As it happens

Jane Austen for bi-polar characters, letters included.

The most marvelous thing happened at the showing of Silver Linings Playbook (2012) I attended.  As Jennifer Lawrence's character reveals a very painful portion of her backstory, an audience member gasped and let go of a sympathetic "Ohhhh" as if this confidence was a true story being recounted in our own presence.  Even better, we all resisted the temptation to chuckle at this naive expression of sympathy, because we were not far from where that tender woman was.  At this point, still in the first act, all of us in the audience were already so invested in these characters that we had become genuinely worried about them and concerned for their emotional recovery and survival.

That's particularly impressive because at this point in the movie, they're both a pain in the neck.  That's a hallmark of the characters in writer-director David O. Russell's films, a corpus which includes Spanking The Monkey, Three Kings, Flirting With Disaster, I ♥ Huckabees and The Fighter.  The films and the characters tend to be smart, acerbic, obsessed and a bit superior.  But there is a wonderful echt-Austen moment in the meeting of Lawrence's and Bradley Cooper's characters, the instant recognition of kindred damaged spirits and the consequent opening of hostilities as a mode of flirting.  Obviously, if you hate yourself, you're going to hate anyone you're attracted to, right?  After all, if your mind is broken, at least it shows you have one.



But where body and mind meet, that's where cinema lives.  So the film really takes off when Cooper and Lawrence dance together (charmingly, like the amateurs they are) to Stevie Wonder's "Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing."  Arlene Croce said it in her book about Astaire and Rogers:  When two characters sing together, they're falling in love; when they dance together, they want to have (or they are actually having) sex.  There is an intimate energy to the rehearsal montage (that word!) that is irresistible.

One last note -- the family dynamic is astonishingly similar to that of The Fighter, something I was thinking about in the theater before I remembered that the two films had the same writer-director.  There is the oppressive influence of the parents, the slightly soiled (and disapproved) girlfriend, the weight of brotherly expectation.   When you consider that the one piece is based on a true story and the other on an utterly unrelated novel, the critic feels invited to see autobiographical qualities in those shared elements.  And in both cases, Russell smoothly blends stars and journeyman actors into a seamless ensemble.

It seems Russell was always telling us about broken people -- it's just that he has now shifted his emphasis to the ways in which they fix themselves, and the result is exhilarating.

Enough to make you gasp and say, "Ohhhh..."

GUEST BLOGGER: Why I Will Never Think Pink

This post is by a suspiciously similarly-named author, Samantha Lockhart, 2010 graduate of the College of William and Mary, environmental activist and organizer and former member of my household.  Following are her thoughts on a childhood favorite, the Fred Astaire - Audrey Hepburn musical  Funny Face (1957).

Contrasting career choices in Funny Face

FUNNY FACE

It is a special experience to rewatch a film that was a favorite as a child, but which you have rarely seen since.  It brings this feeling of comfortable familiarity – like you both know and don’t know what’s about to happen next.  Like having a recurring dream or watching a new M. Night Shyamalan movie.

Often, it means noticing things that you did not see as a child either because your innocence shielded you from it, or simply because you could not have gotten the reference without the social vocabulary that only a liberal arts education can provide.  But for me, and others like me, who grew up watching movies all the time; for those that were raised in part by film and whose life was chronicled in large part by the movies that populated each phase – rewatching these formative movies means so much more.  It’s like finding the pieces of the puzzle that make you who you are today.  Suddenly, you make sense to yourself in some small but important manner.  Like tracing your heritage and discovering your ancestral routes, it is an exercise which can help to show a clearer roadmap that has somehow helped determine fundamental things about the course of your life, your ambitions and your dreams.

Some of this has always been obvious to me, because the watching coincided so closely with my own consciousness of growing-up and self-discovery.  I always knew that The West Wing was a huge part of why I was interested in politics.  That was never a mystery that needed solving, that puzzle piece always fit for me squarely on Wednesday evenings at 9pm on NBC from ages 11 to 17.  But the stuff I watched when I was far too young to notice its impact or to remember it – rewatching those films can be incredibly revealing.  Sometimes it’s in small ways, like realizing that the reason that every time I have only one high heel on, I have the urge to say “Look! I was born on the side of a hill” has something to do with Bringing Up Baby or that every time I wish I was invisible I still shimmy goofily with my arms up because of Time of Their Lives.  But sometimes, the marks that these films leave can reveal themselves to be oddly profound.

Funny Face was one of my favorite movies as a kid, before Fred Astaire’s complete lack of sex appeal bothered to detract from the romance of it.  I remembered most vividly how stunningly beautiful the film is, filled with soft lighting contrasted with sharp, vivid colors that frame Audrey’s stunning face – the true star of the film, but somehow I had forgotten almost everything else. Yet as I watched it, somehow I found myself knowing every word.  One of the tests out there of whether a film has a feminist edge is whether two women ever have a conversation about something other than a man.  Well, Funny Face opens with a scene from a powerful, smart, sophisticated female editor of a major magazine talking to her staff of smart women. True, they’re talking about the color pink, but somehow it doesn’t matter.

Pink=ORDINARY

And the opening number "Think Pink" ends with an hilarious and somewhat empowering moment in which someone asks the fashion editor, Maggie, why she is the only one not in pink, to which she replies “I wouldn’t be caught dead” and walks away in a chic gray suit.  What I love about this is that Maggie is admitting that she is a marketing genius who has manipulated women across the country to like whatever she tells them to like. Right off the bat, this character means more to me than I ever recognized at the time.  Her success is not tied to a man, she is decisive, smart, elegant, sophisticated, wise – and she refuses to wear pink.  I have obstinately refused to wear pink since the age of 4.  I have always associated it with profound mediocrity.  I am obsessed with black and grey. Maggie is extraordinary, and she would not be caught dead.

Modeling=DUMB.

Jo – a boy’s shortening of what is assumed to be a longer girl’s name (Joanne? Josephine?), much like mine – Sam - is smart and never thinks of herself as being beautiful.  She finds fashion and modeling trivial and stupid.  I was a very cute kid.  I was more than cute – I was a stunning little girl.  I’m not saying that to be obnoxious, it’s just true.  I don’t think I measure up now nearly as well.  At the age of four of five, however, I could barely go anywhere without someone asking my parents if I was interested in modeling to which I replied a vehement “NO.”  My mother was confused.  She had been a dancer and actress and occasional model, had no moral objection to the venture that she could have passed onto her young daughter.  My parents were in financial straits and a little modeling money probably would not have hurt, but no one was going to make me do anything I didn’t’ want to do and I did NOT want to model. I perceived modeling as being trivial and stupid.  Of course, I believe that I was too young to appreciate the emotional transformation that Jo undergoes, feeling by the end of the film that modeling could be art, could be glamorous, could help her find the man she loves and could get her a ticket to fulfill her philosophic dreams.  HOWEVER, I do think that I picked up on some other things about Jo.

