Gateway Cinephiles

2008
Director: Errol Morris
Viewed: May 29, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

A - Most Americans who follow current events have seen the pictures. We think we know what they represent. We think we have a handle on the story that they tell. During 2003, prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were sexually humiliated and molested, terrorized with dogs, brutalized, tortured, and murdered. By Americans. The abusers were military police, military intelligence, private contractors, and CIA interrogators. Errol Morris’ new film, Standard Operating Procedure, opens the photo album on Abu Ghraib and initiates an inquiry both indebted to and a world apart from the fleeting sensationalism of the mainstream media’s coverage. The film’s taste for the dramatic might provoke accusations that Morris is aiming for cheap agitprop. Nothing could be further from the truth. SOP is a spellbinding film about a grave and inflammatory topic, a vital rumination that upends one stone after another and then holds up a microphone to the emerging grubs. Morris’ refusal to utilize the Abu Ghraib scandal as a political cudgel might be noble or disgraceful, depending on your outlook, but with SOP, he has unquestionably crafted a haunting work that digs deep and cuts deeper.

More so than any of Morris’ previous films, SOP assumes a familiarity with its subject matter. The filmmaker is speaking to an audience already branded with the images that inhabit his film: hoods, dog leashes, wires, orange jumpsuits, naked men in piles, cadavers in ice-filed bags, and all those surreal, grotesque American grins and thumbs. To assume this common frame of reference (and the accompanying wondering outrage) is a bit of a detour for Morris. The filmmaker’s previous documentaries possess a tone that is expansive and yet reserved. SOP signals in its opening moments—accompanied by a searing, histrionic score from Danny Elfman—that it is a more passionate creature. The film that emerges is urgent, probing, and stark. It leaps into the abyssal inscrutability of Abu Ghraib (and our reactions to it) feet first, and on its way down delivers the best documentary experience of the year to date.

Morris employs a methodology that is now familiar: furiously edited interviews, with no narration and only minimal intrusion from the director’s off-camera voice. The appeal of Morris as a credible documentarian is his (naïve? disingenuous?) resolve that his subjects should be allowed to construct the film’s narrative, insomuch as his films could be said to have narratives at all. SOP focuses on the perpetrators (and scapegoats) of the Abu Ghraib scandal, permitting them to relate events, explain their thinking, air their grievances, and ruminate out loud on their regrets. Many of the familiar faces among the interviewees seem to be female: Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, Specialist Sabrina Harman, and Private First Class Lynndie England, she who is damned to forever be the face of the scandal. The most visible male offenders are still in prison (or, depending on your view of the real perpetrators, still calling the shots at the Pentagon and collecting lucrative speaking fees).

The talking heads are intercut with lavish special effects that deconstruct the more notorious photographs and breathe life into the words (some crude, some poetic) of Harman’s letters home. Morris also makes liberal use of stylized, ultra-slow-motion recreations. These have a music video aesthetic that highlights the uncharacteristic gothic mood that he seems to be aiming for, and they don’t always work. Still, these sequences serve to break up the visual monotony of the interviews, and Morris often employs them in cunning ways, tapping into those aforementioned shared memories to conjure dread just shy of a horror movie. When we begin to wonder whether the interviewees will discuss the use of dogs at the prison, a dark shape lurches past the foreground, out of focus, eventually resolving into a close-up of a German shepherd that invites genuine chills.

Unlike most documentarians, Morris has little interest in merely spinning a yarn or proffering a polemic. SOP, like much of his work, suggests that he trusts his material to uncover its own profundity, relying on only a rudimentary story to hold everything together. Few documentary filmmakers are content unless the audience walks away either entertained, inspired, or convinced. Morris asks that we think, truly think, about what we are shown. SOP doesn’t have a thesis, but it has themes. Chief among these are the mystery of photographs: their evocative power, our reflexive need to take and pose for them, and the perils of the partitioning and excluding frame. “If it wasn’t photographed, it didn’t happen,” notes one of the film’s interviewees. One of SOP’s unexpected marvels is an investigator’s discussion of the forensic challenge in reconstructing the prison abuses from three separate digital cameras. Thousands of photos glide across the screen, lining up along common scenes of shame, rearranging themselves into timelines of brutality. Through the interviewees’ words and his visual flourishes, Morris expands the scope of his inquest beyond what it shown in the photographic frame to include what is beyond it and behind it.

