Category: Film

A History of Violence (2005) (F)

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IMDb / Ebert / Cale
Based on some graphic novel
Written by Josh Olson
Directed by David Cronenberg

I’m moved to write about A History of Violence after writing about Caché, because they are a pair of films with similar ideas at their centre; while Caché hits all the right marks and transcends any sort of label, A History of Violence is a gigantic miss on all fronts. A buzz went up this time last year as it premiered at Cannes, with critics hailing it as Cronenberg’s return to form after years of mediocrity. When it went on general release in the USA, the buzz became a near across-the-board celebration of what almost every critic deemed to be one of the greatest films of the year. They’re all wrong.

As I got up out of my seat and walked towards the exit after the end credits rolled, I was frowning in disgust at having wasted my time on such rubbish. (Fortunately I saw it for free, so I wasn’t out of pocket to boot.) Here is a film that (if you believe the majority of critics) promises deep intelligence and insight into our perceptions of violence as moviegoers and citizens, but delivers hackneyed themes, practically invisible character motivations, and utterly implausible plot turns. When one character, supposedly a ruthless badass, stuck his gun UNDER HIS ARM to fumble in his pocket I was ready to throw shit at the screen – in all bad movies there is a final straw, a nadir, at which point you admit to yourself, “This is an unmitigated piece of shit”, and this particular scene was it.

I digress. A History of Violence starts kind of promisingly. Two evil bastards kill the family running their hotel, including an innocent-looking child, and it is kind of chilling until we cut to Tom Stall’s (Viggo Mortensen) daughter having a nightmare and being comforted by her entire family. It’s a picture of idyllic middle America, and we know immediately that it will be shattered, suggesting rather heavy-handedly that middle America isn’t so idyllic, and harbours secrets and past that people hide. As if we didn’t know that already. The idyll is broken when the two evil bastards come into Stall’s Diner for a bit of ultra-violence, and Stall takes them out in a heart-pumping blaze of cold, calculated killing. He’s a hero, his family and town get behind him, brilliant.

Then some mysterious gangsters from Philadelphia turn up, and despite the obvious connection between them and Stall – he used to work for them, or against them, or something, who cares – the film takes plenty of time setting up another bloody confrontation. After that is done with, we descend from implausibility into farce. Many would tell me that it isn’t supposed to be realistic, it’s all theory, and what theory, but I say bollocks – I can handle things being removed from reality, but I can’t handle them if they say nothing new and, often, say things that are flat-out false.

Take the sub-plot of Stall’s son, Jack. We see him being bullied at school and not really doing anything about it, but after Dad executes two baddies and is lionized, Jack takes his revenge for all the hazing and beats his nemesis to a bloody pulp. Why? Because violence is ingrained in him, in all humans but particularly him because his father passed it on to him, and it was released by that public approval. I get it, and it isn’t particularly profound, or necessarily correct. However, it gets worse as Jack inexplicably uses violence again, this time to a much longer lasting effect. The final insult, the most incredible in a series of stupidly contrived situations, comes when Jack (out of nowhere) confronts his father, spouting some of the worst dialogue in years. The whole things smacks of pretension, of trying desperately to be profound and knowing but falling way short.

There are other scenes involving Mr. and Mrs. Stall that are ridiculous too – not so much the sex scenes, not even the rough one, but the words spoken and not spoken. They feel very much like characters in a movie, compelled to say or do one thing when logic would imply a different reaction, or to say something when nothing is said at all. Their dialogue illuminates no deeper truth; it serves only to further alienate one already pretty peeved audience member. Likewise, the villains (Ed Harris and William Hurt) are cut from the same unbelievable, clichéd cloth. Most of the actors in this film usually do good work, but they all fail in this film because the material they are given cannot be made good.

Going back to the three pivotal scenes of violence, each includes at last one image of shocking depravity – a dripping face, a missing nose – apparently (according to what I’ve been told) typical of Cronenberg. Why were these brief moments inserted? Not to titillate, I’m sure, but to stun. In the context of the rest of the film, though, they just don’t fit. They seem to have come from another film universe, maybe one of Cronenberg’s other films, intruding on this dull, improbable landscape with their brutal realism. This may be precisely the point: violence is shocking and visceral, not something that goes along with our happy ideals. However, as I say, this doesn’t fit, because the film seems to suggest that violence is innate and will happen regardless of how we otherwise behave. It’s an aesthetic decision that doesn’t work.

