Vals Im Bashir (Waltz with Bashir)A fascinating concept. WALTZ WITH BASHIR uses animation to reenact a documentary filmmaker's quest for answers when a friend triggers him to look back at a war 25 years earlier. Without any recollection, director Folman, drawn, searches for clues by visiting old war buddies and analysts, to figure out why he's repressed his memory and feelings for so long. Masterfully produced, the film has vivid colour schemes that paint a surreal landscape adding to Folman's dream-like state of mind. Turns out the dream was really a nightmare all along. Without a doubt, one of this year's best films, BASHIR is gripping from its talky start to finish but ends in devastating silence with imagery that even animation couldn't make look more unreal - and made more harrowing by its authenticity. Highly original, this clever film makes a perfect companion for the philosophical Richard Linklater animated WAKING LIFE.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
BENJAMIN BUTTON is an ambitious film. It sets to take us on a long worthwhile journey into a unusual, if forbidden, love. It actually succeeds in doing just that. It's also an accomplished film astonishingly well crafted that manages to mesmerize you in just under three hours. That's a long time for a movie but length is something you never feel while watching BUTTON.
It even has an astounding, gracious performance from the formidable Cate Blanchett. A role that isn't getting much Oscar buzz but one that ought to. And then there's Brad! Brad Pitt has always been a top notch character actor - artistically much more successful than as a matinee idol. Here he gets to do it all - to gloat, in fact - but he does no such thing. Instead he keeps it subtle, delicate and very much in line with the film's romanticized tone. The love story is sensitively handled throughout by the impressive actors under the knowing direction of David Fincher, himself working against type.
BUTTON is a beautiful film but at the end it is not a perfect one. For all its strength and striking grace, the film is somehow muted, lacking in the fully realized powerful grasp it sets on its audience.
I really enjoyed BUTTON but was more so frustrated that I couldn't love it. Still there is no denying that director Fincher has given the production a touch of class. But if I had to pinpoint the film's key flaw is that top scribe Eric Roth, who's written many outstanding screenplays, adapted a F. Scott Fitzgerald novella but must have used structural blueprints from his previous FORREST GUMP script which BUTTON, annoyingly at times, resembles in format and characterizations.
The only way to fully enjoy THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON is by suspending your disbelief and allowing Fincher and company to guide you through a most unreal premise. Get through this and you are guaranteed to, at least, enjoy BUTTON on a deeply felt emotional level.
The Wrestler
Watching Darren Aronofsky's THE WRESTLER is like watching two films; a movie in a wrestling match with itself, if you will. On one side of the ring, we have a gritty, hard hitting look at a man with a past that's been haunting him. This part is quite powerful. On the other side, struggling to get the best of it, is a superficially felt melodrama of a man trying - all too quickly [at least on film] to reconcile with that past that's haunting him on the other side of the ring.
I am not so sure these two fighters make for a compatible match. First off, you can feel and even see the desperation in Mickey Rourke's Randy without the camera even getting too close or up front. This aspect - of an actor acting out disgrace and shame blended with pride - from behind - is impressive. In fact, whatever Rourke does is quite an accomplishment. He's a marvelous study. Here he battles his dead-end reality with the knowledge that he has very little to live for but with a willingness to put up a good fight to the end. These are the most riveting scenes in the movie but they are also its most painful elements. When the movie centers on the actual ring it becomes quite a difficult film to watch, certainly not an easy one to experience. Yet all of that ugliness is what makes THE WRESTLER worth watching.
As for the rest, the potentially unrealized romance with a stripper sensitively portrayed by Marisa Tomei and, worse, the conveniently placed reconciliation attempts between Rourke's Randy and Evan Rachel Wood [always great] as his estranged daughter work against the film's neo-realist grain. They simply feel forced. I know that justifiably they'd be needed in order to create dramatic tension. But, in fact, these scenes rip right into the film's authenticity, coating it with superficial gloss. Tragic as the outcome is, these key scenes make the film all the more predictable.
