The Savages

We caught up with the movie, The Savages, last night. It stars Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Savage siblings, Wendy and Jon, whose father Len (Philip Bosco) is heading into dementia. Initially each of the three lives in a separate part of the USA, she in New York, where she's working as a temp while trying to get her plays funded for production; he in Buffalo, and the father in Sun City, Arizona. So there's a great deal of contrast in terms of locale from the dourness of New York, to the winter snow of Buffalo, to the blazing sun of Arizona - even in the winter.

The father has been living with an old woman who dies suddenly early in the movie. His actual wife is still alive, somewhere, but it's never said where - she's a bit of a mystery to all the family it seems, and wasn't able to do the 'mother' thing. Apparently the father had been quite brutal with his son, in the past, though this is never explored in much detail, even though it forms an important aspect of the play Linney has written.

It all sounds like a grim story, but in fact it's done with a curiously light touch, so that we can empathise with the characters in spite of their self-focuses. Linney in particular makes a wonderful job of alternatively making us very annoyed or sympathising with her inability to see herself as she really is. Hoffman plays in that wonderfully understated way he was so good at; little on the surface but much beneath. He's a warmer character, inclined to burst into tears at a number of things, but particularly in relation to his current girlfriend who's leaving to go back to Poland because her visa has run out. He has a wonderful scene in which he's strung up in the doorway trying to get his back (shoulder/neck?) back into place. The material looped under his chin means he can just speak and no more, and then Linney gives him a piece of toast which he can only just nibble at. It sounds like nothing, but Hoffman makes it a delight.

The movie, scripted and directed by Tamara Jenkins, doesn't explain itself too much. It lets us work things out for ourselves, because much of what we discover isn't actually spoken aloud. And there's a wonderfully ambiguous line just before the last couple of scenes when Linney finally dumps her adulterous older boyfriend (he can't even talk about the possible death of his beloved dog without immediately switching to talking about having sex). She calls down the stairs to him: It's not about us. It's in answer to a question he's asked and we think at first she's referring to their relationship. In fact, this proves not to be the case, and we realise a little later that she's finally matured in some areas of her life.

The film manages to walk the tightrope between comedy and tragedy by including a number of bit players in roles that verge on the absurd, and the opening scenes themselves, set in Arizona where elderly people fight the fight against ageing in all sorts of ways, are shot as visual jokes. The film was highly praised at the time of its release but seems to have been mostly forgotten since. However there's an article on Hoffman in Salon.com which mentions his part in it; the writer plainly thought the movie deserved better than to be forgotten.

Couple of not-so-top movies

In our current catch-up of various DVDs from the public library, I picked up The Barchester Chronicles, and Last Chance Harvey.  I'm lumping these two together because they were both disappointments.

Last Chance Harvey has Dustin Hoffman (he was 71 at the time) and Emma Thompson (she was 49) in it.   The ages are important, because the film puts these two together and tries to make chemistry out of it.  Both are struggling with loss - he in the sense of losing a job, and then being treated as a second-rate citizen at his own daughter's wedding (there's a stepfather in place who's much more 'attractive' to everyone).  She's reduced to dealing with a mother who can't keep off the cellphone (Eileen Atkins, who's thoroughly wasted in the role) and being set up for blind dates.  Which is a puzzle, because Emma Thompson is just too gorgeous to be on this sort of shelf - at least as she plays this character.   There's minimal backstory in both cases - other characters hint at things, but nothing is very clear, and the two actors are left to play out their roles with little information to offer us.  Even Hoffman's last minute revelation of having heart arrhythmia comes out of the blue; there's no indication that he's likely to collapse after being made to walk up several flights of stairs.

In fact there's minimal story here altogether.  If the two characters had been allowed to develop without all the other guff (what there is of it) the film would have been worth watching.  As it is, they tend to get into an interesting conversation and then the camera pulls away and leaves them mouthing words that haven't been scripted.

And one other thing, it's not surprising that Thompson looks a surprised more often than not.  Somehow when she and Hoffman get off the train at Paddington, they arrive in Trafalgar Square. They do quite a bit of walking along the South Bank too (including trailing around the second-hand book stalls that we remember from our last visit); but this is mostly to show off the scenery and the outdoor globe string lights - it has little to do with the movie.  

