LIFE OF PI

Stars: Suraj Sharma, Rafe Spall, Ayush Tandon, Adil Hussain, Irrfan Khan, Gautam Belur, Tabu, James Saito, Jun Naito, Andrea Di Stefano and Gérard Depardieu.
Writer: David Magee, based upon the novel by Yann Martel.
Director: Ang Lee

Rating: 3/5

Ang Lee’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s much-loved tome Life of Pi represents a line-in-the-sand moment in the relationship between the role of old-school practical effects and the illusion of new-world CGI.

Movies have always been fake – by the very definition of the storytelling art form they are a manufactured reality – but with the Oscar-winning director’s latest ambitious work, a film narrative asks of its audience a level of emotional involvement while being so patently false in its construction. The technology of film-making infuses the entire production, ultimately building a damn near insurmountable barrier between the viewer and the film’s dramatic heart.

What does this mean in terms of deriving the hinted-at profundity from Life of Pi? For many viewers and to varying degrees based upon the individual’s willingness to suspend disbelief, Ang Lee’s film will be either an emotionally engaging work of profound humanity or the latest show reel for Hollywood’s desktop wizards.

Named after a French swimming pool before adopting the mathematical equation via a lovely sequence, the inquisitive young Pi (Ayush Tandon) confronts some pat theological dilemmas as his younger self only to have his world disrupted when his father (Adil Hussain) decides to ship the family zoo to Canada. On route, the cargo ship is upended in wondrously-realised monsoon-storm.

The only human survivor of the tragedy, the late-teen Pi (Suraj Sharma) is set adrift in a life raft with a zebra, an orang-utan, a hyena and a Bengal tiger, known as ‘Richard Parker’. All are CGI creations that represent the very best the latest FX whizzes have to offer; the clunky creatures of Jumanji are a distant, dated memory. But, undeniably, the animals are not real, the threat they pose or the emotions they exude no more believable than any other manufactured entity. (Many viewers may already be of a mindset that near-enough is good-enough in terms of effects work; if so, up the star-rating to suit).

The bulk of the film’s second act is given over to Pi’s existential struggle with ‘Richard Parker’, who must learn to share the confines of the small boat. Much of Lee’s second act recalls significant beats in Tom Hanks’ 2000 survival tale, Cast Away. While ‘Wilson the Volleyball’ never posed the fatal threat Richard Parker does, both clearly represent the lead characters’ yin/yang mental struggle (something Lee tries to spin to profound third-act effect a bit unconvincingly).

Every single frame (pixel?) of the films’ world is the realisation of a visual design team that must have spent the duration of the production drooling uncontrollably. In this regard, the other recent work that The Life of Pi recalls is Vincent Ward’s 1998 dream-world vision of after-life struggle, What Dreams May Come, itself widely considered a technical wonder hamstrung by a style-over-substance plot thinness.

The one constant in all Lee’s works is his skill with actors and he exhibits a refined understanding of his cast’s craft here. Most of the emotions are under-stated, the use of words economical; there is no denying the conviction of all the performances.  Sharma, a non-actor unearthed by the production, is wonderful.

The film riffs on the theme of imagination and storytelling in a kind of ‘insanity as a defence for murder’ denouement; truth be told, the convoluted ending is confusing. Bookended by an enquiring author (Rafe Spall) interviewing the adult Pi (Irrfan Khan) about his mythical adventure, the notion of fanciful fiction wielding the might of literal fact never fully resonates. The wonder of Pi’s sea-going struggle (phosphorescent whales; swarms of flying fish…it’s all there in the trailer) is convincing; the framing, structure and impact of Pi’s emotional and mental struggle, somewhat less so.

THE IMPOSSIBLE

Stars: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Tom Holland, Oaklee Pendergast, Samuel Joslin, Johan Sundberg, Geraldine Chaplin, Marta Etura and Sönke Möhring.
Writer: Sergio G. Sánchez
Director: Juan Antonio Bayona

Rating: 2.5/5

Juan Antonio Bayona’s filmic recreation of the 2004 tsunami is a viscerally torrid spectacle that captures with remarkable precision the scope, scale and force of one of nature’s most frightening displays of power. That it should be so dramatically inert makes The Impossible one of 2012’s most frustrating film-going experiences; you should feel so much of the anguish and suffering endured by the young family at the centre of the story, so universal is their pain. But you just don’t.

