Archive for April, 2008
Before reading this review, you should know that I am the girl who cried at Titanic not because Leo died but because a voiceover said the word “absolution,” as in the survivors waited “for an absolution that would never come.” Great theological words like “absolution” push all my buttons, so I don’t even have to know what a movie called Atonement is about in order to know that I want to see it. (Why did I only see it just now on DVD? Believe me, I tried to see it in the theater several times, but every attempt failed for one reason or another.)
I did know, from reading reviews, that Atonement was more than likely to point to the impossibility of atoning for one’s sins, or at least to point to a very shabby possibility for doing so. And that is the case. However, it’s a compelling portrait of the real pain people feel when they’re aware of their guilt but feel powerless to do anything about it. It also happens to be pretty brilliant in both narrative and cinematic technique, but unfortunately I can’t say a whole lot about that without giving away spoilers. Atonement is a movie where remaining unspoiled truly matters—not because of plot details, but because knowing certain things spoils the experience of doubt and second-guessing and productive confusion that you go through while watching the film (at least, if you haven’t read the novel, which I haven’t).
Here’s what I can say without spoiling the movie: it is indeed about sin and the attempt to redeem oneself. Thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), in pre-WWII England, claims to have seen something, and it results in the wrongful imprisonment of Robbie Turner (James McAvoy–hurrah!), a family servant who also happens to be in love with Briony’s older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley). The movie establishes in its very first scene that Briony is an aspiring writer, so we never quite know whether she believes what she claims to have seen, or whether she’s made it up, or something in between. She almost certainly doesn’t anticipate the consequences, however, which involve Robbie being sent off to prison and then, five years later, to the battlefields of France.
Five years later, Briony (now played by Romola Garai) is beginning to understand what she did, and how she has made miserable the lives of both Robbie and Cecilia. She’s also beginning to make her first attempts to atone for her action, by giving up her spot at Oxford to become a wartime nurse. She empties bedpans, mops floor, scrubs her own hands rather too vigorously (not a subtle image, but still a resonant one). After lights-out, she gets up to write on her typewriter—and we can already tell that she’s using fiction to try to make sense of what happened. We can also tell that it’s not entirely working.
The movie also follows Robbie through France to the beach at Dunkirk, where the English and French troops have retreated. A word of advice: if you don’t know about the retreat to Dunkirk, check it out on Wikipedia. It will save you needless confusion. I could tell the scene was supposed to be really important because it had that famous five-minute-long tracking shot that everybody was talking about before the Oscars. I got that it was somehow about the waste of war, but I sensed there was an emotional level I just wasn’t grasping. Wikipedia may not supply the full context for you, but I’m not sure the full context is possible unless you’re British.
(Also, I just have to mention here that I have not seen and will never see the whole tracking shot—I had to turn away when they started shooting horses. It really happened at Dunkirk, and it was tactically necessary to keep the Germans from using the horses—but I’m still not going to watch it, even though I know that the horses in the movie are circus horses trained to fall over.)
All in all, Atonement isn’t a perfect movie, but it’s a fascinating one, one that you’ll be thinking about days afterward. Yes, it’s rather bleak about the possibility of overcoming one’s guilt . . . kind of like a movie about Martin Luther in his depressed-monk days. But, hey, that’s an accurate portrayal of where all of us are without the grace of God.
Here come the SPOILERS!!!!! I advise not reading further unless you’ve seen the movie.
I’ve been re-reading Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire recently, and in some ways the experience of watching Atonement reminded me of the first time I read Pale Fire: the moments of “wait, that’s not quite right,” followed by realizations of “oh . . .”, followed by replaying entire scenes in your head. It makes my postmodern-nerdy self very happy.
I remember reading reviews of Atonement complaining that some scenes were just too pretty and perfect. The scene where Robbie runs after the bus bearing Cecilia away? Yeah, a little romantic and overdone. The thing is, once you get to the end of the movie, you realize that’s intentional, that the scene is shot the way that Briony has re-imagined it. Everything is heightened in fictional retrospect. Then you start going back and realizing that the scenes you saw twice—once from Briony’s perspective and once from Robbie’s and Cecilia’s perspective—may be actually from Briony’s perspective both times (once from the perspective of what she remembers and once from the approximation of Robbie’s and Cecilia’s perspective that she’s achieved through fiction).
One of the most important scenes in the film is the one in which the eighteen-year-old Briony holds the hand of a dying French soldier. She comforts him and eases him into death, at first by giving her true answers to his questions (“What is your sister doing now?”, “Did she marry the man she was in love with?”), which are true in a sense, but not entirely, because he thinks she’s someone else. Yet when he says that his mother thinks they should get married and asks if she loves him, Briony says “oui.” It’s true in a sense, it’s false in a sense, but it heals—as opposed to her big Not-Quite-the-Truth moment.
