Directors:

The New York Times (Roger Greenspun) review

HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER B- 81

USA (105 mi) 1973 ‘Scope

The entire film plays out like a dream sequence, beginning and ending as if drifting in and out of a mirage-like haze, with eerie music that sounds like a Twilight Zone episode. And in fact, that’s pretty much what it is, the story of an avenging angel who comes back to the small town of Lago to hold people accountable for their greed, corruption and murderous ways, now hiding behind their piousness and sanctimonious morality, all of which is built on a pack of lies. To this degree, it resembles the tone of John Carpenter’s THE FOG (1980), which after revealing itself as an unexplained natural mystery, slowly tightens its noose around the entire town until eventually corpses begin rising from the dead. Eastwood’s film is a little more understated, a revenge saga told like a parable, with a deadly solemn tone throughout. Eastwood is another one of his Man with No Names, known only as the Stranger, who rides into town one day, is accosted by three thugs which chose the wrong guy to pick on, as he immediately blows the three away in broad daylight. Too bad for them. When a corseted blond sashays directly into his path, followed by a stream of insults, one might think he would give her a spanking. Not so, as instead he pulls her into the barn and rapes her, again in broad daylight, this time in front of the entire town standing there watching. This is a bit disconcerting, as there’s some things you just don’t do to a lady, and this is certainly one of them, but this is also a clue that this is no ordinary avenging angel, as is his survival in a bathtub which she shoots full of holes in anger. But he has nary a scratch.

The gist of the story is then revealed in a dream sequence, which is an apparent flashback into the Stranger’s life when he was the town sheriff and was about to report a mining company’s boundary infraction, to their advantage of course, but was whipped to death by a crew of outlaws while the entire town stood and watched. Now the Stranger is back, completely unrecognizable to anyone in town, who have kept quiet about this incident ever since, though the three outlaws were sent to prison for murder, and are about to be released. At seeing what the Stranger can do with a gun, they immediately hire him, offering him whatever he wants that the town can provide, if he’ll protect them from the outlaws return. Basically, they’re asking him to cover up their initial cover up. This borders on the ridiculous, reminiscent of Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO (1961), where the outlaw plays head games with a town with two warring factions. Interesting, since the Sergio Leone westerns starring Eastwood, especially A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964), borrowed liberally from Kurosawa, including the exaggerated facial close ups, the lone gunman slowly ambling out into the street in a cloud of dust, the leaves blowing, the window shutters on the street locked shut by panic stricken and hysterical townsfolk, all shivering in fear, while his dusty, sweaty opponent enters the street, usually covered by at least a half-dozen, rifle-toting henchmen, while eerie, percussive music plays to accentuate the heightened sense of anxiety. But Eastwood directing on his own is toned down to the bare essentials, accentuating a mood of the austere, where the Stranger is a man of purpose. Even his presence has an Eastern sense, as he appears to be a wandering spirit who is restless because no one has bothered to put a marker on his grave.

Few westerns exclusively play the revenge card like this one, though Eastwood tried it again with PALE RIDER (1985), both by the way shot by Bruce Surtees.

Edinburgh U Film Society (Iain Harral) review

As gravestone inscriptions in the town of Lago (painted red and renamed Hell by the phantom drifter) make clear, this was supposed to be Eastwood's fond adieu to the worlds of Sergio Leone and Don Siegel; and indeed he cuts the operatic excess of the former with the punchy economy of the latter. Yet the way Ernest Tidyman's script is submitted to distortion and distension, and fitted with Bruce Surtees' almost surreal images (and several twists of the ghostly revenge plot itself), suggest nothing so much as Eastwood returning for reference to the popular Japanese cinema from which Leone himself first borrowed for the Dollars films. Whatever, there's a boldness, confident stylisation, and genuine weirdness to the movie that totally escaped other post-spaghetti American Westerns, with a real sense of exorcism running both through and beyond it.

After starring in a few of Sergio Leone's more famous Spaghetti westerns, Eastwood picks up the director's reins as well as those of the leading part in a really quite extraordinary gothic western.

Haunted by the guilty knowledge that they stood by and did nothing while their sheriff was horsewhipped to death and fearing the imminent release of his three killers, the citizens of Lago decide to offer Eastwood, the enigmatic 'Man with No Name', anything he wishes in payment for his protection from the murderous gangs' return.

Eastwood's consequent exploitation of the townsfolk is outrageous but somehow strangely satisfying and provides a great deal of the film's wry humour. Indeed, High Plains Drifter takes almost sadistic pleasure in the humiliating treatments meted out to Lago's more unpleasant inhabitants as the thread of the moral lesson of this particular Western unwinds, seemingly as a pointed (but still wickedly funny) condemnation of their apathy and cowardice. As the gunfighter; Eastwood is a joy, as capable of razor sharp one-line ripostes and blunt witticisms as he is of twirling his six-shooter like only cowboys know how.

Slightly surreal in places, High Plains Drifter is perhaps one of the more off-beat, and as result, fascinating post-spaghetti American Westerns. As a tale of revenge, it is carried along by a powerful eerieness and an undercurrent of mordant dark humour to what is realty a pretty unusual climax.

Turner Classic Movies review Michael Atkinson

The western is America’s most famous and iconic film genre – automatically making it one of the world’s predominant narrative templates – and over more than a century of cinema it has been put to every use imaginable, from cheap programme filler to mammoth Cinerama epic to farce to bloodbath. The last great surge of westerns, known evocatively as "the anti-western" and exemplified by the films of Sam Peckinpah and Monte Hellman, came during the ‘Nam era, when convenient myths about American good and evil were universally called into question. Here, the western set of totems and stereotypes – good guy, bad guy, gunfight, hard-working frontier town – were interrogated right down to their amoral hypocrisy and pathological psyches, a process that no film underwent as explicitly as Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter (1973).

Which is not to suggest that Eastwood’s movie is a dead-serious intellectual indictment – it’s raw pulp, with plenty of adolescent overripeness and crude narrative ideas. But the bones of it are outrageously metaphoric, as much as any western since Monte Hellman’s mysterious, seminal cheapie The Shooting (1967). Eastwood plays a nameless gunslinger who simply rides into Lago, a small, spare mining town built on the edge of a huge mountain lake. He doesn’t talk much, in the classic early-Eastwood vein, but the townspeople are all wary, suspicious, openly hostile and plagued with shame. Our anti-hero is confronted time and again, leading to a few impromptu corpses and, in the film’s most wildly questionable scene, a rape of the town trollop (Marianna Hill). Interestingly, we hardly blink at this laconic gunhand dispatching a few antagonistic frontier men with pistol blasts to the forehead and chest, but the rape – which like everything else in the film is involved with a protracted plan for retribution – sticks in our contemporary craw, even if the hateful woman in question does eventually return with her own gun, seeking vengeance.

In any case, it becomes clear that what we’ve got here is a postmodern morality play, in which justice is methodically served but no one is heroic or good at heart. The town’s backstory hovers over the action like a thunderhead – in the recent past, a sheriff who’d been gearing up to report the mining company’s territorial infractions got horsewhipped to death in town, and virtually every citizen had either participated or watched. All have remained silent since. Structurally mix-‘n-matching aspects of High Noon (1952), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) and Forty Guns (1957, as well as hearkening forward to Eastwood’s masterpiece Unforgiven, 1992), the film also has metaphysical implications – Eastwood’s mystery man is either a ghost, an avenging angel, or simply a walking-talking deus ex machina, personifying the townspeoples’ self-immolating guilt, and preparing to bring grief to an American frontier founded on bloodshed, capitalist greed, rampant self-interest and immigrant exploitation. (Eastwood, shying away from the supernatural, has stated more than once that he had always thought of his character as the dead sheriff’s brother, but the film never suggests this, and offers only notions of cosmic eeriness.)

Taking advantage of the town’s quaking fear over a trio of returning outlaws (led by Geoffrey Lewis, Juliette’s dad), the gunslinger essentially takes over, making a put-upon midget (Billy Curtis) sheriff and mayor, having a lavish welcome-home picnic set up for the impending criminals, and forcing the townspeople to literally paint the entire town blood red (one of the gritty ‘70s’ most Boschian images). Eastwood’s character even renames the town ‘Hell’ in red paint on the sign at the town limits, further suggesting an Old Testament reading – or even an existentialist view, in which Hell, as per Sartre’s No Exit, is no more than our own sins and our own communities. Either way, you cannot escape the fact that all westerns are about America in symbolic terms, and in High Plains Drifter the only America we see is Lago itself, rotten and secretive and visited by divine winds of reprisal. Despite his dogged ham-and-egger-ism, Eastwood has fashioned a parable about our national state of mind and its long history of carnage and usurpation, and despite his apparently ambivalent attitude towards state violence (compare the neocon Heartbreak Ridge (1986) to Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), and commence the head scratching), he has made a film, in an era chockablock with such films, about the injustice of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

It’s a good thing High Plains Drifter is such a rich and thorny creature in its ambiguities and abstracted subtexts, because on the surface it does indulge in hammy TV acting (mostly from a supporting cast full of faces familiar from old TV westerns like Rawhide and Bonanza), and veers close to being simplistic and cheesy in its attitudes toward women, gunplay and tough-guy patois. As for Eastwood, he had shown such vulnerability two years earlier in his directorial debut Play Misty for Me (1971), but in this, his second shot at directing, he effectively transports himself back to the inexpressive, squinting Man with No Name of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. (Both "S. Leone" and "Don Siegel" are seen as names on gravestones.) But as we have learned in recent decades (from, among other devotees, Quentin Tarantino and Tim Burton), one decade’s dismissible genre junk is another’s pop-culture commentary. Like other potent pulp from the late-‘60s-early-‘70s, – I’m thinking about George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), Franklin J. Schaffner’s Planet of the Apes, Steven Spielberg’s Duel (1971), Bob Clark’s Deathdream (1974), Cornel Wilde’s No Blade of Grass (1970), etc. – Eastwood’s movie resonates beyond its grade-B trappings, and speaks eloquently in simple language about epochal social realities.

DVD Times Mike Sutton

AboutFilm.com (Carlo Cavagna) review [B+]

Images Movie Journal Elizabeth Abele

eFilmCritic.com (Jay Seaver) review [5/5]

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [4/5] Richard Scheib

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice review [4/5] Brad Laidman, also seen here: Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats review

Ruthless Reviews review Erich Schulte

The Video Vacuum [Mitch Lovell]

eFilmCritic.com (Chris Parry) review [5/5]

Bill's Movie Emporium [Bill Thompson]

Cinepassion.org Fernando F. Croce

CineScene.com (Kristen Ashley) review

FilmFanatic.org

Filmicability with Dean Treadway

Digital Retribution Mr. Intolerance

Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats

The Spinning Image (Graeme Clark) review

Edwin Jahiel <ejahiel@uiuc.edu> review

Ozus' World Movie Reviews (Dennis Schwartz)

DVD Verdict - Clint Eastwood: Western Icon Collection [Dan Mancini] reviewing TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA, also JOE KIDD

High Plains Drifter: Classic Movie Location Found on the Shores of Mono Lake! VorMedia

TV Guide review

THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES B+ 92

USA (135 mi) 1976 ‘Scope

A gorgeous looking ‘Scope film shot by Bruce Surtees, who also shot HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973), that uses a near wordless opening montage of changing events that reveal the backstory even before the opening credits roll, maximizing its use of authentic landscape, impressively revealing the West as a place of great expanse while contrasting that against the psychological boundaries that exist within a man’s mind, where despite the limitless horizons, a man can not run from his past. Eastwood plays Josey Wales, a dirt poor farmer from Missouri whose life changes when his wife and son are murdered and his house burned to the ground by renegade Union troops known as Redlegs led by a cutthroat officer, Captain Terrill (Bill McKinney), whose job is to demoralize what’s left of the South by leading brutal massacres. Wales joins a team of Confederate raiders led by Commander Fletcher, John Vernon, who vow revenge, but after a few operations together the war soon ends, leaving them an armed but rag-tag group with no war to fight and nowhere to go but back home, all but Josey Wales, who has no home to return to. As these men turn themselves and their weapons over to a Union outpost, all part of an amnesty agreement, they are double-crossed and shot down in cold blood by none other than Captain Terrill, where Wales leads a valiant rescue attempt, but he is only able to rescue a young kid (Sam Bottoms) who is severely wounded. When the kid starts singing “The Rose of Alabama,” we know the end is near. Thus begins Eastwood’s transformation from a simple farmer to a reluctant killer back to a human being, but there are plenty more bodies collected along the way.

Blamed for the murder of the men gunned down in his unit, Josey Wales goes on the run, turned into a legendary and mythical figure whose exploits have been exaggerated throughout the territory, all an excuse for Terrill to track him down like a dog, he and any other bounty hunters scraping out a meager existence looking to collect the hefty reward money. The film shifts into a road movie as Josey Wales starts collecting a few stragglers along the way, more outsiders and derelicts who don’t fit into society anywhere else, led by Chief Dan George (and his castaway dog) who adds a comical turn as a disgruntled Cherokee Indian whose domestication to reservations has stolen his Indian identity, not to mention his wife and family who lost their lives on the Trail of Tears. His distrust of the white men matches Josie’s own view of betrayal and human loss. But they also pick up a stray Indian girl (Geraldine Keams) who herself has been victimized, also a Unionist group of Kansas pioneers led by the complaining grand matriarch Paula Trueman who doesn’t trust anybody, hauling her granddaughter Sandra Locke in tow, but granny reveals after an attack by marauding outlaws that she’d rather ride with the contemptible Josey Wales than with the Commanches.

One of the better portrayals in the Eastwood repertoire, the film sets a somber and reflective tone, maintaining the strong, silent image of Clint as a fabled gunslinger, using his macho persona that he already established from the Sergio Leone trilogy, but here he is haunted by his past, plagued by scars deeper than the one etched on his face, and at least attempts a revisionist history about the American West, telling the truth about the massacre of Indians, the open prejudice and hostility displayed by western settlers toward Indians, while also revealing the presence of roving gangs that terrorized the country even after the Civil War was over, as a distrustful anxiety continued to spread thoughout the initial stages of this reformatted Union creating a palpable mistrust of government that exists to this day. Adapted from a source novel Gone to Texas by Forrest Carter, who is part Cherokee Indian, the excellent screenplay is written by Philip Kaufman who was the original director as well, but thinking his shooting style was too slow, Eastwood, who had secured the rights to the book and was executive producer, eventually took over. If any Eastwood movie shows insight into the director’s own world view it is this one, much more personal than it at first appears and always cited as one of Eastwood’s own favorites, as the character Josey Wales believes that by their own actions governments have shown they are dishonorable, whether it be Union or Confederate, but individual men have the capacity to remain honorable to one another, perhaps the last vestiges of morality left after the ravages of war, and it is this creed that forms a more perfect Union.

Eye for Film (Jeff Robson) review [4.5/5]

A remarkable film which sets out as a revenge Western: Eastwood sees his family massacred and joins the Confederate guerillas; after the Civil War, he is hunted by Union soldiers while he pursues his family's slayer and a friend apparently turned traitor. But slowly the film changes direction, until through a series of comic interludes it becomes the story of a man who (re)discovers his role as family man, as he befriends Indians and various strays and leads them to a paradise of sorts where they can forget their individual pasts. If that seems like a rewrite of Hawks' Red River, visually The Outlaw Josey Wales is closest to Anthony Mann in its breathtaking survey of American landscapes (and seasons). Most importantly, after a period of directorial uncertainty, the film demonstrated Eastwood's ability to recreate his first starring role, as the mythic Man with No Name of the Italian Westerns, and to subtly undercut it through comedy and mockery.

eFilmCritic.com review [5/5] Slyder

Clint Eastwood has always had a sure hand on Westerns ever since he debuted on Rawhide and did with Sergio Leone the Man with No Name Trilogy as well as several others. But Eastwood always worried about showing the awful truth amongst the genre which has been full of clichés ever since John Wayne rode off with his babe into the sunset in his wagon. It would all culminate with his masterful Unforgiven, but before that, he was well on his way with classics like High Plains Drifter and this little film, which stands as a high watermark in the revisionist western genre.

Josey Wales (Eastwood) is a quiet southern farmer who falls victim of the brutal Redleg gang since his family’s raped and murdered and he’s left for dead. Hell-bent on revenge, Wales finds out that the Redleg gangs is with the Union Army of the North and with a group of farmers headed by “Bloody Bill” Anderson, he joins the Southern Cavalry and the Civil War. The North eventually wins the war over the south, and the farmers whom fought simply to defend their land are now the last of the holdouts. Wales though, has no one to go back to and his thirst for revenge will forever make him an outlaw. After being framed for the killing of the farmers, Wales flees while the Redleg Posse headed by Captain Terrill (Bill McKinney) and including Fletcher (John Vernon) the man who turned in the farmers and was betrayed and now is forced to ride with them, rallies after Wales.

Eastwood and cinematographer Bruce Surtees easily capture the rugged and wild nature of the West, shooting with dark depressed colors and epic-like faded landscapes. The film is long, clocking at 135 minutes, deliberately paced but never boring and it allows the script and characters to develop accordingly. Jerry Fielding’s score stands amongst the finest scores out there and helps the film in certain times when the pace threatens to deaden. Just as he did before with High Plains Drifter, Eastwood takes the premise he originally laid in the Man with No Name Triology as blueprint and further evolves it, bringing in significant new topics which help debunk several myths which the Western genre was once associated with. Thanks to screenwriters Sonia Chernus and the renowned Philip Kaufman (whom was originally to direct the film but fired by Eastwood), no more are the Northern Armies and Southern Armies over-generalized as the saviors of the republic and the evil racist barons respectively. Many people in the south, General Robert E. Lee included didn’t care or agreed with the Confederacy, yet they fought for the south to defend their land, and there will always be bandits whether it’s in the north or in the south.

The subject of the Indians is also touched once Wales meets Lone Wattie (Chief Dan George) and his telling of how the Indians were taken away from their land and resettled. This pretty much blows away the cliché of Indians being a bunch of ignorant savages as a whole new light is shed with these scenes as well as the scene in which Wales confronts Comanche chief Ten Bears (Will Sampson). Wales is also given quite an interesting development, ending somewhat between both a hero and anti-hero, mean with his guns but compelled to help people who have fallen in a similar situation like him (an Indian named Moonlight [Geraldine Keams] and a pair of Kansas natives Granny Sarah [Paula Trueman] and Laura Lee [Sondra Locke looking hotter than ever] whom later be Wales’s love interest); all of this in his quest to somewhat find peace of mind, but with his past haunting him and chasing him down, he never will find it, and he will always be at war until he finally settles it once and for all.

In the end, this is a superbly crafted piece, featuring a strong direction, an engrossing, well-developed story and fine performances all around. The Outlaw Josey Wales is one of the finer Westerns of the genre and along with High Plains Drifter, a prelude to what was to come. 4.5-5

Reel.com dvd review [3.5/4] Tor Thorsen (link lost)

The '70s weren't exactly the best time to make Westerns. Citing declining public interest and dwindling grosses during the decade, a major entertainment industry journalist went so far as to call the genre "financial leprosy." Yet two of the best Westerns ever were made during the disco era — High Plains Drifter and The Outlaw Josey Wales, both starring and directed by Clint Eastwood. Drifter has been available on a handsome, if bare-bones, DVD from Universal. Now, however, Warner Bros. has released a freshly remastered version of Outlaw as part of its Clint Eastwood Collection, and it's been well worth the wait.

Outlaw was based on The Rebel Outlaw Josey Wales, Forrest Carter's novel about a defiant Confederate guerilla who leaves a trail of good deeds and shot-up Union soldiers behind him on his journey from Missouri to Texas. To say it was unknown in 1974 is an understatement — it had a print run of only 75 copies from a tiny Southern publishing house. As much out of desperation as admiration, Carter sent a copy to Eastwood's film company, Malpaso, where a bored production assistant just happened to give it a casual read. So impressed was the assistant by the character of Wales, that he recommended the book to his boss, who immediately wanted to turn it into a film. But no sooner had Eastwood started production on the film than Forrest landed a major publishing deal to release the novel — re-titled Gone to Texas — which went on to be a best-seller.

How do I know all this? Because the "Hell Hath No Fury: The Making of The Outlaw Josey Wales" featurette on the Outlaw DVD told me so. Although it's a bit heavy on plot exposition at first, the half-hour mini-documentary is the highlight of the disc, an informative treat that more than abrogates any need for a commentary track. It extensively covers the pre-production re-writing of the story, which co-screenwriter Phillip Kaufman reworked from a the-South-will-rise-again drama to a humanistic adventure. Unfortunately, "Hell" barely mentions the juiciest story from Outlaw's production — the "creative differences" that made Eastwood yank the director's reins from Kaufman 10 days into the shoot. However, the featurette makes up for this shortcoming with extensive interviews with stars Eastwood, Sam Bottoms (Lance from Apocalypse Now), Bill McKinney (a long-time Eastwood collaborator), Geraldine Keams, and John Vernon (best known as the basso profundo-voiced Dean Wormer in Animal House). The only living star we don't hear from is Sondra Locke, whose decade-long romance with Eastwood started during Outlaw and ended in a bitter split in the mid-'80s.

"Hell" also features comments from editor Ferris Webster, who speaks glowingly of Eastwood's consummate filmmaking skill. This would sound like hyperbole, except for the fact that you can see the man in action in over 15 minutes of crisply preserved behind-the-scenes footage. Eastwood's calm demeanor is the polar opposite of Francis Ford Coppola's hysterics visible in Hearts of Darkness. Granted, Outlaw was a much smaller-scale undertaking, but Eastwood's steady energy, unflappable patience, and command of the craft is simply Kurosawa-esque, a feat made all the more remarkable by the fact that he's starring in the film too. Listening to Eastwood eruditely explain why he likes shooting films in the fall (it's the angle of sunlight more than the colors) and watching him effortlessly nail one complex shot after another, it's hard to believe that one of his next films, Every Which Way But Loose, would co-star an orangutan.

Also included on the Outlaw DVD is the featurette called "Eastwood in Action." Reminiscent of the "Hero Cop" short on the Magnum Force DVD, its low-end production values and positively obsequious tone make it the 1970s equivalent of the cheesy "sneak peek" documentaries which pad 21st-century cable schedules. More enlightening are the text production notes and cast bios, which deliver funnier-than-usual trivia about the actors; for instance, did you know Vernon's real name is Adolphus Vernon Agoposwicz? There's also an appropriately macho trailer to boot.

As always, though, the real reason to get a film on DVD is the sound and picture quality, and the Outlaw Josey Wales disc doesn't disappoint. Digitally transferred from a richly hued print, the image likely looks better than it did in theaters back in 1975, with its 2.35:1 widescreen scope capturing the vastness and beauty of its Utah, Arizona, and California locations. The new Dolby Digital 5.1 sound mix is a vast improvement too; delivering a lot of subtle wilderness ambience through the rear channels.

The audio-visual remastering and extras make Outlaw Josey Wales essential to any Western fan's DVD collection. What makes it quintessential is the end credits of the "Hell Hath No Fury" featurette, where Eastwood comments extensively and hilariously on Wales' signature habit — his aggressive spraying of chewing-tobacco spittle on dead foes, annoying salesmen, dogs, horses, insects, scorpions, and anything else that gets in his way. Besides adroitly explaining the totemic value of the chaw-spraying, he also says which brands of chewing tobacco he would use for each circumstance on the set. But parents shouldn't worry about their kids running out to guy a king-size pouch of Red Man — Eastwood officially discourages the habit, and pleads, laughing into the camera, "Please don't send me a free case! I don't want it!"

On Hell’s Hero Coming to Breakfast: Clint Eastwood and The Outlaw Josey Wales Karli Lukas from Senses of Cinema, February 2004

DVD Times Mike Sutton

Turner Classic Movies review Scott McGee

914 (55). The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976, Clint Eastwood) Kevin Lee from Also Like Life, May 25, 2008

Movieline Magazine review Joshua Mooney

eFilmCritic.com (Brian McKay) review [5/5]

DVD Review Guido Henkel

DVD Talk (Jason Bovberg) dvd review [4/5] [Special Edition]

DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review Special Edition

Movie Reviews UK review [4/5] Damian Cannon

DVD Verdict (Norman Short) dvd review

Grouch at Epinions.com

Cinepassion.org Fernando F. Croce

User reviews from imdb Author: ironside (robertfrangie@hotmail.com) from Mexico

Brilliant Observations on 1173 Films [Clayton Trapp]

Michael Demtschyna

The Spinning Image (Graeme Clark) review

The Stop Button (Andrew Wickliffe) review [4/4]

Urban Cinefile dvd review Shannon J. Harvey

The Outlaw Josey Wales Dave Kehr from The Reader

Classic Film Guide (capsule)

BBC Films (Almar Haflidason) dvd review

The New York Times (Richard Eder) review

THE GAUNTLET

USA (109 mi) 1977 ‘Scope

Qwipster's Movie Reviews [Vince Leo]

'Big .45 calibre fruit! Macho mentality!' - Eastwood under siege as Sondra Locke leads the assault on his monolithic image. As much comedy as action picture, The Gauntlet mines the vein of humour discovered in The Outlaw Josey Wales: again most of the laughs are at Eastwood's expense. In his most mellow cop role yet, he plays a long-suffering, rather dumb officer who extradites a smart, fast-talking hooker, but ends up hiking her cross country, pursued by mob and cops alike (more identical than alike). The well paced script is an effective mixture of worldliness and naïveté: despite the couple's graphic sparring scenes, in which Eastwood more than meets his match, their relationship remains curiously innocent; a kind of fugitive romanticism pervades. A major source of amusement is watching Eastwood the director leaving Eastwood the actor barely in control throughout. Eastwood's Annie Hall?

Clint Eastwood (The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Eiger Sanction) stars as Ben Shockley, a Phoenix cop sent to Nevada to transport a key witness for a well-publicized mafia trial. The woman in question is a feisty prostitute named Gus Malley (Locke, Sudden Impact), and things begin to look bleak when the Vegas odds of their success in making it to the trial approach upwards of 100 to 1. Highly perilous adventures occur all along their journey, as it's uncertain who they can trust, and not getting along with each other doesn't help either.

Also directed by Eastwood, The Gauntlet is a preposterous and far over-the-top action flick that delivers entertainment while stretching the limits of credibility. Eastwood and Locke are fun to watch as they fight like a cat tied to a dog. and Eastwood, the director, appears to have had fun setting up the wild stunt pieces, which, while making little sense as far as realism, do offer some memorable highlights to talk about and laugh at (or with, as it were).

The sheer absurdity of The Gauntlet is a double-edged sword, making the film fun to watch, but also destroying the tense drama that might have played it if it stayed within the realm of reality. The Gauntlet is recommended for Eastwood fans primarily, or just action fans in the mood for some no-brain entertainment.

User comments from imdb (Page 7) Author: Robert J. Maxwell (rmax304823@yahoo.com) from Deming, New Mexico

Eastwood must have wondered what to do with his image after playing two sock 'em characters in earlier movies -- The Man With No Name, and Harry Callahan. What do I do now, Ma? It's easy to visualize Eastwood sitting down alone and frowning, because he's really thinking hard, you know? And kind of doing thought experiments. And ruminating somewhat along these lines: "The Western is headed toward the graveyard. Not much future there. The main battle in the early 1970s is in modern society, corrupt as it is, what with Watergate and whatnot. Dirty Harry Redux? No -- not yet. Not again. How can I remold this image in which I've been cast. Sergio Leone said that Michelangelo could look at a block of marble and see the man inside, but that he, Leone, could look at me and see the block of marble inside. Not very nice. A good thing he didn't speak English and I couldn't speak Italian. Wait! I think I've got it! We'll take Dirty Harry, give him a new name and location, and turn him upside down! Well -- sideways anyhow. We'll suggest that he's a drunk, but drop it pretty soon. There's a limit to how dirty we want this guy to be. And this time we'll -- that's it! -- we'll give him a girl!" Ben Shockley isn't the brightest cop on the planet, but despite that initial pint of booze falling out of his car, and his day-long stubble, he gets the job done. The job is picking up an informer in Las Vegas, Gus Malley, and getting him to Phoenix so he can testify. The Phoenix police force however is corrupt at the top and the betting in Vegas is against Shockley and Malley reaching Phoenix. Gus Malley turns out to be the ravishing, finely educated, and perceptive Sondra Locke. Eastwood once explained carefully to an interviewer why he had chosen her: he wanted to get away from the cliche of the dumb whore. Right, so he chose his beautiful young girl friend to play the hooker. (If he really wanted to avoid the cliche of the dumb whore, he could have chosen Colleen Dewhurst, except that she would have knocked him out of the box.) Nice photography, fantastic and unbelievable plot, with exploding ambulances, sniping, helicopter chases, an armored Greyhound bus and a house turned into lacework by fusillades of bullets. Nice performances by Bill McKinney as a Las Vegas policeman who is shot to pieces. (He's played so many mean parts that one is pleased when he gets it, even though he's nominally a good guy.) And by Pat Hingle, who deserved better. (Did anyone see him in "The Grifters"?) And especially by William Prince. Prince is a real smoothie, and a pleasure to watch, professionally competent as he is, and a Cornellian too. He had a decent role as a handsome young corpsman in "Destination Tokyo." Following that, he had virtually no lead parts but has turned in an interesting series of increasingly older character studies. (He was the likable sketch artist in "The Stepford Wives.") Sondra Locke is easy on the eyes. Speaking of eyes, hers seem an almost unbelievable cobalt blue. There's less to Eastwood's character here than meets the eye, no development to speak of, and nothing of much interest. The Greyhound bus, wheezing and sighing and flapping its tires, gives the best performance.

Cinepassion.org Fernando F. Croce

The Gauntlet Eastwood plays dumb cop, by Robert Alpert from Jump Cut

Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats review

The Stop Button (Andrew Wickliffe) review [1.5/4]

Light Views, Reviews & Previews (John Larsen)

The Spinning Image (Graeme Clark) review

The New York Times (Vincent Canby)

DVDBeaver dvd review [Blu-Ray Version] Gary W. Tooze

BRONCO BILLY

USA (116 mi) 1980

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

A disarming movie, standing somewhere between a comic, contemporary version of The Outlaw Josey Wales (bunch of no-hopers finding fulfilment together) and Frank Capra (good 'little people', runaway heiress, scheming Eastern bureaucrats). Basically, it's the charming tale of a New Jersey shoe-salesman who fantasises about being a cowboy, and takes a group of assorted weirdos on the road with a travelling show. Not a lot to it in terms of plot, but Eastwood manages to both undermine and celebrate his character's fantasy life, while offering a few gentle swipes at contemporary America (the Stars and Stripes tent sewn together by mental hospital inmates). Fragile, fresh, and miles away from his hard-nosed cop thrillers, it's the sort of film only he would, and could, make.

Apollo Movie Guide [Ed Gonzalez]

Clint Eastwood's underappreciated Bronco Billy is an affectionate ode to the fading myth of the American West and the enduring power of the American Dream. Eastwood, in one of his first roles to examine his own Western icon status, plays the titular cowpoke, a former New Jersey shoe salesman-turned-sharpshooter. Billy is equal parts showman, dreamer, and den mother to a clan of outcasts that includes a Vietnam deserter (Sam Bottoms), a disgraced doctor (Scatman Crothers), a Native American and his wife (Dan Vadis and Sierra Pecheur), and a thief (Bill McKinney). The troupe makes a meager living putting on a cheerfully hokey cowboys-and-Indians show at carnivals, orphanages, and insane asylums, believing that fame and fortune -- or at least enough money for a few beers at the local watering hole -- waits just around the corner. At one out-of-the-way stop, Billy recruits as his new assistant Antoinette Lily (Sondra Locke), a snooty heiress who's just been deserted by her dim bulb husband (Geoffrey Lewis). Slowly, he teaches her that life isn't something that's given to you, but what you make it. "Who do you think you are?" she asks Billy with a sneer. "I am who I want to be," he replies, verbalizing the film's steadfast conviction that the American Dream is alive and well. What's on its last legs, however, is the legend of the American West. Billy's crew, playing to dwindling audiences, represent the last vestiges of a bygone era of gunslingers and Native American warriors. The story can sometimes be silly -- Lewis' stay in a mental institution is both contrived and burdened with clunky symbolic baggage -- and Locke, as usual, gives a performance that's equal parts feisty and cloying. Yet the film's sincere affection for the antiquated cowboy is palpable, and allows slightly heavy-handed moments like Billy and company performing their climactic show in a patchwork tent made of American flags to retain their subdued, authentic poignancy.

Bronco Billy (Clint Eastwood) is an old-fashioned guy governed by old-fashioned principles. An ex-New Jersey shoe salesman, he heads a Wild West tent show to escape the banality of his previous existence. Replacing female assistants happens to be a daily occurrence, until a debutante named Antoinette Lily (Sondra Locke) enters his life and almost brings down the show single-handedly.

Much as in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, star/director Eastwood successfully captures his characters’ quirkiness. Billy’s tent show gang ranges from an Indian snake-wrangler to a rope-twirling draft dodger. We don’t learn a whole lot about these characters, so like the later film it is ultimately something akin to ‘Altman-Light’, but we learn enough to know that Billy is a well-meaning father figure.

Eastwood, much like Burt Reynolds’ character in Boogie Nights, welcomes everyone into an unconventional but strangely warm environment. These characters have abandoned careers as doctors or bank tellers to pursue something more enlightening, and Billy is happy to take them in. These people achieve solidarity and gain purpose by traveling the Mid West and providing people with old-style entertainment.

The plot revolves around Antoinette stumbling upon Bronco Billy in the midst of her marriage failing. Of course, a rich girl like Antoinette can’t just disappear, and her money-hungry stepmother convinces the family lawyer to accuse Antoinette’s wayward husband of murder.

As her family’s machinations unfold, Antoinette begins to feel at home in Billy’s world. A prudish and obnoxious woman, she eventually becomes the best assistant Billy has ever seen. This doesn’t make her any nicer, so Billy works hard to warm her heart.

This story of opposites that initially don’t attract is pretty basic and predictable stuff, but the film succeeds because of its old-fashioned humour. There’s nothing profound here and this is certainly not an accomplished morality tale like Unforgiven, but it is nonetheless a wonderful comedic diversion. The highlight of the film comes in the form of Eastwood and his posse trying to rob a train – like a flashback to his earlier career.

Eastwood is the star here and he gives a great performance as the nurturing father figure. Sondra Locke is more of an acquired taste, but I found her performance to be wholly appropriate in light of the type of character she is playing. Some might criticize Locke for not toning down the obnoxious persona once her character falls for Billy, but this honest portrayal works for me. And if there is something that Billy tries to teach everyone he encounters in his film, it is to abandon the banality of life and be yourself, embracing your full potential.

Urban Cowboy. Bronco Billy Women, the Last Frontier, by Rachel Kranz from Jump Cut

CultureCartel.com (Lucas Stensland) review [5/5]

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice review [4/5] also seen here: Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats review

DVDTown [John J. Puccio]

eFilmCritic.com (Rob Gonsalves) review [4/5]

Cinepassion Fernando F. Croce

HONKYTONK MAN

USA (122 mi) 1982

One of the most oddball and heroically unfashionable superstar vehicles ever contrived. Only Eastwood, with the rest of Hollywood obsessed with taking us up where we belong, could have the audacity to play a comparatively odious and untalented country singer dying of consumption during the Depression. Much of the film is concerned with his picaresque pilgrimage to a Nashville audition along with nephew (played by Eastwood's son) and grandpappy (the excellent McIntire), and it culminates in a last-chance recording session during which the singer nearly coughs himself to death. The whole thing veers wildly in quality, and no Eastwood-hater should go within a mile of it; but few lovers of American cinema could fail to be moved by a venture conceived so recklessly against the spirit of its times.

Slant Magazine review Eric Henderson

Clint Eastwood's dust bowl drama Honkytonk Man is a sensitive road picture about a mostly luckless aspiring country music singer. It was also one of the earlier films directed by Eastwood to reveal the unmistakable disparity between the silent assassin persona audiences had come to embrace in him and the much gentler humanist behind the camera. Anchored by an unforced if slightly episodic screenplay by Clancy Carlile (based on his own novel), Eastwood cast his own son Kyle as his on-screen nephew, Whit. The two of them (accompanied by a mostly peripheral Grandpa figure) escape the parched Okie land on a road trip to Nashville, where Red Stovall (Eastwood) expects an audition at the Grand Ole Opry. Stopping at various whorehouses, poker dens, and juke joints along the way, Whit comes to respect the man he first witnesses passed out drunk at the wheel of his car. Though the film is obviously coated with a veneer of nostalgic sentimentality, Eastwood never lets Honkytonk Man veer into maudlin territory. In fact, the film's construction is so smooth, the tragic finale manages to be foreshadowed enough to not seem gratuitous. Eastwood followed the box-office non-event of Honkytonk Man the very next year with yet another installment in the Dirty Harry series: Sudden Impact. In light of the bitter truths of Honkytonk, the financial success of Sudden Impact seems less like a case of the Phoenix rising from the ashes, but rather Freddy or Jason rising from the grave one more time.

Turner Classic Movies dvd review Jeremy Arnold

Since 1971's Play Misty For Me, Clint Eastwood has directed 24 feature films and established himself as one of the great current Hollywood filmmakers. A handful of those 24 films are bona fide masterpieces (such as The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven, and The Bridges of Madison County) and some are merely ordinary, but the vast majority are at least interesting, solid, and very well-crafted.

Honkytonk Man (1982) was Eastwood's ninth picture as director and the second he also produced - an important item to note when you consider that he has had complete creative control over most of his films ever since. While not one of his greatest films, Honkytonk Man is nonetheless underrated. It features the perfect compositions and clean editing we've come to expect from Eastwood's movies, fine acting all around, gentle but satisfying humor, and some emotional dramatic moments. What it lacks is a truly strong story. Still, it's very watchable if you get in the right mood for a leisurely road movie and character study.

Set in the Depression, Clint plays Red Stovall, a country singer who is determined to audition at the Grand Ole Opry before he dies of tuberculosis. Accompanied by his adolescent nephew Whit (played by Clint's son Kyle Eastwood, who does just fine) and Whit's Grandpa (the great veteran character actor John McIntire), Red departs Oklahoma for Nashville. Along the way, Whit does most of the driving, tries his best to "look out for" Uncle Red, and comes of age as Red passes on some of his unique wisdom and ways of doing things - much of it funny (a chicken theft; a priceless visit to a whorehouse), some of it more sober (Whit must learn to deal with death). The story is certainly episodic, but the episodes are often so enjoyable that it doesn't matter too much. Red eventually makes it to Nashville, and his singing sequences there are touching and well-played, despite the fact that Eastwood's singing talent doesn't exactly measure up to his directing or acting abilities.

Still, Eastwood's well-known love of music, especially jazz and blues, is surely a reason he was drawn to this script. He even included cameos by several well-known musical artists. Famed country singer Marty Robbins was the most prominent - he appears in the recording sequence, playing and singing with Eastwood on the song "Honkytonk Man." Robbins died before the film was released, but his recording of "Honkytonk Man" reached the Billboard Country Top 10 posthumously.

Recently issued as part of Warner Home Video's Clint Eastwood Collection, this disc has few frills - just a trailer and a printed list of highlights of Eastwood's career - but the movie itself is a perfectly fine transfer.

Cinepassion.org Fernando F. Croce

DVD Talk (Shannon Nutt) dvd review [2/5]

PALE RIDER B 84

USA (115 mi) 1985 ‘Scope

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

—Revelations 6:8

While this is another gorgeous looking ‘Scope film, shot in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho by Bruce Surtees, also shooting THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES (1976) and HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973), the script by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack comes up short, as the storyline is more overtly obvious and so much feels embellished from other sources, where another “Man with No Name” rides into town called Preacher (Eastwood), a hard nosed guy fast with his fists who knows how to take care of himself, impressing the locals who are ridiculed and humiliated every time they step into town by local thugs who work for Coy LaHood, Richard Dysart, the man who owns the mining company and the rights to all the land and mineral rights except for a small patch of claims tended to by a bunch of poor mining settlers whose ownership sticks in LaHood’s craw, as he’s a greedy capitalist who wants to have it all with his ecologically disastrous hydraulic mining operation and has no misgivings about wiping out the opposition through threat and intimidation. While not the great Western of the 80’s that many have suggested, there’s plenty of references here to Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI (1954), especially the opening scene which highlights a pack of riders on horseback that eventually target this small mining community and shoot it up, tear it apart, and leave it a vandalized wreck needing to be rebuilt, an incident designed to get them to hasten their departure. With the help of Eastwood, however, someone who can stand up to the bullying tactics and actually fight back, it gives them hope that if they all band together, in unity they can prevail.

The problem with films like this is that their “savior” is revered, adulated, loved, and desired as a mythological character who defies human limitations, as his outsider status allows him to be a super hero while trying to pretend he’s just a man. But compared to him, all the other men in this rag-tag group of squatters don’t stand up. So the women, young and old, idealize him as the perfect man who can save their community, who in every respect is an answer to their prayers. This is given even more reverential status as young Megan, Sydney Penny, is reading the passage of Revelations from the Bible to her mother (Carrie Snodgrass) that describes the arrival of a man on a pale horse just as Eastwood rides in on his white horse. Hull Barrett (Michael Moriarty) is excellent as a decent guy who’s stepped in to help raise Megan with her mother after they were abandoned. It’s his neck that gets rescued from a ritual beating at the hand of LaHood’s men by a total stranger who is soon seen as a man of the cloth. Barrett offers him food and a place to stay out of gratitude, which leads the Preacher into this mix of civil unrest, as people have had enough of repeatedly having their lives destroyed. The Preacher pitches in and does a hard day’s work, earning the respect of the other men. But when LaHood sends a goon (Richard Kiel) to make things right after several of his men came back inexplicably injured, the Preacher may as well have performed a miracle, as no one had ever stood up to the LaHood’s before, much less successfully. His presence gives the group a newfound confidence which quickly dissipates when the preacher mysteriously disappears, only to return again in a most auspicious manner.

LaHood sends for Sheriff Stockburn (John Russell), guns for hire, as he always travels with his six armed deputies, the kind of muscle people with money can afford in order to get what they want. There’s a mysterious connection here, as both have heard of one another, but Stockburn believes Eastwood’s character is dead, likely due to the 6 bullet wounds we earlier saw on his back. This bridge is never connected, as it remains a mystery, which is actually part of the appeal of this film, as it does play out as myth instead of reality. Eastwood is excellent in a role where he barely has to utter any words, as his actions are all that matters in a film like this, where the action sequences are concise, furiously violent, and quickly done with, very much like a samurai confrontation. Only the final scene has any degree of elongated pace, where Eastwood’s presence is largely unseen, a shadowy figure where all we see is a peek of his face, a glimpse of his hand, as otherwise it’s a series of reaction shots, all victims from his largely successful stealth campaign, concluding in the most traditional of western stylizations. The film feels like a less sentimentalized version of SHANE (1953), using a similar ending with a character shouting out their names which also resembles the eloquent final sequence in DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990). There is a nice sedate pace to the movie and there always seems to be a fresh layer of snow on the mountains and streets, but it disappointingly never delves deep enough into any single character, or provides motives beyond the typical levels of money, power, and greed, suggesting too much power accumulated in a single man’s hands corrupts his vision, moral judgment, and sense of individual worth, leaving him, for all practical purposes, blind and rooted in Machiavellian fascism. The problem is that in order to bring him down, the suggested solution, all wrapped up in Western lore, is that only the strongest and most grotesque use of violence prevails—no different really than the mentality on display from the DIRTY HARRY (1971 – 1976) saga.

DVD Talk (Stuart Galbraith IV) dvd review [3/5] [Blu-Ray Version]

One of the oldest Western themes: an enigmatic knight errant rides into town, sides with the poor but decent folk against the robber barons, then rides back to the horizon leaving the West won for the forces of good. This is shot in classical style, with much less of the baroque, mystical flourish which characterised High Plains Drifter. But there are sufficient question-marks inserted to lift it out of the routine: Eastwood's preacher man seems to carry the stigmata of a ghost; and he arrives as the answer to a maiden's prayer. Furthermore, his care for the landscape puts him in the Anthony Mann class. It's good to be back in the saddle again.

User reviews from imdb (Page 2) Author: MisterWhiplash from United States

Say what you will about the man or his methods of storytelling, Clint Eastwood is a master at his own particular kind of style. It's so subtle that it's called easily as conventional, but there's something there, something very dark in his style that has come out in many of the films he's directed (and sometimes starred in). In fact, in one way or another to greater or lessor digress all of his directed/acted westerns (High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven) run a streak of the bleak in them, and only once in a while become resolved in light of a happy ending or something decent. They're still (usually) traditional stories, only stripped away of all of the BS that John Wayne had to carry with him like an insecure badge of masculine honor.

Pale Rider is one of the 'happier' ones, by proxy that a) Eastwood, in a rare outing, plays something that is actually more-so the hero than an anti-hero, only anti in that he doesn't quite play by the law (then again, neither do the law in the film- the six or seven "deputies"), and b) there is something of an actual happy ending, different from Fistful of Dollars only inasmuch that, again, the Preacher is a true good-guy Man-with-no-name. This doesn't necessarily make Eastwood's character any less of a bad-ass than usual, or how he plays him by proxy, which makes it even more interesting. There's moments of insatiable one-liner-type wit, or just a couple of laugh-out-loud bits of real "grit" that we come to love from Eastwood in these kinds of roles. What makes it work as something nearing the wholesome (if not entirely PG-rated) is the conscience of the Preacher- who, actually, hints at not being a preacher at all in a wonderful scene with Sarah Wheeler- and the spirit of the small-townies vs. the big money-barons like Coy LaHood.

The story, perhaps, isn't quite original. Even without having seen Shane (or, for that matter as a slightly opposite but relevant comparison, the Seven Samurai), I can tell there are used parts here, not least of which the last scene with the girl crying out for the Preaher on horseback. And there are some scenes that just ring as corny with the dialog or not all there performance-wise - sadly by this I mean the two principle female characters played by Carrie Songress and Sydney Penny, the latter having usually excruciatingly delivered lines like her miracle-plea. Maybe some will dig that part of the sub-plot, and while I didn't it did not detract from the overall entertainment value of Pale Rider.

It's mostly a lean, effective and fun/dark/absorbing thriller with killer climax and meaty male stock characters (i.e. Richard Kiel's mute Club, a serious parody of the parody Mongo from Blazing Saddles) that reveals the psychology behind the director while going for what works, simply, for the mainstream crowd. 8.5/10

User reviews from imdb (Page 2) Author: James Hitchcock from Tunbridge Wells, England

"Behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death"

"Pale Rider" is sometimes cited as the greatest Western of the eighties, although it had so little competition that that accolade does not seem much more than the cinematic equivalent of being the proverbial big fish in a small pond. (What competition it did have came principally from "Heaven's Gate", "Silverado" and "Young Guns"). The plot is that familiar one- familiar from films like "Shane" and Clint Eastwood's own "High Plains Drifter"- about the mysterious stranger in town who helps the locals fight off a gang of bandits. (Eastwood was a brave man to make a film on this theme in the eighties, as this was the plot satirised by Mel Brooks in "Blazing Saddles", his brilliant spoof Western from 1975. Club, the character played by Richard Kiel, even has something in common with Brooks' Mongo).

The film is set in a small gold-mining village (references to Sacramento suggest that it is in California) in the late nineteenth century. Coy LaHood, the wealthy boss of a powerful mining company, is desperate to drive the prospectors (whom he sneeringly calls "tin-pans") off their claims, and has hired a gang of ruffians to achieve this end. The tin-pans are on the verge of giving up; only one man, Hull Barrett, wants to stand firm. When Barrett travels into the nearest town to buy supplies he is cornered by the ruffians who threaten him with a vicious beating, but he is saved by a mysterious stranger, who later reveals himself to be a preacher. (We never find out his name; he is simply referred to as the Preacher throughout. The character played by Eastwood in "High Plains Drifter" remained similarly anonymous). Despite his clerical calling, he clearly knows how to fight with both a gun and a club, and his arrival gives the tin-pans hope to make a stand against LaHood and his bullies. Realising that his tactics are not succeeding, LaHood calls in the corrupt Marshal Stockburn and his team of six deputies, who have a reputation as lethal gunslingers.

This may be a familiar story, but Eastwood is able to inject some fresh elements into it. Firstly, in line with eighties thinking about the environment, there is an ecological viewpoint lacking in most earlier Westerns; the tin-pans' method of prospecting for gold is far less environmentally damaging than the methods used by LaHood's men, which involve blasting the rocks with high-pressure jets of water. (The film also has an anti-capitalist slant, favouring the little man against the big corporation). Secondly, there is a sub-plot involving Sarah, Barrett's widowed fiancée, and Megan her teenage daughter from her earlier marriage, both of whom fall in love with the Preacher. Although in both cases their love is unrequited, this gives the film an element of sexual tension not normally found in films of this type.

Thirdly, there is a strong religious or mystical current running through the picture, and not merely because the main character is a clergyman. The film's title has a literal meaning, in that the Preacher rides a pale grey horse, but there is also a quite deliberate Biblical reference. At one point Megan reads the following words from Chapter 6 of the Book of Revelation:- "Behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death". Stockburn and his deputies are together seven in number, a number which is often regarded (particularly in Revelations) as having a mystical significance. (It has also been suggested that they are an evil version of the seven gunfighters in "The Magnificent Seven").

Eastwood gives a fine performance as the Preacher, calm rational and authoritative, a performance which leaves open the possibility that there may be something supernatural about the character. When he is washing we see that his back bears the scars of a number of gunshot wounds which, I would have thought, would under normal circumstances have proved fatal. When LaHood and Stockburn are discussing him, Stockburn says that he reminds him of a man he once knew, only to correct himself a moment later. "Can't be. The man I'm thinking of is dead". The implication is that the Preacher may be a vengeful ghost returned from the dead. Certainly, his ability in the final shootout to appear and disappear at will suggests that he may have powers beyond those of a mortal man.

The film has a distinctive visual style, with strong contrasts of light and dark. The interior scenes are mostly dimly lit, the outdoor ones of some magnificent mountain scenery are shot in bright sunlight. This contrast may in itself have significance as symbolising the film's central theme of a clash of good and evil.

The film has had a mixed reception from the critics; Halliwell's Film Guide, for example, rather superciliously calls it a "violent, pretentious movie with little to be pretentious about", although others, such as Roger Ebert, have defended it. In my opinion, however, it is a good example of the western tradition, made at a time when that tradition was out of favour. It does not quite have the depth of "Unforgiven", Eastwood's masterpiece from a few years later, but by most other standards it is a very fine film. 8/10

Turner Classic Movies review Jay S. Steinberg

Much like his allegorical protagonist did for the oppressed prospectors of Pale Rider (1985), director/star Clint Eastwood rode to the rescue when the Hollywood Western genre was at its lowest ebb. Once the notoriously disastrous Heaven's Gate (1980) had made its title synonymous with wretched excess, the major studios wanted nothing to do with sagebrush sagas, and few if any similar projects that could be regarded as significant emerged in theaters through the mid-'80s.

Over his career, Eastwood had known nothing but success with oaters, and he went into the production of Pale Rider regarding the project as a safe gamble. As he declared in 1984 to Michael Henry in Clint Eastwood: Interviews (University Press of Mississippi), "It's not possible that The Outlaw Josey Wales could be the last Western to have been a commercial success. Anyway, aren't the Star Wars movies Westerns transposed into space?"

Eastwood opined to Henry that the Hollywood Western had gone stale by the '60s "probably because the great directors -- Anthony Mann, Raoul Walsh, John Ford -- were no longer working a lot." With the spaghetti Western cycle that had made him a global superstar having run its course, Eastwood found it time "to analyze the classic Western. You can still talk about sweat and hard work, about the spirit, about love for the land and ecology. And I think you can say all these things in the Western, in the classic mythological form."

As developed by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack, Eastwood's scenarists on The Gauntlet (1977), Pale Rider became a compelling concoction owing obvious debts to Shane (1953) and Eastwood's star-making efforts for Sergio Leone. A small community of tin-panners laboring in Gold Rush-era California is in constant threat of being rousted from their claims by a grasping mining baron (Richard Dysart), who aspires to plumb the land for himself. (As a nod to more contemporary ecological concerns, Dysart's urgency stems from the fact that his excessive hydraulic strip-mining operations on his own property have left the earth nearly barren.)

When the most defiant of the prospectors (Michael Moriarty) is accosted on a supply run by Dysart's thugs, he is aided by lone stranger Eastwood, who enters town astride a pale steed like an apocalyptic horseman from Biblical prophecy. The grateful Moriarty offers Eastwood lodging, a proposal that meets with initial resistance from his widow housemate (Carrie Snodgress). Once Eastwood sits down to dinner revealed in a minister's collar, Snodgress' teenage daughter (Sydney Penny) comes to regard him as the answer to her prayers for deliverance. Dysart, for his part, calls in for deadly reinforcements before the irksome itinerant can instill the on-the-ropes miners with faith.

Commenting on the movie with interviewer Christopher Frayling, Eastwood later said, "Pale Rider is kind of allegorical, more in the High Plains Drifter mode: like that, though he isn't a reincarnation or anything, but he does ride a pale horse like the four horsemen of the apocalypse...It's a classic story of the big guys against the little guys...the corporate mining which ends up in hydraulic mining, they just literally mow the mountains away, you know, the trees and everything...all that was outlawed in California some years ago, and they still do it in Montana and a few places."

Pale Rider has a splendid look, with the Sun Valley, Idaho, locations given vibrancy by Bruce Surtees, the cinematographer who served Eastwood's purposes so well in High Plains Drifter (1973) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). Moriarty, Snodgress and Dysart tackle their roles earnestly and effectively, as does a young Chris Penn as Dysart's smarmy son. The supporting cast is peppered with familiar faces from previous Eastwood films, notably Doug McGrath as a miner who runs tragically afoul of Dysart's heavies and John Russell as the mercenary marshal who shares an unspoken past with the inscrutable preacher.

With a take of better than $20 million in its first ten days of release (on a $6.9 million production cost) and a slate of positive reviews, the front office at Warner Brothers had no cause to regret the green-lighting of Pale Rider. While no major cycle of American Westerns would follow in its wake, the film stood as a vindication of the form and proof of its continuing viability.

Pale Rider : environmental politics, Eastwood style Joseph K. Heumann and Robin L. Murray from Jump Cut, Winter 2005

Peter Reiher

a wasted life Bryin Abraham, July 21, 2009

DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

DVD Verdict (Clark Douglas) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

The Stop Button (Andrew Wickliffe) review [0/4]

DVDBeaver dvd review [Blu-Ray Version] Gary W. Tooze

BIRD

USA (161 mi) 1988

Eastwood's Bird is bravely the Bird of the jazz faithful, with few concessions. Most of the exaggerations and telescopings of place and time will offend only the discographical mentality. The treatment of narcotics, race, and racism is matter-of-fact, nor is the sense of period insisted upon as it was in The Cotton Club; above all, brave beyond the call of duty, the director trusts the music, tricky old bebop. Music properly dominates the biopic, explaining Chan's long-suffering love for Bird and Bird's whole outlook on the world. The way the narrative leaps back and forth in time parallels the neurotic speed of uptake in bebop itself. Whitaker looks as if he's really playing, indicates the protean nature of the genius, and grabs the part of a lifetime with both hands. Venora's Chan is a miracle. The progression from the Chan of the courtship days,, with her hip, sassy dancer's walk, to the set face and shoulders of the common-law wife, tells a touching story of betrayed dreams. At last American cinema has done black music proud. Unforgettable.

Any true fan knows about Clint Eastwood's love for jazz music. Many of his urban action films feature jazzy soundtracks, sometimes performed by the man himself (who plays a mean piano). Once upon a time, though, Eastwood was able to bring three films into existence with jazz as their main subject. Warner Brothers has recently released these labors-of-love on beautiful new DVDs. All three are presented with stunning, sparkling sound, and, though they all lack for interesting extras, all three come highly recommended.

Eastwood made the switch from Hollywood icon to great world director with his viciously underrated Bird (1988, Warners, $19.98). This gentle, moody bio-pic of Charlie Parker (brilliantly played by Forest Whitaker) emphasized slowness and darkness, taking time to explore the corners of Parker's life, rather than zooming over the surface. Paradoxically, Bird was a success only in France, where, in the film, Parker finds his most truly appreciative audience.

That same year, Eastwood worked as producer on the excellent documentary Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser (1988, Warners, $19.98). Directed by Charlotte Zwerin (Gimme Shelter), the film collects tons of recently-found vintage footage of Monk in action; playing, talking, and spending time with friends. Zwerin connected the old footage with new interviews with Monk's friends and collaborators. The portrait that emerges is one of genius, sadness, and a certain withdrawn forlorn-ness, as shown in a single, haunting shot of Monk spinning around in circles in a crowded airport.

Eastwood was indirectly involved in getting Bertrand Tavernier's 'Round Midnight (1986, Warners, $19.98) off the ground as well. Considered the equal of Bird, 'Round Midnight follows Dale Turner, played by real-life jazz legend Dexter Gordon in a brilliant Oscar-nominated performance, as he plays the clubs of Paris where his most appreciative audience is. Francois Cluzet plays a smitten fan who takes the alcohol-addled musician under his wing and convinces him to write music again. Tavernier's striking widescreen frame established the rainy, neon-and-smoke filled world of the jazz film.

Apollo Guide (Scott Renshaw) review [65/100]

Cool in a jazz musician is the combination of intensity and relaxation. And, poised over his saxophone, his shoulders and head rolled slightly forward, eyes closed, brow smoothed, Charlie Parker looked like a sleepy god dreaming a new music into being.

He was the essence of cool.

In "Bird," the new movie Clint Eastwood directed on the life of Charlie (Bird) Parker, the image of the great young actor Forest Whitaker standing dead still on the bandstand, with only his fingers moving over the buttons of his horn, is hauntingly definitive, yet somehow shadowy and enigmatic, like a figure drawn in smoke.

Images, not ideas or a cohesive narrative, are what we take away from "Bird." Though it's a Hollywood studio picture, the film has a calculated art-house look. Beginning with Parker's attempt to kill himself by drinking iodine after a squabble he's had with his wife Chan (Diane Venora), Eastwood and scriptwriter Joel Oliansky present us with nearly three hours worth of fragments from the revolutionary alto saxophonist's life. And by the time we reach the artist's death at the age of 34, these fragments have collected into a sizable, though inconclusive, mountain of impressions.

"Bird" isn't the great movie about jazz that some jazz writers are proclaiming it to be. Structurally, it's too scrambled, and ultimately we're too frustrated by the leaping around to feel we understand its subject or even what the filmmakers want us to know about him. But even though, thematically, the movie won't come clear, Eastwood has succeeded so thoroughly in communicating his love of his subject, and there's such vitality in the performances, that we walk out elated, juiced on the actors and the music.

Forest Whitaker's brilliance is the force that holds the scattered pieces of "Bird" together. Only rarely in movies do characters achieve this sort of palpability, and then only when presented to us by a remarkable performer. And this is a remarkable performer giving a gentle, exuberant, charismatic performance.

Whitaker's work here has an enormous weight and authority. Watching him, we feel we can gauge exactly how many late nights Parker has logged or how much he's had to drink by the slope of his shoulders or the angle of his gait.

Yet what Whitaker emphasizes in his performance is Bird's courtliness and grace. He plays him as a kind of humbled aristocrat. There's tremendous delicacy and quiet -- a sweetness -- in what Whitaker does. This comes out especially in his scenes with Venora. An ex-dancer, Chan Richardson was a white, middle-class jazz devotee who haunted Parker's gigs, and Venora plays her as prickly and defiant -- a boho princess.

The scenes these actors play together are like duets danced on slippery ice. Venora's style is sharper than Whitaker's, and her presence adds a sexual tension; and that's important because, without it, Whitaker might seem too easygoing to convey the lady-killing potency Parker was known for.

In "Bird," Eastwood shows talents that were never even hinted at in his earlier pictures. He's particularly good at capturing the crisscrossing emotional rhythms of two people -- Bird and Chan -- who aren't quite sure what to do with each other.

Some of the director's choices, though, are far from fortunate. The film -- which was shot by Jack Green -- is composed in velvety shades of black. But in places it's so murky that you have to strain to see what's going on. And this is particularly frustrating in the more intimate scenes where we want to see what's happening in the actors' faces.

Still, there's a lot to like. In a lovely grace note, Bird, while on a swing through California, rings Stravinsky's doorbell to pay homage -- and, when the composer opens the door, just stands there. Eastwood does a good job of showing how the musicians of Bird's era lived, and he's good, too, at showing the tension in Parker's life between the part of him that longed for stability and the part of him that couldn't tolerate it.

Living on the edge was more than a spur to Parker's creativity. It's possible that Eastwood sees "Bird" as an antidrug movie, but he isn't evasive about Parker's drug abuse and alcoholism. And he doesn't try to obscure how much Parker's life revolved around scoring and shooting. But Eastwood doesn't attempt to provide any pat psychological explanations for Bird's vices. We can thank the filmmakers for resisting the impulse to reduce these characters to easy types.

The only exception is the portrayal of Estevez (James Handy), the vice cop who hounds Bird mercilessly, without any sense of the man's gift, causing him to lose his cabaret license and, in effect, making it impossible for him to earn a living. The filmmakers are conscious, though, that Parker didn't need an Estevez to captain his boat onto rocky shoals; from the beginning, Bird set a shipwreck course.

With its rainy imagery, "Bird" is a romantic vision of the jazz life, but it's a dark romance, and if it weren't for this jazz lover's fond regard the film might be unrelentingly bleak -- another junkie's crackup. This affection shows itself clearly in the pains Eastwood has taken to give a faithful presentation of Bird's music by isolating Parker's solos from vintage recordings and remixing them with new tracks laid down by contemporary sidemen.

Something like the same method, though, has been used to isolate Bird from the social forces around him. But then Eastwood hasn't conceived the film in historical -- even jazz historical -- terms. And if we weren't familiar with Bird's career, we might not realize that after the war he took jazz away from the squares and reinvented it. There's something touching, in fact, in the matter-of-fact way the birth of bop has been presented here, with a blitzed and defeated Bird sitting on a bed in his undershirt telling how he learned how to extend the chord changes and play "inside the melody." For a instant, he looks his age and, for an instant, the tragedy overwhelms us.

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WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART

USA (110 mi) 1990

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

In this adaptation by Peter Viertel from his thinly fictionalised account of John Huston's arrogant antics immediately prior to filming The African Queen, Eastwood - directing himself as Huston/'Wilson' - proffers a supremely intelligent study of a man of monstrous selfishness and often irresistible charm, whose overwhelming passion for hunting drives him inexorably toward what even he acknowledges as an irredeemable sin: killing an elephant. Friendship, the film, and ordinary ethics are sacrificed on the altar of his ego. Wisely, however, Eastwood doesn't preach or condemn, but simply reveals the man's magnetism while admitting to the terrible consequences of his ambition. After a comparatively stodgy opening in London, the film shifts to Africa, and at once settles into a tone of semi-comic high adventure which never allows the serious themes - wanton ecological destruction, colonial racism, and the necessity of remaining true to oneself - to lapse into portentousness. Ably aided by a fine cast and Jack Green's no-nonsense photography, Eastwood constructs a marvellously pacy, suspenseful movie which is deceptively easy on both eye and ear.

Turner Classic Movies dvd review Paul Tatara

Outside of his Oscar-winning work on Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood the director has never been able to shake the curse of simplistic scripts and terminally sluggish pacing. Check out True Crime, Space Cowboys, and Blood Work, all of which he helmed in the past four years, if you need a painful refresher course. By all rights, White Hunter, Black Heart, a fictionalized account of the filming of John Huston's The African Queen, should have worked like gangbusters. Unfortunately, its recent Warner Bros. DVD release only reminds us that it hardly works at all.

At least film buffs will have some fun trying to pinpoint who's playing who, since the names have been changed to protect against lawsuits. Eastwood is John Wilson (wink-wink), a flamboyant, macho-man Hollywood filmmaker who's supposedly shooting an African Queen-like picture in the wilds of Africa. But Wilson is far more interested in shooting an elephant than he is in making a movie, and he's ready to expound on the perceived glory of the hunt at the drop of a safari hat. He literately mouths off to anyone within earshot, including his producer (George Dzundza) and his actors (Richard Vantsone and Marisa Berenson, standing in for Bogart and Hepburn, to little avail.)

A loyal young screenwriter named Peter Verill (Jeff Fahey) serves as Wilson's sidekick and main sounding board. Verill is based on Peter Viertel, the author of the book White Hunter, Black Heart, which, in turn, is based on Viertel's experiences working on The African Queen. Adding yet another dimension to his role in the picture, Viertel co-wrote the screenplay for White Hunter, Black Heart with James Bridges and Burt Kennedy. It's too bad he didn't get to play an actor playing a version of himself in Eastwood's movie. They could have beaten Spike Jonze's Adaptation to the surreal punch.

Eastwood's ridiculously mannered performance as "Huston" is the main problem here. He's playing an unstoppable life-force, a Hemingway-esque individual who attacks every day as if it's his last. But he can't pull it off because he's made a career out of being the steel-eyed silent type who only acts out when he's pushed too far. You simply can't accept Eastwood projecting reckless abandon - or wearing a silk scarf, for that matter - and he continually struggles to duplicate the rococo quality of Huston's speaking voice. There's also a complete lack of emotional balance between Wilson's larger-than-life persona and the other characters, who seem like mere knickknacks in comparison. They're just in the way of what should have been a one-man, off-Broadway monologue.

Everything's great on the technical end. The print is pristine, with wide screen imagery that takes full, vibrant advantage of the African landscape. In fact, Jack N. Green's cinematography is the film's single most impressive feature. Lenny Niehaus's African-tinged score is also right on target, and it sounds terrific, courtesy of a Dolby Digital 5.1 channel soundtrack that was upgraded for this release. You can choose between four different languages (given the loss of Eastwood's baroque vocal stylings, the picture actually plays better in Portuguese) and eight different sets of subtitles.

The bonuses are kept to a bare minimum, with just a trailer and a cast listing that you can just as easily see in the end credits. Strangely, the back of the box promises "Eastwood film highlights," but they're nowhere to be found on the menu. Surely, they don't mean this movie.

A Free Man Jonathan Rosenbaum from Moving Image Source, December 1, 2009

Slant Magazine review Eric Henderson

Film Court (Lawrence Russell) review

Shane R. Burridge review

George Chabot's Review of White Hunter, Black Heart

Prof. Edwin Jahiel

eFilmCritic.com (Rob Gonsalves) review [4/5]

John's Movie Blog

Entertainment Weekly review [C+] Owen Gleiberman

UNFORGIVEN

USA (131 mi) 1992 ‘Scope

“It's a hell of a thing, killin' a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have.” —William Munny (Clint Eastwood)

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

A magnificent movie that transcends its familiar tale of a reformed gunman forced by circumstance to resume his violent ways. When a cowhand cuts up a prostitute and a bounty is placed on his head, killer-turned-farmer Will Munny (Eastwood) joins his old partner (Freeman) and a bluff youngster (Woolvett) in the hunt. But in Big Whiskey, they must face the rough justice of Sheriff Daggett (Hackman)... While Eastwood's muscular direction shows he's fully aware of genre traditions, he and writer David Webb Peoples have created something fresh, profound, complex. It's not only a question of the excellent characterisations, but of situations given a new spin: the prostitutes and the spirit of Munny's dead wife introduce a feminist angle; there are insights into the thin line dividing law from justice; and the accent on ageing, fear and death establishes a dark tone perfectly complemented by Jack Green's sombre images. All of which links with the way this very violent film shows the cost of violence, painting a persuasive portrait of people increasingly given to emotions they have no control over. Refuting conventional cowboy heroics, Eastwood presents an alternative myth whereby a man, goaded by Furies to yield to a past that still haunts him, despatches himself to a living Hell. In this dark, timeless terrain, the film achieves a magnificent intensity.

Austin Chronicle (Louis Black) review [4.5/5]

Clint Eastwood’s defining commentary on – and deconstruction of – the gunslinger persona that made him an icon, Unforgiven remains, a decade after it nabbed 1992’s Academy Award for Best Picture, the actor/director’s crowning Western achievement. The solemn tale of retired outlaw William Munny (Eastwood) and his final murderous act against a duo of cowboys who’ve mutilated an innocent whore, the film exhibits Eastwood’s trademark directorial classicism (expert framing, sharp editing, quiet grace without a showy moment to speak of) and a soul-wracking despair born from Munny’s acknowledgement that killing is “a hell of a thing.” Unforgiven conveys the power of the Western genre’s myths (dramatized most vividly through the character of Saul Rubinek’s reporter) as well as the ugly, unromantic realities that lurk behind them, and the film’s overpowering tragedy is brought to heartbreaking life by the terrific Eastwood, Morgan Freeman (as Munny’s compassionate former sidekick Ned Logan) and Richard Harris (as ruthless bounty hunter English Bob). Yet the film belongs to Gene Hackman, who, in a superbly chilling performance, makes the corrupt, gregarious sheriff Little Bill infinitely more frightening by imbuing his arrogant villainy with a hint of rationality.

Eleven years earlier, William Munny (Eastwood) gave up the outlaw life to marry and settle down, eventually having two children. Three years ago, his wife died, and he's been struggling to make it ever since. A young punk, the Schofield Kid (Woolvett), shows up, tells him that a group of whores have offered a thousand dollar reward to kill a cowboy, who cut one of them up, and the cowboy's partner. During his outlaw days, Munny recalls, he was drunk most of the time; he's put that past behind him. But it's a thousand dollars they're offering, the farm is blowing away, the animals are sick. Though at first he says no, he eventually rides after the Kid, picking up his old partner, Ned Logan (Freeman). In the town, another bounty hunter, English Bob (Harris), is brutally beaten by Sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Hackman), as a warning to assassins to stay away from the bounty. That night, in the middle of a storm, the three ride in to find the whores and set about collecting the bounty. As a movie, 130 minutes of entertainment, I really can't offer a review of Eastwood's Unforgiven. I sat enthralled, by the pace, the story, the extraordinary performances and the brilliant cinematography but thought it maybe a little slow, and rarely has a grand epic had so simple a story. But in the genre, as both a movie and a conscious addition to the ongoing celluloid Western mythology, the film is a masterpiece, a stunning and awe-inspiring statement. In 1956, in that greatest of revisionist Westerns The Searchers, John Ford offering the unsettling view that maybe the western heroes who helped transform the wilderness into civilization were basically psychopaths. But in the film, John Wayne was still a hero. Here Eastwood tells a western story deprived of any heroic resonance. The central story revolves around a washed-up murderer and company, the stupid job of murdering the cowboys, one of whom is basically innocent, and a tough sheriff. This, the film argues, is the way the West was, simple thuggish acts transformed through the eyes of creative observers. Eastwood's explicit here, having a dime store novelist (Rubinek) who first attaches himself to English Bob, then Daggett and then finally looks with longing at Munny, following whichever man seems the most powerful, believing any story. The fascination here is with how events like this became Western myths. One of the defining moments in The Searchers is a shot of Wayne's mad face. In Unforgiven we see Eastwood, beat up and bruised, sitting by a fire. He looks both evil and sad. Oddly, though his future is clearly used up, history, especially popular culture, will redeem him as a hero. Although a powerful participant in the process of mythification as an actor, as a director Eastwood just can't figure out why.

Turner Classic Movies review Jay S. Steinberg

In the early 1990s, Clint Eastwood experienced a rare lull in his career so he elected to dust off a previously optioned Western script from years before and prepare it for what might be his last venture as both director and lead. Between its crisp narrative and willingness to subvert both the image of its star and the conventions of its genre, the resulting product not only re-energized Eastwood's marketability with a $100 million-plus domestic box-office take, it granted him validation as a serious filmmaker. The critical response to Unforgiven (1992) culminated with a string of awards, including the Oscars® for Best Picture and Best Director.

The narrative is set in the 1880s, and opens in a brothel in the dusty Wyoming cow town of Big Whiskey. One of the working girls has just had her face slashed by a cowpoke client, all for the transgression of giggling at the man's endowment. The slasher and his partner are dragged before the town's despotic sheriff, Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), whose notion of sufficient punishment is to have the men make good on the whore-master's expenses in bringing his now "damaged goods" to town. The miscarriage of justice so inflames the prostitute Strawberry Alice (Frances Fisher) that she pools her colleagues' savings, some $1000, and offers it up as a bounty on the offenders.

The story shifts to a ramshackle Kansas homestead, where aging widower William Munny (Eastwood) is struggling to care for his two young children. While tending to his hogs he is visited by a cocky youngster (Jaimz Woolvett) with visions of himself as a mythic gunslinger with the moniker "The Schofield Kid". News of the hookers' gold has spurred him to find a partner to help him collect, and he can barely conceal his disappointment in finding this broken-down pig farmer in the place of the legendary gunfighter he came to recruit. As it turns out, Munny's late wife had steered him into a honest, pious life; with his family's fortunes fading, however, the temptation provided by the bounty is irresistible. Over the Kid's objections, Munny rouses his old accomplice Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) from his similar domestic retirement for backup.

The legend of the bounty, however, has also reached an incensed Little Bill, who rouses his deputies to disarm any stranger entering Big Whisky. The brutal lawman makes a public example of the first such gunslinger who arrives to collect the prize, a big-hat, no-cattle British dandy known as English Bob (Richard Harris). The unfolding of the fates of the Munny party as they ride into certain disaster take Unforgiven to a jarringly violent conclusion.

Screenwriter David Webb Peoples had authored his script (originally titled The Cut-Whore Killings) on spec all the way back in 1976; Francis Ford Coppola picked up the option, and held onto it through the Zoetrope Studios' collapse in the early '80s. Soon afterwards, Eastwood was handed a copy as an example of Peoples' work, and immediately sought the rights. As recounted in Richard Schickel's Clint Eastwood, the star's rapt interest appalled his story editor, Sonia Chernius. "We would have been far better off not to have accepted trash like this piece of inferior work," she stated in a memo. "I can't think of one good thing to say about it. Except maybe, get rid of it FAST."

In a 1992 interview for Cahiers du Cinema, Eastwood expounded on what separated Unforgiven from his previous Westerns. "[T]he film deals with violence and its consequences a lot more than those I've done before," the star stated. "In the past, there were a lot of people killed gratuitously in my pictures, and what I liked about this story was that people aren't killed, and acts of violence aren't perpetrated, without there being certain consequences. That's a problem I thought was important to talk about today, it takes on proportions it didn't have in the past, even if it's always been present through the ages."

There's actually quite a bit that separates Unforgiven from the rest of Clint's sagebrush oeuvre. Consider the feminist subtext spurring the plot, his willingness to play a bounty hunter whose skills had eroded and his handing of the supporting roles to actors with the gravitas of Hackman, Freeman and Harris. As a result, these elements make the film seem fresh and elegiac at the same time. (Eastwood dedicated the film to the two directors that most profoundly affected his early career and own behind-the-camera aspirations, Sergio Leone and Don Siegel.) In August 1992, after the studios had rolled out their big-budget, special effects extravaganzas of that summer, Unforgiven made its way into theaters with relatively little fanfare, and audiences and critics that were hungry for more adult fare flocked to it eagerly.

The film received an aggregate eight Oscar® nominations, and ultimately also captured the prizes for Joel Cox's editing and Hackman's supporting performance. Hackman, whose characterization was at least partially inspired by former LAPD police chief Darryl Gates, gave his usual flavorful effort as the autocratic lawman with carpentry skills as suspect as his moral code. He had initially passed on the script as too violent, and ostensibly has no regrets about having reconsidered.

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eFilmCritic.com review [5/5] Slyder

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The Greatest Films (Tim Dirks) recommendation [spoilers]

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VideoVista review James Starkey

George Chabot's Review of Unforgiven

Movie Vault [Greg C.]

Boxoffice Magazine review

AboutFilm.com (Jen Walker) review [A+]

Edinburgh U Film Society (Stephen Townsend) review

filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) review [4.5/5]

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Entertainment Weekly review [B] Owen Gleiberman

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [4.5/5]

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) recommendation [Great Movies]

Austin Chronicle (Marc Savlov) review [3.5/5]

DVDBeaver dvd review Henrik Sylow

DVDBeaver dvd review [Blu-Ray Version] Leonard Norwitz

A PERFECT WORLD

USA (138 mi) 1993 ‘Scope

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

While this lacks the class and assured blend of genre traditions and subversion that marks Eastwood's best work, it is very entertaining. In some respects, the film looks formulaic: an escaped con (Costner) flees with a child hostage (Lowther), pursued by Texas Ranger Eastwood, criminologist Dern, a trigger-happy FBI sniper and assorted redneck assistants. To an extent, all goes predictably. Costner gets to like the kid, his essential goodness underlined by contrast with the psycho sadist who is briefly his fugitive partner, while Clint's conservative but well-meaning law enforcer discovers a measure of empathy with both the pragmatic Dern and his prey. Among the familiar stuff, however, there are very fine moments. It's just a pity that Costner never really comes alive. That said, the director manages mostly to avoid the enormous maudlin pitfalls of his material, at least until the over-extended final scene. As usual with Eastwood, little is overstated - and the accent is on humour.

Shot in and around Austin last summer (for all two of you who didn't already know), Eastwood's first film since the Oscar-sweeping Unforgiven is a taut, occasionally touching chase film that pits prison escapee/kidnapper Costner against Texas Ranger Eastwood in 1963 Texas. Having broken free from the Huntsville pen along with a morally bankrupt crony, Butch Haynes (Costner) kidnaps young Philip Perry (Lowther) during a botched attempt at car theft. Hot (more or less) on Butch's trail is Red Garrett (Eastwood), a hardened, instinctual Ranger who feels in part responsible for Butch's current predicament and wants to bring him in unharmed. Garrett, we are told, pulled a few strings 20 years previously in order to have a wayward Butch sent to a four-year juvenile facility instead of having him released into the custody of his abusive father, hoping the system would straighten the boy out, given time. Instead, Butch came out a career criminal, and the Ranger has carried the knowledge of that mistake on his conscience ever since. Garrett is given Governor Connally's airstream trailer to use as a mobile headquarters during the manhunt and, much to his dismay, criminologist Sally Gerber (Dern) is sent in to assist. Meanwhile, Butch and the kidnapped boy are getting along just fine, both having come from fatherless, dysfunctional families (Phillip's mother is a Jehovah's Witness and won't allow her children to go trick or treating on Halloween, a quandary that Butch resolves in a scene that is both heartfelt and hilarious -- a hard mix to achieve in the best of films). As the law closes in, the father/son bond between this unlikely pair grows exponentially, until Butch's near-murder of a rural farmhand sends their relationship into a tailspin. A Perfect World is a gorgeous, sprawling road movie, full of unique characters (more or less -- Laura Dern's criminologist seems like some sort of PC afterthought, and Eastwood's grizzled Ranger borders on cliché) and arresting cinematography that reminds us why we live here in the first place. Costner turns in a subtly nuanced performance that is by far the best work he's ever done, and T.J. Lowther's Phillip is a precocious and thoroughly engaging young character, expressive and haunting in all the right ways. It's not a perfect movie -- there's a bit more formula here than there ought to be -- but it's closer than you might think.

Scott Renshaw review [8/10]

Let's face it, Kevin Costner hasn't become one of the most popular movie stars in the world because he can act the hell out of a part. Sure, he's been charming enough in light fare like SILVERADO and BULL DURHAM, but he's done little to prove that his ideal dramatic role wasn't as the corpse in THE BIG CHILL. It therefore might not seem to mean much to say that A PERFECT WORLD features Costner's best all-around performance yet, and indeed it's nothing earth-shattering. However, it's more than solid, and coupled with an impressive turn by 7-year-old T. J. Lowther creates a haunting story that packs a real punch even through its superfluous subplot.

Costner stars as Butch Haynes, a recidivist criminal who escapes from a Texas prison with his cellmate on Halloween 1963. In the course of their escape, they take as a hostage young Philip Perry (Lowther), a fatherless boy raised in a strict Jehovah's Witness household. In pursuit is Texas Ranger Red Garnett (Clint Eastwood), a veteran lawman forced to team up with young criminologist Sally Gerber (Laura Dern). Soon Butch and Philip are on their own, and begin to form an attachment, Butch acting as a surrogate father to Philip and Philip reminding Butch of his own troubled youth. As the unlikely pair head out of Texas, they head also for a showdown with Red, and with Butch's confrontation with his own tortured past.

Screenwriter John Lee Hancock makes one big mistake, and that's spending so much time and the tired and uninteresting subplot focusing on the law enforcement in pursuit of Butch. It seems in the early stages that he's setting up a parallel, or is interested in creating a hunter-hunted conflict a la THE FUGITIVE, but neither reall proves true. Instead we get cliche'd characters in cliche'd conflicts. There's an icy Fed to get on Red's nerves, and plenty of pithy good ol' boy wisdom dispensed. Eastwood and Dern toss off token lines of good-natured antagonism, but neither one is interesting enough to make their story at all significant. A tighter, potentially classic drama might have come from chopping their segments entirely, because the main plot is a gem.

The relationship between Butch Haynes and Philip Perry is one of the most unique and interesting explored in recent years. While at first glance Butch might seem to be a simple "victim of a negative environment" type, he's more complicated than that. The picture that develops of his father is far from clear, making Butch a less than reliable narrator. His attachment to Philip is based on the worst memories of his father, yet it is his father he seeks throughout. A PERFECT WORLD plays out like an extended therapy session for Butch, as he attempts through Philip to create the perfect childhood he could not have for himself. Costner captures a surprising amount of nuance in his portrayal of Butch, one minute the doting father, the next an edgy psychotic. It's a radical change of pace for Costner, and he pulls it off. Perhaps the larger credit for A PERFECT WORLD's success is T. J. Lowther. He's not asked to say much, but his expressive face becomes one of the most vital elements in the film. The relationship between Butch and Philip is the heart of A PERFECT WORLD, and it's nearly perfectly executed.

Director Eastwood's first outing since his Oscar for UNFORGIVEN is a similarly dark piece about a struggle for redemption, and while the whole may not be as strong as last year's Best Picture winner, some of the moments are even better. The opening sequence is instantly gripping, and a long shot of Butch and Philip walking through a field, the boy repeatedly attempting to hold the criminal's hand, is wonderful. The best sequence comes near the end, as an idyllic waltz quickly turns into a remarkably intense confrontation. Eastwood draws out the ending a bit too long, but by that point I was more than willing to stick with Butch and Philip.

A PERFECT WORLD is really two films. One is mediocre at best, but the other is one of the best films of the year. Together, they still add up to one of the better films of the year.

A note to inside joke watchers: look for a billboard for "Bull Durham Tobacco" in the sequence at Friendly's store.

Cynthia Fuchs (c/o inforM Women's Studies) review

DVD Talk (Jason Bovberg) dvd review [3/5]

DVD Review by George George Chabot

Brian W. Fairbanks Review

Apollo Movie Guide [Scott Weinberg]

Variety.com [Todd McCarthy]

Entertainment Weekly review [C-] Owen Gleiberman

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [4/4]

The New York Times (Janet Maslin) review

BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY

USA (135 mi) 1995

The Bridges of Madison County Anthony Lane from the New Yorker

You can't help wondering what a completely faithful adaptation of Robert James Waller's best-selling novel would have looked like: a sort of "Natural Born Lovers," presumably, full of swirling zoom shots and lunatic superimpositions. As it is, screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and director Clint Eastwood have turned out something sombre and restrained—almost, in fact, good (though it's too long). Eastwood also stars, as Kincaid, the strolling photographer who shows up at an Iowa farmhouse and falls for the lonely Francesca (Meryl Streep). The two leads' sly comic rhythm is miles removed from the book's failing solemnity, though Eastwood has bravely given himself the few ridiculous lines that survived.

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

When the daughter and son of the late Francesca Johnson (Streep) return home to Madison County, Iowa, to oversee the funeral arrangements, they're shocked to learn that their mother wished to have her ashes scattered from the Roseman Bridge, not buried beside their father. Worse, they find Francesca's diary, relating how, in '65 while they were off with dad on a visit to Illinois, she met and fell for National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid (Eastwood): an affair which was to affect her entire life. Immaculately performed, and assembled with wit and sensitivity, this is one of the most satisfying weepies in years. Indeed, it's hard to imagine anyone but Eastwood doing such a fine job of adapting Robert James Waller's best-seller for the screen. Typically, his clean, pared direction, coupled with Richard LaGravenese's mostly no-frills script, ensures that the film avoids sentimentality even as the two lovers rush to embrace it.

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [3.5/5]

Since 1988's Bird, Clint Eastwood has emerged as one of Hollywood's most consistently interesting filmmakers. He has an old-fashioned, workmanlike visual style all his own. He is totally honest with us, never hiding behind special effects or drippy music. In directing himself as an actor, he is in complete charge of his instrument, perhaps even as much as Orson Welles or Laurence Olivier were, in that he knows exactly how to move and act to elicit a particular response. He is a movie star rather than an actor, but he is the best at it.

The Bridges of Madison County book, by Robert James Waller, is famous for being utter drivel, but this bad book makes a good movie. The story has a traveling photographer, in town to snap pictures of the famous covered bridges, falling in love with a married woman whose husband is out of town. The story is told in flashback, after the woman's death, as her children go through her things. Screenwriter Richard (The Fisher King, The Ref) LaGravenese apparently aced most of the new-agey excess and Eastwood directs the hell out of it.

I've never much liked Meryl Streep, but then I never much liked Kevin Costner either, and Eastwood brought out Costner's finest performance ever in A Perfect World. Same here: Bridges may be Streep's finest hour. With age, she seems to have dropped most of her acting school pretensions. We sense that these two mighty stars really are two people falling in love.

The film is co-produced by Amblin's Kathleen Kennedy, and I believe that Steven Spielberg was originally going to direct. Imagine the kind of sappy, syrup-drenched crap that would have emerged if that scenario had occurred. Clint's movie is muddy, dusty and full of flies. It took a real man like Eastwood to really fall in love.

DVD Details: I haven't seen the old DVD, but I'm led to understand that this new, 2008 edition is availble in 16x9 widescreen for the first time. Eastwood is not one for commentary tracks, so this new "deluxe" disc comes with a new making-of featurette (including interviews with Streep and Eastwood), a commentary track by cinematographer Jack N. Green and editor Joel Cox, and a music video for Eastwood's lovely instrumental song "Doe Eyes." There are also optional subtitles and language tracks.

With Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood was grandly given credit for single-handedly reviving the moribund genre of the film Western. Such hyperbole may also come his way for The Bridges of Madison County, which can be seen as breathing fresh life into the stagnant genre of women's film melodrama. But probably not, because Bridges is, after all, a woman's story, and what's our Clint doing mucking around in girl stuff? Clearly, Bridges is a movie Eastwood very much wanted to make: Not only does he co-star, he also directs and co-produces. Yet when word crept out that Eastwood was preparing Robert James Waller's runaway bestseller The Bridges of Madison County for the screen, reactions were generally incredulous and bemused. The common ground between the screen icon and the romance novel were far from obvious. But Eastwood has always been one to flex his screen persona, so it's not that unusual that he chose to play the role of the sensitive photographer and lover, Robert Kincaid. His real stroke of genius, though, was casting Meryl Streep as Francesca Johnson, the story's Italian-born Iowa housewife. Through her body language, Streep conveys just as much through what she doesn't say as through what she does. Through her gestures, her facial expressions, the way she holds her body, and her stolen glances, we learn the depths of the currents flowing through her still waters. She is a lonely woman, though she is surrounded by family; she is someone whose dreams of coming to America have not been fulfilled by the dull reality of her life in Winterset, Iowa; she has a busy life stuffed with details but has nothing that truly satisfies or excites her anymore. She's certainly no lachrymose creature bemoaning her fate, but one senses that her capacities for feeling have deadened over time. She's ready for that handsome stranger to come to her door seeking directions. In some ways, Bridges reminds me of The Rose Tattoo, the Tennessee Williams-based film starring Anna Magnani and Burt Lancaster. In it, Magnani plays a fiery widow with a thick Italian accent who falls for the beefy truck driver who comes to her door. The set-up is not too unlike Italian-accented Francesca's four-day solitary holiday while her family is at the state fair, only her gentleman visitor is a lanky photographer from National Geographic. Actually, between Bridges and Don Juan DeMarco, 1995 has so far proved to be a good (if you really want to call a sum total of two “good”) year for the depiction of romance amongst the over-40 set. Bridges is punctuated by scenes of Francesca's grown children discovering the existence of her long-ago affair after their mother has died. At times, watching them deal with this new information is interesting, since it makes them question everything they thought was true about their lives. The entire movie enacts their mother's romance as they pore through her diaries. Occasionally, the movie cuts back to the present, and we see the kids wallowing in their own assimilation problems and, by the end, using their discovery to help resolve marital troubles in their own lives. It's too much and the resolutions ring phony. Another problem with this otherwise beautiful script by Richard LaGravenese (The Fisher King, The Ref, A Little Princess) is that it sometimes renders things way too literally, when the evocative images would have sufficed perfectly. (The best - or worst - example of this is the scene in the bathtub with the showerhead dripping from above. The images in that scene tell us everything we need to know, but then Francesca's voiceover tells us about these erotic feelings she's having. Too much information… but maybe that's what is necessary to be successful in the Winterset, Iowa malls.) Bridges is another example of Eastwood's remarkable economy of style as both a director and an actor. It is neither his best work nor his worst, though it is a fascinating exploration.

Turner Classic Movies review Andrea Passafiume

Robert James Waller's novel The Bridges of Madison County was a genuine literary phenomenon. The simple story set in 1965 about a married Iowa farm wife who has a brief but life-changing affair with a world-traveling photographer struck a chord with readers everywhere. The book was released in April of 1992 without much fanfare, but through word of mouth it quickly gained momentum. Within a few months it topped the New York Times Bestseller list, where it remained for the next three years.

The Bridges of Madison County was such a popular book that it didn't take long for Hollywood to come calling. Steven Spielberg's company Amblin Entertainment quickly bought the movie rights. Spielberg considered directing the film himself, but became too busy working on Schindler's List (1993). Director Sydney Pollack was also attached to the project for a time with Robert Redford rumored to play the male lead, the photographer Robert Kincaid. The lead characters of Kincaid and Francesca Johnson were both middle aged and called for older actors in the roles--a rarity in movies, especially a Hollywood love story. Francesca was the most hotly pursued female role in Hollywood at the time. A-list actresses over forty such as Jessica Lange, Isabella Rossellini, Susan Sarandon and Anjelica Huston were all considered leading contenders.

Finally, it was Bruce Beresford (Tender Mercies (1983) who was officially announced as the director with Clint Eastwood firmly set to star as Robert Kincaid. At 65 Eastwood was a bit older than the 52-year-old character in the book, but after a career of playing mostly tough guys and steely cowboys, Eastwood saw the role as an intriguing opportunity to show a more sensitive side on screen.

Before long, however, Eastwood and director Beresford found themselves at odds over the crucial casting of Francesca, which had not yet been finalized. Francesca was supposed to be an Italian war bride who came to Iowa as an immigrant farm wife. Beresford wanted a more exotic, possibly European actress in the role such as Lena Olin or Isabella Rossellini. Eastwood felt strongly that the part should go to an American actress and began to champion Meryl Streep for the role. Beresford and Eastwood continued to clash, and eventually it was announced that Beresford was leaving the project. Eastwood, an accomplished director himself with films like The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Unforgiven (1992) for which he won an Academy Award as Best Director, decided to take over the director's reins The first thing Eastwood did as director was pursue Meryl Streep for the role of Francesca. He had heard that she wasn't a fan of the novel, so he called her personally to ask her to read the screenplay by Richard LaGravenese. Eastwood assured her that LaGravenese's screenplay had made vast improvements over the book's affected and often-criticized prose. Streep did like the script and soon happily agreed to play Francesca. Building on Beresford's valuable pre-production work, Eastwood assembled the production quickly. He traveled to Iowa and scouted locations in and around Madison County. He visited the towns of Winterset and Abel as well as the picturesque covered bridges made famous by the novel. For the main set of Francesca's home, a real farmhouse that had been abandoned for over thirty years was reconstructed.

The cast and crew of The Bridges of Madison County soon descended on Iowa for the relatively brief forty-two day shoot. Meryl Streep said later that the set was the quietest she had ever worked on. Eastwood worked very fast, she said, never raising his voice above a whisper and rarely asking for more than one or two takes. Eastwood also found time to write the main musical "love theme" for the movie called "Doe Eyes", which was orchestrated for the film's score by Lennie Niehaus. Eastwood also gave his son Kyle some onscreen time in the scene where Robert and Francesca visit a jazz club. Kyle, a real-life jazz musician with his own quartet, can be seen playing bass on stage with the James River Band.

When The Bridges of Madison County was released, viewers and critics alike seemed pleasantly surprised at how good and poignant it was. The consensus was that it was an exceptional case of Hollywood making a movie that actually improved upon the book. The New York Times said that Eastwood had made "a moving, elegiac love story," and the New York Daily News said, "There are moments here - that are as powerful as anything the movies have given us." The film was also a financial success, as was its popular music soundtrack featuring Eastwood's love theme and music from jazz greats Dinah Washington and Johnny Hartman. Meryl Streep was widely lauded for her stunning portrayal of Francesca, and was recognized with an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress that year.

not coming to a theater near you (Leo Goldsmith) review

DVD Talk (Jamie S. Rich) dvd review [4/5] [Deluxe Edition]

DVD Verdict (Clark Douglas) dvd review [Deluxe Edition]

Movie Reviews UK review [4/5] Damian Cannon

Cynthia Fuchs (c/o inforM Women's Studies) review

Dragan Antulov review [6/10]

eFilmCritic.com (Chris Parry) review [5/5]

Epinions [glowsw]

DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review

DVD Talk (Gerry Putzer) dvd review [4/5]

Brilliant Observations on 1173 Films [Clayton Trapp]

Movie Revival [Chad Newsom]

Entertainment Weekly review [A] Owen Gleiberman

Tucson Weekly (Zachary Woodruff) review

Washington Post review Rita Kempley and Desson Howe (click on their names to the left)

San Francisco Examiner (Barbara Shulgasser) review

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [3.5/4]

Brilliant Observations on 1173 Films [Clayton Trapp]

MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL

USA (155 mi) 1997

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

When New York journalist John Kelso (Cusack) arrives in Savannah, Georgia, to cover one of the lavish Christmas parties held by wealthy antique dealer Jim Williams (Spacey), he doesn't expect to get caught up in a murder trial. But after his host shoots volatile young employee Billy Hanson (Law), Kelso finds himself following the case with a view to writing a book, and making enquiries that might help substantiate Williams' self-defence plea - an investigation which, in introducing him to such locals as the transvestite nightclub artiste Lady Chablis and voodoo queen Minerva, uncovers a whole new world beneath the colourful but in many ways conservative veneer of Savannah society. Elegantly directed and beautifully performed, Eastwood's film of John Berendt's non-fiction best-seller is a warm, witty, consistently intriguing character study. Particularly successful are the funny, touching scenes shared by Cusack and the flirtatious Chablis, typical of the movie's fascination with questions of pretence, trust and tolerance. Also engaging, however, is the quirky wit and Eastwood's readiness, whenever the occasion arises, to deflect focus away from the crime on to other details in the social tapestry, subtly nudging at divisions involving race, class, gender and sexuality.

Clint Eastwood has a great feel for the charm and idiosyncrasies of the Deep South. I don't know much about Savannah, I was in the bus station there for an hour once, so I don't know if it comes out smelling so much like New Orleans because it really is, or because Clint is such a jazz cat. But it's cool, and it feels right on. Kevin Spacey's southern gentleman is unflappable and tough, but has the perfect measure of softness as coating. His accent even passes, there is some variation. John Cusack's New York journalist is slightly less perfect, but he does a great job of getting across the concept that this is a highly intelligent young man hobbled by questions of confidence. I'm not sure if the film could have used more linkage between the setting and Cusack's Big Apple eccentricities or not. I mean, for all the length of the film (155 minutes) most everything is touched upon lightly, almost in passing. This works to great effect in the trial scenes, where for once the limitations of the evidence code and the reality of courtrooms aren't savaged. Yes, it could all happen like this, maybe even probably, including the jury foreman. And even better, we're only treated to a few lines of testimony from each witness, like highlights from someone who actually knows how to pick 'em. As good as Spacey and Cusack are, two of the peripheral characters are even better: Lady Chablis is incredible (type-cast or not) as the transvestite, an exquisite mixture of affectation and integrity. But (Australian?!) Jack Thompson is best of all, as the southern defense lawyer. I've met a lot of these guys, and Thompson does an incredible job of portraying it all: the intelligence and folksiness, the smeared borderline ethics, and most of all the elegance and humanity. An absolutely historic portrayal, worthy of comparison to Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Austin Chronicle (Marc Savlov) review [4/5]

Eastwood's film, adapted from John Berendt's phenomenally bestselling “nonfiction novel,” is as entertaining and outrageous a confection as its source material, half Southern gothic and half Our Town on goofdust. Cusack plays John Kelso, a stringer for Town and Country magazine who arrives in the verdant squares of Savannah, Georgia to interview socialite Jim Williams (Spacey) and document the man's annual Christmas party at the resplendent and palatial Mercer House. However, when Williams' violent live-in lover Billy (Law) is mysteriously murdered in the small hours following the party, Kelso decides to forego his 500-word puff piece in favor of undertaking a novel about the case and, by association, the people of Savannah in general (he himself refers to the town as being “like Gone With the Wind on mescaline”). As Williams suavely languishes in the pokey (of all our modern leading men, only Spacey can rot in jail with such sexy/cool savoir-faire -- a tossed-off scene in which he attempts to place an overseas phone call to Sotheby's while being harassed by a hulking, hollering inmate is howlingly funny), Kelso roams Savannah, gathering material not only for his book but also for Williams' defense attorney Sonny Seiler (Thompson). In short order he meets Williams' neighbor Joe Odom, a piano-playing, whiskey-drinking (everybody drinks in Savannah) bon vivant with a penchant for hosting his own wild nights at the home of whomever he happens to be house-sitting for at the time; Mandy Nichols (Alison Eastwood), a forthright and stunning young Southern belle who gladly assists him in puzzling out the Williams case; the voodoo priestess Minerva (Hall); and the Lady Chablis (herself), a boisterous transvestite-chanteuse who takes a shine to Kelso and serves as the fiery, outrageous soul of Eastwood's film. There are many amazing things in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, not the least of which is the fact that these are all real Savannah citizens being portrayed here -- conclusive proof, as if any were needed, that truth is indeed stranger (and more perversely humorous) than fiction. Screenwriter John Lee Hancock has done an admirable job of condensing Berendt's novel, eliminating some of the novel's lesser characters and altering the ending in favor of imbuing a more final note to the proceedings. Eastwood Sr., for his part, manages the wonderful ensemble cast remarkably well, especially for someone more inclined toward action and Western films (Bird and Bridges of Madison County excepted), but the real star here is the scene-stealing Lady Chablis, who deserves special recognition for her brash, saucy, utterly effervescent portrayal of herself. Unlike anything else out there right now, Midnight is a wholly original creation, crossed with shadows and light and the everyday madness of Savannah and its remarkable citizens.

Scott Renshaw review [6/10]

Here's a brain teaser for all you aspiring screenwriters out there: how do you adapt MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, a 350-page true-crime drama in which the crime doesn't occur until around page 170? Before you answer, I should warn you that it's a bit of a trick question. John Berendt's 1994 non-fiction novel, based on the author's experiences while living in Savannah, Georgia in the 1980s, defies simple categorization. Part travelogue, part character study, part cultural anthropology lesson and part courtroom thriller, it combined disparate elements into the hypnotic tale of a unique place. So that screenwriting assignment might be better phrased as: how do you adapt MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, a 350-page true-crime drama which isn't really a true-crime drama?

John Lee Hancock had more or less the right idea when he chose to let his screenplay wander and sprawl. The backbone of the narrative involves Berendt's fictional stand-in, a New York writer named John Kelso (John Cusack) who comes to Savannah on assignment for Town & Country Magazine to cover the city's most lavish Christmas party. The host of that party is Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey), a wealthy antiques dealer who instantly charms Kelso with his wit, hospitality and fondness for Kelso's writing. Then Kelso finds his assignment taking an unexpected grim twist when Williams is charged with first-degree murder in the death of his assistant -- and lover -- Billy Hanson (Jude Law).

That covers the "plot" in a video-guide-summary sense, but it doesn't begin to do justice to what MIDNIGHT is about. Hancock's script wisely retains Berendt's willingness to let a collection of colorful characters carry the story in tangential directions, painting a messy but vivid portrait of Savannah as (in Kelso's words) "GONE WITH THE WIND on mescaline." Among Kelso's odd encounters are run-ins with a voodoo priestess named Minerva (Irma P. Hall) and a flirtatious relationship with pre-operative transsexual The Lady Chablis (played by the real Lady herself). Director Clint Eastwood chooses an ideal, languid pace for MIDNIGHT which turns it into the perfect Southern story: in no particular hurry to get anywhere, yet still intriguing in its richness of detail.

In Berendt's novel, that fragmented approach turns the city of Savannah itself into the story's principal character. The Williams trial functions primarily as a lightning rod for the attitudes and perceptions of the city's inhabitants, in whom eccentricity is ultimately a matter of degree. There are, however, some vacuums Hollywood abhors, and MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL tries to fill two of them with some pretty ineffective stuff. Instead of a story about a strange and mysterious place, it is transformed into the story of a confidence-impaired writer on a quest for True Love and Acceptance; instead of reveling in atmospheric unpredictability, the script introduces a romantic interest (Alison Eastwood) so token you could use her to ride the subway. Hancock works wonders with the novel's decade-long time frame, condensing events with impressive economy. He also strains to shove the story's square pegs into the gaping round hole of studio picture paradigms.

Hancock and Eastwood may very well have made the best adaptation of MIDNIGHT possible within a studio system. The acting is first-rate from top to bottom (including a sly and charismatic debut by The Lady Chablis as him/herself), Eastwood's technical team delivers typical excellence, and many of the book's best situations are re-created with sharp humor. There's just something vaguely unsatisfying about MIDNIGHT, and not just in comparison to its source material. This story cries out for a less conventional treatment, though it's still fairly unconventional by most standards. The makers of MIDNIGHT had their heart in the right place, but the result teases with the promise of an off-beat exploration it delivers only sporadically. Perhaps the answer to that screenwriting assignment is even trickier than the question. How do you adapt MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL? You don't.

Salon (Charles Taylor) review

Chicago Reader (Jonathan Rosenbaum) review also reviewing THE RAINMAKER

Slate [Sarah Kerr] also reviewing THE SWEET HEREAFTER

eFilmCritic.com (Rob Gonsalves) review [3/5]

Philadelphia City Paper (Sam Adams) review

Ted Prigge review [2.5/4]

Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [4/4]

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [4/4] also seen here: PopcornQ review

Montreal Film Journal (Kevin N. Laforest) review

DVD Verdict (Dean Roddey) dvd review

DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review

The Providence Journal review Jim Seavor

Movie ram-blings (Ram Samudrala) review

Eye for Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review [2/5]

Film Scouts (Karen Jaehne) capsule review

Entertainment Weekly review [C+] Owen Gleiberman

The Globe and Mail review [2.5/4] Rick Groen

Boston Phoenix [Peter Keough]

Austin Chronicle (Russell Smith) review [3.5/5]

TRUE CRIME

USA (127 mi) 1999

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

When a colleague dies in a car crash, Steve Everett (Eastwood) of the Oakland Tribune inherits a human interest story on the upcoming final few hours of Frank Beechum (Washington), a convicted killer on Death Row. Trouble is, Steve's an investigative reporter by trade, tradition and temperament and, when he begins researching the case, starts to suspect the remorseless Beechum may be innocent. Moreover, his life is such a mess that he hardly has time to meet Beechum for a last exclusive interview, let alone to search for clues and win a stay of execution. Though the closing quarter of an hour is inevitably flawed by the kind of contrivance parodied in The Player and repeated in numerous race-against-time stories, for the most part this is another typically intelligent Eastwood film, a thriller that's unusually and movingly perceptive about human emotions. Though a couple of plot developments are clumsily scripted, as a character study it's performed, written and directed with wit, sensitivity and insight, ranging from the engagingly non-PC comic exchanges between Everett and his boss (Woods) to the affecting scenes between Beechum and his family.

Like so many of the flawed gems in the Clint Eastwood oeuvre, True Crime manages to underscore both the virtues that have earned him recognition as a major director and the limitations that consign him, for the most part, to a position just a cut or two below the first rank. As one of the last of the old-school auteurs, Eastwood has a clear, consistent idea of what he wants to say with his films, so there's not much danger of mistaking his work for anyone else's. True Crime, which strikes me as his best work since 1992's Unforgiven, contains many of Eastwood's trademarks, including the definitive one: a morally ambiguous, emotionally scarred protagonist getting one last shot at redemption after a spectacular fall from grace. In this case, the rehabbing hero is Steve Everett, a one-time star investigative reporter trying to revive a career he's trashed with booze, satyriasis, and inordinate faith in his gut instincts. When one of Steve's colleagues dies in a car accident, his editor (Leary) assigns him to finish the story the recently deceased was working on: an interview with a San Quentin inmate (Washington) who's about to be executed for murdering a pregnant grocery cashier. Almost immediately, though, Everett starts smelling rats in the wall of evidence, and his original story angle (born-again thug finds peace and salvation through Jesus) becomes a crusade to free a man he believes to be innocent. From this point, the familiar race-against-the-executioner's-clock plot is set in motion, with all the usual accouterments of skeptical bosses, uncooperative lawmen, and the inevitable key witness who has mysteriously dropped out of sight. Eastwood, seldom one for narrative innovation or high-style shotmaking, shows little interest in subverting our expectations. Instead, he places absolute trust in his genius for moving us with sharp, forceful, linear storytelling and his ability to coax memorable, full-bodied performances from his idiosyncratic supporting cast. Woods' turn as an executive editor with a wary reverence for Steve's mercurial talent includes some of his best work ever. Leary is almost as good playing against type as a cuckolded yuppie city editor. True Crime suffers, like many of Eastwood's films, from the director's obsession with symmetry -- an abhorrence of loose ends and unresolved conflicts that give the conclusion a somewhat mechanistic feel. One also wishes, on behalf of millions of female viewers who could probably do without any further exposure to 68-year-old Clint's Inca-mummy physique, that hunk emeritus Eastwood would officially close the book on the shirtless-scene phase of his career. But even conceding the weaknesses that often seem to flow from the very same instincts that lend his work its clarity and power, True Crime still seems likely to hold up as one of the year's better crime dramas. When Eastwood is at the top of his form -- as he is for much of this film -- there's no more spellbinding storyteller in American cinema.

Scott Renshaw review [5/10]

In Robert Altman's film industry satire THE PLAYER, an earnest young screenwriter pitches a death penalty "issue" drama called HABEAS CORPUS, which he insists should have "no stars" and a downbeat ending, because "that's reality." The studio buys the story and turns it into an action thriller in which Bruce Willis races in at the last moment to save Julia Roberts from the gas chamber, quipping "Traffic was a bitch" as he carries her to safety. Capital punishment had been reduced to a plot device for a by-the-numbers crowd-pleaser. In Hollywood, _that's_ reality.

On the surface, TRUE CRIME appears to be something a bit more highbrow, but it's still a frustrating gloss over a sensitive subject. Clint Eastwood directs himself as Steve Everett, an Oakland newspaper reporter with a shambles of a life -- he's an alcoholic only two months on the wagon, a married inveterate philanderer, and a gung ho investigative journalist with a history of gung ho-ing too far. When his editor (Denis Leary) hands him a puff-piece human interest assingment on convicted murderer Frank Beachum's (Isaiah Washington) last day before his execution, Everett can't help poking around in the facts. Those facts suggest to him that a key witness couldn't have seen what he claimed to see, and that Beachum may be an innocent man. With the execution set for midnight, Everett has only twelve hours to save Beachum's life.

