Films Seen - February 2001

[Pre-'96 films not included.]

TIMECODE (19) (dir., Mike Figgis) Stellan Skarsgard, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Salma Hayek, Saffron Burrows [Not just a failed experiment : this was doomed to fail. Splitting the screen into four is little consolation if all four quadrants are dull and disposable, yet that's also the only way this experiment could 'work' : once one of the segments becomes interesting, our attention is focused on that one, the other three becoming mere distractions - and, if more than one is interesting, then we're hopelessly torn, and can only respond by consciously desensitising ourselves, switching off so we can follow both without getting too involved (hardly a recipe for a memorable movie). The only other way it might've worked, however messily and cacophonously, would be if all four stories were given equal weight, all going on at the same time with the sound equally audible - the din would've driven audiences from the theatre, but those who remained might've enjoyed the play of images (and whatever random dialogue they could decipher) in a purely abstract way ; by manipulating the soundtrack to favour one quadrant over the others (i.e. by trying to preserve 'story'), Figgis puts himself in a no-win situation - just as, by improvising the four segments in continuous takes, he eliminates any chance of artfully creating visual links between the images (they do sometimes echo each other in interesting ways, but that's dumb luck more than anything). I realise, of course, I'm missing out on how 'organic' and 'radical' it all is, and I also realise I'm stuck in the "fake reality" created by montage ; I know I'll never be invited to those Beverly Hills soirées where cutting-edge film people talk of digital revolution and 'empowering the viewer', and decide to make half-assed-but-'experimental' films to impress each other (and perhaps salve their own conscience) more than anything. Though I did watch it while waiting for the new Netscape to download, which I feel should count for something...]

THE EEL (57) (dir., Shohei Imamura) Koji Yakusho, Misa Shimizu, Fujio Tsuneta [Starts as neo-noir, solicitous wife turned 'femme fatale', driving white-collar hubby to bloody murder ; then goes pastoral (and a bit predictable), gradually unfolds in limpid, lovely-landscape scenes as he tries to regain his self-respect (walk alongside Society rather than a few steps behind, like a criminal), come to terms with the violent side of his nature (the eel's main function seems to be to reassure him that he's basically a gentle person, albeit an alienated one). As ever with this director, there are all kinds of things in the mix - from absurdist bits (and slapstick climax) to the suggestion that most of the film is taking place inside the protagonist's head - but the overall tone is contemplative, and perhaps a little undercooked : I missed the rude, startling qualities of his other films, the horror-movie tableaux of previous Palme D'Or winner BALLAD OF NARAYAMA, or just the comic energy of the sharper and livelier DR. AKAGI. Maybe it should've stayed neo-noir all the way through...]

BEDAZZLED (54) (dir., Harold Ramis) Brendan Fraser, Elizabeth Hurley, Frances O'Connor [Bewitched by Fraser the nimble farceur (doesn't he look like Steve Buscemi, in his nerd persona?) ; bothered by the diminishing returns setting in after the first couple of sketches ; bewildered by the ending, veering into homily mode ("Heaven and Hell are right here on Earth") and alarmingly feeble contrivance (a good deed voids the contract - yeah, right). Some big laughs, and Hurley may never find a better showcase for her vaguely vacant brand of naughtiness, part big sister part gleeful emasculator (note repeated violence to our hero's gonads) - but the fizz goes out of it long before we get to lines about "the Barbra Streisand of evil". And what's with playing "Wild Thing" over her first appearance? Don't they even realise how lame that is?...]

