As it is one of my favorite films of the year, I paid to see Rachel Getting Married for the second time. These are some thoughts and things that I noted on the second viewing. I'm not sure if there will be spoilers, exactly, but there almost definitely will be some stuff in here that you might not want to know ahead of time if you haven't seen it.
1) It's an interesting question that some are asking: Who is better in the film - Anne Hathaway as the drug addict drama queen Kym or Rosemarie DeWitt as the quietly good daughter Rachel? There's been some disagreement about this topic, as some critics have favored DeWitt. On second viewing, I was more impressed by DeWitt than I had been the first time. Yet I think often, critics assume the less showy role is the more difficult and better acted. That's certainly true in a good number of cases, Demme's The Silence of the Lambs possibly being one example. I also think that it flatters critics to believe that, because it meams that critics are the keepers of some secret knowledge that only they can discern.
All that said, I still think Hathaway's is the film's true blow-away performance. It's the tougher role. It has much more range than simply uptight, upset sister. It requires and achieves sympathy where one might not expect it. And it simply lights up the screen.
2) At the beginning, as Kym and her nurse are walking to the car, Kym says something like, "You're not even going to give me your number?" The nurse answers, "That was one time and it was a mistake. I nearly lost my job for that." And of course, at the end of the film, the nurse picks up Kym and takes her off, presumably back to rehab.
Over on IMDb, that exchange has provoked a mini-contoversy with different interpretations. Some take the conversation to mean that the nurse had previously given Kym, a patient, personal contact information in violation of the institutional rules. But some think it's a reference to a sexual encounter, and that perhaps at the end, she isn't going back to rehab, but she is sneaking off from the family to be with the nurse.
I have to say, the sexual interpretation crossed my mind on this viewing. In the end, I think the evidence is against it. There's the obvious stuff ... Kym's sexual encounter with the best man and their farewell snogging at the end. But also, when they load Kym's stuff into the nurse's car, the nurse has a baby stroller in the trunk. And presumably, given the automobile wreck, Kym would need a lift back to rehab. So I think the non-sexual interpretation is the best interpretation. An interesting question, though.
3) In the post-rehearsal-speech argument, as Rachel, Kym and Dad head off into another room to continue their fight, there's a great little moment where step-mom Carol and fiance Sidney give each other a look that says, "Can you believe we're marrying into this?" Very subtle, but watch for it next time.
4) I'm not sure what to make of Kym's attachment to her dog, Olive. Perhaps it's the only family member from whom she feels only love and no tension. A reminder of an innocent time? A reminder of her brother?
5) One of the reasons that I go to a second viewing is to sample an audience reaction to a film I saw in a theater with seven film critics. It always amazes me how things I might find really funny fly over the audience's head, while something I find dramatic might seem comic. One example here is at the moment when Rachel reveals she's pregnant in the middle of a fight with Kym, and Kyn tells her that it isn't fair to reveal that sort of thing in the middle of a fight. I thought it was clearly a tense moment. The audience laughed. And it is kind of funny, looked at in a certain dark way.
6) How is it that if you want to watch an Anne Hathaway movie on Saturday night in Dallas-Fort Worth, the nation's fourth or fifth lagrest metro area, it's easier to find Passengers, the Hathaway film Sony is trying to bury, than it is to find Rachel, the film Sony Pictures Classics is trying to promote? This has got to be the most agonizingly slow platform release in history. HEck, it would be a shorter trip to go see Get Smart at the dollar theater for a buck-fifty, The good news is that the theater I was in was nearly full, with the movie showing on two screens in its second weekend. Impressive.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Synedoche, New York
I'm in the curious position again of having my review of Charlie Kaufman's Synedoche, New York posted over at Stage and Cinema and Screen Comment, but not here. So you can zip over there for that one. It'll be here whenever it releases in Dallas.
I will say that it's the type of film that I would have liked 10 years ago in my mid-twenties, when I knew more about books and ideas and less about life. That's probably about the best description I can give of it, actually.