And, we assume, to save his own personal and professional soul in the process. TRUE CRIME is naturally more Everett's story than anyone else's, which might lead you to expect that he's the character who will learn, grow and change, especially since he has enough character flaws to fill a week's worth of Jerry Springer episodes. Instead, Eastwood doesn't even pretend that Everett's crusade is about anything more than salvaging a shred of his professional dignity. He's a self-absorbed, flirtatious irresponsible cuss in his first scene, and he's a self-absorbed, flirtatious, irresponsible cuss in his last scene. The role is surprisingly flat, leading to a narrative where all that matters is the plot progression towards Beachum's midnight deadline.

It's in their dealing with Beachum that Eastwood and his writing team throw TRUE CRIME into the most confusion. Beachum's final hours with his wife and daughter are given a lot of screen time -- perhaps to deflect the perception that this is yet another movie about a white man finding salvation through helping anonymous non-white characters -- yet those scenes serve primarily to tangle the film's themes. If we're watching Beachum's torment simply to give Everett's story a face, it's a trivialization of that suffering. If we're watching to gain a greater understanding of the emotional anguish faced by death row inmates, in effect making TRUE CRIME a death penalty "issue" drama, then Everett's pursuit of the story is trivial. And if we're watching to build sympathy for an innocent man, than a late twist which suggests Beachum might be guilty is a manipulative cheat. The film plunges us into one side of the capital punishment debate when it serves its purpose, then tiptoes around the edges of the issue at other times to avoid the appearance of making a controversial statement.

Ironically, it's only the fact that TRUE CRIME is a slick Hollywood star project that makes it fairly watchable. Eastwood once again gathers wonderful technical support -- cinematographer Jack N. Green, composer Lennie Niehaus, production designer Henry Bumstead -- to create impressive atmosphere. He also draws a slick supporting performance from James Woods' as Everett's crass editor-in-chief, a role which makes you wonder whether Woods and Denis Leary accidentally swapped scripts but the result turned out perfectly. The buildup to Everett's down-to-the-wire race to find exonerating evidence will probably work on you in spite of your resistance, but ultimately it's clear that Eastwood's craftsmanship is disguising a genuinely weightless story. TRUE CRIME is true Hollywood, a disposable entertainment that toys with earnest respectability before turning into a chase thriller where the traffic is a bitch.

True Crime John Wrathall from Sight and Sound, June 1999

Alex Fung review

Salon (Andrew O'Hehir) review

Guilt Bonds - Movies - Village Voice - Village Voice J. Hoberman from The Village Voice

New York Magazine (Peter Rainer) review

CNN Showbiz (Paul Tatara) review

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review DAK

Film Freak Central review Bill Chambers

PopMatters (Cynthia Fuchs) review also seen here: Philadelphia City Paper (Cindy Fuchs) review

Black Flix (Laurence Washington) review

The Providence Journal review Michael Janusonis

The Nation (Stuart Klawans) review

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [2/5]

Xiibaro Productions (David Perry) review [3/4]

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [3/4]

eFilmCritic.com (Erik Childress) review [3/5]

Grouch at Epinions.com

Reel.com dvd review [Eastwood] [1.5/4] Pam Grady

Reviews by John

Boxoffice Magazine review Wade Major

Entertainment Weekly review [B] Lisa Schwarzbaum

Variety (Todd McCarthy) review

The Globe and Mail review [1.5/4] Rick Groen

Memphis Flyer (Hadley Hury) review

San Francisco Examiner (Wesley Morris) review

Los Angeles Times (Kenneth Turan) review

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [3/4]

New York Times (registration req'd) Janet Maslin

SPACE COWBOYS

USA Australia (130 mi) 2000 ‘Scope

Philadelphia City Paper (Cindy Fuchs) review

The set-up is obliviously hilarious: the opening ten minutes are a monochrome rip-off/reprise of The Right Stuff, with 1950s fighter-plane test pilots hurtling to the outer limits of the atmosphere, before being leapfrogged into space by a monkey. Fast forward 40-odd years. The Cold War is over and NASA is enlisted to repair an obsolete Soviet satellite before it falls to earth. But the design is so archaic, none of today's computer nerds can figure it out. Hence a call-up for the old coots. By any sane criteria this would be considered an insult to audience intelligence, but in the context of contemporary blockbusters, you'd have to say it's all in fun. And it is fun: tongue in cheek but straightfaced enough to have you pulling for them. Messrs Garner and Sutherland don't have much to do but make the most of every scrap they get, while Clint generously cedes the lion's share of the big emotional scenes to Tommy Lee, who ropes them and rides them home. They puff around the running track, cheat on the physicals, override the automatic pilot - override pretty much everyone and everything that gets in their way, in fact - and show the new pups some old tricks. If the purpose of the exercise was to prove that the codgers can still get it up, then Mission Accomplished.

Clint Eastwood may act like a cantankerous old coot, but everyone knows he's the ideal American Hero — fiercely loyal, exceedingly courageous and smart as a rocket scientist. In Space Cowboys, producer-director Eastwood plays Frank Corvin, a super-pilot and pioneering engineer whose dreams of flying to the moon were cut short 32 years back. An elegiac black and white opening sequence shows Frank and his Team Daedalus in youthful action in 1958, crashing $4 million jets, yahooing and punching each other out, because that's what real men do. The military team members remain competitive and contentious when they grow up to be Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and James Garner, but their true adversaries are the know-nothing and untrustworthy civilians, represented here by James Cromwell in his L.A. Confidential mode. The boys are called back into action when a Russian communications satellite goes wrong, because it's using a guidance system that Frank designed way back in the Skylab days. The Cold War politics, personal betrayals, and acts of heroism that make up the actual mission are predictable, and the film thankfully spends relatively little time on all that. It focuses instead on recuperating old male bodies (and, to an extent, intellects) as venerable cultural objects and still-vigorous entities, certainly a worthy goal in a youth-obsessed era. But Space Cowboys reverts to Eastwood's familiar formula: establishing the obvious problems with the "old way" — egocentric, violent, and obsolete masculinity — and then celebrating it absolutely.

The Village Voice [J. Hoberman]

Speaking of body horror, there's no Hollywood icon—not even John Wayne—who has ever had more fun with the specter of encroaching decrepitude than that still lean and spry septuagenarian, Clint Eastwood. In Space Cowboys, which Eastwood both produced and directed, the veteran star plays long-retired test pilot Frank Corvin, who contrives to blast himself into space—along with his former team, Tank (James Garner, 72), Jerry (Donald Sutherland, 66), and Hawk (Tommy Lee Jones, a mere child of 54). The movie may not pack anything near the emotional punch of Unforgiven, but it's an entertainingly raffish action-comedy nonetheless.

A cockpit-shaking, wing-shearing, black-and-white prologue, set in 1958, establishes the team's cowboy derring-do as well as the ongoing rivalry between feisty Frank and hellcat Hawk. Indeed, Frank was supposed to be the first American in space until, he thinks, he was sandbagged by the irresponsible Hawk and replaced by a monkey. Dissolve to present-day America, where a crisis has arisen in NASAland because no one any longer understands the obsolete technology Frank used to power an old satellite that, for reasons not yet disclosed, requires urgent attention. Called upon to do his patriotic chore, Frank declines to teach the whippersnappers how to fix the thing, exploiting the situation to reunite his old buddies. Or, as one NASA flack puts it, "We've got three weeks to put four old farts in space."

Something like Grumpy Old Men Go to the Moon, the scenario is amusing in a crusty sort of way. The movie has no shortage of recurring gags—including one in which the teammates regularly discover that old pals have passed away. The mode is relaxed and folksy, with occasional heartwarming bits of business—although the grinning Marcia Gay Harden, who plays a NASA mission director, seems a bit too thrilled (or is it pained?) with her part in the project. Each actor gets more than ample time to rehearse his identifying quirk and the leisurely regimen includes trading riffs with Jay Leno on TV. Eastwood is in no particular hurry. It's nearly 90 minutes before the guys board the Metamucil Express and blast out into the cosmos to lasso the malevolent fossil of Cold War hardware that's been left floating in space like a Russki time bomb.

The obvious subtext here is that Clint knows not only how to fix an obsolete satellite but how to make an old-fashioned movie. I was particularly impressed by the effectively frugal use of Industrial Light & Magic effects—despite the somewhat abrupt (and anticlimactic) landing. Eastwood signs off with a blast of generational insouciance, but if he had held off on the Sinatra until the end credits, the final shot would have had a bit more poetic pow.

Scott Renshaw review [6/10]

SPACE COWBOYS will be greeted with enthusiasm in a certain demographic group simply because it dares to suggest that Americans over the age of 60 exist. That's a fairly revolutionary notion in pop culture, most of which is targeted at an audience that still gets graded in "nap-time" and "scissors." It's also a rare opportunity for veteran actors to get work in major roles, so you can't blame anyone involved for being enthusiastic about the project, especially given its themes. It's fun to watch a film like SPACE COWBOYS -- and probably even more fun for those viewers in the stars' peer group -- because the film itself could be an example of what its protagonists are trying to demonstrate: Sometimes, wisdom and experience trump washboard abs.

Clint Eastwood has been around the block a few times in Hollywood, so you'd think that his experience would teach him the difference between a good idea and a good script. Unfortunately, as he has done in most of his recent films, he settles for the former. The story opens in 1958, where the four members of the U.S. Air Force's Team Daedalus are preparing to be the first men in space. NASA and a chimp usurp their place, however, robbing them of their chance for space travel. But 42 years later, NASA comes calling on Frank Corvin (Eastwood) when a Russian satellite with a guidance system he designed is about to plummet to earth. The mission requires in-orbit attention, and Frank takes advantage of his bargaining position by insisting that his original team be allowed to join him for the flight. And so Team Daedalus is re-united: master pilot "Hawk" Hawkins (Tommy Lee Jones), engineer Jerry O'Neil (Donald Sutherland) and navigator Tank Sullivan (James Garner).

There's more than a little bit of GRUMPY OLD ASTRONAUTS to SPACE COWBOYS, with screenwriters Ken Kaufman and Howard Klausner taking advantage of time-worn senior citizen incongruities. Hawk and Frank are still feisty enough to get into fistfights (chortle); Jerry is still a skirt-chaser, even with his telescope-lens glasses (hoot); a female doctor walks in to examine our drooping, totally nude heroes (big-time guffaw). It's cheap humor, but it's still amusing because the performers seem dignified even when they're doing silly things, and because everyone seems to be having so much fun doing it. They also get a chance to turn the tables and mock the cocky younger astronauts (Loren Dean and Courtney B. Vance) on their mission, a development always good for a round of applause. In any other outer space adventure, the hour-plus wait for the astronauts to get off the ground would be excruciating. Eastwood makes the Daedalus team's detailed training regimen a chance to let his gifted NASA-meets-AARP stars flaunt their ease in front of the camera.

Then the astronauts finally do get off the ground, and SPACE COWBOYS crashes to earth. It's bad enough that once the Daedalus mission is underway, the good humor and cameraderie of the training center sequences vanishes, leaving nothing but crisis resolution-based plotting. Worse still is the mission itself, a ridiculous "surprise" that would have been evident even if Eastwood hadn't filmed certain characters with ominous slow-zoom close-ups to signal their soon-to-be-revealed villainy. Eastwood doesn't even seem interested in the entire third act, racing through the events at such a frantic pace (particularly for the usually meandering director) that you may wonder if he was running out of film. More likely, he understands that once the entertaining interplay between the actors gives way to shaky-cam explosions, there's not much reason to wait before sprinting toward the credits.

SPACE COWBOYS builds up enough good will through its first 80 minutes to carry it over the massive hump of its lame conclusion. Eastwood is still one of the most uniquely evocative visual film-makers around -- a director generally willing to linger where other directors would cut -- which generally makes his films worth experiencing. His style also makes him a uniquely appropriate choice for a film about characters that have reached the point in life where they'd rather amble than run. SPACE COWBOYS ambles right along with Eastwood, Jones, Sutherland and Garner, right up to the point where they amble into the conclusion of a generic summer action film. This kind of veteran acting talent deserves better. Wisdom and experience should tell someone like Clint Eastwood that there's plenty of kids' stuff out there without trying to make him and his co-stars part of it.

BFI | Sight & Sound | Space Cowboys (2000) Edward Buscombe from Sight and Sound, October 2000

Andromeda Heights Christopher Huber from Senses of Cinema, December 2000

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Tom Block

filmcritic.com (Norm Schrager) review [2.5/5]

Film Freak Central review Bill Chambers

Reel.com review [3/4] Tor Thorsen

eFilmCritic.com (Rob Gonsalves) review [3/5]

Nitrate Online (Gregory Avery) review

PopMatters Cynthia Fuchs

Salon (Andrew O'Hehir) review

Jerry Saravia review

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Mark Zimmer) dvd review [HD-DVD Version]

DVD Talk (Daniel Hirshleifer) dvd review [3/5] [HD-DVD Version]

DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review [HD DVD Version]

DVD Verdict (Ryan Keefer) dvd review [HD-DVD Version]

DVD Talk (John Sinnott) dvd review [3/5] [Blu-Ray Version]

DVD Town (Dean Winkelspecht) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

DVD Verdict (Dennis Prince) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

eFilmCritic.com (Erik Childress) review [4/5]

Movie Reviews UK review [3/5] Michael S. Goldberger

Flipside Movie Emporium (Rob Vaux) review [C]

Plume Noire review Fred Thom

Xiibaro Productions (David Perry) review [2/4]

New York Magazine (Peter Rainer) review

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [3/5]

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [3/5] Richard Scheib

another review of Space Cowboys by Paul Varner Pop Matters

Brilliant Observations on 1173 Films [Clayton Trapp]

Movieline Magazine review Michael Atkinson

Movie-Vault.com (Matthew Coats) review

Epinions [George Chabot]

Entertainment Weekly review [B-] Lisa Schwarzbaum

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [3/5]

San Francisco Chronicle (Bob Graham) review

MYSTIC RIVER B 83

USA (137 mi) 2003

Ultra grim, to the point of excess, with a hint of Oliver Stone at the end, as if to suggest the film we just saw was on the grand scale of Scorsese's GANGS OF NEW YORK, as if somehow, the history of America is built on dead bodies being buried somewhere, in a place where there's no democracy and no government oversight or accountability, a world where small-minded, right-wing fanatics rule, where their word is the last on any given subject, and all the rest is window dressing. Do you buy that? I didn't. Even the acting was excessive, particularly Penn and his cohorts, not that it wasn't good, it just didn't fit the low-key, cold, austere style of this film, think Gene Hackman in UNFORGIVEN, where evil is not just evil, it has to be portrayed as wretchedly excessive, which typically, by the way, personifies the American film concept of violence. However those two cops were superb, Kevin Bacon in particular and Laurence Fishburne, also the pained, horribly conflicted wife, Marcia Gay Hardin. When I saw that Clint Eastwood wrote the musical score which was soaring while the credits played at the end, this only confirmed my suspicions.

I've never taken a hankering to Eastwood’s films, Bridges of Madison County excepted, as I always believe they break down somewhere. Here, the style of the film was terrific, obviously well-made, but it doesn't hold up as a whole, and it gives the impression Penn gets away with murder, which personifies, in the face of America at war, just how corrupt America is, always was, and always will be, yet pretends to be our protector, the keeper of the flames of freedom, while murdering innocents abroad to protect our own selfish interests.

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

Years after one of them was abducted and abused, three former friends (Robbins, Penn and Bacon) from the predominantly working class Irish neighbourhood of South Boston find themselves caught up together in an arena of distrust, hatred and betrayal after the murder of Penn's teenage daughter. Though not, apparently, quite as rich a study of community relations as the Dennis Lehane novel on which Brian Helgeland's script is based, the film does largely succeed in its strategy of focusing on character, motivation and milieu rather than on police procedure and straightup action. It is in many ways Eastwood's tightest movie for some time, and certainly his darkest since Unforgiven; indeed, the ending offers as corrosive an assessment of the limits of American justice as anything in his career. The use of the director's own main musical theme is a little heavy-handed, and Linney's Lady Macbeth speech is a touch too explicit to convince, but the sheer classical elegance of Eastwood's direction is a delight.

Mystic River Ed Gonzalez from Slant magazine

Clint Eastwood's Mystic River is a somber evocation of a poor, close-knit section of Boston on the brink of moral collapse. Not only is the film the director's best work since his undervalued A Perfect World, it's also one of the most spiritually profound works to come out of the Hollywood studio system in quite some time. Mystic River shares more than a passing resemblance to Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams. Both take place in god-forsaken milieus and feature Sean Penn playing the vigilante cowboy when the judicial system fails its characters or doesn't do its job quick enough. But where Iñárritu's frenetic style repeatedly betrays the inherent gravitas of his story, Eastwood sorts through the rubble of his characters' lives with an assurance and patience that's reminiscent of his better works.

Eastwood's mystical tour through the film's Boston town begins in the past, when a boy is stripped of his innocence by two wolves in sheep's clothing. A "world of hurt" passes into the boy, similar to the legacy of pain that befalls ex-con gangster Jimmy Markum (Penn) when his teenage daughter is found brutally murdered in the present. Jimmy's childhood friend Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon) is the homicide detective who investigates the possible involvement of their friend Dave (Tim Robbins) in the crime. Eastwood is very much concerned with the disintegration of society and the human spirit, perfectly expressed in the transition between the film's idyllic past and hopeless, gentrified present. Just as the fates of the film's three leads are forever tied by a horrifying event, there's an overwhelming feeling here that the death of one person could mean destruction for the entire town.

Many scenes in Mystic River begin or end with Eastwood's camera tilting toward the sky or looking down at its procedural. He observes the horrors of these people's lives like the somber Mystic River that haunts the film's periphery. If the film has an obvious cross to bear, there's no denying the god-like nature of Eastwood's gaze. There's a distinct tenor to Eastwood's films and Mystic River's rhythm comes alive via a series of lyrical parallelisms. As a child, Dave got into a car with two men posing as authority figures: a police officer and a priest. History tragically repeats itself when an older Dave gets into a car with Jimmy's thugs. Eastwood clearly believes that youth is holy and he uses this visual repetition to evoke Dave's eternal damnation. More hopeful: a boy's physical disability (his muteness) is compared to the emotional unavailability of Sean's wife.

The performances are phenomenal across the board: Robbins never contrives his character's arrested development; Marcia Gay Harden, as Dave's perpetually frazzled wife, brings to mind a soul lost in limbo; and Penn is sure to bring Academy voters to tears. The film has its ciphers (namely Laura Linney's Lady Macbeth) and its fair share of summarizing speeches—but even when it appears as if Eastwood has given up on his characters for a series of red herrings, the lyrical editing of the film's Shakespearean last act plays into the schematic idea that the film's characters are merely fulfilling a predetermined prophesy of hurt. If Dogville is a ravishing autopsy of American terrorism, Mystic River is a heart-wrenching act of worship: a holy observance of the way evil spreads like a pestilence (specifically referred to as vampirism in the film) from the past into the present.

The Boston Phoenix review Chris Fujiwara

Each of the three childhood friends who grow up to become the main characters of Mystic River brings the film a particular style of revelation. When it centers on Dave (Tim Robbins), the film is filled with gaps, enigmas, and unpredictable plunges into the past (in glimpses of the cell where, as a child, he was imprisoned by two pedophiles, and of his escape through the woods). Seen from the point of view of Sean (Kevin Bacon), a Massachusetts State Police detective, the story is impersonal and flat. But Sean’s story, too, is riddled with gaps: the sudden emptinesses of the mute phone calls he gets from his estranged wife. Jimmy (Sean Penn), a small kingpin in the working-class Boston neighborhood where the film takes place, introduces a third tone, aggressive and bitter, and an obsession with visibility and control, as when he surveys two youths shopping in his corner convenience store, or later when he goes into a funeral-parlor basement to view the lifelike body of his murdered daughter, Katie (Emmy Rossum). From the narrative relay it sets up among the three men, Mystic River draws two great advantages: first, the power to evoke the complexity of the relationships among the three and the sense that, as Katie’s death forces Jimmy to recognize, fate has linked them forever; second, enough freedom from their perspectives and private hells to gain a privileged view of a vast, intricate human disaster.

This is the key to director Clint Eastwood’s strategy throughout the film. He never seeks to torment the audience with what can’t be represented: the abuse of 11-year-old Dave by the two perverts (if this isn’t shown, it’s not just from Eastwood’s sense of decorum, but because the details of the abuse will escape representation in Dave’s memory) or the death agony of Katie (which the viewer, with Jimmy, is left to imagine). He’s more concerned with the pattern that links the characters. The intelligence of the screenplay (adapted by Brian Helgeland — closely, I’m told — from Dennis Lehane’s novel) lies in its constant dual orientation toward the past (Dave’s abuse) and the future (what Jimmy will do when he catches Katie’s killer). Every event in the narrative is linked to these two points and draws multiple resonances from them.

Eastwood’s brilliance lies in keeping these resonances in play throughout the film. This is partly a matter of touches that might pass for mere narrative vigor, like the helicopter shots that give both forward momentum and a sense of destiny, or the audacious (and successful) crosscutting between two scenes of climactic violence taking place in different parts of town. But it’s also a matter of Eastwood’s love of complexity, of contrast, and of scenes built on tensions among characters with competing motives. During a cafeteria-booth discussion after he identifies his daughter’s body, Jimmy tries, with difficulty, to mourn, while his wife (Laura Linney) supports him and defends him. Meanwhile, of the two police investigators, Sean must balance concern for his bereaved former friend and the desire to solve the case, while his partner (Laurence Fishburne), suspicious of Sean’s tact, gets tough. The struggles among, and inside, the four people are clear and compelling.

Something must be said about the richness of Mystic River, which is at once a gripping psychological study, an astute piece of ethnography, and a bleak and ironic tragedy. All these aspects of the film are served by the meticulous visual detailing, which economically expresses the combination of pride, secretiveness, and decay that is the key to the characters. Every scene takes place either at night or under a milky sky that projects a frail light through the curtains of homes. (In a sinister living-room scene between Dave and his fearful wife — played by the excellent Marcia Gay Harden — the pale midday light scarcely gets three inches past the window before it diffuses into darkness.) The sense of a tight-knit, parochial community of people stubbornly clinging together under this dismal light, making and burying an unrecorded history of crimes and punishments, colors the whole story and determines the ending, one of the most ambitious and powerful in recent American film.

It Came from the Mystic Carloss James Chamberlin from Senses of Cinema, December 2003

Slate (David Edelstein) review

CultureCartel.com (Keith Uhlich) review [1/5]

Reverse Shot review #3 Film of the Year, by Nick Pinkerton, January/February 2004

Reverse Shot review The Quiet American, by Erik Syngle, November/December 2003

Cinepassion Fernando F. Croce

World Socialist Web Site David Walsh

Chicago Reader Movie Review Jonathan Rosenbaum

Mystic River Henry Sheehan

Nitrate Online (KJ Doughton) review

stylusmagazine.com (Jay Millikan) review

Jerry Saravia review [4/4]

A Macresarf1 Epinions Review.

CultureCartel.com (Rachel Gordon) review [3/5]

Goatdog's Movies (Michael W. Phillips, Jr.) review [4/5]

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Nate Meyers) dvd review Deluxe Edition

Reverse Shot review Any Which Way You Can: How Europe Paints Eastwood Red, by Stefano Ciammaroni, November/December 2003

Kamera.co.uk review Thessa Mooij

AboutFilm.com (Carlo Cavagna) review [A-]

hybridmagazine.com review Kelly Hsu

Flipside Movie Emporium (Rob Vaux) review [B+]

The Filmsnobs (James Owen) review

Film Freak Central dvd review [Widescreen Version] Walter Chaw and Bill Chambers

d+kaz. Intelligent Movie Reviews (Daniel Kasman) review [B+]

New York Magazine (Peter Rainer) review

Xiibaro Productions (David Perry) review [4/4]

The Filmsnobs (Stephen Himes) review

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Arthur Lazere

eFilmCritic.com (Mel Valentin) review [3/5]

Newsweek (David Ansen) review

Reverse Shot review Jeff Reichert, January/February 2004

Harvey S. Karten review [B+]

Talking Pictures (UK) review Emma Dixon

DVD Verdict (Dan Mancini) dvd review [Special Edition]

Vern's review

eFilmCritic.com review [5/5] Slyder

Reel.com review [3.5/4] Tim Knight

Plume Noire review Fred Thom

DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review Special Edition

eFilmCritic.com (Erik Childress) review [5/5]

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [3.5/5]

filmcritic.com (Sean O'Connell) review [2/5]

CineScene.com (Chris Dashiell) review

The Providence Journal (Michael Janusonis) review [4/5]

Cinemaphile.org (David Keyes) review

Movie-Vault.com (David Trier) review

Eye for Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review [3.5/5]

Jigsaw Lounge (Neil Young) review [6/10]

Christian Science Monitor (David Sterritt) review [4/4]

Reel.com dvd review [4/4] Jerry Renshaw

Mystic River (Oct 08, 2003) | Lisa Schwarzbaum Entertainment Weekly

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]

Bred in the Bone; Clint Eastwood's 'Mystic River' Rages With the Force of Man's Grief Ann Hornaday from The Washington Post

Boston Globe review [3/4] Ty Burr

Austin Chronicle (Marc Savlov) review [4/5]

San Francisco Chronicle (Carla Meyer) review

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review William Arnold

San Francisco Examiner (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review also seen here: Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review

Nick's Flick Picks (Nick Davis) review [A]

DVDBeaver dvd review Henrik Sylow

MILLION DOLLAR BABY A- 94

USA (132 mi) 2004

Surprisingly good—Eastwood at the top of his game, reminiscent of the calm, poetic narration from Morgan Freeman in SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994), and because it’s sparingly used, it's even more effective. Freeman is superb as Eastwood’s sidekick, providing much needed comic relief as a dry, sarcastic counterbalance to the more ornery, chiseled old buzzard that Eastwood plays. It’s a terrific script, an adaptation by Paul Haggis from “Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner,” a Jerry Boyd book published under the pseudonym F.X. O’Toole after 40 years of rejection, a 70-year old man who had been a boxing manager and corner cut man. While the film is immersed in the down and out boxing world, living and breathing the stink of the gym, it’s not really about boxing, instead it’s a scorchingly real redemption story, where the humorous wit really surprised me, with Eastwood and Freeman continually taking little sarcastic snipes at one another. Add an extraordinary performance by Hilary Swank as a young, down on her luck, middle aged nobody who wants to be somebody and decides to do it in the boxing ring.

Eastwood owns an old run down gym and has a knack for training boxers, but stays away from Swank, as she’s a girl, and he fears nothing good can come of it. But she sticks around, believing the ring is the only place where she ever feels good about herself, and eventually wears down his attempts at insults and rejection. Together they make a name for themselves, and even touch glory, but only for a moment. It’s a darkened, extremely spare film style that utilizes the dimly lit edges of people in shadows or standing in the corners, never really in the picture at all, always just barely there. My knock here is that the sports shots seem all too predictable, and part of the story—seeing her family, the sordid world of managers—isn't even necessary. There's a scene of them having dinner at ringside which, even if true, is pretty ridiculous. However, overall, the tone is sharp, tightly scripted, dimly lit, like in the shadows of what's real, exploring the edges of the frame, with very spare use of music as well, again, written by Eastwood, which is equally haunting and quiet. Something of a weeper.

The Onion A.V. Club review Scott Tobias

Actors are capable of sinking into many roles, but icons like Clint Eastwood are another story: His range is limited, but within those limits, his aura suggests a history and gravity that's more powerful than mere performance. In his beautiful boxing drama Million Dollar Baby, Eastwood allows the gentle masculinity of his recent roles to seep into the entire movie, creating a haunted tone that transforms an underdog sports film into something as intimate as a whisper. With its down-and-out characters and dramatic interplay of darkness and light, the film has the texture of a somber palooka noir like Robert Wise's The Set-Up, but it's touched by a dogged optimism that's anathema to the genre. Though conventional in many respects, it feels like no other boxing film ever made, due largely to Eastwood's unmistakable presence on both sides of the camera.

Based on Rope Burns: Stories From The Corner, a short-story anthology by veteran fight manager and cutman Jerry Boyd (writing under the pen name F.X. Toole), Million Dollar Baby is suffused with loss, since even the brightest boxing careers are short-lived and doomed to disappointment at the end of the line. As a longtime trainer and current proprietor of a dilapidated gym, Eastwood knows this heartbreak better than most, because he's reminded of it every day. His gym manager, played by an assured Morgan Freeman, was a great contender, until a brutal title bout left him blind in one eye. Hesitant to train another fighter, Eastwood reluctantly takes on Hilary Swank, a trailer-park-raised waitress who overcomes her age and inexperience with raw talent and determination. Estranged from their respective families, Eastwood and Swank develop a deep surrogate bond that leads them through the gritty, low-stakes female-boxing circuit.

Million Dollar Baby sets the stage for a hard-won triumph-over-adversity tale, but it's too wise about the boxing world to fall for easy victories, or even the redeeming, spirited letdown of the original Rocky. In Eastwood's hands, the standard training montages have a hushed, meditative quality, with a specific emphasis on the scientific half of "the sweet science" that no doubt stems from Boyd's experience. Though the rambling narrative shows signs of squeezing a few short stories into one—the last 30 minutes, in particular, seem like another movie altogether—the film coheres around groups of characters that integrate more tightly as it goes along. The three leads are all superb, even the seemingly miscast Swank, who finally rediscovers the Method intensity that's been missing since Boys Don't Cry. But Million Dollar Baby belongs to Eastwood, the icon and the auteur, whose weathered face tells a story like nothing he's done since Unforgiven, and whose direction resonates with quiet, insistent soul.

The Boston Phoenix review Chris Fujiwara

First, the title. A million dollars is not a lot for a baby when actors get 10 times that for being in films that no one sees. It’s a Depression-era kind of title, and it resounds with phrases like "Million Dollar Movie," the name of a program of yore on WOR-TV in New York that gave an afterlife to classics of American cinema.

Among American directors working today, Clint Eastwood is one of the few who create worlds as definite, abstract, and self-contained as those limned (often on hundred-thousand-dollar budgets) by such million-dollar directors as Raoul Walsh and Allan Dwan. From the beginning, Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby establishes such a world — one that appears to obey verisimilitude in every respect but that exists only in the imagination. "People love violence," whispers the voiceover narrator, ex-boxer Scrap (Morgan Freeman). The film, its setting (the Hit Pit Gym), and its hero, boxing trainer Frankie (Eastwood), all exist because they’ve been summoned by this love and by its complementary force, which Scrap calls "the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you."

The heroine, Maggie (Hilary Swank), is a dreamer of this dream. Although she is, as the film will detail, the product of a poor rural background and a grasping family, Maggie enters Million Dollar Baby out of nowhere: she just appears in the Hit Pit, fully formed, before she asks Frankie to remake her.

If the strongest motives driving the story of Million Dollar Baby were its up-front ones — Maggie’s will to master boxing; Frankie’s will, which proves less strong, to uphold his principle never to train women — Eastwood would still have enough to go on for a good film. But behind Frankie’s principle stands another that’s formulated in the mantric exchange he and Maggie repeat: "What is the rule?" "To protect myself at all times." Although the script explains Frankie’s obsession with this rule by mentioning a past boxing accident, the reference is embroidery. Maggie is a heroine easy to root for, but Million Dollar Baby is Frankie’s tragedy: the story of a man who against his better judgment and inclination gets involved with another human being and ends up paying for it. (As Joseph Conrad wrote: "I only know that he who forms a tie is lost. The germ of corruption has entered into his soul.")

The wintry look Eastwood and cinematographer Thomas Stern create is ideal for unfolding the pain and the symmetry of this story. Darkness surrounds the characters, both as a sign of danger and as the background of non-existence from which they emerge. This is human life for Eastwood: half-lit, temporary safe zones chipped out of darkness. Most of Frankie’s own house is a lost continent, with light coming from unexpected angles; when he opens his closet to file another returned-as-undeliverable letter to his estranged daughter, light hits him from above. Henry Bumstead’s production design is eloquent. A shot of Frankie and Maggie at a dinner table overlooking an arena evokes a cheap majesty as stirring as anything in The Aviator. The diner where the pair stop on the way to visit her family is a sleek abstraction, both weatherbeaten and ageless, popping up, like Maggie and like the whole film, out of nowhere.

Million Dollar Baby isn’t a complete success. There are three, maybe four ways to shoot a boxing match, and despite his skill at pacing himself, Eastwood can’t avoid running through them before the script runs out of in-the-ring action. A boxing film may be forgiven its clichés, but this one is now and then too liberal with them. The character of Scrap is the most conventional aspect of the film, which (though Morgan Freeman is excellent) goes into a palpable slump in a sequence in which he’s left in charge of the gym. And triteness creeps into the ominous underlining of the formidable stature of one opponent Maggie must face.

Their match results in a late-film plot shift of the type that reviewers must keep secret and that in lesser directorial hands would have sent Million Dollar Baby into a tailspin. I’ll say only that Eastwood has never been more moving, as a director or as an actor, than he is in the last 30 minutes of this film.

Film Comment Amy Taubin article and interview from Film Comment, January/February 2005

Now in his Seventies, Clint Eastwood continues to find new challenges both in front of and behind the camera, as the heartrending Million Dollar Baby demonstrates

Age has clenched Clint Eastwood's face tight as a fist, but he has never been more tender, vulnerable, and heartbroken than in Million Dollar Baby. It's not surprising that the camera still loves Eastwood's visage, finding unchanging beauty in the skull beneath the skin. His facial bones, if anything, appear more finely chiseled than in his youth. But the muscles that hold the thinned skin have contracted, pulling brow and eyes down and inward, so that the signature squint is deeper and less yielding, even to laughter. Eastwood never had one of those expressive, easy-to-read faces. He made a virtue of his guardedness, subtly adjusting a personal character trait to fit dozens of different fictional characters and stories. As both director and actor, he has applied a single style-stripped-down realism-to an enormous range of genres: westerns, cop thrillers, biopics, screwball comedies, psychodramas, even a three-handkerchief romance. At first, he tinkered with their formulas; then he turned them upside down.

Loss, regret, and the things one does and doesn't learn from experience are the themes of the late Eastwood films, among which Million Dollar Baby is one of the greatest. Unforgiven may be more magisterial, but Million Dollar Baby is the tougher work of art in the sense that it's easier to fuel a film with anger and the desire for revenge, as Unforgiven is, than with a grief that can never be assuaged. Million Dollar Baby starts out bittersweet-it could be a Thirties studio picture about a broken-down boxing trainer who gets a second chance when he takes a hungry young fighter under his wing-but it ends up akin to King Lear. And much of the emotional power of the film comes from Eastwood's performance. In the past, Eastwood the director has treated Eastwood the actor perhaps too much as a functionary. Since a large percentage of the world's population enjoys seeing him onscreen, it hasn't been such a bad strategy. But here, for the first time, he gives himself the kind of liberty that he has, so generously, given other actors: to explore the character in the moment as the camera rolls.

Eastwood plays Frankie Dunn, a physical and emotional wreck of a man who has spent a lifetime in the fight game and now owns a run-down gym and occasionally manages a boxer. Frankie's body barely cooperates anymore, but what has really dragged him down is his estrangement from his daughter (Eastwood leaves it for us to imagine what terrible thing happened between them) and also that one of his fighters was badly injured in the ring. That fighter, Scrap (Morgan Freeman), is now Frankie's sole employee and his only friend. Scrap encourages Frankie to work with Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), who's trying to rise above her own family horror show and believes that a boxing career could be her way out of grinding poverty. Frankie wants no part of this venture, but Maggie's persistence, courage, and passion for the fight game prove persuasive.

"Always protect yourself" is the basic boxing lesson Frankie tries to drum into Maggie's head. But Frankie has a problem figuring out when protectiveness-of oneself and the people one is committed to-closes off the possibility of living fully. More than a film about boxing, Million Dollar Baby is about the relationship between parents and children, specifically between fathers and daughters. Maggie gives Frankie a second chance at parenting, and Maggie knows, just as we in the audience know, that Frankie is the best father any daughter could wish for. The heartbreaking thing is that Frankie, almost assuredly, will never feel that way about himself.

This is the most musical of Eastwood's films in that so much meaning and feeling is carried by shifts of tempo and tonality. The shifts that happen within the dialogue scenes are extremely delicate-the three leading actors play off one another with the subtlety and spontaneity of jazz musicians. The fight scenes, however, are explosive and brutal. Shot with two cameras, and virtually unchoreographed, they have a rawness that makes them scary to watch, especially since it's clear that Swank is doing all her own fighting. Swank is terrifically game and courageous, both in and out of the ring. Her eager, bright spirit is a great foil for Eastwood, and together, they create a complicated map of loyalty, trust, and love.

Cinepassion Fernando F. Croce

Maggie, Frankie, and Me Jeff Shannon from New Mobility magazine, April 2005, including an: Interview with Eastwood

Reverse Shot review Hit me Like You Mean It, by Erik Hynes from Reverse Shot, Spring 2005

Bright Lights Film Journal review Tony Macklin, February 2005

Bright Lights Film Journal review Eric Schlosser, May 2005

DVD Times (HD-DVD) [Michael Mackenzie]

Filmbrain Like Anna Karina’s Sweater

Million Dollar Baby Henry Sheehan

Flipside Movie Emporium (Rob Vaux) review [A-]

CineScene.com (Chris Knipp) review

Slant Magazine review Ed Gonzalez

Alternative Film Guide Review Andre Soares

CultureCartel.com (John Nesbit) review [4.5/5]

Goatdog's Movies (Michael W. Phillips, Jr.) review [4.5/5]

Kamera.co.uk review Mark Sells

Movie Vault [Friday and Saturday Night Critic]

Pajiba (Dustin Rowles) review

stylusmagazine.com (Dan Emerson) review

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Arthur Lazere

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [4/5]

hybridmagazine.com review Tiffany Couch Bartlett

Village Voice (Michael Atkinson) review

The Providence Journal (Michael Janusonis) review [5/5]

d+kaz. Intelligent Movie Reviews (Daniel Kasman) review [C]

Million Dollar Baby Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

Reel.com dvd review [3.5/4] James Plath, 2-disc set

DVD Talk (Scott Lecter) dvd review [4/5] [Deluxe Edition] 3-disc set

3-Disc Edition, DVD Town [John J. Puccio]

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Mark Zimmer) dvd review [HD-DVD Version]

DVD Talk (Joshua Zyber) dvd review [3/5] [HD-DVD Version]

DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review [HD DVD Version]

DVD Verdict (Ryan Keefer) dvd review [HD-DVD Version]

DVD Talk (Todd Douglass Jr.) dvd review [4/5] [Blu-Ray Version]

DVD Town (Dean Winkelspecht) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

Jerry Saravia review [3/4]

Harvey S. Karten review [B]

filmcritic.com (Sean O'Connell) review [4.5/5]

Beyond Hollywood review Nix

Reel.com review [3.5/4] Sarah Chauncey

CineScene.com (Shari L. Rosenblum) review

Film Freak Central dvd review [Widescreen Edition] Walter Chaw and Bill Chambers

Salon (Charles Taylor) review

Talking Pictures (UK) review Jamie Garwood

About.com Hollywood Movies (Rebecca Murray) review [A]

Eye for Film (Scott Macdonald) review [5/5]

Christian Science Monitor (David Sterritt) review [4/4]

CineScene.com (Chris Dashiell) review

Ruthless Reviews review Matt Cale

Rio Rancho Film Reviews *potentially offensive*

Martin Tsai's Blog

Exclaim! [Travis Mackenzie Hoover]

Classic Film Guide (capsule)

Washington Post (Desson Thomson) review

Guardian/Observer

Boston Globe review [4/4] Ty Burr

Austin Chronicle (Steve Davis) review [4.5/5]

San Francisco Chronicle [Mick LaSalle]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review William Arnold

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [4/4] January 7, 2005

Critics have no right to play spoiler :: rogerebert.com :: News ... Roger Ebert, January 29, 2005

From boxing movie to political bout » Jim Emerson, Ebert website editor, January 28, 2005

'Million Dollar' misrepresentations » Jim Emerson, Ebert website editor, February 10, 2005

Is Oscar's best pic a masterpiece? » Jim Emerson, Ebert website editor, March 4, 2005

The Village Voice [Scott Foundas]

DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS

USA (132 mi) 2006

Chicago Reader [Jonathan Rosenbaum]

Perhaps only the clout of director Clint Eastwood and coproducer Steven Spielberg could have brought us a movie about how the most inspirational photo of World War II--four GIs raising the flag at Iwo Jima--was mendaciously exploited to sell war bonds. It's a noble undertaking, and Eastwood is stylistically bold enough to create a view of combat based mainly on images that are clearly manufactured. (As with Saving Private Ryan, the movie's principal source is The Big Red One, whose director, Samuel Fuller, actually experienced the war.) But this is underimagined and so thesis ridden that it's nearly over before it starts. (Part of the story--the experience of Native American marine Ira Hamilton Hayes--was better told 45 years earlier in The Outsider, starring Tony Curtis.) William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis adapted a book by James Bradley and Ron Powers; with Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, and Adam Beach. R, 132 min.

The Onion A.V. Club review Scott Tobias

Since stories of battlefield heroics are the myths that fuel the war machine, it really doesn't matter if they're precisely true—or even invented from whole cloth—as long as they contribute to the cause. The flag-raising at Iwo Jima, perhaps the most iconic snapshot of American struggle and triumph in World War II, shows that a picture can say a thousand words, but those words don't necessarily tell the story. On its face, Clint Eastwood's Flags Of Our Fathers seems like a potent piece of revisionist history, boldly examining what heroism really means and how it can be manufactured for the "greater good." But somewhere along the way, the film loses its moxie and becomes the very thing the flag-raisers would have detested—another bronze-cast tribute to bravery and self-sacrifice, destined to fill out a three-hour slot in a Memorial Day TV marathon.

Beautifully structured, save for a heavy-handed framing device (one of several traits, good and bad, it shares with Saving Private Ryan), the script cuts between the propagandistic tour of three soldiers featured in the picture and the cruel details of the battle itself. On day five of a monthlong siege aimed at taking Iwo Jima from the Japanese, a group of Marines planted the flag on top of Mount Suribachi to rouse their fellow troops. It was then taken down and replaced by another flag, which is the one that made the famous photograph. Half the flag-raisers died in combat, but the other half—in Flags, a field medic (Ryan Phillippe), a "runner" (Jesse Bradford) who never fired a shot, and a troubled warrior (Adam Beach) of Native American heritage—returned home for speeches and photo ops. They feel varying degrees of guilt about their new roles, but find some consolation in the fact that their stumping will sell the war bonds necessary to finish the campaign.

At its most devastatingly effective, Flags Of Our Fathers follows these three men as they're trotted in front of roaring crowds at places like Soldier Field and Times Square, knowing that this charade is keeping them from their friends on the front lines. (Whenever they're introduced as "the heroes of Iwo Jima," they all but shrink in embarrassment.) As with Saving Private Ryan, the battle sequences strike a nice balance between old-fashioned derring-do and contemporary viscera, with the barren island sometimes turning into a nightmarish lunar landscape. Yet what begins as a sophisticated meditation on the meaning of heroism gradually slumps into leaden repetition in the second half, as the point gets watered down and belabored. After such provocative beginnings, the film finally, dutifully raises its hand in salute.

Cinepassion.org Fernando F. Croce

War is tragic until fed through the media -- then it becomes heroic. Flags of Our Fathers opens with an anguished soldier running through a pulverized battlefield; the camera zooms into his horrified eyes to reveal it as an old man's memory, or the lingering toll of the past on a collective consciousness, perhaps. In any case, Americans prefer history with "easy-to-understand truths and damn few words," and Clint Eastwood thusly analyzes his subject, namely the snapshot of the six U.S. flag-raisers atop Mt. Suribachi during the taking of Iwo Jiwa. Joe Rosenthal's 1944 photograph made the front page of the New York Times to become an indelible WWII image and an instant symbol of Yankee courage and perseverance; a pose requires faces, so three surviving flag-raisers, John "Doc" Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) are promptly shipped from the battlefront to the spotlight as hero-celebrities. The iconic moment was really a flag-replacement maneuver, but war bonds must be sold, and "that's the story we're selling, boys" -- they become war-effort mascots, shaking hands at ceremony after ceremony. Eastwood shoots in ashen, naval grays, sallow uniform tones, and engulfing darkness, and cuts from a man being bayoneted to a raucous ocean of red-white-and-blue, the "Vict'ry Polka" welcoming the protagonists; shelling turns into fireworks as they are made to climb a papier-mâché replica of Mt. Suribachi to cheering crowds, tragic reality reenacted as entertainment, a most withering critique of United 93.

Crash came in between Million Dollar Baby and Flags of Our Fathers, so patronizing blabbermouth Paul Haggis's unmistakable hand in the screenwriting is clearer here -- the director can try to cut away at the blubber, but he's still left with Haggis's exclamation points (Bradley's "So much for no man left behind" as destroyers sail past a drowning grunt, "Goddamn Indians" as Hayes finds that his uniform can't dim prejudice). Steven Spielberg, who co-produced, is as dubious an influence in this project as he was in Poltergeist: Eastwood's intimate, handheld scuttling on the beachfront segues into a tracking shot following two men carrying a mangled body, then cranes up for a panoramic view of the CGI-filled slaughter. So this may not be a "pure" Eastwood work like, say, True Crime or Blood Work, yet its scrupulous scrutiny of societal notions of heroism and masculinity projected on troubled characters is closer to Ford's They Were Expendable or Wellman's The Story of G.I. Joe (to say nothing of the filmmaker's own gnarled loners) than to Saving Private Ryan -- not a last word on WWII epics but a human-sized contemplation of propaganda and fame, battlefield experience and its public packaging, moral exploitation and personal dignity. No squinting is needed here to spot the toppling of Saddam's statue or Bush's "Mission Accomplished" strut, though some critics insist there's no need for another heroism-debunking portrait, just as they miss the pared-down poetry of a veteran who continues to slash deep in his inquiry. (The film is only half an epic: Letters from Iwo Jiwa next year provides the myth's alternative perspective.) Eastwood questions the printing of the legend, but a more appropriate John Ford quote for his ambivalence might be Anna Lee's line in Fort Apache about the departing soldiers: "All I can see are the flags."

A single photograph, we're told early on in Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, can win or lose a war. But sometimes that photo shows us only part of the story, whether it's the part we don't want to see—slaughtered villagers at My Lai, tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib—or the part we do, with heroes front and center and the carnage out of view.

In Flags, the image under scrutiny is one of the most iconic in American photojournalism: five U.S. Marines and one Navy corpsman planting Old Glory atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima during the fifth day of the 35-day battle. That picture, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, helped rally American support for the war, won a Pulitzer for its photographer (Joe Rosenthal), and made overnight celebrities out of its subjects. But the soldiers didn't feel like heroes, and with good reason.

Based on the bestselling book by James Bradley, whose father, John "Doc" Bradley, was the Navy corpsman in Rosenthal's photo, Flags of Our Fathers is about the three flag raisers who survived Iwo Jima—Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), the dashing and mildly pompous Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), and the proud Pima Indian Ira Hayes (Adam Beach)—and how their moment in the spotlight irrevocably altered their lives. For these men were not the first to fly the Stars and Stripes, but rather a secondary team, assembled after the smaller flag erected earlier by a different group was claimed as a souvenir by a naval officer. It was this second flag, though, that was seen around the world, its raisers plucked from duty and ferried hither and yon by wily politicians who saw the makings of an inspired PR campaign. It was not the first—or last—time that perception trumped reality in the selling of wars to the American public.

According to the press notes, in his later years John Bradley was plagued by hallucinations and night terrors, and Eastwood's movie unfolds as if it were one of them, flashing back and forth between the charcoal sands of Iwo Jima and the clinking banquet rooms where the flag raisers shill for the war bond effort before patriotic well-wishers. Executed in stark widescreen compositions all but drained of color, the battle scenes are as visceral as anything in Saving Private Ryan—no small feat given that Eastwood is 76 this year and has never before directed a film of this physical scale. The landing on Iwo Jima is a master class in controlled chaos, as bullets stream out of camouflaged pillboxes and mortar fire turns bodies into sizzling piles of flesh and bone. But the most surreal, unsettling images come later, when the three heroes are pressed into re-enacting their storied feat as a vaudeville spectacle before a cheering crowd, and when, at a celebratory dinner, they see their huddled likenesses transformed into an ice cream sculpture.

To an extent, Flags of Our Fathers is to the WWII movie what Eastwood's Unforgiven was to the western—a stripping-away of mythology until only a harsher, uncomfortable reality remains. But what Eastwood really does is call into question an entire way of reading history, by which the vast and incomprehensible are reduced to digestible symbols and meanings. In war—Eastwood offers us a timely reminder—who is just and unjust depends on where you're watching from. And to further the point, his next movie, Letters From Iwo Jima, tells the story from the perspective of the Japanese.

With Flags, Eastwood has made one of his best films—a searching, morally complex deconstruction of the Greatest Generation that is nevertheless rich in the sensitivity to human frailty that has become his signature as a filmmaker. You feel this most in the characterization of Hayes, whose postwar descent into alcoholism and near madness has been told before, in song ("The Ballad of Ira Hayes") and on-screen (1961's The Outsider), but never with such haunted intensity. Beach's agonizing portrait is made all the more poignant by the film's revelation that Hayes, like the other men who raised the second flag, did show extraordinary bravery on the battlefield, just not in the way for which he was remembered. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but for men like John Bradley, Rene Gagnon, and Ira Hayes, there were thousands more that went unspoken.

BFI | Sight & Sound | Flags of Our Fathers (2006) Ali Jaafar from Sight and Sound, January 2007

World Socialist Web Site review Ramón Valle

Reverse Shot (Chris Wisniewski) review

Pajiba (Phillip Stephens) review

DVD Times Noel Megahey

Flipside Movie Emporium (Rob Vaux) review [C]

Slant Magazine [Nick Schager]

The House Next Door [Ed Gonzalez]

Confessions of a Film Critic [John Maguire]

The Nation (Stuart Klawans) review also reviewing BORAT, calling it a culture split between Charlie Chaplin (Borat) and D.W. Griffith (Flags)

filmcritic.com (Sean O'Connell) review [3.5/5]

New York Magazine (David Edelstein) review (Page 2)

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Mark Zimmer) dvd review

CBC.ca Arts (Katrina Onstad) review

Christian Science Monitor (Peter Rainer) review [B]

d+kaz. Intelligent Movie Reviews (Daniel Kasman) review [D+]

Ruthless Reviews review Matt Cale

DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson) dvd review

Edward Copeland on Film

DVD Talk theatrical [Jamie S. Rich]

DVD Talk (Randy Miller III) dvd review [3/5] [Special Edition]

DVD Verdict - Two-Disc Special Edition [Neal Masri]

DVDTown - 5-Disc Commemorative Edition [Dean Winkelspecht and John J. Puccio]

DVD Talk - Battle for Iwo Jima Commemorative Collector's Edition (Preston Jones)

DVD Verdict (Brendan Babish) dvd review [Commemorative Edition]

DVD MovieGuide dvd review ['Heroes of Iwo Jima' Commemorative Edition] Colin Jacobson

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Mark Zimmer) dvd review [HD-DVD Version] [Special Edition]

DVD Verdict - Two-Disc Special Edition (HD DVD) [Ryan Keefer]

DVD Talk (Joshua Zyber) dvd review [4/5] [HD-DVD Version]

DVD Town (Dean Winkelspecht) dvd review [HD DVD Version]

DVD Talk (Matthew Hinkley) dvd review [5/5] [Blu-Ray Version]

DVD Town (Dean Winkelspecht) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

About.com Hollywood Movies (Rebecca Murray) review [B]

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [2/5]

eFilmCritic.com (Erik Childress) review [2/5]

CompuServe [Harvey Karten]

eFilmCritic.com review [3/5] U.J. Lessing

Reel.com review [3.5/4] Tim Knight

House Next Door [Sean Burns and Andew Dignan]

Eye for Film (Jennie Kermode) review [4/5]

Eye for Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review [4.5/5]

Film School Rejects (Neil Miller) review [C]

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [3/5]

stylusmagazine.com (Imran J. Syed) review

Entertainment Weekly review [B-] Owen Gleiberman

Time Out London (Geoff Andrew) review

The Guardian (Peter Bradshaw) review

The Observer (Philip French) review

Washington Post (Stephen Hunter) review

Boston Globe review [2.5/4] Ty Burr

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [2.5/5]

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review [2/4]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review William Arnold

Chicago Tribune [Michael Phillips]

DVDBeaver - HD DVD [Yunda Eddie Feng]

DVDBeaver.com [Yunda Eddie Feng]

LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA B 86

USA (141 mi) 2006

Another war film with an epic sweep, the bookend of the previously released FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, each told from the opposing points of view of the same war. On a tiny island in the Pacific, Japan considered Iwo Jima a part of its birthright, and on that soil, it would defend the mainland of Japan, as otherwise the Americans could use it as a foothold to attack Tokyo and Hiroshima. Told exclusively from the Japanese point of view, including remaining faithful to the Japanese language, which is subtitled into English, this is admittedly an adventurous project, a remarkable effort during a time when America considers itself at war with terrorists. And here we have a mainstream Hollywood release by one of the patriarchs of American filmmaking making a war film designing a strategy where American soldiers come under attack. Interesting idea. While this film has received considerable praise, most of it is merited more for the ambitious undertaking than for the film itself.

With the exception of the poetry of Malick’s THE THIN RED LINE (1998) and Fuller’s bitingly sarcastic THE BIG RED ONE (1980), all of these war films look and feel the same, where the director goes through an obligatory checklist of things that must occur in their films. Beachfront assault, beachfront fortifications, moments of expectation before the assault begins, camera angle from behind the machine gun nests mowing down approaching soldiers, a picture of explosions and chaos as soldiers are demolished by the second, one side runs out of food and water, the end is near, the thought of suicide becomes paramount, orders are questioned, messages get deliberately misinterpreted, soldiers turn on their leadership, where commanders rise to the occasion by fighting valiantly to the end, usually resulting in a noble death. Each director may accent or diminish various aspects of these same elements, but it still ends up feeling like we’re watching the same film. Much of this has become so common that what’s actually happening onscreen as body parts are being blown to bits is of dwindling interest. This film sags and is overlong largely because it insists on including the exact same imagery that we’ve come to expect in other films, not realizing their version is really no different, despite this singularly unique idea to present two versions of the same war from opposing points of view. Instead of combining this into one film, we have another example of war excess.

In this film, they use the Ken Burns THE CIVIL WAR (1990) device of reading soldier’s letters written home, cue a melancholic piano theme to go along with poignant thoughts. It might be more interesting if all of the letters used were actually written during wartime, as was the case in Burns’s film, instead this is a fictionalized narrative device that feels like déjà vu, as only the General’s letters were actually discovered. Of course these letters are moving, but predictably so, even though what’s most interesting is a letter written by an American mother to her American soldier that perished in front of them. Again, as this was the only American soldier temporarily rescued in the entire film, a stark contrast to what happens to two Japanese soldiers captured by the other side, of course this is the United Nations moment where stunned Japanese soldiers realize American soldiers are just like them. War is hell and no one should be forced to fight in them unless absolutely necessary. The message in this film about the treachery of war reminds us of the lies we are told and the mythology that is used to demonize the enemy in order to justify war in the first place, but the message is clumsily told, despite its ultimate poignancy. From the Japanese perspective, great care is taken to highlight the sense of honor, perfectly expressed by the rock solid leadership of Ken Watanabe as General Kuribayashi, only to see that honor evaporate under duress and turn to murder. Americans are seen doing the same thing. War does not distinguish among victims. Watanabe’s performance is all the more impressive because he offers staggeringly effective leadership that confounds his more traditional minded officers.

By the numbers, 100,000 U.S. troops attacked Iwo Jima, nearly 7000 died and 20,000 were injured, while 20,000 Japanese soldiers defended the island and only 1000 survived. In this film, we are lead to believe only one Japanese soldier survives, which heightens the tragedy meter, elevating the level of anguish and sorrow. In this film, we continue to hear gunfire off in the distance even when the Japanese have been whittled down to about 25 soldiers huddled together in a cave starving to death. It’s a little misleading, Most of the film is a sepia-toned black and white, and after an initial beach invasion which is over very quickly, the Japanese are forced to retreat into caves they dug, which is the only way they survived the relentless air assault. But from there, they had no access to food or water once their supplies ran out. The Japanese had no air or Naval support, but were left to fight to the last man. There’s a chilling Japanese radio broadcast from home where young school children sing a song to bolster their troop’s morale, claiming the safety of the mainland depends on them, which comes at a moment when all is already lost. It’s a haunting moment in the film with a profound effect, but overall, it’s a good, just not a great overall effort.

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]

It's hard to explain exactly why Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima is so much better than its companion World War II film Flags Of Our Fathers, except to say that Flags tries too hard to emphasize the ironies of selling a war, while Letters deals with the ins and outs of the war itself. Aside from a short modern framing device and a handful of flashbacks, Letters From Iwo Jima starts just before the U.S. invasion of a tactically significant Japanese island, and ends with the U.S. victory. All of this is shown exclusively from the Japanese military perspective, as they dig tunnels, lay in supplies, and prepare to fight off the Americans with almost no resources save their own discipline. And as the battle wears on, even that breaks down.

Eastwood and co-screenwriters Paul Haggis and Iris Yamashita (working from a book by Tadamichi Kuribayashi) finesse the trick of making the historical bad guys into sympathetic characters by dividing them into blinkered, remorseless traditionalists and homesick grunts. Splitting the difference is Ken Watanabe, playing the mission commander, an American-schooled Lt. General more interested in keeping his troops alive for a sustained attack than sacrificing them for some nebulous sense of honor. To some extent, Letters From Iwo Jima is cheap in the way it manipulates audience sentiment, and the few scenes where the Japanese soldiers learn how much they resemble their enemy are way too on-the-nose.

At the same time, Eastwood and company capture what it must have been like for a simple baker like Kazunari Ninomiya, dealing with conflicting orders and a nationalist philosophy that values martyrdom over success. Those looking for contemporary relevance in Letters From Iwo Jima could find it all over the sociopolitical map, from the insanity of terrorist suicide bombers to the frustrations of a "stay the course" foreign policy. The most significant moment in the film is one of its least strident: an unsparing scene where American soldiers execute a handful of prisoners rather than risking their own lives to transport them. It's hard to argue with those soldiers from a strategic point of view, but in the context of Letters, their choice convinces the Japanese to fight to the death rather than surrendering, which ultimately costs even more American lives. Eastwood handles that kind of minute study of human darkness best, showing how people make impossible choices with dreadful repercussions.

Reverse Shot (Michael Koresky) review

In Clint Eastwood’s “Letters from Iwo Jima,” the Japanese star Ken Watanabe, who plays General Kuribayashi, the defender of the island, sweeps off his Army cap and snaps his head downward in an abrupt bow. This curt signature gesture, performed before his officers, is an expression of mastery and, at the same time, of submission—to duty, to Japan, and to death. Eastwood, in such movies as “Unforgiven,” “Million Dollar Baby,” and his two Iwo Jima films (“Letters” is a companion piece to “Flags of Our Fathers,” released last fall), has become the Ernest Hemingway of film directors, a man bound, by his own sense of duty, to celebrate valor in defeat. In the early scenes of “Flags of Our Fathers,” we experienced the vulnerability of the American marines: the Japanese Army, dug into caves and tunnels, lured the Americans onto the beach by holding their fire. Now, in a unique reversal of perspective, we are inside the caves and tunnels. Thrown among the Others—the foreigners hated for their seeming strangeness as much as for their threat—we find ourselves in the morally demanding but exhilarating position of rooting for them. They are outnumbered, they will not be reinforced, and their country expects them to die. They are men with families, wives, and even some benevolent feelings about their American foe. The movie leaves out any reference to Japanese atrocities in China and elsewhere, and this may rankle countries with bad memories of Japanese occupation. On Iwo Jima in 1945, however, the Japanese are not military fascists but men deciding how to die well. The movie, which is almost entirely in Japanese, and burnished with a scrupulous sense of respect, is an exploration of the varieties of stoicism.

“Letters from Iwo Jima,” taken together with “Flags,” is a considerable act of ethical imagination, and I wish I could say that it was also a great film. But both General Kuribayashi and his friend and fellow-officer Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara), an Olympic equestrian before the war, are such idealized officer figures—modest and gallant—that they lose any serious interest as characters, and a lesser officer who pressures his men into suicide passes by too quickly to register as more than a will-driven fanatic. The young Japanese soldier Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a gentle baker who was conscripted into the Army and just wants to get back to his family, is meant to be a life-affirming figure among the death cultists, but, as constructed by the screenwriter, Iris Yamashita, he’s a slight and bashful man who can’t carry the philosophical weight assigned to him. The movie was impressively shot by the cinematographer Tom Stern in the same style as “Flags”—largely in black-and-white, with occasional flashes of wine-dark blood or orange flame—but the many scenes in caves and tunnels induce claustrophobia. One could say that Eastwood had little choice: any Japanese soldier who stepped outside after the huge American force established itself on the island had to face devastating fire. The repetitiveness of the visual scheme is inherent in the authentic way that Eastwood conceived his two-part film. But the project lacks the variety of sensuous pleasures that a great movie has to provide.

The Nation (Stuart Klawans) review (Page 2)

With the release of Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima two months after his Flags of Our Fathers, one of the most remarkable projects in American film history is complete. It astonishes me to think that even a producer-director of Eastwood's influence could carry it off: making two complete films about the battle for Iwo Jima, one from the point of view of the American servicemen and the other from the Japanese viewpoint, with an all-Japanese cast speaking their own language. The ambition is impressive in itself, but what's laudable is how that ambition has been realized, with dignity, compassion and a filmmaker's equivalent of plain-spoken eloquence.

Flags of Our Fathers (reviewed December 4) re-creates the past by exploring a document of the war: the famous photograph of the American flag-raising. Letters From Iwo Jima adopts the same narrative strategy but uses as its documents the correspondence (both delivered and unsent) of Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima. So the American film is about visual images and the manufacture of public meaning; the Japanese film, about words and personal convictions. Here is a paradox: Although the great majority of the characters in Letters From Iwo Jima believe they must offer their lives for their emperor, their manner of making that sacrifice turns out to be highly individual.

Two figures predominate in the large cast: the aristocratic commanding general, Tadamichi Kuribayashi (played by the godlike Ken Watanabe), and a sardonic, sly, hapless conscript named Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), who was a baker in civilian life and would just as soon turn the island over to the Americans. With an ease and grace more suited to the general than the foot soldier, Eastwood and his screenwriters (Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis) slowly draw together the fates of these two. Saigo turns into a fighter, not through love of his country but from personal loyalty to the general. He clings to Kuribayashi because the general, though steeped in the code of the Japanese warrior, is himself idiosyncratic. He breaks with tradition, to the outrage of his subordinate officers, by conserving his troops' strength and falling back into underground bunkers rather than plunging into glorious battle. Worst of all, he forbids his men to commit suicide when they lose a position, ordering them instead to escape and go on fighting. Kuribayashi brushes away the charge that such behavior is a disgrace. He has lived in the United States, admires Americans and knows that the force coming his way is overwhelming. With surrender unthinkable, he and his men are already dead. The best they can do is to keep up whatever spirit they can muster.

Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima together form an enormous diptych that has all the grandeur these stories demand. There are crowd scenes, chaotic battles (filmed in the contemporary style, with most of the color drained away), vistas of vast fleets of warships and airplanes. What emerges most powerfully, though, is an intimate sense of sorrow, and of decency. If there is any chance that popular American cinema will continue to be an art form--a very slight chance, I'd say, looking back over the past year's major studio releases--then I bet Eastwood's Iwo Jima films will stand as a monumental achievement, and an enduring one.

The Village Voice [Scott Foundas]

In the new Clint Eastwood movie, ordinary young men—husbands and fathers, artisans and aristocrats—are drafted into a war whose motives many of them do not fully understand. There, on an island called Iwo Jima, they fight against an enemy who has been demonized by wartime propaganda—a supposedly brutal oppressor with a taste for torture. And at each step of the way, they are reassured by their superiors that they are doing what is just, what is right. The movie is Letters From Iwo Jima, though I could just as well be talking about Eastwood's previous film, Flags of Our Fathers, which told much the same story, except that the young men in that version were called Joe, Ira, and Hank, and here their names are Saigo, Nishi, and Shimizu.

This simple act of mirroring can't help but seem provocative in a movie that's about to be released into a nation at war—a war, like most others, predicated on absolutist notions of good and evil. But in Letters, as in Flags, Eastwood seems less concerned with provocation than with contemplation of a popular military campaign and its supposed days of glory. The second film completes and deepens the first, yet to view them side by side is to see not two sides of a coin but rather two distinct panels in a diptych—one rendered with the disquieting Americana of an Edward Hopper canvas, the other with the patient brushstrokes of a byobu screen. Whereas Flags fanned out over several decades to show the long-range impact of World War II on men who shuddered at the thought of their generation's purported greatness, Letters narrows its focus to Iwo Jima and those thousands of Japanese troops who endured weeks of food shortages and dysentery epidemics only to perish in hails of bullets, or, in some cases, impaled by their own swords. And where the earlier film punctuated its monochromatic color palette with flashes of Old Glory (always drenched in irony), the images in Letters move even closer to stark black-and-white, as if to remind us that the movie's moral landscape is anything but.

Eastwood, who directed Letters from a screenplay he commissioned by the first-time Japanese American screenwriter Iris Yamashita (a research assistant on Flags), seems awestruck by the dogged perseverance of the Japanese, who continued to fight to the death even when all hope was lost. Not surprisingly, he shows a special affinity for the Japanese Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who masterminded that defense and whose tender letters home to his family appear in the film as narration. Played by Ken Watanabe, Kuribayashi, who opposes the war in principle but will nevertheless sacrifice all for his country, emerges as exactly the kind of strong but sensitive man of action Eastwood himself has played in many of his later films—a poet-warrior whose moral compass points one way, his sense of duty another. In Letters, he's surrounded by a literal army of similarly conflicted individuals (some fictional and some fact-based), from the lowly Private Saigo (Japanese pop star Kazunari Ninomiya), who dreams of returning to the small bakery he ran with his pregnant wife before the war, to the regal Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara), an Olympic horse-jumping champion who counts Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks among his personal friends. In voiceover, we hear their letters home too, nearly all of them of a piece in their lyrical candor ("Am I digging my own grave?" Saigo wonders to his wife) and their eagerness to discuss anything but the fog of war.

Letters From Iwo Jima isn't the first wartime drama to suggest that to know thine enemy is to know thyself. William Wharton's autobiographical 1982 novel, A Midnight Clear, for example, tells of a brief détente between platoons of American and German soldiers at Christmastime 1944, while last year's sentimental French Oscar entry, Joyeux Noël, depicted a similar holiday hiatus on the battlefields of World War I. But the special power of Eastwood's achievement is that, save for one indelible moment, the mutual recognition between sworn adversaries happens not on-screen, but later, as we piece the two films together in our minds. The exception comes near the end of Letters, after Nishi retrieves a folded-up note from among the effects of an American P.O.W. who has just died before him. Written by the dead soldier's mother, it is, like so much of the correspondence in Letters, almost banal in its concerns—some dogs dug a hole under the fence and got loose in the neighborhood, and please come home safely. Then, in closing, this advice: "Remember what I said to you. Always do what is right, because it is right." It is Eastwood's queasy triumph that, when we hear those words, regardless of what language we speak, they have rarely sounded more foreign.

Slant Magazine [Nick Schager]

Pajiba (John Williams) review

Bright Lights Film Journal review In Like Clint! by Alan Vanneman, May 2007

Eastwoodian Aftermaths. James Bowman from The American Spectator, February 26, 2007

DVD Times Noel Megahey

Cinepassion.org Fernando F. Croce

filmcritic.com (Chris Barsanti) review [3.5/5]

d+kaz. Intelligent Movie Reviews (Daniel Kasman) review [A-]

Chicago Reader (Jonathan Rosenbaum) review [4/4]

Christian Science Monitor (Peter Rainer) review [A]

Old School Reviews [John Nesbit]

DVD Talk theatrical [Jamie S. Rich]

Reel.com review [2/4] Jim Hemphill

Letters from Iwo Jima Chris Fujiwara

Eye for Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review [4/5]

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Jon Danziger) dvd review

Film Freak Central review Walter Chaw

Newsweek (David Ansen) review

Confessions of a Film Critic [John Maguire]

stylusmagazine.com (Bill Weber) review

Edward Copeland on Film

DVD Verdict - Two-Disc Special Edition [Bill Gibron]

Reel.com dvd review [3/4] Jerry Renshaw. 2-DVD Special Edition

DVD Talk (Preston Jones) dvd review [4/5] [Special Edition]

DVDTown - 5-Disc Commemorative Edition [Dean Winkelspecht and John J. Puccio]

DVD Talk - Battle for Iwo Jima Commemorative Collector's Edition (Preston Jones)

DVD Verdict - Five-Disc Commemorative Edition [Brendan Babish]

DVD MovieGuide dvd review ['Heroes of Iwo Jima' Commemorative Edition] Colin Jacobson

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Mark Zimmer) dvd review [HD-DVD/DVD Combo Version]

DVD Verdict (Dennis Prince) dvd review [HD-DVD/DVD Combo Format]

DVD Talk (Joshua Zyber) dvd review [4/5] [HD-DVD Version]

DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review [HD DVD Version]

DVD Verdict - HD DVD [Dennis Prince]

DVD Talk (Daniel Hirshleifer) dvd review [3/5] [Blu-Ray Version]

DVD Town (Dean Winkelspecht) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [3.5/5]

Mike D'Angelo review

Eye for Film ("Chris") review [4.5/5]

eFilmCritic.com (William Goss) review [5/5]

Mark Reviews Movies (Mark Dujsik) review [4/4]

Film School Rejects (Chris Beaumont) dvd review [A]

About.com Hollywood Movies (Rebecca Murray) review [A]

cinematical.com Jeffrey M. Anderson

Entertainment Weekly review [C-] Lisa Schwarzbaum

Variety.com [Todd McCarthy]

Time Out London (Wally Hammond) review

The Guardian (Peter Bradshaw) review

The Observer (Philip French) review

Washington Post (Stephen Hunter) review

Letters from Iwo Jima Land of the Dead, by Chris Fujiwara from The Boston Phoenix, February 20, 2007

Boston Globe review [4/4] Ty Burr

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [4/5]

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review [3/4]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review William Arnold

Sagacious and audacious: Kiyoshi Kurosawa talks about Letters From ... Taro Goto interviews Kiyoshi Kurosawa about Eastwood’s LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, February 20, 2007

RogerEbert.com (Jim Emerson) review [4/4]

The New York Times (A.O. Scott) review December 20, 2006

THE OSCARS; Surrender and Survival In the Crucible of Battle A.O. Scott from The New York Times, January 7, 2007

DVDBeaver dvd review Yunda Eddie Feng

CHANGLING D 63

aka: The Exchange

USA (140 mi) 2008 ‘Scope

Wretched can barely begin to describe this heavy-handed, overwrought period drama about seriously misguided police misconduct in the late 1920’s Los Angeles, where the tone of the film exists in a dire state of abject misery that just keeps on giving. Using Angelina Jolie in another one of her Saint roles, tears flowing in nearly half of her scenes, as she suffers here in such a Christ-like manner so that the rest of us might be saved from this kind of bizarre, oppressively degrading behavior, the problem being some eighty years later the Los Angeles police department remains one of the most corrupt and brutalizing departments in the nation. Adapted from a real life story which is horrendous enough, Eastwood’s artificial treatment of the material overemphasizes every emotional note, playing it for more than it is worth, which eventually cheapens the real story. Jolie plays a mother whose 10-year old son disappears after leaving him alone when she was called in to work on her off day. There isn’t a single moment in the entire film where Jolie takes responsibility or feels remorse for her own negligence. Instead it’s the LA police department’s fault for waiting 24 hours before they’ll even file a missing persons report. Six months later, rolled out like a photo op in a brazen attempt to shore up their battered reputation, the police reunite her with her son, only to discover it’s not her son. Incredibly, the police still insist it is despite physical evidence to the contrary, even bringing in a doctor to support the department’s views. As she adamently remains convinced this is not her son, the police actually have her committed to a psych ward subject to release only after she’ll admit it is her son, also absolving the police of any responsibility in the matter. Already mired in a false tone throughout with such broadly painted strokes of saintly good and grotesque evil, the portrayal of the mental hospital is about as subtle as any B shlock movie dripping blood at every turn, where the viewer continuously hears cries of pain and torture in the background and where every single staff member is a horrid picture of evil relishing the idea of sadistically inflicting pain on its patients, which is a prime example of Hollywood overkill.

Somehow, this all started to feel like Jessica Lange in FRANCES (1982), also based on a true story, but if truth be told, Angelina Jolie is no Jessica Lange, and Lange’s character in FRANCES was mistreated far worse. Instead, Jolie’s horror story is only hinted at, where psychiatric patients were subjected to electric shock out of punishment for disobedience, and many were left in a catatonic state. Lange’s character in FRANCES, on the other hand, was actually lobotomized in the early 1930’s at a time when the procedure was still experimental and the results were disasterous, leaving her permanently brain damaged, an especially pernicious punishment for the simple crime of a woman speaking her beliefs in 1930’s America. I only mention this as Lange is a much more sympathetic character, an actress who put her heart and soul into that role. Jolie, in contrast, is not mature enough to carry this picture and instead goes through the formulaic method actress procedures of a woman scorned and mistreated, who garners very little sympathy due to the overly pathetic nature of her performance, where she continuously utters to the point of nausea, “He’s not my son!” or “Did you kill my son?” In Jolie’s case, others come to her rescue, arriving at the last moment like the cavalry, while in Lange’s real life story, no one rode to her rescue. Interesting that it is John Malkovich, invariably the most wacked out character on any movie set, who plays the voice of reason, an energized LA pastor who makes it his life’s mission to expose the corruption of the LA police department. From the outset this film has misplaced priorities, as it seems too intent on evoking outrage in exposing the events of the past instead of developing an intriguing storyline with any character build up, as even by the end, Jolie feels like a complete stranger to the audience, utterly forgettable. Certainly one reason was the overemphasis on the artificiality of her overly stylized look, where she kept wearing a heavy fur-laden coat with adorning scarves in the usually sweltering Los Angeles setting, all of which kept distracting the audience from ever developing any real identification with her maudlin character.

SpoutBlog [Karina Longworth]

Clint Eastwood’s Changeling is based on the true story of Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), a single mother whose young son disappeared in 1928 and was returned six months later—at least, the Los Angeles Police Department said it was her son. She didn’t recognize him, which irritated the patriarchal and corrupt police captain so much he threw her into a mental hospital. It would be a horrific story even if underplayed, but Eastwood shoots it like a horror movie. The false boy is lit to resemble the Antichrist Damien in The Omen, while in the psychiatric ward, whey-faced loons press their heads against the bars and shriek, ugly nurses leer, and the creepy doctor plots to throw Angie on a gurney and give her jolts of electricity. The ham-handed script by J. Michael Straczynski rearranges events so that the motives of the police captain (Jeffrey Donovan) are unfathomable—he must want Damien to grow up and bring forth Armageddon. The way Eastwood shoves Jolie’s suffering in our face is like a threat to the Academy: “And the Oscar will go to …” She’s a great actress. She doesn’t need his domineering chivalry.

BACKSTORY
Born in California in 1930, Clint Eastwood seems like the obvious pick to direct Changeling, given its setting in Depression-era Los Angeles, but the film’s original director was Ron Howard, who dropped out to direct Frost/Nixon. A father of seven kids, Eastwood told USA Today that he sees Changeling as “a horror film … the worst nightmare an adult could have.” And Angelina Jolie, the world’s most famous mother of six, told Entertainment Weekly, “When Brad [Pitt] saw Changeling, he said he could see my mother … So decent and sweet, but when it came to protecting her children, she somehow found this odd strength.’’

Pasadena, 1928. Single mom Angelina Jolie is a switchboard supervisor who glides around the telephone company on rollerskates. It’s adorable, but her signature smoky eyes and blood red lips mean she’s probably moonlighting as either a tramp or a clown. Scenes confirming one option or the other were, unfortunately, left on the cutting room floor.

The LAPD is corrupt –– so corrupt that the holiest man in town is John Malkovich. So when Angie’s son goes missing, they give her back a “fake boy,” and the evil detective (Jeffrey Donovan) can’t figure out if the ensuing scandal means he should have an Irish accent or not.

We drink every time Angelina hysterically proclaims, “He’s not my son!” We get very drunk, and this may be why we can’t figure out why Clint Eastwood made a cheap-looking Lifetime movie that eventually turns into an “And justice for all!” episode of SVU. Just when the drinking game is starting to get really out of control, there’s a twist so shocking that it’s punctuated by two inches of ash falling off a policeman’s cigarette … in slow motion.

This sobers us up pretty quick. “Really, Clint?” we say out loud, right in the middle of the screening. But no one can hear our cry, they’re so overwhelmed by the sound of Angelina’s constant tears, which just keep flowing, long after the stakes have vanished, because Eastwood can’t help but indefinitely extend the misery. So we shrug. “Oscars for all!” Now for another drink.

UnderGroundOnline [Keith Uhlich]

There are three or four movies competing for attention within Changeling, and unfortunately for Clint Eastwood, they’re all equally dreadful melodramatic drivel. In his worst directorial outing since 1999’s True Crime, Eastwood delivers something close to a parody of an Oscar-baiting period picture, establishing a faux-prestigious tone for this “true story” about a 1920s single mother whose son is kidnapped and, when he’s located months later, turns out to be not her son. J. Michael Straczynski’s clip-ready script is a tale of both child and female abuse, as gaunt Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), upon contending that the returned boy isn’t her flesh and blood, comes up against a raft of monstrous misogynistic caricatures led by dismissive captain Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) and the nasty chief of the psych ward that Christine is eventually sent to after the LAPD – trying to avoid further negative press – grows weary of her nay-saying. A righteous anti-police-corruption pastor (John Malkovich) and a giggly, loose-limbed serial killer also find their way into Changeling, which overstuffs itself with sensationalized narrative rubbish that Eastwood shoots with oppressively decorous, corny stateliness epitomized by a slow-motion shot of cigarette ash landing (with a titanic thud) upon a table. The broad, crude construction of most every peripheral character is matched by the Swiss cheese nature of the film’s plot, so that Eastwood’s attempts to comment on culturally entrenched sexism get lost amidst hoary flashbacks, dull procedural machinations, and B-movie hysterics. These reach a crescendo once Christine is confined to the mental institution, an embarrassing sequence involving evil physicians who make Nurse Ratched look timid, Amy Ryan’s benevolent, foul-mouthed hooker and Christine getting a hackneyed last-second reprieve from electroshock therapy. Amidst the statuette-craving histrionics, Jolie valiantly attempts to suffuse Christine with the powerless heartache, frustration and fury of a grieving mother wronged. Yet between Eastwood’s overbearing direction, his story’s leaden moralizing and clunky logic, and his procession of ever-lamer would-be endings, Jolie’s performance ultimately succumbs to mannered routine, no less self-consciously affected and hollow than the proceedings as a whole.

A California of Noir Shadows and Blood Manohla Dargis at Cannes from The New York Times

CANNES, France — Clint Eastwood has wrangled a number of unruly stars in his long directing career, but somehow he hasn’t been able to do the same with — or for — Angelina Jolie. She’s the lustrous centerpiece of his latest endeavor, “Changeling,” which was shown to a respectful if subdued press audience on Tuesday morning at the Cannes Film Festival. A view of the human beast at its worst, the film is a tricky bit of storytelling business, in part because it involves a true crime with no moral gray areas, in part because it takes place in the 1920s, an era so at odds with its modern star that it’s like watching Joan Crawford do Queen Victoria.

There are actually several monstrous crimes committed in “Changeling,” including those against a single mother named Christine Collins (Ms. Jolie). In March 1928, Christine’s only child, the 9-year-old Walter, disappeared from their Los Angeles home without a trace, or apparent cause. Five months later, the police handed a boy about Walter’s age (though not his height) over to Christine, insisting that he was the missing child. Initially rattled, she soon realized that this other boy, who himself claimed to be Walter, was an imposter. The Los Angeles Police Department, anxious to clean up the case and what had become a public-relations mess, didn’t just tell Christine she was mistaken, they locked her away in a sanitarium.

It’s a lurid, nightmarish story, reminiscent of any number of James Ellroy’s Los Angeles pulp noirs and one that Mr. Eastwood approaches with such restraint that the somber mood soon turns sepulchral. Mr. Eastwood’s regular cinematographer, Tom Stern, keeps the lights characteristically low and leaches out any color that might pop off the screen — Christine’s crimson lipstick and some unnerving splatters of blood notwithstanding. But the absence of Mr. Eastwood’s longtime production designer, Henry Bumstead, who died two years ago, is keenly felt in the overly pristine back-lot and street sets that tend to look more art directed than lived in. J. Michael Straczynski’s screenplay, which draws from the historical record, feels similarly unlived in, particularly when it comes to Christine.

Despite Ms. Jolie’s hard work and Mr. Eastwood’s scrupulous attention, the difficult, fairly one-dimensional character fails to take hold. For much of the film, Christine weeps and pleads, begging the police for help and fending off disbelievers. She clings to hope, the problem being that Ms. Jolie, whose off-screen role as Angelina Jolie is so much more vivid and all-consuming than the parts she now plays on screen, this one included, does not come across as a clinger or a whiner or a pleader or even much of a waterworks. Like Joan Crawford, Ms. Jolie seems capable now of only playing variations on herself, which is why she was more persuasive holding back her tears as a steely Mariane Pearl in “A Mighty Heart.”

Coda: At the press conference that followed the screening, Mr. Eastwood put the kibosh on reports that he would be returning to play Dirty Harry again. “That rumor is incorrect,” Mr. Eastwood said. But “I am!” Ms. Jolie piped up, an idea that seemed to appeal to her director. “Dirty Harriette,” he said, smiling.

Changeling opens - as did George Romero’s Land of the Dead - with a semi-ironic use of an old-time Universal Studios logo, hearkening back to lionized days of old from a present-tense vantage point. The joke of it is that the sentiment, in both cases, is a pose. Like Romero with Land, Changeling director Clint Eastwood is as lost with where movies came from as with where they are - his film (based on the late-20s/early-30s era true story of Los Angeles-residing mother/martyr figure Christine Collins) is a rootless jumble of tones and plots, a desiccated nowhereland, like something waiting to be feasted on by Stephen King’s ravenous Langoliers.

There’s hope at first that Eastwood and star Angelina Jolie are using Changeling‘s kidnapping-cum-social reform narrative as a mere framework, the means by which to illuminate Collins’ tempestuous emotional inner life in the way of many a so-called, oft-derided “woman’s picture.” Eastwood’s clearly aware that Collins (with her weeping-willow flapper hat and scarlet letter lipstick) is not so far removed from a Crawford, Davis, or Hayward heroine, but he’s incapable, and quite embarrassingly so, of delving into her psychology. Clint’s emotional/visual cues throughout are strictly film school (most hilariously: an inches-long shard of cigarette ash slow-motion falling to the ground to emphasize a lurid, murderous revelation) and he shifts focus so often that Collins eventually ceases to be the center of her own tale, something that throws Jolie’s awards-baiting shenanigans into even harsher relief.

It’s a terrible performance - all clothes, no soul, colored by the worst sort of vanity (the final straw: a ludicrous Snake Pit-like interlude in a mental hospital, featuring sacrificial supporting actress lamb Amy Ryan, that ends with our down-dressed leading lady almost being shock treated), though unsurprising given the clunky, schematic nature of both Eastwood’s direction and Babylon 5 scribe J. Michael Straczynski’s script. When Collins confronts the twitchy maniac (Jason Butler Harner, indicating unhinged psychosis with all the subtlety of his moustache-twirling forbears) who kidnapped and most likely murdered her young son (Gattlin Griffith), Jolie treads new depths of shameless gusto (screaming “Did you kill my son?!!” with every possible inflection and gesture, as if performing the “my sister/my daughter” confessional from Chinatown at the sycophantic urging of James Lipton), though it’s most certainly of a piece with all that’s sloppily preceded.

Flattery will get you everywhere except to the heart of the matter: Jolie’s Collins is such a mascara-stained saint that she can predict the Best Picture winner of 1935 (It Happened One Night - so infinitely superior, as the character notes, to the likes of DeMille’s Cleopatra), but give her a moment of spiritual closure at movie’s finish and she has to demystify it for our benefit (she has “hope” now, you see). Clint films her like a white-hat Western hero who’s just survived a 140-minute shoot-out (she even gets a tip of the brim from the kindly police detective - Michael Kelly - who helps to extricate her from her troubles), but to the end she remains a hollowed-out nonentity, an empty cipher whose mystery (and femininity) is quashed rather than clarified by the dictates of old hat A-to-B storytelling. It’s sure to be a performance (and a film) praised for its proto-feminist shadings, but Eastwood’s gaze has never come off more crudely Neanderthal.

Mike D'Angelo review

Clint Eastwood has directed so many high-toned, award-scarfing prestige movies over the past few years that people have largely forgotten about the schlock he used to churn out, even after Unforgiven cemented forever his reputation as a serious auteur. For every Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby or Letters From Iwo Jima, there’s also been an Absolute Power, True Crime or Blood Work—disposable cinematic potboilers. Changeling, Eastwood’s latest effort (at least until Gran Torino opens in December), looks at first glance as though it must surely belong to the Oscar-bait category, having premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival; Universal’s ad campaign works overtime to sell it as this year’s equivalent of something like Atonement, a sophisticated period melodrama. But prepare not to be edified. For all its highbrow trappings, Changeling is in fact the most compulsively watchable piece of trash Eastwood has ever made.

Much of its breathless allure, I should note, stems from one’s mounting incredulous horror at the knowledge (revealed in an opening title) that these insane events actually happened. On March 10, 1928, a single LA mother named Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) returned home from work to discover that her nine-year-old son, Walter (Gattlin Griffith), had vanished. Five months later, the LAPD triumphantly announced that the boy had been found, in the company of an Illinois drifter—and were none too happy when Collins spoiled the highly publicized trainside reunion by announcing that they’d presented her with someone else’s kid. Indeed, so intent was Captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) on closing the case that when Collins persisted in her denial, he declared her mentally unsound and locked her up in a psychiatric ward, despite the efforts of a crusading reverend (John Malkovich) on her behalf. Meanwhile, an intrepid detective (Michael Kelly), working an unrelated case, made a startling discovery ...

That brief synopsis only scratches the surface of what was known, in its day, as the Wineville Chicken Coop case—a saga so absurdly sensational that you can only wonder how on Earth it ever fell into obscurity in the first place, and so notorious at the time that Wineville hastily changed its name to Mira Loma in an effort to escape negative associations. Rediscovered and fashioned into a somewhat ungainly script by Babylon 5 scribe J. Michael Straczynski, the tale plays, in Eastwood’s so-called “classical” style (which really amounts to a sort of measured impatience), like lurid dime-store pulp disguised as a case study of institutional corruption. It doesn’t help that Jolie, a defiantly modern actress, seems to be in constant battle with the period setting; her solution is to turn up the volume yet another notch in each successive scene. And pity poor Amy Ryan, so indelible in Gone Baby Gone, who’s saddled here with the tired role of a good-hearted, wisecracking hooker and saddled with reams of didactic exposition.

And yet I must confess that I was riveted from start to finish—not by the film’s artistry, which is negligible, but by its sheer ... well, f--ked-up-ness is the only “word” that springs to mind. Changeling aspires to be a muckraking proto-feminist weepie, demonstrating how women of the flapper era were dismissed as hysterics whenever they dared to challenge the male power structure, but its true fascination lies in countless details too damn weird for any screenwriter to have invented. Because the two Walters are played by different actors, there’s no Return of Martin Guerre-style mystery here, but the revelation of the impostor’s motive is a jaw-dropper; likewise various aspects of the parallel investigation, which I wouldn’t dream of spoiling via even the vaguest allusion. And while the film has plenty of cornball Hollywood moments, it also repeatedly thwarts audience expectations—if only by virtue of sticking to the facts of the Wineville case, which was by no means resolved in a cathartic or crowd-pleasing fashion. Think of it as an ideal transition between the summer blockbuster and the quality fall slate.

not coming to a theater near you (Leo Goldsmith) review

Pajiba (Daniel Carlson) review

Angelina Jolie Suffers For Us All in Changeling; Zinedine Zidane Watches a Good Game in A 21st Century Portrait J. Hoberman from The Village Voice

Changeling and Gran Torino Double Feature, by Chris Fujiwara from The Boston Phoenix, December 1, 2009

Slant Magazine [Ed Gonzalez]

User comments from imdb Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California

The House Next Door [Matt Noller] at Cannes

Cannes Dispatch: Part Four: Patrick McGavin at Cannes from Stop Smiling magazine

Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [4/4]

Movie-Vault.com (Julian Boyance) review

filmcritic.com (Chris Cabin) review [2.5/5] also seen here: Reel.com review [2/4]

Some Came Running: Cannes, Competition: "Changeling," "Two Lovers" Glenn Kenny at Cannes from Some Came Running

The Exchange Mike Goodridge at Cannes from Screendaily

Clint, Angelina and the movie with no name Andrew O’Hehir at Cannes from Salon

The Onion A.V. Club review Keith Phipps

Cinematical (Kim Voynar) review

eFilmCritic.com (Erik Childress) review [3/5]

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [3/5]

The Guardian at Cannes 2008 (Peter Bradshaw) review

CBC.ca Arts review Katrina Onstad

Cannes 2008 diary: 'The Exchange' Dave Calhoun at Cannes from Time Out London

Time Out (Geoff Andrew) review

Time Out New York (David Fear) review [2/6]

The Globe and Mail (Rick Groen) review [2.5/4]

Boston Globe review [2/4] Wesley Morris

Austin Chronicle [Marc Savlov]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review William Arnold

FILM; The Mommy Track Mark Harris from The New York Times, October 19, 2008

GRAN TORINO C 71

USA (116 mi) 2008 ‘Scope

Clint Eastwood answers Obama and has a dialogue about race in America, actually reprising a humorous, occasionally gut-slapping variation on his most infamous DIRTY HARRY (1971) role to do it, where nearly every foul word that comes out of his mouth is an expletive directed at one racial group or another. The man just can’t help himself, and there are scenes within the film that poke fun of this constant factor, sort of like doing variations or riffs on this theme. This would be despicable in the present age if it came from someone without the stature of Eastwood, who in what is reportedly his final screen appearance seems to relish an excoriation of all the pent up anger brewing just under the surface of a twisted and paralyzed modern society spewing from the unending display of senseless violence that has gripped our nation. What sense are we to make of all this?

The film is simple enough, an aging Korean war vet, Eastwood as Walt Kowalski, is retired from working the line at the Ford auto plant, is recently widowed, finds that his own family have become complete strangers to him, and with a stockpile of weapons lives alone next door to a Hmong Chinese and Laotian family that emigrated to America during the Vietnam War. All Kowalski wants is to be left alone in peace and for them to stay off his lawn, where he growls to himself whenever he sees one of his neighbors followed by racial epithets, but trouble ensues when a local gang tries to initiate an introverted kid, Thao (Bee Vang), one of the Hmong family members, to steal Kowalski’s nicely polished vintage 1972 Ford Gran Torino, a plan that goes awry, made even worse when Kowalski has to pull a gun to keep the kid from being kidnapped by the gang afterwards. In humiliation, the family next door is forever thanking him with gifts and flowers and eventually food when they realize it’s something he actually needs, surviving pretty much on Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and beef jerky. Thao’s older sister Sue (Ahney Her) is much more receptive, remarkably open and down to earth, taking his remarks in stride and cracking jokes with her racist neighbor, becoming an ambassador and interpreter as she walks him through their home as they’re having a Hmong family barbeque. That scene in itself is hilarious as it’s a play on nearly every kind of stereotype, but it works through oddball humor, like Kowalski continually calling her Dragon Lady, and the fresh appeal of Her’s performance, as she’s a tremendously gifted, extremely naturalistic actress, easily the best thing in the film.

The problem with this film is that no one seems comfortable with the racist dialogue, so it feels staged and overwritten, as it’s obviously written for provocative effect rather than bearing any resemblance to real life. Eastwood’s character is a battle hardened war vet disgruntled over the changing racial dynamic in his neighborhood, which he sees as growing from bad to worse, which he expresses through a series of grunts and squints while sitting on his front porch drinking beer, occasionally pulling his gun on the outlaw types, establishing his turf as a do not disturb zone. In this dangerous and contemptable world, every scene with Sue in it is like a breath of fresh air in this film, as she’s acclimated well to both American as well as her own culture, where she matter of factly states that Hmong girls do well in school while the boys all end up in prison. So the film instead concentrates on her more troubled (and less interesting) brother who has a harder time of it, as he’s exposed to greater dangers with fewer options, so he is more likely to make that one mistake that he will regret for the rest of his life. In an amusing manner, Kowalski tries to mold him in a style that more closely resembles himself, but this is ridiculous, as he’s still just a kid without the least bit of ingrained Americana. So while the film is entertaining in an absurd kind of way, it doesn’t really address any of the social issues it exposes, as Kowalski remains just as much a stranger to his own family as to his neighbors, all of whom (with the exception of Sue) are written in caricature.

Gran Torino (Warner Brothers) imagines what would happen if the classic Clint Eastwood hero—Dirty Harry, Unforgiven's Bill Munny, A Fistful of Dollars' Man With No Name—aged into a racist coot who sat on his front porch with a rifle and a six-pack, decrying the invasion of his Detroit suburb by "spooks" and "gooks." It's not much of a stretch; many of Eastwood's iconic roles combine creeping racial anxiety with an element of vigilante justice. But Walt Kowalski, a just-widowed Korean War vet with a grudge against his Hmong neighbors, is Eastwood's furthest venture yet into the comic possibilities of his flintier-than-thou persona.

Walt is a crank and a bigot, but no fool; he can see that his nerdy teenage neighbor Thao (Bee Vang) is being pressured to join a violent neighborhood gang. So Walt scares the gangbangers away with a vintage weapon and a world-class squint. He strikes up a reluctant friendship with Thao, who helps him with household tasks and envies Walt's mint-condition '72 Gran Torino. Thao learns the art of asking out girls and the efficacy of a well-timed dirty joke. Walt learns that "gooks"—at least the unarmed, studious kind—are people too. As for "spooks" … well, the jury remains out, apparently.

Eastwood fans will love this movie, but I confess that I've never been one of them. The man does have a priceless way with a dry putdown (the winner here has to be "Good day, Puss-cake"), and as an actor, he's a master at riffing on his own cinematic myth. But I can't get past his lead-footed direction and the ponderous Manicheanism of his worldview. Gran Torino ends with a fantasy of vigilante violence that squanders all the goodwill its main character has spent the movie accruing. This is the better by far of the two movies Eastwood has made this year, a stripped-down alternative to the overupholstered Changeling. But both movies share a moral vision—bad guys as leering sickos, good guys (and girls) as sacrificial lambs—that shuts down the possibility of any real, well, doubt.

Village Voice (Scott Foundas) review

Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, from a screenplay by Nick Schenk, based on a story by Dave Johannson and Mr. Schenk, caps his career as both a director and an actor with his portrayal of a heroically redeemed bigot of such humanity and luminosity as to exhaust my supply of superlatives. The movie begins with Mr. Eastwood’s gloweringly cantankerous retired Polish-American autoworker, Walt Kowalski, presiding over his beloved wife’s funeral, and visibly disapproving of everyone in attendance both in the church and at the reception afterward in his Detroit domicile. These include his spoiled but moderately successful sons, their wives and children; his parish priest, Father Janovich (Christopher Carley); and all his Hmong neighbors, who he feels have invaded his once solidly Polish-Irish community. In short, Walt, like many retirees, refuses to accept a changing world on any terms but his own jaundiced view of humanity, and his hostility has not escaped the attention of a Hmong matriarch sitting on the porch next door, who asks him ironically why he has not left the neighborhood with all the other “white people.”

But Walt is too stubborn to change his ways or his locale. When his children suggest that he might be happier moving to a retirement community they have chosen for him, he virtually throws them out of the house. However, he soon discovers a new perilous problem in the area, that of emerging ethnically and racially divided disaffected young gang members: Hmong immigrants from Southeast Asia, African-Americans and Latinos. On one occasion, he rescues a cheeky young Hmong girl named Sue Lor (Ahney Her) from a menacing group of African-Americans by flashing a handgun he has kept in his possession since the Korean War—in which he served with distinction, and possesses the medal to prove it.

We learn later that he is still haunted by the memory of a North Korean youth he killed in hand-to-hand combat. Meanwhile, the story shifts to a fatherless Hmong youth, Thao Vang Nor (Bee Vang), living next door, who is being intimidated by a Hmong street gang, to which Thao’s cousin belongs, into stealing Walt’s 1972 Gran Torino, which he keeps lovingly polished in his garage as a reminder of happier times in his life. When Walt, gun drawn, surprises Thao in the garage, the boy flees in a panic to his home, where he is dominated by his mother and two sisters.

When the gang members come after him, a fight breaks out and spills over to Walt’s neatly tended lawn. An outraged Walt springs out of his house with an M-1 rifle in shooting position, causing the gang members to flee and thereby lose face.

Suddenly, Walt is hailed as a hero by his Hmong neighbors, who start bringing him food, drink and plants despite his pleas for them to stop. But when Thao’s family sends Thao to Walt’s house to apologize for his attempted theft of Walt’s Gran Torino, and to offer his free services for a few weeks as an act of contrition, Walt begins to look at his neighbors in a new light. He also strikes up a friendly relationship with Thao’s older sister, Sue.

As for Thao, he begins regarding Walt as the father he never had, and the two become friends. Nonetheless, the Hmong gang members resume their raids and other depredations with explosive firepower of their own. The stage is set for Walt’s climactic confrontation with this new enemy in his life. In the process, Walt has been transformed into an elderly avenging angel with love in his heart for people of a different color, religion and ethnicity.

Mr. Eastwood worked closely with his writers, Mr. Schenk and Mr. Johannson, who were just starting out in the industry, but also with longtime collaborators like cinematographer Tom Stern; production designer James J. Murakami; editors Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach; costume designer Deborah Hopper; and above all casting director Ellen Chenoweth and her associates, Geoffrey Miclat and Amelia Rasche, who had to scour the country for the film’s nonprofessional Hmong performers. The results of all these collaborations add up to a genuinely pioneering production very much worth seeing for the emotional thunderbolt that it is.

Screen International review Mike Goodridge

Gran Torino is an unpretentious, often very funny humanist drama which is a small jewel in Clint Eastwood's canon of work as a director and a highpoint in his career as an actor. Revolving around a racist curmudgeon with a military past – a cross between Dirty Harry and Archie Bunker – the film is unlikely to reach the box office or critical heights of Mystic River or Million Dollar Baby. But Eastwood's standing as a perennial star, even at 78 years of age, and the publicity surrounding his provocative character Walt Kowalski will guarantee solid box office numbers from adult moviegoers, and a healthy return on investment for Warner Bros and Village Roadshow.

In the awards race, to which he is no stranger, Eastwood is most likely to score recognition in the best actor category. He has never won an acting Oscar and has only two nominations to his credit (for Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby), so, regardless of the fact that he gives a magnificent performance here, sentiment alone should drive him into the final five. Eastwood has hinted that this will be his final performance, a fact which may also work in his favour.

The film opens at the funeral of Walt's wife. A Korean War veteran who stands by her coffin grumpily judging his two sons and their families during the service, Kowalski keeps his M1 rifle in the house, is hostile to the local priest (Carley) when he comes to call, and is full of contempt and abuse for the Hmong immigrants who have moved into the neighbourhood.

He has few pleasures in life – gruff banter with the local barber (Lynch), the companionship of his dog Daisy, regular intake of bottled beer, and his Gran Torino car which he keeps in pristine condition in the garage.

Walt's life changes when his neighbour, shy teenager Thao Lor (Vang), is bullied into stealing the Gran Torino by a group of gun-toting Hmong gangbangers. Walt scares him away and the next day pulls his gun on the gang, winning the admiration of all the Hmongs in the neighbourhood. Thao's mother and older sister Sue (Her) insist that Thao confess to Walt that he was the would-be thief and offer to make amends.

Though he wants nothing to do with the Hmongs, Walt likes Sue's spunky personality, and enjoys their tasty food. He puts the boy to work in his house and in the neighbourhood, and the two develop an unlikely rapport. He tries to help Thao develop handyman skills so that he won't follow the seemingly inevitable path into gang warfare. Gradually his understanding of the family next door leads him to unlock his own damaged soul and confront demons from his past.

Eastwood still commands the screen even while he is spitting out racist comments or coughing up blood. He growls, scowls, threatens and pulls a gun whenever he feels like it. But while the trailer might imply that he is returning to a Dirty Harry "Make My Day" persona here, his character ultimately doesn't obliterate the gang with a gun but with a noble act. It's anything but Dirty Harry Redux.

Similarly Walt's abusive language to the Hmongs – which includes just about every racist epithet you can think of – is shocking at first but gradually becomes comic as he himself realises how absurd his prejudices are.

The two young newcomers Bee Vang and Ahney Her give spirited performances as the Lor siblings whose lives are inextricably bound together with loss and violence.

Eastwood is America's great humanist director at present, making eloquent calls for compassion in films like Million Dollar Baby, Letters From Iwo Jima and this year's Changeling, but never at the expense of spinning a good yarn. Gran Torino is a plea for racial tolerance in the US but it is also a compelling story of friendship which lingers in the mind when the extravagances of Benjamin Button and Australia have faded from memory.

As with Eastwood's other recent films, the film is ultimately a tearjerker with a momentously moving finale. As Clint's own gravelly voice starts up over the end credits singing the mournful title song, it's genuinely sad to think we might not see him act again, but somehow fitting that he should bow out with Walt Kowalski.

Walt Kowalski growls a lot—a dyspeptic rumble that wells up from deep inside his belly when he catches sight of his midriff-baring teenage granddaughter text-messaging her way through her grandmother's funeral, or when his good-for-nothing son and daughter-in-law suggest that he sell his house in a gang-infested corner of suburban Detroit and move to one of those plasticine retirement homes that look so nice in the brochures.

Like many characters Clint Eastwood has played in his six-decade screen career, Walt Kowalski is a man outside of his own time—a man who senses on some deep, inarticulable level that he has outlived his own usefulness. He's a little bit of "Dirty" Harry Callahan, brandishing his disgust (and his firearm) at the unsightly blemishes of a value-less society; a little bit of Million Dollar Baby's Frankie Dunn, the rundown boxing trainer who's been as much of a disappointment to himself as to his estranged family; and more than a little bit of Unforgiven's Bill Munny, the has-been gunslinger haunted by the sins of his past but unable to refuse one last ride in the saddle. And much like those movies, Gran Torino (which Eastwood directed from a generally superb script by newcomer Nick Schenk) is about what happens when circumstance hurls Walt Kowalski into direct conflict with the present.

Like Unforgiven, Gran Torino begins with the death of the Eastwood character's unseen but implicitly saintly wife, after which Walt only has eyes for two things—his faithful canine companion and the gleaming 1972 Ford Gran Torino that sits in his garage, a reminder of the now-defunct assembly line where he spent most of his adult life. Back then, Walt's neighborhood was an enclave of the blue-collar sons and daughters of European immigrants. Now, those same streets have been taken over by another immigrant population—the Hmong people of China, Thailand, and Laos, who fought on "our" side during the CIA's Vietnam-era shadow wars, even if, to Walt, they're no different from the "jabbering gooks" he fought against in Korea.

As Walt rants about the "zipperheads" dragging down the neighborhood, brushes off the barely postpubescent priest who comes around to give Walt confession, and growls some more, Gran Torino looks to be shaping up as something of a gently un-p.c., geriatric crowd-pleaser of the Space Cowboys variety. And if that's all you want or expect of Gran Torino, then that's exactly what it will be—no matter that Eastwood, for whom moviemaking has long been symbiotic with his love of jazz, merely uses the bass line of a butt-kicking Clint Eastwood action movie to play a series of complex variations on his career-abiding themes.

Mostly, Gran Torino is a two-hander between Walt and the literal boy next door—an introverted, fatherless Hmong teen, Thao (Bee Vang), who caves to pressure from a gangbanger cousin and tries to steal Walt's car in a botched initiation rite. Gradually and grudgingly, Walt takes the boy under his wing and takes it upon himself to "man him up" a bit—but only after Walt first steps across the property line and into the Hmong world. At its most didactic, Gran Torino has Walt stare into a mirror and realize that he has more in common with these "foreigners" than he does with his own flesh and blood, but more often, the movie works by subtle implication. Where Korea was Walt's war, Vietnam was the Hmong's. Both understand that a man who has seen war can never not be that man, and that the kind of absolution Walt Kowalski seeks won't be found in a confessional.

This is hardly the first time Eastwood has played a man with a shadowy past, but rarely have the shadows been so vividly illuminated (no matter the director's trademark preference for chiaroscuro lighting). "We used to stack fucks like you five feet high in Korea and use you for sandbags," Walt barks while shoving his old M-1 in the face of one of the gang members who continue to terrorize Thao's family—a moment (one of the finest Eastwood has ever acted) that echoes the image of the Iwo Jima survivor stirred from a nightmare at the start of Flags of Our Fathers. Only, Walt Kowalski is wide awake, and the nightmare is still unfolding.

"The thing that haunts a man most is what he isn't ordered to do," Walt says in Gran Torino's defining scene, and the thing that has long haunted Eastwood is the legacy of American violence and the false heroic myths on which that legacy has been written. For him, romanticized movie violence long ago lost its allure, and at least since Unforgiven, the act of killing another human being has been depicted as one that leaves a permanent scar on men's psyches. In Gran Torino, that strain of investigation reaches its apotheosis in an inversion of Unforgiven's climactic barroom standoff, a scene that brings the curtain down on Eastwood's cycle of urban-crime films as hauntingly as the earlier one did on his Westerns.

I'm not sure if Gran Torino is Eastwood's "best" film, to whatever extent such trivial distinctions matter. Certainly, it's a rougher, less formally elegant one than the masterly Unforgiven and A Perfect World. But especially when viewed in light of this year's earlier Changeling (which, on the surface, looks like the more "important" movie), it seems like one of Eastwood's most personal, right down to his raspy warbling of the self-penned end-credits song. Above all, it feels like a summation of everything he represents as a filmmaker and a movie star, and perhaps also a farewell. "That," future generations of fathers will someday tell their sons, "is what Clint Eastwood was all about."

