The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardbrobe.  Dir. Andrew Adamson. I just finished reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardbrobe.  I confess that I missed reading this children’s classic when I was a child.  My childhood was spent reading comic books; my parents were poorly educated, and they did not know the importance of reading to their children or of encouraging children to become avid readers.  I forgive them for that, because they had so many other strengths as parents.  Seeing this film was a delightful experience.  The film began slowly, and I was not overly impressed with the four young actors playing the children sent from London to the country to escape the Blitz.  I was enamored of this film the moment Lucy, the smallest child, stepped out of the wardrobe and into the wintry landscape of Narnia.  Seeing the lamppost, the cave-like dwelling of the satyr, the interior of the beavers’ den, the statues in the courtyard of the witch’s palace, the eternal winter contrasted to the warming spring because of Aslan’s return—these were magical settings and magical encounters.  Seeing the evil witch, played magnificently by Tilda Swinton, was a revelation—she was a white whale of tyranny and malice.  Then seeing Aslan, the great male lion, gentle and noble and strong and a leader among leaders—another revelation.  This film was inspiring in its straightforward rendition of the book and its essential message of the meaning of Christian sacrifice.  Yes, it’s an allegory—but the terms of the allegory are played out with subtlety and with passion.  As I watched the scene where Aslan sacrifices himself for the human being because of the deep magic that he must obey, I thought to myself, “Mel Gibson—this is why you blew it!  You overplayed and overreached and misunderstood the subtlety as well as the simplicity of sacrifice.”  This was a children’s film, and it was clear to me that because the screenplay respected C. S. Lewis’ narrative, what came across to viewers was that the children’s points of view were respected as well.  Good children’s literature never patronizes children—but respects their innocence, their curiosity, their meanness, and their nobility.  Just imagine getting the presents these children got from Father Christmas in a key scene: the eldest receives a sword and a shield.  Father Christmas tells him, “These are tools—not toys.”  And yet that’s what makes them such great gifts.  The adult world is looking down at the children and expecting them to lift themselves up and achieve things they could never have imagined achieving.  The adults are the leaders and the teacher and the mentors; and the children respond to the challenges posed them.  That’s the way life ought to work.  Sooner or later the world is turned over to the next generation—and the older generation stands aside and yields with a sly smile on the faces of its members.  Now back to the story: what children love is that animals talk to them, and yet in their talking (unlike today’s talking animals in commercials) do not make asses out of themselves.  The animals have to be like the adults in the childrens’ worlds—they are no different than parents and uncles and aunts and grandparents.  They have wisdom, and they pass it on to the children.  So the talking animals work here because they are used in the same way they were presented in C. S. Lewis’ book—as intelligent, and yet idiosyncratic, sometimes vain and sometimes heroic.  Just like people. Another way this film works is that children respond to stories about danger and about death—because they think about these kinds of things, and they want real answers to their questions about them. One of the great moments is when Aslan takes Edmund (the younger boy) aside and talks to him for a long time.  Now Edmund has betrayed Aslan, and yet Aslan never yells at Edmund or is mean to him.  And when they rejoin the other children, Aslan says, “We will talk of this no more.”  So the children (and us too) are left to imagine the details of that conversation—although all of us can imagine the substance of it.   A similar scene is the confrontation between the Ice Queen and Aslan.  What did they say in their long negotiations?  But the best is saved for the scene of sacrifice and the two girls who follow Aslan to the stone table for an enactment of an Old Testament blood sacrifice with obvious parallels to the crucifixion of Christ.  I was moved by the simplicity of the scene and the fact that we experienced it through the eyes of the two girls hiding nearby.  After his death, the girls return to him and grieve.  You know what happens next.  There is a great war scene, then, between forces of good and forces of evil.  Fortunately, it is much briefer than any of the scenes in the interminable Lord of the Rings saga.  As battle scenes go, it was tolerable—as well as predictable.  Peter, the eldest, is as heroic as any king should be.  Edmund makes up for his disloyalty by fighting valiantly.  Everyone is alive at the end, and the old Lion walks away—perhaps to return another day.  I thought to myself, “Children need to believe in eternal life.”  In a way it makes sense to them.  Christianity is like that—a kind of magic, with special incantations, like, “Follow me” and “It is finished.”  Even more beautiful is the magic of the ending of this film, and the brief conversation with the old professor, who admits that at one time he too went through the back of the wardrobe and experienced Narnia—and seems to long for another encounter with that magical realm and the great Lion Aslan. 

