Why do I have to stick to just 10 good pictures of 2012? Keeping in mind there are still some contenders out there, here's my current list in alphabetical order:
Argo - As a suspense thriller, the film had all my friends talking for days. Intense drama, well acted.
Cloud Atlas - Several stories told as mirrors of various time periods with actors doing several roles.
Hope Springs - Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones show what acting means.
Hyde Park on Hudson - It got panned but has some scenes that are acting gems. Randy FDR meets those people from "The King's Speech."
Liberal Arts - Quiet film by Josh Radner about a college graduate returning to his alma mater in hopes of finding why life has lost meaning. Radner and Emily Olsen play off well with each other.
Lincoln - A history lesson with compassion, superb acting and loving production values.
Looper - Time travel with Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon Levitt playing the same character. Fascinating premises. Also stars Emily Blunt.
Moonrise Kingdom - A quirky growing up picture with great cast and top notch writing.
Safety Not Guaranteed - My sleeper Indie picture of the year, but I loved every moment. A man advertises for a companion to time travel with him--"safety not guaranteed." When a reporter meets him, she falls in love... and so do we.
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen - Emily Blunt and Ewan McGregor play out a love story in the deserts surrounding the Yemen and get us rooting for the impossible.
Silver Linings Playbook - Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence show that Streep and Jones aren't the only couple who know how to act.
Skyfall - James Bond dies and is resurrected as he should be.
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - A charming tale of elderly travelers trying to find themselves at the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in India.
The Life of Pi - A boy and a tiger learn about acceptance and love in a boat in the Pacific Ocean. Ang Lee shows what great filmmaking looks like.
The Woman in Black - Daniel Radcliff stars in a scary Gothic thriller with real chills and style.
My top pick vascillates daily between Lincoln and The Life of Pi. Both are magnificent.
Rarely have I been to a film where I thought to myself, what a brilliant scene...well written...well played. Hyde Park on Hudson had scenes like that. While the film may have many flaws, those scene are ultimately etched in my mind.
The trailer for the movie is misleading. It appears to show a romantic comedy centering on Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's entertaining the King and Queen of England who have come to the United States pre-war to get America's support if war comes. Wit and warmth are strongly conveyed in the trailer.
The story becomes much darker than the trailer suggests. One of the focuses of the film is Roosevelt's philandering. Played with understatement and charm, Bill Murray allows the viewer an understanding of why people chose to see what they wanted to with Roosevelt in charge.
The President has an affair with his fifth cousin Daisy (Laura Linney) who realizes only too late in a devastating scene that she is only one of three current mistresses to the President. (The film suggests that polio may have rendered Roosevelt's legs unusable but not other parts.) Roosevelt is seen as charming, selfish, temperamental, a Momma's boy, and the ultimate manipulator. He knows exactly what to say to the young king of England and his wife.
The scene that I reacted so strongly to was the King Bertie and his Queen Elizabeth reacting to Bertie's being put in a room at Roosevelt's mother's home filled with colored vintage cartoons lampooning the 1812 British military. Bertie tells his wife that Roosevelt's mother had apologized but he had mollified her by saying he found them funny. In fact, he is highly embarrassed by them. Elizabeth assumes the Americans are trying to mock them. She is even more incensed when she learns that they will be entertained at a picnic by Native Americans and served hot dogs. She asks Bertie whether this is a way of making fun of them. Olivia Colman' Elizabeth is charming, wary, and devastating when she inadvertently compares Bertie with his brother who abdicated. Samuel West is outstanding as the stuttering king, charming, ill at ease, unsure how to bridge the gap he feels between himself and his wife and the people he visiting. When he tells his wife to never compare him to his brother again, one can feel all the hurt of his situation welling up in him. His ultimate film triumph, merely eating and enjoying a hot dog while all the Americans are judging him, becomes one of the joys of the film. West and Colman are wonderful.
