Drive

Drive (2011)

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman, Catherine Hendricks, Carey Mulligan

Drive's opening scene is intended as a promise of great excitement to come. Our hero, an unnamed stunt car driver played by Ryan Gosling, waits in a parking lot for two thieves whom are paying him to drive them away from the scene of a crime. He's obviously super sick at what he does-- something we know even before see the movie-- veering and swerving and halting and slowing as the po' are close on their tails. The scene ends with him jetting it to a car garage and subtly sneaking away, molding into a crowd of basketball enthusiasts. 

This scene is not nearly exciting as its makers want us to believe. No car accidents, no brushes of death with innocent bystanders, no shoot off, no irony or smirks or close-ups of brake-slamming can be found. That being said, the remainder of the film achieves something much more intriguing than the hyped suspense and violence which drew so many people to the theaters last fall.

Namely, Drive is impressive with its sustained momentum and wonderful characters. In an early scene, The Stuntman establishes a legitimate professional relationship with his employer Shannon, played by Bryan Cranston, who relishes giving his character a distinguishable and unique personality despite Shannon's lackluster dialogue. Albert Brooks is similarly unrecognizable as the sinister and indomitable crime boss Bernie, and Ron Perlman is perfect as violent and impetuous Jewish gangster, Nino.  Catherine Hendricks is wonderfully suited for her brief role, and of course, Ryan Gosling   becomes subsumed in his character's enigmatic demeanor, which deliberately calls for non- expression,  someone who remains an enigma until the final frame, a solitary and reserved figure of justice, with some seriously violent skills under his belt.

The end of Drive reveals so much of the film's hidden elements that it requires a couple viewers to understand its purpose. The Stuntman is revealed to be the most fearsome of this lot of gangsters. He is never afraid and his life is never in jeopardy, even though we thought it was the entire time. In this way, the film is one big joke on the audience. Whether he's wielding a car, a mask, a hammer, a stomping foot, or a knife, he's impenetrable, and so the irony is that, by the end, we realize that he was going to own these guys no matter what.

That being said, this original premise does not make up for the fact that the central crux, a love story between him and his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan) fails on every level. Mulligan is so conspicuously miscast and so incompetent with the role that I am shocked no one nixed the idea. First of all, her character was meant to be Hispanic, so the obvious prejudice of not carrying through with finding a Hispanic actress is distracting and insulting. Coupled with this is the problem that Mulligan presents Irene as thoughtful, dead-pan, and non-emotional, even when Gosling's hero inflicts vengeance and abrupt violence. All the other characters are highly animated, the antithesis of the Stuntman, so why isn't Irene? Why does he fall for her anyway? The scenes in which they dote on each other are forced and disingenuous. If the film is meant to be neo noir, as its press suggests, than shouldn't the female lead be seductive and intriguing? It is increasingly apparent that actresses today can not be beautiful and sexy and still gain serious roles (check out Mulligan playing Daisy in Gatsby, or Emma Stone in every role she's ever been in, like Jonah Hill's love interest once upon a time). This consistency makes the decision not to cast a Hispanic actress even more inexcusable.  

And such a critical and unforgivable mistake makes Drive a great B movie that will be forgetten in ten years, when it could have been a 21st century classic.

B

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: An Exposition

Eternal Sunshine is one of those perfect films that comes along once every ten years. Its writing is so tight and its direction is so adept that its impossible to conceive that its concept is also wholly unique, even bordering on science fiction. Let us not neglect the fact that it's also a superb love story, or that Gondry's vision could not have been more suitable and visionary for the given script. I read Kaufman's script recently and it's simply not as moving as what the finished film achieves; likewise, Gondry's films are not as cohesive as Eternal Sunshine (although I think his direction of the Foo Fighters' "Everlong" is a mini-masterpiece). We can not imagine Joel Barish played by any other actor than Jim Carrey, who disappears in the role and who has never played a role with the same magnitude since, and we can not imagine a different milieu other than the perpetually frigid Long Island. And even though Charlie Kaufman remains one of the most talented living screenwriters today,  none of his screenplays (Adaptation included) approach the popularity, cohesion, and pathos of Eternal Sunshine. All of this points to the singular fact that Eternal Sunshine is a perfect amalgamation of many talents synching up at the perfect moment. 