Obviously, this foreshadows her final, late-in-life attempt to atone for the harm she did Robbie and Cecilia by creating a fictional happy ending for them. I really, really appreciate how the movie leaves it open to interpretation whether we’re supposed to celebrate the power of the imagination to atone for the past or to view it as a pretty poor substitute for true forgiveness. I’m intrigued by the former interpretation, but of course I lean more toward the latter.
Recently, in my other venue, I raised the question of whether it’s possible or beneficial to forgive fictional characters. I definitely believe that fiction can be an exercise in charity on the part of both reader and writer . . . but I don’t think that exercising charity is the same thing as earning forgiveness, because of course forgiveness can’t be earned. It can only be granted, ultimately by God. Briony never atones for the past, and I think the movie shows that she knows it. In some ways, her dementia might be a mercy, the only mercy available to her in a world seemingly without Christ.
Director Joe Wright says that his film is filled with religious iconography, though he also says he’s not quite sure what it’s doing there. Ian McEwan, who wrote the novel Atonement, is an agnostic. The hymn heard in the Dunkirk scene was selected by one of the producers: it’s the last two verses of “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” (with the British tune “Repton”, thank goodness), and they’re perfect for the movie. I take them as a prayer, a prayer for all souls like Briony who seek atonement but don’t know where to find it:
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.
April 27th, 2008
Maybe that’s because it’s really a Peter Morgan movie . . . Frost/Nixon.
After Morgan’s work on The Queen and The Last King of Scotland (despite its flaws), he’s quickly become one of my favorite screenwriters. I haven’t yet seen The Other Boleyn Girl, but my impression is that his snazzy political writing raised it above the level of historical smut. Frost/Nixon is the screen adaptation of Morgan’s own stage play, and it reunites his words with Michael Sheen’s acting.
Nevertheless, if anything could mess up a Peter Morgan project, I’ve feared that it might be Ron Howard–so I was pleased to see this enthusiastic review at Ain’t It Cool News.
Frost/Nixon is out December 5, 2008, stateside.
April 21st, 2008
Sort of by accident, I saw two movies this weekend starring Steve Carell (or at least his voice): Dan in Real Life (on DVD) and Horton Hears a Who (still in theaters, if only because parents are desperate to take their kids to anything animated). Both movies are flawed, though this has little to do with Carell and quite a bit to do with the screenwriters.
First of all, Horton Hears a Who suffers from the overabundance of famous comedian voices and self-conscious pop-culture references that has plagued animated features since Aladdin. But, perhaps influenced by my dear Porpoise—for whom there is no plot-sin worse than a diversion that sidetracks the characters, only to have them return to exactly the same spot where they were before the diversion—I felt like the film introduced plenty of unnecessary obstacles into Horton’s quest to find a safe spot for the tiny world of Whos that he’s discovered on a speck.
Horton’s main adversary, the sour Kangaroo of the jungle of Nool, is rather inexplicably outraged by Horton’s belief in the people on the speck. She declares, “If you can’t see it, hear it, or feel it, it doesn’t exist”—and, in other parts of the movie, she voices concern that Horton will lead the children to use their imaginations. More entertaining than the movie is a quick glance through online reviews that try to interpret the ideological stance of the Kangaroo. Her insistence on empirical evidence means that she’s anti-religious (which, you know, is the same thing as liberal), but she also “pouch-schools” her joey rather than trusting him to Horton’s tutelage, so that must mean that she’s—gasp—a fundamentalist!
Or maybe she’s just a Kangaroo, brought into her confused and confusing existence by desperate screenwriters. In an improbable stretch, she consults a buzzard named Vlad, apparently a representative of the Russian mafia within the jungle of Nool, and enlists his help to destroy the clover upon which Horton claims the speck exists. Enter chase scene with buzzard and elephant. When this fails, the Kangaroo rounds up the other jungle creatures to go after Horton, and they’re amazingly willing to turn into an angry mob. Yet, once the mob is pacified, once the Whos have proved their existence, and once both Horton and the Kangaroo have been reintegrated into the community, the clover and its accompanying speck still haven’t reached their destination. There’s little worse than a series of improbable, unwarranted conflicts followed by an incomplete resolution.
The Whoville portions of the story are more interesting and entertaining, though I agree somewhat with the reviewers who have complained that the Mayor’s one son, rather than any of his 96 daughters, is treated with importance and deemed worthy of finally saving the day. I don’t think the gender bias was intentional—silent son JoJo comes across as the animated version of Paul Dano’s Nietzsche-loving teen from Little Miss Sunshine—but I do think the story could have placed one of the daughters (a shy daughter who feels ignored) in the same role, with less problematic implications.
