On Body and Soul (2017): Quirky and Meaty

On Body and Soul, a quirky Hungarian comedy/drama/romance, was a finalist for this year’s best foreign language film Oscar. It’s a picture that moves along at a relatively slow, contemplative pace, which in this instance counts as a virtue. I found it was interesting and increasingly absorbing through all of its almost two hour length. And it’s available for home viewing exclusively from Netflix (streaming and on dvd).

In a nutshell, the story is about two people who, unbeknownst to one another have the same repeating dream - not a dream about the other person, but literally the same dream as the other person – and what transpires when they discover this. And, it’s about what it’s like being or feeling as if you are an outsider, different from other people. Perhaps you experience social ostracism; perhaps you make excuses or justifications for your otherness; but inside, you still ache, you hurt and feel alone - wanting to belong if not to the group, at least to someone. Ultimately, On Body and Soul is about the universal need for connection – and for intimacy.

How has it been received?  Quite well, both by critics and the movie-going public. According to review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes , the movie has a critical approval rating of 91%, summarizing its appeal thusly: 'Tender performances and a strong sense of style combine to create an eccentric, dreamy portrait of love and loneliness.'  In addition to the Academy Award nomination, it won the top prize, the Golden Bear, at the prestigious Berlinale film festival in 2017; and the picture’s lead actress, Alexandra Borbély, won the European Film Academy’s award for best actress of the year. IMDb (the Internet Movie Database) gives On Body and Soul a score of 7.7 out of 10, based on ratings by nearly 14,000 filmgoers. 

So here’s the set-up:   Endre is the CFO of a beef factory, which is to say a slaughterhouse or abattoir, on the outskirts of Budapest, Hungary.  Essentially, he seems to be the on-site manager of the place. Endre is an older man, near retirement age, with a placid attitude and a world-weary look that says he’s seen it all. His left arm is lame, a condition he self-consciously tries to conceal; he mostly keeps to himself to the extent he can.

But the factory’s quality control lady has taken maternity leave, and a new young woman, Maria, has taken her place. Maria is not liked by the other workers. She is stand-offish, doesn’t socialize, and has an odd manner. Nor is it appreciated that she grades the beef 100% by the book, which is to say very strictly. At the same time, she is a nice looking blonde, and along her aloofness this attracts Endre’s interest.  

Interspersed with the scenes setting up this situation are other scenes set in a stunningly beautiful wintry forest. In that forest lives a magnificent stag deer, not unlike the noble creature Helen Mirren’s Queen Elizabeth saw (or imagined she saw) in the 2006 picture The Queen. In one of these arboreal scenes the stag meets a doe, and thereafter the two of them roam through the snowy woods as a pair. This lovely imagery is mysterious at first, but we come to understand that we are glimpsing a bit of Endre’s dreams.

One day the police arrive at the workplace, based on reports that some of the plant’s cattle “mating powder” has been stolen. As part of the internal investigation which follows, a psychologist comes in to conduct interviews with all employees who might have had access to the powder. Her interview technique is unusual and also rather amusing, focusing a lot on personal stuff that would certainly be off limits in this country, such as the interviewee’s sexual habits and about about their most recent dream. She is startled to discover, in interviewing Endre and later Maria, that each describes an identical dream about the two deer (he identifying with the stag, and she with the doe). It’s through the disbelieving psychologist that these two first discover that they are sharing the very same dream!

The movie takes off from there, as these two quiet, diffident, yet very different folks tentatively explore what this phenomenon might portend; and a quirky love story seems in the offing.

What makes the movie so good?  For one thing, the cinematography is creatively moody and frequently gorgeous. More importantly, though, the performances of the two leads are exquisite and memorable.

Borbély in particular, as Maria, is captivating. If you’ve seen the excellent Swedish TV detective series The Bridge you’d recognize the kind of character she plays as quite similar to that of Saga, the brilliant, quirky detective with Aspergers syndrome. [As an aside, that show was so good, it was copied and made into an American detective series also called The Bridge, starring Diane Kruger as a similar type; and copied a second time as a British/French series called The Tunnel, but I haven’t seen either of those.] Like Saga, Maria is on the spectrum, extremely competent at her job, but largely incompetent in social interactions. She also has an almost superhuman memory. Unlike Saga, she’s quite shy, extremely modest in demeanor and dress. The combination of these qualities makes her both fascinating and endearing. 

