Back to the (not so great) past

 

New Orleans is one of those places where the decay of the bayou mingles with death (think the classic New Orleans jazz funeral), and voodoo and witchcraft haunts the streets of the French Quarter and Garden District. An appropriate setting, therefore, for the co-directing team of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead and the latest in their horror genre of character-driven stories that have very humanistic and philosophical edges - Synchronic, which opened in theatres, drive-ins and VOD this weekend. Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) are EMTs working the overnight shift where they respond to a series of gruesome calls where people have died or are deeply traumatized. Turns out a new designer drug has been going around: Synchronic, which, believe it or not, takes people back in time. If only we could pop a pill for the experience, right? Well, Steve, who’s diagnosed with brain cancer and fears his days are numbered, decides to experiment. And it might make him find his buddy Dennis’s recently lost daughter, Brianna (Ally Ioannides), who also took the drug. Time travel in this case lasts only seven minutes. Thank goodness, because the past isn’t necessarily as romanticized as we sometimes think. Steve returns to the howling winds of the Ice Age and introduces fire to Early Man. Then he disappears into the era of the Conquistadors and is almost devoured by an alligator. Back in the present, and seeing the movie Back to the Future on TV, Steve tells the bartender, “the past fucking sucks!” And, surrounded by the panorama of New Orleans at night, he exclaims to Dennis, “the present is a miracle, bro.” These literal trips to earlier times are interspersed with the working days and nights of the two men’s lives. Dennis is constantly fighting with his wife Tara (Katie Aselton) and Steve, single and a bit of a player, tells him ultimately how good he has it. He describes his life – which could be all of ours – as defined by “random events, chance and luck.” And Dennis, reflecting on Steve’s possible last days, suggests, “all that crazy shit before you die, there’s infinite possibilities.” Both Mackie (Steve) and Dornan (Dennis) have built up substantial acting resumes. Mackie has appeared in 8 Mile, Million Dollar Baby and The Hurt Locker, Dornan in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette but likely is best known as Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades trilogy. Here they connect effortlessly in a classic buddy film with supernatural overtures. Some of the best cinematography occurs in the time travel sequences especially in the set of what was presumably the Battle of New Orleans.

In Montreal, alas, a virtual film festival

 

Given that many film festivals had gone virtual I almost jumped when I heard that Montreal’s well-regarded Festival du nouveau cinema (FNC) – 49th edition – was doing a combo virtual and in-person event. So, I reserved three tickets for its mainstay Cinéma Impérial, getting essentially the same right-side aisle seats I normally get in the plush historic downtown building (and where as a kid I went to see How the West Was Won,  The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm and  It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World in the then Cinerama theatre). The seat chart provided for plenty of social distancing. Then the axe fell. In late September, due to skyrocketing Covid in La Belle Province, indoor dining and theatres were forced to close. But the FNC swiftly made screenings entirely online and I got coupons. (Montreal in person was nice to visit in the fall anyway.) Back home I watched films online, admittedly not the same “event” as viewing in-person.

The first film: Last and First Men, famed Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson’s initial feature and an astonishing meditation on the worldly and otherworldly based on 1930s British author William Olaf Stapledon’s novel. A disembodied voice (Tilda Swinton) from two billion years in the future informs that as our world is in peril so too is the highly evolved future of advanced human species, also facing extinction. She tells us that, contrary to popular belief, the future is certainly not a “utopia” and “no such paradise existed through the eons that lie between your age and mine.” Jóhannsson’s classical and synthesizer score matches the surreal abstract landscape, the narrative’s visual counterparts. A film you might buy and watch again and again.  

 

The second film, from Japan, was by another first timer, Isamu Hirabayashi’s - Shell and Joint. Like Last and First Men its subject is the cosmos, life and death, birth and rebirth, and told through vignettes often in black humor. There are philosophical snippets. “Death is probably more boring” says Yoko (Mariko Tsutsui), who likes to contemplate suicide. To which her friend Nitobe (Keisuke Horibe) responds, “I love it when you talk that way.” Or, after a battle of the sexes argument she says, “In cosmic time does that last exchange…register as having existed at all?” Throughout the two hours-plus film there is the motif of crustaceans and insects paralleling human life and death cycles. And more. Guests in a pod hotel are cut off from one another. Animated insects philosophically fear death. “One moment you’re dreaming and then you’re dead,” observes one over a colleague – a cockroach’s - upturned body. And throughout a quirky jazz score by Watanabe Takashi underlines the offbeat touch.

