USA

Buried (2010)

André Crous

Buried [2010]USA/Spain
2.5*

Director:
Rodrigo Cortés
Screenwriter:
Chris Sparling
Director of Photography:
Eduard Grau

Running time: 95 minutes

A high-concept like almost no other, Buried has an immensely ambitious premise that will draw throngs of viewers interested in seeing whether the film could possibly find a way to deal with the restrictions it imposes on itself. It is a restriction of place, as the entire film takes place in a very small space: a coffin underground, inside which the main character wakes up during the black screen that opens the film.

While Quentin Tarantino played with the same idea in Kill Bill: Vol. 2, the audience will be right to wonder whether an entire film following the same approach could be as entertaining. But the actor playing the role also has to be up to the task, as he has to carry the entire film on his shoulders, and has to keep our attention for the full 95 minutes of the running time. The film, therefore, makes us ask two very important questions: Does the film overcome its self-imposed hurdles, and does the actor hold our attention?

The answer to both, unfortunately, is ‘not really’. However, the film does immediately grab our attention, as we wonder whether the man we find in close-up, Paul Conroy, will escape from his coffin, and how he will manage to do that. That opening black screen, during which we share the actor’s disorientation and fear, is also a wonderful way to start, but what the film fails to do is stick to this approach. Instead, perhaps as a way to make us forget about the tiny space, director Rodrigo Cortés and his director of photography, A Single Man lenser Eduard Grau, employs very fluid tracking shots that circle Conroy’s body, trapped in a tight space we lose track of because of the ease with which the camera moves about.

The actor is Ryan Reynolds, not exactly known for serious roles. This was obviously meant to be Reynolds’s big break from his comedy and superhero work, with many a close-up letting us understand his frustration and despair when a single tear streaks down his cheek. But even though his situation would seem to be easy to empathize with, Conroy is not exactly a likeable character, as anyone offering him assistance on the other side of the line gets a response that doesn’t seek to convey anything other than hysteria at his own situation and the expectation that he will snap his fingers and others will locate and save him. On the other hand, his interlocutors, for the most part, are equally annoying, as they keep on asking him how he ended up in a coffin and how he phone them if he is so far underground. These conversations lead nowhere and become repetitive very quickly, suggesting the dialogue was mostly made up on the spot.

Conroy doesn’t seem to be very clever, either, as he continues to use his lighter to illuminate his surroundings, even when there is no particular need to do so, except to keep an audience used to seeing images at the cinema satisfied. Of course, the lighter won’t last forever, and while this may create some tension with the viewer (who knows there will come a point at which the lighter will fail, perhaps to the utter surprise of Conroy), it also speaks volumes about how stupid Conroy is. Except for humanitarian reasons, there is no reason why we would like to see Conroy survive this ordeal. At best, we expect to see how far underground he is, or where he finds himself.

Buried was obviously made on a very tight budget, although oddly there are a few stylised shots, including one that features a cutaway of the coffin, that seem to want to release us from the feeling of claustrophobia the film obviously elicits. This approach is difficult to understand, as the director undermines the very basic idea that Conroy must be saved within a small amount of time because he will run out of air, and so might the audience. Instead, Cortés lets his camera dance all over the place, including capturing panoramic 360-degree shots inside the confined space that ought to give us an impression of suffocation, not liberation.

There are a few uncomfortable silence and utter darkness, but these are too sporadic to have any real effect on the film, as they seem to be added almost as an afterthought. The heavy breathing, coughing and shuffling in the darkness with which the film opens set the tone, but that tone is crushed when the camera reveals a man stuck in a coffin but having a camera (the audience’s point of view) that can easily move around inside the space.

Buried could have been a very impressive effort to involve an audience ready to sympathize with a man stuck in a tight space, but we cannot, because the character is so bad and we simply don’t have the same experience of fear that he is supposed to feel. Also, since when does alcohol burn the way methanol burns? Or is our hero drinking methanol? There are many questions here that indicate a film badly conceived around a rock-solid central premise. This was not Ryan Reynolds’s big break, and unfortunately, the stylistic excess would be repeated in the Cortés-produced Grand Piano.

Grand Piano (2013)

André Crous

grand-piano-2013USA/Spain
2.5*

Director:
Eugenio Mira
Screenwriter:
Damien Chazelle
Director of Photography:
Unax Mendía

Running time: 90 minutes

Eugenio Mira’s Grand Piano has a central conceit that has been incredibly effective in other thrillers, most notably Speed, Nick of Time and Phone Booth, but it squanders the potential of its idea by drowning it in style and spectacle without eliciting any fear or thrill in the viewer (not unlike the disappointing single-setting but visually extravagant Buried, which producer Rodrigo Cortés directed). In fact, one character’s actions during the climax are so wildly melodramatic, we cannot help but laugh at the utter absurdity of the staging and the lack of credibility.

The plot sees prodigious piano player Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood), who has not performed in five years after having had a breakdown during his last show, coming back to the stage to play the piano his late maestro, Patrick Godureaux, so cherished. He is expected to play a piece titled “La Cinquette,” which will require him to do strenuous finger movements at a superhuman pace right at the end of the piece, and he is understandably stressed out.

In an effort to calm him down, his conductor tells him that no one expects him to play perfectly and that the audience never notices tiny screw-ups in a piano performance anyway. However, Tom is about to get the fright of his life when he takes to the stage and opens his sheet music. There, in bright red ink, are little scribbles that tell him to play every single note perfectly lest his actress wife, Emma (Kerry Bishé), beaming with pride from her seat in one of the boxes, gets shot to pieces by a state-of-the-art laser-equipped rifle.

