Saturday, January 5, 2013

Amour (dir. Michael Haneke)



Amour, the French language film directed by Michael Heneke, begins with the fire department entering an apartment that has been locked up with a corpse inside. So we know how the life of one of the two stars ends up. It is inevitable after her little episode that signals she has had a stroke.

What is most intriguing and gives suspense to the rest of the picture is what will happen to her caregiver, her conscientious, loving I suppose, husband. Haneke is a master of establishing relationships with a graceful series of scenes. The two old people have lived with each other for at least forty years. The way the apartment is decorated, the furniture arrangement, the kitchen table set round with two chairs, all these details speak to the regularity of their habits, the comforts of their cultured home. There are paintings of open landscapes and the freedom they imply sit on walls that seem to close in around the couple as they become trapped in their mortality.

The two are dependent on each other. As Anne loses the use of her limbs, Georges boosts her up to a standing position and the two move in lockstep like awkward dancers. Amour is a close study of two intimates who become strangers to each other. Decisions about the end of life come up. Anne has Georges promise her that he will never bring her back to the hospital. You can easily see why. The operation that was supposed to remove the obstruction of the carotid artery was a failure. According to Georges, only 5% of the operations of this type end in failure.

At one point Georges tells Anne about going to the movies when he was young, how the movie made him cry it was so overwhelmingly sad, how he could still remember how it made him cry, it was so sad, but he couldn't remember the name of the movie or what it was about exactly. Even though we witness scene after discouraging scene of a human body breaking down, and then the mind going away, leaving the survivor alone with a breathing shell of the beloved, there is something abstract or archetypal about Amour. It lacks the impact a truly emotionally warm filmmaker would bring to this material.

The film has much to admire. There is a brilliant tiny scene with a mean nurse whose cruelty is vivid and shocking (Haneke's home territory). The subtlety of the use of running water and what it might mean to Georges and Anne (life, dependability, cleanliness, the ability to do ordinary things) is very resonant. Images of things breaking in or trying to get out -- that sense of entrapment -- repeat and add depth and intelligence to what is potentially an emotional horror show.

I think Love is the wrong name for this movie. Haneke recognizes love when he sees it. He is such a chilly director he merely observes objectively what is happening as one person deteriorates and the stronger mate hangs on and keeps caring. I went in to the movie prepared to be moved by the emotional devastation of what happens when a couple devoted to each other through a long life die. But I left thinking, that was a very well presented case study, very artfully done. It did not really touch me.





Thursday, January 3, 2013

Les Miserables (dir. Tom Hooper)



The movie takes place as if unfolding in five acts. Act one, the criminal serves time. Act two, the criminal is set free, and given stolen silver by the merciful and saintly bishop who puts him up for the night. Act three Valjean is a factory owner and mayor, well respected in a town far away from Paris. Here he meets Fantine who is unjustly cast out of his factory. Valjean (now known as monsieur le maire) tries to correct the wrong by offering protection for Fantine's daughter, Cosette.

Act four Valjean must again change identities to escape the clutches of Javert, a fanatical lawman who is determined to lock up Valjean again. He and Cosette live in a cloistered convent, safe and holy. Here is where Cosette falls in love with one of the revolutionaries (Valjean is not the only one suffering from injustice and hunger) and Valjean learns that the young man is worth saving.

Act five is the final escape through the sewers of the city of Paris as Javert continues to chase after the former convict. The movie like the book is a weeper. There are scenes of grave injustice hard to bear. Then there is the rallying cry of the group determined to cast down the oppressors, and a musical number that soars and sends goose bumps down my spine.

Every time I was moved to tears, it had to do with Hugh Jackman singing and acting his heart out.  The movie is largely Jackman's because he plays Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean served 19 years in prison doing very hard labor (shown in baffling close up by the filmmaker) for stealing a bit of bread to feed his family. Victor Hugo's novel describes the injustice of law enforcement in the person of Javert, the bloodhound on Valjean's trail once Valjean changes his identity to avoid having to go to probation hearings for the rest of his life.

Just when the action becomes too solemn, Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter show up as a couple of dishonest innkeepers singing "Master of the House." They provide welcome comic relief throughout the movie. Some of the lesser parts are beautifully played, especially Eponine who loves in vain and does a noble thing or two, and Marius whose singing about survivor guilt is very beautiful.

The other night Les Miserables was on TCM, the version with Charles Laughton as Javert and Frederic March as Valjean. I was amazed at how much more quickly the story was told without music, but how the power of the conflict was the same.

In the new movie, the music may be mostly schlocky, the story may tilt toward melodrama and thrust Christ imagery around, many characters may lack complexity, the director may not be able to resist pulling away from a shot in a helicopter, but still I wept when Hugh Jackman was singing in the carriage having whisked Cosette away from Javert and discovering the joys of being a father.

Bold heroism is in short supply lately. Jean Valjean is so noble and spiritually holy you think you can resist him. I for one could not.





Wednesday, January 2, 2013

The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, director)



Paul Thomas Anderson is an artist with a dark palette. There Will Be Blood the movie with Daniel Day Lewis portraying an oil baron was about not just one sinister businessman who manipulates unknowing people into selling their land cheap. It was about the menace of unbridled capitalism. Lewis embodied the rapacious nature of business without limits. Paul Dano played two men, complexly.

The Master centers on a relationship between a disturbed alcoholic veteran named Freddy and played by Joaquin Phoenix and a charismatic perhaps equally disturbed founder of a new spiritual movement played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. The audience sees things from Freddy's point of view to the extent possible. It becomes a bit of a burden when he loses control and begins hitting people and things. However,the production is so brilliant, the photography so vivid, the acting so concentrated and consistent, that we go along. We think this is leading up to something besides the relationship between these two men. And then the movie ends, and you think what was it about really?

I think Anderson likes the subject of power. How it manifests itself in a million ways. Boogie Nights had the charismatic director (Burt Reynolds) and the clueless young man (Mark Wahlberg) with the big dick. Julianne Moore hovered nearby a safe motherly figure who tempered the beastly powerful male.

IN Magnolia, Jason Robards is dying but exerting his influence on his dickhead son played brilliantly by Tom Cruise. PS Hoffman is a kind gentle nurse attending to everyone's needs at his own expense.

There has to be a megalomaniac in his films.
There has to be great tension from beginning to end.
Laughing is all right, but rare.

But after you've left the theater, images and scenes of rare power (there it is again, that word) stay with you. The beauty of the sea foaming in trails behind a boat. The squirrelly way that Phoenix collects ingredients for his homemade toxic booze. From the middle distance, people on a boat moored dancing inside. Sunrise over the Golden Gate Bridge. The way Phoenix holds his arms akimbo, his hands holding his back as if holding himself up. His hunched walk, all turned in on himself.