The World's End (2013)

Just in the interests of full discolusure let me make this statement right off the bat: Shaun of the Dead gets my vote as the best film of the 21st century, and my reverence for Spaced is nearly as high. I adore Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and while I'm not under any illusions that they can do no wrong, I do contend that they can do no wrong while they've got Edgar Wright watching over them.
So I came to The World's End with a great deal of excitement, but also some trepidation. I didn't want to be let down, you know? Intellectually I know it isn't going to be another Shaun, but inevitably there's a bit of my brain that's thinking, “Oh, there's a new Shaun coming out!” and that's kind of hard to ignore. I kept telling myself that if it was just as good as Hot Fuzz I would be happy.
Our set-up is pretty simple: Gary King (Simon Pegg) used to be the ringleader of the youth in the little town of Newton Haven. We open on a now-middle-aged Gary telling his therapy group about a night when he tried to do a twelve-stop pub crawl with his gang of friends: Andy (Nick Frost), his best friend; Steven (Paddy Considine), the rival to the throne; Oliver (Martin Freeman), the uptight and ambitious geek; and Peter (Eddie Marsan), the younger boy who tags along with everything the gang does. On the original night the boys only made it through nine pubs, so Gary decides to get the gang back together for another try. Unfortunately, in the course of the evening, they uncover an invasion by alien robots, or "blanks." Easy enough.
The opening montage is pretty good, but I actually like what comes right after better, the start of the story proper, where Gary is going to the guys, talking them into doing the pub crawl. It's funny, but more than that it tells us absolutely everything we need to know about Gary: that he's always got a comeback, that he can't be reasoned with, that he's impervious to anything anyone else says. “Do you know your problem, Gary? You're never wrong,” Andy complains, to which Gary replies, “How is that a problem?”
It sets up the way the other guys look at him well, also. Peter is a little reluctant, but clearly still has a bit of a hero-worship thing going on, and is somewhat under Gary's spell. Steven is determined not to be pushed around by Gary, keeps dropping little lines attempting to assert his superiority, but somehow ends up getting dragged along in Gary's wake anyway. Oliver is sort of detached, telling himself that he's coming along for ironic enjoyment, to see how screwed up things are going to get. I get the impression that this is roughly how their relationship worked as kids, as well. Andy, of course, is the exception, because his relationship with Gary is the one that has really changed, but otherwise it's a pretty econimcal set-up for the characters, past and present.
I do have to ask a question at this point, though....why on Earth does Andy believe Gary's line about his mother's death? There can't be anyone else who knows Gary that would believe that story. He's so clearly someone who will say anything to get his way. It's a bit of a weak point, but since it gets the story going I'm prepared to forgive it.
As with all of Wright's movies, there's a ton of foreshadowing at the beginning of the movie. Practically everything anybody says, practically every image we see, will come back later in the film. Actually, Wright plays with this a little bit, having a few obvious bits that don't pay off. The scene where the guys meet at the station and Oliver says that Gary will outlive them all grabbed me the very first time he said it. “Oh, everybody's gonna die and Gary will die last, or be the only survivor!” But immediately after that comes the discussion of the Musketeers, with Gary saying that there should have been five so that two could die and they'd still have three, and that's pretty obvious as well, isn't it? So I started trying to figure out which three would live. It was easy to figure that Pegg and Frost would be two, so which of the other three? Freeman was the obvious choice just from a casting standpoint, as a much bigger star than either Marsan or Considine, but since we know from the opening montage that Steven made it to the end of the original night it had to be him. Also, I submit that Frost's “Are we there yet?” in that conversation is the best use of that tired old line ever.
Anyway, it might be fun to comb through this movie and write down every tiny bit of foreshadowing and recurring dialog, but that would run to the tens of thousands of words and this isn't a good spot for it. I mostly mention it because one criticism I've heard about this movie is that there's too much repeated dialog, and that annoys me. “Repetitive” is a word I hear a lot in discussions of The World's End, but I love the running jokes in this; in fact, that's very much the point of the movie, and is always gonna be with a Wright/Pegg script. I don't understand the complaint at all, frankly.
I adore the cast in this. In fact, it might be even better than the main cast of Shaun. Rosamund Pike, who plays Oliver's sister Sam (a love interest both for Gary and Steven), is an actress I've always liked, and it's nice to see her in something I'll actually want to watch again as opposed to, say, Die Another Day. It's not the best part any actress have ever been given, of course. It might just be that I watched this and Frances Ha so close together, and am therefore very much aware of how shallow the female characters of male writers can be, comparing them to Greta Gerwig's Frances. The character is pretty ordinary, but suffers in the comparison. I wish there'd been more here for her, but she's very good with what she's got. Also I like it that she keeps saying “Oh, crumbs!” every time she's surprised. I'm a big Dangermouse fan, and that's very Penfold.
An aside: supposedly Pike was originally cast as Emma Frost in X-Men: First Class, and I want to go on record here saying that she might have given that movie an extra star; she suits the role far better than January Jones. I doubt I'll ever write about that one, since I don't expect to see it again, but I bet I'd be more interested if Rosamund Pike had been in it.
Considine is good as the smart and competent guy who somehow always gets overwhelmed by the force of Gary's personality, and Freeman nearly as good as the detached, ironic, but still irritable Oliver. Marsan is better than either, and in fact I'll go so far as to say I've never seen him better. He really nails that mopey quality, and I wish that Gary had been more obviously protective of him (I do quite like the scene in the opening montage where the bully smacks Peter with his bookbag and Gary stands up for him, but nothing is really made of that).
It was nice to see Nick Frost getting a chance to play a different kind of character. I'm so used to seeing him as a big kid, but he does a really good job as a grown-up, a lawyer wrestling with real-life issues and frustrated at the behavior in his friend that typifies the characters he usually plays. Prior to Spaced Frost wasn't an actor at all, and pretty much his whole career since then has been more or less under the auspices of Pegg and Wright. I'm hoping that after this he'll be on his own. I look forward to seeing what he's got.
Pegg's Gary has been the lightning rod for this film from folks who don't like it. Personally I think he does a great job playing a very nearly unredeemable character, but of course that means that he's a bit unlikeable on a first watch. I saw a lot of myself in Gary, and I think that's why I disliked him so much the first time I saw this, but he has definitely grown on me. I still like Pegg better as Shaun, but I would go so far as to say that I like this portrayal better than Nick Angel in Hot Fuzz. I think he does exactly what the part requires.
As with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, though, the real star of this movie is Wright's direction, and I continue to be amazed at his progression as a filmmaker. In my opinion he's the best director under 40 out there (though as of April 18th that won't be true anymore). He has a real flair for how comedy ought to progress, and how to knit together many tiny threads into an appealing cloth, but what's interesting is that he's become a really solid action director. The opening fight in the bathroom is very well-put-together (the bit where Gary knocks the first robot's head off in particular), but what I really like is when Andy gets up, rips his sweater open, screams “I hate this town,” and lays into the blanks with a pair of stools. Nick Frost, Action Hero, is not something I expected ever to see, but I really like it.
The ending is not all I might have wanted it to be. In the first place, it really bothers me that Gary doesn't get his last pint at The World's End. More than anything else in the film I understood Gary's desire for those twelve drinks, and it feels like a terrible let-down that he only got eleven. Also, I don't get why the blanks leaving sent us back to the dark ages, even if they did provide the know-how for all the digitized connectivity. We already had plenty of technology before they arrived, so shouldn't we at worst go back to the world of the early nineties? No smart phones, but at least cars and radio and, you know, electricity? Allowing for a world-wide EMP that destroyed every circuit on the planet, we know how to make new circuits, right? Even I understand the principle, and I am not a practical-minded man. And the closing monologue from Frost could be better, though I do like the image of Gary wandering the countryside with the robot forms of his old friends, getting in trouble. It's not a terrible ending, but it's a bit jarring coming at the end of a film that otherwise so carefully written and smoothly directed. To be honest, there's nothing I really like after we see Sam, Gary, Andy, and Steven on the hillside watching the town burn. That would have made a great ending, if a bit abrupt. If something had to come after, I wish it had been a better something.
But the ending doesn't spoil the film for me. It just prevents it from being perfect. It's behind Shaun, of course, and behind Scott Pilgrim as well, but it's very much on par with Hot Fuzz, and as with all Edgar Wright films I'm sure I'll like it more upon the many, many re-watches I'm bound to give it.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: Just the relationships between the five boys and, to a lesser extent, Sam. One thing I've heard a lot in reviews of this movie is that it might have been better if it had been just the pub-crawl, without the invasion aspect. I can't agree with that, but I do get it; the movie is at its best when it's just those six people talking. Great writing, and great performances all around.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The first time I saw this I shouted “Don't let Oliver go to the john alone!” It was obvious that, if the blanks could get any of the boys alone, they'd be assimilated. And then Oliver comes back, no longer drunk, no longer stressed out, no longer angry when the boys make inappropriate remarks about his sister, and very much on Gary's side about not leaving town. It's obvious that Oliver is a blank, but the movie plays that out waaay too long. I mentioned that the ending let me down, and to be honest that's the worst thing, but this happened right in the middle of the movie still being really good and it jars a bit, so I had to mention it.

PUNCH THE AIR MOMENT: When the robot consciousness says “It's pointless arguing with you.” I love the idea of humanity being so stubborn, belligerent, and idiotic that higher races would simply give up on us. It's a beautiful thought, the very antithesis of the sugary Star Trek speeches you'd get once or twice a year about our great potential. I find it far more emotionally satisfying. Also, I'm a big Sisters of Mercy fan and was turned on all movie by Gary's T-shirt, so when the blank version of Gary appears with the choral opening of "This Corrosion" playing...well, that wrecked me a little bit.

SCORE: 8/10. A better ending would have given it a clean nine stars, but you can't have everything. Like I said, I told myself coming in that if this movie was as good as Hot Fuzz it would be a success, and that's what I got. Considering that this year all of my other most-anticipated films have been at least slightly disappointing (outside of The Grandmaster, which I still haven't managed to see), I'm pretty well satisfied with this.

LISTS: Favorites of the Teens (so far).

