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Movie Review: West Side Story

Everyone has their favorite song from the original West Side Story (1961), but mine is “Gee Officer Krupke,” which consists of a few errant youths making fun of a policeman’s—and by extension, America’s—obsession with tracing their delinquent behavior to cliché childhood misfortunes:

“My daddy beats my mommy / My mommy clobbers me / My grandpa is a commie / My grandma pushes tea / My sister wears a mustache / My brother wears a dress / Goodness gracious, that’s why I’m a mess!”

The point of the song isn’t to dispute the idea that people are influenced by their environments. Rather, it’s to mock the establishment’s fetish for speculating on the causes of behavioral problems while neglecting to give badly needed help to those caught in the cycle of degeneracy. To the boys singing the song, the question of how they got where they are is irrelevant. What matters that Krupke and others won’t lend a desperately needed hand. Since this point is implicitly made at several other moments, I’ve always viewed it as the film’s central social thesis.

Somehow, though, Steven Spielberg seems to have missed that message entirely, because the updates he’s made in his remake of West Side Story, now in theaters, are in direct contradiction to it. Like Officer Krupke, Spielberg in this version has a shallow, pointless explanation for everything. For instance, the two gangs are fighting because their neighborhood is being razed for a shiny new development. Ah, so that’s it! And Tony wants out of the Jets because he had some time in prison to reflect, and besides, he can’t break his parole. Makes sense! Also, it’s emphasized that the aimless Riff has no family, and it’s hinted a few times that his dad may have been killed, a fate that awaits him, as well. How logical! On and on.

Spielberg is trying to treat his characters with love, trying to help the audience see where they’re coming from. But this does nothing for the film and, perhaps more importantly, nothing for young people on the margins of society. Again, this is the point of “Gee Officer Krupke”: that without the intention to give concrete assistance, tracing social evils is merely an academic exercise. Spielberg has so ignored the song’s warning against cheap psychologizing that when “Gee Officer Krupke” is eventually performed, it’s genuinely confusing for a minute whether the boys are being ironic, as in the original, or whether they’re actually serious in tabulating scapegoats, since the latter would seem to be more congruent to the aims of the director.

I’ve been beaten to this point, unfortunately, by Richard Brody of The New Yorker, with whom I rarely agree but who has precisely zeroed in the misguidedness of the new West Side Story:

Brody: “Spielberg… delivers the very kinds of diagnoses that the song is meant to mock—he himself Krupkifies the film. He leaves no loose ends, no ambiguities, no extravagances, no extremes. Instead, he enumerates topics and solutions dutifully and earnestly, creating a hermetic coherence seemingly rooted not in the positive shaping of drama but in the quest for plausible deniability in the court of critical opinion.”

Indeed, the “court of critical opinion” is Spielberg’s true audience, and it will surely grant him his desired approval. That’s because many who evaluate movies today perceive themselves, essentially, as academics—not academics of film, but rather academics of social forces; and for these viewers, it may well be satisfying to discover Spielberg’s “hermetic coherence,” to find that he has scrupulously supplied, if only in passing, the unseen root of each evil portrayed in the film.

Thus, the self-gratifying pontification lambasted in “Gee Officer Krupke” is sadly a dominant mode of art criticism today. Its purveyors want everything put explicitly into context: they’re interested in what’s off the screen, such as the villainous property developers, rather than what’s on it. What a strange way to watch a film!

It’s a shame that Spielberg has been caught up in trying to please these folks, because he has made, otherwise, a very good film. Several musical numbers pop. New actors and actresses give excellent performances. The set design is mostly top notch. Nevertheless, when this movie is watched fifty years from now (perhaps upon being remade again), it’ll stick out oddly for its obsession, so traceable to our current moment, with emphasizing the larger forces impacting the characters, such that every misfortune and misdeed is made to seem logical rather than dramatic. Hamlet in 2021, I’m sure, would be about a Danish hunger crisis that spurred a few innocents to murder.

Somehow I don’t think that would do well at the box office, either.

