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Let Me In (2010)
Essentially a faithful remake of the Swedish pre-teen vampire romance, Let the Right One In, this American reinterpretation loses points in originality and freshness but makes up for it with a bigger budget and better acting. Even fans of the original, and count me as one, must admit that Chloe Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass) as a pint-sized vampire stuck forever in pre-pubescence, and Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) as her aging caretaker, are upgrades. The true surprise is the eerie assuredness of the entire production from director Matt Reeves, he of shaky-cam Cloverfield fame. The entire film just feels so placidly precise, even as it draws tension and sets up for one vicious poolside climax. Some of the audience unfriendly moments from the original have been exorcised (say goodbye to lingering gender identity questions), but Let Me In still happily dwells in an unsettling place, forcing its characters to do questionable things in the name of companionship and forcing the audience to decide how they fell about that. Also, the film still retains its ambiguity for interpretation; whether you view it as a depressing saga of use and abuse, or an disaffected teen romance is entirely up to you. Let Me In won’t grab peoples’ attention in the same way its Scandinavian predecessor did, but it doesn’t screw it up either. And these days, that’s got to count for a lot.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Never Let Me Go (2010)
You’ll be excused for mistaking Never Let Me Go as one of those austere boardinghouse dramas the English are fond of cranking out. I mean it even has Keira Knightley in the thing for goodness sakes. Pretty lily-white British actors trying to find their place in a reserved society spanning the 1970s to the mid 1990s. You’d be forgiven for stifling a yawn. But then Never Let Me Go takes a sudden left turn into a realm of science fiction morality play. It becomes something much deeper and menacing. I am about to go into some major spoilers concerning the sinister premise of the movie, so if you’d prefer to stay pure then politely excuse yourself from the remainder of this review and come back at a later time. I won’t think less of you but only if you promise to come back.
Kathy (Carey Mulligan) and her pals Tommy (Andrew Garfield) and Ruth (Knightley) all grew up in the remote countryside school of Hailsham. It’s like any other school in most regards, except at Hailsham the children all wear monitoring bracelets, are afraid to leave the boundaries of school for fear of being murdered by outside forces, and are told that her physical fitness and internal health are of “paramount importance.” Figured it out yet? My then-partner leaned over and whispered, “Are these kids organ slaves?” Kathy and her friends find out their true identity when an outside third-grade teacher (Sally Hawkins) takes pity on them. She reveals that the students of Hailsham are clones whose sole purpose is to be raised into healthy adults who will then give “donations” to the ailing public at large. Most clones will go through one to four “donations” before “completing,” unless they so desire. You see Never Let Me Go exists in a realm where medical science has made momentous breakthroughs and now people can live to 100 years of age on average. Kathy and her friends are the dirty details.
The rest of the movie flashes through our trio’s teen years. Kathy has always been kind and affectionate to Tommy, but before she could seal the deal Ruth swooped in and took Tommy for her own. Kathy has waited in vain for the two to break up, but that day just never comes. The trio ventures out to a small farmhouse in their teens to do some work and see the outside world. They’re living with a few other Hailsham alums that show them the knack for social interaction with outsiders. There are two rumors at play. One is that the Hailsham alums think they’ve found Ruth’s “original,” the person she’s been cloned from. The second rumor has greater significance: if two Hailsham students can prove that they’re in love, deep, honest love, then they can defer their donations for a few years. This idea takes hold of Tommy and consumes him. Except, we don’t really know whether Ruth or Kathy will be his partner in love.
So why don’t these people run away, or fight back, or do anything of defiance once they discover the horrible truth that will befall them? I have read several critics taking the film to task for being so painfully prosaic and passive, and Never Let Me Go can admittedly fall prey to those detractions at times. However, this is not the Hollywood version where the abused (clones) fight back for their survival and regain independence in a hostile world. That movie was called The Island, plus the several other films that Michael Bay sort of ripped off and then added extra loud explosions. Never Let Me Go has nary an explosion or moment of triumphant revolution. There is no revolt coming because the film doesn’t want to let anyone off the hook; these people are society’s collective collateral damage. They have been bred to be walking, talking, mostly demure, fleshy warehouses for spare parts. It’s only a matter of time before they leave everything on the operating room table, and these people benignly accept their doomed fate (“We all complete”). They march forward, trying to find some level of dignity and beauty before they get the call for “donations.” These people don’t know what it means to rebel; they have no real concept of liberty. They’ve been conditioned since childhood to obey, and that’s the whole point of the film. They have no self-preservation instincts. Likely any cloned child that was expressing strong feelings of boldness was removed, and destroyed, so as not to taint the rest of group. These people are like gown-up versions of veal. They’ve been cultivated since birth for the purpose of destruction, and their knowledge of the world is limited and cruelly self-serving. Watching innocent characters march off to a merciless fate can be very emotionally draining. It should also make you angry.
These people are hopeless so that the movie’s full impact is absorbed. This isn’t some far off nightmarish scenario, because we as a society are already reaping the rewards of a lifestyle, a lifestyle that we’re loath to think about the mechanics of how we got so fat and happy. I can go to a Walmart and buy a T-shirt for a dollar. I am a happy consumer, but what did it take for me to get that product at such a discounted rate? Sure there are variables up the wazoo, but there are many negative factors that go into why that price stays low, invisible hand of the market be damned. Workers clock long hours in unsafe conditions in order to meet supply, earning a penance just enough to keep them alive and moving product. Environmental concerns are overlooked because that would mess with production. Long-term generational poverty can develop. The worker has ceased to be a person and is merely a dispenser of product, much like our clones in the film. This is not a definitive example of what goes on in the world, mind you. Never Let Me Go isn’t some far off scenario; we’re already there, albeit less explicitly. If the price of gas rose a dollar a gallon but it meant that people in other countries could have safe, uncontaminated water and enough food to stay healthy, what do you think would happen?
With all of that said, Never Let Me Go can’t fully fight the trappings of inert drama. For two hours we are watching somewhat nice, somewhat bland British kids gawk and smile their way toward the inevitable. The conceit calls for the breeding of rather milquetoast personalities. It simultaneously makes the characters more innocent and less emotionally involving. The screenplay relies on our sense of outrage and injustice to fill in the gaps of emotional connection. There are little molehills of characterization at best. You’re supposed to be choked up on indignation and sadness so as to not notice that the threesome of character are all rather good-natured but boring. That even may be an aim of the screenplay to accentuate the terrible fate that awaits, or maybe I’m just being overly analytical. Never Let Me Go reveals its awful truth fairly early at about the 40-minute mark, making sure that the audience is fully aware that we are definitely not headed for a happy ending. As it is, the actors are all lovely and talented but there’s only so much silent emoting and teary eyes can conjure.