BFI | Sight & Sound | Gran Torino (2008) Kate Stables from Sight and Sound, March 2009

Changeling and Gran Torino Double Feature, by Chris Fujiwara from The Boston Phoenix, December 1, 2009

eFilmCritic.com (Erik Childress) review [2/5]

PopMatters [Cynthia Fuchs]

The Wall Street Journal (Joe Morgenstern) review

The Onion A.V. Club (Keith Phipps) review

Slant Magazine review Bill Weber

Film School Rejects [Neil Miller]

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [1/5]

Reel.com review [2/4] Sean O’Connell, also seen here: filmcritic.com (Sean O'Connell) review [1.5/5]

Entertainment Weekly review [A-] Lisa Schwarzbaum

Time Out New York (Joshua Rothkopf) review [3/6]

Time Out Chicago (Ben Kenigsberg) review [3/6]

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review [2/4]

Clint Eastwood shines up his 'Gran Torino' Geoff Boucher from The LA Times, January 7, 2009

INVICTUS B- 81

USA (134 mi) 2009 ‘Scope

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

—Invictus, by William Ernest Henley, 1875

This film is pretty much exactly what one might expect, which is a chance for Morgan Freeman to play Nelson Mandela, directed by old buddy Eastwood, but the film is too narrowly focused, spending the entire length of the film on a sport that’s not even understood in America—rugby. Opening with whites in a manicured green field playing rugby, while across the street young black kids are playing soccer in an abandoned dirt field, the racial lines of demarcation are drawn just as Mandela is being whisked into office as the country’s first black President. Nearly anti-political, or as close to it as possible, apartheid is already placed on the back burners as Mandela stakes his presidency on reconciliation between the races, using rugby as his best case scenario, as it’s perceived as an exclusively white man’s game, although there is a lone black player, and many in his own government are ready to banish the sport altogether due to its apartheid era image. Mandela himself, while imprisoned as a supposed terrorist to Robben Island penitentiary, always rooted for the opposition to the South African team, as that was the team the prison guards always rooted for. But as President, Mandela sees it as an opportunity to unify his country, where images of everyone rooting for the same team carry more weight than his unity speeches. So why not start with South Africa’s national rugby team? Well for starters, the team loses regularly and since the election, has had a lackadaisical attitude about just what country they are playing for, as most whites felt the country was going to the dogs in the hands of blacks. Certainly one of the strongest scenes is Mandela’s plea to the exiting white workers on his first day in office, calling them all into his office to encourage them to stay, pleading his case that the first order of business was forgiveness. Freeman certainly captures the nobility of the man, but the narrow confines of the script never allows his complexities to fully develop, instead it manifests itself through small gestures of kindness and politeness, always showing appreciation for everyone around him, but as a character he’s barely fleshed out and mostly disappears during the second half of the movie.

When Mandela calls in the captain of the rugby team, none other than Matt Damon speaking that Afrikaner accent, and pesters him with questions on leadership and inspiration, Damon’s head spins a bit before he fully understands what was being asked of him, to win the Rugby World Cup hosted by South Africa in one year’s time. With the choice of Damon as the star, is there ever any question about the outcome? While the portrayal is entirely fictionalized, though based on historical events, they use the ROCKY (1976) rags to riches formula, accentuating how terrible they were initially, a team in shambles that suddenly comes together under one common purpose, defying the odds and beating teams that were supposedly better than they were, all in the faint hope that they could play in the World Cup Rugby finals before a television audience that might reach over a billion people. There’s even a TV rugby analyst that keeps showing up spelling out the gloom and doom he forecasts for the South African team that by his observation has failed to show even an ounce of courage. Well of course this is the hackneyed method to build suspense when the audience already knows the outcome, as otherwise, why are we watching this spectacle? While the initial 45 minutes of the film is interesting, as it shows Mandela’s close circle or friends and his general routine, especially sharing pleasantries with his subordinates, including his black and white security team, reminding the viewer of the power of his personality which expresses itself through warmth and self-deprecating humor, not power grab tactics, and the film takes the players to Mandela’s cell on Robben Island, a place he spent 27 years, but by the time we move almost exclusively into the sports arena, showing game after game, scrum after scrum, hit after hit, a team with injuries and cuts and bruises, battered but not beaten, where they have to beat a team that is portrayed as invincible, it feels slow and plodding and is in bad need of an editor to shorten this section which is strung out entirely too long, becoming overly conventional and formulaic, offering little inventiveness, turning this into a sentimentalized weeper of sorts, a film that relies on utter manipulation to show how a sporting event could unite a nation. If only it were that easy. Life just isn’t this simplistic.

City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul (Ella Taylor) review

If 2009 had a most valuable player award for the movies, it would have to go to Matt Damon. Whether he's appearing in "The Informant!," a Sarah Silverman Web parody or in Clint Eastwood's stirring post-apartheid drama, "Invictus," he has been consistently spot-on and almost breathtakingly self-effacing. He has become that most unlikely Hollywood rarity: a character actor with a matinee-idol face.

In "Invictus," Damon plays Francois Pienaar, the captain of the South African rugby team the Springboks, which in 1995 won the World Cup. The movie tells the story of that unlikely and politically crucial victory, which as much as anything was the result of the gentle coaxing and adamantine moral suasion of the country's new president, Nelson Mandela.

Morgan Freeman doesn't play Mandela as much as inhabit the man, in a performance that seems to embody the very transcendence that Mandela himself has come to stand for. Freeman captures with perfect pitch the inner workings of a man who, put in charge of a country still ravaged by the still-fresh violence and injustices of apartheid, sees an opportunity for healing in the rites and rituals of sport. His job is to forge within the black community a sense of identification with a mostly white team that for years has represented oppression.

Eastwood adopts a flat, uninflected style for "Invictus," wisely letting this remarkable story tell itself with a minimum of flourish or underlining. The result is a thoroughly absorbing, inspiring movie that, like last year's "Milk," features one of the year's most galvanizing performances. Freeman doesn't merely impersonate Mandela as much as personify not just political genius but an almost superhuman suppleness of character. Rugby is exciting, sure, but there's nothing more thrilling than radical forgiveness in action.

Twitch [Jim Tudor]

A new film from Clint Eastwood is starting to be a regular annual occurrence, like a major sports championship match or the films of Woody Allen. "Invictus", Eastwood's latest directorial effort, has more in common with the former than the latter, as it centers around South African former President Nelson Mandela's involvement with the sport of rugby, propelling the national team to the World Cup finals. Missing is Eastwood's usual looming specter of death, the most common thematic element in his career. But on the flip side, as if to make up for it, Eastwood's secondary favorite elements of recent years are very present: racial tension, and Morgan Freeman (as Mandela). The biggest surprise of it all is the fact that this film, riding in like a drama-heavy historical epic with "important" written all over it, is, in actuality, a feel good sports movie - albeit one with major racial, political, and social themes wrapped around it.

On one hand, "Invictus" is a nice account of President's Mandela's efforts to racially unify newly post-apartheid South Africa through mutual love and support of the national rugby team. But on the other hand, the film inadvertently depicts Mandela as a rugby-obsessed eccentric, valuing it above all other pressing needs of the country. Seriously, in virtually every scene, if Mandela's not halting a staff meeting to turn on the TV for a rugby update, he's bracketing World Cup stats on a chart in his office. He also visits the team on the field, and takes official office meetings with the captain of the team, played by Matt Damon. The promise of getting to play Nelson Mandela had to sound like the opportunity of a lifetime for chronic narrator Morgan Freeman, but I have to wonder if this is the Mandela movie anyone had in mind.

Based in events of recent history (1995, to be exact), "Invictus" completely sidesteps Mandela's great personal troubles of his post prison time, and glazes over the major tasks and other aspects of being president of a newly radically changed country. And yet by focusing on lighter fare, "Invictus" isn't any less of a drag that it might've been had it actually been saddled with all that big-picture baggage. Actually, calling the film a drag is overstating it, but if there is such as thing as a breezy drag, "Invictus" is it. Eastwood can never quite find the exact focus of the story, bouncing around from Mandela, to Mandela's security detail, to the family of the rugby team captain - but never allowing any to develop fully. More embarrassingly, there are numerous red herring deathly threats peppered throughout the film for absolutely no good reason. It all builds up to the formulaic Big Game, the outcome of which actually doesn't matter at all in the greater fabric of the story. It's all indicative of a larger problem, which is the terminally loose screenplay.

"Invictus" is a lightweight tangent in Eastwood's otherwise greatly respectable filmography of darkness, death, and human toil. Supposedly he did it as a favor for his good friend Freeman, who yes, is great as Mandela. In any case, we can hope that next year's inevitable new Clint Eastwood film will go the distance, as this one never quite does.

Aside from Morgan Freeman, who makes a fabulous Nelson Mandela, there's this to savor about Invictus, a rosy tale of racial reconciliation neatly wrapped in a triumphalist sports movie: The film is blessedly free of Obama parallels. Also, we could use a happy global moment, and Eastwood picks one out of the otherwise rocky history of South Africa, when the country's first post-apartheid president stepped out of the jail where he'd languished for 27 years and firmly set aside revenge politics in favor of national unity.

More than most, Mandela understood the cohesive power of the symbol—in this case, the bright-green uniform of the South African rugby team the Springboks, echoing the flag equally beloved by whites and hated by blacks under apartheid. Adapted by South African writer Anthony Peckham from a book by former London Independent journalist John Carlin, Invictus tells the story of how Mandela, with help from the Afrikaner team captain, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon, gym-pumped into Michelin Man and oozing fair play), turned a World Cup rugby match into a moment of rainbow solidarity.

Like every Eastwood production, Invictus is stately, handsomely mounted, attentive to detail right down to the Marmite adorning the team's breakfast buffet, and relentlessly conventional. As a portrait of a hero, the movie effortlessly brings a lump to the throat (Freeman gives a subtly crafted performance that blends Mandela's physical frailty with his easy charm and cerebral wit); as history, it is borderline daft and selective to the point of distortion. It's true that you can't shoehorn a nation's history into a single movie, but Peckham's dialogue, stuffed with strenuously underlined exposition, blazes an indecently fast trail from mutual suspicion to interracial love and understanding.

The powerful dislike between Mandela's black and white bodyguards melts into reverence for their leader and joint cheerleading for the team. Within minutes of their enforced arrival in the shantytowns, the Springboks (including Eastwood's cute son, Scott, who gets plenty of money shots) are happily hoisting adoring little black boys onto their shoulders. Pienaar's parents' maid gets tickets to the cup final, where she and the mistress sit side-by-side, rib-poking with every home-team score.

Never mind that many white supremacists fled abroad to seethe in safety over the end of white privilege. Never mind that the ANC, the very movement that had worked for years to free Mandela and bring down apartheid, is confined here to a lone reductive scene that dismisses a complex resistance group as a bunch of thuggish ideologues. And Winnie Mandela, who is no picnic but deserves a place in this story, is kicked out of the movie altogether, save for a couple of cheap gibes at her betrayal of her long-suffering husband. She and the extremist wing of the ANC have a right to more nuanced exposure in Invictus, if only to acknowledge the unpalatable truth that apartheid manufactured more monsters than it did dignified heroes with forgiveness in their hearts.

That Mandela is a great man is beyond dispute—but that's no excuse to position him in a Great Man theory of history. In the end, Invictus becomes what almost every Eastwood movie becomes: an inquiry into masculinity shaped in the director's own image, with the answers already supplied.

Eastwood can't play his own wounded hero this time, but his perennial ideal is all here in Mandela the courtly gentleman, Mandela the elderly yet still potent flirt, Mandela the dry wit—above all, in Mandela the rugged individualist who won't toe the PC line when duty suggests otherwise. Manning up in Eastwoodland has matured with age, from "Revenge is sweet" (the final scene in Unforgiven) to "The best revenge is living well." Maybe, but in real life that's not enough. Mandela befriended his prison guards and refused to make enemies of South African whites, including his former tormentors. Yet for all his lovely manners, his donations to worthy causes, his insistence on pouring his own tea, or even his high-minded dedication to reconciling former enemies, South Africa today is a muddle of hope and despair.

For the record, I cried my way through the climactic game, with all its kitschy slow-mo lopes around the pitch, its roar of the crowd and peripheral melodrama. But I came out feeling had. How Invictus will play in the North American multiplex (foreign sport + foreign country = not promising) is a lot less interesting than its reception in Johannesburg and—perhaps more significantly—in the townships, where conditions remain abysmal and communities are decimated by a long-untended AIDS epidemic that makes our own crisis look like a tea party. Today's South Africa has been many decades in the making, and it is the product not of one good man but of movements full of courageous men and women who almost certainly rose to power before they were ready. But as they say in the pitch meetings, where's the glamour in that?

Invictus (Clint Eastwood, 2009) Ignatiy Vishnevetsky at Mubi, December 11, 2009

PopMatters (Cynthia Fuchs) review

The Wall Street Journal (Joe Morgenstern) review

ReelTalk (Betty Jo Tucker) review

Pajiba (Dustin Rowles) review

Slate (Dana Stevens) review

eFilmCritic.com (Erik Childress) review [4/5]

filmcritic.com (Chris Cabin) review [4/5]

Slant Magazine review [2/4] Nick Schager

eFilmCritic.com (Mel Valentin) review [3/5]

The Onion A.V. Club review [B] Keith Phipps

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [4/5]

Mark Reviews Movies [Mark Dujsik]

Film Freak Central review Walter Chaw

Screen International (Mike Goodridge) review

About.com Hollywood Movies (Rebecca Murray) review [C+]

DVD Talk (Jason Bailey) review [3/5]

DVD Talk (Brian Orndorf) review [3/5]

One Guy's Opinion (Frank Swietek) review [C+]

CineSnob.net (Kiko Martinez) review [B+]

FilmJerk.com (Carrie Specht) review [C+]

The Land of Eric (Eric D. Snider) review [C+]

3 Black Chicks ("The Diva") review

Entertainment Weekly review [B+] Owen Gleiberman

The Hollywood Reporter review Kirk Honeycutt

The Independent (Mike Goodridge, Editor, 'Screen International') review [3/5]

Austin Chronicle review [3/5] Marjorie Baumgarten

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review [3/4]

Invictus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Ernest Henley Wikipedia

HEREAFTER C+ 79

USA (129 mi) 2010 ‘Scope

While this is basically the Steven Spielberg produced BABEL (2006) of the afterlife, an interweaving string of three narratives that in itself hopes to make the audience feel a part of the interconnectedness of all things, the problem being that some of the narratives are stronger than others, turning this into something of an endurance test to get through the weaker moments in order to enjoy the more powerful moments. If one of these strands weren’t so strong, the film may not be worth the effort, as it’s a plodding, largely uninteresting series of events where the characters themselves couldn’t be more disinterested, leading to an all-too contrived finale that was expected from the outset. Cécile de France, in a horribly unbecoming wig, plays Marie LeLay, a rich and highly successful French television journalist who suffers a near-death experience after nearly drowning while on holiday in Hawaii in the opening tsunami sequence, which in an explosive rush places the audience into the hands of computer graphics designers, something all the rage these days, but not always the thrill the directors hope for. Though momentarily overwhelming, the entire sequence then becomes strangely inconsequential to the rest of the world that moves on to its next human catastrophe, a foreboding sign of what to expect for the rest of the film. Matt Damon is George, a psychologically troubled psychic in San Francisco who is overwhelmingly scarred by his hauntingly sad experiences with the dead, which has made him give up his business in an attempt to try to lead a normal life. Easily the most fascinating sequence is in London and involves two twin brothers, Frankie and George McLaren as Marcus and Jason, where one dies early on in a tragic accident leaving the other alone to fend for himself, feeling suddenly abandoned and lost, hopelessly disconnected from the rest of the world. It must be said that the digital photography used for this film leaves the screen colorless, permeated in a gray graininess, always feeling underlit, as if darkness pervades every frame.

The Cécile de France segments haven’t got an ounce of energy anywhere to speak of and feel stereotypically flat throughout the entire film, as if her world has collapsed and she needs to reinvent herself as a completely new person. Since she wasn’t all that interesting to begin with, this is the hardest of the three sequences to endure. Damon is slightly more interesting because unlike the common perception of psychics, eccentric and stereotypically weird, he’s just an average guy with supernatural experiences that actually connect him to the dead, a gift that he describes as a curse, as he can never seem to recover from these “readings,” overly devastated by their enormous sense of loss. My favorite part of his character is his preference for Dickens over Shakespeare, where he loves to sit and listen to read-aloud recordings of various Dickens stories. His brother, Jay Mohr, is an irritant throughout as he’s completely clueless with a self-centered interest in exploiting George’s prowess and is perhaps even responsible for traumatizing his brother. But Marcus is the genuine article, a troubled kid who is pulled out of his home by social services, as his mother is helplessly addicted and needs immediate treatment, leaving the poor kid in a state of isolation that is hauntingly sad. His is the only segment that generates unending sympathy, as his sense of longing and grief is intensely believable. He is perhaps the only real likeable person in the entire film, which descends into a gloomy maze of joyless hope, where people are turning away from the world around them and isolating themselves into a cocoon of perpetual mourning, where their brief glimpse into the world of the dead leaves them self-ostracized, solemly disconnected from all human experience, forever wandering on a vague spiritual quest for a connection with the afterlife.

The Wall Street Journal (Joe Morgenstern) review

Matt Damon is George, a spiritualist in spite of himself in "Hereafter," and one of three people in the film who have haunting connections with the afterlife. Unfortunately, Clint Eastwood's slow-paced drama has slack connections with the here and now.

This supernatural thriller, which was written by Peter Morgan, begins impressively when a tropical resort is ravaged by a tsunami. In the chaos that ensues, Marie, a TV personality on vacation from France—she's played by Cécile de France in subtitled French—has a near-death experience that qualifies her as another member of the haunted trio. The third member is the youngest, and most improbably affecting—a sweetly bleak-faced English schoolboy, Marcus (Frankie McLaren) who has recently lost his twin brother.

One problem that soon surfaces is the movie's certitude. No Turn-of-the-Screw-y ambiguities, no mind games about whether the three might share some all-too-human delusion. Either you buy their Vaseline-lensed visions of the hereafter, or you watch in stony silence, as I did, wondering why there's no one to care about. Mr. Damon brings calm intelligence to his role, and he has an agreeable encounter with Bryce Dallas Howard in a cooking class—the students take turns wearing masks and spoon-feeding one another in blind tastings. But even that scene wears out its welcome; it isn't as intimate as it promises to be, and its pace, in keeping with the movie as a whole, is insistently slow. The cast includes Marthe Keller as a celebrated student of death and not dying, and Derek Jacobi as himself, giving a reading at a London book fair. Even he seems a bit morose.

The Onion A.V. Club review [C] Nathan Rabin

When Amores Perros came out in 2000, it looked like an uncharacteristically arty variation on the spate of Pulp Fiction knock-offs that inundated video store shelves with gritty, achronological, interconnected narratives throughout the ’90s. Seen today, Amores Perros looks less like a continuation of the Tarantino boom than the beginning of a new subgenre that includes writer Guillermo Arriaga and director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s follow-ups 29 Grams and Babel as well as the Oscar-winning Crash. These films share a weakness for gimmicky structures, but also a portentous tone and a sometimes unbearable eagerness to comment on the interconnectedness of humanity and the randomness and cruelty of fate.

Late to the party, director Clint Eastwood and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Peter Morgan try their hand at the interconnectedness-of-humanity subgenre with Hereafter, an ambitious, globetrotting drama about mortality, fate, and the thin line separating the dead from the living. Matt Damon stars as an unassuming young man blessed and cursed with the ability to communicate with the dead. Damon’s brother (Jay Mohr) wants to exploit his gift for commercial gain, but Damon is ambivalent at best about his special talent. Halfway around the world, meanwhile, a glamorous French television personality (Cecile De France) experiences a profound spiritual awakening following a near-death experience, and a spooky little English boy attempts to communicate with his dead twin brother.

Morgan’s screenplays for Frost/Nixon and The Queen were clever to the point of being glib, but the hotshot screenwriter’s facility for witty dialogue abandons him here. Hereafter isn’t just unfunny; it’s positively humorless. In sharp contrast to the hyperbolic melodrama of Crash, Hereafter is hushed and understated to an almost perverse degree; it’s so sleepy it borders on narcoleptic. Eastwood develops so little momentum that when the film’s three discreet strands intersect climactically, it feels more arbitrary than revelatory. Just because a film takes place entirely in the long shadow of death doesn’t mean it has to be this relentlessly dour.

alibi.com [Devin D. O'Leary]

Who would have thought that, after decades (and decades) as Hollywood’s premier tough guy, Clint Eastwood would become such a stodgy formalist as a filmmaker? Not to insult his oeuvre or anything. Invictus, Changeling, Letters from Iwo Jima, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The Bridges of Madison County: They’re all classy pieces of old-school Hollywood cinema. Eastwood learned his lessons working for some of the finest directors in the business, and he knows how to construct a film with the best of them. But he seems more inclined toward stoic “Masterpiece Theatre”-inspired melodramas than anything with a discernible pulse.

Hereafter, Eastwood’s newest stint behind the camera, is a mature film all right. It’s constructed like something out of “This Old House,” with all the gables, beadboard wainscoting and hand-split wood-shake roofing of a master craftsman. But it’s a work of art that requires a Herculean amount of patience to get through. And I’m not so sure that patience ends up being rewarded.

The film is a Babel-inspired tapestry of story threads in which various people around the globe are linked together by the thin strands of fate. Like so many of those films, though, the characters in Hereafter aren’t bound to one another because their stories are actually, logically, realistically interconnected, but rather because of some grand, New Agey “we are all connected” conceit.

The film starts out with a famous French television journalist named Marie LeLay (Cécile de France from High Tension) on vacation in Indonesia. A sudden tsunami (a stunning sequence, it must be noted) destroys the island and nearly kills Marie, who becomes haunted by her near-death experience. Meanwhile, over in England, a young lad named Marcus (Frankie McLaren) is devastated by the accidental death of his twin brother. Finally, in San Francisco, we have poor, lonely George Lonegan (Matt Damon). Lonegan was once a world-famous psychic, capable of speaking with the dead. But a career spent dealing with unhappy ghosts and traumatized people has left him depressed and hermitlike. Now he hides from his abilities, working as a forklift operator in a warehouse.

Obviously, these three characters will cross paths at some point. Clearly, George will break out of his funk, help Marie and Marcus with their problems, and in the process ... heal his own broken heart. Sounds predictable as hell, but let’s get to it.

Unfortunately, Hereafter is in no hurry to get to that inevitable point. Clocking in at two hours and 10 minutes (and feeling like three hours and 10 minutes easily), Hereafter sets the dial to “meander.” George works at his job, argues with his brother (Jay Mohr), flirts with a cute girl (Bryce Dallas Howard), takes a cooking class at continuing education (really?) and generally bemoans his supernatural abilities. Audiences will be forgiven for wondering if George, Marie and Marcus will ever get around to crossing paths.

They do. Eventually. And for purely coincidental reasons. The script by Peter Morgan (The Queen, The Last King of Scotland, Frost/Nixon) is more of a meditation than a movie. Admittedly, it’s filled with intelligent dialogue and does work up some interesting characters. It’s easy enough to sympathize with our trio of sad sacks, even if they do spend most of their time manifesting their existential angst by being terribly distracted when other people are trying to speak to them. De France is excellent. Damon is good. McLaren is OK. Howard is ... largely incidental.

The problem is that, in the end, Hereafter doesn’t seem terribly pointed. Yes, people get bummed out about death. That’s generally a given. But Hereafter doesn’t espouse any particular theological, cosmological or metaphysical point about said bummed-outedness. The film seems to hint that traditional religion is no real help, although its endorsement of the afterlife—all tunnels of light and crowds of dead relatives—seems doggedly conventional. The film also admits that most spiritualists who claim to speak with the dead are just con men. Except for the really sincere ones who aren’t. As a result, the film finds no real difference between the two. Real or fake, a clairvoyant is going to deliver the exact same message: “Your dead mother/father/brother loves you and wants you to go on with your life and be happy.” Really? Thanks for the news flash.

Pensive, contemplative and lapped by waves of melancholy, Hereafter is a worthy examination of mortality. By the same token, this is also a film that manages to be languid and lyrical even while watching a 30-foot tsunami sweep down a crowded city street. Like Babel, Crash and Syriana, Hereafter may end up being one of those highly regarded, widely celebrated Oscar winners that everybody finds too boring to actually sit through.

Slate [Dana Stevens]

There's something admirable about filmmakers who are willing to risk ridiculousness in an attempt to imagine unfilmable realms of experience: life after death, the subconscious, infancy, drug trips, dreams. Even when the experiment fails—What Dreams May Come, The Lovely Bones—the attempt to deliver the beyond has a weird nobility to it. And on the rare occasions that such films do succeed—think of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, or Michael Tolkin's haunting, underrated The Rapture—the results can be transcendent.

Clint Eastwood's Hereafter (Warner Bros.), for me, fell into the former category. Its vision of the afterlife—indistinct figures milling around in front of a white light—could have come straight from one of those basic-cable documentaries in which people recount their near-death experiences in between cheesy "re-enactments." And Eastwood's habitual preference for expounding ideas over developing characters often gives the movie the dull urgency of a tract (though it advances no religious doctrine, and indeed mentions none, with the exception of atheism). Still, I found myself cutting Hereafter break after break, thinking "OK, that scene didn't work, but let's see where he goes next." And this wasn't because I'm a particular fan of Eastwood—in my view, he's one of our most overrated living filmmakers—but because this movie's earnest dullness was part of its charm. I'm totally down with the idea of a slow-moving, somber meditation on grief, loneliness, and death, directed by an 80-year-old movie star. If only the movie had offered me more in exchange for my patience.

Hereafter's plot (the film was scripted by Peter Morgan, the British screenwriter and playwright who wrote Frost/Nixon and The Queen) proceeds according to the logic of what I've come to think of as "the Babel structure," though this kind of sprawling international narrative no doubt preceded Alejandro González Inárritu's Babel (2006). Three separate story threads—one set in San Francisco, one in Paris, and one in London—develop similar themes before finally, in Eastwood's case a good two-thirds of the way through the movie, they begin to intertwine.

The movie's opening sequence is its best, because it so matter-of-factly upends our expectations of what an Eastwood film should be. A well-known French anchorwoman, Marie Lelay (Cécile de France), vacationing in a tropical location with her lover, is out shopping for souvenirs when the beachside village is suddenly hit by a tsunami. With no warning—and, blessedly, no hokily suspenseful music—we're plunged into a disaster movie, and the victim's-eye view as Marie is hurled along by a wall of water is truly terrifying. She nearly drowns, is pulled from the water by rescuers, and just as they've given up on their resuscitation attempt, she coughs up water and returns to life. But what Marie saw during those few moments between death and life—see above, in re: vague figures milling in a white light—renders her incapable of returning to her life as the successful host of a show called Window on the Event. The only event she wants a window onto is what happened to her in that tsunami.

Meanwhile, in scenic San Francisco—every city in this movie is identified by establishing shots of its most postcard-worthy monuments—a forklift driver and retired psychic, George Lonegan (Matt Damon), is being pressured by his brother (Jay Mohr) to get back into the mind-reading business. Since childhood, George has had a gift for communicating with the dead: When he touches a person's hands, he gets a clear image of the loved one that person is mourning and the ability to transmit messages on their behalf. In fact, he's incapable of not channeling the dead, which has turned George into a lonely hermit afraid of so much as brushing up against another human being. In an attempt to rejoin the world, George takes a cooking class (taught, disconcertingly, by Steven R. Schirripa, The Sopranos' Bobby Bacala) and begins a flirtation with an enticing young classmate (Bryce Dallas Howard).

And concurrently, in London—see how long it takes to even set up the plot of this movie?—a preteen boy, Marcus (played, alternately, by twins George and Frankie McLaren) longs for his dead twin brother. When his drug-addicted mother checks into rehab, Marcus goes so far as to steal money from his foster parents to pay psychics to contact his twin. He's scammed by an series of entertainingly inept shysters, then discovers George Lonegan's now-defunct page on the Internet …

And, at long last, more than an hour into this stuff, the three stories begin to weave together—but the braid they form is maddeningly loose. The feeling of the last act is one of dispersal and fragmentation, the plot's energy slackening just when it should build. Marie wanders off to Switzerland to consult with a controversial researcher into after-death experiences (Marthe Keller). Marcus narrowly escapes a subway bombing, perhaps guided from beyond the grave by his all-seeing twin brother. And George flees San Francisco to pursue his (never adequately explained) obsession with Charles Dickens. Eventually, the paths of the three principals converge at a London book fair. I won't give away what happens when they do—except to say that the encounter between George and the grieving little boy is unexpectedly lovely, and the one between George and the anchor lady unexpectedly lame.

William Maxwell, a novelist and former fiction editor for The New Yorker, once said something simple but heartbreaking about death: "People die and then they're gone. I'll never get used to it." The characters in Hereafter are stuck at that border—the moment when someone dies, and someone else refuses to get used to it, or to give up on trying to understand where their loved one has gone. Though I found Hereafter meandering and occasionally sentimental, I couldn't help but admire Clint Eastwood's ambition in taking on—headfirst—the greatest fact of human existence.

The Village Voice [J. Hoberman]

DVD Talk (Jamie S. Rich) review [1/5]

Salon.com [Andrew O'Hehir]

TIME Magazine review Richard Corliss

The House Next Door [Aaron Cutler] interesting comments on the digital world

Movieline (Stephanie Zacharek) review [5.5/10]

The Parallax Review [Mark Dujsik]

Filmcritic.com Chris Cabin

Cinematical (Erik Childress) review

indieWIRE (Todd McCarthy) review

Edward Champion

Sound On Sight Kenneth Broadway

Slant Magazine (Nick Schager) review

The Independent Critic [Richard Propes]

RopeofSilicon (Brad Brevet) review [C]

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J. EDGAR C- 67

USA (137 mi) 2011 ‘Scope

I am…a revolutionary. —Fred Hampton, Chairman of the Chicago Chapter of the Black Panther Party, murdered by an FBI raid

What is overlooked here is how FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the most powerful police organization in the country, was so compelled by his reactionary beliefs to continually violate the law himself, even resort to murder in order to, in his views, protect American citizens when pursuing Black Panthers in the late 60’s, as evidenced by the December 4, 1969 assassination of Party Chairman Fred Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark in Chicago, including a cover up of the police actions, claiming they were firing in self-defense in a dawn 4:30 am FBI raid into Hampton’s private residence, supposedly to serve a warrant for a weapons violation. According to a forensics report, 99 bullets were found entering the apartment from the outside, while only 1 bullet was ever fired from inside, hardly the barrage of “an onslaught of bullets” reported by the police to justify their actions.

All the Chicago officers on the Hampton raid were vindicated, where only after a period of ten years were they finally held responsible for violating Hampton’s civil rights. Over the course of time, this also led to the FBI revelations that they actually directed the State’s Attorney’s raid, based on diagrams provided by FBI informant William O’Neal, who was paid $30,000 by the FBI and was Hampton’s bodyguard, the man who actually provided the exact location of Fred Hampton’s bed, which was the target of the majority of the police bullets. An autopsy also revealed that there were barbiturates found in Hampton’s stomach, who was known to be ardently drug and alcohol free, suggesting he was drugged the night before by O’Neal, who served him kool-aid and hot dogs the night before, corroborating the testimony of Hampton’s girl friend in the apartment who claimed he did not respond and remained groggy throughout the raid, only lifting his head an inch or so off the bed before he was shot and killed.

Black Panthers were targeted by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI watch list as public enemy number one, calling them "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country,"infiltrated by informants, oftentimes black police officers, and eventually the entire organization nationwide was hunted down and targeted for arrest and/or death “by any means necessary,” to borrow a phrase of the Panthers organization themselves. Bobby Hutton of the Oakland branch was killed, Eldridge Cleaver fled the country, Huey P. Newton was arrested for manslaughter, H. Rap Brown for murder, and one by one the leaders were taken out in a secret FBI spy operation against American citizens called COINTELPRO that was only uncovered years later under the Freedom of Information Act. By 1970, 34 known Panthers were dead as a result of police raids and shoot-outs, while the rising costs of legal fees eventually ended the existence of the Black Panther Party. Hoover and his organization have never been held accountable for their own criminal illegality, which is why there continues to be a major distrust factor of police in black communities. Informant William O’Neal eventually threw himself into the lanes of the Eisenhower expressway, committing suicide on Martin Luther King Day on 1990. There is no mention of any of this in the film, which also neglects to mention Hoover’s active contribution to the Red Scare McCarthyist Era of the 1950’s.

The film does show that from December 1963 until his death in 1968, the FBI wiretapped the phones of Reverand Martin Luther King Jr, claiming that one of King's closest advisers, Stanley Levison, a white New York lawyer and businessman, was a top-level member of the American Communist Party. As it turned out Levison had extensive ties with the Communist Party in the 40’s and 50’s but departed from the organization by the time he met King in the early 60’s. Nonetheless, a wiretap was ordered on October 10, 1963 making Martin Luther King Jr. the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to “neutralize” him as an effective civil rights leader. The FBI campaign to discredit and destroy Dr. King was marked by extreme personal vindictiveness, where as early as 1962 Hoover himself penned an FBI memorandum, “King is no good,” claiming Dr. King was “the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.” Shortly afterwards in 1963, Time magazine chose Dr. King as the “Man of the Year,” and later in 1964 he won the Nobel peace prize, an honor which elicited Hoover's comment that “they had to dig deep in the garbage to come up with this one,” calling Dr. King the “most notorious liar” in the country.

The FBI scrutinized Dr. King's tax returns, monitored his sexual and financial affairs, and even tried to establish that he had a secret foreign bank account. Religious leaders and institutions were contacted in an effort to undermine their support of him, and unfavorable material was “leaked” to the press. Bureau officials contacted members of Congress, and special “off the record” testimony was prepared for Hoover's use before the House Appropriations Committee. Efforts were made to turn White House and Justice Department Officials against Dr. King by barraging them with unfavorable reports and, according to one witness, even offering to play for a White House official explicit sex tape recordings that the Bureau considered embarrassing to King, tapes that just happened to be delivered to Dr. King with threats of greater public exposure the night before his Nobel Prize speech. Despite extensive surveillance, the FBI was never able to portray King as a dangerous radical or find any direct funding or other links between King and the Communist party.

This film, easily one of the ugiest looking films ever seen (in more ways than one), written by Dustin Lance Black, who also wrote MILK (2008), is largely taken from Hoover’s own 1972 memoirs which he dictates throughout the film accentuating a more tender side of Hoover, Leonardo DiCaprio in a horrible accent, not just a ruthless, powerful man in America who rose to the directorship of the FBI from 1935 until his death in 1972. It was only after he died that America learned Hoover was a cross dresser, a closet homosexual, who may have repressed his lifelong love affair with Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), the Associate Director of the FBI from 1930 until just after Hoover died in 1972, the man who inherited Hoover’s estate after he died, which amounted to a little more than half a million dollars and Hoover’s home. Ironically Hoover was outspoken against homosexuality and refused to allow gays, women, and very few blacks to become FBI agents, and in fact spread defamatory false rumors that Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson was gay. And while these personal revelations may be salaciously interesting, they prove to be something of a distraction, and pure speculation, where adding a vulnerable and more humanized dimension to his personality, a secretly repressed love affair that Hoover never publicly acknowledged during his lifetime, and for which there is no corroborating evidence, has a way of diverting attention away from the corrupt ruthlessness in which he ran his office, known for blackmailing Presidents, threatening to expose and ruin the careers of anyone who would dare attempt to challenge him, surviving largely unscathed in his own personal domain as head of the FBI, remaining outside of public scrutiny for 37 years, collecting and consolidating power in his office long after a series of Presidents came and went.

Placing the focus on Hoover’s love life takes away from the fact that this man singlehandedly destroyed lives throughout his lifetime, altering the possibilities of social change in history, where the damage he caused in arrests, murder, and intimidation was far greater than that of any terrorist, where he was the man in charge of all the slimy, underhanded dirty tricks and lies, which Hoover felt was far more effective than the truth, used to undermine the reputations and public effectiveness of others, yet he remained in charge of the nation’s highest law officers, continuing to collect information that he could use “against” others in his own private crusade on public decency, an unchecked monster that himself became that threat to the internal security of our nation, an embarrassing stain in the nation’s history that this film steers clear of because Hoover led the fight against Communism in America and continues to be lauded in right wing circles as a patriot. A dull and drab Clint Eastwood movie that fictionalizes certain aspects of his life is no substitute for the real thing, which would be an exposé that reveals the truth about just what the man was responsible for in his lifetime, revealing all the skeletons in the closet. Despite modernizing crime fighting technology, such as creating a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories, he also used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders, and routinely used illegal methods to collect evidence. There were no Black Panthers and no one from the King family offering their views on how this lone man dedicated his life to work tirelessly not only to discredit the hopes and dreams of others and the movements they advocated, but ultimately he vowed to literally destroy lives. In 2001, Nevada Senator Harry Reid sponsored an amendment to strip Hoover's name from the FBI Headquarters named after him in Washington, D.C. claiming “J. Edgar Hoover's name on the FBI building is a stain on the building,” however the Senate never adopted the amendment.

Review: J. Edgar - Reviews - Boston Phoenix Gerald Peary

Filmmaker Clint Eastwood, famously Republican, portrays right-wing hero J. Edgar Hoover, the late FBI head, as a self-aggrandizing, conniving bully and mama's boy who broke the law whenever he wanted to bring anyone down. Leonardo DiCaprio has the unenviable task of playing a character without a single redeeming feature. He's good as the little merde, though the film itself wobbles from boring bio scenes to effective political history to embarassingly miscast actors playing Bobby Kennedy (Jeffrey Donovan) and Richard Nixon (Christopher Shyer). The script by Dustin Lance Black (Milk) is overwritten, with characters lecturing Hoover about his misdeeds, as if we can't figure them out ourselves. Black does offer a lot of time to the closeted relationship of Hoover and his second-in-command, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). There's little doubt of their gayness, though we don't know if they actually have sex or just hold hands a lot.

exclaim! [Allan Tong]

J. Edgar Hoover was once the most powerful man in America. Wiretapping private conversations, the FBI chief blackmailed U.S. Presidents, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy. He pathologically surveilled Martin Luther King, whom he considered a communist, took credit for high-profile busts he had nothing to do with and shamelessly promoted himself on radio, movies and even breakfast cereal boxes.

It's tough to make a 140-minute film about a character so despicable he'd make Dick Cheney blush, but director Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk) inject Hoover with a touch of humanity: his lifelong affair with his right-hand man, Clyde Tolson. Armie Hammer (the twins in The Social Network) steals scenes from Leonardo DiCaprio (Hoover) by bringing out a bit of vulnerability. Their dysfunctional love story binds together two eras of Hoover's life: the Depression, when he fought bootleggers, and the '60s, when he persecuted the Kennedys and King. Without that relationship, J. Edgar would be unbearable.

Naomi Watts does well with the two-dimensional Helen Gandy, Hoover's faithful secretary. However, we never learn why she stuck by him for nearly 50 years. Judi Dench excels as Hoover's overbearing mother, who in one show-stopping scene tells him straight on that she'd rather have a dead son than a "daffodil."

Tom Stern's desaturated cinematography drains the film of joy, which perfectly mirrors Hoover's repressed inner life. In fact, nearly the entire film is told through Hoover's narcissistic recollections, which allows us to bounce around time ― credit the make-up department for making the characters so believable as they age.

Fortunately, Eastwood and Black condemn Hoover for the bully he was, yet somehow portray him as a human being.

J. Edgar | Film | Movie Review | The A.V. Club Tasha Robinson

The trouble with biopics is the overwhelming pressure to shape a subject’s story into a neat arc, where a defining characteristic in the first act leads to a predictable uplift or downfall in the third. This approach never does justice to human complexity, and it only rarely does justice to a film. In the case of Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar, the attempt to accordion J. Edgar Hoover’s 50-plus years with the FBI (including in its nascent stages, before it was called that) into two hours offers snapshots of many Hoovers without exploring any of them. Eastwood’s prim, respectful biography presents Hoover in turn as a muddy political metaphor, a lesson in self-mythologizing, and a case history in repression, but never particularly as a man.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Hoover, seen alternately as a Department Of Justice up-and-comer and a fat-suited seventysomething, framing the film by dictating his life story to a series of interlocutors who ask polite questions on the audience’s behalf. A puritanical, humorless, driven man even in his 20s, he sets standards few can meet, whether he’s helping reorganize the Library Of Congress or recreating the newly defined FBI in his own image, via anti-radical pogroms and innovations in forensic science. Like Dubya in Oliver Stone’s W., he’s largely defined by his desire to please a controlling, withholding parent (Judi Dench); in particular, a key line from her about how she’d rather have a dead son than a gay one defines his lifelong undercurrent-laden-but-chaste relationship with fellow FBI administrator Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer).

In his script, Dustin Lance Black (Milk) hits some key milestones in Hoover’s life, particularly the Lindbergh-baby kidnapping, but he only defines Hoover in reaction to his mother and his era, and he never bridges the gap between the idealistic youth and the blackmailing politico. DiCaprio isn’t much help; he’s often compelling, but he rarely gets to clarify Hoover’s emotions or intentions. There’s obvious contemporary political relevance in many of Hoover’s offhanded statements—say, his conviction that it’s worth pursuing anyone who might commit crimes—and some more universal lessons toward the end of the film, where the gap between reality and his self-image becomes clear. But the gap between this nicely shot, neatly gift-wrapped package and messy human reality feels equally wide.

Internal Affairs Were J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson lovers? by Beverly Gage from Slate, November 10, 2011

In one of the climactic moments of the new film J. Edgar, a thirtysomething J. Edgar Hoover reveals his plans to take a wife. The scene unfolds in a New York hotel suite, where Hoover has reserved adjoining rooms with Clyde Tolson, his second-in-command at the FBI. Tolson responds with rage to his boss’s news, throwing a temper tantrum at odds with his typically polished demeanor. The argument soon escalates into a fistfight, then into the film’s single most sexual moment: a bloody kiss between the director and associate director of the FBI.

There is no evidence that this fight—much less the kiss—ever took place. What we know about the relationship between Hoover and Tolson comes mostly from the public record: meals together twice a day, joint vacations, a final burial place just a few yards apart. Their interior and sexual lives remain mostly a matter of speculation. Despite daunting research efforts by journalists and historians, we can say little more today than we could four or five decades ago: Hoover and Tolson had a marriage of sorts. But what sort of marriage was it?

J. Edgar’s scriptwriter, Dustin Lance Black, had the luxury of imagining the answer to this question, depicting Hoover and Tolson’s relationship as a tragic precursor to today’s sanctioned gay marriages. The film focuses on their interpersonal drama, conjuring up intimate dinner-table powwows and anguished personal struggles. (For the record: Yes, Hoover loved his mama. No, there is no evidence that he put on her necklace and dress in the hours after her death.)

And yet it is Hoover and Tolson’s public life—the stuff we do know about—that is ultimately the most fascinating part of their story. They never openly acknowledged a sexual or romantic relationship. At the same time, they demanded—and received—a level of respect for their partnership that seems almost unthinkable in pre-Stonewall society. For some four decades, the crème de la crème of political America treated them as a recognized couple; when Edgar was invited to dinner, so was Clyde. We don’t have to make up their most intimate scenes to find a relationship worth exploring.

Hoover and Tolson met sometime in the late 1920s—perhaps, though not definitively, at the Mayflower Hotel bar as suggested in one of J. Edgar’s early scenes. In early 1928, Tolson signed on as a Bureau agent, one of many handsome young George Washington fraternity men recruited in Hoover’s early days as director. His career took off immediately. By 1931, Tolson was assistant director of the Bureau, charged with enforcing Hoover’s famously nitpicking internal policies.

Swift promotion was not particularly unique at the early Bureau; when Hoover found men he liked, he brought them up fast. What made Tolson stand out was the highly public friendship he soon developed with his boss. By the mid-1930s, Tolson was at Hoover’s side for every major Washington outing, from Bureau baseball games to White House affairs. As the FBI gained fame for running down kidnappers and bank robbers (a story rendered almost wholly out of chronological sequence in J. Edgar), Tolson usually accompanied Hoover to New York as well. There, they became fixtures of gossip columnist Walter Winchell’s rarefied Stork Club circle, hobnobbing with the likes of boxer Jack Dempsey and Broadway author Damon Runyon. On one fairly typical night in 1935, they joined Winchell in the press section at a Dempsey fight only to end the evening watching a brawl involving Ernest Hemingway.

Their own brawl in J. Edgar takes places sometime during this period, evoking the erotically charged world of café society as a backdrop for Hoover and Tolson’s grand confrontation. Many of the scene’s other elements are similarly based in fact. Hoover did have a headline-grabbing and certainly false romance with film star Dorothy Lamour, his candidate for wifehood in J. Edgar. He also had a rumored—and equally unlikely—affair with Ginger Rogers’ mother Lela, depicted as the confident older woman trying to muscle Hoover onto the dance floor in one of the film’s nightclub scenes.

For the most part, though, Hoover simply opted out of the marriage-and-children game. He loved to give advice on the subject, publishing preachy newspaper columns and speeches on “The Parent Problem” and “The Man I Want My Son To Be.” But he never seriously entertained the idea of starting a family, and his few dates with women seem to be nothing more than a nod to social convention. In retrospect, it seems astonishing how little he actually did to maintain a heterosexual facade. From his first moments at the Bureau, he surrounded himself with young men, and his loyalties never wavered.

This produced the predictable Washington gossip. As early as the 1930s, local columnists had begun to titter about Hoover’s “mincing step” and fondness for natty suits. By the late 1960s, at least one congressman was allegedly threatening to out Hoover and Tolson on the House floor, retaliation for unrelated backroom shenanigans. Hoover could be merciless in such situations. Throughout his career, he regularly sent FBI agents to track down citizens unwise enough to suggest that he was “queer.” He also cooperated in the postwar Lavender Scare, when hundreds of gay men and women lost their federal jobs as security risks. (Oddly, J. Edgar entirely skips this period of Hoover’s life, despite its jaw-droppingly rich sexual complexity.)

Hoover’s attempts to strong-arm his critics fit our image of him as a ruthless power-monger, and of the pre-Stonewall era as a time of brutal anti-gay repression. Far more difficult to reconcile with this image is the acceptance that Hoover and Tolson seemed to find—at exactly the same time—in the highest reaches of New York and Washington society. Despite the rumors of their homosexuality, they conducted a vibrant and open social partnership throughout their years together, accepting joint dinner invitations, attending family functions, even signing the occasional thank-you note together.

Friends and political associates knew to treat them as a bona fide couple. In the 1930s, for instance, Hoover and Tolson hit the town with Broadway star Ethel Merman and Stork Club owner Sherman Billingsley, busy conducting their own illicit affair. By the 1950s, the two men were double-dating with Dick and Pat Nixon, whom Hoover had met while pursuing the case against Alger Hiss. “I did want to drop you this personal note to let you know how sorry Clyde and I are that we were unable to join Pat and you for lunch today,” Hoover wrote to Vice President Nixon after one failed invitation in 1958. On another occasion, Nixon suggested that Clyde—“our favorite bartender”—ought to learn to make the mean if unspecified pink cocktail that they all had often enjoyed together.

Such exchanges evoke nothing so much as the formal world of 1950s married life, one set of spouses trading entertaining tips and social niceties with the other. But did these friends actually view Hoover and Tolson as a romantic and sexual couple? In recent decades, many acquaintances—including Ethel Merman—have claimed that they “knew” about Hoover and Tolson. But it’s hard to say if this is posthumous speculation or accurate insider knowledge. Nixon famously referred to Hoover as a “cocksucker”—a suggestive word, but one that may or may not be referring to Hoover’s sex life. In the press, Hoover and Tolson were most often described as “bachelors,” a term that served simultaneously as a euphemism and as a straightforward description of an unmarried heterosexual man. At the FBI, acquaintances consistently denied anything other than a close friendship.

It is easy to write off the more open aspects of Hoover and Tolson’s relationship as proof of old-fashioned naiveté—to assume that folks in the 1950s were unaware. But this gives the people of the past far too little credit and flattens out an intriguing social history. If Hoover’s story tells us anything, it’s that today’s binaries—gay vs. straight, closeted vs. out—map uneasily onto the sexual past. Hoover and Tolson were many things at once: professional associates, golf buddies, Masonic brothers, and possibly lovers as well.

At the very least, they were caring social partners, relying on each other for emotional sustenance and daily support that went beyond the realm of ordinary friendship. J. Edgar closes with Tolson clutching a love letter to Eleanor Roosevelt from journalist Lorena Hickok, now widely seen as one of Roosevelt’s several romantic interests. But Tolson might as well have been reading a letter from his own FBI personnel file, which contains one of the few personal missives that have survived decades of purging and obfuscation.

“Words are mere man-given symbols for thoughts and feelings, and they are grossly insufficient to express the thoughts in my mind and the feelings in my heart that I have for you,” Hoover wrote to Tolson in 1943. “I hope I will always have you beside me.”

The New Yorker [David Denby]

J. Edgar Review: Life in a Vacuum - Pajiba Daniel Carlson

Great Man Theories: Clint Eastwood on J. Edgar ... - Village Voice J. Hoberman

The House Next Door [Glenn Heath Jr.]

AFI FEST Review: Unfocused 'J. Edgar' - Film School Rejects Kate Erbland

New York Magazine [David Edelstein]

Movieline [Stephanie Zacharek]

Slant Magazine [Jaime N. Christley]

Review: Leonardo DiCaprio in Eastwoods J. Edgar offers easy - HitFix Drew McWeeny

J. Edgar reviewed - Slate Magazine Dana Stevens

DVD Verdict [Michael Stailey]

Screen Rant [Ben Kendrick]

Filmcritic.com Bill Gibron

Film Freak Central Review [Angelo Muredda]

PopMatters [Cynthia Fuchs]

Truthdig [Richard Schickel]

Boxoffice Magazine [James Rocchi]

About.com [Rebecca Murray]

AdvanceScreenings.com [Matthew Fong]

FilmFracture: What's Your Time Worth? [James Jay Edwards]

Mark Reviews Movies [Mark Dujsik]

The Republic [Roger Moore]

J. Edgar : DVD Talk Review of the Theatrical Jason Bailey

DustinPutman.com [Dustin Putman]

www.screenspotlight.com [Jonathan Jacobs]

Combustible Celluloid Review - J. Edgar (2011), Clint Eastwood ... Jeffrey M. Anderson

ReelTalk [Diana Saenger]

FILM REVIEW: J. Edgar - Things That Go Pop! - CBC.ca Eli Glasner

Blu-ray.com [Brian Orndorf]

J. Edgar | Review | Screen - Screen International Mike Goodridge

Monsters and Critics [Anne Brodie]

Shalit's 'Stache [Matthew Schuchman]

Washingtonian [Ian Buckwalter]

Oscar Prospects: J. Edgar | The House Next Door R. Kurt Osenlund

We Got This Covered [Amy Curtis]

tonymacklin.net [Tony Macklin]

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The Wrap [Alonso Duralde] also seen here: Reuters [Alonso Duralde]

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US Weekly [Mara Reinstein]

Leonardo DiCaprio in Clint Eastwood's 'J. Edgar ... - New York Times Brooks Barnes interviews the actor from The New York Times, November 2, 2011

The Hollywood Reporter [Todd McCarthy]

Variety [Peter DeBruge]

J Edgar – review Andrew Pulver from The Guardian, November 30, 2011

J. Edgar – review Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian, January 19, 2012

J Edgar a visionary? Don't believe it Alex von Tunzelmann from The Guardian, February 2, 2012

J. Edgar – review Philip French from The Observer, January 21, 2012

'Edgar' worth investigating - BostonHerald.com James Verniere

Philadelphia Weekly [Sean Burns]

Critic Review for J. Edgar on washingtonpost.com Ann Hornaday

The Washington Times [staff] Peter Suderman

Orlando Weekly [William Goss]

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J. Edgar :: rogerebert.com ... - Roger Ebert - Chicago Sun-Times

'J. Edgar,' Starring Leonardo DiCaprio ... - Movies - New York Times

Dirty Harry Meets Dirtier Edgar - NYTimes.com - New York Times Maureen Dowd, November 12, 2011

J. Edgar Hoover - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clyde Tolson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

COINTELPRO - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

How Hoover’s FBI Spied on the White House and Counterculture Alike Tim Weiner from Slate, February 29, 2012

Martin Luther King Jr. FBI Files 3165 pages of FBI files

FBI's Complete File on Martin Luther King, Jr. - We Are Change Seattle all 16,659 pages

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Case Study - ICDC Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book III, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities United States Senate, April 23, 1976

The FBI's Vendetta Against Martin Luther King, Jr. from the book The ... The FBI's Vendetta Against Martin Luther King, Jr, excerpted from the book The Lawless State, The Crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies, by Morton Halperin, Jerry Berman, Robert Borosage, Christine Marwick, 1976

The FBI and Martin Luther King - Magazine - The Atlantic David J. Garrow from The Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2002

FBI tracked King's every move - CNN Jen Christensen from CNN News, March 31, 2008

Fred Hampton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

FBI — Fred Hampton FBI Records on Fred Hampton

"The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago ... Democracy Now

The Last Hours of William O'Neal | Our Town | Chicago Reader Michael Ervin, January 25, 1990

Nothing but a Northern Lynching: The Death of Fred Hampton ... Susan Rutberg from The Huffington Post, December 4, 2009

JERSEY BOYS C 75

USA (134 mi) 2014 ‘Scope Official site

As someone who never much liked Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons when they were incessantly overplayed on the radio in the 60’s and 70’s, where it always sounded like they had a “produced” rather than a natural sound, it would be a challenge to sit through yet another disappointing Clint Eastwood film since MILLION DOLLAR BABY (2004), a few of which have been among the worst films in this director’s career. The Four Seasons were the epitome of mass marketing, viewed as old-fashioned and square, the kind of Lawrence Welk schmaltz and sentimentality that even your grandmother could enjoy, where live performances included few spontaneous moments and were identical to the radio sound, as there was little actual performance in an era that featured some of the greatest performers in pop, rock ‘n’ roll, and rhythm and blues history, where the sheer unconventionality of these artists broke from the suffocatingly conformist chains of the 50’s, an era when performers simply stood at a microphone and sang in tune. Compare that to Tina Turner, Janis Joplin, James Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Eric Burdon, Jimi Hendrix, or Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, who all revolutionized the stage performance. Nonetheless, adapted from the writing team that produced the Tony Award winning 2005 Broadway musical that won Best Musical, with John Lloyd Young (now at age 38, where his character ranges from a teenager to the father of a teenager, also winning a Tony for Best Leading Actor in a Musical) in the lead role of Frankie Valli as the sole original Broadway performer to be featured in the movie, the film is largely a recreation of the theatrical conception. This is what’s commonly known in the trade as a moneymaker, a “can’t lose” proposition given to an A-list director, while the investors then sit around and wait for the cash dollars to come rolling in. That’s been the story of this theatrical production from the outset, costing $7.8 million dollars to produce on Broadway in November 2005, recouping all of their investments by the following June, where 9-years later the show continues to average $715,000 per week in grosses, where the weekly running costs are only about $400,000, which is low by Broadway standards, passing over $1.7 billion dollars in worldwide grosses earlier this year, where there are no announced plans to end its New York run. Frankie Valli and his songwriter Bob Gaudio have earned $4.1 million dollars so far on the Broadway production alone, as well as a steady stream of revenue from their musical royalties, where early in their careers they inked contracts where they take 6% of the music’s net profits. And now, the movie, which is wall-to-wall songs, nearly every one a similar looking set piece, which is cheap, easy to construct, assemble a cast, and shoot, which just earns more money into the hands of the investors. All of this sounds like the Hollywood cash cow business formula, having little if anything to do with cinema itself. But this typifies what the movies have become—a successful business product.

From the opening thirty seconds, one is immediately less than impressed to the point of being maddened by the look of the film, shot by Tom Stern, who has worked with Eastwood on every film since BLOOD WORK (2002), as the desaturated look has the color faded out, leaving the picture looking dull and lifeless, while every street scene, with every speck of dirt washed away, also resembles the look of a movie set, mostly shot on the Warner Brothers backlot, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to reality. This deglamorization detracts from the showbiz glitz that is otherwise accentuated throughout, which is basically a trip down memory lane, where the musical production is a showpiece for the Frankie Valli songbook that is heard throughout, with each song sounding so similar, where they even make fun of this criticism early in their rise to success, calling the songs “derivatives,” unoriginal, but copies of similar sounding hit songs. Apparently the fascination is not so much with the actual voice itself, but with Young recreating the swooning falsetto of Frankie Valli, which was all the rage in soul music in the 60’s and 70’s, like Sam Cooke A Change Is Gonna Come -- Sam Cooke (Original Version in HD YouTube (3:15), Smokey Robinson & the Miracles Smokey Robinson - The Tracks Of My Tears Live (1965) on ... YouTube (3:05), Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions Gypsy Woman - YouTube (2:20), Eddie Kendricks from the Temptations JUST MY IMAGINATION (1971)- THE TEMPTATIONS YouTube (2:41), or the Isley Brothers ISLEY BROTHERS LAY LADY LAY.wmv - YouTube (10:21), but also Roy Orbison Roy Orbison - In Dreams - YouTube (2:54), Del Shannon Del Shannon - Runaway (Rare Stereo Version) - YouTube (2:20), and Barry Gibb with the Bee Gees Bee Gees _ How Can You Mend a Broken Heart ('71) HQ ... YouTube (3:56), where the sound is so uniquely distinctive that listeners often can’t tell if the singer is black or white. Coming from the Doo Wop tradition of the late 40’s and 50’s, the term originated in the early 60’s, getting its origins from four guys singing a cappella on the street corner while harmonizing, where the lead falsetto voice was a must, like Little Anthony and the Imperials, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, or Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, often taking advantage of a young teen singer’s natural adolescent voice before it matures through puberty, at which point that singer’s career was over by the time they turned twenty (which thankfully never happened with Michael Jackson). The 60’s were perhaps the golden age of the falsetto in pop and rock music, where hearing falsetto voices was common, while today practitioners would include Prince, Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Bono of U2, Chris Martin of Coldplay, or Justin Timberlake. Frankie Valli is certainly one of the best mainstream pop singers to legitimize the falsetto, where you could hit the high notes while still expressing a masculine feeling of love or defiance. While he sounds a bit tinny and screeching at times, the group broke into the music scene with Valli’s indisputable sound, Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons - Sherry ( 1962 YouTube (2:34), the first of a string of #1 hits.

Recreated by screenwriters Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, Brickman is a former head writer of the Tonight Show (1969—70), also Woody Allen’s writer for ANNIE HALL (1977), MANHATTAN (1979), and MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY (1993). There are some extremely funny, drop dead laughter moments, most generated by Christopher Walken as Gyp DeCarlo, easily the best thing in the film as the local mobster, where according to one of his underlings, local hood Tommy Devito (Vincent Piazza), “If you’re from my neighborhood, you got three ways out: You could join the army. You could get mobbed up. Or—you could become a star,” where for this group, “it was two out of three.” Set in an Italian-American town of Bellevue, just outside of Newark, Jersey, where Frankie was actually born Francesco Stephen Castelluccio, a kid with a voice, the depiction of the mob, however, couldn’t be more sugar coated, where Gyp loves Frankie’s voice to the point of tears when he sings “My Mother’s Eyes” My Mother's Eyes by Frankie Valli (Valley, Vally) - YouTube (3:26) (“That was my mother’s favorite song,”), so he does what he can to protect him, literally offering his services out of the goodness of his heart (only in the movies), as if it’s his responsibility to look after this kid and keep him out of harm’s way. When local punks and hoods get jail time (including their founder and lead guitarist), in this film prison is a home away from home, where they greet everyone with a smile, even the guards, where everyone asks about the family, where it’s more a family reunion than a prison sentence. This sanitized version accounts for why little of this criminal record was known about the Four Seasons before the Broadway production, where it likely would have impacted their early years, as record companies might have refused to play their records. This part of Jersey’s history, which was the major emphasis in David O. Russell’s American Hustle (2013), is simply used for jokes here, suggesting it’s normal for kids get into a little trouble in their youth, but they straighten it all out by the time they become adults. Of interest, it’s not Frankie, but Vincent Piazza as bad-boy Tommy DeVito that runs the show for most of the picture, playing the swaggering founder of the group, whose loud mouth, obnoxious personality, and lack of business sense gets the band into a deep hole financially, spending the rest of their careers paying off the debt. So when he steps aside, the vanilla character of Frankie Valli is so underdeveloped that the movie falters without the interest of a mob connection. All attempts to revive a dysfunctional family fail miserably, so without much of a story, the only thing that matters throughout are the songs.

An amusing anecdote is Frankie and the Four Seasons actually performed in prison for the real-life Gyp after he was handed a 12-year sentence in 1970, where there were strong intimations that his onscreen persona should be portrayed “respectfully,” where the choice of Christopher Walken must be criminal royalty. Additionally, Joseph Russo’s depiction of Joe Pesci as just one of the boys from the neighborhood comes across reverentially, as if he’s waiting in the wings to gladhand all the patrons after the show, flashing that big smile. Also amusing is an Eastwood nod to himself in showing Bob Gaudio (Erich Bergen) watching TV, which turns out to be a clip of the young actor Eastwood half a century ago on the television show Rawhide (1959—65). While the direction is utterly conventional, shooting a cavalcade of hits as one set piece after another of the group singing onstage to yet another thrilled audience somewhere, anywhere, which is like watching a Vegas act, where one of the most unnerving aspects is when, at different stages throughout the film, each member of the Four Seasons speaks straight into the camera, telling the story of the group by talking directly to the audience, as they do in the theatrical version, the difference being on stage there’s a connection to the songs, while here’s it’s just disconnected talk that gets lost as extraneous material. Once they get going, however, the endless blur of Frankie Valli hits just keeps coming, where this may be music to the ears of some, perhaps reaching a crescendo with the performance of Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” Can't Take My Eyes off You - Frankie Valli and The 4 ... YouTube (3:45), but the only break in the entire picture was a road performance by an all-female group, The Angel’s, singing “My Boyfriend’s Back” Angels - My Boyfriend's Back - YouTube (2:09), which felt like a revelation. The film is a bit lackluster and overlong, despite Eastwood cutting out several of the songs, and runs out of steam, where eventually it all looks and feels the same, with John Lloyd Young channeling Michael Corleone in THE GODFATHER (1972) by the end of the picture, with a celebratory Coke advertising style dancing-in-the-streets medley over the closing credits that features every character in the film, a style put to better use by Ellen DeGeneres in her Oscars trailer Oscars® Trailer: Ellen DeGeneres - YouTube (1:00), perhaps originating in Marc Webb’s (500) DAYS OF SUMMER (2009) with Hall & Oates 500 Days Of Summer - You Make My Dreams - YouTube (2:00), where what’s missing is the urgency and sense of vitality that exists onstage in the live theatrical performance.

Jersey Boys | review, synopsis, book tickets ... - Time Out Keith Uhlich

Imagine ‘Goodfellas’ without much in the way of stakes, and you’ll get Clint Eastwood’s pleasingly square and forgettable adaptation of the award-winning jukebox musical, which charts the rise and fall of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Like the stage show, the story is told through the eyes of each of the band members – Frankie Valli (John Lloyd Young), Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza), Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) and Bob Gaudio (Erich Bergen) – each talking directly to camera. It’s a half-arsed gimmick that Eastwood and his screenwriters deploy haphazardly (Valli doesn’t even get his turn until the dewy-eyed final scene). This fits the mood of the movie, though, which comes off like one of those meandering reminiscences you indulge in during a family get-together.

The band has a colourful history that involves money mismanagement, mob ties (Christopher Walken bringing his inimitable style to gangster Gyp DeCarlo) and even actor Joe Pesci (Joseph Russo), who was instrumental in introducing keyboardist Gaudio to the group. Yet Eastwood directs each scene with a creaky monotony that nullifies most of the drama. Even when the characters ratchet up the colourful mob insults or the film shifts back and forth in time, things feel sleepy and sedate.

That leaves the musical performances of hits like ‘Walk Like a Man’ and ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ to pick up the slack (it was a good move to hang on to Tony-winning actor Young as the angel-voiced Valli). Neither the creaky aesthetic nor laughable old-age makeup hampers Young’s charm and charisma. He makes the music come alive despite the cinematic embalming.

Georgia Straight [Janet Smith]

C’mon Clint: have a little fun, why don’t ya? Eastwood’s take on four hoodlums who escape Jersey by singing bubblegum love songs is surprisingly colourless. Then again, Unforgiven and J. Edgar could hardly have trained him for this brand of fizzy soda pop.

In the director’s hands, the song-and-dance-pumped Broadway hit Jersey Boys becomes a passable but tediously predictable portrait of band conflict. Like the musical, Eastwood’s film finds the members of the Four Seasons each addressing the audience directly with the story of Frankie Valli’s rise to teen idol. But they inhabit a grimly realistic ’50s and ’60s shot in desaturated hues. Gone are the musical’s dozens of catchy songs: here we get a handful of hits like “Sherry”, with the only one that taps any real energy in the film’s last, climactic showstopper.

There’s a strange incongruity between this plodding realism and the script’s over-the-top stageyness. The movie Mamma Mia was giddy enough that we might have believed a trio could read music over a composer’s shoulder for the first time and sing it in perfect four-part harmony. Here, when budding composer Bob Gaudio shows the guys his sheet music and they pull it off flawlessly it feels forced because of the tone. Scenes of uniformly grinning audiences swooning to Valli’s falsetto make you long for the deadpan silence of the concert scenes in Inside Llewyn Davis.

Things aren’t all bad. Christopher Walken brings a bit of insanity to the benevolent mob boss who takes Frankie under his wing. And Mike Doyle is flamboyantly hilarious as producer Bob Crewe.

The Broadway star of Jersey Boys, John Lloyd Young, takes the lead here, and while he can reach the high notes, his character’s dull. Vincent Piazza fares better as the Four Season’s swaggering bad-boy Tommy DeVito. The women are throwaways, though, whether it’s the wives left at home or the girlfriends who revolve through the hotel rooms. In fact, it’s difficult to invest in any of the relationships here. Eastwood seems to want to shoehorn it all in—the good, the bad, and the ugly—when most of the audience is probably just there for the matching red velvet jackets and doo-wop.

The Film Stage [Danny King]

On the one hand, Clint Eastwood‘s stage-to-screen adaptation of Jersey Boys is an exercise in Broadway fidelity: rather than re-cast the project with established movie-star personalities, the director chose to fill out three of the four primary roles with actors who performed in the show’s original Broadway tour. Furthermore, according to an interview with Scott Foundas, Eastwood passed over a screenplay from veteran writer John Logan (Rango, Skyfall) in favor of a draft penned by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, who authored the original Broadway book. (Unlike Logan’s draft, Brickman and Elice’s script retains the fourth-wall-breaking gambit of the stage show.) On the other hand, Eastwood’s clear intention to abide by the stage show is undermined by the implementation of his late-period aesthetic, which sacrifices bright, bursting lights and concert-show spirit for musky rooms and cinematographer Tom Stern‘s arsenal of classical shadows, dusty greys, and deep browns.

The result is a film that, while perhaps underwhelming as a whole (and certainly something that won’t convert any latter-day Eastwood skeptics), still contains numerous pockets of interest. Consider, for instance, the wonderful fun Eastwood has toying with the various direct-to-camera addresses. At first, it appears that the actors’ sidebar narrations are conventional: tough-guy Tommy DeVito (Boardwalk Empire‘s Vincent Piazza), who is saddled with the majority of the fourth-wall responsibility, simply walks and talks to the audience, the camera tracking with him as he offers brief exposition and local New Jersey color. Eastwood replicates this set-up so methodically that, whenever a scene is introduced with a single character, we are triggered to expect a bit of transitional narration to occur. But Eastwood flips the trick on a number of occasions, as in a late scene, where a private rant by Frankie Valli (John Lloyd Young) suddenly turns into a two-person conversation when it’s revealed that his girlfriend (Erica Piccininni) is packing her suitcase in the next room. (A similar effect is achieved in an earlier scene that begins with Tommy combing his hair in front of a mirror.)

Eastwood’s decision to keep multiple actors from the Broadway tour is also revealing, considering the director’s well-known preference for quick, efficient shoots that rarely accommodate more than one or two takes per set-up. (“You’ve got people who’ve done 1,200 performances; how much better can you know a character?,” Eastwood states in the Foundas interview.) Needless to say, however, performing Jersey Boys on stage is radically different from performing it on a Clint Eastwood set, and though the Broadway holdovers—in addition to Young, there’s Erich Bergen (as songwriter Bob Gaudio) and Michael Lomenda (as bass player Nick Massi)—make good on their musical talent, they are altogether more stiff and uncomfortable when it comes down to the nuts-and-bolts of a dramatic conversation or altercation. This is especially true of Young, a 38-year-old man who, when the film begins in 1951 in Belleville, New Jersey, has practically no chance in the world of convincing us that he’s a 16-year-old kid who drinks milk with his spaghetti at the family dinner table. (Piazza, the lone Four Seasons player with no connection to the Broadway show, is by far the most charismatic and energetic of the principals.)

On a narrative level, the movie spends a lot of time setting up a framework of working-class New Jersey brotherhood before delving into the jukebox-musical structure that paves the way for renditions of “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” etc. The downside of this choice is that, though the emotional dynamic among the four members is clear and promising—with Gaudio’s well-bred roots making him an intriguing outsider in the group—the narrative developments and rise-and-fall mood swings that populate the rest of the film are simply too demanding for Eastwood’s modest production scale to handle. Considering the amount of plot on display here—the movie begins in 1951, and ends in 1990 (with some shoddy old-age make-up that J. Edgar detractors will surely pounce on)—it’s insane to think that the production budget of Jersey Boys, at $40 million, is only $7 million more than Gran Torino‘s $33 million. (Similarly, Changeling—which, like Jersey Boys, is a period piece with about six plots squeezed into one movie—cost $55 million.) This out-of-whack relationship between subject matter and scale—the plots are getting bigger, while the budgets are staying relatively in the same ballpark—accounts for much of the uneven scene work that plagues Jersey Boys.

This is made clear most glaringly through the film’s female characters, starting with Frankie’s first wife, Mary (Renée Marino). It’s possible to portray a relationship like this with diligent, useful economy (especially in an ensemble picture that, by nature, requires such brevity), but here, with the relationship dubiously jumping from one interval to the next—first-date flirting, marriage, Mary’s alcoholism—it’s impossible to get a grip on how these characters relate to each other and what their relationship means. Frankie’s relationship with his troubled daughter suffers from a similar fault: at one point, she’s a background presence that barely even registers; at another, she’s suddenly one of the emotional cores of Frankie’s arc.

Even with these missteps noted, the movie is a pleasure to look at: Eastwood and production designer James J. Murakami‘s sense of place is phenomenal, from the shiny red booths of a diner to the paper-filled offices where Frankie and the Four Seasons duel over contract disputes and personal rivalries. (Two days removed from seeing the film, I still remember a cup of pencils sitting on a desk in one of those offices—even in scenes as short as that one, Eastwood populates the frame with small details and objects that are breaths of fresh air.) And there are moments, too, where Eastwood breaks out of his prestige-drama bubble and offers surprising spurts of energy: the closing-credits curtain-call; a speedy dash up the front of the Brill Building; numerous references to films of the day, from The Blob to Ace in the Hole; a “Hitchcock moment” where Eastwood appears on television as a character watches Rawhide; and, in what might be the film’s best scene, a humorous full shot of a room of men, each of them with a large glass of red wine, preparing to settle a debt in the mansion of a gangster (a delightful Christopher Walken).

Alt Film Guide [Tim Cogshell]

World Socialist Web Site [Joanne Laurier]

Jersey Boys / The Dissolve Tasha Robinson

Slant Magazine [Chris Cabin]

Film Racket [Bill Gibron]

Film Freak Central Review [Angelo Muredda]

Jersey Boys, the movie, directed by Clint Eastwood ... - Slate Dana Stevens

PopMatters [Chris Barsanti]

Jersey Boys - HitFix Guy Lodge

Cinemixtape [J. Olson]

Sound On Sight JR Kinnard

Jersey Boys | Reviews | Screen - Screen International Tim Grierson from Screendaily

Review: Clint Eastwood's 'Jersey Boys' A Classy Yet Clumsy ... Charlie Schmidlin from The Playlist

Eastwood's Jersey Boys Walk Like Jersey Men | Village Voice Alan Scherstuhl from The Village Voice

Popdose [Bob Cashill]

Jersey Boys - Reelviews Movie Reviews James Berardinelli

Clint Eastwood's Baffling Jersey Boys - Sophie Gilbert - The ... Sophie Gilbert from The Atlantic

Blu-ray.com [Brian Orndorf]

'Jersey Boys' Review: That Thing You Don't Do - Pajiba Agent Bedhead

SBS Movies [Rochelle Siemienowicz]

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theartsdesk.com [Matt Wolf]

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Daily | Clint Eastwood's JERSEY BOYS | Keyframe - Explore ... David Hudson from Fandor

'Jersey Boys' actors laud Clint Eastwood's minimalism - Los ... Saba Hamedy talks to the actors from The LA Times, June 21, 2014

Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio's uneasy relationship with ... Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudi’s Uneasy Relationship with ‘Jersey Boys,’ where Steven Zeitchik interviews Valli and Gaudio from The LA Times, June 26, 2014

'Jersey Boys': Film Review - The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy

Jersey Boys review – a sporadically entertaining affair | Film ... Mark Kermode from The Observer

Examiner.com [Travis Hopson] also seen here: Punch Drunk Critics [Travis Hopson]

The Cleveland Movie Blog [Milan Paurich]

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'Jersey Boys' is old-school entertainment with surprising edge Kenneth Turan from The LA Times

Jersey Boys - Los Angeles Times ‘Jersey Boys’ Has Been a Windfall for All Involved, by David Ng from The LA Times, June 21, 2014

L.A. Biz [Annlee Ellingson]

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'Jersey Boys,' Eastwood's Take on Showbiz Myth - The New ... Manohla Dargis from The New York Times, June 19, 2014, also seen here: New York Times [By MANOHLA DARGIS]

Jersey Boys - Review - Theater - The New York Times Ben Brantley theater review, November 7, 2005

AMERICAN SNIPER C 70

USA (132 mi) 2014 ‘Scope Official site

This is a perfect example of utterly conventional Hollywood filmmaking, as it takes a simplistic, one-dimensional approach to war, patriotism, and serving one’s country, becoming a jingoistic portrayal of an American warrior who thinks he knows what his country stands for by asking no questions, where no reservations are expressed, instead it typifies the gung-ho spirit of the armed forces in much the same way as pro football player Pat Tillman was made the military poster child for enlisting in the Army in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. His idea was to kick some terrorist ass in Afghanistan and Iraq, filled with an ideological certainty that borders on brainwashing, much like the nation’s bullheaded approach for invading Iraq in the first place, where it was inconceivable in Tillman’s eyes that America wouldn’t prevail. Unfortunately, as the Amir Bar-Lev documentary The Tillman Story (2010) points out, it’s much more complicated than that. This glorification of heroism is a throwback to Howard Hawks’ SERGEANT YORK (1941), released just months before America’s entrance into World War II, the story of a World War I sharpshooter that became a war hero, one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War I even as he was a devout pacifist, which won Gary Cooper an Academy Award for Best Actor. Even Gary Cooper, however, was reluctant to play a “too good to be true” character, but reconsidered after meeting Alvin York, the real person the film was based upon. Interestingly, according to Eastwood himself, that was the first movie he ever saw, so it obviously left an impression on him, just as the images from movies and historical photographs leave impressions on other young soldiers about how to behave during wartime, where they often emulate what they see. Similarly, a bulked up and more bland, ideologically toned down Bradley Cooper is excellent in the real-life role of Chris Kyle, a down-home Texas cowboy who rode the rodeo circuit early in his twenties, but when he witnesses the 9/11 attacks, he reconsiders his future, enlisting in the Navy SEAL special operations force at age thirty (age 24 in real life, initially rejected by the Navy SEALS due to rodeo injuries) where he also excels as a sharpshooter and is sent to the front lines in Iraq. As a military sniper, his job is to protect the Marines on the ground by providing an overview vantage point they don’t have, picking off anyone suspected of initiating attacks against the Marine operations. Adapted from Kyle’s 2012 book written three years after his military discharge, American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History, even the title leaves little doubt as to what the focus will be, though his modest, single-minded claim is always that he was simply doing his job by protecting the lives of others.

While the film takes the viewer into the heart of ongoing military operations, almost exclusively seen through a guy’s perspective, it also has a stateside component where Sienna Miller as Kyle’s wife Taya offers a near-cringeworthy performance, though her character is horribly written and is equally one-dimensional, where she seems to have little sympathy or understanding for the unique adjustments soldiers must make upon returning home, as unfortunately they bring a bit of the war back with them. Instead she nags at him continuously to be the person she married, telling him “I need you to be human again,” expecting him to adjust to her concept of a normal family life, while picking at him when he’s less than forthcoming about describing the horrors that he experienced. Keeping much of his emotions locked in, it is only a matter of time before he is called back, as he is needed on the battlefield, eventually serving four tours of duty. Easily the most overwrought and hysterical scenes are the ones when Kyle is in his sniper position in a moment of calm, casually talking to his wife back home, when suddenly a firefight will break out, cutting off normal communications, while she’s left whimpering on the other end of the line wondering what’s happened to her husband. This guy is in special ops, for Christ’s sake, assigned the most dangerous missions, specially trained to be battle hardened, calm in the face of a storm, yet she doesn’t get it, remaining scared out of her wits and clueless about what this guy does for a living. These scenes drain much of the energy from the picture, and there are several of them, where she becomes too much of a distraction, as it’s inconceivable to the public back home that wives would want to be on the phone with their husbands “during” military operations. That’s exactly what could get them killed as it takes away from their primary focus at that moment. The relationships with fellow soldiers may not get the same amount of screen time, but they are much more acutely drawn, as these guys understand each other, where they are trained to have each other’s backs, instilled with the same warrior mentality, yet they can also laugh in quieter moments, as they’ve each been through hell and back.

Certainly one aspect of war this film attempts to convey is the sense of urgency, where Kyle reflects the military mentality when he tells his wife that his family has time to wait, while the frontline soldiers don’t, which is what continually compels him to return. Embellishing the mythic picture of an American hero, only Hollywood would come up with the storyline about a fellow sniper on the other side, a Syrian soldier fighting for al Qaeda named Mustafa (Sammy Sheik) who is actually an Olympic medalist in shooting. Each is the best in their field, where the storyline continually pits one rival against the other, where much of it breaks down into a mind game, maintaining the psychological advantage, where these men become mythical legends within their own ranks. Kyle is actually called “The Legend” by his fellow soldiers, where stories of his prowess spread throughout the military branches, where there’s a price on his head, dubbed the “Devil of Ramadi (Shaitan Ar-Ramadi),” placing a bounty on his head that eventually climbs to $80,000, which distinguishes him even in the eyes of the enemy. This elevates his importance, as it reveals how essential it is militarily for each side to knock out the other’s best sniper. Both are capable of inflicting huge casualties and altering the success or failure of significant missions. Much of this is oversimplified, playing out like a western in the American West, inevitably leading to an ultimate shoot out, the winner being the anointed hero. In Eastwood’s film, however, it nearly brings his unit down, as it exposes their position, subject to an unprecedented attack. Taking place in a sandstorm, it has a dreamlike quality about it, turning into a battlefield of the dead, as men around them keep dropping like flies, but more continue to storm ahead, taking the place of those fallen beside them. It offers a feeling for the senselessness of war, yet it’s also combined with the solemn tributes paid to those making the ultimate sacrifice, as Eastwood’s depiction of a military funeral is easily the best thing in the film, perhaps the only scene that touches the right grace note, (2014) soundtrack - Ennio Morricone -The Funeral - YouTube (2:05). Kyle’s successive returns back home become more detached, told with little fanfare, yet the war continues to intrude into his life, where one of the Eastwood touches is Kyle continually hears the sounds of war taking place even when sitting comfortably on his couch back home, thoughts and sounds he wants to tune out and forget, where he can barely make eye contact or even acknowledge a soldier who graciously thanks him for saving his life. The brief glimpse in hospitals of wounded veterans in recovery feels essential, even though it’s barely touched upon, preferring instead to dwell on the more dramatic war footage, where only at the end does the Hollywood depiction take a turn into vintage archival material, showing the actual funeral of a fallen hero, leaving the audience in the solemnity of a hushed silence, where the closing credits play with no accompanying music.

While the film attempts to honor and eulogize fallen soldiers, but in idolizing this figure, what the film overlooks are the actual hate-filled views expressed by Kyle in his book, as his zealous American fervor is spewed with xenophobic and racist venom, where killing Iraqis is the answer to his own effusive bitterness and contempt, as he is unwavering in his belief that everyone he shot was a “bad guy.” “I hate the damn savages. I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Iraqis…The enemy are savages and despicably evil. My only regret is that I didn’t kill more.” Chris Kyle is actually a younger version of the grizzled old Korean war veteran Walt Kowalski portrayed by Eastwood himself in GRAN TORINO (2008), where his prejudiced views separate him from the changing and more complicated world around him that he can’t begin to understand, as in his mind he’s narrowed it down to overly simplistic, black and white perceptions of good or evil. In other words, we are right, and they are wrong. Intentionally or not, much like John Wayne in a John Ford western, most particularly THE SEARCHERS (1956), this film makes a hero out of Kyle, a special ops patriot that took pleasure in killing and dehumanizing the enemy, recalling the frontier spirit of Ford’s westerns where “the only good injun is a dead injun,” which has now evolved into “the only good Iraqi is a dead Iraqi,” where there are a lot of Chris Kyles in the world who believe in God and country and the American flag, while anyone questioning this view is looked upon with traitorous suspicion and contempt bordering on hatred, equivalent to aiding and abetting the enemy, reminiscent of the derisive and often violent sentiments expressed in the pro-war slogan “America, love it or leave it” during the Vietnam era of the 60’s. In the unquestioning eyes of the true believers, Kyle’s unambiguous belligerence represents not only the embodiment of America’s cowboy mentality (The Cowboy Myth, George W. Bush, and the War with Iraq), but may also explain his considerable success on the battlefield, as there is no soldier remorse, no guilt or crisis of moral conscience about the act of killing when he regrets none of his actions, where in this case his complete lack of subtlety or imagination is what makes him particularly emblematic of today’s American military hero. When faced with the choice between depicting the truth or the myth, however, Eastwood decided to go with the myth, which should come as no surprise to anyone, as peddling myths is the very foundation of what Hollywood does for a living, which is also what makes the film so predictably conventional.

The New Yorker [David Denby]

Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” is both a devastating war movie and a devastating antiwar movie, a subdued celebration of a warrior’s skill and a sorrowful lament over his alienation and misery. The movie, set during the Iraq War, has the troubled ambivalence about violence that has shown up repeatedly in Eastwood’s work since the famous scene, midway through “Unforgiven,” in which the act of killing anguishes the killer. Eastwood, working with the screenwriter Jason Hall and with Bradley Cooper, who stars in the film, has adapted the 2012 best-selling autobiography by the Navy seal sharpshooter Chris Kyle (which was written with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice). “American Sniper” is devoted to Kyle’s life as a son, a husband, a father, and, most of all, a decorated military man—one of the most lethal snipers in U.S. military history. Kyle, who made a hundred and sixty confirmed kills (and more than two hundred probable kills), is always sure that he’s defending American troops—and his country—against “savages.” Perched on a rooftop in Ramadi or in Sadr City, he’s methodical and imperturbable, and he rarely misses, even at great distance. He shoots insurgents, members of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and, when he thinks it necessary, a woman and a child. He’s haunted by the thought of the Americans he hasn’t been able to save. Cooper is all beefed up—by beer as much as by iron, from the looks of it (it’s intentionally not a movie-star body)—and he gives a performance that’s vastly different from any that he’s given in the past. With fellow-seals in the field, he’s convivial, profane, and funny; at home with his loving wife (Sienna Miller, who’s excellent), he’s increasingly withdrawn and dead-eyed, enraptured only by the cinema of war playing in his mind.

Eastwood’s command of this material makes most directors look like beginners. As Kyle and his men ride through rubble-strewn Iraqi cities, smash down doors, and race up and down stairways, the camera records what it needs to fully dramatize a given event, and nothing more. There’s no waste, never a moment’s loss of concentration, definition, or speed. The general atmosphere of the cities, and the scattered life of the streets, gets packed into the action. The movie, of course, makes us uneasy, and it is meant to. Like Hitchcock in “Rear Window” and Michael Powell in “Peeping Tom,” Eastwood puts us inside the camera lens, allowing us to watch the target in closeup as Kyle pulls the trigger. Eastwood has become tauntingly tough-minded: “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” he seems to be saying. And, with the remorselessness of age, he follows Chris Kyle’s rehabilitation and redemption back home, all the way to their heartbreaking and inexplicable end.

Movie Review: American Sniper -- Vulture David Edelstein

Spouting off to an empty chair at the 2012 Republican National Convention, Clint Eastwood looked as if he were slipping into doddering dementia, but he’s shrewder and more focused than ever in his Iraq War picture American Sniper. It’s a crackerjack piece of filmmaking, a declaration that he’s not yet ready to be classified as an Old Master, that he can out-Bigelow Kathryn Bigelow. Morally, though, he has regressed from the heights of Letters From Iwo Jima (2006). In more ways than one, the Iraq occupation is seen through the sight of a high-powered rifle. The movie is scandalously blinkered.

Its springboard is the tragically murdered Chris Kyle’s best-selling memoir (written with Jim DeFelice), which chronicled his tours in Iraq as a Navy SEAL and his acquisition — thanks to an unprecedented number of sniper kills — of the sobriquet “the Legend.” I’m not going to fault Kyle’s view of his enemies as representing a “savage, despicable evil,” but I do fault Eastwood for making what is, essentially, a propaganda film.

The script, by Jason Hall, shows Kyle (Bradley Cooper) watching the Twin Towers fall on 9/11 and enlisting, having learned from his dad that the world consists of “sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs,” and that he must be the last — a protector. Then, after disarming and winning a woman named Taya (Sienna Miller), he’s off to Iraq, with no indication that the two events — 9/11 and the Iraq invasion — have been yoked together by unscrupulous politicians who don’t have a clue what lies in store for American soldiers. As in many jingoist war movies, the native population are portrayed as invaders of our sacred space instead of vice versa. Hall provides a supervillain, a crack shot named Mustafa (Sammy Sheik) who hunts the Legend, with Eastwood laying on the growly doomy music whenever Mustafa appears. Their face-off gives American Sniper a conventional, suck-on-this climax.

In the latest Hunger Games movie, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s PR guy, Plutarch, views propaganda footage of Katniss Everdeen and says, “It’s a little on the nose, but of course so is war.” He could be talking about American Sniper. A fellow sniper tells Kyle as he takes aim at a potential insurgent, “If you’re wrong, they send your ass to Leavenworth” — which would be news to a lot of soldiers who got it wrong without consequences. When Kyle goes back to Iraq, Taya (now with their son and daughter) says, “I don’t think we’ll be here when you get back.” And you just know, as soon as Kyle’s buddy asks him to be his best man, that in a few moments, the guy will be history.

Eastwood does stage a scarily amorphous final battle in a sandstorm, and Cooper is very impressive. Best known for more congenial roles, he plays Kyle as grimly self-contained, both hyperalert and alienated. Kyle is put through the kind of training that would drive most men insane and, newly honed, gradually realizes that he’s now fit to do only a few things — protect other Americans, avoid being killed, and kill — and that he’ll never fully recover his old self. But Eastwood — who never directed a better scene than the one in Unforgiven when the protagonist shoots a basically harmless man and has to listen to his excruciating death throes — makes the moral stakes almost nonexistent. The people Kyle shoots always represent a “savage, despicable evil,” and the physical and mental cost to other Americans just comes with the territory. It’s a Republican platform movie.

Review: American Sniper | Film Comment Chris Norris

When a muezzin call echoes over a black pre-title screen, you know you’re engaged with that top-shelf Hollywood product, the 21st-century war film. Beneath the amplified Arabic chant, a subsonic throb morphs into the rumble of an Abrams tank that appears on screen, up close, from the perspective of the Marines moving warily alongside it down a debris-strewn city corridor, preparing to breach a cinderblock housing complex. Street tension cuts to watchful repose on a nearby rooftop where Navy Seal Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) cradles a long-barreled, sound-suppressor-tipped M40 rifle.

Grungy, bearded, with a dead-lifter’s brawn, NASCAR fan shades, and mud-colored backward ball-cap, Kyle lies motionless, sniffs loudly once or twice, and scans the street below, his bright blue eyes all but popping out of the monochrome palette with which the film renders the blasted war zone—highlighting key assets of a skill set the military credits with killing more people than anyone in its history. As Kyle gives soft, Texan-Jack-Webb reports on his radio, his scope picks up a chador-cloaked woman and a boy walking into the rubble-strewn path of the column. The woman in his cross-hairs produces a grenade and hands it to the child, Kyle’s supervisor radios that he’ll have to make the call himself, and we hold our breath—for a half-hour of expository flashback.

In the 15 days that elapsed between losing director Steven Spielberg and acquiring Clint Eastwood, Team American Sniper did some psychic realignment (from kickass epic to soulful profile in courage), then cast, shot, edited, and delivered a gangbusters hero’s encomium to a man who was shot to death by a troubled vet shortly after his first phone call with producer-star Bradley Cooper. That’s what the military calls a Quick Reaction Force: Eastwood, Cooper, and screenwriter Jason Hall deliver everything this tale requires, without quite squelching the ambient pathology surrounding it.

Any project begun with an avowed commitment to honor a slain war hero will round off some rough edges. Any such film directed by Clint Eastwood risks becoming a Fallujah-set version of Shane. Things seem headed that way after we jump from the rooftop cliffhanger to a bucolic Texas boyhood scene: young Chris bags his first buck, his dad kneels to say “That’s a fine shot, son. You’ve got a gift,” then delivers a moral lesson at the dinner table: “There are three types of people in this world: wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs.”

Creation myth established, we move briskly through the short-lived rodeo career that gives us our first look at Cooper’s De Niro-to-LaMotta transformation: bulky cowboy walk, finely delineated Texas twang, his light-blue eyes—which read as amped-up or tweaked in previous roles—softened into a gentle perceptiveness that belies his bravado. A TV report on a bombed U.S. embassy moves Kyle to enlist for Navy Seal training in California, where he impresses his rifle-course instructors and teasingly charms a hard-looking beauty named Taya (a brunette Sienna Miller), whom he marries just before being re-deposited onto the opening scene’s rooftop.

Using Kyle’s rifle scope for his POV, Eastwood begins a film-length dialectic with a visual conceit used in countless spy, crime, and action thrillers (including Eastwood’s most famous role: a cop pushed beyond legal limits to stop a psycho-killer… sniper). With a soft exhalation, Cooper shoots first the boy, then the woman attempting to complete his pass, the grenade exploding harmlessly. When a jarhead beside him slaps Kyle’s shoulder in congrats, Cooper tersely backs him off, registering an ambivalence conspicuously absent from Kyle’s account of the same incident.

This sobering moment begins Kyle’s sequential tours of Iraq hot spots Fallujah, Ramadi, and Sadyr City, where in 2008 he makes an impossible, record-breaking shot from 2,100 yards, the round traveling toward its target for some five seconds of screen time as if, I daresay, guided by Divine Forces. The actual RPG-wielding target is replaced here by Kyle’s doppelgänger, Syrian Olympic marksman Mustafa (Sammy Sheik), who earlier foiled Kyle’s attempt to save an informer from a black-robed, power-drill-wielding Qaeda enforcer known as the Butcher (Mido Hamada). Frustrated by his own powerlessness and the casualties that the less tactically adroit Marines take during raids, Kyle leaves his rooftop aerie to lead the soldiers in what becomes the film’s most thrilling section. Roving the ancient apartment complex’s shadowy corridors, the SEAL-led Marines stake out lairs and interrogate suspects as they hunt for the Butcher and his al-Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Here, the 84-year-old Eastwood shows a command of complex, large-scale action setpieces to rival nearly any director in the action-film game, the film’s perspective switching from that of the foot soldiers to the snipers targeting them from above.

As the ferocity of his missions escalate, Kyle’s home life shows relatively minor stress fractures. “Even when you’re here, you’re not here,” Taya over-explicates, after suffering a few cruel-and-unusual satellite calls from the midst of firefights. The coming-home plotline feels cursory and underwritten. Responding to any query into Kyle’s emotional state with bright-eyed monosyllables, Cooper gives denial a vividly fresh face, but the characters’ troubling post-battlefield behavior barely exceeds a blunted affect, and his readjustment to suburban home life is mighty speedy for someone who estimates he killed about 100 more than the 160 that were confirmed. In Unforgiven (92), Eastwood explored the wounds that killing inflicts on killers, which post-combat clinical psychiatrists now define as “moral injury.”

As Chris Kyle, Cooper beautifully realizes a living, breathing gentle-giant of a human being; but as a fictional bomb- disposal soldier, Jeremy Renner let The Hurt Locker share truths about war that American Sniper is too respectful to explore. In the book American Sniper, the author does share one regret that haunts him: “I only wish I had killed more.”

“American Sniper” and the culture wars: Why the movie's not ... Andrew O’Hehir from Salon, January 15, 2015

Debate about cultural topics, in our era of insta-judgment and unwarranted conclusions, becomes so flattened and foreshortened that the initial subject disappears from view. Anyone who’s ever read anything I have written understands that I am deeply committed to a view of culture as politics (and politics as an aspect of culture). But the back-and-forth social-media wars over “Selma” and “American Sniper” demonstrate how cultural works get reduced to “politics” in the least interesting sense of that word, meaning the tedious binary between “left” and “right,” neither word meaning what it claims to mean, that explains nothing and obscures everything. An entire range of complex divisions and intersections in American life — based in geography, history, race, class, education and economics, in other words all the elements of “culture” in its anthropological sense — get boiled down to the symbolic circus of bipartisan politics. (I am always tempted to say “meaningless” circus, but that gets people’s dander up and isn’t quite true. It means. It just doesn’t mean much.)

You can’t reduce Ava DuVernay’s magnificent and troubled historical drama “Selma” to its historical fudges on the relationship between Lyndon B. Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr. (I have a bigger problem, the more I think about it, with casting British actors in all four major roles as prominent 20th-century Americans.) The LBJ question is no more than a footnote or parenthesis within the film itself, but one that for the moment has contaminated its reputation. Similarly, Clint Eastwood’s Iraq War drama “American Sniper” is now defined by its extraordinary $105 million box-office performance over the MLK holiday weekend, apparently driven by white male moviegoers in the heartland states. It’s very close to the biggest January opening in Hollywood history, and by far the biggest in Eastwood’s directing career, which includes quite a few hits.

I don’t mean to equate the two films: “Selma” is a more original and more successful work, with deeper historical resonance. But it’s almost as unfair to describe “American Sniper” as nationalistic war propaganda as to describe “Selma” as anti-white historical revisionism. I say “almost” because Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall leave themselves halfway open to that interpretation with their measured and deliberately ambiguous portrayal of Chris Kyle, the profoundly unreflective cowboy-turned-sharpshooter played in the movie by Bradley Cooper. But despite Eastwood’s reputation as the strong, silent type both as a movie star and a director, you really can’t accuse him of being an apologist for violence or depicting it as free of consequences. If one theme ties together his better films, from “High Plains Drifter” to “Sudden Impact” to “Unforgiven” to “Gran Torino,” it’s the lingering trauma of violence and the difficulty of overcoming it. That’s the real subject of “American Sniper” too, no matter how many racist tweets from yahoos in Oklahoma it may have provoked.

As Salon’s Laura Miller discussed in her memorable review of Kyle’s memoir (which provoked considerable ire among his right-wing admirers), the real Kyle, who by his own reckoning shot more than 250 people in Iraq — before being shot himself by an unstable fellow veteran — absolutely thought of himself as a steadfast warrior for good in a Manichaean universe. He stood tall against the “bad guys” and “savages” of the Islamic world, confirming the worst Arab-held stereotypes by getting a “Crusader cross” tattooed on his trigger arm. He apparently never questioned the politics and strategy behind the sequence of events that sent him to Iraq in the first place, and couldn’t be bothered with parsing fine distinctions between al-Qaida, the Saddam Hussein regime, the Iraqi civilian population and the foreign fighters from all over the Islamic world who later joined the Iraqi insurgency. Unsurprisingly, his memoir never mentions Abu Ghraib or Gitmo or “enhanced interrogation” or the total absence of Iraqi WMD or any connection between Iraq and 9/11. He recounts telling a superior that he wished he were free to gun down random unarmed people based on his own godlike judgment, but was nonetheless obeying the military’s pantywaist rules of engagement.

It’s true that Eastwood and Hall – and especially Cooper, an actor who can display visible internal torment without apparently doing anything – have made the movie’s Kyle more sympathetic, more complicated and less of a raging dumbass. I’m aware of the disputes between people who attack “Selma” for its lack of historical veracity and those who are exercised about the depiction of Chris Kyle straying from documented facts. It’s a deeply uninteresting game of gotcha, in my judgment – both movies offer an interpretation of real events for specific narrative purposes, and I think both choices are generally defensible. Go ahead and attack Eastwood for making a movie that’s totally uninterested in the underlying politics of the Iraq conflict, and that depicts its Arab characters in cursory and stereotypical terms. That’s entirely legitimate, and indeed I think those America-centric aspects partly undermine the film’s aims. But to assign Eastwood some Bush-Cheney war-booster agenda because he supported Mitt Romney in 2012, or even because some unknown proportion of moviegoers have seized on it that way, simply isn’t fair.

“American Sniper,” the movie, is a character study about a guy who sees himself as fundamentally honorable and decent, but whose simplistic moral code turns out to be exceptionally poor preparation for the real world and real warfare. How well Eastwood accomplishes that goal, whether or not it’s worth doing and how much that may or may not reflect the real story of Chris Kyle are all matters for debate. In Cooper’s marvelously contained physical performance, Kyle’s beefy, cheerful Texas certainty seduces us part of the way toward his self-righteous vision of himself. Or it does if you let it, and depending on how you process the film’s opening scene, in which Kyle faces a decision about whether to shoot a woman and child on a Fallujah street who appear to be carrying a grenade. The Marine serving as his spotter groans, “Man, they’ll send you to Leavenworth if you’re wrong.” I couldn’t help reflecting that, no, they almost certainly won’t.

In their quest to create a relatable hero for the mainstream American audience – the proverbial dudes-who-don’t-go-to-movies, who have evidently shown up for this one – Eastwood and Hall slice the moral equation awfully fine. They never directly challenge Kyle’s assertion that all his Iraqi kills were “clean” and all his targets “bad guys,” and they manufacture a fictional rivalry between Kyle and a mysterious insurgent sniper called Mustafa, who never speaks but is so physically striking – long, lean and distinguished, with amazing eyelashes – as to be beautiful rather than handsome. It’s like a forceful undercurrent of Orientalist and homoerotic fantasy: Which of these guys will end up drilling the other one with an impossible rifle shot from 2,000 meters, the suave mustachioed Arab clad all in black or the buff, bearded Texan with the frat-boy ball cap? (You don’t even get one guess.)

On the other hand, “American Sniper” never shies away from depicting Kyle as racist and xenophobic, an innocent abroad rendered armed and exceptionally dangerous. After sitting through the film twice, I’m more convinced than ever that there’s a level of sardonic commentary at work that is sometimes subtle and sometimes pretty damn obvious. Pay attention to Cooper’s increasingly congested body language, the posture of a man stricken with unmanageable psychic distress. Pay attention to the use of the phrase “mission accomplished” late in the film, or the stateside scene in which Kyle runs into a Marine whose life he saved in Fallujah and can’t even make eye contact with the guy. This is a portrait of an American who thought he knew what he stood for and what his country stood for and never believed he needed to ask questions about that. He drove himself to kill and kill and kill based on that misguided ideological certainty – that brainwashing, though I’m sure Clint Eastwood would never use that word – and then paid the price for it. So did we all, and the reception of this film suggests that the payments keep on coming due.

Death of an American sniper - Salon.com Laura Miller book review, February 7, 2013

American Sniper feeds America’s hero complex, and it isn’t the truth about war Alex Horton from The Guardian, December 24, 2014

The real American Sniper was a hate-filled killer. Why are ... Lindy West from The Guardian, January 5, 2015

Is American Sniper historically accurate? | Film | The Guardian Alex von Tunzelmann, January 20, 2015

The mediocrity of 'American Sniper' Alyssa Rosenberg from The Washington Post, January 21, 2015

American Sniper and the political battle over Chris Kyle. Dana Stevens from Slate, January 21, 2015

Every movie rewrites history. What American Sniper did is much, much worse. Amanda Taub from Vox, January 22, 2015

Editorial: The reality of American Sniper Chris Kyle The Dallas Morning News, January 22, 2015

How Accurate Is American Sniper? We've Separated Fact From Fiction. Courtney Duckworth from Slate, January 23, 2015

American Sniper: propaganda movie or tale the nation needed to hear? Andrew Pulver from The Guardian, January 23, 2015

'American Sniper's' missing element: The man behind the gun Alyssa Rosenberg from The Washington Post, January 24, 2015

American Sniper: anti-Muslim threats skyrocket in wake of film's release Nicky Woolf from The Guardian, January 24, 2015

'American Sniper' Has Led to Increase in Threats Against Muslims: Civil Rights ... Hilary Lewis from The Hollywood Reporter, January 26, 2015

Why the Left Hates American Sniper | Observer Rabbi Shmuley Boteach from The Observer, January 27, 2015

Jesse Ventura calls 'American Sniper' Chris Kyle a 'liar' Teresa Mull from The Week magazine, January 29, 2015

Civil war at the cineplex: “American Sniper,” “Selma ... - Salon Civil war at the cineplex: “American Sniper,” “Selma” and the battle over American masculinity, by David Mascriota from Salon, February 1, 2015

“The truth is unspeakable”: A real American sniper unloads on “American... Dennis Trainor Jr. from Salon, February 4, 2015

'American Sniper' trial set to start this week in glare of international publicity Dianna Hunt from The Dallas Morning News, February 7, 2015

“American Sniper’s” sinister philosophy: Pro-war propaganda wrapped in... Robert Gordon from Salon, February 8, 2015

'Legend' of American sniper Chris Kyle looms over murder trial Ed Lavandera from CNN News, February 9, 2015

American Sniper Is a War-on-Terror Fantasy | Village Voice Amy Nicholson from The Village Voice

Review: Bradley Cooper shines but Eastwood ... - HitFix Drew McWeeny

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Austin Chronicle [Marjorie Baumgarten]

Dallas Film Now [Joe Baker]

Review: 'American Sniper' - Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

L.A. Biz [Annlee Ellingson]

American Sniper - Roger Ebert Glenn Kenny, December 25, 2014

“Evil Against Evil”: The Fascinating Incoherence of American ... Niles Schwartz from the Ebert site, February 23, 2014

'American Sniper,' a Clint Eastwood Film Starring Bradley ... A.O. Scott from The New York Times

American Sniper (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chris Kyle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ebert, Roger – film critic

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago Friday, APR. 5 - Thursday, APR. 11, Managing Editor Patrick Friel, on behalf of all of the volunteer contributors at Cine-File

ROGER EBERT (1942-2013)

We at Cine-File are extraordinarily saddened at the passing yesterday of legendary Chicago film critic Roger Ebert. Mr. Ebert was a passionate and vocal advocate for cinema, a remarkable writer, and an example of how film criticism could still be smart, affecting, political, and personal even in a large city daily newspaper and on a shifting series of television programs. Mr. Ebert never forgot his roots and never forgot his early cinema loves. He was the rare popular critic (and no one has ever been as popular) who really knew cinema history. His writing was informed by this knowledge and deep love for classic Hollywood and myriad foreign films. He was a true Chicago critic: feisty, opinionated, unapologetic. He didn't suffer fools, or foolish films. But he was also someone who maintained a humility and humbleness throughout his career. He was approachable. He supported small and independent film venues and series in many ways. He relished new talent—filmmakers and critics both. He had a sharp wit—one that he often turned on himself. He connected directly with his fans and readers via his website, Facebook, and, especially, his Twitter account. In the last few years, after the unimaginable series of cancer occurrences, other medical issues, and surgeries left him unable to speak and severely disfigured, he did not shy away from his problems. He continued to put himself out publicly, challenging people to deal with his appearance, working to de-stigmatize his disease and the drastic repercussions it can have. He also became more vocal politically, using his celebrity to champion causes he believed in, carrying though his uncompromising work as a critic to broader areas of human life. These past several years, since his initial cancer diagnosis and especially since his surgery to remove his lower jaw, are his most triumphant accomplishments. The example of his indomitable spirit, strong work ethic, unabated love for watching, thinking about, and writing about film, and the grace with which he dealt with his misfortunes are inspiring and a legacy worth more than his fame, his Pulitzer Prize, and his many accolades. Rest in peace, Mr. Ebert. And thank you.

Roger Ebert honored by Hollywood stars - chicagotribune.com Mark Caro from The Chicago Tribune, April 12, 2013

“Roger, this is your happening, and it's freaking me out.”

This is how Chaz Ebert, after receiving a standing ovation from the Chicago Theatre crowd with her hand over her heart, introduced Thursday's tribute to her late husband —by invoking a line from his screenplay to 1970’s campy cult film “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.” Later in “Roger Ebert: A Celebration of Life,” clips from the Russ Meyer film would be shown, and tears would be shed, though not at the same time.

It was that kind of night.

If Roger Ebert's funeral Monday at Holy Name Cathedral — following his death April 4 at age 70 after a long cancer battle — represented his formal, religious farewell, complete with speeches from the governor and mayor, then Thursday's event at the Chicago Theatre was more of a laughter- and sorrow-filled send-off from the entertainment and media worlds.

There were clips this time, of Ebert and his late TV partner Gene Siskel arguing on the sets of their and others’ (such as Johnny Carson’s) shows, as well as interviews that the Chicago Sun-Times film critic gave before and after cancer claimed his jaw and ability to speak, even as his writing gained depth and vigor. There were also speakers and more speakers.

Ebert famously said, “No good movie is too long, and no bad movie is short enough,” and in the scheme of things, Ebert was more than a very good movie. So it’s no wonder that the people who loved him wanted to talk about him and not to let go. Even at the end of a 2-hour-and-45-minute program, Chaz Ebert told actors Chris Tucker and Scott Wilson in the audience that she was sorry that they didn’t have a chance to speak.

Others did, such as Evanston native/sibling actors Joan and John Cusack. Joan revealed that she'd been asked to read a letter that turned out to be from President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama, who offered their sympathies to those gathered and praised Ebert's “remarkable tenacity” and “zest for life.”

John Cusack shared memories of reading Ebert while growing up, and he recalled visiting New York (and “Late Night with David Letterman”) as a 17-year-old to promote his first lead turn in “The Sure Thing” and winding up seated at a table next to one shared by Ebert and Siskel at the Carnegie Deli. The young Cusack was sweating bullets, he said, until Ebert leaned over and told him, “I liked your movie.”

John Cusack also recalled the studios always stressing to him the importance of his interviews with Ebert, who “reeked of integrity” and thus couldn’t be bought. “He was always supportive of artists and always gave you a fair shake,” Cusack said.

Marlene Iglitzen, Siskel's widow, candidly related how Siskel and Ebert genuinely didn’t like each other so much in the early days, with Siskel having to be persuaded to invite Ebert to their wedding only for Ebert not to show up. The big difference maker, in her view, was Chaz, who helped her husband — and his heart — grow to the point that all were much closer by the time Siskel died at age 53 in 1999.

Up till that point, Siskel and Ebert had been inseparable as far as their professional identities went, but Iglitzen praised Ebert for thriving in the years after Siskel was gone, saying she felt a bit of her husband was alive as long as Ebert was.

Filmmaker Gregory Nava lauded the late critic for his championing of non-mainstream films, such as his own “El Norte” (1983), and for his “great heart. The world of movies has lost its heart.”

Nava recalled being invited to Ebert’s bedside in the days before he died only to see the writer scribbling supportive messages to him and other visitors.

“Roger didn’t ask us to be with him to comfort him,” Nava said, choking back tears. “He wanted us to be with him to give us something.”

