The Mother of Reinvention

Cate Blanchett is blue in Blue Jasmine.

«««1/2  Blue Jasmine. Written and directed by Woody Allen. At area theaters.

Fun fact: the last year Woody Allen did not release a film was a generation and a half ago, in 1981. Predictable as Christmas, his movies always start the same—the black screen, the olde-timey jazz, the same typeface for the titles (“Windsor EF-Elongated”). For better or worse, Allen is nothing if not consistent.

A few times—mostly back in the 1970’s and ‘80’s—his formula was the signature of true classics (Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors, et al). More often that consistency has come across as lack of inspiration, as his string of latter-day disappointments shows (anybody remember Whatever Works? To Rome With Love? Scoop? Anything Else? Melina and Melinda? Or the truly execrable Small Time Crooks?) As soon as this critic has been ready to finally, utterly, completely give up on Woody Allen, he suddenly delivers a flash of the old magic again (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Midnight in Paris). Following him is like being in a marriage than has gone stale, in hope of catching some inkling of the person you once fell in love with.

            That person is back again with Allen’s charming, perceptive Blue Jasmine. It might also be called his “San Francisco movie”, for like in Barcelona and Paris, Allen seems to have drawn inspiration from getting away from his beloved Manhattan. Not that this film shows any particular affinity for the Bay Area itself. Aside from using it as a pretty backdrop, Allen is more interested in California’s mythic significance, as a place where easterners go to reinvent themselves. Or at least to try.

Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) is a Manhattan socialite whose world imploded after her banker husband (Alec Baldwin) was unmasked as a white-collar criminal. Used to dinners at Le Cirque and yachting off Saint-Tropez, she is now a pauper, forced to move in with her sweet , not-rich, adopted sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins). Jasmine’s life is a wreck, but she still has an odor of success about her that many find irresistible. Awkwardly, though she has no money, she can’t stop behaving rich, treating Ginger with the same borderline contempt she did when times were good. Nor is she shy about communicating her disapproval of Ginger’s working-class boyfriend (Bobby Cannavale).

            It would be easy to hate Blanchett’s character for her pretensions and her meddling. Indeed, that seemed to be upshot when Diablo (Juno) Cody sketched a broadly similar character in Young Adult (2011). But Allen has something grander and more romantic in mind for Jasmine—something of the sympathy we reserve for great, self-immolating 19^th century heroines like Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina. We love her as we pity her, and we pity her as we scorn her foolishness.

Allen finds an able collaborator in Blanchett. Sometimes regal, sometimes pathetic, always magnetic, she delivers the kind of portrait that would be career-making if Blanchett’s career were not already made, over and over again. Her performance is doubly unique here because, unlike many other actors directed by Allen, she refuses to come off as an imitation of Woody himself. She’s neurotic, to be sure, but not with all the nebbishy hand-wringing. To paraphrase Tolstoy, while a certain sameness to all well-adjusted people, the unhappy ones are all miserable in their own ways.

A firm believer that character is destiny, Allen shows a certain skepticism of changing ourselves merely by changing coasts. Jasmine, after all, is a careerist who happens never to have worked a real job. Focused only on the next gainful phase of her life, she never seems to consider typical Left Coast avocations like yoga or Buddhism or para-sailing. One of the pitfalls of change is changing into something even more like yourself.

Maybe that’s why Allen will go on making his one film a year, with the same credits and the same old timey jazz, regardless of whether his critics yawn or cheer. At least this time, they’re applauding.

                                                                                             © 2013 Nicholas Nicastro

Are You Not Entertained?

A meeting of minds in Blackfish.

«««1/2  Blackfish.  Written by Gabriela Cowperthwaite & Eli B. Despres. Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite. At select theaters.

           

It's easy to feel morally superior to people in the past. We tend to be less attuned to things we tolerate now that future generations will look upon with horror. Those benighted folks back there in the past, after all, will inevitably become us. Case in point is Gabriela Cowperthwaite's devastating new documentary, Blackfish. 

