1. City of God, dir Kátia Lund & Fernando Meirelles (Brazil).  This film showcased desperation, hopelessness, poverty, passion, greed, jealousy, and megalomania.   The writer-director created on the one hand a believable universe, the City of God, and he created also one of the most horrific characters in fictional film—a young kid called Little Dice, who at the age of eight becomes a murderer and loves every minute of it.  The film was confusing at first because as it began all of the characters were already complete—already had histories we had no way of grasping so quickly without sufficient context.  The opening scene focuses on a raucous barbecue going on in the City of God, a poverty-stricken and run-down neighborhood outside Rio de Janeiro.  One of the chickens makes its escape and the barbecue-king, as well as the leader of street gangs in the City of God, orders everyone to get that chicken.  The chase is on!  Suddenly the entire gang of thugs—all of whom are between the ages of six and fifteen, confront another young man who shows up a block away.  All of the thugs have guns—some of them have been taking potshots at the chicken.  At this moment time seems to stop.  The young man confronted by the thugs appears to be in grave danger.  Something is going to happen to him. 

            Then in a mesmerizing series of cuts, using intriguing camera and gliding tracking shot special effects, we see the young man—in each shot a younger person—until he becomes a child playing soccer on the playground with other kids.  His voice-over, summarizing the process of his life-in-reverse, fixes our attention on his story.  Now the context we need begins, and the writer-director comes up with an organization that helps us grasp the implications of the stories that relate to the main characters.  Rocket is the young man we saw confronted by the thugs.  He has an older brother—a loser who will meet a cruel end.  Little Dice is the toughest of the tough kids growing up on the streets.  The first segment is “The Tender Trio,” and that story ends with a horrible scene showing a young man shot down for revenge right in front of the woman he was planning to run away with.  When young Rocket sees a photographer taking pictures of the dead body, he is inspired—he needs to become a photographer.  But he—like all the rest of the kids in the City of God—is the poorest of the poor. 

            In the last section, poor Rocket steals his older brother’s revolver and decides to begin a crime spree.  But each time he tries to commit a crime, something stops him.  One victim is “too cool,” another is “too sexy.”  Rocket is destined for a life outside of crime.  Somehow he escapes the wrath of Little Dice.  Then comes the climactic scene in the film.  After a gang war has begun, Little Dice hands Rocket a camera so that Rocket can become his publicist—taking simple pictures of the gang and its leader that are published in local newspapers.  Of course, Little Dice’s days are numbered.  Sooner or later we have get back to the scene that was skipped over at the beginning of the film: the barbecue-king Little Dice, accompanied by a dozen or more child thugs—all facing down Rocket a block away.  When all hell breaks loose, Rocket escapes and shoots Little Dice in a climactic scene—but keep in mind that for a photographer, choosing a camera over a gun is much safer and much more creative.  Rocket has photographs for the ages, and Rocket escapes the City of God.  This film was original, creative, heartfelt, respectful of the humanity of its characters, and it moved! 

 

2. Lost in Translation, dir. Sophia Coppola.  This film works because Bill Murray is in it.  Coppola has an eye for the image, all right.  Early in the film she places Murray perfectly “within the shot.”  She controls the meaning through the shot and the cuts—and Murray simply has to “give a look,” or “stare out the window,” or “sigh a little,” or “move your eyes from left to right.”  But after a while the director begins to give Murray shots of longer duration.  She gives him room for his own brand of physical comedy.  And he is brilliant—trying to set the “right” look for a Japanese photographer, trying to stay afloat on an exercise machine, and singing Karaoke as if he means it. Watching Murray is a reminder that film loves well-defined personas.  Murray is as good as—maybe even better—than he was in Groundhog Day.  He has that basset-hound hangdog look about him.  He’s the guy that finishes last in the marathon; he’s the guy that never received a Valentine’s Day card; he’s the guy that just lost his girlfriend to his best friend.  He’s not quite Sad Sack—but he’s close.  And now Murray brings aging to the role.  His face is lined with years of grimaces, deadpans, and silly grins.  His face is all pitted and sandpapery.  He has the Bill Murray look.  He suffers, he whines, he is emotionally paralyzed.  He is perfect for this role. He has the physical comedy of a Steve Martin, but he is not burdened by having the powerful physique, good looks, and smooth-looking profile of Martin.  When Martin wears a tuxedo, he looks cool; when Murray wears a tuxedo, he reminds me of Charlie Chaplin.

            I also appreciated the quiet poise that Scarlett Johannson brought to her role as Murray’s counterpart—the young woman who is as stuck in her life as he is stuck in his own.  She has the right voice for the role and the right moves for the role.  Coppola perfectly realizes Tokyo as a major character in the film.  The scenes where the main characters interacted on city streets were fascinating.  The ending of the film is likewise fulfilling—a simple, moving resolution that overturns no lives and yet reminds us that we are all capable of having once-in-a-lifetime life-affirming experiences with other human beings.  And these experiences enrich us and even “save” us because we are given new hope to carry on our lives with renewed energy and insight.

 

3. Lilja 4-ever, dir. Lukas Moodysson (Denmark, Sweden). The plot outline for Lilja 4-ever is simple: a 16-year-old Russian girl is abandoned by her parents.  They take off—but they don’t take her with them.  She befriends a little boy, Volodja.  She becomes his surrogate mother/older sister.  She meets a young man who seems to care for her. He takes her to Sweden (the boy comes with them), and he turns her over to a man who runs a prostitution ring.  This man takes her passport and locks her up in a room and then rapes her—and thus initiates her into his world of prostitution. 

