Shutter Island (2010)

Not Spellbound

Martin Scorsese was 3 years old when Hitchcock released his psychological thriller “Spellbound”; choc-a-bloc with Freudian dreamscapes with Salvador Dali art direction. The same year one of the first Technicolor noir films,“Leave Her to Heaven”, featured Gene Tierney drowning her character’s husband’s paraplegic brother in a lake. Two years later Richard Widmark made his debut in “Kiss of Death” by guffawing while pushing an old wheelchair-bound biddy down a flight of stairs. When Scorsese turned 18 Hitchcock gave birth to Norman and his dear mother. Two years later Robert Mitchum would terrorize the upstanding Gregory Peck and his virtuous family in “Cape Fear”. Scorsese was so moved by the psychotic jailbird that he had Robert DeNiro reprise him in his remake nearly 30 years latter. Scorsese spent his youth devouring these and a slew of other dark movie classics centered on tormented, psychologically damaged, people struggling with the world. His childhood viewing would have an impact in his later work in addition to “Cape Fear”. One senses that the goodfellas in the mean streets would be very much at home being in “Public Enemy”; There is a raging bull in every “Scarface”.

What’s an old director to do? He’s finally got his statue with “The Departed”. There is an irony in being awarded “best director” for one of your lesser works (does this film compare to “Raging Bull”, “Goodfellas”, “Taxidriver”?) – but after so many years of being snubbed; it’s well deserved. But now that you’re a cultural icon, a popular success, lauded by your peers…. how do you avoid becoming irrelevant? It’s easy for someone born three years after “Gone with the Wind” to feel ill at ease in a world of iPhones; especially when you have made your name being one of the top feature film directors. It would be very dangerous to try and compete with the present. Do what you know: return to the past.: not “The Age of Innocence” but YOUR age of innocence: those Film Noir years when televisions were props in Sci-Fi movies or trinkets in exclusive homes. Bring it back and show everyone that past is prologue. However mesmerizing and dizzying our present world seems – nothing can compete with the timeless verities of well - crafted demons. This old man will scare you just as much anything on Grand Theft Auto or “Avatar”.

The only episode of Saturday Night Live not available for re-broadcast is Milton Berle’s 1979 appearance. This is especially significant since other hosts were banned from re-appearing but their original shows have been grinding through syndication for years. Berle earned the extraordinary banishment for making the hippest show on Television seem “old fashioned”. Mr. Television of the 1950s needed to be excommunicated by the young Turks who’d taken over the medium. We need to underline the fact that this is NOT your father’s Oldsmobile. The cardinal sin in cutting edge entertainment extends beyond merely being bad: it’s being old, stale AND BAD. No doubt Scorsese, a show business vet, knows the horrific scorn of appearing “old news”. “Shutter Island” is a bid to dispel any hints of being long in the tooth. It’s ironic to break out the old, to establish yourself as new – but like his “best director” Oscar shows – the world is filled with irony.

“Shutter Island” doesn’t work. Despite box office success this is a jumbled grandiose mess with enough craftsmanship to make the 2 hours pass moderately quickly. Mr. Scorsese, the master of small thugs in big worlds, tries to master the big world. This film touches on crime, punishment, Freud, the holocaust, justice, eternal love, revenge…. If you thought Scorsese had bitten off too much in “The Last Temptation of Christ” you’re eyes will roll when you see the first flash-back of Dachau. One wonders if Scorsese had seen episodes of the current entertainment industry Island fixation, “Lost”. That show does a marvelous job of keeping everyone in the audience, and on the island, guessing. In Scorsese’s Island the mood is more ponderous. Is not so much “what is going on?” but “what the hell is this?”. A serious parody/tribute? A stylized commentary? A meditation on old time movies? The justice system? Contemporary America’s anger towards the mentally ill? Maybe all. Maybe none. But the overarching question becomes: who cares? Not me. I’m glad he’s doing well financially. I’m happy he’s able to attract top rate talent but, judging by this work, his time has past.

Unfortunately one might think that “I didn’t get it”. Well let’s just say that I felt that I could have rented myself out to many groups of perplexed audience members as a guide to the action. I have no special talent – I’d say, judging by the mystified chatter, that 1 out of 6 people could actually follow the plot – not that this ability is the “end all” in movie appreciation. I still don’t know what happens in the last 1/5 of “2001” – but like the film. No, this is a more basic failure. “Shutter Island” is all dressed up – with absolutely nowhere to go. The endless music swells, superb acting, wonderful set design fail to mask that this pudding “lacks a theme”; or maybe it’s the potpourri of themes: The parallels between the protagonist’s crime and the perceived wrongdoing of others; the links between the Nazis in his mind and the actions of 1950s psychiatry; the line between cop and criminal – yep… check, check, check…. Ahhhhh what a bore it all is – I’m actually looking forward to one of Scoresese’ contemporaries newest production. Yeah I know he’s a rapist – but as someone who actually experienced the holocaust he’s smart enough not to drag it into a B movie. It used to be that when Scorsese asked the question “You talkin’ to me?”. It produced a shutter – now it’s just polite nod. Yep.

Avatar (2009)

More Art, Less Matter


It would be difficult to miss the hoopla surrounding the new James Cameron feature. The man who re-sunk the Titanic, creating as much buzz as the original trans-Atlantic tragedy, has delivered his chef d’oeuvre: “Avatar” – a vast science fiction epic using the latest and greatest special effects money can buy. And money certainly was spent: $300 million production cost sans advertising. This is ironic, as the era of the HUGE budget special effects feature seemed to be heading the way of the Soap Opera. The success of “Paranormal Activity”, which was produced for less than $100,000 and grossed $150 million, seems to signal the future of the film business. The traditional movie theater is becoming as anachronistic as a newspaper.

It is hard to imagine a studio chief “green lighting” this budget-busting project in light of overall box-office carnage due to the endless small screen entertainment alternatives. The same executives employed this strategy in the 1950s with the advent of another small screen: the television. That decade saw the heretofore-static movie house “improved” with wondrous innovations such as growing screens (cinema-scope, cinarama) and outdoor settings (the studios got behind the Drive-In). There was also the development 3-Dimensional films. Well past is present: Mr. Cameron’s brave new world is delivered in a highly specialized updated version of: 3 D. (Note: I saw the 2 D version). Bigger wasn’t better. Cinamax, a technology rooted in these 1950s innovations, has had some lasting success but it’s impact on the “average” movie theater experience has been negligible. “The plays the thing” would be closer to what has traditionally drawn people to the boxoffice. Good writing, acting and directing ALWAYS trumps technology.

Cameron’s “Avatar” is very impressive. Even in the traditional format the experience is extraordinary. This is a magical world; unfortunately it fails to be a magical film. The disconnect lies in Cameron’s visionary lack of vision in understanding his own strength. This director’s best work “Aliens” and “The Terminator” exhibit co-screenwriter credits. But when the director assumes total control of the screenplay the results are “The Abyss” and “The Titanic”. Cameron should take a cue from Ridley Scott, who directed both “Bladerunner” and “Alien”. These works are the most influential sci-fi blockbusters of the latter half of the 20 century. Scott never pretended to be a writer. He focused his abilities on telling the story in a fashion that literally set standards for decades after the films’ debuts. Ironically Cameron’s sequel to Scott’s “Aliens” is a stronger film… but not as groundbreaking. Cameron egotistical need to be a self-contained “auteur” has weakened the impact of his work. Ironically the mega-hit “The Titanic” assured the money-men that Cameron could handle the task of writing and well as directing. It’s a dangerous thing for artists to judge the impact of their work merely by initial box-office reaction. “Kung Fu Panda” was the third highest grossing feature in 2008…. it is doubtful a sentient mammal would consider it the third best film.

“Avatar”’s story centers around a paraplegic soldier who steps in for his older brother, a scientist, on a complex mission where he will inhabit the body of an alien. The basic idea revolves around identity. Cameron deserves praise for having a wheelchair-bound protagonist. This is certainly a first for the sci-fi action adventure genre. Kudos as well for giving the self-discovery narrative a new dimension: IN ADDITION to wrestling with the ghost of his brother he is finding his way as an alien in another culture. Great start. Unfortunately Cameron’s mastery of spectacle cannibalizes character and storyline. His other world is very familiar in an unintentional way: the multi-million dollar landscape is chockablock with airport novel heroes who would seem more at home on daytime TV. There are the valiant magical colored people attacking evil big-business. The tough kind-hearted female scientist pitched against the ruthless bloodthirsty commander who in turn answers to the feckless corporate lackey. Cameron tries to gloss over the thin dramatic structure by throwing in a few one-liners indicating he honestly believes he’s making a parable about current politics. Anyone old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes would see the irony of a major studio insider spending hundreds of millions to launch a crunchy pro-luddite anti-corporate screed. In listening to him on the promotional tours it would seem he is sincere in believing he is a thinker and a writer. “Avatar” proves otherwise. There was an air of bragging in his revelation that it only took him 3 weeks to create the script. Given the final product, 2 days would have been sufficient (without an all-nighter). A major plot point, greedy anti-environmental interest attacking the sacred holy tree where the good guys live, appears in Wes Anderson’s “The Fabulous Mr. Fox”. Perhaps Cameron was inspired by the source material for Anderson’s work – a Roahld Dahl novel. Actually this in unlikely as Dahl and Anderson seem to possess something completely absent from Cameron’s epic – a sense of humor.

Cameron is a virtuoso with the tech – it is easy to be stricken with vertigo on the mountainscapes or be wowed by the realism of the invented language of the alien race – created by a PhD in linguistics especially for this project. The father of the new tongue was on set, and available to the actors settle questions of grammar and syntax. One wonders if the father of “Avatar” was jealous? There were probably other experts paid vast sums: anthropologists, botanists, programmers, architects, product designers…. How unfortunate the master of the Universe failed to hire a script doctor…. Or an editor. His baby wails for nearly 3 hours. One can feel that it took nearly 15 years for Cameron to bring his creation to the screen, post his 3 weeks of banging out the script. He suffered for his baby – and now you’re gonna. In the end there is a parable unfolding: Great powerful men conspiring to spend vast sums to re-conquer a lost audience. They are employing failed strategies from mid-century. “Shower them the most expensive interconnected, computer-driven extravaganza since Ben Hur!!!!!!” The audience has a limited attention span and is glued to their mini-phone screens. No matter – “stuff the movie houses with a 180 minutes of slicker versions of their video game heroes!!!!!!!” Unfortunately the targets are at home hiding behind their Avatars in a world of their own creation. When will middle-aged men understand that you can’t conquer the world by shock and awe?

Star Trek (2009)

To Boldly Go....


