 |
| This
is not a couple: (l-r) Firth and Moore in A Single
Man. |
Too
Perfect
By
Laura Leon
A
Single Man
Directed
by Tom Ford
Yes, that Tom Ford, the longtime creative director
for Gucci and a revered fashion designer in his own right.
Dipping his virgin toes into the murky pool of moviemaking,
and choosing as his material the book that Edmund White described
as “the first truly liberated gay novel in English,” is a
huge step, but the resulting product, A Single Man,
is a stylized, visually stunning feast owing as much to Look
fashion spreads from the Camelot era as it does to any serious
study of filmmaking. Ford does channel Pedro Almodovar, notably
in a scene in which the title character, George (Colin Firth),
has a conversation with a young hustler (Jon Kortajarena)
posed against a backdrop of a billboard-sized ad for the movie
Psycho. Janet Leigh’s bulging eyes, her mouth frozen
in a silent scream, tinge an already sexually fraught proposition.
While it may not be overly subtle, it’s a nice touch.
We first encounter George floating—or is he flailing?—in water
the color of green marble. Then he’s a silent figure intruding
upon a hoary landscape, in which a man and a dog lay dead
in a pool of crimson blood. George bends over to tenderly
kiss the dead man’s lips, whereupon we flash forward to now
(well, 1962), and he’s waking in a cold sweat, a sense of
panic enveloping him as he realizes that he must “get through
the goddamn day.” An efficient and thorough toilette, a crisp
breakfast, and then . . . nothing, as he contemplates the
minute hand of the clock, in preparation of going to his job
as a college literature instructor. George’s near inability
to focus on the task at hand is contrasted with sunny flashbacks
to his relationship with Jim (the guy in the snow), scenes
that Ford presents as one-dimensionally idyllic. He contrasts
such over-the-top joy with a brilliantly photographed scene
in which George, driving past the neighbors in slow motion,
notices the cracks beneath the surface of domestic contentment.
The wife (Ginnifer Goodwin), smilingly cajoles her tribe of
kids until, interrupted by a clearly disdainful and disapproving
hubby in a gray flannel suit, her smiles melt into anguish.
That George is heartbroken, that he’s a gay man closeted in
1960s suburbia and academia, are the foundation of A Single
Man, and from this foundation, Firth delivers a supremely
nuanced performance. Long known for his dashing portrayal
as Mr. Darcy, and more recently as the dreamy Brit of so many
chick flicks, Firth here is grave and profoundly damaged.
A scene in which Jim’s cousin surreptitiously calls George
to let him know what has happened conveys more than Jim’s
family’s sense of shame; Firth, just sitting in an armchair
with a phone to his ear, lets his face measure his shock,
horror, desperation and loss. It’s just a few minutes of screen
time, and it’s one of the most devastating scenes I’ve seen
this past year. Later in the movie, when George chats with
a college student (Nicholas Hoult) who may or may not be coming
on to him, he seems to almost lose some of the weight of loss
that’s been bearing on him, and we get a slightly looser man.
Firth’s performance is one of too few gifts, however, as A
Single Man hovers outside the realm of meaty storytelling,
preferring instead to arrange its characters in pitch-perfect
Jackie Kennedy dresses and gleaming modern interiors. Julianne
Moore, playing George’s longtime friend and sometime lover
Charlie, nails the style, and shares with George a sense of
not belonging in a world dominated by “traditional” couples,
but she’s more of a gimmick, a respected actress taking on
a minor role to add prestige and box-office pizzazz.
And yet, nothing much happens. Clearly, George has serious
business on his mind, but Ford is unable as director to focus
on the character’s inner battle, his longing for lost love
and his understandable need to close himself off, in more
ways than one, from the rest of the world. Because of this,
the ending, while true to the book, is, strangely, a complete
anticlimax. Again, Ford is new to this game, and while he
needs to learn a whole lot about pacing and integrating characters
with their backgrounds, he wisely lets Firth do his own thing,
and that alone makes this a must-see.
Sad,
Sad, Sad
The
Lovely Bones
Directed
by Peter Jackson
The
screen bursts into color as fantastic imagery flashes before
us. A flock of birds lands on a bare tree, becoming leaves.
Purple mountains rise; swirling brown leaves blot out the
horizon; deep blue seas rage; and teenager Susie Salmon (Saoirse
Ronan) watches it all in stunned, beatific wonder.
Susie Salmon, the protagonist of this adaptation of Alice
Sebold’s popular novel The Lovely Bones, is dead. But
she’s not ready to leave Earth behind for the glories of Heaven,
so she’s marooned in an “in-between” where all she can do
is observe.
