Mother (Madeo) (2009)

She'll stop at nothing.

"Mother" is an unusual character-based murder mystery set in modern day South Korea and featuring a superb performance by Kim Hye-ja, the actress playing the title character, a single mother of a mentally backward, memory-impaired, young man of 28 years of age accused of killing a local school girl. Finding precious little support from the law, Hye-ja, desperate to identify the real perpetrator, is herself forced to turn amateur detective.

The story begins with the son, Do-joon (Won Bin), being led into a needlessly violent confrontation with a group of elderly people by his best friend, Jin-tae (Ku Jin). Later, at the police station, facing a sizeable fine for criminal damage, Jin-tae exploits Do-joon's foggy recollection of the event to trick him into taking the rap. Of course, it is Do-joon's mother, Hye-ja (Kim Hye-ja), who will have to try to find the money to pay the fine from her meagre income as a herb seller and unlicensed acupuncturist. Later, when the body of the school girl is found, and the finger of suspicion points to Do-joon, based on circumstantial evidence (possibly planted by Jin-tae), Hye-ja begins a solitary struggle on behalf of her son.

Stripped to its essence, and in the hands of lesser filmmakers, perhaps, this would be just another stock genre murder mystery with an amateur sleuth. But the sly way the story is set up by director, Bong Joon-ho, and screenplay writer, Park Eun-kyo, edging the mother unexpectedly into the role of investigator, is so fresh and clever in its execution that it seems quite novel.

The script is brilliant, with the plot taking various surprising turns. People are not always what they seem at first, and there are some unsettling reveals. Along the way, a harsh light is shone on the investigative powers of the police and the moral fibre of the legal representatives, not to mention the cruel world of Korean schoolchildren, and there are episodes of strong suspense and violence. An intriguing secondary mystery clouds the nature of the relationship between two important characters. Is the one still a small child in the eyes of the other, or is something less savoury involved? Perhaps I missed some vital clues, but in my mind this puzzle was only satisfactorily resolved days after watching the film.

The script is great, but best of all is the outstanding performance by Kim Hye-Ja as the mother, a master class in method acting, her incredibly expressive face able to communicate a range of conflicting emotions within a matter of seconds. The enigmatic temporal bookends in which she features linger in the memory. Very good performances as well by Jin Goo and Won Bin as the two young men.

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• Director: Bong Joon-ho
• Writers: Bong Joon-ho, Park Eun-kyo
• Starring: Kim Hye-ja, Bin Won, Ku Jin, Yoon Jae-Moon, Mi-sun Jun, Young-Suck Lee, Sae-Beauk Song, Mun-hee Na, Woo-hee Chun, Byoung-Soon Kim

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• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 6 May 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961)

Audrey Hepburn plays Holly Golightly, the craziest heroine who ever crept between the pages of a best-selling novel!

Breakfast at Tiffany's, based on the novella (1958) by Truman Capote, is a romantic comedy drama with a very dark heart about identity, self-delusion and ambition in New York City, featuring a mesmerising central performance by Audrey Hepburn.

Holly Golightly (Hepburn) is a bubbly kooky glamorous fun-loving girl whose life seems to be constant swirl of nightclubs, late night parties and men. A handsome young author, Paul Varjak (George Peppard), moves into an apartment above, and is willingly drawn into the carousel of Holly's chaotic existence.

The stage is set for romance, or would be but for one small hurdle. Varjak has long-term writer's block and seems to subsist on handouts from a wealthy patroness, Emily Eustace Failenson (Patricia Neal), while Holly has set her sights on marrying a man rich enough to validate her current life-style, a millionaire, and puts a kind of magic ring-fence around Varjak, nicknaming him "Fred" after her older brother.

The two leads are likeable characters, and we wish them well. Will the fixedness of Holly's ambitions prevent her from finding true happiness? Will Varjak ever find sufficient lead for his pencil (actually ribbon for his typewriter)? As the story unfolds, the happy-go-lucky world of Holly Golightly begins to develop serious fault-lines, as the world-conquering self-image that she has created for herself becomes increasingly difficult to maintain against the intrusion of inconvenient prosaic realities from her present and past lives.

There are strong parallels between the two lead characters, relating to their sources of income, indicated early on in the story. In the small hours in the apartment building one night, escaping from an insistent drunken date, angry that the $50 "restroom attendant tip" he gave her has got him nothing in return, Holly slips up the fire escape to Varjak's window and sees Failenson inside, adjusting her clothes and leaving a $300 gift on the bedside table before exiting. Holly's main income, it can be inferred, is in the form of "gifts", money or otherwise, from men at clubs, where she presumably serves as some sort of escort or companion. Wikipedia's entry for Capote's novella states: "Holly Golightly (age 18-19) is a country girl turned New York café society girl, who makes her living as a companion to society's most prominent men." Varjak has had a book of short stories published, but nothing else recently, so it seems very doubtful that he could be getting sufficient royalties to pay for an apartment in Manhattan. Judging by the decor, it seems more likely that the apartment is provided for him by Failenson.

