20,000 Days on Earth (Directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, 2014)

Note: this is the first of my NZ Film Festival posts. I expect I will finish these reviews sometime before 2025.

There are few artists that trade on mythology quite like Nick Cave. In a career stretching back to the late 1970's, Cave always tackled the big subjects- death, love, God and violence. His music and writing has drawn from the blues, frantic postpunk energy, murder ballads, Scott Walker, Greek Mythology and, of course, Elvis. My interest in him has grown over the years as he has matured into that rare artist who mixes rock and roll id with a gift for storytelling with idiosyncratic detail and power.

20,000 Days on Earth plays around with Cave's own mythology. On the one hand, there is nothing so demystifying as a middle aged rock star being interviewed in a film about their life and career. It is probably the death of a certain kind of mystery to actually get to know artists, or anybody, on a human level. We see Cave pottering about his Brighton home, pondering the weather, running errands and visiting with old friends. We hear him talk about his father, his childhood and his various muses.

At the same time, Cave's presence is still undeniably mesmerizing. When we see Nick and his newly reformed band, The Bad Seeds, run through a new song in the studio all thoughts of the commonplace and ordinary, or even of the typical music documentary fade away. They seem to be tapping into some communal force that elevates and transforms the skeleton of a song into something that moves and is alive. Before an audience, Cave, himself, is transformed. In the film, Kylie Minogue, his one-time duet partner, described him on the stage as a sort of magnificent tree looming over everyone. I like the imagery of that and it really fits Cave.

What makes this film interesting is that the film is using all of these stories and the odd performance piece to help us understand how Cave works and where it all comes from. It's not just some narrative of past glories. We never get a linear rundown of the key moments in his life and career, or whatever. Instead, 20,000 Days on Earth uses Cave's memories and journal entries to illustrate not only his creative process, but also how he looks at life and art. Cave keeps coming back to the transformative power of art and we actually see this process before our eyes and ears. The film often has some beautifully cinematic moments and none more so than the final image of Cave standing resolutely at the water's edge of Brighton at night as the camera zooms out to the stormy sea. This is an excellent documentary.

Robert Altman's A Wedding

A Wedding (Directed by Robert Altman, 1978)

Dr. Jules Meecham: [looking at the guests] Jesus, it's like the last ten days of Hitler!

In whatever era this is, it seems that everything cool is co-opted, packaged and sold back to us eventually. We see this in culture and politics all of the time.What was once shocking becomes mainstream. Confrontational people and ideas are transformed into comfortable reminders of how courageous, outré or exciting we once were...and could be again if you act now! Anything messy, or inconvenient is discarded. 

While I yell at the neighbourhood children for trespassing on my property, let me acknowledge that this is not even a particularly original, or curmudgeonly observation. If you are over a certain age you recognize this pattern. There are some people who are more difficult to re-package for Generation Zygote, however. Robert Altman is one of those people.

Altman's films like Mash, Nashville, The Player and Short Cuts were funny, messy, shocking and often anarchic takes on American society. It has been said that Altman was less about style and more about attitude. I am still trying to figure out what that attitude was- it's not merely "fuck you." There is something else running through his work that evades the easy maverick caricature of his reputation.

Altman probably existed at just the right time for a film-maker of his stripe. There was a brief period in Hollywood between the collapse of the studio system and the rise of our global media conglomerate overlords where strong-willed film-makers had more sway. He was certainly iconoclastic, but it probably limited his career. Altman kicked against the pricks over and over and over again. 

With many of these works in mind, I finally got around to seeing one of his more overlooked films, A Wedding (1978).  The film is about an enormous society wedding where everything goes wrong- from the minister blowing his lines at the ceremony to outbreaks of affairs, decades-old recrimination re-surfacing, drunken lunacy and even death.

Of course, the mishaps of the weekend uncovered deeper problems. The Corelli family represents Chicago's Old Money society, Old Money snobbery and possibly Old World connections of dubious merit. The nouveau riche Brenner clan have their own issues. Even the bride and groom have a few rather significant skeletons in their matrimonial closet. 

 Certainly, the institution of marriage is not treated with a lot of reverence in A Wedding. There is an interesting element of social class criticism here, as well, but the story and format is a bit glib to make any salient points.With nearly 50 characters the narrative often gets a little convoluted. Three decades on, a lot of the social commentary also feels somewhat dated and obvious. Yes, sure, upper middle class Americans are hypocritical, loud and tacky. Tell me something I don't know (and live).

Still, anything with the great Paul Dooley, Pat McCormick and Carol Burnett is going to work as a comedy even if everything else does not quite add up. You must also credit Altman for giving his actors (his many, many actors) the freedom to develop and improvise their characters. There are moments of spontaneity that rank with the best of his films.

