Beatriz at Dinner (2017)

Beatriz at Dinner (2017)

The Great White Dope

“Now that highway’s coming through… and you all gotta move… this bottom rung ain’t no fun at all” -  “See How We Are” by X

Captain James T. Kirk: Be Careful. 

Dr. McCoy: Why? She seems harmless enough.

Mr. Spock: The sand-bats of Manark IV appear to be inanimate rock crystal, Doctor, until they attack. 

-The Empath, 1968 Original Star Trek Series.

“It the ends don’t justify the means, then what does?
-Robert Moses

Being topical is a mixed blessing when it comes to movies. Writers and directors strive to stand apart from the times and render an objective truth… most often this leads to unintentionally confirming that they are as blind as everyone else.  The poster-child for being imprisoned in the zeitgeist would be “Pray for the Wildcats”. Only a PhD in sociology or a rabid connoisseur of kitsch would recall this 1974 TV “movie of the week” which paired Andy Griffith, a fierce California industrialist, with William Shatner, a local advertising executive, on a motorcycle trip through the wilds of Baja Mexico. This journey becomes a exploration of raging rift between corporate aggressiveness  vs. counter-culture harmony with the denouement being the protagonist driving of a cliff to his demise. This work was made at the tail end of the disastrous Vietnam war when hippies and construction workers were squaring off in the the streets and many took refuge in a “back to the earth” movement. The filmmakers made a statement… just not the one they intended. This is a monument to artistic overreach and gives new meaning to the phrase “drive off a cliff”. The writers and directors were, metaphorically,  the uneasy riders in the wake of the seminal “Easy Rider”.  In the age of Trump, where the economic divide is front and center, we have the spiritual descendant of this forgettable TV adventure.

 “Beatriz at Dinner” is more weighty than “Wildcats” but it ends with the protagonist… well there was no motorcycle but… This is another social commentary with, yet another, California mogul squaring off against a child of a ‘south-of-the-border’ Eden. Her name is Beatriz… probably after Beatrice, Dante’s chosen guide to heaven in the The Divine Comedy. Beatriz has a shaman-like presence that suggests she experienced a Christian “Beatific Vision”… a personal, individual encounter with God. In this film our hero meets God’s nemesis, who takes the form of successful real estate developer, Doug Strutt, played by John Lithgow.  The setting is a posh Orange County gated community where, Beatriz, a beloved Central American masseuse, unwittingly becomes a foil against a group of caucasian establishment figures. Beatriz is victorious; or more correctly, Beatriz is victorious? The ambiguity is the weakness of this set-piece drama. It is a polemic that is uncomfortable being… a polemic. It wants to be a larger philosophical meditation where people stumble upon larger questions over a meal. The Louis Malle's 1981 feature film, “My Dinner with Andre”, managed to successfully portray two friends weighing life's journey while dining.  “Beatriz at Dinner” is, at heart, a more conventional political commentary. One thinks this as an non-action extended exploration of characters in political soap operas such as "House of Cards" or "The West Wing".