Other filmmakers — Chicagoan Andrew Davis (“The Fugitive”), Julie Dash (“Daughters of the Dust”) and Ava DuVernay (“Middle of Nowhere”) — told stories of friendship and encouragement, with the latter two singling out Ebert’s dedication to African-American filmmakers.

On the more ribald side, Old Town Ale House owner Bruce Elliott told an anecdote to illustrate Ebert's love of large breasts, and activist/comedian Dick Gregory, 80, showed he’s still got razor-sharp timing as he somehow managed to work a joke about Kobe Bryant’s sexual assault accusations into a zippy tribute that ended with him comparing Ebert to a turtle: “hard on the outside, soft on the inside and willing to stick your neck out.”

Newscaster Bill Kurtis (who provided Ebert’s voice on the recent “Ebert Presents At the Movies” show), TV producer Thea Flaum (creator of Siskel & Ebert’s PBS show “Sneak Previews”), Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker, Sun-Times columnist and former Ebert TV partner Richard Roeper, Facets executive director Milos Stehlik, former Playboy chairwoman Christie Hefner, Ebert Digital co-founder Josh Golden, disabilities-rights activist Marcia Bristo, Hollywood Reporter film critic Todd McCarthy, new Variety film critic Scott Foundas, film industry veteran Tom Luddy, and Tribune reporter Monica Eng and her sister Magan (both of whom maintained a close relationship with Ebert long after their mother had stopped dating him) also offered testimonials. The gospel groups Walt Whitman and the Soul Children of Chicago and Charles Jenkins and Fellowship Chicago opened and closed the show.

By my unofficial non-count, the word that came up second most often was “empathy.”

The word that came up most often was “heart.”

And in the end there was Chaz, on the stage with her family, Roger’s stepchildren and grandchildren, opening hers.

“I have a capacity for love that is very deep,” she said plainly, noting that she knew she had to fill a hole that had been in Ebert’s life. So she did, for more than 20 years of marriage.

And when he was diagnosed with cancer in 2002 and lost his jaw and ability to speak and to eat solid foods in 2006, she willed him on, saying she knew he had more important things to do. But when the cancer returned again recently, “this time he said, ‘I’m tired. You must let me go,’” she recounted. “I thought we had two more years to go. I did not know he would go so quickly.”

Still, she said, she hoped that everyone could experience a love like theirs, even when times were tough.

“When he was disfigured, when I looked at him, I saw beauty,” she said.

On this point there would be no argument.

Movie Reviews and Ratings by Film Critic Roger Ebert | Roger Ebert newly designed Ebert site

Reviews Ebert’s regular site at the Chicago Sun-Times, also seen here: rogerebert.com :: Movie reviews, essays and the Movie Answer Man ...

Great Movies Ebert’s Great Movies site

Roger Ebert’s Blog

Roger Ebert Biography - Facts, Birthday, Life Story - Biography.com

Roger Ebert's The Great Movies and Greatest Films by Tim Dirks

Ebertfest: Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival also seen here: Ebertfest: Roger Ebert's Film Festival

Roger Ebert on Facebook

"The Pot and How to Use It" 160 pages

"The Great Movies III" 432 pages

His 1969 Profile of Paul Newman Newman's Complaint, by Roger Ebert, Esquire magazine, September 1969

The Best Story Roger Ebert Ever Wrote for Esquire Ebert interview of Lee Marvin from Esquire, November 1970, republished February 18, 2010

The New York Times > Magazine > Domains: A Film Critic's Windy ... A Film Critic's Windy City Home, by Edward Lewine, February 13, 2005

Catching a Movie With an Old Friend Stephen Hunter from The Washington Post, June 12, 2005

Roger Ebert's Farewell to "Ebert and Roeper" The Balcony Is Closed, Chicago Sun Times, July 24, 2008

Roger Ebert Is the Essential Man Chris Jones from Esquire, February 16, 2010, also seen here: Roger Ebert Cancer Battle - Roger Ebert Interview - Esquire

A Few More Intimate Moments with Roger Ebert Chris Jones from Esquire, March 2, 2010

Tech Gurus Give Roger Ebert His Voice Back CBS News, March 2, 2010

Roger Ebert: Why I Hate 3D Movies - The Daily Beast Roger Ebert from The Daily Beast, May 9, 2010

The Author Responds to Tea-Party Attacks on Ebert Chris Jones from The Politics Blog, May 12, 2010

Roger Ebert Pens New Cookbook CBS News, June 30, 2010

Roger Ebert: Starting Over Cynthia Bowers from CBS News, January 2, 2011

Why 3D doesn't work and never will. Case closed. Roger Ebert Blog, January 23, 2011

Roger Ebert's TED Talk: The Internet Saved My Life Foster Kamer from Esquire, March 8, 2011

I finally won the New Yorker cartoon caption competition Roger Ebert from The Guardian, May 1, 2011

"I was born inside the movie of my life" Roger Ebert Journal, August 15, 2011

I do not fear death - Salon.com Roger Ebert, September 15, 2011

Roger Ebert: A Critic Reflects On 'Life Itself' : NPR John Powers from NPR, September 21, 2011

Ebert measures up to celluloid's stoic heroes | Michael Miner on ... Michael Miner reviews Ebert’s new memoir, Life Itself from The Chicago Reader, October 27, 2011

Roger Ebert: 'I'm an optimistic person' Rachel Cooke from The Observer, November 5, 2011

Women are Better Than Men Roger Ebert, May 13, 2012

Chaz Ebert Writes to Absent Roger from Cannes Jen Yamato at Cannes from Movieline, May 21, 2012

Nawazuddin Siddiqui's Tryst With Roger Ebert Subhash Kjha at Business of Cinema, May 28, 2012

Roger Ebert–a 'bitchy' man hater? Dennis Byrne from Chicago Now, May 28, 2012

Roger Ebert honored for 'Making History' ABC News, June 7, 2012

Happy 70th Birthday Roger Ebert! Gary Susman from Moviefone, June 18, 2012

Two Thumbs Up Today’s Pictures from Slate, June 18, 2012

Martin Scorsese plans Roger Ebert documentary Ben Child from The Guardian, September 10, 2012

A Leave of Presence Roger Ebert’s last post, April 2, 2013

Roger Ebert takes 'leave of presence' to deal with recurrence of cancer Amanda Holpuch from The Guardian, April 3, 2013

Roger Ebert, film's hero to the end Steven Zeitchik from The LA Times, April 3, 2013

A statement from Chaz Ebert April 4, 2013

“The Thinking Molecules of Titan”: A Story by Roger Ebert The New Yorker, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert: Critic with the soul of a poet Rick Kogan from The Chicago Tribune, April 4, 2013

Farewell to a generous colleague and friend Michael Phillips from The Chicago Tribune, April 4, 2013

The unique partnership of Siskel and Ebert Sid Smith feature from 1999, reprinted from The Chicago Tribune, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert dead at 70 after battle with cancer Neil Steinberg from The Chicago Sun-Times, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert (1942-2013) :: rogerebert.com :: In Memory Neil Steinberg from Ebert blog, April 4, 2013

Postscript: Roger Ebert, 1942-2013 Richard Brody from The New Yorker, April 4, 2013

A Critic for the Common Man Douglas Martin from The New York Times, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert Is Remembered on Twitter, a Place Where He Found a New Voice Mekado Murphy and Michael Roston from The New York Times, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert, nation’s best-known movie critic, dies at age 70 after long battle with cancer The Washington Post, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert, prolific film critic in print and on TV, dies at 70 Emma Brown from The Washington Post, April 4, 2013

An accessible and empowering critic Ann Hornaday from The Washington Post, April 4, 2013

Remembering Roger Ebert Marie Elizabeth Oliver from The Washington Post, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times movie critic, dies aged 70 The Guardian, April 4, 2013

Remembrance: Roger Ebert, film's hero to the end Kenneth Turan from The LA Times, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert dies at 70; Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic John Horn and Valerie J. Nelson from The LA Times, April 4, 2013

Remembering Roger Ebert through his books Carolyn Kellogg from The LA Times, April 4, 2013

Fans, celebrities react to death of film critic Roger Ebert Amy Kaufman from The LA Times, April 4, 2013

Recalling Roger Ebert's influence, on- and off-screen Oliver Gettell from The LA Times, April 4, 2013

PHOTOS: Roger Ebert - Career in Pictures The LA Times, April 4, 2013

PHOTOS: Remembering Roger Ebert WGN TV, April 4, 2013

Remembering the Roger I knew Jim Emerson from Scanners, April 4, 2013

My Roger Ebert Story Will Leitch from Deadspin, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert: Farewell to a Film Legend and Friend Richard Corliss from Time magazine, April 4, 2013

Editing Roger Ebert: A Former Colleague Reflects on the Journalism Legend Steven S. Duke from Time magazine, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert R.I.P. Michael Scherer from Time magazine, April 4, 2013

Chicago Sun-Times Film Critic Roger Ebert Dies Caryn Rousseau from Time magazine, April 4, 2013

Edelstein on Roger Ebert: Farewell To the Mayor of Movie Critic-Ville David Edelstein from The Vulture, April 4, 2013

Some thoughts on the death of Roger Ebert, a man who meant a lot to us Scott Tobias from The Onion A.V. Club, April 4, 2013

What did Roger Ebert mean to you? The Onion A.V. Club, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert: In Memoriam Richard Starzec from The Wesleyan Argus, April 4, 2013

Daily | Roger Ebert, 1942 – 2013 David Hudson from Fandor, April 4, 2013

Roger Simon: The debt I owe Roger Ebert Roger Simon from The Chicago Sun-Times, April 4, 2013

A newspaperman's newspaperman Roger Simon from Politico, April 4, 2013

RIP Roger Ebert: 1942-2013 Tal Rosenberg from The Chicago Reader, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert, the Enthusiast Christopher Orr from The Atlantic, April 4, 2013

What Roger Ebert Knew About Writing Spencer Kornhaber from The Atlantic, April 4, 2013

A Chicago Critic Remembers Roger Ebert Maureen Ryan from The Huffington Post, April 4, 2013

Funniest Roger Ebert Quotes: His Best Movie Take Downs The Huffington Post, April 4, 2013

Remembering Roger Ebert Linda Holmes from NPR, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert, Legendary Film Critic, Dies Eyder Peralta from NPR, April 4, 2013

For Pulitzer-Winning Critic Roger Ebert, Films Were A Journey - NPR Cheryl Corley from NPR, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert Dead at 70 | Movies News | Rolling Stone Jon Blistein from Rolling Stone magazine, April 4, 2013

Peter Travers on Roger Ebert: No One Could Keep Up With Him ... Peter Travers from Rolling Stone magazine, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert (1942-2013) Matt Singer from indieWIRE, April 4, 2013

A Tribute to Roger Ebert Matt Singer from indieWIRE, April 4, 2013

Go to All the Movies You Can Dana Stevens from Slate, April 4, 2013

Influential US film critic Roger Ebert dies at 70 Jill Serjeant from Reuters, April 4, 2013

Legendary Film Critic Roger Ebert Dead at 70 Angela Watercutter from Wired, April 4, 2013

Calum Marsh, Film.com April 4, 2013

Tim Grierson, Paste Magazine April 4, 2013

Scott Renshaw, City Weekly April 4, 2013

Danny King, The Film Stage April 4, 2013

R.I.P. Roger Ebert (1942-2013) Adam Cook from Mubi, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert, 1942-2013 Glenn Kenny from Some Came Running, April 4, 2013

I Will Miss You Roger Ebert Kim Morgan from Sunset Gun, April 4, 2013

10 Movies Roger Ebert Really Hated | Mental Floss Stacy Conradt from Mental Floss, April 4, 2013

What Did Roger Ebert Think of Some of Your Favorite Movies? - IGN Jim Vejvoda from IGN, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert, RIP Bill Pearis remembers many of Ebert’s video reviews from Brooklyn Vegan, April 4, 2013

R.I.P., Roger Ebert Matt Langdon from BunueL, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert 1942-2013 Filmleaf, April 4, 2013

Legendary Film Critic Roger Ebert Dead At 70 Joshua Brunsting from Criterion Cast, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert Reviews: Beloved Movies He Didn't Like (PHOTOS) Katy Hall from The Huffington Post, April 4. 2013

Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter April 4, 2013

Critic Roger Ebert Dies at 70 - The Hollywood Reporter Mike Barnes from The Hollywood Reporter, April 4, 2013

Remembering Roger Ebert: The Iconic Film Critic's Life and Career in Pictures The Hollywood Reporter, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert's Top 20 Best- and Worst-Reviewed Films The Hollywood Reporter, April 4, 2013

Famed movie critic Roger Ebert dies Jim Cheng from USA Today, April 4, 2013

First Take: Roger Ebert, forever at the movies Susan Wloszczyna from USA Today, April 4, 2013

Obama, Scorsese, Winfrey lead tributes to Roger Ebert Bryan Alexander from USA Today, April 4, 2013

Film critic Roger Ebert dies at 70 Kirt Schlosser from NBC News, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert, America's Movie Critic, Dead at 70 After Battle With ... Troy McMullen from ABC News, April 4, 2013

Ebert an Inspiration to Cancer Patients Sydney Lupkin from ABC News, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert's 10 greatest films of all time - CBS News David Morgan from CBS News, April 4, 2013

For Influential Critic Roger Ebert, Life Spent 'At the Movies' Ends at ... Jeffrey Brown and Hari Sreenivasan from PBS, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert, renowned film critic, dies at age 70 Alan Duke from CNN News, April 4, 2013

More than just a great critic, Roger Ebert redefined movie criticism ... Owen Gleiberman from Entertainment Weekly, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert Dead: Legendary Film Critic Dies at 70 | Variety Pat Saperstein from Variety, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert, 70, Has Died: A Look at the Life of Cinema's Great ... Marlow Stern from The Daily Beast, April 4, 2013

Ebert’s Best Reviews ... and Zingers Kevin Fallon from The Daily Beast, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert, the Heart and Soul of the Movies, Has Died Alexander Abad-Santos and Matt Sullivan from The Atlantic Wire, April 4, 2013

Beloved film critic Roger Ebert dies at 70 Liz Goodwin and Dylan Stableford from Yahoo News, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert dead at 70: Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic loses long ... David Hinckley from The New York Daily News, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert: 1942 –2013 Dan Aronson from Fandor, April 4, 2013

Alonso Duralde: How Roger Ebert Influenced My Life The Wrap, April 4, 2013

Hammond On Roger Ebert - An Appreciation - Deadline.com Pete Hammond from Deadline, April 4, 2013

The Five Best Things Roger Ebert Said About Politics Think Progress, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert on politics Breanna Edwards from Politico, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert Seized Much Life from Cancer - Forbes David Kroll from Forbes, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert Dies -- Iconic Film Critic Was 70 Deadline, April 4, 2013

13 Things Roger Ebert Said Better Than Anybody Else Ryan Broderick from Buzzfeed, April 4, 2013

'Brown Bunny': A Look Back at Roger Ebert's Famous Pan Meriah Doty from Movie Talk, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert: 8 Things You Might Not Have Known Mark Deming from Movie Talk, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert: 10 Little-Known Facts About the Great Movie Critic Patrick Kiger from AARP Blog, April 4, 2013

Werner Herzog on Roger Ebert, 'the good soldier of cinema ... Emily Rome from Entertainment Weekly, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert's 'Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls': Remembering The ... Mallika Rao from The Huffington Post, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert Is Dead at 70 - Slate Magazine Josh Voorhees from Slate, April 4, 2013

A Fellow Chicago Critic Remembers Roger Ebert Keith Phipps from Slate, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert in Slate Dan Kois from Slate, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert Was a Great Champion of Black Film Aisha Harris from Slate, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert's Camp Classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, by J. Bryan Lowder from Slate, April 4, 2013

Werner Herzog reacts to the death of Roger Ebert by WBEZ on ... Milos Stehlik interview with Herzog as he hears for the first time the announcement of Ebert’s death, with Herzog overcome by emotion, April 4, 2013

Roger Ebert obituary: Dana Stevens on the great ... - Slate Magazine Dana Stevens from Slate, April 5, 2013

Filmmakers Remember Roger Ebert: Tributes from Spielberg, Scorsese, Herzog and More Forrest Wickman from Slate, April 5, 2013

RIP Roger Ebert: Movie criticism’s Great Communicator Andrew O’Hehir from Salon, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert obituary Ronald Bergan from The Guardian, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert: stimulating, authoritative critic with formidable internet presence Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert: Obama and Spielberg add their tributes to the influential reviewer Ben Child from The Guardian, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert - a life in pictures The Guardian, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert, lover of life, taught me to write Dan Zak from The Washington Post, April 5, 2013

Thank you, Roger Ebert Alexandra Petri from The Washington Post, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert: First citizen critic and father to us all Mary McNamara from The LA Times, April 5, 2013

Five unexpected ways Roger Ebert changed film journalism Steven Zeitchik from The LA Times, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert, my mentor Monica Eng from The Chicago Tribune, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert through the years photo gallery from The Chicago Tribune, April 5, 2013

Dear Roger Ignatiy Vishnevetsky from Mubi, April 5, 2013

On the death of Roger Ebert Michael Miner from The Chicago Reader, April 5, 2013

How Roger Ebert encouraged me Ben Sachs from The Chicago Reader, April 5, 2013

Thumbs upward: Roger Ebert, 1942-2013 J.R. Jones from The Chicago Reader, April 5, 2013

An example of the late Roger Ebert's grace Albert Williams from The Chicago Reader, April 5, 2013

Thumbs upward: Roger Ebert, 1942-2013 | Bleader J.R. Jones from The Chicago Reader, April 5, 2013

Ebert off-camera Andrea Gronvall from The Chicago Reader, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert: 1942 - 2013 Eugene Hernandez from Film Comment, April 5, 2013

On Roger Ebert, 1942-2013 Michelle Dean from The Nation, April 5, 2013

Critics Remember Roger Ebert Matt Singer from indieWIRE, April 5, 2013

The People's Critic: Remembering Roger Ebert Wesley Morris from Grantland, April 5, 2013

What Roger Ebert Had to Say About Black Films Lauren Williams from The Root, April 5, 2013

This Was Roger Ebert's Happening Bonnie Stiernberg from Paste magazine, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert, the People's Movie Critic Tom Carson from The American Prospect, April 5, 2013

AP Critic Remembers Colleague, Friend Roger Ebert Christy Lemire from The Huffington Post, April 5, 2013

Remembering Roger Ebert Annette Insdorf from The Huffington Post, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert - A Remembrance Melissa Silverstein from Women and Hollywood, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert's Wife Chaz Says Their Life Together Was 'More ... Laura Beck from Jezebel, April 5, 2013

Joe Morgenstern Gives a Final Thumbs Up to Roger Ebert Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2013

When Roger Ebert Was a Cub Critic Ben Heineman Jr. from The Atlantic, April 5, 2013

The Many Memorable Remembrances of Roger Ebert - Esther ... Esther Zuckerman from The Atlantic Wire, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert, R.I.P. - Jonathan Foreman - National Review Online Jonathan Foreman from The National Review, April 5, 2013

Opinion: What the Internet owes to Roger Ebert - CNN.com Gene Seymour from CNN News, April 5, 2013

Variety's Scott Foundas Remembers Roger Ebert: A Mentor to the End Scott Foundas from Variety, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert's 'quiet, dignified' death came as he was still making plans Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger from The Reliable Source from The Washington Post, April 5, 2013

Why Roger Ebert’s Thumb Mattered James Poniewozik from Time magazine, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert: Author as well as movie critic Molly Driscoll from The Christian Science Monitor, April 5, 2013

Seitz: Ebert, the Gateway Drug for Film Lovers Matt Zoller Seitz from The Vulture, April 5, 2013

Selected Obituaries For Roger Ebert Forrest Cardamenis from indieWIRE, April 5, 2013

Kenji Fujushima, My Life at 24 Frames Per Second April 5, 2013

Remembering Roger Ebert, In His Own Words Katey Rich from Cinema Blend, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert: Film Critic Trailblazer Let Ideology Get the Better of Him Christian Toto from Big Hollywood, April 5, 2013

From One Row Back: On Roger Ebert and Loving Movies Max Barrone from Complex Pop Culture, April 5, 2013

The Humanity of Roger Ebert: Teaching Us How to Love (and Hate ... Kevin Gosztola from The Dissenter, April 5, 2013

Chicagoist Staff Remembers Roger Ebert April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert: 1942-2013 Tim Ryan from Rotten Tomatoes, April 5, 2013

In Memoriam: Roger Ebert Rotten Tomatoes, April 5, 2013

Remembering Roger Ebert: Film Journalists Offer Their Reflections Rotten Tomatoes, April 5, 2013

Roger Ebert in Illinois: A Tribute to the Man From His Permanent Stomping Grounds Tim Peters from Slant, April 10, 2013

Ebertfest Dispatch: Day 1 Matt Singer from indieWIRE, April 19, 2013

Roger Ebert's Pilgrimage Katie Engelhart from Slate, July 13, 2013

Roger Ebert - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Roger Ebert on His Appearance Video (21 seconds)

Roger Ebert Remembers Gene Siskel Video (25 seconds)

Ebiri, Bilge – film critic

by Bilge Ebiri How Does It Feel to Feel?: Recent Turkish Cinema, from Cinema Scope

THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR: Bilge Ebiri

Edel, Uli

THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX (Der Baader Meinhof Komplex) B 89

Germany France Czech Republic (150 mi) 2008 TV version (180 mi)

This is something of a sprawling mess trying to piece together a perplexing decade of underground guerilla history, but it’s nonetheless mandatory viewing and riveting throughout, despite its (over) length, even while Edel tries to cram all the details of 10 years of history into one film, turning a 3-hour German television film into a two and a half hour theatrical release about the rise and fall of the radical Red Army Faction in the 1970’s known as the Baader-Meinhof group. Founded by activist Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) and leftist journalist Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck), the group is an offshoot of the leftist student and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960’s, feeling they didn’t go far enough. From the radical Communist speeches of Rudy Dutschke, who could ignite a crowd filled with red banners, which is how the film opens, they decided to pick up where he left off by taking more decisive measures, like committing armed robbery—robbing banks, planting bombs, targeting various political and industrial establishment officials for assassination or kidnapping, openly declaring war on the established government which they felt were accomplices to the old Nazi era. As a result, these were largely children of rich, well-educated bourgeois families born after the war who expressed their anger and discontent at their parent’s generation, becoming terrorists who garnered the kind of fame as rock stars from a sympathetic public, especially college age and younger, that at least initially were mesmerized by the sheer audacity of their actions. While this plays like a documentary, intermixing newsreel coverage with courtroom and prison scenes (very reminiscent of this year’s HUNGER), it’s more like a fictionalized recreation of real life based on the detailed historical account of the Baader-Meinhof group from a book by Stefan Aust, chief editor of Der Spiegel from 1994 to 2008. Prior to that he worked with a radical left wing Berlin publication called Konkret which was headed by its editor in chief, Ulrike Meinhof, a distinguished intellectual Socialist-leaning journalist 12 years older than Aust whose views were rarely challenged. As it turns out, she got into radical activism purely by accident, because she was one of the few journalists who got close enough to armed-to-the-teeth Baader and his girl friend Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek) to know what they were up to, eventually becoming complicit with all their plans after helping Baader escape from police custody in 1970, writing their manifesto’s to the press, forming the three person triangle that becomes the focus of the film. Having a husband and two children that she left behind, she’s the one who sacrificed the most to join an underground resistance group.

It should be said that the Baader-Meinhof group killed 33 West German officials between 1970 and 1991, resembling the Weather Underground or even the Black Panthers here in the United States. Like the Panthers, they were ruthlessly hunted down by BKA Chief Horst Herold (Bruno Ganz), the head of the German intelligence division, a former Nuremberg public prosecutor, who almost single handedly brought down the RAF by devising a computer program that could identify their whereabouts. His secret was targeting citizens who only paid by cash, eliminating anyone who bought cars, houses, or paid rent or utilities by any means other than cash transactions, and then cross referencing that with bank robberies, escape routes, suspicious car registrations or residences, shared with local police municipalities, which eventually narrowed his scope to only a few identifiable possibilities. This Big Brother monitoring system was a West German version of the East German Stasi secret police, known for developing a nationwide surveillance system which gave them reason to be identified as a police state. The opening of some Stasi records after the German unification led to an update in Aust’s book which long went out of print after its release in 1985. The film opens with an impressive sequence of a demonstration that turns into a police bashing, targeting only the anti-Shah demonstrators at a pro-Shah rally in front of the Berlin Opera House in 1967, where one of the police opened fire and killed a young German demonstrator. Meinhof’s coverage of this event as part of a global liberation movement, a vanguard against imperialism, won her notoriety in the press, even as the establishment sought to minimize her influence. Despite many unanswered questions, such as the disastrous effect Baader-Meinhof had on the leftist movement in Germany and all across Europe, playing into the hands of more funding and stricter measures of police repression, where slight embellishments in the story might be hard to detect, as both the police and underground movements operated under total secrecy, so there’s not exactly a journalistic trail they left behind, though Meinhof’s words that she read are from actual RAF communiqués. For the record, the RAF lasted for 28 years, which was twice as long as Nazi Germany.

Originally using a Communist inspired revolutionary tone to their actions, Meinhof soon discovered that they veered off script whenever the moment served them, as Baader and Gudrun grew more paranoid at the thought of anyone disagreeing with them, thinking they must be traitors working as German spies, including Meinhof’s husband who they decide to kill on the spot right in front of her, as if she wasn’t even there. It’s Meinhof who points out how they are straying from their original ideology, using mafia style assassination tactics to protect themselves through acts of revenge, not the causes they espouse, and in doing so, losing the sympathy of the German youth. Actually, Baader-Meinhof ended up being much more of an anti government, anarchistic terrorist group that engaged in criminal behavior with the sole purpose of causing chaos and breaking the noose on what they felt was an illegitimately formed government, as it did not represent a significant enough break with the Nazi past, as so many of the judges and police commissioners had served the Gestapo. While the film is a continual stream of bombings and shootings, all of which resemble energized action sequences, the heart of the film is the interior breakdowns, the psychological meltdowns when things don’t go as planned, and the developing mistrust in one another as well as their message. Baader in particular is portrayed as something of a psychopath, a brute who demands obedience, which Gudrun is all too willing to offer him, like one of Charles Manson’s loyal cult followers, but Meinhof is the intellectual of the operations who joined the group because of her identification with the socialist ideology and she’s not fooled by their delusional grandstanding, so they eventually start rewriting her material to fit their deluded rants. Once they are tracked down, their solidarity fractures and disintegrates in prison, yet Baader and Gudrun continued to maintain their relevance, failing to see how their ranks had been decimated and instead continued to operate under the false assumption that they remained part of a united international movement, so they presented a front of police brutality slogans and tag lines about their impending harm while imprisoned that bore little resemblance to the truth, elevating the legions of followers who died senselessly while carrying out Baader’s plans to martyr status, vowing revenge, even though all of their original members were either imprisoned or dead. Blindsided by a leadership out of control, Meinhof is left to suffer the consequences rotting in prison isolation, knowing she is being sold out by her comrades and can do nothing about it. Ulrike Meinhof is truly the heart and soul of this film and her voiceless tragedy becomes our own.

There’s some interesting connections here, as German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder knew Baader from his days in Munich in the 60’s, and portrayed what was left of the Baader-Meinhof group in his 1979 film THE THIRD GENERATION, also known as A comedy in 6 parts about parlor games full of suspense, excitement and logic, cruelty and madness, like the fairytales told to children to help them bear their lives unto sleep, something of a comic romp of confused “third generation” terrorists who haven’t a clue what they’re doing, where instead terrorism has become a brand or lifestyle, yet they meticulously maintain secret meetings and organize terrorist plots. When asked to define the "third generation" of his film's title, Fassbinder (in 1978) replied: “It refers to the three generations of terrorism, a theme that unfortunately is very fashionable. The first generation was that of ’68. Idealists who wanted to change the world and told themselves they could do it with words and demonstrations. The second, the Baader-Meinhof group, went from legality to armed struggle and to total criminality. The third is that of today, which simply acts without thinking, which has neither ideology nor politics, and which, without knowing it, lets itself be controlled by others like a bunch of marionettes.”

BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX, THE (d. Uli Edel; Germany) *** 1/4 Ken Rudolph’s Movie Site

The German film is an ambitious, wide ranging and epic true story of the notorious group of '70s radical leftists who became famous worldwide as terrorists involved in kidnapping, bank robberies, hijackings and well publicized trials. The film is long at 150 minutes; but it has strong characterizations and propulsive action throughout. I found some of the politics and motivations and ins-and-outs of the German penal system hard to follow. But the filmmaking is outstanding, as glossy and involving a docudrama as any Hollywood epic. It is also highly informative as to the connections between the European and middle-East terrorist organizations, their history and development.

Tiscali UK review Paul Hurley

The Red Army Faction was a German terrorist group that operated from the 1960s to the early 1980s and was also known by the names of two of its charismatic leaders, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof. They had their origins in the anti-Imperialist and pro-Maoist protests that swept the West in the 1960s. America's ongoing war with Vietnam was one of the catalysts for the group, and the perceived increase in government powers as well as the threat of a police state led them to take direct action, resulting in atrocity and death across a country still trying to come to terms with re-establishing itself after two destructive wars.

Veteran German director Uli Edel has directed a film which forms a trilogy of sorts with two other recent films from his country: Downfall (which shares a producer in Bernd Eichinger) and the masterpiece The Lives of Others. All of them are films which take a cold hard look at difficult times in the nation's recent past. The Baader Meinhof Complex has received the most criticism of the three, with accusations within and without Germany that it glorifies the terrorist cause.

While it is possible to understand these accusations, it is also important to understand what makes normal intelligent people resort to such means. And Edel and Eichinger have succeeded in doing so. Meinhof (played by Martina Gedeck) was a respected political journalist and mother of two young children when her involvement began. She became a leader by default. Certainly it was the spirit of the times that acted as an impetus, but there was a deeper fear of what might happen that led to what many would consider unthinkable action.

The faction also had a charismatic figurehead in Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu), whose nihilist views come across as both manipulative and charming. As a result, Edel and Eichinger do a good job in explaining just how such a group could come into being. There are also many terrifically shot sequences of the group's varied efforts at training, rebellion and the grisly results of their campaign.

This is, as the name suggests, a complex film. It sweeps through a convoluted period of recent German history, and despite its relatively long running time, still seems to leave the audience wanting the answers to many questions. Nevertheless, as a primer on some of the darker days in modern European history, it is essential viewing.

Cinema Autopsy (Thomas Caldwell) review [4/5]

Nobody could accuse contemporary German cinema of shying away from the past. Films like The Downfall, The Lives of Others and now The Baader Meinhof Complex have all explored very dark chapters of the country’s history, ensuring that the events depicted will be preserved as a constant reminder for future generations. In the case of The Baader Meinhof Complex, directed by Uli Edel (Christiane F., Last Exit To Brooklyn), it is the creation and the terrorist actions of the radical and militant leftist group the Red Army Faction (RAF) from 1967-1977 that is under scrutiny. The RAF had its foundations in the anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist student movements that were happening worldwide in the late 1960s and The Baader Meinhof Complex carefully reveals the conditions under which that rebellious sentiment led to violent action. The young generation of educated Germans knew all too well what could happen if state fascists tendencies were left unchecked and police brutality, an increase of rightwing journalism and rightwing violence against student protesters were all ingredients in turning their outrage into extremism.

The various characters who eventually form the RAF initially come across as very sympathetic. Their protestations are legitimate and their anger understandable. What is so disturbing about The Baader Meinhof Complex is how these characters soon become terrifying as they turn their backs on political debate and resort to violence. Producer/writer Bernd Eichinger states that this transition is why The Baader Meinhof Complex focuses on the RAF’s actions rather than the theories behind those actions. The obvious film to compare The Baader Meinhof Complex to is The Battle of Algiers, a film that has rightly been long regarded as the definitive film about urban terrorism. The Baader Meinhof Complex is a much slicker film but it shares The Battle of Algiers’s episodic narrative, lack of protagonist and refusal to take sides or make moral judgements. The filmmakers have also gone into painstaking detail to recreate the real events by filming at the original locations and even matching the number of shots fired in each scene to the number of bullets recorded by the police during the original incidents.

All the cast are excellent including Moritz Bleibtreu (Run Lola Run, The Experiment) as the young, almost childish Badder and Martina Gedeck (The Lives of Others) as the “bourgeois” journalist Meinhof. Bruno Ganz is also terrific as Horst Herold, the head of the German police force who realises that understanding the terrorists and changing the conditions that have led to their disillusionment is not sympathising with them, but the only way to stop them and prevent others from repeating their actions. His measured approach makes him the voice of reason in all the madness. The Baader Meinhof Complex is gripping cinema that will keep you on the edge of your seat. It is fascinating, exciting, terrifying and sombre. Its attempts to stick closely to the source material, Stefan Aust’s definitive 1985 book of the same title, means that not all narrative strands are explored as satisfactorily as you may expect but that’s a small price to pay for such authenticity.

The Quietus | Film | Film Reviews | Generation Terrorists: The ...

Bernd Eichinger, who wrote and produced Downfall, is the force behind the film version of another German trauma, The Baader Meinhof Complex. Founded by self-described urban guerrillas Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Ulrike Meinhof, the Red Army Faction was the Weather Underground, Symbionese Liberation Army, and righteous outlaws of Bonnie and Clyde combined—robbing banks, planting bombs, shooting cops, and assassinating judges for the better part of the decade that followed the convulsions of 1968.

Directed from Eichinger's screenplay by Uli Edel, the movie is a sweeping, hectic docudrama that would have been immeasurably helped by the use of informational intertitles. Despite a large cast, only the three principals are individualized. Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) and Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek) make a charismatic couple—she's a fiery fanatic, he's a crazy hipster. As the journalist gone native, Martina Gedeck's Meinhof is a tormented liberal who takes the existential plunge—and becomes an object of media fascination—when she decides to escape with the duo after facilitating Baader's 1970 jailbreak.

The events are clear, but the psycho-politics are obscure. Edel's table-setting use of Janis Joplin crooning, "Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz . . ." suggests RAF crazies were spoiled bourgeois. But they were also chickens coming home to roost: Most of the terrorists' parents opposed the Nazi regime; many of the cops and judges had served the Reich.

The Baader Meinhof Complex lacks the claustrophobic power of Kôji Wakamatsu's parallel epic, United Red Army, but—from the early scene in which Berlin cops allow Iranian thugs to attack peaceful demonstrators against the Shah to the final corpse-dump of kidnapped industrialist Hanns Schleyer—the movie has an undeniable sweep, increasing in intensity once the principals are arrested in June 1972. Subsequent action approaches pure tumult, encompassing the seven-month Stammheim trial and tit-for-tat madness practiced by RAF members attempting to free their erstwhile leaders, who would die, almost certainly by suicide, in prison.

The bloody saga's literary dimension, underscored by the Baader-Ensslin-Meinhof obsession with Moby Dick, has been elsewhere explored: The Third Generation (1977) by R.W. Fassbinder, who knew Baader during his hippie Munich days; Yvonne Rainer's cerebral Journey From Berlin/1971 (1980); Reinhard Hauff's Stammheim, an austere dramatization of the trial transcript that won the Golden Bear at the 1986 Berlin Film Festival, where it was shown under police guard; and Volker Schlöndorff's haunting The Legend of Rita (2000), not to mention Gerhard Richter's late-'80s, 15-painting installation October 18, 1977. By contrast, The Baader Meinhof Complex is an extended footnote.

"Why do new terrorist units keep emerging? What motivates them?" someone asks the police chief (Bruno Ganz), to which he answers, "A myth." The Baader Meinhof Complex dramatizes that myth with surprising success, even as it fails to illuminate it.

User comments from imdb Author: Christian Heynk from Germany

I watched the movie at a teacher's screening in Wuppertal on a Sunday morning. I was quite impressed with the accurate and detailed portrayal of the RAF and the events of the so called 'German fall' (Deutscher Herbst). I myself knew of many of the events beforehand and thanks to documentaries such as Veiel's Black Box BRD and Breloer's Todesspiel I was able to compare. For the two and some hours that the movie lasted I was on the edge of my seat. None of the scenes were boring, everything was well paced (at times maybe a little too fast paced) and I felt like I was being taken back to the important past of my native country. However, at the end I felt a little empty. The documentaries I just mentioned focused on only one story, but these documentaries were better because they gave us an in-depth analysis of the opposing forces (the bourgeoisie, the elite and the socialist rebels).

The portrayal of Meinhof and Baader seems accurate, too, but often I wondered if Baader really was the small-time crook he's made out to be in the movie. Except for Meinhof and Ensslin nobody seems to have some really deep thoughts about what was (is) wrong with our society. Mohnhaupt played by Nadja Uhl isn't explained at all, she's just there all of a sudden and we just go along thinking that she is in it for the same reasons as everybody else (Which are???).That way the movie seemed a little biased, as if trying to tell us that the RAF was mainly criminal and not so much political. Although I believe that a lot of their motives were right, even though they didn't justify any of the actions.

Bruno Ganz as Herold is allowed to play his character in a way that everyone thinks of the German government at the time as a dignified and moderate administration although I don't believe that to be true (after all, Herold said that he can only cure the symptoms of the RAF disease but not the disease itself, yet he didn't do anything to make the German people understand that the RAF is not altogether wrong when it accuses the German people of laziness, cowardice and complacency).

Now, leaving the movie, I figured that there was nothing much left to talk about. The teacher material that we received was pretty useless, because it doesn't offer any interesting topics for discussion. I for one think it would be interesting to discuss the present situation (bureaucracy, war in Iraq, terrorism) with the situation of Germany in the 70's. We are still dealing with many of the problems that caused the insurgency and civil disobedience back then, yet today we don't do anything at all. We are dissatisfied with the Bush administration, we oppose the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we suffer from a financial crisis mainly caused by the deregulated free market economy (capitalism) and we watch the divide between the rich and the poor getting bigger and bigger.

However, the youth of today doesn't protest. Why not? Maybe because we taught them well that in the end it's everyone for themselves and that it's best to be obedient, docile and commonorgarden if you want at least a little security in your life. One of the stronger scenes was the one where Ensslin accuses Meinhof of jerking off on her socialist theories instead of actually doing something. That's where you can see how Meinhof was influenced by the RAF. Finally she met some people who were willing to take action instead of just talking and philosophizing about a better world. This scene lends itself well to the follow-up scene in which Meinhof helps Baader to escape from prison. The jump from the window sill is a the same time a jump towards extremism.

Well, all in all, I think it's a good film to get people interested in Germany's past but it can only be the beginning of a more subtle analysis of what the RAF stood for and what it was trying to do.

User comments from imdb Author: ChrisWasser from Germany

I agree with the other comments on the following points: the film does indeed concentrate on the culprits and their actions in a documentary way (as opposed to an interpretation of the RAF's ideas and motivations from a clear-cut political standpoint). Although the victims DO appear they are not characterized more closely; the only representative of the state is Horst Herold (head of the BKA), politicians do not show up at all, the media appear only in the shape of Springer, konkret and Spiegel and even the lawyers (Haag, Croissant, Schily, Ströbele, etc.) are merged into only one (fictitious?) character. I for one do agree with this approach and if you are prepared for it you probably can live with it too. In any case, despite all the chases, shootouts and explosions it hasn't become a mere action-film.

What's more problematic is that the film follows the book by Stefan Aust VERY closely. Therefore the dramaturgy is more similar to "real life" than to a classical feature film (e.g. there are many changes in pace, several climaxes are distributed over the course of the film and a proper arc of suspense is somewhat missing). "Fortunately" real life offered a culmination of events with the Schleyer kidnapping in the "German Autumn" 1977, so that the film ends in a reasonably satisfying way. Nevertheless the end credits come a little abruptly.

The second problem is that the film tries to show virtually ALL events from the book (only some minor incidents like the Mahler detention, Peter Urbach, the burglaries in registration offices in order to steal blank passports or the visit of Jean-Paul Sartre in Stammheim are missing) so that it needs to squeeze 10 years of history into 140 minutes. The result is a film with breakneck speed at some points. The better scenes (e.g. the training camp in Jordan or the lawsuit in Stammheim) are obviously those where the film catches breath, calms down and takes its time for the actors to shine.

The quality of the acting ranges from good to fantastic (with very few exceptions like Alexandra Maria Lara, who is nothing more than wide-eyed again and who thankfully doesn't even have dialogue). Especially Martina Gedeck and Johanna Wokalek are sensational. It is THEIR film and the conflicts in Stammheim which led to Meinhof's suicide are acted Oscar-worthy. But Michael Gwisdek (Ensslin's father), Jan Josef Liefers (Peter Homann), Sebastian Blomberg (Rudi Dutschke), Nadja Uhl (Brigitte Mohnhaupt) and Hannah Herzsprung (Susanne Albrecht) are also very good.

The production values are excellent too. A lot of locations, a great deal of main and supporting roles, hundreds of extras, good special effects (mainly explosions) and a set design and costume design which creates a very coherent 70's atmosphere: you can see that the film cost a lot of money. Every cent is on the screen.

I didn't like the choice of music that much. Deep Purple's "Child in Time" is always great to hear, but the rest (Janis Joplin, The Who, Bob Dylan) is just too mainstreamy and unimaginative for my taste (but probably also very expensive). Why not use MC5, Ton Steine Scherben or Ennio Morricone's "Vamos a matar, companeros"?

Now I'm looking forward to the reactions and reviews from other countries, who probably don't know this part of German history very well. In the US I expect the criticism that there are too many naked people, too many swear words and even more cigarettes (every one in BMK smokes everywhere and at all times), in order to distract from the politics of the film ;-) "Der Baader Meinhof Komplex" isn't the masterpiece on the history of the first generation of the RAF that I had hoped for in my comments on "Todesspiel", but altogether it is a very suspenseful, fascinating, densely narrated and well acted film. Hopefully it will not be the last word on the subject, but it succeeds in giving the audience the basic RAF knowledge on which future (less neutral, more opinionated) movies can build their stories.

Radical Chic Andrea Dittgen from Sight and Sound, December 2008

World Socialist Web Site Peter Schwarz

Reverse Shot [Genevieve Yue]

Culture Wars [Tom Smith]

Critic's Notebook [Sarah Manvel]

Slant Magazine review Joseph Jon Lanthier

The New Yorker (Anthony Lane) review

Eye for Film (Jeff Robson) review [3.5/5]

Salon.com [Andrew O'Hehir]

Twitch (Jon Pais) dvd review

filmcritic.com (Chris Cabin) review [3.5/5]

A Nutshell Review Stefan S.

Electric Sheep - Reviews » Blog Archive » THE BAADER-MEINHOF COMPLEX Pamela Jahn

Bina007 Movie Reviews

Screen International [Fionnuala Halligan] in London

The Baader Meinhof Complex Ian Birchall from The Socialist Review

hoopla.nu review Stuart Wilson

Reel.com review [3/4] Rudy Joggerst

A Persistent Vision [Vernon Chan]

Brilliant Observations on 1776 Films [Clayton Trapp]

Jigsaw Lounge [Neil Young] for Tribune

Little White Lies Matt Bochenski

Film4 [Ali Catterall]

Variety (Boyd van Hoeij) review

The Baader-Meinhof Complex and Choking Man - reviews Sukhdev Sandhu from The Telegraph, November 13, 2008

Film review: The Baader Meinhof Complex | Film | The Observer Philip French from The Observer, November 16, 2008

Independent.co.uk [Jonathan Romney] November 16, 2008

The Independent (Anthony Quinn) review [1/5] November 14, 2008

The Independent (Tim Walker) dvd review [3/5] April 17, 2009

Time Out London (Wally Hammond) review [3/6]

Time Out New York (David Fear) review [2/6]

Ann Hornaday Movie Review: 'Baader Meinhof Complex,' Terrorism in Germany The Washington Post

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review [3/4]

Chicago Tribune (Alexis L. Loinaz) review

Cinema Axis [Courtney Small]

Movie Review - The Baader Meinhof Complex - The Journalist Who ... Manohla Dargis from The New York Times, August 21, 2009

Baader-Meinhof gang back in the press Harry de Quetteville from The Telegraph, May 10, 2007

Baader Meinhof film stirs controversy in Germany Tony Paterson from The Telegraph, September 20, 2008

The Baader Meinhof Complex at the London Film Festival - review Sheila Johnston from The Telegraph, October 29, 2008

The Baader-Meinhof Complex: 'It was fun. Then it turned into a nightmare' Sheila Johnston from The Telegraph, November 6, 2008

The Baader-Meinhof Complex by Stefan Aust - review - Telegraph Michael Burleigh reviews Aust’s book from The Telegraph, December 8, 2008

Book Review: 'Baader-Meinhof' by Stefan Aust - washingtonpost.com Book review by Marc Fisher from The Washington Post, April 12, 2009

Stefan Aust on 'The Baader-Meinhof Complex' What a Wonderful Place to Be, August 25, 2009

Marshall Fine: Interview: Stefan Aust on 'The Baader-Meinhof Complex' Marshall Fine interviews author Stefan Aust from The Huffington Post, August 25, 2009

Stefan Aust on 'Baader Meinhof': '60s Terrorism Still Echoes Today Ann Hornaday interviews author Stefan Aust from The Washington Post, September 11, 2009

German admits to kidnapping millionaire BBC News, April 20, 1998

Suspected Red Army Faction member arrested BBC News, September 16, 1999

Profile: Joschka Fischer's three lives BBC News, January 9, 2001

Fischer recalls radical past BBC News, January 16, 2001

Full circle for German revolutionaries BBC News, March 30, 2001

Kidnappings in Germany BBC News, October 1, 2002

Germany recalls its 'autumn of terror' Rob Broomby from BBC News, October 18, 2002

Meinhof brain study yields clues BBC News, November 12, 2002

Red Army Faction brains 'disappeared' Rob Broomby from BBC News, November 16, 2002

BBC NEWS | Europe | Who were the Baader-Meinhof gang? BBC News, February 12, 2007

German Baader-Meinhof terrorist chief released after 26 years The Telegraph, December 19, 2008

The Baader Meinhof Complex: DVD of the week Benjamin Secher from The Telegraph, April 17, 2009

The Baader-Meinhof Complex Exposes Germany's (Other) Dark Side ... Nell Scovell from Vanity Fair, January 12, 2009

The SIXTIES: "Baader-Meinhof": Bombing their way to utopia The 60’s, April 3, 2009

Heroic Impatience Diego Gambetta from The Nation, March 4, 2010

Baader-Meinhof.com Richard Huffman website dedicated to revealing as much as possible about the radical underground group

Essays/Interviews - Baader-Meinhof.com a compilation of witness recollections

Interviews and footage produced for baader-meinhof.com - Baader ... film footage

The Baader-Meinhof Gang at the Dawn of Terror Introduction from the book The Gun Speaks, by Richard Huffman

The Limits of Violence 2004 essays by Richard Huffman on the legacy of the Baader Meinhof gang

The Bomb Disposal Expert Richard Huffman paints a portrait of his father, Chuck Huffman, a Vietnam expert in diffusing bombs

Red Army Faction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Der Baader Meinhof Komplex - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Edelman, Ezra

O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA – made for TV A- 94

USA (450 mi) 2016

An extraordinary, well-researched and in-depth documentary, made as part of the 30 for 30 series for ESPN, the film is part of a continued effort by ESPN to link sports as an integral part of American history. While ostensibly a biography of former football star O.J. Simpson, known as “The Juice,” one of the first blacks to become acceptable to corporate America, featured in a variety of lucrative advertisements, running through airports for Hertz rental cars, OJ Simpson Hertz Commercial 1978 - YouTube (30 seconds) before shortening his athletic career to make movies, becoming a familiar household name for several decades, even earning a spot as one of the announcers for Monday Night Football, this film also examines the surrounding racial climate in Los Angeles, including a scathing indictment of race relations and the rampant police brutality directed primarily towards blacks. Whether intentional or not, this extensive seven and a half hour exposé, told in five parts, of the life and times of O.J. Simpson is at heart a deeply probing study of the effects of denial, both personal and societal, where for decades the largely white LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) continued to brutalize blacks with impunity, where there was no accountability within the justice system, routinely allowing bad cops who should have been fired or jailed for their excessive use of force to go free, while the impact of societal indifference to the overwhelming presence of racism resulted in riots and civil unrest from the Watts riots in August of 1965 to the LA riots in April of 1992 following a verdict acquitting four white police officers in the vicious beating of Rodney King. During this period the seething anger in the black community from the daily routine of military style arrests was barely even noticed by whites who refused to recognize any racial disparity, though these aggressive tactics only targeted minorities. At the same time, in a strange inverse of racial roles, Simpson’s white wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, a daughter of wealth and privilege, was subject to years of domineering abuse from Simpson, both physical and psychological, where domestic violence took the form of stalking and spying, which led to outrageous jealous accusations that escalated into repeated violent attacks, where the seriousness of the incidents was ignored and covered up and instead allowed to fester and grow more dangerously malignant, culminating in her murder where she and an innocent friend Ron Goldman were brutally stabbed to death on June 12, 1994, where Simpson was the only suspect. A lengthy 10-month trial followed vividly captured on television, with gavel to gavel coverage on CNN, including daily clips with extensive legal analysis on the other stations, branded as “the trial of the century,” the story above all other stories, where the amount of attention became little more than celebrity worship, becoming the most publicized criminal trial in American history, where the defense actually put the LAPD on trial, a tactic that successfully earned Simpson an acquittal of all charges in October 1995, though no other suspects ever materialized. White America was astounded and outraged by the verdict, while blacks were elated in the outcome, though it wasn’t Simpson they were happy for, but the fact that the trial outcome discredited the undisputed power of the LAPD, where the evidence suggested police officers may have routinely lied and mishandled evidence in criminal cases all along. This division along racial lines becomes the central focus of the film, mixing football glory with the Watts riots and the Rodney King beatings, where there’s an attempt to make it all appear seamless, like an impressionistic mosaic where it’s all happening simultaneously, viewed as part of the same moments in history.

The film traces Simpson’s youth to the housing projects of Potrero Hill in San Francisco, the remnants of abandoned army barracks, where his family had migrated west from the backbreaking farm work of Louisiana that offered little hope for a future. While his mother Eunice worked the graveyard shift as a hospital administrator, his father was largely absent, leaving Simpson alone and unsupervised for long periods of time where he and other kids often committed petty thefts. When he and some other kids were caught playing craps in the high school rest room, a teacher hauled them into the principal’s office, informing on what he saw before exiting the office, with Simpson following him out the door. When the principal asked where he was going, he indicated he was just helping return this group of offenders to the office, getting away scot free. Perhaps more significantly, Simpson stole the beautiful girlfriend Marguerite from his best friend, eventually marrying her. Together they had three children (one drowned in a tragic pool accident a month before his second birthday), but his tendency, like his own father (who we learn later was gay, a noted drag performer in San Francisco during the 80’s), was to never spend much time at home, but to roam whenever and wherever he wanted. Simpson made a name for himself as a running back playing football in junior college, becoming the most sought after athlete to enter a Division 1 school, earning an athletic scholarship to play at USC, which designed their entire offense around his running game, as his speed and size stood out, where if he could break through the line, he could score touchdowns with spectacular runs. USC is a private institution serving the wealthy and privileged, nearly entirely white, yet it’s surrounded by a black ghetto, where life on campus couldn’t more closely resemble an ivory tower existence, where Marguerite described it as “like a resort, it’s beautiful.” This college experience allowed Simpson access to some of the richest men in southern California, all of them white, allowing him to realize his dream of being someone important and recognizable. Simpson made headlines playing football, where some of his amazing runs are among the greatest ever seen in college, winning the Heisman Trophy in 1968 as the most outstanding college football player, where he still holds the record for winning the award by the largest margin of victory. As many as 70 of Simpson’s friends, former teammates, and business acquaintances are featured in the film, providing extensive background information from people of all walks of life who knew or worked with this man, where his outer demeanor couldn’t have been more pleasant, as he was affable, loved plenty of company, and was generous to a fault, while surrounding himself with people of wealth and influence. In fact, Simpson refused to see himself as black, claiming “I’m not black, I’m O.J,” distancing himself from the black community during the height of the Civil Rights era of the 60’s, separating himself from other notable black athletes of the times who promoted black activism, such as Muhammed Ali, Jim Brown, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Bill Russell who collectively made claims of black discrimination, jeopardizing their potential earnings by taking a more militant stand against the continued mistreatment of blacks in American society. Simpson, who was also a track star (he was part of the USC sprint relay team that broke the world record in the 4X110 yard relay in 1967, a time that was never equaled in an event that no longer exists, having been uniformly upgraded to meters in 1976), avoided other black athletes who supported a boycott of the 1968 Olympics, a position endorsed by Martin Luther King, Jr., an event largely boycotted only by black athletes, however, where black sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos won medals but wore black gloves and raised a fist high into the air in a black power salute during the playing of the national anthem during the medal ceremony (The man who raised a black power salute at the 1968 Olympic Games ...). Both were immediately ushered home by the Olympic committee which later stripped them of their medals a few months later on October 17, 1968.

Despite one’s knowledge of the O.J. case, this film unearths a plethora of witnesses that drop bombshell after bombshell of new revelations, helping the viewer put not only the incident and the trial in its proper perspective, but the times in which they occurred, ultimately revealing a tale of two cities, where Southern California depicted a Hollywood police culture through Dragnet (1951 – 59), a popular TV series where hardnosed police detectives went strictly by the book, never wavering an ounce from official department policy, where everyone is treated in the same professional manner, regardless of the crime committed, but they always end up solving the crime and getting their man. But there’s an entirely different version of the police that citizens witnessed in plain sight, spending little time in black communities except to ride in and make arrests, where racial discrimination and police brutality were standard operating procedures. Surviving an era of notorious police corruption, Chief Parker reigned from 1950 until mid-July of 1966, when he died while receiving a commendation, the longest serving police chief of Los Angeles history, where they named a police headquarters after him. But in order to keep the troops in line, transforming the department into the modern age, he resorted to quasi military procedures, creating an overtly racist police department with the superintendent actually recruiting officers from Klan rallies, where the involvement with black communities was to swoop in to arrest an offender, place him in a car and drive away, with no interaction whatsoever with the surrounding community. In this manner, the police and the black community remained separate entities with no contact with each other, each growing more and more distrustful of the other, where the police became thought of as an all-white occupying force, using brutal tactics with nearly every arrest, literally manhandling and beating offenders, developing a reputation for strong-armed tactics, none of which appeared in the police reports or court testimony, where their official position was a mythical illusion, while the reality was starkly ugly and brutal, like living in a war zone, traumatizing an entire community where blacks were routinely beaten when making arrests, a tactic rarely seen in the white neighborhoods. This led to an open rebellion in the Watts riots of 1965, and the fatal shooting of an unarmed Leonard Deadwyler by police in May of 1966, allegedly for making a sudden move during a traffic stop after running several red lights, as he was anxiously trying to get his pregnant wife (in the car) to the closest hospital, which was nearly 20 miles away, as there were no hospitals at the time in poor black neighborhoods. His wife hired a young 28-year old Johnny Cochrane as her lawyer to sue the city for negligence, where under arcane rules at the time, a defense attorney was not allowed to ask questions directly to the court, forcing Cochrane to whisper questions into the ear of the deputy district attorney, who would begin each question with, “Mr. Cochrane wants to know,” which is simply amazing to see in archival footage, while also documenting the shooting of Eula Love in front of her own home in 1979 by two white police officers, who were never charged with any misconduct, all of which led to declining confidence in the police. Racial tensions only exacerbated following the murder of teenager Latasha Harlins in 1991, happening just days after the Rodney King beating, who was shot in the back of the head by a Korean-American store owner who apparently thought the 15-year old black girl was stealing a juice box, but never saw the money in her hand. While fined $500 and sentenced to community service, the convicted killer, subject to 16 years for voluntary manslaughter, never served any jail time. The black community was outraged afterwards, where this event was considered one of the catalysts of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, burning the store to the ground, with the mayor’s office estimating that 65 percent of all businesses vandalized were Korean-owned.

Into this racial divide walks O.J. Simpson, a black man beloved by white people as they view him as not threatening, a football hero with a winning smile and a warm personality, who they view as a “safe” black athlete that shies away from all the protests and political controversy. The film intercuts footage of Bobby Kennedy on the campaign trail announcing the death of Martin Luther King with clips of Simpson joining comedian Bob Hope on stage as the USC football team is recognized for their successful season, with Hope congratulating USC as one of the few college campuses in the nation without “a riot, a demonstration, or even a sit-in.” As the nation was riveted by a variety of social issues, from poverty, racism, civil rights, feminism, and the Vietnam war, Simpson showed no interest in any of that, where he was drafted #1 by the Buffalo Bills in the pros, but in his first year he played on a beleaguered team whose coach was fired for ineptitude. Going through a revolving door of coaches, the team floundered until they brought back a heralded former coach Lou Saban in 1972. Drafting a formidable offensive line that was deliberately constructed around his running talents, Simpson immediately ran for over a thousand yards in each of the next five seasons, winning the rushing title four times, having a record-breaking year in 1973 when he was the fastest player to reach 1000 yards in just 7 games, becoming the first and only player to break 2000 yards in a 14 game season (the NFL expanded to 16 games a season in 1978). Simpson was an All-Pro for six seasons and remains the only player to run for over 200 yards in six different games. His career was cut short by an injury in 1977, traded to San Francisco afterwards where he played for only two more years, and was inducted into the football Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 1985. Simultaneous to his football career, he built a 25-year acting career in Hollywood, perhaps most noted for his comic appearances on the film NAKED GUN (1988), playing a police officer constantly finding himself in the midst of mayhem in a wildly exaggerated, hilarious satiric spoof of a bumbling and professionally inept police department, a critical and commercial success that led to two sequels in 1991 and 1994, each one grossing between $50 and $90 million dollars. Simpson was a household name, sponsoring ads for Hertz, Chevy, Pioneer Chicken, HoneyBaked Ham, and various soft drinks, viewed as an American success story, even joining the booth of Monday Night Football games in the mid 80’s coinciding with his induction into the Hall of Fame. During this run, Simpson met a young 18-year old Nicole Brown in 1977 while she was working as a waitress at an exclusive, upscale, Beverly Hills nightclub for the rich and famous called “The Daisy.” Though still married to his first wife, Simpson proclaimed he would marry Nicole almost at first sight, dating heavily at the time, where the story is reported she returned home after their first date with ripped pants, explaining afterwards that he was a bit “forceful.” Simpson also bought his infamous Rockingham mansion that same year in 1977, located in the exclusive, all-white Brentwood neighborhood, a hilly, canyoned, affluent and secluded community on the Westside of Los Angeles, California, known for its thick foliage and gated security fences, where blacks constitute 1% of the population. Divorced from his first wife in 1979, Simpson married Nicole in 1985, five years after his retirement from football. Their marriage would produce two children, Sydney and Justin, though once again, Simpson had a reputation for straying from the family nest. Hard to imagine what those two kids must think of this film, as it may be the first time they have ever been exposed to such extensive detail about their father’s life.

Eight different times the LAPD visited the Simpson home on domestic violence calls, yet in a culture of enablement that hero worships athletes and completely lets them off the hook (think Johnny Manziel in today’s age), the police failed to file reports and just walked away, where nothing was ever done about it. There was never any demand for personal accountability with Simpson, who was never referred for counseling or anger management behavior. Considering all the friends and associates, including members of the police force, so many knew what was going on, but so few did anything about it, which is the real tragedy behind this event, as looking back in hindsight, it feels so preventable. Yet domestic violence remains to this day, some twenty years later, largely ignored by society at large, where people want to sweep these incidents under the rug and pretend they never happened, especially when there’s high-profiled athletes involved who are used to a sense of entitlement. We’ve learned victims aren’t to be believed due to their own internalized fear, as Nicole Simpson was petrified at the time and scared for her life, where even she denied publicly that there was any truth behind the reports of violence, claiming everything was fine, knowing just the opposite was true, as she was being terrorized by her husband, secretly keeping in a safety deposit box the photos of the repeated beatings to her face, which are simply monstrous and grotesque, as well as the handwritten letters of apology from Simpson, which were only discovered after her murder. Simpson pleaded no contest to spousal abuse in 1989, where he was sentenced to community service, which was basically spent organizing a celebrity golf tournament. Finally divorced in 1992 after seven years of marriage, there were attempts at reconciliation, where Nicole moved to her own condominium just five minutes away on Bundy Drive in Brentwood, yet Simpson continued to lord over her, as if she was his personal property, becoming especially abusive when she befriended gay men, even resorting to spying on her through the window of her own home, observing her having sex with other men, which was usually followed by blind rage, where a 911 call in 1989 records him going ballistics, breaking down the back door of her home while screaming and attacking her. Never was he ever arrested nor did he spend a single night in prison. All of that came afterwards, as it was after midnight on the night of June 12, 1994 when the bodies were discovered by a neighbor out walking his dog, where even more horrific are the gruesome murder photos of the double murder with both victims lying in a pool of their own blood, both stabbed repeatedly and ferociously at the home of Nicole while both kids were sleeping upstairs, completely unaware of what happened, ironically in the same neighborhood where Marilyn Monroe’s ambiguously debated death occurred 32-years earlier in the early evening hours of August 4, 1962. Goldman worked as a waiter at the restaurant where Nicole and her family had eaten dinner earlier, discovering a pair of glasses left behind by Nicole’s mother. After his shift was over, Goldman went to Nicole’s house to return them. Simpson had no alibi for the time of the murders, but took a late night flight to Chicago, where a limo driver picked him up at his residence just before 11 pm, claiming the house was dark when he arrived a half hour earlier, with no answer to repeated buzzing at the intercom. The limo driver testified at the trial that he saw a “tall black man” enter the front door of the residence coming from the driveway, after which the house lights were turned on and Simpson answered the intercom, claiming he overslept and would be right out. The luggage was already packed and was observed sitting outside the front door when the driver arrived. Simpson reportedly took a midnight flight to Chicago on business, where blood along with a matching glove missing from the crime scene were found at his residence, so a warrant was served for his arrest by the morning of the 17^th, where Simpson was expected to be charged with the double murder, where as many as 1000 journalists were waiting for him to turn himself in to police headquarters that morning accompanied by legal counsel, but he was a no show. By 2 pm that afternoon the police considered him a fugitive from justice.

In the end, finally confronted with arrest, what does this bold and brazenly violent man do when confronted with arrest? He pathetically runs away and tries to hide, escaping with a large sum of cash and his passport in his white Ford Bronco, the same one found with blood from the crime scene, where a helicopter news team is able to pick out the vehicle and follow it down the freeway on Interstate 405, covering the event on uninterrupted live news television, where the car was being driven by Simpson’s longtime friend Al Cowlings, eventually tailed by a squadron of twenty police cars that keep their distance, all slowed down to about 35 mph, with 9 helicopters joining the chase, where Simpson reportedly had a gun to his head. It’s a surreal moment when people on the freeway swerve over to his car and wave and cheer, or urge him to pull the trigger, with the whole world watching while it’s all captured on television. Once O.J. failed to surrender, the event became a media sensation, with an entire nation asking simultaneously, “What’s happened to O.J.?” who even today is considered “the most famous American ever charged with murder.” Once cellphone contact is made with an obviously irritated Cowlings, who dials 911 to get the police to back off, it turns out O.J. is running home to his mother, eventually returning back to his Rockingham estate, obviously ashamed of what he’s done, unable to live with himself and accept the consequences of his own actions. With a gun to his head, was he going to commit suicide live on national TV? Arriving at his home, but refusing to get out of his car, a police hostage negotiator finally talks Simpson into surrendering, but only under cover of darkness. As he’s being driven away in a police van, engulfed by a mass of people who were there to support him and cheer him on, O.J. responded, “What are all those niggers doing in Brentwood?” Those comments are painfully ironic. It’s staggering that a man who refused to identify himself as a black man was suddenly forced to identify with being black in his defense, where the rallying cry was that he was a victim of a sick system, the racially detestable LAPD that obviously had their own motives. Law professor Alan Dershowitz, part of the famed “Dream Team” of lawyers selected for Simpson’s defense, actually tipped off one of his former students, Jeffrey Toobin (now with CNN) who was working as a legal analyst for The New Yorker magazine, about Mark Fuhrman’s history as a dirty cop, which caused him to comb the basement files in the bowels of the LAPD searching for lawsuits filed against him. Instead, what he discovered was a suit Fuhrman filed against the LAPD for forcing him to continue working in the Watts neighborhood, which was causing him insurmountable psychological stress and aggravation due to his personal hatred for blacks and Hispanics, using a litany of racial slurs to describe them, where his deep-seeded prejudice and hostility towards minorities was indisputable, leading to Toobin’s report of the significance race plays in this particular case, An Incendiary Defense - The New Yorker Jeffrey Toobin, July 25, 1994. Mark Fuhrman was a cop with serious problems, where his lawsuit was filled with repeated incidents of excessive use of force against blacks, claiming that he actually enjoyed breaking the arms and legs of blacks, repeatedly using the n-word to describe them, where he was so psychologically damaged from hatred against blacks that he wished to be relieved from duty. This guy was a time bomb about to explode, but supposedly improved his outlook with the help of therapy, yet he was the first detective to arrive on the premises of O.J.’s residence on the night of the murder where he claims he discovered bloody footprints leading from Simpson’s white Ford Bronco directly into his bedroom, while also discovering another bloody glove matching a similar glove at the crime scene. From the police position, this was overwhelming evidence against Simpson, but considering the cop, the defense believed he planted evidence.

The degree of hysteria surrounding the wall-to-wall news coverage never felt like a murder case, instead it felt like a media circus, where news was no longer circumspect and investigative, with its facts beyond reproach, but newspapers and the media were guilty of overkill, saturating the daily news cycle with this one story, simply feeding the public exactly what it wanted, where the national news started resembling the salacious details of outlandish made-up stories seen in The National Inquirer. There’s no doubt that the trial seemingly went on forever at the time, consuming nearly an entire year, becoming thoroughly fixated on this one subject only. Mark Fuhrman was a tainted cop, who stated under oath that he never used the n-word while carrying out his duties as a police officer, yet court documents suggested otherwise, as his own case file mentioned it repeatedly, while also providing 12 hours of taped recordings of Fuhrman providing realistic ideas for a fictional screenplay about cops in LA which was filled with Fuhrman using the n-word, also exaggerated claims of framing people, torturing and killing victims while getting away with it, creating a fantasy world of a city run by out of control, white supremist cops, but his fictionalized world incredibly matched the black stereotype of dirty cops in the LAPD. Only in Hollywood could someone actually unearth something like that. Barry Scheck was the attorney who became associated as a DNA expert, yet his job was not only to question the police handling of evidence, questioning the professionalism of their own standards and in turn the validity of the scientific evidence proving Simpson’s blood was at the crime scene, but more importantly, his job was to confuse the jurors and provide a seed of doubt in their eyes, suggesting it was entirely possible that the LAPD planted evidence on the crime scene that was favorable for a conviction. To this end, he mesmerized a viewing audience with scientific theories that sounded plausible, but what they had to do with this specific case was clouded in confusion. To a white audience, this would be inexcusable, as science is science, hard to refute, but to a black community that was used to authorities fudging the evidence, this happened all the time, so it was not only plausible, but likely. The defense attorneys hammered home this possibility, which, when added to a racist cop, suggests evidence could easily have been planted. The question, though, was whether it was ever established evidence was planted in this case. Scheck’s arguments were all supposition and maybes, never once directing any proof to that assertion. Due to the prevalence of blacks on the jury, black defense attorney nonpareil Johnny Cochrane didn’t have to argue in complicated legalese, but simply had to ingratiate himself to the jury and become relatable and trustworthy, as opposed to the prosecution attorney Christopher Darden whose style was closer to burying his head in his notes like a prepared speech while making little eye contact with the jury. Having to explain the extraordinary scientific certainties of DNA evidence largely went over the head of the jury, where the complexity became lost over time, as what they could more easily understand was what Johnny Cochrane constantly reminded them of, how cops routinely mishandle and tamper with evidence, as that’s closer to their real life experiences of being black growing up in Los Angeles.

Yolanda Crawford and Carrie Bess, two black women who were members of the jury speak openly throughout the film, offering candid views as the trial proceeds, which is like keeping a scorecard throughout the event, both offering a vantage point that amounts to a window directly into what the jury was thinking. In one instance, Bess provides her own brutal assessment, “I lose respect for any woman who’d take an ass whooping when she don’t have to.” While sitting in jail, O.J. generated $3 million dollars towards his own legal defense by signing autographs, which was still legal at the time as he was not convicted of committing any crime. The merchandise sold like hotcakes, expertly adding the signature to other memorabilia like jerseys, photographs, or footballs. Simpson’s legal bill was $50,000 per day over ten months, amounting to a $15 million dollar defense, the best that money could buy, and don’t think they didn’t earn it by putting on a show. A perfect example is the judge allowing the jury to visit Simpson’s home, despite the fact no crime took place there, as the murder occurred at Nicole Simpson’s nearby address. In preparation for this visit, the defense team observed a winding staircase with pictures on the wall, none of which featured any family members or any other black people, as they were all photos of Simpson with his prominent white friends. The defense removed those photos and replaced them with family shots and photos of Simpson with black people. While this is a sham of reality, becoming utter theatrical spectacle, the showmanship of the defense was allowed by the judge, who himself became mesmerized by the public spectacle surrounding the case. One of the defense attorneys mentioned that if O.J. had been Hispanic, there would have been a Mariachi band greeting the jury in the driveway. Losing co-attorney Marcia Clark remains quite infamous even to this day, especially following such a devastating loss, receiving a $4 million dollar book deal and her own TV show after the trial, yet to this day, she remains oblivious to what happened, as she continues to believe the LA cops failed to achieve credible evidence in their initial interview with Simpson, which was without an attorney present, instead allowing him to ramble incoherently instead of pinpointing where he was at a specific time and place. Co-counsel Christopher Darden was guilty of the most basic legal rule— don’t ask a question for which you don’t know the answer—incorrectly allowing O.J. to try on the bloody gloves before he was certain of the result. Little did he know what went on behind the scenes leading up to the dramatic event, which is they didn’t fit, as Simpson strained and struggled to get them on, largely due to the fact his physician took him off his arthritis medicine for the two or three weeks leading up to that event, so he could barely move his hands. Judge Ito was wrong to remain so starry-eyed about being the center of Hollywood attention, allowing the defense far too much leeway in straying from the strict legal confines of the case, yet she never blames herself for anything that went wrong. She continues to bear no responsibility whatsoever for the fact that she and her partner got schooled on national TV by a more prominent legal team, whose professional expertise ran circles around the prosecutor’s case.

From a Los Angeles jury pool that was initially 40% white, 28% black, 17% Hispanic, and 15% Asian, the final jury composition was 10 women and 2 men, consisting of 8 black women, 1 black man, 1 Hispanic man, and 2 white females, one of whom was also half Native American. Two of the jurors had college degrees, nine had graduated high school and one had no diploma. In the initial vote, only two found him guilty, as O.J. became a symbol of black persecution, where it was all about Fuhrman and racial injustice in the city of Los Angeles, where O.J. became the perfect victim, because he had the money for his legal team to portray him that way. Even worse, after the racist revelations, when Fuhrman was brought back to the stand, he pleaded the 5^th to every single question, refusing to answer on the grounds that it could incriminate him, something no police officer had ever done before. It was simply incredible. Having O.J. try on the gloves over a smaller latex glove was ridiculous, and he sold it for all it’s worth, as did the legal team, coming up with the defense slogan of the trial which was reiterated in the final summation: If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit. But the heart of Cochrane’s closing argument had little to do with Simpson, instead demanding that the jury stop the malicious practices of the LAPD, challenging them and their racial integrity by asking them, whose side are you on? “Stop this cover up. If you don’t stop it, then who? Do you think the police department’s going to stop it? Do you think the DA’s office is going to stop it? Do you think we’re going to stop it by ourselves? It has to be stopped by you.” Then in a moment of legal hyperbole, Cochrane compared Fuhrman to Hitler, claiming it was our moral obligation to stop hatred before it dominates our lives. The irony, of course, is that he was using racial injustice to defend a man who cared nothing about the black community, where lost in the process was what actually happened to Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. After 267 days of witnesses and evidence presentation, 1105 pieces of evidence, 45,000 pages of trial transcripts from 133 witnesses, the verdict was reached in 3 and a half hours. Hard to believe there was any real jury deliberation, where the overall belief was people were simply exhausted and tired of the entire process and wanted to go home, reaching a verdict before the morning was done. To the moving strains of Dvořák’s “Going Home” Largo from his 9^th “New World” Symphony, Antonin Dvorak - New World Symphony ~Largo~ - YouTube (12:07), which happens to be the same music used at Vice President Joe Biden’s son’s funeral last year, the not guilty verdict is announced and Simpson is released from custody, causing utter jubilation in the black community. As it turns out, more than 70% of blacks believed in Simpson’s innocence, while more than 70% of whites believed he was guilty, so the predominantly black jury acknowledged they felt a moral obligation to reverse the ”injustice” of the Rodney King verdict and finally give a black man his just due, a decision that elated blacks across the country, tired of a history of oppression and police brutality, where the thinking was it was good to see the police take one on the chin for a change. Whites, on the other hand, were shocked and outraged, none more anguished in the court than Goldman’s mother Sharon, who was simply distraught, as there was no one else’s blood at the crime scene, just O.J. Simpson, Ron Goldman and Nicole Simpson, two of whom were murdered. That left only one remaining suspect, and he was just set free of a double murder. There are no other suspects in the case. Ironically, one of the black men on the jury put up an upraised fist when the decision was read in a black power salute, where it turns out he happened to be a former member of the Black Panther Party. Who knew? The jubilation of blacks was accompanied by absolute resentment towards whites, an event that was unprecedented, as they literally danced on the graves of two murdered white people. The message being sent was—now you know how it feels—as blacks have historically been arrested and convicted for crimes they never committed, while arresting white cops have always gotten off scot free. Now that the shoe was on the other foot, it was a strange kind of justice, as it didn’t address the charges of murder in the courtroom, but instead took on a larger issue, namely a history of lynchings and murder of black people at the hands of whites. But the bottom line is that after this one euphoric day, life goes on, and blacks have the same hard road ahead of them, where this likely changes little. In the end, the winner was not the black community, but a rich black man named O.J. Simpson.

While essentially a prolonged and well documented discussion on race in America, the fallout from the trial remains divisive, even among Simpson’s legal team, where Robert Shapiro went on The Barbara Walters Show to announce he felt relying upon the race defense had betrayed a sense of moral justice, claiming he would never work with Cochrane again and refused to ever speak to F. Lee Bailey. Whites, especially his neighbors in Brentwood, unleashed a furor of anger and hostility towards O.J. where he was ostracized, as people felt he was a wife beater and a murderer, calling him names whenever they saw him in public. O.J. was no longer welcome at the prestigious golf country clubs where he was once the only black member. It was left to the Goldman family to bear the brunt of the outrage and the agonizing pain of their loss, making sure they hounded Simpson for the rest of his life seeking justice, even if it was only in a civil and not a criminal case, where one only had to prove it was more likely than not that he committed the crime, making sure Simpson could not profit on his victory, as two years later he was found guilty in a civil court and ordered to pay $33.5 million dollars in damages for the two murders, more money than he was worth. As a result, Simpson lost the house in Brentwood, which was subsequently torn down, and he moved to South Beach, Florida, financially supported by his substantial football pension which could not be touched by the courts, living a tawdry life of excess and degradation, hanging out in strip clubs, doing as many sexual threesomes as he could, where he was associating strictly with the lower elements of society, hangers on, people that continued to fawn all over him like the celebrity he was, living the high life, all the while thinking there would be money and girls in it for them. He got a $700,000 book advance for a story suggesting how he might have done it, entitled If I Did It, Confessions of a Killer, which was a weird and twisted way others felt they could get a confession out of him, but it was all a game, an act, where he felt the world was passing him by and he was losing his business opportunities to cash in on his celebrity status. A judge squashed the book deal, awarded the rights to the Goldman family, his biggest debtor, who published the book as if it were O.J.’s own confessions of murder. In a strange way, this twisted, make-believe fantasy mirrored the fictitious screenplay by Mark Fuhrman, where in each case a searing reality rose out of supposed fiction. While O.J.’s life was in disorder, his agent and others were stealing his sports memorabilia, hiding it, storing it somewhere, and then selling it to the highest bidder. When O.J. heard about this, he considered it stolen merchandise and in September of 2007 became interested in getting it back, setting up an anonymous buy with a man in Las Vegas who supposedly had $100,000 worth of O.J. memorabilia to sell. Simpson decides to bring a couple guys with guns to scare the life out of these posers, assuming they would back off, which they did, but for their own protection they captured it all on video, which is all the evidence they ever needed. Cops were called, and O.J. was once again arrested, where one of his own testified against him, claiming he led the assault, and they threw the book at him in what amounts to overkill, receiving the harshest justice possible, as he was sentenced, exactly 13 years to the day from when he was originally exonerated, to a 33 year sentence, matching the number of millions owed in restitution for the double murder he supposedly did not commit. He was charged with burglary and armed kidnapping for screaming out for no one to leave the room, but no one was abducted, no one was harmed, yet he was truly victimized by a system that once miraculously set him free. Now he’s languishing in a Nevada state penitentiary wondering how the hell he got there, becoming just another screwed black victim of “white justice in America.”

O.J.: Made in America isn't about O.J., it's about us | Bleader | Chicago ... Danielle A. Scruggs from The Chicago Reader, June 22, 2016

It's impossible not to think of Muhammad Ali when viewing O.J.: Made in America, filmmaker Ezra Edelman's absorbing five-part, seven-and-a-half-hour documentary about the rise and fall of O.J. Simpson for ESPN's venerable 30 for 30 series. When Muhammad Ali died on June 3 at the age of 74, the world didn't just mourn the loss of a gifted athlete, it also lamented the loss of a fiery political figure. He was someone who spoke truth to power, who through his actions declared that "Black Lives Matter," who refused to let the world forget that he was both black and Muslim, no matter what the cost. Those convictions cost him dearly.

That was a price O.J. Simpson refused to pay. Unlike his contemporaries Ali, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Jim Brown, and Bill Russell, Simpson declined to speak out against racial and social injustices during the political upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s. He was disinterested in seeing himself as black, as part of a larger whole—until, that is, it became a defense strategy when he went on trial for the murder of his wife, Nicole Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994. As with every 30 for 30 installment, sports is the Trojan horse used to examine deeper matters, in this case, issues of race, class, sexuality, misogyny, and America's culture of violence, particularly violence against women.

Much of the first episode is spent exploring the racial tensions between LA's black population and the LAPD, dating back to the 1940s. By examining the history of the LAPD reputedly recruiting officers at Klan rallies, the root causes of the 1965 Watts Riot, the 1991 murder of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, and the '91 beating of Rodney King and subsequent acquittal of the four police officers who struck him, O.J.: Made in America deftly provides context for two things: why O.J. distanced himself from politics and his blackness in his heyday, and why the defense successfully engendered so much support for O.J. during his trial.

Given that history and the buildup of such enormous and well-founded distrust in LA's law enforcement on the part of the black community, the defense team's theory that racist LAPD officers conspired to railroad a black man wasn't that far-fetched. It was understandable that the case became more about race relations in America and less about Nicole and domestic violence. And that's unfortunate.

O.J. Simpson was a serial abuser, full stop. When they first met, Nicole was 18, and he was still married to his first wife, Marguerite (who wasn't interviewed for this documentary—how different things might be if we had her perspective on all that has transpired). David LeBon, a friend and roommate of Nicole's, mentioned that the night after O.J. and Nicole met, she came back with ripped jeans and told him O.J. had been "a little bit forceful." O.J. terrorized Nicole throughout their entire marriage. Eight times the police made domestic violence calls to their house on. And all eight times, the police left O.J. alone with Nicole afterward. Ironically, the same LAPD accused during the trial of conspiring to frame O.J. actually spent years working in his favor.

Seduced by celebrity, power, and athletic prowess, the LAPD protected O.J. and covered up his abuse. In Nicole's 911 calls, she sounds frightened, but also exasperated. It's chilling to hear the resignation in her voice. She sounds like she knows she's already lost, a point that hits home when the documentary reveals her handwritten will and photos of her bruised and battered face that she kept in a safe deposit box. The documentary shows the crime scene photos of her body, drenched in blood, nearly decapitated. The brutality of her murder, revealed plainly and clearly for the first time in two decades, is absolutely horrifying.

Those photos, along with store-surveillance footage of the murder of Harlins (whose killer received only probation) and archival interviews with black women whose houses were destroyed by LAPD officers in raids during the "war on drugs" of the 80s and 90s are all a heartbreaking indictment of the criminal justice system and its tendency to fail women over and over again, whether they're black, white, rich, middle-class, or poor. All of these images taken together make for extremely difficult, painful, and yet necessary viewing.

What also stands out is the candor of so many of the interviewees, which include Nicole Simpson's friends, O.J. Simpson's friends and business associates, former LAPD officers (including Mark Fuhrman), and former prosecutor Marcia Clark. Many of the people interviewed make, at best, problematic declarations about race and class.

Examples range from Fred Levinson, the director of Simpson's Hertz commercials, saying O.J. didn't have a "typical African look" to the CEO of Hertz, Frank Olson, saying "For us, O.J. was colorless. None of us looked at him as a black man" to Fuhrman saying that the King beating could've been prevented if officers had been allowed to use the choke hold. Zoey Tur, the reporter and helicopter pilot who filmed the infamous Bronco chase—and who is also a trans woman—made a poignant connection between her transition and O.J.'s decline. "Very few human beings fall as far as O.J. Simpson," she says. "I've fallen quite a bit transitioning. You go from a hero pilot to some tranny. So I've fallen somewhat myself. But this is an epic fall."

And what a fall it was. After O.J. was acquitted of double homicide in 1995, his life spiraled into a fog of drug and alcohol abuse, bizarre reality-show appearances, transparently insincere attempts to ingratiate himself with black people, and a disastrous attempt to retrieve his sports memorabilia in Las Vegas. It was this attempt that led to a 33-year prison sentence for armed robbery and kidnapping.

Ultimately, O.J.: Made in America is fascinating precisely because it isn't really about one man's spectacularly ugly fall from grace: It is about us. It is about society's failure, even in 2016, to admit that racism is interwoven tightly into the fabric of this country and to reconcile how it continues to manifest itself in shocking, often brutal ways. It is about a culture of violence that runs deep in America, as we've seen once again in the wake of the tragic mass shooting in Orlando that targeted mostly Latino LGBT people, in the wake of the Rekia Boyds and Laquan McDonalds and Sandra Blands and Michael Browns and Trayvon Martins, in the wake of the Stanford rape case, in the wake of the Reader's own investigation of 20 years of alleged abuse at Profiles Theatre. It is about our willingness to be seduced by celebrity, to look the other way when we see injustice because the perpetrator is handsome, charismatic, and gifted in ways that perhaps we wish we were. It is about America's obsession with winning at all costs, no matter who gets hurt—or even killed—in the process.

Yes, 'O.J.: Made in America' is a Triumph of Documentary Storytelling ... Lara Zarum from Flavorwire, June , 2016

In the fifth and final episode of O.J.: Made in America, which premieres Saturday, Pablo Fenjves describes ghostwriting Simpson’s 2007 book, If I Did It, a “hypothetical” description of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Fenjves lived just a few doors down from Nicole’s Brentwood home, the site of the June 12, 1994 murders, and he famously testified to hearing the “plaintive wail” of Nicole’s dog, which helped the prosecution cement its timeline. “I got there thinking he was a murderer and I left there more convinced than ever that he was a murderer,” Fenjves says of his time spent working on the book with Simpson. But what’s “most disturbing,” he says, is “our appetite for that kind of stuff.”

After the sweeping sensation of FX’s The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story earlier this year, that appetite was hard to deny. Writer/director Ezra Edelman had already begun work on Made in America, the first mini-series in ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary program, before he heard that FX had a fictional version of Simpson’s story planned. But Made in America is a different project entirely — not a panoramic view of the trial and its players but a penetrating look at a fallen hero in the context of race and police brutality in Los Angeles and the country as a whole.

Made in America is not squeamish about its subject. It rushes headlong into the most controversial, uncomfortable aspects of Simpson’s story — particularly the irony of Simpson benefiting from the support of a community from which he had explicitly distanced himself for his entire career. Edelman isn’t afraid to look closely at some of the most shameful episodes in L.A.’s past — the second episode is almost entirely devoted to the history of the city’s race relations — like the 1979 killing of 39-year-old Eula Mae Love, who was shot by police eight times on her own front lawn because she owed money on her gas bill, and, of course, the 1991 beating of Rodney King.

A staggering amount of research went into Made in America, which includes archival footage from nearly every period of Simpson’s life. In the first episode, we see O.J. as a bashful college football star in the 1960s and a dashing Buffalo Bills running back in the 1970s. Interviews with former coaches and players, as well as footage of Simpson sprinting and dodging on the field, help the non-sports fan — or those too young to remember Simpson as a football star — understand what made him such a phenomenon even before the murders.

Two of the most interesting interview subjects are former jurors Yolanda Crawford and Carrie Bess, both black women who defend their “not guilty” vote not only on the basis of the L.A.P.D.’s history of racism, but on the prosecution’s shoddy work. “It wasn’t payback,” Crawford says of the predominantly black jury’s decision in the series’ final installment. “They messed up.”

The early episodes lean on Simpson as a bright, rising star, with footage of the young football star tearing up the field interspersed with Chevrolet and Hertz commercials in which he appeared in the 1970s. Edelman highlights the gap between Simpson, who moved in white, upper-class circles, and other prominent black athletes of the 1970s, like Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who infamously raised their black-gloved fists on the podium at the 1968 Olympics. The emphasis on Simpson’s distance from the black community in the first two episodes pays off later, when Edelman examines how Simpson’s defense team used the L.A.P.D.’s disgraceful history of racial bias against the prosecution, resulting in their client’s acquittal.

Despite Made in America’s proximity to the FX series, Edelman does an excellent job making the familiar events of the trial appear newly shocking. Because he has access to so much footage, he’s able to shrewdly cut between talking heads and the scenes they’re describing. Many of the trial’s main figures, like prosecutor Marcia Clark, district attorney Gil Garcetti, and defense attorneys Carl Douglas and Barry Scheck, add insightful, frank, and often funny commentary. Prosecutor Chris Darden is noticeably absent, while others, like defense attorney Johnnie Cochran, have since died.

The final episode enters less familiar territory, documenting the period when Simpson was a free man — but one whom many believed to be a murderer. Footage of the aging Simpson partying with bikini-clad women in South Beach and making bizarre, Punk’d-style man-on-the-street videos evokes a mixture of pity and disgust — and then disgust at yourself for feeling pity.

Edelman isn’t afraid to show how Simpson continued to beguile even those who considered him to be a murderer. One of the scenes I found most terrifying wasn’t violent or bloody — it was a scene of Wendy Williams interviewing Simpson on her radio show in the early 2000s, and slowly warming to the man of whom she seems so wary at first. “Damn you, I like you,” she says. “Damn you, O.J. Simpson, you’re charming.”

The docu-series isn’t suggesting we have blood on our hands because of how we’ve regarded Simpson as a piece of sensational entertainment — as “content” — rather than a sad, messed up criminal. But in real life and in popular culture (is there even a difference anymore?), we’ve proven our fascination with people who do and say the wrong thing. As Walter White and the current Republican nominee have proven, it’s all too easy to valorize someone who doesn’t play by the rules, no matter how ugly their words or violent their behavior.

As engrossing and meticulously composed as Made in America is, it reminds me of the countless film and TV plots that revolve around a beautiful dead woman whose voice we literally never hear. Simpson’s rise and fall is meaty stuff, and given that his story weaves together so many urgent, central issues in contemporary American culture — racism, misogyny, domestic abuse, fame and celebrity, Kardashians — our ongoing fascination with all things O.J. is understandable.

But, like our ongoing fascination with Donald Trump, it’s hard to sustain without feeling at least a little bit complicit in the very thing that we all claim to be horrified by. Made in America ends with a montage of the Juice in his 1960s and ’70s heyday, but in the end there was one image I couldn’t get out of my mind, one I hadn’t seen before: A crime scene photo of Nicole Brown Simpson’s slashed throat, the cut so deep and wide it leaves a gaping red cavity.

Made in America urges us to look at things and contemplate ideas that make us feel not just uncomfortable but complicit in social issues like racism and America’s ravenous celebrity culture. But in the seven and a half hours the documentary devotes to Simpson’s story, it largely ignores the widespread, never-ending issue of misogyny and domestic abuse. Given the rate of domestic abuse charges in the NFL — not to mention how seldom pro athletes are penalized for such transgressions in this country — this is particularly disappointing coming from an ESPN production.

More disappointing is the nagging feeling that a documentary about domestic violence wouldn’t be half the sensation that Made in America has already become as it completes the film festival rounds and settles onto our TV screens. Nothing will change as long as our fascination for the perpetrators of heinous crimes obscures the victims themselves.

I can’t help but think that Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman would never be the subjects of such a meticulous, groundbreaking documentary. But then, they never got a chance to live out their lives the way Simpson has. They’re gone forever, but Simpson lives on in infamy. He’s eligible for parole next year.

Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule: O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA Dennis Cozzalio, June 11, 2016

In one of those strange confluences of life, death and documentary art, last week the world lost Muhammad Ali, humanitarian, devout Muslim and near inarguably the greatest boxer of all time (even if that assignation was initially self-proclaimed), just at the moment when the discussion about the life of yet another celebrity athlete, O.J. Simpson, is about to heat up yet again. Tonight ABC airs the first of the five-part documentary O.J.: Made in America, a seven-and-a-half hour undertaking commissioned for ESPN’s 30-For-30 series that truly fulfills the expansive definition of an epic, and filmmaker Ezra Edelman makes every one of his documentary’s 450 minutes count.

The first two hours of O.J.: Made in America are devoted not just to Simpson’s formative life in the San Francisco projects and his rise to football stardom at USC, but also to painting a vivid picture of African-American life in Los Angeles in the days leading up to the Watts Riots of 1965, a detailed, frustrating and often agonizing portrait of a racial history that provides one aspect of the vast context in which the persona of O.J. Simpson was shaped. Edelman illuminates a crucial contrast between Simpson, the popular USC running back living it up on a primarily white, moneyed campus, and the reality of the more typical African-American experience in Los Angeles in the 1960s which was taking place only a few blocks from where Simpson was being groomed for NFL stardom. Economic and racial prejudice, police brutality during the William H. Parker era of the Los Angeles Police Department, and the scramble simply to maintain a modicum of dignity in the face of a dominant white social structure which regularly, violently insisted that none was deserved, was the reality faced by those who couldn’t gracefully scramble down a field and rack up record yardage for a storied university football program. (One of the saddest threads that emerges early on in the film is in accounting the degree to which African-Americans eagerly moved from strife-plagued areas of the South in the ‘50s and ‘60s to Los Angeles in search of the sort of racial and economic equanimity that eluded them in their home states, and how quickly that optimism was snuffed out.)

Yet O.J. Simpson emerged from being surrounded by it all (and deftly protected from it all), early on largely achieving acceptance in the (white) world of celebrity. He was the first African-American advertising spokesman for a major company—Hertz rental cars—who was perceived as being effective not just with blacks but across the racial board. And he was liked by just about everybody he encountered, black or white, all of which was, of course, the underlying presumptive goal of his personal socio-philosophic mantra: “I’m not black, I’m not white. I’m O.J.”

One of the most unsettling accounts of Simpson’s perspective occurs early on in the film, recalled on camera by New York Times sports reporter Robert Lipsyte, who remembers Simpson, not yet 22 and waiting to sign his rookie pro contract after leaving USC, hanging out in a Manhattan bar waiting to meet up with one of its owners, Joe Namath, the hero of the most recent Super Bowl. Lipsyte was one of a large entourage surrounding Simpson that night and talked to Simpson about his plans, including his negotiations with the Buffalo Bills, his upcoming entrance into the advertising world and his hopes for the TV and movie roles that would come as a result of his career as a football pro. At one point, in talking about the things he’d so far achieved in his young career, Simpson offered up with pride, “I was at a wedding, my wife and a few friends were the only Negroes there, and I overheard a lady say, ‘Look, there’s O.J. Simpson and some niggers.’” Lipsyte takes a breath on camera and says, “I knew right then he was fucked.”

The early sections of O.J.: Made in America make it clear just how separate Simpson intended to be from the black community which took such pride in his acceptance and achievements, and that separation went beyond securing a life of fame and riches with Hollywood always foremost in mind. Muhammad Ali’s refusal to be conscripted into the Vietnam War, and the nimbly articulated reasoning he offered, which was grounded deeply in not only his racial but also his religious experience (“The real enemy of my people is right here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality”), provides an illuminating contrast to Simpson’s refusal to politicize his image. While Ali took his controversial stand, which resulted in his arrest and conviction for draft evasion, the rescinding of his Olympic gold medal, the stripping of the heavyweight title he won by defeating Sonny Liston in 1964 and a three-year ban from professional fighting, Simpson refused to join other black athletes such as Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jim Brown in public support of Ali’s decision. While he professed to understand the importance of Ali’s position and the need to provide support for everyone in the black community, Simpson continued to make it clear that their fight was not necessarily his fight: “What I’m doing is not for principles or for black people. I’m dealing first for O.J. Simpson, his wife and his baby.”

That, having heard such a philosophy expressed openly, blacks could have remained as supportive of O.J. Simpson as his life took an infamously surreal turn into ugly violence in Brentwood, California in June 1994, is one aspect of the mystery of O.J. Simpson upon which Edelman’s film, with its grounding in the racial inequity and violence at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department, sheds plenty of welcome light. However obvious the evidence may have been against him, however bungled by prosecution the apparently slam-dunk case ended up being, the Simpson verdict was perceived by many blacks across the nation, according to the evidence and testimony accrued in Edelman’s film, as a huge emotional release, payback to a system that repeatedly failed to provide justice for the likes of Eula Love, Latasha Harlins and Rodney King.

And it’s to Edelman’s credit that a conclusion like that one has its place in the context of the larger conversation O.J.: Made in America engenders, neither summarily dismissed nor thoughtlessly endorsed but instead woven into the expressive, reverberating fabric of this unusually evocative, angering and enlightening work. If the movie never finds as much room for contextualizing Nicole Brown Simpson as someone other than a victim of an inevitable tide of domestic abuse in the way that Los Angeles’ racial history does for Simpson himself, then the humanizing empathy Edelman displays for her certainly suffices. (The awful finality of her fate and that of Ronald Goldman is displayed here in horrific crime scene photographs I’d spent 22 years avoiding.) O.J.: Made in America unfolds with masterful certainty and illuminating power, delineating the mind-boggling path toward a third act in the life of a man who many, even some of his staunchest supporters and friends, now believe must have commit those heinous murders, a third act which surreally nose-dives into Vegas decadence, petty crime and, yes, even perhaps one more dose of payback for crimes left unpunished.

Though it was conceived as a TV series, with the remaining four parts airing on ESPN after tonight’s bow on ABC, I think of O.J.: Made in America as a movie because that’s the way I saw it. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the very last theatrical screening of a week-long, Oscar-qualifying engagement in Santa Monica a couple of weeks ago, and seeing it that way was one of the great movie-going experiences I’ve ever had. The auditorium where I saw it, with a capacity of 27 people, was about half full, and during the film’s two intermissions there was a palpable need for us all—the 14 or so of us in attendance were pretty closely divided between black and white-- to turn to each other and discuss what it was we were absorbing. (By the end of the movie’s second section, that screening had begun to take on the quality of a very lively town hall meeting.)

Sometime during the first hour, immersed in the sort of rich detail and intelligent commentary that would be a hallmark of Edelman’s film, I felt energized, excited, relieved to be in the hands of a documentary so dedicated to taking its time and creating the proper context for understanding how the phenomenon, and then the tragedy of O.J. Simpson could have happened in the first place. Seeing it in one go in a theater was not unlike the way people now routinely binge-watch programming, documentary or otherwise, on Netflix or DVD in the media-saturated 21^st century, only with fresh popcorn and the company of strangers, which definitely helped ameliorate the desperate sense of a hopelessly fragmented society that the film pointedly examines. If you can stand the wait and have the technology available, I recommend recording the entirety of the series over the next couple of weeks and saving it for a weekend afternoon when you can watch it all at once. But either taken all in one sitting or seen in segments, O.J.: Made in America is made to overwhelm you and invigorate you. It’s going to be hard to top this one for movie of the year, in whatever form it is seen.

The OJ Story and the Flow of Information in a Pre-Internet World Richard Brody from The New Yorker, June 21, 2016

'O.J. - Made in America': Race, TV, and All Kinds of Heartbreak ... Cynthia Fuchs from Pop Matters

OJ: Made in America Is a Rigorous, Infinitely Absorbing ... - Wired Brian Raftery, June 7, 2016

Forget Your OJ Simpson Fatigue—ESPN's Made in America - Slate Jack Hamilton, June 8, 2016

'OJ: Made In America' Is About America, Not OJ - NPR Linda Holmes

O.J.: Made in America: What ESPNs New O.J. Simpson Documentary Forgot Allen Barra from The Daily Beast

Inside OJ: Made In America, ESPN's best-ever 30 for 30 film - SI.com Richard Deitsch from Sports Illustrated

O.J.: Made In America · 30 For 30 · TV Review ESPN's five-part O.J. ... Noel Murray from The Onion A.V. Club

O.J.: Made in America :: Movies :: Reviews :: Paste - Paste Magazine Tim Grierson

ESPN's O.J. Simpson documentary is the best thing they have ever ... Spencer Hall with 15 reasons to see the film from SB Nation

The 12 Most Eye-Opening Moments From ESPN's 'O.J.: Made In ... Maxwell Strachan from The Huffington Post

O.J.: Made in America: 10 Surreal Moments - Vogue Julia Felsenthal

5 Shocking Revelations from ESPN's 30 for 30 'O.J.: Made in America ... Winston Cook-Wilson from Inverse

Review: 'O.J.: Made In America' Is An Epic, Essential Documentary ... Kevin Jagernauth from The Playlist

O.J.: Made in America is more about the country than the man – and it's essential Todd VanDerWerff from Vox

ESPN's 7.5 hour OJ Simpson documentary puts the trial - The Verge Chris Plante

ESPN's OJ Documentary Is a Masterpiece ... - New York Magazine Will Leitch

The ESPN O.J. Simpson Doc: Yes, It's That Good -- Vulture Jen Chaney

'O.J.: Made In America' is a Meticulous, Powerful Documentary ... Jason Bailey from Flavorwire, April 24, 2016

ESPN's 'O.J.: Made in America' Is Documentary ... - The Atlantic David Sims

O.J. Simpson and the Counter-Revolution of 1968 Thoughts on the first episode of ESPN’s five-part documentary, by Ta-Nehisi Coates from The Atlantic, June 25, 2016

'O.J.: Made in America' Is Essential Viewing - ScreenCrush Matt Singer

'O.J.: Made in America': How Do You Like Him Now? | New Republic Sarah Weinman, May 26, 2016

Reasonable Doubt: On "The People v. OJ Simpson ... - Movie Mezzanine Reasonable Doubt: On “The People v. O.J. Simpson” and “O.J.: Made in America” by Mallory Andrews

CutPrintFilm [Chris Evangelista]

ESPN's O.J. Simpson documentary is even better than FX's - HitFix Alan Sepinwall

The 'Ghost' of O.J. Simpson's Notoriety Looms Over ESPN's ... - The Root Todd Steven Burroughs from The Root, June 11, 2016

Collider [Chris Cabin]

'OJ: Made In America': Review | Reviews | Screen - ScreenDaily Fionnuala Halligan

'O.J.: Made in America' Asks If We Need 464 More ... - Village Voice Calum Marsh

Standard Of Review: 'O.J. Simpson: Made in America' Just May Be The ... Harry Graff from Above the Law

OJ: Made in America Paints a Complex Picture of a Sports ... - The Root Andréa Duncan-Mao from The Root, May 20, 2016

JoBlo.com [Chris Bumbray]

'O.J.: Made In America' Charts Simpson's Rise And Fall : NPR interview with Eric Deggans, NPR TV critic, June 11, 2016

Why ESPN Gave Director Ezra Edelman Nearly Eight Hours for O.J. ... James Andrew Miller interview from Vanity Fair, June 10, 2016

Why the director of OJ: Made in America included graphic ... - The Verge Chris Plante interview, June 8, 2016

'O.J.: Made In America' Is The Only O.J. Simpson Project That Matters Mike Ryan interviews the director from Uproxx, May 25, 2016

“Why Don't We Just Make it Seven-and-a-Half Hours?” Director Ezra ... Alix Lambert interview from Filmmaker magazine, May 20, 2016

'O.J.: Made in America': TV Review - Hollywood Reporter Daniel Fienberg

TV Review: 'O.J.: Made in America' - Variety Brian Lowry

OJ: Made in America: a marvelous, gripping true crime documentary ... Brian Moylan from The Guardian

OJ: Made in America is a damning brief against America itself Michelle Dean from The Guardian, June 19, 2016

John Doyle: OJ documentary scintillating ... - The Globe and Mail

ESPN's 'O.J.: Made in America' is nothing short of a towering ... Hank Stuever from The Washington Post

'O.J.: Made in America' is a movie so compelling ... - Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Why 'O.J.: Made in America' might be the first television show to win an ... Mary McNamara from The LA Times

O.J.: Made in America Movie Review (2016) | Roger Ebert Brian Tellerico

Nicole Simpson Left Trail Of Clues, State Argues - tribunedigital ... Vincent J. Schodolski from The Chicago Tribune, February 3, 1985

Review: 'OJ: Made in America,' - The New York Times A.O. Scott, also seen here: Review: 'O.J.: Made in America,' an Unflinching Take on His Rise and ...

It's a Long Story: 'OJ: Made in America' - The New York Times

O.J.: Made in America - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Edgerton, Nash

SPIDER A- 93

Australia (9 mi) 2007 ‘Scope

An Australian stunt driver writes and directs this short film in ‘Scope about a couple driving in a car and having a pointless squabble, where the director plays the guy, who threatens to jump out of a moving automobile at one point, which only pisses the girl (Mirrah Foulkes) off even more, stopping abruptly for gas and to fume as she tops off her tank. He goes inside & gets a few knick knacks as a peace offering and spreads them around the inside of the car, which the girl dutifully ignores as she heads back out into traffic where a moody silence persists. What follows is a brilliant use of comic timing, a devlish imagination, and a playful spirit, all of which takes place after a long and relatively ordinary build up, but then instantly changes on a dime. It’s clear this guy has a dark and macabre sense of humor, but also a dazzling visual sense, so by the time the credits roll, it’s impossible to keep from laughing—an excellent short.

User reviews from imdb Author: james1410 from Australia

This is an exceptional piece of film. Brilliantly crafted by Nash Edgerton, I think there is little doubt he is about to make a huge impact on the Australian film industry. This 9 minutes is high impact film making with stunning visuals, slick editing, moody cinematography, amazing production value and kick ass directing. Beyond his obvious skills behind the camera and in the editing suite, Nash plays the lead character with great skill and timing. A measured performance before the mayhem sets in. What else can one say when superlatives do not do this offering justice. I eagerly look forward to Nash's debut feature film currently in production.

User reviews from imdb Author: MystifiedMe from Illinois, United States

After watching Spider as well as another short film titled Lucky, it seems that Nash Edgerton has a slightly warped mind that relishes the bizarre unexpected plot twist. Even though the final twist in Spider is rather macabre, I also found it kind of humorous - sort of a "that's horrid but it does serve you right" reaction.

The production of Spider is very real-life and natural feeling, gritty rather than slick. The actress who plays Jill, Mirrah Foulkes, is especially good. Her reactions to Jack's 'sweeet' attempts at making up and to his dreadfully misguided joke, are most believable.

Watching Spider is like reading an imaginative short story, I hope to be able to view more offbeat and good stories by Mr. Edgerton.

User reviews from imdb Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida

I normally don't say this, but if you watch this film, you really should not have any heart problems or be terribly squeamish. I am NOT kidding--if you are not 100% sure, then you should not watch this movie as it is probably the most heart-pounding and amazing shorts I've seen in a long time. I also was very impressed with the film--not just because it made such a very strong visceral reaction on me. The film was amazingly well-constructed and even funny, in a very, very dark and twisted way.

While I could say more or even describe the plot, I'd rather not as it would clearly spoil the film. The bottom line is that this is a great but tough to watch short and I can't wait to see more from the brilliant folks who made it. Great job!

FYI--Aside from starring in the film, directing it and co-writing it, Nash Edgerton is most widely known as, of all things, a stunt man! This guy can apparently do it all!!

THE SQUARE B+ 90

Australia (105 mi) 2008 ‘Scope

Anyone familiar with the James Cain novel The Postman Always Rings Twice is familiar with the elaborate, get-rich schemes to fool and perhaps even murder an unsuspecting spouse, where the allure of lust and instant greed seems to overpower all sense of reason, where the doomed lovers never intend for things to go wrong, but when they do, they’re ill equipped for the ultimate price they’ll have to pay. The tension and suspense is building up a scenario where there’s a good chance they can get away with it, but a minor oversight usually leads to their downfall.

Nash Edgerton is an Australian stunt man while his brother Joel is an actor, but here they combine forces where Joel writes an original story and plays one of the leads while Nash directs and edits the film, with both named as Executive Producers. They continue their playful humor exhibited in their earlier short SPIDER (2007), even as this has a menacing atmosphere throughout, helped along by the gloomy outlook that persists under continual deluges of rain. This story has an almost Biblical Apocalyptic feel to it, as in the dreaded Australian noir atmosphere one senses certain characters are cursed, as the actions play out symmetrically as if to justify this point of view. Droopy-faced Ray (David Roberts) plays an ordinary everyman who oversees a construction site, where his world of woe is seen at home in a loveless marriage, as he rarely utters anything to his clueless wife. But he’s having an affair with a cute young beautician Carla (Claire van der Boom), who’s a dozen or perhaps two dozen years younger, so it’s a baffling affair from the start that accelerates when Carla finds a stash of money her husband (Anthony Hayes, resembling the thuggish Leo role from Twin Peaks) conceals from her that she’s fortunate enough to find. Immediately she puts the clamps on Ray to share the loot and run away with her. But he’s working another under-the-table cash angle at the construction site hoping to pocket an additional $40,000 which he’s concealing from Carla, so he needs time. In the interim, he masterminds a botched arsen attempt at her home (carried out by his brother Joel), an evasive maneuver designed to get her husband to think the money was destroyed in the fire, but the duffel bag supposedly containing the money was untouched, with the money gone, so he knows someone stole it and nearly burned his house down to make it look like an accident.

The back and forth tension between the lovers clearly puts them in desperate straits, as someone apparently sees them secretly meeting and then drives away in haste one night, while Ray also starts receiving extortion letters asking for large sums of money. They’re in a heap of trouble which escalates further out of control with their every move, which eventually feels like a mathematical certainty. It’s not a question of if, but how. Despite the tense, brooding atmosphere that seems to dwell on the seamy underside of life, like living in a shadow world, the characters have legitimate concerns that they must address, but fail miserably each time they do, leaving them more hopelessly mired in their own spider-like trap than they were before. There are more plot twists and turns in the road with criminally savvy characters with agendas they’ve never had to deal with before, always pushing them further into the dark side where accidents are waiting to happen, like neverending pile ups collecting on the freeway. There’s clever interplay between the pets of the amorous couple, as their touching affection for one another seems genuinely motivated, with of course tragic foreboding results, which like their earlier short has a masterful visual stroke of poetic savoir faire and is easily one of the best conceived shots in the film. Despite the ascending level of tragedy, and no real sexual sizzle or tension between the romantic leads, there is a balanced comic wit in how the director handles each successive incident, like the Coen brothers toying with their troubled character’s inevitable sense of doom, where they seem to relish the idea of creatively discovering more Job-like punishment to dish out.

