Review of Barbie (2023)

 The Barbie Outfit

Review of Barbie

“Fuck the patriarchy” 

• Taylor Swift, extended version of ‘All Too Well’ 

““She’s everything. He’s just Ken”

• Tag line for Barbie Movie

“Peace in patriarchy is war against women”

• Maria Miles

  
  
  
  

Barbie has been a strange tabula rasa since its creation in 1959. It was based on a German doll sold as a gag-gift to mostly men in European tobacco shops. One can only imagine the role play ideas for the original crowd. The American redesign was crafted by an aerospace engineer who worked on American military missiles. He also had been the sixth husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor and he died by suicide… this isn’t covered in the film. The force behind Barbie’s creation was Ruth Handler, who named the doll, and her companion Ken, after her children. The sibling roots of their namesakes were also not covered in the film. Ruth’s forced resignation from the parent toy company, Mattel, was mentioned, but financial fraud is not something you want to dwell on… which brings us to the strange questions surrounding the storyline of a Barbie movie. What to talk about?

Ms. Gerwig & Mr. Baumbach are art house sensations. How do the creator of Lady Bird, a film showcasing the struggles of girls in 21st century America and the co-creators of Frances Ha, a movie showcasing a struggling woman artist, keep their credibility? They will be making what is essentially a product placement film for Mattel, “the leading toy company & owner of one of the strongest portfolios of children’s and family entertainment franchises in the world”. The boilerplate from Mattel’s website reads like fodder for corporate shills, rather than respected artists. And then there is the doll itself… yes Barbie has “evolved,”  eschewing the pre-civil rights, Mad Men world of her birth by embracing careers et al. But does any woman, aside from the mentally ill , want to be Barbie? Isn’t the name itself still a pejorative term for any female over the age of 14? How on earth can Ms. Gerwig create a film that won’t end in career suicide or corporate disaster? Talk about building tension! 

Well they did it… sort of. The film is a smash hit. Warner Brothers is making bank. Mattel’s girl is on everyone’s lips and audiences are stampeding, many in pink, to the theaters. There are some humorless cranks who are offended, but this only adds to cache. Ms. Gerwig and Mr. Baumbach worked very hard… and you feel it. That’s the problem. The sweat of pleasing the many interested parties produces an extremely clever film… but not a good one. 

Things begin very well. Barbie parodies the paradigm cinema moment of man’s achievement from Kubrick’s 2001. Instead of the bone morphing into a space station, Barbie the astronaut floats above the world,. As we enter Barbieland, the portrait of this pink plastic paradise is… pitch perfect. Margot Robbie is a superb incarnation of the “stereotypical ” Barbie, with her trademark blonde locks. Sharing the synthetic aryan look is Ryan Gosling as the paradigm Ken. Both these characters are individuals, but they exist in a world of types. In other words Barbieland is ruled by the Barbies, plural, with a cast of supporting Kens (plural). Gosling's Ken rival is an Asian “Ken”. They both exist to attract the attention of the Margo Robie . The weird and wonderful land feels as if the Wizard of Oz’s Emerald City was dropped on the beaches of Malibu. 

There is a strange conceit that gives this world the simulacrum of an actual child’s play area. All liquids are hard or invisible. Imagine a little girl giving Barbie a “pretend” drink and you witness what it is like for stereotype Barbie to sip coffee in the morning. Ken tries  to “surf” the ocean and is blocked by hard plastic water . The playfulness and slick recreations are marvelous. Sadly the tone of the film shifts and we enter a very convoluted drama that relies on Barbie having an existential crisis, interacting  with the “real world”and confronting, for the first time, the dreaded PATRIARCHY. 

Ken, played delightfully by Ryan Gosling,  is the foil in the story, but this never quite works because he is, by definition, a subservient dolt. One can feel the screenplay writers bending over backwards to give this professional idiot some standing. Are we really to believe that upon entering the real world Ken goes to a library to read about patriarchy? The gags regarding male arrogance and macho foolishness are hysterically funny, but in the end there is a narrative pull for Barbie to say that things will change in Barbieland in terms of Ken. She feels she has taken him for granted. Ken can stand tall. Ummmm…. No. I’m sure of few things in life but one might be: no one will ever buy a Ken doll without him being subservient to Barbie… The movie forces a very adult notion that fails to mesh with child’s play. It’s never a good thing when kids are forced to act as if they are adults. It doesn't work dramatically either. 

This film is strongest when it simply plays, rather than preaches. The tone instead resembles that of the  social satire of Citizen Ruth, a film poking fun at both sides of the abortion debate. It would seem more appropriate, given that subject matter is a doll designed for pre teen girls, if the film had the spirit of a lighthearted musical comedy, like Mamma Mia, or issue-less social satire, like the original Batman TV Series. In both cases fun is paramount while concerns about messaging take a back seat. Obviously this is a tall order given Barbie’s odd place in the social order . As I write this a news story broke about a sports commentator who was fired for using the term “Barbie” to describe another reporter. How could the writer/director avoid making our heroine more than a… Barbie doll. Strangely this also forces the issue of Ken’s status a professional flunky. In the world of Barbie… who cares? but the real world has real cultural baggage. And how to manage the baggage-handler?

Whereas Ken is a miscast delightful character, Will Ferrell, the CEO of Mattel in the “real world,” and his male Mattel minions, are simply a drag. Their role as clownish, corporate villains is muddled. Their cartoonishness belongs in Barbieland, rather than the “real world”. Kudos for the real Mattel executives for green-lighting the project. Certainly the filmmakers pushed the limit in directing jokes at the corporation. They are openly marked as chauvinistic with Barbie’s outfits being dictated by taking advantage of social changes, rather than championing women.  The real life suits are now laughing all the way to the bank, but had Barbie laid an egg, they might have lost their jobs. There’s some real drama. 

