The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Feeding the Beast
or
To Kill a Mocking-jay

I mocked The Hunger Games rather mercilessly when it came out (as if it would prevent a single sou from entering its coffers) , because even though it was a hot publishing phenom' and a breathlessly anticipated movie, the original concept was a bit derivative without being very divergent (yeah, that's a snark for a future film there).  So now, the second of The Hunger Games films (of four total) Catching Fire has come out (with a new director, Francis Lawrence, of Water for Elephants and I Am Legend as a bit of an improvement over Gary Ross, even with Steve Soderbergh assisting) and this one's a better film.  For one thing. "this time it's political," and the easy targets of reality TV and the excesses of the rich (with an eye towards the Roman Empire and its parallels of bread and circuses) are a bit less strident, although they haven't disappeared.  They're just presented a little better this time.  And the politico's of the Capitol are being a bit more cagey than they were previously.

Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) now finds herself the most watched human in Panem.  Her victory in the 74th Hunger Games along with Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) has earned her and her family a cushy residence in Victor's Village and the vulture-like scrutiny of Panem's leader, President Snow (Donald Sutherland, as creepily confident as if he were selling you orange juice).  He sees the way that Katniss has reached out to Panem's people and now she's the centerpiece of a swelling revolutionary movement.  A personal presidential visit amounts to a threat that she'd better be convincing in her devotion to the State.  "I'll convince them." assures Katniss.  "No." replies Snow slowly.  "Convince me."

And with that, the stakes are raised.  A "Victory Tour" is planned for the remaining districts (the ones that haven't been nuked), but at each appearance of Katniss and Peeta something happens that brings out the riot police.  At the suggestion of the Capitol's new gamesmaster (check out this name) Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman, keeping a straight face), who comes up with a plan to put more pressure on Katniss and speeding the inevitable moment when the public turns against her.  Then, with the next Hunger Games competition occurring (the 75th), it is decided that, rather than having a "Reaping" lottery among the populace, the competition will be between past Victors, considered by the State now to be potential inspirations and inciters to riot.

So now, the Games are between past champions (including Jeffrey Wright, Jena Malone, and Amanda Plummer), some of whom are just as determined to win, while others are angry at being targeted again, but there will be only one survivor.  

It's a better film with more tricks up its sleeve, and the media manipulation is played by all sides—it may be an illusion but Stanley Tucci's teeth actually look whiter this time—with a terrific set-up for the next films that comes out of left field...if you haven't read the books.  It's an entertaining change-up from the situations of the original, and promises to be even more intersting next time out.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is a Matinee. 

The Master

The Master: Scientologist-Baiter
or
"Tom and I are Still Friends"

One wonders why, if a (laughable) movie trailer was so important to cause bloodshed in the Middle East, The Master isn't causing a ruckus in Los Angeles, the home of Scientology.  Perhaps Scientologists have thicker skins (and more tolerance) than radical Islamists, who seem to find any excuse to cause harm at the drop of a Koran, or perhaps it would cause a worrisome spike in the members' auditing, or because—really—it has less to do with Scientology than other issues...like what would draw someone to a situation like Scientology—or any belief system—in the first place.

Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film has a similar theme to his previous films—the combustibility of individuals in a collective, and takes a similar tack—get the best individuals in their fields, wind them up and let them go, producing an oblique open-ended vessel into which audiences can pour their interpretations.  It's not that Anderson doesn't have anything to say, so much as he'll be damned if he comes right out and says it, and sets up situations that suggest relevancy, waiting for the happy accident that will inform the whole.  It's not that there isn't a directorial hand here—there's a reason there are so many close-up's—it's that there's isn't a sure directorial stance.

So, you have a lot of surface, the brilliant spot-on "feel" of the production design by Jack Fisk and David Frank, the crisp cinematography of Mihai Malairemare Jr. , the individual performances of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and (especially) Joaquin Phoenix on display, to an amorphous end that challenges, and often begs for, interpretation.  Fortunately, the material is strong enough, and Anderson's contextual thesis is rich enough that one can throw all manner of thoughts into the stew, and make one's own meal out of it.  