By the end, the melodramatic aspects of THE WRESTLER, while not quite as frustrating as in RACHEL GETTING MARRIED, mar a perfectly good-natured film. While there's much to recommend in THE WRESTLER, frankly, movies such as these two begin to feel way too schematic and false for their own good, thus undermining authenticity and turning them much like works of fraud. In the case of THE WRESTLER, the fraud's forgivable.
The Reader
THE READER should have been one of this year's very best films but just isn't and this is not to say it isn't any good. It's quite good in fact but this also depends, too, on just how one defines Stephen Daldry's latest work in terms of artistic achievement. First off, THR READER comes with the highest pedigree. Almost every single craftsman involved, behind and in front of the camera is of reputable honour [just check the credits at the end]. Playwright David Hare carefully adapted the German book by Bernhard Schlink into a highly effective but, unfortunately, affected movie.
At once THE READER find itself looking all too much like the expected prestige film that collects awards at the end of the year. It sounds like the story that picks up best screenplay awards and plays like the movie that sends its actors onto a podium to collect their Oscar. Yes, so contrived it sounds, plays and comes across that it is difficult not to feign some disdain that it's not that much better.
Not that it's lazy in any way. It would be wrong to describe it as such. But it does feel lacking and incomplete. What I realized is that the film only truly soars emotionally for a brief period when it simply focuses on its two stars, Kate Winslet and David Kross. Wait a minute. David Kross? Whatever happened to Ralph Fiennes? Well, there's the heart of that problem. Fiennes, in a much smaller role than you'd think, only plays the main character of Michael Berg as he reflects on his very dark past as a boy of sixteen, falling for a strange, mysterious woman twenty years his senior. Their brief love affair triggers the entire mystery that - I must confess - was never once a mystery to me. The movie is quite transparent from the start and the tension that leads to the film's tragic conclusion quite contrived. Unfortunately, the two, younger boy & older woman, only appear together in the first half of THE READER.
For some reason Daldry [who did marvelous work on BILLY ELLIOT and THE HOURS] does not seem to have control over his material this time. While he displays impressive courage by having his two actors in shockingly intimate embrace through their scenes together, he does not have enough real drama or conflict to work with for the duration of the film.
Kross is quite the discovery here, in his first English language film. His performance is natural and mature, wise beyond his years. Winslet has the more difficult task of playing a woman at various stages of her life. She is also one of our best living actresses. She can carry so much emotional weight with just one nuance and a facial expression. Unfortunately she seems a little more challenged in her early, younger scenes playing against Kross. Precisely the ones that are ironically the film's best scenes. She is supposedly fronting a cold, heartless facade to hide her emotions. But her controlling line delivery of these scenes are awkward and discomforting. It's only as she ages that she truly benefits from Hare's prose. As a strong shelled individual but a lonely embittered woman in her later years, Winslet provides the film's second act some much needed strength. Even as the whole world's against her character of ex-Nazi officer Hanna Schmitz, one cannot help but feel an empathy towards her, as Winslet portrays the role with such a dedicated if necessarily cold fervor.
Perhaps THE READER could not have worked better despite having one of the best conceptual ideas for a movie. Maybe it becomes evident that the story itself as adapted - even if a powerful one - is not best served by the film medium. After all, there is still quite a disconnect between characters for much of the movie - a purposeful distancing of emotions combined with a rational deterrent to bring key characters together for the sake of plot device. And yet by the end, no matter what is missing, or where we are, we do end up crying because all along we were being led through a war torn drama, a failed romance, a legal thriller, and a memory play - all of the above at once. That it all ends up selling itself as nothing more than a half baked tearjerker is fine by me. It's apparent that it's all it could have been. So a solid tearjerker it is. Now that is its true artistic achievement.
And while I'm at it: what's all this nonsense about Kate Winslet as Best Supporting Actress candidate. She clearly is the film's leading lady and its emotional core. She occupies a good 80% of THE READER. If anything she should be considered for leading lady stature without any questions asked. Shows how Hollywood positions nominees without much rhyme or reason but with every intention to sell its actors as products.
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