As for Gerwig and Baumbach, their creation might not be an artistic triumph, but has been genuine gold for the bottom line.  The blatant errors are there and go beyond the odd storyline and the portrayal of the corporation. Does this film need to be 2 hours long? That’s the same length as the the bio pic of Alan Turing, and he invented computers.  And what are we to make of Michael Cera as Allan? Mattel never really knew what to do with Ken’s brief sidekick and neither does Gerwig. Then there was an odd technical matter. This is a first rate spectacle with the fantasyland brimming with state-of-the-art props and special effects. There is a divine smoothness to the fakery - the houses, the ocean, the campfires. These are moving dioramas that are really captivating. I felt like a child pushing my nose against the glass in the Museum of Natural History.  I also wanted to jump in during the choreography of Ken’s ridiculous battle where weapons never hurt… and despite all this I felt the character’s faces to be under-lit  in many of the scenes. It is as if the basics were ignored in order to spend artistic energy on complicated social satire.

Perhaps there would have been more gold for everyone if the film stuck to Barbieland and eschewed reality and its never-ending source of conflict. This fantasy world already had its strange corner of intrigue:  the character, “Weird Barbie”, played by the brilliant comedic actress Kate McKinnon. She represented dolls that were mistreated by their guardians. Interestingly when Barbie is faced with thoughts of death, the other Barbies point her to “Weird Barbie”. It seems not all little girls have wholesome role-play fantasies with dolls. In some cases Barbie becomes a whipping post for anger and aggression.  It is interesting to note that McKinnon is often splayed on the floor, as if being nearly torn apart is “natural”. Once again there is no need for this film to plumb the depths of all social ills, but it is interesting that the filmmakers felt the need to go outside. Perhaps they were channeling the Wizard of Oz’s use of a separate plane of fantasy. The failure of Barbie is that the split between Barbieland and “the real world” is cloudy and confusing. There is no neat black and white vs. color delineation that showcases the clear line between the drudgery of real world cruelty and the joy of escapist fantasy. Would Barbie, while experiencing Los Angeles, ever want to click her heels three times and return to Barbieland? It’s a complicated question and that’s a problem. Why not simplify everything? There is enough drama “in house” to shape a story about Barbie facing her demons. The arc of the story, however, needs to be rooted in the anodyne innocence of playfulness, rather than the meanness of adults. 

I might be the wrong demographic to comment on this movie but I did find the most profound aspect of the film lay in the audience’s laughter. In my years of going to movie theaters I have never heard so many older women guffawing. This film touches something, despite what I perceive as a strangely muddled script. I never played with Barbie dolls and maybe to get the overall joke, you need to really live that experience. I felt this modern take on the meaning of Barbie fell short… too much stereotypical Barbie, not enough Weird Barbie… too much real world, not enough Barbieland…. Too much talk, not enough dancing…. Too much figuring out, not enough enjoying the moment.… but maybe I’m just another Ken, without the looks; or worse yet… an exploitative male Mattel executive. But in the end Gerwig’s work has grossed over a billion dollars. For that, everyone can thank… Barbie. 

Review of Tar (2022)

Requiem for a Maestro 

“In music one doesn’t make the end of the composition the point of the composition. If that were so, the best conductors would be those who played fastest. ”

 Alan Watts, commenting on purposelessness 

“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” Leonard Bernstein 

“Here’s to the battle, whatever it’s for.” Winners, song by Joe Raposo

 In the masterful documentary about the pianist Glen Gould, 32 Short Films About Glen Gould, the filmmakers never once showed him playing the piano. This disagreeable misanthrope shines despite never being seen tickling the ivories. This is how the writer/director Todd Field might have conceived of portraying the classical music virtuoso in his feature, Tar. Her story is the the off-key song of life, not the beautiful sounds of the orchestra. Sadly the breath her virtuosity matched her abhorrence as a character. The film needed less music, more art. 

Would a person, who violently attacks a rival conductor on stage in front of an audience, react quietly to being banished from seeing their beloved child by an angry spouse? Imagine if Dickens decided to have Ebenezer Scrooge focus on improving his business practices rather than saving Tiny Tim. It is a tribute to the artistry of Todd Field, Cate Blanchett and an ensemble of pros that, despite the flaws, there is no hiding superb craftsmanship. This feature falls in the “uncanny valley” of greatness, having all the appearances of being sublime, but lacking the essential element of, attraction. The critics have been merciless, one going so far as to use the word “Tar-ible” in the title of her review. There have been some Oscar nominations but the project has lost Universal Pictures $50 million to date. Financial failure and critical scorn is not surprising given the film’s premise. 

In an era where audience’s focus has been shaped by Tik Tok’s 3 minute limit, Mr. Field created a nearly 3 hour feature about: a classical music maestro; or as some would say maestra. Whatever quips one has with the final version, it is important to give a nod to the audacity of completing this project. No doubt there were a chorus of pre-production executives texting one another fire breathing emojis or simply…“WTF?” Given the films reception these have morphed into laughing smiley faces celebrating the downfall of the colleagues who gave the green light. But if you think feature film making is Machiavellian, wait until the curtain unveils the world of classical music. Tar isn’t so much a meditation on art as a portrait of a gangster. One associates such people with money and crime but the real mobsters show their colors when everything centers on prestige, not mammon. 

Cate Blanchett is the protagonist, Linda Tar, a girl from a cultural nether region of a blue collar, Long Island suburb. Her first move is to drop her first name for the more exotic “Lydia”. The film is a view of her journey to the apex of the, male dominated, classical music world…. Field tracks our heroine as she stalks the cultural landscape. At the New Yorker Festival Tar’s assistant polishes her charge and mouths the words as the the real-life Adam Gopnik reads the bio from of Lydia’s latest book. The audience coos at the endless list of formidable accomplishments. Lydia has the sang-froid of a K-pop boy-band making a public appearance. She is flawlessly hitting her marks and giving NYers exactly what is expected. She also radiates contempt for her assistant whose life is eternally bonded to the master, think of Tom Courtenay in The Dresser. 

