Blog Archives
Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
I was so looking forward to watching the French drama Anatomy of a Fall, nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director for Justine Triet, that I had to track down the publicity department for Neon Studios and hound them to finally get my annual Neon screener box-set for critics. It took several weeks, and email chains, but thankfully the good folks at Neon supplied me with their screener box, like Christmas morning for a film critic. The surprise Oscar nominations only made me more eager to finally watch this movie. As Anatomy of a Fall played, and the criminal case became ever more complicated, shedding further light upon the characters and their stormy marriage, I found myself sitting closer and closer to my TV, finally sitting on the floor right in front of it. Part of this can be explained by trying to better read the subtitles, though truthfully half of the movie is in English, but the real reason was that I became absorbed, waiting anxiously to see where it could go next, what twist and turn would further reassess our fragile understanding of the events, the people, and the possible circumstances. The original screenplay is so thoroughly engaging, and with supremely talented acting and clever directing, that I knew I was in good hands to ensure my investment of 140 minutes wouldn’t be wasted.
Popular novelist Sandra Voyter (Sandra Huller) is talking with a female reporter about her process as they lounge in her home. They’re drinking, laughing, and then the loud sounds of a steel drum start echoing from upstairs, thanks to Sandra’s husband, Samuel (Samuel Maleski), who puts the song on repeat. He’s passive aggressively sabotaging the interview, and Sandra bids goodbye to the interviewer. Hours later Samuel is found on the ground outside with blood seeping from a head wound. The attic window is open, the same attic he was remodeling before presumably falling to his death. Did he take his own life or was foul play involved? Did Sandra actually kill her husband?
At its core, the movie is an anatomy of a criminal investigation, a prosecution and the personal defense, but it’s really an anatomy of people and the versions of themselves that they selectively present to others and themselves. It’s an old maxim that you can never know what’s going on inside a marriage, or really any relationship, as the inner reality is far more complex than what is easy to digest and categorize by the public. It’s not new to hide aspects of ourselves from wider scrutiny and consumption. It also isn’t new for a larger public profile to invite speculation from online busybodies who think they are entitled to know more. The mystery about whether or not Sandra is guilty or a cruel victim of suspicious circumstance is a question that Triet values, but clearly she values other more personal mysteries more, chiefly the mystery of our understanding of people and why they may choose to do inexplicable acts. How close can we ever really know a person? The upending of her life pushes Sandra to re-examine her own marriage in such a high stakes crucible that can determine whether or not she spends the rest of her life in jail. Under those extreme circumstances, the bigger question isn’t how someone may have committed murder, or taken their life, but the unexamined why of it all that nibbles away at Sandra as well as our collective consciousness as viewers. To me, that’s a more compelling and worthwhile mystery to explore than whether or not it was a murder or suicide (there is a wild theory finding some traction online blaming the death on the family dog).
I don’t feel it’s a significant spoiler to prepare the viewer to know that Triet keeps to ambiguity to the bitter end, refusing to specify what actually happened to Samuel. It’s ultimately up to the viewer to determine whether they think Sandra is guilty or innocent, and there’s enough room to have a debate with your friends and Francophile colleagues. I’ll profess that I found myself on the Team Sandra bandwagon and fully believed she was being railroaded by the French judicial system and press. The righteous anger I felt on behalf of this woman rose to volcanic levels, as it felt like much of the French prosecution’s line of questioning and theorizing was mired in blatant eye-rolling misogyny and conjecture. They insist that because Sandra is bisexual that she must have been flirting with her female interviewer on the day of Samuel’s death, because that’s how it works for bisexuals, obviously, to only be able to size every person they meet, no matter whatever anodyne circumstances, as some possible or inevitable sexual conquest. As an outsider to the French judicial system, I was intrigued just by how the trials are conducted, which seems far less formal despite the wigs and robes, where the accused can interrupt anytime to deliver speeches and question experts. I also appreciated how much attention Sandra’s family friend and defense attorney puts into helping her shape her image, to the press, to the court, to the judge, down to her perspective of her marriage to her vocabulary choices. Rather than be a reflection of Sandra as coolly calculated, I viewed it as learning to prepare for the dangers ahead. It reminded me of Gone Girl with the media-savvy lawyer coaching his high-profile client through their trouble.
