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Soul
and inspiration: (l-r) Cornish and Whishaw in Bright
Star.
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This
Wild Ecstasy
By
Ann Morrow
Bright
Star
Directed
by Jane Campion
John
Keats, the Romantic poet who famously died at a mere 25 years
of age, seems inextricable from the popular image of him as
a sickly aesthete who devoted every waking moment to poetry—for
how else could he have produced such an astounding body of
work? Yet Jane Campion’s quietly passionate, visually rapturous
Bright Star interprets his final (and most brilliant)
three years through his love affair with the girl next door:
a seamstress he refers to as a “minxstress.” Her name is Fanny
Brawne, and we first see them falling for each other at a
party. Fanny (Abbie Cornish) is more concerned with her frock
and the triple-tier mushroom collar she made for it than John’s
recently published Endymion, and he teases her about
her affectations as “a fashionable,” though he is stung by
the attentions of the young swains who fill her dance card.
Campion’s Keats (Ben Whishaw) is recognizable as a young man
“confused by women,” but eager for the admiration of a pretty
girl—as recognizable as the classically impassioned author
of “Ode to a Grecian Urn.”
Adapted by Campion from the biography by Andrew Motion, Bright
Star is both specific to Keats’ writings and the commonalities
of a thwarted love affair. When John and Fanny are introduced,
in 1818, John is living with his friend and protector, Charles
Brown (Paul Schneider). Fanny lives nearby, in a country house
rented by her widowed mother (Kerry Fox). After purchasing
a volume of his poetry, Fanny is moved by the lines “A thing
of beauty is a joy forever,” though she is more impressed
by John’s devotion to his dying brother, Tom. Campion keeps
the focus on the domestic; the Brawnes’ strained finances
are revealed by the fact that Fanny’s mother does most of
the cooking. Yet a baked tart is photographed with equal importance
as John’s pen and ink, and the gentle rhythms of a bustling
household contrast lyrically with his austerity of purpose.
Scathing reviews, however, dash the poet’s hopes for an independent
income, making marriage impossible. A more immediate impediment
is Charles, who, somewhat rightly at first, perceives Fanny
as a coquette (Schneider is magnificently churlish). He ridicules
her attention to flounces and cross-stitches, and she replies
to his increasingly scabrous criticisms with heated confidence.
Campion won an Oscar for her screenplay of The Piano,
and it’s likely that she will win another for this one. Existing
apart from the salons of London (Keats’ admirers, such as
Percy Bysshe Shelley, are mentioned only in passing), John’s
writing is viewed as indistinguishable from his relationship
with Fanny. By rooting the story in Hampstead Heath—and the
trees and glades that surround it—Campion gives the film an
intimacy that defies the conventions of parlor-room dramas.
A family outing to a sun-dappled meadow is shown as a joyous
communion with nature, and a stroll down a rural pathway shows
the couple in perfect sympathy. When John leaves for a sojourn
in London, Fanny suffers physically: “When we’re apart, it’s
as if the air is sucked out of my lungs,” she explains to
her mother. Only later, when John succumbs to tuberculosis,
do his words take on a greater importance in her mind.
To her great credit, Campion (and cinematographer Greig Fraser)
accompany John’s recitations with visual splendor; a painterly
frame of Fanny sitting alone in a field of heather, or John’s
delirious rambling into a hedgerow do as much to reflect their
individual turmoil. Though the inspired costuming (by Campion’s
longtime designer, Janet Patterson) gives the film a look
that is both authentic and startlingly colorful, it’s the
stark, haunting score by Mark Bradshaw that is most descriptive
of their doomed attachment. And that attachment is almost
flawlessly enacted by Whishaw and Cornish; together, they
seem as a natural and inevitable a pair as any seen onscreen
in recent memory, yet they are equally vivid in their scenes
apart, especially Cornish, who conveys an interior life as
full of subtle ardor as John’s. In the end, though, it’s the
words that give the film its rapture. “Poetic craft is a carcass
. . . it needs to be lived through the senses,” says John.
