Film

Not easy being green light: Luhrmann goes Gatsby

2013-05-24T02:25:29+00:00

By Greg Carlson
Film Editor

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” receives its fourth theatrical feature adaptation (for whatever reason, the forgotten 2005 “G” is not included on that list) along with the Baz Luhrmann treatment, an expectedly anachronistic bricolage that marginally improves on the somnolence of the 1974 version directed by Jack Clayton. Mostly faithful in major plot detail and too faithful in the relentless use of “old sport” as Gatsby’s favorite term of endearment, Luhrmann’s edition spares no expense in conjuring up a simulacrum of Jazz Age extravagance and conspicuous consumption. The movie’s brio fails to develop into a “spectacular spectacular,” however, and like Gatsby’s doomed quest, no amount of money can buy the viewer’s love.

The 1998 Greenhaven Press compilation “Readings on The Great Gatsby” addresses Gatsby’s nature by presenting a quintet of essays arguing that the man is variously a classic romantic, a sinister gangster, a profoundly comic character, a pathological narcissist and a fairytale hero for the middle class. Leonardo DiCaprio doesn’t get at each of these positions equally, but his portrayal effectively encapsulates Gatsby’s neediness and desperation for love and approval that never arrive. Of course, it is Nick and not Daisy who comes closest to validating Gatsby’s desire (“You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”), but Luhrmann doesn’t press the homoeroticism of the Jay-Nick bromance, extra-textually stimulated by DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire’s foundational membership in the coarsely named Pussy Posse.

Daisy Fay Buchanan, the shallow and capricious committer of vehicular homicide, is arguably the Gatsby character most resistant to cinematic translation. Mia Farrow’s disastrous interpretation left much to be desired, and Carey Mulligan strains to make the most of her very scarce opportunities to instill complexity in a young woman so idealized by her onetime suitor she cannot possibly live up to Gatsby’s expectations. The romance of “The Great Gatsby” has always struck me as a terrible, rotten mirage, and its fundamental emptiness and fraudulence – a key part of Fitzgerald’s tragedy – presents a major adaptation obstacle.

Those who accept the novel as sacred canon will despise Luhrmann’s big alterations, most glaringly manifested in a poorly conceived and wretchedly executed framing device that places Nick Carraway in a sanatorium as he “writes” the story of Gatsby as a kind of purgation of his alcoholic and melancholic demons. The gimmick gives Luhrmann and co-screenwriter Craig Pearce an excuse to slather on what feels like pages and pages of extraneous voiceover narration presumably included to honor Fitzgerald’s poetic cadences. In case we miss the point, Luhrmann superimposes the text of key passages and quotations directly onscreen.

Considering Shawn Carter’s producing credit and soundtrack presence, it obviously occurred to Luhrmann that Jay-Z’s Marcy Projects to Madison Square Garden trajectory mirrors the Horatio Alger-esque, self-made journey of Gatsby. In her “New York Times” column, Maureen Dowd quoted Leon Wieseltier, who “thinks it’s time for a black Gatsby.” Luhrmann retains Fitzgerald’s references to race, including the moment when Nick and Jay are passed on the Queensboro Bridge by a limousine “driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl.” The scene in the film is underscored by Jay-Z’s “Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” and serves as a reminder of the gulf between the wealthy white Roaring Twenties aristocracy and the artists and innovators of the Harlem Renaissance.

Questions and comments: gregcarlson1@gmail.com

New ‘Star Trek’ returns to political allegory

2013-05-24T02:20:25+00:00

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Movies Editor

Director J. J. Abrams’ rebooted and revised alternate-universe saga of “Star Trek” got off to a respectable start four years ago by focusing on the beloved characters in their younger years, with plenty of action, adventure and special effects. The simple but energetic plot and frequent comic byplay were aimed squarely at entertaining its audiences. With “Star Trek Into Darkness,” Abrams takes the same cast into another action-packed adventure loaded with clever references to the original TV series and the feature films starring those original actors. This time, however, the script also takes the approach used by most of the original TV episodes: incorporating not-too-thinly disguised political, social and ideological allegory into their futuristic sci-fi stories, something barely even hinted at in the 2009 film.

After a brief thrill-packed prologue of nonstop action that gives young Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) a chance to violate the Federation’s Prime Directive in order to save young science officer Spock (Zachary Quinto), and getting himself demoted for his decision, the main plot in this second of the new “Star Trek” films begins with terrorist attacks on Starfleet headquarters in London and San Francisco. The first is a devastating bomb and the second is a carefully coordinated machine-gun attack on the high command itself. It seems at first as if this movie is going to be more James Bond in space than James T. Kirk, or perhaps a sci-fi version of “Mission: Impossible.”

