Month: November 2012

Holy Motors slaps you in the face, has you laughing yourself silly, and confounds you near-continuously. Best to give in and roll with the punches. There are a lot of things it isn’t–mainly a film with only one “correct” interpretation. Best to consider it an exhilarating ride to an unclear destination or, if you will, a surrealistic trip that actually renders the destination irrelevant. In a year when Daniel Day-Lewis and John Hawkes have given virtual acting clinics, former acrobat Denis Lavant throws down what may be the most extraordinary performance of all. Director Leos Carax takes David Lynch-, David Cronenberg-, and Luis Bunuel-style filmmaking to new heights as he comes up with what feels like a practically new art form.

Holy Motors is possibly the dream of the character in the opening scene (Lavant) who wakes up, flamboyantly uses a key grafted onto his finger to open a mysterious door to a movie theater full of viewers of a silent movie, then walks down the aisle with his dog. What follows is a tycoon, Monsieur Oscar (Lavant), leaving his gated house and stepping into a stretch limousine (forget any comparison to Cronenberg’s subpar Cosmopolitan, which also takes place in a limo). In the first of, I think, eleven “appointments,” Monsieur Oscar, using a makeup table in the limo, dons the proper getup to transform himself into an old beggar woman, leaves the limo to go out into Paris and bum some change, then returns to the limo to take on the next character. Before we know it, he’s transformed into a one-eyed, out-to-lunch loco (a character first introduced by Carax and Lavant in the collection of shorts, Tokyo!), who, in an absolute tizzy, pops out of a sewer and abducts a model (Eva Mendes) at a photo shoot in a cemetery. He bites off the fingers of a cameraman assistant, licks an impassive Mendes’ armpit, and proceeds to eat her cash while taking her to an underground lair where, using her own clothes, he will turn her into a Muslim woman. A cemetery gravestone announces, “Visit my website.”

Later he’s a man in a body-stocking with glowing motion-capture sensors who pantomimes the sex act , an assassin taking out his own double, a father counseling his teenage daughter, a man on a deathbed with the same dog from earlier sitting nearby, a hitman going after a businessman in a restaurant, and a reunited lover having a tryst with a Jean Seberg-lookalike (pop star Kylie Minogue), who belts into a melodramatic song, “Who Were We” (co-written by Carax), before hurling herself off the balcony of the deserted Samaritaine department store. Somewhere along the line a parade of serenading accordion players saunter through a church in a bit of comic relief only heightened by the interlude’s sheer poignancy.

Throughout the film Oscar’s limo driver (veteran French actress Edith Scob) keeps asking whether he’s had anything to eat and if he hasn’t had enough activity for one day. French icon actor Michel Piccoli, as an overseeing manager of sorts, steps into the limousine to ask Oscar why he keeps on going. “For beauty of the act,” he says. The beauty of Carax’s act is in the marvelous images, their uncanny interconnectedness, and the unique questions they raise. What might have seemed in a lesser film an exercise in style with little mooring in substance, here confidently stakes its purpose on the most iconoclastic of notions: throw out the rules and expectations and let pure cinema flow. Linear plot and film conventions? Never heard of them. Carax, 51, has only made five feature films in 28 years–he faces a tough job to follow Holy Motors.

4.5 Exhilarating and Confounding “Appointments” (out of 5)

Cinedork.com writer and film aficionado Don Malvasi had the opportunity to check out a bulk of the films that came in through Philadelphia during the 21st Annual Philadelphia Film Festival. An assortment of indie darlings and Oscar contenders provided some very memorable moments in moviedom. In this column, Don breaks down the 2012 Philadelphia Film Festival, one great scene at a time…

• The haunting long shot at the devastating conclusion of the grim yet uncompromising After Lucia
• The initial sparks-flying dinner scene between Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence in the refreshingly unconventional and uplifting Silver Linings Playbook
• Denis Lavant’s diabolical tizzy opposite Eva Mendes, one of many unforgettable scenes in the iconoclastic, laugh yourself silly, near-indescribable Holy Motors

  

