>> Some people have the tendency to see politics in everything. It’s often there, yes - I’m sure you could dissect the politics of Dora the Explorer if you wanted to, and without Googling, I’m confident someone has - but it really does detract from just experiencing a work of pop art. [Not everything is politics politics politics - I recall hearing about the director of some piece of horror dreck, perhaps it was The Hills Have Eyes 2, arguing in a plea for relevance that his movie was a response to the Iraq War. Yeah, sure it was buddy.] Such is the case with the lovely Wall-E, which - while not the best thing Pixar has ever created (The Incredibles, Toy Story 2, and Ratatouille are better films - and Nemo is more beautiful) - is a lovely, excellent piece of cinema, and superior to just about anything else you’ll see this year from any studio.
Pixar’s gift for deft, precise, economical character delineation might have hit its apogee with Eve. It’s all in the tilt of the head and the shape of the eyes – the latter defined by ten blue lines. At first they have two or three shapes; by the end they’ve adopted the shape of Wall-E’s own eyes, indicating her own progression towards awareness and empathy. She is a hard plastic cipher at the beginning; by the end, she is Princess Charming. Literally. (That’s another Disney throwback reference I haven’t seen anyone else note.)
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Wall-E’s actions when he sits down, knocks his treads together and pats the seat next to him may, I suspect, have been vetted and discussed and considered at great length. (Or not.) It’s the most overtly human action he makes in the entire film – it’s not emulative of humans, it’s instinctive.
Eve’s vocalizations change here, if I recall correctly – there’s nothing in her previous utterances that reveal any emotion that’s not consistent with top-level programming. “No – no” is the moment that makes us see what Wall-E saw in her – and just to underscore the Pixar gift, the moment is understated. Prior to this she’s been an impatient professional.
Update: I noticed that more than a few online critics have taken the opportunity to rank the Pixar films now that there are enough of them to do so. Here’s my own Top Ten, FWIW - it clearly displays my Brad Bird bias:
10. Lifted (I know it’s a short)
9. A Bug’s Life
8. Cars
7. Toy Story
6. Finding Nemo
5. Wall-E
4. Monsters, Inc.
3. Ratatouille
2. Toy Story 2
1. The Incredibles
The internet is flooded with movie lists. Search for virtually any variety, any theme, any mishmash of tags and qualities and plot twists, and you can find a top 10, top 20, or even top 100 list. The best Top Films list, by my measure, can be found over at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They – but one of the reasons it’s the best is that it can shift and adapt with time, based on the shifting opinions of critics, writers, and the internet populace. Of course, I fully expect that in the ever more wiki-friendly existence of the future, where everyone’s an equal critic, Battlefield Earth will champion all such lists. So here’s one more static one, purely subjective in every way, of what I consider Ten Beautiful Films You May Not Have Seen.
There are plenty of beautiful films that are quite popular and successful – from the old black and white classics to the Technicolor epics to the modern masterpieces. Many of them are found on lists like this one, from the French magazine Cahiers du cinema.
I thought it might be useful, though, to consider a few films that probably won’t make it high on any list like that one – whether it’s because even if they’re visually impressive, they’re flawed in some obvious way, or have a script that can’t match their cinematography, or they’ve got some unforgivably irritating element that overwhelms the good in them. For the record, I think this describes just about every movie Guy Pearce has ever made – he had a good six films that I considered but rejected for this list, none of them because of him.