The genius of the original series lay in it's ability to play with
issues of the day while fooling you into thinking you were merely
watching a sci-fi adventure. The commentary on race relations,
Vietnam, hippie movement, battle of sexes... all raged with the
relative safety of being in "the final frontier". Star Trek (the
movie) went where other Trek movies never went before - it was
exciting and entertaining but it left me feeling abit, well, yearning
for the zeitgeist of the original program. There was an unmistakable
pop seriousness in the TV series that went beyond mere legend and
parable. I see what you mean in terms of bringing a "Star Wars"
sensibility to the endeavor. This film was wrapped in the kind of
Arthurian, ancient tales and myths of coming of age and understanding
fate and family.... that fit nicely in the Lukas' framework. But
Rodenberry was a cop, not a mere bed-time storyteller. He wanted it
to be more than fable - he wanted you to look out your window, or at
your neighbor, or at the President, or Iraq, or Darfur, or global
warming... and think STAR TREK. I can only imagine him turning in his
grave with a film that celebrates Cowboy sensibility in the post-Bush
era. I also thought there was too much overt tribute to Star Wars -
Scotty's little green friend, the death star, the sword fight, the
escape from the monsters on the cold planet.... Kirk isn't
Skywalker... but having said all this I must confess to thinking it
the best Trek feature - but maybe that says more about the other
efforts than this one...

PS - I don't think Spock looked 137 - I'd say 326.... glad he didnt
have any accidents on the set.

Richie Havens 2009 performance in Barre Vermont

Back to the Garden

Richie Havens opened Woodstock 40 years ago screaming “Freedom”. That voice epitomized the zeitgeist of a generation where people saw the possibility of up-ending the established order. As Mr. Dylan reminded us back then; “The times they are a-changin’”. And nothing changes faster than those on the cutting edge who come to represent their time. There is a sense of awkwardness in hearing the contemporary Bob Dylan, even though he recently became one of the oldest performers to score a number one hit single. He seems to have morphed into a curmudgeon superstar with a social agenda that sits hazily in the background. He shields himself from being a “sell out” by professing he never really “bought in”. Your problem with Bob is YOUR problem – not his. Havens, on the other hand, has a genuine aura of someone who has dedicated himself to the “counter-culture”. This sounds odd given that Havens was for a time the voice of Amtrak: “Climb Aboard America!”. The spirit of the ‘60s was one of embracing individualism while adopting a communal sense of the greater good. Putting politics and history aside – Havens, the performer, embodies the best of what is meant by being “a hippie”.

It was a few degrees below zero when I entered the Barre Opera house to see the show. The crowd was a mixture of aging hippies, farmers, business people and Vermont “folk”. I was seated in back of the handicapped section and I wondered what the elderly woman was doing during Havens’ famous performance on Max Yasgur’s farm. Something told me that she would have had more in common with the New York dairy farmer than the young African American folkie from Brooklyn. But never the less here we all were – 40 years later. Havens came on stage with a very proficient accompanist Walter Parks – Havens provided the voice and percussive strumming while Parks gave the perfect solos and fill. Havens, at 68, is a towering bald presence with a grey beard which rests gently over his African or Indian tunic – he wore a brown version in ’69. Despite this sounding scruffy and exotic the whole outfit fits him as a grand presence – someone you would take note of in public as being dignified and important. You would never notice his stage partner. Parks, a quiet white hipster, is technically brilliant but there is no mistaking the main attraction – akin to Maury Muehleisen's performances with Jim Croce…. Walter knows that everyone is there to see Richie no matter how much guitar pyrotechnics he performs – but he also is aware that Richie appreciates his ability and doesn’t see him as anything less than himself. I read nothing about these two together – their relationship is revealed in the duets and body language. There is an easy effortlessness to their interactions, which speaks of something more than professionalism amongst colleagues – more akin to master craftsmen at their trade.

That voice. If you read the transcripts of Havens stage patter it would seem incoherent, random and rambling. It might be all those things but the delivery converts the banter into a soothing, restful parable. The stories are disjointed but they seem to rest on the idea that Mr. Havens is celebrating every moment of life and his warm exuberance is all encompassing. There were stories about children, his family, other folkies, aging, dying, living – but all incorporated in the warm fabric of his voice. One has the temptation of leaning back and closing your eyes – not in boredom – just a restful respite. The stage talk fits in with the music. Havens’ strong rumbling guitar has two modes: preaching “truth to power” or caressing like a lover. He can alternate moods with a flick of the wrist – unlike most popular entertainers, he has been at this for a lifetime. Walter is in the background giving the right chord or solo. His consummate studied approach blends perfectly with Haven’s strange thumb figuring bar chords (most players use the pointer finger) and quasi-slide approach to positioning the instrument on his lap – he has BOTH an upper and lower fret-board surrounding the guitar’s sound hole as he frantically strums at a 45 degree angle. The combo is a visual representation of the importance of formal training and street smarts – the sound has an exhilarating cry that has a heart in addition to a head.

Mr. Havens quietly smiles; unlike at Woodstock he now has teeth. He looks out into an audience of cold, very uncool, rural white Vermonters and says: “I’m happy to be here. At this point I’m happy to be anywhere. And we (referring to Walter as well) know that if you weren’t there. We wouldn’t be here”. Within seconds everyone is one their feet cheering on the bearded man with the weird guitar. You might not know what he means – but he means it. In these troubled times it is easy to look back at the sixties’ idealism with scorn. Mr. Havens gentle, firm resilience stands as an answer to Elvis Costello’s song-question “What’s so funny ‘bout peace love and understanding?” The contemporary Mr. Dylan might say “Maybe peace, love and understanding are silly”. Mr. Havens, however, holds firm. When he greets you by saying “peace” you know, as everyone did in Barre, that he really means it.

Harvey Milk (2009)

Milktoast Heroes

My grandmother was born when women were forbidden to vote. I was born when African Americans were legally segregated and exploited. I was a seven years old when the gay community put its foot down at Stonewall. As a middle-aged American I can say, borrowing the tag line from the first smokes broadly marketed to young women: “You’ve come a long way, baby”. Harvey Milk is a name most likely remembered by the same people who can recall “Virginia Slims” cigarettes. It’s unfortunate that Mr. Milk has fallen into obscurity. My theory is that the timing of his assassination unfortunately coincided with one of the most disquieting events in 20th Century American history. Milk was murdered on Nov. 27th 1978. Jim Jones orchestrated the Jonestown massacre on Nov. 18 the same year. To give you an idea the impact the mass suicide had on the news cycle I would note that the Dec. 4 issue of Newsweek featured a cover “special report” on “the cult of death”. Harvey was being pushed out of history before his ashes were scattered.

There is much carping about matching the struggle of the gay rights movement with the battles of the mainstream civil rights advocates. A cursory viewing of the actual black and white film footage of police raids on gay bars, which appears during the opening credits of the feature film “MILK” should put to rest any notion that this movement lacked legitimacy. The pathos of these images is strong enough that only the most hardened bigot would fail to see the inhumanity. There is no doubt that Mr. Milk should be placed alongside Malcolm X and other easily recognizable martyrs for human rights. Mr. Van Sant made the film to correct the record and give Harvey is rightful place in the mainstream collective consciousness of good men fighting for a good cause. Unfortunately the film shares the fate of Spike Lee’s bio-pic “X” in that strong performances cannot overcome poor direction and bad writing.

The paradigm American hero is George Washington, a man very, very aware of his place in history. I doubt there are any schoolchildren familiar with the red haired founding father who had no biological children and owed his wealth and standing to marrying a widow. This does not detract from Washington’s accomplishments but it does give a human touch to a personage who coolly gazes up from the one dollar bills (maybe it was the laudanum – you didn’t know?). Young America, still somewhat awed by European aristocracy, adopted the notion that national heroes need to be heroic beyond their recognized accomplishments. “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” is chock-a-block with advice on frugality, humility, hard work, honesty… even tips on bathing… Is it any wonder that a century and half latter two young American boys from immigrant families would create the culmination of the George Washington ideal: SUPERMAN. It is unfortunate that Truth, Justice and the American Way gives us little humanity in our pantheon of national heroes. MLK has become tepid… no room for his attitudes regarding economic egalitarianism, his family difficulties or his short-comings as a scholar…. Once again the truth of MLK’s doesn’t detract from his greatness – in fact I would argue the opposite. Just as the lies Samuel L. Jackson repeated in the pre-inauguration ceremony about Rosa Park’s ordinariness take away from this daring activists role as the spark that ignited the conscious of a nation. She certainly did get on the bus to get arrested AND I SAY BRAVO!

Who was Harvey Milk? I’m sure of few things in life but one of them is that he wasn’t the selfless, affable, earnest, edgeless do-gooder depicted in Mr. Van Sant’s work; despite Sean Penn’s efforts. How could he be? The last person I saw who resembled that person was the leading character in the original production of Godspell. There are hints of something more human in the storyline: the failed relationships, the lover’s suicide, the unbridled ambition and, most interestingly, the taped recording “to be played if I am assassinated”. Now here is someone who possesses our Founding Father’s sense of scripting a place in history. His ability to swap a pony-tale for a three piece suit also gave a hint at something darker – it is difficult in the early 21st century to convey the significance of trimming the locks (see David Crosby’s song “Almost Cut My Hair”). It raises an interesting question about degree of compromising involved in winning. The other aspect, glossed over in the film, was Milk’s war on “being closeted”. I don’t know if Harvey actually “outed” someone without their permission but once again the significance of his stance was pummeled over in the TV movie sensibility of keeping our hero on his journey to martyrdom.

In terms of the writing and direction the closing scene post Harvey’s demise sums up the effort: two of his close aids arrive at a city hall remembrance ceremony soon after the assassinations. It is in the foyer of the solemn marble building and it is sparsely attended - one turns to the other "Doesn't anyone care?" - they leave in disgust..... They walk outside and "discover” a candle-lit parade of 30,000 crying mourners. Guess they missed everyone on the way in? Didn’t hear about the march? I don’t remember the scenes where these two aides were cut out of the loop; ditto from them suffering from severe visual or audio impairment. But I guess that’s “artistic license” – just like the stop action of Harvey locking eyes with the poster of Verde Opera woman as he falls (it was soon over after the fat lady sang). The mainstream stereotype of the gay community is a group obsessed with fashion and style. Mainstream television shamelessly plays on this notion in “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”. It is weird and ironic that “Milk” is so, well, “straight”. This is blandest most mainstream production of an alternative lifestyle you will ever experience (actually there is the movie “Philiadephia”). It is as if the Walt Disney company created a theme park called Queerworld. In short the film was too “straight”.

Aside of the artistic camp there was a more insidious side to the Milk show. The producers decided that they didn’t want to associate the film with the Prop 8 anti-Gay marriage proposal that was circulating in CA at the time of the film’s scheduled release. This was a conscious decision and had nothing to do with production issues. The irony here is that, if one is to believe the film (a dubious choice) the crowning achievement of Milk’s career was his leading the DEFEAT of the anti-Gay workplace proposition brought forth by Anita Byrant. The director noted in an interview “Harvey would have opened it in October”. Well we can hope the producers had some sort of strategy in mind that didn’t involved soft-peddling the very principles of the principle. Maybe they figured if Prop 8 won the film would garner an even larger stage – Sean Penn will win best actor and I’ve no doubt that the film will garner more statues than the competition. It looks like the plan, if that’s what it was, is working. Maybe it’s a tribute to Harvey’s pragmatic side – let’s not consider the alternative.

The Dark Knight (2008)

Our Dark Knight

“The Dark Knight”, the newest Batman film, broke box office records this weekend. The tragic death of Heath Ledger months prior to the opening certainly spawned a certain morbid curiosity regarding the film. Images of Ledger’s Joker appeared on the Net within days of his demise. It was more than a publicity ploy – Ledger is the movie. The film revolves around the not so merry prankster. It’s worth the price of admission but one can’t help feeling some regrets that this Swan Song wasn’t set in a different pond. I’m not referring to the fact that this Gotham is Chicago – even if they’d done it right by using the Big Apple, the flaws are more than geographic.