I will say that it's the type of film that I would have liked 10 years ago in my mid-twenties, when I knew more about books and ideas and less about life. That's probably about the best description I can give of it, actually.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Change is ... meh [Changeling]
Changeling [R]
Grade: C
Cast: Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Gattlin Griffith, Michael Kelly, Devon Conti, Jeffrey Donovan
Director: Clint Eastwood
With its overwrought emotions and black-and-white morality, melodrama is a form of storytelling that we believe our society has moved past.
We’re too sophisticated now to toss popcorn at the stage. “Melodramatic” is almost always a negative adjective. We almost never see a melodrama that isn’t saturated with post-modern irony.
So as Clint Eastwood dresses up Angelina Jolie in flapper garb, soaks her giant peepers in tears, and sends her out into Changeling, we have to ask, how do we deal with a film aiming for an antiquated style? I’m open to it, in some forms, but need convincing. Which should explain my down the middle reaction.
A tale of one woman’s fight against big city corruption, Changeling shows the importance of picking a good story. Scratching and finding a lost treasure from history (and embellishing it, wink)can make up for a bunch of sins. In 1928 in Los Angeles, single mother Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) comes home one day to find her son Walter missing. The search for her son eventually entangles her in a battle between a crusading minister (John Malkovich) and the city’s violent, corrupt police force. Think L.A. Confidential.
Battered by bad press, the police find her son and return him with great fanfare to LaLa Land. One problem. It’s not her son. But that doesn’t much matter to the police (boo, hiss, twist the mustache), who are just happy to have the case closed and the press happy. Collins pushes the police to re-open their search, and finds herself in danger.
Eastwood has taken one of his favorite motifs – the male child abduction, and this time filters it through a female perspective. However, the film’s melodramatic tendencies mean that the emotions come across too simply, without the proper complexity. The tenderness feels too contrived for the needs of the story.
However, the shocking tale itself keeps unwinding in new and interesting directions. Some will think it unfocused. Eventually, as a new story of a psycho killer enters, the multiple stories become scattered, as does the editing. Until then, it’s mostly terrific – you never know where it’s going. Told through simple dialogue and simple filming, the story carries a very natural suspense.
Flat, expository dialogue is an excellent test of acting skill, and the film has plenty of test. Some critics love Jolie’s performance, but I think the exposition reveals her deficiencies. Watch the way some of this stuff dances in Malkovich’s mouth. Then watch how the flat language stays flat in Jolie’s. Her main affectations consist of crying, eyelash-batting, crying, shouting, crying, placing her hand on her mouth, and crying some more. This is perhaps the most blatant case of a star trying to cry her way to an Oscar that you’ll ever see.
That said, Jolie does have power and presence, and she never loses our sympathy. Taking the overall film into consideration, there’s a way to be kinder to her histrionics. Look at the following elements: Its star’s oversized facial features and overdone gesticulations. The film’s overwrought melodrama, simple story, and basic emotions. The heroine’s pure white hat and the villains’ pure black ones. The intensely visual storytelling style, with its long takes and classical framing. As suggested by its 1928 setting and its beginning in black and white, Changeling could easily, easily transform into a silent movie. That might be the best way to think of it in all of its elements – as an ode to a lost time.
Grade: C
Cast: Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Gattlin Griffith, Michael Kelly, Devon Conti, Jeffrey Donovan
Director: Clint Eastwood
With its overwrought emotions and black-and-white morality, melodrama is a form of storytelling that we believe our society has moved past.
We’re too sophisticated now to toss popcorn at the stage. “Melodramatic” is almost always a negative adjective. We almost never see a melodrama that isn’t saturated with post-modern irony.
So as Clint Eastwood dresses up Angelina Jolie in flapper garb, soaks her giant peepers in tears, and sends her out into Changeling, we have to ask, how do we deal with a film aiming for an antiquated style? I’m open to it, in some forms, but need convincing. Which should explain my down the middle reaction.
