Home Cinema
by Leonard Heldreth

Laughter repeats as Best Medicine
      The films this month are a mixed group--a raucous romantic comedy, a literary romantic comedy mystery, an exquisitely photographed tragedy of fathers and sons, and an "indie"-style film by one of Hollywood's biggest directors.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Big Fat Greek Wedding was the success story of 2002, the surprise independent film that made more money than many potential Hollywood blockbusters. Nia Vardalos, a graduate of Chicago's Second City comedy group, wrote a one-woman show about how she and her husband-to-be fell in love and about the repercussions from her family when they discovered she intended to marry a non-Greek. Rumor is that Tom Hanks' wife saw the show and called it to his attention, and he was able to come up with the financing and serve as producer of the film.
   The story is a comfortable mix of familiar patterns. It's an ethnic comedy, and whether it's Monsoon Wedding in India, Cher in Moonstruck or any other ethnic comedy, the elements are predictable, although each has its own variation and embellishment.
   The father, Gus Portokalos (Michael Constantine), throws a fit whenever he thinks about his eldest daughter not being married, but approaches apoplexy when he thinks she might marry a non-Greek. The mother, Maria (Lainie Kazan), manipulates the father (as all ethnic mothers seem to do), and defuses the conflicts between father and daughter.
   She also seems to be responsible for keeping at least one of the family businesses running, a restaurant named "Dancing Zorba's." Then there's the Cinderella story, in which dowdy, frumpy, horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing Toula Portokalos (Vardalos) is transformed by some designer clothes, contact lenses, good makeup and an upbeat personality into the sort of woman who would attract Ian Bennett (John Corbett of Northern Exposure and Sex & the City) enough that he would put up with her crazy family.
   The film has many laughs. They range from chuckles (the mother manipulating the father) through language jokes (the father explaining all works based on their hypothetical Greek origins and the son-in-law's inadvertent obscene comments while trying to speak Greek) to physical comedy (the two scenes in the travel agency).
   Many critics deplored the latter, but I thought they were among the funniest things in the movie. Then there's the ongoing joke in which the father believes a spray of Windex will cure anything. The only joke that just didn't work for me was the crazy grandmother who kept running away. Overall, it's harmless fun as the film builds, like Monsoon Wedding, to the wedding extravaganza.
   The acting is solid all across the cast, with Vardalos, Bennett, Constantine and Kazan carrying most of the weight; Andrea Martin is also fine as an aunt who loves to talk about her ailments. The sets, photography and direction are competent, and Vardalos has transferred her material from stage to screen with success. My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a movie to be enjoyed when you're tired, don't feel like thinking much but want to be entertained.

   

   

Possession
Despite the title, Possession is not a horror film, and it has nothing to do with demonic possession. Rather, it's two parallel love stories, each with some comedy, structured around a literary mystery involving two nineteenth-century poets.
   Anyone who has ever wondered whether Shakespeare wrote all of the plays attributed to him, or who the "Mr. W. H." or the dark lady of Shakespeare's sonnets were, will want to see this film. It is required viewing for all English majors or minors, even if they don't look like Gwyneth Paltrow or Aaron Eckhart.
   The film is adapted from A. S. Byatt's 1990 novel of the same name, which won the Booker prize and contained extensive parodies of Browning, Rossetti and Dickinson.
   Most of these, wisely, have been omitted from the film, which has all it can do to balance what is left. Neil LaBute, the director of the bitter and controversial In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, mellowed somewhat with Nurse Betty (although romance still was just an illusion from which individuals should free themselves), and with this film he clearly has moved into a mainstream mode.
   The plot begins when American research assistant Roland Michell (Eckhart) discovers a manuscript love letter in the papers of nineteenth century poet Randolph Ash (Jeremy Northam) while doing research at the British Museum for his mentor. Ash was held to be a model of fidelity to his wife, but Michell thinks the letter is to someone else, perhaps another poet, Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle), who happened to be in the right place at the right time to be the intended recipient of the letter. He contacts LaMotte expert and twice-removed niece, Maud Bailey (Paltrow), who discourages him, arguing that LaMotte was a lesbian who was discreet, but did not conceal her lover.
   He persists, she becomes interested and the two set off to see what other evidence they can find in the ancestral home. Pieces begin to fall into place indicating that a very real affair may have occurred between Ash and LaMotte. In the meantime Maud and Roland become interested in each other as they follow the footsteps and stay in the same bedrooms as the earlier lovers.
   The film cuts back and forth between the historical lovers and the contemporary ones in ways that link the various settings; e.g., the camera pans away from the earlier couple standing by a waterfall and finds the later couple standing only a few feet but a hundred and fifty years away.
   One of the major ideas of the book is that concepts of romance and love are blends of personal expression and the historical social structure in which individuals find themselves.
   The romance between Ash and LaMotte is full of passion, danger, angst and powerful feelings that they had difficulty controlling. Their desire to be in bed together is so strong that they carefully orchestrate and postpone it for the maximum effect, even when they have gone to a hotel in another town. By contrast, Roland and Maud reflect the rather anemic feelings of contemporary life: he has sworn off relationships, and she is having a tepid affair with another, rather dull Ash scholar.
   Even when they accidentally end up in bed together, they kiss and then their hang-ups get in the way. Ash and LaMotte dress flamboyantly, communicate by letter in elevated language, and are determined to live life to its fullest. Roland and Maud, who live in a "liberated" environment, obviously are so bored with their personal and professional lives that vicariously living a 100-year-old affair is the most exciting thing that has happened to them in quite some time. From one perspective, Roland and Maud learn how to love from Ash and LaMotte.
   Anyone familiar with Karel Reisz's 1982 film version of The French Lieutenant's Woman will see many parallels with Possession, including a green cape worn by LaMotte that is nearly identical to the one worn by Fowles' heroine, and several shots on a breakwater that are reminiscent of the earlier film. Possession is a more interesting film, for it asks more questions about the nature of male-female relationships within the cultural structure.
   Viewers who watch the film should wait until the very end, for a concluding scene explains some additional details that even the literary researchers do not find out.