Of course, there are larger implications with this prosecution. Sandra isn’t just on trial for suspicion of killing her husband to clear the way for her next lover, she’s the victim of all the ways that women are judged and found guilty by society. Sandra is a successful novelist, the top provider, and her husband isn’t, and it eats away at him, festering resentment that she is somehow stifling his own creative dreams. Is she giving him space or being distant? Is she doing enough or too little? Is she a supportive spouse or selfish? Is she a good mom or a bad mom? Is she allowed an independent life or should she be fully devoted to the titles of mom and wife? It’s the struggle to fit into everyone’s impossible and conflicting definition of what makes an acceptable woman and mother, and it’s infuriating to watch (think America Ferrera’s Barbie speech but as a movie). It’s also an indication of the cultural true crime obsession and turning people’s complicated identities and nuanced relationships into easy-to-digest fodder for morbid entertainment. It’s not like there’s some grand speech that positions Sandra as the martyr for all of embattled womanhood, but through her trial and media scrutiny, these social issues are projected onto her like a case study.
As much as I loved Lily Gladstone and Emma Stone in their respective performances in 2023, at this point I’d gladly give the Best Actress Oscar to Huller (The Zone of Interest). First off, she delivers a tremendous performance in three separate languages, as her character is a native German who marries a Frenchman and then they agree to speak in English as their linguistic “middle ground,” a language that isn’t native to either of them. Huller slips into her character seamlessly and it’s thrilling to watch her assert herself, press against the bad faith assumptions of others. One of the highlights of the movie is the most extended flashback where we witness the simmering resentment of this marriage come fully to force, and while it’s unclear whether this moment, as the other occasional flashbacks, is meant to be conveyed as Sandra’s subjective memory or objective reality, it serves as a mini-climax for the story. It’s here where Sandra pushes back against her husband’s self-pitying criticisms and projections. It’s a well-written, highly satisfying “Amen, sister” moment, and Huller crushes it and him. There were moments where I was in awe of Huller that I had to simply whistle to myself and remark how this woman is really good at acting. With such juicy material and layers to sift through, Huller astounds.
Another actor worth celebrating is Milo Machado-Graner (Waiting for Bojangles) as the couple’s only child Daniel, a young boy who is partially blind because of an earlier accident from Samuel’s negligence and the one who discovers his dad’s body. This kid becomes our entry point into the history of this marriage but it also turns on his perceptions of his parents, as Sandra is worried over the course of the trial that Daniel will learn aspects of their marriage that she was trying to shield from him, and he may never be able to see his father and mother the same way again. It’s a rude awakening for him, and key parts of the trial rest upon a child’s shaky memory, adding intense pressure onto a hurting little boy. There’s a key flashback that will change the direction of the case, but again Triet doesn’t specify whether this is Daniel’s memory, Daniel’s distorted memory looking for answers whereupon there might not be any, or the objective reality of what happened and what was said. Machado-Graner delivers a performance that is built upon such fragility that my heart sank for him. It’s a far more natural performance free of histrionics and easy exaggerations, making the response to such trying events all the more devastating.
Anatomy of a Fall was not selected by its home country for consideration for the Academy’s Best International Film competition despite winning the Palme D’Or, the top prize, at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Not to take anything away from 2023’s The Taste of Things, a French drama I’ve heard only fabulous responses, but clearly they picked the wrong contender and lost a winnable race. Do you know the last time France won the Oscar for Best Foreign/International Film? You have to go all the way back to 1991’s Indochine, a movie about the history of France’s colonial occupation of Vietnam. For a nation known for its rich history of cinema, it’s now been over thirty years since one of their own movies won the top international prize at the Academy. Oh well, there’s always next year, France. It’s truly befuddling because Anatomy of a Fall is such an easily accessible movie that draws you in and reveals itself with more tantalizing questions. It has supremely accomplished acting, directing, and writing. Anatomy of a Fall is a spellbinding, twisty movie and one of the absolute best films of 2023, in any language.
Nate’s Grade: A
Share this:
The Zone of Interest (2023)
The Zone of Interest is one of the more maddening film experiences I’ve ever had, and I’m sure that was part of the intention of writer/director Jonathan Glazer (Under the Skin). While based upon a 2014 fictional book by Martin Amis, Glazer had hollowed out the novel’s fake story and replaced it with its inspiration, the Höss family, a real-life German couple and their children who literally had their villa next door to the horrendous Auschwitz concentration camp. The husband was the chief commandant for the camp, and he had his family literally sharing wall space with the notorious factory of death. The entire feature film is then given to observing this family from afar as they try to live a “normal domestic life” in the shadow of something profoundly abnormal and abhorrent. It’s a classic example of a type of movie I will dub the “Yeah, okay, so what?” movie. I get it, I do, but why is this exactly a feature film?