A tale of one woman’s fight against big city corruption, Changeling shows the importance of picking a good story. Scratching and finding a lost treasure from history (and embellishing it, wink)can make up for a bunch of sins. In 1928 in Los Angeles, single mother Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) comes home one day to find her son Walter missing. The search for her son eventually entangles her in a battle between a crusading minister (John Malkovich) and the city’s violent, corrupt police force. Think L.A. Confidential.
Battered by bad press, the police find her son and return him with great fanfare to LaLa Land. One problem. It’s not her son. But that doesn’t much matter to the police (boo, hiss, twist the mustache), who are just happy to have the case closed and the press happy. Collins pushes the police to re-open their search, and finds herself in danger.
Eastwood has taken one of his favorite motifs – the male child abduction, and this time filters it through a female perspective. However, the film’s melodramatic tendencies mean that the emotions come across too simply, without the proper complexity. The tenderness feels too contrived for the needs of the story.
However, the shocking tale itself keeps unwinding in new and interesting directions. Some will think it unfocused. Eventually, as a new story of a psycho killer enters, the multiple stories become scattered, as does the editing. Until then, it’s mostly terrific – you never know where it’s going. Told through simple dialogue and simple filming, the story carries a very natural suspense.
Flat, expository dialogue is an excellent test of acting skill, and the film has plenty of test. Some critics love Jolie’s performance, but I think the exposition reveals her deficiencies. Watch the way some of this stuff dances in Malkovich’s mouth. Then watch how the flat language stays flat in Jolie’s. Her main affectations consist of crying, eyelash-batting, crying, shouting, crying, placing her hand on her mouth, and crying some more. This is perhaps the most blatant case of a star trying to cry her way to an Oscar that you’ll ever see.
That said, Jolie does have power and presence, and she never loses our sympathy. Taking the overall film into consideration, there’s a way to be kinder to her histrionics. Look at the following elements: Its star’s oversized facial features and overdone gesticulations. The film’s overwrought melodrama, simple story, and basic emotions. The heroine’s pure white hat and the villains’ pure black ones. The intensely visual storytelling style, with its long takes and classical framing. As suggested by its 1928 setting and its beginning in black and white, Changeling could easily, easily transform into a silent movie. That might be the best way to think of it in all of its elements – as an ode to a lost time.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Whatever happened to ....
Reese Witherspoon?
Three years ago, she was on top of the world, winning the Oscar for Walk the Line. Since then, she's been in Rendition, a meh political melodrama, and I don't remember anything else.
Three years ago, she was on top of the world, winning the Oscar for Walk the Line. Since then, she's been in Rendition, a meh political melodrama, and I don't remember anything else.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Oscar season
I think the Oscar prediction game is something of a racket. That said, I find it fun to read the articles. David Poland's are always fun at MCN.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Could someone explain this to me?
Say you had a buzz-worthy indie film. It's getting very good to great reviews. It will be on a pretty good number of top ten lists at the end of the year. It's being mentioned strongly in the Oscar race in multiple categories. It has a name director, albeit one that hasn't had a big success in a while. It has a pretty bankable star, moreso than most indies. That star has given an awards-buzz performance. That star was on the cover of Entertainment Weekly two weeks ago with an article talking up her Oscar chances. That star was also on the most watched Saturday Night Live in years on the weekend of the movie's first small release.
Say you had all these things going for you, and you were staging a platform release, i.e. expanding the number of theaters and screens from one week to the next. How many screens would you have it on two weeks after the initial release, after that sort of publicity and buzz? 300? 500? 1,000?
The answer: According to Variety, Rachel Getting Married is at 71 theaters this weekend.
As a comparison, Man on Wire and Frozen River, limited release pictures from a couple months ago, are still on 50+ screens. Tell No One is still on 70+ screens.
Great job of catching the momentum, Sony Pictures Classics.
Say you had all these things going for you, and you were staging a platform release, i.e. expanding the number of theaters and screens from one week to the next. How many screens would you have it on two weeks after the initial release, after that sort of publicity and buzz? 300? 500? 1,000?
The answer: According to Variety, Rachel Getting Married is at 71 theaters this weekend.
