Category Archives: Movies

Get Out

Movies, religion

This film has been almost universally praised, but I felt it was lame. I know it explores racism and even slavery and it is very important to do that, particularly in a country that seems desperate to forget that there ever was, or still is, racism. I just thought the movie was a lame horror flick. And I hate horror flicks. Perhaps my prejudice blinded my limited critical judgment. I wonder what others think. Was I wrong?

More broadly, the fact that this movie earned near universal applause makes me think that perhaps films are universally overrated as an art from. Films are still a very immature art form. Give them time to grow up. Is that true?

Call Me by Your Name

Movies, religion

In many ways this is a traditional ‘coming of age movie.’ It celebrates the time of a young many finding love for the first time. The twist is that he experiences both heterosexual love and homosexual love and it is homosexual love that triumphs. Yet the themes explored are really universal. Just like Brokeback Mountain’s exploration of a failure to grasp love when it was on offer demonstrated the tragic loss that can occur when that offer is not accepted, whether straight or gay, this film considers the tragedy that can still occur when the chance is taken, but ultimately short-lived, again whether gay or straight. In this film the love ends in heartbreak, but is still treasured. Perhaps that is as good as it usually gets.

What I liked about the film was that while it lavishly explored the excitement of youth exploring new ideas, music, art, and in this film above all the sensuality of love, it did not have to lead us to believe that love conquers all in the end as every Hallmark movie does. Sometimes it is good while it lasts, but when it is over it is never a mistake, but it is still over. A chance was seized. When it was over it was simply over, with heartbreak perhaps, but never for nothing. It is still good.

I also like the fact that the older boy (man really) may have appeared to be a shallow cad, and perhaps even turned out to be one, but he was not without empathy and understanding in the end. Shallow maybe, but deep too. Are such contradictions not permitted in matters of the heart?

Phantom Thread: Fashion is Fascism

art, Movies

 

I must admit that this movie mystified me. I found everything about the film masterful. First of all the acting was brilliant, particularly by the lead actor Daniel Day-Lewis who played wealthy and celebrated fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock. Yet Lesley Manville who plays his sister Cyril with chilling calm that alludes to other cinematic Ice queens, is also sensational. She helps to run the family business, The House of Woodcock, with wooden professionalism and is an able executioner (in the traditional sense) who dispatches her brother’s consorts as soon as he has lost his taste for them. Taste is critically important to this film. Woodcock’s current paramour Alma played by Camilla Rutherford is a surprisingly strong young peasant woman whom he summons to his lair from the hotel dining room where he met her. I call her a “peasant” without derogation, only because she does not fit into the pristine elegance of Woodcock home. She is like a fly on the wall, but she does not buckle in to his cruel disdain. She is not a weak victim of his advances. She is a proper foil to his predations.

The food and clothing, of the finest taste of course, are filmed with leisurely sensual opulence. That was what I liked best about the film, but I don’t know why. For the life of me I can’t figure out why I like that stuff. I think I got sucked in. After all what could be more meaningless than fashion? Fashion is the final refuge of the soul-starved. Fashion is fascism.

Woodcock is a man determined to pursue taste and beauty and demands utter tranquility for that purpose. His wife’s clothes (and his) must be of the finest taste (I presume for I know I confess absolutely nothing at all about good taste) and fashion. His house must be tranquil. That is something Alma cannot provide. She grates and disturbs the tranquility to such an extent that Woodcock asks, “Are you sent here to ruin my evening? And possibly my entire life?” Ultimately Woodcock is right when he says, “There is an air of quiet death in this house,” Reynolds says. That is exactly what it is, but it is of his own making, with able assistance from his sister.

So the movie completely mystifies me. Elegance and skill in service of an illusive ideal. I fail to see its purpose. Probably that is because I am not smart enough to see it. As I keep saying over and over again, life is hard when you’re stupid. What was it all for? Craftsmanship without soul? A phantom no doubt.

