Absolution in the land of Deliverance

There's little for me to add to the chorus of praise for Get Low (2010), as well written, shot and acted a film as one is likely to see this year (although that is rather a low bar to reach), so I will try to confine myself to a few quick and perhaps random observations.

The story is about a man who is going to be put in a box in the ground. He is a man who is good at making anything out of wood, including boxes. He even makes his own box to put his body in the ground, and it is beautiful. Is it for that reason, that most of the indoor settings look like the inside of a well-made box, with the sunlight scarcely illuminating these characters, who will all eventually go into one of these boxes?

I should have said at the outset that Get Low is one of the most beautiful looking films to come along in a long time, and not in a self-indulgent way, as in Eat, Pray, Love but in order to reveal the hidden beauties of what may seem to outsiders (especially city folk and Northerners) as a harsh and unrewarding way of life. This is hardly surprising, given that director Aaron Schneider has spent most of his career as a cinematographer (albeit without a really memorable work on his resume).

And not only does the wood look burnished and glowing; the actors, especially Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek look as though they are carved out of beautiful wood. Not that their performances are wooden--no, they are tonally perfect. But they appear to be in touch with the natural world as their characters are. The town people, represented by Bill Murray and Lucas Black are pale indoor folk, struggling to keep up with events instead of shaping them. And the magnificent Bill Cobb seems to have emanated from the wood of his church, a kind of tree himself, a fixed point from which to navigate the terms of good and evil (which, as his character says, are all tangled up together).

Bill Murray has become the most perfect film actor of his generation. Like most of the greats, he is a reactor. (John Wayne was famous for giving other actors the long speeches so he could simply react to them. Gary Cooper was great at that, too.) Whereas his contemporary comic actor Steve Martin has two modes: meta-, stepping out of the film and commenting on it (usually to the film's detriment) and embarrassingly sincere, as in A Simple Twist of Fate or Pennies from Heaven. Murray keeps his irony intact--he always has a double vision of what is before him, but manages it without the overt wink at the audience. The wink isn't necessary. We know Bill Murray, we know who he is. We trust him as our guide as to what is reasonable and what is ridiculous. And is acceptance of each preposterous suggestion of Robert Duvall as natural and desirable (an acceptance driven by Murray's desperation, not greed) is a plentiful comic wellspring, a wellspring I cannot imagine gushing so copiously with any other actor alive.

And giving Mr. Schneider his due, Murray does not pull the film off-kilter or off course. His irony and wiles are put in service of the story and of its lovely denouement. I can't say that Duvall's climactic confession was as surprising or shocking as it may have been meant to be, but no matter--it is what that confession means to Duvall's character, to his former romance, Sissy Spacek and to the people of the town who had never seen him as human.

It's a movie of immense balance and poise. The people with me thought the film was slow. I thought it was measured, like a Handel Largo or a Laurel & Hardy movie. If you sit back and wait patiently, you will be rewarded. You may even see some interesting things along the way. Like life.

(And for heavens sake, click on the Easter Egg in this post. It's fascinating.)

How I learned to stop worrying and love the Great Depression

This clip from Torch Singer (1933) starring Claudette Colbert is a wonderful encapsulation of a certain level of Depression entertainment which affirms just how hard things are, and how you can change them if you just seize hold of your opportunities. This was the dominant economic mythology of the era, and it may have helped America survive it.

It also confirms that sometimes the only way to be a mother is to reject full-time motherhood. Poor Claudette is lumbered with a baby which she is pressured by the nuns to surrender, so she becomes hard-boiled Claudette--don't miss the last minute or so of this clip as you see her moving up the entertainment ladder from gin mill to swanky Broadway club. When she suddenly substitutes for a would-be children's radio entertainer, she re-connects with her inner Mommy, which takes her on the road to reclaiming her child.

Which introduces another theme of this movie--how radio permits the creation and adoption of a fabricated identity. And the anonymity works both ways. When Colbert tries to find her daughter by reaching out to all the girls with her name, her search takes her to a little black girl in a slum. But the film sidesteps both minstrel humor and condescension, and Colbert immediately masks her disappointment at not finding her girl and goes ahead and has a lovely visit with the girl.

As one might expect, the film provides a reunion for the parents, who now see that they could indeed make a life together and all is neatly resolved, but after all, stories do have to have ends. Most people wouldn't be satisified with same s***, different day as the ending of a movie. But I can't help suspecting that that is exactly how Depression filmmakers would have liked to end their films. (And how, in the case of I Am A Fugitive from a Chain Gang and Heroes for Sale, they did end the film.)

Living history

To take off my dispassionate-film-blogger hat and put on my educator hat, Wild Boys of the Road (1933) should be required viewing in every high school class studying the Great Depression in America.

First of all, it was recording the events as they unfolded, without any knowledge of the outcome or assurance that everything would turn out all right. (I also marvel at WWII-era films that way--what faith we had as a people!) Second, it reflects, very powerfully and plausibly, exactly the effect this depression had on young people exactly the age of our high school students today. In other words--if you want students to sense exactly how it would feel for them to have lived through the Great Depression as people their own age--Wild Boys of the Road spells it out.

It is obviously a deeply felt film by director William Wellman, employing speed, trials and tribulations, rain, deep bonding and loyalty among young men--and in this case, one young woman is added to "the club." But it is rendered with a focus and an intensity that shows Wellman gathering his powers.

As with its predecessor, Heroes for Sale, Wild Boys begins by showing the fall from the middle class. These are not the undeserving poor--these are the children of workers and middle managers whom the System has failed. At first, it seems as though the downturn is something that families can weather with a little belt-tightening and a healthy dose of patience. But it becomes apparent that there are no jobs and that none are coming. Our hero, played by Frankie Darro like a small dark Cagney, sells off his beloved jalopy, symbol of carefree times--teenage freedom and emerging sexuality. It becomes evident that sacrifice will not be enough and the boys forge a plan to leave home and go on the bum to relieve their families of the burden of supporting them. So strong is the middle class ethos of optimism, that Darro's parting note to his parents is based on a blatant lie about work waiting for him out of town, a lie his parents are happy to accept for their own peace of mind.

There follows a section with little sugar coating. They ride in empty box cars, receiving regular beatings from railroad thugs. They meet a girl dressed as a boy, and although it is not stated as such, it is presumably her defense against rape. This is brought home by the rape of another girl by that all-purpose movie thug, Ward Bond, who perishes at the hands of an angry mob of kids seeking revenge. It feels so refreshing to reach back to before the decades of antiseptic lies about the world as found in films in the 40s, 50s and 60s. Something about that crisis in the early 30s gave them courage to speak--and to hear--the ugly truth about what was going on. There is feeling, yes, even sentiment, but not forced or falsified, shoehorned to make some kind of point or moral lesson.

The most famous moment in the film is that of the boy who, lacking the strength to pull his body out of harm's way, loses his foot under an oncoming train. It's still shocking, and technically impeccable-the effect work is seamless. But the strength of the sequence comes later, when the kids have browbeaten a local doctor into caring for the boy. An amputation takes place in the train yard, almost a precursor of the similar sequence in Gone With The Wind. But what makes Wild Boy's amputation sequence powerful is how Frankie Darro stays with his friend, comforting him, bucking him up, lying to him a little bit, completely giving himself to this other person for their sake. At that moment, you know it is that feeling of belonging to each other and mutual sacrifice that will ensure the nation's survival.

Wellman wanted a completely pessimistic ending, which the studio rejected. And this time, I believe the studio was right. First of all, it would be too much to endure 75 minutes of misery and end with an outlook of more misery. Second, it is truthful and natural that the good things in our lives are generally not delivered by systems and institutions, but by individuals stepping out of their predetermined roles, perhaps even bucking the system and giving others a chance, as the kindly FDR-like judge does at the end of this film. Moreover, it's been established that these children, damaged as they are, have the spirit and will to survive and thrive--and, as we now know with hindsight, defeat mankind's most dangerous enemies in the second World War. What a crucible those children passed through.

And Wild Boys has its own movie-movie satisfactions--the snatching of a cake as the boys run from the police, Frankie Darro's neat leap into a handy ashcan, disappearing completely. And most satisfying is the final film appearance of former chorus girl Dorothy Coonan. She had already retired from the screen when she married director William Wellman. But Wellman pressured into acting one more time, convincingly playing a tough and resourceful teenage girl, though she was already 30. Best of all, she cadges spare change on the street by dancing to the song "42nd Street" and performing exactly the same tap dance steps she performed in that film only a few months before. Put the sequences side by side--you'll see she remembered the routine step for step. Though unintended, that correspondence between films creates an irony that virtually encapsulates the Great Depression in itself. "Good times and bum times, I've seen them all and, my dear, I'm still here..."