My review of Joann Sfar’s Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is up at Look/Listen, timed for the film’s five-day run at the Webster University Film Series that begins this Sunday . Check it out.
Posts Tagged ‘Biopics’
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Tuesday, October 5th, 2010The Social Network
2010 (USA)
Director: David Fincher
Viewed: October 4, 2010
Format: Theatrical Print (St. Louis Cinemas Moolah Theater)
B+ - The tumultuous story of the founding of the social networking site Facebook is the sort of tale that seems ripe for grandiose declarations about How Everything Is Different Now. Leave it to David Fincher to find a much more fascinating approach, one that acknowledges the revolutionary nature of Web 2.0 while maintaining a plaintive distance (and without striking the pose of a Luddite killjoy). Curiously simple in its broad outlines, but gratifyingly intricate in the particulars of its construction, The Social Network is partly a hoary tragedy of betrayal, and partly a jittery, uncertain assessment of where we find ourselves, culturally speaking, in the twenty-first century. Much like the two works that established the director as an invigorating visual storyteller—Se7en and Fight Club—the new film is firmly grounded within Fincherverse, a (slightly) Bizarro cousin of our contemporary world, awash in the greasy shadows of dissipation and despair. Never mind that The Social Network’s environs roam from the burnished walnut and brass of the Harvard campus to the frosted glass and Aeron Chairs of Palo Alto. Fincherverse is conspicuously fast, cheap, and out-of-control, to borrow a phrase. Here, underneath the slick metal casing of a multi-billion-dollar rocket ship of an idea, one finds a toxic cocktail of crass misogyny, petty resentments, class jealously, and jaw-dropping arrogance. And damn if it isn’t entertaining to watch that witch’s brew roil.
At Harvard in 2003, undergrad computer science whiz kid Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg, magnificently cast), having just been abruptly (and perhaps wisely) dumped by his girlfriend, proceeds to drunkenly slander her on his blog. He then stays up all night coding a crude “Who’s Hotter” site that pulls photos off the “facebooks” of the university’s houses and clubs, with help from his programmer roommates and his best friend, economics prodigy Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). The glut of Internet traffic Zuckerberg’s trifle generates catches the attention of both the campus IT staff and Harvard’s more elite student circles. In the latter category are identical twin rowing stars Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer, portraying both brothers) and Divya Narendra (Max Minghella), who offer Zuckerberg a job programming a new college social site called ConnectU. Before you can say “handshake agreement,” Zuckerberg has launched his own social site, The Facebook, with seed money from Saverin, all the while running interference against the Winklevosses. The Facebook explodes on the Harvard campus, turning both Zuckerberg and Saverin into small-pond nerd rock stars (complete with groupies), and sending the Winklevosses into gentlemanly fits of apoplectic rage. Dispel any illusions, however, that this is a fist-pumping real-world Revenge of the Nerds story.
Zuckerbeg sets his sights on expanding The Facebook to other campuses while insisting on the necessity of preserving its hip image, even as Saverin frets about the necessity of bringing in advertising dollars. Saverin’s fate is sealed, however, with the appearance of Napster creator Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake). Charming, enthusiastic, and slick as owl shit, Parker tells Zuckerberg everything he wants to hear and seduces the undergrad to move Facebook’s base of operations to Silicon Valley. Suffice to say that the rest of the tale if full of acrimony and treachery, not so much because the narrative trajectory of The Social Network strongly signals it (although it does), but because the bulk of the story is told in flashback, as Zuckerberg gives deposition in two multi-million dollar lawsuits: one launched by the Winklevosses and one by Saverin himself. This “Tell Us What Happened” structure gives Fincher and editors Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall the space to deliver some of the most exhilarating cross-cut storytelling in the director’s oeuvre, surpassing even that of Fight Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. To be sure, it’s an approach that’s chock full of landmines and occasions for uninspired laziness. Exhibit A: In the deposition scenes, a lawyer will ask, “And what did he say?,” followed by a cut that reveals what was said. Yet Fincher not only makes such exchanges dramatic, he makes them cinematic. The persuasive performances, the chiaroscuro photography by Fight Club alum Jeff Cronenweth, and the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Rose all cohere to establish the film’s curious aura of electric expectation veined with defeated desolation.