There are other beautiful movies that I considered and rejected – usually because they’re too popular (see: Godfather, The), too CGI or effects-heavy (see: Lord of the Rings – it’s great, but this is animation, not reality), nothing that’s only noir (I love dark movies, but something like The Third Man or Thief may be intense and powerful, but since that’s all they do, they can’t really qualify as visual beauty for what they don’t show), or so iconic that anyone who’s a student of cinema has already seen them (hence why there’s no Hitchcock on this list, nor any of the other old classics). Films that missed the cut for the aforementioned reasons include Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia, Ben Hur, Patton, The Natural, Night of the Hunter, The Big Sleep, Charade, Roman Holiday, Manhattan, Bullitt, The Getaway (Ali McGraw never looked better), Mystery of Rampo, Blade Runner, The Sand Pebbles, Chinatown, The Sting, Apocalypto, O Brother Where Art Thou, North by Northwest, Miller’s Crossing, Branagh’s Hamlet, The Abyss, Raging Bull, The Right Stuff, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Fountain, Sexy Beast, The Last Emperor, Empire of the Sun, George Washington, The Rules of the Game, Heat, Unforgiven, Dark City, The Painted Veil, Au Revoir Les Enfants, Breaker Morant, The Battle of Algiers, The Incredibles, The Mission, Layer Cake, La Roue, Napoleon, and Metropolis.
I had a hard time with The Life Aquatic, this blog’s namesake and perhaps the last good Wes Anderson film we’re going to get now that he’s actively declared war on the concept of plot (here’s hoping that’s not the case), but ultimately decided it was too much of a picture book. Besides, everyone’s seen it.
I struggled with Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America – but ultimately decided it’s too well known, you’d recognize all the people in it, and as wonderful as it is, there are so many other films that capture New York City.
And then there was the hardest one for me to cut of all, Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans – a gorgeous and underrated film which manages to be both the perfect chick flick AND the perfect guy movie all at once – I can see it now, the women walking out of the theater saying, “She threw herself over the edge – so sad, and so romantic!” as the guys say “Did you see that? He chopped that guy in half with that axe thing! It was awesome!” But it will make a prominent appearance on the next list I’m planning, and it was quite popular, so you’ve probably already seen it, too.
So that leaves us with these, in no particular order.
The New World
Just unbroken cinematic beauty, from the first note to the last. When they initially planned to film this movie, Terence Malick and his crew assumed they’d have to find somewhere remote, outside of the United States even – but on a lark, they decided to scout the Tidewater area, and took a trip up the Chickahominy. They ended up realizing that the location near Jamestown was largely unchanged. And so the forests you see are the forests they saw, give or take 300+ years.
Not everyone liked Malick’s film. But the people who liked it seemed to love it, too. I’m glad it has such a strong place in the heart of a few critics, like Jeffrey Overstreet, and I recall Ross Douthat loving it too (but his review, on the old American Scene blog appears lost to the sands of the unsearchable net). It reminds me, as it did him, of the old Robert Frost poem, The Gift Outright.
What’s more, I’ve felt on repeat viewings that the underlying story – the tale behind the gorgeously filmed surface of this movie (all natural light, almost all 65mm stock) – goes much deeper than you might think. The relationship with Pocahontas can be viewed as an allegory for the foundation of America. Bear with me now, it’s not as silly as it sounds: Comparing the personality types of the courageous risk-taking Discoverer in Colin Farrell’s John Smith and the steady, uninspiring, yet tough and reliable Farmer in Christian Bale’s John Rolfe, and you see the two personalities that made the nation possible – the explorer and the maker. Smith, the unreliable rascal whose fear and shady past motivated him to head toward the far reaches of the known sphere, discovers Pocahontas. But you cannot trust this man to build a country, to have the wherewithal to work the land, endure hardship, and make a life worth living in this new world – to be faithful, committed, and make something out of it all. Something like America.
The Searchers
I don’t think it’s all that pretentious to say that if you are an American film buff of any significant level, you’ll have seen The Searchers. Merely a modest commercial success in its time, the respect for this film, its influence and appeal have only grown, chiefly because of a change in understanding of a key relationship and plot point – never spoken of aloud, only implied.
Not the perfect western by any means – it plods and halts at points – this is nonetheless a movie of great, epic, expansive beauty. You must see this film, even if you skip all the others on this list.