• The riveting heartbreak of a divorced parent seeking a few minutes with his kidnapped child, brought by the other parent to Japan , where dual custody doesn’t even exist, in the documentary, From The Shadows
• the final, “huh?” scene in David Chase’s charming and accurate ode to 1960s kids forming a band modeled after the Stones in the brimming-with-hooks Not Fade Away
• the payoff scene in Sister, where “plot twist” takes on a new meaning.
• the crushing Amy Winehouse duets, replete with her insecure, winsome commentary with Tony Bennett in the otherwise ebullient Zen of Bennett
• FDR (Bill Murray) being carried, due to his polio, into his house by Secret Service agents once the press corps leaves the scene in Hyde Park on the Hudson
• Helen Hunt going through the trash looking for the John Hawkes poem to her she never got to read in the marvelous The Sessions
• The son of the boxer accidentally killed due to blows he received in the ring from boxer Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, visiting Mancini thirty years later to selflessly make sure Mancini wasn’t feeling too guilty about things, in the touching documentary, The Good Son
• The sheer terror of the first knock on her door by authorities hounding a formerly jailed West German activist (Nina Hoss in one of the year’s best performances) working as a physician in exile in East Germany during the cold war in the pitch-perfect Barbara

  

• The previously cool-as-a cucumber Christopher Walken, losing it while he tells Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catharine Keener to quit fighting in his apartment in The Last Quartet
• Billy Connolly’s shucking and jiving in just about any of his scenes in the fluffy yet charming Quartet
• The final scene in the intriguing Terraferma, which makes the claim that bold social change comes from individual acts often arising from the most unlikely sources
• The incomparable Isabelle Huppert playful yet stone-serious grilling of the knowing monk in the seriocomic In Another Country
• The heartbreaking morality-twisting scene in Lore that brings the certain realization that there were often no good choices amidst the evil of Nazi Germany
• The can-this-be-true? scene of the District Attorney still clinging to her story even after a confessed killer exonerates The Central Park Five in Ken Burns surefire new documentary.
• The first scene we realize An Oversimplification Of Her Beauty isn’t playing around–it’s going to blend fiction, non-fiction and animation and bring them to a rock-solid, effervescent whole.
• Jim Broadbent first realizing it isn’t a hotel he’s checked into but a wacko nursing home in which he’s been trapped’ in the visually ingenious yet often pretentious Cloud Atlas

What was your most memorable scene from the 21st Annual Philadelphia Film Festival?
Let us know in the comments below.

Only now and then does a film come along where 3D technology achieves its maximum potential. There is extraordinary power in the total effect of many scenes in Life of Pi, a dazzlingly constructed adventure tale of a shipwrecked Indian boy and a Bengal tiger cohabitating aboard a lifeboat. Perhaps not since Avatar has the use of stereoscopy approached the level here.

With no star actors and a supporting cast of a flock of flying fish, a nasty hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, a huge whale, and numerous meerkats, Ang Lee’s adaptation of the Yann Martel’s Man Booker prize-winning novel also achieves new highs in its use of color and the until-now often underwhelming motion-capture technology. Just as Lee took the martial arts drama and ripped it a new asshole in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, here he gives Kipling a 21st-century run for his money. Yet his feel for authentic character traits so ably displayed in films like the The Ice Storm and Brokeback Mountain are also evident in Life of Pi.

When the real star of the film is a computer-generated tiger, there ought not be any inkling in the frame that actor Irrfan Khan, as Pi, the Indian boy, was actually alone in the 26-foot lifeboat while filming his scenes. (As such, my apologies for providing a spoiler if you would rather have not known that.) The boy and the tiger’s struggle for territory aboard the lifeboat and an adjacent raft which Pi must resort to for safety, make for a drama of the most basic order. While not remarkable intellectually (the device of the much older Pi narrating the story to a Western writer is largely a cliche) Life of Pi soars on a primordial level. The scope of the film is awe-inspiring: a torrent of unbridled nature in its exorbitant splendor. Not too shabby a storyline enriches the visuals: a vegetarian Hindu boy who also immersed himself in Christian and Muslim traditions battles his father, who despite owning a zoo in Pondicherry, India, impresses upon Pi the notion that animals have no souls. Pi disagrees. He tests the question after he finds himself on the lifeboat with one Robert Parker, moniker for the Bengal tiger who, along with other inhabitants of their zoo, was aboard a sinking freighter with Pi and his family en route to North America.

