12/28/14 (Part One): Dancing Under the Gallows

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86th Annual Academy Awards, Aliza Sommer-Herz, Best Short Documentary winner, concentration camp, concentration camps, documentaries, Holocaust survivor, Malcolm Clarke, piano player, shorts, The Lady in Number 6, uplifting films, World War II, writer-director

At the time of her death last February, at the age of 110, Aliza Sommer-Herz was the oldest, living Holocaust survivor. She was also an amazingly vibrant personality who captivated all those around her with her expert piano-playing, a skill that she cultivated in the years before she was captured by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp. As Malcolm Clarke’s Oscar-winning short documentary, The Lady in Number 6 (2013) shows, both aspects of Aliza’s life, her piano-playing and her will to survive, were intrinsically linked. As the subtitle states, “Music saved (her) life,” to the great benefit of the rest of us.

Born in Prague in 1903, Aliza was part of an artistically inclined family that counted both Gustav Mahler and Franz Kafka as close, personal friends. Studying under ace pianist Artur Schnabel, Aliza became quite the prodigy in the years leading up to the Nazi Occupation. This skill would end up serving her well once she was transferred to a concentration camp: suitably impressed by her skill, the camp guards kept Aliza around as a sort of “human jukebox,” with any and everyone (including the infamous “Angel of Death,” Josef Mengele) stopping by to request songs and spend time getting lost in her playing. She would go on to perform some 100 concerts while interred in the concentration camp, earning the admiration of everyone around her, prisoner and guard alike.

After surviving the concentration camp, along with her son, Raffi, Aliza would go on to a long, happy life, one characterized by her unrelentingly upbeat attitude (one of her mottos was “It’s up to me whether life is good, not up to life.”) and her continued love of the piano. Even at age 109, during the filming of the documentary, Aliza displayed a vitality and joie de vivre that would be difficult to maintain in someone a third of her age, let alone under the often terrible conditions that Aliza lived through.

Subject-wise, The Lady in Number 6 is unbeatable: Aliza Sommer-Herz is a fascinating subject with a rich, powerful story and enough life lessons under her belt to teach us all for the next century. While any story about the Holocaust is going to be tragic and terrible, at its heart, Aliza manages to imbue so much positivity and love into her tale that it’s all but impossible to get through without a big smile on your face, even if a tear might threaten to roll down your cheek at any minute. At one point in the short, someone makes the observation that when people hear the word “Holocaust,” they only think about the gas chambers and six million dead: there was a whole world in-between those terrible extremes, a world which included many survivors, just like Aliza. In every way, then, The Lady in Number 6 becomes a story of survival and overcoming tragedy, rather than a sorrowful rumination on the unforgettable evil of the Holocaust.

While I fell completely in love with the subject of Clarke’s film, however, I must admit to being less than enthralled with the film, itself. Truthfully, I found much of the film to be a little clunky and choppy: there was also way too much “Vaseline-lens” for my tastes, since this had the effect of forcing emotion into scenes that needed no such help. Aliza is such a fascinating, positive force of nature that no such trickery is wanted/needed: a much more straight-forward style would have suited this better, since Clarke’s filmmaking is often too fussy to be as invisible as it should be.

Technical quibbles aside, however, The Lady in Number 6 is really a lovely little film and deserves to be seen by everyone: if there were more people like Aliza Sommer-Herz in the world, it’s doubtful that we’d be in the kind of straits that we’re currently in. For her ability to keep a brave, hopeful, loving attitude in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, Aliza should live on in our hearts forever.

2/2/14: The Brutality and the Beauty (Oscar Bait, Part 4)

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12 Years a Slave, 1840s, Academy Award Nominee, Academy Awards, Alfre Woodard, American Civil War, antebellum South, based on a book, Brad Pitt, Chiwetel Ejiofor, cinema, dignity, emancipation, emotional films, Film, forced captivity, freedman, historical drama, Hunger, kidnapped, Lupita Nyong'o, Michael Fassbinder, Movies, Oscar nominee, overseers, Paul Giamatti, plantations, Shame, slavery, slaves, Steve McQueen, uplifting films

My Oscar nominee exploration continues with the second Best Picture nominee that I’ve seen, thus far: 12 Years a Slave.

