Friday, June 2nd, 2006
Wong Kar Wai – 2046 (4)
Oh boy, where do I start? It was sombering to see that the concept that so beautifully worked in In the Mood for Love could fall so flat. While this loose sequel explores similar themes, none of the characters got me the least bit interested, the plot was see-through-thin both in terms of what happened and the emotional content, and the pretentiousness of it all just unbearable. Had I seen this in a theater, it would have been one of the rare occasions for me to walk out (though the cinematography, admittedly lost on a TV, might possibly have kept me). At home I sat through it, and I’m glad I did, for the last half hour picked up a bit. But not remotely enough to make this worthwhile. Stay clear.
While Clooney did seem a bit too proud of the things he’s been doing lately at the Oscar’s, the things he does are indeed pretty great, and he wasn’t quite deserving of the scorn heaped upon him by pop reactionaries Parker and Stone in a recent South Park episode (that puts him in a league with recently mocked Al Gore. Apparently poop jokes aren’t controversial enough any more. But I digress). This movie depicts, in rather beautiful black and white cinematography, the courageous act of a few TV journalists at CBS defying overpowering senator Joe McCarthy, and contributing significantly to his eventual downfall. An inspiring and encouraging story at any time, the present context makes this indispensable.
This should by rights have been an awesome movie, with awesome music and an intriguing story, and it didn’t quite fail at achieving it, but it didn’t quite make it, either. Phoenix and Witherspoon were doing an amazing job, especially with the music, but several aspects of the script left me wanting more. We don’t really understand why any of the people do what they do, especially so for the negative influences, his father and his first wife. We get hardly a glimpse of why they act the way they do, and I didn’t really connect to Cash’s reactions to them, either. And the predictable story arc of success – gutter – redemption and it’s edifying connotations may have been unavoidable in a Cash biopic, but still disappointed me in its simplicity. The music made up for much of that, though, and the cinematography and design helped a lot, too.
It’s fun watching the two stabs Hitchcock took at this story almost back to back, seeing the development of his style and technical proficiency, as well as the parts of storytelling that work in neither story. There is an interesting remark on the DVD of the producer of the remake being told by Hitchcock to watch the original Lorre vehicle, to see if that could be remade. The producer made some remarks about Hitchcocks development since then, which apparently hurt the man’s pride – odd, since the earlier work is so obviously flawed. When interviewed by Truffaut much later, he himself made the talented amateur / professional comparison between the two version’s directors, but in the early fifties he obviously still didn’t have the necessary distance from his earlier work. Maybe that’s why he only went half the distance in fixing the flaws, leaving the quite unconvincing spy splot of assassinating a politician in a public auditorium, and the cartoonish police.
The romantic mood and intimate, at times claustrophobic, cinematography, of this compelling masterpiece pull you in closely, and make you experience the melancholy mood and longing of the main characters first hand, for an almost dizzyingly intense experience. The end left me scratching my head a bit, with especially the disconnected footage of De Gaulle suggesting that I maybe missed a whole level of allegory to the plot, but then again, maybe not. It matters little either way.
Let me start by saying that we didn’t actually deliberately rent this. Rather, we inherited a box with four VHS tapes of Hitchcock classics, three of which I had never heard of. The fourth was indeed a classic, so we watched that. I should have been suspicious at the distinct snapping sound I heard when the movie was out of its box – the marketing trap had sprung.
There isn’t much I’m going to say about this magnificent genre marriage of film noir thriller with highschool drama, except: go, see it. A remarkable script, pitch perfect performances, a multitude of lovely details and references: Just go, already.
If anyone were following the reviews on this blog, a pattern of Nazi movie obsession in recent weeks would become apparent. This is partly due to an unchecked adding frenzy to our Netflix queue quite a while ago, and I’m growing a bit tired of it. So this probably explains in part why this documentary of the Kindertransporte, humanitarian efforts in the late 1930s saving tens of thousands of German Jewish children from certain death by sending them to host families in England, didn’t quite manage to grip my attention. It’s a heartwarming story, even if the host families were often struggling with the stressed out children they were receiving, but somehow the movie doesn’t manage to make it stick together. Maybe its the lack of historical commentary and an overarching message of the movie, maybe its just uninspired editing, and dragging interviews. Or maybe it’s just me – the Oscar this movie won in 2001 would suggest that, if I believed awards like the Oscars to be a genuine mark of quality.
With a subject as intriguing as the history of the beloved vocalist combo, and their struggle with the rising Third Reich, and a freebie soundtrack treasurechest, it is hard to see how a movie could fail even as much as this one does. A stale and wooden script, endless repetitions of one single song (Veronica, der Lenz ist da) instead of a representative collection of the Harmonists’ work, and a simplistic notion both of human character and historic processes make this a less than splendid experience – especially when compared to Aimee and Jaguar, which is a entirely different league on a fairly similar subject.
It is a disturbing fact of post-war German history that plenty of active National Socialists continued on to positions of power and influence in the Bundesrepublik, partly because of a lack of skilled leadership personnel not involved with the regime, but also because the anti-communist notions of the old criminals fit well into the new political struggle emerging in Europe. Against this historical background, Riefenstahls particular story becomes all the more fascinating. Her unsettlingly effective propaganda documentaries, Triumph des Willes and Fest der Völker, on the 1935 Nuremberg rally and the 1936 Olympic Games, created a fame for her that was probably the reason for her fall after the war. She wasn’t able to make any more movies, and all her other creative efforts – most notably her photography of the people – got subjected to close scrutiny and harsh criticisms for suspicions of a fascist esthetic, and were always contextualized with her past. This movie portrays her both as the victim of scapegoating and a stubborn denier of aspects of her life, but most of all it paints the fascinating picture of a multifaceted woman, who had the misfortune to live in evil times. You might not like her after this documentary, but you won’t regret having seen it.