 

–Jim Andersen

For more reviews, check out my review of The Power of the Dog.

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Movie Review: The Power of the Dog

The Power of the Dog is a country drama that reaches back to filmmaking basics with great success, thanks to the skill and patience of its director, Jane Campion. Invoking picturesque masterpieces like Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978) while at the same time injecting contemporary rage and torment, Campion has given us a revision to frontier mythos: the big tough cowboy, it turns out, maybe wasn’t so tough after all. Considering American cinema’s continued lionization of the John Waynes and Clint Eastwoods who played such characters with one-dimensional charisma, that’s an original and useful artistic statement.

The actor charged with showing us the dark, damaging side of that Western stoicism is Benedict Cumberbatch, and he’s the right man for the job. When brother George (Jesse Plemons) presumes to ask Phil Burbank (Cumberbatch) to wash up before some distinguished guests arrive for dinner, it takes him several minutes to get the words out, so scared is he (and everyone) of Phil’s reaction to being even the slightest bit insulted. It occurred to me watching this scene that I’ve never actually seen Clint Eastwood live anywhere (not permanently, anyway), nor thought about, if he did, what his housemates would think of him.

The main target of Phil’s meanness is George’s new wife Rose (Kirsten Dunst), who succumbs to alcoholism and infirmity under Phil’s ferocious psychological warfare. But why is he doing this? Why can’t he stand to have her in the house? Early on he professes that he’s taking a stand against her supposed gold digging, but no one’s buying that.

The answer, rather, appears to lie in revelations about the nature of Phil’s relationship with his deceased mentor, Bronco Henry. Rose, it seems, is a reminder to Phil of what he had, what he lost, and what he can never have again. He’s Yale educated (it’s pointedly emphasized) and thus free to make a living elsewhere, but he wants to be alone with his thoughts on this ranch, and Rose has unwittingly invaded the isolation he’s crafted for himself. In this portrayal, then, the stoicism of the Western hero doesn’t lead to loneliness, as The Searchers (1956) or Unforgiven (1992) would have it; rather, stoicism is an intentional technique to preserve loneliness—for reasons likely dark and ugly.

Campion only falters in her final act, when Rose’s son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) becomes the focal point. This isn’t quite up to par with the rest of the film, partly because Peter, who is awkward and skinny—the cowboys yell “faggot,” in case the perception wasn’t clear—isn’t as compelling a character as Phil or Rose. Mostly, though, it’s because the hard logic of Peter’s plan departs from the unruly emotional torment that had dominated the earlier sections and provided the main interest of the film. Campion, I think, knows her material is weaker here, judging by the rushed pace of the last few minutes: she knows Phil was more interesting when he was running the show.

Overall, I’m a fan of this movie: what critic wouldn’t be? It delivers on the technical merits—acting, cinematography, structure of screenplay—, it has interesting symbolism (Bronco Henry taught Phil how to ride…and how to do other things), and it looks toward classic films for inspiration while providing interesting criticism of those same films.

I have my qualms: the weaker final act, why George disappeared for nearly the entire film, why Rose was able to access a seemingly unlimited supply of whiskey, why Phil didn’t take revenge for Peter discovering his hideout. But most of these are minor complaints. The Power of the Dog is old school, character-based filmmaking from a thoughtful and experienced director.

 

— Jim Andersen

For more movie reviews, check out my review of Belfast.

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Movie Review: Belfast

It’s hard not to love Belfast, the coming of age drama that follows young Buddy (Jude Hill) and his family through political upheaval and violence in Northern Ireland in the 1960’s. Written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, the film is notable for its excellent black and white cinematography, some wonderfully subdued but powerful performances, and its coverage of interesting historical terrain.

Ultimately, Belfast is a film about how family works, and it has a lot to say on the subject. A surprisingly large number of Buddy’s kin receive their dues in nuanced characterization, thanks to Branagh’s wise yet emotional screenwriting. By movie’s end we’ve been presented with what feels like a complete portrait of three Irish generations.

