Cord Jefferson knows his audience. The writer-director of American Fiction acknowledges them and calls them out at the end of the film’s second act. Stagg R. Leigh, the pen name of author Theolonious ‘Monk’ Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) proposes renaming his new satirical novel from ‘My Pafology’ to simply ‘Fuck’. His agent Arthur (John Ortiz) is shocked, but both men are even more perturbed when their wealthy white publishers agree to the change, citing it as more ‘black’, and therefore more authentic. ‘Fuck’ becomes a bestseller, and the book cover is everywhere in the second half of this confident directorial debut, and for good reasons. In its commentary on a great many phenomena, American Fiction’s conclusion is best summarised in that one word. Fuck, indeed.
With five Academy Award nominations amongst other awards tucked under its belt, the audience for American Fiction has been spread wide, ensuring that the chin-strokers of a liberal arthouse bent have shuffled it up their list of must-sees before Oppenheimer wins everything anyway. Still, American Fiction deserves consideration. On first viewing, one is struck by its ambition. It has to be ambitious; the irony of satire is that it has to transcend its own message, in order for that message to reach a wider audience. This is the realisation Monk comes to early on in American Fiction. Throughout the film, Monk walks a fine line between his success as a writer and academic, and having to cater to the needs of his family, his agent, his publishers, and ultimately himself. Imagine a version of America Ferrera’s speech from Barbie, but coded for race rather than gender, and extrapolated to feature length. As American Fiction underlines, African Americans have to walk a tightrope to transcend most expectations. Fuck.
Erika Alexander and Jeffrey Wright in American Fiction
Take the very first scene; a (white) student leaves Monk’s university lecture because he has put the N-word on the whiteboard for his class on historical literature of the American South. Despite his own lack of offence taken, Monk is placed on administrative leave for the offence caused to the student. Shortly after, while being informed by Arthur that his latest novel has been rejected by a publisher for not being “black enough”, Monk’s efforts to hail a cab are ignored. Leaving aside the blatant racist undertones of the phrase ‘black enough’, it is shocking to see how the agency of Monk’s race is turned on its head. In this adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel ‘Erasure’, Jefferson sprinkles numerous examples of underhand racism throughout; the (notably white) university board can only see the offence caused, not the offender. His refusal to be offended by a slur referring to his race is ignored, but so too is his attempt to publish a literary work that doesn’t feature Ebonics or black stereotypes. Monk is not ‘black enough’ to dictate what is racist, but is ‘too black’ to be picked up by publishers of fiction for white audiences, or by a cab. He can’t win. Fuck.
Yet, that racial strife that just one problem with which Monk must contend. Several films’ worth of drama comes his way in American Fiction‘s opening act. His mother (Leslie Uggams) is showing signs of mental degradation, his hardworking sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) struggles to keep her familial and professional lives together, and his brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown) is partying too hard to cope with his divorce and realization of his homosexuality. Fuuuucccckkkkkkkk. All these characters are successful doctors, led lives that conformed to the American Dream (the ultimate American Fiction) to a tee, and still ended up sick, stressed and alone. Monk is criticised throughout the film for his distance from those around him, as if this was going to save him from a similar fate. But therein lies the point of American Fiction. We are all hopelessly enmeshed in whatever groups we belong to, and it’s up to us to do with that what we will. Monk belongs to his family, his race, and his new relationship with his neighbour Coraline (Erika Alexander). Until now, he’s chosen to be distant from his family, but their drawing closer together following tragedy opens him up to other experiences.
Jeffrey Wright in American Fiction
Alas, this bevy of experiences exposes American Fiction’s weaknesses. The family dramas sit a little uneasily beside the satirical bent of the book storyline. In trying to tell all these stories, Jefferson is simply trying too hard. American Fiction is focused from scene to scene, but it feels scattered across the whole film. The book has nothing to do with Monk’s family, and the two strands compete for air. This would be a bigger problem if the film wasn’t so sharply written, and peppered with moments of poignancy. Jefferson’s direction isn’t strong enough to marry his narrative threads together, but his writing is confident enough in both its message and form to switch between comedy and tragedy with ease. This is epitomised in Brown’s supporting turn. He earns all his plaudits by being hilarious (Informing his brother he’s “taken a lover”) and dramatically compelling (His response to his Alzheimer-ridden mother’s use of a gay slur) in equal measure.
Anchoring all this is Wright’s barely-stifled bemusement as Monk. His expressions and reactions invite some of the biggest laughs, even when trying to cope with the various twists and turns that crop up in his story. The inciting incident of American Fiction sees Monk watch fellow author Sinatra Golden (Issa Rae) read from her acclaimed new novel, one that deals in the stereotypes and Ebonics that Monk assiduously avoids. His crestfallen face is giggle-inducing, but also readily conveys his repulsion at Black experience being reduced to the usual clichés of gang violence and absent fathers all over again. It’s a deceptively layered performance, having to keep the audience laughing while venting Monk’s exasperations constantly, and Wright manages the balance beautifully. His choice to engage with such reflexive material goes back to his first major role, in Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat; when an interviewer asks Wright’s Basquiat if he’s a painter or a Black painter, he responds, “Are you a writer, or a White writer?” Wright and Jefferson are on the same page, sporting a healthy disdain for artistic and racial pigeonholes, while having to work within those same constraints. Any time Monk has to put on a tough act to pretend to be Stagg R. Leigh, it feels ridiculous, but not beyond the realm of possibility. He has to fake it until he makes it.
Sterling K. Brown, Jeffrey Wright and Erika Alexander in American Fiction
Monk’s hangdog expression and sharp tongue, coupled with his balding bonce and penchant for polo shirts, bring to mind some unlikely inspirations. The first one that came to this writer’s mind was Miles, as played by Wright’s fellow Oscar nominee Paul Giamatti in Alexander Payne’s Sideways. Miles is another academically-minded writer dealing with rejection by publishers, a blossoming romance with a gorgeous woman framed in curls, and a fraternal bond (with his best friend, Thomas Haden Church’s Jack) that frustrates as much as it enriches. Laura Karpman’s score cements the comparison, its use of flute and drums recalling Rolfe Kent’s score for Payne’s film. Despite its incendiary material, American Fiction largely eschews the signature bombastic filmmaking of someone like Spike Lee (The spoof novel ‘Da Pafology’ could be a sly critique of Lee’s use of similar Ebonics in titles like Da 5 Bloods or DaSweet Blood ofJesus) for a cool and calm style, unhurried and polished. This might contribute to the film’s other main narrative problem, namely an undefined sense of time. Weeks and months pass with no indication of how far we’ve jumped ahead, leaving events in a vacuum as the viewer tries to catch up. Still, it’s far from fatal; the film is too angry and intelligent to let a structural issue trip it up. The characters and the commentary see it through.
American Fiction works as satire because it underlines the points it wants to make, while never being so arrogant as to suggest it has all the answers. When Monk does confront his various tormentors, their answers can seem both pat and relatable. Most any decision any character faces is driven by their humanity rather than by their ideology; they have bills to pay before they wage any wars. We’re bound by those pigeonholes of identity and family, and in its own messy but sharp way, American Fiction acknowledges our need to both test those boundaries, and work within them. Fuck.