Why you don’t is something your critic struggled with as the third act of Sergio G. Sánchez’s maudlin screenplay played out (and for several hours post-viewing). This disaster was human tragedy on a biblical scale, but you would never know that from the film. Occasionally, bodies wrapped in makeshift shrouds are glimpsed or silhouettes of corpses floating in the cloudy mass of seawater that surged inland are captured; hospital scenes are crowded but the patients are blurry background extras. Bayona’s film is not about a nation’s suffering.

It is based on the true story of one well-to-do young Spanish family (Anglicised here) who travelled to a Thai resort to spend what would be a fateful Christmas holiday. Dad Henry (Ewan McGregor) and mum Maria (Naomi Watts) oversee a loving clan of three conflict-free boys under 15 (the script’s first nod to non-realism). They are all relaxing by the resort pool when the worst tidal surge in modern history strikes; it is an extraordinarily impactful take on real-life events with effects work and live-action/CGI integration utterly seamless.

The family unit is fractured, the key thematic element that perhaps explains Bayona’s involvement in the project; he directed the arthouse horror hit The Orphanage. For close to an hour we follow the plight of Maria and eldest son Lucas (Tom Holland), who barely survive the film’s most terrifying re-enactment of the tsunami’s force before finding sanctuary, first in the arms of the locals then in a crowded hospital ward. Then, the film abruptly shifts focus back to Henry, staggering around the remains of the hotel, and the journey he undertakes to reunite his family.

Watts, who spends much of the film bruised, bloodied and in a state of prone near-unconsciousness, has some terrific scenes with Holland, who emerges as the films standout star. Exhibiting remarkable resilience after his young life is inverted, Holland’s resourceful, soulful performance recalls the young Christian Bale in Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun. McGregor is less convincing, his father act reduced to hopping rides from survivor-camp to survivor-camp yelling his family’s names; the two youngest boys, Simon (Oaklee Pendergast) and Thomas (Samuel Joslin), are cutesy moppets of no dramatic consequence.

Sánchez’s decision to focus on the family of five was risky. No single experience was greater than the immensity of the disaster; one unavoidably wonders throughout the entire film, “What happened to that villager’s home?” or “Where is that doctor’s family?” or “Whose son is that?” The same nagging sense that cinema failed to capture the inherent vastness of despair also befell Oliver Stone’s World Trade Centre, even though he tried to circumvent it by focussing on those heroic icons, the firemen, who lost their lives that day.

Bayonas was no doubt aiming for tragic, romantic grandeur, the likes of which James Cameron captured in his forbidden-love take on the Titanic disaster. But coming 100 years later, with that distant event evoking its own mythical sweep, Cameron could lay on the movie-star cheese with little fear of retribution. The Impossible adopts similar tactics, asking us to believe that pretty film stars and their disaster movie plight captures what it was like during and after that horrible event. But the moment is too fresh in our minds.       

AMERICAN MARY

Stars: Katherine Isabelle, Antonio Cupo, Tristan Risk, David Lovgren, Paula Lindberg, Clay St. Thomas, John Emmet Tracy, Twan Holliday, Nelson Wong, Sylvia Soska and Jen Soska.
Writers/Directors: Sylvia Soska and Jen Soska.

Rating: 4/5

It may be student loan repayments that drive our anti-heroine Mary Mason into the dark underworld of body-modification surgery, but it is her greed and growing sense of vengeful power that keeps her mired there in American Mary, the icky but supremely effective sophomore effort from Canadian twin-sister filmmaking team Jen and Sylvia Soska.

Played with an understated but ever-present fetishistic glee by the stunning Katharine Isabelle (star of the Ginger Snaps trilogy), Mary is introduced being harshly motivated by her professor, Dr Grant (David Lovgren). She holds her own, even exuding a certain compulsion for the attention being given her. But she is cash-strapped and, in the first of several bad decisions she makes, applies for a hostess role at strip club run by Billy Barker (Antonio Cupo). Having revealed her training in her resume (“We don’t get given a lot of CV’s here, Mary” says Billy), her first night sees her earning unexpected dollars when called upon to perform illegal surgery to save a roughed-up customer.

