Elliot’s Watching, March 2021
The HBO 2-part documentary, Tiger (2021), is - sad to say on many levels - a car wreck waiting to happen. The life story, the rise and fall and rise again (punctuated by a post-production car crash that may end his golf career) of golf phenom Tiger Woods is painful from the out set. He was groomed, driven, by his father to become a great golf pro - striking drives and camera-posing from the age of 2. Many dads have of course tried to turn their children, sons especially, to fulfill their own failed dreams of stardom, especially in sports; only rarely, however, does the kid have the ability to rise to stardom. TW had it from the start, and he became the greatest golfer of his time, maybe of all time, and of course a pioneer as the first Black golfer to rise to that level of excellence. On top of that, he had a winning smile, a confident but not arrogant personality, a seemingly loving relationship with his father, a seemingly charmed marriage and fatherhood - and he became a national figure, far beyond the world of golf (and a multi-millionaire thanks to many endorsement deals). And then it all unravelled, as we learn some dark secrets about his father and we see TW spiral deeper into the world of sex-addiction, infidelity, contortion with prostitutes and, maybe, gangsters, and reckless use of narcotics. His marriage falls apart, his game declines, his body ages, and the reservoir of good will has created drains away leaving swampland. The documentary tells all this but - inevitably - though there’s plenty of footage of his early life, there is little - obviously, he did not cooperate (unlike, say, Michael Jordan in the doc about his career) with the reporting on his decline. So the 2nd half of the project is heavy with talking heads - with a lot of repetition. A cut of 30 minutes or so - kill your darlings! - would have made this a better film.
The late Raj Kapoor’s 1951 film from India, Awaara, is so laughably bad at times that the film is kind of fun to watch, although whether it justifies its full 3-hour length is debatable. To give the film its due, it was apparently a huge commercial success in India and no doubt set a standard for what’s become known as the Bollywood style: lots of melodrama, many musical-theater like/operatic sidesteps as the characters sing about the heartache, and a few big production numbers as well, with vast choruses of singers and dancers and little to do w/ the unfolding story - which in brief is the life story of a young man, Raj (played by Kapoor himself, a bad decision almost always) whose wealthy father turned out his mother because she’d been abducted by some urban bandits and he could, therefore, never be sure if her at that time unborn child would be of his lineage. The young Raj suffers ostracism because he has is, to his knowledge, fatherless - and he’s eventually led into a life of crime (a less likely criminal/thug is hard to imagine) and eventually meets and falls in love w/ the woman who’s being raised by his father - who despises Raj because of his criminal past, and so forth. In one of the stronger moments of the film, Raj gives an account of his life: What choices did he have besides starvation and crime? Overall, the bid dance #s make the film fun to watch, the over-the-top melodrama is kind of fun, too, as long as you never take the story line too seriously. And some of the cheesiness is fun as well: the weirdly nasal singing, possibly the worst staged fight ever filmed, the cheap sets with the painted backdrops - it was a long journey from this potboiler to the World of Apu, but its a glimpse at least into the early years of a film industry in a country that was soon to emerge as a leader in world cinema. 3/2/21
The 2021 drama Judas and the Black Messiah (Shaka King, dir., screenplay by King and Will Berson) is based on the true and horrific story of the FBI and Chicago Police brutality against the rise of the militant Black Panther Party in the 60s/70s, centering on the cooptation of a small-time thug, William O/Neal (played really well by Lakeith Stanfield) co-opted by FBI agent (played well by the always good Jesse Plemons) to be an informant. This film succeeds on many levels. First of all, we really feel from start to finish the incredible tension and pressure on William/Bill as he infiltrates the Panther leadership and provides vital info to the FBI - he’s constantly in danger and torn by moral scruples and pressures from the powerful government. Second, the film