The Shape of Water

Movies

 

Mainly, I hate sci-fi, fantasy, and horror movies. The Shape of Water is all of the above–sort of. I have never seen any Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings movies. None. I know that this is an ignorant prejudice, but it is there and it is real. Frankly, the only reason I went to see this move is that I am trying to see all 9 movies that have been nominated this year for Academy Awards Best Picture. I have enough confidence in the Awards to believe that any film nominated for Best Picture will be reasonably good.

Much to my surprise I really loved this movie. The movie was directed by Guillermo del Toro and written by him and Vanessa Taylor. They have crafted a fine story. It is a love story. In addition to sci-fi, fantasy, or horror, we get love. A very strange love story, of course.

The love connection is between a mute cleaning lady at a top-secret government facility in 1962 at the height of the cold war and a humanoid swamp creature. The first time we see the creature is with a sudden shock that is typical of horror movies. Soon we realize that the only horror in the movie comes from the humans. They are the menacing creatures.

The creature, played by Doug Jones, cannot talk but sure can understand. It understands that the villain is a monster and the mute is something to be loved. The villains are General Frank Hoyt (played by Nick Searcy) and a squared-jawed Colonel Richard Strickland, (played by Michael Shannon). They decide to vivisect the creature as soon as its usefulness disappears. To them the creature is referred to as “the asset;” a label as cold and merciless as “resource.”

To the Colonel even love is brutal. Sex with his wife is an act of brutality with missionary position zeal. It is more of an assault than an act of love. Strickland is a cold and cruel representative of that unattractive part of our species that is quick to torture that which we do not know or understand. Rather than trying to respect it as a fellow creature, we immediately chose to poke it, prod it, hurt it, and when done, kill it. We kill for no good reason. We kill just because we lack the empathy to see the other as a fellow traveller on our meandering journey. Humans are the true purveyors of horror. (Of course we have some good points too).

An unlikely squad of misfits protects the creature. A reluctant Russian spy/scientist, Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) who has pangs of conscience, an African-American cleaning lady, Zelda, (Octavia Spencer), and a hapless artist Giles (Richard Jenkins).

The most important of the rebels is of course Eliza (Sally Hawkins), the mute cleaning lady who comes to identify with the creature–who might be a green god, because he bleeds, he suffers, and like her, he is mute. They are both strange. In more than one way they are one. As she says, “I move my mouth like him, I make no sound, like him, all that I am, all that I’ve ever been, brought me here to him. When he looks at me he does not know what I lack or how I am incomplete. He sees me for what I am as I am.”

Eliza not only identifies with the creature, but also comes to love it. Reading an ancient Persian poem, Giles says of her, as one might say of God, green or otherwise, “Unable to perceive the shape of You, I find You all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with Your love, It humbles my heart, For You are everywhere.”

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 

Movies

In this film Mildred Hayes played by Frances McDormand, in a powerful rage as a result of the lack of progress in the investigation of her daughter’s rape and murder, arranges for 3 large billboards to express that rage. She takes out her rage on the police department that she thinks spends too much time torturing black people to do a proper investigation of her daughter’s case. She specifically mentions the local sheriff Bill Willoughby played with typical grinning brilliance by perennial bad boy Woody Harrelson. He too feels anger because he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Every character feels anger in the film except one–Pamela the beautiful but air-headed 19-year old girl friend of Hayes’ ex-husband.

Willoughby however has learned to get over his anger. He has one last wonderful day, playing hookie and fishing with his two daughters, and keeping them occupied while he and his wife make love one last time. He later says in his suicide note that it was the best day of his life. When his daughter ask if Mommie is drunk, he replies she just has “a Chardonnay headache.”

We got the feeling that the Chief, Willoughby, had no respect for his young deputy, but he urges is young deputy to get rid of his hate. If he wants to be a good detective he must love–not hate. “Hate never solved anything,” he wisely says.