Another of the scenes that plays particularly well is a scene between Roosevelt and Bertie where the elder man charms him by telling him he will be an admirable king. Knowing that Bertie has been at odds with his father, Roosevelt says that "if you were my son, I would be very proud." The two actors are at their best as they compare their handicaps.
Having been to the Hudson Valley many times, I know how beautiful the countryside is. Some of the views are magnificent. Daisy and Franklin have scene in a field of purple clover which is visually stunning. Film viewers only knowing Springwood (Mrs. Roosevelt's estate) from the movie, will be surprised if they see the real mansion.
Although the complete film doesn't quite live up to the brilliance of the couple of scenes described, the film is worth seeing. The main characters performances are memorable and enhanced by Olivia Williams' Eleanor (homely but in control), Elizabeth Marvel (Missy, Daisy's competition), and Elizabeth Wilson (Mrs. Roosevelt).
HBO's The Girl trashed Alfred Hitchcock and reduced him to a one-dimensional sex addict/voyeur who couldn't control his impulses around Tippi Hedren. The film Hitchcock heads into the same psychological landscape, but adds the unique view of Hitch seen through the lens of Wisconsin's Ed Gein, the mass murderer and subject of Robert Bloch's 1959 Psycho. As a character Gein several times has conversations with Hitch.
At the beginning of the film Hitch has just finished Vertigo, which he viewed as a failure. The irony for us, of course, is that many consider it his greatest film. A reporter asks whether he shouldn't just retire and let younger directors do more modern stories. Hitch searches for his next project and finds himself drawn to the salacious sensationalism of Bloch's book. The material in the book is different than anything Hitch normally did. Gein, as a serial murderer, cut off the heads of the women he murdered and kept them as trophies. He also kept his mother's body, which he stole from her grave, and eventually assumed her personality. One wonders if the shocking nature of the book was how Hitch intended to show he was current.
The film maintains a sense of humor throughout. There are several subtle and not too subtle homages to Hitch's other films. Several bird references give a nod to Hitch's film after Psycho. As Hitch struggles with the film, he awakens one night visually referencing Jimmy Stewart's nightmare from Vertigo. There are a couple of scenes reminiscent of his television show monologues to the audience. At the studio a blonde in a grey suit (Vertigo) keeps drawing his attention.
Hitch was known for his witticisms, and Alma (underplayed by Helen Merrin), Hitch's wife of 30 years, proves his match. She is the person he relies the most on, but also the person he most wishes to escape from. Hitch hates his corpulent figure but spends much of the movie drinking or eating, with his wife and secretary acting as mother figures. Alma has to cope with his growing obsessions toward his leading ladies.
Alma helps Hitch with creative decisions--it is her idea to hire Janet Leigh as the star and then kill her off 20 minutes into the film. Later Alma takes over the directing of Psycho when Hitch becomes ill. In an attempt to assert her individualism, she begins writing a script with a male scriptwriter who enjoys flirting with her and subsequently makes Hitch jealous, a feeling she seems to enjoy.
With his new film, Hitch is in transition moving to Paramount Studios who don't want to risk Psycho. Hitch and Alma find they must finance the movie themselves. When Hitch announces they need to sell their home, she asks if they need to sell just the pool or the whole estate.
Anthony Hopkins struggles at times between doing a impersonation of a person the audience knows all too well and finding the real person trapped behind the public mask. He definitely fares better than Toby Jones, who played the nasty Hitchcock of The Girl. Helen Merrin has a much better job with her character because no one knows much about Alma. Scarlett Johansson makes for an amiable and competent Janet Leigh, but isn't required to give much depth except for her filming of the infamous shower scene.
In all, the film was an enjoyable study of the making of one of Hitchcock's most famous films, but isn't one of this year's best.
The trailer for Silver Linings Playbook is misleading. It makes the film look like a fairly light romantic comedy between two charismatic leads, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. The film is much darker than the trailer suggests, but the performances of the two main characters make it worth seeing.
