In the last week, I’ve been catching up. (School’s ended.) Saw three flicks–oddly similar, in terms of content–that I’d recommend, but primarily because they offer up two, three scenes apiece that… well, in terms of acting and dramatic complexity, astonish. The films then often go a bit awry, but why quibble when there’s some unexpected perfection, midway through?
The films: P.S., Birth, The Woodsman. I’ll handle ’em in that order:
1. P.S. The least successful, overall, of the lot. There’s an anchored performance at film’s heart by Laura Linney, and after You Can Count On Me I’m almost willing to watch her in anything. Here she plays a woman creeping into middle age, with an ex-husband (Gabriel Byrne) she shares a half-infatuation with, and a sense of loss (and/or of losing — beauty, bearings, desire) permeates her every action. The film opens with her putting on her face, and it’s a small, subtle, perfect bit of non-acting.
I won’t complain (too much) about the kind of laborious plotting, the misbegotten sideplot with miscast Marcia Gay Harden, or the surface-level emotional shtick of Byrne (who, it turns out, has a sex addiction).
What I will rave about are two scenes. One, between Linney and Topher Grace, who plays her young lover. She has him stand in front of a mirror, and then slowly paints a picture of his future life gone to seed, all dreams dying, … Grace is asked mostly to react, not to respond, and his timing–which seems sitcom-fine but wafer-thin–is astonishing; Linney’s even better, avoiding the urge to rip into (and rip apart) the dialogue. Instead of seeing this as savage monologue, a bit of Mamet-like verbal grandstanding, she manages to capture the pain at the heart of its aggression, the desire at the heart of its repulsion, the … insert another cool antithesis here.
She has another excellent scene with an even more tangential character, her brother, played by Paul Rudd. And here she’s more the reactive one; Rudd, whose willingness to be silly with Panther cologne in Anchorman made me wish he’d give up cheap dramatic leads, shows as perfect an ear for how to play at hurt and anger as Linney… and he needs more dramatic leads. Or just more leads.
2. Birth There are a number of good scenes here–and as Jeff indicated, the film has an allure that is hard to pinpoint. It’s gorgeously shot, with an equally ‘perfect’ soundtrack–and its actors all play three beats slower than you’d expect, and four shades of emotion lighter than the material seems to demand. Kid shows up, says he’s Nicole Kidman’s late husband. It really is gripping, and I never know quite what to make of the allegory–about identity (and how we think we know others, and don’t), or desire (and how we think we…), or memory and grief. Which seems perfect–a film as poem, resistant to interpretation.
Kidman has a scene, a framed headshot, all reaction, at the start of a symphony. Kris and I discussed this–it is either a remarkable bit of acting in the eyes, the barest shift in facial musculature, all reaction — OR it’s an enactment of the movie’s central point: that we can project onto blank slates (and Kidman, and the entire cast, both in affect and in their beautiful empty faces) such a range of emotions and investments…. Or it’s both.
Any way you cut it, I’d pay just to see that scene again.
3. The Woodsman I wasn’t sure I wanted to see it. I knew I should, but I had no idea I’d be so moved. It’s probably the best of the lot, even though it, too, has a couple subplots that substantially weaken the film’s actual impact. But there are scenes with Bacon, who is taciturn to the point of mute but never, ever blank in affect–instead, his eyes roil with rage, desire, despair, fear… pretty much non-stop. He’s fucking amazing. Think back to Diner, with that amazing scene where his character yells out the answers to a quiz show before the contestants do, in a kind of high-pitched drunken whine–Bacon’s never been as good as that, before this film.
Kyra Sedgwick also has some great moments. But the other standout is Mos Def, as a bulldog police detective harassing Bacon. He has one long monologue, again a bit of scenery-grinding script that could go horribly awry. But Def (Mos?) underplays, sidles around the sadness in the detective’s taunting… it’s pretty damn fine.
That’s all. Kris and Max are away this week so, despite my being bogged down in grades and other semester-ending details, I intend to watch a number of flicks. So I’ll be posting enough to irritate everyone.