There are many good defences of this film out there. I suggest you find one and read one as a companion to this slab of vitriol, because while the film itself is a monumental failure, the issues it attempts to deal with are complex and fascinating, and some reviewers were able to find genuine insight in the mire. Maybe the graphic novel was way more effective (though I doubt it). I have seen five Cronenbergs (incidentally his most recent five): Spider was splendid, eXistenZ okay, M. Butterfly a disappointment given the source material, Crash poor, and this equally poor. I’m told his early work is essential, so I’ll have a look there before passing judgment. Hopefully his next project is a return to form, but with the praise for A History of Violence deafening, he’ll probably continue along the same path. Someone who knows more of the guy, have a go at me.

Caché (2005) (E)

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English title: ‘Hidden’
IMDb / Ebert / Cale / Calder / Crawford
Written and Directed by Michael Haneke

I’m not really one for Bazin, Truffaut et al’s so-called auteur theory – it’s my opinion that most films are very much collaborative efforts that no one person can take all credit for – but if there’s one director alive who fits it, it’s Michael Haneke. The two films of his that I’ve seen, La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher) and now Caché, offer director-as-star filmmaking in its purest, most fascinating form. His films are cold, clinical, detached, and disquieting, all in a good way. Like Gaspar Noé, he actively intends to manipulate the audience, but unlike that director he eschews visual trickery. He draws your emotions out slowly, then pulls them wherever he wants, and after the film is over leaves you to wrestle with them on your own.

After Caché, I thought of calling his directorial style ‘minimalist’, but that wouldn’t be true. The camera is often static, and when it moves it’s usually slowly and carefully; the sound design is simply functional, using only incidental sound with no music or effects. However, what happens within the frame is intricately choreographed, particularly in many long-range shots – you get the feeling that every shot (even when it only contains one or two people) has more going on than you could possibly take in, either at a physical or metaphysical level. In other words, it’s the content, not the process of filming it, that provides incredible depth and mindblowing detail. In this respect he is very much an actor’s director, but upon reflection, his restrained, cold technical style is impressive and suits the material well.

And what material. As in La Pianiste, Caché is concerned with real-life situations, scenes that you can easily imagine being played out in the real world. Every person who moves across the screen gives the impression of a life being lived, which is a testament to the actors but also to Haneke’s writing – get your central figures totally believable, and it’s that much easier to trust the rest of the film’s universe. On the face of it, Caché is a standard-issue thriller: the Laurents (father Georges, mother Anne, son Pierrot) receive a series of videotapes which contain footage pertaining to their lives – two hours at a time of the action outside their front door, Georges’ childhood home, a seemingly unfamiliar suburban street corner. They are often accompanied by disturbing, childlike drawings. However, traditional thriller elements rarely surface, and are replaced by an exploration of familial trust, honesty and guilt – the stuff that many of us deal with in our daily lives.

Watching the interactions between husband and wife, father and son, mother and son is as difficult as anything in the film, because they seem real people talking about real problems. I’ll go ahead and get it out of the way: Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche, luminaries of French cinema, are near definitive of the profession in their performances, but they are almost upstaged by Lester Makedonsky, who plays their son. If you can understand any French, pay close attention to the way characters speak in this film, especially in the family: words are mumbled and missed in the way that only people very familiar are capable of doing. It is almost voyeuristic, which is no surprise given Haneke’s earlier films. The scenes between Auteuil and Binoche are charged with massive amounts of suppressed resentment, anger, and resignation, and are an education in screen acting. For me, though, the kid Makedonsky’s line delivery and reactions are note-perfect every single time he appears – it’s a remarkable child performance that is so good it deserves academic study.