I found especially compelling Buddy’s older brother, who receives comparatively little screen time but whom Buddy always seems to be watching with great interest. He’s more introverted than Buddy and tends to react sourly to Buddy’s antics, but he appears to have an inner strength and resilience that Buddy initially lacks. Slowly, though, Buddy comes to emulate his brother, such that by the end of the film Buddy has become far more stoic toward the chaos around him, in part by following his brother’s example.

In fact, Buddy seems to absorb something from each of his loving family by movie’s end, and this may be where the interest lies in re-watching: how does the nature of Buddy’s personal growth trace back to interactions and observations with his separate family members?

While the bond of family may be powerful, Branagh shows us that it can be disrupted by a community out of control. In my favorite scene, Buddy is coerced into joining a gang of looters who destroy a supermarket. When he proudly returns home with a stolen box of cereal, clueless about what he’s done, his Ma (Caitriona Balfe) is having none of it and drags him back to return the stolen item.

In a typical film, this episode might end there, presented as an admirable and humorous example of tough parenting—but not in this one, as the anti-Catholic looters won’t allow the mother and son to return the cereal, and instead the situation becomes gravely dangerous. The wild spectacle of Buddy’s Ma attempting and failing to teach a traditional moral lesson amidst a backdrop of viciousness and amorality makes this moment stick in the mind long afterward.

It’s useful to compare Belfast to Jojo Rabbit (review here), the Best Picture nominee from two years ago with a nearly identical premise. Belfast, of course, is the better film by light years, but it sometimes veers too close to the unwelcome whimsy of its predecessor. For instance, Buddy, like Jojo before him, is a bit too precious, his character needlessly losing some believability in the name of cuteness. And also like Jojo, Buddy has an extravagantly tolerant, sagelike, speechmaking parent: his Pa (Jamie Dornan). A deus ex machina moment at Belfast’s climax and the Van Morrison soundtrack that hints at fun that nobody appears to be having, recall Jojo Rabbit by sapping gravitas from key sequences.

Nevertheless, the craft of Belfast bolsters it to the cream of this year’s crop, and if it wins the Oscar for Best Picture, as some predict it will, it’ll be a far worthier choice than last year’s Nomadland or even the prior year’s Parasite. I’m skeptical it has the power of a permanent classic, because, for all its great insight into family dynamics, it can’t quite look at its historical material head on: it retreats to a child’s ignorance when convenient, substituting feel-good lessons for the authentic images—however ghastly—we deserve. Branagh’s Belfast can be mentioned in the same sentence as Schindler’s List (1993), but Spielberg showed us his atrocities, whereas in Belfast we only hear of them.

Are children are too innocent to see death and gore? No. The slightly too innocent one, sadly, is Branagh.

 

— Jim Andersen

For more old reviews, see my rankings of the 2020 Best Picture nominees.

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Movie Review: The Harder They Fall

Like most westerns, The Harder They Fall is boring. I’m not a fan of this genre due to its restrictiveness: as with the rom-com, the western’s conventions are so strict that they typically exclude significant innovation. The story of a western must play out in an extremely specific way: a good and a bad cowboy, one of whom is a newcomer of sorts, slowly build toward a showdown, and eventually the good cowboy shoots the bad cowboy dead. The end.

Having the cast be comprised of black actors is a good idea, but it ultimately doesn’t change things. We still have a swaggering villain, a climactic shootout, etc., and the pieces fall into place as they must. I should add that this movie is very long (also a hallmark of westerns), due, as usual, to the many, many threats the characters drawl at each other that don’t advance the plot in any way.

To his credit, director Jeymes Samuel seems to sense the staleness of his foundation, and he wants to jazz it up. But his efforts backfire. The story is about a certified badass outlaw (Nat Love) and his gang (RJ Cyler and Edi Gathegi), who are possibly even more badass than he is. Also, his love interest (Zazie Beetz) is without question more badass than the gang is, and they’re also helped by a sheriff (Delroy Lindo) who might be the most badass of all. Meanwhile, the man (Idris Elba) who murdered the protagonist’s parents is a legendary badass, and his badass partner in crime (Lakeith Stanfield) is the quickest draw around. And…his love interest (Regina King) is almost certainly more badass than any of them.

