Farenheit 9/11

Farenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore, 2004) "Everyone’s getting along just fine backstage, the Teamsters are helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo,” cracked Steve Martin after Moore won Best Documentary at the 2002 Oscars (for Bowling for Columbine) and used his speech (accompanied by all the Documentary nominees) as a passionate speech against the Iraq War. The "Shame on you, Mr. Bush" speech was then expanded into this film, which debuted before the 2004 election, but didn't seem to make a dent in Bush's re-election over the swift-boated John Kerry.

It might have been the tone. Rather than educate or inform, Moore's documentary was a bit of a rant, although delivered in a calm, soothing, particularly patronizing tone. For all the juxtaposition of images—of Donald Rumsfeld complimenting the precision of aerial strikes while an Iraqi child's head is being sewn up, President George Bush making a "kill the terrorists" comment to the Press, and then (without an edit, mind you) returning to his golf game ("Now watch this drive"), the excruciating classsroom reading of "My Pet Goat" after being informed that "America is under attack" (Moore's narration muses: "Was he thinking, "I've been hanging out with the wrong crowd. Which one of them screwed me? Was it the man my daddy's friends delivered a lot of weapons to? Was it that group of religious fundamentalists who visited my state when I was governor? Or was it the Saudis? Damn, it was them.  Better blame it on [Saddam Hussein]")—Moore's narration hammers the point home, but comes off as snarky and maybe a little too calculating for a moment rife with unanswered questions and the burden of responsibility that must have weighed heavily on him.  He might also have thought of his personal safety—"they can't find me in a schoolhouse"—of who in D.C. was in charge, and if the attacks were limited to New York.  Or he might have just been contemplating the unbelievability of it (as we all did), even though there was a memo on Condoleeza Rice's desk at that moment—one of several, maybe—warning of an attack but not sure when.

Questions linger as History moves forward: the whisking away of Bin Laden's family members out of the States on the last flights out before the air-travel embargo (Why them? How did it happen so fast, and who had the foreknowledge that Bin Laden, specifically, was behind it that the families needed to be evacuated?  Where are they now?); the rush to Afghanistan to upend the tentative stranglehold of the Taliban who were providing training camps to Al Qaida (Understandable, given the intel and lack of cooperation coming out of the place); the wholly unnecessary push to Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein on trumped-up WMD suspicions (there have been no repercussions for that or the cherry-picked evidence); the decision to support Pakistan (ignoring the democratically-voting India, who was already an ally) when that country seemed unable and unwilling to control its borders, and were ultimately revealed to be harboring Bin Laden.  Whose decision was that?  Is that where Bin Laden's family fled to—or back to Saudi Arabia—did we know this?  Is this why—at one point—Bush stated that finding Bin Laden was no longer his highest priority?  One can spout maxims like "keep your friends close but your enemies closer" but at what point do you admit your alliances are stabbing you in the back?

The images that stick, though, are the war profiteers who saw a great opportunity for making big bucks once the soldiers who'd fought and bled to clear the area and make it safe for the carpet-baggers to exploit.  What's happened to those investors?  What's happening now in Iraq?  Are the lights on?  Is there potable water? Is there any evidence of the U.S. doing any good besides the scars and rubble?  In this election year, we're being asked:  Are we better off?  Shouldn't we also be asking—are they?  Do we just make a mess and have no moral obligation to cleaning it up?  And if anybody has profited from this, at the expense of the lives of our soldiers, why aren't they in jail?

But, back to Farenheit 9/11: the less important issue is should Moore's work be considered under the category of documentary.  To be sure, there is no objectivity in documentaries—every shot, every edit is informed and influenced by some editorial perspective—but Moore's out put is more in the line of illustrated advocacy, starting with a point of view and the content cherry-picked (that term again) to enforce that point (rather than letting the content drive the conclusions).  Moore's staged interviews and stunts are all strategically geared to his theses.  At that point, his films are no longer documents, but propaganda.  So what, you say?  It's an important distinction if you're searching for truth—to be informed—rather than being told what to think.

Justify My Shitty Taste: Don't Hate, Hate Hate Me Because I Like Crash

Mike Lippert of the much-read movie blog "You Talking to Me?" is having a blog-a-thon—one of those community drum-circles, where we pound on a theme and and listen to the echoes it creates.  I don't participate very often in these, but when something inspires a surge in heart-beats, I plunge in.  This time, the theme is "Justify Your Shitty Taste:" find a movie that has been given short-shrift and explain why you like it—defend yourself and your contrary opinion.  Well, I had a piece in the hopper that I wrote years ago to a film that has had its share of acclaim—even winning Best Picture at the Oscars—but meets with such condescending sneers every time it gets mentioned in "movie circles" that I've always felt the need to defend it—up to a point...and then I give up.  There's only so many times you can hit your head against a brick wall without doing damage to your own exquisite taste (that was written with sarcasm, btw).   Here, from the depths of my ignorance (and my ever-growing "Draft" pile) is my justification of Crash.