The third film was actually made in 2014 by Guillaume Nicloux, The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq. A black comedy about a rumored real kidnapping of the famous and iconoclastic author, long a bête noire to the French literary and political establishments for his condemnation of postmodernism, the European Union and Islamism. The joy here is that Houellebecq stars in the film. It’s delicious to watch this supreme intellectual as a morbid sad sack who craves red wine and doesn’t mind the occasional fling with a prostitute. Asked why he looks tired, he replies “the press stresses me out.”  While amusing, I’d wished the film contained more political discussion. We get just a little. “Europe’s true vocation is to make democracy impossible and instead a government of experts,” Houellebecq declares. “I’m against it.”

The FNC is airing online through Oct. 31. And at $10 a pop it’s a treat for anyone who longs for films which tell stories that inevitably break the narrative, character or cinematic mold. www.nouveaucinema.ca

Albert Brooks - everyman's neurotic

 

The Criterion Channel’s decision last week to make a sleight of Albert Brooks movies available was just the ticket for a weekend of hilarity. There aren’t a whole lot of humorous films out there these days in a very sad and unfunny year. I’d never cottoned onto Albert Brooks during his 1980s and 90s heyday – he just seemed too conventional – but grew to admire his work, especially after seeing his 1996 Mother starring Debbie Reynolds. Now I’m in full Brooks adulation mode. Brooks is in the same league of younger 20th Century Jewish comedians like Woody Allen and Richard Dreyfuss – hyper, neurotic, narcissistic and sardonically funny. His films since the Nineties have been few and far between and nowhere as successful though he continues acting and doing voice work. I wonder why - maybe the earlier movies never did great at the box office? In Real Life (1979), Brooks spoofs the reality documentary by filming the story of a contemporary family (Charles Grodin is the dad) as it unintentionally disintegrates under the weight of its newfound notoriety. Brooks as the director is vain and Hollywood-shallow as he defies all around him – staff, producer, the family itself – who maintain the documentary won’t work out. In Modern Romance (1981) Brooks plays Robert Cole, a film editor, with Mary Harvard (Kathryn Harrold) his main squeeze. It opens with them breaking up over dinner because he’s adamant they don’t have enough in common. Then he drives himself crazy wooing her back, spying and stalking just short of criminality, until she acquiesces. But, of course, the relationship doesn’t end there. Lost in America (1985) (photo above), perhaps the best film of the five I watched, is the prototypical road movie but with a twist. Brooks and Julie Haggarty (always worth watching) are a Yuppie couple who are giving up on the rat race and hitting the road to find themselves. Their spiritual guide is the movie Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper 1969). But when Brooks as former ad man David Howard gives a thumbs up to an Easy Rider type biker from the window of his plush RV, the biker gives another kind of finger back. You get the idea. In Defending Your Life (1991) Brooks teams up with Meryl Streep. Both characters have died prematurely and end up in some limbo state called Judgment City where they’re put on trial over their life histories. This is the weakest of the films and too long but the sendups of modern hospitality (albeit in the afterlife) are amusing and Streep as Julia, who takes a romantic interest in Brooks, is incredibly charming and hilarious. Finally, in Mother, Brooks decides to retreat to his childhood home and move in with his mom Beatrice, played by Debbie Reynolds. It seems ridiculous for a semi-successful middle-aged writer to move home and redecorate his old bedroom like in high school. But the real delight is the dynamics between him and mom. Reynolds plays the oh-so-typical every mom - old school, a bit ditzy, and in her mind reasonable in a way their children find absurd. Attempts to bond between them are thwarted as the two are incapable seeing eye to eye. It’s not real conflict, just the frustration of two different generations trying to connect. Finally, a general observation on the films.  The era the movies were made in – yes, I lived through it – doesn’t seem that long ago but I guess it is. And they look aged – from square shaped tinny cars to clunky phones, shoulder pads and feathery hair, to DOS computers. And it’s startling to see that at one time people dressed-up. 