While watching, I suspected that Holly Golightly was a stand-in for Truman Capote himself, casting himself, metaphorically as an aspirational "media whore". Wikipedia, however, draws parallels between Golightly and Capote's mother, who carved out a new life for herself in New York City in a similar way to Golightly: "both left the husbands they married as teenagers and abandoned relatives they loved and were responsible for in order to make their way to New York City, and both achieved Cafe Society status through relationships with wealthier men".

The best thing about the film is the character of Holly Golightly, the glamorous tart rejecting her heart, and Hepburn's wonderful portrayal of her. Wikipedia says that Hepburn herself "regarded it as one of her most challenging roles, since she was an introvert required to play an extrovert", and also that Marilyn Monroe was first choice for the role, which would have been different, but also probably very effective. The great song "Moon River" by Henry Mancini was apparently written specially for the "limited vocal range" of Audrey Hepburn, whose singing of it, according to Wikipedia "helped composer Henry Mancini and lyricist Johnny Mercer win an Oscar for Best Song."

Peppard, by contrast, 33 years old at the time, was surely too old for the role. (Hepburn was 42 32, but always looked young for her age.) Admittedly, he does have the intelligence and sensitivity for the role, but to attract a rich sugar mummy, surely his character would need to be a slimmer, more handsome, more waifish younger man, a young Warren Beatty or Anthony Perkins, for instance, not this stolid buttoned-up suit-wearing type.

Sources:

• Breakfast at Tiffany's (novella): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_at_Tiffany%27s_(novella)
• Audrey Hepburn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Hepburn
• George Peppard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Peppard

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• Director: Blake Edwards
• Writers: George Axelrod (screenplay), Truman Capote (novella)
• Starring: Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Martin Balsam, Patricia Neal, Buddy Ebsen, Mickey Rooney, John McGiver, José Luis de Villalonga

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 2 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: Following good comment from @anonymous, deleted "more waifish" from description of the young Warren Beatty. Added ranking image. Following comment by Wanderer, struck through the whole of last paragraph, which has been pretty much blown out of the water.

True Grit (1969)

The strangest trio ever to track a killer.

A very enjoyable character-based western, directed by Henry Hathaway, and notable for the remarkable strength of will and general audaciousness of its female protagonist, teenager Mattie Ross (Kim Darby), who propels herself into a brutal male-dominated world of violence and death. As in the Coen brothers' 2010 remake, Mattie embarks on a quest to bring her father's murderer to justice with the help of two very different law enforcers, a grizzled hard-drinking US Marshall, Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne), and a charismatic young Texas ranger, La Boeuf (Glen Campbell).

This 1969 film has more back story than the Coen brothers' remake, introducing Mattie and her father, Frank Ross (John Pickard), at home, and showing the context of the murder and the murder itself. From then on the plot follows fairly similar paths, driven by Mattie and her mission. Finding that the local sheriff has no jurisdiction in the Indian Territory to which the murderer, Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey), has fled, Mattie, on her own initiative, hires the meanest licensed federal law officer she can find, Cogburn. La Boeuf also turns out also to be in pursuit of Chaney, for an earlier crime, and in fairly short order, Mattie, Cogburn and La Boeuf enter Indian Territory all bent on the same goal.

As in the Coen brothers' version, the main delight of the film is Mattie Ross herself: the way she interacts with the range of people she encounters and the character of her responses to events. She is an amazing person, only 14 years old but clever and audacious, whose personal courage and readiness to engage in violent action, as the story develops, is tested to the extreme. Perhaps in those days (1880 according to Wikipedia, not that long ago really, around the time my father's grandfather was running around in short trousers), children were less sheltered. Near the start of the film, the filmmakers deliberately show how public executions were treated by many townspeople as a fun day out, with snacks for sale, and small children apparently free to mingle with the watching crowds, and even, from their playground swings opposite the town square, getting the best views.

Hathaway permits his young protagonist more emotion than the Coen brothers do. He shows, from the outset, how Mattie is taken with La Boeuf and briefly shows her crying (privately) over her late father's possessions. Possibly related to this, but less satisfactorily, is the use of the musical score, which to modern ears seems rather unsubtle at times.

Another delight, of course, is the debauched but doughty character of Cogburn and the great performance of Wayne (despite being 20 years or so older than the character in the book, he received an Academy Award for Best Actor), contrasting strongly with the characters of the strictly brought up Mattie and straight-arrow La Boeuf. According to Wikipedia, Wayne did his own stunts, including the final jump.