 Word gets around that Mary is not above illicitly plying her skills, a valued rarity for those with a penchant for bizarre surgical enhancements. Most prominently featured is Beatress (Tristan Risk), whose ‘alterations’ reflect her Betty Boop obsession, and who introduces Mary to Ruby (Paula Lindberg). Ruby wants to be an anatomically accurate real-life Barbie Doll and the film does not shy away from the details of the procedure (and begins to recall in tone David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, its iconic red surgical-garb referenced later in the film).

All the while, Mary remains focussed on her career and is thrilled to be invited by her hospital mentor Dr Walsh (Clay St. Thomas) to a late-night party. But things go horribly wrong and soon Mary, with the help of the strip-joint’s soft-hearted, hard-knuckled bouncer Lance (Twan Holliday), unleashes her medical prowess upon those that have exploited her.

 The Soska Sisters (who make an extended cameo appearance as the ultimate bod-mod aficionados, The Berlin Twins) have progressed their storytelling skills immeasurably since their 2009 debut, Dead Hooker in a Trunk. American Mary reflects a far sleeker European aesthetic and technical proficiency; the pair cite Thomas Alfredsen’s Let the Right One In as a major influence (as well as the gruesome Asian thriller, I Saw The Devil). The film is beautifully framed and shot in a manner that reflects respect and fascination for the practices of bod-modders, however grotesque (be prepared for forthright depictions of split tongues, devil-horn implants and genital mutilation...for starters).

Narratively, the film stumbles occasionally. The Soska’s seem bound to some tropes that never amount to much – the perfunctory trajectory of Det Dolor (John Emmet Tracy); dream/fantasy sequences that pull the viewer out of Mary’s real world, which is sufficiently nightmarish in its own regard. Also, that a top-tier med-student should immediately leap to a sordid fleshpit to make quick cash is a bit much, her actions necessitated by story and not logic.

But American Mary soars when The Soska’s play to their strengths. With their up-for-anything leading lady totally synched to their vision, they have crafted a shocking, slyly funny work of baroque modern horror. Delving thematically into myopic vengeance and soulless immorality as motivating forces, it is a vivid slice (no pun intended) of slow-burn, visceral terror and signals the arrival of Jen and Sylvia Soska as much-watch genre auteurs.

CONAN O'BRIEN CAN'T STOP

Stars: Conan O’Brien, Andy Richter, Jeff Ross, Steve Kroft, Eddie Vedder, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Jim Carrey, Jack White, Jack McBrayer, Jon Hamm, Kristen Schaal and Mike Sweeney.
Director: Rodman Flender.

Rating: 4/5

Having apprenticed his way through the early-dawn timeslot as he waited out his rightful position next-in-line for the Holy Grail of American television – host of NBC’s The Tonight Show – Conan O’Brien assumed the mantle...for seven lovely months. But when his predecessor Jay Leno wanted the hosting gig back after the failure of his 10.00pm variety show experiment, the brass called in O’Brien, cut him a big cheque and ushered him off the lot. Sure, it was more convoluted and all parties lawyered up, but the impact and outcome was the same; Conan O’Brien had been screwed and the showman was devastated.

As captured in Rodman Flender’s sad, insightful yet very funny documentary Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, the Boston native, with his prodigious talent and towering red mane (he jokes he looks like Jimmy Neutron by way of Tilda Swinton), took his schtick on the road to battle the anger and depression that congealed within him following the brutal betrayal. Though it is essentially a performance piece filled with backstage insight, this compelling work refuses to skimp on the man’s motivations for getting back in touch with his people. He hates NBC; he hates Jay Leno (at one point, he imagines a telegram from Leno that asks, “What’s it like to have a soul?”). But O’Brien loves his audience; he loves performing. The film captures the exhaustive healing process he had to endure to emerge (relatively) cleansed.