Controversies

Controversy One. The Netflix film Cuties. It’s been condemned by a number of public figures including politicians. And there’s been a call, several weeks now, for its removal from the streaming service. But as of today, it’s still there and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. I didn’t want to watch this film. Everything I’d heard about it repulsed me. But, you know, in the interest of fair criticism, I wanted to make up my mind for myself. Now having watched it, perhaps it’s because I’ve been influenced by the naysayers, I still am shaking my head about Cuties’ content. But I think I would have come to a similar conclusion anyway. The film, by first time director Maïmouna Doucouré, is supposed to be an indictment of how society sexualizes pre-teens. I would like to do a survey of 100 people who attend a screening of Cuties – without them having known anything about the movie or the controversy – and ask their opinion when they left. My guess is most would say the film itself exploits tweens. In the 96-minute movie there are numerous close ups of these 11-year-olds twerking, swinging their legs and showing, yes, their crotches. There is even one scene where the lead actor, Amy (Fathia Youssant) pulls down her panties and takes a photo of herself. (Sorry I had to tell you this.) The film could be a pedophile’s delight, regardless of its intentions. It’s one of those movies you feel dirty after having watched it. I know, it’s all about art. But there has to be a line drawn somewhere, and it should have been drawn before this picture was made.

Controversy two. Disney film Mulan (Niki Caro). I have never had any interest in this franchise but the fact this latest live action version was filmed with the aid of some of the worst elements of the Communist Chinese government is disgusting and definitely worth boycotting. The film’s end credits give “special thanks” to the “public security bureau” in Xinjiang, the region where the Chinese government has locked away hundreds of thousands of China’s Uighur Muslim minority in concentration camps. There is some suggestion the movie’s theme is also racist with the dominant Han Chinese vanquishing what is coded as Muslim villains. Finally, there is the star herself, Liu Yifel, who last year denounced Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrators.

Controversy three. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ new diversity standards. To be eligible for the 2024 Oscars to win Best Picture a film must meet two of four standards, in other words employing members of various racial or ethnic minorities.  One is onscreen representation, themes and narratives. The second is creative leadership and the project team. The third is industry access and opportunities (such as internships and apprenticeships). The fourth is audience development (marketing, publicity and distribution). The problem, of course, is that whenever one mandates anything, especially for an art form, that takes away the essential creativity of the production and negates what art is all about. Of course, pne always hopes for an integrated industry free of bias. But mandating strictures will turn art into political propaganda or agit prop, or in the corrupt tradition of Communist governments far and wide, state-sanctioned Socialist Realism.

Bonfire of the Yuppies

 

Sean Durkin’s The Nest, opening in selected theatres today and on video on demand November 17, follows Rory (Jude Law) and Allison (Carrie Coon) as they move from a comfortable suburban American life to an ambitious one in Britain. The film has elements of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (Anthony Minghella 1999) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941), and there are even aspects of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities (Brian De Palma 1990). But really this is a psychological drama. The story is set in 1986. Rory O’Hara is an ambitious but fickle stock trader and gets an opportunity to move home to Britain to work for his old boss Arthur Davis (Michael Culkin). Allison, a horse trainer, is perfectly happy in the US. When Rory tells her he wants to move to London she replies, “Go fuck yourself.” Move they do, and into an opulent, centuries old, if a bit creepy, Sussex mansion. Rory commutes to an office tower in London’s financial district. All goes well until it doesn’t. Rory can’t support this opulent lifestyle and Allison has to pay contractors from her secret stash after the checks bounce. It all goes downhill from there. Rory plots a merger with Davis’s company but the details don’t work out. His win-around-the-next-corner aspirations keep turning sour. He ends up trying to coopt a colleague, Steve’s (Adeel Akhtar) Norwegian fish farms acquisition but is embarrassed by an increasingly disgruntled Allison at a formal clients’ dinner. The physical displacement from America to Britain mirrors the financial dislocation as the couple spirals into debt and increasingly becomes estranged from one another. While the ever-ambitious Rory keeps coming up short in the financial world Allison starts to psychologically unravel and at one point tries to dig up her beloved horse, Richmond’s, grave. Law is perfect as the social climbing almost amoral stock trader consumed with material success in the go-go 1980s fueled by massive government deregulation. And Coon is amazing as his strong skeptical wife who is as distraught by the family’s (they have two kids) predicaments as she is enraged at her husband. Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry’s fraught score underlines the gathering tension. The Nest is an adult film that examines the exterior and interior worlds that can strain married couples, regardless of what social class they may be in.  

