Don't Look Now, Hoop Dreams, and Morvern Callar are some of the highlights from this productive week of movie watching. In this post you'll two "adaptations" of classic novels by two very different authors, two mesmerizing movies about the different ways people deal with grief, and also a movie with a typewriter that is a bug. Many more reviews of 2011 movies that I'm catching up with coming in the coming posts. Now that it is winter break I hope to catch up a bit with these posts. Also, the movie posters for the movies this week are all pretty good (except for the In Time one).
Jane Eyre (Cary Fukunaga, USA/UK, 2011): I have not yet read the classic novel that this film is based on, and I also have not yet seen any of the numerous previous adaptations of this story. I came into this film as fresh as you can be to the story of Jane Eyre. Was I impressed? A bit, but I was more impressed by the acting and tone than the screenplay itself. There is nothing wrong with the premise or story, but the screenplay, but primarily the directing, did not give the actors enough scenes that could inspire passion. The acting by both Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender is terrific in their own ways, and they do the best with what they get, but the romance that is central to the story does not click as well as I'd hoped. But there is still the beautifully creepy tone to the movie that I loved. The landscapes and the environment are captured with grace, and the unsettling tone of a gothic romance is captured perfectly due in large part to the dark candle-lit nighttime scenes.
The dreadful romantic atmosphere combined with the great acting by both leads does a lot to make this film feel very good. The story is prime for a more introspective romance, but the film doesn't quite take full advantage of it. The main difference between the movie and novel, or so I hear, is the flashback structure. It may have been added to give more dread to the scenes of romance in the early stages, and it is successful in that, but that tension does not hold through the whole movie. Jane Eyre is a film I very much wanted to love, but only ended up liking. It's a wonderfully creepy romance with acting that definitely puts most modern day romantic acting to shame, but I wish there was more passion in that romance. But regardless of that lack of intensity, the movie still has the right feeling a gothic romance should have, and for that it should be commended.
Grade: B-
Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle, France, 1958): French crime thrillers have become a genre of their own, and this one is one of the most famous. Louis Malle was never really considered part of the French New Wave, but he definitely exhibits aspects of it. One of those aspects is a unique way at capturing the streets of Paris. The great score by the great Miles Davis accompanies the great actress Jeanne Moreau as she walks the streets of Paris looking for the lover she was supposed to run away with. Those scenes of confusion are so well executed, it gives this mostly plot-based thriller a memorable atmosphere. Confusion is what makes up the atmosphere of this film. The audience is omniscient in this film, while the characters are all confused. The movie is almost three movies in one. One part of the movie is the man who Moreau is supposed to run away with, but after he murder her ex-lover he gets trapped in an elevator. Then we have Moreau as she looks for him in the streets of Paris. Lastly we have a couple who stole the man's car and commit their own crimes which implicates the man in the elevator further.
This is a twisty thriller that brings to mind Pulp Fiction just because of how well the story-lines are put together. Some people may feel frustration at the characters because the characters don't know as much as the audience, but I felt empowered by knowing everything. It helped me understand the environment and characters much better when I don't have to worry about what's going on in the plot. Instead of trying to figure out what's going on, we watch as the characters themselves walk around trying to figure things out. It's one of the best thrillers I've seen that deals with how confused the characters are about what's going on. Then there's the ending, which ends all chaos that the characters are going through, and lets karma or God or fate or whatever, do the work. In the end, what's supposed to happen happens. It's a good script that's executed greatly by Malle. But really, this movie is worth watching for the sole reason that it has an original score by Miles Davis. That's all the reason you should need.
Grade: B+
Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, UK, 2002): You may dismiss this movie as a pretentious artsy implausible film that tries too hard to be cool and features a completely unlikable main character. Many have issued that criticism at the movie, but many of those criticisms are why I love this movie. This is a movie that uses slow motion, music, beautiful imagery, and an amazing performance by Samantha Morton to feel completely "cool" but also completely mesmerizing. We meet the titular character played by Morton as she tries to understand why her boyfriend has just committed suicide and is lying on the floor of her apartment. She ends up going to party later on, and ends up leaving him there for quite a long while. She never tells anyone and only ends up removing the body when she sends a manuscript written by her late boyfriend to some publishers under her own name. One of the biggest criticisms of this movie is that Callar seems completely detached and emotionless and doesn't react at all like how most people would react when their boyfriend commits suicide. But again, it is a frequent criticism of the movie that pinpoints exactly why this movie so compelling. Samantha Morton pulls off one of the great female performances I've seen in years in this movie. She plays a person who is completely in her own world, and barely even gives us hints as to what she's thinking. She spends so much time in silence in her own world, we know she is thinking but we can't figure out what about. This is what makes her and the movie so compelling and mesmerizing.
Besides Morton's performance, there is Lynne Ramsay's directing. The pace is slow and patient, and the imagery is gorgeous and spare. It's one thing to make a visually seductive and gorgeous movie set in nature, but it's a whole different accomplishment to be able to make a gorgeous movie largely set in the working class neighborhoods of Glasgow (set in Spain towards the second half). Ramsay started as a photographer, and each image in this movie displays the meticulous sense of detail that only a photographer could elicit. On top of that is one of the best uses of music in a movie you'll experience. Callar walks around listening to music in her own world, and that music is a direct line into her soul, and probably the only line inside her head. Ramsay and Morton have made a movie that is completely interpretative but also immensely contemplative. It's a movie about a reaction, and in this case a reaction to a suicide. We can't tell if she's sad, happy, disappointed, or downright apathetic. From her actions she seems selfish and hedonistic, but Ramsay and Morton give her a personality that is completely individual to Callar. Morvern Callar is a movie to be experienced.