Do you see the problem here? Every character cannot be a badass. Badassery is a zero sum game: being a badass means that other people are not badasses. As Syndrome would say, when everyone is a badass, then no one is—it’s just the norm. Samuel has created a world in which being a mega-badass is the norm. He’s overstuffed his movie so that there are no particularly memorable moments, no focal points. What he winds up with is two plus hours of people comebacking and one-upping each other, such that who comes out on top doesn’t feel important.

Samuel has also made a number of intentionally anachronistic decisions: the hip hop score, the glamorized sets, the lack of proper accents. Again, I credit him for trying to mix it up. But the effect of these choices is to create a feeling that it’s all playacting, that it’s not to be taken seriously. It implies, actually, that accuracy of setting and of tone were never truly important components of the western: that only the characters and their motivations gave the genre its impact.

That’s an interesting theory, but it’s not right. The setting is indeed the central component of the western (hence its name) and the reason its aesthetics remain with us. We watch the classics—The Searchers, High Noon, Shane—to reacquaint ourselves with the Wild West and its idiosyncratic yet alluring set of values, but The Harder They Fall shrugs off the possibility of allowing us that glimpse of what used to be. It therefore doesn’t offer us anything from the past, only the present. And apparently, the present is full of badasses.

 

—Jim Andersen

For more reviews, see my thoughts on Netflix’s Mank.

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Movie Review: Mank

Mank will be an inscrutable entry into the Best Picture academy field this year. Directed by David Fincher in his first feature film since 2014, this quirky dramedy stars Gary Oldman as Herman Mankiewicz, the smart-tongued screenwriter who pens the cinematic masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941).

To derive any enjoyment whatsoever from this movie, one has to be familiar with Citizen Kane, and even then, it’s not easy to keep up—either with the endlessly ironic Mank or with the screenplay’s many pivotal references to Hollywood history and lore.

Interpreting this chatty throwback is a doozy, but here goes. In summary, I view Mank is a kind of Marxist statement about the origins of art. The primary concern of the film seems to be Mank’s left-wing politics and the alienation they cause him in high up Hollywood circles. He irks studio executives with his irreverent disdain for their money-grubbing ways, and he pulls hard for liberal candidate Upton Sinclair, who ultimately loses the California governor’s race (thanks in part to Mank’s bosses)—all against a distant backdrop of rising fascism in Germany, which no one but Mank seems to be taking seriously.

It’s implied that Mank’s building animosity toward greedy bigwigs fuels his inspiration for Citizen Kane, the title character of which he bases on the curmudgeonly news tycoon William Randolph Hearst, greediest of them all. By extension, then, Mank the film argues that Citizen Kane is essentially a political reaction to a ruling elite increasingly detached from the reality of ordinary people at that time.

But is it just me, or this a pretty bad theory? For starters, Charles Foster Kane the character is actually written with great empathy, a far cry from the hard villain that Mank makes of Hearst. And the screenplay of Citizen Kane really just isn’t political in any way: it’s focused almost exclusively on the personal successes and failures of one man, with little attention paid to historical affairs. Fincher’s rendition of Herman Mankiewicz and the actual finished product of Citizen Kane just…don’t connect.

Nevertheless, when it’s all said and done, I have to admit the vision is interesting. I thought we had lost David Fincher the artist after big name adaptations like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and Gone Girl (2014) started dominating his feature film oeuvre, but surprisingly, he’s come back swinging. He may be our foremost visual presenter of bitterness: among his sour creations are William Somerset from Se7en (1995), The Narrator from Fight Club (1999), Paul Avery from Zodiac (2007), the entire cast of The Social Network (2010), Lizbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Amy Dunne from Gone Girl; now we can add Herman Mankiewicz. Where there’s dissatisfaction and disappointment, there’s Fincher.

