Network (1976): The More Things Change ...

Network, winner of four Academy Awards, is a highly polemical satire/comedy about the transformation of broadcast news into infotainment, the evils of corporate hegemony, and the dumbing-down of America. It is one of director Sidney Lumet’s most lauded and remembered films. The film and its trademark rant: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” was the talk of the nation 35 years ago. Sidney Lumet ‘s death a couple of months ago got me interested in revisiting this classic, which I had last seen when it was in general release 35 years ago, to see how it has held up.

Pretty well, I’d say, especially for such a topical, message-oriented motion picture. It remains highly entertaining, outrageous, funny, and thought provoking, though perhaps not quite in the way originally intended. More on that later.
Lumet  (1924 - 2011), although he achieved quite a lot of commercial success,  was/is underrated as a ‘serious’ filmmaker, perhaps because he WAS so successful. Like Network, many of his movies were ‘message’ pictures, such as Fail-Safe ((1964), The Group (1966), Serpico (1973) and The Verdict (1982). “While the goal of all movies is to entertain,” he wrote, “the kind of film in which I believe goes one step further. It compels the spectator to examine one facet or another of his own conscience.” He was wonderful with actors, and worked with some of the greats: Pacino, Fonda, Hepburn, Steiger,  Robards, Brando, Burton, Newman, often bringing out some of their best, most interesting work. Take a look at what he got out of Henry Fonda, Jack Klugman, Martin Balsam, Jack Warden, Lee J. Cobb, and the rest in one of his earliest films, 12 Angry Men (1957), or watch Rod Steiger as Sol Nazerman in the Pawnbroker (1965). Two of Al Pacino’s best roles were directed by Lumet: Sonny in Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and the title role in Serpico (1973).

The actors in Network do not disappoint. Peter Finch is brilliant in this, his final role, as Howard Beale, an old-school newsman in the Walter Cronkite mold, who, in the twilight of his career and in the wake of declining ratings, abandons his professional restraint and decides to actually tell the “truth” to America. Along the way he is co-opted, manipulated, and exploited by his network and ultimately by the multinational mega-corporation that owns it and – by extension - owns us. Finch’s character rants, raves and ultimately disintegrates as we (and the country) watch.  Finch was posthumously awarded the Oscar for best actor for this performance.

Faye Dunaway explodes as Diana Christiansen - the ambitious, ratings driven network program director who sets this in motion.  She understands that controversy gets people talking; and when people are talking, ratings go up. Content and good taste are immaterial.  So, in addition to promoting  Howard Beale (advertised as the “Mad Prophet of the Airwaves” ) and his evangelical fulminations decrying life in a corporate-run America, Diane produces a new weekly series, the Mao Tse Tung Hour(!), chronicling the exploits of the terrorist “Ecumenical Liberation Army”, all the while paying these radicals a hefty sum for their participation. A prescient foretaste of the  reality shows of today?  Dunaway’s Diana is all energy, talking a mile a minute, obsessed with success. She is beautiful and sexy, but empty, soulless.  I found her hilarious. The role earned Dunaway an Oscar for best actress.

Which brings us to, Max Schumaker (William Holden), another old newsman, the head of the network’s news department, and our narrator. In a nice touch, Holden starts and ends the movie with voiceover narration, just as he did so memorably in Sunset Boulevard.  Max is appalled at the commercialization of TV news shows. Yet, inexplicably, he starts an affair with Diana, who represents the antithesis of all Max stands for, and then he falls in love with her. Or so we are told. Notwithstanding Dunaway’s good looks, she is not someone Max or any other sentient being would want to spend time with in a non-celluloid world.

This plot development does offer some rewards, however, chief among them being the reaction of Max’s wife of 25 years (played by Beatrice Straight), who lets loose a fine dramatic speech (“This is your great winter romance, isn’t it? Your last roar of passion before you settle into your emeritus years. Is that what’s left for me? Is that my share? She gets the winter passion and I get the dotage? … I’m your wife, damn it. And, if you can’t work up a winter passion for me, the least I require is respect and allegiance.“). Her mere five minutes of screen time won her an Oscar for best supporting actress.

Robert Duvall and Ned Beatty are also featured, and are fun to watch; especially Beatty as an evangelical  capitalist.

Paddy Chayevsky, who wrote the screenplay (and received the film’s fourth Oscar for his efforts), must have had it in for the television industry. Network relentlessly, broadly (and pedantically) skewers the shows, the people working on the shows, TV executives, and the corporate interests – owners and advertisers – to whom the rest are beholden. A lot of this remains funny, but the message is trite and the delivery pretty unsubtle today.

Was it surprising in 1976 to discover that TV is largely vacuous? The terms “wasteland” and “boob-tube” had been applied to the medium years earlier. The mid-seventies may have been a low point in television programming – certainly compared to our times, but I suspect, and sort of recall, that this movie’s diatribe about the stupidity of TV-land was recognized as hackneyed even at the time. The concern about the diminishing quality of network news, on the other hand, was a bigger deal.

Debate over the quality of TV news programming continues.(e.g.  the controversy about Katie Couric as an anchor; or about  the partisan biases of Fox News or MSNBC), but with the explosion of Cable and the Internet, it is hard to credibly argue today that people can’t get the information they need. We can and do bemoan the fact that many people are horribly uninformed or misinformed, but this is a critique of our citizenry or of our education establishment, rather than of the TV networks. Indeed, the networks are so diminished in the 21^st century, they hardly seem to matter. 

In the mid-70’s, there were only three primary networks. CNN (created in 1980), Fox News (launched in 1996) and the rest weren’t around yet. There was no world-wide-web.  Newspaper readership had lost a lot of ground to television.  ABC, CBS and NBC were where most people got their news. So the cultural context when Network was made was vastly different from our world. This was why Network was so impactful then, yet seems thematically dated now.

Actually, part of my enjoyment in watching Network now, is that the movie is such a great time capsule of its era.

There was one aspect of Network I really did not like. The film is unrelentingly, annoyingly preachy. Howard Beale sermonizes over and over about how we all have become puppets controlled by faceless, evil corporations. Holden, as Max, tells Diana how, back in the good old days (in his case, the 1950’s), people were smarter and had morals and ideals. Max’s generation has real human feelings and needs, he declares, whereas Diana and her ilk are merely “humanoids.”   Max goes on and on, to all and sundry,  about the younger generation’s obsession with TV, how it is character destroying, life destroying, how people don’t read books anymore.

