Film Is a Battleground #13: Life Is Full of Disappointments (Million Dollar Baby, The Village, Napoleon Dynamite, My Life Without Me, 13 Going on 30)

MILLION DOLLAR BABY (in theaters)
THE VILLAGE (on DVD)
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (on DVD)
MY LIFE WITHOUT ME (on DVD and cable)
13 GOING ON 30 (on DVD and cable)

MILLION DOLLAR BABY (Clint Eastwood, 2004)
* (Has redeeming facet)

With the exception of the failed atmospherics of MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, Clint Eastwood has followed his masterpieces UNFORGIVEN and A PERFECT WORLD with a series of unpretentious commercial genre films that, for all they lack as a whole, contain wonderfully sublime scenes.

Eastwood has cast MILLION DOLLAR BABY with his usual collection of outstanding character actors put to unexpected use (Jay Baruchel as a slightly retarded gym rat from Texas?) but Paul Haggis’ script leaves them, and Eastwood, stranded. The relaxed camaraderie of the ensembles present in SPACE COWBOYS, TRUE CRIME, and MYSTIC RIVER is absent here. The anecdotal scenes never develop any resonance stuck between dry stretches of exposition and speeches that baldly state the film’s themes.

The easy grace of Eastwood’s mise-en-scene and montage is still apparent, but neither is put to any purpose. The film gives a more superficial treatment to large moral issues than did MYSTIC RIVER. That film’s bleak moral vision upset me because it grew organically from a precisely detailed physical world. There was a horrifying realness to the nihilism.

In contrast, MILLION DOLLAR BABY exists in some weightless realm unteathered to any reality. The film soft-peddles its hard-boiled elements and lacks the courage to embrace its melodrama. Eastwood’s THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY worked because neither he nor Meryl Streep condescended to the material. By engaging their talents they elevated the doggerel. Eastwood’s performance here lacks his usual decent gravity. He cops a series of crotchety poses precluding the audience from experiencing the emotional depths he attempts to access in the film’s final section. This film is no less a well-made, tossed-off record of playing dress up than Soderbergh’s OCEAN’S ELEVEN and TWELVE.

THE VILLAGE (M. Night Shyamalan, 2004)
* (Has redeeming facet)

You’ll find no greater admirer of UNBREAKABLE than me (my preferred reading of the film being that it is a guilt-inspired fantasy of redemption in the moment preceding death). The first two-thirds of SIGNS matched the power of UNBREAKABLE and suggested that Shyamalan might rival Michael Mann for explorations of masculinity coming from the science-fiction rather than crime end of the genre spectrum. Then aliens showed up and the audience was asked to take them as seriously as a husband and father’s crisis of faith following the death of his wife. The denouement of SIGNS ruined a potentially great film and undermined the finest performance of Mel Gibson’s underrated career.

At his best, M. Night Shyamalan deals with conflicts between faith and reason. His films have drawn comparisons to Kubrick and Spielberg (I think he’s somewhere between a sci-fi Michael Mann and Paul Schrader with more talent), but to me the most obvious influence on Shyamalan is Cronenberg’s THE DEAD ZONE. Even more than his previous films, Shyamalan attempts, in THE VILLAGE, to create the sense of temporal and physical dislocation that makes THE DEAD ZONE simultaneously strange and compelling.

Unfortunately, THE VILLAGE is only a mediocre “Twilight Zone” conceit stretched to feature-length, lacking even a good first two-thirds. The aftermath of catastrophe engendered quests of discovery in Shyamalan’s earlier, better films. Here it engenders retreat. Thematically, this contrast might be rich with meaning, but Shyamalan forgoes exploring that in favor of making the catastrophic event this film’s revelatory twist.