City of God (Cidade de Deus)
You’ve probably heard of this one. City of God is tragic, ruthless, violent and unforgiving. Only one professional actor is in the whole thing – it’s all on the edge, and there’s no games in this thing. The youngsters that populate this tale are murderous and plotting, and you understand why they have the strength of will to run a profitable drug trade, if only for a few years.
Directed by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, the tales in this story are continued in City of Men, at least in spirit. But the original film is still the piece of moviemaking that will haunt you for days after you view it.
The Red Violin (Le Violon Rouge)
This is not a particularly successful movie. It tries to do too much – using a violin, its music, and its ownership as the major pieces in an across-the-ages plotline that is a tad ludicrous. The bodice-ripping tendencies of the second act – with the usually superb Greta Scacchi (if you can, dig up her excellent little turn as Lady Macbeth) and the “he’s better as a funny guy” Jason Flemyng – are laugh inducing. And the whole thing seems overwrought and gimmicky, sort of what you’d expect from a director who made his name doing Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould.
That said, the cinematography is flat out gorgeous at points. The use of color is brilliant, particularly in the flow of character-types through the ages, and the seamlessness of some scenes. The soundtrack, played by the brilliant Joshua Bell, will blow you away. Don’t think too hard about the story – just get swept away by the experience of a beautiful piece of modern cinema.
Barry Lyndon
I never really liked this as a movie – I confess, I don’t love post-black & white Kubrick as much as I should, I still feel like The Killing, Lolita, and Dr. Strangelove are just all-around more watchable and engaging films than 2001, Clockwork Orange, and Full Metal Jacket – but I swear, Barry Lyndon is just gorgeous to behold. John Alcott’s work on the film is the stuff of legend (as far as I know, this film still features the use of the biggest aperture in movie history).
It’s still kind of amusing that Ryan O’Neal got this part because he was considered a bigger star at the time than Robert Redford, so it’s the only way Kubrick could get the movie financed. Later, it would turn out that Kubrick offered the part to Redford anyway, only to be turned down. But O’Neal’s not the reason to see this. These beautiful scenes are.
While others may disagree, I truly believe this is the most visually appealing movie Kubrick ever made. And that’s something worth seeing.
Kagemusha
This had to be on here. Yeah, I know that Ran is a better movie – but the first time I saw Kagemusha is still clear as crystal. I’m still torn about which one deserves to be on this list, but I feel like Ran is more popular. Maybe I should just leave it at: see them both, and decide for yourself.
Ronin
Ah, a beautiful car chase movie – and not a stupid one, either. One of the best casts you’ll ever see onscreen at the same time: De Niro, Reno, Skarsgard, McElhone, and a total of three Bond villains – Bean, and Pryce. This movie has characters, yes – but it is all about the cars. Car chases in Bullitt are classic and American, car chases in The French Connection are blunt and urban, but car chases in Ronin are brilliantly varied and elegantly European.
The camera work in this film is excellent stuff, edgy but not overdone. Parisian cinematographer Robert Fraisse, who has a rather odd filmography, makes some excellent choices, elevating this piece far above the realm of the normal shoot-em up. And if this is the last adrenaline rush for De Niro, who hasn’t made a single good action film since (though I’ve got my hopes up about the Michael Mann-helmed Frankie Machine, due out in two years – that is, if he survives what looks like the very flop-worthy Righteous Kill), it’s a classic one.
This is Frankenheimer’s best cinematic work since The Train, and it’s got a pretty good story (albeit MacGuffin centered – but c’mon, even Hitchcock used that) with a great script, though I’m sure all the best parts are from the (uncredited) David Mamet edits. If you’re a guy, you’ve probably seen this already. If you haven’t: grow a pair and do it now.
A Very Long Engagement (Un long dimanche de fiançailles)
So let’s follow the car chase movie with snappy Mamet lines with a French romance war epic. But it absolutely deserves to be on this list. The trailer is here, but there’s a clip below that’s better for not having the “I’m the important voice trying to sell this to American audiences” voiceover.
