Bullets or Ballots

Review: Lincoln + Django Unchained

Two of the most watchable movies of 2012 concern slavery. While one documents a moment of national importance, the other invents a sprawling revenge story. Both films are also prone to directorial overindulgence.

Lincoln

Daniel Day-Lewis simply is Abraham Lincoln. With his uncanny knack for transformation, Day-Lewis (more than most actors) uses his disguise as a way into the character: the beard and gray hair dye, the soft high-pitched voice, the crotchety but nimble walk. His Lincoln is a sage old storyteller and a dignified leader. How could he be otherwise in a Steven Spielberg movie? But screenwriter Tony Kushner is sly and writes the pricklier aspects of Lincoln, from an occasional vulgar anecdote to his troubled relationship with his son and with his wife. Sally Field, who hasn't had a good film role in years, doesn't shy away from a caustic, desperate Mary Todd Lincoln. Her Mary is deeply wounded by the loss of their son, but still determined to prove herself to the men's club of Washington. And what a men's club: The cast list is a who's-who of actors. I especially enjoyed James Spader, Jared Harris, and the scene-stealing Tommy Lee Jones.

The climate is war, and the political discourse is slavery. Lincoln covers the battle brewing inside the House of Representatives over the Thirteenth Amendment. Kushner's taut script reportedly was whittled down from drafts that chronicled Lincoln's whole life. The end result is some of his most focused writing, with an energy to the dialogue that separates Lincoln from PBS-pledge drive historical fare.

Do You Hear the Actors Sing?

Review: Les Miserables

There was a time when musicals were in style, when tone-deaf actors were dubbed, when stage actors became legitimate Hollywood stars. These days have faded; I'd argue the last great movie musical was Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972). Les Miserables is respectable, neither subservient to every note of its source nor trying to reinvent a beloved property. But working with a smart adaptation and mostly game cast, director Tom Hooper kills some of the goodwill he dreamed.

For a romantic and bombastic poperetta like Les Mis (Miz?), the film alternates between sweep and intimacy. Hooper loads the opening sequence, following Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) as he leaves prison on parole, steals from a Samaritan, then atones for his sins, with disorientingly fast cuts and handheld camerawork. Later, he calms for Anne Hathaway's "I Dreamed a Dream," effectively repositioned after Fantine gives in to prostitution. In one unwavering shot, Hathaway effectively marries vocals and performance, starting fragile, ending angry. But Hooper's approach to this soliloquy -- an overbearing camera, mouth wide, tears tears tears -- is the same he uses for the other actors. The second female power ballad, "On My Own," is strangely truncated, and poor Samantha Barks as Eponine must sob through while the camera forces her down onto the rain-soaked pavement.

Four More Movies this Fall

I've been watching movies all autumn, and wanted to highlight a few worthy of mention. Get ready for more soon!

Anna Karenina
The first twenty minutes exhilarate: actors are thrust onto the stage of a dilapated theater, pulling on costumes, playing scenes before backdrops. But the peculiar intimacy of Joe Wright's take -- setting all of Anna Karenina in this one theater -- is lost when, more and more, the film abandons its own spatial logic. Konstantin Levin's endless ploughing of fields wouldn't work on a stage, Wright must have realized; but long interludes in the bright outdoors suggest the filmmakers weren't sure how to execute their conceit. If we can ignore the visual palate, Tom Stoppard's screenplay swiftly condenses the action, but the dialogue feels truncated. The cast is handsome, though some are fatally young. Keira Knightley reins in her usual instinct for high-strung petulance, and acquits herself well as a tremulous, willfully romantic Anna. Jude Law impresses by playing Anna's cuckolded husband, Alexei Karenin, with decency and affection. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is out of his league as Count Vronsky.
For Your Consideration: Jude Law (Supporting Actor).

Argo
They did what? Key to Argo's intrigue are the true-to-life twists and turns of a key moment in the Iran hostage crisis that hasn't been well-remembered. In the "Canadian Caper," Tony Mendez at the CIA launched a successful operation to rescue six diplomats from Tehran under the guise of a nonexistent science fiction film. Americans in November 1979 anxiously awaited a sequel to the breakaway hit Star Wars (maybe you've heard of it?). Sci-fi in Hollywood often reflected foreign-policy anxieties, from the aftermath of World War II to the rise of the Soviets and the space race. The specifics of Mendez's invented film (also named Argo) and rescue mission are already cinematic; Ben Affleck lets the story tell itself without over-dramatizing. Only the final airport showdown feels contrived. Could this be the next step in a major director career for Affleck? He's working with the best; the dynamic ensemble includes Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Alan Arkin, Tate Donovan. Argo sits confidently aside '70s films like The Conversation and All the President's Men, when films were shot on grainy stock, writers trusted politics to be suspenseful, and editors let actors explore without splicing every five seconds.
For Your Consideration: Best Picture; Ben Affleck (Director); Chris Terrio (Screenplay).

Some Are Born Great...

Review: The Master

"Say your name." 
"Freddie Quell." 
"Say it again."
"Freddie Quell." 
"Might as well say it one more time, just to make sure you know who you are."

There's no turning back once Freddie (Joaquin Phoenix) sits for informal processing with Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). The two men face each other over a tape recorder, Dodd leveling softballs ("Say your name.") followed by more searching questions ("Are you thoughtless in your remarks?"). He speaks with an amiable pomposity, as if giving a Sunday morning sermon. The processing scene is pivotal to The Master, and it's fun to watch: a mental tennis match between Hoffman's confident prodding and Phoenix's unpredictability.

From their meeting, Dodd senses something in Freddie: an otherness? Or that the boy is so easily malleable?  To say he's more instinct than intellect is an understatement. He's a drained vessel, far from heroic, lacking in social conduct. We laugh at his base stupidity: he humps, then curls up to, a sand mermaid made by sailors on the beach. And Phoenix gives an exhausting, highly external performance, his posture strained, his lip fixed in a sneer. Freddie's such an extreme that I wondered how The Cause could lure ordinary thinking people.

Hoffman is the best he's ever been, as effortlessly authoritative as Orson Welles in his early days. Amy Adams may be the real manipulator as his always watchful wife, or (and I suspect this more) full-on Stockholm, a loyal lapdog that Dodd has indoctrinated. Paul Thomas Anderson, writer and director, has assembled the parts together. Is his carefully calibrated direction like Dodd's rhetoric, fooling us into thinking he's made a great movie? As Adams says, maybe it's no more than "a grim joke."

Freddie doesn't reach any great self-realization. His final scene with Dodd simmers, without the volcanic crucifixion that ends Anderson's There Will Be Blood. Hoffman singing "On a Slow Boat to China" as a goodbye feels deliberately arbitary. The Master reenacts welcome-home war films like The Best Years of Our Lives  (1946) and strips them of their patriotism, their hollow Messages and Meanings. We wait with Freddie to figure out where we're going; and when we arrive, what have we seen?

For Your Consideration: Best Picture; Best Director (Paul Thomas Anderson); Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman (Actor); Amy Adams (Supporting Actress); Jonny Greenwood (Score). 

TCM! Hire Me as Your Copyeditor!

Dear Robert Osbourne:

We all love TCM. But Bette Davis and Joan Crawford aren't giving you the stink-eye for no reason.