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Paul Thomas Anderson: Punch Drunk Love
The much-discussed phenomenon known as the sophomore slump doesn't just apply to attempt number two. An artist's second film/book/record is certainly the most dissected, but the plight of un-met expectations can be met at any time. For me, it's usually the second thing I experience by the artist in question - not the second thing he produced, but the second thing I encounter. The first thing, whether it's the artist's first or fifth or fiftieth work - is a revelation. The second, encumbered by my own expectations, rarely matches that. For Paul Thomas Anderson, it's film number four - no one remembers Hard Eight, people took notice when Boogie Nights came out, Magnolia was a heart-stopping work of brilliance. And a hard act to follow. Anderson's fourth film, Punch Drunk Love, doesn't come close to these heights.
To its credit, it doesn't try. Each of Anderson's features has been different from the last, there is no hammered-out formula that he follows, despite the pressure he must inevitably be under to do another Boogie Nights or Magnolia.
That said, the ways in which Punch Drunk Love differs from its predecessors are not good ones. Transitions are awkward. Swirling colour bars and blinking lights: why? how does this connect? Characters don't receive the same depth of treatment. The actors' performances are fine - including Adam Sandler, whose presence usually makes me cringe, in the lead as repressed small businessman Barry Egan - but they're not given a lot to work with. We see his crazy family briefly enough to dislike them, but we don't get to know them: they aren't given a chance to defend themselves. Even the most fleshed-out sister, the irritating and pushy (as is the whole family) Elizabeth (Mary Lynn Rajskub), doesn't move beyond one dimension. We see enough of them to understand how they drive Barry crazy, but not enough to understand why. Similarly, the always brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman plays an evil, one-sided man who takes a simple low-stakes criminal shake-down to violent extremes. Why? Who knows? We get to know Barry well enough to see why Lena (Emily Watson) falls for him, but we don't learn a thing about her.
The only justification I can think of is that Anderson is trying to show Barry's world, and Barry's world only, and Barry is unable to see people as more than cartoons of themselves. He can't see anything positive about his family, or anything negative about Lena. But even if this is the case, shouldn't there be some moment, some eye-opening, some point at which Barry comes alive and sees the world in all its complexity?
Maybe that is what is missing from the ending of the film. It seemed like more than one scene had gone missing completely: the slow build to the climax ended short of any real moment of truth or horror or understanding or fulfilment. I felt as though I had only seen half a film, or maybe two thirds. I'll still look forward to Anderson's future efforts, but recommend waiting for the video release of this one.
Hot Docs
The annual Hot Docs festival of documentary filmmaking is on now in Toronto.
Documentaries are an interesting breed: the product of personal passion, they are often strange, often profoundly affecting. The majority fall into one of two categories: the exposé, or exploration of a mystery; and the quest: a portrait of one person's obsession, a trip into the mind of a singular individual with a dream.
This is the kind I find most fascinating. If you took all documentaries of this sort and strung them together, you'd get as accurate a picture of the human condition as you could hope to find.
One reason this type of documentary is so consumping is that the subject and filmmaker have a unique understanding of one another: the filmmaker is persistent in pursuit of his subject (docs are a labour of love, first of all; if they actually make money, it's usually a pleasant surprise), and his subject is relentless in pursuit of... A reputation as a daredevil. Stardom. A lost friend.
Tyler's Barrel is the story of a young man who has spent his life since age three chasing one dream: to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Despite the fact that no one (in an unscientific poll of friends of mine) could name any of the daredevils who've done this in the past, thereby throwing into question what kind of "fame" he would achieve, Tyler is determined. Throughout the film, filled with tragicomic moments as he gets fired from minimum-wage jobs and evicted from a flophouse and eventually carted off to jail, those who know him comment on his single-mindedness, and wish he had focussed on a useful, attainable goal, rather than one as dangerous and ultimately fruitless as this. The more we get to know Tyler, the more we realise tht this dream is all he has, that he has abandoned any other chances at life. Is he being naive, or foolish? Or is he just desperately afraid?
