 |
| A
man for all seasons: Penn as Milk. |
Tragedy
and Triumph
By
Laura Leon
Milk
Directed
by Gus Van Sant
During the first few minutes of Milk, one gets an uneasy
feeling. Something’s not quite right, but what? No, it’s not
that we’re watching a doe-eyed New York exec, one Harvey Milk
(Sean Penn) cruising on his birthday in the subway. Or that
the guy with whom he hooks up (James Franco) looks about half
his age. Then it dawns on you—it’s the fact that Penn is laughing,
smiling and playful. It’s the utter antithesis of his usual
brooding persona, both on and off screen, that has the power
to shock, then draw you in.
When I first heard about Harvey Milk, it was in 1987 and I
was on my first trip to San Francisco. My brother-in-law and
host regaled me with the tale of the transplanted New Yorker
who settled in the Castro section of the city; the Castro
was formerly an Irish working-class enclave but, by the ’70s,
was fast becoming a mecca for the openly gay. Milk quickly
put his engaging ways to political use, running for office
and eventually becoming city supervisor. Working under Mayor
George Moscone (Victor Garber), and with other progressives
such as Dianne Feinstein, Milk was instrumental in liberalizing
many laws, much to the dislike of another supervisor, Dan
White (Josh Brolin). After resigning his position and unsuccessfully
trying to win it back, White assassinated both Moscone and
Milk on Nov. 27, 1978. Later that night, tens of thousands
of gays and lesbians participated in a candlelight march to
City Hall, where both men had been slain.
It was a haunting story. It still is. Director Gus Van Sant
wisely avoids anything approaching reverence, opting instead
for a breezy retelling of Milk’s rise to power, but with much
emphasis on the freewheeling times. There is an almost nostalgic
feeling about this crazy period, the mid-1970s, during which
many gays found their voices and established a vibrant community
out west. Indeed, one gets the strong sense that such an atmosphere—so
different from the corporate New York that Milk had fled—gave
flower to Milk’s abilities, nurtured his sense of wit and
helped propel his political successes. Of course, it’s also
apparent that Milk loved the limelight, particularly the adoration
of his close-knit band of followers, which here includes Emile
Hirsch and Lucas Grabeel.
Penn is something of a revelation, again, because he seems
to have become a completely different person, both in temperament
and in body language. He makes you believe that gay Harvey
Milk can get the unions to support him. Yet somehow, perhaps
because I can’t help but be contrarian, I found the character
of Dan White more compelling. The script is somewhat one-dimensional
in its characterization of this man; a coda about his defense
attorney’s “Twinkie defense,” in which it was argued, successfully,
that White’s mass consumption of junk food in the weeks prior
to the murders contributed to his mental state, is delivered
as the final “aha!” in an analysis that rarely gets above
the fact that White is a religious white Catholic. Brolin,
however, reaches in and uncovers nuggets of humanity that
make us almost feel for the guy.
Now before everybody e-mails me that I am homophobic, read
on. Brolin makes us see into the White whose solid working-class
voting bloc has eroded, and whose neighborhood has completely
changed before his eyes. Here is the young married guy, a
new father, living a life probably quite similar to that of
his father and his grandfather, and somehow, the script got
changed and he didn’t get a copy. Or if he did, it’s in a
foreign language. Brolin makes us feel his character’s bafflement
and dislocation. Moreover, he evokes a vulnerability, a need
to belong, which Milk himself also senses and, at least initially,
tries to work with. It’s a triumph of acting, one which makes
me less embarrassed about how much I fell for the guy after
seeing The Goonies.
This is that time of year when Hollywood uncaps all the good
movies it has been hoarding, giving us cinematic water to
quench our very, very parched appetites. It’s also the time
when Oscar nomination bets are hot and heavy, so by now, you
have to have heard that Milk and its leads are almost
shoo-ins for recognition. What a refreshing change of pace,
the contemplation of performances steeped in sheer humanity
and unaided by fake retardation or other handicapping conditions,
taking home the prize. Milk, and Penn, and Brolin,
and Van Sant, are truly worthy.
The
Great Escape
Slumdog
Millionaire
Directed
by Danny Boyle
If you’re an adult drawing breath in this last quarter of
2008, you’re surely aware of the state of the human condition.
Optimism is remarkably hard to come by, and for good reason:
For every glimmer of hope to grace the front page of the daily
news (Godspeed, President Obama!) there are several more signs
that we’re pretty well screwed (quickening climate change,
global economic collapse, rampant terrorism, and so on). There’s
not a lot to look forward to these days.
Well, here’s something: Slumdog Millionaire, the latest
film from English director Danny Boyle, presents the kind
of hope for the hopeless that the world needs right now. It’s
a pure feel-good ride, a color-saturated, Dickensian rags-to-riches
story about a kid from the streets of the impoverished slums
in Mumbai, India, who finds himself on the verge of fame and
fortune—and love—thanks to a stint on a popular game show.
Slumdog is a relentless crowd pleaser, a romantic fairy
tale that celebrates the golden days of big-screen escapism,
even though it bears little resemblance to anything Hollywood
has produced in decades.
Jamil Malik (Dev Patel) is one question away from winning
20 million rupees (about U.S. $500,000) on the Hindi version
of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The show’s host (Anil
Kapoor) suspects him of cheating—how could this street urchin
possibly know all the answers?—and has him interrogated (and
tortured, in one of the film’s few remotely graphic scenes)
by the police. As Jamal explains to the police the origins
of his knowledge, the answers unfold pieces of his narrative.