*This article contains major spoilers for the entire plot of Tár*
This article was originally published on Scannain.com
Perhaps it was her notoriety. After all, can you really be seen to praise someone as controversial as Lydia Tár? Well, despite being described as an EGOT, and the fact she isn’t actually real, the Academy said ‘no’. Any criticism of the Oscars for their failure to award Todd Field’s masterful Tár anything on the big night might be interpreted as some kind of slight towards big winner Everything Everywhere All At Once, but now that all the brouhaha has died down, and the gold nuggets have been apportioned, the most enduring accolade will be withstanding the test of time. Tár should have no problem in that regard.
The lady in question says it herself. “Time is the thing”, proclaims Tár (Cate Blanchett) in her fascinating public interview at the beginning of the masterpiece named for her. It’s certainly the thing when you talk to fans and critics on the European side of the pond, who had to wait over three months after its U.S. release to finally get to see writer-director Field’s long-awaited third feature film. His first two films, In The Bedroom and Little Children, told tales of suburban malaise through the eyes of the people experiencing very particular circumstances. Tár goes one step further, focusing on one character, both the victim and cause of a very public downfall. As the lead conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Tár has worked her way up through academia and the classical music world to achieve great things. It is difficult not to write of Lydia Tár as if she’s real; meme culture being what it is, in a way she has become real. Blanchett’s performance has transcended the limitations of the screen on which her fiery performance is projected to become a living, breathing entity of her own. Lydia Tár will stand the test of that elusive thing, time. While doing the rounds of the festival and awards circuits, Tár has been dissected every which way in an attempt to pin down what it has to say. It tackles a lot of issues of the day, from gender equality to abuses of power, but the theme that lasts is time, because it’s the one that every audience member can appreciate. Tár is about someone attempting to control time, whilst simultaneously failing to realize that she has become frozen in time, unable to escape the actions of the past or the consequences that lie in the future. In short, her time is up.
The very first scene shows how frozen Tár has become. Sat on a private jet and groggy behind a sleeping mask, we observe Tár through a smartphone camera, the subject of a texted conversation. The person holding the phone is Tár’s latest find and favourite, star cellist Olga (played by acclaimed cellist Sophie Kauer in her screen debut). The identity of the person she’s texting is never confirmed, but there are so many potential saboteurs that are revealed over the following two-and-a-half hours, that the viewer may find themselves becoming confused, or even paranoid. From the opening, Field’s script and direction is daring to put you in an uncomfortable place: inside Lydia Tár’s head. At this stage, we are not yet aware of what Tár is alleged to have done, but the invasiveness of the first shot is hard to shake off, establishing an eerie atmosphere that rarely lets up for the rest of the film. Tár is made to feel like she’s being stalked. Whether she is or not is up to the viewer, but if she is, even the nature of her stalker is up for debate. Is someone actually after her, or is it a ghost, or merely a feeling? Is Tár’s paranoia the real antagonist of Tár?
Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár
Control is re-established on Tár’s behalf as the credits come in. However, these aren’t traditional opening credits showcasing the primary players. Field moves the full credits normally reserved for a film’s end right to the beginning, a disruptive move worthy of Lydia Tár herself. As the following scenes make clear, Tár is a visionary in the classical music world, one who prides herself on her control of the material she’s bringing to the audience. The choice to place the credits first, accompanied by chanting from a member of a South American tribe whose musicality Tár studied extensively for her PhD, is a choice Tár herself might have made. Normally an audience might have escaped shortly after the credits start to roll, but Tár would insist her story is worth the extra time. As well as reflecting his character’s self-deluded pretension, Field also gives worthy credit to the crew whose very mention could easily have been skipped over were they left to the end of the film.
The scene following the credits is the afore-mentioned public interview between Tár and New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, who posits that some people think of orchestra conductors as mere timekeepers. She responds with that statement that may as well be her mission statement. “Time is the thing”, says Tár. “Time is the essential piece of interpretation. You cannot start without me. See, I start the clock.” This could be an apt nod to T. Fleischmann’s ‘Time Is The Thing a Body Moves Through’, a selection of essays on our interactions with art and how it defines us, but moreover it defines Field’s dialogue for Tár, at once excessively wordy and brilliantly forthright. She takes pride in her control, and exercises it through her verbosity; she even edits her own Wikipedia page. That control extends to the interview itself; the scene opens with Gopnik listing Tár’s accomplishments, and at one point we cut to Tár’s assistant Francesca (Noémie Merlant), reciting the introduction to herself as Gopnik delivers it. All of this has been pre-arranged, introducing a suggestion that Tár is not to be challenged. Throughout the interview, she delivers answers that the audience might not expect, but is clever enough to contextualize them in ways that soften the blow. She pays tribute to the female conductors that came before her (despite the real-life protestations of Marin Allsop, one of the names Tár mentions), whilst admitting that she hasn’t faced much in the way of sexism while rising up in a male-dominated field. Much has been made of Tár as a film about cancel culture, but Field makes a key choice about how to portray the rise and fall of Lydia Tár. Cancel culture is the context in which Tár operates, but it is not the subject of the film. Naturally, in a post-#MeToo world, the film has to acknowledge the shift in attitudes towards inappropriate behaviour in cultural and other realms in recent years, but that becomes window dressing by the end. Tár is about how one character is affected by these shifts, and how she responds to it. The fact that Tár is a woman complicates matters; it gives subsequent plot developments around her actions an edge that wouldn’t be there if the character were written as a man. After many high-profile men have been brought down by their behaviour towards women, how does this dynamic work when the (alleged) abuser is a woman too? This is part of Field’s determination to eschew easy answers, as is his decision not to specify everything Tár is alleged to have done. As time goes on, we learn that there was some kind of exchange of favours between Tár, Francesca and another budding musician/assistant, Krista (Sylvia Flote), though the film is purposely vague about the nature of these favours, be they professional, sexual or otherwise. We also learn that Krista has committed suicide, and Tár’s active refusal to support her applications for posts in orchestras likely played a part in her death. Tár has clearly done something wrong, but for most of the film this is manifested more in the guilt she feels and tries to avoid, rather than the consequences she faces.
Zethphan Smith-Gneist and Cate Blanchett in Tár
Before we even get to the guilt or consequences, though, we get to witness Tár exercising more control, this time in the classroom. While many scenes could lay claim to being the most infamous in Tár, the sequence in which she delivers a masterclass at Juilliard has become a prime contender, not least by acting as a lighting rod for any number of contemporary talking points. Like the interview before it, the scene takes its time. The masterclass is obvious in its formal daring, with Field staging the scene as a ten-minute long take. Florian Hoffmeister’s elegant camera follows Tár around the cavernous lecture hall as if rapt to her every word. Here again we see Tár controlling her audience through her words; the camera hangs on her, even as she invites some audience participation. Asking a couple of students for their opinions on Bach, the camera follows Tár to sit next to Max (Zethphan Smith-Gneist), who expresses disinterest in the white European males of the canon (“As a BIPOC pangender, I have difficulty connecting with Bach.”). The preceding interview established Tár as a champion of female conductors and composers, so it could be presumed by both the students and us, the audience, that Tár might be sympathetic to his point of view. However, in as erudite a fashion as possible, she rebuffs Max’s rejection of the canon. As she does so, she becomes more animated, leading to a moment that serves to bring the themes of control and time crashing together. Tár invites Max onto the dais to sit beside her at the piano to demonstrate some Bach. Up to this point, Max has sat listening, all the while his leg has been twitching, whether out of impatience or nervousness. This continues while sitting with Tár at the piano, even when she stops playing to ask for his feedback. As he struggles to find the words, Tár reaches over him and places her hand on his knee, as if to stop the twitching. The action is impulsive, and feels even more so when it comes from someone who has exercised so much control up to now. The fact that this moment comes as a shock despite the fact there still haven’t been any cuts in this scene is a testament to Field’s writing. By now, we are over half an hour into Tár, and up to this point the film has repeatedly demonstrated Tár’s control over her own narrative and her time. A preceding scene saw her dressing down her colleague Elliot Kaplan, treating an ostensible equal so dismissively as to emasculate him (Putting the pathologically bald Mark Strong in dated glasses and a floppy haircut only adds to the humiliation).
