I’ve listened dutifully to the White Stripes since I caught their puzzling colour-coded act on the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn back in 2001. Jack and Meg White’s records routinely impress me with their range of ideas in spite of the simplicity of their formula. For me, it represents songwriting stripped to the bone, with every added layer a very deliberate and interesting conscious choice on behalf of Jack, who can blow a song out of the water with the simplest tweak. It’s gratifying to see him in the trailer for “It Might Get Loud”, putting together a makeshift instrument with little more than a Coke bottle and nails.
As a musician, I’m looking forward to seeing these men delve into their approaches to creating not just music, but sounds – the very basic elements of the way a song plays in the head long before it comes out in the performance. It will be equally pleasing to see Jack White match talents with the Edge, as the two men seem to operate on opposite ends of the guitarist spectrum, with Jack’s backyard organic approach seemingly challenging the Edge’s vast array of effects pedals. Then, of course, there’s Jimmy Page, one of the only guitarists on Earth with nothing to prove, a man who is the reason most successful musicians today picked up a guitar in the first place.
I wonder what Page makes of the avenues rock and roll has taken over the last 40 years. It’s a great mix of musicians getting together, each coming from an equidistant point in the succession of their breakthroughs, to talk about why and how they still show love for what they do. Davis Guggenheim is serving as director, best known for the Oscar-winning doc “An Inconvenient Truth”. Really looking forward to this one.
One of the first moving images I ever saw: Raggedy Ann comes to life in "Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure".
November 23, 2009
by Joel Crary
“In the beginning, it is always dark.”
- The Childlike Empress, “The Neverending Story”
My first film. It’s hard to narrow it down. I have to go by the year. I have to remember being in the living room of my family’s house on Humber Road. It’s the early 1980’s, but I don’t remember how early. I remember teaching myself how to use the television remote control, how to read the TV guide. I remember the way the big floor model TV set looked when I turned it off, watching the picture shrink to a line and then a dot before disappearing completely. My parents owned a Betamax machine. My sisters and I are watching “Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure” on a Beta tape.
We watched the film often. We took it out of its rectangular sleeve so many times that my father had to mend the fraying edges with masking tape. Things start in the real world as a young girl gets off a school bus. She carries Raggedy Ann by the foot, takes her into the nursery, and leaves to answer her mother’s call. After she’s gone, the doll comes to life. All of the dolls fade out of reality and the film slips into a momentary dreamlike state as the animation takes over. Ann and Andy embark on a journey to find a kidnapped French doll. They meet a camel with wrinkled knees, encounter a taffy pit inhabited by a man made of goo, take a psychedelic trip through a fun house and board a pirate ship. Lyrics from the songs would be locked in my brain and stay there for almost 30 years. I’d sing the Raggedy Andy songs in the elementary school playground two doors down.
One night, unable to sleep, I snuck from my room and crawled down the hallway on my hands and knees toward the living room, where my parents sat watching “Superman II”. Slowly and methodically, I crept down the carpeted stairs to the sunken floor and made my way under their legs, perched like bridges from the couch to the coffee table. I watched the movie, thinking they hadn’t noticed me, wondering what they’d do if they caught me, probably falling asleep at the end of it all. It was during a scene shot in the Fortress of Solitude.
My father put on “Gulliver’s Travels” one afternoon. I was in an ugly mood and made fun of it, raising a storm of complaint, eventually going to my room in protest, or sent there for bad behaviour. I emerged just as the film ended, with Gulliver setting sail away from Lilliput. An orchestra played on the soundtrack while my father encouraged my sisters to wave at the TV, my dad calling out, “Goodbye, Gulliver!” I cried, experiencing a feeling of heartbreak, as though I had missed out on something special that I couldn’t get back.
“The Neverending Story” may have been the first film I saw in a theatre. I have a memory of being in the long gone Odeon/Paramount twin cineplex on George Street and watching Gmork pursue Atreyu to the end of the world. Artax may have been the first animal I watched die. The deep void of despair and sadness that caused. The adventurous spirit the film and theme song instilled in me as I ran out of the house and up the block, under the midday sun, expecting a luck dragon to scoop me up.
My first drive-in experience: A double bill of either “Superman III” or “Supergirl” and “Gremlins” at the Mustang Drive-in out on Preston Road. My parents drove us home midway through “Gremlins” because they thought it contained too much profanity and violence. The last straw was probably the scene where a blender disintegrates one of the creatures almost entirely, spraying green blood all over the kitchen. I recall a ground-up Gremlin being the catalyst for our departure.