It’s all very slick. There are marvelous supporting actors (Morgan Freeman, Michael Cain…) and the modernist slant on Gotham and the Bat-cave were ingenious. No cramped quarters amidst Depression era squalor – we’re in an endless sea of Seagram’s buildings – this Batman lives in Architectural Digest. It works. The props were equally impressive – loved the Mad Maxish cycle and the up-armored Hummer Bat-mobile. And lets not forget the make-up & costumes. This Joker is a homage to Clockwork Orange and PT Barnum; the caped crusader is GQ cool in-and-out of his cowl – couldn’t get enough of that endless wind-flapping curtain-like cape. Unfortunately the writers had too much wind and the director seemed to blow in the breeze of FX fun. The mechanics overwhelmed the driver.

There is talk about this being a meditation on our current regrettable political state. The dramatic team comes out on the side of the rule of law vs. the rule of order. Having just seen “Batman Begins” they still are on the side of Dirty Harry in “Magnum Force” and not Dirty Harry in “Dirty Harry”. Well unfortunately they didn’t quite strike the meditative balance of Fritz Lang’s “M”. The bottom line is the sermon must fit within the dramatic framework. In this case too much weight was laid on a cumbersome love triangle. It wasn’t the actors’ fault, Batman, the DA and the Assistant DA all hit their marks – but you can’t do ballet when the band is playing a polka. Did you believe anyone was smitten with anyone? Once again they all gave it their best shot – but this Love Boat never left the harbor.

Maybe I’m being abit hard – hey what’s wrong with a slick production that tries to rise above the fray and actually say something. Well good intentions can only go so far and this political season I’ll reserve my “Yes We Can” feel good spirit for real politics. Let comic books be… well comic books. Villains need to cackle and good guys need to muster the forces of righteousness just in time to save the lady tied to the saw-mill. The righteousness arrived, albeit it was a busy last half hour. There was plenty of cackling and Ledger’s last performance was indeed memorable – although I really think John Malkovitch nailed this sort of character in “In the Line of Fire”. But at least Ledger wasn’t burdened with being one of the sides of that triangle. Alas he was forced to showcase the writer’s unfortunate habit of giving lines to the character that should have remained director’s notes. I think the Joker is everything he said he was but I don’t think he would have said he was. It’s the same problem Hannibal Lector had in the sequel to “Silence of the Lambs”. In the first film he was Hannibal but in “Hannibal” he was the idea of Hannibal. That film was ingenious, clever, well researched but intellectual summersaults are for the brain and not the heart. Same goes for “The Dark Knight”: We needed more of the dashing DA metamorphosing into the Portrait of Dorian Gray. It’s absurd. It’s over the top. But… it worked. Kudos to Aaron Eckhart; a lesser actor might not have understood how much ham to put in the sandwich. Gary Oldman was equally impressive as the battled hardened cop exhibiting the importance of being earnest. Yes they’re campy but hey THIS IS A COMIC BOOK… women really faint and yes the villain always blink their eyes…. Let’s not discuss motivation or make incisive commentary about current events.

Once again I’m being picky. Lay your $7.50 (or more) down, sit back and look for the signal of the bat in the sky. He’ll come. He’s everything a 21st century batman should be. Morgan Freeman channels James Bond’s Q and delivers enough jabber about the technical side of the Bat-gizmos to make any child of the Wacky Pack generation think: well they probably have stuff like that for Special Forces… More importantly he’s what we crave in W’s second term: a rich. Handsome, corporate tycoon, void of arrogance, saddled with doubt, wrestling with his social conscience and channeling everything into a magic machine to crush the evil doers. It’s enough to make you believe in a smart, good looking, ambitious Chicago politician who doesn’t believe in politics.

Juno (2008)

Inconceivable

The hot independent film this year is “Juno”, a comedy about teenage pregnancy. It is possible to humorously dramatize hot button material. It requires diplomatic sensitivity in drawing the fine line of propriety. Cutting edge comedy often bleeds rather than tickles. In this case it was simply repellent. It is interesting to note that “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days”, this year’s critically acclaimed Romanian film, is also a comedy centered on an unwanted pregnancy. I haven’t seen it. I’ve heard good things. Unfortunately after all the kudos about "Juno" I couldn't make it through the second half.

This film is not funny. The bun-holder is smug, starlet who’s slumming it as a blue collar outcast. I sense in real-life she’s the kind of red-carpet strutter who chews threw personal assistants like M&Ms. No doubt she’ll be successful – at least for 15 minutes – but that might be enough to put some green under the mattress. The unfunniness is credited to one Diablo Cody. In this case your Sunday school teacher was right at least as far as the Devil’s abilities as a writer are concerned. The director, Jason Reitman, keeps the show on the road in a TVish linear storyline way. The main question: was this merely a gig or did he actually think this was funny? I had heard good things about “Thank You For Smoking” but then again word of mouth this one was strong. I guess since I haven’t been much of a devil’s advocate I should charge him as a co-conspirator in Ms. Cody’s preguation comedy. Getting into the details of their crime would be the equivalent of critiquing the opening sequence of "Threes Company" or analyzing Pat Sajack's interview techniques. Do most young teenage girls joke around with the Deli-man about their predicament after "failing" the pregnancy test in public bathroom? HA HA HA - the laughs are just starting everybody - we're only two minutes past the opening credits.

Maybe my funny bone is broken but I would advise all "Juno" fans to view the following: “Citizen Ruth” as how to handle unwanted pregnancy in a clever manner; and “Ghostworld” as a brilliant portrait of young female outsiderness. There have been people saying this is another “Little Miss Sunshine”. No. That was a well executed road film with sympathetic characters. They were genuine American Family odd-balls, the filmic descendants of “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”. “Juno” has its stylistic roots in forgettable "issue oriented" TV movies – I remember one that brought up the scourge of husbands who are physically abused by their wives. I had a deep belly laugh the whole two hours – unlike my experience in “Juno”. It takes a fair about of mediocrity to force me to abandon the warm movie theater at the hight of a New England Winter before the closing credits. It was inconceivable. In the end: the Diablo made me do it.

There Will Be Blood (2007)

Stealing the Show

The American Woodsman is interested in nothing. Any notion of sensitivity is foreign to him. Those boughs so elegantly sprouted by nature, the fine foliage, the bright color that enlivens a part of the forest, the deeper green that darkens another part – all this means nothing to him. He has no memories to call upon in any particular place. His only thought is for the number of ax-strokes required to chop down a tree. He has never planted anything; he does not know such pleasures. Any tree he might plant is worthless to him, because he will never see it sufficiently large to be chopped down. Destruction is what keeps him alive. Destruction is everywhere; hence every place suits him. He cares nothing for the field where he has done his work, because his work is only toil and no idea of sweetness is associated with it. What emerges from his hands does not pass through all the stages of growth that so touch the farmer’s heart. He does not follow the destiny of his products. He does not know the pleasure of new ventures. And so long as he does not forget to take his ax with him he has no regrets about leaving the spot he has dwelled in for years.

-Talleyrand, Memoirs on the Commercial relations between the United States and England, April 4, 1797

Last night I saw Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” – a searing character study of an early 20th century oil entrepreneur. This morning I read the cover story of the NYT business section regarding the feud between Maurice Greenberg, the creator of the world’s largest insurance company, and his heir apparent. It seems that the protagonist is alive and well. This is not a criticism of Mr. Greenberg so much as a compliment to Mr. Anderson’s prescience in telling this story at this time. Americans prefer to think of themselves as optimistic do-gooders and we extend this veneer to business. Our Gospel is simple: capitalism is the bulwark against evil. It is ironic that our patron saint, George Washington, a formidable real-estate entrepreneur who had the good sense to marry a wealthy widow, fails to be honored for his business acumen. There is something about maximizing profit. Even the most ardent pious patriot knows that this preoccupation bears a resemblance to the pursuit of forbidden fruit. We watch television shows about doctors, lawyers and policeman who strive for truth justice and the American way. Imagine a drama featuring bankers, stockbrokers and entrepreneurs? Our heroes might lose their luster discussing a cost benefit analysis of the latest baby-food. How about a frank talk about the pay-day loan business? (Maybe an episode where the bosses target young soldiers going off to war?) I had a friend who worked for a used car dealer. He saw his mentor sell a worthless car to an elderly customer. The novice pressed his elder about the transaction. The boss sagely quoted scripture that extolled the virtues of Eve’s friend from the tree: “Be as wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove” (Matthew 10:16). Our good book is focused on the “bottom line”. No doubt our first President took this to heart. His first job was as a surveyor. Washington was virtuous but he also knew that the pie needed to be divided.

Anderson’s anti-hero is the embodiment of the division that is in America’s blood. Daniel Plainview divides things: earth from oil, families from themselves and his share from everyone else’s. This film is based on the early 20th century writer Upton Sinclair’s “Oil”. Sinclair is better known for his, literally gut-wrenching expose of the meat packing industry (“The Jungle”). I haven’t read “Oil” but given the film I’d say Plainview would have been equally at home selling adulterated cows to orphans. Audiences might not be able to stomach him as a weekly series (although we did have J.R. Hewing) but as a special feature – he’s a treat to watch. This film is really the Daniel Day Lewis show. Without doubt this is one of the best films in awhile but given Mr. Anderson’s previous work (Hard 8, Boogie Nights, Magnolia) I am holding him to a higher standard. The director is, in contrast to his star, out of top form. There are glimmers of brilliance. The scene in which Plainview’s son confronts him after being exiled is magnificently executed in a long shot. Ditto for the staging of Plainview’s fake conversion. The choice of having him confront the preacher out of ear-shot prior to returning to the pews is equally masterful. But the overall effect is Lewis’ star burning amongst set-piece performances, startling under-drawn foil characters and a drab unmusical background.

Mr. Anderson has a track record that showcases a wonderful ability to manage a parade of virtuoso performances in poignant, carefully sculpted American landscapes. In “Blood for Oil” he seems to have lost himself in Mr. Lewis. It’s understandable. This is one of the great film performances of all time. Given Mr. Anderson’s writing/directing, credit must be due. However there is strong imbalance to the work as a whole. On paper this is a film contrasting Mr. Plainfield with a host of luminaries with a distinctly American flavor. There is the distant looming “big oil” – the free market entrepreneurs who are further down the road to salvation. There is the vain preacher and his foolish flock – on the wrong road – they could be plucked from an unpublished Mark Twain story. There is beloved/hateful son who rises from silent shadows of the sins of the father. Yet Anderson, like his protagonist, has a myopic fatalism. If Plainfield’s downfall is “oil”; Anderson’s is Plainfield himself. This sounds strange. How could a tour de force performance undermine a film? The problem lies in Plainfield being framed by his surroundings. It has been said that “no man is an island” – well the same holds true for actors. The LA milieu of “Boogie Nights” or “Magnolia” stands in stark contrast to the dreary bleakness of Plainfield’s world. The sounding of an artistic portrait should never be mistaken for the note it is trying to strike. The director’s job is to bring majesty to the grimness. Lewis gloriously renders hard-nosed, bitter, striving desperation. Anderson thought that was enough. His previous work gives us WORLDS of appalling desperadoes; not simply one single individual. “There Will be Blood” gives us the jewel of Mr. Lewis’ performance in a cardboard box. With the exception of his young son the secondary cast was forgettable. The portrayal of the landscape was equally mediocre – contrast to the “Days of Heaven”. There was equally a surprising lack of music. How about a Woody Guthrie dust bowl ballad from 1937:

Oh, if you ain't got the do re mi, folks, you ain't got the do re mi,
Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see;
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot
If you ain't got the do re mi.