Yet the dressing down Tár gives Max is different. Being a teacher to Max, the power dynamic shifts in her favour. The physical invasiveness of her actions is something that has been hinted at before (In an earlier scene, we see Tár playfully touch a flirty reporter’s handbag in admiration), but this is an unrestricted and inconsiderate move from this alleged master of control. This moment between Tár and Max has two functions. From a character development point of view, it introduces Tár’s potential for physical and/or intellectual intimidation; as the film goes on, this aspect of her personality will play a bigger part in the action. As for the film as a whole, the moment Tár puts her hand on Max’s knee marks time. This moment is the end of Act One. This is precisely when Tár begins to lose control of her story. Though the scene doesn’t end there, a very different pallor is cast over the film. Tár’s ongoing lesson to Max becomes more confrontational, but is still erudite, though Max is unable to respond with civility (“You’re a fucking bitch.”). After this scene, the film’s rhythms speed up. No scene in the film after this goes on as long without a cut. From here on in, Field will loosen his grip on his precise control of Tár’s visual storytelling. The rigor that has been so visible up to this point will give way to faster pacing as the narrative proper kicks in. This is not to suggest Field gives up or loses control over his film: quite the opposite. As a filmmaker, he is so in tune to the requirements of his story that he can see that the formal precision is no longer required. The sweeping camera moves and formally-pleasing frames give way to off-centre framing, and even handheld camera. Tár’s formal precision represents Lydia Tár’s control; as one ebbs away, so must the other.
Sylvia Flote and Cate Blanchett in a nightmarish tableau in Tár
Act Two is where the narrative of Tár actually starts. The fact it takes so long for the story to get going is a source of most criticism against the film; for some, it moves too slowly. Like Tár herself, the film allows itself the indulgence of wordy confrontation, but only up to a point. Unlike her, the film knows when to move on. Among the few purely happy constants in Tár’s life are her partner Sharon (Nina Hoss) and their daughter Petra (Mila Bogojevic). They offer unconditional happiness to Tár but, for as much as she loves them, it’s clear she enjoys the stimulation of control and power more. The pursuit of control, and the structures that enable Tár to indulge in that pursuit, are constantly evoked (See her frequent meetings with predecessor and mentor Andris (Julian Glover), an eloquent reminder of old structures and practices that are probably best forgotten). However, perhaps Tár cannot leave the past behind because she (and we) are constantly reminded of it. As her control of the narrative slips away, Field’s evocation of time becomes more nebulous and mysterious, introducing a sense of unease that builds in and around our protagonist. Numerous reviews have referred to Tár as a ghost story, and Field includes some elements that border on the supernatural to accentuate the unease. Krista sends Tár a copy of Challenge, Vita Sackville-West’s veiled portrait of her affair with Violet Keppel. This hints at a sexual dimension to their relationship. Tár responds by throwing the book away, but not before ripping out the title page that has been embossed with tribal markings, a nod to her time spent in South America researching her PhD. Both Krista and the markings will reappear in the film, but only fleetingly. Krista is only glimpsed face-on in Tár’s nightmares, and her red hair interjects from the side of frames on occasion to hint at her increasing mental degradation, rather like Tyler Durden’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-them intrusions in the early scenes of Fight Club. The markings appear again when drawn on a metronome that has been set off in the middle of the night in Tár’s study. How the markings came to be there, or how the metronome got set off, is left unanswered. We are invited to consider if a ghost is toying with Tár, or if this is a manifestation of her own paranoia. Either way, the ticking is loud and insistent, like the encroaching heartbeats in Poe’s ‘The Telltale Heart’, with Tár grabbing it with both hands in desperation to stop the clock. The fear that time is catching up with her builds throughout the this portion of the film. There are constant references to her past successes, but her sins interject from the side of the frame. For example, an elderly neighbour’s assistance bell goes off now and again to disrupt the composer’s train of thought, a reminder of the unseen parents Tár left behind for her musical success.
The film will go on to suggest that Tár may have encountered someone similarly confrontational to herself in Krista. However, from here on in, Krista only resurfaces through reports of her suicide, but the ghosts of the past manifest themselves in more literal ways as time becomes more ethereal. An investigation into the circumstances of Krista’s death slowly draws Tár in. Meanwhile, the arrival of a new potential protégé, Kauer’s virtuoso cellist Olga, sees Tár indulge some of her worst impulses, including favouritism, bullying, and even downright stalking. Though we’re only witnessing her for a relatively brief period with the Philharmonic, the invocation of routines and the conductor’s dominance suggest this has been the way she has operated for quite some time. However, as her sins begin to catch up with her, time threatens to rupture altogether. The second act ends when Tár offers Olga a lift in her car. Olga leaves something behind, and Tár follows her into her strangely derelict apartment block to return it. Creeping through a waterlogged basement, and glimpsing a growling hound at the end of a long corridor, Field switches from elegant Steadicam to haphazard handheld. This is hell manifested for Tár, and she will not be left unmarked. Indeed, as she flees the scene, she falls and gets a black eye. This mark of Cain will stain her as her public disgrace begins proper. A newspaper story on Krista’s death goes viral, as does an edited video of her confrontation with Max at Juilliard, phenomena that Tár’s old-fashioned ways can’t envisage being a problem. The warning of the first scene, the composer’s fall from grace happening on small screens beyond her control, has come to pass. The use of handheld camera becomes more notable, Tár starts checking her watch more often, and that scar marks her for all to see. Like J.J. Gittes’ bandaged nose in Chinatown, the injury and the danger it represents are too prominent to ignore. It might heal, but the real damage has already been done. Lydia Tár is damaged goods, and it was her own meddling and invasive ways that brought her down.
Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss in Tár
The epilogue of Tár has inspired more debate than most films muster in their entirety. Her return to her childhood home, followed by a relocation to south-east Asia to conduct soundtracks to video games, offers no clear answers. Does Lydia Tár see the error of her past ways? When visiting a massage parlour, only to learn it’s actually a brothel, she runs out to vomit. Perhaps she has learned, but part of Tár‘s daring lies in the fact that there is no obvious sense of redemption. Her new setting and repertoire could be interpreted as a severe demotion. In the film’s final shot, as the camera cranes up over her new audience, a hall full of costumed gaming cosplayers, the audience is invited to laugh not at them, but at Tár. Try as she might to throw herself into this work, she is a world away from the elegant regimented settings she cultivated back in Berlin. We can imagine this being another hell for her; she no longer has control of her place or time. Indeed, the ending of Tár seems conclusive, with no ongoing sense of forward momentum. She just exists in this place now, without family, responsibility or power. This feels at once both cruel and just; we have spent two-and-a-half hours learning about this woman and what makes her tick. It is just at the end that the spell has been broken, and we realize we have been asked to empathize with someone who showed too little empathy herself. In doing so, Field evokes the power of the second Golden Age of Hollywood, when moral ambiguity created riveting drama so wonderfully. His ability to disrupt expectation through the marriage of thorny material to masterful filmmaking would have won him the praise of his director in Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick hypnotised us, even when exploring the depths of human behaviour, and Field does the same. Lydia Tár is compelling not because she’s a victim or villain, but because she’s human; we can all relate to being put through the emotional wringer and losing control. Still, we and Lydia hope these wounds can be healed; time is the thing.
This review was originally published on Scannain.com
One of the main narratives this awards season has been around the comeback kids. Almost forty years after his screen debut, Ke Huy Quan has charmed his way into people’s hearts with his enthusiastic fanboy frolics about Hollywood whilst hoovering up most every trophy going for his supporting turn in Everything Everywhere All At Once. Amongst the lead roles, the same narrative is being applied to Brendan Fraser. A one-time leading man, possessed of good looks and easygoing charisma, he was let down by a system that would normally have milked his charm for all it was worth. And now, here he is, an honoured golden boy who’s seized his second chance with both hands. Lest this sound like he doesn’t deserve his plaudits for Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, that isn’t the case at all. He’s very good; the film is less so.
Aronofsky is among the most vulgarly divisive of Hollywood auteurs. His works defy fence-sitting; when you emerge from one of his films, you will have a strong opinion. Is Requiem For A Dream an inventive nightmare or a forceful scold? Is Black Swan a tragic tale of self-destruction, or a Powell and Pressburger fever dream? These swoony punishments display enough visual pizazz to distract from the dark lessons at their core, but The Whale doesn’t offer Aronofsky enough opportunities to throw his camera about with reckless abandon. The whole thing takes place almost entirely in one setting, namely a dimly-lit apartment inhabited by Fraser’s Charlie. The setting is restricted because Charlie is housebound by his morbid obesity. This particular gambit might help bring Samuel D. Hunter’s words to life on the stage, but in adapting his work for the screen, the writer has fallen at the first hurdle of stage-to-screen adaptations; it simply isn’t cinematic enough. Granted, talented directors can (and do) make single settings and the simple act of conversation need to be seen on a screen, but Aronofsky and his regular DoP Matthew Libatique don’t make their job easy, keeping things brown and dank. Even the sky outside Charlie’s windows only threatens rain. It’s hard to get excited about long single takes that happen within one room, with no reason other than to reassure you that the film’s budget could afford a Steadicam. Visually at least, this is Aronofsky’s least interesting work to date.
What can possibly happen within the walls of this dingy apartment? Charlie teaches English online, but his physical condition is becoming a grave concern to his main regular visitor, his friend and nurse Liz, played with no-nonsense care by the wonderful Hong Chau (Whatever we might think about The Whale, it’s still more nourishing material than Chau was given in The Menu). Liz cares about Charlie more than the film does. Accusations of The Whale being offensive to those of greater body mass are a matter of personal taste, but there is an exploitative air to the way Charlie is framed. His movements are slow and exhausting, and the camera is sure to place itself for a towering angle or a manipulative closeup on Charlie’s sad eyes while the score rises to signal the monumental feat of this man standing up. A more restrained approach to this material would have worked better in service of Charlie’s humanity considering the plot beats that follow. Besides his poor physical health, Charlie’s life is defined by the knocks that come to the door (Again, this is a stage play, barely altered for the new medium). There’s the Christian missionary kid (Ty Simpkins) who seems as soul-sickened as Charlie or anyone else. There’s the unseen pizza delivery guy who feels like he could be Charlie’s best pal. Most of all, there’s Ellie (Sadie Sink), Charlie’s estranged daughter, whose response to her father’s attempts to care are uncaring in kind. All the performers are invested, but they have to be. When Aronofsky is hemmed in by his main character and single setting, it’s up to his actors to overstate the emotion in his stead. It’s a pity that Aronofsky feels so constrained, because we’ve seen him temper his instincts enough to earn comparison to the more humanistic likes of the Dardennes, and The Wrestler arguably remains his best work. The gentle heart with which he infused that film is replaced by overegged moments of emotion to play at awards ceremonies while the cast hope for their name to be called. The Whale isn’t boring or poorly made, but it rarely feels sincere. The material is pure Aronofsky, thematically speaking; this fits quite well in his oeuvre, in its explorations of religiosity, and professional & emotional impotence. Yet, when you realize that Charlie is teaching his online class Moby Dick, the title feels more like a joke than a wry nod.
This is particularly tough on Fraser, whose sincerity cannot be doubted. Those sad eyes that shine from beneath his fat suit have seen a lot of anguish, and the praise heaped on him for this role is not unmerited. He is the heart of The Whale, bringing Charlie to life with a sense of humour and a giggle that many other actors might have thought beneath them in this role. But it’s in service of a film that needs a filmmaker of greater restraint. I grin at thee, thou grinning Whale, but I shall not weep for thee.
This review was originally published on Scannain.com
When it comes to images of a little guy taking on greater forces, few strike as hard as the sight of Nan Goldin and an accompanying group of supporters arriving at a major museum in the middle of New York to throw empty pill bottles into a decorative pool and stage a ‘die-in’. It sounds so trivial and minimally disruptive on the page, but the context offered by All The Beauty and the Bloodshed, Laura Poitras’ latest portrait of a ‘truth to power’-teller drives home how personal this fight is. It’s also something of a missed opportunity, suffering from overreach despite hitting the targets it absolutely needed to.
The key concern for Poitras has always been truth, and the subjects she’s chosen to film over the years have always yearned to expose it. Depending on your point of view, the subjects she’s profiled may have aged her films and given them more sinister slants than were intended. It’s hard to imagine a time when the likes of Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald or Julian Assange weren’t contentious. With Goldin, we get something different; her time to be contentious has been and gone. Since her first photographic exhibition in 1973, at the tender age of 20, Goldin has explored the realities of life in the gay and transgender communities of Boston and New York. The power of her work lies in its ability to pause and look closer at subjects whose identities seem to shift and defy categories, whether by the subject’s choice or the efforts of external forces. Goldin’s work itself defies categorisation; often shown as slideshows, it blurs the line between film and still photography. Poitras ensures we get plenty of exposure to Goldin’s repertoire. Divided into seven sections, each part of the film opens with a montage of Goldin’s work. Spanning from her childhood to the queens of her 20s, to the friends she lost in her 30s and 40s to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Goldin’s life is one defined by the pain of loss of family, both biological and the families she chose for herself. As made clear in Poitras’ structure and the editing, the ravaging of the gay community by one epidemic made Goldin determined to fight all the harder when another epidemic came to her doorstep. Goldin fought for these people, and her work shows precisely what she was fighting for. Behind the external trappings of their queerness lay people, pure and simple. In these montages, Poitras continues Goldin’s efforts to humanize, to starkly moving effect.