Sticking to your guns

For one thing – Jo has very strong principles that center around this concept of empathy.  She works in a bookstore in Greenwich Village and worships a philosopher in France.  Though she finds herself falling in love with drama and glamour of the fashion world through Dick, she does not lose herself to it.  Dick believes that once she has fallen in love with him, it means he “has” her.  She has entered his world and left her own.  She does not see it this way and gets angry with him, essentially ending the relationship by saying that they are “too fundamentally different” to be together.  She talks a lot about the importance of her principles which Dick seems to make fun of.  She is willing to give up on her budding relationship before she would give up on what she believes in.  I think this lesson hit home with me and has given me solid footing on the otherwise rocky terrain of love. 

Don’t Rescue Me

Dick’s condescending insistence that he knows better serves only to anger Jo.  Rather than let him fight her battles, she fights her own.  From getting the last word (or dance) in the café following Dick’s attempts to embarrass her to hitting Professor Flostre over the head with a statue – she can take care of herself. I’ve always been a fan of fighting my own battles, paying my own way, and living my own life and was known to yell at Gaston during Beauty and the Beast “When a lady says NO, she meeeaaans NO!”  And while studying abroad in India during college, threatened and shouted obscenities at the Indian men who made lude assumptions about Western Women.

Ya gotta be happy.

But the final and perhaps most important lesson from Funny Face  is “On how to be lovely, you gotta be happy.”  This marks the second time in the film in which women interact together in a burst of YaYa level female empowerment!  Maggie, the magazine editor, teaches Jo how to talk to the press about herself and provides a significant lesson.  In order to be beautiful, like Audrey Hepburn, you have to be joyful.  I have finally learned that my overwhelmingly positive and unflinchingly optimistic disposition can all be traced back to a profound and fundamental vanity. 

But…really?

Of course – I see in this film what I believe I saw then at age four or five.  I am following the interpretation that seems most familiar to me, like finding your way home when lost based on sheer instinct.  Were I to watch this film with completely fresh eyes, I may also point out that Dick is incredibly condescending about Jo’s philosophy and even says of Flostre “he has as much interest in your intelligence as I have” indicating, of course, very little.  Yet Jo, this incredibly beautiful, young, brilliant, principled, woman still ends up with Dick – the condescending photographer with no interest in her intelligence.  I could note that while Maggie is a successful female figure, she also appears to be unmarried and after all, is successful in the field of “fashion” – one typically assigned to women anyway.  I could choose to highlight that Professor Flostre does turn out to be a fraud and only after Jo for romantic reasons, as if to indicate that Dick was right all along and all Jo needed was a good man to show her the way. 

So perhaps it is a chicken and egg situation – maybe I was always a strong and principled girl and the parts of this film that spoke to that in me were the ones that I chose to listen to. But whether it was me looking for a story and  female figures to help more sharply define characteristics I already had or it was me building myself from scratch from the lessons taught by these films, it hardly seems to matter.  Either way, I hate pink.

As time goes by

Facial hair can indicate clinical depression

Forget five years -- 124 minutes!  There's a reason that romantic comedies, which The Five-Year Engagement (2012) is not, uniformly last 90 to 100 minutes.  The ground has been covered, no matter what it is, and once the audience has sussed out your new twist or gimmick, it's your obligation to get off the stage as quickly and entertainingly possible.

But, as previously asserted, TFYE is not a romantic comedy.  At times it is only a comedy the way Uncle Vanya is a comedy, which is one reason I regret it was directed by the crass Nicholas Stoller, whose last credit, Get Him To The Greek , was dedicated to the proposition that there is nothing funnier than Jonah Hill's butt crack.  Moreover, Mr. Stoller and Mr. Segal seemed to be so busy acting and directing that they did not notice the fairly easy cut they could have made which would have lopped off 20-25 minutes to this film and substantially improved it.

(The cut I mean is to go from Jason Segal's character learning that his fiancee has kissed her boss straight to Segal returning to San Francisco.  That would have omitted the disgusting attempted adultery-with-condiments scene and the disgusting frostbitten toe.  The Apatow crowd seems to be stuck in the pubescent phase of confusing bodily fluids and food plus a fascination with bodily mutilation.)

On the other hand, Segal and Stoller have to be applauded for trying to make something different and better, even if they didn't succeed.  The idea is that relationships are hard and don't match ideals, that we fail and fall short and we still love each other.  Not new, but needs to be repeated for each generation.

Because TFYE is really, at heart, an example of what art historian Stanley Cavell termed the "comedy of remarriage" of which Noel Coward's Private Lives is the modern progenitor. (Cavell finds its roots in Shakespearean comedy.)  In TFYE, the break-up and reunion happen in the context of an engagement, rather than requiring divorce and remarriage, but that is merely a function of changing social customs and movie censorship.  The principal is the same.  Unblemished happiness cannot survive, will not survive.  The characters must be tempered, must be chastened, punished perhaps (maybe that's why the frostbite) so that they may learn.  It might even be considered a comedy of lessons.

What makes TFYE disconcerting is that whereas Coward masks his character's pain in badinage with only the briefest of lapses revealing the truth, the characters in Segal & Stoller's script talk the way real couples having real trouble really talk.  Which is fine, except for the sort of style problems raised when such material is in juxtaposition with the Apatow brand of not just fall-on-your-prat humor, but fall-on-your-prat-in-poo-three-times-over humor.

That said, I laughed not infrequently and there is one Hall of Fame scene between Emily Blunt and Alison Brie.  They are arguing about the long engagement and marriage in front of a young child, and have therefore adopted (rather poor) imitations of Elmo and Cookie Monster, respectively to conduct the argument, which concludes, "'C' is for condom!"

One other odd element -- the cinematography of Javier Aguirresarobe, who not only has never shot a comedy before, but is responsible for some very dark horror films and thrillers (The Road, The Others, some of the Twilight films).  TFYE looked very dark, with many rollicking comedy scenes in half-shadow and the comic violence invoked real terror and pain.  Now the fact is, I saw the film in my neighborhood theater, which is a little old and shabby, and it just may have been that the projector bulb was dim and that the film is very bright and cuddly and cheerful.  But honestly, when a comedy film's characters get depressed, should you be just as depressed as well?  I sure was.

Pulling it together

Happythankyoumoreplease (2010) is an agreeable modest debut whose existence is surely owed solely to writer-director-star Josh Radnor's leading role in a television sitcom. Ordinarily a young filmmaker would have gotten such a rudimentary and ramshackle film out of his system in film school or in an ultra lowbudget shot-on-video festival debut on the way to truly gathering his or her powers and making a truly vigorous and authentic gesture as an artist. As is right and proper for the early work of a fledgling filmmaker, its mostly made of bits and pieces from other people's work with the exception the storyline around a woman afflicted with alopecia, richly limned by Malin Akerman and her love interest played by the always welcome Tony Hale.

Of the other main story threads, one is both implausible and vaguely distasteful and the other is quite dull, but there is one sequence to celebrate, borrowed though it is from Annie Hall (Woody Allen is clearly Radnor's model). It is the climactic scene in which all the threads are brought together and resolved, edited to footage of the female lead singing a song of redemption and joy in a nightclub. In Annie Hall it was Diane Keaton singing "Seems Like Old Times." In Happythankyoumoreplease it is the sweet Kate Mara singing a little-known and completely delightful song by John Kander and Fred Ebb called "Sing Happy." (It is from their debut musical, Flora The Red Menace in which art student Liza Minnelli found herself inadvertently mixed up with Depression-era Communists.) To my mind, this little film will have completely justified its existence if it does nothing more than bring "Sing Happy" into the consciousness of more singers, music directors and film goers.

