movies 17 Jan 2007 09:55 am
Four Movie Reviews
We recently watched four “big name” movies that had been on our Netflix list for what seemed like ages and then they all came in at once. They all were movies that had a lot said about them, showed up in the awards nominations of previous years, and were hailed as quality films. I’ll give them all that. I can also say that they all have stuck in my head until this point, a week and in the case of one, two weeks, later to be written about and thus purged. So as far as “impact” goes, they perhaps all had some, and a couple more than the others.
Ray. David and I just about fell asleep in this. The music made us want to listen to Ray’s music, the real stuff. Jamie Foxx did indeed do a good portrayal. But the writing? Ugh. The story seemed to drone on and on. There isn’t much satisfying about watching someone languish away into addiction, even if it was true. The same story could have been told in less time though it may have been; we watched the version with the extra scenes added in. I still would have cut about an hour off and the extra scenes didn’t amount to that much. At the end, I found the change of the Georgia decision to ban him little solace for the downer the story emphasized.
Capote. GREAT movie. I was intrigued by Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s high-voiced depiction of Truman Capote. He’s one of my favorite actors and the performance was, I think, Oscar winning. It certainly was a risky role for him to take. I know little about the actual Capote so I can’t compare how “lifelike” a job he did. But I do know that he was entirely believable. The story was very tight and well written and moved along. Capote gets tangled around the criminal he’s investigating; it comes to consume him yet there is this cool reserve he tries to hold onto. Catherine Keener plays Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird) and she provides a strong, even voice of conscience. By the climax of the movie the viewer is both fed up (like she is) with Capote’s obsession and rooting for him at the same time. Delicious complexity.
Walk the Line. As far as biopics go, this one was hands down better than Ray, with a similar theme of “watch the brilliant musician struggle with addiction”. Love triumphs beautifully but the ending felt a bit abrupt. Really good acting, good enough in fact, for David to set aside his dislike for Joaquin Phoenix roles and enjoy watching. ;-). I think I realized again though, through watching all four of these movies, how impatient I am with any addiction, and destructive behavior in general, even my own. It makes me angry to watch stupid choices repeat themselves.
Maybe that’s why I need to purge these movie reviews out of my skull. They all share a common theme that I struggle to tolerate. Before I forget, images are from imbd.com.
I save the biggie for last. Brokeback Mountain. This one has confounded and frustrated me the most. Last year when it came out, I listened into quite a few of the long and heated discussions about it. I hesitated when putting it on my netflix list. I hesitated even more letting anyone know I’d watched it. Most of the reviews I’ve read about it went similar to this one:
” While “Brokeback Mountain” seems startlingly unpretentious for a movie about homosexual cowboys, closer reflection reveals that it’s not really about this at all. It’s a simple, tragic story about two men in love. Ennis is a man torn by his affection for Jack and his inability to open up emotionally.”
The review’s source was lost in transit from a forum to my email so I apologize for not crediting the author. It makes my point though…feeling the complete opposite, I didn’t see this any kind of “tragic love story”. It was certainly tragic, but for different reasons in my opinion.
The movie opens with two cowboys getting a lonely job guarding sheep on a pretty mountain. They are essentially fatherless, hurting boys, and as the story goes on, we find out that even the years they did spend with their fathers were not nurturing, healthy relationships. They are bored, hurting, raised a culture that would never have allowed for expressing that let alone healing it, and they have lots of time on their hands. What happens is nearly violent, both physically and emotionally, and goes on to impact them in (yes, addictive) ways for the rest of their lives.
Neither was happy in the “relationship”. One romantacized it but his was a character in love with escapism across the spectrum of his life. The other (in an honestly stunning performance by Heath Ledger) fought against it from the start and not unlike the drug addictions in two of the other movies I watched that week, was haunted by a choice that destroyed anything else he cared about. It was consuming and destructive, not because (dare I say it) it was a homosexual relationship but because it only intensified the lonely disfunction that led him there in the first place rather than doing anything to heal him.
I kept thinking, “stick his fiance up there on the mountain with him and instead they’d have had a beautiful memory while he purged his pain.”
Other than that, Brokeback Mountain was just gorgeous scenery and predictable, boring plot. Take away the “queer cowboy” element and what was left was the stunning cinematography and fantastic soundtrack. But I anticipated every plot shift and that got really old fast. In the light of other movie nominees that same year, and Crash, which ultimately won (and never bored me) and I think the outcry that claimed it was some kind of homophobic bash denying it’s “great classic” movie status pretty much unfounded. The parts were played extremely well and Ang Lee’s films are all beautiful. But I’d never put this film in the “classic” category, as quite a few film critics wanted to.
Both Capote and BBM displayed people-as-addictions and the other two films portrayed drug addicts. I found them all the same. All sad. All raw and honest. The hang up with BBM is that I’ve heard few say that this was a destructive force in their lives. Blame the culture, blame the times. I felt myself recoil at the “pity us” stance BBM seemed to want to pull from the audience.
Well, perhaps what I take away from all four is a deeper compassion for those who struggle with addictions that are so much larger than they are, that consume and control them. Being more merciful is certainly an area where I myself need to grow as a person. I’d choose to do that through empowerment rather than pity though, and that may be where the movies and I part.