Although thematically perfect it is chronologically inaccurate. I’m sure a clever musicologist could find a period appropriate ballad echoing the themes of the film. But Mr. Anderson wasn’t looking. Perhaps he thought it might cloud the hardscrabbleness. Mr. Lewis sure makes up for all the shortcomings. He struck a gusher. I’m just disappointed Anderson wasn’t able to cap it. I listened to Anderson speak about the choice of subject matter. He wanted to make a political statement that was so profound as to rise above politics. Unfortunately people will savor Lewis’ dazzling virtuosity and not the implications of the story. The proof is in the pudding. In the New York Times piece about the bitter, vicious internecine struggle over the fate of Mr. Greenberg’s AIG insurance company – the reporter made reference to Greek Tragedy; but not Anderson’s work. That’s the real tragedy of “There Will Be Blood”.

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Beep, Beep

Imagine you’re invited to a gourmet’s Thanksgiving Dinner. This person can cook. You’ve previously experienced their meals. It’s maybe not to your liking at times but there’s no doubt this person is a foodie. They know their stuff. The spread is laid and you’ve sampled some sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce – so far so good. The cook comes out with the central attraction and starts carving. You can’t wait. Instead of serving up the bird the chef delivers a soliloquy about how Thanksgiving has changed. People don’t cook the way they used to… the holiday is too commercial… they’ve forgotten the meaning… You know the speech. You patiently wait through all the talk in anticipation of the feast. The cook/host abruptly ends the heartfelt blabber and takes the bird back into the kitchen… never to return. This is how I felt watching the Coen brothers’ “No Country for Old Men”.

Cormac McCarthy chronicles the Southwest in the same spare sympathetic yet unsentimental way Springsteen paints New Jersey. The desolate landscape is peopled with beaten souls who have heart. “All the Pretty Horses”, part one of the border trilogy, purposely disposed of apostrophes as if quotes someone seemed pretentious in a book about broke cowboys and broken horses. It was a very exciting prospect: the sparse “down and dirty” writing combining with the smart craftsmanship of Joel and Ethan. I was looking forward to this as I’d heard that the brothers were returning to the roots of their debut film.

I remember the buzz about “Blood Simple”. The boys made a big splash with a very tightly crafted slick film noir thriller. There was enough dazzle to show Hollywood they could play ball balanced with a smartness that kept the black-clad urban sophisticates inline. I remember hearing “They went to Princeton”. Half true – one of them did. But the real issue is that they did their homework. “Barton Fink” was a meditation on what sparks a writer’s ideas (or doesn’t). It was well crafted with all aspects of the production fueling the angst of creation. The choice of the Hollywood screenwriter was balanced with references to real events… It was clever, popular, well received and I couldn’t stand it. I thought it was a bore. BUT I’d never say it wasn’t well done. Hats off to any director who is able to tame the mainstream movie making behemoth to bow to his wishes. These brothers have kept it up for decades and have a body of work that stands up.

Ironically “Blood Simple” was, after all these years, my favorite. For me that film highlighted the brothers’ ability riff on the motion of filmmaking. Little moments. Beads of sweat telling stories. A flash of stark headlights illuminating what might take a pulp writer ten pages to describe. Coen brothers’ have the ability to dance as well. Think of “Raising Arizona” or the “Hudsucker Proxy” – the frenetic movement gliding through scenes… “No Country for Old Men” had an auspicious start born of pure simplicity: who has the goods? It might be hard to build an interesting novel on such a simple idea. Novels have a need for endless subplots and ruminations – even Cormac McCarthy’s. Films can meditate and ferment on even the most threadbare storylines. When this film focused on the simple chase it worked. The brothers’ should have remembered the lesson from another dramatic figure who roamed the Southwest: “Roadrunner”- he was never allowed to leave the road. If he could roam anywhere – how could Wile E. Coyote lay traps? In this case the roadrunner starts drifting and Wile E. Coyote starts talking. The novel’s dramatic anchor was most likely the Tommy Lee Jones’ character. The crux of his struggle was his perceived loss of the utopian world. The film is chalk full of Tommy reminiscing about the good ole days. Maybe the radical historian Howard Zinn should have stepped and explained that the reason those old guys never carried any guns: their father’s had already done the dirty work – there were no more Mexicans and Indians left to kill. Or maybe an anthropologist could have stepped in and discussed the destruction of the Anasazi people and the controversy over suspected cannibalism in the centuries before the European. No Tommy it wasn’t all that pretty way back when, but more to the point – who cares?

You don’t go to see a Coen brothers’ film for enlightenment – its about entertainment. Where was the humor of “The Big Lebowski” or “Fargo”? There were brief moments when Tommy and his dummy deputy almost had something going – but I guess Tommy figured “this is serious business”. It’s too bad. What about Woody? Not that one – Woody Harrelson. He looks promising as a super cool bad boy – but he makes an early-unexpected exit – sort of inline with the rest of the film’s dramatic movement. The directors’ exhibit the uneasiness of treating McCarthy’s book as merely an action film by showing the aftermath of great battles. Even one of the central protagonist’s demise is treated as a after-thought. We view the deed already done as if to say – this movie is about more important things. Well, the book might have been. The film begged for less talk and more suitcase shuffling or pitched pick-up battles. Someone should have told Tommy Lee that he wasn’t the center of the pizza. That honor goes to Javier Bardem. If there is any definitive winner in this project it is former Rugby player/journeyman actor from Spain. This is a mainstream breakthrough role that will get him out of the art-houses and into the multiplexes. Bardem limits the philosophy to a coin toss and a glare from his Picasso eyes. It’s all you need. He’s funny-terrifying and speaks to the Coen brothers weird melding of the off-beat and mainstream. He’s could be in a Scorsese film or Friday 13. If only the Coen brothers could have understood that the book should have been a springboard for a chase movie. It’s not as glamorous as being deep but filmically, their ain’t no water in the desert.

What’s wrong with simplicity? Remember Blood SIMPLE. No one is ever tired of watching Road Runner. Keep it on the road. Who has the money? Who gonna get it? Keep them guessing. Keep them on the road. People come to a Coen brothers film for ride, a smile and maybe a gasp. Leave the brooding at Antonioni’s “Zabriskie Point” or Wim Wender’s “Paris Texas”. It’s like Thanksgiving. They may have served eagles and eels at the original meal – but that’s for historians. People want the turkey – trust me.

The Mist (2007)

The King Knows His Crowd

I went to see Steven King’s “The Mist”. Mr. King is aptly named. Over 43 of his creations have been turned into films. I’ve sat through my fair share. Ironically “The Shinning”, which I thought was the strongest, was so repellent to King that he produced is own version of the tale. I didn’t see it but I have a hard time believing he outdid Kubrick. Another of his works that made an impression: “Apt Pupil”. That film really illustrates why King is popular – it’s not us vs. the bogey men – it’s us. Behind every all American teenager lies a Nazi SS Commandant. King seems to speak from the heart in his work. It’s not that he’s a creep; he just knows, deep down, everyone is.

“The Mist” is the equivalent of a good fast food meal: competently crafted, filling and forgettable. I confess I left halfway through due to stomach troubles but I feel confident in saying “I got the picture”. Once again its not the creepy crawlers coming out of the fog – it’s the reactions of a crowd of normal people facing “the end”. King’s motto should be: a normal person is someone you don’t know very well. The good ole people in a good ole state go to the good ole store in the good ole town and come face to face with… themselves.

King lives in Maine. I visited there once and I can vouch for the fact that “fog” in that state is the real deal. Imagine a cold steam room where you stretch out your arm and can’t see your hand. King, once again, playing on the personal, has brought all the Maine-fog anxiety to life: if you can’t see your own hand – what are you to make of the person standing in front of you? It gets really scary when there’s no fog, no abstraction, no opaqueness – just you and your unobstructed view of all the normal people. Once again King seems to have been born to tell these stories. I heard this about his childhood: When he was a toddler his mother left him to play with a friend who lived near a railroad track. The mother of the friend left them playing in the back yard. A few hours latter King was found wandering the streets of the upright, middle class neighborhood. He stood out. A beautiful young boy walking alone, covered in blood. He doesn’t remember what happened. The mother found the playmate on the tracks, dead. He’d been run over by the train. Who knows if this is merely an apocryphal story. King’s life lesson remains: It’s not the monsters in the mist; it’s the monsters in our midst.

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

Train Kept A’Rollin’


Wes Anderson specializes in the humorous and off-beat. Sometimes he’s funny, i.e. “Rushmore”, and sometimes things seem abit too off the beaten path: “The Life Acquatic”. “The Darjeeling Limited” is a road less traveled but for Anderson and co. – a very familiar path.

The American dysfunctional family is the bread and butter for most members of the Writer’s Guild and even more young novelists. It is a seemingly endless mine of poignant irony and likable anti-heroes. This latest effort by Anderson and co. centers around three brothers and their search for something. Unlike the brothers Karmazov there is no patricide in their spiritual journey. Daddy in this case is dead. Mommie has fled and the two of the brothers are unknowingly being strong-armed into a grand reconciliation quest. The setting is where all contemporary Western spiritual journeys start – from the Fab Four to Steve Jobs – get your tickets ready we’re on a train in India. Anderson is well aware of the irony and he’s clever enough to play on the absurdity of truth seeking tourists. There is some good slap-stick, a strong ensemble cast and a strong script – but it’s a long ride. Brevity really is the soul of wit. Anderson negatively proves the point.

The film had some nice moments. There is a wonderful sequence involving the brothers interacting with some villagers during a funeral: American hipsters bumbling into the Apu Trilogy – it worked. Their dislocation augmented the majesty of the locals. The images spoke. There was also a nice surrealistic sequence showing all the different players magically appearing in compartments on the train. Unfortunately things failed to stay on track. Collaboration is a two edged sword. It’s great to work with friends but how honest can you be? The first 15 minutes of this work is a short loosely connected to the feature in which one of the brothers has an encounter with his nemesis/girlfriend/wife/lover. It didn’t work. It wasn’t funny. Maybe a seasoned borsch belter like Henny Youngman should have walked into the editing room and given the auteurs some advice: Kid ya gotta hook’em from the opening line. Anderson’s unwillingness to leave more on the editing room floor makes me suspect allegiance to individual performers and writers overrode the safeguards for the film as a whole. To put it in terms of another artistic endeavor that was produced post an Indian spiritual Journey: The White Album is good – but it would have been better WITHOUT Revolution #9. One can imagine Paul shrugging and not wanting to challenge John. There might have been a similar dynamic at work behind Anderson making the following choices: Why does t the film have 3 endings? Why does Bill Murray appear? Why find the mother appear and disappear?

