5/4/16: Art Imitating Strife

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Alexandre Desplat, based on a play, Beau Willimon, campaign manager, cheating husbands, cinema, co-writers, dramas, Evan Rachel Wood, extramarital affairs, film reviews, films, George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Gregory Itzin, House of Cards, Jeffrey Wright, Jennifer Ehle, Marisa Tomei, Max Minghella, Michael Mantell, Movies, multiple writers, Paul Giamatti, Phedon Papamichael, Philip Seymour Hoffman, political campain, political scandals, political thriller, Presidential campaign, Ryan Gosling, U.S. politics, writer-director-actor

If you really think about it, apple pie and baseball aren’t the things that most folks would readily associate with the good old U.S. of A…at least, not for the past forty years or so. Truth be told, I’m not sure that either of those oldies-but-goodies would even make the top ten list these days. There is one thing, however, that I’m willing to wager would make just about everyone’s list, one particular aspect of this country that has come to define us for the past few decades more than any others: we are a nation living under the shadow of an absolutely insatiable political machine.

This is not, of course, to make the case for the United States being the most politically savvy country on this particular interstellar ball of rock, water and gas. Not at all. Rather, we are a country completely obsessed with the notion of politics not as a great unifier but as the ultimate divider. Americans have developed an “us against them” mentality that has turned political parties into virtual religions, each with their own zealous acolytes dedicated to spreading the “good word” and stomping out all rivals.  Politics and political campaigning have become such a part of our cultural DNA that they no longer have their own “seasons”: we seem to be inundated with political information, via the 24-hour-news-cycle, on a daily basis. Nowadays, we don’t have presidential election campaigns every four years: we have one, constant, political campaign that’s been running non-stop since the early ’80s.

As we find ourselves in the midst of one of the nastiest, most contentious, presidential campaigns that the country has ever known (by comparison, the George W. era almost seems quaint), it’s hard to turn in any particular direction without getting smacked in the face with some sort of hard-line rhetoric, political scandal or screaming pundit. As with any big societal issue, however, one expects pop culture to spring back with its own rejoinder, add its voice to the conversation. Where, then, are the big political films about this chaotic era? Where is the multiplex fare that makes voters go “hmm”?

Turns out, one of the better, more incisive and cutting films about this current mess we call American political campaigning already came out…back in 2011. With the foresight of a modern-day Nostradamus, House of Cards creator Beau Willimon (who had extensive experience working on Democratic political campaigns, including Howard Dean’s 2004 run for the White House) wrote a play, back in 2008, entitled Farragut North. Several years down the road, Farragut North would be adapted by Willimon and co-writer/director George Clooney as The Ides of March (2011). In the process, they would craft a political thriller that manages to be more prescient five years down the line than it was at the time it was actually released. How’s that for a neat card trick?

Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney) is the kind of golden-boy politician who says all the right things, flashes a million-dollar-grin at the plebes and seems as far-removed from most career scumbags as humanly possible. He comes across as a pie-in-the-sky idealist (shades of ol’ Bernie) but that’s just the kind of difference that’s currently setting him up as the Democratic front-runner for the current primary season. You see, Morris’ only serious challenger, Senator Pullman (Michael Mantell), is one of those “business-as-usual” types (shades of ol’ Hillary) and it seems that the Democratic voter base is primed for a system overhaul. Public popularity aside, however, DNC management just doesn’t see the idealistic Morris as a viable alternative against whatever Republican gets the nomination: they’re rather go with the tried and tested Pullman rather than easy-target Morris (sound familiar?).

Despite his own party’s power games, however, Gov. Morris seems to be fairly well-regarded by all. Perhaps no one person idolizes him more, however, than his second-in-command staffer, Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling). To Stephen, Morris isn’t just his latest employer: he’s a force for good, an agent of change that will wipe all the bullshit away and start us out with a clean slate. Paul (the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) might be Morris’ campaign manager but no one is more of a zealous booster than ruthlessly loyal Stephen.

After a series of big wins (most instigated by Stephen’s sly political maneuvering and pitbull-with-lockjaw tenacity), Morris is looking increasingly like the shoe-in. When a misguided attempt to reach out to another senator (Jeffrey Wright) with a large delegate base ends up producing the exact opposite result, however, Stephen and Paul have to go into crisis-control mode. Senator Pullman’s sleazy campaign manager, Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), makes overtures towards Stephen once it seems that the Morris campaign boat is headed straight for an iceberg: imagine a large rock sailing towards a pristine, crystal-clear picture window and you have the basic idea.

