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Cinema
by
Leonard Heldreth
Three stories of love, and a tale of wine for dessert
The films this month provide three variations on love and a look
at the way California wines beat French wines in the “Judgment
of Paris” in 1976.
Two Lovers
Two Lovers offers a love triangle in which one side of the triangle
is cracked, another side is at least dinged, and the third, while
smooth and straight, isn’t the most enticing side you ever
saw. The cracked side is Leonard Kraditor (Joaquin Phoenix), a
young man who is unstable enough he previously has slashed his
wrists and, as the film opens, leaps into the water, attempting
to drown himself.
Under the water, he has second thoughts and, with help from some
bystanders, climbs out and sets out for home, soaked and chilled.
Leonard has been engaged, but his wife’s family broke off
the engagement when genetic tests indicated that the couple would
likely have children who would die as babies.
Because of his loss, or perhaps because of problems that pre-dated
the engagement, Leonard has been in treatment and now lives with
his parents (Isabella Rossellini and Moni Moshonov). His family
runs a dry-cleaning business in Brighton Beach. Is he stable at
this time? Even he doesn’t know.
Into Leonard’s life comes blond, non-Jewish Michelle Rausch
(Gwyneth Paltrow), a stylish young woman who lives in Leonard’s
apartment house on the floor above and at an angle where they
can see each other’s windows.
Leonard is captivated by her beauty, her lifestyle and the friendship
she extends to him; only gradually does he find out she has an
ongoing affair with Ronald Blatt (Elias Koteas), a man who keeps
saying he will leave his wife for her, and that she has had (according
to Blatt) a little drug problem in the past. Her behavior and
her demands on Leonard indicate some emotional instability as
well.
The third side of this love triangle, and the only stable one,
is Sandra Cohen (Vinessa Shaw), a beautiful Jewish girl whose
father is buying Leonard’s father’s dry-cleaning business
and wants to groom Leonard to run the combined businesses. Sandra
knows Leonard is damaged goods, but she loves him and says she
wants to take care of him.
Perhaps because of that, and because she represents the comfortable
middle-class life he sees in his parents, Leonard finds her much
less interesting than the wilder Michelle, although he manages
to seduce both of them.
Both sets of parents avoid being the trite parents (especially
the trite Jewish parents) who constantly manipulate their children
for their own ends. Both sets of parents clearly love their children
and try to encourage them, even though the young people’s
actions may not match what the parents hoped for. For example,
in a scene near the end, Leonard’s mother embraces him and
wishes him happiness as he prepares to leave, clearly against
her wishes.
The film comes to an end, predictably according to some reviewers,
inevitably according to others. Whether it is a happy ending or
a sad ending also depends on the perspective of the viewer and
perhaps on the time frame involved—the ending’s temporary
happiness or sadness may change in ten years. This film refuses
to give pat answers, which partially accounts for its richness.
Phoenix gives a fine, nuanced performance as the troubled young
man trying to deal with a life that keeps coming apart on him;
he can be annoying but he keeps the audience’s sympathy.
Paltrow displays more dramatic range than usual in her portrait
of a young woman in love with the wrong man and unable to break
her fascination with him.
Shaw is the surprise in the triangle, making her well-adjusted
young woman attractive without being dull. The supporting players
are all excellent with Rossellini outstanding as Leonard’s
mother.
The film is unconventional, but that makes it more interesting
than the typical Hollywood romantic comedy. It captures the irrationality
and exuberance of young love without denying that such Dionysic
ecstasy has its dark side.
James Gray, the director and cowriter, says he based his script
on Dostoevsky’s novella, “White Nights.” Gray’s
previous films include Little Odessa, The Yards, and We Own the
Night, the last two starring Phoenix and, like Two Lovers, set
in New York. The photography is excellent, and New York City seldom
has looked so attractive at night. Top
Revolutionary Road
The real question with Revolutionary Road is: Why anyone would
subject himself to sitting through two hours of watching two mediocre
people flail around at each other and their environment while
they try to figure out why they are unhappy?
The film is based on Richard Yates’ 1961 novel, one of the
first novels to describe the apparently mind-deadening effects
of the suburbs on anyone unlucky enough to live there.
Set in 1957 in Connecticut, the novel apparently (I haven’t
read it) shows the corrosive degeneration of a marriage until
it ends in tragedy. The film seems to be a faithful adaptation
of the novel, but, if so, then the major problems of the film
are at least inherent in the novel.
