Friday, November 16, 2012

LINCOLN

History can sometimes weigh on a film like an albatross around its neck. The importance of getting things right while being entertaining while making something respectable while making it broad enough to get an audience to justify the larger budget for period sets can be overwhelming. When the subject matter is the man on the US penny, and his fight to pass one of the most important pieces of legislation in US history, that weight of history could easily turn any film into a dusty textbook. But Steven Spielberg does not make dusty textbooks, and Lincoln is possibly his best addition to Hollywood’s collection of history on film.

At the end of 1865, Abraham Lincoln has won re-election, the Civil War is in its final year, and the President has decided that the time has come to pass the 13th Amendment to end slavery. With a trio of proto-lobbyists and the Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones), Lincoln and his Secretary of State (David Strathairn) play politics with Congress while continuing to fight the Confederacy.

A film about Abraham Lincoln directed by Steven Spielberg was inevitable. He has been planning it for more than a decade. Scripts and screenwriters have come and gone as the centerpiece of the story shifted from Lincoln’s early days to the Civil War. Finally Tony Kushner (Angels in America, Munich) was hired to adapt Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, with the focus on Lincoln’s final years. The script that resulted is easily one of the best historical adaptations I’ve seen. It achieves the delicate task of creating dialogue for cultural icons, balancing fact with entertainment, and creating suspense where none exists. Like Apollo 13 or Titanic, there is no mystery about the conclusion, but there is so much drama to be found along the way. History adaptations are interesting for all the details that are not widely known, and unless the audience has studied the source materials, there are plenty of surprises in Lincoln.

In one of Spielberg’s earlier versions he had cast Liam Neeson as the President when Daniel Day-Lewis passed. That production was put aside and Day-Lewis was eventually persuaded to join. Good that he did because the performance he gives is nothing short of astounding. Everything, from his posture to his voice, appears completely natural; he isn’t playing Lincoln, he is Lincoln. It’s a cliche, but it’s true: Daniel Day-Lewis completely disappears into this role.

Part of Day-Lewis’ impressive performance comes from his supporting cast. Spielberg is the most powerful director in Hollywood, so he can get anyone he wants. Everywhere in Lincoln there are familiar faces wearing false beards or Gone With The Wind dresses. Sally Field is a standout as Mary Todd Lincoln, and Joseph Gordon Levitt as her son, Robert. James Spader plays a 19th Century version of his Boston Legal persona named W. N. Bilbo. And Watchmen’s Rorschach, Jackie Earle Haley, plays the Vice-President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens. The recognizable cast echoes JFK or The Aviator, where modern celebrity is used to make up for the diminished notoriety of the real people. It’s an elegant and old-fashioned strategy to make lesser historical figures relevant to a modern audience. But, among this celebrity cast, Daniel Day-Lewis still disappears under Abraham Lincoln’s face, which makes his performance even more amazing.

An important aspect of Lincoln’s power is the cast of antagonists. The democratic leaders, the Confederacy diplomats, and the average white farmers who fear mass murder at the hands of freed slaves are strangely humanized despite their views. A combination of script and performance makes clear their arguments as to why ending slavery is bad. Their logic is broken and their views are obviously wrong, but it is not difficult to understand how and why they hold the views they do. This gives the opposition to the amendment real credibility, which aids the suspense in the voting sequence.
The climax of the film, much like the title moment of The King’s Speech, is played almost verbatim as it would have happened. The roll is called and one by one the congressmen vote; focus jumps around to all the characters in the film, and slowly the tally is taken until the results are announced. It seems odd that something so methodical and bureaucratic could be so exciting, but that is the curious power that this film wields. Spielberg has put together a tremendously balanced film. It is witty, engaging, and never feels too long. Essentially, it’s a 19th Century episode of The West Wing, which any fan of the show will tell you sounds amazing.


CLOUD ATLAS


“Remarkable,” “Convoluted,” “Entertaining,” “Sprawling,” “Masterful,” “Transcendant,” and “Guaranteed to divide.” Those are the words the critics have been using about Cloud Atlas. I prefer what was said by the film’s three directors, Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachoswki, and Andy Wachowski, when they premiered the six-minute first trailer: “It’s hard to sell, hard to describe, because it’s hard to reduce.”

Based on the highly-acclaimed (and highly-recommended) novel by David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas is not one 3-hour movie much like the novel is not one 500-page book. It is actually a collection of six 30-minute movies spread across time, space, and genre. These short films have been chopped up and spliced together with interruptions and mid-sentence stops, with voice-overs carrying across multiple stories, and with connections both explicit and implicit. It is an ambitous and unusual film, but unlike other attempts to create grand scope and provoke philosophical debate, Cloud Atlas is also wonderfully fun and entertaining. Tree of Life is an attempt to interweave different eras and themes, but for all its artistic quality it is still a cure for insomnia. But Cloud Atlas’ directors (creators of The Matrix and Run Lola Run) are eager to entertain, and for all the ambition driving the film it never forgets to tell a good narrative.

The ambition of the project is only clearer when the cast is considered. Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, Susan Sarandon, and Hugh Grant are among the main cast, and every one plays at least three parts. Several of the actors, including Tom Hanks, actually play six parts; one role for each section of Cloud Atlas, playing different personalities, different races, and even different genders.

In these six sections the film covers all the major genres and time periods: a dying doctor on a pacific voyage in 1849, letters from a composer to his lover in pre-war Europe, a conspiracy thriller in the 1970s, a modern-day comedy of a publisher committed to a nursing home, the future rebellion of a clone in Korea, and the post-apocalyptic survival story of a tribe living on Hawaii. Taken alone any of these stories would be worthy films, but taken together they become part of a larger work that is offered up to the audience for their interpretation.

