jjgittes Blog

Under discussion:

Team Picture  (2007)

Mumblecore rears its ugly head (and I do mean ugly) once again on Reel 13 with TEAM PICTURE, which proves just how interchangeable the films within this emerging genre tend to be. Just change the city (here, it's Memphis, TN) and the protagonist and then use the same formula – drifting twentysomething deals with a potential romance and a lack of career or direction. While the plight of the aimless does have implicit dramatic tendencies, the trend is getting to be disturbingly repetitive, especially given how TEAM PICTURE takes the aimlessness to an extreme, mirroring the character's meandering with its narrative structure. At least a film like QUIET CITY had an objective – to find the friend that the girl was supposed to meet. TEAM PICTURE, conversely, is as lost as its main character.

As far as that protagonist is concerned, director/star Kentucker Audley (Kentucker?) seems perpetually high (as in, on drugs) and the film seems to hope that we would mistake his quirk for depth. David, as played by Audley, eventually becomes an impossible character to root for. His inability to communicate with people in a normal way or perhaps more importantly, to the audience, is initially interesting, but it evolves into being extremely frustrating. I felt myself giving up on him three-quarters of the way through the sixty-minute main narrative and that is a sign of death for any narrative. Furthermore, I get the sense that Audley, like many of his mumblecore counterparts, is not acting so much as he is playing himself with a different name. In doing so, however, he fails to communicate the dimensions of his character/himself that would give us enough of a window into his psyche that would allow us to care

This leads me to another issue I have with the mumblecore movement that Team Picture epitomizes. While the genre is supposed to more representative of reality than most narrative films, this becomes a stylization in and of itself that many films of the genre take to an unnecessary extreme, which makes them less realistic than they think, just on the other side of the spectrum. In other words, the supposed "realism" is forced. Conversations are rarely as random as they are here and in other films of its kind. The discussions about fingernails and flowers that take place in this movie are just as crafted as regular dialogue, but here with the intention of seemingly like it wasn't as contrived. But, in my mind, they are overcompensating. I'll take a well-shaped scene that advances the narrative any day over a wandering conversation about something uninteresting. Along the same lines, technical snafus like boom shadows and breaking the 180-degree rule aren't cool or rich. It's just sloppy.

I don't even know what to say about the epilogue to TEAM PICTURE, entitled GINGER SAND. After TEAM PICTURE ends suddenly after only an hour, GINGER SAND begins and seems to take place much later, reuniting two of the main characters from the main film, but it also features two characters that Audley doesn't bother to introduce or explain. Once again, he rudely eschews the need for traditional exposition, probably as some form of rebellion against "Hollywood storytelling". The ensuing ten minutes of GINGER SAND has absolutely nothing to do with the story of TEAM PICTURE and gives us no insight as to where David is in his life, what he is doing with his time, etc. All it manages to do is convey that his new relationship isn't working out, even though we just met this new girlfriend and have no sense of their history. So why should we care? And that goes for TEAM PICTURE as well.

(For more information on this or any other Reel 13 film, check out their website at www.reel13.org)

Under discussion:

Lilies of the Field  (1963)

LILIES OF THE FIELD, last week's Reel 13 Classic, is famous for being the film that led the first African-American (Sidney Poitier) to a Best Actor Academy Award. However, as an overall product, it's something of a disappointment. The film is built around the conceit that Homer, Poitier's character, helps out a group of German expatriate nuns with some chores around the house and then can sever seem to leave. However, the manner in which they continually trick, guilt or goad him into staying on quickly becomes tiresome. It's like a handful of bad episodes of "Gilligan's Island" in which some mishap or hijinks prevent our heroes from escaping the island.

One would then assume that Sidney Poitier's Oscar-winning work in the film carries it, but I personally didn't think he was all that great. He doesn't so much create a deep, three-dimensional character as he does rely on his strongest assets – his charm and charisma, those qualities that made him palatable to white audiences of the 50's and 60's. It was, by no means, the best work of his career (THE DEFIANT ONES, TO SIR WITH LOVE, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT and GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER are all stronger) or even the best leading man work of 1963 (Albert Finney in TOM JONES is one example). I don't even think it was the best performance in the film. Lilia Skala (well before she became famous for FLASHDANCE) does some terrific, nuanced work as Mother Maria. The conflict within her character is significantly more subtle and therefore, in a way, more palpable. 

As rich as the black and white cinematography is, the direction of the film is mostly haphazard. The angles are generally uninspired and the blocking for the camera is clunky (I point to several scenes in the nuns' meeting room as examples). The majority of the scenes are slow and ramble on longer than they should and as a result, the film never seems to catch any headwind – no momentum. The second half of the film is much stronger, once the repetitive cat and mouse games with the nuns take a backseat to Homer's determination to build a chapel, but it's too little too late to rescue the film from ultimately being a big ol' bore.

(For more information on this or any other Reel 13 film, check out their website at www.reel13.org)