The Barchester series should have been worth watching.  We survived The Warden section of it, but didn't feel inclined to pick up any more, even though Alan Rickman hadn't appeared by that time.  Donald Pleasance played the Warden who's charged with living off money that isn't rightfully his; Pleasance plays this mild-mannered man as someone deeply troubled.  In fact he plays him as Pleasance, who always looked troubled on screen, when he wasn't looking maniacal.  But the character is more than that.  There's little light and shade, and little warmth (except in one of the scenes with the woolly-thinking Bishop, who just wants peace and quiet and no conflict).  Nigel Hawthorne chews up the scenery as Pleasance's son-in-law, and if the episodes had been taken at the pace he provides, they would have been excellent.  Somehow everything else is pale and sluggish around him.   Everything looks good and authentic, but the lighting throughout is very bland and ordinary, without shadows or contrast.  It's probably somewhat typical of its vintage as a series, although I don't think that can be entirely the reason.

I'd love to have seen these two novels done better (they're amongst the top of Trollope's oeuvre, I think), but somehow this series doesn't get them there.

Kung Fu Panda 2

Went and saw the second Kung Fu Panda last night (in 2D, by the way, rather than 3D - it seems that the former might be a preferable way to watch it). It doesn't stand still for long (although that didn't stop a young child running up and down behind the seats at the back - where we were sitting from about three-quarters of the way through) and in fact there are times when the action is so fast-paced it's hard for the eye to keep up with it - at least on first viewing. I don't think my eyes have aged in this regard particularly, but movies do move very fast these days (just check out a 2000s action movie with one from the sixties, say) perhaps because those working on them get so used to what's passing before their eyes it seems slow to them. I think seeing the movie again on DVD would help clarify some of the action scenes which were often a blur in my mind.

It has some gung-ho humour and some tender moments (usually undercut by Jack Black's Panda character) and occasionally some wit. The story's not bad, though fairly uncomplicated, and even though it's as predicatable as the average cowboys and indians movie used to be, it's entertaining.

I think its greatest achievement however has little to do with the action or story. This is something that's quite subtle in its own way and something that's actually unnecessary. I'm referring to the design of the film, the look. From the outset this is a beautiful film with backdrops and scenery so finely executed and with such artistry that the movie is worth watching for these alone. Yes, of course, it's quite amazing to see the individual bits of fur on the Panda, for example, wafting in the breeze, but these are a textual feature that's been done well for some time in animated movies. What I found most striking was the sense of realness in much of the texture: the clothing hangs and looks like real material; daft items like the knitting wool that sits on the Ping the goose's head is tangible - even more than the creature it's sitting on. The water dripping in the Shifu the Master's first scene has the look and feel of real water. The roofs on the houses look like real tiles. And there are dozens of other examples.

Again all these things may not be new to modern animation, but they're done with a finesse here that's quite extraordinary. (They were a distinctive feature of another animated feature, one that didn't become a big hit - Fantastic Mr Fox - but I don't remember them being as vivid as these ones are.)

This movie also makes a feature of telling two backstories in different visual styles (as the tale of the three brothers is told in the second-to-last Harry Potter movie). Near the beginning it fills us in on the way in which the Peacock (voiced by Gary Oldman) became a villain; this section has the look of Chinese paper puppetry rather than animation, and is a delight to the eye. The other story tells how Po came to be adopted by the Goose. This is done is a sketchier style, somewhat more akin to the approach used by Japanese animation artists.

I'd be happy to see this movie again, just for the breathtaking look of it all.

