4/27/15: An Army of One

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1960s cinema, action films, auteur theory, Bill Mullikin, Bob Newhart, Bobby Darin, cinema, dark films, Dirty Harry, Don Siegel, dramas, Escape From Alcatraz, Fess Parker, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, frontline, G.I.s, Harold Lipstein, Harry Guardino, Hell Is For Heroes, insubordination, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, James Coburn, Joseph Hoover, Leonard Rosenman, Mike Kellin, Movies, Nick Adams, nihilistic films, power struggles, Richard Carr, Robert Pirosh, set in 1940s, set in France, Steve McQueen, The Killers, war movies, World War II

Filmmaking is a lot like cooking, if you think about it: give five different chefs the exact same ingredients and you’re likely to come up with five very different dishes. Ditto for filmmaking: give five different filmmakers the exact same tropes, conventions, themes and scenarios and you’re going to end up with five very different films. Case in point: action auteur Don Siegel’s Hell Is For Heroes (1962). On the outside, the film looks much like many other World War II-set action films: big cast of well-known actors…intense front-line action sequences…dramatic interplay between the soldiers. Digging deeper, however, it’s easy to see that this particular war film bears more than a passing resemblance to similarly dark, paranoid films in Siegel’s canon such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Killers (1964). The result? A tense, nihilistic and constantly odd study in hubris, obsession and heroism, courtesy of the guy who would, one day, gift us with Dirty Harry (1971).

We jump right into the action on the front-line of the Allied offensive, in France, circa 1944. A small American squadron, led by Sgts. Larkin (Harry Guardino) and Pike (Fess Parker aka TV’s Daniel Boone), has been charged with holding the line against the German offensive. As the squad, which includes motor-mouthed Pvt. Corby (actor/singer Bobby Darin), laconic Cpl. Henshaw (James Coburn), Pvt. Kolinsky (Mike Kellin) and Pvt. Cumberly (Bill Mullikin), celebrate their upcoming return home, they receive a new member: Pvt. Reese (Steve McQueen). Reese is a sullen, surly, standoffish badass who seems to have a past with Sgt. Pike and a problem with the bottle.

While Reese lugs several steamer trunks’ worth of emotional baggage with him, his appearance also foretells a bit of bad luck for the squad: not only aren’t they going to get to go home but military brass has decreed that the squad be split, stretching the already thin crew to a breaking point. While Pike takes most of the men further down the way, Larkin and his tiny six-man crew are charged with holding the line all on their lonesome.

The problem, of course, is that a far larger German force is camped out just over the rise, patiently waiting to bomb the ever-loving shit out of the stragglers. As the extremely unpleasant but eminently capable Reese butts heads with Larkin over their next course of action, the rest of the team are caught in the crosshairs. When Reese comes up with a brazen, impossibly dangerous plan to take out the nearby German pillbox, however, he sets in motion a series of events that will test the squads loyalty, their resilience and their very wills to survive.

Despite its familiar trappings, Hell Is For Heroes is a decidedly odd duck. For one thing, the evocative black-and-white cinematography (courtesy of Harold Lipstein) frequently calls to mind film noir and German Expressionist filmmaking: full of hard, deep shadows and an overwhelmingly sinister atmosphere, there’s something intensely unsettling about the film, even during its lighter moments. There’s also the film’s rigid, almost stage-bound sense of blocking: combined with the sharp dialogue (legendary screenwriter Robert Pirosh wrote the film, along with Richard Carr), the movie often feels like a stage play, although this ends up working to its benefit, heightening the eerie sense of unreality.

Siegel, as expected, is a deft hand with the action sequences (the film’s final 20 minutes are one long, sustained battle that’s a masterpiece of chaos and carnage) but the connecting tissue is where the film really stands out: the midpoint sequence, which consists of the G.I.s setting up an elaborate “early warning system,” is almost ludicrously detailed and leisurely paced, yet still manages to be impossibly tense and pulse-pounding. The human-level drama is even better: McQueen’s thoroughly unlikable Reese swings wildly at any and everyone around him and the audience soaks up the benefit.

