Nobody Knows Anything

So, it was impossible for me to post last weekend because I was right in the middle of a six cinema film weekend (and I haven’t done one of those for a long time), and I find films nearly always need a bit of distance before you can approach them with critical comments, especially new films. So, the cinema visits are marked with a * and the two Blu-ray viewings this fortnight is marked with a †.

Valkyrie (2008) *

In which Tom Cruise and several baker’s dozens of British actors conspire to assassinate Adolf Hitler, which, in an interesting redo of the whole Titantic (1997) thing, is something you know going in did not succeed. What’s most startling about the film (apart from how great Tom Cruise is as an actor when he underplays) is the extent to which the plot of 20th July 1944 nearly succeeded and could have brought the War in Europe to an end a year early. Bryan Singer directs with engrossing, immaculate skill from a script co-written by Christopher McQuarrie, and John Ottman edits and composes the doom-laden score, which makes it more than a second cousin to The Usual Suspects (1995).

Revolutionary Road (2008) *

Talking of Titanic (1997), Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are reunited on screen in a very different scenario, a feel-bad story told with mordant humour about a disastrous marriage in the 1950s gone only slightly wrong, that Kate Winslet’s second husband, Sam Mendes, directs. Most engaging when it’s uncomfortable in its scenes of Kate and Leo going at each other hell for leather, as well as bizarre interjections and interventions from a neighbour’s psychotic son, it’s ultimately a film about the dangers of letting dreams of a life you think you could have had distract you from the life you do have, and the dire consequences that can result if you do.

Frost/Nixon (2008) *

Ron Howard does an Oliver Stone thing and films a play so cinematically you wouldn’t know it had ever been a play if you didn’t know that was where it came from in the first place. Both Michael Sheen as David Frost and Frank Langella as Richard Milhous Nixon are ridiculously effective, though there is a certain disingenuous quality to the film’s portrayal of David Frost as an international playboy. Those of us with longer memories recall the trial by television of insurance fraudster Emil Savundra on The Frost Programme in the 1960s and know that Frost could be a heavyweight interviewer if he wanted to. The play speaks, as all plays must, to the age in which they were first performed, and the protagonist of this drama is as much George W Bush as it is Richard Nixon.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008) *

Of all the films I saw this weekend, this is the one that came off worst in my eyes. I went in convinced that it was based on a true story, though where I picked up that impression I have no idea. In fact, it’s based on a novel, which makes the numerous narrative contrivances by which the lead character answers the questions on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? nothing more than novelistic devices, rather than any kind of interesting statement about coincidences and meanings thereof in the real world. I thought Danny Boyle did a terrible job of directing this film, and he clearly loves Dutch angles more than he should do. Every sequence from the leading character’s life is vibrantly overdirected, and then contrasted with the dreadful TV-style coverage on the Millionaire set. I wasn’t convinced, and not even convinced by the end credits Bollywood style dance sequence. Maybe seeing it again as a fictional film may change my mind. And I say this knowing that this film may be about to clean up at both the BAFTAs and the Oscars. And I’m not sure that it deserves to. Though I did think the soundtrack was excellent.

Ratatouille (2007) †

The weekend after my mother died in October 2007 I was going to go with her to see this film, and of course, that is something that did not happen. Mom had seen any number of featurettes about the film on Sky Movies and knew more about it than I did, as I’ve made strenuous efforts since I stopped reading Empire in the mid 1990s not to know anything about a film before I see it. And I just couldn’t bring myself to get to the cinema to see Ratatouille in 2007. I didn’t want to see it alone. Fast forward a year and a half and it turns up on Blu-ray at a price I can’t refuse, and guess what? It’s every bit as good as it should be, if not better than that, and my Mom would have loved it, but she never got to see it. The lesson I’ve tried to draw from this is not to put off to tomorrow what you can do today. And I might even live up to this one day.