Humanity and pain. These are the forces that drive Goldin’s newer crusade. The pill bottles she and her fellow members of P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) throw represent oxycodone, better known as OxyContin. They’re being flung into a fountain at the Sackler Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As the owners of the since-bankrupted Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family oversaw the spreading of an opioid epidemic that claimed untold numbers of victims since the drug was made available in the early 1990s. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed represents a change in tack for Poitras. The likes of Citizenfour saw her getting directly involved in the story, her face and camera becoming participants. Here, Goldin is apt to claim to be the auteur as much as Poitras. Most of the footage shot of protests and group meetings come from Goldin, and the photography montages play like a slideshow Goldin herself may have constructed. Poitras gracefully steps out of her subject’s way. Crucially, though, this never gets hagiographic. As the film makes clear, Goldin has been through too much pain not to have earned her audience’s respect.
Yet, for all its anger and compassion, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed feels like a film in need of breathing space. As a person, a character and a force, Goldin has many stories to tell. With a focus on this particular crusade, ATBATB tantalizes with glimpses of the other lives Goldin has lived. While it never feels rushed (which is a credit to the film’s three editors), ATBATB strives to be a definitive document when it could just as easily serve as a jumping-off point. Poitras and Goldin do such a great job of showing how effective simple people power can be; so many other aspects of Goldin’s life could lead to other projects on topics worthy of discussion. Goldin’s experiences with mental health issues, gay rights advocacy and domestic abuse are none-more relevant. Perhaps Goldin herself was satisfied with the reach of the film we’ve got, or (understandably) found exploring these topics any further just too painful. Still, much as we can lament unexplored territory, it’d be churlish to criticize a film for what it isn’t, when what it is is powerful enough. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is about an empowerer, and it empowers in turn.
This review was originally published on Scannain.com
It’s only fair that Steven Spielberg got to make The Fabelmans. After spending five decades crafting so many childhood memories through his patented blend of wonder, woes and whimsy, the man has earned enough kudos and goodwill to examine his own adolescence through his medium of choice. We’ve had a few directors doing this lately; Charlotte Wells broke hearts with camcorder footage and Paul Mescal in Aftersun, while James Gray brought us another interpretation of Jewish teenage angst in Armageddon Time. But there’s much more riding on The Fabelmans. Besides coming from one of the few directors who can claim to be a household name, it comes at a time in Spielberg’s life when most other people have long since stopped pursuing their loftier goals to settle into quiet retirement. Obviously, Spielberg has no such intention; his next project is a remake of Steve McQueen’s suspension-breaker Bullitt. Yet, The Fabelmans seems to want to explain so much. Where did everyone’s favourite dinosaur-wrangling, beach-threatening, alien-embracing auteur come from?
Well, Spielberg is an Ohioan, but The Fabelmans tweaks a few little details to avoid accusations of navel-gazing. Still, just like Spielberg was, a young Sammy Fabelman (Mateo Zoryan) is taken by his doting parents (Paul Dano and Michelle Williams) to see his first film. It’s still funny that so consummate a filmmaker got the filmmaking bug from something as clunky as DeMille’s The Greatest Show On Earth, but here we are. Watching a train crash into a car on the tracks, little Sammy feels the need to make it happen again. His father is a buttoned-down engineer, but he does have an 8mm camera. Mom’s the artistic one, and helps little Sammy procure said camera to make the precursor to Jaws and Minority Report. If this all sounds rather mawkish, the typically blue and oversaturated lighting from Spielberg’s regular DoP Janusz Kaminski won’t help. The opening act of The Fabelmans is rich in that easygoing emotionality that can only be described as Spielbergian. Everywhere there’s a well-wisher, and not just at Hanukkah. It’s sappy, but hardly cynical; Spielberg and his Lincoln and Munich screenwriter Tony Kushner threaten to fall on the wrong side of cloying, but they’re rescued time and again by Williams. Spielberg shifts away from his usual treatises on absent father figures to investigate what made his mother tick. The late Mother Spielberg, Leah Adler, deserves no less; receiving his Best Director Oscar for Schindler’s List, Spielberg called her his lucky charm while declaring his love. The five-time Academy Award nominated Williams brings Mrs. Fabelman to life, infusing this most happy-go-lucky of mothers with perky charm that carries through to the latter half of the film, when life takes some unwelcome detours. No matter what happens, you hope Mama Fabelman will be there for you. Every time Williams breaks into a smile, so will you.
Mrs. Fabelman has to keep the show on the road; this being a Spielberg film, tumult always threatens leafy suburbia in one way or another. This time, rather than cyborgs or Tom Cruise’s need for attention, domesticity itself becomes the threat. Determined to provide better for his family, Mr. Fabelman (Dano giving a lovely performance in a sometimes-thankless role) moves his family (plus his best pal Benny, played by a vaguely subdued Seth Rogen) to Arizona where he’s taken a better job. This move coincides with the beginning of Sammy’s adolescence. The teenage version of Sammy is played by Gabriel LaBelle. He may be playing a young Spielberg, but his haircut and jawline recall Sam Waterston. This mid-section in Arizona is when The Fabelmans really hits its stride, as the sweet-but-sentimental depictions of choo-choos and grandmothers segues into Sammy making cowboy pictures with his pals, in the vein of his filmmaking hero John Ford. Naturally, the filmmaker finds the filmmaking the most interesting part of the story, and the scenes of Sammy’s films shoots are infused with a giddy joy of creation and endeavour. His audiences may be humble (Classmates, his scout troop), but encouragement lies therein. In a year that has seen the usual ‘movies about movies’ get particularly dark (Babylon, Blonde), The Fabelmans recognizes the perspective that films (and making them, in particular) can offer. Sammy develops his directorial gifts while his mother rediscovers the joys of playing piano. Encouragement comes in all shapes and sizes; cue Judd Hirsch in an entertaining appearance as Ma Fabelman’s uncle. One of the best scenes sees both indulge momentary flashes of inspiration, as the son films his mother dancing while bathed in the glow of a car’s headlights. It’s a simple idea, but Spielberg knows how to find the sublime therein. Yet, despite the beauty of such moments, the efforts of mother and son seem doomed to end differently.
West End Story proved that, even in a new genre to him, Spielberg is a master of storytelling with grace like few other directors these days. If The Fabelmans isn’t quite up to his musical foray, it’s likely due to a reliance on a few too many tropes we’ve seen before. As Sammy progresses to high school, and the Fabelman clan moves once again, the move to a new town and state makes young Sammy and his three sisters very aware of who they are. The Fabelmans depicts antisemitic hostility towards young Sammy, but it comes from jock athletes that wouldn’t feel out of place in West Side Story. There’s a lot of coming-of-age old reliables here (Prom, first girlfriend, family strife), but it’s hard to feel cynical about it when we remember that Spielberg is telling his story. It only figures that a man who’s tapped into collective fears and imaginations via everyday Americana should come from that same background. At the end of the day, Sammy’s a good kid, defined by a few lucky breaks and a few more heartbreaks. That’s Spieberg’s story, and The Fabelmans works because it’s your story too. Bring your mother to see it, and be thankful.