It’s a creed that Campion realizes beautifully.
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Head Cheese
Zombieland
Directed
by Ruben Fleischer
The titular Zombieland of this week’s most popular film is
a kind of post-apocalyptic America in which flesh-hungry corpses
rule the roost. A zombie plague has wiped out most of humanity;
the world is a giant video game for the few surviving Homo
sapiens, for whom the unifying M.O. is kill or be killed.
(Eat or be eaten?) Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) delineates a
series of rules for surviving the new paradigm. He’s a tight-ass,
phobic dork, whose average Friday night consists of a marathon
World of Warcraft session and a 2-liter bottle of Mountain
Dew Code Red (a sly bit of self-aware product placement on
the part of PepsiCo here). He sets out from his college in
Texas toward Columbus, Ohio, where he hopes to find his family
still alive. Soon he meets Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson, at
his most Woody Harrelson-esque), a badass with a customized
Escalade and a weakness for Twinkies. (They eschew real names
in favor of towns: “Keeps us from getting too familiar.”)
The two set on a killing spree that unites them with a pair
of young women (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin) and takes
them in the direction of Los Angeles. This leads to an all-time-great
cameo appearance (that your asshole friends have probably
already spoiled).
Zombieland
continues modern cinema’s obsession with fast-moving zombies,
rather than the arms-straight-in-front walkers of the old
George Romero films. These monsters are dextrous—they can
find their way around obstacles, climb fences, hold on to
moving vehicles. And unlike their celluloid predecessors,
such as the ones that stalked the land in search of “braaainnzzzz,”
these are right at home munching on, as in one of the film’s
most colorfully grotesque scenes, a bit of colon. So suspense
is thrown right out the window. The fast action allows for
some excellent kill scenes, but there’s little substance beyond
the surface splatter. That is to say, Zombieland is
a monster movie for, and about (sort of), the A.D.D. generation.
That’s not entirely a swipe: First-time director Ruben Fleischer
has this thing stylized to a fault, from the slow-motion splashes
and crashes of the opening credits to the pop-up titles throughout.
It looks cool on the big screen, and might look even cooler
on your Mac. But the script is thin on ideas: It’s attempting
to be a cross between Shaun of the Dead and Crank,
and it’s not as clever as either. Still, as one of Columbus’
rules goes, you have to “enjoy the little things,” and on
that it can be said that Zombieland is both little
and enjoyable.
—John
Brodeur
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Bustin’
loose: Page in Whip It.
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Sk8er
Grrrl
Whip
It
Directed
by Drew Barrymore
Though
it’s set in the rapidly growing women’s roller derby scene,
Whip It (which refers to a impressively slick roller-derby
play) is based on, at its heart, the eternal struggle between
parent and child. In this case, it’s mother (Marcia Gay Harden
as Brook Cavendar) vs. daughter (Ellen Page as Bliss) in a
dried-up Texas burg near Austin.
Mom wants Bliss to compete in beauty pageants. Bliss wants
to play roller derby. The 20th century vs. the 21st century.
Both, in their own way, want to escape the humdrum of life
in the burg, going to high school (17-year-old Bliss) and
delivering mail (mom). While much of the film’s hook—and its
entertainment value—is built around the rough-and-tumble roller
derby matches, the film would collapse if the mother-daughter
drama didn’t work.
It does. Page and Harden go at each other with absolute emotional
clarity.
But more about that later, because the roller derby scenes
are as entertaining as a punch in the face. First-time director
Drew Barrymore has lined up a dream cast of tough girls, including
famed stuntwoman Zoe Bell (as Bloody Holly), hip-hop star
Eve (as Rosa Sparks) and perpetually snarling Juliette Lewis
(as Iron Maven), and turned them loose in a flamboyant, DIY
world of skill and style—boosted, of course with a healthy
shot of good-natured violence. Based on Shauna Cross’ novel
Derby Girl, roller derby is convincingly presented
as part self-empowerment tool, part hell-raising good time.
