Mailbox Film Festival #12: Altered States (Russell, 1980)

Last summer at Lincoln Center, I had the good fortune to see every film Ken Russell made between 1969 and 1977, from off-kilter stabs at the stuff of prestige pictures (Women in Love, The Music Lovers) to cocaine-fueled triumphs of muchness (Tommy, Lisztomania).  During this period, Russell produced such masterpieces as the criminally forgotten Savage Messiah and the still-censored The Devils, but even his lesser films (The Boy Friend, Valentino) are theatrical and campy and defiantly unsubtle in the best possible ways. The connective tissue between the highbrow-ish biographies and the manic grotesqueries is Russell’s singular force of vision, marked by elephant-killing overdoses of excess (one of the two E-words indelibly associated with the director, the other being enfant terrible). Even the relatively direct Mahler plays its namesake’s conversion to Christianity as a silent film-styled interlude, in which a Nazi dominatrix nails the composer to a cross with throwing knives.

The Lincoln Center retrospective cut off right before 1980’s Altered States, Russell’s first big Hollywood picture. It’s one of his best-known films, but also one of his least personal. Original director Arthur Penn dropped out after butting heads with master screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky. (Chayefsky, who adapted the screenplay from his own novel, later took his name off the movie, supposedly sight unseen.) Russell claims that he was the 27^th director asked to helm the film, which seems improbable until you remember that his last hit in America was The Who’s rock opera five years prior.  Yet a film featuring numerous scenes of drug-induced hallucination seems such a natural fit for Russell’s talents that it’s a blessing Altered States eventually wound up in his hands. Those scenes, while dialed down a few notches below the sustained insanity of Lisztomania et al., are nevertheless sufficiently weird and dread-inducing, with flattened images of eerie stillness interrupted by kinetic shots of vaguely threatening emblems of the unconscious.

Perhaps the bigger surprise is how straight Russell plays the rest of the movie. Altered States so matter-of-factly treats scientist/professor Edward Jessup’s (William Hurt) hypothesis that an isolation tank (paired with psychotropic drugs) can send a subject cavorting through the evolutionary continuum that it’s little surprise when Jessup finds himself physically regressing after a particularly intense session. As patently unbelievable as those ideas are in the real world, it’s striking how plausible Chayefsky and Russell make them seem over the course of the film. True, the sequence of Jessup the missing link frolicking in a zoo is almost cheesy enough to undermine the film’s previously established gravity, and the final showdown between Jessup’s human and starchild incarnations (which you’ve seen a version of if you’ve seen A-ha’s “Take On Me” video) feels scripted to give audiences a romantic ending. But as a whole, Altered States is impressive in its commitment to and handling of serious philosophical ideas about humanity’s place in the universe. These concepts are anchored by a uniformly strong cast, including Hurt (in his first film role), Blair Brown and Bob Balaban. The special effects, while no longer as impressive as they were in 1980, are still more freakily tactile than the CGI eyesores infecting modern sci-fi and horror. Altered States is one of the last gasps of thoughtful mainstream science fiction post-Star Wars, although a few stragglers like Children of Men and the TV series Fringe (also starring Brown) still find cult success. It’s also an intriguing look at how Russell could have channeled his gonzo aesthetic into the American studio picture. Unfortunately, the director’s personality, as outsized as his films’ setpieces, all but barred him from Hollywood. After Crimes of Passion flopped in 1984, Russell returned to Europe and pursued whichever artistic detours caught his fancy, both within cinema and without.  But Altered States stands as proof that Russell could trim the excess and still make a fascinating statement of profound weirdness.

Mailbox Film Festival #11: Jack Goes Boating (Hoffman, 2010)

Few character actors have done as well in modern Hollywood as Philip Seymour Hoffman. Only Paul Giamatti and maybe Steve Buscemi have broken out of the hey-it’s-that-guy ghetto without losing artistic credibility to the degree that Hoffman has. Hoffman’s mainstream success (relatively speaking) can be chalked up to a combination of talent, an eye for choosing good roles, and strong working relationships with filmmakers such as Paul Thomas Anderson. Even when punching the clock on studio fare like Mission: Impossible III and Along Came Polly, he’s maintained his repuation. For every successful movie he makes, Hoffman stars in another that’s decidedly uncommercial, but which lets him to prove his Serious Actor bona fides.  Jack Goes Boating, Hoffman’s directorial debut, falls into the latter category. Like Love Liza and Owning Mahowny before it, Jack Goes Boating is a character sketch of a sad sap sucker who’s lost more than he ever had. Actors like these kind of roles because they can unload a magazine of “real-people” characterizations from their arsenal. Unfortunately, as movies, they’re superficial and miserablist.