There's so much fun to be had, especially, in the first reel, in Mattie's interactions with other characters. When she comes into conflict with La Boeuf, their brief flirting turns to verbal sparring, and she stands up to him just fine, as she does with everyone else. Her dealings with the horse dealer, Col. G. Stonehill (an outstanding performance by Strother Martin), show her to be a wonderfully feisty resourceful person.

Speaking of supporting characters, others of note include Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper, who play their roles relatively sympathetically, showing that criminals are more than simple monsters.

My only criticism is that Glen Campbell, hand-picked by Wayne, according to Wikipedia, seemed too old for the role (he was 33), or not quite vulnerable and good-looking enough for Mattie to take a shine to him, or maybe just not an expressive enough actor. I never felt there was any chemistry between the two of them.

Sources:

• Glen Campbell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Campbell

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• Director: Henry Hathaway
• Writers: Marguerite Roberts (screenplay), Charles Portis (novel)
• Starring: John Wayne, Kim Darby, Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, Jeff Corey, Dennis Hopper, Strother Martin, John Fiedler

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 26 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: corrected some links. Added ranking image.

Funny Face (1957)

'S Wonderful! 'S Marvelous!

Here's a romantic musical comedy with the most promising ingredients:

• featuring winsome Audrey Hepburn in her first musical outing and legendary dancer Fred Astaire
• directed by Stanley Donen, uncrowned king of Hollywood musicals and director of the glorious classic "Singing in the Rain"
• music by George and Ira Gershwin
• choreography by Eugene Loring
• set in New York City and Paris

Sadly, what should be a light and airy soufflé turns out to be a bit of a pudding.

The film starts well enough with a sprightly musical dance title sequence in a modernistic Mondrian-like style, apparently designed by photographer Richard Avedon, in which Maggie Prescott (the fabulously talented Kay Thompson), editor of Quality fashion magazine, throws out the design for next month's edition, and demands a bold new look, all in pink. Lead photographer, Dick Avery (Astaire), a character apparently based on Richard Avedon himself, seeking inspiration in a Greenwich book shop, happens upon fashion-eschewing philosophy-loving sales assistant, Jo Stockton (Hepburn), and convinces Prescott that Stockton has the fresh new look the magazine needs. Stockton, though somewhat smitten with Avery following an impromptu kiss on the lips, is at first reluctant to be involved. But, on the strength of a free trip to Paris, where at last, in her free time, she can attend lectures by her idol, Emile Flostre (Michel Auclair), professor of empathicalism, she finally agrees to work as Quality magazine's featured model, and they all fly to Paris.

The setup is a bit like a fifties' version of The Devil Wears Prada (2006), with Hepburn pre-figuring Anne Hathaway's fashion-ambivalent journalist Andrea Sacks, and Thompson trailblazing the tyrannical reign of Meryl Streep's ruthless Runway magazine editor, Miranda Priestly. It is a setup with fantastic potential for subtly exploring issues relating to the role of women in the modern world via the conflicting external and internal forces acting on the character of Stockton, a woman who, rejecting conventional gender stereotyping and espousing the world of ideas, nevertheless, has temporarily agreed to compromise her ideals by working in the fashion industry.

A great setup, yes, but a very unsatisfying payoff, where the issues posed in the setup, even the relatively minor issue of the questionable value of fashion (which The Devil Wears Prada addresses very smartly), are pretty much left by the wayside. Instead (without dropping specific plot spoilers), Stockton's behaviour becomes irrationally, even selfishly capricious, leading to peculiar plot developments, all apparently serving to maintain the conventions of the genre. Could this lack of bite in the script have resulted from a failure of nerve when facing up to the popular modern monsters of feminism, intellectualism and anti-materialism?

Forgetting the film's questionable morals and character development, taking it purely in terms of entertainment, the film is simply rather dull. Despite being awarded a Golden Laurel nomination for "Top Male Musical Performance" at Cannes Film Festival (1957), to my unschooled eyes, Astaire seems rather subdued and does not really do anything very impressive in dance, except when pretending to be a French beatnik, and his singing isn't that great, either. My teenage daughter, who has had a good deal of dance training, commented that his dancing was boring. The songs by Gershwin are quite unmemorable. The view provided on the bohemian Left Bank culture looks stereotyped and unconvincing. That said, the Paris-based Bohemian dance numbers by Hepburn, Thompson and Astaire are pretty funny. The best performers are Hepburn who does a funny modern dance routine to express herself in a French dive, and her boss, the head of Quality magazine, who is a hugely entertaining dancer.