Early scenes, many shot with O’Brien’s wife and family in their home as the concert tour comes into focus (caustically title ‘The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour’, mocking the conditions of his payout arrangement), portray a man struggling to keep hold of that spark that has driven his creativity to date. His humour has always been biting*, yet his genuine warmth has kept him onside with audiences; in 2010, Conan O’Brien is a bitter man and he struggles with concert content that he is determined to not let become a surrogate psych-session. He also finds the role of ‘celebrity’ challenging, with several scenes depicting just how annoyed he can become when the sacred seal of backstage privacy is broken.

The bitterness over his high-profile shafting never fully melts away (having arrived in an all-but deserted Eugene, Oregon for his first live gig, he wryly observes, “I should be talking to Barack Obama now, or playing guitar with Springsteen...”) but nor does the obvious affection for the die-hard fans who clearly adore him. Surrounded by a well-established professional circle (notably his committed if long-suffering PA Sona Movsesian and sidekick Andy Richter) and driven to provide a unique high-energy concert experience smothered in lashing of meta self-mocking, Conan O’Brien clearly both can’t and won’t stop.

*I became a fan after this monologue classic from Late Night, circa 2006: “News is that Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt have broken up, mostly because one of them wanted to have kids. Same reason The Jackson Five broke up.”

HOUSOS VS AUTHORITY

Stars: Paul Fenech, Jason Davis, Elle Dawes, Kev Tuamata, Vanessa Davis, Kiri Schmitt, Angry Anderson, Garry Who and Barry Crocker.
Writer/Director: Paul Fenech.

Rating: 2/5

The word that comes to mind over the course of Paul Fenech’s Housos vs Authority is ‘relentless’. There are more specific adjectives that describe, in greater detail, particular elements of this big-screen adaptation of a TV show only a small but dedicated viewing audience tuned in for. But for now, let’s stick with ‘relentless’.

It is a film that, for every single second of its utterly over-stretched 108 minute running time, refuses to waste a single frame on stillness. Whether it might be for an anticipated laugh, a much-needed breath or a glimpse of warmth, Fenech’s frantic ode to white-trash Australia is one of the most…well, relentless films ever to assault a mainstream audience. And assault its audience, and just about every cow held sacred by middle-class Australia, this film most certainly does.

Fenech’s Franky, a brash, juiced-up boy-man who scores threesomes and outruns cops on a daily basis, agrees to take his posse of cartoonish, crass buffoons to Ayers Rock. Packed into an RV they have stolen from a local bikie gang (headed up by rock icon Angry Anderson), Franky’s crew consists of Islander idiot Kev (Kev Tuamata), Kev’s nympho girlfriend (Vanessa Davis) and Aussie roughheads Dazza (Jason ‘Jabba’ Davis) and Shazza (Elle Dawes). Dawes is the film’s rough diamond; underneath her vulgar facade, she takes Shazza on a (comparatively) strong emotional arc and, to her credit, somehow manages to engender audience empathy.   

There are no traditional 1-2-3 punchline set-ups in Fenech’s shock-&-awe approach to humour. Instead, you are expected to find laughs in quick cut-away shots of cops being beaten with rubber thongs, dwarf dope-dealers in souped-up wheelchairs, gangs of skeletal drug addicts who rip off anything not nailed down, the graffiti tagging of Uluru and the implication that Prime Minister Julia Gillard surfs internet-porn in her office.

None of these elements are inherently funny, but the writer/director hurls crudity and tactless imagery at his audience at such a breakneck pace, whether any of it sticks is irrelevant. One must assume that broad, big caricatures of just about every ethnicity (with particular attention paid to white Australians and their iconography) is what Fenech’s fanbase is after; in that regard, Housos vs Authority sticks to its guns with a veracity that can’t be discredited.

The mainstream media will (and has) gotten all uppity about the Fenech’s physical splat-stick  and reliance on expletives. But Bruce Beresford kicked off his career with the Barry McKenzie films; Housos vs Authority is not so far removed from those bastions of Ocker bad taste (Beresford’s leading man, Barry Crocker, makes a telling and well-judged cameo). Also, debate can rage on as to whether social satire that makes broad fun of class stereotypes is done out of respectful understanding or downright meanness; it is a stance I argue when downplaying the worth of The Castle or Kath and Kim.

