Hey friends. I haven't written in a long time. I've mostly been focused on my exciting new podcast which I host with Sean Donnelly. You should definitely check that out, but I also went to the New York Film Festival this week and saw two films that got me in the mood to write. One is an ambitious, somewhat messy adaptation of a classic, and the other is an extraordinary film by one of my favorite directors. Hope you enjoy. And check out my new podcast here: http://moviesandfilms.mypodcast.com/
THE TEMPEST
I’ve had quite the love/hate relationship with Julie Taymor, going back to some of her early stage work. When she decided to bring one of Shakespeare’s most obscure and problematic plays to the big screen with TITUS, I was skeptical, but mostly impressed with her results. TITUS had some eye-popping visuals but often it seemed that Taymor didn’t know when to quit. Visual flare would quickly turn into pretentious overindulgence. She reined things in a bit with FRIDA, which was well acted and a fine story but ultimately a forgettable film. Then came ACROSS THE UNIVERSE. I know it has its lovers and haters. To me, it was one of the most god-awful, unpleasant experiences I’ve ever had in a movie theatre. It did more damage to the Beatles’ legacy than drugs and Yoko Ono combined. The fresh-faced cast amounted to nothing more than a bunch of obnoxious teens playing dress up. “I want to be the dreamy hippie girl!” “I want to be the cynical guy whose spirit is crushed by Vietnam!” All of Taymor’s visual tricks were on display but they were all used in pointless and incoherent ways. After seeing ACROSS THE UNIVERSE I thought that I might never let myself watch another Taymor film again. Well I broke my rule to see THE TEMPEST this week, primarily because of my love for this Shakespeare play and the chance to see a new adaptation of it. I must admit that it’s certainly an improvement and nearly a return to form for Taymor, though certainly far from perfect.
The biggest thing that THE TEMPEST has going for it is its cast. Helen Mirren’s gender-reversal take as Prospera, (rather than ProsperO) is domineering and powerful, never compromising the character or falling prey to gimmickry. Chris Cooper isn’t instantly accepted as a Shakespearean actor, what with his gentle, southern, folksy voice, but he gave one of my favorite performances in the film as Antonio, fitting so seamlessly into the rest of the cast that he never even telegraphs his darker, villainous character traits until they organically enter the story. Alfred Molina and Russell Brand make for very enjoyable clowns, with Brand’s Trinculo standing out as a nice surprise, showing that his one and only character that he always plays really lends itself to Shakespearean verse. But stealing the film from everyone is Djimon Hounsou’s Caliban. While playing equal parts the tragic slave and the conniving monster, Hounsou gains the audience’s sympathy, while never achieving absolution. It’s a beautiful and deeply physical performance that I could see getting Academy Award consideration.
Not every performance is quite as successful. Felicity Jones and (future singing Spider-Man) Reeve Carney make perfectly adequate young lovers. Jones fares better, especially in her scenes with Mirren, but her modern acting and unfortunate, Megan Fox-like inability to close her pursed lips hardly makes her seem like an innocent girl who has spent her life secluded from humanity. Too often she looks like she’s posing for a magazine cover. She is easy on the eyes though. Carney, has more experience as a singer than an actor, but even when he inexplicably breaks out into a musical sonnet, he carries the same vacant charisma he has with him for most the film. This doesn’t necessarily make me want to see him web-slinging to music anytime soon. Most disappointing for me though is Ben Whishaw’s Ariel. Whishaw has failed to impress me in films before, such as PERFUME and I’M NOT THERE, but his androgynous, whiny, and swishy fairy never feels like a solid presence in the film, mostly because he is almost entirely reduced to a never-ending special effect.
Which brings me to the overall look of the film. Rather than displaying all the visual bells and whistles that she can, Taymor makes a conscious decision to focus more on the brilliant text of the play and let the actors tell the story themselves with their mostly excellent performances. Surprisingly, Taymor shows a lot of restraint… until she doesn’t. Filming almost entirely on location in Hawaii, Taymor makes Prospera’s island feel divinely magical while still remaining earthly. This is why it’s so disappointing when she bogs down the film in unnecessary CGI effects, mostly at the end of the film. The animated dogs and Ariel’s water effects are the most cheaply looking and distracting, which can already be seen clearly in the trailer. More successful is the titular storm and shipwreck and Ariel’s transformation into a birdlike creature. Most of the film’s real, physical effects, (such as a sandcastle held in someone’s hand, or Caliban’s rough, stone-like skin), are so beautiful and impressive, that it makes one wish that Taymor had had a smaller budget so she could make better use of her craft skills, rather than resort to all too modern looking special effects.
Though I think I would have much preferred to see Taymor direct this for the stage rather than film, she still does greater honor to this play than she did with TITUS, thus possibly making this her most successful film to date. That’s mostly due to the fact that THE TEMPEST is a better play than TITUS ANDRONICUS, but it’s still a step away from her usual overindulgence. For her fans, this will be a treat. For people like me who had grown really tired of her flare, they will not be completely won over, but at least they’ll be provided with a satisfying production of one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.
ANOTHER YEAR
Mike Leigh is one of my absolute favorite directors and I thought his last film, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, was one of his very best. Now, just two years later, he has topped that with ANOTHER YEAR, which is not only the best film I’ve seen this year, but also quite possibly the finest film Leigh has made to date.
ANOTHER YEAR is quite simply a portrait of people stricken with various degrees of depression and the people who care for them. At the start of the film we see an emotionally lifeless woman, (played by Imelda Staunton in a moving cameo) being forced into counseling after she requests a prescription of sleeping pills from her doctor. When the counselor asks her how happy she is based on a scale of one to ten, Staunton answers “one,” without even taking a second to think about it. In hearing her situation, happiness for this woman seems to be completely hopeless. Leigh could probably fill a whole other film with the struggle of Staunton’s character, but this film isn’t about her. The instead film focuses on the counselor, Gerri, and her husband Tom, played by Leigh regulars Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent, and the depressed people we see in the film don’t always wear it so plainly on their faces.
Tom and Gerri have a perfect marriage. They were college sweethearts, are both intelligent and successful in their professions, and are still noticeably very much in love. One sees the two of them and wishes that they could be part of their family. Tom and Gerri have no shortage of people in their life who desire this very thing, most notably Gerri’s co-worker and longtime friend Mary, (another Leigh alum, Lesley Manville), who frequently invites herself over when she needs some support, or just someone to drink (lots of) wine with. Mary, at first, is quite reminiscent of Poppy, (Sally Hawkins’ character from Leigh’s HAPPY-GO-LUCKY), what with her optimistic smile and bubbly laugh, but little by little it becomes apparent that Mary is actually a terribly unhappy woman. Over the year that the film covers, Mary goes through a series of hardships which force Tom and Gerri to cease being merely nurturing friends with her, but rather reaching the point in which Gerri must confront Mary professionally and acknowledge that she needs help.
The beauty of Mike Leigh’s films, (and ANOTHER YEAR is no exception), is that they are filled, start to finish, with all the little scenes that would normally be on the cutting room floor of any other film. We never see Mary on her own, suffering through all the ordeals she recounts with Tom and Gerri. We only ever see her through Tom and Gerri’s eyes. Mary is likely always quite depressed, but for the first two acts of the film, (which is structured by sequences in each of the four seasons), Mary is much better at hiding her pain through laughter and drinking that Tom and Gerri have an easier time ignoring the elephant in the room. I’m sure there are much more eventful episodes in all of these characters’ lives that would tell a more traditionally structured story, but that’s not what Leigh is interested in. People rarely frankly come out and say exactly what is on their minds. You have to piece the story together through the little moments in between, and in the glances and sighs between lines of dialogue.
Leigh famously creates his films through months of rehearsal and improvisation. The actors in ANOTHER YEAR worked with Leigh for five months shaping and discovering not only the lives of their characters during the year the film takes place in, but also their whole history as well. Broadbent, Sheen, and Manville spoke after the film about how they essentially developed a back-story for every moment of each of their lives and that comes across completely in the film. It’s the reason they feel like such complete and believable characters. We don’t merely get to know them in this two hour story, but we can imagine a whole lifetime surrounding these events.
Since Mike Leigh has made such a great number of nearly perfect films, it’s difficult to simply call this one his best. I will say that I think this is his most successful display of balancing wonderfully, joyous humor with deep, rich drama. He may be criminally overlooked by the Academy Awards this year (hopefully not the BAFTA’s), but one person who cannot be ignored is Lesley Manville, who gives one of the finest performances I’ve ever seen from an actress in this or any other year. Broadbent and Sheen have also rarely been better, and some of the other supporting cast members, including Oliver Maltman, Peter Wight, David Bradley, and Martin Savage do equally exceptional work. But the only one who deserves as much credit as Leigh for this film is Manville. She is extraordinary and you can’t wait for her to return every time she’s not on screen. For me, one year with her was not enough.
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