Will the film seem visionary or shallow to people alive in the future? It is perfectly entertaining to me, and there are aspects of it that are provocative. How much responsibility does one want to take for others? Is it possible to stop unpredictable and uncontrollable disturbed individuals who intend to do things that put the mass public at stake?
Category: Film Reviews
The Abundant Spirit of a Poor Girl: Winter’s Bone
What intelligence or strength exists in such persons and lives can feel like the grace of divinity, though it is really a sharpened survival instinct that refuses to die, that insists that it will do everything before it gives in—that, in fact, it will never give in but must be destroyed by greater and more relentless forces. In the film, the young woman, Ree, not yet eighteen, visits the friends and relatives of her father, asking questions, looking for clues.
The Spanish Element: Don’t Let Me Drown, a film by Cruz Angeles; and Sugar, a film by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
How can we pretend as if everyone has an equal chance in life? There is a willful forgetting involved in the sustaining of many of our trumpeted principles; and Sugar is an act of sympathetic remembrance. Both Don’t Let Me Drown and Sugar are immigrant stories, humble and profoundly American stories.
The Drama of Death: Steven Soderbergh’s film Contagion
The film is a major effort, and looks good, but I did not think of it as beautiful; and while I can admire all the actors in it, some of whom are among my favorites, I was not surprised that Gwyneth Paltrow, an actress of charm and cool temperament, of intelligence and instinct, was the alpha and omega of the film.
The Deceptions of War: Green Zone, starring Matt Damon and Khalid Abdalla
The film is one more dramatic demonstration of how power works, or rather, how it does not work: government bureaucracy, the military, and journalists do not live up to the best ideals. Through the film’s story—through investigation—Damon’s soldier will learn that the intelligence is a lie, that the Iraqis had rid themselves of weapons of mass destruction and had no active plans to produce more, but that those facts were misrepresented to Washington and the world by American bureaucrats eager for war.
A Charismatic Actor, A Spiritual Purpose, A Violent Film: The Book of Eli
In John Hillcoat’s The Road (2009), the lessons that the father teaches the son come out of personal experience and direction; but here in The Book of Eli, there is a return to an ancient text, an old religion. The values on offer in The Road are subject to questioning, to testing, whereas there is something assumed about the values in The Book of Eli, and that attaches something sanctimonious and sentimental to the endeavor.
Testosterone Poisoning: Changing Lanes, starring Ben Affleck and Samuel Jackson
Before the film is over, each character is forced to face the other—to attempt a peace—and also to face his own inner workings, what he does and why he does it and how to become a better man. A change of heart and change of mind are necessary but are made to look easier than they would be in life, where the system—the network of institutions and public beliefs—that rules contemporary American lives is not easily defied or defeated, and remains unchanged though the men have changed.
A Charming Pair: Pride and Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen
It’s pleasing to me that work that so vitally concerns us—the strictures of class and gender (the vulnerability of women, particularly those without inheritance), and the unlikely relation of love to many marriages—should be the subject of classic literature and the kind of film that’s seen to have much prestige. It’s an affirmation that important ideas can be presented in graceful ways, besides being a wonderful story that contains some truth about human nature.
The Temptations of Friendship: Y Tu Mama Tambien (And Your Mama Too), starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna
The pacing of the film is natural, as is its look and the acting in it, and this is a very believable story, and it gives us the many quick-changing moods of real life. It makes the calculation—and the lies and partial truths—ordinarily presented in a typical Hollywood film seem even more unnecessary.
The Limits of Palestinian Life: Paradise Now
Paradise Now, directed by Hany Abu-Assad, presents the landscape in which the Palestinians are massed—its rocky hills, its trees, its poor neighborhoods—and shows some of the communal rituals—simple meals of vegetables, bread, and sauces; and smoking a water pipe. When Said comes home late, his young brother talks about how he would have been reprimanded if he’d come in that late; and when the same boy asks if his mother has used a new water filter—he says the water tasted better before—his mother tells him to turn off the radio he swallowed, meaning he’s too smart-talking.