I can’t say anything about this movie that does justice to it as a work of art. Just – watch a few scenes. You’ll see it. Oh, and: eat your heart out, Atonement.
Road to Perdition
For being the most profitable film on the list, this is not a great movie. Tom Hanks is poorly cast in it, and uncomfortable with the part of father/heavy. The kid is an irritation. Daniel Craig is one dimensional. Sam Mendes’ directing is decent, but not really that imaginative. It’s based on a comic book and feels like it. It is a cold movie, and a wet, wet movie – dripping with rain. If you want an Irish mob movie, see Miller’s Crossing.
But let me tell you – visually, it’s like watching Edward Hopper brought to life. Conrad Hall won the Academy Award for Cinematography – his first came for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). He was a genius. And this is just masterful.
For that fact alone, if this is Paul Newman’s last on-screen part, he can be proud of it. “There are only murderers in this room, Michael. Open your eyes. This is the life we chose. The life we lead. And there is only one guarantee—none of us will see heaven.”
Before the Rain (Pred Dozhdot)
This was the film that started me thinking about this whole concept, when the alert came across my watchlist that Criterion was releasing a newly restored version of Before the Rain on DVD (at last). I saw it years ago in a screenwriting class, and it amazed me at the time. Unlike some of the other films on this list, all aspects of this effort make for a worthy achievement.
It’s hard to make a film about ethnic conflict in the Balkans that speaks to the unending, self-perpetuating, and convoluted nature of these deadly clashes. It seems like so many of the locale-centered movies that you see in America today are in the same places – New York, Los Angeles, the same backgrounds, the same forests, the same hills – to the point where you can go see an average flick like Mission: Impossible 3, and you’ll spot the same bridge setups and Euro backgrounds you’ve seen in a hundred other movies. It’s almost comforting, like seeing the same set week after week on your favorite sitcom, nothing disturbed or out of place, and all the furniture undisturbed.
In a movie like Before the Rain, you may recognize all of one setting or location, and probably only one actor: Rade Serbedzija, the figure at the heart of the sad story. But the performances are complemented by a sense of scale and land that is memorable and striking, and the camera work here – for an inexperienced writer/director in Milcho Manchevski – is just an amazingly well-crafted thing, giving the viewer the impression that they are caught in an ever-swirling trap of time and land and culture. In real life at least, there is always an opportunity to break out of this whirlwind – but not in this film.
The interesting thing about tonight, in my opinion, is that nearly everyone who’s won so far has actually deserved it. That’s rare indeed.
Bardem and the Coen Brothers deserved both wins (and No Country will probably take Best Picture barring an upset). The Cotillard over Christie upset was unforeseen and really quite nice, especially because La Vie En Rose needed something like this to get wider distribution (I haven’t seen Away From Her - though I’ve read what it’s based on - yet while Christie’s a fine actress, she just doesn’t deserve two Oscars). Tilda Swinton absolutely deserved the supporting actress nod (she was the best part of the otherwise forgettable Michael Clayton) despite Christopher Orr’s dismissal over at TNR. And of course you already know what I think of Juno.
As a final note: despite being a movie lover, I just have to concede that this show doesn’t deserve to go on. It’s just become unwatchable at this point - I think the moment it died was the Hattie McDaniel Clooney speech - but it’s just an interminable fetish play much about how Hollywood wants to be viewed, as opposed to what it is. The jokes are tired, the setups are ridiculous, and the only way to watch it without politics is with the mute button. You could make Heidi Klum the host and stage it as a battle royale in a cage between old Hollywood and new and I’d still flip back and forth between it and NFL Network’s combine coverage.
Oh: and Harrison Ford is really old.
