MILK
By Gus Van Sant
MILK is triumphant in so many ways. It is difficult for me to review it without bias. It is a film of which every gay man, woman and their family should be proud; one that spiritedly exposes the struggles of gay liberation in a much more difficult time. It is an event that celebrates gay rights and our liberation. And a film that generously and graciously allows Sean Penn to shine as a gay man, a man who’s made a difference for many, with all of his virtues as well as his imperfections.
Gus Van Sant, once an independent filmmaker of the off-kilter variety, today more well known as the man behind GOOD WILL HUNTING, has managed to recreate a time and place that brought together men and women from all over the world, a heart filled hub, what seemed to be the love centre of the universe circa mid-seventies, called San Francisco, where the struggle for our rights was fought intellectually, politically and most pointedly. He combines archival footage, integrating them into the story to remind us that what we’re reliving is real life history and an important one at that.
If anything, MILK, by no means a perfect film but darn close to one, should be appreciated as a visual document of those who’ve paved our way so that we can now try to live happily ever after. Sadly, watching it also makes you realize that we still have a long way to go. After all, the fight against Proposition Six, disallowing California’s gay teachers to work, is one of the film’s central plotlines and currently one that is awfully close to Proposition Eight, the most hotly contested conservative attempt at oppressing gays and lesbians in our time.
Anyone sane enough to see how some, out of sheer ignorance and fear, try to keep us down will appreciate Van Sant’s vision and Penn’s absolutely striking performance as Harvey Milk and Milk’s efforts to do something meaningful in his life, to be the centre of attention and start a Utopian movement providing basic equal human rights to everyone. But remember MILK is more than just politically acute; it is also a proficiently and artistically well-made film.
As shown, Milk was as much an activist as he was an egoist. He very much loved the people that he scorned for not sharing his exact vision but mostly he was loyal, if not honest, to those around him. Van Sant did not simplify Milk the man in order to romanticize or accommodate him. If anything he gave MILK complex layers, which makes Milk even more human and relatable, not an easy feat in a film that aims to showcase one man’s greatest achievements.
A highlight of Van Sant’s re-imagining is the long-standing romance between Penn's Harvey and James Franco's Scott, the much younger man he picked up at a subway station and vowed to love. It is a love story easy to identify with in all of its highs and lows. Their unconditional love for one another until the end, even after years of separation, is the film’s true highlight
It is a testament to Van Sant that he is able to combine the professional struggles of Milk with the ones in his personal life and to do so in a balanced manner. James Franco is another great asset to the film, portraying Scott in a very natural, comfortable way. Scott is easy to connect with and, as Franco plays him, one can see how Milk would have held on to him throughout his lifetime. Emile Hirsch is another standout as Cleve Jones, street hustler turned advocate. And master-of-disguise as of late, James Brolin does quite a fine job in a disturbing role as menacing Dan White, Milk’s mayoral office colleague turned bitter enemy.
From viewing MILK, one can sense that our road to salvation is still a long one. But Van Sant, unabashed, would have us believe that, at least historically; through our collective efforts we’ve won at least one battle. Yes, Van Sant provides us all hope.
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
By Danny Boyle
As it stands, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is the ultimate amalgamation of artistic vision and the creative process. The visual medium has found its ideal story and director Danny Boyle has both the material and the medium to show off his niche as both artist and entertainer. And looking by the results, Boyle is more than entitled to show off, since much like a peacock, he does it so very well, one figurative feather at a time.
With such sharp source material, the book Q&A by Vikas Swarup, as envisioned by Danny Boyle, long with a cinematic eye, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is a simple but epic story that manages to grab our attention, break our heart and make us want to stand up and cheer. I was unbelievably impressed at how an idea based around WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE, set in Mumbai, can make for a fascinating watch.