And we are so grateful for this because I could watch this movie a dozen times more and still be moved emotionally and still be challenged intellectually. Why is this, exactly? Is it due to the progression of the film, which moves back and forth in time to the precise moment our protagonists first meet? (At the end of movie, during the ride back from first meeting Clementine, Joel tells his friends "She was nice," a profoundly simplistic statement referring to a love affair so complete, beautiful, and tragic, that it's the last memory wiped clean from his memory). Or is it the clever plot devices that make us think of memories? Like how Joel must dig deep to find shameful memories to hide Clementine, which makes one consider his or her own laden memories. Is it the terrific actors and their characters, spanning from a benevolent Mark Ruffalo to a pathetically sweet Kirsten Dunst to a discerning Tom Wilkinson to a loathsome Elijah Wood? Or is it the film's ultimate grandiose statement on love, the one that challenges Tennyson on whether 'tis better to have loved and lost, the one that makes us wish we could start anew with our significant others and grow to know them all over again? Even the title of the film-- the moment Pope's poem is recited by Mary over a spectacular image of Joel and Clementine watching elephants--is emblematic of the kind of literary magic only film can achieve.

I believe that ultimately the film is about second chances, which obviously touches upon something deep in human nature. Kaufman's original script ends on a much more dour note (think of Being John Malkovitch and Synecdoche, New York) than that of the film's conclusion. But in the end, we know love feels like shit, so why end on a note that reminds us of that? The final repetitive frames of a snow-covered beach perfectly echo this point; love creates an imprint on the collective universe that can never be erased. 

Inglorious Bastards : An Exposition

Let me begin with a story.

I had just moved back to New York to begin graduate school after a year-long hiatus picking up odd jobs (Chinese take-out hostess, tea shop barrista, creative writing teacher) in Austin and St. Paul. It was literally my second day in the city, and I was crashing with a couple of friends in the Lower East Side. Inglorious Bastards had come out that same weekend, so I walked to Chelsea alone for a midnight showing. There was virtually no one there. The theater darkens. Trademark Tarentino credits, in bold yellow, flash across the screen, set to his trademark bewilderingly apt choice of music. My heart leaps with excitement. "This is really happening," I tell myself. It's been five years since Kill Bill, which I saw on DVD alone in my dorm my freshman year of college. It's been two years since Death Proof, which I streamed alone in my tiny apartment in Austin. And now, as I sit in this theater, I recognize immediately, in a strange moment within the present that transcends into the future, that what was about to happen will always be, by and large, among my fondest of cinematic experiences.

Watching Inglorious Bastards for the first time was me watching a movie I had never known could exist. The movie transcends genre and narrative, history and fiction, characterization and objectivity. It reveals itself often and yet hides so much of its own construction as well. It functions as both a wholly American invention and a sweeping International film, having no outright determinable origin and featuring talented actors from across Europe (half the film is spoken in French and German for Christ's sake). It defies gender roles and expectations, and toward the end, even complicates what was established regarding the goodness of its characters. It's an alternate reality set within historical realism, and remarkably, a film about the power of film, about how film has the potential, both literally and metaphorically, to determine the course of history. And all the while, as it achieves all these splendid things, it also remains the first film to boldly achieve what will forever change the course of social consciousness, the mythologizing World War II.

When I use the phrase "mythologizing World War II", I refer to something very particular and distinct. Of course, we have been presented with cinematic historical fiction regarding the war for decades. But never has a film taken the occurrence of Nazism and turned it completely on its head by providing an essentially imagined world that takes place within the circumstances of Nazi occupation. The very premise, that a rag tag group of government assigned Jewish-American vigilantes are out to destroy the Nazi regime by any means possible, is not meant to be digested a typical World War II film, but rather, is essentially a revenge saga that almost, but not even quite this, "just happens to" take place during the event. What this manages to do is take World War II as we have come to know it, and desensitize us to it,  not deliberately, but ultimately in a way that reveals how distant it has become from our current world. This desensitization is similarly inevitable for every major important historical event, and yet, with the onset of film in the 21st century, no literature or art has come close to achieving this with such brilliant and mastered magnitude as Tarentino's vision. I wonder if Hellenistic Greeks felt the same way upon experiencing the Illiad and Odyssey for the first time, as generations and collective memories of the war faded and evolved in the face of posterity.