Thanks to the sympathetic Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller), Kirk is reinstated as Captain and eagerly takes on the mission of tracking down and eliminating the terrorist, as much for personal vengeance as to follow his orders and regain his military credibility. We soon discover, however, that this terrorist is no ordinary man (or even alien, illegal or otherwise). He inexplicably saves the Starship Enterprise search party that’s trying to capture him after they are attacked by Klingons, and they learn he is actually a genetically-bred superhuman named Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch) who had spent the past few centuries in suspended animation.

As anyone familiar with the Star Trek universe knows, Khan was the ruthless yet unexpectedly admirable megalomaniac in one of the most memorable episodes of the original TV series’ first season back in 1967, “Space Seed.” Played by the charismatic Ricardo Montalban, the character made such an impression that he returned in the second theatrical Star Trek film fifteen years later, “The Wrath of Khan” (1982). Knowledge of these two stories (as well as various other original TV episodes) helps greatly in appreciating any number of aspects of the new film.

In the original Trek universe, Khan was found drifting in space and inadvertently revived by Kirk, who himself was in his prime. The sequel had a middle-aged Kirk having to cope with a now more bitter and formidable Khan’s quest for power again, while simultaneously dealing with a now middle-aged ex-girlfriend Carol Marcus, who happens to be the research scientist in charge of the project Khan is after, and Kirk and Carol’s now-adult son he has never seen.

On the other hand, in the revised timeline used by “Star Trek Into Darkness,” Kirk is still young and cocky, and Khan had been revived years earlier, exploited by the military for his superior mind to design new weapons until he became a liability. “Wrath of Khan” expresses some passing concern about how the military takes over scientific studies originally intended to search for knowledge and benefit humanity, but the new film presents us with some pretty obvious, almost Oliver Stone-like covert conspiracy activities that actually drive most of the plot’s motivations. We also get Admiral Marcus’ attractive young daughter Carol sneaking on board the mission as a second science officer, with more than a few admiring glances between her and Kirk implying a potential relationship in a later film.

“Star Trek Into Darkness” is certainly a slick-looking, impressive and entertaining action film set in the future, like its immediate predecessor. However, it is much more in the spirit of the original series with its overt political commentary on the events and hot topics of its own era. The closing credits, in fact, explicitly dedicate the film to post-9/11 veterans. Throughout the plot we get characters debating the merits of whether it is best to follow regulations, military orders, majority opinion, personal intuition or an innate human morality. These are exactly the kind of issues that won the original TV series numerous thoughtful fans while flying all but unnoticed under the radar of network executives who saw only sci-fi action stories designed for kids and teenagers.

Interestingly in this increasingly digital era, the bulk of “Star Trek Into Darkness” was shot on traditional 35mm movie film. The digitally converted 3-D is generally quite pleasing and adds something to the experience, but it is not quite as integral to enjoying the film as it is in something designed and shot natively in 3-D like “The Great Gatsby” or “Hugo” or most digital cartoons.

In its opening weekend, the latest Star Trek easily topped the box office charts at double the take of the second place “Iron Man 3” in its third week and roughly triple the third place “The Great Gatsby” in its second week. Time will tell whether J. J. Abrams’ reimagined take on the characters winds up turning off die-hard Trekkies or winning new converts to the franchise. In any case, there is sure to be a third installment.

Questions and comments: christopher.jacobs@email.und.edu

Boyle cuts it close in noir ‘Trance’

2013-05-16T19:53:03+00:00

By Greg Carlson
Film Editor

WARNING: The following review reveals key plot information. Read only if you have seen “Trance.”

The recently released “Oblivion” made the error of using Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World” as an artificial stand-in for desired psychological depth that failed to materialize. In Danny Boyle’s “Trance,” a similar tactic is employed via Francisco Goya’s 1798 “Witches in the Air,” but in this case the painting is a major MacGuffin at the center of an auction house art heist gone wrong. Boyle pays homage to and explodes the contours of classic film noir, although one’s enjoyment of the movie will depend on the extent to which disbelief can be suspended in the service of a plot that explores lost and found memory.

James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson, and Vincent Cassel form the highly unreliable triangle of participants in the criminal roundelay. McAvoy’s Simon is the inside man who suffers an unexpected blow to the head that leaves crook Franck (Cassel) no choice but to retain the services of hypnotherapist Elizabeth Lamb (Dawson), who will assist Simon in remembering the location of the Goya. In his biography of Ava Gardner, Lee Server wrote that amnesia is “noir’s version of the common cold.” Joe Ahearne – who wrote and directed the TV movie upon which “Trance” is based – and John Hodge take the device to heart in their script, setting out to both construct a typically fatalistic noir and explore the abstract, faulty, and untrustworthy workings of the brain.