I don’t think he’s ever produced a masterpiece, and I don’t think Mank is one, but the technical attention to detail and genuine artistic interest of his latest entry, however flawed, makes me hold out hope that one day, he still might.

 

– Jim Andersen

For more reviews, see my praise of The Father.

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Best Picture Rankings: 2021

Originally published March 2021

The annual rankings are here!

As anyone might have predicted, there was a noticeable decline in overall quality this year. Some of the entrants are uneven streaming-only releases that likely wouldn’t have made it into the field in a normal Oscar season, and this year’s apparent favorite, Nomadland, would be in my opinion one of the worst winners in recent memory (and that’s saying something). Overall, I gave 4 of this year’s 8 nominees negative reviews, compared with only 3 of 9 last year.

Nevertheless, there were two films that I greatly enjoyed this year, which are #’s 1 and 2 on this list. I highly recommend both of these pictures, which prove that even in the worst of circumstances, we can still be treated to great cinema.

Without further ado:

 

  1. Promising Young Woman

“It doesn’t bother fulfilling most of the responsibilities of cinematic storytelling, such as character arcs or crafted visuals; it struck me instead as a kind of ritual sacrifice to the #MeToo gods, a wild, disturbing attempt to cleanse the ugly demons haunting Hollywood.”  (Full Review)

 

  1. The Trial of the Chicago 7

“…the stench of pandering transcends politics, current events, and even movie craftsmanship. Sorkin, in trying to please somebody—the Twitter universe, perhaps—has made an inauthentic film, a lowlight in his successful career.” (Full Review)

 

  1. Nomadland

“[This] movie thus devolves into, essentially, a collection of shallow images that we can easily get elsewhere or even stage ourselves. It’s been said that Nomadland is “lyrical” and “poetic;” if so, it’s surely Instagram poetry: its tagline might have been, #wanderlust.”  (Full Review)

 

  1. Sound of Metal

“Poorly paced and freewheeling as it is, this script is just too messy, and it should be said that some technical aspects of this movie are messy as well.”  (Full Review)

 

  1. Mank

“I don’t think [Fincher has] ever produced a masterpiece, and I don’t think Mank is one, but the technical attention to detail and genuine artistic interest of his latest entry, however flawed, makes me hold out hope that one day, he still might.”  (Full Review)

 

  1. Judas and the Black Messiah

“What is the artistic value of a film that denies us hope for its hero? In my own opinion, the value is considerable. It makes for a bleak watch, but there’s honesty in bleakness.”  (Full Review)

 

  1. Minari

“Insistently small in scope, opaque in narrative trajectory, and complex in its treatment of characters who surprise (and disappoint) to the very end, Minari is a truth teller’s rendition of the immigrant tale, a quirky family saga that makes a worthy bid for inclusion in our canon of cinematic Americana.”  (Full Review)

 

  1. The Father

“This has been a year of small movies rather than grand, sweeping visions: fitting, since we lived 2020 in such little worlds. Fitting also, then, that The Father, smallest of them all, is also the best.”  (Full Review)

 

 

–Jim Andersen

For more rankings, see my thoughts on last year’s nominees.

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Movie Review: The Father

Originally published February 2021

I seem to forget every year that the amount of hype a film receives during award season is no real indicator of its actual impressiveness. The Father, directed by Florian Zeller and starring Anthony Hopkins, has had barely any fanfare as the Oscars have approached, so when I finally readied to see it, I expected, based on the lukewarm buzz around it (and the boring title), a conventional, slow paced drama. Instead, I was treated to my favorite film of the year.

The Father unmistakably dwarfs most of its more celebrated nominees in inventiveness, honesty, and even empathy, demonstrating superior craftsmanship and an incredibly moving acting performance.

The world of The Father is a crumbling world, owing to the failing mind of its perceiver. The key to understanding the movie’s structure is realizing that Zeller, instead of simply presenting a series of random, jumbled experiences and proclaiming it the experience of dementia, has instead placed the onscreen episodes into a highly tenuous narrative, which, as becomes evident throughout the movie, is the narrative that the protagonist, Anthony, has laboriously constructed in an effort to make some sense of what is happening to him.