Tom suspects this is a joke, but when he notices a little dot of red light dancing around the piano, and then on his wife’s face, he breaks out in cold sweat. In one of many moments that repeat throughout the film, he runs offstage to audible gasps from the audience, while the orchestra continues playing, to his dressing room, where he finds more evidence that his life is in danger, as well as an earpiece to follow the instructions of his would-be assassin, voiced by John Cusack.

For the rest of the film, Tom will be sitting in the spotlight, from the looks of things speaking to himself but actually communication with the man he cannot see and whose intentions he knows nothing about, except that they may lead to his own assassination. But both this mysterious man and Tom are very talkative, and it would seem little concentration is required to play all the right notes, or perhaps this pianist is just unusually gifted, as there is a continuous back and forth between the two with no sign of Tom, whom the voice in his ear provocatively, playfully and punnily refers to as “a man of note,” missing a beat, or more importantly, a note.

But what starts out as a very strong premise for tension is properly drenched in style, as Mira’s camera flies across the stage with wild crane shots, again and again surging over the orchestra towards Tom and whooshily swirls around his one-in-a-million piano that contains the key (another pun the film plays with a bit too often) to his survival.

Elijah Wood’s big eyes are perfectly suited to the material, as the obvious curiosity he exudes fits with the enigma his character is trying to get a grip on. However, the character of his wife, Emma, is a big joke, and in a last-ditch attempt at tension during the climax, she is central to one of the most bizarre moments in the entire film, as she seems to pleasure herself with a song, performed impromptu for an adoring public, while her husband is running around trying to save them from looming execution. This detour into insanity will either have the viewer in stitches or make her cringe with embarrassment, as we simply cannot fathom how a story with such a serious premise could plumb such depths of farce.

Grand Piano has spectacle but no tension. We do not share the point of view of the audience but rather of the pianist, who on top of playing the most difficult piece of his life, seems to cope very well indeed with having his and his wife’s lives threatened by a lunatic who seems to be very handy with a gun. But wait until you hear what the assassin actually does for a living — one can hardly things could get much more preposterous! If Mira had defined his film more clearly as comedy, perhaps it would have been more enjoyable, but the strange combination of a life in danger and hilarious comedy in the final act makes for an uneven viewing experience that few members of the audience will find satisfying. 

Joe (2013)

André Crous

joe-2013USA
3*

Director:
David Gordon Green
Screenwriter:
David Gordon Green
Director of Photography:
Tim Orr

Running time: 115 minutes

David Gordon Green is one of the most talented filmmakers of his generation. Sure, he made the slapstick comedies Your Highness and The Sitter and gone to the well of stoner comedy once too often, but he also made the poetic Prince Avalanche, which enveloped Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch in an ambience reminiscent of both his earlier work and of Hayao Miyazaki’s gorgeous animations. His meditative Undertow, starring Dermot Mulroney and Jamie Bell and produced by Terrence Malick, is easily one of the best films of the 2000s.

In Joe, he returns to the Southern Gothic atmosphere many have labelled his early work with, and as with Undertow much of the action takes place deep in a forest. But Green’s latest film just proves how fine the line is between his magic and his mediocrity, especially when the casting process leads to a collaboration, or rather a tribulation, with Nicholas Cage.

Cage did some good work when he was younger, and his Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas is well deserved. But that is where his talent ended because his grimaces ever since and his expressions of pain just don’t take us anywhere. In Joe, the reason his emotional outbursts are painful is that they are so embarrassing to watch.

But luckily the casting also yielded the young Tye Sheridan, who made such an impression with his performance in Mud, another film set in the rural South about a flawed man who redeems himself ever so slightly by the end. In both films, Sheridan hits a range of notes that are all wholly credible and keep us rapt. But whereas Mud had Matthew McConaughey to reinforce Sheridan’s character, Joe only has Cage, who as usual can’t act his way out of a paper bag.

Cage stars as the titular Joe, a loner who spends his time at home lying on the couch, clearly dealing with some past torment or afflicted by a demon, at a brothel, and in the woods, where he runs a business poisoning trees so that the owners would have the right to burn them down and develop the area. As one should expect from Green, the metaphor of poisoning trees (or life) is at once straightforward and opaque.

Joe doesn’t have much in the way of family that we know of (in a throwaway comment toward the end, we find out he has a grandchild he has never seen), but then, we know very little about him. The most obvious part of the film is that Joe is positioned as the father figure to a teenage boy, Gary (Sheridan), whose own father is a worthless drunk who takes his money and beats him senseless whenever he gets the chance. One day, Gary comes upon Joe’s business in the forest and proves himself to be a quick learner and a very capable worker. We like him almost immediately, even when he lets himself get beaten up by his ever-intoxicated biological father.

This part of the film is the most frustrating, as we learn very early on that the deceptively scrawny Gary can stand up for himself, that he is a push-over for no one, except his father, whom he can evidently take down if he wanted to. There is some halfhearted explanation that seeks to justify Gary’s passivity, but it is tough to side with him when all we want is for him to stand up for himself against this unnecessary violence.

Joe doesn’t have the same kind of insight as a film like Evil (Ondskan), in which a young man who easily knocks out his school mates is beaten time after time by his father because he is not living up to his expectations. Evil made us ask “Why?” before ultimately delivering a stunning blow that was both physically and intellectually satisfying and put all that came before in a context that may have been carved out for dramatic purposes but made sense and had a powerful impact on the viewer. By contrast, Joe only posits a situation on repeat that never improves and which we can’t quite line up with the immanently likeable Gary. We feel like we are slowly drowning in a presentation, albeit gritty and very likely true to life (Gary’s father, Wade, was played by a real-life homeless man called Gary Poulter), that simply doesn’t give us the answers we are looking for, despite building to what we would expect to be a climactic event.

