THE BLIND SIDE (2009): Feel Good Football Movie

Every year or two a film is released that movie audiences flock to see that’s inspirational and based on a real life story.  That a film is “too good to be true” never occurs to those that enjoy these movies.  We want to believe that we’re viewing a true depiction of real events in the same way we want to believe in miracles.  We would think that movie audiences like the rest of the world would be more cynical and increasingly skeptical due to greater access of global news and blog sites that expose nearly everything.  In fact, the opposite seems to be the case.  In recent years we’ve endured Cinderella Man, Rudy, Erin Brockovich and Seabiscuit.  The latest incantation came in a movie called The Blind Side.

In The Blind Side, Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) and her husband Sean (Tim McGraw), a rich couple from Memphis, come to know and love a large, black and homeless teenage boy named Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron).  Leigh Anne and Sean’s son, S.J. (Jae Head) originally befriended the hapless Michael at a private religious school that he attends.  The only reason Michael is even allowed to attend this school is due to the prompting of school officials by Coach Cotton who is impressed with Michael’s athletic abilities.  When Leigh Anne discovers the boy is homeless, she invites him to sleep on their couch, eventually provides him with a room of his own and makes the offer to adopt him.  The support of Michael by this family causes great consternation among relatives and friends in a mostly white neighborhood in the south, but the couple – and in particular Leigh Anne – are not deterred.  They gradually break through the boy’s defenses and instill in him a sense of trust.  At the same time, they provide valuable lessons to the boy that he is able to inculcate onto the playing field and that also enable him to avoid all the pitfalls generally associated with a youth from his background.  Thus, a player with incredible raw talent but little practical knowledge of football becomes, under their tutelage, one of the most recruited high school left tackles in the nation.  One major obstacle to his attending the college of his choice is the boy’s grades.  Thus, the couple (at their own expense) brings in a tutor named Miss Sue (Kathy Bates) to pull the boy’s grades up from a 1.7 to 2.53 GPA.   Thus the Tuohy’ husband and wife, large contributors and alumni of Old Miss, are able to send Michael on to their alma mater (after accusations of possible recruiting violations on the part of the Tuohys in relation to Michael were dismissed).  Michael, whose biological mother was a drug addict and who never knew his real life father, is drafted number one by the Baltimore Ravens in the 2009 draft.

The Blind Side is not a bad Hollywood film.  The intention of Director John Lee Hancock was to make moviegoers gush and root for this large boy that was never presented with many opportunities to get ahead.  And the movie accomplishes this goal throughout the 128 minutes of film footage.  That the movie cheats in doing this will probably surprise no one that understands the motivations of Hollywood film studios.  That we have Sandra Bullock in a short skirt sassing back hardened gang members is not entirely believable.  That Michael’s transition from homelessness to living in a rich suburban home occupied by white people appears to have been accomplished so seamlessly also belies credibility.  There must have been some difficulties that Michael and the Tuohys encountered that we were not made aware of.  Yet such exaggerations are certainly no worse than in any other movie that is supposed to depict real life events.   One of the movie’s greatest assets is that The Blind Side is an overall pleasurable movie to watch with little if any unpleasantness.  If I was to find any fault with the film it is strictly because The Blind Side is so much like every other movie and doesn’t do anything to disturb our tranquility.

There have been a large number of movies that have addressed the issue of racism, but almost none have ever examined the issue in depth (though there are Academy Nominated movies like Crash and Babel that have made the clumsy pretense of examining racism in depth).  And with the exception of the documentary Hoop Dreams, no movie has looked at institutional racism realistically.  Racists in films almost always stereotypically come from the Deep South, talk and act like rednecks and consistently display their ignorance without provocation.  The Blind Side is no different from any other movie in this respect.  We have the relatives and football fans making crass remarks about Michael, and the prim and proper southern ladies discussing the improprieties of allowing a young black man into one of their homes.   If only racism was that easy to locate there would be a better chance that it could be sifted out.   Unfortunately, not all real life racists overtly express their leanings, and a large percentage of us lack self-awareness that would allow us to analyze our own racist thoughts.  The existence of racism transcends culture and politics.  Many liberals are guilty for assuming that they are not a part of the problem.  Many conservatives are guilty of ignoring that a problem even exists.  The Blind Side in simplifying the problem may be catering to audience members who want to think that they harbor no racist thoughts whatsoever.  After all, most moviegoers are not rednecks or gossips suspicious of any member of another race as depicted in the film.

