5/21/15: The Tale Lost in the Telling

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Ben Shenkman, Brian Cox, Burgess Jenkins, Carol Kane, cinema, con artists, Coupling, crime thriller, Darren Genet, directorial debut, dramas, film noir, film reviews, films, flashbacks, gangsters, golfing, grifters, Hugo Weaving, husband-wife relationship, independent films, insurance fraud, insurance salesman, Jack Davenport, Josh Noyes, Josh Pais, Judy Greer, Movies, period-piece, Peter Himmelstein, Robert Miller, scam, set in 1970s, split-screen, stylish films, The Key Man, writer-director

For my money, nothing beats a simple tale told well. Sure, there’s plenty of joy and value to be found in complex structures, eye-popping visual feasts and all-or-nothing editing extravaganzas: spectacle and cinema will always go hand-in-hand. There are times when there’s nothing finer than getting lost in the sturm und drang of a good, ol’ special effects bonanza, while, sometimes, you just want to see a film so complex and involving that it makes your forehead throb. There’s nothing wrong with big films but they’re also only half of the coin.

The other half of the coin, of course, are the smaller, subtler films: the quietly provocative indie dramas…the sparse, spare experimental films…the incisive character portraits and razor-sharp crime thrillers that don’t require flashy editing, huge explosions or pounding metal scores to make their points. These are films stripped down to their bare components, left to sink or swim by those old-fashioned standbys: absorbing characters, dramatic tension, smart dialogue and genuine emotional resonance. I may enjoy huge, noisy and stuffed-to-bursting event pictures but my heart will always belong to the same part of town that you’re most likely to find me hanging out: the quiet side.

Writer-director Peter Himmelstein’s The Key Man (2011) is a small, quiet film trapped inside a much flashier, more vapid one, the cinematic equivalent of one of David Byrne’s comically over-sized suits. At its heart, all of the components are in place for an effective, if modest, noirish crime thriller, something akin to a more po-faced Fargo (1996). Thanks to the ridiculously heavy-handed editing and visual flourishes like endless split-screens and out-of-place time-lapse photography, however, Himmelstein’s directorial debut ends up collapsing under the weight, burying the effective core under tons of pretty but useless rubble.

The film’s set-up is almost “Indie Crime Film 101” in its simplicity and familiarity: a down-on-his-luck insurance salesman with a wife and kids to feed gets involved with a pair of grifters and their scam to buy the Red Sox. The insurance salesman, Bobby (Coupling’s Jack Davenport), isn’t a bad guy but he is a desperate one: he’s just lost his oldest client right at the time when his wife, Karen (Judy Greer), is pushing to finally settle down and buy a home. Into his despair strides Vincent (Hugo Weaving) and Irving (Brian Cox), a pair of fast-talking, golf-playing con-men who want to enlist Bobby’s aid in a bit of insurance fraud: namely, they want to take out a “key man policy” on Vincent’s old partner, Charles (Burgess Jenkins), in order to bump him off and use the insurance payout to purchase their sports team.

As often happens, however, nothing goes quite according to plan and Bobby soon finds himself in way over his head. More and more people end up involved in what was supposed to be a fairly low-key event and Vincent and Irving gradually reveal themselves to be both unstable and dangerous, by turn. Will Bobby be able to see everything through to his big pay-day or will his conscience kick in and spoil the party? Most importantly: are Vincent and Irving the kinds of business partners that take “no” for an answer?

Deep down, at its heart, The Key Man is a decent, often quite effective, little noir/heist film, albeit one prone to particularly on-the-nose, expository dialogue. The acting is effective across the board, although Weaving’s flamboyant, sleazy Vincent will, undoubtedly, be the performance that sticks in the mind the longest: Davenport is fine, if rather vanilla, as Bobby, while Cox gets a few over-the-top blow-outs that tend to lessen the final impression of his otherwise impressive Irving. Greer’s Karen is a bit less effective, although that’s never due to the performance: her motivations always seem a bit off, however, making the character play out more as a plot element than actual flesh-and-blood person.