CAST AWAY (73) (dir., Robert Zemeckis) Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Nick Searcy [Companion-piece to the equally superb (but slightly messier) CONTACT : once again, Zemeckis combines vaulting ambition with quiet dignity, takes on a massive subject and is content not to cheapen it, shies away from philosophical abstraction into everyday struggles and tiny miracles, backed by technical virtuosity. As in CONTACT, the film can offer stunning images (the lifeboat tossed on the waves, seen from above) but prefers to use its budget in less showy ways, making restraint its own reward : any number of intelligent decisions - Hanks waking up in the plane with the crisis already underway, the homecoming seen on TV as he wanders around hours later - even beyond the gruelling 'middle section', making no concessions either to Hollywood stylistics or SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON-style prettifying (only quibble : how does he heal when his wounds start to fester? oh, and how come he never catches cold?). Text so compelling it's easy to ignore the subtext - which is actually quite a puzzling one. Comes on like the punished-yuppie genre (see e.g. THE FAMILY MAN), wherein a successful-but-arrogant hero learns there's more to Life than the pursuit of capitalism - yet our hero's go-getting worldview (even cancer is a problem to be "fixed") is very much an asset when he has to improvise solutions on the island, and his obsession with Time is what finally saves him, allowing him to plan his escape to a strict schedule ; not to mention the Fed Ex packages that magically wash up on the shore, his much-maligned job coming to the rescue - though only once he breaks his Fed Ex code of honour and actually opens them. Is the film thus drawing a distinction between work-as-tool (good) and work-as-value-system (bad)? And why does one of the packages - which we know came from an artist - remain unopened, becoming a kind of totem for our hero? Is Art what keeps us going in times of crisis - is survival itself an art, something to be learned gradually and painfully? Thoroughly assured on the surface, teasingly ambiguous underneath. Maybe it's deliberately open (hence the ending), prizing uncertainty as the opposite of arrogance ; or maybe Zemeckis is just a technocrat, caring only for the nuts and bolts while the larger meanings go to pot...]

BREAD AND ROSES (43) (dir., Ken Loach) Pilar Padilla, Adrien Brody, Elpidia Carrillo [Something of a Ken Loach film from Hell, but he's still got it when it comes to the actors : old Bertha's look of wary pleasure as the foreman outlines her imminent promotion - waiting for the catch, hoping against hope there won't be one - is a lovely moment, and you just know the reactions are genuine when our heroes line up to watch real-life footage of police brutality. Admirable for what it's saying, and how terribly unfashionable it is (the mind boggles when a director of Loach's calibre has to raise cash from 13 different production companies to get his movie made) : it is disgraceful that the richest country in the world should treat its poor so abominably (though some will reply that this dog-eat-dog philosophy is what made the country rich in the first place), and one admires the old Lefties who still speak up about such things - but the film is crude, and Loach seems to have given up on his audience's intelligence. A sign on the wall at the union offices reads "No Pasaran", but the Spanish Civil War only reminds us of the amazing scene in LAND AND FREEDOM where the various factions debated the fine points of Revolutionary theory, at breakneck speed for a good 10 minutes ; here, on the other hand, Brody can't even explain the concept of being an activist without spelling it out ("I'll do a little diagram for you" - and he does, with neatly labelled boxes for 'Us' and 'Them'!). Note how the Russian woman in the workforce is the one most vehemently opposed to the idea of collective bargaining. This is what we call "poetic irony". Can you say "poetic irony"?]

WHAT WOMEN WANT (48) (dir., Nancy Meyers) Mel Gibson, Helen Hunt, Alan Alda, Marisa Tomei [Overlong, doesn't know how to end, only really funny for about half an hour ; the women's thoughts are over-explicit, unsympathetic Mel is a non-starter - esp. when he soft-shoes so niftily to the sweet sounds of Sinatra - and lots of scenes (incl. that Sinatra bit) seem entirely unmotivated, as when our hero momentarily thinks his gift / curse has gone but in fact it hasn't (so lose the scene, for crying out loud!) ; in a word, sloppy, coasting on charm and a cute premise - yet also one of those blockbusters that tie into the zeitgeist in elusive, fascinating ways. "It's a woman's world," laments one terrified exec to another, and the emergence of women (esp. young women) as a market force is exactly what the film is about, from the teenage fashion show that stops it dead for about 5 minutes to the whole "women are unappreciated" angle, tapping into a collective frustration : the hero (a well-known Lothario) turns out to be useless in bed, mainly because he doesn't know what a woman wants - so why did none of his many women ever voice their thoughts before, instead of just lying there waiting for it to be over? The film reflects a (presumably) transitional phase when women feel both confident and insecure, high on a culture of "empowerment" yet still acting nice and smiling at men's boorish behaviour and sexist jokes, longing only for a handsome guy to appreciate their Inner Mystery (this may be the only time in history when both sexes are feeling threatened) : much of the second half consists of Gibson grovelling as he goes through the painful process of becoming a New Man ("You're so much smarter than me," he tells his teenage daughter) ; yet he's always the hero, always in control - and of course he only admits the truth to Hunt when he's good and ready. Much less honest than DR. T AND THE WOMEN, even as it seems less sexist and more even-handed (at least Dr. T stays bewildered, instead of gliding like a movie star into newfound Sensitivity) ; might make an excellent closer to an all-nighter of THE FULL MONTY, CHARLIE'S ANGELS and IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, though - blandly summing up the state of play, leaving the audience amused, generally satisfied and massaged rather than provoked. Ten years from now, they'll look at it and goggle in disbelief ; has its moments, though.]