            The film begins with its ending—we see Lilja hanging onto the railing of a freeway overpass.  She has been beaten.  She contemplates suicide.  What will she do?  A graphic flashes up back three months to the beginning of her story—outlined above.  After her parents abandon her, at first Volodja is like her mascot; he follows her around like a puppy dog.  Then her Aunt throws her out, too.  Now she is alone with Volodja.  They make themselves a family. Her close friend betrays her; soon Lilja has  a reputation of being a prostitute—when the truth is that her close friend was the prostitute (and lied to save herself a beating at the hands of her father).  Boys harass her for being a whore.  In a fit of desperation she carves her mantra in a park bench—“Lilja 4-ever.”  The relationship between those two young people is worth everything in this film.  I could see that the two are doomed from the beginning—but the love that flowed between them was the only redemption in this film.

            The ending of this film was perfect.  What other way to convey the timelessness of love between two people.  First Lilja’s angel—her little Russian friend—comes to her room and tells her the door to her apartment has been left unlocked.  Then comes the ending—predictable but still shocking.  But the moment Lilja ends her life the scene changes to show her little friend and her playing basketball on a rooftop.  Both have tiny angel wings.  They are happy. I watched the scene unfold and I accepted it for what it was—a dream of that better world, where children are not abused and families are never broken.

 

4. In America, dir. Jim Sheridan (Ireland).  I appreciated the high-octane energy of the film, the movement of the early montages (when the family arrives in America), the winning faces and gestures and dialogue of the Bolger sisters—cast as the couple’s children, the powerful presence of the downstairs neighbor—played by Djimon Hounsou, the way the story was told from one of the daughters’ point of view, the perfect interactions between the children and their father, the faith in family that is at the core of the film, the central plot point of the father’s inability to accept the earlier death of one of his three children, the amazing carnival scene where the father almost gambles away their entire savings just to win an ET doll for his daughter, the quiet and yet intense affirmation of the mother (“I believe in you and the kids believe in you!”)—and the list goes on.  Films are about making you feel something.  Feelings are visceral, intense, and often come unbidden from some deep reservoir of memories and longings.  I laughed and I cried and I felt real feelings—perhaps revisiting some of my family’s small triumphs when I was a child, or my family’s pathetic failings, or the losses that shook me to my core when I was a young man—the list goes on.  Some of the energy is lost when plot takes over and the family befriends Mateo, the AIDS-suffering artist on the first floor.  But even the triteness of this formulaic plot point does not derail the film.  This autobiographical film flows on, with more family moments, more insights into the husband’s grief, and the insight that one of the girls is right when she says, “I’ve been carrying this family on my back for over a year”!  I was shaken by the climactic scene—when Johnny (the husband) breaks down.  The little girl was in control of this family; the film was structured around three wishes she makes (and is granted).  There is magic when we reconnect to our pasts and try to account for the reasons we turned out the way we did.  Now this was a film to savor.  I was moved by it even though sometimes I could see the framework of formula shining through.

 

5. The Barbarian Invasions, dir. Denys Arcand (Canada, France).  This is a film about a son who is estranged from his father—an old story—but one that is told effectively here.  The father, bald because of the treatment for his cancer, looks like an old man in his 70s.  But he is in his early 50s!  The son is a wealthy businessman—but the father knows nothing about him because he has been too busy with his various mistresses over the years.  The son, feeling abandoned by the father, regards him with unremitting bitterness. Of course, something has to give for this film to work—and it does—and what gives is the grudge the young man holds toward the father.  Slowly but surely the father wins us over first, and then wins over his son.  The young man uses his money and his clout with great ingenuity.  The old man is dying.  So the son arranges for a private room on the vacant floor of the hospital.  The son has a contact in a Baltimore hospital—and this expert gladly evaluates the PET scan his father receives in a Burlington, VT, hospital.  Ah, the vagaries of health care.  The title of the film is referred to first as a metaphor for the 9/11 “invasion” by the agents of Osama Bin Laden, but there are further hints at a metaphor relating to all invasions by outside forces that inevitably overwhelm all fortresses of man—and I suppose, by extension, that means the fortress of the human body (diseases).  Another invasion is the insidious drug trade that traffics in broken homes and broken bodies.  Fortunately, the meaning of the metaphor is not limited to one interpretation. 

            What stays with me from watching the film is the sustaining power of love in human relationships.  What makes people drop whatever they are doing and fly to another city and stay for weeks at the bedside of a dying man?  What is that glue that holds people together in the dark days of human life?  What unexpected transformations of the human heart and soul are possible because of the commitments and routines of human interconnectedness.  The last scenes of the film, played out at a cabin along Lake Champlain, is a testament to the bonds between the friends and ex-lovers who come together to celebrate the dying man’s life.  No false notes are sounded in these scenes—every friend is able to say farewell.  The dying man even receives a satellite video transmission from his daughter—on a sailboat in the Pacific—and her final words, “The first man in a woman’s life is her father,” is perfect farewell.  This was a film to savor.