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For my own part, my viewed films in 2007: Michael Clayton’s a fine but ultimately forgettable film, loved Juno, liked There Will Be Blood, but No Country For Old Men absolutely deserves the Best Picture nod this year. Elizabeth: The Golden Age was a total trainwreck but with pretty costumes. Transformers was wicked awesome. 300 was overplayed but good. Live Free or Die Hard was surprisingly retro fun. Spider-Man 3 was meh. Ratatouille was another beautifully crafted Brad Bird work. Hot Fuzz was hilarious. In the Shadow of the Moon was touching. Eastern Promises was brilliantly old school. There have been way too many stupid boring films about Zodiac. Knocked Up was sweet. Amy Adams was cute in Enchanted. Superbad was McLovin. La Vie En Rose was gorgeous. Beowulf was about Beowulf the way that God of War is about Greek mythology, but it was still a great old Argonauts ripoff. The Simpsons Movie was nice. Harry Potter was Harry Potter. In the Valley of Elah had some good performances, but was predictable and blah. The Kingdom deserved more credit for what it aimed at. Waitress was decent. Oceans 13 is no longer guilty nor a pleasure. The Hitcher was really just an excuse to watch Sophia Bush kick ass. The Darjeeling Limited was the first Wes Anderson movie I actively hated. The Bourne Ultimatum was just like the other two but less entertaining. American Gangster was quality. 3:10 to Yuma was a good western that would’ve been better if it realized it was Tombstone and not Unforgiven.
I didn’t get a chance to see Rescue Dawn, Grindhouse, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Nines, Sunshine, or The Brave One. Have to catch them later.
The less said about Atonement - a movie as pointless and overrated as the book it was based on - the better.
>> Whatever you are doing, wherever you are, eat lunch at your desk today, and watch this gorgeous stop-motion short film. A reminder that the timelessness of this story is drawn from the fact that Peter is not afraid of the Wolf, because Peter is the Wolf.
Su-Chin: I’m having a little trouble concentrating. Juno MacGuff: Oh, well, I could lend you some of my atoral if you want? Su-Chin: No thanks, I’m off pills. Juno MacGuff: That’s good. I heard this one chick took like way too many behavioral meds and she went to the mall, ripped off all her clothes, dived into the fountain and was all like “ARGH I’M A KRAKKEN FROM THE SEA!” Su-Chin: I heard that was you.
There comes a point in every moviegoer’s life where you meet a character on the screen who is so real to you, so tangible, and so familiar, that you cannot help but fall in love with her right in that moment—as if running into an old friend for the first time in a long while in a public place, and feeling surprise and joy that this is not someone who just happens to look like that friend, but really them. The world has turned again, and here you are.Let me buy you a drink.
I can speak only for the men in the room who love movies, because I’ve never encountered a woman who felt this way—all the ones I know fall for actors or rockstars as people, and love them in all their roles after and cut out pictures of them from magazines or buy posters of them shirtless or kissing some girl, looking resolute or pissed off or just plain awesome.They say things like “In real life, I think Leonardo DiCaprio is a really good guy, he’s not just dreamy.” I guess some guys do that too—I’m sure, were she still alive, I could be content just watching Grace Kelly clean her ears—but even more than women, the ones I know fall for characters, regardless of the actress.It becomes one more item of comparison.So friends end up comparing the new girl to Anna Paquin from 25th Hour, or maybe she’s more like Kirsten Dunst from Elizabethtown, or maybe she’s Jordana Brewster from The Faculty, or maybe she’s Elizabeth Banks in every dang role she’s ever had.You get the idea: it’s a solid and immediately recognizable shorthand, and it’s easier to make this kind of recognizable comparison then talk about every quirk a woman has, since most guys don’t really want to hear about that anyway.I certainly don’t unless you’re buying the bourbon.
So maybe you, dear reader, will understand this, maybe you won’t.But if you do love films, and the characters in them born of screenwriter and actor and director, then you will understand what I mean when I say, without any qualm: I love Juno MacGuff.
