Film Is a Battleground #3 (Son Frere, Starsky and Hutch, Buffalo Soldiers)

originally published August 6, 2004

SON FRERE (on DVD)
STARSKY AND HUTCH (on DVD)
BUFFALO SOLDIERS (on DVD and cable)

SON FRERE (Patrice Chereau, 2004)
**** (Masterpiece)

Following the dark sprawl of THOSE WHO LOVE ME CAN TAKE THE TRAIN, Patrice Chereau attempted to make a similarly penetrating film on a smaller scale. The resultant effort, INTIMACY, wasn’t a bad film. It featured brave performances by Mark Rylance, Kerry Fox, and Timothy Spall and, because it was in English and dealt with heterosexual relationships, it got shown in more theaters than any of Chereau’s films, save QUEEN MARGOT.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting the largest possible audience to see your film as long as that desire doesn’t dictate what film you make. Despite my auteurist tendencies, I understand the amount of compromise (with producers, cast, and crew) inherent in so collaborative an art form. I don’t wish to speculate as to Chereau’s motives for making INTIMACY. He has no reason to answer to me. However, Chereau has made four films in the last ten years. Two of those films, the royal period piece QUEEN MARGOT and the explicitly heterosexual INTIMACY have received theatrical distribution and home video promotion. The other two films, THOSE WHO LOVE ME CAN TAKE THE TRAIN and SON FRERE, were released to one screen combined, and, though they are available on DVD, have not been promoted in such a way that one might stumble upon them. Which is a serious shame as they are two of the best films made anywhere in the world in the last ten years.

SON FRERE concerns two brothers, one of whom is dying. Chereau shows the events of their re-connection, not necessarily their reconciliation, achronologically. The sequence of events, skipping back and forth over the course of a few months, flows emotionally from peak to valley. Witnessing the moments of bickering, impatience, and half-remembered slights is never jarring or enervating as in 21 GRAMS. Chereau jumbles the chronology to prevent the story’s melodramatic elements from dominating the proceedings. He’s not interested in making a weepie, though he may make the viewer weep. He withholds moments and information (the dying brother’s disease is never named) not as sleight-of-hand but as part of an insistence that both his characters and his audience understand that death is a universal element of humanity. Death and disease impacts all lives: gay brother, straight brother, mother, father, doctor, nurses, and lovers both male and female. To limit the exploration of death to this man or these causes would drain the film of its power.

It’s suggested that the brothers’ denial of the reality of death has played a key role in their dislocation from their family, colleagues, and lovers and that, by accepting the fixed parameters of life they create first a filial bond based on this understanding, which grows to envelope those they earlier only purported to love. This grace-like quality sneaks up on the viewer, only revealing itself when uninvolved outsiders ask questions regarding both brothers’ behavior at the time of one’s death.

Chereau and his DP Eric Gautier made wonderful use of the dark, wet settings and endless supply of key characters in THOSE WHO LOVE ME CAN TAKE THE TRAIN. The shots in SON FRERE set mostly in light, sterile places are more specific, yet the frame remains open and accommodating to the supporting characters that fill out and enrich the brothers’ world. This visual style, specific, yet open suggests Minelli’s mise-en-scene re-imagined in the modern terms of zoom lenses and a hand-held camera.

SON FRERE provides an antidote for the disappointment of HBO’s production of ANGELS IN AMERICA. Well acted though it was, the film required a greater talent than Mike Nichols to complete the transition from both stage to screen and from the last decade of the 20th Century to first decade of the 21st Century. ANGELS seemed simultaneously timeless and dated. This lack of specificity limited its scope and dampened its emotional impact. SON FRERE, despite its short running time and small cast of characters, offers the bracing immediacy of the original, stage version of ANGELS IN AMERICA. It makes a specific, queer story universal.

STARSKY AND HUTCH (Todd Phillips, 2004)
* (Has redeeming facet)

Though it never scales the comedic heights of OLD SCHOOL’s best moments, STARSKY AND HUTCH does a better job of integrating its comic set pieces within a structured plot. The cast’s relaxed performances keep the film buoyed despite this excess of professionalism.

OLD SCHOOL was a mess, but it was really funny. STARKSY AND HUTCH suffers from being too faithful to its source material. Its plot could be lifted directly from an old episode. I don’t think many people watched the TV show for its story. Its appeal rested almost entirely on violence and banter. There’s certainly plenty of the later between Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller and to a lesser extent between villain Vince Vaughn and his sidekick, Jason Bateman.

Like THE BIG BOUNCE, George Armitage’s Elmore Leonard adaptation which also starred Owen Wilson, STARKSY AND HUTCH creates the atmosphere of a cool, tossed-off film but fails to deliver the goods. It’s just diverting enough to make one disappointed that it isn’t very good.

BUFFALO SOLDIERS (Gregor Jordan, 2003)
0 stars (No redeeming facet)

Its release delayed for almost two years as the U.S. Army resumed operations as an active military force, BUFFALO SOLDIERS, is just now making it to pay cable. The film proves not be a victim of corporate timidity but rather a cynical, small-minded film that flatters itself as a military satire. Made up entirely of bits lifted from CATCH-22, M*A*S*H, and STRIPES, the film offers little humor and no insight into military life. It denies even its putative heroes any humanity. Dullards and simpletons are exploited and manipulated by selfish individualists. It’s the worldview of an incurious teenager who mistakes his narcissism for wisdom. At least the talented cast (Joaquin Phoenix, Anna Paquin, Ed Harris, and Scott Glenn) escapes with their dignity intact.