The Village Voice [Melissa Anderson]

One of two fraternal collaborations to open this week (Peter and Benjamin Bratt's La Mission is the other), The Square—indebted to The Postman Always Rings Twice—fails to raise (James M.) Cain. The feature-helming debut of stuntman Nash Edgerton, co-written by brother Joel (recently seen as Stanley Kowalski in BAM's hot-ticket A Streetcar Named Desire), this Down Under noir confuses incoherent body pileups with "twists." Cheating construction-site manager Ray (David Roberts) and beautician Carla (Claire van der Boom) want to ditch their Sydney spouses and start anew, with the help of a duffel bag full of cash stashed in the attic by Carla's mulleted husband. An arson plot goes wrong, a halfwit is impaled, a baby is imperiled, a blackmailer is chained to a motel sink—all convoluted plot developments (with multiple holes and inconsistencies) that add zero suspense but increase your suspicion that the Edgerton boys simply thought more was better (as opposed to 2008's excellent pared-down Postman rethink, Jerichow). Or maybe they were hoping to distract viewers from their film's most lethal flaw: two adulterous leads as sexless as Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in Australia.

Time Out New York review [3/5] Stephen Garrett

From Mad Max to Crocodile Dundee, cinema’s Aussies are a famously tough—and often goofy—lot. So it’s no surprise that the absurdist-nihilist approach to noir popularized by Joel and Ethan Coen would have wormed its way Down Under. Another pair of brothers, director Nash and cowriter-costar Joel Edgerton, has taken that brooding genre and made it equally cheeky with The Square, an uneven but accomplished yarn that aspires to Blood Simple territory. All the genre’s conventions—femme fatale, shady goons, best-laid plans spiraling out of control—have a proper amount of verve and flair to make the whole package feel almost fresh.

But the challenge when dealing with a film noir narrative is that the male leads have to be cunning cads, know-it-alls who are blind to their own inextricable doom. Casting is key, yet David Roberts, as the love-struck dupe who lets his feelings for a restless housewife (Van der Boom) dictate his fate, is only intermittently convincing. Whether tough guy or coward, he never strikes the right balance to make it seem like he could outwit or intimidate anyone enough to get his way. And if your hero isn’t convincing, then your film never really is either.

What is impressive is the filmmaker’s facility with atmosphere, plus his ripe eye for giving blue-collar bruisers just enough dimension to make them more than mouth-breathing meatheads. As for the plot, shock twists abound with diminishing returns, though the final scene is a succession of delicious what-the?!? moments that will leave viewers smiling and wincing in equal measure.

not coming to a theater near you (Rumsey Taylor) review

The Square refers to a plot of land at a construction site, its perimeter blocked off, and its interior a grid of rebar in preparation for a concrete pour. It is also a makeshift grave for a murdered man, and this is why the site’s foreman – one of a slew of characters involved in the impetuous crime that is this film’s central conceit – grows more anxious each time the formal pour is delayed.

This anxiety is to distinguish each scene in the film, none of which play out in precisely the way the practitioners of the crime would prefer. It’s a domino chain of cause and effect, a series of familiar demonstrations of selfishness and greed, one following the next in a series of casually entertaining contrivances. There are multiple scenes of intrigue, deception, and climax delivered in a monotone of familiarity.

The plot is so rigidly mechanized that the characters are rendered increasingly ineffectual. The initial error is set in motion by a man who loves a woman married to another man. There is her husband, who is hostile and untrusting. Then there is the proverbial suitcase full of money that has them all considering the prospect of escape.

The director, Nash Edgerton, handles these events with comprehensive adeptness, and the film never lags even if its highlights don’t reach the feverish heights he aims for. The problem is that he’s dressed his familiar plot mechanics with frivolous characterization, specifically misogynous perception of women, and sporadic violence uncharacteristic of its enactor.

There is nothing wrong with how the film overexerts the machinations of plot at the expense of proper characterization. But the problem, once the plot devolves into desparate characters and their desperate actions, is that the characters engender no sympathy. When the mess unfolds at the end, the most enterprisingly manipulative character is on his knees weeping because of his losses, and we’re to sympathize with his total misfortune. Instead, we’re left with the sense that his sorrow is entirely earned, as well as that of each other conspirator, betraying any investment the viewer has in any of the principal characters.

The Onion A.V. Club review [B+]

The title of Nash Edgerton’s debut feature, The Square, is baldly generic and unrevealing, but like the film itself, it unfolds impressively over time. In one reading, the square is David Roberts, a quiet, seemingly straitlaced man supervising a construction site in Sydney, Australia. In another, it’s the as-yet-unbuilt concrete plaza dominating his current worksite, which becomes a symbol of his frustration and impotence. And in a third reading, it describes his romantic life, which is one step more complicated than a mere love triangle. He’s having an affair with a vivacious younger hairdresser (Claire van der Boom); his marriage may end if his prim wife catches them, but if van der Boom’s thuggish husband (Anthony Hayes) finds out, the consequences will likely be more severe and hands-on. Unfortunately, their small neighborhood is a tight community where nothing stays hidden for long.

The Square lurches into noir territory when van der Boom spots Hayes concealing a gym bag crammed full of cash and bloody towels, and decides she and Roberts should steal the money and run off together. Roberts is awaiting a $40,000 kickback at work and doesn’t want to rock the boat, but doesn’t want to reveal his scheme to van der Boom, either. So to prove his devotion, he gives in to a plot that would put the money in their hands and cover their tracks. Naturally, things go awry, and in the manner of such movies, the first bad decision inevitably leads to progressively queasier ones. By the time someone attempts to blackmail Roberts, he doesn’t even know which secret his enemy is threatening to expose.

That plot complexity is one of The Square’s major appeals, but it’s par for the course in the noir-thriller genre. Rarer and equally appealing is the film’s restraint and ambiguity, both in the details—it’s never clear how Hayes acquired that blood-streaked money, for instance—and in the complex moral tone, which makes virtually every character culpable, and regards a gun-toting freelance arsonist (Joel Edgerton, Nash’s brother, co-writer, and co-producer) with the same blended sympathy and antipathy it lavishes on Roberts and van der Boom’s compromised lovers. With her soft young Ellen Page face and obvious naïve desperation, van der Boom isn’t much of a femme fatale, but she suffices for a story that’s grittier and less heightened than most noirs, and Roberts is equally compelling as a man in over his head. The occasional missteps (some overly precious symbolism, the grimy DV look) rarely get in the way of the film’s many winces, gasps, and breathless, cringing anticipation.

DVD Talk (Tyler Foster) review [4/5] Theatrical release

Movieline (Michelle Orange) review [5.5/10]

eFilmCritic.com (Erik Childress) review [4/5]

Slant Magazine [Nick Schager]

Cinematical [William Goss]

Urban Cinefile review Andrew L. Urban and Louise Keller

Film School Rejects [Rob Hunter]

RopeofSilicon (Brad Brevet) review [B-]

Movie-Vault.com (Avril Carruthers) review [6/10]

exclaim! [Robert Bell]

The L Magazine [Henry Stewart]

Big Picture Big Sound (David Kempler) review [3/4]

CHUD.com (Alex Riviello) review

The Hollywood Reporter review Sheri Linden

Variety (David Rooney) review

In Film Australia review Luke Buckmaster

Mediasearch, Australia review Dave Griffiths

Boston Globe (Wesley Morris) review [3/4]

The Boston Phoenix (Tom Meek) review

Philadelphia Inquirer (Steven Rea) review [3.5/4]

Philadelphia Daily News (Gary Thompson) review [B]

Austin Chronicle review [3.5/5] Marc Savlov

San Francisco Chronicle [G. Allen Johnson]

Canuxploitation: Sharing the Blame

Edmonds, Don

ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS

USA Germany (96 mi) 1974

User Reviews from imdb Author: Rathko from Los Angeles

An exploitation classic that is a surprisingly enjoyable film. Ilsa, the Arian commandant of a secret medical facility, sets out to prove to her doubting superiors that women are able to endure greater pain and suffering than men. She does this by torturing the female inmates in increasingly diabolical ways, while trying to break the American 'sexual freak of nature', Wolfe. Cue lots of gratuitous nudity, castration, strangulation, boiling alive, magnificent pre-implant breasts, softcore sex and gang rape, golden showers, and general bloody mayhem. The German accents are hilarious, and the acting barely one step up from Hershael Gordon Lewis and early John Waters. It even has the ubiquitous 'moral message' at the beginning. But unlike so many of these movies, 'Ilsa' manages to avoid descending into tedious repetition half way through, and builds to a brilliantly ludicrous climax in which an entire camp is gunned down by machine gun fire, without a drop of blood being spilt. Brilliant.

Not many recognize Ilsa, the most notorious character in exploitation films as a Canadian creation, but she was invented by the demented minds at Montreal's Cinepix. In her first adventure, a Nazi medical camp provides the backdrop for brutality as Ilsa (Dyanne Thorne) and her minions perform bizarre experiments. A truckload of fresh prisoners, both male and female, are subjected to insidious torture as Ilsa tries to prove that women have a higher threshold for pain and suffering than men. At night, Ilsa indulges in a liaison with one of the new inmates, an American named Wolfe (Gregory Knoph) with abnormal sexual powers. While Ilsa prepares to show off her cruel scientific breakthroughs to the General (Richard Kennedy), the other inmates plan a revolt to get their revenge. A cut above the sequels, this film features sickening Nazi atrocities including a vicious castration, flesh eating maggots, and gratuitous whipping. It's all pulled off with tongues planted firmly in Nazi cheeks, of course, but even with a sardonic sensibility, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS makes for an unsettling viewing experience.

Dr. Gore's movie reviews

Aryan Goddess ILSA tortures women for the Third Reich. She runs a medical experiment camp. You know, it's all for the fatherland. Like infecting women with diseases, boiling them alive, putting maggots in their wounds etc. Her valuable research will help Germany. She also has a pet project brewing. Seems ILSA thinks that women can withstand more pain than men. She longs to prove her theory and beats as many women as possible to test it. It's all purely for research of course.

Dyanne Thorne, (ILSA), is what makes this movie happen. She is perfection. Without her as ILSA, this movie would not have been nearly as good. She was ready for anything. Large breasted ILSA runs the camp with an iron fist. Having her naked a lot helped. I think I love her. She has turned me on to jack boots for life.

So ILSA beats a lot of women and looks for the man who will satisfy her from the prisoners. And who finally gives ILSA a run for her money? That's right baby. An American. God Bless the U.S.A. Only he can tame the wild ILSA. That was a great scene.

"ILSA, She Wolf of the SS" is a superior exploitation film. All B-movie fans should see it. Blood, torture and breasts aplenty. And then there's ILSA. I salute you.

Something Awful (part 1 of review) Zack Parsons

Something Awful (part 2 of review)

Mike Bracken--Epinions.com

Guns, Girls & Ghouls Boris Lugosi

Prison Flicks Review

Bloodtype Online [Ed Demko]

Dante's Inferno

The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review Richard Scheib

Cinema Crazed

Epinions - Shaithis's Review

DVD Verdict Paul Corupe reviews The Ilse Collection

DVD Drive-In George R. Reis reviews The Ilse Collection

ILSA, HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHEIKS

Canada USA (85 mi) 1974

Canuxploitation: Sharing the Blame

Cinepix commissioned the sequel to Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. This time, the "most dreaded Nazi of them all" shows up in the Middle East. The lustful El Sharif (Victor Alexander) depends on Ilsa to run his white slavery ring, which kidnaps young American girls and sells them to the highest bidder. Between auctions, Ilsa trains the girls to please their new masters, rich oil barons looking for new additions to their harems. When secret agent Commander Adam (Michael Thayer) shows up to investigate, Ilsa risks the security of El Sharif's operation as her sexual desires once again outweigh her duties. No longer trapped in the dingy, wooden concentration camp, the lush Arabian palace setting is used to full advantage, with vibrant colors, bright sunny exteriors, and more interesting production design. Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks is also a little lighter on flagellation, but perhaps even more cartoon-like than the first film. By not being quite as focused on pushing extremes, the sequel settles into a relaxed pace and makes is simply a more endurable film. The only really excessively unpleasant scene, involving a diaphragm crafted out of plastic explosives, is much more disgusting in concept than execution. Keep your eyes peeled for Russ Meyer supervixens Uschi Digart (Cherry, Harry and Raquel) and Haji (Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!) in El Sharif's harem.

Dr. Gore's movie reviews

I can't say enough good things about Ilsa, (Dyanne Thorne). Her outrageous German accent and voluptuous body make this flick a stellar exploitation movie. "My name....is ILSA!" I want her to be my harem keeper. First I would need a harem though. Details, details.

Ilsa isn't so much a character as she is a historical figure. Whenever there are strong women throughout history dominating other women for sadistic pleasure, they shall all be called "Ilsa". The Ilsa from the first movie was in Nazi Germany and was killed at the end of the flick. So clearly this is not the exact same Ilsa. The new Ilsa runs a harem for a depraved "Oil Sheik".

Ilsa runs the harem efficiently, telling girls the right way to lick a body, disciplining traitors with flesh eating ants and presiding over topless kung fu fighting sessions. There are a lot of breasts in this flick. The harem likes to go topless. Ilsa also comes up with a plastic explosive that you place in a girl's private area that will detonate when having sex. Yes. Exploding vaginas. The sleaze was working overtime.

"Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks" promises nasty sleaze and does not disappoint. Every other scene had either blood or breasts or both. It's a great exploitation movie. I recommend it.

Mike Bracken--Epinions.com

Movie House Commentary Tuna and Johnny Web

Bloodtype Online [Ed Demko]

Cinema Crazed

DVD Verdict Paul Corupe reviews The Ilse Collection

DVD Drive-In George R. Reis reviews The Ilse Collection

Egoyan, Atom

Egoyan, Atom World Cinema

This stylish and highly assured young filmmaker's work combines self-reflexive meditations on the nature of film and video with a black, ironic sense of humor. Director Wim Wenders was so impressed with Egoyan's third feature, Family Viewing (1987), an irreverent study of familial breakdown, cultural alienation, sexual frustration and the disposability of the past all linked together by an omnipresence of video technology, that, when awarded the Prix Alcan for Wings of Desire at the 1987 Montreal New Cinema Festival, Wenders publicly turned the prize over to the younger filmmaker. Egoyan has subsequently continued making his own idiosyncratic, often satirical brand of brightly hued and darkly themed meditations on sexuality, politics and the media with Speaking Parts (1989), The Adjuster (1991), Gross Misconduct (1992), Calendar (1993) and Exotica (1994). — Baseline

Film Reference Philip Kemp

Given Atom Egoyan's background and family history, the chief preoccupations of his films might seem all but inevitable. Born in Cairo to Armenian parents, he was taken to Canada as a child and grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, a town so full of British expatriates it seemed like a colonial outpost. While he was still a child his father, an artist, began an extra-marital affair with a woman whose three children were all fatally ill. Small wonder if his films deal so insistently with problems of ethnic identity, broken families, alienation, loss, and death.

Add to these themes, at least in his earlier films, an uneasy fascination with the role of visual media in the modern world. Video in particular serves for Egoyan's characters as an escape route, a form of do-it-yourself therapy that allows them to evade the unsatisfactory reality around them. In Family Viewing a husband and wife lie semi-naked side by side, neither touching nor speaking, grimly watching videos of their earlier couplings that the man has taped over scenes of his son's childhood. When not viewing tapes, he calls up phone-sex lines. Two female characters in Speaking Parts, obsessed with a wannabe actor (and part-time gigolo), spend more time watching him on video than in the flesh. In The Adjuster, Egoyan's most dreamlike and elusive film, a censor secretly videotapes the porn films she's being shown—experience at third hand.

Repeatedly, Egoyan's characters try to reconstruct reality to fit their own yearnings. The protagonist of his first feature, Next of Kin, bored with his own bland WASP background, reinvents himself as the long-lost son of an expatriate Armenian family, It's typical of Egoyan's deadpan humour that the young man is accepted without question, though not looking remotely Armenian. Identity is a charade, and not even a well-acted one.

Elliptical and enigmatic, intricately structured, Egoyan's films have sometimes been called cold and contrived; though as Kent Jones notes, objecting to Egoyan's work being contrived "is a little like reprimanding Monet for his loose brushwork or dismissing Schoenberg for being atonal." As for "coldness," Egoyan resolutely shuns sentimentality, even when dealing with so emotive a subject as the death of children, but there's a soulful, troubled melancholy to his films that's counterbalanced, but never cancelled out, by a concurrent sense of the absurd. This ambiguity of tone can often be unsettling, an effect the director fully intends. He stresses that his films are "designed to make the viewer self-conscious. I revel in that . . . . The viewer has to invest themself in what they're seeing because then the emotions you are able to engage in are that much stronger."

The films often touch on disturbing territory—voyeurism, incest, paedophilia—and with their fragmented structure, give up their secrets only gradually. Sometimes, as in Exotica, a mordant study of need and exploitation set largely in a strip club, it's not until the final moments that we realise the full significance of what we've been watching—and not always even then. This mirrors the troubled outlook of his characters who rarely see anything whole, least of all themselves. Hilditch, lonely serial killer of lonely girls in Felicia's Journey, never thinks of himself as a monster. In his own eyes he's the kindest of men—just as Noah Render, the eponymous insurance man in The Adjuster, believes he's acting out of pure compassion in sexually exploiting his clients.

To date, Egoyan's most explicit statement of the cultural and emotional dislocation central to all his films comes in Calendar, where he ironically casts himself as a photographer visiting Armenia who loses his wife (played by Egoyan's own wife, actress Arsinde Khanjian) to a handsome guide. The film is at once funny and desolate, seemingly simple (by Egoyan's standards) in its structure yet teasingly oblique. Khanjian is one of a number of actors (others include David Hemblen, Elias Koteas, Bruce Greenwood and Maury Chaikin) who constantly recur in Egoyan's films, reinforcing the sense of a hermetic, inward-looking world. Venues are typically bland and drab—featureless modern hotels and offices figure frequently—without much intimation of life going on beyond the edges of the screen. Even when he portrays a community, such as the small provincial township of The Sweet Hereafter, there's little sense of social cohesion: all the houses seem remote from each other, with each person or family trapped in their own separate universe.

The Sweet Hereafter and its successor, Felicia's Journey, marked a departure in Egoyan's career, adapting material by others (novels by Russell Banks and William Trevor) instead of working to his own original scripts. Both films are sensitively crafted, keeping faith with their originals while further exploring his perennial themes of loss and disaffection. ("All my characters," he observes, "have had missing people in their lives.") In Felicia's Journey, what's more, Egoyan intriguingly maps his bleak, sardonic poetry on to the suburbs and industrial complexes of Birmingham. But the incorporation of other authorial sensibilities into his work seems to dilute the mix rather than enriching it; neither film achieves the intensity, or the complexity, of The Adjuster or Exotica. A vision as potent and idiosyncratic as that of Egoyan is perhaps best taken neat.

Ego Film Arts official website

The Egoyan Nucleus Egoyan fan website

Atom Egoyan's fan site

All About Atom biography material from the Egoyan Nucleus

TCMDB biography from Turner Classic Movies

All-Movie Guide bio from Rebecca Flint Marx

Atom Egoyan @ Filmbug profile and biography

Canadian Film Encyclopedia extensive biography

Atom Egoyan: Life and His Cinema profile by The Journal of Turkish Weekly

northernstar.ca brief profile and filmography

Atom Egoyan NNDB profile

Atom Egoyan - Armeniapedia.org Armenian Encyclopedia profile

Location One » Summer Cinema - Atom Egoyan brief profile for a film retrospective

Order of Canada Citation

Canadian Films: What Are We to Make of Them? - Kinema Gerald Pratley, 1998

Atom Egoyan’s Journeys | MovieMaker Magazine Kevin Lewis, November 12, 1999

CINETEXT Atom Egoyan Crissa-Jean Chappell, July 18, 2003

Granta: 'Dr Gonad' by Atom Egoyan Dr. Gonad, Egoyan article in Granta, Summer 2004

Bright Lights Film Journal Article (2006) Four Films in Search of an Author, by David L. Pike, May 2006

Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan directs Wagner - Entertainment ... Julie Mollins from Red Orbit, August 25, 2006

New York Movies - Spellbound - page 1 - Village Voice Spellbound, article written by Egoyan for The Village Voice, November 29, 2005

CTV.ca Filmmaker Egoyan set to teach at U. of Toronto August 10, 2006

Moving Pictures Magazine [Ron Holloway] overview of his work and career (2008)

Atom Egoyan is 2008 Dan David Prize Winner Avi Weinryb from Comic Book Bin, May 20, 2008

Dan David Prize : Atom Egoyan also brief article by Avi Weinryb from Comic Book Bin, May 20, 2008: Atom Egoyan is 2008 Dan David Prize Winner

Egoyan, Atom They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They

Review and Atom Egoyan Interview by Cynthia Fuchs (after EXOTICA), Philadelphia City Paper and Women’s Film Studies (1994)

"Family Romances" Richard Porton interview (after THE SWEET HEREAFTER) from Cineaste, December 1997

Charlie Rose - Atom Egoyan Charlie Rose televised interview with Egoyan January 9, 1998 (27 minutes)

Marcia Pally - A Conversation With Atom Egoyan A German version appeared in Berliner Zeitung magazine on March 5, 1998 (English/German transcript available)

kamera.co.uk - interview - A Quick Chat with Atom Egoyan by Monika ... Interview by Monika Maurer, November 1998

Atom Egoyan interview by Scott Tobias from the Onion A.V. Club, November 17, 1999

Egoyan's Journey: An Interview with Atom Egoyan Donato Totaro and Simon Galiero from Offscreen, February 8, 2000

Reel.com: Atom Egoyan and Arsinee Khanjian Pam Grady interviews both following ARARAT (2002)

BBC - Radio 3 - Atom Egoyan Interview Transcript of the John Tusa interview following ARARAT (2002) – audio also available

PopMatters Film Interview | Atom Egoyan - Ararat Cynthia Fuchs interview, November 29, 2002

The Senses and Substitution: A Conversation with Atom Egoyan E W Emma Wilson talks with Egoyan about his career from NEXT OF KIN (1984) through CITADEL (2006) (pdf format)

Film Monthly.com – A Conversation with Atom Egoyan Interview by Ben Poster, April 14, 2008

Atom Egoyan: TIFF Interview Laura Thompson video interview on CBC TV, September 10, 2008, on YouTube (6:54)

Part 1, Part 2 Peter Keough interviews Egoyan from The Boston Phoenix, May 15 – 17, 2009

Interview: Atom Egoyan Adam Keleman interview from Slant magazine, March 24, 2010

Sublimated Rage, Sex and the History of Cinema: An Interview with Chloe Director Atom Egoyan Matt Mazur interview from Pop Matters, March 24, 2010

The Rumpus Interview with Atom Egoyan: Chloe Interview by Larry Edalatpour from The Rumpus, April 8, 2010

Atom Egoyan (Jonathan Romney) | Film International book review by James Deutsch

Sarabande | Bullfrog Films

Atom Egoyan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

NEXT OF KIN

Canada (70 mi) 1984

23-year-old Peter is bored. How bored? So bored he'll take a trip simply to pretend he is the long-lost son of an Armenian family whom he learned about by surreptitiously viewing their videotaped therapy session. Soon he is on the brink of getting involved with his "sister," and things start to get a bit hairy as Peter (Patrick Tierney in a perfect performance) gets close. This is vintage Egoyan -- his debut -- made when he was only 23 and merely 72 minutes long, an ironic and darkly comedic look at the idea that maybe you can choose your family after all. Egoyan's DVD commentary track is remarkably candid in his feelings about the film's shortcomings and is definitely worth a listen.

Cinepassion.org Fernando F. Croce

Twentysomething naïf Patrick Tierney drifts through his WASP household until video therapy one day gives him a glimpse of an Armenian clan in emotional tatters for having given their only son up for adoption. Already a believer in therapeutic role-playing, he takes off to Toronto to present himself at the family's doorsteps as the long-lost boy, cozing up to the parents (Berge and Sirvart Fazlian) and hitting it off with rebellious "sister" Arsinée Khanjian. Released in the same year as Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise, Atom Egoyan's remarkably lucid first feature is every bit as notable a debut in the landscape of independent filmmaking. Though his lustrous style's embryonic at best (visually, the movie is very much indieland circa 1998), Egoyan's complexity of themes (video, families, unformed identities, the "absent gaze") is already on display. The surface surety of the film's arc, from white-bread sterility to warm, ethnic "Otherness," is constantly fractured (and, as result, expanded) by the director's questioning use of identity, narration and stereotype -- the mystique of video technology (to be explored further in Family Viewing) is here not nearly as destructive as the characters' cultural deception, pointed toward one other as much as toward themselves. Arguably the most easily accessed (and misread) of Egoyan's films, though no less rigorous in its ironies for that. Also with Margaret Loveys.

Strictly Film School Acquarello

A pensive and aimless young man named Peter Foster (Patrick Tierney) lies on his bed listening to his parents' all too frequent arguments and, attempting to drown out their incessant bickering, turns up the stereo, shuts his eyes, and retreats into his own private and impenetrable world. Concerned over her son's seemingly frequent disconnection from reality through these episodes of inscrutable playacting, Mrs. Foster (Margaret Loveys) enlists the assistance of a family counselor (Phil Rash) who videotapes his encounter sessions as a means of encouraging the family to review their interaction and gain insight from their objective observation. Peter dutifully returns to the counseling center - not surprisingly, alone - to view the videotapes before the next appointment, but soon finds his attention diverted to the case file of an immigrant Armenian family named Deryan whose son Bedros was given up for adoption years earlier, shortly after arriving into the country, and whose palpable absence still hovers over the emotionally wounded family - perhaps manifesting in the intractably traditional father, George's (Berge Fazlian) estrangement from his westernized, progressive thinking, artistic daughter Azah (Arsinée Khanjian), the Deryan's sole remaining child. Captivated by the plight of the Deryan family, Peter, with the counselor's approval, proposes to leave home - ostensibly to go on a soul-searching trip where he is to periodically chronicle his thoughts on a running audio journal - but instead, initiates contact with George and Sonya Deryan (Sirvart Fazlian) claiming to be the receptive couple's long lost son.

Marking Atom Egoyan's first feature film, Nextof Kin a visually assured, lucid, and thoughtful exposition on alienation, displacement, and the amorphous nature of home and family. Incorporating innovative narrative devices of circular structure and video imaging, Egoyan explores the dichotomous role of technology as both a convenient tool for communication and an impersonal barrier to true human connection (a modern-day existential angst that is similarly portrayed in Mike Nichols' The Graduate, to which Egoyan pays homage in the film's early sequence): Peter's voice-over that is visually reinforced by the recurring shots of an airport baggage carousel, reflecting his sense of aimlessness and disorientation; the Foster's videotaped counseling session that ironically serves, not to facilitate dialogue, but to further alienate the self-conscious Peter from his family; the tape recorder that becomes a literal surrogate to Peter's articulated thoughts. Furthermore, in illustrating the residual trauma caused the Deryan's 'lost' son Bedros, Egoyan introduces his recurring theme of the absent child - an unresolved emotional fracture that would propel the psychological (and emotional) trajectory of his seminal films, Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter. By exploring the dynamic - and often necessary - function of compassionate role-playing and deception in social and familial relationships, Egoyan creates a haunting and affectionate contemporary humanist fable on identity, impersonation, and connection.

Next of Kin Egoyan’s The Nucleus

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias] The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

Reel.com dvd review [2-Disc Set] [4/4] Rod Armstrong, The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

DVD Talk (Gil Jawetz) dvd review [4/5] The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

DVD Verdict [Kerry Birmingham] The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

FAMILY VIEWING

Canada (86 mi) 1987

Time Out review Tony Rayns

Dad seems like a regular, middle class guy, but his penchants for mild sado-masochism and phone sex have driven his wife to leave him. He packes his senile mother-in-law off to a low-rent old people's home, and instals a charming, sitcom-style bimbo to meet his domestic and sexual needs. His son, meanwhile, spends all his free time visiting Granny in the home, where he strikes up a friendship with a young woman who happens to work for the phone-sex business patronised by his father. Egoyan's movie offers a rare - in 1988, unique - blend of black comedy, parody, formal fun-and-games, and emotive drama, and finally proves to have a remarkable range and maturity, giving equal weight to everything from the implications of video surveillance to the plight of elderly ethnic immigrants. You laugh one minute, gasp the next, and grope for the Kleenex moments later.

Atom Egoyan, an Egyptian-born, Canadian-based writer-director, is perhaps too effective in depicting detachment in his mixed-media drama of Oedipal unrest, "Family Viewing." Using videotape, TV shows, pornography and images from surveillance cameras, Egoyan re-creates high-tech ennui so completely that we tune out his carefully crafted, emotionally drained depiction of couch-potato hell.

In his brief career, the 27-year-old auteur has focused exclusively on remote-control relationships in a society weaned on the screen, a civilization that communicates only during commercial breaks. His first feature, "Next of Kin," dealt with a family learning to communicate in videotape therapy; his second, the low-budget satire "Family Viewing," looks at a phlegmatic sitcom family headed by Stan (David Hemblen), a video components distributor. Stan's live-in girlfriend Sandra (Gabrielle Rose) takes an altogether too healthy interest in her lover's adolescent son Van (Aidan Tierney), who resents his father for all the usual reasons.

When Van discovers that his father has been taping over old family movies -- replacing the footage with homemade pornography starring himself and Sandra -- the boy flouts his father's authority in an effort to preserve his memories of his mother. After replacing the old tapes with blanks, he rescues his maternal grandmother from a run-down nursing home with the help of Aline (Arsine'e Khanjian), a sex-a-phone girl. Not so surprisingly, Aline numbers Stan and Sandra among her clients.

Oh, what a wan and weary bunch they are, not just half-baked, but mashed, stuffed back in their shells and covered with cheese food. The actors, except for Tierney as the awakening Van, are all automatons, as Egoyan no doubt intended. He does get the message across -- this is the Far Side of the tube.

Pedro Sena retrospective [3/5]

Atom Egoyan is not easy to figure out. We don't really know if he wishes to become a bit of a David Lynch, or if he wishes to become a bit of a Luis Bunuel. His films are full of surrealistic details which keep our attention, but unlike Bunuel, or even Lynch, the storylines are rather weak, and tend to be evasive. Bunuel, we always knew that the story was immediate, and that tomorrow and yesterday were always around, we just never knew when. But with Egoyan, the concern seems to be how the characters are feeling now, and that's that. It may be surreal, but it should have much interest for psychiatrists and psycho-analysts, which, unfortunately, we are not.

Egoyan even goes so far, on occasion, as to replay the scene in its entirety, but unlike Godard, he does not give us a different conclusion to direct us to a different set of circumstances. The characters are trapped in the play/replay of their videos and life. They are not connected. And the film seems to be a series of slight vignettes that eventually come together to tell a basic story of the teenage son that is trying to grow out of his father's shadowy image. The film tends to blame that image on the fact that the father has no liking for his mother. The son, seems to know that, and is trying to correct it. He doesn't exactly dislike his step mother, but he is not about to like her either. But then, he doesn't know his own mother, until the end of the film.

There are some curious thoughts here.... television provides a focal point, but no connection to anything within it in particular, starting with the aging grandmother. And then, there are telephones, which DO make connections but not quite the right ones. In almost all the situations, all the phone calls are used for the wrong purposes, and not to make things right, nice, or ok.

While Egoyan makes a valid point in his film, and the later one THE ADJUSTER, he is still lacking in the one part of this kind of filming that defines weather a viewer stays or goes. He doesn't let us in, what is going on. Everything is hidden, as it usually is, be it behind the TV camera, the telephone, or just appearances, like those of his childhood. But this part is, in this film, the one thing that is probably best be left alone to die. It drags the meaning, and the resolutions into a film that lures you into wondering what it is about, but not really giving a darn about what it really is about. This, it seems to this reviewer, is a terrible attitude to take when it comes to this film. It destroys it, and makes it no fun to sit through.

But there are enough eccentricities to keep us amused. The satirical side of this film is deadly, and one could only hope that it had been able to explore that side a bit more.

Family Viewing, Postmodernism, Canadian film, Harold Innis Family Viewing and the Spatialization of Time, by Donato Totaro from Offscreen, March 31, 2001

Cinepassion.org Fernando F. Croce

Channel 4 Film capsule review

Family Viewing Egoyan’s The Nucleus

INTERVIEW WITH ATOM EGOYAN by Ron Burnett, Spring 1988, after making FAMILY VIEWING, originally appearing in Film Views

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias] The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

Reel.com dvd review [2-Disc Set] [4/4] Rod Armstrong, The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

DVD Talk (Gil Jawetz) dvd review [4/5] The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

DVD Verdict [Kerry Birmingham] The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

Movie Review - Family Viewing - Review/Film; Interchangeable ... Janet Maslin from the New York Times

SPEAKING PARTS

Canada (93 mi) 1989

Pursuing the obsession with sex, death and videotape evident in Family Viewing, Egoyan here addresses the dangers of 'living in a situation in which everything depends upon one's attachment to, or rejection of, certain images'. For Clara (Rose), the danger lies in her desire to turn her dead brother's life into a TV movie, a project from which she is progressively erased. For shy hotel chambermaid Lisa (Khanjian), who watches videos of the man she loves as an extra in movies, it's her naive ignorance of the medium's potential for manipulation. Handsome gigolo Lance (McManus) has a role in both their lives; as the object of Lisa's unrequited, strangely ritualised love; as Clara's lover and the actor playing her brother in the film. In striking contrast to the flat, degraded video images of Family Viewing, the visuals here are lush and beautifully designed; still, a sensation of unreality persists. Machines like the video telephone link used by Lance and Clara as a sex aid seem to hinder rather than aid communication. Nevertheless, far from condemning recording media out of hand, Egoyan scrutinises our ambiguous relationship with them; and as the characters grope towards less alienated (self) images, the film achieves a remarkable synthesis of intellectual analysis and deeply felt emotion.

Goatdog's Movies (Michael W. Phillips, Jr.) review [4/5]

Atom Egoyan, a Canadian postmodernist preoccupied with video technology, alienation and, of course, himself, mulls over these matters in his starkly narcissistic "Speaking Parts." While comparisons with Steven Soderbergh's "sex, lies, and videotape" are inescapable, Egoyan's chill and haunted essay is only a distant relation.

Soderbergh's alienated egotists romp and sweat through a video-aided narrative, but Egoyan's troubled souls walk like wraiths through a wasteland echoing with the prophecies of George Orwell and Marshall McLuhan. Like his earlier "Family Viewing," this intricately wired pastiche of realities and instant playbacks is a couch potato's nightmare, a work of the newly graduated Pepsi generation.

A contemporary of Soderbergh, the 29-year-old filmmaker naturally thinks the world is a more fearful place with the omnipresence of cameras, tapes and tubes. TV's "Wonder Years" warms up audiences with home movies, AT&T urges us to reach out and touch someone, but Egoyan can't seem to find anybody home. He's like a native who fears the camera, once aimed, will steal his spirit.

The protagonists of "Speaking Parts" don't say anything until about eight minutes into the film, a slow, non-narrative scrawl through the lives of three people at a hotel, modern and depersonalized and photographed in dream time. Another eight minutes then pass before the characters, all angular, androgynous, curly-haired brunets, sort themselves out. The prettiest of the trio is a film extra and aspiring actor, Lance (Michael McManus), who makes beds and guests as part of the hotel's housekeeping crew.

When Clara, (Gabrielle Rose), a troubled screenwriter, checks into the hotel, Lance wangles an audition for a part in her upcoming movie about a brother who donates a lung to his dying sister. The two establish a relationship, which is consummated when they masturbate together via videophone. "Sex, lies and videotape," viewers will recall, also dealt with the voyeurism and the onanistic dangers of the electronic media.

While Lance and Clara are moaning and gasping and listening to his audition tape all at once, Lisa (Arsinee Khanjian), a handsome chambermaid, is folding peach sheets and towels in the sinister, institutional gray bowels of the hotel. Obsessively in love with the enigmatic Lance, she spends her free time renting and watching his films. "He's just an extra," objects the video store clerk, striking up an acquaintance with the scary girl. "He doesn't have any lines." "There's nothing special about words," she says.

Egoyan, who wrote and directed the film, certainly would agree, for he tells the story in menacingly attractive images, full of icy blues and drained purples. He uses the devil's own technology to sound the alarm, which is a bit like complaining about the smell of the pigsty while savoring the bacon. By setting the picture five years in the future, Egoyan makes use of the videophone and video-mausoleums (the Japanese already have them, he says). This means that loved ones need never die but live on in their tombscreens as pixel zombies.

"Speaking Parts" is a low-budget project but more polished than Egoyan's previous work. And though it offers much to contemplate, it is awfully stuck on itself. What little it has to say is not only pretentious but garbled, as when Lisa interviews a bride for a videotape. "Love is about someone else feeling you. Do you feel him feeling you the way you feel yourself?" It sounds like Ferlinghetti on an Apple computer.

Egoyan, who has been compared to Canada's David Cronenberg, also sees the world as a horror movie, monstrous with insensitive guys, like talk show hosts and big commercial movie producers (yes, that tired old whine) who corrupt the genius of the artist. In this instance, the studio "ruins" Clara's story by insisting that the brother donate his lung to a brother instead of a sister. Well now, that does throw a wrench into the rudder.

Egoyan, an interesting talent, could learn a lot from Soderbergh's spicier, warmer "sex, lies, and videotape," an honest, robust, rounded film by a director who looked inside himself and found a story to tell. "Speaking Parts" seems dishonest and posturing, more like intellectual masturbation. Oh well, that's why they call it projection.

Ted Prigge retrospective [4/4]

Strictly Film School review Acquarello

Reel.com dvd review [3.5/4] Rod Armstrong

DVD Talk (Holly E. Ordway) dvd review [1/5]

filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) review [4/5]

Speaking Parts Egoyan’s The Nucleus

AN INTRODUCTION TO ATOM EGOYAN'S FILM, SPEAKING PARTS by Ron Burnett, from Critical Approaches to Culture, Communications + Hypermedia

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias] The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

Reel.com dvd review [2-Disc Set] [4/4] Rod Armstrong, The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

DVD Talk (Gil Jawetz) dvd review [4/5] The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

DVD Verdict [Kerry Birmingham] The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

New York Times (registration req'd) [Janet Maslin]

THE ADJUSTER

Canada (102 mi) 1991

Austin Chronicle (Marc Savlov) review [3/5]

An insurance adjuster (Koteas) arrives at the scene of a fire and takes the burned-out owner-occupier in hand. 'You may not feel it,' he tells her, 'but you're in a state of shock'. Egoyan's characters are always at a remove from the world, emotionally numb, psychically dislocated. He's fascinated by parallax and discrepancy, the gap between image and reality. Noah - the adjuster - tries to help his clients reproduce their material effects so that the clients can be exactly as they were before. Scrupulously poring over photographs for clues, he places a value on everything; and part of the special relationship he establishes with his clients is having sex with them... The Adjuster might almost be the third instalment in a trilogy which began with Family Viewing and Speaking Parts. It's his richest, most expansive film to date, an engrossing, deadpan tragicomedy, evocatively shot in CinemaScope, with surprisingly affecting performances from Koteas and Chaykin in particular.

Noah Render (Koteas) spends his days, his nights, and every waking hour in between, working as a claims adjuster for his insurance firm. To his clients -- displaced people whose lives have been turned inside out by the fires that have taken their homes -- he is an angel. “You probably don't realize it, but you're in shock,” he says, as he proceeds to take care of their every need, from temporary housing to carnal desires. His job is his life, and it's not just claims he adjusts. Egoyan (Speaking Parts) melds the real with the surreal in The Adjuster, and comes out with something wholly original, a sort of skewed look at the notion of comfort, and just what some people will do to achieve it. Noah's wife, Hera (Khanjian) works at the public censor's office, where she secretly videotapes the pornographic images that replay endlessly before her; at home, she screens the films to her sister Arianne in an effort to share her work with her. Here, literally everyone brings their work home with at night. When the mysterious Bubba and his nymphomaniac girlfriend/wife (we're never really told what she is) enters the Renders' lives in an effort to create (under the pretense of shooting a movie) the perfect sexual fantasy, both couples are inadvertantly pulled into a maelstrom of confusion. Egoyan's film gets a bit confusing itself as it strains against the conventions of more standard, linear filmmaking -- at times you're not really sure how to feel about this or that plot twist, while at the same time it's equally unclear just what's going on in the characters' heads as well. Despite these occasional lapses, The Adjuster manages to sustain a subtle sense of not-quite-rightness; it's a disquieting ride into the peripheries of what you think is happening, and what really is happening.

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Jeff Ulmer) dvd review

DVD Verdict (Nicholas Sylvain) dvd review

Ted Prigge retrospective [3.5/4]

Frank R.A.J. Maloney review

Apollo Movie Guide [Dan Jardine]

The Adjuster Egoyan’s The Nucleus

DVDBeaver.com - Review [Gary W. Tooze]

CALENDAR A 95

Canada Armenia Germany (74 mi) 1993

Egoyan’s odd, insightful, and disturbingly funny Armenian tribute to Paradjanov’s THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES, featuring a combination of film, video, thought, memory, history, art, love, family, letters, language, food, telephones, voice mail messages and voice narration, using to great effect very minimalist form, and only still, tableau camera shots, examining his own personal loss of Armenian identity growing up in Canada, living outside the established community, cut off from his own roots, expressed through his crumbling relationship with his wife, the always ravishing Arsinée Khanjian, who is both wife and translator accompanying Egoyan (playing himself) on a trip to Armenia. While Egoyan appears bored and disinterested as a photographer taking pictures of a dozen historic churches, shot one at a time for a calendar, where each visit to a new church is a repeated ritual, his wife becomes infatuated with their travel guide, Ashot Adamian, who provides greater insight and depth into their heritage, ultimately deciding to stay with the guide in Armenia, leaving Egoyan behind.

Simultaneous to this story, Egoyan repeats another ritual, filming himself in Canada in his own apartment preparing Armenian food for a different woman, each erotic and stunningly beautiful, one for every calendar month, where in each instance the woman gets up from the table, rising as if on cue, to make a phone call speaking in a foreign tongue, leaving Egoyan behind to sit alone at the table where he begins to write his wife, attempting to reconnect his love and heritage across a vast array of distances.

Austin Chronicle (Robert Faires) review [3/5]

After photographing a series of churches in his native Armenia for a calendar commission, a man looks back on the trip to retrace the disintegration of his relationship with his then partner. In Canada, a year later, the glossy prints look down from the walls on his loneliness, while his ex's occasional telephone calls go miserably unanswered. A certain piquancy (for those in the know) is gained from the Armenian-born Egoyan's casting of himself as the lovelorn lensman and spouse Khanjian as the woman he left behind. Egoyan filters his customary themes - the difficulties of personal communication, the relationship between emotional lives and video technology - in a film which incisively balances metaphor and awkward realism, while shuttling nimbly through time and space, between celluloid and video formats.

Calendar Jonathan Rosenbaum from the Reader (capsule review)

Ironically, Atom Egoyan's 1993 masterpiece is the most spontaneously generated of his features, one in which he plays the male lead--a petulant photographer whose marriage falls apart during an assignment to shoot a dozen historic Armenian churches for a calendar. The movie basically oscillates between two time frames: scenes with the photographer, his translator wife (Arsinee Khanjian), and their local guide (Ashot Adamian) in Armenia, and scenes in Canada afterward, in which the photographer repeatedly goes through the same romantic ritual with a number of other women. One of the best movies made anywhere about tribalism and its perils, this is at once hilarious and painful, fresh and beautiful--an apotheosis of Egoyan's preoccupations with identity, sex, and representation. 75 min.

Little boxes, numbered to mark the passing of days, in a block with a picture atop them, a warm image against the cool order of the boxes. This is what a calendar is and what filmmaker Egoyan's Calendar is. The latest from the writer/director (Speaking Parts, The Adjuster) consists of 12 tidy segments, all structured alike, with shots of rolling countrysides, ancient churches, beauty, and life set against the film's formal structure and the coolness of the protagonist, a photographer (Egoyan) whose wife left him during a trip to Armenia where he was photographing churches for a calendar. In each section -- one for each month -- a shot of the calendar leads us back to Armenia and his trip. Always, we are in the photographer's place, behind a camera, seeing the photographer's wife (Khanjian) translate the words of a native (Adamian) who escorts them to the churches and her vain attempts to get her husband to become part of the landscape instead of just a recorder of it. He refuses and watches his wife drift away from him, toward the land and culture of her ancestors and another man. Each section ends with the photographer back home having dinner with a woman from an escort service. As part of a ritual, she asks to use the phone and has a conversation in a language not English, so Egoyan's character can relive his wife's infidelity. The film's form is intriguing and carefully done, but it leaves no room for revelations. By the third segment, we know where Egoyan is going and must be resigned to seeing only the unfolding of the inevitable. Unfortunately, this means watching Egoyan's self-absorbed artist be an unwavering prick, and it's as easy for us to weary of him as it is for his wife. (In fairness to Egoyan, his acting is impressive.) Khanjian is a warm counterpoint to the frigid Egoyan, openly showing us how Armenia entrances her and brings her to new life. She is one reason the film lingers in the mind. Another is that the film works as a fugue, repetitive yet somehow revealing new sounds. Egoyan's boxes pass by, all the same, but we can still divine from them new insights: into history, spirituality, structures, what lasts, and the things that bind and separate us.

Epinions DVD review [Stephen O. Murray]

A sputtering automobile slowly traverses an irregular dirt road on the side of a hill towards an ancient church on the summit (in a spare and elegant long shot that evokes the opening sequence to Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalghia) amidst the elegiac sounds of a rhythmic, traditional chant. Inside the lumbering vehicle, a pragmatic and dedicated photographer (Atom Egoyan) has been commissioned by an Armenian cultural society to create a landscape calendar framing the region's many historical churches (and occasionally, their only surviving ruins). Estranged from his own ancestral roots, the (appropriately) nameless photographer enlists his attractive and genial wife (Arsinée Khanjian) to serve as a translator for their motivated - and perhaps, singularly over-attentive - guide (Ashot Adamyan), a proud native eager to impart his knowledge of the richness and troubled history of the land and the people to his foreign-born, ethnic brethren. However, as the film begins, evidence of the inevitable dissolution of the couple's failing relationship is revealed, represented by the recurring image of the published ethnographic church calendar marking time on the wall and an integrated telephone answering machine that occasionally records the receptionally distant, fragmented messages from his estranged wife as she tries to communicate with him. Attempting to live in the memories of a lost love that had been left behind, the photographer begins to construct his own reality, hiring a series of bilingual escorts in order to recreate an experienced flood of memories from their final days together among the idyllic, desolate churches of their alien, ancestral homeland.

Atom Egoyan creates a deeply personal, humorous, spare, and elemental meditation on cultural identity, rootlessness, disconnection, longing, and spiritual exile in Calendar. Recalling the incorporation of desolate, metaphoric landscape in Roberto Rossellini's Voyage in Italy, Egoyan juxtaposes the serene, panoramic grandeur of the ancient churches against the detailed, often close-up and interior shots of crumbling structures and ruins that manifest the internalized turmoil and devastation of a dissolving marriage. Egoyan further fuses past and present through episodes of invariable, reenacted obsessions, selectively replayed (and consequently, intrinsically manipulated) recorded home videos (a referential narrative device that recalls Samuel Beckett's hermetic, one-actor play, Krapp's Last Tape, that would subsequently be adapted for television by the filmmaker), and personal and professional patterns of estrangement and self-imposed isolation (note the photographer's designated "darkroom day" that coincides with the commemoration date of the Armenian genocide, April 24) in order to convey a visual sense of existential continuity and performance of normalizing ritual after a profound loss. In capturing the confluence of temporality, recollection, and enlightenment in the processing of personal memory and collective consciousness, Calendar illustrates mankind's innately noble propensity to struggle against the erasure of personally - and culturally - traumatic human history.

Tribal Trouble - by Jonathan Rosenbaum from the Reader (full review), also seen here: "Tribal Trouble"

Egoyan - Calendar (1993) Art of Europe

calendar (atom egoyan). - Vox

Calendar Acquarello from Strictly Film School

filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) review [4.5/5]

Edinburgh U Film Society (Keith H. Brown) review

Atom Egoyan: Calendar Egoyan’s The Nucleus

Between the Borders of Cultural Identity: Atom Egoyan's Calendar Ron Burnett

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias] The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

Reel.com dvd review [2-Disc Set] [4/4] Rod Armstrong, The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

DVD Talk (Gil Jawetz) dvd review [4/5] The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

DVD Verdict [Kerry Birmingham] The Essential Egoyan, also reviewing FAMILY VIEWING, SPEAKING PARTS, and CALENDAR

Art Film - Atom Egoyan's Calendar Aaron Sheley from Entertainment Today

Variety (Derek Elley) review

Washington Post (Rita Kempley) review

The New York Times (Stephen Holden) review

Calendar (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

EXOTICA A 96

Canada (103 mi) 1994

Written, directed, and produced by Egoyan, similar in structure and content to both CALENDAR and THE SWEET HEREAFTER, though probably somewhat incomprehensible without seeing the other films. The visual style is brilliant, with layer after layer of hypnotic music, where strands of information unravel with repetitive incidents that occur and reoccur in people’s lives, seemingly without explanation. As the layers are revealed, it becomes clear Egoyan is a master at revealing the inner soul of tortured, exiled characters, ghosts of their former selves who can’t help what they do, who couldn’t help what happened to them, who can’t live a day in their life without forgetting their personal anguish, layer after layer of lust, perversion, sexual abuse, personal betrayal and violence. It lives again and again, rising to the surface, dark, intimate secrets, personal obsessions that take the form of odd and disturbingly compulsive behavior that has been beaten back into submission, forced to live in secret, allowed to exist only in the deepest regions of the subconscious where pain and loss become incomprehensible and wreaks havoc, feeding on itself and on each human victim. Does anyone in the world make better films about the anguish of the human soul?

Like CALENDAR, Egoyan plays cinematic tricks with memory, as memory plays tricks on us, weaving in and out of the present, always shifting bits and pieces of the present with flashbacks, a few photographs, some familiar music, TV or video imagery, the telephone, even unsettled conversations or unanswered voicemail, roles that have been rearranged in the present from what they were in the past in a desperate attempt to protect oneself from more serious psychological damage, keeping them secret. There are always secrets, these are the codes and passwords, the hoops and ladders we use to travel back and forth in time. Secrets never reveal themselves, they are too precious, too personal. They are the illusions on which we base our lives. How could we ever live without them?

The film opens and closes with Mychael Danna music, an Arabic sounding saxophone, and a soft piano. There is a pan of an artificially green jungle motif, and a voice: “You have to ask yourself what brought the person to this place? The person must have something hidden that you have to find.” Don McKellar, an Atom Egoyan look-alike clone, plays Thomas, who is passing through customs smuggling exotic bird eggs strapped around his waist. He shares a cab with someone who leaves him ballet tickets in lieu of his share. The passenger is dropped off in front of Club Exotica, a strip club where young, female dancers perform lap dances for five bucks. The club has the lush, artificial green jungle motif suggestive of wild, exotic birds, women swinging naked from the rafters, seen through palm trees, or they dance on a runway through the jungle lit by golden seashells. Elias Koteas plays the DJ, looking surprisingly familiar to the pimp Harvey Keitel played in TAXI DRIVER, sipping Jack Daniels and speaking in a quiet but appropriately suggestive tone of voice glorifying sex, as lap dances are seen being performed throughout the two-story club. On the runway, he introduces Christina, a gorgeous Mia Kirshner, a dark haired girl wearing a school uniform, a white blouse and a plaid, tartan skirt, calling her young, fresh, and innocent before using the term jail bait. Intercut is Thomas at the ballet sitting next to a man who he just sold one scalped ticket. We never see the stage, but hear the ultra-dramatic music of Prokofiev used to comical effect before switching back to the club where Leonard Cohen is singing “Everybody Knows, That’s How it Goes.”

There is a golden field where a line of people walk out from the distant horizon as soft piano notes play. Bruce Greenwood plays Francis, a tortured soul who was just seen with the school girl, Christina, at his table, now driving home Tracy, played intelligently and effortlessly by Sara Polley, to some seedy looking motel. The club owner is Zoe, Egoyan’s real-life pregnant wife Arsinée Khanjian, who sits in a private quarters overlooking her club. Francis is a tax inspector who enters a pet store, The Bird of Paradise, owned by Thomas, where a soft Schubert piano Impromptu is played by the director’s daughter, Eve Egoyan. A continuing montage shows Francis at the pet store, where he finds a gun, then picking up Tracy at her home, people continue to walk through the golden field, while Thomas is back at the ballet on another night, again sitting next to another man he just sold a scalped ticket, as Francis returns to the club. Tracy plays a tape of piano music, and plays along on the flute, music that plays in Francis’s head as Christina dances for him. There are photos on the wall of a young girl Tracy used to babysit for, followed by a grainy video of Christina and a young black girl – the girl in the photos.

Thomas is back at the ballet sitting next to a black man as the music of Prokofiev fills the air, bringing him back to his apartment where he fixes cocktails before showing him the smuggled eggs. “They’re Hyacinth Macaws, if you really want to know...from very far away.” The DJ urges Francis to touch his favorite girl, but when he does, the DJ takes him outside and beats him to a bloody pulp before throwing him down the stairs into the street where he lays in a downpour of rain. Zoe is irate over the unnecessary violence in her club. Thomas and the black guy are shirtless as an operatic soprano can be heard over the rain. The man feels Thomas’s hairy chest and remarks, “It’s like petting a gorilla.” Despite his battered and bloody face, Francis drives Tracy home in the rain, where she asks “Do you think this is normal what we do?” Thomas wakes up alone the next morning, but listens to a voicemail message explaining the black man was a customs inspector who swiped his eggs, suggesting they need to talk. Francis walks in to the pet store to do his books, his face looks a mess. To the sound of birds and eerie, hypnotic music, Francis is walking through those grassy fields. Tracy is seen explaining to her father that she’s not going to babysit for her Uncle Francis anymore, that he pretends she’s still babysitting and wants to believe his little girl Lisa is still there.

Francis cuts a deal with Thomas, telling him he was sent there to uncover a $200,000/yr smuggling operation, explaining he’ll drop everything if he returns to the club and asks a few questions. Thomas goes to the club wearing a wire while Francis listens in the car, like a scene out of A TOUCH OF EVIL. Christina lap dances for Thomas, who asks about the guy that got thrown out the other night. Initially she just dances, oblivious to the conversation, but when he persists, she explains “He’s a very particular case. His daughter was murdered a couple years ago. He was implicated and then cleared later on when they found the guy that did it.”

In an extraordinary montage of continuously interweaving imagery, both past and present, Francis decides to lay in wait for the DJ with a gun, as Zoe is the DJ at the club now, introducing Christina, who appears different, more hesitating, more violent in her movements, as Leonard Cohen sings in monotone “Everybody knows the good guys lost, everybody knows the poor stay poor, everybody knows the rich stay rich, everybody knows that’s how it goes...” Christina is dancing for Thomas while Zoe is back in her office drinking milk, as the swaying music weaves all this together in cinematic time. Eric has apparently been fired and sees Francis first, explaining he knows everything about him, as Eric and Christina are walking through the grassy fields, covering Christina’s eyes, explaining to Francis that he discovered his missing little girl.

They embrace, but the imagery in his head continues, the eerie, hypnotic music, the sounds of birds, the video, Lisa at the piano, Francis filming the video, the friendship between Lisa and Tracy, who is seen as a very plain, gangly girl in braids, as the original Arabic saxophone plays with a soft piano, and Christina walks up to her nice brick, middle class home. There are barely audible religious chants in a foreign tongue heard under the music as it plays over the credits. The film won the Canadian Genie Awards for best film, director, screenplay, cinematography, art and set decoration, costume design, original score, and Don McKellar won best supporting actor

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

Characteristically stylish, intriguing film from Atom Egoyan, heavy on the eroticism and mystification as it delves into the lives of a number of characters connected by their relationship to the strip joint of the title: the owner and MC; a table-dancer; a taxman obsessed with the dancer; and a pet-shop proprietor, whose business the taxman is auditing. It's another excursion into projected fantasies, anxiety, exploitation and secret needs; the elegant camerawork and intense performances sustain interest, although the fragmentation of the plot sometimes seems unnecessarily obscurantist - finally, the mystery is not so very startling or significant. Fascinating, though, and without the pretensions that have marred some of Egoyan's earlier work.

Exotica is set in and around the strip club of the title. "Cool!" go all the new lads out there - plentiful pulchritude on display. (Which there is). But, Exotica is not an art version of Showgirls. So, if you go expecting that, you'll be disappointed. In fact, if you try to approach Exotica as as a normal movie, you'll be disappointed. For Canadian-Albanian (!) writer-director Egoyan actually works in terms of "the cinema of disappointment". Consistently, he refuses to give the viewer easy entertainment or satisfactory conclusions, instead serving up food for cinematic thought. Exotica is no exception.

At Exotica there are a trio of strange, somehow connected, characters. All, if not actually addicted, are certainly obsessed. Eric (Elias Koteas) is the sleazy MC. He's madly protective of Christina (Mia Kirschner), one of the dancers. She dresses up as a schoolgirl and does her stuff, invariably to Leonard Cohen's "Everyone Knows", for Francis (Bruce Greenwood), a tax inspector. Egoyan gradually reveals, in a manner deliberately echoing the ritual of a striptease, the reasons Eric, Christina and Francis have for what they do. The story runs in the past and the present. A series of flashbacks show the trio, younger and less the victims of their obsessions. In the present, Francis audits Thomas (Don McKellar), the gay owner of a pet shop. Thomas supplements his income by smuggling the eggs of endangered species. Francis uncovers this, just as he is barred from Exotica. Francis offers Thomas a deal: If Thomas will go to Exotica on his behalf, and find out who got him barred, then he will overlook Thomas's smuggling...

Right from the start - as we see customs officers observing the airplane passengers from behind one-way glass, then Thomas checking his reflection in the glass, oblivious to his surveillance - it's obvious that Egoyan is going to emphasise the viewer's voyeuristic role. And, please remember, that the ending was supposed to disappoint. Hopefully, if you bear this in mind, Exotica will prove rewarding viewing instead (or instead, you could always go and ogle Mia Kirshner).

MediaCircus (Anthony Leong) essay ["Demystifying ___"]

`Exotica" is a movie labyrinth, winding seductively into the darkest secrets of a group of people who should have no connection with one another, but do. At the beginning, the film seems to be about randomly selected strangers. By the end, it is revealed that these people are so tightly wound up together that if you took one away, their world would collapse.

Christina (Mia Kirshner) works in a "gentleman's club," although few gentlemen go there. She has a regular client named Francis (Bruce Greenwood). He pays her an hourly rate to come and "dance" seductively at his table. No touching is allowed in this club, but Francis has no desire to touch. What he needs from Christina is not physical. And Christina . . . what does she need? We sense an odd private bond between them.

Eric is the disc jockey in the club, spinning suggestive fantasies about the dancers, drumming up business for the tables. He was once Christina's lover. Now he watches jealously, possessively, as she lingers for hours with Francis. Zoe owns the club. It was started by her late mother, whose "sense of freedom" she admired so much that she even dresses in her mother's clothes. Zoe is pregnant, sweet, honest; she sees the club as a place where lonely people can be less lonely for a few hours. No one there is lonelier than she.

Who are these other characters? Who is the customs officer, and what is his real connection with the man who picks him up at the ballet - the man who owns a pet shop? Why does he steal precious eggs from the man's incubator? And why does Francis hire a baby-sitter to stay at his house when he goes to the gentleman's club, since he has no children? It's easy for a director to play these games all night, setting up mysteries and then revealing deeper mysteries inside of them. That is not Atom Egoyan's game. His plot for "Exotica" coils back upon itself, revealing one layer of mystery after another, but this is not an exercise in style. It is a movie about people whose lives, once we understand them, reveal a need and urgency that only these mysteries can satisfy.

Egoyan, a Canadian director whose imagination and originality have not always been under such masterful control, has been moving toward "Exotica" in his other recent films, like "The Adjuster" (1992). Of that film he wrote, "I wanted to make a movie about believable people doing believable things in an unbelievable way." It was a good film, but you could see the gears turning.

"Exotica" is his best yet, a film in which the characters seem completely real even while they seem to be acting without any apparent explanation - and then seem even more real when we understand them.

Many of the actors come from his stock company. Elias Koteas, who was the adjuster, now plays the DJ; in the earlier film he served others, but this time he serves only himself. Arsinee Khanjian (Egoyan's wife) is Zoe, the club owner, suffusing the sleazy surrounding with a gentle innocence. Mia Kirshner, an actress new to me, combines sexual allure with a kindness that makes her all the more appealing. Indeed, the intriguing thing about Egoyan's work here is the way he sets the story in a hothouse of sex, and then works around the sex, getting to the feelings, revealing how most of the characters are much nicer than they at first seem.

In the months after "Pulp Fiction" opened, I talked to a lot of people who were stimulated by its plot structure, the way it played with apparent paradoxes. Those people are likely to admire the plot of "Exotica" even more, for if "Pulp Fiction" twisted time as an exercise, "Exotica" has a reason for its method: We begin with desperation and need, and move to satisfaction and fulfillment, and at the same time Egoyan astonishingly finds a way to add melodrama, blackmail and an ingenious deception. The movie is a series of interlocking surprises and delights, and, at the end, it is heartbreaking as well. It's quite a performance, announcing Egoyan's arrival in the first rank of filmmakers.

Senses of Cinema (Girish Shambu) review March 2001

Deep Focus (Bryant Frazer) review [A] with an alternate review here: The Double Life of Exotica

not coming to a theater near you (Rumsey Taylor) review

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [4/4]

Ted Prigge retrospective [4/4]

Kevin Patterson retrospective [3.5/4]

Ferdy on Films [Marilyn Ferdinand]

filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) review [5/5]

DVD Verdict (Sean McGinnis) dvd review

Jon Turner, Epinions.com

James Brundage retrospective

Jason Wallis retrospective [4/4]

Apollo Movie Guide [Dan Jardine]

Jake's Film Reviews Johnny Web and Tuna

Exotica Egoyan’s The Nucleus

Review and Atom Egoyan Interview by Cynthia Fuchs (after EXOTICA), Philadelphia City Paper and Women’s Film Studies (1994)

Entertainment Weekly review [B+] Owen Gleiberman

Variety.com [Leonard Klady]

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [3.5/5]

Tucson Weekly (Zachary Woodruff) review

San Francisco Examiner (David Armstrong) review

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review

Los Angeles Times (Kevin Thomas) review

The New York Times (Caryn James) review

THE SWEET HEREAFTER A 99

Canada (110 mi) 1997 ‘Scope

When, lo, as they reached the mountain-side,
A wondrous portal opened wide,
As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;
And the Piper advanced and the children followed,
And when all were in to the very last,
The door in the mountainside shut fast…

—Verse 13, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, by Robert Browning (1888), Robert Browning: the Pied Piper of Hamelin: the complete text

Egoyan’s ferociously sorrowful adaptation from the Russell Bank’s novel, a stunningly beautiful, mesmerizing film that leaves one in a trance, always understating the power of the subjects, using skillful interwoven time periods, parceling out little bits and pieces of information, much of it told in flashback, moving fluidly back and forth across month’s of screen time, beautifully photographed by cinematographer Paul Sarossy, with a medieval and renaissance musical score by Mychael Danna, all in a rhythmic, musical dialogue of pure cinematic poetry. One of the most powerful, yet at the same time, so quietly affecting and profoundly moving films, with so much empty space to fill, both in the visual outer and emotional inner worlds, and with such haunting music which becomes the lead character in the film, leading us like moths to a flame through this amazing emotional landscape. Egoyan had just became a father when this film was made, changing the setting of the book from upstate New York to British Columbia, also reducing a multiple first person narrative of five characters in the book to two main characters, while adding references to The Pied Piper of Hamelin that are not in the book, which so impressed author Russell Banks that he has a small role in the film as the town doctor, freely admitting that he felt Egoyan’s adaptation of Browning’s poem is an improvement over the demolition derby imagery used in the book, which was based upon a real event, a 1989 Bus crash in Alton, Texas where twenty-one children drowned, forty-nine others were injured and it led to a massive $150 million dollar litigation, out of which the participating lawyers earned roughly $50 million dollars in fees. The film won the 2^nd place Jury Prize at Cannes, also the FIPRESCI prize, and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, where a once every decade, 2004 Toronto Film Festival polling of festival programmers, film critics, industry professionals and Canadian film scholars ranked the film fourth in the Top 10 Canadian Films of All Time.

The film is set in a small Canadian mountain town in the winter calm which followed the deaths of fourteen children who died in a school bus crash. Ian Holm plays Mitchell Stevens, the city lawyer who tries to represent the grieving parents, all living in separate, isolated homes with long, winding driveways in a class-action lawsuit against the bus company with the ultimate promise of money, to give direction to their anger and “the sheer magnitude of your suffering,” yet leaving them in a more divided state of anger and disarray. At the same time he seeks to find expression for his own loss and anger, “you suffer enough rage and helplessness and your love turns to something else, it turns to steaming piss,” while losing his daughter Zoe (Caerthan Banks, Russell Banks’ daughter) to a world of drug addiction, clinics, flop-houses, more drugs, more money for drugs, all premised on her lie that she was going to try for something better. But she only grows more faraway and distant, lost to the streets, where eventually she contracts HIV and he is consumed with losing her, which is contrasted against the innocence of Zoe as a beautiful child, with an extraordinary memory of horror when she was bit by baby black widow spiders and he had to be prepared “to go all the way,” to surgically cut her throat, per a doctor’s phone instructions, to save her life, as otherwise the swelling would cause her to stop breathing before she could get to the hospital. This is contrasted against yet another ominous story of the Pied Piper, a bedtime story lulling the children to a sweet rest, after ridding a town of rats, the Pied Piper took the children away because he was mad they refused to honor their debt to him, so he wanted the town punished. Promising a place “where everything was strange and new,” the Pied Piper lured the children out of the town, all skipping and dancing after his wonderful music to an open portal in the mountainside before it closed up. Yet one was left behind, “one was lame and could not dance the whole of the way.” The prominent use of a fairy tale motif effectively alters the point of view to that of the children, giving meaning to the bus crash from a child’s perspective—the unheard voices.

As the lawyer, tormented by the fate of his own daughter, Stevens meets the families, which the audience meets as well, becoming familiar, trying to convince them “There is no such thing as an accident…It’s up to me to ensure moral responsibility in society,” while the camera always sees on the walls pictures of lost children, photographs, memories, coinciding with the opening shot of a mother, her bare breast exposed, lying asleep in bed with her husband and small child, an image of family beauty, safe and secure. Another husband and wife see their adopted son off on the school bus, seemingly small against the white sky and the snowy mountains, an act of simplicity, a parental good-bye, an instinctual concern, an unknowing, final farewell before the bus is lost in a beautiful mountainside covered in snow. Sarah Polley (18 at the time) plays Nicole, the lone survivor of the crash, a 15-year old left paralyzed from the waist down, clearly identifying with the cripple who was left behind, feeling guilty that she survived when others perished, seen reading the poem as she babysits for the two children of Billy Ansel (Bruce Greenwood), children who later die in the accident, so eloquently interspersed throughout, providing a magnificent performance, singing Tragically Hip’s theme song “Courage,” Sarah Polley - Courage (The Sweet Hereafter) - YouTube (4:20). She is, herself, a victim of her own father’s incest, and burns with rage at him now that she is crippled and in a wheelchair, no longer able to realize her dream. “I’m a wheelchair girl now and it’s hard to pretend I’m a beautiful rock star. Remember, Daddy, that beautiful stage that you were going to build for me? You were going to light it with candles.” As the accident is shown, the children’s screams are consumed in a hushed silence, to a deeper agony within our memory, to a place where only silence answers, to a sweet peace, where train whistles can be heard in the background offering silent passage to “the sweet hereafter,” a place where people can find peace with their fate.

It’s dull in our town since my playmates left!
I can't forget that I’m bereft
Of all the pleasant sights they see,
Which the Piper also promised me.
For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,
Joining the town and just at hand,
Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,
And flowers put forth a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new.

But this peace is disrupted and disturbed by the town’s reaction to the lawyer, by an innocent girl’s misplaced blame, by a silent rage and a promise that money can somehow make things right, where the lives of the townspeople begin to disintegrate, severing the ties and values that created this community. Billy pleads with Nicole’s parents to drop the lawsuit, “I’ll even give you the money I got for my kids. That’s the way we used to do it, remember? Help each other, because this was a community.” Developing themes of guilt, separation, anger, unnamable sin, and excruciating loss, the human response to such a nightmarish tragedy is to seek relief, compensation, and perhaps even closure for their loss. But that remains elusive and unattainable, as each individual weaves their own way through the various stages of loss, where Dolores (Gabrielle Rose) the bus driver and the parents of the lost children all end up someplace different, if only mentally, because life as they knew it had changed forever. At the sight of the relocated bus driver, we hear the words of Nicole in a voiceover, “As you see her, two years later, I wonder if you realize something, I wonder if you understand that all of us, Doloros, me, the children who survived, the children who didn’t, that we’re all citizens of a different town now. A place with its own special rules, special laws, a town of people living in the sweet hereafter.” Holm and Polley give career best performances on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, where he is an estranged parent and a hollow soul, where anger and frustration cuts through his icy exterior, while she is a lost child and violated innocent, yet remains the fiercely intelligent moral center throughout. In the world of quiet yet lacerating chamber dramas, this is a towering work, perhaps the film that all other works of heart-wrenching trauma and despair must compare themselves to, shot in the silence and vast wintry landscape of endless snow, an extraordinary film about grief, about broken promises, and the lonely, personal search within ourselves to find redemption.

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

Adapted from the Russell Banks novel, this is Egoyan's warmest and, despite the sophisticated time structure of the fragmented narrative, his most conventional film to date. Holm is the big-city lawyer - with family problems of his own - who starts investigations into a tragic school bus accident that has robbed a remote rural community of all but one of its children, in the hope of persuading the parents to sue for compensation; inevitably, they react in different ways to his solicitude. Beautifully performed, edited and shot (the crash itself is extraordinarily effective), the film is certainly sensitive in its treatment of grief, guilt and anger, and strong on atmosphere. Whether it finally offers any fresh insights into how a community is changed by such a tragedy is less certain.

Edinburgh U Film Society (Neil Chue Hong) review

Like Canadian writer/director Egoyan's last work, Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter uses deft manipulation of the time line to build up a fascinating portrait of a community.

British actor Ian Holm plays the outsider who comes to the town with his own problems divorce, junkie daughter whilst seeking to unify the mixed feelings of the fractured community. His is the star turn amongst a group of accomplished actors, many of whom are regulars in Egoyan's work.

As with Exotica, the jumping backwards and forwards allows Egoyan to slowly reveal more, from the cryptic opening titles until the film's conclusion. The director also draws on fantastic images of snowy countryside and, although perhaps a little clumsy, the continuing references to the Pied Piper of Hamelin are a striking counterpoint not present in Russell Banks' (supposedly unfilmable) novel.

Indeed, the score (from Egoyan's regular collaborator Mychael Danna) plays an important role in giving the film its emotional power. As in Exotica and Ang Lee's The Ice Storm, Danna reinforces the emotional effect of the film, already powerful thanks to the skilled direction and acting.

Unlike so many films, the sense of poignant desolation that The Sweet Hereafter bears will stay with you for a long time.

Scott Renshaw review [9/10]

It's not often that a film inspires me to use the adjective "sublime," but there's no better word to describe what Atom Egoyan has accomplished in THE SWEET HEREAFTER. Most films about tragic subjects appear to be driven by a fear that emotions writ small will leave an audience hungry for grand catharsis, so they attack with teary-eyed embraces and a swelling John Williams score. Egoyan refuses to turn on a warning light when he's about to go for your emotions. When he does, he catches them almost as unguarded as the emotions of his characters.

No other approach could have worked the same mournful, hypnotic magic Egoyan delivers in THE SWEET HEREAFTER. The setting is a small town in British Columbia devastated by a school bus accident which claimed the lives of twenty children. Into the still shell-shocked town steps Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm), an attorney who wants to represent the children's parents in a civil negligence suit. Many of the parents respond to Stephens and come on board quickly. Others, like Billy Ansel (Bruce Greenwood), want nothing to do with Stephens. After all, he's just an ambulance-chaser preying on the community's need for someone to hold accountable for their pain. Isn't he?

Well, like most things in Atom Egoyan films, the obvious answer usually isn't the right one. Through a masterful use of overlapping and interwoven time frames, Egoyan gradually reveals details about the characters which cloud every motivation. Stephens, we learn, is tormented by the fate of his own daughter Zoe (Caerthan Banks), a drug addict who contacts him only when desperate for money. The roles of other characters in the story also unfold in bits and pieces: Nicole (Sarah Polley), a teen-aged survivor of the crash; Dolores Driscoll (Gabrielle Rose), the bus driver who can't help speaking of some of the victims in the present tense; Nicole's father Sam (Tom McCamus); Billy and married motel manager Risa (Alberta Watson). Egoyan's story-telling demands that you pay attention, forces you to draw conclusions, and allows you to feel without telling you _how_ to feel.

He's also a director who can startle you with his confident refusals to make the obvious choice. Nowhere is this more evident than his depiction of the bus accident itself. The moment is gripping and devastating in a completely unpredictable way because of what we see, what we don't see, and the context in which it is framed. The scene becomes a shocking and indelible image of parental helplessness, as does Ian Holm's bravura monologue in which Stephens describes a medical emergency which threatens Zoe's life as an infant. Egoyan portrays the deep, powerful and often illogical emotions of parenthood from several different perspectives, each one performed to perfection, each one with different wrenching consequences.

One of Egoyan's riskier choices is also one of the few which doesn't pay off. Several scenes in THE SWEET HEREAFTER are accompanied by Nicole reading passages from "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," an extended metaphor which grows less effective each time it's used. On screen, with the persistence of a voice, the comparison occasionally feels forced; I can imagine the device working much more effectively in the Russell Banks novel on which the film is based (and which I haven't read), as an entry or exit point to a chapter. THE SWEET HEREAFTER is still a remarkably literary film in the best sense of the word, perhaps the most novel-like film since John Sayles' LONE STAR. What Egoyan adds cinematically -- from Mychael Danna's otherworldly score to the ambiguity-enhancing final shot -- turns THE SWEET HEREAFTER into one of the year's most powerful works. And, in all probability, the most sublime.

"Family Romances" Richard Porton feature and interview from Cineaste, December 1997

The Film Sufi: “The Sweet Hereafter” - Atom Egoyan (1997)

Film Freak Central - The Sweet Hereafter (1997) - Combo ... Bryant Frazer

Four Films in Search of an Author - Bright Lights Film Journal David L. Pike, May 2006

THE SWEET HEREAFTER Atom Egoyan - Alt Film Guide Dan Schneider, also seen here: Dan Schneider on The Sweet Hereafter - Cosmoetica

Images - The Sweet Hereafter Gary Johnson

there will be blame: misfortune and injustice in the sweet ... Timothy P. O’Neill (pdf format)

The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan) - Film Reviews - No ... George Booker from No Ripcord

Toto reviews: The Sweet Hereafter - peteg.org Adam Rivett

Journal of Religion & FIlm: The Sweet Hereafter: Law ... Mary Ann Beavis from the Journal of Religion and Film

CultureCartel.com (John Nesbit) review [5/5]

Nitrate Online (Eddie Cockrell) review

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Justin Stephen) dvd review

Deep Focus (Bryant Frazer) review [A]

Philadelphia City Paper (Cindy Fuchs) review

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [4/4]

Serdar Yegulalp review [4/4]

Jerry Saravia retrospective

THE SWEET HEREAFTER Steve Erickson from Chronicle of a Passion

Long Pauses: The Sweet Hereafter (1997) Darren Hughes

The Sweet Hereafter Review | CultureVulture Bob Wake

James Brundage retrospective

DVD Talk (Gil Jawetz) dvd review [5/5]

The Sweet Hereafter | DVD Video Review | Film @ The ... Gary Couzens from the Digital Fix

Movie Reviews UK review [4/5] Damian Cannon

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [4/5]

The Providence Journal review Michael Janusonis

Slate [Sarah Kerr]

Atom Egoyan's 'The Sweet Hereafter' - M/C Reviews Axel Bruns

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [3.5/4]

THE SWEET HEREAFTER - TIME Richard Schickel

Nick's Flick Picks review of The Sweet Hereafter Nick Davis

Apollo Guide (Dan Jardine) review [87/100]

Canadian Film Dose [Alan Bacchus]

Ozus' World Movie Reviews (Dennis Schwartz) review [A]

Needcoffee.com review

Film reviews Ray Pride from New City

allmovie ((( The Sweet Hereafter > Overview ))) Jason Ankeny

The Sweet Hereafter Egoyan’s The Nucleus

Entertainment Weekly review [A] Oweb Gleiberman

Grim fairytale | Film | The Guardian Andrew Pulver

The Boston Phoenix review Peter Keough

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [4.5/5]

The Sweet Hereafter Blu-ray - Sarah Polley - DVDBeaver.com

THE SWEET HEREAFTER By Atom Egoyan script

Blame and The Sweet Hereafter Legal Studies Forum by Tony McAdams (2000)

The Sweet Hereafter (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Sweet Hereafter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Russell Banks novel

Russell Banks profile by the New York State Writers Institute

Russell Banks Rutgers reading series, February 2007

The New York Times: Book Review Search Article Michiko Kakutani book review, September 6, 1991

The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning the complete online text, along with illustrations

The Pied Piper of Hamelin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

FELICIA’S JOURNEY

Canada Great Britain (116 mi) 1999 ‘Scope

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

Egoyan's adaptation of William Trevor's novel is a genuinely unsettling affair that benefits immensely from the director's ability to show both the Midlands and Hoskins' face as unfamiliar, faintly sinister landscapes. The film centres on the charged encounter between innocent Irish colleen Cassidy, searching for her errant boyfriend in and around Birmingham, and factory catering-manager Hoskins, a kindly, yet lonely bachelor deeply disturbed by fantasies inspired by his own childhood. The flashbacks to Ireland are too often underlined by pastoral folk music (whereas those to Hoskins' youth, with Khanjian as a Fanny Craddock-style TV chef, are delightfully witty), and Hoskins' accent is occasionally a little wobbly, but mostly this is a beautifully crafted affair, with Egoyan's script making the most of various dark ironies while his typically confident direction creates an intense mood.

Eye for Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review [4/5]

Atom Egoyan is a consummate filmmaker. Watching the way he weaves this chilling tale is an education in cinematic technique. His last movie, The Sweet Hereafter, demonstrated a skill in the use of flashbacks that was orchestral in its understanding of story form. Felicia's Journey is much simpler - too simple, perhaps - with a manageable cast of characters. What is clever is the way Egoyan holds back important details until the moment is ripe, so that the audience builds a picture by degrees, with little shocks.

Felicia (Elaine Cassidy) is a young girl from County Cork, who comes to England against his father's wishes to find her boyfriend. She thinks he works in a lawn mower factory in the Midlands, but then again, might have joined the army.

Joe Hilditch (Bob Hoskins) is the catering manager at an industrial plant. He is scrupulous in everything he does, an obsessive perfectionist who still lives in the house he shared with his mother when she was famous as a Fifties TV cook. He spends his evenings repeating her recipes and having solitary feasts at the dining room table. And then he meets Felicia, who asks for directions.

The film is slow, almost languorous. As Hilditch spins a web around the girl and she finds herself dependent upon his generosity, a sinister plot emerges. Hoskins is at his best here, controlled and manipulative. Cassidy never loses touch with Felicia's strong roots. It is not an easy role, both vulnerable and determined. They complement each other, as Egoyan draws the noose tighter.

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Dale Dobson) dvd review

Based on William Trevor's novel, Atom Egoyan's Felicia's Journey explores a difficult subject with sensitivity and intelligence. Bob Hoskins stars as Joseph Hilditch, a troubled, lonely catering manager and collector with a penchant for "adopting" young girls in need of assistance. Felicia (Elaine Cassidy) travels from her home in Ireland to Birmingham, England in search of her erstwhile boyfriend (Peter McDonald); failing in her mission and dependent on the kindly Mr. Hilditch, she moves into his house and becomes aware of his dark secret.

Felicia's Journey is an engrossing character study, prepared with superb attention to detail by Egoyan and performed simply and naturally by his talented leads. The film is slowly paced, building its impact through an accumulation of small, telling details, leading to an unexpected climax which I won't give away here. Egoyan develops each character's background via flashbacks, video clips and recurring motifs, and his restrained, somewhat distant style fits this delicate, deep material well. An epilogue at the film's end feels organic and satisfying, not "tacked-on" or clumsy. The film takes a while to get going and occasionally lags a bit, but the time it takes to explore and examine its characters is well spent.

Bob Hoskins, often at his best in small films like this one, delivers a touching, sympathetic portrayal of a man who has planned and done terrible things out of confusion and pain; he resists "chewing the scenery" and delivers a complex, convincing performance. Relative newcomer Elaine Cassidy is naïve yet mature as a pregnant girl lost in an unfamiliar city but gamely struggling to make things right. This isn't a plot-heavy movie by any means—both performances are critical to the film's effectiveness, and both are fascinating to watch.

Nashville Scene (Noel Murray) review

Over the 20-plus years of his filmmaking career, Atom Egoyan has been that rare commodity--an artist who overcame a "promising but troubling" tag to become someone whose new work can be greeted with genuine enthusiasm. Early films like the icy, techno-phobic relationship dramas Family Viewing and The Adjuster may have been intellectually stimulating, but they were also emotionally enervated. Egoyan seemed to turn a corner with 1993's Calendar, a probing, bittersweet story of love and obsession that confronted the director's own anxieties in a more direct and personal way. Since then, Egoyan has been reaching a larger audience with films that use the accessible structure of psychological suspense to put across deep and complex themes. Last year's Felicia's Journey (playing Thursday through Saturday at Vanderbilt's Sarratt Cinema) may not be the best of the Canadian's recent oeuvre, but it's perhaps the most entertaining, and often the creepiest.

Elaine Cassidy stars as Felicia, who travels from Ireland to England to tell her boyfriend that she's pregnant. When she can't find him, a kindly cook named Mr. Hilditch (played by Bob Hoskins) takes her in and offers to help her track down the young man. But in a series of unnerving flashbacks, Egoyan shows us that Mr. Hilditch has had similar relationships with other lost young girls, and he implies that the ones who came before Felicia may have come to a deadly end.

Felicia's Journey has the rhythm and suspense of a Hitchcock film, but like director Anthony Minghella in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Egoyan removes the McGuffin and lets the queasy motivations take center stage. It's an interesting and useful switcheroo. Hitchcock's best work hooked the audience with plot and then touched ever so cleverly on dark themes like voyeurism, guilt, and psychotic obsession. Like Minghella in Ripley, Egoyan engages our morbid fascination with sex, despair, and sociopathy, dropping tantalizing bits of plot along the way. Indeed, Felicia's Journey is less about what Mr. Hilditch will do next than it is about what he has done and why he's done it--a mystery that Egoyan addresses in hysterical flashbacks to the cook's childhood and his inattentive celebrity-chef mother. What has been missing from Hilditch's life to shape his strange behavior?

Beginning with 1995's Exotica, Egoyan has been interested in the emotion of loss--especially how people behave when their loved ones die. As a subtext, Egoyan has been exploring the exploitation of children by well-meaning adults, who let fragile hopes get perverted into something dark and ugly. 1997's widely acclaimed The Sweet Hereafter (based on the Russell Banks novel) slyly used the story of the Pied Piper to explicate the devastation of a small town after a fatal school bus accident, and had at its center a disquieting portrait of incest. Based on a William Trevor novel, Felicia's Journey inverts the story of Little Red Riding Hood: It shows a girl leaving her Grandma's house to find a home and staying a few days with a man who may be The Big Bad Wolf.

If there's a downside to Egoyan's dabbling in the more plot-driven thriller style, it's that eventually he has to stop vamping on the curious human condition and let something actually happen. When Felicia's Journey finally gives in to the necessities of its genre, it becomes a not-quite-dim (but not-quite-brilliant) serial killer movie. Until the climax, though, Egoyan hypnotizes us with his skillful dance around the facts and the meaning of the story. We in the audience--who have internalized the fairy tales Egoyan is riffing on and the Hitchcock beats he's borrowing--follow right along with him as he shows just what brings the hunter and the prey to their mutual stage. Blackly funny and ultimately jarring, Felicia's Journey is not to be missed.

Felicia's Journey Jonathan Romney from Sight and Sound

New York Movies - Death and the Maidens - page 1 - Village Voice Amy Taubin from The Village Voice

eFilmCritic.com (Greg Muskewitz) review [5/5]

Salon (Andrew O'Hehir) review

AboutFilm.com (Jeff Vorndam) review [B]

Nitrate Online (Cynthia Fuchs) review also including an interview with Egoyan

DVD Times Gary Couzens

Scott Renshaw review [7/10]

Raging Bull Movie Reviews (Mike Lorefice) review [4/4]

The Nation (Stuart Klawans) review

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]

The UK Critic (Ian Waldron-Mantgani) review [4/4]

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [3.5/5] Richard Scheib

FELICIA'S JOURNEY Steve Erickson from Chronicle of a Passion

Kamera.co.uk review Monika Maurer, also including an interview with Egoyan here: Power of the Atom (November 1998)

DVD Verdict (Harold Gervais) dvd review

DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review Special Edition

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Scott Von Doviak

Reel.com review [2/4] Pam Grady

Apollo Guide review [81/100] Dan Jardine and Patrick Byrne

Xiibaro Productions (David Perry) review [3.5/4]

Grouch at Epinions.com

Mike D'Angelo

Reel.com dvd review [3/4] Bill Schwartz

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [4/5]

Britmovie

Felicia's Journey Egoyan’s The Nucleus

INTERVIEW ON FELICIA'S JOURNEY Egoyan interviewed by Offscreen

Entertainment Weekly review [B+] Lisa Schwarzbaum

Variety (Emanuel Levy) review

The Globe and Mail review [3/4] Rick Groen

Philadelphia City Paper (Cindy Fuchs) review capsule review also including an interview with Atom Egoyan

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [3/5]

San Francisco Examiner (G. Allen Johnson) review

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review Paula Nechak

Los Angeles Times (Kevin Thomas) review

ARARAT A- 93

Canada France (115 mi) 2002

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

A director (Aznavour) shoots a historical drama (inspired by Arshile Gorky's portrait of himself with his mother) about Turkey's massacre of the Armenians; meanwhile, Armenians in Canadian exile, some involved with the shoot, some merely with one another, try to sort out their own attitudes to their cultural and personal histories. Egoyan's film, clearly close to his heart, is a summation of the themes that have preoccupied him from the start of his career. Regrettably, while one may applaud his desire to set the record straight and recognise his narrative ingenuity, the atypically heavy-handed execution suggests he may have been rather too close to the material. The dramatic contrivance extends to customs officer Plummer acting as a kind of father confessor.

Ararat Peter Bradshaw from the Guardian

Atom Egoyan's movie-within-a-movie is about the Turks' slaughter of the Armenians in 1915 - an atrocity that encouraged Hitler to think he could get away with the Holocaust. It's unquestionably a high-minded and ambitious piece of work. But it is often muddled and misjudged, and it is saddled with performances of varying quality.

Edward Saroyan (Charles Aznavour) is an Armenian film-maker working in Canada, whose name may or may not carry echoes of Egoyan's own. He is making a movie about the Turks' siege of Van, and intends to modify the historical truth with a fictional amplification of the role of the Armenian expressionist painter Arshile Gorky, who as a child escaped the bloodbath there. In this he has been inspired by art historian and Gorky scholar Ani (Arsinée Khanjian), whose son Raffi (David Alpay) happens to be working on the film, and who, on coming back to Toronto from Turkey, has to tell his story to an elderly customs official played by Christopher Plummer.

The story is bound together by a nexus of family coincidences, not in themselves jarring, but the occasion for some leaden and underpowered acting - the scene in which Ani remembers her husband enigmatically throwing himself off a rocky ledge after she broke up with him is unhappily managed, to say the least.

But the main problem is that the scenes from this imaginary film appear to be presented on ambiguously equal terms with what we must assume are flashbacks to the actual truth, an uneasy superimposition of reality and fiction.

Visiting the set, Ani complains that Mount Ararat, painted on a stage-set flat, would not be visible from where the movie is supposed to be set. She is told that this is "artistic licence", as is Saroyan's proposed use of the Gorky persona. But isn't this a curious concession, given that Egoyan's movie is surely founded on a passionate proclamation of the literal truth - with no relativist ifs or buts - of the Armenian holocaust?

The final set-piece is an emotionally coercive sequence in Saroyan's movie showing the grotesque cruelty of Turkish soldiers, murdering and raping civilians, complete with cutaways to the director and cast in the audience at the black-tie premiere, being moved. Are we invited to react the same way? It's an uncomfortable, unsuccessful moment.

The self-reflexive film-about-film trope leads to valid questions about acts of memory and acts of representation. But these questions are not resolved or even satisfactorily formulated; they lead here ultimately only to ideas about how different people remember things differently - something that comes worryingly close to letting in the Holocaust-deniers. Egoyan's movie has moments of power, but fundamentally it's a bafflingly flawed project.

The Village Voice [Dennis Lim]

Atom Egoyan is a meticulous filmmaker, a careful and controlled director who has made a brilliant career by creating quiet studies of the quirks and contradictions of memory, identity and ethical action. It could fairly be said that "Ararat" represents the pinnacle of that career except that, happily, at 42, Egoyan is young enough to have a few more masterpieces in his future. But even if he somehow topped it in the future, "Ararat" would stand as a crowning achievement, not only within his personal canon but as a film that, with courage and supreme artistry, re-imagines the narrative and moral potential of cinema.

"Ararat" begins in the New York studio of the Armenian painter Arshile Gorky, who survived the expulsion and genocide of Turkey's Armenian population in 1915 and whose double portrait of himself and his mother is one of the most haunting testaments of that catastrophe – "Guernica" as Madonna and child. The film opens with Gorky working on the painting in the 1920s, then cuts to the present day, when a film director named Edward (Charles Aznavour) arrives in Canada to shoot a historical epic about the events of 1915. He is questioned by a customs agent named David (Christopher Plummer), who then visits his son (Brent Carver), who has left his wife for an actor (Elias Koteas) who, we eventually discover, will appear in Edward's film.

"Ararat" is a densely layered round-robin in which nearly all of the characters cross paths at least once; also in the mix are an art historian and Gorky expert named Ani (Arsinee Khanjian) and her son, Raffi (David Alpay). Raffi is currently dating his stepsister, Celia (Marie-Josee Croze), who is convinced that Ani murdered her father. "She wants his death to be more meaningful than it was," Ani impatiently explains. "It gives her a cause."

The tension between Celia and Ani recapitulates the history of the Armenians and the Turkish government, which has steadfastly denied that an extermination took place in 1915. "Ararat" explores the ways in which denial accretes through generations, but this is by no means an anti-Turkey screed. Weaving among his several story lines, Egoyan creates a rich, complicated tapestry that has as its running thread deep questions about history, memory, truth and the monumental resentments and self-justifying myths that victimhood often produces. Whether in one of Ani's lectures about Gorky or in a brief exchange between David and his grandson, the question of what happened and how it happened recurs with vexing frequency. And even when such questions are answered, the right response is by no means settled. "It's a new country," says Koteas's part-Turkish character at one point, "so let's drop the [expletive] history."

Egoyan is confident in his grasp of events: The Armenian genocide is a plain fact throughout "Ararat," which takes its title from a mountain in Turkey that has become a historical symbol for the diaspora. But his uncertainty lies in the event's subsequent meaning for the Armenian community and in the limited power of storytelling to convey historical truth. The most effective passages of "Ararat" have to do with Edward's film, a lush costume drama that hews to the rote iconography of cruelty and suffering that movie audiences have become so inured to. Although Egoyan conveys much of the true story through the film-within-a-film, he is by no means comfortable with the easy pieties and distortions that the medium entails. When someone tells Ani that poetic license allowed Edward to move Mount Ararat from its actual location, she caustically asks, "Poetic license – where do you get those?"

Apparently agreeing with Henry James that historical fiction is neither, Egoyan effectively challenges that cinematic genre, which so often falls short of its moral responsibilities. In one of "Ararat's" best sequences, Ani unwittingly walks through a scene that Edward is shooting, and is harshly condemned by an actor who speaks as if she had interrupted the events of 1915. It's a funny, on-point portrayal of filmmaking at its most grandiose and self-righteous.

Still, in returning to Gorky's mother and son, Egoyan leaves the audience with the reassuring impression that art is a possible and even proper repository for historical truth and collective memory. More remarkably, he evinces faith that cinema itself can be such an art. "Ararat" is a magnificent film, not only for the grace with which it leads viewers through a thorny and complicated story, but for addressing moral ambiguity without succumbing to it.

Atom Egoyan - Armeniapedia.org Belated History: Revisiting Atom Egoyan’s “Ararat,” by Hovig Tchalian, 2006

Sight and Sound review Peter Matthews, May 2003

World Socialist Web Site review Joanne Laurier

Nitrate Online [Cynthia Fuchs] also seen here: PopMatters (Cynthia Fuchs) review

Film Freak Central review Travis Mackenzie Hoozer

Eye for Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review [4.5/5]

CineScene.com (James Snapko) review

Reverse Shot review David Connelly

The UK Critic (Ian Waldron-Mantgani) review [2.5/4]

Xiibaro Productions (David Perry) review [3.5/4]

Reel.com review [4/4] Pam Grady

Harvey S. Karten review [3/4]

Kamera.co.uk review Darren Arnold

Plume Noire review Sandrine Marques

The Providence Journal review Michael Janusonis

Movie House Commentary Johnny Web and Tuna

DVD Talk (Jason Bovberg) dvd review [3/5]

Exclaim! dvd review Ryan J. Noth

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [2.5/4]

Movie-Vault.com (David Trier) review

Film Freak Central capsule [Bill Chambers]

Variety.com [Todd McCarthy]

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [3.5/4]

The Globe and Mail review [2.5/4] Liam Lacey

The Boston Phoenix review Gary Susman

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review

Reverse Shot (Travis Hoover]

WHERE THE TRUTH LIES

Canada Great Britain (106 mi) 2005 ‘Scope

Time Out London review Geoff Andrew

This adaptation of a novel by Rupert Holmes finds the ever-intriguing Atom Egoyan working in a more mainstream vein than usual. On the surface at least, it’s a slick mystery set in the 1970s, when Karen (Alison Lohman), an openly ambitious journalist hoping to hit the big time, investigates what exactly caused a massive rift between Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth), partners in a hugely popular Martin-and-Lewis-style double-act, at the very peak of their success in the late ’50s. The death of a beautiful young woman in their hotel suite seems to have had something to do with it; still, both men had been cleared of the crime…

Egoyan fans won’t be surprised to find plenty of ideas floating around among the whodunnit elements, allowing for wry reflections on fame, power, corruption, sex, money, trust and betrayal, public image and private reality. Potentially very rich pickings, then, but it must be said that, with the exception of Bacon’s predictably fine performance and a solid turn from Firth, the execution never quite lives up to the material’s promise. There are some striking set-pieces and the film always looks attractive but some of the dialogue, especially, is very clunky, and the tortuous narrative – which keeps switching a little too relentlessly between perspectives and eras – has a number of sticky moments. In the end, its an entertaining confection, and far from unintelligent, but there sadly remains a distinct impression of there being less here than meets the eye.

Where The Truth Lies Peter Brunette in Cannes from Screendaily

Fans of Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan, hoping for a comeback from the multiple missteps of his last film, Ararat, which played at Cannes in 2002, are bound to be disappointed by the director's latest offering, Where The Truth Lies. Based on Rupert Holmes' novel of the same title, the film, which follows the showbiz careers of a comedy duo that will recall Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis for most older viewers, is too smart and ambitious for its own good.

Egoyan's chief virtue and biggest problem has always been his intensely intellectual approach to his filmmaking, and this film is no different. Its excellent re-creation of the ambience of 1950s television and the fine acting by Kevin Bacon do not make up for what seems to be a fatal lack of emotional investment by Egoyan in the project, and the director's ambitions overwhelm his source material.

International critical appreciation will be spotty at best and box office receipts should hover in the territory of Felicia's Journey (1999) at best, rather than that of Exotica (1994) and the director's masterpiece, The Sweet Hereafter (1997). The film played in competition at Cannes.

The first problem is that the film is structured in a needlessly complicated fashion, and thus a gesture that was clearly meant to add layers of thematic complexity will end up confusing most audiences.

In the late 1950s, Lanny Morris (Bacon) and Vince Collins (Firth) are the most famous entertainers in America. Beloved because of their conspicuously exhausting television marathons to raise money for polio research, they demand top dollar to play the most exclusive nightclubs.

One day a young woman, naked and dead, is found in their hotel room (here a bit of the scandal surrounding comedian Fatty Arbuckle in the 1920s seems to have inserted into the basic Martin-Lewis paradigm) and though they aren't implicated in her death, their partnership turns sour and they disappear from sight.

Fifteen years later, another young blonde beauty, a reporter named Karen O'Connor (Lohman) decides to find out what really happened back then and quickly-and dangerously - gets mixed up the emotional dynamics of the comedians' relationship.

Plot exposition is jerkily advanced in a number of ways, including multiple voiceovers, secret manuscripts, flashbacks, and recounted memories that tend to confuse more than clarify. Many of Egoyan's classic themes are present - the return of a past that haunts, the effect of media on social consciousness, the disruptive nature of sexuality, the familiar clash of appearance and reality - yet the original material seems insufficiently strong to carry all the weight.

Karen's own sexual involvement in her subjects' lives complicates matters, but rarely in a convincing or even, despite a kinky turn it takes, interesting way.

Given Egoyan's expertise with the medium, the film is always watchable, though the viewer's patience is tried with corny devices like a recurring and borderline silly lobster motif, as well as a couple of over-the-top sex scenes that provide the principal fulcrum of the plot and will cause some to laugh rather than gasp, as was apparently intended.

While some grace notes are weirdly suggestive, like the druggy singing of White Rabbit by a vixenish Alice in a kids' show, other moments seem false and irrelevant - perhaps they are remnants of the original novel that were not fleshed out enough - like Karen's strange visit to the dead girl's mother.

The re-creation of the 1950s and the 1970s is done in quick and dirty fashion-mostly through the shorthand use of clunky tape recorders, stewardess' uniforms and Afros-and seems done on the cheap.

The last part of the film is given over to the unravelling of the mystery of the dead girl's death, but the ultimate explanation is so elaborate that individual motivations are nearly impossible to decipher, hence it's difficult to care.

Bacon's performance is nervous and edgy, and the forced and not always convincing intensity-whether purposeful or not - seems exactly appropriate to his character. Firth, on the contrary, stuck with the more reserved, calculating role (the Dean Martin character has been transformed into an alcoholic, pill-popping Brit), seems to be sleep-walking through the part. The weakest casting choice, however, is Lohman who, while fetching and completely serviceable in White Oleander and Matchstick Men, seems in over her head here and her breathless dialogue delivery quickly gets annoying.

Egoyan retains his masterful eye, and the camera is always in exactly the right place, and the reticence of the mise-en-scene often says more than the overwrought dialogue.

Alas, these palpable talents are not enough to rescue a project that he never really seems to have taken to heart.

Where the Truth Lies Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

There's so much truly wonderful stuff in this film, and the moment-to-moment experience of watching it was compulsively enjoyable. It was a hell of a ride. Wish I could give it a 7. But no dice -- there are just too many obvious problems, Alison Lohman's mousy performance chief among them. Whatever balls-out gravitas the film had gathered around itself evaporated every time she opened her mouth, but it's not just that. It's that the sharks-in-Botany-500 world that Egoyan so successfully evokes would see right through Karen in a heartbeat. Morris & Collins would cut her to shreds; that much is certain. But aside from this casting blunder and some needless, anticlimactic plot twisting, Where the Truth Lies is my kind of movie through and through. Egoyan masterfully raises the spirit of the jet-setting 1970s, when flying First Class meant hobnobbing with famous people, Szechwan cuisine was still exotic, and the height of super-cool showbiz heroism was . . . the Labor Day Telethon. In today's sneering hipper-than-thou pop culture moment, it's all that much of an achievement that Egoyan plays it straight, highlighting the differences between then and now without breaking the spell. We want to throw back G&Ts with Lanny and Vince because, like Blue Velvet's Ben, their just so fuckin' suave. Although Egoyan deserves much of the credit for the stuff that works, Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth are both superb in this film. Bacon's Lanny nails the insecure, lubricious need for acceptance that makes Jerry Lewis's shtick such a compelling form of psychosis. And Firth, as tortured straight-man Vince, is even better, not really doing Dino so much as channeling a Cary Grant wracked with self-loathing and whacked out on pills. Unlike Lohman, Bacon and Firth are completely on Egoyan's wavelength. His direction has never been so effortlessly jazzy and media-hot. What's interesting is that periodically he'll drop in elements from his chilly, academic side, and some of them actually work. The "White Rabbit" sequence is a stunner because it's unhinged in an ever-so-precise manner, sort of the drugged-out flipside to Sarah Polley's song sequences in The Sweet Hereafter. It's the sort of surreal gambit only a filmmaker as idiosyncratic as Egoyan would attempt. Likewise, his roving, scattershot attention to Morris & Collins' lounge act speaks to the director's interest not just in performance, but in the performer / audience dynamic. Firth's scat-singing nervous breakdown is the sort of tour-de-force any other director would shove our faces in; Egoyan allows it to anchor the background. Not all of the signature moves work in this context -- the surrogate-fathers angle falls a bit flat here, but not egregiously so, and as wonderful as it was to see the old gang for a minute (Arsinee! Gabrielle! Don!), there's no real reason for it. So I suppose in the end there's no denying that the whole thing's a bit shallow, that Egoyan's working a bit beneath his station. And yet, after the grinding rectitude of Ararat, I'm excited to see Egoyan putting on his old, ill-fitting leisure suit and hitting the town. He elevates this E! channel pulp, not by taking it seriously, but by allowing his formal chops to go wild, get instinctual, to swing. World-class auteurs should go slumming more often.

BFI | Sight & Sound | Songs For Swinging Lovers Linda Ruth Williams from Sight and Sound, December 2005

by Liam Lacey Truths and Consequences, from Cinema Scope

Cinepassion.org Fernando F. Croce

Reel.com review [2.5/4] Pam Grady

DVD Talk (Svet Atanasov) dvd review [4/5] [Unrated Edition]

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Jon Danziger) dvd review

FilmStew.com [Brett Buckalew]

The Onion A.V. Club review Keith Phipps

filmcritic.com (Jesse Hassenger) review [2.5/5]

eFilmCritic.com (Erik Childress) review [2/5]

Slant Magazine review Keith Uhlich

World Socialist Web Site review Joanne Laurier

stylusmagazine.com (Paolo Cabrelli) review

Raging Bull Movie Reviews (Mike Lorefice) review [3/4]

Epinions DVD review [Stephen O. Murray]

PopMatters (Michael Buening) review

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [2/4]

Plume Noire review Sandrine Marques

Georgia Straight (Paul Myers) review

Reel.com dvd review [1.5/4] James Emanuel Shapiro

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [2/5]

VideoVista review Debbie Moon

DVD Verdict (Brendan Babish) dvd review

Movie House Commentary Johnny Web and Tuna

Bright Lights Film Journal review Gary Morris

Eye for Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review [4/5]

hybridmagazine.com review Roxanne Bogucka

Exclaim! review Ashley Carter

Entertainment Weekly review [B+] Owen Gleiberman

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [2.5/4]

The Guardian (Peter Bradshaw) review

The Observer (Philip French) review

Boston Globe review [1.5/4] Wesley Morris

The Boston Phoenix review Peter Keough

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [1.5/5]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review William Arnold

San Francisco Chronicle [Ruthe Stein]

Los Angeles Times (Carina Chocano) review

Village Voice (Scott Foundas) review

ADORATION B 88

Canada (100 mi) 2008

An experimental and highly theoretical exercise on attitudes about racism, terrorism, religion, racial profiling, intolerance, freedom of speech, privacy and a host of other matters in the first half that turns fiercely personal by the end. The problem is the icy cold and detached mood sours the audience by the time it takes a sudden turn for something more heartfelt, heightened by a very jagged editing style that uses flashbacks to mix the past with the present, which never allows the characters to reveal themselves. Instead, filmed under very dark interiors, the characters remain secretive, self-absorbed and downright uninvolving, where instead of natural flowing conversation, Egoyan has written a theoretical “what if” piece that supposes what would happen under a hypethetical post 9/11 situation where intolerant views become exaggerated and inflamed, especially when transmitted over the Internet. Inspired by a real life article read in French class about a Jordanian citizen (Nezar Hindawi) who in 1986 attempted to blow up a plane heading for Israel by hiding a bomb in his pregnant Irish wife’s luggage, which was discovered during a routine Israeli security check before boarding, saving the lives of nearly 400 passengers, a bright young high school student Simon, Devon Bostick, decides this is the story of his deceased parents, writing a fictionalized essay that intrigues his teacher, none other than Arsinée Khanjian, who encourages him to maintain the illusion that it’s true and develop it for a theater piece, as she also happens to be the drama teacher. Immediately his story becomes the subject of Internet chatter, initially among his friends, where blocks of photos can be seen on his lap top computer screen all respectfully speaking their minds as if in a conference call, where Simon hmself is so relaxed that he picks up his computer and takes it with him into the kitchen to have a few bowls of cereal while listening, his photo remaining one of the many seen onscreen. But the opinions soon spread to the parents and eventually the school board who take immediate action to fire the teacher for encouraging terrorist possibilities, even if fictionalized.

While the thought is intriguing, especially as Simon is using the piece as a way of connecting to his missing parents who died together in an auto accident, actually offering a previously unknown meaning to their lives, inspired by something his grandfather said just before he died, suggesting his father, a man of Lebanese descent that his Canadian grandfather despised, may have intentionally caused that accident. His rabid hatred for the man may have influenced Simon’s memory and knowledge, which he spends the duration of the movie attempting to revise. Simon has been raised by his taciturn uncle, Scott Speedman, one of those obnoxious tow truck drivers that scoops up cars at a moment’s notice, requesting cash up front if the driver wants their car back, someone he views as extremely closed minded on the subject, continually claiming he had little contact with his parents in the ten years they were married. Through a series of flashbacks integrated into Simon’s own search for a missing connection to his parents, a familiar theme to anyone who has read through Harry Potter’s own family ancestry or Egoyan’s own films like FAMILY VIEWING (1987) or EXOTICA (1994), the viewer is continually subjected to sudden changes in chronology and shifting points of view which reveal themselves like a detective story, through a meticulous build up of details, which include hand made Christmas ornaments, an intricately designed Islamic burka, a lawn Nativity display, a highly valued violin and the memory of hearing it played, original drawings, or old wedding photographs, all of which have special meaning and value, which eventually shed some light on his real family history. But as this film suggests, that’s a real effort, especially when members of your own family have unintentionally been misleading you due to their own bias, which alters your own views.