Hello, my name is Yojimbo, and I like Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004).

("Hi, Yojimbo")

It's really funny...really funny, to the point of out-loud chuckles...the extreme reactions Crash gets from its many, many detractors. When Jim Emerson mentioned it as one of his least favorite movies (he has, in the past, listed it as one of his "sociopathic barbarites")* in a recent blog post, the comments section went up in arms with lemming-like ferocity. "I HATE HATE HATE Crash!" yelled (caps indicative) one of the comments.**

I don't. I like it. With the same rictus smile that I appreciate other cynical films.  And the more extreme the reaction to it, the more I smile, because it only drives home the film's point further, and exposes it as true.

Now, some (but only some) of the hatred of Crash comes from folks who consider Crash the usurper that took the "Best Picture" Oscar from *sigh* Brokeback Mountain (as if the Oscars are ever truly the indicator of quality). Now, I didn't mind "Brokeback"--there was much to admire--the stunning cinematography, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana's cruel, no-holds-barred/no-feelings-spared screenplay, and Heath Ledger's performance--someone finally captured the essence of the archetypal head-strong, mumbling western dude (and the guy was Australian, fer cryin' out loud!). Plus, there was something altogether shattering about his memorial to his lost love, in lieu of grave-stone. But, there was nothing in Brokeback Mountain that hasn't been done in every sudsy straight soap of the last eighty years. Nathan Lee of the Village Voice put it far better than I: Ann Proulx's bitter post-Oscar diatribe has a lot of empty fire to it, but, c'mon, honey, you were borrowing Faulkner's pen and you know it. And for anyone who thinks gay cowboys are revolutionary, skip right over the Village People and Jon Voigt for a moment and go directly to Red River. Howard Hawks knew it. Lenny Bruce knew it. Montgomery Clift, no doubt, knew it.

But Crash is the better movie. Crash is the subtler movie, believe it or not. Crash deserved that Best Picture Oscar, because it pulled off a great trick: it pissed off a lot of people, only proving its point.

Let me just say one thing about Crash: It's not "about" racism.

Yes, yes, I know, racism is all over the thing, morally repugnant, down and dirty, pig-ignorant racism. From all sides, and all races. And if racism was all it was about, yeah, some of the hatred for the film might have a point, because all the movie does is say "racism exists, and there's nothing you can do about it," which doesn't make it the Feel-Good Movie of the Year. If it was only about racism, then it would truly be committing that great movie sin "exemplifying what it rails against" like, say, Rollerball that says violence is a terrible thing and then rubs your nose in it for two hours. Or an "anti-war" movie--that relishes its battle sequences. If it were so, 'twas a grievous fault.

But Crash is not just about racism. Racism is a symptom in it, but it's not the "end-all, be-all."Myopia is. The denizens of Crash are all folks (with very few significant exceptions) who've got it all figured out. Entrenched in their lives, in their jobs, in their bureaucracies, they think they've seen it all and they act appropriately. We've seen their type in movies before. Like Bogart's Richard Blaine in Casablanca who "sticks (his) neck out for nobody." Or Jack Nicholson's J.J. Gittes in Chinatown,*** who when asked what he did as a cop down there replies "as little as possible." They're not people of color, they're all gray, walking around with blinders on (which is why the movie's called Crash and not, say, Clash.) They all know "the score" and so they've stopped thinking. They live their cloistered, blindered lives in the grids of L.A. in their own little boxes of assumptions and none of them will try to see beyond them.  They are numb to the world, and the cultural clashes are battles over turf, amplified rhetoric and action so (as Don Cheadle—who also produced the film—playing Detective Graham Waters says in the opening line of dialogue) "they can feel something."

Except...except. Haggis has been accused of manipulation (and like, duh, all movies are manipulative, hate to break it to you) but the most egregious examples are the pretty obvious incident of the "invisible cloak." I think every viewer above a third grade education knew what was coming--the kid was going to get "whacked" with her invisible cloak, because, hey, we're all cynics, and the movie has been pretty cynical up to that point--actually the characters IN the movie have been pretty cynical. But not the kid. In an altruistic, completely naive and childlike way, the kid goes beyond what any of the adults would do and makes a sacrifice to save her father. We all assume that to her doom, and Haggis milks the anguish, and delays the inevitable reveal. The kid's not dead. Why? Because the daughter of the angry shop-keeper has also thought outside the box, and bought her old man blank cartridges. Both those individuals have gone beyond the "I stick my neck out for nobody" syndrome, and the synchronicity has pulled off a miracle, or at least, prevented a tragedy, brought on by short-sightedness.

