| These links go to sections further down on this page. | |
| Antwone Fisher | Sex and Lucia |
| Lantana | Frida |
| A Beautiful Mind | Talk To Her |
| The Bicycle Thief | Raise the Red Lantern |
| Solaris | Being There |
| Dead Man Walking | Lone Star |
| Runaway Train | Amistad |
| Ikiru | The Apostle |
| 2001: A Space Odyssey | Cries and Whispers |
| The Kiss of the Spider Woman | Eyes Wide Shut |
| Monster's Ball | Minority Report |
| (The last two links go to new pages.) | |
| Saving Private Ryan | Shakespeare in Love |
The availability of an escalating number of cable channels certainly does not seem to have diminished the popularity of going out to the movies. Hollywood is making money hand over fist, and there are more pictures than you can keep up with. The present site, however, is not the place to find general information regarding a specific flick. (For that, click here and try searching the database which opens.) If, however, you are the sort of person who enjoys receiving the reactions and recommendations of others (even not excluding a couple of rank amateurs), then read on.
Our goal is to draw attention to some lesser-known, forgotten, or avoided films that continue to deserve to be seen. The problem is that a preponderance of the movies made in America seem to seek nothing more than fast action and melodramatic glitz, all calculated ultimately to do nothing more than make a lot of money. Sheer entertainment, evidently, means sheer profit—especially if you stir in a large dose of cataclysm, violence, and gratuitous sex. For example, though highly rated by many critics, Minority Report in our opinion was such a movie, manipulated into commercial success by slick production and Steven Spielberg's reputation but at heart nothing more than another violence-based shoot-'em-up. It's typical Hollywood. The movie's premise—about three mutated persons who can infallibly foretell murders, but who keep claiming also that the future is undetermined—is implausible, even for science fiction. The plot is driven not by anything interesting about the characters as human beings, but by murder, mayhem, and lots of guns. The ending is corny and predictable. Two other movies which we believe are similarly over-hyped are Shakespeare In Love (click here for our review) and Saving Private Ryan (click here for our review).
One feels apologetic for sounding elitist at this point, but in America the biggest challenge related to movie-going is to find something of genuine artistic significance. This admittedly pretentious but nevertheless useful phrase may be applied to movies in which:
- there are no technical gaffes (you can hear what the characters are saying; corny music does not intrude while somebody is dying; the special effects do not overshadow the story itself; etc.);
- the plot is neither embarrassingly trite nor irretrievably preposterous;
- the characters realistically portray some relevant aspect of the thoughts, emotions, complexities, and aspirations characteristic of human existence;
- watching the movie requires effort, but the effort is rewarded.
You are induced to reflect on your own life or the lives of
people you care about. You learn something. The movie conveys
valuable insight. You feel
moved or even transformed. Your sense of what is important in
life is renewed.
So, on those occasions when you want not just a movie, but a real film, we recommend the following. And, if you have recommendations for us, feel free to send e-mail to connect2@csd.net.)
Lantana
The Australian film Lantana is intense, thought-provoking, and memorable. At first this movie seems to be a murder mystery, but in fact it is more nearly a character study about the impact of bereavement, deception, and betrayal. The cast, which is truly an ensemble, includes Anthony LaPaglia, Barbara Hershey, Geoffrey Rush, Kerry Armstrong, Rachael Blake, Russel Dykstra, and Daniella Farinacci. All give compelling performances. Directed by Ray Lawrence and written by Andrew Bovell, 2001.
Hable con ella (Talk to Her)
Written and directed by Pedro Almodovar, Talk to Her (Spanish, with sub-titles) depicts a developing relationship between two men, played by Javier Camara and Dario Grandinetti, who are brought together because they both happen to be taking care of two women who are comatose and in the same hospital. Female leads are played by Leonor Watling, Rosario Flores, and Geraldine Chaplin. The film is a study of the blurred boundary between love and devotion, on the one hand, and sexual desire and fixation, on the other. There is one graphic scene of sexual fantasy.The Bicycle Thief
Ladri di Biciclette
The movie which seems to have made the most lasting impression on us is The Bicycle Thief (Italy, 1948, B&W), directed by Vittorio De Sica. The beginning, about a man looking for work in post-World-War-Two Italy, seems plain enough, but as the conclusion approaches you find yourself virtually on the street with the actors. (Indeed, much of the casting consisted of amateur talent recruited off the street.)