SOP is mostly free of political and moral tongue-clucking. There is little contextual discussion of the Iraq War raging outside the prison, and only few lofty statements about American morality or empire. The elements in SOP’s photographic collage are both broader and more timeless: bullying, mob mentality, chain-of-command, revenge, guilt, responsibility, judgment, power. In this, Morris avoid caricaturing his interviewees as Ugly Americans, and instead finds a tantalizing, contradictory tone in his treatment. On the one hand, he permits them to be woefully, specifically human, allowing justifications and explanations to pour forth without comment. On the other, his blood- and shadow-flecked styling invests them with the dread agency of legendary creatures in a fable about human fallibility. Granted, the film paints some of the central actors in an unashamedly menacing light—and justifiably so, given the personality traits and crimes revealed. And yet, SOP cannot in any sense be characterized as a righteous indictment of the actors at Abu Ghraib. When Morris intrudes on the film in a distant, off-camera voice, he seems more curious and flabbergasted than angry. The interviewees themselves rarely seem defensive. The most common reactions are disbelief, bitterness, and a longing to forget it ever happened. Of course, it cannot be forgotten, by the perpetrators, the victims, or the world. There are photos.

2008
Director: Steven Spielberg
Viewed: May 26, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

C - Let’s get the Bad News out of the way first: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the weakest chapter to date in the now-grizzled archeologist’s adventures. To put that statement into context, consider that I have stubborn admiration and affection for the series’ previous low point, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Given the mark the original trilogy left on my young mind, and given that it’s been so long since Harrison Ford last took up the fedora and bullwhip, I’m finding it somewhat difficult to put the new film into the proper perspective. What I can’t deny is that there’s a sense of melancholic disappointment to Kingdom, a sharp slap of reality that fades to a lingering sting. It’s like running into a an old schoolmate after nearly twenty years apart, and finding that the former star athlete and class president is now a termite inspector living in a trailer with five kids. Kingdom is a fine adventure film, and it superbly accomplishes its tricky task of updating the series for a new age. Yet there’s something a little shocking and unwelcome about unearthing a new Indy film at long last, only to discover that, in many ways, it’s just another action-film-as-amusement-park-ride in a bloated summer season.

It’s 1957 in Indy’s world, and the long winter of the Cold War has arrived. The Soviets have supplanted the Nazis as the villains du jour, but Dr. Henry Jones, Jr. is still alive and kicking. Since we last saw him, the professor of archeology has grayed and plumped some, settling more comfortably into his daylight role as a befuddled academic. When the film opens, however, our first glimpse of Indy is that dusty and beaten fedora that serves as a talisman for his less savory, more thrilling pursuits. Indy and fellow relic hunter Mac (Ray Winstone) are hauled from the trunk of a car and held at gunpoint at an Air Force hanger (Number 51, naturally). Their captors are Soviet spies, commanded by porcelain-skinned femme fatale Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), who demands that Indy locate a particular crate inside the hanger. No, not that crate, although it does make a cameo appearance. Treating the Ark of the Covenant as a throwaway gag might be uncomfortably glib, but it serves to underline the shift in the series’ tone. The tyrants of the Cold War are not enticed by anything as provincial as an occult artifact. They crave nothing less than the secrets of the stars. Indy reluctantly helps the Russians retrieve their mysterious prize, but of course he eventually slips from their grasp, in a gloriously ridiculous sequence capped with one of the film’s truly unforgettable visuals.

Indy returns to his college, where his cooperation with the Russians—under duress, but no matter—prompts some to question his loyalties. Eventually, a motorcycle-riding delinquent named Mutt (Shia LaBeouf, decked out in leather and pomade) tracks Indy down and pleads for his aid. The Russians have kidnapped the greaser youth’s mother, as well as archeologist Harold Oxley (John Hurt), a father figure to Mutt and an old colleague of Indy. Oxley knows the location of a legendary crystal skull, an allegedly pre-Columbian artifact with mysterious powers, and the dread Agent Spalko is, naturally, seeking it with supervillain fanaticism. It’s fairly pointless to get into the plot details, given that Indy explicates the academic mumbo-jumbo and connects the dots for us, as usual. At any rate, the plot is just an excuse for a bunch of action set pieces, right? In Kingdom, we get a motorcycle escape through a New England college campus; a brawl in an Air Force weapons research facility; a crawl through a Peruvian mummy tomb; a car, truck and boat chase in the Amazon rainforest; and the opening of the gates of fabled El Dorado.