The fact that Inglorious Bastards was a huge blockbuster and not controversial further supports my position that at a given point, civilizations come to approach history through unique modes of story-telling and engagement. World War II, particularly the good vs. evil nature of Nazism, will never be again be strictly relegated to the cinematic confines of historical accuracy. The ultimate feat for any artist, if you ask me.

Now let's see what Tarentino can do with American slavery in Django Unchained.

The Descendants

The Descendants (2011)

Director: Alexander Payne

Cast: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Beau Bridges, Matthew Lillard, Judy Greer 

It is generally understood now that Alexander Payne's films embody contemporary American life in such a uniquely hyper-realistic way that their supremely dark overtones become farcical. Election reaches the zenith of farce when we encounter Mr. McAllister (Matthew Broderick) having sex with his wife while fantasizing about his annoyingly ambitious teenage student, the antagonist Tracy Flick. Like Citizen Ruth, Election's dour ending and nice-guys-finish-last message (in which "real" nice guys don't actually exist)  established Payne as a filmmaker who certainly knows how to leave a bad taste in the mouth. Which is why Sideways was such a pleasant departure from his usual shtick. Even though Sideways featured Payne's usual crude debauchery and cosmic punishment towards its male protagonist, the final frame left a semblance of hope for an American culture shaped by failure and unfairness. 

The Descendants comes off as a desperate attempt at mature filmmaking, but that doesn't make it entirely worthless. The narrative revels in a simple formula: following its hero, George Clooney's Matt King, through an exploration of personal loss as he travels throughout Hawaii with his young daughters to confront his dying, comatose wife's lover (Matthew Lillard). Sincerely lacking in complex dialogue, the film relies primarily on a superb lead performance by Clooney, who temporarily transforms his reputation of playing affluent and suave baller-man to playing affluent and boring every-man. Devoid of nasty sex, humorous happenstances, and cruel realities, The Descendants instead opts to represent a moment in the life of a family uprooted by tragedy. 

Much like Election's use of middle-America suburbia and Sideway's use of the California landscape, The Descendants benefits enormously from its setting,  not so much romanticizing Hawaii but rather successfully and charmingly utilizing its milieu for plot and character development (Matt's wife did injure herself in a motor boat accident, after all). At the crux of the film's narrative arch is the development that Matt and his family will sell a precious spot of land during the duration of his wife's slow death. The film skillfully converges this plot point with the tragedy surrounding Matt's family, and the result is that no scene feels superfluous or especially trite.

In the end, however, one crucial element is severely lacking in The Descendants, which was somewhat present in the tender Sideways, and ubiquitous throughout the purely comedic Election: the element of genuineness.  Much of the film comes off as blatantly dishonest, and it's a profound testament to its brilliant performances that the movie doesn't drown in convention right off the bat. The languid dialogue is solely responsible, and one has to wonder what The Descendants could have been with a strong script rewrite and less exposition from its voice overs and unnecessary characters (in one scene, the King family bumps into a relative at the airport who drives them to view the coveted piece of land to be sold, only so that Matt can explain the sale to the audience). Likewise, the final denouement of the movie drags on twenty minutes too long.

It is ironic, then, that The Descendants feels disingenuous because it lacks the crudeness and dark vulgarity found in Payne's previous films. The film's best scene is the last, when ashes are dumped into the ocean in a ceremonial and deliberately underplayed farewell. "Well, that's it", Matt says to his grieving children. 

Sometimes, all a sappy family drama really needs is a depressing kick to the head.

B-

Shame

Shame (2011)

Director: Steve McQueen

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, Nicole Beharie 

Steve McQueen's strengths are found in his compositions and unbroken takes; water from a pressurized hose washes human excrement off a jail cell in Hunger, alluding to the mechanical and (in)effective process of erasing large-scale human abuses from collective consciousness. In Shame, Michael Fassbender's Brandon jogs through midtown Manhattan listening to a piano piece, the camera following him as he passes each deserted block. The scene has a self-conscious, poetic flow to it, and is mesmerizing because it captures a solitary figure running methodically through an established New York City, like a hand wound on a clock. The question is, what is the purpose of it?