To my ears, a lot of this sounds like the stuff we are hearing about today’s young people: the computer generation. “They” don’t read anymore, “they” are always online, on their smart phones, iPads, whatever. The technology is dehumanizing.    Ironically, today’s accusations are coming from the generation of folks that Chayefsky and Lumet were deriding or writing off 35 years ago.

The more things change …

Watch Howard Beale's "Mad as hell" speech on YouTube

Network is available on DVD, or streaming  from Netflix.

The Trip (2011): Making Good Impressions

The Trip (not to be confused with the psychedelic 1967 Peter Fonda film of the same name) is a jovially funny and bittersweet picture about two British actors named Steve Coogan (played by Steve Coogan) and Rob Brydon (Rob Brydon also playing himself) who take off on a sponsored trip to the North of England to sample cuisine at several Michelin-starred restaurants. It’s a road movie/buddy movie, a bit like Sideways (2004) in a way, and yet really quite it’s own thing.

If you are looking for a lot of story, or intrigue, or action, this is not your kind of movie. But if you are looking for laughs, droll wit, and a bit of a character study, I can recommend The Trip very highly.

This project started out as a BBC series of six half hour episodes about these two guys on their road trip. (Little bits of this are available on YouTube and elsewhere.) For the film, the running time was edited from 180 minutes down to about 107 minutes. It’s said Coogan and Brydon are playing slightly exaggerated versions of themselves. They’ve previously worked together on a number of projects, most significantly, perhaps, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2006). (That was a film about a group of actors trying to film Lawrence Sterne’s “unfilmable” 18th century satirical novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. The novel is purportedly Mr Shandy’s attempt to give the world a complete and totally honest account of his life and opinions, wherein the narrator finds himself so bogged down with the pursuit of comprehensive truth, not to mention digressions galore, that he abandons the enterprise shortly after getting himself born - at page 400 or thereabouts. The film is not so much a depiction of the actual story – to the extent there even was a story - but a free form, and seemingly improvised, depiction of the actors’ doomed attempts to do so.) In that film Coogan and Brydon, again playing themselves, were endlessly competing with and one-upping each other, and so here in The Trip as well.

What makes this picture fun is the actors’ obvious comfort with one another and (notwithstanding some feigned disdain) their enjoyment of one another. As they meander the Lake District in their Land Rover, we get to know them a bit, observing their differences (Coogan is darker and discontented, while Brydon is more secure within himself, seemingly contented with family domesticity). More significantly we can admire their obvious talents, especially their joy in doing impressions of other actors and personalities. Their competitions to do the best Michael Caine impression, or Sean Connery , or even Woody Allen, are amazing and hilarious.

Another bit that cracked me up was the depiction of the (often absurd) efforts of high end kitchens to outdo one another in food preparation and presentation. If I was at any of these places, I’d probably savor every moment, every dish. But the aroma and taste of the exotic preparations doesn’t come across on film. Instead, we see the absurdity of it all. Here’s a little snippet that gives a glimpse of our guys and the cuisine.

Another enjoyable aspect to this movie is the locations. While not worth the price of a ticket for scenic splendour alone, the North country is beautiful to behold.The Trip is also a very quotable film, and I could even see it gaining some kind of cult status..

The director, Michael Winterbottom, is quite eclectic, and has a following. I’d only seen Cock and Bull Story before The Trip, but I’m now anxious to catch up on his other stuff.

The Trip is a small film, the polar opposite of the summer blockbuster. I saw it at the San Francisco International Film Festival last month. It has just been released in New York City, but not yet in the Bay Area. Keep an eye out for it, as it may not be in theaters for long. Or put it on your Netflix list.

Here's the trailer.

Midnight In Paris (2011): C'est Bon!

I like Woody Allen’s European period, what I’ve seen of it. And this may be the best of his recent pictures, certainly up there with Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2009).

Midnight in Paris is a delightful, little light romantic comedy. The romance, however, is not between a man and a woman, but with a time and a place – most especially with the place: an idealized, beautiful Paris. Allen is in love with Paris, and takes us on a lovely, sentimental travelogue through the city. Paris along the Seine, Paris in the rain, boulevards, alleyways, Paris at midnight. I kept smiling to myself as I recognized landmarks, famous and otherwise. Through the magic of the movies, we also get to see this city of lights not only today, but in two of its earlier glorious inceptions: the 1920s Lost Generation era of Ernest Hemingway, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald , Picasso, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, et al; and the belle époque period of the late 19th century, of Maxim’s, Tolouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, and that lot.

There is a story here, of course, about a Hollywood screenwriter, Gil (Owen Wilson) who has come to Paris with his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams), tagging along with her parents on Daddy’s business trip. Gil has had some success in Hollywood and it is a little unclear why he has any need to be freeloading off his in-laws-to-be, but there they are – wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. Inez and her family are presented to us as quintessential ugly Americans, who see Paris as a quaint little backwater, albeit with great shops, and who can’t wait to get back to Malibu. Gil, on the other hand, is a dreamer. He just wants to live and breathe Parisian culture, art, food, history. He has fantasies about moving to Paris (don’t we all), setting up in a little apartment, and becoming a ‘real’ writer, like other expatriates before him. Inez thinks he’s nuts, and tells him so. Repeatedly.

As in so many Woody Allen films, we are presented with a classic dysfunctional couple, ill suited to one another, who somehow believe they love one another, even while it is apparent to the rest of us that this just is not going to work. Gil just wants to walk the streets of romantic Paris with his girl, but she’s not having it. There’s a shopping date, a lunch date, a timetable to attend to. Rachel McAdams does a terrific job playing a beautiful woman with a repulsive personality. She is so convincing that I’m crossing her off my cinema girlfriend list (at least until her next picture).

So Inez goes off and does her thing, and Gil sets off to do his. [spoiler alert] Around midnight, Gil finds himself transported back to the world of his dreams – in the company of his idols, the Fitzgeralds (Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill), Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Cole Porter (Yves Heck), Gertrude Stein (Cathy Bates) and the rest. How this happens is not explained, but we are to believe he’s really there – this is not played as a dream a la Dorothy’s visit to Oz. While at first Gil is astounded, he quickly accepts the situation and then starts to really dig it. And so do we – the caricatures of these writers and artists of legend are quite witty, especially Hemingway, Zelda, and Dali (Adrien Brody). It’s a gimmick but it’s cute.