Myopia is all over the movie--even when racism isn't. Because there's more than racism going on. It's blacks against whites, whites against blacks, cops against civilians, politicians against the cops, the bureaucrats against the trench-fighters, upper class against lower class, and the reciprocal vice-versa. Myopia is ever-present, and everybody stops thinking when they reach their assumptions...and look no further. The insurance worker thinks the guy on the line is a dead-beat, the guy on the line thinks she's a bitchy negro. They both have drawn lines in the sand and will go no further. Matt Dillon's bad cop just assumes all the minorities are scum, so he treats them accordingly. Ryan Phillippe's good cop takes the high road and assumes he'll never act like that in any given circumstances. They're both short-sighted fools. And they won't consider any other possibility. They're two sides of the same coin.

For me, Crash plays like a post-modern film-noir, where the world is crummy, people are tarnished (whether they're rich or poor), but there is no "slumming angel" (as Ross McDonald put it) to try and make things temporarily right—all the characters in Crash have that ability if they choose, if they will, and there is no hand-holding narrator or Stage Manager bringing perspective, merely the dispassionate view from on high.  The good that people do are mere slats of light in an all-enveloping darkness, not unlike the the noir's traditional backdrop, the venetian blind, or as the de-focused headlights in the film's credit sequence.

Another criticism: Too many coincidences in Crash? Yep, but that's to be expected with an ensemble cast in a limited area whether it's La Ronde, or Grand Hotel, or even...the acclaimed Babel where the coincidences are hemispheres apart (those butterflies are mighty powerful!). But Crash isn't like any of these films. The one I compare it to, both in tenor and reaction is The Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir's condemnation of pre-WWII French society going to its ruin in selfishness and self-involvement. French folk hated The Rules of the Game, too. In fact, riots broke out in theaters, and to try and save his investment Renoir kept cutting it and cutting it to try to assuage the angry mob. As a result, after the war when the hysteria died down, it was difficult to find an unexpurgated version of The Rules of the Game until...1958. The tyranny of the mob had done its damage and its only by the luck and a little hard work that a longer copy of this classic exists. Fortunately Crash hasn't had to go that far. Maybe people are just more passive-aggressive these days, content to HATE HATE HATE in the relative anonymity of a bogus screen-name--like, say, "Yojimbo_5." Maybe that's progress.

So, if I'm in a crowd of people and Crash comes up, and folks get angry about it because it's "about" racism but doesn't "do" anything about it (I suppose a cameo by Rodney King might help...?), I don't say anything. It won't do any good. Folks have already made up their minds about Crash and if I try to point out they might be wrong and consider that possibility...no, no, that won't happen. Their thoughts stop at "racism" and go no further, thus proving the movie's point all over again, and proving, once again, why it's such a good film.

Ultimately it's a tough and pointless duty to watch a film with blinders on.  It's no way to see a film, and it's no way to lead a life...as Crash, for all its flaws, so ably demonstrates.


* ...which is a far cry from what he wrote in 2006: "As restrictive as the rules of this cycle may be, “Crash” still manages to be an unusually mechanical instance of it. With numbing predictability, every positive character is revealed to have a negative side (the good, tolerant cop, played by Ryan Phillippe, commits an impulsive, racially-triggered murder), while ever negative character is revealed to have his or her positive (the racist cop, played by Matt Dillon, risks his life to save a black woman trapped in a wrecked car). Just about everyone is an instinctive racist, and just about everyone is a victim of racism, who learns his or her lesson when the tables are turned. Haggis piles up the coincidences that bring his characters together without shame or the slightest restraint; he seems to feel that by emphasizing the contrivances of his plotting, he is in fact revealing a hidden pattern, a secret will, that organizes the world. Turning bad writing into a metaphysical principle is indeed an accomplishment, and one that might well deserve an award – though Best Picture of 2005 is going a bit too far." 

From this to "sociopathic barbarity" is quite the change of opinion.  The above is reasoned analysis.  The latter is just hectoring screed.  Hating Crash became easier and more comfortable, then racheted up to the extreme.  Now, what was Crash saying again?

Emerson does this at times—I'll be shocked if there is ever a Christopher Nolan film that he will praise, rather than merely dismiss it, and he condemned Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers (without even seeing it) merely because Haggis had a hand in the screenplay—to his credit, after actually seeing it, he praised it.  This may sound like bashing the man, but Emerson's is a great voice in film criticism, and I love reading his output, whether I agree with it or not.  His is an essential voice in the understanding of the mechanics of how film can touch the eye and the brain and move the heart.  If he ever stops writing, I will mourn that day.

** Which reminds me of the George Clooney retort to the web-site that said he was "GAY GAY GAY:" "Two GAY's, maybe, but the third's a little extreme."

*** Chinatown also makes a point of using prejudice, not just racial, but class prejudice, as a distinctive example of reactive, rather than thinking, behavior.

The Merchant of Venice

The Merchant of Venice (Michael Radford, 2004) Wm. Shakespeare's most problematic play for modern audiences gets a sumptuous presentation (without PC-intended cuts) in this production, the first sound version of this oft-quoted play; problematic in that, taken merely by folio content, it has a vitriolic anti-semitic tone that runs counter to its classification as a "comedie."  But, director Radford, with one stroke—and, indeed, one shot—manages to restore some semblance of perspective, if not judicious balance to the piece.

