In the meantime, the production is beautiful and assured, as is the acting. Jean Dujardin(as silent film star George Valentin) and Berenice Bejo (as starlet Peppy Miller) ham the hell out of their parts, and they can’t help but be charming anyway. The film milks its silent-era effects shamelessly– from the intense chiaroscuro of the close ups to the broad jokes about speaking and voices throughout. The scene above seems one of several hat tips to Singin’ in the Rain (1952), where our heroine sings behind a curtain as the silent-movie star lip syncs for the audience. There the curtain was a sign of the duplicity of the film world, which favors appearances over reality. Here the curtain is more of a flirtatious device to advance the romance. The collaborative dancing anticipates the film’s last scene even as it suggests the main plot conflict: the rise of the “talkies.” Obviously, this plot has been done before, and very well. Hazanavicius adds little to it, nor does he seem to try to. The characters are not particularly well developed and the plot is predictable. The story, in fact, gets rather bogged down in George’s long slide into failure, though Peppy never seems to tire of it. Somehow the complexity of this film history ends up tied with a bow in a song and dance. Somehow the tragic dimensions of change and loss are given a happy ending, like in the movies.

This scene from Martin Scorsese’s latest film, Hugo (2011), can stand in for the mixed success of the whole. The lighting and visual production are breathtaking. The cut to the obviously phony skyline of Paris under that big yellow moon is audacious and charming. But what’s with the ridiculous speech in which our young hero suddenly intones the moral of the story: the world is a machine and each insignificant piece is really significant after all?  The clumsiness of this moment is underlined by the visual sophistication of the two small children dwarfed by the oversized clock face and gears. What had been an amazingly executed experiment in 3D storytelling starts morphing into pedantic mush.

If I write about a film here it’s because I like something about it or something about it makes me think. And that is true too of Hugo, which is visually stunning. The opening sequence was wondrous: a sweeping camera cut through space to bring us intimately close to that faraway time and place. Suddenly we were there, with the oddball characters and the constant motion of the train station. And the film hardly paused as it quite literally raced after its artful dodger. From the start the situation was hardly realistic, but that made sense for a film so interested in its own relationship to magic. Where it lost me was when its fascination with film history shifted from helping us see differently to cramming us with as much information as possible. You know a film is in trouble when characters start reading aloud from reference books and narrating their memories in flashbacks.

It’s hard not to like a Scorsese movie, even though he can be so uneven and disappointing when he doesn’t have a solid screenplay to work with. Even then his eye is so interested and interesting, and you can almost always see him thinking…. it’s a shame that Hugo fails as both story and history by trying too hard to be both.

The film begins with repetition: a Mardi-Gras-esque conga line of company dancers weaves its way through various sets throughout the film, making the same patterns of hand gestures over and over. This flexible line unifies the film, as do the dancers themselves whom we get to hear in individual interviews. Choreographer Pina Bausch has introduced these gestures at the very beginning, tying them to the seasons, but Pina explains little in the film. Her choreography tends to speak for itself, though the occasions when we see her dancing roles she originated are very moving.

Wenders takes advantage of the repetitive vocabulary of dance forms to structure his film, insofar as it is structured at all. The line of dancers recurs, as the camera zooms into pairs of dancers and out again for broad shots of dancers lining an auditorium wall in Chorus Line fashion.  These dancers advance and retreat as the camera does, taking full advantage of the 3D technology to fill the imaginary space as much as the literal space in the room. The risk in repetition, of course, is boredom, but to my taste the dance of choreography and cinematography here precludes that. There is always something interesting to watch on screen, even if the blank-faced interviews with each dancer reveal little about Pina’s work. Wenders undercuts our expectations of documentary by making those interviews particularly unhelpful. All the action is on stage, or in the beautifully contrived spaces that count as stages in Pina’s work, as below.