Back to Haneke. As the film progresses, subtle aesthetic choices are made to mix things up and unsettle. For example, a particularly significant hallway is shot the same way three times, but the fourth time it is shot from the opposite angle. I don’t really know what to say about things like this, other than that they blow my mind when I think about them – how did he come up with such a simple and effective way of chilling me right to my bones? And if you haven’t deduced as much from the censor’s classification, there are disturbing images (one in particular) that are so shocking as to be burned into your memory forever. It’s the familiar images (of which there are many) that haunt the most, though, because of the different action that takes place within them each time we see them.

There’s so much artifice on display here, but so little artificiality. Haneke manipulates, questions and even threatens you, but he does it without striking any jarringly out-of-place notes. Caché will eat at me as my brain remembers and uncovers more, until I see it again, which I undoubtedly will (one viewing is not nearly enough to come to a coherent understanding of a film like this). I suspected beforehand that it might be the best film of the year, and so it was proved. It’s only April, but I’d be surprised if I see anything in cinemas better than this in 2006.

Dawn of the Dead (2004) (R)

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IMDb / Ebert / Cale
Based on the 1978 screenplay by George A. Romero
Written by James Gunn
Directed by Zack Snyder

The horror genre is in a boom at the moment. I’m not talking about that tame brand of horror that emerged in the 90s (Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer) and that has continued into this decade (When a Stranger Calls, Cry_Wolf), but the horror that harks back to the 70s and early 80s heyday. Films like Wolf Creek, Hostel, The Descent, and 28 Days Later…. Films with that scare you with their content, proper blood and shocks, and don’t resort to shitty, overused film techniques like loud noises and whip-pans. Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake seemed like a bad idea – the original is such a seminal entry in the genre – but remarkably, his film is actually worthy of the title.

Because this is a zombie movie, and we were drinking, half of the time we were paying more attention to our own theories for survival in a post-zombification world. Me, I’d probably get in line behind the characters in this film (and the original, which by the way I haven’t seen): get to a shopping mall and secure it. You’ve got everything you need for months of survival. If nobody comes to save you, at least you will have lived like a king for a while. You’d need to be in a group of 10 people or so – bigger and you risk infighting, smaller and you’re too easy to pick off.

But I digress. Maybe the best thing about this impressive film is the lengthy pre-credits sequence. Ana (Sarah Polley), a nurse, leaves work just as more and more bite wound patients are coming in, but she remains unaware of the impending doom. In her Edward Scissorhands neighbourhood, everything seems okay, but the direction suggests something sinister is going on – why do we linger on a shot of the girl rollerblading away? When Ana wakes up the next morning, we learn why: there’s the girl, in Ana’s house, a voracious zombie with a thirst for her partner’s flesh. That Ana loses her partner so early shows how ballsy and ruthless the film is, and that tone continues as she meets with a motley crew and holes up in that enormous mall.

The thing is, amongst all the heads exploding, chainsaws through shoulders and wickets through skulls, there is a sense of humour. The choice of music is fantastic: Johnny Cash’s The Man Comes Around plays over the opening credits, and Richard Cheese’s cover of Disturbed’s Down With The Sickness plays at about halfway in. Apparently these were Snyder’s choices that the studio disagreed with, but he insisted – it’s just as well. Then there are scenes like the one where they spot zombified celebrities to take out, like Jay Leno and Rosie O’Donnell, or the long-range game of chess the cop has with the weapons expert on top of a neighbouring building. It flicks between humour and horror effectively enough so that we can laugh and then be scared, unsettled for a moment before forgetting about it. It’s probably one of the most audience-friendly films I know of, existing purely to entertain, and it does it well. For boys, anyway.

The script is the source of any problems. Looking at Gunn’s filmography, he seems to be a bit of a hack, and there is little innovation in the story and characters, plus the film kind of runs out of steam towards the end. But the actors do all they need to, and Snyder’s direction is extremely impressive, especially for a debut. His work here suggests a big future. If you’re at all interested in horror this is a must-see – it’s so much fun, and respects its predecessor(s) but creates its own impressive effect. Make sure to keep watching during the closing credits for possibly the biggest shock of the film.

