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.)

The thin blue line grows thinner still

Brooklyn's Finest (2010) is structured along the lines of Thornton Wilder's Bridge of San Luis Rey, in which a chronicler tries to find some connection among several people who died together as part of the same seemingly-random accident. Brooklyn's Finest tells three parallel but unrelated stories of cops who died at roughly the same time in the same place. The question is why, or even if there is a why? Is it God or Fate or the natural cruelty of the universe, the nature of the blue brotherhood, or is it nothing at all?

The problem is that Brooklyn's Finest ends where Wilder's book begins. We are given all the circumstances of these co-incident deaths and no reflection on what they may mean, individually or collectively. Wilder doesn't answer the questions he raises, but at least he raises them. Brooklyn's Finest is so caught up in the detail that has brought these police officers to this point that it has no time for the larger questions.

Except, possibly, the possibility of redemption, which is what keeps the movie afloat. Ethan Hawke is killed, belatedly, for his sins, before we have a chance to know if his repentance is sincere; Don Cheadle--whose talents are in danger of deterioration for always playing a good guy; he may need to change it up like Denzel--dies by accident, borne of the pervasive mistrust between cop and community; and Richard Gere kills his own dead-souled self and comes back to life, exacting something between justice and vigilantism, but better than he was.

Director Antoine Fuqua is best known for Training Day and thus has spent time in morally ambiguous country before. But for all the hard work, there is nothing surprising, unusual, non-formulaic here. If it was not composed of three separate stories, there would be nothing remarkable about the film at all, either on a craft or an aesthetic basis. There's nothing terribly wrong with it, but with all the projects fighting for money and attention, why was this one that the people involved felt had to be made?

Still, any movie that begins with a rambling and colorful monologue by the inimitable Vincent D'Onofrio (when are he and Mark Ruffalo going to co-star in a movie?) has something going for it, right?

Spiritual quest porn

Back to basics: Movies are pictures. They do pictures well. They even do pictures of things that are better experienced than viewed: hence there are successful movies about sex and food. But pictures do not reveal depths of meaning. There is no accurate picture of the inside of the mind. Sure, you can have voice-over narration, but that still needs to be concise and pithy in a way that naturally reduces and homogenizes a complex task like a spiritual journey. As Liz Gilbert, protagonist of Eat Pray Love (2010) says to her friend Richard (see illustration), "Do you always talk in bumper stickers?" The whole script is sort of a bumper script pasted onto a Range Rover taking the viewer on a marvelous journey which is less than the sum of its parts.

One symptom of the problems with this film is that never once does it explain how Liz is living for this 12-month quest. Pains are made to tell you that her bitter ex-husband has taken all her money and her house. Let's see, broke and homeless--time to travel around the world! What?? I've been gainfully employed for many years and only just got to Paris a couple of years ago, and then for just a few days. My wife tells me that the book explains that this whole one-year sojourn was on assignment. Not only does the film omit that, but it omits any sequences indicating that she is writing. She sends a couple of desultory e-mails, but as for being a disciplined professional, dependent on her skills to make a living, it is typical of the Hollywood fantasy machine that all that icky real-life stuff is overlooked. Even worse, the filmmakers seem to be unaware that anyone would want to know such things. Or else, they just don't care if we believe in the story they're telling. (Which is a hint that they don't believe it either. Sad for a story based on real life.)

Ryan Murphy comes from television and seems to believe that filmmaking is nothing but script and acting. He does not seem to be aware of how the camera, the editor or the composer could help him tell his story--it is hard to see if his technique is invisible or non-existent.

Frankly, only the first part of the film is executed with complete confidence, as it focuses on food and sex, albeit Liz abstains from the sex herself. Nonetheless, the sexual vibes are pervasive, along with red sauce and red wine. It begins to lose its bearings when it gets to India, where everyone is eager for Liz to have a spiritual experience, especially Richard, played by Richard Jenkins, a wonderful actor who almost makes this character seem to be a person, although the writer has given him nothing but a propensity to give unsolicited advice. He has a teary monologue about being a drunk and NOT hurting his kid. That gives you a clue to the kind of stakes the movie likes to play with--everything is close to being real, but just doesn't get there.

Everyone else who has the key to spiritual enlightenment in India seems to be English--Michael Cumpsty and Sophie Thompson. But the key seems to be held by a magic elephant who appears, rather delightfully to tie up that sequence. (There is an Indian wedding, but those are getting to be a dime a dozen in movies these days.)

Finally, the film arrives in Bali and its willpower completely collapses. Liz falls into a blindingly predictable romance with Javier Bardem, who is both Natural Man and Brilliant Businessman. She shows she is now strong and independent by shying away from his romantic proposition, then seeing her spiritual advisor and then accepting. How disappointing--she learns that her problem is that she has to learn how not to be with a man all the time. So she goes out and finds a man to be with. Problem solved. It feels like a bad Audrey Hepburn movie once removed.

Which takes us to the principal asset of Eat, Pray, Love. Julia Roberts is made to be in movies. Her large expressive features are completely legible at all times, and although she is not bad at delivering lines, the movie is better when it is most quiet, focusing on food, landscapes, sunsets, ocean views and Julia's big brown eyes. It doesn't get deeper than that, but since I couldn't afford an August vacation this year, this will have to do.

River journey

You probably think you've already seen Trouble The Water, a 2008 documentary inspired by the events of Hurricane Katrina. If not literally seen it before, you may feel, as I did, so surfeited by images of that catastrophe, as to have "Katrina fatigue."

Get over it. This is not a re-working of Spike Lee's When The Levees Broke. It does not provide a general survey of the events, nor does it dive into the politics, as Lee's lengthier film does. This sly film is about more serious business. It is nothing less than the spiritual journey of its protagonist, Kimberly Rivers Roberts (pictured here).

At the film's start, we see her sassy and confident, ready to document the big event to come, possibly as grist for her own creative mill, as she is an aspiring rapper. Then events overwhelm her and her family and then she and her husband Scott, who seems to be one notch above street hustler begin to accept responsibility for their own situation, and then, for others. Kimberly, who was just 24 at the story's beginning becomes the central figure in her family, and then begins to build a larger family around here, drawing in others in need. The end of the film does not offer a solution, but it does provide catharsis, as Scott learns to help others rebuild with the help of a willing employer, and Kimberly transforms her ordeal into the stuff of art, as we see her listening to the mix of her new rap.

We may weep for the New Orleans that will never return, but we rejoice for these two strong young people who have found their own strength in this formative experience.

I haven't said much about this from a filmmaking perspective--the film does integrate original footage, news footage and Kimberly's own Hi-8 material in a very wise way, using dry humor and sly irony instead of the sledgehammer polemics one might expect. It is perhaps the best edited documentary I have seen in several years (and documentaries are all about editing).