Are these action sequences any good? Yes, in that they’re always entertaining and often quite thrilling. Are they on the same level as Last Crusade’s tank chase, Temple of Doom’s bridge standoff, or anything at all in Raiders? Nope. The computer-generated mayhem of Kingdom lacks the sense of genuine danger that Steven Spielberg achieved in the previous films using old school stunt work, pyrotechnics, and camera trickery. Granted, the original trilogy contains the occasional matte or puppetry effect that looks downright embarrassing nowadays. Yet Kingdom is so littered with digital effects—literally from the very first shot—that the film seems to suffer for it. Part of this may be that its effects are, well, substandard. When you’ve seen The Lord of the Rings and Transformers recently achieve miracles of digital visualization, LaBeouf’s vine-swinging in Kingdom comes off as distractingly bogus. I’m trying not to be hypocritical here. Gleefully fake action can suffice in fluffy, post-Indy fare like The Mummy, or as a deliberate stylistic choice in pseudo-auteur popcorn endeavors like Speed Racer. But this is Indiana Jones, for crying out loud. He deserves better, and I know damn well it’s possible when Spielberg’s own War of the Worlds set a higher bar three years ago.

Then there’s the dialogue, which just isn’t very good. I didn’t expect anything close to Lawrence Kasdan’s amazing screenplay for Raiders, but I was hoping for something on par with Temple or Last Crusade. Alas, Kingdom just isn’t as touching, brisk, or witty as its predecessors. That last item is a particular problem. Many of the film’s “jokes” fall flat, partly because they’re simply not funny, partly because Winstone, LaBeouf, and Ford (regrettably) don’t put much of a shine on them. Tellingly, I had a hard time discerning whether it was Ford or Indy that’s become a tired, humorless fart. (The latter might be excused as a distressing but valid evolution of the character, while the former is just bad craft. I tend to favor the more charitable explanation) The dialogue doesn’t fare much better when it gets sentimental, and the alternately hazy and hackneyed secondary characters just make matters worse.

As you probably know by now, Karen Allen is back as—surely we can all agree?—Indy’s greatest female foil, Marion Ravenwood. Thanks to the clunky screenplay, Marion’s return isn’t addressed with the grace or pathos it deserves, but at least Allen finds an appropriate tone. Marion’s credible swagger and low tolerance for bullshit are still intact, but Allen dilutes the character’s youthful venom and finds a fitting middle-aged softness and longing.

Given all these problems, what’s good about Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Well, for starters, it’s a new Indiana freaking Jones movie. I like to think that I’m discerning enough to reject a turd in a box from Spielberg with the words “Indiana Jones” on it. And my initial impression is that Kingdom isn’t even in the upper half of Spielberg’s filmography. Yet Kingdom is no exception to the rule that Spielberg is a natural talent when it comes to the language of film. Even on his off days, his composition and his flair for storytelling are something to behold, and at its best Kingdom is another brick in Spielberg’s artistic reputation. It’s certainly not a self-contained legacy the way Raiders was, but I think that time will generally be kind to its striking beauty and sharp pacing, in the same way that Temple and Crusade have aged well.

Furthermore, I can safely say that Kingdom is further confirmation that George Lucas is an Idea Man, whose strength will always be the creation of worlds rather than films. In contrast to Star Wars, here the creaky dialogue can’t be laid at his feet, nor can the lackluster performances. But the Indy stories are his and Kingdom’s is an unexpected coup. I was skeptical about the film’s aim to update the Indiana Jones franchise for the 1950s. To launch Indy into a new era after such a long absence is, in a word, brave. The shift in tone takes some getting used to, but the story feels compelling and fresh, a diversion into the territory of Cold War thrillers and science fiction rather than 1930s pulp. It’s a gamble, but for me the atomic terror, psychic spies, and alien technology came together. In a way, Kingdom feels like an intriguing slice of Indiana Jones fan fiction, save that it comes courtesy of the original creators and stars. The only downside is that our long absence from Indy’s world covers so much time that one can’t help but feel a bit cheated by all the interesting stuff that’s happened off-screen. (”Wait, Indy worked for military intelligence during World War II? Can we see that?”)