Stoker (2013)

This year has seen two of the greatest Korean directors come to the West to make their first English-language movies. Of Kim Jee-Woon's The Last Stand I can't say anything, because even though I prefer his work to Park Chan-Wook's, I haven't seen The Last Stand yet. I decided it could wait, because whatever I think of their previous work, Park's Stoker is clearly the more interesting of the two films, and I've been eager to see it.
It's easy to look at Stoker and call it a sensual experience, more about sound and visual than story. I think that's true, but it doesn't detract from the story. I don't know that it's terribly deep, or that it will change anyone's life (and if it does, a person whose life is changed by Stoker is probably someone you want to keep in front of you), but it's a coherent, well-told story. Usually when we say that a film is more about the images than the plot we're saying that the plot makes little sense, but that isn't the case with Stoker. The plot is simple but it proceeds naturally, without any missteps or foolishness. It isn't interested in surprising us; the surprises will be audio-visual, rather than plot-oriented. I have no problem with it.
It helps that the film is so well-acted. Matthew Goode, who plays Charlie Stoker, is creepy and charming by turns, as the role requires. His big puppy-dog eyes, his sweet smile, they're extremely sinister. I got the impression early in the film that Park wanted us to suspect that Charlie was some kind of vampire (the movie's title, the fact that Charlie never eats, and we don't see how he kills his first victim), but he pretty clearly isn't one. Still, he would have made a good one.
Nicole Kidman is better as Evelyn Stoker, the widow of Charlie's brother Richard. She's both jaded and wistful; there's a genuine sense of longing from her throughout the picture, a longing for the man she married (Richard had ceased being that man by the time he died), a longing for a good relationship with her daughter, an overarching longing to be cared for. She's a lonely, pointless woman and clearly has been for a long time. I assume that this happened because Richard saw something in their daughter India when she was very young, something that he had also seen in Charlie, and tried to “save” her from her impulses in a similar way to that tried by James Remar's character in Dexter, and he became so caught up in that effort that his relationship with Evelyn suffered. Ever since, she's been trying to matter to someone and has never learned how either to make herself valuable to others, or to value herself.
The big success is Mia Wasikowska as India. I was worried about her coming into the picture; I only knew her as the title character in Tim Burton's poorly-received Alice in Wonderland, and wasn't looking forward to seeing her in this. However, in Stoker she's a real star. It's a genuinely mesmerizing performance. The last time I was as impressed by an actress so young was Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone, and while this doesn't equal that performance, it's remarkable none the less.
But again, the film mostly works as a sensual experience. I love the sound in particular. In the opening scene we hear India's voiceover, saying that she can hear things that most people can't, and the sound mix constantly reminds us of how important sound is to her. We hear the footsteps of the spider crawling up her stocking, the heightened sound of the pencil being sharpened, Charlie's “See you soon” at the funeral. At the dinner table, when she and Charlie are sitting alone and he slides his wine glass across to her, that's the loudest glass of wine I've ever heard drunk. I love the scene where she's rolling the egg around on the table, listening to the shell cracking, or where she leaves the metronome running and can hear it all the through the house, timing her movements to it as she climbs the stairs, as she makes snow angels on her bed. The sound in this film is actually more compelling than the visuals.
And that's really saying something, as the visuals are both beautifully-done and intellectually interesting. Obviously there are gorgeous shots that don't require much thought, In particular there's one where a scene of India brushing Evelyn's hair turns into a flashback of India and her father hunting, visualized by Kidman's copper-colored hair transforming into tall grass that is amazing to see. You don't have to think to appreciate the film, but there seem to be rewards in figuring out the subtleties in Park's presentation. I'm still trying to figure out some of the camera movements in the film that seem to indicate a first-person perspective even though they don't. It'll stand some figuring out. I doubt that Park did that accidentally.
Park tells his story as much through these visual cues as through dialog. Take the scene in the classroom where the students are meant to be doing a still-life of a vase of flowers, and it turns out that India is actually doing the design inside the vase rather than the outside that everyone else sees. What does that tell us about India? Again, that she sees things that others don't. It's a subtle reinforcement of that opening voice-over. The whole movie is full of little clues.
The best scene in the whole movie, in my opinion, has no dialog in it at all. India is playing piano, and Charlie comes in and sits down next to her and begins to play along. Very simple, but it's one of the best sex scenes I've ever seen in a film, and there's no sex in it. By comparison Charlie and Evelyn making out to “Summer Wine” or India masturbating in the shower seem pretty pale.
I also like the bit where India comes home in the rain to find the umbrella hanging on the gate. Charlie offered it to her as she left, saying it was going to rain, and she ignored him. She also doesn't take it when she sees it on the gate. Charlie is attempting to be a shepherd for her, and she won't be herded. It's a running theme of their relationship. Charlie pays some lip service to treating her as an equal, sure. The scene on the stairs during her father's memorial service where Charlie says he'll be staying for a while, but that he wants it to be India's decision as well, for instance. But he can be insistent when she demurs. The last thing he ever says is an order: “India, come here! Now!” Charlie has come home seeking her companionship, but it's clear that he wants to be both father and lover to her. By the end of the movie she wants neither. She wants to belong to herself.
That's why it isn't surprising when India kills Charlie at the end. I believe she's fascinated by him, and the film does start with her talking about wanting to be rescued. When she first realizes what Charlie is she's attracted to him, and I think she means to go away with him when he first suggests it, but she knows that if she does she'll have to follow his path, and she would rather follow her own. In retrospect Charlie's death seems inevitable, as in fact do all the deaths in the film.
What's more interesting to me, and seems not at all inevitable, is the death that doesn't take place. Not Pitt, who dies in the original script but survives the movie, but Evelyn. Why does India spare her? She doesn't seem to have any genuine affection for her, and furthermore has just received a pretty scalding lecture from her. You might reasonably expect her to be feeling resentment after hearing it, if she feels anything at all. On the other hand, though she's clearly trying to hurt India, Evelyn seems more pathetic in that moment than anything else. “India, who are you? You were supposed to love me, weren't you?” Evelyn is very much still a child, and India has become a woman with Charlie's death. Perhaps she thinks that particular murder would be beneath her. Perhaps it was Evelyn's request to Charlie that he take her instead of India, if we can see that as her attempting to sacrifice herself to protect her daughter (I'm torn as to whether she's protecting India, upset that neither of them wants her, envious that he prefers India to her...). However India interpreted that conversation may have affected her somehow, but I don't understand her forbearance in this scene. If someone would like to explain it, I'm listening.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: I've already gone on at some length about the sound in this, but on top of that the music is magnificent. Clint Mansell is really coming into his own now. He's been doing good work for Darren Aronofsky for years, of course, and his Requiem for a Dream score is rightly highly regarded, but in just the past few years, with Moon, Black Swan, and now this, he's established himself as the best in the business, in my opinion. Also, the song “Becomes the Color” by Emily Wells that plays over the last scene and the credits is perfect. I love it when a movie ends with just the right song. That's a star all by itself, really.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: Aside from not understanding why Evelyn is still alive at the end I have no real problem with the movie, so I guess it has to be that. But it doesn't trouble me much.

SCORE: 9/10. I think this is the best 2013 movie I've seen so far, by a fairly wide margin. Furthermore I'll have to agree with and say that it's Park's best work. As much as I love Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and appreciate Oldboy, I found neither of them as moving or as artistically rewarding as this one.

LISTS: Top 100(ish), Favorites of the Teens (so far)

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Coming into 2013 I had a list of films that I thought had a real shot at being my favorite movie of the year. Because I haven't been able to get to theaters much, I've watched only Now You See Me, which I enjoyed but nowhere near as much as I hoped to. I haven't yet gotten to Stoker, The Grandmaster, Much Ado About Nothing, Pacific Rim, or The World's End, which appear to be the main contenders (barring a few dark horses like Only God Forgives or Europa Report). At this moment, my favorite film of 2013 is probably the Evil Dead remake, and while that's a fun little picture, if it ends the year at the top of the list 2013 will have been a desperate failure.
The one I was really looking forward to, the one I was sure would be my favorite, was Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. It was by far my most-anticipated movie of the year. I know that Luhrmann is known as a style-over-substance guy, but to be fair, I'm sometimes a style-over-substance guy myself. I loved his Romeo + Juliet when it came out, and I enjoyed Moulin Rouge, which is a bit of an accomplishment in itself because it's a movie I should have hated. Gatsby seems like the kind of story Luhrmann can tell maybe better than anyone else, but what really put it over the top for me was the casting of Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role. I've been saying for years that he was born to play Jay Gatsby, and he was finally getting his shot. Having Carey Mulligan, one of my favorite actresses, and Toby McGuire along for the ride was just icing on the cake.
I finally got to watch it last weekend, and I've been thinking about it a lot in the week since, trying to decide how I felt about it, and the principal feeling I keep coming back to is disappointment. It is nowhere near as good as it should have been.
DiCaprio is good, but I kind of had this feeling throughout the movie that he wasn't playing Jay Gatsby. Instead, he was playing Orson Welles playing Jay Gatsby. At his first moment at the party, where he shakes Nick's hand and the voiceover is talking about his smile, I thought, “That's Orson Welles' smile,” and DiCaprio never swayed me from that opinion. I couldn't really say it troubled me, but I was constantly aware of it.
Mulligan had to play Daisy, a thankless task. Daisy is one of the less likeable characters in American fiction, selfish and careless and shallow. Luhrmann and Mulligan seem to have decided to try to give her some warmth, and to an extent that works, but it ends up robbing her of any character. She seems to have no volition, no motivation. She's a charming and beautiful doll, no more capable of thought or complex feeling or making her own decisions than if her head were filled with straw.
Of course, to portray her this way, they had to take her completely out of the story after the death of Myrtle (Isla Fisher, who is somehow both under-served by the part and not very good in it). From that moment we never hear a complete line of dialog from her, just hints of phrases now and then, drowned out by ambient noise and other voices. We get no more closeups of her face, either. Luhrmann can't show her reaction, since she feels remorse neither for the crime itself nor for the fact that Gatsby took the blame for it and has been murdered because of it. He doesn't want us to see her as heartless, but the result is that she's just...blank. Gatsby's love for her is the single most important aspect of the story they're telling, and we never get why he loves her at all. How could anyone love her? Be charmed by her, sure. Fall for her briefly, of course; she's Carey Mulligan. But love her? Never.
Of course, the fact that Gatsby's love for her is the most important aspect of this story is in itself damning. This is supposed to be a story about class, about the cluelessness and casual cruelty of the wealthy, yet for some reason Luhrmann mostly ignores it. Sure, we see Tom (Joel Edgerton) treat a few “lesser” people as props and devices, but even that's mostly glossed over. During the confrontation in the hotel between Gatsby and Tom it finally comes out a bit, but it's still underdone and is, in any case, too little too late. F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel is a political work, an indictment of the wealthy, a statement on the inequality of American society. Luhrmann misses that whole text completely.
So what, though, right? We knew coming in that Luhrmann isn't a storyteller, and while it's clear that he doesn't have even a Cliff's Notes-level understanding of the story, the story isn't supposed to be the main thing. It's supposed to be visual, tactile. It's supposed to be about luxury, opulence, the decadence of the Roaring Twenties. For a style-over-substance guy, Long Island in 1922 is as obvious a setting as the fin-de-siècle Paris of Moulin Rouge.
So how does Luhrmann get the style so wrong? Well, principally, by not having real style. Almost all of the sets in this movie are computer-generated, and obviously so. In places that works, giving a dreamlike quality to the surroundings that the characters (who often blur into the backgrounds, so heavy-handed are the effects) move through, adding a layer of unreality to Gatsby's world which is, in fact, unreal. From a narrative standpoint that makes sense, then, but it still looks terrible. And during Myrtle's death scene it goes so far into the fantastic that I felt like I was watching the long-rumored Sin City sequel. It was literally cartoonish. I found myself starving for anything at all to look real, just for a minute.
Not everything about the movie was terrible, of course. There was actually quite a lot to like here. McGuire is exactly what Nick ought to be, and Edgerton is extremely strong (meaning, of course, extremely hateful) as Tom. Hell, DiCaprio and Mulligan weren't actually bad, they just weren't what I wanted. Unfortunately, none of the supporting cast distinguished themselves, except perhaps for Elizabeth Debicki. I was looking forward to seeing Adelaide Clemens again. I've been wanting to find out whether or not she can actually act since her not-great-but-better-than-the-film-deserved performance in Silent Hill Revelation. I'm still wondering. There just wasn't anything for her to do.
The score, which was my principal worry coming into the film, turned out okay. I still wish they had used period music from the most exciting period of American music, rather than Jay-Z's approximation of it, but the fact is that I like Jay-Z and he did a decent, though not outstanding, job here. The ballroom scenes were exactly the kind of excess I enjoy. The frame of Nick writing about the events of that summer from some time in the future, allowing Luhrmann to use some of Fitzgerald's excellent prose, works surprisingly well given that it doesn't make sense...everybody knows that Nick Calloway didn't write The Great Gatsby.
But overall I really feel let down. This is just such a tragic missed opportunity. Luhrmann had a great story with the perfect leads, and instead of using them he just masturbated for two and a half hours. Thirty minutes in I almost turned it off, and actually said out loud, “Man, I hate this movie.” As it went on it pulled me in to some extent, but I never shook that first impression.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The scene at the hotel. It's actually extremely well-done, with DiCaprio, Mulligan, and Edgerton all giving it everything they have. In context, though, it just reminds us of how great this movie might have been.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The endless CGI. Jesus, Baz, you've got plenty of money. Build a fucking set!