Director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White side with Beatriz, however, judging by the character portraits, they are more at home with the ruling class. The wealthy white people and their servants are pitch perfect. There is the preppy cook who is pleasant, professional and cold as ice. There is the older Latina maid who is expert at not being noticed. There is the rare moment when the domestic breaks “character” to reach out to Beatriz - only to find the heroine is NOT a fellow traveler. The menus and drink options are appropriate and highlight Beatriz’s isolation from the world of scotch drinkers and meat eaters. She is gracefully given her water and vegetarian entree.. but this kindness is tinged with difference. The conversation and greetings also highlight the class/culture divide. The caucasians are put off by Beatriz’s full body hug and her inability to play along with the gossip. Beatriz is serious when the moment demands levity and insulted by what passes for mere banter. What is the big deal about Strutt showing off his photos from a hunting safari? There is the quick bit of dialogue, “Everyone knows those animals wouldn’t exist without the hunting revenue?”. Beatriz disagrees with this and other passing quips.  It would be easy to fall into the trap of making the rich representatives of the evils of their class (e.g. the neighbors in Mike Leigh’s “High Hopes). This group of successful strivers have feelings. The spouse of the businessman throwing the party is sympathetic and empathetic. She genuinely cares about Beatriz and credits her with saving her child from the ravages of cancer. Unfortunately she is unable to escape her rich-lady cocoon of insensitivity.  It takes her far too long to register that Beatriz is at the breaking point well before her car broke down. The Lady of the house rises to the occasion and INSISTS Beatriz stay the night including attending a dinner with her husband’s best client.  Her husband, Grant, is skeptical. His attitude towards Beatriz is akin to Czar Nichols’ tolerating Rasputin as his spouse believes he is responsible for their son’s recovery from certain death. Like the last Russian Royal, Grant reluctantly acquiesces ending in complete disaster. Everyone was expecting a quiet self-congratulatory evening celebrating the closing of a large real-estate transaction. Dinner turns into Cortes savaging Montezuma. 

This battle of civilization rests on the question posed by the lyricist Hal David in the classic song “Alfie”, “Are we meant to take more than we give?”. Doug Strutt doesn’t really understand the premise as, in his mind, the point of living is to MAKE SURE you take more than you give. The dinner party shows the guest of honor’s bleak world view. There are his asides about crushing those in his way and skirting tiresome rules. His joking about “not knowing you” if you get caught is met with laughter… but one wonders what the other guest-couple is thinking. The husband is a political fixer, a master of the political sausage making process. If one of his unsavory tactics was exposed it is clear Strutt would throw him under the bus. The fixer’s spouse’s grimace seems to grow broader as the evening unfolds. She understands Strutt sees the world as a place to be developed. Every encounter is a transaction to be measured in this lens. Friends are people who help Strutt get paid… until they don’t… then they become enemies.  Everyone else is an other overt or covert enemy. His pleasures consist of having sycophants fawn on him (including his partner) and killing large game animals. Beatriz gets under his skin… literally. There is a moment when she spontaneously give him a back massage. Here power is revealed. The beast is, momentarily, at rest. Strutt realizes she is a force.  In a rare moment towards the end of the film he lets down his guard and speaks genuinely about his agenda. His view: the ship is sinking… why fret? Just get as much as you can FOR YOURSELF. He seems to admonish Beatriz to grow up and stop pretending everyone else isn’t thinking the same way. Beatriz is having none of it. Her displaced family and long lost friends chose to path of righteousness, only to lose all their wordy possessions. They are on the  God’s side and no amount of demagogy will sway her. She will retain her dignity… but pay the price. Unfortunately the result is not even a pyrrhic victory. But does the film show defeat? The problem in representing the essence of goodness is how to defend against the ravages of evil. As one young Buddhist remarked: “The Dalai Lama has got 12 bodyguards around him when he travels. What do you think would happen if some butthead pulled a gun on HIs Holiness? Do you think those bodyguards would practice non-violence? No way man. Some dweeb with a gun shows up , he’s gonna pop a cap in his ass”*. And so it is with Beatriz… as a disciple of Gaia, how do you stop the rapist of mother earth? The filmmakers are very good at drawing the devil but are less successful when rendering the forces of good. 