Good Night and Good Luck. Dir. George Clooney. I enjoyed this film—but what moved me the most were scenes of David Strathairn, playing Edward R. Murrow, recreating televised newscasts where the great newsman spoke his truths into the camera. This film is about a time when the men and women of CBS News tried to do the right thing. They were journalists, not entertainers (even though Murrow was pushed into doing the celebrity interview shows many of us remember from our childhoods). This is by no means a great film. We observe the huge cast of characters from a distance. They never are given a chance to develop into anything resembling three-dimensional characters. Then there is Murrow; and he dominates in every scene he is in. Clooney plays his producer, Fred Friendly, and two are a perfect team. Friendly helps Murrow find the story and bring it to the air—but Murrow excels at writing the story and delivering it to the television audience. The film focuses on Murrow and Friendly’s decision to take on Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose leadership of a House Committee investigating Un-American activities brought him fame and terrorized the objects of his wrath. There are several back stories in the film—one about a newsroom couple who are married (a no-no in those days) and one about a producer who is so terrified of being called to testify at the McCarthy hearings that he takes his own life. But the film works best when it focuses on scenes of Murrow. And when we watch him, we remember—and I think we are awestruck by this realization—that he is was an amazingly articulated and gifted speaker. His writing sounds more like Shakespeare or Winston Churchill than it does a Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather. How could it be that we have lost such a respect for such poetic prose? David Strathairn deserves an Academy Award for his performance in this film—he brings Murrow to life. One of his greatest moments in the film is after we see him conducting one of many meaningless celebrity interviews. At the end of the broadcast, we cut to his reaction shot, and he slumps in his chair as if defeated by the gibberish of celebrity television.

Clooney hit a home run when he decided not to hire an actor to “do” McCarthy. Instead, McCarthy appears only on archival footage. And he is repulsive and revolting and even disgusting. How did such a venal and mean-spirited man ever get so much power? The historic broadcast, when Murrow spent an hour letting McCarthy damn himself in “his own words,” was the heart of this film. Clooney also frames the film with Murrow receiving an honor in 1958, and then returning to the speech he gave accepting that award at the end of the film. The film is in black and white—a perfect way to realize the 1950s television era. I can still remember my parents’ first television set, a Hallicrafter, black and white and with a tiny screen, perhaps 15 inches. As a child of 6 I was hooked and I have been hooked ever since.

It is no accident that the film works in 2005 because the Red Scare and loyalty oaths of the 1950s are practically upon us as we labor under an Administration that would like nothing more than to bring us back to the 1950s when life for white Americans was simpler and much less confusing than it is now. A new car in every suburban garage! The wife at home, taking care of the kids, and having dinner ready when Father returns home from the office. “June! I’m home!” We are suckers for nostalgia, Virginia, but there never was such a time, and if it could be realized it would not be truthful to the social and cultural context we find ourselves in now. In this film I watched Murrow courageously take on Senator Joseph McCarthy, and all I could think of was Tom Delay, Bill Frist, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney,, and other members of the cabal of conservative Republican absolutists that put loyalty above integrity. It is certain that terrorists are a danger to the American way of life; but when self-styled patriots undermine the freedom of Americans, then they become terrorists of the first rank—and a danger to our Constitution and our security. We live in a country where freedom is the highest value. We must respect the freedom of others in order to have our own freedom respected. When a film like this one comes along, we are reminded of the values that do make our country great.