After an interminable title sequence, the first image is our anti-hero getting ready to take the stage. Field rejects instantaneous clear meaning. Most mainstream features avoid pauses. Field gives Lydia life though the inaction of alone-time. Field’s character delineation relies on gesture and mood, more than the spoken word. Add to this unconventional presentation the use of obscure cutaways which build a sense of wonder. Who is changing Lydia’s Wikipedia profile? Who is spying and mocking Lydia via Instant Messenger? All this blurriness tends to collide with the ham-handed use of interviews and dinner conversation to move the exposition forward. The bloated backstory is too heavy a lift for the writer/director. 

The words are the scaffolding that unpacks the complicated intrigue. Lydia is bringing a noted piece of Gustav Mahler’s work to life in a specially produced recording based on a live performance at Berlin’s most prestigious concert hall. The choice of Mahler underscores her connection the legendary New York classical wunderkind Leonard Bernstein, who was her original mentor/inspiration. The concert coincides with a book release, which is the basis of the New Yorker interview. Blanchett’s character devolves, as her life decomposes. The performative, self-assured, superstar morphs into the strident, defensive, crank. The expository dialogue slows as we see our heroine do battle with her family, colleagues, landlords, lovers, neighbors…. The film is precise, but a grind. Audience members might want to yell the old Led Zepplin line to the maestro and her writer/director: “does anyone remember laughter?” 

Both Blanchett and Field strangely fall into the same deadening trap as Lydia. The protagonist, the filmmaker and the actress are brimming with talent. There is a parallel between Tar’s self-destruction and the film’s excruciating documentation of the downfall. They were both avoidable. Lydia stage-manages her fall by, needlessly, scorning those with the ability to destroy her career. Her backstabbing cleverness falls prey to seemingly wanton cruelty fueled by blinding narcissism. It didn’t have to happen, even for the meanest of the mean girls. A touch of restraint combined with a kind word every now and then and her demise would have been averted. The monster would pass as a lovable hero, except only to the most intimate and the post mortem biographer. The director and Blanchett are equally blind to a conceit that seems so elemental as to be the first lesson for those interested in drama: the audience must care. Tar is a humorless, self obsessed, mean-spirited bore. It’s not impossible to win the audience over to cheer-on the monster…. But you have to try. This film is an unvarnished procedural, rather than an empathetic portrait of a troubled individual. 

The Lydia of the first fifth of the film has a profession-obsessed weariness that repulses even the most ardent admirers of an anti-hero. The New Yorker interview sequence and the following meetings and diners with classical music insiders buttress her credentials as a genuine expert. Everything is… pitch perfect. Everything except the director’s ability to create empathy for this narcissist superstar. The memorable performance is accurate, but undesirable. Why would students passionately climb into bed with her; or executives trip over themselves to spend any time with her? Her exquisite taste and command of music never matches her supposed elan. She is the mirror image of her universally beloved mentor, Leonard Bernstein. The tragedy of Tar is that, despite the phenomenal craftsman of these immensely talented artists, the denouement leads to the strange emptiness at the heart of those poor soul’s afflicted by personality disorders. The point is for the audience to care for this person who doesn’t care. Instead we have a superb clinical portrait of a sociopath. 

Strangely there is one relationship that proves Lydia isn't completely heartless. Her spouse comments on the fact that the only non-transactional bond she has formed is with their daughter. The unbridled love is illustrated by tender moments and one of the most chilling scenes in the film. Her child is being bullied at school and Lydia channels Tony Soprano in the moment when another mobster propositions his daughter. Lydia doesn’t shatter teeth, but her warning to the classmate is equally chilling; in fact more so, as the maestro simply uses words without even raising her voice. The bully is immediately vanquished and even the most ardent detractor of our anti-hero is happy that the daughter, Petra, will be free of abuse. The actress, Mila Bogojevic, gives a remarkable performance that radiates pathos and warmth. If the audience had felt the same about Tar this would have been a film for the ages. 

The way to artfully hide Lydia’s deficits would be the mask of abstraction. Sadly Field clings to the straightforward chronological narrative. This only serves to place the story in the low earth orbit of Lydia’s zero-sum-game. Fields gives the narrative a rise and fall arc of gleaning lessons from a parable. Weirdly this is the un-nuanced world-view of deluded sociopaths living under the perpetual yoke of striving. Lydia will either win or lose….PERIOD! This might work for comic books but not character studies of complicated people. A careful portrait of a life should reject absolutism in favor of rendering the the infinite small moments that are more ambiguous. 

Tar is at its best with the small moments: the tailoring of the suit, the realization of being in a brothel, the mysterious noises, the metronome ticking onward…. There is too much on point proselytizing. The nadir is when she humiliates a student who finds fault with the heroes of the established canon. It seems a contrived set-piece to give commentary on the raging culture wars. Tar, unsurprisingly, champions the established order. The back and forth has a tiresome quality of assigned characters towing the party line. We needed more of Tar’s time in Queens as a child or her genuine interactions with her mentors…. Or even, perhaps, her time with the aboriginals in a South American jungle. These interactions would show vulnerability, rather than gloating. The tragedy isn’t her professional suicide, but her never-ending isolation. The denouement should have been the breakup with her daughter in Berlin, rather than exile as a leader of a cosplay video-game orchestra in a remote Asian backwater. The spectacle of her public downfall is breathtaking but rings hollow compared to the missing crescendo of the emotional cataclysm. The superstar pitcher banished to the grapefruit league is not as compelling as the loving mother who has forever lost her child; or the striver who realizes they have spent a lifetime on a fool’s errand….. think the final scene in Mephisto when the actor realizes he’s playing Faustus NOT Mephistopheles.

 Field and Blanchett seem to be captivated by the pyrotechnics of Lydia on stage. The real drama, however, is in the wings. What makes this film so frustrating is the glimmers of what might have been. There are moments of our anti-hero slides into the gooey, unmotivated…. tenderness. Lydia’s acrobatics, rather than the torment of her diseased soul, are center stage in Tar. The misstep bring to mind The Shakespearian actor Ian McKellen commenting on playing Macbeth. The epiphany came when a fellow actor gave him a small note regarding a famous soliloquy. When playing, “tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” the emphasis should be on the word “and”, not “tomorrow.” This seemingly incidental direction helped the great thespian unpack the force of the tale “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” No doubt it would have been a memorable performance without the insight, but it might only have been “sound and fury.” This is Tar’s fate, to be merely impressive, rather than sublime.