 

6. The Human Stain, dir. Robert Benton.  This seemed to be an old-fashioned film, something from the 1970s, for instance. It had character, plot, and theme. Based on the Philip Roth novel, it places race relations in the foreground. It begins with the ending of the film. We see Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman—relaxed and affectionate in the front seat of his Volvo—drive off an icy roadway in New England. Before the accident occurs, the looks on their faces show that something has been resolved. The film begins anew.  Classics professor Coleman Silk (Hopkins) is fired from his tenured position because he refers to two students who never attended his class as “spooks.” He says he meant to call them ghosts; but one definition of the word refers to a negative slam on African Americans. At home, he rages around the house looking for the phone number of his lawyer—and his wife gets as worked up about it as he is. Then suddenly she drops dead.  Fast forward six months. One night the professor pulls up at a remote house in the country, rented by a writer by the name of Zuckerman (a character in several Roth novels). He confronts Zuckerman and accuses him of having writer’s block! I love this scene! After the bizarre encounter, later the two men sit on the porch and listen to music. Suddenly Silk begins to dance around the porch to the jazz and then insist that Zuckerman dance with him. The scene works! The actors pull it off because they are given a stage to work on—that front porch. Later, after the two men are now officially friends, Coleman drops the bombshell: “I’m having an affair with a 34-year-old woman!” What timing! What great writing! 

            The next large chunk of the film shows us the beginning and middle of the affair between Silk, and the Nicole Kidman’s character, Faunia. She has buried her emotions deeply because of the pain and losses she has experienced.  When Silk is empathic, she attacks him viciously at times. Amazing that this old man stays with her. Why?  Just at the right moment the film moves backward to a third level of time. Beyond the present of  Coleman and Zuckerman, and the past of Coleman and Faunia, there is Coleman’s youth—when he went to college with a boxing scholarship and his coach tells him, in an offhand way, “Don’t tell them you’re colored.”  Now Coleman’s secret is out. The Dean of Classics for all those years never told anyone, including his late wife, that he was African American. He passed as white.  His father is a railway porter, and his wife is an elegant woman, a homemaker. Coleman has a sister and a brother. The family tradition is to send their children to Howard University, a Negro college. But Coleman wants to attend Pitt—because Coleman wants to be white. Having dropped us deep into his past, the filmmaker brings us back to the present—in Zuckerman’s house, with Coleman trying to defend himself. He tells Zuckerman, “This is my last love. Doesn’t that count for something?” 

            Back to the 1940s again.  Coleman falls in love with a blonde woman from Minnesota.  She declares her love for him. He takes her home—but does not tell her that his parents are African American. (By this time his father has died of a heart attack.) The door opens—and there stands Coleman’s mother, obviously an African American woman, and all is lost. She crumbles in the face of his unstated request to accept him as he is—a black man that has passed for white. “I can’t do this,” she cries. So Coleman (coal-man? black-man?) becomes white. In the boxing ring he beats a black man senseless in order to prove to himself that he is white and therefore superior. That reminds me of his relationship with Fiona. They spar like two boxers in a ring. She is a worthy adversary for Coleman, and she almost defeats him. Finally, their relationship reaches a crisis.  She walks out, only to return the next morning and calmly recount the time she tried to kill herself after her children died. But the rope broke. “I don’t think you can measure sorrow,” she says. He listens calmly, and I think he realizes that he has stayed the course and won the most important boxing match of his life. He says, “There is something I need to tell you.”  We know what that has to be   

 

7. Nowhere in Africa, dir. Caroline Link (Germany, 2002).  The only way to describe this film is to talk about it an epic film.  I was reminded of Out of Africa because of the Kenyan setting.  But so much of the film depends upon the sweep of historical events.  One of the dilemmas faced in the film is that many Jews did not take the Nazi threat seriously enough.  They could not believe Hitler would destroy their way of life.  The main characters are Walter and Jettel.  Both sets of their parents stay behind in Germany after the couple moves to Kenya.  Both sets of parents die n the Holocaust.  The film opens with parallel cut scenes of the German Jewish husband in Africa, afflicted with malaria, while his wife and her family carry on in Germany.  Opening with these parallel scenes also introduces the viewer to one of the key characters in the film, a Kenyan cook named Ouwor.  This character heals the husband using traditional African herbal treatments.  He is a presence in the film from the first few scenes.  Now we fast forward to the scene where Jettel and her daughter arrive and are driven to the remote cattle ranch where Walter works for a landlord.  The wife and husband are reunited.  The little girl waits in the car.  The African cook steps forward and reaches out to the girl.  He lifts her up above him, and she smiles down at him and grabs a lock of his curly black hair as if mesmerized by his tall and elegant presence.  A haunting melody, sung by a woman, punctuates this magical moment.  And at that precise moment this film had me hooked! As the adults settle down to their new life together, the plot turns to the story of the daughter Regina.  Fortunately for her, she has Ouwor as her mentor and her guide and her father-figure.  In an early scene he brings her a baby deer to care for as a pet.  He expands her horizons; she sees him as a wise and a good man.  He teaches her about Kenya and the customs of the people.  He takes her to ceremonies and rituals.  He intuits that she embraces multiculturalism.  She wants to know the truths of the people; she wants to know how they live and what they believe.

            The family survives the war—although the British send Walter to an internment camp and Jettel and her daughter to a hotel hotel in Nairobi.  Jettel’s strength of character again surfaces—this is really her story. Eventually, the family must leave Kenya because Walter has a perfect career opportunity. On the  train to Nairobi (and from there a ship to Germany), the train slows down and stops to allow numerous vendors to ply their trade.  Jettel spies an old African woman outside the train.  The woman is selling bananas.  Jettel leans out the window and says, "This little monkey has no money"—in other words, she has no money to pay for the bananas.  So the old woman gives her some bananas anyway.  In a close shot we see the exchange, as the white woman's hand touches the black woman's hand.  This image is then an icon for Jettel's journey. 

