Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Everyone understands the language of a bully
By Edward Copeland
By the same token, hate, bigotry and intolerance also happen to be among the handful of dialects that don't require translation. Susanne Bier's In a Better World touches upon all those topics and raises the question of whether there comes a time when turning the other cheek ceases to be practical or if vengeance can ever be justified because it simply makes a tormentor's victim no better than the tormentor himself. The Danish film took home the 2010 Oscar for best foreign language film, beating such renowned competition as Biutiful, Dogtooth and Incendies, but only received U.S. release in 2011. I wasn't a fan of Biutiful, haven't seen Incendies and it's difficult to compare Dogtooth to just about anything, but In a Better World proves to be far from an embarrassing winner of the prize (as has been the case so often, coming off quite well and avoiding most of the preachiness that could trip up a film venturing into this subject matter if handled purely as a means to sell a message.
In a Better World marked Bier's second nomination for the Oscar for foreign language film. I haven't seen that movie, 2006's After the Wedding, but it would have to be damn good to best that year's winner, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's exquisite The Lives of Others with its touching performance by Ulrich Mühe, all the more haunting now since he died so soon after gaining his greatest international fame from the film.
I did, however, really like Bier's 2004 work (released in the U.S. in 2005). Brothers, which was remade in 2009 by director Jim Sheridan with Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman cast in the roles played so well in Bier's Danish version by Ulrich Thomsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Connie Nielsen. Needless to say, though I usually give more leeway to English language remakes of foreign language remakes, there was no way in hell that I would dare watch the excellent original defiled by the new cast, especially expecting to buy Mr. Bland Gyllenhaal as a believable screwup. Of course, the biggest screwup concerning the original Brothers occurred in 2004 and was committed by the Danish jury picked to select Denmark's entry for the Oscar.
That year, there were two critical (and, coincidentally, box office) successes: Brothers and a film I'm not familiar with titled King's Game. Everyone assumed that one of the two would be chosen as Denmark's entry and would make for a strong contender. Instead, the jury opted for Lars von Trier's The Five Obstructions, really a documentary, which attracted less than 13,000 moviegoers total in Denmark. Critics, scholars and citizens protested to no avail and The Five Obstructions remained Denmark's official entry for the 2004 Oscar foreign language film jury and failed to make the cut. Even if Brothers had made the cut, it wouldn't have been a guaranteed winner, even I were the sole voter because as much as I liked that film, I don't know that I would have voted for it over the winner, the great film The Sea Inside for which Javier Bardem deserved a nomination, and one of the other nominees, Downfall, with Bruno Ganz's overlooked performance as Hitler (and eventually endless source of hilarious YouTube parodies).
Enough digressions. Time to talk In a Better World. The story concerns two 10-year-old boys from families fractured in different ways, transplanted to Copenhagen, Denmark, who gravitate into a friendship spurred by both being bullied. Christian (William Jøhnk Juel Nielsen) moves there with his father Claus (Ulrich Thomsen) after the death of Christian's mother and Claus' wife. The death has shattered Christian, who feels that his father's attempt to be strong for his son really indicates a lack of caring that she died at all.
The other boy, Elias (Markus Rygaard), is the son of a Swedish doctor named Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) and his wife Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), who are separated and considering divorce because Anton divides his time between home and working for Doctors Without Borders at a refugee camp in a wartorn African country. The school assholes have made Elias their favorite punching bag, mainly because he's a "Swede" in their Danish homeland. I found this concept rather shocking since I'd never heard of Danes hating Swedes, so I actually looked it up, but couldn't find any evidence of such a hatred but I did stumble upon an interview Bier gave to Roger Moore of The Orlando Sentinel where she explained this:
"We went to some pains to not deal directly with one clearly defined country or religion. I wanted the movie to be about intolerance in a more general way. We question that lack of desire to understand another person or another culture. Some people are just like that.…
“It’s kind of a joke in the movie, this idea that we don’t like Swedes. OK, maybe a little, but there is not general prejudice against Swedes in Denmark. When we show that in the movie we’re showing how stupid prejudice is, how foolish racism looks. It’s like saying, ‘Come on, we’re all pretty much alike. Swedes and Danes? Exactly alike. Look how stupid in its core racism is.’”
That little joke might be funny, but very little in the movie itself is. While the adults get the top billing (and turn in good and great performances, especially Persbrandt and Dyrholm who both give excellent turns. Thomsen, who was so great in Brothers. almost seems an afterthought at times here.
In a Better World's success rests squarely and superbly on the shoulders of the two young actors, particularly Nielsen as Christian, whose carefully modulated performance begins as a sad young boy, transforms into a heroic kid who wants to help his friend stop being a victim before he turns into someone that scares even Elias and his parents, fearful of what he might be capable of doing.
The parallels established in the screenplay by Anders Thomas Jensen (who has had a hand in most of Bier's major films), from a story devised by him and Bier, nicely matches both visually and otherwise the parallels between suburban bullies and African warlords. It teeters closely at times toward being too obvious in its message, but the script does a good job at making situations gray enough that even the nonviolent advocates begin to question if sometimes the only way to end a bully's reign and make it a "better world" is to follow the Golden Rule literally into a not-so-nice direction.
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Labels: 10s, Bardem, Documentary, Foreign, J. Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Oscars, Remakes, von Trier
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Wednesday, September 21, 2011
With the exposition out of the way, will a story be starting soon?
