Stayin' Alive in the 70's

It’s a movie about an assortment of struggling New Yorkers practicing their moves and doing what is necessary to survive in the city in the tough times of the mid-1970s.

It’s a movie about a group of small time con artists who get drawn into “the big con,” playing against the Mob and the Feds with some unexpected twists.

It’s a movie about the ordinary lives of the New York underworld where wives and kids and girlfriends all must be balanced with the job of being a criminal.

American Hustle is part Saturday Night Fever, part The Sting, and part Goodfellas - and perhaps an homage to all three.  A fictional story very loosely based on the Abscam stings of the late 1970s, the film follows a pair of small time grifters Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) who are roped into working for the FBI to perform stings on politicians to satisfy the ambitions of junior G-man Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). 

Jennifer Lawrence and Jeremy Renner have important supporting roles as Rosenfeld’s jealous wife and a good-hearted but crooked New Jersey mayor, rounding out a dream cast of acting talent.  All four main performers received Golden Globe nominations, and look for Oscar nods for Bale, Adams, and Lawrence.  One scene, a catfight between Adams and Lawrence in a hotel restroom, is an instant classic between the Streep and Close of their generation.

The art of the con is built “from the feet up” according to Rosenfeld, meaning it requires a complete commitment to the details of selling the lie as truth.  By that token, the last detail is the hair – and fittingly, the film opens with a potbellied Rosenfeld failing miserably to create a believable combover.  Director and co-writer David O. Russell (The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook) may be taking a swipe also at both the era of the 1970s and Hollywood itself.  What is a movie like American Hustle anyway, except a “big con” on the audience, making what is fiction and artifice believable?  (Indeed, the phrase "from the feet up" is taken from acting advice given Bale by Bob Hoskins.)

If there is a bone to pick about American Hustle, it may be that Russell hasn’t built his con “from the feet up.”  While he studiously avoids some of the most egregious clichés of the 1970s (it is reported he banned shag carpets, velvet paintings and lava lamps), he can’t resist the occasional laugh at the expense of the era (e.g., the “science oven” [microwave] and men in curlers).  He should have taken cues from Argo, which is set in the same era with a much stronger sense of authenticity. 

But that is a minor quibble with a film that is a tour de force of acting and writing.  American Hustle is a cinematic romp that is as outlandish as the decade it depicts.  This is a film you will pull out of the DVD case (or streaming library) in years to come just to enjoy the performances, even if the direction leaves it just short of a masterpiece.  Round it up to 4.0 stars out of 4.0.

P.S. Special kudos for the soundtrack, which ranges from Duke Ellington to Steely Dan to Donna Summer and sounds fresh, rather than reheated.

A Journey through the Heart of a Dying Land

There is a scene in Alexander Payne’s Nebraska in which about a dozen aging men are arrayed before a television set, slouched in their chairs and sofas, beers in hand, staring blankly at a football game while the women prepare the Sunday dinner in the kitchen.  The drone of the play by play is punctuated with a low-key conversation between two old brothers about a 70’s-vintage Buick one of them used to own.

Ray: “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore. Those cars’ll run forever. Whatever happened to it?”

Verne: “Stopped runnin’.”

The scene encapsulate’s Payne’s comment on the dying culture of the Great Plains and, perhaps, the nation of which the title state is the Heartland.  The main character, with the All-American name of Woodrow Grant (Bruce Dern), is an aging alcoholic former Nebraskan who must journey back through his old hometown (with another All-American name, Hawthorne) on his way to claim what he mistakenly believes is a million dollar prize in a publisher’s clearinghouse sweepstakes. 

He is accompanied on this fantasy quest by his son David (Will Forte) playing Sancho Panza to Woody’s Don Quixote, a reluctant travel companion who knows full well that Woody’s stubborn quest will end in disappointment. 

