Burn After Reading

 

After the Coen brothers scored four Academy Awards for their engrossing and loyal depiction of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, it’s no surprise they were ready to return to the laughs.  After all, the workaholic filmmakers have been known as creators of the Dude (Lebowski), and students of devilish absurdity and old time yarn spinning (Barton Fink and O Brother… respectively) before they made oxygen tanks look dubious.  Hence, Burn After Reading a palette cleanser, if not a complete return to form.

The world of Burn After Reading seems familiar at first glance.  The soundtrack is populated with all the pounding percussion and discordant string sweeps one would expect in an espionage thriller.  It even has a C.I.A. agent (John Malkovich), adultery (George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Malkovich again), and Russians (some guy named Krupa).  From the movie poster up these are all merely dressings for comic genius and taking the piss out of the genre.

Along with this talented ensemble of actors also comes Frances McDormand as Linda, an employee of a fitness center who sets the pseudo-suspense in motion.  But the surprise trump comes from Brad Pitt as Chad.  Here is Pitt playing a character we haven’t seen him play; devoid of romantic interest, perpetually clad in bike shorts and fitness uniform, bumbling and dorky.  It’s enough to make you stop between laughs and ask if Pitt’s comic timing is really so great, or if it’s just funny to see Brad Pitt play such a half-wit.

The Coen brothers wield this small army of acting talent to tell a long tale filled with would-be plot twists, building faux tension that leads up to nothing.  That is the launch pad for all the laughs.  Osborne (Malkovich) is fired from the CIA for his apparent mediocrity and constant drinking.  Linda tries to blackmail him to pay for a breast augmentation.  When Chad is pinned in a closet hiding from Harry (Clooney) the silent suspense is disarmed by Pitt’s gum chewing and whistling nose.

As these character’s paths twist in to an absurd knot and the plot pointlessly thickens, the pace increases with the hilarity until the shoulder-shrugging conclusion leaves you smiling.  J.K. Simmons sums thing up as both CIA agent-in-charge and Greek chorus: “What do we learn?….I dunno.  I guess not to do it again….. but, what did we even do?”

 

****

Mongol

 

How exactly did a kid named Temujin, from the sticks in Mongolia grow up to become Ghengis Khan and control the largest empire in the history of the world?  Russian director Sergei Bodrov plans to tackle that question in a trilogy of historical epics and Mongol is the first.  It was no easy task for Bodrov to create such a grand-scaled film on a less-than-modest budget of 20 million dollars (donated by the country of Kazakhstan among others) and a crew of people speaking roughly 30 different languages.  Somehow it all works.

One of the greatest delights of Mongol is the striking landscape captured so well by Bodrov and cinematographers Rogier Stoffers and Sergey Trofimov.  The film manages to find a striking palette even when focusing on the dull browns of Mongolia’s arid steppe, contrasted beautifully against the gold of a panoramic twilight.  The Mongolian landscape seems to shift tones in harmony with the fortune of Temujin; from the frozen white of his childhood exile, to the lush green fields of his reunion with his bride.

Temujin’s biography can only be understood as myth crossed with history.  Born in a mostly illiterate culture in the late 12th century, records of his wheelings and dealings can be shaky at best.  Bodrov settles on the idea that little Genghis Khan suffered, became wise for it, grew older and continued to suffer some more.  Kicking the film off Temujin is born into political turmoil as his father the Khan (roughly- clan leader) is assassinated and Temujin’s birth rite as head of his clan is usurped.

As Bodrov depicts it, historic Mongolian’s were a stoic bunch and the movie is stocked with men of few words.  Blood-brother and rival Khan, Jamukha is a much needed source of comedy as he merrily sits and drinks at the campfire despite suffering great losses in his battles.  The deepest psychological tract in the film is Temujin’s rift with Jamukha, and his eventual recognition of the shortcomings of his people.  In doing so he unites them, offers new laws and begins his conquering.

The movie’s action tendencies inevitably take over during its few battle scenes.  For the most part they are achieved well, in spite of the film’s meager budget.  A couple moments of hand-to-hand combat seem awkwardly stylized in an unexpectedly Ang Lee fashion.  While that, and a couple more heavy-handed CGI strokes tend to conflict with the film’s earnest grit, overall the battles are visceral despite their predictable outcomes.