It is 14th century Venice and ardent Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes) is in love.  The object of his desire is fair Portia (Lynn Collins, replacing—very well—Cate Blanchett), an heiress in the village of Belmont.  But, a fool with money, he can ill afford to make the trip, and so turns to his frequent benefactor Antonio (Jeremy Irons) to lend him three thousand ducats to make the trip.  Antonio, a wealthy merchant, is a bit strapped for cash at the moment—he has three ships in transit on a business venture that will surely reap great profits.  So, the elder man agrees to guarantee a loan from whoever Bossanio can get one, and he does so from Shylock (Al Pacino), a money-lender in the Jewish ghetto of Venice.  But, Shylock and Antonio have issues: the city is divided between Jew and Gentile with much tsuris and animosity between the two groups, the former frequent victims of abuse and scorn by the latter, and Shylock is miffed that Antonio undercuts his business by offering loans with no interest.  So, the agreement comes with an odd rider—should Antonio default on the loan, Shylock will extract from him "a pound of flesh."  Given the going rate of flesh in the meat and prostitution markets (both of which Radford sees fit to show), it seems like a pretty good rate, and with a deal in the works, Antonio, readily agrees to "the bond."

But, if there weren't complications, it wouldn't be Shakespeare: for Antonio, his ships go missing; for Shylock, his beloved daughter Jessica (Zuleikha Robinson) follows her heart, defying her father, running off with her suitor, a Gentile, and converts to Christianity.  That news is devastating to Shylock, who, when the loan defaults, takes Antonio to court to get his due, and some measure of satisfaction for the wrongs that have been meted out upon his people.

It's extraordinarily well-done, with the context of Venician abuse of the Jewish community made explicit and evident, and the feelings displayed, especially during the hearing, angry and ugly.  But, the players' interpretations are all-important here, especially Pacino's.  His Shylock has hurt etched into his eyes, and the actor's power is never more evident as when he's displaying grief—Dustin Hoffman wanted this role, but one can't imagine Hoffman capable of the towering rage—especially when his voice reaches the upper registers—that Pacino can command.  One never loses the context of past humiliations against Shylock here, and that, now, this time, he will exact his revenge.  Pacino's Shylock is sympathetic, even, if, during the trial, he is cast in the role of "villain."

It is at the end, though, where Radford has his bond.  While the citizens of Venice, wink and cajole and tease and wench, there is a single shot of Shylock, presumably in Temple, as his brethren leave him, and, in a cinematic move that seems to recall Pacino's Michael Corleone at the end of The Godfather, but more appropriately, John Wayne's racist Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, the doors of the Temple are shut on him, first one, then the other, isolating him.  The message is clear.  His own tribe is shunning him.  The root of it is not that he is "The Jew," but that he is uniquely Shylock, and his own character, not his race, not his religion, not anything but himself is the cause of his implacability.  And it is rejected by his community.  The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars (or our God) but ourselves.  The quality of mercy certainly is not strained.  It can be given, but if it is not offered in kind, it can be taken back.

And that, my friends, is a true bond, that no court can recognize.

I would be far more sanguine if some similar fate awaited if the spitters and sneerers and anti-semites among the goyim revellers received a harsher fate than some humiliation by their women-folk, but the play's the thing.  And one brushes up their Shakespeare at their peril.

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

"Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" (Brad Silberling, 2004) Oh, sure. For Hallowe'en on this site we featured flesh-eating zombies and vengeful demons and dead souls that wouldn't stay dead. But in the warm comfort of the domicile, many flights of stairs from the garret in which this is written, the Hallowe'en movie of choice was this (to be heretofore crunched to "Unfortunate Events" to avoid a cramp). It might be the best movie Barry Sonnenfeld never made. It has his insensibility, his florid camera moves,* snappy editing, austere framing and live-action cartoonish gambits (lots of shots of peoples' faces gaping into the camera).

But, it didn't have enough budget and so Brad Silberling took over the project.

Silberling is a chameleonic director; he tends to take on the characteristics of whatever project falls into his lap—handy for his long tenure as a television director of such idiosyncratic shows as "NYPD Blue," but making him hard to pin down as a feature director. How do you explain the disparity between "Unfortunate Events" and his unfortunate "City of Angels?" Before you attempt that, let me trump it by adding the even more unfortunate Will Ferrell vehicle, "Land of the Lost ."