I don’t consider myself a film buff.I haven’t honestly seen that many films older than the 1970s.I’ve seen a lot more of them than a lot of my peers, yes—but they all tend to be movies of a certain type, or with a famous director. I haven’t even scratched the surface of influential dramas or directors, leaning more toward the popular big names, creators like Hitchcock or Kubrick and talent like Stewart and Grant.When you’re talking foreign films, I’m almost a complete blank, with a few exceptions.I can’t analyze films the way some people can—I enjoy the good ones too much to pick apart what’s being done in them, as a director or an editor.When you get right down to it, I know more about Steve McQueen than Francois Truffaut, and I damn well like it that way. But never in all my years of watching films have I found a character who I recognized so well immediately, and felt so touched by in such a novella of a film.
[As a total aside: What I do have, I’ve discovered, is a slightly disturbing talent to recognize faces of minor character actors and That Guys—a few weeks ago, I recognized the daughter from Signs in a random preview, and the ref from Dodgeball (it’s truly a layered movie, as Ben Stiller says) on a trashy TV show, and ... it’s just odd, I know, but I retain that kind of totally useless information. It makes me good to have for six degrees of separation games, and basically just a useless meatbag at everything else.]
Anyway: as Colleen Carroll-Campbell pointed out recently, there were three amazingly pro-life movies in the space of the past year: Knocked Up, Waitress, and Bella.Having seen them all now, I can safely say they are all funny and genuinely sweet movies, and worth watching (for more on Judd Apatow’s work in particular, read Ross Douthat’s posts here and here).I say “amazingly” not because of the power of the films, but because they aren’t explicitly focused on being pro-life, but convey the basic anti-abortion tenet through good and well-told stories, with humor and occasional grace.
It’s important to note that being anti-abortion means just that in this context—not a statement about Roe, or government funding, or stem cells, or cloning, or anything else.It is anti-abortion in the way that those GE sonogram commercials are (and the party of death can’t even stand those!).It merely means accepting the idea that childbearing is a good thing—that the life growing in a womb is unique and real, a gift and not a curse—and that abortion is, on balance, a bad thing that should be avoided if at all possible.
This is not some rabid pro-life view, or at least is not presented as such—it is merely an idea that, despite NARAL’s best efforts, has overtaken the plurality of the American people and the majority of young people if the polls are to be believed: that abortion is a social ill at best, and should only happen in cases of rape, incest, or when a mother’s life is threatened.
Some of these came to light last summer, when a Newsweek article on the “fetal rights” movement pointed out that the latest reproductive technologies—providing, as they do, the ability to see embryos sooner and cultivating, as they do, an atmosphere in which pregnant women happily scrapbook those early ultrasounds—have created a real image problem for the pro-choice movement. As Kirsten Moore, the president of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, put it, the piece “kind of prompted us to realize, oh my God, our movement’s messages suck.”
Not everybody recognizes that truth yet. Despite what TNR argues in its pompous, dismissive tone, this movement toward favoring life marks a generational sea-change in how films deal with pregnancy as a storyline. Start with Cameron Crowe’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a film that hasn’t aged well generally, which came out the year that I was born, 1982: in it, abortion is an afterthought, taken for granted, with scars that do not last or haunt.In 1987’s Dirty Dancing—a stupid movie that I really, really hate, and I can’t stand the girls who just plain love it—the legendary back-alley abortionist rears his ugly head again, with dire results (that’ll learn ya, anti-Roe fascists).In 2000’s High Fidelity, abortion—while viewed as a negative, in general terms—is glossed over and discussed only in passing (this is a John Cusack comedy, after all). And as recently as three years ago, the most significant film about abortion to meet with critical success was the gung-ho abortionist-vindicating epic of 2004’s Vera Drake—and a host of other productions kept the pro-abortion drumbeat going in recent years, including The Cider House Rules, Citizen Ruth (come on Laura Dern, at least Teachers was watchable), and the If These Walls Could Talk mini-series.
If you asked me to name the most prominent pro-life scene in any major studio movie in 2005, I’d say it was probably in Godfather II, and you’re supposed to feel genuinely conflicted there, anyway. Not any more.