 

8. The Magdalen Sisters, dir. Peter Mullan (UK).  Here is a woman’s film worth watching!  Three young women each meet the same fate—they are sent to the laundry run by the Magdalen Sisters in Dublin.  Why are they shipped to this concentration camp for bad girls?  One is raped by a cousin at a wedding—and when she reports her attack, she is sent away in order to protect the young man’s “character.”  A second is sent away because she flirts with boys—and thus is viewed as a danger to the societal order (in which young girls are expected to demur and be silly and passive).  A third is sent there after she gives birth to a child out of wedlock.  Of course, her child is taken away from her and adopted.  At first the film was like walking into a Dickensian world.  Instead of Oliver Twist, we are watching the three young women trapped in this concentration camp.  The whole point of the film is about women’s lack of self-control and autonomy.  Women don’t dare become independent; they don’t dare think for themselves.  Just think what would happen then?  Men would lose control. 

            All three main characters survive their captivity.  In one poignant scene, one of the three actually escapes from the locked compound when she finds an open door that leads right to the countryside.  A man stops in his car and asks her if she would like a ride.  She is too stunned to answer.  He drives off, and the young woman walks right back into the compound and resumes her captivity.  In some respects, her family and her loyalties were the other young women inside.  She was not ready—yet—to make her escape.  In another poignant scene, the old nun is happy to announce a day of film viewing—everyone is invited to see a print of The Bells of St. Mary’s with Ingrid Bergman.  The young women watch the old nun break down and cry in several scenes.  Then, in an amazing moment, the brother of one of the three main characters enters the screening room and announces that he has come to fetch his sister—and all he needed was a letter from the Bishop authorizing the release.  This young man had to act on his own—for years his family made no effort to release her.  Two other main characters escape in the climactic scene of the film and are sheltered by one of the girl’s aunts.  That young woman trains as a hairdresser—and in the last scene has an emotionally overwrought encounter with two nuns during a break from work.  The film ends with still images of the principal characters, and we learn what happened to these women after their lives in the institution.  We also learn that 30,000 women were forced to work in such laundries.  The last asylum closed in 1996.

 

9. Girl with a Pearl Earring, dir. Peter Webber (UK).  We follow a young woman’s development as a character.  She maintains a steadfast courage and feistiness and honor throughout; but also she grows as a person and faces each challenge with initiative and purpose.  She will succeed in life.  She has the right stuff.  She also has a unique talent—she respects the light, and thus understands something essential about the art of painting (as she would about photography, if the film had taken place in the 1900s).  She refines her natural talent at understanding how light can reveal the three dimensions of a human being, and more importantly, reveal the inner world of the person.  Her ability to relate to art is also exactly what the artist Johannes Vermeer needs in 1665 Delft, Holland, in an era when a painter was only as good as the patron who supported his work.  And Vermeer has a patron, a rich and insensitive man who controls all aspects of Vermeer’s world.  In some respects I regarded this film as a well-crafted soap opera.  There is melodrama; there are predictable plot points; and there is great suffering on the part of some of the characters.  But as soap opera it was well done, much like a good episode of Masterpiece Theater.  Vermeer is aloof, frustrated, emotionally hobbled, unkempt, and remote from his family.  In many respects he is the typical 20^th century figure trapped in the 17^th century.  He is alienated from his art and emotionally adrift.  He needs a real companion—an equal, someone he can talk to about the process of making art and thinking about art and figuring out how to understand the way light shapes and frames the human face and torso.  He finds it all right—in the presence of a young woman (Griet) hired to help the maid with Vermeer’s expanding household.  Scarlett Johansson proves again that great acting often depends upon the actor creating an expression that is expressionless—vacant, open, and receptive to the emotions the audience will pour into that expression.

            What happens in a great film about character is that one or more characters breaks the convention of class or other social taboos and becomes something that no one could have expected them to become.  And they always have to pay for their transgression!  Vermeer paints his “Girl with the pearl earring.”  By making the maid an object of great beauty in a painting where she stands alone—not as a background character in a typical group of revelers—Vermeer has, according to societal rules, defiled his marriage and violated the rules of class. He loses because he has to yield to the conventions of class in order to retain his standing and his opportunity to ply his craft—his art.  The young maid loses her job—and has no other recourse.  But then there is the painting.  Where is it now?  It hangs almost 350 years later in a museum in The Hague, Netherlands.  That last shot of the film—a tight shot that slowly tracks back until the shot becomes a wide shot of the object.  All in one shot we are made to understand the timelessness of works of art—the ways they haunt us, inspire us, and capture our attention and affection.

 

10. American Splendor, dir. Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. I was impressed with the idiosyncratic qualities of this film.  Harvey Pekar discovered the secret of modern life—make your own life your art and you will find an audience.  In an era dominated by Reality TV, this story of an obsessive-compulsive, neurotic, angry, and yet principled man represents a fresh approach to the stale personas paraded in front of us on the “staged” reality programs.   At the same time, his vision of reality is focused on a narrow bandwidth that emphasizes anxiety, frustration, gripes, negativity, desperation, and loneliness.  He does not believe in happiness; life has to be chaotic and troubled, and people have to be exposed and vulnerable.  His motto: expect the worst, and you won’t be disappointed. 