obviously shows the evil and paranoia of Hoover and the FBI but it does not stint on the danger that the Panther Party represented as well - with many crowd scenes and meetings stirred into a rage by the brilliant speechmaking of the Chicago Panther leader Fred Hampton (Golden Globe winner Daniel Kaluuya). The film is a little weaker on the love-story backstory - Hampton’s romance w/ a fellow activist and his preparation for fatherhood and imprisonment - but that’s a quibble. The film evokes the era very well - making a good companion piece to the recent white-focused film of the same time and place (Trial of Chicago 7) - makes us think about the ills of our society and, still today, the misuse of federal power and the racism that drove law enforcement, and, even though all viewers will know where this story is headed, it entirely captivates any viewer, right down to the disturbing and shocking final on-screen update at the end of the drama. 3/3/21
The 2021 Netflix series Behind Her Eyes = 6 hours of my life, wasted. I looked after nearly finishing watching the series and saw that it was met with mostly bad reviews, with one exception: a glowing endorsement from the New Yorker, which praised the complex and surprising plot, the ending in particular (I didn’t read the whole review - never do before finishing reading the book/movie/etc.). Can the masses be right and the New Yorker wrong. Yes! After the first episode - which involved a cute (cliche’d) meet in which central character, Louise, crashes into man next to her at bar and he spills his drink etc and they flirt and kiss, once, and then back off. Turns out, the cute-meet guy is Louise’s new boss at the small psychiatric clinic at which she works! Many apologies etc. - but of course he shows up again at her doorstep - and, meanwhile, she cute-meets - another crash! - with a young wife, new to the area, who turns out to be … you guessed it! Well, none of the characters in this series behave in any way like any ordinary, intelligent people, but put that aside; we know there will be many twists and turns. If only they felt realistic and not the product of the imagination, or desperation, of those responsible for this series: author of the source novel? Screenwriter? Director? I can only say that the plot becomes more absurd as it progresses and ends with - not really giving away anything here - the practice of “astral projection” something like that in which the characters can not only leave their bodies and enter into a dream state but can actually trade bodies with one another. Had enough? Me, too.
The 6-part series from Denmark, The Investigation (2021), tells the true story of the team of police officers and others who investigated the gruesome murder in 2017 of Swedish journalist Kim Wall, who was working on a story about a Danish man who built his own submarine. Wall died inside the sub, which later sank to the bottom; investigators raised the sub and found evidence of a struggle - the subman (his name is never mentioned in the series) said Wall died in an accident and that he had to cut up her body in order to remove her from the hull - and that he tossed the body parts into the Baltic. Horrifying. Apparently, though all signs pointed to his guilt (and insanity), there were many hurdles blocking the investigation - most notably no physical evidence of the killing. Over many weeks of hard work, a team of divers, amazingly, recovered the severed body - still not enough. I think American viewers will be amazed at how difficult it was to get a conviction in Copenhagen - it seems the standard for conviction is “beyond a shadow of a doubt,” not a “reasonable doubt.” An American jury would have convicted the guy in 10 minutes! The series is worth watching for the light it sheds on this horrifying case and for insight into police and court procedures in another country; that said, the going is extremely slow, often tedious. So many scenes of the lead investigator driving around in his Volvo. One strong line of the narrative involves Wall’s parents, an intelligent and highly sympathetic couple. One weak line of the narrative, however, is he tenuous attempt to depict strains between the investigator and his daughter - cheesy. The team behind the film deserves credit for not glamorizing or humanizing in any way the life of the killer - however, his absence makes the narrative feel incomplete, I’m sorry to say. This project probably would have been better if it were tighter - 3 or 4 episodes would do, I think.
The Netflix 4-part series, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel (2021), relates in some detail an unusual, even for LA, case of a missing person. A young woman, Elena Lam, an avid user of social media, set off from her Vancouver home for her first solo adventure, planning to see the West Coast of the U.S. and meet interesting (to her) people. After a few days in LA, however, this usually loquacious woman went silent and eventually her parents, Chinese immigrants to Canada, clearly shy and uncomfortable with the media and the public attention, report her missing. She had been staying at the Cecil, a notorious cheap hotel in downtown LA, the scene of many crimes and tragic deaths. The search for Elena Lam became quite intense and the subject of intensive news coverage. There are numerous strange facets to the case and many surprise twists, which I’m being careful not to reveal. I would say in the plus side it shows the difficulty in unraveling a case such as this, with many false leads and rumors, spread and fueled by social media, which took on this case as a cause celelbre. Also a plus: This is one of the few crime-investigation stories that actually comes to a satisfactory conclusion, all questions answered. On the down side, the filmmakers use way too many talking heads, repeating points about the notorious Cecil ad nauseam and, perhaps inevitably, the filmmakers withhold some key information till near the end, info which would definitely have tipped viewers off as to the resolution of the investigation. Still worth watching, but could have been 3 episodes with no great loss. 3/12/21
Just a brief note on Mizoguchi’s Utamora and his Five Women (1946): Mizoguchi made some of the greatest films in the history of cinema - Sansho the Bailiff, Ugerstu - but this is not one of them. It’s extremely hard, at least for this Western viewer, to keep the plot and characters clean in mind and distinct, perhaps in part because of the dull, grainy surviving print. And what I could make of the plot - a series of episodes in which the eponymous Utamora - a famous Japanese artist (in the movie and in life) - faces challenges from those who disbelieve in his work and struggles with depression and fear of loss of his talent - seems to me poorly crafted and presented through dull, static scenes and moments. The drama wears thin, and some of the plot elements are so weird and obscure - most of them take place in the “pleasure zones” of a Japanese city - as to be laughable: e.g., the artist pleads with a woman who he thinks is so beautiful that she will restore his diminished talent; she reluctantly agrees to model - but, under conventions of the time (1946 that is) she wears on a slip and a silken blouse. Horrors! Anyway, I couldn’t even watch to the end. Don’t let this film become your intro to the work of Mizoguchi. The question is: How did he let this happen? 3/14/21
The 3-part Netflix series Murder Among the Mormons (2021) is an engrossing and surprising look at a scandal and travesty that took place in Salt Lake City and among some of the highest-ranking members of the Morman (LDS) Church; though the events received national news coverage at the time, it’s a safe bet that few today know or remember what happened back in 1977, when on the same day two home-made explosive devices killed a young man active in the purchase of documents about the early days of the church and the wife of a man active in the documents business (the husband was apparently the intended target). Two days later another explosion seriously injured the man who’d sold to the LDS church leaders many allegedly authentic documents from the church founders. I won’t give away the details or outcome of the search for and punishment of the perpetrator(s), but will say that many, many people knew or should have known that there was something highly suspicious about these types of documents turning up one after another in the hands of the same dealer/collector. Whether people turned a blind eye to what was going on did so because of ignorance, naivety, criminal complicity, desire to suppress information that could have been harmful to the church - hard to say. There’s a weird sense throughout, though, that a church that by its very founding is based on the unexpected, miraculous discovery of old books written on gold pages or tablets long buried in the earth in upstate New York should find itself threatened by newly discovered documents that place church history and teachings in a new light. Something’s not right here. This series at three episodes is just the right length, holding our interest and not teasing us, as so many documentary series do, by withholding key information and dragging out the story to a needless 4 or even six episodes. 3/15/21