Substitute teacher Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) begins the film in a mental institution. His life is in shambles. He has lost his home and his wife, and when his mother springs him from the mental institution, ends up back living in the attic of his parents’ home. Pat is bright, but bipolar with violent tendencies. We learn from his backstory that Nikki his wife had an affair with a fellow teacher and he came home early, found them in the shower together and beat the lover up. He ends up with a restraining order and incarceration in a psyche ward. [His response to his wife's infidelity seemed like pretty logical response.]
To win his wife back, Pat vows to read all the books his wife teaches. In a charming scene, he reads Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and becomes incensed that after the main character struggles to win the lady he loves all through the book, she dies at the end. "What kind of view of the world is that to teach kids?" he asks his parents as he compulsively awakens them in the middle of the night to express his outrage. His father says to have Hemingway apologize to them.
Pat lives in a crazy household. His father, played by Robert De Niro, has compulsive OCD. Out of a job, he bets on the Eagles football team, trying to make enough money to start a restaurant. He determines that his son's having returned home should bring him luck with his bets.
Cooper is charming and a compelling figure on the screen. The camera loves him (and so apparently does the director who devotes a lot of film time to closeup on his expressive face). He meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a widow whose response to her husband's death had been to turn to promiscuity. The two of them begin an awkward courtship, which Pat refuses to acknowledge because he is focused on winning his wife back. As the two develop a relationship, they have a charming scene where they compare their medications and the effects.
Pat eventually agrees to help Tiffany, who wants to enter a dance contest, if she will give Nikki a letter he has written to get her back. Reluctantly, he becomes her partner and the two of them focus on working together. As they learn to dance together and care about each other's needs, we feel they belong together. Pat just does not see it.
Eventually, his father loses money on an Eagles game and blames Pat. In order to help win back his loses, his father and his betting buddy parlay a bet that includes the points for a significant Eagles game against Dallas and the number of points Pat and Tiffany can garner in their dance competition.
Watching the couple perform at the dance contest may not be “Dancing with the Stars,” but it is one of the fun film dances of the last couple of years.
Cooper and Lawrence make this a highly enjoyable two hours.
Honore de Balzac’s short story,A Passion in the Desert,begins at a menagerie viewing of a hyena where the narrator and a woman have a discussion about whether animals have passions which humans can appreciate. The narrator then relates a story of a 22-year old French soldier who finds himself alone in the desert. He falls asleep and awakens to a "vast ocean" of the desert, utterly alone. After a day adjusting to his environment, he falls asleep in a cave and awakens to find a dangerous female panther sleeping a couple of feet from him. Luckily for him she has just eaten. The two develop \a relationship and the soldier names the panther for his girl friend Mignonne. Eventually , the panther makes an innocent move which the soldier interprets as his attacking him and the man mortally wounds him with a knife. As he lays dying, the panther still looks at him without anger. As part of the moral to the story, Balzac says that the desert is God without mankind.
The novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2001) and Ang Lee’s film based on the book share many similarities to Balzac's short story, but changes his desert to the Pacific Ocean and places a young man on a life boat and a make-shift raft with a ferocious Bengel tiger named Richard Parker (I'll let the film explain how he got his name). In the film, a writer who has come to interview the narrator tells the older Pi that he was told that the narrator’s story will help him see God.
Pi’s story begins in the Indian zoo where his father and mother help raise the animals. His father is a pragmatist; his mother is more spiritual. From his mother Pi develops an interest in religions of all kinds and looks for God's revelations everywhere. His father tells him that when he looks into an animal's eyes, all he is seeing is himself. He catches Pi trying to feed their man-eater Richard Parker and he teaches Pi a brutal lesson about how animals cannot be trusted.
When his father is forced to sell the zoo and transport the animals to the Americas, the family ends up on a Japanese ship with a vicious cook (Gerald Depardeau in a cameo appearance). When storm hits, Pi is saved, along with a wounded zebra, a hyena, a female organatan, and the tiger. It is at this point that story really begins.
