All posts by Dennis Hartley

Japed crusader: Griff the Invisible **

August 8, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on August 27, 2011)

While the “outsider” is a well-established archetype in film, a new sub-genre has emerged in recent years. It’s perhaps best described as “Revenge of the Nerds: The Millennial Generation Re-boot”; a little bit mumble core, with a touch of character study and magical realism (steeped in hipster irony). The protagonist is usually a quirky, socially awkward daydreamer who pines for love and understanding, but despite best efforts to connect, comes off as, well, a dork.

Frequently, our hero or heroine is ridiculed and/or bullied by others, prompting deeper retreat into a private universe, or the creation of an alter ego who then (figuratively or literally) “defeats” their tormentors. Think: Office Killer, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Amelie, Secretary, Muriel’s Wedding, Ghost World, Lars and the Real Girl, Napoleon Dynamite, Eagle vs. Shark and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Now you can add Australian import Griff the Invisible to that list.

20-something Griff (Ryan Kwanten) is an introverted Sydney office drone one or two symptoms shy of an Asperger’s diagnosis. The more he tries to make himself “invisible”, the more he incites the office bully (Toby Schmitz) to cruelly prank him in front of his co-workers. Poor Griff hasn’t figured out that most basic tenet of social anthropology-the more you assimilate, the less attention you draw to yourself . His only solace comes in the form of an alter ego, “Griff the Protector”. A legend in his own mind, Griff the Protector is a nocturnal crime-fighter, who takes names and kicks ass.

The Sydney police have been receiving numerous complaints from Griff’s neighbors about some weirdo running around at night wearing a rubber superhero suit, peering into windows and creeping people out. “Oh no, you’re not doing it again, are you?” asks Griff’s concerned older brother Tim (Patrick Brammall), implying that Griff has had a history of difficulty delineating reality from fantasy.

You can tell that Tim (the “responsible” sibling) cares about his brother, but is at the end of his rope as to how he’s going to drag Griff out of his arrested development and into adult life (kicking and screaming) . Besides, he has his own life to live, with a career, a bright future and a new girlfriend named Melody (Maeve Dermody).

However, as we get to know Melody, we wonder if she’s hooked up with the “right” brother. For example, whenever Tim starts prattling on about plans for the future, Melody tends to drift off, fixing her gaze on an indeterminate point somewhere on the horizon. And when it’s time to say “good night”, her quick pull away when Tim tries to give her a peck doesn’t bode well for the couple’s future, either.

The only time Melody gets jazzed is when she’s alone, reading up on particle physics. She has become obsessed with the possibilities of passing a human body through solid matter. She has been practicing the trick on her bedroom wall; needless to say, she’s been sustaining head injuries-which could explain the “drifting off” thing. So, are these two kooks (Griff and Melody) going to end up together?

This is the first feature film for writer-director Leon Ford, and while it’s a bit uneven, Kwanten and Dermody have great screen chemistry and lend charm to the film. However, the characters, as written, teeter precariously between “endearingly quirky” and “mentally ill” (you’re torn between cheering them on and wishing someone would whisk them both off for a psych evaluation).

That aside, Ford’s film is a diverting enough 90 minutes, as long as you don’t set expectations too high. And the film’s message, which is something along the lines of: Who cares what people believe about you, as long as you have someone in your life who truly believes in you…is certainly an encouraging one, nu?

Documentary

Lady in a cage: Nenette ***

August 8, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on January 29, 2011)

Orangutans are skeptical

Of changes in their cages

And the zookeeper is very fond of rum.

-Paul Simon

Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore!’

-Edgar Allan Poe

The cat, of course, said nothing.

-Kinky Friedman

Humans are silly creatures, particularly with our compulsive need to anthropomorphize our animal friends. You see what just happened there? I had an uncontrollable compulsion to say, animal “friends”. How do I really know they’re my “friends”? When I was a kid, I loved spending Saturday mornings watching Yogi and Boo-Boo copping picnic baskets. Now, let’s say I’m taking a nature hike on Kodiak Island, and suddenly find myself face to face with a 1500 pound bear. What would be my first “compulsion” then? Give him a cheerful greeting? Not likely. I would probably acquiesce to my lizard brain response (i.e., soil myself and flee in the opposite direction).

In Nicolas Philibert’s Nenette, a documentary centering on a beloved 41 year-old female orangutan who has resided in the menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris since 1969, a zoo visitor hypothesizes likewise. “The thickness of the glass…it’s in proportion to our fear of getting closer,” he muses. “She seems familiar to us, because we’re protected. But, if the glass were to break all of a sudden…you wouldn’t hear ‘my sweet Nenette’ anymore. You’d only hear, ‘Run for your lives!’.” Like I said- humans are silly creatures.

