10/15/14: All in the Family

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31 Days of Halloween, adoption, Andres Muschietti, based on a short, childhood fears, children in peril, cinema, co-writers, Daniel Kash, David Fox, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, fairy tales, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Guillermo del Toro, horror, horror movies, Isabelle Nelisse, Jane Moffat, Jessica Chastain, Mama, Megan Charpentier, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, sisters, The Woman in Black, writer-director

For the majority of its run-time, writer-director Andres Muschietti’s Mama (2013) is a moody, atmospheric and fairly slick little chiller that handily recalls such recent films as Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2010) and The Woman in Black (2012). Relying more on suspense and fantastic visuals than creative bloodshed or mass chaos, there’s something decidedly old-fashioned, yet intensely endearing, about the film’s rather modest aims. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, for the most part, but it’s an incredibly easy film to get along with.

At the climax, however, Muschietti tries something a little bold and stretches for a pretty emotional, almost melodramatic, finale. While this tactic could have resulted in something with all the consistency of sodden cardboard, it actually ends up working spectacularly well, imbuing the film with a warm, authentically emotional and subtly powerful finale. If the final moments can color our ultimate impression of a film (how many otherwise quality movies have been all but ruined by terrible endings?), then Mama’s finale helps boost the movie up into a slightly loftier collection of peers.

Muschietti’s feature-length debut is actually an expansion of his earlier short (also called Mama), which garnered quite a bit of attention, particularly from genre superhero Guillermo del Toro. Suitably impressed with Muschietti’s ability to combine atmospheric chills, creepy visuals and genuine emotional impact, del Toro jumped on as executive producer, leading to the full-length expansion that we’re currently discussing. There’s always an inherent danger to expanding a short into a feature: one merely has to look at the vast majority of SNL “features” to fully see how difficult it can be to stretch 5 minutes of material across 90 minutes of dead air. In this case, however, Muschietti has succeeded in expanding out his original idea without making the whole exercise seem unnecessary and academic.

Beginning with a haltingly handwritten “Once upon a time…” scrawled in white over a black screen, Mama has all of the nightmare unreality and sense of fantasy of the best fairy tales. We follow an obviously distraught man as he packs up his two young daughters (leaving their pet dog behind, which strikes a subtly ominous tone from the get-go) and races out for an isolated cabin in the woods. His behavior is erratic and frightening and there’s nothing about this that seems to spell a happy (or long) life for either young girl. Once at the cabin, however, the father is attacked and dragged off by some kind of unseen something, leaving his daughters on their own in the middle of nowhere.

Jumping ahead five years, we learn that the girls’ uncle, Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), has been looking for them ever since, despite the nagging notion that five years is an awful long time for a couple of young kids to be missing. As luck would have it, Lucas’ friend, Burnsie (David Fox), manages to stumble into the hidden cabin in the woods and finds the young girls alive and well, if filthy and seemingly feral. With the aid of his punk-rocker girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain) and the kindly Dr. Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash), Lucas attempts to reintegrate the girls back into the civilized world.

The girls, however, are acting a bit odd, to say the very least. For one thing, they won’t stop talking about the mysterious “Mama” that (supposedly) cared for them in the cabin for the past five years. Burnsie and Lucas find no sign of anyone, however, leading them to believe that the girls have retreated into their imaginations in order to deal with the trauma of their father’s actions. Even more unnerving, however, are the quiet little conversations that Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse) appear to have with no one in particular. As these behaviors continue, Lucas and Annabel begin to feel the influence of a powerful, potentially malevolent force.

When Lucas is inexplicably shoved down the stairs by an unseen force, Annabel is forced to care for the kids on her own, while her boyfriend lies unconscious in the hospital. Despite her steadfast refusal to devote herself to kids or “settling down,” Annabel comes to care for Victoria and Lilly, vowing to protect them at all costs. Something else feels protective towards the children, however, something primal, evil and relentless. It would seem that someone else was looking after the girls, after all…and Mama has no intention of letting her “babies” go without one helluva fight.

Similar to Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and The Woman in Black, Mama puts atmosphere before action and setpieces, which tends to give the whole affair a more muted, subtle feel. This isn’t to say that the film doesn’t feature more “modern” scare moments (ie: the “screeching jump-scare sound of death”) but it is to say that these moments are easily the film’s weakest. When allowed to spool out slow and creepy, however, Mama proves to be a real winner. There one scene, in particular, which showcases the film’s aesthetic to great effect: as Annabel and Victoria play in one room, Lilly plays with an unseen Mama in the other. The shot is devised as a “natural” split screen, with the door frame dividing the screen in half. It’s a cleverly staged moment, to be sure, but it’s also a fantastically effective one: I’m willing to wager that more than one viewer will experience a bit of the ol’ goose-flesh during that particular moment.

