Margaret: A Marvelous Mess

Margaret

Written and Directed by Kenneth Lonergan

US, 2011, 150 mins.

Available on DVD/BluRay/Amazon Instant

Movies shouldn't need a disclaimer, but sometimes the struggle involved in making and releasing a particular film leaves traces so evident in watching the thing, it becomes hard to imagine what viewers who don't know the backstory would think.

Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret is a film that bears such traces. Originally set for a 2006 release, Margaret was instead dogged by a spate of post-production problems. Lonergan reportedly angered studio bosses by taking too long to come up with a final cut, and the film languished, unfinished and in litigation, until a salvage-job cut was more or less buried in limited release last year. The version that hit theaters is unevenly paced, full of seemingly-bizarre tonal shifts and plot threads that appear to either arise from, or end up going, nowhere.

Yet, despite the film's missteps and not-quite-fulfilled ambitions, Margaret is a beautiful, masterfully acted and directed work of cinema.

A Familiar "Stranger"

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

Spain/US, 2010

Directed by Woody Allen

When it comes to Woody Allen, it's been a cliché since at least 1980 to state a preference for his "early, funny" films. Even if those are his best work—a debatable point—he's made plenty of good films since then. That said, his output over the last ten years has been, to put it charitably, mixed. For each good movie (Match Point, Vicki Cristina Barcelona) there have been at least as many bad ones (Cassandra's Dream, Melinda and Melinda) and about two times as many that rate no more than a "meh" (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Whatever Works). Because of the high bar set by Woody's earlier works, even the films in the neutral category often feel worse than they are. Such is the fate of You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.

FI: What Time Is It There?

What Time Is It There? (Ni na bian ji dian)
Taiwan, 2001
Directed by Tsai Ming-Liang

I don't want to bury the lede: I found it difficult to get into What Time Is It There? One of the things you face if you watch a lot of movies from around the world is that your taste will, inevitably, not match up with certain styles, genres, and schools of cinema. For example, the particularly slow, static style found in much contemporary Asian cinema—especially, as is the case here, the Taiwanese Second New Wave—just doesn't work for me. I don't think that makes this a bad film, per se; I believe it mostly achieves the goals it sets out to achieve. But by the time the film was over, I just didn't care, though I feel that's likely just as much my fault as it is the film's.

What Time Is It There? is split into three (or, perhaps, 2.5) concurrently-told stories. Hsiao-Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) is a young street merchant who sells watches in Taipei. His father has recently passed away, leaving his grief-stricken mother (Lu Yi-Ching) depressed and waiting for her husband's inevitable reincarnation. Hsiao-Kang, meanwhile, meets Shiang-chyi (Chen Shiang-chyi), who is headed to Paris for unclear reasons. She wishes to buy Hsiao-Kang's own watch, rather than any of the ones he is selling, because it can display two time zones at once. Their brief interaction triggers something in Hsiao-Kang, who becomes compelled to set every clock he finds to Paris time. The film then follows these three characters (with the main focus on Hsiao-Kang and Shiang-chyi) through several quiet, contemplative, lonely days, where strange coincidences and parallels seem to almost connect their disparate stories.

Tsai's film is very good looking. Cinematographer Benoit Delhomme creates painterly images and meaningful compositions, while Tsai keeps the camera set in static long takes reminiscent of Ozu. But the result is a film that is very slow-moving. There is minimal dialog, and very little of what you're meant to think is spelled out for you. The film is about wanting desperately to feel something despite the numbness of isolation and grief, about the connections (real and imagined) that tie us to the world and to each other. It's a film that challenges you to feel the emotions its characters are experiencing by watching the slow accretion of detail in its images. This requires a certain level of immersion into the film's world, and (unfortunately) it is a level I never managed to attain. If you're more patient than I am, perhaps you can do better?

Five-Star Streaming #2: Before Sunrise

(Today is Bloomsday and, as a tribute, this edition of Five-Star Streaming will examine a movie that is actually set on Bloomsday, as a reference to the compressed timeline and digressive structure it shares with Joyce's Ulysses. Enjoy!)