It should be obvious to everyone by now that Sheridan will be a big star, and one can only hope that he continues to choose his projects as wisely as he has until now, as the characters have suited his abilities perfectly, even when the films themselves have not been consistently good. Joe could have done with a few more female characters, although a comparison with the nearly woman-free Undertow shows just what he can accomplish when he puts his mind to a project and focus on the interesting characters (usually, the children) instead of the supposedly more complex adults, who in the case of Joe are dull as dishwater.

I sincerely hope Green returns to the heights of Undertow because while Joe is far from bad, his films have always benefited from his eye for the beauty in the ordinary and his ability to add a dash of magic to the everyday.

Margin Call (2011)

André Crous

01E_MGC_DOM_1Sht.inddUSA
4*

Director:
J.C. Chandor
Screenwriter:
J.C. Chandor
Director of Photography:
Frank DeMarco

Running time: 107 minutes

J.C. Chandor’s Margin Call opens with force, and its opening scenes sustain the energy of this film, which is mostly set in a single location throughout most of its running time, encompassing a diegetic time frame of roughly 36 hours.

There is no conventional setup; instead, the surprise is the setup. We meet the characters and the sudden turmoil in medias res, as employees at an investment bank see their colleagues being let go. The impact of this storm is all the more powerful because the axing takes place in full view of the entire staff, as the fateful meetings are scheduled in a conference room with a glass wall facing the rest of the office.

Margin Call gives us a rush of adrenaline already, and we don’t even know what the film is about, yet. But then we see Eric Dale getting fired. Dale is played by Stanley Tucci, and obviously, if Tucci is playing him, he has to be consequential. Indeed, although he may only appear in three scenes, his character is pivotal to the development of the film. To remind us of his significance, he is mentioned every few scenes, and we get the very real sense there would have been no Margin Call had it not been for the delicate project and catastrophic projections Dale had been working on.

Not that the film lacks big names. Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Simon Baker, Paul Bettany and Zachary Quinto all feature in this cast of professionals. One has to admire the confidence of first-time filmmaker J.C. Chandor, whose follow-up would be the exceptional All is Lost with Robert Redford as a cast unto himself in 2013. This film required an ensemble that works together in unison with characters only rising above the rest at very critical moments, and Chandor’s direction is flawless.

We eventually do find out that the film is set in 2008, and while this is not Lehman Brothers, it is a very similar outfit, with some of the same problems. Quinto’s character, Peter Sullivan, is entrusted with some deeply troubling data by the outgoing Dale, which basically show that the company is about to tank, as over the previous two weeks its volatility has started to exceed historical levels.

Luckily, one does not need to understand the terminology used to describe the systemic failures behind the action in order to grasp the seriousness of the situation here. The language is generally transparent and easy to comprehend, and is helped by some of the major players here just being good salesmen and not necessarily all that into linguistic gymnastics with financial lingo – some of the most highly paid individuals here cannot even read a chart.

In the middle of the film, there is a wonderful scene around a conference table when the self-admitted earner of “the big bucks”, the company’s CEO John Tuld (Jeremy Irons), asks Sullivan to explain the situation to him and to those around the table, “as you might to a young child, or a Golden Retriever.” What Sullivan reveals to them, and to us, is that the firm is at a point where it either throws all sense of morality out the window and keeps on to a fraction of its cash, and likely making many on staff instant millionaires because of the way these things work out, or own up to its makes and loses all its money.

Of course, the firm chooses the former option, but while there is nothing wrong with the overarching narrative, the film falters in its final act by not letting us experience the exhilarating moral dilemma the characters face on the big day. Too little of the final day is shown, and most of the action seems tired and simply added on to the whirlwind of revelations and decisions of the night before, all of which we were witness to, including one of the most important meetings ever held at the company, taking place at 2:15 a.m.

The opening shot of the film – a time-lapse showing the Manhattan skyline – is also disappointing, as it establishes place but doesn’t convey the feeling of an adrenaline rush we would have got if we had immediately been shown the inside of the office. In fact, the film is rather unimpressive when it comes to its visuals, although the director does use green lighting effectively to convey the feeling of money everywhere.

Peter Sullivan is a wonderful character, and not only because of Quinto’s expressive face, but mostly because he seems genuinely nice. In one of the first scenes, he thanks his mentor shortly after he was fired, to thank him for taking a chance on him. Sullivan’s colleague, Seth, is played by the curious-eyed Penn Badgley, who is an equally charming character: slightly awkward and more sensitive to the highs and lows on the timeline, we also briefly see he wears white socks, subtly hinting that he doesn’t really belong in this rough and tumble world.

In the final scene, the focus abruptly shifts to the character of floor head Sam Rogers (played by Kevin Spacey), who we have learned cares very little about life outside the office. His dog, Ella, has died, although we don’t know whether it was a natural death or if he had finally decided to relieve the animal of its suffering. The film seems to imply his grief is noteworthy because we get a few sounds over the black screen of the closing credits, but this entire scene is presented in a way that seems disproportionately overblown compared with the rest of the story.

Margin Call has some terrific bits and, for much of its running time, is riveting. It is too bad the final few sequences are so rushed and don’t give us the kind of insight into the characters that were just starting to grow on us, as we really want to know how the actions they take affect them in the moment and beyond.