Astaire was terribly miscast. (According to Wikipedia, Hepburn insisted that he be cast. He had starred with his sister Adele in the stage version years before.) Hepburn was 28 but looked younger. Astaire was 58 and looked it, especially in his frequent cardigans, a 30-year age gap, too wide. There seemed to be no reason why she should fall for him, except that he took the liberty of kissing her on the lips a couple of times, and also that he was the one that saw her potential as a model and chose her for the magazine feature.

According to Wikipedia, only a year or so after the release of this film, the bottom fell out of the musical film genre, and Donen had to change to other kinds of work. On the evidence of this film, I'm not really surprised.

Sources:

• Stanley Donen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Donen
  

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• Director: Stanley Donen
• Writer: Leonard Gershe
• Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Kay Thompson, Michel Auclair, Robert Flemyng, Suzy Parker

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• Rating: Rental
• When seen: 22 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendment: Added ranking image.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

My private life is my own affair

In The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, an original story by Billy Wilder and co-writer, I. A. L. Diamond, the filmmakers slyly play with the familiar tropes of the great fictional detective and audience expectations, fashioning a tale at once classical in plot and characters but contemporary in vision.

The film kicks off with a very smart temporal bookend, set in a bank vault 50 years after the main action, in which a dust-covered, bound, sealed chest of Sherlock Holmes memorabilia belonging to Dr Watson is opened and, piece by piece, the contents revealed. First, the audience is reminded of the familiar elements of Sherlock Holmes' life - the deerstalker hat, the meerschaum pipe, the magnifying glass, the door number 221B, and so on. Second, a tantalising puzzle of novel or less familiar elements is introduced: a musical score entitled "for Ilse van H. Sherlock Holmes, comp.", a gold pocket watch containing the photograph of an attractive young woman, a ring fronted with the initials "SH" hiding a miniature magnetic compass, a medical syringe, a snow globe featuring a bust of Queen Victoria, and a sheaf of papers entitled "To my heirs", from which a ghostly Dr Watson narrates. After mentioning the 60 or so published accounts of Sherlock Holmes' cases, he continues, "But there were other adventures which, for reasons of discretion, I have decided to withhold from the public until this much later date. They involve matters of a delicate and sometimes scandalous nature, as will shortly become apparent…".

The story switches back 50 years to Holmes (Robert Stephens) and Watson (Colin Blakely) returning to their shared Baker Street flat, and to an immediate puncturing of some less modern aspects (the habit of wearing a cloak and deerstalker hat) of the familiar Sherlock Holmes stereotype, and the reinforcing of some other ostensibly more modernistic elements (the interest in music, the use of recreational drugs), with Holmes waxing irate at the public's inaccurate image of him, foisted on him by Watson's use of poetic licence when reporting his "simple exercises in logic" and the publisher's erroneous illustrations. Holmes also protests that Watson has falsely characterised him as a misogynist - he does not dislike women, merely mistrusts them - thereby introducing another of the more modernistic themes of the film: Holmes's sexuality.

Nowadays, if two unmarried men share a flat and one writes consistently glowing reports of the other's exploits, people might reasonably wonder about the nature of their personal relationship. Wikipedia reports that "Holmes is not known to have had any relations with women" whereas Watson was married in some stories. In a minor plot thread involving an ageing Russian prima ballerina (Tamara Toumanova) on the point of retirement, the script writers have some fun playing with the notion that Holmes might have been gay. Holmes is summoned to the side of the ballerina, and only manages to avoid a proposal to father her first child, in exchange for a precious Stradivarius violin, by pretending to be in a relationship with Dr Watson. Watson's conventional panic about what people will think of him highlights Holmes' amused and urbane response, adding to his status as a man socially, as well as intellectually, ahead of his time.

Now into the film comes a damsel in distress, Gabrielle Valladon (Geneviève Page), a beautiful woman with a foreign accent and a missing husband, and the story takes on more of the elements of a standard Sherlock Holmes mystery, including cages of canaries, disappearing circus midgets, monks sworn to silence, odd goings-on in the ruins of a Scottish castle and even sightings of a Loch Ness monster.

The scriptwriters continue to have fun with Holmes' sex life, allowing him to provide a rationale for his distrust of women, and placing him in various interesting juxtapositions - and let's be honest, temptations - with his new client, Valladon, including full-on nudity and the semblance of domestic married bliss. Early on, at the Baker Street flat, for example, Valladon, mentally confused after a recent near drowning and apparently thinking herself in her own home and mistaking Holmes for her husband, wanders around unashamedly in a state of undress and attempts to embrace him. Later on, to mask their true identities, Holmes and Valladon pretend to be a married couple, with Watson as their valet, leading to interesting developments in the bedroom.

