Check out this entry on my Huffington Post blog (where I write occasionally and mostly about sitcoms):
True, don’t you think?
AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY
The movie should be called Late October: Osage County.
For all the dialogue about the oppressive heat, the light is fall amber, the leaves on the trees are spotty in places, and the characters sure wear a lot of long sleeves and even sweaters. Did I mention that no one visibly sweats?
The point is an important one, and the problem it reveals is verisimilitude, the appearance of truth and reality. Those important details were false and continually pulled me out of the film.
This type of movie needs verisimilitude to work in ways that the play did not because audiences are forced to accept the inherent limitations of the stage where cinema does not have them.
There is a different standard for willing suspension of disbelief for stage and screen.
I’ve never seen August: Osage County presented as a play, though I understand from sources I trust that it is top-notch. Unfortunately, the type of dialogue and staging that are effective in the theater do not translate to film without more modification than has been made here.
The all-star cast is fine, and strong performances abound except when the lines get in the way. There are riveting and painful moments, but the scenes (and other bits and pieces of scenes) that work well individually and independently are offset by other false notes that do not work at all.
So, the question is to see, or not to see?
By all means see the film to watch these actors try so hard to work around and rise above the artificially arch dialogue and theatrical constraints that should have been eliminated in the adaptation.
Of course, another way to look at it is that the pain inflicted and endured by these characters in the film might be unendurable if the film had some of the verisimilitude of, say, The Squid and the Whale (2005) or The Savages (2007) to name two searing, family dramas starring Laura Linney that spring readily to mind.
HER
I keep thinking about this movie and want to see it again. Thinking about it so much since Friday night, actually, that I’m not really ready to write about it definitively…but also want to say something now while it’s all rolling around inside my head!
Spike Jonze’s reputation rests mostly on three films before this one: Being John Malkovich (written by Charlie Kaufman), Adaptation. (written by Charlie Kaufman and adapting parts of Susan Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief), and Where The Wild Things Are (written by Jonze with Dave Eggers and based in part on the classic children’s book by Maurice Sendak.)
All of them are strikingly original and sometimes amazing films. I have used the b-word – brilliant – to describe his work before.
Her, written and directed solely by Jonze, is only going to enhance his reputation.
Sometime in the not too distant future, a vulnerable writer who makes his living penning letters for hire falls in love with his new operating system. Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) and Samantha (Scarlett Johansson) may not be such an unlikely couple.
Early on, he tells her things that we suspect he’s never told anyone before, notably that his marriage has broken up because he has hidden himself from his wife. He hides nothing from Samantha. At least, that’s true for awhile.
Later in the film, when we see Theodore meet his wife (Rooney Mara) for lunch, she tells him that dating his operating system probably works well for him because he always wanted a wife but didn’t want to deal with reality.
When I see Her again, I must take a pen and some paper to scribble down these exact quotes (I never take notes the first time I see a film). There are other clever quotes, and insightful quotes, and funny quotes, but these two ideas are essential to the way the film affects me.
Without them, I would have liked the film (exciting production design with terrific use of color and style, beautiful yet understated cinematography, terrific performance, important ideas, incredibly good writing), but I may or may not have loved it. These insights touch me in a way that feels very authentic for the two characters, suggests so very much more than the few words uttered, and draws me into these characters and the situations that unfold throughout.
Worth noting, Her includes another strong performance by Amy Adams as Phoenix’s friend and neighbor.
Put this on your must-see list.
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
Watching Ethan and Joel Coen’s latest film, which covers one week in the life of a fictional folk singer based in Greenwich Village in 1961, I thought about how the best things about Inside Llewyn Davis and the worst things about the film reminded me of their 2009 collaboration, A Serious Man.
Here’s what I had to say about that one at the time:
Ethan and Joel Coen’s latest film, A Serious Man, is a 1960s retelling of the Job story. The film is fascinating (as the Coens are wont to be) but not wholly satisfying. The cultural context and cinematic detail throughout are rich, and the terrible things befalling our protagonist are also clever and, at times, slyly amusing, but it is that character who needs a bit – just a bit – more of a response to these events to draw the viewer more fully into the film. Michael Stuhlbarg plays physics professor Larry Gopnik as an appealing but ineffectual man. That’s okay so far as it goes, but I want more. Probably I’m just looking for larger meaning where none is intended – and I do not expect the filmmakers to answer all of the great questions about human existence and theology – but it would be nice to have some clues about Larry’s interior life. All of that aside, the film is still worth seeing. Go and judge for yourself.