This review was originally published on Scannain.com
As subgenres go, folk horror is usually one of the most appealing to true afficionados. The rural settings of folk horror offer ripe ground in which to sow suspicion and fear, as the buzz of the city gives way to the long dark of the unlit plains and hills. From Häxan, through The Wicker Man, right on to The Witch, the isolated countryside is a perfect playground for the things that go bump in the night, usually exposing the darkest impulses of those that venture into this landscape. The problem with Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men is that it does little that’s new to justify the obvious effort that has gone into making it. Once you know the tropes that come with folk horror, too much of this well-rendered jaunt to the Scilly Isles (or thereabouts) is predictable, a fact that the film seems to recognize in itself, and which it tries so ardently to overcome.
For as far back as folk horror on film goes, Jenkin takes inspiration from one of its most notable recent examples, Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse. Like that monochrome mindbender, Enys Men pits its characters against their own memories and wits on an isolated island. In 1973, a volunteer botanist (Mary Woodvine, one of the stars of Jenkin’s acclaimed debut Bait) is sent to a rocky island off the coast of Cornwall to study a new and unusual species of flower that’s sprouted there. The white and red of the flower pops off the screen, as does the blood red of the volunteer’s rain mac. As with Bait, the apparent simplicity of Jenkin’s filmmaking becomes its main asset. The grainy textures and saturated colours of 16mm film contribute immensely to establishing a sense of time, and adds a spooky feel to the events that are about to transpire. Likewise, the ADR heavy soundscape seeks to evoke the charmingly rudimentary feel of older horrors. However, there is also a risk of such methods becoming a parody of themselves. Jenkin could doubtlessly have upgraded to digital (or at least larger film stock) than he used on Bait, but he consciously chose not to. This would be fine if used in service of a stronger narrative, but instead Enys Men ends up feeling like something Toby Jones’ guileless sound designer would have worked on in Berberian Sound Studio; it’s got some very noticeable craft on display, but suffers from the same pretensions to depth as too many modern horrors.
The volunteer is assigned to the island alone for two weeks to study the plant’s growth, but surely as one day leads to another, things will slowly but surely turn creepy. There is a false sense of security in how the daily routine unfolds (Turn on your generator, go check on the plant, make tea, etc.), but this starts to grate before it starts getting upended. Things gradually becoming more ghostly, but the emotional framework on which all this hangs is flimsy at best, undermining any efforts at pathos. With no named characters and little in the way of narrative thrust, the already brief Enys Men threatens to outstay its welcome. Furthermore, the film is suffering from a severe case of ‘A24-itis’, as yet another lead in a horror movie learns that what she really fears is the trauma of her own past. This trope could be considered a spoiler if it hadn’t lapsed into the realm of cliché long ago. Jenkin knows the filmmaking is the star of the show, and it’s a move of a confident filmmaker to display his talent so readily, even when the story being told isn’t worthy of those efforts. Make an appointment with The Wicker Man instead.
This review was originally published on Scannain.com
When a director gets above a certain age and starts playing around with camera angles, lighting and framing, they’re either crying for attention or they’ve got nothing to lose. With EO, Jerzy Skolimowski is very much in the latter camp. The filmmaking dictum is never to work with children or animals, but if Skolimoski can successfully wrangle the likes of Alan Bates and Vincent Gallo, surely he can cope with any old ass, right?
Why are we so often more ready to empathize with animals than people? As Skolimowski demonstrates, the answer lies in the eyes. Many a sequence comes to a close on a close-up on the mild dark eyes of our asinine lead. Poor EO is a donkey trained to perform at a circus. The opening scene sees EO and his troupe having to perform in flashing red lights amidst jarring rapid cuts; think the climax to Guadagnino’s Suspiria, but with no bloodshed and only marginally more ass. We are put in EO’s point of view, before being ripped back into the human world. For starters, the circus is ordered to close as regulations on animal welfare tighten, and thus begins a bizarre odyssey for our four-hoofed protagonist. In other hands, this tale would likely have seen a circushand take the donkey in as both are consigned to the scrapheap, but Skolimowski and co-screenwriter Ewa Piaskowska clearly believe in the strength of their filmmaking ability and the emotions inherent in EO’s odyssey. Moved to an impoverished donkey sanctuary, and after his trainer Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska) pays him one last drunken visit, EO brays from the depths of a soul that clearly is there, his howls of desperation echo over the Polish valleys and the cinema. EO is one of the most compelling characters in any film to be released this year. Skolimowski achieves this through ambitious but elegant camera angles. By turns, we are in EO’s head, watching him make his way through his strange human world, or eavesdropping on the human dramas that decide his fate from one scene to another. Skolimowski keeps us on our toes, never committing fully to a given register. This could have gone into full whimsy, or embraced a Dardennes-esque realism, but then EO and his ilk aren’t so stoic as to commit to such rigid limitations.
The freedom from any realist trappings helps Skolimowski not only avoid easy comparison to EO’s obvious antecedent, Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthasar. It also allows him to give EO an active role in his story. Those nightmarish red lights and filters interject intermittently whenever a scenario gets too real, and there’s a specificity to the sound design that both envelops EO, and distances him from the surrounding world. The chants of a football team that adopts EO as a makeshift mascot are deafening, as are the punches when hooligans from a rival team assault the fans and EO with equal ferocity. For all its directorial verve, EO is not a happy-go-lucky tale. The poor animal’s well-being is constantly on the line, and dependent on the good (or ill) will of the surrounding humans. At various points, he’s sold for meat, abandoned in a forest and transported across borders. We’re with EO all the way, even if some creative decisions baffle. The score by Pawel Mykietyn leans too much into the whimsy, becoming obtrusive on occasion. One should never complain when Isabelle Huppert is in a movie, but her appearance as an Italian countess (!) takes you out of the film momentarily. Still, these prove relatively minor speed bumps in EO’s journey. By the time we get to the end, and Skolimowski makes his ultimate point, you’ll be amazed how invested you were in this humble creature.
This review was originally published on Scannain.com
The secret of comedy has always been timing. Any comic will tell you that choosing the moment for the punchline to land is the key to whether the joke works. Apparently, no-one told Ruben Östlund. The Swedish filmmaker has a particularly blunt approach to his joke construction. If the first act of his film is the setup, what remains is a punchline barrage, repeating the point ad nauseum in case you didn’t get it the first time. This approach works well for some audiences, as evidenced by Östlund’s two Palmes d’Or. His second win, the polished Triangle of Sadness is ‘satire’ with a capital ‘S’ and flashing bright lights. It’s making a point, and it wants you to acknowledge that.