Is Beatriz an failed exorcist? A disenchanted savior? Has the Archangel Gabriel laid down his sword? The first, and most successful, portion of the film, shows her as awkward observer with the veneer of being “a part of the family”. The matriarch is sincere in her love of Beatriz but is unable to fathom the chasm between her and this group of ruling-class strivers.  As the guests arrive she stands at a distance as an observer. Her gait and manner are stilted. She frets over her dress in the mirror. Then Strutt throws down the gauntlet, in error, by mistaking her for a servant and asking her to fetch another drink. The patriarch correct’s the tycoon’s faux pas but Beatrix comes alive and asks the host for a re-fill. The alcohol fuels an honesty and boldness that Strutt correctly views as a frontal assault on everything he holds dear. This begins a strange journey into understanding Beatriz as a foil for good. The oddness rests in not fully grasping her character. She is an odd amalgamation of having tremendous worldly insight cloaked in utter cluelessness. She can hold her own in the world. She has, against all odds, landed a good job, good apartment, good connections… She knows how to navigate the internet. Yet she seems a babe in the woods during the dinner party. She drips with sincerity and is lost at the cruel humor and ass-kissing. Her revulsion towards Strutt seems oddly inappropriate. He is a horror but she would seem to possess a better understanding of the rules of the game. Is it the alcohol that blurs her judgement? After hurling Strutt’s smartphone at him for showing off his kill (literally a rhino) she retreats to the cancer stricken daughter’s room for a timeout. Our innocent then “googles” Strutt via the internet… His nasty track record includes the revelation that he might be the force behind the destruction of her Eden-like childhood village. Her backstory’s brutality extends to her own family. Her father has some Strutt-like qualities. There is an aside where she describes enduring her rough-neck fisherman father begin her to kill and torture a rare animal. Her life work seems an answer to his cruelty. She reaches out, via her smartphone, to a life-long friend. This soul-mate never returns the call. The inscrutability of her character leads to wondering about the existence of this person. Is this a metaphorical “reaching out” or does Bestriz have real friends? The filmmakers show her only true companion to be a dead white goat…This unfortunate animal shares the fate of the poor creature whom her father kicked do death on the fishing peer. The buck is murdered by a neighbor who complained about the noise. Is this goat’s death the source of Beatriz’s inability to contain her rage towards Strutt?…. or, once again, was it the wine.. or both, or neither. 

The last third of the film takes refuge in abstraction. Beatriz returns to serenade the offended guests with a beautiful ballad. Her voice matches her touch in having an unworldly ability to calm and heal. Despite the respite there is a sense that something is going to happen… and it does…. Beatriz has a strange communion with a dark patch on the ocean. There is the encounter with Strutt, where he bares his soul followed by a bifurcation of action. Note to artists: having two endings creates no ending rather than a better one. (e.g. Mark Romanek’s “One Hour Photo”).  “Beatriz at Dinner” gives us a violent dream sequence, where revenge is exacted… followed by an almost Antonioni-like disappearance into the surf. This crisp set-piece devolves into pop ambiguity of incomprehensible rock songs. To quote the Cars: “It doesn’t matter where you’ve been, as long as it was deep, yeah”. 

It’s difficult to shift from straightforward class commentary to abstract musings about the fate of Gaia’s disciple. Part of the problem was invoking the tension between Central America the the United States. This is a gruesome, complicated history that has no place in a compact meditation on Trumpism. Last week a tower of skulls was discovered in the heart of the Aztec empire. The structure was built from victims of ritual sacrifice including women, children in addition to warriors. ( http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/05/535613480/aztec-tower-of-skulls-reveals-women-children-were-sacrificed ). Cortes’ men had described this terrifying building. For centuries it was thought to be merely a poetic flourish to highlight the brutishness of the supposed “heathens”. It turns out the imaginary prelapsarian native world was more Garden of Earthly Delights than Eden. This isn’t a justification for Cortes’ savagery but an illustration the difficulty shoe-horning Salma Hayek into being the beneficent magic negress. The incarnation of native righteousness might have sprung from life as another skull in the wall. Not exactly a comforting building block of paradise. Beatriz cannot be Dante’s tour guide of the heavens as she is NOT in a divine comedy. Her world is a solid, competently executed, well-made-play featuring contemporary political issues. Substituting divinity for partisanship is an attempt to place the artwork’s message is above the fray. Unfortunately the tree of knowledge isn’t planted in the well manicured lawns of Orange County… nor is it in  the amorphous haze of the pacific surf. 