Treasure or trash: you be the judge

 Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things (on Netflix), is the latest mind bender from perhaps the most eccentric director working in Hollywood, Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, 1999; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Synecdoche, New York 2008)). Based on Canadian novelist Iain Reid’s novel, the story, on its surface, is simple. A couple, new in their romance, is driving along a country road to a farmhouse where she (Jessie Buckley) will meet his - Jake’s (Jesse Plemons) - parents. It’s winter and a snowstorm is brewing. The film’s title refers to the main character, the woman – who goes by various names – seeking an end to their still newish relationship. But she tells herself it’s easier to just go along. This is one of several oblique commentaries throughout the film on the compromises one makes in conventional life. As the drive continues the two people strain at conversation. Various topics, like Hollywood musicals and poetry, spark an outpouring of knowledge from Jake. And then she recites one of her brilliant poems, a deep esoteric dive. Arriving at the farmhouse, several oddities occur. There are frozen dead animals. And the couple suffer a prolonged wait for Jake’s parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis). Now we’ve entered Stephen King territory. Mom and dad, with bizarre facial expressions and awkward poses, talk in abrupt or extended sentences. As the night wares on - no, your eyes aren’t deceiving you – we start seeing mom and dad at different ages. These dissociated images match the young woman’s questionable identity – is she a poet, a student of quantum physics, an amazing surrealistic painter? The couple then drive home. They stop, bizarrely, at an ice cream parlor, located in the frozen tundra. Then they pull up at Jake’s old high school. There, the janitor, an aged version of Jake, eventually doffs his clothes and ends up following an erudite-speaking pig down a hallway. At this point - or actually some time before – you might ask: has the filmmaker lost his mind or am I losing mine? This is the kind of film, folks, you’re either going to love or hate. Or, charitably – which is how I view it - at least think worth dissecting for symbol and thought associations, dreams, aging, and the nature of life itself.   

Playing hooky: A mélange of Hitchcock

 

I played hooky from my day job this week - yes, even when you  work for yourself you can feel a twinge of guilt taking the day off – because TCM’s Summer Under the Stars (it’s still summer, folks) featured an entire day of Alfred Hitchcock. The five movies I caught were early and mid-Hitchcock of which I’d only seen snippets or not seen at all. The first was The Lady Vanishes (1938). This is a classic “train” whodunit – like Murder on the Orient Express – and from the same era. A group of tourists are in the fictional European country of Bandrika (think Lichtenstein) with even an apparently made up language! One, Iris (Margaret Lockwood), is taking the train home. Across from her is Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), a governess. Iris falls asleep and when she awakes Froy is gone. And no one on the train knows her whereabouts or even doubt she was on the train in the first place. The real theme of the movie is, like George Cukor’s 1944 Gaslight, whether the central character believes her own mind or thinks she's losing it. The second movie was Foreign Correspondent (1940). The title is a joke and a poke at journalism. Joel McCrae plays John Jones, a bored New York reporter summoned by his publisher to be a “foreign correspondent” – a haughty term that Jones makes fun of. But he’s chosen because he has no pretenses and doesn’t even know a lot about international politics. But one thing he’s good at, he’s got a reporter’s nose for news and knows how to break a story. Merriment, drama – and of course romance - ensue as Jones attends galas in various European capitals and meets the corrupt grandees colluding with the enemy, fomenting a soon to be dastardly war.   The next film was Suspicion (1941), a psychological drama where a wallflower, Lina (Joan Fontaine) marries a playboy and bon vivant, Johnnie (Cary Grant). All starts well until Lina has, uh, suspicions, about where the money is coming from to finance their high-flying life. Here, Hitchcock probes the complexities of the mind and human behavior in tracing Johnnie’s amorality and sociopathology. The fourth film was Stage Fright (1950), with a complex plot starring Marlene Dietrich and Jane Wyman that plays on guile, manipulation and identity.  It’s a type of whodunit where the central character Eve (Wyman) is as fooled as we are trying to flush out the real murderer. The fifth film was The Wrong Man (1956), which had the strongest impact on me. Based on a true story, Henry Fonda is Chris Balestrero, a jazz musician. One day he’s picked up by the police because he looks like the same person who has been pulling a series of neighborhood holdups. Of course, in real life, there are countless of these cases, where someone – and it could be you or me – is arrested because of mistaken identity. Some are even convicted and spend decades in jail.  What’s powerful in the film is the realism generated by a superb supporting cast (the police detectives) and Fonda as Balestrero who finds himself in the Kafkaesque throes of the criminal justice system.