View From a Height

Saw Prince Caspian last night, largely on the strength of having liked The Lion, the WItch, and the Wardrobe, and the warm feelings of the book from my childhood. I can't say I was particularly impressed.

It was a faithful filming of the book, almost scene-by-scene. But scene-by-scene filimings seem to drain the movie of any tension. There's no sense of forward motion in the plot, no rhythmic create-and-release of dramatic tension in the events. The characters seem at the mercy of events, unable to actually effect change, and eventually reduced to waiting for Aslan to show up and help. I realize that this is the great lesson of the film - that we don't control events, and that faith is necessary for God to help up. But as useful as it may be for Apologetics for Children, that dynamic doesn't make for compelling movie-making.

There's also no real character development, with only Prince Caspian having a major moral decision towards the end of the film. The Pevensie children are already fully-formed from the first film, and only Peter and Susan are really engaging. The bad guys are stock characters, although patterning them after the early modern Spanish is inspired.

The great strength of the Lord of the Rings and the third Harry Potter film was that they were movies, not screen-captures of the books. Apparently, the Harry Potter franchise couldn't withstand the complaints from small children about missing this or that scene, and went back to treating the books as screenplays.

If they really are planning to film all seven Narnia books, I hope they find a way to break out of this trap.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Admit it. For about a week in 1997, you, too were wondering if even Prince William could save the House of Windsor. Turns out you were wrong, too.

The Queen reminds us of the difference between the partisan and the political. The Crown may never be partisan. We are reminded of that at the outset of the film, set on the day of the 1997 elections, as Queen Elizabeth muses with her royal portraitist about what it would be like to vote.

"I should like the chance, just once, to vote. Not the mechanics of the act so much as the chance to be partisan. "Yes, ma'am, you may not be able to vote, but remember...it is your government."

But the Head of State, symbol of the country, is an intensely political position. It is that, as much as anything else, that the Royals have been shielded from over the last half-century. Cherie Blair has it wrong: it's not a coccoon of privilege so much as a coccoon from politics. The Queen might give some advice to Prime Ministers, but these meetings are about policy more than the temper of the nation.

And yet, even then, even after Blair rightly advises Her that the nation wants something less detached at this moment, there's a sense that the Queen hasn't got it entirely wrong. During the memorial after September 11, it was moving to tears to see her sing the words to our national anthem. Had the Queen had a history of such outbursts it would have meant little. Imagine Diana doing the same an then imagine your reaction. Eh. That's nice. Bit of a lightweight, that Diana, don't you think?

Most of the focus by the American press has been on their darling, Tony Blair, saving the Royal Family from themselves, as his character says in the film. But he himself, ah, grows in office, but learning to appreciate the Royals and the unique position they play in the life of the country. He goes from being somewhat in awe of a monarch he expects to have only perfunctory contact with, to a being a staunch defender of the Queen and the institution, to the dismay of his Republican wife Cherie, who accuses him of using the Queen as a substitute mother.

Blair is also limited by his engagement in politics. As the Queen is giving her address concerning Diana, Blair marvels the Queen's savvy; "That's how you survive!" The address, of course, was about more than survival, it was about the Queen learning how to fulfill her role as national unifier in a new way. Just as the Queen is not permitted to descend to partisanship, so Blair cannot transcend it.

The casting it pitch-perfect. These are public figures, all but Diana and the Queen Mum still alive, whom you believe you know. In the case of the Royals you've seen them most of your life, and Blair has managed to pack almost as much exposure into a decade and a half of national prominence. The actors manage to disappear into their roles almost seamlessly.

It's important to remember that this is a movie, not a history. It's inconceivable that Philip would need to inform Elizabeth and the Queen Mother about the proper use of the Royal standard, although contemporary American and (evidently) British audiences need the lecture. And the Charles character displays an understanding of the public relations difficulties of dealing with Diana that it's hard to credit the real Charles with.

