Last week my wife and I saw Woody Allen's new nostalgic comedy MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, a frothy tribute to the city of love and lights. With nods to some of his earlier films, Allen sets up the eternal debate between genuine feeling and philistine grabbing. Owen Wilson, embodying Allen's persona, plays Gil, a successful but unhappy screen-writer, who has come to Paris with his spoiled fiance (Rachel McAdams in a bravely unsympathetic mode) and her obnoxious parents. This plot is simple: she wants to go home to Hollywood and he wants to write in Paris. It's the second story that makes the movie special.
To escape his smothering future family, Gil takes midnight walks in the streets of Paris where he is picked up by a limo from the 1920's and whisked into the artistic world of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein. Along the way, he falls in love with the entrancing Adriane (Marion Cotillard, gulp, can you blame him?) These scenes give Allen a chance to comment on nostalgia for a time often overly romanticized, especially by writers and film. He manages to expose Hemingway as a drunken lecher, and even worse, a writer trapped by his own machismo style. As Hemingway speaks to Gil, he intones some of the stripped, blunt language that was his pride but also his curse as a writer. As for Fitzgerald, he is seen as an attractive and shallow weakling, as is his wife Zelda. And Allen goes further, revealing Pablo Picasso as a preening but unsure cock of the roost.
All of this made me reconsider the talents of 1920's Paris. Have they been over-rated by historians and even art historians (hmm)? How many people read Gertrude Stein and her almost nonsensical prose? Did Picasso really "invent" Cubism? Do we forget about Cezanne's incredible spatial and color inventions of thirty years before or Picasso's co-worker Georges Braque's intricate analytical cubist pieces and his clever synthetic collages? Yes, Picasso gave us THE WOMEN OF AVIGNON and GUERNICA, which are brilliant and shocking works, but of all the artists embodied in Allen's film, Henri Matisse and Fitzgerald come off best in the real world. THE GREAT GATSBY and many of his stories remain some of the finest, most sensitive writing of the 20th Century, much more readable than almost anything by Hemingway. Matisse with his vivid colors, his radical arrangements in painting as well as in sculpture and cut-out collages, which he virtually made an art form, are more interesting and aesthetically pleasing than almost any work by Picasso.
Though Woody Allen purports to love the past as seen in 1920's Paris, he is also realistic about the snares of nostalgia. If Gil stays in Paris, it won't be in the 1920's.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Still the Best
We just finished watching the London 25th anniversary of the musical LES MISERABLES on PBS. This is a magnificent concert production with a huge orchestra and chorus and thousands of die-hard LES MIZ fans in attendance. Although the intimacy of the London or New York productions is dwarfed, the concert provides stunning clarity of voice, diction, and emotion. Don't miss it. I am sure PBS in their search for donors will show it many times; that's what pledge breaks are for.
Seeing this concert brought me back to my first experience of LES MISERABLES in the spring of l989. I led our sixth annual Humanities Class trip to New York where we took in the arts and theater. Our first play was the recently opened smash THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA with its soaring melodies and incredible sets. The students were swept away, particularly the girls, by the romance and spectacle.
The next night, feeling PHANTOM was the pinnacle of Broadway musicals, we trooped into LES MISERABLES without much expectation. By the end of Act I as the barricades were erected with smoke, fire, emotion, and great music, I could tell that the students were in awe, especially the boys this time. Maybe it was the swaggering machismo of the young revolutionaries, but perhaps it was also the sweep of Hugo's themes and the extraordinary music that lifted them. As Act II progressed, the deaths and sacrifices began to change the tone. At the death of Eponine in Marius's arms and the defeat of the students, the emotions of the audience rose. And in the finale, as Jean Val Jean dies in the company of his daughter Cosette, Marius, his son-in-law, and the spirits of Cosette's mother Fantine and Eponine, the scene takes on the qualities of great operatic ensembles, lifted by the show's major theme "One Day More," sung by the entire company. As the lights came up, I looked around at my group. Like me, most of them were in tears, even some of the athletes, who never dreamed they would respond to a show like this.
If anything sums up the power of the musical LES MISERABLES, it is this: it speaks to our sense of beauty, justic, and love in terms few popular entertainments could possibly envision.
Seeing this concert brought me back to my first experience of LES MISERABLES in the spring of l989. I led our sixth annual Humanities Class trip to New York where we took in the arts and theater. Our first play was the recently opened smash THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA with its soaring melodies and incredible sets. The students were swept away, particularly the girls, by the romance and spectacle.
