The third movie in the TGWTG (That Guy with the Glasses) Website 'Anniversary trilogy', proceeded by Kickassia and Suburban Knights. TGWTG is a website that hosts various comedic reviewer 'personalities' who discuses and skewer, in character, various pop culture products like movies, video games, comic books ect. For three years most of the better known reviewers got together to create multi-part 'anniversary movies' for the website. Each year the movies actually got more ambitious, and even contained semi-legitimate character arcs.
Like the previous entries in this series To Bold Flee is largely a combination of website in-jokes and pop culture references, the plot cut, pasted and riffed on various films it parodies, in this case large portions of the film (even down to extended dialogue sequences) consist principally of plays on such movies/franchises as Ghostbusters, Star Wars, Star Trek, and The Matrix. This is also the film where website creator Doug Walker killed off his principle character 'The Nostalgia Critic', a decision he fairly quickly regretted as he brought the character back from the dead about seven months later.
I found this film quite enjoyable and well done, the special effects especially good and appropriately tongue in check for this kind of production. Despite having much backing in website in humor, the plot is coherent enough that you could watch it without being familiar with the website, though it would doubtless be kind of a surreal experience. The movies build on each other well and this film (video) is more emotionally effective if you've seen the previous entries in the series. There is nothing quite like this series, and the care and enthusiasm with which these movies were made makes them something kind of special. ***
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Clear History (2013)
Like John Wayne, or more obviously Bob Hope and Woody Allen, Larry David has a basic character he has refined and plays in nearly all of his work, namely that of a fussy, self-obsessed, socially awkward, sabotager of self, and HBO's surprisingly big modest scale comedy Clear History is the perfect vehicle for him, pun intended. David plays Nathan Flomm, a veteran advertising man who has gotten in on the ground floor of a California based company hopping to put out the first affordable mass market electric car in America. However Nathan has a falling out with his boss Will Haney (Jon Hamm, showing again that ultimately what he wants to do is comedy) over the latters decision to name the new car after his son Howard. Nathan doesn't think that Howard's an appropriate name for a car and says so loudly, ultimately agreeing to take up Wills offer to by out his share in the company before the vehicle is released. Needless to say given the kind of movie this is 'The Howard' is tremendously successful (I'd drive one) and Nathan has lost out on the Billion dollars he would have netted on his former share of the company.
Extremely embarrassed at being known as the man who foolishly lost out on a billion dollar investment at the 11th hour, Nathan goes underground, changing his appearance (early in the film he sports wild hair and a massive beard), and reinvents himself on Martha's Vineyard with the new identity of Rolly DaVore, he gets a job as the care taker of an older women and becomes surprisingly well liked by the locals. Only after 10 years on the down low it looks like Rolly/Nathans old life might come back to haunt him, when his now multi-billionaire former boss decides to build a massive mansion on the Vineyard. At first Rolly thinks he's going to have to pick up an leave again, but when he catches a late night showing of the movie The Fountainhead (for whose protagonist Will's son, and by extension electric car model are named) Nathan gets the idea of blowing up the mansion, thus driving Will from the island forever.
Nathan via the agency of his best friend Frank (Danny McBride) recruits two locals to blow up the mansion, Joe Stumpo (Michael Keaton) and "Rags" (Bill Hader) who are rednecks and particularly resentful of Will for building on what was once Stumpo family land. However they need both a fuse and an in at the site, which results in Rolly having to purchase the former from a shady Chechen named Tibor (Live Schreiber, unaccredited), and quit his job with the old lady to get the latter, guilting Philip Baker Hall into giving him a job on his construction team because he once found the mans lost dog years ago. On the job site Rolly accidently strikes up a friendship with Wills young trophy wife Rhonda (Kate Hudson), who seems unhappy and who Rolly convinces himself is romantically interested in him. What better way to get back at Will then to steal his wife out from under him thinks Rolly, but Stumpo and Rags have their hearts set on blowing the mansion up, and Tibor is after Rolly for more money for a fender bender he had with the formers Howard, while simultaneously the Chechen is courting Rollys newly slim friend Jennifer (Eva Mendes), and Rolly also just must know if the rumors he's heard about his ex-girlfriend Wendy (Amy Ryan) and members of the soon to be visiting band Chicago (who provide the movies sound track) are true. The awkward thus escalates until it ends in a perfect self defeating crescendo.