American Graffiti (1973)

André Crous

American GraffitiUSA
5*

Director:
George Lucas
Screenwriters:
George Lucas
Gloria Katz
Willard Huyck
Directors of Photography:
Ron Eveslage
Jan D’Alquen

Running time: 112 minutes

What a difference a night makes. The entertainment value of George Lucas’ second feature film, American Graffiti, does not depend on special effects or easy laughs from pratfalls or whatever childish behaviour we have come to behave from film teenagers. The action takes place over the course of a single night, from sunset to sunrise, when everyone’s lives will inevitably change forever as some of the individuals go off to college while others stay behind to either stagnate or begin their lives as adults.

It doesn’t matter that this film was made many decades ago, at the beginning of the 1970s, and took as its central characters a group of friends in 1962, the seriousness of their decisions is timeless and still relevant to viewers in the present day.

Set in California in the last year of innocence in the United States, before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the soundtrack to the lives of the handful of friends we follow is a compilation of music from the 1950s and the early 1960s so lively that the only viewers who don’t feel like dancing along are those who don’t have a pulse. The music is not just extra-diegetic but also produced in the world of the film itself, be it on the radio or by a band at the high-school dance.

At the brightly illuminated Mels (sic) drive-in, where cars pull up to order meals that are delivered to their open windows by waitresses on roller-skates, four friends barely out of high school gather to spend their night together. Steve (Ron Howard) is waiting for his longtime girlfriend, Laurie, whom he will be separated from for months at a time once he is away at college. She is expecting him to ask her to marry him, but when he suggests, instead, that they see other people to test the strength of their relationship, she is understandably rattled and after giving him the cold shoulder, she gives him a proper tongue lashing (and not the kind he was expecting) at a dance. More on that dance later.

Curt (Richard Dreyfuss) is conflicted over his imminent departure to the north-east for college. He has received a scholarship from a local diner, but he doesn’t know whether he is the kind of person who is “competitive” to survive the college environment. At the beginning of the film, a blond “goddess” drives past him and seems to mouth “I love you” in his direction, but he will spend the whole film looking for her, further rooting himself to the town and his hopes there. He also becomes involved in the activities of the local gang, the Pharaohs, and seems to have a hidden talent for criminality.

Terry “The Toad” (Charles Martin Smith) is an awkward boy with glasses whose life is made when Steve bequeaths his 1958  Chevy Impala to him for the night. This car gives him the self-confidence he never had, and he ends up with a platinum blonde girl named Debbie with whom he has adventures no one could have imagined when evening fell, or just how right he was when he predicted at the beginning of the film that “Tonight, things are gonna be different.”

And then there is John Milner (Paul Le Mat), the boy who never grew up, who drives his pimped-up car up (with license plate THX 138, the title of Lucas’ very different previous film) and down the streets to race anyone who dares challenge his superiority on the road. John, who is also looking forward to spending the night with a girl, ends up babysitting his potential prey’s teenage sister, and what this does to his character development and our empathy for him is truly stunning.

The writing as a whole is equally “boss,” and while the songs on the soundtrack — ranging from “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” and “The Great Pretender” to “Johnny B Goode,” “A Thousand Miles Away” and “Get a Job” — are as appropriate and relevant as they are full of rhythm, they never overwhelm nor amateurishly overemphasize the scenes they accompany.

One of the highlights of the film sneaks up on us totally unexpectedly. A rare crane shot swoops down on a parked car, where Steve and Laurie are discussing their relationship while Five Satins’ “To the Aisle” softly plays on the soundtrack. Their short conversation is followed by Steve’s pathetic attempt at seduction that borders on assault, before he is thrown from the car. Laurie, far from being hysterical or made a victim, is in the driver’s seat.

This follows an earlier altercation between the couple, once again perfectly captured by Lucas, who uses an unbroken take of some 92 seconds that comprises a backward tracking shot and a nearly 360-degree pan as the camera focuses in close-up on Steve and Laurie dancing while she makes it clear she knows his secrets and has made her peace with them.

In terms of the strength of the screenplay, one need look no farther than the opening sequence, in which the dashing of Laurie’s expectations to get married is followed by Steve giving Terry the keys to his car, and Terry promising to “love and protect this car till death do us part.” But it is the combination of the dialogue, the soundtrack and the acting that make the film so compelling and ensure all the stories continue to grab us, even as four different trajectories are woven through the night. Perhaps it is because the camera doesn’t look down on its characters: Even when they sit on the curb or slide underneath a car, the camera goes where they go.

Whether it is credible for the whole town to seemingly keep driving up and down and around throughout the night is a little beside the point, as the experience is so thoroughly immersive we follow the characters wherever they choose to go, even if they wander without much of a goal except to have fun.

This is what a coming-of-age film is supposed to look and feel like. Never treating the children like infants, never abusing the expected anguish over the transitional nature of things but highlighting the beauty of experiences when we (and they) know these may never be repeated again. American Graffiti remains the most enjoyable, heartfelt film George Lucas ever directed and one of the best films about the bittersweet end of childhood.

The Great Gatsby (2013)

André Crous

Great GatsbyUSA
3*

Director:
Baz Luhrmann
Screenwriters:
Baz Luhrmann
Craig Pearce
Director of Photography:
Simon Duggan

Running time: 143 minutes

After the disappointing Australia, Baz Luhrmann marks his return to the world of supersized, kaleidoscopic entertainment with The Great Gatsby. His film is the adaptation of the eponymous 1926 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which is as short and compact as this film is long and sprawling, clocking in at nearly two and a half hours.

