Heart and Heaven

Caught up on a couple of old movies recently: Places in the Heart (1984) and Heaven Knows, Mr Allison from 1957.  The first stars Sally Field in one of her best roles, and the second has a relatively gentle Robert Mitchum co-starred with Deborah Kerr.  Kerr plays a nun, so for most of the film only her face is visible.  Other body language is almost minimal, but this doesn't stop her giving a wonderful performance.  

Yes, both the movies are old-style, tear-jerkers, the former focusing on forgiveness and the latter on an impossible relationship that nevertheless transcends its boundaries.  Places in the Heart is a story about forgiveness (there's an echo of the beginning of Les Miserables early in the piece) and how people who ought not to get along can manage to do so if they're willing.  It also has a curious subplot that never quite connects with the main story.  In this Lindsay Crouse plays Field's sister whose husband, played by Ed Harris, is having an affair with a mutual friend.  Obviously Crouse connects with Field because they're sisters - they have a few short scenes together - but for the most part this story plays out by itself almost in parallel with the main one.  At the very end all the characters are gathered together in church for a service.  A wonderful travelling shot begins with Harris being forgiven by Crouse - the touch of her hand on his is enough to tell us.  The camera moves from row to row as each person receives the communion wine, and finally we see Field's deceased husband sitting beside her.  He was accidentally shot early in the film by a young and very drunk negro, who was subsequently lynched. The camera moves a foot or two more and there is the negro boy.  He whispers to the husband, Sorry, and there's a look that might mean all sorts of things on the husband's face, but none of them are antagonistic.  It's a strange ending that comes out of nowhere - there hasn't been a hint of the surreal prior to this.  For all that, it's in keeping with the tone of the movie and its theme.

John Malkovitch plays a blind boarder who's foisted upon Field as a way to forestall her having to sell the house.  Of course they eventually learn to get along, but the performance by Malkovitch is somewhat over-the-top (Malkovitch is always over-the-top, you might think) and for me it jarred. 

Heaven Knows etc is a story about a marine who lands on a deserted island in the Pacific during the Second World War.  It's not quite deserted: a nun has been left behind on the island through some odd circumstances and the two begin a rather edgy relationship.  The Japanese arrive, take over the island, but fail to realise it's not quite as empty as they think.  They also fail to notice that their supplies are getting lower than they should be as Mitchum does a daring night raid on the stores. Eventually the US arrives on the island and conquer the Japanese.  That's pretty much the story, but Mitchum and Kerr invest the script with a great deal of warmth and humour, and humanity.  Kerr's character might seem a bit too much a member of the weaker sex at times, though Kerr brings some feistiness to the part, and Mitchum is given the chance not only to be a gentleman but also to be very protective gentleman.  The actors manage to make both the people credible, and John Huston films the whole thing with minimal fuss, knowing that he can rely on his two main cast members to do all the work. 

Creativity and Failure

"Creativity is a consequence of sheer productivity. If a creator wants to increase the production of hits, he or she must do by risking a parallel increase in the production of misses. ... The most successful creators tend to be those with the most failures!" Dean Keith Simonton

Robert Sutton wrote in Weird Ideas That Work, that "in a typical year this group of about 10 people generated just over 4,000 ideas (which they know because all ideas are tracked on a spreadsheet):

Of these 4,000 ideas, 230 were thought to be promising enough to develop into a nice drawing or working prototype. Of these 230, 12 were ultimately sold. This "yield" rate is only about 1/3 of 1% of total ideas and 5% of ideas that were thought to have potential. Boyle pointed out that the success rate is probably even worse than it looks because some toys that are bought never make it to market, and of those that do, only a small percentage reap large sales and profits. As Boyle says, "You can't get any good new ideas without having a lot of dumb, lousy, and crazy ones."'

No one should choose the option of failure deliberately, but trying especially hard to avoid it means taking no chances on change. The better message to get across is that failure is a by-product of risk-taking, and honest mistakes will be forgiven.

All of the above are from an article, Forgive and Remember, by Robert Sutton, Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He studies and writes about management, innovation, and the nitty-gritty of organizational life.

Atonement

For some reason I'd heard mixed opinions on Atonement, so wasn't sure what to expect. In terms of performances and film craft (particularly the visual aspects) it's superb. In terms of intensity, the first half is strong, but the second, where it focuses almost entirely for some time on the character of Robbie, seems to lack something. Things pick up again once we're back in London, with the grown-up Briony trying to make amends for her most ill-judged decision back when she was 13, and then there are the final scenes with Vanessa Redgrave playing the elderly Briony, where Redgrave imbues her few minutes of screen time with an intensity that matches the early scenes.

Saoirse Ronan gives an extraordinary performance, the gaucheness matched by the conniving, the stiff body that seems unable to relax, the jealousy that we only understand much later. And Keira Knightley and James McAvoy are solid in their roles. Knightley's role unfortunately diminishes after the first half - she only appears briefly two or three times, and in the war scenes McAvoy is left to play almost to himself; the two accompanying soldiers make little impact. This is the way the screenplay is constructed; I don't know as yet how the book works in this respect (though I'm more tempted to read it after seeing the movie).

Joe Wright seems to be one of those directors who's come out of nowhere. Apart from his recent revamp of Pride and Prejudice, which had some odd moments, (but certainly gave fresh vision to the story) his only work seems to have been in television, and even there, it's been not well-known in general. How did he get to handle Atonement, which obviously has a good deal of money behind it? The lengthy single take on Dunkirk beach is a huge achievement on its own, even though it doesn't add a lot to the story, regrettably. (It competes strongly with the single take in Children of Men.) And it must have used up more than half the film's budget.

About this scene, Wikipedia notes: Charles II: The Power and The Passion, Pride and Prejudice and Atonement all have long tracking shots in them. Atonement has a continuous 4.5 minute shot of the Dunkirk evacuation. "Basically, I just like showing off," Wright told the audience at the Hay Festival. Showing off or not, (or seeing how much he can pack into one shot, like the number of bytes now packed into the average micro sd) the lengthy take is remarkably constructed, and the visual aspects have a painter-like feel about them, something that reflects Wright's art history background.

It would be interesting to re-view the film now that I know how it ends, and know what sort of 'trick' is played on the viewer. I think the acting and visuals would continue to enthrall, and the story might no longer be seen as the main thing. Knowing a great deal more about the characters and where they're headed would actually add to a repeated viewing, rather than take away from it, I think.