Did I find Fenech’s foul-mouth assault on political correctness funny? Not really, and I’ve scored it accordingly. But it’ll play well to those that know and live the housing commission lifestyle and films that understand their target demographic are rare, so it is not without merit.

In a heartfelt gesture, the film dedicates itself to the memory of Australian enetertainment industry icon Ian Turpie, who starred alongside Fenech in the project's original small-screen incarnation.

SKYFALL

Stars: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Albert Finney and Javier Bardem.
Writers: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan.
Director: Sam Mendes

Rating 4/5

The traditional pre-credit action sequence that lets the audience know that latest Bond adventure has begun also lets the audience know exactly what they can expect from Skyfall, the 23^rd instalment chronicling the adventures of Agent 007.

Walking into focus through the speckled darkness of an Istanbul apartment block, Daniel Craig’s MI6 super-agent stalks the killers of his colleagues, their corpses littering an apartment fragmented by light and splattered with blood. It is a scene that brings real world violence into the action-figure realm; Bond movies have been mostly bloodless affairs, despite much twisted villainy. The opening to Skyfall feels real; the last gasp of a dying agent called Ronson is burned into both Bond’s and the audience’s psyche.

Soon, though, Bond is out into the harsh light of the Turkish day and hurtling along its streets in a car/motorcycle chase that at different intervals skims along rooftops, involves a grader and ends in a fistfight atop a speeding train. The sequence is preposterous but wholly involving and carries with it a vengeful, purposeful mean streak. Welcome to Bond 2012.

Director Sam Mendes brings a great deal of thematically dark psychology to his first foray into Bond-age. The plot spins on a computer hard-drive MacGuffin but rarely has a film-maker seemed so clearly disinterested in his film’s central device. Instead, Mendes and scripters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan ruminate on the ageing relevance, mental struggle and physical decrepitude of their central character and the doddering image of the organisation for whom he provides secret service.

The film’s exploration of the value of wisdom over muscle is further enhanced by the central role that Dame Judi Dench’s ‘M’ and, late in film, Albert Finney’s ‘Kincade’ contribute; if the film hits the box-office heights expected of it, two septuagenarians may emerge as the year’s biggest action heroes.  As Bond, Craig is literally reborn onscreen as a damaged-model 007 yet one who must face a world of futuristic wonder (as captured in an incredibly vivid sequence set in Shanghai) and a villain steeped in technological wizardry.

Ah, the villain. His name is Silva and he is played by Javier Bardem (only the second Oscar winner to do play a Bond baddie, A View to a Kill’s similarly blonde-coiffed Christopher Walken being the other). Like Bond’s first-reel entrance, Silva is brought into focus from deep in the frame but, unlike 007’s silent but deadly prowling, he does so while mouthing one of the great bad-guy monologues. Bardem has created a truly seething and repulsive adversary (something missing from the Craig-era instalments to date), his motivations and methods pathological and convincingly frightening.

Mendes has crafted a Bond film that succeeds on a fullness of fresh detail and vision while still honouring the mythology and chronology of the series. The reinvention of the iconic ‘Q’ character as Ben Whishaw’s hipster-nerd tech-geek could have gone very bad; of course the producers are pandering to the next generation of Bond fans by skewing this character younger, but it is done with wit and balance.

So too the staging of the action sequences, which pulsate with modern-movie energy yet take their inspiration from classic-movie set-ups; a teeth-rattling shoot-out at a parliamentary hearing in the middle of London could have come from any number of great bar-room gunfights from the cinema of the wild west. A bulky mid-section and a what seems like a few too many endings means that Skyfall probably isn’t The Greatest Bond Film Ever, but it is certainly the pick of the modern era incarnations (Goldeneye onwards).

Where it does excel is in the deepening of the man behind the myth. The plot leads to a confrontation back where it all began; not the legend of Bond the agent but the emotional complexity of James the boy. If Skyfall takes its action cues from the Bourne movies and the last Mission Impossible film, it mirrors that other great Brit-lit hero, Harry Potter, in it’s lead character’s arc. Parental figures and familial legacy are central to the importance and impact of Sam Mendes’ story and Ian Fleming’s stylish protagonist becomes a more real but no less exciting figure because of it.

