Film stuff by Mark

The buzz about The Iron Lady is that Meryl Streep is fantastic and the film, just so-so. That’s correct. Sometimes a good film highlights a performance, and that performance is what you walk away remembering. Sophie’s Choice—still in my thinking the film that contains the greatest American female performance ever put to film—is such a film. It’s strong, goes places, and yet still provides a pedestal for a Meryl Street master class in acting.

The Iron Lady has a near-equal performance by our greatest living actress (sorry, Meryl, I know you don’t like to hear this), but the performance distinguishes itself partly because the rest of the film is relatively weak by comparison. The film itself has no center, so by default, the central performance becomes what the film is about.

What’s strong are the casting and performances. Of course there is Streep, whose performance I’ll go into later. It’s a cliché to say that Jim Broadbent (her husband in the later years) is dependable. He’s more than that here; he’s delightful. It seems he can do just about anything in films, and here he beings a lilt and joyous energy to an underwritten part as Margaret Thatcher’s husband Denis. You can see how important Denis must have been to Margaret, and the film hints at one of the many directions this film might have taken and didn’t (to its detriment). A film on their relationship alone could still be made, though it’s sad to say that Streep likely wouldn’t be Margaret in that film, too.

Casting the “younger versions” of older leads is often treacherous. Going for some kind of physical equivalence is mandatory, but that often results in a compromise in either acting ability and/or an ability to capture the essence of the older character’s personality. One of the strongest aspects of The Iron Lady is the casting and acting of young Margaret and Denis, played here by Alexandra Roach and Harry Lloyd. Roach is tough and sure, and her performance actually possesses more political conviction than Streep’s. Lloyd on his part has the same jaunty step and twinkle in his eye as Broadbent; it’s a lesser part, but he is anything but a weak link. Watching them together adds immeasurably to the scenes with the older acting legends.

The structure of the film is part of the problem. The framing device is Thatcher now, in and out of reality with the encroaching Alzheimer’s or dementia. It’s a little Lifetime-ish, and reduces the film to a more generic, personal “woman’s story” instead of a presentation of one of most powerful women of the last century. The film seems interested in world-shaking events only to the extent that they are challenges or opportunities for Margaret. In one sense, the film has accomplished the near-impossible: it’s an apolitical film about one of the toughest politicians in recent history.  The film pays lip service to the expression of conservative British views, but they  just lay there like the swept-up ‘80s hair, false teeth and spot-on accent. They are just part of the picture, and we never really get to see what drives Margaret to believe what she does apart from learning that she got some views from her dad and his experiences as a grocer.

And this is the one part of the film that misses in terms of Streep’s performance. As fearful as I am that my laptop will self-destruct as I write something less than complimentary about an actress I consider an acting genius, there is something missing here. Streep is a hard-working, technically accurate actress, and no, I’m not going to write the old chestnut that she isn’t warm enough. Her performance is astounding in its precision; she sounds intelligent when necessary, old when necessary, loving and motherly when necessary. There are few actresses with the personal authority to play a Margaret Thatcher, and what works best beyond the technical triumph is the clout and weight that the actress brings to the character; not all the great actresses possess that kind of personal power.

What’s missing is passion in the gut. Thatcher had that. This film’s Thatcher doesn’t, at least in Streep’s interpretation. Loath as I am to pretend to know where an artistic giant may be coming from in his/her interpretation of a character, one has to wonder in this political year if the left-leaning Streep just couldn’t find the passion necessary to faithfully represent the deep political convictions of a right-leaning character. She finds the woman, the mother, the wife, and Streep rises to rhetorical heights in the scenes in Parliament. But while we see the determination, even the stubbornness of the character, we never catch the fire.

There was a context to Thatcher. By concentrating on the woman first and pushing the context to such a secondary position, the film actually compromises its central character. She was a woman of her time, and she wasn’t just the product of a strong-willed small businessman.

