DREAMS ARE WHAT LE CINEMA IS FOR...

Monday, January 10, 2011

CLOSER 2004

If the amoral bed-hoppers that make up the bulk of daytime tabloid talk shows were articulate, intelligent, impossibly attractive, and rich; their lives might be something like the lives of the four spiritually damaged protagonists of Closer, Mike Nichols' searing look at the pain people cause one another in the name of love.

Julia Roberts as Anna

Jude Law as Dan

Natalie Portman as Alice

Clive Owen as Larry

The tony trappings of upscale London fail to mask the rather ugly games of sexual one-upmanship that characterize the entwining relationships of the film's four lead characters. Based on a play by Patrick Marber (who wrote the equally perceptive and acidic Notes on a Scandal - 2006), Closer is a sexual roundelay that skewers romantic myth and lays waste those who pursue love as though it were part of a self-fulfillment program. Here, the believers of love at first sight; those souls whose religion is passion, chemistry, and the heart wanting what it wants - are revealed to be the ones most apt to give themselves license to lie, deceive, and and inflict pain, if all is done in the name of love.

Changing Partners

Having explored the ins and outs of caustic relationships in both Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and Carnal Knowledge (1971), Mike Nichols is cinema's unofficial frontline correspondent in the war between the sexes. With wit and candor, he goes to places of rare honesty in human relations and somehow finds ways of making us see parts of ourselves in some of the most odious characters. He has a gift for shining a compassionate but cold light on some of the worst aspects of human interaction; and in the process, reinforces the notion that sometimes even at our most monstrous, most of us are rarely ever less than just human.

"Hello, Stranger"

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

The language. Though biting and brutal, the dialog in Closer is too clever to be real:

Portman: “I don’t eat fish.”
Law: “Why not?”
Portman: “Fish piss in the sea.”
Law: “So do children.”
Portman: “I don’t eat children, either."

- but direct and to the point in revealing character and the small ways we use words to protect ourselves, wound others, and ultimately conceal. The film is as much a treat for the ears as it is for the eyes.

The Truth:

“Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off. But it’s better if you do.”

PERFORMANCES

Years before Black Swan Natalie Portman proved that she was more than just a sci-fi geek pinup. Though outrageously beautiful and possessing a natural star quality, Portman is refreshingly low on self-consciousness and unafraid to go to the uglier places a character might take her. Cast cannily as the kind of male fantasy dream girl she's been marketed as since her career began, Portman reveals levels of intelligence and will that are not often associated with waifish objects-of-affection. She is never less than compelling throughout and, for me, at least, virtually wipes the rest of the accomplished cast off the screen.

The Lie

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

At one point in the film, Portman's character describes the photographic artwork of rival Julia Roberts as “A bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully.” She might just as well have been talking about the film she's appearing in.

Closer is indeed a film about unpleasant people acting unpleasantly, but everyone is shot so lovingly they practically glow. As a fan of vintage movies, my heart has a special place for that time in history (pre-late-50s realism) when movies were populated exclusively by those humanoid gods and goddesses we called movie stars. They didn't look like anyone we'd ever seen and the world they inhabited onscreen didn't even remotely look like the one we inhabited. It was a hyper-reality that created a dreamscape to build fantasies on.

Closer, with its gleaming sets and uniformly gorgeous cast, puts that old-time glamour in the service of presenting a merciless look at the dark side of romantic desire.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

The one scene I never tire of watching is a sequence that takes place in a private room of a strip club where Natalie Portman and Clive Owen verbally spar about love, lust, and longing.

It is amazing on so many levels. From a purely technical standpoint, the astounding virtuosity of the camera angles alone makes for a unitary lesson in filmmaking.

It's funny, tense, sexy as hell, and oddly moving as these two enact a mating dance of the lonely.

It certainly doesn't hurt that Natalie Portman sets the screen aflame, either.

WOW!

