mst-5 Reviews

Masculine Feminine (1966)

Anthropology of a decade

[7/10 · 12 August 2003]

Possible Spoliers: Though not Godard's best, Masculin, feminin is in many ways the prototypical Godard film, exhibiting as it does both his characteristic virtues and characteristic vices. The plot is simple and barley manages to hold the film together; a young man (Paul) conducts a shapeless relationship with a singer (Madeline), works on a cigarette trick, engages in politically oriented graffiti, wrestles with only moderate energy with his own political views, watches two strangers get killed and takes scant notice, etc. Friends and acquaintances of the pair drift in and out of the film, to no great effect.

The film, like most Godard films, should be dreadful, and to many it will appear to be just that. But it manages to develop a rhythm, largely thanks to interesting editing choices, and keeps the viewer interested, if not exactly riveted. One hangs on with a Godard film in an attempt to discern the pattern at work-there seems to be no organizing principle as such, nothing particular the filmmaker wishes to communicate, but one senses a method, or a semblance of one, to Godard's madness.

Nearly 40 years on, Masculin, feminin appears very much a product of its time, though not without some claim to universality. References to the Vietnam War and to De Gaulle along with detailed, and dreary, political texts read aloud by the actors, do date the film somewhat, and yet a good deal of ground is covered; love and sex, birth control, women's rights, democracy and liberty, France vs. America, Bob Dylan, the Final Solution, German war guilt, union agitation, random violence, vanity, pornography. Trouble is, neither the characters nor the film reaches any particular conclusions about any of these things; many of them are mentioned in passing-themes stillborn. But perhaps that's part of the point. Godard seems to be acting almost like a

documentarian-at this point in time these kinds of things were discussed, but desultorily, as a part of the process of living, but not as its whole. Will this interest you, the putative viewer? Who knows. In my opinion, this is hardly a great film. Scenes drag on and lead nowhere; dramatic events happen but have no bearing on the rest of the film and thus we are not inclined to care; the sound of gunfire and titles break the film into chapters for no justifiable reason; Godard appears as confused as his protagonists as to the value of art, politics, and action. Still, the film has a wholly original texture, and that cannot be faked.

Peep Show (1981)

Nothing to indicate riches to come.

[5/10 · 23 March 2003]

An early Egoyan short. "Peep Show" does not provide a great deal of material for analysis, even for Egoyan fanatics, and in this respect is inferior to "Howard in Particular," another early Egoyan film. The film uses a curious, oddly imperfect, color layering technique which is visually interesting, but no more than that. The strange goings on in a photo booth do, however, presage "Amelie", as well as an X-files episode. This film, along with "Open House" and "Howard in Particular," is available on the "Family Viewing" DVD.

Howard in Particular (1979)

Fine student film

[6/10 · 23 March 2003]

Interesting student short (I assume) from a 19 year old Atom Egoyan. A older man attends a retirement party for himself where he finds an audiotape of his boss reciting various incidents from the man's career. The main voice on the tape is Egoyan's, and the writing slips between juvenile and slightly more sophisticated irony. But the interest of the film lies not in its writing but in its central conceit: the disembodied voice of authority (c.f. Modern Times). Egoyan fans will immediately recognize the theme of technology as a filter and distorter of human communication as a major feature of a number of his films, most notably "Family Viewing" and "Speaking Parts." Egoyan uses stark black and white, and repeats three main images, the old man's face, the speaker, and the tape machine, with beguiling results. This film, along with "Open House" and "Peep Show," is available on the "Family Viewing" DVD.

The Opportunists (1999)

Satisfying minor-key neo-noir

[7/10 · 25 February 2003]

Spoilers herein:

A ex-con safecracker (Christopher Walken) trying to live on the straight and narrow is enticed into doing one more job by people he may not be able to trust (a shady security guard, an Irish drifter, a little league coach). He cases the building where the robbery is to take place and meets a colorful lock expert (Tom Noonan in a characteristically excellent small performance) who helps him construct a mock-up of the safe. The job goes wrong, but the ex-con is bailed out in the end. Sound familiar? So we've seen this film dozens of times. It is then something of a miracle that "The Opportunists" works as well as it does.

Myles Connell's directorial debut is a relentlessly low-key, relatively low-budget, character driven neo-noir that satisfies because Connell never gives in to expectations and refuses to overwrite the characters. All the obligatory scenes are here; Walken visits an elderly relative whom he provides for; makes a mess of his legitimate business (auto-repair); is threatened by creditors; pleads (sort-of) with his girlfriend not to throw him out; practices on a mock-up safe while his partners watch, etc. In the hands of a lesser actor, this could all have been deeply mediocre, but Walken glides through this with the humble grace, and the quiet defiance of someone almost fatalistically detached from his own life and choices, but with a core of decency that we respond to without feeling manipulated. All the supporting players do a fine job, but this is Walken's picture, and Walken is a great actor, one of the greatest working today.