The next night, feeling PHANTOM was the pinnacle of Broadway musicals, we trooped into LES MISERABLES without much expectation. By the end of Act I as the barricades were erected with smoke, fire, emotion, and great music, I could tell that the students were in awe, especially the boys this time. Maybe it was the swaggering machismo of the young revolutionaries, but perhaps it was also the sweep of Hugo's themes and the extraordinary music that lifted them. As Act II progressed, the deaths and sacrifices began to change the tone. At the death of Eponine in Marius's arms and the defeat of the students, the emotions of the audience rose. And in the finale, as Jean Val Jean dies in the company of his daughter Cosette, Marius, his son-in-law, and the spirits of Cosette's mother Fantine and Eponine, the scene takes on the qualities of great operatic ensembles, lifted by the show's major theme "One Day More," sung by the entire company. As the lights came up, I looked around at my group. Like me, most of them were in tears, even some of the athletes, who never dreamed they would respond to a show like this.
If anything sums up the power of the musical LES MISERABLES, it is this: it speaks to our sense of beauty, justic, and love in terms few popular entertainments could possibly envision.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Incredible Sunshine of Charlie Kaufman's Mind
Screen-writer Charlie Kaufman won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the 2004 film ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. It was his third nomination in a short time span. Rarely has such an original voice been heard in Hollywood films. Kaufman's first nominated film was 1999'S BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, a trippy comedy about a dweeb (John Cusack)who discovers a wormhole into the brain of one of our finest but perhaps oddest actors. Along for the wild ride are Cameron Diaz, the hilarious Catherine Keener, and Malkovich playing himself to the hilt. The film, like most of Kaufman's work, has the feeling of Lewis Carroll's ALICE IN WONDERLAND, where a character is swept into wild adventures beyond his control. A bizzare, laughable concept becomes one of the most delightful comedies in the last twenty years.
ADAPTATION, 2002, is another strange concept. Based on Susan Orlean's book THE ORCHID THIEF, the film stars Nicolas Cage as screen writer Charlie Kaufman and his twin brother Donald. Charlie has hit a writer's block in trying to adapt Orlean's book to the screen, and his brother, a hack writer, jumps into the breach. Donald interviews Susan (played with wild comic gusto by Meryl Streep), but doesn't quite believe her story. So the brothers follow her to the Florida swamp where the orchid thief(Chris Cooper, hysterical) lives. What follows is one of the most hilarious and suspenseful endings a movie could have, and it owes much to the real Kaufman's witty imagination and the actors who play it straight making ADAPTATION a heady comic mix.
It is difficult to choose which of the three original films by Kaufman that I like best, but ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND seems to have more pathos, heart, and internal logic than the others. It tells the story of Joel(Jim Carrey in a wonderfully expressive performance), a repressed, lonely young man, who meets an unstable free spirit Clementine, played by Kate Winslet. After a final clash, Clem goes to a memory cleaning office and has all her memories of Josh erased. As Josh realizes what she has done, he decides it's too painful to live with her memories, and he follows suit. Naturally, things go awry, and Kaufman's ingenious plotting, director Michel Gondry's swift and unlinear cutting, and the performances of a delicious cast (Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson, Kristin Dunst, and Mark Ruffalo) make it that much more fun. Though the sci-fi or fantasy elements are fun, at heart it is the love story between two lonely people that is the glue that makes ETERNAL SUNSHINE a major work.
Here is the source of the title:
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.
From Alexander Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard,' in which the only saving grace of a doomed love affair is fading memory.
ADAPTATION, 2002, is another strange concept. Based on Susan Orlean's book THE ORCHID THIEF, the film stars Nicolas Cage as screen writer Charlie Kaufman and his twin brother Donald. Charlie has hit a writer's block in trying to adapt Orlean's book to the screen, and his brother, a hack writer, jumps into the breach. Donald interviews Susan (played with wild comic gusto by Meryl Streep), but doesn't quite believe her story. So the brothers follow her to the Florida swamp where the orchid thief(Chris Cooper, hysterical) lives. What follows is one of the most hilarious and suspenseful endings a movie could have, and it owes much to the real Kaufman's witty imagination and the actors who play it straight making ADAPTATION a heady comic mix.
