Congratulations to Homeland

Congratulations to the crew from "Homeland," well-deserved best drama Emmy winner this week - though I'm still a big fan of Mad Men, the recent series seems to have lost of bit of its edge I thought. Homeland was a complete surprise - I've generally been down on Showtime series, which I find very formulaic and just a step up from Lifetime: all featuring a star actor from network TV or films, playing a: woman in distress (C Word, Nurse Jackie) or ordinary person suddenly found in extraordinary circumstances (Weeds) or extraordinary people are really "just like us" (Big Love, Dexter) or just plain exploitation of sex and rx (Californication) - but all of them pretty much two-dimensional and predictable (Dexter maybe an exception there) - and Homeland could have gone the same way (CIA agent with a drug problem) - but it's so much more, at least through the first 5 episodes of season 1: Claire Danes is awesome in the lead, dominating every scene she's in with her big eyes and her expressive features and her strong personality, yet she stays within the boundaries of the character - we genuinely feel we're watching Kerri Mathisson (?) and not C.Danes (not true of most of the other Showtime stars). The plot is suitably complex and tense without being gratuitous in its violence or overly clever or baroque with its plot twists - so far, it all makes sense, and we know just enough to stay interested and engaged, but not all that much more than the main characters. Is Sgt Brody a turned POW, or are Kerri's theories unfounded, or even products of her own drug-induced delusions? We have no clear answer, yet. I will share my suspicion and see how it plays out: I think K's boss, Estes, is the actual turned agent, that he slipped the razor blade to the prisoner - lots of evidence and clues point this way, but I'd be a little disappointed in that his guilt would perpetuate the stereotype: the black/ethnic characters always get the shaft.

Realism to an extreme: a movie as slow as life (Lake Tahoe)

The 2006 Mexican film "Lake Tahoe" is a completely honest film in the "dogma" style: shot in near real time (takes places over course of one day, with real-time sequences broken by black screen visual ellipses) with no special effects, no soundtrack, mostly amateur actors probably, real settings in what appears to be a small city in the Yucatan. If you watch it for plot (or for that matter for images of Lake Tahoe, which you'll never get) you're on the wrong track: plot is super-simple (spoilers here, though not much to spoil): teenage boy drives his old car into a post and spends much of the morning trying to guy a part to get the car started again, in the course of which he meets a young guy who will befriend him and a young woman with whom he'll have a brief fling; boy is very distracted and withdrawn, and we gradually learn that his father has died perhaps the day before - he goes home a few times - his home is quite a bit more upscale than the other places he visits during the course of the movie - where his mother is drowning her sorrows and his kid brother is left more or less unattended. That's pretty much it; nothing truly happens, and there's no resolution. I admire the movie for fulfilling its intentions, but have to say I found the pace soporific; I don't need an action film or any complex plot design to draw me into a movie, but this one was so austere and glacial that it almost defies the audience. Also, would have been a stronger movie if it had less ambiguity: I know things are never wrapped up in real life as they are in a 90-minute commercial film, but still I was left scratching my head: how did the dad die? why are there no funeral arrangements or crowds of family and friends at the house of the mother (even if she's not still with the father? that was unclear)? Why such a distinction in social class between the boy with the car and everyone he meets or visits? Where was he heading at the outset and why? And what's the significance of the title (whose only reference in the movie was a bumper sticker on the car from Tahoe, which kid brother pastes into his scrap book)? Mystery and ambiguity are certainly welcome elements in films, but in this one the mysteries are huge black holes in the middle of an already extremely spare movie - director and writer have some obligation, I think, to fill in at least some of the blanks.