Each of the ages of Pi are well acted, but Suraj Sharma as the "boat" Pi is amazingly nuanced in his performance.
Ang’s film is magical. According to The Making of Life of Pi: A Film, a Journey by Jean-Christophe Castelli, Lee planned from the beginning to use the 3D medium. For me, it has moments that transcend most other 3D films I’ve seen. Rather than using extreme 3D throughout, the effect is toned down until needed for special moments. For example, while Richard Parker and Pi are alone, Pi notices luminous plankton surrounding the boat and his makeshift raft. A giant whale, feeding off plankton, breeches the surface and rises majestically up into the sky. The sight is truly awe-inspiring. At another point, as elder Pi tells how he was named after the clearest swimming pool in France, we see his uncle swim across the screen in totally clear water with clouds in the distance.
The most magical thing about the film is Richard Parker, the CGI tiger based on a real tiger named King. I intentionally didn’t tell my viewing companions about the CGI effects until after the film. They were amazed since there was never a false moment when they doubted that what they were seeing was the actions of a living tiger.
It is also hard to believe that the storm which sets the plot in motion and the sinking of the ship are also CGI moments. The image of Pi underwater watching the lit boat sinking deep into the Pacific is another haunting image I won’t forget.
[SPOILER ALERT] In the film, Pi ends up telling the writer two stories. The first one is of his adventures in the boat with the animals I mentioned above. The hyena kills the zebra and the orangatan, but he is finally killed by Richard Parker. Pi is able to train King to accept him by using starvation techniques. A school of flying fish and large tuna become a major event. And the climax of Pi's story revolves around a floating island filled with meerkats and banyan trees. By the time they near Mexico, Pi is able to stroke Richard Parker's head. When they reach Mexico, Richard Parker goes into the jungle without turning around and even acknowledging Pi. Elder Pi was in tears as he described it, and so was I.
When elder Pi finishes his story, the men taking his history, sent to find out why the ship sank, find his story too unbelievable. So Pi tells a second much darker story in which another sailor with a broken leg, the cook, his mother and himself end up stranded in the boat. The cook kills the sailor and eventually his mother to use for bait to catch fish. For the second story to be true, all we saw was only metaphor. The second story, like his father’s view of the world, is cruel and unrelenting and Pi himself was Richard Parker. His father's God is an angry God. The second story is told without visual embellishments and none of the wonder and religion found in the first.
Author Martel has said that when people ask which story is to be taken as true, he refuses to answer. It is up to each person to make that decision for themselves and then live their life with that viewpoint. Which story does the film favor? One has only to look at the magical views Lee creates. The world can be filled with fantastic animals which show us the God that exists all around us.
Director Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina is one of the most
sumptuous and glorious films to look at in the last few years. Kiera Knightley
is a beautiful Anna, swathed in silks and bustles and furs, beautiful jewelry, lavish colors and surrounded by rich sets. Says costume designer, Jacqueline Durran, "Anna's thematic scheme of color is dark, particularly with the red she wears at the beginning in the Karenin home. What she wears becomes somewhat lighter in tone when she becomes enraptured with Vronsky, before returning to the darker hues as she becomes anxious and paranoid that his affections towards her have waned."
Screenwriter Thomas Stoppard says, "Much of the action takes place in a large, derelict 19th century Russian theatre--not in the sense of 'onstage only, but often in different parts of the theatre, e.g, the auditorium, the wings, backstage, the under-stage, the fly-tower, etc. A bold stroke. Perhaps my favorite moment onscreen is when Anna, leaving Oblonsky's house, and Levin, walking away from meeting his brotther in town, cross paths on the stage. The back of the stage opens to reveal the snowy landscape Levin is going home to, and the two worlds elide for a moment before they separate."
The approach is unique and challenging. Anna lives in a world
where everyone assumes roles, as in a theatre, and when she is in that world,
the story is told in a theatrical formal presentation.
