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Home Cinema
by
Leonard Heldreth
Traversing
a familiar frontier of love and poetry
The films this month start the new year
on a distinctly positive note, from the animated adventures of Up through the
familiar frontier optimism of Star Trek, the eternal quandaries of love and poetry
in The Edge of Love, and the unflagging exuberance of Happy Go Lucky. Up
Let’s
acknowledge the obvious: Pixar has once again made one of the best films of the
year. Reviewers may debate where Up ranks in the Pixar hierarchy of WALL-E, Toy
Story, Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Monsters, Inc., etc., but it clearly illustrates
its family heritage. For various reasons, some of which I will comment on, I think
Up is at the top of the Pixar list, and not just because of its name.
The film
was directed by Pete Docter, who directed Monsters, Inc. and was a writer on Toy
Story and WALL-E. He and Bob Peterson (who co-directed) co-wrote the script from
a story by Docter. While a few reviewers complained about the script, it’s
essentially a mixture of tried-and-true story elements that often are put together
in striking and original combinations.
The film divides into four units: the
opening that shows the marriage of Ellie and Carl Fredricksen (voice of Ed Asner),
the appearance of Russell and the urban developers, the South American adventure,
and the conclusion back in the United States. The opening sequence is stunning,
a silent montage of images that sums up two lives and brings tears to the eyes
of most members of the audience.
Then Russell (voice of Jordan Nagai), the
rotund Boy Scout trying to earn a merit badge, appears and developers try to take
the house, which is all that Carl, now seventy-eight, has left of his life with
Ellie. The South American adventure (most of the film) follows Carl and Russell
as they fly to Paradise Falls, encounter rare birds and pseudo-talking dogs, and
contend with the explorer, Charles Muntz (voice of Christopher Plummer); echoes
of Indiana Jones are everywhere. The last section, clearly the weakest, shows
what happens when they return to the United States.
Despite some of the trite
elements, the film exhibits significant originality—Muntz’s dirigible,
the dog-collar translators, the “cone of shame,” Kevin the mother bird,
and the flying house. Some of the dialogue is quite clever, and the dog’s
psychological qualities often are hilarious—the word “Squirrel!”
will never sound the same to you.
That the major hero is seventy-eight and
the villain, Muntz, must be over a hundred, is rare in this era of youth-oriented
films. Russell, the Boy Scout, is not only overweight, he’s inexperienced
and easily confused—no young Indiana Jones here. The dog-hero, Dug, a slobbering
yellow ball of affectionate fur (“Hi, my name is Dug! I have just met you
and I love you!”) is an outcast in his pack, and his attempts to help his
friends often are not in their best interests.
The film was released in some
theaters in 3-D, and while the visual effects may have been more impressive as
the house floats through the sky, the polaroid glasses reduce the brilliance of
the primary colors, a quality which adds a great deal to the film. This one, like
Coraline, may be impressive in 3-D, but there’s a lot to be said for watching
it in 2-D.
However, let’s drop the quibbles. Just rent Up and watch it,
at least once, maybe twice. You’ll see what I mean when I say it’s one
of the best of the year. Star Trek
Some
years ago, after listening to and giving papers about literature and media, a
friend and I were talking at dinner about Homer’s Odyssey and the common
culture of Greek and Roman civilization. In classical times, everyone above the
rank of slave knew who Achilles was, that Aphrodite (or her Roman equivalent,
Venus) was a troublemaker, and that the fall of Troy sent Aeneas on the journey
that led to the founding of Rome.
These things were learned not necessarily
in school, but in oral tradition, drama, songs and most other forms of entertainment.
We bemoaned the lack of such a common cultural language and then somehow warped
into talking about the universality of television and then Star Trek; we finally
realized we still had such a common set of myths, and they were transmitted not
through the oral traditions of Homeric bards or even written texts but through
the electronic media of television.
Instead of Achilles and Apollo, we had
James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock; instead of the fall of Troy, we had the voyages of
the Starship Enterprise; instead of the hydra and the cyclops and the island of
Circe, we had tribbles, Klingons and Romulons, and a large cast of characters
related by their functions in the series as closely as the Greek characters were
related by blood and royal connections. Some of them were even as one-dimensional
as Mars or Venus.
The small size of early Greek civilization enabled it to
create a common history through oral tradition and to expose its citizens to a
common set of social values; the twentieth century had needed television to create
such a common set of characters and values among its vastly larger population
base. But is anyone in today’s civilized world not aware of Captain Kirk
and Mr. Spock?