In fact, I’m hard-pressed to recall another performance of McQueen’s that is quite this unpleasant and cold: even the flinty-eyed Frank Bullitt had a basic degree of humanity that seems to be lacking in Reese. Obsessed with proving himself right, completely dismissive of authority, misogynistic and arguably misanthropic, Pvt. Reese is, perhaps, one of the single most unqualified heroes in the history of the biz. Look closer, however, and McQueen’s world-weary eyes almost (almost) tell a different story. His latter-half heroism isn’t so much a last-minute Hail Mary as it is the natural culmination of his inherent stubbornness: Reese is more than willing to die to prove himself right.

While McQueen is a reliable marquee draw, the rest of the Hell Is For Heroes cast is a veritable embarrassment of riches. Guardino and Parker are both excellent as the guys (grudgingly) in charge, with Parker possessing the absolutely perfect blend of authority and down-home humility. Nick Adams turns in a slightly goofy, if likable, performance as the tag-along Polish soldier, Homer, while Coburn is great as the reserved Henshaw: you know a film has a fantastic cast when an actor of Coburn’s stature is, effectively, relegated to second-tier status but he brings an easy warmth to the proceedings that are completely expected and always appreciated.

The two big surprises, however, end up coming on the lighter side of things: Bobby Darin’s conniving, perpetually scheming Pvt. Corby is a classic character and Darin plays him with complete gusto. At times approximating Lou Costello, Darin provides much of the film’s comic relief and never wears out his welcome, high praise for the type of character that normally gets under your skin, fast. The other surprise is Bob Newhart’s delightful performance as the bumbling, over-his-head Pvt. Driscoll. From his entrance (crashing into a tree with his jeep) all the way to the show-stopper where he commandeers a German phone line and proceeds to feed the enemy fake intel, Newhart is sheer perfection, his timing pitch-perfect and his hang-dog, malleable face so essential to the film’s (occasionally) deeply-set sense of humanity. Driscoll often reminded me of the similarly bumbling Radio O’Reilly, making me wonder if this might have served as inspiration for Gary Burghoff’s iconic character: the mind practically boggles!

Ultimately, Hell Is For Heroes is a continually surprising film, a feat which certainly stands as one of its greatest assets. From the opening all the way through to the purposefully ambiguous finale, which skips the expected emotional payoff and gives us something decidedly more open-ended, Siegel’s film defies conventions and arrives at an altogether more interesting destination. Less interested with easy definitions of “heroism” than he is with the reality of the situation (depending on the angle you view it from, Reese’s actions could easily fall under the umbrella of “insubordination,” “insanity” or even “manslaughter”), Siegel turns in another complex, nuanced and disturbing examination of the evil that men do, even when they do it in service of “the greater good.” In other words, just another day at the office for one of the all-time greats.

4/19/15: The Game of Life

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2014 Academy Awards, 87th Annual Academy Awards, Alan Turing, Alex Lawther, Alexandre Desplat, Allen Leech, arrogance, Óscar Faura, based on a book, based on a true story, Benedict Cumberbatch, Best Actor nominee, Best Actress nominee, Best Adapted Screenplay winner, Best Director nominee, Best Film Editing nominee, Best Original Score nominee, Best Picture nominee, Charles Dance, cinema, code-breakers, crossword puzzles, cryptography, dramas, early computers, Enigma machine, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, flashbacks, Graham Moore, Headhunters, homophobia, homosexuality, Jack Bannon, James Northcote, Keira Knightley, life during wartime, Mark Strong, mathematicians, Matthew Beard, Matthew Goode, MI6, Morten Tyldum, Movies, multiple award nominee, mystery, Oscar nominee, persecution, race against time, romances, Rory Kinnear, Russian spies, secrets, set in 1940s, set in 1950s, set in England, spies, The Imitation Game, thrillers, Tom Goodman-Hill, Turing machines, war films, William Goldenberg, World War II

