Due to the
madness of SxSW sucking editor John Laird in to the void
this week, all of the reviews are going to run, hopefully,
on Monday. Thus, with seven reviews burbling in my chest,
and the opening weekend already a flicker in your rearview,
I thought I’d try out a little column called Quick and Dirty
where I approach the films not as individual objects but as
a weeks worth of cinema viewing in an attempt to see what
exactly we as an audience are being fed by small and big
studios alike. I’ll try to keep my ramblings to a minimum,
but I warn you, this a pro-rambing column. Opinions will be
stated, by they may be wrapped in a gauzy layer of
pontification.
Would love to hear your opinions.
Quick And Dirty
To start a week
of film watching with a movie like Abbas Kiarostami’s
Certified Copy is a dangerous one. Kiarostami is a
critically-revered filmmaker that abides by the law of his
own auteurism and his films float or sink based on this. His
newest film, starring Juliette Binoche, is as a slow a
roller as anything else Kiarostami has produced in his
career. He cares not about the linear thud of plotting, he
cares about characters and their interactions with others as
well as their surroundings. Have you seen Taste Of Cherry?
One man, a taxi, and conversation - that’s it. Certified
Copy doesn’t fall far from that tree. Juliette Binoche
and William Shimell play an antique art dealer and an art
philosopher on a strange, awkward road trip to an artistic
site in the Italian country side. We know little of these
characters, but as the film unfolds, slowly, the possible
details of their lives quietly emerge. Are they married? Are
they play-acting? Does it matter if the emotions feel right?
Kiarostami is not a man to look to for fast pacing, but I
implore you to make it through to the end as the film peels
off its layers and the very smallest details become
fascinating.
My girlfriend, constant companion in my canoe-ride of
cinema, mentioned, while watching Xavier Dolan’s new film
Heartbeats, that it was the flip side of Certified
Copy. Where Kiarostami made a movie so centered on the
emotional interiors of its characters (however you might
view them) the actually exterior beauty of the film suffers.
Xavier Dolan has made a beautifully composed film about two
friends who fall for the same, dastardly gent, that revels
in the beauty of, well, everything. It’s a typical hipster
flick with emotions and consequence highlighted through
clothing and color. Dolan at times is too in love with the
precious qualities of his film though, and the characters,
desperate for love, grow a bit one note. Perhaps Dolan and
Kiarostami’s films take cues from their characters levels of
maturity. Both films are about relationships tested by
secrets, but each about a relationship in a far different
stage. Kiarostami’s couple is at the end of a relationship,
while Dolan’s are fresh-faced and excited about the world.
I’d say the cinematography, the visual style in general,
avidly expresses these levels of maturity. Heartbeats ending
is a tad cheap, but as a whole, the film is well worth
watching. Xavier Dolan wrote, directed and stars in the film
as Frankie, and he succeeds, to varying degrees at all. His
Frankie is a jumble of slow-motion sadness, whose entire
life hinges on this one romance. It’s a wonderful
performance, and qualms aside I look forward to what Dolan
brings next.
Speaking of the grim trappings of unspoken love, Jane
Eyre arrives this weekend, all clad in corsets and
brooding. I’m not a fan of period pieces but if talented
folk like Cary Fukunaga keep approaching the material with
this sort of sparse intensity, I’ll sign up for another. Mia
Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender are brilliant as Jane Eyre
and the secret-harboring Mr. Rochester. Fukunaga approaches
the material not with the flowery prose so inherent to the
writing of the time, but with a keen eye and a sharp knife
to parse the film down to the most prescient details, and
the film audibly hums because of it. There’s a cold
intensity to the film that dragged me along by my
bootstraps.
If love and its many incarnations and pitfalls was the
predominant theme of the week, the road trip was a close
second. Perhaps its March and the spring break madness has
permeated the hard husk of Hollywood as the open road seems
at least a husk in which a story can be inputed. Eran Riklis’
The Human Resource Manager tracks not just the life
of the title character as he bumbles his way across the cold
of an Eastern European country trying to bring a body back
to its home, but also the impact of a Israel over the last
forty years. The Human Resource Manager (no names are used
in the film) is a shallow man, obsessed with his work, but
his trip out from under the weight of Jerusalem, drags the
emotions of his life to the surface. It’s a good film with a
few over-the-top moments I found jarring, but there’s a
strip of symbolic allusion (the Humvee, the bomb shelter,
The Human Resource Managers quickness with a bribe, etc.)
that gives it a fine brick of credibility to hold on to.
Paul, on the other hand, has been marketed like a
stoner comedy with requisite number of dick jokes you’d
expect from the director of Superbad. And oh wee are
the crowds who spark a blunt and drop on in going to be
surprised. Yes, the tale of Clive (Nick Frost) and Graeme’s
(Simon Pegg) road trip across the SW with a computer
animated alien (voiced by Seth Rogan) has its moments of
hilarity (Kristen Wiig, an especially hilarious addition to
the cast) but in general for a stoner-alien comedy this is a
lowkey flick. I actually found myself more drawn to the
softer side of the film, the emotional weight it strangely
carries, then the humor which seemed to fall flat more often
than not. I wonder if a road trip film just can’t be made
without the physical destination standing in for the equally
important emotional destination. I’m curious how this film
will do in the weeks to come, but I imagine it might be a
big hit this weekend, with a steep decline in the weeks to
come.
The Music Never Stopped, Jim Kohlberg’s adaptation of
an Oliver Sack’s book, does every wrong that Paul
does right. Where Paul creates characters we can love
and then allows for the emotional moments to stem from them.
The Music Never Stopped places a trio of bland
stereotypes in to a vastly emotional situation and asks us
to care. Which I did not. J.K. Simmons gruff man shtick
falls on its face here and isn’t helped by the cloying
performance from Lou Pucci or the soundtrack of classic rock
hits I’ve heard so many times by now they’re less songs and
more sonic clichés.
What a strange week in film. Maybe they are all this strange
though. Maybe cinema is just a weird, wacky world that draws
connections between situations and characters you never
believed existed. I swear watch Heartbeats and
Certified Copy back-to-back and the two films, so
different, will speak to you of the same pain, just in a
different language.
- Noah Sanders
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