            One of the special moments in the film: when the real Harvey Pekar talks to his real nerd friend on soundstage, while in the background sit the actor playing Harvey Pekar and the acting playing the nerd friend.  So where is the reality here?  There is Harvey Pekar’s life, Harvey Pekar’s comic book series, the film about Harvey Pekar, the real Harvey in the film, and the actor playing Harvey in the film.  So on one level his choice of making art out of his life—and making his wife and coworkers costars in that life—is a brilliant example of American entrepreneurship.  Hey, he makes his life a long-running gig.  He gets paid for it!  But the other side of this “art” is that the comic books, the American Splendor series, is not really an accurate representation of his life after all.  The comic books don’t reveal the essence of Harvey Pekar; they reveal the persona of Harvey Pekar.   The truest moment of the film comes when Harvey, unable to sleep one night, wonders, “If I die, will the character keep going, or will he fade away.  Who is Harvey Pekar?”  The answer to the first question: yes, the comic book series will fade away, because people buy it only because they are hooked by the persona that is contained within. This guy’s life is like his own talk show—once he’s gone, the show will be canceled.  The answer to the second question is, “That’s a good question—for all of us.”  In essence, there is a profound sadness at the core of a film like this; and yet there are profound lessons in it for understanding current American values, the real diminishing of the American middle class, the loss of the American Dream, the rise of corporate America, and the danger of an evolving groupthink Orwellian ethic.

 

11. The Station Agent, dir. Thomas McCarthy.  The film is a sensitive and moving portrayal of the way three strangers connect the strands of their lives to each other.  The key ingredient in this film was its lack of sentimentality—especially in the depiction of the main character—a dwarf, a small person.  Peter Dinklage was captivating as Fin McBride, who inherits an old train station in New Jersey.  The key to his effectiveness was his somber realization of the character, embedding all of the pain, humiliation, rejection, and harassment that small people suffer at the hands of “normal” people.  Watching him react to his world, seeing him “light up” around trains, and seeing him spending so much of his time alone built that character and made it come to life.  The film is all about seeing a new world and seeing a new perspective on life.  Viewers come to identity with Fin’s character, and the key scene of revelation is when he gets drunk in a neighborhood bar.  He climbs atop the bar and presents himself—with his vulnerability showing—for public view.  When he yells at the patrons, “Here I am!  Take a look!”, then we get the full force of the sentiment that this character feels—all the pent-up rage and frustration and alienation and loneliness wrapped into that naked moment. 

            I loved the way the story unfolded.  First Fin is befriended by the irrepressible Joe, a guy who is absolutely uncomfortable with the vulnerability associated with silence.  If he isn’t talking, then he is anxious.  At the end of the film, in a simple and elegant scene at a hospital, we see him sitting next to Fin and reading a book—not talking—for the first time.  A film like this is about how people improve themselves by connecting their lives to other people.  The film reminds us of what is best about relationships of love—you are given permission to be alone in the context of not-aloneness. The third character is a woman whose son died two years ago; since then her grief has overwhelmed her.  She is separated from her husband, and she is barely functioning.  The wheels are coming off of her life—and that is shown by her inability to drive a car safely.  She almost runs Fin down twice.  But sooner or later everyone is drawn to Fin.  He can function in silence; he knows utterly the experience of loss. In some respects Fin is like a priest figure—someone to whom people can come for confession and absolution.  He collects the people around him.  He becomes the center of their existence.  He heals them as he begins to be healed himself. The first time we see Fin smile is when he is videotaping trains as he rides along in Joe’s van as Joe races down the road parallel to the train.  The film succeeds because at its core is the transformation of Fin’s character.  The last shot of the film, of the three main characters sitting on the porch and not saying a word—if a perfect close to a film.

 

12. Sweet Sixteen, dir. Ken Loach (UK, 2002).  I have been a fan of Loach's films since viewing Ladybird, Ladybird (1994) and then My Name is Joe (1998).  Loach is committed to telling the stories of working-class people, and he does not shy away from the effects of poverty, drugs, and alcohol.  This film has the most ironic of titles.  The stereotype of "sweet sixteen" is the debutante dressed in pink chiffon and white pumps—a combination of innocence and the first bloom of maturity. Here the main character is a young Glasgow lad.  The accents are so thick that subtitles are used throughout the film.  The effects of poverty, poor education, lack of parental involvement, drugs, and substandard housing all combine to strangle hope.  The set-up is straightforward: Fifteen-year-old Liam's mum is in prison.  Liam does not like her boyfriend.  Liam and his sister spent years in an institution (probably taken away from their drug-dependent mum), and his sister has never forgiven her mum for being abandoned by her.  Liam, on the other hand, has big plans for mum when she gets out of prison.  He wants to care for her, make her feel proud of him, and create a fresh start for both of them once and for all.

            Liam is talented in many respects.  First, he is a sensitive young man.  He has the instincts of a businessman.  Unfortunately, the only way he can act on those instincts is through illicit activity—and that means the drug trade.  He may have talent beyond his years; but his emotional state is still that of a 15-year-old.  So he makes dumb mistakes, acts out of revenge, doesn't listen to good advice from his sister, and even betrays his best friend.  Everything he plots seems to be working but inevitably backfires. And then other more powerful individuals strive to make Liam a pawn they can control.  But people are not predictable chess pieces that can moved around boards by more powerful people.  Every idiosyncrasy in the human character comes out under duress.  So many things are motivated by love; but too often that love has been twisted and distorted in the minds of those who are the lovers.  Every path leads downward.  Every hope is dashed.  The film ends on Liam's birthday, the day he turns "sweet sixteen," and the day he walks along a beach, all hope blasted, and talks on the omnipresent cell phone to his sister, who repeats (like a lament), the words, "What a waste!  What a waste!"

