"The Debt" and "Barcelona" this week. The first is so straightforward I had a hard time finding anything substantial to say about it, and the other I found a lot to say about it quite easily. This is a post about grown up thrillers and cross-cultural love. Enjoy. Next post is the start of the school year, so I hope you're excited for double the amount of movies every week. I certainly am.
The Debt (John Madden, 2011): I reviewed this film for The Daily Evergreen, you can find that review here. I don't have much to add to that review, or anything at all. The film is pretty straightforward and there's nothing that's blatantly horrible about it and nothing all that great either. It's definitely solid entertainment though and Jessica Chastain is having a great breakout year. Another thing of note I could add is that I actually saw this film at a real press screening in Seattle with a bunch of critics. I had a chance to meet with Seattle Times movie critic Moira MacDonald, it was a great and informative meeting and on top of that she took me to a press screening of this film (which is why I got to see it about two weeks before it came out). For that reason I'll probably remember this movie much more than I would have otherwise.
Grade: B-
Barcelona (Whit Stillman, 1994): Earlier this year I reviewed "Metropolitan"and gave it very high praise. It provided an inside look at young white collar culture never really before seen in film before. I found it a fascinating and masterful film that was a pure joy to watch. This film is almost a sequel to "Metropolitan." It has a couple of the same actors playing very similar characters, but this time they are transported to post-Franco Spain, right in the middle of a country with a wave of anti-Americanism. The way these two WASP's deal with this anti-Americanism while trying to get girls is hilarious to watch and their insights are consistently fascinating. They try to achieve a social life with people that have completely different political views than them, mainly girls. But they don't seem to let that get in the way too much, though the last act of the film does take the anti-Americanism to a place that certainly wasn't necessary. The plot though is completely irrelevant. I could watch these characters walking around and talking to people in Barcelona for ages, because everything they say is so fascinating and always hilarious.
The last lines of dialogue spoken in this film are what drove home to me that this is not only an entertaining film with fascinating and funny characters, but the film as a whole is a brilliantly thought-provoking film about loving someone who looks at the world in a very different way than you. The two main characters are white American yuppie conservatives, and they're proud of it. All of their love interests in the city of Barcelona view America as a big bad wolf and have pretty negative feelings towards America in general. Somehow though, these people get along. They definitely have fascinating conversations, but ultimately all they're looking for is happiness from each other. In the last line of the film one of the white characters say something like, that's the cool thing about dating someone from another culture, whenever you do something annoying they just assume its a cultural characteristic and never take it personally. It's a fascinating insight that rings true over the course of the film, and it's a possible answer for why cross-cultural love works well.
I'm sure many will find the high-brow characters annoying and arrogant, but I love watching interesting people I don't see much of in movies. I doubt I will ever get to spend this much time with one of these guys in real life, so this is my chance to learn life lessons from these people. Whit Stillman is a brilliant and personal writer-director who seems to instill his films with a Woody Allen level of wit and intellectualism. His first film, "Metropolitan," introduced us to this culture, and his second film, "Barcelona," showed us how people of this culture interact with those outside their culture. He made a third film in 1998 that I cannot wait to check out now (and his first film in 12 years coming out later this year or next). Stillman has found a niche, and he's taking it by the head and creating masterworks with it.
Grade: A-
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