The Wrestler

The Wrestler proves once again that a great performance doesn’t equate to a great movie. Mickey Rourke’s performance as the broken down wrestler, Randy “The Ram” Robinson, is flawless, especially in its physical aspects; one wonders what Rourke did or did not have to do to prepare himself for this role. The way he handles his long hair, puts on and removes his hearing aid, adjusts his reading glasses, carefully tapes up his knees and elbows—all are very convincing. But the script he’s working with is full of Hollywood clichés. He has a heart attack while in the ring and his doctor says he can’t wrestle anymore. How long before he’s back in the ring? By the third reel. The stripper on whom he has a rather pathetic crush rejects him as a boyfriend/lover, nominally because he is “a customer.” How long before she sees the light? Third reel. Even in Rourke’s own character we have the cliché of the “blank (prostitute, gangster, drug dealer, wrestler) with the heart of gold.” He wrestles and plays video games with the kids in his trailer park; he offers sage advice to young wrestlers; he tries to make up with his alienated daughter. The scenes with the daughter are the movie’s worst; she just seems cruel and petulant. In one of their few peaceful moments, Randy tears up and tells his daughter, “And now, I'm an old broken down piece of meat... and I'm alone. And I deserve to be alone. I just don't want you to hate me.” It’s supposed to be a big moment, but the sentiments are obvious, they are full of self-pity, and the emotions toward his daughter don’t seem deserved. Director Darren Aronofsky, whose first feature Pi dazzled everyone, resorts here to a commonplace documentary style to convey grittiness. Marissa Tomei plays the stripper Cassidy, the object of Randy’s affections, well and does a mean pole dance. We get that the stripper and the wrestler are really in the same business, and her livelihood depends, like his, on the whim of the crowd. It’s a bit heavy handed. The film is supposed to expose the reality of the wrestling world, but I find all the locker room love among these steroid abusers to be a little much. Surely there’s some ancient grudges being nursed, some envy, some plain old nastiness among them. Presumably because the film is set in New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen contributes an original song for the closing credits; like the film, its pretty obvious and not one of his finer efforts.

The Reader

I came to this movie expecting not to like it; I'm tired of holocaust films and generally avoid them, and I've even grown a little weary of Kate Winslet undressing. Also, this is a film that received decidedly mixed reviews. So I am a little sheepish to admit that I was won over.

The affair between the thirty-something Hanna Schmidt (Winslet) and 15-year-old Michael Berg (Richard Cross) is obscure in its motivation--hers, not his--but pretty convincing as it unfolds, and seems to evolve into real affection (but with lots of sex, all tastefully photographed). During their affair Hannah has Michael read to her, mostly from the classics, whenever they're not having sex. Michael embraces this role almost as eagerly as he does her. Stupidly, he never figures out that she is illiterate. The reason for her illiteracy is never made clear, just as the reason for her taking up a 15-year-old lover is obscure. Much has been made of her illiteracy as a symbol of Germany's moral blindness in the Nazi era, and their relationsip as representing the moral complexity of the relations between War-era Germans and the post-war generation. This may be more explicit in Bernhard Schlink's novel. What strikes me about this central relationship is the failure of love, or more specifically, the failure of the moral commitment inherent in love. Hannah deserts her boy-lover because she is threatened by a promotion in her job (tram conductor) that will put her in an office and expose her illiteracy. She packs up and leaves her apartment with no word of explanation to Michael, leaving him to draw his own devastating conclusions about the efficacy of his love. However, Michael echoes her failure when he attends a war-crimes tribunal as a young law student, and discovers Hannah's past as an Auschwitz guard. He fails to offer evidence of her illiteracy that would have at least lightened her sentence, even after his law professor and mentor has advised that he has a moral obligation to do so. We can only surmise that he is embarassed to admit that he had an affair with this hapless Nazi. Later when Hannah is in prison he fails to even visit her, and though her sends her tapes of books he reads aloud, he is decidely cool toward taking any responsibility for her as she is about to be released.

Kate Winslet deserves her Oscar for Hannah, a difficult woman who never expresses herself directly. What we learn in the courtroom is that she is naive to the point that her cannier codefendants take advantage of her. That is not apparent in her affair with Michael. We discover another aspect of her character as she teaches herself to read, now in her 60s, in prison. I was not convinced by Richard Cross as the 15-year-old Michael--he seemed goony and not someone who would inflame the desire of Hannah. He is better at as an early 20's law student. Two small but notable performances are by Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire) as Michael's law professor and a double performance by the wonderful but rarely seen Lena Olin (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) as a holocaust victim testifying at Hannah's trial in the 1970's and as her daughter in the 1990's who has a devasting conversation with the grown-up Michael in her New York apartment. That uncomfortable interview may be the film's best moment. Ralph Fiennes does what he has to do as the emotionally retarded adult Michael. (I saw Fiennes in London in Coriolanus; he really can act and needs to extend his movie range.)