Blessedly, the tweaking of Indiana Jones’ genre trappings doesn’t feel forced or frivolous, like some kind of “Sherlock Holmes in the 28th Century” speculation. If there is a bit of awkwardness to Kingdom’s alignment with the realities of a new setting, there’s also a clear recognition that cultural icons are creatures of a specific time and place. Some discomfort is to be expected. This is what makes me more inclined to forgive the harder, more petulant edge to Indy in this outing. The Indy of the 1950s is less a man of bravado than a scarred and foul-tempered bulldog. This is the most conspicuous change in the character: he just isn’t as charming as he used to be. It’s saddening, but also somewhat understandable. Two decades of frantic globetrotting, a Second World War, and the chill of the Red Scare would wear down any man.

More crucially, Kingdom also boasts a satisfying awareness of its place in Indy’s character arc. Unlike the man he portrayed in the original trilogy, here Ford plays Indy as a veteran hero with little need for newly minted wisdom. He is weary and cantankerous, but he also feels complete, excepting perhaps a family to share his later years with. The older Harrison Ford fumbles Kingdom’s ill-conceived attempts at humor, but so what? To his credit, Ford knows exactly where his character is in 1957. We get a strong sense of a resilient old man with the foolishness and narcissism distilled out of him. Indy gets to show off his breathtaking anthropological knowledge like never before, and he’s presented with opportunities to provide direction and wisdom to others. Kingdom offers what seems like heresy for the series, but upon reflection only makes sense: a vision of a man changed by the harrowing events that have come before. This is first Indy film that is occupied not with the hero’s struggles with desire (that ever-tantalizing “fortune and glory”), but with his awakening to his true needs. In a telling and wonderfully insightful twist, Kingdom’s story hinges not on the plundering of a relic, but its return to its rightful place, an oblique indictment of the previous films’ colonial undercurrent.

My expectations for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull were, in a way, the complement to the film that I got. I anticipated an exhilarating Spielberg epic whose break with the Indy films of old would be its downfall. Instead, I discovered a thoroughly B-grade summer action flick whose most enthralling feature is its audacious updating of an allegedly sacred American pop mythos. As with all the Indy films, I think that Kingdom will grow on me. However, I also suspect that the fourth film’s place in the Indy Canon will always be shaky. The mediocre effects, dialogue, and acting lend it a sad staleness. Its redemption lies in its persuasive determination to blaze new paths with its hero, Spielberg’s eye for transfixing imagery, and the fact that in the final analysis, it’s still a fun action film.

2008
Director: Andy and Larry Wachowski
Viewed: May 21, 2008
Format: IMAX Theatrical Print

[Full Disclosure: Although its trailers had intrigued me, the overall critical drubbing that Speed Racer has received (35% on Rotten Tomatoes, 37 on Metacritic) dissuaded me from seeing the film in its first week. However, a beautifully written and overwhelmingly positive review by Dennis Cozzalio re-piqued my interest, prompting me to catch Speed Racer at a late IMAX showing. In most cases, I avoid reading reviews for films I know I'm going to see, lest the reviewer's impressions creep into my own. I violated this rule of thumb for Speed Racer, and I will acknowledge up front that Dennis' work likely lent a positive bias to my review, in that he helped me see the virtues of this apparent flop.]

B - Right out of the gate, let me lay out some facts about Speed Racer: 1) It is absolutely batshit crazy. By this I mean that it refuses to play by the rules and exhibits abnormal, even alarming, behavior. 2) It is not, despite initial appearances, an empty vessel of day-glo gloss and digital mayhem. 3) It is an ideal family film for parents to share with older children and preteens. 4) It is a work of ambitious filmmaking, and in the final analysis, it succeeds more often that it stumbles. 5) Did I mention that it’s CRAZY?