Inside Llewyn Davis is beautifully performed, Oscar Isaac plays the eponymous role, and many familiar faces and famous names fill out the rest of the cast. It is also impeccably photographed, and it is built around an achingly brilliant production design.
There are some vitally important themes introduced, too, about love and loss, about aging and death, about birth, and about what constitutes our responsibility to one another. But somehow these ideas seem like a series of glowing dots embedded within a maze of other dots, many of them attractive, but without a bit more connection, the pattern is less than it might have been.
I went to see the film with my friend Allison, who wrote to me this morning, “I’ll be interested to see what you come up with to say. I hope there’s at least a paragraph about how the cat had the most interesting storyline of the film.”
Here goes, Allison. I think the cat is the device that comes closest to linking the narrative dots and presents an embodiment of all of the themes mentioned above with the people in Llewyn Davis’ life – his recording partner, his lovers, his family, his friends – and the ways he sometimes tries to help them, sometimes doesn’t try to help or to connect, often hurts them, and generally fails them and himself.
The cat almost carries the film…but not quite…
SOME VELVET MORNING — Addendum
So, my friend Anna Fields commented that this is a play that has been filmed but that she still loves it.
My reply: At first I thought the same thing, Anna, and it would certainly work well in a stage space, but the ending would “feel” totally different without the use of close ups. I am not sure I would walk away from it with the same understanding from seeing the exact same blocking and lines on stage. There are elements of her interiority that come through in rapid fire transition that, I think, require the framing of the camera to work.
On reflection, I think she agrees.
Isn’t it fun to talk about film?
SOME VELVET MORNING
You should go into writer-director Neil LaBute’s latest film knowing that it plays out more or less in real time, was shot in eight days, and features top-notch performances from Stanley Tucci and Alice Eve.
Think about the film within those parameters, and remembering that LaBute likes to write about love on the periphery of power, you will find Some Velvet Morning satisfying.
I can’t tell you much about what happens without ruining what is essentially a big set up to a finale that makes everything that comes before it fall into place, but I can tell you the film starts with a beautiful woman (Velvet) stretched out on a sofa listening to music when her former lover (Fred) turns up on her doorstep after four years and announces that he has finally left his wife and has the luggage to prove it.
Let’s just say that over the next 80 or so minutes, both characters reveal a lot of passion and ambivalence and that some scary things happen, too.
Referring to a line in the film from an argument between Fred and Velvet — “When has love ever been fair?” — LaBute reveals some of his thinking on the matter in press materials.
“I think that statement probably speaks to love as a currency. The way people sometimes use their affections against another person can feel almost monetary. You know, I’m going to give you this and you give me that. Or I’m going to parcel out my feelings or I’m going to hold back saying something that I know you want to hear because I get something from that. I think that’s an interesting dynamic, and a dramatic one, and that’s probably why I’ve examined it as many times as I have.”
It is certainly a transactional approach to love, if you want to call it love.
LaBute is not afraid to examine the baser actions of people, especially men, in his films, which may not always make his work easy to watch but does position it to reveal some ugly truths worth examining…if only to know what to avoid in real life…
SAVAGES
What a mess. What a cheesy mess. Those are technical terms.
I usually try to catch Oliver Stone’s films out of a fond remembrance of how much I loved his work in the 1980s. I liked some of his films in the 90s, too.
Since I missed Savages when it was in theatrical release, I decided to watch it this afternoon on HBO On Demand.
It was pretty bad (man, I wish Taylor Kitsch could land another role as good as Riggins in Friday Night Lights), but I couldn’t turn it off.
Maybe it was morbid curiosity. I did keep wondering just how bad it could get. Or, maybe it was the appeal of the knitting project I had started that I didn’t want to put aside at the time.
In any case, I didn’t stick around because the film was engaging.