Said twists are the great MacGuffin of Shyamalan’s oeuvre. Widely discussed and lauded, they are, with the exception of the technically impressive but unaffecting THE SIXTH SENSE, the weakest elements of his films. The literal presence of aliens ruined the poetry of SIGNS, the comic book come-to-life finale in UNBREAKABLE necessitated an alternate (though defensible) reading so as not to undermine the disquieting inspiration of the preceding two hours, and the twist in THE VILLAGE both lacks shock value and makes one wish Shyamalan had dealt with the issues the re-defined premise suggests just before allowing the credits to roll. The story of THE VILLAGE, once all is revealed, holds theoretical interest. As in 21 GRAMS, however, the filmmaker shoehorns a premise into a previously successful design, thus allowing the interest to dissipate through a needlessly complicated unfolding.

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (Jared Hess, 2004)
0 stars (Has no redeeming facet)

A pastiche of elements lifted from Todd Solondz, David Lynch, Wes Anderson, and Richard Kelly’s DONNIE DARKO (itself heavily indebted to Lynch) reduced to sophomoric sketch comedy proportions, NAPOLEON DYNAMITE is the inverse of great, recent art about adolescence (DAZED AND CONFUSED, RUSHMORE, “Freaks and Geeks”). NAPOLEON DYNAMITE encourages its audience not to identify with its characters’ awkward discomfort but rather to keep them at arm’s length, laughing at and disengaged from a very bourgeois idea of a freak show.

This film’s sensibility is closest to Solondz’s. I find his films uneven because of a bitter overeagerness to be transgressive. NAPOLEON DYNAMITE never takes such terrible, self-destructive risks. Tame in both thought and execution, NAPOLEON DYNAMITE’s popularity seems destined to unleash a flood of third-generation dupes as depressingly lifeless as the Tarantino imitations which polluted the late 1990s.

MY LIFE WITHOUT ME (Isabel Coixet, 2003)
* (Has redeeming facet)

Sarah Polley contributes her great talents and innate complexity to a mediocre literary adaptation that would be deeply offensive if not for her presence in the underwritten lead role. Her character’s decision to hide the fact that she’s dying from everyone in her life demonstrates a capacity for great selfishness and a desire to manipulate lives both on this Earth and from Beyond that Coixet seems unwilling to explore. Thankfully for the audience, Polley is incapable of doing anything simply, and though the supporting characters are defined exclusively by their complete devotion to her (with the exception of Deborah Harry, whose motherly devotion lies beneath a hard surface earned by a life of disappointment), some fine actors (Scott Speedman as her husband; Mark Ruffalo as her lover; Julian Richings as her doctor; Amanda Plummer as her kooky co-worker; Alfred Molina as her absent, imprisoned father) do what they can to elevate the thin material.

13 GOING ON 30 (Gary Winick, 2004)
* (Has redeeming facet)

When I was single I tended to spend my weekend nights watching films on pay cable that I hadn’t seen yet because I was concerned about being seen renting them. So it was with nostalgia I tuned in 13 GOING ON 30 last Saturday. And, yes, I’m terribly self-involved.

A cut-rate BIG that betters Winick’s previous film, TADPOLE (a cut-rate RUSHMORE), simply on the basis of being watchable. Jennifer Garner’s unthreateningly cute and reasonably charming, Judy Greer and Mark Ruffalo, both watered-down for the family audience, add a little spice and nobody wasted a lot of time thinking through the logistics of the time-travel gimmick.

I can’t distinctly remember anything about it, but unlike NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, I didn’t want to punch anyone associated with its making. I think that counts for something.

Click here to read the full post with comments

Film Is a Battleground #12: Iced In (American Splendor, Personal Velocity, High Roller)

The rare occurrence of severe winter weather left me stranded at home for January's final weekend. I watched some movies.

