Il ya longtemps que je t'aime (I've Loved You So Long) - % % % %

A brilliant concept for a character-driven drama, Kristen Scott Thomas plays Juliette who moves in with her sister's family after 15 years in prison for murder. Her sentence comes out pretty early in the film, so I don't think I'm ruining anything by telling you that she killed her son when he was six. It's a remarkable story of the struggles of resiliency. How does one go on after something so horrible and then after losing so much of one's life in such a shameful and impossible to understand manner?

Kristen Scott Thomas is excellent. Really excellent. Her eyes hold a well of sadness known particularly to those who have lost their children.

The script is excellently written and directed by Phillipe Claudel, including paralleling stories and characters that broaden the main plot and elaborate upon Juliette's journey. She is befriended by her parole officer who suffers from his own demons. Her sister, well played by Elsa Zylberstein, has two young daughters of her own whose mere presence continually emphasizes the conflict and develops opportunities for inter-character conflicts. She has chosen to adopt because of her fears after her sister's actions. It is profound how our actions lead to the understanding of our younger family members' worldviews and this is a deftly woven example. As Juliette is developed, set pieces illustrate and remind the audience of her struggles, from wheelchair bound extras to the new birth of a friend's child. Again and again, she must revisit how her life will always be different and similar to others. It's magnificent at times.

And yet, there are moments that are too heavy handed. A friend tells her that he doesn't judge her because he worked in a prison once and has learned that we, the free and the convicted, are all the same. Oh, brother. It's already clear after explaining that he worked in a prison for a time, but he goes on and explains it all so unnecessarily. It's too bad because it's otherwise a wonderfully tender and hopeful moment. There are others included in the film and still more in the extras' deleted scenes. I wish they had cut just a little bit more. The film could have soared even higher.

All in all it's very very good. I put off watching it because I thought it'd be too depressing and, while there is a deep sadness to it, the film is extremely hopeful. This is not misery-porn like Cherrie Baby or some Lars Von Trier sadistic parade of emotional torture. Kristen Scott Thomas' reserve becomes a force of strength and hope and the surrounding cast is a crew of some of the best people one could ever hope to know. Perhaps a bit too optimistic, but there are plenty of judgmental side characters for balance. It never feels too cheerful. It is true that spending an evening with a bunch of kids running around a beautiful home and walking around a vineyard with a bunch of intelligent friends is wonderful and it does regulate the dreariness of life. This is a character who, like her social worker and parole officer say, is very lucky to have family. And through these thoughtful adult relationships and the bonds of communal, daily, family living, a very wounded soul can be a resource of love and support as well. And maybe live happily ever after too. Well, can live ever after, which is often the best we can reasonably hope for, and that's OK too.

Poetic Justice - % % %

The script is just way too contrived, much like the title. A film about a girl named Justice who writes poetry named Poetic Justice. Ouch. Add to this that the characters are too erratic to feel like real people, let alone anyone you'd want to care about.

Spoiler
The film follows Justice and her friends as they travel from LA to Oakland on a road trip. The film opens as Justice (Janet Jackson) loses her not so great boyfriend (Q Tip) in the very first scene. He gets shot in the head, the blood flying onto her. The scene is typical of the film. The characters simply go back and forth, shouting, kissing, fighting, without much underlying arc. Their personalities and moods simply serve to move the plot along too conveniently. And the plot has ridiculously unnecessary sections like the stop at the carnival. I can see that in editing it was decided to keep the section because it develops the relationship between Justice and Lucky, but it should have been obvious in the screenplay that it felt especially gimmicky after a similar side-story at a family picnic. And then

Justice and her love interest, Lucky (Tupac Shakur), have vulnerable moments, but the rest of the cast are shallow, often heartless and cold. It may be that Singleton wanted to show the various people like this, but it is a harsh statement from a man who knows that he is a rare cinematic voice of the African-American community. Justice's best friend, Iesha (Regina King), and her boyfriend, Chicago (Joe Torry), are particularly juvenile and trifling characters. Regina King has become a fantastic actress, as noticed in Ray. But these characters are ridiculous. Iesha's moment of vulnerability happens quickly. Suddenly after vomiting and being told that her drinking is a problem by her best friend, she comes around and makes a sweeping apology. It's a terrible scene on many fronts. Later she and Chicago break up in a violent fight, instigated by his lack of stamina at sex. It's pathetic for both characters. Is Singleton using these two as a foil for the better love between Lucky and Justice? If so it is too strong a contrast, and they are too awful as people for anyone in the audience to learn any lessons from.