I’ve never seen the Speed Racer cartoon, so I can’t say how closely the film hews to the formula or the details of the source material. The first twenty minutes or so lay out the premise in a nifty extended sequence that twists together several flashbacks with a contemporary scene. We meet little Speed Racer in his schoolboy days, obsessing over auto racing and idolizing his older brother Rex, a crack driver for the family-owned Racer Motors team. Rex eventually departs the Racer team (and home) under a cloud of bitter feelings and harsh words, and thereafter develops a reputation as a notoriously dirty freelance driver. Then an accident during a brutal rally race takes Rex’s life, leaving the family to mourn what has been left unsaid and Speed to take the wheel of the team car, the Mach 5. Back in the present day, Speed (Emile Hirsch) has grown into a spooky-talented motor sportsman, literally chasing a holographic ghost of his brother in an attempt to best his record track time. (This is one of the film’s many debts to what I can only describe as a Mario Kart aesthetic.)

Speed’s rising profile as one of the world’s best drivers prompts tycoon and racing patron Royalton (Roger Allam) to approach the family about an alliance. Royalton offers resources and perks Racer Motors can only dream of, and he makes it clear that refusal is not an option. The plot of Speed Racer is essentially the tale of Speed’s moral journey through the world of racing. Despite the victories that Speed has racked up, both his wary father, Pops (John Goodman), and his own tunnel-vision approach to racing excellence have thus far shielded the family from the greasier corporate realities of the sport. No more. Speed is simply too good at what he does to evade difficult choices any longer. He is now a brand, a commodity, a rival, and a liability to be eliminated.

Speed Racer arrives courtesy of Andy and Larry Wachowski, the writer-director brothers who gave us the genre-upending, multimedia behemoth that is the Matrix trilogy. Speed Racer attempts something similar to those films, in that it constructs a fantastic universe to tell a simple story without a glimmer of irony. In fact, Speed Racer might be more deftly executed than even the first Matrix film. Heresy, you say? Speed Racer’s gee-whiz sensibility lightens the film’s tone, giving the emotionally affecting moments space to breathe. While the Matrix veered into leaden pretension, Speed’s human landscape is straightforward and heartfelt. While the Matrix is at times downright incomprehensible, Speed’s plot is outlined at every turn in bold strokes, even as it zips along dribbling detail and back-story.

Visually, Speed Racer is an amazing achievement. The shiny, neon-bright quality to the film’s futurist aesthetic has received a lot of well-deserved attention. Speed Racer’s time and locale are indeterminate, and while the film certainly takes place in the Future, there are hints that its universe is a parallel one, where automobiles, corporations, and superficial glitz rule. (Well, maybe not so parallel…) Although they treat us to plenty of wondrous computer-generated sights, the Wachowskis also keep the George Lucas-style gaping to a minimum. Indeed, they often return to the comfy confines of the retro-suburban Racer home, just to keep us grounded.

As eye-popping as the production design might be, much less attention has been paid to the look of Speed Racer as a moving picture. If you’ve seen the trailers or commercials, it’s probably already apparent that the racing set pieces have a brain-melting kineticism. However, what struck me was the Wachowskis’ use of shifting and sliding layers in the film’s visual language, even in the quietest scenes. Characters glide through the foreground as events play out in the background. Plots points are often conveyed in two or even three separately framed zones of action. Meanwhile, everything is kept in constant motion, often with relentless panning and effects-embellished cuts. Visually speaking, it’s pretty much unlike anything I’ve seen in a film in recent memory, and the Wachowskis earn some auteur bragging rights for pulling off such a novel style.

The drags on Speed Racer’s performance are fairly typical for this sort of big-budget, (mostly) family-friendly adaptation. There are patches of the script that are unforgivably silly or simply hackneyed. Several of the film’s attempts at humor are hopelessly broad and cardboard-stiff. And yet it is a funny film, one that rarely winks knowingly or extends a gag past the point of no return. (Christina Ricci as Speed’s girlfriend Trixie claims the best one-liner of 2008 so far: “Was that a ninja?”) The presence of the family chimpanzee Chim-Chim seems to be a nod to the original series and little more. Call me a cold-hearted bastard if you must, but chimps just aren’t funny as sidekicks. (The Wachowskis forget that chimpanzees should be paired with people for pathos and with other chimps for humor, a.k.a. the Lancelot Link Principle.)