Grade: A
Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, Canada/UK, 1991): I watched this movie without much familiarity to the source material or the author of the source material, William Burroughs. This is important because as I later found out, this is less an adaption of the book of the same name by the famous beatnik, but it's a film about the making of the book. In that sense it is an extremely fascinating movie about the creation of art, and the really weird ways art can get created. With this new knowledge I'm fairly sure I would have enjoyed the movie even more. My initial watch produced a fascination with what was going on, but it didn't completely work because there didn't seem to be a point to it all. The movie didn't seem to be telling an important story. But now with the added knowledge, I'm sure a repeat viewing would be much more appreciated.
I compare this movie to Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for its hallucinatory and odd tone about a writer having an odd time gaining artistic inspiration. The movie features weird alien creatures, giant bug typewriters, a lady wearing a man costume, and black powder made from giant centipedes. It's a very weird and odd movie, but it does work when considering the creative process. It's also got a deadpan tone in which humor is always allowed but not forced. David Cronenberg has crafted a very unique movie that has some of his own touches in an adaptation of a famous book. I do wish some parts of the movie were more interesting, but overall it works as a movie about getting lost in your own art and trying to find your way out. Naked Lunch is a trip through a bizarre world that quite honestly is pretty fun to enter. Peter Weller plays the author, and his acting is completely great for this role. He plays it subtle when he needs to, and when things get even crazier, his mood advances towards crazy in a way that's not too out of whack with who he is. If you're a fan of Burroughs you have to watch the movie, and if you're a fan of Cronenberg you also have to watch this movie.
Grade: B
Hoop Dreams (Steve James, USA, 1994): This is an astonishing three hour long documentary about two black kids who have dreams of playing professional basketball. The movie follows them from 8th grade all the way until they start college. It's an amazing and one-of-a-kind experience that represents the height of what documentaries can do. The greatest movies show personal stories while also examining the environment of those people. In other words, great movies are both micro and macro. This is a movie that does exactly that. The two boys at the center of the movie lead their own parallel lives, and both start the movie as rising basketball stars recruited by a top private high school in the south Chicago area. Where things go different is when they start playing basketball. One of them, William Gates, is as good as they thought they would be, while the other, Arthur Agee, is not as talented as they'd hoped. As the movie goes on and their lives progress we not only see how urban life fails these students, we also see how life is just not predictable. There are bad things that happen to these kids that can be blamed on others, and there are things that happen that can't be blamed on anyone.
There is so much you can take away from this movie because it is so extensive and so comprehensive. It's a movie that applies to blacks and poor minorities everywhere in America through the way it shows how these kids have only the biggest dreams because that's all they have, and then how those dreams are so impossible for them to attain because of the place they live and the system they are against. Hoop Dreams is also a movie that has lessons for non-minorities in the sense that you have dreams as kid, and this movie is an example of how those plans can go awry. Even if you do everything right in the pursuit of your dream, life still happens, and those dreams will go away. It's really amazing how much you can learn just by observing the lives of two people over the course of five years. I must also mention the amazing job that Steve James and his editor did in putting together the reported 250 hours of footage they shot for this movie that was initially supposed to be a 30-minute documentary for TV. I'm not going to say that this is the best basketball movie ever made, because that's been said many times before, and also that's not really all that great of an accomplishment considering other basketball movies. The better and still accurate compliment for me to say is that this movie is one of the best documentaries ever made.
Grade: A
In Time (Andrew Niccol, USA, 2011): You can read a full review of this movie here. I really liked Andrew Niccol's Gattaca and his screenplay for The Truman Show but this film doesn't succeed nearly as well as the other movies at having any sort of social commentary or characters that inspire emotion. The future envisioned in the world is an interesting one, but it needed much more exploration if Niccol wanted to make a feature length movie out of the concept.
Grade: D+
Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, UK, 1973): Horror movies and supernatural thrillers don't need to be great movies to be memorable. There's a low standard for those types of movies, which is why it might be surprising how good of a movie Don't Look Now is. I've seen a previous film of director Nicolas Roeg, called Walkabout, and it was an amazing piece of art, so it's not surprising that his foray into the genre picture would be so great. The film is a masterfully put together movie about premonitions and the supernatural side of psychics. The film starts with the death of the daughter of Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland's characters. We then see their grief as they take some time in Venice to sort things out while Sutherland also finishes the restoration of an old church. On one side the movie is about grief and how we cling to any explanation or hope that we can reconnect with out loved ones, but on another side the movie is about the occult and the supernatural and how these things can exist if we look for them.
What makes this movie a true marvel is the way Roeg includes motifs and themes that reoccur throughout the movie. The color red is hugely important in not only the visuals of the movie but also the plot. There are visual cues that only make sense in the context of the entire film. Most impressive of all is that there are hints of whole scenes that have one meaning the first time you watch it, and then a completely different meaning on repeat viewings. I've only seen the movie once so I only base this on going back and re-watching a couple scenes and just thinking back about them, but I'm certain that repeat viewings will only add to the appreciation people have for this film. The only criticism of this film that I can think, and not that I agree, is that the movie is all style and no substance. Even if you don't think the substance in the film is up to par, you still cannot help but admire the amazing style. This is a movie that uses editing as the primary way of telling the story, and it's the way that the scenes are cut together, including a masterful and famous sex scene, that send the message of how timeless and fluid time is, for those who are psychics, but also for those who aren't.
Grade: B+
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