AMERICAN SPLENDOR (on cable and DVD)
PERSONAL VELOCITY (on cable and DVD)
HIGH ROLLER: THE STU UNGAR STORY (on cable)

AMERICAN SPLENDOR (Robert Pulcini & Shari Springer Berman, 2003)
** (Worth seeing)

For the first hour or so, AMERICAN SPLENDOR’s ambitious mix of biopic, literary adaptation, documentary, and animation admirably captures Harvey Pekar’s worldview. Pekar can’t imagine living happily in a world that makes sense. By accepting and cataloging his own eccentricities (without romanticizing or mythologizing them) in the autobiographical “American Splendor” comic books Pekar re-casts himself as the center of a particular, peculiar world, one that most resembles a 1970s, rust-belt version of Fred Allen’s radio show.

The film loses its way when it attempts to recreate Pekar’s brief exposure in the mainstream media world as a semi-regular guest on “Late Night with David Letterman.” Pekar’s reasons for returning to the Letterman show, where he served as an eccentric straight man (presumably allowing Larry “Bud” Melman a night off) are vague, thus softening the impact of his on-air diatribe against GE that ended his participation with Letterman. Because we don’t know what drew Pekar to do the Letterman show repeatedly (he claims it was only for the money), we can’t understand why he rejects the program in such a passive-aggressive, public manner. The directors become more interested in impressing the audience with the mixture of on-air archival footage and backstage re-enactments featuring Paul Giamatti as Pekar and Hope Davis as his wife, Joyce Brabner. Unfortunately, the diatribe itself features the film’s most awkward staging. GE and/or Letterman wouldn’t allow use of the footage of Pekar’s final appearance so Giamatti is forced to deliver the rant into the vacuum of a Letterman impersonator. It’s the only moment where his performance falters.

It’s as if the filmmakers shy away from commenting on Pekar’s exposure in the mainstream media as a way to avoid acknowledging the parallels between the Letterman appearances and their own project. That’s a shame because both Pekar the man and Pekar the artist are interesting enough figures to carry an entire movie. Pulcini and Berman’s audacious attempt to integrate both of those possible movies into a single framework works exceedingly well until it threatens to reveal something of them, though the manner in which they ultimately fail further serves to illustrate Pekar’s unique talent.

PERSONAL VELOCITY (Rebecca Miller, 2002)
* (Has redeeming facet)

Rebecca Miller’s admirable attempt at creating worthy roles for talented character actresses falls victim to the too-neat, MFA quality of the three stories she adapted for the film. A failing the film accentuates by providing the most redundant use of voice-over since ME, MYSELF, AND IRENE.

“Delia” features the excellent Kyra Sedgwick in title role and is the most compelling of the three stories which makes the deflating, sub-Carver ending all the more disappointing. The second story, “Greta,” has a wistful comic energy. Parker Posey even at her most still seems on the edge of mania. Watching her, one gets the sense that being polite takes great effort. The story benefits from that tension only to squander it completely when the narrator explains the final scene lest the slower members of the audience fail to be impressed by the neatness of Miller’s conceit. The final story, “Paula,” pulls the unconnected stories together tenuously. We learn that all three stories take place at the same time, but the revelation adds no meaning. Like the Annie Ross/Lori Singer sections of SHORT CUTS, the story used to link the other stories houses little more than leftover ideas, thus lacking any inherent reason to exist.

HIGH ROLLER: THE STU UNGAR STORY (AW Vidmer, 2005)
0 stars (Has no redeeming facet)

Stu Ungar was a card playing prodigy. He was also a degenerate gambler and drug addict. Rumor and legend of his prodigious talents, appetites, and desperation overshadow the known facts of his life. Best known to the general public from his appearance in A. Alvarez’s The Biggest Game in Town, Ungar should be both a great subject for a film and a great role for an actor. In this film he’s neither. There is the consolation that this film (unlike Barry Sonnenfeld’s GET SHORTY travesty) will likely be little-seen and won’t preclude a better, bolder attempt at Ungar’s life.

I spent part of the ice storm watching early Sopranos episodes. Even in those rich surroundings, Michael Imperioli stands out as a talented and compelling actor. One wouldn’t know that from Vidmer’s film. His script sanitizes Ungar and his mise-en-scene is lifeless. Imperioli is left adrift.

Click here to read the full post with comments