Compared to much clumsier historical epics like Oliver Stone’s Alexander and Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven, Mongol is a somber triumph.  Taken on its own it is a film that is artful and amusing despite its self-importance.

***1/2

 

Be Kind Rewind

Michel Gondry is back with more of his whimsical imagery that is scotch taped together with Be Kind Rewind.  Gondry seems to brew concepts that are merely launch pads for his trade mark, hands-on design.  It’s a wonder that he has been able to color in the lines enough to give an emotional depth to his bag of tricks.  This particular flight of fancy works as a love letter to what Gondry has been doing all along: making believe.

 

The setup is simple: two normal guys Jerry and Mike (Jack Black and Mos Def) are in a pickle.  Mike is left in charge of a failing VHS rental store in nowhere-New Jersey and Jerry accidentally erased all of the tapes with his electrically charged body (the cause of Jerry’s problem is even sillier).  When an old lady wants to watch Ghost Busters they tell her to come back and then shoot it themselves.

 

So comes another Gondry vehicle for sweetly lo-fi special effects.  The first third of the movie seems to be little more than vehicle.  At points the rickety exposition punctuated with off-kilter slapstick could even be homage to some of the schlock the boys end up remaking, or ’sweding’ as they dub their d.i.y. process.  In any case the trouble is forgotten once the boys pick up the hefty VHS camcorder, the curtain seems to open a little wider and Gondry’s charming wonderland unfolds once again.

 

The neighbors are even brought into the joyous labor, as the girl from the dry cleaning shop becomes a leading lady and the local mechanic fashions make shift vehicles.  Laughs break up the constant grins caused by incautious attempts at Rush Hour 2 and Driving Ms. Daisy.  Black is in his best dork suit; up tight, narcissistic and hilarious, while Mos Def sheds his MC swagger to play a pure and naive young man trying to save a tiny business.

 

The fun comes with an encapsulation of Gondry’s guiding philosophy that anyone’s creativity is more captivating then prepackaged perfection, even if you can see the strings.  Indeed, the strings Mike and Jerry use to float ‘ghost books’ around are what makes it magic. 

 

**** 

 

Best Animated Ten Minutes I’ve Spent In Months

 There’s a lot of interest in personal connection and consolation there.  And man is it beautiful. 

Persepolis

Based on Marjane Satrapi’s outstanding graphic novels comes this black and white animated delight deals with Satrapi’s own experience being an Iranian citizen, her temporary residence in Austria and her return to her homeland.  The film is 90% black and white animation (with a couple snippets of color) and all in French.

 

The first thing an audience looks for in an animated version of a graphic novel is a visual quality that is respectful of its source material.  There are really no qualms to be had there, as co-director Vincent Paronnaud nails Satrapi’s economical but affecting style while making subtle improvements.  A haze of ink splatter here, some radical perspective there, toss in a charming near-psychedelic dream sequence and the comics are in motion.  The only complaint is at points the fast paced 90 min. telling of her autobiography, coupled with the high contrast black and white gets a little fatiguing to the eye.

 

Any biopic (and only in a round about way this is), or book adaptation comes up against the twofold task of editing a story down to get through it all, and not completely alienate the fans.  Paronnaud and Satrapi (who co-directed as well) triumph in this respect because of their screenplay.  No major point in the two Persepolis novels feels too glossed over.  Someone who’s never read the books could understand all of the gravity of the political tumult and war tearing Iran, as well as the gracious sense of humor Satrapi employs to the mix.  The movie easily shifts from impressionistic visions of young Iranian men falling to their death, to a hilarious, surreal montage detailing Satrapi’s awkward physical transition into womanhood.  

 

Finally the movie retains the instinctual gravity of the stories deepest point: the burden of split consciousness.  Most of Satrapi’s battle is a psychological one as she fleas Iran at such a young age to find herself in Vienna.  She is as much delighted at the ease of life in her new home, as guilty for leaving her family in a war zone.  Little Marjane becomes fluent in French while going through teenage growing pains.  She never feels at home amongst her Austrian friends even while head-banging along at a Vienna punk rock show.

 

A return home can only offer oppressive social codes; women are forced to wear veils over their heads in public and can’t be seen walking with a man unless he is a family member.  Marjane’s European sensibilities make her too loud for Iranian oppression, and her respect and awareness of her heritage makes Austria a difficult fit.  Her tenacity and humor add color to the black and white balancing act, a stranger in a strange land, Satrapi dreams of God and Marx in the same sigh.