Unfortunately, all Anthony has available to him to construct this narrative are unreliable fragments of memory, so the best he can do is scramble them into a weak thread of mysterious persecution by unclear parties, and even this can’t fully account for the many discrepancies that continue to frustrate him throughout the film. The retrospective nature of what we have been watching becomes clear when we realize that nurses in Anthony’s new nursing home have been infiltrating scenes that took place well before he met them: his present has bled into his past, and he can’t separate the two.

It’s an ingenious setup, and I’m already looking forward to when I can see this movie again, so that I can try to trace the (faulty) connections between the scenes that Anthony uses to place them in (incorrect) order. I don’t think this will be an impossible task, because Zeller has mercifully provided us with one reliable overseer of events: Anthony’s alarmed daughter, Anne (Olivia Colman). A few scenes take place from her point of view, and these are verifiably true, although they also appear in the jumbled order decreed by Anthony’s nonsense narrative, such that we see Anne buying a chicken at the store long after we’ve seen other episodes during which we know that the chicken has already been brought home. The trick, then, will be to use what we know for sure, from Anne, to discern what, in Antony’s struggling mind, is false.

I don’t know how valuable any praise of Anthony Hopkins’ performance is, since it speaks so obviously well for itself. But safe to say, it’s extraordinary. More than extraordinary. Anyone who has had a family member or worked with an individual with dementia will recognize the out of place witticisms, the showy bluster, the matter-of-fact rambling, the sudden and uncharacteristic ferocity, the too-absurd tall tales, the startled, vacant stare.

By all accounts, the Best Actor Oscar this year will go, posthumously, to Chadwick Boseman. And indeed, Boseman has earned recognition. But let this rightful commemoration of Boseman’s achievements, both the ones we remember and the ones that were sure to come, not avert us from the other great performances turned in this year, especially this masterpiece from a fellow acting legend, one of the great talents in all of movie history.

This has been a year of small movies rather than grand, sweeping visions: fitting, since we lived 2020 in such little worlds. Fitting also, then, that The Father, smallest of them all, is also the best. The admittedly worthy argument against its candidacy for Best Picture is that this isn’t the time for it: that now is simply a moment in history for other films to shine. Judas and the Black Messiah, for example, explores with raw authenticity the conflict between police and political revolutionaries, so relevant to today’s current events. Nomadland follows, less skillfully in my opinion, the economically displaced of rural America, another story undeniably in need of telling.

These films have been described, with some truth, as “urgent.” But when, then, will be the urgent time to tell about the Anthonys of the world? More forgotten than anyone, no movements will be dedicated to them; no one will rally in their name. Zeller, though, knows that our engagement will be elsewhere: for his last shot, he pans to the trees outside the nursing home—the ones, unlike poor Anthony, with all their leaves, bright and bustling in the wind, going on amongst themselves with the business of being alive: business that Antony, who’ll have to content himself with a walk among them in the park later on, isn’t quite an important part of, anymore.

 

—Jim Andersen

For more reviews, see my praise for Judas and the Black Messiah.

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Movie Review: Judas and the Black Messiah

Judas and the Black Messiah, written and directed by Shaka King, took me a few days to mull over, because its storytelling methods are quite unorthodox. You’d be forgiven for leaving the theater unsatisfied after seeing this impressively original movie, because whereas we expect historical dramas to embellish their facts, King seems to have, if anything, pared down his content, keeping his characters oddly flat and minimizing our engagement with their assorted concerns.

Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) is the titular black messiah, an anti-capitalist revolutionary who never wavers in his mission. In a conventional film, he might be tempted at some point by material gain or the fear of punishment—but here, truly Jesuslike, he stays true: in a late scene, he even refuses money for his own escape and directs it to be used to start a medical facility. His counterpart, Bill O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), is the Judas of the tale, and he’s roped in early by the FBI and never escapes.