To give credit where it’s due, Östlund does have an eye for a great setup. Opening at a runway audition for a bevy of shirtless male models, the writer-director plays up simple laughs as an interviewer has the models switch between their stock poses (Balenciaga frown, or H&M laughter) on a dime. It’s too easy to laugh at the world of high fashion, but we’re given an interesting prism through which to see it. One of the models, Carl (Harris Dickinson, turning up the likeability to counter his lack of body fat), is not doing as well as he might have imagined from this career. An early highpoint sees Carl and his girlfriend, fellow model Yaya (Charlbi Dean, whose premature death lends a sadness to… er, Triangle of Sadness), begin to bicker about which should pay in a restaurant. He’s the man, but she makes more. The fact they’re models renders the exchange laughable, but strip away that excessive sheen, and there’s something relatable in their financial woes. These mid-to-late millennials weather the same storms as their kin, and don’t let their perfect skin and toned abs fool you otherwise. Yaya is an influencer, but is dependent on the handouts of sponsors to maintain the façade. Faking it is hard work, and the leads, balancing their sniping with vulnerability, help Östlund ground Triangle of Sadness in this reality. It’s a fine line he walks, with the characters living in an ever-so-slightly heightened reality. Carl’s audition takes place in an undecorated yet pleasingly-framed and beige prefab nightmare, reminiscent of another winking Swede, Roy Andersson. Alas, our focus is about to shift away from any sense of what is real, and will plunge further into Andersson-land, into the downright farcical.
As their latest freebie, Carl and Yaya take a cabin on board a luxury yacht, populated by a bunch of first-class snobs with whom to hobnob. Of course, that’s only half the story. We are introduced to the uniformed crowd-facing crew, led by over-eager Roxette doppelganger Paula (Vicki Berlin). All are young and pristine, and on the hunt for a handsome tip. Perhaps this is why Carl and Yaya seem to disappear for long stretches of Triangle of Sadness’ flabby midsection. If Act One (‘Carl and Yaya’) gave us unlikeable but relatable characters, Act Two (‘The Yacht’) renders us subject to a Stygian barrage of wealthy morons, broad in caricature and devoid of nuance. According to Östlund, the collective mindset of audiences circa 2022 must be so devoid of nuance that signifiers of satirical intent must be underlined. There’s the elderly British couple who own a weapons manufacturing company; naturally, they’re named Winston and Clementine. Then there’s Dimitry (Zlatko Burić), the bloating Russian oligarch with wife and mistress in tow. At one point, when Carl asks what he does for a living, Dimitry declares “I sell shit!” Triangle of Sadness couldn’t be accused of subtlety; as a writer, Östlund never met a metaphor with which he couldn’t bludgeon an audience into submission. As we spend time with these monied dolts, pretense and restraint gradually ebb away, as the passengers are gifted all and every champagned whim, to the point that an incoming storm causes dinner table expulsions on a par with Mr. Creosote in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. As much as we might like to see the snobs get their comeuppance in these situations, the second act of this voyage goes on far too long. At one point, we glimpse the yacht’s bridge, obviously unmanned to hammer home the point. The whole Bacchanal badinerie is overseen by Woody Harrelson’s drunken depressive captain, who lets loose his inner Marxist after a few whiskies. The scenes in which the captain and Dimitry jokingly dissect their respective economic outlooks are the film’s nadir; you won’t care who’s a capitalist or a communist, so long as they just shut up. Watches will have been flashed in the crowd by the time an unexpected (Read: entirely predictable) twist to the yacht’s tale comes along. Triangle of Sadness simply drains passengers, crew and audience alike, but sadly, we’ve not come into port yet.
Act Three (‘The Island’) sees the yacht’s inhabitants plunged into Lord of the Flies territory. To say much more risks jeopardizing some of the hard-earned laughs the film remembers to bring, most of them courtesy of Dolly DeLeon’s Abigail, one of the lower rungs of the yacht’s cleaning crew. Still, for all the zaniness Östlund purports to bring to bear, you know where this is going. The last shall be first, and the first shall be humbled, and the newly-empowered last will probably be corrupted. It’s a pity Triangle of Sadness is so obvious, because it’s handsomely made, and Östlund is a cannier and wittier director than he is a writer. Some of the obvious punchlines here could have been delivered with a clever cut or camera move rather than the blunt writing to which Östlund reverts. By the time the end of Triangle of Sadness rolls around, the game performances and visual technique will be overwhelmed by the blunt force trauma of being beaten about the head by its message. After all the vomitus produced here, eating the rich seems like less than an appetizing prospect.
This review was originally published on Scannain.com
On paper, Roald Dahl’s works are ripe for musical adaptation. His novels are often centred on children of the age at which the books are aimed. They feature big leaps of imagination and emotion, the kind that are best expressed in song. While any material can be adapted for music, the songs have to be used in the right way to have the desired impact. Julie Andrews sang around the Nazis to save the children. In the oeuvre of Mr. Dahl, that creepy-as-hell tunnel ride in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was ever-so-slightly muted by the prospect of Gene Wilder breaking into song soon thereafter. With Matilda The Musical, the songs are there to serve the story, but is this story worth serving when we’ve seen it before? (Even if this was the first adaptation of Dahl’s novel, the mere existence of Carrie: The Musical should have been a warning.)
Dahl’s source novel was a hit from its first publication in 1988, and continues to amaze (17 million sales and counting) children in need of a lesson in gentle rebellion. It has also inspired some notable retellings, most notably director Danny DeVito’s nostalgia-tickling 1996 adaptation, and Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly’s stage musical, which opened in London’s West End in 2010. Matthew Warchus’ (Pride) film adaptation is faithful to the musical, incorporating its songs and cheeky energy, but this ultimately becomes a demonstration of material that was written for the stage, and works better there than on celluloid. The tale of a lonely but gifted girl with telekinetic powers is proven to have definite punch, but whether she’s Carrie White or Matilda Wormwood, the material clearly needs a strong guiding hand to make it work.
Newcomer Alisha Weir is adequately cute and convincing in the lead role, staying just the right side of precocious as she belts out the challenging vocabulary of Minchin’s fun repertoire. As Matilda, the unloved and underappreciated daughter of the foul Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood, Weir is a steady anchor around which Warchus and Kelly (adapting his stageplay) create a hyperactive and frequently annoying world. For most of its runtime, Matilda the Musical feels like its songs and cutesy tone are to keep the kids entertained while their parents remember Mara Wilson’s sweet performance in the original film. In and of themselves, Minchin and Kelly’s lyrics and score are engaging, but married to the primary colours of the production design and a grating sound mix, they become unintelligible. Most lost in this visual and aural barrage are the Wormwood seniors, a pair of pantomime villains overplayed by Andrea Riseborough and Stephen Graham. Every hammy, overproduced scene they’re in feels like a CBeebies production of Mike Leigh’s High Hopes.
The obvious defence of this garish production is that its primary audience will be young children, yet such arguments are best ignored, as they suggest that children cannot accept this material unless it’s brightly lit and friendly of face. Comparisons will inevitably be drawn between this and DeVito’s film, but the latter benefitted from understanding that children can engage with dark material with little cushioning. Both the novel and the previous film dismissed the need to talk down to children, and the stage musical had to inject some OTT energy to make the material work for that medium. Putting that live energy onscreen with little-to-no adaptation only serves to highlight the different approaches that make their respective media work. Take the acting; Graham and Riseborough would work well on stage, but grate onscreen. Lashana Lynch has a similar problem. After earning raves for ass-kicking turns in No Time To Die and The Woman King, she feels miscast as Miss Honey, Matilda’s timid teacher. Her stutters and pauses ring false, and it’s only when the film begins to explore the dark underbelly of its characters in its second half does she feel any way developed. Until these talented performers are given some character beats to work with, they feel forced. The younger members of the cast are similarly hobbled; theatrical performances in a filmic medium hardly ever translate. At least Emma Thompson appears to be having fun as the big bad, school principal Miss Trunchbull. She and the cast belt out their big numbers with gusto, but their register is scarcely changed from the stage musical, meaning they feel false by design. Once the film gets to the real meat of the story, featuring child abandonment and abuse, absent parents and possible murder, the stakes feel more real and involving. It just takes a while, and a lot of sickly pandering, to get there.