The mode that Fincher has adopted keeps the viewer conscious of the looming fiscal and personal eruptions (whether one knows the Facebook story or not), and of the intrinsic unreliability of the perhaps self-serving recollections that comprise most of the film’s action. This is Greek tragedy, sans the cosmic meddling and with a double shot of human hubris, although here the tale ends not in collapse but with billions in assets and nagging questions about what has been (and is being) accomplished. Despite its thrills (and laughs), The Social Network is not an easy film to cozy up to. It is a story that simmers with mistrust, almost to the point of thematic fixation. The Winklevosses and Saverin fail to appreciate Zuckerberg’s cold ambition. Saverin is crippled by odd suspicions, but doesn’t see the locomotive of perfidy speeding towards him. Zuckerberg constantly parses others’ words for slights, even as his vanity and callousness alienate everyone around him. Friendships and relationships erode and then give way like muddy riverbanks, while others explode suddenly in a combustible cloud of duplicity (real and imagined). Zuckerberg asserts that he wants to replicate the social experience of college online, but Facebook’s genesis seems to throw everyone involved into a scumpool of high school nastiness. There’s nothing smugly celebratory about Fincher’s cynical conception of human nature, just resignation and bemusement, coupled with cool uneasiness about how such stories will play out in a future of digital pseudo-connectedness.
The screenplay by Aaron Sorkin overflows with the writer’s trademarked high-velocity, fussy dialog, but it’s fitting to hear it on the lips of Harvard undergrads and Internet moguls, whose minds seem to be whirring at supersonic speeds. In fact, a few ridiculously on-the-nose lines aside, The Social Network proves to be Sorkin’s deftest script since his mostly forgotten Hitchcock homage, Malice. The film’s casting is uniformly superb (and even a little sardonic in the case of Timberlake as the man who throttled the life from the recording industry), although the performances themselves mostly range from the smoothly functional to the warmly welcome. The exception is Eisenberg, who gives the best performance of his career, easily surpassing any of his recent comedic roles and even topping his breakout turn in The Squid and the Whale. The “Michael Cera’s understudy” cracks—which yours truly has been guilty of voicing—should be put away now. Eisenberg conveys Zuckerberg’s essential blend of aspiration, bitterness, social gracelessness, and self-aware brilliance with spooky precision. However, there remains something inscrutable in the portrayal, and it is this elusive glimmer of unsettling genius—the sense that he’s thinking three steps ahead of us mere mortals—that makes Eisenberg’s performance such a feat. Although The Social Network is decisively an ensemble film, Eisenberg’s dominance underscores the centrality of Zuckerberg’s intellect and ego to the tale of Facebook. While Fincher glibly and not-so-subtly suggests that the man’s drive is rooted in his need to impress the Girl That Got Away, such (fictional) psychological speculation is less compelling than the film’s broader (but no less glib) narrative of Nixonian resentment. If Zuckerberg the character has an arc at all, it is one characterized primarily by a sudden revelation: exclusivity is no longer a desirable feature. Without a prayer of getting into Harvard’s elite social clubs, Zuckerberg founded his own club, made himself president, and (eventually) let the whole world in the door. Now you’ll have to excuse me; I need to post this review on Facebook.