Set on Long Island in 1922, a stone’s throw from New York City, in the posh villages of West Egg and East Egg, the protagonist and narrator of the story, the 29-year-old Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), moves into a small cottage on the grounds immediately bordering a palatial fortress where there are nightly parties that draw elegant crowds from across the state and beyond partaking in the near-orgiastic celebrations of money and booze.

The host, we learn, is a mysterious man called Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is Nick’s age, and rumours swirl as to the origin of his fortune. When Nick finally meets Gatsby, he is most impressed by his smile, about which Nick waxes lyrical when he describes it as “one of those rare smiles you may come across four or five times in your life.” Alas, despite the faithful (unlike most of the story’s characters, who effortlessly two-time their partners) adaptation of nearly every single line in the novel, this very important character trait does not make its way onto the big screen.

However, Gatsby’s first appearance onscreen certainly presents him as a star worthy of Nick’s ultimate devotion, as we, seemingly from Nick’s point of view, look almost directly at him while fireworks fill the night sky in slow motion behind him. This point-of-view shot obviously seeks to make us identify with Nick, and consequently with his interest in Gatsby, but such appreciation is undercut by the pointless bookend structure of the film that is meant to mirror the writer’s voice in the novel.

The film opens with Nick, at a sanatorium in winter time, a few years after the events; he is struggling to come to terms with his friendship with Gatsby and is urged by his psychiatrist to write out his memories. These notes, typed out just like in Moulin Rouge!, become, as we realise by the end of the film with a sense of dread, the novel itself. It is a jarring structuring device that makes it seem like Fitzgerald could be equated with Nick, although it does illuminate the reason why there are a few scenes in both the novel and the film, related to us by Nick, where he nonetheless wasn’t present.

The Great Gatsby is mostly a story of love and admiration, between the dainty, ditsy Daisy (Carey Mulligan), a distant relative of Nick’s, and Gatsby. Despite his riches, Gatsby is a man who still yearns for the heart of the woman he has loved for many years and because of whom he has become the man he is at present. Nick is a man trying to make ends meet after the Great War and enjoying the life of a bachelor at a time of roaring debauchery. This wasn’t quite the case in the novel, but fortunately, Luhrmann is better at subtlety here than usual.

The set and costume design, as should be expected from a Luhrmann production, is gorgeous (“full of money”, to borrow Fitzgerald’s description of Daisy’s voice), and when late at night during one party the girls splash around the pool at Gatsby’s place with some inflatable zebras, one has a feeling of awe at how many things are going on at once inside the frame. The director was in the mood for indulgence, however, and the party scenes sometimes feel like a bit of a sideshow to the central drama.

The film generally isn’t very visually inventive, with scenes of fast cars shot the same way every time to provoke an impression of confusion, and whereas the director’s digital tracking shots whipped the viewer from Montmartre to an operatic moon in a single movement in Moulin Rouge!, here they seem both irrelevant and less sophisticated as we rush from one side of the bay to the other without a sense of exhilaration. The special effects are sometimes stunningly bad, as it seems the technical team forgot that backgrounds or rear projection don’t always have to be blurred to such an extent it becomes a distracting wasteland of colourful ash. The film has little feeling for place or people, and too many of the scenes feel like they were shot on a sound stage.

The Great Gatsby’s final 10 minutes are a mess and show Luhrmann’s intention was not to reflect on loss but rather to skim over it completely. The final chapter of Fitzgerald’s novel was riveting because it showed how tenuous Gatsby’s connection to the rest of humanity was, while the film nearly glosses over this significant matter entirely.

There are a few references to Sunset Blvd., another film about a longing for the glamour of yesteryear (Nick asks Gatsby “Are you ready for your close-up?” and one character’s death in a swimming pool immediately brings to mind the bookends of Wyler’s film), but Luhrmann is mostly his energetic self, and we realise that while his fingerprints are all over the film, his creativity has more or less run dry. A long sequence of dissolves towards the end of the film is almost sad, and so is the lingering close-up on Nick’s face when he gives Gatsby a heartfelt compliment a few moments later.

Despite the raunchy parties, we all go home at the end feeling little for Luhrmann the host, and while there are a few rare moments of joy to be had, among them the introduction of the many partygoers — transforming the novel’s list into a memorable smorgasbord of characters — the overall impression is one of excess rather than excitement.

How to Survive a Plague (2012)

André Crous

How to Survive a PlagueUSA
4*

Director:
David France
Screenwriters:
David France
T. Woody Richman
Tyler H. Walk
Director of Photography:
Derek Wiesehahn

Running time: 120 minutes

Once, there was a terrible disease in the United States and around the world. It seemed to affect only homosexuals, and the discrimination against this already marginalised community increased as fear gripped the country over the fatality of the human immunodeficiency virus that led to blindness, deafness, sensitivity to the smallest illness, the unsightly Kaposi’s sarcoma, and almost certain death.

The 1980s and the first half of the 1990s were the worst for those suffering from the AIDS epidemic, as first the Reagan government was unwilling to address the epidemic (President Reagan infamously mentioned the word AIDS for the first time in public as late as 1987), the Ed Koch administration of New York City dragged its feet, and then the George H.W. Bush government didn’t push its drug administration and National Institute of Health to pursue research of the disease and of a potential cure with greater urgency.

How to Survive a Plague is a documentary that tells the story of how a group of activists brought down enormous pressure on the government, informed themselves about the virus, worked to raise public awareness and make the influential drug companies aware how their policies were affecting a large swathe of the population.

