12 Years a Slave (***1/2)

In human history, there are, unfortunately, many worthy contenders for superlative evilness, but the Holocaust and American slavery were at least unusual in perpetuating elaborately organized systems of cruelty that provide endless storytelling possibilities. There are more films about the Holocaust, I think, and the unwillingness of Americans to look at the ugly sides of American history may be part of that, but there have been, also, many more Holocaust survivors who were in a position to tell their stories. Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) was an educated man, a free black man with a loving wife and children in Saratoga, New York, who became a slave in 1841, and was sent to Louisiana. Later, he wrote one of the few surviving slave narratives. In effect, he had a perspective analogous to a Holocaust survivor, living a normal life one day, though discriminated against, and thrust into the control of others the next. His reaction is ours, were we thrust into a similar situation.

Northrup, then, does not represent the typical slave story. When he is, essentially, kidnapped while being mistaken for a runaway, his first reactions are to argue, to fight, and to run. Another man, taken along with him, expresses contempt for the “niggers” who have always been slaves and only wish to survive. Northrup says, “I don’t want to survive; I want to live.” Although his skills on the violin are an occasional help to him, his learning and independence are generally of no advantage. He cannot pick cotton as fast as others, and so he is punished. He cannot resist telling a cruel master (Paul Dano) that he’s made a mistake, and so he is punished. In one of the more remarkable scenes in the film, Northrup finds himself nearly hanged, with his toes just able to touch the ground. Instead of cutting to the next scene, director Steve McQueen lets the camera linger, with Northrup at the center of the frame, as white people and slaves alike go about their business.

McQueen’s last movie, Shame, told the story of a sex addict as if it were the Jesus story, but this scene is the closest this movie gets to pretentious. There’s no need to lay it on thick when depicting slavery. In its most ordinary aspects, it is still dramatic. There are several scenes of violence, enough to make the point that a slave was subject to violence at the whim of a slaveowner, and for reasons that could not always be anticipated or avoided. However, for me other scenes had an equal impact. In one, Northrup’s owner (Michael Fassbender, star of Shame and McQueen’s earlier Hunger) wakes up the slaves to have them dance and entertain him, a reminder that no part of a slave’s life, save perhaps private thoughts, was entirely his own.

In some respects, I find the slavemaster a more curious character than the slave. It’s easy to understand Northrup, especially since he has been raised as a free man. But how to explain the man who can live with people he owns, and see their humanity, and yet can still regard them as of a kind so different that he does not identify at all with their suffering or feel guilt at causing it. Of course, this was not always true. Northrup spends most of his time in captivity under the master played by Fassbender, but is first purchased by a somewhat kinder man played by Benedict Cumberbatch. This man treats Northrup with humanity, yet, as one of the women points out to him, is no more inclined to set him free, if only because it will cause him financial ruin. In this way and others, McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley are able to present different aspects of a curious, unfortunate, and fascinating chapter of American history.

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viewed 11/3/13 3:05 pm at AMC Cherry Hill and posted 11/4/13

A Little Bit of Heaven (**3/4)

It’s a funny thing that there’ve been two comedies about getting cancer in the last year. This one, set in New Orleans (but with a too-generic soundtrack), is even a romantic comedy, since Kate Hudson’s character, Marley, falls for her doctor (Gael Garcia Bernal) even as he tries to save her. No, it’s not as sappy as it could have been, and Hudson is bubbly and likeable even as she continues to make her role in the classic Almost Famous seem a fluke. But certainly a comparison with 50/50, last year’s cancer comedy, leaves this a bit wanting.

While movies based on true stories are certainly not always better, in the case of 50/50 the characters and situations had such specificity to them that it was no surprise to find out its screenwriter actually lived much of it. In this case, the supporting characters are given a trait or two but function more as a prop for the main character. Her mom’s (Kathy Bates) trait is not letting Marley be independent; her dad’s is being distant (literally and figuratively). The doctor character’s trait is that he can’t tell a joke. Also, he’s Jewish and Mexican — Julian Goldstein. (Had the movie been told from his point of view, it could have been called Marley and Me.) Marley apparently falls for him because in the beginning of the movie she’s telling us, in voiceover, how she isn’t interested in a long-term relationship, so you know what that means. (Is it cliché or contemporary if a woman plays the part of the reforming philanderer?)

First-timer Gren Wells also includes the sort of medical scenes you could have assumed, a barf here or there, making sure that Hudson gets to keep her hair, although she bravely eschews make-up (or wears very little) in several scenes. The director, Nicole Kassell, previously made the challenging The Woodsman; it’s hard to imagine the same person directing a movie in which Whoopi Goldberg has a goofy cameo as God, or, technically, God as imagined by one cancer patient, or maybe just a vivid dream. I wouldn’t say that the comedy, romance, and cancer clash, but they don’t always mesh either. Given the plot, the movie tries too hard to be sweet, on balance, especially the ending. But the pace is good and some of the dramatic/emotional moments work (probably more than the comedy or romance), so…average.