While the particulars of the scam aspect were a bit foggy to this particular viewer (insurance fraud sounds sexier than it really is), everything fell into place with a nice sense of purpose and irony that often felt perilously close to approximating a Hitchcockian vibe. Several scenes, such as the one where Bobby races home only to find Vincent acting the perfect gentleman with his family or the one where Vincent does a bit of impromptu Shakespeare, have nicely realized senses of tension that yield fairly thrilling payoffs.

Indeed, all of the pieces are in place for The Key Man to be a real sleeper, the kind of low-budget micro-masterpiece that coulda/woulda/shoulda been a contender. Practically from the opening credits, however, the film is almost completely hamstrung by one crucial element: the overly busy, fussed-with editing and over-used tricks like split-screens tend to drown out every other aspect of the film.

The biggest offender here is the damnable split-screen, an effect that’s used so much as to approach the level of SNL-type parody. Truth be told, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that uses as many split-screens as The Key Man does: hell, even the above poster art is set up as a kind of split screen…it’s practically wired into the film’s DNA. When used in moderation (or for an actual purpose), there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with a split-screen: it’s just another filmmaking tool like any other. When the split-screen begins to call attention to itself outside of the actual film framework, however, this feels a bit like the cart dragging the horse. There’s one instantly memorable moment where multiple split-screens fly around the central frame until to unite into one screen that becomes Vincent’s face: it’s silly, flashy and, ultimately, very pointless, the very definition of style for style’s sake.

While the split-screens are the biggest offenders, they’re not the only ones. There are also numerous instances of needless time-lapses, in-camera focus changes, out-of-focus images, you name it, that tend to pull attention off of what the film is trying to say and puts it squarely on how the film is saying it. There are certain films that can employ an “everything and the kitchen sink” approach – Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Wrong (2012) come immediately to mind – and work spectacularly, allowing the medium and the message to come together in complete harmony. The Key Man is not one of those films. Here, the low-key, engaging crime thriller aspect is completely over-shadowed by the flashy editing and the split-screens.

Perhaps the split-screens are by way of helping to sell the era (the film takes place in 1975) but that also becomes a bit of an issue: rather than feeling organic, the time-period in The Key Man always feels forced, as if the filmmakers need to constantly remind us of where we are. Karen reads a copy of Jaws, they watch Johnny Carson on TV, outfits get almost as much screen-time as actors, the score is the kind of jazzy funk that underlined a million ’70s-era cop shows…over time, it feels less like we’re immersed in an actual era than an Ikea showroom dedicated to more “happenin'” times.

There’s no doubt that Himmelstein has some skill behind the camera, both directing and scriptwise. While the dialogue was often too obvious, the actual setup had enough twists and turns to justify the above Hitchcock reference, even if infrequently. There’s something about a good grift/heist film that’s almost irresistible and The Key Man often scratches that itch quite ably. In fact, I daresay that a no-frills, stripped-to-the-bone version of this same film would score quite a bit higher on my personal meter: there’s a lot to like here, despite how infuriating much of the over-stuffing becomes. Ultimately, it’s easy to look at this as a case of “first-time-around-the-block-blues”: as a debut, The Key Man has a lot to recommend it but it also fails in some pretty fundamental ways. Here’s to hoping that, the next time around, Himmelstein and company go a little easier on the frosting and give the actual cake a chance to shine.

6/23/14: Ol’ Hitch Would Be Proud

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Alex Winter, Alfred Hitchcock, Allen Leech, Best of 2013, cinema, classical music, Damien Chazelle, Dee Wallace, Don McManus, Elijah Wood, Eugenio Mira, favorite films, Film, film festival favorite, film reviews, Grand Piano, Hitchcock films, John Cusack, Kerry Bishe, Movies, mystery, pianist, piano, sniper, split-screen, suspense, Tamsin Egerton, thriller, Timecrimes, Tom Selznick