Rachel Getting Married (2008) *

Jonathan Demme won the Best Director Oscar in 1992 for The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and was able to parlay this success into the Hollywood-does-AIDS movie, Philadelphia (1993), but then it all went horribly wrong. Beloved (1998) was a difficult film that was not much liked. The Truth About Charlie (2002) was not much liked either, mostly because it was a remake of the beloved Hollywood classic Charade (1963). The Manchurian Candidate (2004) was a workmanlike remake of another John Frankenheimer classic from 1962, and I’m pretty sure that I didn’t see it at the cinema, but caught up with it on DVD (though I could be wrong). In short, this might be the first time in 10 years that I’ve seen a Jonathan Demme picture in a cinema, and that seems terribly wrong because I’m a Jonathan Demme fan, and he just hasn’t been able to resume the great run that led up to The Silence of the Lambs. Demme hasn’t been idle; in the 15 years since Philadelphia, he’s also directed any number of documentaries. And so to this film, shot for next to nothing in 21 days, a multiracial, liberal fantasia of marriage for the Barack Obama era, maybe in part patterned on Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding (2001), in that harsh reality and too much emotional honesty combine with joyous, musical celebration. Of all the films I saw this weekend, I liked this one the most, even despite having a nosebleed in the dark halfway through it.

Batman Begins (2005) *

And so to the Imax for a double bill of Christopher Nolan madness. Nolan has continued the narrative indy deftness of Memento (2000) and Insomnia (2003) as he’s turned into the go-to guy for Hollywood bigness. Considering that the origin of Batman is one of the most overworked tropes in comics, Nolan brings a startling amount of originality to the project. In many ways though, it’s just a warm-up for the main event.

The Dark Knight (2008) *

That scene where they turn the 18 wheeler truck upside down on a Chicago street? The one that looks like an awfully expensive CGI shot? The filmmakers did it for real for the Imax cameras on a real Chicago street that had to be reinforced for the stunt to be performed; CGI was used to remove wires and mounts, but not to flip the truck. Quite often, screenwriters insert an emotional subtext into the film scripts of big blockbuster prospects to attract actors to the films and give them something to act. Thus, Jurassic Park (1993) is really about Sam Neill learning to embrace the concept of parenthood (and not 54 shots of CGI dinosaurs that everybody went to see the movie to see), and Twister (1997) is about the divorce proceedings of Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton (and not the CGI twisters that everybody went to see the movie to see). And so on, you get the idea. Unusually, both The Dark Knight and Batman Begins have any amount of emotional subtext, and much talk of justice and law and murder, but the difference is that this is what these films are actually about. The Dark Knight in particular is a post-9/11 movie if ever there was one, with a homicidal maniac running berserk on the streets of Gotham, and the only question being, is it acceptable to beat up, torture, or kill this man, because of what he is doing? The Dark Knight does not have answers to these questions, entrenched as it is in its world of symbols and meaning and metaphor, but they’re rich questions, and none of them have found their way into this film by chance.

Art School Confidential (2005)

If making fun of art school pretensions is as easy as satirising the fashion industry, then how come there haven’t been more movies like Pret-a-Porter (1994) and this one? The film is most fun when exposing just how shit bad art can be, and how ready pretentious idiots are to line up to praise it. The film is a lot more subtle than it may have been given credit for, it’s a kind of slow burn, and where it ends up seems more inevitable than it may have been at the start.

Bird (1988)

Bird is dark, really dark. Dark even by Clint Eastwood’s love of darkness and jazz. A film entirely unsuited to VHS that took an age to come to DVD. And an even longer age for me to acquire it. I saw it once, in a cinema, in 1988 (or 1989), and it was so dark that you could see how much light there is even in a darkened cinema. Charlie Parker burned the candle at both ends, and it’s amazing he lived as long as he did.

Female Agents (2008)

Haven’t made it to disc 2 yet, so am unable to verify how accurate the film may (or may not) be. Sadly more workmanlike than inspired, the film arrives on DVD with an appalling title that fatally mistranslates the original French “The Women of the Shadows” into the more prosaic (though accurate) Female Agents.

Be Kind Rewind (2007) †

Michel Gondry continues his series of naive films in celebration of the simple pleasures of his French childhood. This has manifested itself in the Lego music video for The White Stripes, the oversized hands of The Science of Sleep (2006), and now this paean to the age of VHS video rental, though set in modern times.

One cinema visit this week marked with a *.

