Two of Us ["Deux"](2019): The Power of Love

 

It’s an earlier time. Two young girls, 10-ish, are playing on a tree lined country road, running, laughing. One hides behind the wide trunk of a tree, carefully staying just out of sight as the other searches. For a moment, she’s on our side of the tree, then she moves out of view. The other girl circles the tree, but her friend has disappeared. What? Chalk it up to an intelligent bit of foreshadowing.

You’d think that opening a movie with a flashback might be confusing, but it makes sense in the excellent, soon-to-be-released Two of Us, France’s official submission for the 2021 Best International Feature Oscar (formerly known as Best Foreign Language Film). Actually, the scene is more metaphor than flashback. Two of Us (the French title is Deux, which I prefer) is the story of two women of a certain age, Nina and Mado (Madeleine), both retirees, living across the hall from one another in an apartment building somewhere in France. They leave their doors open and spend most of their time together, mostly in Mado’s comfortable-arty apartment. 

To the outside world, including Mado’s two adult children, Anne and Frédéric - Léa Drucker (best known
in the US for The Bureau, aka Le Bureau des Legendes) and Jérôme Varanfrain - the two ladies are simply neighbors and friends, but in truth they’re much closer: lovers in a committed relationship who have been clandestinely sharing life together for decades, using the tandem apartment scheme as a convenient cover. Now Nina (the remarkable Barbara Sukowa [Hannah Arendt (2012), Lola (1981)] and Mado [the terrific Martine Chevalier – a star of the French stage, less well known in cinematic circles] are talking about moving to Rome, not only their favorite place in the world but where they can live together openly. 

Among other things. this means that Mado needs to fess up to her kids – a task requiring all the courage she can muster. Unfortunately, this does not go well; and when an unforeseen twist of fate occurs a short time later, she and Nina are separated, seemingly powerless to do anything about it. Although constrained by Mado’s health and her family’s incomprehension, it is at this moment of trial where the exigencies of love and commitment dramatically come to the fore. What started as a character study becomes an imperative, existential adventure.

I can’t say enough good things about the two lead actresses. They are both so perfect for this story; I was not surprised to learn that the characters were written with these specific actors in mind. Barbara Sukowa, whose early fame derived from her work with the German auteur Rainier Werner Fassbinder in the early 1980s, plays Nina, a former European tour guide and free spirit whose whole life has become enmeshed with Mado’s.  Nina is the alpha protagonist and has no family issues to get in the way. One of Sukowa’s earliest roles, the one that first brought her to public attention and the first in which I ever saw her, was as Mieze, Franz Bieberopf’s doomed lover in Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980). Nearly forty years later in Two of Us, she looks remarkably the same (though obviously older). Here, she’s sharp, vigorous, and passionate playing an increasingly desperate character willing to risk everything for her love. 

In some ways, however, Chevalier’s performance is more nuanced – because Nina is, initially, a more
conflicted character, and then later in the film because circumstances require her to communicate with the subtlest expressions: a flicker of an eye, a shift in body attitude and the like.  In Two of Us, Sukowa is the action figure and Chevalier is the soul. What we realize by the time the film concludes is that they are two parts of a whole. 

Also worthy of mention is Drucker’s performance as Anne, Mado’s forty-something daughter. Anne has always believed that she had an unusually close relationship with her mother, that she knew her better than anyone else. Her reaction to the discovery of mom’s lesbian relationship is, as you might expect, quite dramatic. It’s not just the homosexuality, although that is certainly a shock (Mom - a sexual being?); it’s the recognition that Mado has successfully concealed her real life from Anne for years, maybe decades, and that Anne has fallen for her dissimulation, blind to the evidence that , in retrospect, was right in front of her. It’s an unforgettable moment. In fact, Drucker gives a heck of a performance in her supporting role throughout the film.

Two of Us is a fine, always fascinating movie to watch. There are not a whole lot of films about love relationships of older couples - people in their sixties, seventies, or older – particularly dramas like this one focusing so closely on the relationship itself.  As a mainstream drama film, this one is rarer still in featuring a mature lesbian couple. The only other picture I’ve seen in recent times with such a theme is the wonderful Paraguayan movie, The Heiresses (2018) about two women in a decades old relationship, each from the privileged class, and how they each deal with financial and personal adversity. 