In any case, by the end of the film, the significance of the items pulled out of Dr Watson's chest should be quite clear and questions about Holmes' choice of relationships feel satisfactorily resolved.

Turning to performances: as the great consulting detective, Robert Stephens, his features suitably angular, is really pretty convincing. With voice and body language, he conveys a background of sufficient social and educational privilege and the required intellectual arrogance, and with just a hint of arch campness, introduces the shadow of a doubt. Colin Blakely plays Watson very conventionally, as is right, to emphasise Holmes' uniqueness; Geneviève Page is just right as Holmes' client, lovely and loveable; and Christopher Lee is very sinister as Mycroft. Of the supporting actors, Irene Handl gives a wonderful performance as Mrs Hudson, Holmes' landlady.

This film would make a good double bill with John Huston's classic The Maltese Falcon (1939).

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• Director: Billy Wilder
• Writers: I. A. L. Diamond, Billy Wilder
• Starring: Robert Stephens, Geneviève Page, Colin Blakely, Christopher Lee, Irene Handl, Clive Revill, Tamara Toumanova, Stanley Holloway

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 27 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home, on iPad
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: Added ranking image.

The best science fiction movie...

Over on the Linkedin website, in the Movie Addicts discussion group, Michael Gericke posed the question "Science Fiction - What's the best movie?" Although it's not a movie commentary as such, I'd like to re-post my answer here, somewhat amended.

As the notion of "best" here is clearly subjective, it's not really possible to arrive at a definitive answer. That given, my vote would go to Stanley Kubrik's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), probably the most far-reaching SF movie ever in ambition of ideas and brilliance of technique, though its intellectual "coldness" may put many people off.

My second vote would probably go to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) which was hugely influential and which I can watch again and again. As well as the brilliant scenes where replicant androids are tested for emotional responsiveness, I especially love the scene where Deckard, using speech navigation on his home computer, finds a crucial clue in a photo, zooming in beyond all belief.

Here are some other contenders, organised by topic:

• Best noir-inflected: Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville;
• Best robots/androids: Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running, Paul Verhoeven's Robocop, John Cameron's The Terminator / T2, and again Ridley Scott's Blade Runner; Brad Bird's The Iron Giant;
• Best aliens: Robert Wise's The Day The Earth Stood Still, Nicholas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth, Ridley Scott's Alien, Steven Spielberg's E.T,, Close Encounters of the Third Kind;
• Best action-packed: Andy & Larry Wachowski's The Matrix, James Cameron's Aliens and The Terminator / T2, John McTiernan's Predator, Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall, John Carpenter's The Thing;
• Best social satire: Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Stanley Kubrik's A Clockwork Orange;
• Best paranoia: Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris
• Best humour: John Carpenter's Dark Star, Stanley Kubrik's Dr Strangelove;
• Best special effects (at the time): Jack Arnold's The Incredible Shrinking Man, Stanley Kubrik's 2001, Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park; James Cameron's Avatar

N.B. I referred to an excellent book: The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies, John Scalzi (2005)

Source Code (2011)

Make Every Second Count.

Source Code is an intelligent suspenseful science fiction thriller with a clever script and excellent performances.

The premise of the story, like an updated version of Groundhog Day (1993) for the attention deficit generation, repeatedly casts the central protagonist (Jake Gyllenhaal) back into a single 8-minute period of time on a speeding train. Groundhog Day's weatherman Phil Connors' comparatively leisurely 24 hours are compressed into the high pressure intensity of Gyllenhaal's character's situation, and the minor misadventures and personal tragedies punctuating small town life in Punxutawney are upgraded to kick-ass action sequences and life-threatening explosions.

Like Gyllenhaal's character, the audience is thrown right from the very start of the film into a very confusing situation, and a large part of the fun for the audience is working out, in parallel with him, why he is there and what the heck is going on. Like Groundhog Day, more fun is then had exploring the parameters of the situation, introducing permutations, and learning how to "game" or otherwise exploit the situation.

Without dropping any specific plot spoilers, and without getting into questions of strict scientific legitimacy, I can say that for me the story develops and concludes very satisfyingly. Geeky types like me, familiar with the standard tropes of time travel fiction, will probably see a key plot revelation coming quite a long way off, but the difficulty of avoiding a degree of predictability is a problem common to all popular genres and not a major criticism.

If there is anything that doesn't work so well for me, it is a recurring story thread of a person Gyllenhaal's character needs to contact. Somehow, this seemed tacked on, not intrinsic but as if it was intended to manipulate the audience's sympathies.