The ambiguity of the ending covers a confusion about the weightiness of the drama. This is a set-piece which beautifully illustrates contemporary American political strife. The canonization of the Latina undercuts the power of the story. The terra-firma of direct action with a knife, one of the paths shown in the film, has clarity. This lies in contrast to the fog of imaginary friends in imaginary worlds communing with imaginary white goats. This film needed to stay the course of social commentary and concrete story-telling rather than attempt a universal truth. In short, Strutt needed to get his ass capped. Obviously the filmmakers were nervous about demonizing the heroin. This accounts for the artistic overreach. Ironically bestowing sainthood had the effect of distancing her from the audience. The nemesis, strangely, becomes dearer to our hearts by being real. John Lithgow is mesmerizing delivering his brief. Salma Hayek, with no makeup and ill fitting clothes, has never been more beautiful. It’s too bad the writer and director felt she needed a pedestal. They killed Beatriz thinking it would make her right, but it felt wrong. Ironically if Beatriz had killed Strutt, she would have been wrong, but the film would have felt right. We needed a murderer to argue about and they gave us a martyr… we need not pray to our lady of Beatriz. Her salvation would be in better art. Remember “Pray for the Wildcats” and the perils of going off the “cliff of deepness”. Knowing you’re mediocre is better than pretending you’re great. This is something people of all political stripes can rally around. One imagines Beatriz and Strutt in front of the TV. He has his scotch and she pets her goat. They are watching the opening of “Pray for the Wildcats”. She says this is ridiculous. He nods in agreement. Then they argue about what to watch. He kills her goat. She kills him. The cops are called and we all argue about who is right after seeing it on the evening news. 

* Music Downtown: Writing from the Village Voice by Kyle Gann, page 277

Interstellar (2014)

Interstellar (2014)

Ground Control to Chris and Jon

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.” 

― Laurence J. Peter, The Peter Principle

Matthew McConaughey is a bore to watch. There, I said it. Unfortunately he is the star of “Interstellar”, Christopher Nolan’s latest sci-fi film. McConaughey's performance in “Dallas Buyers Club” was a tour de force but “True Detectives” showed the limits of his force. He has a propensity to ham it up if left unsupervised - see “Wolf of Wall Street”. Nolan gave McConaughey free reign to drift when the actor needed to be fastened to his command chair. Someone might have tapped the director on the shoulder and noted that John Lithgow, a seasoned master of stage and screen, was on the set. Lithgow plays a grumpy old man with nothing to do except yell at his grandkids. He did an amazing job but there are only so many ways to bark at children. Michael Caine, another screen legend, phoned-in his part as the chief Scientist. The other cast members were saddled with roles that failed to test their mettle, maybe they could have assisted Lithgow with the kids. It is a crime that all these talented people were put under the yoke of Nolan and hundreds of millions in studio money. They needed direction, not expensive props. They were crushed by an army of accountants and technicians adrift without a leader. Even Matt Damon, who has exhibited discretion in his choice of material, fell victim. Two hours into battle Matt rises out of a deep induced coma. He has openly expressed regret for rejecting a part in the sci-fi mega-blockbuster “Avatar” which explains his unfortunate decision to participate in this holiday turkey. Damon throws a few punches and then blows up, literally. His character’s fury is rooted in having lied in order to secure an undeserved rescue. The off screen Damon might be equally peeved for different reasons.

