SlipOfTheTongue Blog

Under discussion:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button  (2008)

Director David Fincher is a talented visual stylist who is willing to twist a knife or two into the moviegoer's chest just to see how much they can take.  His strong suits do not seem to be the depth of his characters or his sense of realism.  Rather, his visual style marks the beginning of his imprint and it creates tone and mood so that his characters don't have to say as much.  He gets off on putting people in unusual situations where they must think outside the box and even at times struggle with demons they don't fully understand. 

At first glance, THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON seems a departure for him, and represents the dipping of his big toe into the waters of gooey, sentimental, "five star" cinema.  It has been compared to Forrest Gump (and not by those who liked that film).  The similarites are understandable (both are big budget, effects driven, sentimental yarns featuring unconventional and somewhat misunderstood protaganists).  Yes, this is also a very long movie and it does use some broad strokes to sum up life experience with catchy phrases such as... ("You never know what's gonna get you in the end") which does recall the "box of chocolates" line.  But in this movie, I forgive the many Gumplike flourishes and narrative coincidences that make the story flow like sweet maple syrup.  This movie does arch towards preciousness at times but BUTTON is not about some doofus who is able to show us our better selves.  The character of Benjamin Button experiences an alternate pathway through life but his path is not charmed.  Ultimately, he cannot escape the same taskmaster that we all give in to in the in the end - our own mortality.  This movie is a rumination on the relativity of time and the human life experience.  Whereas Gump really did seem to be about Forrest, this film seems more to be about us and the effect death has on the way we live.  BUTTON is not quite as accomplished as Gump was at "spinning yarn" but I still like this film better.  Not because some aspects of it didn't feel "pre-fabricated" but because those pre-fabricated moments felt less pointed to me.  They just didn't bother me much.  From the beginning you know that the character is aging backwards and will one day look like Brad Pitt (i.e. charmed/beautiful) but the early scenes are also tainted with the sense of impending death. The experience of watching this movie is like that of sitting in a rocking chair and letting a warm afternoon breeze lull you into a light sleep, and then having dreams.  You are seeing certain actions and watching things unfold (in this case as fable), but you are also vaguely aware that the dream is informing or reflecting upon your life as well.  If you are willing to go with it, the idea of following this man down this alternate path of human reality (this dream) is an interesting way of re-framing your ideas concerning your own life experience.  What if there were another kind of life?  Would it still seem so fleeting?  Would it be better?  What would it feel like to age in reverse?  Fincher is the type of director who views such a journey from more of a bird's eye view.  His characters are chess pieces moving on a board.  It may seem like they are in control but in fact, they may not prevail in the end.  This rings true to me as an approach because so much in life does seem to be out of our control.  Name one person whose life turned out exactly the way he/she thought it would be (or wanted it to).  Someone has got to be pulling some strings.

Movies that age young actors are generally thought to be a trap for filmmakers.  I cringe when I think of the make up in the Bette Midler movie "For The Boys" or see Winona Ryder's old lady getup in "Edward Scissorhands".  BUTTON's primary stunt is to age Brad Pitt backwards using a combination of motion capture, traditional make up, and the superimposing Pitt's face onto the bodies of other actors.  The effect is largely successful if a tad odd.  It is, however, interesting to anticipate how the director will physically represent each stage of Benjamin's life.  Pitt's performance is geared toward boyish innocence when the character looks older, and is more nuanced as he looks younger but has to convey the maturity of a life lived.  There are moments when the makeup effect is sort of "too big for the room" and is a distraction.  But for the most part it is a success (and believe me, this thing really could have gone awry).

Among the more touching portions of the film is the sequence in which Benjamin has an affair with an "older" woman played by the superior Tilda Swinton.  This affair begins innocently as Benjamin listens to her stories and becomes more and more interested in her.  She is similarly attracted to his youthful essence (though she doesn't quite understand why since it comes in the body of an older man).  It is a May - December romance but not in the order you think.  The way it resolves itsself is amusing and Swinton carries her scenes with her usual aplomb.