Our hero Jack (Hoffman) is less a person than a list of character traits. He drives a cab. He’s never been in a long-term relationship. He clears his throat a lot. He smokes pot, has itty-bitty dreadlocks and likes reggae. (Well, he says he does; we just see him listen to “Rivers of Babylon” over and over.) Amy Ryan plays Connie, Jack’s female counterpart who is equally uncomfortable interacting with other human beings. If Ryan’s performance seems overly mannered, perhaps it’s because she is saddled with delivering such unfortunate lines as “I don’t think I’m ready yet for penis penetration.” John Ortiz and Daphne Rubin-Vega reprise their roles from Jack Goes Boating’s original off-Broadway production as the couple whose fraying marriage provides the foil for Jack and Connie’s budding romance. Both actors are clearly more comfortable on stage, but Ortiz transcends his shallowly-written character to become the film’s most human presence. With Jack, he’s a sounding board and motivational coach; at home, he’s a heartbroken cuckold who loves his wife too much to leave.

Jack Goes Boating’s theatrical origins bleed through every frame. It’s not that the setting is stagy – Hoffman varies the locations and moves the camera enough to make it look like a proper movie. The main issue is the overfidelity to playwright Bob Glaudini’s words. Like much modern theatre, Jack Goes Boating attempts to transform vernacular phrasing into a kind of street poetry, but instead comes across as stilted and artificial. The heavy-handed rhythms of a line like “Charismatic, she said.  She only kissed him, she said. In the elevator, helping him move a body. ‘I only kissed him,’ she said” might work better on stage, where the sets are minimal and audiences expect heightened dialogue. On film, though, it’s at odds with the supposedly realistic milieu. Even the core quartet of actors can’t elevate the material into the realm of believability. That the usually great Hoffman leans so heavily on shtick in his portrayal of Jack only exacerbates the problem. Hollywood is littered with great screenplays that producers, directors and actors trampled into mediocrity. But Jack Goes Boating proves that reverence to the text can be equally debilitating.

Fresh Celluloid #3: Paul (Mottola, 2011)

I first saw the trailer for Paul before the screening of previous Fresh Celluloid subject The Adjustment Bureau.  My reactions were mixed.  On the one hand, Hot Fuzz and Superbad were two of my favorite movies of the past decade. A collaboration between the co-writer/cops of the former and the director/cops of the latter? Backed with a supporting cast that includes Jason Bateman, Bill Hader, Kristin Wiig, Joe Lo Truglio, Jane Lynch, David Koechner, John Carroll Lynch and Jeffrey Tambor? Seems promising! OK, the wisecracking CGI alien set off an alarm, but I could get past it. And maybe the marketing department just stuffed the trailer with the lowest common denominator jokes. Oh reader, how I hoped.

As it turns out, Paul is no Hot Fuzz.  It’s not even Run, Fatboy, Run. Sadly, the film it best resembles is Mac and Me, if it were sponsored by Comic Con instead of McDonald’s. Perhaps the strangest thing about Paul is that, in almost every way, it’s a kids’ movie.  Not just because it stars a child-sized humanoid extraterrestrial, but because of the cartoonish villains, the bodily function humor and the inevitable dollop of sentimentality.  Yet Paul is rated R, mostly for language that feels awkwardly shoehorned-in to attract an adult audience. It’s as if Pegg and Frost came up with the idea of “E.T. for adults” but couldn’t figure out what to do beyond making the alien a sarcastic stoner. Whereas Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz ripped into genre clichés, Paul is all too willing to embrace them. Every time we’re presented with a tired scene, I’d wait expectantly for a subversive or ironic twist that never came. Paul careens from sophomoric humor to a half-hearted attempt at touchy-feely material that mostly rings hollow, both because it comes from nowhere and because the filmmakers constantly undercut it with lame jokes.

On the plus side, Pegg and Frost bring their always endearing heterosexual-life-partner chemistry, and Kristin Wiig (infinitely more likeable in movies than she is on SNL) is a natural fit as the potential love interest. Really, the entire cast brings their A-games; it’s just unfortunate that the ratio of funny people to funny jokes is so low. Then there’s the character of Paul himself, voiced ably if unsurprisingly by Seth Rogen. Unfortunately, CGI hasn’t advanced enough yet beyond dead eyes and jerky movements to create an empathetic lead character. Paul is not so much an extraterrestrial as a visitor from the Uncanny Valley.  And while merely looking at Paul is taxing, having to deal with an alien that has all the charm and wit of ALF (but eats birds instead of cats) is asking too much.

Director Greg Mottola has proven with movies like The Daytrippers and Adventureland that he has a knack for low-key comedies. Even Superbad is the smallest, most human entry in the Apatow canon (excluding Funny People). But the biggish-budget, special effects-reliant Paul needs a director like Edgar Wright who can make visuals pop and use editing to heighten jokes. In fact, Paul has made me wonder if Wright, as director and co-writer, was the real force propelling Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz into greatness.  Without Pegg and Frost, Wright made the visually inventive and appealing Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.  Without Wright, Pegg and Frost have made Paul. Hopefully, though, the real culprit is the ever-meddling Hollywood system. Made a couple of surprise hits out of clever in-jokes for genre geeks? Then please, write a broad comedy with as many easily-identifiable references as possible. The worst thing about Paul is not that it’s terrible; it’s that it’s mediocre. Given the talent involved, even an average film is a disappointment. Hopefully, Pegg and Frost (along with Wright as co-writer) can prove themselves again with this winter’s The Adventures of Tintin.  After all, that film’s director knows a thing or two about loveable talking aliens.

