Thursday, September 26, 2013

Prisoners

100th Posting for Film Reviews from Two Guys in the Dark!
      
Here's something much nicer to look at
than what goes on in Prisoners
Since our humble beginnings (no false modesty; we sort of slipped in under the cover of night) on December 12, 2011 (see Two Guys home page) we—OK, I (still sorry that my someday-to-be-writing-partner Pat Craig hasn’t been able to add anything yet, but hope still springs eternal) have arrived at the mark of 100 postings, which includes reviews (counting this one) of 190 films and a few extras such as predictions/winners of the Oscars for 2011 and 2012 films and an ongoing tally of the star levels and posted dates of the films under review.  It has rarely been easy finding the time to compose and post all of this stuff, so I ask ongoing forgiveness for content mistakes and typos that slipped through (my fault), wacky layout problems that just proved to be unfixable (Google Blogspot’s fault), and additional layout inconsistencies that crop up among the various Web browsers (I compose on Safari and find Chrome to mirror it, with slight variations on Firefox; beyond that I can only hope that what you see is somewhat similar to what I intended—the fault there seems to lie with digital technology itself, but I don’t want to complain too much because I’m already under the constant scrutiny of Google and the NSA for various impertinent remarks over the years so I can't complain too much or I'll be back to a #2 pencil, scrap paper, and thousands of stamps).  However, despite any presentational problems from whatever source of obstacle arrangement, I offer heartfelt thanks to the tens of thousands of you (no exaggeration), as tracked by Google (don’t worry; they don’t send me your addresses, Internet or otherwise), from every continent (except Antarctica; I just haven’t been able to woo the penguin audience yet) who have chosen to read these ramblings on anywhere from a superficial to deep-thought basis, which makes the endeavor well worthwhile for me even though the actual replies have been scant and irregular—except from 2 of our most faithful Members:  new friend/frequent contributor, rj (Richard Parker) from Texas, whom I’m willing to consider “the third guy” (or more likely, the actual “second guy” until Pat ever has time to write movie reviews after doing his own SF Bay Area theatre reviews on a regular basis—you can search him within the www.insidebayarea.com\ site, which I encourage you to do) because rj’s contributed so much of useful insight in his various replies and old friend/colleague Roger Smitter from Illinois who keeps up with me privately on a weekly basis at my direct email of kenburke409@gmail.com, which any of you are welcome to do also.

The other essential thanks regarding the ongoing existence of Film Reviews from Two Guys in the Dark go to older-friend-by-the-day (that’s probably not coming out right, but I mean it as a compliment, not as an ageist comment) film critic Barry Caine who encouraged me (and Pat) to begin this venture (and who would probably even be one of our Members—for whatever value that may hold, which I haven’t yet understood, but I do thank all of you who have declared yourselves as such—if I’d ever write something he’d consider short enough to read; sorry I never learned that skill from you—or Pat) and, of course, my marvelous wife, Nina Kindblad—pictured above soaring high over Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, on our recent retirement vacation to Hawaii—who’s supported and encouraged me in all things since we met over 26 years ago, serves as a thought-checking sounding board for my opinions before they go into print and a sharp-eyed proofreader afterward, and gives me additional reasons every day to embrace life (and her), thankful that I could ever be so lucky to have someone so wonderful to share it all with.  I love you, Sweetheart, and always will—even when you drag me off to ballroom dancing at the Hayward Senior Center!

So, fill up your champagne glasses, join us in celebrating one of our early triumphs (just getting past the first year of publication was the first one), and move on to this week’s review, fortunately focusing on one of the best films of 2013 (one that I can proudly say I find myself in exact agreement about with the folks at Rotten Tomatoes, given their 80 average and my 4 of 5 stars [80%], although the reviews at Metacritic come in a bit lower at 73—more details on both in the links cited far below; in general I’ve found that my reviews parallel either one or both of those critics’ amalgamations about 62% of the time [117 of my 190], although my rating was higher on 42 of my other 73 posted in this blog, with 26 coming in lower and 5 in a middle position relative to the positions of these critical collectives—so it’s useful for me to know that my opinions mirror the larger world of reviews about 2/3 of the time but that I’m also a bit independent and somewhat more generous than most, at least in terms of what I see because with only attending about 2 new ones weekly I have the luxury of being steered away from most of the dreck by my more well-known colleagues, therefore enjoying the unpaid luxury of seeing only what I want which usually turns out to be among the better offerings available, such as with Prisoners).
       
          War, Children, It’s Just a Shot Away
        (and it's nothing to sing about this time)

                        Review by Ken Burke              Prisoners
       
A gripping drama about the dual horrors of abducted children (along with the twisted motivations of the abductors) and the tortured parents desperate to get them back.

[Take care, curious readers, for plot spoilers gallop rampantly throughout the Two Guys’ brilliantly insightful reviews.  This is how we write, so as to explore what must be said as art transcends commerce (although if anyone wants to pay us for doing this ...); therefore, be warned, beware, and read on when ready to be transported to—well, wherever we end up.

We also encourage you to check your tastes against ours with the summary of Two Guys reviews, which we update with each new posting.  But please be aware that the links we recommend in our reviews may have been removed or modified without our knowledge.  Other overall notations for this blog may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage.  Now, onward to illumination; you may want to protect your eyes from the brilliance.]