Anyway, again The Blind Side is typical, crowd pleasing nonsense.  Wouldn’t it have been nice if Michael, the object of everyone’s affection, showed a little more of a subversive side and provided more of a difficult challenge for the couple?  Michael is portrayed as the most submissive of characters.  Michael never truly challenged anyone in the entire film.  As a result, instead of focusing on him we end up focusing on the good looking and feisty young housewife played by Sandra Bullock.  Audiences unquestioningly adore a smart talking yet attractive and feminine female character.  Bullock, never described as the greatest of actresses, does a decent job of pulling this part off.  Maybe because we’ve been treated with so much that’s incredibly worse in Hollywood, standards for what passes as a good movie are fairly low.  But when a forty year old woman can move her hips like Sandra Bullock, the men in the audience seem mesmerized and the women wish that they could be like her.  That almost becomes enough to make The Blind Side more enjoyable than the average film … for some people.  This movie is a one woman show and makes the more inspirational side of the story seem almost like a distraction.  And all other performers in The Blind Side are merely there to play supporting roles for the leading lady.

 

January 5, 2010

© Robert S. Miller 2010

ALL THE KING'S MEN (1949): The One and Only Kingfish

I’ve held such a high opinion of the movie, All the King’s Men, that I’m almost shocked when I see its flaws.  Moviemakers, or even famous philosophers, are not always the best chroniclers of history.  When writing On History: Advice to a Journalist, Voltaire – with a reputation of open-mindedness – voiced his own conjectures on historical writing and interpretation.  On the topic of Alexander the Great, Voltaire felt that any historian accusing Alexander of being mad was guilty of bias.  On the other hand, any historian who agreed with Voltaire that Alexander was a “majestic” man was impartial.  If instead we chose to create an historical study on Huey P. Long and we used the descriptive term “autocratic” rather than “majestic,” you would get the gist of Robert P. Warren’s own impartiality regarding the man.  Since the time that the novel, All the King’s Men, was written in 1946, Warren’s portrayal of the Kingfish has been so taken for granted that no one thinks twice that Warren may have had a bias of his own.
 
The movie, All the King’s Men, produced and directed by Robert Rossen (who also directed the phenomenal Body and Soul and The Hustler), was originally filmed in 1949 and starred the majestic Broderick Crawford (the italics are mine) as Willie Stark, a fictional Huey Long.  From someone who grew up slopping the hogs on his father’s farm, Stark, through the assistance of his wife, Lucy (Anne Seymour), became self-educated and eventually admitted to the bar of the fictional southern state in which he resided.  At first a sap for the state’s political machinery, Stark bored his listeners when calling for political reform by throwing around a lot of facts and figures.  However, through the advice of an out-of-work journalist named Jack Burden (John Ireland), who always admired Stark’s message, and a feisty political insider named Sadie (Mercedes McCambridge), Stark took to the campaign trail through the use of demagoguery aimed directly at the ignorant “common folk.”  By reminding his listeners that everyman was a hick and a king at the same time, he said that he would provide them exactly what they wanted without telling them at the same time how this would be accomplished.  Big business would treat the farmer fairly, government would insure that children could read, and hospitals would be built that would treat the sick.  Stark said that he would do this by being a hick, by being a bumpkin, just like his supporters, and understand exactly what the people wanted.  Eventually, this resulted in Stark being elected as governor.
 
Stark then made deals with constituents to build bridges, schools and hospitals with the very people who were opposed to his reform.  What eventually occurred, however, was that Stark kept a black book of the vices of his opponents, and would delve into that book whenever the opposition became too strident.  Those who he made deals with were eventually wholeheartedly expected to endorse his proposals or face blackmail and intimidation.  Other things also happened along the way.  Stark, a loyal and temperance abiding family man, gradually changed into a hard drinking and womanizing debaucher.  When a political opponent threatened to expose Stark’s own indiscretions, he was forced to through threats to tow the line.  Those who did not give in to pressure conveniently disappeared.  Stark’s adopted son, Tom (John Derek), was involved in a drunken driving accident that killed a young girl.  When the girl’s father threatened to expose what really happened, the father disappeared – only later to turn up dead.  This caused a small bit of consternation upon the elected representatives in the state, but Willie was able to stem the tide by appealing directly to his constituency who practically demanded that Willie cleared of this offense.  Naturally, as the movie painstakingly makes clear, the electorate was too ignorant to understand what was really going on.  They were just taken up with Willie Stark’s rhetoric.
 