Gil also meets Picasso’s lover, Adrianna (Marion Cotillard) and is enchanted. She also is attracted to him. Ahhh, some dramatic tension – what about Gil’s engagement (and Adrianna’s connection to Picasso)? I won’t tell, find out for yourself. More significantly, we are privileged to see Ms. Cotillard in a whole new light. I don’t know about you, but I never understood what the big deal about her was. She was good as Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose (2007), barely noticeable in Inception (2010); but didn’t project (to my sensibility, anyway) warmth, beauty, or sexual allure in those pictures. Here, however, she gives us all of that, with a dollop of real intelligence to boot. She can take McAdams’ place on the girlfriend list. In any event, Gil is surprised to discover that Adrianna and her contemporaries don’t find their era particularly special. They imagine that times were way cooler back at the turn of the century. There’s a lesson here, of course. Gil figures this out pretty quickly, as do we.

There is not a lot of meat to this film. But it got me thinking. Allen’s sympathies are clearly with his protagonist, with his love affair with Paris, with art, with the fantasies of every sojourner who imagines “what would my life could be like if I settled here?” (wherever ‘here’ is). Who hasn’t thought about relocating to a vacation spot, opening up a little B&B or, perhaps, telecommuting from the beach or the bistro? But after soaking up the local splendor, we always come home. In Midnight In Paris, Gil decides he’s staying in Paris. In fact, he’s a fish out of water there, doesn’t even speak the language, as far as we can tell. His antagonists, Inez and her family and friends, are portrayed as smug and superficial, but they aren’t nincompoops – they go to the museums and historic places, travel to Versailles and even out to Mont Saint Michel, they are clearly well educated people. They shop for antiques, while Gil shops for Cole Porter sheet music. They are living in the real world – albeit a luxurious one – while Gil is living … in his dreams? Is their world so evil, so wrong?

I doubt Woody Allen wants us to question his premise or his protagonist’s choices in this way. As I said at the outset, Midnight In Paris is pretty light entertainment. But it IS entertaining. And Owen Wilson, always a likeable character, really carries this movie. He’s got a great face, always changing. It’s not at all handsome, but it’s always interesting. His sense of wonder, dreaminess, and earnestness are endearing. If you close your eyes, at times he sounds almost like Woody, and of course he is Allen’s alter ego. Like his alter ego, he is attracted to beautiful women, but unlike the Woody Allen character, Wilson’s Gil is comfortable around women and it doesn’t stretch credulity to believe that women are attracted to him. Wilson is also a better actor than Woody Allen.

So, Midnight In Paris gives us sentimentality, romance, fantasy, a moral, food for thought – that’s enough, isn’t it? And it’s a great title.

In current release.      Here's a trailer.

Hanna (2011): Lean, Teen Killing Machine

Hanna has an interesting premise and a great trailer, not to mention a very watchable young actress in Saoirse Ronan. It has some gripping action sequences and creative, occasionally beautiful photography. All this is enhanced (mostly) with a lively score by the electronica/psychedelica duo, the Chemical Brothers. The movie is entertaining enough to keep the audience interested to the very end, and yet most will walk out of the theater unsatisfied. It coulda been a contender, instead of just a bum, which is what it is, more or less.

Perhaps the most egregious problem is with the story itself. I want to believe that there was a coherent narrative to begin with. If so, large pieces of the plot were unaccountably left on the cutting room floor or snipped out of the screenplay to save time or stay within budget. Or maybe the story never was properly fleshed out, and the filmmakers just figured we wouldn’t notice. Well, I saw this with four other people, and everyone noticed.

The film begins somewhere in “the wilds of Finland” according to the official story line, far from civilization. Sixteen year old Hanna (Ronan) has lived her whole life here. Her father, Erik (Eric Bana), has trained her to be strong, self sufficient and smart. Also, to fight and kill like a trained assassin. Which, it turns out, is exactly what she is. They live in a little cabin, without electricity or other amenities of the modern age. It’s snowy and bitter cold. In every scene Hanna and her dad are dressed in furs and thermal clothing. Until, that is, it is time to leave.

Erik has trained Hanna her entire life for one mission: to kill Marissa (Cate Blanchett) – an evil CIA agent. Erik informs Hanna that if she doesn’t get Marissa first, Marissa will kill her. (He doesn’t explain why – the reason is revealed later). He pulls out a little black box, with a switch. When Hanna is ready, she just needs to flick the switch, and the box will become an electronic beacon, summoning Marissa’s people, who will bring Hanna to her quarry. How the battery has lasted for fifteen years is not explained. Why Eric kept such a device all these years is not explained. (Had he been plotting this since Hanna was a baby?) Erik takes his leave. They will rendezvous in Berlin. Erik changes into a three piece suit and walks off into the frozen woods. No overcoat, no boots, no hat. Hey, wait a minute … how does that work? Won’t he freeze? How far does he have to walk? Why a suit all of a sudden? Sorry – just suspend your disbelief, people.

The CIA guys do show up, in helicopters, scores of them, armed to the teeth. They’re hunting Erik but find Hanna, who takes out a few, but is subdued. She awakens in a small underground room. Florescent lighting, steel walls. She knows not where she is, yet she is calm. A woman posing as Marissa comes in. We know she’s an imposter but Hanna doesn’t. Hanna kills her [this is not much of a spoiler, as this scene is in the official preview], and all hell breaks loose. The next ten minutes comprise the first of several great action/chase sequences in this picture, as Hanna throttles a dozen or more soldiers/guards, and wends her way through passageways and heating ducts to make her escape.

When Hanna finally pokes her head out of the duct she has crawled through she finds herself in the middle of an endless desert. It’s a stunning contrast to the arctic world in which we (and Hanna) have been immersed until now. It is hot, desolate and beautiful. Not a building in sight. (Hmmm … how’s that possible?) Implausibly, Hanna hitches a ride on the undercarriage of a Hummer that happens by, and eventually, with the help of some American tourists, makes her way to a town. Turns out she’s in Morocco. Why the CIA has an underground facility in the Moroccan Sahara is not explained.

