2/22/14: Doing it For Yourself (Oscar Bait, Part 7)

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1980's, 2013 Academy Awards, 86th Annual Academy Awards, Academy Award Nominee, Academy Award Winner, Academy Awards, AIDs, AZT, based on a true story, Best Actor nominee, Best Actor winner, Best of 2013, Best Supporting Actor nominee, Best Supporting Actor Winner, biographical films, bull-riding, character dramas, cinema, clinical trials, Dallas Buyers Club, drama, film reviews, films, gay community, HIV, homophobia, Jared Leto, Jean-Marc Vallee, Jennifer Garner, Matthew McConaughey, Movies, Rayon, rodeo, Ron Woodroof, Steve Zahn

For all intents and purposes, we like to pretend that the world isn’t as cruel and ruthless as it really is. We’d like to think that no one truly falls through the cracks, that there’s always some sort of safety net out there if people are just willing to look. It may not be the most ideal support, we’d like to think, and people may not be able to live in the exact manner of their choosing but beggars can’t be choosers, we reason. At the very least, we’ve always thought, truly sick people should be able to have access to medicine: no one should just be allowed to sicken and die, particularly if there’s something that can be done about it. Right? If we’re being dead serious with ourselves, however, we don’t believe that anymore than we believe in unicorns or the Bermuda Triangle.

In reality, vast expanses of the populace, of every populace since the beginning of time, have been marginalized, pushed to the fringes and forced to rely only on themselves for their well-being. These populaces vary from society to society, country to country, culture to culture and state to state but they’re always painful reminders of one cold, simple fact: whenever anyone needlessly dies, equality is nothing more than a feel-good bedtime story. Anytime an individual is brushed off by the established order and left, essentially, to die, we see the failure of the status quo. In these situations, it becomes necessary for brave individuals (or groups) to fight for their own rights, health and well-being. This need to fight doesn’t necessarily reflect society at its best but it sure does make for some riveting cinema and Dallas Buyers Club is gripping from start to finish.

Based on a true story, Dallas Buyers Club wastes no time in introducing us to our protagonist, rodeo bull-rider and general gadfly Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey). Ron’s the kind of guy who likes to live life to the fullest: threesomes behind the scenes of a bustling rodeo, conning his fellow riders and getting his ass beat in the process, hovering up cocaine by the yard, saying the first thing that comes to his mind. There’s absolutely nothing altruistic about our “hero”: within very short order, we’ve determined that he’s a virulently homophobic, crooked man-child who couldn’t give two shits about anyone else in the world. He’s the kind of good ‘ol boy who sneers when it’s revealed that Rock Hudson is homosexual and dismisses HIV and AIDS as a “gay disease.” He’s also the guy who ends up with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, thanks to his numerous, unprotected sexual escapades.

Doctors give Ron just thirty days to live but he’s a stubborn cuss and won’t go softly into that good night: “Fuck your 30 days, motherfuckers: ain’t nothing can kill Ron Woodroof in 30 days!” Ron celebrates his “ridiculous” diagnosis by immediately rushing out and having a coke-fueled orgy with his best friend Tucker (Steve Zahn) and a couple “lucky” ladies. Once the seriousness of his situation finally settles in, however, along with the realization that all of his friends and associates have abandoned him, Ron must get to the very serious business of staying alive. Drug trials offer scant hope: kindly doctor Eve (Jennifer Garner) can’t guarantee that Ron will actually get the AZT rather than the placebo. Time and time again, Ron is faced with the terrifying notion that no one really feels they can cure him: everyone seems to be waiting for Ron to die so they can study him.

A chance meeting with an AIDS-infected transexual named Rayon (Jared Leto) sets into motion a chain of events that sees Ron go around the world to pick up experimental, “unauthorized” HIV/AIDS drugs and distribute them to patients through a club of sorts” the Dallas Buyers Club. In short order, Ron and Rayon’s club is doing boomer business and Ron’s health seems to be improving. Dark clouds appear on the horizon, however, when the DEA, IRS and AMA all get wind of what’s going on. Will the Feds work to shut down the only thing that seems to be keeping Ron and Rayon alive? Is Ron an opportunistic con-man or a saint in redneck clothing? If Ron gets shut down, what will become of the rest of the Dallas Buyers Club?

