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Cinema
by
Leonard Heldreth
A closer look at some Academy Award nominees
All of the films this month were nominated for multiple Academy
Awards, and some won. Three of the films examine the effects of
doubt and guilt on their characters, while the fourth presents
the end of a professional athlete’s career.
Doubt
Although first staged in 2004, just after the church scandals
about sexual abuse became public, John Patrick Shanley’s
Pulitzer and Tony award-winning play is set in 1964, just after
the Kennedy assassination and when the Catholic Church was experiencing
the reforms of Vatican II and the nation was realizing the depths
of the Vietnam difficulties.
Certainty was hard to find at that time. The location is St. Nicholas
Catholic High School in the Bronx, which Mr. Schenley attended.
The author, also a veteran screen writer (Moonstruck) and director,
has adapted his play to film (shortening the title from Doubt:
A Fable) and directs.
Four main characters are involved in the conflict. Father Brendan
Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is the typical young Irish priest—intelligent,
shrewd, reliable and a strong believer in the church hierarchy
as well as the reforms of Vatican II. The principal of the school
is Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep), a narrow-minded, sadistic
nun who believes in the old ways and who does not hesitate to
use any means to consolidate and preserve her power. Caught between
these two is Sister James (Amy Adams), a young nun teaching at
the school.
The immediate problem is Donald Miller (Joseph Foster II), the
sole black student in the school. Serving as an altar boy, he
has been caught drinking the sacramental wine. Sister James mentions
to Sister Aloysius that Father Flynn has taken more interest in
Donald than circumstances would justify, in her opinion, and she
saw Father Flynn put an undershirt in Donald’s locker. Sister
Aloysius immediately concludes that Flynn is having improper relations
with the boy, and she sets out to have him removed. Their confrontations
and the exploration of the case against Flynn make up the rest
of the film as the two slug it out. Is Father Flynn guilty? Is
he gay? Why has he left three parishes in five years? Why is Aloysius
willing to lie to convict him?
One of the best scenes is between Sister Aloysius and Donald Miller’s
mother, played to perfection by Viola Davis. Only after Donald’s
mother presents his side of the story do some of the reasons for
his behavior begin to fall into place. Rather than go public and
face the charges, Flynn leaves, but that’s not the end of
the story. Throughout, doubt hangs over all of the characters,
who question their own and others’ actions, except for Sister
Aloysius who is certain she is right.
All four major actors were nominated for Academy Awards, although
Streep’s performance was criticized by a number of reviewers
as being a caricature rather than a character. Davis stole the
show in her brief scene, and it’s hard to argue with the
other performances.
Doubt is a film that maintains the intellectual and moral questions
of a good stage play, but Shanley never opens it up adequately
for a good film—he just does the obvious. Streep and Davis
talk as they walk along a sidewalk rather than in her office,
and the last scene is set in a snow-covered garden at the school.
The play talks of a wind that is blowing, and the film shows Streep
leaning into a gust of leaves and wind as she walks back to the
school. There is little translation into cinematic terms. But,
given the strength of the play, perhaps that’s not necessary.
It still emerges as a powerful film that leaves viewers asking
questions after the credits roll, and, in view of recent revelations
about the treatment of children by religious organizations in
Ireland, the subject clearly still is relevant. Doubt received
Academy Award nominations for Best Actress (Streep), Best Actor
in a Supporting Role (Hoffman), Best Supporting Actress (Davis
and Adams) and Best Adapted Screenplay. Top
The Reader
Stephen Daldry’s previous film, The Hours, was praised for
its elegance and criticized for its lack of passion; The Reader
has received a similar response. Like the earlier film, The Reader
deals with abstract qualities, perhaps even more of them than
The Hours, and its weight of guilt, shame, and emotional withdrawal
give it a cerebral quality that causes many film-goers, even the
intellectuals who claim to want “serious” films, to
whine about its “bloodless” quality.
The Reader, based on the best-selling 1995 German novel of the
same name by Bernhard Schlink, carries with it the experience
of the Holocaust, although it takes place well after that event.
Although the screenplay jumps about in time with flashbacks within
flashbacks, the original novel followed a chronological order.
In 1958 in Neustadt (Germany), fifteen-year-old Michael Berg (David
Kross), on his way home from school, hides from the rain in an
alley and throws up, not realizing he is coming down with scarlet
fever. Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), a thirty-something woman
who lives upstairs, cleans him up, comforts him in a perfunctory
way and sends him on home. During his illness, Michael’s
mother tells him that when he recovers, he should thank the woman
who helped him, and some months later, he stops by her apartment
and does that. Through various circumstances, Hanna and Michael
end up in bed together, and during the summer they have a passionate
affair, one that entails his reading to her before they have sex,
hence the title. Hanna works as a streetcar ticket collector,
but that is all Michael knows about her. One day, he returns to
her apartment to find it empty and her gone. Although he doesn’t
know the reason, the audience knows that she has been offered
a promotion from being a conductor to working in an office job,
and for reasons not clear at the time, she flees. Many reviewers
speculated about why she left Michael, but she didn’t leave
because of him—she left because she could not take the better
job and could not explain why.