Even more than usual, I heed you to believe the plot spoilers warning noted just above (and in general at our Home Page, noted at the start of this posing) regarding this review of Prisoners, because if you haven’t seen it yet I’m going to miserably ruin it for you with the following comments, but there’s no reasonable way for me to write about this highly-effective emotional powerhouse without getting into the specifics, so proceed at your own risk.  Better yet, if you have any thought of seeing this film (and obviously, many already have as it opened with almost $21 million last weekend in well over 3,000 theaters so it’s close to making back half of its budget already—which indicates that its stars were willing to work cheap, given how many of them there are at very high-caliber talent and box-office levels), do so soon and then come back here to spend some time ruminating on what transpired in French-Canadian Denis Villeneuve’s first English-language film and first attempt at conquering mainstream cinema (after a fairly short career as a director, with previous highest praise most likely for his 2010’s Incendies, which deals with twins travelling to the Middle East to learn more about their family’s mysterious past, because it received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film).  Through a quirk of scheduling over the past week (which included a successful medical procedure for Nina’s aching arm, rug-cleaning and other winning battles against fleas on my cats, Annie and Inky [obviously, the shoutouts are flying fast and furiously this week], and attendance at 2 of the last regular-season games of my beloved Oakland Athletics [now repeating as American League Western Division champs, with playoffs toward the World Series just over a week away]) I ended up seeing Prisoners twice, which was useful in clarifying certain plot points which weren’t that clear the first time around for me (so, maybe my spoiler-filled explorations will be useful even for those of you who have seen it already, because if you’re like me there was just too much emotional intensity constantly erupting on-screen to be able to follow every briefly muttered line of dialogue, although the end result of that was still a marvelously-satisfying time in the dark—even darker than you'd expect because Prisoners' images are broodingly low key much of the time, with great impact ).

The multiple-focus of this film is on a collection of broken people, in their various ways all variations on being dysfunctional, disillusioned, and/or desperate.   Some of the major characters begin this narrative unharmed, but by the end of it they’re all in differing stages of the worse for wear with no clear understanding of whether any justice was served, nor ever could be.  The essential crisis, as well presented in the unsettling-but-not-overly-expository-trailer, is that the young children of Keller (Hugh Jackman) and Grace Dover (Maria Bello—although the plot calls for her to become alternately catatonic and near-hysterical from the horrible trauma she suffers, so we don’t see as much of her), along with their close friends and neighbors, Nancy (Viola Davis) and Franklin Birch (Terrence Howard), disappear after mid-afternoon Thanksgiving dinner on a cold, rainy day in suburban Conyers, PA.  It’s quickly clear that the girls, Anna Dover (Erin Gerasimovich) and Joy Birch (Kyla Drew Simmons), are nowhere to be found, that they likely were taken by someone in a ragged old RV parked in front of an empty, for-sale house in their neighborhood, and that the rapid finding of the RV with its odd, unresponsive driver, Alex Jones (Paul Dano), isn’t going to lead to any quick solution to this horrifying mystery (made all the more disturbing through the constant atmosphere of grey skies, rain, snow; ominous music and drumbeats on the soundtrack; POV shots from inside the RV when the little girls are first playing on its rear ladder and other shots that seem to stare at the parents’ houses as if they’re being watched (which, as it turns out, they are, by another suspicious guy that we'll meet later).  All of this might seem a bit overdone in its obviousness, except that the script and performances are all so well-crafted that the exaggerated becomes the sublime within the confining context of Prisoners.

In addition to Jackman’s Keller who dominates the action with his insistent determination to find the girls—whom he frantically wants to still be alive despite the unanswered, angry (secretly fearful) questions he hurls at everyone connected to the kidnapping—and Dano’s Alex, who’s revealed to have the mental capacity of a 10-year-old (and a reclusive, scared one at that, offering nothing to allay any suspicions about his involvement in the assumed abduction), the other main presence in this nerve-wracking drama is the cop trying to solve the case, Police Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal—not to be confused with the Thunder God’s evil brother of the same name [Loki that is, not Gyllenhaal], played by Tom Hiddleston; you’ll see plenty of Tom when Alan Taylor’s Thor: The Dark World comes roaring at you in early November).  Just as we get a bit of a tense vibe from Keller even before the family walks over to the Birch’s house for that holiday dinner—and an eerie feeling about him when he says the “Our Father” prayer before guiding his teenage son, Ralph (Dylan Minnette), in shooting a deer as the entrĂ©e for that dinner in the disturbingly-quiet opening shot (calling to mind Fredo Corleone [John Cazale] saying a “Hail Mary” while fishing in The Godfather: Part II [Francis Ford Coppola, 1974] just before his brother-ordered assassination)—and we’re never given any reason to feel comfortable about what Alex’s understandings, motives, or actions may/might be, Det. Loki is not a character intended to put you at ease.  He’s extremely successful at his job, having solved all of his cases up to this one, but we can tell immediately that there’s something tightly-wound about him (illustrated by his habit of wearing his shirt buttoned to the very top but never wearing a tie, as if he’s seen too many movies about Chicano gangs), as well as sad (as shown by his eating alone on that same Thanksgiving night in a Chinese restaurant where even Chinese diners have not ventured out into that inhospitable weather).  The tensions of this kidnapping situation grow exponentially over the several days that it drags on, making Loki all the more ready to snap (if nothing else, because he’s constantly being pushed in that direction by short-fused Keller, whose 9 ½ month sobriety and self-help sinning-avoidance recording/radio station in his carpentry-business truck are being pushed to the limit by his constant worry about Anna and Joy, although you get the sense that his fragile investment in his religion is at question anyway given his here-and-now survivalist orientation, leading to his twin mantras of “Be ready” and “Pray for the best, prepare for the worst”).  My learning-disabilities-specialist wife detects some subtle signs of Tourette Syndrome in Loki’s twitching and sharp responses (early on with Dover, he keeps trying to get the distraught father to back off with repetitions of “I hear what you’re saying," punctuated with “Just let me do my job”), so he’s likely addressing some personal problems even when not caught up in an excruciating, high-profile crime, but with the pressures now on him from Dover on the one hand and his gruff, uncooperative Captain on the other, it’s no wonder that he later loses control at a very inopportune moment, further complicating an already-tangled, opaque situation.