Owen Wilson brings an unintended poignancy to the film. His character is the anchor that assumes the role of the absent parents and tragicomically brings everyone together while tearing them apart. It is revealed in the closing of the film that the spark for the family reunion is his failed suicide. Wilson’s real-life brush with self-destruction makes for uneasy reflections about the painfulness of quiet desperation. The tabloids put the finger for his troubles on an unscrupulous druggie “friend”. Funny thing about “friends” – sometimes they don’t bring out the best in you. Let’s hope Anderson’s next feature, which is being co-written by his buddy Noah Baumbach, hits the mark. My gut tells me he needs to find some new collaborators. Sometimes the best work comes from the acrimony - ask John and Paul about their Indian adventure.

Beowulf (2007)

Out of the Dark Ages


One doesn’t usually turn to old English epic sagas from the dark ages as material for main-stream American feature films. “Beowulf” is an exception. Studio execs went out on limb and it paid off – and not just financially. My decision to see this film was based on default – not desire. I live in a rural town and I’d seen everything else. The first few minutes were rough going. Not only was I sitting through a Hollywood version of an ancient poem – IT WAS ANIMATED. I was wondering if an early exit was in order – if I left now – the local restaurants would still be serving dinner. I withstood the “bust’em up”, “blood and gore” of the opening sequence. It reminded me of a television spot that ran a few years ago for the Marines in which a dragon is slain. But the film settled down… and so did I.

Certainly the director has the younger set in mind in terms of pyrotechnics of the animation. Video games are having an effect on features – in this case it worked. “Beowulf” is in many respects a comic book from the last millennium. The issue of “realness” fades and many of the fine performers’ work pushes through the advanced graphics. But what makes things click is the writer’s clever adaptation of the story. The cornerstone of the work, the monster and his mother, are given an extra dimension in terms of their relationships with the protagonists. This in turn makes the story more than simply a testosterone-fest of bad-guy-killing. These heroes are flawed AND they are linked to the forces of doom.

This alteration to the storyline opens up this work to both the fans of “Grand Theft Auto” and “The Seventh Seal”. Let the kids marvel as bodies fly and the camera swoons. There is room for adults, who have weathered generational changes, to muse about the real conflicts afflicting Beowulf and the other nobles. Kudos should also be given to the filmmakers for presenting these characters’ ambivalence about the rise of monotheism and the Christian sensibility. This is not a stab at any faith but a recognition that not everyone at that time fell in line with the Church’s ascent. I understand this is very much a part of the original text. Many make noise about the current American films being immoral – well praise should be given when a film examines the nature of morality in an intelligent way that is approachable to many different audiences. Unfortunately many of these critics will focus on the debauchery and violence – those are only a few of the notes in this surprisingly edifying rendering of a literary classic. This film is not for the faint of heart; but those who throw stones should remember their bible. The last book certainly would merit more than a PG-13.

Lions for Lams (2007)

Lions for Lambs by Bores


Here’s a joke for you. “How do you get a turkey in a projector?”. Answer: ”Ask Robert Redford to direct it”. Attention: all those paying victims of the “Milagro Beanfield War” – the general is on the march again! Protect your hard earned admission fee and wait until it turns up on very very very late night television – you’ll have the opportunity to turn the channel. If you want to have the experience without actually viewing “Lions for Lambs” here are some instructions: round up a group of well meaning precocious 5th graders and have them write down their thoughts on Iraq, Afghanistan, Peanut Butter and life in general.

There are some unsettling mysteries surrounding this film; particularly Merly Streep’s active participation. It is difficult to know if she was a victim of some sort of extraordinary rendition – she’s not talking. I guess she figures let sleeping lions and lambs lie. Maybe there was an exchange of an extraordinary amount of money which might explain the production values or lack thereof. Tom Cruise strikes me as the kind of person who might have actually believed this was an interesting, important script. But doesn’t he have an army of handlers? There isn’t one member of the posse who could have spoken truth to power and muttered: “Tom, ah, this project is, ah, pretty fucking stupid”

The movie has three plotlines: Tom Cruise, a venal ambitious young Republican booster has a plan about a new surge strategy to win the war in Afghanistan and ultimately secure his bid for the Presidency. Tom must convince a skeptical seasoned Washington lefty reporter, Merly, that he is sincere and knows his stuff. Neither is true and she knows it but she’s getting long in the tooth and TV News ain’t what it used to be. Robert Redford himself appears as a tired old humanities prof who’s guilt ridden about inadvertently sending two minority students off to “fight the good fight”. Redford throws all his effort into convincing a brilliant rich white kid that its bad to be cynical. Then there’s the tragic story of the minority kids themselves. Have we gotten your adrenaline flowing? Just imagine all these amazing tales mixed together. Meryl’s “frustration” seems genuine as does Redford’s “old and tired”. Tom’s performance really suffers from the lack of windows to break and furniture to smash – but maybe they’ll be an Mission Impossible IV. The saint-like African American and Hispanic do there best but it’s hard to be that good and not be boring. In the end the mirror image of Step’n’Fetchit can be equally stifling creatively. It’s unfortunate that the writers created caricatures and not characters.

Redford has a few lines in here throwing barbs at the rich white kid for not getting involved. I think the student should have responded: “How could you put us in this movie! We’ll never get hired again!!! You and Tom and Meryl can afford to waste your careers on this dreck – YOU'RE ESTABLISHED! What about us! How come you didn’t hire good writers!? Don’t you run a fucking institute for young talent?! Why did you try to direct again!? You think Rumsfeld is arrogant – what about you!? Didn’t you learn anything from Milago!? How many more young actors are you going to sacrifice!?”

Dartmouth College 2007 Production of HAIR

Back to the Future


Imagine if Rip Van Winkle woke up and discovered his teenage children re-enacting his parents’ youth. My guess is that he’d want to go back to sleep. I had a similar experience returning to my alma mater and watching the drama department’s production of the seminal musical “Hair”. The twilight zone feeling started when the student usher told me her father was in a class a couple of years before mine. I waited in vain for re-assurance that I appeared much, much younger than Dad. Truth be told I remember THE ORIGINAL production of “Hair”. In fact my parents saw it staged prior to it being launched officially and my mother begged my father to financially back the production. My father wasn’t a prude but being a prudent businessman – he declined. The rest is…. I remember a very serious conversation with my best friend about the nude finale. I’d say the lack of clothes was more interesting than all the politics and drugs for the pre-tween crowd – we were 9 years old. I mentioned to the usher that Diane Keaton was in the original production and jokingly said she was a crowd pleaser in the final seen. She’d never heard of Diane Keaton. The joke, however, was really on me as this production lacked bare bodies – except for one very tightly choreographed, dimly lit scene. Staging this play without nudity is akin to mounting Macbeth with no violence. But I understand the director’s choice. This is 2007 not 1969 – this is Dartmouth College not the Public Theater – this is Iraq with a volunteer army not Vietnam with a draft. The overall effect was a disconcerting view of the past and the present.

Technically the production was strong. By and large the students dance and sang their hearts out – certainly solos should have been re-assigned, staging was off in parts… but lets not quibble – for a student production it was an “A”. But this is “Hair” and the whole point of the play is getting a good grade doesn’t matter. It’s a strange undertaking to resurrect the zeitgeist of the recent past. The students will have a much easier time with next term’s production of “Julius Caesar” – their parents didn’t actually live through the fall of Rome so they’ll be plenty of confidence with which to use their newly minted artistic licenses. The main problem with their efforts was a sense of strain. Every performer on that stage is a young person saddled with student loans, worried about AIDS and terrorized by environmental catastrophe – not to mention the two overseas wars… the struggles in “Hair” failed to measure to today’s economic and social challenges. This is not to say that the 60s youth had a walk in the park but the non-singing portion of this show has the sort boy/girl drama that would barely register with your average 7th grader. “Hair” is a reaction against the 1950s and ironically it has its roots in a fairly conventional American original – the Musical Comedy. Today’s young people don’t line up for musicals unless they happen to be in New York with their parents. Is it any wonder that these performers failed to muster an authentic sense of revolution and rage? I can only imagine the back-stage talk: so did they have health insurance back then? They’d probably have an easier time relating to a more recent youth oriented smash musical. I’m sure you’d hear some genuine cries during a rendition of: “How we gonna pay! How we gonna pay! How we gonna pay! THIS MONTH’S RENT!!!!!”

There is much talk these days about the lack of activism amongst young people and general criticism of the 1960s. “Hair” holds an interesting lens in which to view both those questions. This play originated in a landscape probably closer to present day Iran. Homosexuality was an illegal disease. Many rape laws of that period were based on the Common Law notion of woman as property. The ability of people of color to gain unrestricted access to public transportation and accommodation was a new concept. New York City and other municipalities revoked “cabaret cards” (a license to work) to many performers on the grounds of obscenity or prior narcotics convictions. Given this reality one can better feel the resonance of songs about drug-use, love and equality sung by a scantily clad multi-racial cast. It might seem quaint to a modern eye but this was cutting edge. Tom Brokaw has recently released a book about the generation after his “Greatest Generation”. In “Boomers” one of the leaders of the Columbia student uprisings talks about how “the other side won”. Certainly the rise of Ronald Reagan and new religious right has given support for this notion. It is important to point out, however, that Ronald Reagan was the first divorced President. The fact that this was a complete non-issue can be directly attributed the liberalization of mainstream notions of acceptability. It is also interesting to note that many mega-churches take their cues from 60s era music happenings rather than standard church fair of the early 20th century. The whole notion of casual dress for dining or travel is something the current generation takes for granted. It would not have been unheard of for a gentleman flying in a commercial airplane prior to 1960s to be refused a boarding pass for failing to wear a jacket and tie – there is no question such a person would be refused entry to any urban restaurant or nightclub. The effects of the “Hair” era are more than cosmetic – ask the last three Secretaries of State. Certainly the ideals of racial harmony, sexual equality, progressive attitudes about the underclass… have all fallen woefully short. But make no mistake we live in a world born of the 60s not the 50s.

The sour notes sounded by the former radical leader and others stems from a sense that our society, despite our economic and technical prowess, has regressed. There is a fondness for a simpler time. Even monsters such as Manson seem re-assuringly crazy compared to Harris & Kleilbold. The carping about “the kids” is nothing new. To people who remember a world without answering machines young people seem callow and distracted. There is no doubt all the “advances” have made for a more the over-extended, hypercompetitive America, but not dumber. Verbal and communications skills have been negatively affected but today’s 9 year old has mastered more gadgets than their predecessors – they can do more than re-program a VCR. We can bemoan their deficits but remember there are plenty who reminisce about the days when people would dress up to eat out. There is a reason our government is nervous about calling a draft. Today’s youth might not march on Washington – they’d shut down the economy via a modem from their living room. Janis, Jimi and Jim OD’ed but Kurt blew his head off. There’s a difference. Don’t mess with these kids – they won’t be dancing and singing “Let the Sunshine In”. It’s the dawning of a new age and its not Aquarius.

