Craiger’s Cinema Corner

*1/2  OUT OF  ****

Robert F. Kennedy was one of the more intriguing and beloved political figures of the 20th Century.  Because of this, it sure is frustrating to see his story be told as a vague and enigmatic backdrop to a series of tired, formulaic, and uninspiring melodramas that could have occupied a weekly episode of DAYS OF OUR LIVES.  Emilio Estevez’s BOBBY takes great pains to be a fitting tribute to the man, but it washes away any pretense of worth by submerging the film with an endless  series of wooden and disinteresting characters that I all wanted to see aboard the doomed Poseidon and eventually sink to the bottom of the ocean.

It has been said widely in the press - by his own admission - that BOBBY was Estevez’s dream project that he has tried to make all of his life.  He struggled with the screenplay for over seven years before he managed to get it “right” to see the light of day as a full-fledged feature.  By “right” I am assuming that Mr. Estevez is saying that he wanted to make a preachy, overly sentimental, and soap opera masquerading as a political/history film that has far too many redundant and underdeveloped stock characters that even a grand 1970’s disaster picture could hold.  BOBBY is a film that has its heart in the right place, but its head seems vacant from the process.  The script is simply paint-by-numbers.

This is a real shame, because BOBBY kind of pushes its title character to the background.  Kennedy’s story is ripe with hope, promise, and tragedy.  In 1968, the 42-year-old New York Democratic Senator looked poised to follow in his big brother’s footsteps to the White House and usher in a newly evocative era of American prosperity.  His aims were challenging and inspiring for his time.  When running he stood on a Presidential ticket of racial and economic justice, non-aggression in foreign policy, decentralization of power, and social improvement. A crucial element to his campaign was an engagement with the young, whom he identified as being the future of a reinvigorated American society based on partnership and equality. 

He stood steadfastly for the impoverished and for minority groups and desperately challenged his country to strive for strong civil rights for all its citizens and to reduce the disparity between the rich and poor.  He further stood against ground troops in Vietnam, a war that he found ruthlessly unnecessary for US involvement.  If anything, Bobby Kennedy was easily considered a hero by many.  He can be summed up in his own words: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.”  There is no doubt that Kennedy was a beacon of hope that was quickly darkened by an assassin’s bullet and his untimely death in summer of 1968 at L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel.

I have no doubt that Estevez is deeply passionate about Kennedy’s legacy and with the possibilities of “what if” he went on to office and was not shot to death by a 24-year old Palestinian.  I also have little doubt that he wanted BOBBY to be a grand homage and very fitting bit of hero worship for a fallen political figure that both he and many Americans still hold dear to their hearts.  The story of Robert Kennedy is of intense historical interest.  Although we are a much more racially tolerant society today, we still live in an age of polarizing US involvement in overseas wars and military operations, not to mention a time of ever-increasing human rights violations and intense poverty both at home and abroad.  Kennedy’s words speak volumes for 2006 and 1960.  Yet, Estevez’s handling of this important political and historical figure is so heavy handed, so trivial, and so overstuffed with stereotyped characters, wretched clichés, and forced social commentary that one has to wonder whether his own hopes as a filmmaker superseded his actual directorial and writing abilities as a filmmaker.

Firstly, Estevez makes the wrong move at trying to tell a story of multiple characters and multiple storylines in manners that made the late Robert Altman a master storyteller.  Estevez is no Altman, that much is certain.  Estevez employs a kaleidoscopic outlook on the characters, searching for and showing us people from different classes and different circumstances all held together by their shared experience of being at the same hotel on the same day that Bobby was killed.  The trouble is that Estevez makes most of them uninspiring and instantly forgettable.  There are too many roles in the film that are too vastly undeveloped to make any reticent impact on the viewer.  There are no flesh and blood personas in the film, just character types that came from the stock character factory.

We have the hotel’s now retired doorman recalling his glory years; the hotel’s passive black cook; the angry black campaign worker; the Latino waiters; the racist hotel restaurant manager; the aging alcoholic nightclub singer and her downtrodden husband; the hotel manager who sleeps with the help; the wife of the manager that sheepishly works at the hotel saloon; the young teenage campaign workers that like to do drugs; the hippy drug dealer; the young and idealistic college kids that marry to avoid the Vietnam draft…and so on and so on.  I grew dizzy just trying to remember all of the characters and unrelentingly dull storylines that they are forced to inhabit when the larger story of Kennedy lies in the background.  As we see all of their stories awkwardly flow in and out of each other it dawned on me that they are all essentially perfunctory to the conclusion of the film.  They are time wasters and basically try to get us to the point where Kennedy is shot, the film fades to black, and we get the obligatorical title cards that says when Kennedy actually died at the hospital and what happened to the other wounded hotel victims.  Well, laddie-fricking-dah.

I guess that there is something wholeheartedly unsavory about a filmmaker that tries to make cookie cutter melodrama out of one of the most painful moments of the US’s past.  What’s truly amazing is the level of talent that a relative filmmaking novice like Estevez is able to round up.  We are not talking B-grade talent, but a high caliber cast that includes multiple Oscar nominees and winners.  The scope of the ensemble cast is astounding, especially when one considers how many favors Estevez must have called in and how most of these great actors allowed themselves to play mostly lifeless and bland roles without any genuine personality.

No formulaic character is left unchecked.  All of them are involved in a story that centers at the Ambassador Hotel in June of 1968 where Robert Kennedy captured the California Democratic primary and looked like he was well on his way to facing off against rival Richard Nixon in the election.  The Hotel was the home of RFK’s campaign headquarters and also the place of his unfortunate death.  Sandwiched in with this real life location and moment in history is a myriad of fictitious characters and their day leading up the assassination. 

Each character, of course, reflects and offers ruminations on the time they live in, oftentimes in clunky dialogue, some of which comes from the school of PATCH ADAMS for the painfully sentimentalized and gag inducing peachiness.  We have the idealistic campaign workers played by Joshua Jackson and Nick Cannon who desperately want a RFK victory.  Then we have Elijah Wood and Lindsay Lohan as teens that are strangers to one another, but decide to marry at the hotel so that Wood does not have to fight in Vietnam.  Lohan’s story touches on that of the hotel’s saloon worker, played by Sharon Stone (never looking more unattractive), whose own story is liked with the hotel manager (played by the usually dependable William H. Macy).  Macy’s manager, it seems, is banging one of the hotel’s switchboard operators, played by Heather Graham.

Then there are the other characters.  We meet the one-dimensional, bigoted restaurant manager, played by Christian Slater, who does not let his minority workers vote for reasons that seem legitimate (most of them are illegal immigrants who could not legally vote in the first place).  Macy, of course, fires Slater after engaging in dialogue of would-be stirring and rousing convictions.  Then we have the workers under Slater, two Latinos (played by Freddy Rodriguez and Jacob Vargas) who hate the fact that they have to work another double shift.  One is especially sore that he’ll be missing Don Drysdale’s hopeful sixth consecutive shutout for the Dodgers (gee, I wonder if we’ll get a scene where the racist restaurant manager and the minorities will bond by listening to the game on the radio while at work…yup!).  Mixed in is a metaphor for passive resistance to whitey by - you guessed it - Laurence Fishburne, who dishes out Morpheus-like musings on peace and harmony for mankind like he just read them off of fortune cookies.

And then on to the other characters.  We get the drunken singer who slowly grows to learn that…hey…she’s a mean drunk and that she abuses her husband.  She’s played by former Brat Pack star Demi Moore and her husband is also, fittingly, a former Brat Pack star as well, played Estevez.  Emilio’s Daddy , Martin Sheen, is even in for the ride as a middle aged depressed man who has an attractive younger wife (Helen Hunt, not looking all that young) who is forced – gasp! – to take her shopping for black shoes because she forgot to bring them to wear with her black dress for the gala later that day.  They bond while shopping and realize their real love for one another.  Yippie!  Finally, we have the story of two AWOL RFK campaign workers (Shia LeBeouf and Brian Geraghty) who waste their day doing drugs supplied by the LSD induced Ashton Kutcher, the latter who gives a performance that truly typifies irritating.  Whoops, silly me, I almost forgot Anthony Hopkins playing the retired hotel worker that reveals how his marriage fell apart because he was really married to the hotel.  How heartbreaking!

None of these characters are compelling.  None of these characters are involved in sub-plots that amount to anything meaningful and worthwhile.  None of these characters add anything of substance to the larger and more tragic story of Kennedy’s death.  In all, BOBBY is as witless and lethargic as daytime television.  What’s truly disheartening is to see good talent be wasted in inconsequential roles that demand little of their actual talent.  Most of their individual parts are so sketchily developed that – when they all spiral together in the end of the film and some of them are also victims of stray bullets from Kennedy’s assassin – I found it next to impossible to really care about any of them.  The final moments that shows Kennedy’s fateful speech to the crowd followed by his shooting is undeniably strong and sad, but it is everything that came before it that is so bathed in moronic soap opera suds that I found it hard to care.  BOBBY proves that star power alone can indeed create a monotonously dull film going experience.

If there is anything that Estevez does right it is in his portrayal of Bobby himself.  He wisely reveals the man for the iconic figure that he is.  He is seen in shadows and blurry shots in the background behind the principle actors, which reinforces his larger-than-life-stature.  Furthermore, Estevez utilized stock historical footage of Kennedy speeches and his travels on the campaign tour.  Watching a few of these clips made me wonder why Estevez did not just simply make a retrospective documentary about his fallen hero.  Certainly, there is enough footage to be salvaged and enough people that could contribute commentaries to the piece.  After sitting through BOBBY it’s abundantly clear that this would have been a much more fitting tribute to the man.

Emilio Estevez’s would-be stirring, heart-warming, and inspirational fictional-historical film BOBBY deserves modest merits for placing Robert F. Kennedy as being one of the more significant political voices of the 1960’s.  The fatalistic flaw of the film is that it attempts to revisit history by fictionalizing it in the form of 22 unnecessary characters that are all so vastly undeveloped and hackneyed to the point where the celebrities stand apart more than their roles do.  What’s even worse is the fact that BOBBY’s claptrap and clichéd-ridden theatrics do a sharp injustice to the legendary legacy of RFK.  Instead of being a virtuoso exercise in revisiting history for a better understanding of it, Estevez feels that the best way to remember Bobby Kennedy is through the eyes of an endless series of pointless stock characters whose stories bare little emotional and relative weight.  BOBBY wants to be a powerful and assured ensemble character drama, but it plays madly like Robert Altman for Dummies.  For a work that pains to lament on the lost idealism of the 1960’s and the downfall of one of its champions, Estevez’s BOBBY is excruciatingly inert and embarrassingly mediocre.  The film is a less-than-subtle NASHVILLE wannabe from a filmmaker that simply is not skilled enough to make something so polished.  BOBBY is a sad film, but in unintentional ways.