As a comparison, Man on Wire and Frozen River, limited release pictures from a couple months ago, are still on 50+ screens. Tell No One is still on 70+ screens.
Great job of catching the momentum, Sony Pictures Classics.
Rachel, dishwashers, and Bob Fosse
Rachel Getting Married has a lot of great little stories about its origins and making. I mentioned the one about Paul Thomas Anderson being offered the part of the groom Sidney. Here's a second. The dishwasher-loading contest came to screenwriter Jenny Lumet from a disagreement from her childhood between her father Sidney and Bob Fosse. The two men got into an intense friendly disagreement about the proper way to load a dishwasher and took about an hour of fiddling around with different configurations.
On the Button?
A note on Hollywood-Elsewhere about David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button .... an extremely positive third or fourth or fifth-hand review from a projectionist. "It's over" is the quote about the best picture race.
Friday, October 17, 2008
The Needle and the Damage Done [Rachel Getting Married]
Rachel Getting Married [R]
Grade: A
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Bill Irwin, Debra Winger, Tunde Adebimpe, Mather Zickel.
Director: Jonathan Demme
Have I ever mentioned the time that I picked Anne Hathaway to be the biggest star to emerge from Brokeback Mountain? I love that story!
Most critics treated the performance kindly but lightly, seeing only another Disney teen queen trying to stretch her career beyond drinking age. More astute observers (aka: “me”) saw a classic beauty riding into the movie like a star, convincingly portraying 20 years of life in 15 minutes, and nailing her one big scene. While she hasn’t always been perfect since, I admire the way she has taken her job seriously and studiously.
So it means something when I say even I didn’t know she had this in her. By this, I mean her astounding performance at the center of Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married. The first stage of stardom is finding a bankable screen persona. The second stage comes from bravely smashing through it. The sound you hear is of shattering glass. It’s no longer a question of whether Hathaway can be this good. It’s now a matter of whether she can ever be this good again.
Clean for nine months as a drug rehab careerist, Hathaway’s Kym Buchman returns to her family’s blue-blood Connecticut estate to attend her sister Rachel’s wedding. Rachel (Mad Men’s Rosemarie DeWitt) has lived her whole life in the shadow of her sister’s drama, addiction, and endless need for attention. She wants her wedding day to Sidney – a sari-wrapped Bollywood spectacular – to be her one day at the center of family life, a mission that goes predictably haywire when her sister arrives.
The sisters share an opposite’s admiration for one another. But they bicker religiously. They each own a piece of the family’s wounding secret – a tragedy created by Kym’s addiction. Raining on this wedding are unspoken words, collective guilt, and the difficulties of forging forgiveness. The family dynamic is haunted. But it isn’t hateful. That’s an important thing to keep in mind.
Upon placing a ring on his bride’s finger, the groom (Tunde Adebimpe of the band TV on the Radio), a professional musician, breaks into an a capella rendition of Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend.” But the Young song best fitting the film is “The Needle and the Damage Done.” If every junkie is like a setting sun, then Kym is clawing at the horizon, refusing to go gently into the darkness.
The cigarettes that rarely leave Kym’s lips signal fear, desperation, paranoia, self-loathing, any number of things. They guard her sobriety and, possibly, express a longing for a speedy death. Her self-deprecating personality is a mad scramble of defense mechanisms designed to preemptively soften her next slip. She feels a deep need for love, but also a deep fear of its potential for rejection, and her caustic nature sabotages her best intentions. Yet she isn’t dead. She is the lively one. The witty one. And you see why the family, despite her worst, doesn’t want to lose her.
Her selfish, painful toast at the rehearsal dinner turns into a disaster of 12-step exhibitionism, self-loathing, affection, and a sincere apology spoken in a gallows humor that can’t help but come across badly. Yet there’s something to be said for it. It’s the most alive and deeply felt of all the speeches, the least practiced and polished, the single one that couldn’t be repeated at any wedding.
