Sunday, August 21, 2011
The Life of the Mind
By Damian Arlyn
Writer's block. We've all had it. That torturous feeling of staring at a blank sheet of paper (or, in most cases nowadays, a computer screen) and not having the faintest idea of what to say. It is the bane of the writer's existence. Barton Fink had it. He had it bad and as I sit at my keyboard peering into the vast amounts of intimidating whiteness on my screen, knowing full well that I am going to have to fill all that empty space with copy before my deadline is up, I am understanding a little bit of how he felt and what he went through in Joel and Ethan Coen's 1991 masterpiece Barton Fink (which celebrates the 20th anniversary of its U.S. release today). Fortunately, however, my wallpaper isn't peeling, there are no mosquitoes in my room and, perhaps most importantly of all, I didn't wake up in bed this morning next to a dead body.
Barton Fink is probably the Coen brothers' strangest and most esoteric work (and that's saying something). It was only their fourth feature film and it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where it snatched up several awards (including the prestigious Palme d'Or). I remember when I first saw it in college. I had recently watched and enjoyed The Hudsucker Proxy and had decided to check out other movies by these wacky filmmakers. I probably should've gone with Raising Arizona or Miller's Crossing next, but Barton Fink was the one that I remember being slightly intrigued by back when it first came out. It seemed bizarre, stylish and engaging. It turned out to be all of these things and I loved it…even though I didn't completely understand it (and still don't).
It tells the story of a successful 1940s Broadway playwright (the titular character, played by Coen regular John Turturro) who wants his work to have meaning and value, to change the way things are. Reluctantly, he takes a deal to come to Hollywood and write the screenplay for a Wallace Beery wrestling picture at a major studio. As Barton sets up his typewriter in a depressing, rundown hotel where he's staying, he finds it very difficult to write (only getting as far as his first two sentences: "Fade in on a tenement building on Manhattan's lower east side. Faint traffic noise is audible; as is the cry of the fishmongers."). However, Barton's situation starts to undergo a radical change when…Well, I'm not quite sure what happens. Either he loses his mind or weird things just start to happen around him or I don't know what. The ambiguity of the film's hallucinatory imagery is one of the many interesting qualities about it.
Because it's a Coen brothers film, Barton encounters a series of unusual characters in his journey through the movie industry. His next-door neighbor Karl (played by John Goodman) is a hulking insurance salesman — a quintessential example of the "common man" that Barton is so dedicated to lifting up in his work — who likes to drop by and chat with Barton, whom he seems to like. Barton meets one of his idols, novelist William Mayhew (John Mahoney), and his long-suffering secretary Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis). Barton also comes into
the good graces of studio head Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner in an Oscar-nominated performance) who speaks of how the writer is "king at Capitol Pictures." However, as is often the case in a Coen brothers film, nothing is what it seems to be. His warm and friendly neighbor is in reality a psychotic serial killer who beheads his victims, his favorite writer turns out not only to to be a drunk but a fraud whose works are written mainly by his secretary and the studio boss who was literally kissing his feet turns out to be a dictator who berates his talent and flat-out refuses to let him out of his contract or produce anything he writes. It is a bleak picture that the Coens paint of working in Hollywood, a virtual purgatory of miserable lost souls. Indeed, the hotel itself where Barton ends up staying feels more like a prison where all the inmates live out a sad and lonely existence (besides the Goodman character, no other tenants are ever seen in the hotel, despite the fact that we see their shoes placed outside their doors) and where the "warden," a bellhop named Chet (Steve Buscemi), seems utterly clueless as to the goings-on in his establishment.
Barton Fink is in many ways the archetypal Coen brothers movie; the type of film that only they could produce. Its style, its pace, its themes, its haunting visuals, its dark sense of humor, its enigmatic ending are all elements that are distinctly Coen. It also came at an important point in the development of their careers. Barton was made after they had established themselves as a formidable presence in the independent film world, but before films such as Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou, No Country for Old Men and True Grit turned them into the household names they are today. Perhaps that is why in recent years the Coens have indicated that they might be making a sequel to Barton Fink that takes place many years later. If it does get made, it would be the only sequel that the Coens have ever produced and as much as I don't care for the idea (I personally think that Barton Fink should be a completely self-contained story that creates its own reality and has no ongoing narrative), I have to admit that I would be curious to see what they could come up with.