Compared to Hunger, which was remarkable for its political images and structural coherence, Shame feels lackluster, an excellent concept often lacking a definitive visual message. Despite this, the choice of scenery is deliberate, as Brandon's world is devoid of color and brightness. McQueen's atmosphere is mono-chromatic, quiet, and reserved. Brandon's apartment and office building are high-rises where the uniformed and unfriendly shapes of New York architecture lie just beyond every scene. Suggestions of Brandon's reluctance to acknowledge his own destructively stationary path can be found in every corner; the way a TV is positioned in his living room, facing nothing at all; the manner in which he drinks Red Bull and too much sugar in his coffee; the way his apartment and office lack decorations or hints of human interactions (i.e pictures). His sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan) wears colorful hats and leopard-print coats, which contrasts with Brandon's exposed face and dark attire.

In addition to the fitting scenery, an  additional strength is the film's characterization, amplified by exquisite performances from its leads. Brandon's character refuses to come off as generic for a man with insatiable sexual compulsions, and Fassbender's stifled expressions, desperate outbursts, and moments of sheer pining bring an air of sadness and originality to the story. Shame is largely about longing, both Brandon's and Sissy's, which is why the scene where Sissy sings the lyrics to "New York, New York"  ("I want to wake up in that city that never sleeps/ and find I'm king of the hill") is particularly moving. In the opening shot, Brandon scopes out a young hottie on the subway, then follows her out of the station, losing her the last second to his disappointment. He encounters her again in the last frame, a transformed man after encountering death. Is Brandon longing for this woman just to sleep with her, or does he believe she is the "one" who will finally save him? My instincts point to the latter, since the film embodies New York as a place where isolation and loneliness are the norm, and where genuine human relationships are few and far between.

Despite these pluses, Shame suffers in the end from its own lack of consequence. We are happy that irrevocable disaster was warded off, but we also desire a more palpable effect to arise from Brandon's  realization of his own familial and self neglect. If we are to perceive the ending as hopeful, it is only a shot in the dark, which results in a viewing experience that demands much more than what an excellent narrative merely suggests. 

B+ 

The Debt

The Debt (2011)

Director: John Madden

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, Sam Worthington 

Watching an espionage film is only enjoyable if we can relish in the indomitable, super-human nature of covert agents hopping from one enticing location to another. One of the most enjoyable experiences I have had in the theaters this past year has been watching Bryan Bird's spectacular Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, basking in Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt escaping from high security Russian prisons and soaring off skyscraper rooftops in Dubai. Thankfully, we also have Daniel Craig's James Bond owning it at a high stakes poker game in Montenegro in Casino Royale, and more recently, Steven Soderbergh's largely under- appreciated Haywire, when hired agent/assassin Mallory Kane pummels Michael Fassbender into pieces in a Dublin hotel room. 

My point is, everyone should love a good spy movie. What they should not love is a spy movie where agents sulk about in their weakness and self-pity in a "psychological drama" like The Debt. 

The Debt is about three Israeli agents on mission to capture and bring to justice a Mengele-esque Nazi war criminal residing in East Berlin in 1965. The film jumps back and forth in time, from the East Berlin mission to 1997 (why?) as the three agents are now retired and publicly revered for having captured the Nazi way back then, when in fact they actually shot him dead, no wait, he actually escaped, and now they all hide some seriously shady secret that continues to haunt them all...and I'm already asleep.

The movie starts out well enough. Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson are always enjoyable to watch,  of course, even though their performances are passionless and static. Their young counterparts do not resemble them in any capacity, a huge credibility problem. However, Jessica Chastain dominates the movie and works arduously with her character. When the narrative transitions to 1965, the action builds as the trio comes closer and closer to their subject, curiously in the Nazi gynecologist's room, where Chastain's Rachel poses undercover as a married woman trying to improve her fertility by being inspected by the doctor. The choice of the patient/doctor set-up is a strange one, and there are a series of scenes where Rachel, legs spread on the table, is examined by the "Surgeon of Birkenau", and it remains a mystery whether the story writers intend this to be suspenseful, or simply a plot-device (Spoilers ahead!) to foreshadow Rachel's accidental pregnancy from a love affair with her partner. Which begs the question: what kind of secret agent gets pregnant while on the mission? And why are these agents so terrible at their jobs?

Unfortunately, the audience is never granted the level of suspense this story requires. Once they capture the Surgeon, a long, claustrophobic period ensues where they are cooped up for weeks in an apartment with the madman, gradually defeated by the pressure and stress of the mission.  In one scene, the cunning Nazi provokes them into screwing up the mission by delivering a "Jews are weak and deserve to be destroyed" monologue that results in our agents losing their cool and botching everything up, allowing the war-criminal to escape forever. 