Ricci as Trixie, Goodman as Pops, and Susan Sarandon as Mom all bring the right tone to the material. Goodman and Sarandon in particular could have been forgiven for phoning it in and cashing their paychecks, but they stake out a clear sense of the Racer family’s dynamics and priorities with a pair of genuinely touching portrayals. Hirsch is a bit of a disappointment, if only because the film is supposed to be about his character, and he comes off as colorless and thick most of the time. Last year’s Into the Wild begged for a magnetic cipher in its leading role, but Speed Racer needs a Boy Scout hero with nitro in his veins. Hirsch just doesn’t rise to the occasion, although to his credit he nails some of the trickier aspects of the performance, such as Speed’s Zen focus behind the wheel and his wonderment at his own celebrity and inhuman skill. Many of the secondary characters are a tad too cartoonish for my taste, but this is less a criticism of the actors than the Wachowskis (shades of Dick Tracy’s exaggerated Sunday-funnies sensibility abound).

Allam claims the film’s juiciest role as silk-suited villain Royalton, and to call what he does with the part over-the-top is a gross understatement. Royalton is a paunchy, windy, grasping, pompous murdering monster with expensive tastes and a God complex. Watching Allam spit oily seducements and volcanic declarations is a bit like the acting equivalent of an ogre crushing fleeing peasants into goo. In Speed Racer, at least, this can be a good thing. Royalton’s repulsive nature distinguishes him from not just the noble Racer family, but the consumer-spectators of the film’s world, and that’s important. Royalton is a Cheater, and the message of Speed Racer is one of white-hot sports idealism: Cheaters never prosper. In particular, the mere existence of an athletic godling walking the world—a Jordan, Woods, or Racer—annihilates corruption and deceit and hands Cheaters their comeuppance.

And then there’s Paulie Litt as Speed’s little brother Spritle. Spritle is the sort of child character who should be annoying as all get-out, and sure enough he flirts with annoyance from time to time. He’s also at the center of some of the film’s corniest moments. (Watch as Spritle and Chim-Chim raid the candy stash and stuff themselves silly! Ho-ho!) And yet… there’s just no way that I can deny that Litt is one of the many unexpected pleasures of the film. The kid’s a fine comic actor, and he brings an expressive, cheeky current to Spritle that’s more interesting than the work from most of the secondary adult performers. Certainly, he’s in an altogether different league than Nicholas Elia, who portrays young Speed and delivers the film’s only truly awful performance.

Speed Racer is a bizarre, audacious film, but it’s also an excellent film to share with a family. Other than one well-timed obscene gesture from Spritle, there’s nothing objectionable in it other than lots and lots of borderline fantasy-scifi action. Every minute of Speed Racer boasts discoveries and delights for both adults and any kid past the third grade. Viewers at the younger end of this range might not catch the more sophisticated dimensions to the film’s family and corporate drama, but that’s okay. I’m willing to bet that Speed Racer will still hold them rapt.

In the end, I have to line up on Dennis’ lonely side of the fence of this one. Speed Racer is outrageous, odd, relentless, and even occasionally bad. It’s also original, fearless, and blessed with a big heart. In its best moments, it’s downright magnificent to watch it unfold. I can sense that Speed Racer will not appeal to a lot of people, and for that reason I was tempted to give it a C (Take It or Leave It). However, the more I think about it, the more I’m resolved not to pass up an opportunity to recommend a film this unique, this daring, and this much fun.

2007
Director: Stephen Walker
Viewed: May 19, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

B - If someone had summarized the premise of Young@Heart to me a few weeks ago, it would have raised my condescension hackles to critical levels. “This is a documentary film about a community chorus that performs rock, pop, R&B, and soul songs. Oh, and all the performers are over 70 years old. Funny, huh?” Fortunately, Young@Heart is not the terrible documentary it should have been. In fact, I’ll go further than merely admitting and retracting my suspicions, however well-founded. Young@Heart is a damn good film. There’s nothing especially artful to it, and it probably would have worked just as well on cable television as on the big screen. Yet it pulls off a tricky storytelling feat: It treats a subject matter strewn with perils in exactly the right way, juggling an array of reflective themes about age, death, art, performance, pop culture, and human worth. It’s a triumph of the first principles of documentary film-making: take an interesting topic, construct a narrative, keep things moving, and make it sing.