Howl’s Moving Castle.  Dir. Hayao Miyazaki.  (Japan).  I have become a devoted fan of Miyazaki’s work since I saw Princess Mononoke (1997) and Spirited Away (2001). The film is about a plucky young woman, Sophie, who works in her aunt’s hat shop in a romantic nostalgic 19^th century-type village in Scotland.  One day Sophie by chance meets Howl, a Rock-star handsome young man who is the proprietor of a strange moving castle that clambers across the Scottish landscape on huge chicken legs.  But an even greater act of imagination in this film was the transformation of the intelligent and adventurous young Sophie into an old-woman version of herself (because of a spell cast upon her). The key to the success of this transformation is that the young girl has an opportunity to experience her old age before she is old.  The pluckiness of the young girl becomes a measured resolve in the old woman; the adventurous spirit of the young girl becomes a dogged tenacity on the part of the old woman.  One theory of aging, known as Continuity Theory, proposes that in old age one’s values are maintained, deepened, and refined.  The older you become, the more you become the person you have always been.  The mean get meaner and the kind get kinder.  I think that is what happens in the case of this film.  The more I saw the old woman in this film, the more I became interested in her as a character.  I loved her grit, her resolve, her ingenuity.    Her dialogue was perfect.  She was one tough old lady.   At first, the young Sophie recoils in horror at seeing herself in the mirror after being transformed into an old woman.  But she gets over it, and she realizes that she must leave her home and begin a new life.  Once this “old version” of Sophie goes on the road, the film takes off.  Out on the highlands, a magical scarecrow encounters her, and he gives her what she needs—at first a cane, and then a place to stay out of the weather.  What does he find for her?  Howl’s moving castle!  What does she do early in her tenure in the castle?  She gets to work and cleans up the place.  The Rock-star Howl has little taste for housekeeping.  So an old woman gets on her hands and knees and does what needs to be done.  After she brings the castle back to live-ability, she takes a break and enjoys the passing as the castle moves through the highlands landscape.  “When you’re old, all you want to do is to stare at the scenery,” the old Sophie says.  Her faithful scarecrow follows her wherever she goes.  These early scenes in the film were perfectly conceived and I am sure would stimulate the imaginations of the young.  This film was one part old-fashioned Disney animation and one part Harry Potter.  One of the stars of the film was the fire spirit, voiced wonderfully by Billy Crystal.   I am beginning to realize that viewers watching international animation need to hear the English-speaking voices rather than read subtitles.  There is something about hearing the inflections of the voices that make sense for the animation experience.  In conventional feature-length international films I prefer subtitles, because then I can hear the inflections of the foreign speakers and better understand the emotional responses of their characters.  But animation is a two-dimensional art form, and I was delighted to have the expert voice work of the actors, including Christian Bale, Lauren Bacall, and Jean Simmons.  The film bogs down when it focuses on the anti-war theme—delivered, I think, too didactically for its own good.  The film is really about the young girl’s transformation.  She is both young and old at the same time, and that dual personality would make sense for all of us as we face our daily conflicts.  To keep that young person with us as we age is one side of the same coin that would keep that old person in us in our youth.  We are always, if we are whole, both young and old, growing and fading, strong and frail, improving and stagnant—these are the dynamic forces that mark our humanness.  I think the film taps into this insight into human character.  I grew tired of the characterization of Howl as a moody, spoiled rich boy.  When he says, early in the film, “If I can’t be beautiful, it’s not worth living,” I was distressed at his lack of maturity.  Eventually, we realize that he is trapped by forces that are larger than him—and so we empathize with him.  But Howl’s entrapment is less effective, as the film moves toward its climax, than the imaginative sections showing Old Sophie dealing with the fire spirit and the Witch of the Waste.  In one great scene, for example, Sophie has to climb stairs to see the Queen at the palace, and a strange little dog follows her.  This dog is right out of classic Disney—a perfect set-piece of imaginative animation and storytelling.  The Witch of the Waste is also a great characterization.  There is much to recommend in this film.  I was less excited when the young Sophie returns—in visage as well as in spirit—at the end of the film.  I missed the Old Sophie.  Now that was an original character!

The Interpreter. Dir. Sydney Pollack. The secret to this film is the series of scenes that represent confrontations between the characters played by Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman. They are the backbone of the emotional intensity sustained throughout the film. Here we have two great movie stars and they are playing real people. The plot is simple. Kidman's character, an interpreter at the UN, overhears what sounds like a plot to assassinate an African dictator. In their first confrontation, Penn, a Secret Service Agent whose mission is to protect foreign leaders, reminds her that he is not there to protect her, but to investigate her. He is right to be suspicious of this intelligent, but mysterious woman. As new evidence surfaces, Penn confronts her again, and this time the reaction shots of these actors signal their mutual distrust of each other. Only when a stalker appears outside of her apartment window does Penn's character begin to take her story seriously. In fact, when he visits her in her apartment, and she tells him a story about her brother, who is missing back in Africa, Penn stops at the door and tells her that his wife died in a car accident about two weeks ago. So that explains the darkness and moodiness of his character in earlier scenes. In that accident, his wife's latest lover was also killed. Their next encounter occurs after she escapes police surveillance to meet with a photographer we saw in the first scene of the film (that took place back in Africa). When she returns to her apartment, Penn is there, and he is boiling over. Their fifth encounter takes place in a creative scene where he is watching her from a building across an alley (a stakeout) and she calls his cell number and the two have a long phone conversation-and then she spots him at the window across from the alley.

All right, let's face it now. This all sounds like an increasing intimacy is involved with these encounters. After all, that scene is one intimate phone conversation-two characters looking across the alley from their windows, their cell phones at their ear, and talking in hushed tones. What do you think you should expect next? When are we going to see the panning shot of the shoes, slacks, shirts, and underwear and then the two lovers in bed? How many times have we seen that cliché worked out in Hollywood films. Will it happen here, too? But the next scene takes care of that question. Several of the principal characters in the film end up getting on the same bus in Brooklyn, and as amazing as it sounds, you believe every minute of the scene and its increasing tension. What is going on here? In one part of that scene, Sean Penn, speaking on his cell phone with an undercover cop on the bus, says, "We have a situation here!" And the undercover cop responds, "Well, boss, we really have a situation here!" And in the context of that scene, you know what that dialogue means!