Nolan’s films prove the ‘The Peter Principle’. This is business management jargon for the idea that managers rise to the level of their incompetence.  Promotions based on past work are no harbinger of future success as the new job requires a new toolkit. This writer/director started with an innovative independent film, “Memento”, based on a leading character with no ability to retain long-term memory. It was followed “Insomnia” where a California detective is forced to solve a case in the endless sunlight of an Alaskan summer. It was a main-stream commercial feature with big name stars and pushed the boundaries of a detective story, think “Crime and Punishment” rather than Dick Tracey. The serial killer was played against type by Robin Williams. Ironically during the dissection of this actor's suicide the stress of working in constant daylight took a serious emotional toll on the erstwhile comic, leading to a relapse and a stint in rehab. It had the opposite effect on Mr. Nolan’s career leading to his taking the reigns of the Batman franchise and his own high budget science fiction film “Inception”. These endeavors showed strong box office which led to Nolan being given the opportunity to direct another of his ideas, which he penned with his brother Jonathan (who wrote “Memento”). “Interstellar” is a complicated apocalyptic tale with elements of time travel and space exploration. Commercially speaking the Nolans’ projects have shown a general upward trend in gross receipts. They have been given more resources and delivered solid returns. Artistically speaking, however, things ended with “Batman Begins”. In viewing “Interstellar” one wonders whether Robin Williams wasn’t the only victim of “Insomnia”. Plumbing the minds of brain damaged loners and guilt wracked detectives does not prepare one to paint portraits of established super-heroes or create other worlds. The Nolan brothers are better suited to a narrower canvass. Unfortunately “Interstellar” is a grand showcase of glitzy lazy amateurism born of being overwhelmed.

It’s difficult to give scope to the epic horribleness of this film. Usually the craft-related departments come through in these blockbusters. Not in this case. Even the makeup was bad. McConaughey, who plays a NASA pilot/corn farmer, had an unearthly copper hue. This dove-tailed with the flatness of the special effects, astounding for a modern day sci-fi feature. What was particularly disturbing was the blatant  borrowing from Kubrick’s “2001”. Imitation of a classic is derigueur… but a half baked, half assed re-staging? Norton's “astronaut falling into the time abyss” is even more embarrassing when one considers the original was made over 46 years ago, decades before wide-scale deployment of computer graphics in motion pictures. Nolan’s visual impairment is matched by his aural deficits. The sound mix lost all sense of proportion. Key moments of dialogue were drowned out by tinnitus inducing swells of music or special effects. Not that hearing the words really mattered. Nolan has the knack of repeating things in droning soliloquies. If you miss it the first time due to a timpani drum or a tidal wave, you will have four or five more opportunities to digest the narrative. As we drift through Nolan’s universe with this crew of tired cartoon characters, we yearn for yesteryear’s stark simplicity. Nearly half a Century ago HAL was terrorizing his astronauts with simple curt sentences as they breathed and breathed and breathed. This combined with the Strauss waltzes defined the rhythms of space. Instead we are subjected to the tedious dialogue on obscure science or non-sensical plot points. Nolan’s script is designed for obsessive test takers who are interested in passing a quiz on the plot, rather than an audience focused on experiencing the texture of other worlds. There is a madness to the grand reveals in this film. Are we supposed to believe that this passionate NASA employee is completely unaware of a major NASA installation with a few hours drive in this underpopulated world? Are we to believe that the people in charge of this super massive installation are unaware that the leading NASA pilot is just down the road? Are we to believe that the NASA chiefs would suddenly hire this pilot who happens upon the facility due to his 10 year old daughter's receiving messages in morse code from another dimension? Yes, yes yes…..  Which begs the exclamation, WTF!? It goes on and on…. for 2 hours and 49 minutes. This audience member was praying that another encounter with a black hole would speed the clock… alas unlike the Lazarus project heroes stranded on those distant planets, there was no hibernation chamber to shield us from the desolate monotony.