Whenever I think about suspense films, there’s always one name that’s on the tip of my brain: Alfred Hitchcock. It should go without saying that Hitchcock was one of the greatest directors to ever walk this planet, a master craftsman who was probably only equalled by fellow artisans like Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman. For my money, however, ol’ Hitch is also the greatest director of suspense films, hands down. Hitchcock films are perfectly wound, intricate clockwork puzzles, designed for maximum audience reaction and as close to perfect examples of sustained/released tension as I think it’s possible to create. His method of operation is best described by his famous example of the difference between “surprise” and suspense.” To paraphrase: if two people are sitting at a cafe table and suddenly blow up, that’s surprise…if the audience sees that there’s a bomb underneath the table but the characters don’t, however, that’s suspense. In one instance, you get the momentary shock of surprise, which is a fleeting rush. On the other hand, however, you can continue to build tension, dragging out the scene until the audience is practically screaming at the screen: this is a longer process and requires more patience but the payoff, ultimately, is that much greater. Hitchcock was practically peerless in letting audiences stew in their own juices.

Hitchcock, obviously, was a pretty one-of-a-kind filmmaker, a true auteur. Despite this indisputable fact, however, why would I begin a review of Eugenio Mira’s extraordinary new film, Grand Piano (2013), with a bunch of praise for an unrelated filmmaker who died when Mira was all of three years old? Regardless of how extraordinary I find Hitchcock to be, how much could he actually have to do with Mira’s film? Let’s put it this way: Hitchcock may not have had anything to do with Grand Piano but his fingerprints, style and sense of humor are all over the film. In many ways, Grand Piano is one of the very best films that ol’ Hitch never made, a meticulously crafted, unbelievably tense and remarkably plotted work of art that showcases a pair of actors at the top of their craft and gives audiences one completely unforgettable thrill ride. I’d heard good things about the film before going in but this was one situation where the hype should have been a whole lot louder.

Master pianist Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood) has come out of a five-year retirement in order to perform for a packed audience that includes his adoring, extremely famous actress spouse, Emma (Kerry Bishe). Tom quit the business after screwing up a complicated piece, humiliated by his public miscue. He’s here tonight, however, and playing his dead mentor’s priceless grand piano: the smell of redemption is in the air and Tom is feeling pretty great. As he turns the page on his sheet music, however, he comes across an ominous declaration, written in red across the page: “Play one wrong note and you die.” Subsequent notes lead him to understand that a mysterious sniper has both Tom and his wife in his sights and won’t hesitate to shoot them if Tom makes any mistakes. After being directed to grab an earpiece from his dressing room, Tom is finally in vocal contact with the mysterious man (John Cusack). The rules are simple: make one mistake, say one thing, try to attract attention in any way at all or disobey a single order…and Tom’s a dead man. But the show must go on: Tom’s audience may be captivated but he’s a captive and will do whatever it takes to get out.

Grand Piano takes an extremely simple, if ludicrous, premise (concert pianist held captive by sniper during live performance) and manages to turn it into one of the thorniest, wildest, most wonderful and flat-out impressive films I’ve ever seen. No joke: the film is an instant classic and, were it not for the prevalence and necessity of modern technology like cell phones, would seem almost timeless. Chalk that up to a few different things. On one hand, you have an outstanding lead duo with Elijah Wood and John Cusack: the two have more chemistry as adversaries than most romantic pairings I’ve seen lately. Wood has been on a bit of a career renaissance of late, with his performance in Franck Khalfoun’s outstanding Maniac (2012) being a particular highlight. His performance as Tom is just as good, although much more restrained (obviously). If anything, he definitely brought to mind the hassled heroism of someone like James Stewart, driving home that whole Hitchcock connection. Cusack has also been shying away from the roles that made him a mega-star in the ’80s and ’90s, becoming a bit of a brooding hero/anti-hero in film’s as diverse as Lee Daniels The Paperboy (2012), The Factory (2012), The Numbers Station (2013), Adult World (2013), The Frozen Ground (2013) and The Bag Man (2014). His performance as Clem is one of his very best “bad guy” roles, easily the equal of his work as the villainous Robert Hansen in The Frozen Ground. Cusack has the doubly-difficult task of being able to use only his voice for the vast majority of the film: it’s to his great credit that every slimy aspect of Clem comes through the earpiece loud and clear, without the benefits of body language or facial expression. Quite simply, Wood and Cusack are extraordinary in the film, each one so perfectly cast that it, again, reminds one of Hitchcock’s meticulous way with his actors.