In 1966, Michael, now studying law under Professor Rohl (Bruno
Ganz of Wings of Desire), attends a trial of Nazi war criminals
and is horrified to find Hanna on trial as an S.S. guard who was
responsible for selecting people for extermination in the death
camps. Watching the progress of the trial, he realizes he has
information that can ameliorate her sentence, although she refuses
to reveal the information herself.
Over the remaining years until 1995, the end of the novel, Michael
(now played by Ralph Fiennes) records audiotapes of books and
sends them to Hanna, but refuses to visit her. At the end of the
film, he does meet with her in prison and, at her request, delivers
a package to Ilana Mather (Lena Olin), a Holocaust survivor in
New York City.
Winslet won an Oscar for her performance as Hanna, and the win
was justified. Hanna is a difficult character because the audience
never sees inside her. All that is known is what she says and
does, and what others say she did. Further, Winslet has to walk
the narrow line between first, generating undue sympathy for this
woman who sent women and children to their deaths and second,
creating a monster that would be a cliché. She succeeds.
She also makes understandable Hanna’s mental limitations
(she’s not mentally handicapped, just uneducated and not
very bright) in a way that makes believable her accepting a job
at death camps and accepting orders of her superiors. Kross is
remarkably good as Michael, and Ralph Fiennes, with his cold-fish
withdrawal from life, is exactly right as the older Michael.
The film, like the novel, explores the question of guilt, both
personal and collective, and examines the differences in response
to the Holocaust between two generations of Germans, exemplified
by Hanna and Michael. The film raises many questions and provides
few answers, as does the Holocaust itself, but it’s a powerful
film that is fascinating. The early scenes have extensive nudity,
some frontal, and simulated sexuality; these scenes were not filmed
until after Kross turned eighteen. Kross, by the way, did not
know English until he started preparing for this, his third feature
film. The Reader received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture,
Best Actress (Winslet won), Best Director, Best Cinematography
and Best Adapted Screenplay. Top
Frost/Nixon
While film adaptations of stage plays and novels are common, Peter
Morgan created his successful stage play by adapting the original
Frost/Nixon videotapes for a theatrical presentation. When that
was successful, he wrote the screenplay, and veteran director
Ron Howard guides the film version of the British stage hit. Frank
Langella and Michael Sheen repeat their stage roles as Nixon and
Frost.
David Frost’s original interviews with Richard Nixon, covering
nearly thirty hours, occurred in May 1977, three years after Nixon
became the first President to resign from office; the material
was edited down to four ninety-minute segments for broadcasting.
Frost persuaded Nixon to do the interviews by giving him $600,000
plus ten percent of the profits. Because Frost had trouble pre-selling
the interviews, he fronted the money, and, had he failed to secure
an interview he could market, he would have had great financial
and professional losses. At the time, Frost was a successful interviewer
and talkshow host, but he was not considered a tough journalist
capable of getting Nixon to confess to wrong doing. Nixon apparently
saw the interviews as not only a chance to refurbish his financial
situation, but clean up his disgraced image through adroit statements
and a sympathetic stance. For most of the interviews, Nixon got
exactly what he wanted, but in the Watergate interview, Frost
brought Nixon as close to confessing as anyone was able to do.
It’s a powerful moment.
In the play and its film adaptation, Frost’s ability as an
interviewer is deliberately played down in order to increase the
suspense: Is this a man who can handle “Tricky Dick”
Nixon? Time also is spent on the negotiations and the mechanics
of setting up the interviews, but since the original tapes are
available on videodisc, Peter Morgan was limited to condensing
and emphasizing certain parts of the debate to the exclusion of
other parts. The only clearly fictionalized section is a phone
call that Nixon makes to Frost late one night after the ex-President
had a few drinks. Like the recent attempt to explain W’s
failings by the pressure his father put on him, Nixon tries to
convey to Frost how excluded he felt all his life and how difficult
it was for him to be as sociable as a politician has to be. It’s
an interesting call, although Nixon later questions whether he
actually made it.
Langella and Sheen are excellent as the two leads, although Langella
tends to steal the show (as Nixon always tried to do). While he
captures Nixon’s intelligence and deception nicely, he’s
almost too suave himself to totally capture Nixon’s strained
social skills and inability to handle the unscripted moment. He
seems far more couth and in command than the real Nixon ever did.