          The film concerns a particular entertainer at SeaWorld Orlando. A veteran of the theme park's live animal shows, Tilikum is a six ton male orca ("killer whale") who has killed three people in his checkered career. By all evidence he's not a rampaging monster. Like most orcas, he's intelligent, sweet-natured, and eager to please his trainers. In that discrepancy lies Cowperthwaite's problem: what is it about the way Tilikum was procured, housed, and treated that has made him liable to deadly spasms of violence?

          In a sense, the answer is as obvious as the fable about the fox carrying the scorpion across the river ("Why did you sting me?" asks the fox as they both drown. "It's in my nature," replies the scorpion.) Like tigers and lions, orcas are the top hunters in their world, and nobody makes exposes about big cats who turn on their trainers. It's in the nature of apex predators to sometimes kill.

          But Blackfish dives deeper. Bred over millions of years of evolution to range over wide swaths of ocean in tight, socially-cohesive groups, captive orcas are forced to live among strangers in comparatively tiny enclosures. Where female offspring in the wild spend their entire lives beside their mothers, captive-born orcas are regularly (and painfully) separated from their parents. Indeed, Cowperthwaite catches SeaWorld personnel systematically misinforming visitors about orca biology and psychology, maintaining that they live longer in captivity (they don't), and that wild whales regularly mutilate each other (which they seldom do). Their motive is not hard to guess: SeaWorld makes millions of dollars a year on its orca shows, and millions more in putting males like Tilikum out to stud.

          More dismaying is the way the park treats its human employees. Tilikum's trainers in Florida were allegedly kept in the dark about the whale's role in the 1991 death of a young trainer in Victoria, British Columbia. Accidents like the death of Dawn Brancheau in 2010 were blamed on the employees, who were no longer around to defend themselves. Cowperthwaite cuts contemporary interviews with the fatuous "party line" former trainers were paid to deliver in front of audiences. Looking back, the ex-employees cringe. In the end, the film is as much about the rendering of human beings into profit-making commodities as it is about the abuse of animals.

          This film is not so much an expose on its subject as an evisceration. For viewers who care about animals, it's difficult to watch. Anything as effective at wringing emotions from its audience as Blackfish deserves some scrutiny in its own right, and Cowperthwaite does commit some distortions of her own. Though she rightly observes that there are no documented instances of wild orcas killing humans, there have indeed been attacks, including the sinking of a 40-foot yacht off Galapagos in 1972, and a surfer bitten so severely off California he needed 100 stitches. One of her "experts" asserts that wild orcas have language—an extraordinary claim not supported by any reputable linguist or comparative psychologist. That claim is part of a pattern of anthropomorphism in the film—a likening of motives and emotions between humans and a species about as alien to our experience as any mammal can be.

          SeaWorld, after refusing to take part in what they perceived as an exercise heavily biased against them, did issue an eight point rebuttal. They argued that—unlike the impression Blackfish leaves on most viewers—the park doesn't sponsor the capture of wild orcas, and hasn't in thirty years. They claim never to punish their animals (engage in "negative reinforcement")—an impression that, again, a naïve viewer might gather by the casual use of the word "punishment" in the film. Nor was Tilikum's captive life quite as lonely as Cowperthwaite makes out: he had pod-mate named Taima (who died in 2010) with whom he was "friendly", as well as a grandson named Trua who is an occasional companion now.

          Then there's the question of proportion. Blackfish inevitably leaves the impression that the practice of keeping orcas for entertainment is a serious issue—or else why make the movie? Yet out of a worldwide population of 50,000 to 100,000 whales, a grand total of only 45 were in captivity as of June, 2013, with only 32 of those on display. Granted, if the practice is morally wrong, numbers don't matter. But when it comes to mobilizing attention, there are arguably bigger problems (such as the ongoing, wholesale decimation of Africa's elephants) to invest precious public sympathy than a few dozen captive orcas.