Ikiru
A similarly neo-realist film is Ikiru, directed by Japan's eminent A. Kurosawa. This one also is B&W with sub-titles, but by the time it's over you may very well want to watch all of Kurosawa's films as a personal project.
Lucia y el sexo (Sex and Lucia)
This Spanish film with English sub-titles has, as the title hints, some very erotic sex scenes. But that's not all. In fact, if you watch the film just because you're in the mood for something sexy (which would not be a bad reason to watch it), you may nevertheless soon find yourself being absorbed by the characters, who are all of great interest, and the plot, which is somewhat complex and indeed occasionally too convoluted to follow. So, this is not merely a sex flick, though it is plenty sexy. Somewhat like Eyes Wide Shut, Sex and Lucia has several layers of meaning which seem to converge around the tension between human sexuality as a healthy life-force which brings human beings together and sex as a source of insecurity, competition, and possessiveness.Released in 2001, the movie was written and directed by Julio Medem and stars Paz Vega (Lucia), Tristan Ulloa (Lorenzo), Elena Anaya (Belen), and Najwa Nimri (Elena).
Antwone Fisher
Known mainly as Denzel Washington's first work as a director, Antwone Fisher is the story of a man who, with great effort and a certain amount of luck, finally transcends the terrible deprivation and abuse of his childhood. Based on the life of the actual person Antwone Fisher, who in fact wrote the screenplay, the movie resists the obvious temptation towards manipulative sentimentality and offers instead a powerful and moving character study. Featuring Derek Luke in the title role, Joy Bryant as Fisher's romantic interest, Cheryl, Denzel Washington as Fisher's Navy psychiatrist, and a supporting cast which is almost entirely African American, Antwone Fisher on a surface level is a study of problems related to African American racial identity. But the film is really much more than that. It is a story of personal redemption, and of the importance of getting the right help at the right time—from boundary-creating institutions such as the Navy, from professional sources such as psychotherapy, and perhaps most of all from friends who care enough to see past our faults to the deeper potential and goodness that lie beneath. This is certainly one of the best movies released in 2002.
Raise the Red Lantern
Raise the Red Lantern, a Chinese production portraying the horrific impact of patriarchy and sexism, was nominated in 1992 for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Sadly even such acclaim does not seem to have attracted an American audience of any size.Directed by Yimou Zhang and based on a novel by Su Tong, Raise the Red Lantern tells of a young woman who, though well educated, is betrayed by her own mother into a life of virtual slavery as the fourth wife of a dictatorial Chinese lord. Inside the lord's immense compound each wife has her own apartment. Only one wife at a time is accepted as the lord's favorite, and the film's title refers to the lord's practice of hanging a red lantern on the porch of the dwelling of the wife with whom he will be spending the evening—a sign of favor and an ostensible privilege.
On the surface the movie's message seems to be that competition among women is as fierce and brutal as the competition traditionally ascribed to men. Indeed, the new wife learns bitterly that the lord's other three wives, with whom she at first naturally seeks to bond, are variously irascible, deceitful, and untrustworthy. But in the end it is clear that the true villain is the lord, who is enabled by his culture's pronounced chauvinism to float remorselessly above his wives' fray while insidiously and systematically reducing each one to complicity in his own trickery, sadism, and insanity. Even the mother, who at the film's outset binds her own child into humiliating servitude, is actually motivated not by callousness but by the wish to procure material security for a daughter in a society whose treatment of unmarried women is harsh and degrading.