SCORE: 4/10. Perhaps that's unfairly low, but it's been years since I found a movie this disappointing. In a couple of years I'll go back to it, I suppose, and maybe I'll find things to like about it. I might even decide I like the movie overall. But right now, all I can feel about it is that tremendous disappointment. Someday, someone will make a proper movie from The Great Gatsby, and when that happens I'm sure I'll love it, but it won't have DiCaprio. It won't have Mulligan. It kind of breaks my heart.

In Bruges (2008)

I saw Martin McDonagh's second film, Seven Psychopaths, earlier this year and loved it, and have loved it more each time I've re-watched it since. So I've been kind of putting off watching this one, because it would have to be a disappointment; I was sure it would be obviously the first effort, the one where McDonagh made all the mistakes he would learn from before creating his masterpiece. I was totally wrong, though. McDonagh hit a home run first time out. I'm surprised but pleased to say that I think this is actually the better of the two films.
Of course, it helps when a young guy making his first picture is able to get Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, and Colin Farrell to star in it. That's got to smooth out the wrinkles somewhat, doesn't it? But regardless of the cast McDonagh has put together such a strong, thoughtful, well-told story here. I'm so impressed by it that I'm going to do something out of character for me: I'm going to issue a spoiler warning. If you haven't seen this go watch it (it's streaming on Netflix) and come back. For most films I really don't think it matters much, but this one you'll want to see without knowing too much about it first. And because it's the story that interests me, I'm gonna go into it in some detail.
So let's go. The basic story is pretty simple. Ken (Gleeson) and Ray (Farrell) are two hit men in the employ of Harry (Fiennes) who have been sent to Bruges to await further instructions. It eventually turns out that the reason they've been sent off is that their last job went bad, and Ray accidentally murdered a young boy. Ray thinks they're in Bruges to hide out. Ken thinks they're there on the next job. He's half right. Harry visited the city as a child, loved it, and sent them there so that Ray could have a nice time right before Harry orders Ken to kill him.
The main thing McDonagh had to do to make this film work is to get us on Ray's side. This isn't the first time an attempt has been made to make a child murderer sympathetic, of course. It's a challenge filmmakers have been setting for themselves since M, but McDonagh needs more than that. We can't just sympathize with Ray. We have to like him. So it's interesting that at the beginning of the movie we don't, or at least I didn't. He's whiny. He's rude. He's ungrateful, here in this beautiful city that he refuses to even try to enjoy. We're a half-hour into the movie before we learn what he's done, and another filmmaker would have used that time to seduce us. McDonagh doesn't even try to make Ray likeable 'til we know about the boy. That's pretty bold.
He comes alive when he meets Chloe (Clémence Poésy) and we learn that, when he's not being a big crybaby he's actually very charming, or at least a bit of a likeable nincompoop. Even when he's violent he's endearing, especially when he smacks down the annoying Canadian (Zeljko Ivanek); for a smoker that scene is pretty rewarding. Chloe makes us like him, in effect saves his character for us, so it's interesting that she's his undoing. If not for her, he wouldn't have hit the Canadian, and so wouldn't have gotten arrested on the train. Instead of making his escape, he's dragged back to Bruges, and back into danger. Furthermore, if not for Chloe he wouldn't have blinded Eiric (Jérémie Renier), and if Eiric hadn't wanted revenge Harry might not have found Ray anyway. It's not her fault, really; certainly she means him no harm, but the fact is that if he hadn't met her he would be safe somewhere else on the Continent, and Harry and Ken would have buried the hatchet. Happy ending.
That's the thing, though, isn't it? Should there be a happy ending? Because it sure feels like there's gonna be one. Ray and Chloe are happy together at the cafe, Harry and Ken have made up in the bell tower, and it feels like everything's gonna work out, and we're pleased with that because we've gotten so into Ray and Ken and what's going on with them that we've forgotten what the movie is actually about. Then Eiric calls up to Harry, he and Ken fight, and Harry shoots Ken in the neck. “I'm sorry, Ken,” he says, “but you can't kill a kid and expect to get away with it. You just can't.” Suddenly it all comes back to us. Do we want Ray to walk away? Just...run off with the beautiful girl and live happily ever after? Is that justice?
Well, is it? Society cries out for punishment, doesn't it? But me, personally, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of punishment. Don't get me wrong, I recognize the need to remove some people from the community; we're all better off when folks without conscience are taken off the streets. But Ray has a conscience. It's only Ken's intervention that prevents his suicide in the park. He knows that he deserves to die, says that he wants to, and it's only Ken and Chloe keeping him alive. If the only point is to make him suffer for what he's done, what can we do to him that will hurt him more than he's already hurting himself?
And yet, it's an open question whether Ray has learned any lesson, really. I think we can safely assume that he isn't gonna be a hitman anymore, but in the course of the film we see him assault the Canadian and his girlfriend and Jimmy (Jordan Prentice), as well as Eirik (to be fair, that one was self-defense). He may not want to kill, but he certainly hasn't lost his taste for violence.
That's what makes the scene where Harry comes for him at the hotel so gripping. Marie (Thekla Reuten, who has more than a touch of Juliette Binoche about her, of which I heartily approve) is blocking Harry from going upstairs after Ray, guessing that he won't hurt a pregnant woman. She's right, of course. But while they argue Ray creeps to the top of the stairs and takes aim at Harry, and the first time I saw this I was convinced that Ray would take the shot and accidentally kill Marie instead. It's a huge relief when he doesn't. Maybe he is learning.
On that note, I think it's instructive what happens when Jimmy is killed. Harry has just put a bunch of bullets into Ray. He's badly, perhaps mortally, wounded, but he crawls across the snowy cobblestones towards Jimmy's body. When Harry sees the body, he wrongly assumes he's killed a child himself, just as Ray did. So instead of delivering the coup de grace, Harry shoots himself. But, and here's the important point, Ray tries to stop him. With what might have been one of his last breaths, Ray tells Harry to wait, so that he can explain, but Harry just says "You've got to live by your principles" and kills himself.
Think about it: if Ray just keeps his mouth shut then the man who has shot him will die, and Ray will still have a slim chance to survive. If Ray tells him the truth, then he himself will die and Harry will go home to his wife and kids. Ray knows this, yet he still tries to tell Harry the truth. He is, in effect, attempting to sacrifice himself to save the man who has killed him. I think that's McDonagh telling us that Ray has learned, that he might somehow find a way to make amends, if he lives.
So that's what the movie comes down to, and why the ending is so good. We don't know whether Ray lives or dies. He needs to repay society for the damage he's done to it, and he seems to want to, and he clearly can't if he's dead or in prison. But like Harry says, can he kill a child and just walk away? Do we want him to live, or don't we? McDonagh leaves it up to us. All he has is questions. He offers no answers.
Farrell is very good as Ray. I especially like the scene where he finds Ken at the bar and explains how his date with Chloe went, and his mouth is running at three times normal speed because he's just done a gram of cocaine. I don't know how he delivered that dialog; it's like watching a great guitarist play a complicated piece of music, really. Fiennes is, as always, excellent. It's always good to see Ivanek, who is one of my guys. Poésy is very charming, though I did keep thinking of Melanie Laurent while I watched her. Still, watching her was a genuine pleasure. But the real star is Gleeson. He's one of my favorites; I love his face, the way you can see everything he's thinking right there in his eyes. You get so much out of him even when he's not talking. Like Fiennes, he's always excellent, and I think this might actually be the best work he's ever done. There are moments, like when he's telling Harry that he loves him, that make your breath catch. I'd watch him in anything.
And once again, I have to give a lot of credit to McDonagh. What a great debut film! It's not quite at the same level as Duncan Jones' Moon, but then, Jones' follow-up Source Code isn't as good as Seven Psychopaths, either. I hope to see a lot more from this guy, although the fact that he took four years between films, and the second one was about writer's block, makes me a little nervous. I hope this isn't all we're gonna get from him. Still, even if it is, he's done more with these two films than most writers or directors do in a whole career.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM:

The city itself. Having seen it in this film, Bruges is now the place to which I hope to retire. It's just gorgeous, and shockingly photogenic. Full props to the cinematographer (Eigil Bryld), but it's clear that he had a lot to work with.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The beginning isn't much fun. It becomes brilliant once Chloe is introduced, and we get the flashback to the boy's murder, but up until then it's both slow and aggravating. Even on a re-watch I find the first twenty minutes a bit hard to enjoy.

SCORE: 9/10. Very close to perfect (aside from those first twenty minutes). It raises questions that are worth discussing, and makes me wish I had seen it in theaters back in 2008 and then gone to the bar with friends afterwards to talk about it all night.

LISTS: Favorites of the Naughts, Top Ten of the 21st Century, My Top 100(ish).