Steve Carell at the crossroads: Brand or actor?

Ten years ago, Steve Carell was an adroit actor/comedian emerging on The Daily Show, albeit without such a set persona as Rob Corddry or Steven Colbert. Then, with the double-whammy of The Office and 40-Year-Old-Virgin, Carell's name became a household word. But Carell still had the power to decide what that household word would mean.

Many, probably most, comedians become brands. Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Bob Newhart -- we know what we are in for when we walk in. (Peter Sellers is perhaps the only brand known for its unpredictability; however, we should note that his superstardom is owed to the rather narrow character of Inspector Clouseau.] But recent performers have straddled the divide between brand and ac. Perhaps Bill Murray was the first; certainly Will Ferrell is working both sides of the street, especially since it appears that his brand (the overgrown adolescent) may not be sustainable as he ages. (This is what happened to Jerry Lewis.) Jim Carrey is attempting to negotiate the transition, but it has been rough for him.

Carell's brand, which is what he relied on in that bit of commercial fluff, Date Night, is a quiet, decent everyman who wanders across a range from narcissism to self-deprecation, but hovers over the reasonable center. If he's going to do something crazy, it's because he has been pushed to it, whereas a Jim Carrey-branded character starts at stark raving bonkers and amps it up from there. Crazy, Stupid, Love. cements that trend and rests a lot of its ambition on the skill and warmth of Carell's acting, as seen here, partnered with the impeccable Julianne Moore.



This is worlds away from the disconnected and perhaps insane weatherman Carell played in Anchorman, one of the films that helped build his reputation. But more surprising, having made the step up to feature film leading man, is that the crazy, spontaneous improv comic is still lurking around, albeit literally disguised.

Ordinarily when animators hire famous actors to voice characters, they are trading on the recognizability of the voice being engaged. (Before the modern era, voice experts rendered their own versions of voice types. Paul Frees or Daws Butler had their own version of Ed Wynn, Charles Butterworth, Lou Costello or even Phil Silvers. June Foray has a devastating Marjorie Main. Sometime in the 1980s, it became evident that real movie stars, many of whom grew up on animation, were willing to become, nay enthusiastic to serve as animation voice talent. Imitators were no longer necessary, except for dead personalities, e.g. Maurice LaMarche's great gloss on Orson Welles.) So when Despicable Me (2010) was announced to star Steve Carell, it was not to be expected what a transformative performance he would give.



One good sign -- the character designs bore no resemblance to the actors providing their voices, clearly signaling the animators' disinclination to trade on the actors' celebrity personas, including those of Russell Brand, Jason Segal, and most especially Julia Andrews, none of whom are cast in ways they would be in a live-action film.

It is rather heartening to hear Mr. Carell hold onto his inner Peter Sellers. There are comics around who still trade on their versatility -- Hank Azaria and Christopher Guest come to mind. But such performers are rarely stars. So here's hoping that while Steve Carell solidifies his brand, he hangs on to the versatility and range which were so important on the way up.

Crazy love, but not crazy enough

A couple of unrelated observations about crazy people in love.

It's Kind Of A Funny Story (2010) seems to be the official demarcation of Zach Galifianakis as a film object. It is not necessary to have a well-written role for him, or something that interesting or unique for him to do. (The height of eccentricity in this movie consists of patients wearing doctor's scrubs - Wow, is that Zany!) No, you simply hire Galifianakis to certify that your film is quirky and offbeat whether or not it actually is. It's a sad degradation of an artist who is dangerously close to leasing out what is valuable about himself to entities who don't appreciate it. Robert Benchley, one of the finest writers of light humor was an alcoholic who couldn't deal with his belief that he had drunk his talent away and spent the last 7 or 8 years of his too-short life appearing in Hollywood movies not worthy of his talent.

Where he is usually a strange and primordial presence in most films, here he gets heartfelt and sincere advice and has a balanced perspective on himself on his illness, confusing ZG with any old actor out of the casting files. I have to assume the man has tax problems.

What's worse, whether he means to or not, the mere presence of Galifianakis pulls the entire film off-balance and away from the sweet if flimsy teen romance that is meant to be the center of gravity. It's as if you cast Robert DeNiro is the kindly man next door. Not only is it a waste of resources, but everybody will be waiting for the moment when that guy next door goes OFF!

The real problem with this movie about crazy people is that it's not crazy. It does, however, have one of the best-ever uses of the "object of reconciliation." This is a hoary old storytelling device, though it usually works very well. There are lots of ways to get there, but in essence you need (a) a rift between two characters; and (b) an object loaded with significance for one of the characters, but not for the other. It is best if the object is obscure and difficult to obtain so that the character for whom the object has no meaning must go through many trials in order to obtain this talismanic thing and then present to the other at the most emotionally critical point. In IKOAFS, the object is Egyptian music which, upon being played during a party on the ward lures the hero's reclusive and depressed roommate from his room. I don't think I ever saw music used as the object and worked like a charm. Unless maybe it was a song from childhood. Rats, it's not unique as I thought. Still worked.



Elling (2001) on the other hand, does involve actually crazy people, much to its merit. It was the number one film ever produced in Norway, which is why me and all my friends rushed out to see it. (Not really.) Also, it won an Academy Award for best foreign language film.

I sought out this film because it is based on a novel which was also the basis of a spectacular Broadway flop in the 2009-10 season. (To be fair, the play was a hit in London, but in a different production). It tells the story of two men completely unequipped to adjust to life on their own being forced to adjust to life on their own. One seems to be somewhere between autistic and OCD and the other is just a plain old-fashioned foole.

And if Elling had been produced in the 1920s or 1930s, they would have just been a pair of fools. But today we give such characters a medical diagnosis and put them in realistic situations and realistically limited options for solving them. This has its rewards in grounding comedy in the plausible and the natural, but it has its drawbacks in closing off the realm of the fantastical, which was available to the great fools such as Laurel & Hardy, Jerry Lewis and Ed Wynn.

But this is not an American film, it is a Northern European film, a world of limited resources and constricted dreams, compared to the mythos of the great American landscape and dreams of freedom, success and escape which lives in every American psyche. So their adventures -- going on a car trip, having a relationship with a woman, maintaining an apartment -- are plausible and relatable, and the film is likable. But this viewer would have liked an over-the-moon adventure (as in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest), a little romance, a little poetry.

The diagnosis for both films -- terminal niceness. Could use a dash of real madness.

These kids nowadays sure do like them comic books.

If you don't know why this is funny, you're probably not going to enjoy Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010). Obviously, films have been based on comic books since at least the late 1930's (comic books were only invented in the mid-30s; before then, movies were based on newspaper comics like "Li'l Abner" and "Dagwood.") And films have borne the video game influence since at least the first Tron, back during the Reagan administration. But Scott Pilgrim, based on a series of graphic novels about characters who are avid gamers, makes a substantial attempt to incorporate game-style storytelling into the narrative flow of the film. It's not just the sound or energy lines shooting out of Scott's band when they play, or the "Pow" and "Bif" words floating out of the punches -- heck, we had that on the Batman TV show back in 1966. It's the actual use of the ideas of scores and levels embedded in the scenes that feels innovative. Here's the scene in which what had seemed like another alternate indie-romance-comedy with Michael Cera begins to spin out into something quite different.