One family, in particular was torn between loyalty to Stark and to doing the right thing.  The father was an influential judge by the name of Stanton (Raymond Greenleaf) that was offered the position of attorney general for the state.  The son, Adam Stanton (Shepperd Studwick) was a talented doctor who was offered a position running the newly created hospital that was one of the biggest medical facilities in the world.  The attractive and politically naïve daughter, Anne Stanton (Joanne Dru), falls irresistibly in love with Stark and can’t help revealing all of the family secrets to him.  The journalist, Jack Burden, who helped jumpstart Stark’s political career, by the way, is madly in love with Anne, also.  Burden along the way finds some damning information about Anne’s father, but he refuses to turn it over to Stark.  He does, however, make the incredibly stupid move of providing the documentation concerning her father’s sins to Anne.  Anne, of course, can’t resist Stark’s advances nor resist giving the documentation directly to him.  When Stark puts pressure on the judge with the newfound knowledge of the judge’s misdeeds, Judge Stanton then commits suicide.  This prompts the son, Adam, the great and talented doctor, to then become an assassin.  Stark, after avoiding impeachment and now looking forward to a run for the White House, is gunned down by Adam in the State House.  Adam is then shot dead by Stark’s bodyguard approximately sixty times. Jack and Anne, now recognizing what dupes they have been, promise each other that they will live-up to the ideals of the Adam or else face knowing that everything the assassin had done will be in vain.
 
Warren failed to fool anyone when he later claimed that Willie Stark was not based on Huey Long.  If Willie Stark was not truly Huey Long, it was only because Warren was using the character to defame the late governor.  Who else could Willie Stark have been?  A populist of a southern state who was at first defeated and later elected as governor; a southern politician who had ambitions towards the White House; an officeholder who faced impeachment and was later assassinated by a relative of a political opponent?  Warren only changed the chronology and certain facts to show the politician in the worst possible light.  Long did declare martial law at one point, for example, but only after an organization called The Square Deal Association tried to take over the state government by force.  This is not brought out in the movie.  (The Square Deal Association, by the way, modeled their selves after a racist organization called the White League who engaged in an armed rebellion at the time of Reconstruction.)  And Warren was not beyond personal assassination.  The teetotaler and devoted family man, Willie Stark, turns into a drunkard and an adulterer who sanctioned murder.
 
Please keep in mind that Huey Long was at his peak politically during the Great Depression.   A political machine was already in play in the state of Louisiana before Long was ever to come to power.  Long simply destroyed that machine and replaced it with another machine.  Long’s campaign slogan was: “Every man a king, but no one wears a crown.”  Quaint though the slogan was, Long at least delivered on some of his promises.  Education and medical care advanced under his tutelage.  Without his brand of radical populism, that Warren so out of hand condemns, Louisiana may forever have remained the state that resisted change.  The old regulars from New Orleans may have remained in charge, the poll tax to prevent the poor from voting may never have been removed, and wholesale illiteracy (aggravated by the fact that the poor could not afford to buy the textbooks required for their children to attend school) may never have vanished.
So what about the rest of what Robert Penn Warren was trying to say?  Warren, through the acting of Crawford, made the case that Willie Stark (as Huey Long) was so compellingly evil that we almost come to accept that this is the entire story concerning Huey Long.  Warren also comes near to proclaiming that the citizens of the state were too poor, stupid and desperate to appreciate that Stark was using them for his own gains.   (Warren’s harsh and imperious judgment of the voter almost sanctified what Huey Long always said: his opponents were the ones who monopolized the wealth in order to marginalize the needy.)  In the academic community, Warren’s assessment of Huey Long has been pretty much accepted for the past 60 years (despite Warren’s views being anything but progressive).  (Of course, judging by the continued political success of Long’s brothers and son after his own death, not everyone has accepted this judgment.  One of his brothers was later to serve in Congress for five years.  Another brother served three times as governor of Louisiana.  And his son was a United States Senator for almost forty years.)
 
