12/30/14 (Part One): Behind the Eight-Ball

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Arthur French, Bridget Barkan, Caleb Landry Jones, Christina Hendricks, cinema, dark comedies, Domenick Lombardozzi, drama, Eddie Marsan, film reviews, films, God's Pocket, John Slattery, John Turturro, Joyce Van Patten, Molly Price, Movies, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Richard Jenkins, secrets, step-son, working-class neighborhood, workplace accident

You gotta feel for Mickey Scarpato (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the patron-saint of palookas in God’s Pocket, South Philly: he’s just pulled off a heist and been rewarded with a slab of raw beef at the exact time that his shithead, racist step-son, Leon (Caleb Landry Jones), gets himself killed in what may or may not have been a workplace accident. Mickey’s wife, Jeannie (Christina Hendricks) wants her beloved boy to have the best funeral possible but mercenary mortician Smilin’ Jack (Eddie Marsan) only takes cold, hard cash, which is in rather short supply for unlucky Mickey. He could go to his best buddy and fellow con man, Arthur (John Turturro), if only ol’ Arthur wasn’t the guy who stiffed Mickey with the beef in the first place. Arthur’s got plenty of his own debts all around town, however, and is in no mood to pony up for Leon’s coffin, although his cold-blooded aunt, Sophie (Joyce Van Patten), is just the kind of person you want on your side when the break-a-legs come calling. To put a cherry on his shit sundae, local legend/legendary drunk newspaper columnist Richard Shellburn (Richard Jenkins) is sniffing around both Leon’s workplace and his grieving mother…just the kind of trouble that Mickey needs when he’s just trying to get square with everyone. Ah, God’s Pocket…you cruel bastard, you…

There’s a lot going on in actor/first-time director John Slattery’s God’s Pocket (2014), maybe enough for a couple of films, although that seems a little odd considering the relatively short run-time. Nonetheless, Slattery, adapting Peter Dexter’s novel, crams in enough oddball characters, bleakly comic setpieces and shocking bursts of violence to ensure that we’re never bored, even if character motivations often seem as arbitrary as the whimsical hand of fate that so often flips poor Mickey the bird. God’s Pocket also bears the onus of being one of legendary actor Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final performances before his untimely death in February 2014. For this reason, alone, Slattery’s modest little noir-lite would deserve a watch: passing up any Hoffman performance is the dumbest of dumb moves. How does the actual film hold up, however, especially considering Slattery’s usually in front of the camera as Mad Men’s sleazy Roger Sterling, not behind it? Turns out, God’s Pocket isn’t perfect, by any means, but it’s just quirky enough to work, anchored by another massively impressive performance by Hoffman as a sad sack loser who just can’t quit losing, even as victory dangles so mercilessly close.

Slattery’s debut is a an actors showcase, above anything else, and there’s almost a laundry-list of great performers turning in some spirited performances. Turturro can (and does) do this kind of likable loser stuff in his sleep but there’s something particularly interesting about his Arthur, a thoroughly worthless mook who still manages to be the most loyal guy on the block, even as he repeatedly screws over Mickey. Marsan has rarely been as slimy as he is here: Smilin’ Jack has to be one of the nastiest, crassest individuals on Earth but it’s also impossible to tear your eyes off him. Caleb Landry Jones, so interesting in Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral (2012), really tears into the character of Leon: there’s nothing sympathetic or likable in his performance whatsoever…Leon is complete slime, from beginning to end, and Jones looks like he’s having a blast.

If I had any real issue with any of the performances, it would have to be with Hendricks and Jenkins. Although they both turn in some solid work here, I found them to be more than a little stagey, especially once Hendricks really lets loose in the film’s final third. I also admit that the subplot involving their relationship made no sense and served as a constant source of confusion for me: minus that inexplicable bit, I might have liked the individual performances a bit more but it always felt a bit off to me. I’ve enjoyed Hendricks in the few roles I’ve seen her in outside of Mad Men and wish that her Mad Men co-star had found a little more for her to do. To be honest, it would have been kind of cool to see Hendricks tear into the Sophie role, as it would have given her the opportunity to be more than dour and upset.

And then, of course, there’s Philip Seymour Hoffman. A tremendously varied actor, Hoffman was never relegated to just one type of performance or character: he could play everything from a nerd to a blue-collar Joe, from a saint to a sinner, and bring the same sense of lived-in verisimilitude to any and all of them. Here, he plays Mickey with a kind of roiling, seething frustration, a wide-eyed, lunkheaded refusal to accept that life is really this bad and that he really is that screwed. There are moments here, such as when Mickey finally kicks the shit out of Smilin’ Jack or the jaw-dropping meat truck crash, that easily rank with Hoffman’s best work. At his best, Hoffman was an effortless mimic and there’s nothing about his portrayal of Mickey Scarpato that feels inauthentic in the slightest. This is a perfect example of a gifted actor bringing his A-game to a smaller production, treating the proceedings like this was the only game in town.