Using a violin saturated soundtrack by Mychael Danna, the missing discovery in this movie is the unexpectedly powerful performance of Arsinée Khanjian, who is pretty much despised and rejected by most everyone throughout the entire film, especially his uncle who shows his own racial intolerance, actually wearing it on his sleeve as a badge of honor, so it comes as an unexpected surprise when he finally listens to her, of all people, in a conciliatory gesture, which brings Khanjian’s role into light, showing her true colors as an extremely gifted actress rarely seen onscreen except in her husband’s movies. The film is dour and grim, but intensely thoughtful, and especially heartwarming by the end, provoking interest in Simon’s personal journey, as his journey becomes ours as well as we make our way through the post 9/11 security-laden minefields, filled with school zero tolerance policies, which are not even questioned by the local communities. Egoyan suggests history is being rewritten before our eyes, filled with a societal acceptance of intolerance, racial profiling, and to the extreme even torture, signs of an impatient North American people still waiting to exact revenge from a culturally distant world they have little interest in understanding.

Long Pauses [Darren Hughes]

There's certainly no mistaking an Atom Egoyan film -- the non-linear narrative, the technology fetish, the intertwined obsessions with history, identity, and trauma, and all of those secrets and lies. Closest in spirit and form to Ararat, Adoration is another interesting jumble of ideas from Egoyan that, to my surprise, works more often than other critics had led me to expect. I especially like the scenes between Scott Speedman and Arsinee Khanjian, who are the only two actors in the film who consistently make Egoyan's dialog sound like words an actual human being might speak. (In Egoyan's defense, the performance of language and identity is a central concern -- and plot point -- of the film, so some of the awkwardly-heightened language is clearly by design. Egoyan alerts the attentive viewer to this fact by formal means, though I'm not sure if that defense justifies the unfortunate shifts in tone he creates.) Egoyan's at his best when he manages to balance his wealth of ideas with drama, when his characters transcend the intellectual and psychological conceits they are intended to embody. That happens often enough in Adoration, particularly in the final act, to make it my favorite of his films of the last decade. (I'm still eager to see Citadel.) One final note: Mychael Danna's original score is fantastic, but I'd prefer to hear it alone on a soundtrack album. I suspect I would have liked Adoration a good deal more if Egoyan had trimmed 75% of the music cues.

Atom Egoyan's 12th feature film offers a typically kaleidoscopic rumination on voyeurism, videography, the relative nature of truth, and the aftermath of tragedy. It's closer in form and tone to the Canadian auteur's early work (particularly his 1987 masterpiece Family Viewing) than to his erratic recent literary adaptations (Felicia's Journey, Where the Truth Lies). Egoyan's wife and frequent muse, Arsinée Khanjian, occupies the central role here as a high school French and drama teacher who encourages a bright pupil (Devon Bostick) in an elaborate fabrication. Inspired by a classroom translation of a news article about a Jordanian man who attempted to blow up a commercial airliner with a bomb hidden in his pregnant girlfriend's luggage, the boy claims the story as that of his own deceased parents—a lie that quickly goes viral and takes on even more bizarre dimensions when the teacher (for reasons Egoyan holds close to the vest for most of the running time), disguised in a face-covering burka, pays a house call on her student and his blue-collar uncle (an excellent Scott Speedman). Never short on ambition, Adoration has no lack of interesting things to say or interesting ways to say them, but the longer it runs, the more you feel Egoyan working up a sweat to deploy the same effects—Pinterian abstractions, fractured timelines, shifting points of view—that he once made seem effortless. The end result is a movie considerably more absorbing to talk, write, and think about afterward than it is to actually watch.

Time Out New York (Keith Uhlich) review [2/6]

The roundly terrible Adoration exhibits all of Atom Egoyan’s usual stylistic quirks and thematic obsessions—those traits that mark him, for better and for worse, as a bona fide auteur. Yet what works in one Egoyan film, like the sorely underrated Ararat, does not necessarily work in others. Here, the time-jumping narrative and self-consciously somnambulant mood undermine the writer-director’s zeitgeist-inspired thesis.

Terrorism is on Egoyan’s mind, and not just the kind inflicted by Middle Eastern extremists. Simon (Bostick) is a troubled high-school student trying to make sense of the death of his father, Sami (Noam Jenkins), and mother, Rachel (Blanchard). This leads him to concoct a story—with the full sanction of his flighty French teacher (Khanjian)—about his dad being an airplane-bombing terrorist. The lie spirals out of control and several unspoken motivations come to light, but the specifics barely matter, because the director would rather sell us his increasingly stale line about the mind-warping effects of technology.

For this most technophobic of artists, terror is not only imposed but self-created, typically through the very objects we use to both inform us about and distract us from the horrors of the world. To this end, the iSight-equipped MacBook on which Simon chats with friends and strangers is as loaded a vessel of communication-cum-diversion as the antique violin played by Rachel in the film’s gauzy flashback scenes. Yet the soundtrack, slathered in overbearing, weepy strings, clues us in to which item Egoyan finally considers the pathway to redemption. His point of view has rarely been so laughably retrograde.

Boston Globe review [2.5/4] Ty Burr

'Adoration," the latest cool blue puzzle-box from Canadian writer-director Atom Egoyan, has a lot on its plate. Terrorism, adolescence, anti-Arab racism, mixed marriages, online communities, teacher-student relations, the sins of fathers, the anger of children, the Nativity, and tow-truck ethics are some of the many issues the filmmaker chews over here. That the movie doesn't quite topple over like a wedding cake is tribute only to Egoyan's rigor and skill. He's a moralist who wants to tackle 50 problems at once, but he's also a neat freak.

As with the director's other films - 1997's "The Sweet Hereafter" remains the best known - the audience spends the first half-hour figuring out exactly what's going on. (If you want to play the game, beware of spoilers in the next two paragraphs.) A lanky, brooding Toronto high schooler, Simon (Devon Bostick), presents a monologue to his class about his Lebanese father (Noam Jenkins) using his Canadian mother (Rachel Blanchard) as an unwitting airplane bomber; she's stopped at Customs before the device can explode. The boy's story gets out to the public and controversy erupts.

Except that none of it may have happened. As Simon alternately defends and vilifies his father in noisy video chat-room debates with his classmates and impassioned adults, it becomes clear that he has grafted a news story onto his personal life, and that his parents actually died in a car crash years earlier. Why, then, did his oddly intense drama teacher, Sabine (Arsinee Khanjian), urge him to write and perform the monologue? What seething anger is Simon's uncle, Tom (Scott Speedman), a bearded tow-truck operator who has raised the boy, carrying toward his own late father (Kenneth Welsh)? Who's the masked Arab woman who shows up at Simon's house on Christmas Eve?

Watching "Adoration" is like juggling three tennis balls, a porcupine, and a graduate thesis, but eventually it finds a unifying theme, that of tolerance melting away racial and intergenerational hatreds. Egoyan's script relies too much on coincidence, but one such happenstance results in the film's best scene, an unexpected diner date in which Tom and Sabine share their respective burdens and find wary common ground. Even that, though, is broken up by a cabdriver (Dominic Cuzzocrea) loudly discussing the merits of a free lunch.

In Egoyan-land, no one gets a free lunch. We're too attached to each other by unspoken debts and grievances, he feels, and too blinded by perspective. The fault of "Adoration" is that it tries to use cinema to see all perspectives at once and with a seriousness that tips into the lugubrious. Mychael Danna's score, with its keening violin threnodies, both anchors and immobilizes the narrative, and God forbid anyone should crack a smile.

The film's boldest sign of life is Khanjian's performance as the teacher, a woman clearly unstable yet possessed with eerie grace (not to mention a heroic uni-brow). The role embodies the director's prickly notion of forgiveness as a necessary, ruinous thing; that the actress is Egoyan's wife and long-time leading lady explains the ease with which she moves through his landscapes. He's an emotional Cubist and she's his Nude in a Black Armchair.

The Walrus Magazine » Atom Egoyan Adoration » The Unsettler » By ... The Unsettler, by Denis Seguin, October/November 2008

Slant Magazine review Andrew Schenker

CompuServe [Harvey Karten]

PopMatters review Matt Mazur

Cinematical (Kim Voynar) review

Moving Pictures Magazine [Ron Holloway]

Christian Science Monitor (Peter Rainer) review [C+]

Screen International review Howard Feinstein at Cannes from Screendaily

Bina007 Movie Reviews

Critic's Notebook [Robert Levin]

filmcritic.com (Chris Cabin) review [2.5/5]

Exclaim! [Travis Mackenzie Hoover]

Naked Lunch Radio

Review: Adoration (CityNews.ca)

Variety (Justin Chang) review

The Globe and Mail (Liam Lacey) capsule review [3/4]

Time Out Online (Dave Calhoun) review [3/6]

The Boston Phoenix (Peter Keough) review also including an Egoyan interview here: Part 1, Part 2

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review [2/4]

Los Angeles Times (Betsy Sharkey) review also seen here: Chicago Tribune (Betsy Sharkey) review

Nezar Hindawi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hindawi Affair - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1986: UK cuts links with Syria over bomb plot BBC On This Day, October 24, 1986

The Hindawi Case: Syrian Connexions The Institute for Counter-Terrorism, London, November 1, 1986

Can peace expunge his crime? - Middle East, World - The Independent Robert Fisk from The Independent, July 30 1998

"El Al bomber too dangerous to release, court rules" Jenny Booth from The London Times Online, October 13, 2004

CHLOE B 86

Canada USA France (96 mi) 2009 Sony Pictures Classics [us]

I guess I've always been good with words. —Chloe (Amanda Seyfried)

First of all one has to say, it's gorgeous to see a film shot in 35 mm any more, as everything is digitalized these days, becoming much too commonplace and it's immediately recognizable in so many movies, diminishing the look of the film while admittedly hard to tell in others, so when Egoyan shoots the old fashioned way, I for one, am a huge advocate. Egoyan ventures into commercial filmmaking with his stab at an earlier French film NATHALIE (2003), something of an erotic mystery, adapted by Erin Cressida Wilson, who also wrote the fabulously inventive SECRETARY (2002) and the truly bizarre FUR: AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS (2006). While the film shows us one hand while holding another behind our backs, this sleight of hand narrative never really provides the punch it’s looking for as deceit is the common thread spread throughout the film. Julianne Moore is Catherine, a gynecologist who has her own practice while her husband David (Liam Neeson) teaches at the university. Both live in an immaculately beautiful bi-level house with giant picture windows that is continually shot from all angles, using mirrors and windows that feel like an immense architectural dream home afforded only by the filthy rich. When her husband doesn’t arrive from the airport for a surprise birthday party that took enormous planning on Catherine’s part, arriving instead in the wee morning hours, she gets suspicious, as if this kind of thing happens all the time. Finding a photo message left on her husband’s cell, his arm wrapped around a gorgeous young female student, she devises a clever plan to test his fidelity, which the audience initially finds amusing since he’s teaching a class on the exaggerated sexual exploits of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the farthest thing one could possibly find to fidelity. Out her office window at work, which features glass windows on two sides, she routinely follows to comings and goings of one particular call girl, Amanda Seyfried as Chloe, who moves from her residence to an upscale hotel across the street rather easily. Obviously, her choice has been made.

Catherine decides to hire Chloe to tempt her husband, paid by the hour at her standard fee, then report back to her just exactly what transpired between them. At first a harmless flirtation leads to another session, which leads to an introduction and a walk in the park, kissing and eventually stealing away to an empty backroom corner of a conservatory for a hand job among the exotic plants—none of which is shown, always described. Chloe’s near literary description of the events at first galls Catherine by her husband’s tawdry sexual advances, but begins to mesmerize her a bit as there seems to be a dream logic to these planned events which seem to have a mind of their own, as Chloe tends to meet suddenly and unexpectedly, then embarrassingly shows up at Catherine’s office where she’s already showing signs of a nervous wreck waiting to explode. Chloe seems perfectly comfortable pressing her buttons, agitating her to the point of just a little more distress, then turning on a dime into that comforting soul who ends up wiping those tears from your eyes. She is the personification of mood swings who always has a tendency to show up or text a message at the worst possible moment, where Catherine suddenly drops everything to meet her, usually in a darkly illuminated hotel bar as she listens to more sexual expository about her husband’s latest philanthropy, now moving discreetly into hotel rooms as the sexuality goes more graphic. Upon hearing this, Catherine is so distraught at the idea that she’s lost her husband that she crumples into a ball, suddenly comforted by Chloe, the other woman she fears the most, who suddenly has an ability to sooth and calm her nerves, to take her mind off the anguish and despair, to change her inwardly destructive, self-absorbed remorse into something resembling warmth and comfort, where kissing and stroking one another leads to a sexual liaison of her own, a surprisingly delicate yet naked display of human need.

But here the tables are turned. While obsessing about her husband’s affair, Catherine has had one of her own, thinking all this time that everyone around her was having sex except herself, spending so much time anxiously avoiding her family and friends that all suspect something is up. But when Catherine tries to end it and Chloe begins stalking her son as a way of getting to her, the story takes on eerie, Hitchcockian dimensions. All that empty, continuous space from earlier scenes that fills these immense rooms suddenly feels constricted and claustrophobic, as if there’s not enough air to breathe. Catherine feels caught in a web of her own making and she’s suffocating from her own deceit. One of the strange turns in this film is the sudden shift from the implication of the husband, who was the focus of the first three-quarters of the movie, a strange maneuver that may have been hampered by actor Liam Neeson’s time restrictions, as he was available for only 2 days following an unfortunate skiing accident of his wife, actress Natasha Richardson, who was flown to another hospital for what was expected to be a stable recovery but she unfortunately died unexpectedly. As a result, the story seems to have evolved without him in his absence, becoming a unique women’s picture, something that appears to be a typical man’s fantasy, yet it’s a screenplay written by a woman based on a previous film directed by a woman (Anne Fontaine), so a woman's imprint is all over this one, yet in Egoyan's hands, it somehow never feels right. One prefers movies that he writes himself, as this story seemed to lack his personal vision and was instead an attempt to make a commercial film, or at least so it seemed. It still had Egoyan quirks and oddities, and the music of Mychael Danna, but his earlier works certainly surpass this film.

Time Out (Dave Calhoun) review [3/5]

Atom Egoyan only directs – not writes – this more slick, less subtle but still enjoyably barmy remake of ‘Nathalie’, the 2003 film which saw a middle-aged Parisian (Fanny Ardant) employ a hooker (Emmanuelle Béart) to seduce her philandering husband (Gérard Depardieu) and report on the details.

There was something so French about the original (the implicit acceptance of adultery, for one) that it’s not surprising that the emphasis has changed so that the affairs of the husband (Liam Neeson) are less certain and more of a possibility that prompts the hiring of Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) by his wife (Julianne Moore).

But there’s a literalism that disappoints: just when you’re enjoying the suggestion that the entire set-up is reflective of the wife’s turmoil or, at least, her mid-life crisis, the story takes a silly turn into stalker-thriller territory. Egoyan’s style is strictly arthouse-accessible: soft colours and dark shadows; modern architecture; a hint of erotica and the odd nipple shot.

The New Yorker (Anthony Lane) review

As the festivity of the Winter Olympics dies away, what is the next extravaganza that Canada has to offer? Welcome to “Chloe,” in which a Toronto-based gynecologist has a lesbian affair with a prostitute whom she suspects of having slept with her husband. If that isn’t a winter sport, I don’t know what is. Not unlike snowboard cross, perhaps, except that these contestants have lunchtime sex in hotels instead of knocking each other helmet first into the slush.

David (Liam Neeson) misses a surprise birthday party thrown for him by his wife, Catherine (Julianne Moore), who doesn’t realize that, for most men, surprise parties are slightly less enjoyable than surprise dentistry. She thinks that he was otherwise engaged, and, in a fit of inquisitive revenge, pays a call girl named Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) to befriend and tempt him. The befriending gets out of control, but Catherine is so aroused by firsthand accounts of it that she, too, falls into Chloe’s embrace. The movie—directed by Atom Egoyan, who should know better—is closely adapted from “Nathalie,” a French film of 2004, with Gérard Depardieu and Emmanuelle Béart, but what seemed like standard practice for Parisians comes across here as unsmiling porno-farce. Even the throbbing score, by Mychael Danna, sounds unwittingly risible, and there were times—I refer you to David’s first, salivating gaze at Chloe across a coffee shop—when I felt that we could be watching one of those soft-core cable dramas starring the redoubtable Shannon Tweed, with titles like “Night Raptures IV” or “Executive Sensations.” Wait, if you must, for the DVD, although even then, once you’ve heard the hooker say, “I try and find something to love in everybody,” there is a strong case that “Chloe” should be pulled from your Erotica shelf and moved to Science Fiction.

not coming to a theater near you review Mike D’Angelo

One of Canada’s most steadfastly idiosyncratic filmmakers – and that’s saying a lot coming from the country that gave us Guy Maddin and David Cronenberg, among others – Atom Egoyan has had his ups (Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter) and downs (Ararat, Where the Truth Lies) over the years, but one thing he’s never remotely been is anybody’s hack for hire. So it’s enormously dispiriting to find him wasting his considerable gifts on a dopey “erotic thriller” like Chloe, huffing and puffing to lend a touch of mystery and elegance to patently ludicrous material. Fans of the French director Anne Fontaine (are there any?) will be doubly stupefied to realize that Chloe is in fact a radically revised remake of her 2003 film Nathalie…, itself not exactly the zenith of 21st-century art cinema. But whatever the original’s flaws, it didn’t look like something you’d find yourself guiltily watching on Cinemax at 3:30 a.m.

Not that I object to seeing plenty of Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried naked, mind you. The former plays Catherine, a conspicuously well-off Toronto doctor who begins to suspect that her husband, David, a college professor, may be cheating on her with one or more of his students. To find out, she hires a high-priced “escort,” Chloe, to seduce David and report back. As in the original, none of these heterosexual assignations is ever seen—instead, we hear about them as described by Chloe to Catherine, who takes in every steamy detail with a mixture of grief and lust. Gradually – and here we start to move well away from the original – the two women themselves develop palpable sexual chemistry, ultimately falling into bed. But when Catherine decides things have gone far enough, Chloe goes postal… and the easiest target may be neither husband nor wife, but the couple’s recently dumped, sexually frustrated teenage son.

Both Nathalie… and Chloe share the same big third-act twist, which I guessed within about five minutes when I saw the former. But Nathalie (who was played by Emmanuelle Béart), unlike Chloe, was a fundamentally benign character. What made the original film somewhat interesting – and right up Egoyan’s alley, actually, now that I think about it, which may explain why he took the gig – was the revelation that this purportedly tawdry situation was in fact a stealthy form of couples’ therapy, with lies and fantasies employed as a means of unsurfacing buried truths. Trouble is, screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary) chucked that whole idea out the window, having apparently decided (or been instructed by someone with an eye toward broad popular appeal) that what this story really needed was for the escort to become a generic she-demon, blackmailing people with risqué photos and attacking them with dagger-shaped hairpins. Once she’s been punished, normality can be restored.

For a while, Egoyan, reveling in glossy, modernist production design, and his first-rate cast (which also includes Liam Neeson as David) manage to give Chloe a veneer of faintly dull respectability. Julianne Moore has always excelled at repressed eroticism, and her vacillation between disgust and horniness during Chloe’s monologues achieves a level of genuine complexity; you can practically see her hand drifting between her thighs, even though it’s only her facial muscles that actually move. Once the film goes off the rails, though, it doesn’t even qualify as especially juicy pulp—the third act looks only like a desperate, last-ditch attempt to make the movie at least a little bit mall-friendly. Under ordinary circumstances, this guff would merely be forgettable. With Egoyan’s name attached, it becomes actively depressing.

alibi.com [Devin D. O'Leary]

Canada is a funny place. The country has produced its fair share of edgy entertainers: David Cronenberg, Kids in the Hall, William Gibson, Neil Young, Tommy Chong. But even in their darkest moments, there’s a certain politeness to what they do. Canada does have an edge; it’s just clean and very well-maintained.

Take, for example, the works of Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan (Family Viewing, Speaking Parts, The Adjuster, Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter, Ararat, Where the Truth Lies). Look over his résumé and you’ll see a career-long study in obsession, dysfunction, guilt, anger, alienation and grief. And yet, no matter how sexual, how violent, how emotionally disturbed his works become, they still have a certain intellectual polish that makes them feel almost antiseptic. That’s not a criticism, mind you; just an observation. In fact, at their absolute best, Egoyan’s films seem all the more unseemly thanks to their sparkling, up-market settings.

Egoyan’s latest work is the psychosexual drama Chloe. Like many of his films, it’s set among the upper middle class. The Stewarts are a successful Toronto couple. Catherine (Julianne Moore) is an overworked gynecologist. David (Liam Neeson) is a college professor who divides his time between Toronto and New York. Like a lot of Egoyan’s other subjects, the Stewarts dwell in a tidy, modern house with lots of glass walls—and yet they still manage to hide a lot of nasty secrets.

Catherine, unhappily passing middle age, finds herself increasingly isolated from the men in her life. Her son is a sexually active teen who wants little to do with his parents. Her husband is becoming more and more immersed in his work, and she’s starting to suspect he’s having an affair with one of his students. Determined to confirm her worst fears, Catherine hires a high-class hooker named Chloe (Amanda Seyfried, Mamma Mia!) to “seduce” her husband and see if he takes the bait. He does. (Would you say no to those milk-saucer eyes?)

Instead of confronting David “Cheaters”-style (we’re at least one hair weave and a video camera short of that), Catherine continues to pay Chloe for her services—ostensibly to see just how far her husband is willing to go. Why exactly is Catherine orchestrating these ongoing sexual encounters? Is she getting off on them? Is she trying to regain some sort of control over her husband’s libido by scripting his sex life? Yes and yes may be the surprising answers.

While the film starts out as an erotic psychodrama, by about the halfway point it starts to morph into your basic erotic thriller—shocking twists, nicely lit sex scenes and all. Egoyan’s art house talents aren’t exactly suited to such standard-issue commercial cinema. Thankfully, he resists the urge to go completely Fatal Attraction on us. He’s still more interested in the murky interior worlds of these successful but unsatisfied characters, and the scenes that work best are the ones in which people are grappling with their inner demons. The script, written by Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus) and based on a 2003 French film called Nathalie..., mingles feminism and kinkiness and packs at least one dynamite, didn’t-see-that-coming twist. Still, with a cheesier cast and a lot more blood, the less-than-subtle ending could have come straight out of a late-night Cinemax movie.

Neeson’s wife, Natasha Richardson, died during the filming, and the actor was obliged to wrap things up rather quickly. As a result, the film is left largely in Moore’s hands. That’s as it should be. Moore and Neeson make for a fine, frission-filled couple, but it’s Ms. Moore’s film.

Moore has always been an actress who’s at her best when she’s naked—both physically and emotionally. She made her first big impression with that indelible pants-off tirade in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and hasn’t let vanity or fame get in the way of bold choices since. Moore leaves a strong impression here as the conflicted wife who finds her sexual priorities somewhat confused.

Seyfried, the third of our little ménage à trois, makes for a winsome enigma. (Movie reality check: Hookers—even high-class ones—do not look like Amanda Seyfried.) Unfortunately, her titular plot catalyst is stuck with some confusing motivations, making Chloe a hard character to navigate into “fully believable” territory.

Chloe has its moments, and those moments are slam-bang powerful. But it’s a bit of a muddle at times. The mix of psychological and sexual, the pushing of social boundaries, and the question of personal identity are a perfect fit for a probing filmmaker like Egoyan. At the same time, the film’s pulpier, B-movie elements don’t always jibe with with Egoyan’s slow-burn art house atmosphere. But hey, regardless of whether or not the film winds up with some implausible elements, it’s a juicy ride through emotional, intellectual and (let’s not forget) sexual territory. ... Even if that territory is north of the border.

Mark Reviews Movies (Mark Dujsik) review [3.5/4]

PopMatters (Jesse Hassenger) review

Monsters and Critics [Anne Brodie]

The Village Voice [J. Hoberman]

The Rumpus Original Combo: Chloe - The Rumpus.net Jeremy Hatch from The Rumpus

The Rumpus Review of Chloe Larry Fahey from The Rumpus

The Onion A.V. Club review [C+] Keith Phipps

REVIEW | Egoyans Accidental Black Comedy Chloe Succeeds as Guilty Pleasure Eric Kohn from indieWIRE

Slant Magazine [Andrew Schenker]

CHUD.com (Devin Faraci) review

Film School Rejects [Neil Miller]

theartsdesk.com [Veronica Lee]

Screenjabber review Justin Bateman

Cinematical (Monika Bartyzel) review

Digital Spy [Simon Reynolds]

Monsters and Critics [Ron Wilkinson]

Eye for Film (Amber Wilkinson) review [3/5]

They Shoot Actors, Don't They? Katarina

DVD Talk (Jamie S. Rich) review [1/5]

DVD Talk (Brian Orndorf) review [3/5] also seen here: eFilmCritic.com (Brian Orndorf) review [4/5] and hwere: Briandom [Brian Orndorf]

DVD Talk (Tyler Foster) review [3/5]

DVD Talk (Jason Bailey) review [2/5]

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [1/5]

Movie City News [David Poland]

Chloe Andre Chautard at Toronto from Moving Picture Magazine

Daily Film Dose [Alan Bacchus]

New York Daily News (Elizabeth Weitzman) review [1/5]

RopeofSilicon (Brad Brevet) review [D-]

CineSnob.net (Kiko Martinez) review [C-]

Filmcritic.com Christopher Null

Screen International (Allan Hunter) review registration required

Interview: Atom Egoyan Adam Keleman interview from Slant magazine, March 24, 2010

Sublimated Rage, Sex and the History of Cinema: An Interview with Chloe Director Atom Egoyan Matt Mazur interview from Pop Matters, March 24, 2010

The Rumpus Interview with Atom Egoyan: Chloe Interview by Larry Edalatpour from The Rumpus, April 8, 2010

The Hollywood Reporter review Michael Rechtshaffen

Entertainment Weekly review [C] Owen Gleiberman

The Guardian (Peter Bradshaw) review [2/5]

As erotica, Chloe falls flat | Jack Arnott Jack Arnott from The Guardian, March 4, 2010

The Independent (Anthony Quinn) review [2/5]

The Globe and Mail (Liam Lacey) review [3/4] March 26, 2010

Toronto as a sexy, self-involved femme fatale Liam Lacey from The Globe and the Mail, March 27, 2010

The Boston Phoenix (Peter Keough) review

Austin Chronicle review [2/5] Marjorie Baumgarten

San Francisco Chronicle [Mick LaSalle]

Los Angeles Times (Betsy Sharkey) review

Nordstrand Florian Eichinger - Zurich Film Festival

The New York Times (A.O. Scott) review March 26, 2010

Adapting to Life’s Change, on Screen and Off Katrina Onstad from The New York Times, August 27, 2009

Eguino, Antonio

CHUQUIAGO

Bolivia (86 mi) 1976

Chuquiago X-Ray of a City, by Alfonso Gumucio Dagron from Jump Cut

Eichinger, Florian

NORDSTRAND B 89

aka: North Beach

Germany (89 mi) 2013 Website Trailer

Something of a self-taught filmmaker, Eichinger began his career as an editor, but soon produced several shorts, also directing one, and used money earned from making commercials to finance BERGFEST (2008), his low-budget first feature, while NORDSTRAND is the second part of Eichinger's planned domestic violence trilogy. Opening with just a touch of understated wry humor, two young boys, perhaps aged 9 and 6, left alone in their home steal a few sips from their father’s liquor cabinet, only for their parents to return where they innocently look like nothing has happened. Their father peruses the liquor cabinet and pulls out 3 glasses, pouring each one a glass from the liquor they were drinking and encourages them to drink up. Too startled to move, the kids sit frozen with fear. When Mom enters the room, Dad waves her back out, claiming this was men’s business, and shuts the door in her face, which leads to the title sequence. What follows is a brooding, slowly evolving character study of two long estranged brothers, Marten (Martin Schleiß) and Volker (Daniel Michel), returning to their abandoned childhood home by the North Sea coast where they are planning to spend a weekend together. Both have led two distinctively separate lives, where Marten works in the music business and Volker designs computer programs, but Volker establishes right away that he’s not interested in discussing careers. Using his big brother influence, Marten attempts to convince his brother to come with him when their mother is released from jail, where she has been since the death of their father, but Volker shuns that idea as well, claiming his only real interest is in selling the house, as he wants no further family connection with any of them.

They’re seen eating together, mostly bread and cold cuts with beer, also hanging out at the frigid beach, where an old girlfriend Enna (Luise Berndt) informs Volker that she couldn’t wait any longer, and after never hearing from him in years, she finally married and has a child. While their visit is cordial, it’s clear Enna may be the only person of interest remaining from Volker’s troubled past, as glimpses of flashback sequences show Volker continually being brutalized by his father while Marten and his Mom stood and watched from behind a door. When Marten attempts to be sympathetic, Volker has no interest in being a victim anymore, claiming he’s moved on, finding nothing to be gained by dwelling on the past, which is why he has no emotional connection to the house, as it brought him no good memories. In one of the more intriguing scenes of the film, Volker is paid a visit by an elderly neighbor, Frau Suhren (Martina Krauel, coming across like a true Fassbinder actress), who informs him that everyone has continued to talk about his family secrets and hidden childhood trauma long after he moved away, suggesting “Sometimes it’s impossible to free ourselves from these patterns on our own,” asking if he sees himself as a victim? “Of course, but I don’t whine about it. I want to look forward.” Again, Volker wants no sympathy from this woman, who he sees as a prying old hag meddling in other people’s business, contending all she’s really interested in is her own agenda, which has nothing to do with him. Be that as it may, and without blinking an eye, Frau Suhren informs him he’s hiding his real emotions behind a wall, and that he’s poisoning Enna’s relationship, which is her real interest, before turning and walking out the door. It’s a stunning moment, as she sees right through him, mercilessly showing no fear of him whatsoever.

Deeply rooted resentments begin to surface between the brothers as painful memories crop up, where Marten is trying to find some semblance of the brother he once knew, but he’s completely shut out, like everybody else. In a desperate measure, he plays an old LP record which is a light and breezy French recording of a song called “Paris Smiles,” hopping and jumping around as it plays, making sure his brother hears, as if there’s some emotional connection there which is never revealed, but Volker just sits typing away at his computer, putting on earplugs to block it all out, exactly as he is shutting out the rest of the world. His oppressive nature is elevated when he takes Enna out to sea in a small rowboat, where she makes it clear to him that they are finished as a couple, so he pulls out the plug from the bottom drain, allowing water to rush in. Despite her pleas, he refuses to budge, literally forcing the boat to sink with her in it, where she has to swim back to shore in the frigid water, angry at what an idiot he’s become. There are beautifully austere moments where Marten runs alone on the seashore in a morning mist as grinding metal music plays on the soundtrack, producing an anguished scream.

Shot by Andre Lex, the film is broodingly picturesque, a perfect backdrop for a blunt confrontation with a tragic past. Sharply written and concisely edited, the drama between the two brothers comes alive with such bold lines of demarcation, where Volker is a walking time bomb of unleashed venom, perfectly capable of doing just about anything, as he seems incapable of expressing remorse. Marten nearly kills himself trying to get through, but it feels reasonably clear that even if he died tomorrow, Volker would not be moved, as he really doesn’t care anymore. The aggressiveness of his disdain for others is like a loaded gun. Over the end credits, when we hear the French song again, this time it contemptuously stands for the weakness of the French, and his brother, and anybody else that’s not a true German. With this film Eichinger has created another young Franz Biberkopf from Fassbinder’s BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1980), something of a prelude to Fascism and becoming a Nazi, as Volker could easily be on a similar trajectory.

Two brothers, Marten and Volker, finally meet up again at their parents’ abandoned house on a North Sea island after years of estrangement. Marten wants to persuade his younger brother Volker to help him get his mother out of prison, where she has been since the death of their father. But Volker has other ideas: He’s intent on forgetting the violence he suffered as a child at the hands of his father. Only when he bumps into his now married childhood sweetheart Enna do cracks begin to appear in the wall he has built around himself. Meanwhile, Marten, who was spared the violence, is plagued by feelings of guilt for not standing by his brother out of pure fear. A film without false sentimentality, NORDSTRAND explores with psychological precision the complex relationship between two brothers shaped by a traumatic childhood, and as it does, raises questions of guilt and responsibility.

Nordstrand | Film | Kritik | critic.de Josef Lommerange

It all starts with a bottle of booze. From childish curiosity Marten and Volker want to try the spirits, who always drinks her father. Suddenly the parents come home from my walk, and the father noticed the little rascals action. To classify all can not be first, what direction Florian Eichinger North beach (2013) will take, but looks and choppy sentences are ominously over the scene. Only when the living room door closed silently before the mother, there is no need fuller explanation more. The family drama is Eichinger's second feature film, and is hard to Berg (2008), the middle part of his trilogy about domestic violence.

After years the brothers Marten (Martin Schleiß) and Volker (return Daniel Michel ) back to her parents' house, now a derelict cottage on the North Sea. While Marten wants to move his brother to pick up his mother from prison, Volker plans to sell the house and leave everything behind.

Displace and pretend to supplant what it's actually in North beach. Violence emanating from the father is either only hinted at in short scenes or short with some flashbacks, but concise illustrated. It is like a veil on the premises of the oppressive country house. The Schnapsschränkchen or certain rooms serve as indicators of painful events in the past. All brought something and leads to inevitable confrontations.

Eichinger, memories of the previous experiences never works out explicitly, giving his film an oppressive calmness. Thanks to the opening scene, which also only touches on the family situation, the memories rather hang ominously in the air, but can be made understandable through small moments. Just the young Volker to see. Head in the trash or with a bloody nose in his room while he is knocking back the mother of Eichinger says just enough and no more than necessary, which is the main strength of his film, which requires a lot of patience.

Compared to his last work hard mountain , came along the sometimes bumpy and bad striking, north beach has a liquid and especially tangible. Although the setting is reminiscent of Eichinger's debut, but there is a significant difference. Again, the characters are faced in absolute seclusion with the past, but during the Mountain Festival Origin of familial discord was separated and the conflict has been transferred to a remote mountain cabin, north beach remains firmly anchored just this. An escape from this place that would be symbolic of a degree with the experienced, seems pointless. The residence is singular between the open sea and never ending heathland. Only late in the film gives viewers an insight into just another house, which seems caught and strange. The final confrontation with the past is inevitable, because there is no way to break out of this spatial arrangement.

Nevertheless, North beach lays some stumbling blocks in the way that rob the film of its somewhat austere force. Eichinger does not seem right to rely on his basic conflict and provides story and characters with additional implications, but want to concretize addition to its function as a dramatic element unnecessarily. Over the life of the brothers outside the family situation is Eichinger little information. An insight into everyday Volkers is finally a DVD to pass the Marten mother and their content shows him as violent thugs. Thus Eichinger extends Although the act of violence into the world outside the family, but this seems to be something deliberate pedagogical apprehension of sequelae. The supposedly more stable turns out to be deeply damaged his stoic calm is deceptive, and it is to the domestic relations eventually wear out more. Clashes with ex-girlfriend ( Annathal stream ) or conversations with villagers illustrate this but insistent because they reappraise his condition gradually.

Volker can be identified as the one who is harsh and action-related approach to the process of repression. The opening scene is actually mentioned exactly again and already suggests a direction that is emerging more clearly later. The three glasses filled with brandy, and the father performs his silent act of humiliation. Volker does not hit with the father, Marten. The younger of the two was the fight against the head of the family already begun and his brother - what will be presented at the final race in the open ocean - simply superior. Finally, but both suffer.

Eimbcke, Fernando

Fernando Eimbcke - Filmbug biography

Fernando Eimbcke studied film at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos (UNAM), where he wrote and directed several shorts, notably No Todo es Permanente, which was nominated as best documentary short by the Mexican Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1996. Eimbcke made several music videos for various rock bands, for which he received much recognition as well as a number of awards.

The desire to develop a project of his own led him to convince his friends to form a script workshop to write feature films. At this workshop, quite a few screenplays were written that ended up tucked away in some producer's drawer, but in 2001, Eimbcke won a contest to produce the short La Suerte de la Fea… a la Bonita no le Importa, which went on to participate in a number of national and international festivals such as Guanajuato, Berlin, and Sao Paolo, among others. In 2002, he was invited to make a short film against corruption, No Sea Malito, which participated in Sao Paolo that same year.

In 2003, the Berlinale invited him to the first Talent Campus, to which he applied with the short The Look of Love.

The following year, Eimbcke received the support of the Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía to write a script, which led to the inception of DUCK SEASON (Temporada de Patos); the finished screenplay received the grant for production development from the same institution.

DUCK SEASON (Temporada de Patos) was shot from July 14 to August 17, 2003. The film was completed in May of 2004. The film won 7 Mayahueles in the Muestra de Cine Mexicano de Guadalajara as well as the FIPRESCI prize and was selected to participate in the 43é. Semaine de la Critique in Cannes (2004). Winner of 11 Ariel Awards in 2005, the film was included in more than 70 Festivals and has been sold to more than 30 countries.

Groucho Reviews: Interview: Fernando Eimbcke—Duck Season—02/24/06

Fernando Eimbcke and Alfonso Cuaron Talk Duck Season Steven Chupnik interview from Movieweb, March 6, 2006

Interview with Fernando Eimbcke, Writer/Director of Duck Season Rebecca Murray interview from About.com, March 7, 2006

Fernando Eimbcke's Duck Season - ScriptMag Rita Cook interview from ScriptMag (undated)

Fernando Eimbcke Interview ‹ Little White Lies — Independent UK ... Jason Wood interview from Little White Lies (2008)

LAKE TAHOE: Eimbcke's dreaded "second" film proves a gem. Also: filmmaker Q&A James van Maanen from Trust Movies, including an interview with the director July 10, 2009

Filmmaker Magazine Director interview, July 10, 2009

Reverse Shot Talkies #3: Fernando Eimbcke > REVERSEBLOG: the ... Eric Hynes interview from Reverse Shot blog on HD Video (2009) on YouTube (6:33)

How Many of Me - Fernando Eimbcke

Fernando Eimbcke - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Image results for Fernando Eimbcke

DUCK SEASON (Temporada de patos) A- 94

Mexico (90 mi) 2004

A delight from start to finish, from its quiet, opening black and white still images by Alexis Zabé which are presented without sound, which fade to black after every shot, like Aki Kaurismäki, to the selection of the cast, who are pitch perfect throughout, to an amazing sound design, including original music by Liquits, a piano passage by Alejandro Rosso, and a brief passage by Beethoven (from his 4^th Piano Concerto), but what’s starkly different here is how this first time director assuredly finds the right tone to present his material. The tone is one of subdued elation as two middle class 14-year old housing project kids, best friends Flama and Moko, Daniel Miranda and Diego Cataño, are left home alone one Sunday afternoon after mom goes off to some unannounced engagement, where they’re finally free from the world of grown ups and responsibilities and can just sit back and play video games, share a liter of coke on ice, eat chips and be happy, like a live, theatrical rendition of The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. When they are momentarily interrupted by a neighbor girl next door who needs to use their stove, 16-year old Rita (Danny Perea), they barely even notice, as they can’t take their eye off the screen even for split second. All is going according to plan until the power suddenly goes off, leaving the two boys with nothing to do and a girl in the kitchen who announces she’ll be staying a bit longer because she now has to do everything by hand. So, bored and hungry, they dial for a pizza delivery and two large cokes, where the deliveryman on a motorbike has to contend with speed bumps and a housing complex with dozens of different high rises all looking the same with nearly identical addresses. When he arrives on the scene with no power, he has to trapse up 8 flights of stairs, pizza and helmet in tow, only to be told by these two ungrateful customers that he was 11 seconds late, so they’re not paying. When the pizza man, Ulises (Enrique Arreola), refuses to leave, a Mexican stand off ensues, or, a journey begins.

This is so cleverly written by the director and Paula Markovitch that it resembles a minimalist theatrical piece, an interior chamber drama all taking place in one or two rooms. What follows are small vignettes, moments in time, character studies taking place in real time, which seems, surprisingly, odd, or impressionistic pieces that reveal the wit and character of each person, which turn out to be surprisingly funny and uniquely original. The initial obsession with “wasting time” playing games is interrupted by a power outage where people have to find something to do. Inevitably what happens, much like John Hughes’ THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985), is that they quite unintentionally discover each other. Ulises, true to his name, has been separated from his home town of San Juan and dreams of returning, but he keeps getting screwed over by bad relationships and dumbass jobs. Flama’s parents are divorcing and spend all their time arguing over who gets what piece of property, all of which is driving him crazy. Moko is just happy to have a friend to hang out with on a regular basis, and Rita, the odd one out, insists on baking a cake for her birthday that her own family forgot (another John Hughes reference), but things continually go wrong in the kitchen. Brownies, she finally decides, are so much easier. Meanwhile, she’s happy to have a helper in the kitchen like Moko, implanting her own worldly wisdom on a cute 14-year old while dreaming of being a rock star, making the most of her opportunity of being the girl next door while Moko grows weary of beating the eggs.

Suffice it to say, the pizza gets eaten along with the cakes and marijuana brownies that kick-in in no time, slowing things down to a dead crawl where occasionally someone will be asleep on the sofa while others will be chatting away, but all are visibly moved by a painting on the wall of ducks in a pond, one of them taking off in flight, a metaphor for their own adolescent development, especially with no adults on the premises, but each one is sure the painting is moving. Ulises is so fascinated that he places it in the bathtub so he can stare at it while he takes a bath, eliciting a surrealistic image in his mind where for ahwile he actually steps inside the painting. It’s a gentle exploration of their own lives filled with a beguiling curiosity, where the director has the added capability of mixing together a series of wordless images for comic effect. Wise beyond their years, using music and editing that only enhances the poignancy of the moment, the cameraderie of the characters takes on a surprising intelligence and social complexity, beautifully capturing the apathy of youth with understated, Jim Jarmusch-style cinematic poetry, suggesting a journey well spent, leaving the audience charmed and thoroughly captivated by this delightful film.

Time Out London review Geoff Andrew

This very agreeably droll first feature covers a momentous few hours in the lives of a couple of 14-year-old inhabitants of the projects of Mexico City. It’s Sunday lunchtime, and Flama (Daniel Miranda) and Moko (Diego Cataño) are embarking on their same old like-clockwork weekly get-together: no parents, music they like, porn, Playstation, pizza delivered… But this time things don’t go to plan: first, they’re interrupted by Rita (Danny Perea), a neighbour’s maid who demands use of their oven to bake a cake, then by Ulises (Enrique Arreola), whose 11-seconds-late delivery of the pizza provokes the pals to refuse payment. In turn he refuses to leave the apartment – and then the electricity goes down…

Cue mutual recrimination and regret, improvisation and experimentation, and – after a while – contemplation of friendship, identity, the purpose of life and the significance of the ducks in an awful wall-painting… From his simple premise, Eimbcke slowly but surely constructs a subtle, multi-layered black comedy of the existentialist kind, as the four characters ruminate and riff on opportunities taken and missed, dreams and disappointments, pasts, presents and futures, reality and… well, whatever it is they experience while out of their heads. Inventively shot with minimal resources, perfectly paced and beautifully played by the young cast, the film adopts the lightest of touches to grasp a fistful of big questions, somehow managing to be simultaneously tough, tender, funny and fresh. Its very modesty is both essential to its emotional authenticity and part and parcel of its enormous charm. Further delicious evidence of the reviving fortunes of Latin American
cinema.

User comments from imdb (Page 2) Author: noralee from Queens, NY

"Duck Season (Temporada de patos)" answers the question what do 14 - 16 year olds in a Mexico City housing development do on a lazy Sunday afternoon when their mother and the electric power is out?

Turns out, not much else than the kids in the Wisconsin basement did in "That'70's Show" or in Dr. Seuss's "The Cat in the Hat". It is a relief to know these latchkey friends aren't like Larry Clark's "Kids" on NYC's Lower East Side or those in the banlieus we've seen lately in French films, as instead we have a series of amusing vignettes, with the humor emphasized by co-writer/director Fernando Eimbcke's camera angles. The audience frequently takes the position of the oven, video game, painting, etc. that the adorable youngsters stare at intensely in various degrees of sobriety. Danny Perea as literally the girl next door is marvelous. The boys' friendship is very naturally portrayed.

This is the second little movie I've seen this year where a pizza delivery guy gets caught up in his customers lives (as in "Pizza") and it is a cute gimmick, even if we don't really learn much about the guy other than that he's fed up.

We only learn much about one of the kids, as the minor revelations are let out gradually in incongruous ways. Surprisingly, any of the self-discovery or lessons learned are really just a taking off point for humorous actions. It's just a series of funny looking scenes, one slowly after another, usually based on the kids' naiveté and misunderstandings. (The trailer is very misleading as to the pacing of the film.)

The final scene is after all the credits so you can see, among many thanks, acknowledgments to Yasujiro Ozu, probably for the domestic focus and camera angles, and James Jarmusch, as this black and white film does have a lot in common with the look and interactions in "Coffee and Cigarettes", among other of his films.

There are only a couple of cool song selections we hear them playing, with some classical pieces for juxtapositional humor.

The English subtitles are always legible and easy to read.

The Nation (Stuart Klawans) review Page 3

Flashing onto the screen and then fading away in languid rhythm, silently, views of a Mexico City residential quarter set the mood for Fernando Eimbcke's Duck Season (Temporada de Patos). The roof line of a housing project, tilting against the sky at a Dziga Vertov angle. A close-up of someone's bicycle chained to a lamppost, the rear wheel missing. Kids playing on a swing set in a lot beside a highway. A Volkswagen Beetle nosing slowly down a quiet street. A title tells you it's Sunday, 11 AM, when nothing much happens. The images are black-and-white, as if waiting to be completed by someone's act of imagination.

On the eighth floor of one of the project buildings, a woman nervously hurries off for the day. Did she remember to turn off the stove? Yes. Did she remember to turn off the coffee maker? Yes. Everything is secure for her 14-year-old son, Flama (Daniel Miranda), and his curly-headed buddy Moko (Diego Cataño), who can be expected to keep the apartment neat. Their only plan for the day: to play video games, drink Coke and munch on chips, without getting up from the sofa.

With one brief exception, everything from this point on will take place inside the little apartment, which despite the mother's hopes slowly fills with physical disorder and emotional unruliness. First the power goes out. Then an unknown neighbor comes knocking--16-year-old Rita (Danny Perea)--to ask if she can use the oven. Then the boys order pizza but won't pay the deliveryman, after he's run up eight flights of stairs, because he's eleven seconds late on the thirty-minute guarantee. Bespectacled and 30-ish, Ulises (Enrique Arreola) responds to this affront with more patience than exasperation, but he still refuses to be stiffed. Now that he's staying, too, four people are knocking about the apartment, feeling bored, edgy, anxious, angry, sad and horny. They have several more emotions, too--but those take a while to show themselves.

Think of Duck Season as being, in its sly way, a road movie. Although the characters don't go anywhere and the scenery doesn't change, a handful of people are nevertheless shut up together as if in a car, to experience the mundane passage of time and explore one another's natures. Even the title hints at road movies. The ducks figure in a painting of garage-sale provenance that hangs on the apartment wall: a picture of birds taking off for migration. A poignant image, especially for young people (and for an outsider from San Juan named Ulises). By the end of Duck Season, you understand that all these characters are taking off, too, no matter how stuck they seem.

Maybe, in fact, you understand too much. After the halfway point, Eimbcke's script ticks off its revelations with almost metronomic regularity, at a pace that lets in one or two more than you might want. But this is the only forced aspect of a film in which the actors seem to breathe their roles rather than perform them. Lovingly cast, suavely directed and always pitched perfectly, whatever its tone, Duck Season is the kind of small, quiet, thoughtful movie that ought to be as abundant as Sunday afternoons. Better hurry to see it, because another won't come around for months.

Washington Post (Desson Thomson) review

The 1980s teen comedies of John Hughes acquainted us with the world of the teenager, but they smacked of sitcom cuteness; they never felt real. The French films about childhood by the likes of Francois Truffaut and Louis Malle were brilliant evocations of youth, but those works of the 1960s and 1970s are gathering dust in moviedom's archives. "Duck Season," an extraordinary debut by Mexican Fernando Eimbcke, takes up where these filmmakers left off, reexamining the emotional textures of youth in an age of overwhelming entertainment technology.

Eimbcke understands the dichotomy of the teenager's life: too young to function in the adult world but old enough to feel the roil of grownup emotions. (The only way out? Get older.)

Best buddies Flama (Daniel Miranda) and Moko (Diego Catano), residents of a high-rise bunker in Mexico City, find themselves alone in Flama's apartment. Flama's mother (Carolina Politi), on her way to a pressing social engagement, has given them that familiar adult kiss-off: pizza money. Left alone, to their 14-year-old minds, there's only one thing to do: play a rousing, ballistic video game of Halo, featuring "Bush" vs. "bin Laden."

Soon the doorbell rings. Rita (Danny Perea), their attractive 16-year-old neighbor, wants to use their oven to bake a cake. They let her in, begrudgingly, and get back to the virtual machine gun slaughter. Then the power in the building cuts off. Rita stares at her ruined cake. Flama nibbles on his fingers. Moko runs his fingers through his curly hair. It's definitely time to order that pizza.

Enter Ulises (Enrique Arreola, whose angular features suggest Roberto Benigni), a twenty-something deliveryman who brings in the pizza 11 seconds beyond the half-hour delivery guarantee. Flama and Moko demand a freebie. Ulises refuses to yield. When the power returns, they agree to settle the standoff with a soccer video game. Ah, Mexico City: The power dies again, at a decisive moment in the game. Neither side will budge.

Take away the electricity from these kids and they're bereft of purpose. But Eimbcke, who wrote this film with Paula Markovitch, never expresses contempt for his characters. By examining their inner lives with compassion and respect, he inspires us to do the same. The pizza standoff, for example, could have been presented as a junior-league joke, a silly battle between kids. But with little else to stand up for in their lives, Flama and Moko have no choice but to treat the matter with their full moral attention. (Ulises, whose name is surely not accidental, has his own reasons for standing his ground.) In director Eimbcke's hands, the pizza episode matters as much, and is as mesmerizing, as a spaghetti-western duel at high noon.

There are more revelations, including a goose-bumpy introduction to sexuality, questions of self-identity and the metaphorical significance of both the cake and a kitschy painting of ducks. The painting also provides a telling metaphor for the movie, which won 10 Ariels, Mexico's Oscar equivalent: The harder you gaze into it, the more deeply you're drawn in.

User comments from imdb Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California

Temporada de patos has gone the rounds of fests and swept the Mexican equivalent of the Academy Awards. Being a minimalist at heart, I don't know why people keep saying this is "a slight conceit" and "not much happens" and stuff like that. Not much happens in Samuel Beckett's Endgame and Waiting for Godot either -- except a consideration of the most important questions about existence. Cut out the crap, and you may be left with the good stuff.

It's been said that the dumb silences in Jarmusch are smarter; I don't think so; they're just hipper-looking. This is a not a movie about hipness, but about everyday life, and its moments of transition, focused on a couple of fourteen-year-olds in a middle class apartment in Mexico City on a Sunday and a pizza man who stays to argue over getting paid and a sixteen-year-old girl from next door who stays to do some baking because her oven isn't working and, let's face it, she's lonely.

Actually almost nothing happens in Antonioni's L'Avventura either but it was given a famous award at Cannes for inventing "a new cinematic language." In fact real time, and the reduction of eventfulness typical of real life, are so rarely expressed in cinematic language it seems something quite new when they are, and this, to me, is the virtue of Duck Season -- as well as its sincerity and, despite its modesty, its emotional validity.

Mexico loved Duck Season but in America it's politely nodded to but then everyone has to say "it's a slight conceit." The thing is, Antonioni's L'Avventura contained not only adults, but elegant Italians, including Monica Vitti. It's not such a pleasure to look at Moko (Diego Cataño) and Flama (Daniel Miranda). Flama's nervous mama leaves them to an Sunday of Slayer and large lovingly poured glasses of iced Coca. Do you remember that Coca Cola used to have cocaine in it? It's obvious that Moko and Flama are getting hopped up. But then the electricity goes off.

Minimalism is like Zen meditation. If you think of nothing, if you stop and sit, if you simply count to ten over and over, you will open the doors of perception. That electrical shutdown stops the action. Periodically Duck Season does that. Duck Season is a boring movie. But it's also an adorable movie (I think that's why it made the sweep of the Mexican awards). Beckett's plays are boring too. But they're also hilarious, tragic, and profound. Funny what all you can do with nothing.

Duck Season encourages close observation. It begins with a series of static shots of middle-distance scenes around the apartment complex where the action, in black and white, occurs. These set us up to appreciate the value of stillness. But the movie is a joke. Flama's mom keeps coming back worried that something hasn't been turned off. When she's finally gone the boys peek out and scream with delight. The joke is that their fantasy perfect Sunday isn't going to happen. The non-stop Slayer action is constantly interrupted.

Duck Season makes a bad painting of birds in flight into a huge symbol.

Flama's parents are involved in preparing for a bitter divorce, and the painting is one of the biggest bones of contention. Flama's own imbitteredness is reflected in his mastery of the cruel put-down. Curly-haired, cupid-lipped Moko has been his pal forever. It's not clear whether Moko gets turned on by Flama or it's merely that all his memories of getting turned on involve Flama because they're always together. Director Fernando Eimbcke worked with the young actors to invent his plot. There are in fact many films where nothing happens and they are the hardest to describe, because "nothing happens" means that every tiny detail is a plot element.

The pizza man works for a company that pledges no charge if delivery isn't within half an hour. Ulises (Enrique Arreola) is so named because he's sidetracked on his journey and almost never comes back from it. Flama insists he's over the thirty-minute zone by eleven seconds. Ulises challenges that claim but Flama won't pay so the delivery man stays on to play a soccer video game to see who wins. When Rita (Danny Perea) serves them all marijuana brownies, they're deep in Lotusland and nobody's going anywhere for a good long while: the high expands the time that was already stretched for us by being slowed down. Using Ulises as the exemplary traveler, Eimbcke slyly points out that getting stuck is part of any serious journey. He paints well enough with the personalities and habits he had on hand to create elegance and meaning. Moko's confused, emerging sexuality, Rita's concealed loneliness, Ulises' dreams of return to San Juan (his Ithaka), Flama's anger at his divorcing parents' petty squabbles, are so cunningly engraved on the plot's minimal surface that they stay with you.

As the pizza man's name shows, this dull Sunday in a Mexico City apartment is a wild and rather dangerous journey. Despite the natural opacity of fourteen-year-old boys – which we'd never have penetrated if they'd kept playing their video games – everyone reveals themselves in Duck Season. Slowing down action opens up character.

As film critic Michaël Melinard of the Paris newspaper L'Humanité says, Eimbcke needs to be grouped with the new Mexican filmmaker elite – Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Carlos Regadas. Jane Austen, one of the greatest novelists in English, famously described her marvelous books – whose social scale was indeed restricted – as "the little piece of ivory on which I work." Eimbcke works on a little piece of ivory in Duck Season too, and his social scale is as restricted as Jane Austen's, but he has a knack for getting close to his characters, and he shows us that in the right hands less is more.

Village Voice (Michael Atkinson) review

filmcritic.com (Chris Barsanti) review [3/5]

Slant Magazine review Ed Gonzalez

Cinematical [Christopher Campbell]

The Onion A.V. Club review Scott Tobias

Mike D'Angelo review

FilmStew.com [Kevin Biggers]

Cinepassion.org Fernando F. Croce

PopMatters (Michael Buening) review

Twitch (Todd Brown) review

Clay Pigeons: Fernando Eimbcke’s “Duck Season” Leah Churner, James Crawford, and Kristi Mitsuda from indieWIRE

Salon.com [Andrew O'Hehir] also seen here: Salon.com Mobile

Window to the Movies (Jeffrey Chen) review [8/10] also seen here: ReelTalk [Jeffrey Chen]

The New York Sun (James Bowman) review also seen here: James Bowman review

stylusmagazine.com (Kevin Worrall) review

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Ross Johnson) dvd review

DVD Times Noel Megahey

DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review

Tail Slate (Linda Sheridan) review [3/4]

The Land of Eric (Eric D. Snider) review [B+]

One Guy's Opinion (Frank Swietek) review [B]

Premiere.com review Ethan Alter

FilmExposed dvd review Chris Thornton

Film Journal International (Shirley Sealy) review

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [4/5]

Plume Noire review Fred Thom

CHUD.com (Ian Arbuckle) dvd review

Monsters and Critics - DVD Review [Jeff Swindoll]

The Lumière Reader Timothy Wong

The Village Voice [J. Hoberman] capsule review (Page 2)

Duck Season Press notes, including an interview with the director (pdf format)

Entertainment Weekly review [A-] Lisa Schwarzbaum

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [3/4]

BBCi - Films Jonathan Trout

Guardian/Observer

The Boston Phoenix (Brooke Holgerson) review

Boston Globe review [4/4] Ty Burr

Austin Chronicle (Marrit Ingman) review [3/5]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer [Sean Axmaker]

San Francisco Chronicle [Neva Chonin]

Chicago Tribune [Michael Phillips]

Time Out London (Wally Hammond) review [4/6]

DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze and Adam Lemke

Fernando Eimbcke | SPIKE various videos available

LAKE TAHOE B+ 92

Mexico (81 mi) 2008

A gorgeously understated, quietly affecting film where each shot is masterfully composed by Alexis Zabé, who worked with Eimbcke on his earlier film DUCK SEASON (2004) and for Carlos Reygadas as well on SILENT NIGHT (2007), providing long, uninterrupted shots that are mesmerizing in their mix of urban detail and perfect composition, reminiscent of Chantal Ackerman with her poetic observation. This amounts to a day in the life format, as we follow a single teenage character Juan (Diego Cataño) over the course of one day, and while the near wordless film has a storyline, most of it takes place offscreen, yet nothing is lost to the audience where small yet meticulous details prevail, where we soon discover everything we need to know through brief verbal exchanges. The characters are beautifully rendered, all with few words spoken, yet they are among the most original and masterfully drawn people we’ve seen in films recently, largely because of the their unique qualities which are shown with a striking attention to detail. Opening in dead silence as the acting credits are listed, Juan soon drives his car into a pole on the outskirts of town, which is never shown, but only heard when the film fades to black (after every shot, Kaurismäki style) and we see the outcome afterwards in the next shot, which leads into the opening title sequence. In the silence and near total emptiness of the morning, Juan walks through the small harbor town of Puerto Progreso in the Yucatán in Mexico looking for an auto repair shop. After 3 or 4 are closed, he finally finds a lone young girl working the counter, Lucia (Daniela Valentine) who suggests they wait about ten minutes until the guy who knows where things are returns, David (Juan Carlos Lara), as she hasn’t a clue. Fading to black about a half dozen times, both are reconfigured in the frame slightly differently each time as they sit on the front steps and wait what amounts to ten minutes Mexican time, which could be half the morning.

The beauty of this film is the way Juan’s life interweaves between different characters, almost like a rite of passage, as no sooner does he meet these people, but he’s constantly leaving them as well. He spends time with an old man (Hector Herrera) with an obvious affection for his big Marmaduke dog, who initially wants to call the cops thinking Juan is a thief, but after many failed attempts, he can’t seem to get his phone to work. After hearing Juan describe his accident, he can guess what parts he needs to fix his car, and pours Juan a bowl of cereal along with one for himself. When Juan indicates he’s already eaten, this giant hulk of a dog jumps up onto the chair and slurps the milk and cereal bowl clean that’s still sitting on the table without ever moving the bowl whatsoever, a charming and simply hilarious scene. When the old man takes a nap afterwards, Juan leaves without a word in search of his missing part, which leads him to Lucia’s front steps waiting for David, who eventually shows up and asks Juan to hop onto his bicycle, as he’ll ride to the scene of the accident promising to have it running in about 5 minutes. But when they get there, the missing part doesn’t fit, as they need an earlier version of the part, so they wander over to David’s house who insists he has the part but spends the entire time watching martial arts videos. Juan escapes back to the old man for the missing part, but in return he asks Juan to walk his dog, as he’s getting too old to do it himself. But once outside, that dog is a force and actually tugs Juan behind him for awhile before breaking free, disappearing into the emptiness of the barren neighborhoods.

This time Juan wanders back to his own home which is in a state of emotional turmoil, as his kid brother is left alone playing in a tent in the front yard while his mother is inconsolable and wants to be left alone, so Juan wanders back to Lucia, who this time asks Juan to hold her baby while she smokes a cigarette and plays some loud rap music, even singing a rap song herself, asking Juan if he wouldn’t consider babysitting this evening so she could go to a concert. David bikes him back over to his car, and while the new part fits, that’s not what’s wrong, it’s instead a part that’s connected to it. Not to despair, David is soon working under a car parked on the street, which turns out to belong to Juan’s uncle, who, after asking about his mother and brother, offers him a baseball jersey and a bat. Once they secure the part, they’re back to the scene of the crime and whoah, it works—Juan has wheels. David is ecstatic and peforms a few martial arts tricks, inviting Juan to a public screening later that night of Bruce Lee’s classic ENTER THE DRAGON (1973). Meanwhile Juan is back with his little brother, still playing alone, and gives him what turns out to be their dad’s baseball jersey. When his little brother asks what the word condolences means, as people have been calling all day, we begin to put together a picture of why Juan is so downbeat and home is in a state of upheaval. In this manner, Juan works through the unseen emotional baggage that he’s been carrying around with him, which isn’t really about the car at all, but larger internal issues of greater significance. It’s curious that the film all but ignores the central drama, but finds superb secondary characters that seem to stick with Juan all day long, befriending him, giving him at least a brief reprieve from his grief. Friendship is a wonderful thing, with total strangers or even within your own family, and by building a series of interconnected sequences of what appear to be random events, by the end they become magnified, evolving into something irresistably endearing, especially coming at a time when they’re needed the most—a wise and refreshingly mature work that without an ounce of sentimentality downplays the emotional payoff until it matters.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

A teenager (Diego Catano) crashes his car on a deserted Mexican road, then begins a lengthy quest for a repair shop in what feels like a ghost town. Early into this quirky 2008 drama I wondered whether the boy himself was a spirit, roaming through an afterlife plagued by incompetents and punctuated by blackouts. But as he encounters more people he gradually emerges from a numbness stemming from a deeper trauma than his accident. Director Fernando Eimbcke (Duck Season) and cinematographer Alexis Zabe (Silent Light) use long shots to make the wide-screen frame occasionally function as a proscenium, highlighting not only the protagonist's isolation, but also the goofiness of a kung fu-crazy grease monkey and an irrepressible canine. In Spanish with subtitles. 82 min.

Village Voice (Aaron Hillis) review

Coming down from the Saturday sugar rush of his 2006 comedy Duck Season, Mexican auteur Fernando Eimbcke's lovely, Yucatán-set dramedy drifts by on a similar deadpan wave of static vignettes and lingering pauses that must be 10 months pregnant. Eimbcke's droll rhythms are reminiscent of early Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismäki—here stylistically appropriate for a film about social and emotional inertia. After downcast teen Juan (Diego Cataño) crashes the family Nissan into a telephone pole—the accident heard but not seen until after impact—he somberly ambles across the expansive, solitary desert in search of a needed auto part. He seeks help from a mistrustful old mechanic who shares behavior with his oddly anthropomorphic dog, a too-young mother with punk-rock ambitions, and a martial arts obsessive more interested in Shaolin badasses than in fixing cars. Through Juan's encounters with such eccentrics, and eventually his own family, the reasons for his melancholy emerge—waves of heartbreak in what appear to be calm waters.

The second film from Fernando ‘Duck Season’ Eimbcke retains the crew (including excellent cinematographer Alexis Zabe, now shooting in colour and widescreen), the star (Diego Cataño) and the droll, minimalist ambience and slow-burn emotionalism of his earlier film in the deceptively uneventful ‘story’ of a middle-class Yucatán young man’s day-long search for a spare part for his crashed car. Eimbcke’s is an amiable, discreet and original talent, not to every go-getter’s taste – but the drowsy affection he shows in his often startling images of small-town life can evince a similar ‘revelatory in the banal’ approach to that of the Iranians.

And his naturalistic performances preserve the kooky attentiveness exemplified by some of the best American indies. Allowing for moments of gentle contrivance, ‘Lake Tahoe’ makes for a quietly seductive entertainment, progressively engrossing, funny and communicative, the whole enterprise graced with a humanism so sweetly positive and pure it threatens to shade into Zen acceptance.

Time Out New York (Kevin B. Lee) review [4/6]

Inspired by a childhood accident that befell director Fernando Eimbcke soon after his father’s death, this low-key character study is a beguiling paradox of Mexican suburban splendor masking personal grief. After he wrecks the family car, teenage Juan (Cataño) wanders the outskirts of town seeking help. He stops into shops run by a wizened old man (Hector Herrera), a teen single mom (Valentine) and a kung fu fanatic (Lara), each offering assistance piecemeal over the course of the day.

The film’s siesta-speed pacing lets us bask in a cavalcade of sunny compositions, framed in ample CinemaScope dimensions. Nearly every shot is a joy to behold, especially given Eimbcke’s penchant for bringing out the quirky geometries of Mexican building facades: Dilapidated walls, sun-bleached storefronts and modular housing units are transformed into a community silently bursting with architectural personality.

These soothing open-air environs gain significance as the details of Juan’s family tragedy slowly materialize. Unable to deal with his own kin, our hero’s trek through his neighborhood streets buys time to regain his equilibrium (there’s even one building with the word ZEN writ large on its side). It’s a mysterious, alluring world that Eimbcke reveals to him and us, where both strangers and surroundings offer solace when family fails.

New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis

So different from the usual fare that it might have arrived from another galaxy, “Lake Tahoe” is a painstaking collage of small incidents and expansive images clustered around a fragile narrative. At the center is Juan (Diego Cataño), a phlegmatic teenager whose bright red Nissan has collided with a pole; around him are a variety of characters — a grumpy dog lover, a friendly kung fu fanatic — who may or may not be able to help him get moving again. To reach his destination, however, he will require more than a mechanic and a replacement part.

Filmed in the Yucatán harbor town Puerto Progreso, this gorgeous, deceptively tranquil movie (the second from the Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke) unfolds in long, motionless takes that cut abruptly to black. These perplexing voids suggest flickers of trauma that spike on Juan’s brief visits home to check on the unexplained distress of his mother and younger brother. Hints of loss — a missing pet, a deferred dream — pepper Juan’s dogged quest for assistance, the brief moments of absurdity highlighting his detachment. His demeanor is a riddle that the screenplay (by Mr. Eimbcke and Paula Markovitch) is in no hurry to solve.

Exquisitely captured in natural light by the cinematographer Alexis Zabé, Juan’s journey is framed by sherbet-colored houses and lemon sidewalks, dipping palm fronds and a burnished, turquoise horizon. The director calls his style “artisan cinema”; I just call it dreamy.

User comments from imdb Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California

'Lake Tahoe' is a work of inspired minimalism formally laid out in luminous long shots--long and thin, because of a wide aspect ratio--and cut into segments with blackouts as in early Jim Jarmusch. As in Eimbcke's 2004 first film, 'Duck Season,' the protagonist is a teenage boy, whose meandering day seems a combination of Kafkaesque delays and the mañana spirit but gradually reveals a sense of dislocation due to personal loss. Someone important has died in his family. His mother (Mariana Elizondo) is smoking and weeping in the bathtub, and later lies asleep. His little brother Joaquin (Yemil Sefani) sits in a little tent in the backyard clipping football photos and later crouches in a bedroom closet.

But the morning begins for Juan ('Duck Season's' Diego Cataño) not at home but wandering on the road. He crashes the family's little old red Nissan into a tree (we just hear the crash in a blackout between static shots and then see the car and the tree). Juan is unharmed but the car won't start. A droll series of frustrations follows as he goes around on foot trying to get help at one garage after another. Juan needs a mechanic and instead people want his help and his friendship. These include an old man, a scrawny Bruce Lee fanatic who takes Juan back and forth to his Nissan on a rickety old bike, and a young woman with a small baby that stops crying and begins to coo whenever Juan holds it.

Eimbcke makes good use of the stillness of his young actor and of the camera. The old garage owner, Don Heber (Hector Herrera) takes Juan for a thief and has his dog, Sika, keep guard while he searches first for the phone then for the phone book to call the police. But the phone is dead, and before long Don Heber is sitting down to a cereal breakfast with Juan. When Juan declines ("I've had breakfast") Don Heber says "Sika!" and the dog jumps up on the table and eagerly consumes Juan's bowl of cereal. Don Heber decides without seeing the car what part is broken (the distributor harness) and tells Juan to look for it in his garage, then falls asleep in a hammock.

David (Juan Carlos Lara II), who's about the same age as Juan, boasts of his prowess as a mechanic, but disappears for long periods. While waiting for him in the doorway of a parts shop Juan gets to know Lucia (Daniela Valentine). He's also sidetracked to a meal at David's. While David is a fanatic of martial arts and invites Juan to a Kung Fu movie that evening, David's mother tries to convert Juan to her born-again Christianity.

It's Juan's deadpan manner and the deliberately ineloquent camera that help make the various incidents droll and somehow touching. Lucia wants something of Juan too: for him to babysit her baby, Fidel (Joshua Habid) so she can go to a concert.

Every shot seems to fall into the spaces defined by a quiet maze of low white buildings, graffiti and sunlight, as if all the locations in the little town were scattered in a small circle. Each image is beautifully composed and shot by cinematographer Alexis Zabe: even the shots of Juan driving the car, shot from outside the windshield, happen in lovely sun-kissed shadow. As he wanders around Juan passes by his modest family house, which is cozy and interesting inside, but full of emptiness. It's these touch-downs at "home" that show Juan's life has broken free of its moorings. It's emotional confusion as much as the day's circumstances that explains how Juan's come to be adrift in time. And yet he both retains a sense of purpose (and gets David to fix the car) and still has time to connect further with Don Heber, David, and Lucia, returning after a magical night away to fix hotcakes for Joaquin and add one significant touch from the front bumper of the now-revived car to complete Joaquin's scrapbook of their lost family member.

'Lake Tahoe' is only 81 minutes long and is a marvel in its use of limited means to charm, to create a unique (yet familiar and believable) world and to develop character and touch us with few words and few gestures. Though the blackouts may remind one of Jarmusch's 'Stranger Than Paradise,' Eimbcke carries them further, making them last longer and stand for the passage of time and also enriching them by continuing the sound track over the blackness, notably and drolly the screams and screeches of Kung Fu masters as Juan watches the Shaolin classic in a darkened cinema with David. The blackouts symbolize stoppage but also show Juan's life leaping forward even as he sits stymied.

Shown in February 2009 at the Walter Reade Theater of Lincoln Center, NYC, as part of the FSLC 'Film Comment' Selects series. Shown at numerous festivals with several awards and nominations.

Michael Koresky of Reverse Shot

Wide outdoor expanses. Static frames. Frequent cuts to black. Impassive camera subjects. The sense that humor’s hovering, but withheld, in dead, thin air. It seems we’ve heard this song before. But in his second feature, following his 2004 deadpan debut Duck Season (a pocket-sized, black-and-white coming-of-age kinda-comedy that was inexplicably picked up by a then optimistic Warner Independent), Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke retreats into this much-rehearsed visual style only to dig a little deeper, and with a color palette that, if not vibrant, at least provides the director with some new emotional hues to work with. The surprisingly touching result is as affecting as it is atmospheric, and the overall impression is less one of self-conscious mannerism than of genuine heartache, an honest attempt at conveying a young man’s necessary, if tenuous, stab at human interaction. At first, the whiff of Kaurismäki and Jarmusch is undeniably pungent, but Eimbcke keeps peeling back his layers of detachment one by one, until something pure and plangent remains onscreen.

Lake Tahoe, which takes place not in its titular tranquil getaway, but in a parched Mexican suburb (the title ends up being a tangential yet stirring Madeleine), opens with a seemingly insignificant car accident. Juan (Diego Cantaño) has slammed his red Nissan sedan into a telephone pole: we only hear the crash over a black screen, and see the resulting minor smash-up once we flash back to a still, cloudless daylight. Juan leaves his car on the side of this stretch of blank road and makes his way on foot to the nearest town. Eimbcke frames his search for assistance as a somewhat expected series of clear, head-on compositions, an immobile camera patiently peering at vacant or closed workshops as Juan makes his way across the screen, left to right. As he traverses the neighborhood, edifices at once colorfully painted and drab, buildings of aquamarine and white and slate-gray, take up nearly the entire frame, with a shadowed door opening the only way out—or in. By virtue of the camera’s placement and stillness, the Yucatán settings of Lake Tahoe, with their overgrown, weedy sidewalks, palm trees, and broken fences, are reminiscent, variously, of Kaurismaki’s Helsinki, Seidl’s suburban Vienna, or Jarmusch’s early Eighties New York—they seem to be receding away from the viewer.

Indeed, this is a film about recession itself, and all that can imply. Environment of course impresses itself upon those who inhabit it, and the handful of locals Juan meets over the course of his day all seem the products of some combination of economic and personal despair. Upon entering the gate to the property of elderly mechanic Don Heber (Hèctor Herrera), Juan is immediately suspected by the cantankerous, lonely man as a trespasser and possible robber. Through precise framing and the presence of a mild-tempered mastiff, Eimbcke turns this minor instance of mistaken identity into sullen comedy rather than a fracas—the dog stands completely still and stares straight ahead at Juan, sitting in Don Heber’s living room, the two figures making a center-frame monolith. Following this and an extended shot in which Heber and his animal share a breakfast-table moment, eating out of their own cereal bowls, while Juan looks on with tense bemusement, one would predict Lake Tahoe to continue to unspool as a series of black-out vignettes, in which our passive protagonist finds himself tangled in a web comic mundanities, meant to amuse by virtue of their reserve and discomfort. Yet the humor grows less assertive, and the melancholy less forced, as we gradually discover, with the most delicate of strokes, the source of Juan’s apparent despondency.

A stone face, whether it be on Bill Murray or Kati Outinen, is key to this brand of humor, and Cantaño, whom Eimbcke had previously cast for his mix of precociousness and stultified prepubescence in Duck Season, nicely calcifies his features here. As his decidedly unwacky misadventures continue throughout the day, including his meetings with a young, quietly flirty single mother (Daniela Valentine) who works in a meager auto parts shop and her pony-tailed, kung fu–obsessed coworker (Juan Carlos Lara), however, Juan’s oddball mixture of diffidence and longing purposely begins to disturb the fabric of Eimbcke’s film. From phone calls to his younger brother Joaquin (Yemil Sefami), it’s clear that something’s amiss, and that perhaps Juan’s car accident, for which he has yet to procure the proper replacement mechanism, was indicative not of a farcical insouciance but of his mind fixating on other, more dire, things.

Eimbcke cements these suspicions with Lake Tahoe’s first instance of camera movement. Upon returning home midway through the film, Juan enters the bathroom to discover his mother lying in the tub, the shower curtain half-drawn, revealing only her arm, extended out not must further than her wrist, a cigarette dangling from her fingers. Eimbcke slowly, almost imperceptibly, zooms in to this tableau, the odd, sterile disassociation of which can’t help but recall Kubrick’s woman-in-the-bathtub scene in The Shining. Yet the mother never emerges from behind the curtain, and her curt, seemingly unimportant exchange with her son, muffled as it is with vague grief, remains abstracted. Yet Eimbcke’s cunning camera move registers, however subtly—it’s a disruption in the well-maintained aesthetic approach of the film. Later, Eimbcke will parallel this with a more pronounced zooming out, as Juan unleashes sudden, and surprising, fury on his car in a movie theater parking lot.

There’s no doubt that with this film, Eimbcke has confirmed himself as a masterful practitioner of the artfully composed long take—there’s a truly graceful arrangement of Don Heber napping in a hammock, bathed in a hazy burst of sunlight, his dog reposing underneath, and later a lovely, almost Tsai Ming-liang–worthy nighttime image in which Juan’s car pulls away from the front of his house to reveal a silhouetted Joaquin in an illuminated tent in the yard just beyond the gate—but Lake Tahoe also proves his approach to melancholy is more humane than aesthetically trendy. There’s a beating heart beneath this still life.

FIPRESCI A Single Day Odyssey in the Yucatan City of Children, by Jurica Pavicic in Berlin, 2008

Hammer to Nail [Michael Tully]

filmcritic.com (Chris Cabin) review [3.5/5]

Lake Tahoe Michael Sicinski from The Academic Hack

Siffblog [Kathy Fennessy]

Screen International review Lee Marshall

Slant Magazine review Fernando F. Croce

Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [3.5/4]

cinemadaily | Not Of This World: Fernando Eimbcke’s “Lake Tahoe” Andy Lauer from indieWIRE

Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review also seen here: Cinematical’s Jeffrey M. Anderson

LAKE TAHOE Facets Multi Media

NewCity Chicago Ray Pride

New York Post V.A. Musetto

LAKE TAHOE: Eimbcke's dreaded "second" film proves a gem. Also: filmmaker Q&A James van Maanen from Trust Movies, including an interview with the director July 10, 2009

Filmmaker Magazine Director interview, July 10, 2009

The Hollywood Reporter review Deborah Young at Berlin

Channel 4 Film [Ali Catterall]

Variety (Russell Edwards) review

The Irish Times review [3/5] Donald Clarke

The Boston Phoenix (Gerald Peary) review

Boston Globe review [2.5/4] Laura Bennett

Philadelphia Weekly [Matt Prigge]

Eisenstein, Sergei

Russian Archives Online (excerpt)

Born on Jan 23, 1898 in Riga, Latvia, Sergei Mikhaylovich Eisenstein was to become one of the most world-renowned filmmakers of the first half of the 20th century. Eisenstein was of Jewish descent through his paternal grandparents. His father worked in shipbuilding, until 1910, when the family moved to St. Petersburg, where his training as an architect and engineer had a great influence on his future filmmaking.

The architect in Eisenstein was inspired by Renaissance conceptions of space. He studied Leonardo da Vinci's work and was influenced by Freud's interpretation of da Vinci. Trying to bridge the gap in what he felt was the distorted space induced by technology, Eisenstein pushed the outer envelope of filmmaking. He attempted to understand how the sensations of the machine age could be incorporated in the grand style of the Renaissance and how the meaning of Marxist humanism might be traced back to the spirit of the Quattrocento.

Watching the insurgent crowds during the 1917 October revolution bearing down on the Winter Palace of the Tsars in St. Petersburg, Eisenstein foresaw his future. He enlisted in the Red Army and helped organize and construct defenses and, as his first step in his career, produce entertainment for the troops. Having decided that a military life was not for him, in 1920 he entered the Proletkult Theater (the Theater of the People) in Moscow as an assistant stage designer, where he quickly became a co-director. But in whatever he sought to do, Eisenstein never forgot his political agenda and was to become the most noted filmmaker of the communist regime.

Eisenstein, Sergei Art and Culture

In an Eisenstein film, loose, metaphorical associations displace narrative continuity: images related only by analogy cut up chronological sequences. Physical action is by turns slowed down to a grueling pace and sped up to a frenzy. In every respect, Sergei Eisenstein’s films are challenging. And yet he made them with a specific political intent: he wanted people to be moved -- to feel in their bones and their gut -- the rhythms of the Marxist theory of history.

Eisentein wanted the camera to move at a tight, jarring clip from thesis to antithesis and synthesis: he wanted aesthetics to perform history. He wanted audiences to be moved to social action through their experience of the film.

So he invented a new kind of editing that interwove discordant images into the flow of action to create what he called a "montage of attractions": odd, striking juxtapositions that modulate the film’s rhythm and put the viewer in a psychological state capable of inducing certain ideas. In the famous scene from "Potemkin" (1925), for example, the Odessa Steps provide the backdrop for images of desperately fleeing citizens, close-ups of faces and guns, and attacking soldiers. As it depicted the tragic events of the 1905 Russian Revolution, the cacophonous montage induced in its audiences a state of terror and outrage that gave rise to several conflicts with the police.

Ultimately, Soviet authorities lambasted Eisenstein for formalist techniques they deemed petty bourgeois deviations from the state-sanctioned Socialist Realism. And Hollywood producers dismissed his films as insufficiently entertaining. But throughout his troubled career, and after, Eisenstein met with great enthusiasm in Western Europe. His films' Marxist faith and arty edge appealed to European intellectuals between the Wars, before Stalin's outrages became known.

Unlike many other of Eisenstein's films, "Potemkin" (1925) appealed to everyone: intellectuals, the masses, state officials. Whereas his earlier "Strike" (1924) alienated audiences by ignoring narrative continuity in favor of a kind of visual poem, "Potemkin" softened the discord of montage with a cohesive narrative. In a sense, it exemplifies the synthesis between avant-garde techniques and political polemic that Eisenstein was always struggling to achieve. In 1958, ten years after Eisenstein's death, an international poll determined that "Potemkin" was the best film of all time.

For 14 years after "Potemkin," Eisenstein struggled under state authorities newly suspicious of his methods. "October" (1928) was denounced as shamelessly formalist, as was "The General Line," also known as "Old and New" (1929). A series of failures ensued, culminating in his nervous breakdown. It wasn’t until "Alexander Nevsky" (1938), a film about a thirteenth-century Russian prince’s battle against invading Germans, that Eisenstein regained the praise of the public and the Soviet authorities. Departing from his montage style, "Nevsky" relies heavily on narrative structure and comes across as epic and grandiose, almost operatic. Eisenstein followed with "Ivan the Terrible," intended to be a three-part series. While the first part was a tremendous success, the second part was banned for its clear critique of Stalin. Eisenstein’s health failed while producing part three, and the footage was destroyed by the state.

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein Eisenstein website

Biography Baseline’s Encyclopedia of Film, from the website

All-Movie Guide bio from Jason Ankeny

TCMDB biography from Turner Classic Movies

Sergei Eisenstein Michael E. Grost from Classic Film and Television

Film Reference profile by Richard Taylor

Sergei Eisenstein Dan Shaw from Senses of Cinema

Eisenstein Marty Jonas from the World Socialist website, February 11, 1998

In Perspective: Sergei Eisenstein Anna Chen’s essay In Perspective: Sergei Eistenstein

Eisenstein Classic Russian Films by Eisenstein

Russian Archives Online: Sergei Eisenstein

Eisenstein, the Glass House and the Spherical Book From the Comedy of the Eye to a Drama of Enlightenment, by Oksana Bulgakowa from Rouge (2005)

Of Mice and Men Reflections on Eisenstein and Digital Imagery, by Paul Willemen from Rouge (2006)

Off Screen Article (2007) Eisenstein: ‘Intellectual Montage’, Poststructuralism, and Ideology, by Jason Lindop, February 28, 2007

Eisenstein, Sergei They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They

Revolutionary Soviet Film Posters by Mildred Constantine and Alan Fern, a book review by David Kunzle from Jump Cut

The 7th Most Influential Director of All Time (2002 MovieMaker Poll)

Robin Buss' Top 10 Directors

GLUMOV’S DIARY (Dnevnik Glumova)

Russia (5 mi) 1923

User Reviews from imdb Author: Janos kis (keeshionutz@yahoo.com) from Hungary

This is presented as Eisensteins' first movie. It was probably directed by him, but considering it's a short movie and the emphasis is placed more on the editing than on anything else it's hard to acknowledge it as one of the masters'. However the movie is very impressive, and not only for its historical value. No matter what it shows you, it's the way it does it that's captivating: in a playful manner stimulating your fantasy. The editing, though not so philosophically relevant as in Stachka, Potemkin etc. is consciously ambiguous, you can place a meaning on the correlations between the shots but can never be sure what's real and what's not. Of course, since it's a movie about magic... Highly recommended if you come across it...

STRIKE (Stachka)

Russia (82 mi) 1924

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Mark Zimmer)

There's hardly a thrill for a film buff greater than to stumble onto a truly great film. That is the feeling I had when I finished watching Sergei Eisenstein's first motion picture, Strike. Once one gets past the polemics, the film takes hold of the viewer and never lets go until the wrenching finale.

Unlike Eisenstein's other masterpiece of 1925, Battleship Potemkin, this film is not based upon a real-life situation. Rather, Eisenstein and his compatriots, the Proletkult, are creating out of whole cloth events under czarist rule. They take no prisoners whatsoever; everything is directed toward sympathy with the plight of the workers, and no opportunity to blast the police and the capitalists is spared.

The story is fairly straightforward; workers at a factory in an unnamed city in czarist Russia are discontented. However, it's not until management cruelly humiliates a worker, accusing him of stealing a micrometer and pushing him into suicide, that the pretext for a strike arises. And when the Russians strike, there's no namby-pamby picketing involved: windows are broken, foremen are dumped into muddy ditches and the goings-on are generally riotous.

As the strike wears on, the workers begin to starve, but they refuse to give in to the terms of capital. The police conspire with the factory bosses to set up a ring of informers and spies, and hire agents provocateurs to cause trouble and to give the state an excuse to crush the strikers. While the leaders of the strike vainly attempt to encourage the workers to go home and stay out of trouble, the police first turn fire hoses on the strikers and then their rifles.

Neither the plot nor the politics make this film great; it is Eisenstein's vision and technique which from the very outset is absolutely dazzling. He uses double exposure and juxtaposition to make ironic comments of all kinds; the montage technique which is so justly famous from Potemkin is used here on several occasions during the riots and the harrowing finale to brutal effect. As Eisenstein observed some years later, nothing affects the viewer like the spilling of blood. He inserts explicit footage of cattle being slaughtered amongst the many shots of the surging throng at the mercy of the police' guns. PETA members will not want to watch the end of this movie, which has a certain Faces of Death quality to it.

The film is a veritable catalog of interesting shots. We start off with reflections of workers in a puddle, and then the film runs backwards. The mug shot of one of the strike leaders from front and side suddenly comes to life in a split-screen effect. The camera also heightens the paranoid aspect of the film, where everyone may be an informer. One of the spies in a James Bond moment uses a pocket watch camera to take photos of one of the strikers taking down a police poster.

Eisenstein also dips into surrealism at one point; when the police are attempting to get one of the workers to act as an informer, a pair of midgets are dancing the tango on a dinner table behind them; when the two in the foreground leave, the midgets hungrily devour the food on the table. Eisenstein doesn't pull a single punch. When the police seize one of the strikers, suddenly we're seeing Rodney King all over again, as they punch and kick him into unconsciousness.

The new musical score by the Alloy Orchestra takes a little while to get used to, but it forms a terrific counterpoint to the film. Heavily percussive during the factory sequences, the score is alternately slapstick and full of tension. The music has a vaguely Slavic character, with overtones of klezmer music, with intermittent clarinet and sax choirs.

iF Magazine Matt Langdon

One of the true poet-philosophers of the cinema Sergei Eisenstein set out to provoke the audience with content and jolt them with his montage editing style. He wanted to shake the masses out of their complacency with his agitprop messages about the struggles of workers and civilians against authority. Because of this he was the perfect director to represent the Communist Party in Russia and his film STRIKE is considered one of the most important films ever made.

Even by today’s standards STRIKE (made in 1925) moves quickly and is engaging while entertaining. But the film’s mastery lies in the way Eisenstein powerfully combines form with political content to get his message across. Today we would call this method propaganda or heavy handed and no doubt Eisenstein knew how to over do a scene for effect.

STRIKE is about workers who go on a strike when a fellow worker commits suicide after being wrongfully accused of stealing a piece of equipment. Told in six parts, STRIKE emphasizes the workers' lives, crossed with that of the caricaturized fat cat factory owners who chomp on cigars, drink cocktails and contemplate how to resolve a problem they are clueless about. They resolve it by hiring spies to find the ring leader, single him out, then send in the cops and the cavalry to break up the strike and ultimately kill everyone who is considered a troublemaker: which is to say "everyone."

Eisenstein was a supreme stylist emphasizing what he called "montage" editing, which juxtaposed multiple images (beautifully shot by Edouard Tisse) to get across a specific meaning. Yet, if you don’t get the meaning, his films are still very enjoyable to watch. With the use of magnificent motifs, poetic interludes, amazing expressionistic angles, super-imposition, constructivist compositions, and numerous multi-level shots -- that fill the frame with movement -- STRIKE is one of the most dynamically shot and edited films in the silent era.

The print was restored a couple years ago and looks terrific and the DVD by Image Entertainment gives STRIKE the proper treatment. The DVD contains a great score by the Alloy Orchestra, who add modern touches and -- to be honest -- make the film more accessible to today’s audience. Also included is an audio commentary by Russian film historian Yuri Tsivian who gives a thorough historical addendum that adds a lot of background to the film.

The old adage "if he had only directed this one film he would have still been considered a master" applies to STRIKE, which was Eisenstein’s first film. Cinema wouldn’t have been the same without Eisenstein’s brilliance. If you are interested in film history and you love silent film, then your collection wouldn’t be complete without STRIKE.

Sergei Eisenstein: Strike Dereek Malcolm from the Guardian

DVD Net (Shaun Bennett)

Images Movie Journal Craig Fischer analyzes the Soviet Avant-Garde

Women's Space in Soviet Film Narrative Judith Mayne from Jump Cut

CineScene.com (Chris Dashiell)

VideoVista Jim Steel

Epinions [Stephen O. Murray]

DVDBeaver Gary W. Tooze

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (Bronenosets Potyomkin) A 100

Russia (75 mi) 1925 USA release (65 mi) Another Potemkin Poster

One of the landmark films of cinema history, influenced by D.W. Griffith’s INTOLERANCE, Charlie Chaplin, and Fritz Lang, Eisenstein was originally a set designer, but won the rights to make a film celebrating the 20^th anniversary of the 1905 mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin that sparked the Russian Revolution. Inspired by the location, Eisenstein rewrote the script once he finally saw Odessa, giving the film a feel for spontaneity and historical accuracy, although this is a fictionalized account of history, actually using newsreel footage of the British navy to establish the power of the Czar’s naval force, which caused artificial military concerns in Germany, France, and England, a film so cinematically real that historians began to understand the film as historical fact, and participants of the actual battleship revolt began to believe the film’s depiction of events. However, the outpouring of sympathy, the great demonstrations in support of the people of the city, also the sympathetic joining in arms by various vessels at sea is all fictionalized. Eisenstein’s purpose was not to rewrite history, but to agitate, to gain support and revolutionary sympathy by means of a propaganda film, actually causing the film to be banned in France and England, as they were afraid of the possible impact. The film is famous for the runaway baby carriage on the Odessa Steps, while a line of Cossacks marches down the steps shooting at and leaving piles of massacred unarmed civilians in their path. The film is an enthusiastic utopian vision of Communism and a beautiful abstract play at sea, a film consistently voted one of the Top Ten films of all time. The name Potemkin, by the way, was actually one of Katherine the Great’s military officers.

Eisenstein uses unforgettable bold imagery, stylized composition, and powerful rhythmic editing, introducing a style known as montage, the joining of film images to suggest an idea, create a mood, or evoke a theme. In the West, film was shot in sequence, called continuity shooting, but Eisenstein captured many unrelated shots and put them together in a montage, or an impressionist, stream-of-conscious sequence to develop the narrative structure, using editing to develop rhythm and movement and suspense, almost capturing the feel of a dream-like rhythm throughout the film. Also, he introduced the term “jolt,” a jolt in the visuals, similar in today’s terminology for jump or flash cuts, using a shot of such brief duration, sometimes only a single frame, barely seen by the audience, creating a sharp dramatic impact or shock emotional effect.

Battleship Potemkin Film Comment

One of the immortal classics of world cinema, The Battleship Potemkin was a perfect vehicle for the young, brilliant and restless Eisenstein to experiment with his theories about montage, the creation of new ideas and filmic realities through the creative juxtaposition of images. Based on the famous revolt by the crew of a Russian warship in Odessa in 1905, the film celebrates the courage of the rebels and those on land who supported them, and it also depicts, in the extraordinary and oft-quoted Odessa Steps sequence, the raw brutality of the Tsarist regime. Well-received in the USSR when first released, the film was among the first Soviet films shown in the Western Europe, where it created an enormous sensation—the most powerful evidence yet of a new, revolutionary art emerging from what claimed to be a new, revolutionary society.

Edinburgh U Film Society [Iain Harral]

Despite the fact that it has been subjected to exhaustive criticism and analysis Eisenstein's best known film retains its capacity to emotionally stir the viewer.

A prime example of Eisenstein's montage theory of editing, where neutral, separate shots come together to create something more wholly meaningful, Battleship Potemkin recounts the story of the Kronstadt navy mutiny which inspired the 1905 revolution.

In the absence of dialogue Eisenstein was freed from the difficulties of endowing characters with psychological depth instead turning to the use of rigid types whose class and political affiliations could be made clear by what they looked like and whose emotions were expressed in bold physical gestures and exaggerated facial contortions. Hence in the famous Odessa Steps sequence the shawl-clad mother clasping her son, murdered by the soldiers, articulates her rage with a wide-eyed expressionist howl towards the camera.

Apart from the well-known apects of Eisenstein's art - montage editing put to an overtly political use - it's worthwhile considering the enormous scale of the production and the film-making system that enabled a director to temporarily mobilize and command the Russian fleet and thousands upon thousands of extras who were, after all, just ordinary Russian people.

Battleship Potemkin is possibly as fast moving, exciting, and utterly committed a piece of film-making as you will ever see.

MovieJustice (Dan DeVore)

What a truly monumental film this is. The Battleship Potemkin is one of the most important movies ever made in terms of what it did to advance the medium and art form of film. Of course, by today's standards it seems to be lacking quite a bit in certain areas, by which I mean film techniques have been refined and improved upon since then. However, in 1925, it was a landmark film and it is very doubtful anyone had ever seen anything like it before. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein, it would be safe to say that this is the Citizen Kane of Russian cinema. Leftist Russian cimena that is.

The fact is that Battleship Potemkin is, at its core, a propaganda film. Sure just watching it casually with no background knowledge it seems be an adventure about a group of sailors on a battleship who revolt against their commanding officers. At first glance that is what it appears to be, a revolt which goes on to inspire a port town to also stand up against their "corrupt" officials. In reality this film was supported by the communist Russian government of the 1920s under the rule of Stalin, to make their cause look heroic and noble. A propaganda film if their ever was one. In fact this may be the most infamous propaganda film ever made.

Everything about it just preaches to us how great communism is.

First of all, let me make a couple of points clear. The officers on the battleship are servants of the Tsar and his empire. The sailors represent the passionate and respectable communist government. It would be easy to completely overlook that element going straight into the movie with no background knowledge of this Eisenstein work. However, the story is not completely propaganda as the events really did take place in 1905. It is how the story is told that makes it propaganda. That is one of the marvelous things about film, because it is one of the few mediums that can skew reality so much and preach on many levels, whereas other art forms cannot.

From the beginning of Battleship Potemkin the audience is put in the shoes that the Russian government wanted us to wear. We symphasize with the sailors who are all cheerful, noble looking, and hardworking despite the awful conditions on the ship. While the officers are old, twisted, and vile sinister beings that take joy in the suffering of the crew. The crew looks to mutiny and finally do take over the ship with the last straw, which is the food they are forced to eat. The food consisting of a maggot swarmed piece of meat, which the doctor on board says only needs to be dipped in salt water to remedy and render edible. The scene is completely disgusting. Eisenstein sacrificed nothing to show us the horror of the conditions on the ship.

Once the horror is gone, everything is right with the world and there is no wrong. Everyone is a worker, going about their specific tasks with the utmost bliss and efficiency. There is no need for central leadership with the burden of command, when everyone who is expected to do their job does it. During the immediate scenes following the revolt the sailors are all working hard, while a upbeat musical score plays in the background.

Another thing to point out towards the beginning of the film is the priest on board the battleship. He is portrayed as an old, long haired, bearded, evil, Rasputin-looking man. He is ignorant and stumbles around, after all according to the communist belief, religion is only for the weak. So naturally a man of the cloth in this film would have to look like a fool. Just seeing him can send shivers up any spine.

The most famous scene of the movie, which is considered mandatory viewing for all serious film critics and scholars around the world, is the "Odessa steps sequence." It is very brutal to watch and not for the light hearted. After the people in a harbor town of Potemkin (after which the ship was named) start a revolution, the Tsar seeks to put it down. The Tsar's military sends soldiers to march on the revolutionaries. The soldiers are all robotic and inhuman in their motions and mannerisms, all the more reason for us to hate them. They march in a straight line down the Odessa steps, while grim music howls in the background. They shoot everyone in sight, who by this point are running away, but they are still shot in the back. Arms, legs, and hands are trambled on. When a woman runs up the stairs with a baby in her arms pleading for mercy, she is shot down.

Another woman is shot through the eye, while her child tumbles down the stairs in a baby carriage, crying for help. The soldiers are inhuman entities that feel no remorse. By making the communists look like innocent victims against the evil of the Tsar, Eisenstein accomplished exactly what he was after, a distorted view of reality and history. With this sequence, the Russian montage theory was created. Fast editing, showing clips of different events going on at the same point in time, that are related to each other. In 1925, it was revolutionary to film.

The message of the film, which was to show what might happen if the Communist government were to ever fall, is what caused this movie to be banned in many countries for years. Especially because of the Red Scare and the whole Cold War, not until the past couple decades could this film be praised for the masterpiece that it is. Just because the message is pure propaganda, doesn't mean that it is not an important and great movie. The Battleship Potemkin took film and showed the world how powerful of art form it could be. Or how dangerous.

Senses of Cinema Helen Grace

BRONENOSETS POTEMKIN essay by Clyde Kelly Dunagan from Film Reference

An essay on history and "The Battleship Potemkin" Gregg Severson writes a historical narrative on the film

Epinions [metalluk]

Encyclopaedia Britannica Gregory McNamee

» Battleship Potemkin from Greylodge

Film as Art Danél Griffin

Film Commentary by CGK

Movie Reviews UK Damian Cannon

The New Humanist Owen Hatherley

VideoVista Jim Steel

Alex Christensen, The Magic of the Movies

eFilmCritic.com Paulapalooza

Goatdog's Movies [Michael W. Phillips Jr.]

Movie Revival [Chad Newsom]

YouTube - Battleship Potemkin El acorazado Potemkin with Led Zeppelin 8 minute sequence to “Stairway to Heaven”

Clip from the Odessa Steps sequence of The Battleship Potemkin very brief

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

DVDBeaver.com - Full Graphic Review [Gary W. Tooze]

OCTOBER (Oktyabr)

aka: Ten Days That Shook the World

Russia (95 mi) 1927 co-director: Grigori Aleksandrov

Chicago Reader (Dave Kehr)

Sergei Eisenstein was given a free hand and a mammoth budget to re-create the October Revolution for its tenth anniversary (1927), but the results displeased the authorities--for reasons both political (the presence of Trotsky) and aesthetic (Eisenstein's extreme formalism, here at its most abstract and theoretical). Much of the montage is reductive and static, but some of the action scenes are genuinely stirring--when he wasn't editorializing, the man really could cut film.

ToxicUniverse.com (John Nesbit)

Commissioned to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the 1917 revolution, Eisenstein came up not with a rousing spectacle that might please the proletariat, but with an experimental film aimed at exemplifying his theory of 'intellectual montage'. The result, for all its spectacular set pieces (notably the raising of the Petrograd bridges and the storming of the Winter Palace), is sometimes hard to follow, since human actions and motivations tend to be neglected in favour of the overall, rather abstract design of the film, and the narrative is regularly interrupted by montage shots of metaphorical and symbolic value. As a result, the film remains an interesting oddity rather than entertaining or illuminating. Indeed, watching it today can seem hard work.

“We have the right to be proud that to us fell the good fortune of beginning the building of the Soviet State and by doing so, opening a new chapter in the history of the world.”

—Vladimir Lenin

Commissioned by the Soviet Central Committee in 1927 to commemorate the ten year anniversary of the October Revolution, October (also known as Ten Days that Shook the World) is the last significant silent film of legendary director Sergei Eisenstein. The Russian government desired the finest documentary possible, so they assigned their finest director the task of re-creating the Russian Revolution, and gave him immense resources to create his film. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Eisenstein's films conform to the party line. Yet, the great director is still able to find enough artistic license to experiment:

“In the light of the resolutions of the Central Committee, all workers in art must...fully subordinate our creative work to the interests of the education of the Soviet people. From this aim we must not take one step aside nor deviate a single iota. We must master the Lenin-Stalin method of perceiving reality and history... This is a guarantee that our cinematography will be able to surmount all the ideological and artistic failures...and will again begin to create pictures of high quality, worthy of the Stalinist epoch.”

Eisenstein's epic drama comes as close to being an eyewitness documentary account about Lenin and the Socialist Revolution as possible since Nikolai Podvolsky and other leaders of the uprising served as consultants. Filming the events in their actual locations in Petrograd (later to be named Leningrad before returning to St. Petersburg) give the film added credibility that historians will find especially fascinating—especially notable is the storming of the actual Winter Palace. On the other hand, modern viewers with little interest in the Russian Revolution will think October overdoes its history, as occasionally events feel like they are tediously filmed in real time.

Nevertheless, Eisenstein ranks as a leading film grammarian—his editing techniques and use of creative camera angles have been studied and imitated for years. Given free creative reign and a large budget to produce October, Eisenstein pulls out all the cinematic tricks he can muster with his impressionistic style and ability construct incredibly complex large-scale mob scenes.

Imagine the technical challenge of staging such scenes in 1927! Filmmakers couldn't rely on CGI to fill in for the thousands of extras involved with these massive scenes. Much like his famous Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin, the famous director communicates a sense of the chaos through a montage that combines large scale shots, a slowly rising bridge with dead horse attached, more intimate shots of a woman with hair draped over the bridge, and a fallen corpse. Individually many of these shots would appear to be lifted from a surrealistic Goya painting, but taken as a whole it makes sense and can only be Eisenstein. This bridge montage stands as the highlight of the historic film.

Beginning with the symbolic deposition of the Csar with the toppling of the Alexander II statue in Petrograd in February, Eisenstein's film outlines highlights of the early stages of the revolution amidst joyful and patriotic music. The initial exuberance becomes more somber when the Russians realize that the Provisional government has brought “no peace, no bread, and no land” after five months in power.

Lenin returns to rally the people, but counter-revolutionaries put down a spontaneous revolt (that inspires the famous bridge montage) Lenin must hide underground until the fateful ten days in October that truly shake the world.

While blatantly propagandistic, the film is surprisingly even-handed towards the Bourgeoisie government for the most part. However, as the crucial October date approaches Eisenstein juxtaposes images of Napoleon with Menshevik leader Alexander Kerensky and later associates the leader with golden peacocks and oppulance. Contrasted with these obvious symbols are simple images promoting the Bolshevik cause: Bread, Peace, Land, and Brotherhood.

The two-hour film will likely provide more details about the Russian Revolution than most non-Russian history specialists desire while others will resent the film's core political message, but film students will continue to gain by closely examining Eisenstein's artistic expression.

By no means does October represent the most coherent of Eisenstein's films. At times it seems that the filmmaker is experimenting with the medium, but still many parts continue to be engaging. MTV could learn some lessons from this great master—he certainly leaves us far more memorable montages than anything that modern copycat filmmakers have created.

Ivan the Terrible and October book reviews Helen Grace from Senses of Cinema

October Eistenstin’s October, by Murray Sperber from Jump Cut

Epinions [Stephen O. Murray]

THE OLD AND THE NEW (Staroye i Novoye)

aka: The General Line

Russia (121 mi) 1929 co-director: Grigori Aleksandrov

This is the most neglected of Sergei Eisenstein's features, his last completed silent picture (1929), also known as The Old and the New. It's a bucolic epic about the Soviet struggle to collectivize agricultural production, and it's far from his least interesting or exciting film, though some critics have made it sound that way by noting that the most famous sequence involves a cream separator. For the record, it is a thrilling sequence--part of Kenneth Anger's Eaux d'artifice is modeled directly after it--but it's far from the only thing this rich, poetic, and sometimes quite funny film has to offer. Recommended.

Slant Magazine [Ed Gonzalez]

The General Line was the project Eisenstein interrupted to make October, the epic commissioned to mark the tenth anniversary of the USSR. Neither of these two celebrations of his theory of 'associative montage' (which remain among his most powerful and innovative movies) met with official approval or popular success; Eisenstein was condemned as a 'formalist'; and began the world travels that eventually led him to Mexico. The General Line is a comprehensive account of Soviet agricultural policies, showing the struggle for collectivisation of the farms, distinguished (like October) by Eduard Tissé's phenomenal photography, by Eisenstein's muscular homo-erotic poetry, and by extraordinary sadomasochistic undercurrents. Fans of Kenneth Anger's Eaux d'Artifice should not miss the daringly erethistic cream-separator sequence in The General Line on which it is based.

DVDBeaver.com [Mikkel Svendstrup]

SENTIMENTAL ROMANCE (Romance sentimentale)

France (20 mi) 1930 co-director: Grigori Aleksandrov

User Reviews from imdb Author: realreel from United States

In short, one of the landmark films in the development of avant garde cinema, ostensibly in the same Surrealist vein as Clair's "Entr'Acte," Cocteau's "Blood of a Poet" and Bunuel's "Un Chien Andalou" though with touches uniquely Eisenstein's. "Romance Sentimentale" set the stage for further experimentalist efforts, including the formal use of nature and contrapuntal sound. Interestingly, it was Eisenstein's only privately commissioned work, produced for the husband of the woman it features.

iQUE VIVA MÉXICO! (¡Que Viva Mexico! - Da zdravstvuyet Meksika!)

Russia USA Mexico (90 mi) 1931, released in 1979 co-director: Grigori Aleksandrov (incomplete)

Trivia from imdb

This record only represents the 200,000-plus feet of unedited film that Sergei M. Eisenstein, Grigori Alexandrov and Edouard Tissé shot in Mexico 1931/32 for Mary and Upton Sinclair and three American co-financiers. It was Eisenstein's vision to end up with movie about Mexico in six parts called "Calavera", "Sandunga", "Maguey", "Fiesta", "Soldadera", and "Epilogue". The project was cancelled before it was completed due to cost overruns and months-delayed completion, and the producers refused to let Eisenstein attempt to edit anything from the material he had finished after Stalin called him back to the USSR. From this footage the following pictures were subsequently edited by other hands: Thunder Over Mexico (1933), Eisenstein in Mexico (1933), Death Day (1934), _Time In the Sun (1940)_ and ¡Que Viva Mexico! - Da zdravstvuyet Meksika! (1979). Since this record covers only the unassembled original footage, no reviews/comments should be placed in this record, but rather with the applicable, released version listed above.

When the film, developed and printed at Paramount Studios out of the original directors' control, was returned to the USSR authorities, a copy was then at the USSR State Film Archives. This film was restored and narrated by Grigory Alexandrov, and produced by Mosfilm, and distributed by Sovexportfilm - unfortunately without a visible date.

If Leni Riefenstahl was Hitler's point-person for political propaganda, Sergei Eisenstein was Stalin's whore. But unlike any of the films Riefensthal produced for the Third Reich, Eisenstein's films are masterworks of political subversion made for the Russian people but nonetheless critical of the collectivist system under which they were made. Born in 1898 in the Riga region of Russia, Eisenstein cultivated a revolutionary form of film editing through such masterpieces as Strike and Battleship Potemkin that would forever inform the way films are cut. The radical blend of narrative fiction and documentary footage in works like Alexander Nevsky (a film considered the precursor to the modern-day music video) defy classification, as well it should considering that Eisenstein directed each and every one of his propagandistic masterpieces with an unsettling and irrepressible feverishness that make them entirely too difficult to pin down.