All the well-known moments occur in that theatre: Stiva Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen) almost
losing his wife; Anna (Knightley)
arriving on the train with Countess Vronsky (Olivia Williams) and meeting her
future lover, Alexei Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the ball where Anna captures
and is captured by Vronsky, her home in Moscow, the horse-race, the opera where
she is publically embarrassed.
But the story of Anna’s torrid adulterous relationship is
contrasted with the story of 18 year old Kitty Shcherbatsky (Alicia Vikander) who
is devastated by Vronsky’s neglect and eventually finds true love with Tolstoy
stand-in Kostya Levin (Domhnall Gleeson) who deserts the city to live among the
peasants at his estate Pokrobskoe. Only when the actors break free from the
constraints of the city are we given real vistas of the world. The theatre is stifling after awhile; the
country is real freedom we can feel.
Jude Law actually plays a complex Alexei Karenin (Anna’s
husband) who proclaims he is above jealousy but eventually is moved to
indignation and vengence. He allows us to have pity and sympathy for a fairly
unsympathetic character.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Vronsky is called on to be handsome,
which he is. His deep blue eyes offset stunningly his blonde good looks. His
eyes often match the blue of his uniform and Anna’s costume. As Anna sinks
deeper and deeper into the jealousy of her love affair, he begins to allow us
to see a more sympathetic side.
Kiera Knightley is gloriously costumed and looks the part,
but her performance is not as strong as the others. As she sinks deeper into
jealousy and morphine addiction, she becomes more tiresome than tragic.
The script by Tom Stoppard is an
interesting contrast to the 1948 film.
Anna Karenina (2012) ****
Vivien Leigh made Anna Karenina for Alexander Korda in 1948.
Like Wright’s film, director Julien Duvivier’s production had lavish costumes
(this time by Cecil Beaton), with sumptuous fabrics, furs and amazing
necklaces. Leigh was at her most beautiful, having just recovered from a bout
of tuberculosis. This is one of the times that color would have enhanced the entire look.
The script by French playwright Jean Anouilh (author of such wonderful works as The Lark; Becket, or the Honor of God; Antigone), Guy Morgan, and
Julien Duvivier changes much of Tolstoy’s work. Among other things, Annie
(the love child of Anna and Vronsky) dies with a sense of moral censorship. The film follows the two to Venice. Lavish
and vast sets of Russian palaces loaded with period detail, designed by Andrej
Andrejew, offer the viewer much to concentrate on.
It is interesting to compare the role of
Stefan Oblonsky in these two films. Here Hugh Dempster is pretty much an oaf;
in Wright’s film, Macfadyen, is personable and charming. A very young Sally Ann
Howes plays Kitty. Most of the performances are high film acting without much
attempt at today’s realism.
Anna with Kitty at the ball. The star jewels in her hair were probably inspired by pictures of Empress Elizabeth of Austria.
Ralph Richardson (in the character of the husband who is 20
years older than Anna) gives little in his performance with which to sympathize.
He seems in some ways to be practicing his Dr. Sloper from The Heiress (1949).
Leigh’s lover, Kieron Moore, fails to move beyond just the
looks of his part. I didn’t really find him particularly charming nor
outstandingly beautiful. Because of the moral nature of the film, the passion
of the two adulterers seemed very chaste and was generally just talked about.
The film ends with Anna’s suicide, one of the most famous of literature, as the
climax.
In all, Leigh is lovely to look at, but the script fails to
ignite.
Anna Karenina (1948) **** (part of the Criterion Collection on Hulu Plus)
Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln begins in 1865 with two African
American Union soldiers describing to Lincoln the atrocities their men endured
at the hands of the Southern armies. Two white soldiers join them and begin
quoting Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. One of the African Americans finishes the
address. That opening scene gives us a clear view of the people’s view of the
President and allows us a chance to like Lincoln.
