Seized by the Moments

 In Boyhood, Richard Linklater has created a film of extraordinary vision and emotional power that is unlike any other film you’ve seen. The film, shot in 39 days over 12 years with the same cast, chronicles the life of Mason Evans, Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) from ages 6 to 18. The transition as he grows up is seamless, so that the emotional effect of his maturation is subtle but cumulative over the course of the film’s 165 minutes. By the time Mason leaves for college, we know why his mother (Patricia Arquette) is weeping, while also sharing Mason’s own sense of freedom and possibility on the cusp of adulthood.

We have seen child actors and their characters grow up before our eyes – from Ricky Nelson to Fred Savage to the kids of Modern Family. Michael Apted’s Seven-up documentaries have followed real-life children well into adulthood at seven-year intervals. Linklater’s “Before” trilogy (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight) charts a relationship with the same actors roughly a decade apart over three films. But there has never been a film with the patience and commitment to follow a character’s growth to adulthood using the same actor in real time, and compress it into a single feature-length film.

There are no contrived crises in the film. There is no continuing plot, other than growing up. The film’s naturalism gives it the effect of a cinéma vérité documentary, as if An American Family had been filmed over more than a decade. This gives the film an intimacy that creates a powerful viewer bond. The intimacy is enhanced by Linklater’s casting of his daughter Lorelei in the role of Mason’s older sister. I don’t think a more accurate depiction of sibling relationships has ever been filmed.

But the universal is found in the particular, and the narrow longitudinal focus of the film raises deeper questions about American (and particularly Texan) assumptions about what is meant by “becoming a man,” as well as the effect our adult decisions and behaviors have on our children. The film takes aim at the problems created by our identification of alcohol use with adulthood, without being preachy or melodramatic.

Linklater both loves and understands his native state, and the film is shot with both a sense of place and a reverence for its geography. Having traveled widely in the state this past year, I found in the film a sense of recognition that did not devolve into caricature. Even a brief scene in a rural Texas church service rang true without mocking.

The acting in the principal roles is first rate, which I hope will be recognized at Oscar time, particularly for Coltrane, Arquette, and Ethan Hawke (who plays Mason Sr.). As is typical of Linklater films. the music score is spot-on with soundtrack selections that provide a sense of time, place, and character development.

Earlier this summer, we were given the tear-jerker coming of age film The Fault in our Stars. In Boyhood, we have a real-time coming-of-age film, in which the tears flow from the pain and beauty of an ordinary life. At one point in the film, a character comments, “People always say ‘seize the moment,’ but I think it’s more like the moments seize us.” In Boyhood, Linklater has presented a sequence of moments over the course of a childhood that are arresting in their poignancy. For those who want plot and action, the film may seem slow; but like childhood itself, if you bear with it you will be rewarded. A masterpiece. 4.0 stars out of 4.0.

Noah and the Argonauts

Darren Aronofsky specializes in films that are painful to watch: the destructiveness of addiction in Requiem for a Dream; the physical brutality and abuse of The Wrestler; the psychotic self-mutilation of Black Swan. In Noah, the painful viewing is the gratuitous carnage of iron-age tribal warfare set in the period between two apocalypses – one caused by humans, the other by God.

Noah is not a biblical epic in any conventional sense. Context is manufactured out of whole cloth. One critic calls it "the Book of Genesis with a page one rewrite." Almost everything about the antediluvian world seems out of place. The landscape is anything but Middle Eastern (extensive sequences were filmed in Iceland); the costumes look like they came from Land’s End than from the ancient Near East (women in form-fitting pants and cloth jerkins?); the weapons are anachronistically iron-age, and even include a bazooka-like projectile launcher. The antediluvian earth is a world of reptilian goats, magical powers, fire-stones, and a race of stony giants called “watchers” in a bizarre interpretation of extra-biblical myth. (These "fallen angels" are so ridiculous that the producers excluded them from any pre-release publicity shots.) Noah has more in common with the old “dynamation” classics like Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts than The Ten Commandments or The Passion of the Christ.

Yet Noah still manages to be transparently preachy, a self-conscious diatribe about our contemporary ecological crisis. As the film begins, we are told that the “industrial society” of Cain’s descendants has ravaged and destroyed the earth – creating a post-apocalyptic landscape reminiscent of Mad Max or The Road. Noah and his family are the lone faithful remnant of the descendants of Seth, the keepers of the eco-friendly true religion of the Creator, nomads running from the bloodthirsty tribe of Tubal-Cain. The modern subtext later becomes explicit when Aronofsky incorporates images of modern warfare in Noah’s retelling of the story of creation and fall.  