There’s nothing trite or superfluous in Two of Us. As I’ve said, it’s beautifully acted. More surprising is that this is the feature film debut of its writer-director Filippo Meneghetti. That a first-time director, and a man at that, has created such a natural, believable and honest portrayal of Nina and Mado’s relationship is quite extraordinary. 

Did I mention that the film is well paced and entertaining? No? Well, now I just did. 

Two of Us is definitely worth your time, folks. [Oh, and it’s not just for old people!]

Opens February 5, 2021 in theaters and on most on-demand platforms, such as Amazon, GooglePlay, Apple/iTunes, Vudu, etc. 

Grade: A-

1 hour 39 minutes

Small Axe (2020): E Pluribus Unum

The unofficial motto of the United States is actually a pretty good description of the wonderful British film project collectively entitled Small Axe.  E Pluribus Unum (latin for “out of many, one”) has appeared on the Great Seal of the US since 1782 and is stamped on all American coins. It’s bad form to start a review with a digression, which this sort-of is since I will be discussing not an American production, but rather a British one set in London, with an English director and cast. Nevertheless, the concept “out of many, one” is absolutely germane to a consideration of Small Axe.

Small Axe  is a thematically related group of films - directed and co-written by UK auteur Steve McQueen [12 Years A Slave (2013), Widows (2018)]. Billed as a mini-series, it is actually an anthology consisting of five films, each of which tells a story about members of the Caribbean/West Indian community in London between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. As you might, imagine, writing and directing five individual feature films to be released together as a package was a herculean and time-consuming task; and in fact McQueen spent years pulling it together. McQueen himself is of West Indian extraction, and this was a passion project for him. He has called it “a celebration of all that that community has succeeded in achieving against the odds.”

Each of the movies can stand on its own. Each has its own look and an individual style appropriate to its subject matter. For example, three are shot on film stock (two in 35mm format, one in 16mm), the other two with digital cameras. Three are adaptations of true stories, while two are fictional; though the fictional pieces ring just as true as the others. While the movies themselves form an ensemble, Small Axe does not utilize an ensemble cast (although that might have been interesting); and no characters from one movie are carried over into any other.  Each picture, in its own way, is interesting and revealing about the world its subjects inhabit; and each is emotionally evocative, sometimes jarringly so. 

Understanding the title is a key to understanding the films, how they fit together, and McQueen’s reason for putting out an anthology in the first place. There was a song called Small Axe on Bob Marley and the Wailers’ reggae album, Burnin’ in 1973. It, in turn, refers to a Jamaican proverb that goes “If you are the big tree, we are the small axe.“  Seemingly small acts, from different folks at different times, can bring about change and topple – or at least transform – the powerful forces of oppression and institutional racism. In similar fashion, these five movies, each with its own story of little people getting up, standing up for their rights, meld together thematically to form an indelible whole that resonates more strongly than any one of the movies does individually. Seeing them in close proximity to one another is a powerful, eye opening experience about another time and place with quite a strong resonance in our own.

Taken as a whole, it’s brilliant.

Unknown to most Americans (fixated as we are with the indelible stain of slavery and racism in the USA), around a half million people emigrated to the UK from the West Indies – places like Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada and Trinidad – during the postwar period from the late 1940s to the early 1970s.  The majority of this community, largely black, settled in London. They were all British citizens with the right to resettle in the mother country and work there. Nevertheless, because of the color of their skin, along with their relative poverty and different culture, they were resented by the working classes and disdained by many in the upper classes. In consequence West Indians were subject to a high level of prejudice and abuse from the white power structure, which is to say the police, the courts, the educational system and social service agencies.

Each of the pictures in Small Axe  depicts a different aspect of this discrimination – which looks remarkably like its American cousin - by centering on the actions of particular individuals fighting against and/or attempting to rise above the obstructions laid in their path. The protagonists here are not MLK-style heroes, leading mass protest movements; rather, each might be considered a little axe, contributing his or her little cuts to the eventual downing of the big tree.

