First Thoughts on Bella the Movie

What can I say about Bella the movie? It's beautifully filmed, beautifully acted, beautifully paced--it has everything a "nice" "inspiring" film has--except it has some unnameable other thing, something more. Director Alejandro Monteverde has given his vignette a subtlety of symbol that filmmakers like Spielberg and Shyamalan should study. The film has a couple of moments in which the significance of people, things, and events deepen beyond their simple appearance--moments and images which, like icebergs, drag with them the immeasurable bulk of Something More below the visible tip.

The best example of this is the Edenic imagery of the film: riding the train out of the city, Bella gives José a very green apple, then pulls another one out for herself. What distinguishes this from all other tired references to the fall of man is that it inverts it: the apples become a communion, a shared meal. It is a refiguring, not a replay of Eden. Stepping off the train, they walk to Jose's parents' house, and meet his father (read Father?) who puts them to work planting his garden. "It will be Paradise," he says in Spanish. Again, the film takes the simple act of gardening--taking with it the events of the fall of man--and refigures it as Eden should have been--man and woman working together WITH the Father, to "till and keep" the garden.

Perhaps more on this later.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford has received as many critical awards as its transcontinental name has letters. Some critics love to have their sense of established film conventions jostled significantly, but not this critic. The sprawling episodic plot never departed enough from its literary source (Ron Hansen's novel) to become a good movie in its own right. The haunting riff that signaled the transition between loosely connected episodes grows more clangy and less haunting with each hour that passes until the central story line--Robert Ford's obsession with the glory, power, and mystique of Jesse James, who he follows and eventually murders-- finally gets some steam about 2/3rds of the way through the movie.

The last third of the movie is worth the wait. With all the superfluous characters (and oddly well-developed) dead or in jail, we can focus on the primary psychological conflict between Jesse James and Robert Ford. It's compelling though the camera can never quite reach inside the character's heads the way Ron Hansen's prose can. The camera strains to tell us what's in Jesse James' head through close-up after agonizing close-up, but can never quite articulate it. That's the problem with adaptations that aren't adapted. The beauty of the original is lost in an extended effort to be faithful to the source.

I don't get all the fuss surrounding Brad Pitt's performance either. It was neither striking nor powerful. I guess people are just floored that he took a complicated role.

Central Station - A Film from Brazil

Last night I watched a great foreign film, titled CENTRAL STATION, or in Portuguese, CENTRAL DO BRASIL. I was totally surprised. Director Walter Salles brings together a hardened, selfish retired teacher and a little boy whose mother has just died in a car accident. The retired teacher is a letter writer at the Central [train] Station in Rio, and gets drawn inexorably out of herself as she tries to decide what to do with the boy. The result is a search for the boy's father that becomes a pilgrimage of its own--almost a spiritual journey for this woman who has given up loving others.
Salles directs a paradoxically gritty and transcendent film; the poverty and shocking depravity of Rio contrast greatly with the simplicity and natural beauty of the poorer rural villages. I can only describe the film's visual style as luminous. The picture is filled with shining Light. Not shining lights, but Light. Salles tells a story of a woman who has never been a mother, but who becomes a Mother in the fullest sacrificial sense.

A beautiful and moving film; put it on your list of things to watch.

If only Hitler had denounced British imperialism...

I know I'm late to the bandwagon, but Forest Whitaker's portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland is perhaps the finest performance I've ever seen. While Whitaker perfectly embodies the irresistible charisma and brutal egomania of the man, director Kevin Macdonald's accomplishment is no less great. It's probably the finest, most emotionally engrossing movie I've seen since The Lives of Others.