We first encounter Freddie Quell (Phoenix) in the Navy during the battles in the South Pacific during World War II.*  Even there, in the midst of hundreds of young men in close quarters, he's an outsider, a loner connecting with no one except for his one discernible skill-mixing noxious brain-cell killing concoctions out of anything handy.  He spends his time isolated, in some form of inebriation, the limits of behavior and humor blurred to indiscernibility, and when he's out of the service, he's immediately transferred to a psych division, where he is examined endlessly to no avail—the doctors are spending all their time trying to find the answer to what's wrong.  It's all too obvious what's wrong—he's a barely functioning alcoholic obsessed with sex—but there's no cure for a complete lack of self-awareness or perspective, and Quell is released to the world, unchanged and unremorseful, just another problem that can't fixed and so is dispatched out of anyone's responsibility, to let Nature or Darwinism deal with him.  He's a perpetual outcast on the edge of functionality, unstable and instinctually acting out.  A job as a department store photographer ends up as an ironic choice—he spends his days looking in, trying to document normalcy, while on breaks, he uses his darkroom chemicals to create some bizarre cocktail to fry his brain and ease his isolation, while trying to make time with a store model.  Phoenix is brilliant in this, a raw nerve and not just mercurial, but mercurial at a high boil.  The photography job ends with a violent incident of his own making, and he winds up as a migrant worker where, again, he moonlights with moonshine, and has to go on the lam where he stows away on a boat that has been commandeered for a wedding party.

It's here that he meets Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman in a varied, extravagant performance that feels a bit like Orson Welles in Citizen Kane) self-described as "a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist and a theoretical philosopher. But above all, I am a man, a hopelessly inquisitive man, just like you."

"Just like you."

Yes and no. Dodd is the gypsy-evangelist of something called "The Cause," a nebulous philosophy for which he is the architect and messiah.  The rules of The Cause change a bit according to need and the whims of Dodd (who erupts in petulant anger when challenged on it, by believers and non- alike) even though the origins of it supposedly date back "trillions of years" (later, his son will tell Quell "he's just making all this up as he goes along").  He's drawn to Quell for his potent concoctions, for his raw contrariness, which Dodd finds a challenge to his self-improvement methods (called "processing"), and because Quell's feral anti-social fury is a reflection of Dodd's free-thinking, but with the irresponsibility that he doesn't have the freedom to practice.  Both men are self-medicating outliers, unable or unwilling to fit in—square pegs in the rounded holes of society.


For Quell, Dodd's processing is a tonic, though not as bracing as what he can make himself, a form of questioning self-examination that, instead of making one feel bad about oneself, makes one feel good.  And for Quell, seeming to belong for the first time in his life, The Cause feels like home and family.

Not all the family is happy, though.  Dodd's followers, including his Lady McBeth of a wife (Adams), fear Quell's aggressiveness and unpredictability, she especially questions whether Quell will ever improve and worries about the effect he will have on her husband and their cottage industry.  Quell may be the best patient for the very therapy that they espouse, but the danger lies in how much damage he will prove to their house of cards in the process.  It's a battle of co-dependents for The Cause, while the two men find the limits to their visions of paradise.  There's a lot of room for mis-interpretation here, most especially in Dodd and Quell's scene in which the older man seeks to calm the emotions of both of them by singing, as if it was a lullaby, "(I'd Like to Get You on a) Slow Boat to China" which ends with the phrases "All to myself/Alone," emphasizing the isolation of both the Messiah and the acolyte, as they set themselves adrift. 

So, in the end, once the credits have rolled up, what does it all mean?  What's the point?**  I'm honest enough with myself to say I don't have a flippin' clue, except what I've laid out here as themes and observations, but will admit that it is all up there on the screen, ready to be interpreted in as individual a manner as any audience member can provide, which is what makes Anderson (along with Terrence Malick, who is a bit more focused) one of our most enigmatic of filmmakers.  Whether that makes him a visionary or a charlatan—like the filmmakers, captains of industry, and religious leaders he portrays, making it up as he goes along—depends on our interpretation, as well.  And it is enough for me that he continues on the path he takes—not going for the easy superhero flick, or facile rom-com—without compromising anything...not even his intentions.  It makes him brave, admirable...and always watchable.  Challenging to be sure, but I like a challenge.

The Master is a Matinee.

After useless psychoanalysis, Freddie turns the examination on others.

What color are her eyes?  You decide.

No, really. We're all together in this.

* One of the running motifs of the film is the time spent on ships of some sort, adrift.

** It's been amusing to read film critics struggling with this one, some finally merely knocking over their king to just call it a "character study."  It's a tough one, alright.  But, it is trying to say something about the human condition, even if only to say it has no easy answers, either, not even for those who espouse and specialize in easy answers.  I like that, but one wishes there was more provided by the film-maker, rather than just providing a rorschach test for us to throw our interpretations onto.

The Ides of March

"'The Situation' in The Situation Room"
or
"A Little Problem with the DnC"

The bobble-head version of George Clooney is back in The Ides of March, the new film directed by...George Clooney.  You remember the bobble-head Clooney, don't you?  It was the loosey-goosey version of the actor that was popular during his "ER" days, a combination of looseness and arrogance, and it made up his persona in his early film career, before the time he decided that he'd get serious about his career after the debacle of Batman & Robin.