It’s been said by others, but I will repeat it here. The film is a missed opportunity—actually, several missed opportunities. The political animal that was Thatcher, the fascinating stories of Margaret and Denis (young and older), the study of a colossus, the glimpses into the interactions of great (but conservative) leaders who changed the world—these are stories that are waiting to be filmed. The life and political service of a Margaret Thatcher is worthy of several films and miniseries. But having our Great American Actress take the lead in this particular film, and having her do such a breathtaking job of it, means that it’s likely going to be a full generation before we see the film that Thatcher and her era deserve.

I’m a terrible person. I know that I should like War Horse. It’s not even that I am afraid of/resistant to sentimentality. I fully expected this to be a full-throated emotional and sentimental film, and that would have been OK. I even thought that the film would be in the same class as The Artist and Hugo, and would have been the third part of a trilogy of films this past year looking back to the golden or olden days of film—in this case, when films weren’t afraid to go big with the emotional moment. When films earn their sentimentality, I’m right there cheering.

But War Horse isn’t a sentimental story. It’s THE PENTULTIMATE BOY-AND-ANIMAL STORY. There are no characters, just archetypes. Where does one begin? Jeremy Irvine (The Boy) handles his scenes well, and may be a real actor. But who can tell? He’s just the boy who loves the horse, not a specific individual. Even his face is of a piece with this—he’s Young Handsome Strapping Lad, not a person. Dad (Peter Mullan) is every slightly lovable drunken dad who is still loved by his family, though his personal decisions regarding his family’s support are well nigh appalling (he really should be Irish). Mom is not just The Boy’s mother, but is Everymom who cajoles and nags, but of course really loves her weak-willed and lazy husband after all is said and done (and when did Emily Watson go from fragile to sturdy and indomitable?)

The look is luscious, sun-dappled, honeyed and relentlessly archetypal. It’s not just beautiful, but is filled with Everyshots. The shots of boy and horse are not this boy and this horse, but are shot against the sky, with perfect painterly lighting and a dedication to a studied resistance to individuation. The war footage is not these folks in this war in these trenches, but has “This Is War” stamped on every frame. And perhaps most in-your-face of all (spoiler alert) is when Boy returns from War, and we are treated to the All-Time Mom Greets Returning Son shots. It’s not Albert coming home, but All Sons Coming Home from Every War. The shots here are so self-conscious that we lose all sense of the genuinely emotional reality of A son returning home; it’s stunning to the eye, and only lightly touching upon the heart.

The film’s look reminds me of a combination of Days of Heaven, Barry Lyndon and Gone with the Wind. (You’ll also find Joyeux Noel, Old Yeller, the Atlanta crane shot from Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, and a dozen more Hollywood classics here.) Barry Lyndon was so self-consciously artful that it was distracting. Days of Heaven was gorgeous, but its cinematography lovingly contained, even augmented, the story. Gone with the Wind is Gone with the Wind. War Horse’s look keeps pulling us out of the story to the Idea, and its beauty, which is often enough on its own in an epic, is a near-constant slave to the archetypical. Occasionally, the beauty and self-consciousness work together to the film’s benefit, as when (spoiler alert #2) the young German boys are killed, and the sweeping arms of the windmill both hide their death and make a welcome small comment about the relentlessness of war, hate and death.

The acting is good throughout, but is uniformly generic, or classic, or Hollywood studio, whatever you want to call it. It’s a good 20+ minutes too long, and the barbed wire scene in particular goes on for far too long. And the music! As a musician who respects John Williams immensely, I’m confused. At times it’s rich and full as a classic epic film. But it seems to want to be a throwback as well, as it sounds straight from the ’40s; it seems to be a little too old and a little too bold in telling us that we’re supposed to guffaw “right now” and then well up later. He’s as master a craftsman as Spielberg, so the style must be purposeful. It seems to be riffing on music styles that now seem too leading or manipulative, and therefore seems to call attention to itself as an historical homage rather than an integral score.

The morality of the piece is fascinating. It’s set during WWI, and one might think the Germans are the bad guys and the British and French the good. But what is moral here is an appreciation of Joey, The Horse. He/she who appreciates Joey and “gets” him is good; those who don’t are bad or inconsequential.