3 Women (1977) (E)

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IMDb / Ebert 1 / Ebert 2 / Cale
Written and Directed by Robert Altman

2006: the year I discovered Robert Altman. It’s not that I was unfamilar with his work – I knew of his high status, and had seen Short Cuts and Gosford Park, considering the former to be greatly impressive. I think I was just too young for any of it to really stick with me, or to motivate me to seek out more. Well, after Nashville, I really wanted more, and decided I might as well start with one I’d read virtually nothing about. 3 Women is an extraordinary film, one that washes over you and stuns you, lingering in the mind long after viewing it, daring you to forget it.

At first it seems more about two women than three: Shelley Duvall’s Millie, a woman so enveloped in her own trendiness that she doesn’t notice that everyone is laughing at her, and Sissy Spacek’s Pinky, so childlike as to appear utterly dependent on Millie’s guidance (at work, at home, and down the pub). Here, it’s extremely tempting to simply discuss the narrative of the film, because it so closely resembles a dream; there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else one can go when discussing it. Indeed, it came to Altman fully-formed in a dream, and that doesn’t surprise given that it progresses exactly as a dream would – strange, bewildering, sometimes completely illogical, but always feeling natural. You know how you only realise how strange that dream was after you wake up? That’s what it’s like after watching this movie.

I’m not going to do that, though. I came to it untainted by any kind of plot summary, so I’m going to avoid that from now on. Like in Nashville, the characters are defined mostly by their flaws. Millie is often painful to watch, walking just behind other pairs, talking constantly but never being listened to. She sincerely believes that all the men desire her, but before she is even up the steps they ridicule her. Pinky is the exact opposite, a blank slate who approaches every aspect of adult life as though it was for the first time. She believes Millie is helping her, educating her well, which is even more painful because her mentor couldn’t be more misguided. The third woman of the title, pregnant Willie, is usually seen painting disturbing, pained figures on the pool walls and floor. She seems alienated, or alien, out of step with her surroundings. We don’t follow her the way we follow Millie and Pinky, but we often feel her presence in the background, watching over proceedings like a… something.

The music is the first clue. To begin with, it doesn’t seem to fit at all, but it steadily becomes more and more appropriate until it goes perfectly with the images and tone. And it’s not just a case of becoming used to it – the film actually changes into something different, a clear but not incongruous shift. Just like a dream. Then there’s the impeccable film technique, timing every shot just right, and in a few notable cases surprising us with anomalies such as double reflections and a wavy fluid that sometimes partially obscures the image. It’s very strange, and dreamlike. You get it, I’m sure.

Again, Altman captures the potential of the form without resorting to lazy hoodwinks or clichés. The notions that could lead to disappointment are there, but they are executed perfectly. You don’t necessarily understand it – and quite likely, you shouldn’t – but it doesn’t feel wrong, or a cop-out. Don’t get me wrong, I do love Mulholland Dr., but I kind of feel like Lynch pulled the wool over our eyes. Nothing wrong with that per se, but with Altman there are no smoke and mirrors, and no pretensions. He shows us some stuff, and leaves the rest up to us. A genius and a giant of cinema.

Look Both Ways (2005) (C)

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IMDb / Bond / Keller & Urban
Written and Directed by Sarah Watt

As I walked out into the street after seeing Look Both Ways, an overwhelming surge of reality hit me. I saw people walking fast, slow, with their heads down or looking straight ahead, engrossed in their lives so that they didn’t stop to consider other passers-by. I was struck by the banality of it all, the simplicity, when taken at face value. Needless to say, Look Both Ways replaces this seemingly dull real world with a cast of erratic characters and a series of contrivances, viewing this universe with a wide but limiting focus that puts to bed any chance of the story (or stories) having any lasting impact. Shame, really, because it started out with so much promise.

For a film that bundles in no less than 8 meaningful characters, Look Both Ways, at around 100 minutes in length, is about 45 minutes too short. I’ve said it a hundred times, and I’ll say it again: if you want to engage the audience, limit yourself to getting a few things right rather than trying to wow them with many things. This is Watt’s first feature, and I say she was too ambitious in her writing – shear it back, cut some characters, lose some scenes, make others longer, then you’ve got a good movie. As it is, most of the actors are at least once asked to step outside the confines of the character they’ve built in order to offer some kind of revelation, and this just doesn’t ring true. The story isn’t allowed to grow by itself; instead, Watt tries to force a grand conclusion, which ends up doing none of her characters justice.

