The Never-ending Story

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

Raise your hand if you rolled your eyes when Warner Bros. announced that the seventh Harry Potter book would be split in two. By the end of the franchise, I will have shelled out around sixty dollars for eight matinees, adjusting for inflation and omitting repeat visits. Imagine those paychecks. But as A.O. Scott noted, the Harry Potter film series has also been good to the audience.

If the movies aren't J.K. Rowling's originals, we have much to be thankful for. Chief among them is the studio's commitment. Despite a revolving door of directors, the actors were able to inhabit their characters across eight films, with the late Richard Harris the lone exception. Released over a ten-year period, the films mostly allowed Hogwarts students to age with their characters. 

Just think of the mediocrity of other recent franchises; the Narnia films come to mind. The Potter success came at the same time as the books (and the midnight releases, costume parties, collegiate Quidditch...). After the first Harry Potter film, the rest never felt overwhelmed by CGI and special-effects wizardry. Warner Bros. was smart not to convert the seventh film to 3-D. 

Good choice: Deathly Hallows, Part 1 is a quieter adventure. It makes its emotional impact by placing the three young heroes in the real Muggle world for large stretches. Stripped of constant reliance on magic, this movie lets itself be morose and even unexpected. Harry and Hermione burst into spontaneous dance to the radio, their only window to the world in their isolation. A London coffee shop shootout, with eerie silence exploding into Tarantino-sudden violence, and the Ministry of Magic infiltration show the films at their best.

Some of my generosity may be rescinded with the eighth installment. The final fifty pages do not quite live up to all that comes before. But for now, I'll enjoy this intermediate film, a film of anticipation, which satisfies (oddly enough) by continuing.

Bing Crosby's White, Weird Christmas

Everyone dreams of a white Christmas. That is, until they are sitting in Logan Airport (as I am), enduring gate changes and flight delays.

But earlier this week I watched White Christmas (1954) for the first time, and zoned out a lot to think about snow. White Christmas has the most famous standard ever standard-ed, some Irving Berlin (including an homage to "Abraham"), and Vera-Ellen's freakish skinny legs, but I wondered if it was a classic for the right reasons.

Then Bing Crosby opened his mouth. Not to sing, though that's also worthwhile. But I'm convinced nobody has ever talked like Bing Crosby in White Christmas. Granted, I haven't seen all of Bing's ouerve. If his lines here are an accurate representation, though, Bing is the lovechild of Dashiell Hammett and Dr. Seuss.

Danny Kaye: I guess I just laid an egg.
Bing: An egg? Brother, you laid a Vermont volleyball!

Danny Kaye: I don't seem to have any cash.
Bing: Where'd you leave that? In your snood?

Does anyone still wear a snood? And when did Vermont reign supreme in the volleyball championships? Other classics:

I don't know what you see in this tall drink of charged water, but after you get to know him he's almost endurable. 

You're lucky! You might have been stuck with this weirdsmobile for life! 

The thing about Bing is that he was possibly the squarest man in America. Or so we remember him, with his pleasant boo-doo-doo baritone. But he also experimented with jazz and black music early in his career. Let's not forget that he crooned in blackface in five (!) movies. Uncomfortable now, no question, though I bet he felt some kind of musical hipness just by dressing up and getting down with it.

He's always playing himself, but it's a self that's always in character. He constantly dons roles within his films. But he's so genial and, I'll say it again, pleasant on the ears that those characters always seemed just like Bing. The Bing we could identify with. And so it's easy to overlook that he was an odd duck. Or that he tried very hard to be an odd duck. Even in Holiday Inn (1942), he was spitting out lines like "take a slug out of the mug."

Is he going for Tough Guy? Is he trying out Cool? Somehow, it makes my days merry that normal old Bing Crosby himself was a weirdsmobile.

Someone Tell Me, When Is It My Turn?

Review: Black Swan

When was the last time we witnessed a truly magnificent horror film? The kind that makes you squirm in your seat, bite your nails, and grip the armrest? Darron Aronofsky's Black Swan, a thriller that elevates ballet to Grand Guignol intensity, offers one of the most exhilarating visions of sustain terror in recent memory. Given Aronofsky's emphasis on fingernails, you might not want to chew yours.

His protege is Natalie Portman, who has rarely been given the chance to play a full-fledged woman before. Over the course of a strenuous performance, she breaks free from her girlish cocoon. She plays Nina, a ballerina of technical excellence who is hired for Swan Lake in a dual role: the demure White Swan, a natural fit, and the seductive Black Swan. The company's director (a sinuous Vincent Cassel) pushes her toward letting go of her rigidity. But in her drive for perfection, she slowly transforms from controlled and disciplined to violently reckless.

Beyond her unquenched lust for the role of the Black Swan, two women propel her toward paranoia. Mila Kunis plays her nemesis Lily, a fellow ballerina who seems to befriend Nina only to steal her part. Kunis meets the challenge of a character whose every enticing smile might be imagined. While Nina battles to keep her role, she also lives with her controlling mother (an excellent Barbra Hershey), who was once a dancer herself.

Aronofsky flirts dangerously close with parody, seeing just how far he can push the horror-genre elements. Shadows give way to lurkers; doors slam and wounds bleed. As Lily adopts the movements of the Black Swan, her offstage life is overwhelmed with hallucinations and self-harm. Even though it fulfills the horror-movie quotient for jump scenes, the film locates the emotional horror of unceasing dedication to an artistic ideal. Lily becomes consumed; the script mirrors with heavy doses of manipulation.

But these gimmicks speak to the glitz and the grittiness of the ballet world. Members of the industry toil for the opportunity to exhaust themselves physically and mentally. The scariest moments are visceral; danger lurks behind every curtain naturally, but we squirm most at mutilation to hands and toes. Black Swan is a real talent showcase for Aronofsky and Portman, as well as a splashy, riveting exercise in genre.