Video Review: Beginners Much Better than Its Silly Trailer

BEGINNERS (2010–released 2011)

Directed by Mike Mills

Olympus Pictures, 105 mins. R (For no reason other than gay people are shown)

* * *

Some movies fail because they suck and some because they can’t get mass distribution in a market dominated by just six studios. (That’s the fate of most independent, foreign, experimental, documentary, and non-linear films.) Then there are films that flop because their production companies don’t have a clue of how to market them. Place Beginners in the latter category; its worldwide box office was a paltry $14 million. I suspect most audiences avoided it for the same reason I did when it was in theaters: a dreadful trailer that promised to reduce gay people to swishy stereotypes.

I concede to gay friends and family that the movie has elements of swish and camp. Goran Visnjic is guilty of this; as the character Andy his acting palette has just two tones: the happy puppy-eyes look that precedes a hug, and the baleful downcast glance that it is usually followed by the line, “It’s because I’m gay, isn’t it?” (No; it’s because you’re acting as if you’re brain-damaged!) Visnjic’s mediocre performance signals that Beginners is no Long Time Companion; it’s not even Philadelphia. But that’s part of my point. What it’s also not is a “gay” film; it’s a film that happens to have gay characters, but whose center is a heterosexual relationship. And it’s not even about that. It’s really about what each of us find within ourselves when we stop playing expected social roles and take time to ask ourselves who we really are and what we really want. The title Beginners is ironic; it references the “Ah ha!” moment in which you finally make sense of something that has tripped you for years and begin to move on.

In the case of 71-year-old Hal (Christopher Plummer), it’s the liberation that comes after his wife Georgia (Mary Page Keller) dies–he can finally openly live the gay life he has craved since his adolescence. This revelation shocks his 38-year-old son Oliver (Ewan McGregor), but it also helps him clear leftover childhood trauma. It explains why his father was so both physically and emotionally absent, why his mother was morose, and why family conversations were like ships leaving different ports and moving in opposite directions. He also learns that Georgia was also trapped–by expectations that she be a dutiful housewife and not the bohemian flake that she really was. And it really explains why Oliver has t-shirts that last longer than most of his relationships.

As they say, a funny thing happens in the five years between his father’s coming out and his death. Hal and Oliver reconnect, but more to the point, Oliver observes his father’s joy­–first through judging eyes and then through his own sadness. When Anna (Mélanie Laurent) appears on the scene, Oliver is in the midst of deep depression and cynicism. Anna is a French version of his mother–free-spirited, blunt, and marching to a different drummer. She’s also drop-dead gorgeous and is attracted to Oliver. The film explores whether this relationship is as doomed as Georgia’s belief she could “fix” Hal, or if Oliver can find his inner joy before he turns 71 like his old man.

I can say not more except give this film a try on video. It’s way more intelligent that the trailer made it out to be. It’s certainly not a great film, but it is a diverting one that deserved better. And it’s definitely not a gay film. It does veer toward stereotype in several scenes–doesn’t Hollywood stereotype everyone?–but in an odd way it redeems itself. When the camera moves away from establishing (read: hit us on the head) shots that identify who is gay and who isn’t, the movie is at its best: gay people and straight people interact, carry the same emotional baggage, and do their best to help those they care about. You know; just like real life when people put aside all labels except “human.”

Noam Pikelny Makes Banjo Hip

NOAM PIKELNY

Beat the Devil and Carry a Rail

Compass 4565

* * * *

I highly recommend Noam Pikelny’s latest solo banjo release. Yes, I know that most people associate banjo with the theme music for The Beverly Hillbillies, but trust me when I say that it’s been decades since that style of playing has been dominant. But you don’t have to take me at my word about Noam Pikelny. His band The Punch Brothers is one of the hottest acts in bluegrass music and Pikelny won the 2011 Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass. Pikelny has shared stages with Martin, and in case you’ve been asleep, Martin doesn’t wield the banjo as a comedy prop; he’s won a Grammy and an International Bluegrass Music Association award with it.