In fact, Loki’s exchanges with Keller Dover (a name as complicated as the man) on several occasions show both actors at their prime, as Jackman explodes in utter frustration at the lack of substantial progress in finding the girls, further provoking Gyllenhaal to the point of suspecting that something further is amiss with Dover when Alex disappears a couple of days later, after being released by the police due to lack of evidence to charge him with anything nor hold him for further investigation.  Despite Dover’s protestations that it’s a complete waste of precious resources to accuse him of anything when the real crime concerns the missing girls, Loki’s concerns are right on target because of 3 things:  Upon Alex’s release Keller rushed to the police station to confront him, whereupon Alex whispered something that Keller had reason to think was proof of the abduction (although later denials by Alex and no corroboration from anyone else leave the police little reason to continue to pursue this disturbed/disturbing young man but one who no longer seems viable as a suspect); when stalking Alex later that night Keller hears him singing a child’s parody of “Jingle Bells” that the girls were also singing on that fateful Thanksgiving afternoon; and—as a result of these first 2 reasons, Keller has, in fact, kidnapped Alex, holding him prisoner in the dilapidated apartment building once owned by Keller’s father (whose own unexplored story, except for the ending where as a prison guard he committed suicide, adds to both his son’s troubled persona and our sense of the constant emotional turmoil that seems to haunt this Northeastern neighborhood).  Dover is convinced that at the very least Alex knows where the girls are hidden, so he takes it upon himself to expand Prisoner’s references to captives to include this young man as well (thereby enlarging the initial concept of the film’s title, in a manner similar to how De Sica’s 1948 Italian Neorealism classic, Ladri di biciclette, should have been translated into English as Bicycle Thieves to refer to the distraught protagonist, Antonio Ricci [Lamberto Maggiorani], who ultimately decides to resolve his tragic situation through stealing, as well as to the first thief [Vittorio Antonucci], rather than the long-standing translation of The Bicycle Thief, which implies absolution of Antonio’s attempted crime rather than acknowledging that the circumstances of the narrative pushed both “hero” and “villain” into regrettable actions, although in Prisoners the crimes are much worse on all sides with our ultimate villain’s rationale far more deluded and Keller’s response much more vicious than the starvation-motivated situations in Bicycle Thieves).  What follows is a violent beat down of Alex by Keller, then his imprisonment in a confined shower stall that allows additional torture with scalding and freezing water in an attempt to break him, to push him to the fearful edge of sanity so that he’ll divulge the girls’ location, even after Keller has reason to believe that they’ve been killed by someone else (based on the reasonable assumption that Alex is too mentally-stunted to have planned the crime and its cover-up, implying that there was an accomplice, which evolving events of the film seem to justify).

The events to which I refer involve (you know, if you’ve seen it already; a surprise if you haven’t and decided to brave this review anyway) the emergence of Bob Taylor (David Dastmalchian), who first appears at a neighborhood candlelight vigil for Joy and Anna, only to run away and escape from Det. Loki after giving off some suspicious vibes.  Then he pops up again (but beknownst only to the audience because none of the other characters see him) entering the darkened houses of the Dover’s and the Birch’s for some unknown reason (where none of the adults are available to encounter him because Franklin’s distraught-but-willing reluctance to aid Keller in the torture of Alex has led to admitting the counter-crime to Nancy so they’re both at the “prison” with Keller and his captive, while Grace is semi-unconscious from prescription meds in an attempt to control her anguish).  When Loki gets a tip from a clerk at a discount store where Bob’s been buying children’s clothes (after a police sketch of him hits the newscasts in connection with the girls’ disappearance), Bob is soon captured in his home where all evidence points to him being the actual kidnapper/killer, especially some locked storage boxes of bloody children’s clothes, a few of which are identified by Keller and the Birch’s as belonging to their daughters.  This doesn’t explain other weird aspects of Bob’s dwelling, though, where the walls are covered with scrawls of never-ending mazes, some of the other storage boxes are filled with live snakes, and a rotting pig’s head occupies the kitchen sink.  Before we can get closure on any of that, however, all hell breaks loose as Loki boils over after several hours of Bob scrawling a maze which is supposed to be a map to the girls’ location, leading to an altercation in the interview room where Bob grabs a gun and kills himself, much to Loki's horrified shock.  Soon after, some answers emerge about Bob, as the forensics team determines that the blood on the children’s clothes came from the pig, leading Loki on a hunch that shows Bob simply stole clothes from the Dover and Birch homes so that he could “participate” in the kidnapping/murder controversy, for reasons that seem to lead again to dead ends until Keller finally torments Alex enough to get him to mumble something about finding the girls in the maze, which leads him back to Alex’s aunt’s home to see what explanation he can find for that obscure clue, although none is forthcoming.  Suddenly, all of the dead ends screech to a halt as Joy is found and hospitalized, barely able to say anything except enough to send Keller racing back to Aunt Holly (a marvelous Melissa Leo, an early contender for another Best Supporting Actress Oscar to go with the one she won for The Fighter [David O. Russell, 2010]) where she turns out to be the surprise perp, forces Keller to drink some of the sedation brew that she kept the girls quiet with, then dumps him in a hole in her back yard under what appears to be a broken-down car, while admitting that she’s soon going to kill his daughter.