Eventually, the plot leads to another scene between Penn and Kidman, and they end up in her apartment again, and what we have here are two heavyweights, two great actors, going at each other like two boxers in a ring. Finally Sean Penn blows only like Sean Penn can blow. I was reminded of the wonderful interactions between Nicole Kidman and Anthony Hopkins in The Human Stain (2003). This is what you buy with that ticket when you go to that cinema-to see the miracle that occurs when two great actors go toe-to-toe and pull out all the stops-and you believe it all! And at the end of the scene we get the payoff of the increasing intimacy set up throughout this film-and it is an individualized response, based upon these two characters, and we believe it! There is only one encounter left to talk about-and it is the one encounter that is most forced by the plot, and least plausible when it comes to the measure of the real world. And yet it has to happen in the film, and we have to accept it, because now we are talking about film conventions, just the same way we talk about dramatic conventions. Sometimes we accept the scene because it has to happen to resolve the drama. So we get it and it is wonderful to behold the performances of these two actors. They are greater then the sum of the film's parts. The plot of the film pales before the prominence and the reality of their characters. And at the end there is one more encounter left for us, and for a long time I will remember Sean Penn sitting on top of a fence, his legs supported by a lower rung of the fence, just balanced there comfortably as he talks to the other character. Behind him, and across the river, is the skyline of Manhattan. Only the movies takes us to places like this. Everything in that scene is about texture and about mood and about characters coming to a resolution. Before we get there we have a perfect montage of images of the interior of the UN set against lovely theme music and the voice of Nicole Kidman reading names-and in that montage there too is closure. There are lots of good things to remember and talk about in this film. In the midst of all the wild plot swings a thriller can provide, sometimes it's enough for one character to give solace to another character. That's what's known as the human condition.

Kung Fu Hustle.  Dir. Stephen Chow.  (China, Hong Kong, 2004).  High energy fun, without a doubt.  I laughed at many of the crazy antics in the film and I appreciated the kung-fu-with-gusto attitude of the filmmaker.  The first scene threw me off a bit because it seemed a blending of film noir and kung fu that appeared, at first glance, to be setting up a complicated structure of characters and plot that would be hard to keep up with.  In that first scene someone is killed in a fight between rival gangs.  I was afraid this would turn into more scenes of gang against gang mayhem, but I was wrong.  Suddenly the film regained balance, straightened out, and then went right over the top.  After we are introduced to the Axe Gang, the folks that kill the first bad introduced in the first scene, we are taken straight to Pig Sty Alley, a monster set (reminiscent of Scorsese’s set in Gangs of New York (2002).  Beginning with this scene the film took off for me.  We are introduced to the landlady and the landlord, comic characters right out of television situation comedy.  Everyone loves the landlord; everybody hates the landlady.  And when those two fight, look out!  At the climax of their fist long-drawn-out fight, the landlady sends the landlord out the window and he lands-splat—face down on the ground.  Dead?  Of course not.  He’s a cartoon character of sorts, and that means the laws of gravity and all other laws that have to do with “splat” are cancelled.  And we can sit back and enjoy this crazy film.  Enter Sing (Stephen Chow) and Donut, his best friend.   Sing is an aspiring kung fu master, and yet in everything he attempts, he is a master of incompetence!  Thank goodness, for that—because it is the source of great fun and laughter.  You have to ask yourself, “Why does this young man want to be one of ‘bad guys’?”  The answer is given to us in a flashback—where Sing as a kid, after reading a bogus manual on the Buddhist Palm method of Kung Fu, tries to defend a young girl against several bullies—who stole her lollipop.  When he stands up to the bullies, they knock him about like a piñata.  So what does he decide to do?  He may as well go over to the dark side of the force, because now he realizes good guys never win!  The scene where Donut and he try to attack the landlady at Pig Sty Alley was one of the best scenes in the film.  This scene leads to a great chase scene between the two.  They run out of town and into the country at breakneck speed, like the Road Runner being chased by Wiley Coyote.  And just when it looks like she is going to catch him, she smashes (splat!) into a billboard, and just like in the Warner Brothers cartoon, she slides down the billboard like a blueberry pie sliding down a wall.  I loved it!  Now don’t forget that there is scene after scene of choreographed kung fu fighting in the film as the Axe Gang fights a number of average guys from Pig Sty Alley.  And there are delightful surprises in the outcomes, and even more delightful surprises later (remember that landlady and that landlord?).  And then the best surprise is saved for the last when we find out a secret about another character.  And it works—it just plain works, and is a lot of fun in the watching.  What works throughout the film is that it is anchored in sentiment.  The characters are passionate, loving, caring, and committed to high ideals.  The bad guys are just that—bad guys.  The good guys have heart.  When I left the film, it occurred to me that perhaps the only character to be killed in all of this action was that bad guy in the first scene.  The film is not about killing, and it’s not even about the kung fu battles as battles.  It’s about finding out about one’s true identity and putting yourself in touch with the consequences of that identity.  Love wins out—because no kung fu ever invented can destroy love.