It’s a bit of a project to watch all of Small Axe – the five pictures taken together total a little under seven hours. On the other hand, it’s not unlike a lot of the other programming we’ve been watching during the covid era, right?  The lengths of the individual films vary considerably. The longest, Mangrove, is the only one that can truly be called a full-length movie – coming in at 128 minutes. It is also, perhaps, the most satisfying of the bunch.   The other four are of varying lengths,  averaging only about 70 minutes each – which is to say quite do-able. 

Herewith a brief summary of the five movies:  

The first Small Axe film is Mangrove, a true story about Frank Crichlow and the Caribbean restaurant in Notting Hill, London he opened in 1968.  Although that district is now fashionably upscale, back then it was a slum, occupied largely by West Indian immigrants drawn by the cheap rents. The first “respectable” eatery in the neighborhood, Crichlow's Mangrove restaurant became a community gathering spot. Along with that came police harassment; the place was raided and ransacked repeatedly without just cause (no contraband or other evidence of criminality ever found). Eventually, Crichlow and his supporters marched on the police station in protest – resulting in a police-initiated melee. Of course, it was Crichlow and eight other protestors – soon known as the Mangrove Nine – who were arrested, charged with incitement to riot. What followed was historic: a notorious 55-day trial, the depiction of which in the movie’s third act becomes its incredible centerpiece. The terrific cast is headed by a searingly intense Shawn Parkes as Crichlow, Latitia Wright as persuasive activist Althea Jones-Lecoint and Malachi Kirby as Darcus Howe, whose evocative speech at the trial, though a tad overdone, offers an emotional closing argument to the whole affair.  The film is fiercely dramatic, occasionally (and forgivably) dipping into melodrama during the riveting trial. It may even bring tears to your eyes – of outrage and of joy, both.

The next film in the ensemble is something entirely different. It is called Lovers Rock – named not, as you might think, for a place but for a genre of light pop reggae music that became popular in London’s Caribbean community beginning in the mid 1970s. the lovers rock style focused on romantic themes of love found and love lost – a contrast to the harder, angrier, political reggae blossoming in Jamaica. The film takes place at a West London house party in the early 1980s and is, in fact, primarily about the house party phenomenon. These events sprung up in response to anti-immigrant prejudice by which early generations of Caribbean immigrants were excluded from most local clubs and pubs. Nature abhorring a vacuum, local folks began hosting dance parties in their homes – clearing out the front rooms, bringing in a hot DJ, charging a modest admission and drawing scores of young people seeking a night of music, romancing, and a place to hang out, along with home-made West Indian grub, beer and such. Just who are these people and what was it like? McQueen brings us inside in such an intimate way, it’s like being there. How is this a small axe? Hint: if they don’t cater to us, we can do it ourselves. 

        (Key to an enjoyment of Lovers Rock – for reasons you’ll understand when you see the picture - is the light reggae song by Janet Kay (a second generation Caribbean Brit herself) entitled Silly Games, a huge crowd favorite that is featured in the movie.. [Listen on Spotify or watch on YouTube])

“Episode” 3 of Small Axe  is entitled Red, White and Blue. It’s the true story of Leroy Logan, a bright young West Indian guy who started his professional life as a research scientist. Logan avoided trouble growing up but was well aware of the racism and violence of the constables in his community, and when they assaulted his law-abiding father without cause, Logan was jolted into a life-changing decision. Believing that the best way to change the system was from the inside, he decided to join the Metropolitan Police himself in 1983. Red White and Blue demonstrates how dangerous and difficult that choice really was. He was viewed as an unworthy and unwelcome outsider by many of his (mostly white) uniformed colleagues, even as he was deemed a turncoat by many in his own community. John Boyega, in probably his best performance to date, is captivating as Logan. The movie takes us only through the first year or so of Logan’s career - through antipathy, isolation, hardship and danger - to a point of despair and indecision, as he wonders if his efforts are worth it, whether it will be possible to effect change after all. 

        [Coda: The film doesn’t actually tell us, perhaps because British audiences presumably already know; so if you haven’t seen Red, White and Blue, consider this a sort-of pre-epilogue: Logan chose to stick it out, and as it turned out he  did contribute mightily to changing police attitudes and policies respecting race. In fact, he was lauded for pushing for such change - awarded an MBE for his efforts. He retired with honor after thirty years of service in 2013.]

The fourth entry in the anthology is called Alex Wheatle, for the award-winning writer of novels for teens and young adults, upon whose early life the film is based. What Alex Wheatle gives us is his backstory. He was born to Jamaican parents but spent most of his childhood in a group home for children. Young Asad-Shareef Mohammed is pretty remarkable as eight-year-old Alex,  trying his best to cope with an overwhelming situation. By his mid-teens, now beautifully portrayed by newcomer Sheyi Cole, Alex was living in a South London (Brixton) public housing hostel, running the streets, small-time dealing, and getting into the reggae music culture as a DJ with Crucial Rocker sound system, through which he began writing songs, poetry, etc. He was caught up in the 1981 Brixton riots (following months of unrest and a brutal police crackdown in the largely Caribbean neighborhood) and served prison time for that. He used the lockup to read widely, reassess his life path and focus more seriously on writing. The film captures Wheatle’s life from youth through early adulthood, events which shaped the content of his subsequent fiction and became the foundation of his success.

The fifth and final film in the anthology is Education - loosely based on McQueen’s own educational experiences. It’s a coming of age story of a boy, 12-year-old Kingsley (Kenyah Sandy – a young actor to watch), who is quite bright but with a learning disability. Attending a mostly white school, his problem is misdiagnosed by the white school staff as laziness and stupidity, seen as typical of the barely human West Indian population. When Kingsley is sent to the principal’s office for being disruptive, he discovers he's being sent to a school for those with “special needs.” At least that’s the colloquial term used to whitewash the true bureaucratic terminology and policy, which refers to them as institutions for “educationally sub-normal’ children. Distracted by working two jobs, his parents (Charlene Whyte, Daniel Francis) are unaware of the unofficial segregation policy at play, preventing many black children from receiving the education they deserve; until a group of West Indian women take matters into their own hands.“ 

While the above summaries may give you the idea that this all downer stuff, I should say that it is more dramatic and evocative than depressing. And the series ends on a note of inspiration and hope. 

The question arises, is it essential to watch the five movies of Small Axe  in the listed order? No, it’s not, but writer-director McQueen prefers that you do. The films actually were shot in this order, and McQueen curated them to be viewed that way. He likens the arrangement of these movies to cuts on a record album, which back in the day were played in the order that the creators - the Beatles or Bob Marley or whoever - laid them out. In the age of digital music and personal playlists, respect for the artist’s vision has largely faded, so you can do what you want, but I’d still recommend viewing them in order to the extent possible. And why not?

As I’ve said along the way, the acting throughout all of Small Axe is excellent, and in some cases truly remarkable. Music is also a big part of all five pictures, sometimes in the forefront, other times as a soundtrack to the stories. It sets a mood and grounds us in the era, running from Toots and the Maytals, to the aforementioned Janet Kay, to The Clash’s London Calling.

These films deal quite frankly and movingly with racism.  As such they are not merely artifacts of a particular community in mid-twentieth century London – although McQueen and his team did a marvelous job of bringing at least this viewer into the scene at that time in that place and into the lives of some memorable characters - even though I personally am far removed from those circumstances. There are too many people and places in current day America, as 2020 surely reminded us, that face similar police … um …“insensitivity” and other race-based social and structural barriers. Connecting, as the Small Axe anthology allows us to do, with three-dimensional protagonists humanized by a talented and attuned director helps us to better understand and empathize. And empathy may be what we need most.

Grade:  A

Streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime Video (free with Prime membership)

Duration:

Mangrove         128 minutes

Lovers Rock         71 minutes

Red, White and Blue 81 minutes

Ales Wheatle         67 minutes

Education         64 minutes

Soul (2020): Pixar Stays Fly

I am a big fan of Pixar’s animated films, as you may know. In my review of Toy Story 4 last year, I wrote, “Time and again, they produce warm, funny, satisfying movies that appeal to kids and adults alike; Films that can thrill us, make us laugh, tug at our heartstrings, and stimulate our minds.” Their 23rd feature, SOUL has just been released to the Disney + streaming platform. They have done it again folks: produced an animation that is one of the best movies of the year. 

SOUL is an imaginative, entertaining, witty, clever and endearing film.  It is co-directed by Pete Docter, the writer-director of Up (2009) and Inside Out (2015) and the original story-creator of WALL-E (2008). So, it’s no surprise that, like most Pixar projects, this movie touches both our emotions and our intellect - somehow balancing an inquiry into the meaning of life (and death) with a light touch and an interesting everyman character. You read that correctly – SOUL, ultimately, treats with the eternal question about the meaning of life! You may or may not agree with its suggested answer, but it will likely stir you to think on it, and you will no doubt be entertained along the way.  

This is not a kiddie flick that adults might enjoy too, so much as an animated film for adults that kids might also like. Even there, I question whether small children would “get” much if anything out of it at all; even though Pixar says it’s been tested on all kinds of audiences and that small fry love it.  If so, the little guys’ pleasure will arrive at a very different level than ours. (My 3 ½ year old grandson just sat through the whole film, mesmerized by the media, and afterward asked his parents “guys, what happened in the movie?”)

So – What IS it about? As co-writer Mike Jones describes it, SOUL is “the story of a soul who doesn’t want to die, who meets a soul who does not want to live. In their interactions together, they end up convincing each other of what it means to live a fulfilled life.”  Like most Pixar projects, the action in SOUL originates from the characters. This is unlike so many mainstream films where the characters are secondary to action that originates elsewhere, and the anodyne protagonists just happen to get caught up in it. 

The main character is Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a part-time middle school music teacher and talented, but struggling pianist. He’s actually a good teacher, but his dream is to be a working jazz musician. One day, the school principal tells Joe that he will be promoted to a full-time teaching position with higher pay, full benefits, the works. He should be thrilled, or so thinks his mother Libba (Phylicia Rashad). But on the very same day, Joe gets an offer to join the hot quartet of esteemed jazz icon Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett). Although far less secure, this opportunity would be a dream fulfilled. Our man is on cloud nine, until fate intervenes with an accidental rendezvous with mortality. Before Joe knows what’s happened, he’s on a stairway to heaven (or, more precisely, a ramp to “the great beyond”). We’re not even ten minutes into the movie. 

You probably have heard, and from the above cast list you’d have no doubt guessed, that Joe is a black man.  In fact, this is the very first Pixar feature film with a black protagonist and majority black cast ever. It’s a big deal in some quarters! I’d say this is one reason to see SOUL, except that the picture is so good you really don’t need extraneous reasons to check it out. Still, it is long overdue.  More on this topic later. 

Joe feels like himself, but he doesn’t look the same; he’s a bluish green incorporeal soul. (Imagine having to conjure and animate what a soul looks like!) He’s not ready to die, he says; he’s really just getting started in life. In fact, he needs to get to his first big gig (with Dorothea’s band) tonight! Fate, being fate, turns a deaf ear. Trying to escape, Joe falls off the path to the great beyond, eventually finding himself in a quite different place called, cleverly, “the great before”. In case you’re wondering, this is where pre-fetal human souls are formed and their predispositions established. And it is where Joe meets “22” (Tina Fey) - a little pre-person who’s incorrigibly trying to avoid becoming an embodied human. “I already know everything about earth”, says she, “and it’s not worth the trouble.”  Joe is supposed to mentor 22, so she can find her “spark”- one of those processes too complicated to explain (or P2C2E, as Rushdie’s Haroun would call it).  As it turns out, mentoring is a two-way street - one that conveniently allows a detour back to Joe’s earthly environment - with plenty of snafus and monkey wrenches thrown into the plot – in order that certain lessons can be learned. 

At this point, SOUL transforms from an individual metaphysical journey into a brilliant odd-couple buddy film. Tina Fey is terrific as 22, and she and Foxx seem to have wonderful chemistry (assuming that can happen with voice artists).  For a while when Joe and 22 are in New York together, she amusingly and tellingly animates his earthly body; and her perspective living in Joe’s world changes both of them profoundly. Many of the other voice actors are pretty awesome as well, including Tiburon, California’s 10-year-old Cora Champommier (she’s now 12) as Connie the surprisingly inspired trombone player in Joe’s class. And Rashad is really wonderful a Joe’s mother, Libba.

Throughout, the Pixar team outdoes itself in creating worlds, both realistic and imaginative, that we get caught up in. The ethereal world of souls is imaginatively non-earthly. For example, in the great before are celestial “counselors”, helpful beings intended to be “a distillation of the universe” according to co-writer Mike Jones, that are rendered as ever-changing Picasso-esque line drawings – a remarkable visual idea that works surprisingly well. 

For the earthly sequences, Pixar’s animators have designed tangibly realistic neighborhoods to surround Joe in his life, whether on a busy New York sidewalk, at a coffee shop, on the subway or at the Half Note jazz club; along with remarkably credible characters to fill this world, from Joe’s multi-cultural, multi-hued public-school music class, to Curley (Questlove), his former student, now Dorothea’s drummer; to Melba (the Bay Area’s Margo Hall) and the ladies at Libba’s tailor shop; to Dez and Paul (Donnell Rawlings and Daveed Diggs) and the other guys at Buddy’s Barber Shop; to Moonwind  (Graham Norton), a spiritual hippie sign-twirler.

With Coco (2017) and now with SOUL, the idea and prospect of death plays a big part in the narrative – somehow without the film’s being too scary for kids or too morbid for adults. The theme is more of an entry point for a consideration of  what is important in life itself. Maybe there’s more to it than career or material wealth or other badges of success. As the saying goes, no one on their deathbed says, “I wish I had spent more time at the office …”   Or as Ram Das liked to suggest, "be here now."

SOUL was cowritten and co-directed by Kemp Powers. It is his first directorial effort. It’s not, however, his first screenplay. He wrote an award-winning play, One Night In Miami, which premiered in 2013; then, when the play was picked up for a film adaptation, he was tapped to write the screenplay. The story is about a real-life late-night meeting that took place between Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, legendary singer Sam Cooke and football superstar Jim Brown on February 25, 1964, after 22-year-old Clay had just defeated Sonny Liston to become the heavyweight boxing champion of the world.This was just days before Clay announced his affiliation with the Nation of Islam, changed his name to Muhammad Ali.  None of the four icons ever disclosed what they spoke about. So, Powers brilliantly imagines their dramatic conversation. The film, directed by Regina King, was released on Christmas day, the same day as SOUL. It is widely considered one of the best pictures of 2020. So is SOUL. Not a bad year for Kemp Powers. 

Joe Gardner, the protagonist of SOUL, was initially envisioned as a white guy, but when the creative team decided he would be a jazz musician, it made more sense that he should be African-American. The character and his world were not yet well developed at that point. Docter, Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer and the project’s co-director, had no black writers nor any African-Americans on Pixar’s senior creative staff, and he wanted the film to look, feel and be as authentic and credible as possible. He wisely recruited Powers to assist in developing the screenplay; within a few months Powers’ position was elevated to co-writer as well as co-director – the first black director in the studio’s thirty-plus year history. While a glimpse at the credits on any Pixar feature film, including SOUL, clearly reveals that there are literally hundreds, perhaps thousands of creative talents that go into these projects – animators, character designers, voice actors, scene designers, colorists, editors, musicians, and on and on – Powers’ contribution is undoubtedly huge reason that Joe and his world come across as so astoundingly real.

Speaking of musicians, some of the musical bits in SOUL are quite lovely. The score is by Oscar winning composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The jazz music was composed by Jon Batiste (best known as the bandleader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert) and Joe Gardner’s keyboard work is actually Batiste. Standout moments include Joe’s audition solo with Theodora Williams and Connie’s classroom trombone solo early in the picture (actually played by the terrific Andy Martin).  It’s nice that actual jazzy jazz (unlike the faux “jazz” that Ryan Gosling’s character professed to like in La La Land [2016]) is getting its due in a major motion picture. 

Bottom line: SOUL is a great flick. You should check it out. And stay fly!

1 hour 40 minutes Rated: PG [“for thematic elements and some language”]

Grade: A

Streaming exclusively on Disney+