 

***1/2 

There Will Be Blood

 
Director P.T. Anderson’s recent contributions to American film have been described a lot of ways.  Quirky for Magnolia’s climax of raining frogs, or Adam Sandler’s cross country trek to tell a sleazy mattress salesman to stop harassing him in Punch Drunk Love.  Oldtimey  grit, Upton Sinclair and California’s desert prairies would never be a guess for Anderson’s next cinematic meditation, but he has arrived at a new vocabulary that eschews high paced urban madness for a slower ticking clock. 

Loosely based on Sinclair’s “Oil!”, Daniel Day Lewis stars as a calculating oil man Daniel Plainview at the turn of the century.  Sharing “The Jungle”s historic aversion to romanticizing early American labor, There Will Be Blood reveals the oil industry in its infancy crashing along in a manner as coarse and dangerous as the men doing it.  Accidents are frequent and ghastly as heavy machine parts sometimes fall into wells upon unsuspecting workers.  Anderson handles the tragedies as unflinchingly as his character Plainview, taking long dark shots of monotonous work interrupted by the frank clanging of metal pieces descending on someone’s head.  Plainview only shrugs it off with a “Goddamn it….. shut down until the midday.”  

The only spice augmenting the greedy sense of chaos is Johnny (Radiohead) Greenwood’s avant score that is heavy on grinding discord from the string section.  Greenwood’s score is an odd fit, but a perfect one.  The film opens with a sudden burst of orchestral drone as the camera confronts a bare Californian hill as if it were the monolith from Kubrick’s 2001.  The soundtrack becomes more frantic and percussive as Plainview buys up property, swindles small towners and confronts his arch enemy: a young evangelist preacher named Eli Sunday (Paul Dano).

The film takes a measured pace, building tensions between an entrepreneur and a fundamentalist.  Anderson adeptly gives the audience time to soak up the meaning of their conflict without narrating it in your face by showing the men doing business, and pausing to let you soak up their barren backdrop.  As Lewis brilliantly deadpans his character to the point of emotional crumbling, and Dano fervently leads a congregation in a fire-and-brimstone condemnation of sin, we begin to see There Will Be Blood depositing a new chapter in Americana.  It’s a chapter filled with battle between an old way of life and a new one; between backwoods Calvinism and capitalist ambition.

The story leaves little room for a classic protagonist.  Both Plainview and Sunday are morally corrupt in their own regard.  Plainview considers abandoning his adopted son when he becomes handicapped in a drilling accident.  Sunday beats his own father for what he considers to be sinful stupidity at the error of selling Plainview an oil rich plot.  As the two become more twisted in their respective battles the movie breaks up the tension with black humor of an entirely original tone.  At one point Plainview beats Sunday for demanding money.  The fight is humorously  schoolyard-esque with Sunday screaming and Plainview pushing his head into the mud, but all the laughs come laced with wincing as both characters seem so close to insanity.

The movie is lengthly in considering the ultimately tragic fates of its twisted characters and pays off with a shocking climax that satisfies the titles promise.  When all is done the film closes feeling worthy of canonization with so many famous American pictures that reveal the country’s turbulent nature.  While people like Scorsese, Stone, Coppola and Leone are heralded for confronting the seedy underbelly of American crime and war, now Anderson can be remembered for showing the bloody trail of American business. 

***** 

Juno

Juno’s got more Oscar whispers going than most films right now, and there’s a lot of Academy Award talk this time of year.  Perhaps this Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking) picture offers a little levity in an intense and often brutal list of Oscar nominees.  There are tiny spurts of brutality, but more verbally from ex-stripper (and blogger extraodinaire) Diablo Cody’s writing.

 

From its opening scenes Juno is unabashedly stylized.  Ellen Page’s (Juno) dialogue is loaded up with one-liner zingers that are distractingly witty.  At times her character seems to suffer from Kevin Smith syndrome, only instead of quick lipped meditations on anal sex and mall shopping, Juno seems to verbally cock an eyebrow at peoples eccentricities and flaws.  It may be a little more fresh than Jersey Girl, but it can be equally distracting.  Her soliloquy on China giving away babies like free Ipods is funny, but feels contrived.