Quick Review: Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinksy
Monday, August 16th, 20102009 (France)
Director: Jan Kounen
Viewed: April 14, 2010
Format: Theatrical Print (Landmark Plaza Frontenac)
B - Jan Kounen’s speculative (and frequently downright fictional) film about an affair between two artistic titans sumptuously affirms that not every tale of erotic craving need address romantic love. Years after witnessing the notorious 1913 premiere of The Rite of Spring, Coco Chanel (Anna Mouglalis) invites a hard-luck Igor Stravinksy (Mads Mikkelsen) to her chalet, with his wife and kids in tow. The designer desires to give the composer the freedom to create, but before you can say “kindred spirits,” the pair are engaged in a sweaty, desperate, but oddly chilly affair. British writer Chris Greenhalgh adapted his own novel for the film, and both he and Kounen emphasize the white-hot obsessive knots—and inevitable implosion—that can occur when two like-minded souls collide. Both the Rite, which serves as a recurring musical motif, and the dramatization of Chanel No. 5’s creation underline the film’s fascination with mystery, whether that of the artistic mind itself or the process of inspiration. These themes prove far more compelling than a flimsy notion of fumbled True Love. In Kounen’s expressive hands, what might have been a slight (albeit sexy) slice of biopic achieves something finer, a more cerebral cousin to Jane Campion’s poetic ruminations on emotional states.
In the Very Temple of Delight
Monday, September 28th, 2009Bright Star
2009 (UK / Australia / France)
Director: Jane Campion
Viewed: September 27, 2009
Format: Theatrical Print
A- - Jane Campion’s new film, Bright Star, is positively swollen with exquisite sorrow. Unabashed and yet sober in her embrace of the romantic, Campion exhibits a shrewd talent for blending personal and cultural understandings of love, and Bright Star is further, devastating proof of her instincts. In presenting the tale of the relationship between seamstress Fanny Brawne and the English poet John Keats, Bright Star relies on the viewer’s own romantic reference points as well as their understanding of generic tropes. The film slathers on the components of a textbook romantic tragedy: a soul in creative torment, attraction concealed behind bickering, social barriers that suffocate the lovers, a meddlesome third party, emotions that quickly veer from ecstatic to distraught, and a world that seems almost malevolent to love. Campion assembles these well-worn elements into a whole that is not only deeply affecting, but also visually and aurally compelling. Bright Star does not ask for our indulgence. It earns it, by sweeping us along into a world where poetry expresses what blunt declarations, and even physical intimacies, cannot. It operates much like poetry itself. To borrow a phrase from Campion’s masterpiece, The Piano, it is not so much an account of a chaste love affair as it is a mood that passes through you.
The characters of Bright Star do not know what we know, of course. They are unaware that John Keats would perish of tuberculosis at age twenty-five, and that he would one day be regarded as a titan among the English romantic poets. Campion presents Keats (Ben Wishaw) as an admired figure within a small literary circle, but a penniless man, supported by friends, frequently excoriated by contemporary critics. Campion is not attempting anything so banal as a biopic, however, and so the film observes Keats primarily from the perspective of the true protagonist, Fanny (Abbie Cornish), whose family knows the poet and eventually rents half of the country house where Keats and his friend Charles Brown (Paul Schneider) live. Fanny has a quick wit and is renowned for the exquisite clothing she designs and sews herself. In the curious social landscape of early nineteenth century England, she seems to be of a higher station than Keats, a mere starving artist with no prospects. Keats is troubled, roiled by a witch’s brew of existential terror, as personified by his ill brother, and professional insecurity. He is charming and brilliant as both a creator and a theorist, but failure haunts him.
Fanny has little interest in poetry, yet there is something in Keats that pulls at her, despite (or perhaps due to) the shadows that seem to trail behind him. She is a modern woman, thoroughly unconcerned with gossip and proud of her own craft. She works her way into Keats’ life with gestures that are simultaneously transparent and genuine: she bakes his ailing brother biscuits, makes him a pillow slip, invites him to Christmas dinner, and asks for instruction in poetry appreciation. The exact moment when their relationship evolves from friendship to love is uncertain, but after they share a few gentle kisses in the woods, their demeanor around each other changes. In one of the film’s most lovely shots, they follow Fannie’s young sister, Margaret (Edie Marten), stealing kisses and holding hands when her back is turned, freezing comically when she glances at them. Campion magnificently conveys the sense of two people who revel in the presence of one another, but probably could not explain precisely why they find such delight there. That Fannie and Keats were so often denied this simple pleasure makes their story all the more bittersweet.