   

Road to Perdition
Sam Mendes' second film, after the phenomenally successful American Beauty, also focuses on family relationships, but the emphasis is on fathers and sons. As the patriarch of the family says, "It's a natural law: Sons are put on this earth to trouble their fathers."
   Based on a graphic novel written by Max Allan Collins with art by Richard Piers Rayner, Perdition falls short of the epic sweep of the Godfather series but only because of the sheer historical range and enormous cast of the earlier films. The film's visuals rightfully won for Conrad L. Hall the 2003 Oscar for best photography.
   The plot has a tragic inevitability. John Rooney (Paul Newman) is a major crime boss headquartered in Rockland (Illinois) and Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) is his enforcer, a killer so effective that he is referred to as the Angel of Death. Sullivan also is surrogate son to Rooney, who took the orphan boy in and raised him. Their bond is demonstrated in a lovely scene in which they slowly peck out a duet on the piano together.
   Connor Rooney (Daniel Craig of Laura Croft, Tomb Raider) is John's blood son, a pompous hot-headed fool whose actions set in motion the tragic forces that threaten to destroy them all. Michael's sons, Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin), and Peter (Liam Aiken), also are loved by the elder Rooney. Annie Sullivan (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is not quite clear on what her husband does for Rooney, but she knows enough not to ask. Other major roles are Capone's lieutenant Frank Nitti (Stanley Tucci), and hired assassin McGuire (Jude Law).
   Michael Jr.'s attempt to see what his father does for Rooney leads to events that send the father and son on the road, first to Chicago to meet with Nitti, and then across the Midwest, robbing banks only of Capone money, to force Nitti to withdraw his protection from Connor Rooney and let Michael have his revenge. Complicating the chase is McGuire (Jude Law), a slimy hired killer who likes to take pictures of dead bodies, including those he has killed.
   All of this plays out against a Midwest landscape of snow and grey skies and black trees and pounding rain. The working out of the plot as people are forced to do what they have tried to avoid is like the working out of Greek tragedy.
   Someone impulsively does something stupid, and the ramifications keep increasing until corpses litter the stage. There's even a note with the same directions that Claudius sends with Hamlet to England; it also backfires. As mentioned earlier, the photography is beautiful, the scenes often lit like Hopper paintings and the depression-era settings recreated with meticulous detail. Minor characters, such as a bodyguard whom Sullivan encounters and has to kill, are developed much more than in most films. The violence, common as it is, often occurs just off frame or is seen only in reflection. One night on a deserted street with rain falling, a group of men are mowed down by a Thompson submachine gun, but no sound is heard. Only the flash of the gunfire and the falling of bodies.
   The acting is superb. Newman and Hanks, playing against type, have never been better, and Craig, Tucci and smaller roles are equally well done. The two boys are extraordinary. One could go on, but this is a film that needs to be seen to appreciate fully its tone, its photography, its painstaking detail, its superlative acting. Because Road to Perdition is restrained, carefully structured and painstakingly formal, some reviewers whined about its being "cold" and "distant," but the powerful emotions and strong acting of the entire cast made it a very moving experience for this viewer. I suspect those critics would be dismayed by anything less "feel good" than My Big Fat Greek Wedding. As a result, however, they would have missed one of the finest films of the year. It goes into my permanent collection.