If you don't currently appreciate the the virtue and restraint of our American revolutionaries, this movie will definitely give you time for reflection. Bloody revolutions only lead to more perpetual cycles of blood as the liberators become the oppressors. If there's one lesson the 20th century has taught us repeatedly, it's this one. It's interesting, however, to see the fascination liberal intellectuals still have with the figure of Idi. A documentary accompanying the movie hardly dwelt at all on Idi's genocidal tendencies, preferring to sentimentally recall Idi's relentless verbal jabs at the British crown. The interviewees were fascinated with the way Idi "gave it" to English imperialist pigs. This then is what they consider to be the majority of Idi's legacy, rather than the mass, lazily unhidden graves constructed by his regime.

In the Valley of Elah

It shouldn't bother us much when big screen stars patronize us daily with their moral superiority, or when they sound off on politics with inflated self-importance, or when they do all of the above while sporting the latest fashions trademarked by murderers like Mao and Che Guevara. It's all part of that frivolous pageantry that forms the background static of our national culture and without it we'd have to go back to thinking about something meaningful. It should only cause annoyance when the seriousness employed when sounding off in the public square inspires film. The "war as irrationality" stance taken by so many Hollywood elites may make for good posturing in the public eye, but produces terrible drama. Anyone who saw Troy, or The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, or Jarhead knows that the theme of alienation doesn't translate well to the screen. Who wants to see Achilles mope around like a disaffected teenager mourning the irrationality of war? Alienation may work in a Camus novel, but not in a movie. Combine the theme of alienation with the inflated sense of seriousness and self-importance and you have Paul Haggis' latest movie In the Valley of Elah. Haggis admittedly wanted this movie to be an important statement concerning the Iraqi War. I just wish Mr. Haggis would have confined his serious statements to the background static that we live with daily rather than awkwardly converting it to film. Read this interesting Variety article about the flick.

Fellini's 'La Strada'

Martin and I recently watched Federico Fellini's La Strada (stay tuned for his more sophisticated opinions), on a special edition DVD introduced by Martin Scorcese. Scorcese cites Fellini as a seminal influence; watching La Strada, it's easy to see how.

La Strada (meaning The Road) tells the story of a young, simple woman, Gelsomina (played by Fellini's wife Giuletta Marsina), who is sold to a travelling circus strongman to work as an assistant clown, cook, and concubine. She is simple-minded, innocent, sweet, and loving; he is brutish, arrogant, and very angry. The film was mostly about him brutalizing her in spite of her efforts to love him, and his eventual self destruction because of his own anger.

Sound familiar? It was very much like Raging Bull, only this one at least had one sweet and likeable character. Gelsomina stays with Zampano despite being given opportunities to leave him; the idea, I suppose, is that her love will ultimately redeem him. The tragedy of the film, however, is that it doesn't; at the end we see Zampano miserable and, we can assume, remorseful, but is that enough after Gelsomina has sacrificed her life loving him?

The story was practically the definition of tragic, but I couldn't help wanting to give Gelsomina the most basic piece of advice ever given to a young girl: you can't change that man! I suppose,though, that wasn't the point - we were meant to watch her tragic innocence trampled by the brutal cruelty of a world that doesn't care how sweet your intentions are.

What it comes down to, then, is that this is just a genre of film that I don't like - I don't enjoy watching angry self-destruction and pointless tragedy. I'd rather see a compelling story or some sort of anecdote to the anger and sorrow of daily life. There are so many angry people in the world - you only need to go as far as the grocery store to see people yelling, shouting into phones, suffering from the angst and anger of going through life concerned only with yourself. I think I'll avoid Fellini's and Scorcese's furious, 'raging' characters and turn to cinema for beauty and something uplifiting - escapism, I guess, but isn't that the point of film anyway? It's what I'd prefer, at least.

Michaelangelo Antonioni, RIP

Check out this video of Monthy Python making reference to Michaelangelo Antonioni, another great film director who died on July 30, the same day as Ingmar Bergman. Anontioni was a mid-century Italian neorealist, whose desparate dramas focused on characters suffering from ennui and malaise. (Keep listen to the character speaking after the credits and music start to roll).

And speaking of dead directors, Alfred Hitchcock was born on this day in 1899.