In other words, we might be hearing again soon from that crazy writer known as Barton Fink…and I don't mean a postcard.
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Labels: 90s, Buscemi, Coens, John Goodman, John Turturro, Judy Davis, Movie Tributes, Sequels
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Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Let Live and Love
By Jonathan Pacheco
Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever is an uncompromisingly pessimistic examination of our society’s inability to accept two people of different races coming together in love or lust. Twenty years after the film was released, I’d like to think our society has progressed somewhat from the plaguing issues Lee harps on in the film, but no doubt, the problems remain simply as an extension of the greater racial misconceptions we still harbor, even if prejudices these days seem to be slightly more about culture than literal skin tone. Lee’s intentions, as usual, come from a place of passion and good will, but the director seems to get lost in his own film, becoming a little too self-involved to fully take care of his characters and his audience.
The interracial affair between Flipper (Wesley Snipes), an ambitious black architect in an all-white firm, and Angie (Annabella Sciorra), his new Italian secretary from the temp agency, is the catalyst for the rest of the film’s painful and occasionally violent events, but their relationship is unrealistic and unconvincing at best. Granted, Jungle Fever is indeed a melodrama occasionally bordering on allegory (the name “Flipper Purify” should tip you off to the character’s trajectory), so heightened emotions and exaggerated sequences of events should be expected, but even in that context, Flip’s head-spinning 180, going from trying to get Angie’s white butt fired because she’s not an African American to screwing her on his drafting table, all in near-record time, is absurdly comical in a way Lee probably never intended.
Lee’s passion and anger for the film’s topic is clear from the opening moments as the director dedicates the film to Yusuf Hawkins, a black teenager who, at the time of this film, was the latest victim of several New York City incidents of white mobs killing black men after they were suspected of dating white girls. The matter was fresh in Lee’s mind, so it’s understandable that his film might characterize people and events a bit more extremely to get his audience’s attention, but I fear that some of his tactics, namely portraying nearly every character as a shameless slur-slinging racist, makes his message slightly off-putting and less accessible to those who need to hear it.
Samuel L. Jackson’s much-lauded and award-winning turn as Flip’s crackhead brother Gator still ranks among his best (heck, whenever he’s at least tolerable I consider it an accomplishment), but it almost feels like a wasted performance since the subplot of Gator’s addiction and estrangement from the Purify family never jells with the rest of Jungle Fever. It always entertains, like the hellish sequence involving Flip desperately trying to find Gator in the “Trump Tower of crack houses,” and sadly, the arc is far more developed than the central Flip/Angie relationship, but it’s so ill-fitting in this particular film, lingering awkwardly even after the other main plot threads have been tied up.
Across all storylines, Jungle Fever examines how different people fight the adversity they face. Once Angie and Flipper become pariahs of their respective worlds, they shack up in an apartment together, half as a “screw you” to those who disapprove of their union, and half because it’s their only remaining option. Angie’s attitude toward the situation exhibits her defiance; sick of being pushed around by her father and brothers, she’s willing to ride out this taboo relationship to the end, perhaps seeing something in it that never was there. Flipper, however, needs the shelter of his racial community, the one that empowered him to stand up to his discriminatory bosses earlier in the film. Throughout Jungle Fever Flip has fallen back on race, always playing the victim to the white man’s oppression, so when he’s forced to live without that crutch, stuck in a relationship created by an affair of mere curiosity (or so he claims), he does everything he can to deny the relationship altogether, from secretly trying to reconcile with his wife to berating Angie for publicly acknowledging that the two are lovers.
Paulie (a wonderful John Turturro), the good-hearted neighborhood guy that Angie left for Flip, is a social punching bag for most of Jungle Fever and was often encouraged by Angie to push back against his own oppressors (usually her bullying brothers). He eventually fights adversity with defiance as well, but not one guided by sexual passion, curiosity, and confusion, but by logical thought and genuine emotion.