American Gangster (2007)

All in the Family Values

When you think of 1970s black New York drug dealers the word that comes to mind is “Superfly”. Curtis Mayfield’s composition trumps Gordon Parks’ direction in conveying the angst of “tryin’ to get over”. To quote the song: “The aim of his role was to move a lot of blow; ask him his dream – what does it mean? He wouldn’t know – ‘Can’t be like the rest’ is the most he’ll confess but the time’s running out and there’s no happiness”. Ridley Scott re-visits the mean streets of New York in the age of marshmallow shoes, wa-wa guitars, view-blocking afros and real-life home grown (not Colombian) drug dealers who would be known even to the most sheltered of Upper East side white kids. Scott’s “American Gangster” doesn’t give us “Superfly” and that is the film’s strength as well as its weakness.

All New Yorkers in the 1970s feared Nicky Barnes – the flamboyant Harlem heroin trafficker whose "Mr. Untouchable" image loomed in the tabloids in the same way "the teflon don" John Gotti would during the 1980s. Only the insiders knew of Frank Lucas. Scott’s film reveals why – Mr. Lucas was in business while Nicky was in show business. Lucas combined a Puritan work-ethic, his version of family values with street smarts and Machiavellian ruthlessness. The two kingpins cross paths in “American Gangster”. There is a workplace collegiality but Mr. Lucas makes clear that his organization is more interested in heartland values rather than “bling”. Scott paints a portrait of Lucas as a solid apprentice who carefully studied the master. Bumpy Johnson was the strong arm for the traditional mafia in Harlem and ruled the roost. Lucas learned how things were done and, more importantly, how it could be done better. He craved his mentor’s success but questioned why Bumpy needed the mob.

Lucas’s foil, Detective Richie Roberts, equally ambitious and matches Lucas’ ability to morally compartmentalize his life. Whereas Lucas makes family the bedrock of his career, Roberts loses his to neglect and philandering. Ironically both men share an inhuman devotion to their amoral “code of honor” which eventually renders the same result. Roberts’ wife, son and best friend are sacrificed on the alter of “being the best crime-fighter in the world” while Lucas does the same by “being the best drug dealer in Harlem”. Scott deserves praise for reviving the gritty New York of Abe Beame, "Shaft" and "The French Connection". It all looked right. The script, although suffering from over-exposition of Roberts material woes, was strong. The secondary casting was excellent… as was lighting, set direction, costumes… So why did the film feel, to use the words of Lucas’ mentor: “that there’s no heart in it”?

The primary problem lies in the choice of the two stars – Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. These are excellent actors who have been miscast. Crowe failed to master the accent – a startling error for someone who is usually technically flawless. More to the point – he was not convincing as the Jewish gadfly. Compare Crowe to Sean Penn in “Carlito’s Way” or Meryl Streep in “Prime”: these goyem are believable as Jewish New Yorkers. Crowe, despite heartfelt moments, failed to deliver the goods. The performance had a forced professionalism – an unspoken: “I’m doing this to establish the fact that…” Contrast this with some of the secondary players – Carla Gugino WAS the forlorn neglected wife; Ruby Dee WAS the kingpin’s mother. Crowe is merely good – it isn’t enough.

Washington’s Lucas had a subtle but equally damning defect: the hardness was flawless. No doubt there was a great deal at stake in choosing to portray a real gangster who is currently being glorified in Rap songs. One can hear activists from all sides questioning the decision of the leading African American movie star to portray an unmistakable, real-life, bad-guy who preyed on members of the community. Washington’s chooses a stony un-repentance that flattens the character. It might shield him from criticism of making Lucas out to be a weak black man – but for dramatic effect vulnerability is preferable – think of his rendition of the crooked cop in “Training Day” – that sociopath had resonance. Lucas has some of the dreariness of a monomaniacal entrepreneur. You might want to buy stock in Apple or Microsoft but how many people really enjoyed: “Pirates of Silicon Valley”? – the dramatization of Gates’ and Jobs’ rise to the top. In other words the mechanics of Washington’s steely creation of an organization that produced the best dope at the cheapest price fails to be as dramatically compelling as the story of an insecure country bumpkin who made it to the top of New York City’s drug world. In Washington’s portrayal there is anger but no real fear. There is rage but no compassion. The denouement is the scene in which Ruby Dee pleads with her son to realize “you don’t kill cops”. He is respectful but firm. She then slaps him. Here is the moment in which the mask should have fallen. This should have been the mortal blow. Here was Washington’s opportunity to give Lucas the hint of a soul. Unfortunately he let it pass and the stone-cold Lucas lived on until the closing credits.

It is interesting to note that New York Magazine ran an interview with the real life Lucas prior to the release of the film. He prattled on about “best product at the best price”. In this piece he was paired with his old nemesis/friend Nicky Barnes. Predictable, given our criminal justice system, both these murderous sociopaths are free after giving up all their compatriots. Meeting real life gangsters has the same effect of witnessing a bar-fight or watching pornography - the initial thrill quickly morphs into repulsion built on boredom. Lucas and Barnes are your typical depraved “businessmen” – with a bit of education either would have been a captain of industry making excuses about hiring child-workers, poisoning local villages, painting toys with lead, building orphanages on nuclear waste sites, making cars that explode, hiring thugs to kill union workers, turning over clients to oppressive goverments….. In this case they’re stuck with justifying a more obvious, less acceptable form of gangsterism – the street drug trade. At the heart of every successful gangster is a bore who sees violence as another strategy in the corporate tool-box. Master Lucas reveals in the interview:

“In our business, you get paid by fear. When the fear factor comes in, that’s when you start to make money. Violence is part of it. You ain’t gonna sweet talk no motherfucker”

There you have it – and if he gone to Harvard business school he might be using the phrases “skill-set”, “thinking outside the box”, “pushing the envelope”… Ironically “American Gangster” is peppered with talks about customer satisfaction, knowing your clients, building a brand, loyalty to the organization…. Kudos for Ridley Scott for taking the time to understand the heart of the beast – but dramatically speaking audiences prefer the type of thugs in “Goodfellas”, “Scarface” and “The Godfather”…. In fact it should be noted that Pablo Escobar was known for endlessly watching Marlo Brando in action. One of his prized possessions was a box set of Coppola’s masterpiece (Godfather I, II & III) – discovered in his private prison after his ignoble end. (He also had a photograph of himself dressed as Pancho Villa) Pablo died alone running on a roof-top recalling his early police escapes when he was a grave stone robber – this time he didn’t make it. He was a desperate egotist who fell into crime – a successful business genius but at heart your run-of-the-mill car thief, burglar, bank robber….. Crime is about people who lack empathy and possess an unattractive desperation – this is a major dramatic challenge. Even the most successful drug dealer of all time knew he could never compete with Hollywood’s reality. The dream-factory knows how to create bad guys who CHOOSE to be gangsters. Hollywood crime villains make their own rules without hints of being governed by the petty forces of careerism and practicality.

Which brings me back to “Superfly”. Show business is about myth – about a shaped reality that delivers escape. “Superfly” rules the 70s New York drug world because he was what Nicky Barnes wanted to be: the noble, flashy anti-hero – aware of his desperation and vulnerability. Frank Lucas really wanted to be head of a Fortune 500 company – the film even has him quip about the lack of opportunity on Wall Street – its tongue and cheek BUT.... This might be “real” but that’s not the kind of gangster audiences pay to see. Flashy romantic desperados are the real ticket – remember the song: “‘Can’t be like the rest’ is the most he’ll confess but the time’s running out and there’s no happiness”. Its impossible to imagine Denzel “trying to get over” – his thought it all through and made calculated choices based on the highest return. It might make for good business – but not good show business. Everyone feels the heavy hand of corporate rule - we wish to believe our gangsters are immune.

King Kong (2007)

The Kong Show

I am old enough to remember the last attempt. Mr. DeLaurentis, the larger-than-life producer, took advertisements out in the NY tabloids asking people to come down to the World Trade Center for a reaction shot of Kong’s death. I recall there was a hullabaloo about him breaking up the concrete at the base of one of the Trade Towers where they placed Kong’s body. Jessica Lang, the new Hollywood ingénue, played Faye Ray’s part. Aside of Ms. Lange and trying to see my friends in the closing sequence (none appeared) the 1970s “updated” Kong was forgettable. Mr. Jackson seems to have shared my reaction. This “Kong” is a homage to the original 1933 production.

It is interesting that Jackson marks this work as a primary influence. Being close to Jackson’s age I remember my first viewing of the original Kong left me cold. Sure it was exciting to watch the iconic ape in action but the scratchy dialogue and stop-action stuttering made the film difficult for 70s New York kid to fully appreciate. We were children of Star Wars and the black & white monsters from the Depression era seemed hokey. Yet Jackson saw something profound beneath the musty scenery. One can imagine this young New Zealander hunched before a pre-color TV or riveted to a fold out chair in a school gym watching a 16mm print of the giant ape battle the forces of modernity in pre-VHS Kiwiland.

What sparked Mr. Jackson’s worship of this weatherworn classic? Why did the man who could choose anything decide to remake this particular beast? Given Mr. Jackson’s beginnings as a low-budget horror film creator the idea of tackling the granddaddy of cinematic monsters is natural. But a look at Jackson’s roots reveals that “the plays the thing” rather than the beast itself. The story of King Kong revolves around a self-created meglomananical filmmaker. In fact Jack Black, the film’s rakish villain, might consider Jackson a benevolent fellow-traveller. Jackson, a small town film-buff working in a camera shop, marshaled armies of friends and neighbors over weekends to create his first feature (titled Bad Taste) which revolved around aliens abducting a small town to be the main course in their inter-stellar fast food chain. This was followed by Braindead in which a mother turns into a cannibal that even George Romero might consider “over the top”. Jackson might not share Jack Black’s lack of morals but they are certainly kindred spirits whose beginnings lurk in the neitherworld of showbusiness.

Jackson found his “Kong” in the film adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ fairytale masterpiece. Kudos to the film executive who recognized in Jackson’s early work an ability to create fantasy “by any means necessary”. C.S. Lewis can worry about highbrow elements of story and references to history and ages past – Mr. Jackson was there to put on a show. His abounding spirit combined with heretofore unlimited resources produced the block-buster of blockbusters. Jack Black, on the other hand, never found a way to tame his monster-hit and created a real-life blockbuster. This monster not only destroyed New York City but Mr. Black’s new found respectability.

In a sense Jackson’s King Kong is two separate films: one is a pyrotechnical display of Jackson’s ability as a horror/action-adventure filmmaker; the other film is a meditation on the blinding price of success. As an action film Jackson certainly delivers the goods. The director has taken fight scenes to a new plane – literally. Whereas traditional protagonists battle back and forth – Jackson’s fight up and down as well. This has become a popular device in kung fu movies and although Jackson might not be the first to employ this technique – he certainly knows how to use it. Kong is literally all over the place - slaying scores of never-ending monsters from ALL DIRECTIONS. The backdrops are always breathtaking and sublime – whether at the pinnacles of the mountains or the nadir of the valley. The natives, however, were a problem – not that they weren’t restless. They were too restless. As a New Zealander Mr. Jackson probably shares a European sensibility regarding race relations. Its not that people across the pond are more racist but they consider American’s to be hysterical with regards to cultural differences. Call me over-sensitive but the group of black-as-night, spear-throwing, bone-threw-the-nose savages were too reminiscent of vile stereo-types of native cultures. I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more discussion of this depiction. It probably lies in the fact that Jackson genuinely meant no harm and the root of this portrayal lies in a hyped-up version of the original. Given the fact that this was the age of Stepinfechit I think Mr. Jackson should have come up with a different approach. This, however, does not take away from the over-all success in portraying a fantasy world of natural monster demons. Even before arriving on the Island itself the “sturm and drang” of the boat against the rocks showed Jackson the director fully in control of his game.