By Edward Copeland
I didn't think it was possible for a movie that's 1 hour and 50 minutes long (including end credits and requisite Marvel teaser scene) to end up spending all but about the last half-hour of that time on exposition, but indeed that's what Thor plays like.
As the comic book empire continues to expand its movie franchises for an inevitable film that brings the Marvel characters together under the leadership of that mysterious SHIELD organization which allows Samuel L. Jackson to earn a living by making cameos while Clark Gregg wears suits and travels from film to film so he can report to Jackson's Nick Fury. (Have no fear — there's the required Stan Lee cameo as well.) When they toss Robert Downey Jr. in as a reformed arms maker in Iron Man and Iron Man 2, it turns out to be great fun. With Thor, you literally get an hour and 20 minutes of gobbledy-gook followed by about 25 minutes of yawn-inducing action and it's over.
Kenneth Branagh directs. Yes, that Kenneth Branagh. The man once spoken of being the next Olivier in terms of bringing Shakespeare to film but he can't even be the new Olivier on an entertaining level of whoredom. His acting for cash is sporadic and not hammy enough to be a hoot and his non-Shakespeare direction results in films such as a remake of Sleuth that no one was asking for and the godawful Mary Shelley's Frankenstein where both he and Robert De Niro were so over-the-top that it turned out that John Cleese gave the film's best performance. He even marred his Shakespeare films with stunt casting that probably made the Bard in the afterlife wish the stories were true that he weren't the true author of his works.
Fortunately, Anthony Hopkins is on hand to pick up some of that U.K. actor "I'll blow anyone for cash" spirit to his role as Odin, Thor's father, the king of Asgard, the realm from which Thor (Chris Hemsworth) comes. Not that Hopkins gets much emoting to do: His job — other than making certain the check clears — consists of little more than standing (and lying) around in a fancy metallic-looking suit with a patch on his eye and seriously imparting information to both the audience and to his sons, Thor and Loki (Tom Hiddleston).
Thor tends to be a bit of an arrogant hothead and when a group of Asgard's enemies (I'd look up their names if I truly gave a damn, but I don't. They're sort of blue and icy) somehow invade their realm and violate a sacred area with sacred relics, Thor leads an unsanctioned raid on them which Odin did not approve. As a result, his father banishes Thor to Earth for his actions and, because all the exposition hasn't been revealed yet, decides this is the best possible time to let Loki know that he was adopted (though stolen seems a more accurate description) from the same realm and while he doesn't look blue and icy, he belongs to that enemy's race. Loki, now next in line to be king anyway since Thor has been jettisoned, in a fit of spite, plots a coup and throws Odin into a coma.
Meanwhile on Earth, Thor lacks his powers, but he does fall for a young researcher, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), when he lands on the RV of her and her scientific team Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) and Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings, who was so good in the woefully underrated Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist). Gregg's SHIELD agent promptly steals the RV and their research and holds Thor who can't lift his sacred hammer, which has been embedded in the desert. (Speaking of hammered, getting drunk might make Thor go by quicker.)
Though it will be next to impossible, don't blink or you'll miss that Rene Russo plays Odin's wife Frigga, which as far as I know is not Norse for friggin' as in "give me a friggin' break." Poor Idris Elba, who has been good in so many things but most memorably as Stringer Bell in the first three seasons of The Wire, gets hidden by an elaborate costume as Asgard's gatekeeper who controls "the bridge" between different realms.
In fact, the costumes and design of Asgard really offer the only good things about Thor. Those parts are gorgeous to gaze upon. Bo Welch's production design and Alexandra Byrne's costumes on Asgard do leave quite an impression even if the film itself doesn't. In theaters, the film, which was shot regularly, was converted to 3-D for some showings and I can't imagine how exciting exposition plays in three dimensions. Wow — Thor and Jane lie by a campfire and point to a paper so he can show her where he comes from. It's like I'm in the scene! Their "romance" has about as much believability as the little kids' attachment to Frosty the Snowman when they've known him for about 15 minutes.
As the credits roll, before we get the requisite teaser scene with Nick Fury and the next Marvel movie, words tell us that Thor will return in The Avengers. I imagine that movie will at least have a story and, if nothing else, the IMDb cast list promises Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, so that at least holds the promise of some entertainment.
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Labels: 10s, Branagh, Cleese, De Niro, Hopkins, Natalie Portman, Olivier, Remakes, Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Shakespeare, The Wire
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Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Just Don't Call Her Twinkle Toes
By Josh R
I have nothing against Darren Aronofsky, but I am sometimes given to wonder if he was held enough as a child. This is not to say that the writer-director of Black Swan, a grisly fairy tale set in the world of professional ballet, is in any way deficient as a filmmaker. On the contrary, he has always displayed an intuitive grasp of the mechanics of storytelling and suspense, a sure hand with actors, and a distinctive flair for the dramatic — his approach to mise-en-scène is visceral, exciting and uniquely his own. He is also (and this is not meant in the spirit of a put-down) a bit of a sadist. Above all, Aronofsky is a keen observer of human suffering, of the graphic physical variety. In Requiem for a Dream — by my estimation, the only film of his in which the bloodletting seemed genuinely gratuitous — there was a certain grim satisfaction in the way the main characters were essentially gutted like fish as a denouement to their battles with addiction. Even in The Wrestler, perhaps his gentlest film, the physically broken-down title character’s tortuous exertions in the ring were rendered with such bare-knuckled clarity that the viewer was left in no doubt as to the intense physical pain which accompanied them. The final scene — basically, a 10-minute coronary in progress — was as tough to watch as anything in Requiem.