I understand artistically what Glazer is going for here. It’s the ironic juxtaposition of the ordinary and the awful, asking the viewer to think about how many millions of Germans went along with the mounting anti-Semitic and racist policies of Nazi Germany out of self-interest and/or willful ignorance, the banality of evil, as Hannah Arendt termed it. That becomes the challenge of the movie, watching this family tend to the garden, host a birthday party, and read bedtime stories while watching the gloom of the chimneys, listening to the constant soundtrack of scattered gunshots and the screams of victims, including the wails of babies. Every scene is elevated by the dramatic irony of the context that it is happening next door to a concentration camp. We watch them plant flowers, and it just so happens to be next door to a concentration camp. We watch them invite the mother-in-law to make her new bedroom her own, and it just so happens to be next door to a concentration camp. It gets tedious as a viewer because without the irony, we’re just watching a family live their life. I get that’s the point, this example of one family trying to ignore the terrifying reality literally at their very doorstep. I understand that message and I understand why that is even more relevant to our troubled modern times with an alarming rise in anti-Semitism and the celebration of fascism and repressive strongmen. However, I don’t think we get real insights into these characters because they’re more just general ideas intended to forward the critical thesis of the power of self-delusion and excuse-making. That’s fine as a starting point for a provocative movie, but don’t make me watch a family do their laundry for an hour and then tell me it’s an Important Statement because they happen to be next door to the horrors of history.
Let me try this same kind of approach on another human tragedy. Say we have a family drama about a hard-working couple trying to go through the day-to-day challenges of marriage and raising a family, and it JUST SO HAPPENS that they live within distance of… the internment of the Japanese in World War II. Does this magically transform and elevate the ordinary actions on-screen into more than what they are? Perhaps to some, but for me it felt too transparently methodical and quickly redundant. I don’t need a whole movie documenting a family next door that barely scratches the surface of their circumstances of living.
There are a few moments that manage to break through. There’s a scene where the daughters are swimming in the nearby river and the family realizes that the gray streams intruding upon the water are the ashes from the camp. From there they furiously scrub themselves clean, the grotesque horror something they attempt to cleanse, whether they’re horrified because the ash belongs to people or because it specifically belongs to Jews. The mother (Sandra Huller) refuses to move away after her husband Rudolph (Christian Friedel) is reassigned by the Nazi brass. This is the home she’s put her time into remodeling and reshaping and she isn’t going to just let anyone live under her roof. This setback is far more upsetting to her than anything she overhears on the other side of her garden walls. There’s also an ongoing story where one of the Höss children is leaving behind a trail of apples, inspired by a favorite bedtime fable, and this has an unfortunate unintended tragedy for people these children will never know or see. There’s an offhand remark by the mother-in-law as she’s touring the backyard where she wonders if a woman in her book club is among the throng next door in the camps. Rather than use this as a moment of reflection over the genocide occurring next door, she then moves onto lamenting that she never got this same woman’s curtains that she always prized. I wish the movie had more of these character moments that directly confront the willful ignorance rather than keeping the audience simmering with the same meditative Big Picture concept that has been relentlessly winnowed down so finely that it may as well be dust.
Glazer makes very specific choices to highlight the detachment of the movie. His camera angles are often taken from far fixed points, and the coverage makes for smooth edits that let you know there were multiple cameras filming these scenes rather than the stress of multiple setups and different takes to cobble together. This makes the movie feel closer to a documentary where we have captured real life as it is happening instead of a group of actors on a set pretending to be different people putting on a show for our entertainment.