Page is an underestimated talent, mostly because Juno
didn’t require her to be much more than a smartass. Here,
she’s as convincingly uncomfortable trying on gowns for beauty
contests as she is freewheeling and self-assured when on skates.
The real surprise in the cast is SNL vet Kristin Wiig, who
conjures up emotional reserves she hasn’t previously had an
opportunity to use.
The main problem with Whip It, though, is that it tries
too hard to please, too hard to be fair to all
the characters. Someone has to turn out to be an asshole,
don’t they? The other problem is the shambling script—which
has characters that seem to have wandered in from Napoleon
Dynamite and other clichéd indie-film “classics”—and the
shambling direction.
But first-timer Barrymore gets the big confrontation just
right, because Harden and Page are that good. (And their reconciliation
scene is even truer.) This makes everything OK.
—Shawn
Stone
Pants
Not on Fire
The
Invention of Lying
Directed
by Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson
It’s always interesting explaining to your child why sometimes
telling a lie isn’t such a bad thing. “Grammy, I love
the crocheted pullover with the Day-Glo kitty cat!” and “No,
Dad, you don’t look that old,” being two of the sorts of white
lies we spout when not doing so would result in hurt feelings
and (in the case of Grammy) recrimination. The movie The
Invention of Lying plays with this idea, going so far
as to create an alternate universe in which everybody blurts
out the truth, no matter how painful. Anna (Jennifer Garner)
matter-of-factly informs Mark (co-director Ricky Gervais)
that there’s positively no hope for a potential pairing, as
his gene pool would certainly wreak havoc on the perfect children
she’s guaranteed to have. Even ads are to the point: Coke’s
tag line is “It’s very famous,” whereas Pepsi’s is “When they
don’t have Coke,” and a sign in front of a nursing home screams
“A sad place for hopeless old people.”
As the movie begins, Mark is being fired from his job as a
producer of historical narrative-type films about the 13th
century. Seems his work, detailing the Black Plague, is just
too depressing. Coworkers played by Tina Fey and Rob Lowe
casually inform him that working with him has been among their
worst life experiences, and they’ve always hated him. It’s
amazing that he’s able to rebound with a blind date with Anna,
but as a helpful waiter observes, it’s clear that she’s way
out of Mark’s league. Things change when, on a sudden impulse,
Mark lets slip a lie, resulting in a financial windfall. Emboldened
by his discovery that untruths can be beneficial, he weaves
a stunning vision about the afterlife to a dying woman, whose
nursing staff are so moved that they begin to spread the word
about Mark’s messiah-like pronunciations. Suddenly, everybody
on earth wants to hear what Mark has to say, buying into it
even when he proclaims that the secret to the afterlife is
printed on Pizza Hut boxes. He informs somebody that he’s
black, and the guy responds, without missing a beat, “I always
knew it.”
Fame and fortune find Mark, but he still can’t score with
Anna, who asks him if his newfound status changes his genetic
makeup. The movie, which is uneven at best, plays fast and
loose with the Hollywood staple of the sloppy good-guy loser
winning the impossibly gorgeous and accomplished girl, but
we’re left to wonder why in the world Mark would still want
somebody so vapid and overly concerned with appearance. The
Invention of Lying is an uneasy melding of Jim Carrey’s
Liar Liar and Bruce Almighty, as it moves its
central premise into the area of religious satire, culminating
in Mark’s image replacing that of Jesus on the cross. One
wishes that the immensely appealing Gervais would have stuck
to the satire and wicked black humor, rather than muddy the
waters with the romance. Given that nearly all of the characters
in the movie are highly unlikable, including Anna (although
Garner is dead on), it’s a strange decision. In the end, the
uneasy pairing of cynicism and sentimentality that make up
The Invention of Lying is its downfall.
—Laura
Leon
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