First off, yes, it does make me sad that 21 the only film I've seen in the theatres for the last couple months is this tub of tripe. My excuse is that the Math Club wanted to go see it as an activity, and I like to support the Math Club in their activities when possible. (Also, at least my ticket was discounted, so I only lost $6 and two hours, rather than $9 or $10 and two hours.)
I've seen many movies that are worse than 21. And I'll say that the first hour wasn't even that painful. It started out as a film that glorifies the life of the mind, that glorifies working hard and being smart. Heaven knows we could use more films (and music and books and TV shows, etc.) that do this. But then it just gets... mediocre.
In a way, I'm not sure why I'm bothering with writing about this film. I'll keep it short. But it really does exemplify something decadent and disturbing about America. Or, no, maybe it doesn't. I mean, it cost $35 mil, and the film's already made that back plus a lot more. So, ok, America has bad taste. We knew that already. This is the way the market works. This is why we get mediocre films like this.
But back to the mediocrity: lead actor is remarkably uneappealing, really no charisma at all; plot "twists" are painfully obvious; characters presented as smart do idiotic things often; Kevin Spacey grates as smarmy math prof (ok, that one's rather personal); lots of sub-CSI swooshy effects of chips stacking up and cards being dealt in slo-mo... I mean this thing is a veritable "How Not To..." guide for directors. (I see now that director Robert Luketic also directed Legally Blonde, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, and (ye gods) Monster-In-Law, so what did I expect, right? (I mean, when your career has been a downward spiral since Legally Blonde? Ouch.)) He can't even be bothered to provide some sort of reason for the lead and romantic interest to fall in love? One minute she's deliberately not kissing him on the subway, making him feel awkward. The next minute she's straddling him in a strip club in Vegas telling him to come up to their suite so he can fondle her against the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the strip. Chemistry? Zilch. I've seen waterlogged matchbooks generate more heat.
Sad to see some good actors wasted, too. Kevin Spacey's been wandering the wasteland for a while after such a promising early career (Glengarry Glen Ross, The Usual Suspects, American Beauty). And Laurence Fishburne? Buddy, you didn't make enough money from The Matrix (and the two embarrassingly bad sequels) to avoid disasters like this?
The more I think about it the more it feels like it didn't even rise to the level of mediocre. As it went along I had to try harder and harder to keep from snorting my derision. (I rarely do this in a theatre, out of respect for my fellow patrons. Though I'll confess that eventually Mission to Mars broke down that respect to the point where I was laughing aloud by the end. I know Volcano did the same thing, too. Now that's a funny movie.)
Times like this I wish we were constructed, as a biological entity, to be able to be entertained by a film like this: Investors take $34 million into area where it could make a huge difference in improving the lives of the people there, sending along a film crew or two with a filming budget of $1 million to record the process of improving lives. Wouldn't it be great if that movie made $24 million in its first weekend and was profitable for the investors by the second week?
Well, wishes/horses/beggars/ride, right?
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Saturday, April 12, 2008
One more thought on American Beauty
Recall Ricky Fitts's video of the empty white plastic bag, spinning and dancing on the breeze. We twice watch this video in the course of the film, and it is beautiful, but keep thinking about it. Would this bag be beautiful if it still had purchased items within it? No, it would be weighed down, lifeless, perhaps twitching pathetically in the breeze but nothing more. Only when the merchandise, the things are removed, only then does it achieve the lightness necessary to rise, to spin, to dance and be sublimely beautiful.
Keep yourself light. Always.
Keep yourself light. Always.
Defending American Beauty [spoilers]
A recent repeat viewing of American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes, reminded me of some complaints about the film. Now, I'm sympathetic to complaints that the film was a bit overrated. This happens almost every year, it seems, that some film that might have been pretty good ends up annoying everyone because when Oscar season rolls around it gets puffed up far beyond its worth. (I may take a few slings and arrows, here, but I'd put Paul Haggis's Crash in this category, because, frankly, it had a few really good scenes. But it's hard to even enjoy those scenes now because so much of the rest of the film is too blatantly manipulative and ridiculously coincidental and these flaws should have utterly disqualified the film from even being nominated. And the damn thing won! See, even now, it falls further in my estimation because of its being overvalued. But I digress.)
But I'm not sympathetic to all the criticisms of American Beauty. Are these clichéd characters? Perhaps they begin this way. It might be better to call them stock characters. But the film then spins them in strange directions, and portrays them in ways we have not (often) seen before. Also, the performances are angled and pitched uniquely, and this too allows the familiar nature of the characters to be transcended. (Annette Bening does particularly vital work, as her character is one of the most thinly written, and dances the closest to caricature throughout.)
This film is not realistic? Of course not. It's extremely stylized. What's wrong with that? You expect art to be realistic? All art is stylized, it shouldn't bother you that this one wears it a little more plainly on its sleeve.