A young boy’s journey through the slums of India and his relentless effort to survive anchors this incredibly moving film. At its start, we are watching the famed game show on television. Now perhaps twenty, the contestant, Jamal, is in the studio, in the hot seat, and as he responds to each question, one at a time, he looks back and we begin to see and understand how each of his answers has shaped and been impacted by Jamal’s short but triumphant existence.
Boyle’s efforts pay off. It is hard to find a more commanding and dramatic movie. With such a force, it is clear that Boyle really understands how to use film visually to maximize the power of each image and how to use editing to build on tension and emotions to the highest possible effect.
Boyle has also aced in casting his actors. His three leads are each portrayed by three formidable young actors. Despite the decision to have three unknowns playing characters at different stages of their young lives, he is able to garner much empathy and, when need be, anger for each of his characters throughout.
By the end, teary eyed and all, and I am not giving away more than I need to, it is a winning story of both love and pride, a foreign ride that seems far and exotic yet so easy to understand. Boyle’s technique is spot-on, through refined imagery and the simplicity of a story, he shows us one boy’s will power to live and, by doing so, how lucky we are to be living.
WERE THE WORLD MINE
By Tom Gustafson
The rugby team in WERE THE WORLD MINE gets shaken and stirred when Timothy, their anxious gay classmate begins spraying pansy potion in their eyes and, after a good scrub, they re-awaken only to fall in love, or is it in lust, with one another. This is HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL for the gay set. But in this homosexual utopian fantasy the magic spell gets out of control and soon enough the entire town’s in sensational heat, men, women and children, looking not too different from the zombies who’ve walked aimlessly in those LIVING DEAD films, except that the small town denizens are all somewhat more attractive giving the googly eyes.
As imagined by director Tom Gustafson, this idealism can only exist as a temporary fix because in only ninety minutes, the film’s entire length, a few modern love songs will be sung, the boys will take off their shirts in unison and dance, they’ll also kiss and make out all while the unaffected townspeople will demand a resolution, which they will most certainly get.
The fantastical glimpse of what were to happen would the gay Timothy, likeably played by Tanner Cohen, find the attention he seeks from school jock Jonathan, a super sexy Nathaniel David Becker, is filled with romantic notions that keep imaginatively disrupting a glum reality. But nothing’s too serious in WERE THE WORLD MINE. When drama teacher Mrs. Tebbit, a good witch-like Wendy Robie, casts Timothy as Puck in a school’s all male production of A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHT DREAM we know that we are in for a treat and that very shortly Timothy/Puck will get his boy.
Watching WERE THE WORLD MINE, especially its few well crafted musical numbers, allows for a glimpse into today’s gay cinema sensibilities and offers the audience a giddy taste of all kinds of sugary goodies and treats that we too know, all too well, will only last us as long as the magic potion, or more precisely the film, ends. Now, that’s ninety minutes of pure, out of control romance.
UN CONTE DE NOEL – Roubaix!
By Arnaud Desplechin
French cinephiles in the sixties wrote extensively of Hollywood films and then dissected their American directors, those who’ve influenced them. The even termed them auteurs; which by design shaped film aesthetics, theory and criticism. Then not much later these same critics went onto become directors in their own rights, revolutionizing the international film industry with their own brand of filmmaking, itself labelled nouvelle-vague, or new wave, which, strangely enough, turned wildly different than what was being done in Hollywood and what they were writing about. French films for years have been renowned for being more abstract, elliptical, philosophical and such.
Since then, almost fifty years have passed, and yet we have still come to expect a very opposing style and artistic sensibility coming from French cinema. You can be certain that very few French films today will ever look or feel American. No matter how big budgeted, or what star value they hold, film from France, even the slicker ones, will hardly ever be of the glossy, franchised variety. As such, even A CHRISTMAS TALE, a high-end, all-star, comfortably budgeted Holiday-themed film comes across as equal to something of a matte finish.