And they've dropped the tired old joke of the wimpy hero getting the stuffing knocked out of him (which might be why Kick-Ass eventually ran out of gas for all the fun along the way). Moreover, while this set-up -- hero must defeat seven villains sequentially -- sounds limited and formulaic, the screenplay has the good sense to continue working it out in different ways.

But one's reaction to the film is going to depend on one's feelings about its references. I'm not keen on film references to contemporary culture. Robin Williams' self-congratulatory riffs make Aladdin really dated today (William F. Buckley wasn't even hip back then). But Scott Pilgrim is built entirely on sharing a specific private language with its intended audience, and a lot of the criticism online is about it having too much DDR and not enough Halo. The movie keeps saying, "We know movies are for old people, but really, we're one of you -- we're game-playing, comic-book reading kids, too!" And given the professed artificiality in the story-telling; or at least the adoption of more stylized narrative conventions than even film uses, the question is raised, can one be made to care for a character, who is literally a flat image on a page, or a cluster of pixels?

But just as Brecht and Orson Welles and other experimenters in meta- style have proven, a character who is self-aware about his fate and communicates that awareness with the audience can be sympathetic nonetheless. Here, the film has it both ways: it calls attention to the conventions of story-telling and character development, yet lets you feel the triumph inherent in the situation (I'm thinking specifically of what happens at 0:07 of this clip):



It's possible that this is all a narrative dead-end, but I have to admit that in this case, the ride was a great deal of fun.

RED (2010) represents a more straightforward and traditional adaptation of the graphic novel, discarding the conventions which are unique to that form in favor of those shared by comics AND movies. It is pretty much a straight-down-the-middle action comedy of the type that star Willis and free-lance lunatic Mel Gibson used to crank out in the 80s, except that the protagonists have crept into their 60s and the action is pumped up to what used to be called "cartoonish" levels, except here "cartoonish" goes up past 11 to a 13. Most people don't think you need a rocket launcher to dispose of a single human being about 30 or 40 feet away from you. And it turns out not to be a good idea.



Evidently, the source graphic novel was darker and grimmer than this and the producer peddled that idea for a few years before deciding to turn it into a romp. The result is a creative boomerang, medium-wise. Film introduces multiple angles, low key lighting, rapid changes of scene, terse dialogue. Comic books follow suit, but in bright primary colors, especially in the Silver Age. Neo-noir becomes popular with films like Body Heat and L.A. Confidential and comics respond with The Black Knight and Sin City; those products are adapted to film with mixed commercial and aesthetic results. Neo-noir graphic novel RED is unsuccessfully peddled for adaptation, it is eventually transformed into a movie-movie, with no real influence from either the source graphic novel or the comic book as a medium. The principal influence on the film RED is the desire to sell more popcorn.

It does have fun with the archetypes that the cast brings with them. Here is Queen Elizabeth Helen Mirren slipping off the pumps and slipping on the work shoes:



And in a misguided attempt to make the film resemble human life, Bruce Willis is given a love interest half his age (take that Demi!) played by the usually enticing Mary Louise Parker, who in this film seems to think she might win an award if her character exhibits enough brain damage, so as to completely lack common sense. Hence some phony campy byplay with Mary and Helen exchanging girl talk between automated rounds:



Would that they had not tried.

Both films are very fine weekend-evening rentals, both are light as a feather, but the contrast between them in subject matter, style and the seriousness or non-seriousness of life, death and love illustrates a generational split much larger than what kind of comic books people like.

The romance of work

The workplace romance has become an established sub-genre of romantic comedy, so established that Morning Glory (2010) jettisons the usual question of will-the-guy-like-me-if-I'm-too-obsessed-with-work which dominated forerunners like Broadcast News. It takes place in a realistic world in which the men and women all accept that you have to be obsessed and work like a demon just to hold onto jobs in television network news. The romance is deeper and more complex in this case -- it's partly the romance of getting and keeping the job (as in the same writer's The Devil Wears Prada), but it is also the romance of obtaining the approval, and ultimately the love of a withholding and difficult substitute father-slash-mentor who has helped this woman define herself. Yes, the movie is light and funny, even laugh-out-loud funny, but the platonic romance between Rachel McAdams's young producer and Harrison Ford's disapproving anachronistic journalist sends the movie in a much more interesting journey than the usual snare-the-cute-guy chick flick.

There's a lot to like about the film. Having briefly sojourned in this field a few times I liked seeing how small, shabby and in need of paint most broadcast facilities are, how exciting walking around midtown New York can be, how obsessively people can stare at charts of numbers that are alleged to tell them important things about their jobs (this can apply to almost every field of work). I liked the mistakes they didn't make -- the heroine's boyfriend has no problem with the fact that she works hard. He's part of the same world. And they skipped having her boss (Jeff Goldblum) or Harrison Ford hit on her. Hurrah. They skipped making a fool out of Diane Keaton, the long-suffering co-anchor of the troubled broadcast. I can only recall one montage -- the obligatory show-is-becoming-a-success sequence, so that device was not overdone. Nor was there an attempt to shoehorn a song in over a falling-in-love sequence.

Two minor stumbles -- the "entertainment vs. news" argument is repeated a few too many times, especially since, as Rachel McAdams's character points out, the war is over and entertainment won. And the solution to the central problem of the story, bridging the gap between McAdams's and Ford's characters and their attitudes toward broadcasting is blindingly obvious, but nonetheless takes weeks of elapsed time and almost an hour of movie time to arrive out. On the other hand, the ultimate pay-off, the manner in which Ford reaches out to McAdams, the skill and warmth with which it is delivered and edited on film, is terrifically satisfying, and makes a possibly implausible ending plausible.

Most enjoyable of all -- the real-life director of Saturday Night Live, Don Roy King, appears as the director of Daybreak, literally conducting the broadcast like Stokowski, with a grace and graciousness that makes one appreciate how miraculous daily live television is.

The Voice of ...?

Shall We Kiss (2007) is to be applauded for rejecting a narrative bias that has become so deeply embedded in film as to go almost unnoticed. The implied answer to the title question is, of course, yes. Film and narrative prefer the road taken. And there is also an implicit assumption that new romances are preferable to old and perhaps troublesome marriages. Unless it is a film noir and a femme fatale, adultery is a good thing. Either you find a new, more suitable partner, or you return to your old partner renewed and refreshed. Perhaps filmmakers are trying to craft an argument to justify their own behavior to their spouses? Or is it that narrative wants to push characters to a place they haven't been before and where their behavior will be less predictable? (I will leave aside arguments that moral standards are breaking down because (a) this is not the blog for that sort of thing and (b) you'll find the same complaint in Plato and in Proverbs. Morals are Always Collapsing.)

