JimBell Blog

Under discussion:

Bella  (2007)

When Bella screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006, it won People’s Choice Award. It is a good film. Complex characters with some good dialogue convey a positive vibe without being maudlin. Bella is the story of Jose (Eduardo Verastegui) a cook working in his brother’s restaurant and the young waitress, Nina (Tammy Blanchard), who is fired for being late. Jose is not a happy camper. He hallucinates when scraps go down the garbarator, and then he purposely sticks his hand in a gas flame. He is hiding, hiding in his brother’s kitchen and hiding behind a huge black beard that makes him look like a nineteenth-century Russian anarchist. For her part, she says she cannot get her life together, and we notice that she cannot avoid getting pregnant and cannot take a pregnancy test and still get to work on time. At the same time, both characters seem, above all, to be decent people.

The complex motivation of the characters keeps the story from being a formulaic love story. The many good things Jose does for Nina on their day away from work he does not because he is a knight in shining armour saving a damsel in distress but because he is damaged and for his own reasons wants to adopt the child she is carrying. He thinks this will make amends for the young girl he accidentally killed in a traffic accident. When Jose takes Nina to visit his family, his motivation is entirely unclear, but we might guess a) he wants Nina to see what solid family support he has, b) he wants some of that support himself, and c) he wants his parents to meet the woman who may play a big part in his and their lives. His father is not the stereotypical wise old patriarch, but an immigrant who refuses to learn English, a father who has issues with his son driving again, and a husband who gracefully shares parenting with his wife. She begins by castigating Jose but winds up giving him the kind of deep support most people would love to get from a mother. Part of this support is revealed in a nice bit of dinner table dialogue where she says something like this in front of Nina and another guest: “I don’t usually share this, but when we were first married we tried and tried to get pregnant, and just when we were about to give up we heard of a baby up for adoption. As far as we are concerned that is the only difference between Manny and our other two sons.” So we know that Jose has confided in his mother and that she is on his side.

Now, it is perfectly possible to hate this movie. But as discerning viewers, we should be clear what our standards are. This takes some self-examination. There is a strong bias against looking inward because we live in a consumer culture, movies are something we consume, the customer is always right, and therefore movies had better please us or else it is their fault. If we do not examine ourselves as well as the movie, we may well be unaware of why we don’t like Bella. To take a hypothetical example, if I am unaware that I demand all excellent movies to be serious dramas with lives full of fury and signifying nothing, then I will be unaware why I dislike Bella and the gentle kindness people show each other. If I am unaware that I have my feelers out for even the slightest hint of a controversial issue, then I will be unaware why the abortion sub-text gets my goat. If I don’t realize that I consider all happy endings Hollywood pap, then I’ll have no idea why the largely positive outcome in Bella seems like a cop out. I’m not saying that viewers should not hold views like those above but rather that they should be aware of them and, if they criticize a movie, to acknowledge them. David Thomson, the long-time movie critic, provides a good example when he declares his bias: At his age, he prefers comedies and good stories, which, not incidentally, he thinks are what Hollywood does best. With that declaration out in the open, we know how to take his reviews.

Myself, I tend to apply the same standards to movies as I do to novels. I love movies ranging from Princess Bride to Spy Game to The Age of Innocence that have tight, well-thought-out stories. And this is where Bella falls down, in two places. Although the film wisely creates suspense in both Jose’s story and Nina’s story, the suspense in Nina’s story is specious. In a flash foreword, we see Nina go into what appears to be an abortion clinic, flop back on the table, and emerge in tears to be comforted by a waiting Jose. Has she had the abortion as planned? The film unfairly withholds the answer in order to create a more impressive ending. In addition to this weakness, the ending goes way too fast. The entire film up to the last scene essentially covers one day, and then in the last couple of minutes we cover about four years and most of the stuff we wanted to know: She did not have an abortion, she had a child, Nina apparently left, Jose has raised the girl, and after about 4 years Nina sees her daughter and asks to be let back into Jose’s life. Whew! Although Bella has narrative problems, they are not serious enough to stop even a plot-obsessed guy like me from enjoying the film.

Under discussion:

Transsiberian  (2008)

TransSiberian (2008) is a good thriller, but be careful who you watch it with.

Partner (10 minutes into the film): I’m not seeing much in the way of scenery. Maybe it’s lucky we decided not to take the TransSiberian like these two (Roy—Woody Harrelson, and Jessie, Emily Mortimer) because we might have seen nothing but trees.

Partner: This is so slow. I mean nothing is happening except the movie is creating this vague sense of fear, just like so much nowadays! Just anxiety and dread free-floating.

Me: I think they’re creating mystery. What exactly is that other couple bunking with Roy and Jessie up to. Roy and Jessie are such good, church-going, trusting Americans, and the other couple is up to something. The characters are developing. The girl looks punky but might be ok. The Spanish guy is sleazy and suspicious at one moment and then charming and jovial at another.

Partner: Now Jessie is kissing that Spanish guy. Ok, she’s lost all my sympathy. How dumb! Whatever happens to her, she deserves. How can she be so stupid?

Me: I think her somewhat troubled “perfect” marriage and her old, wild days showed through there for a second. She’s a complex women, and not a happy camper.