In last night’s grim episode of Downton Abbey author/creator Julian Fellowes cut down two heroic characters at once (see the scene above). One darling dies but the other is left as good as dead at the end of the episode: the series’ only romantic hero crippled and impotent? Suddenly the serene expectations of the period costume drama (and perhaps this historical class) are upended and we viewers aren’t sure of our ground…. What could possibly come next? Will Lady Mary become Lady Chatterley? We remember that D.H. Lawrence, and Faulkner himself, were also marked by the “Great War.”

It takes a confident writer and producer to take such risks with viewers’ feelings. When Charles Dickens killed off the angelic Little Nell his readers deluged him with letters of protest. In Downton Abbey the footman William must remain a heroic sacrifice to narrative probability (as the maid Rose says in this episode, it would be too much to expect that theirs would be the only household left untouched by war…). But Matthew Crawley must be saved somehow, and this turn toward tragedy must become his unexpected route back to Lady Mary. One senses here the sort of romantic negotiations that occur in 19th-century literature from Jane Austen to Charlotte Bronte: the lovers must be humbled before they can live happily ever after. At least, that’s what our new great expectations hope will happen.

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Directed by Kelly Reichardt, this understated, underrated film redirects our attention from the conventions of film viewing (plot, action, character, dialogue) to the constraints of the film frame itself. What is in the frame and what is left just outside it?  The story of a westward migration along the Oregon Trail in 1845, the subject matter is well suited to grappling with this question. Outside the frame there may be desert, gorges, cliffs, hostile peoples….the terrain is literally unmapped around the edges.  Inside the frame are three different families and their guide, Stephen Meek. Inside are wagon wheels, tin pans, buckets, kindling, rifles. There are daily routines of scouring, knitting, cooking, fixing, and walking, walking, walking. What is knowable is only what is right in front of your eyes and feet.

Reichardt emphasizes this by her visual choices. In an inteview she discussed using the 4:3 aspect ratio of television shows because it cuts off peripheral vision from side to side. This limited vision echoes the view from the narrow bonnets the women wear, as well as the settlers’ situation in the wilderness. The effect is unsettling and tensions spiral for characters and viewers. We want to see more, and know more, but Reichardt refuses to indulge us. In this commitment to uncertainty and ambiguity the film seems deeply anti-cinematic.  Indeed, by the end we know little more than we did at first, and neither do the embattled characters, now desperate for water.

Within the film’s frame there are a few particular enigmas. One is Meek himself, who may be as lost as the settlers feel. As performed by Bruce Greenwood, his bluster sounds hollow but it is impossible to know for certain what he knows. As one of the women remarks, “I don’t blame him for not knowing the way, but for saying he did.” This woman, almost nameless and storyless, gradually becomes the central figure of the film, as if emerging organically from the hills and dust. When a nameless Native American enters the frame she is the only character who tries to engage with him. It is a testament to Michele Williams’ performance and Reichardt’s direction that this character too remains enigmatic: is she right in suspecting Meek, in trusting the Native American? The balance of power between these three semi-articulate figures comes to a head in the formal confrontation above. The camera cuts between close ups of different faces, resisting long shots until the three opponents are shown in their triangular stand off. Between Meek’s arrogant threats and the “savage’s” silence the film seems to side with the woman’s simple action. When Meek taunts her with what could be “over those hills” she accepts it laconically: “could be.” Perhaps that is the ultimate message of the film: in desperate straits, when there is no way of knowing what is true or right, one must simply act. It is bold and confident filmmaking.

credit Columbia Sony Pictures 2011

My students are writing their first papers of the semester now and struggling with Mark Doty’s essay “Souls on Ice,” in which Doty describes metaphors as “containers” for emotion, or tangible vessels for intangible ideas. This definition functions much like metaphors themselves: making the complex simpler, if not simple.