Another outcast in search of fame is Le Coq de Montréal - a car thief and bank robber who decides, at the age of forty-six, to move to a less dangerous line of work: movie stardom. After all, there are lots of films about car thieves and bank robbers, right? A striking figure, a gaunt, scarred cross between Ben Kingsley and the guy from Midnight Oil, le Coq goes from being a star in the underworld to being an extra working for minimum wage. "He is always typecast as a convict," complains his girlfriend.
His attempts to find an agent are fruitless: he is thwarted by his own CV. "What is this... six months experience tunneling under Montréal. What does that mean?" "Oh," responds le Coq, "I was just, you know, looking for... stuff." Hmm. She tells him to take acting classes. Seeing a man go from cocky to humble can be hard to watch, but ultimately this is someone who will survive, no matter what.
Director Christian Bauer turns the camera on himself as he goes in search of his lost friend, filmmaker and cameraman Allen Ross. when the subject of a documentary is himself a filmmaker, there is lots of great material available: footage from films Allen had worked on with Bauer is interspersed with new footage from Bauer's quest, with Bauer's commentary overlaid: this is Allen, this is where we were, this is what he said to me that day. Missing Allen is a very personal quest, which retains its objectivity in part due to Bauer's own reticent and somewhat stiff nature: at one point, interviewing a friend and colleague, he acknowledges hiding behind the camera to protect his own emotions. Some scenes are hard to watch; the longer the search goes on, the lower our expectations of a happy ending, or even a real sense of resolution.
These are stories one would never "buy" as fiction. In some ways, they don't seem "plausible," as if real life could never be that strange. But in the inquisitive and thoughtful eye of the documentary filmmaker, even the outlandish becomes real and affecting.
Neil Labute: Nurse Betty
Looking at the video box, you'd think Nurse Betty is a girl movie: Betty, a waitress and soap opera junkie, travels across the country to meet Dr. David Ravel, matinée idol and man of her dreams.
Then you remember the director is Neil Labute.
Labute is known for his controversial films, which he considers vehicles for his personal world view: people are evil. A member of the religious right, he is a firm believer in original sin and the necessity of redemption. His films show people (especially men) at their worst: his first feature, The Company of Men, portrays two heartless cads manipulating an innocent ugly girl for their own amusement. It's painful to watch.
So you know this ain't no chick flick.
Betty is sweetness and light personified. She is friendly and kind to the regulars at the diner where she works; several seem to have an avuncular soft spot for her. Her husband Del, a car salesman, is the opposite: a thoughtless philanderer, he thinks he's smarter than anyone in town, and uses his smarts to rip people off.
Except he tries the wrong trick on the wrong people. They come looking for him, and an evening of intimidation leads to his murder. Betty sees the killing, goes into shock, and erases the incident -- and her normal life -- from her memory. She replaces it with her fantasy life: she is part of the soap opera world, and Dr. David Ravel, heart surgeon, is pining for her. She just has to go and find him.
Labute is fairly heavy-handed with his characters; the smaller parts especially are one-sided caricatures. Del, in addition to not remembering Betty's birthday, takes a casual bite out of the little cupcake-with-candle her coworkers gave her, before barking: "clean this shit up!" Okay, we get the point. Chris Rock is a criminal live-wire, all testosterone and no thought. His father, played by morgan freeman, is much more layered: thoughtful, aware of his station in life, but no corny crook-with-a-heart-of-gold type.
Betty herself, while convincingly portrayed by Renée Zellweger, is too simple a naïf to be fully believed. She is too pure, too sweet, too humble to be human. Although it is nice to see a female character who finds solutions to her problems on her own, even if in such a highly unorthodox, unbelievable manner.
