Have I over-rated
this film? I think not. As a morality
play, set in the early days of television as a growing mass-medium, it
interrogates the psychology of its characters, the contestants’ motivations
(and rationalisations) for accepting the offer to cheat (on the game show
Twenty-One), as well as the producers’ greed and anti-Semitism. The tension created by director Robert
Redford (rest in peace) is real, as federal investigator Dick Goodwin (Rob
Morrow) starts honing in on the deception, aided by a developing relationship
with Charlie Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) supported by their shared Ivy League
backgrounds (Harvard for Goodwin – with Morrow sporting a terrible Boston
accent; Columbia for Van Doren, son of noted poet Mark Van Doren). Van Doren famously beat Jewish Herbie Stempel
(John Turturro), purportedly because the producers (and sponsor Geritol, headed
by Martin Scorsese) wanted a more attractive WASPish winner. Did Redford take notes while acting in All the
President’s Men? This film does not reach the dynamic heights of that thriller
but the structure feels similar. Reflecting back on this time in the early ‘90s,
it is hard to remember that Fiennes was just fresh from his triumph in
Schindler’s List, Morrow was a TV star (Northern Exposure) seeking to make the
leap to the big screen (unsuccessfully), and Turturro was already an
established character actor (for Spike Lee and the Coen Brothers). It seems
like a lifetime ago – and the quiz show scandal seems like ancient history,
though I recall watching The Joker’s Wild as a child, not realising it was host
Jack Barry’s comeback after a decade in the wilderness following the scandal of
Twenty-One. Engrossing.
After all its
great reviews (which I didn’t read), I’m not sure why I shied away from
Aftersun for so long. I guess it seemed
like a heartwarming father-daughter bonding story -- and I didn’t think I
needed that (but see Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, 2025,
where I got that and I liked it!). In
fact, this is a Scottish father-daughter bonding story and perhaps that
makes a difference. It feels more authentic than what I expected an American or
Hollywood version would be like. But
more importantly, this is a mood-piece (and/or a moody piece) where we’re
somewhere in the future looking back on the events, years later, viewing young
dad Callum (Paul Mescal) partly through the eyes of 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie
Corio) and partly through adult Sophie’s eyes (but we spend only a blip of time
in this present tense). Young Sophie is always watching – her dad, but also the
teenagers around them at the Turkish resort town where they are holidaying. We
see her observing adult things, but it isn’t quite clear how much she understands
or whether she fully grasps what we as viewers can plainly see – Callum is
struggling, perhaps from his divorce, perhaps for other reasons. Writer-Director
Charlotte Wells (whose debut feature film this is) shows us Callum on his own,
in other scenes to which Sophie is not privy, that fill in some gaps, emotional
gaps, if not factual ones. Knowing that
the film is somewhat autobiographical privileges Sophie’s viewpoint and lets us
understand that the director is reconstructing what she could have or should
have seen, in hindsight years later. We
never know what happened next for Callum but what we do get to see, in these
casual, naturalistic, real-feeling moments between father and daughter, is
deeply affecting, precipitating a gentle flow of thoughts and reflections about
childhood, parenthood, and how to cope in this world. Very moving.
Time may not exist
very clearly in Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest (and greatest?) film, which
begins in an era where Weather Underground-styled activists are attacking the
authoritarian and anti-immigration actions of the current US government and
then fast-forwards 16 years to another timepoint where, uh, not much has
changed, except the revolutionaries have aged and the authoritarians have tightened
their grip.Sounds serious (and topical)
but this is a comedy … and an action film, complete with car chases.In fact, the film script (also by P. T.
Anderson but indebted to Pynchon) had been gestating for 20 years, starting
with Anderson’s desire to extend his range with those car chases.That he does. However, the comic-book broadness of the
characters here (specifically Sean Penn’s Colonel Steven J Lockjaw and Leonardo
DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson) doesn’t feel too far afield from Anderson’s other
Pynchon adaptation, Inherent Vice (2014), with a similar goofy vibe. But One
Battle After Another is Anderson at the top of his powers and fearless in his
willingness to “go there”. Surprisingly, this may also be Leo’s greatest performance
ever – and certainly his funniest – as he bumbles his way through the action as
a past-his-prime substance-addled/depleted former rebel, now paranoid
stay-at-home single dad to Chase Infiniti’s mixed-race teenager, who both get
dumped into a neo-Nazi operation to cleanse America.Benicio del Toro plays a welcome role as Sensei
Sergio St. Carlos, a karate instructor who helps Bob out. Indeed, there are a
variety of excellent character turns here from faces familiar and not (Teyana
Taylor, Regina Hall, Eric Schweig, more) that heighten the kaleidoscopic experience
which still, in the end, stacks up as an action movie/thriller with a not-so-disguised
political theme (and call to action). Highly recommended!