GOYA IN BORDEAUX (61) (dir., Carlos Saura) Francisco Rabal, José Coronado, Maribel Verdu [Fits in with Saura's claustrophobic theatre-pieces of the past two decades (tinged with flamenco, natch) but the main man here is undoubtedly Vittorio Storaro, working his magic with some gorgeous effects : lighting schemes are oppressive, flooding the image with hot orange light till the characters start to resemble insects trapped in amber, but the film draws you in - a deathbed fever-dream, fluid yet relentless - then explodes cathartically with the startlingly visceral Horrors-of-War climax (as performed by 'physical theatre' troupe La Fura dels Baus). What's great are the silhouettes and painted backdrops, rooms suffused with candlelight, transparent panels allowing action to be highlighted in adjoining rooms (as in the theatre), images like Goya walking down a corridor with paintings on the walls, each painting lit from behind individually so it glows in the darkness ; what's not so great is the inert narrative, starting from a tired premise (artist looks back over his life), studded with leaden aphorisms ("A spiral is like Life itself") and dull observations on the meaning of Art ; what's beyond great is Ms. Verdu, a reminder that Spanish women are the most voluptuous on Earth. Old-fashioned but impressive - perfectly achieved within very narrow limits.]

THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE (71) (dir., Mark Dindal) With the voices of David Spade, John Goodman, Eartha Kitt, Patrick Warburton [Weird how the culture's been infantilised, kids and adults coming ever closer : the locutions of, e.g. Chandler on "Friends" (who's supposed to be pushing 30) blend without a hitch into the "Whatever"s of dude-speak or "Nuh-uh / Yuh-huh"s of an 8-year-olds' slanging-match. All degrees of snarkiness, but it's still a little sobering that this ultra-snarky but rather brilliant comedy (like ALADDIN, or the likes of "Pinky and The Brain") is in fact being aimed at smart-ass schoolkids ; why aren't adult comedies so restlessly inventive, casually post-modern or joyously over-stuffed? Not as rich as TOY STORY, pitched at the same tone throughout - aggressive showbiz patter, like a souped-up version of 30s vaudeville - but packed with gags, incredibly tight (78 mins.) and impatiently cutting itself short whenever it threatens to bog down (what's up with Disney, anyway? crisis of confidence, or just tired of the same old crap?). Love the way Warburton's big dumb lug turns into so much more ; love the awkward silence of first bonding, broken by the croak of a passing frog ; love the evil kitten at the climax (faster, pussycat!) ; love the sight-gag where Kuzco and Yzma keep missing each other by a fraction of a second, harking back (at least) to Buster in THE NAVIGATOR ; love the old geezer going "Bewa-a-are the groove". Even loved Sting coming in over the closing credits - just as a reminder of the limp, soppy thing the rest of it is not. Groovy...]