The question here is what is Labute's motive -- you know hes got one. What's the moral of this story? Stay true to your dreams, and you will be rewarded (although not necessarily with the reward you were hoping for)? He has made Betty so pure as to be a stand-in for St. Mary (no virgin/whore complex there), whose purity redeems in some way the evils of just about everyone she encounters. Is Labute trying to sell modern-day miracles?
For all of its flaws, the film works. The sweetness and light softens the chilling Labute weltenschaung, which in turn enlivens what would otherwise be a bland girl movie. We may not agree with Labute's version of the human psyche, but he certainly makes us think twice about it.
David Weaver: Century Hotel
To read the promo materials, one would expect Century Hotel to be an ambitious project.
Well, it's pretty to look at, I'll give it that.
The premise: a century of stories in one hotel room. Now, this is a great premise. It's such a great premise in fact, that many have used it (or variations thereof) before. Grand Hotel is the classic of the genre: the film in which Garbo spoke the immortal line, "i want to be alone." there's also Neil Simon's Plaza Suite, the ambitious-but-poorly-received Four Rooms, and Arthur Hailey's simply-titled Hotel. In the arena of hotel films, there's a lot of competition and the standards are high.
Century Hotel captures your attention right away, when a young girl (Lindy Booth) checks in who has made plans to spend the eve of the millennium with a complete stranger she met on the internet. The bellhop tells her the story of the hotel's opening night, when a woman was murdered in that very room. We flash back to 1921, and begin the story of that woman (also played by Lindy Booth).
Can I just interject for a moment to say how irritating I find it that in hotel years, eighty seems to equal a hundred? Did no one involved do the math? You wanna call it a century, you better make it a century.
And there were some other problems too: the prostitute (Mia Kirshner) forgot her corset on the way out, the mail-order bride (Sandrine Holt) was wearing totally inauthentic stockings for 1933. Picky stuff, but if you're gonna do it, do it right.
Anyway.
Then we jump ahead to the 'eighties, where a married man is using the room for purchased entertainment. Then back to the 'fifties, a paranoid/obsessive man alone. Then ahead to the 'sixties, a reclusive rockstar. Then back to a fellow coming home from the second world war. Then back to the 'thirties, and the arrival of a Chinese mail-order bride.
Where's the connection?
I kept waiting for these stories to be "intricately woven" together into a "seamless portrait of relationships." Okay, they're all about love in its many forms, but that ain't enough. Supposedly they take place in the same room, but you can't tell to look at it: one character makes passing reference to this ("Isn't this where the bathroom used to be? This place has gone really downhill"), but basically, if not told, the viewer would have no clue. While the individual segments are well done in and of themselves, they remain unconnected. The overall effect is disjointed, rather than seamless. Some films, such as Exotica, or Kieslowski's Trois Couleurs trilogy, weave their various strands together at the end in ways that seem surprising yet inevitable. Century Hotel fails badly in this department.
In order to maintain interest, writer Bridget Newson has relied too heavily on the shocker twist, dropping plenty of red herrings, but then boom surprise. It's an easy way out for a boring story, but unfortunately doesn't make for an interesting, challenging film. And it's kinda cheating. I hate that kind of trickery.
Better to save your cinematic dollars for Figgis' latest project, Hotel, due out later this year.
David Fincher: Fight Club
Well, I finally succumbed and watched Fight Club (in my defence: a friend lent it to me. I was too tired to leave the house in search of entertainment) after years of resistance.
Yawn.
Based on the (try-hard) novel by chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club can be easily lumped in with the rest of the "discover reality/your dark side through addiction" films. In this case, the drug is that fave of maledom, testosterone, and is acquired by allowing people to beat you up. All of which is old news, to anyone who has ever partaken of any competetive sport, most especially wargame activities such as martial arts and paintball. I will be the first to admit that the visceral adrenaline thrill of pretending one's life is in danger is heaps and heaps of fun. But "heaps of fun" does not a script (or novel) make.