Well, that wobble of the head returns in Ides, adapted from the play by Beau Willimon (by Willimon, Clooney and Grant Heslov) called "Farragut North."  I've always seen that wobble as an indication that whichever character he played with it had a lack of moral rectitude, an imperfection of the spine or sensibility that disconnected the head from the rest of the persona—a flaw that lent unpredictability to what actions they'd take, a toss of the head like a toss of the coin.  And it is one of the ways that Clooney telegraphs what his Governor Mike Morris, candidate for President on the democratic ticket, might be capable of.  It keeps you guessing, whatever the words from his mouth might indicate, about the actions this man might take in his run for power.

It is tough to express surprise at the roads political films—or films about politics—might take these days.  It's all about disenchantment with the process and how power—or even the quest for it—corrupts.  It's an old saw that goes back long before Shakespeare and back to The Greeks.  And very few films—or plays—about the Court of Kings, fact or fictional,  can look clear-eyed at the process, thinking that ideals might remain intact.  Even Mr. Smith Goes to Washington deals with the innate corruption of government and pleads for a clinging to of ideals from our public servants...or even an acknowledgment that they are servants, rather than our Masters.  What was nice about things like "The West Wing" was that, despite the maneuverings, manipulations and moral morasses that went with the job, public service was declared an altruistic aspiration, a noble thing, however down and dirty things got to accomplish anything.  Most, though, like The Candidate or All the Kings Men (any version) have it as a "given" that compromise of purpose, process and principles are par for the course, that it is next to impossible to determine the true measure of a political man.  The only variable is how corrupt that man (it's usually a man, and white) can be.  Post-Watergate and The Lewinsky Affair, even a film like Absolute Power assumes, without doubt, that The President of the United States is capable of the most craven of murders.  The Ides of March doesn't swerve from that cynicism.

The film begins with Morris' Head of Communications, Stephen Myers (the ubiquitous Ryan Gosling—if his Drive performance is a "1" and Crazy, Stupid Love is a "10," in dramatics, this is is an average "5") approaching a microphone, coming slowly into focus, a process that is completed when he is at the podium—the shot will be mirrored later in the show.  He begins to slap-dashedly spew homilies about his religion, and then the speech deteriorates into babble.  Not that it is important, he is merely a stand-in, checking a microphone for his candidate at a technical rehearsal for a televised debate.  It would pass without much notice, except at the real debate, Morris uses the same lines words for words defending his lack of religion when challenged on the point.  It is clear, at that point, that Myers is Morris' surrogate, putting words in his mouth, articulating the governor's message, packaging the man to appeal to the lowest common denominator and the highest number of registered voters.  

The campaign manager is Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a jaded veteran of the political trenches, spinning, manipulating and point-man for acquiring the parties' nomination a few months down the road.  Zara is the Big Picture Packager, Myers is Dr. Details.  On the other side is campaign manager Tom Duffy, who is played by Paul Giamatti—and let me just say what a pleasure it is to see Hoffman and Giamatti, two of the best character-spinners in movies today going up against each other.  It is a match made in Political Purgatory.

Before too much gets underway, Clooney introduces another character in a shot that tracks her movements, flouncing, buffed, polished and toned, towards campaign HQ: this is Molly Stearns, intern (Evan Rachel Wood) and just the way Clooney introduces her puts you on alert that she is important to the drama, far more than her job of bringing coffee would indicate. Wood is a fine actress, and as with Down in the Valley, she's able to convey twin faces of innocence and corruption, the theme of the film at which she is the fulcrum. Already one sees where things are going, but one wonders if Clooney has the directing chops to make it fresh.

He does...kinda.  There are nice little touches of how the film seems to bifurcate into twin halves reflecting each other,* the actors make the dialog snap and there's just enough "play" in the film to keep you guessing about what is "real" or political theater. And there's one scene that's shot very simply—a tension-inducing pull-in to a black van that makes you suspect the worse (which, for some it might be) that is rather nifty.

Ultimately, though, as well as the film is presented and played, it is not telling us anything we don't already know...or fear...that hasn't been said for the last 60 years, when, post-Eisenhower and the star-struck Kennedy years, we ditched the notion that politicians are concerned with the People, rather than their prestige and perks.  The Ides of March has no spine of its own to speak of and brings us nothing new, offering no solution (not even providing dramatic satisfaction)...but merely more of the same, just like every election season.

The Ides of March is a Rental.

* Clooney did a good interview with Charlie Rose about the film—Rose has a cameo for verisimilitude, as do a few other familiar talking heads—in which he said "The first half of the film is for democrats and the second half is for republicans." Exactly right.