Review of Happiness is a Journey (2022)

 The Serfs in Our Midst

Review of Happiness is a Journey

"The best artist has that thought alone which is contained within the marble shell; only the sculptor's hand can break the spell to free the figures. -Michelangelo, Letter To His Father In Florence

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function.” -C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

“We will have to leave this planet, and we're going to leave it, and it's going to make this planet better” -Jeff Bezos

Link to 12 Minute Film, Happiness is a Journey

Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan’s Happiness is a Journey is a quiet 12 minute film with no real dialogue and made for a budget of less than $10,000. It features a poor, ungainly, anti-celebrity, Edie “Bear” Lopez, delivering newspapers in the middle of the night. That’s it. It sounds ponderous and dreary. In the hands of lesser artists it might have been, but Lucas and Bresnan manage to give Mr. Lopez’s life the dignity and beauty it deserves. They have also made one of the most scathing indictments of the current economic system since Walker Percy and James Agee teamed up for, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, the poetic documentation of depression-era dust-bowl poverty. This seemingly simple visit to a newspaper distribution plant in Texas packs the same punch as the much-ballyhooed Nomadland, the star studded feature film showcasing the harsh conditions for American’s army of transient workers. This film is a salvo against the constant drum-beat that we live in the best of times.

Lucas and Bresnan cloak their subversive narrative in classical form. This work is a masterclass in the “direct cinema” style. Starting in the late 1950s Filmmakers Richard Leacock and Robert Drew pioneered a handheld documentary approach that eschewed verbal commentary and fixed tripod set ups. Happiness is a Journey combines this form with the use of a split screen, something popular in the late 60s early 70s. Essentially the audience is given two “channels” to view the action, or lack thereof. It reenforces the feeling of witnessing a process unfolding, rather than an individual’s personal struggle. This is a film about a way of life, rather than a single story. In fact the first half of the film takes place with an ensemble of warehouse workers. This is an important introduction as we see Lopez’s journey is shared by an array of folks of varying ages, sexes races, disabilities…. They are united in the need to make twenty two cents per newspaper delivered, without any benefits.  

The filmmakers wisely chose Christmas Eve as the night to showcase the working life at the bottom of the economic rung. The atmosphere is friendly but there is no air of celebration, save some holiday cards doting the work areas. The filmmaker’s titles, occasionally appearing on top of the images,  explain that these independent contracts work 365 days a year. Holidays are an anathema to those in charge. The title of the film comes from a workspace gussied up with tchotchkes breaking the institutionalization. Amongst a collection of Monster energy drinks, gold bond powder and a black painted figurine of Bart Simpson, is a sign which reads: Happiness is a journey… not a destination.  This bromide captures the spirit of the friendly workplace where everyone, regardless of age or gender, loads and sorts.The congeniality is born of being in the same boat. Three generations of an African American family work next to an elderly white woman just down from a young man who looks like a roady for a Southern rock band. The protagonist, Mr. Lopez, wears a hillbilly beard complete with a Craftsman tool baseball hat and a Dallas Cowboys change-purse covering his neck. He wears his wealth on his hands with each finger covered with extremely large silver rings, many are adorned with skulls. He looks a decade older than his actual age of 60. His companion, a chihuahua, seems even more ancient. Both man and dog trudge through the night with determination. The grind occasionally showing through with Mr. Lopez stumbling a little on a small curb and the dog shaking in the early morning cold. Some of the co-workers are not as resilient, with one middle-aged man collapsed in a slumber on a pile of freshly sorted papers.  

The second half of the film shows Mr. Lopez making the rounds to florescent-green lit blue collar neighborhoods, drab institutions and gas stations. He stops for gas, begging the question about how many papers he must sell to fill up his pick up. The truck is an extension of Mr. Lopez’s cluttered appearance. The inside of the cab is as crowded as all the silver jewelry on his hands. Judging by the amount of stuff in the front seat it is clear there are issues with hoarding. This notion is reenforced at the end of the film where he finally arrives at his modest residence. The front area, too small to be called a lawn, is packed to the gills with things. When he opens the door a cat crawls to an assigned space amongst the debris between the gate and the trailer.  It is roughly 6AM Christmas morning and Mr. Lopez is finished until he has to get up again and arrive in the early evening at the newspaper distribution center. The final card for the film states that he has been religiously following this routine, going to work EVERY SINGLE DAY, for 21 straight years without a break. 

Those interested in defending the economic status quo would point to Lopez’ abundant material possessions as proof of his well-being. He has a decent place to live and access to calories. His vocation is his choice. This is HIS journey. This would probably be a minority opinion as most would consider decades of piecework with no benefits to be Dickensian.  Putting Mr. Lopez’s journey aside the filmmakers spent roughly half the movie showing the group, not the individual. Some might rationalize Mr. Lopez’s choices but what about the array of others? The most economically successful country in the world has at risk families, in addition to the disabled and elderly, spending Christmas working for pennies. There have always been economically disenfranchised forced to the margins to make ends meet. The genius of this film is the ordinariness that exposes the ever expanding numbers of vulnerable people. Whereas in the past this work might have been delegated to a specific group on the bottom rung, the warehouse crowd is remarkably familiar. These are people you know. And now, because of Lucas and Bresnan, you know their struggles.  Watching the quiet process of newspaper delivery, peppered by the occasional cue-card, produces an unsettling array of questions. What happens when Lopez’s pickup breaks down? Who takes care of the young child playing amongst the worker when his attentive father falls ill? What becomes of the lady in the mechanized wheel-chair when people stop buying newspapers? The answers become important as the distance between the audience and Mr. Lopez narrows. The filmmakers have captured the zeitgeist of this precarious moment by highlighting an unsung laborer with his ancient toy-dog, garish rings and friendly demeanor punching the clock 24/7. He becomes a fellow-traveller in early 21st century America, rather than a remote character in a documentary. Happiness is a Journey shows something is very wrong with the overall picture. The scenery grows bleak as we approach our destination. We might not end up on the metaphorical perpetual-loading dock, but their struggle is ours. The filmmakers aren’t making bold claims. Just bearing witness. This is a film about seeing the unseen. You won’t look at the ubiquitous newspaper vending machines the same way. That’s a good thing. 