These activists formed part of a grassroots organisation called ACT UP, and there can be no doubt that it is because of the work of ACT UP that AIDS deaths have drastically decreased and medication is affordable to a very significant amount of people infected with the lethal virus. AIDS has not disappeared, but the AIDS crisis has, and it is because of the protests and the perseverance of ACT UP.

This documentary, comprised almost entirely of footage shot by dozens of individuals at the time of the epidemic that follows some of the main figures in the movement, starts in what is clearly presented as another lifetime: The appearance of the Twin Towers reminds us this was another lifetime. Labelled “Year 6”, the film opens in 1987 at a protest march against the policies of New York City Mayor Ed Koch, whom activist Ann Northrop beseeches to declare a state of emergency, so that those suffering in the emergency rooms, often for days before they are treated, usually assaulted by homophobic assailants right there in the waiting rooms, can be properly treated, with dignity.

There is incredible anger at Koch, and this anger, which extends to the government as a whole, fuels the movement for most of its existence, coupled with a strong urge to find a cure and stop the suffering and the death of thousands upon thousands of people. “It’s like living in a war,” says Peter Staley, a former bond trader on Wall Street, who is one of the main characters in the film. “All around me, friends are dropping dead. And you’re scared for your own life at the same time.”

The fear and the anger translated into many activists throwing caution to the wind and acting out in ways they may not have considered had they been healthy or unaffected, although some of the important individuals, like retired chemist Iris Long or Merck research scientist Emilio Emini, were not activists but participated because they cared, they knew they could make a difference and help all of these people in any way afflicted by HIV and AIDS.

Without a doubt, one of the most engaging figures is Peter Staley, who is good-looking, passionate and eloquent about the message of the movement. He scales government buildings to hang banners that proclaim “Silence = Death”, he appears on television programs to debate politicians about the government’s health policies, and he speaks at AIDS conferences that until then had largely excluded the voices of the movement. This last point is not really dealt with in any detail, however, and the film would have benefited from greater context.

We follow ACT UP’s fight against Burroughs Wellcome Company, the pharmaceutical firm that produced AZT, the first AIDS drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration, at the astronomical cost of $10,000 a year per patient, to getting DHPG approved, which would save the eyesight of tens of thousands of AIDS sufferers. Their actions are not just the result of their anger but also of an enormous amount of research, often by members who studied at Ivy League schools. They help people understand the virus and huddle with everyone else to come up with the best strategy to proceed. They would go on to form the Treatment and Data Committee, which would ultimately become the Treatment Action Group (TAG).

We follow the action as if someone had taken a camera back in time to record everything as it happened. Meetings in basements, interviews with some of the main people, family gatherings… everything is there in the film — even Staley riding his bike.

This film contains incredibly powerful moments, and they are almost always the result of inherent emotion on the faces of characters deeply affected by this epidemic, often the victims of decisions made by bureaucrats who don’t yet understand what ordinary people are going through on a day-to-day basis. And that is why it brings such insight to notice people like Ellen Cooper, who used to be an FDA regulator who had to explain the administration’s decisions to an angry ACT UP crowd, become AIDS activists themselves.

Interestingly, the scene that moved me more than anything else was also the most obviously filmic. It was the protest march against President George H.W. Bush’s apparent inaction on AIDS research. Tens of thousands of protesters flocked to Washington, D.C., and some even dumped the bones and ashes of their loved ones on the front lawn of the White House, their actions set to the eerie sounds of “Happiness” by Jónsi and Alex. This scene is incredibly powerful.

How to Survive a Plague tells a breathtaking story but falters towards the end when it starts using shorthand once Bill Clinton becomes president, skipping from 1993 to 1995, which is when research had picked up and the government agencies and public opinion had finally come around (with the exception of eternally homophobic Senator Jesse Helms) to agreeing that a cure should be sought. We are told these were the worst years, but we don’t know why. That is a terrible omission from the narrative.

However, suddenly seeing Mark Harrington (one of the leaders of TAG) and others appear as a much older man, knowing what that means, and hearing videographer Bill Bahlman confirm that “the dying was stopping,” quickly stuns us into silence.

Although it is only a few years since AIDS decimated entire communities, this film is a very vivid reminder of the trauma that accompanied the disease and shows how activism accelerated the research that eventually led to the cocktail, achieving major triumphs along the way, like getting DHPG approved and highlighting the absurdity of the Roman Catholic Church’s prohibition on using condoms.

If you want to know anything about the struggle against AIDS, this is the film to watch.

Someday, the AIDS crisis will be over. Remember that. And when that day comes, when that day has come and gone, there’ll be people alive on this earth — gay people and straight people, men and women, black and white — who will hear the story that once there was a terrible disease in this country and all over the world, and that a brave group of people stood up and fought, and in some cases gave their lives, so that other people might live and be free. — Vito Russo

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

André Crous

The Place Beyond the PinesUSA
4*

Director:
Derek Cianfrance
Screenwriters:
Derek Cianfrance
Ben Coccio
Darius Marder
Director of Photography:
Sean Bobbitt

Running time: 140 minutes

Derek Cianfrance is the unsung hero of contemporary cinema. Despite the grim and outright pessimistic perspective on relationships that he made so visible in his 2010 film Blue Valentine, in which a young man and woman constantly fight, bicker and make up, only to crush each other again — and the viewer, too — his films very realistically accentuate something very few others can boast of: the dark side of love.