And, throughout the four decades since she was captured in her native Borneo and transplanted to the Jardin des Plantes, Nenette has watched the daily parade of silly creatures that point and gawk and endlessly pontificate about what she might be thinking. The director gives us lots of time to study Nenette’s (mostly impassive) reaction to all the fuss; because the camera stays on her (and to a lesser extent, her three fellow orangutans) for nearly the entire 70-minute running time of the film. The zoo visitors are largely heard, and not seen, save for their ephemeral reflections in the thick glass that separates the simians from the homosapiens. “She looks sad,” says one little girl. “I think she looks very depressed,” one woman opines; “Maybe she misses her husband?” wonders another.

Nenette has actually been “married” three times over the years, and has borne four offspring. One of her adult sons keeps her company (and to address the inevitable question that arises concerning the particulars of that living arrangement, a handler assures us that when Nenette’s son matured, it was decided that she be put on the pill, surreptitiously dropped into her daily bowl of yogurt).

In my favorite scene, a visitor attempts to bond with Nenette’s son. Speaking in almost reverently hushed tones, she tells a companion that, unlike most zoo patrons, she “knows how to communicate” with the orangutans. “Sing for me,” this Jane Goodall wannabe coos seductively, and then kisses the glass (we assume, as the orangutan appears to be aping the gesture from his side). I suspect she is one of those people who, according to a handler, drop by for daily chats with the apes, as if visiting with a family member in prison.

Nenette, of course, says nothing. Orangutans are taciturn by nature, and not overtly demonstrative like some of the other great apes. I suppose this makes Nenette’s inscrutable countenance an ideal “blank canvas” upon which each chatty visitor can paint their own unique projection (if you planted a microphone behind the Mona Lisa, you would likely have a very similar collage of comments).

Not surprisingly, it takes the observations of (someone we assume to be) an actor to ultimately put Philibert’s enigmatic and meditative film study into perspective. As he marvels at “the quality of (Nenette’s) idleness” which she executes “with astounding virtuosity” he is reminded of an exercise from acting class, in which the teacher instructs the students that “the space is yours…just be there.” He concludes, “She is fully there, that’s all.” For all we know, she’s pondering how yummy a nice banana might taste right now.

Animated, Armageddon, Family Issues, Sci-Fi

Facebookopalypse now: Summer Wars ****

August 8, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on February 5, 2011)

Don’t be misled by the title of Mamoru Hosoda’s Summer Wars-this could be the Gone with the Wind of Japanese anime. OK…that’s a tad hyperbolic. But it has drama, romance, comedy, and war-centering around a bucolic family estate. Maybe- Tokyo Story meets War Games? At any rate, it’s one of the better animes of recent years.

The film opens with echoes of Weird Science, as we are introduced to a couple of nerdy teenagers, geeking out in the virtual world of “Oz”, a global cyber network where all users (from individuals to governments) communicate and conduct business via avatars. Kenji (voiced by Michael Sinterniklass) and his pal have part time jobs working for the network (something techie…it’s all big magic to me).

Anyway, the boys are pretty sharp at what they do; Kenji is also a math whiz. When it comes to relating to the opposite sex, however, they are relatively clueless. Kenji has a crush on of their classmates, Natsuki (Brina Palencia), but has no idea as to where to take it from there. Imagine his surprise when Natsuki invites him along on a visit to see grandma out at her family’s sprawling country estate, where the clan is gathering to celebrate the spry matriarch’s 90^th birthday.

Kenji is hit with an even bigger surprise when Natsuki introduces him to her family as her “fiancee”. Flustered at first, Kenji decides (correctly) that he should probably play along. After apologizing for springing this on him, Naksuki begs Kenji to go along with the ruse for the duration of their visit; she just wants to avoid getting hounded by nosy relatives on the subject of matrimony. This actually gives the socially awkward Kenji an instant entree with the eccentric but loving clan. He has some consternation when Natsuki’s “first crush” suddenly shows up-her brooding, James Dean-ish uncle (J. Michael Tatum), who is the long-estranged black sheep of the family.

Late one evening, Kenji receives a cryptic text message, challenging him to crack a complex equation (which is like catnip to a math nerd). After pulling an all-niter, he solves it. Unfortunately, he soon discovers that he has been duped; by solving the math problem, he has unwittingly enabled a malicious AI program to hack into the Oz network-and sees his photo plastered all over the TV news as a wanted cyber-criminal (much to his newly adopted family’s chagrin).

As the virus begins to methodically assimilate the avatars belonging to millions of users, it exponentially gains more control over the grid, wreaking increasingly insidious infrastructural havoc worldwide as its power grows. Soon the stakes become even higher-and in true anime tradition, the mantle of saving the earth falls on upon the diminutive shoulders of our geeky hero and his friends (with unexpected help from grandma, who proves that in times of crisis, it’s those old school social networking skills that really count).