I read Pahlaniuk's novel when it first came out and found it engaging in the beginning chapters, but that it lacked the steam to maintain its momentum. This is always disappointing. The narrator begins as an interesting character, driven by insomnia to attend group-therapy sessions for cancer survivors, in search of a real emotion. I was hooked right away, eager to go where the author would take me. But then... it turned into a jam session (so much great afro-cubop of the 'fifties ended up in the same predicament) that gets into a groove and doesn't know where to go. Ooh, ending? we need to build up to an ending? Everybody blatt your trumpet in unison! Or blow up a building or something! Whatever.
There is something to be learned from even the worst films.
Herewith, a summary (to save you from having to sit through it):
- For those who did not already know, you really ought to throw off the shackles of bourgeois consumerism. Consumerism is so nineties.
- Edward Norton is brilliant, and can make almost anything watchable. And he is superfoxy, in that pencilneck geek way I so adore.
- Brad Pitt should really not be given any rôle in which he is expected to espouse any sort of philosophy, even the most simple-minded variety. He just can't pull it off. He did, however, remind me of the scene in The Breakfast Club where Bender tells Claire that she is destined to be fat, even if she isn't yet. There is a certain Brando-esque quality to Pitt's cheeks - they are definitely pushing maximum density - and we can expect them to droop even further into jowliness in the near future.
- Helena Bonham Carter cannot be relied upon to deliver American accents and emotion at the same time. Well, she can deliver them, but she delivers them in plural (she's from Boston! now Chicago! now Atlanta!) mixed with those Merchant-Ivory vowels we are more used to hearing from her.
- If you do want to change the world, it is much, much easier to drop a bomb than to write a brilliant novel (or adapt a novel for the screen). Evidence of this can be found in many American cities. Does not a cultural renaissance follow crime and destruction? No? Maybe those criminals weren't winking enough or something.
I shouldn't be so harsh though, should I. The editing was excellent (if a little cliché at times). Ditto the cinematography, and I loved the opening credits. And I was quite grateful that they trimmed the tedious and needless reptition of the "I am Joe's bile duct" joke, which appeared on every second page of the novel. But I didn't think the ending needed nearly as much dumbing-down as this adaptation afforded it. It was pretty easy to guess halfway through that Tyler and our narrator are one and the same; they did not need to reiterate the fact a hundred and fifty times. Ah well.
If you have never seen a film made outside of hollywood (this product-placement vehicle was brought to you by the old boys at Twentieth Century fox), the snappy style and groovy tunes may distract you enough that you will find it interesting. If you are an angst-ridden teen whose soul is of a complexity that mere grownups cannot comprehend, you will dig the nihilism.
But if you have already learned that the only things worth doing in life involve creation rather than destruction, you will be bored to tears and be thankful that you didn't even waste a toonie renting it.
Gary Burns: Waydowntown
When I first saw the script for Waydowntown last spring, I couldn't wait to see the finished product. Thankfully it lived up to expectations. Or maybe that's just because it hits kind of close to home.
Many cities in this frigid country of ours have networks of tunnels and skyways to prevent us from coming into contact with the harsh realities of the Canadian climate. As someone who can go almost all the way to and from work without seeing the great outdoors, I can relate to the story of four young office minions who have a bet to see who can stay inside the longest.
When we meet Tom (Fabrizio Filippo), Sandra (Marya Delver), Curt (Gordon Currie), and Randy (Tobias Godson), they have been doing it for a month. Going from point A to point B without stepping outside. The strain is beginning to show. They are beginning to resort to extremes, booby-traps and mindgames. Each accuses the other of breaking the rules. Each has a particular weakness which may bring the final downfall. Each develops coping mechanisms, from smoking up, to sniffing fragrance samples, to attempts at seduction.