It is difficult to choose which of the three original films by Kaufman that I like best, but ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND seems to have more pathos, heart, and internal logic than the others. It tells the story of Joel(Jim Carrey in a wonderfully expressive performance), a repressed, lonely young man, who meets an unstable free spirit Clementine, played by Kate Winslet. After a final clash, Clem goes to a memory cleaning office and has all her memories of Josh erased. As Josh realizes what she has done, he decides it's too painful to live with her memories, and he follows suit. Naturally, things go awry, and Kaufman's ingenious plotting, director Michel Gondry's swift and unlinear cutting, and the performances of a delicious cast (Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson, Kristin Dunst, and Mark Ruffalo) make it that much more fun. Though the sci-fi or fantasy elements are fun, at heart it is the love story between two lonely people that is the glue that makes ETERNAL SUNSHINE a major work.
Here is the source of the title:
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.
From Alexander Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard,' in which the only saving grace of a doomed love affair is fading memory.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
A Winning Horse and Two Marriages on the Edge
Making movies based on historical events is tricky enough, but filming a suspenseful history story is really difficult, especially when it's a well-known sports event. Last year's SECRETARIAT is no exception. We already know that Big Red was the wonder horse who won the Grand Slam of racing back in 1972 and holds incredible records. This film tackles these challenges by sharing the focus with believable characters played by fine actors. Chief among these are Diane Lane as Penney Chenery, who takes over her father's horse farm after her mother's death and his being incapacitated, naturally against incredible odds (her family is in Denver, not, Virginia; she's a woman in a man's world; the farm is in serious financial trouble). Lane brings a caring warmth to the part that eventually turns to grit as she proves she can deal with the best of the men in the racing business. As her eccentric trainer, John Malkovich adds humor and grace to the proceedings. All the stereotypes of the sports film are here: impossible goals and odds, swelling music, gorgeous dawn and dusk shots of Virginia and Kentucky blue grass, a boatload of typical sidekicks. Plus, a gospel version of "Oh, Happy Day" keys up when inspiration is called for. Somehow it all works beautifully. SECRETARIAT is even better than SEABISCUIT, which attempted to be a story of national unity and personal redemption, filmed with such "importance" that it was hard to relate to. This is one horse who goes the distance.
Another more recent dvd edition is the Oscar-nominated BLUE VALENTINE, a somber and achingly sad examination of a couple falling apart. Acted with unspairing and often painfully real power by Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, the film freely moves in time to show the highs and lows of the couple's relationship. He is a high school drop-out who moves furniture and she a pre-med student when they meet. By the time they break up, they have a loving daughter, she has a career, and he is the same boy he was when they met. Gosling has a great ability to exhibit natural charm, incendiary fury, and heartfelt regret. And Phillips never makes a false emotional note. If you can take this one, it's worth it. A suitable companion piece is the emotional drama RABBIT HOLE starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, and Dianne Wiest. It is a stark portrayal of a marriage on the edge after the accidental death of their four year old son. All of the actors bring strong conviction to their roles, and an intelligent script and smart direction make this worth watching. CAUTION: Don't watch these two together!
Another more recent dvd edition is the Oscar-nominated BLUE VALENTINE, a somber and achingly sad examination of a couple falling apart. Acted with unspairing and often painfully real power by Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, the film freely moves in time to show the highs and lows of the couple's relationship. He is a high school drop-out who moves furniture and she a pre-med student when they meet. By the time they break up, they have a loving daughter, she has a career, and he is the same boy he was when they met. Gosling has a great ability to exhibit natural charm, incendiary fury, and heartfelt regret. And Phillips never makes a false emotional note. If you can take this one, it's worth it. A suitable companion piece is the emotional drama RABBIT HOLE starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, and Dianne Wiest. It is a stark portrayal of a marriage on the edge after the accidental death of their four year old son. All of the actors bring strong conviction to their roles, and an intelligent script and smart direction make this worth watching. CAUTION: Don't watch these two together!
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Weddings and such
The hoopla has faded and the happy pair has flown off to nestle in obscurity before Kate really becomes the target of cameras again. Some spent last week sneering at the pomp and ceremony and citing the many crises that have befallen the world this year. An article in UTNE Magazine dismissed the royal wedding as the pinnacle of anglophilia and pointed out the myriad tacky souvenirs flooding the market as well as the stained history of the current royal family.