This is familiar territory for Payne, as Nebraska is his fourth film set in his native state.  Payne has an affection for the taciturn culture of the Great Plains that is tempered by a sad realism.  Those unfamiliar with the ways of the Heartland may mistake Payne’s affection as mockery, but he loves the state and its people much as Woody’s harping wife (June Squibb) loves Woody – deeply, warts and all.  The characters in Nebraska, like the real-life towns they inhabit, are run-down, weather-beaten, and falling apart, but are living memories of a way of life that has endured more than its share of noble suffering, rather than side-show relics to be mocked by modern sophisticates. Nebraska is a place where every person, every place has a past that is cumulatively present, so that 70-somethings can still speak of their teenage yearnings and traumas as if they happened yesterday.

Payne is a master at capturing the subtleties of character and emotion, and Bruce Dern gives a career performance with a submerged humanness that is encrusted by many layers of repression and guilt.  What distinguishes Nebraska among an impressive Payne portfolio that includes Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, and The Descendants is the visual style of the film.  Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael has captured the stark beauty of the Great Plains in a rich toned black-and-white that conveys both the nostalgia and the emotional character of its subject.

In its depiction of the great American middle, Nebraska is less mocking than Fargo, less bleak than The Last Picture Show.  Its closest cinematic relative is David Lynch’s The Straight Story, with a touch of Melvin and Howard.  Like Richard Farnsworth’s Alvin Straight, Dern’s Woody Grant has a determination born of desperation to bring closure to a life – and a way of life – that is slipping away.  Like Paul LeMat’s Melvin Dummar, he is a lost soul in search of redemption chasing the American dream of instant wealth.  

Nebraska is a classic that will merit Oscar consideration for best picture, director, screenplay, cinematography, and acting (for Dern and Squibb in particular).  4.0 stars out of 4.0.

101 Spiritually "Literate" Films of the 2000s

I prepared this for my course on "Faith and Film: A 21st Century Review" at the Western National Leadership Training Event.  It's not comprehensive -- I'm sure there are some I could add to the list and others you might think don't belong.  Feel free to add constructive comments.

101 Spiritually “Literate” Films of the 2000s

Dan Saperstein, WNLT 2013

Compiled with assistance from: http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/

2000

Cast Away

Chocolat

Dancer in the Dark

O Brother Where Art Thou

Pay It Forward

The Legend of Bagger Vance

Traffic

2001

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

*Amélie

HP and the Sorcerer’s Stone

K-Pax

LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring

Shrek

Waking Life

2002

About Schmidt

Catch Me If You Can

Changing Lanes

LOTR: The Two Towers

Signs

Spirited Away

Thirteen Conversations about One Thing

2003

21 Grams

Big Fish

Bonhoeffer

Finding Nemo

LOTR: Return of the King

Mystic River

Pieces of April

Whale Rider

2004

Finding Neverland

Hotel Rwanda

Million Dollar Baby

*Motorcycle Diaries

*Osama

*The Passion of the Christ

2005

Capote

CON: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Crash

Match Point

Millions

Munich

*Tsotsi

2006

Blood Diamond

Children of Men

*Joyeux Noël

The Last King of Scotland

*The Lives of Others

*Pan’s Labyrinth

The Pursuit of Happyness

Stranger than Fiction

2007

Amazing Grace

Atonement

*The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

HP & the Order of the Phoenix

In the Valley of Elah

The Kite Runner

Lars and the Real Girl

No Country for Old Men

There Will Be Blood

2008

The Dark Knight

Doubt

Gran Torino

Henry Poole Is Here

Milk

Rachel Getting Married

The Visitor

Wall-E

The Wrestler

2009

A Serious Man

The Blind Side

District 9

Invictus

The Messenger

Up

Up in the Air

*The White Ribbon

2010

127 Hours

CON: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

*In a Better World

Toy Story 3

Vision: From the Life of Hildegard of Bingen

2011

The Descendants

HP & the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 2

*Of Gods and Men

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

The Tree of Life

2012

*Amour

Les Misérables

Life of Pi

Lincoln

The Master

Moonrise Kingdom

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

The Sessions

2013

42

Lee Daniels’ The Butler

Mud

*The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Stories We Tell

To the Wonder

Trance

*foreign language with subtitles

Life of Pi - Viewer's Guides Now Online

As far as mainstream cinema goes, few movies are more thoroughly theological than Ang Lee's Life of Pi. Few movies are as beautiful to watch, or as technically well-crafted. Few movies have generated more discussion as to their meaning, either (see the 2,600 comments at www.screenrant.com). Life of Pi won four Oscars this year, and should have won the Best Picture Oscar as well.