          In the background is the larger question of the moral standing of zoos and aquariums. That's too big an issue to cover here, but it would be a shame if the practices of for-profit corporations like SeaWorld got legitimate research institutions painted with the same black brush. SeaWorld itself helped save Keiko, the star of Free Willy, from his dismal prison in a theme park in Mexico City—a story Cowperthwaite doesn't bother to tell.

          To her credit, Cowperthwaite fairly observes that such places were instrumental in getting people to care about creatures like orcas (and elephants, and apes, etc.) in the first place. After all, not everybody can afford to travel to Puget Sound or Iceland to observe wild orcas. Much as their practices are questionable, SeaWorld and other parks have had a role to play in reconciling humans to the other species on this planet. Time will tell if they've done that job well enough to make themselves obsolete.

© 2013 Nicholas Nicastro

To Have and Have Not

This guy gives the most memorable performance in Elysium.

««1/2  Elysium.  Written and directed by Neill Blomkamp. At neighborhood theaters.

"Do you think I like breathing this air?" asks the priggish CEO John Carlyle (William Fichtner) in Neill Blomkamp's Elysium. He objects to the very air on planet Earth because, by the late 21^st century, the entire planet has become a shantytown, a prison/toilet for the teeming billions who represent the vast majority of human beings. One percenters like Carlyle have meanwhile decamped for Elysium, an orbiting gated community where the air is fresh, there is no disease, and the people are diverted by an endless series of cocktail parties.

          The South African director's last film, District 9, was a breath of fresh air when it arrived in 2009. The story of a very different sort of alien invasion, it was witty and topical and perhaps the most effective piece of sci-fi-themed political satire since the original Robocop a generation earlier. Expectations for this follow-up were therefore pretty high. Unfortunately, there turns out to be nothing particularly original about Elysium. Instead of a breath of fresh air, we get something like the air on a jetliner—breathable, but stale.

          The hero is Max (Matt Damon), a small-time criminal lately down by law. He's just trying to go straight, but that's a tall order when he's being profiled by the police, and the police are all robots. The best scenes in Elysium show Damon's dealings with robo-cops and silicon parole officers, struggling to cope with their machine literalness yet keep his cool ("Are you being hostile or abusive? Would you like some drugs?"). Unfortunately, all these scenes were given away in the coming attractions.

          What's left is little more than the usual summer action-salad. Max is irradiated on the job, so he makes a deal with some gangsters to get himself smuggled to Elysium and its miraculous (and apparently cost-free) medical care. Standing in his way is Kruger, a borderline psychotic mercenary (Sharlto Copley) in the employ of Elysium's defense minister (Jodie Foster). Much of the film comes off as a set-up for the inevitable mano y mano clash between Max and Kruger, which is perhaps the least interesting direction Blomkamp could have taken his premise.

          To be sure, the film features some terrific production design. We can only admire the dedication that moved Blomkamp and his crew to breathe human fecal dust for two weeks as they shot in the world's largest landfill, outside Mexico City. Copley—the lead in District 9, and lately seen in Europa Report— speaks in an almost impenetrable Afrikaans accent, coming off as a seriously addled safari guide. He isn't exactly scary, but he is a unique presence.

          Foster, on the other hand, is completely wasted as every Tea Partier's imaginary caricature of Nancy Pelosi. Nor the idea of futuristic economic apartheid exactly original, forming the basis even for young adult epics like The Hunger Games. Blomkamp needed to do something more with it, but opts instead to condescend to the audience, given them a ten-buck theme park ride instead of the intelligent satire of District 9.

          In the end, Elysium comes off like an underwhelming remake of some 70's sci-fi opus we never saw. Like Logan's Run or Rollerball, the original would have been something with way worse special effects, less action, but a lot more substance.

© 2013 Nicholas Nicastro

If It Ain't Broke

Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is winning in Breaking Bad.

«««« Breaking Bad.  Created by Vince Gilligan. Sundays at 9pm on AMC, starting August 11.