WHAT FUELED MY DREAMS

From everything I've written thus far, I've made it sound as though Closer were an anti-romantic comedy (black comedy) and basically down on love. The truth is, like that other favorite of mine, Two for the Road, Closer is at its core a deeply romantic film. Chiefly because it dares to show the bare bones of relationships and dramatizes the hard work and self-sacrifice necessary to achieve true intimacy with another. The four protagonists in Closer all fumble about blindly seeking love without knowing how to return it, demanding love without earning it, and giving love without committing to it.

Love Gets Ugly

It deflates the romantic ideal (much of it movie-based) of the instant attraction, the animal connection that sparks all great romances. Closer dares to posit that those who indulge this conceit are in love with the idea of love and are unprepared for (or lack the maturity) required to become "closer" to another individual.
To my way of thinking, a film like Closer gives love the respect it deserves.

Not everybody has the stomach for movies like this. Indeed, the public stayed well away from this film when it was released. But the relationships I grew up around (and I dare say a good many of the relationships I see today) look more like the ones depicted here than the inherently dishonest, wish-fulfillment fantasies of The Bridges of Madison County or Under the Tuscan Sun. That may be my curse or blessing, I don't know. But what I do know is that I've seen more tears shed and people hurt over the pursuit of false ideals than I ever have over people coming to terms with the fact that love takes courage, selflessness, and a willingness to be vulnerable.

Law: “Deception is brutal. I’m not pretending otherwise”

Closer is an adult story about the responsibilities of real love. That it tells its story with wit, intelligence and style only serve to make it one of my fave rave films of all time. A modern classic.

Natalie Portman - Stopping Traffic

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

NIGHT MOVES 1975

For some of us film fans, certain directors come with their own baggage. If I see a David Lean film, I expect sweeping spectacle; If I see Bogdanovich, I expect film school redux. Kubrick is great for icy misanthropy, and Woody Allen is ideal for...well, Woody Allen.

Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde) is a director whose name I so associate with serious themes and deep social commentary that even when he directs a simple little detective drama like Night Moves, it's difficult not to attach to it a profound, pithy significance that may not even be there. In the case of Night Moves, an updated noir bathed in the same chic nihilism as Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974), the "significance" is there in abundance.
In the summer of 1975, I had just graduated high school and my summer job was ushering at a movie theater in San Francisco while waiting to start film school in the fall. I was thrilled Night Moves opened in the theater where I was employed, allowing me the opportunity to see it countless times (for free!). And it's a good thing, too. for the plot of Night Moves is a real puzzler that benefits from repeat viewings. It was simply icing on the cake that Penn's solemn approach to the detective film genre so suited my post-adolescent self-seriousness.

Gene Hackman as Harry Moseby

Jennifer Warren as Paula

Melanie Griffith as Delly Grastner

Susan Clark as Ellen Moseby

The plot of Night Moves is ostensibly an update of the typical '40s film noir detective thriller, only with a post-Watergate deconstruction of the American hero myth thrown in. The detective in question, Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman, who, like Karen Black, seemed to be in every film made in the '70s), is adrift, both personally and professionally, when hired by a fading movie actress to locate her runaway teenage daughter. Seventeen-year-old Melanie Griffith, making her film debut, is cast as the sexually precocious daughter. A nymphet role of the sort she would play again in Paul Newman's The Drowning Pool (1975) and likely incite picket lines today. Griffith makes quite an impression, and I distinctly remember wondering if this girl's helium voice would change when she grew up. (It didn't.)

Gene Hackman as private eye Harry Moseby plays chess with himself (knight moves, anyone) during a stakeout

Client: "Are you the kind of detective who once you get on a case nothing can get you off it? Bribes, beatings, the allure of a woman's body?"

A very young Melanie Griffith

As was the wont of '70s films, as Moseby delves deeper into the mystery of his case, which takes him to the Florida keys and has him stumbling upon a smuggling operation, he inevitably has to confront the even deeper mystery that is his life. 70s films were nothing if not about reducing all human experience to navel-gazing.