True heroes, unlike their cinematic counterparts, rarely receive the appreciation that they deserve. Oh sure: they may be honored, feted and immortalized via statuary but this is usually long after they’ve ceased drawing breath on this particular plane of existence. The reason for this, in most cases, is that true heroes…the kinds who save tens of thousands, if not more…usually operate in the shadows, away from the spotlight of public scrutiny. They’re the doctors and scientists who discover new cures and immunizations on a regular basis…the engineers who continue to craft safer buildings, bridges and roads…the unsung politicians, bureaucrats and civil servants who toil away behind the scenes, not for power, money or glory but because they honestly don’t want to see their citizenry starving or freezing to death in the streets. Cinematic heroes are a lot more thrilling, sure: watching Batman punch the living shit out of garishly clad supervillains is much more thrilling IMAX fare than watching Jonas Salk develop a Polio vaccine. When it comes down to brass tacks, however, it’s kind of obvious that Salk has saved at least a few more folks than Batman has, albeit with much less panache.

Morten Tyldum’s multi-Oscar-nominated The Imitation Game (2014) takes a look at one such unsung hero, the prickly, brilliant mathematician/cryptologist Alan Turing. Aside from being responsible for the Turing machine, a proto-computer that would be a nice enough feather in anyone’s cap, Turing was also one of the British code-breakers responsible for cracking Germany’s infamous Enigma machine during World War II, allowing the Allies to move the war into its endgame. Estimates put the number of lives saved by ending the war early at around 14 million, give or take: in other words, not bad for a guy who wore a sweater and slacks to  work instead of a spandex suit. Along with being a world-class code-breaker, however, Turing was also a gay man during a time period when sexual orientation was illegal. Years after his triumph over the Engima machine, Turing was prosecuted and found guilty of indecency: choosing chemical castration, Turing would go on to commit suicide roughly a year after his “therapy,” at the tender age of 41.

Similar to The Iron Lady (2011) and The Theory of Everything (2014), The Imitation Game takes the real facts of Turing’s life and expands, folds and manipulates them into something altogether more “cinematic,” if arguably less factual. By employing a flashback structure, Tyldum runs three simultaneous timelines: the “present-day,” circa 1951; the “war years,” circa the 1940s; and Turing’s childhood, circa the late-’20s. While the meat of the story takes place during the war, the “present-day” material opens the film and sets up a mystery (of sorts) that the school and war eras will attempt to “solve.”

In the present day, we follow Detective Robert Nock (Rory Kinnear) as he investigates a mysterious break-in at the home of Prof. Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch). As Nock investigates the incident, with a minimum amount of support and help from the prickly Turing, he becomes stymied by the reclusive professor’s redacted military record. This leads us into the film proper, with Turing attempting to offer his services to the British government as a decoder, despite a complete lack of interest in politics, social disorder or even a rudimentary understanding of the German language.

As Turing butts heads with his rigid, disapproving commander (Charles Dance), he also manages to tick off the other code-breakers that he’s supposed to be working with, labeling each of them as “worthless” in each own, indomitable way. He does, however, manage to find a kindred spirit in Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley): their friendship eventually develops into an engagement, albeit one inherently doomed by Alan’s homosexuality. We then get the third part of our little “triptych” as we journey back to Turing’s boyhood years and witness the young genius (Alex Lawther) as he’s introduced to the world of cryptography and falls in love with his classmate, Christopher (Jack Bannon). As these three timelines move and maneuver around each other, we gradually develop a more complete picture of Turing as the quintessential outsider, a man tasked with saving the social order that , ultimately, condemns and hates him. You know: pretty much the definition of the selfless hero.

While the historical details behind The Imitation Game are certainly up for debate (as they were in the aforementioned biopics) the film, itself, is a much sturdier, well-made and entertaining affair than either The Iron Lady or The Theory of Everything. Credit certainly must go to Cumberbatch, who tears into the role of Turing with complete and absolute gusto: while he gets several “big” scenes, it’s all of the small, almost invisible personal tics and quirks that really make the character come alive. While there’s nothing here that’s completely foreign to Cumberbatch’s work with the new Sherlock series (aside from a new-found sense of vulnerability that would fit the smug detective as poorly as a reverse-mohawk), he’s pretty effortless as getting across the commingled pain, hubris and awkwardness that seemed to be at the heart of the character. Cumberbatch is an actor who understands how important it is to listen: there’s a rare joy to be found in watching an almost endless cycle of emotions sail across his expressive face, from boyish mischief to hopeless defeat. Rather than simply indulging in mimicry (as with Streep’s take on Maggie Thatcher or Redmayne’s performance as Stephen Hawking), Cumberbatch does it the old-fashioned way and just acts.