I guess Altman's acceptance of chaos is what most stands out to me.  I am not sure his working method has been duplicated by many other important directors. His anti-authoritarian streak would seem to extend to himself as he often ceded control as director and worked a lot more collaboratively than many other acclaimed film-makers. 

Altman's films may sometimes go for low-hanging fruit, or exhibit a cruel streak in him, but there is nothing antiseptic, or packaged about his work. A Wedding may have a lot of the same elements as other Altman films, but it had little in common with anything else. It's worth a look if you can find it.










   

The Grand Budapest Hotel

"You're looking so well darling, you really are. I don't know what sort of cream they put on you down at the morgue but, I want some." (M. Gustave /Ralph Finnes)

Twenty years in, there is something about the perfectly crafted worlds created by Wes Anderson in his films that invites as much uneasiness as comfort. As much I love his curatorial bent, I was wondering if his films like The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited were becoming less than the sum of their meticulously detailed parts. 

These doubts did not keep me from enjoying Anderson's most recent films, Moonrise Kingdom and The Fantastic Mr. Fox. It occurred to me that I like Anderson's formula the same way I love seeing Busby Berkely, Hitchcock, Fellini, Scorsese and Woody Allen cover a lot of the same ground in their films. If Anderson films all have great soundtracks, period furniture, ridiculous missions, characters with daddy issues and Bill Murray, who am I to complain?

No, the discomfort I feel has more to do with thinking about the implications of these hermetically sealed worlds in Anderson's body of work. I can't think of any artist who combines such an outwardly twee and fastidious façade with such melancholy and anarchy. There may well be better examples, but when I watch his films the phrase "the illusion of control" keeps running through my mind. What are these characters and environments holding at bay? What is Anderson fending off?

Anyway, what of his latest film? The structure of The Grand Budapest Hotel is kind of perfect for Anderson. It's a fish tale and it's also a story within a story within a story. There is thus a built-in allowance for him to create his own little world, only this time the scope is on a much larger scale. In previous films, Anderson managed to transform Houston into a New England prep school, crafted the perfect J.D. Salinger version of New York City and brought an L.L. Bean catalogue to life as backdrop for a sweet love story. This time Anderson and production designer, Adam Stockhausen, have Stefan Zweig's pre-war Vienna as inspiration for their incredible sets.

We first view the Grand Budapest Hotel in a state of disrepair in all of its brown and orange glory in the late '60's. Set in the far, far, far, far fictional Eastern European country of Zubrowka, the film opens with a young writer (Jude Law) befriending the owner of this once magnificent establishment. His name is Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham) and he recalls over dinner the story of how he came into possession of this prize.

Tony Revolori plays Young Zero and, like so many of Anderson's preternaturally mature young characters, is guided by a mentor as he negotiates his way through his career and love life. Ralph Finnes plays Monsieur Gustave, the concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel, with élan. He puts his staff through a number of eccentric rituals (with another trademark Anderson montage) to assure the hotel operates like a precision time piece.

If The Grand Budapest Hotel is any indication, a concierge stands at the pinnacle of the service industry and M. Gustave evidently services his clients very well indeed. One very old and very, very wealthy client, Madame Celine Villenueve Desgoffe und Taxi left a valuable painting to him in her will. Tilda Swinton is almost unrecognisable as Madame D. Needless to say, her son, Dmitri (Adrien Brody), and the rest of her family are none too pleased.

M. Gustave, aided by Zero, steals the painting and returns to the Grand Budapest Hotel to hide it in the safe. On their return, Gustave made a pact with Zero naming him as heir. While this was taking place, Dmitri conspired to frame Gustave for the murder of his mother using the false testimony of one of her servants. Unbeknownst to Gustave, or Dmitri, his mother made a second will that was to go into effect in the event of her murder. In this second will, Gustave was left everything.

Gustave is sent to prison where he soon adapts rather nicely. One of things I love, love, love about Anderson is how he wedges the colloquial Texas slang and attitude of his youth in his films, no matter what the time, or setting. I certainly did not expect to hear the term "candy ass" in a film set in Europe in the 1930's, but coming from the lips of Finnes it was more funny than it should have been. In any case, Gustave is soon sprung from the comically forbidding Zubrowka prison and dashes off with Zero to prove his innocence.

The backdrop for this farce is the gathering storm of war in Europe as an unnamed fascist country is menacing neighbouring Zubrowka. Their jack-booted presence  may have served as a Deus ex machina in leading to the discovery of the second will and delivering Gustave to safety, but the rise of fascists meant the death of this old, beautiful world. As Old Zero sadly concluded, M. Gustave was from another time and did not survive happily into a new, uglier world. Neither did Zero, it seems.