Read hundreds of reviews of current and classic films at CrAiGeR’s site:

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***1/2  out of  ****

Tony Scott’s newest thriller, DÉJÀ VU, is a highly respectable return to form for a director who has seen his last few films fall deep into the depths of mediocrity.  It is also proof-positive that you can still tell an old-school and dime-a-dozen police procedural in new and fresh ways.  DÉJÀ VU has its foundations on a remarkably far fetched concept that often borderlines as being asinine, but it is nevertheless held marvelously together by two key elements: A tense and involving script that creates genuine intrigue and forward momentum and yet another solid performance by Denzel Washington that sells the ludicrousness of the film’s premise by his down-to-earth and rock-steady charisma.

It should also be mentioned that this is Tony Scott – at least if you include his recent resume of films – at his most refreshingly restrained in years.  Instead of letting MTV inspired visuals and frantic, vomit inducing editing draw attention to themselves, Scott lets his camera settle down for most of DÉJÀ VU and instead lets the story and performances move the picture forward. 

Scott has come under fire from me in recent years, especially for his predilection for unnecessary stylistic flourishes.  Films like MAN ON FIRE (also with Washington) felt over-directed, as did 2005’s DOMINO, one of the biggest messes of that year where its wanton desire to disorient the viewer with its kinetic and hyperactive cinematography and editing could have easily caused epileptic seizures.  Those last two films mentioned reaffirm a steadfast belief of mine that if you tell a story simply with a less-is-more approach, then that often is the best choice.  Past Scott films, like the Quentin Tarantino written TRUE ROMANCE from 1993 and the submarine thriller CRIMSON TIDE from 1995 (again, also with Washington), revealed his dedication to story and character first and horrendous visual overkill second.  DÉJÀ VU also demonstrates this point.

More than anything, DÉJÀ VU has a glorious and inspired time dealing with the so-called phenomenon of…yes…déjà vu.  You know, that ever so subtle – but perseverant – sensation that something momentary that we have experienced, or said, or have heard, feels so eerily familiar, like we have been witness to it before.  Sometimes the feeling is fleeting.  Oftentimes, it sticks with us, but it is nevertheless there.  That’s déjà vu.  Scott’s film has grander aspirations with using that sensation for greater storytelling purposes.  At least to a few of the characters in the film, there is a distinct reason why some people experience déjà vu. 

Déjà vu - at least in the film - coincides with time travel.  Well…kind of.

I don’t believe that I am exploring spoiler territory here by mentioning that the film utilizes the premise of temporal travel.  It is made abundantly clear in the film’s advertising campaign, which continues to demonstrate how modern studios are giving away way, way too much in an attempt to lure people into the cinemas.  Certainly, the time travel aspect of DÉJÀ VU would have been a legitimately surprising plot twist in the film if no preconceived knowledge of it existed in my mind before seeing it.  In a way, this in one of those films that could have actually worked even more successfully if the intricate details of the plot were kept under wraps.  Nevertheless, Scott and company revealed too much in the trailers, but this does not necessarily preclude that the film is negligible.  Far from it. 

I will give huge kudos to the screenplay (written by Bill Marsilii & Terry Rossio) with at least coming up with a very unique and interesting manner to incorporate time travel in their film.  The concept has seen the light of day in many forms through the years.  There were the time traveling cyborgs from the TERMINATOR films, not to mention the time traveling DeLorean from the BACK TO FUTURE trilogy.  Then there was one of the most ingenious and hypnotic of all of the recent time travel films, 2004’s PRIMER, which dealt with the nature of paradox and multiple planes of time in logical ways. 

Many films shy away from the nature of paradox in time travel sci-fi.  Obviously, if one labors away at dissecting these types of films, the logical loopholes that they reveal are large and frustrating (see last year’s laughably bad A SOUND OF THUNDER, where it had paradoxical plot holes that were cringe inducing).  However, the best films of this genre know impeccably how to (a) acknowledge the paradox phenomenon of time travel and (b) not focus too much on them to the point where the film’s narrative falls apart.  DÉJÀ VU, in fact, occupies much of its running time on dealing with paradox, but no so much that it drains out our overall enjoyment of the story.  The film’s pacing, direction, and performances are so grounded and confident that one is willing to forgive the fact that – yes – if you scrutinize the film, the nature of paradox ultimately undoes it all completely.  Yet, DÉJÀ VU is so compelling and slick that it’s really hard not to surrender to it.  It’s outrageous, but impressively mounted and told.  It’s also wickedly entertaining and exciting.

Like all good thrillers, DÉJÀ VU does an exemplary job of establishing the crime, introducing us to the participants, and then throws the audience a plot twist curveball to raise the stakes even more.  The film opens in February 2006 in New Orleans, a city still recovering from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina (this is the first film to be produced in the city since the disaster).  Unfortunately for the Big Easy, they will face another catastrophe.  A ferry that was just on its way out of its pier suddenly explodes in a hellish fireball, killing over 500 voyagers, including members of the military and their wives and kids.  Of course, in our paranoid post-911 age, terrorism is seen as the likely cause.

Enter ATF agent Doug Carlin (played in one of those quintessentially effortless performances of conviction and determination by Denzel Washington) to investigate.  Carlin is a remarkably astute detective with some really keen observational skills.  He looks for things that even the trained eye could miss.  Carlin’s initial assessment of the bombing points to something perhaps more homegrown, and his skills are so sharply assured that he comes under the admiration of special FBI agent Pryzwarra (the effectively underplayed Val Kilmer).

Pryzwarra runs one of those highly elite and enigmatic “secret” agencies whose first assignment is the ferry bombing.  They have special…how can I say it…methods to track down who the bomber is and how he committed the crime itself.  Carlin, being an inquisitive chap, decides to allow himself to be recruited into this FBI agency and follows Pryzwarra to his special headquarters.  When he arrives there he discovers the astonishing.  The government has developed a way to view anything that has happened within a specific geographical area – from any angle – in the city within the last four days and six hours. 

Essentially, imagine one of those STAR TREK-like view screens that is able to give you a shot from any perspective of…say…your home from a period in the past.  It’s a time travel big screen TV with limitless camera possibilities.  Pryzwarra explains to Carlin that they are able to do this by combining multiple feeds from different satellites.  Sure.  Uh-huh.  Carlin does not buy into either.  The FBI tech agents spill the beans that they have indeed created a time portal and they explain it in manners that I cannot possibly rephrase here to make it sound logical, only to say that their explanation is filled with enough techno-mumbo-jumbo to make it sound like it was possible.  Throw in Einstein, the words worm hole, temporal, time planes and so on and you get the idea.

Being a man that discerns every single detail of a crime scene, the FBI’s time traveling view screen intrigues Carlin.  It even grows more intriguing when he discovers that there is a connection between the murder of a young woman named Claire (the beautiful Paula Patton, who stole Halle Berry’s DNA) and the bombing itself.  It is here where the Carlin character grows Hitchcockian in a VERTIGO kind of way.  Like Stewart’s character in that film, Carlin becomes obsessed with the woman, wanting to track her every move and action.  Having the temporal big screen TV helps a lot.   This sets in motion some if the film’s most inspired set pieces, one of them being one of the most unusual car chase scenes I’ve seen.  I always love it when a film can show a standard action sequence that I have seen endless times in the past with a clever twist.

It seems that the FBI’s time travel device has a limited range.  When they want to follow the bomber (played in a chilling performance by Jim “Jesus” Caviezel) in the past in his pickup truck their cameras loose their feed.  However, they have a Hummer with a special headset with a mini-view screen on it that covers one of the eyes of its wearer.  Carlin takes the vehicle, drives to the out-of-range area, and the camera feed picks back up to that point in time.  Now, with his one eye on the camera – while driving - he is able to see the past where the bomber is driving his truck in front of him speeding away.  With his other unobstructed eye he sees the road in the present, with no bomber eluding him.  Sounds confusing?  Well, you just have to see it.  It sure is nifty.

DÉJÀ VU works so efficiently on so many divergent levels.  Firstly, it takes the standard elements of a police thriller and mixes that in with a murder mystery and then further meshes that with a science fiction tale.  The film reminded me considerably of Steven Spielberg’s MINORITY REPORT, a cop thriller that also involved time travel, albeit in the form of looking into the future.  The pleasure of DÉJÀ VU is that it effectively marries its divergent pieces in a manner that never lets one overwhelm the other. 

The premise of the film, at its core, is time travel, but the sheer absurdity of it never casts a shadow over the story and characters.  If anything, the time travel elements in this story add a whole new dimension to the quest of the hero to investigate the murder and the bombing mystery as a whole.  The film is patient and does not needless go for scenes of bombastic action.  Instead, as Carlin picks up clues and begins to put the pieces together, we grow to see the larger picture with him.  This is made even more clear when he himself time travels to the past (c’mon, it was inevitable) to gain an ever greater sense of the truth.  All of this culminates in a third act that is suspenseful, chilling, and – especially in the final scene – kind of haunting.  Let’s just say that the film has a very swift and calculating manner of ensuring that Carlin from the past never manages to visit or cross paths with Carlin from the future. 

The story is well told and void of excessive frills, which is all the more shocking considering that the usually stylish Scott is behind the camera.  The way he curbs his past tendencies with the camera and instead tells the film in a much more straightforward manner is noteworthy and commendable.  A film this dense that jumps backward and forward in time demands more visual restraint, and Scott dials it all down appropriately.  The film works even better because of Washington’s portrayal of Carlin.  Again, Washington displays how he is able to command the audience’s buy-in even in the midst of a fantastical storyline.  DÉJÀ VU may not be a believable thriller, per se, but it is made all the more believable in the manner Washington sells the performance.  Yes, Washington has played roles like this in his sleep before (as he did is Spike Lee’s wonderful INSIDE MAN from earlier this year), but few other actors play the parts so convincingly.

