Review: The Place Beyond the Pines

2013, 140 mins, US, Cert. 15, Dir: Derek Cianfrance

“If you ride like lightning…” warns a greasy Ben Mendelsohn to Ryan Gosling’s dissolute stunt-biker, “…you’re gonna crash like thunder.” It’s the type of line that would seem laughably trite in any other film; in the context of director Derek Cianfrance’s delicate high-wire balancing act between baroque crime epic and intimate character drama, it makes perfect sense. The Place Beyond the Pines is the 140 minute visual equivalent of a Bruce Springsteen song, with all the delicate scope, darkness and desperation of The Boss’s best. Impressive but flawed on viewing and rather brilliant in retrospect, it is an attempt to marry the brutal realism and ragged edges of Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine to a Dostoevskian tale of crime and consequence.

The plot centres around two men, both new fathers and both with severe daddy issues of their own. Ryan Gosling’s Luke is a short tempered wanderer who turns to crime to support the child he never knew he had, while Bradley Cooper’s idealistic cop Avery Cross struggles against police corruption, his father’s disapproval and a scenery chewing Ray Liotta. Gosling and Cooper give the best performances of their careers so far. Gosling ups his already fearsomely impressive game with a slowly shifting performance that demands constant re-evaluation of his character, but it’s Cooper who’s the real surprise. He graduates effortlessly from bland pretty boy to complex leading man and made me regret all the jokes I’ve made at his expense.

Both men’s stories spin around the same centre, only intersecting once before culminating in a coincidence so monumental it can probably be seen from space. Instead the twin plots spiral away and spread out, weaving and meandering and leaving a sense of time passing and of guilt and blame trickling down through the generations. It all leads to a divisive final act that will feel like the culmination of a tragedy of Greek proportions to some, and a forceful whack over the head to others. I was left admiring its sheer ambition while lamenting the loss of its more elliptical, mysterious qualities.

It’s hard to think of a recent film more steeped in the cinema of the 1970s, from it’s Altman-esque scope to the themes of inter-generational sin and redemption that it shares with The Godfather. It is a throwback to a bygone era of great American filmmaking, the likes of which are generally thought to not exist anymore. Although Cianfrance could have learned from those film’s willingness to go over the 150 minute mark to flesh out some underdeveloped points, it’s easy to forgive its missteps when it has moments of such aching beauty and sadness. Cianfrance is making his bid for the big league; when he stumbles it’s because he’s reaching so high and so far.

Review: Zero Dark Thirty

2012, 157 mins, US, Cert. 15, Dir: Kathryn Bigelow

In his novel Goodbye to Berlin, Christopher Isherwood described himself as “a camera with its shutter open… recording, not thinking”. It’s a sentiment that must have resonated with Kathryn Bigelow. I can’t remember ever seeing a film as detached and pitiless as Zero Dark Thirty, her account of the ten year hunt for Osama bin Laden. It’s a cold, dead eyed stare into the moral abyss of America’s decade long ‘War on Terror’, that refuses to bow to either right wing chest-beating or left wing histrionics. The controversy snapping at its heels has ruled it out of major awards in favour of safer fare like Lincoln. Lincoln is a sturdy, intelligent and admirable movie, but Zero Dark Thirty is a great one. Given that it is an American made movie, it inevitably focuses on the American side of this conflict, but its impassive, journalistic approach to its material are the very definition of moral ambiguity. It is neither a jingoistic celebration of American might or an Oliver Stone-esque horror story. Instead it is a ruthless, dispassionate lament.

It is also a taut, tense thriller. This may seem obvious given Bigelow’s work on The Hurt Locker, but remember that here she has a story to which everyone knows the ending. The final raid on bin Laden’s compound is a magnificently handled scene of tension and suspense that never falls prey to gung ho military fetishism. Bigelow and writer Mark Boal make ways around the potential problems of the film’s coldness and inevitable outcome by focusing on the obsessive pursuit of bin Laden by fictional CIA operative Maya (Jessica Chastain). Where other films would seek to make Maya an emotional core with a complex backstory and Oscar baiting speeches, here she is totally closed off.

Credit here is due unreservedly to Chastain, who manages the staggering feat of giving a performance of depth and intensity while managing to remain inscrutable. When Maya is present at the film’s most controversial scenes, those of the torture of suspected terrorists, it is almost impossible to guage her full reaction. These scenes of torture are rightly horrifying and, crucially, don’t lead to the desired answers. In one of the film’s most chilling scenes, Maya and her colleagues watch in emotionless silence as a TV broadcasts President Obama’s assurances that America does not use torture, before they simply return to their work.