Fanny’s family never stands in her way, but her mother (Kerry Fox) is concerned for her daughter’s future. Campion and her performers convey as much though glances and body language as through words, establishing all that we need to know about the personalities of the Brawne family. Little brother Samuel (Thomas Sanster) barely speaks, but his loyalty to both his mother and Fanny, and the way those loyalties rend him, is in stark evidence. The most active antagonist in the tale is Brown, who endeavors to drive Fanny away with sheer cruelty, motivated almost certainly by jealously (perhaps sexual). Doom coils through the film, and not merely because of the death that we know is looming. The lovers are boxed in by financial and social realities, and they cannot envision an escape. Their hopes for the future are limited to their next meeting. When Keats moves to the Isle of Wight for a summer to write, their correspondence is filled with rapturous highs and despairing lows. Fanny waits expectantly for the postman, and on days when no letter comes, she is inconsolable.
Campion ushers us into Fanny’s story after she and Keats have already become acquainted, as attraction starts to take root and grow into something more. The exclusion of a portentous first encounter is telling. While Bright Star has the veneer of a conventional romantic narrative, Campion is more focused on permitting her viewers’ minds to settle over the emotional curvatures of her characters. The process of romance, the little physical and emotional events that accumulate into something ineffable, is secondary to the sensation of romance, a mood that powers the film’s dynamos. Perhaps more than any other English-language film-maker who tackles matters of the heart, Campion understands the strength of her chosen medium. Her film gazes lovingly as the seasons slip by, but there is more than rough symbolism at work in her use of blossoms, leaves, and snow. Campion appreciates the relationship between place, time, and feeling, and the way that memories we cherish are so often bound to the sensations that cascade over us in that moment. Thus the feeling when a lover first touched our hand is linked inextricably with Christmas tea and a roaring hearth. As with The Piano, Campion presents images that are both aesthetically arresting and emotionally resonant, establishing a pensive, almost nostalgic intimacy between audience and character. Her cinematic approach is always balanced just on the edge of metaphor without, amazingly enough, ever succumbing to glibness. It’s not that love is like sitting in a room filled with butterflies, or that grief is like walking through a gray, snowbound forest. Rather, by presenting Fanny in such situations, the film finds expression for emotional states that resist more cerebral scrutiny.
Bright Star is not free of missteps. The whipsaw character of Fanny’s mood backfires at times, as when she goes from euphoric to suicidal in a single cut, and as a result the viewer’s empathy for her plight starts to dry up. The film plods in its final twenty or thirty minutes, as Keats’ miserable demise looms closer and his relationship with Fanny seems to become more static, all in the misguided attempt to wring as much anguish as possible from tragedy. Yet Campion’s film is still a potent illustration of how uniquely suited cinema is to telling stories that rely on the interaction between the senses and the heart. This is not a film about John Keats, or about Fanny Brawne, or about life in nineteenth century England. It’s about love and death, and how much it hurts that life has to contain both.
Revolutions, Glorious and Otherwise
Sunday, February 1st, 2009Che: Part One and Che: Part Two
2008 (Spain / France / USA)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Viewed: January 31, 2009
Format: Theatrical Print
A - It’s unlikely that Steven Soderbergh’s meticulous, two-part marathon Che will ever end up a beloved film, to be devoured over and over. It’s simply too sprawling, and especially too heedless of the tactful cloak of “mere entertainment” that so many other biopics don. Not to say that Che disregards entertainment, as the four-plus-hour Roadshow Edition is unmistakably fashioned in the image of the 70mm epics of old”: a Marxist Lawrence of Arabia complete with overture, intermission, and printed program. Che will be, I think, a work to be studied with deep fascination and awe, a case study in film-making that is both uncompromising and fiercely focused. Whatever Che lacks in humanity or grace, it is an exhaustive, gritty, and intricate cinematic dissertation on revolution as a social, political, and military process. The result is one of Soderbergh’s finest films since his debut, sex, lies, and videotape, although Che far surpasses that work in its ambitions.