His regulars at the shop he runs bust his balls incessantly for one thing or another, and it’s during one of these sessions that Spike Lee hides the key to Paulie’s eventual personal liberation. The young, abrasive Italian and Jewish men in the shop land on the subject of New York politics one morning, in particular their displeasure with having a black mayor (David Dinkins, who referred to the city as a “gorgeous mosaic” of diversity when he took the oath of office) instead of their own personal white choice, Rudy Giuliani. When Paulie goes around the room asking how many of these knuckleheads even voted in the last election, every one had an excuse except for Paulie himself, who indeed voted — for Dinkins.
So when Paulie eventually chooses to ask the kind, encouraging, attractive black patron (Tyra Ferrell) out on a date, it’s not out of some “jungle fever” lust or curiosity, it’s because Paulie knows his heart and knows his reasons for being attracted to her are real, just as he knows his reasons for voting for David Dinkins are genuine, not color-based. Paulie’s defiance of racial taboos, both as an honest citizen and as a human being looking for a relationship with solid footing, may be the film’s most sustaining message after 20 years.
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Labels: 90s, John Turturro, Movie Tributes, Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee
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Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Chasing a Hat: Miller's Crossing, 20 Years Later
By David Gaffen
The Coen Brothers’ celebrated third movie, Miller’s Crossing, which opened 20 years ago today, opens with an ethereal shot of the wooded area where the movie’s pivotal moments come to pass. Carter Burwell’s majestic score plays; we’re treated to an upward gaze of the dense forest a few hours outside of a never-named city. The camera pans downward to the hat — belonging, as we find, to Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) — which then flies away, carried off into the forest by the wind.
Nothing in the movie that takes place following this is as hopeful; the opening images are illusory as the Coens go on to present one of their typically bleak films, one that offers no quarter to anyone who believes they’ve got something figured out that puts them ahead of everyone else. The chief characters are all working an angle — multiple angles, as it turns out. Some are trying to maintain what they have — the status quo, as represented by Leo, the town boss, played by Albert Finney, and Tom, his right-hand man and stony assassin, smarter than everyone else in the room at any given time.
Some are trying to move up in the world — Johnny Caspar, played to the hilt by Coen Bros. veteran Jon Polito, and his dead-eyed henchman, Eddie Dane (J.E. Freeman), just as icy as Tom, but crueler. And then there’s Bernie Birnbaum (John Turturro), playing all sides against the middle, and just out for himself. No one is trustworthy — not even a fixed fight, which as Caspar notes, "If you can't trust a fix, what can you trust? For a good return, you gotta go bettin' on chance — and then you're back with anarchy, right back in the jungle."
Miller’s Crossing is one of the Coens’ more easily re-watched movies, their third film, one with more visual style than most, even if it lacks the emotional complexity of Barton Fink, No Country for Old Men or A Serious Man. Perhaps that’s what makes it easily digestible — very few of the characters hide complex motivations other than keeping themselves safe, with (hopefully) a bit more money in their pocket. They're all betting on chance, and their shifting alliances suggest societal anarchy, where no one institution is strong enough to withstand corruption, which is the most enduring institution. The Coens drive that point home with an early scene where Tom enters Leo's office to find the Mayor and Police Chief, a scene mirrored later in the movie when Tom finds the same pair sitting with Caspar, recently installed as town boss.
The Depression-era setting makes it clear why they, as a whole, would be first, and last, most interested in self-preservation. It’s why Marcia Gay Harden’s Verna flies into the arms of Leo as a way of protecting her brother, Bernie; why Tom is eager to cast off Bernie because he correctly notes the threat of Caspar’s rising power.
Ultimately not a one of these characters is allowed to relax in the knowledge that they've improved their circumstances. As Tom tells Leo, the only reason he holds any power is people believe he’s powerful — without that belief, he has no power. The sole reason why Tom is able to withstand his making enemies among most people he sees is his cunning and usefulness to Leo; his fortunes take a turn for the worse without Leo’s backing.
Similarly, Eddie Dane is of practical use to his boss, Johnny Caspar, as long as it is believed that he isn’t going behind his back. It’s a confidence game Eddie ends up losing — and where Tom comes out the victor. But the infallibility of his judgment has long been called into question, leaving him in the woods alone by the end of the movie.