Watch how subtly Walken plays the early scenes where he refuses to take the job, and how consistently Connell has his actors play "emotional" scenes in a minor-key. Connell could have written "big" emotional scenes, could have given his characters dozens of one-liners, "zingers," but then he would have made "The Score" or "Heist." The Opportunists is better than either of these films, better too than "Ocean's Eleven." All these films tread similarly well-worn thematic paths, but The Opportunists aspires to the upper echelons of neo-noir drama thanks to smart, restrained direction and the presence of Walken.

The End of the Affair (1999)

Exceptionally dreary adaptation

[4/10 · 20 February 2003]

"The End of the Affair" is an excellent example of a curious sort of film adaptation, shall we say a fourth category of adaptations. First, there are the great majority of adaptations which fall far short of the source material; they completely re-write characters for dubious purposes; they trivialize the author's concerns; they end of a falsely upbeat note, etc. Examples of this type of film are legion.

Second, there are films which measure up to the original material, and in so doing remind one of what was good about the original work. See, for instance "The World According to Garp"; "Deliverance"; "Tess"; "Doctor Zhivago."

Third, there are the rare films which manage to transcend the material on which they are based. The Godfather by Puzo, lest we forget, is really a potboiler; hardly a classic piece of literature. Somehow, Coppola is able to infuse Puzo's book with a spirit and mood all his own; the text is transformed into something truly great. Other films which are superior to the source material might include "All the President's Men"; "The Ice Storm"; "The Day of the Jackal." I'm sure you can think of a few more.

Finally, there are films like "The End of the Affair," faithful and intelligent adaptations which nonetheless leave so much to be desired that one is forced to question one's opinions about the novel in question. I liked Greene's novel; I thought it did a good job of balancing sexual and spiritual issues and of conjuring up the atmosphere of wartime London. The characters were a bit slight (almost as if they had been sketched for the screen, actually), but well drawn nonetheless. For me, the novel fell somewhere in the middle of Green's canon, but until I viewed Neil Jordan's film, I would have hardly been liable to cast aspersions on the book.

Jordan's film, however, though reasonably faithful to the book, decently cast (although the choices are not inspired), admirable photographed, etc. is dreary almost to the point of being unwatchable. Very few directors can film unremitting dreariness to good effect. Bergman is the only example that comes to mind. Downbeat, depressing, pessimistic, cynical, yes. But even superior directors like Tarkovsky (Nostalgia), Allen (Interiors), and Malle (Vanya) are tripped-up by dreary. Jordan's "End of the Affair" just wears one down with its persistent ponderous dreariness. Fiennes projects misery and loathing; Moore, with a marginally passable British accent, is exhausting to behold; Rea is rain-sodden and crumpled. Among such a cast of characters, Ian Hart's performance as the private detective Parkis, apt to be overlooked in a different film, stands out. Hart is able to convey a wealth of emotions and attitudes (other than hate and guilt) with which we can identify, pride in his job, longing for companionship, love for his son, professionalism, and as a result brings much needed life and light to the film.

But I digress. The point is, this film is at once so dreadfully unpleasant yet so skillfully done in a technical sense that I began to wonder, what did I like about the book in the first place? If this is the result of a good adaptation, either the book itself is not very good, or the book is more or less unfilmable.

Incidentally, the other film that caused me to question the value of a novel I had enjoyed was Keith Gordon's "Mother Night." Two films do not quite a category make, do they? I wonder if other film fans have had a parallel experience?

Z (1969)

Courageous

[9/10 · 7 August 2002]

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

Costa-Gavras finest film without question; here his militantly political stance comes across cleanly and without sanctimony. I am not an enthusiastic fan of all his work, and was somewhat disappointed with Missing. 'Z', on the other hand, is fueled by a totally convincing paranoia which both engulfs the viewer and, cruelly, engenders a kind of desperate hope that everything will be all right in the end, which it is not. Unlike in Missing, where Jack Lemmon's final speech seems designed to appease the outraged viewer (and mollify the director himself?), Z's finale is devastatingly dispassioned; the forces of tyranny have carried the day as justice, truth and socialist transformation are vanquished. In this sense, Z is essentially an act of witness; one of Costa Gavras considerable strengths is his ability, or willingness, to show his heroes lose, to show justice frustrated, to suggest that when the odds are stacked against one, one tends to fail. So many films, even some good ones (such as The Milagro Beanfield War, which the IMDb amusingly classifies under 'fantasy') show us the little man or woman battling apparently insurmountable odds and winning, and there is a place, I think, for these feel good films. But it takes a great deal more courage to make a film like Z... One of the 40 greatest films ever made.