As for the performances, the film stands or falls primarily on the performance of Jake Gyllenhaal, and he carries the role with ease, combining a character of intelligence and sensitivity with a believable potential for physical action and even violence. Vera Farmiga also impresses as Goodwin, ably intimating her character's internal conflict between personal empathy and strict by-the-book professional competence. Within a narrow range of rather repetitive dialogue, as Adam Kempenaar and Matty Robinson pointed out in their review, Michelle Monaghan keeps her performance fresh and apparently spontaneous.

I don't mean to make too much of the similarities with Groundhog Day, as this is quite a different film, in a way more similar to Tony Scott's fun but somewhat less compelling Deja Vu (2006). Beyond the confines of the story itself, looking at the character arc, and even the morals of the stories, one has to say that Groundhog Day has far more to give and far more to say than either Source Code or Deja Vu.

Groundhog Day stands the test of repeated viewings, remaining delightful. If Source Code can achieve that, it will have done very well.

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 17 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Cinema
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Sources:

• Filmspotting #342

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Amendment: Added ranking image.

Groundhog Day (1993)

He's having the worst day of his life... over and over...

This is a wonderfully entertaining romantic comedy in which a clever fantasy premise is exploited to the full by a really sharp script, supported by exemplary performances, and underpinned by a subtext of real substance.

The film poses the question, "What would you do if you got stuck in a time loop, and were condemned to relive the same day, over and over again?" Would it be a curse or a blessing? Scriptwriters Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis take obnoxiously jaded TV weather reporter, Phil Connors (Bill Murray), with accompanying producer, Rita (Andie MacDowell) and cameraman, Larry (Chris Elliott), and drop him into small-town hell. For Phil's fourth year running, he is being sent to report from the otherwise unremarkable town of Punxutawney, Pennsylvania, on the February 2nd tradition of using a burrowing animal, the eponymous groundhog, a sort of over-grown hamster, to predict the weather, and the accompanying goofily energetic celebrations that grip the townspeople.

February 2nd, our first day in Punxutawney introduces us, at least tangentially, to most of the characters and locations that we will be revisiting in the rest of the film. Phil, painted as a cynical pessimist, a "glass is half empty" kind of guy, dismisses the enthusiastic Rita as "fun, but not my kind of fun", cold shoulders the rather nerdy Larry, and sneers at the small town antics of the townspeople and their ignorance of more fashionable ways of life in the metropolis. Forget about being able to get an espresso or cappuccino, they don't even know how to spell the words!

The following morning, Phil is subjected to a second performance of the previous day, but finds that he is the only person aware that the day is repeating, in a kind of nightmarishly extended deja vu. As he continues to wake up, at 6.00 a.m. morning after morning, on the same day, February 2nd, he goes through the full gamut of responses to the situation, ranging from scepticism, confusion and disbelief to panic, stoicism and darkest despair, all to no avail. Although he can behave as a free agent, no matter what he does, he can't escape this loop in time.

Quickly figuring out the parameters of the situation, Phil realises that when time loops, effectively, there are no social consequences, no retribution for selfish, immoral or illegal actions, and he begins to "game" the system. This aspect of the film is highly entertaining, as day-by-day, Phil cynically accumulates knowledge in order to exploit other people and gain material things and experiences, and various scenarios mutate and extrapolate in different ways, some of them laugh out loud funny. It is only when he realises and tries to win his heart's desire that his system breaks down, and things get very interesting.

The cinematography is not flashy, but in some scenes the visuals and audio are used in quite sophisticated ways to subliminally enhance the emotional impact, with the filmmakers subtly distorting spacial dimensions and/or soundscapes. For example, to create an eerie "deja vu" effect when Phil returns to Gobblers Knob, the little park with the bandstand, the music is slightly distorted with a chilling echo effect. Later too, when in extreme close-up the clock numerals on Phil's hotel alarm clock change from 05.59 to 06.00 a.m., the audio effect is amplified, heightening the dreadful inevitability Phil feels. And apparently the dimensions of Phil's hotel room were changed to increase feelings of claustrophobia and alienation.

Speaking of alienation, Brian Aldiss, one of the later breed of science fiction writers mining inner space (people's psyches) rather than outer space, successfully created an objective rationale for alienation in the short story "Man In His Time" (1965). The idea in this story is that planets have their own time zones and that planet-hopping astronauts may return to us physically but remain separated from us temporally, even, in the case of the protagonist of this story, finding himself experiencing everything an awkward three minutes ahead of his wife and colleagues. Likewise, Groundhog Day is an elegantly realised externalisation of inner space through a time-travel or alternate dimension paradigm, encapsulating the whole breadth of human emotion and attitude to life. For all that it is a comedy, at its centre, I would say Groundhog Day is a story about human depression and despair and our responses to that human predicament. The title has entered the vernacular as short-hand for a tedious repetitive (working) experience.