Most choose to see the story as the assassination of the perfect wedding by the attention whore Kym Buchman. That’s certainly how Rachel sees it. But that thinking goes a little too far in choosing sides. To outsiders, the family has a talent for stealth public relations, the carefully considered word, a willingness to favor image over reality (a fact that slightly contributes to the tragedy).The exuberant headache that is Kym – for better and worse, in sickness and in health – forces the family to own up to its reality. Rachel Getting Married is about struggling for the perfect wedding and finding the acceptably and therapeutically imperfect one in its place.
While it’s easier to play the role with the audience’s sympathy, DeWitt brings fierce, layered intelligence to the overlooked bride. Bill Irwin, as the father riding the line between loving and enabling, is the film’s quiet marvel. Debra Winger as the distant mother, enters the film with the panache and mystery that should emanate from a vanished star. Some would like an Oscar nod. But one would only be for Hollywood’s sins against 50-year-old actresses.
No one is ready to admit it yet, but Rachel Getting Married is a better film than Demme’s Silence of the Lambs. His approaches – handheld camerawork, overlapping dialogue, the loose vibe – all take risks and mostly work. He gets wonderfully rewarded by his willingness to allow his creators the room to create. Some critics have made noise about the presence of recognizable musical stars friendly to Demme – a violation, they feel, of the film’s verite leanings. But a director earns his indulgences. Demme definitely earns them here.
Declan Quinn’s hand-held camera becomes beautifully embedded in the ceremony. The debut script by Jenny Lumet, the daughter of director Sidney and granddaughter of Lena Horne, pays for its occasional narrative conveniences with impeccable characterization and emotion. We don’t often talk about casting directors, so send a big Sarah Palin wink to Bernard Telsey. Every last actor, down to the 12-steppers and the cowboy-shirt relative, finds the right feel.
Some critics have stressed the film’s moments of joy, love, and redemption. But that description is misleading. I don’t pretend to say that this sad, sad story is an easy film. But it is the type of film that a critic sits in the dark for 52 weeks a year to get two hours of.
Grade: A
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Bill Irwin, Debra Winger, Tunde Adebimpe, Mather Zickel.
Director: Jonathan Demme
Have I ever mentioned the time that I picked Anne Hathaway to be the biggest star to emerge from Brokeback Mountain? I love that story!
Most critics treated the performance kindly but lightly, seeing only another Disney teen queen trying to stretch her career beyond drinking age. More astute observers (aka: “me”) saw a classic beauty riding into the movie like a star, convincingly portraying 20 years of life in 15 minutes, and nailing her one big scene. While she hasn’t always been perfect since, I admire the way she has taken her job seriously and studiously.
So it means something when I say even I didn’t know she had this in her. By this, I mean her astounding performance at the center of Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married. The first stage of stardom is finding a bankable screen persona. The second stage comes from bravely smashing through it. The sound you hear is of shattering glass. It’s no longer a question of whether Hathaway can be this good. It’s now a matter of whether she can ever be this good again.
Clean for nine months as a drug rehab careerist, Hathaway’s Kym Buchman returns to her family’s blue-blood Connecticut estate to attend her sister Rachel’s wedding. Rachel (Mad Men’s Rosemarie DeWitt) has lived her whole life in the shadow of her sister’s drama, addiction, and endless need for attention. She wants her wedding day to Sidney – a sari-wrapped Bollywood spectacular – to be her one day at the center of family life, a mission that goes predictably haywire when her sister arrives.
The sisters share an opposite’s admiration for one another. But they bicker religiously. They each own a piece of the family’s wounding secret – a tragedy created by Kym’s addiction. Raining on this wedding are unspoken words, collective guilt, and the difficulties of forging forgiveness. The family dynamic is haunted. But it isn’t hateful. That’s an important thing to keep in mind.
Upon placing a ring on his bride’s finger, the groom (Tunde Adebimpe of the band TV on the Radio), a professional musician, breaks into an a capella rendition of Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend.” But the Young song best fitting the film is “The Needle and the Damage Done.” If every junkie is like a setting sun, then Kym is clawing at the horizon, refusing to go gently into the darkness.
