JimBell Blog

Goodbye Solo review

JimBell — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:44:45 GMT

Why are neo-realist films (neo-neo-realist?) such as Goodbye Solo (2008) so difficult to understand? Goodbye Solo should be the rather straight-forward story of a buoyant, good-hearted cabbie, Solo (Suleymane Sy Savane), who tries to save a ride, William (Red West), from committing suicide. But trying to figure out what the film is saying is difficult. Why? For one thing, the film makers put a tremendous effort into making things looks real, and maybe they don’t put as much effort into making things meaningful. This suggestion is based on the assumption that you cannot do everything or else you get cognitive overload. In Goodbye Solo, the city of Winston-Salem is so vividly portrayed that it almost becomes a character. Long shots of deserted, down-at-heel streets create a slightly menacing atmosphere, and shots of humdrum motels foster an empty feeling, a sense of separation. The acting is equally realistic, with the actors showing the natural complexity of people. More specifically, Solo is helpful to the point of being aggressive. And he is always upbeat except when he crashes in moments of serious defeat and reflection. On the other hand, William is realistically extremely stubborn, resentful of someone barging into his life, and only subtlely softens under the pressure of friendship. As you’d expect, the plot is also a lot like real life, taking turns you don’t expect if you have the typical Hollywood movie template as your viewing framework.

When the movie suddenly ends, I’m left thinking, “Well, that was a fascinating slice of life, but like a slice out my life, what does it mean?” This question contains within it the seeds of a second reason these neo-realist films are difficult to understand: They strive to be like life, which is, in my experience, perplexing. Do Director or Scriptwriter comes up to me and says, “Hey, Jim, all that crap you just went through means that . . . “

So a lot of the work is left up to the viewer. As a reviewer of fims for friends and associates, I’m wary of putting too much of myself into movies. I shudder at idiosyncratic interpretations. As someone said about Freudian interpretations of movies and their ubiquitous phallic symbols, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Goodbye Solo says, on the face of it, that compassion, generosity, and friendship sometimes does nothing for the person you’re trying to help. One spiritually-oriented reviewer said the movie shows “the difficulty of compassion,” and that is putting it mildly. In this case, it is more like futility. Do I need to support this more? After two weeks of wonderful friendship from Solo, William, as planned, throws himself off a cliff.

A third reason Goodbye Solo is difficult to understand is that the “in your face” meaning is not at all what the film says. A hint of this comes from the last lingering image of Solo and his stepdaughter standing in non-realistic triumphant fashion on Blowing Rock cliff. Another hint comes when we realize that, despite the title and the main plot line, the film is not just about Solo and William. It is also about Solo and his family and about Solo and his career. Solo’s family is a mess. His Mexican-American wife has booted him out largely because he is studying to become a flight attendant and, if he succeeds, will seldom be home. Yet Solo loves his step-daughter and has a great relationship with her. Solo’s career is also a mess. He does not particularly like driving a cab, but as a relatively new immigrant, it is the work he could find. He studies hard for his airline attendant’s examination and seems extremely well qualified, but he fails. Each of these three plot lines has a turning point. With William, it is when Solo decides to accept William’s wishes, live by their original agreement, and drive William to his jumping place. A tough defeat but one to accept. With his family, the turning point is when Solo asks his daughter to accompany him on the trip to Blowing Rock jump. Solo says he’s not strong enough to do it by himself. Looking on the positive side regarding his family lends strength. On the drive home from the jump, solo’s daughter asks if he’ll give the flight attendant’s exam another shot, and, still smarting from the failure, he says yes. Looking on the positive side regarding his career affirms Solo’s commitment to life. Now we see the theme emerging, but it hasn’t been easy.

Creating a neo-realist movie that is difficult to understand has its pluses and minuses. Viewers read the Rorschach ink blots any way they want; for example, “Goodbye Solo shows the unbridgeable gap between black and white Americans.”. Some viewers stop watching is exasperation as they “watch paint dry.” Some viewers just accept not getting it and move on the next, more predictable movie. Others struggle and throw up their hands in despair. To friends, some who enjoyed the film give reviews where they have to hide in poetry and vagueries that they loved the movie but cannot explain what it was about. I’m guessing the film makers put up with all of these drawbacks for the big Ah-ha! You ponder, struggle, maybe discuss the film or read reviews, and then suddenly—Ah ha!—you know why they made the film. Hard-won insight is much more powerful and valuable than a telegraphed message.