Marital Discord
Clark: "Who's winning?"
Hackman: "Nobody. One side's just losing slower than the other."

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Uncompromised heroes can be boring onscreen. Saints and do-gooders always pale next to the more dimensional and colorfully drawn villains. One of the great things Penn does with Hackman's character is that he makes him so flawed in his reason; so limited in his awareness of self; basically, so human in his attempt to defend and uphold his moldy moral code, you can't help but find yourself drawn into his quest. Especially as the mystery he's investigating begins to spiral far beyond anything he initially thought it would be.

Hackman's Harry Moesby joins the ranks of many '70s screen heroes: Jack Nicholson in Chinatown (1974) Warren Beatty in McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) and Hackman's Harry Caul in The Conversation. Heroes whose best efforts fail to pan out. Heroes who are no match for the larger systems of corruption they're fighting against. In a world where the bad guys and the good guys are no longer distinguishable by black or white hats, heroism itself can seem like an obsolete virtue.

"Does it matter, Harry?"

PERFORMANCES

I like Gene Hackman immensely (The Poseidon Adventure notwithstanding), but at this stage in his career, he seemed to be giving the same performance in film after film. It took Superman (1978) to shake some of the cobwebs off of his acting style. Mercifully, he's always an interesting actor to watch; intelligent and sensitive, yet always a kind of violent tension lurking beneath the surface. But the performance that really caught my eye and captured my attention was Jennifer Warren's.

As the enigmatic Paula, Warren is a modern update of the traditional noir femme fatale. Like those ladies, she's beautiful, earthily sexy, strong-willed, and prone to speak in riddles. I was most impressed by her natural acting style and striking presence. To me, Warren's husky-voiced, no-nonsense sexuality hinted at what feminism might have inspired in the contemporary screen sex symbol.

Harris Yulin as Marty Heller

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Paraphrasing like crazy here, but Raymond Chandler once wrote of detective thrillers that it didn't matter much in the end "whodunit"; what mattered was the successful exploration of human nature and the examination of the darkness at the center of man's soul. In that vein, Arthur Penn's Night Moves succeeds mightily and proves very effective as a dramatization of a man's inner journey. The big mystery and plot twists at the center of Night Moves are plentiful and satisfying, and the film has a really sensational ending. But I doubt if you'd be able to find two people who can agree on just what the hell is going on. But chiefly because of the quirky cast of characters assembled and the uniformly fine performances throughout, Night Moves is a puzzle of a film that works whether or not you can fit all the pieces together.

In case you forget you're watching a '70s movie, there's a post-coital scene

where our couple enjoy red wine and fondue in bed

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Nobody did heady pretension like '70s directors. Night Moves is a perfectly enjoyable detective thriller when viewed on a strictly surface level, but I love that Penn chose this particular genre to make a heavy statement about the human inability to connect, abandonment, loneliness, betrayal, and the ambiguity of morality.

It's stylish, well-cast, and there's plenty to discover in the plot and in the performances with each viewing. After Bonnie & Clyde, Night Moves remains my favorite Arthur Penn film.

"Do you ask these questions because you want to know the answer, or is it just something you think a detective should do?"

Friday, October 15, 2010

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH 1976

The track record for pop recording artists successfully transitioning to motion pictures is checkered at best. For every A Hard Day’s Night or The Rose, there’s a Shanghai Surprise or Under the Cherry Moon. If the more successful examples of this often painful sub-genre have anything in common, it's that they tend to be vehicles that don't unduly strain the talents of the artist in question, and, contextually speaking, serve to augment and exploit the said artist's already firmly established public image.

Elvis merely had to channel his stage persona for Jailhouse Rock; Roger Daltrey really WAS Tommy, and 70’s pop sensation David Bowie found the perfect vehicle for his otherworldly Ziggy Stardust/ Space Oddity image in Nicolas Roeg’s dreamily poetic adaptation of Walter Trevis’ sci-fi classic: The Man Who Fell to Earth.