In flashback, we witness the young Jamal and his brother Salim
(Madhur Mittal) wallowing in the squalor and filth of the
slums; the death of their mother at the hands of a Hindu mob;
Jamal’s meeting of, and many separations from, his lifelong
love, Latika (Freida Pinto); and a series of skin-of-their-teeth
escapes from the gangsters and criminals who rule the streets.
Boyle knows a ripe opportunity when he smells it, and he made
the most of this one. It’s an unbelievable but, in the words
of the film’s police inspector (Irrfan Khan), bizarrely plausible
story, and the film’s success could be called the same. The
screenplay, based on the novel Q & A, cleverly
clothes a simple tale about love and destiny in a Three
Musketeers romp. Shot on location in Mumbai using hi-definition
digital video, Slumdog marries the crackling energy
and fractured storytelling of Trainspotting with the
disorienting blur of 28 Days Later. The dialogue is
about one-third subtitled Hindi, but never hard to follow;
the music, by famed composer A.R. Rahman, is as lively as
the on-screen action.
And the cast of mostly unrecognizable Indian actors makes
the picture: Patel, known in England for his role on the serial
Skins, has a quiet intensity and the looks of a matinee
idol; Bollywood vet Kapoor is perfectly smarmy and patronizing;
and Ayush Mahesh Khedekar, who plays Jamal as a child (both
Jamal and Salim are played by three different actors), is
worthy of an Oscar nomination for his irresistible energy—he
all but carries half the film. (It should be noted that the
contributions of casting director Loveleen Tandan earned her
a co-directing credit.)
Mumbai serves as a microcosm of the world at large: It’s the
second most populous city in the world, a port city that doubles
as its nation’s financial center, home to both unparalleled
prosperity and abject poverty, and the site of one of the
most horrific terrorist attacks in recent memory. But for
the purposes of this tale, it’s a stand-in for any big city—in
U.S. terms, it’s New York and Los Angeles rolled into one
and cut with post-Katrina New Orleans. And while some will
complain that Slumdog Millionaire doesn’t fully
delve into the true nature of Mumbai’s seamy underbelly (there’s
an India-for- dummies feel to some of it, in favor of a broader
optimism) it’s not really about that—it’s a movie about life
and liberty, but mostly the pursuit of happiness. And it’s
ultimately about the cinematic experience, the power of entertainment
to make you forget about life for a few hours at a time. On
that last count, Slumdog Millionaire is the best picture
of the year.
—John
Brodeur
 |
| I’m
an alien, dumbass: Reeves in The Day the Earth Stood
Still. |
Little
Green Spacemen
The
Day the Earth Stood Still
Directed
by Scott Derrickson
A Saturday-afternoon TV staple about aliens who land on Earth
to protect the planet from nuclear war, The Day the Earth
Stood Still (1951) was emblematic of the Cold War. And
now the remake, which replaces the threat of MAD with environmental
catastrophe, arrives just in time for the wave of Obama-election
sensitivity to the Green Revolution. Some sound bites on sustainability
aside, however, this new version is more about special effects
than interplanetary intervention. The updating is most enjoyable
during the first half, when a meteor-like sphere hurtles toward
Manhattan, depositing Klaatu the alien (Keanu Reeves) and
his gargantuan robot bodyguard. Though the robot is relatively
simple by Transformers standards, its looming size and laser-red
eye slot are as menacing as the original’s. But science has
come a long way since those pre-CGI days, and so a panel of
specialists, including astrobiologist Helen Benson (Jennifer
Connelly), accompanies the military force sent to intercept
the sphere. One nifty factoid is the placental space suit
that incubates Klaatu until he is shot by a nervous soldier.
In a government laboratory, a surgeon discovers that the membranous
humanoid has a human-like entity inside. Reeves doesn’t seem
to be inspired by Michael Rennie’s beloved alien, or anything
else (except maybe his own private nebula), but his pallid
complexion and out-of-body detachment work for the early scenes.
Helen helps Klaatu escape from the clutches of the president’s
representative (Kathy Bates), who assumes that an alien invasion
is imminent and denies the alien’s request to be taken to
the world’s leaders. En route to civilian life, Klaatu has
an amusing encounter with a lie detector, but his advanced-intelligence
weaponry is less successful in neutralizing the hostility
of Helen’s mixed-race stepson, Jacob (Jaden Smith), whose
father died in combat. While Helen and Jacob try to come to
terms with their loss, Klaatu gives them the message he was
sent to deliver: That the Earth, one of only a few planets
in the cosmos capable of sustaining complex life, is at a
tipping point because of the damage done to it by humans.
And since the Earth can survive without humans but humans
can’t survive without . . . the human race will just have
to go. Speaking for the world’s population, Helen tries to
assure Klaatu, with all her dewey-eyed maternal sincerity
(and Connelly is considerably dewy-eyed), that “we can change.”
Whether she convinces him or not doesn’t matter, since the
robot is morphing into a planetary pestilence that bogs the
film down in underwhelming metallurgical effects. Director
Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) is better
at atmosphere than action, and the screenplay gets lazy (McDonald’s
is a poor substitute for the Lincoln Memorial). Even so, the
film’s modicum of social awareness fits right in with the
new optimism.
—Ann
Morrow
|
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