The timeless "love" interest is between Pitt and Cate Blanchett whom Benjamin meets when he looks very old, and she quite young (the girl being played by a child actress).  Over time their biological paths cross and the two connect romantically somewhere in the middle of their lives.  You can tell that their relationship is going to be impractical to say the least in the long term.  The chemistry between Blanchett and Pitt is good but they really don't spend a lot of time on screen together until the last hour of the movie.

Yes, the film is long and takes a while to get going, but it still feels by the end that the calendar pages are flying off the wall faster than we can track them.  In this regard the narrative mimics our own lives.  This story is about one person's journey through time, and as the journey comes toward its inevitable conclusion it would make sense that the pace and urgency of the narrative necessarily speeds up.  At this point the narrative literally feels like a ticking clock, a tableaux of scenes and images counting down.  Benjamin gets to have the penultimate combination of youth and experience toward the end of his life, but he still can't escape from the inevitability that time is slowly crushing him, destroying the fevered dream we once had for him to live a better life than ours.  Whether we are constantly moving toward our individual destinies or running from them our mortalities are always gaining ground.  And this macabre notion is what makes the movie more David Fincher than it is Forrest Gump.

Under discussion:

The Dark Knight  (2008)

THE DARK KNIGHT is an artistic, well plotted, visually sumptuous superhero film.  It straddles the line between art and commerce as well as any studio executive or casual moviegoer could hope.  It is a bit too long and somewhat preachy at times but it's extremely engaging and very inventive.  It strikes chords of hope amidst the dissonant sounds of cynicism, cruelty and chaos.  From a film making stand point it's a success on it's own.  And then there is Heath Ledger.

Ledger's performance is a revelation.  Ledger has created the single best arch villain performance in recent memory.  He does it by endowing his character with a sense of immediacy of thought and action that is utterly believable while fitting securely into a two dimensional world of metaphor and superhero convention.  Every line Ledger delivers feels credibile.  Whether he is lying through his teeth about how he got his hideous facial scars or explaining his criminal "raison d'etre" to a sorrow filled and bed ridden district attorney, we hang on every word he says and we go there with him.  This is not played for camp.  This is played straight and with a sense of pain that is not self-indulgent.  This bleakness gives way to the best camp of all.  The kind that comes out of darkness.  We follow Ledger when he is torturing innocents or swigging champagne.  We laugh at his jokes when we should not.  We like him even though he is vile.  

We respect and like The Batman too but The Batman is a means to an end (the movie says this outright).  He is a tool through which society can correct itsself but he is not viable in the long term.  He is temporary and somehow non-human.  The Joker, however, is alive and in the moment.  He's like the shark in Jaws.  He acts from beyond traditonal financial and ego driven motivations.  He kills, and terrifies, and makes us snicker at the idea of sentimentality.  He simply is.  It makes no sense but that is what great villians do.  They leave the hero broken and they test our loyalty and our sense of self-righteousness.  This is what he does to The Batman as well.

Why do we fall?  In order to learn to pick ourselves back up, as Alfred (Michael Caine) says.  In THE DARK KNIGHT this is precisely what happens.  A great villain causes a hero to fall.  We do not see him pick himself back up.  We only know that he must continue to fight.  And this is compelling though disturbing.  It makes for good drama.  We know he will continue until he can no longer do so.  And this two dimensional characterization of the struggle between good and evil (told through the use of comic book characters) shows us that evil can be compelling and simultaneously that there are no true heroes that can survive indefinitely.  And yet, we are told to continue the fight.  It is a lesson we will forget.  But Ledger's performance will be remembered.  Even with all the fanfare, the performance is still underrated.  It is doubtful Ledger will get the credit he deserves.  And that's a shame because he could have been a real contender.  In time, he could have developed into one of the great ones.

Under discussion:

Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D  (2008)

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH is dramatic cotton candy.  Characterizations are thin.  Dialogue is bare bones.  The majority of the running time is allocated to action set pieces that (shall we say) stretch credibility?  I doubt it would stand up to heavy scrutiny in 2-D and I wonder if some of the effects would play very well even in the home theater environment.  But slip on those 3-D glasses and what a glorious confection it becomes.

