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Saturday, 25 February 2012
Tuesday, 14 February 2012
Why is “The Artist” being showered with so many international awards (and most likely a few Oscars)? It’s all about BRINGING BACK THE MOVIE MAGIC. Like “Hugo,” “The Artist” is a film about the craft of movie-making (it was a good year for such films). Whereas “Hugo” focuses on special effects, “The Artist” focuses on acting. But more than acting. The black and white “The Artist” focuses on VISUAL STORYTELLING which is precisely what film is SUPPOSED to be. Anyone who has gone to film school will appreciate the forceful message here, summed up by the last word of the film: “ACTION!”
Filmmaking true to its pedigree tells the story VISUALLY. Lazy filmmaking (think “visual audiobooks”) tells the story through words, words, words (and plenty of voiceover). “The Artist” MUST tell the story visually, you see, because it’s a SILENT FILM. Say what? You heard me. And there are those black backgrounds with some white curly dialogue every so often (like “The Perils of Pauline” that people of a certain age will remember seeing on Saturday mornings). But these words were not even needed. We could have utterly followed everything without them. Brilliant.
George Valentin (looking like the real McCoy, a manly actor’s actor, Jean Dujardin) is a middle-aged silent film actor. A chance meeting with aspiring young actress Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) begins the saga of her “talkie” career on the rise and George’s “silent” stardom waning—also due to his resistance to a changing world. In spite of their age difference and opposite fortunes, a love story develops. For me, this was a hearkening to those who can’t accept that we now live partially in a computer/digital/online/virtual world today. Companies like Blockbuster persisted in deep denial until it was almost too late.
Dujardin, who is up for a “Best Actor” Academy Award, is alternately melodramatic (as the silent movie star), brooding, forgetful of the camera, and a camera magnet. He is able to gaze prolongedly into and in front of the camera, as well as get us to gaze prolongedly at him. He is a total natural. Totally comfortable in all kinds of limelight. A true creature of the screen.
Although the story is too light to ever be wrenching (accompanied by such a delightful, old-timey, bouncy, Depression-era, “silver lining,” “sunny side of the street,” orchestral soundtrack), its tender moments are truly that. Since much of “The Artist” depicts films within a film, the takeaway seems to be that life is a film. Life is a SILENT film that is much more about our actions than our words. I would say life is a drama, a liturgy, a dramaturgy with a Paschal pattern. Like a star, we’re born, we grow, we shine, we fade, we die. And then we rise again.
I left the theater DANCING. You will, too.
OTHER STUFF:
--Alternate title for “The Artist”: “A Man and His Dog.”
--Is the Jack Russell (Ma calls them “those Jack Daniels dogs”) up for a doggie Oscar? He should be! He was in almost every scene. So cute when he buries his head….
--Peppy really is peppy. Flapper girl.
--George Valentin. Rudolph Valentino.
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| OK, my stink eye is not as good as this little fella's. |
--Three young ladies in my theater did NOT hear the Lorax telling them to shush it at the commencement of the film. So I told them to shush it during the Previews because I could tell we were going to have a problem. I wanted to hear every word of the Previews for my $11.50 (Chicago Loop cinema going ain’t cheap). And then, wouldntcha know it, it turns out to be a silent film, so I couldn’t act like I couldn’t hear the words when they kept up their tittering. But, dang it, movies are an (expensive) EXPERIENCE and these chicks were ruining the kick-posterior, lilting, music-only soundtrack. I leaned forward, and, in the glow of the glorious black and white, gave them my best stink eye. They caught it and put a sock in it for a few scenes. (It’s amazing the courage and strength one garners from being a consistent female opt-out at the airport cancer machines, and doing the pat-down in public—in order to set a good example.) Halfway through the film, the three “talkies” exited. Philistines. (But I still love them, of course--and all philistines--in Christ.)
--The Hollywood community understands and portrays well their particular brand of artistic heartbreak in the Hollywoodland of broken dreams…. Reminded me of “Mulholland Drive” under this aspect. (NB: I otherwise have huge problems with “Mulholland Drive.”)
--I am hoping “The Artist” might trigger a 20’s fashion surge (kinda like we had in the 70’s). I love 20’s fashions (for both guys and gals).
--Seriously? They had a “SCREENWRITER” chair on the sets back then? Sigh. “How are the mighty fallen.”
--Minor flaws: I felt like the film within a film in the beginning, to truly look like a silent film, should have been speeded up. The film hit its stride at the multiple “takes” when George first acts with Peppy. From there it was smooth going. Some shades of “Singin’ in the Rain” plot points….
--Dujardin totally nails the dapper peacock primping, preening and “mugging” of the times.
--“Tree of Life” is up against two FEEL REALLY GOOD MOVIES for Best Pic: “The Descendants” and “The Artist.”