While her abrupt changes in tone and lines out of place stick with me, so does her interesting directorial style. Most of the film is framed simply and effectively, but there are brief interludes using different media – hand-drawn animation and still photography – that offer insightful breaks in the narrative. They don’t always work in the context of the scene, and some of the epileptic flashing of images on the screen did my head in, but they are innovative techniques that deserve praise. Just tone them down a bit. Her use of music and non-incidental sound, though… well, to put it bluntly, it was derivative and didn’t fit. In most cases, the film would have played better over silence.

The acting is fine, with particularly good performances from the ever-excellent William McInnes and the heretofore unseen Justine Clarke in what one would call the central roles of Nick and Meryl. Of all the characters, they are the most involving – not surprising given that far more screen time is devoted to them than anyone else, but the quality of acting really shines through, particularly when they don’t have anything to say.

This has been billed as an Australian Magnolia or Crash, but I would veer from that and say it has more in common with Zach Braff’s Garden State. Both films, by first time directors, appear to be slight and whimsical but end up aiming for something loftier and more lasting, which remains just out of reach. It isn’t escapist cinema, but it’s miles from verité; while there is potential – big questions are asked about the fundamental element of humanity: mortality – it isn’t followed through, as attempts to answer such questions will inevitably fall on their face. I will be interested to see what Watt comes up with next, though. She’s confident, which can only be a good thing in a filmmaker. A better balance, and she might be onto something.

The Beat My Heart Skipped (2005) (H)

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Original title: ‘De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté’
IMDb / Ebert
Based on ‘Fingers’ by James Toback
Written by Jacques Audiard and Tonino Benacquista
Directed by Jacques Audiard

When James Toback wrote and directed Fingers in 1978 with Harvey Keitel in the lead role, he probably didn’t expect that two and a half decades on it would be reworked by a French writer/director named Jacques Audiard. Those of you who are familiar with his earlier Sur mes lèvres (Read My Lips) already know what a good director he is; with De battre… he has shown himself to be one of the most exciting and confident filmmakers working today.

This is subjective filmmaking of a very high order. Immediately we are thrust into the world of Tom (Romain Duris), a small-time real estate crook who used to be a decent pianist. Everything that happens in the film, we see from his point of view – he’s in virtually every scene – so the film achieves a real sense of getting inside someone’s head. The plot turns on Tom’s decision to try and get back into playing the piano, with a view to getting out of derelict buildings and onto the stage. Whether he gets there or not depends on how well he can rein in his nerves, his constantly racing brain, and finally find calmness at the piano.

However, just as in La pianiste, piano-playing is shown not to be a pleasant creative outlet but a source of disappointment and infuriation. The scenes of him evicting tenants with rats and baseball bats have a similar nervous energy to those of him practising with his Chinese mentor (who provides some of the film’s best moments). He is always moving – his fingers, his feet, his eyes – he never stops for a moment to just relax. Duris’ tension-filled performance is instantly intriguing, and despite maybe a couple of slightly forced moments, he’s bang-on perfect, a mixture of good Ewan McGregor and (dare I say it) the incomparable Vincent Cassel. As well as the Chinese girl, the supporting characters include his real estate associates, their spouses, his dad, and a shady Russian man. They’re all mixed up in each other’s business some way or another, and they collide in different – some very powerful – ways.

Audiard’s direction is characteristically excellent. While this is not quite as complete a film as Sur mes lèvres, it enveloped me immediately and keep me solidly transfixed for its duration. Like Pawlikowski and Herzog, he has an uncanny sense of timing each scene perfectly so that it isn’t too short or long – each time we cut to a new scene, it feels like a perfectly natural progression, even if there may still have been more to say. The camerawork, almost entirely hand-held, fits the story well; he shoots in a freeform style with useful shifts in focus that is almost invisible. That is, you are never distracted by the nature of the images, but enthralled by what is contained within them.