 

Paul opens in theaters March 18.

Mailbox Film Festival #10: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (Stone, 2010)

There’s something sort of refreshing about a filmmaker with absolutely no interest in subtlety.  Oliver Stone has yet to make a film I love*, but it’s sort of fun to sit down with his movies and know who’ll be the villains (capitalists, the government) and who’ll be the heroes (anyone going up against capitalists and the government).  This black-and-white view of morality is ridiculous if taken at face value, but it can also be entertaining at a primal level.  Everyone likes a story where the good guys beat the bad guys – who needs all that moral shading stuff to get in the way?

So if you’ve seen the original 1987 Wall Street, you know what to expect from Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.  On the plus side, everyone in the sequel out-acts Daryl Hannah (even Shia LaBeouf, although that’s a low bar to clear).  And the idea of revisiting Gordon Gekko and his ilk in the wake out the recent global financial crisis has the potential to be fascinating.  So it’s a bit disappointing that the resulting film is as empty as a stockbroker’s soul (boom! Roasted!).  A week after watching Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, this is what I remember:

-Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas, of course) comes the closest to being a morally complex figure: sometimes he’s a terrible, evil dude, and sometimes he’s a slightly less terrible, less evil dude.
-The unfortunately-named Winnie Gekko (Gordon’s daughter) is played by Carey Mulligan, who has nice hair and is the living embodiment of the word “winsome.”
-Shia LaBeouf does, in fact, appear in this movie.
-The only fake accent in this film worse than Carey Mulligan’s is Shia LaBeouf’s.
-Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf) criticizes his mother (Susan Sarandon) for being a real estate agent (boo! hiss!) rather than someone who actually helps people.  Jake is a proprietary trader.  No one notes the irony.
-Likewise, Winnie Gekko is a muckraking blogger.  Apparently only the women in this film need to worry about having “morally positive” jobs.
-Eli Wallach, looking every one of his 937 years, makes bird noises.
-Louis Zabel (Frank Langella) commits suicide by 6 train, which seems awfully inconsiderate of commuters and MTA personnel. (But that’s a banker for ya! Always leaving their mess to be cleaned up by the little people! Zing!)
-Were it not for a certain motorcycle race (to be discussed below), I probably would have forgotten Josh Brolin was even in this movie – and he’s the main baddie. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Brolin himself forgot he was in this movie.
-In Wall Street, Charlie Sheen plays Bud Fox. In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Bud Fox plays Charlie Sheen.

Also, there’s a lot of talk about stocks and hedge funds and stuff like that? As my understanding of/interest in money doesn’t go beyond my personal savings account, I found the financial intrigue difficult to follow.  So I, like Josh Brolin, ended up mentally checking out about halfway through the film.  But the personal relationships don’t work much better. Dramatic events come to light – the tragedy involving Gordon’s wife and son; Winnie’s pregnancy – only to fizzle out after checking off the box marked “emotional depth.”  Where Bud Fox in Wall Street goes from being “good” to “bad” to “good,” Jake Moore is a static hero (or at least as much of a hero as a trader can be! Thank you, tip your waitress).

Stone is clearly condemning the “greed is good” mentality as responsible for the crisis. At the same time, though, he relishes depicting all the material goods bought with the filthy lucre: the penthouse apartments, the Savile Row suits, the Italian racing motorcycles. About midway through the film, Bretton James (Brolin) and Jake race through the forest on their bikes.   The scene is meant to symbolize their competitive streaks, but it’s also clearly a “Whoa! Don’t you wish you were as rich as them so you could be that awesome!” moment.  I wasn’t going into Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps expecting a nuanced portrait of the global financial crisis.  But this lack of consistency makes Stone’s message ring hollow.  It’s the same problem he had with Wall Street, which is why Gordon Gekko became an icon to a generation of young stockbrokers despite his abhorrent personal ethics.  But questionable politics can be easily overlooked if a film is entertaining.  Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a muddled movie that leans heavily on clichés and lazy characterization.  But I have to give it some credit: thanks to Douglas’s performance and Stone’s force of personality, at least it isn’t generic.

 

*Admittedly, I haven’t seen Salvador or any of the Vietnam trilogy.

Obligatory Oscars Dream Roundup 2011

So the 83rd Academy Awards – the only awards show that still kind of matters! – is tomorrow night.  Sadly, I will be unable to watch unless I stumble across a television.  But that won’t stop me from making a list of the nominees I’d like to see win.  I don’t care about who actually has the best chance of going home with the Oscar.  These are simply who I’d vote for if I were a member of the Academy.