The harsh circumstances are overlaid with admirable camerawork and sequences — the early scenes in Leo’s office, as well as the justifiably classic scene where hit men come to kill Leo. This scene — and most scenes, really — were demands by the Coens to sit up and watch, as Leo is clued into trouble by smoke seeping through the floorboards, and as we watch the slow development as he gently rests his cigar on an ashtray and drops into his slippers before sliding under the bed to avoid the hail of bullets.
Finney still looked dashing at that time, dodging the gunfire in a silk robe whilst carrying a tommy gun, eventually taking out all of the guys who had come to get him, “Danny Boy” on the soundtrack. It’s one of those satisfying “movie” moments; a character later refers to Leo as “an artist” with his weaponry — but that’s clearly a call to the filmmaking itself. The later sequence where Caspar murders Eddie Dane stands as a brilliant contrast: dimmer lights, harsher music. There’s no romance in the camera here, focusing on a bloody, drooling Caspar as he bellows (with another man screaming in the background) about putting a bullet in someone’s brain.
Early in the movie Tom tells Verna of a dream he had, about his hat flying away in the woods. She surmises that the hat turned into something different — something “wonderful.” But Tom tells her it didn’t — it was just a hat. Whatever the characters are chasing after is an illusion. Buried in the sumptuous visuals is that bleak reality — a cold void, like the void in Tom’s chest: there is no ‘something wonderful,’ some pot at the end of a rainbow to fulfill one’s dreams. It’s just a hat.
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Labels: 90s, Coens, Finney, John Turturro, Movie Tributes
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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Two Fists, One Body
By Jonathan Pacheco
It’s been widely reported that on his first date with his eventual wife, President Barack Obama took Michelle to see Spike Lee’s electrifying film, Do the Right Thing. It’s not only possible, but likely that the thought-provoking movie affected the thinking of the man who would become this country’s first black president some twenty years later. Many may not admit it, but there was an unconscious Utopian consensus that the beginning of the Obama Era represented a devastating blow to racism in America. While it marks a historical step forward, rewatching Do the Right Thing reminds me how far we still have to go; the film has lost little of its power and relevance in 20 years as it presents complex characters capable of good and evil, and raises more questions than answers regarding our solutions to racism.
Do the Right Thing is razor thin on plot: all we have are situations. Brooklyn blazes in the hot summer and tensions — specifically racial — rise to an all-time high. Sal (Danny Aiello) opens his pizzeria just as he’s done every day for the last 25 years, but his son Pino (John Turturro) is fed up with the black and Hispanic patrons of the neighborhood, warning his brother Vito (Richard Edson) to never trust them, specifically the restaurant’s black delivery guy, Mookie (Spike Lee). A myriad of other characters populate this neighborhood, pontificating on stoops, playing in the streets, observing from the sidewalks.
It’s difficult for me to call Spike Lee “subtle” as his characters exhibit many of the same qualities made me fume during Paul Haggis’s Crash. I was just a toddler in 1989, but it’s hard for me to believe that so many people coexisting in the same area simply walked around all day throwing racial slurs in everyone’s face. Isn’t that what people bashed Crash for? For being unrealistically and offensively blatant in its portrayal of the people of Los Angeles? Working in Lee’s favor is the fact that, despite the filmmaker’s insistence that the whole city of New York existed under this climate at the time, his story only centers around a single neighborhood in Brooklyn. It’s much easier to believe that one small area could be so outwardly racist than it is to believe that all of Los Angeles is that way, as Haggis would have you believe.
So while Lee uses heavy-handed storytelling frameworks and techniques to provoke (with the racial slur montage being the chief example), he takes the blatant and makes it feel subtle by enabling each character to possess both racist and non-racist qualities. Pino does nothing but complain all day about the blacks that come into the restaurant, yet Mookie points out that all of his celebrity heroes are indeed black, from Magic Johnson to Prince. Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) rants at the local Koreans in the morning, but ends up being one of the sole voices of reason in the evening. Even Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), who seems to be a hardnosed menace with his boom box continuously blasting “Fight the Power,” shows some wisdom during his famous Love/Hate monologue.