Review of Licorice Pizza (2021)

 Hearing the Sirens

Review of Licorice Pizza

“And you climb up the mountains and you fall down the holes” 

• Song All The Way From Memphis, Mott The Hoople

“Everyone has the right to make an ass out of themselves. You just can't let the world judge you too much” 

• Maude, from Harold & Maude

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter”

• Mark Twain

Licorice Pizza, Paul Taylor Anderson’s latest feature, arrived in the midst of a seemingly never-ending pandemic. The talented director chooses optimism over despair and delivers a heart-felt paean to young lovers. This is a very personal film. It is set in the early 1970s when the writer/director came of age. Every artist struggles with presenting the passion of intimacy without losing an audience to the opaqueness of a private language. This is especially challenging for mature filmmakers who are past fretting about disapproving producers. Licorice Pizza is a qualified success. It shows Anderson’s strengths in working with actors and capturing the zeitgeist of youth, LA and the 1970s. Unfortunately it stumbles in an odd, meandering way. It is as if you asked a parent about their grown children and they gave a detailed description of the neighborhood where they grew up. It’s a great response that has nothing to do with the question.

At the heart of Anderson’s drama is a perfect couple. That’s the problem. Cooper Hoffman is magnificent as Gary. Alana Haim nails the part of Alana. They are magical together. Why aren’t they together? He is 15 and she is in her 20s. Certainly this would be a challenge, even more so in the the previous decade. Unfortunately this gap doesn’t play on screen. He seems older and she appears younger, undermining the perception of the impossibility of a romance. At one point Alana literally voices to her sister/confidante that she feels uncomfortable hanging out with Gary and his younger crowd. It is as if the writer/director needs to reinforce the central plot point.The words fail to convince. Without the impediment to true love the interactions become rehearsed, rather than felt. Gary, the supposed 15 year old, manages the adult tasks of forming businesses, hanging out in bars, managing clients, securing acting parts with the aplomb of a polished adult. The public, especially their crowd, would not frown upon their union. This isn’t the startling age gap exhibited by the patron saints of odd-ball romantic comedy, the 10 year old Harold and his elderly mentor, Maude from the eponymous Harold and Maude. But even given the supposed impossibility of being a couple, Anderson fails to reign-in the seduction of “cool” asides.  The central characters drift into a different film that tries to capture the wider world. 

The concise, unadorned moments in Licorice Pizza are superb. We see the young couple facing the trials of early adulthood without the noise of larger statements about the 70s entertainment industry. Gary goes on an audition and faces the smiling sociopaths who hire aspiring child actors. The glances between the casting director and the producer tell a million stories.  In another sequence Gary tries to have his agent take an interest in Alana. This is a sublime portrayal of the harshness of an industry where the callow, obsequious, success-hungry wannabes are played by indifferent, capricious seasoned pros.  At one moment the elderly agent seems as if she will take out a knife and cut Alana to bits, then comes a seamless pivot to laughter and compliments. No doubt being a child star can be exhilarating, as exhibited by the New York City showcase visit. However, even in this frolicking riot of fun the dark side is apparent.  The mature star turns on Gary for his prank. You can’t help thinking how it would have turned out had the handlers not been around to stop her physical assault. Furthermore this diva has the air of a grudge-holder. Will there be longterm consequences? Contrast these crisp show-business portraits with the overwrought introduction of Jon Peters and the sequences involving Sean Penn and Tom Waits. These figures would have been more appropriate to Boogie Nights.  Anderson’s sweeping portrait of the LA skin trade was a sprawling feast of decadence. Licorice Pizza is supposed to be an intimate love story… or wants to be. The asides cloud us getting to know Gary and Alana. The film becomes a disjointed soup of interesting moments that never coalesces. The audience yearns for the conciseness of Anderson’s debut feature, Hard 8. That gritty love story revolves around a young, down and out, couple on the fringes of the Las Vegas casinos. Their struggles stir passion. Licorice Pizza produces wry smiles. Despite the fine acting and directing, the final reunion of Gary and Alana gets a thumbs up, rather than a tear. Anderson’s other romantic comedy, Punch Drunk Love, has the same problem. The romance is lost to the pyrotechnics of a wild plot line which includes a manufacturer of toilet plungers squaring off against thugs sent by a phone sex operator. 

At the heart of Licorice Pizza is the confusion about the central storyline. Is this about the couple, or the era? At times the audience is left with the impression that this film starts where Tarantino left off in his panoramic sweep of 60s LA, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Anderson is a far superior director and even the mis-steps make for a fun trip. Unfortunately the director commits the same crime as the absent guardians of latchkey kids. The parents vanish and the children are left to fend for themselves. Gary and Alana’s mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters disappear and we are left with waterbeds, pinball machines, closeted politicians and flashy movie stars. It’s entertaining but distracting. Their final reunion becomes a simple beat, rather than a crescendo. The audience needed more quiet time. There is a brilliant, silent,  moment involving Gary, in a pique of jealousy, calling Alana at her house. She is dating a rival actor and our hero is heartbroken. They are both in their homes. Gary is babysitting his brother and Alana is surrounded by the constant din of her sisters. Nothing and everything happens. Gary is completely quiet and simply listens as the confused Alana hangs on the phone. It is a scene that outshines all the slick cameos and outlandish set-ups. Something real was at stake. Too often Anderson’s resorts to Disney-esque adventurism and the couple’s escapes lack an edge. A mirror example, that exhibits the much needed tension, is the seminal 70s feature, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. The audience is absorbed in the believable money struggles facing an itinerant single mother and her young son. Homelessness and poverty hover at every turn, despite many funny moments. Contrast comic-book untouchability  of Gary and Alana. Even when he is apprehended by the police, one of the few genuinely harrowing moments, the danger evaporates in minutes without explanation. Alana arrives. All is good. The families are nowhere to be seen. The couple continues on their way, as if they were Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in a 1940s Andy Hardy film. It’s catchy fun, rather than heartfelt emotion. 