Streep and Adams

I watched two movies over the last two nights which both starred Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. The first was Julie and Julia, the second, Doubt. The first might be a chick flick, by description, the secondly is a serious adaptation of a seriously successful stage play.
I'd heard some reports about J&J which made me think I didn't want to see it; in fact it turned out to be a delight - well, at least the Meryl Streep part of it did. Amy Adams played a thirtyish woman, rather self-centred, not terribly sure of herself, who is persuaded by her husband to blog about cooking her way through Julia Child's cookbook, in a year.
Streep plays Child about fifty years earlier, at a time when she was trying to find out what she wanted to do with her life. And did find out, most successfully, as it turned out.
There were quite a few connections between the two characters, (both have 'saints' for husbands) who never actually meet in the movie (though there was a hint towards the end that it might happen), and the thing flits back and forth between the two periods with considerable ease.
The revelation of the film, however, is Streep's performance. It could be described as a striking imitation of Child - and everything is there: the awkwardness because of her height, the delicious laugh, the nonsequiters, the mutterings and mumblings, the surprised little noises. But it's much more than an actress playing the part of a person most of us will have seen on TV at some point. Streep thoroughly inhabits the role, so that you seldom think about her 'performing'; she just scoops Child up holus bolus and presents her as she would have been if she herself had made a movie at the time.
Streep has always had an uncanny knack of getting the voice right in a movie - I can still 'hear' her in the Australian film she made about Lindy Chamberlain. She had that accent down pat, and managed to make herself Australian, if that's the word I'm looking for. And she's done it in other movies too. But her Julia Child is a marvel. And the scene with her sister, with both of them full of delight at seeing each other again, and full of fun and full of suggestions that there might be a 'tall' man for the sister to marry (she opts for a small bloke, as it happens) is one of the best scenes in the movie.
Amy Adams has a slightly thankless role; she's never going to get the sympathy Streep gains, and there are scenes where she's required to turn the audience off her. And does.
Her role in Doubt is similar: another slightly self-centred character who's either more naive than she looks, or just a little conniving. I wasn't sure what to think about her. Still, she's a good deal more sympathetic than the Streep character, who is the devil incarnate when she gets going. Sure, she has a couple of sympathy scenes with an elderly nun who's losing her sight, but these are utterly overwhelmed by her sheer awfulness in every other scene. The priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman in an ambiguous role that never quite clarifies where he's at) calls her the Dragon in an early scene. She's far more than that. She's prepared to lose her soul to prove her point, and possibly does.
The story, set in 1964, centres around a large Catholic school run by nuns, with a priest theoretically in charge, but pushed to one side by Sister Aloysius. She doesn't like anything he does, doesn't like his sermons (which are short and punchy), doesn't like his use of a ballpoint pen, his need to have three lumps of sugar in his tea, his longish fingernails, but most of all, his concern for the one black boy in the school. Sister A takes it into her head that the priest is homosexual, and perhaps he is - neither the movie nor Hoffman ever allow it to be definite - and that he's intent on corrupting the boy. She determinedly brings him down - at least as far as her limited realm is concerned (he's given a 'promotion' at another parish, and school) - and makes sure that her control-freak nature is satisfied to the max. But at the end....doubts.
The film has some marvellous sustained scenes lifted directly from the play, I guess, but otherwise is opened out naturally, without any sense that scenes are broken up just for the sake of it. I've seen some of it twice now, and it remained as powerful on a second viewing as on the first.
Incidentally, the Julie character in J&J is described in the credits as being 'now a writer.' Julie Powell's second book, Cleaving: a Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, which details affairs she had after the first book's publication, as well as her experiences learning the butcher trade, was published November 30, 2009.
So much for her husband the saint....
Photo is of Julie Powell

Stranger than Fiction

Watched the movie, Stranger than Fiction, last night. I didn't realise my son had recorded it onto our hard drive recently, and was pleased to catch up with it.

Will Ferrell does a great job as the very uptight hero, Harold Crick, who would have got on with his exceptionally boring life if it hadn't been for the fact that he's occasionally begun to hear a detailed narration of his life. Somehow he communicates boring without being boring; he's quite endearing, in fact. His narrator is the ever-wonderful Emma Thompson, here playing a famous writer so stricken with writer's block that she's gaunt, drawn and haggard, and as uptight in her own way as Harold is in his his.

Queen Latifah and Dustin Hoffman round out the main roles, and the somewhat surprised romantic female lead is played by Maggie Gyllenhaal (whatever happened to the days when film stars had names that rolled off your tongue?)