I don't exactly think that Anderson mourns for the old days in the same way that Stefan Zweig, or M. Gustave did, but I can see a connection between them. Maybe that's why I am so fond of Anderson, myself. The past can seem so sad and wonderful that the order we impose on it in looking back is a way of coping with the all-too-chaotic and frightening present. This is a very long-winded way to say- I love The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Rio Bravo (Directed by Howard Hawks, 1959)

"Really? I thought he was going to kick Death's ass one more time." 

-Richard Pryor, upon learning of John Wayne's death.

"Don't set yourself up as special- you think you invented the hangover." 

-Sheriff Chance (John Wayne)

Public Enemy, notwithstanding, John Wayne is not easy to dismiss. Wayne was a towering figure in Hollywood and audiences loved him for decades. Wayne was big- not just in stature, but in what he represented for a lot of people. He was no mere movie star- Wayne seemed to embody some version of a mythic America. Wayne's contradictions, on-screen and off, mirrored those of his country. Hell, you could say he *was* America in his day and not be absolutely wrong.

That's a lot of baggage to unpack on a Saturday afternoon in front of the TV. In regards to Wayne, I have tended to stay on the John Ford side of town, so I have only just now got around to Rio Bravo. At the helm for this was Howard Hawks, perhaps the most versatile director in Hollywood history. Westerns were only a small part of a career that saw him expertly try his hand at making gangster movies, film noir, war flicks, screwball comedies, musicals and even science fiction. 

My expectations were thus pretty high for this film. Wayne plays a brave Texas Sheriff, John T. Chance, who is battling against outlaws who threaten the town. This is a common scenario in Westerns and Wayne is playing his most archetypical character. Yet, it works because the film goes beyond the clichés and even the action scenes to focus on the characters.

The heart of the film is the relationship between Sheriff Chance and his former deputy, Dude. Played with a sweaty intensity by Dean Martin, Dude fell for the wrong girl and fell on hard times. Dude is the town drunk, the Borrachón. As Rio Bravo opens he is reduced to retrieving a silver dollar contemptuously flung into a spittoon  by the execrable Joe Burdette (played by the shockingly young looking Claude Akins). The brawl that ensues leads to Burdette's arrest for murder and a chance for redemption for Dude as Chance's deputy.

Chance will need all the help he can get since his arrest of Burdette has put him in the cross-hairs of a powerful enemy, Nathan Burdette. Nathan, Joe's brother, is the local cattle baron who hires a series of outlaws to try and break his brother out of jail by any means necessary. He is the real power there. Upon being rebuffed by Chance, Nathan employs some local musicians to play El Degüello, the "No Quarter" dirge played by the Mexican Army outside of the seige of the Alamo, really, really loudly over and over outside of the jail. The man knows how to send a message.

The Sheriff is left to try and hold out for the arrival of the U.S. Marshall with only Dude (the town drunk!) and Stumpy (an incomprehensible ageing cripple!) to help him. (Stumpy, played by the great Walter Brennan, is comic relief that is actually funny). The odds are not looking good. When Chance's old friend, Pat Wheeler (Ward Bond), is murdered in the street on his way out of town, the prospects look even worse.

In the middle of this, a mysterious woman nicknamed Feathers arrives. Angie Dickinson plays this character who likes gambling, has a shady past and takes a liking to Sheriff Chance. She comes on strong to him. Chance gives her the cold shoulder for much of the film, but their relationship develops as the danger grows closer. Every time the Sheriff tries to send her away, she comes back.

I guess what surprised me the most about Rio Bravo was how it focused on these relationships, old and new. Chance shows a kind of gentleness and patience with Dude and his struggles that is unexpected. Similarly, Chance and Wheeler's friendship seems genuine and nuanced. There is also real (and probably in real life) affection between the Sheriff and Stumpy. Even the May-December (well, maybe June-October) relationship between Chance and Feathers makes sense in this film. 

I think this was all possible because the pace of the film is so unhurried. Hawks does nothing indulgent here, but the film unfolds without the modern tendency to amp up the action at regular intervals. If anything, the showdown at the end of the film was de-emphasized. Still, every shot was composed beautifully (and there were hardly *any* close-ups). All movement and editing was seamless and on-point. Check out the framing for the final showdown scene. It's excellent.

The acting is another highlight of Rio Bravo. For me, Dean Martin was the real revelation here. For a guy who is often thought of as one of America's last loveable drunks, there is a real darkness here. The desperation and pain in his eyes felt like they were drawing on something from the inside. Martin's portrayal of Dude reminded me of one of Frank Sinatra's best performances. Maybe the Rat Pack were about more than constant fun and Ring-a-Ding-Ding!  Maybe not.

As for the star of Rio Bravo, Wayne performs skilfully. John Wayne, the man, is so closely tied to his characters that his acting is underrated. Again, you don't associate nuance and John Wayne, but it is undeniable in this role. He was also much more vulnerable here than I expected. Sheriff Chance was very often *not* in control, yet he came through in the end.