Warren may not have been appalled by Huey Long’s methods so much as he was by his message.  Warren, at least in his younger years, was extremely conservative in his political thinking and extremely rigid in his attitude towards social change.  (It would be another twenty years before Warren recanted concerning his support of segregation.)  Huey Long, on the other hand, was so left leaning in his thinking that he criticized the New Deal and the Roosevelt administration for not going far enough.  (Roosevelt, in fact, had the IRS investigate Long for tax irregularities that were never proven, and he also cut off federal funding to the state of Louisiana.)  In deed, though Long tried to distance himself from socialism, he was frequently cited as having socialist leanings.  Still, whether one agrees with Long’s point of view is not the point.  What is the point is that Warren took him on by slandering the messenger rather than refuting the message in his novel.  Warren goes so far in this as to suggest that the assassination of Willie Stark was an act that was just.
Nevertheless, in spite of everything I have just said, this movie, All the King’s Men, is probably the greatest of all political movies.  Remember that every story has a bias.  This is particularly true when were dealing with a story based on quasi-historical fact.  It is my opinion that Robert Penn Warren was guilty of the same demagoguery for which he accused Willie Stark.  He played fast and loose with the facts as well, and for this he won the Pulitzer Prize - which has as much meaning to me as what movie wins the Oscar for Best Picture.  But it’s the staying power rather than the prizes awarded that give a particular work its substance.  It was this movie that made the novel popular.  The original movie is still greatly appreciated today, which is particularly surprising since attempts to remake it have completely failed.  (As I understand it, the most recent remake starring Sean Penn, takes us back to the 1950s rather than the 1930s.  Why a director would change up the novel in this manner is impossible to understand.  The 1950s was a decade of social convention, whereas the 1930s was a decade of desolation that would have made possible the career of a politician such as Willie Stark or Huey P. Long.)  Robert Penn Warren, to his credit, penned a compelling if slanted story.  And Broderick Crawford made his role in the movie memorable.
 
As in most movies filmed before 1950, the acting in All the King’s Men can at times be wooden.  Even Broderick Crawford plays his role by hamming it up now and then, but nobody ever plays the bully, the cynic or the corrupt politician better than him – all components of Willie Stark’s personality.  At certain times Crawford’s acting takes over the entire movie.  Indeed, in scenes like where he’s browbeating the judge into submission, he’s practically carrying the other characters.  Crawford doesn’t just read his lines.  He talks down to the other characters in the movie as if his own money and reputation were at stake.  Crawford’s acting makes this movie convincing, and it was that acting that makes me prefer it to its contemporary movie, Citizen Kane.  Orson Welles was an excellent actor and director, and he knew how to photograph a scene.  However, Welles was an amateur compared to Crawford in actually living a part.  It is because of Crawford that the since overused theme of destruction by greed and ambition is portrayed so convincingly in this movie.
 
Of course the story is a remarkable farce - but then so was the career of Governor Long.
 

June 20, 2007 
© Robert S. Miller 2007

APOCALYPTO (2006): A Civilization in Decline

Compared to Mel Gibson’s last film (The Passion of the Christ), Apocalypto is a mild movie.  This is oddly significant since an important scene in Apocalypto includes the depictions of the tearing out of hearts and the decapitations of many Mayan victims.  Apocalypto contains a number of typical Gibson touches that are on display in the Mad Max trilogy, Braveheart, The Patriot and, of course, The Passion.  It also borrows from a number of adventure movies that take place in the jungle, all of which seem to include scenes where someone is going over a waterfall.  There is also some resemblance to The Ten Commandments starring Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner.  The last half of Apocalypto involves an almost conventional chase scene through the jungle where the hero of the movie, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), eludes his captors.  Yet having said this, Apocalypto is the strangest and most worthwhile movie I have seen this year.
Jaguar Paw lives in a small jungle village disconnected from the major cities of the Mayan empire with his pregnant wife and small boy.  He spends his time gathering food and hunting wild boar with a party of male villagers.  Jaguar Paw’s father is a magnificent hunter and tutors the many members of the hunting party (and especially Jaguar Paw) on the ways of life.  Sometimes the tutoring includes especially cruel and extremely funny pranks such as the tricks he plays on a weaker member of the party whose manhood is in question because this party member has been unable to have any children with his wife.  While hunting wild boar, the hunting party runs across some Mayan stragglers who are obviously in fear and who are fleeing some sort of pursuers.  Jaguar Paw senses their fear and is bothered by this.  Jaguar Paw’s father coaches him to never fear because it is the lack of courage and the association with those that do fear that rots a man’s soul.  (This becomes an ongoing theme throughout the move and is handled with a great deal less heavy-handedness than is usual for Gibson.)  Jaguar Paw suffers a nightmare about his contact with the wandering stragglers and, unfortunately, his nightmare comes true.  Soon Mayan slave traders arrive at the village and though the villagers fight valiantly, the adult members are all bound and taken away – that is everyone except Jaguar Paw’s wife who hides in a well with her son out of view of the captors.  Jaguar Paw’s father has his throat cut in front of his son, but even while he bleeds to death the father refuses to show deference for his captors or any sort of fear in front of his son.
 