 

13. Monster, dir. Patty Jenkins.  I was absolutely captivated by the acting of Charlize Theron in this film. I can see why she added significant weight to play the part of the main character.  As an actor, she knew she could more easily inhabit the body of that character if her body was more like the character’s body.  A fat suit would not work as well for a dramatic role. Robert DeNiro’s similar role in Raging Bull often came to mind.  Theron wanted to play the dark side—to show how the unconscious can be made conscious.  She pulls it off in every way.  I appreciated some of the patterns of her creation-of-character: the quick turns of her head, the bugging-out of her eyes, the expansive and poorly coordinated gestures as she tried to interact with Selby (the girl she falls in love with), and the speech patterns that revealed the inner workings of a twisted mind.  Her character gained my sympathy early in the film—and that was the key to helping me process the rest of the film.  I saw this woman as lonely, adrift, needy, defensive, vulnerable, dangerous, hyperactive—a combination of wants and needs.  Most important, her characterization was never simply one of behaviors.  She held the camera with her eyes (shining and open wide under shaved eyebrows and a blotchy forehead).  When Selby invites her to stay overnight with her in her room (Selby is staying with relatives), the key moment for me was when Selby touched her face with her hand and said, “You’re so pretty.”  The reaction shot of Theron’s face was perfect because it revealed the utter vulnerability at the core of her being.

            Selby is the easier character to unravel.  She is an alienated young woman who wants to strike back against parental authority.  Lee is more complicated. Early in the film, she meets the wrong John—someone who brutalizes her.  She kills the man in self-defense, only moments before he was going to murder her.  Moments later, standing alone at the scene, she lets go two primal screams that are unearthly—and perfectly understandable at this moment in the film.  In some respects, for the first time she has struck back at the heart of the beast (the men who have abused her all of her life).  Eventually she becomes a serial murderer.   At the end of the film Shelby betrays her.  Lee realizes the police are listening in on their phone call.  Nevertheless, she declares her love for Selby.  Now Lee is alone—held between two guards, who take her back to her cell (or to the death chamber), and she turns around and glares over her shoulder one more time—as if to force us to look at her pockmarked face one more time and account for her.  She gets the last word—she is free to the last, and she remains indelible in our minds as we think about the meaning of her life.

 

14. The Secret Lives of Dentists, dir. Alan Rudolph (2002).  I loved this film—because it honestly portrayed family life in a house dominated by three small children.  Campbell Scott was the moral and physical anchor of the film.  He was absolutely committed to his family, and especially to his children.  The mother’s energy, early in the film, is devoted completely to her passion for opera—and soon, we learn—her passion for her lover.  What she does not know is that her husband accidentally spied upon her embracing her lover in the dressing room on opening night.  He does not tell her what he saw; and she does not bring up her affair.  And then the strangest thing happens: her husband decides not to confront her, not to compel her to confess with whom she is having that affair.  He decides that if he does not act, then he will not have to deal with all of the complications of such a confrontation: the lawyers, the court case, the living arrangements, the competition for the three girls.  Scott never cracks a smile in the entire film. While he sits in the theater and watches his wife (knowing she is having an affair), instead of seeing the performance, we see his memories of his courting and marriage and family come alive.  One of the great images in this montage is of the husband and wife—she riding side saddle on his lap—coasting on a bicycle down a steep hill.  “Hang on!” he encourages.  That’s what he also decides to do with regard to this marriage—to hang on, and hope that there will be no crash at the bottom of this hill.  Just when it appears that the wheels may come off of this marriage—just when confrontation lurks in the foreground—the husband gets a stomach virus (what people like to call “the flu”).  After a day or two he is on his feet again, and then one after the other in the family picks up the virus and is bedridden for a few days.  Throughout this onslaught of the virus, the husband is a steady presence in the household.  He carries one of the children up and down the stairs.  She has “Velcro-ed” herself to him early in the film, and we learn that she instinctually knows the mother has metaphorically leaving the family.  She will have nothing to do with her mother; she clings only to her father. 

            If Scott is a stoic presence throughout the film, he reveals another side of his identity by means of the presence of one of his dental patients, a narcissistic young man who is fearful of having his teeth worked on, and then dogs the doctor when one of his new fillings falls out.  Eventually, the patient is revealed as a dimension of the doctor’s identity.  Only the husband can see this character, who pops anywhere in the house at any moment and comments crudely on the subject matter of any scene.  The Dennis Leary character (the alter ego of the husband) does a wonderful job of being a menacing, egotistical, and mean-spirited presence.  Sooner or later Scott will have to get rid of him—in order to keep hold of his family and of his identity.

 

15. Mystic River, dir. Clint Eastwood. The horror of child abuse is not shown explicitly; Eastwood suggests the horror—we can fill in the rest with our imagination.  In some respects, this is a horror film made for mature audiences.  One of the horrors of the modern world is rape, another is incest, another is spousal abuse, and another is child abuse.  Each of these horrors has traumatic and long-lasting effects on the abused as well as on all of those close to the abuser. It’s important not to forget the “horror film” angle here.  The agents of horror look like decent people.  They are indistinguishable—like the pod people in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).  The key scene in the film was when the abused child, Dave, now grown, sits watching a horror film on television.  His wife comes in, and she is shocked at how scary he looks.  He is completely embroiled in the film.  He may have been watching The Wolfman.   Dave sees himself as a “boy who escaped from wolves.”  He has personalized the abuser as a monster in fairy tales; and the next step beyond such tales are horror films about wolfmen or werewolves. He tries to explain to his wife what he has figured out—having thought through his story and finally realized his fate.  In a sense the abused becomes the abuser—the victim becomes the victimizer—the innocent child becomes the wolfman.  Of course, she doesn’t understand his “confession,” and her lack of insight leads inevitably to his downfall.  But it’s a great scene, a scene of great acting, and a scene of great passion and terror.