There is a power to specificity. Annie Hall is a great relationship film while still being set in the 1970s on Manhattan’s West Side. The death of the “girl in the red coat” in Spielberg’s Schindler’s List is one of the most powerful visual statements about the Holocaust by virtue of the girl’s anonymity and individuality. War Horse is a Grand Statement by a master craftsman who is completely in control of his craft. Spielberg isn’t accidental about any technical element of his filmmaking, but the film’s lack of power and emotional can’t be deliberate.

I’m doing the second part to a review of The Tree of Life because I want to address some issues separately, and I don’t want my thoughts and criticisms to be folded into a review that reflects my utmost admiration for the film. I’d like to pull off to the side of the road, so to speak, and address some thing, question others, and groan a little.

First, God. Of course it’s impossible to visually represent God as One existing outside of space and time. Malick does a good job suggesting a deity, and coupled with the almost-whispered prayers of the film’s characters, the combination of image and sound suggests the immanent and intimate that most believers would associate with God.

Next, creation. The creation dogma of today is evolution, and the film goes along with that. As one who believes that evolution will become as much of a scientific embarrassment as bloodletting in medicine, and who believes that the underpinnings of it are cracking as I write, I have to note how completely Malick gives himself over the theory. He addresses deity and human life, but slides over how life could come from non-life. I don’t necessarily expect an Adam-and-Eve sequence from this film, but will have to pay closer attention next time to see if that Sauron-like deity is suggested to have had much of anything directly to do with the start of life.

The film, of course, opens with a quote from the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Scriptures, if you prefer. God asks Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth…when the morning stars sang together?” (Job 38:4, 7) It ultimately caused Job to disengage from judgment, and then ponder, and then come to wisdom. I can only assume we are to do the same thing. Job lost his children, and here, a child is lost. But the main character is not the parent, as Job was. Plot connections don’t seem to be meant, just a cosmic perspective leading us to view things more correctly. If Malick means for us to get off our high horses, shut up, and start meditating on the bigger issues, then he has my deepest respect.

As a filmmaker who has shown an extraordinary love and fascination with nature throughout his career, it’s intriguing that Malick sets nature against grace here, clearly suggesting we choose the latter over the former. As a Christian, I was looking to see how he would define grace, which I associate with the life and death of Christ. I may have missed it this time around, but he seems to equate it with love, kindness and forgiveness.

And while this is not at all the most egregious example, can’t anyone in Hollywood or the American film industry get religion right? Obviously, Malick is working to connect a mid-twentieth-century American expression of Christianity with larger cosmic issues. No problem there; in fact, kudos. But either Malick is deliberately trying to create a generic Christian religion here—which doesn’t work with the specific place, time, and family dynamic he’s created—or he just gets religious expression as wrong as those directors who can’t hold a candle to him artistically (i.e., just about everyone else). Most filmmakers working outside of an Irish or Italian story seem to try and create a nonspecific Protestant expression that’s not Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian—it’s just limp generic non-Catholic. Here, it must be Catholic, as Pitt’s character genuflects, does something of a crossing of himself, and then goes and lights a candle. But the priest preaches like nothing I’ve heard in a Catholic church (and this from a former altar boy), sounding much more the Anglicans of Jane Austen expression. The “grace” at home before the mail isn’t Catholic either. Confusing.

Leaving Malick alone for a moment, can’t anyone get this right? Every so often we get a Robert Duvall film that both reflects and respects reality in religion, and I and other believers breathe a huge sigh of relief and recognition (even if it’s not always complimentary). I know that the American film industry is, at the moment, generally antipathetic to genuine Christianity and confused about nearly every kind of religious expression. But where are the researchers here? If you work to get the costumes and sets right, and the dialogue of its time, can’t anyone nail down a real place of worship where people really do and say what they would actually do in such a place?

I’m being a little unfair to the film and to Malick, as the exactitude of the family’s religion doesn’t harm the film much. It’s just disconcerting to see even so small a lapse in such an astonishing film, especially one that uses religion as a springboard to such celestial issues as the film addresses.

Perhaps at some other point I’ll do a Part Three to this review, as there is so much more in this film on love and grace that could be discussed. I have to get past my awe of its artistry and the initial round of questions and irritations first.