David Bowie

Simply told, The Man Who Fell to Earth is the story of a traveler (Bowie) from a drought-decimated planet who comes to earth with a vague plan to save his world's remaining survivors. (The plan is made explicit in the novel: he intends to build a ship that will transport his planet’s survivors to earth to colonize, and if necessary, forestall nuclear war).

Splashdown

Armed with the advanced technology and intellect characteristic of his people, the determinedly pragmatic alien (who goes by the name of Thomas Jerome Newton and carries a British passport) is rendered defenseless by his inability to comprehend the complex and sometimes paradoxical workings of the human soul.
A treatise on everything from alienation, longing, corruption, ambition and hope, The Man Who Fell to Earth is that most intriguing brand of science fiction film: a futuristic drama that takes into account the fact that the technological advancements of science seem never rise above the ethical limitations of man.

A world without water, a family left behind

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
I really admire how The Man Who Fell to Earth plays with the concept of time. The story has the feel and scope of an epic, but there is no reference to just how much time has elapsed. Major events unfurl, inventions reorganize lives, yet Bowie's unchanging flawlessness stands in poignant counterpoint to the aging decay of those around him. Roeg's employment of fluid time imbues Tevis' novel with an abstract metaphysical richness that makes this somewhat familiar "fish-out-of-water" tale shimmer with keen human insights and finely-observed perceptions about loneliness and the universal need to connect.

Close without Contact

PERFORMANCES
Whether by design or luck, surrounding the relatively stiff and inexpressive Bowie with a team of idiosyncratically naturalistic actors (Rip Torn, Candy Clark, & Buck Henry) evocatively underscores Bowie's inerasable "otherness" as the alien and brings into tragic relief his unending estrangement from those he seeks to understand.
Hands-down the film's best performance is given by Rip Torn as the disillusioned idealist Nathan Bryce, but Candy Clark is the film's emotional center. As Mary-Lou, a small-town girl lonelier and more isolated than the alien she falls in love with, Clark does some very intelligent things in bringing dimension to a character who's none-too-bright.

Candy Clark as Mary-Lou: Looking for Love

A plea to be seen instead of just being watched

Mary-Lou & Nathan find one another in old age
"I don't want her to get lonely."

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
There is just something so right about the conceit that an alien from another planet would look like an orange-haired British pop star. It adds yet another layer of pop-cultural awareness to a film that equates human greed, ambition, and folly to a preoccupation with surface appearance and the inability to actually see what is right before our eyes.

Rip Torn: "Are you a Lithuanian?"

Bowie: "Don't be suspicious."

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
The Man Who Fell to Earth is a film filled with fluid imagery. Both literally and figuratively. Liquids, in the form of water, alcohol, and bodily fluids, are a major visual motif and subtextural theme.

WHAT FUELED MY DREAMS
Having lived for more than 50 years, I've seen my share of technological advancements. Sci-fi movies are inclined to envision the future as some utopian ideal where all our problems solved by technology, or as a nightmarish world of "1984" -ish technological enslavement. My experience has been that no matter how advanced the invention, we humans have a way of modifying it to accommodate our basest natures.

The Man Who Fell to Earth doesn't position itself in any easily identified point in time and tells a tale of a savior, of sorts, who comes to earth; and yet the most use we have for him is exploitative and corporate in nature. Money and power rule, and while the corrupt and ambitious move the world along to its inevitable annihilation, people fumble about trying to connect while blind to ever discovering how to do so.

You can keep your Star Wars gadget-fetishism and your Close Encounters of the Third Kind wish-fulfillment fantasy; I'll take the wistful vision of space travel offered by The Man Who Fell to Earth. A film whose catchline could have been: "In space no one can hear you cry."

"I think maybe Mr. Newton has had enough."

VOGUE Theater, San Francisco 1976
Promotional check which entitled the recipient to $1 off towards the purchase of a
The Man Who Fell To Earth movie poster