Lee’s film engages in far less religious navel-gazing than Martel’s novel. Good thing. After weeks at sea and a spell on a magical island, the viewer is presented with a quandary at film’s end. It is less a philosophical brain-teasing twist and more of a matter-of-fact coda to give us even more pause as we consider what we’ve just witnessed. Contemplation gives us plenty of answers without The Answer. Meanwhile, some damn pure cinema just wrapped us up and sent us home.

4 Schools of Fying Fish Attacking A Kid and A Tiger On A Damn Lifeboat (out of 5)

Bradley Cooper uses the phrase “I can’t edit myself” with enough frequency in Silver Linings Playbook to manage to regularly apologize yet still excuse himself as he delivers zinger after zinger. Basically he still harbors the simple notion that if he tells it like it is, remains honest with himself and tries hard enough to stay out of trouble, he’ll be able to return to his old status quo. That includes getting back his estranged wife despite the little matter of a restraining order against him. Just released from a mental hospital where he was diagnosed bipolar, Cooper returns to the presumed comfort and safety of his old homestead. Family (including Robert DeNiro as a bookmaking, obsessive-compulsive Dad) and friends think him crazy to feel such unwarranted optimism since he previously beat up a male work colleague after discovering him showering with his wife. That doggone restraining order again!

Director David O. Russell may have fashioned a romantic comedy of sorts out of two lead characters who suffer from mental illness but his take is anything but light and casual. Silver Linings Playbook’s main attribute is shining a high-powered search light on the moments in a family when tension is all too sure to rear its ugly head. Despite Lawrence’s cheeky charisma and Cooper’s self-deprecating if deliberate self-awareness, the characters are the antithesis of romantic, the opposite of exploitative Credit the savvy direction of Russell and the insightful source material of novelist Matthew Quick but don’t forget to include two of the brightest and most controlled performances of the year. Had Cooper or Lawrence been off the slightest, this whole project would have come tumbling down. They both manage to give their characters the requisite subtlety to present us a tale not just of redemption but of painful truths–those of disturbed personalities, sure, but ones we all can recognize. The added stretch that Cooper’s character in the novel was hospitalized for three years rather than the nine months depicted here serves to not so much undermine the seriousness of dealing with a mental illness but merely to compress it for the sake of a more successful outcome. Fresh on the heels of the Fighter, Russell yet again proves himself one of the best in getting the utmost out of an ensemble cast. DeNiro, who worked with Cooper in the delightful Limitless last year, is a quirky, gruff, yet oddly caring figure here and utterly devoid of any Frockerisms that have plagued his recent performances. Sexiest Man of the Year Cooper goes entirely against type, and Jacki Weaver gives an understated yet vital performance as Cooper’s compassionate mother.

Jennifer Lawrence.

She definitely has “it” in the old Clara Bow sense. Word has it that despite being thought too young for the role, Lawrence was accomodated a Skype audition for this film. Good thing. She apparently blew away Russell and company and now she finds herself the odds on favorite for a Best Actress Oscar. What is completely believable about her performance is that she pulls off both carefree nasty and sneakily compassionate–often in the same moment.

4.5 Old-Fashioned Screwball-Style Comedies With Contemporary Edge (out of 5)

Daniel Day-Lewis leaves tread marks all over actors who previously played Abraham Lincoln. Roll over Raymond Massey–and tell Walter Huston the news.

Hyper calm, self-deprecating, eager to spin pithy tales for every occasion, Day-Lewis’s Lincoln seems distracted by a doting focus on his beloved younger son, Tad. Here Abe deceives like a butterfly, then stings like a bee. Comfortable with being the only guy in either political party who believes a Constitutional Amendment to outlaw slavery can actually pass Congress, he uses his authority like an ace in the hole. He plays it only when absolutely necessary, and then for maximum impact. His placid style drives his advisers, including Secretary of State William Seward (a stirring David Straithairn) to maddening frustration, until cobra-like, he jarringly implores them to take any steps necessary to get the requisite number of votes. Here Lincoln gives the ultimate lesson on practical politics while Day-Lewis gives the ultimate lesson of stepping into an enigmatic role and absolutely owning it. By the way, Steven Spielberg directed and Tony Kushner (Angels in America) wrote the screenplay. Tommy Lee Jones plays Thaddeus Stevens, second fiddle to Lincoln and a more radical abolitionist who must bring himself to compromise for the sake of change that has an actual chance of accomplishment, instead of much less likely to pass reparations. Jones defines intensity. Here he’s a moralistic bull amidst a China shop of halting, reactionary Democrats, who actually pose on the Congressional floor the notion that abolishing slavery might one day lead to, heaven forbid, blacks voting.