DÉJÀ VU is a real mind-bender of a thriller that plays efficiently as Sam Spade meets Philip K. Dick meets Alfred Hitchcock.  It takes the trappings of a police story and fluently joins that with an out-of-this world time travel premise that further creates even more genuine intrigue and thrills.  The film has some mighty chasms of logic that the viewer must perilously jump across through its 128 minute running time, but DÉJÀ VU is able to command us to take its joyously tension-filled ride and never look back for unnecessary explanations in common sense.  Once you are willing to go with the film’s underlining premise of time travel and not go out of your way to pick holes in it, then DÉJÀ VU emerges as one of the more intrinsically inventive genre pictures in many a moon.  The film takes risks and makes gambles, especially when it sharply segues from contemporary cop whodunit to reality-defying sci-fi action picture.  The ingenuity of the film is grand, and its follow-though – with slick and solid direction and strong performances – helps make DÉJÀ VU a sci-fi thriller that feels more emotionally grounded than its defiantly implausible premise lets on.  The secret may be Denzel Washington, who is a strong enough presence in any film to make the unbelievable feel believable.

Read more reviews by one of Western Canada’s most prolific on-line critics at:

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***1/2  out of  ****

In terms of definitively tapping into the fragile mindsets and troubling emotions of his characters, Mexican born director Alejando Gonzalez Iñárritu is arguably one of our most raw filmmakers.  The themes that he has presented in his films are universal constructs, most notable how human beings – as a result of their differences – are unable to communicate with one another in meaningful and constructive ways.  

Despair, sadness, and despondency with subtle hints of hope permeate his past works, like his 2000 debut film AMORES PERROS and his masterful character study, 21 GRAMS from 2003, which was a stunning and brilliantly executed film that many critics (including myself) forgot to mention on their best films of that year (Sean Penn’s performance in MYSTIC RIVER from the same year stole some of its thunder).  Now comes BABEL, which marks Iñárritu’s self-imposed conclusion of his collaboration with screenwriter/novelist Guillermo Arriaga.  Like their other two previous films, BABEL is a film of stunning clarity on human tragedy and the disparities that exist between people that span continents.  It’s penetrating, absorbing, powerful, and fiercely moving.  It certainly moved me.

Anxiety breathes throughout BABEL, as it did in AMORES PERROS and 21 GRAMS.  All of the films in question undeniably have the same stylistic trappings that tie them together, the most specific being non-linear and fragmented storylines with divergent characters that all seem unrelated but ultimately correlate through time.  Now,  Iñárritu is surely not the first filmmaker to tackle this sort of esoteric and unconventional story structure (films as far ranging as PULP FICTION, MEMENTO, and last year’s Oscar winner for Best Picture, CRASH, have all flirted with disjointed narratives).  Yet, Iñárritu is one of the those rare filmmaking creeds that is able to make his penchant for multi-layered and disorderly stories seem less like exercises in redundant style and more like necessary elements to the development of the story’s underlining tone and mood.  This is truly felt in BABEL, especially when one considers that his broad and far-reaching storyline spans the globe from Morocco, Tokyo, Southern California, and Mexico. 

Like CRASH, BABEL focuses intrinsically on how people from different cultures in our apparent age of tolerance and acceptance are still unable to communicate effectively with one another for common goals.  This disharmony that humanity continues to experience haunts Iñárritu’s film.  Media experts like Marshall McLuhan foresaw our world being developed into a “global village.”  What BABEL seems to tell us is that – no matter how similar people from across the world are in terms of their experiences and hardships – we have a very long way to go towards becoming a truly harmonious global family.  The brilliance of the film is how it displays how culture prejudices and wild and baseless bigotry often clouds something as simple as the truth.  Reality can often be deceptively clear, but we often go out of our way to make it murky.

What, for example, is easier for some to believe – that an American tourist was the victim of a terrorist’s sniper bullet in a foreign country or that they were simply the victim of a innocent child that was, unfortunately, playing with a rifle?  Simple answers and explanations are hard to come by for the characters in BABEL, which is what I guess makes the film oftentimes heartbreaking to watch.  It’s hard to be a “village” when our willingness to emphasize our differences, not our similarities, hinders our world’s ability to bind together.  Compassion is a distant entity in the film; only bad judgment while trying to survive by the skin of our teeth seems like the only means of existence.

To reinforce this cultural and ethnic divide,  Iñárritu tells multiple stories from different vantage points that all inevitably link together in the most subtle ways in terms of the similar themes that are saturate through them.  All of the stories within the film – at their core – are about families and how parents relate – for better or worse – to their children.  All are potent and emotionally charged for their own reasons, but the film works like a symphony in how it’s all put together.  All of the families come from different levels of wealth and ethnic backgrounds, but the universality of their dilemmas seems constant. 

Like “the butterfly effect”, the film also explores how one seemingly small and inconsequential event on one side of the world can have disastrous effects on the other side.  The snowball effect the film creates is extraordinary, but believable.  For instance, the fairly trivial gift of a gun that a Japanese business man gives to his Moroccan friend leads to one American woman being shot; a Mexican woman being stranded in a desert; her eventual discovery by border authorities whom later deport her back as an illegal immigrant to the US; two young children being stranded in the desert; and also to the death of one young child.  The point here is clear: Iñárritu is saying that we are tied together in the world through the most minute of actions, but it is these tiny activities that act as catalysts for our greater, more far-reaching inability to connect with one another.  We fail to see our commonalities, and often the consequence for this is literally the death of those we care about.

On these themes, BABEL is a most memorable and transfixing film that really stays with a person hours after viewing it.  We emotionally relate strongly to all of the stories in the film and it’s surprising how we relate to those that are distant cultures removed from us.  There are no “good guys” or “bad guys” in the film, nor are their deaths deliberately telegraphed or premeditated Some of the deaths are at the result of twisted fate, chance, and pure indirect accidents in logic.  On this level, BABEL works magnificently. 

However, if one studies the film on a basic level, it is very easy very early on to see exactly how all of the pieces to its narrative jigsaw puzzle fit together.  There are times when the film’s obviousness is so apparent that it drowns out some of its authority.  It’s as if Iñárritu and Arriaga think that they are smarter than they actually are with the multiple stories, trying to impress us with what they see as an abstract and highly interpretive piece of filmmaking.  Whereas AMORES PERROS and 21 GRAMS were Cubist paintings, BABEL is more like a simply painted landscape or still life.  Deciphering BABEL is relatively simple.  The sheer predictability of how the story unfolds and how characters relate to one another is the film’s only really shaky and irritating element.  I found myself thoroughly engaged in each of the little stories – they are little masterpieces in their own ways – its just how they all fit together and how easily they do that hinders the film.

Aside from the film’s blatancy and telegraphed story threads, BABEL is still whole-heartedly compelling.  The film tells four stories in all.  The first one shows two young children (Said Tarchani and Boubker Ait El Caid)  in Morocco whose father (Mohamed Akhzam) has purchased a gun in order to shoot wild animals that threaten his sheep herd.  While out tending to their grazing sheep one day one of the brothers coaxes the other to test the boasted range capabilities of the rifle (they are having doubts that it can hit a target up to three kilometers away).  So, one boy aims for a bus.  He fires a shot and thinks he has missed.  The bus suddenly stops.

This leads to the second strand of the film that involves an American couple, Susan (Cate Blanchett) and Richard (Brad Pitt) who are on vacation in Morocco.  It is this couple that are on the bus that was shot at by one of the Moroccan youths and it is actually Susan that is hit.  Her injuries are life threatening and there is no hospital in sight.  When they finally reach a village and get some modest medical aid, the story has hit the American embassy and news headlines are flashing around the world that Susan was the victim of a terrorist attack.  The Moroccan youths  and their father – realizing the gravity of their situation - flee from the authorities, perhaps with the understanding that they will find it difficult to explain to anyone what actually happened.  Meanwhile, Richard tries desperately to save his wife’s life, all while keeping in touch back home in America to ensure that his two young children are well looked after with him as his wife being away.

This leads into the third story of BABEL that concerns an illegal immigrant named Amelia (Adriana Barraza) who has worked for Susan and Richard for years and could aptly take claim to having raised their son and daughter on her own.  When Richard calls her to reveal what has happened to Susan he begs for her to spend a few extra days tending over his kids.  The problem is that her son is about to be married soon back in Mexico.  She can’t obviously miss the wedding, but she also just can’t simply leave the children behind as well.  As a result, she decides to take the kids with her and – with the aid of her wild-eyed nephew, Santiago (Gael García Bernal) - heads down through the border so they all can make it to the wedding.  The two kids (Elle Fanning and Nathan Gamble) don’t seem too keen on the whole idea, and Santiago does not like it either, maybe because his Aunt is an illegal immigrant and that crossing the border with two American kids may prove difficult.  When they do, in fact, try to return home from the wedding, their situation makes a turn for the absolute worse.

The final sub-plot - and, in my mind, the most memorable and sad - involves a deaf-mute Japanese teen name Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) who is trying to cope with her mother’s recent death and with a world that she has difficulty communicating to.  Her mother was a close and warm-hearted figure in her life, but now that she is gone all she has left is her father (Kôji Yakusho), who is cold and distant.  He tries hard to establish good relations with his troubled daughter, but he can’t seem to get through to her.  In a desperate desire to reach out to people on a meaningful and emotional level, Chieko engages in a series of chilling and unnerving acts that involve her being increasingly vulnerable and sexually promiscuous.  Her willingness to essentially prostitute herself out to any faceless man is pathetic, but she is more of a lonely and troubled soul than a deviant one.  Her story and her father’s boomerangs back to Morocco and the gun, but this occurs – as mentioned – in manners that will hardly take anyone by surprise.