This is a fun, satisfying comedy, which while boosting a large all-star cast, thanks to the fact that its a cable TV vanity project doesn't have to try too hard, which relives it of the kind of financial pressure which makes so many comedies opt for the safe and routine. Clear History is not routine, rather its a lightly quirky little gem of a comedy. ***
Extremely embarrassed at being known as the man who foolishly lost out on a billion dollar investment at the 11th hour, Nathan goes underground, changing his appearance (early in the film he sports wild hair and a massive beard), and reinvents himself on Martha's Vineyard with the new identity of Rolly DaVore, he gets a job as the care taker of an older women and becomes surprisingly well liked by the locals. Only after 10 years on the down low it looks like Rolly/Nathans old life might come back to haunt him, when his now multi-billionaire former boss decides to build a massive mansion on the Vineyard. At first Rolly thinks he's going to have to pick up an leave again, but when he catches a late night showing of the movie The Fountainhead (for whose protagonist Will's son, and by extension electric car model are named) Nathan gets the idea of blowing up the mansion, thus driving Will from the island forever.
Nathan via the agency of his best friend Frank (Danny McBride) recruits two locals to blow up the mansion, Joe Stumpo (Michael Keaton) and "Rags" (Bill Hader) who are rednecks and particularly resentful of Will for building on what was once Stumpo family land. However they need both a fuse and an in at the site, which results in Rolly having to purchase the former from a shady Chechen named Tibor (Live Schreiber, unaccredited), and quit his job with the old lady to get the latter, guilting Philip Baker Hall into giving him a job on his construction team because he once found the mans lost dog years ago. On the job site Rolly accidently strikes up a friendship with Wills young trophy wife Rhonda (Kate Hudson), who seems unhappy and who Rolly convinces himself is romantically interested in him. What better way to get back at Will then to steal his wife out from under him thinks Rolly, but Stumpo and Rags have their hearts set on blowing the mansion up, and Tibor is after Rolly for more money for a fender bender he had with the formers Howard, while simultaneously the Chechen is courting Rollys newly slim friend Jennifer (Eva Mendes), and Rolly also just must know if the rumors he's heard about his ex-girlfriend Wendy (Amy Ryan) and members of the soon to be visiting band Chicago (who provide the movies sound track) are true. The awkward thus escalates until it ends in a perfect self defeating crescendo.
This is a fun, satisfying comedy, which while boosting a large all-star cast, thanks to the fact that its a cable TV vanity project doesn't have to try too hard, which relives it of the kind of financial pressure which makes so many comedies opt for the safe and routine. Clear History is not routine, rather its a lightly quirky little gem of a comedy. ***
Cloud Atlas (2012)
When I first heard/saw images from the movie Cloud Atlas I knew that I wanted to see it. The more I read about the movie however the more I came to the conclusion that I should really read the book first. Cloud Atlas, both book and movie are very epic in scope and somewhat complicated in structure, I even read one reviewer state, and I'm paraphrasing, that you basically need to have read the book first as a sort of atlas to help you find your way around the movie. So I read the book.
David Mitchells 2004 novel is an epic, philosophical mediation on a number of subjects, as well as an impressively pulled off exercise at writing in multiple voices, styles and genres', and yet having the six tales that comprise the book be complimentary and add up to a much greater whole. The movie is also quite impressive, the late Roger Ebert called it "one of the most ambitious films ever made", and indeed the film is reminiscent of the silent epic Intolerance, with its multiple store lines set in different times but all built around the same theme or subject matter, which in this earlier case being 'intolerance.'
A film adaptation of a novel, especially one as epic and multi-layered as this one, is forced to cut, compress, and change things in order to be workable, but the hope is always (or should be always) to stay more or less true to the spirit of the source material, Cloud Atlas the film does this well. I'd say the film stays about 60% true to the book story wise, with the most faithful segment being The United Kingdom 2012, and the lest faithful probably England and Scotland 1936, which leaves out a major romantic sub-plot and relocates its setting from Belgium to the UK. As part of this necessary compression the films three directors, Tom Tykwer and Lana & Andy Wachowski center there philosophical mediation on the maxim "only the strong survive" or in this rendering "The weak are meat the strong do eat" as a kind of law of nature that is periodically upended when brave individuals rise above themselves for the sake of others, and that it is this rebellion against the natural order that constitutes the essence of what makes one truly civilized.