But the issues in Noah are not only ecological. Aronofsky continues to unload his personal baggage with parents in Noah. Parents in his previous films are all deeply flawed people – self-destructive, abusive, and virtually incapable of love. In Noah, the title character is yet another abusive parent: a controlling leader of a family cult, a cold-blooded agent of “divine justice.” Noah is all moral contradiction, a religious sociopath depicted as a vegetarian who will risk his life to rescue an animal yet think nothing of slaughtering humans. But the ultimate abusive parent in Noah is God, whose genocidal impulse and emotional absence are never mitigated, whose justice is only tempered by defiant human compassion. In Noah, the rainbow is just a special effect without theological content.

The film will undoubtedly provoke discussion about care of creation, human and divine will, and the tension between justice and mercy. But the theological content emerges more from Aronofsky’s distortion of the biblical story rather than the source material, creating a confusing mess of biblical theology. Aronofsky proves the old preaching dictum that “a text without a context is a pretext.”

There are some redeeming elements in the film. The narrative structure creatively integrates biblical backstory as flashback. There are moments of visual brilliance, such as the aforementioned creation sequence (which even alludes to evolution). And the CGI action scenes are staged and edited with ferocious energy. But there are also major disappointments. The score is bombastic and overbearing. And, while Aronofsky is often regarded as an actor’s director (his previous four films have generated four Oscar nominations for acting, and one win), the acting in Noah is two-dimensional. Russell Crowe as Noah is alternately obsessed and aggrieved; Jennifer Connolly as Noah’s wife is given nothing for the first 90 minutes until she erupts in maternal rage. Poor Emma Watson as the wife of Shem cries so much in the film that one wonders if 40 days of rain was even necessary. Even Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah is more caricature than character.

Noah is painful to watch, and for all the wrong reasons. Save your money and pass on this silly pseudo-biblical eco-apocalypse fantasy. 1.5 stars out of 4.0.

Deconstructing a Construction Toy

My favorite Roger Ebert quote is, "What makes a movie good or bad is not what it's about.  It's how it is about what it's about."  This is the case with The LEGO Movie, which on the surface is a pedestrian - even cliche - children's animation film designed to sell toys. (This is among the most despicable of genres, often producing little more than 90 minute long badly written commercials.) However, The LEGO Movie subverts and transcends its genre and, while not a great movie, is one of the most important films of recent years.

The film starts by establishing the genre, launching us immediately into a backstory battle of good and evil with the obligatory oracle of a redeemer to come.  Don't worry about catching all the details up front - this is a family film after all, so the pretext will be repeated many times. When we shift to the narrative present, we are bombarded with the typically saccharine kid-movie elements, including a banal hyper electronic lollipop theme song ("Everything Is Awesome!")

It is at this point that we begin to appreciate that there are subtexts to the film that engage the pop-culturally proficient viewer. The first is the lurking awareness that writer-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) recognize the irony of the premise, namely that a mass produced toy made of painstakingly identical pieces can make someone "special" and "awesome."  They come dangerously close to devolving into either commercial exploitation on the one hand and self-parody on the other.  They manage to avoid both through the rapid-fire use of pop culture references and memes with occasional hilarious effect. (The Billy Dee Williams cameo alone is priceless.)  The references are quick and multi-layered, and will keep pop culture fans coming back for multiple viewings to catch them all. There is also a "revenge of the nerds" subtext at work in which fantasy-wonk geeks saves the day. I don't think it is coincidental that the central character is named "Emmet" (as in M-IT). 

But there is another dimension of the film that deserves kudos, namely the crafting of the film around the LEGO play experience.  The CG animation recreates an elaborate LEGO world that appears to live half in reality and half in fantasy, as if we were entering an imagined LEGO playworld.  The story replicates the dual desires to create and to destroy that fuel construction toy fantasies. (Which is more fun, to build something really cool or to blow it up afterward?)  The characters, which are a fantasy brigade of action heroes, sci-fi and fantasy movie icons, historical figures and ordinary LEGO people, break out of their individual narrative worlds to interact in a pop culture remix reminiscent of “Adult Swim” shows on the Cartoon Network, while also reflecting the imaginative flights of action-figure fantasy play.  The characters are co-creators of their world as LEGO-builders themselves, each with their distinctive styles (“Does anyone have black pieces? I only work in black!” says Batman). 