But the movie is indisputably Queen Elizabeth's, and Stephen Frears has managed to create a sympathetic and complex portrait of her, at a time when it was easier to reduce her to a cardboard villainness.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 4:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The story of Purim, the biblical Book of Esther, would make a terrific movie. Hopefully, One Night With the King hasn't ruined its chances. This is what happens when you start letting goyim make movies. (That's a joke people.) The producers of the film are religious Christians, whose hearts are clearly in the right place, but who could have used a little more research before committing this thing to film.

Hollywood of the 1950s and 1960s produced tremendous biblical epics, based on Hebrew Bible and the Christian one, set in the First Temple period and the Second Temple era. I'm willing to give a wide degree of artistic latitude to filmmakers who take on this material. I'm even willing to allow for screenplays that do some violence to subtleties in the Rabbinic backstory (known as MID-rash).But in this case, the decisions to do so were completely unnecessary, and more inquisitive minds, who go back and actually read the story, may end up believing that the filmmakers' innovations are part of that tradition.

To be sure, they did get a couple of details right. Ahashverosh is a fool, easily manipulated by advisors. The Jews, by and large, did not return to Israel after Cyrus the Great permitted them to, and the existential threat is interpreted in part by the Rabbis as punishment for this assimilation. But these details are lost in the reworking.

The main motivation for the action is Xerxes's impending invasion of Iraq, er, Greece, to avenge his father's death four years earlier, and to prove his manliness to the court. Vashti, who in Esther refuses to attend the King's banquet out of her regard for her own royal dignity, is now set up as an anti-war protester. Esther - rightly called Hadassah - has some sort of magic jewel that acts as a kind of planetarium projector under the right light.

The Midrash tags Ahasverosh as being insecure because he's a usurper, having married Vashti, Nebuchadnezzar's granddaughter, to secure his right to the throne. What, marriages of political convenience aren't enough? And if you're going to make a story out of a book who main point is that God can act through seemingly natural events, having a tailor-made-for-marketing magic crystal act as the witness for Esther's Judaism undermines the whole enterprise.

In the Midrash, Haman has spent time among the Jews, and hates them anyway. Here, he's just sort of anti-Semitic from the get-go and from afar, murdering Esther's parents (another complete invention). How much more texture would the real Haman have had.

The Midrash provides more than enough material for a great movie of palace intrigue, romance, and politics on an epic scale. The changes replace the sublime with the ridiculous. Esther's bold venture into the King's presence, and Mordechai's moving speech that prompts it, are robbed of almost all their considerable inherent dramatic value by this setup act.

I'm even willing to cut the evangelical filmmakers a little slack when it comes to Christological interpretation, even though the older generation usually played it straight with Samson and Delilah, and David and Bathsheba. But the whole Greek-invasion-Jewish-sympathizer stuff acts as a Trojan horse, so to speak, for their ideas. Haman wages his campaign against the Jews on the notion that they're forming a fifth column for the Greeks. He also claims that the Jews talk of a redeemer, a "King of Kings" who will level all men.

The implication is clearly that the Jews are being persecuted for their correct beliefs. But Christianity stands on Jerusalem and Athens, and the Jews refer to God, never the Messiah, as the "King of Kings." In any event, the concept of the Messiah does not appear to have been developed anywhere near that fully by 500 BCE. It's possible, of course, that they don't even realize what they're doing, that they think they're doing Jews a favor by showing how Judaism shares democracy's core idea that "all men are created equal."

They get their western history wrong, too, claiming that the Persians "permitted" the Greeks to retain their hate democracy after a military defeat. In fact, the Greeks defeated the Persians in defense of their civilization.

The romance portion is just silly as presented. They could have at least had the King come up to Esther at a masquerade ball and ask her if she knows where he could find, or even if she were, this Esther that he's heard about. Instead we get "The Bachelor in Shushan," with the Master of the Harem acting as Master of Ceremonies. I'm sure Chris Harrison is delighted to be played as a eunuch.

Even some of the attempts at Jewish authenticity are laughable. In a scene from the book, Haman confronts Mordechai when he refuses to bow down, knocking him down with his scepter. The Jewish hand extended to help Mordechai up is clearly wearing a red string around the wrist.