More importantly, climactic character events don’t pop up out of nowhere. When Mookie breaks the dam by tossing the trash can into Sal’s window, it was not only the result of Raheem’s death, but also smaller, additional things. You must remember that throughout the entire film, Mookie’s been walking the line between Pino and the blacks, trying to keep the peace and not take offense at the man’s ignorance, but at the same time wanting to stand up for himself and his race. Also remember that, although Sal has generally been good to Mookie, even calling him a son, the owner of the pizzeria takes a liking to Mookie’s sister that makes the young man uncomfortable with his boss. By the time Lee shows Mookie rubing his face outside of the pizzeria, the mob raging over Raheem’s death, the weight of the entire day is finally pressing down upon him.
Because of the nature of the plot and the giant cast of vibrant characters, entire sequences don’t stand out nearly as much as the moments and monologues. Danny Aiello’s performance deserves its Oscar nomination, particularly for Sal’s conversation with Pino, as the father explains to his son why he’ll never move his restaurant. He points out that those kids, those young adults sitting out there in the neighborhood — they grew up on his food. They love his pizza, and that makes them valuable — not because of their business, but because they fulfill the old man’s purpose in life. Do some of them want him and his Italian family to get out of their predominantly black neighborhood? Sure. But most of them love the family and appreciate the service they provide. Aiello’s Sal has his own prejudices, but he’s intelligent and human enough to mostly ignore his own racism and that of others because he knows that there are more important things than skin color and countries of origin. I get the feeling that he hopes he can be an example to his sons and his patrons in that respect. What’s heartbreaking is that at the end of this conversation, Pino stomps out to scare off a pestering patron, completely ignoring his father’s words.
The most moving speech comes from the great Ossie Davis’s Da Mayor, the neighborhood’s mainstay drunk. He ambles through the streets flirting with Mother Sister (Ruby Dee) and dishing words of wisdom (ambiguously telling Mookie to “always do the right thing”), but when some teens heckle the old man, calling him a bum, his well-hidden anger bursts through. As he shares his stories of being unable to feed his starving children and wife, he does so with fire, fury, and guilt. Spike Lee incorporates themes of fathers unable or unwilling to provide in many films — from Crooklyn to He Got Game — but Davis takes this short soliloquy and carves such a painful, affecting, special moment out of the film.
However, the movie’s most famous speech belongs to Radio Raheem as he relates the theme-defining conflict between Love and Hate, symbolized by his giant brass knuckles. The young man tells of Love’s struggles with Hate, but also of Love’s ultimate victory. But through the tragic death of Raheem at the hands of negligent cops, Lee tells us that Love can’t always get the knockout. When Raheem falls to the ground dead, Lee frames the shot so that we only see his right hand — the one with the Love brass knuckles — lying there next to him, dead as well. And when Mookie has made his choice of violence shortly afterward, it’s with a yell of “HATE!” that he sends the trash can crashing through Sal’s window.
Now, some people still question whether Mookie “did the right thing,” claiming the film leaves this ambiguous. This view is fueled by the seemingly conflicting quotes that Lee adds at the end of the film — one from Martin Luther King, Jr. (representing the Love fist), stating that no violence is ever justified, and one from Malcolm X (representing the Hate fist), claiming that violence in self-defense isn’t necessarily violence — it can be seen as intelligence. But the question isn’t whether Mookie did the right thing by smashing the trash can into Sal’s window, inciting a riot that would burn the business to the ground. Lee has made it clear that he doesn’t question Mookie’s decision, as he’s said many times that only white people raise that question; black people seem to “get it” already. By smashing that window, Mookie chose Hate as a declaration of self-defense; they will not tolerate what happened to Radio Raheem. Not only is it intelligent in that it refuses to give the oppressors the upper hand, but I would argue that it benefits Sal and his family (seen by most as the enemy, despite the fact that they weren’t responsible for Raheem’s death). By leading the charge to tear down the pizzeria, Mookie, consciously or not, directs the hate-fueled energy of the mob towards a building, and not a human. Mookie could just as easily have thrown that trash can at Sal or Pino or Vito, and the crowd would have followed. Instead, the Italians are able to stand across the street in relative safety, the mob having no interest in them at all.