There’s a certain kind of ethos at work here, and while the gore quotient can sometimes upset the balance of his films, I think I can see what Aronofsky is getting at. His films deal with the externalization of internal conflict — psychological torment which manifests itself in the form of physical pain. The wounds are a metaphor for something else, but the approach is very literal-minded; when Natalie Portman’s emotionally fragile ballerina is ripping the skin from her bones, she is literally tearing herself apart in order to prepare for the role of a lifetime.
This all goes to say that Black Swan is not recommended fare for the squeamish, or those who prefer fantasy-based drivel such as The Turning Point, which made ballet look very, very pretty, and ballet dancers look like shallow hedonists only capable of experiencing the big emotions — love, pain, loss, betrayal — at the high school cafeteria level. There’s nothing pretty, cute or sweet about Aronofsky’s treatment of his subject; if anything, being a member of the American Ballet Theatre corps de ballet often seems like one step up from life in a Turkish prison. If all the little girls who’d decided to become ballerinas after seeing The Red Shoes watched Black Swan afterward, their parents might have saved a fortune in toe shoes.
Then again, impressionable young women have been known to find a perverse sort of pleasure in pain (it’s the reason that eating disorders and small cutting never fall out of fashion), and Aronofsky knows exactly how to translate the kind of swoony, intoxicating hunger that fuels teenage fantasies of orgiastic self-mutilation into visual form. Portman’s pale, tremulous Nina is a promising young dancer in the corps de ballet. When the tempestuous prima ballerina (Winona Ryder, acting sufficiently crazy) is forced into early retirement, Nina is promoted to principal dancer and secures the coveted dual role in Swan Lake. The director of the company (Vincent Cassel), who is not above mental manipulation in order to bring the most out of his dancers, offers her the role with one proviso; while there is little doubt that she can embody the elegant, delicate White Swan to perfection, she must also find a way to convincingly inhabit the uninhibited, predatory Black Swan in order to keep the part. To pull off this coup de theatre, the repressed, emotionally stunted Nina must channel her darkest inner demons and invite them out to dance — to the point where she can no longer distinguish her own fevered hallucinations from reality. It’s less a question of life imitating art, or vice versa, than one of art and life becoming so inextricably linked that one can no longer exist without the other; she and the Swans have become one and the same. The performance of a lifetime cannot be far at hand, assuming Nina survives long enough to give it, and manages to do so without shedding any blood (hers or others) in the process.
There are intriguing elements to Black Swan, and they almost (if not entirely) coalesce into a very satisfying film. The underlying concept is basically the same as that of Bergman’s Face to Face, in which Liv Ullmann’s buttoned-down psychiatrist is driven to insanity by her own demonic, tormenting visions. Add to that a bit of All About Eve’s backstage skullduggery and the bloodstained shenanigans of De Palma’s Carrie, and you get a rather peculiar hybrid of arty psychodrama and gut-churning pulp shockfest. It’s not an entirely comfortable marriage — imagine if Holly Hunter started stabbing Harvey Keitel with a broken-off piano key as a means of alleviating sexual tension, or if I Know What You Did Last Summer featured a dream sequence inspired by the choreography of Pina Bausch — but it has its own kind of loony fascination, and is brought to life with such flourish that it still sends shivers down the spine at all the right moments. Visually, it’s the most exciting thing Aronofsky’s done to date, and grimly enveloping enough to make you mostly forget how nutty it is.
In case there’s any doubt on the subject, Black Swan exists very much in the vein of a director’s film, as opposed to an actor’s. Most of the characters seem to exist on a purely conceptual level — in other words, as literary constructs that make sense within the context of the film they’re in, but not as part of any larger reality. This doesn’t prevent the principal actors from making an impression; they’re not exactly flesh-and-blood people, but make for compelling figures nonetheless.
I’ve found many of Portman’s performances wanting in the past, but she’s very effectively used here. Her lean, anxious, haunted look, coupled with an air of seeming vapidity, is exactly right for Nina — an unformed person totally unequipped to grapple with the maelstrom of emotions funneling into her consciousness and fueling her metamorphoses from angel to demon. I’m still not sure how deep Portman’s talent runs, but it’s clear that she’s making a connection here — she understands what the role is supposed to be, and she’s up to the demands. Cassel was seemingly put on the earth to play villains, and strikes a perfect balance between smarminess and seductiveness; even while he bullies, berates and abuses his girls, you never doubt why they’d gladly follow him down the garden path to hell. It’s nice to see Barbara Hershey back in action again, even if her role as Nina’s overbearing, slightly unhinged mother is a tad underwritten to allow her to really go to town with it — it’s the one piece of characterization that could benefit from having gone a bit more over-the-top. The best, most interesting performance is given by Mila Kunis, bringing a feral sensuality to her role as the free-spirited rival dancer who may or may not be giving Nina the additional push she needs to send her over the edge. She’s a marvelously enigmatic presence — you’re never quite sure how much of her treachery is real, and how much is a product of Nina’s imagination (credit to the actress that she keeps you guessing right up until the end.)