Something that hit me in the gut this time through the film was the intense tragedy of the Chris Cooper's ex-marine character, Frank Fitts. In previous viewings I've been so caught up in Kevin Spacey's Lester Burnham, and his fitful efforts to find some sort of authenticity, that his death at Fitts' hand has always filled me with anger at the Fitts character. (This despite the fact that Lester tells us, in his film-opening voice-over monologue, that he will be dead very soon.) But not this time. This time I was finally able to see the deep need, the horror of having been locked down and locked away from his own desires that finally caused Fitts to snap. This final sequence is also one of the film's most brilliant twists, as we expect him to kill Lester for being involved with his son, and instead Fitts steps in out of the pounding rain to embrace Lester and then kiss Lester. Is he inspired by the courage of his son to do what he never could? Whatever the case, this is a courage he's never been able to muster before, and the kiss is not returned, is rebuffed, gently yes, but rebuffed, and now what can he do? Now the thing he has crushed down within himself his entire life is known, and we know what must now happen. Lester must be killed as the keeper of this knowledge.
And every character is the same. They're all so filled with need. Different needs, but also the same. They all need connection of some sort, and find themselves awash in a culture that would have them bury these needs under things (clothes, house, garden, car, drugs, rumors of sexual prowess). The style of the film captures this well, too, with so much focus on the surfaces (screens, cameras, mirrors, windows). In the end, all the illusions have fallen away, and this leads to violence and death, but also to freedom for some of the characters.
And even Lester finds freedom. We see the bemused smile (reflected in his own blood) on his dead face, and we feel the truth in his confession to Mena Suvari's Angela character that he is happy. He finally saw the beauty in that final second.
We should take to heart, too, the admonition to be genuine, to not be content with the surface. And more, we should also strive to savor the beauty, the beauty all around us even in the ugly things, even in the people we may write off as shallow or stock. In a culture that calls us to value the surface of things, to judge by how things look and what they can do for us, finding beauty in the other things is a subversive (holy?) act.
----------------------------
Note: We'd be remiss to close without mentioning Thomas Newman's excellent soundtrack. It's brilliant, and works very hard to help the film transcend, again, the stock nature of some of its elements.
But I'm not sympathetic to all the criticisms of American Beauty. Are these clichéd characters? Perhaps they begin this way. It might be better to call them stock characters. But the film then spins them in strange directions, and portrays them in ways we have not (often) seen before. Also, the performances are angled and pitched uniquely, and this too allows the familiar nature of the characters to be transcended. (Annette Bening does particularly vital work, as her character is one of the most thinly written, and dances the closest to caricature throughout.)
This film is not realistic? Of course not. It's extremely stylized. What's wrong with that? You expect art to be realistic? All art is stylized, it shouldn't bother you that this one wears it a little more plainly on its sleeve.
Something that hit me in the gut this time through the film was the intense tragedy of the Chris Cooper's ex-marine character, Frank Fitts. In previous viewings I've been so caught up in Kevin Spacey's Lester Burnham, and his fitful efforts to find some sort of authenticity, that his death at Fitts' hand has always filled me with anger at the Fitts character. (This despite the fact that Lester tells us, in his film-opening voice-over monologue, that he will be dead very soon.) But not this time. This time I was finally able to see the deep need, the horror of having been locked down and locked away from his own desires that finally caused Fitts to snap. This final sequence is also one of the film's most brilliant twists, as we expect him to kill Lester for being involved with his son, and instead Fitts steps in out of the pounding rain to embrace Lester and then kiss Lester. Is he inspired by the courage of his son to do what he never could? Whatever the case, this is a courage he's never been able to muster before, and the kiss is not returned, is rebuffed, gently yes, but rebuffed, and now what can he do? Now the thing he has crushed down within himself his entire life is known, and we know what must now happen. Lester must be killed as the keeper of this knowledge.
And every character is the same. They're all so filled with need. Different needs, but also the same. They all need connection of some sort, and find themselves awash in a culture that would have them bury these needs under things (clothes, house, garden, car, drugs, rumors of sexual prowess). The style of the film captures this well, too, with so much focus on the surfaces (screens, cameras, mirrors, windows). In the end, all the illusions have fallen away, and this leads to violence and death, but also to freedom for some of the characters.
And even Lester finds freedom. We see the bemused smile (reflected in his own blood) on his dead face, and we feel the truth in his confession to Mena Suvari's Angela character that he is happy. He finally saw the beauty in that final second.
We should take to heart, too, the admonition to be genuine, to not be content with the surface. And more, we should also strive to savor the beauty, the beauty all around us even in the ugly things, even in the people we may write off as shallow or stock. In a culture that calls us to value the surface of things, to judge by how things look and what they can do for us, finding beauty in the other things is a subversive (holy?) act.