The Zone of Interest is a movie that crushes you in the everyday details, and in that it reminded me of 2020’s The Assistant, another indie that didn’t quite work for me. That film was about a young woman who served as a film production assistant to a producer modeled after Harvey Weinstein, and it asked how much she can ignore for the sake of her own upward mobility. It had a really compelling premise but the movie spent most of its running time just watching her do her job, filing papers, getting coffee, walking home, with the implicit knowledge banging around in our anxious minds to then elevate the mundane (she’s not just fixing the copy machine, she’s fixing the copy machine and Harvey Weinstein might be abusing someone just in the next room!). This ironic juxtaposition proved too tiring for me without also exploring the characters and conflicts more explicitly. Things happening off-screen while far more boring things happen on-screen is not itself great drama. Being drama-adjacent does not automatically magically imbue the ordinary with transcendent meaning. I need more than, “Big things are happening… over there.” The Zone of Interest is a critical favorite for 2023 but I think many viewers will have the same response I did: yeah, okay, so what?
Nate’s Grade: C+
Share this:
Godzilla Minus One (2023)
In his seventy years, Godzilla has been many things, a force representing mankind’s hubris, a protector of the Earth, a father, a weird chicken-like creature that Godzilla 1998 director Roland Emmerich asked his concept artists to make “sexy,” but rarely has the famous giant lizard been genuinely scary, and even rarer still has any of the thirty movies been genuinely serious. The surprisingly affecting Godzilla Minus One achieves both with impressive execution. Set shortly after the end of World War II, the far majority of this monster movie is given to somber human drama, with our protagonist a kamikaze pilot too afraid to give his life senselessly for the cause. Once he returns home, he is treated like a pariah, shamed by his neighbors attempting to literally put the pieces of their lives back together amidst the rubble. He’s riddled with post-traumatic stress and two counts of survivor’s guilt eating away at him. For this man, his war is not over. To make matters even worse, there’s a gigantic lizard terrorizing the seas and heading straight for Tokyo. The second half of the movie follows a very satisfying formula taken from Jaws, with a group of men getting on a boat, working together, and trying to catch their big prize. The ingenuity of their plans makes use of the meager means at their civilian disposal, as the military cannot get involved out of fear of stoking U.S.-Russia aggression in the dawn of the Cold War. The way this character’s arc comes together, at a great moment of heroism that also ties in his relationship with other supporting characters you’ve come to enjoy, is great storytelling. Usually in monster movies the human drama is filler and you can’t wait for those pesky people to get squished to make way for the waves of destructive fun. Not so here, as every scene the characters are in peril has you clenching your fists in fear that Godzilla could triumph. This Godzilla is terrifying and I really enjoyed the sense of scale the filmmakers exhibited, making sure we saw him from a human-sized perspective, and the special effects, while not outstanding, are quite remarkable for its small-scale budget. For Godzilla fans, there might not be enough of the Big Guy for them. I was taken with the emotional journey of these hardscrabble characters fighting for dignity and redemption and to protect their found families, and that was never something I thought would be the major selling point of a Godzilla movie — human emotion. Fear not, the 2024 American release looks to bring back the cheesy nonsense.
Nate’s Grade: B+
Share this:
The Boy and the Heron (2023)
It’s been over ten years since renowned animation legend Hiyao Miyazaki graced the silver screen with what was believed to be his last film yet the retirement didn’t kick, for the benefit of all of us. I’ve resisted watching 2013’s The Wind Rises simply because of the melancholy of it supposedly being his final film. The man is in his 80s and still hand draws much of his storyboards, so if indeed this is the last Miyazaki movie we ever get, it ties thematically with many of the concepts and interests of this man’s storied career that it feels like a fitting capper. It’s his most autobiographical, following 12-year-old Mahito as he relocates to the country after surviving the firebombing of Tokyo during World War II. Unfortunately, he lost his mother in the bombing, and now his father is remarrying his mother’s younger sister, who looks near identical to Mahito’s mother. On the grounds of his new home, the boy discovers a strange overgrown tower with a door that leads to another world, and it’s within this world that a creepy scary bird promises Mohito can find his mother again. The Boy and the Heron is an imaginative and transporting fantasy with some major themes around the edges about grief and acceptance and environmental disaster, but it’s the haphazard structure and poor pacing that hold it back for me. Simply, it’s too long to get going and then too short to conclude. We don’t exit to the hidden fantasy world until almost halfway through, and the time in the regular world is stretched out, especially without going into further detail about our protagonist, who is kept very opaque. The discovery of the new world and learning its strange mostly bird creatures and rules and conflicts is where the movie really gets interesting, especially once the menacing heron becomes a squat man serving as our reluctant guide. It feels like there’s going to be some heavy revelations forthcoming, especially with the supposed duplicate nature of Mohito’s mothers, but it all comes down to an aged Man Behind the Curtain with a reveal straight out of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. We take too long to get to that intriguing fantasy world, and then once we’re there it feels a little too surface-level in design for a world on the cusp of dying. Then it’s a mad scramble to leave, and while the culminating decision feels earned in its wisdom, it also feels like the movie has simply run out of ideas. The Boy and the Heron is beautifully animated; the world feels like it’s undulating before your eyes, and there are numerous moments that allow it to breathe. However, it feels like maybe we could have gotten started sooner and finished a little later. Even mid-level Miyazaki is better than most, so The Boy and the Heron is still a worthwhile animated fantasy even if it doesn’t reach masterpiece status from a master storyteller. At least now I can finally watch The Wind Rises, so there’s that too.