The casting director got it about half-right. John Rhys-Davies is natural and riveting as Mordechai. Omar Sharif turns in a workmanlike performance as Xerxes's general. Someone named Tiffany Dupont proves that you don't have to be Jewish to play Esther, although the role here isn't all that demanding. But Luke Goss is as wooden as his sword as Xerxes, and a number of the minor roles stick out like afterthoughts in a community theater production of Shakespeare.

The main redeeming feature of the film is that it looks fabulous. The rendition of the city of Shushan is jaw-dropping. The costumes are what is usually called, "sumptuous," and the military encampment is appropriately, er, Spartan.

For anyone who's interested in reading a coherent narrative of the Purim story, based on selected Midrashim and presented as a compelling story, I'd strongly recommend putting the price of the movie tickets towards Turnabout, based on the writings of Rabbi Meir Leibush. It's a great read, will probably take about as long to read as to sit through the film, and will be much more rewarding.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Suitable for children.

Ahhhh, no. As your head stops runing like a bell from the soundtrack, the first thing you remember about The Departed is the prodigious amounts of tomato juice. There's a hell of a lot of blood in this film, which is so unlike Scorsese, and a couple of the shots are jaw-dropping, less for the violence that for the suddenness and for their plot implications.

The second thing is that about 2/3 of the dialogue consists of f-bombs, yet still manages to get off some good lines. At a command center during an attempt to trap Nicholson, there's, shall we say, a little inter-departmental rivalry. "Who are you?" "I'm the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy."

The last thing is that this is a terrific movie, with some fine performances, a premise that grabs you from the beginning, and pacing that never lets up.

The setup is deceptively simple: Jack Nicholson is a Boston mob boss who inserts Matt Damon as a mole into the State Police. The State Police insert Leonardo DiCaprio as a mole into Nicholson's organization. Both Damon and DiCaprio fall for the same police psychologist. So...who gets to whom first, and how many other people do they have to go through the get there?

Both Damon and DiCaprio are impressive. Damon's still the action-anti-hero, but the performance here is a little more subtle than in the Bourne films. DiCaprio is starting to grow on me as an actor. I liked him in Catch Me If You Can, and here, he's an appealing guy who wants to do the right thing, but whose life is coming apart under the strain of being undercover.

Nicholson will get raves for his performance, but he doesn't really deserve them. It's a solid job, but he's played the criminal-with-subcutaneous-currents-of-violence a couple of dozen times by now. He doesn't mail it in by any means, but it's also clear that the role's not much of a stretch for him. When he stands at the front of his guys, confronting the Chinese mob at a drop, wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night, you'd swear it was the Joker.

The only role that doesn't quite come off is the shrink. Vera Farmiga just doesn't carry off the mix of professional, vulnerable, confused, and suspicious that the role demands. She is all of those things, but the transitions aren't believable, and her character is hard to pin down as a coherent personality.

One small bonus is getting to hear Alec Baldwin praise the Patriot Act.

Make no mistake, this is a violent, violent film, unusual for noir, which relies on the threat of violence to ratchet up the tension. There are enough surprises to keep it interesting, but Scorsese never relies on coincidences. We see enough of both mob and police culture for them to be believable as well.

Enjoy, at your own peril.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 11:58 AM | Permalink

Today's the 100th anniversary of the birth of Billy Wilder. And if you think for one second I'm going to try to compete with Mark Steyn on this subject, guess again.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I saw United 93 this morning, and my guess is that director Paul Greengrass won't be getting a lot of plaudits from the Academy. He's done too good a job.

These are not impersonal airliners striking from nowhere. This plane - and by extension, the others we don't see the interiors of - are hijacked by real people, real, malevolent people with faces.

A couple of points stand out. First, the military was consistently behind the loop. There was virtually no communication between the military and civilian air authorities. NORAD was continually tracking the wrong planes, planes which were down or had already crashed, or had already been confirmed as not hijacked. They didn't even know United 93 was hijacked until after it hit the ground. They're gamely trying to improvise, without weapons, without clearance, without planes, without information.