Whoever said evil is "banal" never watched AMC's Breaking Bad. Whether this month's final run of eight episodes are good or bad (signs point to "good"), the show's legacy as a contemporary classic is secure. With it, series creator Vince Gilligan has joined David (The Sopranos) Chase, Matthew (Mad Men) Weiner, David (Deadwood)  Milch and a few elite others to become one of true storytelling auteurs in broadcasting.

          It was five years ago—though it seems longer—we were first introduced to Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a mild-seeming high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with Stage III lung cancer. Facing a mountain of medical debt and with little left to lose, Walter decides to put his knowledge of chemistry to work synthesizing crystal meth. Partnering with a former student and ne'er-do-well meth-head Jesse (Aaron Paul), Walter bumbles his way through the art and politics of the drug trade. Almost against his own expectations, he and Jesse prosper. Through the show's first five seasons, this reasonable, mostly-decent individual evolves into a creature barely recognizable to his wife (Anna Gunn) and, more disturbingly, to himself—yet all the while never losing the sympathy of the audience. Apparently, the last half-season will tell the tale of what Walter reaps for the bumper crop of sin he has sown.

          Like any mad scientist, Walter's rationality is his super-power and his curse. His skill with chemistry allows him to fashion MacGyver-esque solutions to his various problems with crazed junkies and nosey cops, but also leads him farther and farther from any sort of redeeming humility. Early in the series, he jokingly gives himself the alias "Heisenberg" after Werner Heisenberg, the physicist who promulgated the "uncertainty principle" that limited what we can inherently capable of knowing (and, one presumes, of controlling). But by the crest of his criminal ascent, Walter is using his alias to strike terror into his competitors—no inside joke intended, and no room for uncertainty left.

          Like all the best series, Breaking Bad is not just addictive from the very first episode. It also contains layers of complexity that reward second and third viewings, and which a mere two-hour feature film could never touch. The comparison with one of those weighty 19^th century novels is more apt than most of us realize. The novels of Charles Dickens, for instance, were never stand-alone products, but the literary equivalents of TV series, coming out in the form of eagerly-awaited installments. Nor do the novels of Dostoevsky have anything over Breaking Bad as tales of moral transformation set within a perfectly observed social canvas.

          Unlike series like Mad Men or The Wire, Bad is primarily driven by character, not some exhaustively rendered setting. Nor should it best described as an ensemble piece, like The Sopranos. Though Gunn, Paul, and Dean Norris (as Walter's DEA-agent brother-in-law) are all terrific, Cranston's Walter White is really at the core of what makes this show so compelling. While we occasionally look(ed) for redeeming signs of humanity in Tony Soprano and Don Draper, Walter's corruption is perhaps the most compelling moral arc in the history of television. The show's message—that rationality and the best of intentions can still have deeply problematic outcomes—isn't new, but the truth rarely is.

          When someone has gone beyond the point of no return, is there really no way back? Stay tuned. 

© 2013 Nicholas Nicastro

Love Me Three Times

More peripatetic love in Richard Linklater's Before Midnight.

«««1/2 Before Midnight.  Written by Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke. Directed by Richard Linklater. At selected theaters.

It's been 18 years since Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) spent that night wandering Vienna in Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, talking and flirting and falling in love. Their yak-fest wasn't everyone's cup of tea, but for many of us that film hit the sweet spot between intelligence, erotic possibility, and wistfulness. Because of that, or perhaps because it prefigured the current "hook-up" culture, Sunrise became one of the touchstone films of its time. It's not universally nameable, to be sure, but it's one everybody seems to remember ("You know, that movie where the guy talks the girl into getting off a train with him? Yeah, that one…")

          The trio continued Jesse and Celine's story in 2004's Before Sunset, reuniting them after circumstances prevented them from redeeming the promise of their one night together. Jesse was in Paris promoting a book he wrote on that experience; Celine showed up to get her copy signed. The result was another dance of postponed desire, picking up pretty much where it left off nine years before. Except that there was no vague promises to meet up again in the future: Jesse, married to someone else but smitten as ever with the mercurial Celine, impulsively skipped his plane home.