Another early cinema experience was Jeannot Szwarc”s “Santa Claus: The Movie” starring David Huddleston and Dudley Moore. I remember looking up at the starry night sky of the North Pole on the huge screen as Santa and his reindeer nearly succumbed to the cold. My sisters and I still laugh at John Lithgow’s over-the-top performance as evil toy manufacturer B.Z. I quoted a B.Z. line in the backseat of mom and dad’s station wagon one day that had the word “damn” in it, promptly landing me in trouble.
I shared a lot of my early movie-watching experiences with my family, who were simultaneously entertained and wary alongside me. It must have been hard for my folks to decide what they should and shouldn’t expose us to. They let some things slide, but there was definitely a fair share of moments when a tape would be halted partway through because of one too many “goddamns”. My siblings and I were born in a generation where entertainment was already on its way to being a lot more lax in religious morals than the type my parents grew up with.
Next time I’ll take a look at a few films that used to scare the bejeezus out of me.
Brian Clough endures a televised one-on-one encounter with Don Revie in "The Damned United".
(Tom Hooper, 2009)
November 22, 2009
by Joel Crary
To call football a religion in the UK wouldn’t be far off, entangled as it seems to be in age-old church rivalries and characterized by the devoted support of a working class who would rather sing hymns at the stadium than in a pew on Sunday. “You know it’s illegal to sign someone on the Sabbath,” Manager Brian Clough (Michael Sheen) reminds his assistant Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall) as they approach the front door of a prospective defender. Maybe just a handshake now, to stay on the side of both divine and state law.
It was Clough’s decision to sign Dave Mackay (Brian McCardie) that brought Derby County out of the depths of the English league’s second division in 1969, or so he explains to Sam Longson (Jim Broadbent), the team chairman. Longson believes that the players pull rank on management, as do the fans, for that matter. He has a point. Clough could care less about the fans. He has his sights set on getting the best of Don Revie (Colm Meaney), the manager of the successful first division multi-award-winning Leeds United.
Revie seems to have it all together. Before Leeds’ first lottery match with Derby, he and his players deboard their bus wearing suits and signing autographs for a collection of excited fans. Clough has carefully set out glasses and a wine bottle with the label facing just the right way. He knows everything about Revie, explaining to Peter that they’ve lived almost the same life. He knows the shops he probably frequented while living in Middlesbrough. Tonight, he will be Revie’s equal at last. And then Clough is snubbed. He spends the game watching Revie coach Leeds animatedly, himself sitting quietly, wondering what Revie’s got that he doesn’t have.
“The Damned United” gets by on showing hardly any football action. It isn’t about the players, after all. Clough talks to his Derby men like a prison warden in contrast to Revie’s fatherly demeanor. A former player, he knows the moves but has no gift for relating to his men. He takes on new players like shapeless mounds of clay that he can mold to his liking, never stopping to understand their personalities, only knowing where each man should be according to his ability and what he should do in order to guarantee victory. For a while, things work out for Brian Clough. He’s getting to where he believes he deserves to be.
Then, he is offered the position of manager of Leeds United. Revie has left the opportunity for Clough to move in, though he doesn’t want him as a successor. Peter doesn’t believe that it’s a good idea. So much of a team’s success, it seems, is in correlation to where the men come from. They know each other, know the community and understand how to function as a unit. Clough sees it as an opportunity to become known for being an even better coach than Revie. He is ravenous for fame, fed by moments such as Muhammad Ali calling him out on international television. Yet when he coaches the men, there is a clear disconnect. Leeds is loyal to Revie. So are the fans, who belt out his praises en masse in song at the matches.
Had he not been fired as Leeds manager, “The Damned United” may have served as Clough’s profane epitaph, a curse hurled at all he could never be able to achieve. Director Tom Hooper, who helmed the recent “John Adams” miniseries, positions Sheen in his shots as though he is constantly being outmanned by the upper part of the frame. In one sequence, Clough can’t bear to watch the outcome of a Derby match that could make or break his expensive efforts to revive the club. The light from the stadium shines through high windows, bringing him to squint as he tries to go on crowd reaction. Other shots put him on the far left or right in varying degrees of closeup. It is clear that Hooper and screenwriter Peter Morgan believe that Clough is two men, not one. Without Peter by his side, there is an empty hole in Clough’s life that prevents him from achieving his lofty goals, or at least being able to set more reasonable ones.
Sheen is fantastic in the film, at turns cocky and childishly defeated, and it’s great to see Meaney play a medium-profile legend. The film builds to a first and final confrontation between Clough and Revie that underscores the reality of what Clough tried to achieve in climbing the ranks of the first division. Was all of his pettiness really only sparked by a handshake? I wanted to see more of Clough’s behaviour as a father to his two sons for comparison, given that the film puts such an emphasis on the familial bond that football teams take pride in defending, but it’s clear that his approach is flawed. The league may canonize a man for bringing his club competitive glory, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t answer to those who made him what he was.