--So I slept on it. My fears were NOT allayed. This movie is a pleasurable “in the moment” adventure, but has no sticking power. Zut alors!* Ultimately forgettable. Except for that balmy, tripping the light fantastic SOUNDTRACK that I would love to hear as I walk down the street every day…. :] Even the ominous parts are only quasi-ominous.
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Ugh. Even my French is “antiquated.”
Ugh. Even my French is “antiquated.”
Friday, 3 February 2012
“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is the story of a boy who loses his father in the Twin Towers on 9/11. Oskar Schell (wunderkind Thomas Horn) seems to have Asperger’s syndrome (Oskar comments that tests were “inconclusive”), and his dad (Tom Hanks) was the only one who really understood his brainy but socially awkward and phobia-ridden son. Oskar’s relationship with his mother (Sandra Bullock) is distant and strained.
Oskar, his mother and his paternal grandmother (with whom Oskar is also close because she communicates on his level) live right in Manhattan. “Extremely Loud” reconstructs what Oskar dubs “the worst day.” We are taken through the exquisite pain of what families must have endured during and after their terrible losses. To “make sense” of the pain (Oskar is all about science, facts and logic) and to be able to hold on to and feel close to his father, Oskar sets out on a mission to find the lock that goes with a mysterious key found in his father’s closet.
Oskar’s quest takes him all over New York City to meet many, many people, and in the process he must overcome his many, many fears (exacerbated by the trauma of 9/11). He has a fiercely determined and obsessive will, and his general inability to empathize/sympathize with others makes him sometimes verbally and otherwise abusive, especially toward his mother.
It’s pretty interesting and enlightening to see the world from this geeky kid’s perspective. There are more and more young people like Oskar, and we will be seeing more and more films incorporating these characters. However, the total improbability of a guileless young boy journeying around NYC alone (although the highly improbable reasons for his safety are later explained to us, and the fact that at one point an older gentleman [Max von Sydow] accompanies him on many of these treks) makes the heart of this tale feel exceedingly unreal.
Although there is a delicate, moving soundtrack, and the dialogue and acting is meticulously executed by the finest in the business, there is just so much artifice to the whole project that I never once lost myself in the story or forgot that “these are actors” and “this is a film”—a well-simulated tale, but ultimately contrived. It hits all the right notes, tropes and hackneyed themes, but the only originality here is getting into a boy like Oskar’s mindset when faced with a horrible tragedy (Oskar gives abundant voiceover to the slow-paced 129 minute film, but it fits). The clichés are attacked head on: “Everyone has a story to tell.” “Everyone has suffered something.”
There were many sniffles in my theater, but I just couldn’t. It didn’t feel as though 9/11 was being exploited, and I didn’t feel emotionally manipulated: it was more like the product I was watching was pitch-perfect, Purell-sanitized with very few surprises or light moments although it tried mightily to aim for both. We were taught in film school that you’re allowed one perfect coincidence in a film, usually in Act One, but ELIC has quite a few. I just didn’t buy it.
The value of ELIC? To hear the distinct voice of an Asperger’s kid who moves from headstrong to heartstrong. Life is a bunch of little moments. To re-live 9/11. To examine various archetypal father-son relationships (solid and weak). To look death squarely in the face and know that “love is stronger than death,” even for a little boy who doesn’t believe in miracles.
OTHER STUFF:
--Plot points a bit convoluted.
--Another film with PRECIOUS little media technology shown being used (even though film IS set back in ancient 2001). People talk to each other, write longhand letters, hug, draw, scrapbook, have deep conversations, play old-fashioned games, admire and use artifacts from the past (note old camera, old film projector). Today’s movies are becoming refuges for depicting hyper-tech-free living, no-tech zones.
--The title was never used in the film (that I caught, anyway) but totally appropriate since Oskar does not like loud noises (one of his quirks).
--Like the “Twilight” series, the folks in “ELIC” have lotsa, lotsa time on their hands. They don’t cook, eat, shop, go to the bathroom, do dishes, make coffee, take showers, do homework, clean, etc. Hey, even Lisbeth Salander goes to the grocery store for supplies.
--Thomas Horn (discovered when he won during Kids Week on Jeopardy) is just totally precocious, like so many of the incredible crop of child actors today.
--Oskar has an Oscar moment when he’s explaining in a deluge of a monologue to his grandmother’s mute elderly gentleman “renter” all that he has endured since 9/11…. Also, great scene of his rage at the end, when Mom tries to calm him down.
--Oskar is very hard on himself and demanding of others. He feels things so intensely, not just external stimuli, but emotions, too.
--Mom: “I’ll never fall in love again for the first time.”
--Oskar comes to the conclusion that: “People are not like numbers. They’re like letters and letters make stories and stories want to be told.” Nice.
--“Don’t stop looking.” Great advice, that.
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