In comparison with his later films, like Baby Boy, I could just chalk this up to youth and immaturity. He was 24 when he made Poetic Justice, so fair enough. That's impressive. There are kernels in the film, especially Janet Jackson and Tupac's performances. They have real chemistry. Justice's character is buoyed by the poetry of Maya Angelou, whose performance and role in the film as a family elder is unfortunately awkward and forced. The film as a whole lacks subtlety and sympathy, let alone a script editor. But there are so damn few films about young black Americans, I'll take what I can get.

Furthermore, I love that it is a respectful story about a postman and a hair-stylist. I think we should revel more often in the stories of more average people. Don't get me wrong that I think film should always reflect reality, but looking at even the indie films of this summer, very few revolve around any people remotely modest or average in their occupations.

Inglorious Basterds - % % % %

Ridiculous.




I could just leave it at that. Fun, funny, gory. I'm still mulling this one over.


What's the point of this movie? Is it that revenge is essentially wish fulfillment, as is much violence? Hollow, fun, and leaves you with a skip in your step but little else?

The ridiculousness permeates every little bit of the film. "Once upon a time... in Nazi occupied France" opens the film, establishing that this is a fairy tale, and a preposterous one at that. Brad Pitt as a hillbilly scalping sergeant. Eli Roth as the Bear Jew who beats Nazis to death with a baseball bat. That's some brilliant casting. I loved the musical selections. I laughed so hard when Bowie's theme from Cat People played to the Jewish heroine prepares seductively for her night of revenge. It's so over the top, I'm not sure how to take it. The most brilliant part of the film is the use of nitrate film stock as an explosive. That's a genius metaphor. Film exacting an eruptive revenge while the heroine laughs maniacally immediately following her gruesome death.

I'll write a more coherent review soon. I just had to get something down. So ridiculous.

Comments

If you have read any part of this, would you please leave a comment? I'd like to know if anyone has checked this out and if I ought to tailor it for an audience or if it should continue as an exercise for myself. Thanks!

Besieged - % % % % %

Why is this film not talked about more often? It is beautifully executed by a filmmaker, Bernardo Bertolucci, at the peak of his abilities. It stars Thandie Newton and David Thewlis in daring, subtle and charged performances. It is from an excellently written script, Bertolucci and wife, Clare Peploe, brilliantly adapted and changed from a short story by James Lasdun, The Siege.

Shot by shot, the film is composed of elegantly selected perspectives which follow these two characters, "emotional exiles" and their developing love for one another. Shandurai is an African immigrant fleeing trauma and seeking a new life as a medical student in Italy while working in the home of a solitary pianist, Mr. Kinski (Thewlis). Newton is beautiful. She is extraordinarily beautiful. Thewlis has shown potent sexuality in the films of Mike Leigh and here he is reclusive and intense. The strength of the character develops through his music and implied actions.

After declaring his love for her, she is terrified and infuriated. He demands to know how he can make her love him and she tells him that he could get her husband out of prison in their home which has become a military dictatorship. He is stunned at not even knowing that she is married. And here begins a parable of devotion and love. The film opens with a folksinger singing in Luou, and he appears in Shandurai's dreams, pressing her feelings and passions forward. Spoiler: He sells everything, his inheritance and eventually his Steinway, his voice, to buy the freedom of her husband. She comes to love him and they share one night together, and in the morning her husband arrives at the door freed.

The film is nearly silent, but for the powerful presence of music: the piano played by Kinski and the African pop music loved by Shangurai. The film unfolds detail by detail and in the excellent commentary by Bertolucci and Peploe, Bertolucci explains that he wants to follow the style of Hitchcock, by creating suspense in the audience. It is a story of two wounded souls who must press beyond their safe, structured lives in order to find love and companionship. Maturely, there is not a traditional happy ending, but rather an understanding, which is often the most that can be hoped for in adult relations.

In the commentary, Bertolucci reveals that he doesn't do a storyboard. He creates a shot list the day before. He digests the material and then proposes a means of approaching the story. I can't believe that. His Cinematographer must go nuts. He also talks about showing off in his shots, being acrobatic, and he feels that age has subdued him. True, Il conformista is a dazzling film. And yes, Besieged is more subtle, but the editing is more challenging and exciting. Close-ups of Newton are divided, using jump cuts to strike notes of emotions, "palpitations of the heart of the movie" he describes in the commentary. For example, two shots of Newton getting news of her husband were taken in two different emotional tones and then intercut to create a complex moment and story. The film was shot with three cameras! What a luxury!