“The Damned United” is showing at the Bytowne Cinema through Thursday, November 26th.
The real Clough and Revie meet in an interview for Yorkshire television:
Elie/Didier and Yvan make their way across Belgium in "Eldorado".
(Bouli Lanners, 2008)
November 21, 2009
by Joel Crary
I was all set to see “The Blind Side” today, a 12:45 show at the Rideau Centre. I arrived at the theatre to a mob of Twilight fans lined up for the 1 o’clock showing of “New Moon”. With 7 minutes to go until my showtime, the box office hadn’t even opened, so I elected to leave. It’s just as well. I took a long overdue look at what’s happening film-wise in Ottawa this month and discovered the European Union Film Festival, which is being put on by the Canadian Film Institute at Library and Archives Canada until Sunday, December 6th. I picked up a membership and found a seat in an auditorium that was probably just as full as “New Moon’s”, albeit with a different breed of film fan, all in attendance to check out “Eldorado”.
A man arrives home one night to a window of his modest country house lying in pieces on the porch. The burglar is still upstairs. The man arms himself with a pipe and finds him under his bed. The burglar threatens to knife the man if he comes any closer, so the two are at a stalemate. Enough time passes for the shock of the situation to wear off. The man just wants to get some sleep, but he doesn’t trust the burglar, who offers to leave peacefully if he can keep the man’s coin jar.
And so the first of many fractured trust issues is presented for Yvan (Bouli Lanners) and Elie (Fabrice Adde). Yvan is a middle-aged used car salesman, sporting a scraggly Lou Albano beard and a garage uniform. Elie is 30, his beard a patchwork by comparison, his greasy hair kept flat by a ball cap. Yvan offers him a ride back to the main road and after a befuddled goodbye, he leaves for work. When he returns, Elie is still waiting. It turns out not many cars use that road. Elie is looking to get to his parents’ house near the Belgium-France border. That’s what he needed the coins for, he explains. Yvan can sense that he’s a junkie. He knows the type. As the men struggle for conversation over the course of their trip, we discover why.
Along their journey, they are introduced to a series of bizarre people and situations including a psychic who collects cars involved in pedestrian deaths, a nudist who claims to be the actor Alain Delon and a doberman bound and hurled from a bridge. Elie reunites with his family, and in the film’s best scene, it is understood perfectly what kind of a relationship he has with his father, who never appears onscreen. Elie’s mother (Françoise Chichéry) explains more about familial tragedy in her eyes than any kind of literally visualized angry encounter ever could.
Individuals who can’t seem to find a solid footing in daily life are perfect for road movies. There is a sustained sense of amusement in “Eldorado” that comes out of the fact that Elie and Yvon will never find common ground, yet their budding friendship is a comfort when it appears as though each character has no one left to turn to. They bicker spiritedly over whether or not making a person smoke in a rainstorm is fascist. They try to combat the dangers of drunk driving by taping Yvon’s hair to the roof of the Chevy. They offers bits and pieces about their lives, but neither comes to wholly know or trust the other.
What they do reveal packs an effective emotional punch. Lanners, who plays Yvon but also wrote and directed the film, gives just enough of his characters away to make them emotionally sympathetic without spoiling the mystique of their relationship. Belgium has chosen to submit Lanners’ film for Academy Award competition and the actor/writer/director stands a good chance of seeing his film reach a wider audience. In addition to some wondrous cinematography that captures the majestic and melancholy tranquility of the Belgian countryside, Lanners’ film has heart, imagination and rich metaphors. He puts his characters in simple yet extraordinary circumstances, memorable in their off-centredness, and lets them figure a way out naturally.
Why would Yvan help out the man who tried to rob him? Perhaps it’s out of loneliness. Perhaps it’s Good Samaritanism. As the film opens, a disheveled man claiming to be Jesus Christ speaks in direct address, offering the instruction that God loves us and that this time, he will not be crucified. One of the men will lose his soul by the end of “Eldorado”. The other, having buried his past mistakes, will be left to tread carefully as he tries to find his way home.
The European Union Film Festival runs until Sunday, December 6th at Library and Archives Canada. For more information, visit the Canadian Film Institute online at http://www.cfi-icf.ca.
Lem encounters the alien life form of Captain Charles T. Baker in "Planet 51".
(Jorge Blanco, Javier Abad and Marcos Martinez, 2009)
November 20, 2009
by Joel Crary
Compared to “WALL-E”, the Pixar animated film about a robot who journeys into outer space and finds out more about humanity’s place in the grand scheme of things, “Planet 51″ is pretty inert. It’s a film about first contact that succeeds pretty well only when it directly lifts from its predecessor. When Captain Charles T. Baker lands on an alien planet and figures out that the life forms can speak perfect English, he asks for a cappuccino. That’s our best of the best right there.