This theme is played out through the stories of an American lawyer traveling the South Seas in the mid 19th century, a struggling English composer during the great depression, an investigative reporter in 1970's San Francisco, a sixty-something book publisher in the contemporary UK, a cloned waitress in 22nd century Korea, and a struggling goat herder in the post-apocalyptic ruins of 24th century Hawaii. The film emphasizes the link between these characters and stories as being symbolic of the human condition, or looked at another way as evidence of re-incarnation, by casting largely the same group of actors in multiple stories lines, sometimes under unrecognizable layers of makeup, sometimes playing characters of different genders. So needless to say there is an awful lot going on here in both stories and visuals, and that can no doubt be overwhelming and off putting to some views. I myself have wondered how I would have received this movie had I not read the book first.
These theoretical reservations aside however I think there is an awful lot in this movie to go away impressed, and even moved by. It's extraordinarily well put together, where is its editing Oscar, the main cast's a fine one including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent and Hugo Weaving, though on occasion they can be sort of awkwardly worked into some stories. The sets, visuals, costumes, all show tremendous dedication to detail, and while I have a long standing tradition of acting put off at the Wachowski's all but inevitable (Speed Racer excluded) instance on ostentatiously loading their films with material from a freshman philosophy class, here I thought they were appropriately restrained, you come to the films meaning more or less on your own, they don't club you over the head with it, save lightly at the very end.
All in all a dammed impressive project that shows there is still a lot of freshness and vibrancy available to the film medium, even when its put in the service of mining some of human civilizations oldest questions. ***1/2
David Mitchells 2004 novel is an epic, philosophical mediation on a number of subjects, as well as an impressively pulled off exercise at writing in multiple voices, styles and genres', and yet having the six tales that comprise the book be complimentary and add up to a much greater whole. The movie is also quite impressive, the late Roger Ebert called it "one of the most ambitious films ever made", and indeed the film is reminiscent of the silent epic Intolerance, with its multiple store lines set in different times but all built around the same theme or subject matter, which in this earlier case being 'intolerance.'
A film adaptation of a novel, especially one as epic and multi-layered as this one, is forced to cut, compress, and change things in order to be workable, but the hope is always (or should be always) to stay more or less true to the spirit of the source material, Cloud Atlas the film does this well. I'd say the film stays about 60% true to the book story wise, with the most faithful segment being The United Kingdom 2012, and the lest faithful probably England and Scotland 1936, which leaves out a major romantic sub-plot and relocates its setting from Belgium to the UK. As part of this necessary compression the films three directors, Tom Tykwer and Lana & Andy Wachowski center there philosophical mediation on the maxim "only the strong survive" or in this rendering "The weak are meat the strong do eat" as a kind of law of nature that is periodically upended when brave individuals rise above themselves for the sake of others, and that it is this rebellion against the natural order that constitutes the essence of what makes one truly civilized.
This theme is played out through the stories of an American lawyer traveling the South Seas in the mid 19th century, a struggling English composer during the great depression, an investigative reporter in 1970's San Francisco, a sixty-something book publisher in the contemporary UK, a cloned waitress in 22nd century Korea, and a struggling goat herder in the post-apocalyptic ruins of 24th century Hawaii. The film emphasizes the link between these characters and stories as being symbolic of the human condition, or looked at another way as evidence of re-incarnation, by casting largely the same group of actors in multiple stories lines, sometimes under unrecognizable layers of makeup, sometimes playing characters of different genders. So needless to say there is an awful lot going on here in both stories and visuals, and that can no doubt be overwhelming and off putting to some views. I myself have wondered how I would have received this movie had I not read the book first.