Outsourced review

JimBell — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:56:23 GMT

Outsourced (2006) takes the very serious topic of outsourcing, treats it with a light touch, and presents an alternative view of it. Todd (Josh Hamilton) sees his entire phone-order department outsourced to India, and he saves his bacon by reluctantly agreeing to go to India to train his replacement and the Indian workers who are replacing the operators in Seattle.

Although things do not go well at first, quiet comedy abounds. Refreshingly, Outsourced does not try for laughs by making the characters quirky. In fact, Todd is relentlessly ordinary. This leads to one of the most deft touches of this intercultural movie: When Todd runs into a culture he doesn’t understand, and when nearly everything is going wrong, he does not become louder and more ridiculous, he becomes quieter. Although this could lead to a long dull stretch in the movie, it allows the Indian culture to come to the fore. The comedy arises not from individual quirkiness but from the environment. When Todd gives an insistent neighbourhood boy a rupee, the boy gives him a hug—and steals his cell phone. He later returns it. Todd allows him to choose a pencil for art work, and the kid grabs the whole bunch and runs off. Todd has a lot to learn. But the movie does not try to teach us about India. Rather it shows India in action and lets us learn what we are ready for.

It is a great compliment to a movie when you like it enough to start searching for small things it could have done better. Outsourced occasionally feels a little bit amateurish or low budget. But for every tiny amateurish shot there are many wonderful touches. For example, when Todd and his new Assistant Manager, Asha (Ayesha Dharker), are forced to check into a hotel, the only room available, the manager claims, is the Kamasutra Room—and the camera shows a close up of the name and rate on the board. This is clunky. In support of this shot, you could argue that it was taken from Todd’s subjective point of view, but all other shots in the movie were from an exterior point of view, showing Todd finding his way in a strange land. But after this clunker shot comes, a minute later, a first tentative kiss, with no dramatic close-up, no atmospheric panorama, but rather a standard two-head shot which allows us to see, after the kiss, Todd’s almost imperceptible nod. Excellent.

Another example. When filming the change-of-seasons festival where the Indians throw coloured dyes at each other, there is an impressionistic shot of a mob of people at the bottom of the screen and an impenetrable cloud of red dust at the top. This shot does not fit with the rest of the cinematography which is very matter of fact. It is also probably not accurate, because when you mix red dust, blue dust, and some other colours, you get an unphotogenic grey. This shot is out of place because the movie has been emphasizing an almost-documentary style. Yet, in the same sequence, Todd drops his inhibitions and, covered with red and blue pigment, he grabs some bombs and fires back. But here’s the little detail I love—he throws hard! He was a pitcher in college, and he hits both guys square on the head. This detail lets observant viewers know that while Todd has “stopped resisting” Indian society, he’s not completely happy about it and he’s not going to give up on his own culture.

This fish-out-of-water comedy has two serious, underlying issues. In spite of vast differences between cultures, genuine human contact is possible. People can connect and care for each other across considerable divides. This message is refreshing in light of the many Hollywood movies which posit the opposite. The other issue is outsourcing, and here I don’t think the film plays fair with the issue. It tries to get us to see that there are more important things in life than your job, for example, your parents and getting married. However, the film stacks the deck. All the laid-off Indian workers have learned so much English and so many skills that they can all get jobs elsewhere. Only the laid-off manager will have great difficulty, and Todd steps in and saves the day. But stacking the deck in the argument glosses over the problem of profit above all else, the problem of multinational corporations that have no concern for the community, and the problem that today in the USA there are about 16,000,000 able-bodied people unable to find work.

I really enjoyed Outsourced as far as it went. I can see why it picked up audience awards and best picture awards at smaller festivals—Seattle, Palm Springs, San Jose, Bend, and Tipton, Iowa. We empathize with Todd and root for him to make the best of a tough situation. He and Asha have excellent, natural chemistry, and we hope against hope that their romance will flourish. And it s such a treat to watch an upbeat movie.