The biggest problem with The Debt is that the Jewish agents prove to be weak, just as our villain predicted, which is a terribly irresponsible premise for a movie. Moreover, in the final scene, which takes place in 1997, Rachel decides to finally finish the job and kill the geriatric Nazi who alluded them many years before. Great, finally! Kill the old bastard! No such luck. Once again, this 90 year old man stabs Mirren to shreds and nearly escapes again. Will Rachel live or die? Did she do the right thing in revealing her decades-long lie? What are we left with after watching this shallow blather? War criminals, what are they good for? Absolutely nothing.

D

Melancholia

Meloncholia (2011)

Director: Lars Von Trier

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland

One of the most surprising aspects of Meloncholia is the simple moments laden with tragedy. For a movie with a premise resting upon the impending destruction of mankind, the most heart-breaking scenes take place in the private confines of Justine's (Kirsten Dunst) personal interactions. Take the scene early on, during Justine's wedding to doting, benevolent Michael (an Americanized Alexander Skarsgard).  Michael presents her with a photograph of a meadow of red flowers, promising that they will live there together, and whenever she "gets sad" she can look at the flowers and not be sad anymore. The look on Justine's face confirms that they will never make it that far, due to her emotional unavailability and periodic depression. Another scene takes place in the bedroom of Justine's nephew, the son of her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsburg) and husband John (Kiefer Sutherland). Justine has snuck away from the wedding reception to tuck the little boy in, and later sneaks upstairs again to watch him sleep. John, hiding in the corner, surprises her, saying "I hope you're happy," and "Do you know how much money this has cost me?" Justine has advertently derailed the party through her constant sneaking away. However, when John says this he is not playing the clueless bad guy role; rather, he is mindful of Justine's melancholy and legitimately hopes she is happy. When the reception is moved outside, the attendees decorate hot air balloons with inscriptions of good will to the newlyweds, and Justine watches mesmerized as the balloons float up into the black sky, a beautiful array of personal testimonies that will never be seen again, a lovely metaphor for man's brief span of time on this planet.

Precious moments like these elevate Meloncholia from gimmicky somber-female avant-garde drivel (I found Antichrist  irresponsible and self-consciously subversive for the worst reasons) to a precise timeline building toward a single, finite conclusion. The opening sequence of images, which ends with the planetary collision, leaves the viewer befuddled; when the planet hits, what will the characters be doing, and what will it feel like for them...and us? Therefore, when the intensely disturbing and realistic disaster hits in the final frame, in three seconds nonetheless, we are given exactly what we have been craving since the opening sequence because we were not presented with this image before (tee-pee on a hill?) and because it solidifies our desire to witness the disaster first-hand. 

In other words, Lars Von Trier pulls out every ounce of creativity from his bag of tricks. My favorite moments of Von Trier's films involve the chilling dread of realization he evokes from the use of a single object. In Antichrist,  an X-Ray photo of a child's malformed feet tells a father that his bat-shit crazy wife has been torturing their son. In Meloncholia, a makeshift device consisting of a circular wire on a stick confirms to a terrified Claire that the planet is moving toward earth, and very quickly. The image of Justine's horse falling to his legs is meant to foreshadow her inability to move forward, in life and after death, but it also demonstrates the death of all animals during the planet's impact. 

While alone and distressed in John's study, Justine replaces displayed art-book pages of abstract paintings, like those of Kadinsky, with those of human portraits, like those of Bruegel and Caravaggio. She wishes to surround herself with human nature, not abstract images of the universe, motion, and light.  This metaphor applies to the filmmaking, as Von Trier wants us to relish in his human portraits, not the elusive nature of  the deadly, interstellar planet.

To speak of Dunst's beautiful and empathetic performance of debilitating depression would be redundant. The film features so many fantastic, naturalistic actors (John Hurt as Justine's absentee father, Stellan Skarsgard as Justine's insensitive boss), but one stands out above the rest. Kiefer Sutherland's John is the third most important character, and the naive, reassuring nature of his character is so subtle that it's nearly difficult to detect.  There are so many high-caliber juxtapositions to Meloncholia, all of which were brought together to formulate a film that is both gorgeous and sad, realistic and fantastical, and scientific and poetic, allowing it to surely withstand the test of time.

A+