BEST PICTURE
Seen ‘em all
In terms of sheer enjoyment, my favorites were True Grit, Black Swan and Toy Story 3.  But The Social Network strikes the ideal balance for a Best Picture winner: it speaks to the times it was released, but I could also see people studying it in film school 30 years from now.  Besides, I’m not going to hand it an award in another category anyway.

BEST ACTOR
Not seen: Biutiful
Truly, 2010 was the year of THE FRANCO.  He was great in 127 Hours, great in Howl, great (I assume) in General Hospital and great at playing “James Franco” in “real life” (or is it???). I can’t hate on any of the nominees in this category, though. Biutiful looks kind of terrible, but I could buy that Javier Bardem brought the goods.  I’m sort of getting Mickey-Rourke-in-The–Wrestler vibes for Colin Firth, by which I mean he’s a talented actor who’s unlikely to get another fighting chance at a Best Actor win, at least until he ages into an elder statesman.  And it would be kind of cool if Jesse Eisenberg won – but still not as cool as FRANCO.

BEST ACTRESS
Not seen: Blue Valentine, Rabbit Hole
Consensus pick! I never had any particular affection for Natalie Portman, but she somehow manages to go balls-to-the-wall cuh-RAZY while still being vulnerable enough to invoke sympathy.  Kudos to Darren Aronofsky for following The Wrestler with another brilliant stroke of meta casting.  PS: Did Rabbit Hole ever actually come out?

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Seen ‘em all
This is a toughie.  I guess Jeremy Renner’s just getting automatic nominations now post-The Hurt Locker.  I like him fine, but his work in The Town wasn’t his best.  John Hawkes was an interesting baddie in Winter’s Bone, but his performance wasn’t as memorable as Jennifer Lawrence’s.  I’d be happy with any of the other three, but I have to give special props to Christian Bale for actually being less over-the-top than the real Dicky Eklund.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Seen ‘em all
In contrast, this category is pretty humdrum.  Melissa Leo and Jacki Weaver are basically playing variations on the same Supporting-Actress-Oscar-Bait-role-for-women-of-a-certain-age (Leo the comic version, Weaver the creepy version).  Helena Bonham Carter’s barely a blip in The King’s Speech.  Amy Adams got nominated because her character swears and wears low-cut blouses, which is completely not what her persona is in real life! So we’re left with Hailee Steinfeld, who shouldn’t even be winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.  She should be busy winning the Best Actress Oscar instead.

BEST DIRECTOR
Seen ‘em all
David O. Russell and Tom Hooper made pretty conventional directorial decisions, which is especially shocking because Russell fashions himself an auteur (though I only really liked Three Kings; admittedly I still haven’t seen his first two).  The Coens are my favorite working directors, so I’m kind of always rooting for them, but I’ll save up my wishing dust for another day.  I’ll instead give Darren Aronofsky a slight nudge over David Fincher, mainly because I already picked The Social Network over Black Swan for Best Picture.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Not seen: Another Year
Inception, of course.  Haters gonna whine that it was all exposition.  But if the exposition is entertaining, then what’s the problem?

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Seen ‘em all
Here I’ll give it to the Coens, for somehow improving on a film that was already great.

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
Seen ‘em all
If you saw Toy Story 3 in theaters, then you remember Day and Night.  Even after watching all of the nominees, it stood out as the most visually inventive and had a satisfying story arc.  Second place goes to Madagascar, a Journey Diary for its beautiful and clever use of mixed media.  Special bonus points to Bill Plympton’s short-listed (but not nominated) The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger, which was unfortunately shut out in favor of the one-note Let’s Pollute and the overlong The Gruffalo.

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM
Seen ‘em all
God of Love, God of Love, God of Love. God of Love? God of Love! Not only was the short itself totally charming and funny, but it was the only one that made me excited to see a feature by the director.  Sadly, I doubt it’ll win, precisely because it is charming and funny.  It’s also the only nominee that’s not about Bad Things Involving Children.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM
Seen ‘em all
This was the strongest of the short film categories, but the two that stood out the most were Killing in the Name, in which a Jordanian Muslim whose wedding was bombed confronts the extremist group responsible, and Poster Girl, about a female Army sergeant who was trouble adjusting to life after Iraq.  I just slightly connected with Poster Girl more, but both are worthy contenders.  This category is also one of the few where I suspect my favorites will be the Academy’s as well.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Not seen: GasLand, Inside Job, Waste Land
This may be the most frustrating category because of all the films that aren’t nominated.  Then again, maybe the three I haven’t seen are works of genius: Inside Job and Waste Land aren’t out on DVD yet, and GasLand has been a “Very Long Wait” since I pushed it to the top of my Netflix queue.  I’m split on the two I have seen.  Restrepo contains some astonishing, invaluable footage that in itself probably deserves the Oscar, but it could have used a real filmmaker to give it shape. Exit Through the Gift Shop, on the other hand, is highly entertaining.  It sure would be fun for it to win, especially since Banksy is bound to have some delightful prank cooked up – but it also feels kind of unfair to have it compete in the documentary category.  And really, Amir Bar-Lev’s 2007 doc My Kid Could Paint That is a more incisive examination of the modern art scene. (Bar-Lev also directed The Tillman Story, the film that should have won this category.)