Perhaps Licorice Pizza has more resonance but given the body of Anderson’s work, expectations are high. It seems his forte is the wide shot rather than the close up. His searing renderings of zealots, be they in business, religion or fashion, are potent to a fault. ( There Will Be Blood, The Master, Phantom Thread) The exacting expositions of the protagonists’ pathologies make an audience feel they’ve witnessed an autopsy rather than experiencing a life. Licorice Pizza has the opposite problem in erring on the side of frivolity. The balance is struck with the epic portraits of Los Angeles. There is an element of this genius at work in Licorice Pizza. Sadly Gary and Alana’s story seems a weaker version of the many individual sequences from his magnum opus, Magnolia. That film showcases a wide-ranging group of Los Angelenos facing various crisis’. The difference is that Anderson is more fully invested in their stories. The other slices of Licorice Pizza are leftovers from his penultimate achievement, Boogie Nights. Once again the antics of the sad denizens of the porno trade are more carefully delineated than the current offering.  That is not to say the film isn’t worth the time. 

Anderson is a wonderful filmmaker. His achievements are even more impressive in light of the onslaught of serialized action features which have taken over the fading feature film offerings. Licorice Pizza is a welcome entree when the top grossing films this week are The Matrix Resurrections and Spider-Man: No Way Home.  Anderson has something to say and is a superb craftsman. If only if he would resist the siren call of cool distraction. Even the title Licorice Pizza betrays a wandering eye. “Licorice Pizza” is 70s slang for vinyl records. It’s catchy but what does that have to do with the couple at the heart of the drama? Perhaps “Mood Ring” or “Wacky Pack” would have been more appropriate. If you’re not old enough, look up the definitions. Those quintessential 70s items capture the irreverent romantic un-romance of Gary and Alana. Unfortunately Anderson chose the nick-name for an LP. It is fitting. This careful, insightful writer/director lost track of his metaphorical children. It’s a great title, but not for this movie.  Anderson is careless but still manages to deliver a wonderful, nostalgic, reprieve from our current pandemic world. My reaction to the film is summed up by the rock group 10cc in their 1975 smash hit, I’m Not In Love. Take off your mask. Wipe off your hands with alcohol. Think about a more innocent time. Download the song, put in your earbuds… and listen. It’s a wonderful distraction. 

Review of, Waiting for Godot (2021)

 The Odd Couples

Review of Waiting for Godot

“Why on earth are we here? Surely not to live in pain and fear” 

• John Lennon, Instant Karma

I drove 10 miles down a dirt road to see a production of Waiting for Godot. The Unadilla Theatre is located on a working farm in Calais Vermont. The parking lot is next to a field filled with ancient Highland cattle. The cows are Neolithic but the plays are of our time. The sylvan backdrop is home to a number of first rate performers, directors and technicians. The weight of Beckett’s classic poses a number of challenges, even to the most prominent thespians. Those, in the know, will immediately draw comparisons to seminal productions. The play’s formidable reputation makes it  de riguer for students, even in secondary school. Before the curtain lifts many audience members will have strong opinions.  Googling  “Interpretation of Waiting for Godot” deliveries nearly 300,000 results. Kudos to Jeanne Beckwith, the local director, for daring to add her perspective on this classic, or more precisely anti-classic.

Decades before Seinfeld there was a comic work that prided itself on “nothing happening.”  In this case the laughs are deadly serious. Beckwith and the cast utilize slapstick to deliver the unsettling news that life’s fundamental questions have no definitive answers. The English publisher added the subtitle “a tragicomedy in two acts” to soften the blow. (the play was originally in French)  The first production was in Paris during the beginning of the Cold War. Nazis had occupied the theater 7 years prior. The universal threat of nuclear annihilation was also less than a decade old. Certainly this would be an ideal grist-mill to ponder questions of how and why we exist. But no one would tolerate a screed about the self-evident evils of fascism and unbridled Capitalism, as the French say, “Capitalisme sauvage.” Enter the zany odd couples who spend over two hours in two acts… doing exactly nothing… and everything.

Estragon (Matthew Grant Winston) and Vladimir (Donny Osman) are the primary protagonists. Think Abbot and Costello or Dean and Jerry, two comedic teams that dominated pre-TV entertainment at the time Godot’s creation. Winston captures Estragon’s complaining, egocentric manner. He is entertaining within the confines of entertainment. Real life Estragons are tiresome, and try the patience of even the most caring teacher, companion, stranger, neighbor..… Osman projects empathy and understanding. He’s not a push-over. In fact much of the time his is pushing back from his companion’s whining.  He nails Vladimir’s sincerity and curiosity. Those qualities are coupled with a searing desire to know the inner workings of his own moral compass. Estragon is hungry. Vladimir wonders about hunger, amongst many many other things. The two of them spark a sing-song meditation on…. Why? Estragon drones on and Vladimir philosophizes. These are fringe characters who have center stage in a void. They inhabit a desert with single scraggly tree. There is no back-story. Oddly their disposition sparks uncomfortable reminders for any audience member who has ever been in any kind of relationship with a spouse, a co-worker, a child, an adult, an elderly person, a baby, a boss, a stranger, a traveling companion… i.e. everyone. There are constant arguments, affirmations, pronouncements, denouncements over everything and nothing. They are united/divided in an appointment with the mythic Mr. Godot. They rhapsodize about, and dread, the encounter. Think of your average Christian realizing the second coming is at hand. The duo pass the time waiting for the shoe to drop or axe to fall.  Thankfully Osman and Winston have chemistry that results in laugher and reflection.Their interactions are pleasing, and self-sustaining, even before they meet Pozzo and Lucky. The second duo are a startling counterpart to our jesting anti-heroes. There is more brimstone than treacle in the new arrivals.