Moneyball

"Re-Inventing the Game/Enjoying the Show"
or
"...Like an Island of Misfit Toys"

"It is played everywhere...in parks and playgrounds and prison-yards.  In back alleys and farmers fields. By small boys and old men.  Raw amateurs and millionaire professionals. It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed. The only game in which the defense has the ball. It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of Spring-time and ending with the hard facts of Autumn. Americans have played baseball for more than 200 years, while they conquered a continent, warred with one another and with enemies abroad, struggled over labor and civil rights and the meaning of freedom.  It is an American Odyssey that links sons and daughters to fathers and grandfathers.  And it reflects a host of age-old American tensions: between workers and owners; scandal and reform; the individual and the collective.  It is a haunted game in which every player is measured against the ghosts of all who have gone before. Most of all, it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope and coming home.  At its heart lie mythic contradictions: a pastoral game born in crowded cities;  an exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating and has excluded as many as it has included; a profoundly conservative game that often manages to be years ahead of its time. And...the men who fail seven times out of ten are considered the game's greatest heroes."      Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, "Baseball"

Baseball is my favorite sport.  I've played that and soccer (never well) but baseball has always seemed to fascinate me as an observer as no other sport can.  Yes, it depends on athleticism, but it also has an intricate strategy, a formula that can be tossed out in favor of an improvised gambit—baseball can go for long stretches with nothing happening except anticipation, which will snap into frenetic activity, going from 0 to 60 at speeds that NASCAR fans can only dream about.  It can create long-term loyalties but crush your heart in an instant.  It is a cruel mistress, inspiring love but at the cost of your spirit.

There's never been a movie about baseball that has satisfied me.  Often,  the game is ignored for personality, or uses it has a metaphor, wrapping it in myth (The Natural) or legend (Eight Men Out).  But the game is lost in the melodrama, serving only as backstop or stage.

This is why Bennett Miller's film of Moneyball grabbed me so intensely.  Written brilliantly by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, it manages to tell the story of the game—as it is now, where budget and salaries have as much to do with a winning season as the efforts on the field, the front office strategy (or lack thereof), team dynamics and its construction, the reliance between old ways of doing things and the boiling down of what it takes to win, its joys and failings in one film, created by filmmakers all playing their A-game.

The Oakland Athletics have just lost another chance to make it to The World Series and their general manager, former washout-as-a-player Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) faces a long winter trying to re-build a winning team after losing his three key players while his budget for salaries is capped.  He can't compete with money-pits like the Yankees ("It's like a farm system for the New York Yankees," he gripes to his scouts at one point. "We're organ donors for the rich!").  Convinced that the economics of the game, as it stands, is unfair, he tries unsuccessfully to make headway, until he meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill—never better), former Yale student in economics, who is working his first job as an adviser to the Cleveland Indians.  The nonathletic portly kid has a unique way of working, matching stats against potential, finding a niche of talent that is undervalued by the old-school way of judging talent ("He's got an ugly girlfriend—means he lacks confidence") Beane's first recruit is Brand as Assistant GM, who can look past the "conventional wisdom" and see the best advantages of the worst paid players.  The strategy is to abandon the "home run hitters" and find the guys who can get on base, make plays and score in-field runs.  The top-dollar guys can have their home run derbies, Beane wants to win, and find a way to win that doesn't depend on the size of the purse-strings.

But, the conventional wisdom still runs the A's.  Beane clashes with the vet scouts and with the coach (Philip Seymour Hoffman, who starred in Bennett's Capote), whose traditional ways tend to hamper the efforts rather than enhance them.  The A's start the season at the bottom of the ALWest, and the traditional empty-air of sports opinion turns against Beane. 

The story is in the record-books, but that's just a collection of stats.  Moneyball, as with "Moneyball," depends on what you do with them.  The nicely streamlined script is smart, subtly funny, and performed by all involved, especially by Pitt, whose never seemed so relaxed in front of the camera, can be caught in nary "a pose," and even manages to do some nifty tricks with delivery that seem beyond casual. Hill is a performer I've always seen as comic stunt-casting, but here, playing a character perpetually on the verge of a peptic ulcer, he gives a performance of such restraint, that when he does break out it's a bit of a revelation.  And Hoffman, playing the A's "seen-it-all" cynical coach, barely lifts an eyebrow playing smug defiance.  There are pieces of this film that I already know will be showing up in my "Best Moments of 2011" at the end of the year.

The film does hedge the timeline a bit.  "The system" didn't pay off quite so immediately for Beane, but it did pay off—enough that the "level playing field" he dreamed of, is even leveler while more askew, thanks to other teams adapting his methods. The "mythic contradictions" of baseball never seem to cease.  

Moneyball is one for the record books and (yes) the best film about sports I have ever seen.

Moneyball is worth a Full-Price Ticket—right behind home plate.