I agree with Mike on The Woodsman. This is a movie that could so easily have gone wrong in so many different ways. But almost every time you anticipate a predictable turn (what will happen when Bacon is outed at work, for example), the movie plays it much more delicately and avoids the easy reaction. With almost any other actor, you would spend the movie trying to figure out whether Bacon’s character is being overly humanized, but his acting is so controlled that judging him seems beside the point. There is a scene on a park bench, actually there are two scenes on a park bench, between Bacon and young girl that capture the balance of menace and poignancy in Bacon’s character. Those few minutes perfectly showcase what Bacon brings to the movie. And the contrast between Bacon here and Sean Penn’s character in Mystic River helped me understand why I found Mystic River so unsatisfying.
OK, I’ve been avoiding The Woodsman but now I’m going to have to see it. As for Birth I like the poem analogy–resistant to interpretation but always being interpreted. I’ve toying with a particular reading that works as an allegorical critique of America/Hollywood in which a childish nation desires that which is continually out of reach (but somehow wins in the end–the brief flash of a smile as Anna is falling apart in what looked to be a Ralph Lauren photo shoot). Kidman’s role as object of desire (stunningly beautiful, emotionally vulnerable yet frustratingly dispassionate) is worth considering. The line between character and actor gets a bit blurry to me in a film as opaque as this one is. To be honest I’m not exactly sure where this is going but I toss it out nonetheless. I’m also curious about Jean-Claude Carriere’s role in this film and would really like to read his earlier drafts to see what Glazer responded to and potentially cut. The missing commentary track was frustrating but probably exactly the point.
OK how do I edit my comments??? Sean (as America if my reading makes any sense) is the one with the brief flash of a smile not Anna, though her romp on the beach and his smile are connected somehow. And there is some gender stuff to unpack in this film as well. I can’t help but want to draw a line between Glazer’s use of boyhood in Sexy Beast (the enigmatic pool boy) and his use of boyhood in Birth. I’m also perplexed by the opening tracking shot and the use of a voice-over narrative. The film starts out like a fairy tale. Oh shit, obviously this film intrigues the hell out of me. I’ll stop.
Chris’ comparison to Mystic River is dead-on. In fact, (minor spoiler ahead) there’s a plot twist in both River and Woodsman where a character with pedophiliac urges gets to beat the crap out of another pedophile, almost allowing us/the audience to absolve ourselves of identification with such urges. It bothered me in River, because the book was so careful, so particular about clarifying that Dave (the Tim Robbins character) was not just a vigilante and former victim, he was very very close to being a victimizer himself. And that is a crucial complexity for EVERY character in that book, that everyone is teetering between suffering and causing suffering, which I think gets lost as we move to the screen. Mystic’s more cathartic than complicated about suffering, and easier (too easy) on the audience.
When I saw that film, I thought–well, it’s hard via imagery(whether with pedophilia or some other kind of violent victimizing) to convey the coexistence of vulnerability and aggression, of powerlessness and power, and so on. Maybe you can’t do this subject on film. But Bacon, as Chris notes, gets it exactly right in Woodsman. (The little girl in the bench scene is equally tough-hearted and honest in her performance.)
It’s Chris H, right? Say hello to a political scientist, folks, and a fine, fine fellow. Not very good at poker, though.
It’s the facial tics that give me away, Mike. I win every time at poker.com.
mike, don’t you know any women? jeff is going to get very upset if any more men post to this blog.
I’ll just pretend Chris H. is a woman. Women can be fine fellows right?
I’m going to pretend that Chris is married to Mike. It makes the fact that they play “poker” funnier too.
…poker…
watched “the woodsman” tonight. i thought it was fine, nothing amazing. the score was very distracting, as was the color composition. i imagine a french version of this with just ambient sound and fewer scenes where everything is some shade of blue or gray. thematically, i did like the film’s refusal to metaphorize too overtly–sedgwick’s character is fucked up as well, as mos def’s also hints at being, but the film avoids the “everybody hurts” identification, though it does hint at it. wonder how it played on stage–it was a play first, right?
i would have liked to have seen more with sedgwick and bacon–a person who decides to extend their relationship with a confessed pedophile is interesting in their own right. what i am glad there was not more of is the interview with the producer in the extras. five minutes of that guy was more than enough for me–though he did make some good, sly points about the limited areas in which successful black filmmakers can operate in hollywood.