Is the fate of American women any less precarious? Well, yes. But the fact remains that even in the United States women and persons of color are forced into unnatural and destructive forms of competition by a culture in which they are objectified, manipulated, and exploited. It is frighteningly easy to translate Raise the Red Lantern into a setting of the contemporary West.
Solaris
Another foreign film which makes and maintains a powerful impact on the viewer is Andrei Tarkovsky's renowned Solaris (1972, USSR, B&W). Though categorized in the science-fiction genre and usually compared (often favorably) with Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris is actually much more about inner space than outer.The film eschews technological details and special effects in favor of an unflinching and disturbing exploration of the experiences of its characters when the boundaries between imagination and reality are blurred or even removed. The location on an interplanetary space station is, in my view, no more than a convenient and clever way to get at the psychology of a small community of isolated characters, who attribute their varying and contradictory experiences to the mysterious planet which they are orbiting. But do their perceptions and (evidently) hallucinations arise from the planet below, or from within their own subjectivity?
And this question becomes more than merely academic when, for example, the protagonist falls in love with a woman who may not really even exist. This may sound far-fetched or outlandish (appropriate adjectives when describing science fiction?), but it is part of the genius of Solaris to make us recognize that we deal with questions—vital questions —about the difference between perception and reality everyday. Consider the following poem:
The Mask
"Put off that mask of burning goldSolaris is long (two tapes' worth), and there are parts where you may find yourself dozing off; but towards the conclusion the intensity is so heightened that some viewers have suffered anxiety attacks. It's well worth it.
With emerald eyes."
"O no, my dear, you make so bold
To find if hearts be wild and wise,
And yet not cold.""I would but find what's there to find,
Love or deceit."
"It was the mask engaged your mind,
And after set your heart to beat,
Not what's behind.""But lest you are my enemy,
I must enquire."
"O no, my dear, let all that be,
What matter, so there is but fire
In you, in me?"William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Another foreign-produced film, but in English, is Hector Babenco's remarkable The Kiss of the Spider Woman (Brazil, 1985), starring Raul Julia as Valentin Arregui and William Hurt in a Best Actor (Cannes) performance as Luis Molina. The two characters are cellmates in a Latin American prison: Arregui a tough, fiery revolutionary, and Molina an affected, histrionic gay male. The plot at first seems to focus on the evolving and touching relationship between two very diverse characters, but in the end the movie is about much more than the encounter between a gay man and a straight man. It's a memorable and powerful piece of art.
Lest ye think us devoted only to foreign material, we include in the
"don't-miss-it" category
Frida,
Being There, Runaway Train, Lone
Star, Dead Man Walking, Amistad, Eyes Wide
Shut, A Beautiful Mind, and Monster's Ball.
Frida
Frida (2002), directed by Julie Taymor and starring Salma Hayek, is based on the life of the noted Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907—1954). Severely injured as a young woman in a traffic accident, Kahlo lived with physical pain for the rest of her life. She also coped with the intense emotional pain caused by the numerous infidelities of her husband, famous muralist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina). Kahlo lived through times that were turbulent, and her personality itself was stormy. Salma Hayek, who is also one of the film's producers, brings enormous energy and conviction to the title role. Geoffrey Rush, who may be the most adaptive and brilliant male actor presently working in cinema, plays the fugitive Communist leader Leon Trotsky, with whom Frida Kahlo herself had an affair. Frida would be an enjoyable and informative movie if it were only about fine art, but it is really about the struggles and aspirations of strong characters, strongly portrayed. It is such an engaging film that it transcends any cliches about artists who become great because they have suffered great pain. This is a must-see.
Eyes Wide Shut
Immediately after seeing Eyes Wide Shut (1999) I overheard several guys in the men's room at the theater expressing their frank opinions of the movie. Nobody liked it. One complained that it wasn't really very sexy; Body Heat was a lot more erotic. Another commented that Stanley Kubrick had died right after making the film. One of his friends replied, "I think he died before he made it." Lots of laughter.