I understand what screenwriter Joe Stillman was going for with Baker. He’s a cocky, shallow, chiseled hero type who has no business flying a spacecraft. He would be voiced perfectly by Patrick Warburton. Instead, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has stepped in, marking his latest effort to boost his kid-friendly appeal. I even get that choice, to a certain extent. He’s a big guy, a hero type, the kind of guy NASA might send to plant Old Glory on foreign galactic turf. But Johnson plays his character like an overgrown kid who’s eaten too many Twix bars.
Baker tells us that “Planet 51″ is 20 billion miles from Earth. Fine. It kind of looks like Saturn with a terrestrial composition instead of a gaseous one. Trees and intelligent life flourish. The atmosphere is apparently exactly like ours, because Baker can breathe freely. The aliens are green, sport antennae and have four fingers on each hand. Yes, there is a “Gimme four!” joke. Other than that, they look remarkably human. They wear clothing and have haircuts and run comic books shops.
Baker lands in the town of Glipforg, which looks like Hill Valley from the 1955 segments of “Back to the Future”. The vehicles look like the vehicles from the 2015 segments of “Back to the Future Part II”. Even though the cars hover, the alien race hasn’t seemed to have mastered air travel, and certainly not space travel. Teenager Lem (Justin Long) lands a job at the local planetarium. He thinks the universe is 500 miles wide and that the stars number about a thousand, and no one corrects him. He has a crush on girl next door Neera (Jessica Biel) and his best friend Skiff (Seann William Scott) is a little too attached to robots.
“Planet 51″ contains a lot of homages to past works of science fiction like “E.T.”, “Jurassic Park” and “Terminator 2″, some kind of funny, but none really all that imaginative. The film also has an affection for pulp comics and old sci-fi films from the 50’s of the “It Came from Outer Space” variety. Black and white news reports are cheapened by commercials for toothpaste (probably a wise idea not to go with cigarettes). Green versions of Marilyn Monroe grace the pages of entertainment magazines. Young hippies protest for the sake of protesting and get around in space age Volkswagens.
Most interestingly, there is an undercurrent of Cold War paranoia running through the entire picture. A character named General Grawl (Gary Oldman) wants his army to exterminate Baker and spreads propaganda that he is a master of mind control and brainwashing. The kids are taught the duck-and-cover maneuver by their schoolteacher. All the while, Grawl has his opposable olive digit on the red button that will blow everything to hell, or whatever the creatures believe in.
The filmmakers seem very much in tune with darker visions of suburban America, but routinely hold back on expressing them lest things get too dour. The film borrows heavily from “WALL-E”, down to a spunky and mute robot character (who is admittedly the most fun to watch). The success of “WALL-E” and “Up” has shown that today’s kids can accept and be entertained by heavier thematic material if it’s delivered in the right way. “Planet 51″ is like a history book with all of the blood and guts blacked out. The teenage melodrama is routine, and there are a couple of dreadfully bizarre and borderline homophobic jokes about anal probing that should have been dropped altogether. The wonder of space travel is turned into a generic fantasy by Baker, who is a complete joke, but kind of a flat one.
“Planet 51″ is Ilion Animation Studios’ first feature. Based out of Madrid, their animation team shows talent. Considering that it’s a film about exploration of the most universal order, I found myself wishing for more depth. Yes, it should keep kids busy for 85 minutes. Satisfying their curiosities about the night sky is another matter.
Sam introduces Andrew to The Shins in "Garden State".
(Zach Braff, 2004)
November 19, 2009
by Joel Crary
Recently I’ve come across several articles on hipsters and indie cinema that point to “Garden State” as some sort of (un)holy text, for better or worse. Of note is one written by a personal friend of mine, music and culture enthusiast Matt Buttler, who seems to be arguing on his blog that hipster-dom is a sort of necessary result of the postmodern condition – that is, a culture of anti-ideas rather than ideas, seeming creative dead-ends rather than new avenues, etc. Matt is responding in part to an article printed in Adbusters last year that made the claim that hipsters marked no less than the end of civilization. This week, Vadim Rizov, who may be my favourite film blogger, posted a rebuke of Twitter users who took part in a meme that defined “indie” film as such and such, more often than not incorrectly out of ignorance, citing “Garden State” as the film that kick-started a useless paradigm and stigma about independent cinema.