Now we have Knocked Up, Waitress, Bella and best of all, Juno.I can’t even communicate the kind of affection I feel for twenty-year-old Ellen Page’s character.I swear she reminds me of every girl I adored before the age of 18, quirkily smart and devilishly cruel and relentlessly funny, and with a warm goodness that radiated through in spite of the shell they built around themselves.That point she makes about the jocks—that they secretly crave “girls who play the cello and read McSweeney’s and want to be children’s librarians when they grow up” more than the skinny too-perfect forced-to-be-ditzy cheerleaders—is true of the ambitious political geeks, too.Of course, when I went to college, I found out those girls all turned into potheads working at the dull-ass radio station in the basement of the University Center and who had fickle, starved, conflicted hearts.But in this moment, at this age, I recognize Juno MacGuff as an old friend, and it hits me right in the chest.
That seems to be the case with Juno, the film in which a spunky teen (Golden Globe nominee Ellen Page) changes her mind about abortion after hearing about her baby’s fingernails. Inside the clinic, as Juno fills out the necessary forms, she suddenly becomes conscious of all the women waiting with her—nervously tapping their nails, clicking their nails, biting their nails. As the disparate sounds gel into a kind of heartbeat, Juno suddenly realizes her fetus is a human being.
When she bursts out of the clinic, a teen pro-life picketer outside cries, “God appreciates your miracle!” Astonishingly, the pivotal, life-affirming moment passes without a flicker of condescension.
I can’t offer anything more about the film that critics haven’t already said ten times over.The movie has met with the most critical success of any of this crop of intrinsically anti-abortion films—Roger Ebert actually chose it as his top movie of the year, astoundingly.So let me just say that I wish it, and all the young women who see themselves in Juno MacGuff, all the best that life—in all its challenges, tears, laughter and wonder—has to offer.
Juno MacGuff: [yelling through the house] Uh, dad? Mac MacGuff: Yeah? Juno MacGuff: Either I just wet my pants… or… Mac MacGuff: “Or”…? Juno MacGuff: Or… THUNDERCATS ARE GO!
>> I am amazed at how faithful the Coens are to the original text of No Country for Old Men, which is a pretty convoluted story in its own right. The dialogue is almost verbatim. The two areas where they part with the book noticeably are in the hotel room (anyone who’s seen it will know which scene I’m talking about), and in the order the events leading up to the end take place. They move the scene with young Mrs. Moss to later to emphasize its emotional impact (and they make it ambiguous with the cut, and the absence of a weapon, where as the book just says what happens). The ending has sparked some debate, among film buffs and others, but the point is still made: this is a fantastic and well-made film about living under the shadow of death, knowing what’s coming for us all, and finding it unavoidable, yet still living and going on. Absolutely what we’ve come to expect from the Coens. A simple example: when Llewellyn flees initially, chased by the crazed dog, he swims the river. Functionally, for the story, it’s his River Styx, the dog his Cerberus. It’s truly rare to see a film that echoes of Ecclesiastes and Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” all at once.
So one of the networks ran a package on the spate of recent war movies from Hollywood, most of them of distinctly anti-American thematic content, in which an interview with some film critic or other was introduced this way:
“This is not your father’s Hollywood, is it?”
Answer: “No. In the World War II era, war films were gung-ho patriotic. [blah blah blah]”
The interesting thing here is that they’ve got their generational notions all screwed up. They think themselves vibrant radicals, rebelling against a stale tradition. The reverse is true. In fact “your father’s Hollywood” is now the Hollywood of “Apocalypse Now”, “Full Metal Jacket” and even “Platoon” — very far from “gung-ho patriotic,” in short.
The stale tradition in Hollywood, friends, is anti-Americanism, and these nitwits in Hollywood are utterly innocent of what dreary traditionalist they have become. What would be really radical, really a vigorous revolt against an antique fashion, is unbashed patriotism in a movie.