The true question that Lee asks is this: when is Love “the right thing,” and when is it Hate? Immediately after Raheem’s death, Mookie stood with Sal and his family, facing the mob in apparent union, but he finally decided that these circumstances called for him to choose the other side. The next morning, when Sal expresses his anger at Mookie’s choice to smash the restaurant window, Mookie shoots back with, “Motherfuck a window, Radio Raheem is dead.” Or, as Lee puts it, it’s a black man’s life vs. a white man’s property. Does Mookie’s decision solve everything? No. Vito, at one point feeling that Mookie was his only friend, now feels betrayed by Mookie, and Pino feels vindicated in his racist beliefs. Most of all, Sal has been betrayed after serving and loving the neighborhood, with his business of 25 years sitting in ashes. But a man’s life was carelessly taken. Hate was the right thing in that situation. “Motherfuck a window,” indeed.
The philosophies of Dr. King and Malcolm X aren’t meant to be presented as opposing, “one or the other” decisions. Lee believes that it’s important to incorporate both, as they are not mutually exclusive, just as the Love and Hate fists both belong to the same body. If there were any doubt, just look at the final image of the film as it fades to black: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X — the two fists — shaking hands, smiling.
Just like the Obama presidency, Do the Right Thing doesn’t contain the cure for racism; that was never Lee’s intention. The man just wants you to open your eyes and think about what you’re really seeing. These vibrant, well-played characters represent the problems that we still face in full force today. The eventual solution to racism will most likely contain ambiguity and shades of grey, but Lee challenges us to look at our individual situations, observe them, then do the right thing.
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Labels: 80s, John Turturro, Movie Tributes, Spike Lee
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Thursday, October 25, 2007
From the Vault: Do the Right Thing
One of the most important, and best, films of 1989 has arrived. It is Do the Right Thing, the controversial film by Spike Lee and the third film he's written, produced, directed and starred in following 1986's She's Gotta Have It and last year's School Daze.
The film tells the story of one day, one very hot summer day, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York. Beautifully photographed by Ernest Dickerson, the film takes its time as it introduces us to the neighborhood's characters. There is Sal (Danny Aiello), the Italian man who operates his pizzeria with his sons (John Turturro and Richard Edson). There is Mookie (Lee), their delivery man who has a son by his girlfriend (Rosie Perez). There is Da Mayor (Ossie Davis), a drunk simultaneously afforded respect and ridicule by the neighborhood. There is Smiley (Roger Smith), a man with a speech impediment roaming the streets selling photos of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Finally, there is Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito), a man outraged that there are only pictures of Italian Americans on the pizzeria's wall. Buggin' Out demands that some "brothers" be added to the wall and this request, looked on as serious by some, trivial by others, sparks the most serious and powerful essay on race relations in recent memory.
Do the Right Thing is that rarest of movies today — the conversation starter. Everyone might talk about Batman, but they don't debate its message. Lee's film isn't like that. It can't be ignored and it must discussed. I still have a lot of questions about the film. Why did Lee choose to portray Smiley with a stutter? Why is a seemingly sympathetic character driven to commit what appears to be an unnecessary act of violence? Lee doesn't try to fill in the blanks, exemplified by two contradictory quotes by King and Malcolm X that close the film.
The performances are uniformly excellent, with no character portrayed as all good or all bad. In fact, the only character who borders on villainy doesn't even take part in the final violence except in self-defense. Davis gives a wonderful performance as the seldom-sober sage, the only continuous voice of reason in the film. Ruby Dee, Davis' real-life wife, shines as Mother Sister, who watches everything from her window.
Paul Benjamin, Frankie Faison and Robin Harris provide ample comic relief as a trio who sit on a street corner commenting on all the failures and faults of the people around them while their own lives drift on aimlessly. Do the Right Thing shows the work of an artist completely in control of his film environment, an artist confident enough to tackle an important issue and intelligent enough not to try to provide an easy answer.