The meditative sections of the film are in a sense the heart of the matter. We know Jackson can juggle and spit-fire but how does he tackle heart-felt drama without C.S. Lewis’ breadth of knowledge regarding the human condition? Is Jackson merely a technician/showman or can he make us think? The key test lies in the feelings towards the monster. Were the bullets flying out of the fighter planes striking something more than Kong? I found myself thinking about human’s relationship with animals and felt genuine sorrow at the death of Ann Darrow’s companion. Jackson’s Kong, more than the ancient original (certainly more than DeLaurentis’) rose above being an icon of terror and became a tragic love-struck anti-hero. This Kong didn’t merely exist – he lived, loved and died. The re-creation of Depression-era New York was flawless. The human actors were all strong. So when the giant ape hits the pavement all is in place for Jack Black to deliver his famous camp line: “Twas beauty killed the beast”.

The message struck a cord because you know in your heart of hearts Jack is lying. The beast wasn’t a beast and beauty certainly wasn’t the cause of his demise. Jackson is pointing at – Jack Black/himself. It is ironic that the character Jack Driscoll, the writer, played by a very talented Adrien Brody, disappears into the scenery. This is not a film about writers and this really isn’t, despite the many action sequences, a film for children. This is a film about doers. The kind of people who come out of nowhere from some down-under part of the world and make their mark in the big city. This is Jack Black’s movie. This is a man at the top of his game looking at the world and realizing that fulfilling your dreams without regard to an understanding of the more fundamental laws (of nature, of God…) is pure folly. Business is business but business is NOT everything.

The word is that the film is not living up to the monumental financial expectations. But I’m sure Jackson isn’t really thinking about the other entertainment moguls and money men. He made a labor of love and I’m sure he’s more concerned with the natives on his small island and his wife – whom has co-wrote all of his films. It’s a wonderful thing to create a monster – it’s more important to know how to control him. If Jack Black only knew. I get the sense that the man who made this film still stays in touch with the people next door who carried the scenery for his first feature. That is surely something Jack Black would never do.

Schindler's List (1993)

Steven Spielberg is the undisputed leader of popular cinema. He has been responsible for a number of the highest grossing pictures ever made (E.T., Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Close Encounters of the Third Kind). Although his work has been accepted by the public, critics and peers have been less approving. They have labeled his films saccharine, pandering and derivative.(An Andrew Lloyd Weber of the silver screen). Mr. Spielberg tried to heighten his standing by turning to adaptations of recognized books (i.e. The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun). The jury was still unimpressed. Their continued disapproval did not escape Mr. Spielberg. A few years back he even made a public allusion to his feeling slighted by the Academy. (Ironically it was while he received the Irving Thalburg Award). To this day (1/24/94) he has not received an Academy Award but all that could change on March 21 starting at 6PM (West Coast Time). Mr. Spielberg's two current releases show him maintaining his ability to produce mindless box office blockbusters, Jurassic Park, while still pursuing the artistic recognition he feels he deserves, Schindler's List. Mr. Spielberg has, once again, turned to an award winning book for his material. This film, however, stands apart from his other "serious" works. Empire of the Sun was forgettable except for the marvelous recreation of pre-Communist China. The Color Purple was simply forgettable. Schindler's List demonstrates that Mr. Spielberg is capable of producing work with staying power.

Technically Schindler's List is flawless. The attention to detail in costuming and scene-design made the setting altogether convincing. Re-creating the factory where the Jewish slave laborers produced pots, pans, hinges… must have been a particularly daunting task. It was as if one had been transported into a European version of a Lewis Hine photograph. The ghetto and the concentration camps were also tour de forces in terms of realistically re-creating a time and place. This goes beyond the mere act of choosing to shoot on location. It is the magical task of making those places live as they did in the past. One need not be an expert on mid-twentieth century European fashion and architecture to be utterly convinced. The genuineness supersedes academic or professional accreditation. The artisans who helped reconstruct this reality are truly deserving of the title of master craftsman.

Spielberg's use of color raises many issues although the cinematographer exhibits the same unsurpassed professionalism as the set designers. The bulk of the film is black & white with the exception of the closing sequence and two colorized objects. Mixing black & white and color has been a device used in many films for varied ends with mixed results. Spielberg colors the two objects (Hanukkah candles and a little girl's red coat) in order to highlight their innocence. They are beacons of hope in the dreary black and white hell. The device was used Coppola's Rumble Fish; Mickey Rouke staring into the tank watching the brightly colored fish. The problem in both films is that the black and white images, although gritty and mean, possessed a strength and beauty which made the colorization appear hokey. The little girl with the red coat is especially irksome. Instead of looking on her as a innocent amongst the carnage she becomes an annoying red splotch in a beautifully rendered image. This is the opposite of what Spielberg intends. His choice of contrasting the past and the present was also troubling. Modern film audiences associate black and white with "old movies". (Proceeds from television sales make black and white commercially prohibitive). Given this frame of reference the events depicted in the film become distant and removed. The color in the closing "present day" sequence only reinforced the remoteness of the atrocities. Perhaps intercutting black & white and color works best when illustrating fantasy sequences (e.g. The Wizard of Oz) but even in this context it can become a self-conscious distraction (e.g. She's Gotta Have It). In other respects the camerawork is exquisite. The characters are framed beautifully and the textures vary with the action. The storming of the ghetto sequence is brilliant. The frenetic camera movement intertwined with the flashes from the machine guns makes for a riveting crescendo of horror.

Schindler's List possesses a stupendous cast. All the leading players are virtuosos and the secondary cast is equally convincing. One performance should be singled out. Ralph Fiennes steals the show. His portrayal of the Nazi death camp Commandant Goethe brilliantly plays on the banality of evil. The myriad of W.W. II movies have cast SS leaders as die-hard true believers. Mr. Fiennes shatters this stereotype with the first words uttered from his mouth. He is being given a driving tour of the ghetto by two junior officers who ask what he thinks. Instead of responding with a contrived speech about the glories of Hitler… he blows his nose and yells "put up the roof of this car; it's fucking cold". Nazism becomes a job not a religion. It is a means by which school-yard bullies with mediocre minds can create hellish fiefdoms and rule with impunity. There is no sport in killing Jews; it's just a pastime; an ugly stop on the climb up the ranks. The most disconcerting aspect about Com. Goethe is how recognizable a character he is: his whimsical abuse of power, his lack of introspection, his knee jerk uttering of the party line, his greed, his narcissism, his lust…. Here is the overlooked, insecure nobody that exists in every social institution: school, camp, neighborhood, army, work force…. Nazism affords a means of acceptance and success. It's not about believing in anything; it's about pleasing the boss. His final cry of "Heil Hitler" is given as a parting nod to his own role as a dictator not the dictator himself. This single character embodies the spirit of that dreaded political philosophy.

The fact that Mr. Fiennes stands-out points to a fundamental flaw in Schinlder's List. The film is uneven and ambiguous. Mr. Fiennes is wrought in stone but the rest of the cast is underdeveloped or obscure. The epitome of the former can be seen in Embeth Davidtz magnificent rendering of the domestic. It has been said that the greater part of screen acting is reaction; not action. Ms. Davidtz mastery of gesture and expression can be witnessed from her initial selection on line to her confrontation with Fiennes in the basement. The problem lies in what is missing; not from her but in the editorial development of her character. The audience is presented with this captivating figure only to have her whisked away in the behemoth of Schindler's story. She is not alone. There are others, especially amongst the secondary characters, who seem well delineated but ignored. There can be little doubt that in the interest of brevity things must be sacrificed. Given the films length, almost three hours, one wonders if the proper decisions were made. Does it really require all that time to establish Mr. Shindler as a wheeler-dealer? Should the emphasis of the story shift to make the Jewish prisoners the central focus rather than Mr. Shindler himself?

What are we to make of Shindler? Liam Neeson's portrayal, although technically superb, is unsympathetic. His breakdown at the close of the story was especially troubling. He is a war profiteer turned saintly savior. In order for his final speech to be convincing one must see the grand metamorphosis and, despite the three hour build-up, Mr. Spielberg fails. At some point Schindler realizes that the Nazis are evil. The story lacks a moment of epiphany. There are hints of a gradual change of heart but his decision to actively fight the Nazis is rooted in obscurity. Schindler is a man who has no compunction about living in a dispossessed Jewish family's house or using slave-laborers. After witnessing the massacre in the ghetto he still finds room in his heart to defend Com. Goethe. He tells Ben Kingsley that Goethe is a busy man just trying to do his job. Kingsley then recounts a grisly tale in which he tells of the Commandant's personally executing a few dozen prisoners with his revolver. In the end Schindler sees the light. He becomes born-again gallant savior who personally rescues hundreds of prisoners from the gas chambers while risking everything to build a munitions plant which supplies defective artillery shells. His new-found virtuosity extends to his personal life as well. Schindler abandons his philandering and re-unites with his wife. Is Spielberg's Schindler believable?

There can be no argument that the protagonist in this drama performed heroic deeds; but does that necessarily make him a hero? At the heart of the matter lies a question of motive. Judging by the obtrusive text, which would appear to delineate the exact time and place events were occurring, Mr. Schindler's change of heart occurred after the Nazi's war effort was on the wane (circa 1944). Might it be possible that Schindler decided to switch sides sensing a German defeat? The suitcases of money which he possessed seemed to be issued by the German central bank; what would this currency be worth if the Allied forces triumphed? These troubling thoughts spring from an unsettling ambiguity surrounding the movie's Schindler. Mr. Spielberg seems to feel it is enough to deify and forget the past. Unfortunately not even Mr. Neeson's technical virtuosity could mask this film's structural flaw. He delivers the "could have saved more" speech with heartfelt gusto. The problem lies in the fact that the Schindler of the first two and a half hours undercuts every word he utters. This is a story about a man who undergoes a fundamental spiritual re-assessment. Spielberg showed us the before and after but forgot the most essential "during". Despite the marvelous array of ingredients and wonderful presentation; the pudding lacks a theme.

There is an odd parallel between Mr. Spielberg and his protagonist. It is interesting to weigh the what might driven a director of box office sensations and unappreciated "serious" films to tackle the Holocaust. Could it be the sacredness of the subject matter forces a modicum of respectability and likewise shields him from criticism? Is there anything ethically wrong with evoking those millions of victims in order to secure artistic acceptance? Perhaps these thoughts are as blasphemous questioning the morality of Spielberg's hero. Once again there can be no argument that the Spielberg's Schindler, whatever his design, saved hundreds of people from certain death. Likewise Schindler's List, whatever Mr. Spielberg's motives, has generated important awareness about the nadir of modern civilization. In the end the tangible goodness outweighs any negative speculations. There is a wonderful moment in the film when Ben Kingsley holds up a crudely typed sheet containing all the names of those that Schindler will save. He says "This list is all good". Hopefully Mr. Spielberg will be able to do the same with his Academy Award trophy.