Although a number of the narrative devices in Satoko Ohuder’s script will feel familiar to anime fans, it’s the humanistic touches and subtle social observations (reminiscent of the films by the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu) that make this such a worthwhile and satisfying entertainment. Director Hosoda began his career in the genre back in the early 90s, working at Japan’s highly respected Toei Animation studio as an animator. This is only the second feature-length anime he has overseen; his first was the outstanding 2007 fantasy-adventure, The Girl Who Leapt through Time. Judging by these two films, he has a very promising career ahead of him.

Drama, Fantasy

The weight of water: Undertow ***1/2

August 8, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on January 22, 2011)

Just when you thought you’d had your fill of romantic ghost stories about closeted Peruvian fishermen, along comes writer-director Javier Fuentes-Leon with his debut film Contracorriente (Undertow). And yes, I am being facetious. A cross between Making Love and Truly Madly Deeply, it is a unique, compassionate, beautifully moving tale.

The story is set on the Peruvian coast. We meet an amiable young fisherman named Miguel (Cristian Mercado) and his lovely, very pregnant wife Mariela (Tatiana Astengo), who live in a sleepy little village-the kind of place where everyone not only knows your name, but nearly everything that you might be up to at any given moment.

So it’s a minor miracle that no one knows about Miguel’s amor secreto-an artist/photographer named Santiago (Manolo Cardona), an urban ex-pat who lives in an isolated beach shack, where he works on his paintings. Although he’s a low-key and gentle man, Santiago lives in literal and figurative isolation ; due to the fact that he is an openly gay agnostic. In a small town heavily imbued with the deeply conservative values of both traditional machismo culture and the Catholic Church, this counts for two big strikes against him.

Because of his high standing with fellow fishermen and the village priest (and the fact that he is a father-to-be), Miguel is bound and determined to keep his languid, passionate trysts on the beach with Santiago compartmentalized. “I’m not that way,” he insists with a barely convincing air of macho indignation, when Santiago breaches the subject of total and open commitment (denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, as the saying goes). Mercado is a subtle actor; the look on his face as he stalks away from his lover after the spat conveys both the conflict in his heart and the inner turmoil he is suffering from .

As the birth of his child approaches, Miguel gets jumpy. After Santiago “accidentally” runs into Mariela in the public market and offers to buy her a good luck candle for her baby after striking up a friendly chat, Miguel forbids him from further contact with his family. Santiago acquiesces, and the lovers cool their heels for a while. Imagine Miguel’s surprise when, after the birth of his new son, he is awakened in the middle of the night and discovers a distraught Santiago sitting on his kitchen floor. Miguel frantically attempts to shoo Santiago out without awakening his wife; it doesn’t work.

Miguel then has an even bigger surprise when Mariela asks him who he is talking to, even though Santiago is sitting between them . “Your face is white,” his wife says (as if he has seen a you-know-what). Santiago has a new secret, which drives the remainder of the film.

The director and his cinematographer (Mauricio Vidal) utilize the inherent beauty of the tropical South American coastline to good effect (it’s interesting to note that Cabo Blanco, where the most of the principal photography was done, was also where some location footage for the 1958 version of The Old Man and the Sea was shot).

The three leads are quite engaging. The film won the audience award at the 2010 Sundance Festival-not surprising considering the emotional wallop in the film’s denouement. While it is essentially a tale informed by magical realism, it earns its points delving into one of life’s biggest mysteries-the complexity of the human heart.

Documentary, Show Biz

Shades of Gray: And Everything is Going Fine ***1/2

August 8, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on January 22, 2011)

Everything is contingent, and there is also chaos.

–Spalding Gray

Who was it who once dismissed the art of the monologist as “comedy, without punch lines”? Oh…it was me. OK, I confess-when I used to work as a stand-up, I always felt a bit envious of my more long-winded show-biz cousins, because generally, they get to sit down (I’ve always been a lazy bastard). Not only that, but they get to sit behind a desk, upon which they are allowed to keep notes (in case they lose their place-which probably makes actors jealous, too).

They could get away with using props-without being accused of “hiding behind them”. Also, why is it that when a stand-up comic does a long-form piece with props, it’s a “one person-show”…never a “monologue”? Who, or what, officially certifies you as a monologist?

As I allegedly became older and wiser, I came to admire the monologists, once I gleaned what separates them from stand ups. Stand-ups are insecure and desperate for acceptance. That’s why we’re willing to go out there “naked” with only a microphone in hand, performing the same 20 minute act night after night for roomfuls of hostile drunks, collect $50, and dash for the exit, before the sense of shame and humiliation over what we do for a living sinks in (Jay Leno once cleverly likened the life of a stand up to that of a hooker).