Despite the film’s remarkably small, intimate set-up, it’s far from a two-man show. More than able support comes in the form of Kerry Bishe, whose Emma manages to seem fully actualized with a rather minimal amount of screentime. Also impressive are Tamsin Egerton, as Emma’s brash sister Ashley, and Alan Leech, as Ashley’s boyfriend Wayne. The duo add quite a bit of genuine humor to the film, as well as some surprising pathos, later on. They aren’t big roles, by any stretch of the term, but they are exceptionally important roles: there are no throwaway pieces in Mira’s intricate jigsaw puzzle of a film. Every actor, just like every camera angle and line of dialogue, is perfectly calibrated to offer maximum impact. One of the neatest touches? Bill and Ted’s Alex Winters as the assistant. As always, it makes me wish he acted more often, since it’s a perfectly nuanced performance. Even a seemingly disposable role like the janitor who shakes his head disapprovingly at Tom is given considerable class when played by a veteran character actor like Jim Arnold: it’s a great touch that really speaks to a rock-solid cast.

Not only is Grand Piano exquisitely cast, however, but it’s immaculately crafted, possessing some truly gorgeous cinematography and an excellent sound design that seems tailor-made for amps that go to 11. I’ve driven home the Hitchcock references time and time again but I’ll hammer it one more time: quite simply, Grand Piano looks like one of Hitchcock’s classic films. There’s a richness of image and color, a vibrancy and life that instantly recalls the Golden Age of Hollywood. As enamored as I was with the story, it would have been impossible to tear my eyes from the screen, regardless, thanks to how great everything looked. There’s one moment in the film where a shot organically becomes a split screen: I’m not quite sure how it’s done but I do know that it’s audacious, eye-catching and completely badass. It’s the kind of moment that makes films so much fun and Grand Piano is full of them.

Truth be told, Grand Piano really knocked my socks off. By the time the film revs up to full speed, it’s absolutely unstoppable, one fist-raising moment after another. It’s no hyperbole to say that I was on the edge of my seat the whole time because I literally was: it would have been impossible for me to sit back if I tried. Like the best of Hitchcock’s films, Grand Piano is imminently watchable, a 90 minute thrill-ride that feels like 45. Not only is Grand Piano tense and thrilling, however, but it’s also whip-smart: this is not the typical “dumb people do dumb things to advance the plot” film. This is much closer to an intricately plotted heist film, where every little detail and tidbit is part of the scheme, every throw-away factoid is actually a clue to the bigger picture. Regardless of how initially ridiculous any one set-piece in Grand Piano is (and there are some real corkers, let me tell ya), the movie handles everything with such a consistent sense of intelligence and rationality that I was inclined to believe all of it: why not?

I’ve tried to be as purposefully vague with plot details as possible so as to preserve as many of the film’s genuine surprises as I can: this is a film that will surprise you, time and again, so the less known, the better. The only things that you really need to know are that Grand Piano is an astounding film, Eugenio Mira is absolutely a director to keep an eye on and that you’re pretty much guaranteed to have a blast while watching. I don’t pretend to speak for Alfred Hitchcock in any way, shape or form but I’m pretty sure that Hitch would give this his seal of approval. At the very least, he’d take one look at Eugenio Mira and say, “Now there’s a man who understands the difference between surprise and suspense.”