IMDb link

viewed 5/3/12 7:30 pm at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 5/7/12

Bad Lieutenant—Port of Call: New Orleans (**3/4)

“It won’t be better, but I’ll settle for different,” sang the Waitresses in their non-hit “Redland.” So might be the justification for Wener Herzog’s odd reimagining of Abel Ferrara’s brutal 1992 cult drama. It’s odd enough that such a movie would be remade at all, let alone by the director of Grizzly Man, Rescue Dawn, and Encounters at the End of the World, true-life sagas of men in extreme settings. At first, this version seems like a somewhat ordinary detective drama, though the opening scene, in which cops played by Nicolas Cage and Val Kilmer debate about whether to rescue a trapped victim of Hurricane Katrina or bet on when rising water will drown him, gives an indication of things to come. (The setting is transplanted from New York.)

Cage plays the cop that gets promoted to lieutenant and heads up the search for whoever massacred a family of African immigrants. But this ordinary plot turns out to be the device by which we observe the lieutenant aiming to score drugs, illicit sex, and a means to recover from gambling debts. And that, in turn, proves a device for what might be Cage’s most over-the-top performance yet, which is saying something. Drama gives way to farce as he wiggles his way in and out of trouble with his bookie, his prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes), his alcoholic father, his father’s alcoholic girlfriend, drug dealers, and gangsters. In one scene, the routine search of an amorous couple turns into a wild-eyed Cage trading some blow and a blow job (by the girl, in front of the guy, in a parking lot) for not arresting the couple. And the lieutenant, though bad, is not even the most unsavory character in the movie. There’s enough happening to keep things interesting, and a wacky ending that suggests that life is God’s cosmic joke, but it’s a close call as to whether Herzog’s remake is satirical or just plain dumb.

IMDB link

viewed 11/23/09 at Prince [PFS screening] and reviewed 11/25/09 and 12/1/09

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (**3/4)

Curious is Benjamin (Brad Pitt) because Benjamin ages backward. Screenwriter Eric Roth (Munich, The Good Shepherd, Ali) and director David Fincher (Zodiac, Panic Room, Fight Club) borrow this idea—and almost nothing else—from the identically titled F. Scott Fitzgerald story. Whereas Fitzgerald’s “Curious” is just that, a curious trifle, the film tries to be two things: a philosophical work, told in flashback excerpts of an old woman’s diary, and a love story of longing and separation.

Benjamin is born in New Orleans at the end of the Great War. In a concession to physical reality, he is baby-size and unlearned, but with the face, and arthritis, of an old man. Taken in by a black caregiver (Taraji P. Henson) at a nursing home, he grows larger, but not, seemingly, older. (Despite this setting and time period, racial themes are not prominent.) Time marches on, but Benjamin only grows more vigorous. Partly isolated from others by his condition, he forms mostly brief relationships. Only with his (adoptive) mother and the granddaughter of one of the nursing home residents is there a longer-lasting bond. (Fincher manages to depict the friendship of the “old man” and the little girl without it seeming creepy.) Eventually, Benjamin leaves New Orleans on a tugboat.

Except for some sexual frankness, the movie feels old-fashioned and timeless, which may be appealing. It’s beautifully shot and scored (by Alexandre Desplat). The make-up effects combine with Pitt’s elegant performance to make you forget he’s a movie star, or that the plot is outlandish. (However, I never quite understood why Benjamin assumes that he’ll regress into childishness and lose his adult memories to match his appearance. Given the way he starts out, couldn’t he as easily just look childish? I suppose the answer is that that outcome would seem more comic than poignant, as indeed the reverse situation is in the beginning, but it bothered me just the same.)

Having noticed that screenwriter Roth also wrote Forrest Gump, I realize that the two movies have a lot in common, structurally. Although comedy was more prominent in Gump, both movies feature the life stories of their central characters, and romances in which the strangeness of the hero creates a challenge. Despite this, I liked Gump a lot better. For all of the loveliness of this one, I felt unconnected to the story, and two reasons suggest themselves. The first is that, notwithstanding Pitt’s performance, Benjamin is not that memorable a character. Gump annoyed some people, true, but Button won’t annoy anyone because his only major characteristics are a certain reserved politeness, and his love for the girl, played as an adult by Cate Blanchett. Which brings up the other reason I didn’t love the movie. Blanchett is another fine performer, and her role has more personality to it, but when we first see her, I could not connect this hard-edged ballet dancer to the sweet child first encountered. There is too much separation in time and in character. And so I remained unconvinced, or maybe just unmoved, by the placid man’s reawakened ardor. I actually found Benjamin’s other romance, with an unhappily married Englishwoman (Tilda Swinton), a more compelling storyline, but it’s a much smaller part of the movie.

I’m not saying there was no poignancy at all in the way these two people can love but not grow old together, or in the way that the movie reminds us of how our connections with other people make us human. But I preferred the warmer tone of Gump, where the female lead is in some way like Blanchett’s—hard, but in a way that makes it easier to see the tenderness within. In fact, a more recent movie, Slumdog Millionaire, tells a very similar romantic tale, wherein the hero tries to reconnect with his childhood friend, now a toughened-up young woman. There too, I rooted harder for the couple than here. This is clearly a well-crafted movie, and so I know some people are going to like it a lot. But in my case, it just seems like an overlong curiosity.

IMDB link

viewed 12/1/08 (screening at Ritz Bourse); reviewed 1/25/09