The cigarettes that rarely leave Kym’s lips signal fear, desperation, paranoia, self-loathing, any number of things. They guard her sobriety and, possibly, express a longing for a speedy death. Her self-deprecating personality is a mad scramble of defense mechanisms designed to preemptively soften her next slip. She feels a deep need for love, but also a deep fear of its potential for rejection, and her caustic nature sabotages her best intentions. Yet she isn’t dead. She is the lively one. The witty one. And you see why the family, despite her worst, doesn’t want to lose her.
Her selfish, painful toast at the rehearsal dinner turns into a disaster of 12-step exhibitionism, self-loathing, affection, and a sincere apology spoken in a gallows humor that can’t help but come across badly. Yet there’s something to be said for it. It’s the most alive and deeply felt of all the speeches, the least practiced and polished, the single one that couldn’t be repeated at any wedding.
Most choose to see the story as the assassination of the perfect wedding by the attention whore Kym Buchman. That’s certainly how Rachel sees it. But that thinking goes a little too far in choosing sides. To outsiders, the family has a talent for stealth public relations, the carefully considered word, a willingness to favor image over reality (a fact that slightly contributes to the tragedy).The exuberant headache that is Kym – for better and worse, in sickness and in health – forces the family to own up to its reality. Rachel Getting Married is about struggling for the perfect wedding and finding the acceptably and therapeutically imperfect one in its place.
While it’s easier to play the role with the audience’s sympathy, DeWitt brings fierce, layered intelligence to the overlooked bride. Bill Irwin, as the father riding the line between loving and enabling, is the film’s quiet marvel. Debra Winger as the distant mother, enters the film with the panache and mystery that should emanate from a vanished star. Some would like an Oscar nod. But one would only be for Hollywood’s sins against 50-year-old actresses.
No one is ready to admit it yet, but Rachel Getting Married is a better film than Demme’s Silence of the Lambs. His approaches – handheld camerawork, overlapping dialogue, the loose vibe – all take risks and mostly work. He gets wonderfully rewarded by his willingness to allow his creators the room to create. Some critics have made noise about the presence of recognizable musical stars friendly to Demme – a violation, they feel, of the film’s verite leanings. But a director earns his indulgences. Demme definitely earns them here.
Declan Quinn’s hand-held camera becomes beautifully embedded in the ceremony. The debut script by Jenny Lumet, the daughter of director Sidney and granddaughter of Lena Horne, pays for its occasional narrative conveniences with impeccable characterization and emotion. We don’t often talk about casting directors, so send a big Sarah Palin wink to Bernard Telsey. Every last actor, down to the 12-steppers and the cowboy-shirt relative, finds the right feel.
Some critics have stressed the film’s moments of joy, love, and redemption. But that description is misleading. I don’t pretend to say that this sad, sad story is an easy film. But it is the type of film that a critic sits in the dark for 52 weeks a year to get two hours of.
Sunshine in a bag [Happy-Go-Lucky]
Happy-Go-Lucky [R]
Grade: D
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Alexis Zegerman
Director: Mike Leigh
You either love Poppy or you don’t.
Count me among the don’t. The blissfully clueless teacher at the center of Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky puts a smile on everyone’s face, but not this one viewer, at least.
Poppy (Sally Hawkins) has a talent for perpetual sunshine, until the day that her beloved bicycle gets stolen and she’s forced to take driving lessons around the streets of London. Even then, not much can put a dent into her elastic cheerfulness.
The film centers mostly on Poppy’s relationship with her driving coach, an unstable, bigoted, conspiracy-minded jerk (Eddie Marsan) who rants about bad drivers and security cameras as she handles the wheel. He takes it upon himself to teach her lessons of the real world while he teaches her left turns. Poppy meets his cynicism with cartoonish optimism.
There is a long cinematic heritage of happy idiots. (Although in fairness, Poppy isn’t stupid. Just annoying and not particularly awake.) Forrest Gump comes to mind. A more accurate comparison would be Peter Sellers’ simpleton Chauncey Gardiner in Hal Ashby’s Being There.