Up until now, Hanna has taken in every situation with an almost unearthly calm. But when she manages to get a room in a local hotel, she goes through an almost slapstick sequence, in which everything unnerves her: light switch, electric kettle, tv, ceiling fan – until she finally flees in a panic. When she later returns, however, the appliances are off and her earlier experience apparently forgotten. Anyway, Hanna has to make her way to Berlin and she does so through a series of implausible events, journeying briefly through Spain and France - just for the heck of it, apparently. She is followed and harried along the way by Marissa’s hired henchmen, led by the sadistic, imperturbable Isaacs (Tom Hollander). Marissa has a reason for not using CIA to get the girl, but it’s unconvincing; particularly in light of the fact that Hanna has just offed quite a few Americans in her escape from captivity.

The underlying premise of Hanna stems from a little sci-fi back-story, which is revealed about half way through. I won’t reveal it here, but suffice to say, it is murky. The back-story helps explain Erik’s motivation and why Marissa wants Erik dead, but actually confuses us about Marissa’s interest in Hanna. Does she want to kill her or save her? By the conclusion of the picture, we still don’t know. This is not a tantalizing mystery – it’s just bad storytelling.

There are other holes in this tale, but you get the point.

Saoirse Ronan is believable as Hanna. Her face is interesting - her blue eyes in that pale face are amazing - and you want to root for her, notwithstanding the plot deficits or the fact that she is a killer. She looks good as the kick-ass girl, but who is this person? All we get is a cartoon heroine, with no soul, no heart, no truth revealed. A closer examination of Hanna’s struggle to become a real person might have enriched this film. She’s an innocent, raised in isolation, fighting an alien world, struggling to discover her humanity and to learn how to connect with other human beings for the first time. Some token scenes are included to develop these themes, but they are cloying and superficial. They feel tacked on and insincere. As a result, they are at cross-purposes with the forward motion of the film and a distraction from the action.

Eric Bana looks good. Not much acting here, though. And when he opens his mouth, we get his vaguely central-European accent recycled from Munich (2005). Cate Blanchett has similar problems – more surprising in her case. Her Marissa is a cross between the prim, amoral Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) in Michael Clayton (2007) and the over-the-top Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) in From Russia With Love (1963). Marissa is supposed to be from Georgia (USA), and Blanchett slips in out of a southern accent throughout the picture for no discernable reason. Blanchett isn't given a whole lot to work with, but I’m thinking Tilda might have been a better casting choice.

Hollander’s portrayal of the villainous Isaacs is odd and derivative. Disturbingly, Isaacs’ insinuated homosexuality seems designed to make him a creepy character. He looks kind of like Elton John, but wears workout clothes throughout. Like Peter Lorre’s pedophile in M (1931), he whistles – not In the Hall of The Mountain King, but something more disco; this quirk is also reminiscent of Malcolm McDowell’s Alex, the psychopath in Clockwork Orange (1971), who warbles Singing In The Rain while committing his ultraviolence. Like Alex, gratuitous violence is Isaacs'  forte.

The often beautiful look of this film is a credit to Alwin Kuchler, director of photography. The absence of a coherent vision or storyline has to be charged to the director, Joe Wright. Interestingly, his previous features, Pride & Prejudice (2005), Atonement (2007) and the Soloist (2009) were all superior in these respects. Wright had no prior experience with the action genre, yet the fight scenes and chase scenes are the best part of Hanna. Go figure!

In current release.

The Love Parade (1929): Zank 'Eavens For Chevalier

Not sure how this old chestnut got on my list, but I’m sure glad it did. The Love Parade was one of the earliest “Talkies”, as sound movies were first called, and was, I’m told, the first true movie musical EVER! Sure, Jolson sang in The Jazz Singer (1927), but that was his gig – he sang on stage. He didn’t sing in the rain, sing to his lover, or just sing for the pure joy of it. In The Love Parade, Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald  Lupino Lane and even Chevalier’s dog burst into song all over the place. While the style of music is certainly not au courant, it was then, and it is still interesting and enjoyable.

The Love Parade is also a comedy, and at times it is laugh-out-loud funny. This is not really surprising, as it was directed by a master of early screen comedy, the great Ernst Lubitsch. In this country, Lubitsch is known for such classics as Trouble in Paradise (1932), Design for Living (1933), Ninotchka (1939) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942). In 1929 Lubitsch was already a noted director of silent films, but The Love Parade was his first talkie.  With wonderful actors, a good script and a pastiche of comic styles , it was (deservedly) a big success. The humor is a mix of physical comedy – some really hilarious slapstick moments – and verbal wit. It's still funny, more than eighty years later.

The story centers on Count Alfred Renard (Chevalier) an officer in the army of a mythical European kingdom of Sylvania. Chevalier/Alfred starts the film in Paris (naturally) as an attaché of the Sylvanian Embassy. He is a happy philanderer, high on life, carousing all night, sleeping with beautiful women, etc. His one faux pas was hooking up with the wife of his boss, the ambassador – and for this he is sacked and sent back to Sylvania. Before he leaves, he has time for a lovely, smile-inducing farewell song to the beloved ladies of Paris. Lubitsch lets us know that the ladies will miss him too. Alfred’s similarly ribald servant, Jacques (Lane) joins in this reverie, and the serving class wenches reply in kind. Even Alfred’s pooch gets in a verse, reciprocated by the neighborhood bitches. A great musical number.

Let me say right here that until I saw The Love Parade, I could never understand the Maurice Chevalier thing. To me, he was always this kind of passé old French guy, famous for being famous, creepily singing Thank Heavens For Little Girls at age 70 to 26 year old Leslie Caron in Gigi (1958). Now I get it. Back in the day, he was a charming ladies man, cute even. He was funny, with just the right amount of self-mockery. He knew his French accent was silly, yet romantic to the American ear and played on that. In this picture, at least, you can’t help liking him. I’m not alone in this opinion: the spouse liked him, too.

The kingdom of Sylvania is kingless. Queen Louise (MacDonald) is in charge (sort of – there’s also this passel of old stuffed- shirt courtiers following her around “advising” her about running the country.) But the important thing is that she is young and hot – and lonely. Seems that her staff can’t seem to find her a suitable mate. And she wants to mate. This being a pre-code film, her yearnings are made quite evident. Along comes Alfred, supposedly to be sanctioned for his roguish behavior. He’s cute. He’s interested. We know where this is heading … directly to the bedroom; but only after some witty repartee and another lovely song about the birds and the bees or whatever.