The themes of loving difference, the means of moving towards another and the connection between generosity and passion. I can go on and on. It's wonderful. Unexpectedly, the love scene is so different from Last Tango in Paris, for example. They put their legs over one anothers' in a tender moment and awake at the final moment nude and embracing, preventing the other from moving without one's consent.

The film feels small in many ways, stemming from the intimacy of the cast and location in a beautiful Roman home, pierced through by a spiral staircase. There are entire characters whose faces we do not see. We only see what is important and essential. This narrowness makes it feel like folklore, a modern parable, leading to a moral that generosity and self-sacrifice lead to, and are inherent in intimacy and love. It's wonderful.

According to the author of the short story in the commentary, it is based upon a medieval tale by Boccaccio. So there.

Killer of Sheep - % % % % %

Killer of Sheep has been called a hidden masterpiece for decades. Problems with securing the rights to the music in the film kept it from getting distribution. Few people understand the extraordinary prices attached to music rights that generally serve to promote the music and future music sales. But I digress from the film, which is quite extraordinary.

Why are there no other films quite like it? Killer of Sheep follows a man through his middle aged life trying to make it through a difficult job, living poorly with crime always a tempting opportunity, raising kids while sustaining a relationship with his wife. Pretty mundane in many respects. Yet the film exists in a hot dream-like world. Shot in 16mm black and white the film transports us to a kind of rural reverie, akin to the opening of the Wizard of Oz, without the intensely performed musical numbers. In Killer of Sheep, the only musical performance is that of a little girl in a closet singing to her doll. The main character suffers from sleep deprivation and this dreary, muddled atmosphere follows throughout the film, lulling the audience into a somnambulic acquiescence. We are awakened by heart-ache as we see good intentions crash from the back of a pick-up truck or the sad dignity of this family trying to keep the lure of crime at bay.

The scenes of kids playing in vacant lots surrounded by buildings nearing collapse and train yards with paralyzed cars cemented in place create the magic of the film. The central performances are powerful and intimate, but the scenes with the children reveal a resilient joy and a befuddled persistence. These qualities are what make Killer of Sheep unique and appealing.

Julie & Julia - % %

Yes, after a summer of watching nearly nothing, I watched this. It was cute at points and not as annoying as some (male) reviewers have made it out to be. I won't say much because there isn't much to say.

The film revolves around a sad twenty-something who wants to be a writer but like many has not been able to find a way through hard work and tenacity to accomplish her goals and so has a temp job. It's a legitimately depressing temp job. Well they all are in legitimate ways, essentially depressing, but this one involves attempting to assist the survivors of the World Trade Center attacks. But instead of finding inspiration in her work, Julie finds it in an exercise. She decides (with the help of her shallowly depicted husband whose only characteristic, aside from being saintly, is to not like having it rubbed in his face) to begin a blog of cooking all of the recipes from Julia Child's famous book on French cooking.

And so begins Julie's creation of Julia Child in her imagination. Meryl Streep is obviously, unsurprisingly wonderful. But the plot lines with her would have been more interesting as a documentary I might watch on PBS one Sunday afternoon. She sounds much more interesting than the parallel story of the imagined Julia and the real life Julie, a simple woman without much to deal with in real life except her own underdeveloped self. So she develops herself into a better cook and a sometimes writer. She faces obstacles. Things don't always go her way. But eventually she gets profiled in the New York Times and gets a book deal. She apologizes to her bland husband and all ends happily. Yawn.

The only interesting thing I've found about this film is that Ben and Ben on At the Movies thought that Julie was whiny and childish. That's not too far from the truth. What makes this character different than say any Meg Ryan character ever is that Julie doesn't have anything going for her. I can't imagine why her husband married her. Since the book is autobiographical, apparently the author doesn't get it either. And the process of getting Julie to a place where she becomes someone of interest is painful because it illustrates a theory of mine that schooling doesn't really develop adults, life does. And much of schooling is structured to prevent maturing. Intense academic rigor should perhaps be reserved for the more matured and young adults should staff gas stations and janitorial closets and learn a bit more about themselves and life before getting fabulous educations. Then when they graduate from Barnard they perhaps won't spend eight years temping and feeling like failures.