Sheen, having played Tony Blair twice in The Deal and The Queen,
is used to being the underdog in the acting competition, and he’s
quite capable of holding his own against Langella and Mirrin.
The sets and supporting cast are copied as closely as possible
from the original tapes, and the DVD includes some cuts showing
the original people and their stage counterparts doing the same
lines. Ultimately, how most viewers will feel about Frost/Nixon
will depend on how they feel about Nixon. Some reviewers saw Nixon
as once again escaping the prison term he so richly deserved,
while others saw some element of Shakespearean tragedy in his
mistakes and fall.
As the country today discusses whether to prosecute members of
the Bush administration or to pardon their errors and move on—as
Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon—a look back at the Nixon era can
be enlightening as well as a little scary, especially when Nixon
says, “When the President does it, that means that it is
not illegal.” Frost/Nixon received Academy Award nominations
for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Langella), Best Editing
and Best Adapted Screenplay. Top
The Wrestler
Darren Aronofsky has made the offbeat indie film Pi, the award-winning
Requiem for a Dream; and the puzzling and commercially unsuccessful
science fiction film, The Fountain. He acknowledges his fourth
film, The Wrestler, is an attempt at a new start, even though
the idea had been in his head for several years. Although he originally
planned to have Mickey Rourke in the lead role, he found that
casting the controversial actor made raising money for the picture
more difficult, and switched to Nicholas Cage. Then he found financial
support in France and, by reducing his budget, he was able to
use Rourke. The results have justified his vision, for the film
and its cast have won Golden Globes, San Francisco Film Critics
awards and Academy Award nominations.
The plot is simple—a mixture of the Rocky pictures and Requiem
for a Heavyweight, as well as the other films and television shows
about washed-up professional athletes. Randy “The Ram”
Robinson once was a top draw in the professional wrestling circuit,
filling Madison Square Garden in a match with his nemesis, the
Ayatollah. But twenty years after his glory days, Randy is wrestling
in high school gyms and other makeshift arenas; he struggles financially,
barely getting along on his cut from the matches each weekend;
health problems from old injuries plague him. About a third of
the way into the film, after a bloody and physically demanding
match, he has a heart attack and wakes up in the hospital. The
doctor says Randy has no choice—he has to give up wrestling
or he will die. But for Randy, wrestling is his life—he lives
for the sound of the crowd, the applause of his fans and the camaraderie
with the other wrestlers. The Ram knows he has screwed up his
life—“I deserve to be alone,” he says at one point—but
he refuses to be angry or bitter at finding himself down and out.
He talks the problem over with one of his best friends, a stripper
named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), and she suggests that he try to
reestablish a relationship with his teenaged daughter Stephanie
(Evan Rachel Wood). The rest of the film follows Randy as he tries
to talk to his daughter, establish a better relationship with
Cassidy and decide whether to stay retired or to risk one last
match against his old rival, the Ayatollah, to make some money.
To get in shape for the part, Rourke worked out for six months
and gained thirty-five pounds of muscle to top 230 pounds; with
his long bleached-blonde hair and steroid-enhanced physique, he
certainly looks the part (think Hulk Hogan), and he makes the
scenes with Wood and Tomei believable and touching. Cassidy the
stripper, like Randy, is a performer past her prime; like him
she uses a stage name, and she also has a child. Cassidy tries
to keep Randy at a professional distance, but she cannot resist
going to see one of his matches. Tomei’s performance gives
credence to the old cliché about the stripper with the
heart of gold, but the script gives little justification for her
actions.
The film does not try to glorify Randy. He keeps repeating mistakes
he has made in the past, and although he seems to make a breakthrough
with his daughter as the two dance in an abandoned arena, she
realizes he will never change. Reviewers emphasized the similarities
between the comeback wrestling attempt of Randy Robinson and the
comeback acting career of Mickey Rourke. Rourke sums it up when
he says of his character, “Randy wants one more chance, and
he ain’t gonna get it. I’ve been lucky. I got another
chance.”
Viewers interested in professional wrestling will enjoy the behind-the-scenes
view of the sport, as the wrestlers discuss who will be the bad
guy and what holds they will use. The moves may be choreographed,
but the injuries are real. The Ram hides a razor blade in his
wrappings so that he can draw blood from his forehead during a
match. The Wrestler was nominated for Academy Awards for Best
Actor and Best Supporting Actress (Tomai). Top
—Leonard G. Heldreth
Editor’s Note: All films reviewed are available on DVD or
VHS from local stores.
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