Where, we start to wonder, are the character arcs for these individuals? Without any real changes in their attitudes or situations, the narrative begins to seem…well, a bit boring.

But King isn’t interested in making a white-knuckle thriller, nor does he want a traditional two-character study. Instead, he presents us with an atypically stoic tragedy, a pained lament for a historical figure’s early death that drops all pretense of uncertainty. In the film’s opening, we’re introduced to its five-note main theme—Best Original Score, please!—and it’s a sad, almost funereal dirge, setting King’s tone for the remainder of the film. Judas and the Black Messiah is essentially a visualized death march for Fred Hampton, a mourning of his long-assured fate from a studied admirer. Nothing is so conveyed in this film as the utter inevitability of Hampton’s eventual death: the pieces are in place from the very beginning, and nothing can change.

I think my favorite moment of the movie is when an anonymous, unseen FBI agent shouts, after examining a sedated Hampton in his bed: “He’s actually gonna make it!” It’s heartbreaking to hear, because it reminds us of what, in our hearts, we already knew: that O’Neal’s cooperation wasn’t truly essential, that Hampton would have been killed regardless of the duplicity.

We have to ask ourselves, I suppose: what is the artistic value of a film that denies us hope for its hero? In my own opinion, the value is considerable. It makes for a bleak watch, but there’s honesty in bleakness. Had King relented a bit, we might have seen something closer to Aaron Sorkin’s far inferior The Trial of the Chicago 7 (review here), which addresses highly similar themes and, unlike Judas, does employ the traditional rules of drama—but finds itself too often in corny territory and ultimately sounds an out of place, Kumbaya-style final note.

Perhaps the survival of pregnant Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback) is the glimmer we want: Hampton may have been doomed, but maybe, if we work hard enough, his son won’t be. Musings like this are possible, even necessary, when a director insists on a certain vision. So while his characters may not be as dynamic as we’d like, King leaves us with no less to ponder for it.

 

— Jim Andersen

For a related review, see my more negative thoughts on The Trial of the Chicago 7.

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Movie Review: The Trial of the Chicago 7

Aaron Sorkin, screenwriter of some rightful cinematic classics like A Few Good Men (1992) and The Social Network (2010), as well as, more relevantly here, television shows like The West Wing (1999-2006) and The Newsroom (2012-14), has taken to the director’s chair to realize his script for the historical drama The Trial of the Chicago 7, now out on Netflix. The notorious knock on Sorkin, which he earned mostly via The West Wing, is his penchant for long-winded speechmaking and didacticism, especially as a means of promoting mainstream, diplomatic liberalism.

This new film is a transparent attempt to rewrite that reputation. Sorkin has researched a historical event highly relevant to today’s political climate, and, as usual, has written a central character—Tom Hayden, played by Eddie Redmayne—who espouses the virtues of pragmatism and restraint in order to most effectively achieve liberal victories. But this time, Sorkin wants to be hip. So he’s written Abbie Hoffman (Sasha Baron Cohen) as a witty frenemy for Hayden in order to represent the more progressive wing of liberal politics, and the two characters go at it with spirited debate about how to best conduct the fight for social justice.

Sorkin thinks he’s written an evenhanded philosophical dispute, but he’s Sorkin, so he hasn’t. In the movie’s thematic climax, when Hoffman questions Hayden’s liberal convictions, Hayden delivers this devastating, unanswerable excoriation:

Hayden: “My problem is that for the next fifty years, when people think of progressive politics, they’re gonna think of you. … They’re not gonna think of equality or justice; they’re not gonna think of education or poverty or progress. They’re gonna think of a bunch of stoned, lost, disrespectful, foul-mouthed, lawless losers, and so we’ll lose elections.”

How coincidental that Hayden’s fifty-year imagination extends forward to…right now! It’s almost as if this eerily prophetic speech was written, in fact, by a screenwriter fifty years in the future who stacked the deck for this particular character by endowing him with infallible foresight.