With its dependence on double and triple-crosses, “Trance” pays homage to a number of twisty noir hallmarks, including “Detour,” “D.O.A.,” and as Tom Wardak has pointed out, “High Wall” and “Spellbound,” a pair of psychiatry noirs that Wardak notes, “flipped the gendered stereotypes of male psychotherapist and female hysteric… to explore the emasculation that returning soldiers now felt in a peaceful, domesticated, female-driven arena.” The emasculation of “Trance” is mostly visual and in keeping with motion picture rating double standards, as both McAvoy and Cassel are photographed in careful compositions to obscure their genitalia while Dawson’s nudity is situated as a key plot point doubling as an art history lesson about the presence and absence of pubic hair.

Even though Lamb is grossly outnumbered by the male thugs and thieves with whom she capably holds her own, “Trance” has a few tricks up its sleeve regarding gender. While it is easy to read Lamb initially as a femme fatale responsible for the downfall of Simon, Boyle’s slippery shifts in allegiance and the revelation of Simon as a possessive abuser suggest that the “real” protagonist of “Trance” is Elizabeth. Unfortunately, Boyle seems to be less interested in character than in structure, and despite Dawson’s considerable efforts, Lamb suffers in the tradeoff.

The resolute amorality of the movie’s characters burdens anything that might pass for a rooting interest, and in this respect “Trance” is less successful than Boyle’s directorial debut “Shallow Grave.” Regular collaborator Anthony Dod Mantle works his usual magic behind the camera, fracturing, fragmenting, and mirroring motifs into a hallucinatory kaleidoscope that includes a bizarre close-up of what remains of Cassel’s head after a point blank gunshot. Next to Dawson’s glabrousness, it’s the movie’s most discussed image. The photographic pyrotechnics complement the contrivances bound to the film’s big shock, a disclosure made all the wilder for its dependence on Simon’s acomoclitism as memory trigger. “Trance” may not be for every taste, but it’s a razor in more ways than one.

Questions and comments: gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Luhrmann’s ‘Gatsby’ eccentric but effective

2013-05-16T19:52:20+00:00

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Movies Editor

Flamboyant Australian director Baz Luhrmann, whose “Strictly Ballroom” (1992), “Romeo + Juliet” (1996), and “Moulin Rouge” (2001) brought him numerous admirers and detractors alike for his self-consciously stylized, out-of-the-box approach, has now put his distinctive touch on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic novel of 1920s jazz-age America, “The Great Gatsby.” The results will not please everyone (neither his fans nor his critics), but most of the time the film works surprisingly well in translating the book’s plot, characters, and themes to the screen.

There has been plenty of pre-release buzz and disparagement of some of Luhrmann’s choices, dismissed in advance as trendy pandering to modern tastes at the expense of authenticity. Notable among these gripes are the idea to make it in 3-D, Luhrmann’s trademark style of bold colors with flashy digitally-enhanced cinematography and editing techniques, but especially his use of such anachronistically non-period music as hip-hop songs in its soundtrack.

As it turns out, the Baz Luhrmann version of “The Great Gatsby” is not really the outrageous exercise in excessive style over content that many were fearing (or perhaps hoping for). It’s true that there are occasional intrusions of modern hip-hop and pop songs into a few scenes, mostly to intensify Luhrmann’s vivid visuals depicting the wild, carefree 1920s party mentality for younger viewers who are simply unable to associate emotionally with period 1920s jazz music as an integral expression of the emotions of the “Jazz Age.” For the most part these music cues are brief and skillfully blended into an overall score, which retains a general period flavor as well as incorporates several authentic songs from the general era (often plus or minus a few years but less obviously anachronistic).

There are more than a few stylistic similarities to “Moulin Rouge,” including the opening dissolve from a beat-up old movie look into the main credits and a recurring use of the rapid digital tracking shots into scenes. The visual style seems the most Luhrmann-esque during the lavish party sequences. However, Luhrmann has abandoned heavily artificial look of the settings, costumes, and performances he employed in “Moulin Rouge” for meticulously authentic-looking production design and costumes (both by his wife Catharine Martin), and appropriately straight dramatic acting by a well-selected cast.

As for the use of 3-D, in the case of “The Great Gatsby” the illusion of depth is very pronounced throughout the film, adding greatly to appreciation of the design of the sets and Luhrmann’s placement of the actors and props within them. It’s a better film in 3-D than it would be in 2-D, and it’s got much more interesting use of 3-D than many 3-D films.

Luhrmann co-wrote the screenplay with Craig Pearce, doing a good job of capturing the essence of the short memoir-style novel by creating a framing story of how the novel’s narrator Nick Carraway comes to write his experiences into a book as a form of therapy for his alcoholism. This allows many of Fitzgerald’s literary touches to come through as a voice-over narration, and provides an excellent opportunity for clever use of 3-D during periodic returns from the main plot back to Nick at his typewriter with superimposed words and letters from his manuscript floating in front of the scene at the surface of the movie screen.