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

I've been in the mood for some classic noirs lately. After all, just last week I wrote about The Third Man. That's a personal favorite, and I've seen it many times. Right now my queue at Netflix is full of my favorite noirs, but with a few classics I never got around to mixed in. This is one of those; I'm a little embarrassed to admit that until early this morning I had never seen The Postman Always Rings Twice.
It's also the first time I've ever seen John Garfield, though of course I knew the name from studying the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee. I knew he was one of their main victims; though not a Communist, he was a well-known liberal, and he worked for good jobs for black and latino actors and crew, and of course he was Jewish, and that was enough for the fascists on the HUAC, who thought Hollywood could only be trusted to conservative christian racists. They hunted him relentlessly, had him blacklisted, and when he returned to Broadway (he got his start on the stage) even hounded him there. He had a bad heart, and they literally hounded him to death before he was forty. So I had some regard for Garfield as a martyr to liberal causes, particularly political freedom, but somehow that never translated into watching any of his movies.
Lana Turner, of course, I know. Even more than I love classic noirs, I love classic horror, and she was in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Spencer Tracy. That's how I know her best. I have that on DVD and will inevitably write about it, but for now I'll say that she was passably good in a passably good movie. Turner herself, though, always considered this her best role, and so I feel like I know her a lot better now that I've seen it.
The thing is, I'm not sure this really is a film noir. The genre is a little nebulous, but this doesn't have the sort of photography and camera tricks that you'd expect from a noir, and the characters are subtly different. The overall drift of the story is pretty standard for the genre, to be fair. A drifter, Frank Chambers (Garfield), takes a job at a roadside gas station/burger joint, owned by affable middle-aged Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway). Frank and Nick's beautiful young wife, Cora (Turner), fall in love. Nick wants Cora to run away with him, but Cora refuses to give up the restaurant; she knows Nick will cut her off without a penny if she divorces him, and she doesn't want to return to the life of wage slavery. So the young lovers murder Nick, and spend the rest of the movie wilting under suspicion and turning on each other while still being unable to resist each other.
Like I say, fairly typical. It's in the details that this distinguishes itself from the typical fare of the genre. Cora is not your everyday femme fatale. In the first place, she doesn't seduce Frank; he seduces her, and in fact is a bit more aggressive in his courtship than modern sensibilities would be perfectly comfortable with. She not only resists Frank, but goes out of her way to demonstrate that she is happy with Nick. Nick himself sort of drives them together. There is one scene that seems almost comical with regards to Nick's cluelessness: he plays guitar and asks Cora to dance. She doesn't want to, because she doesn't want to turn Frank on, so she says that she feels silly dancing alone. Frank offers to dance, but Cora says that she and Nick should turn on the jukebox and dance together. Nick insists, saying that he would rather watch dancing than dance himself, so Cora says they can't dance in the living room anyway, since there's not enough room. So Nick moves them all into the restaurant, where instead of dancing to the light tune Nick had been playing on his guitar, they dance to a sexy latin song on the jukebox, with Cora getting more uncomfortable by the moment. In a more modern film, you'd almost expect Nick to be the kind of man who likes to watch his wife having sex with other men.
The idea that it would be nice if Nick died occurs first to Frank, not Cora, though it is Cora who insists upon going through with it, and who plans and carries out their first attempt on Nick's life. That's more typical, and we begin to feel more comfortable with the plot, but it doesn't really last. When the second attempt works, but Frank is injured, the District Attorney, Kyle Sackett (Leon Ames), briefly convinces Frank that Cora actually intended to kill them both; Frank signs a complaint against her, and both murder and attempted murder charges are brought against Cora. At this point Cora turns on Frank, but we understand why: if he had trusted her and stuck to their original story, there would have been no evidence to convict them. Frank's statement might well send her to the gallows. She turns fierce then, and yet it's hard not to side with her against Frank. I wonder if that wasn't less true in 1946; maybe back then a woman who had turned on her husband was automatically more to blame than the lover who had helped her, but to a modern audience she is far more the injured party.
Also, I'm sympathetic to Cora when we learn that Frank plans to sell Twin Oaks (the road house) and move to Canada to take care of his paralyzed sister. He hasn't even considered Cora's feelings, which is especially bad since he's committing Cora to becoming a nurse for his sister. She doesn't want to spend the best years of her life washing and cleaning up after a woman she's never met and has no loyalty to. We might well revere a woman who was willing to make this sacrifice for her selflessness, but we don't condemn a woman who isn't that selfless; the selflessness is notable because it's so rare, and I doubt many of the folks watching the movie (or reading this) would be willing to make this sacrifice, and so if we're fair, we can't think less of her for her unwillingness. Just in case we can, Frank has to stop Cora from committing suicide over it.
It's the only moment where Nick is the bad guy, and of course it's the impetus to the second, successful murder attempt. We can feel, and sympathize with, Cora's desperation here. Something clearly has to be done. Of course, in the real world, we would want Cora to divorce Nick rather than murdering him, but she still has our sympathy to some extent.
I've been thinking about Out of the Past, and Jane Greer's role in that. Greer's Kathie is the perfect model of the character type, and I've always referred to her as the most fatale of all femmes. Greer begins that film as the sort of dangerous, amoral woman that Cora becomes in this one, the woman who fights off the blackmail attempt, who threatens to turn Frank in as revenge for his infidelity. I think that perhaps what makes Cora so memorable is that she isn't a femme fatale; rather she becomes one during the course of the story, and we get to watch it happening. In effect, I fell like this is how Kathie became Kathie.
In this genre, we usually watch the hero make mistakes, fall gradually into a state of despair and degradation, and usually he does this under the influence of a character like Kathie. In this movie we watch her make mistakes, bad decisions that seem to be her only option in desperate moments. She is the nascent belle dame sans merci. And then of course there's the end of the film, where she is willing to sacrifice herself in order to regain her humanity and the love and trust of her relationship with Frank; very few femmes fatales have done the same, and we almost feel that she dies with a clear conscience.
In effect, within the regular tropes of the noir, she's the hero and Frank is the femme fatale. It's a great and, within the genre, unique role. No wonder Turner thought it her best. So, how is she in it? Well, I've always considered Turner to be very much of her time, I think. Most of the things I've seen her in seem fairly dated now. Look at her contemporary, Ingrid Bergman. When we watch Casablanca or Notorious we belong to her; her star power is undiluted by the years, and I don't think we can say that about Turner. On the other hand, when we watch someone like Jean Harlowe, she's almost a joke. It's hard to understand what anyone ever saw in her. Turner is somewhere in between. She isn't Bergman's equal, but she's risen a lot in my estimation. The years have somewhat diminished her, but she is still powerful, and I doubt anyone else could have played the part better.
You get solid support from Ames and Hume Cronyn (as Cora's lawyer), and also from Audrey Totter in what amounts to a cameo appearance. I love Totter, no matter what she does. The big supporting role, the one that makes the film work, is Kellaway's, though. Aside from the one scene I mentioned above, he's just so likeable, so naïve and trusting. He just feels like a nice guy, and that's another important distinction between this movie and many similar ones: we don't get to feel that the plot against him might be justified, like in Out of the Past. He's just too...well, again, nice. If he's an ogre, this movie loses half its power.
Garfield is very good as Frank, as well. Like I said, I don't know his work well, but I like him. He's nearly as emotionally complex as Cora. He feels very natural in the part, not like he's playing a rough-and-tumble tramp, but like they cast a rough-and-tumble tramp in the part and let him play himself. I've moved Body and Soul, which I've always heard was his defining film, up to number one in my queue; this movie makes me want to see more of him, because this is really about Lana Turner. Even though Garfield has more screen time, even though it's told from his perspective and largely through his narration, this is her movie, a great performance in an iconic role. Everyone else in the movie is secondary.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: I'm saying the story. Just the complexity of it, the way Cora's and Frank's feelings for each other change constantly throughout the film. As good as Turner and Garfield are, they have a lot to work with. It's an accomplishment, so let me give credit to screenwriters Harry Ruskin and Niven Bush, and also maybe to James M. Cain, who wrote the novel the film is based on. I haven't read it and don't know how true they are to the original, but regardless Ruskin and Bush did some fine work here. The dialog is only pretty good, but the way the story unfolds is definitely special.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The direction and cinematography aren't bad, but they aren't really noirish enough, in my opinion. I suppose that makes sense, since neither director Tay Garnett nor DP Sidney Wagner had worked much in the genre. It's perfectly well-shot, don't get me wrong, but it isn't quite what I wanted. I'm a bit unforgiving with my noirs.

SCORE: 8/10

LISTS: Favorites of the Forties

Now You See Me (2013)