Meanwhile, Endre (played by Géza Morcsányi) is a bit eccentric himself - a very private person, almost reclusive, with the thoughtful, cautious manner of a guy who is more observer than participant in the social world. Having long since given up any hopes of being romantically connected to another person, Endre is bemused by his attraction to and his mysterious connection with Maria.

In the hands of these two, the odd circumstance of the shared dream is not just an interesting premise, but the basis for an unusual, delicate, increasingly absorbing relationship.

Also interesting is the peek this movie gives us into the workings of a commercial abattoir (something I, personally, have never seen – nor want to think much about) – and just as interesting, the glimpse we are afforded of the psycho-social world of the humans who work there – the matter-of-fact way they go about their grisly business, the physicality of much of it, and the suggestion that the omnipresence of death, inherent in production of meat from live animals, winds up being an earthy environment for widespread flirtation and sexual liaisons.

Borrowing from and highlighting the movie’s premise – that two strangers could share the same dream – the picture itself is somewhat dreamy. The interspersed scenes of the stag and doe in their snow-covered woodland are divine. The inevitable contrast between these wild creatures and the doomed cattle is pretty striking, a not so subtle subtext to the human story in the foreground.

Which leads me to a cautionary word:  As I’ve suggested, On Body and Soul contains scenes in the slaughterhouse that may be disturbing to the faint of heart. While the film kindly avoids depicting the literal death moment of any steer, we are not spared much else. To be blunt, there are some brutal and bloody scenes of the so-called meat processing. Although these are thankfully quite brief, but I nonetheless found them unsettling. I guess it’s good to be reminded from whence our food derives. But consider yourself warned.

 

That said, On Body and Soul is a worthwhile, oddly touching, thoughtfully absorbing motion picture.  I recommend it.

1 hour 56 minutes.  Not rated.

Grade B+

Available both streaming and on dvd from Netflix (exclusivel

The Seagull (2018): Hope and Despair

The Seagull is a star-studded cinema adaptation of the classic tragicomic play by Anton Chekhov, the first of his four major theatrical works (the others being Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard). I saw a pre-release screening a few weeks ago, and really liked it.

Given the status of the play, which Chekhov, who must have had a weird sense of humor, referred to it as a comedy, it’s rather surprising that there have not been more attempts to bring it to the silver screen. As far as I can tell there are only two films directly from the play: There’s a Russian movie also called The Seagull (aka “Chayka”)  from 1970 that’s available on YouTube (with English subtitles), and a British-American version from 1968 called The Sea Gull, directed by Sidney Lumet, that’s reputedly pretty awful, notwithstanding a fine cast featuring Vanessa Redgrave, Simone Signoret, James Mason and David Warner. 

The new version, opening in select theaters on Friday May 18, and somewhat more widely on May 25, also features a top-notch cast headed by Annette Bening, plus Saoirse Ronan, Corey Stoll, Elisabeth Moss, Brian Dennehy, Billy Howle and Mare Willingham. Having followed up my viewing by reading the play, I can say that the screenplay, by the Tony Award winning playwright Stephen Karam (whose brilliant 2015 drama The Humans was one of the best contemporary plays I’ve seen in years) follows Chekhov’s text pretty closely, which makes it too pretty great. As is the acting. The Seagull - play or movie - is very much an ensemble piece, with between four and six principal characters (depending how you count), so it is key that everyone holds up their end – which is pretty much the case here (with one possible exception).

While the Chekhov’s play, first produced in 1896, is widely regarded as a masterwork and one of the seminal works of modern theater, movie-critics so far are divided on the quality of the new motion picture. Most agree that the acting is terrific, and that theThe Seagull is worth seeing on that score alone. Folks like David Edelman of New York Magazine, Jordan Hoffman of The Guardian, and Gary Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times have praised the film. Others have been disappointed for various reasons.

