With that much talent, that much money, that many resources, what have Spielberg and his team said with Empire of the Sun? War is tough on families? Coming of age in a prisoner of war camp is miserable? I don’t know.
Maybe the movie is more focused and tries to say something about the main character, Jim. At eleven years of age, he is torn from his parents and winds up in a prison camp near Shanghai. But what is Spielberg saying about the kid? Although I’m not sure, there are tantalizing glimpses. First comes the contrast between Jim’s very privileged life in the British sector of Shanghai and his life on the street with Basie and then in prison camp. The problem here is that in the first part of the movie, we don’t really get to know Jim. Although we see a lot of him, we never look into his eyes to see him as a real person. It’s as if he is playing the role of precocious rich kid instead of being a person who happens to be a kid who happens to be precocious and rich. In this regard, The White Countess, set in Shanghai at the same time, is far superior because the two main characters, played by Ralph Fiennes and Miranda Richardson, seem to come to life organically, be realistically complex, and be people we can empathize with if not like.
In the middle section of the movie, we see Jim growing up in the camp, becoming the king street urchin, dashing from one deal to another in high spirits. The problem here is that we mistakenly think Jim is thriving on camp life. In the movie’s pivotal scene, however, we realize that he has been desperate for affection, that dashing around “doing things for people” is in large part a) keeping himself so busy that he can ignore his loneliness, and b) trying to cultivate replacements for his lost parents. He is also using his fierce intellect to distance himself from his emotional loss. So, when the Americans are bombing and Jim is jumping around on the roof enthralled but endangered, his friend, the camp doctor, dashes to rescue him, as buildings are falling all around. Jim spouts some abstract stuff about how the runway they built for the Japanese was sort of the prisoners’ runway, and the doctor says sternly that, no, it’s the Japanese military’s runway, and “don’t think so much!” At this stern and heart-felt admonition, young Jim cracks. He sobs that he can’t remember what his mother and father looked like. And then he babbles some Latin conjugations as the doctor carries him down stairs.
In the final portion of this two-and-a-half-hour movie, Jim is a bit deranged. The problem is that we’re not quite sure how or how much he is deranged. Or is he just sort of “shell shocked”? Or has he grown up so fast that he really hasn’t integrated everything he’s learned? No, he is definitely losing touch with reality because when his father and mother show up with hordes of other parents to look for their lost children, he does not recognize his parents even though they look exactly like they did when he was separated from them 3 or 4 years before. He ignores his father, but he has a glimmer about his mother. He examines her nails (we don’t know why), he reaches up and smudges her lip stick (we don’t know why), he takes off her hat and feels her hair (we don’t know why), hugs her, and the movie ends. And Spielberg is saying that . . . ?
Even though An Everlasting Piece (2000) is set in Northern Ireland instead of Baltimore, it is a quintessential Barry Levinson film—that is, it addresses serious issues humorously.
Barry Levinson should be, but doesn’t seem to be, recognized as a leading director. Not because of his Oscar nominations for Bugsy, Avalon, Diner, And Justice for All, and Rain Man (win), but because he often tries to present substantial social concerns with a light-hearted touch. Consider, for example, Levinson’s film before An Everlasting Piece, Liberty Heights (1999). Levinson wrote the screenplay for the film because what he considered an anti-Semitic comment regarding one of his films made him very “angry.” The resulting script about diverse ethnic groups in Baltimore in 1954 was funny enough that when producer Paula Weinstein read it on a L.A. to N.Y. flight, she “was hysterical.”
Maybe Barry Levinson isn’t recognized as a “leading” director because he isn’t consistent. But, although he makes some films that don’t measure up in the opinion of the critics and the public, they are always interesting, An Everlasting Piece included. The story of two hairpiece salesmen in Northern Ireland who are sometimes in conflict mirrors another of Levinson’s films, the classic Tin Men. That movie, which is also a period piece (circa 1963), tells the story of another duo of salesman who are in competition. Whereas the Irish salesman are green and new to the sales game, Tilley (Danny DeVito) and BB (Richard Dreyfuss) are pros and know all the tricks to closing a sale, some of which aren’t exactly above board. However, the movie is set at a time when the rules are changing for selling aluminum siding, and the scams and cons they use to make their sales are no longer being tolerated. By the end of the movie their world of Cadillacs, cigars, long lunch breaks, and going to the track is pretty much coming to an end and they have to consider their future and what might be next. Both films have great dialogue, a Levinson trademark, and when the tin men are in the diner shooting the breeze you’ll be reminded of another of his great Baltimore movies, Diner.