Pirate Radio

"Rockin' the Boat"

The legend of "Radio Caroline" (and similar ships of the line) is one of the great stories of broadcast rebellion...and opportunism; during "The British Invasion" of Rock n' Roll the government-run radio stations (the BBC) limited the amount of "pop" to a minimum of hours. Seeing a demand among the populace for more, a small band of entrepreneurial renegades hired a ship, built a powerful transmitter on it and began defiantly broadcasting over the Island with rock n' roll—advertising-supported rock n' roll. Other ships did the same. At one point, another pirate operation, Radio City, commandeered one of Britain's off-shore defense forts from World War II and began rocking out.

"Pirate Radio" (released April in Britain as "The Boat That Rocked") is the latest in a string of 2009 releases that take the premise of a true story and make an easily digested, formula film out of it. The movie and its producers would have you believe the British ministry felt a moral imperative to stamp out pop music, the very thing that was filling the government coffers with tax dollars, and the radio-pirates were acting in a fit of rebellion and righteous indignation at their musical muses being silenced. They were on a Mission to bring the Music to the People.

Nah.

They wanted to make money. It was a bunch of guys who saw an opportunity to make it in a market that wasn't having its needs met. So, they created illegal, unlicensed operations that played 24 hour rock in international waters. Nothing succeeds like excess. And "The Beeb," run by the country's Post Office, didn't like the pirates because they were competitors, siphoning funds that they believed to be rightfully theirs. The word "pirate" isn't used lightly. But money is not sexy enough subject matter when dealing with rock music, despite that you can't have one without the other, positively or negatively.* And movies about turf wars work best where there's actual turf.

I'll beg forgiveness on this for the writer-director is Richard Curtis, who has managed to fill his movies with sharp utterances that we find ourselves wishing we were smart enough to make as comebacks. He says things better than we mortals do, and luckily he chooses to caper in the comic realm, having started as a writer on ""The Black Adder"," and ""Mr. Bean"," and graduated with such rom-com's as "Four Weddings and a Funeral," "Notting Hill," and "Love Actually"—his directing debut.**

Stylistically, the thing is a mess. A fast multi-screened 60's-styled opening that operates like some flipping PowerPoint nightmare explains the back story fast and loose, and from there pin-points a fictional ship, "Radio Rock," operated by Oliver (Bill Nighy, who does a fine balancing act of appearing totally stoned while being exceedingly "British"), and a crew of good-for-nothing-but-jamming disk jockeys, led by a token American "The Count" (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his nemesis, the beloved rake Gavin (Rhys Ifans), other jocks divided between "characters" and burn-outs and a just-arrived newbie named Carl (Tom Sturridge) who serves as the audience's surrogate for reams of exposition. This ship of fools maintains a fixed position in the North Atlantic, frustrating the efforts of one particular minister, Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh, just as twittish as he can be) and his assistant...er...Twatt (Jack Davenport) to bring them down by any means necessary. It sets up a neat heroes and villains scenario that completely messes up the history, but tries to gin up some advocacy towards the wackos broadcasting without a license to shrill.

The main story is the government versus pirates scenario where the government is a tidy, repressed bunch of stick-uppers and the disc jockeys are slobby loose cannons on deck. Carl's story of being sent to the ship, for reasons unknown, by his Mum (Emma Thompson***) after he's been expelled, and his subsequent attempts to de-virginize himself is second in priority (Gemma Arterton and Talulah Riley are the "bits of crumpet"—if I can use the period vernacular—employed in the attempt), and its filled out with petty bickering on-board ship and various personal crises among the disc jockeys. Hi-jinks on the high seas.

That all sounds perfectly dreadful in summation, but Curtis is deft in the details, providing a lot of genuinely earned laughs, and pulling off some nice little moments—one example being a post-heart-crushing of Carl, where he sits dejected in the ship's meeting room, where he's soon joined by fellow crew who try to boost his spirits with chocolate and crisps. When he has none of it, they begin to eat the cookies and drink the drink until he finally pulls his head out and nibbles with them. The unspoken lesson: you have to shoot while the geese are flying, chappie. That it's done without words and with "Bean-ish" comic timing makes it good writing and good film.

But, if Curtis and crew deigned not to complicate the story particulars, it's assured that they wouldn't take the film into uncharted dramatic waters, so they turn it into a "crisis" where "the people" triumph, conflicts are washed away, everybody gets paired up and Rock n' Roll will never die.

And artists get a penny per disc sold, if they're lucky.

The film did poorly in its Anglicized form, where it was shown at a length of 140 minutes, which is excessive for any comedy. For the titularly changed "States" version, twenty minutes were cut, but it doesn't solve a basic problem. Today's audiences may not have the same flavor of love of rock music as director Curtis does. The market is super-saturated with it on all levels, and a people's version of piracy, through peer to peer networks, has exposed what was thought of as devotion as merely acquisitiveness. How much love can you have for an artist's work if you're perfectly happy to rip him off? **** This is the market-place the film is preaching to and trying to reach.

