Elliot’s Watching week of 6-20-21: In the Heights, the movie

Elliot’s Watching week of 6-20-21

The Jon M. Chu film adaptation (2021) of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s debut musical, In the Heights, is an over-the-top extravaganza that in my view turns what on stage was probably a straightforward and moving personal drama, about LMM’s youth and background, into a bloated and saccharine mess. Terrible to say - because there is much to like about this project and some powerful moments for sure, notably the opening eponymous musical tribute to and evocation of this Manhattan neighborhood. The highlight of course comes from LMM’s original songs and his fantastic use of imagery and rhyme, in part in the tradition of rap and in part in the long tradition of musical theater. We can see and hear the seeds of the confidence and originality that blossoms in Hamilton - LMM’s unique use of recitative, in particular. That said, in the end Heights is not so much a tribute to or evocation of the neighborhood as it is a romanticized and idealized bit of memory: In the Heights there seems to be no crime, no poverty, no significant conflict among the denizens, a complete unity and brotherhood. The framing device, in which the protagonist tells a story to a group of adorable and supernaturally attentive children, is trite and corny. The dance sequences are a marvel of technicality but they are completely overwhelming - hundreds of dancers in synch, whereas 6 would be great. A movie doesn’t have to be bigger - just faithful, and maybe better. And this is in part me, but the sound engineering of this film seemed to me way out of whack: In every song, even simple solos and duets, the bass vibe was cranked way, way up to the point where LMM’s beautiful lyrics were simply drowned. I wish I’d seen the play on Broadway, and I came to this movie with high expectations, which were not met. 

Elliot’s Watching week of 6-13-21: A great series, a special, and a classic

 Elliot’s Watching week of 6-13-21

The second season of Saverio Costanzo’s HBO miniseries My Brilliant Friend, based (very closely!) on Elena Ferrante’s quartet of novels, in my opinion is stronger and more visceral than the very good Season 1. In season 2 we see the two main characters - best friends, rivals, antagonists - move from late adolescence to young womanhood, as their ways of being and living gradually diverge. The central character and narrator, closely modeled one would suppose on Ferrante herself, is Lenu, played with enigmatic shyness and insecurity by Margherita Mazzucco, but the real driving force is the spirited and tempestuous best friend Lila, a killer role for Gaia Giriace. I don’t want to give away any plot details, but let’s just say that this season follow two arcs: Lenu begins to separate from her working-class family in Naples and finds that she’s an outsider in the academic circles of her college community in Pisa so that, by the end of the season, though she has found unexpected literary success, she is torn between her childhood and family world and the new (to her) world of literature and scholarship. Lila, in contrast, is mired in a terrible marriage and living in near poverty; she pretends indifference to her desperate fortunes and on one devastating scene she cruelly mocks Lenu’s attempts to speak as an equal among the literati - but it’s obvious to all that she’s deeply jealous of her friend’s success; we surely sense that her suppression is nearly tragic - a wasted life and talent, at least up to this point in the story. Throughout, the acting is excellent, the visuals - the interiors and the many long shots of the neighborhood streets in Naples - are beautifully and I would guess accurately re-created; I’ll also not the effectiveness of the understated score, which guides us in our perception of the characters without ever overwhelming us with bathos or emotional overload. Looking forward to the Covid-delayed season 3. 

Bo Burnham’s special for Netflix - Inside (2021) - is a tour de force, written, directed, photography, recorded, everything by Burnham, all done from inside a small (one-room?) apartment where he supposedly (at least in terms of this film) lived in isolation during the year of Covid. He’s a multi-talented guy by any measure: actor, stand-up, musician (keyboard the guitar), singer, song-writer, photographer, satirist, commentator. Most of the skits, if that’s what they’re to be called, are musical, with BB accompaniment usual on electric keyboard; his singing/songwriting is in the vein of much of today’s musical theater - you can sense the influence of Hamilton, and hear the distant echo of Rent. A lot of the skits are are superb, notably White Woman’s Instagram, FaceTime with Mom, Everything All the Time (his take on the Internet), Socko (sock puppet w/ strong opinions), to cite a few of many. The story arc itself is sad, even painful; we know he’s “acting a part,” but still we sense something personal about his ordeal - and something universal: a poignant scene to mark the moment he turned 30; another when he tries to recognize the first anniversary of his starting this project. He’s a skeptic about social media and about the amount of time most of us spend online - but of course, as he well knows, he’s equally dependent and his show is entirely digital - a show without an audience, and he has a clever take on that aspect as well. It’s hard to imagine not liking this 90-minute special - and to be thankful that it’s in the past. 