It’s credit to the talents of the actors that you do feel a storm of emotions from such otherwise frail characters. Mulligan (An Education) showcases her great gifts for communicating sadness. Her face just crinkles up, her eyes get glassy, and you want to hug her. She’s our dramatic linchpin. Her looks of conflict and yearning do well to communicate the inner struggle of her character’s abbreviated life. There’s a lot left to the imagination and Mulligan once again crushes it. Garfield (The Social Network) is stuck playing a wishy-washy character, which makes him seem a bit thick at times. He’s the most naïve and hopeful of the three, so when those hopes get crushed again and again his breakdowns have the most emotional heft. Knightley (Pride and Prejudice) has been in six period films since 2005, so she’s got this thing down pat. Ruth is a bit more assertive and angry than her friends, and it’s a pleasure seeing a more calculating side from the actress. It seems like the filmmakers had a troublesome time trying to downplay the attractive features of their cast. So it seems that they relied on the actors eating less. Knightley, and particularly Garfield, look rather gaunt and puckish, even before they begin “donations.”
I’ve gone this far without even mentioning director Mark Romanek’s (One Hour Photo) contributions, or the fact that the film is based off the 2005 novel by author Kazuo Ishiguru (Remains of the Day) and is adapted by Alex Garland (28 Days Later). Great artists that shaped the vision of this film. It’s a shame then that the impact of Never Let Me Go is blunted. It’s an intelligent, poetic, haunting, and emotionally wrenching film experience, and yet it could have been far more penetrating and devastating. The passive nature of the characters accentuates their doom and our sense of outrage. But that same passive nature makes them less than engaging characters. It’s been days since I saw the film and it still lingers in my memory, a testament to the moral quandaries and acting prowess. The existential drama of the film is better suited for the page where the questions of identity and morality can be given more careful and rewarding examination. The movie has an oddly detached feel to so much suffering. Never Let Me Go is a hard film to let go but also a hard film to truly embrace.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Dear John (2010)
Best-selling author Nicholas Sparks is probably a perfectly reasonable human being. I’m sure he’s great at parties and that people love him. He may even have a dynamite recipe for sugar cookies. But I don’t know what happened to Sparks to turn him into the romance genre’s angel of death. His novels have followed a familiar practice of big Third Act deaths that usually deny readers their cherished happy endings. Is the motive to push people to make the most of our preciously little time spent on Earth? Is Sparks just sadistic and has found the secret to eternal life — the tears of millions of housewives and teenager girls. Whatever his rationale, another commonality for Sparks is that the film adaptations of his books are pretty corny and dreadful. A Walk to Remember, Nights in Rodanthe, Message in a Bottle; all about romance ultimately denied, none coming close to watchable. Dear John can at least be called watchable; however, watching should be limited to the confines of your living room TV when there’s nothing else on.
It’s the spring of 2001, and John Tyree (Channing Tatum) is enjoying his two-week leave from the military. He’s out surfing the fine North Carolina beaches when he rescues the handbag of Savannah (Amanda Seyfried) from being washed away. They two of them casually chat and soon those chats lead to barbecue invitations, parental visits, and kisses in the rain (a romantic movie tradition). Savannah takes an interest in John’s eccentric father (Richard Jenkins) because she recognizes his condition as autism. She’s been helping to watch her neighbor’s autistic child. Savannah would like to start her own horse camp for the autistic (sounds like an insurance nightmare). Life seems so full of promise and John promises to be back as soon as his military commitment expires in six months. Then 9/11 happens. John re-enlists and extends his tour another two years. This places great strain on his relationship with Savannah, but they write each other countless letters that manage to find John no matter what far-flung village he’s stationed at. Can their love exists on a series of hand-written letters? Well, look no further than the classic implications from the film’s title.
Dear John goes through all the traditional Nicholas Sparks waterworks trademarks: young love leads to yearning, which leads to heartbreak, which leads to more yearning, which then inevitably leads toward one of the leads dying and everyone learning some sort of shallow profound meaning about life, blah blah blah. There are plenty of heightened melodramatic elements thrown into a fairly traditional, unspectacular love story, but all potent potential moments of drama feel underwhelming pretty much because the audience doesn’t care. John and Savannah are perfectly nice people and their love has that hopeful bloom, but their relationship is no more involving than watching a pretend couple in a commercial for greeting cards or life insurance. These people are vanilla. It makes it astounding, then, that such highly charged elements like cancer autism, and 9/11 fail to leave any impact. Dear John confuses listing dramatic events as drama itself. The dramatic stakes feel entirely too mellow and the film generally has a detached feeling, like it’s purposely distanced from the material for fear of getting too involved. This is a relationship movie that has its own commitment issues.
The military angle is respectfully explored, though not in much depth. John is torn apart by the pull of returning to his beloved but also of serving his country and, more personally, keeping his band of brothers in arms together. It’s a complicated scenario but the military commitment is another item in a list that should grab your interest but fail to do so. 9/11 isn’t given any deeper consideration other than the fact that it serves as a roadblock between our two lovebirds. If you want to see a more nuanced, complicated, and empathetic view of today’s overburdened military, check out the movie Stop-Loss, which also stars Tatum.
The film drops any facade of being a romantic drama about midway through when Seyfried gets completely sidelined. She’s less a character and more an agreeable plot device; she’s self-aware and kind and knowing and receptive yet also naive. This makes her sudden character shift rather jarring, which seemingly paints Savannah as extremely co-dependant. Dear John then transforms into a serviceable father/son drama. There are some nice and moving moments between John and his father; this should have been the real focal point of the movie. Jenkins acts circles around everybody in this movie. It’s wonderful seeing a grown-up in these kind of movies show the kids ho this acting thing is done. Tatum actually might become a pretty good actor. He convincingly plays the more emotional moments well. He may very well prove to be the Patrick Swayze of his generation. Tatum can dance (Step Up), make the girls cry, and also handle some rock-socking action (G.I. Joe, Fighting, most of Tatum’s other movies). I think there’s an actor buried beneath that daunting physique waiting to blossom. Don’t disappoint me, Channing.
Dear John is a formulaic romance trained to seek pre-programmed audience responses (“Now you will laugh. Now you will cry. Now you will cry again. Now you will once again continue to cry…”). Lasse Halstrom (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Cassanova) directed this movie but you’d never be able to notice. I don’t want to be too harsh on the film because the acting is pleasant the story isn’t repulsive and does have some good moments, but mostly the movie comes across as bland and remote. The romance seems absent a beating heart to keep things moving. It’s all too lifeless. The character of Savannah best summarizes Dear John as a whole: mild pretense of wisdom, pretty to look at, genial, but fairly bland and difficult to convince is worth your valuable time.
Nate’s Grade: C
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A Single Man (2009)
Tom Ford is a rare human being. He seems to be good at everything. The prominent fashion designer has never been averse to risk. He left work in America to toil for Gucci, a faltering European luxury brand. He became the creative director from 1994-2004, eventually leaving to form his own company. And after decades of success in the world of fashion, Ford decided to make the jump into movies. From fashion mogul to film director, nobody else has done it, let alone done it with such acclaim right out of the gate. A Single Man has been met with rich praise and Ford has been touted as a natural filmmaker. Perhaps Ford’s odyssey into moving pictures will inspire others to drop their needle and thread and pick up a camera instead. Who wants to see a Project Runway/Project Greenlight crossover?