So, it's perhaps fortunate for Silberling that so much of "Unfortunate Events" depends on others. The Lemony Snicket-styled writing—a bit like "Miss Manners" without her morning pick-me-up—of dark, despairing fore-shadowing** inspires a switch-back Rankin-Bass-styled opening that comes crashing to a halt. ("This would be an excellent time to walk out of the theater, living room, or airplane where this film is being shown." says the Lemony Narrator, as read by Jude Law)

"Fade to Black" is the more appropriate phrase. Fade to monochromatic gothic steam-punk macabre, (which permeates the film, like a lighter version of "The Addams Family") as the film takes up the sad misfortunes of the Baudelaire orphans: Violet, a voracious inventor (Emily Browning); Klaus, a voracious reader (Liam Aiken); and Sunny, a voracious biter (Kara Hoffman and Shelby Hoffman). When their parents are killed in a mysterious fire, the Estate (executed by a piggish Timothy Spall), the kids are shipped off to the cunning clutches of Count Olaf (Jim Carrey), a dispicable actor who only cares for the Beaudelaire fortune. Treated as servants by the fiend, he decides to kill them off when it's determined that he'll only get the money when they're adults. And so he leaves them, locked in a car on a rail-road track with the 11:15 barrelling down on them.

What to do, what to do?

Based on the first three "Unfortunate Events" books ("The Bad Beginning," "The Reptile Room," and "The Wide Window,"), the film is as episodic as could be with the child-endangering machinations of the Count the single unsavory thread running through it. Upon Carrey's every entrance, Silberling takes the wise course of just hanging back, giving Carrey a wide shot (with distorting anamorphic lens) and keeping any other actor out of giggling range. So much of his performance is ad-libbed, you could make the case that it's Carrey who's driving the bus; things calm down considerably when Billy Connolly and Meryl Streep take possession of the children (and the movie), but gears up again when Carrey dervishes his way into the scene (Connolly stays out of his way, but Streep engages him, going eye-to-eye).

It's a good thing, too. "Unfortunate Events" could have turned excessively mordant to the point of leeching all the fun out of it, production-designed into stasis if Carrey wasn't there to break windows (and characters) in the proceedings. In that spirit, the cast is rounded out by such anarchic spirits as Catherine O'Hara, Jennifer Coolidge, Cedric the Entertainer, Dustin Hoffman, Jane Lynch, and Craig Ferguson that flit around the corners to keep things from getting too predictable, and deservedly more than a little off-kilter.


* He started out as the Coen Brothers' cinematographer.

** It's fun when doled out in tea-spoons of dread and low dudgeon, but if you want to hear it overdone, listen to the director and author Daniel Handler's commentary track on the DVD. Handler (as "Lemony Snicket") acts like your staid Aunt Petunia, who goes all-fluttery and horrified at the movie, which is funny for ten minutes, then overstays its welcome...by two hours.

The Sea Inside

"The Sea Inside" aka "Mar Adentro" (Alejandro Amenábar, 2005) The issue of assisted suicide is never a cheery one, and one is hard-pressed to call this one a "fun night at the movies." Although the subject of past films,* Amenábar's approach, as it ususally is, is quite different.

The director's specialty, so far in his short career, is to deal with the plight of trapped people who can't recognize their predicament, so distracted are they by inconveniences that keep them from focussing; they can't see the forest for the trees.

"The Sea Inside" (which won the 2005 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and is based on a true story) has a similarly trapped person who's all too aware of his predicament: Ramón Sampedro (Javier Bardem) is a quadriplegic due to a diving accident in his youth. The worst thing that could have happened to him, he thinks, was to have been saved from drowning. And now, his existence is one of helplessness, aided by his family for all his needs. He may be helpless, but he is hardly inable—he is the hub of the family—everything revolves around him. Even from his limited vantage point he is well-read, articulate, gifted: he writes poetry, designs his own mobile wheelchair, and is the engine behind his lawsuit to request assisted suicide. This is his one goal, informing his life and those who are working on his cause, and the movie is involved with his cause from his point-of-view. It's not as myopic in its story-telling as, say, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"—Amenábar and his camera are far more free of navigating space and Bardem's performance is a critical part of the story. But, similar to Julian Schnabel's film, there are occasional moments of dream-fantasy where Ramón equates the ability to move with flying. He can elevate himself to the place he wants to be and carries out the conversations he craves with no limitations, not even by others' free will. Amenábar is only too aware of the irony.

Bardem is one of those blessed actors (like Jean Gabin and John Wayne and the early Spencer Tracy) who seem to exist outside age. Those three could play older at an early age and Bardem is tasked with doing that without the aid of showing stiff joints or stooped shoulders. It's all in his lived-in face, conveying a lifetime of restriction and impatience with his situation. Amenábar and Bardem keep Ramón from being an entirely sympathetic character, his frustrations erupting into petulance and tantrums that cascade down through the family. For him, the one thing he is not able to do, physically and bureaucratically, is take his own life, and despite protestations from the State and advisors and family, he is set on his goal. Dead-set.

Like Amenábar's other films (Abre los ojos and The Others), it is sometimes a frustrating slog, but it reaches a revelatory epiphany that puts everything into perspective for the protagonists, as well as the audience. Amenábar's little puzzles have lessons for everybody.