5/11/14: A Real Mama’s Boy

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actor-director, Addie, Addie Bundren, Ahna O'Reilly, As I Lay Dying, based on a book, Beth Grant, Blood Meridian, burial, Christina Voros, cinema, Cormac McCarthy, Danny McBride, Dewey Dell, difficult narratives, dysfunctional family, film adaptations, film reviews, films, incest, independent films, indie dramas, isolated communities, isolation, James Franco, Jewel, Jim Parrack, John Kennedy Toole, last wishes, Logan Marshall-Green, Movies, multiple narrators, quest films, river crossing, Southern Gothic, split-screen, stream of consciousness, Tim Blake Nelson, unfilmable books, William Faulkner

Say what you will about James Franco (and I’ve said plenty of bad things, trust me) but you can’t accuse the actor-director of sticking to strictly safe, middle-of-the-road projects. For every Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) or Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), we get something like Interior. Leather Bar (2013) or his recent adaptations of William Faulkner’s infamous As I Lay Dying and Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God (both 2013). I’ve often felt that Franco can be scattershot and unfocused, while also feeling that his best acting work was still all the way back in Freaks and Geeks: he’s done the sub-James Dean thing for almost two decades, at this point, but he never felt more authentic than in Apatow’s short-lived TV series. That being said, I did enjoy his recent meta-Apocalypse comedy This is the End (2013), which revealed a fairly deft hand when dealing with his large ensemble cast. Would he bring this same quality to his adaptation of Faulkner’s notoriously “unfilmable” book? Read on, gentle readers…read on.

As I Lay Dying, Faulkner’s 1930 classic about the Bundren family and their quest to honor dead matriarch Addie’s final wish, is one of those novels, like John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces or McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, that most folks have considered nigh impossible to bring to the screen. While Confederacy’s tricky narrative seems somehow cursed, at least judging by the number of failed attempts to bring it to the big screen, and Blood Meridian is held-back by its awe-inspiringly ugly content (I think this probably has as much chance of being filmed as the Crossed graphic novels do), the problem with filming As I Lay Dying has more to do with the structure of its narrative. Since the book tends to be very stream of consciousness and uses multiple narrators to tell its tale (each member of the large family, including the dead Addie, gets a chance to narrative), there isn’t a whole lot of “physical” business to hang your hat on: it’s mostly inner conflict. This is one reason why Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has been largely considered “unfilmable.”

While the narrative structure in As I Lay Dying is decidedly non-conventional, it’s not like we’re dealing with a Kenneth Anger short: this is still a story about a family coming to grips with the loss of their mother while trying to find their own (very awkward) way in the world. These are relateable characters, even if we might not be standing square in the shoes: with the right touch, filming As I Lay Dying certainly doesn’t seem as improbable a task as taking on Joyce’s post-modern epic. For the most part, with a few reservations, I think that Franco acquits himself quite well. This adaptation isn’t perfect, of course, and many of my issues with Franco (unfocused, scattershot) tend to be issues in this film, as well. If it ultimately ends up being a bit more of a triumph of style over substance, that’s not necessarily a terrible thing: the film is never boring and frequently quite beautiful.

As Addie Bundren (Beth Grant) lays dying, she asks her husband, Anse (Tim Blake Nelson), to fulfill one final wish: she wants to be buried in the nearby town of Jefferson, several days ride from their homestead. She also wants to see her kids one final time, especially her favorite son, Jewel (Logan Marshall-Green). Jewel and his brother, Darl (Franco), however, are out making a delivery and don’t make it back til she’s already passed on. Jewel, of course, feels terrible but Darl seems a bit more ambivalent. Rounding out this merry bunch o’ folks is another brother, Cash (Jim Parrack), the youngest kid, Vardaman (Brady Permenter) and the family’s only daughter, Dewey Dell (Ahna O’Reilly). Anse’s friend, Vernon Tull (Danny McBride) hangs around for a bit but, ultimately, it’s just the Bundrens against the rest of “polite society.” As one set-back after another befalls them (the bridge is washed out and a river crossing becomes disastrous, Cash’s leg gets badly broken and “set” with wet cement, Dewey Dell is “in a family way” and needs to take care of it), the Bundren keep trudging on, hauling Addie’s coffin along to its final resting place. As Addie begins to rot, the Bundrens are treated more and more like pariahs: outsiders be damned, however…they will get to Jefferson one way or the other.