I don’t think of myself as a hipster, which is, of course, a classic hipster assertion to make. I turned 30 last week and I feel as though I’ve largely outgrown those kinds of definitions. If the definition of a hipster comes down to a lifestyle of constantly attending awful rock shows, making bad or extreme fashion choices, drinking a beer with too many consonants in its name and exhaling sarcasm instead of air, I’m about one for four. This isn’t to say that I’ve never bought an ironic t-shirt, thought that compilations weren’t a spiritual necessity or spouted asinine opinions about contemporary society that had no basis in informed fact. A lot of that comes out of the energy of being young and submitting to the false recognition that life is short, that cool is exclusive or that certain existential dilemmas can’t be solved with a little perspective.
I was first attracted to “Garden State” because of the music. About a year before its release I took the advice of a friend and started listening to online radio stations to discover new songs, and that’s how I came across “Breathe In” by Frou Frou, the former dance pop duo comprised of Imogen Heap and Guy Sigsworth that would come to pop up on “sounds like Morcheeba” Amazon recommendation lists. I bought the record while on a trip to New York City in June of 2003. Less than a year later, the album’s first track, “Let Go”, was featured prominently in the teaser trailer to “Garden State”, which began opening in theatres on July 28th, 2004.
The teaser presents a series of images and brief snippets from many of the more visually alive sequences in the film. Writer/director/star Zach Braff is shown prominently wearing an expression of near catatonia as bizarre things happen around him or to him. A group of people scream for dear life as his plane crashes to the ground. A room full of people move in fast forward as he sits perfectly still on a couch. He is shown wearing a shirt that has been stylized in sync with the wallpaper behind him, causing his torso to blend in to the background. He discovers a torn gas pump handle still attached to his car. Throughout all of these moments, the same expression, the same glassy-eyed acknowledgment that he should be reacting to these incredible circumstances, but somehow can’t. Quotations from Newsweek and efilmcritic.com sell Braff as a young visionary. All the while, Frou Frou’s lilting dance number drives the preview forward, filling the cracks with heart and the melancholy observation that there is beauty in breaking down.
Perhaps my personal discovery of Frou Frou was instrumental in finding “Garden State” so appealing initially. Those who knew of Braff knew him from the popular television sitcom “Scrubs”, in which he played a goofy medical intern with a bizarre imagination. His prominent presence in a film represented something fresh for a young generation, a new and unique kind of auteur that the youth could call their own without admitting to it. His devoted online presence fueled his fandom and drove scores of people to the theatre and video stores, turning “Garden State” into a cult classic. Studios began their cookie-cutting process and the inevitable backlash followed. For some, the movie has come to stand for all that is unbearable about Generation Y, a collection of misguided individuals who assembled their cultural histories from soundbytes and conveniently located hyperlinks that teach them all they need to know about how the world works.
When we first see Andrew Largeman in a non-dream state, he is tucked tightly in bed in a purely white room, looking up at the ceiling. His phone rings. It’s his father, calling to tell him that his mother has died. Andrew reacts to the message as though he’s trying to do rudimentary math in his head – the previous generation dies and leaves the next alone in mental disarray. We discover that Andrew gets through life on a cocktail of lithium and other anti-depressants that keep him functioning, but only barely. Throughout the course of a weekend, he abandons his meds and allows his emotions to surface, whereupon he is able to forgive himself for his mistakes and deal more truthfully with his own life.
The emotional sad sack with psychological issues is the hipster prototype. Kids understand dour and upset. The world is a massive letdown, but that’s sort of comforting. There is a solace in not being all right. It means that a person can be different, more fully individualized in a global village that has suddenly and dramatically shrunk in size. There is a relief in thinking that no one understands. And that’s how the hipster subculture thrives: by a superficially singular yet mutual understanding of a collective’s ironic apart-ness. Back in 2001, Donnie Darko excitedly turned to Gretchen Ross and asked, “What emotional problems does your dad have?” as though emotional problems were trading cards that could be negotiated for a complete set. In “Garden State”, Andrew Largeman sports a proud collection, as does old high school friend Mark (Peter Sarsgaard), though someone has stolen his Wolf Blitzer.
Sam (Natalie Portman) enters Andrew’s life in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. Her affliction is epilepsy. Her medicine is a sense of humour and music. She dares to utter the name of a band that will change Andrew’s life, pouring on the significance of The Shins before a brief few bars of “New Slang” plays over her grinning face. It’s a moment with little precedent on film. Certainly, characters have luxuriated in music and called artists by name, but an actual, for real “indie” rock band? The past decade has marked a period of time in which pop radio married itself to hip hop and music video channels stopped playing music videos altogether. How would a young woman in Jersey know of a band out of Portland with a couple of 7-inch singles and a full-length debut released on Sub Pop?