If you really stop to think about Black Swan, you might conclude that it’s fairly ridiculous — it’s a testament to the element of showmanship Aronofsky brings to the proceedings that you don’t reflect on this until the film is over. He goes for the jugular without going out of bounds, and the film works, even when its disparate elements don’t always fit together the way that they should. It’s a close contest in terms of who’s the bigger head case — the director or his heroine — but as far as blood-splattered trips to Crazy Town go, this one has style.
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Labels: 10s, Barbara Hershey, De Palma, Holly Hunter, Ingmar Bergman, Keitel, Liv Ullmann, Natalie Portman, Winona
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Thursday, August 19, 2010
We believe in Happy Endings
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
In 1998, after reading many positive reviews of writer-director Don Roos’ The Opposite of Sex, I purchased a VHS copy of the movie on a whim and shoved it into the player for a look-see. Though I think it was slightly overrated by quite a few critics (my main peeve of the film is that the ending doesn’t completely jibe with what took place before it) it was both a worthwhile buy and an entertaining watch; a jet black comedy starring Christina Ricci as a young nymphet who wreaks havoc for her half-brother (Martin Donovan) and his acquaintances in a small, conservative Indiana town.
Roos got his big break as a television scribe for many prime time dramatic series including Hart to Hart, Paper Dolls, The Colbys and Nightingales — and this background is evident in Sex, with Ricci’a character behaving in the manner of a teenage Alexis Colby (the role played on Dynasty by Joan Collins). He has a definite feel for strong female characters, as witnessed by his contributions to films such as Love Field (1992), Single White Female (1992), Boys on the Side (1995) and Diabolique (1996). Happily, the tradition of meaty, well-written parts for actresses continues in a smart, witty film I thought even better than Sex (if you’ll pardon the pun): 2005’s Happy Endings.
Happy Endings — a euphemism for any sexual release that occurs during a massage — tells three stories that in the tradition of multiple narratives interweave with one another throughout the film. The first tale belongs to Mamie (Lisa Kudrow), an abortion clinic counselor dating a Latino masseuse (Bobby Cannavale) who finds that a secret she’s kept under lock and key (she was supposed to abort the pregnancy that resulted from she and her stepbrother Charley’s [Steve Coogan] foray into losing their virginity, but gave the child up for adoption instead) is about to be exposed by an aspiring documentary filmmaker named Nicky (Jesse Bradford). Nicky knows the identity of Mamie’s son and offers to make available this information under the proviso that she agree to be the subject of a documentary he wants to make and submit to the American Film Institute for a student grant. Mamie and her boyfriend, Javier, have an alternate plan — they will win Nicky’s confidence by distracting him with another subject for his film…namely Javier himself.
Story No. 2 involves stepbrother Charley, who, since his assignation with Mamie has come out of the closet and enjoys a long-standing relationship with Gil (David Sutcliffe) and friendship with Gil’s best high school chum Ruth (Laura Dern) and her lover, Diane (Sarah Clarke). Ruth and Diane have a young son named Max — and at the time they were trying to conceive, they asked Gil to…well, donate to the cause…but ultimately went to a sperm bank for the father. Charley’s not so certain this is the case, however — and is obsessed with the speculation that Max just may be Gil’s son.
The third tale involves a triangle between Otis (Jason Ritter), a sexually confused youngster who works in Charley’s restaurant and moonlights in a band, a female hustler named Jude (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and Otis’ father Frank (Tom Arnold). Otis has talked Jude into replacing the singer in the band (who’s doing a stint in rehab) after hearing her give out at a karaoke night and she makes herself at home at Casa del Otis — first by helping the young man lose his virginity (in a parallel of the Mamie-Charley tryst) and then moving into the pool house at father Frank’s estate. She pretends to be Otis’ girlfriend (even though Otis is gay) in order to square things between Otis and his father…but with the passage of time, she finds herself falling for the older man and, as the saying goes, the wacky complications ensue.
Although Roos’ original idea for Endings was to tell three stories about three sisters, the unchanging constant in the film’s equation was actress Kudrow, whom Roos had worked with previously in Sex (she gets most of that film’s best lines and pretty much walks off with the movie tucked under the arm). Anyone who’s only familiar with her flaky turn as Friends’ Phoebe will be genuinely surprised by her first-rate emoting as Mamie in Endings — she breathes life into a character who wins the sympathy of the audience despite her unpleasant qualities. (An onscreen title card explains Mamie’s cruelty by saying: “Don’t worry if you don’t like her — her ex-husband was a gambler, so maybe that accounts for a lot.” By the end of the film, however, if Mamie’s situation doesn’t cause you wipe away a tear then you are clearly a robot, my friend.) Mamie is an archetypal Roos creation; in fact, nearly all of the characters in his movies are unattractive people — not in a hunchbacked, dueling-scar-on-the-cheek sense but people who perform acts of ugliness despite being fundamentally decent (if incredibly flawed) human beings. And yet, after experiencing two hours of nasty goings-on with the individuals involved, the film lives up to its title and allows its protagonists the assurance that everything comes out in the wash.
In Sex, Roos used Ricci’s character as the on-screen narrator, a technique he abandons here in favor of those onscreen title cards which in many ways function as an additional participant in the film’s narrative (Roos, in an interview, compares it to Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream). While a few critics thought this a bit self-indulgent, I found myself in favor of it — particularly because the titles provide information to which the audience is not privy and it eliminates unnecessary and awkward dialogue exchanges. A good example occurs toward the end of the film, when Mamie and Charley have arranged a meeting with their son (Eric Jungmann). The card explains that although they didn’t get an invite to his wedding, they did get to see their grandchildren via e-mailed photos…which eventually come to a stop. Tom, the title card explains, married a woman who’s “much like the rest of us…nothing but opinions.”