Loki’s suspicion that Dover has Alex trapped in the old apartment complex finally pays off when he finds the battered-within-an-inch-of-his-life-young-man, resulting in the Captain’s order for Loki to go notify the aunt which he does just in time to catch her trying to kill Anna with an injection.  This leads to more bloodshed as simultaneous shots result in Holly’s death and Loki’s head wound, followed by his frantic rush to get Anna to a hospital, complicated by the ever-present rain, his blurred vision and wavering consciousness, and the director’s masterful handling of the scene through exquisite cinematography (by the marvelously-talented Roger Deakins, whose extensive, atmospheric-imagery-triumphs include Sid and Nancy [Alex Cox, 1986], Barton Fink [Joel and Ethan Coen, 1991], Fargo [Coen brothers, 1996], House of Sand and Fog [Vadim Perelman, 2003], Revolutionary Road [Sam Mendes, 2008], Skyfall [Mendes, 2012]) and jolting editing (by Joel Cox, who’s worked with Clint Eastwood—among others—on Pale Rider [1985], Unforgiven [1992], Mystic River [2003], Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima [2006], along with Gary Roach, a collaborator with Cox on some of these Eastwood films and others such as Changeling [2008], Gran Torino [2008], and J. Edgar [2011]).  After all of the rampaging chaos, we finally settle into a quiet ending where a patched-up Loki returns to the scene of the crime but is just about to leave for the night when he hears a faint whistle, which we know to be coming from a weakened and wounded Keller Dover, still in the hidden hole, using what his daughter went back to her house to find that fateful day before she spent some time in this hole.  As the screens cuts to black, we can tell Loki is aware of the sound and likely will discover Keller, but where any of these surviving damaged souls will journey for the rest of their lives is unlikely to be known to anyone but their therapists who will likely be able to retire on the income derived from their patients' ongoing miseries.

How you perceive the impact of Prisoners may well depend on whether you see the intricate maneuverings of the plot to be craftily-calculated or just too coincidental to accept.  For one, the other key character that I haven’t even mentioned yet—Holly’s husband and partner in crime—disappeared 5 years before the events of this film yet provides the needed key for Loki to make the connections totally unknown to him just as he enters Holly’s unlocked (unlikely?) front door, sees a photo of the guy wearing the same maze pendent found on the corpse long left in a hidden basement of a pedophile (alcoholic priest, Father Patrick Dunn [Len Cariou], discovered early [and oddly, as far as the rest of the film is concerned, until the strands are all woven together at the end] in the story as Loki was interrogating known child molesters in the vicinity—with the vague explanation from the should-have-been-defrocked-but-is-still-living-at-his-parish-church-priest [Pope Francis, here’s another task for you to help clean up] that he killed the unknown man after hearing his confession that he’d killed 16 children and would kill again), then quickly adds up all of the previously-confusing plot elements and manages to catch Holly just as she administers the intended-fatal injection so that there’s just enough time to attempt to rush Anna to recovery.  Add to this the twist that Alex isn’t Holly’s nephew at all but was the first kidnapped kid after formerly-religious Holly and her husband (sorry, didn’t get his name, even with 2 viewings) decided to “wage war against God” due to the sudden death by cancer of their young son so they abducted and killed children so as turn their parents into God-hating demons, just as was happening with Keller (despite the despair he felt while torturing Alex, even as he continuing in hopes of a last-minute-rescue-breakthrough), leaving us to believe that Alex (who was taken 26 years ago from the vacant house in the film’s first sequence) somehow drove back to his old neighborhood with hazy memories, then just innocently offered the girls a ride prior to his aunt’s renewed desire to inflect havoc on her community.  Finally, we learn that Bob was also abducted by Alex’s supposed-relatives but somehow escaped, yet internalized their fascination with dead children, snakes, and mazes.  It all connects in a well-arranged series of plot dots as well as connecting emotionally with me as a terrifying story of grief-induced maniacal behavior from a collection of skewed or maddening motives, but as much as I admire Prisoners and encourage viewing of it (even if you have hauled yourself through this all-secrets-revealed-review, I know from experience there’s still value to be gained from revisiting this film in person), I can also see (as I’ve read from some other reviewers) that you might feel the coincidences are just too much, the assault on the ultimately-innocent Alex is too disgusting (But how innocent is he?  He knew that his “aunt and uncle” had murdered those other children that the troubled "uncle" confessed about, he knew where Anna and Joy were, but seemingly kept it all inside because through his own years of captivity he had forgotten his parents, bonded with his captors, and possibly didn’t understand enough of what was going on around him to feel the remorse and rejection that Keller—and we—want him to acknowledge.), and there’s virtually nothing decent resolved here except the ultimate rescue of the girls—Joy somehow escaping (shown in quick, ambiguous shots) and Anna lucky enough to enjoy the “kindness of strangers”—so we’re still left with a sickening, empty feeling that such grotesque perverts walk among us, “innocent,” undiscovered, and unpunished, except possibly by chance such as with those women abducted in Cleveland years ago by that monster, Ariel Castro, with their rescue also the result of an unplanned happenstance, with the whole sordid episode possibly no less fantastic in its cruel events than what’s depicted fictionally in Prisoners.  So, you may be overwhelmed by what is intended to unnerve you in this film or you may find ways to fault it if it all seems too carefully-constructed.  What’s not constructed, though, are the cretins who inflict such harm on unsuspecting children and the inhuman responses such crimes may stir up in the families who become desperate to find some solution to their tragedies before the captives die or are lost forever to their former lives.  Prisoners should leave you haunted about that reality, even if the rest of the plot may be perceived as just too convoluted of a maze.