Zach Helm, the scriptwriter, has carefully avoiding explaining too much: we have no idea why an apparently real person should suddenly find himself to be a character in someone's book, and no idea how this all works at the end, when 'character' and author eventually meet. By sidestepping that possible complication, Helm is able to focus on the people in the story, and give us a few comments on life and death and the fact that like it or not, we all face death at some time - even if, as Harold remarks rather tearfully, it's just not convenient at the moment. It's also slightly unlikely that someone as wild as Gyllenhaal's character would really fall so readily for someone so boring/oddball as Harold, but somehow it works in the context of the movie. Only Ferrell, perhaps, could make the line, 'I want you' sound both romantic and physical.

Looking back at the list of quotes on imdb.com I realise again that the dialogue - and narration - in this movie is a lot sharper than you first think. And the humour is subtle; very little of it has that TV sitcom style of: person A makes an odd remark, person B caps it with a laugh line. And there's quite a lot of fun had with the idea of what a story is, how it works, whether it's a comedy or tragedy, and whether all of us have this kind of sense of being part of a story written by someone else.

In the trivia section related to this film, there's this interesting paragraph: The last names of all the characters (and the bus line and publishing firm names) are the names of mathematicians, scientists, engineers, artists, etc. (Harold) Francis Crick: with Watson and Wilkins found the structure of DNA; (Ana) Blaise Pascal: French mathematician and philosopher; (Karen) Gustave Eiffel: engineer and designer of the Eiffel Tower; (Penny) M.C. Escher: Dutch graphic artist; (Dr.) Magnus Gustaf Mittag-Leffler: Swedish mathematician; (Professor Jules) David Hilbert: German mathematician; (Doctor) Gerardus Mercator: 16th century Flemish cartographer; (Kronecker Bus Line) Leopold Kronecker: German-born mathematician and logician; (Banneker Press) Benjamin Banneker: free African American mathematician, astronomer, clockmaker, and publisher; (Dr. Cayly) Arthur Cayley, 19th century British mathematician. Even Dave (no last name) seems to be a reference to the main character from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

It's hard to know how people pick these things up, but it's interesting that they do! (Even harder to know what sort of people pick up the goofs on movies....are they totally focused on looking for inconsistencies?)

Hook

I noticed in Roger Ebert’s book, Awake in the Dark, that he classes Stephen Spielberg’s movie, Hook, as one of Spielberg's failures. This surprises me; it’s a superbly made movie, has excellent performances from Dustin Hoffman and Bob Hoskins, (who form a hilarious partnership), a controlled one from Robin Williams that keeps the character in perspective; two marvellous kids – Charlie Korsmo and Amber Scott; and solid supporting performances from Maggie Smith, Julia Roberts and Caroline Goodall.
When I first saw it a few things grated: the roller-skating Lost Boys and some of their other toys that seemed out of place, and Julia Roberts herself. But 16 years on these are minor quibbles. Roberts exudes her usual warmth and has the disadvantage of almost never acting ‘live’ with anyone, which she overcomes in general. The updating of the Lost Boys is woven into the story without much problem, and once accepted, is no longer a concern. The Lost Boys themselves are a marvellous bunch, wonderfully cast, and the performance by Dante Basco as Rufio is full of emotion. (Basco, incidentally, is one of four brothers all working in Hollywood and on TV.)
I’ve watched the movie several times over the years, and it always resonates with me, more than I remember E.T. doing so. The whole business with the father/son thing has particular emotional content for me, and perhaps makes me more partial to it, but it isn’t just that. Spielberg takes a mythic quality story and extends it in a number of directions and manages to make it all work. The design of the movie is a delight, full of magical touches (the appearance of the ‘hook’ throughout, for instance) and there is a great deal of subtle humour (when Tinkerbell flies Peter to Never-Neverland, a tramp on the bridge is lifted off his feet as they pass – not in close-up, but quite casually as part of the shot). Furthermore there’s considerable emotion in the piece: after a number of ‘casual’ and sometimes comic pirate deaths, there’s the real death of Rufio at the end. And the gradual disgust felt by Jack at his father’s lack of interest and lack of ability to save him, is strongly portrayed.
So, Roger, I think for once you were wrong. Maybe the popcorn wasn’t tasting so good that day.