   

   
Full Frontal
   Steven Soderbergh has directed some of Hollywood's biggest hits and Oscar winners -- Traffic, Erin Brokovich, Ocean's 11 -- and he also has directed films that are more like well-financed independent productions -- his first hit, sex, lies, and videotape; Kafka; and the recent The Limey and Solaris. Full Frontal is like an inexpensive (two million dollars) independent production; it lacks the traditional structure of his biggest hits and is clearly a fun project for him and the actors, the sort of pricey indulgence that studios permit big directors to carry out as long as their other films regularly are bringing in over $100 million at the box office. Neil Jordan follows the same pattern of alternating hits like Michael Collins with art projects like The Butcher Boy.
   Full Frontal has little to do with nudity--the title refers more to an exposŽ of movie-making, Hollywood inside jokes, and other "let-it-all-hang-out" spoofs of acting. The movie follows a group of people through a day as they go about their jobs, have problems, and prepare to attend a party for Gus (David Duchovny).
   Julia Roberts plays an actress named Francesca who is playing a character named Catherine in a movie in which she interviews Blair Underwood, who plays an actor named Calvin who is playing the character Nicholas being interviewed (I may not have the names in exactly the right order but I don't think it matters -- you can tell when Julia Roberts is in character because she wears a dark wig).
   This movie is shot in high definition video, so you can tell the actual movie that is being made from the movie about how it is being made. This section has something to do with a fake love note written on red paper that someone, maybe Catherine, slipped to Calvin to catch him off guard for the interview. To keep things interesting, Brad Pitt shows up (as Brad Pitt) to run across a busy intersection with Blair Underwood, who still is in character as Calvin (or maybe it's Nicholas). David Fincher, director of Seven, Fight Club and The Panic Room, shows up to run across the intersection, too, although it's not clear whether he's in character or not. Harvey Weinstein, head of Miramax Pictures, plays (surprise) a studio head, and Terrence Stamp crosses through the background of a couple of scenes looking pleased with himself.
   Another part of the plot has to do with Lee (Catherine Keener), a PR person who interviews prospective clients in unusual scenarios, and her husband Carl (David Hyde Pierce), a magazine writer who is fired because he drinks his beer out of a glass instead of out of the bottle. Carl slips his wife a farewell note written on the same red paper on which Nicholas's love note is written--is there a connection? Were they short of paper?
   Lee's sister Linda (Mary McCormack) is a professional masseur and one of the few people to meet the elusive Gus on the day of the party; she also is flying to Tucson to meet Ed (Enrico Colantoni), a man she knows only through their virtual meetings on the Internet. Ed is the writer and director of a minor theater production about Hitler called The Sound and the Fuhrer, and, together with Carl, the co-writer of Rendezvous, the movie that Roberts and Underwood are in. Nicky Katt plays an actor who plays Hitler in Ed's play; he is hilarious as a burned out Hitler, chatting on his cell phone while the Reich collapses.
   The way the movie was made is almost more interesting than the film itself. Soberbergh gave the actors a list of rules they had to follow while on the set. They drove themselves to work, they did their own makeup and provided their own costumes, they had no trailers to stay in, and they had to provide their own food. They were expected to ad lib part of their dialogue, and they were required to have fun. Minimal equipment was used, with Soderbergh doing most of the photography, part of it on digital videotape. The film was shot in twenty-one days.
   Full Frontal is an interesting and sometimes amusing exercise that keeps the viewer alert trying to follow what's going on, but if you're looking for fast-moving, slick entertainment, this isn't it. As virtually anyone could have predicted, the film got bad-to-mediocre reviews and died at the box office.
   Soderbergh was planning on taking a year off after completing Full Frontal and the much more interesting Solaris, but with two financial failures back to back, he decided to continue working. It's clearly time for him to direct another $100 million blockbuster.

--Leonard G. Heldreth

Editor's Note: All films reviewed are available on DVD or VHS from local stores.

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