John Wayne, the actor, really was larger than life, though. There is a magnetism that supersedes acting chops. I can never take my eyes off him and you especially can't do that here.  His performance in Rio Bravo reminded me why so many people loved him, contradictions and all. This is an excellent film.

Final note: I would be remiss if I did not note Ricky Nelson's performance as Colorado, the baby faced gun-slinger and guitar player (there sure were a lot of those guys in the fifties). The film finds time for another, more pleasant musical interlude so Ricky can show off a little. Dig the classic Dino croon, too. Nice job fellas! See the clip below for evidence of the incredible acoustics of the jails of the Old West:

Funny People (2009, Directed by Judd Apatow)

"Success has made a failure of our home." -Loretta Lynn, 1963

"Dying is easy. Comedy is hard."- Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole) in My Favorite Year

I was in no great hurry to see Judd Apatow's Funny People when it came out in 2009, despite being a big fan of numerous TV shows (The Larry Sanders Show, Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared) and films (The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up) he has helmed. I was spooked by Adam Sandler, initially. There is a lot of Gilbert Gottfried in him. It baffles me why he has been so successful. This wasn't a deal breaker, though. The was the initial thought that Funny People was going to be an autobiographical and more dramatic take on the world of stand-up comedy that really put the brakes on for me. Uh oh. 

Fortunately, Funny People is not exactly the Judd Apatow Story. The film, of course, is playing with the audience's expectations by making the premise of this would-be comedy centre on that most serious and unamusing subject- death. Sandler plays George Simmons, a hugely successful comedy film star, not unlike the actor, himself (meta!). At the apex of his career, he learns that he has a rare blood disease. He must face death. Despite his success, he is lonely. He has no real friends and is estranged from his family. How will George face this crisis?

In a daze, George reaches out to the things that have given him the most comfort- the stand-up stage and his relationship with his ex-fiancee, Laura (Leslie Mann). In trying to re-connect with his past, he encounters and be-friends a young comedian, Ira (Seth Rogan). If George lives in the rarefied air of private jets and Malibu beach-front compounds, Ira is at the other end of the spectrum. He sleeps on his friend's couch, works at a deli and is still trying to find his comedic voice. So, the film is tracing both George and Ira's journeys to find themselves.

So, Funny People has a lot to work with. I was anticipating some themes to emerge that might take Apatow into a new artistic place. There was certainly ample space (like nearly three hours of space!) to explore what makes these characters tick, how people react when facing death, or even what kind of people are drawn to a career in comedy. That space was largely unexplored, or clumsily done. 

I would like to think that there is also room for actual comedy, too! There are some really, really talented people here to draw from, aside from Apatow and Rogan- Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman and Azis Anzari all appeared as comedians. So, why does the film feel so forced and mirthless at times? We had lots of characters *in the film* laugh at dreadfully unfunny bits in the Comedy Scenes to help us along (I swear, I will hear Rogan's monotone heh-heh-heh in my nightmares for the next five years), but as for honest-to-God funny lines? I think there might have been six. That's not good enough, even in a dramedy. 

I know we are supposed to take it for granted that George is this charismatic comedy genius ("I grew up on you!"), but does every part of his character have to be so half-baked? One moment George is telling an appalling story about how his comedy comes from trying to avoid his father's violence and the next minute we have a rather bland scene where the two are seeming to bond by the pool over a Jackie Gleason conversation. So, it's all good? As this was part of a sequence of scenes where George was making good with his family, I was surprised that Funny People did not put a Relationships Repaired tally on the screen. None of this rang true.

For that matter, I did not really buy any relationship in the movie. George and Laura, George and Ira, Ira and his friends, Ira and Daisy, Laura and her family, Eminem and Ray Romano- none of them made sense. Characters make huge life decisions seemingly on a whim all of the time in movies, but it is so over the top here.  I am willing to suspend my disbelief for anything, but a person's humanity should never be judged on how they react to a performance of a song from fucking Cats. George was doomed for Laura when he didn't mist up over her daughter's (her real life daughter, at that!) rendition of Memory. That was that. So, Apatow is basically forcing the audience to validate his daughter's performance, or *they* are selfish, fucking dicks. Dirty pool, mister. Dirty pool.

If we are being charitable to Apatow, we could say this movie is a love letter to his family. We could also say that he was doing a shout out to all of friends in comedy. Most likely this is a little tribute to his early life in comedy as being a sort of an 

Ira to Gary Shandling.

I think it is certainly worthy to branch out into different territory for an artist. Coming to terms with who you are, dealing with death, fighting your past, trying to remember who you were- all of this is great fodder for a drama, or a comedy, or even both. You could set this in the world of comedy, or anything and there is a lot to work with. Unfortunately, Funny People did not deliver the goods for me. 

Welcome!

Welcome to my film blog. I have decided to review every movie I see for the next year and see what happens.