It’s like that old Chesterton quip: “Defending any of the cardinal virtues today has all the exhilaration of vice.”
Paul sent this note along a few days ago. I’d been thinking about it a lot recently after seeing the starkly divided critical reaction to Peter Berg’s The Kingdom, a quality film that manages to say some important statements while telling what seems, on a surface level, like a typical action story. It bears more than a few similarities to Black Hawk Down, and it’s certainly worth seeing, despite what Anthony Lane said about it.
Somehow, the critics can’t seem to see an action movie that’s at all pro-America - even one that shows America’s leadership on the ground to be flawed and disorganized, one that shows how complex these situations truly are, and one where the true hero of a movie isn’t Jamie Foxx or Jennifer Garner, but a strong and stable Saudi policeman played brilliantly by Ashraf Barhom - without labeling it as jingoistic, or comparing it unfavorably to Rambo. This says a lot more about the critics themselves, I think, than the biases of the film.
Instead, the critics want the unfettered leftist claptrap that you’re going to have ample opportunity to see in the coming months. There’s the two Meryl Streep films (she’s the good liberal journalist in one, evil in the other) Renditionand Lions for Lambs, which previews seem to indicate consist primarily of straw men making ridiculous pro-war statements, only to be rebutted by the wise liberals, or scolded by Robert Redford (who suddenly got really, really old - he could still carry things in Spy Game, but looks worse than Paul Newman now). And then John Cusack will tug at our heartstrings in Grace is Gone, which is less about lecturing than finding inner peace after loss (and I’d bet it’s more successful than either of the others). And after all that, we’ve still got about a half-dozen indie films, followed by Body of Lies with Russell Crowe and Leo DiCaprio next year, another “the CIA screwed us all over and put us in this mess by being anti-communist” movie directed by Ridley Scott.
While I haven’t seen these films yet, the common factor here is simple and easily evident after reading any plot: these are polemical films, intended to preach, not intended to tell stories. It’s as ham-handed and predictable as the afternoon movie on Lifetime. Look, I don’t mind watching the occasional propaganda movie, from the left or right, if they’re actually good or even enjoyable movies. Regardless of the way your creation is judged for political reasons, at least make it good as art.
Of all of these sad attempts, the worst is an adaptation of a tragic true story, with Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon: In the Valley of Elah is getting the kind of critical praise and angry veteran response that you can expect for all of these other upcoming projects, with the added element of the father who still insists that his son, who after his return from Iraq was stabbed 33 times by fellow soldiers after a night of boozing, was killed for more complex reasons - despite the lack of any hard evidence to that effect.
Davis remains bitter, not only about the loss of his son, but toward the investigators and prosecutors in the case. He’s also a bit perplexed by the direction of the film, particularly when it deals with the four men accused of the crime.
“This wasn’t a case of PTSD,” [the father] insists, referring to post-tramatic stress disorder. “These guys had their motives for killing my son and it had nothing to do with them being kicked out of the Platinum Club.”
He continues to think that his son witnessed an event or events in Iraq that led to his death.
“He had to be silenced,” he said.
It’s sad to see Hollywood playing this game with this father’s emotions, but hey, we all know what gods they worship in that town.
A better question, and one worth asking, is this: What stories did Hollywood used to tell, and what stories does Hollywood deem worthy of telling now?
They tell the heroic story of Jimmy Carter. They tell the courageous story of the Howard Dean campaign, written by an ex-Dean staffer and starring Jake Gyllenhaal on Broadway, now headed to the silver screen with Leo DiCaprio, directed by George Clooney. Oh, and they tell about Charlie Wilson’s War - which sounds on its face like it’s going to be another “anti-communists got us into this” screed - but this one, of course, is about a liberal Democrat, so it’s certainly going to be more fair.
Maybe years from now, when the climate isn’t the way it is, they’ll get around to telling another story, buried in the papers, when the words of the critics have faded away, and the Medal of Honor still stands.
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