The journey to a great Mayan city brings along a number of ordeals and hardships.  But it is along this trek that the member of the hunting party who was weak suddenly comes into his own.  He proves that he is a Man.  We also get to meet two interesting villains.  The leader of the slave traders has many of the same attributes as Jaguar Paw’s father and is notable for his bravery.  A second villain (the one who cut Jaguar Paw’s father’s throat) is a complete lackey and is notable for his sadism (becoming a common trait in a Mel Gibson film).  They lead the villagers to a great city with pyramids where we observe decapitated heads tumbling down a runway.  Some of the villagers are sold into slavery.  The rest, including Jaguar Paw, are led to the top of a pyramid where they are to be ritualistically executed.  A family that is gathered on the top of the pyramid, and who are watching and enjoying the spectacle, we are to presume to be royalty.  (The decadence of the family is clearly depicted in this scene, but I’m not so sure that an eight or nine year old boy as is shown here could be quite so unaffected by observing what’s going on).  Jaguar Paw watches as many of his friends are killed.  The claimed purpose of each human sacrifice was meant to appease the gods in a time of famine, but the actual reason is to control the masses and to excite their superstitions. Finally, it is Jaguar Paw’s turn to have his heart cut out and his head chopped off.  But while he lies on the execution block determined to die as bravely as his father, an eclipse appears in the sky.  The religious and political leaders of the city obviously knew the eclipse was coming and use the reappearance of the sun to tout their supernatural powers.  Because of this supposed fluke, Jaguar Paw is taken off the chopping block only to be forced to engage in another ritual game of slaughter where the slave traders would pick off their victims one by one.  Because of the efforts of the formerly weak hunting party member and because of the ingenuity of Jaguar Paw, Jaguar Paw makes his escape into the jungle and thus a fast paced chase ensues.  Through use of various items in the jungle, the leaping over a waterfall causing certain members of the villain’s party to leap after him, and the use of a boar trap that Jaguar Paw was familiar with, Jaguar Paw kills every member of those who pursue him.
 
In the end Jaguar Paw saves his wife, young son and newborn son from drowning in the well.  Along the way, he observes Spanish ships in a coastal harbor whose masters would soon topple the entire Mayan empire and along with it institute repression of their own.  Jaguar Paw, rather than meet the Spaniards, decides to go back to the jungle with his family to make a new start of his life.
 
I have remarkably little reason to criticize this movie for anything.  The movie is extremely violent but, unlike The Passion of the Christ, Gibson does not dwell on the violence.  Whether the movie is historical or ahistorical is tough to say.  Revisionists will be offended at the portrayal of the Mayan aristocracy, though historical accounts and archaeological evidence do suggest that many human sacrifices did take place.  We just don’t know how many human sacrifices actually took place.  The problem with many of the historical accounts is that they came from the Mayan conquerors, the conquistadors from Spain and Portugal.  These individuals obviously had their own historical agenda, which was to justify their miserable treatment of the Indians.  But I don’t think that Gibson was guilty of bringing in his own historical interpretation on this one.*  For one, the building of the pyramids did not come about because of decent or humane treatment of the Mayan masses.  Only a complete exploitation of the people and an appeal to their deep religious instincts could have ever made such an undertaking possible.  Second, though Gibson does show his contempt for the aristocracy and the slave traders among the Mayans, he also shows complete respect for the bravery, humor and beauty of the Mayan villagers.  Whether he is making a statement that the villagers are inherently closer to God than the members of the city (as one reviewer I have read implied) is really not something that Gibson ever overtly states in the movie.  Finally, there seems little question that the Mayan empire was in a state of decline when the Spaniards arrived.  A soft and rotten ruling class had sometime back replaced the warrior class.  This made it possible for just a few hundred Spaniards who had arrived by boat to easily topple the Mayan empire.
 