As has become my habit in the last few months, I’ll leave you with some metaphorical music to resonate with your experience of watching or just contemplating the events depicted in Prisoners.  This time around I’ve chosen a couple of tunes that aren’t directly connected with what transpires in the film but instead are more about the sense of loneliness and isolation felt by troubled souls such as Det. Loki and the despondent parents whose children are maliciously taken from them, a mood explored in Judy Collins’ version of “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” (written by Randy Newman), from her 1966 In My Life album but performed here at http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=phsq-1dEC5w in 1967 on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour TV series (there are many versions of this song available on YouTube [and other locations I’m sure] because it’s been on dozens of albums including by Newman, but there are few voices ever preserved that can match Judy’s so I’m going to use her rendition [further influenced by her recording being only the second cover of the song—after Julius La Rosa in 1966—done notably before Newman himself put it to vinyl]).  Then from the same Collins album, to address the sense of a world gone to hell as experienced by both the kind of ruined humans who would masquerade as Alex’s relatives and the response to their crimes as felt by a unhinged self-declared family protector such as Keller Dover, I offer Judy’s version of Leonard Cohen’s “Dress Rehearsal Rag” (with slightly adjusted lyrics) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42-Rv-3Aw50 also sung years before it was recorded by Cohen, but, if you prefer, here’s a 1968 live version from him done for the BBC at http://www.you tube.com/watch?v=lNTFqSaFwyo.  Even Cohen would admit that the grim contents of “Dress Rehearsal Rag” are “no way to say goodbye” on this celebratory Two Guys occasion; however, with the content of Prisoners being as tellingly morbid as it is I won’t attempt to put any frosting on this burned cake but will just thank life (and whatever it may be directed by … or not) for the gifts of talented filmmakers such as the ones connected on-and-behind-screen to works such as Prisoners that help us confront the darkness that doesn’t always disappear, even when exposed to the bright light of day.  Thanks for coming along with Two Guys on even these unsettling journeys, but we hope to bring you more uplifting ones as well; please stay with us as often as you can. 


If you’d like to know more about Prisoners here are some suggested links:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpXfcTF6iVk (a very effective trailer in that it gives you all of the conflict points you need to appreciate the dramatic situation and intensity to be explored in the film without giving away critical plot points that drive and supply the added suspense that isn’t even implied in this trailer—besides, dispensing plot spoilers is my job and I think I do it well)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCYRAH0jQH4 (short—2:47—anatomy of a scene from the film, narrated by director Denis Villeneuve showing the growing tension between the characters played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman as criminal suspicion starts to shift to Jackman)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAlt1_S_7Hc (long—42:44—press conference for the film from the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival featuring [once you get past another Prisoners trailer and a long promo for TIFF] interviews with music composer JĂ³hann JĂ³hannson; producer Kira Davis; actors Terrence Howard, Maria Bello, Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Melissa Leo, and Paul Dano; director Denis Villeneuve; and screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski [who certainly came up with a much better script here than he did in Contraband; review in this blog's January 29, 2012 posting])




As noted above, we encourage you to look over our home page (ABOUT THE BLOG), found as the first one in our December 2011 postings, to get more information on what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, including our formatting forewarning about inconsistencies among web browser software which we do our best to correct but may still cause some visual problems beyond our control, as well as difficulties we’ve encountered with the Google RSS Feed Alert when used in conjunction with iGoogle and Google Reader.

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If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my new email at kenburke409@gmail.com.  Thanks.

By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile.    Ken

P.S.  Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker.



Friday, September 20, 2013

The Family and Populaire

          Forget Your Troubles, Come On Get (Slap) Happy


                    Review by Ken Burke                The Family

Robert De Niro is an informant in the Witness Protection Program with his family in France when the mob “family” learns of his whereabouts and bloody encounters ensue.
            
                                                                               Populaire
          
A delightful but slim French movie that harks back to the days of 1950s Hollywood romantic extravaganzas set in the competitive arena of ... speed typing for women.

[Take care, curious readers, for plot spoilers gallop rampantly throughout the Two Guys’ brilliantly insightful reviews.  This is how we write, so as to explore what must be said as art transcends commerce (although if anyone wants to pay us for doing this ...); therefore, be warned, beware, and read on when ready to be transported to—well, wherever we end up.

We also encourage you to check your tastes against ours with the summary of Two Guys reviews, which we update with each new posting.  But please be aware that the links we recommend in our reviews may have been removed or modified without our knowledge.  Other overall notations for this blog may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage.  Now, onward to illumination; you may want to protect your eyes from the brilliance.]