As in the book, Nick describes characters for the audience and then we see scenes play out during Nick’s fateful summer of 1922 when he comes to New York to become a bond salesman. He happens to rent a small house on Long Island next door to the mansion of mysterious and reclusive millionaire Jay Gatsby, whose trendy parties are the talk of New York even though no one who attends actually seems to know him or anything about him. Directly across the bay is the estate of Nick’s wealthy cousin Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom, an old schoolmate of Nick’s who is having an affair with the rough-edged Myrtle, wife of a small-time mechanic named George Wilson. Gatsby had fallen in love with Daisy before going overseas in World War I, and never gave up hope of winning her even after she married Tom. Meanwhile Nick becomes attracted to Daisy’s high-class and fast-living friend Jordan Baker.

Of course the romantic triangles add a bit of tension to the basic story contrasting life of the privileged classes vs. the struggling middle classes vs. the more-struggling working classes. It is in fact the romantic passions and intrigues that lead to the climax and inevitable tragic conclusion, which leads to Nick’s cynical turn to alcohol and eventual writing of the book about it all. Naturally any number of elements of the book are left out or barely alluded to in the film version, but the basics are there.

Tobey Maguire comes across well as Nick, giving the film a good anchor as the audience’s guide and commentator on the events. Leonardo DiCaprio is in top form as the title character, with his Gatsby often recalling that of Robert Redford in the 1974 film version, as well as DiCaprio’s own performance as troubled millionaire Howard Hughes in “The Aviator.” Carey Mulligan makes an appropriate Daisy, with Elizabeth Debicki, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, and Jason Clarke all effective as Jordan, Tom, Myrtle, and George, respectively.

At 143 minutes, Luhrmann’s film is almost the same running time as the 1974 adaptation by British director Jack Clayton, but seems like it moves by nearly twice as fast due to their differing filmmaking styles. Previous film versions ran only about 80 minutes in 1926 (a film unfortunately no longer known to exist) and 91 minutes in 1949 (a film difficult to see due to complicated copyright issues). Devotees of F. Scott Fitzgerald and of Baz Luhrmann should find much to like about this latest screen version of “The Great Gatsby,” although those so inclined may just as easily find much to dislike.

Questions and comments: christopher.jacobs@email.und.edu

Cruise races to ‘Oblivion’

2013-05-10T00:24:13+00:00

By Greg Carlson
Film Editor

WARNING: The following review reveals key plot information. Read only if you have seen “Oblivion.”

Director Joseph Kosinski, working from his own currently unpublished graphic novel, borrows from so many science fiction texts that genre fans might well pass the unsustainable running time of “Oblivion” tallying the allusions. From any number of episodes of “The Twilight Zone” to quotations of “WALL-E,” “Solaris,” “Moon,” “Minority Report,” and the unavoidable indebtedness to “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Kosinski’s shaky simulacrum labors as a visual concept-in-search-of-a-story that took multiple scribes several rewrites to complete. Many of the harshest critiques have been levied at star Tom Cruise, who continues to look and behave some fifteen to twenty years younger than the July 3, 1962 date on his pilot’s license, but the real trouble with “Oblivion” is the huge, empty vacuum of nothingness suggested by its title.

Long after viewers have sifted through messy exposition belabored by long stretches of redundant voiceover, “Oblivion” adopts a “Matrix” meets “Terminator” view of enslavement or death delivered by artificial intelligence. A gigantic tetrahedral station unimaginatively nicknamed the Tet fills in for HAL 9000/Matrix/Skynet as the movie’s symbol of sentient machinery gone awry. Cruise’s Jack Harper, in partnership with communications officer/lover Victoria Olsen (Andrea Riseborough), works on a desolate Earth to service and repair the intimidating drones that patrol the huge platforms slurping up resources needed to sustain the Tet. No matter how many midnights he skinny-dips with Victoria, Jack cannot shake visions of life before the fall, even if he erroneously believes humans have retreated to the safety of a colony on Saturn’s moon Titan.

Olga Kurylenko, who was three years old when “Risky Business” was released in 1983, plays Julia Rusakova, an astronaut whose frequent appearances in Jack’s dreams portend even deeper significance when she shows up in the flesh aboard a crippled NASA craft. Julia’s arrival shifts the narrative focus of “Oblivion” to a series of creaky revelations that include both the AI shocker and an opportunity to feature Jack versus Jack fisticuffs in a clone showdown. Throw in retreats to Jack’s secret cabin and the mysterious “Scavs,” led by an underutilized Morgan Freeman, and the recipe of “Oblivion” stirs in too many ingredients to be palatable.