First, the sociological problems of stultifying suburbia are now
more than fifty years old and as stale as a dead fish. Some people
are returning to the cities, some are remodeling the suburbs and
others live their lives of quiet desperation wherever they happen
to be without blaming it on their environment.
Second, like the apparent problems with the suburbs, the concept
of “finding oneself” has been done to death; what if
we try to find ourselves and discover nothing much is there?
The idea that we are all “special” is an inherent contradiction;
perhaps the ’60s concept of existentialism finally has moved
into the contemporary mind, and we accept that we are only what
we make of ourselves. So enough of “finding ourselves.”
Last, our founding fathers only guaranteed us the right to the
“pursuit of happiness”—none of them said we were
guaranteed to catch it.
In the film, Frank and April Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate
Winslet) find life in the suburbs boring because each of them
thinks he and she is special and better than the situation in
which they live. Each day, Frank takes the commuter train into
the city to work for the company where his father used to work,
even taking the same train his father took.
Frank fiddles with papers at his desk, indulges in a multiple
martini lunch and sometimes takes the afternoon off for a little
hanky-panky with a girl from the steno pool whose name is Maureen
Grube (Zoe Kazan).
April stays at home where she fixes breakfast, takes out the garbage,
cleans the house, fixes lunch, visits with people who drop in
and keeps an eye on their two children as she prepares to fix
dinner. To take the edge off the horrors of their existence, they
smoke a lot of cigarettes and drink a lot of liquor.
Both of them are unhappy—not only because they are living
lives of conformity—but because they have unfulfilled yearnings.
April seems to want to be an actress, but may not have the talent
to do it, and Frank wants to be—well, he’s not sure
just what, but something other than what he is.
In a flash of insight, April suggests they sell the house and
move to Paris where she can get a job at an embassy (which clearly
will be more exciting than cooking and cleaning) and Frank can
sit around and think until he decides what he wants to be when
he grows up. Surely, under these conditions they will be happy,
and they delight in breaking the news to all their unhappy friends
and watching reactions of amazement.
However, life is cruel in unusual ways, and their plans are upset
by two awful events—Frank gets a promotion with a big raise
and April gets pregnant. Naturally, they have to cancel the Paris
plans and it’s all downhill—way downhill—from there
on.
Winslet and DiCaprio throw their all into the dramatic interactions,
and they do well, even if there is a whiff of drama-school-exercise
around some of their exchanges. Kathy Bates is fine as the talkative
real estate agent, and Michael Shannon does well with the thankless
part of her mentally deranged son.
Director Sam Mendes (Winslet’s husband) provides the same
steady hand and technical expertise he exhibited in his previous
award-winning films, American Beauty, Road to Perdition and Jarhead.
Roger Deakins, an Oscar-winning photographer, makes the settings
suitably claustrophobic, and the musical score complements the
visuals.
What then is the problem? First, you’ve heard it all before—the
suburbia stuff, the rebellion-against-the-parents stuff and even
the abortion stuff. Second, the individuals involved never really
engaged my empathy; I wanted to say, “Get up, stop whining,
blow your nose and get on with it.”
Maybe the actors, director and screenwriter deserve points for
their often heroic efforts and good intentions, but the bottom
line is there may have been a good reason why Yates’ novel
sat on the shelf for fifty years.
Revolutionary Road was nominated for three Oscars: Best Supporting
Actor (Michael Shannon), Costume Design and Art Direction. Top
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Eric Roth, who wrote Forest Gump, took the basic idea from F.
Scott Fitzgerald’s twenty-page short story and developed
it into a film that lasts nearly three hours. David Fincher, whose
previous films include Aliens 3, Se7en and Fight Club, marshaled
a remarkable array of tricks with make-up, digitalized images
and other cinematic techniques to create an elegiac fantasy about
a man who is born old and ages backward.
Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt and other actors) is born in 1918 in
New Orleans as a baby with all the infirmities of age. As he grows
up and ages chronologically, his body becomes younger until he
physically is a kindergarten student in his seventies and finally
becomes a baby who ceases to breathe.
His mother dies when Benjamin is born, and his father (Jason Flemyng)
takes the child to a private nursing home where he abandons him
on the steps. Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) finds the “baby”
and raises him in the nursing home, where he fits right in with
the geriatric patients.