Martin isn’t the only good company Pikelny keeps. Also assisting on this album are music industry luminaries such as Tim O’Brien, Jerry Douglas (Allison Krauss Band), Aoife O’Donovan (Crooked Still), and Chris Thile (Nickel Creek). Want some old-time music? Check out his duet with Martin on “Cluck Old Hen.” How about some whimsy? Any tune called “My Mother Thinks I’m a Lawyer” will fit the bill, especially when wrapped in an arrangement that’s half bluegrass and half ‘30s-style string band. Desire a barnburner? Listen to Thile make his fingers do double duty to keep up with Pikelny on “Bear Dog Grit.” Looking to taste of something sweet? Pikelny turns down the noise and slows the pace so that O’Donovan can transform the Tom Waits composition “Fish and Bird” into something as delicate as a Kate Rusby offering. Don’t think a banjo album can be hip? Check this out and get back to me.

Here’s Steve Martin talking about banjo playing and being upstaged by Pikelny on The David Letterman Show.

Swamplandia a Snappy Novel

Swamplandia! (2011)

By Karen Russell

ISBN: 978-o-307-27668-1

Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! is showing up on a lot of “Best Of” lists for 2011 novels and some reviewers have hailed it as their top choice. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but it is a very impressive debut novel populated with unforgettable characters. If pressed for a sound bite, mine would something along the lines of: “Hard-luck losers mucking about wetlands trying to avoid being snapped up by a Leviathan named Seth.” Let me explain.

Russell’s story centers on the Bigtree family, an ensemble ensconced on a muddy island in the midst of the Okefenokee Swamp. The Bigtree surname is an invention of patriarch Samuel designed to make his poor white trash brood seem vaguely “Indian” and more exotic for tourists making their way from the mainland to witness the family enterprise: alligator wrestling. Samuel rules over his family and a dreary little theme park, Swamplandia, as the “Chief.” He’s equal parts deluded, bumbling, big-hearted, well intentioned, and clueless. He’s mainly inept and the family’s real center is its star, matriarch Hilola. She was born Jane Owens, but as Hilola she dives into an alligator pit, out swims them, and puts on a show by subduing one of the gators and taping its jaws shut. The Chief runs a family “museum,” hawks junky souvenirs, and mentally prepares his children to enter the family business by feeding them constant stories about the family’s fame on the mainland. The kids dutifully tend to the “seths,” the nickname given to all alligators because Hilola originally wrestled a monster called Seth on a billboard. (As The Chief explains, they kept the name because “advertising is expensive.”) The family’s alleged fame is mostly a load of swamp mud, but seventeen-year-old Kiwi and younger daughters Osceloa, 15, and Ava, 9, mostly believe it until their mom suddenly dies and Swamplandia is left entirely to The Chief’s stewardship. As you might expect, that doesn’t go well.

Swamplandia! begins as a quirky book about lovable losers, but it becomes something murkier and sadder. When Hilola dies, the tourists stop coming, Kiwi bolts for the mainland, and The Chief soon follows–ostensibly to raise money for a new scheme that will win back tourists from a mainland amusement park. We watch as the Bigtrees replace one set of myths with equally implausible ones. Kiwi lands a job at the rival theme park, where he practices using big words and dreams of going to Harvard, though he’s just flunked his GED exam. Nobody knows where The Chief has gone, and the two girls remain on the island. Osceola disappears into Ouija boards, séances, and imagination. When an abandoned 1930s-era dredge floats into Swamplandia’s waters, Osceola announces she is betrothed to the ghost of a young man who died on the boat; one day she too disappears. The guts of the book evokes Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness–Ava’s journey into the heart of the swamp in search of her sister. Her guide is a creepy Deliverance-like figure known only as The Birdman.

The Conrad reference works on another level, if one considers that the Bigtrees call alligators “seths.” Set­–rendered Seth by the Greeks–was the Egyptian god of darkness and chaos. He’s the one who killed and disemboweled his brother Osiris and then poked out the eye of Osiris’s son Horus, who in turn castrated Seth. The blind eye, darkness, chaos, the spirit world…. All of these are good metaphors for this novel. Could we even see Sam as emasculated once his Chief illusion is shattered? You tell me when you rediscover him in Swamplandia!

