I must first confess that I have an unrequited love affair with Maggie Smith. I first fell in love with her in 1969's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie ("Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life."). She enchanted me as Peter Pan in London, Christmas 1972. As I have aged, she has matured, but I still find her fascinating, whether in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, or Downton Abbey or Harry Potter. Her long history of work (over 73 titles to her credit) make it an easy leap to accept her Jean Horton, a retired diva with a lengthy career facing her "declining" years in a retirement home for musicians. One could make easy jokes about how Quartet is a comedy-drama of wrinkles for the Marigold set (of which I find myself). Bette Davis' line about how "old age is not for sissies" reinforces the survivor status of all the characters living in the home, but like a beautiful ship of state, Beechem House (actually Hedsor House and Park, Taplow, Buckinghamshire, England), provides for its retirees a glamorous refuge from the world. Jean arrives to find three former friends also live at the house, Pauline Collins (Cissy), Billy Connolly (Wilf), and Tom Courtenay (Reginald). Reggie and Jean had been married for a brief while and still have not made up. The staff, wanting to save the house, are planning a gala to celebrate Verdi's birthday, where all the retired musicans will have a chance to perform. Can they get the four former friends who performed in Riggoletto together to do the quartet they performed in their youth? You probably already know the answer. But in a film like this, getting there is the fun of the movie. Novice director Dustin Hoffman gives us loving closeups of age at its best. The script may lacks great depth, but there are lingering moments of delight and pathos and a pleasant couple of hours entertainment.
For a couple of months I resisted seeing Zero Dark Thirty because of its content. I knew it dealt with the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his ultimate death in May 2011. I knew it dealt with torture and bombings. Only because I wanted to see all the films nominated for Oscars this year, did I find myself going to see the film.
To start off, Jessica Chastain carries the film. She gives one of the most powerful performances I've seen. Her line readings were always believable and the range of emotions fascinating.
The film's director, Kathryn Bigelow, has created a treatise on why the war on terror is as it is. If one needs to understand why torture continues to exist, the film's arguments show us car bombs which kill randomly and specifically and attacks on civilians at hotels. Those images brutalize the viewer and argue graphically for the need for such a character as Chastain's Maya.
I don't believe I want to see this film a second time, but the impact of the first viewing is one I carry with me. (In that since I would equate it to Schlinder's List.) I did find the film very similar in feel to Affleck's Argo.
Mart Crowley's off-Broadway hit, The Boys in the Band, became for many during the 1970s, the first play with all gay characters that defined a culture they didn't know. Many vocal gay writers, such as Edward Albee, hated the self-loathing evident in script. Making the Boys, a documentary on the play and the subsequent film, tries to analyze its place in the gay liberation movement which is considered having began with the Stonewall Riots in June 1969. Crowley's play had opened off-Broadway in April 1968. Crowley had worked for film star Natalie Wood in Hollywood. He had written an earlier play which flopped. He became Miss Wood's assistant and he had many contacts within the Hollywood community. He set out to write a play filled with characters he could understand. In later years Crowley became a writer and producer of Robert Wagner's Hart to Hart. The play, The Boys in the Band, consists of nine gay men getting together at the apartment of one of the character, Michael, to celebrate the birthday of another, Harold. All types of gay characters are represented. Emory, the most flamboyant and "out" characters brings Harold a street hustler as a birthday present. The characters drink, play truth games, and eventually strip off their social masks to reveal themselves, an often painful process. In 1970, the play was filmed with the original cast and was well-received. As other more sympathetic portrayals of gay characters became part of the gay movement, Crowley's play was often seen in a negative light. Tragically the history of the actors who were part of the play/film often reflected the life of those around them. They fell ill to same plague that killed off a large number of American gays. Only two of the original cast members were alive in 2011; all the others, including previous producers and directors and artists, had died of AIDS. The documentary becomes a powerful historical document of one of the important gay works of the 20th century.
Mike D'Angelo of Esquire stated in his review of Primer (2004): "Anybody who claims they fully understand what’s going on
in Primer after seeing it just once is either a savant or a liar."
I'm not a savant nor a liar, so I'll admit that
this film played games with me, fascinated me, left me confused, and I look
forward to seeing it a second time.