As befits this type of large-scale production, Cumberbatch has quite the cast to back him up. While Keira Knightley has never especially blown me away, I quite enjoyed her low-key performance as Joan: the bit where she tells the obnoxious Turing that, as a woman in a man’s job, she “doesn’t have the luxury of being an ass,” like him, is subtly (but witheringly) delivered but as sturdy as concrete. There’s also good work coming from Matthew Goode, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard and James Northcote as Turing’s put-upon co-workers, with Goode getting some especially nice moments. If Charles Dance and Low Winter Sun’s Mark Strong come off more stereotypical and clichéd (as the stodgy commander and sneaky MI6 agent, respectively), chalk this up to roles that serve more as plot-points than to any deficiencies in the acting, which are top-notch.

From a filmmaking perspective, The Imitation Game mostly works, although I’ll admit to not being a fan of the flashback structure. For my money, this would have worked much better as a more traditional narrative, moving from Turing’s childhood up to his indecency conviction: the constant cutting between eras often has the effect of pulling us out of the moment, making it difficult to ever get fully invested in the structure. The “present-day” material also exists solely as a contrived “mystery,” especially since the final emotional resolution occurs via screen-text after the film has actually ended. Running it chronologically (with, perhaps, a return to the childhood-era for the final revelation/emotional wallop) would have kept the focus on Turing, eliminating the unnecessary mystery element. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention that the various newsreel cutaways and war scenes, while de rigueur for this type of film, really stick out like a sore thumb: they never feel authentic or, to be honest, even particularly well-integrated.

While The Imitation Game would go on to rack up an altogether impressive array of award nominations (including a win for Best Adapted Screenplay), there were also plenty of critics who decried the film’s various historical inaccuracies and seeming desire to minimize Turing’s homosexuality. From my perspective, I didn’t necessarily find this to be the case. While it’s certainly true that the film makes certain deviations from the historical record (including creating characters and conflicts that never existed), it would be difficult to find a cinematic biopic that doesn’t do that: certainly, The Imitation Game seems no more guilty of this than does the similarly lauded The Theory of Everything, which managed to paint its subject in such glowing terms that the whole thing seemed more than a bit fanciful and overly romantic. The Imitation Game is a much more gritty, down-to-earth film, albeit one with a foot planted firmly in the kinds of historical biopics that multiplex audiences will be more than familiar with.

I also felt that Turing’s homosexuality was portrayed in a much more organic way than many films like this might opt for: the silly “mystery” angle notwithstanding, the childhood and war-era storylines opt for a refreshing “show, don’t tell” mentality that never feels forced. While the final text does seem like a bit of a cop-out (for the most part, the entirety of the film’s equality message is shoe-horned in right before the credits roll), there’s enough subtle characterization and commentary, throughout, to get the message across loud and clear.

Ultimately, The Imitation Game is a suitably sturdy, well-made character study, although I certainly didn’t find it to be the best film of 2014 (or even one of the best, to be honest). While Tyldum is an assured hand with the material here, guiding the film’s many tense setpieces with a ruthless sense of efficiency, there’s also very little that stands out, aside from the excellent performances. For my money, Tyldum’s previous film, the astounding Headhunters (2011), was a much more impressive, mind-blowing piece of art: The Imitation Game, while more important and “serious,” is certainly the lesser of the two, in close comparison.

Despite its (decidedly minor) issues, however, there’s no denying that The Imitation Game is a solid, powerful and well-crafted film. In an era where the LGBT community still fights for the rights, respect and understanding that has been sadly absent for too long, there’s no denying that this is a story that definitely needs to be told. As long as any person is forced to go through what Alan Turing was put through, all of humanity collectively suffers. Here’s to hoping that, in the future, our children will look back on the events depicted in The Imitation Game as an example of a petty, small-minded and terrible time that no longer exists.

True heroism, after all, isn’t about making the world better for yourself: true heroism is about making the world better for everyone, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, nation of origin, religion (or lack thereof), political-leaning or personal wealth.