These theoretical reservations aside however I think there is an awful lot in this movie to go away impressed, and even moved by. It's extraordinarily well put together, where is its editing Oscar, the main cast's a fine one including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent and Hugo Weaving, though on occasion they can be sort of awkwardly worked into some stories. The sets, visuals, costumes, all show tremendous dedication to detail, and while I have a long standing tradition of acting put off at the Wachowski's all but inevitable (Speed Racer excluded) instance on ostentatiously loading their films with material from a freshman philosophy class, here I thought they were appropriately restrained, you come to the films meaning more or less on your own, they don't club you over the head with it, save lightly at the very end.
All in all a dammed impressive project that shows there is still a lot of freshness and vibrancy available to the film medium, even when its put in the service of mining some of human civilizations oldest questions. ***1/2
Saturday, September 7, 2013
The Handmaid's Tale (1990)
Film adaptation of Canadian author Margaret Atwood's 1985 dystopian novel of the same name. The story is set in the near future in the Republic of Gilead, a theocratic military dictatorship that has arisen out of a recently collapsed United States. Our protagonist Kate (Natasha Richardson) is a former librarian who is captured by Gilead forces when she attempts to flee the country to Canada along with her husband and child. Because increased environmental pollution has greatly reduced the number of women capable of bearing children and Kate has proven herself fertile via the existence of her young daughter, she is taken by the government to serve as a "handmaiden", a position apparently derived from the Biblical story of Sarah giving her handmaiden Hagar to Abraham in order to conceive a child. Kate is assigned to be a handmaiden for an important military leader (Robert Duvall) and his rather bitter wife (Faye Dunaway).
Atwood's original novel is basically a long monologue by its protagonist and deals mostly with very internal subject matter via a stream of consciousness narrative that goes back and forth through time as intruding memories interrupt Kate's rendering of her time as a handmaid. This structure presents difficulty when it comes to adapting the story as a film, and this movie can in no way convey the full power and subtitley of Atwood's excellent novel, however it does succeed as a dramatic work in its own right.
The cast is high caliber, the writing strong, the aesthetics intriguing. It is a tale of life under an American Taliban, a subject matter surely more resonate now post 9/11 then it was on original release. Nothing is explicitly spelled out for us in much detail relating to how the world of the film came to be, or even really how it works, or doesn't as the case may be. I actually like that in a work like this, especially given how much of this has to work on a metaphorical level. Gilead is not a likely society to consume the US, though doubtless there is a sizable minority who would like to see something like it put in place. However a policy change here and a new law there and some societal pressure in between can move a nation in a given direction, and here in a story born of an outsiders perspective of an increasing religious right influence on Regan era America, a worst case scenario is put forward, to scare us back a little. This movie, and more so the book it was based on do this, and they make it interesting. ***
Atwood's original novel is basically a long monologue by its protagonist and deals mostly with very internal subject matter via a stream of consciousness narrative that goes back and forth through time as intruding memories interrupt Kate's rendering of her time as a handmaid. This structure presents difficulty when it comes to adapting the story as a film, and this movie can in no way convey the full power and subtitley of Atwood's excellent novel, however it does succeed as a dramatic work in its own right.
The cast is high caliber, the writing strong, the aesthetics intriguing. It is a tale of life under an American Taliban, a subject matter surely more resonate now post 9/11 then it was on original release. Nothing is explicitly spelled out for us in much detail relating to how the world of the film came to be, or even really how it works, or doesn't as the case may be. I actually like that in a work like this, especially given how much of this has to work on a metaphorical level. Gilead is not a likely society to consume the US, though doubtless there is a sizable minority who would like to see something like it put in place. However a policy change here and a new law there and some societal pressure in between can move a nation in a given direction, and here in a story born of an outsiders perspective of an increasing religious right influence on Regan era America, a worst case scenario is put forward, to scare us back a little. This movie, and more so the book it was based on do this, and they make it interesting. ***
The Spy in Black (1939)
The Spy in Black aka U-Boat 29
British "quota quickie" based on the WWI espionage novel of the same title by Scottish author J. Storer Clouston. This movie is most notable as the first teaming of director Michael Powell and writer Emeric Pressburger, the duo would go on to have a successful multi-decade movie making partnership and become collectively known as "The Archers" or just "P & P". Having now seen this film, which I'd long been curious about, my first instinct is to assure you that the duos work gets better with subsequent films. That is not to say that The Spy in Black is a bad film, it was pretty well received in its time and today should be regarded as fair in quality.