I will be screening Life of Pi at the Western National Leadership Training event (WNLT) in Jackson, Wyoming October 10, and have prepared both a five-page Viewer's Guide, with summary, theological overview, and discussion questions; and a 17-page close reading with theological analysis (the "long" guide contains both the viewer's guide and analysis). The guides can be downloaded at:

[Links were no longer operational as of 1/10/14. For copies, contact me directly at dmsaperstein@gmail.com.]

Lee Daniels' The Butler

There is a poignant scene in Driving Miss Daisy in which Hoke, the chauffeur, brings Daisy to a dinner at which Martin Luther King, Jr. is speaking.  Daisy goes without an escort into the large mansion where the speech is to be given, leaving Hoke to listen to the speech on the car radio.  Sadly, there is nothing as subtly revelatory in Lee Daniels’ The Butler, which aspires to greatness – and offers some great performances – but ultimately sags under the weight of its own self-importance.

Now before e-flaming me with your comments, let me clarify a few things.  First, I am a white male who, while embracing liberal values on matters of race and equality, has lived a privileged life.  I recognize that my reading of the film may be quite different from that of an African-American or a person who has known less privilege than I have, and I do not presume to speak for them.  Second, my purpose in this blog is to analyze and evaluate films based on their merits as film, which while not entirely independent of their subject matter, is as much concerned with how they say what they say as with what they are saying.

There is no doubt that Lee Daniels’ The Butler has some very important things to say about the struggle for civil rights, the expressions and experience of racism both overt and subtle, and the tensions the civil rights movement caused within the African-American community itself.  These are all the more timely in the wake of the Martin-Zimmerman verdict and the voiding of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.  It follows the story of a White House butler named Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker) who serves during the terms of seven presidents.  While “inspired by a true story” the film is highly fictionalized in an attempt to portray the full history of the civil rights movement from Depression-era lynchings to the Obama election through the experiences of one man and his family.

That is also its biggest problem.  The film’s scope is so broad that it overwhelms its narrative framework.  It uses the narrative device of the father-son relationship between Cecil and his son Louis to create artificial tension around key moments in the movement, where Louis seems to be ever-present like a black Forrest Gump.  The more subtle – and natural – tensions are found where Gaines’s sense of duty and reserve as a butler conflict with the racially insensitive and oppressive policies and practices of presidential power he must silently observe.  As with Mookie in Do the Right Thing, who must choose between love and hate in the face of a personally kind but nevertheless racist employer, one waits for Gaines to reach his breaking point.  When it comes, it is directed not at his employer, but at his son.  The film’s perspective, it seems to me, is summarized in a line spoken in the film by Martin Luther King, Jr., that “the black domestic, by his dignity and strength of character, is engaged in an act of subversion, perhaps unknowingly.”  It is reported that Spike Lee was originally set to direct the film, but pulled out late in pre-production.  The film lacks the edginess Lee would have brought to it.  As it is, the film is more like a Pat Boone cover of an R&B gem.  The notes are all there, but the funk has been mainstreamed.

The film was obviously Hollywood hot stuff:  it boasts some 41 producers including the heavy hitting Weinstein brothers, and a cast of Oscar winners and wannabes that proves more of a distraction than a contribution (Is that really Robin Williams as Eisenhower? Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan?)  The star power outshines the script, which is loaded with historical sound bites and 60’s era movie clichés, so that the cameos only increase the film’s sense of self-importance.