It’s a shame that Slattery’s debut will probably be over-shadowed by Hoffman’s death, since it’s a really well-made film that deserves to be taken in on its own merits. From a production standpoint, Slattery hits all of the familiar notes but manages to imbue everything with an underlying sense of humor that really helps the grim proceedings. The script is tight and the film looks and sounds good: nothing here reinvents the wheel but it’s a pretty slick ride, nonetheless. Since this is one of Hoffman’s final performances, however, everything achieves a sort of shimmering mythology, almost as if the film is pulled from its modest perch to attain a slightly higher elevation than it might actually need. As a film, God’s Pocket is a modest, highly entertaining and exquisitely acted little character drama that throws a lot of elements at the wall, many of which stick. As a Philip Seymour Hoffman vehicle, however, it’s yet one more example of he’ll be so sorely missed.

7/19/14 (Part One): Memory is a Burden

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auteur theory, based on a play, Best of 2013, Byzantium, Caleb Landry Jones, cinema, Daniel Mays, drama, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, flashbacks, Gemma Arterton, horror films, Interview With the Vampire, isolated communities, Javier Navarrete, Jonny Lee Miller, Let the Right One In, misogyny, Moira Buffini, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, Neil Jordan, patriarchy, rape, romances, Sam Riley, Saoirse Ronan, seaside resorts, the Brotherhood, The Crying Game, vampire code, vampires, vampires vs humans

If you think about it, actually being a vampire would be kind of a drag. You get to live forever but all of your friends and loved ones will be long dead, at some point, leaving you all alone (unless they’re also vampires, in which case, party on, Wayne!). You get to stay the same age forever, which would probably be okay if you were between 20-50 but would, presumably, suck if you were either a pre-teen or in your nineties. You’re pretty much constantly on the run, since normal folks probably don’t dig getting their blood drained as much as vamps dig draining it. There are also all of those codes of conduct to get through: like any secret society, there are leaders and followers…imagine keeping a middle-management job for thousands of years and then come complain about your 9-5 job. You’re also going to wind up old-fashioned and out-of-date, at some point: if you were cutting-edge in the 1700s, you’re gonna be a little passe in the 2010s. And, of course, there’s the whole “daylight turns you into ashes” thing: forget about those sunny afternoon picnics!

While these issues with vampirism have, presumably, existed since the very advent of the idea, too few films actually deal with this on any significant level: for the most part, vampires are either seen as blood-thirsty monsters or as tragic, romantic, Byronic figures. Leave it to acclaimed writer/director Neil Jordan, then, to help rectify the situation a little. Fans of vampire cinema will probably recall that Jordan was responsible for one of the more elegant, esteemed vampire films of the ’90s, Interview With the Vampire (1994), which briefly touched on the huge gap between those who embrace vampirism and those who are afflicted with it. After almost 20 years away from the fanged ones, Jordan has returned with another vampire adaptation, Byzantium (2012), based on Moira Buffini’s stage play “A Vampire Story.” While Interview was a lush, big-budget and star-packed “event picture,” Byzantium ends up being a much more elegiac, low-key and subtle, if no less beautiful, film. It’s a world of difference from Interview but, ultimately, I another masterpiece for the Irish auteur.

Byzantium deals with the life and times of young Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) and her mother, Clara (Gemma Arterton), who seems to be no more than a decade older than her daughter. As it turns out, both young women are actually centuries-old vampires, on the run from the patriarchal vampire Brotherhood and keeping as low a profile as they can in the modern era. This, of course, means a life spent as refugees, never getting too comfortable in any one spot, lest they blow their cover or run afoul of the omnipresent Brotherhood. Clara exists in the same manner that she did before being “turned,” which means she sells her body and exists on the blood from her unsuspecting “clients.” Eleanor, on the other hand, tries to exist in much the same way as any teenager might: she takes classes, strikes up friendships with young men and tries to stay on the good side of her temperamental mother.

Fortune seems to smile on the pair when they end up back at the small, sea-side village where Eleanor spent her pre-vampire days in an orphanage. While at her “day job,” Clara makes quite an impression on a lonely sad-sack of a guy, Noel (Daniel Mays), who invites Clara and Eleanor to come stay with him at the sprawling, dilapidated resort hotel known as Byzantium. Eleanor, for her part, strikes up a friendship with a pale, wan young wine-bar waiter named Frank (Caleb Landry Jones). As mother and daughter each pursue their relationships, for very different reasons, it seems as if the nomadic pair will finally be able to find some semblance of normalcy in their ageless lives. This, of course, is not to be: when Clara’s violent past comes crashing into their present, she must do everything she can to protect her and her daughter from the predatory, misogynistic Brotherhood. Will mother and daughter find “true love” or is the real onus of vampirism the eternal loneliness and isolation that these creatures must endure?