* I'm thinking of "Whose Life Is It Anyway? " and "Wit," which brings to mind that the posters for those films only featured the star's (Richard Dreyfuss and Emma Thompson, respectively) heads, as well.

Alexander

"Alexander" (Oliver Stone, 2004) In the two-way race getting the story of Alexander the Great to the screen between Baz Luhrmann and Oliver Stone, the latter got there first, having worked on a screen-play since 1989. Luhrmann's announcement of an "Alexander" project was probably just the thing Stone's film needed to get off the ground, and his thorough planning shows (historical inaccuracies aside): this is one of Stone's deftest film--a combination of his macho liberal ethics and his pre-disposition to turn everything into braying Myth. Here he's dealing with Gods and Titans and men who reach beyond their grasp, and if one thinks this one has a political agenda talking about a King wanting to chase his Persian prey into the mountains, you're only scanning the surface for easy targets.*

Stone's going for epic statements here of dreamers and the pains they inflict on Society** and a pretty good tying up of some major themes in several of his films without descending into his fall-back of the "Good and Bad Fathers of our Soul." Oh, there is familial stress going on constantly with two of the more watchable stars as Alexander's warring father and mother King Phillip and Olympias (Val Kilmer and Angelina Jolie***). Their battles for the betterment of Alexander (Colin Farrell) make up the intrigue that Stone keeps flashing back to once Alexander reaches Babylon and established his first Alexandria city-state. But the main focus is Alexander and his battles from Ireland**** Macedonia to Persia to India, each one given their own specific vantage point. The desert combat in Persia is given a neat over-view by a mythic hawk, the latest in a long line of familiars haunting Stone protagonists. The India battle is an epic jungle gore-fest between man and beast that turns into a red nightmare, but is affectionately begun with an old-time movie iris-out.

The film is so full of "rules of thumb," you begin to wonder if there's not a training manual with the thing ("A commander never gives an order he wouldn't carry out himself," "Don't surrender your reason to passion," "Moderation in all things" and the film's mantra "Fortune favors the bold"), and as gritty as Stone makes it (and there's a lot of blood-spatter flying through the battle scenes), it has the pristine quality of those Hollywood sword-and-sandal epics where even the Persian city of Babylon seems immaculately free of dust. Stone seemed inspired by the look of "The Lord of the Rings" and its way around a vast story-line, but seems to favor his Myths well-scrubbed.

Still, it's an epic that was filmed in 93 days, despite far-flung locations and looks miraculous despite the tight schedule. For all the things that could conceivably have gone wrong, Stone's Cecil B. DeMille styled dream project managed a lot of things right.

* Stone's "W." biography would show up at the end of 2008, looking rushed and a little wasted and without much to say. You can't satirize a political satire, and the joke ceased being funny a long time ago.

** In an odd post-mortem, Alexander's kinsman Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) supposes that Societies are inspired by dreamers and then exhausted by them to the point of wishing them failure, if not death. That's an interesting thought coming from Mr. Conspiracy Theory. Stone's also one of those liberals who likes to include all of us to enjoy his guilt—"It's all out faults." Hey, speak for yourself, mack!

*** Stone is particularly praise-worthy of his actors on the commentary track of this film and with good cause--Farrell shows off the promise that his over-hyped career has only suggested, Kilmer is as boisterously good as he's been in years, and Jolie again shows why she's one of the most commanding actors on the screen these days. She has a line reading ("Loves. Loves!") that wheels between conflicting emotions with such quick-silver speed that it nearly whips your head around. One would be tempted to see that she's the latter day Ava Gardner if not for one thing—she's a better actor than Gardner. Stone loves a touch of madness in his actors. Jolie is his perfect match.

**** Farrell doesn't disguise his Irish accent, and the kid who plays him (very well) in the early sections of the movie does a fair register of Farrell's brogue. But most of the actors have Irish accents that at times is distracting, but somehow seems fitting for the folk-tale blarney with which Stone tells the story. You go with it, as it feels right. Kilmer's accent is American. Jolie's is faux-Greek.

Spanglish

"Spanglish" (James L. Brooks, 2004) I think it's a case of worrying too much. Brooks has had a history of vivisecting his movies in the editing room—for example, he made a musical "I'll Do Anything" and during the editing stage removed all the songs. Here, he took out two crucial lines: one, to shorten the journey of Flor Moreno (the adorable Paz Vega) and her daughter Christina (Victoria Luna, growing into the amazing Shelbie Bruce) into America—originally they flew in with a pilot whom Flora was attracted to, but made a silent vow to never again get involved with irresponsible men (That scene is crucial, but it's not in the version released to theaters); the other is a scene where it's quite apparent that although they have a lot in common, the two protagonists in that scene come from distinctly different emotional cultures, and that what they share comes down to empathy, rather than love and that's an important statement to make. Again, it was cut out, making the film a bit more undefined and quite a bit more "safe" from controversy.