Shall We Kiss bucks that inclination (pretty surprising for a French film), heading another direction by adding a layer of perspective, introduced by a storyteller and a listener. Unlike most storyteller frames, this one has something at stake -- the title question as applied to speaker and listener, and reflected in the tale being told.

This then, is a film that turns on its narrative as reflected in narration, a tool much underutilized in film today. There is a strong bias against narration in the American film industry. It is considered a crutch, a sign of weakness, of redundancy, of preference for word over picture. And used in a redundant or literary way, that position is quite right. But what such critics of narration ignore is the possibility of juxtaposing word AGAINST picture.

The narrator's voice actually precedes the introduction of synchronized sound. If one looks at the title cards of Biograph films around 1910-1911, one can read something like "Spurred by the treachery of the savage, the brave hunter exerts his utmost to preserve the sanctity of this flower of womanhood." That is, the cards often told the audience what was going to happen in the scene to follow, and is if concerned that the audience would not understand the implications thereof, would provide an overlay of both narrative and social interpretation. (Films of the era seem very anxious to assure the audience that social order, though perhaps temporarily disturbed, will be returned to its Right and Proper status. Or, as Louis Armstong replied when asked how things were, "Same as ever. White man still ahead.") From almost the inception, right through most of the Golden Era, American filmmakers did not trust the audience to get it right. If they understood the storyline, they might not understand what it MEANT. (That's why Dorothy has to tell you there's no place like home, or else you might think it's much cooler to stay in a place like Oz.)

Voice-over narration took a long time to arrive, and at first it was used to remind you that you were watching an Important Film Based on Great Literature. These kinds of films often started with a big book opening slowly, perhaps with tilt-down and dolly-in on the first page. "This is not the usual crap, folks, it's based on a real good book, and we can prove it. See, we're saying the first words of the book as you can see right here." Still, a mistrust of the audience.

But even that simple use of the voice-over opened the door to a more important idea -- the concept of distance and separation from the narrative that was about to unfold. Theater always takes place Right Now. Even if we are in ancient Athens, we are there Right Now because, see, there are the live actors right in front of us, talking right now. Film, by and large, apes that illusion. Even if the sequence of images and sounds is frozen, and we know it is, because there are films we watch over and over, the illusion is that this is all taking place in some sort of now. There is no past tense as the scenes unfold, which is probably why most synopses are written in a breathless present tense, like Damon Runyon without the baroque locutions.

Narration denies that. It says, "This is something that happened," not "this is something that is happening." At first that mode was only employed to say that this is set in the fabled past, or that this is a very important story you should know. Before long, Hollywood went Aesop and started turning stories into lessons, especially in What Not To Do. (This is always a good way to show depravity and immorality, by showing it in detail--fun, fun, fun--and then show people being punished for it. In fact, it's the basis of Cecil B. DeMille's entire career.) There was also the practical of covering time lapses and informing the audience of important changes and developments in a more efficient way than a title card (which suffers from differing reading speeds among the audience, leaving half frustrated at not being able to finish the card in time, and half bored waiting for the others to catch up.) I love the way Truffaut's unemphatic narration in Jules and Jim elides vast gaps in time, space and movements of the heart in a breathtakingly casual way, perfectly consistent with the tone and theme of the film. It's like a narrative torque wrench.

These uses of narration voice-over converged in the hard-boiled crime film (a genre that intersects with film noir), in which the detective shares his process and his outlook on the story as it unfolds. Of course, it is of the essence of the mystery story that facts and circumstances unfold in a non-chronological sequence. Thus there is the underlying narrative and the plot of the mystery laid on top -- that is, the story of how the crime is solved (and often, as in Chinatown, what the crime actually is.) The distancing effect of narration also provides room for humor, usually a wry irony only about a half-clik above sarcasm, but humor nonetheless.

This mode reaches its apogee with A Christmas Story, in which the narrator, author and screenwriter Jean Shepherd tells of epochal, earth-shattering events which are juxtaposed against scenes of an ordinary American childhood. The humor is not of mockery, but of gentle recognition that these little commonplaces feel enormous as we experience our own lives. The irony is one that we share as fellow humans, not one imposed by a sardonic author.

Emmanuel Mouret, writer-director-star of Shall We Kiss? has been compared to Eric Rohmer and Woody Allen, although neither his tone nor his visual style has much in common with either of those. Mouret sports neither nostalgia nor neuroses.* But there is the double vision of either the moralist or the humorist (natural enemies), which is the engine that makes this very slight film go. Indeed, I would argue that without the narration frame, one has little more than a minor variation of When Harry Met Sally, this one answering the central question: "can men and women be friends AND lovers?" in the negative.

(Side note - has anyone attempted a gay When Harry Met Sally? It would seem that the line between friend and lover would be even slippier when both parties share gender. Mine is an outsider's perspective, but it seems as though there might be some comic changes to be rung there. And no, I don't mean when the gay character is pathetically crushing on the straight character. That is a ridiculous straight fantasy, and in a lifetime spent in proximity with gay people, I've never known it to be happen. Being an oppressed minority makes most people pretty practical, and unlikely to waste their time chasing those who are not only unavailable, but likely to hurt you.)

The concept that the entire inner story of the film, which consumes at least 80% of its running time is told in order to explain a simple "no" offered in reply to the title question creates an unexpected suspense, i.e., will the answer change, as the telling of the story winds deep into the night, into the storyteller's hotel room, and as she assumes a semi-erotic pose while she tells the story. The fact that the listener is utterly satisfied by the story and a kiss which carries the implicit agreement to part forever -- that is, the kiss is meant as a simple pleasure sufficient unto itself, without the promise of future delights -- is a more impressive bit of legerdemain. Those who know French better than I claim that the French title, Un baiser, s'il vous plait ("A kiss, please) bears the implication of a kiss upon parting, which, if true, throws a lovely melancholy frame over the whole thing. And oddly, the melancholy of the outher story is much more satisfying than the fumbling consummation of the inner story.

All thanks to narration!
______
* I suppose playing the lead male role invites the Allen comparison and the preoccupation with the tiny physical details of a sexual encounter the Rohmer.

Paris, actually

Paris (2008) feels like another attempt to employ the Love Actually template to tell parallel stories which will converge, at least spiritually, if not in fact. In this case the hub is Paris rather than love, but both films are about battling loneliness.

The model might go back farther, to Grand Hotel, with its doomed petty clerk going to spend the time and money he has left in Berlin. In this case, a dying dancer feels himself withdrawing from the world, yet the world keeps rubbing up against him, and the people of it against each other. I suppose only a Parisian would anchor such a film to terminal illness; this is not Funny Face or Amelee, but finally there are some chance connections that make baby steps toward something more substantial.

The music is Satie, and that seems just right. Serious, reflective, but not heavy or dramatic. The professor who ambles into a foolish affair is given too much time to pontificate about French history--that point could be made much more quickly. There is that Parisian rarity--snow. Juliette Binoche is allowed to look a tired, lonely and bedraggled mother of two small children--a shocking misuse of a great natural resource. And one half-hour from the end there is an enchanting, if somewhat artificial, interlude that reminds one of a scene from Fellini, as fashionistas invade the wholesale meat market just before dawn to tease and flirt with the big strong men who haul and butcher meat. There seems to be some kind of liberation that comes with that early/late hour, and the film breaks free of its straightforward editing style and begins to skip and lark about a bit.