The “slap” in my title this week refers to a related/semi-connected aspect of the 2 movies under consideration, the slap that competitive female typists back in 1959 apply to their overheated manual typewriters as they slam the carriages back into place for another line of text in their fierce desire to become champions in the French romantic comedy Populaire (RĂ©gis Roinsard)—to be explored below—and the collective “slap” applied by the Brooklyn-mob-based-marriage-and-bloodline-unit, known (privately) as the Manzonis in The Family (Luc Besson) on their former gangster “family,” with our renegades currently known under the auspices of the Witness Protection Program as the Blakes because patriarch Giovanni (Robert De Niro) has ratted on his “business associates” and now must stay on the lam with his actual family in order to escape the wrath of his former mob colleagues (especially the barely incarcerated Don Luchese [Stan Carp], who has hit squads looking all over the globe for revenge on Giovanni/renamed Fred Blake—and, just for good measure, his wife [now going by Maggie Blake (Michelle Pfeiffer)] and children, Belle [Dianna Agron; normally I’m rather clueless when a TV personality makes the jump to the big screen because I don’t see a lot of broadcast/cable series so when someone such as Bobby Cannavale makes an impact in a film such as Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen) I have no idea that he’s well-known from his work in such video series as Nurse Jackie (as Dr. Mike Cruz), Boardwalk Empire (as Gyp Rosetti), and Blue Bloods (as Charles Rosselini), although I do recognize Agron from her work on Glee as now-graduated-high-schooler Quinn Fabray—a walking advertisement for better strategies of birth control—(which may leave you wondering along with me why a Medicare-eligible guy still finds interest in this adolescent music-fest but maybe it’s because the show does a lot to fictionally repair shortcomings in my own pre-college life)] and Warren [John D’Leo]).  We understand briefly in a Brooklyn flashback/dream scene why Giovanni/Fred chose to testify against his former partners-in-crime (he was being held accountable for some transgression that would have resulted in his termination so he preserved his life by providing enough evidence against Luchese—given the other extra-diegetic references made later in The Family, it’s pretty clear that this character has a reference-point as well, that of the last major counter-power-wielder to come under the retaliation of the Corleone family in The Godfather: Part III [Francis Ford Coppola, 1990], the Mafioso-businessman Don Licio Lucchesi [Enzo Robutti]—to send him to jail [for what this “punishment” is worth, given the easy access his on-the-street associates have to him and how cooperative the prison guards are with him, a funny but sad comment on what little impact incarceration has on the best-connected in our criminal counter-society), just as we assume that his cooperation had an impact on his former mob associates, but the details are sketchy here so that we can just get the Manzoni family off to France for a new attempt at identities and backstories to allow them to slip unexamined into a local Normandy-region small town.

But their own personality flaws allow disturbingly identifiable actions as a pompous plumber, a haughty shopkeeper, a self-important plant manager, and some pushy, presumptuous new classmates of the kids are all put into their place through violent reactions toward the perceived insults to this witty but homicidally-dangerous family attempting (but not too carefully) to lay low so that their FBI manager, Robert Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones), and his 2 colleagues can provide protection to their charges even as the Manzonis make it difficult because of their proclivity to answer any affront with a physical response (the only grievance that goes unavenged is that of the college-student math tutor who rebuffs Belle’s romantic assumptions after she seduces him, but his day may be coming soon once she’s over the crush; he could probably use his own protection program—especially if she wasn’t using another type of protection during their fling; however that might get us into Instructions Not Included territory [Eugenio Derbez; review in our September 12, 2013 posting—with the good news update that it continues to expand in its number of available theatres but the related bad news that its income numbers are now falling rapidly; the other one from last week, Afternoon Delight (Jill Soloway), is sadly sinking fast as well, with grosses at a mere $152,000 level] so I doubt that a sequel with this plot device is in the works).  But what begins as a pleasant comedy of change-resistant-New-Yorkers refusing to offer any tolerance toward the offending locals soon enough turns into a typical gangster-movie-bloodbath as the minions of Don Luchese finally close in on the Blakes/Manzonis, requiring retaliation from not only Papa Fred/Giovanni but also all of the rest of the “Blakes”—along with Agent Stansfeld—to put down the mobster hitmen, then close the movie by moving on to another secret location with a stronger family bond (collectively killing your enemies can have that kind of impact) under the direction of exasperated-but-compliant Agent Stanfield.  The Family does a lot of recycling of familiar faces in familiar roles, but the end result is carried decently by the talent of the entire cast and the marvelous, varied scenic locations of France (mostly in and around Paris, despite the stated location in the slightly western province of Normandy).

If you come to this movie expecting to see De Niro in a parody version of what we've learned about him in various well-known mob movies (Mean Streets [Martin Scorsese, 1973], The Godfather: Part II [Coppola, 1974], The Untouchables [Brian De Palma, 1987], Goodfellas [Scorsese, 1990])—as modified by his hilarious riffs on his “fierce” personas as with various comic roles in Analyze This/Analyze That (Harold Ramis, 1990, 1992) and Meet the Parents/Meet the Fockers/Little Fockers (Jay Roach, 2000, 2004; Paul Weitz, 2010)—or even Michele Pfeiffer reprising various exaggerated turns such as in Married to the Mob (Jonathan Demme, 1988), Batman Returns (Tim Burton, 1992), Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2007), and Dark Shadows (Burton, 2012), you’ll likely be satisfied in the first portion but possibly made a bit uncomfortable by the extended violent shootout at the end when the troops of Don Luchese track down the "Blakes" by means of a small quote from Warren–using the Don’s pun on a modern staging of Alexander Pushkin‘s 1831 play Boris Godunov—which leads to a climatic hunt-and-retaliation scene that leaves all of the “buttons” (the trigger men sent by Luchese) dead and the "Blakes" on the way to their next contrived identity-location.  In the process of the setup for this vicious culmination of what has largely been funny before (illustrating how relative “violence” can be in the arts, as prior to the concluding shootout with the NY-based assassins—in which all of the "Blake" family [including their dog] and protector Stansfield participate, leaving all of the Don’s troops dead in the process—we also have Fred breaking a plumber’s legs in retaliation for a perceived swindle, Maggie blowing up the local market in response to clearly-intended insults by the proprietor, and fierce attacks by Belle and Warren on some schoolmates who have taken or attempt to take unwanted liberties on these homicide-capable siblings, no matter how innocent or helpless they may at first appear), we see that when the action picks up considerably toward the end, all of the "Blakes" prove themselves capable of effective mayhem against Luchese’s mini-army, although the previous comic tone disappears at this point, to be replaced by well-structured tension and a few just-in-time-strikes against the attempted assassins that keep the family intact and ready for another relocation (although there’s nothing to indicate that incarcerated Don Luchese won’t find them again in order to start the retaliation process all over—but given the relatively surface attitude of most of what we see here there’s no reason to worry too much about what comes next for this self-protecting foursome, unless the involved production companies decided to spring a sequel on us in the next few  years, at least if the box-office returns continue to be strong—#2 on opening weekend with a take of about $14 million in over 3,000 theaters, losing out only to the latest supernatural horror assault, Insidious: Chapter 2 [James Wan], a likely short-term winner given its high potential among the “you-can’t-scare-me … maybe ...” teenage audience).