            But the first half is all Sean Penn.  I think of this actor as a National Treasure.  I thought to myself, “Where does he get those faces?”  “How is he able to capture the look of a character feeling such specific emotions?”  Eastwood’s understated style was transformed in scenes showing Penn emoting in only the way Penn can express himself.  Often Eastwood used bird’s-eye point of view shots of the actor at key moments, such as the time he called out—in anguished cries, “I that my daughter in there?!”  The first half of the film was simply a showcase of this great actor’s talents. Penn perfectly realized the heartfelt grief of the father that has just lost his daughter to a terrible crime.  Penn’s aching stomach, his wrenched facial expressions, his guttural vocalizations—all combined to create a portrait of a character I could “sympathize with”—and there’s the key.  But Penn is more than that image of grief—and that little lower layer stabs at the viewer as more information about his character is forthcoming.  Eventually, we realize that Penn, an ex-con, has lived a lie.  He is not an innocent character.  Even worse, he has done monstrous things, and he will continue to do monstrous things—especially because he is blinded by revenge.   

             

Four Great Documentaries

 

The Fog of War, dir. Errol Morris.  I have taught Morris’ The Thin Blue Line several times in a documentary film course, and I was not disappointed in this most recent effort—based on interviews with  Robert McNamara, who was Secretary of Defense under Johnson during the Vietnam War.  Morris has honed the skill of interviewing a subject in such a way that the subject seems to be looking right at us (even though in fact he is staring into a monitor that shows an image of Errol Morris staring back at him).  This technical sleight of hand is an important component in getting subjects to reveal themselves on camera. The other key to the success of this film: the shots in the B-Roll (the images that cover the voice-over) are extraordinarily imaginative, metaphoric, and even haunting.  He helps us SEE the truth of the words by using appropriate visual support.  The film offers numerous biographical insights into McNamara’s career.  Here are comments on some of the 11 rules of war:

            Rationality will not save us.  In 1992 McNamara learned that there were already numerous missile sites in Cuba in 1962—and that Castro was ready to use those missiles if he felt the need would arise.  “That’s how close we were!” McNamara notes that three times in his seven years as Secretary America was on the brink of nuclear war.  “The human race needs to think more about killing.”   Maximize efficiency.  McNamara explains that research showed the inefficiencies in high altitude bombing.  So American bombers began low-altitude runs, and that led to the firebombing of Tokyo.  In one night in 1945, 100,000 citizens of Tokyo were burned alive in the firebombing of the wooden structures. Fifty square miles of Tokyo gone. Watching this old man tell his stories was an education in itself—a college course in how to learn from our mistakes in war. Proportionality should be a guideline in war.  McNamara compares the extent of the destruction to what would have occurred if American cities had been firebombed.  The consequences: 51% of Cleveland, 51% of New York City, 40% of Los Angeles, 35% of Chicago.  As he names these cities, we see the corresponding Japanese cities of similar size named.  These cities were destroyed at the level he ascribes to the destruction that would have occurred in US cities.  This is an amazing, horrific montage.  In all he names 67 US cities where 60-90% of the civilians would have been killed.   Gen. LeMay admitted to McNamara that if the US had lost the war, then they would have been tried as war criminals. Belief and seeing are both often wrong.  The Gulf of Tonkin.  Only later did we learn this was a hoax. “We had in our minds a mindset that led to that action,” McNamara says.   He explains that in Vietnam “we did know them enough to empathize” (the first rule above). “They saw it as a Civil War; we were in it for the Cold War.” Then McNamara notes that 3 ½ million Vietnamese were killed in this war.  Never say never. This old man’s face in all of these sections haunts me.  Here is an old man as prophet—someone who does not predict the future, but someone who warns us that our current behaviors are insane.  In the last section McNamara says, “There’s a wonderful phrase—‘the fog of war.’” Have we returned again to Vietnam?  Have we begun to see what we want to believe rather than facing those truths that are right in front of us?

 

To Be and To Have (Être et avoir), dir. Nicolas Philibert (France, 2002).  The film tells the story of an elementary teacher's interactions with his children.  Most of the scenes take place in the schoolroom.  But the director broadens the film by showing us scenes of the interior of barns (showing the children at work), the interiors of some of their homes (showing interactions with the parents), a picnic scene, a visit to the middle school (where three of the children will attend next year), and one scene where the teacher talks directly on camera to the filmmaker.  What treats are in store for you: hearing that gentle, soothing voice of the teacher, Georges Lopez; watching his control of the classroom—his eyes darting here and there to take in the scenes around him, and his nonverbal gestures conveying so much more than words can say.  He brings discipline to the classroom, but he also brings listening, sharing, discovering, and loving to these students.

            And the students!  There is Joyo, every attention deficit pouring from his being; Julien, one of the older children, slow at math, who works hard on the family farm and receives less-than-gentle discipline from his mother when doing his sums; and Olivier, another of the older children, whose father is sick with cancer and may die; and Nathalie, profoundly shy and facing the difficult prospect of moving on to the middle school and becoming the target of teasing for her plainness and her slowness.  Several scenes stand out: Jojo not completing his coloring assignment and having to stay inside at recess for a discussion about "getting things done"; the counseling of Julien and Olivier—where the director uses a two-shot of the boys to compare their responses to the gentle wisdom of the teacher; the teacher trying to persuade Jojo to wash his hands (while Jojo keeps bringing up that wasp he saw in the bathroom); scenes of parents working with their children on homework; a conference between Lopez and one of the parents; the picnic scene (and the teacher and other children searching for a lost child in the woods); a gentle scene between Lopez and Olivier as the teacher asks about the status of his father's health; and a long talk between Lopez and Nathalie, who clearly is afraid of leaving the school and going to the middle school.  The film ends with the last day of school, and we see the children leaving.  Before they depart, each child kisses the teacher on both cheeks, a traditional French gesture.  When all have left, the camera holds on Georges Lopez, and he almost breaks down.  The students depart.  They are all moving on to new places and new adventures while the teacher remains behind in the classroom. 