Cheri review

JimBell — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:06:25 GMT

Cheri (2009) is poorly made movie telling in a remote and detached manner the story of the love affair between a middle-aged prostitute and a spoiled young lover. We do not care much about Lea (Michelle Pfeiffer), although she seems a cut above the other courtesans. Cheri (Rupert Friend) is half her age: she is his unofficial godmother. He is a spoiled brat and womanizer, selfish and beautiful and quite immature. Now that we have characters we don’t like or care mush about, we are further distanced from their heartbreak by prominent and superficial music which contradicts the emotions we should be feeling. Having a staccato, bouncing score drown out a lover’s cries of anguish may epitomize the superficiality of the Belle Époque around 1900 in France, but it also distances the viewer. If that was not enough, we have the classic method of keeping viewers at arm’s length, the voice-over narration. The movie even ends with this narration, and I would be greatly surprised if you felt a twinge of sorrow for the tragedy it tells. Your consolation can be that the movie looks great—lush settings, great costumes, and Michelle Pfeiffer and Rupert Friend looking their best.

The Brothers Bloom review

JimBell — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:04:30 GMT

Whether you like The Brothers Bloom (2008) will largely depend on your sense of humour and your tolerance for being fooled. Film maker Rian Johnson assumes you are “full of beans” like he is, and that you’ll follow the twists and turns of the caper with interest. It worked for me, but a sense of humour and a tolerance for ambiguity are highly individual.

I liked the sly sense of humour. For example, when the con artists Bloom (Adrian Brody) and his brother Stephen (Mark Raffelo) select a lonely American heiress as their last target, they get Penelope (Rachael Weicz) who “collects hobbies”—we see a montage of her playing a variety of musical instruments, spinning discs, leaping into the air for karate kicks, and so on, ending with a piece of origami that looks a bit sad. The karate and the fancy paper appear later in the movie, which to my mind makes the montage of hobbies not gratuitous but which to some people seems merely smug.

There is an intelligent “conceit” or extended metaphor that runs throughout the film: writing a life. Stephen plans his masterful cons like a Russian writer planning a sprawling novel, but Bloom is getting tired of always playing a part and wants to live an unwritten life. This raises the question of whether you can lead an unwritten life. The film does not explore this deeply because it is a fast-paced caper, but it provides a serious idea to anchor the shenanigans. It also sets up Penelope to reinterpret the metaphor in the climactic scene—what matters is who does the writing. If Bloom no longer has his brother writing roles for him, he can try to write his own life, the best story he can create. I thought the handling of the metaphor was deft, but others might see it as too smart for its own good.

The actors were so good I could relax and trust they’d pull off any scene, funny or serious or ambiguous. I enjoyed a movie that assumed I was smart enough to remember a sentence about blood made early in the movie to interpret a key scene late in the film.

The only noteworthy weakness is thatm try as I might, I cannot figure out Stephen’s motivation for his behaviour in the climax of the movie. I can guess, but the film does not give us much to go on. Still I found the entire movie a fun and entertaining romp.

Easy Virture review

JimBell — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:39:24 GMT

Easy Virtue (2008) got a difficult reception, but the movie almost works. You’d think it would work. It’s a breath of fresh air—a Noel Coward piece of wit and satire is a pleasant change from grunting super creatures. It has a good director—Stephan Elliot’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) was a wonderful piece of Australiana. It has excellent actors—Kristin Scott Thomas, Colin Firth, and others. The English country estate is gorgeous and the cinematography does it justice. So why didn’t the movie work?

This frothy movie doesn’t get good until it gets serious. The first half of the movie is all giddiness and fluff. Although some viewers might find this tolerable or even amusing, I found it tiresome and then inconsequential, so I was set to not watch the second half. Okay, so the rich English aristocrat brings home a sexy American divorcee and the snotty family doesn’t like her much. But then suddenly the mother yells at her immature son saying that he is blind, oblivious, a disappointment: He should be running the estate and know that it is bankrupt. This revelation is followed shortly by the father explaining to the inquisitive American that he is not a happy camper because he led the men of his village into WWI and brought none of them home alive. Now the comedy of manners has some bite. If the serious element had come earlier, we would have laughed more knowing the depths the social wit subtly manifested.