I’d also like to make a special mention for the music. The best soundtrack I’ve heard in ages, this film mixes classical with French pop and house to extremely good effect. Scenes of Tom listening on the car stereo and Tom listening through headphones are interspersed among the scenes of him slaving away at the piano seemed to fit so very well. I can’t say why, it’s a metaphor for something maybe, or maybe it’s just a great way of showing how he’s in touch with the past and the present but slightly unhinged at the same time.

De battre… ends with an epilogue set two years after the main action that is alarming and brutal. At first it felt a bit sudden, maybe even out of place, but on reflection I think it fits perfectly and even sums up the film. We change, but we stay the same. Things grow in us, and are replaced by new things, but they don’t die out; they lie dormant, waiting for an opportunity to be brought to the surface. This is laid out in explicit detail in the epilogue, and we are left shocked and, in the case of this viewer, completely satisfied. This is the best film I’ve seen so far this year.

Hi, Mom! (1969) (R)

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IMDb / Emerson
Written and Directed by Brian De Palma

Beginning with a point-of-view shot of the protagonist’s perspective and ending with that same protagonist waving directly into the camera, Hi, Mom! is a film that states a clear desire to involve and manipulate the audience. It wants to make you complicit in its senseless violence, its comedy, its voyeurism. It wants you to be aware that as you watch and judge, you are also being judged. A film like this wouldn’t even get made today in America, but if it were, it would be just as incendiary as I’m sure it was back at the beginning of the 70s.

Practically formless, Hi, Mom! is composed more of a string of related scenes rather than a straightforward narrative. There’s Jon Rubin, just back from Vietnam, who wants to film the people in the housing project across the road from him and sell the footage to discerning buyers. And in the windows of that housing project, we have: the family of four whose mother remarks that their housing project is much nicer than the others down the street (it’s exactly the same); the playboy who forcefully beds a different woman each night; the cute girl who Jon attempts to seduce; and the young actor staging a play called ‘Be Black, Baby!’ with some African-American friends, and the audience for that play. Through all of these characters, these ciphers who do not remotely represent real individuals but instead stand for collective groups of society, De Palma turns his gaze on the American public and says ‘Something ain’t right’. And he does it with a wink and a smile, daring you to distance yourself from it.

As I said, it’s a string of related scenes with not much tying them together narrative-wise; still, many of these scenes are excellent. The absurdly optmistic footage shot by the well-to-do family makes light of a situation most would be disappointed with; little is more depressing than someone trying to say they’re happy with their lot when really, they’re not. Jon’s routines with the cute girl are extremely manipulative, but I found myself laughing along with them because Jon was intended to be a source of amusement – wasn’t he?

Then there’s the performance of ‘Be Black, Baby!’, for which the film’s upbeat soundtrack stops and we descend into hell for several harrowing minutes. It’s the moment in the film where you realise how twisted it’s been all along, how you are just as involved in it as these audience members are in the play. It’s truly horrifying to watch, creating an incredible sense of dread that eventually does spill over into our deepest revulsions. And suddenly, Jon appears to play his part, and we’re back where we were – aware once again that it is just a film, just a performance, as if his presence on screen reassures us. The audience’s eager recommendation of the play at its end is, I suppose, akin to my little ‘R’ at the top of the post there – I felt angry and confused, but I’m damned if I didn’t enjoy it just a bit, or feel like I learned something.

After that, Jon loses it and… well, I don’t want to ruin it for you, but his actions are outrageously senseless, and they are coupled with that same upbeat music that keeps telling you everything’s going to be all right. A character called Joe King (say it out loud, fast) succinctly sums up the film’s agenda, but is listed in the credits as a real person. Then Jon interrupts to register his disgust because, among other things, Mr. King hasn’t been to war and seen what he’s seen. Finally, he says hello to his mother, and smiles and waves directly at us.

What to take from all this? Is he reminding us one last time that it’s all just a performance and we can go home and recommend it to our friends and family? Or is he saying that it is us, the audience, that spawned him and brought him to commit such heinous acts? This is the earliest film I’ve seen that really manipulates the audience and incorporates them into its agenda, and it does it very effectively; in a way, its lack of structure helps its impact. You won’t be able to sit through it and not have a reaction. Just quietly, this is a film that came out of nowhere, almost completely unheralded, and pretty well stunned me.