Spellbound, dir. Jeffrey Blitz (USA, 2002).  The filmmaker chose to feature eight of the 249 spellers who made it to the National Spelling Bee in 1999.  He chose wisely because the 8 kids are from different socioeconomic backgrounds, have a variety of parental support, and come across like individuals (each with his or her own set of idiosyncrasies).  As each of the 8 young people was introduced, however, I related to them for a more basic reason, based upon my own socioeconomic background.  When students were from poor backgrounds, I could relate to their struggles more easily.  I immediately felt a rapport with them; I immediately felt sympathy for them and wanted them to win. So I began to root for the girl whose father was an illiterate ranch hand from Mexico; or for the rural youth from Connecticut whose parents are distinctly middle class; or for the African American girl from Washington, D.C., who is devoted to her family; or the nerdy girl with older parents who are totally devoted to her success.  I felt less empathy for students who were already living the American Dream.
          The American Dream is really the subject of this film. Spelling is a metaphor for the educational path that young people pursue as they go after the American Dream.  The good speller is the good learner is the good student is the good worker is the one who finds a way to succeed on his or her path.  It was evident that children of East Asian immigrants have a special role in this cadre of expert spellers.  For their parents, hard work, long hours of study, a focus on self-discipline—these are the ingredients of success. Just as the parents succeeded, so shall the children succeed.  The documentary also works because of some neat technical decisions.  In an early montage, we see the last two spellers fighting it out at the end of a regional bee.  Before the speaker can complete the next word, we hear the student spelling the word—one word yields to the next in a harmony of spelling competition.  Later in the film, the director creates a montage of students spelling word after word correctly; later there is a montage of losers—each one dropping away like a blossom from a tree in springtime.  The sound of that damned bell—chiming each time the word is misspelled, becomes the source of another montage.  When the winner is revealed, I was surprised, and yet strangely satisfied that the young winner—although living a good life already—seems deserving and humbled by the experience.  Spelling has become entrenched in the American psyche as a symbol of knowledge and upward mobility.   

 

Winged Migration, dirs. Jacques Perrin, Cluzaud, Michel Debatsl. (France, 2002).  The first time I saw this film I put down my notes after a few minutes and simply watched the film. That first encounter with the film was special—because I was able to observe the migratory ducks, geese, and cranes up close (thanks to cameramen flying in ultra-light aircraft).  Sometimes the camera was above the animals, sometimes below them, and other times behind them.  The metaphor of flight as freedom made me realize how much it would mean if we human beings could fly like birds—such inexpressible freedom and buoyancy—using the wind to rise and fall in the sky and then landing on terra firma safely each time.  Of course, there is the shots of the birds flying on either spring or fall migrations.  Often those shots combine the flying with spectacular images of the landscape below the animals—the river Seine and the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, Monument Valley in the American Southwest, Mt. Saint Michel, the great limestone karsts of China, a hellish Ruhr Valley cityscape, New York City (and the World Trade Center towers).   In several scenes we see significant human interaction with the animals.  The film opens and closes with a scene of a boy encountering graylag geese that have stopped to rest in a small stream.  Early in the film an old woman wearing a babushka tries to approach a flock of cranes that have visited a field near her rural home.  They fly off; but when they return, she is there again—and this time she feeds them grain from her hand. The most important component of the film was helping viewers relate to these animals as individuals.  Early in the film, when the graylag geese fly away from the small stream, one of the geese is trapped in a net that lay just below the surface of the water.  The little boy appears, and after he cuts the net loose, the goose flies away—a part of the net attached to his webbed foot.  We see that goose at least 3 more times in the film and are delighted to learn that it has returned to the same small stream—the cycle of migration is made more complete and understandable by following that one animal’s experience.  This personalizing of the animal’s experiences allows us to more easily empathize with their loss.

 

Other recommended films:

            Calendar Girls is a delightful portrayal of middle-aged and older women who reclaim their sexuality when they pose for a calendar to raise money for a local hospital. The Cooler is a first-rate independent film about a man whose job in a Vegas casino depends upon his peculiar talent of short-circuiting the good luck of gamblers.  All he needs to do is walk past them—and their lucky streak ends.  Of course, when he falls in love with a prostitute, everything changes. Dirty Pretty Things explores the illegal trafficking in body parts in London from the perspective of an African immigrant and former doctor who does something about it. He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not is a bizarre French film (in two parts) that explores one young woman’s obsessive love from contrasting points of view.  The Housekeeper is another French film about a man who hires a young woman to keep house—and guess what? He falls in love with her.  Intolerable Cruelty is the latest Joel and Ethan Coen romp—this time a take on screwball comedy starring our Clark Gable—George Clooney.  Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World stars our Australian version of Clark Gable, Russell Crowe, as a naval commander as skilled as Admiral Nelson.  Minor Mishaps is a Danish film about a family that puts itself back together after the death of the mother.  Mr. and Mrs. Iyers is an Indian film about a Hindu woman and a Pakistani man whose shared experience Owning Mahoney is another story about gambling—this time from the perspective of the obsessive gambler. Respiro is an Italian film that seems to be a comedy at first, but then shifts to a powerful drama about a woman’s clinical depression and its effects on her family and community.  Two Men on a Train is an intriguing study of role reversal—between a middle-aged robber and a reclusive old man who had always fantasized about leading a more dangerous existence.