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FEATURE
Not seen: Biutiful, In a Better World, Incendies, Outside the Law
OK, so the only nominee I’ve actually seen is Dogtooth.  And if the Academy gives the award to Dogtooth, then it would mean everything I thought I knew about the Oscars is wrong, and also I’m trapped in the wrong Fringe universe with Faux-livia.  The Academy will either give it to Biutiful (name recognition) or one of the three unknown picks (whichever is the most heartwarming).  But a morbidly dark comedy with a disturbing premise and several cringe-inducing scenes? Even if it is brilliant? Whatever’s Greek for “not a chance.”

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Not seen: How to Train Your Dragon, The Illusionist
Again, I’ve only seen Toy Story 3, but I have a hard time believing the other two could possibly be better.  It’s a wise rule to never bet against Pixar, and Toy Story 3 is in my (probably unpopular) opinion the studio’s best movie since Toy Story 2.

Mailbox Film Festival #9: The Tillman Story (Bar-Lev, 2010)

Director Amir Bar-Lev’s wanted to name this documentary “I’m Pat F—ing Tillman,” after the Army Ranger’s last words before dying. For obvious reasons, the title was changed to the more neutral The Tillman Story.  But the replacement title, seemingly anodyne and generic, actually reveals more about the documentary’s subject.  The film explores three definitions of the word “story” in regards to Tillman’s death: first, a biography or history; second, a constructed narrative, often with the intent of supporting a moral or ideology; and third, a lie.

Arizona Cardinals safety Pat Tillman was arguably the most famous person to enlist in the U.S. Army after September 11, turning down a multimillion-dollar football contract in the process.  After completing a tour of duty in Iraq, he was redeployed to Afghanistan in 2004.  There, Tillman was killed in what the Army initially claimed was an ambush by enemy forces.  The military posthumously awarded him the Silver Star, allegedly for saving the lives of his fellow Rangers during the attack.  Only later was it revealed that the Army had covered up the truth: Tillman was killed by friendly fire (aka fratricide), attacked by men from his own unit.

Much of Bar-Lev’s documentary is devoted to the Tillman family’s struggle uncover the truth about Pat’s death against the military’s resistance and outright lies.  Tillman’s mother Mary sifted through over 3000 pages of documents relating to her son’s death, piecing together the redacted parts with the help of writer and Army special-ops veteran Stan Goff.  Frustrated by the military’s caginess, the Tillmans pressured Congress to launch an investigation into the conspiracy.  The results were somewhat unsatisfying: lower-level members of the military hierarchy received the brunt of the punishment, even though the evidence suggested the cover-up extended to the top reaches of the government.  

The Tillman Story also delves into how Pat Tillman became appropriated after his death by right-wing politicians and the media, people who never knew him yet made assumptions about who he was and what he believed.  Tillman had suspected that his celebrity would make him attractive as a symbol, particularly if he were to die in combat.  As a result, he resisted drawing attention to his Army career.  Publically, he refused to discuss his reasons for enlisting and asked to be treated like any other soldier; privately, he requested a civilian burial instead of a military one.  After his death, these requests were ignored.  He became a poster child for the pro-war movement, an all-American super-soldier.  Never mind that the real Pat Tillman wasn’t so easy to pin down.  In contrast with the “meathead” football player stereotype, Tillman read widely, admired Noam Chomsky and earned a 3.8 GPA at Arizona State.  Despite his enlistment, he disagreed with President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq – but he also turned down an arrangement between the military and the NFL that would have let him out of his Army commitment early.  When strangers lined up at the memorial service to assure the Tillmans that Pat was with God, his brother Richard’s eulogy bluntly informed them that Pat was an atheist.

As Tillman brother Kevin states in the film, “a terrible tragedy was transformed into an inspirational message that served instead to support the nation’s foreign policy wars.” But Bar-Lev refrains from taking the opposite tack and making Pat Tillman into a liberal martyr.  Only Pat and his closest friends and family can understand the person he really was and why he chose to fight.  Bar-Lev instead focuses on how the Tillman family had to deal with the fallout of his death.  All families suffer when they lose a member to war; the Tillmans also had to confront a government conspiracy and a constant barrage of propaganda asserting Pat was something he wasn’t.  “He was a human being,” Mary Tillman says in the film. “And by putting this kind of heroic, saintly quality to him, you’re taking away the struggle of being a human being.”  With The Tillman Story, Pat’s family and fellow Rangers at least have the chance to set the record straight and reclaim his life.