Besieged by all sides, both “friend” and “foe,” Stephen only has one clear compass left: his unwavering belief in and support of Morris and his campaign. When Stephen finds out something scandalous about Morris, however, something that threatens to tank his worship of the man in an instant, his whole world threatens to crumble around him. Will Stephen be able to separate the man from the message or is this just cosmic proof that every politician, at heart, is really a self-serving scumbag?

Right off the bat, The Ides of March should be instantly familiar to anyone who’s happened to catch any of Willimon’s House of Cards series. In tone, style, intent and message, there’s a whole lot of crossover here: hell, they even both deal with politics as filtered through the Democratic Party, a further similarity that’s too glaring to miss. Where House of Cards often falls into the trap of upping the melodrama to almost Shakespearian levels, however, The Ides of March is consistently more grounded and level-headed.

Like House of Cards, The Ides of March is a brisk, busy piece of work, stuffed to the brim with political minutae, realistic Machiavellian scheming and plenty of sturdy, if not overly showy, performances. There’s a sense of verisimilitude here that certainly speaks to Willimon’s extensive political background: like the best police or medical procedurals, you get the idea that Willimon knows what he’s talking about and that kind of trust goes a long way towards keeping you in the film’s clutches.

As usual, Clooney is a thoroughly charming, disarming presence: appropriately serious and imminently “presidential,” yet possessed of the ability to slip effortlessly into cold, reptilian evil, it’s a role that fits his style to a tee. For his part, Gosling does what he does best: cold, unemotional detachment broken, ever so often, by jagged spikes of pure, steely focus. While Gosling’s style tends to dampen nearly all of his big emotional moments (like it usually does), his performance is consistent, strong and essential to the film’s inner dynamic.

On the support side, we get something of a smorgasbord of small, indelible performances. Marisa Tomei is pitch-perfect as the journalist who considers loyalty to be a four-letter word. Hoffman and Giamatti don’t do much that we haven’t seen before but each actor manages to imbue a role that could’ve been nothing more than plot device with an underlying sense of sadness that’s both striking and subtle. Evan Rachel Wood’s Molly might be a bit of a thankless character (as are most of the female characters that aren’t played by Tomei, to be honest) but she brings a perfect blend of naivety and ambition to the role that helps to balance out the almost feral machinations of everyone around her.

In many ways, The Ides of March strikes me as a much better version of another recent political thriller, Austin Stark’s The Runner (2015). Where The Runner tended to wallow in the worst aspects of shows like House of Cards and Boss, however, The Ides of March takes a much calmer, more nuanced approach. It’s the difference between fire and ice, between a long, overwrought speech and a quick, cutting glance.

From a film-making perspective, The Ides of March is as sturdy as its performances. The script is strong, Clooney’s direction is typically self-assured and the film has a rich, burnished quality, thanks to cinematographer Phedon Papamichael’s stellar camerawork. If the score can, at times, get a little overblown (this is Alexandre Desplat, after all), it just as often falls away to complete silence, an impressive detail in a cinematic world where leading musical cues are as common-place as product placement. The name of the game here is “subtlety”: Clooney and Willimon aren’t as interested in spoon-feeding you the info as they are in handing you a fork and telling you to dig in.

Thematically, there’s a lot to process here but the basic take-away is actually pretty simple: be careful who you choose to elevate to godhood. No human is infallible and people, by their very nature, will let you down. Fall in love with a politician’s policies, with their strategies and their plans for the future. Believe wholeheartedly in the message but be very, very careful about the messenger. As the old saying goes, “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The unspoken notion, of course, is that any and all power will corrupt, to some extent. As poor Stephen finds out, we’re all only human, when all is said and done, and humans have been doing some pretty terrible things ever since we climbed out of the primordial ooze. Spend a day watching campaign ads and you’ll realize that we’re still up to the same tricks.

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.

1/10/14: A Modern Master Returns

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Amy Adams, auteur theory, Boogie Nights, cinema, drama, Film, Film auteurs, Hard Eight, Joaquin Phoenix, Magnolia, Philip Seymour Hoffman, PT Anderson, Punch Drunk Love, The Master, There Will Be Blood, World War II

Here’s a little factoid about myself that will, no doubt, make me a bit of a pariah in this day and age: I’m a firm believer in the auteur theory of filmmaking. I know…I know: it takes a village to make a film, right? How dare that one person put their name on the project multiple times! An Alan Smithee film? What a massive jackass! Were it not for the gaffer, camera op, best boy, boom operator,  makeup artist, set designer, PA, editor and craft services folks, there would be no film! Rabble rabble rabble!!