Unlike in the book, one of my favorite sections is the earliest, the 1849 travel of Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess) as he is being cared for by Dr. Henry Goose. The eccentric doctor is brought to life by Tom Hanks, and is one of the best examples in the film of how the casting adds new levels of enjoyment to the stories. Like a blockbuster adaptation of “Where’s Waldo?” it is a lot of fun trying to spot all the famous faces hidden under the make-up. At the end of the film the credits include the answer-key with all the actors’ characters showing up alongside their name, and its likely that several will come as a surprise.

Cloud Atlas is a film like The Avengers in that the people who like it and the people who don’t like it will probably be saying the same thing; “So massive,” and “Too massive,” are reviews from personal taste. I’ve met people who hate Casablanca or The Fighter, but praise Valentine’s Day for its originality, and I think those people are idiots. But that’s my personal opinion. It’s impossible to make a film that everyone likes, and Cloud Atlas is not for everyone. It is 3-hours, after all, and there is violence and romance alongside foul language and futuristic slang. Fans of Hugh Grant may find it difficult to see the rom-com leading man in the same light after seeing him play the warrior chief of a tribe of cannibals. But, for the other side of the audience, this film includes Hugh Grant playing the warrior chief of a tribe of cannibals! Depending on how you approach that line (exclamation point or period) might tell you if Cloud Atlas is a film you will enjoy.

The best I can say is that I enjoyed it. When I wasn’t enjoying the characters and their stories, I enjoyed the filmmaking. When I wasn’t enjoying the filmmaking, I enjoyed the music. There was never a moment where I felt the film was dragging too long, skipping over something important, or failing to hold my attention. It is a sprawling epic in the best way, and I highly recommend giving it the opportunity to surprise you.


Friday, November 9, 2012

SKYFALL


Connery. Lazenby. Moore. Dalton. Brosnan. Now Craig. Casino Royale introduced us to Craig as “The New Bond”. Quantum of Solace may have stumbled, but he was still “A Bond”. Now Skyfall shows us that Craig is “The Bond”. Perhaps it is because Craig is more actor than movie star; perhaps it is because he has, in Sam Mendes, been given a great drama director rather than just a great action director; or maybe it is because Skyfall has combined some of the best Bond story elements with a touch of The Dark Knight. No matter which reason is cited most, it is very clear that Skyfall has left Craig standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Sean Connery as the best James Bond.

Skyfall opens with a breakneck sequence on par with Casino Royale’s parkour foot chase, which sees Bond racing through the markets of Istanbul with fellow agent Eve (Naomie Harris). A decision from M (Judi Dench) leaves 007 missing, presumed dead, and the titles play with the new theme from Adele. The best Bond themes have, with the exception of Live and Let Die, been sung by powerful female vocalists like Shirley Bassey or Tina Turner. Adele fits in better than the previous few singers, and the song is a terrific single with lyrics worth hearing again after seeing the film.

As the story gets going there is the foreboding absence of a villain. We meet the charming new Q (Ben Whishaw), and the mysterious bureaucrat Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes). Bond gets his handprint-identifying gun back from Licence to Kill, and a radio transmitter very similar to one he received in Goldfinger. References to the classic films carry on throughout with a familiar car making an impressive comeback. But nearly half way through the film and still no villain. He is hinted at, he is described, but he is not shown. Like the shark in Jaws, he is held out of sight for as long as possible so that his entrance can be more powerful.

The scene were we are finally introduced to Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) may be the greatest confrontation of Bond and villain ever put to screen. The dialogue is so tightly woven and beautifully played; it is just short of, “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.” The scene, and Bardem’s performance, are comparable to the kitchen confrontation between the Joker and the mob in The Dark Knight.

Echoes of Christopher Nolan’s Batman masterpiece are throughout, and in every way these echoes add to and improve the Bond formula. A major element of the villains plan is lifted directly from the Joker’s plot, and the pitting of an “unstoppable force against an immovable object” drives Skyfall in a powerful way. It seems things have come full circle since Nolan has cited Bond’s films as being formative to his technique.

Beyond the story and character details that make Skyfall so engaging, and standing behind Sam Mendes on the creative team, is the film’s cinematographer Roger Deakins. His name might not be familiar, but he has nine Oscar nominations for such films as True Grit, No Country For Old Men, Fargo, and The Shawshank Redemption. His work behind the lights and lenses of Skyfall make it the best-looking Bond film ever. The constantly changing neon world of Shanghai, the foggy highlands of Scotland, and the red haze of a massive fire are brilliantly captured. Combined with Sam Mendes’ sure direction, which avoids the fast and shaky editing of Quantum or the Bourne films, Skyfall has an elegant clarity that has been missed from modern action films.

Returning Bond to the clear film style and classic formula is at the heart of Skyfall’s goal for the franchise. It is, as Empire Magazine put it, as if Daniel Craig was introduced as Bond in Casino Royale and Quantum, and has in the intervening time been through all of his previous adventures. He is older, wiser, and is more like the character we were introduced to fifty years ago. The re-introduction of formula standards like Q make it clear by the end that when Bond returns he will have all the elements that make a Bond film with him.

Unlike Craig’s first three pictures, Bond 24 will, I hope, open with a gun barrel and that classic Monty Norman theme. Skyfall teases the famous theme music, and holds back from using the full riff until well over half way, but by the time the guitar notes hit the film has already stepped into place as one of the greatest Bond films in the franchise’s fifty-year history. With Skyfall achieving 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and leading Quantum of Solace by $60 million to be the most successful of the franchise, further Bond can only be a good thing, and 2014 is eagerly awaited.