Russell raises big issues in her novel, not the least of which is the question of how families such as the Bigtrees are supposed to cope. Take away their fantasies and what, precisely, do they possess? She creates indelibly memorable characters, makes us feel Ava’s peril and the slither of the swamp, and takes us inside a world where few of us would wish to enter any way other than vicariously. At some point in the journey she’s a little lost herself and the novel’s resolution feels like a deus ex machina worthy of one of Osceola’s séances. But one can forgive such slips in the midst of such fecund storytelling.

George Clooney Sleepwalks through "The Descendants"

If only the scriptwriter was this thoughtful!

THE DESCENDANTS (2011)

Directed by Alexander Payne

Fox Searchlight, 115 mins. Rated R (language)

* * ½

The Descendants has garnered decent reviews, which we should interpret as still another sign of the shallow yield of 2011. In truth, it’s neither a good film, nor a bad one—merely an inconsequential one. It’s also a walk through for George Clooney, who looks rested, tanned, and unchallenged.

The film is set on Oahu and Kauai. Clooney plays Matt King, a big-time lawyer from an extended family that traces its ancestry to 19^th century missionaries that came to Hawaii to civilize the natives. If you need to know more, consult Sarah Vowell’s Unfamiliar Fishes, a book that writer and director Alexander Payne seems to have cribbed in developing a back story on why the Kings own so much land. Matt King’s wife, Elizabeth, is involved in a boating accident that leaves her in a vegetative state, and overnight he must set aside his Type A personality and develop parenting skills to deal with his daughters: 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller) and 17-year-old Alexandra (Shailene Woodley).

Clooney is first seen wearing a Hawaiian print shirt and he either has a fleet of these, or he seldom changes it. Take that as a metaphor for how few surprises are in store in this script. Payne tries to interject a few twists—an impending development deal, Elizabeth’s secret affair, a resentful father-in-law, Scottie’s temper tantrums, Alex’s teen angst—but everything in this film is like standing on a seaside cliff and gazing into the distance: you can see what’s coming long before it arrives. Particularly lame is the role of Sid (Nick Krause) as Alex’s inappropriate boyfriend. He seems to be in the film to call people “dude” and offer some faux Hawaiian Falstaffian comic relief. It’s a silly role that serves little purpose but then again, much of the script is silly, including Matt’s very lame caper to discover and confront Elizabeth’s lover.

We never see Clooney perspire in this film and that too is a metaphor. He’s never Matt King; he’s Clooney being Clooney—smooth, confident, calm, and in control (even when the part calls for him to act as if he’s not). The guy’s wife is dying for heaven’s sake, and he can’t muster a tear until the end!? Alex is a little monster and all he can say is, “Hey! Watch your mouth.” Will Alex grow up? Will Matt learn to be a dad? What does your view from the cliff tell you?

Payne has directed truly snarky films such as Election (1999) and Sideways (2004), but his script for The Descendants is lost in a sea of sentimentality and forced redemption. The kids don’t act like real kids, Clooney doesn’t act like he’s really anguished, and everything else in the film—except Judy Geer’s small role as a cuckolded wife—seems contrived. Label The Descendants a Terms of Endearment film: one that pulls at the heartstrings and might induce a sniffle or two. Once you think about it, though, you’ll be embarrassed that you broke out the Kleenex box. It’s 115 minutes of diversion—nothing less and certainly nothing more. Number me among those who want to see Clooney stretch himself; we know he can channel Cary Grant, but can he do anything else?

Top Films of 2011: Making the Best of a Bad Situation

No easy answers down this rabbit hole.

Making a list of the top ten films of 2011 is a bit like compiling the most nutritious junk foods for the National Institute of Health. In a better film year most of these films would have struggled to make the list and my top film, Rabbit Hole, would have been a bottom-of-the-pack choice. The best films I saw last year were all restored prints of classics: Les enfants du paradis (1945), Les diaboliques (1955), All About Eve (1950)…

The Academy Awards has the weird idea that a film is considered a 2011 film if it opens in either La-La -Land or New York before December 31. We take the view that a 2011 film is one that opened in a place called “the United States” during 2011, even if was made the year before; hence some on this list were considered for awards last year (which merely underscores the paucity of quality for 2011).