But such carping does little to deflate one of the loveliest days I have ever seen on television. We fortunately chose the PBS coverage (via BBC) and let the dvr work while we slept. At nine we toasted our English muffins and brewed our coffee (sorry, no tea for breakfast) and settled down with a neighbor to wallow in everything royal--the luxury limos, thousands of fluttering union jacks, bad hats (Fergie's daughters!!), Camilla actually looking happy, trees growing in Westminster Abbey, and Kate and William! And did we mention her dress? No, but everybody else did, and even Joan Rivers and the Fashion Police loved it.
Yes, lowly peons and high-placed nobles alike, most of us reveled in the royalty. So, to the block for anglophobes everywhere!
But such carping does little to deflate one of the loveliest days I have ever seen on television. We fortunately chose the PBS coverage (via BBC) and let the dvr work while we slept. At nine we toasted our English muffins and brewed our coffee (sorry, no tea for breakfast) and settled down with a neighbor to wallow in everything royal--the luxury limos, thousands of fluttering union jacks, bad hats (Fergie's daughters!!), Camilla actually looking happy, trees growing in Westminster Abbey, and Kate and William! And did we mention her dress? No, but everybody else did, and even Joan Rivers and the Fashion Police loved it.
Yes, lowly peons and high-placed nobles alike, most of us reveled in the royalty. So, to the block for anglophobes everywhere!
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Sidney Lumet and the Art of Being Relevant
Sidney Lumet, a director of stage, tv, and especially film, died recently at the age of 86. He never made a TRANSFORMERS movie or dealt with terminators, aliens, or hobbits. Instead he explored life in cities, especially New York, life that invigorates, pushes, demoralizes, and kills. But Lumet infused his work with realism and occasionally sharp satire. He was especially interested in police corruption as seen in two of his best films: SERPICO(1973) with Al Pacino and PRINCE OF THE CITY(1981). Although he never won an Oscar as Best Director, he drew bravura performances from individual actors and group ensembles as well. Lumet could plumb the depths of Eugene O'Neill's LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT(1962) with its harrowing portrait of the ultimate dysfunctional family as seen in the ravaged faces of Katherine Hepburn, Jason Robards, Jr. and Ralph Richardson. Or he could foresee the effects of the coming women's movements in his version of THE GROUP(1996), an entertaining take on Mary McCarthy's acid-laced satire.
On individual terms, Lumet's most memorable films concentrated on society's losers or victims, which he showed with compassion and unaffected irony. His first film, TWELVE ANGRY MEN(1957), skewers in-bred prejudices, as Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb brilliantly battle over the fate of a falsely accused Hispanic. A personal favorite is the electric drama DOG DAY AFTERNOON(1975), in which Al Pacino gives his finest performance as a married bi-sexual caught in a botched bank job. His character wants to pay for a sex-change operation for his boy friend. A series of tragi-comical events makes the robbery a media circus. Lumet handles all of this chaos with a caring and judicious hand, balancing comedy with pathos. His next film would be his most controversial and also one of his best: NETWORK. Perhaps the sharpest satirical comedy since DR. STRANGELOVE, this scathing comic drama seems even more prescient today than when it came out. Peter Finch won a posthumous Oscar as the demented news anchor Howard Beale whose rant became part of the national discourse: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" He was matched with equally voracious and gutsy performances from Faye Dunaway (Oscar) as a career obsessed producer and William Holden (Oscar nominee) as her lover and victim. The film touches on racial unrest, world corporation control, and the decline of the media as a purveyor of facts, not propaganda. Nominated for Best Film of 1975, NETWORK lost to ROCKY, a bit of sentimental populist pap. But as the years advance, Lumet's reputation only grows in stature, and the directors of many "Best Films" are forgotten.