Again, the way in with which al of the stories relate is nothing altogether unexpected, but each of them work stupendously as little short films.  The performances in all of them are universally solid and exceptionally.  Cate Blanchett is very effective in her tricky and limited role as a grieving and mortally wounded wife, and Brad Pitt has never looked more withered and world weary – not to mention old - as her distressed and demoralized husband.  Pitt gets considerable attention for being a pretty boy, so it’s really all the more gratifying to see an underrated talent wipe away any semblance of ego and vanity by immersing himself in his role.  Beyond the obvious star power in the film, the real standout performance comes from Rinko Kikuchi as the sexually repressed and tortured Japanese teenager who is looking for love and acceptance.  Her story is debatably the most stirring and gloomy and it’s especially alarming to see how much she exploits herself to get what she feels is understanding and attention.  Considering the emotional tailspin that she goes through and her spiritual journey, Kikuchi’s performance can be seen as tender, poignant, risky, and courageous.

Alejando Gonzalez Iñárritu won Best Director at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and after watching the gripping, tragic, and haunting BABEL, the accolade seems justified.  The film is a very worthy – if not slightly flawed – final film in his “death” trilogy that continues his predilection towards multiple, non-linear storylines and divergent characters whose similarities also reveal unwanted differences.  With superbly written stories within the larger story, impeccable cinematography (from BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN’S  Rodrigo Prieto, who creates some truly memorable and tense visuals), forceful and authoritative direction by Iñárritu that has a sense of urgency and pathos, and some great performances by the leads and an astonishing performance by one of its supporting players, BABEL overcomes some of its insecurities and becomes  a richly nuanced assemble piece.  It reinforces the notion that our worldwide multiculturalism is also an unfortunate inhibitor of a greater – and more widespread – understanding of how we relate and perceive one another.  The film is despotic in terms of it showcasing its characters on the verge of decay, but it ultimately has slight stands of compassion and hope that can be extrapolated.  In this way, BABEL is brutally honest and tragic, but it’s also cautious and sincere about its subject matter and worldview.  For that, the film is another ambitious triumph for Iñárritu, who is emerging as one of cinema’s most gifted and unique new voices.

Read more reviews by CrAiGeR, one of Western Canada’s most prolific on-line, critics at:

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***1/2  out of  ****

When the Ian Fleming created his fictional secret British secret spy, Commander James Bond, I have doubts that he truly realized the scope, brevity, and popularity of his character.  After a series of novels and short stories, twenty major – and official – feature films, as well as a tidal wave of comic books and computer games, it’s abundantly clear that this super double agent is among the most cherished and consistently popular figures in all of modern fiction.  Nobody does it better.

Fleming created his spy way, way back in 1952 while he was on vacation at his Jamaican estate called – yes – the Goldeneye.  By the author’s own admission, Bond was named after an American ornithologist of the same name who was an expert on Caribbean birds.  However, the true inspiration for 007 came from a real spy -  Dušan Popov, a Serb double agent that worked for both the British and Germans.  Popov was also widely considered a promiscuous playboy that flirted incessantly, so it’s no wonder where Bond got his womanizing ways from.

So, if Fleming was not an avid bird watcher, then perhaps one of the key fictional characters of the 20th Century would have never been created.  Since Fleming liked birds and owned a copy of the real James Bond’s field guide, the fictional James Bond began to take shape.  Why the name Bond?  In Fleming’s own words, he wanted, “The simplest, dullest, and plainest sounding name” he could find.  He wanted him to be “a neutral figure – an anonymous blunt instrument wielded by a Government Department.”   Within no time Fleming’s agent would see the living daylights through a series of very successful novels and short stories.  When Fleming died in 1964 the further adventures of Bond were still realized on the page, but like most popular books today, movie adaptations seemed inevitable.

Amazingly, there are now 21 films of James Bond’s adventures that have made it to the silver screen since Sean Connery made a splash as the character in 1962’s DR. NO.  These films – produced by EON pictures – are considered Bond “canon” (there was one American film adaptation of Fleming’s first novel and there was also a largely forgettable big screen remake of the same book starring David Niven as 007).   Up to now, five actors have played James Bond with varying degrees of success and popularity.  The first was Connery (1962-1971), largely worshipped as as the cinematic James Bond.  Then there was the vastly underrated George Lazenby who starred in one the best least seen Bond entries in 1969’s ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE.  Then there was Roger Moore (1973-1985) - the Bond I grew up with - who I would consider a close second to Connery.   Timothy Dalton (1987-1989) – not everyone’s favourite Bond, but somewhat close to Fleming’s vision of the role – came after Moore.  Then, of course, came our most recent and – in my mind – most overrated of the Bonds, Pierce Brosnan, who made some respectable 007 adventures that started to veer a little of course into large scale spectacle more than they should have.

Now, meet the new James Bond: Daniel Craig.

After seeing this newest version of CASINO ROYALE – BOND  21 and the first Bond picture since THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS to use a Fleming story for inspiration – I may be setting myself up for a lot of criticism by saying, unequivocally, that Craig just may be the best James Bond to hit the screen.

Now, okay, I am not saying that he is necessarily better that Sean Connery (some could construe that as being as sacrilegious as saying that THE PHANTOM MENACE is better than THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK).  Yet, I must make my delineation very clear here.  Connery is the best movie James Bond.  Daniel Craig is – by far – the best Ian Fleming James Bond to appear in a film.  If one considers that Fleming’s original vision was to create an “anonymous blunt instrument” that was cold, detached, somewhat ruthless, and cunning, then Craig most certainly fits that bill better than Brosnan, Dalton, Moore, Lazenby, and – yes – even Connery. 

The glorious aspect of CASINO ROYALE is that – like last year’s BATMAN BEGINS – it completely and spectacularly reboots an aging franchise that was slowing beginning to demonstrate a real lack of ingenuity and gusto.  That is not to say that the last few Bond films were not financially successful and popular (the last Brosnan film was the highest grossing 007 film ever), but the franchise was staring to leave me feeling wearier than I was accustomed to.  Surely, the players behind the camera have not changed much.  The producers are all the same (Michael G. Wilson and Barbara – son of Cubby – Broccoli).  Two of the writers of this film wrote the last two Bond films (Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, with a script re-write by two time Oscar winner Paul Haggis).  The director of the film (Michael Campbell) has also helmed a previous Bond film, Brosnan’s first one, GOLDENEYE.  The people envisioning this new, retrofitted James Bond for the 21st Century are all – collectively, at least – veterans of the franchise.  It a testament to their open-mindedness and willingness to be daring with something as cherished as Bond is to moviedom to completely reinterpret the character. 

This is not another entry into the past Bond canon and mythos.  This is not so much BOND 21 as it’s the very first James Bond film in a new series of films.  This is an origin story of who Bond is, how he got his 00 status (note to viewers: he has to get two field kills, in any manner possible), how he developed his ruthless skills as a spy, how he developed a curious disdain for members of the opposite sex for being only useful for all manners sexual, and – yes – it even goes out of its way to showcase how and where Bond got his first Aston Martin.  CASINO ROYALE cheerfully and audaciously throws the entire series that has preceded it out the window and has started utterly anew and fresh.  The makers are not messing with cinematic apple pie, metaphorically speaking.  Rather, they’re just adjusting the ingredients and how the recipe is put together.

Truth be told, there are a lot of Bond elements that purists will find missing.  Firstly, and most crucially, there are no outrageously conceived gadgets.  Instead, this new Bond uses guns, knives, and his prowess and muscle.  There is no sarcastic and acerbic Q to create such toys or to mercilessly criticize Bond.  The new Bond would never put up with Q’s bickering.  There is also no Miss Moneypenny for Bond to flirt with.  There are no fantastical action set pieces that border on pure make-believe and fantasy.  There is plenty of action in this new Bond, but it’s more rough and viscerally frantic, chaotic, and bloody (which may be simultaneously an ode to both Fleming and to another new and enjoyable action/spy hero, Jason Bourne).  There are no buxom lasses with IQ’s that could not match their show sizes for Bond to procreate with.  The new Bond women have brains as well as assets.  They are more of a difficult catch for Bond’s pursuits.  There are also no cartoonishly silly looking evil villains that want world domination and to see Bond be placed in an elaborate and exotic trap that they hope will lead to his satisfying death…like putting him into a pool of water with ill-tempered, mutated sea bass.  Er…wait…wrong franchise.

The most crucial - and welcome - difference is Bond himself, and as played in a performance of raw, tenacious bravado, tenacity, and pure refined testosterone by Craig, this 00 agent is one fierce and ruthless killing machine.  Craig – at least at first – may seem like an atypical choice.  He’s not sexy, per se, like Connery’s charming spy.  He dies not have the cheeky and sharp-tongued wit like Moore’s version.  He’s not soft spoken and suave like Brosnan’s.  Nope, Craig’s Bond is probably the closest approximation to what Fleming originally envisioned.  With his chiseled, boxer-like physique, his world weary and battled hardened face, and his piercing and penetrating blue eyes – Craig is definitely not a fancy pants, pretty boy Bond.  His Bond is much more concerned with taking out his victims first and lashing out with the sly and droll quips a distant second.  He’s vicious, arrogant, reckless, and wickedly amoral, especially when it comes to having sex with married women (his self-professed favorite kind).  This is the cinema’s most remorseless Bond, one who kills without thinking too much about it and does not give a damn when waiters ask him whether or not he wants his martinis shaken or stirred.  He does not give a damn.  This Bond is pure no-nonsense.  He has a cruel and detached charisma, which kind of makes him that much more exciting and invigorating as a character. 

CASINO ROYALE – aside from its revolutionary handling of it’s main attraction – also does an exemplary job of staying fairly faithful in tone and plot to the novel.  ROYALE was Fleming’s first Bond novel and shows how Bond has completed the requirements for 00 status (this is presented in a nifty introductory black and white montage which subsequently converts to color for yet another inventive and catchy title sequence).  His superior, M (one of the few staple Bond elements to reappear here, and still played by Judi Dench) seems convinced that Bond is not ready for the spy game just yet.  Bond’s first real mission is to track down a financial subsidizer of terrorism in the world.  The opening scenes of the film demonstrate Bond’s intelligence and sophistication as a detective, as he follows clues and hints to places like the Bahamas to Miami. 

He soon learns the real identity of his prey, Le Chiffre (the quietly menacing Mads Mikkelsen) who – through his own financial backer – is going to enter a very exclusive, winner take all, no limited Texas Hold ‘Em game at the famed CASINO ROYALE in Montenegro.  Of course, Bond is the best poker player at MI6, so M decides to get him bankrolled an in the game asap.  To watch over him is an accountant named Vesper Lynd (played by the luminous and fetching French star, Eva Green, who just may be the sexiest on screen accountant in recent memory).  Her and Bond have a nice meet cute.  She introduces herself as “The Money,” to which Bond dryly retorts, “Yes, every penny.”  Needless to say, Bond faces some nasty competition – and a few allies – at the game, where it soon becomes apparent that Le Chiffre will only loose to Bond over his dead body…literally.