Mailbox Film Festival #8: Waiting for “Superman” (Guggenheim, 2010)

Perhaps I’m just defensive of the public school system.  I attended public schools for entirety of my educational career, and I think I turned out OK (at least fine enough to get admitted to a public university!).  Growing up in Louisiana, I knew a lot of people who went to Catholic schools, and I certainly didn’t find them smarter, better educated or more intellectually curious than my classmates. Then again, I was fortunate enough to have a number of advantages: the Gifted and Talented program, a magnet high school, and college-educated parents.  But what about all those kids who aren’t so lucky?

Davis Guggenheim’s documentary Waiting for “Superman” explores why bad schools become “dropout factories” and what can be done to ensure all American kids are sufficiently educated to compete in the global job market. The film cuts between interviews with experts like activist Geoffrey Canada and controversial DC public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, and with stories about five cute kids and their families hoping to be admitted into the limited-capacity charter schools they believe will give them a running start in life.

Guggenheim largely places the blame for underperforming students on bad teachers and the unions that protect them.  True, the film illuminates some unsavory aspects of union contracts, including automatic tenure and bans on merit-based pay, that seem to remove much incentive for teachers to do their jobs well.  But Guggenheim ignores all of the other factors that contribute to why a student may do poorly in school.  The film’s stars are children with a drive to learn and supportive parents who value education – otherwise, they wouldn’t be trying to get their kids into charter schools or paying private school tuition they can’t afford.  But frankly, many if not most of the kids who do poorly in school and drop out just don’t care.  Even the most inspiring teacher faces an uphill battle against apathetic parents, crime-ridden neighborhoods and a peer group that looks down on anyone who studies too much.  And just as there are teachers who shouldn’t be teaching, there are also students who just aren’t wired to do well in school.  Guggenheim shows how American students’ test scores rank toward the bottom of the developed world, ignoring the fact that in many of the other countries, the less academically-minded kids get tracked off into technical school, agriculture or blue collar jobs much earlier on.  America is the exception for pressing the same academically-focused curriculum on all students, and for perceiving college as a universal necessity.

Which isn’t to say that the American educational system doesn’t have serious problems.  It takes a stony heart to watch Waiting for “Superman” and not feel for the children left behind (Acts of Congress notwithstanding).  Guggenheim positions charter schools as a possible answer, but even he acknowledges that only one in five charter schools outperform neighborhood public schools.  The documentary’s message seems to be the near-impossibility of changing the school system on a grand scale, due to both political and sociological factors.  As the film’s title indicates, only a superhero would have the power to swoop in and save the day.  But at the same time, Guggenheim tries to put an idealistic spin on an overwhelming situation, imploring viewers over the end credits to visit a particular website or send an SMS text to a dedicated number. Waiting for “Superman” succeeds as a call to action to change America’s failing educational system.  However, it also frustrates by not offering viable solutions to such a crushing, overarching problem.

Mailbox Film Festival #7: The Merchant of Four Seasons (Fassbinder, 1971)

It wouldn’t feel right to call Rainer Werner Fassbinder one of my favorite directors, for the same reason I couldn’t call The Fall one of my favorite bands, no matter how much I adore them both. When Fassbinder died just days after his 37^th birthday, he had completed nearly 50 movies, two dozen plays and myriad other works for TV, radio and stage.  When you’re dealing with that sizable a body of work, it’s inevitable that there’s a lot out there, even some major works, that you haven’t gotten around to yet.  I could love a dozen of Fassbinder’s movies or Mark E. Smith’s albums – more, indeed, than most directors or bands ever produce – and still only scratch the surface.

One of the very first things I did when I got my Netflix account a few months ago was add in bulk every Fassbinder DVD available on the site.  But new releases surged to the top, his movies began sliding down the queue.  When I saw that Film Comment will be screening Fassbinder’s 1976 made-for-German-TV I Only Want You to Love Me this month at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, I was intrigued by the note that the film is “a clear follow-up to The Merchant of Four Seasons.”  I knew Merchant was the film that broke Fassbinder internationally, but I’d never seen it.  Now I had a good excuse to bump it to the top of the queue.

The film tells the story of Hans (Hans Hirschmüller), a fruit seller whose choice of occupation is just one of many factors that leads him to be derided by his appearances-fixated mother.  After he hits his wife Irmgard (Irm Hermann), she flees with their daughter to his mother’s house and calls her lawyer to request a divorce.  When Hans abruptly has a heart attack, Irmgard returns to him and assists his recovery.  They hire an employee, allowing them to sell more fruit and increase their profits.  While Hans’s increased financial success somewhat impresses his family, he continues to be scorned by his mother, sister Heide and brother-in-law Kurt in more subtle ways.  Only his younger sister Anna (Hanna Schygulla) seems to have any respect for Hans. Meanwhile, Hans mentally escapes to fantasies of what his life should have been: either married to the love of his life (Ingrid Caven, Fassbinder’s then-wife) or killed by a North African (El Hedi ben Salem, Fassbinder’s then-lover).