A.O. Scott of the NY Times, whose reviews I usually like, acknowledged the solid underpinnings  and the superlative acting, but felt that the camera work was too busy, disrupting the rhythm of some important scenes. I respectfully disagree. One of the scenes Scott disliked involved a key moment when Bening’s character, Irina, launches into a hurtful argument with her adult son, the sensitive Konstantin. The way this was shot seemed to enhance rather than impede the drama and emotion of that moment for me.

Other critics wrote that the movie was superficial, not as deep or nuanced as the play. Such an assessment may depend, of course, on which production of the stage version one has seen, if any, and when.  One reviewer acknowledged this, saying that the picture seemed a little flat compared to one of the several stage productions he had experienced, adding that everyone who has seen the play probably has a favorite moment, and nothing in the movie will quite rise to that level. As I’ve said, Karam’s screenplay is remarkably similar to Chekhov’s text. (The film does a bit of tinkering with the order of things, commencing with a bit of the first part of the final act, then doubling back to the beginning of the story, following that straight through to where we started and continuing straight on to the end. I found that this worked pretty well and gave extra meaning and context to the repeated part.  None of the reviews that I’ve seen, even the tepid ones, took issue with this.)

It should go without saying that film and dramatic theater are different mediums, but it bears repeating that any comparison must take this into account. There’s an immediacy in the experience of watching good live actors performing a dramatic scene on a stage right in front of you which can’t be duplicated on film (or video) in the same way. On the other hand, movies can enhance an actor’s subtle, often wordless expression of emotion and/or interiority through closeups, zooms, soundtracks, and so forth in ways that plays can’t. Just as one can’t directly compare a movie qualitatively to the novel it’s based upon (or vice versa), it’s neither fair nor apt to rate a movie by equating it the play on which it’s based. The same is true respecting the relatively new phenomenon of  stage musicals - such as Frozen, Kinky Boots, Mean Girls – derived from movies; they are just different animals.  One can prefer one type of rendition over another but a movie needs to be judges as a movie, a play as a play, a Broadway musical as a musical, each on its merits in the chosen medium.

This is easy for me to say here, since I have not had the good fortune to see a stage production of The Seagull. And as I’ve said, I quite liked the movie. Yes, the movie remains rather stagey, even though the picture undoubtedly opened things up in a nice way - scenes in a rowboat on a lake actually take place in a rowboat on a lake, for example. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Denzel Washington’s Oscar-nominated drama Fences feels stagey in the same way – for the same reason. As does Sleuth (1972), the terrific mystery-thriller starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine (based on a play by Anthony Shaffer), and numerous other cinema adaptations, I’m sure.

For those who haven’t seen it in any form, The Seagull is about the tangled relationships of the various folks hanging out in and around a lakeside summer dacha, owned by the famous actress Irina (Annette Bening), and her recently retired, civil servant brother Sorin (Brian Dennehy).  While Sorin is a modest, regretful sort, Irina is a vain prima donna, anxious to hold on to her star status and her fading beauty. These qualities, among other things, alienate her adult, mid-twenties son Konstantin (Billy Howle), an aspiring but so far unsuccessful playwright, who has grown up on the estate, largely ignored by his mother. Irina has brought her younger lover Boris Trigorin (Corey Stoll) there this summer. Boris is an accomplished and very popular writer, albeit somewhat self-effacing.  Konstantin is in love with Nina (Saoirse Ronan), a lovely local girl, who longs to become a successful actress like Irina, and who admires and falls in love with Boris (who is not unreceptive). Meanwhile, Masha (Elizabeth Moss), daughter of the estate’s managers Shamarayev (Glenn Fleshler) and Polina (Mare Willingham), can’t help but love Konstantin, even though he despises her. Masha drinks, takes snuff, and generally goes around dressed in black, like a a 19^th century goth, feeling sorry for herself, while spurning the guy who loves her, the impecunious schoolteacher Medvedenko (Michael Zegen). Polina, it turns out, actually loves the beloved country doctor, Dorn (Jon Tenney), but then Dorn has had affairs with pretty much all the local ladies over the years, Polina and Irena included.

Got that?

