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Life Sucks and Then You Die

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A Quiet Passion

by Cat McAlpine

Writer/director Terence Davies (The Deep Blue Sea) delivers a film on Emily Dickinson that is visually brilliant (for the most part) and textually weak. Ironic.

The struggle, surely, with writing a historically rooted film is that certain events must happen, in a certain order, and you’re responsible for the connective tissue. Unfortunately, A Quiet Passion doesn’t have much connective tissue, and it is grating as a result.

There are brilliantly tense moments between family members, witty retorts, a blatant rejection of organized religion, and even a saucily smashed dinner plate, but none of these aggressions fester into anything larger. At one point, sister Vinnie (Jennifer Ehle, fantastic) chastises “Now things will be tense for days.” We don’t see any of those days.

Cynthia Nixon (Sex in the City) is perfectly awful as the aging Emily, but in earlier scenes she grins her way through acerbic words with the most bizarre delivery.

This isn’t the film’s only stylistic disparity. Visually, A Quiet Passion is a treat. The lighting is gorgeous, with equal time spent on sunny lawns and in shaded bedrooms. The color is rich too, especially for a film of its type.

But, somewhere near the middle, the narrative encounters the Civil War. In this moment real photographs of the event are shown on screen as voiceovers float in with disconnected commentary on the war. A few of the pictures are oriented horizontally, leaving the rest of the screen black. It looks like, and I hate to say this, at worst a PowerPoint Presentation and at best a History Channel special.

A Quiet Passion has drawn praise as a solidly feminist film. If the latest definition of feminism is a main character who doesn’t marry, I hazard to say we can ask for more. Emily doesn’t seem to put off marriage for art, but rather has little romantic interests to begin with. There’s one failed attempt at adultery, one briefly interested party, but she is never more than bitter. Emily wails that she’s simply too ugly.

No man ever tells her she can’t write. In fact, Emily politely asks her father’s permission if she could please write during the early morning hours while everyone else is still sleeping.

This film is carried by its beautiful cinematography and its smart camera work, but even that leaves something to be desired.

Like Emily Dickenson’s own poetry, with its characteristic dashes, A Quiet Passion is disjointed and a bit difficult to interpret.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

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Unfair and Unbalanced

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Christine

by Hope Madden

There’s a moment in Christine – Antonio Campos’s clinical character study of ‘70s on-air reporter Christine Chubbuck – when a violently depressed Christine chastises her mother’s parenting. Had she been a better parent, maybe Christine would understand how the world worked.

There is such honest, bewildered frustration in that moment. With that single thought, a career-best Rebecca Hall exposes Chubbuck’s isolated, lonely, crippled soul.

We’re invited to join the stormy decline of Chubbuck’s life. An awkward, severe professional at odds with the era’s sensationalistic news trends, Chubbuck clashes with her Sarasota station’s news manager (Tracy Letts) and pines for its handsome anchor (Michael C. Hall).

Chubbuck’s professional frustrations and personal isolation come to a head simultaneously. Thanks to Hall’s meticulous performance, what we can see is that the emotionally brittle, deeply depressed Chubbuck hasn’t the resilience to contend with it.

Hall’s body language, her gait, her facial expressions and her speech amplify her character’s growing turmoil. It’s a creeping darkness that grows to be almost unbearable before bursting into an eye-of-the-storm calm that’s even eerier for its realism.

Though Craig Shilowich’s screenplay leans too heavily on frustrated spinsterisms as a handy excuse for Chubbuck’s behavior, and Campos’s direction intentionally keeps Christine at arm’s length, Hall’s harrowing turn guarantees that Christine Chubbuck makes an impression.

Campos’s disturbing 2012 horror Simon Killer remained intentionally distant as well – a provocative approach that suited the mystery of the titular sociopath. Here, though, it feels too chilly, almost heartless.

That seems inappropriate, because neither Chubbuck nor those she left behind were heartless. In fact, one of the great successes in Hall’s performance is her ability to personify Chubbuck’s amazingly off-putting, alienating behavior while simultaneously pointing out that most of us are only a few social misjudgments away from pariah status ourselves.