There can be no greater pain, no more terrible turmoil, than to be torn away from family and friends, taken far from their loving arms. I can’t imagine anything worse than waking up in unfamiliar climes, fully aware that somewhere, some immeasurably far distance away, your old life waits for you…that your family and friends wait for you, not knowing your fate. Unless, that is, you were taken from your family and sold into slavery. This, of course, is the central premise of Steve McQueen’s powerful historical drama, 12 Years a Slave.

Based on the memoirs of Solomon Northup, a free black musician living in New York in 1841, 12 Years a Slave details his struggle to maintain his dignity and sense of self in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Bounced between several different plantations during his twelve years of forced slavery, Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor) must use his considerable wits and courage, as well as his amiable nature, to keep himself alive and ever vigilant for any chance at freedom. Along the way, he meets a host of people: slave-owner and slave, plantation owner and brutal overseer,  emancipationist and lynch mob. Most of the people he meets will conspire to either use him for their own ends or will abuse and degrade him as they see fit, although he will also find a few kindred souls along the way like Patsey (Lupita Nyong’O), the fiery female slave that can pick four times the cotton that any man can and Bass (Brad Pitt), the emancipationist who, ultimately, leads to Solomon’s freedom.

12 Years a Slave is one of those rare films that is both unremittingly brutal and grim, yet simultaneously beautiful and hopeful. I’m tempted to compare the film, at least aesthetically, to Braveheart, in that both movies have a way of making epic imagery out of grimy, downtrodden humanity. 12 Years is a much more subtle film, of course, freed of the grandiosity and vengeance tropes that gave Braveheart the veneer of a popcorn film, despite its melancholy subject matter. Here, McQueen distills the horrible legacy of slavery down into one character’s personal journey, making a very large story much more compact, while allowing Solomon to be our guide through this pre-Civil War-era.

From a technical standpoint, 12 Years a Slave is quite beautiful, thanks in no small part to its evocative cinematography. Sean Bobbitt, the director of photography behind McQueen’s previous films Hunger and Shame, as well as Neil Jordan’s Byzantium, has a way of shooting even the ugliest events that highlights the beauty of the surrounding countryside, using lighting in such a way as to make everything positively glow. Shot-wise, McQueen and Bobbitt have a tendency to favor close-ups, especially where Solomon is concerned but that ends up being a pretty wise-move: Ejiofor is an absolutely amazing actor, a performer who can say so much with just a quivering lip and tear-filled eye.

Which leads us, of course, to the stellar ensemble cast. As befits a modern historical drama, 12 Years a Slave is packed to the rafters with top-shelf star talent and more “Oh-that-guy!” pointing than a Woody Allen film. There’s SNL-regular Taran Killam as one of the connivers who kidnaps Solomon; Paul Giamatti as a mean-spirited slavery broker; Benedict “Sherlock” Cumberbatch as a plantation owner that’s just about as “nice” and “fair” as Solomon ever finds; Paul Dano as Ford’s ridiculously venomous overseer, Tibeats (the scene where Solomon whips the shit out of Tibeats has to be one of the single most uplifting moments in the history of moving pictures); Michael Fassbinder (picking up a Best Supporting Actor nod) as the vicious Mr. Epps; American Horror Story’s Sarah Paulson as the equally vicious Mrs. Epps; Alfre Woodard as the slave “wife” of another plantation owner; Raising Hope’s Garrett Dillahunt as the treacherous Armsby and the aforementioned Mr. Pitt as Bass, Solomon’s eventual savior.

The acting, across the board, is exceptionally good, but Ejiofar is a complete revelation as Solomon Northup. He is such a visually expressive actor, particularly those big, emotional eyes of his and he conveys a world of character with just a smile, here, or a tear, there. The scene where the camera focuses on Solomon’s face as he sings a spiritual, Ejiofor cycling through more emotion in a few moments than most actors do in an entire film, is amazing.  Thus far, I’ve only seen one other Best Actor performance, Christian Bale in American Hustle, and Ejiofor resoundingly mops up the floor with him. This is the kind of performance that not only deserves an Oscar nomination but the actual award, itself. When Solomon finally looks on his family after his time in captivity and says, simply, “I apologize for my appearance but I’ve had a difficult time these past several years,” it’s impossible not to be completely and utterly destroyed: another actor might have made the moment too cloying, too precious. Ejiofor makes each syllable sting with so much pain, sorrow, joy and dignity that they become knives, cutting as much as they comfort.