Benjamin’s subsequent life is almost a tour of the twentieth
century. He goes to sea and ends up in Russia where he has an
affair with Elizabeth Abbott (Tilda Swinton), the wife of a British
diplomat.
The outbreak of World War II sees him battling German U-Boats
and returning to New Orleans, where he finally meets his biological
father and finds out his true identity, as well as the fact that
he will inherit a large fortune.
He pursues Daisy (Cate Blanchett), the young girl he met many
years ago and who now is a successful ballerina, but she is interested
primarily in her career.
Over the years, they do develop a relationship for that brief
period when she has aged and he has grown younger. The rest of
this long but always interesting film tells the story of Benjamin
and Daisy until the current time.
There is, by the way, a framing story of an old woman dying in
a hospital as New Orleans braces for the arrival of Hurricane
Katrina, as well as another semi-framing story of a clockmaker
who created a clock that ran backward in memory of the son he
lost in the First World War.
Fincher and his screenwriter have created an engaging film whose
focus almost always is on the transient quality of life; as one
character says, we only find out how much people really mean to
us when we lose them. The film also emphasizes the value of caring
for others especially those you love.
Queenie raises the young Benjamin after his father abandons him;
Benjamin chooses loneliness and isolation rather than saddle his
wife and daughter with a person growing ever younger and more
irresponsible; Daisy cares for the helpless infant who once was
her husband. The film also highlights the similarities between
the beginning and the end of life, and Fincher manages to make
the film moving without making it sentimental. This is a film
that almost everyone will enjoy.
Benjamin Button is shot beautifully by Roger Deakins, and the
special effects that create the multiple images of Benjamin, all
of which look like Brad Pitt, are quite astonishing. Near the
end, they take him back to the way he looked as the young hitchhiker
in Thelma and Louise.
The sets, period costumes, make-up and special effects are all
first-rate, as is the acting. The film was nominated for thirteen
Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Pitt), Best
Director (Fincher), Music Score, Film Editing, Sound Mixing, Cinematography,
Costume Design, Writing (Adapted Screenplay) and Best Supporting
Actress (Henson).
In the year when Slumdog Millionaire swept the awards, it won
in only three categories—Visual Effects, Make-up and Art
Direction. Top
Bottle Shock
In 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial, Stephen Spurrier,
a British wine merchant with a shop in Paris, needed some publicity
to improve his faltering business. Saying that it was a way of
educating himself on New World wines, he proposed a blind wine
tasting by French experts that would pit French wines against
American wines with, obviously, the French expecting to win.
Spurrier traveled to Napa Valley in California and purchased a
number of the best wines he could find. In the subsequent competition,
which occurred in France, the American wines took first place
in both the red and white categories, a result that stunned the
world of serious wine drinkers. Bottle Shock is the somewhat fictionalized
account of that encounter (“based on a true event” is
the way it’s usually described) that led to a bottle of each
of the top wines on display at the Smithsonian.
Most of the major characters are based on real people, although
the sweet young thing in mini-shorts who is supposed to be an
intern seems to be an addition to complete a romantic triangle.
Bill Pullman plays Jim Barrett, owner of Chateau Montelena vineyard,
whose Chardonnay was the winning white wine, and Chris Pine plays
Bo Barrett, his son, who settles his arguments with his father
by fighting him in a boxing ring set up at the edge of the vineyard,
and who subsequently takes over the winery from his father. Steven
Spurrier is played by Alan Rickman, who, as usual, is excellent
as the British snob who slowly comes round to appreciate the virtues
of California wine.
Dennis Farina plays Maurice Cantavale, who runs the travel agency
next to Spurrier’s shop and wears god-awful plaid suits.
The part of Gustavo Brambila is played by Freddy Rodriguez; Brambila
plays a minor role in the film but then went on to found his own
wine company.
This is not an Academy Award-winning film, but rather an amusing
one that has a few good laughs, a lot of chuckles and a fair amount
of material that would have been at home in a typical situation
comedy.
Throw in the numerous beautiful shots of Napa Valley, the discussions
of wine (at least one of which is laughable), the American win
over the French (which was repeated thirty years later) and it’s
a movie to watch while sipping a glass of your favorite vintage.
Bottle Shock is not up to the standards of Sideways, but it will
carry you over until the next good film about wine comes along.
Top
—Leonard G. Heldreth
Editor’s Note: All films reviewed are available on DVD or
VHS from local stores. Reviews of earlier films cited, except
Sideways, can usually be found at www.mmnow.com
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