The failure to explore the girls’ story actually bothers me more in Dan in Real Life. Dan—like the Whoville Mayor, played by Steve Carell—is that most hallowed of movie stock characters: the widower father. If that’s not enough to make us feel sorry for him, the fact that two of his three daughters are teens should do the trick.
The movie seems to realize that it needs to do something to make Dan’s character more three-dimensional, but in trying to give him depth, the screenwriters can’t seem to decide how likable he should remain. We’re clearly supposed to like him, but it’s hard to extend that grace to a father who’s so unreasonable that he won’t let his 17-year-old daughter drive, not even with him in the car.
Dan does get to experience a moral quandary when he falls for his brother’s girlfriend. The quandary is heightened by his realization that his brother, something of a ne’er-do-well, genuinely cares for Marie. Unfortunately, the movie never deals satisfactorily with this complication—unfortunate, because this is one thing that could have raised it above the level of a predictable romantic comedy.
Another potential saving grace would have been giving us a little more insight into why Marie decides that Dan is her soul mate. We know hardly anything about her, except that she’s been plunked into this terribly uncomfortable family reunion—and that she makes good pancakes. In other words, she’s mostly a plot device, as are Dan’s three daughters. The one that wants to drive gets to reflect ironically on her father’s getting his license revoked, the one that wants to date gets to reflect ironically on her father’s recklessness-for-the-sake-of-love, and the one that wants attention gets to look cute and sad. Yet none of this irony (apparently the sole purpose for which the daughters’ characters exist) even translates into any character growth for Dan.
If I had to weigh the two movies against each other, I’d say Dan in Real Life is better, because, though it’s flawed, you actually do care about the characters. You care enough about the movie to want it to be better. Horton is just a big, tangled mess—a pretty mess, but a mess all the same. Let’s hope that Steve Carell’s next project, Get Smart, is less convoluted.
In conclusion, may I make the completely irrelevant comment that I would pay good money to see something called Horton Hears Doctor Who?
April 20th, 2008
Y’all know how much affection I feel for John Krasinski, but even his presence couldn’t completely override my doubts about seeing Leatherheads after a horde of mediocre and less-than-mediocre reviews appeared. Fortunately, Dormouse prevailed and convinced me to go see it with her; I found it much more enjoyable than expected. Though far from perfect, Leatherheads is an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours—much more entertaining than watching an actual football game.
Part of Leatherheads’s argument, to the extent that it has one, is that football was much more entertaining before it had all these pesky rules. In these golden days, circa 1925, pro football is practically ignored—which, the movie suggests, might mean that it’s more fun, if harder to earn a living at. Wily, scrappy, aging pro player Dodge Connelly (George Clooney) and his fellow Duluth Bulldogs may have to share their field with a cow, but they love their game. Until the team goes bankrupt, that is.
In contrast, 1920s college football is beginning to draw quite a following, especially with the added draw of former war heroes like Carther “The Bullet” Rutherford (Krasinski), who singlehandedly forced a German platoon to surrender. Or did he?
Carter Rutherford’s all-American golden boy smells a little too clean to the editor of the Chicago Tribune, who sends “lady reporter” Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger, a.k.a. Squinchy McZellweggie) to dig up some dirt. Littleton’s character has been seen before in both Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington—the strong, yet secretly lonely journalist, usually played by Jean Arthur, who ends up falling for the naïve goodness of Jimmy Stewart (or Gary Cooper) and feels reluctant to expose him to the cruel world.
Clooney is clearly borrowing from/paying tribute to Frank Capra comedies, as well as other golden oldies. There’s a scene on a train that I could have sworn came straight out of It Happened One Night. Critics have been slamming Clooney for copying the formulas of classic Hollywood comedies without maintaining their apparent ease—or for combining too many elements that don’t fit together. There are some moments that are a stretch—a chase scene in which Dodge and Lexie rather inexplicably don police uniforms—and some loose ends left unwrapped, but it’s still more fun than any recent romantic comedy I can think of—except for Enchanted, that is. (And since I don’t generally like romantic comedies unless they’re in black-and-white, I’m hardly an unbiased source.)
Speaking of Enchanted, it might be fair to compare Leatherheads to what Enchanted would have been if it had been made by someone other than Disney. What I mean is that when you’re riffing off your own artistic heritage, you’re free to invest it with a little self-conscious mockery along with the tribute-paying. When there’s less of a direct connection between you and your predecessors, the tone has to be different. While clearly evoking Jimmy Stewart, John Krasinski tones down Stewart’s aw-shucks routine enough to make it palatable to this irony-steeped generation.
Leatherheads will probably never achieve the iconic status of It Happened One Night or Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. There’s one area, however, in which it improves on its inspiration: the smart lady reporter gets an equally intelligent guy, rather than being “tamed” by the innocent doofus. There are still definitely some ways you can surpass the oldies.
April 6th, 2008