Kosinski’s fondness for elegant design rescues “Oblivion” from total catastrophe, but like his debut “Tron: Legacy,” the beauty is only pixel deep and bereft of intellectual sustenance – especially notable when Jack succumbs to that most laughable of action tropes: outrunning the fireball. The vehicle effects work, however, and Claudio Miranda’s frequent, IMAX-ready wide shots frame landscapes that provide the necessary scale for the dragonfly-shaped, iPhallic “bubble ship” flybys. Along with the EVE meets Beholder firepower of the spheroid drones, the sleek, Bell 47 helicopter-inspired “bubble ship” is the film’s most interesting and memorable character.

The post-apocalyptic dystopia of “Oblivion” contains all kinds of markers to lace the unfamiliarity with a sense of the uncanny. Aviator sunglasses and a New York Yankees baseball cap are joined by other iconic symbols of American culture, including “Planet of the Apes”-style glimpses of a half-buried Statue of Liberty and the inexplicable presence of Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World” as a symbol of who knows just what – a reference to Arthur C. Clarke’s “2001” novel, maybe? The danger of inviting a painting like “Christina’s World” to the party is the risk that some viewers will notice its artistic superiority. I can imagine spending two hours revisiting Wyeth’s canvas. “Oblivion,” not so much.

Questions and comments: gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Not your usual Mother’s Day movie!

2013-05-10T00:23:56+00:00

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Movies Editor

Mother’s Day is this Sunday, so it seems an appropriate time to take a look at the relatively recent Korean film “Mother” (2009), released to Blu-ray in the U.S. by Magnolia Pictures back in 2010 and now available for under $15.

International cinema has long been celebrated at film festivals and art theatres, especially those of France, Italy, Sweden, Japan, Russia, and India, but films from Korea have been largely unknown by moviegoers outside of that country. Over the past several years a growing body of interesting works have gained some recognition around the world, often by incorporating elements from other notable world filmmakers and assimilating them into a distinctively Korean cultural sensibility. “Mother,” for example, has been likened by one critic to films by Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski, and David Lynch (particularly “Blue Velvet”). It might also be compared to certain aspects in films by Claude Chabrol, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Yasujiro Ozu, and others.

Writer-director Bong Joon-ho’s “Mother” is essentially two stories in one, an intriguingly complex dichotomy between mother and son as well as between intense maternal devotion and a criminal investigation. All along the way there’s a healthy dose of perhaps disturbingly ironic and often darkly comic commentary on legal bureaucracy, adolescent cruelty, double standards, and modern life in general.

After a brief lyrical but enigmatic opening sequence (which becomes clear much later), the film spends its first half-hour or so setting up the daily routines and personality quirks of the aging widowed mother (Kim Hye-ja) and her mildly retarded but functional and very strong-willed 27-year-old son Do-joon (Won Bin), who spends more time than his mother would prefer hanging out with his low-life friend Jin-tae (Jin Goo). Then one night Do-joon gets drunk, and unwisely follows a local high school girl down a dark alley on his way home. The next morning the girl is discovered dead on top of a nearby roof, and Do-joon cannot remember what happened the night before.

At this point the film becomes what appears at first to be a typical murder mystery. All circumstantial evidence points to Do-joon as the murderer, so he’s arrested, but his mother refuses to believe her kind-hearted and simple-minded son could do such a thing, pestering police and legal counsel for justice on what they consider an open and shut case. She hires an expensive attorney but soon has reason to fire him. Getting no help from the police, she decides to undertake her own personal investigation and interrogation of her son, trying to get him to remember what happened.

The determined mother takes more and more risks and moves further outside of her comfort zone to get information that will clear her son. The deeper she probes, however, the more she learns about various unsavory activities going on under the noses of an apparently normal and respectable neighborhood. The mystery becomes more and more intriguing until suddenly the plot takes an unexpected left turn with revelations that change the viewers’ perspectives on the characters. Then sometime later, after that information can be processed, it takes yet another even more unexpected twist that puts the rest of the film in an entirely different light.

The depth of the plot and characters truly showcases the bravura performance of Kim Hye-ja in the title role. Acting is strong all around, with former teen TV heartthrob Won Bin effectively demonstrating his dramatic range as Do-joon, a drastic change of pace from the sullen and mysterious anti-hero of his next film “The Man From Nowhere” (an action-packed Korean variation on Luc Besson’s “Léon the Professional”).

Magnolia’s Blu-ray of “Mother” displays the nicely composed wide CinemaScope cinematography with a very sharp image, although it often seems to have a rather low-contrast, grayish cast that doesn’t really seem intentional. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack is quite good (in the original Korean dialogue with optional English subtitles). There is no audio commentary but still a very nice selection of bonus materials, all in Korean with English subtitles, but unfortunately all in standard-definition (except for about nine minutes of HD trailers promoting other films). Extras include a 90-minute making-of documentary and several featurettes of about six to fifteen minutes each, covering various aspects of the production and interviewing actors, plus two trailers for the film.

