Drive

2011 // USA // Nicolas Winding Refn // September 22, 2011 // Theatrical Print (St. Louis Cinemas Chase Park Cinema)

In another reality, where Ryan Gosling was not available to assume the role of the nameless Driver in Nicolas Winding Refn’s peculiar, vitalizing new film, another young male actor could theoretically have done so without difficulty. However, Gosling’s physical presence—lean and boyish, casually self-possessed, and just a little bit crazy at the acute margins—is so essential to the effect of Drive that one can scarcely picture what such an alternate iteration of the film would look like.

This is not to say that the Driver is a demanding role, or that Gosling’s performance is some kind of actorly feat for the ages. There's just not enough texture to work with. In adapting James Sallis’ 2005 novel of the same name, director Refn and scripter Hossein Amini maintain a cool distance from their wheelman antihero, who carefully considers the world around him and speaks in short, clipped sentences. (The only exception being a terms-of-service speech he recites to his prospective clients, a monologue that self-evidently draws from a Hollywood bad-ass archetype that Drive itself embraces and critiques.) We never learn much about him or where he comes from, and the film’s rare glipses into his inner landscape have a stark simplicity that precludes a deeper interrogation of character. The Driver is a cipher, and Drive therefore cannot be properly regarded as a character study. It is, rather, a slick and invigorating noir piece.

For me, the film recalls Thief in its generic trappings and style, especially its smudgy vision of the nocturnal cityscape and the spectacular, synth-heavy score by Cliff Martinez. Moreover, Drive is preoccupied with masculine codes in a manner that unavoidably echoes any number of Michael Mann’s works. However, Refn embraces a dreamier, more unreal tone than Mann, and also a more brutal approach to violence that positions it pointedly alongside shimmering romanticism.

Refn opens the film with a nocturnal warehouse burglary and subsequent getaway, a dazzling sequence that reveals the Driver’s breathtaking talent behind the wheel and his unwavering dedication to a clear set of rules. (One of the little touches that hooked me into the film right away was the silence of the burglars, who simply ride along in mute terror, holding their breath at the approach of every squad car and helicopter. A different, less intriguing film would have placed a couple of wearisome mooks in the back seat to spout fearful exclamations with every cut.) Consistent with genre conventions, the Driver’s commitment to his rules is swiftly complicated by an emerging friendship with Irene (Carey Mulligan), the Pretty Thing down the hall who has a sweet little boy and a husband in prison. Meanwhile, the Driver’s restless mentor (Bryan Cranston) talks him into a stock car racing enterprise with a pair of backers (Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman) who also happen to be loathsome, remorseless gangsters. Then Irene’s husband makes parole, goons start threatening the family, and the Driver finds himself wedged into a corner facing the proverbial One Last Job.

Drive’s narrative is hardly original stuff, but Refn’s copious visual and aural artistry and his somewhat removed, fable-like approach to that narrative make the film a wellspring of unexpected cinematic pleasures. It is, above all else, a familiar story presented in a very idiosyncratic mode. Viewers who settle in expecting a high-octane action odyssey are bound to be disappointed. Excepting the opening sequence and one other car chase at roughly the halfway point, the film features very little actual driving. It does, however, boast long, pregnant pauses; flat, self-consciously insipid romantic dialog; languid pop music interludes with on-the-nose lyrics; sequences that are little more than generous celebrations of Los Angeles’ ugly splendor; and an abundance of gruesome beatings, knifings, and shootings presented for maximum shock and revulsion.

Underneath these elements throbs a rather harsh appraisal of those aforementioned masculine codes. Gosling’s baby blues and soft-spoken affability charm the viewer, and the professional minimalism of his code suggests a fundamentally Good Man who does Bad Things because he has no other reliable talents. There is a critical moment in the film, however, when the mask drops, and the Driver is revealed to be capable of frightening cruelty. In that moment, the absence of access into the character’s mind becomes a blessing, and there is a modest relief at his inscrutability. No matter how noble his intentions or clinical his pursuit of vengeance, the Driver has been unavoidably tainted by a lifetime of criminality, and no code can protect him. In this light, the front-loading of the film’s most stunning car chase is a cunning stratagem. The life of the Driver is first drenched in nitro-fueled glamour, and then torn down in a flurry of appalling, blood-and-guts violence. It makes for a striking, tragic stripe of genre exercise, and one so aesthetically enthralling that it seems unkind to label it an exercise at all.