In fact, Ejiofor’s portrayal of Solomon is so towering, so absolute, that other worthy performances tend to get a bit lost in the shuffle. Newcomer Nyong’o is perfect as Patsey, radiating a complex mix of sensuality, fear, anger and pride. If anything, I really wish that her character had more screentime: folding the Eliza character into Patsey would have given Nyong’o more screentime and given the film, in general, a stronger female presence. As it is, it’s quite telling that there wasn’t really a leading actress role to give a nomination to. Cumberbatch is excellent as the nicer-than-most slave-owner: there was quite a bit of nuance to his performance, proving that Cumberbatch’s stuffy eccentricities play out quite well on the big screen.

Much has been made of Fassbinder’s portrayal of the slimy Edwin Epps but, for my money, his was mostly a serviceable performance, too given to the kind of odd tics and quirks that Joaquin Phoenix usually uses to better effect. I thought there was much too much flash and a near constant attempt to “show” us the things that Epps was feeling. Ejiofor’s performance is almost completely internal, seeping into his mannerisms and expressions in a very organic manner. Fassbinder, on the other hand, comes across as much more “actorly” and presentational: his performance never seems to truly penetrate through to the character’s soul.

Ultimately, as with any other film (especially any awards nominee), I find myself asking the same questions: Is this really that good? Is this film worth the hype? Will we even remember it in 10-15 years? In the case of 12 Years a Slave, I’m leaning towards “yes” for all of those. McQueen has fashioned a real monster of a film, subtle but powerful, beautiful yet constantly grim and ugly. There are two scenes in the film, in particular, that strike me as being the kind of thing that proves the intrinsic quality and subtly of the film. One scene is the edge-of-the-seat moment where Solomon is hung from the neck in a muddy courtyard and must shift from foot to foot, side to side, for at least an entire day: one false move and he’ll effectively hang himself. The scene is absolutely perfect, nearly Hitchcockian in its perfect marriage of suspense and irony.

The second moment comes from the parallelism of Solomon joyously playing music for the white party at the beginning of the film, as a free man, versus him playing music for another white party, later on, as a slave. We see the difference in Solomon, of course, in his posture and his face, even in the slightly mournful cast to his trademark fiddle. McQueen is also careful, however, to let us see the difference in the very atmosphere, modulating the music so that it becomes not so much a product of Solomon (as in the beginning) but a part of the soundtrack: background music, if you will. Just as Solomon has lost his individuality and become part of the faceless, voiceless horror of slavery, so too has his music been subsumed, made a part of the machinery.

12 Years a Slave is not an easy film to sit through: the brutality, degradation and suffering on display is not sugar-coated, nor is it presented with anything less than the fact-of-live mundanity that slavery, unfortunately, was for many people. Despite everything that the world throws at him, however, Solomon Northup never once loses his personal sense of honor and dignity. He knows that they can take anything away from you – your livelihood, your freedom, even your name – but they can never take your humanity away from you…unless you let them.

Solomon never lets the slavers take away his dignity and it’s to Steve McQueen’s great credit that he never lets the film take it away, either. I’m not sure if 12 Years a Slave really is the best film of 2013 but I can wholeheartedly say that it’s certainly one of them.

1/29/14: Some Homes are Castles

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'70s films, Abby, Anne Tenney, Australian films, B-movies, Blacula, blaxploitation films, Charles Tingwell, cinema, Coastas Kilias, Darryl Kerrigan, Dracula, eminent domain, Eric Bana, feel-good films, films, happy films, horror films, independent films, low-budget films, making a stand, Mamuwalde, Michael Caton, Movies, Rob Sitch, The Castle, The Full Monty, the Kerrigans, Tiriel Mora, uplifting films, vampires, William Crain, William Marshall

Of the many, many sub-genres available in the wide world of film, I must admit a certain fondness for the blaxploitation genre. I grew up on films like Shaft, Dolemite and Across 110th Street (one of my all-time favorite movies): I’ll stack any of these films up against whatever you’ve got. Blaxploitation horror, however, was always a bit of a dicier proposition. When done poorly, you ended up with travesties like Blackenstein (which we’ll review in a future segment) or goofy romps like Abby. Upon occasion, however, there were some real gems to be found here: Sugar Hill and J.D.’s Revenge are both atmospheric little chillers and Scream, Blacula, Scream is a minor classic. The best of the bunch, however, as well as the forefather of them all was William Crain’s Blacula.