Inevitably, the film feels like a 110-minute prelude to Chubbuck’s infamous on-air suicide, and that’s where Campos and Shilowich’s weaknesses show. What was at the heart of Chubbuck’s final display – institutional sexism, unending loneliness, mental illness, professional integrity, irony?

The filmmakers showed a great deal while exploring very little, but thanks to a performance likely to be remembered come awards season, Rebecca Hall makes sure Chubbuck’s struggle resonates.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

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The Emperor’s Old Voice

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Florence Foster Jenkins

by Hope Madden

Brace yourselves – Meryl Streep is wonderful in her new film Florence Foster Jenkins. Great to know she’s finally found her footing with this whole acting thing.

Yes, Meryl Streep can act. Thanks to a string of recent films like Into the Woods, we learned that Streep can sing, too. Maybe not as well, but passably. She’s also great in a comedy (Julie & Julia, The Devil Wears Prada).

How good? Well, she did grab Oscar nominations for all three of the above efforts.

In the title role of Stephen Frears’s new 1944-set biopic, Streep gets to strain those vocal cords while showing off her comic sensibilities. No surprise, she does both with aplomb in the role of the NYC heiress who loved music far more than it loved her. Streep delivers a vibrant central performance in a charming if forgettable end-of-Summer comedy.

The film gets so much right, though. There could not have been a better choice to play Florence’s devoted yet philandering husband than Hugh Grant, whose scheming is rarely in the service of self. His every expression exposes such tenderness and protectiveness, whatever his cagy action.

Big Bang Theory’s Simon Helberg, playing Florence’s talented if green accompanist, steals scenes – from Meryl Streep, no less! – with the barely contained giggle or outright expression of bewildered wonder. To a certain degree, he represents the audience, forever asking: How is all this possible?

Because the film remains relatively faithful to the truth of the events: Jenkins honestly believed her caterwauling to be the tones of a sublime soprano. Her husband had so insulated her from critics who might burst that delusion that she willed herself to the stage of Carnegie Hall.

Florence is the butt of this joke, and to Streep’s credit, we all feel as protective of her as her husband and accompanist do. She finds the right combination of entitlement, tenacity, vulnerability and true, blinding love of art to make the character more than just a joke. Everyone can understand deeply loving something you simply don’t have the talent to succeed in.

Unfortunately, Frears can’t quite deliver the poignancy or even the universality that should undergird the giggles and screeches. Despite moving performances, the film dips too frequently and too deeply into sentimentality. Worse though, is the fact that you come away from the film thinking: Can you believe she really sang at Carnegie Hall? She’s still a joke. She should be a bit more of an inspiration.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

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To Infinity, Not Beyond

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The Man Who Knew Infinity

by Hope Madden

If you think a movie about math can’t be thrilling, well, The Man Who Knew Infinity won’t prove you wrong.

Writer/director Matt Brown’s painfully earnest biopic of Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel) seeks to tackle divine inspiration, institutional racism, culture clash, colonialism, and mathematical proof against the backdrop of WWI Britain. Unfortunately, the film feels far more hemmed in by cinematic tradition than inspired by historical events.

Brown’s approach is certainly by-the-numbers, and a stifling respect for the subject hamstrings the effort. Ramanujan is never more than an utterly wholesome, godlike presence. A lead turn by Patel does nothing to burst through the clichés. As has been the case in each of his films, Patel’s performance is broadly drawn and lacking depth.

He isn’t given much to work with, truth be told. Brown’s screenplay offers little more than saintly suffering. Look how nobly he endures taunts, cultural misunderstandings, loneliness, illness!

The scenes at home in India are even more appallingly respectful, everything quaintly simple and yet admirable. It’s as if Brown distrusts the audience with any complexity or information on Ramanujan they might deem offensive. (Like, for instance, that his wife was a 10-year-old when they married.)

As Ramanujan’s Cambridge mentor G.H. Hardy, Jeremy Irons, of course, shines. A veteran of the melancholy Englishman role, Irons inhabits this academic with emotional rigor mortis, occasionally lapsing into the most charming flashes of vulnerability and ardor. The subtlety and sly tenderness of his performance suggests a longing that nearly revives the film from its terminal anemia.

A handful of supporting turns – Toby Jones, Jeremy Northam – almost add layers, but Brown’s screenplay relies so heavily on the rote of Traditional British Cinema that the film never gets the chance to breathe.