Civilian authority was similarly handicapped for precious minutes by simply disbelieving what they were seeing. The Newark Tower is staffed by trained professionals with a clear view of Manhattan, but they didn't see the first plane hit because they weren't looking for it, which is as good a metaphor for the government response that day as any. With no US hijackings in over 20 years, the hijack desk isn't even manned. Since nobody sees the plane hit, nobody's sure initially 1) what happened to American 11, and 2) what caused that big hole in the North Tower. You hear controllers saying, authoritatively, "nah, they wouldn't fly a plane into the WTC."

They, like the passengers on the other flights, and the European man on 93 who had been through a hijacking before, were relying on past experience.

You also realize how much the United 93 passengers gained from their hijack crew being shorthanded. With two men in the cockpit, that left only two hijackers free to try to keep the passengers cowed. One of them was constantly running back to talk to the cockpit. So not only couldn't they see all the passengers on the air phones, they also couldn't keep the stewardesses from seeing the pilots' bodies, tipping off who was flying the plane.

A fascinating touch comes at the end of the film, when Greengrass cuts back and forth between the passengers saying their prayers before launching their counterattack, and the hijackers saying theirs in the cockpit. There's no moral equivalence here, though. I don't know Greengrass's religion or politics; I do know that he understands there are good guys and bad guys and who are who.

As in any historical picture based on real events, you know how it turns out. You find youself seeing people making plans for after the flight, next day, next week, next month, and remind yourself that you know what they don't. In spite of that, you're rooting to the very end for the passengers to win.

There's nothing cheap or maudlin or sentimental about the ending. The focus remains on the passengers, from their point of view.

One other patron after the film complained that because the film was so factual and real-time, we never really get to know any of the hero-passenger, the four guys who put aside their fear and put together their response. That they could have been developed more fully as people.

I disagree. The passengers were more or less strangers to each other, so why should they not be strangers to us? We know what we need to know about them, and that's enough.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 4:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday night, I saw an advance screening of Cameron Crowe's latest, Elizabethtown. A fast-enhanced flu, along with the holiday itself, prevented a timely review, but I've still managed to sneak in it under the deadline.

Elizabethtown follows Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) for what has to be the most eventful week in his life. Baylor works for a barely-disguised Nike (the CEO's name is Phil, and the company is based in Oregon). He is, apparently, a shoe designer who is personally responsible for a $972 million fiasco called the "Spasmodica," feted at the company, ignored by the public. After falling on his sword figuratively for a business magazine article, Drew heads back to his apartment to fall on a kitchen knife and end it all.

No, the cell phone ringing is not a call from his girlfriend, but from his sister, to let him know that his father had died on a trip back to his home, Elizabethtown, KY. Drew's job is to fly to Kentucky, pick up the ashes, and bring them home. His father's hometown, and a borderline-crazy airline attendant, Clair Colburn (Kirsten Dunst), have other ideas.

The story idea is appealing. A little reminiscent of Garden State, but without the medication. This part of the film is autobiographical for Crowe, and his affection for this side of his family, and the country, shows. Crowe avoids making fun of small-town, borderline-southern society, while still managing to present them as human.

The chemistry between Bloom and Dunst is unmistakeable. The two actors are likeable on their own, and they work well together here. Claire is clearly a little nuts, but not dangerously so, and she knows enough not to push but to lead. Even Claire's detailed scripting of Drew's closing roadtrip is more helpful than overbearing. (The roadtrip is a pleasant ending, but it seemed a little heavy on the politics, and occupies far too central a place in the movie's marketing given its actual length.)

Baylor's Kentucky relatives accept him as he is, knowing he won't be around long. But Drew is still recovering from his shoe-fiasco, so his character is a little too passive to pass judgment, anyway. As a result, there's mercifully little of the Big City vs. the Small-Town South that grates on actual Southerners.

