Howards End

Back in college, a girl I was seeing dragged me to A ROOM WITH A VIEW. The movie, all 36 hours of it, was painfully, excruciatingly long. I promised myself I'd never see another Merchant-Ivory picture again. Well, time dimmed the promise, as it often does, and I queued up HOWARDS END a short while ago.

I liked it. I really liked it. If I had to boil down my reasons, I'd find Emma Thompson's Margaret Schlegle. She begins the movie an engaged, joyful, dynamic woman. As time wears on and her choices tell on her, we see that she's put herself in an ever-shrinking box. We've seen that type of character before, but Thompson's triumph comes from her endowing Margaret with the self-awareness to know whom she is, whom she was, and whom she may become.

Thompson's dedication to her character's full humanity is of a part with the entire film's approach to its characters, its settings, and its situations. HOWARDS END is populated with real people, with real problems, who make real decisions. At no point do we hear the plot's gears grinding, and at no point do we lose our investment in these people. Time with HOWARDS END is time well spent.

But I still won't give A ROOM WITH A VIEW another go. Life's too short.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

I like the combination of the real and the fanciful in THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU. Elegance, insight, and grace infuse the (only?) real element of the film, the inner life of Steve Zissou; while the fanciful element shines with vision, creativity, and an edge toward fancy.

Steve Zissou is a man in the process of losing his illusions. His business is crumbling, his partner is leaving, and his crew yearns for the days when he had the energy to make illusions seem real. As the movie pares this character down to his vital core, it creates an increasingly fantastical world for him to inhabit. How fitting that his moment of enlightenment should come in the most fantastical scene of them all.

Holy cow, did I like this movie.

The Ruling Class

THE RULING CLASS is two movies with a common theme. Unfortunately, I didn't care for either one.

The first movie is an English country farce in which Peter O'Toole, who firmly believes that he's Jesus Christ, returns from his voluntary stay at a lunatic asylum to assume the title and holdings of 14th Earl of Gurney. The 13th Earl was a big fan of autoerotic asphyxiation, a compulsion that's played for every laugh it can get. That's right, folks: accidental suicide as comedy gold. Somebody approved this. Anyway, O'Toole shows up, private crucifix and all, and proceeds to turn life upside down at the Gurney estate. There's your first movie.

The second movie is a horror picture complete with seduction, murder, and the undead. Gurney visits a House of Lords that's filled with cobwebs, ghouls, and lawyers, and it's supposed to get under our skin. But it doesn't, really. It just falls flat, and it falls flat because it's such a hamhanded hammering at the two movies' common theme that it had me wishing the producers had just printed up a circular to hand out at entrances to the Tube.

The common theme is this: the English class system is bad. It values lineage over ability, and it makes for a ridiculous social and political construct. There: I've just save you two hours.

Now, I don't mind message movies. I do, however, mind movies that are nothing but message, particularly if it's a message I don't care about. I'm not English. I don't care about the English class system. While I'd be happy to watch a movie about people who happen to be a part of that system, I'm not too excited about a two hour commentary on the system itself. My excitement reaches new lows when said movie's comedic bits aren't funny (I didn't so much as crack a smile.) and its horrific bits aren't scary (I didn't feel even the slightest chill.).

What a disappointment.

My Dinner with Andre

I don't think I can approach MY DINNER WITH ANDRE with anything like a critical eye. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Since when have I had a critical eye?) Here's the problem: Andre is a dead ringer for a friend of mine named Dan. He looks the same. He dresses the same. He speaks in the same cadences. He's deeply, profoundly engaged with life, and he loves to share his ideas with his friends, even when he exasperates them.

Dan's been dead for three years, now. I miss him. MY DINNER WITH ANDRE was, in a weird way, like getting an extra couple of hours with the guy. I don't know when I'll see the movie again, but it's good to know that it's out there. Maybe when I'm ready for another conversation.

Technical note: the disk I saw was of a very bad print. If there's a special edition out there, you might want to go with that.

The Pianist

I got a postcard from Germany the other day. The photo was of people wearing silly folk costumes against a beautiful background. The message read, "Liebe grüsse und alles gute sowie viel freude mit eurem neuen familien!" While watching The Pianist this morning, that postcard kept coming back to me. It represented the latest variation on perhaps the greatest cognitive dissonance in my life: that between my wonderful, loving German friends and relatives, the culture and language I associate with holidays and early childhood; and the monsters the Germans became under the iron rule of the Nazi party. I've read the books and seen the movies and had the conversations, but the question still remains: how is it possible that my people were once those people?

Consequently, watching THE PIANIST was like getting punched in the face for two and a half hours. The movie follows an affluent young Jewish man of Warsaw, the titular pianist, as he scrambles to survive the coming, then occupying, then disintegrating German horde (played, incidentally, by actors who look like me and my relatives). We see him assisted and betrayed, in denial and disillusioned, as his world literally crumbles around him. Adrien Brody delivers a star-making performance, fully investing his character with all the humanity he deserves. His oppressors, the Nazis and their collaborators, are also fully realized in their monstrosity. It's a brilliantly made film, perhaps someone with more distance would enjoy the heck out of it. For me, it was agony. I have no desire to see it again.

Blood Simple

I enjoyed BLOOD SIMPLE for its audacity, for the skill with which is was made, and for the memorable performance of M. Emmet Walsh, a character actor whom I'd seen a million times but whose name never stuck until now. (Run, sentence, run!)

BLOOD SIMPLE, the Coen brothers' first movie, is a Texas noir with a sleazy bartender, a sleazy bar owner, a sleazy bar owner's wife, and a sleazy detective. That's a lot of sleaze, and the amazing thing about this movie is how it makes you care about these people as they betray, slay, and dismay one another through the course of the picture's tight 96-minute running time. There isn't a thing about this movie I don't like, from its performances to its photography to its pacing to the labyrinthine story. This picture's a treat.