As mentioned earlier, the film is aided considerably by a nicely realized, very emotional finale. Without giving anything way, suffice to say that Muschietti manages to temper the character of Mama with enough melancholy to put her evil into a different perspective, allowing for a climax that’s equal parts sad, lovely and very satisfying. There’s nothing especially upbeat about Mama but it also refuses to traffic in easy “sorrow-porn,” either.

Craftwise, the film has a consistently polished look that works quite nicely, especially during the aforementioned finale. The special effects scenes, while obviously CGI, are fairly well-integrated into the film, allowing everything to feel a bit more organic than in the similar Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (which often felt perilously close to slipping into CGI-silliness). The acting is good, although I must admit to being less than impressed with Chastain’s performance: her character vacillates between whiny and ridiculously self-assured and there were plenty of moments where I found myself unable to fully invest in her character. By contrast, Charpentier and Nelisse are rather amazing as the young girls: child actors can be notoriously hit-and-miss but there’s nothing about either one of their performances that took me out of the film, especially once things start to ramp up in the final third.

While there’s nothing especially gritty about Mama, it stands as an exceptionally well-made, effective and moving bit of fairy-tale influenced horror. From the outstanding opening credit sequence (creepy kids’ drawings that tell the film’s story in shorthand) to the knockout finale, Mama is a consistent pleasure. It may not be the most original film in the world (astute viewers should probably be able to get the general drift by at least the midpoint of the film, if not sooner) but it’s also the furthest thing from anonymous dreck as one can get. If you’re a fan of slicker, more commercial fare (the movie is rated PG-13 which, for the most part, means absolutely nothing nowadays), you could definitely do a whole lot worse than pulling yourself up to Mama’s table.

4/20/14: A Mother Knows (Oscar Bait, Part 16)

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2013 Academy Awards, 86th Annual Academy Awards, Academy Award Nominee, Academy Awards, adoption, Barbara Jefford, based on a true story, BBC journalist, Best Actress nominee, Best Adapted Screenplay nominee, Best Original Score nominee, Best Picture nominee, Blue Jasmine, buddy films, Catholic church, character dramas, cinema, drama, film reviews, films, homosexuality, Judi Dench, Mare Winningham, Martin Sixsmith, Movies, multiple award nominee, nuns, Oscar nominee, Oscars, Peter Hermann, Philomena, road trips, Sean Mahon, Stephen Frears, Steve Coogan

In the hustle of bustle of awards season, when it seems that every film is bigger, more important and more prestigious than the next, it can be a refreshing break to sit down with something a little more modest, a bit quieter. The 2013 Oscar season was filled with lots of very big, very vibrant films, including American Hustle, 12 Years a Slave and The Wolf of Wall Street, but one multiple nominee stood out a little: the Steve Coogan/Judi Dench-starrer Philomena. Not only did Philomena tell a much smaller, more personal story than the other nominees, it managed to focus on character in a way that (in my highly biased opinion) was only matched by Nebraska and Dallas Buyer’s Club. It was also a bit of a David vs Goliath story, since everything about the film marked it as the scrappy underdog to the more established powerhouses helmed by Scorcese, Cuaron, McQueen and Payne. Like its subject matter, Philomena is the scrappy little newcomer that can – and does – get its day in the sun.

Ostensibly, Philomena is the true story of a woman looking for the son she gave up for adoption 50 years earlier. The woman, in this case, is Philomena (Judi Dench) and she’s forced to give her son Anthony up for adoption when he’s just an infant. Philomena, you see, has been sent to a nun-run home for wayward girls after her “indiscretion” with a local boy and the nuns make it plainly clear that it’s God’s will that the children be separated from their mothers as quickly as possible. Philomena’s best friend Kathleen (Charlie Murphy) loses her daughter, Mary, when the child is adopted and the nuns decide to make it a two-fer, throwing in young Anthony, as well. Philomena loses her son, without even getting to say goodbye, and spends the next 50 years wondering what became of him.

When Philomena’s grown daughter contacts disgraced former BBC journalist Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) with the story, he initially blows her off. He doesn’t do human interest stories, after all, since he’s a serious journalist. Something about the story ends up resonating with him, however, and he sets off on a journey of discovery with Philomena, starting with the abbey in Ireland where it all began and ending in America, where they finally track down Philomena’s son. Revelations will abound, however, and the hot-headed Martin will gradually lose his patience with the frustrating “culture of silence” surrounding the Catholic church’s adoption practices of that era. In the end, however, this is Philomena’s story and she knows that forgiveness is the glue that really holds the world together. Will she ever find out the truth about her son? Will Martin ever land the big story that will put him back in the public eye? More importantly, will these two strangers be able to make a change in an unfair system?