Baseball, of course, is a game made for metaphors, and Moneyball (2011) is full of them. In one of the last scenes of the film, the Oakland A’s assistant general manager (Jonah Hill) tries to show the general manager, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), that some experiences that may feel like failures are really successes. He shows a great clip (is it from a real game?) of a baserunner scrambling to get to first base, then belatedly realizing he had hit a home run. There’s a pause until the Jonah Hill character says “it’s a metaphor.” Billy/Brad, exasperated, says “I know it’s a metaphor!” and we have to wonder what isn’t a metaphor in this idea-driven film. The poster at left, with its tiny figure on the great green grass, puts the main idea on display: how much difference can one man make in a giant system? or, as the slogan puts it, more commercially, “what are you really worth?” The smallness of Pitt’s figure seems to be in ironic juxtaposition to the huge black letters of his name, which tell us exactly what he’s worth.

The movie, directed by Bennett Miller from a book by Michael Lewis, is admirably cautious in answering these questions. Since historical narratives like this one can’t really have “spoilers” I feel safe in saying that Beane does make a difference to the old established ways of running baseball teams, but he still isn’t exactly victorious. The big questions asked in the film– how do you evaluate talent? what is your biggest fear? what does it mean to win or lose?– are only sketched, not reduced to glib cliches. It’s refreshing to see a film so comfortable with complex ideas and so ready to grapple with them respectfully. In that regard this film reminds me of Miller’s last, Capote, which did an equally good job of rendering abstractions on film.

The idea that drives Doty’s essay is very similar to the tentative conclusion that Miller gives us as well: “our metaphors go on ahead of us…” and they know more than we do.

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth… When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

The film uses this biblical text from Job to remind us of the joys and beauties that we too easily forget, though they are all around us. These resurrected childhood memories are lost just as the pleasures of childhood (the intense emotions, the vivid sensations) are lost, just as Eden is lost. The film’s title and insistence on spirituality is less about finding an actual god, though it often seems to be addressing one, but rediscovering that spiritual appreciation within oneself. Jack looks back on his childhood as if it is a dream-like state of the unconscious and begins to recognize that his brother’s death makes that pre-lapsarian idyll all the more precious. The joy was not just in contrast to the tragedy that followed; rather, joy and struggle are inextricably connected, as the quote suggests. This realization allows Jack to forgive and be forgiven by his stern father and it allows him a reunion at the end with his hallowed mother.

There is plenty to criticize about this film–the overbearing voice-over, the generic characters, the lack of narrative, the dinosaurs–but in keeping with the film’s ambitious scope and its own effort to find the good and the beautiful, let’s focus on the positive. We should celebrate Malick’s courage in putting this personal and idiosyncratic vision out there, though it may have trouble finding a receptive audience. Malick takes a big risk when he hedges between the personal or autobiographical narrative and the universal or metaphorical. This film lands awkwardly between the two poles, perhaps, but it was worth the leap.

The beginning and ending of the film do suggest this banal faith in home and the people in it, but the film quickly moves on to more interesting matters, visually and narratively. The clumsy first and last scenes, in which some cliched plot points are given some rapid exposition, could be deleted without damage to the wondrous middle. There Weir allows his camera to veer off track again and again, while reinforcing a narrow storyline. The plot is simple: the inmates escape, suffer harrowing deprivations, and reach their goal. They lose the usual number of characters along the way, with the usual sentimental effect. The geography seems divinely designed to test and torment them: they walk from Siberia through the Mongolian desert to Tibet and the Himalayas. By the time they get to the Himalayas even Weir seems exhausted: that part of the journey is reduced to a few minutes of montage.

Yet by then we’ve been hooked– by the glamorous scenery in part, but also by the beauty of the visual storytelling, as Weir moves from exquisitely composed longshots to tramping feet. He deftly gives a sense of the enormity of the journey and its personal costs by shifting scales and rhythm regularly. He lets his camera stumble along with the characters, as you can see in this quick, rough scene. It begins with a slow pan across the ice then dissolves into a chaotic tumble of cuts and handheld mayhem. It’s giddy with pleasure in running, breathing, being alive. In this and other scenes Weir reveals how nature and humans can sometimes be in sync, both bursting with vivid life.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part two (Warner Bros, 2011)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, or number 7, part two, is a film with many endings. I’m sure it has at least seven if you count all the signs of finish: a death and resurrection, villains vanquished one by one, a battle won against all odds, the reappearance of favorite characters from early in the series, many well-arranged group shots, and plenty of cameras panning out and away from Hogwarts, our home away from home this past decade. And then there’s the epilogue “19 years later”….