What saves the film is both the power of the civil rights story itself, and the outstanding performances of Forest Whitaker in the title role, and Oprah Winfrey as his wife.  Both leads will undoubtedly be remembered at Oscar time, although Whitaker’s is the stronger and more deserving performance. Those are both good reasons to put up with the film’s excesses.  Lee Daniels’ The Butler will undoubtedly become a February staple in eleventh-grade American history classes for years to come; however, the better teachers will screen the documentary series Eyes on the Prize, or Lee’s Malcolm X instead of this Forrest Gump meets Driving Miss Daisy mash-up.   2.75/4.0 stars (an extra quarter-point for Whitaker’s performance).

Mud

If you are going to write a great American coming-of-age story, there is no better place to start than with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  The recent DVD release of this spring’s indie-film hit Mud is straight out of the Mark Twain classic.  (Indeed, a minor character bears the name Tom Blankenship, the same name as the real-life inspiration for Twain’s Finn.)

Mud begins on the River – not the Mississippi but a backwater tributary in southeastern Arkansas.  Fourteen year old Ellis and his younger friend Neckbone are river rats whose outboard skiff is a worthy substitute for Huck’s raft.  They are on an adventure to a river island in search of a legendary cabin cruiser lodged high in a tree, hoping to plunder its booty.  Instead, they encounter Mud (Matthew McConaughey) – a mysterious stranger who is hiding out on the island.  Mud is on the run, seeking to be reunited with his estranged true love (Reese Witherspoon).  The boys are at an age where love and obsessive infatuation are indistinguishable, and Mud’s romantic conviction is their anchor amid the swirling eddies of failed marriages and abusive relationships around them. Whether Mud is a victim or a con man – Jim or the Duke – is the central mystery of the film. 

Writer-Director Jeff Nichols has created a richly textured film with a strong sense of place and outstanding performances all around.  He wisely uses the romantic story line as context for the real emotional core of the film: the painful negotiation of growing into manhood, exhibited in the competing characters of Mud and Ellis’s hardscrabble father “Senior” (Ray McKinnon).

There are theological subtexts in the movie, most notably in references to the story of Creation and Fall.  “Mud” may be a reference to Adam, the original mud-man.  He wears a cross of nails on the heel of his boots as a defense against Satan (and snakes are an ever-present danger on the island).  Nichols seems to want to represent the Fall in the power of the temptress over the male of the species, and redemption in the constancy of true love.  His theology is more folkloric than biblical, and is only partially counterbalanced by Ellis’s mother Mary Lee (Sarah Paulson) who pursues a kind of liberated womanhood.

Part Sling Blade and Stand by Me, and all Huckleberry Finn, Mud is one of the best coming-of-age films of the past decade, and a likely Oscar contender for acting (McConaughey), writing, and directing.  3.5/4.0 stars. 

The Way, Way Back

            The 80's are back, as in The Way Way Back, a coming of age film that plays coyly with the decade that mastered the genre.  The opening scenes, which involve the far back seat of a 70's era station wagon (think That 70's Show) and 80's era music (REO Speedwagon, Mr. Mister) could make you think this was a period piece.  Indeed the adults are stuck in the 80's, developmentally at least, and the fine cast of adults (Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Allison Janney) bring out both the pain and narcissism of unresolved teenage angst as they live in denial and fear of middle age.  Their immaturity torments Duncan (Liam James), a nerdy and alienated 14 year old forced to endure a summer with his mom, her new boyfriend, and the boyfriend’s aloof daughter in a New England beach town.  Duncan finds a friend and mentor in Owen, the 30-something manager of a nearby water park played by Sam Rockwell, and their relationship forms the centerpiece of the film.  Sure, they are so imitative of the Chris Makepeace - Bill Murray relationship in Meatballs that the latter should sue for royalties, but they make it work.  AnnaSophia Robb, now an acting veteran, is largely wasted in the role of Duncan’s would-be love interest next door, and a better film would have been more Lucas and less Meatballs.  Nothing in The Way Way Back advances the coming-of-age genre, but the writing is snappy, the acting is first-rate, and – hey – every generation needs its own film canon of its adolescence.  For this purpose, The Way Way Back serves quite well.  3.0/4.0 stars.