Contagion

2011 // USA // Steven Soderbergh // September 17, 2011 // Digital Theatrical Projection (Wehrenberg Galaxy 14 Cine)

Steven Soderbergh has never been a filmmaker who does things in a workmanlike way. Even his most trifling films carry tracings of his signature qualities: the easy conjuration of contemporary chill, the steely confidence in his formal approach, and the shameless infatuation with his subject matter that somehow still seems poised. Contagion exhibits these characteristics, but it just might be his most purely functional film. (My equivocation reflects the fact that I have not seen Full Frontal or Haywire). Bear in mind that this is the director who gave the world not only a fluffy, ecstatically hip remake of Ocean's Eleven, but two sequels to that film. The Ocean's films might be disposable, but the cast and crew's fun-drunk vibe pulses right out of the screen, tugging the viewer along on waves of color, music, and razor-sharp fashion. Not so with Contagion, which has a similar one-note simplicity, but drapes it in such matter-of-fact grimness that it ends up not functioning particularly well as either art or entertainment.

Structurally, the film is more-or-less a Disaster Film, right down to the ensemble cast and procession of micro-narratives. In this instance, the disaster is a flu-like viral epidemic, which begins in Hong Kong and rapidly spreads across the world, killing infected individuals in a matter of days. Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns commendably maintain the focus on the scientists and medical doctors who are scrambling to understand the virus, contain its spread, and devise a cure. The film's approach celebrates the thankless work and unwavering dedication of its scientific protagonists: a CDC administrator (Laurence Fishburn), his field investigation ace (Kate Winslet), an experimental virologist (Jennifer Ehle), and a WHO epidemiologist (Marion Cotillard), among many others. The jargon comes fast and furious, but the film mostly refrains from glamorizing the practice of science with ludicrous, art-designed laboratory settings or laughably improbable technology. Nor does it paint the scientists as faultless superheroes, as it makes pains to show them succumbing to fear, arrogance, and selfishness in their weaker moments.

Matt Damon supplies the Everyman perspective as a suburbanite father whose wife (Gwenyth Paltrow) is one of the epidemic's first victims. He subsequently hunkers down with his daughter to hopefully outlast the plague and the resulting food shortages and violence. Inasmuch as the film has an antagonist other than the virus itself, it is Jude Law's conspiracy-preoccupied public health blogger, who rails against the evils of Big Pharma and government inefficacy, all while secretly profiting from his testimonials about a homeopathic "cure". (The blogger in me finds it unfortunate that Law's character is such a conniving asshole, but the scientist in me takes satisfaction in seeing homeopathic quackery so deservedly denigrated.)

The rigorously realistic, almost wonky way in which Contagion approaches its subject matter is admirable, and suitably fascinating for the 99.99% of filmgoers who don't live and breath epidemiology every day of their professional lives. Unfortunately, this commedable approach is employed solely to present a Cassandra-like message: Human civilization is vastly unprepared for the inevitable global epidemic that we know is coming, and if it survives it will mostly be by pure luck. That dire but clear-eyed declaration is the beginning and end of Contagion's purpose, effectively reducing the film to a work of slick agitprop on the behalf of the global public health infrastructure.

And more power to it in that respect. However, as a work of cinema there's just not much to Contagion other than what is presented on screen. Soderbergh has tackled sprawling ensemble works before with Traffic, but that film--for all its flaws--conveyed a profound appreciation for the complexities of human virtue and vice in an interconnected world. Contagion is thematically parched by comparison, and its stabs at humanizing pathos are weak. Soderbergh can be emotionally warm when appropriate (King of the Hill, Erin Brockovich), just as he can employ his more aloof style to find an oblique route under the skin of a character (The Limey, The Girlfriend Experience). However, neither of these approaches stands a chance of succeeding in Contagion, which spreads its story too thinly across multiple continents and characters, and is too fixated on justifiably frightening scientific fact.

The Vanishing

1988 // Netherlands - France // George Sluizer // September 6, 2011 // Hulu Plus

[Note: This post contains minor spoilers.]