A monologist, on the other hand, has to have a strong sense of confidence. Confident enough to believe that the minutiae of their lives is so fascinating, people will pay good money to sit in rapt attention for 90 minutes while they prattle on about themselves.

Whether or not you are going to enjoy And Everything is Going Fine, Steven Soderbergh’s documentary about the life of the late Spalding Gray (king of all monologists) largely hinges on how open you are to paying good money to sit in rapt attention for 90 minutes while someone prattles on about themselves. That’s because Soderbergh is shrewd enough to let a man who was nothing if not a compulsive (and gifted) storyteller tell you his own story, in his own words.

For Gray’s fans, Soderbergh’s film could be what the Beatles Anthology was to Fab Four aficionados-a masterfully edited and chronologically assembled compendium of clips from TV interviews and performance excerpts spanning the breadth of his career, spiced throughout by rare and previously unseen footage. What emerges is a portrait of the artist, narrated by the artist.

Like many moviegoers, my first awareness of Gray was due to Swimming to Cambodia, Jonathan Demme’s wonderfully realized 1987 film version of Gray’s stage show, in which Gray was able to weave a mesmerizing and entertaining monologue from his experience working on the 1984 film, The Killing Fields. He had a relatively minor part in that film, but the stage piece it inspired is a veritable epic; it may begin like just another backstage tale, but somehow ends up touching on life, the universe and everything.

The film was a surprise hit, and although he continued to take acting roles, he was always best at “playing” Spalding Gray, particularly in subsequent film versions of three more stage shows, (the 1988 HBO presentation Spalding Gray: Terrors of Pleasure, and two feature films-Monster in a Box from 1992 and Gray’s Anatomy, released in 1996).

There is an elephant in the room that Soderbergh largely sidesteps, and that is Gray’s tragic end. In March of 2004, after a two-month disappearance, his body was recovered from the East River, off Greenpoint in Brooklyn. It was a presumed suicide, as Gray had been suffering from severe depression (and had made several attempts to take his own life) since a 2001 car accident that left him with a fractured skull and shattered hip. There is some footage of Gray recounting the accident, and hobbling around on crutches, but not too much further elaboration on what it eventually may have led to.

Perhaps the director does broach the subject in his own oblique fashion; in one interview clip Gray jokes about how Soderbergh had talked him into taking a “perfect part” in his 1993 film King of the Hill-playing a depressive who eventually kills himself. And there are several clips (from tinterviews and stage shows) where Gray refers to his mother’s suicide; perhaps the most revealing quote comes when he says “I was darkly convinced that at age 52 I would kill myself because my mother committed suicide at that age. I was fantasizing that she was waiting for me on the other side of the grave.” We can never know who or what Gray thought might be waiting for him when he took that plunge into the watery depths, but if dead men really could tell tales, I’d bet his would be the best.

Dramedy, Heist Caper, Show Biz

Whoa, Lopakhin: Henry’s Crime ***

August 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 30, 2011)

Keanu Reeves does Chekhov? No, I’m not pitching an idea for an SNL sketch. After all, he has done Shakespeare (in Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado about Nothing, Gus van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, and played the lead in a stage version of Hamlet)-so is it such a stretch to see him sporting a goatee and a waistcoat in The Cherry Orchard?

In the quirky indie heist caper Henry’s Crime, he plays a guy who takes a role in a Chekhov play, even though his character is not an actor. I hear you-“Typecasting?” I know that Reeves has his share of detractors, perennially chagrined by his unique ability to remain completely motionless and expressionless for two hours at a stretch. But I have a theory-although his characters appear wooden, they still enjoy a rich” inner life” (you know…like Pinocchio).

One assumes that Henry (Reeves) has some kind of inner life. He seems a likable, easy-going fellow, if a bit…inscrutable. Maybe it’s his job. Working the graveyard shift at a N.Y. Thruway tollbooth would put anybody in semi-comatose state. Nothing fazes the agreeable yet impassive Henry, one way or the other-although he does display a slight twitch when, one morning at breakfast, his wife (Judy Greer) broaches the subject of the couple having a child.

We get the impression that Henry would prefer to be anywhere else but there, at that moment, having that particular conversation. What’s going on? Is this a troubled marriage? Does he love his wife? Is this cipher of a man internally harboring primal doubts? Or…is he suffering from a sudden attack of gas? There’s no way of discerning.

Fate intervenes, when an old high school chum named Eddie (Fisher Stevens) shows up on his doorstep, with a drunken cohort in tow. Both men are dubiously outfitted for baseball. Eddie wants to know if Henry can give them a ride to their “game”. Nothing about this questionable scenario seems to raise red flags for Henry. Even Eddie’s request to stop at the bank “on the way” fails to elicit a raised eyebrow from Henry. Needless to say, the heist goes awry, Henry’s car stalls, his “friends” flee, and guess who ends up holding the bag?