Amazingly, it is Pamela the intellectually challenged girl friend who brings the epiphany that delivers the moral center to the film from words she has read on a book marker while she was reading “that book about polio, you know the ones with horses.” The words that bring thematic focus to the film together with Willoughby’s suicide notes are that “anger begets greater anger.” Friedrich Nietzsche did not say it much better than that when he explored the topic of resentment. She may be dim, but she understands, what so many others fail to understand without great suffering.

The one weakness I found in the film was the religious theme. When a local priest comes to visit her, Mildred angrily and crudely rails at him—comparing the Catholic church to a gang and suggesting that he and every other churchman is “culpable” for the many abuses of children perpetrated by priests. They might be culpable but I did not think this worked well in the movie.

On another occasion Mildred sits by herself mulling things over when she says, echoing Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, “there ain’t no God, the world’s empty, and it don’t matter what we do to each other.” She noticed a deer near the spot where her daughter and wonders if she is supposed to think her daughter has been reincarnated as a lovely deer.

Mildred and Dixon have an awakening at the end of the film when they seem to realize that revenge is an empty vessel that will bring no nourishment. I don’t know why Mildred would change so drastically after one sleep. I thought it was an unearned, and hence unsatisfying transformation, even though I agree with the sentiment entirely. It was not a hard truth and therefore unsatisfying. Like a cheap thrill.

Recently we celebrated Martin Luther King Day here in the USA. He was not a perfect individual. Few of us are. But he was wise. He said, “I chose love because the burden of hate is too great.” That was a deeply earned insight.

Finally I commend the music in the film particularly the final song written by Townes Van Zandt, one of my favorites, and sung by someone I had never heard of before, Amy Annelle, with her ethereal voice.

Enjoy.

The Post

Movies, politics, Truth Seeking

On a cool day, we decided to see a movie. Like last year, I was hoping we could see as many as possible of the movies nominated for the Academy awards. We saw this one before the nominations came out, as we believed rightly it turns out, that it would be denominated for Best Picture

As a result we went to see The Post, a movie about the Washington Post and its owner, editor, and newspaper people reporting on the Pentagon Papers after the Nixon administration got an injunction against the New York Times who had started reporting on them first.

This was an outstanding movie about the costs, risks, and benefits of standing up to power. As Katherine Graham, the owner of the Washington Post (ably played by Meryl Streep) said, “If we don’t hold government to account why do we have a newspaper?” That is an important question, no more so than now in the age of so-called Fake News. Unfortunately there is a lot of fake news out there but it does not come from the New York Times, the Washington Post, or The Guardian and other first rate media. It comes from “fake news farms,” and other disreputable outlets. It is really sad that Donald Trump has tried to catch on to this issue. He was the primary beneficiary of fake news. He may have even contributed to its emergence (though that at least in the case of the Russian intervention in the 2016 Presidential election that has not yet been proven).

The film is extraordinarily relevant at a time when the current President of the United States, is not just attacking one newspaper, as Richard Nixon, did in the case of the Pentagon Papers, but is attacking an entire industry as fake news.

The Washington Post was threatened with lawsuits including potential prosecutions of the owner, Katherine Graham and the editor Ben Bradlee played by Tom Hanks. The timing is also extreme, because the Post was just in the process of going public on Wall Street at the time and the publicity of these threats could scare off the bankers and potential investors. It took incredible courage for Bradlee and Graham to go ahead with publishing under these circumstances. They might have gone to prison.

The film shows us this powerful jeopardy they experienced. Bradlee, who had less to lose, said bravely, “We can’t have an administration dictating to us our coverage just because they don’t like what we print about them in our newspaper…”

         Until this event, Graham had been considered a light-weight newspaper owner. As one of her colleagues said, “Kay throws a great party, but her father gave the paper to her husband.” This dismissive assessment, not without a large dollop of male chauvinistic prejudice was widely shared in her newsroom.