Like Luis Buñuel after him, Eisenstein was too anarchistic for the Hollywood studio system to tame. Shortly after making the bourgeois short comedy Romance Sentimentale (which would play nicely on a surrealist double bill with Buñuel's L'Age d'Or), Eisenstein went to Mexico in 1931 with assistant director Eduard Tisse and producer Grigory Alexandrov to shoot a film about the country's mythic landscape with the financial help of writer Upton Sinclair, the muck-racking genius behind 1905's controversial slaughterhouse exposé The Jungle, and his wife Mary Craig. Shooting stopped in 1932 after a series of financial mishaps with most of the work completed, though one of the film's segments couldn't be filmed. The Stalinist regime prevented Eisenstein from ever seeing ¡Que viva México! as he had intended it though Sinclair had approved two separate interpretations of the film: 1933's Thunder Over Mexico and 1939's Time in the Sun.

Currently, filmmaker and researcher Lutz Becker is working on his own interpretation of Eisenstein's unfinished masterwork using the film's original negatives and master prints. But in 1979, producer Alexandrov was allowed to assemble the picture using Eisenstein's storyboards and outlines to create an approximation of the director's original vision. No version of the film can ever capture exactly how Eisenstein would have assembled the footage he shot in Mexico from 1931 to 1932, and as such Alexandrov's interpretation of the director's ¡Que viva México! ("as Eisenstein conceived it and as we planned it") becomes rather slippery when analyzed using an auteurist model. (In a way, isn't any cut of the film considered an anti-auteurist gesture?) But if the film as it exists now can't tell us for sure how Eisenstein would have shaped the footage, make no mistake: these delirious images that map out a Mexican mythology and social unrest are unquestionably his own creations.

Despite the devastating, elegiac tone of its images, ¡Que viva México! is still every bit as unnerving and aesthetically confrontational as October. And just as the film would inform later works by Orson Welles (It's All True), Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo) and Sergio Leone (A Fistfull of Dollars), many of its images anticipate later works by Eisenstein. (One of the film's more startling images is that of a Mexican woman looking down at an ancient pyramid, a shot which brings to mind the more famous image of Nikolai Cherkasov's Czar Ivan IV from the director's Ivan the Terrible films staring down from his palace window at a line of advancing worshipers.) With ¡Que viva México!, Eisenstein intended to document the mythic struggle of a Mexican people in a perpetual state of unrest, dividing their history into six parts: Prologue, Sandunga, Conquest, Fiesta, Magey, Soldadera (the only episode that wasn't completed) and Epilogue.

Mexico learned about Mexican history and its people through artists like Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros and Jose Orozco, and it's obvious from the start that Eisenstein was enamored with the country. The genius of the film's Prologue is how Eisenstein successfully evokes an eternal Mexico in suspended cultural animation. The entire episode takes place in the Yucatan, a beautiful region of Mexico seemingly possessed by its stone gods, pagan temples and marvelous pyramids. Here, "time flows slowly" and Eisenstein's images evoke a certain near-frozen sense of evolution by placing the film's modern Mexicans beside their ancient stone counterparts. Immediately, the director has set up a fascinating struggle between the past and the present that permeates the rest of the picture and is indicative of what Eisenstein considers both the country's strength and devastating weakness.

Throughout the film's Sandunga episode, Eisenstein's images bring to mind an Eden uncontaminated by Spanish culture. Eisenstein's text describes life in the province of Tehuantepec as "a slow, semi-vegetative existence," pointing to a certain pure, symbiotic relationship between man and nature by situating the people of the region before tranquil landscapes inundated with trees and lush vegetation. There's a strange but serene geometry to this segment (look for the delirious graphic match between a stone necklace and a man sitting on a hammock) that suggests a people untainted by modern influences. The culture here is largely matriarchal and the central narrative concerns a young girl named Concepcion and her attempts to raise a dowry for her future husband Abundio. Even the names of the film's first couple is largely metaphoric, and though the episode ends in bliss (two parrots engage in love play on a tree branch above the couple's heads) it hardly anticipates the fall of Eden evoked by the film's central Magey episode.

Throughout the Conquest and Fiesta episodes, Eisenstein evokes the painful legacy of Cortes' invasion of Mexico in the 16th century with an elaborate juxtaposition of codes and symbolic struggles. The celebration depicted here is largely in service of the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe and though Eisenstein is obviously critical of the Catholic Church, the incredible marriage of sparring symbols throughout the episode recognizes a Mexican collective in spiritual limbo. The monks who came to the region destroyed ancient temples in order to build their churches, converting the so-called heathens of the region to Catholicism. Eisenstein seems to understand why the film's Mexicans are so hung-up on ironic, ritualized celebrations of their own devastation. Mexico has been unduly influenced by Spain (the Fiesta bullfighting sequence symbolically pits both countries and their respective cultures against each other), but Eisenstein's strange puppet show continues to contemplate the lingering threat of the people's ultimately irrepressible past.

In the Magey episode, the peasant Sebastian wages a battle against a colonial landlord (a doppelganger perhaps for Mexican dictator Porfirio Dias) who ravages his wife Maria. This cruel, lyrical battle begins on a rich hacienda and culminates in a delirious confrontation in a barren desert that is home to the phallic Maguey cactus. (The cactus shields the film's peons from colonialist gunfire and its white juice feeds their stomachs.) ¡Que viva México! plays out as a collection of images that repeatedly pit classic paired rivals against each other: paganism versus Christianity, nature versus culture, virginity versus sexual perversion, night versus day, poor versus rich, and so on. And with the film's ghoulish Prologue, Eisenstein encodes these various battles in the Day of the Dead sugar masks worn and consumed by Mexican children. He marvels at "man's triumph over death through mockery of it" but the film's melancholic tone suggests that Spain may have forever sent Mexico spiraling into a spiritual and cultural limbo from which it has yet to recover.

CineScene.com (Chris Dashiell) in depth 4-Part essay, Eisenstein’s Mexican Dream

Revolting women: the role of gender in Sergei Eisenstein’s Que Viva Mexico! and U.S. Depression-era Left film criticism Chris Robé from Jump Cut, Winter 2006

Latin America on Screen

The New York Times M.H.

BEZHIN MEADOW (Bezhin lug)

Russia (31 mi) 1937/1968 (incomplete)

Channel 4 Film

Eisenstein was possibly the greatest of the Soviet film-makers, although here you'll only get a taster of what he could do. The basic storyline seems to be that a man decides to sabotage the local economy by burning down a meadow, but is opposed by his good Soviet son. However, the film was burnt by the Soviet authorities in 1937 and what we have here is a series of stills taken from out-takes discovered in the 60s and restored by archivists. It's interesting enough to watch - if only for the might-have-been quotient - but, unless you're a total film buff, there's probably more to life than that.

That Cow (Andrew Bradford)

I was poking around the extras on the Criterion Alexander Nevsky disc, and found the best effort reconstruction they had of this missing Eisenstein film, Bezhin Meadow.

So this is a review of something which no longer exists. The reconstruction consists of the start and end frames of each original shot - thanks to Sergei's habit of saving them for posterity - with what I assume is another of Prokofiev's wonderful scores. This was meant to be the first sound film for Eisenstein, but for this effort, it was necessary to create subtitles for the dialog.

The story is placed within Stalin's modernization / collectivization drive for the young Soviet Union. It was a tumultuous time of hushed violence, ranging from resistance by peasants to Stalin's ideological crackdowns. Eisenstein took on a very pertinent story - a father who commits arson to stall the collectivization, and the son who informs on him.

The supporting materials on the disc include some essays written by Eisenstein, regarding this failed project. He sounds like any other talent bullied around by a government or a religion. It became too painful to read about how art was now supposed to reflect a socialist realism, and that he could not do anything meaningful without embracing it from a communal aspect... I had to move on, it was so depressing.

An unfinished film makes necessarily for an incomplete review. All I can say is that the visuals are equal to, if not greater than, the rest of Eisenstein's work. There's an intimacy here beyond the simple interpretation of what a few frames suggest. I think it's the material for one, bringing out an aspect to his filmmaking that the vast historical dramas tended to suspress. If Bezhin Meadow would have survived, I have no doubt it would rank amongst Eisenstein's greatest films. The problem is that I have to go by what we have, which is an awful lot of promise, with a lot more missing. Bezhin Meadow is excellent, evocative filmmaking, but the holes are too great, and the presentation so much not what was originally expected, that I have to restrain myself. What we see is the promise of greatness, rather than the greatness itself. May this one turn up in its full glory some day.

Senses of Cinema David Ehrenstein

ALEXANDER NEVSKY (Aleksandr Nevskiy)

Russia (112 mi) 1938 co-director: Dmitri Vasilyev Alexander Nevsky 1

The Tech (MIT) [Raul A. Gonzalez]

Eisenstein's first project to reach completion in nearly ten years, Alexander Nevsky is widely regarded as an artistic and political disaster, despite its wide international popularity. Conceived as a kind of nationalist epic (and approved as such by Stalin), it resurrects the 13th-century hero Nevsky as an almost mythic guardian of the Russian heritage, and celebrates his victories against the Teutonic invaders; it was read as an anti-Nazi film during the war. It's easy to see why the mixture of religiosity, caricature and bold aestheticism has pleased many of the people some of the time. It's main interest now is that it cleared the way for the infinitely richer and more complex achievement of Ivan the Terrible.

“Whoever comes in peace is welcome, but whoever comes with a sword shall die by the sword." With these words, says the legend, Prince Alexander Vasilievich Nevsky led the Russians to fight not only for their land, but against Teutonic imperialism. The year was 1242, and the Teutons had brutally conquered a large part of the Russian Empire in a kind of blitzkrieg of ancient times. The city of Pskov and the whole of western Russia had surrendered to the merciless Teutons, who then set their eyes on Novgorod, the epitome of progress of the Russian motherland.

Seven centuries later, in 1939, the imperialist threat was still present, but few Russians realized it after the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. In spite of this seemingly peaceful scenario, Stalin asked the great director Sergei Eisenstein to make a film that would awake the conscience of the Soviet nation to fight for their motherland against the potential enemy, then disguised with swastikas instead of the traditional sword and armor. This explains Eisenstein's clever idea to use in his Alexander Nevsky the traditional story of Prince Alexander in order to make the political message clear.

Although Alexander Nevsky was initially intended to be war propaganda, where content often overshadows technique, Eisenstein took advantage of some of his innovative cinematographic techniques to create one of the most visually astounding battle scenes ever filmed: the battle of Lake Chudskoe, which also serves as the climax of the film. Stalin also asked the famous composer Sergei Prokofiev to write the musical score for this film. The collaboration between these two geniuses of the Communist era resulted in one of the most striking portraits of the eternal battle between good and evil ever filmed.

A special feature of this Classic film is that the copy of Alexander Nevsky has been fully restored from the original print, complete with a remastered version of Prokofiev's original score played by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra.

digitallyOBSESSED! DVD Reviews Mark Zimmer also reviews IVAN THE TERRIBLE Pt’s I and II (excerpt)

If Regis were to ask you for a great Russian director, the name Sergei Eisenstein would be the natural one to come to mind. Not only the most prominent Russian director, he was one of the greatest artists of the cinema to date. Making his reputation with the silent epics Battleship Potemkin, Strike and October, he had an long string of bad luck in entering the sound era. First came a trip to Hollywood that ended in the disappointment of not being able to film his script of Dreiser's American Tragedy (for which I will NEVER forgive David O. Selznick, who vetoed the film). Then the inability to complete ¬°Que Viva Mexico!, and the studio's seizure of the footage shot and a complete recutting that disregarded Eisenstein's ideas. When he returned to Russia to make Bezhin Meadow, that film was denounced and destroyed. This left Eisenstein at a completely low ebb, out of favor and in danger of being forgotten, if not imprisoned.

But at the same time, Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev was at a similar low ebb in his fortunes; none of his compositions had been published for years, and he, too, was rejected by the Stalinist regime as out of step with the communist reformation of the nation. Yet these two set about a collaboration which would produce three of the most striking films of the sound era, the resounding triumph of Alexander Nevsky and the first two parts of the Ivan the Terrible trilogy, which was never completed. These only completed sound films of Eisenstein are presented here in this new Criterion set.

Alexander Nevsky (1938) 01h:48m:24s

"Defend? I do not know how to defend. We shall smite them with all our power!"
Alexander Nevsky (Nikolai Cherkasov)

Nevsky is, in this reviewer's opinion, one of the most sublime marriages of film and music ever to have been created. Eisenstein was selected to make a propaganda film to arouse the Russians against the dangerous expansionist tendencies of the Germans under Hitler, and the 13th century defeat of the German Teutonic Lakes by the title hero seemed to be a suitable method for doing so. Playing the title role in this, as well as the other two films, is the excellent Nikolai Cherkasov, who was something of the Russian equivalent of Charlton Heston. With a commanding voice and presence, he brings these characters to life with gusto and humor. Having defeated the invading Swedes on the Neva river two years earlier, Alexander Nevsky is asked to come to the aid of Novgorod, the last free Russian city-state. In the nearby city of Pskov, the Teutons are depicted as laying waste to the city and its people, butchering men and women and burning infants alive, all in the name of the church in Rome. The religious fanaticism forms a key part of Eisenstein's criticism, which is not directly paralleled to the Nazi menace, but which is effective nonetheless in evoking Russian nationalism. After a disastrous initial skirmish, the film climaxes in an unforgettable half-hour long battle on a frozen lake. Winding up the story is a lengthy coda of the losses suffered by the Russians and Nevsky's moderation and humanism in dealing with the foe, in sharp contrast to the evil of the Teutonic Knights.

Prokofiev's score is nothing short of marvelous; he captures the essence of Russian folksongs in his faux melodies, generates an incredibly exciting track to underlie the battle sequence, and gives a haunting and anguish-filled soprano solo over the identification of the dead afterwards. Also noteworthy are the ominous themes devoted to the knights and the atonal mockery of Gregorian chant assigned to the bishop and priests accompanying the Germans. Moving in the extreme, Prokofiev's music lifts this far above a mere propaganda film and into the stratosphere of perfect cinema.

Eisenstein is less reliant on montage here, but in the battle sequence he effectively uses it to generate excitment, continuously cutting the shots ever shorter until they are deep into music-video territory. The highly stylized costumes are carefully designed to make the Teutonic Knights and their footmen seem to be inhuman robots; this was a theme that George Lucas would pick up in Star Wars, as well as the imagery of the Emperor, who is clearly derived from the evil black-robed monk who plays the organ for the Germans. The resemblance between the iron helmets of the footmen and the metal helmets of the Nazis is certainly not coincidental.

One of the best movies ever made, Alexander Nevsky gets my absolutely highest recommendation.

by J. Hoberman Criterion essay

Reel.com DVD review [Bill Schwartz] this excellent review also includes IVAN THE TERRIBLE Pt’s I and II

The QNetwork Film Desk [James Kendrick]

Movie Reviews UK Damian Cannon

DVD Net (Shaun Bennett)

David Arnold

Turner Classic Movies Paul Tatara

ToxicUniverse.com (John Nesbit)

Eric Walker

Movie House Commentary Johnny Web

On two Eisenstein films = "Aleksandr Nevskii" & "Ivan the Terrible" a study guide including superb photos

Alexander Nevsky: Stalinist propaganda in the 13th century Alex von Tunzelmann from The Guardian, October 8, 2009

The New York Times (Frank S. Nugent)

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze] the review also includes IVAN THE TERRIBLE Pt’s I and II

TIME IN THE SUN

USA (55 mi) 1940 co-director: Grigori Aleksandrov

User reviews from imdb Author: rook1 from Paris, France

'Time in the Sun' cannot be considered as an Eisenstein's movie : it's a montage, made by Mary Seaton, of what was filmed by Eisenstein for 'Que Viva Mexico !' The result is very useless, meaningless, and has a stupid narrator voice, which transforms those superb pictures in an uninteresting ethnographic documentary.

The New York Times (Bosley Crowther)

One of the most celebrated controversies in the annals of Hollywood was that raging some seven or eight years ago over a picture which was never released. In 1931 Sergei M. Eisenstein, the famous Russian director, had gone to Mexico to film what he presumably intended as an epic study of the Mexican people, the title of which was to have been "Que Viva Mexico." But for reasons variously disputed, Eisenstein never cut and edited the vast and assorted footage which he gathered; and, in 1933, when Upton Sinclair presented a picture culled from this celluloid mass under the title of "Thunder Over Mexico," there were persons around and about who hotly held it didn't follow at all the intentions of Eisenstein.

Well, a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, so a more dispassionate view is therefore likely to be taken of Marie Seton's latest reworking of the Eisenstein material. And furthermore, Miss Seton, who is a British journalist, claims that the director himself outlined the rough scenario that she followed in editing this second version, called "Time in the Sun," which opened at the Fifth Avenue Playhouse yesterday. So the boldness of her endeavor will probably cause neither riots nor bloodshed.

As a matter of fact, from this distance, the earlier controversy seems slightly foolish, and the film which Miss Seton has produced from the couple of hundred thousand feet which Eisenstein shot is probably as good a picture as could be distilled into a reasonable length. Basically, it is documentary in nature—a magnificently photographed account of Mexican native life which attempts to get beneath mere externals to spiritual forces. For, whereas "Thunder Over Mexico" was concerned mainly with the question of peonage, "Time in the Sun" visualizes the inherence of a free, pagan spirit which has survived in the Mexican native, despite Spanish civilization and slavery. From the Mayan ruins in Yucatan, it traces the evidence of this spirit through the nature and customs of the people which have continued for centuries, and concludes with a spectacular display of the Mexican's attitude toward death.

Many technical faults are obvious in "Time in the Sun": it does not flow smoothly, its construction seems contrived and the main idea is conveyed more in narration than in picture. But the photography of E. Tisse is so stunning and of such dramatic strength that each individual shot offers an exciting experience. This, we feel, is the chief distinction of the film—this, and the fact that it should make an end to the "Que Viva Mexico" controversy.

SEEDS OF FREEDOM

USA Russia (67 mi) 1943 co-director: Hans Burger

The New York Times (Bosley Crowther)

The great Russian revolutionary film, "Potemkin," made as a silent picture by Sergei Eisenstein in 1925, has been ingeniously and effectively re-edited and related to contemporary events in a fascinating sort of revival called "Seeds of Freedom," which opened at the Stanley yesterday. Essentially this film is "Potemkin" in all its original magnificence—a classic among motion pictures and one of the boldest films ever screened. Now a prologue and epilogue have been added and a suitable sound-track affixed. Though somewhat presumptuous, these new fixtures indubitably enhance the great old film.

For Eisenstein's historic telling of the story of the Potemkin mutiny in 1905 and of the Odessa revolt which followed is, in "Seeds of Freedom," shown as a flashback remembrance of the episode by one of the original sailors of the ship. Now, as a leader of Russian guerrillas behind the Nazi Crimean lines, he tells the story to his followers while they are waiting nervously for an attack. And then, when he has finished the story—the film "Potemkin"—he leads his followers forth. The sustaining idea is that people fight now for freedom as they fought then and that the counterpart of the Nazis were the Czarists in 1905.

On the whole, this modernized version, which William Sekeley supervised, is done with taste and distinction. The musical score and sound effects are excellent, and the dubbing of English voices onto the silent film is generally good. Occasionally, contemporary idioms sound incongruous, as they do in the prologue and epilogue. But the writing by Albert Maltz has strength and heart. And Henry Hull is acceptably convincing as the leader who tells the tale, while Aline McMahon contributes a moving speech which is interpolated in the old film.

But it is that old film, "Potemkin," which is bone and sinew of the Stanley's attraction. Never to be forgotten are its great scenes—the horrible slaughter of the people on the Odessa steppes, the scenes of the revolt of the sailors and the brilliant sequence showing the cruiser preparing to fight. For those who have never seen "Potemkin" we heartily recommend this chance. Indeed, for those who have seen it the opportunity to see it again should not be missed.

'Potemkin' Modernized

SEEDS OF FREEDOM; a modernized version of the Russian film. "Potemkin," produced by Sergei Eisenstein in 1925; revised edition supervised by William Sekely and directed by Hans Burger; dialogue and contemporary story by Albert Maltz; musical arrangement by Paul Abraham; produced by Potemkin Productions, Inc.

IVAN THE TERRIBLE PART I (Ivan Groznyy I)

Russia (99 mi) 1942, released in 1945

Channel 4 Film

Eistenstein's epic masterpiece was originally released as two films - 14 years apart - but they are best viewed together for maximum impact. They chart the bizarre history of the populist ruler and, more broadly, the crisis of representation in Stalin's Russia. Part 1 deals with Tsar Ivan's struggle to unite the Russian empire and free it from Eastern domination, while Part 2 (also known as The Boyars' Plot) examines his opposition to the Boyars' schemes. Under strict instructions not to employ conceptual devices such as montage, Eisenstein still manages to provide powerful images and, with set pieces, distil the sense of pomp and circumstance surrounding the Tsar. Part 1 was awarded the Stalin Prize First Class.

digitallyOBSESSED! DVD Reviews Mark Zimmer also reviews ALEXANDER NEVSKY, and IVAN THE TERRIBLE Pt’s I and II (excerpt)

Ivan the Terrible, Parts One and Two (1945, 1946) 01h:33m:11s (Part One), 01h:25m:46s (Part Two)

"From now on I will be just what you say I am. I WILL BE TERRIBLE!"
Ivan the Terrible (Nikolai Cherkasov)

Stalin was justifiably thrilled with Nevksy, and decided that Eisenstein's next project should be another historical epic, this time based on the life of 16th-century Tsar Ivan IV, or the Terrible, who unified the Russian state. Stalin's choice was somewhat odd, since he intended to use the character of Ivan as a justification for his own despotic rule, but apparently didn't quite comprehend exactly how badly the cruelty of Ivan would come across in the later parts of the film. Conceived as a trilogy, Eisenstein only completed the first two parts before his death in 1948. The first part won a Stalin prize, but the second, which showed the increasing ruthlessness of the Tsar, led to the banning of the film until 1958, long after Stalin's death (as well as Eisenstein's). Although about four reels of Part III were completed, most of it was destroyed in the third great tragedy of Eisenstein's career.

The film opens with the coronation of Ivan as Tsar, and his determination to unify the various Russian states, which were ruled by nobles called boyars. The life of Ivan was spent in struggles against the plotting of the boyars and his efforts to make them submit to his will. The first part centers on how Ivan consolidated his power into absolute rule, and demonstrates that the peasantry had great affection for him, apparently preferring him to the chaos of the boyar rule. The second part concerns a plot by the boyars (led by Ivan's aunt Efrosinia (Serafima Birman)) to assassinate Ivan and put his half-wit and easily controllable cousin Vladimir (Pavel Kadochnikov) on the throne instead. At the same time, Ivan is forming the Oprichniki, his own secret police (a factor which no doubt contributed to Stalin's ire) and his Machiavellian scheme to turn the boyars' plot against them.

Cherkasov is again terrific here, effortlessly moving from the young Tsar to the middle-aged Ivan, aided by extreme makeup which emphasizes his hawklike character. Serafima Birman is also unforgettable as the wicked aunt who poisons Ivan's wife and then tries to replace him on the throne with her son. Also noteworthy is Erik Pryryev, as the young Ivan. Not only does he closely resemble Cherkasov, but he is quite an accomplished young actor who gives a sensitive portrayal of the terrified orphan who is bullied and humiliated by the boyars. Eisenstein intentionally returned to the techniques of silent film here, with extreme gestures and highly expressionistic lighting. Prokofiev's music is again in evidence, though more subtly than in Nevsky. There are highly effective moments, however, such as the wailing clarinet that accompanies the plotting of the boyars.

Eisenstein's attention to detail comes into full flower in Ivan, from the incredibly sumptuous costuming to the detailed frescoes on the wall, to the repeated imagery and body language which forms a comment on the action and draws parallels that might not be seen otherwise. Oddly enough, despite his intimate connection with montage, Eisenstein hardly uses it at all in his last film, preferring instead to rely on religious imagery and the lighting to make the comments that would otherwise have been made by juxtaposition of shots. As the supplements make clear, this is a film of a great many layers which rewards repeated viewings.

That Cow (Andrew Bradford) reviews Pt I only

Sergei Eisenstein is considered one of film's greatest artists, but few outside of so-called film snobs have seen his work. Perhaps it's not surprising that the masses do not flock to old black and white historical dramas of periods they know nothing about, on top of which they have to pay attention to subtitled Russian. As time goes on, I realize more and more that what you get out of a film is directly proportional to the effort put into it. With Eisenstein, at least for me, it is critical to get rid of all the distractions, and let the film wash over me.

Ivan the Terrible is Eisenstein's retelling of the historical figure. He envisioned the project in three parts, but was only able to complete the first two due to failing health and Stalin's desire after seeing Part II to quash to project, as Ivan's totalitarian techniques were becoming uncomfortably similar to his own.

The blurb at the start of Part I tells us that Ivan was the first Tsar of Russia, pulling together the loosely knit collection of principalities into an actual state, and putting military might behind the throne. The words are not strictly necessary, but sets the stage for the opening coronation scene - essentially, Ivan's story already in progress.

Ivan's position as Tsar is tenuous. As the Muscovy Prince, he controlled just one of the many local city-states of Russia. The Boyars, the ruling nobility of Russia, naturally preferred the existing system and the advantages it held for them. From the start, they make snide comments, and aimed to control, if not rid themselves of, the new Tsar.

A significant reason for Russian unity for Ivan was to assert a military influence in the world. Not just to defend from the frequent invasions by Russia's neighbors, but to achieve an equal trade footing, as they were at the time landlocked. In the films, we get to see just one campaign in progress, against the Kazans, the first and most significant war in Russia's emergence.

Ivan returns from the front in ill health, launching us into palace intrigue. He believes he is soon to die, and asks the Boyars to pledge allegiance to his infant son. They refuse, save for Prince Kurbsky. Ivan recovers, gives Kurbsky command of his westward army to attack Livonia (modern Latvia and Estonia), and begins to extort the Boyars for the war effort. Some of them flee, other remain to conspire against Ivan. The church joins with them, finding they are not able to exert their accustomed pressure over this Tsar. A leading figure here is Efrosinia, Ivan's aunt, who wishes to see her idiot son, Vladimir, placed on the throne.

Efrosinia takes an opportunity to poison Anastasia while she is ill. Ivan is stunned by his loss, but does not make the connection immediately. On the heels of Kurbsky's flight out of the country, he feels truly alone, unable to truly trust anyone.

Ivan chooses to leave Moscow, reproaching the Boyars, and inviting the common people of the country to support him. When they line up outside his retreat in Alexandrov village at the end of the film, the effect is simultaneously inspiring and sinister. Watch the framing here for some truly marvelous compositions.

After repeated viewings, I have most of the main characters down, but some of the peripheral figures are still vague. It's not hard to understand their function, and perhaps identity is beside the point. Yet I can't help feeling that there are deeper levels to uncover.

I have not read Eisenstein's theories on editing, but it is clear from any close viewing that he is effective. He goes further than most in using visuals to communicate. Words often become unnecessary in this world - though it certainly helps that the material lends itself to his dramatic stylizing. For Kurbsky's near lack of speaking, we get a very good idea just how divided his loyalties are.

I'll get into more details of Einstein's visuals in Part II, where they are featured a bit more prominently than Part I. Don't stop looking for visual connections here, though. There's still plenty to find.

I have a host of nitpicks about the film which might go away with a better knowledge of Russian history. After all, Eisenstein was filming for a Russian audience. Such things as why Ivan IV was crowned as Tsar in the first place would be very interesting to learn, but would it really enhance the film? It's hard to say, but in the effort of a several part project on Ivan's life, this does not seem a small detail. Clearly, the role of Tsar was intended by the Boyars as a kind of figurehead position, but why the need to put someone there in the first place if they hadn't had one before, and none of them were interested in a central authority? Is Ivan a Boyar? On this question, I am rather confused - his aunt is one, as is his wife Anastasia, but his attitude and at times how he is treated suggests he is not. This information may seem conspicuously missing, but the film stands on its own fairly remarkably well without it.

One of the aspects of Part I that strikes me the most is the physical transformation of Ivan. We meet him at his coronation, unshaven, dressed in white (or at least bright clothing), giving a boyish impression of hope and idealism. In the second major sequence, his wedding to Anastasia, he is already beginning to change with his hair slicked back, and a closely trimmed beard along his jawline. By the end of the film, his pointed beard seems sinister, and he dresses like a goth icon, exuding torment and dread. His journey is difficult, though the film overstates the historic tragedy in this period to a minor degree.

For these films, be sure to get the Criterion version. There are some slapdash editions out there with poor, sometimes unreadable subtitles. Though I suppose if you are fluent in Russian, it won't matter.

by J. Hoberman reviews IVAN THE TERRIBLE Pt’s I and II from Criterion

J. V. Stalin: The Discussion with Sergei Eisenstein on the Film Ivan the Terrible from Revolutionary Democracy

Ivan the Terrible and October book reviews Helen Grace from Senses of Cinema

Ivan the Terrible Kristen Thompson reviews Yuri Tsivian’s book from Screening the Past

Reel.com DVD review [Bill Schwartz] this excellent review includes ALEXANDER NEVSKY and IVAN THE TERRIBLE Pt’s I and II

Epinions [metalluk] review includes ALEXANDER NEVSKY and IVAN THE TERRIBLE Pt’s I and II

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) reviews IVAN THE TERRIBLE Pt’s I and II

ToxicUniverse.com (John Nesbit) reviews IVAN THE TERRIBLE Pt’s I and II

Turner Classic Movies Felicia Feaster reviews Pt I only

DVD Net (Shaun Bennett) reviews Pt I only

Epinions (Stephen O. Murray) reviews Pt I only

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz] reviews Pt I only

Clip from Ivan the Terrible part I

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze] the review includes IVAN THE TERRIBLE Pt’s I and II

IVAN THE TERRIBLE PART II (Ivan Groznyy II: Boyarsky Zagovor)

Russia (88 mi) 1945, released in 1958

Mark R. Leeper offers his own amusing views

Capsule review: How better to start April than getting out of the way Eisenstein's great quasi-historical pseudo-epic IVAN THE TERRIBLE (Parts I and II)? You won't learn much history but you will be able to tell people you've seen it.

It has come time to review another undiscovered classic of early film. This one shows up on public television every once in a long while but has been completely forgotten by anyone who doesn't watch PBS. The film is really two Soviet films by Serge Eisenstein, IVAN THE TERRIBLE (Part I) and IVAN THE TERRIBLE (Part II). It is difficult to decide if this is really one film or two. On one hand, when Part I ends it has more loose ends than a golf ball with the skin peeled off. About all that is tied up is the current sentence. Talk about leaving room for a sequel! Eisenstein doesn't just leave ROOM, he leaves the whole house! An historical note on Eisenstein: he appears to be the only Jew revered by the Soviets since Karl Marx. Apparently he hid his religion by not asking to leave.

As with most films about conflict, the IVANs tell the story of the unending struggle between pretty people and ugly people, with ugly people being the bad guys. (This struggle may be more recent than we tend to think. In Dickens's time it was more a struggle of people with funny names such as Twist and Nickleby against people with ugly names such as Mr. Scrooge or Miss Zits.) It is only with the more realistic Schwarzenegger and Stallone films of the 1980s that the good guys are ugly too (and in Stallone's case they are making up for lost time). IVAN THE TERRIBLE is the story of how after an ugly becomes Czar he tries to run Russia for the peasants, all of whom are pretty. From a distance Ivan looks ugly: his hair is greasy and slicked down and he looks like he probably has fleas. But it turns out Ivan may not be ugly after all; it may be a plot by his aunt who has a face like a corn-grinding stone. It was probably she who put the Penzoil in his Vitalis.

The film opens with Ivan's coronation, which is more long and expensive than it is interesting, but then that is true of a lot of Russian films. They were made that way to prove to the world that Communism works so well that they can afford to waste film. But you know that Ivan is in big trouble because the place is just teeming with *ugly* people. There are a few pretty people who are saying loyal sorts of things, but there are far more uglies and they are not at all happy that Ivan is being crowned. Be warned, however, that some of the pretty people may well turn out to be villains. You will know this is happening when the camera starts showing them in unflattering close-ups.

Following the coronation there is a reception and banquet that turns out to be the funniest meal on screen since Blake Edwards's THE PARTY, except I guess it came before. During the course of a one-hour meal:

1. people plot against Ivan,

2. Ivan's best friend announces he cannot support Ivan and exiles himself,

3. there is a peasants' revolt where they burn the outskirts of the city,

4. the peasants storm the palace,

5. Ivan fights with one peasant in hand-to-hand combat,

6. Ivan announces he is going to be the People's Czar, in spite of the fact he is ugly,

7. the peasants return to their homes, the Mongol ambassador arrives and demands tribute,

8. and Ivan declares war on the Mongols.

And you never get to see the dessert.

The second film has some definite stylistic differences from the first film. During the course of making the two films, Eisenstein became more anti-West as time went along. By the time he made the second film the anti-foreigner sentiment is obvious. He puts much more bright light at the bottom of the screen so the subtitles will be almost impossible to read. At the same time, this makes the plot more complex and harder to follow.

I wouldn't say this about Part I, but IVAN THE TERRIBLE (Part II) ranks up there with the original PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, the original HELL'S ANGELS, THE RETURN OF DRACULA, and SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT as a film that suddenly goes from black-and-white to color in the middle for no obvious reason. It is quite a shock. Presumably the Soviet economy took an upturn during the shooting. Unfortunately, the blues on the colored stock have been lost to time but the reds are somewhere between vibrant and oppressive, much like Ivan himself. Part II has enough songs to rank almost as a musical and some odd dance numbers, including one around a peasant dressed like the Statue of Liberty.

The two film together are fairly long but the plot is not difficult to follow because it moves so slowly. Other than the banquet scene, in any given fifteen-minute stretch you can be reasonably sure that not much as happened. In fact, even in two films about Ivan, we learn almost nothing about the man or anything he did. The snail-paced plot instead gives plenty of time for meaningful looks and poses. It is as if every frame was intended to be a great--if not very realistic--painting.

That Cow (Andrew Bradford) Pt II only

The second and prematurely final part of Sergei Eisenstein's masterpiece begins a little oddly to my modern eyes, introducing many of the characters and the actors that portray them. These we already know from Part I, some only in passing and not necessarily identified at the time. It's an effective way to get the story rolling. I'm a little nagged by the incongruity, but looking at Ivan The Terrible as a single work, the technique was necessary to remind the audience of the characters. The films were completed consecutively, but Part II was not released until 1958, after Stalin's death. Was the introduction part of the original plan, or deemed necessary by the extreme delay in getting the film out? I suspect the latter, as the sequence doesn't suggest the same great care Eisenstein took with the rest of the film. The story proper begins with the traitor Kurbsky in the palace of the Polish King Sigismund. The first line, spoken to Kurbsky, is "Some defeats are more brilliant than victories", which refers to how Kurbsky, in charge of the western Russian army, was defeated in Livonia. The films do take some liberty with history, as the line only makes sense as Kurbsky's defeat and flight are tied together, strongly implying that he was disloyal in battle. In reality, Kurbsky only fled to Poland after falling in disfavor with Ivan, because of the Livonian defeat.

This playing with the facts is hardly unusual in historical drama. Ivan is a tragic figure, and we see his development from different angles. Kurbsky is fairly peripheral in Part II, in fact, but this opening reprises elements from Part I from outside, setting the stage for what is to follow.

Ivan returns to Moscow from Alexandrov Village to reassert his authority. He sets about to create the Oprichnina, a "widower's portion" of lands he has sole authority over. In reality, this area is carefully selected in its design to reduce the power of the Boyars. The edition I am watching (not the Criterion, unfortunately) confuses the Oprichnina with the Oprichniki, his own police force to control the Oprichnina, and often considered a forerunner to the later Soviet secret police of the Cheka, NKVD and KGB. We are treated to the one and only flashback in Ivan The Terrible, where young Ivan witnesses the poisoning death of his mother at the hands of the Boyars. This is the seed of anger that lies behind the tyranny of his rule. As the child Muscovy prince, he began to assert himself out of the unfairness inherent in the Boyars' influence, but even then, by having one of the Boyars executed, we see the streak of vengefulness and distrust that so dominated him later on. He is dwarfed by his environment and the bear-like Boyars that surround him, even when he applies the power of his position, reinforcing the image of someone reaching beyond their natural abilities. What is interesting is that this sequence was intended as a prologue at the beginning of the first film, and overruled by uncertain censors. The fortunate irony is that these scenes unify Part II in a much stronger way, when perhaps the original idea would have resonated through to the end of the unfinished Part III.

The bloodshed begins with the execution of members of the Archbishop Philip's family. Indeed, this is about as much as we get to see, the film being content to rely primarily on the political manipulations from this point on - but this bloody tyranny is strongly implied nonetheless. The Archbishop is a former friend who opposes Ivan's efforts to consolidate his power. When Ivan learns that his wife Anastasia was likely poisoned, and by his aunt Efrosinia at that, his resolve deepens. At the same time, Philip is moved to join Efrosinia in ridding the country of Ivan, and placing Efrosinia's son Vladimir as Tsar. Despite his own suspicions of his Aunt, Ivan protects her, somehow preferring the appearance of family cohesion over admitting the reality. But when Philip publically condemns and ridicules, he arrests him and embraces their name for him - Ivan the Terrible.

Images surround the characters in frescos behind and around them, images of death and religion like ghosts of history. The compositions are exact, like paintings. No moment is carelessly shot, each character expressed to their surroundings in lockstep to their relationship to the plot.

One sequence renowned for its use of color (there is another later on, but the rest of Ivan is black and white) is a kind of palace celebration, with frenetic music and dancing, at moments suggesting a modern mosh pit. The scene is painted in sinister reds and blues and is likely the most important of the film. Ivan is a master manipulator, playing on the insecurities of his loyal Oprichniki against his family ties with the boy-like Vladimir, whom his aunt wishes to become Tsar. A drunk Vladimir spills his guts about an assassination plot against the Tsar. And Ivan plays on Vladimir's hesitant desires to be Tsar. I'm spoiling a lot of plot here, but I'll hold back here and just say Ivan finds a way to save face so completely and cynically, he clearly is down to only having his own interests at heart.

Much of the film is meant symbolically, and here most of all. Many images are repeats of what we have seen already, but in different form, as Ivan begins to others what has been wrought on him in the past. Look to the documentaries on the Criterion edition to see the comparisons. While we may not recall the earlier scenes at this time, Eisenstein's idea is that we feel them unconsciously through the similar imagery. Whether that is true or not, as art, the technique is masterful in terms of deep structure.

I suppose I should say something of the Prokofiev score, which is widely noted for these films. I'm not big on soundtracks, but they do play their role. The spaces between dialog are often quite long, as so much is communicated by the images. The score may be necessary to fill that space, but it goes beyond the rudiments of tone, suggesting insights into Ivan's character.

Where Part I shows pride in the unity of Russia, Part II delves into the folly of holding too hard onto power. Like the Russian revolution itself, in Part I Eisenstein demonstrates the expected opposition to a sympathetic (at least to Stalin) cause. Yet Part II turns the story on its tail. Ivan's respect and care for the people slides into neglect his grip grows tighter. There is some speculation than Ivan was not quite sane. The film doesn't show him in such a light, but clearly he is not far from falling off the edge.

Turner Classic Movies Pt II only

DVD Net (Shaun Bennett) Pt II only

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz] Pt II only

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze] Pt II only

IVAN THE TERRIBLE PART III (Ivan Groznyy III)

Russia (4 mi fragment) released in 1988 (incomplete)

Trivia from imdb

This film is currently a fragment of one scene showing Ivan interrogating a German spy whom he suspects of being a spy but hires for his bodyguard. Stalin ordered that the shot footage, of which was 20 minutes, was to be destroyed since it showed, like Ivan Groznyy II: Boyarsky zagovor (1958) that Ivan was a bloody tyrant and his methods were uncomfortably close to Stalin's own totalitarian practices. 4 minutes and 20 seconds of the scene remain. Footage of virgin Queen Elizabeth also remain, but those shots were not finished because there was an order not to use the head of the Film Union in a female role.

Elek, Judit

RETRACE (Visszatérés) C- 67

Hungary Romania Sweden (98 mi) 2011 Official site [hu]

Both Hungarian and Romanian films have a consistent history of social realism, both during the Communist and post-Communist eras, usually bleak in nature without a trace of sentimentality, where truths are revealed through an unsparing depiction of reality. That’s simply not the case here, in a dreadful stylistic misstep, as this is simply wretched filmmaking, featuring some of the worst acting on record, where the director is from the old guard Communist era of the 50’s and utilizes the heavy-handed, old-fashioned propaganda style of filmmaking, not just force-feeding the story, but browbeating the audience with what the director feels are the pertinent Holocaust and totalitarian unpleasantries she wishes to dispense. While part of the problem may be the demands to speak multiple languages, especially the child actors, this is an overreaching and sadly melodramatic Holocaust memory tale that blends the present with the past, where the dreadful quality of filmmaking only undermines the director’s intent. While there may be an interest in the story being told, an adaptation of two stories, Summer Night by Marguerite Duras and Winged Horses by Miklós Mészöly, the blatant stereotypical depiction of humanity simply isn’t very sophisticated and takes the audience back behind the Iron Curtain to find films that resemble this one. Apparently growing up under a totalitarian regime leaves one desensitized and without much sense of empathy, as evidenced from a quick check of the director Judit Elek on IMDb: For the purposes of the movie Tutajosok (1990), 14 sheep were spread with flammable substance, and then to the order by Judit Elek were burned alive. 69 scientists from the Jagiellonian University demanded that the authorities forbid Judit Elek entry to Poland. Scientists wrote, “No director knowing his own worth would debase himself by using so primitive and cruel methods.”

While the film is a joint effort, supposedly 70% Hungarian and 30% Romanian, it opens on location in Sweden with an unusual Jewish funeral service at sea, which sets off a chain reaction, where Katherine (Kathleen Gati), of Hungarian origin, who escaped to Sweden as a child to escape the Holocaust, can be seen early on still traumatized by nightmarish Holocaust dreams and decides to return to her birth site with her family. What was Hungary has since been declared part of Romania after the war. Set in 1980 when the Soviet Union still prevailed, a rural Romanian village is under police lockdown pending an anticipated arrival of President Nicolae Ceauşescu who often comes here on hunting trips, where local families must make arrangements to guarantee his trip is successful. Openly bitter about the prospects of serving a man like Ceauşescu, a brutally oppressive dictator, Sándor (András Demeter) and his wife argue about bearing children, as Sándor refuses to bring a child into the world “for them,” a reference to the cruel, iron fisted dictatorship of the current leaders of Romania. A horrible family tragedy occurs on the arrival of Ceauşescu’s visit, but one Sándor refuses to share with the world, maintaining his privacy throughout even as his name becomes fodder for the rumor mill, named a prominent suspect in a recently unsolved crime. Meanwhile, as Katherine and her family sit idly in their car at a border checkpoint, once more at the mercy of Gestapo like guards, she is awash with memories of her childhood, shown in black and white, where Sándor was her closest friend. She also recalls the street lined with Jews, all stuffed into railway cars, where the only reason she was saved was because she was small enough to fit through a hole in one of the railcars.

Of course, she is racked with guilt for having survived when others didn’t, and has a history of suicide attempts. As her family travels deeper into Romania, they encounter the police-state presence surrounding Ceauşescu’s visit, which parallels the world she left behind as a child. While Katherine is pleased she remembers bits and pieces of the Hungarian language, the frightful aspect of her past is reliving itself in the present, where hotel guests are lined up on the floors in hallways making way for the potential visit of the President. The only way out of town is through bribery, but she’s able to find her family home and a few of the people from her past. What’s frightfully evident is that the police state she left behind as a child is still painfully present under the Ceauşescu regime, where strong-armed intimidation tactics towards ordinary citizens are the norm, leaving everyone vulnerable, as anyone can get arrested simply for the manner in which they answer police questions. The problem here is that Elek is just as heavy handed in telling her story, continuously maximizing the melodrama, ramping up the egregious nature of the bad guys, where subtlety is obviously not her strong suit. The picture she paints of both Romania and Hungary are so stereotypical black and white that whatever truths she’s attempting to convey get lost in the stylistically superficial depiction, as her sense of character throughout is highly exaggerated. Anyone familiar with SHOAH (1985) doesn’t need another lecture on the anti-Semitic attitudes still prevalent today in the geographic regions responsible for sending Jews to the gas chambers, where the blatant racism from the Nazi’s still prevails. The same could be said for the Fascist measures used by the ruling police states of the region, where Hungary and Romania serviced Hitler’s Final Solution, and neither nation has ever come to terms with their own historic complicity in eradicating Jews.

RETRACE | siskelfilmcenter.org Barbara Scharres

Two stories set in Ceausescu’s Romania merge in a Transylvanian town. Katherine, a Holocaust survivor returning with her family to her birthplace, finds present-day change less disconcerting than traumatic dreams of the past. In the nearby forest, her childhood friend Sandor, a game warden, deals with the imminent arrival of the big boss himself for a hunting holiday. With the region in police lockdown and gripped by paranoia pending Ceausescu’s visit, a tragedy play out, with infidelity rather than politics the cause. In Hungarian, Romanian, and English with English subtitles. 35mm print courtesy of the Hungarian National Film Fund.

The Eleventh Hungarian Film Festival in Los Angeles - Cinema ... Cinema Without Borders

Cast: Kathleen Gati, Philip Zandén, Demeter András, Sarah Clark Katherine, who, at seven, survived the Holocaust, visits her fatherland of Transylvania, Romania for the first time, traveling from Sweden with her family. She must face both happy and frightening memories of her forgotten past, as well as the depressing reality of Ceausescu’s communist dictatorship and the romance developing between her husband and her sister. Parallel to her story and simultaneously we get to know her childhood love and friend Sándor, who serves the dictator as a forester and whose story has a tragic ending. The film ends with the surprising and odd encounter of the two stories. Inspired by Marguerite DURAS ("Summer Night" / "Dix heures et demie du soir en été") and Miklós MÉSZÖLY ("Chevaux Ailés "/ "Horses on Wings") Festivals: 2011 - Moscow International Film Festival (in competition)

The Echo of War Daria Borisova

Romania of the 1980 was practically the same as the Soviet stagnation of the Brezhnev era. This American family with disbelief stares at the enormous portraits of Ceaușescu, red banners that were the same in all countries of the socialist camp. In parallel to Katrina’s story is a another storyline about Shandor, a Hungarian friend from her childhood. Now he is a grown man, working as a forester in the hunting reserves of Ceaușescu. Shandor refuses to have a child with his wife, because he doesn’t want to have children “for them” (the monstrous leaders of Romania). The film is full of intolerance toward dictatorship and fascism. At a press conference Judit Elek spoke openly about the problems of Hungarian society, the most important of which she sees as historical amnesia. “Over the past decades the societal political formation has changed several times. Today neo-fascism is developing. Nationalists are active and loud. And this has become possible because the remains of those phenomenon that characterized Hungary during the Second World War have not been properly buried. Hungary was an ally of Hitler’s German. During the past ten years Hungarian society has never looked this problem in the face. It is painful to look history in the face, and people don’t like pain. But without honest pain, you can’t move forward.” Judit Elek’s film may have been shot in an old-fashioned style, but the passion of its message and civil commentary are unquestionable.

RETRACE/ VISSZATÉRÉS - 34th Moscow International Film Festival Igor Saveliev

All happy families are happy in the same way, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. That is the case in Judit Elek’s movie. The Romanian and the Swedish families have very little in common. What could a Transylvanian forester and a respectable West-European lady have in common? Nothing. And still at some point they start the inexorable movement towards each other from points “A” and “B”, traversing the frontiers… Do they want this meeting? No. But… It depends… Will they meet? No. Though…

Judit Elek is one of the most experienced Hungarian directors (she began filming in the 50s and is considered a representative of the “first generation” of the founders of Hungarian cinema). She ventured to experiment on a large scale, juxtaposing three epochs, three worlds on the screen – Hitler occupation, the West and developed socialism. The latter is taken in its most flagrant form familiar from the usual first-hand stories: when Perestroika was under way in the USSR, Soviet people, who came to Bucharest and tried to talk to the “aborigines” in the way they had already got used to on TV, they met with horrified glances and fingers pointing at the ceilings in the hotels, which meant that everything was bugged.

The movie is set long before the Soviet Perestroika, in 1980. Katherine, a Jew of Hungarian-Romanian origin living in Sweden ventures to come to Transylvania, which she had left at the age of 7. She was taken to the death camp and miraculously survived: her relatives dismantled the floor in the freight car, but only a child could squeeze through the opening…

Almost everything in this country reminds Katherine of a Holocaust, it might even seem that the director indulges in flashbacks. The border guard turns into a Gestapo soldier (while the curt, barking noises in the background prove to be a football broadcast and not the Führer’s speech); people lying along the walls in the dark bring back a lot of memories, but it is a usual socialist hotel: no more rooms and the lights are out. When after all the dramatic events on the Romanian soil the car with the Swedish number plates crosses the roadway barrier, Katherine’s little daughter asks: “Is it OK to sing now?” and hears the answer: “Yes, now everything is OK”.

Meanwhile the forester Teletski does not yield to his wife’s entreaties and refuses to beget a child: “I don’t want to make babies for them, I don’t want my son to become a murderer”. At the same time it is for “them” that he himself prepares the hunting ground, for Ceausescu who is due to shoot bears here. And the moment you think about the paradoxical notion of “murder” in the context (in a few years the opponents of the regime will themselves finish off the Ceausescus), the forester’s rifle fires and soon Teletski is wanted for double murder. Evidently paradoxes of the 20th century cannot be understood without Shakespearean plot twists.

Film New Europe - Moscow IFF Competition: Retrace/Visszatérés Iulia Blaga

Elkabetz, Ronit and Shlomi

SEVEN DAYS (Shiva)

Israel France (115 mi) 2008

Seven Days (Shiva) Screendaily at Cannes

In Seven Days, the Elkabetz siblings catch up with the two protagonists from their remarkably successful debut, To Take A Wife. Three years after they separated, Viviane (played by Ronit Elkabetz) and Eliahu (Abkarian), are reunited under one roof for the seven days of Shiva, the Jewish wake for the death of a close relative - in this case, Viviane's older brother Maurice.

In what is once again a claustrophobic chamber piece, the camera is symbolically drawn back to show not only the tensions between Viviane and Eliahu, but the intricate fabric of an entire family squeezed together for a whole week, bristling under the pressure of traditions that have to be observed and nursing old resentments that have never been aired. This is an ambitious undertaking, dealing with so many characters and perhaps too many crises, and the plot is ultimately too thin, lacking the forceful, concentrated impact of To Take A Wife.

Sporadically moving and seemingly based on the directors' personal experiences, Seven Days looks authentic and rings true but is insufficiently focused to draw the audience further in than sympathetic bystander status. A stellar cast in Israeli terms, including Moshe Ivgy, Keren Mor, Yael Abecassis and Hanna Laszlo will easily open the film at home but its chances outside are riskier to predict.

The background is once again a large family of Moroccan Jews living in Israel, still moving fluidly between Hebrew, Moroccan Arabic and French. They all congregate in the house of the late Maurice to pay their respects to the dead and wait for neighbours and relations to come in and offer their condolences. But since the story takes place during the 1991 Gulf War, under the threat of Saddam Hussein's missiles, few people show up for the occasion, leaving the family to its own devices - gas masks within easy reach should they be needed.

Once the grieving formalities are over, the Ohayon family members soon start revealing their real nature. Viviane can't stand her estranged, passive-aggressive husband, Eliahu. Viviane's sister, Simona (Azoulay-Hasfari) sulks; her brother, Haim (Ivgy) is facing bankruptcy; and his wife Ita (Laszlo) demands he return the money taken from her family. The other brothers are concerned but don't rush to help. Meir (Ilouz) is running for mayor; Itamar (Aboutboul) would sell his home but his wife won't let him; David (Ohayon) offers to sell his but doesn't have much to sell. Jacques' wife, Lili (Abecassis) who had been in love with the late Maurice, can't stand being in the house next to his widow, Ilana (Mor), while a friend of the family, Ben Loulou (Frank) offers to help because he is infatuated with Viviane.

And there's plenty more to come. There are angry, spiteful altercations while the confined space, the Gulf War and the obligation of Shiva allows no easy escape.

Competently directed but written and performed more like a stage play, the plot runs in circles instead of moving towards a distinct goal, although there are some good touches. To underline the lack of privacy, Yaron Scharf's camera uses mostly wide angles, and no character is ever left alone in the frame for very long. The confrontation between Elkabetz and Abkarian and her clash with Azoulay-Hasfari are the most sustained scenes in the film, and Solika Kadosh, as Maurice's old mother, is by far the most persuasively tragic figure.

Ellis, David R.

CELLULAR C 74

USA (94 mi) 2004

Another one of those SPEED, PHONE BOOTH-style films, written by the same writer as PHONE BOOTH, where the film is built on a simple premise, where in this case Kim Basinger plays a kidnapped victim, a science teacher by trade, who is able to make a smashed telephone operable while locked in an attic, using Spock-like skills, but it randomly connects to the cell phone of a typically self-centered All-American beach bum who then can’t allow the signal to stop, and spends the rest of the film evolving into some kind of super hero. The action was overly embellished and gratuitous, pretty much in high gear from start to finish, all good guys versus bad guys, with little to no character development except for Basinger, but the film was well-paced and suspenseful, including a quirky performance by William F Macy who plays the only honest cop in town.

Cellular Bruce Diones from the New Yorker

A decent Hollywood thriller, lacking any sense, but entertaining just the same. The veteran screenwriter Larry Cohen, who wrote "Phone Booth," uses the same communication-breakdown gimmick here: a kidnapped woman (Kim Basinger) finds a phone and dials a random number, reaching a mellow surfer (Chris Evans) who becomes hellbent on saving her. The director, David R. Ellis, has fun juggling the two characters (he styles their scenes so that they seem to be in different films), and a cool tension develops between Evans's brightly lit outside world and Basinger's tremulous inside one.

Cellular Nick Schager from Slant magazine

Ever answer your cell phone without first checking to see who's calling? Me neither, but Ryan (Chris Evans), an irresponsible, undependable young stud in sunny California, apparently picks up no matter who rings his number. When a surprise caller turns out to be Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger), a biology teacher who's been kidnapped by unknown thugs and has miraculously rewired a smashed phone to make this desperate call, Ryan's carefree day of chilling on the boardwalk and wooing his ex-girlfriend (Jessica Biel) turns into a heroic free-for-all as he races to save the mysterious damsel in distress, her young son, and her husband from their murderous captors. Sound plausible? Of course not, and thankfully, David R. Ellis's vigorous Cellular doesn't bother attempting to smother its ludicrousness with a coat of realism.

Sleek, efficient, and devoid of pretense—unlike most of its box-office brethren, this thriller brazenly revels in delivering basic genre kicks—the film traces Ryan's frenzied L.A. odyssey as he zooms across the city attempting to track down Jessica on a mobile phone that's constantly threatening to lose its connection or peter out as a result of low battery power. Throughout, improbabilities piggyback on top of one another faster than Ryan can change stolen vehicles, from Ryan's exceptional ability to successfully navigate vehicles through both oncoming highway traffic and a crowded construction site (not to mention a chain-link fence) to his lack of hesitation in flashing a pistol as a means of getting a store salesperson to sell him a phone charger. By the time Basinger has utilized her scholarly knowledge of the human body to thwart a would-be attacker, my eyes were thoroughly exhausted from excessive rolling. Yet one's incredulity at the narrative's absurd twists and turns (scripted by Chris Morgan from an idea by Phone Booth scribe Larry Cohen) doesn't preclude enjoying the film's substantial pleasures.

Ellis's proficient direction helps sustain a consistently frantic, tense pace, and though Ryan's bravery seems preposterous and out of left field, Evans proves himself to be a sufficiently charismatic leading man. While Basinger is given little to do other than sob violently and utter breathy, urgent protestations into a makeshift telephone, her portrait of desperate maternal hysteria is immeasurably more tolerable than her dreadfully affected turn as a grieving mother in the appalling The Door in the Floor. Jason Statham (as the lead kidnapper) and William H. Macy (as a cagey retiring cop) fill out their less-than-fully-realized roles with workmanlike vigor, and Rick Hoffman is amusingly smarmy as an arrogant, sarcastic lawyer whose brand new Porsche roadster is twice hijacked by Ryan. Yet at the end of the line, it's Ellis's dedication to providing an unrelenting series of shamelessly silly—but nonetheless entertainingly taut—B-movie set pieces (roaring car chases, public shootouts, abundant races-against-time) that makes the ridiculous Cellular ring.

Elvey, Maurice

HINDLE WAKES

Great Britain (117 mi) 1927

Hindle Wakes Ed Gonzalez from Slant magazine

A remarkable synthesis of proto-feminist ideals and visionary aesthetics, Maurice Elvey's Hindle Wakes, adapted from Stanley Houghton's controversial play of the same name, begins with a loaded shot of two male factory workers shoveling coal into two small round-like ovens. Even without the names "Alice" and "Sally" scrawled in chalk above the fiery holes, the implication of this one shot is already extraordinarily clear: that women are the architects of life, a dominant view echoed in just about every scene in the film, including the ensuing image of factory chimneys pumping smoke into the morning air like excited phalluses. Elvey makes poetry out of the mundane, using images of clocks and machines and paralleling views of his characters' behaviors and routines to set up the vice-like class inequity of the time. Nearly everyone wants a reprieve from this banal, almost sinister clockwork, and as such its no surprise that when Franny Hawthorne (Estelle Brody) and her friend Marcy Hollins (Peggy Carlisle) go to Blackpool—Britain's version of Coney Island—for vacation, Hindle Wakes transforms itself into an orgiastic celebration of freedom. Elvey's images of rising and falling carnival rides, fox-trotting bodies, and sumptuous night lights are all implications for sex, their metaphoric energy matched only by their sumptuous visual sweep. In Blackpool, the collective effort of the people doesn't empower the state but the individual, a feeling of independence Franny looks to enable back home when she learns that her father, Chris (Humberston Wright), and his boss and childhood friend, factory owner Nathaniel Jeffcoate (Norman McKinnel), have learned of her affair with Nathaniel's son Allan (John Stuart). Social customs rule that Franny and Allan do one thing but Franny does something else entirely, a decision she makes not only for herself but the oppressed women of her time. Though the film's Victorian milieu may not be ready for her, Franny nonetheless remains true to her own sense of freedom, and as the opening spectacle of sexual codes repeats itself and night descends on the Lancashire mill town of the film, this fierce woman warrior charges straight into the 21st century.

Emerzian, Gaylon

GIVING WAY

USA (16 mi) 1981

Giving Way Giving way to murderous rage, by Jake Jakaitis from Jump Cut

Emigholz, Heinz

Goff in the Desert (Goff in der Wüste)

Germany (110 mi) 2003

User comments from imdb Author: mraukui from Germany

This is a splendid study about the buildings of the American architect Bruce Goff, once a collaborator of Frank Lloyd Wright. Goff's houses are visions of combining nature's elements with houses and there is a great variation of forms. He adapts his buildings to their surroundings. Emigholz visits the sites of buildings of Goff and films them. Shot in 35 mm the images and beautifully lighted the images create an atmosphere of the location which enables you to get an feeling for the buildings. There is no commentary, the beautiful images speak for themselves and draw you into the world of Goff. The excellent sound contributes a lot to the atmosphere of the locations. Heinz Emigholz is a master of the craft of film-making and creates pure cinema of great perfection and beauty.

by heinz emigholz from Cinema Scope

SCHINDLER’S HOUSES (Schindlers Häuser)

Austria Germany (99 mi) 2007

Schindler's Houses Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

This was my long-overdue first exposure to Emigholz's "Photography and Beyond" series, of which Schindler is the twelfth installment. (It's an oversight I'll be correcting in the very near future; Goff in the Desert is now available from Netflix, fercryinoutloud, and several other films in the series can be had as region-free imports from Filmgalerie 451, same as Schindler.) I have seen two of his earlier films, but I'm hardly an Emigholz expert, and the conceptual subtleties of this film may very well be eluding me. But as a film unto itself, and as an experimental documentary detailing the California buildings of Austrian architect Rudolf Schindler, Emigholz's film is a tough nut to crack. After a voiceover prologue in which Emigholz explains that to consider architecture as a self-contained artwork, much less one with coherent autobiographical content, is an error since, social planning being what it is, any number of unintended environmental aspects (many of them outright eyesores, especially in southern California) will develop around any given building, inexorably changing its meaning. All good so far, but in the specific case of Schindler, it's hard to understand just what Emigholz means for us to notice. Most of his houses seem to interact more with natural features -- trees, climbing shrubbery, hill slope -- than with the built environment, although some, especially the storefronts such as Modern Creator Stores (1936), do become engulfed by surrounding commerce.

Is Emigholz arguing that Schindler's modernism is caught in a dialectic with nature, both having been designed to mingle with it and in jeopardy of being overrun by it? Are these highly funky, rectilinear structures, with their odd pockets of enclosed space, intended to act as though they were autonomous modernist objects in order to actively display the asymptotic, even quixotic drive of high modernism, a la Mies and Corbusier? Tough to say; the images Emigholz selects hint at this but reveal nothing definitively. What's more, as a film about architecture, Schindler's Houses is often unsatisfying to the point of perversity. Emigholz's method of stock-still framings, which ape still photography only to add the crucial time element, is a compelling one given the topic. And his strict refusal to offer straight-on elevations, of the canonical sort one would see projected from slides in a standard Architectural History survey course, is a valid decision, since it forces us to engage differently with the structures, as spaces rather than images. But what's with all the dutch angles? For most of the film Emigholz tilts his framings to provides shots that are almost wilfully at odds with Schindler's formal strategies. Granted, eventually Schindler's work enters a second phase (beginning roughly with the Yates Studio Remodel in 1938 and ending with 1946's Toole House) wherein his perpendiculars are set off by slight curves and diagonals, putting everything just ever so slightly off the 90° axis. But as we enter Schindler's final phase, the dutch angles once again seem obtrusive. Has Emigholz identified a formal approach that only makes sense for his subject's mature period, building the film accordingly and allowing the rise and fall to seem inexplicably awkward? This is either the gambit of a cracked genius, or sloppy structuralism so committed to its patterns that it fails to notice when they get in the way of deeper understanding.

Filmjourney Robert Koehler

Emmerich, Roland

2012 C- 67

USA Canada (158 mi) 2009 ‘Scope

While this purports to be a sci-fi end of the world scenario, the latest in disaster porn, complete with utterly mindblowing special effects that should leave even the harshest skeptic a bit overwhelmed by it all, what it is really is another one of those Chevy Chase National Lampoon American vacation movies, where everything that could possibly go wrong really does this time, but Dad ends up saving the world, or at least what’s left of it. John Cusack (Jackson Curtis) gets to play the nerdy Clark Griswold role of Chevy Chase, but this time he’s separated from his wife (Amanda Peet) and kids, apparently too absorbed in his struggling career of writing science fiction novels. I guess that’s progress for you, but due to slow sales he has to limelight on the side as a limo driver for a fabulously rich Russian businessman and his family. Things aren’t going so well as he’s been replaced in his family by mom’s new boyfriend, Gordon (Thomas McCarthy – yes, the filmmaker of THE STATION AGENT [2003] and THE VISITOR [2007]), a fabulously wealthy plastic surgeon and a guy his son now thinks the world of. Feeling left out, Curtis decides to take his two kids on a camping trip to Yellowstone where he discovers giant secrets, namely, never go camping without bug repellant, and perhaps more importantly, the end of the world is near. Meanwhile, in a parallel story, a mid-level government bureaucrat, Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), is a geologist working feverishly to discover what’s causing the sudden rise in temperature to the earth’s core, a potential disaster in the making, and one that’s steamrolling its way into the present faster than anyone could anticipate. Already, major earthquakes are having an impact in California, shortening Cusack’s camping trip as mom wants the kids returned home. But through the mad rantings of an Armageddon-obsessed radio shock jock (Woody Harrelson), Curtis discovers there’s a post apocalyptic escape route, complete with a secret map where the ultra rich and special dignitaries will be ushered to safety while the rest of the world perishes.

While the film has its comedic moments, nothing is nearly as preposterous as Cusack’s dazzling escape route in a stretch limo while roads, bridges, and buildings are collapsing all around him, eventually adding still more thrills in an airplane that takes off from a collapsing runway and flies through more falling debris, where Cusack displays his amazing ability of outrunning an aircraft during the latter stages of take off!!! Instead of realizing thousands or even millions are dying, the audience is instead distracted by this buffoonery, snickering and actually applauding the ridiculous images onscreen. Perhaps the more ludicrous moments are the best thing about the film, as much of this plods along in mindless fashion for nearly three hours showing an endearing love for schlock movies and their tendency toward exaggeration and superficiality, where much of this feels like TITANIC (1997) meets GODZILLA (1954) before rounding it out with WATERWORLD (1995). As the world around them collapses, the standard cinematic response is to show chaos in the streets and the pandemonium caused by the presence of Godzilla, or any other disaster of your choice. Of course, while this is happening, Curtis gathers his family together and they make a run for safety, eventually finding themselves in the outer mountainous reaches of Nepal and China where several gigantic ships have been secretly built to withstand the tremendous force of the tsunami’s wreaking havoc with the ocean, which eventually swallow up nearly all the earth’s land mass. Helicopters are seen flying elephants and giraffes over the Himalayan mountains in a last ditch effort to restock the world on these giant arks, where, by strange coincidence, they also pick up the Curtis family which, you guessed it, was otherwise left stranded in the Himalayas. The entire film is a contrived, chaotic mess that would be preposterous if it wasn’t for the enormity of the special effects which continually show the destruction of the earth, from Los Angeles to the White House, from Paris and the Eiffel Tower to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, to a Buddhist retreat high up in the Himalayas, (What? No Tokyo?) all eventually wiped out by colossal sized waves which are suddenly free from gravitational pull and out of synch due to the Earth’s Crust Displacement, or so we are told. Once that happens, the exhilaration of the movie really fizzles out, as if the entire budget has been spent in special effects demolition and now they have to invent what passes for a story. Something along the lines of TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE (2004), only with different special effects and without the snarky, subversive tone, this continues America’s jingoistic obsession with seeing themselves as the earth’s saviors (“Team America: Fuck Yeah!”), a comic book delusion of epic proportions.

Review: 2012 Ray Pride from New City

Is Roland Emmerich hoping to suggest a Fritz Lang fueled on Ecstasy and poppers? The Teutonic apocalypticist has topped his customary grandiloquence with bursts of grandeur in the 158-minute “2012,” a bravura, breathtaking, ridiculous, assured, intermittently political, berserk masterpiece about the end of the world. As a director-producer-SFX-house-owning Euro-auteur, he has no parallel. (Timur Bekmambetov needs to notch a few more conflagrations in his belt.) The economic critique leveled against form-follows-function disjuncture in movies like “Fight Club” could escalate to Titanic scale against this pinnacle of Emmerich’s appetite for destruction. As lit and framed by Dean Semler and designed by ranks and ranks of designers, Emmerich’s provocations aren’t meant to capture the hushed, stoppled intake of breath upon encountering a finely ruined world. There’s gallery-drowned influence that’s only grown with time. Some of his images hope to sleep cheek-by-jowl with work like Maurizio Catellan’s “La Nona Ora” (The Night Hour), in which a Pope has been slain by a small, perfectly aimed bit of meteorite. Amusingly, Emmerich has shown off the yields of his profits: he’s made his London home into a gallery of boldly political art, some commissioned. He wears the galleristic influence with confident glee. He adds more and more politicized sarcasm to the kind of enterprise that was considered programmatic, say, “Gone in Sixty Wonders of the World.” Emmerich is a mephitic prankster and the perfume comes from a perfect nose, a perfect nose for what he does. With John Cusack, God bless ‘im, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Patrick Bachau. 158m. Anamorphic 2.40 widescreen.

Time Out London (Tom Huddleston) review [4/6]

Let’s get the sniffy movie-snob protests out of the way. Yes, ‘2012’ is infantile. Yes, it treats the deaths of six billion people as little more than a tragic footnote. Yes, it’s about as interested in subtlety, narrative invention or character development as the Corkscrew at Alton Towers.But what a ride. There are moments – sights, sounds, special effects – that have never been seen or imagined before, sequences of staggering complexity, immaculate detail and breathtaking scale. In summary, it may seem like just another disaster movie, but this one is bigger, louder, crazier and more wildly exhilarating than anything previously attempted, even by Roland ‘Independence Day’ Emmerich’s own smash ’n’ grab standards.

The plot is little more than a framing device, the MacGuffin something to do with sunspots, plate tectonics and the Mayan calendar. The closest we have to a hero is John Cusack’s shambolic failed author Jackson Curtis, whose attempts to save his estranged family from a fiery death somehow involve Russian plutocrats, Himalayan plane crashes and Woody Harrelson in a fez.

But nobody goes to a movie like this for the storyline. This is disaster porn, and unashamedly so: pavements crack, buildings topple, crowds flee, planes plummet and world leaders scramble to save their own skins as the planet goes to hell in a handcart. Posterity will not be kind to ‘2012’ – and it definitely won’t work on DVD – but catch it on the biggest, noisiest screen available and approach it on its own terms, and it’ll knock your socks off.

The Wall Street Journal (Joe Morgenstern) review

'2012," Roland Emmerich's latest assault on planet Earth and its moviegoers, isn't the end of the world: It only feels that way. This oafish epic about the End of Days—as predicted by the Mayan calendar—operates in a dead zone roughly equidistant between parody and idiocy. You do get the connection between tongue and cheek, but much of the humor still goes thud. A few action sequences rise to the challenge of the subject, but many of the digital effects look murky, and the cumulative effect is numbness. The only character with genuine, if grotesque, energy is Charlie Frost, a crackpot prophet, conspiracy theorist and pirate radio broadcaster played by Woody Harrelson; he provides a few jolts of Rapture schlock before the movie turns into destructo drek.

For better or (mainly) worse, Mr. Emmerich is up to his old tricks. In "Independence Day" he tested our mettle with marauding aliens. In "The Day After Tomorrow" he unleashed global warming that precipitated global freezing. This time his cosmic weapon of choice is a beam of mutant neutrinos that emanates from the sun and, by heating the earth's core, destabilizes tectonic plates, defeats coherence (though the huge, disjointed production might have been conceived as a study in chaos theory) and degrades dialogue. ("An unprecedented international venture is under way," the American president tells his daughter during an intimate conversation couched in the near-English favored by Emmerich films.)

The international venture involves building what Charlie suspects to be a fleet of space ships that will save the rich and powerful before our planet goes the way of Krypton; to get a seat, the wild-eyed geezer says, "you'd have to be Bill Gates or Rupert Murdoch or some Russian billionaire." (Of the three, only a particularly obnoxious Russian billionaire has a confirmed reservation.) Since the White House has kept a lid of secrecy on the existence of the ships—which aren't really what Charlie suspects—it falls to the president's chief science advisor, Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), to uncover the truth. Once he does, however, Adrian, like his boss, seems blithely indifferent to the venture's ethical aspects, which aren't debated until the movie's climax. (The president finally wonders aloud if seats on the ships should have been offered in a lottery. That sounds like a plan, except for leaving six or seven billion passengers wait-listed.)

The script is so scatterbrained that no one ever seems to understand anything in real time; it's as if all reactions are on 30-minute delay. (The running time is 158 minutes.) What's more, "2012" has no discernible attitude toward the end of civilization, apart from the belief that there's a movie in it. The cast includes John Cusack as Jackson Curtis, a sci-fi novelist turned limo driver; Amanda Peet as Jackson's ex-wife, Kate; Danny Glover as the president; Thandie Newton as his daughter; and Oliver Platt as the president's steely chief of staff. Among the points of interest either damaged, disturbed or destroyed are Las Vegas, the Vatican, the Himalayas, the South Pole (relocated to Wisconsin), the Washington Monument, much of Wyoming and all of California. For once, Manhattan meets its fate offstage.

eFilmCritic.com (Rob Gonsalves) review [3/5]

I don’t think I’ve laughed harder at any movie footage this year than I did at the internet five-minute sneak peek at "2012," with John Cusack outracing a catastrophic earthquake in a limousine.

Thousands of people die in those five minutes, but what makes it hilarious is the focus on the limo, ludicrously avoiding one damn thing after another — cascading skyscrapers, exploding gas trucks. Once the destruction kicks in, the first hour or so of 2012 is an epic comedy of retreat; our heroes narrowly escape the end of the world via car, camper, plane. The bad news is that there’s another hour and a half to go, and in the final forty-five minutes the movie starts to feel very long and played-out.

This is par for the course for director Roland Emmerich, who seems to have a deep fetish for the end times: he killed millions of us in Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. He also surrounds the meat of his apocalyptic sandwiches with stale bread — thinly written characters learning What’s Important in Life (usually family) while journeying to the allegedly transcendent climax in which Humanity Prevails. 2012 is probably Emmerich’s best film, which isn’t saying much; he’s certainly gotten better at the money scenes, the familiar landmarks crumbling, the tsunamis and lava redrawing the map. It’s king-hell disaster porn. But then Emmerich and co-writer Harald Kloser try to wrest meaning out of it all.

Cusack plays the standard-issue schlub, a failed novelist with a limo-driver gig, two kids and an ex-wife (Amanda Peet) now married to a plastic surgeon (Thomas McCarthy, who in another corner of his life wrote and directed The Station Agent and The Visitor). As in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, it seems that most of the planet dies so that a guy can prove to his ex-wife that he’s a good man after all. There are other characters, like Woody Harrelson’s cracked doomsayer, who seems to be visiting from a better movie (his final scene is perfect), and various officials debating what to do about the impending global meltdown. They debate a lot.

2012 is really two movies. The second movie is sterner in tone, full of ethical brooding about who should be allowed onto one of the seven big “arks” meant to preserve the best and brightest of humanity. In short, Emmerich now asks us to take seriously what we enjoyed about the first movie. It wasn’t fun or funny after all, we’re told (or scolded); billions of human beings are dead, and we have to honor them by retaining our own humanity, our compassion, in the face of disaster. This is a letdown, to say the least. Emmerich keeps building these nihilistic dark comedies and then letting the air out of them with a moralistic pinprick.

I’m not saying the film’s ultimate message isn’t welcome. Compassion is good, and all. Death is bad — I’m totally with you there. I am saying that it’s a bit hypocritical to get us jazzed with mass destruction — and get us into the theater with the promise of same — and then do an about-face and turn it into a 9/12 lesson. Especially one so unconvincing. We’ve got one-half of a good old apocaflick here, though, rendered as breathtakingly as I’ve ever seen it done.

"2012" is made for the big screen, so I can’t in good conscience advise you to wait for Netflix. But when the arks start showing up (unless you’re a fan of Stephen McHattie, wasted here as one of the ark captains), you can probably hit the aisle. You’ll have seen a decent two-hour disaster-gasm, and you won’t miss anything you haven’t seen before.

Read the director's guide the perfect disaster movie here David Jenkins from Time Out London

1. When you’ve got the idea, head to the internet
‘You can pretty much get everything off there now. Interestingly, if you put “2012” into the Amazon search engine, you get thousands of books all about this one date. They’re all called things like “2012: The Awakening” or “Apocalypse 2012”. It’s wild.’

2. Be creative with the science
‘I always wanted to do a biblical flood movie, but I never felt I had the hook. I first read about the Earth’s Crust Displacement Theory in Graham Hancock’s “Fingerprints of the Gods”. When I discussed it with Harald [Kloser, his writing partner], I said we need a “plausible” reason, not a scientific one. Show this film to a scientist and they would probably laugh.’

3. Build on past experience
‘I covered the theme a little in my first movie, “The Principle of Noah’s Ark”, about the space shuttle programme. It was also about morality and what you can and can’t do in these situations.’

4. Make sure there’s a political angle
‘Politicians are good people, but they have a dilemma. They make their decisions secretly because if they told the people that the apocalypse was nigh, no one would be saved.’

5. Get your metaphors into line
‘Our biggest problem for this film was deciding who Noah was. We knew that God had to be science, because you can’t have the voice of God booming down, saying, “You’re all doomed!” At first we thought it should be some billionaire like Bill Gates, but we decided that was a little too James Bond. Then it comes back to the White House, because in an American movie, there’s nothing more powerful than the White House.’

6. Don’t fear cod-religiosity
‘We decided that what people do in a crisis is that they start praying. Even the most religion-hating person would get down on their knees and ask God for salvation. Yes, it’s good to be spiritual, but praying in the face of disaster will not stop the disaster. Fate, luck and coincidence might help you survive, but not prayer. We show this in a scene in the Sistine Chapel where we create a big crack in the fresco of God and Adam. And then the whole church falls on to a big crowd.’

7. Cast a nerd
‘My next movie’s going to star Woody Allen. No, only joking! Luckily, I make movies where the movie itself is the star, so the studios allow me to cast people you wouldn’t always associate with this kind of film. So here we have John Cusack.’

8. Digital effects are your friend
‘I love working with visual-effects artists, and I don’t ever think I’ll make a lo-fi movie. I love to go to the people who really, you know, “do it”. I have no fear of that.’

9. Don’t be afraid of the three-hour mark
‘This movie is as long [two hours, 38 minutes] as it has to be. Whenever you test a movie, people always say “It’s just 15 minutes too long” – so you cut it. You show it to them again and they say “It’s still a bit too long” – so you cut another ten minutes. Then you end up cutting all the things that make it really great. The ten most successful movies of all time are all around three hours long. My favourite movie, “Lawrence of Arabia”, is four hours. So there!’

10. Be confident!
‘I’m not just saying this, I think this is the best cast I’ve ever had. Why? Because it’s a really good script. I know I wrote it, but it just feels good. Harald and I wrote “10,000 BC” and I’m totally willing to admit that was not a good script. Actually, it was a good script at the beginning, but we made too many compromises. So I said to Harald, “This time, no compromises.” And he said, “Roland, I’m so happy you said that.” ’

CHUD.com (Devin Faraci) review

The Village Voice [Chuck Wilson]

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [1.5/4]

Film Freak Central review Ian Pugh

Salon.com [Stephanie Zacharek]

2012 Richard Scheib from The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review

Cinema Autopsy [Thomas Caldwell]

eFilmCritic.com (William Goss) review [3/5]

Screen International (Mike Goodridge) review

Mark Reviews Movies [Mark Dujsik]

CNN Showbiz (Tom Charity) review

Jigsaw Lounge [Neil Young]

Ain't It Cool Movie Reviews (Harry Knowles) review

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [1/5]

The Onion A.V. Club review [D] Keith Phipps

Slant Magazine review [0/4] Simon Abrams

Edward Champion

Sci-Fi Movie Page (James O'Ehley) review

The Land of Eric (Eric D. Snider) review [C+]

ReelTalk (Betty Jo Tucker) review

Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review [2/4] also seen here: Common Sense Media

About.com Hollywood Movies (Rebecca Murray) review [B-]

FilmJerk.com (Brian Orndorf) review [D+]

FilmJerk.com (Edward Havens) review [D]

One Guy's Opinion (Frank Swietek) review [D+]

CineSnob.net (Kiko Martinez) review [D+]

Urban Cinefile (Australia) - [Louise Keller]

Armond White has panned 2012 The New York Press

The Hollywood Reporter review Stephen Farber

Entertainment Weekly review [B] Lisa Schwarzbaum

The Guardian (Xan Brooks) review

The Daily Telegraph review [2/5] Tim Robey

The Independent (Anthony Quinn) review [2/5]

Austin Chronicle (Marc Savlov) review [2/5]

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review [4/4]

Encina, Paz

HAMACA PARAGUAYA

France Argentina Netherlands Paraguay Spain (78 mi) 2006

Cannes Film Festival - Movies - New York Times Manohla Dargis at Cannes from the New York Times

Directed by Paz Encina and paid for by money culled from more than a half-dozen countries (the Netherlands, Spain and, oddly enough given its economic straits, Argentina), "Hamaca Paraguaya" centers on two elderly peasants who are waiting for the rain much as Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot, though with far fewer jokes. Watching this attractive exercise, which unfolds with great deliberation and without a single camera movement, I was again reminded that art-house cinema has as many of its own clichés and narrative tropes as Hollywood does. Mr. Encina's film, which takes place in 1935 during wartime, looks and sounds very good, and there is something intellectually bracing about a film that forces you to either accept its leisurely rhythms or hit the exit.

Still, given the dearth of Paraguayan cinema especially, it's somewhat disappointing that Mr. Encina's formalist rigor did not make room for a richer, more overt sense of Paraguayan time and place. My point isn't that filmmakers from countries with underdeveloped cinemas should bear the burden of cultural representation more heavily than those from rich countries with mature (or decadent) cinemas; a Paraguayan director should not have to speak for his homeland any more than, say, Brett Ratner, who is here representing American national interests with the latest "X-Men" movie. The benefits of advanced technology and porous borders are inarguable, including the increased ease with which we can consume world cinema, but does this accessibility also help dilute national voices?

Long Pauses: TIFF 1: Three for Three Darren Hughes from Long Pauses

Judging by the snores, giggles, and sighs of frustration I heard around me in the theatre, I'm likely among the minority when I call Hamaca Paraguaya (Paz Encina) a stunning piece of filmmaking. It is the prototype of the "boring art film." By my count, in fact, there are only fourteen camera setups in the entire movie, and they're employed with an almost geometric rigor. By the fourth sequence in the film, its rhythms become obvious -- they're observable and dissectable. I'm tempted even to plot out the film's form on graph paper. But the strict construction is only so interesting and effective because Encina maintains a constant tension between it and what really drives her film: the mysterious grief and love shared by the main characters, an aging couple who await the return of their son from war.

I use the word "mysterious" not because the couple's love and grief are unmotivated. The plot, spare as it is, explains their son's reasoning for going to war and it informs us that the man and woman have been together for decades. Rather, the "mystery" of the film is the mystery that haunts and shapes so much of human experience. It's our strange tendency to deflect grief by talking about anything -- anything -- other than that which grieves us. It's the rituals of intimacy. It's the pendulum swings between hope and despair. I have a lot more to say about this film, and look forward to doing so when I have more time.

Hamaca Paraguaya Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

I often have difficulties with feature films attempting to adopt techniques more commonly associated with the experimental avant-garde. This isn't so much due to purism on my part. It's just that frequently, filmmakers fail to take into account that the collision of narrative with formal experimentation will usually reduce the formal properties to mere window dressing, since, on a cognitive level, narrative information tends to predominate in our attention. This explains why I cannot fully embrace Hamaca Paraguaya, despite my having a great deal of admiration for it. In a series of long takes, Encina gives us a glimpse into the lives of an elderly couple waiting in vain for news of their son, ostensibly off fighting in the war with Bolivia. The dominant structure of the film finds the couple setting up and sitting in a hammock in the trees, almost always in a fixed long shot, rendering their faces indistinct. Dappled across the running time are medium and close-up shots of each of the lead characters, although apart from the hammock scenes they never appear at the same time (best as I can remember). Individually, we see them working the land or interacting with outsiders who give each of the protagonists a vital piece of information that they withhold from the other (regarding the fate of their son, naturally), resulting in a kind of "Gift of the Magi" mindgame. If I had to cite a significant point of comparison for Hamaca, it would be Marguerite Duras, actually. As with Duras, all the dialogue is obviously dubbed, setting up a formal tension between sound and image. Visually, Encina's film recalls the fixed-frame landscape studies of artists such as Sharon Lockhart and Tacita Dean. But unlike those experimentalists, Encina never makes a convincing argument for why her tale had to be told with these stock-still visuals, and in fact she eventually deviates from this format. (In addition to the inserted close-ups, the final shot slowly zooms into the midfield, for no clear reason.) Comparisons to Beckett have been drawn pretty frequently, and not without good reason. As in Godot and Endgame, Hamaca is characterized by repetitive, comically incantatory dialogue demonstrating an utter stalemate. Some found this irksome, but in fact it's Encina's best move. Anyone who's ever been in a long-term relationship can well imagine that by the time you and your partner are in your sixties or seventies, speech itself will most likely have become redundant. (This is another likely metaphorical reason for having the old couple "talk" to each other without having the actors actually speak on camera. Both are practically telepathic in their ability to anticipate the next bickering sentence.) Despite this well-considered formal conceit, and the film's stark sylvan beauty, I still came away feeling ambivalent about Hamaca, since its visual style connotes rigor without ever impressing any overall shape on the viewer.

The Auteurs' Notebook Daniel Kasman

While gore-fests may get the most attention in the realm of horror films, perhaps not enough is given to that darkness of art-house cinema, the secret repose for the most suggestive kind of horror: the ghost story. The line is easy to trace, for when Jacques Tourneur perfected the notion of fright and irrationality existing off-screen instead of on, he was pointing towards a cinema of intelligence, of obliqueness, of subtlety, of dread rather than fright, and above all else, one of horror. A genre-straddler like Kurosawa Kiyoshi points the right way: as one moves away from action and more towards formal and narrative minimalism, on-screen absence can be a powerfully haunting evocation of what is feared.

Paz Encica's New Crowned Hope entry, Hamaca paraguaya (Paraguayan Hammock) is an excellent example, where-in what is nominally dubbed a pretentious or at the very least plodding aesthetic and focus is really just looking at the same picture the wrong way. Vaguely set in 1935 during Paraguay's Chaco War with Bolivia, Encica's film is made up of a small handful of long takes in long and medium shots of an aging couple waiting for their son, who left to join the war, to return home to his plantation. The eponymous hammock is the couple's meeting place before and after work, as well as during siestas; they split up so that the man, Ramón (Ramon del Rio), can work in the fields and his wife Candida (Georgina Genes) can clean the laundry.

Together, the married couple just barely relax, fidgeting and fretting about their son and everything else, finding their worry about their son expressing itself in a continual discomfort and restlessness, a combined result of Ramón's hope and Candida's fatalistic pessimism. Apart, their son is stilling haunting them, absent in the frame but vocal on the soundtrack.

In fact, Encica's soundtrack is Hamaca paraguaya's most haunting element: no words are spoken on-screen. Instead, we hear dialog only in voice-over, and even from long shot it is clear no one is actually speaking out loud. When Ramon is clearing his field and we hear the dialog between him and his son discussing breaking the news of his departure to his mother, or when Candida is washing by a stream and we hear her talk to her son about him leaving, it is clear that memories and ghosts are on the couple's mind—if not in the land as well.

When the couple comes together for what should be some mutual solace—and instead forever wait for the rain, like the son, to return, or comically be angry when the boy's dog won't shut up, only to become worried when it finally does—we still hear them talking only on the soundtrack. And the way the soundtrack is engineered there is no attempt to make it sound like the voices are coming from what is on-screen. Most haunting of all, the voices seem like a commentary track, a rambling, forlorn conversation being held after the events on-screen have occurred, the remembrances and talks of the dead.

So it is true—the more one removes from a film the more haunted it is by what is left out. The more disconnected the image and the audio are, the stronger the longing for union. Paz Encica's film is one of a most vigorous restraint, almost unbearable. But unlike the purpose of a horror film, Encica's is not to scare or to disturb; it moves in a more melancholy vein. What is left out is not something to fear, it is something for which to long. Remarkably, beautifully simple cut-aways to a stormy, overcast sky which seems always on the brink of rain is the film's ultimate expression: haunted by what's not there, we are always hoping that which is missing will appear, that which is longed for will be relieved.

Slant Magazine review Ed Gonzalez

Jigsaw Lounge [Neil Young] IndieLisboa film festival report

Hamaca Paraguaya Lee Marshall in Cannes from Screendaily

Variety.com [Deborah Young]

Time Out New York (Joshua Rothkopf) review [2/6]

New York Times (registration req'd) Nathan Lee

Endfield, Cy

TRY AND GET ME

aka: The Sound of Fury

USA (85 mi) 1950

Time Out review Tom Milne

A flawed but strikingly dark thriller about a World War II veteran (Lovejoy), unable to provide for his family, who drifts into petty crime, is inveigled by an unbalanced acquaintance (Bridges) into a kidnapping that goes wrong, and ends on the wrong side of a lynch mob. Although based on a factual case from the '30s, it is designed as an anti-McCarthyist plea (Endfield was blacklisted soon after), and its weakness lies in the elements of message: the journalist who whips up mob hysteria against the criminals, and the Italian professor who provides a civilised commentary deploring what is going on. But the background is sharply observed, the first half is rivetingly done, and the tension reasserts itself for the lynching finale.

Chicago Reader (Jonathan Rosenbaum) capsule review

Conceivably the most anti-American Hollywood picture ever made—I certainly can't think of any competitors—Cy Endfield's brilliant and shocking 1951 thriller (also known as The Sound of Fury) was adapted by Jo Pagano from his novel The Condemned, which was inspired by a lynching that occurred in California during the 30s. A frustrated and jobless veteran (Frank Lovejoy), tired of denying his wife and son luxuries, falls in with a slick petty criminal (Lloyd Bridges), and the two work their way up from small robberies to a kidnapping that ends in murder. Apart from a moralizing European character who isn't really necessary, this is a virtually flawless masterpiece, exposing class hatred and the abuses of the American press (represented here mainly by Richard Carlson) with rare lucidity and anger. At once subtle and unsparing, this may be the best noir you've never heard of: Endfield's American career was cut short by the blacklist the year it was released. With Kathleen Ryan, Katherine Locke, Adele Jergens, and Art Smith.

Film Noir of the Week Glenn Erickson, originally seen here: DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson) dvd review

1950's Try and Get Me! has never been an easy film to see. Its only home video release is a Republic Home Video VHS from 1990. It's both a socially conscious tract against lynching, and one of the most pessimistic, frightening films noir from the classic period. It encourages examination from several angles. Its director was blacklisted. It was released as The Sound of Fury late in 1950, and underwent a title change while in its initial run. No official reason is given, but the title might have been uncomfortably similar to MGM's 1936 film Fury, which is loosely based on the same factual incident.

Not unlike Jules Dassin of Night and the City, versatile director Cyril (Cy) Endfield was just getting his career in motion when the blacklist made him unemployable in Hollywood. Endfield would later achieve success in England directing, writing or producing tough minded pictures like Hell Drivers, Zulu, Sands of the Kalahari and Zulu Dawn.

Try and Get Me! was filmed on location in the Phoenix area. Unemployed Howard Tyler (Frank Lovejoy) already has one young boy. His wife Judy (Kathleen Ryan) is anxious that he finds a job soon so she can see a doctor to deliver her second child. Demoralized by the bleak job prospects, Howard falls in with Jerry Slocum (Lloyd Bridges), a narcissistic braggart who lures him with promises of easy money: "Getting any other offers lately?" Howard drives the getaway car for a series of robberies; he tells his wife that he's found a job and begins to drink heavily. Then Jerry bullies his reluctant partner into helping kidnap the son of a wealthy local. The unstable Jerry murders the kidnapped man. Torn by guilt and self-loathing, Howard continues to drink. He accompanies Jerry on a nightclub holiday with the loose Velma (Adele Jergens) and her mousy friend Hazel Weatherwax (Katherine Locke). Unable to keep silent, Howard breaks down in Katherine's apartment. The secret gets out and the police close in. Howard is locked up with the now-deranged Jerry. Stirred up by alarmist newspaper headlines, a huge mob converges on the city jail. The sheriff (Cliff Clark) can't hold them back.

A social horror movie for depressed times, Try and Get Me! is not recommended for everybody -- its emotions run high even before the crime and kidnap story gets in gear. Howard Tyler's unemployment experience is sheer misery and humiliation, death in small doses. It hurts when his kid asks for money to go to a ball game. He can't possibly tell his wife how hopeless things have become. The neighbors' new television is just more evidence of Howard's failure.

Author-screenwriter Jo Pagano indicts American society as aloof to the needs of working class citizens in economic straits -- the Land of Riches doesn't give a damn if Howard's family goes homeless or starves. A bartender sees nothing wrong with charging Howard extra for a grade of beer he didn't order. The situation is emasculating, especially with the preening, suppressed homoerotic Jerry showing off his muscles and asserting his superiority. The film's key image shows Howard unable to sleep, standing in the dark staring out the window. He's a criminal; he knows that he'll be caught sooner or later.

Howard Tyler loses what's left of his judgment and dignity, and the sordid trap becomes tighter. Unable to tell Judy the truth, he turns to the pathetic Hazel, a wallflower who thinks she's found the love of her life. Howard's personality disintegrates, as the story races to a finish devoid of redemption. Judy Tyler can only wail, "Oh Honey ... what have you done?" Tyler's son witnesses the arrest. He bolts upright in bed with a nightmare, traumatized like the kid from Invaders from Mars three years later.

Jo Pagano's second thesis is that law abiding, "decent" Americans are easily stampeded into savage acts. He based his story on a true incident from the Depression year 1933. Two suspects in a kidnap-murder were openly lynched before a huge mob, not somewhere in the South but in San Jose, California. The mob action was triggered by sensationalized newspaper coverage suggesting that the suspects were going to be set free on a technicality. Towns for miles around emptied out to attend the hanging. Despite an early warning, California's governor refused to reinforce the local police. He then praised the vigilantes in interviews. Unlike Fritz Lang's 1936 Fury, Endfield's Try and Get Me! closely follows the true incidents, including the fact that college students were key participants in the lynching violence. Nowhere is the horror of lawlessness so graphically represented: in full view of their neighbors and hundreds of strangers, citizens defy the civil authority: "There's no law against what's right!"

Try and Get Me! also contains a socially-conscious argument for civic responsibility. The secondary hero of the story is Gil Stanton (Richard Carlson), a newspaper columnist set up as an obvious audience surrogate. At first unforgiving of Howard Tyler, Gil meets the despondent Judy and shifts his column to a more understanding tone. Everybody resents him except the Sheriff. Gil's publisher (Art Smith) takes over and continues to churn out provocative headlines, to keep his papers selling out three times a day. Velma and Hazel become the pawns of the publicity machine, and pose smiling for photos in the courthouse.

Injected into the screenplay is a character out of left field, an Italian mathematician-sociologist (Renzo Cesana) who appears at regular intervals to lecture Gil and others on social responsibility. His erudite but superfluous harangues are the epitome of weepy liberal pleading -- "environmental factors" are responsible for the "breakdown of social decency". It's understandable that conservatives would consider the speeches obvious propaganda, especially when delivered by a man who is both an intellectual and a (gasp) foreigner. Actually, Cesana's speeches contradict the film's true message. Howard Slocum isn't an underprivileged slum kid lacking a moral upbringing, he's a desperate man pushed aside by the economy. The body of the movie faults society's emphasis on material success and conspicuous consumption. Howard goes bad trying to keep up with a rat race he can never win.

This confusion hurts Try and Get Me!'s chances for classic status, the same way that a vague ending hurts the otherwise ferocious race-riot movie The Well. The question is, were these early 1950s pictures damaged by Production Code pre-censorship? It's difficult to tell. Although Lang's Fury and Wellman's The Ox-Bow Incident remain the classic lynch law movies, Pagano and Endfield's film is much closer to historical reality.

There's no denying the power of Try and Get Me!, which begins with a blind street revivalist preaching at full pitch: "Why do you do the things you do? Why?!" The actual "Sound of Fury" is the roar of the mob, which transforms society into a savage animal. Howard Tyler and Jerry Slocum are dead-to-rights guilty yet wholly undeserving of their barbaric fate. Howard collapses into psychic agony, and Jerry fights back like a rabid dog. The onrushing mob overwhelms the few deputies and storms the jail. Forget movies where the Sheriff threatens to kill "the first man who steps forward". Doing that would probably result in multiple deaths, including most of the deputies. It's a scene of total horror. The implication is that citizens can be herded and bullied into doing terrible things -- by newspapers, by politicians, by television demagogues encouraging lawlessness: "There's no law against what's right!"

The scenes with the Italian busybody aside, Cy Endfield's direction of his actors is superb. ¹ The shooting style evolves as the story progresses. Howard Tyler's long days trying to find work are shot in documentary style, but his alcoholic panic attack at the nightclub is highly expressionistic. Endfield was not the only participant to suffer a career interruption. Alleged Communist connections put Lloyd Bridges on bad terms with HUAC until he cleared himself by becoming a friendly witness. A veteran of many socially conscious dramas and films noir, Art Smith was blacklisted after being named by his old colleague Elia Kazan. Producer Robert Stillman's early credits include the hard-hitting Champion and Home of the Brave, but he went directly from Try and Get Me! into TV work with Queen for a Day. Talented Frank Lovejoy didn't get many more starring roles, but his very next one was in Warners' reactionary I Was a Communist for the FBI. The soulful Irish actress Kathleen Ryan may hold the record for appearances as the suffering woman of political victim-heroes: between 1947 and 1950 she appeared in Carol Reed's allegorical Odd Man Out, Edward Dmytryk's pro-Communist Christ in Concrete and Endfield's searing Try and Get Me!

To fully appreciate how unusual films like Try and Get Me! were, one must understand that America's screens in 1950 were flooded with fare promoting family values, military vigilance and the joys of peacetime prosperity. Movies even slightly pessimistic toward American life, even hits like The Asphalt Jungle were considered "unhealthy" by many in the industry. Although the HUAC witch hunters focused mainly on the past affiliations of Hollywood talent (mostly bread & butter creatives unable to fight back), the socially critical messages were present in several of their films, themes that conservatives would surely label subversive propaganda. Christ in Concrete and Salt of the Earth were barred from release or boycotted by ultra-conservative organizations. Joseph Losey's The Lawless and Leo Popkin's The Well are about vigilantism and racial/ethnic prejudice. Jules Dassin's Thieves' Highway indicts business as a closed system of rackets; Abraham Polonsky's superb Force of Evil extends that logic to charge that our entire business culture is compromised by corruption.

Today's "free" movie screens approach political controversy almost exclusively in documentaries. Few current dramatic films seem as morally courageous or sophisticated as the above examples from the highly politicized postwar years. Dramas even tangentially critical of the war in Iraq haven't been particularly successful. If one can appreciate its political context, Try and Get Me! remains a searing revelation.

Savant has seen Try and Get Me! in a revival print and on the old, good-quality Republic VHS. It may have played once or twice on Turner Classic Movies, but not for many years. Although not considered a core noir title, it's surely more powerful than many of the noir classics, and well worth seeking out.

Ozus' World Movie Reviews (Dennis Schwartz) review

The New York Times (Bosley Crowther) review

Engel, Morris

Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin Gary Morris from Images

LITTLE FUGITIVE B+ 91

USA (75 mi) 1953 co-directors: Ray Ashley and Ruth Orkin

This is a small and often overlooked film that tends to fall through the cracks, rarely part of the discussion of Orson Welles in the 50’s or John Cassavetes in the 60’s when one recalls the history of American independent or low-budget films, where the film is listed here: AMERICAN INDEPENDENT FILM - Movie List on mubi.com, but not here: American independent films. Made for just $30,000 during the heyday of the studio system, the film is barely mentioned next to the influential, independently financed films made outside the studio system, such as Welles’s OTHELLO (1952) or MR. ARKADIN (1955), or experimental short films made prior to that. LITTLE FUGITIVE (1953) was the first independent feature to be nominated for an Academy Award, in this case Best Original Screenplay, while also winning a Silver Lion Award at Venice. Shot using a cinéma-vérité style, this American film predates most of Jean Rouch’s documentaries, one of the founding fathers of the style, and is often cited as having an influence on François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) (1959), one of the seminal works of the French New Wave, while also having an impact on the Iranian New Wave films from the 70’s to 90’s that often sought to tell religious or metaphorical stories through a child’s eyes. Storywise, the film is something of a cross between The Cat in the Hat, a mischievous children’s book by Dr. Seuss that suggests pure anarchy exists while Mom’s away, and the Chaplin Silent era where the Little Tramp lives on the fringes of society, usually a victim of circumstances, often observing the exploits of people of privilege from the vantage point of a hungry Tramp having nothing at all. After Mom goes away for a 24-hour period due to an emergency medical situation in the family, she leaves behind two mischievous brothers who are instructed to stay home, 12-year old older brother Lennie (Richard Brewster) and 7-year old younger brother Joey (Richie Andrusco), leaving a few dollars on the table for food. But these boisterous kids are seen earlier continually hanging out on the cramped streets of Brooklyn, New York with other boys, exploring the vacant lots nearby, shooting guns at targets, and even playing baseball in the streets, perpetually hanging outside, only coming indoors when they’re hungry, so the idea of staying home all day seems beyond their capabilities.

As the youngest, the older boys continually pester and pick on Joey, usually trying to get rid of him, as they really don’t like him tagging along, a spoiled and often whiny, freckle-faced kid with dirt and slime constantly on his face with an everpresent toy gun in his holster, so they design a cruel hoax where it appears Joey has shot his older brother, using ketchup like they do in the movies. Believing the worst, suddenly wracked with guilt and afraid of all policemen, Joey is encouraged to high-tail it out of town “until the heat dies down,” suddenly feeling all alone in the world. Grabbing the money his mother left on the table, he hops on the subway, getting off at the end of the line, which happens to be Coney Island, wandering around alone, where the rest of the film is a somewhat mystifying, mostly wordless odyssey through an amusement park as seen through a child’s eyes, initially dejected, lost and alone, but eventually discovering the delights of the crowds, the funhouses, the merry-go-round, ball-throwing and shooting galleries, batting cages, cowboy photographs, pony rides, not to mention all the food vendors, where Joey can be seen eating to his heart’s content. Shot in Black and White, a minimalist film told in a naturalistic manner, the overall key to the film is using a portable, hand-built 35mm camera by Charlie Woodruff that could be strapped to the shoulders, designed by the cinematographer and co-director Morris Engel who refused to use a tripod, insisting upon the mobility of constant street movement, a remarkably effective technique that caught the eye of young American director Stanley Kubrick who wished to rent the camera and Jean-Luc Godard who wished to purchase it. Engel was able to hold a remarkably steady camera image long before the development of the Steadycam. Of interest, much like Italian Neo-Realism, the film was shot without dialogue, so every word of dialogue had to be re-synched back in the studio afterwards, where the earliest sequences suffer the most, resorting to predictably generic dialogue, while Engel’s wife Ruth Orkin co-edits the film, a first time experience for both of them, teaming up with a friend, Ray Ashley, to co-write, co-direct, and co-produce the film.

Joey eventually discovers the crowds at the beach, learning he can return disposable pop bottles for a cash refund, where he interweaves throughout the human throngs grabbing discarded bottles, receiving a nickel for each returned bottle, where the stark and somewhat downbeat realism of his existential wanderings often contrast with a few whimsical moments when he plays with even smaller kids. Joey’s real passion is the pony rides, which he returns to again and again, developing a friendly relationship with Jay Williams, the Pony Man, who eventually suspects something is up with a kid wandering around without any adult supervision, which only scares the poor kid off, where one of the most hauntingly beautiful scenes is the transition into nightfall

Little Fugitive: Nightfall scene - YouTube (1:38), where the musical soundtrack throughout is Lester Troob’s lone harmonica, using “Home On the Range” as the movie’s musical theme. In the morning, Joey dusts himself off after spending a night outdoors and washes his face in the public fountain, copied identically by Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups). In the early hours when the beach is empty and there are no crowds, the Pony Man again befriends Joey, letting him help with the horses, trying to alleviate his suspicions, but also acquiring information where he obtains an address or phone number, getting ahold of Lennie who makes a beeline to the Pony Man at Coney Island, but Joey has again disappeared, where the camera follows Lennie in his search for his younger brother, oddly similar, but due to the age difference, less compelling, as Joey is the real star of the show, giving a heartbreaking performance that can’t be matched by anyone else, literally owning the audience’s sympathies. Veering back and forth between sidewalk shots and aerial views, giving a time capsule glimpse of Coney Island, there’s a gorgeously photographed rainstorm where people rush for cover, where the beaches empty and crowds hover under the bleachers waiting the rain out, reminiscent of an era when people had time to wait, where they weren’t rushing to get somewhere, but could simply wait out a storm. Afterwards, Joey is once again alone on the vast emptiness of the beach, engulfed by the enormity of it all, just a speck in the sand until his brother spots him, where of course no one makes any mention of an adventure when Mom returns home. The film was inducted into the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1997.

The Village Voice [Joshua Land]

An underseen indie-film landmark and an invaluable artifact of local history to boot, the 1953 Little Fugitive (back for matinee-only engagements at the Museum of the Moving Image and the Pioneer as a tribute to co-director Morris Engel, who died last month at the age of 86) takes off from the slimmest of stories: Tricked into thinking he's killed his older brother, a seven-year-old boy goes on the lam, spending the better part of two days and a night wandering the beaches and boardwalks of Coney Island as his (very much alive) brother struggles to find him before their mother returns home. Seldom effective as storytelling, Little Fugitive shines as a beautifully shot document of a bygone Brooklyn—any drama here resides in the grainy black-and-white cinematography, with its careful attention to the changes in light brought on by the inexorably advancing sun. Both Truffaut and Cassavetes were fans of the film, and its influence is obvious—moments of blissed-out carnival-ride fun find echoes in The 400 Blows, and the pervasive loose framing, found angles, and jumpy editing suggest Shadows. Filled with "Aw, fellas!" period ambience and the mythic imagery of cowboys and horses, comics and baseball, it's a key proto-vérité slice of urban Americana.

Little Fugitive Mike D’Angelo from Time Out New York

For most people, American independent film began in 1960 with John Cassavetes's semi-improvised Shadows. Seven years previously, however, a trio of oddly unheralded mavericks, working on a shoestring budget, produced what is arguably one of the most influential and innovative movies in the medium's history—a film that not only inspired the French critics who would form the New Wave but also seems to have foreshadowed the wave of lyrically observational, child's-eye narratives that poured out of Iran in the '80s and '90s. Little Fugitive's minimalist plot concerns a seven-year-old boy, Joey (Andrusco), who mistakenly thinks he's killed his older brother and runs away to Coney Island. There's little suspense or dramatic incident, however, and virtually no dialogue; instead, the camera simply follows Joey around, watching with bemused curiosity as he munches on a Nathan's hot dog, collects deposit-redeemable bottles at the seashore to finance his jones for the pony ride, and wanders aimlessly underneath the boardwalk, peering through the slats at the shadows of passersby above.

Filmed in crisp black and white, using a specially modified lightweight camera that allowed the directors to unobtrusively shoot footage of Andrusco interacting with ordinary folks, Little Fugitive lacks the sociological undercurrent of, say, Truffaut's The Four Hundred Blows or Panahi's The White Balloon. It also falters badly during the opening and closing dialogue sequences, which are obviously post-synched and in which the children come across as actors speaking memorized lines. But once Joey hits Coney Island with $6 (a small fortune for a young boy in 1953) in one pocket and his "dead" brother's prized harmonica in the other, it's hard to imagine any New Yorker not feeling a warm glow at these stolen images of a bygone era. You have to admire the filmmakers' dedication, too. At one point, Joey's in a batting cage, swinging wildly at pitches aimed roughly at the level of his head. One of the balls he hits clearly smacks right into the camera operator; the image abruptly lurches backward, and Andrusco has to stifle a laugh. The camera just keeps on rollin'.

eFilmCritic Reviews Elaine Perrone

When photojournalist and maverick filmmaker Morris Engel died in New York on March 5, 2005, at the age of 86, his obituary in the Los Angeles Times included a tribute from François Truffaut. The legendary French auteur had once told the New Yorker magazine, “Our New Wave would never have come into being, if it hadn't been for the young American, Morris Engel, who showed us the way to independent production with his fine movie, Little Fugitive.” Little Fugitive, and Engel, set a precedent for independent filmmaking in Hollywood, as well, influencing the work of John Cassavetes and, later, that of Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarentino.

Engel teamed with his wife, photographer Ruth Orkin, and a friend, Ray Ashley, to co-produce, co-write, and co-direct Little Fugitive, which they completed on a miniscule budget of about $30,000. Using a lightweight hand-held 35mm camera, which a friend invented for him, Engel shot Little Fugitive entirely on the streets of Brooklyn and on Coney Island over a period of a few months. The film’s score is performed on a solo harmonica and the pipes of a calliope. Shot in black-and-white, Little Fugitive runs a total of 80 minutes and is almost dialogue-free. (What little dialogue there is – about 2,000 words – was post-synchronized in a studio.) Its two stars, and many of the supporting players, were inexperienced children from the neighborhood, for whom Little Fugitive is their only screen credit.