Here's something that bothers me: the characters in the film don't speak German, but speak English with a German accent. That seems awkward, but I can live with it. But when Michael reads Hannah Huck Finn he does Jim's dialog in Twain's slave dialect, how does that translate into German exactly?

But I got over it and found the whole film compelling; I don't recall ever getting up from my chair.

A Christmas Tale

This isn’t a Christmas movie to any significant degree, so you won’t feel any seasonal disorientation if you watch it this spring. The holiday does provide part of the occasion for bringing together a family, which has been the basis of many a movie. The difference here is in the execution. Director/writer Arnaud Desplechin delivers us sympathetic characters of great depth and a very rich occasion for gathering (no, it’s not just for holiday feel-goods). The matriarch of the family, Junon, subtly played by the still gorgeous Catherine Deneuve, has been diagnosed with a form of cancer that can only be treated by bone marrow transplant, though the transplant is about as likely to kill the host as it is to preserve her life. The only biologically compatible people who can contribute the marrow are a deeply troubled grandson and the black sheep of the family, middle son Henri, played by Mathieu Almaric (whom you may have seen last as the villain the latest Bond movie). Henri’s older brother, Joseph, died of the same cancer his mother now has, when he was six, 30 years ago; Henri was perhaps conceived to serve as a possible marrow donor to his dying brother, but turned out not to be compatible. Junon freely admits she has never loved her second son, and he has never loved her. Henri’s sister has a congenital hatred of Henri such that, in a financial arrangement that keeps him out of jail, she insists on his banishment from the family. It is only Junon’s illness that prompts her to lift the banishment and allow Henri home for the holiday. How’s that for a set up?

There’s a second familial plot line that I won’t go into, but it too is very rich. What strikes me is how thoroughly Shakespearean all of this is—and, for me, that’s a good thing. From the generic seasonal title (like A Winter’s Tale and A Midsummer Night’s Dream) to the overt references to Midsummer (watching the 30’s version on TV and quoting its epilog in the sister’s voice over that is the film’s epilog), to the legalistic deal-making (ala Merchant of Venice), to the introduction of a stranger (Henri’s Jewish girlfriend), to banishment—all of it seems there to anchor this tale in the context of Shakespeare. In a very early scene we see the father, Abel, addressing mourners at his son’s graveside. He says that his son’s death has become the foundation of his future life, so that his son has become his father. If that’s not a Shakespearean metaphor, I don’t know what is.

This is a difficult, challenging film, but one that rewards our efforts. The characters are all complex but essentially sympathetic, and they grow. I contrast it to Rachel Getting Married, reviewed here recently. It is the best film I’ve seen some time, and Desplechin has established himself as a force to be reckoned with in my book. I will probably watch it again, which I rarely do, if for no other reason than to further feed my Shakespeare obsession.

Subtitle Alert: Persons speaking in foreign tongues.

Slumdog Millionaire

I’m more or less prepared to drink the Kool-Aid on Slumdog Millionaire. It’s a pretty compelling movie, though a very traditional one at heart. It is essentially a love story (boy meets girl, overcomes tremendous obstacles to win girl); what’s different here is the setting of India, and in particular the slums of Mumbai. The portrayal of urban poverty, especially in the first half hour or so, is stunning. Seen through the eyes of seven-year-olds, it is not so much a life of deprivation, but one of frenetic, often exuberant, and inexplicable action. The mother of the brothers Jamal and Salim, is cut down in an anti-Muslim riot while washing clothes (anti-Muslim sentiments are an undercurrent throughout) and they become orphaned street children (no reference is ever made to their father). Along with another little girl, Latika, they take under their wing, the boys soon are sucked into the city’s criminal underworld, a world that Jamal embraces and Salim keeps at arm’s length. So, in addition to its traditional love story, it is Hollywood in the plot line in which one brother turns to evil and the other remains, if not pure, at least on the side of the angels— traditional even to the extent that the evil brother eventually sacrifices himself for the good. (Didn’t Cagney and Bogart do this gig?) By their early teens Jamal has killed one of their gangland oppressors; he takes Latika as his mistress, and rejects his brother. Five years pass, and Salim has found honest work as a tea server and, after futile attempts to relocate Latika, he decides the only way to reconnect is for him to appear on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. That he is able to do so, and that the questions he gets happen to be answerable from his experiences as a “slumdog,” requires viewers to suspend their disbelief, but it’s worth it as the movie ends (who would’ve guessed?), with the lovers’ kissing, reunited at last. The film is really dark and violent, not for the kiddies. Director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) used real slum kids for the roles of the boys at seven, but actors for them at 13 and 18. I’m not fully sold on the actors in the final phase, and the lack of physical resemblance at the various ages is a bit disconcerting. It’s a feel-good movie, except for the poverty and violence, which makes for an odd mix. Stick around for the credits; there’s a fun dance sequence in the train station.