By the time I saw Dallas Buyers Club. I had already seen a handful of other Best Picture nominees for 2013: American Hustle, 12 Years a Slave and Captain Phillips. Of these four films, Dallas Buyers Club was easily my favorite and, in fact, probably one of the best films I’d seen in quite some time.  There’s an awful lot to love in Dallas Buyers Club: the film looks great and has a gritty, earnest eye for period detail; the script is razor-sharp, full of sharply delineated characters and plenty of juicy dialogue (especially some of Ron’s bon mots); the ensemble casts fits together like a jigsaw piece, each actor (both major and minor) working together to paint a complete picture; the film has a big, epic scope yet still brings everything down to a personal, relatable  level; the film is deeply emotional and powerful, yet never maudlin, obvious or hysterical. It’s a beautifully made, powerful work of art that hits on a number of levels yet never loses the inherent dignity and passion of its characters. And then, of course, there are those towering performances by McConaughey and Leto.

Even before he was given the Best Actor statue at the Academy Awards, I already knew that McConaughey had earned it. His performance as Ron Woodroof is nothing short of a revelation: angry, charming, obnoxious, feral, frightened…Woodroof is an open-nerve, the unbearably loud voice of the disenfranchised screaming at maximum volume. There’s absolutely nothing about McConaughey’s performance that ever feels like acting or, to be honest, anything less than completely authentic. At times, it’s impossible to watch, since the pain radiates from the screen in waves. At other times, it’s impossible not to watch, since McConaughey seems to attract all matter and attention to him in the same matter that a black hole might. Ron Woodroof is an amazingly conflicted character and McConaughey brings him to life in all his multi-faceted glory. Bruce Dern was amazing in Nebraska and Chiwetel Ejiofor was heartbreaking in 12 Years a Slave but, for my money, McConaughey gave the single best performance of the year, hands-down.

Leto’s performance as Rayon, although not as multi-faceted as McConaughey’s take on Woodroof, is a pretty spectacular piece of craft. Leto becomes the character so completely that, just as with McConaughey’s performance, I bought it all absolutely. Despite how good Leto was, however, there were still several moments that felt too “actorly” and performed, moments that were more wholly-integrated in McConaughey’s performance. I chalk this up to one fact, plain and simple: Leto just isn’t the actor that McConaughey is, at least not yet. It’s impossible for me not to feel, at least in some small way, that Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips) ultimately deserved the trophy more than Leto. While Leto gave a humble, nuanced and tender performance, it still felt like a performance: Abdi, on the other hand, never felt anything less than completely authentic, even if his role didn’t have the emotional beats and arc of Leto’s. Nonetheless, Leto’s performance is extraordinary and, in any other Oscar year, would have been my pick, as well.

In many ways, Dallas Buyers Club strikes me as the anti-American Hustle. Both films are period-pieces about the disintegration of the American dream and both feature characters who must pull off elaborate hustles in order to survive. While American Hustle strikes me as weightless and inconsequential, however, Dallas Buyers Club reminds me more of films like Boogie Nights and Goodfellas. There are certain films that just impact me more than other films and Dallas Buyers Club was one of those films: by the time the end credits rolled, the film felt like a masterpiece and something deserving of the term “classic.” When American Hustle was over, however, I only found myself entertained: truth be told, I’d already forgotten about several key moments days after first watching it. Dallas Buyers Club, however, stuck with me for days and I can still it so clearly that I might as well have watched it days ago, not weeks ago.