Eyes Wide Shut, of course, stars Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. It contains a good bit of nudity and sexual activity, but it was never intended to be an "erotic thriller"—though predictably it was advertised as such. The film has many layers of meaning, but the central theme is an almost Freudian exploration of the inescapable role of sexual energy in human behavior, for good or ill. If seeing the movie makes us uncomfortable, perhaps it is because it invites us to look more deeply at the self-centered motives which tend to infect most of our own sexual feelings and appetites. I rank Eyes Wide Shut as one of the five best movies I've ever seen.
A Beautiful Mind
This is a wonderful, thought-provoking film about an actual person, John Forbes Nash, who was a brilliant mathematician—and also a paranoid schizophrenic. Through much of the movie we join Nash in being uncertain which of the other characters are real and which are merely the imaginary products of Nash's mental illness. We find ourselves contemplating our own understandings of "reality," and wondering whether all the things we believe in are so objectively real after all. Directed by Ron Howard (remember "Opie"?), A Beautiful Mind (2001) stars Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, and Ed Harris.
Monster's Ball
Marc Foster's Monster's Ball (2001) stars Halle Berry as a down-on-her-luck waitress and Billy Bob Thornton as an angry, psychologically repressed guard with lots of seniority in the Georgia Department of Corrections. Both characters have suffered enormous emotional deprivation and tragedy throughout their lives, and as a result both are capable of venting considerable rage and even cruelty on other people. The two are brought together through a series of circumstances that seem somewhat improbable— but improbable in the same way that real life is sometimes improbable and yet true. Though we are left wondering whether a racially mixed couple can really find true happiness together in a small southern town, we have no doubts about the absolute necessity of their love for one another as the movie ends. There are some grim images and harsh plot elements, but the film in its total effect is a hopeful story of romance and redemption.
The rating is R for some explicit sex scenes, but rather than being gratuitous these scenes are integral to the plot and to the development of the characters.
Being There
Years ago I read the MAD Magazine satire of Being There (USA, 1979) and thereby got the impression that this movie was so silly that I really didn't need to see it. Wrong. Being There is itself such great satire that it could make fun of MAD.The immortal Peter Sellers stars as Chance the Gardener, a.k.a. Chauncy Gardener, an "idiot-savant" of unknown origin who has seemingly spent all his life as the groundskeeper for a wealthy employer in Washington, D.C. When his benefactor dies Chance lands on the street, helpless to cope with public existence and unable even to read a newspaper. He does happen to have a nice wardrobe and the demeanor, procured sheerly by lifelong training, of being cultured.
The one thing Chance is actually good at is watching television. In fact one of the movie's most famous lines is Chance's mindless statement, "I like to watch," indicative of his unflagging wish to turn on the TV but usually interpreted by other characters as revelatory of Chance's sexual preferences (of which Chance actually has none). Sellers had the uncanny ability to deliver such inane lines convincingly—a major cause of the film's astounding level of artistic success.
While wandering about, Chance gets bumped by the limousine of a wealthy Washingtonian (Shirley MacLaine) and is taken to her mansion (shot on location at the Biltmore estate in North Carolina) to recuperate. Chance's naivete is mistaken by the aging man-of-the-house (Melvyn Douglas) as sophistication, and so begins Chance's rise to prominence and influence. Chance is oblivious to any of this, embodying instead the movie's two mottos:
"If getting there is half the fun, being there is all of it,"This last line is uttered by Chance at the end of the film, just before he walks across the water of a small, idyllic pond on the estate. Most viewers feel that in some tantalizing, enigmatic way, this must represent a Christ figure. This seems to have puzzled a good many reviewers, who evidently are not aware of a famous parable about a gardener invented back in the forties by a professional philosopher named John Wisdom (no kidding).and
"Life is a state of mind."
In the parable, two explorers come across a beautiful clearing in the wilderness. Though not meticulously groomed, there are gorgeous flowers everywhere. One explorer believes that there must be a gardener who tends the plot. The other disagrees, regarding the cleared area and the flowers as a chance occurrence. "Where is this gardener?" the second explorer wants to know. When no gardener appears, the first explorer reasons that the gardener must be invisible. The two explorers then subject the area to all kinds of tests in the attempt to determine whether there is an invisible gardener.
