Elliot’s Watching - May 2023
Rohmer, Leigh, Bunuel, Malick, Bujalski, Mrs. Maisel, Succession, and Barry
The second work in Erich Rohmer’s late-life quartet, A Tale of Winter (1992) is a sweet yet strange love story, centering on an appealing young woman, mother of a young daughter from an early relationship and now faced with choosing a life path w/ two suitors: Mr. Wrong (a beautician, as is she), a potential Mr. Right (a devout intellectual librarian), and Mr. Lost - the love of youth and father of daughter who through some cockamamie mishap involving lost addresses has slipped away from the woman’s life but for whom she still waits - hoping to find him, by chance, in all of Paris or beyond - he may be traveled to America, who knows? What gives this film a bit of a push, as hinted in the title, is the analogous Shakespeare play A Winter’s Tale, which involves the disappearance of a queen who was punished thoughtlessly by her husband. The film even includes the characters viewing the play: the woman (Felicie) and Mr. Potential, Felice in tears, as the king and queen reconcile, through some of S’s most ridiculous contrivances; the scenes as shown are among the worst and most pompous stagings of S. and would more likely bring forth hoots rather than tears but so be it. The film itself is pretty good in that we really get to care about and root for this obviously troubled and confused young woman.
A definite two-thumbs-up for Deborah Cahn’s Netflix political drama The Diplomat, with an excellent performance from Keri Russell as the newly appointed American Ambassador to St. James (i.e., the UK) just as a missile attack on a British navy ship kills 41 soldiers and draws in successively Iraq, Russian, and maybe more. Unlike so many shows of this ilk The Diplomat has the sense of accuracy and likely reality - the intrigues and egos and romances and alliances of British, American, Iranian et al agents and diplomats, all struggling to fulfill their divergent agendas - in particular Russell as a dynamic, tough, analytic, and in some odd ways obsessed with her appearance force of nature. Lots of surprises along the way, many moments of intrigue some of which might elude on first viewing, and t’son secret that a 2nd seasons has been green-lit, with makes the dramatic conclusion of season 1 a great stepping-off point.
So….what’s there to say about Luis Bunuel’s The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955) except to say that Bunuel must have needed the money. The film has none or nearly none of the satiric and imaginative visuals and strange encounters that of any other Bunuel film I’m aware of - ranging from the slice scene in Andalusian Dog to the weird sexual predatory behavior in Tristana to the slings and arrows aimed in Discrete Charm and the list could go on; the list could go on. Criminal Life centers on a chid in a well-to-do Mexican family who watches as his governess is shot to death and he imagines that he is responsible for this shooting and the scene governs the rest of his life as, for unexplained reasons, he plans to kill a series of women: All of them do die, but not at his hand, and he’s puzzled and troubled that the police cannot arrest him for his though-crime. Maybe some potential here, but it’s acted out of conceived in such leaden and preposterous manner that the film is hard to watch and I would have dropped it at some point but for the very few flashes of Bunuelian insight: strange behavior with a lookalike mannequin, for ex. This is not the place to begin watching his movies, however.
The 3rd in Eric Rohmer’s late-in-life quartet, A Summer’s Tale (1996), is the lightest and most true to life of the series thus far, a love story of sorts that centers on a young man -(Gaspard) a grad student in mathematics - on summer vacation but quite shy and aimless. We feel sorry for him because of initial isolation and seeming loneliness or at least shyness (this film in the sense of a story of loneliness and wasted youth it brings to mind Rohmer’s Green Ray). A perfectly lovely young summer waitress (Margot) befriends him and is obviously interested in him, but he pushes her off: He has a girlfriend who will visit him later in the summer, and she as well is waiting for a boyfriend who someday will arrive. And this starts the pattern; over the course of the film Gaspard will begin dating 3 young women, but none of the relationships will quite work out; is he a cad or a predator or just morbidly shy and awkward? The film seems to be Rohmer’s look-back at wasted opportunities of youth, but without deep regret or sorrow; it’s a film in which all of the major characters are sweet and longing and trying to figure out their paths in life (Gaspard, played by Melvin Poupaud dreams of becoming a song writers/singer - and he’s pretty good but aimless, not driven it seems to a career in such a competitive field). We can easily imagine him years later reflecting on his youth and wondering at his missed opportunities and broken pathways.