Pochahontas (2007)

Our American Hero

In 1973 Terrence Malick established himself as a great American auteur by writing and directing Badlands – a stunning portrait of a great American invention – the serial killer. In retrospect Mr. Malick, unlike his contemporaries of that era - Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola – never delivered the likes of an ET or Star Wars or a Godfather. In fact he not only failed to deliver a blockbuster – he failed to deliver. Since his stunning debut he has directed three features: Day of Heaven, Thin Red Line and now The New World. Three features in three decades is not what our Puritan work ethic dictates as a “respectable” output. But perhaps Malick, in the tradition of the Founding Fathers, Thoreau, the Western pioneers… is following his manifest destiny.

Let others have a career; Mr. Malick has been strolling through American history – taking in the scenery and drawing his own conclusions. He’s spent half his time in the Heartland (Badlands, Days of Heaven) wresting with desperate lost souls – dying in all the innocent beauty east of Eden. He pondered about our Great War (WW II) and drew a portrait of ambiguous soldiers wrestling with themselves as much as the Japanese. The odd thing is that all these films inhabit the American mythology while tearing at its seams. Badlands is a nightmarish foreshadowing of Lucas’ American Graffiti. Days of Heaven might be viewed as Thomas Hart Benton’s Guernica. The Thin Red Line shows Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation in their hour of darkness or maybe Speilberg’s soldiers having an existential crisis on their mission to save Private Ryan.

Malick has decided to begin at the beginning. The tale of Pocahontas and Capt. Smith is the bedrock of the American experience. Most Anthologies of American Literature begin with Capt. Smith’s tales about the “New World”. Interest in the story has reached beyond academics with the Walt Disney Company producing an animated feature, Pocahontas, within the last decade. Recently William T. Vollmann has dedicated a entire volume of his seven part History of America to Smith’s founding of Jamestown. The element of this story that pulls together academics and patrons of popular culture is the relationship between the swashbuckling Smith and the young Native American princess. That such a relationship existed at the moment of America’s conception vaults the historical into the realm of the mythic. Hollywood couldn’t have given the country a better script of its beginnings.

The “real” Capt. Smith lived through war, starvation, imprisonment, enemy-capture, enslavement… One wonders however, if he would have survived the 21st century American debate about what constitutes fact and fiction in a memoir. The following is the portrait Capt. Smith paints of himself in “The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles”:

“by his own example, good words, and fair promises, set some to mow, others to bind thatch, some to build houses, others to thatch them, himself always bearing the greatest task for his own share, so that in short time he provided most of them lodgings, neglecting any for himself.”

One can feel the other residents of Jamestown flocking to their blogs to refute the wise Captain in the early stages of his book tour. Malick is unconcerned. The director is smart enough to know better but the Smith-myth is central; not the actual history. Malick paints a very realistic portrait of the new Americans despite the fact that the valiant Captain might have taken the same liberties as the author of “A Million Little Pieces”. But in the end isn’t Capt. Smith the great great grandfather of James Frey and Oprah?

Ambition is the driving force in Jamestown. This group will stop at nothing to get ahead. The internecine struggles over rank and authority will be hideously familiar to any modern American office worker. Its not that our distant cousins over in Europe wouldn’t be petty and awful – it’s just that our fore-fathers were, in Ross Perot’s words: the people working the third shift at the Dairy Queen. In such an environment manners and a sense of civility are signs of weakness. This was a group that certainly knew the word “Roanoke” – the nearby colony that two decades earlier disappeared with the 90 men, 17 woman and 9 children never to be heard from again. Yet they willingly made the choice to go on this voyage. Makes you wonder about their lives in the motherland. The Lords of the Manor and the Captains of Industry knew better. Capt. Newport, played by a very blue-blooded Christopher Plummer, was on the first boat back home while Jamestown “took shape”. Given what followed he certainly made the right choice. The new colonists resort to eating their leather belts to stay alive. Maybe Smith was right to implore everyone to stop wasting time digging for gold.

Malick’s harsh portrayal of this world of Joe Shmoes and John Smiths certainly undercuts the primness with which we revere the Founding Father’s fathers. These people weren’t blue blood or even blue collar – they were red-neck through and through. Capt. Smith, however, is a stand-out. He is aware that he is on a journey to, in the great American tradition, re-invent himself. He is our first Bruce Springsteen – a sexy poet repulsed by the grimness of his culture and surroundings but accepting the fact that he is a character in Jungleland. One can hear Capt. Smith rollicking on some boulevard serenading a modern-day Pocahontas with the promise of a new life if she’d just stop listening to her Chief. We can also see the young maiden crying in the back seat of the beat-up Camaro asking the driver “who are you?”.

The unanswered question in this film is: who are the Indians? There is a disturbing asymmetry to The New World. The young Americans are drawn with precision yet the Native Americans remain elusive. Malick no doubt did his homework and the costuming and set designs are outstanding. The backdrop is authentic – but not the people. The “naturals” are more akin to fairies in an expensive production of A Mid Summer Nights Dream rather than actual aboriginals. The initial reaction to Smith is certainly genuine – they want to kill him. Unfortunately for them they make a series of very bad choices. They spare his life and then adopt him as a tribesman and let him frolic with the Chief’s favorite daughter – the prettiest girl in the tribe. The implausibility of the situation is secondary to the super-human genuineness of the natives. Pocahontas and her father seem implausiblely plausible – people make bad choices and pay the price – but the other Natives and their society appear other-worldly. As the good-captain says “they are without jealousy or malice”. Certainly after months of living with the Jamestown crowd “the naturals” – a successful traditional society living in sync with their surroundings – would appear to be super-human. There is a palatable sense of horror when Smith returns to the world of the violent, mean-spirited, petty, desperate gold-diggers. It would have been interesting to Malick had found a way to paint the Powhatans as real – but where would he find a source? These poor people were annihilated. The lack of a record left Malick with all the trappings of the Powhatans without the Powhatans themselves. The father-chief and Pocahontas are plot devices to further the narrative of Jamestown. John Smith’s world is grimly real whereas the Powhatans “are the stuff that dreams are made of”. In this case Capt. Smith is the dreamer.

The New World takes an extended journey to the old world in the second half of the film. The plot takes on a Shakespearian edge: the princess goes to meet the King and Queen of England and is re-united with her lover. They come to their senses and she returns to her true love. The comedy turns tragic, however, when the Princess suddenly dies. The banality of the narrative is beside the point. Shakespeare’s forte was language not story. By the same logic assessing Malick’s in terms of the plot-driven narrative is to be deaf to the visual feast. There is a small sequence where the Native American escorting Pocahontas walks amongst the trees in the formal gardens at one of the English palaces. In a sense this small scene of this traditionally dressed native wandering around the formal hedges and rigid tree-lines is a metaphor for the entire film. This exquisite tableaux is a tile in a cross cultural mosaic painting the birth of America. It’s not about “story” or “romance” but the romance of the myth of our founding. Malick, with his usual flair for excellent acting, photography and craft, has given us another one of his American visions. We are a brutal, savage people who touched a prelapsarian (in our view) world and beat it down to our level. There is always something tragic/heroic in our quest despite our venal actions. Badlands is successful in spite of the loathsome protagonist. The audience is drawn to the killer in Days of Heaven even though he schemed against an innocent man. The soldiers in The Thin Red Line are too uneasy about their brutality to be the usual World War II heroes… and yet there is a hallowed of innocence surrounding these ambiguous warriors.

Malick is, at heart, a Texan. This part of the country tends to root for the guys in black hats. He has a soft-spot for Cain. Abel was a favored son, we are a nation of Cains. We are the second sons busting our asses to make the right sacrifice for the all powerful. We loathe introspection in direct proportion to our love of THE LAW. Rules are made up of isolated facts that create abstractions so we can live with ourselves. Pocahontas’ constant refrain to Capt. Smith is “Who are you?” The Captain might not have an answer, but he shares Cain’s disdain for his brother’s good fortune. Malick knows that in Smith’s quest to rise above his station lies the heart of the American experience and his hideous ambition to be the favored son will lead to his downfall. No matter how hard we Americans will it, the fact remains: God has rejected our offering. God preferred our brother’s sacrifice because it was more than mere fruits of the field – it contained blood. Well if its blood God wants – its blood he’ll get. Fratricide was our answer to God’s rejection – only sending us further into the wilderness. Europe and the Natives have Kings, Queens, Chiefs and Princes whom God looks upon with favor. America has the hardscrabble, hard-luck Capt. Smith. The treason-filled, self-promoter struggling to better himself. One can hear the Captain reflecting on his plight by singing a Bruce Springsteen song about Starkweather, the “hero” of Malick’s first feature:

I saw her standin' on her front lawn just twirlin' her baton
Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died

From the town of Lincoln Nebraska with a sawed off .410 on my lap
Through to the badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path

I can't say that I'm sorry for the things that we done
At least for a little while sir me and her we had us some fun

The jury brought in a guilty verdict and the judge he sentenced me to death
Midnight in a prison storeroom with leather straps across my chest

Sheriff when the man pulls that switch sir and snaps my poor head back
You make sure my pretty baby is sittin' right there on my lap

They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my soul'd be hurled
They wanted to know why I did what I did
Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world

Badlands might be seen as a modern day version of what would have happened if Capt. Smith had run away with Pocahontas.


The American curse is to be thoughtful and reflective. The greatest threat to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is those who question “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The tycoon, the worker bee and even the dispossessed are as truly American as mom, the flag and apple pie. But those who step back and question the process are dangerous. They start asking questions about right and wrong. There is no good or bad just THE LAW. If Smith can escape hanging he can go on to become a penultimate Founding Father. If Starkweather gets the chair; well he deserved it. That’s that. That’s the law. That’s what happened. Don’t think too much about it or we’ll suspect you’re a communist or worse yet an artist. Don’t think, just act. Just make the movies and have a career. Malick seems to take the challenge. You want blood? I’ll give you blood. I’ll dress it up and show it off. In reality Starkweather was pigeon-toed, cross-eyed but Malick sees him as a young Charlie Sheen. The real Pocahontas & Capt. Smith could never compete with the sex appeal of Q’Orianka Kilcher and Colin Farrell. But these are merely facts. Bits of history that can be molded in the same fashion as other uncomfortable truths: our beloved land of freedom was founded by a savage group of marauders who invaded, pillaged then annihilated “everything in my path”. Pocahontas visit to the King and Queen is really the ultimate humiliation for a Princess robbed of her culture and whose subjects were already falling under the sword. The institution of slavery took root a little more than a decade of the founding of the colony. But once again these are mere facts. Smith was just another hard-luck soldier trying to have fun amongst all the smoke and bodies. Malick takes it all in and smiles. He strolls through the carnage and studies all the hardworking ill-fated sons of Cain. He’s not going to excuse the mess by becoming another mega-star in the pantheon of the American Entertainment Heroes. He’s sitting down with that ever-expanding group of alienated American thinkers who love this country but loathe all the crassness born of a desire to forget. His job is to entertain.. and entertain he will. Long after Spielberg, Lucas and Coppola have faded from the public consciousness Malick’s band of American anti-heroes will be delighting and horrifying future generations. Somewhere, centuries from now, a young person will look at this body of work and remark: “What a bunch of savages”. And Malick’s spirit will tip his black hat and say “but you gotta love’em”.