This movie barely rates three out of five stars in the Spout rating system but see it in 3-D and the movie rates four stars for novelty alone.  The world premiere took place at the Los Angeles Film Festival this past Sunday.  Brendan Frasier was in attendance and he thanked a number of people who were (blah, blah, blah) integral to the making of the film (insert names of studio execs here).  Get on with the movie Brendan!  You look good but my attention is waning!

This is a movie that knows what it is.  If effectively creates a story almost exclusively built around a place never before seen (the center of the Earth) and imagines what it might look like from top to bottom.  Since the burden of realism no longer exists our minds are free to go wherever the filmmakers want to take us and for the most part, we buy in.   

The filmmakers also understand that as a cotton candy experience we would appreciate an attractive cast.  They smartly build in a story scenario where the center of the Earth periodically heats up to 200 degrees, a temperature making human life impossible.  So there is your ticking clock.  Our protagonists must get out of the center of the Earth before the temp spikes to said temperature.  The unintended (and much appreciated) effect of this is that we get to see Brendan Frasier in a sleeveless muscle shirt through much of the movie and for the other part of the audience Anita Briem gets into her short shorts and stays that way until the end of the movie.

There is a mine car / roller coaster ride that recalls the same action set piece from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (it is equally hard to swallow here).  There is a Tyrannosaur chasing a kid (there needs to be a Tyrannosaur in every movie these days doesn't there?).  And of course, in the movies, it is always possible to ride a geyser thousands of feet into the sky and land safely while sliding down a sloping mountainside (happens to me every day). 

All of this aside, the true hero of this movie is Real D, the 3-D process that makes the ride enjoyable and crystal clear.  This is from the viewer who sat on the left side of the theater in the fourth row in front of a huge movie screen at the Mann's Village in Westwood.  And in terms of the 3-D let me say that my favorite scene was a very slow moving and kind of fascinating scene in which "the kid" (Josh Hutcherson) has to leap across a field of magnetic rocks suspended in the air to reach a distant plateau.  It's not that the scene was brilliantly conceived.  It's just that it looked kind of cool in 3-D.

From all of this I take the following...

Make 3-D movies that go to places we have never imagined before.  We buy in to the artificiality all the more.  Keep the 3-D coming but easy on the forced shots of people spitting stuff on the camera or poking you with a long poker.  It's just a little bit cheesy.  And yes, we would really prefer a good story with a well developed script so work on that, o.k.?  Next time, consider letting a real filmmaker have a shot.  Someone with a sense of story.  Someone willing to take risks.  Where are the latter day Speilberg's and Cameron's and Lucas types anyway?  I would think that 3-D would offer someone talented a real opportunity to show their stuff.

Under discussion:

Boy A  (2008)

BOY A is a good reminder of just how difficult it can be to translate theme and narrative from novel to screen.  Directed by John Crowley, this film nearly gets everything so right that it is an absolute shock when the film flies off the tracks in the last act.

Andrew Garfield plays a young ex-con with a secret in his past.  This secret is so dark that he is forced to change his identity during the film's opening sequence.  He chooses the name Jack.  Case worker Terry (Peter Mullan) coaches him through the transition with sensitivity and patience.  During this sequence, completely unaware of what I was about to see, the film La Femme Nikita came to mind.  What was Jack in for?  Would he become entangled with the governement?  With the police?  BOY A peels back the onion slowly and you really do not know what is going to happen.  Through the use of soft, desaturated images, tight close ups and low angles a feeling of unease is gradually built and as Jack begins his transition we slip in and out of flashbacks and the narrative thread is off and running.

Every scene is so visually assured and so well acted that you begin to give your trust over to the filmmakers completely.  The story is populated with interesting working class British characters.  All of them seem honorable in a way.  There is a wounded nature to working class characters.  They bond to one another.  It is not that unlikely in such stories that a person might be asked to forgive a friend's (or a lover's) past transgressions in service of creating a bond in the present.

At the center of this story is Andrew Garfield's performance, which is charming and dead on believable.  It is difficult to take your eyes off of him, so fully does he create his own interior world as an actor.  Everyone else is teriffic too.  Everyone.  The camera work is unusual, keeping you off balance with unconventional angles.  The intercutting from present to past works well.  Everything is great.  And then comes the final act.