The Graduate (1967) (C)

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IMDb / Ebert 1 / Ebert 2
Written by Calder Willingham
Based on the novel by Charles Webb
Directed by Mike Nichols

Inches away from being a grand Fail, The Graduate is the worst film I’ve seen since Doom, and the most annoying and insipid since Millions. There is so much praise out there for it – it almost always comes up in a list of great American films – but at film’s end my reaction was worse than feeling unmoved: I felt cheated. Cheated by a writer who set up an intriguing situation then pissed it away by descending into cheap fantasy, cheated by a director whose track record suggests he is incapable of producing an insufferable film, cheated by the legions of fans who led me to see what all the fuss was about.

The tagline reads: ‘This is Benjamin. He’s a little worried about his future.’ I assume that implies that the audience will be, too; I wasn’t. From the beginning I couldn’t care less, even when my current situation – (near) graduate looking for what to do next – mirrors his to a degree. Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock is surely one of the most annoying characters in movies: his awkwardness, meant to be adorable, is frustrating. His attitude towards his parents is immature. The things he says are off-putting and often stupid; the things he does are flat-out ridiculous. This is mostly due to the scriptwriter’s (lack of) craft, but Hoffman needs to shoulder some of the blame – it could have been an interesting character, one we at first distance ourselves from but eventually come to associate with, but he did not pull that off.

What angered me most was the inconsistency. One moment Benjamin is a stuttering fool, wandering through a hotel lobby totally unsure of himself; the next he’s taking a girl to a strip club on their first date, sunglasses fixed on his face, cigarette hanging out his mouth, the supposed epitome of don’t-give-a-shit cool. Then he’s back to stuttering and awkward, then confident, and back and forth and so on for the rest of the movie. None of it makes any sense! Why would he do that, or that, or that? Why would he say such stupid things? Why wouldn’t he say such an obvious thing? I can’t understand it, or why it struck a chord with anyone.

Anne Bancroft did well in her challenging role – very well – and Katharine Ross is beautiful and wonderful right up until the inane closing minutes. Unfortunately, the story takes too many stupid turns to allow them to keep shining. And what was up with the music, man? Legendary Simon & Garfunkel score? Bullshit. It was three, or possibly four, songs repeated two or three times each, and only once – the opening credits – did they work well with the image. Next time The Sound of Silence comes on the radio, I’m going to break it, because I heard it enough times in this movie to last the rest of my life.

As for Nichols, I’m not familiar with much of his work – only Closer, which I enjoyed despite its theatricality – but I read that it almost always cuts into the deeper channels of modern society. Not this one. And his technique is particularly unsubtle – the slow zoom is used a couple of times too many, and the fast, clumsy zoom is used distractingly often. Some compositions are nice, the most obvious being the famous legs/Benjamin shot on the poster, but others beat you over the head (Benjamin sitting on a bench, alone, at Berkeley with Old Glory fluttering in the foreground sticks in the mind).

Yes, all that saves The Graduate from the lowest rating are some interesting, informing points of technique (I didn’t know Kubrick ripped it off for 2001) and some good support acting. Everything else is pointless, dated trash that may have been edgy and provocative in its time but is almost completely inconsequential now, not to mention utterly nonsensical. This is a rare film that makes me think today’s best films are better and more profoundly effective than those of previous decades – give me Eternal Sunshine, Lost In Translation or Before Sunset any day over tripe like this.

Capote (2005) (W)

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IMDb / Ebert / Cale
Written by Dan Futterman
Based on a book by Gerald Clarke
Directed by Bennett Miller

I’ll make it immediately clear that Philip Seymour Hoffman deserves to win the Best Actor Academy Award for his role in Capote. His work here is the most impressive in an already distinguished career despite his comparative youth; usually offered supporting roles, here he grasps the opportunity to carry a film with both hands and really does walk off with it. His long overdue success comes in a film that, while impressive enough, lacks a certain something – it isn’t that it’s bad, it’s just less than it might have been.