Blacula begins in a fairly typical way for an American International production (Corman is definitely a spiritual forefather to the proceedings): a dark and stormy night at Dracula’s castle. The distinguished African Prince Mamuwalde (William Marshall) has sought an audience with Count Dracula in order to request his assistance in ending the slave trade to North America; Dracula, for his part, really likes his slaves and wouldn’t mind a few more. He turns on Mamuwalde, bites him, curses him (“I curse you with my name. You shall be…Blacula!”), seals him in a coffin and walls his wife up to starve to death in the tomb. In other words, this Dracula is pretty much a colossal, racist asshole.

An inspired animated credit sequence (seriously cool, maybe one of the coolest credit sequences ever, to be honest) leads into the present day, where a couple of the most outrageous gay interior designer clichés in the history of moving pictures are purchasing several items from Dracula’s castle (a Transylvanian yard sale?). They fall in love with the coffin, even though they haven’t opened it, and lug it all the way home to Los Angeles. Once there, Mamuwalde (now Blacula) rises from his centuries-long sleep and proceeds to break fast on our friendly duo. He then stalks the streets until he accidentally runs into Tina (Vonetta McGee), who just so happens to be the spitting image of his long-deceased wife. What’s a lonely vampire to do but court this lovely creature? Turns out Tina’s friends and sister aren’t too keen on the idea, especially after some sleuthing turns up the truth about Mamuwalde’s origins (for one thing, he lies about his age). Dr. Gordon Thomas (Thalmus Rasulala) teams up with Lt. Peters (Gordon Pinset) and the LAPD and they all attempt to run the bloodsucker to ground. This culminates in a chase through a warehouse and the ultimate act of melancholy acceptance.

As far as low-budget horror films go, Blacula is certainly no worse (nor much better, in certain ways) than many others. The film is actually much less gimmicky than it may sound, functioning more as another straight-faced, if slightly unoriginal, adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic novel than anything else. Unlike Blackenstein, the majority of the cast in Blacula are black, with the majority of the white actors portraying the police. Cultural aspects are also interwoven much more organically through the story, from Prince Mamuwalde’s origins to the fantastically funky Afro-Cuban theme song.

In fact, for the most part, the film actually comes across as very low-key and highly respectful. William Marshall portrays Mamuwalde with a tremendous amount of dignity and nobility, as truly befits a Prince, and there’s very little in the way of slapstick humor (the interior designers are about as comical as it gets). Marshall, a trained Broadway and Shakespearian actor (as well as the King of Cartoons from Peewee’s Playhouse), actually worked with Crain and the producers to give his character a back-story, which certainly helps to elevate the story into the realm of tragedy rather than exploitation. The love story also feels genuine and not tacked on, something else that ties it in more intimately with the source material.

As befits a low-budget horror film from 1972, however, all is not smooth-sailing. The makeup, in general, is pretty bad but poor Blacula’s makeup is particularly awful: he basically just grows a widows-peak and unibrow. Some of the dialogue can be pretty silly (“Vampires multiple geographically.” “It’s a goddamn epidemic!”) and the gay characters are obviously very out-moded and rather derogatory. Everyone involved came from TV backgrounds, which definitely influences the overall look of the film (think Kolchak-esque production values). Marshall is pretty spectacular in the titular role, however, and the ending packs a pretty decent emotional wallop. All in all, Blacula ends up being one of the better low-budget vampire films out there and definitely worthy of a screening. Be forewarned, however: you’ll be humming the theme song and performing “air horns” for the next week straight.

Sometimes, it takes me a while to really connect with a movie. I may watch something a few times and appreciate it but it may take me a whole lot longer to actually like it. Take Fincher’s The Game, for example: I actively hated that film when I saw it in the theater but, after watching it several more times in the ensuing years, I’ve actually begun to like the movie. Give it another 10 years and I’ll probably love it.