So enough talk of saving rock music to sell the movie. It's a sham. What is there is genuine laugh out-loud moments, a persistent air of tart larkiness several cuts above your standard "Carry On" movie and a killer soundtrack of innocent-sounding 60's standards. It's fun.

"Pirate Radio" is a very cheap bargain-price Matinee.

* Unless you download your favorite artists' music illegally, of course. Then they get screwed. Ain't devotion grand?

** He also co-wrote the two "Bridget Jones' Diary" movies and for "The Vicar of Dibney"

*** Thompson does a lovingly vapid 60's hipster, with cigarette holder, moonish sun-glasses, and Mary Quant checkered coat, reminding one of Vanessa Redgrave in her "spacey" days. And I guess you can't do a 60's movie without putting January Jones in it, so she's there, too. Here's a thought: Most of the women in the film, save the on-board lesbian who takes care of "the boys," are duplicitous. What's up with that?

**** And, not to belabor the point (BUT!) radio stations have a blanket agreement with music publishers (BMI and ASCAP, say) to pay the artists for the music played. The Pirate stations were under no obligation to do so, and probably didn't. So much for promoting rock.

The Savages

"The Savages" (Tamara Jenkins, 2007) Maybe it's a pack-order kind of thing.

I've had enough conversations with children of aging parents complaining about their siblings who want nothing to do with the responsibility (and I usually end up talking to the sibling who enables them).

I say "pack-order" since, once out of the shadow of their parents' influence , the children suddenly see themselves as "top dog" in value, rather than having to be supplicant in the demands of their parents. Then, as time goes by, and the roles of need become reversed—the child must fend for the parent while that parent tries to assert the illusion of authority over the children (something reinforced in the kids by a lifetime of obedience, mixed with bitter defiance).

To disrupt this natural balance leads to the inevitable melt-down of the nuclear family. And both sides resist the change and hold on to their acquired ground, when it's as natural a part of the life-cycle as Death (which we also resist). It's as inevitable as a change in seasons, but it always seems to catch us by surprise.

The parent must learn (if they have a mind to) to accept their diminished capacity. The child must learn responsibility over another human being beyond their own needs. And both resist it, kicking and screaming, sometimes literally.*

This is rich dramatic ground to till, and "The Savages" manages to break it down to its basic components. The two siblings (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney—who would appear to have nothing in common other than their enormous talents) must deal with their diminished father (Philip Bosco, nicely delineating the edges of gruffness and helplessness), whose longtime companion in an assisted living facility has just died of a sudden heart attack, shattering the illusion of his independence. It's up to the kids, both academics and both lousy at relationships, to suddenly cope with unfamiliar territory: 1) real life and 2) the responsibility of being a partner. Of course, they fight like cats and dogs. Their rivalries, ostensibly for their parent's affection but also over the acquisition of writer's grants, is always churning just below the surface and bubbles up in passive-aggressive little blorps and clumps and repressed urges to kill (Linney and Hoffman excel at unspoken emotion—they wear it in their jaw-lines) and bitter sub-text.

Only a universal event can shock perspective into these two people looking inward for answers, and it is only the confrontation of common mortality that can civilize these savages.

The movie is funny and depressing as Hell.

But, that's Life.

* As I've said, I talk to people. In my own family, I was blessed with adults for a brother and sister, who understood our roles, and we shared responsibilities in our mother's situation, and grew as a family because of it. My brother and sister are the best friends I have, along with my sainted wife and are genuinely brave and wise. Just to put it on record, kids...

Doubt

"Waiting for Sister Aloysius"

I'm a recovering Catholic who finally walked out the stained-glass double doors after the pedophile priest racket was revealed. My faith had been shaken before, back when I was a kid and couldn't reconcile all those souls condemned to Purgatory for eating meat on Fridays, when we, the living, were freed of forced fish-stick consumption after Vatican II. But the pedophile priests was like sprinkling Holy Water on a vampire for me. That the Church hierarchy would shuffle child molesters within the system to keep the offenses quiet exposed the rottenness of the Church hierarchy right up to the Pontiff. That those priests would take the Authority of the Church, and people's Faith and the trust their flock had instilled in them, and betray it for their predatory ends...well, Jesus wept. Probably tears of blood.

So, here comes "Doubt," the film version of John Patrick Shanley's Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning play (Shanley wrote "Five Corners," and "Moonstruck" and directed the surreal and neglected "Joe Versus the Volcano"*) In it, knuckle-rapping Catholic School principal Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep) confronts Vatican II subscriber Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) over her suspicions about his dealings with his students. It seems Sister James (Amy Adams, maybe a bit too sweet) has suspicions about Flynn after one of her students (Joseph Foster) returns from a rectory visit "acting strangely." Sister Aloysius already thinks Flynn's a bit lax in his philosophies, and she begins actively campaigning for his ouster—a dangerous position for her to take as all the nuns are subordinates to the priests. Still, she clings to whatever control she can and exploits the fear she inspires in her students to her ends, which justifies her mean-spiritedness.