Tony Kushner’s screenplay is based on a part of Doris Kearns
Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. The film
focuses on Lincoln’s maneuverings to get the Thirteenth Amendment passed in a
contentious Congress, which feels surprisingly present-day. Reverse the
political titles of Democrat and Republicans, and one could see the film as
commentary on this past election.
The care for historical accuracy and casting of people who look remarkably like their historical counterparts is just one of the joys of
the production. The look of the film is not often as rich as Robert Redford’s
The Conspirator (2010), but the human drama and emotion is much more engrossing
and heart-felt. Redford delighted in long-shot views of the unfinished
Washington monument and the vistas of the raw capitol. Spielberg only has a
couple matte shots. His palette is more like painted etchings, with rich
shadows and chiaroscuro. Joanna Johnston’s costume designs presents lush and
authentic looking clothing which mirror the worn suits of Lincoln contrasted
with the elaborate, often Victorian gaudy dresses of his wife.More on Johnston’s costumes can be seen here.
Rick Carter’s production design gives sets which capture the
dark and smoky feel of the Lincoln White House (many residents complain about
the small feel of the residence) and the chambers of Congress where much of dramatic
action of the story takes place.
The most outstanding aspects of this production are the
performances of an incredible Daniel Day-Lewis, who feels a shoe-in for an
Academy Award nomination, and a powerful performance by Sally Field as the neurotic
and loving Mary Todd Lincoln. Their major confrontation scene over the loss of
their son Willie and Mary’s perceived danger to her eldest son, Robert, moved
me to tears for both actors. With beautifully nuanced performances, I found myself believing the actors as their
characters and not just as wax figures who kind of look the part but lack the humanity of
the people. These are people I can feel for and with.
In the small part of Robert Lincoln, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
has a very moving scene with his father where he tries to assert his need for
independence to serve his country in spite of being the president’s son.
Other outstanding performances were given by David
Strathairn (William Seward), James Spader (Bilbo), Hal Holbrook (Blair), Tommy
Lee Jones (Thaddeus Stevens, who has more at stake in the amendment passing
than we know), and Lee Pace (Wood).
In a quiet scene between Lincoln and his two secretaries,
John Hay (Joseph Cross) and John Nicolay (Jeremy Strong), Lewis captures the
homespun wisdom of Lincoln. At the end of the scene as Lincoln leaves, Hay stands
to honor the man—and I wanted to stand also.
I must admit this and many scenes
moved me to tears of both empathy and joy.
[Minor spoiler] An interesting playwrite/director decision comes near the
end. We assume we will see Booth and the tragedy at Ford’s Theatre. Instead, we
are taken to Tad’s enjoying Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp at Grover’s Theater
when the play is stopped and the president’s assassination is announced.
The film was emotionally exhausting, but one that shows the
power of Spielberg at his best.
From the outset let me stress, Skyfall is my favorite James
Bond film. I have seen all of them and although I am a great fan of the early Sean Connery films, I have always felt that Daniel Craig came closer to the Bond I
envisioned when reading the books. Connery feels a little too perfect, never
rumpled, never harmed—even when he found himself in deadly situations. Craig’s
sense of physicality with the part makes him a much more believable action hero. Here is a
Bond who can be injured and hurt. Craig’s first turn as Bond in Casino Royale
seemed an auspicious start (2006), but the second film, Quantum of Solace
(2008) felt tired and rather unimaginative, so although I was anxious to see
the film, I was also prepared to be disappointed.
I wasn’t disappointed.
The opening chase at the beginning of Skyfall follows Bond
chasing his assassin through a market, down streets, across rooftops, via
motorcycles [which I must admit felt a little like déjà vu from the major chase
in The Bourne Legacy (2012)]. The ending of the chase, however, with Bond and his nemesis fighting on the moving
train, and Bond manipulating the CAT shovel to stop the train from pulling apart, put me on the edge of my seat. When M demands his colleague shoot at him, the adrenaline was fully pumping. I saw the film on a 6-story high and wide IMAX
theatre screen and watching Bond plunge 6 stories in high detail was an
incredible experience. [If you can see the film on IMAX, do it… it is worth the
money and the experience.]
