Jane Eyre

2011 // UK // Cary Fukunaga // April 14, 2011 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Tivoli Theater)

From a capsule summary of Cary Fukunaga's 2009 feature film debut, Sin Nombre, one might conclude that it is a gritty, realistic portrait of the horrors of illegal immigration and Mexican gang culture. Not so. Whatever its faults, the film's most enthralling characteristic is its stylized sensationalism. Fukunaga renders the northward flight of a fraught Hondouran girl and a hard-bitten Mexican fugitive as a mythic Hero's Journey out of Hell. The director's use of resonant visuals and his conspicuous care for details (both naturalistic and heightened) signals that he favors an evocative story over real-world Serious Issues. Thus, a Chiapas rail yard becomes a terrifying and sulfurous Purgatory, while MS-13 thugs convening in a graveyard take on the aspect of reveling demons.

In this light, word that the director would be helming, of all things, the latest adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's seminal novel Jane Eyre elicited first confusion, then profound curiosity. True to form, Fukunaga stresses the gothic elements of the source material, tweaking Brontë's tale into something approaching a moody ghost story (in spirit if not in substance), complete with twisted woodlands and phantom whispers. The film veritably drips with Northern damp, thanks in large part to the striking design overseen by Will-Hughes Jones and the peerless location selection. The film is an excellent illustration of genuine atmospherics, as opposed to mere lavish window dressing, particularly now that every limp period film seems to boast the latter.

The novel describes Jane as studiously plain and Rochester as a homely lout, whereas Fukunaga's film offers the angelic Mia Wasikowska and the unfailingly absorbing Michael Fassbender. No matter. Nearly every character in the film is an effortlessly and richly realized figure, wholly apposite to Brontë's shadowy yarn of personal honor and ghastly secrets. Yet none of the performances are what one could justly call dazzling, or even particularly actorly. Even Fassbender, whose early scenes as the snappish Rochester are admittedly a bit of a jolt, seems to shrink a bit in the chill winds of the Derbyshire hill country. This ultimately works in Jane Eyre's favor, as it permits Fukunaga's direction to take center stage, along with the cinematography of Adriano Goldman, whose lensing of Sin Nombre was nowhere near as lovely.

Fukunaga uses his setting to fine thematic effect, conjuring from moor and manor a wracked aura of alternating exposure and suffocation, which harmonizes elegantly with Jane's entrapment between comfort and self-respect, yearning and dread. Often, the film's style wanders into distinctly impressionistic terrain, employing dreamy close-ups and drifting focus in a manner that recalls Jane Campion's cinematic odes. Indeed, Dario Marianelli's score of quiet, mournful strings draws unmistakably from Michael Nyman's prominent work in The Piano, but also from George Fenton's underrated score for the Jekyll-and-Hyde flop Mary Reilly.

That Fukunaga manages to establish such a potent mood without losing sight of the humane coming-of-age pathos at the story's core, or skimping on the dense thematic treatment of gender, class, and morality, is quite an achievement. Moira Buffini's screen adaptation is generally faithful, although unlike the novel's linear narrative, it makes ample use of flashback. Pointedly, she allows most of the novel's moments of moralistic vindication to wither away, leaving a more desolate (and credible) "Tale of Woe," as Rochester would say. Of course, running through the whole thing is the dodge-parry-thrust of Brontë's dialog, which unsurprisingly attains full flower in any scene shared by Wasikowska and Fassbender. It's delicious stuff, but in a work that is otherwise so overtly cinematic, the dialog seems more a remnant of the story's literary genome than a natural outgrowth of the film's style.

Source Code

2011 // USA // Duncan Jones // April 9, 2011 // Theatrical Print (AMC Esquire)

Perhaps it's not legitimate to draw conclusions about a filmmaker's preoccupations from just two feature films, but it's hard not to see the sympathies and affinities of director Duncan Jones snapping into focus with his sophomore effort, Source Code. Slicker and squishier than Moon, the director's superlative hard science-fiction tale from 2009, Jones' latest film features the sort of computer-generated effects, wooly-headed science, and contemporary Age of Terror "relevance" that he had previously shunned.