This memory came back as I watched the “reboot” of
the Star Trek series with the release of J.J. Abrams’ new Star Trek. Abrams
and his writer faced many of the problems the Greek tragedians and other writers
faced of presenting a familiar story in a way that keeps the attention of fans,
who know most of the details of the story, but gives them something new to think
about. Fortunately, on most counts, he succeeds.
Like most origin stories,
this one begins with the birth of the hero, James Tiberius Kirk, on board a space
shuttle as his mother flees an attacking Romulan warship and his father crashes
another warship into the attacker to give his wife and the crew a chance to escape.
What none of the humans know at the time is that the Romulan ship is from the
future and it has come back specifically to destroy the senior Kirk.
A few
quick scenes sketch in the boyhood of Kirk and of his other half, Spock, in this
ongoing allegory about the balance between mind and body, between thought and
action, between intellect and emotion. They are seen at the Star Fleet academy
where Kirk is a rebellious student and Spock an instructor. Finally, they both
end up on the bridge of the Enterprise (we have heard this story before), and
through various trials and tribulations, including the destruction of the planet
Vulcan, they come to respect each other and form the alliance all Star Trek fans
understand.
The action is deliberately much faster than in most previous Trek
films. The special effects are slicker and more convincing, and the time travel
paradox even more confusing, especially when the young Spock sees the older Spock
(back from the future) across a crowded room.
The new actors playing the old
roles generally are effective, for they try to capture the essences of the roles,
rather than the eccentricities of the actors. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto are
fine as young Kirk and Spock (although every reviewer/fan has some quibble), while
Leonard Nimoy slips effortlessly into his role as Spock prime. Karl Urban has
Leonard “Bones” McCoy down cold, Simon Pegg successfully plays Montgomery
“Scotty” Scott as a young mechanical genius, while Anton Yelchin and
John Cho respectively play Sulu and Chekov quite adequately for the small parts
they have in the film. Uhura is played by Zoë Saldana, who directs her erotic
interests toward Spock. Eric Bana gives a single-minded determination to the evil
Romulan Capt. Nero.
The Enterprise itself looks sleek and well-fitted, and
the sets, costumes and even music are quite nicely done. Mr. Abrams creates a
much better production than one would have expected from his work in “Alias,”
“Lost” and Mission: Impossible III. If there is a problem, it is that
this film spends most of its time setting up a situation, building characters
and filling in back-stories to show how the characters got to where they now are.
Perhaps the next film will take them to a place where no one has gone before. The
Edge of Love
Based on books by the children of the characters, this
film examines the relationship between Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, his wife Caitlin,
singer Vera Phillips and Phillips’ husband, William Killick. The setting
is England during World War II, the first part set in London when it was being
bombed, and the second part in the country, where many fled with their children
for safety.
Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys), Wales’ most famous poet, is
writing poetry and propaganda for the War Department; Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley),
whom Thomas knew when they were young, is singing in an underground nightclub;
Caitlin Thomas (Sienna Miller) has just joined her husband in the city, leaving
their children behind with family. William Killick (Cillian Murphy) is a soldier
about to be shipped off to the front and who wants to marry Phillips.
Phillips
and Killick do marry, and he goes to the front while she escapes with Thomas and
his wife back to the country; there, she finds she is pregnant, but some of the
locals think the paternity of the unborn child is a little questionable. The interaction
of Thomas with the two women and their relationship with each other is the focus
of much of the film. Is he having an affair with Phillips, as a bathtub sequence
suggests? How many men is his wife having affairs with (or prostituting herself
for)? Are Vera Phillips and Caitlin Thomas having an affair, as another bathtub
sequence suggests?
In the meantime Killick is injured and shell-shocked and
is returned to England to recuperate; with Phillips, who now has their baby, he
occupies another cottage on the Thomas farm. Put off by Thomas and his literary
friends, Killick takes a gun and shoots up the place one night, shouting “You’re
nothing but a lot of egoists!” His goal was to frighten a snobbish elderly
woman, but police take him into custody the next day. The trial forms the climax
of the film.
The film was directed by John Maybury, whose earlier films include
his 1998 account of the painter Francis Bacon, Love Is the Devil, another film
about the problems of being an artist. Maybury tries to expand a fairly banal
incident—a shell-shocked veteran temporarily losing self-control—into
a significant event. Some of the film works, and some of it doesn’t.