The Place Beyond the Pines is a departure from his previous film in the sense that it doesn’t focus narrowly on the ups and many downs of a relationship but rather takes the consequences of fathers’ actions and project them over a generation to examine what happens down the line, although the director has much more interest in the drama of life than in any religious interpretation the viewer may bring to it.

The result, as is to be expected with Cianfrance, is not pretty, and yet life, though always complicated, is not without hope. There is a chance for characters to redeem themselves, but there is a big caveat: provided that other people don’t bring them down in the process. There are no guardian angels here, and even the actions that seem to spark a temporary reprieve for someone in dire need are usually motivated by the so-called protector’s selfish need for self-protection.

In this film, Cianfrance teams up with noted director of photography Sean Bobbitt, who has a background in documentary work (as does the director) and worked with Michael Winterbottom on the marvellous depiction of domestic turmoil in the underrated 1998 film Wonderland.

The collaboration produces a very gritty representation of life that includes drugs and violence. But these are merely props in a story that runs much deeper.

The film tells the story of Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) who earns the bare minimum riding a motorcycle inside a steel “globe of death,” and when he learns he has a son he drops everything to commit his life to being a good father. However, he is stubborn and aggressive and behaves like a real miscreant towards the man whose life he is making miserable: Kofi, the stepfather of his son. Kofi turns out to be one of the most interesting characters in the film, and he is portrayed with a quiet sense of dignity and fatherly love for a child who is not his own by actor Mahershala Ali.

Events transpire that lead to a confrontation with rookie police officer Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), who is about to lose his naiveté about life as a policeman. His actions, as well as those of Glanton, will follow him for years to come and impact his relationship with his son.

The film is set in upstate New York, in the town of Schenectady, which is the approximate Mohawk translation of the film’s title. However, this factoid doesn’t feature anywhere in the story, which will certainly animate many post-screenings discussions at the bar (because, yes, you probably will need a drink after this film).

As we saw in the gorgeous but disturbing Little Children, the green foliage of New England towns can hide terrible secrets (of course, American Beauty had the same message), and The Place Beyond the Pines also seeks to pull the curtain back ever so slightly on the goings-on in the small town where its story takes place. Corruption, drugs and violence are just a few of the issues that the film raises, and they don’t even come close to the emotional violence done to us by these fictional characters.

As bookends, the opening and the closing shot are as magnificent as their meaning seems to be just out of reach. The opening Steadicam shot will make the viewer think of GoodFellas and its famous Copacabana tracking shot through the kitchen as we follow Ray Liotta (who also appears in this film) deeper and deeper into a place where he wields great influence. In Cianfrance’s film, it’s Gosling whose back is turned to the camera as he walks shirtless and supremely confidently through an amusement park in a shot that lasts nearly three and a half minutes from beginning to end; he is serene despite the wild sounds all around him as he heads towards the abovementioned “globe of death”, where — in a seemingly unbroken take — he will mount his motorcycle and perform the deadly stunt for a raucous crowd.

The film’s closing shot shows this same character’s son, many years later, taking up a motorcycle and driving off into the distance, this time across a peaceful autumn landscape that in no way represents his inner turmoil. Where he is headed we do not know (very likely he doesn’t know, either), and it would be incredibly simplistic and presumptuous to assume this scene neatly slots in with the events of the opening shot, but there is an unspoken hint of filiality between the two, and tenuous as the connection may be, we get a feeling of cohesion that is simply gorgeous.

Cianfrance’s films may be bleak, but his work proves the ever greater richness and complexity of life, and he should get more credit as a storyteller and a documenter of human emotion.

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)

André Crous

We Need to Talk About KevinUK/USA
4*

Director:
Lynne Ramsay
Screenwriters:
Lynne Ramsay
Rory Stewart Kinnear
Director of Photography:
Seamus McGarvey

Running time: 112 minutes

Young Kevin (Ezra Miller) is a monster. From the moment he is born until the night he is arrested at school, a creepy, stomach-turning malice is palpable, and at various points, the viewer will rightly wonder whether the film might unfold as an adaptation of The Omen.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a film about the effect a child’s killing rampage at his school has on his parents, but compared with other films like Beautiful Boy, Gus van Sant’s Elephant or the astonishing The Class (Klass) from Estonia, the focus here is purely on the mother and her very traumatic recollection of her son’s childhood.

The film does not pretend to be interested in the reasons behind Kevin’s actions, and this is an important point to keep in mind. Whether we eventually get any kind of explanation or motivation is quite beside the point — the point being an examination of his mother Eva’s (Tilda Swinton) struggle to make peace with the events of the past 18 years that culminated in the deaths of many innocent children, at the hands of her own flesh and blood.

But this does not mean the film is indifferent toward Kevin’s psychology. It is made evident that Kevin was an unwanted baby and that Eva did not plan on being a mother. It is impossible to tell whether the film assigns the blame to her for Kevin’s unstable character, but we do get a sense she is not blameless and may even be responsible for his ultimate breakdown.

The glimpses we get are all presented as wholly subjective impressions, and perhaps for the first time since Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, we are made aware of the colour red in almost every single scene. But unlike Roeg’s film, which was an effective exercise in making a stylized thriller, We Need to Talk About Kevin uses red as a way to visibly stain the memories of the main character. Such visual intelligence is rarely seen on the big screen.

It is also to the screenplay’s credit that Eva is at the centre of events since this is the only way for the film to present her son and his actions as perplexing without testing our patience and our desire for rational motivation. Kevin has no sense of shame and fearlessly humiliates his mother, who tries to rationalize his behaviour and refuses to discipline him. Often, Eva’s sense of culpability makes her blame herself for the petulance displayed by her son, who forever remains a stranger to her.

