My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

See also my blog on books: Elliot's Reading

Sunday, June 21, 2015

A rare film about the development of a character: Leviathon

The Russian 2014 film Leviathon (not to be confused with documentary of name about deep-sea commercial fisheries) is  totally powerful, engaging, often surprising film that had me from the start and kept me for the full 2 1/2 hours. It tells of a middle-aged Russian tough guy, Kolya, a real hothead, involved in a legal dispute with municipal authorities (lives in a small town on what I think is the  Arctic coast) who want to take his land and home by eminent domain to build a new municipal center (in essence, a palatial showcase for the party thug mayor of the town). Movie begins as Kolya's army buddy, now a Moscow lawyer, comes to town to help and reveals he has a folder full of dirt research on the mayor, which he'll use to muscle a deal. Kolya in particular is completely unsympathetic from the outset - not at all in the expected mode of the heroic man fighting city hall, or the winsome old couple in the cliched recent movie about a guy who wants to build a new house his way and the hell with the authorities (Still Mine) - he slaps his sullen teen son around and seems to have various shady dealings with corrupt cops. Part of the beauty of this film is how, without reliance on stereotypes of two-dimensional characters, the film shifts our sympathies gradually, incrementally, until we come to see Kolya as not only a victim but as a noble sort - truly a rare film about the development and deepening of a character, about his growth in response to crisis. There are several references to the suffering of Job, and Kolya does suffer almost to Biblical proportions, but Job was the plaything of the O.T. God whereas Kolya is a victim of people and their greed and their unchecked impulses. The film will certainly reinforce your hatred of Russian politicians - about as corrupt and brutal as they come - but it will also open your eyes into a new way of thinking about characters, moving beyond initial judgements and impressions, understanding and accepting ambiguities - and there are ambiguities in the ending, some elements in the film, as in life, cannot be answered or explained - I won't give any away - but will say that the questions at the end, who is responsible for the death of a main character and for the ensuing consequences, only add to the richness and veracity of this movie.

Saturday, June 13, 2015

The quintessential Merchant-Ivory production: Howards End

How well you like Howards End will depend entirely on whether you (still) have a taste for the Merchant-Ivory formula because this 1980s film is the quintessential M-I production: selection of a classy British novel from early in the 20th century, staying slavishly faithful to the novel in the screenplay (Ruth Prawer Jhaabvala, as always), meticulously selected period details no expense barred - many vintage cars and horse-drawn carriages and English country houses and London flats that look as if they've been lifted whole from a museum diorama, typically fine classically trained lead actors and secondary cast - and in the end you feel you've done something noble by watching a classic instead of the 6th remake of Star Wars. But have you? Why not read the book, after all? (Maybe many people did both.) There's absolutely nothing wrong with this production (other than maybe the length - 2.5 hours!), and Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham-Carter are particularly excellent as the two Schlegl sisters (even if they're both too good-looking to play the part of as they put it "spinsters" - movies have to make some concession to un-reality). Forster's plot is excellent of course - and the movie does get at the class divisions and at the loathsomeness of some of the family that owns Howards End - and maybe at the deeper themes Forster is just hinting at: the break-up of social class, the very beginnings of immigration into London and into England, collision between ruthless capitalism/finance and urban/agrarian tradition. Who owns Howards End, and who should own it, and what does "owning" property entail? - the book, and the movie, make us consider all these questions. Though it's a formulaic film - a grand version of Classic Comics - it's a shorthand way to get at Forster's thinking and expression and at his central mantra: Only connect.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

TV series Triple Crown: Acting, Writing, Directing - Olive Kitteridge

Let me join the chorus in praise of the HBO/Cholodenko series (4 parts) Olive Kitteridge, a rarity in that it's an American series based on serious literature and manages to bring the book up to a higher level - most American TV adaptations - think Empire Falls - that attract an entourage of stars earn a bunch of Emmys from TV industry inferiority-complex types who are just thrilled to have a movie star step into their world for a moment, a bit of media slumming. This one's the exception - there are a # of pretty high-caliber stars - Macdorman, Jenkins, Bill Murray notably - and they only add to the quality of this excellent series. I have a few quibbles w/ the ending of part 4 - a little too pat in how it brings us back to the beginning point, and maybe a little too cute-meet and too optimistic when OK seems to find a new relationship (w/ Murray), although of course we have to wonder, as she says about her husband's flirtation, it wouldn't have lasted two weeks. That said, so many strengths in the series, esp in the big 3 components - writing, acting, directing - but also beautiful yet never flashy cinematography and art direction that captures a period and place, evocative but never overwhelming musical score. The scenes in the last 2 episodes between mother and son, especially OK visits her son's family in Brooklyn, could be worthy of study and emulation in a screenwriting class - and in fact would make great exercises for an acting class as well. Part of the strength of this series is the complexity of character, Olive's especially (but not exclusively): she's blunt almost to the point of being "on the spectrum," seeming to have no understanding of the effect of her observations and recriminations on others (her son painfully calls her out on this), yet she's not exactly unlikable - she's witty and most (not all) of her critiques are on the money and justified. We shake our heads in wonder; she's the teacher you hated but respected (and feared), grudgingly. As her husband, Henry (Jenkins, in maybe his best performance ever) says: How fortunate I am to have you, Olive, to always tell me what I'm thinking.

Sunday, June 7, 2015

A rare TV series adaptation that improves on the original

I liked the novel - collection of linked stories, actually, Olive Kitteridge when it came out some years ago but didn't completely warm to it as others did, finding it hard to sympathize w/ the ever-bitter OK and finding Elizabeth Strout's overwhelming interest in darkness and despair - the novel is filled with sudden deaths, suicides, suicide attempts, and the silent suffering of many - to be almost too much: a gorgyle view of life on the coast of Maine. It's very rare that an adaptation actually improves a work of serious fiction but the HBO 4-part series on OK is the rare exception: condensing the novel into four episodes (I've seen only the first two so far) sharpens the story line advances the narrative. The screenplay is extraordinary - full of wit of the rarest sort, the kind of things that smart people actually so to one another, and also unflinching about moments of cruelty, despair, and serious mental illness. The two leads - Frances McDormand as OK and Richard Jenkins at her husband, Henry - are fantastic, bringing these characters to life in a way I've almost never seen in a TV dramatic series: they are deep characters, with a complex and ever-shifting relationship, hard to pin down and hard to anticipate, but always credible. The supporting cast is fine as well, especially challenging as the series covers a fairly long span of time - so we see the characters age and mature (or the opposite) yet the characters seem whole and unified. The director, Lisa Cholodenko (had to look up name) deserves much credit. The series in no way diminishes the darkness of Strout's vision of the world but does make this dark story more more vivid and case-specific by presenting everything through dialogue and action rather than narration and evocation.

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

What I like about Bloodline, and what I don't

The Netflix series Bloodline has the look of a fine series - opening credits that must have been designed by whoever did the fine opening credits for Netflix House of Cards, a cool musical opening track that reminds me of T Bone Pickens's work on True Detective, and even the setting - the Florida Keys - has some of that Southern gothic extremism that gives a series an edge. The first episode was unduly choppy, with so many characters and potential plot elements - as well as a complex narrative structure in which the events of the central crisis get filled in episode by episode, at first opaque and no doubt complete only in the final episode - much as in Damages, which I think was by the same writing team? As the title implies it's a family drama: mom and dad (Spacek and Shepard) get together w/ their 4 adult kids for a celebration of the contributions the family has made to the community, and all centers on the black sheep oldest son, Danny, who creates family havoc wherever he goes: he wants to stay and help on the family resort hotel, the other sibs want him out of the picture as he's never earned a living or done anyone any good. We see in episode one that he dies and that youngest bro., played by a miscast Kyle Chandler, the family peacemaker and successful son, tries to make it look as if he'd died in a fire on a boat. It will take some time before we can make sense of this. I was much more engaged by the end of the 3rd episode - the characters are sharply drawn and there's just enough noir-edge to the plot to keep it floating above the level of family drama, return of the native, prodigal son, etc. The success of the series - I will no doubt watch more episodes - will depend on whether the writers can make all of these elements cohere and make sense - as they really couldn't in Damages, especially after season 1. You do get the sense that they're figuring it out as they go along - for ex., introducing key characters in episode 3 who by all accounts should have been at the least referenced right from the start. Also, Chandler is not the only miscast, as all of the Raburn (?) children seem to be much too old for their parts - the act as if they're in their 20s and they look to be in their 40s.

Monday, June 1, 2015

A fallen world and a silent God: Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest

Robert Bresson's 1941Diary of a Country Priest is more interesting than it sounds (how's that for damning w/ faint praise?) - the kind of movie that could not and would not be made today and perhaps never again, a faithful (apparently, adaptation of a novel about the troubles and anxiety a young parish priest feels on his first assignment in a small village in, I think, Normandy. The film has the contemplative style familiar from other Bresson films - many close-ups of the face of the main characters, often distorted in spiritual agony (one particularly beautiful sequence goes back and forth from priest to young troubled woman in confessional), set against some bleak location shots of the village, often in chilly winter scenes, muddy roads, primitive and impoverished farm houses, and rude country physicians (very Flaubertian). What makes the film interesting is that the priest is universally disliked in the little village - he's somewhat of a moral scourge, a stick-in-the-mud, unable to relate to any of the parishioners, doctrinaire about the catechism and the rules of confession. He tries to do well - has an idea for example for a community recreation facility, but this goes nowhere, and he seeks counsel from an affable nearby priest, but he cannot relate to other people, he's entirely unsuited to this work. Also, he's very ill - the parishioners think he's an alcoholic, which he may be, but he's also weak and malnourished and, as we learn at the end (not much of a spoiler here), he is dying of stomach cancer. So there, to all you doubters. What makes the film a little less interesting is that the priest is not facing any great moral crisis - such as say in The Power and the Glory - he's just struggling to meet his obligations and perhaps to save a lost soul. One element of the film that I think may too easily be overlooked (the  otherwise excellent Criterion commentary does not mention this) is the role of social class: we see early on the priest's indifference to the request of an elderly working man, but he spends a great deal of his time at the home of local count, talking to the count, his wife, his daughter, and her governess (the count's mistress). Had he spent more time with the people of the village, he might have had a better reception. Or maybe not - the people in the village are almost universally despicable themselves, even the children. Not sure why Bresson's view (or the view of the novelist whom he adapted) is so bleak, but there are hints of Catholic allegory throughout - a fallen world, a would-be savior (who subsists on bread and wine), a silent god.