First off, despite its endearing title and its fable-like opening sequence, the film celebrates, if even that, misery, resentment, frustration and animosity between and towards members of the Vuillard family. As introduced, that opening scene, in fact, sets up the dreadful tone with what has historically preceded the family reunion that is about to take place and combust in one fiery week of regrets, misery and confrontation. Yet the film never borders on melodramatic cliché, even when it has so much potential to do so.
The Vuillard family is headed by a headstrong and unsentimental Junon, terrifically played with all gusto by Catherine Deneuve, the above the marquee name actress who has aged gracefully even while filling out. Deneuve’s matriarch and festive hostess does posses a classy exterior but plenty of inert anxiety. And it serves the film well by showing that not all skeletons in our closets have to be big revelations. In fact the insidious anger from one family member to another is the result of years and years of jealousy, pettiness and blame, that at their heart, even family members forgot the specifics, the reason, the guilty and the victim. Things just are.
It is interesting that a film set around the Christmas holidays featuring such star power as Deneuve, Mathieu Amalric [QUANTUM OF SOLACE], Anne Consigny, Melvil Poupaud and Chiara Mastroianni [Deneuve & Marcello Matsroianni’s real life daughter], among others, can be this intentionally disturbing. But, I guess, this is director Arnaud Desplechin’s whole point, to turn such a cheery spirited time into something more disquieting, to be able to show discomfort under one roof.
I shall not reveal what is at the heart of the family dysfunction but will say this much, this point is explained early on in the film and is a large part of what makes the film work, which is probably why it is best not shared. Therefore, once it is understood, it is far easier to believe and accept such hatred between family members, who at the same time, most possibly, also love one another.
What else makes the film work is that Desplechin sets it up much like a fable but then slowly shreds away all possible fairytale elements, replacing morality with incriminations. Yes, everybody can somewhat be blamed and they do go on blaming each other, as seen through the ensuing insults and arguments. If your idea of a cheery Christmas involves dazzling snow, a burly Santa and a nicely decorated tree smack in the middle of the living room, right by the fireplace, A CHRISTMAS TALE may just be the film for you. But I am afraid that in return it may also end up setting you back a couple of therapy sessions, something the Vuillards clearly have been avoiding all along. Now this would never happen in a big Hollywood Holiday movie. That would imply the wrong kind of Holiday spirit.
ANTARCTICA
By Yair Hochner
Can I mistake a film for being good just because it titillates me? Perhaps. Because with ANTARCTICA, director Yair Hochner paints a world in which plenty of good looking men get plenty of good looking – albeit empty – action. No, it’s not a porno and not even a film about the porno industry but a truthful film, at how some men choose to live their lives as if it were porn: good looking AND empty.
But then I would be unfair to Hochner, by not paying close attention to the world he’s created, a world in which these good looking men of Tel Aviv, in their twenties and thirties, do their dating scene as one big revolving door, because it is both telling and far deeper than any porno would allow.
And so why should Tel Aviv be any different? Well, for one, Hochner’s Tel Aviv boasts Mediterranean model-types looking for love but settling for lust or, at its worst, compromising for companionship with very little benefits.
Hochner collects six men [and two women] for his insightful study of romance and, mostly, one-night stands, something all too familiar to many men around the world. He points his finger and faults his men but for some odd reason their behaviour still turns us on.
It’s a pretty world full of frustration. And personally, I got involved and was going in for the kill myself, having spotted four potential dates from among the picture-perfect cast. But this being a film I had to settle for my voyeuristic status.
And if that weren’t enough, Hochner opens the film with a quiet yet telling observational vignette, a series of one-night stands that jump-starts the film and its raison d’etre.
Yet he also makes some odd choices as a director. For one, he casts a leading Israeli drag queen to play the mom of two of the main characters, whether as an ode to John Waters and Divine or, perhaps, to the more recent movie musical version of HAIRSPRAY, Hochner’s sense of humour seems to betray his efforts of shedding serious light into a life of frivolity. But then again, maybe Hochner was going for drama-lite.