All out of your system? Feel better now? Good to hear. Now, let’s go ahead and take a little closer look at what I believe. No film gets made without the able support of every department, crew member and actor: this is a stone-cold fact. Unless you’re a one man/woman band, you will need other people involved. However…and this is the big however, folks…a truly great, singular, one-of-a-kind film requires a very strong central vision. There are lots and lots of truly great films out there, with more being made all the time. There are also, however, certain films that exist outside of time and space, films that are almost without peer: Kubrick’s 2001; Coppola’s Apocalypse Now; Scorcese’s Taxi Driver; Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. There is a reason that these films are so seldom separated from their creators: these are the work of auteurs and are as much a creation of these singular individuals as they are of all those who worked on them.

As I mentioned, the auteur theory is particularly unpopular nowadays, mostly because we seem to have so few true auteurs left. One modern filmmaker that easily fit within this old tradition, however, is the inimitable PT Anderson. Over the course of six feature films, Anderson has explored several aspects of the American Dream, along with the inter-connectedness of all things. My first experience with Anderson was ’97’s Boogie Nights, a film that quickly became one of my all-time favorites. He’s bounced around over the years, landing on some spots that I loved (Punch Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood), along with one that still has me confounded (Magnolia). Aside from that other Anderson (Wes, for those who just got here), PT is one of those filmmakers that can always provoke chills and awe from me. Any new PT Anderson film is a reason to celebrate. This, then, brings us to Anderson’s most recent film, The Master.

The Master bears the onus of being only the second Anderson film (along with his debut, Hard Eight) that I failed to see in theaters. To be honest, I actually neglected to see the film until this past Friday. Hoping to make up for such an egregious oversight, I decided to dedicate the whole day to the film, allowing my mind to soak up and focus on as much PT as possible. By the end, however, I must be honest: while The Master is a good film, it really doesn’t add much to Anderson’s already impressive canon.

Ostensibly, The Master is the story of Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix). Freddie, for lack of a better word, is a mess. We first meet this potentially insane navy-man during the tail end of World War II. Freddie’s the kind of guy who humps sand sculptures and can make booze out of anything, including torpedo juice. Cut loose from the only world that makes sense, Freddie is pushed head-first into a world that has no idea what to do with him. A terrifying outburst in a shopping mall ends his photography career, just as an unfortunate incident involving homemade moonshine ends his career as a migrant farm worker. Freddie is a mess, a roaring monster made up of only an id, a penis and a shot liver. At the bottom of a very tall barrel, Freddie stows away on a luxury boat, one night, and discovers his purpose in life: Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

Dodd, the charismatic leader of a cult called The Cause (despite what many remarked upon the film’s release, I can see only the most surface/basic parallel between Dodd’s Cause and L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology: basically, they’re both cults) becomes fascinated with Freddie’s untamed, animalistic nature and deigns to take him under his wing. Over the course of many years, Freddie becomes one of Dodd’s most loyal acolytes, before the whole thing eventually goes ass over tea-kettle, leading to a resolution that’s nowhere near as apocalyptic as There Will Be Blood but just as final.

Unlike Anderson’s previous films (with the possible exception of Hard Eight), The Master seemed to exist more as a series of pleasurable moments than as a unified whole. The acting, across the board, is phenomenal, particularly in the cases of Phoenix, Hoffman and Amy Adams (as Dodd’s long-suffering wife). The film has a clean, almost vintage look which suits the material to a t. There are several inspired scenes (Freddie imagining every woman in a packed room nude; Dodd yelling “Pig fuck!” to a packed room as if suddenly struck with Tourette’s; Freddie picking cabbages with other migrant workers and then violently defending himself when one falls ill from his moonshine). Ultimately, however, The Master felt too inconsequential to me, too weightless. There was none of the sense of a large world and its interconnected consequences that one felt in Boogie Nights and Magnolia. Even There Will Be Blood, which The Master’s intimate character study most closely resembles (although the resemblance isn’t especially close), had a sense of a larger world and how it affected the characters contained within. The Master, for all of its scope, is really the story of Freddie Quells, an aimless drifter looking for some sense in this world. Phoenix does wonders with the role, no doubt about it, imbuing Freddie with so much realism that you’ll swear you’ve met this guy before (hopefully you weren’t this guy). It’s always a pleasure to watch Hoffman work: he has to be one of the most under-rated actors working in film today.

At the end of the day, The Master is still a good film. When compared to much of what came out last year, it stands head and shoulders above the competition, possessed of the kind of cool, calm grandeur that PT Anderson could probably create in his sleep. When measured against the rest of his mighty output, however, The Master seems uncomfortably slight: Boogie Nights may have seemed garish and candy-coated but it was also a full meal. The Master feels, conversely, like the palate cleanser between courses.