Henry doesn’t rat and takes the fall. At this point, one might surmise that Henry is either some kind of transcendent Zen master…or a clueless moron (not unlike the protagonist of Forrest Gump or Chance the gardener in Being There). Ah, but our little wooden boy is about to meet his Geppetto: Veteran con man Max (James Caan).

Max is one of those oddballs who actually “likes” prison-which is why he has been sabotaging his own parole hearings, so as to continue living on the state’s dime. He becomes a mentor/father figure to Henry, who takes it to heart when Max advises him that he needs to find a Dream, and then pursue it. So what is Henry’s epiphany? Since he’s already done the time, he might as well now do the crime.

Henry gets out of the pen, discovers that his wife has remarried to one of the creeps who set him up, and foments a plan to rob the bank that he originally had no intention of robbing in the first place. While casing the scene, he Meets Cute with an actress (Vera Farmiga) who is working at the theater next door to the bank. Hence, the plot thickens, getting us to that part where Keanu does Chekhov.

There’s a little déjà vu running through this film (the second effort from 44 Inch Chest director Malcolm Venville). Sacha Gervasi and David White’s script may have been “inspired” by some vintage heist flicks; specifically, Alexander Mackendrick’s 1955 comedy The Ladykillers, and Lloyd Bacon’s Larceny, Inc. from 1942 (essentially remade by Woody Allen as Small Time Crooks). While the film has classic screwball tropes, it lacks the pace of Lubitsch or Sturges.

That said, I still found Venville’s film engaging enough. I was reminded of Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo ’66; in addition to sharing its filming location, this is another low-key comedy with oddly endearing characters that “sneaks up” on you, especially once you realize how sweet it really is. And there’s no crime in that, is there?

Dramedy, Family Issues, Sports, Troubled Teens

Lawyers, sons and money: Win Win ***1/2

August 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 2, 2011)

Back in my wintry Alaskan radio days (back in the 20^th Century) there was a corny old one-liner that I wasn’t too proud to recycle once or twice as a weather forecast zinger:

“In fact…it is SO cold, that as I drove past the courthouse this morning on my way to work…I spotted a lawyer who actually had his hands in his own pockets.” (SFX rim shot)

I don’t mean to insinuate that a “lawyer” is, by definition, an opportunistic, self-serving type; what profession doesn’t have its “bad apples”? There are a lot of straight-shooting idealists out there practicing law. But I think we can all agree that that there are very few attorneys who have never met a loophole or “gray area” they couldn’t eyeball from outer space-with their glasses cracked.

You get a vibe that attorney Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti), the lumpy middle-aged protagonist of writer-director Thomas McCarthy’s new film Win Win, likely began his law career as one of those straight-shooting idealists. He’s an amiable fellow and a solid family man who devotes a good portion of his free time coaching the local high school wrestling team. There’s a noticeable deficit of statuettes in the trophy case, but Mike and his assistant coach (Jeffrey Tambor) try to keep up the positive reinforcement.

It’s too bad that Mike can’t turn some of that positive reinforcement back onto himself. While out for a morning jog with his friend Terry (Bobby Cannavale), he suffers a full-blown anxiety attack. Once the paramedics leave, Mike sheepishly opens up to his concerned pal (also an attorney) about the financial worries that have been keeping him up nights. Mike also confesses that he’s envious that Terry has amassed a relative fortune through his own successful law practice. Terry does his best to empathize, but as he is still reeling from a recent divorce, he’s anxious and depressed himself.

When one of his clients, an elderly man named Leo (Burt Young) is declared legally incapacitated, Mike comes up with a brainstorm for turning this “loss” into a “win win”. In order to pull it off, however, Mike will have to dive headfirst into one of those “gray areas” that I referenced earlier. After a brief wrestling match with his conscience, Mike offers himself to the court as Leo’s legal guardian. Leo can continue to live in his own house, and Mike will check in on him.

The judge raises an eyebrow, but grants him guardianship. So how does the “wrestling with his conscience” part figure in? Mike is fudging just a wee bit…and his wife (Amy Ryan). He actually intends to put Leo in an elder care center (a nice one, of course), so he won’t really be fussing with taking care of him, per se. Oh-and he’ll sort of “pocket” the monthly $1500 stipend Leo’s estate pays him for being a guardian. But, as long as Leo is content, and Mike is making some extra money to help support his own family, everybody wins-right?