Gladiator (2000)

The first time I saw Gladiator I knew how it would end as soon as I saw the scene at the beginning of the film where Commodus is fight training with his men in the woods. It would end in the arena with a fight between him and Maximus. It’s called foreshadowing, and once you become aware of it, you can never become unaware of it. You can only be fooled by it when it’s been done more carefully and concealed as a throwaway line of dialogue or a casually exposed and then dismissed prop. The annoying part is if you removed this short scene, which lasts half a minute at most, would the film be better for it or not? Because when you get to the scene at the end, you’ve spent a couple of hours watching Maximus hack people to death, and the result of the Maximus/Commodus fight should be a foregone conclusion. Do you need to know that Commodus is handy with a sword? Does it make any difference?

Donnie Darko (2001)

A word about film soundtracks. Which is better? Careful choice of exactly the right track, or turning the whole thing over to a music supervisor and saying I want something 80s? What struck me watching Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason was that because Universal could afford a giant music budget, the whole film had been bathed in a wash of slushy romantic hits because that would make for a better soundtrack album. In contrast, Donnie Darko has very deliberately chosen songs that are meant to relate to the whole and be part of the meaning of the film. Check out the lyrics to Mad World if you don’t believe me.

The Hunt for Red October (1990)

How underrated is John McTiernan? The first time I saw Die Hard I didn’t realise just how artfully it had been constructed, it was Bruce Willis in a vest, excitement on every level, all that. Yet as the vast wave of Die Hards on a Boat, Train, Plane, etc started filling up theatres in the early 90s, the directorial skill of Die Hard started to become more apparent. Think of this: at no time in the film are you in any doubt as to where in the building an event is taking place, and the reason you’re never in any doubt is because you have been carefully and deliberately shown around every location without even knowing that you’ve been taking in this information. This style continues in this film, although this time a lot of it’s been achieved with some unsubtle production design. I have a real weakness for submarine films, and sound designers do too; in 5.1, you’re on the sub.

Basic (2003)

Connie Nielsen is great in Gladiator. On their recommended commentary track on the Extended Edition, Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe spend some time contemplating whether or not Nielsen could be a bigger star than she is. What occurred to me is that she may not want to be. Connie Nielsen is not Reese Witherspoon, I don’t think Nielsen has the drive and ambition to push for superstardom. And on the evidence of Basic, why would she want to? Nielsen is from Denmark, she’s tall, she speaks seven languages, so you can imagine how well this goes over in casting sessions where she is automatically the smartest person in the room. There isn’t a moment in Basic where you don’t believe in her character, she has a Southern accent, and a proper military bearing (McTiernan forced her to wear proper army boots throughout the shoot).

Ali (2001)

Spike Lee would have made a different film, but I don’t know if he would have made a better one. This film is another in Michael Mann’s portraits of lone, driven individuals, which date back to The Jericho Mile and Thief and perhaps reach their apex in Heat. Or perhaps the apex is Ali. All I know is that Muhammad Ali’s decision not to accept the draft is one of the finest deeds a human being has ever done.

When We Were Kings (1996)

Compare and contrast. As good as Will Smith is in Ali, and he is very good indeed, it becomes more intimidating when you see for real the guy he had to play. The unique extras on the R2 release of this DVD are the original TV telecasts of both the Rumble in the Jungle and the Thrilla in Manila. Ali and Foreman were big guys, they don’t move with any particular grace, and the Zaire fight is exhausting to watch because you can see the stamina draining from their bodies with every round.

The Good Shepherd (2006) *

How restrained is Matt Damon’s performance? In an early scene, Angelina Jolie is licking his ear with her tongue, and he has to remain unaroused because that’s part of his character. Long but absorbing, maybe Robert De Niro should have directed more in the last 10 years instead of hiring himself out to Rocky & Bullwinkle and the like.

Something Wild (1986)

Who ever loved a yuppie? This was part of the yuppie nightmare series that also included After Hours and Fatal Attraction. Yet it hasn’t aged a bit. Exemplary screenwriting meant that all Jonathan Demme had to do was turn up on set and get things going. And assemble a soundtrack so lengthy it has its own credits sequence.

Donnie Darko (2001)

Oh, I appear to have watched this film twice. First time round was the theatrical release, this time it’s the director’s cut. It’s interesting that now we know what the film’s about, has it become less or more mysterious?