----------------------------
Note: We'd be remiss to close without mentioning Thomas Newman's excellent soundtrack. It's brilliant, and works very hard to help the film transcend, again, the stock nature of some of its elements.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Get Michael Caine!
We often say, upon reaching the end of a movie made long ago, "Well, they don't make them like that anymore." Sometimes this is a compliment for the movie, or a dig at the shoddy crap shoveled into most theatres most of the time these days. Sometimes we deliver it with an eye-roll and a shrug, as in, "Thank God they don't make them like that anymore."
It seems to me they don't often make movies like Mike Hodges' 1971 film Get Carter anymore. And it is a shame. Not to say it is a perfect film, nor even to claim that it somehow enlarges our understanding of humanity. But it explores a certain layer of society, and a place, and a time, that few of us have known.
The plot is so diffuse, it would be difficult to spoil it, even if I tried. Jack Carter, hood henchman to a London gangster, returns home to Newcastle to find out how, and why, his brother really died. He's reading Farewell, My Lovely on the train to Newcastle, and it's a nice touch. He pursues the truth like Philip Marlowe, wandering through the milieu, tugging at loose threads where he finds them, talking and toughing his way out of it when necessary. (If you've never read any of Chandler's fiction, do yourself a favor and hie thee to the library ASAP. Read one or two early novels (say, The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely) to familiarize yourself with Chandler and Marlowe, then grab The Long Goodbye, which is a stone-cold, genre-transcending masterpiece.)
But of course, Jack Carter's no Philip Marlowe. He's a nasty bit of business, and that's the other charm of this film. He's a gangster, and we're never allowed to forget it. We may be pulling for him, because it seems he's got a little bit of kindness in him, and the others around him seem generally worse, but his rough edges are always in evidence. He's not all that careful about those around him, he enjoys women but is perfectly content to use them along the way. He's pretty smart, or maybe canny is a better word. He knows how this world works, and that makes him able to circle in towards the truth. These days when star actors play bad people, it's often Oscar bait (Denzel in Training Day) or as a chance to embody some Important Idea being expressed by the movie. I can enjoy either of those things, but here Michael Caine's just embodying a character, and it's refreshing.
Also refreshing is the gritty style of the film, the lovingly presented bleakness and grime of Newcastle, reminding us of the bleak, grimy soul of our protagonist, and indeed nearly every other soul in the film.
No, they don't often make films like this one anymore. More's the shame.
--------------------------------------
Note 1: I've heard the 2000 remake starring Sylvester Stallone is awful. Beware.
Note 2: Mike Hodges also directed Clive Owen in 1998's Croupier. I haven't seen it since then, but I remember it being good, and similarly unsentimental for the most part. Perhaps it is time for another viewing.
It seems to me they don't often make movies like Mike Hodges' 1971 film Get Carter anymore. And it is a shame. Not to say it is a perfect film, nor even to claim that it somehow enlarges our understanding of humanity. But it explores a certain layer of society, and a place, and a time, that few of us have known.
The plot is so diffuse, it would be difficult to spoil it, even if I tried. Jack Carter, hood henchman to a London gangster, returns home to Newcastle to find out how, and why, his brother really died. He's reading Farewell, My Lovely on the train to Newcastle, and it's a nice touch. He pursues the truth like Philip Marlowe, wandering through the milieu, tugging at loose threads where he finds them, talking and toughing his way out of it when necessary. (If you've never read any of Chandler's fiction, do yourself a favor and hie thee to the library ASAP. Read one or two early novels (say, The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely) to familiarize yourself with Chandler and Marlowe, then grab The Long Goodbye, which is a stone-cold, genre-transcending masterpiece.)
But of course, Jack Carter's no Philip Marlowe. He's a nasty bit of business, and that's the other charm of this film. He's a gangster, and we're never allowed to forget it. We may be pulling for him, because it seems he's got a little bit of kindness in him, and the others around him seem generally worse, but his rough edges are always in evidence. He's not all that careful about those around him, he enjoys women but is perfectly content to use them along the way. He's pretty smart, or maybe canny is a better word. He knows how this world works, and that makes him able to circle in towards the truth. These days when star actors play bad people, it's often Oscar bait (Denzel in Training Day) or as a chance to embody some Important Idea being expressed by the movie. I can enjoy either of those things, but here Michael Caine's just embodying a character, and it's refreshing.
Also refreshing is the gritty style of the film, the lovingly presented bleakness and grime of Newcastle, reminding us of the bleak, grimy soul of our protagonist, and indeed nearly every other soul in the film.
No, they don't often make films like this one anymore. More's the shame.
--------------------------------------
Note 1: I've heard the 2000 remake starring Sylvester Stallone is awful. Beware.
Note 2: Mike Hodges also directed Clive Owen in 1998's Croupier. I haven't seen it since then, but I remember it being good, and similarly unsentimental for the most part. Perhaps it is time for another viewing.
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