Mike’s scheme runs like clockwork-until a potential spanner in the works named Kyle (Alex Shaffer) rolls into town. He’s Leo’s teenage grandson, who, despite his taciturn nature (quick to deflect any questions about his parental situation) ingratiates himself with Mike’s family-especially after he turns out to be a gifted wrestler.

Mike can’t believe this streak of luck. But as they say-no good deed goes unpunished. Enter Kyle’s estranged mom (Melanie Lynskey), just out of drug rehab, armed with an attorney and looking for a steady income (like the $1500 a month she could get if the court appointed her as Dad’s legal guardian). Mike’s streak could be over.

In the hands of a lesser team (McCarthy co-wrote with Joe Tiboni), this narrative that could have descended into turgid family soap. But luckily, this is Thomas McCarthy, the actor/director who also helmed The Station Agent and The Visitor. A true “actor’s director”, McCarthy coaxes pitch-perfect performances from the entire cast.

It’s refreshing to see Giamatti underplay a role for a change; he’s a fine actor, but has been known to ham it up. It’s an outstanding turn, especially in his scenes with newcomer Shaffer (admirably holding his own with the seasoned players). The development of their relationship is central to the story, and neither of them hits a false note. Ryan is a wonder to behold as always; I think she remains a sorely underutilized talent and needs to be offered a leading role immediately, if not sooner. Touching (but never maudlin), funny (without mugging) and genuinely heartwarming, this is a must-see.

Historical drama, War

The sorrow and the pity: City of Life and Death ****

August 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 9, 2011)

One of the lighter moments in City of Life and Death

After watching Chuan Lu’s City of Life and Death, “war is hell” feels like an understatement. Set during the “second” Sino-Japanese War, this historical drama focuses on the 1937 “Rape of Nanking” (an estimated 200,000-300,000 residents were slaughtered by Japanese soldiers over six weeks ). The horrors recounted here burrow into your psyche and bivouac like an occupying army.

Shot in stark black and white, the film hearkens to the classic era of neorealist war dramas like de Sica’s Two Women and Rossellini’s Open City. Lu infuses his narrative with a Kurosawa-like humanism, taking a relatively non-didactic approach. Initially, we get the invaders-eye view, primarily through the personal experiences of a Japanese soldier named Kadokawa (Hideo Nakaizumi).

As they enter the ruins of the heavily bombarded city, Kadokawa and fellow members of his small patrol seem frightened and confused, like they are not quite sure what their next order of business is. They meet pockets of resistance from the tattered remnants of the outgunned Chinese defensive forces, who have obviously taken heavy casualties.

It’s not long before most remaining Chinese soldiers have been captured and rounded up. In the first of many horrifying atrocities reenacted in the film, they are marched en mass to the beach, where they are unceremoniously mowed down (so much for that whole Geneva Convention thing).

Out of this pile of carnage crawls a survivor, young Xiaodouzi (Bin Liu), a prepubescent soldier who looks like a cherub that has stumbled into the pits of Hell. His (true) story is an amazing one. He finds his way into the “safety zone” of the city-which brings us to the conundrum of this tale. If I told you that the most compassionate character in this film is a Nazi, would you believe me? All I have to do is tell the truth, because John Rabe (John Paisley) was a real person.

A German businessman, he was a key organizer in a group of foreigners who negotiated with the Japanese for the Safety Zone, which ended up saving thousands of Chinese (shades of Oskar Schindler). Rabe’s assistant, Mr. Tang (Wei Fan), who is bilingual in Japanese, plays a huge part in this endeavor, as does Mrs. Tang (Lan Qin).

Tang cultivates an uneasy “friendship” with Kadokawa’s mercurial commanding officer, Ida (Ryu Kohata), a textbook sociopath. Mr. Tang learns that dealing with the devil is tenuous at best (Ida’s cold-blooded betrayal is beyond reprehension-and one of the more shocking moments in a film that is rife with them).

But Ida outdoes even himself when he demands that Rabe surrender 100 female “volunteers” from the Safety Zone to be requisitioned as “comfort women” for the Japanese troops. In an emotionally shattering scene, women slowly begin raising their hands, seeming to reach a mutual grim epiphany as they look around the room at each other and realize that this may be the only way to ensure that their children survive the nightmare (heart-wrenching as that scene is, it pales in comparison to the historical record-there were an estimated 20,000 rape victims, from toddler age to grandmothers).

Interestingly, the most compelling character is Kadokawa, who is the “conscience” of the story (the director has taken flak in his native China for portraying a Japanese soldier in a sympathetic light). Granted-through association he is complicit, yet he is still human. He’s conflicted; at times visibly appalled and repelled by what he is witnessing. He doesn’t refuse orders (until the crucial denouement) but in a way he is an avatar for the collective guilt all humans bear as a species perennially bent on inflicting pain and suffering on itself.