I appreciate that all the characters do not perfectly intersect in a marvelous complex culmination that is a glory of the screenwriters art, but has nothing to do with life as lived on this planet. Still, after all, our observing and observant central character draws no conclusions from all the dramas that pass by his windows, and we never learns if he lives or dies. C'est la vie.

Feeling Phlegmish

Sadly, Moscow, Belgium (2008) is not an ironic or paradoxical title. It's just the name of a rather pedestrian town in Flanders, which is part of Belgium, in which this very pedestrian love story takes place. It's an example of the, "See ordinary, middle-aged, non-glamorous people can fall in love and have sex just like Brad and Angelina do." Is anybody laboring under the illusion that this is not so?

Evidently, the picture made a splash on the festival circuit, and so becomes one of the first Belgian pictures to have achieve international distribution; probably the first Flemish-language film to do so in a long time, if ever. The film is not unpleasant, but it is not surprising, funny or moving either. Nor is there anything much to say about the cinematic qualities. The only observation I have to make about this movie is that Flemish sounds almost as horrible as Dutch, a language that makes one sound as if one is suffering from terrible bronchial congestion. [Full disclosure- the Lockhart ancestors originate from Flanders.]

Judging by the film In Bruges, that place seems much more interesting than Moscow.

Actually, it's not...

It's Complicated (2009) appears to have been written and directed by Sonoma-Williams and dedicated to the proposition that 60-year-old women are likely to own successful businesses (which they don't have to spend any time running), have their children attend prestigious colleges without wondering how to pay for them, and have two well-heeled men chasing after them. And they say men have sick fantasies. (Yes, I know Meryl is supposed to be in her 50's, but I went to her high school and I know how old she is.) Writer-director Nancy Meyers continues to prove that she is the economy brand of the Nora Ephron franchise, with her characters suffering from mild body issues in place of Ephron's character's full-blown neuroses.

The film is pleasant, but no more and the only really remarkable thing about it is the skill and detail of Meryl Streep's acting, skill and detail she no longer applies to her celebrated character roles in films like Doubt and Julie & Julia. The latter have degenerated into vaudeville turns of tics and mannerisms. Streep's performance in Complicated is full of small realistic touches which are not in the service of a joke or a plot point, but simple pure characterization, revealing a character's insecurities, self-deprecation or indecision. Nonetheless, she is far less likely to be nominated for a piece like this than she is for playing an obvious gargoyle like in Devil Wears Prada.

John Krasinski is the film's secret weapon in the inconsequential role of the daughter's fiancee. Away We Go, which featured his best leading role so far, and was one of the best films of 2009--a film which gives you faith in the future of movies, virtually disappeared from everyone's mind by the time award season came around. Someday someone is going to realize that he is our new Jimmy Stewart, Jack Lemmon and Tom Hanks and his goofy charm is going to drive some major films in years to come.

Tied up and down

It's hard to believe that Serious Moonlight (2009) was written as an original screenplay, because its physical and emotional landscape has the cramped feeling of a low-grade off-Broadway play. It's not just that it's in one room, it's that it harps on one note. What do you make of a film which has one of its two major characters duct-taped to a toilet for three-quarters of its running time? The whole film seems to have been duct-taped to a toilet.

There is a place for minimalist cinema. Hitchcock and Chaplin both engaged in this--Chaplin in One A.M., a solo turn and Hitchcock in Lifeboat and Rope, which have restricted settings and techniques. Often, the only way to adapt a play which is about confinement is to preserve that confinement, such as Extremities, Dial M for Murder or Wait Until Dark.

This story, which starts as one type of hostage story and then seems to turn into another, has no irrefutable reason that it takes place in the bathroom, and the idea that one character has been trussed up in such a way that he may relieve himself at any time (although not clean himself afterward) makes the whole thing thoroughly repellent.

It's a shame, because the new-model Meg Ryan, as seen in films such as In The Cut and The Deal, burnt but not bitter, angrier and more ironic than her younger self, is quite engaging. And the more recent Tim Hutton, with the swagger and confidence of the man that he is today, as contrasted with the boy we remember from Ordinary People (which, after all, was 30 years ago) is also good company. But though the script by the late Adrienne Shelley (Waitress) has quirks and twists, none of them make the film pleasant or funny.

Which leaves one to wonder whether Shelley directing her own work could have retrieved it from the brink.

Stop reading this blog right now!

Open another window or tab and add The Deal (2008) starring (and co-written by) William H. Macy to your Netflix queue right now! I mean it! I'll wait here. Hmmm...ladedadedudumdum
...lalalala...Oh, good, you're back.

This is the funniest, most exhilarating, cynical yet hopeful low-comedy satirical romances I've seen in a long time. Even though the film debuted at Sundance to enthusiastic audiences, the producers were unable to get theatrical distribution that made economic sense. [Meanwhile a wretched thing called Chloe just hung around my neighborhood theater for a month attracting flies.] All of this is a long way of saying that although the film was a direct-to-DVD release, it's a first-rate film.

Based on, and fairly closely following an insider-written novel about Hollywood, the story offers the lesson that the best way to succeed is to stop caring. (In this way, it echoes the immortal Office Space.) Failure coupled with momentum is the true path to success.

As I've said here, I'm not trying to run a review site, so I won't recite the story or the excellent comedy cast (except to mention that it is night to see a woman of Meg Ryan showing that she, like Diane Lane, can play her own age and still be very sexy). I find myself hard put to discuss the cinematic style--in this type of fast-moving acerbic comedy, in the school of Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder, the craftsmanship is simple and unobtrusive. These films are all script and performance, both of which are top-notch.

The only other thing I can think to say is that this the only film ever to accurately demonstrate exactly what a producer does. Most movie producers in films are uncultured morons, cutting budgets, hiring relatives, spouting moviebabble that they don't understand. Macy's sharp producer has learned from the school of William Goldman that Nobody Knows Anything and from Woodward and Bernstein to Follow The Money. Keep your head down, cash the checks and keep moving.

Seriously--if you really like movies, see this one.

What do we mean by that?

What is really remarkable about Adam (2009) is not merely that a touching and entertaining romance can be built around Asperger syndrome, but the apparently effortless command and mastery by which writer-director Max Mayer employs Asperger as a metaphor for a whole range of adult relationships, and indeed, for the act of watching film. Before I go on, I need to tell you that this is not a "disease of the week" movie, or a plea for special understanding of a misunderstood population. It's simply a story about relationships in which one person has an inherent difficulty with relationships--not much different than all those movies about slovenly frat boys who don't understand women. Adam just doesn't understand anybody. And there is not a single dull or redundant moment in this highly engaging movie, beautifully shot by Seamus Tierney. (I was stunned when I learned this film was shot on hi-def video, not 35mm. The images are crisp and evocative, nothing like the dull, smeary look of Cold Souls.)