Essentially, The Family is a reasonably-entertaining diversion in which we see some recognizable actors or character types doing familiar bits of business (with the best of this being Fred agreeing to take part in a cinema-club discussion in which he suddenly finds himself watching the De Niro character [and the others] in Goodfellas, then explaining to an enraptured audience the realities of crime life—without directly implicating himself, although handler Stansfield is ready to burst at any second), mostly focused on undermining their WPP identities so as to impose themselves on the poorly-depicted French before more aggressively imposing themselves on the assassins sent to dispatch them.  It’s a pleasant enough lark, but much more violent than the trailers would lead you to believe and rather light on anything of significance (although Fred does pursue his grievance about brown water to the guilty fertilizer plant resulting in his bombed destruction of the offending processing unit which clears the liquid output for the whole community, proving that even gangsters make good environmentalists when the local bureaucracy isn’t responsive enough—he also takes out his frustrations on the plant manager in a mostly-unseen episode about being dragged by a car that makes his assault on the plumber look benevolent, so you know that beneath his usually-pleasant exterior lurks the soul of a hitman on his own terms, with little concern for those who cross him).  And for my usual suggestion of a musical allusion to accompany the movie under consideration, in this case The Family, I’ll go with the instrumental version of Nina Rota’s main theme from The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) at http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=x8KHXKOji4Q with some random images from the first 2 films (or maybe you’d prefer the version with English lyrics [by Larry Kusik], “Speak Softly, Love,” as sung by Al Martino [who played Frank-Sinatra-stand-in Johnny Fontaine in Godfather 1 and 3] at http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=ratoEGXA2aI, illustrated with various clips from The Godfather: Part II), allowing us to reference De Niro’s most famous gangster role but with a melancholy tone that speaks to the many atrocious acts committed by and attempted upon the Manzoni family by the even more dangerous “family” run by Don Luchese, the murderous epitome of "Thugs R Us."

In contrast, another story set in Normandy—but this one in the very late 1950s—isn’t physically violent at all, although the mental pressure on the lead character, Rose Pamphyle (DĂ©borah François), in Populaire may make her feel as if she’s being violated by a unique aspect of a secretarial career, the need to achieve as a speed typist at the national and international competitive level.  In this whimsical, loving tribute to the avalanche of Hollywood’s wide-screen, bouncy-music, Technicolor movies of the 1950s that encouraged American audiences to leave the new-seduction of their small, black-and-white TV sets in favor of returning to the public cinema theaters they had so long embraced we get a slim story that merges standard fictional structures of romance, competitive spirit, and celebration of self-confidence joined with personal determination that have been celebrated for decades in the cinema lore of entertainment-happy America and every cinematic culture that we have influenced.  There’s no intention of anything deep or disturbing here, just a surface situation of a young woman desperate to move away from her village where her life is circumscribed to be a support to her widower father, Jean (FrĂ©dĂ©ric Pierrot), and become the virtually-arranged wife of a local auto mechanic.  By chance she finds that her way out is sitting in the window of her dad’s general store, a manual Triumph typewriter that she determines to conquer so as to get a job as a secretary in a nearby larger city, Lisieux.  After determined practice with her amateur 2-finger method she heads for her first competitive challenge, that of besting many other young women with similar desires for the “romance” of office work, in this case a group of opponents who aren’t nearly as attractive as Rose but who have a more focused understanding of a job’s requirements and a purposeful intention of providing a toned-down, non-distracting appearance (dark-framed glasses sales must have been another lucrative career at this time—except for Rose).  Rose doesn’t seem ready for the “audition” pressure upon her first attempt, but she lands trial employment with insurance agent Louis Échard (Romain Duris) who’s impressed with her furious-finger-technique on the one “hand” (sorry for the lousy pun; however, it is within the spirit of this movie) but driven to distraction on the other hand by both the noise she creates pounding out his correspondence and disturbed by her general clumsiness that leads to one office disaster after the next.  He soon realizes that she’s barely tolerable as a secretary but has the potential to be a winner in the regional, national—possibly even international—speed typing competitions that were about the only opportunity for conquest-focused glory available to women in this highly-misogynistic postwar era, so he puts her into a training regimen that would impress Olympic coaches, leading to regional success and the transition to a full 10-finger approach that greatly increases her chances for higher levels of achievement.  In the process she also becomes attracted to him with the feeling being mutual as he calls her “pumpkin” and acknowledges that she has other attractions beyond her skilled fingers (leading to a sex scene that’s about the only thing here you wouldn’t find almost word-for-word, scene-for-scene in an actual 1950s on-again, off-again, on-again romantic comedy), but upon winning the French nationals Rose is pursued by the wealthy, success-obsessed father-and-son-team of AndrĂ© (FĂ©odor Atkine) and Gilbert Japy (Nicolas Bedos) who need for the typing champ to be associated with them to further sales of their sleek Populaire typewriter.  When Rose dethrones their previous image-maker they move in on her, which Louis angrily encourages (in self-depreciating fashion, believing their financial support is necessary for his protĂ©gĂ© to get the additional training she needs to unseat the frequent [5 of the last 10 years], current World Champion, an American who’ll be on her home turf when the final competition is held in NYC).