Gibson uses little dialogue in this movie and, other than a couple of conversations between Jaguar Paw and his father, he could have gone without using subtitles altogether.  How authentic the Mayan dialogue is will have to be left up to the scholars, but what little dialogue there is makes an extremely strong statement.  Only Gibson would have gone to this much trouble to make this movie, and that’s what makes him the most peculiar moviemaker that is left.  One can see why his personal life is in such a mess because he likes to take wild chances.  The difference between the making of his movies and the rest of his life is that he’s very sure about himself when he is behind a camera.  He does not listen to advice (which offends just about everyone), he keeps the story straightforward if not simple, and he deals with universal themes.  His movies contain an almost tribal passion.  With all of the sadistic villains that inhabit his movies, there is also an abundance of strong-hearted individuals that are always on the lookout for further avenues to redemption and reaffirmation of their human decency.   This is what brings his movies closer to greatness than all of the petty hot air that’s being tossed around by the other effete moviemakers trying to fit into a certain niche.
 
Gibson will probably be ignored for another best picture nomination with Apocalypto.  He will receive all sorts of mixed reviews from people who just adore his movie to those too sensitive to anything remotely vital.  His right wing and religious rants, his anti-Semitic statements, the diatribes of his crazed father will all be written about him again – none of which seems to have any bearing on the artistic qualities of his movies.  Gibson is trying to make a moral stance that will be called outdated.  He has made a number of movies condemning political oppression that will satisfy no one – at least in his movies, Gibson is impossible to pigeonhole.  I like Gibson as a moviemaker because he is a one-of-a-kind wild man.  He seems only now to be coming into his prime as a movie producer and director.  He is willing to spend millions of dollars of his own money on projects that could just as well leave him broke.  He has picked movie topics that on their surface would not appear to appeal to anyone and, if not attended by all moviegoers, are at least spoken about by everyone.**
 
* No reviewer should be criticized for being skeptical of Gibson’s historical take.  If we were to believe Gibson’s We Were Soldiers, the Communists would have been driven out of Southeast Asia by 1966.  American soldiers apparently understood their mission so well that they didn’t even need supplies to defeat the Viet Cong.  And in The Patriot, Gibson attributed to the British occupiers during the Revolutionary War atrocities (i.e., setting fire to a church killing dozens of unarmed people trapped inside) that had actually been committed by Nazi soldiers.
 
** I know that I may sound too generous in my praise.  Understand that I do feel many of Gibson’s earlier efforts are barely worth watching.  The Lethal Weapon series, Ransom, Tequila Sunrise, The Man Without a Face and Maverick, whatever their original entertainment value may have been, are so much like other popular movies that I can’t enjoy watching them a second time (if I even enjoyed watching some of them the first time).  Gibson as the leading man likes to ham it up so much that he often wrecks promising projects.  He comes close to destroying Braveheart by being holier-than-thou with his one-word pronunciations (“Freedom!”), and the movie is only saved by the acting performance of Patrick McGoohan as the evil King Edward I.  By the way, if you want to watch a movie for its action sequences, just rent Enter the Dragon starring Bruce Lee, which is only 97 minutes long, rather than watch Braveheart, which is almost three hours long.
 

December 18, 2006 
© Robert S. Miller 2006

ATONEMENT (2007): Perception and Reality

Most of the reviews of the movie, Atonement, have been positive.  Many other reviews begin typically as follows: “Though I’m in the minority here, I found Atonement to be melodramatic and dull.”  It’s remarkable that there can be so much uniformity for those in the “minority.”  Briony (as a young girl played by Saoirse Ronan) is a young and impressionable storyteller growing up on a large estate outside of London.  She is just beginning her teenage years when World War II begins.  She misinterprets passion between her beautiful sister, Cecilia (Keira Knightly), and a caretaker on the estate, Robbie (James McAvoy), as something more sinister.  When she witnesses a sexual assault of her friend, Lola (Juno Temple), she fingers Robbie as the culprit – based only on her own perception that it must have been him.  (We learn later that Paul Marshall [Benedict Cumberbatch], a friend of the family, carried out the assault; Paul at some point marries Lola to protect himself from ever being prosecuted for his crime.)  This being an England still beset by Victorian morality, Robbie’s indiscretions with Cecilia are interpreted in the most negative fashion and no one doubts that he is guilty of the sexual assault.  Robbie is hauled off by the magistrates and later given a choice of remaining in jail or going off to war.

 

We then jump ahead five years.  Briony (now played by Romola Garai) is an army nurse, and a very kind and capable one at that.  Cecelia, also a nurse, has abandoned her family but still corresponds with Robbie, who is now at the front.  Briony attempts to correspond with Cecelia and begs to have a chance to see her and ask forgiveness for all that she has done wrong.  Cecelia ignores all of Briony’s letters.  We perceive in the movie (though perceptions are misleading in this movie) that Briony does go to see Cecelia and discovers that Robbie is there with Cecilia on leave.  Robbie knows that he will never be pardoned of his crime, but he does wish that his name be cleared for the sake of his family and for the people who gave him employment.  Briony promises that she will provide a written statement confessing that she fabricated the story about Robbie’s involvement in the sexual assault.  Briony is never given the opportunity to make it up to Robbie and Cecelia, however.  We learn from an old and sickly Briony (played by Vanessa Redgrave), now a famous novelist, that Robbie dies at Dunkirk before the evacuation of British soldiers could ever take place.  Cecelia drowns in London in a fallout shelter during an enemy raid only a few months later.  Briony also reveals that Cecilia and Robbie never did meet after his arrest.  According to Briony, this was a fabrication created for her novel because she could not abide having the couple never meet again.  Briony ended the novel by having Robbie and Cecelia walk the beaches of Dover because she wanted to give it a happy ending.

 

Atonement, directed by Joe Wright and based upon the novel of Ian McEwan, is paced well for 123 minutes (much better paced than the novel), is stylish in appearance, is incredibly acted by Saorise Ronan as the young Briony and Romola Garai as the barely adult Briony, and comes close to conveying a tragic message.  It certainly will be considered significant among 2007 movies.  However, the movie viewpoint changes from perceptions of Briony and perceptions of other characters throughout the movie, and this trick is not always successful.  It dilutes the impact of the forced separation of two passionate characters that are in love with each other.  The replaying of scenes from different perspectives makes us appreciate how cleverly we are being manipulated by the filmmakers.  Also, we see Robbie walk across the beaches of Dunkirk and we are supposed to appreciate how many dollars were spent upon the production.  The acting of Vanessa Redgrave as the aging Briony who is now suffering from vascular dementia (meaning that she will never again be able to deal in the world of words) makes us admire the casting by the moviemakers in creating a complete Briony from youth to old age – all of which does little for me.  We want to care – or in any case be affected by the actions of the characters, but all of the cinematic and literary techniques is too much of a distraction.

 

Maybe McEwan as a novelist and Wright as a director were uncertain about their own abilities to provide a competent narrative in first person.  Frankly, their talent was too limited to weave a story together based in one part on the subjectivity of perception, another part on the crushing impact of prudishness upon the lives of passionate young people, and still another part about the need to atone for one’s past sins.  Another English writer like D.H. Lawrence may have been able to pull it off, but McEwan was no Lawrence.  Nevertheless, I give the moviemakers credit for making this more than a romance.  Briony comes across both as a nasty and morally smug young teenager to someone who does appreciate later as an adult the damage she has done to the lives of Robbie and Cecelia.  Keira Knightly, as the young flapper, is almost too perfect looking to be completely believable as such a vital young woman, yet the sultry expressions she gives to the camera convince the viewer that she would bring heartbreak to any young man.  McAvoy is extremely authentic in the first third of the movie, but he is almost too saintly in the middle third of the movie to be perceived as a person rather than a symbol.  But we get enough sampling of genuineness in the three characters to understand how what occurred was a true waste.  And the key character, always having it in her power to correct the situation and never actually doing anything about it until it is too late, compounded the tragedy.

 

January 8, 2008

© Robert S. Miller 2008

AVATAR (2009): More than a 3D Movie?

I had the opportunity of seeing James Cameron’s Avatar in 3D in one of the IMAX theatres located here in Minnesota.  Avatar is without question visually the most spectacular movie I’ve ever seen.  Undoubtedly, that was Cameron’s intention and I’m not going to quibble that the $380 million spent upon this blockbuster was a poor investment.  Winner of the Golden Globe Award’s Best Picture, nominated for nine Oscars and seen by more moviegoers than any other film in history, it’s difficult to argue with and, at the same time, not be impressed by the numbers.  The story (part Star Wars, part Pocahontas and part biblical in its Garden of Eden rendition) does not even factor into its viewership unless one writes reviews for The New Republic or watches interviews on Charlie Rose.  Cameron threw in an anti-war statement that was obviously directed at the Bush administration for sending occupying forces to Iraq and Afghanistan.  Fortunately for Cameron, this will be missed by much of the viewership which is made up of twelve year old children.