CASINO ROYALE does have some familiar elements.  This may be a more aggressive Bond film, but it still manages to have nicely placed bits of humour (Craig’s Bond is not a campy charlatan of verbal jabs like Moore’s was, but he still manages to engage in some funny wordplay well placed one-liners.  One is a real howler – and very self referential – where he tells Vesper Lynd that her alias at the poker game will be Stephanie Broadchest.  Also, when he finally dishes out the character’s famous introductory line – which is incidentally the last line of the film  - it’s a golden moment. 

Aside from the film’s sense of humor (this is not a completely rigid and stone cold Bond), CASINO ROYALE arguably presents the most fleshed out, humanized, and vulnerable James Bonds since the 1960’s.  The emotional arc the character goes through is broad, not to mention the physical one (this Bond is tortured by the villain in one sick scene in ways that you would never imagine any of the other Bonds going through).  Craig’s Bond is also not flawless and completely debonair.  He makes mistakes and the consequences are sometimes dire (remember: he’s a new 00 agent).  Bond gets thrown around a lot in the film and dishes out equal amounts of lethal force.  Previous Bonds barely broke a sweat in their films.  After many moments of mayhem in CASINO ROYALE, Craig’s Bond looked like he just went the distance in an Ultimate Fighting title match up.  He’s often bruised, bloodied, and exhausted.

More importantly, his relationship with women is more delicately handled and sophisticated.  Much has been mentioned about how Brosnan modernized Bond (plllleeeaase), but this new Bond meets his intellectual equal in Vesper Lynd.  She is an unqualified babe, but she’s not that eager to jump into the sack with him.  The film has the time to develop their cat and mouse relationship slowly and patiently.  She fights off his charm and Bond needs to work overtime to win her over.  This new approach to the female/Bond dynamic is kind of refreshing and intriguing.  Vesper is not his sex toy that he will glibly forget in the morning.  He actually grows to really love her and this all leads to a final act that – despite being a bit too dragged out for its own good – develops real, palpable tension and suspense, not to mention that it leaves Bond a very susceptible prey.   Our personal buy-in and resonation with the character is CASINO ROYALE’s most noteworthy trait. 

Daniel Craig and the people behind the camera have achieved nearly the impossible with CASINO ROYALE.  They have taken a hallmark and essential character in the annals of cinematic history and have drastically and successfully reinvented him to starve off redundancy and stagnation in the 21st Century.  Obviously, messing around with a persona as identifiable and as loved as James Bond may seem like a dubious task, but CASINO ROYALE is like a much needed punch to the gut of the franchise as a whole.  Icons, no matter how cherished, are always ripe for reinterpretation and alteration, and Craig’s stirring ferocity and grizzled humanity that he brings to Bond proves that change is not only a good thing, but should be welcomed.  Sure, some die-hard fans may miss Q, Miss Moneypenny, the dastardly super villains with henchmen named after killer sharks, and the gee-whiz spectacle of the Bond of old.  Yet, many of them will find it hard to argue with CASINO ROYALE’s insistence on taking Bond more sternly and seriously.  This new Bond is still flirtatious and smirky, but he has a license to kill and seems very keen on using it.  With a 50-plus-year-old character that has a newfound and tightly coiled intensity and determination in the form of its new star - not to mention a faithfulness to author Ian Fleming’s original perception of the character - CASINO ROYALE is a wondrously entertaining and qualified triumph.  It deserves serious accolades for making something so old and familiar feel so new.   This is not the best Bond film in years, but in decades.

Read hundreds of other reviews of current and classic films by Saskatchewan’s leading on-line film critic at:

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***1/2  out of  ****

I like Will Ferrell.  A lot.  He is incredibly funny.  He’s made – in my mind – two of the goofiest films of the last few years in ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY and TALLADEGA NIGHTS: THE BALLAD OF RICKY BOBBY.  He’s a remarkably broad physical comedian.  When I say “broad” I essentially mean that he seems willing to go out of his way to dumb himself down to any low level for a laugh.  For that, he is a hilarious man. 

I have laughed at some horrendously inane things that have come out of his mouth in his films.  I roared when his Ron Burgundy tried to tell a female reporter than women have pea sized brains and are “dirty pirate hookers” from “Whore Island” based on scientific facts.  I also lost it just as much when his Ricky Bobby plunged a knife in his non-paralyzed leg to convince his friends - and himself - that he was paralyzed.  Like I said…he’s broad…but unmistakably droll.

Yet, beyond Ferrell’s otherwise capricious and daffy comic energy lies kind of a tender soul.  Even the chronic troglodytic and narcissistic apes that were Burgundy and Bobby had hearts underneath their ignorant facades.  It is this tenderness that really comes out in the forefront in Ferrell’s newest dramady, STRANGER THAN FICTION.  The one real delight in the film is in what a marked and noticeable change of pace it is for this master funny man. 

His character, Harold Crick, is a nice, calm, soft-spoken, apathetic, and wholesome person.  He is not a larger-than-life cartoonish buffoon.  He is a real person with hopes, aspirations, and feelings.  Surprisingly, in Ferrell’s hands one would expect this character to be as over-played as possible for all of the Ferrell-purists out there.  The most edifying aspect of STRANGER THAN FICTION is the poise, grace, and understated way that he creates a unique and interesting persona.  I never thought that I would say this in a review, but Will Ferrell gives one of the best performances of the year in the film.

This is not Ferrell’s first foray into playing roles straight and semi-serious.  He was very decent in Woody Allen’s terrific 2005 film MELINDA AND MELINDA, which chronicled the same story told from two different perspectives - comic and tragic – and then tried to decipher for itself what life tended to lean towards.  STRANGER THAN FICTION works a lot like that.  Is life a series of bad, tragic setbacks or is it one ripe with spirited and comical overtones?  That is the existentialist dilemma that Harold Crick goes through, and Ferrell gives such a textured and subtly nuanced portrait. 

He’s a lot less Jerry Lewis-esque here.  His work in FICTION owes more to carefully understated – yet funny – performances by actors like…say… Jack Lemmon and Steve Martin.   Outwardly he’s funny, but inside there is a poignant heart.  To see Ferrell so well reigned in for the proper comical and dramatic effect here is a revelation.  This could be the start of a decent dramatic career for the actor on the level of Robin Williams, who became much more effective and – ironically – funny when he played against type.

Beyond the character of Crick – who is wholeheartedly original – the other great element to FICTION is in its premise.  To call it surreal or absurdist is an understatement.  It’s also inventive and unique; kind of ADAPTATION-lite.  The premise is deceptively simple: A man lives his life from one painfully routine day after another when he starts to hear a voice in his head.  The voice is not his conscious, another personality, or a higher power.  It’s a struggling author.  She – at the same time of Crick’s actual existence  – is writing what she thinks is a fictional book about a man named Harold Crick.  She is Crick’s narrator.  When he brushes his teeth in the morning with 22 strokes, she is in an office typing that description.  He essentially hears her narration like a running DVD commentary on what he is doing or thinking at any given moment. 

Why is he hearing this writer’s voice and – more specifically – how is he hearing the voice?  The great thing about STRANGER THAN FICTION is that it never once goes out of its way to engage in a lot of useless exposition.  The film – very wisely – establishes it’s strange and mystical premise and never looks back afterwards.  Attempts at explaining Crick’s amazing experience with the author’s narration is left on the sideline, and properly so.  This is a film that does not need realistic explanations.  It’s about escapism and indulging in a creative premise in the presence of interesting and likeable characters.  The film does not care about how he is hearing the voice.  All it cares about is that he is hearing a voice.  Once you accept the otherworldly premise, the rest of the film sublimely proceeds forward.

Harold Crick responds to his voice like anyone would.  Normally.  First, it’s with initial shock and befuddlement followed by doubt and suspicion.  He’s a normal guy.  He works in one of those sanitary and colorless office cubicals as a member of the IRS (“I work for the government,” he says at one point, “no one likes or respects me”).  His world is one of strident routine and mathematical scrutiny.  The director – Marc Forster – has a highly inventive visual approach to amplifying the character’s predilection to logic, measurement, and statistics.  When he his walking to the bus, for instance, counting his steps, small little graphics comes up on screen – like CNN tickers – displaying his counts in his head.  These visual touches reinforce Crick’s Vulcan-like personality.  In a world dominated by figures, he lacks human interaction.  All he has are his obsessive-compulsive impulses with data.

Crick is a sad figure, as a result.  He lives alone, goes to work alone, eats lunch alone, and goes home from work alone.  He has lived this type of static, lonely life for over ten years.  Then something very, very odd happens without warning or explanation – he starts to hear a voice.  At first, he thinks he’s hearing things.  Then, when the voice kicks in even more, he begins to look at his toothbrush with suspicion.  Despite the fact that he has no idea of the identity of the voice, it is revealed to be that of writer Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson) who is magically narrating Crick’s life in his head as he lives it.  Pretty soon he begins to realize that he is the main character in someone’s book.  A dozen Dr. Phil’s could not help this poor sap.

He does what every man that is having an author narrate his life in his head would do – he sees a shrink.  She tells him – matter-of factly – that he’s schizophrenic.  He does not think so.  “I have a voice in my head that’s narrating my life, but with a better vocabulary,” he tells the psychiatrist.  She disagrees, of course, and wisely advise drugs (can ya blame her?).  He thinks he should see someone else more knowledgeable about his predicament.  He soon visits an English professor that specializes in narrative and literature.

As the voice continues to occupy his mind at every turn, Harold has a dark secret revealed to him.  At one point the voice says. “Little did he know, death was around the corner.”  What?!  How could this be?  Could Crick literally be killed as he will possibly be in Kay’s book?  Perhaps, especially considering the fact that the same author is speaking to him in his head!  Faced with the damaging realization that the author wants to kill him in the book (but does not know precisely how yet) Crick goes to see the Professor (Dustin Hoffman) for advice as to how to deal with the voice and with his impending doom.  Obviously, the prof thinks Crick is a loon, but gives him some pointers, the most tangible being to look at his daily life and mark off elements that owe more to tragedy and what falls more into the comic arena.  Early on, at least, Crick’s life appears hopelessly and unavoidably tragic. 