George Sluizer's disturbing 1988 thriller is a kind of "daylight nightmare," wherein a sunny holiday trip changes into something abnormal and terrifying, all in plain view of scores of witnesses. It doesn't end there, however: The film's protagonist Rex (Gene Bervoets) spends three years thrashing about in this nightmare, where even charming little cafes and quiet country roads take on a fractured and ominous aspect. Thematically, the film zeroes in on the nature of obsession and the destabilizing character of an unresolved mystery, and in this respect it is kin to works as diverse as Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Sweet Hereafter, Zodiac, and The White Ribbon. Unlike those films, which generally assume a more sociological or philosophical approach to the aforementioned themes, The Vanishing is an intensely psychological film. Sluizer approaches the story as two distinct journeys through personal conflict and catharsis. The first concerns Rex, whose anguish over his girlfriend's inexplicable disappearance demands an answer that may not be forthcoming. The second journey is that of Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), a sociopath in the guise of a mild-mannered chemistry teacher and family man, who feels that he must act on his homicidal impulses in order to prove something to himself or the cosmos. Eventually, the two men meet and confront one another, but they don't so much interact as ricochet off another, fatefully altering each man's ultimate destination.

The film contains just enough oddness to keep the viewer ever so slightly off-balance about what they are witnessing. Events occur which may or may not be "real," but are presented in such a way that they hint at deeper truths rustling just out of sight. Henny Vrienten's score recalls Howard Shore's early work with David Cronenberg in its reliance on synthesizers that moan and squeal with sinister import. For a film that is essentially bloodless, there is a palpable aura of unsettling sexual and physical peril lurking in nearly every crevice. The fact that Rex is carelessly misogynistic and Lemorne malevolently so subtly colors the film's events, and only adds to the viewer's sense of discomfort. Sluizer cunningly uses his performers and his frame, establishing an uneasiness that silently shrieks a symphony of warning. The much-discussed conclusion, while hardly a "twist ending," is the sort of confounding anti-resolution that adds to the film's pitiless aura of authentic mortal and moral despair.

Diabolique

1955 // France // Henri-Georges Clouzot // September 6, 2011 // Hulu Plus

There's a specific kind of thrill to be had in re-discovering a classical-era film one has seen before, but only remembers vaguely, an enjoyment that is somehow distinct from that of a genuine first-time encounter. So it is with Henri-Georges Clouzot's masterpiece, Les diaboliques, which I had seen many years ago, and had become unfortunately entangled in my memory with the 1996 American remake. The remarkable thing about Clouzot's film is how efficient it is in setting up its premise, and then ratcheting up the tension with one uncanny twist and perilous development after another. What's more, Nicole and Christina's scheme is already unfolding when the film opens, and Clouzot does a commendable job of conveying exactly what the women have in mind for the monstrous Michel, all without resorting to stilted dialog. I adore the way that every character in the film save the three principals is presented as vaguely comedic, from the crotchety tenants to the school's faculty, from the drunken soldier to Charles Vanel's oddly insistent retired police detective. Far from being a distraction, the tone of light absurdity serves to heighten the sensation that the women's murderous plot is unraveling and slipping through their hands. Of course, the film's hidden, second-tier story—the gaslighting of a vulnerable woman in order to kill her—is hardly original stuff, but I'm hard-pressed to think of another example that is presented with such lean, nasty potency.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011 // USA // Rupert Wyatt // September 3, 2011 // Theatrical Print (AMC West Olive)

As near as I can discern, Rupert Wyatt's Rise of the Planet of the Apes is partly a reboot-prequel to the well-regarded 1968 science-fiction landmark Planet of the Apes, and partly a spiritual remake of that film's less-well-regarded sequel-prequel from 1972, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Setting aside the convoluted, essentially distracting matter of the film's status within the wider franchise, however, and what you have is a pretty standard science-fiction action flick. As a finger-wagging fable about humankind's disheartening failures towards its scientific monsters, Rise is meaty, entertaining stuff, a popcorn-movie complement to James Marsh's more sobering documentary Project Nim. Unfortunately, there's plenty of flaws to pick at in this post-Darwin Frankenstein tale. There's the cartoonish simplicity of its heroes and villains, and its lazy re-imagining of the original film's nuclear apocalypse as a corporate biotechnological doom. There's the useless female love interest, the awkward homages to the original film, the sci-fi gobbledegook that strains credibility, and the scads of gaping plot holes.

And yet... The motion-captured performances—including a lead turn from mainstay Andy Serkis as chimpanzee revolutionary Caesar—while plainly computer-generated, are as captivating as any of the work by the flesh-and-blood actors. That's not to dismiss the talents of James Franco, Brian Cox, John Lithgow, and the rest of the ensemble, but it's evidence that digital performances have reached the point where they can be downright absorbing in their own right. (It's also evidence that the human dialog from scripting team Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver might be part of the problem here.) What's most interesting about Rise is how thoroughly its asks us to sympathize with Caesar, and how relatively modest its spectacle ultimately proves to be. Culminating in a stand-off on the Golden Gate Bridge between a SWAT team and a group of fugitive apes bound for the sanctuary of Muir Woods, the film offers but the first few steps in the apes' eventual conquest of Earth. It's a visually invigorating climax, but qualifies as but one encounter in a larger origin story, rather than a genuine turning point in the war between hairy ape and less-hairy ape.