 

Much like the snappy dialogue, the soundtrack is a little too precious.  It seems like Juno can’t hop into her dad’s minivan wearing an ironic vintage T-shirt without a twee assault from Moldy Peaches, or Belle and Sebastian. 

 

These hip dressings, only serve to detract from a heartfelt movie about a pregnant teen.  When she doesn’t sound like she’s giving a pre-Late Show Conan O’Brien routine, Page is both believable and likeable.  Michael Cera (Superbad) carries a disarming naivete as her track running boyfriend.  The super-yuppie couple (played by Jennifer Garner, and Jason Bateman) hoping to adopt Juno’s unwanted baby, have a life-like conflict of their own.  Bateman plays  a thirty-something who is all grown up, but still wants to rock and roll.  The subtle sexual tension that develops between him and Juno is almost disturbingly natural, in contrast to Garner’s character who is drawn like an aspiring Stepford wife.

 

There are no easy answers to teenage pregnancy, or martial angst for that matter and luckily the film doesn’t pretend to have them.  It’s a common sense embodied by Juno when she tells her father, “I’ve been out all day dealing with things well above my maturity level.”  With a wry, c’est la vie kind of humor the movie manages to occasionally break through its stylish tendencies and show how people grin through unfortunate circumstances.

 

*** 

 

 

 

 

Margot at the Wedding

Director Noah Baumbach really came out of nowhere with 2005’s Squid and the Whale. Only serious Wes Anderson fans would have remembered him as co-writer of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Squid won over audiences with its sadly hilarious dysfunctional family full of pretension of a brand that is distinctively New York-intellectual. Margot at the Wedding, boasting an ensemble cast of Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jack Black, had the independent film community anticipating a slam dunk. It would seem however, that Baumbach is not interested in a victory lap.

From the opening sequence Margot at the Wedding feels weighty. The shots are often very close-up and employ a muted palate of colors, which at brightest take on the bronze flares of over exposed Super 8mm home movies. This seems to intentionally serve the voyeuristic edge of the movie, as the camera wobbles as if there is some other family member holding it. Perhaps, they were hiding from the wrath of Margot.

Nicole Kidman really digs into her role as Margot, the sharp tongued hellion who has arrived to either celebrate, or completely derail her sister Pauline’s wedding. Margot uses a sneer and amateur psycho-analysis to reduce everyone around her to a desperate state. With her already maladjusted adolescent son in tow, it’s clear she is on the verge of meltdown herself; even as she instigates Pauline’s.

Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the much more sympathetic Pauline. With one marriage behind her and a daughter as well, she is wandering in to a marriage with a lovable-loser played by Jack Black. The two have a believable chemistry and Black really excels playing a role that is not as cartoony as his typical flick.

For all its disaster the movie steers clear of melodrama. When Pauline blows up and starts screaming there is no swelling of a string section on the soundtrack, followed by the slamming of doors. Instead she is still in a room with the person she is screaming at and it’s just awkward. At one point after being reduced to tears Jack Black’s character is so heavily sobbing to Pauline over the phone all she can say is: “Honey I can’t understand what you’re saying.” It’s funny, but the laughs get caught in their cruelty.

Baumbach buries the dark humor that made Squid so disarming even further below the surface. At points, as the characters verbally assassinate each other you wonder if it is still there. Kidman may have earned herself an Oscar nomination for being insufferable, as Margot swallows more meds with Chardonnay and chastises her sister for marrying beneath her. If there is any key to the film it is taking the disasters with a grain of humor. With it, they are tragically funny. Without a sad laugh the movie feels suffocating.

***

I’m Not There

Over the past several years Bob Dylan has earned his place in the pantheon of American mythology. The recent, and excellent documentary by Martin Scorsese explores Dylan’s rise from Minnesota obscurity into folk icon, and his greatly controversial move to a new electrified folk-rock sound. Dylan himself has dug in to share his twentieth century adventures with his scattered, autobiographical Chronicles book. With new box-sets and biographies hitting the shelves every month it seems America still can’t get enough of the mysterious lyricist, or his chameleon like ability to morph into different figures.