Before Sunrise
USA, 1995
Directed by Richard Linklater

What it's about:
A twenty-something American man named Jesse (Ethan Hawke) meets a twenty-something French woman named Celine (Julie Delpy) on a long-distance European train. He convinces her to get off the train with him in Vienna and spend an evening together, with the caveat that they will both be leaving in the morning and will, in all likelihood, never meet again. The two walk around the city, discussing ideas big and small in a stream-of-consciousness style conversation that sees them gradually opening up to each other and themselves.

Context:
In 1995, Richard Linklater was still primarily known for Dazed and Confused (1993) and his ground-breaking Slacker (1991). On the heels of those films, Before Sunrise helped cement his reputation as both a maverick indie auteur and a chronicler of Generation X's aimless, unfocused energy. This was still a time, remember, when the mainstream legitimacy of independent cinema hadn't yet been proven. Pulp Fiction had fired one of the first modern indie salvos to rattle the establishment, and that had only been released the previous year. The Oscar ceremony often referred to as "the Year of the Independents," when films like Fargo, Shine, and Secrets and Lies broke into the Best Picture category, wouldn't happen for another year. So Before Sunrise, with its drifting, unconventional "plot," wasn't exactly conforming to a well-established mold the way today's "indie" movies (mostly backed by subsidiaries of the large studios) seem to do. Even today, it would be a gutsy move to make a film that, essentially, consists of two people walking and talking and not much else.

Why You Should Watch:
I can't pretend this is a movie for everyone. Linklater and Kim Krizan's often-improvised "script" is full of the kinds of capital-R Romantic notions and undergrad philosophy that stoned twenty-somethings often use to impress each other (a lot like Linklater's later Waking Life [2001]). There's no real story to speak of, at least not in terms of big incidents or familiar narrative patterns. I can easily grasp how some people might consider this a rambling wankfest and be quite turned off to it before it even gets started.

But if you can get past that, there is a great sincerity and wonder buried just below the surface. This is a film about what makes us learn about ourselves, what makes us grow as people. The answer Before Sunrise seems to propose is getting outside of our comfort zones and connecting with other people, even if just for a night. Jesse and Celine go from strangers to something much, much more in the course of their evening together, and you get the feeling that they have been forever changed by the experience. This is the sort of transformative experience we all dream about, in our heart of hearts, whenever we travel. It's a tribute to the spirit of all of those times we've thought about doing something different, something radical or brave or unexpected, only to say no and turn, out of fear, back to our humdrum lives. Before Sunrise is a movie about embracing that possibility, embracing openness as an agent for change, and just putting it all out there, come what may.

If you can at all sympathize with that perspective, or if you've ever traveled alone to a foreign country, or even if you feel like you've lost something of the honesty and optimism of youth, this film might speak to you. Hawke and Delpy are charmingly, utterly convincing in their roles, and make the occasionally-complicated dialog feel natural. And while the look of the film declares it to be very much a product of the '90s, its thematic content is timeless. As long as people still feel trapped by the roles modern society leaves open to them, as long as people look in the mirror and wonder, "What if...?", Before Sunrise will be relevant.

(As a side note, Before Sunrise's sequel, Before Sunset, is also available for streaming. If you enjoy the first one, you'll definitely want to watch the second, which does more of the same but somehow still manages to steal your heart.)

Watch this if you like:
Trivial discussions that feel profound, travel, European cinema, Lost in Translation, having a romantic side, well-defined characters, self-discovery, Eric Rohmer


Five-Star Streaming is an occasional feature championing great movies available to be streamed from Netflix. As of each post's date, the film under discussion was listed as streaming on Netflix's Watch Instantly service in the US. However, due to the volatile nature of licensing rights, I can't always know how long a particular selection will be available, so you'd better watch each film while you can!