In order to handle the multiple narrators/points of view necessary to pull off the story, Franco uses two techniques: he utilizes a split-screen format in order to present opposing POVs simultaneously (obviously necessary to prevent the kind of bloat that could have sunk this quickly) and he has various characters deliver monologues directly to the camera. Of these techniques, the split-screen is the more intrusive but ends up being the more effective, in the long run: the monologues always come across as stagey and awkward, overly theatrical and way too presentational. When the split-screen works well, it’s used to excellent effect: at one point, Darl has a conversation with Dewey Dell and each actor is represented on one side of the screen. When either actor speaks, their voices are heard in the opposite frame but they don’t speak in their frames. It’s a showy effect, to be sure, but it actually serves a very valid purpose, allowing for a more concrete way to express the disconnect that these people feel. At another point, the split-screen is utilized underwater, leading to a really cool effect where each frame is a different color: it’s actually pretty neat, to be honest, aided immeasurably by the consistently excellent cinematography.

In fact, if I have any major complaint about the split-screen format (once it gets past the rather laborious first 15 minutes, that is) it’s that it often seems to devalue cinematographer Christina Voros’ amazing work. As I Lay Dying always looks great and, often, the film looks quite beautiful: Voros has a particularly “painterly” way of framing characters, similar to director Peter Greenaway, and this leads to some mighty impressive vignettes. I don’t know that the split-screen was, ultimately, necessary to the film’s structure (the monologues certainly weren’t) but they do end up adding some artistic, as well as subtextual, depth to the production.

As an adaptation, As I Lay Dying works pretty well, although it doesn’t do much to clear up some of the book’s denser elements. In particular, I found the revelation of Dewey Dell’s pregnancy to be handled in a rather confusing manner: while I haven’t read Faulkner’s novel since college, I’m pretty sure that the film arrives at a different conclusion. It could be that I missed something, of course, but I have the nagging suspicion that it was changed. The only other major change that I could see was the omission of the book’s non-familial narrators, which makes perfect sense: in a low-budget production, including a raft of extra characters doesn’t make much sense, logistically. It never hurt the narrative, at least as far as I could tell, so this seemed like a pretty negligible change.

Acting-wise, Franco’s cast does a pretty good job and coheres fairly well. Tim Blake Nelson is pretty extraordinary as the (literally) toothless Anse: even though I had the devil’s own time understanding him at any given point, Nelson brought an intensity to the performance that was electrifying. The scene where he finally puts Jewel in his place, explaining how he went 15 years without food and Jewel can damn well go a few days without a horse, is powerful stuff. Marshall-Green and Franco acquit themselves just fine as Jewel and Darl, respectively, but Jim Parrack is the real fraternal standout as Cash, the no-nonsense carpenter. As strange as it sounds, I found the scene where he described the logistics of coffin building to be utterly fascinating: I found myself captivated, despite having no interest in woodworking or coffins whatsoever…that’s a good performance! O’Reilly had several good moments as Dewey Dell but she also had an unfortunate tendency to be a bit wooden, a problem that seemed to infect other members of the cast. On the whole, the acting tended to vacillate between “excellent” and “serviceable,” with no one being particularly cringe-worthy.

Ultimately, As I Lay Dying stands as a very respectable, respectful adaptation of a notoriously difficult novel. When the film works, it has a real sense of dark power and urgency that is rather enthralling: the final resolution of Dewey Dell’s “problem” is just as horrifying and depressing as the resolution of Jennifer Connelly’s “problem” in Requiem for a Dream (2000). When the film doesn’t work, it can come off as stiff, pretentious and a little tone-deaf. That the film is, in the end, more successful than not certainly speaks volumes to Franco’s dedication to this project. After seeing this, I’m genuinely excited to see what he’s done with Child of God, especially since he once again utilizes Voros as his cinematographer.

I may not be a member of the Franco Fan Club just yet, but rest assured: a few more films like this under his belt and he runs the risk of actually becoming someone I’ll have to pay attention to. Now, let’s get him working on adaptations of Blood Meridian and Confederacy of Dunces: it’s a hard job but somebody’s gotta do it.