Even the most insipid late night television spot can lay bare insights into the society at large. This holiday blockbuster offers a strange asymmetrical message regarding scientific progress. “Interstellar’s” earth has suffered an unspecified ecological disaster leading to the degradation of farmland and a one generation end-time. There are vague references to greedy selfishness being at the heart of the debacle. Everyone wanting too much which might hint at a call to collectivism. Strangely McConaughey seems to exhibit an abhorrence to the idea that the government, or anyone, can tell him anything. The apocalypse has had no dent in our hero’s solid American individualism. Oddly the this end-time earth bears little resemblance to the standard “Mad Max” set-piece. It is a subdued shabby rural setting. Imagine a crappy small town in the Mid West or upstate NY that is visited by a dust storm every fortnight. It’s drab, but people are well fed. There is a muddled sense of order more Mayberry than dystopia. The government has the same listless quality. There is an odd sequence where the local school teaches McConaughey’s daughter that his beloved Apollo missions never made it to the moon. This propaganda is designed to keep the young people interested in farming rather than technology. This makes little sense as McConaughey’s farm is swimming in high tech automation. Logic would dictate a Federal push against publicizing space exploration achievements would have no bearing on agriculture as a career. Unfortunately we are in the Nolan’s strange universe. This particular storyline makes Pol Pot’s campaign to promote smoking seem downright comprehensible. “Interstellar”, despite the reams of expository dialogue, is riddled with inexplicable reasons for the characters’ motivations. Probably the central incredulous plot point lies in Caine lying to McConaughey about the prospects for earth. We are supposed to believe this former NASA pilot, who loathes his current farm work and obsessively collects space trinkets, would refuse to lead an intergalactic mission to save mankind. All because of his young daughter. I guess the Nolan’s missed the news story about Mars One, the current ONE WAY mission to form human colonies on Mars. Here is a quote from the NY Times article: “More than 200,000 people from dozens of countries applied”. No doubt there are hundreds of parents amongst the throngs willing to abandon their families to serve some outlandish fantasy of “progress”. McConaughey himself is an odd proselytizer about Science’s place in man’s future. He rails against the lying PC police who deride NASA. At the close of the film he has a change of heart. He sits in the old farmhouse replete with a small little league field outside. It is now located in a huge space station orbiting Saturn. He senses something is wrong and embarks for the wormhole to get to his sweetheart. Her partner has conveniently died. His sweetie sits in her brave new world. The odd thing is it bears a remarkable resemblance to the desolate earth everyone is abandoning. One again, WTF? One keeps on thinking - why didn’t everyone just stay on earth and try to solve those problems? This sort of question is never really addressed in the film. Earth IS finished. Period. All the wizardry that assures a successful space mission never applies to the mother planet. Underneath the copper skin of McConaughey’s “down to earth” hero is a pernicious technological escapism. This badly executed, poorly thought-out, feature is really a paean to mankind’s technical prowess. Our answers lie in our abilities to innovate. We can always build tunnels to escape out mistakes.

The Nolans have proved themselves clever with their early work. This film is dumb which is highlighted by it’s attempts at being smart. There is a constant refrain from Michael Caine of Dylan Thomas’ wonderful poem, “Do Not Go Gentle into that Goodnight”. The force of this work lies in KNOWING the fight will inevitably END IN DEATH. The valiance is born in being DOOMED. So why is this poetry triumphantly repeated by the lead scientist charged with manning earth’s salvation? Well the clever Nolan brothers might say that Caine knew the earth would fail. Correct. Except that he had a strong faith in his mission’s success exhibited by the fact that he felt guilty about not having a majority of earthlings join in his careful PLAN B. Thomas’ words sound good, especially when rounded by Caine’s rough English accent. Unfortunately they make about as much sense as the rest of this draw-out mess of a film. It is inconceivable that people who would carefully plot the logical progress in “Memento” would make the amateurish mistakes which permeate every aspect of “Interstellar”. How could this happen? It is preferable, from an artistic POV, to believe the Nolan brothers are simply in it for the money. Sadly it seems this nearly three hour waste of time is rooted in a genuine effort to produce good work. It would be economically more rewarding to produce a shorter film. There is also an excess of heartfelt nonsense that simple con men would eschew. No, the fraternal duo are being blinded by misguided accolades and the Sirens’ call of huge budgets in order to spare no expense for their “vision”. Audiences everywhere can hope that their inner circle possesses an honest friend who can advocate for spare modesty in their next endeavor.  How about a ninety minute film of a father caught between the pull of duty and his tween daughter? Unfortunately one sense future movie-goers are in store for more of the Nolans' magic. The brothers might want to ponder the lyrics of a current indie calypso band: “Don’t need no message from outer space, to see what’s goin’ on in front me face” *.  And maybe someone could send them a copy of “The Peter Principle”.