It’s unspoken in the film, perhaps because modern narratives still don’t know how to discuss 21st century technology without sounding infantile or corny, but Sam in particular is a child of that technology. The Internet has expanded the definition of what can be called authentic, while simultaneously enforcing authenticity as a prime secular ethic. Anyone can now be the first to hear anything. The moment in “Garden State” when Sam plays The Shins for Andrew, a band he’s never heard of, attracts hipsters by presenting itself as a moment of unbridled authenticity. The boy listens to the girl’s music and it/she changes his life. She pulls him out of his medication-induced clouded haze to realize that life is worth encountering by showing him that a song can still mean something to two people at the exact same time.
Music’s always had that power. The soundtrack to “Garden State” is lathered with good, solid songs. They emerge from the narrative like a thoughtfully chosen playlist, repeatedly evoking the right kind of modern emotion. Every song spirals around the loneliness a person can experience when coming of age. Mark tells his mother that he’s only 26 and that he doesn’t want to feel rushed. At 24, I listened and thought, yes, I didn’t want to feel rushed. There’s something about being 23, 24, 25, 26 that makes the rest of a life feel unacceptable somehow. People speed by like blurs and rarely stay. The future is an infinite abyss.
What “Garden State” does well is sustain a mood and vision that is quite apparently of its writer and director. Braff deserves due credit for it. He has yet to follow it up, and when he does, he won’t be telling the same story. The film is the acute result of being a certain age, feeling a certain way and resisting the belief that everything will change. “Garden State” is about the process of letting go.
The body of Jesse James is photographed for the history books in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford".
(Andrew Dominik, 2007)
November 18, 2009
by Joel Crary
At the end of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance”, James Stewart has finished relaying his story of gunning down the infamous outlaw for a reporter, finally coming clean that it was John Wayne whose aim was true. It won’t fly in the press, the reporter famously asserts: “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” In spite of its wonderful cinematography and a great performance by Casey Affleck, I was thoroughly let down by “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”. It makes the mistake of printing the facts, and too many at that.
The film stars Brad Pitt as the outlaw and he’s just fine in the role. Jesse snarls and acts kind of nuts and seems dangerously unpredictable. He’s a hero to the young Ford (Affleck), who desperately wants to join his gang. Indeed, Affleck plays the role with a pitiable brilliance – in one scene, he forks over all of the knowledge he’s gained about Jesse from the pulp paperbacks that he keeps in a shoebox under his bed, drawing comparisons to himself down to the number of letters in their respective older brothers’ names.
Jesse laughs in his face. We kind of want to see him get his due, and this is one of the film’s faults – it can’t commit to supporting either of its protagonists. There is no indication of why Jesse is the way he is. Keeping him a mystery would be fine if Ford were the focus of the narrative, but for the film’s first half, which casts its net too widely in needlessly trying to establish supporting characters, he is not. Finally, Ford jumps into action, dispatching Jesse’s cousin Wood (Jeremy Renner) in a gunfight that he had no part in. The kid might have the guts to fire on Jesse after all.
By the gunfight scene, the film had worn me down with its pacing, which is far too gradual and ultimately causes its structure as a whole to collapse from underneath itself. The last half hour offers a potentially fascinating conclusion, but compared to how the film has told the story to that point, everything ends up feeling rushed and superficial. Andrew Dominik, who based his script on the novel by Ron Hansen, would have been wiser to vary his approach with regard to timelines. All of the moments he chooses to chronicle, such as Wood and Dick Liddil’s (Paul Schneider) romp up to Jesse’s uncle’s house and Jesse’s relation of his execution of Ed Miller (Garret Dillahunt) to Robert’s brother Charley (Sam Rockwell), might have indeed been necessary, but they aren’t placed in a relation to one another that makes them seem particularly relevant to the plot.
Dominik implements a narrator to poetically describe his characters’ lives and internalized feelings to the point of absurdity. In one scene, Ford paces around Jesse’s house from room to room while the narrator details every move he makes, even though they are plainly visible, robbing Affleck of the chance to communicate his mindset physically. This exhibits only a cowardice in technique, not in Robert Ford. The narrator describes Jesse’s home life. A good thing, too, because there would be hardly any indication that he had one otherwise. Poor Mary-Louise Parker is given precious little to do in her role as Mrs. James other than to shriek in horror upon his assassination, the one plot element that holds interest when nothing else of interest really presents itself.
“Assassination” is ultimately a story about how a man like Jesse James, who masterminded nearly 30 holdups, who outsmarted many men to their deaths in the violent environment of the old West, who trusted only two men in 10,000, and then not by much, could be shot by a punk kid with a crush on him. It takes an interesting turn in depicting the aftermath, but the slow buildup to the shooting doesn’t allow the film’s conclusions regarding Ford’s character to carry much dramatic weight. Jesse and Ford’s relationship is key, but the film spends far too much time diverting from it in order to pay attention to every single facet of the historical circumstances. In the telling of a legend, that’s wholly unnecessary. In the relating of fact, it’s tedious.