Despite being a film about the terrible ravages of AIDS, Dallas Buyers Club is a fiercely vibrant, alive, angry film. There is nothing melancholy or morose about this: like Ron Woodroof, Dallas Buyers Club isn’t interested in feel-good sentiments or gauzy hand-holding. There’s nothing stereotypically “heroic” about Woodroof: he’s a selfish jerk and he knows it. He also, however, refuses to give up, refuses to lie down just because the odds aren’t good. He refuses to listen to “experts” who’ve written him off, friends who’ve turned their back on him and a society that looks down on him. Ultimately, Ron Woodroof couldn’t give two shits whether you like him or not: he’s not asking society’s permission to live. Ultimately, Ron (and Dallas Buyers Club) stand as towering testimony that the spark of life can never be truly extinguished as long as the will to survive is strong. Dallas Buyers Club was a profoundly moving experience and was, without a doubt, one of the very best films of 2013.

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2/20/14: Love Among the Leeches

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1950's films, Academy Award Nominee, Academy Award Winner, Africa, auteur theory, based on a book, battleship, Charlie Allnut, cinema, classic movies, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, gin, home-made torpedo, Humphrey Bogart, Jack Cardiff, James Agee, John Huston, Katherine Hepburn, leeches, missionaries, Movies, Rev. Samuel Sayer, riverboats, Robert Morley, romance, romantic films, Rosie Sayer, steamboat, The African Queen, the Louisa, war films, World War I

Any discussion of the greatest cinematic romances of all time must, invariably, include John Huston’s classic 1951 adventure The African Queen. In fact, short of classic film couples like Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy or Clark Gable/Vivien Leigh, Humphrey Bogart and Hepburn’s romantic turn may be the first couple that film buffs normally think about in this regard. That being said, it’s interesting to note how far Huston tends to tilt the film in the direction of white-knuckle adventure vs “falling in love.”

By this point in film history, the plot of The African Queen (adapted for the screen by Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Agee, who also wrote the screenplay for Night of the Hunter) should be familiar to just about anyone. Rose Sayer (Hepburn) and her brother Samuel (the always excellent Robert Morley) are missionaries stationed in East Africa during the onset of World War I. Local riverboat captain Charlie Allnut (Bogart) drops by to inform that the Germans are on the move and that they should (probably) abandon their posts. Determined to stay, the Sayers soon realize that even good intentions and God can’t stand in the way of the rampaging Germans, particularly once they burn the village (and church) to the ground and beat poor Rev. Sayer.

After her brother dies, Rose goes with Charlie, ostensibly to relocate to safer territory. Instead, the headstrong Rose has determined that she and Charlie should single-handedly take on a nearly impenetrable German fortress and one completely badass German battleship named the Louisa. The Louisa, you see, is the key to the German control of East Africa and would be quite the fight for another battleship. Attacking a battleship with a rickety riverboat? Why, that’s just crazy talk! Rose, however, knows two things like the back of her hand: she’s too damn stubborn to ever admit defeat, regardless the odds, and she’s fallen head-over-heels in love with the slovenly, equally pig-headed Charlie. Will love and a boat full of explosives be enough to thwart the German troops? Will Charlie and Rosie ever stop arguing long enough to kiss?

As a youngster, The African Queen was (easily) one of my parents’ favorite films and something that they seemed to watch about as frequently as I watch my favorite films…which is to say, quite often enough to make neophytes sick and tired of the whole thing. I was never a big fan of The African Queen but I’ll freely admit that this had as much to do with me as the film: as an avowed Clint Eastwood/Charles Bronson fanatic, Huston’s modest little war pic was always going to have an uphill battle in the “Make Phillip’s blood boil” sweepstakes. Nonetheless, even though I wasn’t a huge fan of the film, there was still always one scene that got my complete and undivided attention: if you guessed anything besides the leech scene, you probably didn’t know pre-teen/teen me very well. As a kid into ooky, gooky and icky things of all sorts and sizes, particularly those that paraded across the big/small screen, things didn’t get much ickier than the bit where Charlie emerges from the river only to find himself covered in those slimy little bastards. I still get a chill every time I think about that scene, which certainly must say something as to the film’s staying power.