To make matters even more complicated, Harold becomes involved with a local baker named Ana, played in yet another effortless and plucky performance by Maggie Gyllenhaal.  She hates any type of government stooge.  She really hates taxmen.  She has not paid her taxes because of how the government spends her tax money.  Yet, Crick tells her that she has no choice – she has to pay or else.  She, in retaliation, does everything possible to make Crick’s job a living hell.  Then something strange happens – Harold starts to fall for this icy and distant lady.  More amazingly, she begins to show some modest sympathy for the lug.  A relationship begins between the two and Crick starts to see something to really live for.  However, with his death looming around the corner and with the realization of his voice’s actual identity, he goes on a quest to meet Eiffel to see if he can stop her from killing him.  Smart move.

Well…does Crick die in the literary and literal sense?  I will not reveal that other than to say that my only real misgiving with the film is that its solution to Crick’s own internal crisis seems to betray what has occurred before.  The film showcases one possible ending which – despite being what most people don’t want to see – would be much more daring and bold, not to mention intrinsically fascinating.  Yet, the film decides to take a road most traveled approached and offers over a twist at the end that feels more like a cop out than it should have been.  I loved the build up to the ending.  I loathed the follow-through that kind of left me shaking my head.  Let’s just say the film could have achieved a level of touching and heart-rending gravitas if it went towards its initial offering of an ending.

Yet, despite its weakness in its conclusion, STRANGER THAN FICTION reveals itself to be a very pleasant diversion at the cineplexes.  The film is sweetly engaging, has solid direction by Marc Forster (a German director who made MONSTER’S BALL and FINDING NEVERLAND), a completely original and absorbing premise, and – most crucially – some very good performances that don’t ham it up too much despite the film’s ludicrous premise.  With a cast that includes such notables like Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal, it’s a real surprise indeed to see  Will Ferrell give the film’s finest performance, especially when one considers that he normally plays idiotic and mentally bankrupted goofballs.  Along with the film’s pathos-filled and fantastical storyline, Ferrell gives such a controlled, reserved, and touching performance that reflects the film’s musings on life and happiness.  Those expecting Ferrell to play an irreproachable doofus and slapstick-inspired fool in STRANGER THAN FICTION may be pleasantly surprised.  The genuine marvel of the film is how it takes his larger than life comic vitality and hones it into a tremendously focused and assured performance that plays brilliantly between both hearty laughs and sensitivity.  More than anything, Ferrell’s great performance in the film proves one long held belief of mine – less is always more.

For more reviews written by CrAiGeR, please log on to his site at:

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

****  out  ****

 “My country send me to United States to make movie-film. Please, come and see my film. If it not success, I will be execute.”

-Borat Sagdiyev

 in trailer for

BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN

Borat Sagdiyev seems like a typical, red-blooded Kazakhstanian.  He’s soft-spoken, honest, and forthright.  He has many friends, likes Disco dancing, and his sister is the Number 4 prostitute in the entire country.  He is also a TV personality for his homeland, reporting on all things underdeveloped, lacklustre, and overwhelmingly non-progressive.  He has a large family and a loving wife that is so physically intimidating and domineering that she threatens to “break his cock” if he ever becomes unfaithful.  Borat is also a staunch and faithful patriot to his home country.  Oh, he also is afraid of Jews.  He thinks they will kill him in his sleep.  At one point he states, “Although Kazakhstan a glorious country, it have a problem, too: economic, social and Jew.”

To quote its full title – BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN is a very funny film.  Even the title reminds one of other past satires – like DR. STRANGELOVE: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB – and how their intentionally long-winded titles seem in on the joke.  Is BORAT, though, one of the “funniest films of all-time” as proclaimed by one entertainment magazine that shall remain nameless (ahem, Entertainment Weekly)?

Not really.  I certainly laughed fuller and harder during early Mel Brooks comedies like THE PRODUCERS, as well as during the first truly successful spoof films like AIRPLANE!.  Dudley Moore’s performance in the original ARTHUR remains one of most hilarious that I’ve seen.  A few of the early films of The Farrelly Brothers were gut-wrenching.  Yet, BORAT deserves very worthy accommodation as being on a very short list of some of the funniest films of the last few years (two of the others being THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN and TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY).  In short, those who have been reading the film’s massive advance press may be setting themselves up for disappointment.  Surely, the film is not the most amusing film of all-time, but it is an unapologetic riot and easily the best comedy of 2006.

Beyond its obvious sight gags and scatological humor, BORAT is an effortlessly masterful social satire.  The film does not owe its existence to mainstream contemporary comedies as much as it does classic mockumentaries.  It’s a thoughtful and pointed bit of commentary on the human condition mixed in with some incredibly blue material.  In reality, think Jonathon Swift meets THIS IS SPINAL TAP meets CANDID CAMERA meets TOM GREEN meets MICHAEL MOORE and you have BORAT.  Okay, so there are a lot of ingredients in this comedic cake, but it is to Sacha Baron Cohen’s ultimate credit that he is able to pull it all of so gloriously.

More than anything, BORAT emerges as a film that gives the British (and Jewish) comedian a chance to monopolize on one of his popular characters from HBO TV’s DA ALI G. SHOW.  The character originated in short comedic set pieces on the satirical British TV show THE 11 O’CLOCK SHOW in 1998.  He’s a fish incredibly removed out of water that engages on a public tour of America to point out valuable life lessens that his socially backward people back home can learn.  Furthermore, Borat seems to constantly battle with the “Jew menace” that his countrymen face.  That is why his Ministry of Information has decided to send him to the “U S and A” – his self-proclaimed “greatest country in the world” – to learn lessons for Kazakhstan.  He targets New York in particular.  Why?  In his mind, there are “less Jews there.”  He also is highly sensitive when it comes to dealing with The Big Apple’s recent bout with terrorists.  “We decided to not take airplane should the Jews repeat their attack of 9/11,” he tells us. 

Okay, is anti-Semitic humor ever funny or legitimate?  Of course, if handled properly.  Mel Brooks successfully lampooned Hitler and Nazism with his musical within a film called “SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER.”  Ditto for screen legends like Charlie Chaplin who achieved similar satiric greatness with his GREAT DICTATOR.  Yet, BORAT seems to have really hit some people – and countries – below the belt in painful ways.  Aside from its anti-Semitism, the film has been lambasted for its portrayal of Kazakhstan and its people.  What some people forget to realize is that this is a work of satire, not a legitimate or realistic portrait of Borat’s homeland. 

Yes, Borat’s Kazakhstan looks like a country of perpetual trailer park trash, but people read too much between these comedic lines.  I am sure that the real Kazakhstan is not like BORAT’s Kazakhstan.  Furthermore, I am not sure how anyone could take offence to the film because it never takes itself seriously with its portrayals.  I can’t think of one person (myself included) that could readily locate Kazakhstan on a map, let alone know precisely what its culture is like.  It would be no different if an idiotic Ukrainian from the Canadian province of Saskatchewan went to America on a “Make Benefit” mission.  C’mon, how many of you out there can locate Saskatchewan on a map, let alone trust a film like that to be the definitive portrait of all Saskatchewanians?

BORAT is paradoxically a work that has fuelled a lot peoples’ criticisms about its racist content. Huh?  Any serious and legitimate claims that the film is inflammatory and potentially damaging should be deflected by the fact that Borat is a complete and utter imbecile.  How anyone with the power of free thought could take any of his rants sincerely is beyond me.  Borat is a fool; a spectacular moron in the same mould as Inspector Clouseau.  That character called his Chinese butler his “yellow friend,” but not because he was a malicious and mean spirited man.  He was an ignoramus and a bumbling buffoon who had no clue how clueless he was.  That’s what made Seller’s creation and Coen’s work as Borat so oddly appealing.  Both are cartoonish figures that are astronomically naive and ignorant.  It is their very ignorance and stupidity that makes them funny, not what they actual say, which is oftentimes inflammatory.

More than anything, Borat is a figure that breeds more tolerance and acceptance in other people.  He also reflects the notion that only idiots are racists.  In terms of dumb bigots, Borat takes the cake.  He is horrifically fearful of Jews, despite never having actually seen one, nor is he able to identify one if he met one in public.  He is also chronically homophobic, despite not being able to spot a gay man from a mile away, nor realizing when he has engaged in a homoerotic act.  During one of the film’s truly hilarious sequences, he visits New York’s gay pride parade and invites a few men back to his hotel for the night.  He later tells someone what a very nice time he had.  When that person sees the wholes in his story and explains to him that he spent the night performing sexual acts with gay men, Borat is shocked and appalled.  “You mean to tell me,” he responds, “that the person that put plastic fist in my anus is homosexual?”

Borat’s monumental tunnel vision and ingenuousness grows even larger as the film progresses.  Accompanied by his documentary producer Azamat (Ken Davitian), Borat’s quest takes him all over the nation on a cross-country trip in a run down ice cream truck (he wanted a Hummer from the dealer, but he was soon told that six hundred dollars would not get him a “pussy magnet” that is the Hummer).  He originally wanted to just film in New York, but fate stepped in.  While watching TV one night in his hotel room he glimpses Pamela Anderson on a re-run of Baywatch.  To him, she is a golden goddess and he must – come hell or high water – find her and marry her.  Thus begins his quest, which takes him to Washington to Atlanta through the Southern US to Dallas and finally to an autograph signing involving Anderson herself.  Incredible hilarity ensues with each of his stops on his tour.

Take one episode, for instance, where he agrees to address a capacity crowd at a rodeo and sing the US anthem.  The crowd is filled with tough southern folk, as is the case with a Rodeo promoter who candidly shares Borat’s views that homosexuals should all be “hung.”  Anyway, Borat dresses up in western garb and tries to appease the crowd by saying things like, “We support your war of terror,” and, “May George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq!”  With each increasingly grandiose statement, the rodeo crowd starts to believe that this guy is not a typical Kazakhstanian.