Tell No One

Who knew the French could put together such a good thriller? Tell No One has one of those plots in which what you thought you knew falls away under your feet and nothing ends up as you originally thought it was. Viewers share this experience with Dr. Alexandre Beck, played with passion by Francois Cluzet, whose wife seems to have been murdered and he is eventually framed for it. He is the prototypical Hitchcock hero, caught in a trap of intrigue not of his own making. Through the many (perhaps too many) twists and turns of the plot, most of the action seems to be driven by character, and nearly every character in the film, even the minor ones, seem to be given a touch of life. It is here that the French thriller departs from the clockwork machinations of its American cousins like the Bourne films. French films are often obsessed with romantic love, usually in pretty sophisticated forms, and here Alexandre’s love for his wife drives everything. That love perhaps demands an ending that is too neat and sentimental for a sophisticated film. The scenes of Alexandre and his future bride as children are cloying and unnecessary. The wonderful Kristin Scott-Thomas is in this movie speaking French again (can’t get work in English films?), playing Beck’s closest friend, the lesbian partner of his sister. It has been noted elsewhere that the lesbian relationship here is portrayed as a perfectly normal (and complex) domestic arrangement. The director and writer Guilliame Canet plays the small part of a spoiled, rich young rapist whose murder turns out to be the hinge of the plot. Word is that an American version of the film is in the works; sounds like bad news. A well acted, suspenseful, and intellectually satisfying thriller.

In the Electric Mist

It's always great to see Tommy Lee Jones in action, but the role of Dave Robicheaux, a rural Louisana cop, is almost too easy for him. The plot, such as it is, centers on a black man who was murdered in the mid-1960s and a series of killings of young women. The plot tries to tie the two together, partially through the contrivance of Dave's imagined conversations with Confederate general Thomas Hood (Levon Helm, formerly of The Band). Dave wants to hang the murders of the girls on local thug and aspiring movie producer played by John Goodman. As if more plot were needed, a film is being made in this corner of the bayou, and it's alcoholic star (Peter Sarsgaard) befriends Dave. The real star of the film should be the setting, but it didn't feel like French director Bertrand Travernier really nailed it. The gumbo needed to simmer awhile. Travernier did a great movie, Round Midnight, with an American jazz man Dexter Gordon; here he uses bluesman Buddy Guy in a small role and, as noted, Levon Helm. I was struck by how literary the language is. General Hood's utterances are all epigrammatic, Dave's voice overs are highly philosophic, and he has a conversation with his wife, while fishing, in which he asks, "What would be your definition of experience?" Evidently this movie was something of a mess in production and went straight to video in the US. Oops. You get the feeling that things might be clearer if you read the book (like the title?), but I have no immediate plans. This movie's got some problems but, hey, it's Tommy Lee Jones, it's bayou country, it's Travernier!

Milk

Director Gus Van Sant has done some weird movies (Elephant) and some pretty traditional ones (Good Will Hunting). Milk falls into the latter category, which, as far as I'm concerned, is a good thing because his more experimental efforts are mannered and usually tedious. Sean Penn seems capable of transforming himself into nearly any character, from the menacing murderer in Dead Man Walking to the manic guitarist of Sweet and Lowdown. His Harvey Milk is completely convincing; he even transforms the character within the course of the film, from a hippie who dabbles in politics to a mature political leader, one who can be manipulative but who also knows the weight of responsibility and finally destiny. Josh Brolin, who has been on a roll with W. and No Country for Old Men, can't manage to infuse much life into Dan White, Milk's co-supervisor (like a city councilman) and eventual assassin; Harvey speculates on White's anger and repressed homosexuality, but we don't see much depth there. The framing device of Harvey's tape recording a final statement in anticipation of being killed seemed bit obvious, but the arc of Milk's career is compelling, as is Penn's Oscar-winning performance.