Hoffman protests, but he can’t erase the absolute demolition Hayden has just wreaked upon hippies and Bernie Bros everywhere. Not to fear, though, because Hoffman eventually does manage to suitably impress Hayden by revealing that he has read all of Hayden’s own writings. Hmm.

Sorkin also forays into racial tensions in America. He holds up well enough here, and there are some profound moments. They’re predicated, though, on the requirement, which, to be fair, is true to the historical record, that Bobby Searle (Yahya Abdul-Mateen) isn’t going to stick around for the whole movie. As in any old school horror, which I suppose this is in a way, the black guy goes first.

That leaves room for Hayden to steal the finale—patriotic music playing, evil judge raging—by proving once and for all that he’s one of the gang, one of the cool kids. That he’s on the right side of history.

It’s a bit of artistic anxiety: Sorkin in 2020 is worried that, with a body of work that features The West Wing, he might not be. And he could be right or wrong: I, unlike Sorkin’s characters, don’t have a screenwriter to feed me unfair prescience. Maybe pragmatic liberalism will stand the test of time. In fact, I hope it does.

But it doesn’t really matter here, because the stench of pandering transcends politics, current events, and even movie craftsmanship. Sorkin, in trying to please somebody—the Twitter universe, perhaps—has made an inauthentic film, a lowlight in his successful career. His impulse toward those pushy political radicals has always been exasperation, and that impulse is perfectly artistically valid. But it’s precisely because it is valid that it is impossible to hide, and if Sorkin keeps trying to bury it, the quality of his work will continue to suffer going forward.

 

– Jim Andersen

For more negative reviews, see my piece on Promising Young Woman.

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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: Promising Young Woman

Promising Young Woman, directed by Emerald Fennell, is punching well above its weight as a Best Picture nominee. It doesn’t bother fulfilling most of the responsibilities of cinematic storytelling, such as character arcs or crafted visuals; instead, it represents a kind of ritual sacrifice to the #MeToo gods, a wild, disturbing attempt to cleanse the ugly demons haunting Hollywood. By virtue of this film’s undeserved nomination, the academy appears to hope, maybe the legacy of Harvey Weinstein and his ilk will fade into distant memory? Maybe the constant drip of reported malfeasance by male stars and bigwigs will finally stop? Please?

There’s not much to discuss in the way of depth or nuance. The film’s trailer pretty much hits all the highlights, because above all, this movie wants to be quotable. The problem is that all of its quotes have already been said or written many times over: it’s a Frankenstein’s monster of feminist thinkpieces—especially the pieces that want to let you know that you, whoever you are, aren’t off the hook…so don’t get too comfortable!

In channeling them, the talented Carey Mulligan goes uncharacteristically over the top, packing so much swaggering snark that she can’t help but burst frequently into campiness. Since I’m a fan of Mulligan’s work, I choose to believe that it was director Fennell’s decision, not hers, to have the character, whenever she drops her drunk girl charade, pop open her eyes cartoonishly like Sandy Cheeks coming out of hibernation.

What Promising Young Woman does have is rage. If you loved the movie, you probably have a decent amount of it, too. This is the kind of film you wish that all the worst people would watch, so that they could recognize themselves and see how terrible they are (but they won’t watch it because they suck too much—argh!). Or perhaps your friends and family who aren’t quite feminist enough, who don’t quite get it: if only they watched this movie, and felt the proper shame!

Don’t get your hopes up. Possibly, just possibly, outrage is the one thing we have plenty of already, which is why this film doesn’t feel original in any way. What we always need more of, on the other hand, is intimate, truthful storytelling, but Promising Young Woman, with its swollen, pandering bravado, falls far short of providing that.

It’s notable that this film, for all its ostensible sympathy with the unheard plight of survivors, leaves its own victim off the screen entirely: we never see the pivotal video of Nina’s attack, nor the character’s subsequent decline. Fennell, then, has chosen to commemorate the invisibility of these women rather than use her powers to illuminate. Who will be the director brave enough to shine the light?

 

– Jim Andersen

For more reviews, see my positive review of Minari.