LE GUETTEUR (THE LOOKOUT)

Stars: Daniel Auteuil, Mathieu Kassovitz, Olivier Gourmet, Nicolas Briançon, Francis Renaud, Luca Argentero, Arly Jover and Violante Placido.
Writers: Denis Brusseaux and Cédric Melon.
Director: Michele Placido.

Rating: 2.5/5

The slickly commercial aesthetic that Italian director Michele Placido (The Caiman; Tulpa) applies to his French crime thriller The Lookout helps to soothe the affect of some creaky first-act clichés and rather loopy third-act developments.  

Topped and tailed by pulsating action and featuring a charismatic turn by Mathieu Kassovitz, scriptwriters Denis Brusseaux and Cédric Melon certainly can’t be accused of leaving anything on the table in their telling of a story that goes to the brink of absurdity on more than one occasion. The film generally keeps audiences on side with a flair for the grand set-piece and a narrative momentum that suggests with each increasingly nutty plot twist, just about anything might develop.

Chief Inspector Mattei (a grizzled Daniel Auteuil) has been tipped off to a major heist that is set to go down in downtown Paris. The police operation is thwarted, though, when a sniper opens fire on the gendarmes, wounding several. Mattei’s connections lead him to Kaminski (Kassovitz), that rare breed of marksmen high on Interpol’s watchlist after a post-service criminal career.

Not everything goes the robber’s way. One of their crew, Nico (Luca Argentero) is wounded and must be mended by disgraced doctor, Franck (Olivier Gourmet), who resides far from prying eyes in the French countryside, where he plies a new trade in supplying addicts with black-market morphine. At first an incidental character, Franck soon emerges as the film’s most insidious criminal, an outright psychopath whose penchant for torturing naked women spins what was a multi-handed crime melodrama, à la The Usual Suspects, into a nasty, Seven-style stomach churner (horrible violence is perpetrated against women in the film).

The convolutions of the plot are too often predicated by coincidental happenings and events that defy natural laws. Exhibit A would be in the film’s opening shootout, when Kaminski navigates several flights of stairs in the time it takes for the wounded cop he overpowered on the rooftop to cover the same distance in a lift. It lends itself to a moment of tension that brings the sniper and Mattei face-to-face, but upon reflection is preposterous. A late-stage revelation that is designed to deepen the backstory between the two key conflicted protagonists is a further step too far.

The byzantine interaction of characters provides what feels like 100 different speaking parts – the thieves (Nicolas Briançon; Francis Renaud), the cops (Jérôme Pouly), a simpering lady-lawyer (Arly Jover), Nico’s hard-bitten wife (the director’s daughter, Violante Placido) and various gypsies and petty-crim cohorts pop up then disappear with varying degrees of relevance.

Placido is a confident, competent craftsman – along with longtime collaborator, DP Arnaldo Catinari, he gives The Lookout a steely sheen that enhances the ruthless world populated by these immoral players - but not so much that a nagging sense that the whole enterprise is a little bit daft ever fully dissipates.

MARIJINE (MARIJA'S OWN)

Featuring: Nina Violic, Zeljka Sukova, Mila Culjak, Petr Marek, Prokop Holoubek, Marketa Lisa, Cvjetana Lovric and Loredana Presta.
Writer/director: Zeljka Sukova

Rating: 3/5

The latest volley from the new wave of deconstructionist documentarians who seem determined to redefine the factual film-making format is Zeljka Sukova’s Croatian oddity, Marija’s Own. The efforts of three young women to give their late grandmother the send-off she deserves mixes actors and real-life relatives, deep family emotions and electro-pop tunes to generally winning effect, though just when real becomes unreal (and, occasionally, surreal) will inspire debate over its worthiness.

Despite its truncated 62 minute running time, a great deal is learnt about the life and legacy of Marija Violić who, as revealed in a vivid opening collage of family photos and voiceover, was laid to rest in 2004 in an unremarkable grave in her hometown of Rijeka. Though she stated in her final years that no one would miss her when she was gone, the truth is that her influence touched all the women in her family and she is remembered with great fondness.