The Tree of Life

2011 // USA // Terrence Malick // September 1, 2011 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Tivoli Theater)

I first encountered The Tree of Life four months ago, and given the primacy of the parent-child relationship in Terrence Malick's lauded film, part of me assumed that revisiting the film following the birth of my son would permit me to appreciate it in fresh ways. And, truth be told, the affecting quality of the film's suburban Waco scenes was intensified, if only because I found myself reflecting that much more intently on the ways in which my wife's and my outlook will inevitably mold our son's character. Young Jack's matter-of-fact statement of his revelation to his father, "I'm more like you than her," is an expression of the narrative nucleus of the Waco sequences. Indeed, the importance of this declaration is the reason that the last year of the O'Brien's residency in the little corner house figures so prominently in adult Jack's reverie. The pivotal events from that time period—the death of a local boy in a public pool, Jack's theft of a neighbor's lingerie (and possible first masturbatory experience), Jack's shooting of his brother with a pellet gun—all lead in some way to Jack's revelation that he is his father's son, i.e. more a spirit of Nature than Grace.

In addition, there were details that I caught on my second go-around that deepened my appreciation of the film. For example, the context of the more perplexing imagery early in Jack's memories—such as the children following a woman through a forest, or a boy swimming through a drowned house—makes it clear that what we are seeing is a metaphorical expression of the pre-birth experience. (This, in turn, reinforces my suspicions that the film's final sequences are a highly symbolic conception of the afterlife, or at least the afterlife as Jack hopes it will be.)

In the main, however, my initial impressions, articulated in my conversation with fellow Look/Listen writer Patricia Brooke, were essentially reinforced with a second viewing. I remain fascinated with the pure visual poetry of those extensive Waco sequences, which are realistic while also conveying the disconnected and dreamy quality of half-remembered times. If one considers the depiction of the O'Brien family as a standalone object, I'm tempted to call it the most successful use of Malick's unconventional editing methods (here implemented by a five-person team of editors) in his entire filmography. Jack's memories take on the quality of a collage of moving snapshots, assembled in roughly chronological order. In some ways, the experience of the film is therefore like flipping through a family photo album, with the expected lingering over memories that are especially potent. This approach allows Malick to achieve a glinting, unabashedly nostalgic depiction of a lost American landscape, and yet also infuse it with the sort of melancholy that any journey through an intensely personal past can achieve. In this, the best moments of The Tree of Life share a common character with Terence Davies' superlative documentary memoir, Of Time and the City.

I remain, however, generally unmoved by Malick's joining of Jack's conflicted inner odyssey to cosmological ruminations on the nature of God and existence. I chalk that up partly to my own suspicion of earnestly presented spirituality, and partly to the inadequacy of Malick's method. It's certainly possible to be touched by a work of cinema that expresses a worldview dissimilar to one' own. Heck, Malick's own The Thin Red Line ultimately seems to side (narrowly) with Private Witt's theistic, anti-materialist view of the human experience, which I reject and yet still found deeply affecting. In The Tree of Life, however, while I clearly understood what Malick was trying to achieve with his images of nebulae and jellyfish, I found little resonance in those visuals. Where some have seen a profound expression of vexing philosophical concerns, I see a handsome illustration of a deistic worldview that is self-evidently dead on arrival.

Moreover, the director's decision to expand the scope of his observations beyond the immediate environs of his characters, to encompass all physical reality, seems to have heightened his taste for the grandiose even as it diminished his focus. One of the primary factors that makes his previous films such innovative and entrancing works of cinematic art is how he utilizes the local surroundings to establish an "ecological" narrative that is just as vital as the human-centered narrative. (The former, it should be stated, can consist of human-made environments, such as Days of Heaven's steel mill.) Freed by computer technology to explore the outermost reaches of the cosmos and the innermost workings of a living cell, Malick seems to struggle a bit more to connect his images back to the O'Briens and Jack's inner turmoil. For me, the paradox of The Tree of Life is that Jack's memories have a palpable aura of the sacred, while the film's visions of spinning galaxies and stalking dinosaurs strike me as somewhat antiseptic. They effectively remove me from the embrace of the cinematic experience rather than providing a macroscopic counterpoint to Jack's story, which strikes me as the opposite of the intended effect.