I’m willing to bet that Srinivasa Ramanujan was a flawed and fascinating person – geniuses so often are. Too bad Brown is content to see him as a romantic mystery.

Verdict-2-0-Stars

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Startlingly Relevant

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Trumbo

by Hope Madden

“We are going to have to do some things that we never did before, and some people are going to get upset about it. But I think that now, everybody is feeling that security is going to rule.”

Those are Donald Trump’s words as to why he’d consider warrantless searches, Muslim databases, and closing or surveilling mosques – a fear-monger-fueled attack on civil liberties and basic humanity. What’s scary is the idea that he’d consider doing things “we never did before,” because, as Trumbo points out, we’ve done some pretty nasty things in the name of xenophobia.

Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) had been the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood before the blacklist. He and nine others chose to stand up for their first amendment rights, finding themselves in contempt of Congress and facing jail time. What you may not know, and the film hopes to point out, is that Trumbo was at the center of the shameful period of history from its opening to its close.

As fascinating a history lesson as Trumbo is, too much competes for your attention.

Though the cast is lousy with talent, that almost becomes its weakness. There are so many people to draw your consideration, with few characters feeling as if they serve the larger story as much as they require attention of their own.

Elle Fanning is wonderful, as usual, as Trumbo’s eldest daughter – a social activist like her father. Helen Mirren is delightfully wicked as Hedda Hopper, gossip columnist and anti-Communist instigator. Louis C.K. offers perhaps the most naturalistic performance in the film, which, while quite solid on its own, actually emphasizes the sometimes stilted performances around him. Meanwhile, Diane Lane is utterly wasted in the conflicted but supportive wife role.

Even smaller roles sometimes rob focus from the central character and story. John Goodman and Stephen Root liven things up as Schlockmeisters Frank and Hymie King, and Christian Berkel is a scene-stealing scream as Otto Preminger.

Cranston’s central figure should be the undisputed star, though, and the fact that so many others pull for your attention is a shame, because the Breaking Bad star tosses off droll one-liners like an old pro, and his chemistry with every other actor onscreen is wonderful. He epitomizes the writer’s inherent yin and yang with effortless humor and skill.

There is an expression of weary panic on his face as he sees the direction his beloved country is taking – one of ignorance, fear, and hatred. It’s a look we can probably all recognize about now.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

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Go See Selma

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Selma

by Hope Madden

Every year Oscar season sees a healthy number of well made biopics for the Academy’s consideration, and those efforts are very often rewarded: 12 Years a Slave, Lincoln, The Iron Lady. But in the 14 years I’ve been covering film in Columbus, none has been as painfully relevant as Selma.

Ava DuVernay’s account of the civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama doesn’t flinch. You can expect the kind of respectful approach and lovely, muted frames common in historical biopics, but don’t let that lull you. This is not the run of the mill, laudable and forgettable historical art piece, and you’ll know that as you watch little girls descend a staircase within the first few minutes. Selma is a straightforward, well crafted punch to the gut.

Working from a screenplay by first time scripter Paul Webb, DuVernay unveils the strategies, political factions, internal frictions and personal sacrifices at play in the days leading to the final march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Yes, she simplifies some complicated issues and relationships, but she is a powerful storyteller at the top of her craft and her choices are always for the good of the film.

The reliable David Oyelowo exceeds expectations as Dr. King. His passionate reserves at the pulpit and the microphone are goosebump perfection, but it’s in the quiet moments that he most impresses, having a bone-deep feel for the man’s weariness as well as his humor, his failings and his faith. It’s a beautiful performance and the heart of a powerful film.

At all times, DuVernay’s film certainly maintains an appropriate reverence for the material. Her cast is more than up to the challenge, beginning with the powerhouse turn from Oyelowo and extending through an impressive, sizeable ensemble. But it’s the filmmaker’s strength in storytelling that elevates this film above others, because DuVernay is never heavy handed, never preachy, and yet every scene is weighted with its historical significance as well as the disheartening immediacy of these events.