Consider another sequence that involves Borat visiting an etiquette instructor followed by a suave and sophisticated night of dinning with some pompous elites.  He has awkward table manners, to say the least.  Firstly, he asks to be excused to go to the washroom and then comes back with a plastic bag filled with his feces and asks where he should put it.  Then, without his dinner companions knowing, he calls a skanky prostitute to be his date for the evening.  The snobby crowd is dismayed, even more so considering that they once believed that Borat could be saved from his low-grade cultural upbringing and become “Americanized.”

Perhaps one of the more inspired and funny bits occurs when Borat and his producer get caught in the hood when they fail to know where they are going one night.  Borat approaches some black hoodlums and asks for directions.  Now, Borat does not truly like what he calls “chocolate faced” people, but he thinks they are really cool with their vocabulary and clothing, which only serves to perpetuate these ghetto stereotypes.  Later, he goes to a hotel looking for a room with his pants pulled down below his crotch all while calling the deskman every gangsta colloquialism in the book.

All of these scenes are delivered in a kind of guerrilla style of loose filmmaking, which is an incredible combination (I have read) of staged and real events.  Watching the film unfold its hard to decipher what’s real and what’s not.  Surely Borat’s visit - for example - to a Pentecostal Christian service felt too real to be fixed (their willingness to save Borat’s soul while speaking in tongues is borderline and realistically creepy).  Cohen is keeping his lips sealed, though, as to the real and unreal elements.  He even goes as far as to not do interviews or press about the film unless he does so as Borat. 

Beyond the satire, the film is irreproachable crude and vulgar at times.  Like any courageous and daring comedian, Cohen seems committed to doing absolutely anything to get a laugh, no matter how vile and silly.  Some of the humor and sight gags in the film reach a whole new level of tastelessness and bawdiness.  Boundaries of political correctness and decency are not observed in the film.  Some scenes have to be seen to be believed.  One moment, for example, has Borat get into a nude wrestling match with his morbidly obese producer when they have a “tiff.”  The scene stretches the realm of the R rating and that it has probably the only non-sexual, comedic money shot in film history.  The fight between the two gets rough, tough, and all manners closely approximating pornographic.  How BORAT walked past the MPAA without an NC-17 rating is beyond comprehension.  The fact that it got a 14A by the Saskatchewan Film and Ratings board is equally stupefying.

Yes, the film is astoundingly vulgar and crude and it’s very funny for its coarseness, but the real heart of the film’s comedy comes from Borat’s awkward interactions with typical Americans.  Oftentimes, the film is rather sharp at how prejudices and bigoted views are revealed in the subtlest ways, often without provocation.  Take the scene where Borat gets aboard an RV filled with  traveling fratboys.  These guys are drunken losers whose words indicate a strong demeaning attitude and hatred of women.  Borat does not instill these ideas in the teens; they reveal these hateful words themselves.  Also, there is one sly scene in New York where Borat wants to shake hands and kiss its citizens in a sign of friendship.  The intolerance and verbal abuse he gets is noteworthy, if not mean and spiteful.  When Borat attempts to approach one man, he flees and runs like hell from him, most likely thinking that he is a terrorist.

The point that the film is making – and yes, it has many – is that Borat is less offensive than some of the Yankees he comes across.  He is an anti-Semite and comes form a country that has many preconceived racist views, but he’s such a product of abnormal stupidity that you almost want to forgive his rudeness.  Many of the Americans he comes across are less intellectually bankrupt, but they also subtly reveal their own hurtful prejudices, like when the societal elites want to “Americanize” Borat or when the New Yorker runs away from him in a fit of paranoia…and so forth.

Perhaps the true irony of BORAT is that it has become such a target by governments as pure hate mongering.  BORAT is not trying to perpetuate stereotypes; the character is merely revealing that they exist in contemporary America.  The film makes his own country look bad, but the film is considerably more of a scathing condemnation of American ideals and customs.  It’s funny that the Kazakh government has shunned Cohen and his film for “being a concoction of bad taste and ill manners which is incompatible with the ethics and civilized behaviour of Kazhakstan’s people.” 

The film also looks poised to be banned in Russia.  Its Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography has told distributor 20th Century Fox that it will not grant permission for the “offensive” film to be shown.  For a country that pigeonholes a smart and whimsical satire like BORAT in with works of cheap pornography is kind of alarming.  The attitudes of the officials of Russia and Kazakhstan reveal their incredible predication for being humorless.  Surely these people are bright enough to know comedy and satire when it is presented to them…right?  Borat is simply too unintelligible and hopelessly clueless to be considered as a threat to anyone with a brain in their heads.  You would have to be dumber than a bag of hammers to have Borat reinforce your own bigotry.

BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN is many things.  It’s tasteless, vulgar, uncompromising and in-your-face with its politically incorrectness, grotesquely lewd, and awe-inspiringly outlandish.  Yet, the film is also such a fearlessly mounted work of gut-busting social satire that highlights and celebrates Sasha Baron Cohen’s absolute commitment to do anything to make us chuckle.  You’ll find yourself bowling over with laughter after the most shameless of exhibitionist stunts and sight gags, but the most rewarding and ambitious aspect of BORAT is how it manages to infuse some subtle social commentary throughout its proceedings.  Borat is a bigot and misogynist, but his own narrow-minded and deluded spirit often reveals the shortcomings of others.  For that, BORAT works as all great works of social satire do:  They make you giggle and think about its material.  To quote the title character, “’BORAT’ is great funny movie-film that I liked much.  It’s was very nice.”     

Read hundreds of reviews at the site of Saskatchewan’s most prolific on-line critic at:

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

CrAiGeR’s RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW SERIES: 

****  out of  ****

“Injun will chase a thing till he thinks he’s chased it enough. Then he quits. Same way when he runs. Seems like he never learns there’s such a thing as a critter that’ll just keep comin’ on. So we’ll find ‘em in the end, I promise you. We’ll find ‘em. Just as sure as the turnin’ of the earth.”

- Ethan (John Wayne) in THE SEARCHERS

THE SEARCHERS was John Ford’s 115th feature film.  That in itself is a streak of prolific filmmaking that will likely never be eclipsed.  Consider also that – when he began shooting the legendary western – he was already a four-time Academy Award winning director (again, a feat that will likely not be bested).  His career began in 1914 and he started to direct films in 1917.  He would eventually go on to become one of the most admired, cherished, and influential directors among the Hollywood and critical elite.   It’s hard to find another director in the last century of the cinema that could take claim to having such an all-encompassing sphere of influence that Ford had.  Within ten to fifteen years of THE SEARCHERS debut a brand “New Wave” of filmmakers hailed it as the film that influenced them the most.  Considering that the list of this talent includes everyone from Paul Schrader, Steven Spielberg, John Milius, Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, George Lucas, and Martin Scorsese is noteworthy in itself.

In the annals of the western genre, some critics have hailed THE SEARCHERS as its greatest achievement.  Recently, Entertainment Weekly proudly placed it high on its list of the Greatest Films of All-time.  The film has dated, to be sure, and our collective consciousness responds to its themes a bit differently today than the audiences of 1956, but THE SEARCHERS is Ford’s greatest film and – without a doubt – a masterpiece.  It was a revisionist western before the word was even a thought in one’s mind and without the film there would have been none of the future’s other classic, masterful revisionist westerns, like Clint Eastwood’s THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES and his landmark UNFORGIVEN.  It also could be readily argued that THE SEARCHERS’ influence spanned even beyond the genre itself.

There are clear-cut echoes of the film in other works of such varying narratives.  The virtues and moral and ethical codes of Ford’s western can easily be spotted in films like Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI, which the director himself admitted was an Eastern meditation on Western themes.  Even consider films that are such polar opposites, like George Lucas’ STAR WARS: EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE, where its hero’s journey discretely hints at the journey of THE SEARCHERS’ main character.  STAR WARS has often been called an intergalactic western in space.  Some of Lucas’ images very much reflect and pay homage to Ford’s film.  An early moment in A NEW HOPE - which shows a befuddled and shocked Luke Skywalker return to his farm homestead to see his family killed and his home burnt to the ground - eerily echoes a similar scene in THE SEARCHERS where it’s hero returns home to see his family destroyed.

Perhaps even more clear cut is the similarities between THE SEARCHERS to the films of Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese, more specifically, their 1976 collaboration, TAXI DRIVER.  A cursory examination of the film may not yield any correlation with Ford’s film, but the more one views TAXI DRIVER the more THE SEARCHERS appears to be a very strong inspiration.  The quest of THE SEARCHER’S main anti-hero, Ethan, strongly mirrors the obsessive quest of TAXI DRIVER’s Travis Bickle.  It can be easily argued that Bickle is the more sociopathic of the two, but both characters seem born from similar material. 

Both live in societies that are decaying.  Both live in worlds where the only clear cut sign of empowerment is wanton violence and force.  More crucially, both men engage in their own self-congratulatory and righteous missions to save women that they feel are in need of a savoir.  Both men are also isolated loners who see that the only escape from their disparity is to embark on moral quests.  For Ethan, it is to rescue his teenage niece who he feels has been kidnapped and turned into something abnormal and inhuman by Native “savages.”  For Bickle, he also tries to save a young teenager from what he sees is a lifestyle of dehumanizing influence.  In his case, he is trying to rescue a hooker from her pimp.  Finally, in both men’s cases, there are some subtle hints that both women are not entirely in need of saving, which further accentuates the men’s own fierce determination and fanatical impulses.  

That is what separates THE SEARCHERS from other westerns that came before it.  It marked a definite turning point in the western genre, which in itself was on a downward spiral in terms of widespread popularity.  The film, like most of Ford’s famous works, is applauded and loved for its cinematography and Vista Vision images of the natural environment (no one framed the ethereal and gorgeous red stoned rock formations of Monument Valley like Ford did).  Yet, beyond the film’s incredible stunning visuals are themes that dig deeper and resonate equally deep where other westerns dared not to go. 

THE SEARCHERS, at its core, was a reflection on racism and bigotry and how one’s own self-destructive and morally backward outlook on society gets the better of him.  The film also deals with the notion and identity of the American character in the midst of untamed wildernesses of post-Civil War life.  More than anything, the film’s protagonist, Ethan, mixes his own depression, anger, guilt, and bigoted views together to fuel his desire to be a savoir.  There is a complexity to the nuanced themes that made THE SEARCHERS a very atypical western by 1950’s standards, which I guess is what makes it even more absorbing today.