Some films, however, hit me immediately, going straight to my reptile brain and setting up residence in my immune system. I fell completely head-over-heels for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly when I first saw it, for example and after finishing Taxidermia for the first time, I promptly started it all over again. It’s hard to tell why some things get to me more than others. I do know one thing, however: I fell instantly in love with Rob Sitch’s The Castle and it will, in all likelihood, become one of my favorite films in the future.

The Castle is an Australian film that could, for lack of a better term, best be described as a feel-good film. Right off the bat, we’re introduced to the Kerrigan family, an ultra-lovable clan of eccentrics. There’s Darryl (Michael Caton), the resourceful, ever-optimistic patriarch and his loving, supportive wife Sal (Anne Tenney) or, as their kids say, “If Dad is the backbone, Mum is the other bones.” We also meet their kids Dale, Steve and Tracey (Stephen Curry, Anthony Simcoe and Sophia Lee, respectively) and Tracey’s husband, Con (Eric Bana, in his screen debut). Another son, Wayne (Wayne Hope) is currently serving a prison sentence, not because he’s a bad person, but because he listened to the  wrong person. There is absolutely no sense of shame as far as Wayne goes: his family loves him just as much as if he were sitting before them.

And this, friends and neighbors, is what makes The Castle so completely, absolutely magical: these people genuinely love and respect each other! Fancy that: a family unit constructed of love, support and understanding, rather than sarcasm, irony and snarkiness…the mind practically buckles at the thought! These are quirky characters, to be sure, but they never lose one iota of their wonderful innocence and charm, regardless of how strange their actions might get or how much the world attempts to crush them down. For the world will, indeed, try to crush the Kerrigans.

Turmoil comes to their small suburban paradise in the form of a planned expansion by the next-door airport (literally next-door, as in “two-feet-from-their-backyard” close). Their property, along with their neighbors’ properties have been seized under eminent domain laws and they’ve been offered a cash settlement and told to hit the road. Only problem is, Darryl Kerrigan loves his home: it may look cheap, stitched together and decidedly middle-class to outsiders but it’s where he raised his family, it’s where all of his memories are and it’s his home, dammit! He rallies his neighbors, who all pledge to put up a united front. As his neighbor Farouk (Costas Kilias) makes clear, things can always be worse: “He say plane fly overhead, drop value. I don’t care. In Beirut, plane fly over, drop bomb. I like these planes.”

When he can’t get anyone to listen, Darryl enlists the aid of the lawyer who represented Wayne, despite his lack of knowledge in constitutional law cases (“I can’t do this!” “You defended Wayne.” “And he got eight years!”) and proceeds to take the case as far as he can. Along the way, he happens to join forces with a former Queens Council barrister, a legal eagle who just may have the know-how to send the government packing. The whole thing climaxes in a thrilling courtroom dance between the barrister (Charles Tingwell) and those who would deny a man the simple right to raise his family.

The Castle is one of those films that, as mentioned above, I just fell in love with right off the bat. The humor is rapid fire and genuinely funny (blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments include the super-thin pool table built into the too-small room and Dale’s outrageously useless inventions) and the dramatic moments actually feel real, not tagged on. The acting is absolutely impeccable, especially from Michael Caton: I not only felt like I knew Darryl but I genuinely wanted to spend time with him. This, in a nutshell, is the beauty of the entire film: this is a group of people who genuinely love and care for each other. As a family unit, they are nothing but positivity, acceptance and love. My favorite example of this comes from the family’s dinners, where Darryl constantly extols the virtue of his wife’s cooking: “What do you call this, then?” “Chicken.” “And it’s got something sprinkled on it.” “Seasoning.” “Seasoning! Look’s like everybody’s kicked a goal!” Moments like this could come across as silly and treacly in the wrong hands but the film is so pitch-perfect that it all comes across as sweet rather than cloying.

In fact, the absolute best compliment that I can pay The Castle is that I really didn’t want it to end. I could have probably enjoyed the Kerrigan’s exploits for another two or three hours but the 85 minutes I spend with them was way too short. I was going to compare The Castle to another go-to feel-good movie of mine, The Full Monty (a comparison which the box art even takes pains to mention) but I honestly believe that The Castle is the far superior film. The Full Monty, as great as it is, still has a tendency to manipulate and play with our emotions and expectations. The Castle, on the other hand, just presents a group of really likable characters and asks you to come along for the ride: that’s an invitation I’ll accept anytime.