It's one of those plays that makes you want to act. The parts are juicey and can be played any number of ways, and the cast is always on top of their roles: Streep, is all pinched-nerve as Aloysius, and obviously relishes the power of the role (probably as much as Aloysius does); Hoffman is a cypher, betraying as little emotion as he can (when it's not to his advantage) until he's braying at the top of his lungs (when he and Streep finally take the gloves off, it's almost too much, the tension building to it has been so intense). They're great, but Viola Davis quietly, resignedly breaks your heart as the mother who wants the best for her son, whatever it takes.

If I have a complaint with the movie it's that there's a bit too much weather happening in the background that comments directly to the matters on-screen. It's gilding the lily meteorologically to have implied threats accompanied by thunder, heated discussions thrummed by the rattling of a downpour and the conflicts of conscience buttressed by a leaf-filled wind-gust. One expects the choir from "The Color Purple" to come marching down the street singing "Looks Like God's Trying to Tell You Something." Shanley has had enough experience directing; he should know when they talk about "opening up" a play they're not talking about the Heavens. His background choices are too "on the nose"—like having a radio playing just the right song to reinforce the obvious. God is supposed to work in mysterious ways.

After it's debut, Shanley changed the name of the play to "Doubt: a Parable," which is essentially true as it's a story about humans that teaches a religious principal. And the implications, shifts, and nuances are so rich and subject to interpretation that the one-act play invariably becomes two acts with the debate it inspires in the audience.** What is Faith? What is Devotion? Can a rigorous belief sustain itself when the very text of it changes and the institution that inspires it betrays it? And what does that say of the Institution that compromises its own teachings?

Doubt does not imply complacency. But "Doubt" does.

"Doubt" is a full-price ticket.

* He also wrote the screenplays for "Alive" and "Congo," but the less said about them the better.

** It happened as soon as the credits started in the theater where I saw it--"Did I miss something?" said the woman in front of me to her husband. I casually told her what she hadn't considered, and she and her husband looked at me in shock. "Oh my God!" she said, and that started a lively discussion between my row and their row about who was right and the implications. I'm starting to fall in love with this theater, where the audiences are so engaged.

Synecdoche New York

"And the Truth Is..."

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

William Shakespeare "As You Like It" 2/7

Director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) wakes up every morning with a fresh pain to fuss about in the morning and a malady that he saves for the afternoon. He's a mess. So's his life, and the only time he feels comfortable is telling actors how to play their parts. But he frets about everything else. "I have 650 lighting changes! Why does it have to be so complicated?" "Because you make it complicated," says his wife Adele Lack (Catherine Keener), whose own art is to make paintings so small you need magnifying specs to look at them in the gallery. She's reductive. He likes to blow things out of proportion, which sometimes manifests itself, physically, as sycosis. "It's spelled differently," he tells his daughter Olive. "P-s-y 'psychosis' is when you're crazy, like Mommy is sometimes."

Welcome back to the World of Charlie Kaufman (and yes, after all the success you can still call him "Charlie"). Kaufman's screenplays are expanded "Twilight Zone" episodes where reality is warped and woofed through the gray matter of Kaufman's mind and some basic axiom of the human condition comes shining through like sunlight through cheese-cloth. "Synecdoche New York" is the same sort of Möbius-loop swirl like Kaufman's scripts for "Being John Malkovich," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," and "Adaptation.."* And as with those scripts, you not only get the story as it stands, but also a look into the soul of Kaufman, as well. "Malkovich" was the story of an street-artist who dreamed of being more than a puppeteer and ended up becoming a director of another man's life--a grander-scale puppet-master. "Eternal Sunshine" explored relationships and the hopeless act of putting one behind you. "Adaptation." was a look at obsession, disguised as Kaufman's own frustrations at trying to write a screenplay for an un-adaptable book. "Synecdoche New York" is another step altogether: Kaufman makes his directorial debut in this film about a director who can direct anything but his own life.

"And the Truth Is..."

"...well, like most directors, I suppose, what I really want to do is act."