Matilda the Musical is designed to play to the children in the audience, matching their energy with colour and hyperactivity. For the adults, though, the artificiality of the whole endeavour (particularly in its opening half) is likely to grate. The experience is comparable to the recent glut of remakes of Disney animated classics, as it has the same material as previous iterations, but forgets the particular charm of what made those iterations work. And when you have three stronger previous versions to choose from, it makes the comparison all the more striking.
This review was originally published on Scannain.com.
“It’s official, ol’ buddy. I’m a has-been”. When newly-cancelled TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) confesses this feeling to his pal and stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), you can almost hear Quentin Tarantino speaking those words. His latest slice of wit, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (Ellipsis… optional), deals with such feelings in a way that many detractors would have thought long out of the writer/director’s reach. His warmest and most accessible film, Jackie Brown, is over 20 years old now, but age appears to have brought out the sentimental side in ol’ QT once more.
Whether bringing World War II to an early fiery end in Inglourious Basterds, or killing slave owners with giddy abandon in Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino’s stylish and sarcastic reimaginings of history have offered both catharsis, and questions about their validity. Does looking at history with wagging tongue firmly in cheek cheapen the events in question? This had to be at the forefront of the writer/director’s mind when making his latest film. After all, he’s dealing with events that have happened in his lifetime, and some of the key players are still alive. Fortunately, QT has an ace up his sleeve: a healthy dose of self-reflection. There can be little argument that OUATIH is Tarantino’s most ambitious film to date, thematically speaking. Once content to work at the level of faithful homage and basic ideals of dispatching evildoers, Tarantino now grapples with the denizens of Hollywood itself, its misbegotten aging stars, its naively-led women and its bloodlusting underbelly. Tarantino still has caché to spare, but as a director accused of leery race-driven indulgence, and a beneficiary of the patronage of Harvey Weinstein, QT feels a need to touch on the innocence lost in the rough and tumble of Hollywood, and the careers that can slowly bleed out, or that can be cut off on a bloody-minded whim.
It’s nothing new for a Tarantino film to draw attention to the films its homaging/ripping off, but Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is at once both elegiac and starstruck. The bloody death of Sharon Tate and friends at her and Roman Polanski’s Los Angeles home in August 1969 closed and locked the door on a decade that bent and warped American ideals out of all proportion. After political assassinations, foreign war and racial strife, it brought a further chill to see that even rich, white famous folks could also die at the hands of warped assassins. LA is home to so many of the films that seared themselves on Tarantino’s brain. However, for the first time, the references and steals serve to say something more about those films and, perhaps more crucially, the man homaging them. Critics and fans have attempted to dissect Tarantino’s very psyche since Reservoir Dogs exploded onto screen 27 years ago. Now, Tarantino takes that task upon himself. There’s a lot of QT in the main characters here, riddled as they are with doubts, regrets and wrinkles.
First among the regretful LA denizens is DiCaprio’s Dalton, a former matinee idol turned TV cowboy, reduced to guest spots on The FBI and Mannix. Despite a wealthy well-appointed life, Dalton finds himself regretting his slide into relative obscurity. It’s even harder when his new next-door neighbour is hotshot young director Roman Polanski (Rafał Zawierucha) and his wife Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). It’s hard to imagine someone as self-aware as Tarantino being reduced to Dalton’s bald self-pity. Hence, we are also introduced to Pitt’s Booth as a counterbalance. Booth lives a much less grand life, but is a constant and close friend to Dalton (“A buddy who is a more than a brother and a little less than a wife”). He’s also still a working stuntman, with the abs and bruises to prove it. Tarantino is doubtlessly full of both Dalton’s doubts and Booth’s aged laxity. The casting here is crucial. DiCaprio still has those boyish good looks, but the hints of age and his cagey public persona fit all too well on Dalton, watching time go by without him. His days of flambéing Nazis with a flamethrower onscreen are over; with this pointed nod to the aforementioned Basterds, Tarantino acknowledges his own glory days are slipping by. Pulp Fiction is 25 years old. His latest film stars the children of his earlier work’s collaborators (Rumer Willis (daughter of Bruce) and Maya Hawke (daughter of Uma Thurman) have small roles). Pitt’s Booth offers an optimistic riposte, albeit one tinged with its own mysteries and controversies. There as aspects of the characters and the film as a whole that some audiences might find troublesome, but it suggests a maturation on Tarantino’s part that he intends to provoke with something other than postmodernistic flashes of violence. DiCaprio’s perma-worried scowl and Pitt’s acid-dipped exuberance help the film over rough ground, and the two are absolutely electric together.
While Dalton and Booth mull over their career choices (including offers from spaghetti western directors, more TV cowboy work, and fighting with Bruce Lee, played by an uncanny Mike Moh), a young woman goes to see the Dean Martin spy comedy The Wrecking Crew in LA’s Village Theatre. She watches one of the supporting actresses fall backwards over some suitcases to widespread laughs. The actress in The Wrecking Crew is Sharon Tate. The woman watching in the crowd is also Tate. However, the two look dissimilar enough to remind us we’re watching a fiction based on fact. In the role of Tate, Robbie brings an effervescence that transcends Tate’s death, and drives home Tarantino’s ultimate point. The optimism of the 60s, personified in Tate and yearned for by Booth and Dalton, is constantly brushing up against the cynical, bloody-minded new. Booth frequently encounters members of the Manson family cult, offering guilt-free sex and mind expansion while also instilling a fear of the inevitable. Then again, is it inevitable? This being Tarantino, you will be held rapt to see if the Polanski household at 10050 Cielo Drive does get its uninvited house guests once again. But there will be plenty there besides to keep you in place over its generous runtime.
There is little in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’s direction that isn’t traditional Tarantino; shots of gaudy movie posters, dance numbers and women’s feet are all firmly in place. The dialogue is as arch as ever, but also comes tinged with sadness, regret and even a little resent. When Dalton encounters a young actress (Julia Butters) on his latest movie set, both her precociousness and his self-pity elicit eye rolls and empathy. In both its length and proclivity for self-reflection, the chatter in OUATIH encourages a relaxed mood, inviting the audience to hang out with these characters before the denouement (Whatever your feelings on the film’s final act, you will definitely need to prepare for it). With emotion in spades and an unhurried character-driven pace, Tarantino finds himself back on Jackie Brown territory and form. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is his finest film since Pam Grier and Robert Forster shared one of cinema’s greatest kisses, and a reminder of the bite that old dogs can pack; not as vicious, but still mightily effective in taking down its targets. Hollywood and Tate are dead; long live Hollywood!
The Film Cynic 