Nate’s Grade: B
Share this:
All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)
The surprise surge of the Oscar season is a German-language remake of the 1929 Best Picture winner, and after watching all 140 minutes, it’s easy to see how it would have made such an impact with modern Academy voters. All Quiet on the Western Front is still a relevant story even more than 100 years after its events. It’s a shattering anti-war movie that continuously and furiously reminds you what a terrible waste of life that four-year battle over meters of territory turned out to be, claiming over 17 million casualties. I’ve read the 1928 German novel by Erich Remarque and the new movie is faithful in spirit and still breathes new life into an old story. We follow idealistic young men eager to experience the glory of war and quickly learn that the horror of modern combat isn’t so glorious. There are sequences in this movie that are stunning, like following the history of a coat from being lifted off a dead soldier in the muck, to being reworked at a seamstress station, to being commissioned to a new recruit who questions why someone else’s name is in his jacket. It’s a simple yet evocative moment that sells the despairing reality. The movie doesn’t skimp on carnage as well, as long stretches will often play out like a horror movie where you’ll fear the monsters awaiting in the smoke and that nowhere is safe for long. And yet, where the movie hits the hardest isn’t depicting the trenchant terror but with the little pieces of humanity that shine through the darkness. There’s a small moment in a crater shared by two enemies where one of them is dying, and these final moments of recognizing the same beleaguered helpless and frightened humanity of “their enemy” are poignant. Make no mistake, All Quiet is a condemnation on the systems of war where old pompous generals send young men to needlessly die for outdated and absurd reasons like the concept of “maintaining national honor.” A significant new subplot involves Daniel Bruhl (Captain America: Civil War) as a representative of the German government trying to negotiate an armistice when the French representatives are looking for punishment. It allows us to take a larger view of the politics that doomed so many and laying the foundation for so many more doomed lives. The ending of this movie is a nihilist gut punch. The production values are impressive and elevate the artistry of every moment. The sound design is terrific, the cinematography is alternatingly beautiful and horrifying, and the production design is startlingly detailed and authentic; it’s easy to see how this movie could have earned nine Oscar nominations. All Quiet on the Western Front is a warning, a eulogy, and a powerful reminder that even older stories can still be relevant and resonant.
Nate’s Grade: B+
Share this:
Corsage (2022)
Corsage aims to loosen the stuffy costume drama with a dose of feminist upheaval and irreverence, but ultimately I felt like I was spending my time with a bored woman trying and failing to conquer her boredom. After turning 40, the Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps) has a midlife crisis. She’s been renowned for her beauty, as that was her primary function for her husband the Emperor (Florian Teichmeister, an actor literally on trial for child pornography), and has become obsessed with her weight. Every person she meets seems to remark that she’s much thinner than her paintings. Now that she’s beyond her child-rearing age, she is languishing with how to spend her copious amounts of time in fabulous luxury. She goes horseback riding. She visits her cousin, and tries to have an affair with him. She gets to experiment with an early film camera. She gets prescribed morphine for her melancholy. She visits wounded soldiers and women locked away in sanitariums. She even gets a tattoo on vacation with her best friend. I thought the movie was going to be either more of an expose on yet another woman suffering from the oppression of her gilded cage, and Corsage glances at this topic, or a fictional account of a rebellious woman pushing against the patriarchal powers that be. The movie doesn’t really feature either approach. There aren’t enough tweaks to its genre to qualify as satire. It’s a character study of a supremely bored wealthy woman missing out on any passion in her life, whether that’s from lovers or political causes or even good company. Krieps (Phantom Thread) is the best reason to keep watching, but as the movie chugged along, it felt like I was watching a depressed character go through the motions looking for anything to possibly spark joy. The movie felt rather rudderless and I don’t feel like the totality of the scenes added up to a multi-dimensional portrait of our lead. I wish the movie had more attitude or more irreverence or even reverence, something to stir the nascent passions of those watching and waiting for more.