Oh, and there’s this thing about getting married before you have sex, so that gets taken care of post-haste.
This sets up a problem, though. Louise is a Queen, with power, duties, respect; Alfred is an attractive goofball, merely a consort, with nothing to do, no one to command, and now he’s not even allowed to go catting around. He's frustrated. He pouts. How long can the young couple be happy with this kind of dynamic going on?

Meanwhile, Jacques hasn’t been idle. Following in the master’s footsteps, he quickly connects with Lulu (!) (Lillian Roth) a servant girl in the palace. Lulu is attractive. She is also bigger and stronger than Jacques, and a no-nonsense kind of a gal. Together they supply some great slapstick schtick, and a musical number or two. I don’t recall having seen either Lane or Roth before, but each is a blast to watch. Actually, I just lied – turns out Roth played Arabella Rittenhouse, Margaret Dumont’s daughter, in Animal Crackers, but that was less a comedic than a romantic role. Here, she is a wonderful comedienne, and more memorable. Lane was a veteran of scores of silent comedies as well as the vaudeville stage, and just brilliant and physical comedy. His slapstick scenes in The Love Parade are a reason in themselves to see the movie.

The rest of the acting ensemble is also strong. Of special note is the character actor Russ Powell, who has a very small, but hilarious role as the Afghan ambassador. He speaks a made-up Afghan language that totally cracked us up – worth the price of admission.

I must admit that the last twenty minutes or so of this picture is a bit of a let-down. The comedy fades a bit, as the writers and Lubitsch struggle to resolve the gender power dynamics between the queen and her consort. And the solution, while not surprising for 1929 perhaps, is what we would now call politically incorrect. Indeed, my companion left before the end, because she didn’t care to watch this play out. Not a bad choice, actually.

I highly recommend The Love Parade. A bit of cinematic history, it’s silly, airy, fluffy and fun most of the way. And, if you decide to quit a few minutes early, you won’t miss much.

Available on DVD (Criterion Collection), including Netflix

Source Code (2011): Action in Purgatory

Source Code is an action-thriller about a man on a speeding commuter train trying to find an urban terrorist before the terrorist blows up the train and worse. It is also a biomedical sci-fi movie pitting a startling scientific breakthrough against our basic notions of ethics and compassion, life and death. The thriller wins.

Source Code stars Jake Gyllenhaal, and this is his movie - perhaps his finest to date. We first see him waking up with a start, sitting in a train heading into Chicago. Shocked and disoriented, he doesn’t know how he got there. All around him are commuters. In his sport jacket and slacks, he looks like them, but he's not one of them. Facing him is a pretty young woman (Michelle Monaghan). She seems to know him, and is chatting at him, maybe even flirting. She calls him Sean, but his name is Colter Stevens. Colter‘s eyes show fear, maybe even panic. Colter’s last memory is of his Army helicopter in Afghanistan, but where’s his crew? What’s going on here? He doesn’t get a chance to find out. As another train passes by, a bomb goes off, flames envelope the scene and …

Colter is astonished to find himself alone in a dusty, apparently wrecked capsule of some kind, in his military gear, strapped into a seat. From a small monochrome video screen, a woman is talking to him, trying to get his attention. This is Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), who may be his commanding officer. She asks him about his mission, reminds him that his job is to find the bomb and the bomber on the train and that he only has eight minutes. Before he can get answers to any of his questions, BAM, he is back on the train with the same commuters, and the young woman is again chatting with him. In fact it is the same conversation. The same events are repeating themselves. This time, though, he remembers that the train and everyone on it is going to blow up in eight minutes, unless he acts. He’s got a job to do.

Colter’s situation is a bit like Bill Murray’s in Groundhog Day, but with a twist: Murray relived the same day over and over and had seemingly an infinite number of iterations to get it right (although he doesn't know what "it" is); Gyllenhal is racing against a real-time clock. If Colter can’t find the terrorist soon, he’s going to strike again, and not just blow up a train, but destroy the entire city. And Colter only gets an eight minute window to work in.

Gylenhaal is finally coming into his own. Always an interesting actor, he has matured into something special. He is no longer boyish, although a sense of innocence remains. In fact, he comes across as the complete man, with a cut physique and an intensity to match, alternately sensitive and strong, impulsive and thoughtful, likeable and potentially dangerous. With his soulful, intelligent, questioning eyes, he is always watchable, a presence on the screen.

Sophomore director Duncan Jones keeps the story and the action moving along, while experienced cinematographer Don Burgess and the art and design team make it work. The film opens with a collage effect, alternating swooping views of the train speeding across middle America toward Chicago with lovely aerial shots of the city’s skyline. Eventually we swoop into the train, where the action starts. The scenes on the doomed train are great. This could be claustrophobic, but it’s interesting instead, with cameras sometimes looking down on the action, sometimes up to the second deck, following Colter into cramped spaces in search of the bomb and then of his quarry. Colter has few clues to work with and everyone on the train is a suspect, which leads to some amusing and some horrific confrontations between Gyllenhall and some fellow passengers.

The capsule scenes are appropriately close and dark; and it is there, through Colter’s developing relationship with Goodwin, that we gradually come to understand what is really going on, where we come to truly identify with Colter and his purgatory experience, and where, through Farmiga’s character, we are confronted with the ethical/spiritual issues ultimately posed by the Source Code project. Jeffrey Wright gives a convincing portrait of the egotistical, genius/mad scientist responsible for all this.

The sci-fi explanation may not be wholly convincing, when all is said and done, but it’s a good enough premise. Gyllenhaal and company do the rest. This may not be high art, but it is solid entertainment.

In current release.

Jane Eyre (2011): The Book Is Better

The advantage of making a movie from a classic novel is you have a built in audience. The problem is that it’s hard to meet that audience’s expectations.

Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre was published in 1847. It depicts the struggle of an intelligent young girl/woman to maintain her independent spirit in a male dominated world, overcoming poverty and childhood cruelty, as well as class and gender restrictions. It is also a gothic-style tale of repressed romantic and sexual passion, and a man with a “terrible secret”. Bronte’s novel is a beautifully rendered story, which may explain why it has remained popular for 160 years, and may also explain why this book has been brought to the screen so many times. According to IMDB, twelve movies have been made based on this book, five in the silent era alone; and ten TV movies or miniseries as well.

So how does the new version hold up? Let me first say that I have read the novel but once, 10 or 15 years ago, and quite liked it. In this I surprised myself, as I am not a huge fan of gothic literature generally. And I have only seen one other film adaptation, the 1943 Orson Welles/Joan Fontaine picture (for comparison, after viewing the current release).