In the early 1960s, George Falconer (Colin Firth) is a 50-year-old English professor still recovering from the loss of his love. Jim (Matthew Goode) and George had been together for over 16 years, that is, until Jim died in a car accident one rainy night. George has never fully recovered since that awful night. He doesn’t intend to waste any more time waiting for a reunion; at the end of the day, he will kill himself. He lays out his suit, empties his safety deposit box, and writes letters to his remaining friends and family. This will be George Falconer’s last day in Los Angeles, but perhaps in the meantime he’ll discover more reasons to give life another chance.
Ford comes from the world of high fashion and here he proves that he should be taken seriously as a filmmaker. He has a sumptuous eye for visuals. A Single Man looks great in every scene. The costumes and period details are impeccable and may even give the historical consultants from Mad Men some due pause. The cinematography by Eduard Grau can become irritating because the colors go from drab to vibrant, reflecting the main character’s changing moods (lifted spirits = brighter colors!). At first it’s a neat visual gimmick but as it persists it becomes a crude blinking light, inelegantly summing up what the movie feels it cannot communicate. At times it just feels like piling on. I don’t need the color to drain from the screen to understand that George is sad.
Ford’s adaptation skills, on the other hand, could use some more polish. He and David Scearce spent years adapting the 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood. They even added the whole suicide angle, which becomes their narrative crutch. There is a refreshingly funny sequence where George tries to act out his suicide position and goes from the shower to his bed, finally deciding upon shooting himself inside a zipped sleeping bag to cover the ensuing mess. This little five-minute stretch is like an oasis of humor in the super serious desert that is the rest of the film. The second half of the film is dominated by a will-he-or-won’t-he flirtation with a good-looking lithe college student (Nicholas Hoult, the boy all grown up from About a Boy). The kid shows definite interest. The romantic angle syncs up with George’s lost love and proves to be a welcomed distraction to George’s dejection. However, their connection is extremely thin, with Hoult making flirty eyes and inquisitively tilting his head for an hour. The romantic story exists as a means of making sure the narrative can mend George’s broken heart.
The story meanders for too long with a few revealing flashbacks, but honestly how hard is it to wring pathos from a suicidal man? How hard is it to write a middle-aged man taking stock of his life, getting his affairs in order, and saying his fuzzy goodbyes to people who don?t realize the significance. Everything gains magnitude under that prism; every pause, every inhalation, every wistful glance becomes riddled with deeper subtextual meaning, or so we are lead to believe. Every moment can unlock a new memory or secret, like when he sniffs a stranger’s dog and recalls his former beloved pet he shared with Jim. Under this guide, it is hard to tell whether the movie is doing any actual dramatic lifting. So much is supposed to be interpreted in the blankness, which the audience is entrusted to craft meaning to the character’s nostalgic pit stops. “Oh, he must be taking in the scent of the ocean one last time,” or, “Oh, he must be thinking about… something. But he’s gotta definitely be thinking about something. Something deep.” Can you see how this might get tedious after a while?
A Single Man could have afforded more peaks into George’s background and less of Julianne Moore. She plays an old boozy Brit friend of his from back in the day. Her moments onscreen, while limited, are a chore to get through because Moore just consumes her characters sadness. She gets drunk on the one emotion she’s been hired to play. She’s certainly not embarrassing herself like in 2006’s Freedomland, but this isn’t a performance for her illustrious highlight reel. I don’t care if she does get nominated for a supporting actress Oscar, as seems all but certain; I expect more from Moore.
Firth is the whole movie so it’s a relief that he turns in the performance of his career. He gives a complex portrayal that doesn’t nicely fit into the typical Firth cinematic creature: priggish, clever, dry, ultimately a good guy. Here you can practically see the gears in his head processing the last moments of life. The extent he can convey with his eyes or simply the corners of his mouth are exquisite. He provides so much of what the narrative does not. He’s a sad creature mired in one long day of existential grief, but I need more from this character than what Ford affords.
George Falconer gives a dandy speech about the fear of the minority, almost outing himself to his college class, but for a flick about an older gay male passing through life to be an invisible member of society, Ford adopts a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to narrative. He buttons up his characters emotions. Understatement is lovely when there’s enough to work with. That’s the issue with A Single Man. Ford hasn’t given himself enough to work with, instead forcing the audience to make up the work by inserting meaning into every furtive brow and pained expression. This is a meditation on a life in passing, told through a series of small vignettes. I need more than a melancholy man listening to the clock strike seconds off his soon-to-be-ended life. If I wanted to watch that movie I’d check out the latest Gus van Sant art house masturbations.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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(500) Days of Summer (2009)
It doesn’t take long before you realize that (500) Days of Summer is a different kind of romantic comedy. In fact, to slap that genre title onto it does a disservice. I’ve watched plenty of romantic comedies (a notable rise in viewership since getting married in 2006), and the traditional Hollywood romantic comedy exists in a world not our own. It is a sitcom world where people blurt out their feelings, interact in bizarre manners, and get into wacky hijinks and contrived misunderstandings. These tales also exist in “movie world”; (500) Days of Summer, on the other hand, is refreshingly recognizable. Granted the characters still have fantastic if slightly off kilter jobs (writer of greeting cards), and the characters live in fabulous and gigantic apartments. Excusing those contextual quirks, the movie is upfront about its intention. “This is a story of boy meets girl,” a narrator intones, “but it is not a love story.”
Tom (Joeseph Gordon-Levitt) recounts the 500 days he has spent with his ex-girlfriend, Summer (Zooey Deschanel), the girl he aches over because he feels her to be his “one.”
This is a movie about love and relationships but it has such a wider scope. It’s perceptive and insightful in the way that human beings engage in coupling. Tom ping-pongs between memories, tying together happy moments and the failed recapturing of those exact happy moments later. I enjoyed how reflexive the film can be with romance. When Tom is infatuated with Summer he lists her attributes: “I love her smile. I love her hair. I love her knees. I love how she licks her lips before she talks. I love her heart-shaped birthmark on her neck.” And then when he is frustrated with Summer, he lists her faults: “I hate her crooked teeth. I hate the way she smacks her lips. I hate her knobby knees. I hate that cockroach shape splotch on her neck.” I appreciate a movie that tries to tackle the complexities of love in a manner that doesn’t seem trite or sensational. A movie doesn’t have to say anything new about romance (is it even possible to scoop the Romantic poets?), but it can still say something true and revealing. It is a story about love, but not a love story.
It also helps that the characters are meaty and are played by capable actors. Tom is a smart enough guy, though a bit of a foolish romantic. He buys into the love that is talked about in pop songs and greeting cards; he’s not naïve per se but plenty vulnerable enough to get his heart broken in the real world. Summer is an independent woman who says at the start that she is not looking for a boyfriend. She doesn’t wish to be constrained by a relationship and wants to enjoy the carefree days of youth. Yet Tom persists thinking he can wear her down or win her over, waiting for Summer to cave and find solace in Tom’s embrace. He fancies Summer as the “girl of his dreams,” though everyone else isn’t so sure. His little sister argues, “Just because she likes the same bizzaro crap you do doesn’t mean she’s your soul mate.” One of Tom’s friends has a really nice monologue describing his “perfect girl,” and these descriptions noticeably differ from that of his long-term high school sweetheart. But then he stops, reflects, and says that’s what his “perfect girl” would be like, but his current girlfriend, well, she’s better than his imaginary version of a perfect girl. But Summer isn’t a fantasy of romantic perfection, she’s a person. She has her own desires, her own insecurities, her own ambitions, and her own life to lead. These two feel like actual human beings and not stock players, though (500) Days of Summer does carry its own share of stock parts like the square boss (Clark Gregg) and the goofy, horny friend (Geoffrey Arend).
The saying “the camera loves” somebody seems outdated, old fashioned, and liberally applied. But when it comes to actress Zooey Deschanel, well, the camera just loves her. It’s hard not to fall in love with this blue-eyed beauty. She’s adorable, but not in an overly quirky way, and she’s smart, but still approachable, and altogether lovely. She is the face of unrequited love. She can be cold and aloof and jubilant. Deschanel plays the complications and complexities of an enigmatic woman who refuses to abide by labels. Her last conversation with Tom manages to be both crushing and inspirational. Her chemistry with Gordon-Levitt feels entirely naturalistic and pleasant. Gordon-Levitt has been cranking out strong performances in indie films like Brick, Mysterious Skin, and The Lookout. He’s quite possibly becoming one of the premier young actors working today. He has an everyman capability but he also can turn on the charm in a way that doesn’t seem forced, like Shia LaBeouf. Gordon-Levitt is the anchor of this movie and we see the world and Summer through his eyes. He brings great vulnerability to his role and we feel each step of his emotional journey. Both actors deliver terrific performances that don’t stoop to playing by the conventions of the romantic comedy.
The nonlinear story structure seems like a gimmick until you realize that the writers, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, have cleverly freed themselves from the contrivances of movie romance time. MRT, for those who prefer their nomenclature in the shorthand, is that unbelievable breadth of time where the characters fall head over in heels in love with each other. It always feels so fast and far too fleeting, so that when complications have to arise late in the second act they too feel rushed. You could apply a healthy dose of montages to signify massive time passages, but those get old unless you’re Sylvester Stallone training to fight another boxing match. (500) Days of Summer tells you right away that this story takes place over a year and a half, and Day One isn’t when boy got girl but when boy met girl. By skipping around to specific dates, Neustadter and Weber are hitting only the highpoints, the memorable moments, and leaving out the unforeseen groundwork. All those mundane yet essential moments of pulling together a successful relationship are there, they are just now implicit. They are implied in the time jumps. The relationship between Tom and Summer, therefore, exists in an expanse of time that feels believable. The nonlinear structure also belies the way our memories work. Human beings don’t remember everything in a straight line, especially in matters of the heart.
There’s a lot of drama to be mined here with the breakup territory, but the movie is also playful and funny. Director Marc Webb, he of the video music world, pokes fun at other filmic expressions of love. At one point, Tom struts down the street and becomes the center of a lively choreographed dance sequence complete with animated blue birds. At another point, during Tom’s heartbreak, the movie descends through Bergman and Fellini visual tropes. It simultaneously communicates Tom’s emotional highs and lows and satirizes the histrionic nature of his feelings. Truly, when one’s in love you couldn’t feel better, or worse, but upon retrospect you can see how silly such in-the-heat-of-the-moment proclamations can be. There’s also a scene later in the film where Tom attends a party that Summer invited him to. The screen cuts in half, and on one side we see Tom’s expectations of what will happen that night and on the other side we see what actually occurs. The visual symmetry is interesting and a great glimpse inside the mind of a hopeful romantic.
(500) Days of Summer manages to be breezy, moving, delightful, perceptive, charming, and just a great time at the movies. It’s a story about falling in love for the right reasons with the wrong girl. Summer isn’t the villain of the piece but her own woman, and she can be fickle and frustrating but she is not cruel or indifferent. Tom is desperately in search for his “one true love” but he’s playing by a checklist he’s drawn up from movies, TV, and love songs. All of this could have been sticky and formulaic (in fact, the dynamic vaguely resembles the characters from the abysmal Ugly Truth), but the filmmakers and the talented actors make the movie feel honest and relatable. The nonlinear narrative allows the movie to simultaneously be more playful, believable, and actually easier to understand, linking selective memories. No matter your current romantic situation, (500) Days of Summer is a slick antidote to Hollywood’s rom-com factory line.
Nate’s Grade: A
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The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009)
You think your romantic foibles are complicated? Based on Audrey Niffenegger’s best-selling novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, we follow the life of Henry (Eric Bana), a librarian stricken with the unique genetic disorder of uncontrollable time travel. He first discovered this condition when he was six years old and disappeared out of his mother’s car, only to rematerialize and watch her die from afar. An older version of Henry happened to also be on hand and fill in his younger self on the details. Henry will randomly move backwards and forwards through time, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. One of the side effects of spontaneous time travel is, naturally, nudity, as Henry travels in the buff a la the Terminator. So usually the first thing he must do when he winds up some place new is find some clothes. Henry seems destined to be a sad and lonely man, but then one day Clare (Rachel McAdams) enters his life, confessing that she’s known Henry for years and been waiting for this exact moment to arrive. She asserts herself and asks Henry for a dinner date that’s been in the works for some time. They fall in love, or fall further in love in Clare’s case, and try to make a relationship work despite Henry’s hiccups through time.
There’s a tenderness to the movie, though I found it tricky to fully engage in the characters. Much of the movie concerns the plot complications that befall such a strained and unique relationship. The flick gives new meaning to cold feet when Henry literally vanishes during his wedding, only to reappear as a mid-40s version of himself (hey makeup department, you couldn’t do more to effectively age Bana than add a dash of grey?). There is a great mind-bending section where Clare cheats (?) on Henry with… a younger version of himself. I was interested in the subdued proceedings and I felt underpinnings of empathy for Henry and Clare, but then my mind wandered into something a little darker and pessimistic. Now, The Time Traveler’s Wife is a polished traditional romance despite the sci-fi trappings but I started thinking about if what I was witnessing was actual romance? Henry first visits Clare as a child, telling her he will be her eventual husband. She falls in love with him in that moment and rejects all other suitors, knowing with absolute certainty that she will marry Henry. She just has to find him. And when adult Clare does meet Henry the librarian, he has never seen her before up to that point (it’s not as confusing as it may sound). She’s been waiting years to see his face again and she tells him that they are destined to get married. You see what’s at play here? The romantic plot is a loop where each character supplies the other’s conviction. Henry locked Clare into a life of looking for him and said they would marry, but then the adult Clare is the one who convinces Henry that they will indeed marry, and he tells young Clare this who will then convince Henry, etc. Is there any free will at play here, or is each partner in this relationship being manipulated by the certitude of the other? It’s sort of a metaphysical chicken/egg scenario.