With Levinson’s love of tackling issues with a light-hearted approach, you can see why the script for An Everlasting Piece appealed to him: It’s about two barbers who try to gain a monopoly on hairpiece sales in Northern Ireland in the 1980s when strife was tearing the country apart. Colm (Barry McEvoy) is Roman Catholic and his new business partner George (Brian F. O’Bryne) is Protestant, and they figure that should give them an in with every bald guy in Northern Ireland. McEvoy, who wrote the script based on his grandfather’s experiences, wanted to get both sides in the conflict laughing at each other.
But, presenting a heavy subject with a light touch leaves you open to lots of criticism:
1. Not funny enough.2. Not serious enough.3. The comic and the dramatic don’t go together.
And then, as with any film essentially from another country, there is always the question of whether the humor translates for an American audience. While you’ll hear this movie criticized for reasons 1, 2, and 3, the real problem is a cultural one. For one thing, the humor is understated. Lines that are “thrown away,” as we would say, would probably be cherished by a UK audience. Also, some of the humor comes from the Irish tradition of storytelling and some episodes in the film have the flavor of well-polished barroom tales that started out true and have since gained in conviviality what they have lost in veracity.
By JIMBELL and Wonga
The Painted Veil (2006), one of the best movies of the year, is a wonderfully original and relevant story. It’s original because it’s a romance in reverse. When Walter (Edward Norton) and Kitty’s (Naomi Watts) new marriage sinks from neutral to adultery, we expect the whole thing to end dismally, but the husband and wife slowly mature and slowly grow closer together. The Painted Veil is relevant for the hope it touches in us that we, too, might earn such redemption.
When Dr. Walter Fane is home in England from China, he’s attracted to Kitty principally because she is pretty. Although she does not return his infatuation, she agrees to marry him because of subtle pressures from her family. She is shallow, easily bored, and used to luxury; her strengths are probably parties and social tennis. He is repressed, awkward, and unable to chit chat; his strengths are probably scientific research and concrete problem solving. They have almost nothing in common, their marriage does not magically blossom, and she has an affair with the British Vice Consul (Liev Schreiber) in Shanghai. Although she has the affair, the movie makes clear that they are both at fault. While arguing, he says (all quotations approximate), “I knew you were shallow, but I’d hoped for something more,” (to which she could have replied, “I knew you were an introvert buried in his work but I’d hoped for something more).” Actually, she replies, “If a man doesn’t have what it takes for a woman to fall in love with him, it’s not her fault,” (to which he could have responded, “If a woman doesn’t have what it takes to change a husband’s infatuation to real love, it’s not his fault”).
When Walter announces that they are trekking into the interior of China to help in one of the areas hardest hit by the cholera epidemic, the complexity of his motivation exemplifies the depth of the characters in this story. Foremost, he wants to punish his wife by exposing her to hardship and disease. But maybe, as he claims later in the story, his primary motivation is to punish himself. He despises himself for making such a mess of his marriage. He also has a humanitarian interest in helping where he is really needed, and he has a scientific interest as a physician and bacteriologist. Both these motivations become prominent when he starts working in the remote village.
Things are at an icy stand-off in the marriage, and there is no escape. She then starts to hear great things about her husband. For example, the kids at the Roman Catholic orphanage love him. He starts to see her becoming useful and doing good work—she is playing piano and leading games with the children at the orphanage. As the ice thaws, Walter sums up: “We were wrong to expect in each other what was not there.” When they visit the local British Deputy Commissioner (Toby Jones) and his gamine Mongolian lover (fashion model Yu Lin), the common-law wife says the attraction to her husband is that “he’s a good man,” and Kitty wonders, “What woman ever loved a man for his virtue?” She’s open to new ideas, she realizes this is a good one, and she embraces it. Their love grows.
Excellent music, fine cinematography, and great acting convey the story. The artistic care taken with this story manifests itself yet again in the final scene. Kitty and her 5-year-old son are shopping in London. Unlike an earlier scene, Kitty decides that buying cut flowers is not frivolous. They then bump into the Vice Consul, and as the camera cuts back and forth between the son and the lover of five years ago, you try to figure out if he was the father. You can’t, which is the point--it doesn’t matter. In direct contrast to an earlier scene where Kitty was instantly enamoured with his ambassadorial charms, she now finds him sorely lacking compared to the memory of Walter.
You’re Gonna Miss Me (2006) is a documentary of an obscure and talented rock singer from the last 1960s, Roky Erickson. If that is all the film was about, it would be in trouble because there is not much documentary footage available from forty years ago, and Roky in the early 2000s was brain-damaged and reclusive. You’re Gonna Miss Me manages to be about a lot of things at the same time: rock history, recreational drugs, family dynamics, mental illness, modern psychology versus religion, and a courtroom drama about who gets to look after Roky, his mother or his youngest brother.