Turning to the performances, Bill Murray puts in a great performance, typically minimal, and credible across a wide range of character traits, from warm-hearted and loving to coolly obnoxious to clinically depressed. I hadn't given Andie MacDowell much credit, but on second thoughts, she is an excellent foil for Murray, and functions as the story's moral and emotional compass, guiding the audience via her reactions to Phil. As Adam Kempenaar and Matty Robinson said about Michelle Monaghan's performance in Duncan Jones's similarly themed Source Code (2011), MacDowell is able to overcome the inherent difficulties in a role with a lot of repetition, keeping her performance feeling fresh and spontaneous.

It is not only the leads who give good performances. A host of actors with small roles provide outstanding supporting performances. Stephen Tobolowsky is gorgeously obnoxious as the insurance salesman and Marita Geraghty is stunningly ditzy. Given only the verbal equivalent of post-it notes, Angela Paton, Brenda Pickleman, Robin Duke and Rick Overton, to name but a few, are all brilliantly effective in making their points.

Exceptional films like this remind us that, like good dramas, good comedies turn out to be about something substantial. I tell my students that we can derive two morals from this film: 1) It's up to you what you make of your time (your day) on earth, so spend your time wisely; 2) If you want to win a person's love, you need to make yourself loveable.

Postscript (30.05.11): I've been reading "How to Read a Film" by James Monaco, and this has reminded me of the filmic writing of Alain Robbe-Grillet. It occurs to me now that the literary equivalent of Groundhog Day is Robbe-Grillet's novel "Jealousy" (1957), in which the same scenes are revisited again and again, with new twists and false trails and dead ends and backtracks and insights, in the mind of a man suspicious that his wife may be having an affair.

• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 14 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Sources:

• Filmspotting #342

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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Corrected "Quickly figuring out the parameters of situation" to "Quickly figuring out the parameters of the situation". Added ranking image.

Desk Set (1957)

Make the office a wonderful place to love in!

Desk Set is a smart romantic office-based comedy starring the legendary on-screen/off-screen couple, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, and an interesting man (or in this case, woman) vs. machine theme, with a sly twist of woman vs. man thrown in.

Miss "Bunny" Watson (Hepburn) is the operational head of the Reference Department of a large corporation (the fictional Federal Broadcasting Network, it says on Wikipedia), where she oversees a small team of women researchers, fending a host of queries by phone. Watson has moulded her researchers into a capable and productive team, and she herself is stunningly encyclopaedic in her knowledge. Into this smoothly-running department comes a mystery consultant assigned by top management, Richard Sumner (Tracy), a self-effacing tight-lipped but strangely likeable character who spends his time poking into obscure corners, measuring things with his tape measure, and crawling around on the floor with a piece of chalk. He turns out to be an efficiency expert, or "methods engineer" as he puts it, whose work in the Accounts Department is rumoured to have resulted in the installation of a new computer system, and a large number of workers losing their jobs. As one would expect, such rumours lead to high anxiety among the Reference Department staff, particularly as, because of a possible upcoming merger deal, Sumner has been sworn to secrecy by the top brass as to his true goals within the department.

There are some very enjoyable scenes, including one where Sumner, hoping to prove to Watson how useful a computerised reference system would be, tests her with the sort of questions that computers are very good at but most humans are rather poor at, with interesting results. Another excellent scene pits the women in the reference department against a computerised system, like a modern version of John Henry, the legendary railway worker who pitted his skills against a mechanical steam hammer (or drill, depending on the source [Wikipedia: John Henry (folklore)]).

As for the romantic angle, Watson is in a long-term relationship with her immediate boss, titular head of the department, Mike Cutler (Gig Young), and as the film begins, is waiting for her invitation to accompany him to some upcoming key social event. There is more than a little anxiety on her part due to the length of their relationship, and the way he seems to take her for granted. Sumner's arrival introduces an interesting twist. Watson is unexpectedly asked out to lunch by Sumner, and there is a little flutter of excitement at a potential rival suitor, though the lunch engagement turns out very differently to how Watson imagines.

For those familiar with the genre of romantic comedies (and who is not?), there is little suspense to be had here, but a great deal of pleasure in watching the easy interplay between the two leads in their familiar double act (they first teamed 15 years earlier, according to Wikipedia), with Tracy playing the quiet straight man, the understated foil, to Hepburn's high intensity comic. Of course, as often happened in the old Hollywood studio system with its stables of highly charismatic and capable but ageing stars, Tracy and Hepburn are too old for their roles. The role of Watson would be best suited to someone in her late thirties, at a guess, while Hepburn was a decade older, and Tracy was in his mid-fifties at the time of filming. Perhaps this is partly why Hepburn ramps her performance up to such high levels of energy, simulating youthful vigour and joie de vivre.