In one extraordinarily staged sequence, a contingent of Japanese soldiers conducts a traditional victory dance through the city. Keep an eye on Kadokawa’s face. He is chanting along with the other soldiers, but as his eyes meet those of the dazed and expressionless Chinese onlookers, it becomes clear that as far as his soul and humanity are concerned, this is a Pyrrhic victory at best.

I can’t say that I “enjoyed” such a relentlessly grim and depressing 133 minutes. That said, City of Life and Death is one of the best films I’ve seen this year. It is intense (and brutal), but masterfully made and well-acted. It also examines a chapter of 20^th century history that has been largely overlooked by film makers.

The fact that the Chinese and Japanese governments remain at loggerheads over respective “official” accounts of those horrific six weeks back in 1937 demonstrates that this is not an obscure incident that should just be relegated to the dustbins of history. In fact…no “incident” of this nature should just be relegated to the dustbins of history.

Conspiracy a-go-go, Historical drama, On Politics

Days of future past: The Conspirator **1/2

August 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 23, 2011)

War does not determine who is right…only who is left.

-Bertrand Russell

Who was it that originally quipped “There was nothing ‘civil’ about it” in reference to the American Civil War? Truer words have seldom been spoken in reference to that ugly chapter of U.S. history that left 600,000 corpses in its wake. The scars still run deep; witness the controversies stirred up by some of the recent commemorative events related to noting the 2011 Civil War Sesquicentennial.

By the spring of 1865, after four horrifying years, it was all over but the shooting, as far as the war itself was concerned, but the psychic wounds were fresh. And, as we’ve all known since elementary school, it was in this climate of fear and loathing that, on the night of April 14^th (with the ink barely dry on Lee’s official surrender at Appomattox), President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated while attending a play with his wife at the Ford Theater in Washington D.C. by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.

What many Americans are not as cognizant of is that Booth was but one of the players in a conspiracy to kill not only Lincoln, but VP Johnson and Secretary of State Seward. In essence, it was an attempt to take down the federal government in one fell swoop (Seward, bedridden at the time, was stabbed at his home, but survived, and the VP’s would-be killer lost his nerve).

Out of the eight accused co-conspirators who stood trial before a specially appointed government commission (official-speak for “military tribunal”), the most enigmatic figure was D.C. boarding house proprietress Mary Surratt, who holds the dubious distinction as the first woman ever executed by the United States. Her story has been dramatized in Robert Redford’s The Conspirator, which is the first feature film produced by his American Film Company.

In a sepia-toned opening scene recreating the look of a Matthew Brady photo, we meet Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy) a Union soldier lying wounded among the dead and dying. After his discharge from military service, he goes into law practice, and his first major case is a doozy. He is asked by his mentor, Senator Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) to defend Mary Surratt (Robin Wright).

While her son John, who had managed to flee the U.S. and eluded authorities until well after his mother’s trial and execution, appeared to be more directly involved, a combination of circumstantial proximity (the conspirators held numerous meetings at her boarding house) and less-than-flattering press (President Andrew Johnson publicly stated that she “…kept the nest that hatched the egg”) assured that her attorney had a tough row to hoe. As portrayed in the film, Surratt retains an air of almost serene inscrutability throughout the trial. Wright embodies this dichotomy quite well.

After choking back his initial abhorrence at the very idea of defending Surratt, Aiken’s formidable challenge is how to build a strong defense under the restrictions imposed by military tribunal procedure (there is no entitlement to a jury of your peers, for starters). The man charged with assembling the tribunal wasn’t much help; Secretary of War Edwin Stanton did everything in his power to push for an expedient trial and executions. Kevin Kline gives an interesting performance as Stanton; I could swear that he’s consciously channeling Dick Cheney’s voice and mannerisms.

And the parallels don’t stop there. Although Redford has been playing dumb in the several recent TV interviews I saw, denying any analogical intentions, it’s inevitable that any halfway historically astute viewer is going to notice the pointed similarities brought to the fore in James Solomon’s script between the dramatic shift in the nation’s sociopolitical climate post-Lincoln assassination in 1865 and post-9/11 in 2001 (Bob Redford ain’t dumb, nor is he apolitical).

Most of these didactic are telegraphed in the exchanges between McAvoy and Kline. Stanton tells Aiken at one point, “Someone must be held accountable. The People want that.” To which Aiken replies, “It’s not justice you’re after; it’s revenge.” Operation Iraqi Freedom, anyone? Several of their conversations hammer home the reminder (and it’s a good one) that, no matter how grave the “national crisis” may be, the basic constitutionally-assured civil rights of American citizens do not come with a factory-equipped “on/off” switch.