Mel Gibson's Oscar speech, 1996

As life sometimes happens, when one part of your life is going great, another slides. Adele has taken Olive to Berlin for a showing of her work, and the weeks stretch into months, and Cadon can't hold his fragile state enough to have an affair with Hazel (Samantha Morton) the ticket-agent at his theater. The he gets a MacArthur grant. How's he going to spend his "genius" money? He rents a warehouse--like a monolithic Quonset hut in the middle of Schenectady, and begins a series of work-in-progress workshops, where the play will begin to take shape. But pretty soon, the play cannot be contained, and Cotard begins to wander through an increasing maze of scenarios intertwined with a phalanx of actors seeking direction and a cityscape forming inside the warehouse. He begins to lose track of his life and the play's purpose until he hires Sammy (the terrific Tom Noonan) to play himself. Sammy claims to have followed Cotard for years and says he knows the director better than he knows himself. At the time, that didn't seem like quite a stretch. For awhile the two are inseparable.

And then things start to get a little bit weird.

syn•ec•do•che (sĭ-něk'də-kē) Pronunciation Key n. A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword).

To explain any more of the plot is to do two things: 1) Give away what's going on, and 2) explain what's going on; I can do the first, but not the second, which 1) is anathema to film criticism and 2) required of film criticism. The stew of "Synechdoche New York" is so rich that one can only pick a flavor or two, a passing impression, the overall emphasis, but I can't tell you what it tastes like, other than to say "I enjoyed it immensely, and I'd order this item on the menu again." I can understand why it would completely overwhelm a casual tasting or appear too rich to stomach, and I can certainly see the polarizing effect it has on those whose tastes don't run to such things.

But taste is an individual thing, and the structure of "Synecdoche New York," which, in itself, is its own false-front, is a deliberate shout-out that "Nothing is real," so if you're looking for explanations of some basic matters, it's just not going to happen, because the connective tissue that would provide the answers not only isn't there, it's considered irrelevant to the task at hand, and manipulated to actually confront, confuse, and consternate. And make a joke of it.

Which I find hilarious.

For instance, I love that Kaufman cast two actresses—Samantha Morton and Emily Watson—who I find, frankly, a bit indistinguishable, and cast them as an important woman in Cadon's life and the woman who's playing her in the play. That the two actually do become indistinguishable is a wonderful joke that I, alone, might get, but I still enjoy it. That the background score for a poignant telephone conversation seems to travel over the telephone line, as well (with the same tinny sound), is a great joke, but might frustrate someone else looking for logic or reason. That Adele coughs in a voice-over might make someone throw up their hands and question why someone would consider doing that only makes me giggle. That Hazel, when taking a tour with a real estate agent, makes a comment that she's really nervous about buying a house, but really wants to take the plunge, so much so that she'll ignore that the house is on fire, and, oh by the way, the agent's son is living in the basement, only reminds me of the compromises I've made and the flaws I've overlooked in similar decision-making processes. It also says something about the character...yes (*sigh*) in a lunatic way...but I found it funny.


"And the Truth Is..."

"I thought I was President of the United States. Then when my daughter was born, I realized I was just the Secret Service."

Seattle actor Ken Boynton, explaining Fatherhood

What's interesting to me is that I have my own ceiling of "guff" in movies: I'll "take" Kaufman because the spirit in which he creates is playful, the ideas he expresses I find, if not profound, worthy of consideration (such as the over-uttered point of "SNY") and the work, and the path taken to get there, entertain me; I appreciate the journey, even if the destination disappoints.

Yet, as a recent post on David Lynch's "Inland Empire" made abundantly unclear (my fault: I'm sorry, I was being illustrative of my frustration with the piece and its artist) there's only so much obfuscation I can take. There is a difference between an artist being deliberately "difficult" to understand, and an artist with a point to make. If you want to confound, go into the puzzle-making business. If you want to communicate—and that means taking the chance that your message may be received and judged—make sure that you're communicating. "Inland Empire" had no "Rosetta Stone," not even the orientation of humor, to guide the viewer, so whatever "TRUTH" Lynch was aiming for got lost in the scene-shuffle.** One can argue about the cruel economics of the film business, but every so often an indulgent artist has to give his Muse a bracing cuppa joe, black, (and amusingly, Lynch, of all artists, should know this!) and show it where the audience is sitting.***

Which brings up the philosophical question: If a theater-troupe makes a play in an empty theater, does it make a sound

And the answer is: "Who cares?"

"And the Truth Is..."

I know now that there is no one thing that is true - it is all true.

Ernest Hemingway, "For Whom the Bell Tolls"

"Synecdoche New York" is a full-price ticket.

* Although nobody ever brings up his writing for "Ned and Stacey" and "The Dana Carvey Show"

** I don't make a habit of beating up on Lynch. I love 80% of his out-put, especially "The Elephant Man," "Blue Velvet," "Mulholland Falls," and "The Straight Story." "Wild At Heart" and "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me," pffft!

*** At the Guild 45th late show, a late-comer sat across the aisle from me, and throughout the movie we separately giggled and hooted throughout the film, laughing at the same parts. Only when the credits came up did we glance at each other and, in a perfectly synched move, raised our drink-cups in salute to the screen.