FI: The Music Man

The Music Man
US, 1962
Directed by Morton DaCosta

Look, not every cinephile loves every genre. It's the truth, and there's no point in pretending otherwise. Movie reviews are subjective things, and genre is one of the biggest sources of bias. As diverse as my tastes may be, musicals are one genre for which I generally have little time. Maybe it's something about the verisimilitude of the filmed image, and how random singing and dancing sort of breaks the illusion of reality in a way that it does not on stage. I can't say for sure; all I can do is cop to the fact that most movie musicals—old, new, or in-between—leave me cold.

With that out of the way, let me say that I quite liked The Music Man, on the whole. Perhaps this is because it plays on a couple of my favorite tropes: con men and early 20th-century Americana. Traveling salesman and flim-flam artist "Professor" Henry Hill (Robert Preston) rides into River City, Iowa, ready to perpetrate a scam involving a boys' marching band that he is in no way qualified to lead. In spite of resistance from the Mayor (Paul Ford) and the willful librarian/piano teacher Marion Paroo (Shirley Jones), the quick-talking Hill begins to win over the town's residents, but there are signs that, this time, the con might play out a little differently.

The Music Man is a rather well-made musical, hearkening back to the classic ones made in the genre's heyday. Morton DaCosta's staging and Onna White's choreography make good use of Robert Burks's widescreen Technirama cinematography, which allows the dancers' full bodies to remain in frame without sacrificing the sets and scenery. Preston, who had played Hill on stage, really owns the role and makes a wonderful scoundrel. Jones is winsome and winning as Marian, almost making me forget her time as the matriarch of The Partridge Family. All of the sets and costumes (seersucker and boaters as far as the eye can see!) are appropriately old-timey and colorful, making River City a genuine leading character.

My only real problems with the film are its length—which, at over two-and-a-half hours, does feel a little excessive—and the slightly-dated ambiance endemic to most classic musicals. Still, the sharp, funny dialog and memorable tunes go a long way towards making up for these problems, and if you're a fan of the genre (and somehow haven't already seen the film), you'll probably come away quite happy.

FI: Le Plaisir

Le Plaisir (Pleasure)
France, 1952
Directed by Max Ophüls

Starring a coterie of French film stars (including Jean Gabin, Danielle Darrieux, and Simone Simon), Max Ophüls's Le Plaisir is a filmic adaptation of three stories by celebrated French author Guy de Maupassant. As explained by the narrator Maupassant (Jean Servais), each of the stories concerns the intersection of pleasure with another aspect of life: love, purity, and death. Throughout, Ophüls's famous ever-moving camera dances a rondo around the actors, recreating through its movements an approximation of their emotional states.

The first tale, featuring a strange dandy's visit to a dance hall, makes the best use of Ophüls's (and cinematographers Philippe Agostini and Christian Matras) camera work and choreography. The last story, about a model and an artist in a turbulent relationship, also shows off Ophüls's skill at imbuing film style with emotional meaning. The middle section, in which the ladies of a brothel go on a holiday to witness their Madame's niece's communion, is the longest and least-engaging section of the film, and the one in which Maupassant's knack for quick characterization gets most watered-down by the demands of cinema. This had the effect of taking me almost completely out of the film until the third act began.

Overall, the film is stylish and uneven, not entirely unlike an earlier (and better) Ophüls film, La Ronde. There, at least, the transitions from segment to segment felt organic, while the stories in Le Plaisir don't quite feel adequately punctuated. Still, if you're an Ophüls fan, or enjoy excellent cinematography, costumes, and art design without as much concern for stories they service, you might find Le Plaisir less out-of-balance than I did.

Doctor Who - Season 6, Episode 7: "A Good Man Goes To War"

"Demons run when a good man goes to war." - Proverb


Often, in interviews, actors playing villains will say that "bad guys" don't know that they're bad. They have reasons and motivations that, in their minds, justify and rationalize whatever "bad" things they may do. Outside of old superhero comics and other genre fiction, the distinction between the good and bad guys is scarcely black-and-white.

