Film stuff by Mark

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.

A well-acted, beautifully written small picture. It’s a dramatic comedy about a young man who has a 50/50 chance of beating cancer—based on the real-life journey of screenwriter Will Reiser. It’s on the scale of a Woody Allen movie, and doesn’t have an epic shot, computer creature, or swelling chord of music in it. Not that there is anything wrong with that—but it’s a nice break to go through an entire film without any of that.

Once it’s over, you realize that the idea could be considered cliché—young man is dead in every emotional and relational way, gets sick with a possibly terminal illness, and gradually comes to life through the experience. But the outcome of the disease isn’t obvious from the start, and the movement toward life is so real, so measured, that we are in suspense until near the end, and are engaged throughout. The requisite moments are there—the comeuppance scene of the “villain,” the primal scream of rage against the disease and all it’s taken and might take from the central character, the reconnecting moments between the lead and important secondary characters. But they are done in understated or unexpected ways, and seem to flow out of the reality of the circumstances and the characters themselves.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Adam) is one of my favorite young actors, and at first I was underwhelmed by his performance. That is, until it became clear what an emotionally constricted people-pleaser his character was. Then, over time, the performance blossomed with a warmth and freedom of expression that was still gentle but no longer beaten down. It’s a lovely character arc.

Dallas Bryce Howard is an unusual screen presence, and I struggle to find the right adjective to describe her as an actress. She has lately been excelling in playing multi-layered women we don’t like without turning them into completely hateful people (see The Help). She’s growing in skill as an actress, but she never seems to fit entirely into any film in which she’s cast. There is an individuality that stands out (or for the more critical among us, sticks out) in her films. Yet I admire her bravery and her unwillingness to play a character generically. Here she plays Rachael, Adam’s girlfriend, and isn’t afraid to show us the conflicted weaknesses behind her actions.

Anna Kendrick as the therapist can pretty much do no wrong on screen. Once I saw her performance in Up in the Air, I was sold. She owns the screen every moment she’s in a scene.

The heart of the story, though, involves Adam’s relationship with his best friend Kyle, played in fairly typical crude puppy-dog fashion by Seth Rogan (Reiser’s real-life friend who helped walk him though his cancer experience). Kyle is rude, crude and lewd, and the reason why kids shouldn’t see the film. His character helps maintain the realism of the film by his sex-obsessed rants, references and suggestions, which are typical of certain types of young men. But the incessant crudity almost derails the film from making its strongest points—the value of true friendship. It’s not a spoiler to say that Kyle is a true, decent and loyal friend, and that in spite of his immaturity and adolescent perspectives, his actions display the heart and soul of a genuine friend when one is needed. It’s a point that’s almost drowned in profanity and coarse sexual talk. But ultimately, Kyle and his friendship with Adam are at the heart of the film. And—no spoiler alert here—Kyle gets to be the center of the most emotionally satisfying scene in the film, and brings us willingly and happily right along with him. You’ll just have to see the film to know what I mean.

I have to completely let go of my professor/film critic hat when I talk about this movie. That’s OK, and it’s not just because I am a Christian or that I have a little (tiny, actually) connection with one of the actors. (Kevin Downes, who plays Shane Fuller in the film, was in my office with his brother Bobby a few years ago discussing the possibility of shooting a film in our region of upstate/Western New York).

It’s because this film is something different from almost every other kind of film. It’s a feel-bad, feel-good sermon, and it completely works on that level. It’s not meant to entertain, though it’s as touching to a Christian dad as any film I’ve ever seen. It’s not trying to be “work of art,” but it has one comic scene involving the question “Do you?” between actors Robert Amaya (Javier) and Alex Kendrick (Adam) that is a good an exchange as found in any comedy anywhere.

The most striking feature of the film is what makes it such a great experience for an evangelical Christian, and a Christian dad in particular It’s so unabashedly Christian, and isn’t the least bit subtle, coy, or hesitant about it. For someone who believes that Jesus is the center of the universe, as does the author, that makes this film a joy to experience. The acting is OK at best (except for the aforementioned scene). The script is meandering and wildly unfocused at times, with too many stories trying to be told. The film looks good, but none of the technical elements is particularly noteworthy.. But for someone who believes in Christ, it’s the most powerful film to come along in ages. It hits hard, hurts some, and makes its impact loud and painfully clear.

“Christian films”—those aimed specifically at a Christian market—are manifestly improving, and there are offshoots of that genre that can easily be categorized as tight independent films with an increasingly Christian worldview behind them (e.g., Like Dandelion Dust). Then there are those films that embrace the idea or experience of faith within a Christian context (see The Way by Emilio Estevez or Vera Farmiga’s Higher Ground) that are moving into Robert Bresson or Carl Dreyer territory. There’s so much going on in the area of faith, and specifically, Christianity, in films that we can only notice the growth as well as the breadth of expression. If we’re looking at only one strand—“Christian films,” films primarily about faith, films tangentially about faith—we’re missing the tapestry of topics that are being investigated and the increasingly complex and fine work being done in unexpected corners.

Courageous is clearly in the classic “Christian film” category. And while folks are rightly saying that they are improving and are, to many of my friends, as enjoyable as a Disney film, it can’t come close to most mainstream “Hollywood” films. Doesn’t matter. This is a different animal, with a completely different aim. Go, Sherwood Pictures, go. Keep it up, keep improving, and keep making the kinds of films that are on your hearts to make.