If Estragon and Vladimir are best friends, or an old married couple, Pozzo is a tyrant who bullies his enslaved captive. Only in this universe would the that person have the moniker “Lucky.” His life is humiliating grunt-work at the hands of the slave-driver. Lucy is a human cart-horse who must perform. Pozzo literally has him dancing to amuse his new audience. His movements are bad, but the physiological damage is worse. He is asked to reveal his inner-thoughts.  The heretofore monosyllabic Lucky expounds, or more precisely explodes. Tom Murphy does a superb job of letting-rip a verbal barrage of inchoate religious/philosophical musings. He becomes a radio tuned in-between a PBS and AM talk. It is the only speech by this character, but it makes an impression… and a point. 

What did you expect? A lifetime of being repressed yields a darker, condensed version of the gibberish spoken by Vlad and Estagon. The old duo is alarmed by the outburst and silences Lucky. They preferred the old soft-shoe to the slave muttering on about God. Leave that to Vladimir.  Lucky’s absurdity hits close to home. Pozzo, the master, is more straightforward, stomping on his hat and yelling, “there’s an end to his thinking!” Clarke Jordan does an excellent job channeling the insolence of the rich and powerful. Even in the Second Act, when the tycoon is blind and pleads for help, the schadenfreude feels appropriate. Vladimir, on the other hand, evokes the pain in seeing people forever locked in a suspended animation of epiphany without the means to act. He knows “habit is the great deadener” and yet he clings the pursuit of Godot. In this respect Beckett’s masterpiece has the conventionality of having the audience empathize with a play’s central character. At the same time the author is undermining established theatrical norms. The traditional framework of a three act play is based on: a problem is presented, the situation is analyzed and a solution is found. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quip, “There are no second acts in American lives”, points to the impatience of our culture. We rush to comfortable answers without doing the hard work of weighing options.  Beckett believes there are no third acts. Life is a perpetual second act. There isn’t even a comfortable first act. Perhaps this radicalism was sparked by a linear three act play produced a decade and a half earlier in New Jersey. It was masked in conventional structure but the last act was, literally, out of this world. 

Thornton Wilder’s Our Town might seem a world away from Parisian avant-garde theater. Strangely both author’s were gripped by the crisis of absurdity. We live our lives on a treadmill of routine that blinds us to the magic of life. There is a direct line from the callow teenage Emily Webb in her eternal New Hampshire gravesite and the world-weary philosophical outcast Vladimir in his expansive apocalyptic desert. It is easy to empathize with the young widowed-bride. Vladimir is more of a challenge. Donny Osman’s superb showmanship is up to the task. The audience can identify with his struggle despite the starkness of his surroundings and the un-admirable, though well-rendered, cast-mates. He doesn’t cave to the transactional convenience of Pozzo. He feels for Lucky’s plight. He is a true friend and guide to the hapless Estragon. It takes a real performer to stoke the coals of tenderness in this cold, ashen landscape. Perhaps the showman could have, at times, bent to the slowness of an intimate moment. It is a tough needle to thread as the production might stray into preachy sentimentality. They avoid this trap and rely on a distinctly un-mawkish “commedia dell’arte” sensibility.  These performances were heartfelt and not simply a forum to vent philosophical razors. Even the smallest details were geared to illustrate the play’s central theme of finding life’s meaning in the morass of societal dullness. The Boy, performed with wonderful innocence by Case Phinney, deliveries the news of Godot’s consecutive no-shows. Osman’s rage is set-up by the quiet dead-pan of Phinney’s negation of history. It is the timeless struggle against every bureaucracy and corporate phone-tree. The “man” never ceases to remind you that you and your memory are null and void. Their life’s mission to to make sure you don’t believe you exist. Your job, if you are up to it, is to fight being categorized as meaningless.

It is disquieting to think of Vladimir on the Godot-treadmill of absurd belief. Knowing the world is absurd is distinct from believing in absurdities. Vladimir believes both. He retains a comic view of the world but is mired in a tragic enslavement precluding a “happy ending.” There is no ambiguousness about the joy of artisans willing to pay tribute to his struggle. This is an act of defiance against our sea of troubles. Even the sylvan hills of rural Vermont aren’t immune from changing weather, unstable economics and the deadly pandemic. And yet, in this remote corner, there are those who take the time to do the hard work of reminding us that all is not lost. Deep in the forest, amongst the ancient cattle, we take a few hours to reflect by watching those who are truly lost. As Vladimir says: “Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come” I would replace the last phrase with: we are glad this Godot came. Kudos to the Unadilla Theatre for hosting this production. Unadilla is an Iroquois word meaning “council place” or “place of meeting.” How perfect. This is our modern “city on a hill” guarding us against the great deadener of news delivered through screens. The real life experience of watching real people struggle. We need to make the pilgrimage more often. No more waiting.

Review of The Green Knight (2021)

 

The Knight Shift

“And anyone who ever played a part, they wouldn’t turn around and hate it.”

• Lou Reed, Sweet Jane

“I was born into this life and it is a great honor to serve my country and the Queen.”

• Prince Harry, Letter of Resignation

The Green Knight is rooted in the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. What kind of producer would bet on a 13th century text as the basis for a feature film? Answer: someone who hires David Lowery as the writer/director. Lowery has a knack for giving new varnish to old stories. Bonnie and Clyde become quarreling high schoolers from an Everly Brothers’ song. A Ghost Story is a horror film remade as an Andy Warhol art movie. What will he do with a 800 year old tale of chivalric romance? Answer: the pomp and pageantry give way to existential questions. The knight in shining armor is a contemporary, disenfranchised, cellphone-bound, teenager. Behind the role-playing lurks self-doubt and skepticism. The monster becomes the question: what’s the point of slaying the dragon?