The Merchant of Four Seasons is the first of Fassbinder’s many films to be modeled on the Douglas Sirk-style Hollywood melodrama. While neither as campy as The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant nor as heartbreaking as Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The Merchant of Four Seasons is a clear starting point for some of the themes and stylistic choices that would become Fassbinder’s signature: namely, the hypocrisy of bourgeois society.  To illustrate this artificiality, Fassbinder pushes melodrama’s heightened emotions to extremes.  The characters in Merchant either overplay the emotions – laughing a little too loudly, a few beats too long – or they recite their lines flatly. The film also exaggerates the stylized acting found in many pre-Method Hollywood pictures.  Characters move stiffly and slowly, and scenes end in formal tableaux.  When Hans has his heart attack, he dramatically swoons and crashes to the floor.

Although Hans is the film’s protagonist, his sister Anna acts as the film’s philosophical mouthpiece.  When she tells Hans’s daughter Renate that “people haven’t always treated your father well,” she isn’t just speaking about Hans, but about everyone dismissed by the middle class.  His family only deems Hans worthy of token respect once he hires an employee to do the physical labor.  His life before that, Kurt tells him, “wasn’t much of a life, if you think about it.” Amid the backhanded compliments, Anna reminds her family of how poorly they regard Hans just a few months before.  When Heide accuses her of being aggressive, Anna coolly speaks the truth: “You did despise him, and at the bottom of your hearts, you still do.”

Anna’s words are backed up by the family’s apathy (at best) toward Hans’s very existence.  On his return from the Foreign Legion, his mother greets him with harsh words: “The good die young, and the people like you come back.” When he collapses from his heart attack, Anna is the only one who makes the effort to call emergency services.  And at the end of the film, as Hans decides to publicly drink himself to death, the bar patrons look on with blank expressions as he downs dozens of shots.  Clean strands of glycerine tears line Irmgard’s cheeks, but her face bears no emotion.  She makes no effort to stop him.  Riding home from the funeral with Hans’s employee Harry (Klaus Löwitsch), Irmgard proposes a business transaction: marriage.  “If we were to team up,” she tells him, “it’d be the best for everyone, I think: for you, for me, and especially for Renate.”  Harry responds with a simple “OK,” with no more emotion than if Irmgard had asked to buy a plum.

The Merchant of Four Seasons isn’t subtle about its politics.  But like Douglas Sirk before him, Fassbinder wraps his subversive themes in the traditional cathartic medium of melodrama.  The movie appeals first on a visceral emotional level; viewers can sail past any intellectual current if they so choose.  Fassbinder was a master of visual composition, and the film’s beautifully stylized images also help to soften the film’s message.  Still, The Merchant of Four Seasons is a little too distant and static to rank in the very top tier of the director’s canon (at least what I’ve seen of it).  But as the film that set the template for much of his best work, Merchant is an important entry in Fassbinder’s filmography.

Fresh Celluloid #2: The Adjustment Bureau (Nolfi, 2011)

Misleading film trailers are sometimes called the movie the studio wish it made, not the one it actually did.  Based on The Adjustment Bureau’s marketing campaign, I suspect that someone at Universal wanted a conceptual sci-fi paranoid action thriller – in other words, The Bourne Inception.  At its heart, though, The Adjustment Bureau’s reference points are as retro as its villains’ gray flannel suits. Screen it in a triple feature with A Matter of Life and Death and It’s a Wonderful Life, and, aside from superficial exceptions like modern technology and fashions, you’d hardly know it wasn’t made in 1946. The Adjustment Bureau shares with those films a matter-of-fact approach to divine intervention and the earnest belief that true love conquers all.

The Adjustment Bureau borrows its premise from Philip K. Dick’s “Adjustment Team,” in which a mysterious cadre covertly alters humans’ reasoning and physiology to force them to choose certain options that affect the fate of the world.  Like Dick’s novel A Scanner Darkly, “Adjustment Team” is ambiguous as to whether the conspiracy actually exists or is just the product of the protagonist’s mental breakdown.  There’s no such room for interpretation in The Adjustment Bureau, though: Emily Blunt scarcely has time to question Matt Damon’s far-fetched claims before they’re diving through space-bending doorways and fleeing fedora-clad agents.  (There’s also a lot more running in the movie.)

Damon stars as David Norris, an up-and-coming New York politician who loses his US Senate race after a scandal reveals he got in a fight while in college.  (In other words, nothing that might turn the audience against him or be a scandal in real life.)  As he rehearses his concession speech in the men’s restroom, he discovers modern dancer Elise Sellas (Blunt) hiding from security after crashing a nearby wedding.  The next day, while commuting to his new job at his friend Charlie’s (Michael Kelly) office, David runs into Elise again on the M6 bus.  They strike up a conversation, and she hands him his phone number.  Elated, David steps into his new office, only to find himself in the middle of a bizarre scenario: his coworkers have been frozen in time, and a group of anachronistically-dressed men are scanning Charlie with strange antennaed devices.  David tries to escape, but the agents trap him in a secret room, where Richardson (John Slattery) informs David that he wasn’t supposed to see the adjustment or meet Elise again.  If David reveals to anyone what he witnessed, the agents will make sure his mind is wiped completely clean – not just of the adjustment he saw, but of all his memories.