          Now we have Before Midnight and what feels like the final installment in the couple's story. Almost a decade later, they're now married, with twin daughters. Jesse has moved to Europe, but is feeling remorse for his intermittent relationship with the son (Seamus Davey-Kirkpatrick) he left behind. Celine, feeling "fat and forty", is lovely as ever and every bit as talented at thinking her way out of happiness. Approaching the end of an idyllic summer-long vacation in Greece, the consequences of Jesse missing his plane nine years before have returned with a vengeance. For, as Linklater shows, while it's all well and good to make sacrifices for the sake of love, sacrifice is rarely just a "one and done" thing. It keeps having effects that demand fresh sacrifices.

          Delpy and Hawke's names are on the screenplay for good reason: most of this film (and the other two) are dialog, and the words need to fit the mouths that say them. Once again, Linklater and his stars have crafted what amounts to a concerto for two instruments, by turns harmonious, discordant, and funny. In Sunrise their by-play was a dorm-room discourse, the problems more theoretical than real. Here, Linklater, Delpy and Hawke adeptly recapture the couple's characteristic rhythm while making their problems deeper, more urgent. "Sometimes I think I'm breathing oxygen and you're breathing helium," Celine complain of Jesse's way of deflecting her frets with humor. "What makes you say that?" he replies in a put-on falsetto. She's simultaneously charmed and exasperated.

          To cop a line, the problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans in a world of super-heroes and giant, rampaging monsters. Or maybe those are the only kinds of problems that really matter. In this case of Jesse and Celine, another sequel ("After Midnight?") sounds like a good way to find out.

© 2013 Nicholas Nicastro

What's Sauce for the Goose

Sumner and Gerwig play in Frances Ha.

«««1/2 Frances Ha. Written by Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig. Directed by Noah Baumbach. At select theaters.

Imagine "Frank". He's a single 27 year-old living in New York, pursuing a vaguely artistic career with no realistic chance of success. He lives paycheck to paycheck, using credit to live just a little bigger than his means. He's got a girlfriend, but nothing too serious—a relationship with some chick definitely isn't worth messing up a primo living arrangement with his best (guy) friend. In short, he's a classic slacker, another of a lost generation of males who see no particular reason to grow up, to whom romance is definitely secondary to "bromance". Judd Apatow has made himself a handsome career rhapsodizing guys like him.

          Imagine further that Apatow has nothing to do with any of this, and that "Frank" is actually Frances (Greta Gerwig). Now you've got the gist of Noah Baumbach's amusing, subtly subversive Frances Ha. Amusing, because like Baumbach's best-known other work, The Squid and the Whale, it combines great sensitivity and compassion for his characters with an almost absurdist ear for social relations. And subversive, because it holds that what's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose. There really isn’t yet a female equivalent of the word "bromance" ("gynomance"?), but that's what the script by Baumbach and Gerwig is getting at.

          Being the epitome of character-driven comedy, Frances depends on lot on the blonde, lissome Gerwig pulling off her portrayal of Frances in a way that's sympathetic, not pathetic. She does it brilliantly. Ditzy but proud, she's endearing because she's screwed by circumstances, and endearing because of her own shortcomings, but mostly she's just adorable. She's certainly more appealing to watch than Seth Rogen, who's played pretty much same kind of character elsewhere.

          The most significant figure in Frances' life is her friend Sophie (played by Mickie Sumner, Sting's daughter), who has a secure career and a worrisomely serious relationship with a guy named "Patch" (Patrick Heusinger). To Frances' mind, a mere "Patch" is no substitute for the real thing, which is the storybook "us against the world" partnership she shares with Sophie. That Sophie herself is conflicted about her soon-to-be conventional life only makes their separation more painful.

