Helen Hunt is a genius, not because she made a perfect film - that, she did not do – but because she made a charming film filled with relatable characters that, despite having a hard-hitting edge, owns a warm, even tender centre that grabs a hold of its viewers allowing them to identify with characters that at heart are imperfect but still with hope. From the very start and until the final happy images, yes they are filled with hope, Hunt has you under a spell. Hunt should be commended because she’s working with a sharp but heavy-handed script, that she co-adapted from a recent novel, where conflict is the order the day and still people, as in reality, get on with their lives.
THEN SHE FOUND ME is the story of familial relations and chosen connections observed within the lives of its insecure and uncertain adults. And so the adults in this Manhattan-filled world occupied on screen want children, want to be connected to children but certainly behave just like children all the same. In this pithy examination of immaturity in us all, Hunt has struck gold in some of her casting choices.
And what has Hunt done right? Let’s begin. I can list a few things right off the bat. Casting Bette Midler as her biological mom has undoubtedly given Midler her best role since THE ROSE or at least the most appealing since her film heydays, let’s see, perhaps since BEACHES. So eons later Midler owns the part of selfish, deceitful Bernice Graves who very much wants to reconnect with the daughter she gave up when she was only a teen herself. She is not only convincing in her humorous bits, of which there are plenty, and which she performs with a subtlety missing in many of her previous comedies. Yet in her dramatic scenes she possesses a quiet power that adds depth to her role. Her confrontational scenes with Hunt are quite effective.
Then there’s Colin Firth who truly knows how to play everyman with conviction and has the audience rooting for the guy filled with idiosyncrasies and contradictions. He makes for a convincing partner to Hunt’s angry and stubbornly bitter April searching for a man, a baby and much happiness. Which brings me to Hunt who not only directs this first feature effort with such self-assurance (and only a few MAD ABOUT YOU episodes to her credit) but also co-adapted the material and stars in a role that gives her a few key moments to remind oneself why she did win an Oscar in the first place. This role surely justifies the Oscar clinch without a doubt. In some ways, she’s even better here than in her award-winning AS GOOD AS IT GETS.
So what’s wrong with the entire picture? Why does it work most of the way but is not entirely satisfying? And why is it not the big draw it could have been? Two possible solutions: Perhaps it’s the universal theme of misery that prevails. That would make it the film a way-too-close-to-home downer. Then, just maybe it’s that independently produced films with women as the leads just don’t have enough money for a good publicity campaign. Hence the film is playing to empty screens in more the obscure theatres.
Between you and me, I have someone to blame – and perhaps I am biased. It’s all Matthew Broderick’s fault. Never been a fan, I must admit (only in THE PRODUCERS did I succumb; and that’s because he can actually sing and dance – what he cannot do is act – oh yeah, except in ELECTION which I felt guilty for liking). Here, Broderick gets to chew the scenery (oy vey, more than Midler – that’s a crime in itself) and then if that’s not enough, he plays such an unlovable person from the word go that it is hard to illicit any sympathy for him even when his character goes through difficult times. His small but pivotal role almost spoiled the fun I was having watching characters trying to get out of their self-imposed misery.
At the end, the movie still won me over mostly because I am a sucker for big confrontational scenes, and there are plenty, especially when they are funny, sad, blow-ups reminding one of how just like home and universal the subject matter is.
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE [2008] ***
The eerie and haunting new investigative documentary by Errol Morris is a heavy-handed, ultimately depressing look at the awfully unremorseful people responsible for producing the photos of prisoner humiliation that took place in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, an act of atrocity that the world was eventually shown and allowed to judge. The maddeningly irresponsible soldiers who took the photos and participated in the humility of their victims are interviewed just a few years later and what is most striking is that they, for the most part, seem to lack introspection and still hardly accept or even understand accountability, even while sitting in prison all this time after being indicted for their heinous crimes.
Yet what is most noticeable in this film from famed documentary filmmaker Morris is that he is now a very well established director with lots of resources and tools and has somehow managed to pull off every trick in the cinematic technique book to make his movie visually stimulating to its audience. From surreal re-enactments filmed in oblique angles to special visual effects dazzling about the screen and even a gripping original soundtrack by Danny Elfman, no less, Morris has us busily reacting to trickery and illusions. This is perhaps to mask the fact, more so than any other, that his film is, despite its ever-important topic, low on substance.
The effects are used to enhance what is essentially a film that has its subject matters talking directly at the screen and there’s only so much talk that can generate this much interest, especially when it is coming from its seemingly low intellect, trailer trash types that seem to have an excuse and justification for everything they’ve done. They keep repeating how they did not realize that their behaviour was criminal. That only lower ranked soldiers got reprimanded is telling of an unjust political system that does not weigh in responsibility at the very top.
The best scene in the film is the one where one of the key investigators into these crimes describes how he sifted through confiscated photographs to determine which ones constituted a criminal act different from those abhorring ones that are considered Standard Operating Procedure, from which the film stems its title. From all accounts, The President had no choice but to apologize on behalf of the USA for a public humiliation that caused the country socio-political grief but, as seen here, very little else happened other than the fact that ignorant scapegoats got punished and the system itself got away with murder, literally. Appalling whether the film works completely or not.
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