Meanwhile, they are surrounded by their coworkers, who may not officially be part of the bet, but are going through the same dilemmas in slow motion. Isn't selling your soul to the man for the hope of an executive benefit plan just another, slower way to asphyxiate yourself? Don McKellar(who has been in every good Canadian film ever made)'s Brad, the middle-aged wage-slave we all dread becoming, is horrifyingly accurate.
The film uses its microbudget to its advantage; being shot on dv and then blown up to 35mm gives it a graininess and distorted colours that illustrate that am-I-hungover-or-am-I-still-drunk feeling that plagues our oxygen-starved heroes. They are grey-skinned and pale, with lips like vampires'. Little signals sneak up on you slowly -- hey, when did he change his tie? -- before you realise all of the visual tricks that Burns (Kitchen Party, Suburbanators... Canada's most ignored indie director) has employed. It ain't a continuity problem, that's just how the world feels somedays. Seeing this colour scheme pasted on top of the banal day-to-day of corporate life (the motivational posters, the endless empty-headed talk of "teamwork") underlines just how surreal the modern office has become.
A funny little flick chock-full of deadpan suicide references. yeah it's comedy, but it is very, very dark.
Lars Von Trier: Dancer in the Dark
I have a rule which I may have to break (or bend, a little).
I try to read as little as possible about a film (or book, or play) before seeing it, so as not to taint my viewpoint for or against before the thing even starts. So when a friend and I decided to meet for a movie the other night, we decided on Dancer in the Dark because we love Lars Von Trier, and a musical starring Bjork and Catherine Deneuve sounded fun.
Fun? I suppose I should have known better, considering Trier's filmography. But that is the thing with Trier: you never really know what to expect. This is good.
Anyway, I won't be spoiling anything if I say that Dancer in the Dark is sad. Just a warning.
It's also beautiful and compelling and overwhelming.
For Lars Von Trier to come out with a musical after issuing the Dogme 95 manifesto seemed a bit like cheating to many. The film begins, however, in a grainy, shaky, washed out tone that could easily fill the Dogme 95 requirements (no special lighting/filters, no mixed in soundtracks). Bjork plays Selma, a poor single mother with coke bottle glasses who dreams of musicals. She has been cast as Maria in a local amateur production of The Sound of Music and action begins with a hilarious scene in which Selma dances poorly and her friend Kathy (Catherine Deneuve), handing her all of the "favourite things" in the song, appears to be trying to set a giant bowl of noodles on Selma's head.
From the subtle exposition and kitchen-sink realism of factory shots, we drift into Selma's dream world. The rhythms of the machinery become the percussion of her fantasies, as the sepia-grey tones brighten into sun-tinged oranges and greens and trier segues into the first musical number. This is the only musical I have seen where the dance numbers seemed so organic and natural. Bjork's score is unself-consciously beat heavy and entirely appropriate given the industrial reality from which it is born, as is the somewhat stilted choregraphy.
The action seems stunningly lacking in melodrama (well, maybe, to start with, at least), due to profoundly understated performances. The characters themselves carry an integrity seldom seen on screen. But the plot, while starting out quietly affecting, ramps up towards a painful ending. In less assured hands, this would be a big mess. Trier and his wonderful cast manage to pull it off. On the one hand the script is terribly manipulative, but Trier's simplicity and avoidance of easy cinematic device make it seem innocent. There are no swelling violins here, and the background silence between the songs makes each word hit that much harder. It's like sonic negative space.
The visual simplicity adds to Trier's implicit critique of the "American dream." The United States has used the dream as its defining metaphor since its inception; it's probably impossible for any director, especially a foreign director, to set a film in the united states without infusing it with his sense of the mystique that the United States has built up about its defining philosophy. Trier is not too too hard on the dream itself, he reserves his criticism for those who have taken its fulfilment for granted, and have forgotten what it means in the first place. Selma, the immigrant, came to America for the opportunity to secure her son's future. Bill and Linda (David Morse and Cara Seymour) have forgotten the underlying principles, and are more concerned with having a nice house and two cars et cetera. Trier's use of colour underscores this difference: because really, those musicals numbers are no more colourful than a typical sunny fall day. In contrast to the washed out colours Trier uses in the every-day scenes, however, they seem brilliant and beautiful. Actually, they are always that brilliant and beautiful, but usually we can't be bothered to notice.