The story is perhaps a little complicated and has to deal with German efforts to get British navel plans from a disgruntled officer. This scheme requires kidnapping a young women on her way to the Isle of Hoy to serve as a new school teacher and replacing her with a German agent, it also requires secreting a German U-boat Captain onto the same island to met with the treasonous English officer. Like later Archers films with their strong evocations of a particular British setting, like I Know Where I'm Going with the Isle of Mull or A Canterbury Tale with, well Canterbury, The Spy in Black evokes its isolated location in the Orkney Islands, a small chain north of Scotland that due to its out of the way location was an important safe staging point for British vessels during both World Wars.
The story does have one pretty good twist that I honestly didn't see coming, but is talkie without being much involving (something that is not an issue in later P&P films), and the action sequences not particularly thrilling. The movie does however show signs of the structural innovation that would become a P&P hallmark, and the teams instance on bringing depth to German characters who might otherwise just be throw away villains. **
British "quota quickie" based on the WWI espionage novel of the same title by Scottish author J. Storer Clouston. This movie is most notable as the first teaming of director Michael Powell and writer Emeric Pressburger, the duo would go on to have a successful multi-decade movie making partnership and become collectively known as "The Archers" or just "P & P". Having now seen this film, which I'd long been curious about, my first instinct is to assure you that the duos work gets better with subsequent films. That is not to say that The Spy in Black is a bad film, it was pretty well received in its time and today should be regarded as fair in quality.
The story is perhaps a little complicated and has to deal with German efforts to get British navel plans from a disgruntled officer. This scheme requires kidnapping a young women on her way to the Isle of Hoy to serve as a new school teacher and replacing her with a German agent, it also requires secreting a German U-boat Captain onto the same island to met with the treasonous English officer. Like later Archers films with their strong evocations of a particular British setting, like I Know Where I'm Going with the Isle of Mull or A Canterbury Tale with, well Canterbury, The Spy in Black evokes its isolated location in the Orkney Islands, a small chain north of Scotland that due to its out of the way location was an important safe staging point for British vessels during both World Wars.
The story does have one pretty good twist that I honestly didn't see coming, but is talkie without being much involving (something that is not an issue in later P&P films), and the action sequences not particularly thrilling. The movie does however show signs of the structural innovation that would become a P&P hallmark, and the teams instance on bringing depth to German characters who might otherwise just be throw away villains. **
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Dogville (2003)
This film was first introduced to me ten years ago on Ebert & Roper as being something of an anti-American film. Now given that its director Lars von Trier is a self righteous European type and seemingly famous for being anti-most things, its perhaps not surprising that he would make a film that is widely perceived to be anti-American in nature. But it is in the context of the time in which the film was produced, the lead up too and early stages of the second American lead war against Iraq, that the film is perhaps best understood. The film is a parable, the meaning of which is don't trust Americans, they may appear to be largely harmless though notability low brow folks at first glance, but given the right circumstances they become pretty repugnant monsters.
The staging of the film is interesting, its like a minimalist stage play. There is one set, seemingly a warehouse environment with the various houses and buildings of the town of Dogville (a mythic every town USA said to be located in the Rocky Mountains of a Great Depression era United States), drawn in chalk with minimal prop and set accompaniments. The narrative structure is divided into 9 chapters and a prolog and there is a regular narration by John Hurt that is descriptive enough that the audio track of the film could easily be released as a book on tape. These production elements that harken to the stage or literature are counterpointed by the all star international cast of the piece that includes the diverse likes of Nicolle Kidman, Lauren Bacall, Chloe Sevigny, Paul Bettany, Stellan Skarsgard, Ben Gazzara and Patricia Clarkson.