Just when you’re liking the movie, the ending sort of flops. There’s a preachy, old-fashioned, Agatha Christie-style wrap up and analysis which is out of place and should have been rewritten and reshot. And then in the final scene—I won’t give away the somewhat surprise ending—the ambiguity is entirely unproductive. So struggling through the overly loud music, and the mumbled upper-class accents was, in the end, not worth it, but a few judicious changes would have made Easy Virtue a substantial delight.

Duplicity review

JimBell — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:33:47 GMT

Duplicity (2009) is forgettable. You’d expect it to make an impression because with Tony Gilroy at the helm (Jason Bourne movies; Michael Clayton) and a fleet of top-notch actors . . . But even if we grant that it is a romantic caper film and not supposed to be substantial, it is still not a particularly good romantic caper film. Why?

Take the romantic part. Even though Clare (Julia Roberts) and Ray (Clive Owens) have some on-screen chemistry, what is the basis of their attraction? We don’t know. They are both professionals who lie for a living and work in the unsavoury field of corporate espionage. Should we care about them?

Take the caper part. We don’t know until well into the movie that there is a caper. At first it seems like industrial espionage; then, through a series of flash backs, we see that Clare and Ray are trying to pull a fast one. When the caper comes to a conclusion, it’s not what you expected. But this surprise ending is a cheat: You were given no hints, no chance to figure it out yourself. It was simply sprung on you, making it all that much more forgettable.

Easy Virtue review

JimBell — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:05:22 GMT

Amongst White Clouds review

JimBell — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:25:10 GMT

Amongst White Clouds (2005; documentary)—I don’t have much to say about this fine documentary except it is for a limited audience and I really liked it. This young guy (Edward Burger) is reading about Buddhism when he realizes that there are people out there living the life now that he is only reading about. So he learns Mandarin (yes), tracks down the hermits living in some mountains in China, and moves in amongst them—for years. I admire the dedication. With camera in hand, he interviews the different Buddhist monks living a mile or so apart in the mountains. I found their different versions of Buddhism intriguing. It is not that they are confused or uncertain or misinformed or eccentric, but, as the Buddha said, you have to find your own path, and they have, each one emphasizing a different aspect of the teachings. I also really liked the seclusion. Actually, not the seclusion but rather the way the monks handled the seclusion. It was an inspiration.

The French Connection (1971) review

JimBell — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:06:53 GMT

When I saw The French Connection (1971) years ago, I thought it was fantastic. When I rewatched it last night, I thought it was good but not that remarkable. In American film history, it holds a prominent place, partly as sparking gritty urban crime dramas. But how does it view in and of itself?

It’s probably worth mentioning, because we’d mention it for any film that never won a bunch of Academy awards, but the opening scene in France is incomprehensible. Some guy goes home and some other guy shoots him. Later we recognize the shooter as the accomplice (Marcel Brozzuffi) of the French drug smuggler, Alain (Frenando Rey). But we have to listen to the director’s commentary on DVD to learn that the victim was a French undercover agent.

The plot thereafter is easy to follow because it is largely a series of chase scenes, the most famous being Popeye Doyle’s (Gene Hackman) driving a “borrowed” car under the elevated train tracks as he chases the killer on the commuter train.

The strength of the film is its documentary style. Director Friedkin has a background in documentaries and was inspired by two European movies Breathless and Z which had a documentary look and feel. No sets were used, and the dirt and low light of New York creates a powerful sense of place.

The film is based on an actual case, and the Popeye Doyle in real life was an on-set adviser, and even appeared in the film. By sticking reasonably close to what went down, the film surprises with interesting details. For example, Doyle and his partner, Rosso (Roy Scheider), are having a drink in a well-known nightclub when they notice a young guy unknown to them spreading a lot of money around at a table with known gangsters. On an off-duty hunch, they follow him, and thus start the investigation that broke a major drug smuggling ring.

Director Friedkin tried to show the fine line between cop and criminal, a theme done much better in later movies such as Heat. It doesn’t work in The French Connection. Doyle appears to be an obsessive, brutalizing, racist cop, but we don’t get any insight into his character. Why is he obsessive? Not a clue. When he smashes people around and yells racist epithets at them during a raid on a bar, is he acting naturally or aiming for effect? Not a clue. The villain Alain appears to be a charming and cultured Frenchman, but we don’t know. He gives his young wife a gift, but we have no idea what motivated him. He dines in a fine New York restaurant, but we do not hear his conversation and so have no idea how to interpret this—extravagant decadence? or just another meal? or gourmet appreciation of the fine things in life? We also do not know what motivates the mastermind to smuggle heroin because he already owns a prosperous shipyard. The theme of the fine line between cop and criminal goes nowhere.