The other, more curious choice, is to introduce the character of an older, established female author who, herself, unveils some pithy observations about humanity looking for love in all the wrong places, But then Hochner has her go to a meet-and-greet session with aliens who are just about to land in the heart of Tel-Aviv [very CLOSE ENCOUNTERS of him]. If not bizarre, in context, it is nevertheless a weighty subject to introduce mid-way while men are busy unbuckling belts in their throes of passion.
And with all these men running around from one apartment to the next, I am not sure if by design but the characters, and actors, that manage to garner the most sympathy and are best served are also the ones that the film gives most attention to. The winning Tomer Ilan as Omer, a kind hearted librarian, a soul deserving of love and Guy Zu-Aretz as Ronen, a winsome freestyle journalist and bedroom lothario. There a few other screen friendly personalities with mucho charisma, including Lucy Dubinchik, as Shirely, Omer’s confused and troubled sister whose dream is to be set free to discover ANTARCTICA, what eventually forms the film’s significant title.
ANTARCTICA tries to manage plenty of plotlines and, as such, some of the story gets lost in the shuffle. Nonetheless, ANTARCTICA never bores as it constantly places, replaces and displaces its characters from one location to another. As in real life, if not for the good, then at least ANTARCTICA is still a lot of fun to watch despite the trials and tribulations of its urbanites in heat or perhaps precisely because of their mating calls.
THE SECRETS
By Avi Nesher
Like the Kabbalah, the subject at the heart of THE SECRETS, Avi Nesher’s latest is a film filled with mysticism, an air of mystery and ravishing beauty in its sympathetic telling of two radically different young women who, sharing a room in a religious seminary in Safed, birthplace of the ancient Jewish ritual of spirituality, make a life altering pact that forever bonds and changes them.
Last I saw an Avi Nesher film was 1985 when he released his controversially ambitious but adventurous Jews-in-Palestine liberation epic, RAGE AND GLORY, at the International Film Festival in Montreal. At the time, as a student journalist, I had the opportunity to interview the then celebrated Israeli director and I was in awe of his accomplishments at home, his love of film as well as knowledge and, most certainly, his popular local films back home [THE TROUPE, DIZINGOV 99]. Apparently a lot has happened to Nesher in the past twenty years. For one, he went onto become a prolific filmmaker stateside – of mostly shameful B-grade films. And it seems that he has finally returned to Israel, where his serious and proud efforts were previously made, in order to produce, direct and write his last two films.
His very latest is an impressive venture, another polished attempt filled with visual splendour even with Nesher’s limited epic budget constraints. And, truth be told, I am not surprised. THE SECRETS is still slick and stylish and boasts a star turn by French vedette Fanny Ardant as a sickly woman with a past, living across the study hall. Turns out that the girls, Naomi [a fabulous beauty by the name of Ania Bukstein] and Michelle [a fun, free spirited & lovable Michal Shtamler] are sent out to assist the lonely stranger tending to her groceries and medication.
In the process, Naomi, a devout Jew playing the role of a self-declared faith healer, gets a ahead of herself. As an all-knowing and challenging adventurer, she convinces Michelle, the rebellious no-good girl with a heart of gold, to assist their newfound friend and neighbour Anouk, who it turns out is dying, with a forbidden sin-cleansing ritual, bringing the two to mighty danger with the school, the sacred laws and even their own families.
THE SECRETS is a story conceived by Nesher with religious feminist playwright Hadar Glaron [who must know one thing or two about women and faith]. It manages to present an even-handed but critical view to what it considers are the faith’s limitations, prejudice and, even, hypocrisy, towards women as equals. And still it’s a film that has its heart and soul in the right place, never degrading even while critical, implying a ray of hope in the faith towards its sense of traditional family values and joys.