Many of the salient characteristics are Aspergers are phases that we all go through, especially as teenagers. Inability to look people in the eye, a low level of empathy (this is actually physically developing as the pre-frontal lobe is still growing and not completed until the late teens), difficulty understanding non-verbal communication, or indirect verbal modes such as irony and sarcasm--all of these can be puzzling to 14-17 year-olds. There are films from Classical Hollywood I have learned to shy away from in a high school film course, not because material is offensive or upsetting, but simply too difficult to decipher. Social and censorship codes of the 30s, 40s and 50s made it impossible to discuss some matters directly. I found myself stopping the film Casablanca to explain that when the young Bulgarian bride asks Rick what he would think of someone who does a bad thing for a good reason, she is asking him if she should sleep with Renault in order to get an exit visa for herself and her husband. So many films of this era--To Have and Have Not, Notorious, Gilda are reeking with sex which a teenager cannot detect because no one removes any clothing or says a dirty word.

But indirection, compression and the use of verbal and visual signals is often right smack at the heart of filmmaking. Look at the beginning of Adam. We see a young man at a funeral. We see him return to an overly-large apartment. He goes to a calendar marked with "Dad's Chores" and "Adam's Chores" and strikes out "Dad's Chores." Close-up on an American flag folded in a triangle, shoved onto a shelf. We know this young man has lost the father he lives with, that he is methodical and that the father was a veteran. All this in the space of seconds without dialogue. I wonder how readily someone with Aspergers would grasp the unspoken exposition of this very film.

And then there are relationships. How much do we ever understand what is in another's head? (This is one of my "commercials" for teaching literature in school--it is one of the few ways to approach the inside of another person's mind.) We try, we guess, we make mistakes, we ask forgiveness (or don't), we are forgiven (or not) and the success of relationships is often measurable by our tolerance for each other's stumbles.

It is hard to describe how satisfying and sure-footed this film is. Adam is not a saint, and not possessed of mystical knowledge. (Adam even makes a deft Forrest Gump joke, which takes his girlfriend a moment to recognize, so rare are his wisecracks.) Scenes are visually well-composed, the action well designed, beginning and ending at the right spot. One might take issue with the subplot, which has to do with our tolerance for deception from others, but I think it sheds light on the main thread of the story.

Also I liked the metaphoric use of children's stories, particular Le Petit Prince and The Emperor's New Clothes, which ties in nicely with Rose Byrne's character's desire to become a children's author; this in turn neatly wraps up the conclusion, which is satisfying without being pat. It is hard to believe someone with such a meager film resume can make something with such clarity, control and confidence.

One little side note--that satisfying conclusion is the result of studio involvement and focus groups, which helped pinpoint some audience dissatisfaction with the original ending. Hats off to Fox Searchlight for acquiring and distributing the film, but also helping make a positive artistic contribution.

Love and death...fun, right?

I guess there's a romantic comedy to be made based in the grieving process, but Love Happens (2009) is not that movie. Billy Wilder almost succeeded with Avanti! about two middle-aged people going to Italy to pick up the bodies of their parents who had been carrying on an illicit affair. That one is, I suppose, your leading picking-up-a-dead-body romantic comedy.

If only Love Happens had anything that interesting happening. There's slick, and there's so completely lubricated as to have no friction whatsoever. Moreover, from the craft standpoint, at no time does the screenplay fuse its two disparate bits--Aaron Eckhart trying to learn how to mourn the loss of his wife with the tentative romance with Jennifer Aniston. Aniston is such a charismatic actor that evidently writers and directors do not feel it necessary to actually give her a character to play, so her sole personality trait is a penchant for finding big words and writing them in secret places. Seriously, that's it.

It doesn't help that Eckhart's character, a man with a successful self-help book, who cannot take his own advice seems like a pale reflection of the far brighter, quirkier and funnier character played by Jeff Daniels in The Answer Man. Nor does Eckhart's big public confession of what a fake he is strike any note of originality (See the classic Hail The Conquering Hero to see this device used effectively.)

It doesn't help that, whether through happenstance or design, men's griefs are treated as serious and dramatic, while women's griefs are light and funny. I guess it's not as big a deal to lose a man as it is to lose a woman.

Finally, there is a crippling lack of chemistry between the leads, who seem to be capable professionals who can appreciate each other's skill and work together amicably, but strike no sparks of passion. On the DVD, there is a special feature about the digital effects used in the film to make elements filmed separately appears as if they are in the same place and the same time. Unfortunately, the romance which is supposed to be at the heart of this film looks as though it, too were a digital effect.

Wasted on the young

I don't know if you've noticed, but children are not idiots. Not all of them, anyway. And you can speak to them as if they're going to be adults someday and be rewarded for the effort. The makers of I Capture The Castle (2003) have done so, and while they haven't been showered with Shrek-type riches, I suspect their work will be looked at respect and affection for a long time.

This would follow suit for the book Castle is based on, which is evidently a Young Adult favorite in Britain. It's a blend of coming-of-age story with eccentric-family story. And there is an interesting dichotomy between the beauty of the film's images and the messiness of the relationships in it. Nothing quite works out as you expect and that is quite admirable.

The story is told by the aptly-named Cassandra, a very smart 17-year-old girl bubbling at the frontier of love and longing, but still able to view her disintegrating family with an unbiased eye. Father is both genius and failure, stepmother both muse and betrayer, sister both princess and harlot. The charming Americans who turn up as neighbors and landlords are both saviors and destroyers.

Children's literature (and the films based on it) isn't supposed to be like that. We should be able to tell good from bad, fair from foul. The castle is charming and magnificent on the outside and completely barren and crumbling inside, like the family itself, like the promises of the adult world. Leave it to a British film to make muddling-through into a virtue--but muddling without compromising yourself. Write for passion, marry for love, work for life.

One cannot pass on this film without noting the high proportion of young actors whose careers continued to blossom after this film. Cassandra is played by Romola Garai, from New Moon and Emma on Masterpiece Classics; her sister is played by Rose Byrne of Damages; Henry Cavill, seen in Whatever Works; Marc Blucas, previously known from the TV version of Buffy, and who is even busier today. One suspects that director Tim Fywell, who was in his mid-50s when he made the film, was in touch with his inner teen.

Product

The entertainment industry trade papers routinely refer to the films and television programs with which we, the lumpenproletariat fill our empty hours as "product." This is not meant to be derogatory. Most of the entertainment business is engaged in distribution and in order to distribute, you have to have something to distribute. That is "product."

If you view Valentine's Day (2010) as "product" rather than aesthetic expression, it is far less offensive. Everyone in a committed relationship has to do SOMETHING on February 14, and the benevolent masters of New Line Cinema have engineered a product to meet that need. And given the obligatory nature of the entire exercise, it's not all that egregious.

Yes, it's slick, yes the stories are superficial, yes there are no movie stars, except Julia Roberts, who, in an extremely underwritten part is called upon to do what only a Movie Star can do. But it keeps moving along at a brisk pace (not brisk enough for my wife and I to guess at least two of the story "twists.") Nonetheless, the film does not slavishly adhere to either romcom or sitcom conventions: not every person is happily paired up, and not every single person is miserable. The cast is engaging and hard-working, and it was nice to see director Garry Marshall's good-luck charm, Hector Elizondo in a significant role. One good aspect of the engineering is that while some of the subplots were extremely simplistic, they informed--at times literally--the principal plot strands. And I am going to out on a limb and say that I think Eric Dane is underrated and I would like to see him given some heavy lifting, acting-wise. I think he's up to it.