Viewed as a group, the women represent a cline of romantic options in the office environment. At one extreme is the fresh young recruit, Ruthie (Sue Randall), so green she has to ask how far you can go with male co-workers at office parties (the unwritten rule being, apparently, whatever you can get away with without having to lock the door). At the peak of her powers is Sylvia (Dina Merill), still young and confident that she can have her choice of men, (it is she who pins a sprig of mistletoe to the inside of the department door so that she can nab any good-looking men on entry). Further along is Watson, older and on the border of hope and despair, languishing in an excessively long and uncommitted relationship with her immediate boss and worried that, like a dependable old suit of clothes that he knows will be waiting for him at the back of the closet, he might tire of her and pass her over for a younger woman. Finally, at the end of the road is Watson's best buddy, Peg (Joan Blondell), more mature, not quite so attractive, perhaps, who describes herself as having passed the point of no return, and is now on the shelf with no hope of romantic salvation.

This all begs the question of why the men should seem to have all the initiative in romantic relationships, severely disadvantaging the women, and leads on more generally to the issue of equality in the workplace. The script clearly establishes that Watson is the brains of the department, with Cutler exploiting their relationship to get her to help him with his work, which he then takes credit for. The women are clearly on relatively low salaries, with Ruthie struggling to find an affordable party dress, and even Watson having insufficient funds in hand to repay a co-worker ten dollars until another colleague repays her loan of five dollars, putting them almost at the level of the office errand boy, happy to be able to extract another five dollars in tips with their advice.

• Rating: High matinee
• When seen: 16 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Hepburn)

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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

There's one in all of us.

Where the Wild Things Are is rather like a live action version of Pixar's Monsters Inc (directed by Pete Docter, 2001), with some insightful dramatic parts, some laugh out loud fun and funny parts, but also some parts that are quite dark in tone and rather scary for under 10s.

When the film came out I remember there was some doubt as to whether the presumed target audience (kids) would take to it. Checking Wikipedia, they have a quote from the director that 'his goal was "to make a movie about childhood" rather than to create a children's movie.' In a home viewing context, with most of the cast running around in big "silly" animatronic monster suits, I thought it would be touch and go as to whether my 10-year old son would suspend his disbelief, but he watched till the end, laughed quite a lot at times, said he enjoyed it and would give the film 4.5 out of 5 stars.

The initial setup introducing the 8-year old boy, Max (Max Records), is very insightful, showing things from his point of view, exploring how lonely life can be in the winter holidays for a kid in a modern single-parent family, with no friends evident nearby, no siblings to spend time with, and a mother busy with work or boyfriend. Max Records is very convincing as a normally imaginative boy pretty much left to his own devices, who sometimes puts on his wolf costume and goes a little wild and crazy, like jumping on the kitchen counter and howling. In the heat of the moment, he goes further than that here, does something that causes him to need to escape the home environment, to flee to the country of the Wild Things.

The way Max travels to the country of the Wild Things is different than in the book, where the voyage is clearly and artistically psychological in nature, but it still works pretty well. A key question is how the filmmakers are going to tackle the monsters themselves. At first glance, seeing the direction they'd taken, using costumes with big heads, and animatronic expressions, like the Jim Henson creatures, the casual viewer might well be apprehensive, but as the story progresses, the monsters turn out to work very well, in large part due to the strength of the storyline, and the strength of the characterisation. So that by the end, the fate of the Wild Things is quite moving, and by the very end of the film, it had even got a little dusty in there.

In the book, which is very short, whatever else they may be, the monsters are an expression of Max's psyche, an outlet for the wild, wicked side of his character. In this film version, the monsters are that too, but from the very outset, they clearly have lives of their own that apparently exist independently of Max. To my mind, the monsters go beyond representing Max's wild imaginings, and are in a way more his imagining of the sort of virtual extended social network, extended family or group of friends that he might appreciate. The group of monsters that Max happens upon reminded me most of a small commune of aged hippies or community of artists, who have their own long-standing issues, especially relationship issues.

Because one thing that Max seems to be missing, that could help during times like these when he's burnt up or used up relations with his closest relatives, his mother and sister, is a deficit or lack that Kurt Vonnegut highlighted in his book Slapstick! or Lonesome No More (1976), and that is extended family (and friends and neighbours). Many of us in the west, perhaps especially in the USA, live in small tight family groups, nuclear families. And that's just not enough, Vonnegut points out, for animals who until recently evolved in tribal societies with lots of adults to pick up the slack when nuclear relations go sour or when those people need a break.

• Rating: High matinee
• When seen: 16 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.