The film has also been labeled as being almost Homeric in terms of it telling of a story that involves an odyssey.  That comparison is apt, in my mind.  The narrative is a meandering and epic journey of psychological torment and warped ideology.  Ethan lets his hate and anger spawn his own odyssey and journey to “free” his niece from Natives.  His quest spans over five years.  Nothing stops this man, not his advancing age, or the longevity of the journey, nor even the harsh elements itself.  Deep down, he has to find and save this girl from a society he deems as horrific for its sadism.  The film’s tagline alone on its poster speaks volumes about Ethan’s journey:  “He had to find her…her had to find her…he had to find her.”

Now, it has also been argued whether or not the film was liberal minded for its time about its portrayal of racism and bigoted attitudes about Native Americans.  Does Ford chastise Ethan’s fanaticism or celebrate it?  It is clear that the film’s so-called “hero” is ethically unsound and morally loathsome.  He’s a jerk.  There are two ways to do things in his mind – his way or no way.  Ethan’s impulses are brought upon by unyielding hatred of Indians and the thought of his family being impregnated by their unholy lifestyle.  There is nothing modest or altogether wholesome about Ethan’s yearning to save his niece.  Yet, THE SEARCHERS comes across as being oftentimes ambiguous, which makes it even more intriguing.

Certainly, the film is more emotionally and thematically complex than the other westerns of its time.  Certainly, most genre pictures leading into THE SEARCHERS portrayed Native Americans in a less than hospitable and magnanimous manner.  Ford’s film, at least, tries to dive into some heated waters that other films never did.  To our 21st Century eyes, Ethan is a vengeful, hateful, and despicable SOB that allows his prejudicial world view cloud any sense of decency that he could have had.  It’s interesting to decipher whether 1950’s audiences – pre-Civil Rights era – where inclined to share similar reactions to the film.  I think that, to a small degree, the film played off less as an exploration into racism than it did a romanticized western of gallantry and heroism to the 50’s viewers.  Perhaps it also did for Ford and its main star, John Wayne, who up until his involvement in THE SEARCHERS was the very epitome of good, old fashioned American gumshum, courage, and heroism.

Wayne may have won his first and only Oscar decades later for TRUE GRIT, but his performance in THE SEARCHERS remains his finest and most indelible.  Wayne is often unfairly criticized as a “bad actor.”  Those nitpicky critics miss the point altogether.  Wayne’s enormous strengths as an actor were neither in his vocal range nor in his overall breadth as an actor.  The man had very little range, per se, as an actor.  However, Wayne was a masterful performer in terms of being a presence on screen.  Sure, his line delivery was often stilted and wooden, but he often compensated for these deficiencies by his larger-than-life visage.  The Duke may not have been able to achieve notoriety as a “great” thespian, but no one in the history of the cinema had his on-screen vitality.  When the Duke set out to save his niece in THE SEARCHERS, you believed he was gonna die trying.

More significantly, Ethan represents Wayne at least attempting to play darker, edgier roles than he did in the past.  He starred in an unbelievable number of films under Ford’s tutelage before SEARCHERS - nine to be exact.  I think that the key to THE SEARCHERS’ overall effectiveness is primarily in terms of the scope and rugged forcefulness of Wayne’s performance in it.  He is the anchor to the whole enterprise.  Without his world-weary, beguiled, and spiteful performance, the film would grind to an unsatisfying halt.   Wayne already had made his name synonymous with the Western in films like THE BIG TRAIL, THE SPOILERS, RED RIVER, THE THREE GODFATHERS, THE FIGHTING KENTUCKIAN, STAGECOACH, FORT APACHE, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, RIO GRANDE, and HONDO.   However, THE SEARCHERS was a stark turning point for the actor.  For the first time, he played a role that did not instantaneously inspire our hero worship.  Ethan was an anti-hero who was eventually forced to let his racism lead him down a path to damned isolation and loneliness.  Wayne always professed that Ethan was his favourite and best character he ever played in his 50-plus year career.  He even named one of his sons Ethan in homage to the film.

The film was based on a novel of the same name and was adapted for the screen by Frank S. Nugent.  The novel, by Alan Le May, was first serialized as a short story in the fall 1954 issues of the Saturday Evening Post.  Its first title was “The Avenging Texans” and it had many similarities with the film’s script in terms of concerning a Comanche kidnapping of a white girl in Texas in 1838.  The film mirrors this story and adds to it the obsessive quest of Ethan to save the white girl.  Made even direr is the fact that Comanches murdered most of his family and burned their home to the ground.   

Ethan, reaching a boiling point, sets out to rescue his niece.  However, he does not want to rescue her in the conventional sense.  He will rescue her by shooting her dead when he finds her.  Why?  Because, in his mind, she has become some sort of hell spawn of the devilish Comanche.  Again, Ethan’s journey can invite simultaneous condemnation and admiration, depending on you point of view.  Should we admire the man?  After all, in the film’s famous last scene - where he embraces Debbie (Natalie Wood) - there are some that point out that the character is redeemed; hence, his journey was just.  Yet, the man is so twisted leading to that point that one could easily debate whether it’s right to root for him in the first place.

Ethan was a Confederate soldier who takes great pride in bragging that he never surrendered.  After the war he becomes a lonely wanderer.  At the film’s opening he arrives at his brother Aaron’s (Walter Coyt) and his wife Martha’s (Dorothy Jordon) home.  Ethan is damaged goods, to say the least.  When he meets Martin (Jeffrey Hunter) he reveals his bigotry by stating that he thought he was a half-breed.  Martin claims to be one-eighth Comanche.  To Ethan, any inkling of Indian blood is more than he likes.  The story reveals that he rescued Martin when Indians killed his family and he left him with Martha and Aaron to be raised.  When the home is destroyed and Debbie is missing.  Martin desperately wants to help Ethan, but he remains persistently rude and inflammatory towards him throughout the mission.  It’s hard to embark on a quest of revenge when one of your party members – albeit very slightly – reminds you of the enemy.

Their quest continues for years.  Throughout it all Martin begs for Ethan to show mercy on Debbie, who he plans to ruthlessly gun down.    Martin asks for Ethan to show restraint.  He wants her to be alive when they find her.  Ethan is stubborn and will not see any way out of his quest.  “Livin’ with Comanche’s ain’t livin’,” he screams back at one point, utterly typifying his hatred and indignation of Natives as a whole.  I think that, for the first time, THE SEARCHERS presented a legitimate and obvious racist in the form of its main character.  Other films have had subtle hints here and there, but Ford’s film reveals it to be that much more obvious and evident.  This film focuses so much more on this element.  In hindsight, Wayne’s choice to play such a vindictive and unruly lot can be seen as courageous on his part.  Wayne built a career of playing chivalrous crusaders, so Ethan in THE SEARCHERS represented such a decided change of tone and place for the actor.  And – yes – he does not kill Debbie in the end, but is he really saved?  He takes Debbie home with him, but is he honestly any less of a bigot?

Beyond its themes and rich characters, THE SEARCHERS remains a seminal visual masterpiece that only Ford could construct.  He had such a gift and unprecedented ability to frame his westerns in luminous and sprawling vistas.  He often made use of Monument Valley and his compositions showed a painterly love of the scenery.  His command of the camera and using it to reveal mood is also noteworthy.  Just look at the scene where Ford reveals Ethan’s reaction to his family killed and their home burned to the ground.  Perhaps my favourite single shot occurs at the end.  Much like Eastwood would do later his own films – like UNFORGIVEN – Ford shot Ethan from the POV from inside of the home looking outside. The home inside is dark and shadowy and frames the lonely figure of Ethan set against the landscape of the wilderness in the foreground.  The composition here says a lot about the character.  Ethan is framed by the darkness of the home’s doorway, which is a reflection on his deluded soul.

Much of John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS had aged rather obviously.  Some of the subplots seem silly now and many of the supporting performances are stilted and awkward.  Yet, THE SEARCHERS should be viewed in modern context as one of the greatest and influential of all the westerns, if not a watershed film in the history of the medium.  It represented its legendary director at the peak of his narrative and directorial powers.  Furthermore, and most importantly, THE SEARCHERS emerged as Hollywood’s first revisionist western where plucky idealism and spirited values of the frontier hero were radically altered and changed. 

THE SEARCHERS also presented John Wayne not as the hero but almost as a subtle villain, a deplorable racist that embarks on a fixated and zealous mission that is fuelled by his hatred of Native Americans.  This type of character and the issues surrounding him are nothing new to today’s audiences, but they were fundamentally fresh and new in 1956.  That’s what makes the film so strong even 50 years after its release.  Its willingness to embark on social commentary in the western genre during a time when these types of films were more about black and white heroes (white men) and villains (Natives) is its most powerful trait.  Ford’s film deconstructed this narrow-minded sensibility about the relationship between pioneer settlers and Native Americans.  And, yes, The Duke gives a great performance.  Not by relative standards, but by his standards. 

For more retrospective reviews of classic films, log on to CrAiGeR’s site at:

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***1/2  out of  ****

MONSTER HOUSE seems to have its sensibilities more in tune with slasher films and teen comedies than it does your average family film.  If anything, this just may be one of the most atypical computer animated films that I certainly can recall.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that its story revolves around houses that come to life to eat people with glee and young characters engaging in hilarious dialogue about various parts of the human anatomy. 

There is one exchange between two pre-pubescent kids that is a real howler.  While the two of them are in the demented - and very much alive - home, she looks up at a chandelier while it is moving and screaming.  “There, that must be its uvula,” she spouts out as she sees the chandelier vibrate.  Her ignorant male companion responds, “Oh…so this is a girl’s house?”

MONSTER HOUSE is very wisely rated PG for “scary images and sequences, thematic elements, some crude humor, and brief language.”  That, however, should not in any way shape or form be some sort of damaging demerit when looking at the film’s quality.  This is not one of those squeaky clean, sanitized Disney animated clones that would appeal to those under five and no one else.  In the annals of great family entertainments the best films of the genre appeal to everyone in the audience, both young and old alike.  MONSTER HOUSE, on this very level, is a fantastic achievement. 

It’s an animated film with eye-popping visuals and a fantastic aesthetic eye, so both young tykes and adults can appreciate it.  The youthful characters are plucky, witty (well, mo