The first time I saw a trailer for this, I fell in love. I love magic, I love heist films, I love several of the actors. So a movie with good actors playing magicians who rob banks? Oh, man, I'm so totally in. I was sure this was going to be my #1 film of the year, and hoped it would be one of my favorites, period. I'm sorry to say that it is neither, but it's still pretty good.
The story is an interesting one. Four magicians (a mentalist played by Woody Harrelson, an escape artist played by Isla Fisher, and two sleight-of-hand guys played by Jesse Eisenberg and Dave Franco) set up a big show in Vegas, during the course of which they rob a bank in Paris and shower the audience with the loot. The FBI and Interpol are after them, but of course they don't know how the trick was done. The quartet give two more shows and pull of two other big-time heists, each time giving the money to the audience, and then at the end we find out who's behind the heists and why he's doing it.
There are some problems with the film. A few plot points are pretty convenient. Some of the magic tricks are pretty clearly impossible without the use of CGI; I would rather they had stuck to actual stage magic. And Michael Caine, the wealthy man backing the magicians, just kind of...disappears. Not in a magic way, just in a “the writer forgot about him” way.
Also, the characterization is a little thin. None of these characters are particularly memorable. It seems that director Louis Leterrier and his writers (Boaz Yakin, Edward Ricourt, and Ed Solomon) were very caught up in the way the plot was moving, and didn't want to slow down to develop everyone. Instead, they hired a very good cast and trusted them to put more into the roles than what was actually on the page. To be fair, I think it worked pretty well; the four magicians (unfortunately given the terribly clichéd name “The Four Horsemen”) are all very likeable, and you end up wishing you could spend more time with all of them. Harrelson in particular doesn't get anything like enough screen time, and Fisher spends a lot of time just looking pretty, but both have their moments. Franco is supposed to be the clear #4 behind the other three, but actually he gets some of the best bits, especially the ridiculously fun takedown of Ruffalo and his partner when they raid the Horsemen's apartment. Eisenberg stands out among the four. He is playing basically the opposite of the character he played in Zombieland, which is interesting, given that everybody says he's a one-note actor. Anyway, if the point is to leave your audience wanting more, those four people did a damned good job.
A little more time is spent on the FBI agent leading the investigation (Dylan Rhodes, played by Mark Ruffalo). As an actor I like him more than any of the magicians, but his character isn't quite as interesting. And then there's Mélanie Laurent as the Interpol agent working with him. I suspect that once I've seen more of her work she's going to be one of my favorite actors, but prior to this I'd only seen her in Inglourious Basterds. She was magnificent in that, and was the biggest draw in this cast for me. And, you know, she did a fine job, but there just wasn't a lot there for her. Although she had more screen time than anyone but Ruffalo, her character was a little flat. Like Ruffalo, she was overshadowed by the magicians, and it's kind of too bad we didn't see more of the Four and less of the Law. Still, both are very charming actors, and I'm not complaining about them too much.
Caine is Caine; he can't do a bad job. Morgan Freeman is a surprise. I've gotten so used to seeing him play wise, kind old men that it took me a while to realize that he's the villain in this. I kept thinking, “Well, if they want me to like him just because of who he is, in spite of his asshattery, they've badly misjudged me.” I was halfway through the movie before I realized, no, I'm NOT supposed to like him. So if I'm going to name a cast member who confounded my expectations, it's got to be him, and the final resolution of his story is pretty rewarding; that's a good scene.
So all the actors are somewhat underserved but do good jobs anyway, in the service of keeping a fairly intricate plot moving. It's quite a good plot, as well; sure, it's implausible, but didn't we expect a story about magicians robbing banks to be a bit implausible? And Leterrier deserves a lot of credit for his direction: the film looks and sounds great, and moves very, very fast. The closest it comes to getting bogged down is when the Four have a brief, out-of-nowhere moment of doubt just before the last show, but it resolves itself quickly into Franco's best scene, the one I mentioned before. There were a few occasions where I was thinking, "Whoah, Louis, stop moving the camera around so much, let us see what's happening," but mostly I was pleased with his work.
I think this is a movie that tells you something about yourself when you watch it. It tells you what kind of movie watcher you are. Some people can lose themselves in a movie; they can suspend disbelief and just go along for the ride. Others can't; they analyze each scene, pick at each plot hole. I happen to be the former, and so for me this movie was a good time. I'm not blind to the holes in it, but they don't ruin the film for me. Most of the people writing about this movie on the IMDb message boards, on the other hand, appear to be of the latter type. There's an awful lot of haters on there. I'm not saying those people are bad, or stupid, or wrong, but I'm glad I'm not one of them.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: I really like the interrogation scenes. Harrelson and Eisenberg really shine there; I love the bit where Eisenberg tosses the handcuffs onto Ruffalo. On the other hand, that really shows up what I was saying earlier about the magicians not getting enough screen time: why didn't we get to see the interrogations of Fisher and Franco? That would have been perfect.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: No particular moment. There isn't really anything I dislike about this film; there's just a sort of general, mild disappointment. It's an entertaining movie, but I have to think that with a little more polish on the script, some holes plugged and loose ends tied up, a few more character moments here and there, it could have been great. It was a very good time, and I liked it very much, but as I said at the start, I really wanted to love it.

PUNCH THE AIR MOMENT: There isn't one. There really should be. How could they not include a punch the air moment?

SCORE: 7/10. A pretty low seven, but still a seven.

The Third Man (1949)

I love film noir. Horror is my favorite genre, and as I get older I seem to be falling more and more in love with science fiction as well, but noir just accesses something in me that seems to need letting out once in a while. The tough guys, the dangerous women, the human frailty, and of course the light and shadow, always put me slightly, deliciously on edge.
The Third Man, written by the great Graham Greene and directed by Carol Reed, didn't invent the noir, of course. It didn't come out until 1949, years after The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, and Out of the Past. What it did, though, was perfect it. I'm not calling it my favorite, but no noir (and almost no movie, period) was ever more well-made.
Start with Greene's screenplay, based on his own novella. It's pretty nearly perfect, and if I was teaching a class on screenwriting, I'd start with this script. It's got absolutely no fat, not a wasted line or tangential scene. Everything we see or hear advances the story, yet Greene doesn't rush through, doesn't ignore any important details. Reed is very much his partner in this, maintaining a very steady pace and only pausing occasionally to let us breathe and to show off a particularly nice bit of cinematography.
And, oh, what cinematography! When I say that this film perfected the noir, this is what I mean. The film is just masterfully shot and lighted. The shadows on the Vienna streets, stretching to impossible lengths, vanishing into deeper shadow...the oppressiveness of the sewers...the ever-present rubble. Plus, even half-destroyed by Allied bombing, Vienna is such a beautiful city, one of the loveliest in the world. The images of this film really are magical. And Reed experiments so much with where he places his camera, and at which angles, that rumors have always persisted that Orson Welles actually directed the film, or at least participated in the direction. I don't believe that, myself, but it's clear that Reed was a student of Welles' work, and had learned his lessons.
But the film isn't just a technical marvel. Greene's story is engaging: an American writer of pulp westerns, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) has come to occupied post-war Vienna in search of his old school friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles). Holly's novels aren't terribly successful, and Harry knows he's a bit short of cash, so he's offered Holly a job. Holly shows up in Vienna to discover that Harry has been killed by a car, but suspects that the death might not have been an accident. The local police don't seem to care much, taking the stance that Harry (who, they allege, was a black marketeer) deserved what he got and they have more important things to do, even if it was murder, than track down the man who killed one of the worst criminals in Vienna. So, Holly sets out to reconstruct the last days of his friend's life, and ends up causing all kinds of trouble.
Cotten is very good as Holly Martins. He's an unusual sort of hero; he's a bumbler, a drunk. He's arrogant but also incompetent. He is occasionally capable of an insight or a penetrating question, but for the most part he gives the impression of being the only person in the whole city who doesn't know what's really going on. He's as far removed from Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe as any noir hero could be. Spade, for example, is always two steps ahead both of the audience and the other characters throughout The Maltese Falcon. At the end of the movie we learn that he knew who the killer was very nearly as soon as the murder took place, but we don't know who it was 'til he confronts the murderer at the end of the picture, by which time we've gotten so caught up in the hunt for the falcon that we've almost forgotten that the movie began with Spade's partner gunned down in an alley.
That's not true of Holly. He's very much the audience, a part that would usually be played by a supporting character; he's the fool, and we learn what's really happened through him because he isn't capable of any great leaps of logic that we can't follow. Not only does he not know anything that we don't know; if we've been paying attention, he knows a good bit less than we know. Also, whereas the noir hero is typically a tough guy, able to stand up to punishment and dish it out, we never see Holly successfully use violence in the whole film. The only time he tries, he gets put on his ass with a single punch and has to be helped up. Otherwise, whenever there are threats of violence, he's the target, trying to escape it. He's not a larger-than-life hero, but he's the lead in a larger-than-life movie and his presence keeps us engaged in the story. That makes him one of the most interesting leads in the history of the genre, in fact, and if he's less worthy of emulation than Philip Marlowe, he is much more accessible, all the same.
His character arc is fascinating. At the beginning of the movie he's very much the ugly American, certain that only he is in the right, intent upon imposing his will onto the Allied authorities and the city's underground. During the course of the film, though, he is ground down. He is humiliated at nearly every turn. He is constantly reminded of how out-of-place and helpless he is. His amorous advances are rejected, and he finds himself becoming more and more contemptible in the eyes of his would-be lover. Ultimately he is faced with a choice, to betray his principles, or to betray his other principles, a dilemma with no answer he can live with. He is resilient, and we don't find him a broken man at the end of the film, but he is a changed man, an aged man, one who might never be quite sure of himself again.
Alida Valli is also quite good as Anna Schmidt, a performer in a comic opera and Harry's lover. Her character is interesting, far more competent and aware than Holly, but deeply flawed herself. She is so in love with Harry, dead or alive, that she remains blind to his faults even when they're placed directly in front of her. She is not an emancipated woman. In fact, for most of the film she is very much property to be traded or dealt for. Harry has discarded her, offering her to the Russian authorities for his own benefit. The police use her as a bargaining chip to make Holly do what they want. It is interesting, though, that she rarely takes Holly's advances seriously, and on the rare occasions that she does, it seems that she's using him to replace Harry. She even calls him “Harry” a couple of times. She is simply not interested in him; she's too in love with Harry. Her affections are obviously misplaced, but it's a relief that she doesn't fall into Holly's arms. She sees him as clearly as we do, whatever blinders she might be wearing otherwise.
And then there's Orson Welles. I wouldn't rank him among the screen's greatest actors, but he had few equals as a pure screen presence. According to the filmmakers, Welles was a bit of a handful during production, not showing up on set, not cooperating when he did show up, but you don't see that on the screen. When that kitten finds him, when the light across the street comes on and we see his face, the look of surprise instantly fading into a mischievous smirk, the movie suddenly belongs to him. I read somewhere that he's only on screen for eight minutes total, and yet he's what we remember when we look back after watching the film. I personally consider this the best on-screen work he ever did, and Harry Lime is one of the screen's most memorable characters. If I ever get around to making my personal all-time Oscar list, I suspect that Welles will win Best Supporting Actor. He'll at least get a nomination.
The rest of the cast is perfectly fine. Trevor Howard is Major Calloway, the chief of the English authorities. He's, well, very much the picture of a gentleman soldier. It's not an earth-shaking performance, because it isn't an earth-shaking part, but Howard is exactly what it requires. Bernard Lee is extremely enjoyable as his right-hand man, Sgt. Paine. He's got a bit of a tough-but-cheerful, Brendan Gleeson air about him, and is probably the only genuinely likable character in the film (except, guiltily, for Harry himself). Ernst Deutsch and Siegfried Breuer are appropriately sinister as Harry's criminal associates, and also interestingly effeminate. That's a bit of a trope in the classic noir, presumably because of Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet.
Paul Hörbiger is great as Karl, the porter of Harry's building. The actor couldn't speak English very well, and Reed supposedly used that to add realism to the picture. It's fun, watching him try to communicate with Cotten. Actually, one of the best things about the film is that it's full of actual Austrian actors, outside of Cotten, Welles, Howard, and Lee (well, Valli is Italian, but to American ears of the forties, foreign was foreign). As result, a large part of the dialog is in German. Reed never bothers to translate any of it, and it's okay; we can understand perfectly well what's being said, even if we don't speak the language, and it adds a great deal of realism to the picture. Hedwig Bleibtreu as Anna's landlady is equally entertaining, and for the same reason. She spends all her scenes ranting about the police and Anna bringing shame upon the house, and somehow we get it.
It's also nice to see Wilfrid Hyde-White in a very small (but in a way important) part as the head of the Cultural Reeducation Society, a propaganda service for “civilizing” the former Nazis. He always plays the same guy, and I always enjoy it. But, if I'm going to be honest, the supporting actor I like the most is the little boy who thinks that Holly has committed a murder that occurs halfway through the film. That kid is amazing, with a big booming voice and a great, round, expressive face. I hate child actors, but that little boy makes me so happy. I laugh every time I watch him. In fact, they don't give out an Oscar for “Best Actor under Ten Years Old,” but if they did he'd win my all-timer for that even more surely than Welles would get Best Supporting Actor.
I suppose I can't write about this movie without mentioning the zither. Every time I watch the movie, when it starts off, I hear the music and think, “Oh, that's a bit cheesy, isn't it?” but five minutes in it just seems to fit. It's certainly unique. I've heard many people praise its originality, how expressive the instrument is or whatever. I won't go that far, but I like it okay, and I agree that the movie would be very different, and possibly not as good, with a typical orchestral score.
I also love the ending of the film, and if you haven't seen it you might want to skip the paragraph between the asterisks:

* * * * * * *

We've just left Harry's funeral. Anna is present, as is Holly. Afterwards, Reed sets his camera at the end of a long street. The street is lined with trees, and leaves are gently falling. In the far distance, we see Anna walking towards us, and in the left foreground, we see Holly leaning against a cart on the side of the road, waiting for her. It takes her forever to get to him, and Reed never cuts away. Finally she reaches Holly, and us, and she just walks right past without even looking at him or the camera. He stands for another second, then lights a cigarette. It's one of the best endings in the whole history of movies. Absolutely perfect.