"Spanglish" probably takes enough chances that it made its makers very nervous. Brooks does extensive research, drenching his films in the worlds they inhabit and making them seem unconventional when their stories are actually quite in line with conventional wisdom. Brooks takes worlds spinning out of control and contains them, returns them to the status quo, achieving the normal or what will pass for normal.

Here, it is a Latina single mom, with no English to speak of, assimilating into a well-to-do dysfunctional Hell.A. family. He's a five-star cook who'd settle for three (Adam Sandler, nicely played*), and she's a hopeless neurotic (Téa Leoni, taking scary chances)—so self-aware she's oblivious to the havoc she creates around her. Leoni's neurotic California wife is the biggest risk in the movie, because she's an intelligent woman who has made herself as dumb as a stump, stuck in a loveless relationship with herself and trapped in a never-ending downward spiral of self-improvement. She's irritating as hell, mostly because the actress does not cut her any slack (you want to give her an award, then slap her upside the head with it). You can feel her self-absorption suck the feel-good out of the movie, but without her, it would go nowhere, and, frankly, it wouldn't be a convincing portrait of Los Angeles.

Rounding out the cast is Cloris Leachman, who reminds of why she's such a talent and can mine worth out of badly written parts, but especially out of good ones. Again, Brooks does amazing work with kid-actors, and each of the youngsters in "Spanglish" are unconventional and scary-good. But there is one scene between Sandler, Vega, and Bruce that is as deftly played as any I've seen as it's a conversation between Sandler and Vega with Bruce translating. It's good conversation, too, done at top-speed and lots of sub-text that all three actors excell at. It's a classic scene all around showcasing optimal writing, direction and acting. Brooks is that good. He just needs to trust himself and his material.

The film got a bit of a critical drubbing, probably for the superficial reasons that it starred Adam Sandler (never a hallmark of quality up to that point in his career) and the Leoni character is such a train-wreck (that's the point, I believe) But despite that reputation and its poor box-office, "Spanglish" is one of those movies that "got away"—a love story where "love" has the best of intentions and is more in line with the old bilblical term "Charity."


* Although it's certainly not something to hold out as indicative of the entire performance, check out Sandler's "blind" perfect beer pour. It's one of those character details that displays something would wouldn't associate with the actor/comedian—discipline.

A Very Long Engagement

"A Very Long Engagement" aka "Un long dimanche de fiançailles" (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2004) Epic war film, reuniting Jeunut with his "Amelie" star Audrey Tautou, that tells the story of one woman's search for her lost lover who went to WWI and never came back. The film is full of story and incident (and Jeunet's wind-up mechanism way of telling a story) that it makes the 134 minute film feel a lot longer.

The film starts as a story told in flash-back of five soldiers who were court-martialed for self-mutilation (shooting themselves in the hand by various means) in order to get themselves out of the war and the hellish existence in the trenches on the front line. One of them is the Manech (Gaspar Ulliel), lover of Mathilde (Tautou), whose fantasies and re-imaginings of the circumstances of the war make up the bulk of the film's realisation. By various means, she begins to piece together the story of her lover's court-martial and punishment (he and the others found guilty are thrown out of the trenches into "no-man's land" to fend for themselves), which are told "Rashoman"-like from different angles and perspectives.

The war-scenes are appropriately grisly, Jeunet displays his usual penchant for things grotesque--there's a murder of a rotund general by a prostitute that's particularly...interesting--that are part and parcel of his films, and there's the tendency to turn his films into little Rube Golberg-esque mechanisms, that can become tedious as much as they can delight (He always has to thrown in "the mechanism of sex" joke somewhere, too).* Still, as distracting as his eye for the unusual shot can be, there are moments of "gee-whizzery" and CG-wizardry that are pretty wondrous, and stay in the head long after the details of the movie fade. Jeunet is a master of bending reality to meet his artistic goals, whether lighting and dressing an area to its maximum potential, or employing digital tricks to make it conform to his vision or the past's.

Examples of some of the amazing frames of "A Very Long Engagement," some courtesy of Evan Richards and his wonderful blog "Cinematography, Etc."

A make-shift field hospital set in a dirigible hangar is engulfed in flames when a bomb sets off the contained hydrogen.

A sinister night meeting is made even more so in Jeuneut's composition--as the one must come down to the other's level.

Going a long way for a visual pun-a farmer is met by gendarmes to join the war-effort, and the wind from their car sweeps aside the tall grass leading to their wagon. "Draft," indeed.

Jeuneut makes incredible use of depth-of-field here, as Mathilde seeks out the wife of one of the condemned in a market-place (Yes, that is Jodie Foster, whose french is impeccable)

A Luhrmann-esque "post-card" shot told in lettered flash-back.

A CGI recreation of WWI-period Nice, France. Quite Nice, in fact

The crippled Mathilde must stand on her rickety wheelchair to reach for war records.

"MMM"--the initials "Manech's marrying Mathilde" --is a constant icon throughout the film. Here, Jeuneut cranes up from the carved initials to Mathilde's obvious bliss. The shot will continue further up to include an albatross-symbol of tenacity.