The closer black Americans came to the same simple freedoms others took for granted, the more dangerous their lives became, the more anger they faced in the streets, the more outrage was heard from the system that didn’t want – not just yet – to recognize their rights. That shameful time in American history was 1965 – a full fifty years ago. How awful that those wounds feel so fresh.

Verdict-5-0-Stars

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Lost and Found

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Unbroken

by Hope Madden

With Unbroken, Angelina Jolie’s second effort behind the camera, she proves she knows how to put together a team. Beginning with screenwriters Joel and Ethan Cohen (each with 4 Oscars, two apiece for writing) and extending to cinematographer Roger Deakins (11-time Oscar nominee) and the man behind the music, Alexandre Desplat (with his mere 6 Oscar noms), she’s given Louis Zamperini’s story the storytellers it deserves.

Their film shares the honestly amazing tale of an Olympic runner who finds himself adrift at sea and then held in a Japanese POW camp during WWII. If the film suffers from anything, it’s an overabundance of respect for the source material.

So much of Zamperini’s life just defies belief – if ever there was a true story destined for the big screen, it was his, and Jack O’Connell delivers the grit and spirit needed to pull off the tale. O’Connell may be new to many viewers, but this Brit has been quietly developing an impressive arsenal of work (Eden Lake, Starred Up, ’71). If this performance and film leave questions about Zamperini as a person, O’Connell certainly convinces when it comes to the man’s seemingly bottomless reserve of strength.

While you absolutely get the feeling that this is the guy you’d want with you if you were ever lost at sea, the film refuses to expound on what drives that buoyancy. Nor does it offer a glimpse at the conflicting emotional turmoil he would carry with him after the war.

The cast is large and O’Connell has the kind of easy charisma that makes most scenes feel intimate. The ensemble offers some memorable turns – from Domhnall Gleeson and Takamasa Ishihara, in particular – but too many actors fall back on broad stroke flying ace clichés and too few hold your interest.

Still, there’s no escaping the jaw-dropping facts of this adventure – facts which alone compel rapt attention for the duration of the film. Deakins’s images are on a scale befitting the epic, and Jolie has a knack for taking advantage of every inch of a screen.

Whatever Unbroken’s faults, the adventure will overwhelm you, as it should, and the facts and triumphs will stay with you long after the credits roll.

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

 

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He Blinded Her with Science

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The Theory of Everything

by Hope Madden

If there is one thing that The Theory of Everything should convince you to do, it is this: Get to know Eddie Redmayne.

He is a magnificent, chameleonic actor who has found a way to bring humanity to roles as varied as that of a matricidal son, a suicidal homosexual teen, a socially awkward hick, a deeply conflicted witch hunter, and a love-struck baritone in post-revolution France. And now he will finally be known – and likely Oscar nominated – for his subtle, authentic and moving portrait of Stephen Hawking.

Redmayne is the reason to see this film. It’s a remarkable performance at the heart of a decent but not exceptional film.

Based on Jane Hawking’s second memoir, the film begins as a young doctoral student falls for a medeival poetry major and, despite the death sentence of a medical diagnosis, marries. While Anthony McCarten’s adaptation retains the struggles and failings in the marriage, director James Marsh can’t find the passion or urgency the story needs.

The problem is certainly not his cast. Alongside Redmayne, Felicity Jones offers a tender, thoughtful performance, and the supporting players turn in solid work as well. But their relationships, passions and drama are all kept too tidy and too subdued.

Marsh, whose previous films – documentaries, in particular – have proven to be honest, impish and fascinating – can’t seem to find his footing. Where his approach in previous work has always felt fresh, here he makes safe choices at every turn. Aside from an odd, fish-eye close up here and there, nothing about his telling of this extraordinary life ever feels daring.

The science itself is minimized to the point of near nonexistence, making the only examined aspects of the Hawkings’ story that of her love and his physical disability. And even that feels slight.

It’s a gorgeous film to watch, with lush but muted colors, manicured lawns and relentlessly clean sidewalks, hallways and college students. Marsh’s framing is always truly lovely. And Jones and Redmayne exhibit a deep connection that allows their characters’ struggles to feel poignantly real.

There is much to applaud in The Theory of Everything, but there should have been more.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

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In Like Flynn

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The Last of Robin Hood

by Hope Madden

Errol Flynn was a bad dude, but charming and rich enough to get away with it. Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s accounting of his scandalous last days, The Last of Robin Hood, sidesteps the tawdry details and tries to shed some light on how it all could have happened.