The upshot of all of this is that ultimately there is no evidence which will ever settle the issue. Nothing can dissuade the first explorer from his conviction that there is an invisible gardener, and nothing can convince the second that the so-called garden is anything but a happenstance, a chance event. The parallel question, debated by philosophers for ensuing decades, relates to evidence for the existence of God. The parable illustrates the truth that in the debate between devout believers and devout atheists, there are no mutually agreeable grounds to adjudicate the dispute. The existence of God, it might be said, depends upon the state of mind of the believer.
Who can say whether Director Jerzy Kosinski was aware of Wisdom's Parable of the Gardener? The thematic connection clearly seems too strong to be mere chance (!). At any rate, Being There is not only cute. It is deep.
Dead Man Walking
Everybody has heard of Dead Man Walking, but we have several friends who've avoided seeing it because "It's too heavy." (In other countries Americans must be noted for embracing the rather odd notion that it's good to be superficial.) Penn as a lowlife renegade in a small Louisiana town is extraordinarily convincing, and Sarandon is even better as Sister Helen Prejean. (The Flying Nun was never like this.) Perhaps best of all, Tim Robbins steadfastly avoids the trap of lapsing into the sort of good-guys vs. bad-guys genre which seems to be the unfortunate fate of most movies about murder and capital punishment.
Runaway Train
Andrei Konchalovsky's Runaway Train is not merely a "thriller" or an "action movie," despite reviews claiming that it is. John Voight is spellbinding as an escaped convict (contrast this role to his mundane "Mr. Phelps" in Mission Impossible) who, as he flees prison, winds up on a speeding freight train which can't be braked because the engineer has died of a heart attack. Just as surely as Hamlet wonders whether it might not be better to "shuffle off this mortal coil," Voight's escape [??] to an unstoppable train is an existentialist metaphor for life itself; and though the sadistic warden holds all the cards, in the end it's the prisoner who shows a better hand.
Lonestar
Lone Star is enormously good cinema, if you don't view it merely as a sort of postmodern (i.e., no clearly identified heroes or outcomes) Western. Sure, there's been a murder and it's the sheriff's job to figure out who did it. But on a deeper level the movie is about the transformations that result from clashes between races, cultures, genders, and generations; and on a still deeper level it is about interpretation or, even, hermeneutics —about the way everybody interprets reality (whatever that is), past, present, and future, to suit their own interests and needs. "Useful fictions" may be comforting, but in the longrun they may prove more harmful than helpful. The final scene, which appropriately is shot at an abandoned drive-in, is merely quirky unless you get the point that some aspects of the past may be—and at times must be—revised by reinterpretation, while other aspects of the past are just there: inescapable, brute, and factual. Lone Star seems to be saying that redemption may come, if it comes at all, when we can discern where and how to distinguish between what can be revised and what must be honestly faced.
Amistad
Amistad is simply a great movie. Based on an actual incident in the 1830's when a slave ship was commandeered by a group of slaves who had managed to free themselves, Amistad is superbly acted and beautifully filmed. Further, Amistad serves as a profound reminder of the sources of racism in the United States—the horrific legacy of slavery by which our culture is haunted even now. But Amistad, though brutally honest, captures many moments of enduring victory.
The Apostle and other films . . . .
Robert Duvall's The Apostle is marvelous. The acting is utterly convincing, especially by Duvall in the lead and by Miranda Richardson and Walter Goggins. The plot revolves around Pentecostal religion in Texas and Louisiana. For an informative review see James Berardinelli.We recommend Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers. Haven't figured this one out yet, but the acting and cinematography are incredible. Don't miss this one unless you refuse to watch movies that are any more complex than True Lies (a.k.a. True Crap).
One other comment is that if it's been a long time since you saw Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, check it out. Hey, Blade Runner, E.T., Star Wars, Star Trek—they're all cool, but 2001's in a class by itself.
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