The young Mathilde fantasizes that her new boy-friend will save her from falling from the lighthouse. The next scene will have them embracing as they gaze from the light in a mock-Hollywood shot.

Jeuneut makes the stair-way leading to the light-house lamp a "golden spiral.

From the impossibly soaring crane-move preceding it, it's obviously a set, but the breathtaking sun-set looks quite real, even if it is computer-enhanced.

Jeuneut makes Mathilde's family's home warm and earthy by accentuating the color palette of the scene.

The Fog of War--Jeuneut drains the color out of a stark battlefield to shades of gray.

A hospital is drained to a sepia tint, not unlike the jaundiced color of old medicine bottles.

The lighthouse stirs to life

Ultimately, it is such a polyglot of a movie that one can't help feel it might split any potential audience. Those wanting a purely romantic film will be put off by the war scenes and the occasional blunt sexuality, as well as the prolonged sense of hopelessness the film radiates. Those interested in the mystery aspect will be frustrated by the lack of momentum in the progress of acquiring facts and the diverging stories leading to blind alleys. What spurred me on was seeing the amazing scenes like the preceding ones, and seeing a new one around every splice.

It's an amazing film, if not everyone's cup of tea.

* It occurs to me that in the unlikely event Steven Spielberg ever wants to hand over the reins of the "Indiana Jones" films to another director Jeunet would be the perfect choice.

Kinsey

"Kinsey" (Bill Condon, 2004) Bill Condon's film of the life and work of Alfred Kinsey, whose scientific study of sexuality in America was the literary equivalent of playing "Doctor" in the '50's ("I'll read yours, if you'll read mine") is a cogent little gloss of the subject which still manages to tell an intriguing and controversial story, while addressing something Kinsey and his researches never did--that of morality, and "feelings." Treating sex as a clinical study wasn't so easy a proposition, as Kinsey, his wife, co-workers and the Rockefeller Foundation that funded him, found out. Condon films the movie in a series of boxes--safe little containers to hold the forbidden fruit. It's when Kinsey is outdoors that he feels the most free. Put him in a rotunda, he's in trouble. What started out as a cold and clinical study by his group soon affects the lives of his researchers, and, when the results are published, the rest of the country. Condon (who wrote the screenplay) starts the movie as a training exercise, grilling his survey-takers (Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton and Chris O'Donnell--great cast, with Liam Neeson and Laura Linney, playing Kinsey and wife, being very fine) on their approach, their manner, and their reactions to answers as a test subject--neatly introducing the back-story. There's one box that Kinsey won't consider--Pandora's--and he and his staff are only too willing to dive into it--experimentally, of course, in the name of Science--only to find the damage that it can cause. The libido and the psyche are two compoletely different things, and the film almost makes a case for restraint in sexual matters, for all the damage it can do. An interesting consideration, that. One wonders how amused Kinsey would be by the irony.

The other thing that's interesting is that when writing a review of the film, there's no way that you can write it without filling it with unintended double entendres (said the Actress to the Bishop).

Garden State

"Garden State" (Zack Braff, 2004) A delightful little film, rude with detail, about a young aspiring actor who takes the occassion of a trip back home to attend his mother's funeral to stop taking anti-depressants. Zack Braff ("Scrubs") writes, acts and stars in "Garden State," and he's got to be pretty good, but he pulls off a perfect hat-trick without slighting any of those functions. Plus, he has a pretty good eye for camera-work, too, as his medicated section plays austere and sterile, but gradually becomes freer with subject matter and composition right to the last shot. Good cast, too. Natalie Portman is all charming neurotic tic as a Jersey girl, and Peter Sarsgaard turns in another seemingly effortless performance as the best of Braff's stoner-friends. Ian Holm is the tightest-wound of control-freak dad-shrinks, and there's a wonderful cameo by Jean Smart. The film loses its way briefly in the third act on a prolonged scavenger hunt, but wraps up nicely. Pretty damned good for somebody's first film!****

**** The topic of "Garden State" came up at a party recently and the reactions to it were extreme--love it or hate it. But the most vehemence--and a large reason to hate the movie was Natalie Portman. I thought she was great, more than redeeming herself for the "Star Wars" prequels, but a couple of women in the room not only thought she was horrible, but ruined the movie. ??? Really? RUINED the entire movie? In my opinion, they couldn't be more wrong. But, why would they think that? I think it's because she wasn't wearing the right kind of make-up. No, not Maybelline. Something like the make-up Charlize Theron wore to win the Oscar in "Monster," (besides the truly amazing performance, that is), or the false nose Nicole Kidman wore in "The Hours." And let's be fair here, the transformation of Daniel Day Lewis for his award-winning performance in "My Left Foot," or the weight and schlumpf George Clooney burdened himself with for "Syriana." So, word of advice, Nat', if you're ever gonna be taken seriously, think something disfiguring.