In many ways, Byzantium is a spiritual cousin to Tomas Alfredson’s exquisite Let the Right One In (2008), a compelling, beautiful and almost crushingly sad rumination on love, duty and the burdens of eternal life. The film looks and sounds absolutely gorgeous: the cinematography, courtesy of esteemed veteran Sean Bobbitt (Hunger (2008), Shame (2011), 12 Years a Slave (2013)), is consistently elegant, vibrant and immaculately composed, while the score, by frequent del Toro composer Javier Navarrete, is instrumental in establishing the mournful, elegiac tone.

Without some serious substance to back it up, however, Byzantium would still only be a beautiful, if empty, confection. Lucky for us, then, that the film ends up being another of Jordan’s jam-packed mini-epics. Truth be told, there’s so much going on in the film that it actually felt way too short at two hours: there are numerous elements, such as the extraordinarily detailed vampire backstory, that get something of short shrift in the film but that’s quite a nice problem to have…after all, how often do you walk out of a film wishing there were more rather than less? Byzantium features some very interesting notions on vampirism, not the least of which is the rather amazing manner in which vampires are “created.” While I’m loathe to spoil any viewer’s first introduction to the “turning,” suffice to say that it involves a supremely creepy shrine on a tiny, isolated island, blood-red waterfalls, bats and doppelgängers: it has to be one of the most unusual vampire origin stories I’ve ever seen and is so visually stunning that I found myself replaying the scenes multiple times. I don’t often have the tendency to “geek out” while watching films but Byzantium makes it patently impossible to not become fully invested in every aspect of the production, be it visually, thematically, or acting-wise.

Thematically, Byzantium deals with some pretty heavy subjects: the power struggle between men and women in a patriarchal society; the burden of revenge vs the higher calling of forgiveness; mother/daughter relationships; euthanasia of the elderly; the notion of women as “creators” vs men as “destroyers;” the impossible myth of true love; the way in which the time constantly informs the present; the intriguing idea of vampirism as cure for earthly illnessess…that’s quite a lot to digest in a mere two hours, especially when Jordan takes the time to develop each angle in as much detail as possible. In particular, I found myself utterly captivated by the power struggle between Clara, Darvell (Sam Riley) and Captain Ruthven (Jonny Lee Miller). Ironically enough, Clara main sin, as far as the Brotherhood is concerned, is the fact that she turned Eleanor into a vampire: women are not allowed to “create,” in the Brotherhood…only males are allowed this particular “honor.” Contrast this with the biological reality of women as the true “creators of life” and you get just a small taste of what the film is cooking up.

None of this would have the same impact, of course, if we didn’t become so invested in the characters. Luckily for Byzantium, the film is graced with a pretty exceptional cast. Ronan and Arterton are exquisite as the mother/daughter pair: Ronan’s ethereal beauty is so otherworldly that it’s pretty easy to buy her as an ageless, tormented creature, while Arterton makes Clara a completely three-dimensional character. Clara is not always the traditional “hero”: truth be told, she can frequently be an impossibly selfish, brutal, emotionless monster but she never stops being Eleanor’s mother, which gives the proceedings a rare poignancy. Jonny Lee Miller portrays the unbelievably slimy Capt. Ruthven as a bigger monster than any bloodsucker and Riley brings a quiet sense of elegance to the role of Darvell that’s as close to Byronic as the film really gets. These are not romantic characters, certainly nowhere close to the vampires in Interview, and the top-notch acting helps to sell this unconditionally.

Truth be told, Byzantium is an amazing film, the kind of beautifully made, deep experience that marks the very best cinematic experiences. There are very few filmmakers that combine languid beauty and gut-churning violence in the same way that Jordan does and Byzantium must certainly stand as a high-water mark in either instance: when the film is beautiful, it’s absolutely stunning (there are probably 300 or more “frameable”shots in the film) and when it’s brutal (beheadings are a pretty common occurrence), it absolutely kicks like a mule. Jordan knows that life is equal parts beauty and filth, however: this wouldn’t be nearly as honest without both.

As far as I’m concerned, Neil Jordan already had the kind of back-catalog that most filmmakers would give their right arm for: from The Company of Wolves (1984), Mona Lisa (1986), The Crying Game (1992), Interview with the Vampire (1996) and The Butcher Boy (1997) to Byzantium, Jordan has made a career out of elegant, difficult films. When his films have managed to break through and wedge themselves into the popular zeitgeist, as The Crying Game and Interview did, Jordan has proven that he can be just as indelible a force as Coppola, Scorsese or Spielberg. With Byzantium, Jordan may just have crafted his most exquisite film yet, which is no faint praise for such an artisan. It may have taken him a while to return to horror filmmaking but let’s hope that we don’t have to wait 20 years for the next one. Byzantium is the real deal and any fan or student of cinema, regardless of their interest in vampires, would do well to see this as soon as possible.