Why so late? Well, I don’t live in a big city, I’m very busy outside of my life of seeing films, and films don’t play very long anymore before being pulled. If I want to catch them in the theater, where I should have seen this, I have to more diligent about catching them quickly. So I decided to see it a few days on my OK, not-tiny-but-not-big TV on DVD. Am hoping that it’s nominated for enough Oscars to justify a re-release in the theaters, but I’m not getting my hopes up. So I saw it at home. Still–wow.

Director Terrence Malick may not have created a whole new language for film with The Tree of Life, but he certainly has a new and fresh dialect going on. Yes, it’s audacious, reaching for both heights and depths that few films can conceive of. It would be easy to focus on the cosmic issues are work here, and they are central, powerful, and integral to what he’s doing.

But what intrigued me the most was the way Malick told his story, and especially his story-within-the-story of a young man in fifties Texas. He comes at his plot of family life from an angle, with his camera always moving around, pushing forward, pushing forward, pushing forward. Family discussions and dynamics aren’t presented; they’re caught, and then we move on. It works to make the thoughts and actions of a young boy and his family, especially his parents, all of a piece with issues such as, oh, the existence of God, the creation of the world, and the end of the world. If that sounds pretentious, it’s not, and the film doesn’t feel that way at all. His approach has been called impressionistic, and that’s partly accurate in its look and use of light (incredible) and movement. But Malick goes deep at moments, into thoughts and behaviors and feelings that are specific and real, all without stopping the onward momentum of the film. We feel as if we get to know this family, and especially this young man played with such feeling and precision by Hunter McCracken.

Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain as the parents have rightly received a great deal of praise for their performances. Both have already won awards for this performance in conjunction with other triumphs of the year (Pitt for Moneyball and Chastain for The Help, The Debt, Take Shelter, and Coriolanus—yes, she’s had quite the year). I highlight in conjunction because these performances have the same challenge as the actors in a Hitchcock film. These are both performances that can be studied for years—Pitt inhabits this character, and Chastain plays a walking dream and a real person at the same time—but as with Hitchcock films, it is ultimately the director who is the star. If either actor had only done this one film this past year, I daresay there would be praise, but no awards.

Not sure why five editors were needed—don’t recall ever seeing that many listed before—but as with early (1920s) Russian/Soviet films, this film has been assembled, constructed. That’s not an insult, but the highest praise. It takes a great deal of work to have something with so many parts flow so smoothly. The world this film creates is unique—a word I don’t use often and don’t like to. Yes, there is a strong sense of place in mid-century Texas, but this is not a family drama essentially. It’s not even the story of one young man, who has grown up to be a painfully pained Sean Penn. That’s the plot, but not the story. The story is life, transition, creation, death, humanity, deity and grace, and Malick and associates have created a look and pace that respects the issues the film raises and suggests.

The only weakness is the Sean Penn portion of the present. This portion of the film is slick, gorgeous, and neither specific nor cosmic enough to fit in with the rest of the film. While trying to hold the film together narratively, and helping with where Malick is going at the end, the Penn scenes don’t connect emotionally with the McCracken scenes of the character as a young boy.

But this is a minor carping. What we have with The Tree of Life is simply the most extraordinary film of the year, and perhaps many a year. It’s not going to entertain everyone, to be sure. That’s not its goal. Its subjects and one’s interpretations of those subjects have fueled and will fuel many discussions through the years, and it’s the rare American film that will even suggest that such cosmic issues be taken seriously. But beyond that, this is a stunningly beautiful, moving piece of artistic craftsmanship. Time will tell what effect The Tree of Life will have, but Malick has created a film that has pulled up the entire art form. Watch for its effect throughout the years.

Alexander Payne, director of The Descendants, simply has to make more films. Off all the takeaways from this wonderful film, this is the probably the biggest. The Descendants is not a perfect film, but an intelligent, insightful film on a medium scale is always a welcome.

The story is just one man’s story, and it’s kept appropriately sized. It’s not a GRAND STATEMENT, nor is it a grand melodramatic tragedy on a lonely, individual scale. (Insert huge sigh of gratitude here to Payne.) George Clooney plays Matt King, a middle-aged man, a father, a husband, a lawyer, a businessman, and a member of a fairly normal extended family. He will be nominated for Best Actor, and he continues to grow in subtlety and depth. I’ve never been moved by Clooney’s acting before, but I was here (in the perfectly calibrated goodbye scene near the end of the film). Yet he is still doing the occasional bobble-head thing and that sporadic halting, hiccup kind of delivery that approximates realism without living it.