I get the feeling most of the problems lie at the script level. Futterman is a first-time writer, and it shows; while the dialogue is economical and sparkling, the pacing is uneven – while years pass in the lives of the characters, it seems like very little to us watching. Also, a film which unfolds at a languid pace should offer considerable detail (of anything) to the viewer, but come the end I felt like I’d missed something.

That’s all the bad stuff, though. Hoffman is so good that it must be seen to be believed – note particularly how he uses props (cigarettes, glasses of alcohol) and gestures to convey the inner workings of the character, not to mention the mastery of Capote’s unusual voice. It’s a masterclass. The supporting parts are filled out by actors that are always worth watching – Clifton Collins Jr., Catherine Keener, Bruce Greenwood, Chris Cooper – but apart from Collins, we don’t see as much of them as we would like as they get written out of the action.

Miller, a first-time director (very much a freshman effort, this film), hints at a potentially glorious career. His compositions frequently reminded me of Brokeback Mountain, a comparison which he himself is not surprised by, because he has studied Ang Lee’s films. There are plenty of worse directors to imitate, that’s for sure. I’ll watch keenly to see what he does next.

I did quite enjoy Capote, but as the brevity of this review shows, it hasn’t really stayed with me. While a more focused and less forgettable portrait of a famous person than Walk the Line, it drifts at times, seeming a bit padded despite its relatively short running time. Many critics have lavished great praise on it, so on their opinion and the strength of the acting it is worth seeing, but for this particular viewer I don’t expect it to linger in the mind. I did, however, get to see the trailer for Caché, which threatens to be the greatest film of the year – I really cannot wait.

Walk the Line (2005) (C)

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IMDb / Ebert / Cale
Written by Gill Dennis & James Mangold
Based on ‘The Man in Black’ and ‘Cash’ by Johnny Cash
Directed by James Mangold

Take last year’s Ray, change the central character from a black man to a white man, add a few more redemption clichés, and you have Walk the Line. It’s remarkable how similar these two films are. There’s the death of a sibling at a young age, the strained relationship with the father, the escape from down-home obscurity to stardom, the womanising, the drug addiction, the crawl back to normality on the back of that sweet gal. On this basis, one might also think that the lives of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash were also practically identical. They weren’t. It’s just that the similarities between their lives are what Hollywood biopics thrive on. I would imagine that a film about any famous person would be the same, if their stardom followed a parabola (a great start, followed by decline, and finally redemption).

I knew this would be the case, though. So why did I go along? Well, because of the music, basically. I love Johnny Cash’s music. He’s one of my favourite recording artists. Thankfully, the moviemakers got that part absolutely right: the musical interludes are remarkably close to the original recordings, which is amazing given that Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon sung and played their instruments for real. I was hoping for more than that, however. I wanted some kind of insight into Cash the man, something more than the standard biopic clichés that you can see in a hundred other films. Unfortunately, it just isn’t there; I suppose this means I should read more.

Not to say that Phoenix and Witherspoon aren’t very good. They pretty much nail their parts, the mannerisms and the emotions, all the while connected with the drama of each scene. Thing is, they’re making the best out of a pretty poor script. The dialogue is forgettable, and everything feels glossed over – pretty much the same problems I had with Ray, except that was longer and slightly better acted so it gets more points in my view. I’m on side with Matt Cale’s suggestion that a better film would’ve focused solely on the events surrounding the concert at Folsom Prison – more and more, I feel that if you narrow your focus and concentrate on getting everything right within that smaller focus, you’re more likely to hit the deeper truths present in the material. A thorough examination of one day in the life of an individual is always more compelling than a shallow overview of their entire life.

Seeing this on the same day as Brokeback Mountain brought home to me how good that film was. It was everything this film could’ve been: nuanced, meditative, involving, affecting. Walk the Line is a showcase for two actors offering their best work, and little more. Besides their performances, it offers nothing you couldn’t get from reading a few articles or the books written by the man himself. Having seen most of this year’s multiple Oscar nominees (only Capote and Memoirs of a Geisha to go), I would suggest that this is the one that is least worth your time.