Dylan’s staying power in American culture seems to have much to do with the existential bravery of his work. He has been the heir to Woody Guthrie’s throne, the mouthpiece of the civil rights movement, the mystical poet, the western story teller and even the praise singer. He’s notoriously dodged all of these titles in interviews claiming to be nothing at all, turning his back on politics and the very idea of a ‘folk revival’.

So, it seems fitting that Todd Haynes want to explore the many faces of Bob Dylan using a variety of actors playing a variety of characters in a kind of avant-homage to the shape shifter. The weight of Haynes task falls on a number of people interpreting, impersonating and enhancing a real person; and the film cracks under the weight.

The film makes no claims of linearity and so it can’t be judged on those terms. Nonetheless, the outstanding performances of Cate Blanchett as the “Don’t Look Back” era Dylan, and Ben Whishaw who’s comments fit in like a Greek chorus, can’t help the film find its own logic. The hardworking Christian Bale is tragically miscast, and his performances fall flat as an awkward parody of Dylan being torn apart for refusing a civil rights award. Both Richard Gere as the cowboy/outlaw Dylan, er Billy the Kid, and Heath Ledger as the womanizer seem like disconnected mini-dramas that make you eager to return to Blanchett’s Oscar-worthy performance. Top it off with Marcus Franklin (yet another talented actor who can’t save the picture) as the little black boy claiming to be Woody Guthrie himself, and you have what looks like an attempt at a fractured meditation on personality and the sixties, but is nothing more than a pool of post-modern muck.

Further complicating things is Haynes interest in paying film homage. Black and white captions accompanied by bullet sounds tip a hat to Godard. At one point Blanchett finds herself in a elegant garden populated by an absurd entourage of press people and a very cracked-out Beatles. The garden is decorated with stone fixtures and confusion taken directly from Fellini’s “8 1/2″. This is an irony all too rich to go unnoticed as “8 1/2″ is a movie about a director with all the funding, attention and actors and no idea what he’s shooting. Did Haynes come up for air and realize that he was Fellini’s lead, a director with no vision and so much commotion?

Luckily, Dylan’s cryptic biography and rich lyricism can survive such misguided tributes. Better still the movie has a double-disc soundtrack full of great singers (Cat Power, Jim James, Jeff Tweedy, Sonic Youth, Richie Havens and more) doing outstanding covers of his songs.

**

American Gangster

What was it about the Nixon years that America just can’t seem to finish digesting? Was it the foreign policy faux pas that cost so many American and Vietnamese lives? Maybe it was the choking economy or a new-found lack thereof?

Maybe it was none of these things, but in any event they are all prominent threads in Ridley Scott’s true-crime drama American Gangster. Scott is no stranger to real-life drama (G.I. Jane) but has historically leaned more towards the fantastical (Legend, Alien) and the epic (Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven). Maybe it’s his track record that makes his choice of translating the life of Frank Lucas-the most notoriously succesful black leader of organized crime- so suprising and the film so poignant.

Denzel Washington stars as Lucas, while Russel Crowe plays a pleasantly humble role as a Jersey cop named Detective Richard Roberts.  The two are fantastically matched as Washington displays his perennial grace and dignity that lends the drug lord a sympathetic air despite shooting a neighberhood gangster in broad daylight, and flooding the streets of New York with high quality heroin.  Crowe looks anything but grandiose as Roberts struggles to win a custody battle over his son, turns in a trunk full of bribe money and gets chased out of New York by some corrupt cops who treat him like a kid on the wrong side of the playground.

The movie plays out like a more grand update on the French Connection (the famous bust is outwardly referenced in the dialog) with all the typical, racist, stereotypes shuffled.  Instead of Gene Hackman’s Irish gumshoe, Roberts is a Jewish cop.  All of the Italian families and crooked cops marvel at the presence of a black druglord dominating their streets.  Ridley Scott doesn’t pull any punches either as both cops and criminals toss racial slurs with venomous hatred.

Nevertheless, race is not the picture’s prime concern so much as ethics. Repeatedly throught the film Detective Roberts is mocked for turning in the found cash, which was probably swiped from the evidence room by a less honest cop. Eventually Lucas himself trys to buy him off, begging the question: ‘what’s the point? The world is a screwed up place.’ Ridley Scott is not interested in wrapping the answer up with a bow. What he does give us is just violent enough, with carefully measured New York grit to give this true story an authentic sense of drama and personality.

****1/2