The best portion of the movie comes across during the second half when the movie focuses more on the emotional consequences of Henry’s condition. Early on Henry’s uncontrollable time traveling is played for laughs and some forced and somewhat trivial conflict (oh no, he missed another dinner!). Henry has a chilly relationship with his father (Arliss Howard) until, well, I’m not quite sure, but things improve. In the second half of The Time Traveler’s Wife, the drama gets more serious and intriguing when Clare and Henry attempt to conceive. Henry’s genetic disorder gets passed down to the baby fetuses, which means little babies are vanishing out of the womb and perishing before being zapped back inside. That’s a rather disturbing image and yet it is a thoughtful and plausible problem given the premise. As a result, Clare suffers through several traumatizing miscarriages. But they keep at it because Henry has seen his future lineage, also a time-traveler, and he knows that one of these pregnancies will go full term and become their eventual daughter, Alba (Tatum McCann). It was this storyline that stopped my mind from occasionally wandering and hooked my interest. Perhaps it’s cheap sentiment, but it’s hard not to feel for this loving couple when they endure pregnancies fraught with danger. The movie misses out on a dynamite dramatic opportunity with Alba. If I were adapting this to the screen, I would make sure to include Alba as a grown 30-something woman visiting her father on his deathbed, tearfully informing her dear dad on all the eventful moments that he won’t be around to experience. Picture an adult Alba talking about her own children to her dying father. There wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house. Hollywood, if you’d like to tack on an extra emotional ending to this movie, there’s still time. Call me.
It is here that I must address some key scenes that may pique curiosity. During Henry’s travels, he frequently visits the young child version of Clare. The first time Clare meets her future husband she is a little girl sitting in a meadow on the boundary of her family’s palatial estate. Henry, as he does every time he becomes unstuck through time, arrives in the nearby woods without a stitch on. Director Robert Swentke (Flightplan) and screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin (an Oscar-winner for Ghost) work diligently to make sure the movie walks a very fine tone, and I confess that the scenes between loving child and naked time-traveling man escape creepy pedophilic overtones. Take that blurb for what you will in a romance: “Hey, no pedophilic overtones!”
There are some other complications when it comes to this matter of unexpected time traveling. Firstly, the rules seem to be flexibly applied. At one point Henry is talking about how he cannot prevent his mother’s deadly car accident. The movie professed a destiny-entrenched approach to time travel, meaning every action you think you’re engaging out of free will was predetermined (the TV show Lost also subscribes to this theory). It cuts out time paradoxes. But then in another moment Henry uses his knowledge of the future to win the lottery. So which is it? Are the filmmakers trying to convince me that it was destiny for Henry and Clare to win the lottery, because I’m not buying it. Having a time-traveler for a boyfriend takes out some of the natural drama o relationships when one party can peak ahead. Relationships have danger and excitement and uncertainty to them, but when Henry can just matter-of-factly say, “We’re gonna be fine. We’re still together and in love fifteen years later, I saw it,” well it may make for good romance for some, but it makes for rather inert drama. How can you hope to win arguments? Naturally, the hefty book has been streamlined as much as possible for a mainstream moviegoing audience, which means that Henry’s scope of time traveling is scaled back. At one point he quantum leaps beyond his own lifetime, and because this has never happened before and is really only done to introduce a ticking death clock. I suppose there will always be inconsistencies when it comes to breaking the space-time continuum.
McAdams (The Notebook) is a great choice for the romantic center of the movie. She’s glassy-eyed and smiles so hard in her early sequences you think her dimples are going to explode off her cheery face. She is such a winning presence and her warm-hearted glow powers the character and the movie. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have very good chemistry with her onscreen mate. Henry is a victim of an existential cruel joke. Bana (Munich) is light-footed and makes Henry more than a space-time martyr. He’s somewhat amorphous as a character, a collection of niceties and genial, puppy-dog affection, which means that Henry is routinely upstaged by his genetic condition. However, when Henry faces the specter of his impending death is when the character gets a lot more attention and Bana is able to work his considerable talents. He gets ample opportunities to showcase his time-traveling buttocks. I don’t think too many women out there would be that put off if a naked Eric Bana magically materialized in their bedroom.
The Time Traveler’s Wife is mildly reminiscent of The Lake House, and not just because of the time travel romantic complications. Deep down, these are traditional Hollywood romances with a fresh sci-fi coat of paint. The movie is best if you set the logic portion of your brain off so that inconsistencies and potential contrivances don’t distract from an intriguing story that presents some nice developments. There’s a tender love story here, though the characters don’t leave as much of an impression as they could have with such a plot-heavy romance. It finishes strongly and the mood throughout has a somber bittersweet quality, hammering home the “enjoy the time you have” message. McAdams is darling, Bana gets in the buff, their chemistry isn’t great, and the filmmakers refrain from the material getting overly sentimental or solipsistic. In a summer of relative disappointments, a tricky, clever approach at traditional romance is welcome amidst the explosions and wacky studio comedies.
Nate’s Grade: B
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The Room (2003)
I consider myself to be a connoisseur of crappy cinema, thanks in large part to growing up on the fabulous TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000. To me, truly bad movies can be just as enjoyable to witness as great, competent works of filmic art. So imagine my surprise when it I had never heard of a little flick called The Room until a month ago. I was reading an Entertainment Weekly article about this tiny 2003 movie that has developed a rabid cult following. I felt betrayed. How did I go five years without ever hearing about this movie? The Room is writer/director/star Tommy Wiseau’s magnum opus. It must be seen to be fully believed.
To watch The Room is truly a life-altering experience. This movie goes beyond bad. It’s so bad that it almost seems like Wiseau is a mad genius. This movie is bad on multiple levels and hooks you from the beginning, instantly daring the audience to stick around to see if it gets worse. And it does in the most wonderful ways. If I was stranded on a deserted island and could only bring five movies, right now The Room would be one of them (I may even be tempted to just bring five copies of this movie). Wiseau’s film cannot displace Manos: The Hands of Fate as the worst film of all time, but The Room easily belongs in the upper echelon of craptacular cinema among the likes of The Land of Faraway and Lady Terminator and Bulletproof Monk. I am simultaneously appalled, bewildered, fascinated, delighted, and comforted by this movie, comforted by the fact that something this singularly inept could still sneak through the system. But this film is so perfectly inept on a multitude of levels that it feels like it could never be recreated again, like the human race benefited from this chance artistic encounter. The only way I can fully describe my unhealthy appreciation for this cinematic slice of the absurd is to simply list off my list of loves.