All the same, the two films share a heightened consideration for the loyal worker bees of tomorrow's technocratic order. Unlike most filmmakers who explore such territory, Jones is less troubled by vaguely-defined dehumanization than by the cynical manipulation of our humanity by corporate and governmental authorities, who are as savvy in matters of psychology as they are in genetics and quantum physics. Equally fascinating and more understated is Jones' awareness of the slipperiness of definitions. Is scientific precision even possible when we use words like human, work, copy, causation, simulation, or happiness? Jones keeps such airy concerns grounded by focusing on his protagonist's plight, and thereby avoids (for the most part) science-fiction cinema's propensity for aimless pseudo-intellectual pondering. In particular, both Moon and Source Code exhibit a thematic absorption with the psychological and philosophical dimensions of human contentment and fulfillment, expressed through a tight story rather than grandiose speechifying.

All that said, Source Code absolutely functions first and foremost as a corking good science-fiction thriller, and like most examples of that sub-genre, it hand-waves the viewer's questions away with suspect techno-jargon. Perhaps that's necessary, given that Jones' approach here privileges mortal tension over mystery. Accordingly, the film allots its resources primarily to maintaining the narrative's momentum rather than rigorously establishing setting or mood. This renders the whole enterprise as something a touch more disposable than Moon, as do the performances, which are all smoothly functional except for Jeffrey Wright's agreeably repulsive turn as a scowling, high-handed scientist. I'm loathe to say more about what actually happens in the film, as Source Code is best experienced without any preconceptions regarding its plot. I will say that I'm undecided about the film's conclusion: It's either a ludicrous sop to the audience's alleged need for Happy Endings, or a clever and melancholy U-turn that harmonizes with the rest of the film's yearning for liberation and autonomy.

Sucker Punch

2011 // USA // Zack Snyder // March 31, 2011 // Theatrical Print (St. Louis Cinemas Moolah Theater)

Sucker Punch, Zack Snyder's first attempt at an original screenplay, is unquestionably derivative and ridiculous, but it's also the rare film that embraces those qualities with a ruthless enthusiasm pitched halfway between adolescent glee and auteurist obsession. In his films, Snyder doesn't conceal his references, homages, and blatant rip-offs, but neither does he wink, Tarantino-style, while presenting them. He seems to accept as a fundamental and uncontroversial principle of movie-making that his works exist within a broader tapestry of cinema, music, television, comics, video games, and even advertisements, all of which freely flow into and out of one another. Perhaps disappointingly, Snyder rarely uses this assumed inter-textual quality of his work for the purposes of deconstructing genre or medium. He, does, however, evince a crude fascination with storytelling in general and with the power (for weal or woe) of private narratives. Witness the acknowledgment of triumphalist national myth-making embedded in 300's pep-rally frame story, or Ozymandias' arrogant and sensational conception of his destiny in Watchmen.

In Sucker Punch, Snyder foregrounds his absorption with personal fictions, utilizing it as an explicit aspect of the film's plot, structure, and themes. And, boy-howdy, this seems to have thrown the critics for a loop, as the overwhelming complaint about the film appears to be that it is frustratingly incoherent. (This morning, Google was returning over 66,000 results for "Sucker Punch"+"Zack Snyder"+"confusing".) To be sure, the film is an unrepentant Bad Movie, possessing an abundance of missteps: wince-worthy dialogue, thin characters, hambone performances, greeting-card moralizing, laughably literalist music design, and, of course, the director's characteristic obsession with ultra-slow-motion, regardless of a scene's content or context. However, it's not clear to me why so many critics lost their way in the film's story, as Sucker Punch is essentially a straightforward Hero's Journey with a half-twist of Jacob's Ladder. We're not talking about Michael Haneke here, or even Chistopher Nolan, for Christ's sake. Frankly, the film doesn't offer much wiggle room for trippy arguments over what it is "really" about. In fact, the plot can be summarized in one sentence: unjustly committed to a corrupt mental asylum, a young woman (Emily Browning) plots her escape with the aid of her fellow inmates. That's it.

What's deliriously appealing about Sucker Punch is the novel way that Snyder conveys that simple plot: through a sequence of nested fantasies that re-imagines the events of the asylum escape in outlandish, anachronistic multi-genre contexts. Thus, the mental asylum becomes a rococo dancehall and brothel run by oily mobsters in sharkskin suits. The brothel in turn becomes a steampunk Great War battlefield stalked by Prussian zombies; and also a sinister castle swarming with armored orcs and dragons; and also a monorail speeding to a glowing metropolis on a distant planet. Often, the exact details of what is "actually" happening are cryptic, although Snyder emphatically illustrates the repercussions of events, maintaining the forward momentum of the underlying (and mostly hidden) asylum escape narrative throughout. It's a risky approach, one that underlines the pre-fabricated and disposable character of the film's costume and scene changes, even as it revels in the sheer awesomeness of over-the-top, anime-shaded fantasy and science-fiction spectacle. Unsurprisingly, Sucker Punch borrows heavily from a legion of films for its story, form, and adornments: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, The Fall, Moulin Rouge!, Brazil, The Matrix, Suspiria, and The Lord of the Rings, to name just a few. (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is probably of too recent a vintage.)