In short, the poster that claims “it all ends,” and the media waxing nostalgic, may be premature. The merchandising machine lives on. If I sound impatient it is because I wanted to enjoy this film, as I have enjoyed several in this series, including Deathly Hallows part one– but I found it impossible. The cutting of the last book into two films leaves this piece almost incomprehensible — a rush of action sequences with few connecting emotions. The direction, again by the usually adept David Yates, feels aimless — as if all decisions were made by a committee of marketing managers who needed the camera to pan past Cho Chang one more time so viewers remember where Harry began. Scenes that should be suspenseful, like characters saved at the last second, just seem repetitive. And there are too few moments of pure glee or mischief–like when Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) giggles”I’ve always wanted to use that spell!” at an otherwise dark moment.

The sheer overflow of fun that was one of the charming features of the books and earlier films feels forced: instead of the exuberant variety we’re used to we get the “gemino” spell which multiplies everything one touches into more of the same. Many of the most climactic scenes do indeed seem to be pastiches of bits from Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, and other former blockbusters. In the scene below in Gringott’s bank Harry enters a dark cave and must distinguish the “authentic” object from the copies, just as Indiana Jones must do in The Last Crusade, part of a series that was itself a parody of adventure films. The scene both expresses and contains our ambivalence about overbundance and uniqueness: if this is art, shouldn’t it be special and unique? but if it is to make money, and be loved my millions, shouldn’t it be mass produced? Voldemort, who has divided his soul into pieces, shows how unsustainable that paradox is.

Overall, the film is more predictable than terrible, but that was disappointing. By its end it is broadcasting shamelessly: the screenplay requires characters to say that the dead “are still here,” thumping their hearts, not once, but twice. As Ron says above in one of the movie’s many self-referential bits, “you’re seriously going to try that one again, are you?” It asks Harry to have faith in love, and its characters to have faith in Harry, but the film has little faith in its viewers.

The clip above is a good representation of its film, Sweetgrass (2009): slow, deliberate, and beautifully shot. The artistry is apparent, but the filmmakers, Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, have the good sense to make the “story” subtle. As in this excerpt, the documentary is not narrated or prefaced or even introduced except through these lingering images. Although it risks losing its audience, the strategy works by forcing us to pay close attention to what we see and hear. The quizzical expression on a sheep’s face. The sound of birdsong. The wind ever-rustling.

There is in fact a story here about change and motion, but it is told through stillness. Montana cowboys have driven their sheep to pasture in the Beartooth Mountains for decades, but the film documents the last run in 2003. As a documentary Sweetgrass is unsparing and unsentimental: it cuts from a silhouetted Marlboro man standing on a ridge to a foul-mouthed cowboy cursing out his sheep.

Barbash and Castaing-Taylor like to disrupt our assumptions about nature and the West. They linger on broken landscapes like the ones that begin this trailer, where lines cut across and interrupt the picturesque and sublime. There is beauty here, they imply, but don’t take it for granted.

The sheep themselves can surprise too. At the end of the trailer they transform from a few stragglers to a shifting abstraction that moves as one. In a breathtaking shot later in the film we see a shadowed mountain across a green valley. As the camera slowly moves closer we make out a line of white trailing down its side. Then the line of white appears to move. Then we see that the white line is actually hundreds of sheep making their way down the cliff. The mountain that seemed so motionless was never still at all and the camera’s slow motion made us see it (and the sheep) afresh. The filmmakers’ restraint is admirable: they let the story tell itself and its structure emerges organically from the material. They show a remarkable confidence in their own vision and judgment, and they earn it.