`
As Bond appears to die in his fall, we pick up one of the best title sequences since the work of
Saul Bass on such pictures as Vertigo or Man with the Golden Arm or
Psycho. The only thing you need to know about the title sequence is that it is
made of all the important symbols from the film. It does not tell the story of
the film as much as do theme and variation of the main images.
I have tried to figure out why we are all so attracted to the
Bond character. One of my FB friends, a former student of mine, suggests “Why
wouldn’t we be? He’s handsome, he drives great cars, he beds beautiful women,
and he always defeats the bad guy.”
I have been reading Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Made Us Human. He talks about how we dream and stresses
that the major of our dreamtime is spent in anxiety resolution—we are chased,
we run, people put us in peril. He quotes J. Allan Hobson who says “Fight or
flight is the rule in dreaming consciousness, and it goes on and on, night
after night, with all too rare respites in the glorious lull of fictive
elation.” Does perhaps Bond become our surrogate, constantly pursued or having
to fight, bedding beautiful women without fear of commitment since we know, of
course, that by the last reel they will not be around to cloud his bedding another
woman in the next film, offering us unique technology which gives us that “ah-ha”
moment when we could be stunned and amused. We get great effects with humor and
often tongue-in-cheek wit. Bond has generally functioned without a back-story.
We know the kind of car he likes driving, what he thinks of M, what his
preference for martini preparation is, but generally there is little more.
Where does he come from? How was he raised? Does he have any opinions about
anything? In the first Craig-Bond film we had Bond falling love, losing the
woman and eventually mourning her loss. As the Bond film ends, the nightmare resolves
itself and we are able to leave having experienced our dream fantasies without
feeling ourselves in peril.
Just as the Batman of the 1960s has become a brooding dark
character, the suave unflappable Bond has become someone who can wear a great
suit but suffers and must face the dark side of his life. He has become the
image which reflects our times.
Bond says he is all about Resurrection. The franchise in the
hands of Daniel Craig is alive and well.
At 74, Morgan Freeman automatically brings a lot of gravitas
to the roles he plays. The qualities he seems to personify include intellect, wisdom,
humor. One thing Freeman generally doesn't get to play is a romantic lead.
In The Magic of Belle Isle, as Monty Wildhorn, Freeman has to stretch our credibility while playing an alcoholic irascible wheel-chair-bound author of American westerns. We know from his other roles that he has a soft chocolate
center inside his hard shell and know that by the end of the film he (and we)
will find it.
Monty, a depressed widower, has given up writing when he moves
to a summer home by a lake in upstate New York beside divorced pretty blonde mother of three, Charlotte O’Neill
(Virginia Madsen). Charlotte’s daughters seem are stereotypical: Willow, the
pouty teen; Finn, a precocious 9-year-old who wants to learn to tell stories, and
Flora, the youngest sister who still loves to be read to by her mother.
Having given you the
situation, I’m pretty sure you can see where this gentle movie is heading:
Monty becomes the loving, caring person we know he is. Charlotte finds in him the
caring companion she seeks. Willow finally sees life through her mother’s eyes
and reaches out to her. Tomboy Finn learns to see things that aren’t there and
create the stories with the imagination she doesn’t know she has. Flora
finds a father figure who actually cares about her.
The playwrights (Guy Thomas, Rob Reiner, and Andrew Scheinman)
seem to really like their characters, and as we would expect, the town (and film) are filled with characters that we can learn to appreciate. Although the situations are pretty
predictable, we can leisurely enjoy the character studies director Reiner
presents. [Spoiler Alert] The surprise of the film is the romance that develops
between Freeman and Madsen, moreso because of the age differences than the
racial differences. The two have enough charisma that we care about them and their future. In that way, the ending becomes a surprise because it
allows us to have the romantic ending we think should be but which more “realistic”
directors might disdain.