Ultimately, I think it works quite well, if only a free-wheeling, go-for-broke entertainment with a giddy appreciation for geek-culture cool and a tad more ambition than sense. Unquestionably, the whole thing looks damn lovely: the "comic book gothic" production design entices, the opulent burlesque costumes elicit gapes, and the green-screened, color-corrected digital vistas are wondrous and distinctive, as one expects from Snyder. Oddly enough, Sucker Punch is also the director's least troublesome film from a political and cultural standpoint, which isn't saying much, but at least it represents progress. One can detect some wriggles of Jungian psychology underneath all the roaring biplanes and robot samurai, but such gestures are far too underdeveloped to be taken seriously. Best to just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Of Gods and Men

2010 // France // Xavier Beauvois // March 29, 2011 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema)

It's a tricky thing, adapting real-world events fraught with moral, theological, and philosophical significance into a film which purports to share the same character. The burden of oblivious pretension and unprincipled exploitation has buckled the ambitions of countless films about Very Serious Matters, whose creators seem prone to an especially stubborn sort of artistic blinkeredness. In his Grand Prix-winning new film, Of Gods and Men, French writer-director Xavier Beauvois succeeds where many of his confreres have often failed, owing primarily to his disciplined and fitting stylistic choices.

Beauvois--whose other works are unfamiliar to me--uses a stripped-down approach to convey the tale of French Trappist monks in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria in 1996, who must decide whether to stay or leave their monastery when the nation's civil war comes knocking at their door. The director exhibits an admirable respect for his material's integrity. The monks are keenly aware of the momentous consequences of their choice on the villagers they serve; on the broader honor of their order; on their personal righteousness; and, most directly, on their own safety. Accordingly, Beauvois and co-writer Etienne Comar generally resist stifling their film with grave trimmings meant to double-underline the dire nature of the monks' predicament. The characters know exactly what they are facing, and we know it because the performers are intensely capable and the filmmakers regard them with rapt attentiveness.

Beauvois' film works carefully, establishing the pattern of the monks' lives, conveying the particulars of what it means to dedicate one's life wholly to Christ's teachings in a remote corner of the old French empire, surrounded by Muslim neighbors. The particulars, it turns out, are remarkably innocuous: the monks run a medical clinic for women and children, they listen to the concerns of the village leaders, they plant crops, they make honey, they scrub floors, they read the Bible, they pray. Baeuvois watches them in long shots as they chant together in communal worship, recalling Philip Gröning's masterful documentary, Into Great Silence. There is little music in the film, all of it diegetic. (The film's only real dramatic belly-flop involves an audio cassette recording of Swan Lake's thunderous crescendo. In a work that is otherwise so restrained, the scene in question comes across as comically heavy-handed.) Beavois doesn't use stirring string cues or beatific lighting to emphasize the gravity of his tale. Instead, he lingers on the naturalistic texture of the Atlas setting: glassy mountain lakes; herds of goats in the wooded hills; old cars stalled on dusty roads.

Gradually, the shadow of the civil war falls across the monastery, although the political and cultural context of the conflict remains obscure within the boundaries of the film. No one utters the words "canceled elections" or "Armed Islamic Group."  It's clear, however, that the monks are fearful of the jihadist rebels and wary of the corrupt government, which still rumbles with anti-colonial sentiment. The monks only seem to trust their neighbors, who look at the thuggish jihadists and wonder despairingly and rhetorically, "Who are these people?" Eventually, it becomes apparent that the advancing rebels will either conscript the monks or kill them, and the brothers must therefore reach a consensus about whether this looming fate warrants any action beyond, well, reading and praying, I suppose.

The film is therefore a quite pointed first-order rumination on moral duty and martyrdom, one that is partly enmeshed with Catholic tradition but not wholly dependent on it for pathos. It's perhaps a bit dry to watch monks sitting around and debating the pros and cons of abandoning their home, or monks whispering anxious prayers to themselves in their dark cells. However, the film's events have the luster of graceful credibility, reinforced by an understated hand. One can envision that the monks would have had these conversations, and they would have taken the time to carefully consider the moral meaning of their choices. Many of the brothers are frightened or angry, confessing a secret wish to return home to the relative safety and comfort of life in France. French audiences were likely well aware of how the story concludes, and the film's American promotion does little to conceal the unhappy ending of the tale. Nonetheless, there is value in any tale told with such elegance, even one so thematically frank.