Re-watching The African Queen as an adult certainly reinforced one thing that my adolescent self managed to miss entirely: despite what I initially thought, there’s plenty of action to be found in Huston’s jungle journey. This isn’t to say that the film’s reputation as a romance is undeserving: there’s still plenty of lovin’ to go around. My initial memories, however, ended up being pretty unfairly weighted: between the numerous “over the rapids” scenes and the incredibly tense moment where the German fortress first catches sight of The African Queen and proceeds to bomb the living crap out of Rosie and Charlie, there isn’t much fat (if any) on the film.

In fact, if anything, I actually found the romantic angle to be a bit too comfortable and rather cliché: the scruffy bad-boy falls in love with the prim-and-proper good girl and changes his life for the better. Hepburn and Bogart spend so much time feinting and verbally sparring around each other that their inevitable falling in love seems more a fact of sheer exhaustion than any kind of aligning of the stars: they’re too tired to keep fighting, so they may as well smooch. Perhaps I’ve become numb to this type of character development since I’ve seen it so many times over the years but this aspect of the film definitely struck me as routine and “by-the-book.”

If I have trouble affording The African Queen the same amount of esteem that other critics do, however, I have absolutely no problem in extolling the films many (many) virtues. Bogart is pretty great, even though my favorite role of his will forever be Angels with Dirty Faces: he won the Best Actor Oscar for the performance, which ended up being his only win. Hepburn is absolutely perfect as the starched-stiff Rosie, although her transformation into a moony-eyed, swooning schoolgirl seems rather an odd fit.

The cinematography, by DP Jack Cardiff, is astounding and immediately impressive: some of the shots here are pretty enough to frame. There’s a real sense of grandeur to some scenes, such as the first glimpses of the mighty German fortress and the massive Louisa, which makes Charlies African Queen look like a wooden rowboat. Cardiff really makes the African locations pop and the various shots of local wildlife (such as the eye-popping scene where dozens of sunning crocodiles slide into the river) really set the scene and help blur the line between what was filmed in-studio and what was shot on location. Production-wise, my one complaint would be with the musical score, which often struck me as both too whimsical and too intrusive. It reminded me a bit too much of the overly leading scores in modern films, scores which seem to want to control ever audience reaction/emotion.

More than anything, I’m glad that my re-evaluation of a classic film has led to new appreciation for said film. While The African Queen will never be my favorite John Huston or Humphrey Bogart film (or Katherine Hepburn movie, for that matter), I still found myself thoroughly entertained and swept up in the action. If you’ve never seen The African Queen before, do yourself a favor and get acquainted: if your heartbeat doesn’t race at least a few times, you may already be dead.

1/27/14: You Had to Be There

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'80s punk rock, Academy Award Nominee, Academy Award Winner, Academy Awards, biopic, British Prime Minister, cinema, conservatives, Denis Thatcher, Film, growing old, historical drama, love story, Margaret Thatcher, Meryl Streep, Movies, Phyllida Lloyd, politicians, Ronald Reagan, the Falklands War, The Iron Lady

History, we’re told, is written by the winners. This is, I assume, because the losers are currently pushing up daisies and otherwise occupied. Nonetheless, there really are two sides to every story and it would often surprise us to see how poorly those two halves fit together. We may think we know the myriad reasons or provocations behind any number of historical incidents but, in reality, most of us just weren’t there (if you were there, anywhere, for anything, then this certainly doesn’t pertain to you: just keep on as you were before). We can guess, we can speculate, we can play arm-chair quarterback and backseat driver until the cows come home but, at the end of the day, it changes nothing: most of us just weren’t there, no matter what it is we’re talking about.

There have been few public figures (and almost all of them politicians, let’s be frank) that have been as divisive a presence as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. On the one hand, Thatcher was England’s first female Prime Minister, no small feat in the notorious boys’ club that is British politics. She was, by all accounts, passionate about her causes and politics, something that isn’t always evident in other politicians. She also helped to usher in an age of prosperity for England in the ’80s, although there were certainly costs. On the flip side, there was a very good reason why punk rock in the UK flourished under Thatcher’s reign, the very same reason for the boom in U.S. hardcore during the Reagan years. Both were considered paragons of their respective conservative parties, diligently pursued military actions as the ends to the means and managed to raise an army of vocal antagonists, individuals willing to riot, protest and do whatever was necessary to halt what they felt was the rapid slide into fascism.