The Young@Heart Chorus is comprised of Northampton, Massachusetts retirees who have made it to their eighth decade (and beyond). The Chorus’ “babe in the woods” is its middle-aged musical director, Bob Cilman. Over two decades ago, the Chorus started out performing Vaudeville numbers, but pop music is now its bread and butter. Cilman is utterly no-nonsense about the Chorus’ legitimacy and his own standards of excellence. They rehearse relentlessly in order to master Cilman’s novel arrangements of familiar (and not-so-familiar) pop songs. Sonic Youth’s “Schizophrenic,” Allen Toussaint’s “Yes We Can Can,” and Coldplay’s “Fix You” are just a few of the selections rehearsed and premiered in the film. There’s nothing particularly unusual about the dynamic of the Chorus other than its members’ age. Cilman is the passionate, critical, and anxious taskmaster. The Chorus members are spirited and dedicated, and sometimes resentful of their director’s pointed reprimands.

Substantively, that’s pretty much all there is to Young@Heart. It’s a portrait of a group of performers. Given that we’re talking about a feature film here, however, director Stephen Walker has to find a story to hang his hat on. His approach is to follow the Chorus’ preparations for its new season, from the first rehearsal where Cilman trots out the latest songs to the Chorus’ season premiere in its home town. The film’s overarching drama is concerned with the nuts-and-bolts of the performance. (Will Lenny and Dora master Cilman’s duet arrangement of James Brown’s “I Got You”?) This might sound like undemanding reality show fodder, but the film is very well-constructed, and we feel the performers’ frustrations and the strain on Cilman. There are also plenty of subplots, most of them (naturally) dealing with the illnesses and passings of Chorus members. Walker mostly keeps the focus on a half-dozen or so of the performers that catch his eye, each a character with an accessible hook.

Admirably, Young@Heart manages to walk a very narrow tightrope in its portrayal of the Chorus. The subject matter is ripe for chuckling derision: “Look at these wacky old folks, pretending to be rock-n’-roll stars!” Walker stumbles occasionally, but his overall treatment is so graceful and sincere, it’s easy to chalk up his missteps as expressions of an unfortunate cornball sensibility rather than mean-spiritedness. It certainly helps that all the performers are endearing people, whose hobbyist approach to music cloaks a lusty, Jagger-esque longing for the spotlight and the roar of the crowd. Revealingly, the Chorus is truly a collaborative effort, and the warm, vigorous dynamic of the group seems to hint that age can purge the egocentric taint from rock’s soul.

The Chorus “music videos” that Walker slips into the film at regular intervals are a mixed bag, and mostly rely on a crude, jokey correspondence between the lyrics and the performers. On the one hand, The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” and the The Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere” exhibit wry humor and clever staging. On the other, Bowie’s “Golden Years” and the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” fall flat, calling to mind limp talent show numbers or the pop culture parodies that The Simpsons mined and exhausted long ago.

What makes Young@Heart compelling is not the one-joke premise, but the substantial questions about art and aging that surface as we get to know the Chorus. Indeed, Walker quickly zeros in on a crucial point: both the performers and Cilman are ruthlessly earnest and hard-working about the whole enterprise. The Chorus’ un-ironic, disciplined outlook, elegantly and repeatedly conveyed, banishes any notion that their efforts amount to a lark or a novelty act. This is no joke. This is rock-n’-roll, and don’t you forget it.

In its way, Young@Heart is an exceptionally nimble inquiry into two emerging realities of American life: the waxing length of the autumn years due to medical advances, and the saturation of our shared cultural experience with pop entertainment. Walker’s achievement is to discover the unexpectedly dense thicket of themes where these realities overlap. To risk a cliché, Young@Heart makes you think, about life, death, and music. I wouldn’t call it an illuminating film exactly, but time and again it makes you pause to ruminate on matters from the frivolous to the momentous. Does art have to be of high quality to serve a social good? Does the rebellion of rock lie in aesthetic contrarianism or the social courage that attends it? How do we find meaning in life when death is such an imminent and inescapable dimension of the human condition?

This, I think, is the success of Young @Heart. It is a film about a relentlessly adorable subject that has no need to be ambitious, yet Walker makes it ambitious with a perceptive and careful hand. In doing so, he exhibits that most enviable talent in a documentary filmmaker: the ability to uncover fertile human commentary within a simple premise.