Nate’s Grade: C+
Share this:
Argentina 1985 (2022)
How does one adjudicate a country’s own nightmare and find justice? That was the situation Argentina found itself in after returning to a democratic state following seven years under a military junta that kidnapped, tortured, interrogated, and killed thousands of its own citizens in the guise of “stopping radical communists.” Argentina 1985 gives you its setting in the title but it’s really about the chief prosecutor (Ricardo Darin) trying to hold the top generals accountable for their crimes against humanity. There is a lot riding on this case and plenty going against him, including near-constant death threats for he and his supportive family. There are some very harrowing personal accounts in the movie, but it’s set up almost like an underdog courtroom drama conceived by Aaron Sorkin, and much is made about putting together the young hotshot team and seizing the day. The movie is swiftly paced for being over two hours and has notable comic relief to keep things from getting too overwhelmingly gloomy given the subject matter. However, Argentina 1985 never loses its focus on making the powerful account for their sins. It’s a rousing courtroom drama with piercing details, engrossing human stories, and the temerity of history. In the light of rising authoritarian movements around the world and even in the U.S., this movie has even more urgent political relevancy about making sure the crimes of government officials are accounted for and that justice is served. It’s a testament to the heroism of everyday citizens and it makes for an invigorating drama that doesn’t lose sight of the big picture amidst the plethora of procedural details.
Nate’s Grade: B+
Share this:
Decision to Leave (2022)
Imagine crossing a classic film noir detective story with some unrequited romance heavy with yearning, like In the Mood for Love, and that’s the combo you get with director Park Chan-wook’s newest, Decision to Leave. In Busan, a straight-laced detective (Park Hae-il, The Host) is investigating an older government official who fell to death from a mountain peak. He suspects that the man’s wife, Song Seo-rae (Tang Wei, Lust, Caution), a much younger Chinese immigrant, might have something to do with the death, and so the detective gets closer and closer to his suspect, blurring the lines of the investigation and his own personal desires. It sounds like familiar genre territory, and it can be, but director Park Chan-wook (The Handmaiden, Oldboy) is the X-factor, and quite simply, he shoots the hell out of this movie. There are some jaw-dropping shot selections and camera arrangements here to cherish. The movie is less interested in its sordid murder mystery details and more the possible relationship between its two magnetic poles, made even more complicated by the detective already being married, though only spending the weekends at home. There is a stormy swell of will-they-won’t-they sexual tension in constant churn, and it adds a dour sense of melancholy to the entire movie. There’s a time jump two-thirds of the way through the movie that is slightly aggravating, because it’s like starting over and repeating the mystery catch-up but with less time, making the details of this new case even less meaningful than earlier. Decision to Leave ends on a strong downbeat that feels appropriate given the mood of the preceding two-plus hours. I don’t think the characters are as textured as they could be, part of this is being jostled around by the non-linear storytelling and artistic tricks of Chan-wook. I think the movie generally favors mood and flirts with wanting to be seen a tragic romance worthy of Hitchcock, though I don’t think it fully gets there. So much of the movie is about probing whether or not the feelings are real between these two, whether she’s toying with him or he just wants to complete the unfinished assignment (the dynamic reminded me of Luther and Alice in the BBC series Luther). Decision to Leave feels like a solid film noir mystery, elevated by A-level directing talent, and then missing its ambitious grasp with its lilting love story that feels a little too subdued and understated to really smolder.