In Chauncey, Ashby found a wry, accidental commentator with the secret wisdom of happiness, an antidote to the self-important political culture that he wanders into. In a film starring two actors approaching their deaths (Sellers and Melvyn Douglas), Ashby’s fable reflects on the supreme, simple joy of happiness.
It seems like Leigh is going for something along those lines. But I could never quite fathom his purpose. Does Leigh admire Poppy’s ability to always look on the bright side, despite life’s pitfalls? Or is he satirizing her as the ultimate representative of a culture that’s too happy to stop and think? Is the joke on her or us? Either way, it seems a long way to go for a short point. And one made previously with superior execution.
If by acting we mean embodying the character on the page, Hawkins does fine. Her one-stop happy machine comes across. But it’s almost completely one note. The role doesn’t allow for much range. At the climax, Poppy does finally confront a nasty situation with the driver, forcing a moment of angst. But it feels like a contrived ending to a contrived dichotomy.
But there are a number of unsung amusing moments – most deliciously flamenco lessons from a Spanish instructor(Karina Hernandez) in the middle of a messy breakup, a woman with a grudge against marmalade. Wonderful energy. If only it had more.
Grade: D
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Alexis Zegerman
Director: Mike Leigh
You either love Poppy or you don’t.
Count me among the don’t. The blissfully clueless teacher at the center of Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky puts a smile on everyone’s face, but not this one viewer, at least.
Poppy (Sally Hawkins) has a talent for perpetual sunshine, until the day that her beloved bicycle gets stolen and she’s forced to take driving lessons around the streets of London. Even then, not much can put a dent into her elastic cheerfulness.
The film centers mostly on Poppy’s relationship with her driving coach, an unstable, bigoted, conspiracy-minded jerk (Eddie Marsan) who rants about bad drivers and security cameras as she handles the wheel. He takes it upon himself to teach her lessons of the real world while he teaches her left turns. Poppy meets his cynicism with cartoonish optimism.
There is a long cinematic heritage of happy idiots. (Although in fairness, Poppy isn’t stupid. Just annoying and not particularly awake.) Forrest Gump comes to mind. A more accurate comparison would be Peter Sellers’ simpleton Chauncey Gardiner in Hal Ashby’s Being There.
In Chauncey, Ashby found a wry, accidental commentator with the secret wisdom of happiness, an antidote to the self-important political culture that he wanders into. In a film starring two actors approaching their deaths (Sellers and Melvyn Douglas), Ashby’s fable reflects on the supreme, simple joy of happiness.
It seems like Leigh is going for something along those lines. But I could never quite fathom his purpose. Does Leigh admire Poppy’s ability to always look on the bright side, despite life’s pitfalls? Or is he satirizing her as the ultimate representative of a culture that’s too happy to stop and think? Is the joke on her or us? Either way, it seems a long way to go for a short point. And one made previously with superior execution.
If by acting we mean embodying the character on the page, Hawkins does fine. Her one-stop happy machine comes across. But it’s almost completely one note. The role doesn’t allow for much range. At the climax, Poppy does finally confront a nasty situation with the driver, forcing a moment of angst. But it feels like a contrived ending to a contrived dichotomy.
But there are a number of unsung amusing moments – most deliciously flamenco lessons from a Spanish instructor(Karina Hernandez) in the middle of a messy breakup, a woman with a grudge against marmalade. Wonderful energy. If only it had more.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Hello, Clarice
Tom Maurstad talks to Anthony Hopkins about his symphony. No telling if it involves screaming lambs.
William Ayers
Director Sam Green of the documentary The Weather Underground defends former member William Ayers, who is at the heart of a controversy involving his relationship with Barack Obama. Whatever you think about the political use of William Ayers in this campaign, Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn were effectively terrorists who advocated and used violence to gain their political goals in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Had they and their cohorts not sucked at their jobs an blown themselves up, they likely would have killed hundreds of soldiers and family members at Fort Dix, New Jersey. If Green got taken in by such a person, whatever. But I wouldn't be.
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