MOTHER on Blu-ray: Movie: A- / Video: A- / Audio: A / Extras: B+

Questions and comments: christopher.jacobs@email.und.edu

Raised on robbery: Cianfrance visits ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’

2013-05-02T17:45:27+00:00

By Greg Carlson
Film Editor

WARNING: The following review reveals key plot information. Read only if you have seen “The Place Beyond the Pines.”

Derek Cianfrance trades the time-jumping, one-on-one marital discord of “Blue Valentine” for the more determined triptych of “The Place Beyond the Pines,” an expectedly moody and atmospheric examination of paternal failure and inescapable generational torment that nods to sources as wide-ranging as “Roustabout” and “Miller’s Crossing.” Selling the movie on the promise of Ryan Gosling as a death-defying motorcyclist who robs banks to provide for the baby he didn’t know he fathered, Cianfrance delivers a “Psycho”-style shock when Gosling’s Luke Glanton is killed just as the audience has grown accustomed to his reckless larceny. The murder of Luke by police officer Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) provides the first of two significant narrative turning points in which Cianfrance divulges his agenda.

It turns out Cross is no less ruthless than outlaw Glanton, but the privilege afforded him by his upbringing as the offspring of a judge allows room for political ambitions that don’t necessitate armed robbery. Cianfrance might be trying to comment on class (as in societal pecking order) and class (as in character that transcends financial disadvantage), but the film is guarded and cagey on matters of good and bad fortune, morality, and personal responsibility. In his aggressive demolition of the film, Ed Gonzalez calls “The Place Beyond the Pines” a “daisy chain of physical and emotional violence that sacrifices emotional specificity to often-purple marriages of sight and sound.” In light of the director’s way with actors, not all viewers will be this perturbed by Cianfrance’s storytelling proclivities.

In the third story arc, Cianfrance focuses on teenagers AJ (the son of Avery) and Jason (the son of Luke). The director lavishes a surprising amount of attention on AJ (Emory Cohen), a frustrated bully who postures behind the phony affect of mannered slang and grating false bravado. Following the lead of many a soap opera, the boys become friends without knowing that AJ’s dad shot and killed Jason’s dad. AJ’s ugly personality is so pronounced one cannot help but wonder how he managed to develop into a cur, especially when raised with means by Rose Byrne’s sympathetic Jennifer. We’re not supposed to like AJ, but it’s hard not to wonder what happened in the fifteen years skipped over by the director.

In assigning point of view, Cianfrance shortchanged Michelle Williams in “Blue Valentine” and does the same thing to the often invisible women of “The Place Beyond the Pines.” As the mother of Luke’s child, Eva Mendes manages to squeeze every possible drop of humanity from her suffering, noble Romina. Since Cianfrance doesn’t offer, we have to speculate as to the reason Romina would be drawn back to Luke when she has begun building a new, stable life with Kofi (Mahershala Ali), the one male in the film who might be a whole dad. Mendes is every bit as good as the men – maybe better, since she is given so much less emphasis and has fewer scenes in which to make an impression.

In “Blue Valentine,” Cianfrance demonstrated his keen ear for music, and “The Place Beyond the Pines”—from Mike Patton’s score to needle-drops of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” and the climactic placement of Bon Iver’s “The Wolves (Act I & II)”—marry Gosling’s tough persona to the ineffable cool of song, not unlike the heat generated much the same way in “Drive.” Coincidentally, Springsteen (“State Trooper”) and the very same Bon Iver track were cued up in Jacques Audiard’s “Rust and Bone,” a superior study of a troubled man not fully equipped to be a father.

Questions and comments: gregcarlson1@gmail.com

The Fargo Theatre is officially going digital

2013-05-02T17:26:22+00:00

By Diane Miller
Editor

Film is out. Digital is “it.”

Within the next year the biggest movie companies in the world, e.g., Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox and Paramount, are expected to no longer distribute movies on film.

This leaves film projector-run cinemas like the Fargo Theatre no other choice but to convert to digital technology.

“Basically, for the Fargo Theatre to stay in business, we have to be a movie theater,” says Emily Beck, the Fargo Theatre’s executive director. “We couldn’t pay the heat and all that with just our live events. Even if somebody just loves coming here to see live music or whatever, it’s still important that we remain a movie theater because that’s what keeps the doors open.”

There are a number of reasons for this massive movie industry overhaul. One of the biggest is cost. A movie on film costs about $1,500 to print and ship. A digital movie, in comparison, costs about $150. Film is just heavier and more time consuming to process.