* * * * * * *

Some classic movies are hard to watch for modern audiences. Sometimes it can be hard to engage with the styles and preferences of an earlier age, and we miss the advances film has made in the intervening decades. But this one...this is still great. It's pleasure to watch almost sixty-five years after it was made, and I suspect it always will be.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The scene between Cotten and Welles on the giant Ferris Wheel. Welles is magnificent. The menace on his face while Cotten's back is turned, the switch to the open, friendly smile when Cotten turns to face him. The simple admission, when Cotten suggests that he'd be easy to get rid of: “Pretty easy.”

Look down there. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you £20,000 for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money? Or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spend?

If Holly hadn't mentioned that the police had dug up his grave, Harry would have killed him on that ride. He's charming and completely without conscience. He says evil things with an affable face. I can't even call him one of the great villains, because he's impossible to see as a villain. Holly takes a lot of convincing of the awful things Harry has done, and Anna never really is convinced, or maybe doesn't care. We're with them. Surely he isn't that bad. Surely he can be redirected. The police must be exaggerating; how could that smile hide a heart so black?
He is contemplating the murder of his oldest (and possibly only) friend as a regrettable necessity, and possibly he won't even regret it all that much. And we see him the same way: we know he must be stopped, imprisoned if not killed, but it really is regrettable. That smile just won't be the same seen through the bars of a cell.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: There's really nothing serious to complain about in the picture. The only reason it isn't a perfect ten is that, for reasons I don't completely understand, it doesn't move me the same way that The Maltese Falcon does. But objectively, the film is flawless; it deserves to be called the best noir ever made.

SCORE: 9/10. I recently learned that the Criterion edition of this film has gone out of print. That's inexplicable and unforgivable.

LISTS: Favorites of the Forties, My Top 100(ish).

Zombieland (2009)

I don’t know why it took me this long to get around to watching this.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that everyone assumed that you couldn’t make a decent horror comedy. It was just kind of a truism that horror and comedy simply don’t mix; you could do a comedy that had some horror themes, like Young Frankenstein, or you could do a horror that had a few jokes, like the Nightmare on Elm Street films, but that was about it. Attempts had been made and they’d all failed, at least in the perception of the public, except for a few campy B-movies (I love Killer Klowns from Outer Space and Evil Dead 2 is one of my favorite movies, but come on…) where the laughs were as likely to come from the silliness of the film as from any humor written into the plot. It seemed impossible.
Shaun of the Dead changed all that, of course. It was funny as hell from start to finish, but it had a few moments that might well have come straight out of a George Romero film. Suddenly there was a template for a good horror comedy, and since then we’ve been in a bit of a golden age. Severance, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Slither, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, all entertaining films with the odd dash of ultraviolence or even genuinely creepy moments here and there. And some more serious horror has at least added humorous elements, like Cabin in the Woods or Drag Me To Hell. That’s a relief, really; the genre seems to have decided for the most part that it isn’t allowed to be fun anymore. There’s no joy, no playfulness, in a film like À l'intérieur or Martyrs. Straight horror has gotten hard to watch recently, but horror comedy is saving the day.
Zombieland just feels good. Most of the jokes hit, Jesse Eisenberg (Columbus) and Emma Stone (Wichita) are extremely likeable, the kid (Abigail Breslin) rarely aggravates me, and this is BY FAR my favorite performance by Woody Harrelson (Tallahassee). He’s the best horror hero since, well, Shaun. I like my heroes competent, unhinged, and speaking with southern accents, and he just rips into the zombies with such glee that you have to smile. Ruben Fleischer’s direction is pretty unobtrusive, but he paces the film extremely well; it bogs down very slightly when Stone, Harrelson, and our special cameo performer hit the hookah, but otherwise it clips right along. I was never bored for a second. A couple of the emotional beats even land, which surprised me, though the scene where Wichita and Columbus get drunk was a little clunky. And there's a deleted scene where the kid convinces Wichita to go back and pick the boys up after the girls have stolen their car that really should have been included in the film, but on the whole, it's very well put together indeed.
I hear this was originally intended to be a television series, but they couldn’t get any network interest, so they just made a film. I’ve also heard that they tried to make it into a web series last year and failed pretty ignominiously, through having no budget and being unable to land any of the original actors but still trying to use the same characters. That’s a shame; I would absolutely be into this if it became a series, even without Harrelson, Eisenberg, and Stone. It would be nice to have a cheerful counterpoint to The Walking Dead. Surely SyFy or somebody could pony up a few bucks. There must be a market.
So I'm gonna give this a solid seven, damn near an eight. Harrelson himself is a 10, and most of the rest of the movie is pretty damned good. This isn’t going to be at the top of my list, but it’s a definite eventual purchase.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: Columbus' rules for survival, or rather, the way the rules keep popping up in the background every time one of them comes into play. I especially liked when Tallahassee runs over a zombie twice with his truck and “#2: Double Tap” is printed on the pavement, but basically every time it happened I grinned. But then, I watched the whole thing with a big dumb smile on my face.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The blossoming relationship between Wichita and Columbus could have been better, as mentioned above. Sometimes it works, as when Columbus puts his seat belt back on, and other times it doesn’t. When it doesn’t it’s a little aggravating, but I don't think it drags the film down. I can live with it.

SCORE: 7/10

B. Monkey (1998)

I want to make two things clear about this film: first, I love it; second, most folks won’t. It's hilarious that the DVD cover includes a blurb that it's a “roller coaster of thrills.” No, it really isn't. It's not a thriller, it's not an action movie, it's not even really a love story, though a romance is central to it. It's really a study of some very interesting characters.
The plot is pretty standard stuff. There’s a thief named Beatrice (Asia Argento), who we’re informed is called “B. Monkey” by her peers because she can get into any building. That makes her sound like an expert cat burglar, and I never get tired of that sort of thing, but in fact all we see her do in the film is commit armed robberies. That's disappointing. She lives with her two partners, Paul (Rupert Everett), who runs the little clan, and his cradle-robbed lover Bruno (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), who goes out to commit the actual crimes with B. Paul is an addict, though what he's addicted to is never made clear, and he's been turning the trio's profits into drugs. This has left him dangerously in debt to a crime boss named Frank (Tim Woodward). Meanwhile, Paul's relationship with the increasingly unhinged Bruno has taken a turn for the worse, and B is beginning to feel like it might be time to grow up, get a regular job, and abandon her criminal activities.
Meanwhile, there's Alan (Jared Harris), a schoolteacher by day who spins discs at a hospital at night. I never heard of a hospital with a DJ, but I think it's a pretty cool idea, provided the DJ has Alan's tastes; he's very into the music of John Coltrane and Charlie Parker. He has a rewarding life, but it's a little bit dull. Alan could use a bit of excitement.
So, he's living a quiet life and looking for adventure, and she's living a raucous life and looking for peace, and of course they meet and fall in love. But their relationship is threatened by B's difficulty in adjusting to ordinary life, Alan's fears of B's past, and of course the possibility that Frank will just get fed up and have everyone shot.
So from a story standpoint, this is very ordinary. Furthermore, there are a lot of rumors about studio interference and forced re-shoots and re-edits, which might explain why the plot seems a bit disjointed at times (well, most of the time). Looked at as a narrative, the film doesn't exactly fail, but it isn't very strong.
It is strong, though, just as a sensual experience rather than a story. It's not the most beautiful film I've ever seen, but it is very lovely. The cinematography is excellent. The movie takes place on the streets of London and Paris, and ends in a highlands rural community, and the scenery is great. I adore both Alan's apartment and Paul's house, and even the little French inn the couple stays at on vacation. The movie is full of great sets. It doesn't really have a score, or at least not much of one; instead it has a soundtrack, and a great one. It's half the cool jazz that both Alan and Paul love, and half the techno and trip-hop that B and Bruno fancy. The film, lovely as it is, is also worth just listening to, between the music and the voices of the cast. It's very evocative.
Although the story isn't the greatest, the characters are well-drawn and well-played. I've always thought of Harris as a terribly underrated actor, and he sort of holds this movie together as the only stable character. There are certainly moments where I feel like he's being a bit of dick: when B enlists Bruno's aid to intimidate a troublesome woman into silence, Alan flips out, whereas a discussion ("B, I appreciate that you're trying to help me, but I'd rather you didn't assault people...") would seem like a more reasonable response than disappearing for a few days. Still, it's understandable; Alan is doing his best, but he's in a situation (and dealing with people) that are beyond his experience and capabilities. His character has a boring life, perhaps, but Harris doesn't play him boring, and while he's frequently frustrated with B, it's clear that he's always in love.
That bit might not have been so hard to play, though. Argento's B is a force of nature, one of the most desirable women I've ever seen in a movie. She's fierce and fearless and always on top of every situation in her own world, though Alan's world confounds her. At the same time, though, she's sweet and forgiving and just very genuine. She feels everything so deeply, and it's natural to her to act on those feelings. Anyone would love her. Her criminal past isn't terribly well-done; she seems like more a dilettante than a career criminal. The part of her past that does work is her affection for Paul and Bruno. In fact, for most of the film, her love for Paul is more obvious on the screen than her love for Alan, though perhaps that makes sense. Everett's Paul is the best character in the film.
That's not unusual for him. He's stolen practically every scene in every movie he's been in. He's just one of the most talented and magnetic actors in the world. This part suits him. Paul is very ironic, very nihilist, and very charming. He is utterly pathetic; I spend a lot of the movie angry at him, for being weak, for being cruel, for thoughtlessly endangering B, and yet I ache for him, too. Everything that happens to him is his own fault, he deserves what he gets, but I keep hoping he can somehow be saved. When Alan physically throws him out of the house, I want to slap Alan for it.
Meyers was very young and still learning to act here. He's mostly just ridiculously beautiful, that's very clearly why he was cast, but I like the way he plays Bruno. He's wild-eyed and ardent and always on the verge of an explosion. Whereas Alan and Paul are the grown-ups in the movie, Bruno and B seem like children together. When they just sit and talk and laugh, they're perfect together. And really, though there are scenes where Meyers could possibly have been better, there are none where he isn't good. His last scene, where his motivations change twice in just a very few seconds and he wraps up the plot basically all by himself, is surprisingly good. It's a bit of a heavy responsibility, and it doesn't help that the scene isn't terribly well-written, but with the support of Argento and Harris, he totally pulls it off. This established him, for me at least, as someone to watch, and over the years he has rarely let me down.
To some extent, I suppose the love story is the tale of Alan learning to fill the space in B's life that had been filled both by Paul and by Bruno. Right from the get-go he's very much like Paul in her life, the calm, the obvious affection. He has to learn to be like Bruno, though, with his wild passion and recklessness. I guess that's the point of Alan advancing on Bruno in that final scene, refusing to back down, declaring that he'd die for B in a situation where he might actually do just that. I think it works, but mileage may vary.
The supporting cast is okay. There are a couple of familiar faces. Clare Higgins, who will always be the scheming Julia of Hellraiser, has a couple of not-bad scenes as the headmistress of Alan's school. Julie Wallace is utterly disgusting (meaning that as a compliment) as an abusive mother. My favorite appearance, which of course meant nothing to me or anyone else in 1998, is an impossibly young Eddie Marsan as an out-of-his-depth thug. Seriously, he looks 15. It's hilarious.
I've never recommended this film to anyone. It's very flawed. The believability of the relationship between B and Alan is sometimes perfect but occasionally a bit shallow, the story is both convoluted and predictable (a difficult combo), and the denouement is a bit too...sweet, maybe. It feels a little contrived. It has nothing to say, offers nothing new. But to me, the beautiful things about this film are extraordinary. I don't ignore the flaws, but I can forgive them for the sake of the characters and their surroundings. They're worth it to each other, and to me, as well.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The four stars and the varying mood they create. Everett brings a darkness or sadness, Meyers a sense of danger, and Harris sanctuary and stability. Argento floats effortlessly among the three, sometimes taking on the atmosphere of her scenemates, and sometimes conflicting with them, but it all works. I always feel what I'm meant to feel. Also, it's insignificant, but I like the bit near the end where Asia imitates the women at the cricket match. It's a nice moment.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: Asia's closing narration. It's superfluous and a bit cloying. I mean, it might have been left to our imaginations that B and Alan would settle into their new lives, but I guess it's okay that they show us the cricket match and the pub. As I said above, I enjoyed a bit of the cricket match, really. But the narration just tells us what we're seeing, along with the fact that they never saw Bruno again, which is information we didn't really need. It's such an amateur touch from a very talented director (Michael Radford, Il Postino) that I really want to blame the studio for it. “Who knew I would find happiness in the middle of fucking nowhere?” is just a terrible closing line, and the film deserved better.