The dragon in this tale is the Green Knight, a Hulk-like figure who seems to embody the forest. His physicality is an amalgamation of old growth trees graphed onto a super-hero’s body. His opponent is the privileged screw-up, Gawain. The feckless teen is catapulted into stardom by his ambitious mother, the sister of the king. The mighty knights of the roundtable are too intimidated by the Green Monster so the callow Gawain accepts the challenge. The mother ensures the slight young man’s victory over this beast. The catch is that, after a year, the new knight must participate in a return match in a far off chapel.

The feckless rich kid is now a sanctioned hero replete with weapons, clothing and blessings of the church and high society. Old ways die hard and he fritters-away twelve months with drinking buddies and a beautiful lowly commoner. There is a wonderful scene in which she speaks all the words everyone wishes he would say. He certainly feels attachment but demurs for more established prospects. This is a tone-deaf careerist rather than a chivalric hero. His quest confirms our worst suspicions. Briefly into the journey he loses his horse, weapons and sacred tokens to a band of unimposing criminal scavengers. Losing his stallion is particularly noteworthy as the word “chivalry” is based on the French word for horse (cheval). These knights were inseparable from their animals. He is redeemed through set-piece encounters with various women who find him enthralling. They give him charms and tokens. A green belt for eternal protection and the sacred axe, which he needs for his encounter with the Green Knight. They come at a price but our transactional hero has the audacity to wonder, “What’s in it for me?” One of the princesses mercilessly chides him: Knights don’t ask the price of their services. He learns the art of accepting “gifts.” But therein lies the heart of Sir Gawain’s cardinal sin. He is a crass yuppie cognizant of “price” but oblivious to “value.” Every move is rooted in the calculus of advancement, not a code of chivalry. His passion is tempered by security. Boldness shows through at times, but it is the stuff of adrenaline, rather than blood. He encounters a majestic trail of giants lumbering across the mountains. He asks to ride on one of their shoulders. When the massive hand is outstretched Gawain flees in terror. No doubt mom would have approved: that looks too dangerous! Think of your prospects.

Lowery knows the timeless motifs of the ambitious mother and prodigal son. He also is aware that the supposed prudishness of the Middle Ages is a myth as fictitious as a real-life Green Knight. Noble women were strong, powerful and sexually confident. Knights were more akin to State-sanctioned marauders. The real code of chivalry was a device created by those in power to keep a check on ambitious men with weapons. (Historian Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame, has a wonderful series of videos on life in the Middle Ages). Lowery is a master of uncloaking the truth of a past that is ever-present. This is a fairy tale with the grit of our current world beset with Lermontov’s ambiguous “heroes.” Behind the magical-realism of sorceress’, giants, spells, witchcraft, knights, oaths, quests… is the darkness of sacrificing one’s integrity for mammon and standing. Only in this tale would the hero knight give away the token of his love’s affection to a seductress who happens to be his host’s wife. It is more The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills than The Legend of King Arthur. The denouement is equally unsettling. When it comes to winning the crown, he has Henry VIII’s family values. Perhaps “wins” is the wrong word. He deserves the crown and its never-ending parade of pain. The betrayed lover, fabricated bravery, stolen child and dead son are not the stuff of “happily ever after.” There is an inevitability to rebelling subjects and a burning castle. In the end he metaphorically joins fellow king Richard II on the ground talking of graves, worms and epitaphs… but does he?

Lowery puts a final twist on his twisted dream by borrowing from the most cynical of American writers, Ambrose Bierce. Like the Confederate Soldier in An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, Gawain has a reprieve. Unlike the civil war counterpart his alternative life is the nightmare of actually being a king. At one point when the Green Knight raises his axe Gawain asks if this is “it”? Isn’t there more to the game of life? The Green Knight is befuddled. The embodiment of natural knowledge looks at the young man and embarrassingly admits… this is it. Our hero is, in the Buddhist sense, “truly in the moment.”. He puts away the protective charms. He bows his head and expects the blow. It is his first genuine act of bravery and maturity. He sees the broader picture: being king and not being king are… the same. The Green Knight salutes the “road to Damascus moment” by joking, “Now off with your head.” This is even worse than an actual blow. The elder Knight knows: you will always lose, but heroes fight anyway.

One could imagine the grammatical symbol for Chivalric Romance as an exclamation point, marking brave deeds and heroic triumphs. Lowery’s The Green Knight is the question mark at the end of “to be or not to be?” The performances are a perfect balance to the quirky sensibility of this unorthodox tale that frames an uncomfortable question. The actors are sexy, empathetic and precisely anti-heroic. The set and costuming are enthralling, exquisite without overspilling into Disney-like fantasy. The director’s mastery of the historical aspects of the period and mythology is exacting. The overall effect is to land in the uncanny valley of escapist fantasy. Lowery has the wherewithalto capture our imaginations. We fall into his dream. Strangely there is an unsettling quality in his looking glass. We expect uplifting dreams and torrid nightmares, but how to digest existential ambivalence in the context of a magical fantasy? Our knights in shinning armor aren’t supposed to wonder if the jousting match is covered by insurance. Their realizations can’t be the pointlessness of conventional heroism. We needed more of the Green Knight’s sagacity of acceptance. There is deep wisdom behind all the Hulk-theatrics that bend’s the heroic framework. It is interesting that in the original poem the Green Knight himself is a disguised relative. The entire “game” is revealed as a intra-familial life lesson. Lowery retains the spirit of the ancient scribes. That Zeitgeist is expressed by the cynical iconoclast, Mr. Bierce, in his Devil’s Dictionary: “Existence n. A transient, horrible, fantastic dream, wherein is nothing yet all things do seem: From which we’re wakened by a friendly nudge of our bedfellow Death, and cry: “Oh Fudge!”” Lowery’s quest might be disquieting for those expecting true horror or real fantasy. There’s the rub. The holy grail might be a beaten old terra-cotta mug, rather than a shining golden goblet.