Not a film that can be captured in words. See it in a cinema while you have the opportunity (you're only allowed to wait for video if your home theatre has surround sound).
Post script: the songs, while not typically "hummable," are still going through my head three days later.
Mike Hodges: Croupier
I was stunned to discover that this film was made in 1998! Where has it been for the past two years? Apparently, Hodges' (who wrote and directed the original Get Carter in 1971) latest work was deemed too intelligent for Brits to handle. No matter, it's here now.
This is one of those films that succeeds on many levels. On the one hand, you have a quiet thriller set in the seedy underworld of London gamblers: drugs, money, paranoia. On the other hand, the more you think about it, the more there is.
Jack Manfred (Clive Owen) is a struggling writer. There are hints of a shady past in South Africa: we know his father is there, gambling and lying, but we don't know much of the history of Jack himself. Jack's father calls with an opportunity for his son: a job as a croupier in a London casino. Despite his reservations, Jack slips into this role from his past with stunning ease, shutting down - there are many rules croupiers must follow, most of which revolve around having all the charm and compassion of a robot -- becoming an impassive voyeur.
And of course what is a writer if not a voyeur? The ability to observe objectively -- rather than playing favourites with one's characters -- is one of the essential characteristics of good writing, but how does it conflict with one's "real" life? The more successful Jack becomes, at writing and at the casino, the more distant he grows. He has created a world in which he has perfect control: he controls the characters he creates in his novel, he knows the odds as he watches the punters lose. He knows how to manipulate the game. But is it really control, or is it just an illusion?
It is rare to see such a finely wrought study, such a perfect blend of ideas and suspense. Also, Clive Owen is really cute. Go and see it now.
Steven Spielberg: Sugarland Express
Those who know me might be surprised that my first review is a Hollywood action flick, but I am continually amazed that, in all the writing and ballyhoo that has gone on about Oliver Stone's overrated opus Natural Born Killers, no one has mentioned that the story was done before -- and much better -- by Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg's debut feature, Sugarland Express, (1974) tells the story of Lou Jean Poplin (Goldie hawn) and her husband Clovis (William Atherton). they are a white-trash couple who've grown up rough (much like Mickey and Mallory in NBK). Clovis, for example, is in jail.
He doesn't stay imprisoned for long though. Lou Jean busts him out. Her baby has been taken away by social services, and she wants it back (I guess this is the fundamental difference between Sugarland and NBK: in Sugarland, the protagonists have motivation and character. In NBK, they act out for no reason that is apparent to the viewer). Hence, she and clovis decide to take a road-trip to Sugarland to fetch the baby, necessitating the kidnap of a policeman, and resulting in their cause-celebre status in the media. Crowds that have heard about them on the news line the streets when they pass through town. People offer gifts for Lou Jean and her baby: toys, diapers, lipstick so Lou Jean can be pretty for the omni-present cameras.
Considering the dreck to which Spielberg later sank (E.T. ring a bell?) this is a work of minor genius. The tradmark pacing, the ability to make absurd circumstances feel true, and then wrench empathy out of them, are here, combined with complex social commentary that he later abandoned in favour of the feel-good and the facile. The empathy we feel for Lou Jean and Clovis raises many issues: how can we regard ourselves as morally upstanding if we "relate" to these gun-toting kidnappers? If their actions seem justifiable, might not the actions of other criminals? Et cetera et cetera.
On top of that, it's fast and fun.
Basically this film has twice the impact of Natural Born Killers, without the bells and whistles. And it predates NBK by twenty years. So which one would you call ground-breaking?
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