I was a young teenager when Adam Sandler, David Spade, Rob Schneider and Chris Rock were all on Saturday Night Live together in the early- to mid-90’s. I grew an affection for Sandler via his performance in “Happy Gilmore” and for Spade in “Tommy Boy”. I caught the Chris Rock train once I saw his stand-up work. And then there’s Rob Schneider, who’s been fine in more toned-down roles, but hasn’t had one since he started riding Sandler’s coattails in the ingratiating “The Waterboy”.
Sandler has racked up a score of mostly misses rather than hits with me, but I think he can be great with the right material. It’s when he tries to introduce characters that he and his close friends apparently find especially funny that he more often than not sinks my interest. “Grown Ups” immediately has the fact that there will be no wacky-voiced Sandler going for it. Schneider, on the other hand, looks dead on arrival with the stupid haircut and unfunny joke about having an old wife. While Spade’s television work has been fairly inoffensive, theatrically, he lost me at “Joe Dirt”.
The movie is being sold as a return to form for some comedic veterans who have split from SNL and built careers out of being immature. It could work, especially with Rock in the cast, who’s almost always funny. Unfortunately, I didn’t laugh at a single joke in the trailer. Kevin James looks to be on hand for some physical comedy that Chris Farley would have performed a hundred times better, had he survived to see this film. It’s kind of neat to see the old gang come together, but the paths these actors have taken to get to “Grown Ups” certainly don’t guarantee that it will be anything greater than the sum of its parts.
Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel sets the groundwork for her fashion empire in "Coco avant Chanel".
(Anne Fontaine, 2009)
November 15, 2009
by Joel Crary
“Coco” was the name of a lost dog, found in the lyrics of a cabaret performer who refused to take off her clothes for the extra tips. To the rich men in attendance, the name seemed to neatly put in place the winsome creature who wanted nothing more than to go to Paris and seek her fortune, but not at the expense of debasing herself for their sexual pleasure. In “Coco avant Chanel”, the creature is portrayed by Audrey Tautou, whose unique countenance commands and informs every scene like an alien presence.
The story of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s rise to fame in the world of fashion is paved with money. Raised in an orphanage before trying her hand at live performance, Coco shows early on an almost sixth sense for the way dresses should fit, preferring comfort over popular style. The warmth of her introduction to millionaire Étienne Balsan (Benoît Poelvoorde) might assure her big city success, but her partner and sister Adrienne (Marie Gillain) has a chance at upward mobility with a Baron, leaving Coco in the lurch.
With a scant few francs left in her savings and no parents to turn to, Coco has no choice but to appeal to Balsan’s attraction and becomes a guest in his house. Stage actress Emilienne d’Alençon (Emmanuelle Devos) confirms the suspicion that Coco is not the first to take advantage of Balsan’s good graces. Coco is treated as a novelty at parties held to stroke the egos of the French bourgeoisie, men who have never worked a day in their lives, who treat and speak of women as items of property. In one scene, Balsan demands that Coco perform as though she were a trained seal, and Tautou remains in the centre of the shot while drunken revelers carouse around her unfortunate frame.
The film is appropriately subtle in its establishment of Coco’s approach to fashion. Her tailored outfits are extensions of her emotions. The deeper her ideological separation from the patriarchal world around her becomes, the more her fashions defiantly tend toward the masculine. As she grows more comfortable in Balsam’s house, so do her expressions of distaste for the exploitation of women in a society where money dictates personal, emotional and spiritual achievement. At the turn of the 20th century in Europe, when a woman’s fashion choices ran directly in parallel to their sexuality, to see a woman dress proudly like a man must have introduced a buffet of repressed homosexual desire in men and women alike. Addressing the notion of sexual attraction, Coco notes that “skin is skin”.
A man enters the picture who seems to sympathize with Coco’s avant-garde fashion sense and intelligence. Arthur “Boy” Capel (Alessandro Nivola) takes a shine to Coco’s independence and admits his fetish with a smirk: “I’m not used to undressing boys”. The two fall in love and the independent thought that marriage is little more than a social convention is of little solace to Coco when she cannot have the entirety of her lover’s attention. He introduces Coco to Jules Renard and Friedrich Nietzsche and shows her the sea, an expanse of endless opportunity for the free thinker, where Coco sees the blue outfits of the fishermen and logs in her mind how brilliant they appear against the silver glint of the catch.