Her granddaughters - the filmmaker herself, famous local actress Nina Violic and Danira (who, signifying the Sukova's intent to mess with reality, is played by Mila Culjak) – decide to throw a long overdue wake for their nanna, during which they will ask each guest to design an honorary ornament to be placed on the freshly-restored burial site. Fuelled by the overall joie de vivre of the family gathering (and lots of red wine), the scenes in which the feisty female family elders present their ideas is a hoot. Marija’s Own is certainly not a dour trudge through memory and loss but, at its best, a buoyant celebration of family life.

The films shortcomings emerge from the idiosyncrasies imposed upon it via manufactured elements. There is a nagging suspicion that the event, though mostly played-out with warmth on-screen, was crafted with greater enthusiasm for the fictional components; at key moments that require a poignancy only real-life captured on film can provide, a few frames of falseness often prove to be Sukova’s undoing. The director’s decision to shoehorn Czech synth-pop trio Midi Lidi into the already-cramped confines of the dining room setting results in some quaintly endearing moments though more often seems just plain strange.

The film fumbles its ending, which comes to a moving peak involving all the guests gathered around the newly-decorated grave (Ales Suk’s editing in this sequence is top-notch) before descending into an misjudged end-credit passage during which the elderly ladies take part in a music-video clip for the band. Despite all the indulgent add-on elements that Sukova imposes upon her debut work, there is sufficient insight and honesty to transcend the conceit. Most importantly, the spirit of Nanna Violić that imbues the film with a touching resonance remains tangible throughout.

THE MASTER

Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Laura Dern, Ambyr Childers, Rami Malek, Jesse Piemons, Kevin J. Connor, Christopher Evan Welch and Madisen Beaty.
Writer/director: Paul Thomas Anderson.

Rating: 4.5/5

 

More than any filmmaker working in American cinema today, Paul Thomas Anderson demands his audience’s intellectual involvement. It is a dangerous path to tread and Anderson has paid a commercial price for such lofty ambitions; as universally acclaimed as Boogie Nights, Magnolia and There Will Be Blood were, none of them made much theatrical coin (his most critically-divisive film, Punch Drunk Love, made even less).

Such a fate will also most likely befall The Master, his expansive, picaresque slice of American ambition and the tortured individuals who both suffer at its feet and exploit its virtues. However artfully-rendered (and The Master is a work of refined artistry), the intertwined psyches and complex dynamics of a life shared between a half-crippled, spontaneously-violent drunk and a delusional cult-leader con-artist is not the kind of narrative mainstream audiences usually embrace.   

The film’s extended opening stanza is light on plot but rich in character. Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) drinks to deal with the responsibility of a late-stage WWII naval life but soon finds his post-traumatic self struggling in a sane society. He stumbles across a cruiser that is hosting a members-only party for family and followers of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a boisterous, corpulent alpha-male whose disciples adhere to the self-awareness techniques outlined in their charismatic overseer’s book, ‘The Cause’.

The directionless Quell is consumed by Dodd’s manipulative mastery; in an extended mid-section that cross-cuts between the stillness of Dodd’s questioning glare and the twisted facade of Quell as he becomes achingly aware of his life’s failings, Anderson’s abstract rhythms peppered with memory-filled mini-flashbacks begin to define the co-dependent nature of the two men. It is the first of two sequences that constitute the methodical psychological breaking down of Quell’s addictive, violent, repressed-memory self.

Viewers not already enthralled by Phoenix’s mannered, mumbling (Brando-esque, if you must) portrayal of Quell will struggle with these sequences; he’s a tough character to like, even when his cold-hearted manipulation by determinedly guarded mentor Dodd reduces him to a bawling wreck (every character’s self-centred devotion to ‘The Cause’ prevents the film from becoming as emotionally engaging as many will pine for over the 137 minute running time).

Anderson has acknowledged that There Will Be Blood was his John Ford/John Huston picture; The Master drifts into Terrence Malick territory (the opening tropical island sequence directly recalls the first moments of The Thin Red Line). Towering above his contemporaries, Anderson has matured incredibly as a craftsman in the relatively short period since the ‘razzle-dazzle’ days of Boogie Nights and Magnolia. His sparse words, too, are acutely attuned to the dark nuances of his characters (including Amy Adams’ steely-eyed wife and protector) and the speech patterns of the 1950s upper-crust Eastern US seaboard setting.