I really enjoyed the film and the various characters. As Finn, Emma Fuhrmann gives a charming performance. The interaction between her and Freeman is one of the fun things about the production. Once again by the end, however, it is Freeman I came to see... and once again he shows himself one of our Living
National Treasures.
Since the 1967 26-episode BBC production of The Forsyte
Saga, I have found myself drawn to Anglophile drawing room drama. In fact
English drama became one of the staples of my Sunday evening with Masterpiece
Theatre. Through 1971-1975’s Upstairs Downstairs, created by Jean Marsh, Eileen
Atkins, John Hawkesworth and John Whitney, with 68-episods introduced much of
America to the lives of those serving and those being served. The more recent fascination with the series
Downton Abbey (co-created by Julian Fellowes and Gareth Neame) spurred me to
watch again the 2001 Robert Altman/Julian Fellowes masterpiece, Gosford Park.
Watching the film is like visiting a comfortable old friend’s
country home for a weekend while being entertained with period details and an
Agatha Christie-style story.
Director Robert Altman’s characteristic large ensemble casts, well developed characters, overlapping dialogue and
improvisation are all set in 1932 with superb production values.
The film begins
with the arrival at Gosford Park of Constance, Countess of Trentham (a glorious
Maggie Smith trying out her Countess of Grantham character in fine ironic
fashion) and her lady’s maid, Mary Maceachran (mousey Kelly Macdonald), who becomes one of the bridge characters. On the
road, they encounter actor Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam), American film
producer Morris Weissman (Bob Balaban) and Weissman’s valet, Henry Denton (Ryan
Phillippe). Novello was a real actor from the 1930s, having appeared in Alfred
Hitchcock’s The Lodger. At the house they are welcomed by Sir William McCordle
(Michael Gambon), Lady Sylvia McCordle (Kristin Scott Thomas) and their mousey
daughter Isobel (Camilla Rutherford). Other house guests (or should we say suspects?) include Lady Sylvia’s sisters and their spouses (Geraldine Sommerville, Natasha
Wightman, Charles Dance, and Tom Hollander), Freddie
Nesbitt (James Wilby) and his formerly rich wife (Claudie Blakely) and Isobel’s
suitor, Lord Rupert Standish (Laurence Fox) and his friend Jeremy Blond (Trent
Ford).
Almost all the guests and many of the servants have secrets
of their own, some of which are revealed and relevant to the plot, others just
red herrings to keep us guessing.
The downstairs servants includes Alan Bates,
Helen Mirren, Eileen Atkins, Derek Jacobi.
Before the weekend is done, McCordle is wounded by a stray
bullet, cuts off many of the guests to his money, and then is found dead. A bumbling
and unobservant Inspector Thomas (Stephen Fry) and his trusty Constable Dexter
(Ron Webster) arrive to discover that McCordle had been poisoned AND stabbed.
One of the points of the film is that the servants are
everywhere and see everything. (In fact, in almost every scene there is a
servant.) Just like the silent and obiquitous servants, Altman’s camera moves
constantly. The group scenes were shot with two cameras so that the actors
wouldn’t play to one camera. He felt it made the acting more natural. To help
with the overlapping dialogue, Altman gave each of the actors a microphone so
boom mikes were not used. (I did find turning on the captions helped in sorting
out the dialogue and gave me many lines I would have missed.)
Julian Fellowes’ script is rich in period detail of country
manor life both upstairs and downstairs. The idea that the people’s servants
would be addressed by their employer’s name was interesting. Or having the
Countess writing thank-you notes and leaving tips for each of the servants was
a detail I had not considered.
The film holds up remarkably well, Even knowing the outcome
does not hurt the appreciation of how we learn what we do. It’s a great film,
with first rate acting, first rate script, and first rate directing.
If you are a Downton Abbey fan, see it for Maggie. You won't be disappointed.