The theater has been working for about a year to raise enough money for digital equipment. And at around 5 p.m. on May 1, the theater announced on Facebook that its goal was reached:

“WE DID IT!! THANK YOU Fargo Theatre fans!! As of this afternoon, we have reached our capital campaign goal of $200,000! We are so grateful for all your support and generousity. Woot!”

Summer movie season kicks off in May, so Beck says the theater was hoping to reach its goal sometime by then. The theater is expecting the new equipment to be installed by June. However, with movie theaters all over the country making this same transition, a lot of the equipment is on backorder, so there are no guarantees.

Watch for updates on the Fargo Theatre’s website (fargotheatre.org) or Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/TheFargoTheatre)

Questions and comments: diane@hpr1.com

Climbing the steps ‘To the Wonder’

2013-04-26T17:22:21+00:00

By Greg Carlson
Film Editor

The mixed reviews that have followed the nearly inevitable accounts of film festival boos and cheers for Terrence Malick’s “To the Wonder” report that the prestigious filmmaker has paddled even deeper into the sea of idiosyncratic cinematic storytelling. This is marked by the obscurity and inscrutability of deliberately withheld information and violations of the artist-audience contract. Because of chronological proximity, “To the Wonder” will be compared to “The Tree of Life” more than to Malick’s earlier movies, even with the presence of several of the auteur’s longstanding thematic interests and storytelling devices. It might be a stretch to define the plot of “To the Wonder” as a love triangle, seeing as Malick has no use for plot and that one side of the triangle is little more than a “Giant”-inspired interlude.

In close collaboration with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, Malick continues to refine the visual sensibilities that include subjective, swooping, and dancing camera arcs, and the almost non-stop continuity interruptions and jump cuts that stitch together the bits and pieces selected from miles of footage collected during the shoot. Additionally, Malick retains his trademark use of whispery, fragmented voiceover narration, which provides as much or more verbal communication than any truncated slivers of interactive dialogue. “To the Wonder” features zero in-depth, sustained conversations and many have remarked that you probably see more shots from behind Ben Affleck’s taciturn Neil as he looks at something than images of his actual face.

One of the reasons Venice Film Festival audiences chortled at Javier Bardem’s yearning Father Quintana almost certainly has to do with Malick’s unwillingness to deliver a character via the expectations of classical Hollywood cinema. The miserable priest ministers to prisoners and parishioners, wealthy and poor. He speaks of Christ’s presence, but the holy man wrestles internally with struggles as traumatic and personal as those faced by Bergman’s Tomas Ericsson or Bresson’s cleric of Ambricourt. To be sure, however, “To the Wonder” is nowhere near as satisfying as “Winter Light” or “Diary of a Country Priest.”

Affleck and Bardem are bigger stars than Olga Kurylenko, but what constitutes point of view belongs to her displaced single mother Marina, a fragile young woman made all the more alien when she accepts Neil’s invitation to leave Europe for the monotonous McMansions and Sonic Drive-Ins dotting the otherwise vast and empty Oklahoma landscape. Malick is now in his late 60s, but the years seem to have sharpened his appetite for the visual appreciation of the unknowable feminine. One reading of the filmmaker’s construction of Marina finds the old master out of his depth, infantilizing and disabling his character via what might be described as exotic othering. Marina’s blank slate condition frustrates and confuses as she lurches from childlike playfulness to violent outbursts called forth by some imprecise mental anguish.

The distinctions between the stoic and action-averse Neil and Marina’s constant twirling, whirling, and spinning suggest that Malick holds to old-fashioned and outmoded conventions that gender male “madness” as a matter of melancholic, Hamlet-like intellect and female “madness” as the biologically and emotionally codified erotomania of Ophelia. In one scene, Neil and Marina visit the office of an OB/GYN who recommends the removal of Marina’s IUD following unspecified but implied cause for concern. Marina is also informed that a hysterectomy will not be necessary. What can we make of this or anything else we see when Malick conceals so much more than he illuminates?

“To the Wonder” was released in theatres the same day it was made available on demand. It is available as a rental from iTunes and Amazon.

Questions and comments: gregcarlson1@gmail.com

A beloved classic and a forgotten gem

2013-04-26T17:16:20+00:00

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Movies Editor

Small distributor Olive Films has been steadily releasing an impressive number of vintage American and foreign films to Blu-ray, from several all-time classics to numerous obscure program-pictures and various neglected masterworks. One of the company’s major focuses has been the output of low-budget and often-overlooked studio Republic Pictures (which produced films from 1935-1959), including numerous titles starring John Wayne—both before and after he became a major star. Two notable Republic productions debuted on Blu-ray earlier this year.