Me: How dumb! She left that Spanish guy alone in her room with her suitcase there, with her passport and everything in it.

Partner: She is not very bright for a woman who used to be worldly and street smart.

Me: Yeah.

Partner: Why doesn’t she just tell the Russian police the truth about what happened!?

Me: Right from the start we’ve seen you cannot trust the police. The story about them holding a guy for a month because his name was spelled wrong on a travel document, then cutting off a couple of toes to make him pay the bribe.

Partner: Turn down the volume! That torture scene is . . . oh, no!

Although I did not enjoy watching the movie, it is well-crafted, featuring excellent acting all around and a strong sense of place which enhances the foreboding. If there is anything that keeps this from being an excellent film, it is the denouement, the very end. A strength of the movie is the depth of serious questions it raises: Can an all-American boy and a bad ole girl make a marriage work? What’s the best way to approach another culture, with open arms or with great care? And there’s the age-old question beloved by Henry James in the late 1800s about how “innocent” Americans could fit in “sophisticated” Europe. These questions understandably take a back seat to the frantic action of the climax. But in the denouement, none of these questions are developed or taken to the next level. Rather Roy and Jessie seem stunned, which is perfectly understandable but is also the easy way out for a screen writer.

Under discussion:

Redbelt  (2008)

Although I enjoyed Redbelt (2008), the movie could have been substantially better.

I enjoyed watching the movie because the philosophy that goes along with some of the martial arts has been a long-standing interest of mine. Ejiofor, who I’ve admired since seeing him in Dirty Pretty Things (2002), conveys that inner stability or stillness exceptionally well. Speaking of actors, Emily Mortimer is again wonderful in her secondary but pivotal role, Laura Black, the lawyer. The strongest dialogue is for these characters. The dialogue shows a serious understanding of the Buddhist (or whatever) philosophy underlying ju jitsu. To make a point, I’d say the best dialogue in the film is when the hyper, drug-addicted Laura meets the black-belt Mike (Ejiofor) in a restaurant and admits in a nervous way that she has a problem. He says, if I remember correctly, “How can I help you?” Brilliant dialogue delivered by actors who understand deeply the parts they are playing.

But Redbelt has lots of problems. Excellent critics give it mediocre ratings. James Berardinelli gives Redbelt only 2.5 out of 4, saying the plot is ridiculous, there are too many coincidences, and the scam simply wouldn’t work. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave it a respectable 3 out of 4, picking up on the theme of “understanding will defeat strength.”  IMDb rated the film 7.0/10, a boringly average rating by thousands of film buffs. Also, a guy with 8 years training in Brazilian jiu jitsu (the focus of the film) said on IMDb that the cop’s suicide was dumb, the whole con thing was stupid, and the final out-of-ring fight would never have been allowed. Perspicacious, or what!?

David Mamet, screenwriter and director, says in the additional features to the movie that he does not ask other people about his scripts because his friends, whom he is most likely to ask, will not provide honest feedback because they want to remain his friends, and, furthermore, Mamet wants to be his own harshest critic. He is right as far as he goes. But anyone can use an outside perspective (or two). That’s what truly good book editors provide.

There are several avenues into what went wrong with this quite watchable movie: Ridiculous plot? Underdeveloped theme? Split between the social dynamics of the first part and the physical combat of the last part? I’ll chose theme. A man appears pure in isolation from the hurly-burly of the modern American commercial world, but within his admirable purity lies the seed of a problem. When he encounters the corruption of modern American capitalism, he maintains his purity and decency, but initially he has no effect on the corrupt practices. When this tension reaches a peak, he responds by quitting and heading for his studio, but then he realizes that he must use his purity and honour to challenge the corruption not just flee from it.

What an amazing theme compared to most pabulum out here! But the movie does not clearly develop this theme. First of all, it is not clear for most of the movie that the martial arts instructor is flawed. He seems a beacon of light. In retrospect, I see that the movie dropped some hints of the protagonist’s flaw. For one, when he begins Laura Black’s ju jitsu training by telling her she must leave the outside world out there, she says she has apparently come to the wrong place. I had put this down to her squirrelly behaviour, but I was probably supposed to see that she was right. Later, the martial arts master and the lawyer, Laura, battle the movie moguls ripping off his instructional methods and materials, so I thought it showed him taking action in the face of corruption. But in retrospect, I realize she was doing all the taking. All in all, such ambiguous events fail to make clear that our hero is flawed.

Near the end of Redbelt, our hero walks away from the big-money match when he learns it is rigged, he meets Laura in the hallway, they speak briefly, she slaps him, and he returns to the ring to reveal the fraud. Laura’s slap is the turning point of the movie. Significantly, Mamet says that Laura “explains” things to our flawed fighter. Unfortunately, we do not hear a word of this so-called explanation. It is Mamet’s head. Consequently, we are left guessing what is going on. You only find the answer if you watch the DVD extras and hear Mamet say Laura “explained” that an enlightened master cannot merely hide in his martial arts studio but must take his goodness into the world and fight corruption.

Redbelt’s theme is complex and mature and thought-provoking, but it is so poorly developed that viewers have little chance of appreciating it.