The Seagull wouldn’t be the classic it is if it was just about unrequited loves. The play is stuffed with dialogue, and the movie is talky too. The storylines and the dialogue touch on many themes – most obviously the sometimes absurd sometimes tragic complications of romantic love in its many flavors, not least the misplaced, unrequited variety; as well as unrequited familial love. The Seagull is also self-consciously about the meaning of and value of art and artistic endeavor, about beauty, vanity, self-delusion and other human follies. Then there are the related themes of ambition (including the unfulfilled variety), accomplishment and disappointment. At one point, a gravely ill Sorin laments, “In my youth, I wanted to become a writer – I didn’t. I wanted to speak well – I spoke atrociously. … I wanted to marry – I didn’t. I wanted to live in town all the time – and here I am ending my days in the country and so on.”

A story like this lives or dies on the quality of the acting.  As already noted, the performances here are generally quite lovely. Annette Bening is terrific as the egocentric, sometimes shockingly cruel Irena. One cool example is a scene in which she confronts Boris about his infatuation with Nina, persuading him to stay with her instead, then winks at us, seemingly channeling Richard III’s wooing of Lady Anne (“Was ever a woman in this humour won?”). It is    as if Bening was born for this part; and perhaps she was, considering that she first played middle-aged Irena over thirty years ago at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater when Bening herself was in her mid-twenties.

Stoll, as Boris, is also at the top of his form, charming, philosophical, and while initially flattered and amused at the attentions of the much younger Nina, eventually besotted with an amour fou. Ronan brings the character of the naïve Nina to life in her growing infatuation with the great writer and her fantasy-ambition of becoming famous. Moss, although rather too old for the part at 35, is somehow just fine as Masha, the a black-clad romantic Eeyore. Tenney is engaging and wise as the handsome Dr Dorn; and Dennehy is world-weary and perceptive as Sorin.

The only weak-link, kind-of, is Billy Howle as Konstantin. The character is a difficult one to be sure – an idealistic young guy whose talent doesn’t appear to rise to his ambition, an ambition built on a desire to compete with his uber-successful mother. He’s also a man-boy who has got both an infantile love for and an equally strong adolescent resentment bordering on hate for his inconsiderate mother; as well as yet another despairing victim of unrequited romantic love. As portrayed by the 29-year-old Howle, 25-year-old Konstantin acts like he’s 15. Even if that’s the way the part is written, something else is not quite right: Howle  doesn’t muff his lines, but he doesn’t quite inhabit them either. Or so it seemed to me.

That just drops my grade for this movie from A to A-. I still recommend it. Great story, great screenplay and wonderful acting makes The Seagull a film well worth checking out. It’s that rare  meatier movie you can think your teeth into as we enter the cotton candy season of superheroes, action flicks and puerile comedies.

99 minutes.  PG-13

Grade: A-

In limited rolling release. Opens in San Francisco and several other cities on Friday May 18, 2018. Opens in Berkeley, San Rafael and Pleasant Hill California and other cities around the US on May 25. Check your local listings.

Tully (2018): Oh Mother!

by Len Weiler

Tully is the new movie starring Oscar winner Charlize Theron [Monster (2003), Young Adult (2011), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)] about the trials and tribulations of an exhausted mother of three small kids, including a newborn infant.

Tully was written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman, the same team that gave us Juno (2007) and Young Adult (2011). I liked Juno as a quirky, satirical comedy with cute, charming high school protagonists (Ellen Page and Michael Cera). That movie has a back story about a yuppie couple that comes apart because the husband (Jason Bateman) is stuck in adolescence and can't come to grips with adult responsibilities. In Young Adult, Theron played a yuppie woman who’s stuck on her high school glory days and can't come to grips with adult responsibilities. Juno worked, because it focuses on the kids and their coming of age story; Bateman's character is a mere sketch, and a creepy one at that. Young Adult didn't work, because it focuses on the creepy character and doesn't really know what to do with her.

Tully is also about a woman’s difficulties coping with adult responsibilities - in this case trying to raise three small children while running a household and holding down a full-time job – but there the similarities dwindle. Theron’s character is called Marlo, and when we first meet her she is nine-months pregnant, and really huge. It’s all well and good to use pregnancy prosthetics to make svelt actresses look large, and I understand that Theron is a pretty big girl at 5’ 10” or so, but the make-up department went a bit overboard on her. Margo looks like she’s carrying quints. No wonder she’s tired all the time.

