Sunday, September 25, 2011

The Eagle (Kevin Macdonald, 2011, UK, USA)


Works both as implicit criticism of Gladiator's historical whitewashing and as a moving sword-and-sandals adventure in its own right. I still haven't seen The Last King of Scotland, but Macdonald's State of Play built a startlingly intimate atmosphere for a conspiracy thriller, beginning with personal relationships and working outward to ideas about image, idealism and preservation. The Eagle accomplishes much of the same. While, sure, it's a movie about Channing Tatum as a red-blooded imperialist Roman centurion setting out to restore his father's name and recover an important symbol of the fallen Ninth legion, it never shies away from difficult questions about the uncomfortable morality of the plot (the sort of thing that Gladiator's muddled, atrocious opening sequence cheerfully ignored). That Tatum's violent patriot is contrasted throughout the film with Jamie Bell's idealist slave is nothing groundbreaking in itself, but I can't think of a more successful example of character's clashing ideologies working themselves out through physical and emotional conflict. Macdonald never settles for pat solutions either; when one shot displays an obvious dualism (black horse/white horse, violence/innocence), the very next creates a refreshing ambiguity. It doesn't hurt, either, that said shot fails to stand out too much from the rest of the many gorgeous framings on display. Few recent films have incorporated hazy/dreamy flashback images so well, and credit goes to DP Anthony Dod Mantle,  of Von Trier's Antichrist. 


Macdonald's treatment of culture begins and ends with near-miraculous moments of poetry; an early, whispered prayer by Tatum in a dimly lit room sets up a wordless prologue to the final battle scene, which brings the literal symbolism of the Eagle into physical immediacy. Again, while the apparent attempt to create a rousing victory at the end of the film may seem to negate the complexity of what's gone before, the scene ends with an act of violence that simultaneously avenges a prior killing and deeply unsettles the viewer, all thanks to the filmmakers. No moment of classical Hollywood triumph is left unspoiled, and Macdonald's willingness to confront these issues head on, rather than ignore them and make the one-dimensional "epic" film he's so clearly capable of, is invigorating. The film doesn't quite resolve its two warring ideologies, but it's a movie, and any clear attempt to do so would seem over-simplistic.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Drive (Nicholas Winding Refn, 2011, USA)


While I enjoyed Refn's previous two features, Bronson and Valhalla Rising, something nagged at me about them both. One could accurately sum up Refn's style as "cool for cool's sake" (as a friend once did), and although it's difficult to deny the visceral thrill of Valhalla Rising's punk-rock Tarkovskian style, it gives the distinct impression of Refn as an enormously skilled cinematic fetishist. Like Kael said about Spielberg, he's a "born director"...but can he do more than entertain? Drive answers with an emphatic "Yes." Unlike those other two films, the roots of his new neon-noir lie in American genre movies, although Refn works not to contribute to the tradition, but gives an outsider's perspective. Ryan Gosling's unnamed protagonist works as a stuntman, performing car chases and crashes, while moonlighting as a getaway driver for faceless crooks. Most noir movies contain characters who define themselves by attitudes and personalities they've seen in the movies, but the Driver is different. He doesn't talk much, and therefore doesn't talk about movies, or go to them. He knows only the stunts, the crashes, the explosions, the violence; so when he meets a woman (Carey Mulligan) he's able to care about for the first time, his emotions are manifested in acts of gruesome violence - for which he finally has motivation. Some have criticized the choice of song which plays over the final shot as being too on-the-nose, I would say that the extreme ambiguity of what has gone before lends the song's lyrics ironic meaning.

Refn, while gifted, is a single-minded filmmaker, and so to go into an analysis of the film's various striking scenes and images would be largely redundant. I do want to mention, though, that while I was most looking forward to Albert Brooks' appearance as a brutish gangster (and he doesn't disappoint), my favorite performance in the film came from his partner, Ron Perlman, as the Jewish thug Nino. His long, toothy face fits perfectly in the surreal world of Refn's L.A., and his character more than any other (even Bryan Cranston's sympathetic Shannon) is tinged with real sadness and frustration, amplified by the intriguing distance with which Refn shoots his final scene.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Decision at Sundown (Budd Boetticher, 1957, USA)


Boetticher’s purest exercise in tension-building, at least of the films I have seen, and all the more worthwhile for the masterfully executed anticlimax. Some might consider the “philosophizing” too on-the-nose, but this is a tired and irrelevant complaint in a genre so often praised for brash stylization (at least of the Spaghetti variety). I don’t recall how gender roles functioned in the other three Boettichers I’ve seen (Seven Men from Now, Ride Lonesome, The Tall T), but this film offers a rewarding reversal of classical Hollywood sexism - most often, female characters are defined solely by their relationships with men; in Decision at Sundown, Allison and Kimbrough’s differences are marked most pointedly by their perspectives on women. “I understood women better than he did,” remarks Kimbrough. For all his destestable qualities, by the unresolved conclusion, it’s hard to disagree.

(An aside for readers: I'll be watching and reviewing a lot of westerns in the months to come, as part of an independent study course I'm taking on the current state of the western genre. For those who haven't seen many beyond the established classics, Boetticher provides a wonderful jumping-off point into the many forgotten treasures of this great American tradition.)