SCORE: 7/10
LISTS: Favorites of the Nineties

So, DO the Eighties Hold Up?

Wrap-up for “Do the Eighties Hold Up?” August
Well, it's a bit of a toss-up, really. I rated all six films before I started, according to how good they seemed to be in my memory. Here's a quick table showing the ratings I expected them to have, and the ratings I gave them after watching them last month:

So it looks pretty even, and note that none of them is bad. Three of the films were at least as good as I remembered, and three of them were not. Overall, more stars were lost than gained (narrowly), so we might possibly say that on the whole, the films aren't as good as they were, but it's still pretty close. Can we use these six films to chart definite trends in the films of the Eighties? Well, they were all highly-regarded in their time. All but Prick Up Your Ears were nominated for at least one Oscar (the screenplay for Witness actually won, which astounds me). So it might not be a bad cross-section, although I don't know that anyone would say this list represents the best of the decade. Only one of these films made my personal Eighties top 25, and I doubt the others would make anyone else's lists, either. But, let's use them anyway and see what we can say.
Are there common threads here? Well, let's start by looking at the music. The Elephant Man had the only good original score. Of course the music in Amadeus was brilliant; it would have to be, but that music wasn't original to the film, obviously. Diner relied mostly on diagetic music (I've only just learned the word “diagetic,” or music that is actually played by characters or devices during a scene, and am pleased to get to use it), and because it was jazz and good early rock & roll, it works. Prick Up Your Ears also relied on diagetic music, but did have a score, which although rarely present was not very good. Educating Rita had a terrible score, and Witness was even worse, so we're one-for-six on good original music. That sort of reflects what I remembered of the Eighties, actually. Soundtracks were relied upon more heavily than scores, but when original music was used it seems like everybody took to heart the good work Vangelis did on Chariots of Fire (a score which, by the way, does still hold up) and tried to imitate it, and did so poorly. The Eighties was the era of crappy synthesizer scores. These films provide evidence of that.
Good writing, though. Diner, Educating Rita, Amadeus, and Prick Up Your Ears all had excellent scripts, and in the case of Rita I would go so far as to call it brilliant. The Elephant Man was solid, if a bit heavy-handed, and I've already complained at some length about the TV drama-quality script for Witness, but collectively these films represent some brilliant screenwriting. I always call the Eighties the “Dumb Fun Decade,” but each of these movies has intelligence and emotional depth that belies that (even Witness, though that's due as much to performances as to what's actually being said).
Cinematography is a bit of a problem. The Elephant Man and Amadeus are both gorgeous, and Prick Up Your Ears has some interesting, moody photography, but the other three just didn't look that good. None of them are ugly, but visually they don't offer much. I'm beginning to suspect, though, that this might be due in part to crappy DVD transfers. Those films aren't even available on blu-ray, and the DVDs are from that first wave of DVDs, where the transfers were often a bit spotty, especially for films that didn't have huge followings. I kind of feel like I can't judge their visual style too harshly until they get a blu-ray release, or I get hold of a time machine and can go watch them in theaters. So I'm retracting some of the mean things I said about how Educating Rita looks. Not all of it, though.
The acting was quite solid. The leads in every film were at least very good, and many were brilliant. The supporting cast in Educating Rita wasn't very strong, and in Witness the supporting cast wasn't good mostly because they were given nothing to do. There were no bad performances in Amadeus, but I do think that a few actors might have been miscast and sort of overcame it. In The Elephant Man and Prick Up Your Ears the supporting casts were very strong, and in Diner nearly every role was played perfectly. If I was giving out an ensemble-cast Oscar (which the Academy really needs to institute) for the Eighties it would definitely go to Diner.
And finally, direction. I'd say the class job of the bunch was done by Milos Forman in Amadeus (hardly controversial, since he won the Oscar), and Stephen Frears did an excellent job with Prick Up Your Ears, as well. A lot of credit has to go to Barry Levinson for getting strong performances out of unknown actors and holding together a story that isn't really a story in Diner, and since that was his debut it's even more impressive. While sometimes David Lynch drags The Elephant Man off into weird places, and I complained about this at some length already, he's still David Lynch, and I love him. I can't say I love the work done by Lewis Gilbert and Peter Weir, but they weren't actually bad, just maybe a bit uninspired.
So if we take these six films as a valid cross-section of the Eighties, the typical movie of the decade had very strong writing and great performances by its lead actors, decent supporting work that occasionally shined, good-but-not-great direction, spotty cinematography (or at least bad DVD transfers) and appalling original music. Does that sound like the Eighties you remember? Discuss.

Prick Up Your Ears (1987)