1) The film’s plot involves a love triangle with the three least personable people imaginable. Johnny (Wiseau) is a broad shouldered, marble-mouth Austrian who supposedly works at a bank, we’re told. Lisa (Juliette Danielle) stays in their apartment doing very little, though she says that she shouldn’t have gotten into the computer business because it’s “too competitive.” Lisa declares in damn near every scene that after five years together (though the characters say seven at the end of the film) she no longer loves Johnny. She now loves Mark (Greg Sestero), Johnny’s best friend. And if you forget that key point then Mark will assist you because one third of his dialogue is declarations of “Johnny’s my best friend.” Another third of his dialogue might as well be, “What are you doing?” Mark is one of the thickest dolts in history. Even after Lisa has sex with him twice, calls him repeatedly, and leads him to places where they can be alone and intimate, he looks at her dumbfounded and says, “What are you doing?” like a kid who will never comprehend that 2 + 2 = 4. This is the basis of the plot and yet so much of the movie is gloriously repetitive and involves characters sitting around, saying the same things over, without ever really advancing the plot.
2) The Room hooks you from the start, and it’s all thanks to the weird neighbor kid/surrogate son Denny (Philip Haldiman). This supposed student is an orphan that Johnny has taken a shine to; Denny has his rent and tuition generously paid for by Johnny. In the very opening scene Johnny gives Lisa a slinky red dress as a gift. She tries it on and both Denny and Johnny make favorable remarks. Johnny says he’s a bit tired and leads Lisa by the hand up the stairs. The camera stays on Denny, who, instead of taking the hint and leaving, remains standing, grabs an apple, takes a bite out of it, then slowly walks up the stairs after the amorous couple. He then hops on their bed and joins in on their pillow fight foreplay. The characters have to literally spell it out to the guy that they want some privacy for sex. “I know, I just like to watch you guys,” Denny responds. What? Denny confesses to Johnny about experiencing weird feelings for Lisa. This kid is supposed to be in college but he acts like he’s developmentally challenged. A friend has a theory that Denny has a confusing gay crush on Johnny, but I believe that would be way more deep and subtle than the movie seems capable of.
3) The movie is littered with subplots that come out of nowhere and never resurface again. All of a sudden Lisa’s materialistic mother (Carolyn Minnott) announces she has breast cancer. This is never commented upon again. All of a sudden Denny is confronted by an angry drug dealer who wants his money, which means he’s also the world’s worst drug dealer if he’s willing to give out drugs on credit. The characters all collect on the roof and yell. This is never commented upon again. Lisa makes up a story that Johnny hit her. He publicly denies it. This is never dealt with again in any capacity. Lisa lies to Johnny that she’s pregnant, just to “make things interesting.” Her rationale is that they’ll eventually start trying to have a baby anyway, which conflicts with her frequent statements that she doesn’t love Johnny and wants to leave. This fake baby is never commented upon again. About thirty minutes into the movie, another couple sneaks into Johnny’s apartment to have sex. Why I cannot fathom. When Lisa and her mother intrude upon this scene, the mother asks astutely, “Who are these characters?” Exactly madam. The movie keeps going over the same material because nothing new ever sticks.
4) The line readings are astoundingly inauthentic. Half of the film seems to be dubbed, especially Johnny’s lines. Much of the dubbed dialogue fails to match up with the actor’s mouth movements. There is one sequence in a flower shop that is nothing but dubbed dialogue and it happens so quick. The scene itself lasts like 10 seconds but it still manages to squeeze in this entire conversation: “Oh hey Johnny, I didn’t see you there.” “Yep, it’s me.” “Here are the flowers you wanted.” “How much?” “18 dollars.” “Here ya go. Keep the change. Hi doggy.” “You’re my favorite customer, Johnny.” “Byeee.” It happens so rapidly with so little breath in between. Wiseau’s quick changes in temperament with consecutive lines will amaze you. He goes directly from, “I did not hit her! I did not! I did naaaaaaaut,” to a very casual, “Oh hey, Mark,” in a nano-second flat. The speech patterns rarely approach realistic human cadences.
5) Lisa is routinely told by the several male characters that she is exceptionally beautiful and lovely, but this woman’s personality is like a dead plant. Danielle is a fine enough looking woman, though the hair and makeup people do her no help with those thick eyebrows, but as a beauty that could manipulate multiple men? I don’t think so. Danielle has a bit of a tummy to her, which is fine by my standards of beauty, but from a Hollywood perspective a woman that lacks a concave stomach is considered “fat.” Lisa’s friend Michelle (Robyn Paris) is in fact a more attractive female and might have served as a better Lisa. I think perhaps Danielle was willing to do nudity and Paris was not, but really, if you’re a struggling L.A. actor and you’re willing to agree to be apart of something like The Room, surely you’ve already ignored any internal misgivings. What possible hang-ups could there be left?
6) The film is structured like the soft-core porn that dot the late hours of premium cable channels. There are four lengthy sex scenes in the first hour, though one of them is composed almost entirely with recycled footage from the first bout of lovemaking between Lisa and Johnny. The sex scenes are deeply un-erotic and consist of several camera angles that make it impossible to see what is actually happening. There is nothing sexy about watching Wiseau’s pasty posterior humping the hips of Danielle (seriously, the body alignments are way off here). When Lisa and Mark have sex on top of a spiral staircase, Wisuea can barely frame the action coherently. Why would anyone want to have sex on a spiral staircase? That’s just asking for chronic back pain. Mark fails to even take his pants off. For such lengthy sex scenes, Wiseau does so little with the talent on display. What makes all the sex scenes even better is that they each get a wretched pop song as a soundtrack. It’s all mid 1990s R&B with some growling sex guitar, and it’s all awful. There’s one song that repeats the phrase “you are my rose” like nine times in a row. If you fail to cringe and howl from the sex scenes then the songs ought to do it.
7) Wiseau makes the most mysterious decisions as an artist. He sticks to a minimum of locations and one of them happens to be the roof of Johnny’s apartment complex. The sensible thing would be to film on an actual roof. Wiseau decided to film on a roof set and use an ineffective green screen backdrop that makes San Francisco look like it inherited Los Angeles’ smog. The film keeps cutting back to exterior stock footage of the city that signifies the passage of hours, a day, or no time whatsoever. When Denny is confronted on the same rooftop about his sudden drug disclosure, Lisa berates him. As she cries and shrieks and overacts, you cannot see it because Wiseau’s camera has cut her facial reactions out of frame. The scene cuts back and forth between Denny facing the camera and the left side of Lisa’s head. At another point Lisa is talking about her cheating ways with her pal Michelle, who seems way too giggly to be disapproving. During this scene Lisa has angled her body in such a manner that when she speaks it appears like a subcutaneous alien is about to burst forth from beneath her neck. Wiseau did not catch this unnerving and distracting sight. The film’s lone idea of male bonding involves tossing a football together. So Mark and Johnny will go out running in a park and toss a football back and forth, all the while having a faint conversation that gets drowned out by an overly anxious score. There will be swaths of the film where the score just competes with the onscreen dialogue.
