Beyond the cut lay films that include
Well, late night viewing on HBO is actually a lot more rewarding than regular viewing. Cases in point: Romeo + Juliet and From The Terrace.
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Having missed it the first time around, I was glad to catch Baz Lurhmann's take on the famous story of star crossed love. I sometimes stun myself with my lack of film education.
Lurhmann has an incredible sense of theatre and spectacle, as well as a great love for music. While this is certainly no purist version, I really enjoyed the artistic license. When Luhrmann really gets going, there's this kind of giddy flamboyance to his work. I loved this sensibility in Strictly Ballroom, and enjoyed the irreverence for R+J as well.
The bombastic approach actually helped humanize the performances in a strange way: teenagers are so overwrought and prone to melodrama, lest we forget that this is a story of young, posturing bucks and hormone addled maidens. The dialogue was handled credibly well and I am again reminded that the Bard probably really needs to be experienced via performance for true efficacy and enjoyment. But I must note that I also believe a great deal of research, presearch actually, is immensely helpful in contextualize just what the frig everybody is on about in those things.
Biggest surprise of all was Leo D. Did not expect such a genuine performance. Harold Perinneau was the bees knees, no surprise there.
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From The Terrace is proof that Paul Newman is an irresistible force for me. Two thirty am and falling asleep? Not if there's a Newman movie on!
This is your standard tale about following your own path to success, only to find that success might not be what you really wanted. The redemptive love interest is actually the most rote and boring part of the movie. It's much more interesting to watch Newman and Joane Woodward's character interact. They're both a little hedonistic, oversexed, and confident. Their interactions were refreshing, but I guess I should have realized that Woodward would be painted with the Brush of Amorality and Materialism. It all gave me a bit of a sexist vibe, because she really does become the villain, and it seems to stem from her desire for a fulfilling sex life. A life she's quite content to have with her husband, until he ditches her for marriage to his job.
Also interesting b/c they really play up Woodward's beauty in this film. She's very Grace Kelly, and it's something to see.
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What does Paul Thomas Anderson do? He makes movies fraught with the promise of horrible consequence, but does not necessarily deliver on those promises. Not a complaint, rather an observation of his wicked use of musical cues and editing.
The Master tells the story of damaged, deranged, dangerous and possibly unsalvageable Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix)--a WWII vet with a violent streak and a penchant for combustible potables. This is a guy who thinks of antifreeze as an aperitif.
Freddie crosses paths with Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a self aggrandizing, charismatic, self styled Renaissance man who purports to have uncovered some Universal Great Truths. From these truths he has fashioned The Cause--some hybrid of brain washing, group therapy, and mystic mumbo jumbo. In many scenes Dodd came across so keenly as the parlor room grifter, the shyster seance holder; hauling his motley crew from one parasitic engagement to the next, with the dissatisfied duped nipping at his heels.
Dodd is the kind of character who begs the question: what is the difference between foisting your bullshit on everybody and actually believing that bullshit for yourself? If you talk the talk for so long, are you destined to believe your own propaganda? Hoffman does an amazing job of portraying the incredible responsibility and exhaustion of being a Godhead. You have to make all the decisions, do all the thinking. You create a trap in which you cannot be fallible, cannot be unsure. In a scene where Dodd creates a ridiculous game called "Pick A Point" it's all so clear: what should be a simple excursion is weighted down with ridiculous notions of faux meaning. There is no lesson to be learned, "Pick A Point" is the kind of "game" a bossy five year old would inflict on younger siblings.
Phoenix seems to sculpt the character of Quell. It's an amazing physical performance. He spends almost the entire movie in a concave posture, shrinking from the world around him. His extreme discomfort with himself and his place in the universe is reflected in every facial tic, expression miscue, inappropriate smile.
And major, major props to Amy Adams. She conveys a sense of menace, zealotry, and viciousness with an admirable economy of expression and intonation. Her solidity is terrifying, and helps to further illustrate that Dodd is much more lost and malleable than he pretends.
A lot has been, and will be said about the allusions to Scientology. And it's all there, from throwaway speeches about past alien lives to references to SeaOrg. But for me the movie didn't read as a searing condemnation of Co$. Dodd and Quell used each other, with neither one ever really getting what they wanted. It's a quiet movie about the lies we tell ourselves and others, the things we can't hide even we are lying, and the strange freedom we have even in our damning, destructive choices.
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ReplyDeleteYour movie reviews read like articles I see written by professionals on Ain't it Cool News and other sites. I'm both impressed by and envious of your writing ability and insights, H.
ReplyDeleteI'll need to watch On the Terrace soon. My appreciation for Paul Newman developed somewhat recently, and damn does that guy deliver in everything he's in - old or new.
Thanks for the read and the movie recommendations.