The affable Damon is ideal as the film’s center, equally capable as action star and romantic hero.  He shares good chemistry with his co-stars, not just with Blunt but also Kelly as his best friend and Anthony Mackie as a sympathetic bureau agent.  The film is at its best in the smaller scenes that focus on these relationships.  David and Elise fall believably into love, and it only takes a few lines exchanged between David and Charlie to get a handle on their friendship. Writer/director George Nolfi has a good ear for scripting snappy yet natural-sounding dialogue, perfect for razzing on a buddy or flirting with a stranger.  Even the requisite throwing-out-the-speech-and-straight-talking-to-the-constituents scene acquits itself relatively well.  These human moments are so well-crafted, however, that they only emphasize the ridiculousness of the Adjustment Bureau scenes, which only get worse the more the agents reveal of their origins.  The exception is the encounters between David and senior agent Thompson, played by Terence Stamp with his signature blend of refined Cockney menace.  Those scenes stand out for being the only moments in the film that generate a real sense of danger.

The main problem with The Adjustment Bureau is its inability to settle on a proper tone.  The film is so fixated on the romance between David and Elise that it’s too soft-hearted to work as a conspiracy thriller.  David attempts to overthrow the Adjustment Bureau not because he has to save the world, but because he wants to be reunited with his true love.  As a result, the stakes are low, and it’s a safe bet that David and Elise will end up together, even if it means they have to break the bonds of fate. There’s also a strong spiritual current that’s unexpected in this type of modern big-budget Hollywood movie.  On the one hand, it adds to the film’s old-fashioned appeal.  On the other, it’s very hard to carry off if the filmmakers don’t commit to the idea completely, and I’m not so sure they do.

I’m curious to see how the audience will respond to The Adjustment Bureau. Will they be disappointed by the misleading ads? Unimpressed with the “conspiracy”? Too cynical for the mystical love story? While I don’t think The Adjustment Bureau is entirely successful in carrying out its ambitions, it’s still the kind of movie I wouldn’t mind becoming a hit.  The world could use a few more romantic dramas with such likeable leads and an endearingly earnest message.

 

The Adjustment Team opens in theaters March 4.

Mailbox Film Festival #6: Tamara Drewe (Frears, 2010)

There are few things more appealing to Hollywood than the loose, modernized adaptation.  Dust off an old (public domain!) Shakespeare play or Austen novel your audience might’ve read in high school, but cut out the iambic pentameter and Regency costumes that scream “BORING!” You get the name recognition and the vaguely educational sheen of the original literature, but without making the viewers do any extra work.  If you’re lucky, it might even be screened by substitute English teachers for decades.

With Tamara Drewe, Thomas Hardy finally gets a Clueless or 10 Things I Hate About You of his own.  The film is adapted from Posy Simmonds’s graphic novel of the same name, which in turn was inspired by Far From the Madding Crowd.  Now, I don’t know how widely read Hardy is in Britain.  He’s certainly not as popular in American schools as William Shakespeare or Jane Austen.  (We did study The Mayor of Casterbridge in my 10th grade English class.  It was my least favorite book I read in high school.) I suspect, though, that Far From the Madding Crowd still has only a fraction of the readers of Pride and Prejudice or Hamlet, which makes it an unexpected candidate for modernization – much less reworked as a light comedy.

Of course, the fact that Tamara Drewe originated as a comic strip in The Guardian probably gives it some extra popular appeal in the UK.  Indeed, that format is ideal for adapting the serially-published Hardy: all the insane plot twists, none of the dull descriptive detail.  But in a film, that’s a lot of story to cram into under two hours.  Even for a whirlwind romance, Tamara (Gemma Arterton) and Ben’s (Dominic Cooper) relationship progresses at a dizzying rate.  Title cards inform you that the seasons have changed, but it doesn’t feel like much time has passed.  Director Stephen Frears has also increased the roles of Jody and Casey (Jessica Barden and Charlotte Christie), two teenage girls who observe and comment on the main action, making the adults’ stories seem even more rushed.

Pacing problems aside, though, Tamara Drewe is enjoyable if somewhat forgettable. It’s never really laugh-out-loud funny (despite what the poster above says), but it’s a solid example of rustic farce.  Arterton is particularly good at portraying the title character, a clever journalist whose surgery-enhanced looks lead her to either being underestimated or viewed with suspicion by the other characters. Bill Camp gets to play the rare American character in British film who isn’t either an idiot or a jerk, and it’s always pleasant to see Tamsin Greig, even if her role’s not particularly funny. Frears takes advantage of the film’s graphic novel origins, using split screens, insets and thought bubbles, to create a style whimsical enough to be fresh but restrained enough that it isn’t distracting.  I wouldn’t call Tamara Drewe a must-see by any means, but it sure is a lot breezier than spending your day curled up with Far From the Madding Crowd.