As mentioned earlier, Philomena is definitely a labor of love: Coogan got the idea for the film after reading the original newspaper article and was involved in nearly every aspect of the film, including the Oscar-nominated screenplay. One of my favorite stories during this last awards season was the one where Coogan got the shocking phone call about his modest little film being nominated for multiple Oscars, including Best Picture. Stories like this, similar to the buzz that surrounded Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, serve as a wonderful tonic to the usual entertainment industry propaganda machine, adding a little human element to everything.

It’s certainly surprising to see Coogan attached to something so heartfelt but he ends up being the real revelation of the film. As portrayed by Coogan, Sixsmith is an incredibly well-rounded character: a complete, churlish asshole, yet filled with righteous indignation and good intentions. He makes a wonderful foil for Dench and their relationship is the real foundation of the film. At its heart, Philomena is a buddy road movie and those always live or die by the believability of the central relationship: by this rubric, Philomena not only lives but thrives. There’s something almost elemental about Coogan snarking his way through the minefield of contemporary society while Dench projects the sweet, naive air of a child. She’s nice to everyone, regardless of how much they spit on her, while he can’t seem to find anything good to say about anybody, including her. In one of the film’s funniest scenes, Martin makes a condescending comment about Philomena’s good nature that ends up saying as much about her as it does about him: “She’s told four people that they’re one in a million…what are the odds of that?”

If Coogan’s performance is a big surprise in the film, Dench’s is pretty much business as usual. Over the course of some 100+ roles and almost 60 years in the business, Dench was become synonymous with impeccable performances and her turn in Philomena is no exception. I do feel that Dench has got a bit comfortable over the last several years, since most of her recent characterizations seem to follow pretty identical arcs (there’s not much difference in personality between Dench’s role here or her performance in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, to be honest) but there’s no denying how effortless she is. Dench is the kind of performer who can energize anything and she invests the film’s various emotional beats with a spunky sense of purpose.

Ultimately, however, Philomena suffers from something that’s distinctly a filmmaking issue: as a whole, it lacks dramatic tension. Despite the trials that Philomena and Martin go through, the stakes never seem to be high enough, lending everything the feel of a slightly bittersweet made-for-TV movie. None of the film’s revelations really affect anything and the one that potentially could, the revelation of Anthony’s lifelong homosexuality, is deflated almost instantly: Philomena always knew that her son was gay, even if no one else did, so this isn’t news to her, even if it is to the audience. Philomena is such a wonderful, understanding person that, ultimately, this particular revelation couldn’t have any affect on her: that’s just not how her mind (or world) works. Likewise, the banter between Philomena and Martin never reaches a critical boiling point, even though Martin frequently acts like a privileged jerk. Like its titular subject, Philomena is such a thoroughly easy-going, good-natured film that it doesn’t seem particularly interested in rocking any boats. After all, the final confrontation is handled not with the tongue-lashing that we know is well-deserved but with the act of forgiveness that might prove impossible for many watching. Like the battered nun in Bad Lieutenant, Philomena forgives her oppressors, allowing her soul the peace it needs but robbing the audience of the easy gratification of retribution. It’s a mature, reasoned way to handle things but it does tend to make for a fairly even, uneventful story arc.

Since I watched Philomena after the Oscar ceremony, I wasn’t able to really consider it as I watched the telecast but the other nominees were definitely front-and-center in my mind as I watched it. How does Philomena compare? In many ways, the film is the epitome of “good but not great.” While Dench’s performance was typically good, I certainly don’t think it was better than Cate Blanchett’s turn in Blue Jasmine. Similarly, while I thoroughly enjoyed the film, it had nowhere near the impact of Dallas Buyer’s Club, 12 Years a Slave or Nebraska. It’s a much smaller film, obviously, much more of a Little Miss Sunshine than an event picture. The script, while quite good, was also overshadowed by Woody Allen’s script for Blue Jasmine, one of his best in years. If anything, I firmly believe that Coogan was robbed of a Best Actor nomination, finding his performance to be much more nuanced and interesting than Christian Bale’s turn in American Hustle. Provided Coogan keeps at the dramatic roles, however, I see no reason why he won’t (someday) be able to take a statue home for his troubles.

In many ways, Philomena is an absolutely lovely film (the scene where Philomena, Martin and Anthony’s boyfriend sit down to watch home movies brought tears to my eyes in the best, most non-exploitative way possible), filled with wonderful performances, some nice cinematography and a fairly unobtrusive score (also Oscar-nominated, for some reason). There are a few too many obtrusive flashbacks for my liking and the aforementioned lack of narrative tension tends to sap much-needed drama from the proceedings but patient audiences will find much to like here. Philomena may not have been the best film of 2013 but it was certainly one of the nicest ones. At the end of the day, can we really ask for more?