And while Ardant’s performance does unfortunately ring false [she’s overly glamourized and bigger than life for the role she portrays of a poor, unfortunate soul]. Though she unnaturally emotes her character’s inner-struggles and pain, she is, after all, truly the foreign piece of THE SECRETS’ puzzle, the alienated individual. So it almost makes some sense that she doesn’t belong. But the remainder of the film, especially its use of young Israeli actresses, seems to be made by those familiar with the controversial topic of Kabbalah, those acute with its territory and its ethereal significance. Nesher understands its provocative nature and happily applies it for his own benefit. We remain intrigued throughout.
FROST/NIXON
By Ron Howard
The beauty in Ron Howard’s FROST/NIXON, a filmed adaptation of Peter Morgan’s stirring word play is how Howard was essentially able to take the stage material and, together with the playwright, gloriously adapt it for the big screen, from the camera’s viewpoint, opening it up ever so slightly and making these verbose exchanges a fun and exciting game to watch, a tennis match for the brain.
FROST/NIXON is mostly captivating when it, strikingly, captures the worn-out defeated and deflated face of Richard Nixon at his nadir. It is a film filled with plenty of such visually telling, confessional studies of that notoriously famous face, its lines and creases. Exceptionally well played by Frank Langella, the Nixon on film, as opposed to the one Langella originated on the Broadway stage, is even more imposing and impacting, as the camera captures his every painful look of guilt, pride and regret, up close and personal, something the stage was unable to do.
Yet while his are the best moments of FROST/NIXON, they are hardly the only effective ones. The film itself, turns out, slowly unfolds to the rhythm of mystery [with an excellent noir-duet score by Hans Zimmer] towards its stirring conclusion and easily ends up as one of this year’s most exceptional Hollywood releases. And Howard, Morgan and company, who have, together, expanded on the play, should be very proud of their results, as every single technical and creative aspect of the film is a top-notch achievement.
The battle of wits between British television host-cum-interviewer David Frost and humiliated ex-president of the Unites States Richard Nixon is played out like a near-murder mystery, a political Sleuth or Deathtrap, a cat and mouse chase film whose subject is all too real. And although no murder ever takes place, it might as well, since re-enacting the thought process that brought a desperate-to-be-taken-seriously Frost to guide Nixon to the nearest thing to a Watergate confession has all the trappings of such a glorious crime story. Turning Frost into a little Columbo, outsmarting his real-life opponent, without losing credulity is a challenge but in FROST/NIXON it simply works.
In yet another fabulous interpretation by Michael Sheen [THE QUEEN], also reprising his role from the stage, he plays the role of Frost with such spitfire charisma and energy, in direct contrast to Langella’s Nixon, in his desperate need to prove once and for all that he too is a serious newscaster.
They say that the real interviews between the two men were never this interesting and the sparring never this creative but still you have to give it Morgan’s imagination that he constructs, both, a duelling yet respectful relationship between the hunter and his prey. Thus, the interview results are reconstructed with such an element of high drama. Not a surprise given Morgan’s previous successful screenplays for the similarly plotted THE QUEEN & THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND.
Just about everything in FROST/NIXON is polished with a professional glee. Howard has really managed to use the play’s introverted ideas and turn them into an ocular mind game. To think that we can still get swayed by watching David Frost illicit a confession out of Tricky Dickey – a legendary tale so old that it may even seem irrelevant by now – but, by golly, we do care and we do anticipate the end result. Even if we know it, we still want to hear the shameful plea coming out of the mouth of the man America once named the most distrusted President in US history.
FROST/NIXON turns out to be one of those films where you can just tell that somebody knew what they were doing all along. I can just imagine Ron Howard watching the play, really stirred as he first experiences it; And then, perhaps a second viewing in the dark and perhaps yet another one [over and over again], just imagining how he would play it out on film. And then – shot for shot – Howard goes ahead and fulfils his commitment by reinventing FROST/NIXON, basically turning it into a digestible and entertaining film about an confident intellectual fleabag pitted against a frivolous insecure egoist, and then methodically mixing it all up. And with all due respect to both his subjects, the material was right there all along in real life.
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