The real acting find here is Shailene Woodley, who is justly earning praise and recognition for her turn as Matt’s daughter Alexandra. The role could easily have been interpreted as The Generic Angry Older Teenage Daughter. Happily, it’s not, though Alexandra almost starts that way. Then her situation and personality unfurl, and we see a young woman who is her own personality, and is angry for a reason. Her character is a specific person with her own thoughts and feelings; Woodley avoids clichés at every turn. She’s a joy to watch here, and if this performance is any indication of the future, we all have a lot to look forward to.

The film has a great sense of place that reminded me of The Constant Gardener, another film that made you feel as if you were getting to know a place as well as the plot and people. Right away we are told that the setting is not going to be the tropical paradise Hawaii we would normally expect. We’re treated to beaches and mountains and vistas, but they are all a part of the world of the characters. Hawaii stays a setting, never competing with the actors by being a character in and off itself.

The acting is uniformly good throughout, with nary a false note. There are several scenes that go right to the edge of humor or believability, but most stay in bounds and only color, rather than tear at, the world that Payne’s created. Nick Krause as Sid, Alexandra’s friend and steadying influences, threatens at first to become a human version of the “surfer dude-ish” turtle in Finding Nemo, but he eventually goes from a joke to a person. Judy Greer as the wife of an unfaithful man, however, goes too far in her scene with the woman who had an affair with her husband, and a film majoring in modulation tips into comic silliness for a moment. Happily, it passes quickly.

The casting of Beau Bridges as Cousin Hugh is perhaps understandable—we need to like this guy and sympathize with him to some extent as he works through some touchy business with Matt. But a recognizable star introduced at a relatively late point in the film almost breaks the delicately real world that’s been created. Having your mind go “Oh, it’s Beau Bridges—and look at that hair” certainly can take you away from the film for a moment.

All told, though, The Descendants is a grown-up film for grown-ups that is not an adventure, a joyride, nor a special-effects-laden rollercoaster. While what it’s not is especially appreciated right now, what it is is even better—a sad, funny, real, complicated, intelligent film about people who are sad, funny, real, complicated and intelligent.

As sleek and shiny as the surfaces of the world’s tallest building and the suits worn by Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt) and Jeremy Renner (Brandt). One great action sequence after another, with just enough quiet moments to catch your breath. And it falls out of your brain an hour after you’re done watching it.

I like and admire director Brad Bird (The Incredibles and Ratatouille, the latter being one of my favorites of 2007), and this is a career-establishing move to live-action films. It’s clear that Bird’s imagination, nurtured in animation, brings a freedom and energy to his action sequences that most other action directors don’t possess. He’s not earth-bound in any way, and there is a visceral punch and joy to those parts of the film that easily lift this fourth entry in the series above the others.

Another high point is Jeremy Renner, whose intensity pulls the film up another notch, especially in his scenes with Cruise, who moves away from his normal baseline approach of smiles and one-liners when he acts with Renner. Renner doesn’t shine here as he did in The Hurt Locker or The Town, but he’s easily the strongest of the four leads. Having Simon Pegg as the comic relief is another bonus, but his humor isn’t always well integrated into the film’s rhythms and tone. Still, Pegg’s character is a happy presence that prevents the film from reaching intensity overload via the presence of Cruise and Renner.

There’s an uneasy alliance between the relative realism of the political tensions and violence in the film and the utter fantasy of some of the action sequences and plot points. The film is both grounded and cartoonish, often within the same sequence. It’s almost always dazzling, but it stretches disbelief too far, too often. The last-minute—rather, last-second—climax is simply beyond the pale, and undercuts the suspense and tension of the sequence it ends. It nearly mocks all that went before.

Suffice it to say that Paula Patton is a solid actress who plays the Bond girl with Lara Croft skills in this non-Bond movie.

As an action film, it works. Just suspend your disbelief to the max and enjoy the ride.