Bringing it all back - Homeland

"Homeland" so far (3 episodes) is one of the best and most promising Showtime enterprises ever - the lot is really engaging and manages to stay just on the near side of credibility. Clare Danes in the lead is terrific as a CIA agent based in DC with no personal life, a slew of problems (including some drug addiction), a need to prove herself to herself (making up for a botched case in which she missed a vital piece of evidence) and to her mentor (a grumbly older CIA operative who begrudgingly gives Danes advice but is a bit of a malcontent - played by the highly mannered Mandy Patinkin) - Danes has eyes on a returned Marine POW whom she believes to be a "turned" prisoner passing some kind of secret messages to a stateside terrorist group - we believe she's right, based on some clues, but there are so many possibilities for double-crosses and double-agents it's hard to know if she's seeing the whole picture. She has set up a rather elaborate surveillance mechanism on the Marine's home, and therefore watches way more of their domestic troubles than she cares to, or needs to - and as for us, we're following both a domestic psychodrama (the Marine's wife had been pretty deeply involved with his best buddy, when they both assumed that he was missing or dead) and in his internal psychic problems (weird sexual hangups following years of captivity) - but there are things we see that she doesn't, including his use of a Muslim prayer mat. Of course my suspicion is that somehow he hasn't been turned but he's trying to get access to a sleeper cell in order to expose it. Anyway, plenty of tension and lots to keep us interested and to keep us guessing, without too much gratuitous sex or violence - very smart series so far (based on an Israeli series, which I'm betting was as good or better - the originals usually are).

The strengths and weaknesses of Game of Thrones

The great strength of "Game of Thrones" (Season 1), like other HBO productions, particularly the British-born ones, is the no-expenses-spared way in which the show creates an entire world, visually before us - Rome did the same, but in some ways Thrones is even more impressive in that the world is medieval-inspired but also imaginary and fantastical. The jousting scenes, the village life, the castles, the roadways - all are based closely on our images of life in the middle ages in Europe; but then there's that odd barrier castle, The Wall, protecting against invasions from the North, and the kingdoms across the "Narrow Sea," based loosely on African or Arab tribes, that are unique visual creations for the show. For the first two or three episodes, I was constantly interested in the look of the series, but that interest, by the end of 5 episodes, has begun to wear thin. Unfortunately, the characters, though each a vivid type, have failed to draw me in - it's not, at least so far, a series about changing characters and their complex relations but about unchanging types and their clashes and interactions - types familiar from many other series: the vulgar king, the tough and honest old soldier (just like the centurian from Rome), the narcissistic upstart (channeling Baltar from Battlestar?), and so forth. Over the course of the series of source novels I'm sure there is some character development, but I don't see it yet in the series. There's a lot of plot material to deal with as well and though I can follow the main strands way too many elements are simply put forth in narrative rather than through dramatic action. Series with many strong elements and lots of promise, but not sure if I'll follow through multiple seasons.

What documentary film can do: Sweetgrass

Inspired by NYT article yesterday watched the very unusual 2009 (?) documentary "Sweetgrass" - about as pure a documentary as you'll ever see, and like nothing else you've ever seen most likely. The director - (looking it up) : Lucien Castaing-Taylor, and she calls herself the "recorder," not the director - builds this great film from footage shot over two years with a group of sheep farmers in Montana - on the surface, not an immediately appealing topic to most people, but amazing what C-T gets out of this: it's a sorrowful elegy to a whole way of life and one of the finest examples I've ever seen of a study of the interaction between people and nature. Very unusual in that the people - grizzled cowboys, mostly - are secondary to the livestock, the thousands of sheep, and the herding dogs. The film has no script whatsoever, no interview, and, except for the opening and closing moments, no title screens - we just observe, through the camera, a way of life: birth and nurturing of lambs, shearing, herding, and then moving the herd up a rocky, difficult trail to the summer grazing pasture. Who the people (cowboys) are, what they think, what brought them to this life, where they're heading: we know nothing more about them than we know about any one of the sheep, really. This film is in the tradition that goes back to Vertov's I Am A Camera (I think the nyt mentioned this as well), but with today's portable equipment documentarians can do so much more. C-T captures some astonishing moments, both emotionally and visually: a younger cowboy breaking down in tears during cell-phone call to his mother, confusion when a bear or wolverine attacks some sheep in the middle of the night, the rough hands of a sheep farmer assisting with the birth of a lamb. The movie gives us no context - we (or at least I) don't know if ultimately these sheep are bound for slaughter, or if they're raised for wool only - but it's a great demonstration of the power of film: putting us right into a life, immersing us in a another, largely inaccessible world, and let us see and hear it with our own eyes and ears - the camera, the filmmaker - are just invisible, a clear lens through which we peer.