Will the go-for-broke seeking of the slavery amendment actually prolong the war? Even Lincoln himself isn’t certain. However, the President’s gnawing suspicion that it’s now or never provides his inner flame. He concludes that waiting will doom any chance of passing the amendment. So Lincoln brings on a trio of arm-twisting, job-promising provocateurs (including James Spader and John Hawkes). Ultimately, Stevens and even Lincoln himself join the lobbyists in hands-on dealing and imploring.

Meanwhile, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as Lincoln’s older son, Robert, dying to join the war effort, runs up against Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln (a very good Sally Field). She has already lost an 11-year-old son to typhoid fever, and shudders at the prospect of losing another one to the war. This leaves Abe having to smooth out family tensions that are a microcosm of what he faces every day in the public sphere. Lewis and Field share a scene that roils with sparks-flying passion: hers, a fervent, about-to-lose-control yin; his, a centered, compassionate yang.

Ultimately Lincoln eloquently huffs and puffs its way into revealing what an actual democracy looks like. More reminiscent of the Lyndon Johnson administration than any since, Lincoln’s political machinations boldly remind us of how our current dysfunctional, gridlocked legislature is but a mere caricature of the real thing. One whiff of the wheeling and dealings here makes one wonder whether we even remain the same country anymore. Yet through the magic of Day-Lewis and the masterstroke of Spielberg/Cashier’s collaboration, this gem of a film engenders pride in our heritage. It exudes a happy/sad sense of certainty that even though a staggering 600,000 lives were lost in the Civil War, the courageous vision of one incredibly clever, iconoclastic president prevented things from becoming far worse. The film concludes, with conviction, that their lives had not been lost in vain.

5 Instant Classics (out of 5)

The relationship between thieving, conniving 12-year old Simon and his cranky, shiftless older sister Louise forms the core of the sad, stirring Sister, a film from French director Ursula Meier. Shot by the wonderful cinematographer Agnes Godard, Sister evokes the Alpine ski resort that is the setting of Simon’s mischief, with a gritty self-assurance. Kacy Mottet Klein portrays Simon with a maturity far greater than his years–simultaneously evoking a cleverness and a vulnerability fitting for his role as essentially the head of household. Simon manages to keep stealing expensive skis and belongings from the pockets of the wealthy tourists at the top of the mountain, then give much of his newfound loot to his much older yet unemployed sister as they share an apartment bereft of any parents or other siblings in the town below.

Numerous shots, often from the level of Simon’s viewpoint, take place in the internal hallways of the privileged skiers and on the ski lifts bridging the considerable gap between the resort and the working class town below. Yet Sister avoids the polemic of overdramatizing this social incongruity. Steadfast in its closeups of Simon’s every wile and guile, it steps things up even further in its raw yet often tender scenes between Simon and Louise (Lea Seydoux). A tight naturalism purifies the sordid proceedings. When Simon’s naughtiness is first discovered by Mark, a line cook in a restaurant (Martin Compston, the lead in Ken Loach’s excellent Sweet Sixteen) he fears obvious retaliation. Given the audacity of his age and enterprise, however, Simon actually lucks out and takes on the cook as a fence for his stolen goods. Equally compliant are ski resort locker room denizens who willingly buy his stolen equipment. Not that Simon isn’t occasionally too big for his britches. Posing as a member of the elite himself, he befriends an Englishwoman (GIllian Anderson) and her children and while having lunch with them commits the faux paid of insisting to pick up the check. As her suspicions arise, our hearts go out to his needy impulses but worry for his future safety.

Then the film takes a turn which if anyone spoils for you, you should quit speaking to them for a few weeks. Even without the twist, Sister (France’s entrant in the Oscar Best Foreign Film sweepstakes) would be a highly commendable film. Not only in thematic terms given its wayward youth motif, but also in tone, the film certainly conjures up the masterful Dardennes brothers (Kid With A Bike, L’Enfant). The depth of Seydoux’s performance informs Louise’s narcissism with complexity of the occasional, surprising loving care. Yet it is Klein’s bravura turn as Simon that will haunt you. This kid doesn’t play.

4.5 Wild Child’s (out of 5)