Inevitably there will be spoilers in any report on Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess (2013) so read no further if you’re about to watch: What makes this film so astonishing is that it appears in all regards - the low-resolution camera work, the awkward cuts and pans, and of course the look of all the actors, most of them classic geek in style, big awkward eyeglasses, huge collars on dress shirts, cheap-looking rugby shirts, etc. - and of course the whole concept of man v machine, very1980, when the most advanced computers were big, heavy devices about the size of large TVs of the era, noisy clunky printouts of all info, and a game of chess took hours. The catch is that this is an entirely enacted and scripted film about an imagined competition some 30 years ago - and I am sure it will take any viewer, including this one, some time to recognize that this is a film set ca 1980 and not a more nearly contemporary film about an imagined competition some 30 years back. What gives it away? I guess the footage of one of the loners knocking doors and asking if he could sleep in their/her room - who’s going to allow this?, I thought, as it came clear that this is a sly comedy we’re watching and it’s a great sendup of the types of personality that would congregate at such a competition - in some ways not so distant from today and in other respects a whole generation or even 2 in the rear view.
The plot of Terrence Malick’s second film, Days of Heaven (1978) is about as thin as it gets - migrant worker (Richard Gere) on the rails with girlfriend/wife (but posing as his sister) and young daughter derail at site of a vast wheat field run by a handsome and perhaps kindly wealthy farmer (Sam Shepard); as harvest progresses, farmer increasingly attracted to Gere’s partner, and she agrees to marry him, but as part of a robbery scam - which of course goes awry as she falls for her new husband and arouses Gere’s hostility, ending in a chase and shootout - and none of it particularly believable, motivated, or surprising - yet - it’s still a great film to watch, preferably not on a laptop, for the extraordinary photogram, landscape and otherwise, from the incomparable Haskell Wexler and Nestor Almendros - not just the obvious beautiful images on the Texas [supposedly, but film was shot in Alberta] plains or sunsets and so forth but even in the most ordinary settings his eye brings everything to life and continuously surprises - that said the film score is powerful as well from the great Ennio Morricone. So plot, character and credibility are not Mallick’s credentials - for just one example - why does the kid/narrator speak w/ an indelible NY accent? Makes no sense. Who cares?
Not sure what’s left to be said about The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Season 5, 2023), but a few notes here: After a tenuous start, which didn’t really pickup to the great Rachel Brosnahan (as the Eponymous Midge) in the first season until RB stepped into her role as a comic, upending her husband’s future and that of their marriage. But after the first season the series seemed to founder - an asinine visit to Paris, some overwritten passages such as the ferris wheel conversation, and we stopped watching, but, curious, we began 5, the final series, and were pleasantly surprised: Lots of cutting humor, Midge struggles to find her place as a writer for the top late-night show (compared w/ Jack Parr, for ex) - and building toward the inevitable conclusion as she gains her footing first as the “lady” writer for the show and, more important as a stand-up. There was a lot of pressure on the creative team, notably Amy Sherman-Palladino to come up with a killer final season, and she/they succeed where so many have failed: esp Midge’s surprise standup, which had to be hilarious or the show would’ve flopped and they came through perfectly. Overall in this series I found the segments focused on Midge’s parents, particularly her father, to be clumsy and absurd; the more the show was about Midge and her generation, the better. So it was far from a perfect series, though the end was perfect - and Brosnahan’s world is her oyster, so to speak - a great comedic actor who will probably want to stretch to avoid stereotyping.