The ensemble cast in Endings performs at the peak of their powers, particularly Kudrow and Coogan, who manage to instill likability into characters whose actions result in a great many hurt feelings and broken relationships. My best friend from high school are still engaged in spirited debate about Gyllenhaal — she doesn’t care for Mags (though she admits she may have not seen much of her work, save for Secretary and The Dark Knight) but I’m one of her biggest fans; her character of Jude probably behaves the worst of the lot (which may be why Roos allows her to disappear at the end save for a fantasy musical number) and yet is still undeniably appealing…though again, that may be my admittedly biased admiration for Gyllenhaal’s work. (Gwyneth Paltrow, who starred in Roos’ 2000 film Bounce, had originally been slated to play the part of Jude.) For me, the biggest surprise in the film is the finely subtle accomplishment of comic actor Tom Arnold — who’s normally the cinematic equivalent of nails-on-a-blackboard, but he really shines here. (If I have any nitpicks with the ensemble it's that Laura Dern’s part is woefully underwritten, a crime for such an amazingly gifted actress.)
Since the release of Happy Endings, Roos has written and directed Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (2009), a comedy-drama that re-teams him with Kudrow and also includes Natalie Portman and Lauren Ambrose in the cast. (Roos and Kudrow also collaborated on the online sitcom Web Therapy.) With the batting average that he’s maintained with Sex and Endings, I’m anticipating enjoying the film should it come my way in the near future.
Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. blogs at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, and the fact that he’s just now gotten around to seeing Happy Endings five years after its release is a testament to his obsession with the movies, television and radio of the past.
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Labels: 00s, Cannavale, Gwyneth Paltrow, L. Dern, M. Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Shakespeare, Television
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Monday, June 01, 2009
2008-2009 Broadway Plays, Part 1
By Josh R
May is not a time of year that holds pleasant associations for anyone who’s ever survived a college education. Cramming for exams, grinding out term papers, fighting off the urge to procrastinate…to say that it can be overwhelming is the height of understatement (I would describe my mood at the tail end of my final semester as falling somewhere between immoderately frazzled and thoroughly deranged). It was never my intention to revisit this dreaded state of emotional dystopia, and yet, with a whole season’s worth of plays to discuss, and the Tony Awards looming on the not-too-distant horizon, I find myself in more or less the same spot as when I had to pull 30-odd pages on Dalton Trumbo and The Blacklist out of thin air in about 48 hours in order to graduate. The best approach — really, the only realistic approach at this point — is address everything as briefly as possible, with apologies to the shows I omit due to considerations of time, space and exhaustion.
The straight play reigned supreme on Broadway this year, with more than 20 revivals and a smattering of new works. Theatres that have traditionally housed musicals played host to tried-and-true favorites by Coward and O’Neill, as producers tried to adjust to a less friendly economy. Musicals cost money; with smaller casts and lower overheads, plays are here to stay — at least for the immediate future.
First up — the early-season entries that premiered in the fall, as well as the current crop of “new” plays (note the use of quotation marks) in contention for Tony Awards.
The most surprising production of the 2009-2010 season may well have been Ian Rickson’s glorious staging of The Seagull, in a production that transferred from London. Chekhov can be a rather dry affair, and The Seagull, while indisputably a classic, can seem pretty parched in the absence of a fresh directorial perspective. This was very much the case with the last Seagull I’d seen — a star-studded debacle in Central Park helmed by Mike Nichols featuring Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman and a phalanx of other big-name talents. The fact that Nichols
seemed more interested in throwing an A-list party than in interpreting the text was the least of that show’s problems — everyone seemed to be acting in a different play (and frankly, all but a few seemed mismatched with their roles). This was most assuredly not the case in Rickson’s masterful staging, which, while remaining entirely true to the spirit of the piece and the intentions of its author, didn’t treat the play like the kind of lofty classical opus to be treated with kid gloves and kept under glass like a priceless museum artifact. In much the same manner as Louis Malle’s Vanya on 42nd Street, this was The Seagull brought down to earth and demythologized — a naturalistic staging which captured the emotional truth behind the words without getting wrapped up in the profundity of them, or aiming for the formal gloss of a Masterpiece Theatre production. With his complex portrayal of a woman who can be both passionate and aloof, engaging and off-putting, breathtakingly assured and wildly insecure, Chekhov seemed to have imagined the actress Arkadina as a Molotov cocktail blended from equal parts fire and ice — and that’s exactly the way Kristin Scott Thomas played her, embodying the myriad contradictions of the character with wit, verve, and a laser-like emotional acuity. Since the production ended its limited engagement way back in December — and since Tony nominators have notoriously short memories — The Seagull and its star were conspicuously absent from the list of contenders for the big prizes.Also lost in the shuffle was Thea Sharrock’s hugely successful revival of Peter Shaffer’s Equus — although whether that success owed itself more to