It is the use of remix pop culture and the participation of the characters as co-creators that make the film groundbreaking.  Films of video games have been noteworthy flops.  The LEGO Movie succeeds in replicating the video-game world where others have failed.

While the dialogue and acting are at times plastic (I had to say it), there are enough strong performances – particularly Elizabeth Banks as Wyldstyle and Will Arnett as her boyfriend Batman – and notable cameos (Morgan Freeman, Jonah Hill, and the aforementioned Mr. Williams, among others) to make this watchable.  And although the cinematography and editing are at times manic, they are always interesting and occasionally amazing.  The film will undoubtedly become a cult favorite among certain residents of Colorado and Washington.

There are some fairly accessible ways the film can be interpreted theologically.  There is a parabolic dimension to the film that becomes especially prominent in the third act (“Something can be made up and still be true…”).  The central themes of order vs. freedom, creativity vs. conformity, and self-preservation vs. organized resistance all have theological dimensions.  The surface narrative – set in a fascist dystopia run by “President Business” – has sufficient political resonance to be denounced on FOX News.  However, the ultimate moral – that ordinary people can harbor extraordinary gifts by just being themselves – seems too lightweight to carry the heft of the fantasy storyline. 

The LEGO Movie is no Citizen Kane, but it is a fresh and in some ways groundbreaking exercise in Saturday matinee filmmaking that will appeal to children and adults alike. I saw it in 3-D, which makes the most of the stunning visuals. 3.0 stars out of 4.0.

A Folk Song Put to Film

Hang me, oh hang me, I’ll be dead and gone;

Hang me, oh hang me, I’ll be dead and gone.

I wouldn’t mind the hangin’,

It’s just the layin’ in the grave so long.

Poor boy… I’ve been all around this world.

Inside Llewyn Davis opens with this melancholy ballad which sets the tone for the rest of the film, about a soul wandering in a sea of loss and loneliness.

Llewyn Davis is a struggling folk singer in pre-Dylan Greenwich Village who doesn’t have enough money for a winter coat, much less an apartment to live in.  Played with subtlety and sympathy by Oscar Isaac, he is frequently a jerk and a boor, even to those who help him.  But he can also care for a displaced cat, sing a sea shanty for his neglected father, and manage to keep enough friends from whom to bum food and cigarettes, borrow money, and secure a couch to sleep on.  What is inside Llewyn Davis is a broken soul, an unwell spirit haunted by the suicide of his former singing partner.  His spirit is infused with and sometimes overcome by desperation to the point that we are given to wonder if he will take the advice of a would-be promoter and reunite with his (dead) partner.  As with all artists, the condition of his soul overflows into his work, in this case a repertoire of depressive folk songs and ballads.

As with writer/directors Joel and Ethan Coen’s earlier O Brother, Where Art Thou? the music – under the supervision of T Bone Burnett – is as much a part of the story as any character.  It is beautifully sung by Isaac himself – occasionally backed by Marcus Mumford (of Mumford and Sons) – and a supporting cast headed by Carey Mulligan and Justin Timberlake.  Like O Brother, Where Art Thou? the soundtrack stands alone as a quality album.  

The songs also reveal the tension in the music scene between the brooding minor key themes of the Village folk music scene and the breezy novelty songs that characterized the commercial folk market (illustrated in the film by the bouncy “Please Mr. Kennedy”).  But this also reflects the film’s subtext of social criticism.  Inside Llewyn Davis takes place a month after the inauguration of John Kennedy and his “New Frontier,” and offers a counterpoint to the myth of innocence and optimism it produced.  The late 50s and early 60s are often remembered nostalgically, but in reality it was a time of economic stagnation and high unemployment, an era when “retirement” meant “poverty”, and when women in trouble had to hunt for back-room abortionists.

But despite their attention to period detail and social context, the Coens are not making political statements as much as they are making statements about the human condition.  Indeed, a repeated line in the film tells us that a folk song "was never new and never gets old."  Inside Llewyn Davis is a folk song put to film.  

The central symbol of the film is the ginger cat which accompanies Llewyn on his journeys and serves as a projection of his inner self – what one critic called his “horcrux.”  The cat is accidentally set loose in the world and Llewyn is determined to bring him home.  The cat’s journey is also Llewyn’s, and the musical themes of voyage and homecoming are reiterated in Llewyn’s own backstory as a merchant marine and the son of a merchant marine (whose nursing home is named “Landfall”). 