10 (tie): The Greatest Movie Ever Sold and Exit through the Gift Shop. Both of these quirky documentaries reveal how buzz can be manufactured and marketed, the first by exposing the role of product placement, and the second by showing how life literally follows art. A metaphor for why today’s culture is often more hype than substance?

9. My Week with Marilyn: Not a deep film, but Michelle Williams is stunning as Marilyn Monroe, and a talented cast transforms a slight script.

8. The Illusionist: A charming (and nearly silent) animated film about the dying days of vaudeville and a middle-aged magician’s big heart.

7. Melancholia: If the apocalypse is this beautiful, bring it on! This film is everything Malick’s Tree of Life wasn’t. That list begins with the word “interesting.”

6. The Hedgehog: A rare instance in which the film of a popular novel is equally good and the liberties taken work. Learn why 11-year-old Paloma wants to kill herself when she turns 12, and why she might change her mind.

5. Martha Marcy Mae Marlene: A stunning performance from the luminous Elizabeth Olsen in a creepy film about the allure of cults. Redemption or damnation?

4. Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune: A smart documentary about the late protest singer Phil Ochs that shows the power, the glory, and the hubris. Ochs was flawed, but we sure could use his voice now.

3. Blue Valentine: If you need more proof that Michelle Williams is the real deal, this will provide it. She and Ryan Gosling play a matched set that manages to clash in a relationship that should be, but never quite is.

2. Another Year: This superb British film from last year didn’t do much at the box office because it’s strictly an adult film, and it stars veteran actors long past their pretty boy/pretty girl prime. It’s Mike Leigh’s take on how the middle class and working class live in such radically different worlds that even the well intentioned manage to miscommunicate.

1. Rabbit Hole: Nicole Kidman has made herself into a fine actress, which she demonstrates in this family tragedy. What happens when a dream world shatters? Where does one find solace? A film long on hope and short on tidy resolutions. It deserves top dog status for avoiding clichés and fairy tale endings.

Note: There are longer reviews of most of these films on the blog. Click on the movie madness list (left hand side of the home page) to see individual reviews.

Worst Films Viewed in 2011

An action sequence from Somewhere.

2011 will not go down in anyone’s film annals as a stellar year for cinema. In that spirit it makes sense to begin the end-of-the-year wrap-up with the stinkers. Tune in tomorrow for the best-of list.

Our rule is that we dishonor bad as we encounter it. Some of these films were released prior to 2011, but we only saw them on video. (A few were so bad that it made sense that they went straight to video, and some were made outside the US and never opened at local theaters.)

In descending order of purification:

9. Fish Tank: A film with a strong lead actress, but it’s basically British poor white trash that should have never left the council flats. Who can behave more badly: the cast of loser adults or the 15-year-old loser-in-training?

8. Meek’s Cutoff: Much ballyhooed and gorgeous to look at–if you want to spend 104 minutes watching a painting on the screen. Nothing happens. Nothing.

7. Love and Other Drugs: See Ann Hathaway naked. Best viewed with the sound off.

6. Cave of Forgotten Dreams: Stunning prehistoric art shot by Werner Herzog that would have made a stunning 15-minute silent film. Alas, it’s 90 minutes of Herzog’s pretentious mystical musings on….? Damned if we know.

5. Waiting for Superman: A rightwing attack on teacher unions disguised as caring about kids. It’s really a GOP defense of vouchers pretending to be a lottery drama.

4. J. Edgar: A lot of money spent so that Leonardo DiCaprio can bring J. Edgar Hoover to life and reduce him to listless limpness. How can you make Hoover boring? Leo manages.

3. Tree of Life: Pretentious crap from Terrence Malick. A film about the beginnings of life and the struggle for existence across the eons that unwittingly redefines the term “timeless.”

2. Thor: Not good enough to be a comic book-brought-to-life, and not bad enough to be camp. The only thing louder than Chris Hemsworth’s grunts is the collective groan of the audience.