8) There’s like a whole other level of offhand dialogue throughout, where characters will stand around and Johnny or someone else will mumble to no one in particular. The actual dialogue is full of other memorable head-scratchers, such as:
Random disapproving guy to Mark: “Keep your stupid comments in your pockets!”
Same disapproving man: “It feels like I’m sitting on an atom bomb that is going to explode!”
Michelle using chocolate candies as a means of foreplay: “Chocolate is a sign of love.”
Lisa’s mother: “Nobody ever listens to me.”
Lisa: “You’re probably right about that, mom.”
Johnny’s profound wisdom: “You know, if more people love each other the world would be a better place.”
Johnny refers to someone as a chicken and then proceeds to make this accompanying sound: “Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheeeaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiip.” This bizarre chicken impression will be repeated no less than three times.
This brief exchange at a coffee shop between Mark and Johnny:
Mark: How was work today?
Johnny: Oh pretty good. We got a new client… at the bank. We make a lot of money.
Mark: What client?
Johnny: I cannot tell you. It’s confidential.
Mark: Oh come on. Why not?
Johnny: No I can’t. Anyway, how is your sex life?
And finally, the signature line, where Johnny has had enough of Lisa’s mental games and he roars, “You are tearing me apart, Lisa!”
I could keep citing further evidence of The Room‘s cinematic shortcomings, but listing the faults of one of the worst films ever made can be pointless after a while. The staggering amount of faults in Wiseau’s film is also its combined strength. Most bad movies have a finite level of badness, like a poor plot or some troublesome acting. The Room is a movie composed of nothing but 99 complete minutes of badness at every facet of filmmaking. I am a more complete person having seen this remarkable film. I highly recommend gathering a group of friends around and holding a viewing party; the movie plays to even higher levels of enjoyment with a group atmosphere. The Room is Tommy Wiseau’s accidental masterpiece and, to me, proof that a loving God exists.
Nate’s Grade:
Artistic Merit: F
Entertainment Value: A+
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Reservation Road (2008)
This movie beguiles me. I watched it over a month ago and I am still turning it over in my brain, and not just for the fact that I get it confused with the similar sounding yet also disappointing Reservation Road. It’s another movie that presents the suburbs as a prison of bourgeoisie social moirés about how men and women are expected to live to be happy. The movie looks magnificent thanks to skilled cinematography by Roger Deakens, even if it falls back on redundant visual metaphors (look, the windows are shaped like prison bars!). The acting by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, the unhappily 1950s married couple Frank and April Wheeler, is mostly impressive. Michael Shannon deservedly was nominated for an Oscar as an unhinged realtor’s son who cuts through all the troublesome and fake niceties. It is a terrific performance and jolts the movie with much-needed energy, somewhat like Renee Zellweger’s role in Cold Mountain. I think that’s where my biggest area of concern is: the movie is just kind of placidly dull. Watching people be miserable for most of a two-hour running time isn’t a deal-breaker, but the movie needs to have some life to it. Revolutionary Road feels just as morose and restrained as its assortment of doomed married couples eeking out an existence. Perhaps that is an achievement to be heralded for director Sam Mendes. Then again, perhaps it just means I felt purposely remote and directionless and just waited for the movie to expire.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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The Reader (2008)
Every now and then, the assorted members that make up the Motion Picture Academy make, shall we say, quizzical selections. There are snubs and undeserving winners, but then there’s the crazy nomination where you see the movie and say to yourself, “What the hell were they thinking?” In recent years I’ve usually found at least one Best Picture nominee that left me scratching my head. In 2007 it was Atonement, in 2004 it was Finding Neverland. But I could at least fathom a guess as to why each of those movies appealed to the Academy and garnered a Best Picture nominee. I’m stumped when it comes to 2008 Best Picture nominee, The Reader. Based upon an award-winning novel, I can only surmise that Academy voters saw the words “Kate Winslet” and “Holocaust” and thought the movie had to be far worthier than the likes of WALL-E or The Dark Knight.
In post-World War II Germany, teenager Michael Berg (David Kross) begins a torrid affair with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz (Winslet). He’s 15 years old; she’s easily twice his age. She instructs her young lover to read to her before they engage in sexual activity, which turns reading into an act of foreplay. The summer affair ends abruptly when Hanna runs off after her employer has given her a promotion. Michael is heartbroken that his lover has flown the coop. Flash forward several years and Michael is attending law school in Berlin. He and his fellow students visit an ongoing trial that features a group of former female concentration camp guards. To Michael’s shock, Hanna is on trial as one of the murderous Nazi guards. The young boy is beset by his feelings of love for a person who has committed despicable deeds. Hanna is keeping a deeper secret and will go to her grave to keep it. Eventually an adult Michael (Ralph Fiennes, wasted) finds his life returning to an imprisoned, older Hanna, possibly his life’s greatest love.
The Reader contains interesting story elements: sex, guilt, romantic affairs with former Nazi prison guards. But rarely do any of these interesting elements actually transform into an interesting story. The movie just kind of lies there, basking in some phony reflective pause when the movie manages to be so distant and uninvolved. At times the movies seems to have little interest in its own self. This movie feels like it was made to be Oscar-bait because it deals with Big Themes and Important Topics, or at least the film wants to appear like it deals with said items. The Reader is mostly shallow. It pretends to present a moral quandary but director Stephen Daldry (The Hours) doesn’t bother to analyze the contradictions of his characters. The film alternates between characters shouting obvious declarations and just stumbling around in contemplation, bumping into the furniture. It’s simultaneously annoying and boring. The movie wants to put a human face on monstrous deeds, which can be a noble pursuit. The Reader fails to be a “challenging” movie when it can’t be bothered to challenge its characters to do something.
The message of quasi redemption at the center of this specific film is either laughably naïve or downright insulting. Hanna keeps a personal secret shame at all costs, and she would rather go to prison for life as a Nazi murderer than let people know she cannot read. I’m sorry, but that’s dumb. The fact that it seems like The Reader presents the theory that Hanna’s illiteracy mitigates her guilt is offensive. I’m sure the 300 people that were locked in a burning church to die would be sympathetic that their killer couldn’t read See Spot Run. In what world is illiteracy more shameful than genocide? If you’re going to float ridiculous notions at least commit to exploring their very ridiculousness, and therefore acknowledge that there is something amiss. The Reader instead seems to flutter from idea to idea without ever truly delving deeper. If you’re going to craft a character that’s more afraid of a library than a book burning, at least try and explore this enigma. There’s drama in the disconnect. But the movie never feels like this should be an issue. Can’t you see, silly movie goers, that Hanna is but a symbol for the German people who couldn’t read the signs to come and were ignorant to the extent of Hitler’s horrors. She would rather stick to her duty than claim moral responsibility. That’s fine, but there are a great number of movies, and countless more books, that have examined the psychological culpability that can turn a populace into silently willing participants in mass murder. The Reader would rather spend its closing moments exploring the magical healing power of literature. The fact that the film eliminates the novels’ section where Hanna reads news articles and novels about the Holocaust (thus gaining moral clarity) is dumb. Instead of gaining insight into her actions she reads Chekhov. The movie ends up transforming into a weird and wrongheaded episode of Reading Rainbow.