For the unenlightened, Flynn is best known for his Hollywood swashbuckling films of the 30s and 40s and just slightly less known for his wicked ways. He died at 50 in the arms of his teenaged lover, whose mother was later charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor for her involvement in the affair.

The film avoids lurid antics, mercifully, and treats young Beverly Aadland (Dakota Fanning) with respect throughout. Fanning’s performance is an understated wonder, animating a person who accepted people at face value, refused to be a victim, and managed to respect herself though everyone else saw her as a lovable pawn.

Equally wonderful is Susan Sarandon as Beverly’s scheming mother. Layered with desperation, naiveté, cynicism and star-struck gullibility, the performance reminds you of just how talented the veteran is.

As Flynn, Kevin Kline looks surprisingly like the old swashbuckler, but his performance skirts caricature. Worse still, though he certainly manages to showcase Flynn’s charisma and oily charm, he isn’t able to find the ugliness inside. His performance is too generous, which is the film’s greatest weakness. Glazer and Westmoreland seem to hold all involved relatively blameless. For that reason, their film has no teeth.

It’s a curious approach, partly because of the way Lolita – both the book and Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film – is worked into the narrative. It would appear that Flynn recognized the similarities between his situation and that of Nabakov’s lead. While many would use this fact as an avenue into Flynn’s twisted perception, the film and Kline convey it as almost sadly self congratulatory. The tone is of melancholy rather than repulsion, or even indignation.

Perhaps the filmmakers saw no real villainy in a story where a mother passes her 15-year-old daughter off as 18 and a lecherous old perv takes advantage of the situation. There are certainly those who believe Nabakov dismissed the repugnant behavior of his character. But perhaps Nabakov had faith in a reader who could recognize an unreliable narrator, and he used that device to explore the mind of a predator who can barely recognize his own criminality.

The Last of Robin Hood could have benefitted from the same wry, weary wisdom. Instead, it chooses to point its finger nowhere in particular, leaving us with a villainless tale of a by-gone era where things were less wholesome than we’d imagined.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

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Too Superficial to Satisfy

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Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

by Hope Madden

In offering the world a glimpse of the phenomenal life of Nelson Mandela, director Justin Chadwick wisely relied on the words of the man himself, adapting Mandela’s autobiography for his film. Chadwick’s vision is grand, the performances strong, and the story not only compelling, but tragically timely. So why does Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom feel unsatisfying?

The fault is certainly not with the film’s leads. Idris Elba’s performance is alive with exploration. You can see his temperament adapt and change along with Mandela’s experiences. Elba finds a depth of character not provided on the page of William Nicholson’s screenplay, and his maturing characterization allows the film, which suffers from Cliffs Note-idis, a bit of depth it would otherwise lack.

Likewise, Naomie Harris deftly handles the far more radical change in character demanded from a depiction of Winnie Mandela. From idealist to radical, Harris nails the metamorphosis, but because of the way we simply check in with Winnie every few years, the role lacks much opportunity for nuance.

The film simply covers too much ground. It does so with sumptuous set design, a convincing ensemble, and a directorial hand that respects the source material enough to uncover flaws as well as triumph. But what Chadwick needed to do was narrow his vision.

Long Walk to Freedom offers perhaps the most compelling depiction of the relationship between Nelson and Winnie Mandela yet brought to the screen, aided by performances that ache with tenderness. Elba commands the screen with a smoldering charisma worthy of a portrait of Mandela, while Harris treats Winnie Mandela with respect and compassion without sugar coating her behavior.

Had Chadwick and Nicholson plumbed this rich relationship a bit more, or simply chosen any smaller slice of Mandela’s life to examine more fully, their film – with the gifts it has to offer – could have become a magnificent memorial for mourners and a fascinating introduction for those only drawn to the story of the leader because of his recent passing.

Instead, the filmmakers settled for a superficial treatment, hitting all the high points without examining the depth or complexity of anything. It’s an unfortunate compromise, both because all the needed ingredients were in place for a truly grand biopic, and because Mandela deserved a more memorable send off.

 

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmm-aazQQKA