This science-fiction film is a fascinating
puzzle--literally an enigma within an enigma. Four scientist friends are
working in their spare time in the garage of one of their tract houses on an
invention. Their jargon filled dialog is difficult to follow but it sets the
tone for this believable scientific endeavor.
As the film unfolds two of them (Shane Carruth as
Aaron and David Sulliivan as Abe) begin to branch off and eventually stumble
upon a method to time-travel through a small metal box. Blonde unmarried Abe
comes to see Aaron one day and tells him that he has something to show him.
They park near a large storage building and as they watch Abe's time traveling
duplicate comes out of the building. As soon as we see him, Abe occupying two
spaces in the same time, we realize that conventional chronology and linear
plotting has just disappeared. Here's the way the time travel works from Wikipedia:
By the end of the film, we are totally uncertain
whether we are watching the originals or their time traveling duplicates. (For
if one can constantly time travel back and forth, how many duplicates might
exist? And when we learn there is another larger travel box, what implications
are there? And what about the concept of death if one can always retreat to the
box?)
Director-writer-composer-producer-editor Carruth
has said that his intention with the film was to document the break-down of the
two main characters' friendship as they confront the ethical issues of
manipulating the future and making one's fortune.In an interview with Carruth on www.indiewire.com, Carruth explains the title and the purpose:
First thing, I
saw these guys as scientifically accomplished but ethically, morons. They never
had any reasons before to have ethical questions. So when they're hit with this
device they're blindsided by it. The first thing they do is make money with it.
They're not talking about the ethics of altering your former self. So to me,
they're kids, they're like prep school kids basically. To call it a primer or a
lesson was the easy way to go. And then there's also this power they have in
using the device is something almost worse then death. To put someone else in
the position where they're not sure they're in control of anything. They're not
in the front of the line anymore and they're living in someone's past, to be
secondary in that world. The thing that is most important is to feel like
you're at the front of the line, to be prime or primer. I definitely never
wanted to say that in the film, but that's where it comes from.
This Indie film is well-worth watching a couple of
times and allowing the philosophical concepts to sink in, just as the ideas in Looper capture us.
The Impossible (2012)is
not the first film to use the Asian Tsunami as the basis for a plot-line. Matt
Damon's Hereafter (2010) has one
character who has survived the tsunami. But the English-language Spanish-made
film, The Impossible, is based
on the experiences a real family from Spain who survive the experience. Many actual
survivors have seen the film and praise its use of detail to help the viewer
see life as it was for them.
For anyone who missed it, on December 26, 2004, an underwater earthquake in
Indonesia sent tidal waves across the Indian Ocean which affected many major
beach resorts. One of the hardest hit areas was in Thailand, particularly the
island resort of Phuket.
In all 227,898 people are believed to have died as a result of the Asian
Tsunami.
The film is not a typical disaster film where you can pick out who is going to
die and who will survive. Instead, the film becomes a personal testament to the
survival of the family. The film begins with the family arriving in Phuket for their
Christmas vacation. As they celebrate Christmas day, the family participates in
a balloon lighting ceremony that one survivor later mentioned in a blog,
specifically saying, “I was at the same ceremony. … I experienced the same
thing.”
The next day, December 26, proved a beautiful sunny day. At
10 a.m. the first wave hit the shoreline flooding all areas inland. Many of the
beach resorts never had a chance. A wall of water some 18-feet tall hit the
area killing thousands. In at least two assaults, the survivors had to battle
swift moving currents, broken glass and metal, debris, cars, power lines,
bushes, and bodies.
In the initial onslaught, mother Maria (Naomi Watts) is swept away with her
eldest son, Lucas (Thomas Holland). She is badly injured from all the debris.
As they struggle to come together in the strong currents, they are hit with a
second major wave. Their initial goal for survival is to climb a tree which is
still standing in the water.
One of the themes that the film develops is the idea of how others in a tragedy
must help each other. As the mother and son are trying to swim to the tree,
they hear a Swedish baby calling for his parents. While Lucas tries to convince
his mother that they must only worry about saving themselves, Maria makes it
clear to him that it is their duty to save the child also. "What if he
were your brother?" she asks. That act of charity replays itself
several times during the film as Lucas grows to learn that in the face of
tragedy one has a human need to help others.
After being rescued by the locals, the two end up at the hospital where bodies
are stacked in rows of bags and the resources are strained beyond rational
understanding. Another common thread throughout the movie is the vast variety
of people affected. Person after person struggles to communicate and we get a
sense of the Tower of Babel where no one speaks the other’s language. That need
to overcome language barriers becomes an important element to the disaster.
Maria, critically ill but trained as a doctor, sends Lucas off to help others.
He ends up becoming the legs for many survivors, combing the hospital for the
lost. Triumphantly he reunites one man and his son even though he cannot speak
their language. But he becomes inconsolable when he returns to his mother's bed
and finds her missing.
A third obvious theme of the film is the devastating effects feelings of
abandonment have on the survivors, a universal feeling of many of the families
who went through the tsunami. One survivor on a blog writes of how unusual it
was for an entire family to survive unscathed. That sense of being alone in the
world resonates throughout the film.
Back in one of the resort hotels, now looking like a bombed out war zone,
father Henry (Ewan McGregor), having saved his two youngest sons, continues to
search for Maria and Lucas. Another survivor with a cellphone allows Henry to
call his overseas family to give them news. Survivors spoke of the incredulity
people had believing how bad the situation was.
Constantly people looking like shell-shocked refugees (which they were), they try
to offer comfort to others--hands reach to touch and looks offer kindness in a
communal experience of suffering. At one point Henry decides he must leave his
sons behind in the care of a couple who say they will watch over his two boys.
When Henry tells his eight year old that he must take care of his brother, the boy
heart-breakingly pleads with him saying, "I've never looked after
anyone." But he learns to become his brother's keeper.
Henry eventually becomes separated from the boys and his search in the chaos of
the hospital trying to find his family becomes Dickensian in proportion.
"Why should I see a film about a devastating tsunami?" you might well
ask. The film is about the endurance of the human spirit in spite of adversity.
The film reminds one of how suddenly all we hold precious can be lost. This is
story of not just one family but representative of thousands of experiences,
and attention should be paid to all they went through. As people have said of
the learning about the Holocaust, attention must be paid and others must be
witness to what has happened.
Special note should be paid to incredible sound design of the film. While the
real tsunami lasted four hours for those who survived, the film compresses the
experience into a 10 minute devastatingly real sequence.
The filming of the tsunami involved model work with 1:3 inch scale model and a pool.
director Juan Antonio Bayona "wanted supervising sound editor Oriol
Tarragó to create a sound design that wouldn't have any music. After many
experiments, Tarragó came up with the concept of having a different sound for
each shot of the tsunami sequence."
"’Every shot has a different point of view, so I tried the idea of making
a contrast between every shot, like high and low frequencies and volumes,’ he
said. ‘We collected different sounds from waterfalls and underwater
recordings.’”
At some points as the film becomes highly subjective and tries to take the
viewer inside the character's reaction to things. For example, the film grows
silent suggesting the character's inability to process what was happening.
The real Maria Belon, on whom Naomi Watts' character is based, had told the
production team that when the water first hit, she didn't really know what she
was hearing. She thought it sounded like a bunch of low flying planes coming
inland.
"Tarragó also used 'sounds like a far-off plane flying when the water is
coming to the resort. We also used the vibration sounds of glass and animals
running and birds flying because they could feel what was going on.'"
The sequence proved real to Belon and many other survivors who write of the
details that give life to the film experience.
Maria Belon was described as shocked by the underwater sequence "because
for her that was the perfect metaphor of what was life, how you cannot control
your destiny. ... You are only dragged by the current."
Afterthought:
I read a review of the film where the reviewer was
criticizing the movie because it focused on a European family who survived. As
Roger Ebert once stated: “Criticize the movie you saw, not the movie that you
wanted to see.”
During 2012 I set out to watch 100 movies in 100 days and saw 113 movies before the end of the year. While I won't limit myself to only 100 days this year, I will set as my goal to watch and review 100 films--whether at the cinema, on DVD or on television. If you find anything of interest, please feel free to enter into a discussion on the films. (It's okay if we disagree.) I'm just someone who loves film. If you do too, join in. Let 2013 showings begin.
[This film was the last I saw in the final week of December 2012.]
Les Misérablesis one of the best films I saw in 2012. I saw it on an IMAX screen in San Francisco with fantastic sound quality and loved the experience. I feel really good about it being nominated as Best Picture for the Oscars.
From the onset I will admit I was well primed to enjoy the film. I saw the live stage production three times, the filmed stage production in 1988, and the filmed 10th anniversary and 25th anniversary concerts three times. I have also seen two filmed versions of the novel: (1978 for television) with Richard Jordan as Jean Valjean, Anthony Perkins as Javert, Caroline Langrishe as Cosette, and Angela Pleasence as Fantine; and (1998) with Liam Neeson as Jean, Geoffrey Rush as Javert, Claire Danes as Cosette, and Uma Thurman as Fantine. Hugo's work has indeed been popular in film, having versions in 1901, 1909, 1912, 1913, 1917, 1925, 1934, 1935, 1948, 1952, 1958, 1967, 1972, 1982, 1988, 1995, 2000. Plus I taught a reading, "Jean Valjean and the Candlesticks" for many years in a unit on Romanticism and only a few years ago read Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame for the first time. On top of all that, the film did one of the most extensive publicity campaigns of any movie for 2012. Those people who found fault with the film seem to fall into primarily two camps. As one friend stated, "I have never seen the musical. ... I found the characters very underdeveloped and felt nothing for them." The second fault seems to rest with the number of close-ups the director uses to tell his story. In regards to the close-ups, I remember a critique of Howard Hawks (I believe) who was criticized for emphasizing closeups. The reviewer said it felt like a movie made for the small screen (television). The feeling of those who object to close-ups seem to feel that the proper visualizations for musicals and film should play off the vast realism of the sets and exploit the vistas of 1840 Paris. While I agree that the settings created for the city were fascinating and often seductive viewing, I would maintain that the purpose of any musical is that connection between the viewer and the audience. A closeup allows, or rather forces, the viewer to concentrate on the singing. I am reminded of the critics who found Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl singing alone on a black set, relying only on her face to convey the poignancy of "My Man." They talked about what a risky move but how effectively it worked. I felt the same was true in this film. When people have something to sing about, I want to see them, and concentrate on their singing and facial expression. Much has been written about the rather unique approach director Tom Hooper used in creating a much more realistic presentation. The actors didn't just mouth prerecorded playback with prerecorded emotions; they sang on the set and then an orchestra was added behind them. This approach allowed for great depth of feeling. (Anne Hathaway's "I Dreamed a Dream" and Eddie Redmayne's "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" shows for me the power and the wisdom of the approach.) Another criticism of this approach was that many of the actors didn't seem as polished as some of the concert versions. They point to Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe's singing. For me, both men portrayed the torment their characters went through both in emotional range and vocally. Back to the criticism about there not being depth with the characters. Each time I see a production, I find the plot (for such an episodic novel) has been effectively condensed, with much of the character development in the songs themselves. (For people not used to listening to lyrics, that might be a problem.) Most people were blown away at the intensity of Anne Hathaway's pain, conveyed in both "At the End of the Day" and "I Dreamed a Dream." Jean Valjean's growth is certainely assayed in several of his soliloquies. Even the minor characters of Thenardier and Madame Thenardier are well developed characters in "Master of the House" and the wedding sequence. The Romantic storyline consists of the setup for Jean Valjean's redemption and his connection to Fantine and her daughter Cosette. Jean is hated by a policeman, Javert, who believes he should be punished ruthlessly. Jean is an ex-convict who is befriended by a priest who saves him from returning to prison for stealing by "buying his soul" with a pair of silver candlesticks which he stole from the priest. Time jump. Valjean has now assumed the persona of a factory owner and mayor of a town. Fantine works for him and, because of the jealous manipulation of the other factory women, Fantine thrown out into the streets where she reluctantly turns to prostitution to obtain money to help support her child Cosette, who is living with the Tenardiers. When Valjean and Fantine reconnect, she lies dying. Valjean pledges he will find Cosette and raise her. He evades Javert and ends up "buying" Cosette from the world of the Tenardiers. Time jump. Valjean and the teen Cosette live in Paris. The young student Marius, a friend of the Tenardiers' daughter Eponine, sees Cosette and immediately falls in love with her. Marius is part of a group of student radicals who believe they can start a rebellion and change the conditions of France. The plot centers on four ideas: Marius and Cosette, Eponine's love for Marius, the students' rebellion, Javert's rediscovery of Valjean and their eventual confrontation, and Valjean's saving of Marius from the slaughter of the soldiers. In true Romantic fashion, the students fail to raise the people, Valjean is eventually redeemed and wins out over Javert, and Marius and Cosette end up together. Romanticism stressed a world where life is as it should be. In Jean Valjean's world there is forgiveness and love. As they sing in the finale:
Take my hand
And lead me to salvation
Take my love
For love is everlasting
And remember
The truth that once was spoken
To love another person
Is to see the face of God.
One of the changes I found in watching the film is that for me, for the first time, I feel sympathy for Javert's inability to accept that he might be wrong. Crowe's final soliloguy touched me more than any Javert I have seen.
When the film reprises, "Do You Hear the People Sing" at the end, all four of us who attended the showing together were in tears, especially the one in his twenties. That reinforced for me the power of the performance.
Les Misérables(2012) *****
You might also enjoy this short on the sets and decor of the film.
[While I write this review in 2013, the film was one I saw in the last week of 2012.]
I first read Tolkien’s The Hobbit in 1972. I enjoyed the quest formula and Tolkein’s creation of a comic-book type world filled with dwarves, goblins, trolls, elves, giants, dragons, and spiders. Many of the plot details have faded, but I do vividly and with pleasure remember the opening with Gandalf and the dwarves invading Bilbo’s home, Gollum and his ring of invisibility, Bilbo’s escape from the spiders in the trees and from the goblins in a barrel, and the ending with the big battle with Smaug.
By taking only about a third of the book to create the new trilogy, Peter Jackson concentrates on the comic-book charm of the dwarves and Bilbo.
The film begins with a lot of exposition about the former magnificent dwarf kingdom, diminished by battles with the Orcs (goblins) and finally captured by Smaug under the Lonely Mountain. Another important point explained is the Arkenstone, a white stone which reflects great light, originally discovered by Thorin’s grandfather, recrafted by the dwarf artists, and eventually lost when Smaug claims the mountain.
As Gandalf’s choice for the "burgler" that the dwarves need to help them, quiet-living hobbit Bilbo Baggins ends up with his home being invaded by Thorin Okenshield and his 13 dwarves ready to set on their quest to reclaim their homeland. The opening visit to the world of the Hobbits is charming and greatly enhanced by the characterization of Bilbo. The wry humor of Gandalf and the invading dwarves allows us the chance to adjust to the use of 3D in the highly detailed hobbit house.
As the dwarves sing their mysterious song about the Misty Mountains, Thorin produces a map which shows a hidden door in the side of Lonely Mountain where they can re-enter their kingdom. The once reluctant hero Bilbo ends up deciding to join the adventure. And as we expect, he grows with each adventure they face, until he is fully accepted in his role by the dwarves at the end.
Once the group reaches the woods, the plot becomes a somewhat standard quest adventure filled with narrow escapes from trolls, cave-dwelling goblins and Wargs (giant wolves), the elves of Rivendell, and eventually they are saved by giant eagles.
Watching the film, one must suspend the disbelief of an adult and allow the Saturday-afternoon fun adventure to unfold.
Martin Freeman's Bilbo is charming. Thorin's band of dwarves are great comic-book fun, with Richard Armitage playing a powerful Thorin. Ian McKellen's Gandalf becomes a commanding presence who becomes the wise parent of the entire troop. Andy Serkis' Gollum seems much more malevolent than in Lord of the Rings.
Seeing the film on an IMAX screen and in 3D was magical. The vast glorious vistas of New Zealand as middle-earth and the shire play out beautifully in the IMAX scale. The camera tricks to suggest the relative sizes of Gandalf, the dwarves and the hobbits are effective in Jackson's storytelling.
If you're willing to become a kid again for a couple of hours, the film is highly enjoyable--a definite must-see.