In my view, a movie must succeed or fail on its own merits. It is a popular and amusing sport to compare movies to the novels from which they are adapted or derived, and, while I sometimes indulge in this game, it is folly. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but many qualities of a good novel simply cannot be transferred to film: the prose style is one example, the inner thoughts and musings of the characters may be another. With a novel like Jane Eyre, this recognition is critical, since Jane narrates her own story and the reader is privy to her thoughts, musings, and feelings about the events of her life in a way that cannot be directly captured on camera. Yet the physical and emotional atmosphere, the landscape, the characters’ physical appearance and their connection with one another may be conveyed in a film in a way impossible to render on the page.

This preamble is my preemptive defense against those admirers of the novel who may be predisposed to love this movie. I did not. The main problem is that Mia Wasikowska as Jane comes across largely as an empty vessel, reacting to most of the events of her life with a blank visage. There are a few exceptions where manufactured tears are in evidence. But mostly, she presents us with a passive expression – to which we are invited to superimpose whatever we want her to be thinking or feeling (or what the musical score encourages us to feel on her behalf). Whether this effect is a directorial choice by Fukunaga or a failing on the part of Wasikowska, I cannot say; probably both are to blame. Whatever the reason, it is maddening to watch, particularly in the several scenes in which Jane is together with Mr. Rochester, the brooding, imperious, master of Thornfield Hall, Jane’s employer, and the man she comes to love and who loves her. Jane is supposed to be proper, reserved, and cautious certainly, but she is also passionate inside, intelligent, and eventually, in love. Perhaps it is assumed that we viewers know the story already, so we can fill in these qualities for Jane, and the script does give her some dialogue which suggests what may be lurking within; but Wasikowski’s rendering is empty and flat. Consequently, there is no chemistry between her and Rochester. His desperation when Jane departs, and her compulsion to eventually return to him are inexplicable, in the sense that neither feels true or real. These things come across as plot devices we are just supposed to accept.

If you disagree, I suggest you check out Joan Fontaine’s performance as Jane in the 1943 picture. Like Wasikowska, she is plainly dressed, mild mannered, careful in her speech. But she is a flesh and blood character. Her eyes move. She actually reacts to the events as they occur, and she connects with Orson Welles’ Rochester from the first meeting. We know then that something is afoot, and as the relationship grows, so does Fontaine’s connection with Welles.

Jane and her relationship with Rochester are the heart of the story and of this film, and it is a shame that Jane comes across as so vacuous in the new film, because otherwise there is a lot to like here. Michael Fassbender's Rochester is believable and compelling. He is virile, emotional, masterly, brooding. While not exactly handsome, he is certainly manly and attractive. He does not chew up the screen like Welles, but he fills every scene he is in. With his strong jaw, and burning eyes, his Rochester is a force to recken with. His passion for Jane develops and grows, notwithstanding the absence of visual reciprocation; which makes Fassbender’s performance the more remarkable. He is featured in several upcoming films, and I suspect his star is rising.

Judi Dench inhabits her role as Mrs. Fairfax the housekeeper in a charming, believable way. She gossips, reassures, bustles about and gives needed life to her scenes with Jane, again without much in the way of reciprocation. Jamie Bell as Rivers does a nice job, showing compassion for Jane at her most woebegone, and credible incomprehension at her subsequent unwillingness to marry him and go off to convert the heathen.

The scenes from Jane’s childhood effectively portray the harshness of her life and the Dickensian conditions endured by the poor and powerless. Jane’s aunt, Mrs. Reed (Sally Hawkins), is cold, selfish and cruel - like a 19th century Mrs Dursley; and Mr. Brocklehurst , clergyman/proprietor of the horrific Lowood School, is a sadistic, self-righteous, highly hypocritical villain, and the school itself has a cold, dark prison-like atmosphere. The child Jane (Amelia Clarkson) is sympathetic, but like her older self, played as a largely quiescent character. Again, comparisons to the 1943 film are revealing: Peggy Ann Garner in the same role shows a lot of spunk, which helps us better understand the sturdy backbone and spirit of the adult Jane Eyre. (The earlier film has an added benefit: 10 year old Elizabeth Taylor plays the doomed Helen, Jane’s school friend).

Adriano Goldman, the cinematographer of the current film, shows us the beautiful but bleak and foreboding heath and moors around Thornfield. His interiors are dark and mysterious, sometimes so dark one fears that poor Jane will fall and injure herself. The photography emphasizes the strangeness and loneliness of the place, and, coupled with the strange bumps and moans in the night, add to the growing sense of mystery surrounding the place, leading to the revelation of Rochester’s secret.

But eventually, this is the story of Jane Eyre, and Jane just doesn’t cut it.

In theaters.
The 1943 Film with Welles and Fontaine is available on DVD and as a Netflix streaming download.

Some Films Just Don't Work: Unfaithfully Yours (1948), No Man of Her Own (1950), Adventureland (2008)

Regrettably, some films are only interesting as an exercise in figuring out what went wrong. Some don’t even deserve that much attention. Here are three duds I’ve watched (or tried to watch) recently: Unfaithfully Yours (1948), No Man of Her Own (1950) and Adventureland (2008), a disparate bunch to be sure, except in their dudness. If you like any of these pictures, let me know, tell me why. If you haven’t seen them, well – you’ve been warned.

Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

I expected to like this film. After all it was written and directed by Preston Sturges, the brilliant, comedic force behind The Lady Eve , Sullivan’s Travels, and several other funny, satirical films of the late 1930’s and 1940’s. Boy was I ever wrong.

Unfaithfully Yours is an American film about a British symphony conducter (Rex Harrison) who comes to suspect his much younger wife (Eve Arden) of having an affair. During the course of a New York concert, he vividly envisions various responses, ranging from murdering his wife and framing her lover, to graciously divorcing her along with a gift of money to go off and be happy, to killing himself.