Federico Fellini's classic 8 1/2 (1963) sill feels fresh and original today and you can see how it was ground-breaking as one of the first cinematic portrayals of a man in psychiatric distress and part of the 60s wave of film as surrealism - the debt to Dali and Bunuel is evident, but there’s a socio-political aspect to 8 1/2 that early surrealist cinema dodged. In other words, it’s a film still worth watching both for its unique achievements and its groundbreaking status - that’s assuming, of course, that you can get beyond the cynicism and the degrading treatment of women (in the guise of adoration of women) throughout the film - as the central character, Guido (a career performance by Mastroionni) belittles and degrades his mistress, his wife, and his “ideal woman” (Claudio Cardinale) all of whom cross paths on the set of the film Guido is planning to direct. Guido is, quite evidently, a stand-in for FF - portraying a film director who, like FF, has completed his 8th film, a huge success (La Dolce Vita) and who is at sea as to how to proceed with his next film, now that he has all the resources he needs for a breakout film. As he struggles to pull his movie together, he’s pressured by the producer, the screenwriter or script advisor, and by many women who parade before him seeking to be cast - none of which advances his project in any way; it appears that he has no idea what he hopes to film and when he hopes to begin the work (one excellent scene shows a casting session in which, indifferent and distracted, he rejects one actress after another). What really drives the film, however, are the strange sequences in which he dreams of his youth, dreams of a graveyard encounter with his deceased parents, and the night-time visit to the enormous skeletal structure of a racket ship that he somehow plans to incorporate. Of course FF is well aware that this is a film about a film, and all of the mis-steps Guido makes of course contribute to and advance the meta-film narrative: FF really did construct the rocket ship and use it in his film. Films (and books) about the struggles of an artist, esp a successful one, usually come off as a whine and a complaint, but this has so much more inventiveness and imagination as to surpass all others of the mini-genre. As to Guido’s mistreatment of and contempt for the women in his life (except for his mother?), perhaps we have to read that as the beginning of FF’s own breakout as a homosexual: Perhaps he had to purge his system of his heterosexual history and desires in order to proceed with his 9th picture. 

Possibly the best recent movie you've never heard of, and Mare of Eastown

Possibly the best recent movie you’ve never heard of - why it’s gone so unrecognized is beyond me - is the Sarah Gavron’s British film (on Netflix), Rocks (2019), about a group of h.s. girls attending an all-girls school in London, which seems to have a pretty broad, multi-racial enrollment. The film focuses on the eponymous Rocks (her nickname, and not a very good movie title, I think) played beautifully by Bukky Bakray. After some reasonably jovial scenes among her friends and in her council housing w/ mom and grade-school-age brother, she learns via a brief and unfeeling note that her mother has gone away - not the first time this has happened - leaving her suddenly in care of young brother, maybe for a few days, maybe forever, we just don’t know. The film follows their odyssey through a # of painful and quite credible encounters (a note at the end off the film informs us that many street children in London helped w/ the development of the plot and the dialog) as Rocks seeks the basics, food, clothing, shelter, while keeping her spirits up and keep her and her brother in school. There are no villains in the film and no heroes either, but there are many painful, sorrowful encounters as well as many scenes that show the resilience and spirit of the Rocks and others in her clique. The film resolves, sort of, with a lot of ambiguity, much like another great film about a lonely child fending for himself, 400 Blows. Some may opt for subtitles on this film, which would be essential esp for Americans if you want to get every word of every exchange, but in my view a better way to appreciate and experience this film is to get what you can from the dialog, which is hardly Shakespearean, and just focus on the mood and impact and general import of all of the exchanges, which you can easily do. 

The Kate Winslet vehicle Mare of Easttown (Brad Ingelsby) on HBO is a good police-procedural murder mystery that has many strands and involves multiple families and in a broader sense the whole eponymous town, modeled I would say on Easton, Pa., and in fact all shot in Pa (I’m guessing in Harrisburg?) with a real sense of verisimilitude. Unlike most such series, this one actually wraps, tying up all the loose ends and not leaving us with teasers that carry on to a 2nd season; this one seems to be a one-and-done. The extremely complex plot does not quite stand up to close inspection - I won’t give anything away here, but will say that there’s an awful lot of luck, or screenwriters’ heavy hand, in the resolution of some of the story lines, but that’s made up for by the true sense of an ending achieved in the final episode of this series that’s worth watching and will lead to many discussions as to who dunnit; the resolution is plausible if not obvious, though I did find the resolution a bit strange and unlikely and will say no more here on that. One completely separate quibble, though: How come so many movies and TV series seem to have absolutely no sense as to how the college-admissions process works  in the real world? Mare’s daughter’s college-ap process is ludicrous and could so easily have been done right; writes care so much about the accuracy of police and court procedures - why can’t they get this simple stuff right?