Doctor Who is a show that usually plays this both ways. Some bad guys (read: the Daleks) are just evil, while others simply have selfish, short-sighted, or otherwise antisocial motivations. Sometimes, as in the just-completed two-parter "The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People," it's not at all clear who is good and who is evil, if anyone can really be called either. But we can always count on the Doctor and his broad-minded, humanistic ways to be a beacon of goodness, however murky the depths may seem.

Or can we?

Another Year: Time Marches On

Another Year
United Kingdom, 2010
Directed by Mike Leigh

The Northern Irish band Therapy? once declared, perhaps paraphrasing Tolstoy, that "happy people have no stories." Yet Mike Leigh's Another Year depicts a year in the life of a happy, successful couple in late middle age, their story broken into four sections corresponding to the seasons. Tom Hepple (Jim Broadbent) is an engineering geologist. Gerri (Ruth Sheen) is a counselor. They have a lovely home, a well-adjusted adult son (Oliver Maltman), and work diligently in their allotment garden during their free time. So what is the story, here?

Well, true to the quote, most of the "story" isn't about Tom and Gerri, but their interactions with the friends and relatives whose troubles blow them into and out of the Hepples' happy little life. This includes friend Ken (Peter Wight), an overweight, lonely jokester, and Tom's taciturn, grieving brother Ronnie (David Bradley, Harry Potter's Argus Filch). But the most troubled of these outsiders is Mary (Lesley Manville), Gerri's unstable, tragic co-worker, whose presence ties the four sections together.

True Grit: Vengeance and Death in the West

True Grit
US, 2010
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen

This may be a break from the usual format of a film review, but I have to say, here in the first line, that I really enjoyed True Grit. However, I would be a liar if I told you that I'd found a place to hang my hat in talking about it. I don't believe it is a terribly difficult film, in any sense—well, unless you count the thickness of the dialect-heavy dialog the Coen Brothers lift from Charles Portis's novel, which does take some getting used to. But the film itself is not convoluted or hard to follow. This is no sparse, philosophical treatise filled with hard-to-decipher symbolism; it is an entertaining, widely-accessible, successful exercise in genre. It is a journey film, with a very definite Point A and Point B. So why do I find it so hard to talk about?

FI: Meet John Doe

Meet John Doe
US, 1941
Directed by Frank Capra

If you're familiar with Frank Capra's canon, you'll recognize many of the elements at play in Meet John Doe. Like many of Capra's films, Doe is a message picture. It issues a challenge to the status quo, attempting a shot across the bow of the moneyed elite, the corrupt journalism they buy, and the government they prop up. It is a tribute to the "common man," but not in a collectivist, socialist way. Rather, it's an appeal to the Depression-era American spirit of helping everyone out and giving everyone a fair chance to succeed on their own merits. I'm not saying it achieves these ambitions—it's second-tier Capra, by no means on a par with his best films—but there's enjoyment enough in watching it try.

Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck) is a journalist who, after learning she's just been laid off by the paper's new, sensationalistic publisher (Edward Arnold), delivers a column about a certain John Doe: an unemployed, dissatisfied drifter who wishes to protest by jumping off the roof of city hall on Christmas Eve. Of course, it's a hoax, but the column is so popular that the paper decides to hire an "average American" to act as John Doe. They settle on "Long John" Willoughby (Gary Cooper), a former bush league ballplayer and current hobo. They convince Willoughby that they'll pay him enough money to fix his injured arm, allowing him to return to baseball, as long as he plays along. But when his speeches inspire an earnest, grassroots movement, the powers-that-be seek new ways to exploit "John Doe's" popularity to further their own agenda.

The film does tend towards being a bit preachy, with a few explicit references to Jesus thrown in for good measure, and Capra's small-town politics and heavy-handed style do tend to rankle some viewers. Still, the film is entertaining (if overlong), and features good performances by Cooper, Stanwyck, and the always-lovable Walter Brennan—as an ocarina-playing hobo called The Colonel!—in support. If you're interested in the American psyche in the brief, late-Depression/pre–Pearl Harbor era, Meet John Doe gives you one serviceable approach to that zeitgeist.