Winslet’s acting is fine. She’s such a gifted actress that I doubt you’ll see her give a bad performance even if the movie doesn’t live up to her talent. She isn’t doing anything showy to make Hanna a sympathetic character, which works out well, but the film’s distant perspective means that Hanna seems more like an aloof cipher. She’s this formless blob of a character that expresses a mixture of human emotions but doesn’t resemble a recognizable human. This is the fault of the director and screenwriter who chose to replace subtext with ponderous silent stares (note to all “deep” filmmakers: THEY ARE NOT THE SAME). Winslet slips into the character with the same ease she has slipping out of her clothes. The Reader is another nudity-filled performance for Winslet, her eighth movie featuring her nude (also her fourth Oscar nomination for a nude performance, there must be some connection). As readers can attest, I am no prude when it comes to the female form, but even I thought things were getting a little gratuitous. In the first 45 minutes, Winslet is naked in almost every scene she shares with Kross. It’s almost as if the nudity is supposed to disarm the audience and make Hanna a more intimate. Winslet is one of her generation’s finest actresses, which is reason enough that she shouldn’t be handed a Best Actress Oscar for substandard material.
The Reader may not be a traditional Holocaust film and in fact it’s really not so much about the Holocaust. Sure, that colossal event casts a shadow over Germany, but the movie is mostly about a cold and daft woman and the callow boy who loves her. It’s about two characters, but it the movie is too reserved and then some. Everybody just seems numb, which makes for a boring movie after a while. I repeat: a boring movie about underage sexual affairs with freaking’ Nazis! Winslet’s fine performance is not enough to redeem the whole movie. I think much was lost in translation from page to screen. The Reader actually was more effective when it was just a cradle-robbing unorthodox love story. But then, those flicks don’t typically get nominated for Best Picture Oscars.
Nate’s Grade: C
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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
This lavish and long-winded spectacle is curious, all right. Director David Fincher (Se7en, Zodiac) has all the technical wizards at his disposal to produce a near three-hour fantasy about life, love, and death. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button works around the bizarre gimmick of a man going through the process of aging backwards. It’s loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, adapted by Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), and the results are befuddling. Benjamin is a handsomely mounted and incredibly expensive work engineered for one purpose: to win Oscars. Benjamin Button is a film that strives for making grand statements and wringing a maximum amount of tears, but it’s also a film that lives more in a series of moments than as a cohesive whole. It’s a fine piece of work but feels overburdened by its urgent desire to be profound.
Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) is born on the day the first World War ended in 1918. He is born as a small infant that better resembles an 80-year-old man (in Fitzgerald’s short story he is born as a full grown old man, which means it must have been fun for his mother). Benjamin is aging backwards but his mind is still as it should be, so while he is all wrinkly, arthritic, and covered in liver spots, Benjamin is like other small kids who want to make friends. Benjamin’s father (Jason Flemyng) is horrified by his son’s condition and abandons him at the steps of a nursing center. Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) raises Benjamin as her own child and he grows up (down?) surrounded by a colorful cast of elderly residents (one woman remarks that a young-old Benjamin looks just like her ex husband). It is here that Benjamin meets the love of his life, Daisy (played by Cate Blanchett in her older years). She’s enchanted by Benjamin’s condition but she has her youth to live and Benjamin is left behind. Daisy becomes a trained ballerina and tours the world. Benjamin goes on a series of escapades, like working on a tugboat, traveling to Russia and having an affair with a diplomat’s wife (Tilda Swinton), and discovering his biological father and the family business of buttons. But he’s always been waiting for Daisy, and eventually they “meet in the middle.”
The very nature of the premise means that the movie isn’t going to have many pure, joyful moments. The idea of a romance that needs to take 40 years to connect, and even then has a limited shelf life before they go in their separate aging directions, is beautiful and heartbreaking. Waiting decades for a glimmer of your happiness with your mate, that’s a hard pill to swallow. Benjamin Button explores a similar situation covered by vampire-immortal romances, where you must endure watching your precious loved ones grow old and die. The entire movie radiates with an overwhelming sense of melancholy. The movie manages to find humor and grace amidst its melancholic dirge. The reflections on mortality are ever-present though rarely profound. It may not say anything new or original but it has many things to say about life, death, and the fleeting moments in between. By that notion, the film is structured so that the beginning, where Benjamin is a young old man, it’s more comic and beguiling, then as he and Daisy match up we finally get the pairing we’ve been pining for from the start. The pent-up passion provides great conflict, and then we barely get to enjoy the coupling before reality strikes. The final twenty minutes of the film, where old Daisy cares for old young Benjamin, are incredibly moving and have an indelible symmetry to them, watching an old lady lead a child by the hand.
So then why do I feel so hesitant about fully accepting this movie? The story follows a similar Gump like pattern of incidents but the movie refrains from being mawkish. The main character is mostly passive with little personality; he’s nice but take away his unusual condition and not many folks would remember their time with Mr. Button. Before he gets with Daisy the film feels a bit episodic with the chapters of Benjamin’s life, and they are entertaining asides but they fail to amount to much more. Benjamin Button feels like something important is absent; it’s not cold as others have claimed but it feels, perhaps, remote, stopping just shy from being a full emotional investment by keeping the audience at a somewhat objective distance. This may be Fincher’s own design because Fincher ensures that a film about living life to the fullest doesn’t degenerate into sentimental claptrap. The end hits hard but not as hard as it could if I was more invested in Benjamin as a character. The Hurricane Katrina framing device seems tacked on, but then again the story mostly takes place in New Orleans and Katrina is rather noteworthy, you could say. The “elderly lady recalls her life story” is reminiscent of Titanic, and might not even be necessary though it offers Daisy the ability to look back over her years with added insight. The layers of realistic makeup piled onto Blanchett are impressive, though I worry what would happen if the actress had to go to the bathroom.
Technically, the movie is nearly flawless. The visual effects are astounding, seamlessly allowing Pitt to play the role even as a young child. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a glorious experience to watch but a mildly curious experience to register. The film is so meticulously crafted and it has all the right components of a tragic romance for the ages, but it somehow misses the mark. It’s an entertaining and moving film but it leaves something to be desired. The most resonant moments are also the ones that are the simplest, the ones that lack the window dressing of expensive special effects. I appreciated the film’s expressions of symmetry, but I have the nagging feeling that Benjamin Button both tries too hard and perplexingly doesn’t try hard enough. It keeps audience involvement at a distance, wishing to comment on humanity without embracing humanity. It is difficult for me to articulate what is lacking, because it is an enjoyable if overly long movie, but it falls into the “almost” category of poignant filmmaking. It’s almost a challenging movie, it’s almost an affecting movie, it’s almost a movie worth falling in love with. The film’s story and sensitivity and scope cannot match the technical audaciousness.
Nate’s Grade: B
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