And praise for yet another great Mike Leigh TV drama now released as a feature (Criterion, thank you), Grown-Ups (1980), absit young couple that move into “council” housing where they try to set up and settle in to their new space (and from her POV, the excellent Leslie Manville, star in many Leigh films, to prepare to have a baby and raise a family), but 2 obstacles impede their potential happiness: LM’s sister has become a real pain - she’s lonely and socially extremely awkward and bossy - and she spends way too much time in their marriage as her own life is so pallid (she still lives at home with Mom), and the adjacent apartment - not Council (ie not Welfare, as we might put it) owned by (their former) h.s. teacher; tensions build among all characters on all sides and all lets loose in an incredibly confrontation among all the characters in a powerful sequence that’s both terrifying and heart-breaking - a good film in the Leigh style of Chekhov of the British working class, that rises to the level of greatness in the brutal confrontation toward the end of the performance.
Everyone in the world has already written about Succession Season 4 (the finale, 2023) so I might as well jump in w/ a few observations. For one thing, how could it be so much fun to watch the cavorting of a group of people whom we truly despise - selfish, privileged, right-wing, immoral, the list of adjectives could go on, but in the end, or perhaps I should say from the beginning, we lavished in watching their lives of extremity, sometimes with envy, let’s face it who wouldn’t want to travel by private jet?, and most of the time with repulsion. Yes they’re so witty and so credible, that’s what made it work. As to the final season, and there will be spoilers here, I wasn’t as keen on the last episode as most seem to have been - to me the extra 30 minutes was time wasted and too much, and the sharpness and precision of all of the preceding episodes is one factor in the success. Most of the commentary I read today puts it at face value that the show is now over, but I’m not so sure: Doncha think we need a few more episodes, watching Tom’s total failure as ceo and his constant humiliation by his new owner/boss = who will/should torment him about his attraction to Shiv? And Shiv - she cannot stay on as a corporate wife, no way. Shouldn’t we watch her devour Tom? I had said from the outset that the final victor would be the hapless Greg, and I still think that’s possible. And can we end w/ Kendall looking out from Brooklyn Heights? Surely he has a scheme in mind - perhaps relating to the still pending outcome of the presidential race - some Trumpian mischief, yes? That all said, it was a highly intelligent, well conceived, scripted, and performed - including, btw, terrific use of a musical score. Kudos creator Jesse Armstrong + Kieran Culkin, Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, and others + bonus points to Nicholas Britell for the score.
Another excellent and somewhat overshadowed bowed out this week as Bill Hader’s 4-season run of Barry came to a close. Part of the underachievement medal comes from the nature of this series - 30-minute episodes and billed as a comedy, where in fact it’s a fine, multifaceted drama series, with a lot of twists and turns and strong character development throughout. A one-sentence plot summary has it that Hader/Barry, suffering shell shock froths time in military service, takes on the job of an enforcer for mostly mob conglomerates; he disembarks on assigned to kill a member of an acting troupe, and in the process he steps into acting and finds himself leading a double-life, and many conflicts and dramatic scenes ensue - a sure-handed mixture of a doomed-love romantic drama, a send-up of Hollywood values and the pressures of writing and seeing through to the end of an original script, acting lessons, a murder involving active police officers, and disputes with various at-war drug gangs vying for c control of LA (led ultimately by Anthony Carrigan’s great portrayal of gay Chechen enforces NoHo Hand), a prison drama, and the list could go on - but the riches are plentiful and not the least of which was a wholly satisfying and credible final episode: s rarity.
Zarna Garg’s hilarious one-hour comedy special. One in a Billion (Prime, 2023), establishes her as a best of all India-born female comics living and performing in the U.S. today - Ok, how many others are there? But that of course is part of her schtick: Women born in India are just not encouraged to enter the entertainment field, and that’s even more so for those who emigrated to the U.S. - and that’s part of her material: the parents who push their kids relentlessly toward success in a few fields, ie engineering, finance, technology. Which leads to a # of laugh lines, notably her take on her beautiful daughter at Stanford who’s taking required arts elective in pottery: $80,000 for this!! Who makes pottery? Old men in villages in India! Because the have to! And so it goes. The show builds as it moves along; her delivery, from a minuscule stage, is flawless, and the show is remarkably clean and good-spirited, with a delightful surprise at the end.