And yet, other interactions don't seem quite right. Susan Sarandon plays Hollie Baylor, Drew's mom, and she reacts to her sudden widowhood with all enough self-absorption that we understand why all the Kentuckians think she lives in California. The stand-up performance she gives at her husband's memorial is so completely out of place, so completely about her and not him, that I found myself wondering exactly why it was supposed to win us over.

There are a few signs of overdirecting, as well. The voice-over at the beginning, as Drew flies in the company helicopter to meet his doom, is pretentious. During a brief montage of Drew remembering his father, we see dad buckling little Drew into the front seat of the car. That's followed, later, by Drew buckling in the urn with his dad's ashes. For some reason, Crowe found it necessary to make the counterpoint explicit by repeating the memory. When Drew drives into town, one of the local stores has a sign thanking the troops, which helps set the scene. Crowe beats in the pro-military contrast with the Left Coast, though, as Uncle Dale presents Drew with his father's West Point ring.

I've more or less given up on Hollywood understanding anything at all about business, but the failures here are worth noticing. No mere shoe designer could possibly cost a Nike almost $1 billion. Companies make mistakes all the time, although I've yet to see Nike's test-marketers blow one this badly. And when New Coke bombed, Coca-Cola fired VPs and directors, not the chemist. I understand Crowe's cinematic need to make Baylor a public failure, but with the dot-com days over, 30-year-old prodigies are usually only given those sorts of budgets in Hollywood.

The question with any film is how much to take as reality, and how much to take as representational. Elizabethtown seems to want to be taken literally, but there's too much that's not real for that to work. And yet, at the end, I left the theater happy about the fate of the characters, which may be more important.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 4:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"This is a true story..."

Well, mostly.

In this case, it's the story of amateur Francis Ouimet, who defeated 5-time British Open Champion Harry Vardon (he would go on to win a sixth) and Ted Ray in a playoff to win the 1913 US Open Golf Championships (true - but we'll revisit this).

It's also the story of how Americans like winners better than snobs.

Ouimet was a caddy (true), at a time when golf was an aristocratic sport. His parents were immigrants, but his house was directly across the road from the Brookline Golf Club (true). His father, a French immigrant, did just about everything possible to discourage his son's interest in what he considered to be a waste of time (true - well, the part about his father).

Vardon was the greatest British golf champion of all time, who revolutionized the game. But while he, too, was no aristocrat, he spent his life hoping his golf would win him acceptance on the golfing world's terms. He made the fatal mistake of assuming it was about winning.

In an age where Tiger Woods is heir to Jack Nicklaus who succeeded Arnold Palmer, it's hard to remember that golf was a vehicle for snobbery. But what it meant was that of all the people on the course that day, Vardon was the one most likely to give Ouimet the respect he deserved - one sportsman to another.

At least one reason Ouimet didn't make anyone worry was his choice of caddy - 10 year old Eddie Lowery (true). At the screening I saw, the audience cheered not only when Ouimet made the winning putt, but also when Eddie talked back to the crowd.

The acting was good, possibly because of the use of British actors for the British figures; perhaps because the cast is composed of relative unknowns, so we see only the role, not the actor.

It also didn't insult their intelligence. While Taft wasn't President any more in 1913, he was at the course for the tournament, and perhaps people still referred to him as President. The golfers played through rain - through downpours - and they played 2 rounds each the first two days. They evidently didn't use ball markers, either, which meant that one golfer could block another with his shot. Better to get that stuff right than to shade it, thinking people won't accept it.

Since the screenwriter also wrote a book about the subject, the storyline stays close to actual events, and emphasizes the parallels between the lives of Ouimet and Vardon. The only complaint I'd have is that the tension in the final round was artificial - Ouimet actually won by 5 strokes, and the pivotal hole was the 17th, not the 18th. When I found that out, I had to go back and check all the other details. The actual history reads like a set of movie cliches, so it's important not to do anything to call it into question.

In the end, if you can get past those details, The Greatest Game Ever Played is very entertaining.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)