Eva’s emotional turmoil, her angst and her frustration at always being the victim are staged very competently, though the constant staring of the people she passes in her small town does become more than a little irritating.

Kevin is not a likeable boy, nor does he reveal any sense of a moral compass. He is allowed to be passive-aggressive throughout his entire childhood and always gets away with this kind of behaviour, perhaps because his family seems to be isolated from the rest of society. Though neither of his parents is particularly quick-witted, Kevin somehow manages to be a genius at social manipulation, and his dark side will send shivers down the spine of any adult viewer. But even if we accept him as just a loose cannon, this aspect of his character comes across as contrived.

With its focus on Eva’s ostracism in society and her stoic acceptance that the days ahead will be as gloomy as the days behind her, We Need to Talk About Kevin is likely to elicit a sense of frustration at this remarkably passive character who never fights against the injustices committed against her and who often remains quiet about her sense of helplessness.

A film about a child who is born unwanted and finally takes his revenge by mowing down his classmates is certainly one way to promote a pro-choice message, one I have no qualms with, but the radical characterization of Kevin as being something close to the Antichrist does not help the cause.

Though far from brilliant, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a potent and haunting depiction of a mother’s conflicted response to being rejected by her own son, made by a filmmaker clearly in control of her craft.

This is a slightly modified version of the writer’s review that first appeared in The Prague Post.

Margaret (2011)

André Crous

Superlative performances make Margaret, director Kenneth Longeran’s gloomy comeback released more than half a decade after shooting, a charm.

MargaretUSA
3.5*

Director:
Kenneth Lonergan
Screenwriter:
Kenneth Lonergan
Director of Photography:
Ryszard Lenczewski

Running time: 150 minutes

By the time Margaret was finally released, it had aged so much it had probably passed its expiration date already.

Shot in 2005, it took a full six years before this film saw the light of day and was finally released for distribution. One of the main reasons for the delay was director Kenneth Lonergan’s insistence on a three-hour running time. Given enormous opposition on the part of the distributors, Lonergan eventually relented, and in the end, his film is 150 minutes long.

Two and a half hours is an ambitious length for a film whose plot can easily be summarised, and although the film evinces much of Lonergan’s skill as a storyteller, it doesn’t do him justice as a filmmaker. One of the best films of the first decade of the 21st century was his début feature, You Can Count On Me, a masterpiece of contemporary cinema that has a small story about infidelity and sibling rivalry and first made critics sit up and notice Mark Ruffalo.

Ruffalo makes a return in Margaret, though his brief presence is a great disappointment: He plays a significant role in the development of the film and yet he appears only in two short scenes — both in which, it must be said, he delivers a performance worthy of enormous praise.

Taking its title from the eponymous poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins that speaks of grief and a child’s response to the concept of death as it is represented by dead leaves, an emotional reaction as strong as an adult’s reaction to the death of a friend, or of oneself. The poem is very appropriate, as it encapsulates the essence of the film’s plot very accurately.

Lisa (Anna Paquin) is a sharp-tongued teenager living with her mother and younger brother in the Upper West Side in New York City. She will soon join her absent father (played by Lonergan) on a trip to New Mexico and decides to try to find a cowboy hat somewhere in upper Manhattan. She fails, until she notices a bus driver wearing one on the job. She runs after the bus, waving to get the driver’s attention, but the driver only waves back, and not paying attention, he runs a red light and crushes a woman pushing a shopping cart over the road.

When the police ask Lisa whether the light was red at the time of the accident, she looks over at the bus driver (Ruffalo) and when he looks back, she takes it as a sign there is silent complicity between them, and she decides to protect him by saying the light was green. But she is deeply affected by the woman who was run over, a woman who slipped the surly bonds of Earth while lying in Lisa’s arms, and she tracks down the woman’s family.

But Lisa is a piece of work. She is a bit of a stereotypical teenage girl, with all the drama and snotty retorts to her mother that go along with it, and she always tries to ensure she has the upper hand in conversations, even if that upper hand is (usually) gained with sarcasm. She is immature even as she verbally abuses and bullies many people around her, breaking hearts and testing their good will towards her. Over the course of the film, she steamrolls many men in her life, and many women, including her mother, are also terribly hurt. The film is a good companion piece to Noah Baumbach’s 2005 film The Squid and the Whale, a film that navigates with an equally despicable but more vulnerable teenage protagonist, though Margaret lacks the latter film’s tight focus.

The film is not always easy to watch, but Lonergan finds raw emotion in the everyday details of New York that are dark but not without hope and presents that emotion with compelling clarity. Sometimes he veers a bit too far toward so-called gritty realism by inserting seemingly random fragments of footage into his scenes — a ferry on the Hudson here, a seagull soaring over Central Park there — but these moments do not contribute as powerfully to the viewer’s impression of realism as the cast’s performances.

Unfortunately, the film’s release puts it at a slight disadvantage, as the obviously significant events of 9/11 and the Iraq War seemed outdated upon its release, though the theme of revenge, for the death of one woman on the street, or thousands in the two World Trade Centre towers or in the Middle East, is obviously very relevant to the plot itself. This objection will certainly fade with time, and perhaps the film can be more fully appreciated after an interval of another six years.

Margaret is, if not a brilliant piece of cinema, at least another affirmation of Lonergan’s talent as a screenwriter and artist of human emotions. Paquin plays her vile character with great passion and supports the equally superlative cast, from J. Smith-Cameron, who plays her mother, a theatre actress, to side characters like the happy-go-lucky Paul (Kieran Culkin).