With the promotional prowess provided by the Japy company, Rose becomes a media sensation while Louis sinks into depression, unable to put his attachment to her behind in order to rekindle a romance with his former flame (and wife of his best friend, Bob [Shaun Benson]), Marie Taylor (BĂ©rĂ©nice Bejo, famed as the love interest in another French tribute to Hollywood’s famed past—celebrating both the coming of the sound era, a la Singin’ in the Rain [Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952], and the ingĂ©nue-eclipsing-the-headliner-theme so well-known from such classics as A Star is Born [William A. Wellman, 1937; George Cukor, 1954; Frank Pierson, 1976] and All about Eve [Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950]—Peppy Miller in The Artist [Michael Hazanavicius, 2011]).  Louis is also haunted by his failure to have achieved anything notable either heroic (he fought with the French Resistance during WW II but saw his unit annihilated as they tried to run from a German assault) or sport-based (he was, as he notes, “an athlete but not a champion"), so Rose’s victory would also be a vicarious one for him, but now she’s gone—at least until Marie encourages Louis to rush to the World Championship matches, declare his love, and hopefully achieve the double goal of repairing the relationship and giving Rose the incentive she needs to overcome her fear of the ferocious Susan Hunter (Sara Haskell)—although it could all backfire, even if Rose is eager to see Louis again because his previous strategy had been to fuel Rose’s anger with some stunt which then intensified her competitive spirit.  Whether true love could evoke the same response is a chance Louis decides to take, so he arrives just in time to inspire her in the final round.  Of course, even with a last-minute crisis of her keys momentarily jamming, Rose wins (with help from her suddenly-supportive father—who was furious at his daughter’s decision to change her future from what he’d charted out for her—as he surprises her by sending the old Triumph machine [still sitting in his store window, as a tribute to his now-famous daughter] which she chooses to use instead of the Japy model, thereby cutting her ties with her benefactors—and supposed love-interest, Gilbert—no matter her final place in the contest), with an astonishing new record of 515 keystrokes per minute, Louis presents his idea for a typewriter ball (instead of individual keys) to the suits from the “ICM” company (a quick fictionalization of IBM’s revolutionary Selectric typewriter, introduced in 1961, not long after the 1959 setting for Rose’s “triumph”) which leads to the reunited couple’s financial security, and everyone in the theater has a great time watching this delightful trifle.  Populaire attempts to do nothing beyond celebrate a type of moviemaking now a half-century removed from our current sensibilities, provide a bit of a parody of the current obsession with athletic triumphs by overpaid musclemen in high-stakes battles, and revive the romantic dream that true love will conquer any obstacle, no matter how daunting the circumstances.  I don’t think that Populaire is significant cinema nor will it likely even be remembered when awards talk begins in earnest a couple of months from now, but if you just need something deliciously uplifting to boost your spirits this is a great choice—but with the sad acknowledgement that unless it really picks up steam from the scant 15 theaters that currently house it you may not even get a chance to consider it until video options are available.  If you can find it, though, it might aid in the transition from the escapes of summer back to the realities of autumn, a whimsical relief from probabilities and rationalizations that loom in this returning time of shorter days, colder weather, and possibly fading hopes of accomplishing all—any?—of those long-ago attempts at New Year’s resolutions.  

       Give yourself a break and put it all on hold for a couple of hours with Populaire or at least a soothing musical interlude from those increasingly-receding times depicted in this pleasing movie, either the calming notes of Acker Bilk’s instrumental “Stranger on the Shore,” a huge single record hit in the early 1960s (and part of this movie’s soundtrack) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jzx664u5DA (along with some beautiful beach photos) or something more upbeat such as Bobby Darin in full Sinatra mode doing “Mack the Knife” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qrjtr_uFac (this was the #2 record of 1959—behind Johnny Horton’s “The Battle of New Orleans, which just didn’t seem to be able to be rationalized into support of this review no matter how I tried—although you might be interested in the original version at http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=aPG9GcykPIY, sung by “Mack” composer Kurt Weill’s wife, Lotte Lenya [briefly referenced in Darin's version], in German probably as audiences heard it in Bertolt Brecht and Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, performed in Berlin’s contrarian Epic Theatre production back in 1928).  If all of that smoothness doesn’t mellow you out enough, then maybe you need the more determined-to-survive-at-all-costs-encouragement from The Family, which at least will be much easier to find in a movie house.  Whatever it takes to get you through the week, I wish you the best with it and will return in a few days with a final posting for September, one that will mark another milestone for the Two Guys site, our 100th presentation of reviews.


If you’d like to know more about The Family here are some suggested links:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo5jJpHtI1Y (the trailer for Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas [1990], an important in-joke in The Family… with a touch of the classic “In a world …” trailer talk toward the end)



If you’d like to know more about Populaire here are some suggested links:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L5MKbYnhbw (if you don’t care to see an entire foreign film with subtitles or practice your high school French then just watch this trailer which shows you just about everything that you need to know about this movie)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IREh0mBWs4k (relatively short [10:31] interview with actors DĂ©borah François and Romain Duris, along with writer/director RĂ©gis Roinsard)



As noted above, we encourage you to look over our home page (ABOUT THE BLOG), found as the first one in our December 2011 postings, to get more information on what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, including our formatting forewarning about inconsistencies among web browser software which we do our best to correct but may still cause some visual problems beyond our control, as well as difficulties we’ve encountered with the Google RSS Feed Alert when used in conjunction with iGoogle and Google Reader.

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P.S.  Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker.