12 - Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

James Franco’s Oz: “I’m just not the man you wanted me to be.” It’s the one line that rings true.

Nor is the film the film I wanted it to be.

I came to this movie with perhaps too great an expectation. After all, Disney interpreting the pre-Dorothy world of Oz seemed like it would be fun. I like the work of leads James Franco, Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis and director Sam Raimi. Unfortunately, like the Scarecrow, the film struggles to find a heart (something you’d think was a no-brainer for a Disney film) and never succeeds to illicit more than a smile.

Most of the blame for the problems lies with a fairly mediocre script which rehashs the Dorothy quest to return home while dealing with the squabbles between the three witch sisters. Into the mix is added  two new characters (for the modern audience), a CGI china doll and a talking monkey.  While the new characters are cute, they fail to support Oz the Magician like Dorothy Gale’s Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the cowardly lion (who is referenced once early on as a real lion that threatens and then is scared off). While there are lots of Easter eggs (See here ), the film is surprisingly one dimensional.

The copyright issues with L. Frank Baum’s material obviously created interesting problems. All of Baum’s books (hence the plots and characters) entered into public domain in 1956; some Oz books by later writers retain their copyright. Samuel Goldwyn purchased the film rights for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1933, but he subsequently sold them to MGM studio in 1938. In 1954, Walt Disney bought the film rights to Baum’s other 13 Oz books, which led to Return to Oz (1985). 

So what things are under copyright and which aren’t? Things in the book should be in public domain; things from the 1939 film, such as the ruby slippers and the look of the yellow-brick road were copyright protected.

I liked the opening part of the traveling circus (Baum Brothers Circus) done in black and white as was MGM’s film. Playing with the 3D, occasionally the director breaks the surrounding frame by having objects actually fly out of the picture.

After a tornado, we end up in Oz, a land of color. But for the next section of the film, we seem to have been transported to a trailer for Disney’s new theme park ride, The Land of Oz. The sequence offers little in terms of plot and appears to be purely intended to test out ride ideas in glorious 3D CGI. By the time we make it back to the real story, the momentum and interest has lagged. At times, I felt the film was attempting to make sure that no opportunity remains for a film version of Wicked.

The most surprising thing I found about the film is the total lack of charisma conveyed by the four leads. Together they seem unable create a believability in the reality of the film and their line readings become just that.

Oz should be a place of wonder, not boring. I was surprised that I found Jack the Giant Slayer more fun.

Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) ***

Day 18/18 - Synecdoche, New York (2008)

I once took my students to an art exhibit where all the paintings were white. It took them a long time to wrap themselves around the idea that chosing to paint white was actually using all the colors of the spectrum.

I felt much like my students trying to wrap my head around Director/Author Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, starring Philip Symour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Samatha Morton, Michelle Williams, and Dianne Wiest. The actors were brilliant, but I was totally thrown by things being out of kilter. Things happened I couldn't figure out: a character goes to look at a house for sale which is on fire. She buys the house and whenever we see the house there are flames seen burning. The script makes a big point it is Halloween and a doctor, supposedly the next day, has a calendar on his wall which states it is March. One of the characters says that she has twins, and then gives then gives three names.

Hoffman plays Caden Cotard, a theatre director who gets hit in the head, and from then on we move into a world that we think we understand but don’t. Eventually Caden wins a MacArthur grant and uses his money to construct a growing, huge set of New York, peopled with actors preparing the individual scenes for the audience that will someday come.

Reality bends even more when he hires actors to play himself and others to play the people in his lives.

Caden fears death throughout the film. He sees himself, however, director of his universe. He at one point expresses surprise that there are 13 billion people in the world and that none of them are extras in their own stories.

When Caden feels the need for a replacement of his original double, the actress Millicent Weems (played by Dianne Wiest) who had been hired to play a cleaning woman (Ellen) asks to take over the part. When asked what she knows of the character, she gives us the real clue to the film:

(Millicent) Caden Cotard is a man already dead. He lives in a half world between stasis and anti-stasus. Time is concentrated, chronology confused. Up until recently he strived valiantly to make sense of his situation. Now he’s turned to stone.

Near the end, she becomes Caden’s director—speaking to him through an ear-mike. Her monogue becomes the most beautiful part of the film and speaks to all of us of a certain age facing an uncertain future. Let me quote Millicent/Ellen’s brilliant speech written by Kaufman:

Stand up. Now it is waiting and nobody cares. And when your wait is over, this room will still exist. And it will continue to hold shoes and dresses and boxes and maybe someday another waiting person. And maybe not. The room doesn’t care either. 

What was once before you an exciting mysterious future is now behind you, lived, understood, disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence and now are slipping silently out of it. This is everyone’s experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone is everyone. So you are Adelle, Hazel, Claire, Olive. You are Ellen,  all her meager sadnesses are yours. All her loneliness. The gray strawlike hair, her red raw hands. It’s yours. It is time for you to understand this. 

Walk. 

As the people who adore you stop adoring you,
as they die,
as they move on,
as you shed them,
as you shed your beauty, your youth,
as the world forgets you,
as you recognize your transience,
as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one,
as you learn there is no one watching and there never was,
you think only about driving. Not coming from any place. Not arriving any place. Just driving. Counting off time:

Now you are here. It’s 7:43.
Now you are here. It’s 7:44.
Now you are gone.

I think of many of the elderly friends that I have seen age and I realize how clearly they would understand this metaphor of life.

When I started this review, I thought I would write about how much the film confused me, but writing about it, I realize how brilliant it is.

Synecdoche, New York (2008) *****