The themes of birth and death are also prevalent, and are given their most poignant voice in the classic song, “The Death of Queen Jane,” which recounts the death in childbirth of Jane Seymour, wife of Henry VIII, who in the song pleads for a cesarean section to deliver her child, even though it would take her life.  Llewyn must confront demons of life and death at both ends of the life-journey, from abortion to suicide.  In their early film Raising Arizona the Coens portrayed family as an idealized community of wholeness and healing.  Llewyn Davis is conflicted over family:  he criticizes his friend Jean’s desire for a suburban life as a sell-out; he neglects his dying father; and he arranges abortions for the women he has impregnated.  Like Odysseus – another Coen meme – Llewyn Davis has been away from home too long, and is lost at sea trying to find his way back.

As with many Coen brothers films, the journey is filled with strange characters, not the least of whom is John Goodman’s relatively brief turn as a jaded heroin-addicted jazz musician, which provides some comic relief, believe it or not, even if it does seem thrown into the narrative as a contrivance.  Nevertheless the strangeness of the journey makes homecoming all the sweeter.

Inside Llewyn Davis is a well-crafted film.  It has received Oscar nominations for cinematography and sound mixing, both of which are deserved.  It is another very good film in a season of great films, which is probably why it was left on the honorable mention list of Best Picture nominees.  Nevertheless it is a film very much worth viewing, if for no other reason than the music and the cat.  3.5 stars/4.0

Is there an Algorithm for Love?

Her is a love story unlike any ever made in Hollywood.  Set in the indeterminate near future in Los Angeles, it traces the arc of a relationship between Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) – a shy and nerdy Cyrano de Bergerac who writes vicarious personal letters for a living – and Samantha (Scarlett Johansson) the disembodied artificially intelligent personality of his new computer operating system (think Siri on steroids).  If this sounds bizarre, it is; and writer/director Spike Jonze allows the borderline creepiness of the concept to settle just long enough before allowing the transformation from bizarre to believable to wash over both Theodore and the audience.  The result is a film that is something of a cross between Annie Hall and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and fully the equal of these two quite different cinematic masterpieces.

Phoenix delivers a remarkable performance, which along with his performance in The Master last year (2012) cements his credentials as one of the elite actors of our age.  In much of the film, he is the only actor on screen yet he is able to carry the film with a rich and subtle performance that doesn’t overwhelm the extended solo close-up shots of him talking with Samantha.  Johansson, whose voice is at times sultry and intelligent, playful and pained, gives life and emotional credibility to Samantha, and may earn her the first Oscar nomination for an actor who never appears in a film.  Not to be overlooked is Amy Adams (who also appeared with Phoenix in The Master) who shines in a supporting role as Theodore’s platonic friend.

Her, incredibly, is only the fourth feature film directed by Jonze, after Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Where the Wild Things Are; and it is his first original screenplay.  Each of these films revolves in some way around psychological interiority, which is notoriously difficult to translate cinematically.  In Her, Jonze shows a confidence and emotional maturity that is missing in his previous efforts, which elevates the film from the quirky to the universal.  He is casual and believable in depicting the future Los Angeles (using Shanghai as a doppelganger) and the technology that is just over today’s horizon.  The cinematography of Hoyte van Hoytema is used effectively, with a slightly surreal futuristic overexposure; particular images (e.g., a spray of pollen in the sunlight; steam rising from a manhole cover) give resonance to the emotional tone of the film.  Also noteworthy is Owen Pallett’s score, with help from Arcade Fire on the soundtrack.  As Steven Spielberg suggested in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in the relationship between the human and the trans-human, music is the universal language.  If there is a criticism of the film, it is in the editing: at 119 minutes the film is about ten minutes too long, and drags just a bit in the third act.

Jonze, like Woody Allen (his closest model), is a thinking romantic; and like Stanley Kubrick (pause for a moment of reverence), leaves the viewer both emotionally moved and intellectually stimulated.  The questions raised by Her are not merely those of technology and artificial intelligence, or of our Pygmalion-like love of our creations, but are questions about the human condition:  Is what we call “love” merely a projection of our selfish desires on another?  Is it merely a psychosocial construct to cover up the ultimate solipsism of pure subjectivity?  Is love genuine or artificial?  In other words, is there an algorithm for love?  Ultimately, Jonze manages to affirm both love and humanity in the bittersweet realization, as Allen noted in the famous ending to Annie Hall, that whether love is real or illusory, “We need the eggs.”

Rated R with strong language and graphic cybersex, Her is yet another great film in what is turning out to be one of the strongest years in cinema of the 21^st century.  4.0 stars out of 4.0.

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.