The textures and motion of fabrics can nearly be felt as Coco gets her hands into her hard work, in contrast to the effete men surrounding her, who take pride in their positions of wealth without lifting a finger unless it’s to cheer a racehorse. Tautou is at turns radiant and reserved as Coco. She never offers a dishonest smile as she walks proudly in detailed outfits that inject her character with more than words could say. Writer/director Anne Fontaine and her crew of costume designers tell half of Chanel’s story through dress. There is not an outfit or hairstyle that isn’t meant to portray the bearing and social beliefs of the character. It is a treat to watch Coco move provocatively, comfortably, and yes, elegantly through a crowd in clothing that she deems beautiful according to the standards set by her own imagination and talent.
While the film admirably captures the part of Chanel’s life that it advertises, I fear that Western audiences may be too unfamiliar with Chanel’s life to feel satisfied with what it ultimately offers. Based on the book by Edmonde Charles-Roux, Fontaine’s narrative pays too long an attention to Chanel’s life at Balsan’s mansion without making enough significant plot developments. As a result, the film drags in areas and ends too shortly after its climax. Tautou is great as the quintessential New Woman, though. She has a unique look that singles her out in a room full of dying archetypes.
“Coco avant Chanel” is showing at the Bytowne Cinema through Thursday, November 26th.
Gavin makes the young ladies of the United Kingdom quiver in "Pirate Radio".
(Richard Curtis, 2009)
November 14, 2009
by Joel Crary
Watching “Pirate Radio” is like taking part in a 135-minute high school cafeteria food fight. At first, you can’t believe everyone’s getting away with it, but at around the 30-minute mark you kind of become desensitized to the dessert-flinging and start to realize what a giant mess everything is.
A shame, because there is some great talent in the film. In an early scene, young Carl (Tom Sturridge) is introduced to the crew of the Radio Rock, and my grin widened as the character actors stepped forward: Nick Frost, Rhys Darby, Chris O’Dowd, Katherine Parkinson. These are people I know and love from television and film and to see them all gathered in one place gave me high hopes for “Pirate Radio”. As if things couldn’t be looking better, Rhys Ifans and Bill Nighy were on board, and the one and only Philip Seymour Hoffman looked to be performing a role akin to Lester Bangs in “Almost Famous”. One of the simple joys in life is watching Hoffman rock out to late 60’s era rock n’ roll music, an extensive playlist of which is present in “Pirate Radio”.
Unfortunately, these terrific actors spend almost absolutely no time at all talking about the music. We see them on their boat in the North Sea, broadcasting The Who and The Rolling Stones to millions of listeners, much to the chagrin of the British government. Each DJ has his own shtick in place to build a cult of personality and tempt scores of women onto the boat for a quick shag. We understand quickly that the pirate’s life is hedonistic and desirable and cool. But what about the songs? Why do these people feel it necessary to spend their lives at sea, other than the fact that rock n’ roll allows them to take advantage of their lifestyles?
Hoffman’s character, the Count, is a total lite version of Bangs. He’s an American DJ who came aboard the ship in the absence of Gavin (Ifans), a Brit who left for greener pastures in America. For whatever unexplained reason, Gavin has decided to come back and a rivalry grows between the two. It is a competition that should blossom out of a mutual respect, but respect for what? Where do these men come from? Besides a desire to ruffle the feathers of the powers that be, what fuels their drive to get rock n’ roll out to the masses? “These are the best days of our lives,” the Count tells Carl as the ship’s time at sea seems to be drawing to an end. Carl doesn’t believe him, and it’s no wonder.
The powers that be are tightly encased within Sir Alistair Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh), a government minister with a very precise haircut. Branagh puts in the film’s sharpest comedic performance. His second in command is Twatt (Jack Davenport), who digs up as much ammunition against the rogue DJs as he can to shut their operation down. It is a testament to Branagh’s brilliance that I laughed every single time he offered a bit of dialogue that played on his subordinate’s name (“Well done, Twatt”).
The film contains several storylines involving the loss of Carl’s innocence, the identity of his real father, the short-lived marriage of one character to a fan, and Dormandy’s efforts to shut the radio station down. Director Richard Curtis periodically gives us shots of young people tuning in to the broadcasts and eating up the words and music of the DJs, sneaking radios under their pillows and into bathrooms to indulge in their rock n’ roll fantasies. Things turn a bit hectic for the ship in the film’s conclusion with some nice camerawork and harrowing action.
“Pirate Radio” embellishes a lot on the practices of pirate radio stations of the era including Radio Caroline, but not a lick of this story is true. I liked the film’s energy, but it’s only sporadically funny and it doesn’t have an affection for the songs and records that a story like this should have. Released overseas as “The Boat that Rocked”, “Pirate Radio” suffers from editing problems that leave its characters to flounder. The DJs don’t seem to be serving any sort of socially important function, but are instead living selfishly for the glorification of their immature egos. Near the end of the Radio Rock’s short-lived seafaring career, each crew member throws their hands in the air and salutes rock n’ roll. They all know the moves, but no one knows the music.