Feature documentaries are newly popular, and people are still unsure what a documentary is or should be, and, thus, people judge such films on widely different criteria. At least, that is my impression, an impression that is easy to explain but difficult to substantiate. I think that documentaries are newly popular because I—and probably you—know lots of good documentaries produced in the last few years--along with the outstanding feature films. But if you go back even five years, you’ll find you know the big feature films but not the documentaries. Let’s try it with the Academy’s nominations. From last year, you remember The Departed, and the powerful documentary An Inconvenient Truth as well as the controversial Jesus Camp which is still showing. From the year before, you remember the feature film Crash, and the wonderful documentary March of the Penguins, the disturbing story of corporate corruption, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, the heated sports documentary Murderball, and maybe even the anti-globalization diatribe Darwin’s Nightmare. The first year I noticed a strong interest in documentaries was 2002, when people got excited about Winged Migration, Spellbound, Daughter from Danang, and, of course, Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine. Let’s look at the Oscar winners before that and see how many we recognize. For feature films, I’ll bet you recognize A Beautiful Mind, Gladiator, American Beauty, Shakespeare in Love, Titanic, and The English Patient, not to mention a host of nominations such as Traffic, Erin Brockovich, The Sixth Sense,, Saving Private Ryan, and L.A. Confidential. For Oscar-winning documentaries, I’ll bet you don’t know many of Murder on a Sunday Morning, Into the Arms of Strangers, One Day in September, The Last Days, The Long Way Home, or When We Were Kings. I only know the last one.
As we’d expect with a newly popular art form, people are not sure of what it should be and, thus, how they should judge it. Should documentaries follow the traditional definition and be “presenting facts objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional material, . . . presenting historical subject matter in a factual and informative manner” (American Heritage Dictionary)? Or, to ask a refined version of this, should documentaries try to be objective but acknowledge their subjectivity? Is it a documentary if you make an unabashedly subjective film about something, having no pretence of presenting the world as it “objectively” is? Is it a documentary if it is propaganda, presenting one side only and presenting that side in an unrealistically positive light? As one reviewer said favourably of Michael Moore’s new documentary Sicko, it is “a persuasive piece of propaganda.” Can a documentary include staged, “fictional” events? For example, Moore apparently stages a piece of absurdist street theatre by taking a bunch of ill 9/11 workers to Cuba for proper medical care. Is a film still a documentary if it is primarily what Marshall McLuhan called a “probe,” raising questions rather than portraying reality or arguing for solutions? Finally, as far as quality goes, can a documentary be a good documentary if it does not agree with my political, economic, and religious values?
You’re Gonna Miss Me is an old-fashioned documentary, presenting the facts as objectively as possible without editorializing. The strength of the documentary is the great access director Keven McAlester got to the Erickson family. We see Roky in his run-down house cluttered with a plethora of electronic equipment all turned on to create an ungodly buzz and roar while Roky falls asleep watching cartoons on television. We see his mother and guardian surrounded by huge sheets of cardboard on which she has pasted pictures and printed her story so that the world will understand that she is not to blame. She freely explains that Jesus and yoga are far more effective than doctors and medication when it comes to treating schizophrenia. We meet briefly brother Don who was a drug addict and tried to kill himself, and two other brothers who present as ordinary guys, but most of all we meet Sumner, the youngest, who fled the house at 18, became a classical musician in a symphony orchestra, and wants “custody” of Roky. Sumner says something like “They say you can’t buy happiness, but I’ve paid for 10 years of therapy, and I know you can.”
The weakness of the documentary is that it doesn’t investigate. Ironically, this is also a strength, for it recreates realistically the immense complexity of behind a simple question of whether a man should live with his mother or his brother. Yet I was frustrated that the film did not investigate further the question that runs like a subtext beneath the entire documentary: Why is Roky the way he is? Was it hereditary mental illness? We see plenty of the eccentric mother and can make up our own mind, I suppose, but the film could have tackled the question directly. His father’s brief, taciturn appearance is eerie. We hear a few things about a dysfunctional family, but the film doesn’t dig into this either. Was the villain too much LSD and heroin? We hear from one and only one band member that the band leader Tommy Hall gave the guys way too much acid one time, but, despite a terrible trip, Roky came back for more. We hear that Roky got electro-shock treatments at the Rusk State Mental Hospital/Prison but no more details. Of course, there is no one cause, but I would have liked more information so that I could have understood in a preliminary way the mix. When we see Roky around 2000, he is the focus of a family feud, which we understand well, but he is also clearly mentally ill and brain damaged, which we don’t understand as well as I’d like to.