Possibly the best film to come out of Republic and ranking easily among John Wayne’s best roles is “The Quiet Man” (1952). This was a pet project of director John Ford, but despite his critical and box office success as well as having a star like Wayne attached, he could not get any major studio to finance what seemed like such a limited-appeal story. The low-budget Republic, however, eager to raise its reputation with works from a major director, promised Ford he could shoot it if he’d first make them a profitable John Wayne western. The result was “Rio Grande” (1950), the third and arguably best of Ford’s “cavalry trilogy,” which contained yet another of Wayne’s most nuanced dramatic performances, as well as marking his first time acting opposite Maureen O’Hara, his fiery co-star in “The Quiet Man” (and is also available on a fine-looking Blu-ray from Olive Films).

Here Wayne plays an American ex-boxer named Sean Thornton, who returns to his native village in Ireland to buy the house he was born in and settle down to a peaceful life. When he arrives, he meets and is instantly attracted to the pretty and very strong-willed Mary Kate Danagher (O’Hara), whose bragging, brawling, and domineering older brother Will (Victor McLaglen) wants to buy the same piece of property. Thanks to some scheming by sympathetic townspeople they eventually get married, but Will refuses to give his sister her proper dowry, and tension escalates into an eventual, full-blown donnybrook in true John Ford fashion.

The film is an engaging romantic comedy-drama that’s loaded with quaint, ethnic Irish flavor and plenty of Ford’s favorite themes. The cast is also packed with Ford’s favorite actors, as well their family members and his. Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond, Francis Ford, and Arthur Shields are just a few of the familiar faces. A major attraction is also the lovely location cinematography in Technicolor by Winton Hoch and Archie Stout, lovingly restored in this beautiful scan from the original negatives.

Olive’s Blu-ray looks outstanding, with rich colors and a crisp image that reveals the textures of fabrics. The sound is also very good. Olive includes a couple of bonus features for a change, an illustrated booklet with part of Joseph McBride’s book “Searching for John Ford,” and a nice half-hour Leonard Maltin documentary on the film’s making from 1992 (produced in standard-definition), which includes the complete original trailer within it. THE QUIET MAN on Blu-ray - Movie: A / Video: A+ / Audio: A / Extras: C+
“Strangers in the Night” (1944) is an odd little gothic thriller. It’s an early film directed by Anthony Mann for Republic with a noir sensibility and plenty of beautifully-shot, black-and-white atmosphere somewhat reminiscent of a cross between “Laura” and “Rebecca” (both of which are available on Blu-ray through Fox Home Video). It also has an amazing amount of plot, character backstory, and sometimes subtle wartime subtext crammed tightly but effectively into under an hour’s running time. Such quantity of material and quality of production values might easily have made a good ninety-minute to two-hour production at one of the major studios. The complicated story takes some time to set up, but it keeps moving along steadily and relentlessly, and once things really start to happen, there is a very rapid climax and resolution.

The film begins with a Marine sergeant named Johnny (William Terry) wounded in the South Pacific. He begins a pen-pal relationship with Rosemary Blake, the woman whose address is in the cover of a book donated to the base hospital, and eventually falls in love by mail. When he’s sent back to the States, he naturally heads for her seaside estate in a small California town. At the cliffside Blake mansion, the elderly semi-crippled Hilda Blake (Helene Thimig) shows Johnny the large portrait of Rosemary hanging in the living room but informs him that she is unfortunately away and should be returning in a few days, inviting him to stay at the house.

Meanwhile, new Dr. Leslie Ross (Virginia Grey) tries to establish herself in the community but finds unexpected hostility from the wealthy and disturbingly eccentric Blake, especially after Blake’s worrisome maidservant Ivy seems to be trying to warn the doctor about something. The plot thickens and develops into more of a noir murder mystery as Rosemary’s arrival keeps getting delayed, suspicions start to arise, and characters eventually decide to take action (some to solve the mystery and others to prevent its discovery). Then, all of a sudden, there’s the big reveal, payoff, and it’s over.

“Strangers in the Night” has its share of far-fetched plot devices, some perhaps even unintentionally funny, but the film is nicely structured, smoothly directed, and competently acted. While far from a masterpiece, it’s a sadly underrated little gem with an engaging story and a lot of potential for analyzing various deeper themes, motifs, allusions, and stylistic elements, as well as its importance within Mann’s career.

Olive’s Blu-ray has very nice picture quality, with a lovely contrast range and generally sharp details. Audio is decent though not outstanding. As with most Olive releases, the only “special features” are a main menu and chapter menu, but at least that’s more than some major studios have been doing lately, with discs that simply start playing and then repeat when the movie’s over. STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT on Blu-ray—Movie: B / Video: A / Audio: A- / Extras: F

Questions and comments: christopher.jacobs@email.und.edu