Taking care of her two kids, Sarah who’s in first or second grade, and Jonah in kindergarten, is hard enough - particularly Jonah, a mostly sweet kid who is wont to throw tantrums at inopportune moments and seems to suffer some sort of emotional disorder or is on the spectrum or has ADHD or something. The principal at his tony school just says he’s “quirky”, while suggesting that he may need a full time aide or maybe even move to another school. As if Marlo doesn’t have enough trouble as it is. Once we get the basic set-up, Marlo has her baby and gets to add sleep deprivation to her list of problems.

Marlo’s got a husband, Drew [Ron Livingston – Lucky (2017), Boardwalk Empire (2013)], but although he seems to be a nice guy and sympathetic to Marlo, he is no help at all, working long hours and then playing video games when he comes home. She does the cooking, cleaning, shuttling Sarah and Jonah to school, plus diaper changes, breast feeding, and most everything else pertaining to their newborn. [Presumably, there’s some sort of childcare during the day, but this is not actually mentioned in the film; and  just as oddly, Marlo’s alleged job as an HR manager is alluded to but never shown – questionable choices given the premise of the movie.]

Marlo’s well-to-do, self-satisfied but well-meaning brother, Craig (a smarmy Mark Duplass) notices how fatigued and bedraggled Marlo is, and suggests that she engage a “night nanny”, like he and his perfect wife did. That way, she can get some sleep while the nanny can handle most overnight baby care duties. [I had never even heard of such a service, but apparently night nannies are a real thing.

Enter Tully [Mackenzie Davis - Blade Runner 2049 (2017)] a mid-twenties miracle worker for Marlo, with an assured, take-charge attitude. She promises not just to help with infant care but with Marlo’s life. “You can’t treat the part without treating the whole”, she declares. And she delivers, too. Marlo’s life does seem to get better, to renormalize. She wakes up refreshed. One morning there are even freshly baked goods awaiting her on the kitchen table. Marlo can enjoy her kids again; she remembers what it’s like to smell the roses, so to speak.

We know that something more’s going to happen. Not much of a story otherwise. We fear that Tully is too good to be true. Perhaps she’s got an evil side? Well there is a twist, and I’m not going to spill it (or spoil it) for you. It’s safe to say that the third act is dramatic, but I also can assure you that this is not a horror movie.  It’s the ending, at least in part, that has produced the controversy.

See, we begin to suspect part-way through Tully that Marlo’s problem may be more than simple exhaustion. In fact, the film is about something deeper -  the very real psychological stress experienced by many women associated with childbirth – sometimes as a trigger for postpartum depression and/or, rarely but also more seriously, postpartum psychosis. Seems that the so-called Mommy Lobby is upset at the movie’s portrayal of Marlo’s condition, sees the film as an insult to all mothers out there suffering from maternal mental illness, and so forth. To which I say, hogwash.

First of all, this is a narrative film, a Hollywood movie, not a documentary. Second it is not and does not purport to be about all women, or even about all women with psychological issues around childbirth. As if there could be. It’s about one (fictional) woman and her problems. A story, by the way, written by Diablo Cody, herself a mother who has said she’s had some of these issues herself. It seems to me that drawing attention to these conditions, sparking conversations about them, is a good thing.

No, the problem with Tully is simply that it’s not a very good picture. Corners have been cut. The characters are not fleshed out. I’ve mentioned the “HR job” and the lack of any daytime childcare reference. Some other examples: Drew is barely there; there is no sense of the relationship between him and Marlo. Don’t they talk? Don’t they argue? Does Marlo have any friends? At all? Would the administrator of a high end private elementary school really avoid talking to a mother about issues raised by her child’s disruptive behavior, such as ADHD or autism or other possible conditions, instead referring to the behavior only as “quirky”? I don’t think so.

On the other hand, the story is conversation provoking – a good thing, as I’ve said. And, as Marlo and Tully, Theron and Davis each are terrific. No surprise from Theron and a pleasant one from Davis. Their performances help keep the project above water.

96 minutes

Grade: B-

In general release.