the merits of the production than to Daniel Radcliffe’s highly publicized nude scene can remain a subject of debate (or not — something tells me all those teenage girls in attendance the day that I saw it were not hardcore Shaffer mavens). No matter how many times I see it, I’m never quite sure what to think of Equus as a play; while frequently fascinating and unfailingly provocative, it never quite seems to come together in the way that it should. Its central conflict is built around the contention that true liberation can be achieved only through madness — a conceit that the narrative doesn’t really seem to support, given that the lunatic in question seems less a free spirit than a desperately unhappy prisoner of his own warped mind. That notwithstanding, Sharrock’s highly polished staging kept the action moving even though the play’s overly cerebral passages, and Richard Griffiths delivered a performance admirable for its understatement (resisting the urge to mine so many flashy monologues for the stuff of actorly tour-de-force is no small thing). Inevitably, it was Radcliffe — in clothes and out of them — who attracted the lion’s share of the attention, although the performance lacked something in terms of shading and nuance. I’m not averse to an element of theatricality — but portraying a character who functions in a state of angry delirium doesn't necessitate shouting all of one’s lines.The shouting was appropriate in Neil Pepe’s fall revival of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, a marvelously cynical look at Hollywood power players and the ambitious hangers-on who love them (or, at least, want to ride to glory on their coattails). As a play, Speed-the-Plow isn’t quite as rich in scope as some of Mamet’s more celebrated works — nevertheless, it is a smartly calibrated, vastly entertaining example of the playwright’s craft. The action is streamlined and concise, while the dialogue, consisting mainly of sentence fragments, manages to be blunt yet elliptical at the same time. In some of his plays — particularly, it must be said, in the ones where female characters are placed front and center — Mamet’s fragmented style seems to be at odds with characterization. It feels perfectly right in Speed-the-Plow, which centers around the interactions of two jittery, over-caffeinated studio execs whose motors run so fast they can only pause long enough to communicate in sound bites. When I saw the production, these two titans of industry were played by Jeremy Piven and Raul Esparza, while the role of the seemingly demure office temp who gets caught in the crossfire was performed by Elisabeth Moss. Piven left the production mid-run amidst some controversy — something about mercury poisoning after having eaten too much salmon — and was subsequently replaced by Norbert Leo Butz and Mamet stalwart William H. Macy. Better Piven had departed under fishy circumstances than Mr. Esparza, who, I suppose, may be capable of giving a performance that is less than brilliant — I only say “may” because his most recent performances haven’t provided any evidence to that effect. On the heels of his triumphs in Company and The Homecoming, the protean star of plays and musicals delivered yet another galvanizing star turn — one which went for the jugular, and hit its target like a guided missile.
As for new plays, the story remained much as it always has on Broadway — which is to say, ‘twas slim pickins. The season’s best and most interesting new works could be found in non-for-profit off-Broadway houses — venues where the risk factor is considerably less from a financial standpoint, and greater risks can be taken on the artistic front as a result. Female playwrights made a particularly strong showing this year. Lynn Nottage’s Ruined, a modern-day version of Mother Courage set in war-torn Congo, deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, while Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw was a sharply observed comedy of manners with a sleek contemporary twist. Sarah Kane’s Blasted — an audacious compendium of unspeakable behaviors — was perversely fascinating, while Annie Baker’s clever, inquisitive Body Awareness marked a particularly auspicious debut for an emerging playwright. If the women commanded the spotlight, the men were not entirely lacking in action; Lorenzo Pisoni’s Humor Abuse, an autobiographical account of growing up in the circus, and Chris Durang’s absurdist trifle Why Torture is Wrong and The People who Love Them were particular standouts in a off-Broadway season that offered more than its share of high points (the lows were there too…but that’s a discussion for another day).
To say that no new works to be seen on Broadway quite matched that standard is a bit misleading, since all but a few could be accurately termed “new.” The late Horton Foote’s Dividing the Estate, written and first performed in the late 1980s, made its belated Broadway bow in a limited engagement at The Booth Theatre last fall. A kindler, gentler cousin to August: Osage County, featuring a gaggle of contentious Texan siblings squabbling over their inheritance, it was warmly received by critics — if generating little in the way of excitement beyond that. Foote’s homespun, elegiac style can work to beguiling effect when plied in service of gentle stories about gentle subjects — Trip to Bountiful and Tender Mercies are the two that immediately spring to mind. It doesn’t seem entirely appropriate, though, when the subject is something as thorny as a family feud. As with many of Foote’s later works, Dividing the Estate seemed to consist mainly of rose-tinged anecdotes strung together to create a sort of careworn, dog-eared scrapbook — while the fire-and-brimstone antics of Osage County would have seemed completely out-of-place, the proceedings could have used a bit more in the way of tension and urgency. Still, the play did furnish the occasion for pitch-perfect ensemble work by cast led by Elizabeth Ashley and Gerald McRaney; deserving of special praise (and receiving the show’s lone acting nomination) was Hallie Foote, the playwright’s daughter and frequent collaborator, making a memorable impression as the passive-aggressive sister determined to grab off the biggest piece of the pie. Another “new” play — at least according to Tony eligibility rulings — was Richard Greenberg’s The American Plan, originally performed off-Broadway in the early '90s. The Manhattan Theatre Club revival, directed by David Grindley, featured expert performances by Lily Rabe, Keiran Campion and particularly the acerbic, husky-voiced Mercedes Ruehl as an imposing, fatalistic Teutonic mama who alternately coddles and smothers her hapless offspring. Fine acting aside, you could see The American Plan’s surprise twist coming from a mile away, and the pretensions of the dialogue weighed the proceedings down to a certain degree — it didn’t quite make sense for Jews on vacation in The Catskills to spend quite as much time waxing philosophical.