Pandora is occupied by Avatars and has become the focus of interest of the United States Marines now teaming up with American corporate interests that want to exploit the planet for a mineral known as Unobtanium.  (Cameron could just as well have called it oil.)  Anyway, some scientists including the renowned Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) have great respect for the inhabitants of the planet and want to learn from the Avatars and treat them with decency.  Obviously, she will face opposition from the military and corporations.  In particular, she is opposed by Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), a governmental dupe for corporate interests.  Enter Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a war-wounded paraplegic that would like to take over for a mission that his recently deceased brother had been involved in.  Jake can, through Dr. Augustine’s program, “migrate” his soul into the body of an Avatar and thus comingle with the native population.  Jake tries it out, finds he enjoys the experience of being an Avatar, and in particular relishes the opportunity of “making love” to a beautiful female Avatar named Neytri (Zoe Zaldana).  Predictably, Jake finds himself sympathizing with the plight of the Avatars, fights on their behalf against further exploitation by the Marines and the corporations, and in the end helps the Avatars repel the invaders.  Unfortunately, the victory was at a great price as the Avatars witness the destruction of their “sacred tree” and the death of many of their loved ones.  Dr. Augustine also dies in the encounter.  What saves the Avatars is their belief that all life is interconnected and will work in harmony so long as we treat nature and each other with reverence and respect.  Not even Colonel Quaritch, tough hombre that he is, can withstand the power of the Avatars’ spiritual outlook and beliefs.  Jake thus plays a key role in bringing the evil Colonel down.

Depending on which side of the political spectrum one happens to be on, Cameron will be commended by a small minority of viewers for his “courageous” political stand.  Besides the film appealing to anti-imperialist advocates, there is also an environmental theme, a theme about the need for cultural understanding, and a theme about the evils of greed.  Nevertheless, Cameron gives us enough thrills in the movie to make everyone in the audience conveniently forget all of that.  The peaceful loving people of Pandora do turn out to be rather warlike when it comes down to defending their habitat.  For commercial reasons, the action scenes are perfectly justifiable.  These scenes pull in a whole different set of audience members that would otherwise be bored with being preached at in a film like this.  And though the one-sided badness of everyone that would stand up for the military or corporate interests is obvious and less subtle than contained in the most stereotypical of dramas, again most moviegoers of this film will be oblivious to the message being presented.  If anything, Avatar more blatantly panders to all tastes than Cameron’s previous blockbuster, Titanic, so it should now be completely obvious to everyone that the lack of a cohesive story can sell.

I’m willing to forgive Avatar for almost all of its faults in any case.  I wasn’t expecting anything more than visual eye-candy when I went into see it, and that was almost all I did get.  However, there are moments when the story is a tender one and I can’t fault that.  Especially when being shown in 3D, the movie is visually magical.  The cinema has attempted to make 3D sell for over fifty years, but Cameron is the first moviemaker to truly pull it off successfully.  Though much of its beauty is owed to spectacular special effects, the planet of Pandora looks remarkably like the planet Earth with trees, forests, mountains and valleys, rivers and waterfalls.  Pandora is merely earth unspoiled by man (with some added natural phenomena that never did exist here).

I will say that the acting is respectable.  If every character in this film happens to be a type, at least these were well cast types.  Stephen Lang has aged well and plays the stubborn and arrogant Colonel with a great deal of admirable cartoonish bluster.  Ribisi plays the non-entity corporate executive that cares for nothing but profits quite well.  The Avatars, and especially Zoe Zaldana, do come close to exhibiting actual personalities.  And Weaver is extremely competent at playing the tough, but morally correct scientist and woman.  (I can’t say that Sam Worthington would have been all that impressively cast if he had not been outfitted in an Avatar suit.)

I’m not sure if I’ll ever watch the film again.  At 162 minutes in length, I really can’t see watching it again unless it happened to be showing in another IMAX theatre where I could see the film in 3D.  But besides that, I’m also afraid that if I watch the movie too closely I’ll be concentrating more on what’s wrong with the movie than on the many things that are positive about the film.  To most audience members, Avatar will remain a fond and remote memory of a few hours of enjoyment that one had at a theatre.  It would be a great experience to first see this as a child rather than as an adult.  It will never be a profound movie going experience.  It would be the equivalent of having seen the original King Kong starring Fay Wray as it must have appeared back in 1933.  Or again, it would be like watching the original Star Wars as a child when it first came out in 1977.  That’s a movie going experience that in some cases is as it should be.

March 2, 2010 

© Robert S. Miller 2010