Chapter Six of "Do the Eighties Hold Up?" August

Of the six movies I picked for this little theme month I'm finishing tonight, this is the one that had the most influence on my life. That's because before seeing it I had never heard of Joe Orton, and after watching it I went out and bought his work. All those years I was rootless and wandering, living in my van a lot of the time, I had a box of about a dozen books that I carried with me everywhere I went, the ones I read the most often and enjoyed the most. Joe Orton: Complete Plays was one of those books. I liked all of his work, and adored Loot and Funeral Games. He was this incredibly witty and irreverent writer, at a time in my life when I was utterly rejecting authority and tradition. He was one of my favorite writers, and that's all down to me having seen, and loved, this movie.
But what about the film itself? Well, it's technically a fine film, nothing earth-shaking, but the direction by Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, Dirty Pretty Things) is interesting. It isn't told in chronological order, but rather as a series of flashbacks that arise from interviews conducted by John Lahr (Wallace Shawn), the man who wrote Orton's biography, also called Prick Up Your Ears. It jumps around from the early Fifties to the late Sixties, but you never get confused, and with the exception of an orgy scene early in the third act the film never lags; Frears is always moving the story forward.
There's almost no score. With a very few exceptions we just hear music that's playing on radios or phonographs within the scenes. Actually, the most memorable bit of music in the film is when Orton's family scatters his ashes at the end; in real life, this moment was accompanied by “A Day in the Life” (Orton was once contracted to write a screenplay for the Beatles), and so Frears plays a bit of that song over the scene. In the original theatrical release, and on the VHS edition, the original track was used, but there must have been some kind of licensing issue, because the DVD release has a fairly dull cover of the song instead. But other than that, the music mostly doesn't draw attention to itself, and after Witness and Educating Rita that's a relief, really.
The story is pretty straightforward: Joe Orton (Gary Oldman) is an uneducated, in fact barely literate, working-class kid who dreams of being an actor. He wins a scholarship to RADA but doesn't seem to have what it takes. While there he meets the more cultured Ken Halliwell (Alfred Molina), and the two become a couple. Early in their relationship Ken is as much Joe's mentor as his lover, but as the years pass Joe becomes a famous playwright, while Ken fails over and over at various attempts at artistic expression. Also, Joe is not monogamous, and has flings with apparently every homosexual in the U.K. Eventually, tormented by both envy and jealousy, Ken murders Joe while he sleeps, and then commits suicide.
The script is pretty good, if a bit heavy-handed in places. Ken is so obviously the First Wife, the one who coached and supported Joe when he was nothing and is then discarded when Joe's ship comes in. The script makes that plain just in the way the story develops, but in case the audience is simple-minded, Joe's manager Peggy Ramsay (Vanessa Redgrave) actually says, while being interviewed by Lahr, “Poor Ken. He was the First Wife. He did all the work and the waiting, and then...” It's a good scene, but I definitely felt that I was being told something I already knew while I watched it.
Also, we hear Ken complain several times in the film that he helps Joe write his plays and never gets any credit, and Lahr's wife Anthea (Lindsay Duncan), who is helping him write the book, twice complains about the same thing. I don't know if Frears is trying to draw a parallel here, but if he is he doesn't do anything with it, and if he isn't I don't know why he let those scenes into the film at all.
Anyway, like I say, a very straightforward story; the only thing that makes it stand out is that the couple are homosexual men rather than a man and a woman. That was pretty daring in 1987, of course, and even though there's no actual sex, Oldman and Molina spend a lot of time making out both with each and with other actors. But if you imagine that Ken is played by Diane Keaton and Joe by Alec Baldwin, say, it's hardly innovative, and in the 21st century it has rather lost its power to shock.
Still, it's a very solid script, written by Alan Bennett from Lahr's book and Orton's diaries. Oldman, Molina, and Redgrave are all given plenty of excellent lines, and there are many moments, particularly between Ken and Joe, that are near-perfect, both because of what they say and because of how quickly those scenes move. Frears and Bennett never linger, but Molina and Oldman can say a lot in just a very few lines. The scene where Joe won't let Ken accompany him to an award presentation is a marvel of concision (“Okay, so when they have awards for titles, you can go to that.”), but the best example of Frears' pacing is the scene where Joe learns that his mother has died. He and Ken have been fighting, but when Joe says “My mother is dead,” Ken instantly becomes sympathetic, knowing how it feels to lose a mother and wanting to comfort Joe. When Joe rejects him and walks out it's devastating, but it's so quick and clean that we don't know we've been hurt 'til the next scene has begun.
When you have such a simple story, with such sharp dialog, your film lives on its performances, and on that note I have a confession to make: the inclusion of Prick Up Your Ears on this project is a bit of a cheat. It's supposed to be about eighties films that I loved when they were new but haven't seen since, but I watched this and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead on the same night back when Rosencrantz was new, so in 1990 or possibly even 1991.
The important point is that by the end of that night, Gary Oldman had gone from being the curiosity who had played Sid Vicious to being my favorite actor. I'll eventually write about Rosencrantz, which I own on DVD and have watched many times over the years, and of course he's brilliant in that, but in this he's really something special, so biting and ironic. He has a definite arc, moving from an innocent but inquisitive youth to a cynical and selfish man, world-weary and caustic but still charming. No effort is made to age him with makeup through the film, and yet you can tell roughly how old he is in each scene, from 17-year-old Joe in his mother's house to the 40-year-old wowing audiences across the U.K., just by the way he carries himself. Something in his eyes, the way he moves his lips, tells you everything about who Joe is at any given moment.
Molina might be even better. His arc is more distressing than Oldman's, as he moves from an arrogant and insufferable young man to a broken, neurotic paranoid. Ken seems never to have learned to have fun, and as he gets older it gets harder and harder for him simply to enjoy himself. He's utterly miserable, at times nearly unwatchable...a tragic figure, even as a murderer.
Both Oldman and Molina are chameleons; they seem to really become whoever they're playing, to the point that it's hard to imagine what their actual personalities are really like. They are both true actors, and must be among the most talented actors alive. It's great to see them playing off of each other in this. Both are completely flawless.
Ken and Joe are extremely unlikeable, really, and yet there's so much depth of character there for Oldman and Molina to explore that you really latch onto both of them. Even though Joe is a selfish slut, we never lose sight of what Ken sees in him; he's sharp, witty, unbelievably charming. He gives that little grin and we want to forgive him everything. Ken, on the other hand, is pathetic to the point of distaste, and yet when Joe is cruel to him we want to put our arms around Ken and comfort him, and scold Joe for being such an asshole, even though if I had to live with Ken I'm sure I'd treat him pretty badly as well.
Their relationship is fascinating. Why does Joe stay with Ken as long as he does? It's obvious that they are no longer lovers; Ken says at one point that he can't remember the last time Joe touched his cock. They clearly don't enjoy each other's company. Joe is successful, raking in enormous fees. Clearly he could simply walk away from Ken and get on with his life, but he stays with Ken in a cheap one-room walkup in Islington. Why? All of his feelings for Ken seem to have disappeared; have they perhaps been replaced by pity? Does Joe, for some reason, simply enjoy hurting him, keeping him on a string to toy with him? Does he feel obligated to stay with Ken, because he learned so much from him? Is it simply that it's what he's used to? He doesn't strike me as the sort who's afraid of change.
The scenes where Joe tries to teach Ken to pick up lovers are interesting from this perspective as well. I think Joe has both altruistic and selfish motives here. I believe that he genuinely wants Ken to enjoy himself, but also he wants Ken to find someone to replace him, so he can escape without guilt.
This is the first time I've watched the movie since reading Orton's work, and it's amazing how much of their lives together made it into the plays (or possibly how much Bennett took from the plays for his script). For example, they show a rehearsal for one of Orton's radio plays where a character talks about his lover, who he met when he was 17 and the lover was 23, and how his life used to revolve around their relationship. While these lines are spoken we just see Oldman look at Molina, and Molina winces. I wish they had inserted more of the plays into the movie; I would have enjoyed that.
The supporting cast is strong. Vanessa Redgrave is characteristically wonderful, although like our leads her character is quite unlikeable, charming and witty but pretentious and contemptuously condescending to Orton's family, the “little people from Leicester,” as she calls them. Still, she has a few very good lines and in a way drives the film, since she seems to have been the only person who really knew Joe. She and Frances Barber narrate a lot of the film, since we're seeing their memories in flashbacks. I've always loved Barber, and she's so good as Joe's sister Leonie, uncomplicated in her affection for the brother she didn't really understand, sweet and jovial, and frank enough with Lahr that her husband gets positively screechy with embarrassment over his brother-in-law's notoriety. She has such a beautifully expressive face; I love the way her mouth moves at the funeral home, when she and Joe are viewing their mother's corpse, and she's trying so hard not to laugh. I wish she had made more movies, rather than settling for television, but at least I'm glad we have her here.
Janet Dale is nearly as good in her role as the boys' landlady, Mrs. Sugden. She has one of the film's most memorable moments, when she says to the boys, “Do you notice I'm limping? Spilled a hot drink down my dress. My vagina came up like a football.” Joe and Ken melt into helpless laughter; it's nearly a very sweet scene between the two, but then Joe once again rejects Ken and tells him to “have a wank,” which sends Ken into one of his speech-making fits, and of course it's laughable because he's so ridiculous. It's moving, the sudden change in pressure, from a funny moment to a sweet one to an ugly one, and back to a funny one. Of course, the effectiveness of that scene is mostly down to Molina, but Dale does a good job getting it rolling; she draws the attention upon which Molina capitalizes.
Shawn is his usual likeable, reliable self. Also, he provides the film's most interesting bit of trivia: in real life, Peggy Ramsay was once Shawn's manager. It must have been strange for him, acting opposite Redgrave, who was playing a person he had actually known. I wonder if that affected his performance, or hers. I would love to hear him discuss that experience. Julie Walters (making her second appearance in this project) is funny in an unfortunately limited role as Joe's mother, and James Grant has an even smaller part as Joe's father. The only meaningful dialog he has is sitting in a dark room, where he delivers only a couple of lines about his unhappy marriage after his wife's death (“You must have had some good times,” says Leonie; “Several,” the old man replies), but he does it well. My favorite supporting performance, though, is from the great Joan Sanderson, about whom more in a minute. Also, Sean Pertwee supposedly has a very small part, which I have not yet been able to pick out. I'll have to watch it again and look out for him.

DOES IT HOLD UP?: I think it does. In some ways it means more to me now than it did when I first saw it, now that I know Orton's work so well, and have come to terms with my own sexuality (which was still very much up in the air in 1990). I was both turned on by this movie, and ashamed of being turned on by it, when I first saw it. I feel like I have the perspective to appreciate it now in ways that I couldn't then. And those performances from Oldman and Molina are timeless; I doubt that folks will still be watching this in a hundred years, but if someone happens to come across it, I bet those performances will still impress. I like to think of some guy on Jupiter calling this a hidden gem someday.
In some ways this is very similar to Educating Rita. Both have unspectacular stories but strong scripts, and both hinge upon two very strong central performances. The script for this one, although good, is not as good as Rita's, but Frears' direction is far smoother than Lewis Gilbert's (barring the “worst thing” entry below) and the performances are at least the equal of Caine's and Walters' (and the supporting cast in this is definitely superior). If Educating Rita holds up, this does even better, though of course it's a good bit less cheerful.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: It's impossible to pick out a single moment for either Oldman or Molina, or to choose between the two of them, so instead I'm going with a scene in which neither of them appear: the one with Joan Sanderson. I just love her; she is now long-dead but she is immortal in my memory for her hilariously unimpeachable turn as Mrs. Richards in my favorite Fawlty Towers episode, “Communication Problems.” Anyway, in this movie she plays Anthea's mother, and her single scene is helping with Anthea's transcription of Joe's diary. He typed most of it, but the sexiest bits of the early ones are in shorthand (so that his mother couldn't read them). Anthea knows that her mother learned shorthand in secretarial school, so she gets her to translate Joe's stories about getting handjobs in public lavatories and masturbating in his mother's bedroom for her. It's very funny to hear that voice talking about ejaculating on some man's raincoat, and she somehow remains very stern and aloof throughout. I'm calling it the best scene in the film, which is probably not true, but I feel pretty good about saying it anyhow.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: This isn't really the worst thing. I'm not even sure it's a bad thing, but it's a little bit jarring. For a movie about a playwright, this is surprisingly nontheatrical, until we get to the actual murder. Then, suddenly, it's very stagey. Ken has just suffered what turns out to be Joe's final insult. He steps to a mirror and begins a brief monologue, but we're inside the mirror and he's looking directly at us, speaking to us, even though he's nominally talking to Joe. It's a soliloquy, really, and is actually pretty good, and of course Molina milks it for all it's worth:

I don't understand my life. I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was going bald. I'm a homosexual. In the way of circumstances and background I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint. I was programmed to be a novelist or a playwright, but I'm not and you are. Joe, you do everything better than me. You even sleep better than me.

And then he bashes Joe's head in with a hammer. The score, which basically didn't exist through most of the film, suddenly gets very loud, very over-the-top. As Ken makes his speech, his face is lit from below, like a counselor with a flashlight telling a ghost story around a campfire, and then when he picks up the hammer the lighting gets very garish. We get the shot of Ken's raised hand with the hammer in it. The hammer falls, and blood spatters the ceiling. We see Ken with his hand raised again and a comic look on his face, and then blood spatters the walls. Then Ken, hand raised, comical expression, and blood spatters his clothes. Then Ken has another brief soliloquy, takes an overdose, strips, and collapses dead and naked on the floor. I can't help finding the whole scene very...out-of-keeping with the rest of the film, which has been so wedded to realism for most of the running time. This is almost like a dream sequence in comparison.
I know it's a conscious choice Frears made; I'm not even sure it doesn't work, assuming it's meant to be a depiction of Ken's final break with sanity. But watching this I definitely had to wrestle with that scene a bit. I'm still not sure what I think of it. I'd like to hear Frears talk about it, just as I'd like to hear Shawn talk about Peggy Ramsay. I'll have to get the cast and crew together for a dinner party some day.

SCORE: 8/10.