Something called Impressionism quickly established itself as the biggest belly-flop of the year — not even the marquee value of Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen, making their first Broadway appearances since The Real Thing and The Heidi Chronicles respectively, could keep it from closing two months ahead of schedule. Not all the news was bad, however, and other instances of starry casting paid big dividends. There was no reason to assume that Jane Fonda, who hadn’t set foot on a Broadway stage in some 40-odd years, would deliver one of the breakout performances of the season. She did just that in 33 Variations, a strange, diffuse work by I Am My Own Wife scribe Moises Kaufman, rising above the limitations of the script and showing that she’s still got the goods to take on multi-faceted roles of the non-monster-in-law variety. Fonda’s most exciting quality as a performer has always been her bracing, prickly intelligence — the performances that stand as her career high-water marks always examined the manner in which intellect can exist at odds with naked emotionalism. It’s a formula that still retains its potency; as a dying scholar trying to unravel the mysteries of Beethoven’s life and work, she was never less than compelling, even when the play itself seemed unfocused and inconsistent in its ambitions. A cutesy subplot involving a burgeoning romance between Colin Hanks and Samantha Mathis — appealing performers who work a bit too hard to be ingratiating — could have excised altogether without altering the narrative framework considerably.
If 33 Variations was, at least, a work of considerable ambition, the season’s one true non-musical smash was blissfully unencumbered by anything of the kind. I didn’t see Art, Yasmina Reza’s previous Broadway hit, or Life x 3, which did very well abroad but was less kindly received in its 2004 New York debut. Based on everything I’ve gleaned about the prolific French playwright and her oeuvre, God of Carnage doesn’t represent much of a departure for her. It’s simplistic in its aims, which is to say it has about as much depth to it as pan of water; if that statement smacks of reproach, bear in mind that, in certain instances, shallowness can be a virtue. Reza has a remarkably assured grasp of the mechanics of playwriting — one can’t fault her sense of structure, and God of Carnage is, above all things, a shrewdly constructed work of theater. It knows exactly where it’s going and exactly how to get there, moving along smoothly from start to finish without hitting any speed bumps or permitting itself to stall for a fraction of a second. If it is, essentially, a glorified sitcom given the illusion of sophistication by virtue of an upscale milieu and highbrow cultural references (a pigeon dressed up as a peacock), that doesn’t prevent it from qualifying as the most entertaining new work of the season. Two couples meet to discuss an altercation their children have had on the school playground — what begins as an informal meeting for dessert and cocktails, largely characterized by strained civility and forced politeness, quickly degenerates into a drunken, screaming free-for-all, with the type of juvenile antics that might embarrass Albee’s George and Martha (in case you were wondering, it is a comedy). It’s a foolproof recipe for success — everyone loves seeing grown-up people behaving like children, especially when those cell-phone-stealing, flower-throwing, projectile-vomiting heathens in Armani are played by actors as resourceful as the four person cast assembled by director Matthew Warchus. His rollicking, immaculately executed production gives each performer his or her moment to shine in turn — James Gandolfini and Jeff Daniels are perfectly matched as wildly contrasting combatants in what turns out to be the silliest of pissing contests, Hope Davis’ drippy passivity mutates into a kind of maniacal glee all the more hysterical for its unexpectedness, while the indispensable Marcia Gay Harden all but steals the show as the kind of self-important, highly strung culture vulture who couldn’t let any imagined slight pass if her life — or her sanity — depended upon it. You can insult her husband, but don’t dare to insult her taste.
If God of Carnage was the best production of a new work to be seen on a Broadway in 2009, honors for the best new play can be conferred upon Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty, currently playing at The Belasco Theatre. That may sound like a ringing endorsement, but honestly, when you look at the season’s new plays as plays — meaning what’s on the page, as opposed to what shows up on the stage — 2009 didn’t produce any classics. There were some good, solid efforts, but very little in the way of risk. Reasons to be pretty is about the gap in communication and between men and women, and specifically how that lack of understanding is fueled by male competition and insensitivity (a friend of mine remarked that all LaBute’s plays and screenplays revolve around the notion that men are pigs - she may be on to something there.) It’s a worthy effort, with sharply drawn characterization and a dramatic intensity most of the year’s other new entries lacked — and yet, it feels a bit like the writer is spinning his wheels. If you’ve seen LaBute’s other works — in addition to being a prolific playwright, he’s had success as an independent filmmaker (In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors) — you know that he’s traversed this terrain before, and isn’t breaking any new ground at this point. There’s a sense of déjà vu that comes with seeing so many different variations on a single theme; LaBute is too talented a writer to get stuck in place, striking the same notes over and over again in slightly different arrangements. While his latest effort a lot to recommend it, it can’t avoid seeming remedial.