The only thing that spoiled our experience of the film Valentine's Day was my wife's rash decision to look at that film's template, Love Actually a few days later. The quirkiness and originality of both the stories conclusion and the cast, the greater interpendence of the stories and the stronger sense of the stories moving together to a cohesive conclusion about love in general, not just romantic love (highlighted by the brilliant documentary footage shot in an airline terminal of family and loved ones exchanging heartfelt kisses) threw Valentine's Day deep into the shadow (or better yet, a studio sunlamp) compared to the genuine sunshine of Love, Actually.


But it is still important to recognize Valentine's Day as a good product, especially when seen in stark contrast to poor product, such as All About Steve (2009). It's very possible AAS did not begin as product. It seems as though it has things it wants to say about being an individual, about being unafraid to be oneself, to follow one's passion, to avoid subsuming one's identity in the pursuit of a partner. What resulted is an uneasy merger of romantic comedy and very silly slapstick.

One problem could be that the romantic object is the suddenly popular and utterly uninteresting Bradley Cooper. I must assume that this actor's agent has photos of important film executives in compromising poses with farm animals, for there is no other possible explanation for his consistent employment. He is so bland and generic that I must presume there is UPC code tattooed on the back of his neck.

Give Sandra Bullock credit, both as star and co-producer. I believed she tried to do something different, and has always been unafraid to appear foolish. Moreover, the film deftly avoids the symmetrical yet phony resolution it seems to be heading toward. But it never arrives at the triumphant feeling for its conclusion that it apparently intended.

The Goods (2009), on the other hand is about nothing but product, both on-screen and in the industry. The Will Farrell-Adam McKay franchise has become an assembly line, for which Will Farrell's presence is no longer necessary. The story concerns moving cars off a used car lot that have been sitting there too long and the film itself has an air of having set around too long. There is no sense that this story has to be told now--no sense of innovation or discovery. Everyone is going through the motions. Ultimately, it doesn't even seem to matter if the cars are actually sold, as long as some sort of 90-minute film has been delivered to the distributor. Foolishly, Jeremy Piven is supposed to be a sympathetic character. (This is as welcome as a lovable Kevin Spacey or a cuddly Gary Oldman. Give me a break.)

The Farrell-McKay franchise has never been able to tell the difference between a 10-minute TV sketch premise and a 90-minute film story, and the unevenness of tone and style here crops almost minute to minute. The actors barely seem to have been on speaking terms with each other. Many jokes have nowhere to go and, not surprisingly, pay off, despite the fact that they involve pedophilia, homosexual assault and other bizarre practices. You can make joke about an erection--the inability to get one or to get rid of one. Simply showing a phony "tentpole" does not actually constitute a joke, especially when the pants involved belong to James Brolin. Unlike other used car comedies (including Used Cars--which promised, "Nobody ever died over $50," and Cadillac Man) little of the alleged humor is unique to the selling of cars. They could be moving marital aids as far as the script concerned, since most of the jokes are the kind of sex humor guaranteed to crack up 13-year-olds of all ages.

And what does it mean that the once-revered Vertigo shot, tellingly used in both Jaws and Goodfellas now appears to ineffectually punctuate a comedic con sequence? (I suspect it might be one of the signs of the approaching apocalypse.)

After all, what do you get when you try and sell 211 cars in 3 days? Desperation and exhaustion, which The Goods exhibits in spades.

Charmless Charm

Elsewhere in this blog, I've referred to a great old blues song by W.C. Handy, "Loveless Love." (500) Days of Summer (2009) seems to be an attempt to make a charming movie without charm. Or a relationship movie that's about a bad relationship. I suppose the filmmakers should be congratulated for the ground-breaking courage, but it makes for a grim 90 minutes that is apparently meant to be fun. This is akin to making a delightful comedy about getting rid of a skin condition.

I suppose they play fair--Leslie Nielsen tells us in voice-over (and how much more wonderful would the film have been if they had put Mr. Nielsen on-screen): "You should know up front this is not a love story." All right, but it was reasonable to expect a should-have-been love story. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a marvelous actor who deserves to star in a marvelous vehicle. (He's already done so, in the brilliant film Brick, but not enough people know about that one.)

Problem is that Zooey Deschanel, who has been on the cusp for a number of years, remains on the cusp here. It's still possible she will break through and become an actual phenomenon, but she has been hovering there for about 11 years without happening. And something about the girl in this story has to be tantalizing enough for Our Hero to delude himself into believing that there is a reason to keep trying. (The narration tells us that the heroine does not believe in love, there's no reason to believe that's true. Unlike the similarly-themed Paper Heart, nothing the girl does or says convinces us that she doesn't believe love could be just around the corner. Just not with Joseph Gordon-Levitt.) For whatever reason, Deschanel--in this film, anyway--is not That Girl. And the film falls apart beyond repair by that flaw of casting.

A couple of observations for the filmmakers and cineastes--this film did not invent the non-sequential failed romance. You would have to go back at least to Richard Lester's Petulia (1968) which might not go over with the audience today because the man is much older than the woman. But its non-sequentiality is far more disorienting than in (500) Days. In the latter, each day comes carefully labeled. I know there were people who were confused by the film nonetheless, but there are people who are confused when green traffic lights turn amber, so we can't worry about those people. One sequence that did feel inventive (I am ready for someone to point out its antecedent) had two screens side-by-side showing "Expectation" and "Reality." Not only was it a clever story-based narrative device, it also contained the final resolution of the story. (But for two very well-done codas, one of which may have been imaginary.)

A talented film, if not an accomplished one.

Come and be lonely with me

There are a number of ways that you can tell Good Dick (2008) is not a romantic comedy, even though it shares the same subject matter--unlikely people getting together against the odds. They don't meet cute. The male responds by stalking the girl. Both are to some extent desperate and at the end of their ropes. And they are brought together, ironically, over the practice of what our forebears called the solitary vice.

This is one of those films that seems determined to prove that it can't work, continually putting obstacles in its own way and boxing itself in. The writer-director is lead actress Marianne Palka and, without trying to be sexist about it, I wonder if a man would have designed a film that is nearly as agoraphobic as its protagonist. Note to filmmakers--video stores are officially used up as nexuses of romantic engagement. We have had bookstores, music stores (and the resulting mix-tapes), concerts, operas and now video stores as courtship sites. Time to scout out new territory. Starbucks?

The other element that struck me most forcibly is the film's reticence, which seems almost male. Palka does a nice job of presenting her character as is, without back story or explanation, but for one lapse, a brief meeting with a father (played by an unbilled Tom Arnold) who may have been abusive. The film skates toward providing what Paddy Chayefsky called a rubber ducky, then manages to avoid it. What makes this persistent silence work is the overlay of music. I cannot imagine this film cut together without music. It would have been interminable. But the music could not be conventional film underscore. Instead there is a thrumming pop-electronic bed which binds together scenes that would have been just scraps. A good example of film doing what it should, show, not tell.