The plot concerns Grace Margaret Mulligan (Kidman) the runaway grown up daughter of a big time gangster (James Caan) who is fleeing her father for a place where she can live with her moral principles. An aspiring young writer/philosopher Tom Edison Jr. (Bettany) who lives in Dogville with his retired doctor father (Philip Baker Hall) befriends Grace and convinces her to let him call a town meeting (Dogville has a population of about 25) on weather or not to grant her asylum as her mob background potentially threats the towns folks safety. Tom Jr. convinces the locals to give Grace a two week trial period to decide weather or they want to continue to shelter her from searching gangsters and local authorities. At Bettany's urging Grace offers to do odd jobs for free for the local towns people to try and endear herself to them, at first this is not received well as the locals are too proud to take that kind of charity, but when the people are convinces to start thinking of Grace's efforts not as doing things they need to be done, but rather things that they would like to be done, well things go much better.
After two weeks the people of Dogville unanimously vote to grant Grace asylum, they even start to pay her some for her efforts, and convert an old building from the towns former mining days into a permanent residence for her. Things go really well for a while, until the towns peoples baser natures start to show through. Hank (Stellan Skarsgard) raps her, and a ten year old boy Grace has been tutoring (Miles Purinton) begins to blackmail her into giving him spanking that he sedo masochistically enjoys. Things get increasingly worse until Grace is literally kept as a slave by the people of Dogville, chained to a heavy weight and used to satisfy the sexual appetites of all the men in town except for Tom Jr. who really loves her, but in time himself will turn against her. The townsfolk blame Grace for her troubles, insisting she brought them upon herself, that they are really being quite generous to her, and refusing to acknowledge among themselves the horrible things they have done to her. The meaning I suppose is that Americans are full of themselves and can never acknowledge the evil that they do, that they heedlessly inflict destruction thinking they are doing good. That Iraq really has weapons of mass destruction and they are freeing the people from a ruthless dictator, never mind the death and civil war they leave in their wake.
You can take or leave this interpretation of the film, but I found it an effective examination of the problem of evil even if you completely disregard the then contemporary political overtones. Self righteous and judgmental at times to be sure, what morality play isn't, but also probing and forces the viewer to confront head on the evil that people (not just Americans) do. Perhaps this even one of von Triers more watchable films. ***
The staging of the film is interesting, its like a minimalist stage play. There is one set, seemingly a warehouse environment with the various houses and buildings of the town of Dogville (a mythic every town USA said to be located in the Rocky Mountains of a Great Depression era United States), drawn in chalk with minimal prop and set accompaniments. The narrative structure is divided into 9 chapters and a prolog and there is a regular narration by John Hurt that is descriptive enough that the audio track of the film could easily be released as a book on tape. These production elements that harken to the stage or literature are counterpointed by the all star international cast of the piece that includes the diverse likes of Nicolle Kidman, Lauren Bacall, Chloe Sevigny, Paul Bettany, Stellan Skarsgard, Ben Gazzara and Patricia Clarkson.
The plot concerns Grace Margaret Mulligan (Kidman) the runaway grown up daughter of a big time gangster (James Caan) who is fleeing her father for a place where she can live with her moral principles. An aspiring young writer/philosopher Tom Edison Jr. (Bettany) who lives in Dogville with his retired doctor father (Philip Baker Hall) befriends Grace and convinces her to let him call a town meeting (Dogville has a population of about 25) on weather or not to grant her asylum as her mob background potentially threats the towns folks safety. Tom Jr. convinces the locals to give Grace a two week trial period to decide weather or they want to continue to shelter her from searching gangsters and local authorities. At Bettany's urging Grace offers to do odd jobs for free for the local towns people to try and endear herself to them, at first this is not received well as the locals are too proud to take that kind of charity, but when the people are convinces to start thinking of Grace's efforts not as doing things they need to be done, but rather things that they would like to be done, well things go much better.
After two weeks the people of Dogville unanimously vote to grant Grace asylum, they even start to pay her some for her efforts, and convert an old building from the towns former mining days into a permanent residence for her. Things go really well for a while, until the towns peoples baser natures start to show through. Hank (Stellan Skarsgard) raps her, and a ten year old boy Grace has been tutoring (Miles Purinton) begins to blackmail her into giving him spanking that he sedo masochistically enjoys. Things get increasingly worse until Grace is literally kept as a slave by the people of Dogville, chained to a heavy weight and used to satisfy the sexual appetites of all the men in town except for Tom Jr. who really loves her, but in time himself will turn against her. The townsfolk blame Grace for her troubles, insisting she brought them upon herself, that they are really being quite generous to her, and refusing to acknowledge among themselves the horrible things they have done to her. The meaning I suppose is that Americans are full of themselves and can never acknowledge the evil that they do, that they heedlessly inflict destruction thinking they are doing good. That Iraq really has weapons of mass destruction and they are freeing the people from a ruthless dictator, never mind the death and civil war they leave in their wake.