Jack's secret is revealed rather abruptly by a secondary character (one who is not very well developed).  There is little suspense or intrigue in how it happens.  It just happens.  The set up for this is bungled as we don't feel enough for the secondary character who snitches.  At this point, the story has been so skewed toward Jack's current relationships, state of mind and memories of the past that the revelations and plot twists come off feeling stale and obvious.  In fact we see everything coming from a mile away.  And all of our wonderful characters disappear from the story.  There is no meaningful interplay between them as Jack's world falls apart.  He simply clutches his head and sinks into a corner, as does the film.  It feels like a coward's ending to a great story that might have been. 

Everything that comes before the last act is of the highest caliber.  Everything that occurs in the last act feels overly arty, overly cutty, and uninterestingly morose.  Suddenly we find ourselves in a freshman film school project.  What a shame.

It is said that first impressions are everything.  But in the movies, nothing leaves an audience with a bad taste like a botched ending.  It is just so sad to think about what a great film BOY A almost was.

Under discussion:

Must Read After My Death  (2008)

MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH offers an intriguing opportunity for viewers to look into the tortured lives of a Connecticut family that struggled to regain its composure and its emotional stability as the decades passed and things got progressively worse.

Allis and Charlie got married and had four children (Ann, Chuck, Bruce, and Douglas).  Allis documents the unhappiness in the early years by use of a dictaphone and later through the use of a tape recorder.  She would often go out and sit by herself in the car to do so.  Years later, these recordings were wedded to stills and family home movies by Director/Producer/Editor Morgan Dews (grandson to Allis).  He is able to document this American tragedy with the dispassionate but loving eye of a family member one generation removed.  Yet more passion and more insight into the reasons for the family's emotional disintigration might have turned this film from something interesting into something truly riveting.

After the film's U.S. premiere screening at the L.A. Film Festival on Sunday several comments by Director Dews stood out to me.  We were informed that Allis and Charlie were "free thinkers".  They were not tied to pre-conceived notions of how a family should be raised and perhaps they had felt any problem could be addressed if approached objectively.  Their "open mindedness" led them to psychiatry's doorstep at a time that the discipline was stil in its infancy.  Psychiatry during the 60's was still developing and it was not uncommon for a patient to come out of therapy more screwed up than when he went in.  One wonders if directly or indirectly the fact that Allis and Charlie were free thinkers may have contributed ultimately to some of the family's problems.  I know that my own family had similar ideas about changing the world when I was growing up.  Those lofty ambitions do not always benefit the development of children trying to grow up and live a normal life.

Another intriguing fact was that the parents were into futurism.  This included high tech gadgets such as the dictaphone and tape recorder.  Without this penchent for the latest and greatest "tech" perhaps none of the family's history would have been preserved in the first place.

In the Q&A., Dews also alluded to the fact that it was difficult to isolate a clear story line while editing the film.  In other words, from all of the countless hours Allis committed to film and tape, Dews had to find a way to choose what was relevant and what to focus on.  I wish he had developed a clearer idea of what made his family tick.  The lack of clarity shows in his lack of vision putting the film together.  We never really know the full story.  Charlie had been an alcoholic.  Had it all been his fault?  Was there a genetic component for mental illness on either side of the family?  Did Dr. Lenn, the family psychiatrist, steer the family in the  wrong direction during therapy?  I guess we'll never really know.  It just goes to prove that even when you have a ton of evidence, conclusions about what made people unhappy in the past are not always easy to come by.  Blame is not always easily fixed.  Catharsis often remains just out of reach.  That is why putting the past behind us and learning to live in the now is so very important.

This is not to say we should not re-visit the past, but we should be prepared to be confused by it, and at times disappointed.