Rhys
is competent as Dylan Thomas, although he’s much better looking than Thomas
was, and Murphy has little difficulty with the supporting role of Captain William
Killick. The most interesting parts, however, and the better acting, belong to
the women. Knightley is both beautiful and sexy while yet displaying an aloof
attitude not explained until late in the film. She does her own singing, offering
a credible voice and reasonable song interpretations. Sienna Miller is flirtatious
and a little crazy as Caitlin Thomas, who, after Dylan’s death, wrote a memoir
called Leftover Life to Kill. Some of the acting seems a little over the top,
but these were self-dramatizing people.
The problem with films based on true
events, as this one purports to be, is the difficulty of separating facts from
the screenwriter’s fictionalizations, and Maybury seems to enjoy beefing
up the sensationalism. Nonetheless, the film has several positive aspects. It
seems to be shot on location where the action originally occurred and the costumes
seem right. Many local Welsh men and women were used in small parts, and their
faces add authenticity to the scenes.
The acting is solid, the photography—both
in London and the countryside—is well done, and the music, especially in
London, is believable, even if Knightley’s immaculate teeth definitely do
not fit into wartime London. As an added bonus, some of Dylan Thomas’ poetry
is read in voice-over for appropriate scenes—it’s a nice replacement
for background music, which is often innocuous. Happy
Go Lucky
British filmmaker Mike Leigh’s previous nine films—e.g.,
Bleak Moments, Naked, Secrets and Lies and Topsy Turvy— often have emphasized
the darker side of life. His tenth film, Happy Go Lucky, has a central character,
Poppy (Sally Hawkins), whose exuberance, giggles and jokes at first make you want
to ridicule her.
But as the film progresses, it becomes clear Poppy is not
just an empty-headed optimist; whether by choice, genetic disposition or dominant
personality, Poppy simply sees the glass as being nearly full and goes on with
her enjoyment of the day. By the end of the film, after considering a number of
alternatives, the viewer may decide Poppy knows more about life than most people
would admit, even though she doesn’t proselytize her position.
As always,
Mike Leigh’s films are about people. He rehearses his actors for weeks as
they build the characters, create personalities and backstories until the actor
knows the character as well as he knows himself. The dialogue often is improvised
first and then written down. As a result, many of Leigh’s films, like Happy
Go Lucky, have a minimum of traditional movie “action.” The viewer keeps
waiting for something awful to happen (and the film has several situations with
that potential), but it doesn’t.
The audience just gets to know the constantly
joking and smiling Poppy as she teaches her elementary school pupils (she is a
very good teacher), goes drinking on the weekend with her roommate and other teachers,
takes driving lessons and Flamenco lessons, visits her sister, goes out with a
new boyfriend and continues with her life. She is both extremely irritating with
her constant joking and completely endearing as she obviously cares for and knows
how to encourage other people. Her roommate, Zoe (Alexis Zegerman) realistically
points out to Poppy, “You can’t make everyone happy,” to which
Poppy responds, “No harm in trying though, is there?”
Despite the
episodic nature of the story, several scenes stand out: Poppy helping a student
from an abused home cope with his aggression, her interaction with her sister
who wants her to “get serious” about life, the Flamenco dancer who acknowledges
that dancing lets her express her anger and hatred, and a chilling scene in which
Poppy encounters a mentally disturbed man in an isolated and dangerous setting.
Perhaps the most important part of the film is a series of encounters Poppy
has with Scott (Eddie Marsan), her driving instructor, a bitter racist wound tightly
into a coiled spring of hatred and rigidity—in short, exactly the opposite
of Poppy. The two instantly antagonize each other, and Poppy drives Scott over
the edge by refusing to take the driving lessons as seriously as he wants her
to take them. However, Poppy is not a person who goes around looking for opportunities
to help people; she just meets life as it comes to her and deals with it as she
can.
The acting is excellent throughout, with Sally Hawkins winning a Golden
Globe and an acting award at the Berlin film festival, as well as numerous other
major awards for her part. Poppy is one character you will not forget. Eddie Marsan
and Alexis Zegerman also have been nominated for and won major acting awards for
their parts, and Leigh’s screenplay has received an Oscar nomination.
—Leonard
G. Heldreth Editor’s Note: Films are available on DVD or VHS from local
stores. Reviews of earlier films can be found at www.mmnow.com
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