Even if it meanders toward the end, which it does, John Cassavetes’s The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) is worth watching for a # of reasons. The basic story line: the owner of a sleazy LA (I think) nightclub/strip joint, Cosmo Vitelli (Ben Gazzaro, in a great performance!) gets into serious gambling debt, and as the mobsters try to collect they come up with a scheme in which Cosmo will kill the eponymous bookie to erase the debt. Cosmo, not a killer himself but obviously familiar w/ firearms, embarks on this suicidal mission. The great thing about this movie, above all, is the seemingly insider portrayal of a slice of nightlife unfamiliar, I would think, w/ most aficionados of art films. Many of the scenes appear to be improvised - as in JC’s previous films such as Husbands, and in the tradition of NYC theater method acting: These segments (including Cosmo’s meeting w/ the mobsters who run the gambling syndicate, Cosmo on the pay-phone checking up on the nightclub acts as he prepares to carry out his “assignment”) are fantastic, worth the whole film. The film is also notable for a lot of shots with handheld camera and low lighting pierced by occasional flash of neon or stage lights - putting us right in the heart of the action. Less appealing - the film really comes to no conclusion, just kind of ending; this disappointment (maybe another viewing would show me more?) may result from JC’s “director’s cut” edition. I rarely say this, but maybe he cut too much; in any event, this director’s cut is notable, if not unique, in that it’s a good half-hour shorter than the initially released version: Good for Cassavetes, willing to kill his darlings to make for a better, faster-paced, if sometimes enigmatic film. 3/21/21
Two mini-series about sports coaches: First, the Jason Sudeikis vehicle Ted Lasso (on Apple+) in which JS plays the eponymous coach whose completely unconventional methodology brings his team to an improbable level of success. The plot in essence involves a new owner (Hannah Waddingham as Rebecca) of a dismal British “football” (aka soccer) team who, to spite her ex-husband, hires a new coach - Lasso - who had some success as an American football coach but knows nothing about soccer. Her intent: to drive the team toward failure and bankruptcy. And along comes Lasso with his open, American can-do attitude, goofy sense of humor, relentless optimism, and emphasis on teamwork, self-confidence, and anti-bullying. Can you believe it? Not even for a second, nor are we meant to - we’re just meant to enjoy Lasso’s exuberance and to fantasize about team such as this one (had the stakes been lower - say, a high-school or even a small-college team, maybe you could believe some the turnaround). This is a feel-good show to the nth degree, right up to its emotional climax - and toward an inevitable Season 2. Second, the Swedish 5-part (HBOMax) series Beartown, which is something like a Swedish/hockey version of the great Friday Night Lights - a sports show in which the entire population of the small town is ridiculously wrapped up in the success of its local h.s. team, with all of the attendant pressure this puts on the kids and on the coach (and his family). The story line has retired NHL pro Peter Andersson and family returning to his home town to lead the h.s. team to glory - but the return of the home-town hero doesn’t quite work out, as there’s a dark side to Peter and to the whole story line, in which Peter’s daughter is raped by the star of the team and the town rallies around the star because what could be more important than winning? Peter himself is morally ambiguous and there are strong hints that he left theNHL because of a significant problem with alcohol and violence (perhaps fueled by his reaction to a family tragedy). The story line is chillingly believable, as it disrupts not only Peter’s family, but it engulfs the entire town in its immoral ambiguity - an under-the-radar series that deserves a wider audience (as we hope for Season 2). 3/24/21
Max Ophuls’s Le Plaisir (1952) is a class, b/w treatment of three stories by de Maupassant - “The Mask,” about an elderly man who wears a full-sized carnival mask of a young man’s face in order to “fit in” and dance joyously at a Paris nightclub, a story about the sex-workers in a brothel in Normandy, and a story of a young artist who violently and inexplicably breaks with his longtime fiancee (and model) - with strange and tragic consequences. I’m sure all 3 stories are great - none was familiar to me - and all are excellent, but the clear standout is the middle piece, somewhat longer than the other two: We see the young women, sweet and innocent, who for some reason take up this degrading and dangerous profession - serving the prosperous clientele of the small seaside city; on one night, the brothel closes and the customers meet on a beachfront to discuss their lives and their woes, and they squabble like children and we sense the sexual frustration and their dismal lives. At the heart of the story, the women head of to the country for the first-communion of the niece of one of the women; to see them interact with the children of the family is strikingly beautiful and moving, and then at the church service all of the women burst into tears, a fit of tears that overtakes the whole congregation - and we sense their lost lives, the wrong turns each must have made, and their bravery and humanity, so much more than that of their upright civil-servant clients. All three of the stories, but the first in particular, showcase MO’s unique but much-imitated production style, with incredibly long and detailed tracking shots, including many 360-degree camera rotations, so difficult to pull off, that show us what feels like a full sweep of life - vibrant, visually inventive, exciting, even dizzying at times.