Under discussion:

Encounters at the End of the World  (2008)

I have never seen a Werner Herzog film so this is the perspective of one who is essentially experiencing his filmmaking for the first time.  Take from that what you will.  I have been aware of Herzog's work for years and have nibbled around the edges but never jumped in.  I nearly rented Fitzcarraldo more than a dozen times and almost saw both Rescue Dawn and Grizzly Man in recent years.  Both films sounded fascinating, as did this one.  Perhaps it was the inherent bleakness of some of his work that held me back.  There is bleakness in ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD but there is also a deftly humorous touch and (at times) the hand of a showman who knows how to play to an audience and ask engagingly human questions.

The scene on Saturday night was one of a packed house.  This was day three of the Los Angeles Film Festival.  There was an introduction by a rep from the Sierra Club.  I knew that we would have global warming on the brain that night.  Encounters is not about global warming per se but about Herzog's exploration of the personalities and mysteries that inhabit a science outpost at the South Pole (McMurto Station).  The people who have come there are eccentrics, quite often brilliant, though sometimes a bit daffy.  They are ecclectic square pegs that just wouldn't fit anywhere else.  Or so Herzog would have us believe.

This film is interested in science but it is really more of an exploration of mysticism and a search for answers at the Earth's end.  Herzog likes to create mini-narratives and vignettes of larger than life personalities.  He will not sit still for interviewees who are full of themselves nor will he hesitate to leap in and ask engagingly silly questions.  While talking to a geneticist and an arctic ice diver about the discovery of three new microscopic species found on an ocean dive Herzog blurts out,  "So...is this a great moment???".   His question is an attempt to seize back the narrative back from clinical professionals who damn well don't know how to tell a good story.  Herzog needs for the moment (any moment) to be larger than life, proto-religious even.  Filming academics and scientists must be as difficult as working with kids or animals.  They just never do what you want them to do.

The South Pole is stunningly beautiful even as it begins to melt before our eyes.  The people who come there seem to appreciate this drama though they are often quite stoic in how they respond to things that would vex a normal person.  It is a harsh environment and the people there know how to survive.  It is an odd mix of personalities.  As one worker amusingly states, "Everyone not tied down, falls to the bottom of the planet."  As Herzog meets them one by one he  creates portraits of these people by asking them unusual questions and then letting the camera continue to run far after the question has been answered.  In the spaces between the dialogue, the camera captures the essence of who they are and we laugh at them at times because they can be downright goofy.  At other moments we appreciate how incredibly interesting and soulful they are, and we are grateful to have audience with them.

In the bleak shadow of global warming the appropriate balance for this film appears to be one part inquisitiveness, one part humor, and one part resignation to our own impending demise.  We are the modern day dinosaurs.  Herzog overtly states that most scientists here feel there is no hope for the human race.  We are beginning the slow march toward the end.  But it's good to know that in the shadow of our own demise we can still appreciate factiods about homosexual penguins.  We can nod as we observe the thin line between the behaviors of animals and those of ourselves.  We can glory in the radiance of natural light as we look up from the ocean's bottom and glare through a melting ice shield.  We can appreciate the people who work in this environment.  We can learn from the fact that among these blue collar workers and scientists, global warming is not "subject to further study".  It is a fact.  And that "factiod" is coming to get us.  We had better enjoy the beauty and grandeur of these changes as they happen because otherwise, there isn't a whole lot of other pleasantness comin' our way.

I enjoyed the experience of watching this film and I genuinely get the feeling Herzog enjoyed making it as well.

Under discussion:

Lady in the Water  (2006)

M. Night Shyamalan's work is always a juggling act between sentimentality, mystery and credibility.  I loved The Sixth Sense, enjoyed Unbreakable, and hung in there for most of The Village.  LADY IN THE WATER is his most recent and it makes you wonder whether he is playing some kind of contemptuous joke on his fans.  What possible explanation could there be for this poorly conceived, sloppily written, lazy exercise in childlike mysticism?

It seems almost impossible that a director with this much imagination could drop the ball so badly.  One wonders - did he know it was this bad?  Or did he think it was good?  Did he try to make it good but give up because he had a shoot date looming?  When did he realize it was no good - during production or post production?  Or does he still think it's a good film?  I find all these questions much more interesting than the film itself.

One word for you.  "Narf".  He should have stopped right there.