Now this is supposed to be a comedy, but it’s just a mess. For one thing, Sturgess couldn’t decide whether he was going for clever, droll and witty in the Noel Coward style, or slapstick of the Charlie Chaplin/Buster Keaton style. Hard to mix the two, it seems. Compounding the problem is that Rex Harrison simply can’t seem to do slapstick; and he doesn’t even get the droll and witty piece down: he expostulates as if he was trying to be heard in the cheap seats in the back balcony, never realizing that he’s acting in a film rather than in a theater. Although the premise of imagining the murder of a two-timing wife could be played for laughs, it simply is not amusing to watch our protagonist (in his dream) gleefully, repeatedly slicing her throat with a razor! (I kid you not.) It's a shame that the core of this movie is so bad, because some of the supporting performers, especially Edgar Kennedy and Julius Tannen, are fun to watch

No Man of Her Own (1950)

This is another one, I thought I’d like. It stars Barbara Stanwyck, and I really like a lot of her movies, such as Baby Face (1933), The Lady Eve (1941), Ball of Fire (1941), and Double Indemnity (1944). It was directed by Mitchel Liesen, an experienced director at the time (although I don’t know that I’ve seen any of his other films). Yet, despite an interesting story idea, it is one of the flattest performances by an ensemble that I’ve ever seen.

Stanwyck plays Helen, a ‘fallen’ woman, unmarried but pregnant, with seven cents to her name, who starts the story wearily dragging herself and her forlorn little suitcase up the stairs of a New York apartment house to the door of her former lover, Steve Morley (Lyle Bettger), to beg for help – shelter, money, a little affection, whatever. Steve’s a cad, has already taken up with another girl, and refuses even to open the door, but he does slide an envelope under it with a one way ticket to San Francisco and five or ten bucks. So Helen gets on the train, where she is befriended by a young couple of newlyweds, Patrice and Hugh Harkness. Patrice is also pregnant and there’s a natural sympathy between she and Helen. Patrice and Hugh are on their way to Hugh’s hometown to meet his wealthy parents. But then there’s a horrible train wreck, Hugh and Patrice are killed, and Helen wakes up in the hospital, having given birth to a baby boy via emergency C-section. Helen is mistaken for Patrice, and soon is taken in by Hugh’s bereaved parents, who show nothing but kindness to their widowed “daughter-in-law” and their new grandson. But we know trouble is brewing because of the somber tone superimposed on all this (and because of an awkward framing device, which started the film at the end, then shows us what happened as an extended flashback.

Still, the story has promise right? Should Helen tell the Harkness family the truth and risk being turned out , relegating herself and newborn babe to a life of destitution in a cruel world? Can she maintain the act, pretending to be someone else? Can she resist the charms of Hugh’s handsome, kindly brother Bill (John Lund)? I didn't care, because the pace of the movie is irritatingly slow and the acting is remarkably wooden, almost catatonic, most remarkably (and surprisingly) in the case of Stanwyck as Helen. This affect is so pronounced, that I have to believe it was intentional, perhaps to remind us that the entire situation is being played back for us in Helen’s memory. If that is the case, it was a terrible decision. (In the new film version of Jane Eyre (2011), Mia Wasikowska gives a similarly uninflected performance, with similar results; see my notes on that film in my next post.)

There are also annoying, cloying voiceovers by Helen at key moments (“I can’t go through with this.But I must! I can’t!”). Voiceovers to convey an actor’s inner thoughts were apparently a cinematic vogue in the late 40’s (see Olivier’s Hamlet from 1948, as another dreadful example), but rarely if ever does this work – at least for the modern viewer.

I must confess that I could not sit through the entire movie and quit about half-way through. Maybe it gets better? I seriously doubt it.

Adventureland (2008)

I wanted to see Adventureland because I had heard it was pretty good and because it starred Jesse Eisenberg, a couple years before his leap to prominence in The Social Network (2010). Also it was written and directed by Greg Mottola, who had also directed Superbad (2007) and the recent Paul (2011), both of which I liked pretty well. (See my review of Paul)

This is a coming of age picture. Normally such films are about high school seniors just before or after graduation; this one is about college graduates getting ready for grad school or life itself. There are scads of bad or mediocre films in this genre, but there are also a remarkable number of decent or even excellent ones, such as The Last Picture Show (1971), American Graffiti (1973), Breaking Away (1979), Diner (1982), Say Anything (1989), Dazed and Confused (1993), the aforementioned Superbad (2007), etc. A common themes in all these films is that the young person has to find his/her own way; their parents are hopelessly out of touch at best, malevolent tyrants at worst or effectively non-existent.  A related theme is that romantic love may provide the necessary link to self understanding. Some are comedies, some are dramas; Adventureland tries to be both: a dramedy of sorts.

Eisenberg plays James, a somewhat subdued, introverted young man whose plans to travel in Europe with friends over the summer between college graduation and the start of grad school are dashed when his parents reveal that they can’t afford to chip in as promised. We deduce his disappointment from the situation, since Eisenberg plays his character in such a low key manner that he is unable to reveal much of what James is actually thinking. He takes a job at the seedy, local amusement park called Adventureland, running sideshow games, like the ring-toss. It’s dull and demeaning work, but there are other young people there to get to know, including the attractive (in a slightly goth way) Kristen Stewart, as Em. She is also kind of subdued and introverted. They start to get friendly, although Em is dating (or at least having sex with) another guy.

That’s about as far as I got in this film. It was so slow, so predictable, so enervating that I just couldn’t go on. Don’t get me wrong: it is perfectly acceptable to make a movie about a depressed person, or an introvert going through tough times. One classic example is De Sica’s Umberto D (1953), which is about a lonely old man, being turned out of his rooming house for lack of funds, with no prospects, silently contemplating suicide, but needing to find a home for his faithful pooch first. A dreary, depressing situation, but a very watchable, engrossing film. While one shouldn’t expect a film such as Adventureland to aspire to the level of the best De Sica works, one does need to be engaged by the narrative and/or the character. Didn’t happen here.

If you are still interested, all these films are available on DVD. Adventureland is also available on Blu-Ray. Unfaithfully Yours and No Man of Her Own are also available as streaming downloads from Netflix.

The Adjustment Bureau (2011): Free Will Hunting

Ever had someone suggest to you that the twists and turns of their life, such as stumbling into their career or suffering a serious injury or winning the lottery, were “meant to be”? Or perhaps you feel that way yourself, that events in your life were fated to happen, that like Luke Skywalker, you have a destiny? If you are a believer, of course, you may feel that God is in charge, that whatever happens is God’s will. Well, that’s the essential premise of The Adjustment Bureau. Our lives are guided by a divine Plan, and just in case we are tempted to deviate from that well laid Plan, minions of the higher authority, called The Chairman in this flick, will intercede and make whatever “adjustments” are necessary to put your life back on its intended course. Nothing personal, it’s just business.