Nate’s Grade: B
Share this:
RRR (2022)
The Indian film sensation that has converted millions across the world has one new convert: me. I’ve been hearing about RRR all year and how outlandish it is, how wild and audacious this three-hour action historical musical can be, and that it’s a celebration of the exuberant possibilities of film, and to every part of that sentence I pump my fist and declare an enthusiastic yes. Think of it as a superhero movie that also happens to be a musical. RRR is set in 1920s India and follows two real-life figures central to India’s independence from Britain. Komaram Bheem (N.T. Rama Rao Jr.) and Alluri Sitarami Raju (Ram Cgaran Teja) never met in real life, but the movie makes them not just enemies but also the best of friends. Both men are set on a collision course, with Bheem searching for his little sister who was kidnapped into the big city by the British governor (Ray Stevenson), and Raju is working his way through the ranks of the British police and searching to arrest Bheem. What might get in the way is the greatest bromance in years, as these guys don’t just like one another, they will swear their undying allegiance and love for the other. Raju helps his BFF talk to a nice British girl he is crushing on, and he even helps Bheem by leading a dance off between hilariously haughty British elites. That “Naacho Naacho” dance is a shot of pure joy and encapsulates the movie: it’s frantic, frenetic, overpowering, and purely genuine. There isn’t a hint of irony in any of the overzealous 186 minutes here. The lead characters act like super powered gods, or burst into song and dance, complete with cover-worthy poses, but at no point does the movie want you to laugh at it; it wants you to get on board and enjoy how perfectly crazy the movie is. It took me about an hour, but I was won over completely by RRR. There is a man getting whipped who moves the crowd into a revolutionary mob through the power of his song. There’s a guy throwing a leopard at another man’s head. A man kicks a running motorcycle into the air and then uses it as a projectile. It’s got spectacular action with more style than a hundred Hollywood movies. The action is so well choreographed and clear to understand that it’s immensely gratifying to watch. The extravagant wire work adds to the grandiose mythic nature of the movie. The arc that Raju has is more compelling and satisfying than many in even American indies. Not only are these gents buff as hell, and effortlessly charming, but they can and will dance circles around the competition. I won’t pretend I have a deep knowledge of Indian cinema but this seems like an excellent entry for many Western fans to explore the stylistic heights of Indian cinema. This is a wild romp with cheer-worthy heroes, a bromance for the ages, and villains you can’t wait to topple. RRR is a bit exhausting by the end but I was never bored during its different tonal shifts. It might not be the best movie of the year but it’s certainly going to be the most movie you’ll get in 2022.
Nate’s Grade: A-
Share this:
Triangle of Sadness (2022)
The Palme d’Or-winning satire Triangle of Sadness comes from excellent stock. Swedish writer/director Ruben Östlund made audiences squirm with 2014’s Force Majeure and 2017’s The Square, so I anticipated an excellent comedy that made me cringe as often as it made me laugh. The unwieldy two-and-a-half hour experience made me laugh, made me avert my eyes, and ultimately underwhelmed in approach and pacing. Lampooning the entitled, oafish, and essentially useless upper class is an easy enough comedic approach, but I guess I was waiting for something more specific or nuanced. I did enjoy the kindly elderly couple who made their fortunes on grenades and landmines. The movie starts off lackluster, with a handsome young couple (Charbli Dean, Harris Dickinson) arguing over money, and then transitions to its luxury cruise where the rich are pampered and pandered, like when the entire crew has to drop whatever they’re doing to change into a swimsuit and take a dip in the water to please a rich lady who bravely believes she is helping these poor souls “relax” from their troubles. Too often, the movie trades in pretty broad critiques and even humor. There’s a nauseating ten-minute sequence that is nonstop projectile vomiting and exploding toilets overrunning with filth (do you get it? The ship is also called “Society” and it sinks, so do you get that?). The last hour of the movie involves a small group from the cruise trying to survive on a deserted island, and it’s here where the power balance shifts, allowing Abigail (Dolly De Leon), one of the housekeeping staff, to become a de facto leader because she’s the only person with useful skills. The obnoxious rich people begin to get some comeuppance, but Östlund won’t allow easy payback for satisfaction. I missed the simplicity of Force Majeure‘s deconstruction of fragile masculinity. It was a much more coherent thesis that felt richly explored with its supporting characters and central dynamic. I think this movie was a little too scattershot and lackadaisical. It’s supposed to be about capitalism propping up a useless class of people, but there isn’t enough savagery during the island portion to really seal this prickly commentary. At no point, do people literally eat the rich, alas. Triangle of Sadness ends so abruptly that I loudly groaned, as it feels less ambiguous and more like I’m missing out on an actual conclusion of a movie, and after 150 minutes at that. It’s an entertaining and exacting experience but one that could have benefited from judicious trimming and a little more shaping, with its narrative and social criticisms. Also, R.I.P. Dean, who died shortly after the film’s release and was only 32 years old.
Nate’s Grade: B
nathanzoebl 
You must be logged in to post a comment.