As a film, The Iron Lady attempts to present both disparate halves of the coin that was Margaret Thatcher yet uses a technique that seems to unduly weight the outcome in her favor. Structurally, the film begins with Thatcher as an old, doddering retiree, going to the local convenience store to purchase some milk, just like any old pensioner. She returns to her modest flat where she engages in spirited conversation with her husband, a sweet activity made suddenly sad by the realization that he’s not actually there: he’s been dead for some time and Maggie is now completely alone, left with only the memories of her past and her husband’s “ghost” for company.

Throughout the film, the action moves between two parallel timelines: Thatcher in the present, trying to finally dispose of her dead husband’s long stored possessions, and Thatcher, in the past, on her road to Prime Minister. The effect is interesting, more so when one realizes how much the “present” material dilutes our perception of Thatcher in the “past.” Any time the audience seems to be at risk of developing more negative attitudes towards Thatcher, the film cuts back to the present and drops us back into her very sad current struggles. The effect is akin to trying to discipline a puppy days after the incident: you may have been mad at the time, but the puppy doesn’t remember what happened now and you probably won’t, either, have it wiggles its ears at you. In other words, its pretty impossible to hold young/middle-aged Thatcher’s politics/actions against her when we’re presented with the sad, lonely figure that she’s become.

In many ways, then, The Iron Lady functions more as a love story than a biopic. We follow Thatcher’s courtship of and eventual marriage to Denis Thatcher (played ably by Harry Lloyd in the past and quite wonderfully by Jim Broadbent in the present), a relationship that weaves in and around Margaret’s political career. Since the film tends to spend so much time in the present, with a distinct focus on the bittersweet idea of Margaret finally learning to let go of her dead husband, it can often seem as if the story of her rise to power is of secondary importance.

This is not to say that the filmmakers whitewash the issue in any obvious way. There is still plenty of discussion regarding Thatcher’s labor-busting policies, tendency to squeeze the middle class into extinction and disastrous war in the Falklands. We see plenty of protesters mobbing her vehicles and hear plenty of venomous slurs tossed her way. The overall impact, however, tends to be diluted when we immediately cut back to old, doddering Margaret looking sad as she contemplates her husband’s old clothes. A purely chronological story, one that began with a young Margaret and moved forward to her old age would have been an entirely different story, methinks, or at least one that provoked a bit more confrontation.

As it is, The Iron Lady really stands for one main reason: as yet another showcase of Meryl Streep’s nearly unnatural abilities as a performer and mimic. Her portrayal of Thatcher is so spot-on, so uncanny and intuitive, that it really puts to rest any question as to the true intent of the film: this is, first and foremost, an acting showcase for Streep. As always, she’s impeccable, bringing her usual array of tics, mannerisms and piercing glares into play in a way that never, for a moment, had me doubting that I was actually watching Thatcher. Streep is exceptional in a film that seems very content to plow a middle-ground without much over-due antagonism.

The biggest problem, as mentioned earlier, is that The Iron Lady is really two films jammed together: a historical biopic and a sad relationship film. Separately, either story would have had some genuine pathos and emotional resonance. Mashed together, however, both storylines seem to get shafted, with neither one allowed to be fully developed.

At the end of the day, perhaps The Iron Lady is supposed to transcend the notion of personal history and politics, pointing out the uncomfortable fact that, at the end, we’re all going to dodder around and miss our loved ones, regardless of the impact we’ve made on the world at large. It’s no doubt true but there’s still a part of me that wishes that this talented cast and crew would have dug a little deeper, done a little more than cast a gauzy, sentimental gaze over a very powerful public figure.

Ah, well…I guess you had to be there, after all.