But what about free will? That’s not just a delusion, is it? What if, for once in your life, you meet your one true love, and you know you just have to be together. Even if that’s not in the Plan, we can change that, right? David Norris (Matt Damon), the protagonist of this tale, based on a Phillip K. Dick story (naturally), certainly thinks so. Norris is a young, handsome, charismatic, up-and-coming politician from Brooklyn destined, it seems, for great things. As the film opens, he is about to lose his bid for New York’s U.S . Senate seat, but this may just be a character building setback. He’s tough, he can fight back.

Then he accidentally meets the quirkily charming and attractive Elise (Emily Blunt), and suddenly none of that matters. Everything is different. There’s an instant connection. He feels it. She feels it. We feel it. Indeed, the chemistry between these two is magical, something rarer in film than in life, I think. Many movies strive to recreate such moments for us, but not many succeed. I don’t know whether to credit the director, George Nolfi, or Damon and Blunt (probably all three), but they deserve our thanks. The relationship between David and Elise is at the core of the Adjustment Bureau, and it is what saves this from being just another ok thriller.

Because these two are not meant to be together – it’s not part of the Plan at all. And the agents of the Bureau do everything in their considerable powers to keep them apart. These agents are drab but persistent men in black, all of whom wear hats for some reason. At one point they decide to break protocol and explain the facts of life to David (and us), warning him that pursuing this relationship in opposition to the Chairman’s plan will destroy his entire career, and Elise’s too, and besides it just can’t be done. Ultimately, David rebels anyway - he has to be with this woman come what may. What follows starts out as a cat and mouse game between the hats and Matt, and ends up in a wild, suspenseful chase through New York, aided by some clever sci-fi gimmickry
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The photography evokes a gritty, rainy, iconic, believable New York City: docks, skyscrapers, Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge, Liberty Island - courtesy of veteran cinematographer John Toll (Gone Baby Gone, Braveheart, The Last Emperor, It’s Complicated, etc). Nolfi moves the story along at just the right pace, although this is his first stint in the director’s chair. He must have a nice rapport with Damon, having previously worked with him as writer of Ocean’s Twelve and The Bourne Ultimatum. Unfortunately, his screenplay is the weakness of this film. Ultimately the story, while posing interesting questions, is silly and full of holes.

But the love story and the attractive lead players hold it together and make this an entertaining and interesting, if not great, film.

Available streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, and elsewhere.

The Last Station (2009): One of Mirren's Best

I had the notion that The Last Station was a good movie, but probably a downer, about the last days and eventual death of Leo Tolstoy; and so I resisted seeing it when it was in wide release, as well as for several months this year, while the Blu-ray disk sat next to my TV, patiently, unassumingly waiting, waiting. Well, I was wrong. The Last Station is an engrossing drama, well written, directed and photographed, with first rate actors, including Christopher Plummer, James McAvoy and Paul Giamotti, and a brilliant performance by Helen Mirren. And I didn’t find it at all depressing.

The story is taken from real life, and, as far as I can tell, pretty accurately depicts the passionate love and irreconcilable conflicts between Leo and Sofya Tolstoy in the master writer’s final days. It’s an interesting story, raising some interesting issues, but the reason to see this film can be described in two words: Helen Mirren.

Mirren is a prolific actress, and I’ve seen her in a bunch of excellent performances, from her detective series, Prime Suspect, to a string of interesting films like Last Orders and Gosford Park (both 2001), culminating in The Queen (2006) for which she won an Academy Award as best actress. Throughout, one of her great qualities has been the ability to express a wide range of emotion – grief, resolve, affront, sympathy, whatever - through a steely veneer of British reserve. As Sofya Tolstoy, trying to save her marriage and contend with a cabal hostile to her most basic desires, Mirren is able to muster such noble reserve through great force of will, but only sometimes. Other times, her fears and passions overwhelm all constraints and burst force angrily and even hysterically. It is an incredible, heartrending, appropriately melodramatic performance. (I saw Mirren like this only once before: in her electrifying performance as Alice in the Broadway production of Strindberg’s Dance of Death opposite Ian McKellen in 2001, but that was live theater.)

It is 1910, and 82 year old Leo Tolstoy (Plummer), the world’s greatest living writer, is living on his country estate. In his later years, he has written extensively about the need for moral and economic reform, pacifism, non-violence and Christian love. A cadre of devotees and sycophants surround him, calling themselves Tolstoyans. The Tolstoyans, lead by Vladimir Chertkov (Giamotti), believe they are the vanguard of a utopian movement, and want Tolstoy, their prophet, to bequeath all future royalties from his writings to “the people” (i.e. the Tolstoyans). Tolstoy is sympathetic, much to the chagrin of his wife of 48 years, Sofya (Mirren), who has born him thirteen children, edited and transcribed his novels, stuck with him through thick and thin, and who is dependent on her husband’s income for her and the family’s sustenance. She knows her husband as a man, not a messiah: Sofya is the anti-Tolstoyan. Tolstoy is torn between love for his wife and love of his philosophy and beliefs, and he has not long to live. The struggle has reached its denoument. Who will prevail?

The story is told through the eyes of Valentin (McAvoy), hired by Chertkov to be private secretary to the great man, and a spy for the movement. Valentin is a naïf and a devotee of the Tolstoyan philosophy, but he sees the tragedy befalling this family. He is also the vehicle for a digressive love story with the earthy and lovely Masha (Kerry Condon). Happily, this merely serves to bolster Valentin’s understanding and empathy, without interfering with the arc of the main story. McAvoy, as usual, is appealing, and allows us to identify with Valentin’s perspective as the story unfolds.

Giamotti’s screen roles seem to alternate between somewhat nebbishy, Everyman characters, and sleazy, manipulative types. In his Chertkov, we see a convincing depiction of the latter. Thus, in the competition between his Tolstoyans and Sofya Tolstoy, our sympathies naturally trend in her direction.

Tolstoy himself is realistically and movingly portrayed by Plummer, as a man possessed of both hubris and humility, caught between two powerful, compelling desires, and cognizant of his mortality, resentful of the need to make an impossible choice at a time of life when all he wants is peace. Plummer earned an academy award nomination for this supporting role.

Ultimately, this is Helen Mirren’s movie. If you are a fan of great acting or of this actress, or both, you should see it.

Available on Blu-ray, DVD and Netflix streaming.