On individual terms, Lumet's most memorable films concentrated on society's losers or victims, which he showed with compassion and unaffected irony. His first film, TWELVE ANGRY MEN(1957), skewers in-bred prejudices, as Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb brilliantly battle over the fate of a falsely accused Hispanic. A personal favorite is the electric drama DOG DAY AFTERNOON(1975), in which Al Pacino gives his finest performance as a married bi-sexual caught in a botched bank job. His character wants to pay for a sex-change operation for his boy friend. A series of tragi-comical events makes the robbery a media circus. Lumet handles all of this chaos with a caring and judicious hand, balancing comedy with pathos. His next film would be his most controversial and also one of his best: NETWORK. Perhaps the sharpest satirical comedy since DR. STRANGELOVE, this scathing comic drama seems even more prescient today than when it came out. Peter Finch won a posthumous Oscar as the demented news anchor Howard Beale whose rant became part of the national discourse: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" He was matched with equally voracious and gutsy performances from Faye Dunaway (Oscar) as a career obsessed producer and William Holden (Oscar nominee) as her lover and victim. The film touches on racial unrest, world corporation control, and the decline of the media as a purveyor of facts, not propaganda. Nominated for Best Film of 1975, NETWORK lost to ROCKY, a bit of sentimental populist pap. But as the years advance, Lumet's reputation only grows in stature, and the directors of many "Best Films" are forgotten.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Matthew and Jake Are Back on Track
CONFESSION: I cannot stand Matthew McConaughey. He began well as a lawyer in A TIME TO KILL, based on John Grisham's novel, giving an intense performance that lacked the vanity of his later efforts. But the rest of his career has been spent playing shirtless slackers opposite the likes of Kate Hudson. With that said, I still enjoyed the courtroom mystery of THE LINCOLN LAWYER, in which he plays (surprise) a somewhat sleazy LA lawyer whose office is a creaky, chauffer-driven Lincoln town car. Sometimes he's smart, but sometimes he's not, putting his desires ahead of his needs. He takes on the case of a rich playboy, played with steely cold by Ryan Phillippe, who's accused of rape and battery. But as a famed Dane once said, something is rotten in this case, which takes McConaughey into the darker regions of LA low life. Marisa Tomeii plays his ex-wife, who can't quite cut the strings. The film has the noir feeling of Raymond Chandler and does not disappoint.
FINALLY BACK TO FORM: When Jake Gyllenhaal popped on the scene in films like the inspiring OCTOBER SKY (1999) and the truly strange and creepily appealing DONNIE DARKO (2001), he began a promising career that led to strong performances in ZODIAC and especially the ground-breaking BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005) opposite the late Heath Ledger. But his last two films have been major duds in which he was miscast as a medival hunk saving the day in PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME, an effects-laden swashbuckler in which he was all but lost. The other was even worse: the deplorable LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS in which he played a swinging Viagra salesman who falls for a feisty Parkinsons patient, embodied by an annoyingly perky Anne Hathaway. Naked or not, this unfortunate combo was in the poorest taste that tried to combine frat boy humor (Jake's slovenly gross brother--why is there always one of these slobs in movies today?), a serious disease, and even an orgy.
SO it is a pleasure that Gyllenhaal has bounced back in the new sci-fi thriller SOURCE CODE, in which he gets to bounce forward eight minutes in time in order to find a bomber hell-bent on blowing up Chicago. The film is smart, fast, and fun, even though it has some serious questions about terrorism and mind control. And Gyllenhaal delivers a nuanced performance that expresses charm, fear, and control.
It may be too late for McCounaghey, but Gyllenhaal has a chance of being a major leading man, depending on his film choices and the fickle taste of his public.
FINALLY BACK TO FORM: When Jake Gyllenhaal popped on the scene in films like the inspiring OCTOBER SKY (1999) and the truly strange and creepily appealing DONNIE DARKO (2001), he began a promising career that led to strong performances in ZODIAC and especially the ground-breaking BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005) opposite the late Heath Ledger. But his last two films have been major duds in which he was miscast as a medival hunk saving the day in PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME, an effects-laden swashbuckler in which he was all but lost. The other was even worse: the deplorable LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS in which he played a swinging Viagra salesman who falls for a feisty Parkinsons patient, embodied by an annoyingly perky Anne Hathaway. Naked or not, this unfortunate combo was in the poorest taste that tried to combine frat boy humor (Jake's slovenly gross brother--why is there always one of these slobs in movies today?), a serious disease, and even an orgy.
SO it is a pleasure that Gyllenhaal has bounced back in the new sci-fi thriller SOURCE CODE, in which he gets to bounce forward eight minutes in time in order to find a bomber hell-bent on blowing up Chicago. The film is smart, fast, and fun, even though it has some serious questions about terrorism and mind control. And Gyllenhaal delivers a nuanced performance that expresses charm, fear, and control.
It may be too late for McCounaghey, but Gyllenhaal has a chance of being a major leading man, depending on his film choices and the fickle taste of his public.
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