Still it’s a good movie with an energetic documentary style, a palpable inner city setting, and a dynamic and inventive sound track. It also gives a glimpse into police work before cell phones, GPS, and squads of human rights lawyers. It ends with shots of the criminals and how little time they did. It is not clear whether this is a film device or fact, but it is fact. It left me amazed at how much law enforcement work went into achieving a pyrrhic victory—a good chance there were behind the scenes payoffs.

Bringing Up Baby review

JimBell — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:05:17 GMT

It’s difficult to judge a screwball comedy such as Bringing Up Baby (1938) because it is screwball. The term comes from a baseball pitch popularized by Carl Hubble in 1934 where the ball travels in an unpredictable path. So you cannot insist on plot coherence. What is paleontologist Dr. David Huxley (Cary Grant) doing taking a leopard to New Jersey on the day he is supposed to marry his icy research assistant? You cannot demand realistic characterization. Why does Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn), a beautiful, ditzy socialite, suddenly pick David off a golf course to be her future husband? You cannot even hold the movie to the genre standards of a “screwball comedy,” because the term has no agreed-upon definition. It is generally applied to certain films made from 1934 to the early 1940s. Mistaken identities often add to the chaos, but not in Bringing Up Baby. Because of the Great Depression, class is often an issue, but not in Bringing Up Baby. Rather this film features the classic screwball romance—a mismatch in temperament and wealth between man and woman, with the woman planning the marriage from the get-go. The film also features farce, placing the characters in ridiculous situations. For example, as the two leads exit the party, she steps on his tux tails and rips his suit, and he tells her to leave him alone. When she turns to go back into the party, he is standing on the hem of her dress and rips the back panel out of it. She, however, is in no mood to listen to a word he says and walks back into the party unaware that her undergarments are exposed. When she finally figures it out, he’s there to help her make a Chaplinesque exit.

In 1938, New York Times film critic Frank Nugent slammed the movie because it had no original jokes. But, again, who says the jokes in a screwball comedy have to be fresh? The bottom line is the movie has to make you laugh or smile or, at least, be quietly amused, and a lot of that humour has to come from farcical situations. Bringing Up Baby worked for me! Why?

The plot of a scatterbrained woman getting an good-looking nerdy professor to marry her avoids a couple of obvious pitfalls. She could be too scheming to be likeable, but Susan is so chaotic that she doesn’t really have a master plan of how to get her man. Katharine Hepburn was wonderful. I never realized how good-looking she was—and the outfits she wore made her look more attractive. She had a girlish charm that made it difficult to dislike her. As for her victim, he could have become nasty about how she was screwing up his orderly life, but Dr. Huxley soldiers on, never getting vicious, always holding onto the hope that things will work out reasonably. Just as I never realized how attractive Hepburn was, I never knew what a solid actor Cary Grant was. I had assumed he was another handsome face. I didn’t know he’d run away from home to learn his vaudeville chops with a touring acrobatic company, or that at 18 he’d left the company in New York to pursue a gruelling life of stage plays and third-rate movies before he finally hitting his stride in films such as Bringing Up Baby.

The comedy is not just monodimensional farce. There’s slapstick—she drops an olive, he steps on it and falls on his top hat. There’s madcap chaos—three people talk at once and the dog, George, starts barking. There’s sly jokes—Dr. Huxley is introduced at dinner as a big game hunter, and he quietly spends the meal getting up to look for a dog. As another example, Dr. Huxley and Susan have to calm the ubiquitous pet leopard by signing, “I can’t give you anything but love, baby,” when the leopards’ name is, of course, Baby, and the two singers who don’t get along are falling love. There’s situational jokes—just when Dr. Huxley and Susan lose Baby, a traveling circus loses its dangerous leopard. And there’s the abstract conceptual joke—a dignified, systematic man of science is reduced to a humbled, confused man in love. I enjoyed the whole thing from start to finish.