To avoid seeming remedial myself, I’m going to leave things there for now….the portion of our program where Josh is generally underwhelmed by everything and impossible to please has reached its conclusion. Next up, I’ll tackle the flurry of revivals that arrived in the spring — which is when the wow factor really kicked in, with some marvelous productions I fully expect to bore everyone to tears going gaga over. Stay tuned…
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Labels: Albee, blacklist, E. Ashley, Gandolfini, J. Fonda, Jeff Daniels, Jeremy Irons, Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas, Malle, Mamet, Natalie Portman, Nichols, P.S. Hoffman, Streep, Theater Tribute
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Monday, October 29, 2007
A rut of not-so-many colors
By Edward Copeland
At the very beginning of The Darjeeling Limited (not counting the Hotel Chevalier prologue), we see Bill Murray in a cab speeding through Indian streets, rushing to meet a train that he just misses catching. Once Wes Anderson's latest cinematic ride is over, I wished I'd stayed with Murray at the train station where it's possible I could have found a better and more interesting movie.
Watching The Darjeeling Limited after Wes Anderson's last disappointment, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, I can't help but wonder if what's gone off course in Anderson's films is not having Owen Wilson as his writing collaborator.
I loved Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums and I liked Bottle Rocket, but Anderson's work with other writers (Roman Coppola and co-star Jason Schwartzman here, Noah Baumbach in Life Aquatic) seems to lack the essential fun and magic the Anderson-Wilson screenplays were able to conjure.
What's left in both cases seem to be sets, shots and even color schemes out of a Wes Anderson movie, but with nothing of interest to bring the productions alive. The Darjeeling Limited seems even more aimless than Life Aquatic did, with Anderson calling on most of the same stable of actors (Wilson, Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston) to sound pretty much the same notes they have in his other films.
The one thing that sets Darjeeling Limited slightly apart is the addition of Adrien Brody, who manages to shake up the usual formula a bit by bringing his own strange chemistry to the mix and most of the best moments of the movie are thanks to him.
I got to see the latest prints of the movie which include the short film Hotel Chevalier in front of it, a short that has received more praise than The Darjeeling Limited itself. Even that wasn't that interesting to me, though I think it earned kudos just because it ends more quickly than the main feature.
It's easy to see why they added it though, to explain what otherwise would look like a wordless cameo by Natalie Portman late in the film. On the other hand, it also undercuts some of the movie's closing lines about Owen Wilson's character not knowing the whole story when the audience does.
With Wilson's personal problems of late, I wish him only the best, but I do wish he'd step back behind the keyboard, with or without Anderson. Anderson is a very idiosyncratic filmmaker, but that runs risks after awhile.
Think of all the duds another filmmaker, Woody Allen, had in the '90s when his best offering, Bullets Over Broadway, happened to have a collaborator on the screenplay.
Anderson hasn't been flying solo on his scripts, but he hasn't found anyone who meshes with him as well as Wilson did. With The Darjeeling Limited, Anderson has come up with his second film in a row that plays as the dullest form of deja vu you can imagine, right down to the similar slow-motion shots of actors walking to background music.
The Darjeeling Limited is an even bigger disappointment than Life Aquatic was, but I still hold out hope that Anderson can right his ship.
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At the very beginning of The Darjeeling Limited (not counting the Hotel Chevalier prologue), we see Bill Murray in a cab speeding through Indian streets, rushing to meet a train that he just misses catching. Once Wes Anderson's latest cinematic ride is over, I wished I'd stayed with Murray at the train station where it's possible I could have found a better and more interesting movie.
Watching The Darjeeling Limited after Wes Anderson's last disappointment, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, I can't help but wonder if what's gone off course in Anderson's films is not having Owen Wilson as his writing collaborator.
I loved Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums and I liked Bottle Rocket, but Anderson's work with other writers (Roman Coppola and co-star Jason Schwartzman here, Noah Baumbach in Life Aquatic) seems to lack the essential fun and magic the Anderson-Wilson screenplays were able to conjure.
What's left in both cases seem to be sets, shots and even color schemes out of a Wes Anderson movie, but with nothing of interest to bring the productions alive. The Darjeeling Limited seems even more aimless than Life Aquatic did, with Anderson calling on most of the same stable of actors (Wilson, Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston) to sound pretty much the same notes they have in his other films.
The one thing that sets Darjeeling Limited slightly apart is the addition of Adrien Brody, who manages to shake up the usual formula a bit by bringing his own strange chemistry to the mix and most of the best moments of the movie are thanks to him.
I got to see the latest prints of the movie which include the short film Hotel Chevalier in front of it, a short that has received more praise than The Darjeeling Limited itself. Even that wasn't that interesting to me, though I think it earned kudos just because it ends more quickly than the main feature.
It's easy to see why they added it though, to explain what otherwise would look like a wordless cameo by Natalie Portman late in the film. On the other hand, it also undercuts some of the movie's closing lines about Owen Wilson's character not knowing the whole story when the audience does.
With Wilson's personal problems of late, I wish him only the best, but I do wish he'd step back behind the keyboard, with or without Anderson. Anderson is a very idiosyncratic filmmaker, but that runs risks after awhile.
Think of all the duds another filmmaker, Woody Allen, had in the '90s when his best offering, Bullets Over Broadway, happened to have a collaborator on the screenplay.
Anderson hasn't been flying solo on his scripts, but he hasn't found anyone who meshes with him as well as Wilson did. With The Darjeeling Limited, Anderson has come up with his second film in a row that plays as the dullest form of deja vu you can imagine, right down to the similar slow-motion shots of actors walking to background music.
The Darjeeling Limited is an even bigger disappointment than Life Aquatic was, but I still hold out hope that Anderson can right his ship.
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Labels: 00s, A. Huston, Murray, Natalie Portman, O. Wilson, Wes Anderson, Woody
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