Detractors have called the film too vaguely ambiguous, ploddingly slow or point to characters that are all artifice and construct. For some, there is an icy, heartless chill to the carefully-captured frames that allows for no emotional payoff nor exhibits enough on its mind to warrant Anderson’s and DP Mihai Malaimare Jr.’s stunning images.

But The Master, while probably not Anderson’s ‘best’ film, may be remembered as his most important and unarguably most ambitious. An intimate yet vast story of a damaged man’s self-acceptance at a time when his country was struggling with its own dark, repressed demons and the hope of a brighter future, The Master snapshots that moment when America had a choice - lead or be led. In Phoenix’s classically fallen soul Freddie, Anderson still finds a glimmer of hope in his protagonist’s redemption. The profound sadness of The Master stems not from the horrors of one man’s past life but rather in its capturing of the beginning of his society’s end; a nation’s future, full of potential, forever compromised by a generation’s blind adherence to a false prophet’s lies.

LE PRENOM (WHAT'S IN A NAME?)

Stars: Patrick Bruel, Valerie Benguigui, Charles Berling, Guillaume de Tonquedec, Judith El Zein and Francois Fabian.
Writer: Matthieu Delaporte, based on his play.
Directors: Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patelliere.

Rating: 3.5/5

The verbal dynamics of a dinner-party gone very bad are played-out with action-movie intensity in writer Matthieu Delaporte’s adaptation of his own hit 2010 play. Recalling the brio of such chamber-piece melodramas as Edward Albee’s Whos’ Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Yasmina Reza’s Carnage and Ira Levin’s Deathtrap but with a lightness of touch reflecting its origins in great Gallic farce, this compelling if occasionally too boisterous work never quite breaks free from its origins but is a vivid piece of cinema nonetheless.

Topped and tailed with some lucidly over-edited outdoor scenes and a witty voiceover constructed to remind audiences who saw the stage version that this is, in fact, a movie, Delaporte and his co-director Alexandre de La Patelliere spend the other 95% of the film in a single-setting - the lovely apartment of well-to-do middle-class Parisians Vincent (Charles Berling), a feisty intellectual, and Elisabeth (Valerie Benguigui), a public-school teacher. This evening, the married pair have invited their friend, renowned trombonist Claude (Guillaume de Tonquedec), to a dinner party during which Elisabeth’s brother Vincent (a terrific Patrick Bruel) and his girlfriend Anna (Judith El Zein) will announce the name of their soon-to-be-born son.

Established as jokester who walks a fine line in bad taste humour, Vincent announces that the child’s name is also that of a certain Teutonic mass-murderer; not particularly thoughtful, given the hostess’ Jewish heritage and the role her mother, Francoise (Francois Fabian) has played in their upbringing. This jocular miscalculation is the lit fuse that finally sees the evening erupt into a screaming match in which prejudices, family secrets and long-gestating ill-feelings are revealed.

As the good-natured jibes give way to seething temper tantrums, each cast member is given ample opportunity to unleash Angry Acting 101; Bruel and Tonquedec present the most balanced characterisations, whereas Benguigui and, in particular, Berling occasionally take the histrionics to ear-shattering levels. That said, the naturalistic interactions and motivations of all Delaporte’s creations are entirely believable, if clearly bound to their live theatre beginnings; despite the prologue and coda and the best efforts of DP David Ungaro to bring cinematic scope to the apartment setting, What’s in a Name? is essentially a filmed version of the play.

Having long been a writing team (Renaissance, 2006; 22 Bullets, 2010), the debutant directing duo give their actors a lot of frame-space in which to gesticulate, adding to the sense that everyone was still very much of a ‘live-theatre’ mindset (4 of the 5 cast key cast members played their characters during the stage season). The lack of close-ups and meagre use of such stylistic ‘flourishes’ as dolly-shots suggests that Delaporte and Patelliere were both still similarly tied to their work’s beginnings. Which, in this case, may be entirely appropriate; What’s in a Name? exists, soars even, on the precise wordplay of its principles and, in playing to its strengths, ensures it is compulsively watchable.