          Are we about to see a rash of other "gynomances"? Considering that we've already seen the birth of the female slob comedy (Bridesmaids) and the female buddy-cop comedy (The Heat), it seems likely. Real females might mature faster than males, and be more honestly in touch with their limitations, but they're just as vulnerable to the whims of a brutal job market that makes slacking seem so appealing by comparison. As long as the girl slackers are as likeable as Gerwig, I'm in. But the female equivalents of Seth Rogen or Jason Segel? Not so much.

                                                                           © 2013 Nicholas Nicastro

Gone Fishing

The crew goes down in Europa Report

«««Europa Report. Written by Philip Gelatt. Directed by Sebastián Cordero. Available now on demand on iTunes. Opening in selected theaters on 8/2.

We're living on the eve of a new golden age of exploration. The Mars rovers, for example, have turned that planet from a point of light in the sky to a real landscape, a place both alien and vaguely like southern Utah. In exactly two years, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will visit Pluto, the last planet (technically, "dwarf" planet) in our solar system to be seen up close. Meanwhile, astronomers are busy cataloging hundreds of worlds beyond our solar system—an impossible dream for the entire lives of most of you reading this review—including some that appear capable of sustaining life

          We're living on the eve of a new golden age of exploration, but you'd never know it from our movies. Instead, Hollywood is determined to recycle old superhero franchises, vampires, zombies, and 60's-era TV shows. Star Wars is about to get new episodes, but since when has Star Wars been remotely concerned with, you know, the stars? Even the rebooted Star Trek seems disinterested in actually in going where no man has gone before, preoccupied as it is with duels against arch-terrorists. Instead of awe and excitement, the prevailing mood in Hollywood movies seems to be gloom. Knights are always "dark knights", Thor is stuck in "dark world", soldiers are always "winter soldiers", and the starship Enterprise is hurtling "into darkness".
          In this dour environment Sebastián Cordero's low-budget Europa Report comes as a welcome splash of light. Made with less money than Stanley Kubrick spent in 1968 on 2001: A Space Odyssey, it's the story of a polyglot crew of a privately-sponsored expedition to Jupiter's "ocean moon". Cordero himself is a newcomer from Ecuador, and Report features no stars—unless you count District 9's Sharlto Copley as an up-and-comer.

          To overcome his budgetary limitations, Cordero opts for the "found-footage" premise used in The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, Chronicle, and perhaps most relevantly, the not-so-bad Apollo 18. It's a conceit that is showing its age, but combined with the detailed realism of the treatment (reportedly contributed by NASA), the final product is perhaps the most visually convincing put on film at any price.

          According to the script by Philip Gelatt, the "Europa One" mission was conceived to explore the possibility of life in the ocean thought to exist under the moon's icy crust. As far as private space tourism has advanced lately, going all the way to Europa is a wildly risky investment—it's a two year trip just to get there, with a miles-thick ice cap to drill through to reach any water. Sure enough, the interplanetary fishing trip starts to go bad when a solar flare fries the ship's communications gear, leaving it cut off from Earth. The crew (Daniel Wu, Michael Nykvist, Christian Camargo, et al.) elect to keep going—and why not? Captain Cook explored the Pacific on voyages just a long, with smaller ships, without ever getting technical advice or Daily Show reruns sent up from home.

          Authenticity aside, Report is structured in pretty standard fashion, with the crew members falling one-by-one to the consequences of their choices. What is refreshing about it, though, is the way it restores a sense of idealism—of purpose worthy of sacrifice—that went out of space movies since Alien envisioned its crew of low-brow, for-hire space truckers in 1979. The idea of exploration as an expression of the best in ourselves almost qualifies as innovative, especially in the context of a "private" venture, with nary a national flag to be seen. When the ship is launched, their employers don't reiterate the terms of their contracts—they serenade the crew with The Blue Danube. All that's missing is the preserved head of Richard Branson wishing them good luck and godspeed.

          The film obviously could have benefitted from somewhat more than a mini-budget. At times, we yearn not just to see the actors responding to some off-screen threat, but to actually see what's going on. But the solar system is still a better place with smart indies like Europa Report in it.

© 2013 Nicholas Nicastro