She’s dead from the opening scenes of the movie. We see her
in flashback, with her loving parents Jack (Mark Wahlberg)
and Abigail (Rachel Weisz), sister Lindsay (Rose McIver) and
brother Buckley (Christian Thomas Ashdale)—and her killer,
neighbor George Harvey (Stanley Tucci, a makeup-encrusted
grotesque).
Harvey lures Susie into a trap. Precisely because we know
she isn’t going to get away, the tension and dread are unbearable—up
to a point. Understandably, director Peter Jackson spares
us the worst; unfortunately that decision mitigates the earlier
effect, and the abject horror of Susie’s fate.
It’s no surprise that Jackson is dramatically rusty: He’s
spent the last decade with orcs and monkeys. The central event
of The Lovely Bones is the rape and murder of a teenage
girl, which is, to say the least, a big cinematic problem.
And he doesn’t solve it.
It doesn’t wreck the central conflict of the story, however,
which is the unmaking and reassembling of Susie’s family,
and Susie’s own path to understanding.
Jackson spares us the special effects on the former, and lets
his actors take center stage. Wahlberg and Weisz are both
touching, the former for the desperation with which he invests
his character, the latter for her growing, and subtle, disaffection.
Susan Sarandon shows up as grandma, a strong and comic life
force with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Ronin’s Susie, however, is trapped in Jackson’s special-effects
phantasmagoria, and the technological bells and whistles stand
in nicely for her “spiritual problems.”
While a lot of the visual pyrotechnics seem arbitrary, they’re
effective. And Jackson manages one devastating, virtuoso sequence
in which Susie sees all of her murderer’s other victims. Mention,
too, must be made of the music: Recycling Brian Eno music
from the 1970s was a brilliant idea.
The
Lovely Bones works as well as it does, though, because
of Ronin’s performance. She makes a character that’s not flesh
and blood anymore all too human.
—Shawn
Stone
Biblical
Distortions
The
Book of Eli
Directed
by the Hughes Brothers
January
is the strangest time at the multiplex. In with the leftover
holiday-season blockbusters and Oscar bait, there’s usually
a glut of films that are too weak in star- and/or buzz-power
to fly against the big December guns, and superstar vehicles
aiming to do clean-up business during the weak season. The
Book of Eli falls firmly into the latter camp: a name-above-the-title,
post-apocalyptic actioner designed to cash in on a market
that’s obviously lacking in post-apocalyptic actioners. Sarcasm?
Indeed. But it’s anybody’s game until the next Will Smith
film drops.
The Hughes Brothers’ first film since 2001’s From Hell
is a strange film for a strange time. Denzel Washington stars
as Eli, a lone traveler in a desolate world where ash falls
like tickertape against a perpetually bright, gray sky. His
mission is to “go west” and deliver the book he carries in
his pack: the last known copy of the King James Bible, all
others having been destroyed after the apocalypse “30 winters”
ago. Along the way he comes upon a town cobbled together from
what appears to be the remains of an Old West retail district,
where a man named Carnegie (Gary Oldman) holds sway. Carnegie
is in search of this lost bible because “it’s a weapon” he
can use to control minds, to expand his empire. Carnegie finds
that Eli bears what he is seeking, he sends forth the young
Solara (Mila Kunis) to tempt the new visitor. But lo, Eli
“don’t play,” and the girl follows him as he continues on
his path. Kunis threatens to be the picture’s Achilles’ heel;
she seems terribly miscast in her early scenes, but adjusts.
For all the muddled mess this film could have been, Eli
is just a road movie with the occasional decapitation. Despite
broad attempts at social commentary—there’s nothing remotely
metaphorical about the main characters’ names—it’s quite conventional.
You’ll pick up on a dozen familiar references, everything
from The Road Warrior and Raiders of the Lost Ark
to I Am Legend and 300 and Zombieland.
The Bible stands in for any other Holy Grail-type treasure;
Oldman is a stock evil genius type, however well-acted; cannibals
and zombies are more or less interchangeable. You’ve seen
it all before, and you’re aware of this from the very first
frame.
But here’s the Hughes Brothers’ big coup: You may actually
find yourself wanting to see Eli again. Because watching
scenery gobblers like Washington and Oldman go nose-to-nose
is the reason we go to the multiplex in the first place. Because
the cameos from Tom Waits and Malcolm McDowell give the film
a lift when it needs it most. Because, just when you think
you’ve seen it all before, the brothers Hughes deliver some
of the most stylish battle sequences you’ll ever see, including
a one-shot standoff scene in which the camera moves in and
out of a house several times before going straight up the
barrel of a gatling gun. And because the film’s last-act reveal
is on par with The Sixth Sense or The Prestige.
—John
Brodeur
|
Site
Search 