Another Year

2010 // UK // Mike Leigh // March 19, 2010 // Theatrical Print (Plaza Frontenac Theater)

One of the central pleasures of a Mike Leigh film is the intensity of the emotion that lurks behind the most banal human interactions. The filmmaker's masterful writing and nuanced command of his performers--not to mention his talent for selecting the right performers--enables him to render with intimidating accuracy the psychological anguishes of the human experience. So it is with Leigh's latest, Another Year, a grim and amusing turn-of-the-years portrait. The film's matched lodestones are geological engineer Tom (Jim Broadbent) and therapist Gerry (Ruth Sheen), an affable, contented married couple living out their autumn years in a snug English home. We peer in on the pair for a couple of days during each of the four seasons, focusing on their hosting duties for a succession of friends, family, and colleagues. These gatherings usually include a heroic quantity of wine, plenty of kindly jabs, and a nasty, awkward moment or three.

Another Year shares more than a little thematic territory with the director's previous effort, Happy-Go-Lucky, in that both films are concerned with the nature of joy and with the virulent way that negativity rots people from within. Both films are also brilliant examples of Leigh's talent for what I can only term "social anxiety drama." As omniscient observers guided by Leigh's direction, we have a tingling awareness of the ways in which the story's social situations are likely to boil over into confrontation and unpleasantness. In this film, the analogue to Happy-Go-Lucky's resentful, tightly-wound driving instructor Scott is Gerry's co-worker Mary (Lesley Manville), a fifty-ish party girl who appears pleasant enough at the outset, but is gradually revealed as a shrill headcase. Of course, we never know exactly how events will play out, or what Leigh will choose to reveal or obscure, and as such the unspooling of the story remains a gratifyingly searing experience, despite the fuzzy English tone. Unlike Happy-Go-Lucky, which was held aloft primarily by Sally Hawkins' luminous performance, Another Year is a equitable ensemble piece. It even makes time for peripheral characters who serve as counterpoints to the primary narrative, such as the wretchedly depressed housewife (Imelda Staunton) under Gerry's treatment. A rich, sad, and marvelous film from beginning to end.

Limelight

1952 // USA // Charles Chaplin // March 27, 2010 // Theatrical Print (Webster University Moore Auditorium)

Limelight was Charlie Chaplin's last film for United Artists, his last American feature film, and his last film of any significance. However, it was not widely seen in its day, due in part to the director's well-publicized clashes with a Red-sniffing U.S. government over his leftist political leanings. Chaplin probably didn't know at the time that Limelight would be his closing artistic statement, but the film certainly has the thick sentimental sheen of a career swan song, one rife with unmistakably autobiographical shadings.

Unquestionably, the film exhibits Chaplin at his most mawkish and self-pitying. Here is the Chaplin of The Great Dictator's closing speech, minus the authentic passion: prone to grandiose monologues at the slightest provocation, usually on the topic of the meaning of life or the fickle tastes of the mob. Add to this the unsubtle moralizing of the Hayes Code era, and the result is one of the director's most distressingly self-indulgent and ungainly works. The weepy story of washed-up "Comic Tramp" Calvero (Chaplin) and the pure-hearted ballerina he cares for and eventually loves (a radiant Claire Bloom) is cardboard-thin stuff, prone to treading water when it's not bellowing its themes to the heavens. Of course, narrative richness has never been an attribute of Chaplin's works, which at their best function as slightly sorrowful, ultimately uplifting comic fables, garbed in timeworn vaudevillian gags and inspired tomfoolery. If anything, Limelight is too bombastic and too assured of its own melancholic character to weave the delicate magic that emanates effortlessly from an outwardly frivolous film such as City Lights, or even The Gold Rush.

This isn't to say that Limelight doesn't have its stray pleasures. The film regards Calvero with a frustrating but nonetheless fascinating ambiguity, and it's unclear if the character is ultimately deserving of approbation, sympathy, dismissal, or contempt. The ballet sequences, performed by Bloom's double Melissa Hayden, are stylish and handsome, if somewhat conspicuously positioned as a dose of high art within an oeuvre that is otherwise so proudly pop in its bones. And, of course, the film features a gratifying musical comic sequence with Chaplin and his celebrity rival from the silent era, Buster Keaton, in their only appearance together on screen. Indeed, Keaton's extended and agonizing stage business with a sheaf of orchestral music is probably the best visual gag in the whole film.