You can take or leave this interpretation of the film, but I found it an effective examination of the problem of evil even if you completely disregard the then contemporary political overtones. Self righteous and judgmental at times to be sure, what morality play isn't, but also probing and forces the viewer to confront head on the evil that people (not just Americans) do. Perhaps this even one of von Triers more watchable films. ***
We Have A Pope (2011)
We Have A Pope aka Habemus Papam
Italian film billed as a reluctant pontiff comedy has some dramatic heft and ultimately doesn't go in quite the direction I thought it would. The most common description of the film (the one you find on its IMDb page) goes as follows: "A story centered on the relationship between the newly elected Pope and his therapist." Now based on this description alone I can write a pretty standard endearing comedy in my head, but the fact of the matter is that the two central characters, Cardinal come Pope designate Melville (French actor Michel Piccoli) and the atheist psychologist brought in by the Vatican when the new Pope refuses to appear in public (Nanni Moretti, also the films director) spend very little screen time together. Early on Melville escapes from his Vatican handlers and strikes out by himself in Rome, needing some time to reflect on the awesome responsibility of the new position he's been asked to hold, while the never named psychologist is forced to stay cooped up in the Vatican as the Conclave never officially closed and no one is suppose to leave, in part to prevent leaks to the media.
Melville ends up in the company of a group of actors and we learn that being an actor is what the old man had originally wanted to do with his life, but his sister rather then he was the one admitted to an acting school. Moretti, hold up with a bunch of aging cardinals, tries to practices his wears on them for a while, but mostly ends up playing cards with them, and eventually organizes a round robin volleyball competition among the various colleges of cardinals, which is the films comedic high point. Despite his longing to be an actor, and a perfect set up to allow him to appear on stage as one (the troops lead actor has something of a psychic breakdown and Melville knows his lines) the film choses not to take the obvious route, nor does atheist Moretti ever achieves a spiritual epiphany among the cardinals, nor are they much influenced by him. In fact the ending was a surprising downer, but not an inconsistent one given what comes before. On the whole a clever bit of somewhat insightful film making. ***
Italian film billed as a reluctant pontiff comedy has some dramatic heft and ultimately doesn't go in quite the direction I thought it would. The most common description of the film (the one you find on its IMDb page) goes as follows: "A story centered on the relationship between the newly elected Pope and his therapist." Now based on this description alone I can write a pretty standard endearing comedy in my head, but the fact of the matter is that the two central characters, Cardinal come Pope designate Melville (French actor Michel Piccoli) and the atheist psychologist brought in by the Vatican when the new Pope refuses to appear in public (Nanni Moretti, also the films director) spend very little screen time together. Early on Melville escapes from his Vatican handlers and strikes out by himself in Rome, needing some time to reflect on the awesome responsibility of the new position he's been asked to hold, while the never named psychologist is forced to stay cooped up in the Vatican as the Conclave never officially closed and no one is suppose to leave, in part to prevent leaks to the media.
Melville ends up in the company of a group of actors and we learn that being an actor is what the old man had originally wanted to do with his life, but his sister rather then he was the one admitted to an acting school. Moretti, hold up with a bunch of aging cardinals, tries to practices his wears on them for a while, but mostly ends up playing cards with them, and eventually organizes a round robin volleyball competition among the various colleges of cardinals, which is the films comedic high point. Despite his longing to be an actor, and a perfect set up to allow him to appear on stage as one (the troops lead actor has something of a psychic breakdown and Melville knows his lines) the film choses not to take the obvious route, nor does atheist Moretti ever achieves a spiritual epiphany among the cardinals, nor are they much influenced by him. In fact the ending was a surprising downer, but not an inconsistent one given what comes before. On the whole a clever bit of somewhat insightful film making. ***
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)