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Labels: 80s, John Turturro, Spike Lee
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Wednesday, August 15, 2007
From the Vault: Miller's Crossing
By Edward Copeland
The camera has calmed down, but the Coen brothers' craftsmanship proves better than ever in Miller's Crossing, their meditation on a corrupt town and the gangsters who run it.
Gabriel Byrne stars as Tom Reagan, right hand man to Irish mob boss Leo (Albert Finney). Tom keeps his emotions in check, never loses his cool, plays everyone against one another and prides himself on being a son of a bitch. Miller's Crossing's plot weaves such a labyrinthine story that it's futile to try to explain it here. Mood dominates this homage to the work of Dashiell Hammett. Some inconsistencies crop up, but the ride is too enjoyable to worry about them.
In Joel and Ethan Coen's previous films, Blood Simple and Raising Arizona, they built their reputation with manic camera moves and unusual angles. Miller's Crossing provides a more placid picture, making its mark with characterization and nice set pieces, particularly when two strongarms come to pick up Tom and a nice moment involving a dog, a boy and a body.
Byrne takes his central role and makes it the film's strongest point, completely becoming the enigmatic protagonist. Even by the end, his motivations remain cloudy but he's the pivotal player and gets some of the best lines such as "nobody knows anyone that well."
Marcia Gay Harden provides other fine moments as Verna, Tom's lover, Leo's girlfriend and the sister of Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro), the character whose actions ignite the movie's momentum. Turturro, best known as Danny Aiello's racist son in Do the Right Thing, makes an indelible impression in his small role.
Finney, always excellent, shines even though his character barely appears though the sequence involving the attempted hit more than makes up for his absence. Jon Polito and J.E. Freeman get to have fun as a rival Italian gangster and his shadow. Polito blusters memorably while Freeman, who was frightening in David Lynch's Wild at Heart, adds another character to his gallery of ghouls you wouldn't want to encounter in a dark alley.
Joel's direction moves the films along well while managing to make the complicated plot fairly clear. "There is nothing more foolish that man chasing his own hat," Tom says at one point in the film and hats prove to be the major motif. People give and receive "the high hat" or take off their hats or lose them in poker games. Do the hats mean anything? The Coens say it is free of any plot connection. Who knows, but hats off to Miller's Crossing anyway.
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Labels: 90s, Coens, Finney, John Turturro, Lynch
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Friday, December 02, 2005
From the Vault: Barton Fink
Ambition and aspirations can lead to widely divergent paths and that certainly shows in Barton Fink, the latest film by Joel and Ethan Coen.
Fink made headlines earlier this year by becoming the first film in Cannes Film Festival history to win best picture, best actor (John Turturro) and best director (for Joel, who helms the brothers' works). Its appeal to an international jury of film judges comes from the fact that it's a movie that doesn't spell everything out for the audience, something that American films do too often and seldom to good effect.
It remains to be seen whether deeper meanings lurk below the surface of this entertaining and disturbing film or if the Coens have created the film equivalent of those old Mad Lib games with the audience filling in the symbolism instead of parts of speech. Either way, Barton Fink's style and dialogue make it one of the best cinematic trips this year.
Turturro stars as the title character, a left-leaning playwright in the Clifford Odets vein who was making a name for himself in New York writing plays about "the common man." His being revolves around the espousing of his social and creative consciousness, though when it comes to actually listening to what the common man has to say, Fink's self-absorption keeps him from hearing the words.
Following the opening of his first substantial Broadway success, Barton's agent suggests that he head to Hollywood to find screenwriting work for awhile, if for no other reason than to make some good money to enable him to write more plays. Reluctantly, Barton listens, comforted by the idea that common people also live in California. Barton finds his first assignment to be writing a B-grade wrestling picture starring Wallace Beery, something he has no idea how to do.
For help, he turns to a prominent Southern novelist (nee William Faulkner, played wonderfully by John Mahoney) whose Hollywood career has pushed him inside the bottle while his faithful secretary (Judy Davis) does the actual work.