CHUNHYANG (47) (dir., Im Kwon-Taek) Lee Hyo-Jeong, Cho Seung-Woo, Lee Jung-Hun [Kind of recommended, despite the rating : you just have to know what you're getting, viz. pictorial beauty (foggy mountains, lyrical trysts) wrapped around a crushingly one-dimensional tale of good vs. evil. Story drags it down at every turn - part Victorian melodrama (heavy on the female self-sacrifice), part "Romeo And Juliet" ("Our enemy is the class that divides us") - despite (or because of) being deliberately kept in stark, archetypal form, an oral-tradition folk-tale which the film basically decorates rather than re-imagines, nothing like the sophisticated narrative primitivism of e.g. SANSHO THE BAILIFF. Predictability is part of the deal, ditto slowness - patience is a central theme, like the fisherman in the painting waiting forever to meet King Moon - but that still doesn't make the quaint dialogue ("Don't forget to follow the 'six exercises of a scholar' ") and 'picturesque' ethnographic touches any easier to take. Maybe it's a kind of experiment, expressed through disjunction rather than conjunction of sound and image, placid visuals vs. very intense audio - pleasing colours (reminiscent of the pastel shades in late-50s Technicolor) and patient pacing backed by the thrilling, amazing pansori performance which acts as voice-over. Maybe it's actually quite interesting ; but it's still a trial to sit through.]

BEFORE NIGHT FALLS (49) (dir., Julian Schnabel) Javier Bardem, Johnny Depp, Olivier Martinez, Sean Penn ["We create Beauty," explains the persecuted artist ; "Beauty is the enemy". Schnabel creates beauty too - velvety colours and swaying music combine in sensual, seductive passages (probably captures Cuba much better than the rather staid BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB) ; and beauty is the enemy here as well, showing up the tepid clunkiness of this perfunctory biopic. Not a lot to say, really : nothing really shocks (even the hellish prison turns out to be rather pleasant), yet the film keeps plugging away at the victim-of-oppression angle ; nothing really sticks, scenes rarely building on each other. Not a drama, just a flat line studded with occasional epiphanies ; intriguing glimpses of our hero - how he used sex as a weapon, how he could've been (but wasn't allowed to be) the poet of the Revolution - but no overall insight there, either. Nicely-made, singularly pointless ; Schnabel may be better off switching to commercials or music videos - what with this and BASQUIAT, he's definitely king of the stunted narratives cheered by isolated pleasures.]

THE HOUSE OF MIRTH (75) (dir., Terence Davies) Gillian Anderson, Eric Stoltz, Laura Linney, Anthony LaPaglia, Dan Aykroyd [Recognisably a Terence Davies film, but also something of a departure : his English films were self-consciously lush odes to Sensitivity in a cruel world, but this is lit quite starkly (and scored very sparely) for a period drama, and the decor is in fact quite simple, no doubt partly for budgetary reasons (the opening scene in the railway station seems oddly underpopulated, just Lily emerging from the mist to an empty platform) ; above all, it's a much shrewder movie, slightly exasperated with Lily's quixotic dreaminess and misplaced romanticism, half-agreeing with the view that "a clever woman would know just when to play her cards right". Unlike DISTANT VOICES and (especially) THE LONG DAY CLOSES, where the heroes (hence the film-maker) clung stubbornly to the beautiful things in Life as an escape from a basically vile world, this heroine has the chance to triumph in that world - and throws it away, whether because she's too naive to realise that Society is Darwinian (founded on success and "getting what you want"), or too vain to sully herself by sinking to that level, or just not "nasty" enough to hurt others in order to survive ; the film's implacable pace and pared-down, airless look seem to mock her, observing her tragedy at a deliberate distance (according to Stoltz, he and others in the cast approached the film as a kind of black comedy) - yet that tragedy also elevates her, from the coquettish social butterfly of the early scenes ("A whole week! How delicious!") to something magically still and stoical. Purity is self-destructive (and vice versa), like in a Thomas Hardy novel - or a Lars Von Trier melodrama, except the lost, quietly honourable Lily is a long way from those wilfully self-sacrificing heroines ; she just doesn't get it, the film using artificiality to good effect (as in the impossibly beautiful Mediterranean interlude), daring us to miss the very real power-struggles going on beneath the surface. Starts slowly, builds in intensity, closes like a trap snapping shut ; barbed, restrained, and quietly transcendent.]