1. Somewhere: Sofia Coppolla should go the California and manage her old man’s wine estate–anything except direct. It would be wrong to say Somewhere goes nowhere. That would have been more interesting. Let’s just say that it opens with a car driving in circles and goes downhill from there.

Skippy Dies Uneven but Intriguing Read

SKIPPY DIES (2010)
By Paul Murray
Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-86547-943-2, 661 pp.

* * *

Paul Murray’s sophomore novel opens with a shock: fourteen-year-old Daniel “Skippy” Juster has just died on the floor of a down-market Dublin doughnut shop, the name of his girlfriend upon his lips. Why did Skippy die? Was if for love? Was it the pills he and his friends indiscriminately pop? Was if from a ruptured heart triggered by his recent swim meet? Or is something more sinister to blame?

Murray’s sprawling novel is, at turns, sad, provocative, chilling, and screamingly funny. It is set at Seabrook College, a once-tony-grown-shabby Irish Catholic prep school. It’s a place that’s been cruising on its reputation for decades, the kind of place where “tradition” is constantly invoked in the hope that no one will notice that “venerable” has been steamrollered by “sclerotic.” The priests who nominally run the place are old and tired, as is much of the lay faculty. In fact, the entire staff knows the place is a joke except for “the Automator,” oily Acting Principal Greg Costigan, who is determined to modernize Seabrook and aggrandize himself in the process. The students are certainly aware that Seabrook is just a place where their well-heeled parents stuck them to get them out of sight and out of mind, a reality Murray reveals in several tortured phone calls between Skippy and his clueless father.

Skippy Dies isn’t really about why Daniel Juster died; it’s really about how institutions, families, and individuals fall apart in ways analogous to the famed frog-in-the-pot scenario in which the frog isn’t aware he’s being slowly boiled to death. In many ways, it’s also a metaphor for Ireland. (Remember how the Celtic Tiger turned out to be declawed stray cat?) The kids are especially sharply drawn. Murray assembles a memorable cast. Skippy’s family life is so screwed up that he finds temporary solace in Lori, a little flirt who’s taking him for a twisted ride. His roommate is Ruprecht Van Doren, an obese, doughnut-inhaling nerd who is either a future genius or a young Frankenstein, who is busy building a machine constructed of copious amounts of tinfoil, which he hopes will allow him to access the eleventh dimension! Others in his circle include Mario, who carries his “lucky” condom, which has never been out of its wrapper in the three years he’s possessed it; the über-cynic Dennis; and Titch, a vacuous preppy predestined to follow his old man into the gray-flannel realm of banking and mergers. Murray absolutely nails teenaged angst. He paints a world of boys obsessed by sex and thoughtless in their personal interactions, though vaguely aware of being adrift. Skippy’s group lives in mortal fear of thuggish upper classmen, especially a clique led by Carl, a neo-fascist drug pusher who does his best to hide the demons that would reveal him to be frightened, damaged, and insecure.

Where are the adults to help the kids navigate these shoals? Clueless would be too charitable an adjective. History teacher Howard Fallon is a milquetoast dubbed “Howard the Coward” by students and peers alike, and not without reason. Costigan is what Carl will look like in ten years and Miss McIntyre the amoral temptress Lori will become. The rest are assorted cynics and fools, except for the priests, who are something altogether darker. The adults don’t hear each other, let alone the kids; in fact, they are often revealed responding to imagined conversations, not what was actually said.

Murray uses humor, surrealism, absurdism, and splashes of magical realism throughout. These add needed balance to the pathos and tragedy of a story that’s less coming-of-age than end-of-an-age. At 661 pages the novel sprawls, sometimes effectively, but often not. At 400 taut pages Skippy Dies would have been a small masterpiece; as is, it sometimes stumbles over its myriad style and mood shifts, and the hit-us-over-the-head metaphors. (The theme of futility is, for instance, hammered and anviled home by Howard’s obsession with World War I.) Overall, though, it’s a worthwhile read. I’ll give you a hint: Skippy didn’t choke on doughnuts.