To say much more would not only be detrimental to the unfolding of the plot, but a synopsis would almost certainly be incoherent. The best explanation is that the story has two halves, one involving the seedy Hollywood hotel where Barton takes up residence and the insurance salesman (John Goodman) who lives next door, the other skewering formula filmmaking.
The main problem with Barton Fink is its inability to clearly link the relationship between the two halves, except by the loosest of associations of the creative process gone awry. Still, the film soars in spite of this, thanks to Goodman's excellent work and the amusing caricatures of studio executives, particularly Michael Lerner as the studio chief.
After sitting through this summer of failed formula films, the open ridicule the movie dumps on the process lifts the dispirited movie fan. When Lerner berates Barton about movie audiences wanting to see wrestling not soul searching, except for a little for the critics, any reviewer has to revel in a movie that expresses the same dissatisfaction with the bunk being churned out of Hollywood.
In the beginning, the style and camera acrobatics of Blood Simple made critics take notice of the Coens, but it's their words that have come to dominate their work. The understated ugliness of Blood Simple gave way to the humorous platitudes springing from the mouths of the low-rent characters in Raising Arizona.
Last year's Miller's Crossing painted its dialogue in strokes broad and terse but all infinitely memorable. Now comes Barton Fink and whatever weaknesses it might have, it's the words that hold the package together. The wonderfully rhythmic dialogue ranging from Lerner's deceptively self-effacing studio chief to the verbal volleys of a pair of detectives (Richard Portnow, Christopher Murney) mesmerize as much with speed as with content. The film's beautiful cinematography resembles the work of David Lynch — and that's not entirely out of place here.
As far as the meaning (or if there even is one), that's best left to the audience. Half the fun will be discussing Barton Fink afterward. Personally, I doubt the film has a deeper level, just fun references skewering all sides of the political spectrum on the eve of World War II, from the socialist, fascist and capitalist points of view. Barton Fink represents the Coens at their most ambitious, but its aspirations remain unclear and, I believe, that is precisely their point.
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Labels: 90s, Coens, Faulkner, John Goodman, John Turturro, Judy Davis, Lynch
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From the Vault: Jungle Fever
From the moment the opening credits begin, with its flying signposts and bouncy Stevie Wonder title song, the audience knows it's in the hands of a talented filmmaker.
Spike Lee scores again, continuing his record of making a successful film every other time, with Jungle Fever, though it doesn't equal his incomparable Do the Right Thing.
The film is being sold as the story of an interracial romance between a married architect (Wesley Snipes) and his Italian temporary secretary (Annabella Sciorra). However, Lee seems to lose interest in this story thread once it has served its purpose as a catalyst for the other characters in the film.
Essentially, the film focuses on race, taking themes Lee didn't develop well enough in School Daze and presenting them in an entertaining and thought-provoking manner. The film works best displaying microcosms of both African- and Italian-American communities.
Where the film comes up short is by failing to create a definable relationship between Snipes and Sciorra. Both actors are good, but the film doesn't make the effort to create a legitimate romance or a curiosity-seeking romp.
What Lee's film does do well is showing the reaction of the families to the affair, from Snipes' father, a defrocked preacher (Ossie Davis) who delivers a powerful speech about race-mixing to Sciorra's racists father and brothers, two-thirds of whom got whacked by Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.
John Turturro's character of Sciorra's fiance provides another nice element. His sweetness and earnestness shine brightly against the harsh bigotry that surrounds him. After playing the racist son in Do the Right Thing, Lee presents Turturro with a wonderful contrast and gets Turturro's best performance to date as a result.
The single most memorable performance belongs to Samuel L. Jackson as Gator, Snipes' crack-addicted brother. Jackson makes Gator humorous, pathetic and frightening and leads the film into its most harrowing sequence inside a crackhouse.
Lee directs as well as he ever has, but he still encounters trouble with his script. If he hones his narrative skills, this major talent could join the leagues of Martin Scorsese among great American filmmakers. In a summer filled with big-budget action and lame-brained comedies, Jungle Fever, despite its script flaws, deliver a welcome breath of fresh air.
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Labels: 90s, John Turturro, Pesci, Samuel L. Jackson, Scorsese, Spike Lee, Zemeckis
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