The issue was whether or not these two would have the courage (or lack of sense) needed to publish the Pentagon Papers while facing the President of the United States through his Attorney General, in court? It amazed me that even though I thought I remembered the result, the tension was palpable. No doubt this is the sign of craftsmanship in  film-making.

Finally the film gives a nod to the United States Supreme Court who ruled “the founding fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfil its essential role… to serve the governed, not the governors”

Lady Bird

Movies

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0nfg4qryqxahdod/Screenshot%202018-01-29%2020.43.50.png?dl=0

 

We drove to Casa Grande to see one more film in our attempt to see all the Academy Award nominated films. This time we saw Lady Bird our 4th movie in 3 weeks. And all 4 were great. My faith in movies is renewed. Of course it helps that none of these films had a super hero. I don’t think I need to see one more superhero.

The film is a coming-of-age story from the point of a view of a bright, lively, rebellious, and far from perfect 17 year old girl, Christine, (who gave herself the name Lady Bird because she wanted a name of her own, not one given by her parents). It was minor rebellion, but not her last. The film was written and directed by Greta Gerwig who deserves an immense amount of credit cinematic gem.

Saoirse Ronan, the star of last year’s Brooklyn, which we also enjoyed in Arizona, plays Lady Bird. The central core of this movie is her difficult and complicated relationship with her mother whom she clearly loves, though not without challenges.

The movie opens with a scene in which the 2 have been on a car trip looking at colleges. Mother (played by Laurie Metcalfe) and daughter are both crying over the final passages of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. We get the impression that these two have a great ideal relationship. That feeling is quickly dissolved as they argue over which college Ladybird should go. Lady Bird wants to go out east where there is culture, not Sacramento, her hometown, which is “the Midwest of California.” The ride ends with a shock. Not a happy shock.

I loved the scene where mother and daughter were shopping together in a department store for a special dress. They constantly bicker and argue until the mother spots a great dress and Lady Bird is instantly ecstatic. This reminded me of another great movie, The Commitments, in which the band was constantly arguing until they got on stage and played music that was magic. All dissension melted away in the beauty of the songs.

Lady Bird’s best friend, Julie, is played by Beanie Feldstein.  Their relationship is also complicated. Life is never simple except in the Hallmark movies. There is a wonderful scene where the two of them wolf down a whole box of communion wafers as if they were fast food. Perhaps they are fast food? They play a great trick on the nun who is principal of the school, when they tie a “Just Married to Jesus” sign on the back of her car. After Lady Bird dumps her friend for a more popular friend Julie points out that she is a “moron in a deeper sense.” Not in the ordinary sense of someone like Donald Trump I suppose.

Lady Bird also has an interesting relationship with a seemingly perfect boy friend, Danny, played by Lucas Hedges, until she discovers he is more interested in boys than girls. At a school dance, when they are dancing too close, the nun walks by and says, “Leave 6 inches for the Holy Spirit,” which I have learned is what the Nuns always said.

Her second choice of a boyfriend is hardly better. That is Kyle played by Timothée Chalamet. He is a listless cad who deceives her into thinking that he is losing his virginity with her as she is with him. When he admits she is his 6th , Lady Bird starts to cry. She says to him, I wanted it (her first sex) to be special. He asks, “Why? You’re going to have so much unspecial sex in your life.”

When Kyle comes to pick her up to take her to the prom, he stays in the car car and honks his horn. Her father asks Lady Bird, “You won’t go to a guy who honks for you will you?” Sadly, showing her rebelliousness is not yet complete, she does run to him. Her individuality has limits. Those limits are shown again when the cool kids say lets skip the prom and Lady Bird, obviously disappointed, acquiesces in order to be cool. Fortunately she later asserts herself and goes with her best friend Julie instead. The rebel matures.

Lady Bird thinks that she has already finished the learning part of High School, but this is far from true. With her friends she learns that smoking, drinking, and sex aren’t all they’re cracked up to be either.

I also loved the scene with the Nun principal, who had read her essay to get into college. The Nun told her, “It’s clear how much you love Sacramento.” This comes as a surprise to Lady Bird (and me and probably all viewers who have learned how frustrated she is about her home town). Lady Bird has a thoughtful reply: “I guess I pay attention.” To which the wise Sister replies, “Don’t you think they’re the same thing?”

All in all I loved the movie about a young girl who was able to confront the fears that so many of us have. And not just young people either. have: Fear of not being accepted. Fear of not being loved. Fear of the future. Fear of failure. Fear of not pleasing your loving parents. Lady Bird makes missteps, but she shines. She shines for us all, lighting the way, because we all need more light and more bravery.

All the Money in the World.

Movies, Philosophy/Ideas, Social democracy

 

 

When we are in Arizona we love to see movies. I am not sure why, but we seem to have much more time for movies out here. We always try to see as many of the movies nominated for best picture as possible. The first movie we saw was All the Money in the World.

This film gained notoriety when Kevin Spacey, who originally played J. Paul Getty, was discharged from the film after it was shot, because of cascading allegations of sexual misconduct. Christopher Plummer was hired to play the role and all the scenes with Spacey were reshot one month before the release date of the film. It is incredible that so much could be done in such a short time. And they did it well.

The movie is based (inspired by it says) real events that occurred in 1973 when Italian kidnappers abducted the grandson of J. Paul Getty, John Paul Getty III. The grandfather, according to the film, was not only the richest man in the world; he was the richest man in the history of the world. Even though the grandson was the most favorite of all of his grandchildren, Getty hardly raised an eyebrow when he heard news of the kidnapping because he was watching the stock market results on the ticker tape. That is sacred of course.

When the media asked Getty how much he would pay to have his grandson released he said, quietly, ominously, and matter-of-factly, “Nothing.” It was shocking.

Only when a cut off ear of the grandson was sent to him in the mail did Getty start to take this seriously and even then, he did it as a business tycoon. He tried to get the best deal he could. He bargained. He bargained for the life of his favorite grandson. Getty said he has no money to spare.

Later when Getty reneges on his promise to pay because the oil embargo has made him more insecure, his chief fixer, Chase, played by Mark Wahlberg, asks Getty, “But no one has ever been richer than you are. What would it take for your to feel secure?” “More,” was the chilling answer. The answer of a true businessman.

There was one more element in the movie I found interesting. Recently I have been thinking a lot about rich people. Rich people and their fears. Some people have criticized me for this saying I sow seeds of class conflict. I disagree but may deal with that issue some time.

The rich seem to have intense fears, not the least when they are most secure. That is what I find most interesting. Why do the most secure seem to feel the most insecurity? In fact, it often seems the richer they are, the more fearful they are. I always think this is a hint that they feel guilt over their wealth. They feel that they don’t deserve it and someone will be coming to take it away, and they had better be prepared.

Peter Bradshaw the movie reviewer in The Guardian had some interesting things to say about Getty in this context. As Bradshaw said, “This film suggests they (the rich) also have more fear of their own children – fear that they will parasitically suck away energy that should be devoted to building up riches and status; that they will fail to be worthy inheritors of it, or waste it, or cause it to be catastrophically mortgaged to their own pampered weakness. This fear is the driving force of Ridley Scott’s raucous pedal-to-the-metal thriller about the ageing and super-rich oil tycoon J. Paul Getty.”[1]

Fear makes the rich do strange things. Things that might not be to their own advantage. Things that reveal a stark lack of fellow feeling. F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “The rich are different from you and me,” to which Ernest Hemingway is famously alleged to have replied: “Yes, they have more money.” Hemingway should have said, “Yes they have more fear.”

Kris Kristofferson wisely said, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” That was true. But he could have said, just as truly, “Fear is just another word for everything left to lose.”

[1] Peter Bradshaw, “All the Money in the World review–raucous crime thriller banishes ghost of Kevin Spacey,” The Guardian (Dec. 19, 2017)