I was listening to
Leonard Cohen’s debut album not too long ago and, naturally, it reminded me of
this Robert Altman film that prominently uses three songs from that LP (“the
stranger song”, “sisters of mercy”, and “winter lady”). These songs lend a very melancholy feel to
the film and surprisingly were added after the film was already written, even
if their lyrics feel very apt. The plot
is pretty melancholy too – Altman called it an “anti-Western” but methinks it
isn’t unlike other traditional Westerns that show changes as the wild frontier
gave way to business interests. Perhaps the implied destruction of the American
dream by unfeeling corporate monoliths (even if the small business focuses on booze
and hookers here) is at odds with John Ford’s focus on community building (even
if the community was sometimes racist). This description reminds me just how
American the Western genre really is. But it’s true that Altman has put his own
spin on things here, importing his muttered/overlapping dialogue into the sound
design and working with cameraman Vilmos Zsigmond to “flash” the film before
shooting (creating a hazy appearance that makes indoor scenes by candlelight/firelight
warm and cozy). The camera also zooms and tracks, catching incidental action or
drifting in and out of focus on gambler/businessman McCabe (Warren Beatty) and brothel
manager/prostitute Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) who may or may not be
developing a relationship before everything goes sour. It’s not surprising that Christie escapes
from this reality by smoking opium, lending even more haze to a picture that
feels like an impressionistic (if possibly realistic) look at the past as
prelude.
Not what I
expected at all (and therefore so much better).Described by SBS as “real zombies attack a film crew making a zombie movie”
and it might be that for the first 30 minutes or so – but it isn’t only that or
even really that.I can’t write the
review without explaining what happens after the first 30 minutes so stop here,
if you’d like to be surprised like I was.That said, the Japanese title (Kamera o tomeru na! or Don’t Stop
Shooting!) pretty much gives things away.The “real” plot involves a middling director (Takayuki
Hamatsu) hired to film a zombie movie live in one take for a broadcast
event – and the first 30 minutes is exactly that.This “one cut” is indeed pretty thrilling but
also rather odd with strange longueurs and unexpected dialogues, entrances, and
exits.When the characters run, they
really run and the hand-held camera bounces along behind them.Of course, watching this at first, you don’t
really understand the technical challenges required to make the film flow (and
sometimes not flow).Therefore, the subsequent
hour of the film takes you through the making of the film – but the genius here
(from what appears to be an actual film class/collective) is that this “making
of” is also fictional, with the script delightfully “explaining” all the weirdness
in the zombie film that we’ve already seen (and now see again from behind the
scenes, still in “real time” but no longer one cut).Only in the end credits do we get a glimpse
the actual crew making the real one cut zombie film. Given the extreme low budget (made for $25K
but earned $25 million), this reminded me of Kore-Eda’s After Life (1998) where
amateur players recreate dead people’s most cherished memories, also on a
shoestring.And just like that film, One
Cut of the Dead has a lot of heart, endearing yourself to the ragtag crew and in
this case its central family.Well worth
your time, whether you like zombies or not!The zombies are incidental!
I was going to
write that the idea of this film is superior to its execution but waking up
this morning, I find that it has stuck with me more than expected. Focusing a fiction film on the murders of the
Osage people (women, especially) in 1920s Oklahoma as a way of calling
attention to colonialism’s effects on Indigenous people and culture more
broadly is laudable indeed. Lily Gladstone (a Blackfoot woman) plays the
central Osage heiress to an oil fortune, Molly, with powerful resignation,
never giving in spiritually to the white usurpers but also not overtly speaking
out, perhaps playing a long game or perhaps accepting her culture’s fate. We are told early on that hers is a culture
that speaks little but knows all.
Clearly, her situation is one of supreme powerlessness – and the plot
echoes other “women in distress” pictures, such as Gaslight (1944), which director
Martin Scorsese would be well aware of. But the film focuses less on Molly and her
family (her three sisters and her mother all die) and instead, perhaps for
commercial reasons or from loyalty to his stable of actors, the narrative spends
most of its time with the white characters (i.e., the villains in this story). In
particular, we follow Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), a WWI vet who has
moved to Oklahoma to live with his rich uncle Bill “King” Hale (Robert De
Niro). Hale has a plan that involves his
family members marrying Osage women in order to secure the “headrights” to
their oil money (as oil was found on tribal lands). Not coincidentally, these
same Osage women soon die, either from the “wasting illness” or from
murder. About two hours into the movie,
the FBI (led by Jesse Plemons) investigates. I was also going to write that I’m not a big
fan of Leo’s but I’m willing to reconsider that statement as well. Here, he seems to be playing just a dumb guy –
or an unreflective one, driven to this lack of reflection by the way it suits
his own self-interest. Again, this seems
a metaphor for much of white America’s foreign and domestic policies: do what lines the pockets of the powerful
while somehow maintaining a complete lack of self-awareness about any ill
effects on the poor and people of colour. So, I have to hand it to Leo for
suppressing his natural instinct to be charismatic to play this evil man (if
evil can be represented by bad faith; see Sartre). De Niro, playing old rather than morphing
young, also disappears into his character, the much more crafty and overtly
evil boss. Scorsese takes his time
allowing the plot and characters to develop (running time = 3 hours and 17
minutes) but I really did not feel that things dragged (even if I believe
undoubtedly there must have been ways to cut this down). He pulls out a few directorial flourishes
that delight the eye and, in a moment of real panache, uses an unusual coda to
tell us the ultimate fates of the remaining characters, as these events are
based on a true story (from David Grann’s book). The coda seems to serve a number of functions
– homage to the days of storytelling of yore but also perhaps an acknowledgment
of the need to use artifice to present the tale. Naysayers may question whether the implementation
of the idea for the film has transgressed on the real lives and real issues of
the Indigenous people portrayed (or not portrayed) but I reckon Scorsese was
right to use his starpower (and that of DiCaprio and De Niro) and his bully
pulpit to focus our attention here.