It is hard then to not see the fictional Maya as a stand in for America itself. Her implacable façade hides the impression that there’s something broken inside her; something she believes can only be fixed by literally gazing down at the body of her prey. Her almost pathological zeal reaches Ahab-ian levels, and come at the expense of family, friends, or of anything at all outside of her own rabid obsession. And when she finally succeeds, her victory brings no gratification, no sense of release. Instead she breaks down crying in response to the pointed question “Where do you want to go?”. She has given everything in the name of an understandable but tragically misguided vendetta. Zero Dark Thirty never explicitly gives up its own answers, but to me the implication is clear: that America has won the battle it set for itself, but at what terrible cost?

Review: Django Unchained

2012, 165 mins, US, Cert. 18, Dir: Quentin Tarantino

After wandering for too long in the realms of messy and indulgent film-making, Quentin Tarantino has come in from the cold. It’s been a long time coming, but now he is back on form with Django Unchained, a deranged and gleefully perverse revenge Western that is his best, and funniest, film since Jackie Brown. With a staggering disregard for anything resembling good taste, it tells the story of the titular freed slave (Jamie Foxx), who partners up with eccentric bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (played with erudite eccentricity by Christoph Waltz). After learning of Django’s German speaking wife Broomhilda, Schultz agrees to help rescue her from the ownership of sadistic slave onwer Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). If you’re expecting a respectful take on slavery, please leave the auditorium now. From here on in Quentin will not cut to the heart of slavery, but run at it with arms flailing furiously, trailing screamed obscenities behind him.

What is it that makes this his best film in so many years? I could tell you that it displays a deep love of cinema and pop culture and that it’s staged with a bravura expertise, but the same is true of Kill Bill. Even the dreadful Death Proof has a magnificently handled car chase. I could tell you that it uses its exploitation frame-work to raise interesting questions about its historical context. But again, these are ideas that are rattling around inside the bloated excess of Inglourious Basterds.

Perhaps the real reason lies in its character, who have something rare for a Tarantino film: genuine depth. Foxx, an actor I’ve long been indifferent towards, proves to be a powerfully charismatic screen presence who shifts effortlessly from shackled slave to resplendent avenger. Leonardo DiCaprio too is a cunning piece of casting, with his babyish face and former teen idol status clashing horribly against the utterly repellent Candie.

But the central crux of Django Unchained lies with the characters and performances of Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson. The dapper, charming Schultz claims to despise slavery, but he’s more than willing to exploit it for his own ends. It is only when he sees the full extent of the brutality meted out at Candie’s opulent plantation Candyland that he begins to unravel as he realises his own complicity. Tarantino may claim that this is a film about black empowerment, but it is equally, if not more so, a film about white guilt.

Equally of interest is Jackson as Candie’s head house slave Stephen, a horrifying figure of collusion and the real power behind the throne of Candyland. With his Parkinson’s tremor, lurching gait and privileged position within the plantation, he is a grotesque play on the Uncle Tom stereotype. He is an acknowledgement of the brutal truth that the oppression of the many is often facilitated by the collaboration of the few. Crucially, he is never allowed to become merely a figure of fun to be mocked and jeered at by the audience. There’s something disturbing about Stephen; something genuinely pathetic, in the truest sense of the word. It’s a brave character to have written, but an even braver one for Jackson to have played.

Despite all this, Django Unchained has a major, notable problem. The first two hours fly by in a disreputable whirl of colour and chaos before the film unexpectedly burns itself out. There is a nightmarish action sequence that clearly should be the film’s bloody climax. Instead the plot is dragged out for a further half hour, with Tarantino’s awful cameo (complete with one of the worst Australian accents you will ever hear) marking the exact moment when the whole film jumps the shark. It’s not that Django Unchained is too long, but the story is just too short for the running time.

This egotistical indulgence aside, Django Unchained proves that Tarantino is still a force to be reckoned with. At his best he is a film-maker capable of extraordinary verve and daring. At his worst he is shackled by the need to be Quentin Tarantino. If Django Unchained proves anything, it is that Django is not the only one who is off the chain.

Waiting for Bigelow

There must be a reason that I can’t stop watching the Zero Dark Thirty trailer. What is it that’s causing the hairs on my neck to stand up, that’s sending a shiver down my spine. What’s preventing me from tearing my eyes away from the official final trailer? (When exactly did publicity campaigns start releasing ‘Final Trailers’ anyway, like a parent snatching sweets from a gluttonous child?) Maybe it’s the mystique lent to the film by the big, muddy footprints of controversy it’s leaving everywhere it goes. It has already achieved the impressive and somewhat admirable feat of proving as offensive to the sensibilities of the right wing as to the left. And yet there’s something that’s drawing me in. I’m happy to accept Kathryn Bigelow’s line that depiction isn’t the same as endorsement for now, until I get a chance to actually see the film. Instead, here are five reasons I’ve found for my fascination:

• The obvious one first: that choral cover of Metallica’s ‘Nothing Else Matter’,which kicks in about halfway through, is magnificent. It hangs over the tail-end of the trailer like a spectre. Clearly somebody remembered the equally brilliant use of a choral ‘Creep’ in the trailer for The Social Network and decided they wanted in. Good call.
• Jessica Chastain- she’s barely in the trailer but her stolid presence and haunted eyes stay with you through every second. Can we just give her the Oscar right here, right now?
• The tone and atmosphere evoked here remind me, rather surprisingly, of Stephen Spielberg’s Munich. I think Munich is an underrated film with some overlooked virtues. It bravely tried, however imperfectly, to explore the personal toll of state-sponsored atrocities.
• Mark Strong. He’s only in it for about two seconds, but that’s enough. Every film should have Mark Strong in.
• It’s directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Not only is she Hollywood’s- scrap that,make that the world’s- leading female filmmaker, but she’s the woman who stole the Oscars from ex-husband James Cameron and his baby Avatar.

Review: Les Misérables

2012, 158 mins, UK, Cert. 12a, Dir: Tom Hooper

Watching Les Misérables is rather like being mugged. This is not a film that wins you over gently so much as rips its heart from its sleeve and batters you into broken, bleeding submission with it. I have always felt that criticising musicals because ‘people don’t really sing like that’ is akin to asking why martial arts protagonists don’t shoot each other. With that in mind, even I was taken aback by the sheer scale of Tom Hooper’s mad behemoth of a film. Les Misérables is big. Really big.

The tone is set by the opening shot, as the camera bursts out of the sea before soaring over a ship and down to a group of prisoners as they are buffeted by the waves bursting on them in merciless torrents. It’s a nice indicator of how the film is going to continue, engulfing you in relentless surges of towering melodrama that send you sprawling in the aisles, gasping for air.

One of these prisoners is Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), who as the film begins is being released from his nineteen year sentence. After breaking his parole, he is pursued over nearly 20 years by the fiercely dogmatic Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe). Although their struggle culminates in the shadow of the barricades of the 1832 Paris uprising, Les Miserables is a film that eschews complex political or historical statements in favour of broad, romantic sweeps. This uprising is destined to fail as much as the one foreshadowed in the film’s epilogue, but for now it’s the tragic glory of the act that counts.

Jackson firmly carries the sprawling plot on his shoulders with the kind of bravura performance many have long suspected that he’s capable of. In one of the best scenes he sings of inner turmoil following his release with veins bulging, his eyes wild with pain and rage. It’s a performance of stature and dignity that lends weight to a potentially simplistic character. The real surprise comes from Crowe. Imperious and with a steely reverence for his duty, Crowe’s voice is easily the least vocally disciplined, but he makes up for it with his best performance in years. Somehow, in a melodramatic musical painting in broad emotional strokes, Crowe transforms into a genuinely moving and engaging character study of a man whose honourable intentions have led him to the brink of fascism.

Director Hooper marshals these forces on a scale more fitting to a civil war than a musical. With The King’s Speech he gave the impression of a TV director paddling out of his depth, yet here his inexperience proves his greatest virtue as he throws everything he has at the wall. His ‘anything goes’ approach of sweeping vistas, close ups, mad angles and songs performed live on set results in a musical quite unlike any other. Also present is his penchant for striking and unusual shot framings, with his characters often confined to the far corners of the screen. Crucially, he does everything that can’t be done on stage, never leaving you wishing you were watching the show.

Not all of it works of course. Comic interlude Master of the House seems lifted from a totally different film and Hooper never manages to carve a totally coherent path through his messy and convoluted source material. His solution is to keep things moving at such bruising, breakneck speed that it’s impossible to notice. I have seen Les Misérables on the stage and admired the spectacle of it, but Hooper and his cast made me understand and care about these characters in a way I never did before. I was won over by the film’s towering energy, and for the first time I was made to feel at home on those doomed barricades. Whether you fight against the ensuing deluge will determine how much you enjoy the film, but it’s easy to imagine people returning more than once for repeat viewings. Better to surrender yourself, and just go with it.

Hi there.

To anyone making their way to this blog from my old one, welcome back,  and an equally warm hello to anyone stumbling across it for the first time.

In case you don’t know, this is my amateurish and rather overly-ambitious collection of reviews and ramblings about film. I started it to improve and practice my own writing as part of a learning curve, which kind of makes any mistakes or rubbish bits a good thing, right? Anyway…

I write whenever I get a break from uni work and my hectic social schedule (just humour me), so I can’t post as much as I’d like. If you keep reading though, I’ll keep writing. And if you stop reading, I’ll probably just carry on.

Joe.

Ps- Anyone interested in my old blog, especially my Top Twenty of 2012 list, can find it at http://wouldtherealorsonwellespleasestandup.blogspot.co.uk/