One interesting parallel arose just this week, when it was announced that Wikileaks suspect Bradley Manning (still awaiting trial) was transferred from solitary confinement at the brig at Quantico to a medium-security facility at Leavenworth. In the film, Aiken appeals (successfully) to the tribunal that Surratt be transferred from the draconian Old Capitol Prison (where she was never allowed outside) to another facility, where she was permitted outside to take fresh air and exercise (the other accused co-conspirators were initially kept below decks on two ironclads anchored in the Potomac River).

McAvoy and Wright have great chemistry. Evan Rachel Wood makes the most of her brief turn as Surratt’s daughter; she’s a wonderfully intuitive actress. While I wouldn’t place this film in the same echelon as a Breaker Morant, Redford has made something that will please history buffs, yet be eminently watchable to others. I will admit that his tendency to take an austere approach in his film making has left me cold on many occasions. But Redford’s hand is assured; his art comes from a thoughtful and intelligent place. And sadly, that has become the exception to the rule in modern American cinema.

Art world, Drama, Mystery

Yes, darling…but is it art? – Certified Copy ****

August 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 16, 2011)

Love is like two dreamers dreaming, the exact same dream

Just another Technicolor romance on the screen

-from “Nightmoves” by Michael Franks

In the introduction to his playful 1974 rumination on art forgery, F for Fake, director Orson Welles looks straight into the camera and says, “This is a promise. For the next hour, everything you hear from us is absolutely true, and based on solid fact.” Trouble is, the film runs 85 minutes (think about that for a moment). I couldn’t help but flash on that, when somewhere around the halfway mark of Certified Copy, the latest film from Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, I had to ask myself: “Now…steady. Is he having a laugh?”

Initially embarking in the direction of Before Sunset/Two for the Road, before taking an abrupt turn into Last Year at Marienbad/Track 29 territories, Kiarostami’s film begins innocently enough. Elle (Juliette Binoche) is a French ex-pat living in Tuscany. A single mom, Elle supports herself and her pre-teen son by running a small art gallery. One day, she attends a lecture by a British art critic named James Miller (William Shimell). He’s promoting his latest book, which deals with art forgery, and the age-old conundrum: If it is perceived as “art” in the eye of the beholder, does it matter if it’s “real”?

Elle, who splits before the lecture ends, seems less fascinated by what the author has to say than she is by the man himself; although she blushes and vehemently denies as such when her precocious son teases her afterwards about her apparent crush. Doing her best not to come off like a groupie, Elle introduces herself to James, and after he lets on that he has no particular plans until he has to catch his train that night, offers to take him on a tour of the countryside.

Hey-it’s Tuscany, right? And as we’ve learned from watching countless romantic movies set in the Tuscan countryside, what’s not to love about those sunny, pastoral vistas that inspired the likes of Michelangelo, daVinci, Donatello and Botticelli? This is not lost on the director or his DP Luca Bigazzi (Il Divo, Bread and Tulips) who allow us plenty of time and space to soak in the lovely views while Elle and James prattle on about love, life, art, meow-meow, etc.

Just when you’re being lulled into thinking this is going to be one of those brainy, talky, yet pleasantly diverting romantic romps where you and your date can amuse yourselves by placing bets on “will they or won’t they-that is, if they can both shut up long enough to get down to business sometime before the credits roll” propositions, Kiarostami throws you a curve ball.

When a café proprietress mistakes James for Elle’s husband, marveling at how he seems to be treating his wife as if he is courting her for the first time, she decides to play along. While James is at the gent’s, Elle romances an entire back story on the spot, telling the woman that this is their 15^th anniversary, and that they have decided to revisit the town where they spent their honeymoon.

When James returns, he seems to intuit Elle’s Kabuki, and slides into character, picking up Elle’s narrative right on cue. Even after they leave the café, they don’t “break character”. Or is it Kabuki? Have they actually been married for 15 years-and all that blushing first date stuff was just a role-playing game? Perhaps this is an attempt to spruce up a tired relationship? Or is James a figment of Elle’s imagination…or vice versa? I’m not telling.

Don’t worry, these are not spoilers. Because the director isn’t “telling” either (sly devil). I don’t even think he knows what’s going on with these two. You know what I think? I think that he wants us to think. I know-life throws enough curve balls at us every day. You’ve got enough to think about; why spend ten bucks on a movie that’s going to make your brain hurt even more? Because while you’re pondering, you have an impossibly attractive couple to ogle.

Not to mention Binoche’s amazing performance; there’s pure poetry in every glance, every gesture. Shimell (an opera singer by trade), is impressive as well in his first notable movie role. Then again, maybe this film isn’t so much about “thinking”, as it is about “perceiving”. Because if it’s true that a “film” is merely (if I may quote Mr. Welles again) “a ribbon of dreams”-then Certified Copy, like any true work of art, is simply what you perceive it to be-nothing more, nothing less.