After being turned down by every major U.S. distributor, Little Fugitive was finally picked up by a man named Joe Burstyn, a leading distributor of Italian films. Astonishingly – and deservedly – this small gem of cinematic pioneering went on to win the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion award. It also garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay, rather ironic in that the film’s true brilliance lies in Engel’s indelible images, Orkin’s fine editing, and the naturalness of the children’s performances. The story itself couldn’t possibly be slighter.

The magical, often poignant, Little Fugitive centers on two brothers. At its heart is Joey Norton (Richie Andrusko), a husky, freckle-faced seven-year-old who loves horses and hanging out with his older brother, Lennie. Trouble is, twelve-year-old Lennie (Richard Brewster) and his friends consider Joey a major pain and spend their time trying to find ways to dodge him. Overhearing the older lads planning an excursion to Coney Island, Joey begs to be included but is rebuffed. When the boys’ mother is called away on a family emergency, she puts Lennie in charge of Joey, scuttling the Coney Island outing entirely. Miffed, the others concoct a cruel prank, featuring a rifle and a bottle of ketchup. Staging a shooting of Lennie, his buddies convince little Joey that he must run away, lest he “fry” for murdering his brother. With no destination in mind, the little boy boards a train, with only the $6.00 his mother has left behind for household expenses. The train’s last stop: Coney Island.

Employing his small camera to photograph the boardwalk and beaches from spaces as confined as a merry-go-round and a batting cage, from underneath a pier and the top of the towering Parachute Jump, Engel’s Little Fugitive is a delightful chronicle of Joey’s Excellent Adventure, and an absorbing slice-of-life portrait of hundreds of thousands of people at leisure, with no clue whatsoever that they were being filmed.

In the DVD’s commentary, Engel noted that he did not elicit performances from the children, but simply gave them minimal direction – more like suggestions – and allowed them to act upon their own natural instincts. In one scene, I gasped as Joey happily – and precariously – grabbed for the brass ring on a fast-moving carrousel. Other scenes caused great merriment as I watched the seven-year-old’s innate creativity with food: Absent-mindedly arranging peas on a dinner plate, spitting out a too-hot bite of hot dog and allowing it to cool between his small fingers before popping it back into his mouth, spitting seeds from a slice of watermelon wider than the span of his own shoulders, and blissfully digging in to a box of Cracker Jack while riding a mechanical horse.

When his money runs out at the same time Joey discovers the pony rides, he is crestfallen – until he learns the concept of collecting deposit bottles and redeeming them for coins for a potentially endless number of rides. The scenes of Joey scouring the teeming beaches for empty bottles are among the most absorbing in their simplicity, depicting ordinary people (but for a few relatives, including Engel’s wife Ruth, in cameos) going about their business of sunbathing or playing in the sand, cuddling on towels, and crowding around drinking fountains. Engel even managed to capture through his lens an actual drowning that occurred while he was filming.

Some of the film’s most beautiful images are those shot in silhouette late at night, or at daybreak when the boardwalk and beaches are empty and silent but for the sounds of birds and gently lapping waves.

After Little Fugitive, Engel went on to release only two more feature films: Lovers and Lollipops (co-written and directed by Orkin, 1956), and Weddings and Babies (1958). Together, the collection is often referred to as The New York Trilogy. All three are available on video through Kino International, although, unfortunately, so far, only Little Fugitive has made the transfer to DVD. The DVD’s extras are the original theatrical trailer and a fascinating commentary by Engel.

Little Fugitive - Turner Classic Movies Sean Axmaker

Little Fugitive (1953) - Articles - TCM.com

Little Fugitive (1953) - Home Video Reviews - TCM.com

Little Fugitive (1953) - Notes - TCM.com

Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin: Poets of the Working Class (a review of Little Fugitive, Lovers and Lollipops, and Weddings and Babies) from Images

Bright Lights Film Journal Gary Morris, November 1999, also seen here: Images

Slant Magazine [Joseph Jon Lanthier]

PopMatters [Michael Antman]

DVD Savant - Blu-ray [Glenn Erickson] also seen here: Little Fugitive on Blu-ray - Turner Classic Movies

Blu-ray.com [Casey Broadwater]

DVD Talk - Blu-ray [Matt Hinrichs]

DVD Verdict (Blu-ray) [Patrick Naugle]

Monday Editor's Pick: Little Fugitive (1953) Alt Blog

FilmFanatic.org

The Little Fugitive Don Willmott from AMC Review

Films on Disc [Stuart J. Kobak]

Cinespect [Daniel Guzman]

CineScene.com Chris Dashiell

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

TV Guide

Review: The Little Fugitive (1953) - Reviews - Boston Phoenix Gerald Peary

New York Times [Bosley Crowther] (registration req'd) also seen here: The New York Times

DVDBeaver Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]

Children of the revolution | Film | The Guardian Jonathan Jones from The Guardian, July 13, 2000

Little Fugitive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Independent films

England, George

ZACHARIAH

USA (93 mi) 1971

Stomp Tokyo Chris Holland and Scott Hamilton

Zachariah proudly proclaims itself to be "the first electric Western." We're also pretty sure it could also honestly be advertised as "the last electric Western," "the only electric Western," "the best electric Western," and perhaps most descriptively, "the worst electric western."

Zachariah is supposed to be a musical, but it doesn't have all that many musical numbers. It sometimes feels like it's just a really weird philosophical cowboy movie that someone added a few musical numbers to in order to liven it up.

The main character is Zachariah (John Rubinstein, Harry Jr. from the tv series Crazy Like a Fox), a young man who wants to be a gunfighter. His best friend is the town blacksmith, Matthew (a very young Don Johnson). Don't worry: neither of them gets to sing.

One day the two of them decide to leave town to chase their dreams. They join up with a criminal gang (played by one of the bands listed in the credits, so they do sing). Eventually Zach and Matt leave them behind and find a bar where gunfighters hang out. It develops that Zachariah is a very fast hand, probably as fast as Jobe Cain (Elvin Jones), the fastest gun in the west. It is Elvin Jones who provides one of the few enjoyable scenes in the movie, a blistering drum solo.

Zach and Matt then part ways, and the film follows Zachariah's increasingly surreal and pointless travels. By far the most pointless is one that has to do with The Dude, as played by Dick Van Patten. When a western has a character named "The Dude," that character should be pretty important. That's just the way these things work. In Zachariah, The Dude is a used carriage salesman, and he shows up for a couple of minutes, and has no impact on the plot. What a waste! There's also a scene where Zachariah gets laid, and we are threatened with the sight of naked musicians. It's not pretty.

Zachariah features lots of partial sets, and abstract buildings made of plywood. This may be a profound statement on the fragility of modern life, or it may just be the by-product of a small budget. It probably falls into the same category as all of the biblical names, which are omnipresent, but don't mean anything either. The sets give the production a distinct look, but distinctive isn't the same as good.

Regular Stomp Tokyo readers know that when a film fails our basic expectations (namely a story, halfway-competent direction, and an attempt at acting -- and Zachariah fails at all three), we go looking for entertainment in a movie's dark corners. Zachariah's corners yield mere cobwebs: the action consists of one significant gunfight and lots of scenes of Zach shooting up a mountain, the main babe is second-rate, and the music just might make your ears bleed.

So why would you want to watch Zachariah? Hmmm. It might be fun to make fun of Don Johnson -- he's pretty goofy and very young in this movie. But let's suppose, just suppose, that you were to make up a big pitcher of margaritas with your friends. Chris suggests going through three or four before actually hitting play on the VCR. Then, and only then, might Zachariah cough up some entertainment value, mostly as your drunken friends hold their own mock shootouts or show you their best Dick van Patten imitation.

"Electric Western." What the hell were they thinking?

dvdfuture.com [Randy Spiros]

When people reminisce about the good old days and what decade they would have wanted to live in, the late sixties always comes up. Free love, innovative music, good drugs and the youth movement are some of the highlights mentioned. People like to watch the movie "Woodstock" or "Monterey Pop" as a way to take a trip back in time. There was another movie made around this time that incorporated rock bands and a rock n' roll attitude. Not too many people are even aware of it's existance. This movie is 1971's "Zachariah" and can now be found on DVD. Why anyone would want to seek it out could be a tough question to answer. This film is so bad that you must really need to feel nostalgic to view it. It came out with the tag line of 'The First Electric Western.' A second 'Electric Western' was never made.

"Zachariah" is a mess from front to back. The acting is bad. The direction is bad. The writing is bad. Some of the music is decent. A very young Don Johnson of "Miami Vice" fame stars as a cowboy named Matthew, one of the two main characters. That is enough explanation as to why the acting was bad. The director, George Englund, was forty-four when he made this youth orientated film, but I have a feeling it would have been a disaster without a generation gap. The film was co-written by a group of people known as the Firesign Theatre. They put out a bunch of comedy albums with that name though I never bothered to listen to any. I don't think many people did, but this group was considered avant-garde so it didn't matter. There is music and a physical presence in the movie by The James Gang, Joe Walsh's first group. Country Joe And The Fish, The New York Rock Ensemble, Doug Kershaw and Elvin Jones also play some tunes and are in "Zachariah." These were not the top groups of the day though The James Gang came pretty close. So, even when this movie was released hardly anybody was aware of it. Now, almost thirty-five years later, someone has dug it up and put it out on DVD and people will still probably never know about it.

The story is so simple it is embarrassing. As The James Gang rock out on a barren, desert plain, somewhere nearby a cowboy dismounts his horse and unwraps a package. He pulls out a pistol. This cowboy is Zachariah as played by John Rubenstein. He starts to practice shooting and drawing with the pistol. He then rides into town to show his best pal, Matthew, the weapon. Matthew exclaims, "Far out!" Zachariah later kills a bully in a saloon where Country Joe And The Fish are rocking out in. Now Zachariah decides he can never go back home and he will be a gunfighter. Matthew decides he too wants that life and they both ride off and join the Cracker Gang which is played by Country Joe And The Fish. Leaving them, the duo start to hang out with a top gunman named Job Cain played by the legendary drummer, Elvin Jones. For Matthew this is it, but Zachariah leaves in search of something that is still missing in his life.

I don't think director George Englund had a clue as to how to integrate rock 'n' roll music and rock 'n' roll bands into a movie. Englund was also a producer of this movie so you would think he had more than a passing interest in it, but the result shows differently. The film is more a very bad western than 'Electric Western' as the tag line advertises. The characters do things you would expect in a normal western, except they do things poorly. The bands are part of the background and rarely come to the forefront. The exception is Elvin Jones and Country Joe And The Fish who have a small semi-relevant part as The Crackers. The two cowboys run with The Crackers for a bit. Otherwise the rest of the rock 'n' roll cast could have been left out without harming the story. The fact that they have parts in the movie show how much deadwood this film has to it. Sure it's nice to hear The James Gang rock out with extended jams, but their songs are never allowed to be completed. There are no MTV type cuts. The bands are shown playing and then there is a cut to some regular action and then after a while there will be a cut back. For the most part the music doesn't fit the action taking place in the scene. It's like the songs were already written and had to be hammered into certain sequences. A good example of this is Zachariah and Belle Starr(Pat Quinn) trying to dance to music by The New York Rock Ensemble as they approach a bed. This music is not meant to be danced to very handily. The attempt by the actors is laughable.

As bad as this movie is I can see parts that may have been used in the later rock 'n' roll movie, "Jesus Christ Superstar." The camera likes to take half way zooms in the very beginning as The James Gang plays in the middle of the desert. There are many shots of the sunset and the sunrises. There are shots just of the sky, itself. Then some of the actors wear costumes that are part western era and part modern era. Even the western town and buildings have wooden, painted, obvious facades added to them to give them a surreal look. Maybe someone from the "Jesus Christ Superstar" crew saw this movie and used only the few interesting assets it had and discarded the liabilities.

Just how bad is Don Johnson in this film? First off, he is supposed to be a blacksmith when we first glimpse him. He is wearing a set of overalls with no shirt. He is very skinny. His head looks too big for his body as the dyed blonde hair is almost touching his shoulders. Never in any world would you believe he was a blacksmith. Then he talks in a very fast nasal tone. It took a while for him to slow his voice down and gain some meat to his body where he could appear credible as a police officer in the eighties television show of "Miami Vice." Here he looks like a homosexual street hustler.

Pat Quinn who made a terrible Belle Starr had starred earlier in the hippie classic, "Alice's Restaurant" as Alice. A few more movies like this followed and she soon disappeared from the acting world.

John Rubenstein, who was the son of the famous conductor Artur Rubenstein, rusted, but did not fade away. He is the famous 'jack of all trades, but master of none.' He still acts, writes soundtracks and does many other things with films, but somehow stays unknown. He wrote a forgettable song for the "Zachariah" soundtrack too.

The color and clarity of the "Zachariah" DVD is really good. At times some outside scenes may have too much darkness to the shadows. The sound, though mono, is done in dolby digital and is okay. I don't see why a movie with so many rock 'n' roll songs in it was not put out in a better sound format.

This is not a very good movie. Cool poster though! Maybe you can look at it as a movie that is so bad it is good. If you are a fan of any of the rock groups in "Zachariah" then I guess you will want to see his movie. Otherwise this is a one star movie out of five stars.

DVD Savant [Glenn Erickson]

Epinions [Chris Jarmick]

Ferdy on Films [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Mondo Digital

The Digital Fix [Anthony Nield]

Film Freak Central Review [Travis Hoover]

Boomer Beefcake and Bonding [Jeffery Dennis]

The Spinning Image [Graeme Clark]

Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings [Dave Sindelar]

Channel 4 Film [capsule review]

TV Guide

New York Times [Roger Greenspun]

Enyedi, Ildikó

TAMAS AND JULI (Tamás és Juli) A- 94

Hungary France (60 mi) 1997

This was seen as part of a series of ten films commissioned by France’s La Sept ARTE channel, called “2000 Seen By,” where all the films were set on the last day of the century. There’s a lovely mix of Asian art and imagery, adding a feeling of intimacy to this otherwise bleak Hungarian world of gritty realism. Tamas is a young coal miner, Juli a kindergarten teacher, both provide terrific performances, blending his crudeness with her tenderness, developing their romance with a sly smile, a lover’s hesitation, or melancholy moments when left alone. On 12-31-99, she sends him a romantic letter into the mines asking him to meet her later for New Year’s Eve, but the time conflicts with his work shift and he has no way of reaching her.

To the hauntingly beautiful sounds of a Japanese flute and guitar, the film opens with snow in the trees as it is the New Year’s shift in the mines. The camera plunges into the depths of the mines, and into the black darkness of memory. Told out of sequence, in a flashback to summer, two fisherman stand in a quiet stream, the younger Tamas is telling an older friend about a woman he likes, but he hasn’t spoken to her. Balalaika music plays, sounding very much like early Mozart, as happy children run around their teacher, Juli. Tamas approaches and tells her, “You look...inspired,” and they agree to a date. He takes her to a waterfall, which is shown in the changing seasons, they sit on a ledge overlooking the town, making tender touches to the sound of birds. She changes the subject to dogs, as two dogs are seen fornicating.

Next, in the bright neon colors of a disco, they sit under a blue light and have a drink, joined by two friends. An electronic bass pulsates as a semi-nude woman dances on a pedestal and waves to Tamas innocently while he stares at her body. Juli wants to go home, and when they have a boring conversation on the train, she tells him “You are annoying me,” and won’t let him walk her home. He walks past a neighborhood outdoor café where a local band is playing, while in his mind, he sees an image of the café in winter, empty, surrounded by snow. He stops in for a beer, alone, seeing another girl in a flower dress smiling at him. Tamas calls her at school from the mines as she is reading the children a story before nap time and proclaims his love for her, which is broadcast over the school loudspeaker. All the children giggle as she breaks into a beautiful smile.

Juli waits at a bus stop next to a statue of Christ on the cross, dogs are barking in the distance as she waits for Tamas. She kisses him playfully when he arrives, but when he starts pulling her blouse off, she tells him no. “Spread them!” he shouts at her, slapping her in the face. The scene shifts as he watches her exercise the kids at school, a folksong plays, there is fog on green hills. She is seen wearing a bright green jacket at the bus stop, while he is wearing blue across the street, waiting for a bus going the other way. Close ups reveal sad faces and quick, furtive glances. The same image is shown in changing seasons, ending with children playing in the snow. The camera moves overhead as they walk down a snowy street approaching a bridge. He pretends he just happens to be walking by, but she ignores him. A friend asks Tamas what he’s doing for New Years, where he explains they’ve split up, but he is seen rehearsing saying he’s sorry in the darkness of the snow at the bus stop, always with dogs barking in the distance. She approaches and smiles at him, but he blows it, instead remarking “Why do you look so dumb?” She then tells him “Get lost...after 5 month’s, only you could say such rubbish.”

There is a fantasy image at the bus stop, Juli bares her breasts for Tamas, tells him not to be afraid, then removes her panties as cars drive by before making love. But Juli is only writing a note to Tamas, asking him to spend New Year’s Eve with her, telling him to meet her at the Rock Bar at 10 pm where she’ll be waiting. The scene shifts to New Year’s evening, Julie is wearing red lipstick, waiting alone in the snow in front of the café. Tamas is working in the mines, where there is an ominous sound that stops the work. They check the methane level and everything seems to be OK. Once inside, Juli sees Tamas on TV, as miners are being interviewed before they head into the mines working their New Year’s shift. Tamas tries to tell Julie his predicament, but all she can hear is “Listen...” as two girls dance to loud rock n roll music blaring.

In a remarkable scene before midnight, Juli gets on a cart, presses the lever to start the pulley, and goes into the mines all by herself. There is a stunning contrast of the dirt and grime of the miners, the darkness and filth of the mineshaft, and Juli in her high heels and party outfit, but she is crawling around looking for Tamas. In a brief moment, their eyes meet, but there is a sudden explosion in the mines, followed by images of empty carts continuously coming out of the mines, while flute music plays over the credits, a mournful cry of anguish and loneliness.

SIMON MÁGUS

Hungary France Great Britain USA Germany Italy (100 mi) 1998 ‘Scope

A seductive hybrid out of Christian lore, Yiddish folk tale and romantic fiction, writer/director Hopkins' first feature plays variations on the Brit historical costume drama. The action takes place late in the 19th century in an imagined Jewish stetl, in Austro-Hungarian Poland, suffering from economic and agricultural blight. Through this sombre Tim Burton-like world roams outcast Simon Magus (Taylor), a man reviled and feared for his presumed magical powers and for bringing a curse on the village; in fact he's an idiot savant desirous of salvation, but confused by the ministrations of the Devil (Holm). Tragically, his subsequent madcap religious vacillations make him seem a potential tool to anti-Semitic landowner Hasse (McGinley) in his struggle to acquire land promised to young Jew Dovid (Townsend), a favourite of the poetry-loving squire (Hauer). Compelling as a revivification of 'magical' storytelling, this admittedly modest movie impresses equally in its confidence of tone and sense of balance. It is never heavy and often very funny; the performances are uniformly well judged and the script sweetly dovetails its various strands.

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]

Holy fool. Mad visionary. Mystic outcast. Simon Magus (Noah Taylor) is a mumbling, shambling loner living on the outskirts of the Jewish quarter of a small village in 19th-century Poland in this "tale from a vanished world."

Barred from his community church for making up his own nonsense prayers, the village elders fear that this "cursed child" is possessed and the superstitious seek out his dreams and visions, but few accept him.

His torment brings about visits from a demonic figure (Ian Holm) who urges him to evil and drives him to seek solace in the Christian religion, where an anti-Semitic German merchant (Sean McGinley) tempts him with food and acceptance in return for spying on his people.

This dark, sad fable of faith, family and tolerance is the most compelling facet of Ben Hopkins' "Simon Magus," but just one of the threads in this tale.

An ambitious Jewish smith, Dovid (Stuart Townsend), struggles to build a railway station to bring commerce to the dying town and, in the process, woo the lonely widow (Embeth Davidtz) he loves. The land belongs to a poetry-loving squire (Rutger Hauer) who, starved for culture in this hamlet, agrees to consider his offer in return for Dovid reading the squire's book of verse.

Taylor's intense performance gives Simon's fevered battle with faith and his desperate need for cultural contact a tragic dimension missing from the film's familiar stories of romantic misunderstandings and religious intolerance.

Beautifully realized and lovingly photographed, Hopkins' film creates an almost allegorical world out of time. The storybook village could be out of the Middle Ages but for the steam engine that puffs through the countryside.

At its best, "Simon Magus" celebrates the magic of art and the transcendent power of acceptance. It should be a revelation in a world where religion competes with superstition and tradition battles modern ideas, but for all it's warmth and wonder, it carries little more power than a storybook fable.

Ildiko Enyedi's Simon Magus Andrew James Horton from Kinoeye

Ildiko Enyedi has aims which are no less grand than those of Kamondi (see New Age Visions Part I). However, her attempts to evoke magic and mystery with her film Simon Magus (1997-98) are rather more successful.

The original Simon Magus was a charismatic Gnostic, considered to be the first in religious history, living in Samaria in the first century. Legend has it that one day he arrived in Rome and after showing off in front of the local citizens, he challenged St Peter to a dual of magical powers. As Simon was levitating above the city and the surrounding mountains, Peter was silently praying for God to bring shame upon this foreign sorcerer.

Since Simon himself had turned away from Christianity, God now naturally seized the opportunity for revenge and Simon plunged to the ground, taking his authority and arrogance with him and dying of the after-effects a few days later. Another version of the tale, and of Simon's death, has Simon's disciples obediently burying him, after he arrogantly vows to resurrect himself in three days (which, needless to say, he never does).

Enyedi's film, however, changes everything around. For a start, the action is transposed to contemporary Paris, with the mysterious magus from the east coming from Budapest. More intriguingly, in the film, Simon is resigned and exhibits an almost world-weary modesty. After solving a murder mystery for vast sums of money, he is the one who is challenged to a dual to survive buried underground for three days, which he accepts reluctantly. Simon is actually far more interested in an attractive French girl who has won over his hardened cynical heart. (Regular readers of Kinoeye will not be surprised to hear that she is young enough to be his daughter [Click here for Kinoeye's article Gentlemen Prefer Passive and Pubescent]).

In a neat and fancy turn that any aspiring magus would be proud of, Simon concedes the dual and kills off the magus in him, but at the same time wins the day and is reborn as a man. Unlike Kamondi, Enyedi (who first emerged in the 1980s as one of number of adventurous new directors) clearly knows what directing a film is all about. The first fifteen minutes illustrate this graphically, with Enyedi creating an atmosphere of tension and expectation that draws us into the film. The lack of concrete information, the photography and a persistent Bartok motif overlaid on top of it all make for a compelling piece of cinematography. The mood is one of mystery and is infused with a style and an eye for detail that only a truly European film could carry.

Presumably, it was on the basis of these opening 15 minutes that Enyedi was awarded the Grand Jury prize for best director at the 30th Hungarian Film Week. In this respect, Warhol's excessively quoted comment about every person being famous for 15 minutes can be twisted into a rather different meaning in Enyedi's case: Enyedi is not famous for the duration of 15 minutes, but because of a particular 15 minutes.

Although some tensely atmospheric scenes depicting the city return, the rest of the film is on the whole rather less inspiring than the opening quarter of an hour and, surprise, surprise, when it comes to Enyedi filling out her plot, the whole thing falls to pieces, leaving her introduction as a tantalising memorial to what the film could have been, if only a decent scriptwriter had been found.

This is an enormous shame. Kamondi's film is fatally flawed and it is hard to imagine what could have been done to save it, given Kamondi's obvious love of the preposterous; Enyedi 's film, however, has merit. The performances of Peter Andorai as Simon and Julie Delarme as the French girl Jeanne are accomplished, and the scenes in which they first meet are warmly witty and engagingly dynamic.

The film certainly could have done a lot worse. A few weeks after Budapest's Film Week, another film with the title Simon Magus was shown at the Berlin film festival, Berlinale, only to suffer the ignominy of being booed by the audience. Enyedi's Simon Magus, for all its faults, does not deserve to be booed.

BFI | Sight & Sound | Simon Magus (1999) Ken Hollings, July 2000

Reel.com review [2/4] Tor Thorsen

VideoVista review Andrew Hook

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [3.5/5] Richard Scheib

Film 4.com [Ali Catterall]

The Boston Phoenix review Mike Miliard

San Francisco Chronicle (Wesley Morris) review

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [2/4]

Ephron, Nora

JULIE & JULIA C- 67

USA (123 mi) 2009

Julia Child is certainly deserving of a fitting tribute, but unfortunately this isn’t it, turning into a largely mindless escapade mixing the ambitions of a food blogger with very scant bits of Child’s own life prior to her first book publication. While the film attempts to combine the two, attempting to match moods where neither understood the profound effect their work would eventually have, Meryl Streep as Julia, is a workhorse of a woman whose delightful energy just exudes off the screen as she competetively ploughs her way through an all-male French cooking school, while Amy Adams is not so interesting as a Child-channeling blogger Julie Powell, who over the course of 365 days prepares each of the 524 recipes in Child’s book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, who spends her time, well—blogging about the experience, reading to us several of her entries as she putters around in the kitchen, which in a movie theater is about as interesting as a painter describing his strokes. Repetetive with only moderate interest in a movie that spends so much time talking about food, what the film lacks, frankly, is any sense of drama.

We already know the influential success of Child, and many of us have seen her quirky mannerisms on TV cooking shows, with her warbling voice that sounds as if John Cleese was imitating a dying parrot, but is there enough interest in whether or not a blogger is successful or not? Not in this movie. Not when the sarcastically disapproving phone calls from her unseen mother register more interest that the blogger herself. The sing-songy, near elevator music that plays throughout doesn’t help matters much, as this maintains a largely superficial air even when trouble brews. Of course there are ups and downs in everyone’s life, but this film never gives a full sense of who these women are, and concentrates instead only on the extremes. If Julie Powell was ever successful, you’d never know it by what was shown here, as she fits the profile of a pretty much any ordinary person. Julia Child, on the other hand, revels in each loopy turn of the phrase, and Streep is marvelous when at some point she ironically confesses that she’s “so conventional.” Unfortunately, there’s not much to this one, feeling downright sad and disillusioning that it didn’t have more to offer. Arsinée Khanjian, for instance, was much more interesting in her brief appearance as the overbearing and eccentric black & white TV chef from Egoyan’s FELICIA’S JOURNEY (1999), whose son (Bob Hoskins) turns out to be a mind-numbingly ordinary guy who just happens to be kidnapping young girls.

Time Out Chicago (Hank Sartin) review [3/6]

Nora Ephron's loving tribute to Julia Child is considerably more refreshing than the usual biopic, and in the role Meryl Streep hits a grand slam without even breaking a sweat. But the movie switches back and forth from Child's story -- set in Paris in the 1950s -- to the story of Julie Powell (Amy Adams), who in 2002 famously started a blog about cooking everything in Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year's time. Though the format allows Ephron to avoid most of the usual biopic clichés, the writer/director also never really draws an emotional or thematic thread between the two stories, and there's no real payoff. Moreover, both stories are mainly based around the act of writing -- Child writing and publishing her cookbook and Powell blogging -- and the film rarely becomes very visual or dynamic. Additionally, both women are in happy marriages, Child with her husband Paul (Stanley Tucci) and Powell with her husband Eric (Chris Messina), and so Ephron cooks up turgid little subplots and melodramas to try and make these supporters more interesting, but her efforts waste time and turn soggy. All this aside, Julie & Julia does have some euphoric moments centered around food and cooking, and both Adams and Streep are very much worth watching.

Is it possible to love half a movie? Every time Streep is onscreen as Julia Child, Julie & Julia is as light and airy as a soufflé. Every time Adams is onscreen, someone slams a door and the soufflé falls. For the most part, it’s not Adams’s fault. She can be a delightful actress, but when she plays sad, Adams can be quite grating (cf. Sunshine Cleaning). As depressed office worker turned food-blogging sensation Julie Powell, Adams is done no favors by Ephron, whose screenplay accentuates Powell’s helpless and whiny side, missing her wit.

The contemporary story in this back-and-forth movie mostly takes place in Julie’s cramped apartment, and Ephron makes it feel cramped. Sad Julie feels unfulfilled. Her husband (Messina) is saintly but bland. Julie cooks. Her eyes get big and moist. Her blog gets famous. Her eyes get big and happy. You’re likely to wish, as we did, that the movie could skip her story entirely and get back to Julia Child.

Ephron does better with the other source material, Child’s memoir My Life in France, possibly because she doesn’t Ephronize it as much. But the real praise belongs to Streep and Tucci (as Child’s husband, Paul). Undaunted by playing one of the most famous and distinctive women of the last century, Streep plunges ahead with enormous gusto, knowing instinctively just how far she can push her big, broad performance without sliding into camp. Better, she and Tucci make this unconventional couple’s deep and abiding love crystal clear. They’re the sort of people you want to meet at a dinner party.

Time Out New York (Joshua Rothkopf) review [3/6]

You can’t have a movie about Julia Child without food—and not just any food, but the savory French cuisine that turned American palates away from tuna casseroles in the 1960s. Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia doesn’t disappoint in this regard: Here are rich, bubbling crocks of winey beef bourguignonne, mountainous heaps of chopped onions, trussed ducks and, most magnificently, a browned sole meunière that practically swims off the screen on a buttery tide.

It also goes without saying that you can’t do a biopic about Child without showing her effect on a generation of empowered women. Here’s where Julie & Julia gets into hot water. For whenever Meryl Streep is not onscreen—hooting, chortling and pretty much owning the chef’s eccentric persona in one of her most exuberant turns—there’s this whole other movie that you want to skim off like fat. Julie Powell (Adams) was a real-life Queens blogger who, from 2002 to 2003, famously made her way through Child’s landmark Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Judging from the movie, Powell threw a lot of whiny tantrums and almost alienated her husband. Ephron falls into her worst habits of rom-com syrupiness in these scenes, and (even more discordantly) reveals a dated Sex and the City sensibility.

If only we could stay with Streep’s burbling creation. The movie shows Child traveling to France, collaborating and editing, suffering jealousy and heartache (she had no children), and loving deeply. Paul Cushing Child, the cook’s devoted foreign-office husband, was everything this impulsive epicurean needed; Streep and her colleague from The Devil Wears Prada, Stanley Tucci, make up a thrillingly rich and urbane union. They are perfect ingredients.

The Globe and Mail (Kate Taylor) review [3/4]

A movie about the parallel lives of a famous cook and an unknown blogger, Julie & Julia employs the usually reliable narrative strategy of alternating between two stories, cutting from one to the other at the moment most calculated to generate suspense.

You know that director Nora Ephron hasn't got the balance quite right, however, when we leave blogger Julie Powell at a point of great excitement – yet find we have largely lost interest in the identity of her mystery dinner guest when we return to her story. In the meantime, we have been savouring meaty scenes from the life of the great Julia Child, the famed American cook who helped introduce French cuisine to the United States. Child was a large personality, and Meryl Streep is a great actress – the combination does rather overshadow young Amy Adams in the role of Powell, the earnest disciple.

And there's an irony, because everybody involved here, from Ephron and Streep to Child's publishers, owes the real Powell a huge debt: Julie is the reason the persona of that over-effusive purveyor of butter-soaked cuisine is suddenly so delightful again, handing Streep a plum role and the Child estate, one presumes, fresh royalties. Powell has done what the most devoted fan can only dream of: She has introduced her mentor to a whole new audience.

It was the real Julie Powell, an unhappy government clerk in New York with an unfinished novel in her bottom drawer, who decided to spend a year cooking every recipe in Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogging about the experience. The blog found a loyal following and was written up in The New York Times; a book deal soon followed. This movie is based on Powell's 2005 Julie and Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen and on Child's memoir My Life in Paris .

Ephron's adaptation of the story of Powell's rise to fame is like some diluted version of the romantic comedies such as You've Got Mail or Sleepless in Seattle with which she has made her reputation. The rebirth of the unfulfilled Powell through her blog seems predictable; the fight with her loving husband and his departure for a night or two on the office couch seem perfunctory. There is a really funny scene with a pot full of lobsters, and the story, a post-modern happily ever-after in which the democracy of the blogosphere delivers success to the deserving, has a few gentle things to say about the relationship between the famous and the unknown. The aging Child, who died the year before Powell's book appeared, is informed of the blog but proves dismissive.

The film is at its best in scenes set in Europe in the 1950s – the protracted genesis of Mastering the Art provides the drama here. The wife of an American diplomat stationed in Paris, Child turned to cooking because she loved eating, took the Cordon Bleu course to entertain herself, met up with two Parisians who were trying to write an English-language cookbook devoted to French cuisine, and eventually spearheaded that project, always encouraged by an adoring husband whose own career was increasingly stagnant but not uneventful. (There is a McCarthy-era scene in which Paul Child is interrogated about “un-American activities.”) It took almost a decade of work by Child and her co-authors, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle (the latter is presented here as lazy and less involved), before the first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking was finally published in the United States in 1961.

In the role of the irrepressible dynamo, Streep produces an impersonation but not a caricature – she does a superb job of effusing over food in a way that is comic without being ridiculous. And she makes Child's energy and optimism absolutely irresistible; the movie is as snappy as those lobsters whenever she's on screen. Stanley Tucci provides an amusing and lusty foil in the role of Paul Child, while Adams as Julie and Chris Messina as her patient husband Eric are left being sweet and cute on the sidelines.

Quote-hungry publicists are going to hope that critics call this a movie that makes you want to eat, but it made me want to shop, for butter, for brie, for baguette – and for books, not Julie & Julia , of course, but rather both volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking .

filmcritic.com (Bill Gibron) review [3/5]

Christian Science Monitor (Peter Rainer) review [B-]

Atlantic Monthly (Nina and Tim Zagat) review

CineScene.com (Chris Knipp) review

eFilmCritic.com (Erik Childress) review [3/5]

Pajiba (Dustin Rowles) review

eFilmCritic.com (Mel Valentin) review [3/5]

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [4/5]

About.com Hollywood Movies (Rebecca Murray) review [B+]

Village Voice (Robert Wilonsky) review

CineSnob.net (Kiko Martinez) review [B+]

Screen International (Fionnuala Halligan) review

Slant Magazine review [2.5/4] Dan Callahan

Entertainment Weekly review [B+] Owen Gleiberman

The Hollywood Reporter review Kirk Honeycutt

Variety (Justin Chang) review

Boston Globe review [3/4] Wesley Morris

Austin Chronicle (Kimberley Jones) review [2.5/5]

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review [3/4]

Los Angeles Times (Kenneth Turan) review August 7, 2009

Julie, Julia and me: Now it can be told -- latimes.com Russ Parsons reveals why Childs didn’t care for Julie’s blog from The LA Times, August 12, 2009

Julia Child - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bon Appetit! A Bow to Julia Child | csmonitor.com Phyllis Hanes interviews Julia Child from the Christian Science Monitor, October 22, 1992

Learning to cook the Julia Child way | csmonitor.com Paul Thacker interviews Julia Powell from the Christian Science Monitor, April 23, 2003

Food: The School of Julia Barbara Kantrowitz from Newsweek, October 3, 2005

Amy Adams: When You Wish Upon a Ramin Setoodeh from Newsweek, December 31, 2007

Film Food, Ready for Its ‘Bon Appetit’ Kim Severson from The New York Times, July 28, 2009

Cooking as a spectator sport Michael Pollan from The New York Times, July 29, 2009

Meryl Streep's Delicious Julia Child Dorothy Kalins from Newsweek, July 30, 2009

15 Food Questions for Nora Ephron Nicki Gostin from Newsweek, August 3, 2009

Secrets to blogging fame from Julie Powell | csmonitor.com Megan K. Scott from The Christian Science Monitor, August 4, 2009

Julie & Julia: Stop Hating Julie Powell, Jennie Yabroff from Newsweek, August 6, 2009

My Week Cooking as Julia Child Sarah Ball from Newsweek, August 6, 2009

Laura Jacobs on Julia Child | vanityfair.com Our Lady of the Kitchen, Laura Jacobs from Vanity Fair, August 2009

Why you'll never cook from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of ... Regina Schrambling from Slate, August 28, 2009

Julia Child Biography - Biography.com

PBS: Julia Child: Lessons with Master Chefs

Julia Child's Kitchen at the Smithsonian

The French Chef Julia Child's Chicken in YouTube (1:39)

Saturday Night Live: The French Chef (3:51)

Julia Child and Company (10:00)

Epstein, Jean

THE FALL IN THE HOUSE OF USHER (La chute de la maison Usher)

France USA (63 mi) 1928

The Fall of the House of Usher Ed Gonzalez from Slant magazine

First, a distinction—or, rather, an abstraction—by Jean Epstein: that The Fall of the House of Usher is based on the themes of Edgar Allen Poe's famous short story of the same name. The gothic-printed message of the title card forecasts the film's ether-ness (its avant-garde inquest of the real through an incantation of otherworldly atmosphere), which crests over us like the veil of the cinema's original corpse bride. Through kaleidoscopic composition—of prismatic swamp water, soggy terrain, and branches that caress the sky like fingers—Epstein affects Rorschach-like chiaroscuro, every image a dense, sludgy viscera, a looking glass held up to the audience and characters, daring us to pass through.

The staircase outside Usher's house is the final check point between here and there, winding down and around to the ground and shot by Epstein so that the landscape of the film is sliced into three very distinct spatial planes: foreground, middleground, and background. This profound consideration and demarcation of cinematic space gives this masterwork of the silent era a striking 3D-like complexity, and its power is such that the long shot of a dog running away from the house of Usher induces a cataclysmic sense of fear and strangulation, as if the animal weren't running down a road but falling into a bottomless abyss.

The world inside the house is no less frightening, a phantasmagoria of transmigrating vibes where Usher's wife Madeleine (Marguerite Gance)—one in a long line of obscure objects of desire—travels in slow-motion torpor, caught by the camera at odd or oblique angles, like the shot of the woman glimpsed through the strings of a harp. The film's images pluck the heart, which is apt given that the aristo Usher (Jean Debucourt) paints his ostensibly sick wife as if he were performing a transfusion. To the faithful-hearted Usher, Madeleine is a keepsake, a genie to lock inside his canvas-bottle and whose wedding dress, like make-a-wish plumes of smoke, haunts his imagination and memory.

The film's tour-de-force is a hulking funeral procession of overlapping visual textures and animal-like camera movement, a startling vision of metaphysical passage and metamorphosis. With the castle's dripping candles in ominous tow, the men proceed through land and water toward the netherworld of Usher's catacombs, with Madeleine's veil weighing them down like an arm digging into the ground; all the while, an owl keeps ominous watch and two toads get their groove on. Madeleine will not go gently into this sinister night, nor will Usher let her, insisting that her coffin remain unnailed, which, in effect, precipitates a supernatural spill between worlds.

What was theoretical in Epstein's The Three-Sided Mirror is here freer, more lucid and ethereal, and from its first image of a visitor with busy fingers wading through a tangle of trees and branches to the final orgy of poetic destruction, the director intensely considers the push-pull relationship between life and art—the precarious soul-suck between the two and the chaos their battle risks. When Debucourt's Usher looks at his painting, he is both staring at the visage of his elusive wife's representation and the audience itself. Epstein treats celluloid not unlike Usher's canvas—a delicate, fragile thing to draw on (slow or fast, sometimes twice, thrice, four times over)—and to look at the screen of this film is to witness a portal into a complex, heretofore unknown dimension of cinematic representation.

Epstein, Rob

WORD IS OUT

USA (124 mi) 1978

Movie Magazine International [Monica Sullivan]

A documentary by the San Francisco-based Mariposa Film Group, comprising interviews with 26 gay American men and women of varied classes and ethnic origins. It is neither militant (although it does contain some footage of civil rights demos) nor analytic (although the careful selection of interviewees bespeaks one level of analysis), and is an important film for those very reasons. It doesn't intimidate or alienate any potential viewer, but uses techniques of simple reasoning, and elements of mild surprise, to catch attention and hold it. If two hours of talking heads sounds like a long time, then it's a measure of the film-makers' success that the result is as gripping and persuasive as the most accomplished fiction.

The Summer of Love in the straight world occurred in 1967. For the San Francisco gay community, The Summer of Love took place in 1978. Harvey Milk was still alive and thriving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and AIDS, the plague that would be an epidemic by the summer of 1981 and didn't even have a name yet, had only been detected in a few scattered cases. Disco was huge that summer, only the followers of Reverend Jim Jones suspected what a monster he might be, and George Moscone, the Mayor of San Francisco and an enthusiastic movie buff, was a rising political star. It seemed to be a time of endless possibilities, and for the patrons of the Gateway Cinema on Jackson and Battery Streets, 1977 and 1978 were the years that the Mariposa Film Group four-walled Jack Tillmany's revival theatre for an exclusive engagement of "Word Is Out."

Director Peter Adair, who had been a cameraman on "Gimme Shelter," had interviewed a large group of lesbians and gay men and then selected the most articulate 26 to speak on camera for the documentary. As the FIRST full-length documentary to study gay life in America, "Word Is Out" was and is a landmark film, designed to shatter stereotypes and clarify mysteries of misinformation. After the initial grumbling about why one film was playing at the Gateway instead of golden oldie double bills twice weekly, "Word Is Out" became a long-running phenomenon. Gay AND straight audiences were starved for the information supplied in this funny, deeply humanistic movie.

The speakers aren't all kids: They are as young as eighteen and as old as 77, they live across the country from San Francisco to Boston and their experiences reflect universal concerns shared by everyone. For the proverbial one brief shining moment, the gay community flowered in prestige and power and the resulting knowledge and understanding benefited everyone. And then the horrors of Jonestown dominated international headlines by November 1978, Milk and Moscone were assassinated ten days later, the infamous White Night Riots at San Francisco City Hall followed the light sentence received by the assassin and rumblings about a gay cancer were heard in the land. Harvey Milk would become the subject of a movie and an opera. AIDS would claim millions of victims, including director Peter Adair, who made another picture, 1991's "Absolutely Positive," about his & others experience with the virus before his death at 53 in 1996. But "Word Is Out" was the first to open many people's minds to what being gay meant in a world where the subject had rarely been addressed above a whisper.

Bright Lights Film Journal Gary Morris

Working Collectively on Word Is Out Stories of Working Together, by director Robert Epstein from Jump Cut

Word Is Out Fran Taylor from Jump Cut

The New York Times (Janet Maslin)

THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK

USA (88 mi) 1984

Qwipster's Movie Reviews [Vince Leo]

Harvey Milk, a gay activist elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors (or city council) in 1977, was assassinated in 1978 alongside mayor George Moscone by fellow-supervisor Dan White, who had recently lost his appointment and had targeted on the pinko left for his revenge. The murders inspired a 45,000-strong candlelit vigil, and the scandalously lenient sentence given White caused riots the like of which the city had never seen. Epstein and producer Richard Schmiechen expanded a projected film on anti-gay legislation into a feature-length documentary about America's first 'out' gay politician. Charismatic and outspoken, Milk was headed for the job of mayor, and deserves a place in the pantheon of specifically American radicalism. This documentary about his career and the repercussions of his assassination deservedly won an Oscar.

Quite frankly, The Times of Harvey Milk is one of the finest documentaries I've ever seen. It tells the story of San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, a businessman who managed to secure a seat on the board of city supervisors, becoming the first openly homosexual elected official in the city's history, or in the country, really. It also tells of Milk's death, along with San Francisco mayor Moscone, at the hands of a fellow city supervisor, Dan White.

This documentary starts with the end of Milk's life, with Dianne Feinstein's pained announcement to the press that Milk and Moscone were shot and killed. It's a curious thing to start with the film's big climax, but it turns out to be the best move documentary filmmaker Rob Epstein (The Celluloid Closet, Paragraph 175) could make, as it makes everything that follows all the more resonant. From then on, Epstein shows bit of interviews with several of Milk's peers, giving us some insight of the man behind the media image, showing his selflessness and interest in helping everyone he can, in his effort to promote unity and acceptance, not only for the gay community, but for everyone.

Epstein also manages to secure a wealth of television footage, from interviews of Milk himself, to key newscasts which has relevance to Milk's life. The interviews and footage are woven together perfectly, with a sequence of events that gives us a great feel for the man that Harvey Milk was, and what he meant to so many people. great care is taken to show Milk in the most human light possible, and not as a martyr or person who could do no wrong. It does concentrate on his strengths, however, which was mostly his ability to touch people's lives and gain their respect.

If there is any downside to this fantastic film, it's that it couldn't end on the heartfelt vigil held in Milk's honor shortly after his death, which provides perhaps the most emotionally poignant moment of the movie. Unfortunately, the trial of Milk's killer, Dan White, was so bizarre that it had to follow after, which does erase some of the momentum and shift away from Milk's life. Epstein does eventually tie it back together, though, by ending the film with the notion that Milk's sexuality might have played a role in his demise, which wasn't really that evident in the presentation here. The film was released shortly before White would take his own life, the following year.

The Times of Harvey Milk is one of the best films of 1984, and deservedly would win the Academy Award for Best Documentary feature. Beautifully packaged together. with much food for though and an emotional core, it has the ironic distinction of being both easy to watch as well as difficult, given the tragedy that would end Milk's life.

Slant Magazine [Eric Henderson]

There's a lesbian politician in the recent PBS documentary After Stonewall who talks about how she was approached by a constituent who exclaimed, "I hate all politicians. I think they're all liars and can't trust one of them, except for you." When the politician asked why he considers her the exception, he referred to her openness about her sexuality and explained, "You've already told us the worst thing about yourself. Why would you lie about anything else?" The inevitability that public officials of non-heterosexual orientations will invariably find their sexuality morphing into a political statement beyond their control is reflected in Rob Epstein's seminal 1984 queer documentary The Times of Harvey Milk. As portrayed in the film, Milk was a self-made politician—a camera store owner who, with absolutely no experience in the world of government, ran a grassroots campaign to become the first gay city supervisor in San Francisco.

It is a story that practically tells itself: gay politician rises to great popularity in the world's quintessentially gay metropolis, unpopular straight-laced politician (also, like Milk, self-made) struggles to join the burgeoning conservative movement but is stymied by his city's liberal stranglehold, straight politician murders gay politician and mayor George Moscone in a fit of rage, city mourns, straight politician is sentenced to manslaughter (the pathetic sentence: as low as four years in prison), cue city riots. And with the variety of interview subjects that cover the necessary bases of emotional (the eggshell tremulousness of Tom Ammiano), intelligent (the serene Sally M. Gearhart), and surprising (Jim Elliot, a union leader who admits before he met Milk, he had no moral objection to the police's practice of rolling fags from gay bars), not to mention powerful news footage of the events (Dianne Feinstein recoiling from the microphone after announcing the assassinations to a shocked paparazzi), it would've been pretty hard to trip this documentary up. Everything falls dutifully into place, topped off with an expressive early Mark Isham score that might have veered into maudlin territory if it weren't smartly performed on muted, icy new wave synthesizers.

But Epstein's grandest coup, and what elevates Harvey Milk beyond being a stunning, emotional docudrama and into the realm of elegant social activism, is in the subtle parallels he draws between the Milk-White dichotomy and the concurrent, controversial battle over Proposition 6, which would grant California public schools permission to fire openly gay teachers. The coalescing Moral Majority brigade (which would form the first significant American movement in backlash against the gay community's gains since Stonewall) were putting all their chips on a wager that the American public's tolerance would only go so far, and the line in the sand: "the children." It was a bet that was paying off in elections across the country in the late '70s (to a musical accompaniment from Anita Bryant).

If their argument was that children's pre-sexuality is malleable and in jeopardy of being corrupted by "subversive influences," Epstein effectively pokes a hole in the logic by suggesting that White's fragile psychological state (one crucial detail in White's case history that occurred following the film's production was his suicide in 1985) is as much a product of the inadequate social upbringing that set him up to believe in a world where heterosexuals triumphed over homosexuals. When Harvey Milk emerged as a popular (and cunning) politician who was capable of beating White at his own game, White's petulance and irrationality seemed to finger him as a man reverting to a state of mental adolescence, reaching a climax with black-and-white video footage of White going ballistic in the council chambers and batting his microphone away in indignation.

Epstein's strategy pays off in the decision to allow White's teary courtroom breakdown, the one many feel let him off with the legal equivalent of a slap on the wrist, play out for a veritable eternity, even daring viewers to identify with his inner torment. (White's legal team's infamous "Twinkie defense" seems like the ultimate substantiation of this sort of developmental retardation, and the fact that homosexuality had only recently been removed from psychological classifications for mental illnesses is the sick punchline.) It's precisely this sort of benevolence to White, perhaps unwarranted in the eyes of Harvey Milk's target audience, that turns a story of predestination (Milk actually recorded his thoughts to be broadcast in the event of his assassination) into a demand for unqualified social openness—specifically, mandated public education—about the realities of sexual diversity. Without it, White was left without any sense of moral bearing and, yes, could conceivably not be held accountable for his actions. This concept gives greater gravity to Milk's own vigorous exhortations for all homosexuals to "come out of the closet! You must!" It's one thing for a documentary to claim a person great, it's something else entirely to convince the audience they have an active role in fulfilling his legacy.

DVD Talk [Stuart Galbraith IV]

DVD Verdict Paul Corupe

The Onion A.V. Club [Nathan Rabin]

Fulvue Drive-in Nicholas Sheffo

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

The New York Times (Janet Maslin)

DVDBeaver.com - Review [Gary W. Tooze]

Erdélyi, János and Dezsö Zsigmond

THE WOMAN (Az asszony) B 89

Hungary (81 mi) 1996

Extraordinary and shockingly real story about a wife hiding her husband in a cellar for years during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, as he is wanted by the police, where interest in him wanes through the passing of time while her sexual allure to a Soviet guard becomes more pronounced.

Erdem, Reha

TIMES AND WINDS (Bes Vakit) A- 94

aka: Five Times

Turkey (111 mi) 2006 ‘Scope

The bucolic, pastoral nature of this film feels timeless, like it could have been shot decades or even hundreds of years ago, featuring terrific locations gorgeously shot in ‘Scope by Florent Herry in the remote town of Kozlu high up on a rocky cliff overlooking the sea in Northern Turkey, where the rustic beauty of the landscape dominates the mood throughout this near plotless film, recalling the hypnotic imagery of Carlos Reygadas from JAPÓN (2002), even using music from the same composer, Arvo Pärt, or the exquisite minimalism of Bresson where people’s lives cruelly mix with the sublime grace of the natural landscape in AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (1966). A film with surprising relevance on generational patriarchal abuse and illiteracy within the Muslim world, reminiscent of the Taviani brothers film PADRE PADRONE (1977), which was set in Sicily featuring a brutally domineering father who pulls his 6-year old son out of school and literally banishes him to the isolation of a similar rocky, high country of Sardinia to watch his father’s flock of sheep, stealing his childhood, working him like a slave, which only stirs a sense of outrage and profound resentment against his father. Here as well, the Islamic religious teachings instruct children to listen to and obey their fathers, a paternal figurehead whose word is recognized as final and absolute and should be treated with absolute respect. The problem is in this remote, largely illiterate society where people live so closely to the land, living day to day, in cyclical rhythm with the seasons, the parents repeat the same mistakes of their own parents, using brutally harsh methods to raise their children, which may include severe beatings along with a neverending sense of parental discontent.

While there are only brief references to this subject, beating or mistreating children and animals is a striking theme that runs throughout the film, where we observe the aftereffects through the eyes and ears of three children on the verge of adolescence. One is his father’s older but less favored son, Ömer (Özkan Özen), who has dreams of killing his father and even procures a scorpion hoping he will do the job, or sneaks into his father’s room at night to open the bedside window hoping to aggravate his severe cough, later emptying the powdered medicine from his father’s prescribed capsules, or his best friend Yakup (Ali Bey Kayali) who is forced to witness his grandfather continually berate his own father, reducing him to tears as he refuses to stand up to him, and later has to witness his own father peeping through a window at his schoolteacher, (Selma Ergec), an attractive young woman who routinely receives community offerings of goat milk and bread, the one he has a crush on himself, even refusing to wash his teacher’s blood from his finger after he helps remove a splinter from her foot, and their cousin Yildiz (Elit Iscan), whose mother treats her like a slave and forces her to do all the housework as well as care for the more favored baby, a young girl who sits in tears at her parents door listening to the sounds of their lovemaking. There is an amusing scene where the boys observe a pair of mating donkeys in a field, and when they realize girls are watching the same thing, the boys instantly inflict their morally superior wrath of judgment on the girls, threatening them as they know their fathers would. Worse yet is an older boy without any parents, Davut (Tarik Sonmez), who tends to the village goats all day long, following them out onto dangerous mountainous crevices, herding them back to safety, yet he has scars on his back from a beating incurred from an irate villager who felt the need to impose his own judgment for eating a handful of nuts from a neighboring tree.

Despite the description, the film has such an unwavering stillness about it, offering no explanations, remaining completely nonjudgmental, showing a world in harmony with the universe and its own laws of nature, beginning with night and moving backwards to morning, divided into five sections which represent each time we hear the sound of the imam calling the community to prayer. Within these framed periods of time, children are forced to run errands for their parents, or are seen fast asleep in the fields in various states of rest, or sitting high atop a mountain cliff observing the magnificent calm of the mountains and sea beyond. Mostly because this film does such an excellent job establishing a world of people in harmony with their natural surroundings, where they stop and watch a solar eclipse or take shelter and wait out a passing rainstorm, these outbreaks of people behaving badly call attention to themselves, as they just don’t seem to fit. They feel like an irritant to the otherwise natural rhythm of life. It’s interesting that villagers place such importance to the wonderment and beauty of childbirth, yet as children grow older, they are looked upon for their more practical, utilitarian value. There’s an amusing scene where Yakup’s parents speak of the miracle of childbirth, where the innocence of babies moves them to tears, and they actually pull him out of school just to be able to hold his newborn brother, which is portrayed like a nativity scene. From outside the window we see the bleary eyed father trying to look in as we hear the natural sound of an ass braying. There’s another wonderful scene on a mountaintop where Ömer’s father is reaching over the ledge, where Ömer has thoughts of pushing him off, where the camera acts as his thoughts and quickly darts to the edge before swinging out into the air, leaving the audience to wonder just what really happened, as its hard to distinguish what’s real and what’s a dream.

While this is clearly one of the better looking films out there making spectacular use of ‘Scope, showing no signs of artifice or sentimentalism, it’s also overly simplistic with repetitive images, musical refrains, and an odd sounding braying horse that kept reminding me of Cloris Leachman as the grotesque Frau Blücher in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974), where just the mention of her name sent horses into a panic, yet it explores the roots of this irrational paternalistic rage that may have historical roots in explaining the continuing cycle of neverending wars in the region. Part of the reason radical fundamentalist Islam is spreading is due to the populist appeal it has from impoverished conditions in regions just like the one, which breeds a continuing cycle of illiteracy. This does not bode well for planting the seeds of diplomacy. But this film very innocently reveals that family by family, the disposable attitude parents display towards their own children may possibly explain how easy it is to recruit so many young suicide bombers, who are already made to feel so worthless. There’s an interesting scene at school where young children are made to chant “Love your nation before loving yourself.” Written, directed, and edited by Erdem, he seems to be placing his finger on the pulse of his surroundings, offering a glimpse of what awaits these still innocent children in the region before they are swept up by the wave of fanaticism and hate.

Music:

Arvo Pärt

TE DEUM

Talinn Oda Orkestrasu (1984 – 86)

SILOUANS SONG

Talinn Oda Orkestrasu (1991)

ORIENT & OCCIDENT

Isvec Radio Senfoni Orkestrasu (2000)

COMO CIERVA SEDIENTA

Isvec Radio Senfoni Orkestrasu (1998)

Times and Winds Jonathan Rosenbaum from the Reader

Turkish filmmaker Reha Erdem has a feel for the light, shade, colors, and textures of a scenic mountain village, which he shoots gracefully in 'Scope, often following people along various passageways. He also has a leisurely and not always convincing way of dealing with the troubled lives of three village kids, and his taste for pretentious music and portentous section headings suggest he doesn't always know when to leave well enough alone. This 2006 feature works better in terms of mood than storytelling. In Turkish with subtitles. 110 min.

The Village Voice [Ed Gonzalez]

Times and Winds is a film bewitched by the rhythms of everyday life in a remote Turkish village. Director Reha Erdem sees pain and love the same way he does the moon and sun—as constant, illuminating forces—and his camera pushes forward as if on an axis, peering at family and communal experience through the impressionable eyes of three pre-adolescents.

Ömer (Özkan Özen) prays for the death of his cruel imam father, inviting the bitter wind into the man's bedroom at night and contemplating the effects of a scorpion's sting on the adult body; Yakup (Ali Bey Kayali), enchanted by his teacher's beauty, refuses to clean the woman's blood from his thumb after he pulls a splinter from her foot; and Yildiz (Elit Iscan), resentful of her mother and blinded by the adoration of her father, weeps when she catches her parents having sex.

The actors are prone to expressionlessness, and Arvo Pärt's score bears the brunt of the story's thematic heavy lifting, preciously rhyming growing pains to the sway of the seasons. But Erdem's vignettes can be trenchant, as in the amusing scenes of boys and girls responding differently to animals bumping uglies—evocations of how society determines sexual roles at an early age.

Turkish Cinema Newsletter: Times and Winds | Bes Vakit by Reha Erdem

This magical film is a haunting portrait of the tensions that lie beneath the seemingly placid surface of a remote, beautiful and rugged mountain village perched between sea and sky, untouched by the modern world. The director's fourth feature recounts the dreams and desires of villagers whose simple lives are regulated by the calls to prayer that divide the day (and the film) into five sections (the Turkish title literally translates as "five times"). The main characters are three youngsters, two boys and a girl living in this harsh, strictly disciplined culture, where both animals and children are frequently beaten. In subtle touches, the picture deals with the early sexual awakening of the three, their communion with nature and revolt against their parents. Omar, the imam's son, fantasizes about killing his father. He collects scorpions, hoping they will do the job for him. Omar's best friend Yakup has fallen in love with the beautiful schoolteacher and turns against his own father when he discovers that his dad is a Peeping Tom who has been spying on the young woman Yakup worships. The girl, Yildiz, is obliged to mother her baby brother, while her budding sexuality is troubled after she witnesses her parents making love. Erdem's lyrical and meditative film is visually stunning, shot by his talented regular director of photography Florent Henry and with an extraordinary score by Arvo Pärt. Times and Winds walked off with the two main prizes at the 25th Istanbul International Film Festival--Best Turkish Film and FIPRESCI awards.”--Elliot Stein, Tribeca Film Festival

With a remarkable attention to the vicissitudes of life in a remote Turkish village; director Reha Erdem captures the delicate transition between childhood and adulthood, as three young friends explore the fraught territory of love, lust and death. A humanist-pastoral epic in the tradition of Pudovkin.--LA Weekly

FIPRESCI Antti Selkokari

What is really striking about with Reha Erdem's Times and Winds (Bes vakit) is its refusal to be explained. All it does is to invite us to look again, closer. To look at the world and its beauty with eyes we never thought we had.

The film is set in a small village that leans on high cliffs, facing the vast sea, its outskirts laced with olive groves. The village inhabitants live according to the rhythm of nature and the five daily calls to prayer. The central characters are three children on the brink of adolescence. The film follows the children and their interaction with their parents and a school teacher. One of the children wishes for the death of his father, who happens to be the imam of the village.

The boys in the film are shown to be bound by their religion. A strong contrast to the cultural ties is school: the place of reason and enlightenment. From the beginning of the film one can see the bipolarities abound; the images of the lush Turkish landscape are accompanied by western classical music. The music, Orient and Occident by Arvo Pärt, emphasizes this duality even more. Yet in this piece of art, the music and images lyrically converge.

Erdem does not shy away from Islam. Abrahamic religions are present here and that's what makes the film even more universal. Times and Winds does not have to be seen as a religious film, but as a spiritual one. It is the inner life that Erdem is concerned with here. Times and Winds is about growing up; into the film are cut sole pictures of children lying somewhere in the woods hidden under weeds or on a bed of rocks. It seems as if these children are asleep. Maybe they are in the sleep of childhood. At the end, a boy wakes up to full consciousness and the burden of adulthood, which he realizes is crushing.

It would be rather fruitless to pin down all the possible influences in Times and Winds, since nobody, not even Tarkovski or Kiarostami, has a copyright on slow camera movement. And the consistent shooting on children's eye-level could be seen as a friendly nod to Gus van Sant's Elephant.

However, I would not want to ruin Erdem's life and career by calling him a master too early. So many genuine talents are burnt out too fast. The rage with which the media devours the new masters, never gives them time to mature.

Times and Winds proves Erdem has the talent and ability to become a master. But we have only seen the first inklings.

OhmyNews [Howard Schumann] also seen here: CineScene.com (Howard Schumann) or here: from imdb Author: Howard Schumann from Vancouver, B.C: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0855729/usercomments

Two pre-teen boys and a girl endure pain caused by the inbred generational habits of their parents in Reha Erdem's minimalist "Times and Winds" ("Bes Vakit").

Set in the remote village of Kozlu in Northern Turkey overlooking the sea, the film reflects the traditions of the culture in which it occurs, showing how parents repeat the mistakes of their own parents and those that came before them.

Seen at the Vancouver Film Festival, "Times and Winds" is shown in five parts beginning with night and ending with morning, mirroring the daily time that is divided by the sound of the call to Salah, the compulsory ritual prayer, performed five times each day after ablution. The film stresses the importance of religion and prayer in the life of the simple villagers but it is apparently not enough of an influence to prevent them from mistreating their children.

Omer (Ozkan Ozen) holds feelings of bitterness toward his father, the local imam, who not so subtly favors his brother and is not hesitant to say how much smarter the younger boy is. Omer dreams of ways to kill his father -- opening the window over his bed so his cough will worsen, emptying the capsules of the medicine he is taking for his illness, pushing him over a cliff or simply getting together a group of local scorpions to pay him a visit.

Omer's best friend Yakup (Ali Bey Kayali) is upset when he sees his grandfather constantly demean his father, calling him useless and lazy. Yakup also has a crush on his teacher (Selma Ergec) and refuses to wash the thumb that is stained with the teacher's blood from a foot mishap. When the boy sees his father furtively peeking into the window of his teacher's house, he is devastated.

The boys' female cousin, Yildiz (Elit Iscan) has a strained relationship with her mother who favors her younger sister and uses her as a household slave.

Though sexuality is barely touched on in the film, Yildiz is brought to confused tears when she hears her parents making love. Other scenes show the children's embarrassment when they watch animals mating in the field, reminiscent of the film "Japon" by Carlos Regadas, whose poetics seem to have been an influence in this film. Another boy, Davut (Tarik Sonmez), an orphan who is the town shepherd, shows the scars on his back to the town council after he is physically beaten by a villager, but can only cringe when they tell the offender that what he did was wrong but exact no punishment.

"Times and Winds" has a poetic look and feel with beautiful pastoral scenes of the Turkish countryside in summer captured by cinematographer Florent Herry, but shots such as the children sleeping outdoors are repeated once too often to maintain interest. While the music of Arvo Part lends atmosphere, it is overly dramatic and is used to the point where it becomes irritating and distracting. In a film of this nature where there is little narrative drive, it seems that the ambient sounds of nature would have better served the director.

"Times and Winds" has strong performances from its non-professional cast and contains some poignant moments that can be powerful, but Erdem seems to be trying too hard and the film lacks flow and the kind of emotional pull to make it truly memorable.

The Evening Class [Michael Guillen] also seen here: Twitch (Michael Guillen)

Encouraged to catch Reha Erdem's Beş Vakit / Times and Winds at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, the film ended up being one of my favorites and I have no doubt it will retain that status even within SFIFF50's diverse line-up, where it celebrates its West Coast premiere. It certainly warrants a second appreciation. Erdem is expected to attend.

Times and Winds is illuminated with moments of colloquial radiance. Beautiful, poignant, tender, these moments are visually framed by mutable weather sweeping across wide landscapes (stunningly photographed by Florent Herry). By film's end, I was weeping, face in my hands, grief stricken for all the vulnerable children in the world harshly disciplined by stern fathers and the serrated edge of life's fugacity. Unexpectedly overcome—and, admittedly, a bit embarrassed at my inability to stop crying—I noticed a fellow a few seats away from me who kept staring at me with a bemused grin, as if I were an entertaining fool. I felt my privacy violated. Who the hell was he to mock my grief? Of course, he was no one other than director Reha Erdem, who obviously got his jollies off watching me become devastated by the film's sumptuous photography and aching themes of childhood lost. If he hadn't created such a beautiful film, I might have punched him in the nose. Instead, I emerged from the theater and scribbled down this response:

You children, who sleep blanketed in warm straw
Or inbetween hummocks of sunlit grass
In the dappled shade of summer pine needles
Or dreaming on sunsoaked stone
Taking refuge in the narcolepsy of innocence

You children, who work hard, learn hard,
While moons scudded with clouds stare with watchful eyes,
While constellations cycle and clouds somersault
While the sea swallows whole the endless self-limitations of shorelines and men
You children, slumber through the last days of your innocence
And dream of killing your fathers.

Beware the murders you wish for.
Beware the folly that will break your heart.

As Dimitri Eipides synopsizes for the TIFF capsule: "Times and Winds is a finely etched portrait of remote village life in Turkey composed of small, meticulously observed moments of great beauty, melancholy and lyricism. …Erdem has a profound and innately poetic sense of the rhythmic passing of time, with each day in the village divided into five by the calls to prayer. … Despite the arduous living conditions and the domestic indignities that the young ones endure, Times and Winds is not a depressing film, for within each heartbreak lies the potential for self-discovery and redemption."

Variety's Derek Elley insinuates that any plot synopsis will sound like "a recipe for boredom" but assures that "Erdem's calculated juggling of small events creates an atmosphere of much more going on than is actually shown on screen."

J. Robert Parks observes at Framing Device: "The movie opens with a night shot of the village lights, but it's framed in such a way that it focuses on the dark water and sky behind it. In fact, the numerous landscape shots frequently combine land, sea, and sky in ways I haven't seen before, and the way the light is captured at all times of day is breathtaking. The pans across the hills become luminous meditations that provoke awe and wonder. The long shots of the minaret set against the sky and water are simply spectacular."

Set in the Turkish village of Kozlu with its cobbled uneven streets and embroidered pillowcases, Times and Winds celebrates the poet's task of "shepherding the winds" and reminds me yet again why I favor foreign films that allow audiences glimpses into pastoral villages and lifestyles well on the decline. Such films may end up being the final record left of a particular texture of rural upbringing.

Twitch teammate Opus, though less enthusiastic than I, states his objections but concludes: "[A]s a pure mood piece laced through with introspective thoughts concerning the roles of fathers, and the terrible consequences when they abuse their authority, Times and Winds can be quite powerful and haunting."

Not Coming to a Theater Near You [Jenny Jediny]

cinemattraction (Neal Solon)

Twitch Opus

Framing Device J. Robert Parks from the Toronto Film Festival 2006

Times And Winds (Bes Vakit) Dan Fainaru from Screendaily

Slant Magazine [Fernando F. Croce]

Salon.com [Andrew O'Hehir] Page 3

Reha Erdem-Bes vakit (’Times and Winds’) (2006) All Free Downloads

Premiere [Aaron Hillis]

Chicago Tribune (Maureen M. Hart)

Chicago Sun-Times Bill Stamets

New York Times (registration req'd) Stephen Holden

Ergüven, Deniz Gamze

MUSTANG A- 93

Turkey France Germany Qatar (94 mi) 2015 ‘Scope

Everything changed in the blink of an eye. First there was comfort, and then suddenly everything turned to shit.

—Lale (Güneş Nezihe Şensoy)

For film festivals other than Sundance, the stories and slotted in-competition directors appear to be dominantly male-oriented—at Cannes, 16 competition films by men and only 2 by women, and at the Chicago Film Festival, there are 13 male competition films to only 3 by women—making it a rare occurrence when viewers come upon a film written and directed by women, where within the overall history of cinema this still remains relatively unexplored territory. Winner of the Europa Cinemas prize at Cannes for best European film in the Directors’ Fortnight, this film immediately stands out by conscientiously altering the viewing patterns among the largely male-dominated efforts of contemporary cinema, turning the tables and focusing on the treatment of women, particularly younger adolescent girls who live under extremely repressive social conditions. Co-written (with Alice Winocour, the 2012 director of Augustine) and directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven, she was born in Ankara, Turkey while studying literature and African history in Johannesburg, South Africa, eventually learning to direct at La Fémis in Paris, where her first feature film is France’s submission to the Academy Award Foreign Film category. Set in a small Turkish village by the Black Sea, hundreds of miles away from the more populous city of Istanbul, the film opens innocently enough after the last day of school, where instead of riding the bus, 12-year old Lale (Güneş Nezihe Şensoy) and her four older sisters Nur (Doğa Zeynep Doğuşlu), Ece (Elit Işcan), Selma (Tuğba Sunguroğlu), and Sonay (Ilayda Akdoğan) decide to walk home instead, as it’s a beautiful sunny day, where they decide to play in the shallow water with some boys in their class, mostly splashing around, but also playing a game where girls sit on the shoulders of boys and try to knock the other sister into the water. By the time they get home, however, one by one they are beaten by their grandmother (Nihal G. Koldaş), proclaiming their behavior immoral and scandalous, as the girls are the subject of malicious gossip spread around town by their neighbor who claims she saw them “pleasuring themselves” on the necks of the boys. As their parents died a decade earlier, the grandmother has been raising them, but in this instance their domineering uncle takes over, Erol, Ayberk Pekcan, the driver from Winter Sleep (Kis uykusu) (2014), sending the oldest girls for a virginity test while removing their computers and phones, forcing all girls to wear plain brown dresses while placing iron bars on the windows locking them all indoors in order to “protect” them.

Essentially believing they have to save the girls from themselves, the film isn’t a comment against Islam, which is the primary religion in Turkey, but against a patriarchal society where men, especially those coming from a poorer educational background, expect women to protect their purity and remain virgins until marriage, believing otherwise their marital chances will be ruined, along with the honor and reputation of the family. Narrated by the youngest sister Lale, who offers a kind of outspoken Linda Manz sensibility from DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978), the closeness of the girls is evident throughout, as the film pits the expectations of the girls against that of their family, who immediately go about the business of indoctrinating the girls how to be loyal and subservient wives, turning the home into a “wife factory.” Informed that their school education is over, older women are brought in to teach them how to cook traditional dishes and sew clothes while the uncle goes about the business of arranging marriages for the oldest two sisters, including a stream of inspections from potential suitors, where the goal is to have all the girls, ages ranging from 12 to 16, to be married off by the end of summer. While the title is a reference to the wild horses indigenous to the area, the symbolism of taming the wildness out of the horses is not lost on the viewers, as much of the film plays out as a clever battle of wills, where an unbridled, free spiritedness is pitted against an entrenched conservatism that condemns their behavior. This is as much a battle of the West versus the East, where the ideals of freedom and democracy conflict with the more authoritarian, patriarchal governments of the Middle East that are more inclined to impose a strict order upon a society rather than leave them to their own inclinations, where the rights of women have traditionally been stifled for centuries. Nonetheless, the grandmother is equally conflicted, as she loves the girls, even indulges them from time to time, and in the most hilarious scene of the film is willing to go to outrageous methods to protect them from the wrath of the men after they sneak off to see a local soccer game and can be seen on television cheering them on, literally cutting off the power of the entire village to avoid detection, yet she is also fully complicit in their subjugation.

The timing of the film uncannily follows in the aftermath of the horrific murder of Özgecan Aslan, a young Turkish university student that was brutally murdered during an attempted rape, her body burned beyond recognition and her hands cut off to avoid detection, an event that sparked outrage across the country leading to massive protests demonstrating against unacceptable violence to women, the first mass movement in support of Turkish women, where Aslan’s father was quoted after her death, “We grew up with fairy tales. Once upon a time… Once upon a time there was an Özge. And then there wasn’t any.” The film is interestingly presented like a fable with Lale’s innocence and fierce independence at its center, with a focus on faces and bodies, often intermingled together, heightening the tension between freedom and repression. Bathed in the radiant pastel-colored cinematography of David Chizallet and Ersin Gok which beautifully captures the carefree innocence of the young girls, but also how freely they move their bodies as an extension of their inner spirit, the performances have a wonderfully naturalistic feel, where the sisters are often framed in close proximity to one another, almost as if they are an extension of one body and one soul. What’s so effective about the film is how each of the young girls is portrayed, smart, overly clever, and mischievous, with healthy desires and a burgeoning curiosity, perhaps overly Westernized, but from the outset that’s the way they’ve been taught. Adding to an interior psychological context is moody, introspective music by Warren Ellis, some of which can be heard here: Robes De Couleur Merde in Mustang (Warren Ellis), including several with Nick Cave, the duo that masterminded the glorious soundtrack of THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (2007). The haunting music suggests an element of fragility, a contrast to the defiance and open rebellion they feel in response to their tyrannical treatment. One by one, as each sister is delivered to the groom’s family like custom bought merchandise delivered to order, the results are mixed, as only the oldest is married to the boyfriend of choice, while all the others are forced to resist in their own ways, often with staggering consequences. While the youngest is the most independent and outspoken, she is literally the anchor of the film, where the film is largely seen through her eyes, with a narrative slowly evolving from light-hearted comedy to tragedy, where much of this plays out in the realm of horror, though to the director’s credit, even the most tragic sequences are delicately handled. Ostensibly about the mistreatment of women around the world, and in particular, by overcontrolling men — who deserve to have their heads examined — this is actually one of the better films seen that expresses this universal travesty in such a lyrically poetic manner. While there is a window of hopeful optimism, the film offers a beautifully observant exposé on childhood ending all too soon, where an idyllic innocence hits a brick wall of male-enforced societal rigidity that becomes fixated on adolescent women, all but imprisoning them for the rest of their lives.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago Kyle Cubr

Five orphaned teenage sisters have just finished their day at school at the beginning of summer and spend the afternoon innocently playing at the beach with some boys. Their interactions are witnessed by a concerned neighbor who views their actions as salacious. Upon returning home, they are punished by their grandmother and uncle who brand them as 'whores.' The girls' home becomes more and more prison-like as they are subjugated to training from their elder relatives so that they all can be arranged for marriage. MUSTANG is a coming of age tale about repression and loss of innocence. Deniz Gamze Ergüven's film plays out like criminals being transferred from a minimum-security prison to a medium-security prison and finally to a maximum-security one. Being forced to wear "shit-colored dresses," having bars installed on the windows, and adding higher walls to the perimeter of the house--the girls literally become prisoners in their own home. The symbolism is not subtle, but is effective in demonstrating Ergüven's point of what happens when freedom is stripped. The five female leads have a dynamic chemistry on screen that makes it feel like they really are sisters, aided by their naturalistic dialogue. Themes of sexual awakening and purity are deftly explored as Ergüven avoids the explicit and relies instead on implied off-camera scenes. It's rare to find a film willing to address these subjects as they pertain to women of these ages. Ergüven's change of tone from light-hearted sisterly moments to the morose is impressive given some of the heavier subject material covered in the film's second half. Reminiscent of Sofia Coppola's THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, MUSTANG is a bold directorial feature debut on the transition from adolescence to womanhood.

TIFF 2015 | Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Turkey ... Jordan Cronk from Cinema Scope

As a film about adolescent girls, told from the perspective of adolescent girls, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s debut feature Mustang immediately stands out amidst the largely male-dominated efforts of contemporary cinema, its concerns distinctly feminine in constitution, its context specific in circumstance yet universal in scope. In a secluded Turkish village along the banks of the Black Sea, five orphaned sisters are being raised by their grandmother and uncle in an atmosphere of sexual, religious, and ideological repression. They’re physically reprimanded and verbally chastised for harmlessly cavorting with their male classmates, kept under strict house arrest during the summer months, and forced to submit to virginity tests as their guardians furiously arrange for their individual marriages to local Muslim boys. In an early scene one of the sisters forlornly describes the house not as a home, but as a “wife factory.”

Strange and involving, the opening act of the film proceeds something like a culturally reconstituted The Virgin Suicides (1999) or perhaps a less arch, more pastoral Dogtooth (2009). In this case the girls prove to have little trouble fooling their elders, and embark on a series of youthful exploits outside their domestic confines. One of the best sequences in the film finds the sisters lying and bribing their way across the city and into the crowd at a FIFA game, a moment which calls to mind Jafar Panahi’s Offside (2006). But Ergüven seems less interested in the political than the personal, focusing on the familial and psychological ramifications of the sisters’ situation and their attempts at rebellion (the adults, by contrast, essentially remain caricatures). Each girl responds in a different way to the tyrannical treatment, and the narrative moves accordingly from comedy to tragedy to, in the case of the two youngest and most restless sisters, epiphany. All told it’s an understated, undemanding journey, and if the worst one can say about a film by a first-time director is that it (not unfavorably) resembles other, better films, then that bodes well for Ergüven’s future.

ArtsHub [Sarah Ward]

For five sisters frolicking around a seaside village in northern Turkey, their awakening into adult life is not their own. Aged from pre-teen upwards, Lale (Günes Sensoy), Nur (Doga Zeynep Doguslu), Ece (Elit Iscan, Tas Mektep), Selma (Tugba Sunguroglu) and Sonay (Ilayda Akdogan) enjoy the fun typical of their pubescent youth — complete with innocent beach and orchard romps with neighbourhood boys — until they're told their behaviour is inappropriate. As Lale's narration makes plain, this is the moment their lives change, with a restrictive regime enforced upon their conduct and rebellion springing in response. Before, the girls were maturing gracefully and organically; now, their blossoming minds and bodies have rules to rally against, hastening their ascent to womanhood.

Their reaction is understandable, for in Mustang, femininity is an object to be owned and a force to be controlled — and not by those who are born with it in their possession. After being reprimanded by their grandmother (Nihal G. Koldas, Kuma) for the reputational damage their actions could bring, and then subjected to a virginity test by their aggressive and domineering uncle (Ayberk Pekcan, Winter Sleep), the siblings are confined within their house, stripped of any corrupting possessions, and indoctrinated in the markers of propriety required to become model wives, all ostensibly for their own benefit.

So springs conflict, contemplation and even moments of comedy in the equally thoughtful, tense and tender film, as written and directed by feature debutant Deniz Gamze Ergüven with co-scribe Alice Winocour (Augustine) with their sympathies evident and their handling of the material seething with subtlety. The battle for control of the girls' wills and ways may be waged with as much quiet subversion as outlandish acts as each is married off, or prepared to be; however the pervasive power struggle and its impact always remains evident. Every longing look out of the barred windows, shedding of the shapeless brown dresses they're forced to wear, and unlikely assistance sometimes afforded by aunts both keen to avoid inciting further patriarchal ire, and tussling with their own constraints, reinforces a world in which oppression doesn't just reign, but remains the defining characteristic upon which women forge their identities.

As the feature's strong sisterly bond also shows, such domination also shapes their ties with each other, with Mustang as potent in constructing sibling relationships as it is in conveying the rigidity they're trapped within. While Lale remains the feature's guide and the audience's entry point into an insular realm, this is never her tale alone, even with Sensoy's the most striking of the film's naturalistic performances. The character and the young actress flutters around her elder cohort as each — in the narrative, as well as in their portrayals — offer complicated, multifaceted demonstrations of the toll of growing up in their stifling environment. That the five central figures recall the haunting of The Virgin Suicides and the distress of Miss Violence speaks to the shades of their protagonists and plight that they work through, never merely a helpless victim, a dutiful homemaker in training or a dissenting troublemaker despite their apparent lack of agency and choice.

Of course, championing camerawork from cinematographers David Chizallet (The Anarchists) and Ersin Gok that flits between soft, sprawling and lyrical and fast, sharp and boxed in, Ergüven actively straddles the chasm between dreamlike and harsh evocations of fated females. Warren Ellis' (Far From Men) score achieves the same feat, for Mustang never surrenders to the melancholy that threatens it. Indeed, the spirit of self-preservation and resilience soars as a coming-of-age story becomes a pseudo prison break not just from the home that imprisons them, but from the judgements their female status inspires. The tragedy that surrounds Lale, her sisters and their cultural situation is never lessened; however hope for an escape never fades, either.

Cannes Interview: Deniz Gamze Ergüven - Film Comment Yonca Talu interview, June 8, 2015

Like Miguel Gomes’s six-hour comprehensive portrait of Portugal also showing in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s debut feature Mustang draws attention to cinema’s duty to document life, by capturing Turkey in all its harsh reality. Taking its title from the wild horses that gallop on the endless prairies of North America, the film takes place in a Black Sea town and tells the story of five sisters—from youngest to oldest: Lale, Nur, Ece, Selma, and Sonay—who move carefree with their long hair and liberated bodies on their way to becoming women. But when an innocent game they play on the seaside with boys is interpreted as an indecent act by the townspeople, the sisters’ lives are upended by familial pressure and a conservative mindset focused on marrying them off as soon as possible. Determined to refuse the archaic rules set forth by the adults, these united mustangs do everything in their power to be free again—whatever they can do in a house that is literally transformed into a prison through the addition of bars on the windows. But Ergüven never lets us forget that the girls’ rebellion occurs within an unjust and often cruel society which is likely to chew them up fast.

Following the premiere of Mustang in Cannes—before it went on to win the Europa Cinemas prize for best European film in Directors’ Fortnight—FILM COMMENT spoke with Ergüven about being a woman in Turkey and the wild horses of her film.

Mustang begins with Lale’s saying in the voiceover: “Everything changed in the blink of an eye. First there was comfort, and then suddenly everything went up the creek.” I think the word “suddenly” is crucial here, because one of the most striking aspects of the film is that an innocent playful event quickly turns into a tragedy. This is a state of affairs that we often encounter in Turkey, when an everyday, trivial situation leads to unexpectedly violent consequences. Could you talk a bit about how you departed from that event—which is, if I’m not mistaken, a childhood memory—to construct the story?

One of the things that bothers me the most in Turkey is the constant and hideous sexualization of women. And I know this starts at a very young age—girls are treated this way when they are only children, before they even become women. Like the character of Lale in the movie, I was the youngest of all my sisters, so I became aware of these matters when I was a little girl. But that scene you see in the film is not the only instance of this. There were many events of that sort, but that was probably the one that left the biggest impact on me. But I also put many other stories that I heard in Turkey into the film, like schoolmasters forbidding girls from going up the stairs with boys. I have a hard time believing that these sorts of moral lessons can be seen as calls to purity, because I think that, on the contrary, they are a way of seeing sexuality everywhere. The same attitude also sees the veiled woman from the perspective of gender and sexuality.

In a larger context, the abrupt and brutal transition that occurs in the life of your characters reflects the unpredictable and turbulent fate of Turkish women, the fact that women are under a constant threat in Turkey. You leave home in the morning to go to school or to work and you are killed in the afternoon. You never know what can happen to you. When watching the film, I thought of what Özgecan Aslan’s father had said after her death: “We grew up with fairy tales. Once upon a time… Once upon a time there was an Özge. And then there wasn’t any.”

[Her eyes tear up.] Özgecan was killed the day I gave birth to my son… It was a very long and difficult delivery, and I found out what happened to Özgecan right after, so I was quite shaken up by the overlap, the way the whole country was shaken up, of course. In Turkey there is a permanent discourse to weaken the place of women. Afterward, however, Özgecan’s murderer was a complete freak, he was not the average citizen. But the worst thing is that people we might call average or ordinary are not that different either. And obviously Turkey has grown very tired faced with this sort of unacceptable behavior.

The uncle says something very harsh when quarreling with his mother: “If these girls turn out to be spoilt, you’ll be responsible for it!” Obviously the word “spoilt” has a very degrading connotation here, because the girls are referred to literally as spoilt milk. We witness the crudest face of this macho understanding in the traditional marriage proposal scenes. The grandmother says: “Verdim gitti!” [“I gave it and now it’s yours!” as if something is being sold]. The girls are delivered to the groom’s family like a pack of goods delivered to their buyer at the marketplace or at an auction.

Yes… For instance, the scene in which Selma is taken to the hospital on her nuptial night, is real. Someone who works in a public hospital in Ankara told it to me. It was a situation that he encountered often during wedding seasons, in the spring and summertime, like police stops. Suspicious families would come and check their bride’s virginity. Speaking of the tradition scenes, I wanted to move away from the journalistic models that are published in the newspaper everyday or things like virginity surveys that we see all the time. I’ve always wondered who writes those and with what authority. And I tried to discover what lies under the surface by asking people I knew were knowledgeable about these matters. But what was essential for me was to be able to film those girls in different poses, so to show that we could also look at them without associating their bodies with sexuality.

How did you decide to present the story like a fairy tale and to make Lale’s innocence its center of gravity?

At the beginning, I felt the need to move away from true stories and from the naturalism that is so dominant in today’s cinema, because this is after all a very dark subject matter. So I felt like I needed to bring in some kind of light. But of course the girls’ situation is so real that I didn’t want to imprison the characters in that reality. And there was also the desire to depict these girls as heroines, like when Nur breaks the chairs after being accused of doing something disgusting and screams: “Then these chairs are also disgusting, because they touched our asses!” The wish to adopt a fable-like style became all the more apparent when we got together with the actresses. I wanted to portray these girls like a five-headed monster. They were like supernatural, otherworldly creatures for me with their long hair, which was reminiscent of a horse’s mane.

The camera films the characters with an innocence equal to theirs—that is to say, the film’s form embodies this innocence, as if the girls were observing their own bodies and getting to know them. And as you’ve said, the subtle balance between tragedy and comedy gives the film the lightness of a feather.

I think you can find the essence of someone’s gaze in the way they use the camera. I remember the first few shots of Jean-Claude Brisseau’s Secret Things. There, for instance, I immediately sensed a worrisome gaze in his way of filming those women. But the opposite was true in my case. I wanted to capture the freely moving bodies of these girls from as close as I could. I wanted the camera to have the same freedom and to film them as they were, a group of carefree and innocent children.

Mustang performs cinema’s duty to remind and remember—the urgency of which is more than ever apparent today—by confronting a grim reality of Turkey. In this respect, I assume it is a priority for you that the film reaches Turkish audiences, right?

I am worried of course by the increasing censorship in Turkey. But after receiving warm reactions from a few people here whose responses I was fearing the most, I felt like there could still be a sane mentality in the country. Let’s say the worst happens and the film is banned—which I don’t think will happen—it would still be impossible to prevent it from being watched, because as we know, films travel to all sorts of places thanks to the Internet today. I believe that no matter what happens, the film will continue to live, and a sane fraction of Turkey will embrace it. The film reflects a human reality and you can’t run away from that reality no matter how much you close your eyes. I remember a tweet during [the] Gezi [Park protests]: “We are so right!” And that’s also true of the girls in the film. They are so right that it’s impossible to say they aren’t.

Cannes Review: Directors' Fortnight Prize Winner 'Mustang ... Jessica Kiang from The Playlist

The Lumière Reader [Brannavan Gnanalingam]

Film Corner, The [Greg Klymkiw]

Avuncular American [Gerald Loftus]

Cannes: ‘Embrace of the Serpent’ wins at Directors’ Fortnight Michael Rosser

Deniz Gamze Ergüven: 'For women in Turkey it's like the middle ages' Rachel Cooke interview from The Guardian, May 15, 2016

Meet Deniz Gamze Ergüven - Indiewire Laura Berger interview from indieWIRE, September 8, 2015

'Mustang': Cannes Review - The Hollywood Reporter David Rooney

Cannes Film Review: 'Mustang' - Variety Jay Weissberg

Mustang review: The Virgin Suicides in Anatolia is a sweet ... Jordan Hoffman from The Guardian

Mustang (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Erice, Víctor

Victor Erice Adrian Danks from Senses of Cinema

Writing Cinema, Thinking Cinema ... Víctor Erice from Rouge, January 1998

On the Uncertain Nature of Cinema by Victor Erice (in Rouge) On the Uncertain Nature of Cinema (By Way of the Work of Manoel de Oliveira), from Rouge 2004

Erice-Kiarostami: The Pathways of Creation Alain Bergala from Rouge (2006), written for the catalogue of the exhibition Erice-Kiarostami: Correspondences

Risks and Revelations: Erice-Kiarostami Erice-Kiarostami: Correspondences, by Miguel Marías from Rouge (2006)

Letters to the World: Erice-Kiarostami: Correspondences Curated by ... Article on the Erice-Kiarostami: Correspondences exhibition in Barcelona in 2006 by Linda C. Ehrlich from Senses of Cinema

SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (El espíritu de la colmena) A- 94

Spain (97 mi) 1973

“It's me, Ana...It's me, Ana.” —Ana (Ana Torrent)

Something of a memory play, a poem of awakening, a reconstruction of a past that’s been stolen from an entire generation, that needs to rediscover itself through this slowly realized, hauntingly beautiful Spanish film set in the shadow of Franco during the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in 1940, showing how the world of adults and the world of children intersect, told from the point of view of a young 8-year old girl Ana, Ana Torrent, who like Linda Blair in THE EXORCIST (1973) has been haunted by this role ever since. Told without any narrative, but from a series of impressions, we discover that the adult lives of her mother and father are in quiet turmoil, as they barely speak to one another and instead remain totally isolated in the rural countryside with little contact from the outside world. Her father (Fernando Fernán Gómez) tends to his bees, keeping a scientific journal, while his wife writes letters to a long lost lover exiled in France, leaving the two children, Ana along with her older 10-year old sister Isabel (Isabel Telleria), alone to their own devices most of the time. Much of this feels like personal recollections, where during the Franco era, people were afraid to open their mouths for fear of political reprisals and instead lived secret lives. Released two years before the death of Franco, this was the first Spanish film to portray a freedom fighter, someone on the losing side of the Civil War, with any degree of sympathy. Much of the film is wordless, or is spoken through whispers, where the muted exterior world has an impact on an equally disturbing interior world which at times resembles the horror genre, where the director has a habit of making quick cuts away from scenes that haven’t yet played out, leaving the audience to wonder, like Ana, as if stuck in a perpetual dream state not being able to recognize real life from an imaginary world. This has become a familiar metaphoric representation of the Franco era, recently expressed through Guillermo Del Toro’s PAN’S LABYRINTH (2006), which was a much more violent and sadistic portrait lacking some of the poetry of this film.

Erice offers no clues about what’s going on until well into the picture when we see Ana paging through a family album and deliberately leaves much to the imagination of the viewer. In one of the more traumatic sequences, Ana finds her sister lying on the ground, possibly dead, which is highly disturbing when no adult can be found. Perhaps more than any other scene, this slowly calibrated revelation is fraught with menace, shot almost like a ghost movie, where the world becomes a shadowy existence. Ana is not amused when she discovers her sister has been playing tricks on her. Adults and children alike are excited when a truck arrives bringing an exhibition of cinema, which for most is their first exposure to moving pictures, and happens to show James Whale’s FRANKENSTEIN (1931), where an indelible image of Frankenstein and the little girl sticks in Ana’s mind, wondering why he killed her. When she asks her sister, Isabel reminds her that everything in movies is fake, that no one was actually killed, but takes her to an abandoned stone hut in the middle of an open wheatfield where she claims she can conjure up images of a spirit that can take human form if she closes her eyes and identifies herself. Ana returns there regularly and is surprised to find a real partisan holed up there with a wounded leg, so she brings him clothes and food. When he later disappears, having been hunted down and shot in the middle of the night, the police inspector discovers items belonging to Ana’s father. She runs away when her father discovers her making a visit to her secret location. Without any family connection left, Ana is out on her own lost in the countryside having to fend for herself as the FRANKENSTEIN scene with the little girl replays itself, where the real and the imagined become inseparable. The original music by Luis de Pablo is playfully childlike, with luminous cinematography from Luis Caudrado (who later discovered he was going blind and killed himself), also an unforgettable child performance by Torrent, who’s so bewildered and confused that we rarely get to see her smile, while the evocative mood is quietly mesmerizing in this impressionistic vignette of secrecy and lost innocence.

Time Out review Tony Rayns

Erice's remarkable one-off (he has made only one film since, the generally less well regarded El Sur) sees rural Spain soon after Franco's victory as a wasteland of inactivity, thrown into relief by the doomed industriousness of bees in their hives. The single, fragile spark of 'liberation' exists in the mind of little Ana, who dreams of meeting the gentle monster from James Whale's Frankenstein, and befriends a fugitive soldier just before he is caught and shot. A haunting mood-piece that dispenses with plot and works its spells through intricate patterns of sound and image.

Village Voice (Michael Atkinson) review

Set in 1940 in Spain's Castillian countryside, the film centers around eight year-old Ana (the haunting Ana Torrent in an extraordinary performance) and her ten year-old sister Isabel (Isabel Telleria). In the town square, they join the other children for a screening of James Whale's Frankenstein. Ana becomes fascinated by the monster and is convinced that he still exists, somewhere out there in the countryside.

In an abandoned farmhouse, she finds an escaped Republican soldier (on the losing end of Franco's Civil War) and believes that he's her monster, bringing him clothes and food. Erice meant his film as a sly social commentary, but his opinions are so well enveloped in the film's dreamy coming-of-age tapestry that moviegoers worldwide (especially younger ones) have embraced it. Mostly, it captures the mood of childhood, the mystery, the newness, and the unseen tragedies.

Spanish master Víctor Erice graduated from film school in the early 1960s, and has since earned a living writing criticism, directing television, and filming commercials. He has made only three features in the last 33 years, debuting with The Spirit of the Beehive in 1973, and taking roughly a decade between movies thereafter. Apparently his compulsions apply more to perfection than process. In the U.S. Erice has always been a negligible figure, but in the U.K. Beehive and 1992's Quince Tree of the Sun are routinely remembered as two of the greatest films ever made. In any case, Beehive remains arguably the finest and most beautifully wrought first film of the European '70s, a mysterious crucible as elusive, concrete, and visually primal as anything by Herzog, Straub, Olmi, or Denis. But it is also an unashamedly symbol-drunk piece of work; as if shopworking with folklore that doesn't exist, Erice insists through his visuals that everything, even the vast, furrowed Castilian plains themselves, signifies emotional intangibles. Set in post–Civil War 1940, the movie dreamily documents a rural village's quotidian, but does it so elliptically that, as is the vogue in recent Asian cinema, half the story and all of the backstory must be sought at the movie's fringes, between its scenes, and in its silent ruminations.

The connections among Beehive's central family—two ebony-eyed young sisters Ana and Isabel (Ana Torrent and Isabel Tellería), a distracted, love-letter-writing mother (Teresa Gimpera), an older, beekeeping father (Latin cinema vet Fernando Fernán Gómez)—aren't even apparent until deep in the film. Instead, precedence is given to the overbearing call-and-answer between earth and sky, and to the arrival in town of a traveling projectionist and an old, dubbed copy of James Whale's Frankenstein (1931). For the girls, the film's fierce oddness, experienced in a cinema-poor context, is electric, but it rhymes with the world as they see it—stretching away from them in every direction, rife with unclear connections, treacherously inhabited by images that belie their own meaning. Mushrooms, family snapshots (clues to Mom's forlornness), the motivations of grown-ups, a dead body, the movie image itself: Everything disguises its true nature, and Erice's implicit idea, that childhood is a process by which we understand the lies of life, is nearly as harrowing as the scale of the landscape in contrast to its pint-sized heroines.

Naturally, the phobic scene in Frankenstein when the monster confronts a flower-picking girl by the pond continuously haunts Ana's worldview—in the crayon-drawn opening credits, in her dreams, and when a wounded fugitive with large feet appears in an abandoned barn. Shot in an unforgettably jaundiced twilight (the cinematographer, Luis Cuadrado, was reportedly going blind during the shoot, and killed himself in 1980), Beehive is a graceful and potent lyric on children's vulnerable hunger, but it's also a sublime study on cinema's poetic capacity to reflect and hypercharge reality. Virtually everything about it is iconic, from Erice's perspective-assault imagery to Torrent herself, who with just two appearances ( Beehive and Carlos Saura's Cría Cuervos) became a new cineastic generation's totem of fearless innocence.

Slant Magazine review Dan Callahan

Every magic hour, light-drenched image in Victor Erice's Spirit of the Beehive is filled with mysterious dread. Set in post Civil War Spain, circa 1940, it tells the tale of two young girls, Ana (Ana Torrent) and Isabel (Isabel Tellería), whose lives are marked when their village plays James Whale's Frankenstein. The print they watch apparently does not include the censored moments when Karloff's monster throws a little girl into a lake. They see the girl play with the Monster, then they see the girl's father carrying her drowned body down the street (every child who saw this scene was hit by it: just ask your parents or grandparents). Isabel tells Ana that the spirit of the Monster lives in an empty outhouse near the village. As Ana becomes more and more intrigued with this possibility, a sort of hesitating menace seems to ooze out of every corner of the film.

Spirit of the Beehive is told from a child's point of view. The girl's parents (Fernando Fernán Gómez and Teresa Gimpera) are fairly impenetrable figures, though it's clear that their marriage is in trouble. There's something voluptuous about the cinematography, and this suits the sense of emerging sexuality in the girls, especially in the scene where Isabel speculatively paints her lips with blood from her own finger. At times, Beehive seems a little too in love with its own prettiness. Shots are held for longer than they should be so that we can gaze at the sun coming up, or at a pattern of light coming through a window. Cinematographer Luis Cuadrado was going blind at the time he shot this, so he seems to be cramming in as much optical wonderment as he can. It's hard not to feel that this is a film where visual beauty is being indulged for its own sake, and sometimes to the detriment of the movie. It's a mood piece, certainly, a personal collection of moments that add up into a kind of reflective-afternoon dreamscape. In Franco's Spain, everything had to be in code, and the film gives us a subtle sense of what it is like to live under a dictatorship.

Torrent, with her severe, beautiful little face, provides an eerily unflappable presence to center the film. The one time she smiles, it's like a small miracle, a glimpse of grace amid the uneasiness of black cats, hurtling black trains, devouring fire and poisonous mushrooms. These signs of dismay haunt the movie. Like Jean Vigo's L'Atalante and Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter, Spirit of the Beehive is one of those strange, essentially private one-offs in film history that grows larger because of its isolation (Erice has only made two films since). But another Spanish film with Ana Torrent, Carlos Saura's Cría Cuervos, expresses the same concerns with much greater lyricism and specificity. The Saura film is a weighty bookend for Beehive, and they belong together as works of art made under the shadow of (and stimulated by) governmental strain.

Victor Erice: The Spirit of the Beehive Derek Malcolm’s Century of Films from the Guardian

I once showed a dozen or so classic non-American films to students at the Royal College of Art. To my surprise, despite the fact that the list included the work of such world-renowned directors as Luis Bunuel, Satyajit Ray and Kenji Mizoguchi, the film they fell in love with was Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive. They rightly thought it close to magic. It is one of the most beautiful and arresting films ever made in Spain, or anywhere in the past 25 years or so.

Set in the Castillian countryside around 1940, when Franco had won the civil war but was still hunting down republican sympathisers, and made in 1973 when it was necessary for Spanish film-makers to cloak their political messages in allegory, it has an eight-year-old girl called Ana, superbly played by Ana Torrent, as its central character.

She watches James Whale's Frankenstein at the local cinema and can't understand why Frankenstein kills the little girl he meets and seems to cherish by the lakeside. Her elder sister, Isabel (Isabel Telleria), explains that nobody actually dies in movies. But she adds that the monster is really a spirit who can take on human form and can be summoned up by closing your eyes and calling out: "I'm Ana". She has seen him in a deserted outhouse near the village.

Ana is detemined to invoke the spirit. Going across the deserted fields to the outhouse, she finds a republican fugitive and brings him clothes and food. For her, he is Frankenstein and even though he is shot by the civil guard, she is certain spirits don't die and dreams that she meets him, like the little girl in Whale's film. Brought back home by her distracted parents and put to bed, she goes to her bedroom window and whispers: "I'm Ana, I'm Ana."

The film can be construed in many ways but is, above all, an almost perfect summation of child hood imaginings. It is also about the pall Franco's long shadow left over Spain. Ana's father, played with understated power by Fernando Fernan Gomez, has evidently been traumatised by the civil war and is a shadowy figure writing a treatise on beekeeping while his wife writes letters to a would-be lover, exiled in France. They are a family "locked up in themselves", unable to avoid the terrible emotional consequences of the civil war and the absolute triumph of dictatorship.

The film is thus cloaked in quiet and sadness, through which its children move almost as if in a dreamworld of their own. It is brilliantly shot by the great Luis Cuadrado in atmospherically muted colours: the series of dissolves with which he denotes the passing of time outside the makeshift cinema where the children see Frankenstein provides one stunning sequence, but there are many.

Few know that Cuadrado was going blind at the time, which makes his work all the more remarkable. There is also a memorable score from Luis de Pablo, which sums up everything while underlining nothing. It is virtually impossible to get the sight and sound of the film out of one's mind after watching it.

But, of course, it is chiefly Erice's film - a perfectly controlled and imagined first feature so painstakingly made that Elias Querejeta, one of Spain's most enlightened producers, worried that it would never be completed. To date, Erice has made only two more films: South, which is merely half a story, never completed, and The Quince Tree Sun, one of the most extraordinary films about painting ever conceived. He is now working on another one, late as usual.

The Spirit of the Beehive: Spanish Lessons Criterion essay from Paul Julian Smith

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) - The Criterion Collection

Writing Cinema, Thinking Cinema ... by Victor Erice Rouge, January 1998

On the Uncertain Nature of Cinema by Victor Erice (in Rouge) On the Uncertain Nature of Cinema (By Way of the Work of Manoel de Oliveira), from Rouge 2004

Erice-Kiarostami The Pathways of Creation by Alain Bergala (in Rouge) Alain Bergala from Rouge, 2006

Turner Classic Movies review James Steffen

not coming to a theater near you (Leo Goldsmith) review

DVD Verdict (Bill Gibron) dvd review [Criterion Collection]

The DVD Journal | Quick Reviews: The Spirit of the Beehive: The ... Mark Bourne

DVD Times - DVD Times Noel Megahey

Film Notes -Spirit of the Beehive Kevin Hagopian from New York State Writers Institute

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [5/5] Richard Scheib

CultureCartel.com (Lee Chase IV) review [3.5/5]

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Jon Danziger) dvd review

filmcritic.com (Keith Breese) review [5/5]

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]

THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (El Espiritu de la Colmena, 1973) Mondo 70: A Wild World of Cinema

Reel.com dvd review [4/4] Tim Knight

Electric Sheep Magazine Virginie Sélavy

PopMatters (Michael Buening) review

Raging Bull Movie Reviews (Mike Lorefice) review [4/4]

DVD Talk (Svet Atanasov) dvd review [4/5] [Criterion Collection]

World Socialist Web Site Richard Phillips

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) dvd review [4/5]

Epinions [Stephen O. Murray]

Twitch review Canfield

THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (Victor Erice, 1973) Dennis Grunes

The Spirit of the Beehive: Facts, Discussion Forum, and ... Absolute Astronomy

Spirit of the Beehive Geocities

Spirit of the Beehive web discussion from The Auteurs

Cinematheque Ontario - Film Details - SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE

TV Guide review

Boston Globe review [3.5/4] Wesley Morris

DVDBeaver.com [Nick Wrigley]

Young Actress Reviews

The Spirit of the Beehive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Image results for Spirit of the Beehive

YouTube - The Spirit of the Beehive : Ana meets a stranger on YouTube (3:24)

YouTube - The Spirit of the Beehive - "The Spirit's House" (6:15)

Francisco Franco - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Spain under Franco - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

General Francisco Franco

Spain - THE FRANCO YEARS

Franco's Spain

SOUTH (El Sur)

Spain France (95 mi) 1983

The Tech (MIT) (Ricardo Rodriguez) review

The sublime Spirit of the Beehive was a daunting act to follow, but ten years on Erice produced a film to equal that earlier masterpiece. The setting is northern Spain in the late '50s. We look again through the eyes of a child, ever watchful and all-seeing, winkling out the secrets of this world apart, where there is neither Good nor Evil; no heroes, no escape; and life is lived in spluttering bursts of poetic intensity. Erice creates his film as a canvas, conjuring painterly images of slow dissolves and shafts of light that match Caravaggio in their power to animate a scene of stillness, or freeze one of mad movement. The dramatic impact of gorgeous image and tantalising message is enormous.

EL SUR, WHICH MEANS "the south" in Spanish, is director Victor Erice's second film. His first movie, The Spirit of the Beehive, won the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival. Beehive, like El Sur, is told from a child's perspective.

El Sur is a simple film, rich in interesting childhood observations and perspectives. It is marred, however, by underdeveloped characters and the lack of a sense of closure.

The film is set in late 1950s Spain and revolves around the relationship of 8-year-old Estrella and her mysterious father, Agustin. The father and daughter were once close, but their relationship begins to break down as the film progresses.

In the second part of the movie, Estrella (now 15) and her father no longer enjoy the intimacy they once shared. Agustin has turned to drinking; his further mental decomposition and Estrella's subsequent visit to the South comprises the remainder of the film.

The character Estrella (Sonsoles Aranguren) is well developed and thoughtful. Estrella's actions and emotions are full of meaning and insight and not too naive. The film successfully explores a unique father-daughter relationship and the accepting nature of children.

Agustin (Omero Antonutti), however, is not fully developed as a character, despite his central role in the movie. Although the father character is meant to be mysterious, the reasoning behind many of his actions often needs more explanation. For example, his feelings for a past lover are never fully explained, leaving the viewers with an awful sense of being shut out. This and other underdeveloped aspects of the film ultimately affect the film's ending, which is unfulfilling, predictable, and not at all tragic.

On the whole, El Sur misses, primarily due to its poor character development. However, its childhood insights are genuine and heartwarming. A knowledge of Spanish might serve as added incentive to see the film.

DREAM OF LIGHT (El sol del membrillo)

aka: The Quince Tree Sun

Spain (133 mi) 1992

CineScene.com (Chris Dashiell) review

Films about art invariably make their case by virtue of the finished product: the activity is justified by the art. Victor Erice's "Dream of Light" is about the creative process. There is no "finished product" to justify the activity.

The very act of creation speaks for itself in this amazing portrait of middle-age Spanish artist Antonio Lopez taking on his aging body, the vagaries of mother nature and his own perfectionism while trying to paint a young quince tree he's planted in his backyard.

Not quite a documentary but certainly no work of fiction, this staged cinematic essay obsessively details the physical aspects of Lopez's work but it's as much about painting as it is about aging and the passage of time.

As if taking a cue from the lessons of an old art school teacher that Lopez reflects upon ("Fuller, fuller, he used to say, but I never understood what he meant until I was older."), Erice uses the fullness of his 138 minutes to give us the texture of the passing seasons and the slowness of Lopez's painstaking perfectionism.

During filming between Sept. 29 and Dec. 3, 1990 (Erice dutifully identifies each passing day), Lopez struggles to capture the play of autumnal light on the quince fruit as the weather turns and the light becomes too erratic. He turns to pencil but the tree turns too fast for him to freeze the moment and he realizes that he's slowed with age. As the tree sags under the weight of the heavy fruit, ripening and falling to the ground, he could be contemplating his own maturing body.

In leisurely conversations, Lopez chats about his work with his wife and fellow artist Maria Moreno, reminisces with art school chum and colleague Enrique Gran, and tries to explain himself to a visiting Chinese artist. These people play themselves with remarkable ease and the unscripted scenes flow with a naturalism that never betrays the hidden hand of Erice's direction.

The winner of the Cannes Jury Prize in 1992, this is only the third feature for Erice, best known for his 1973 art house hit "Spirit of the Beehive," but it's directed with the assurance and grace of a master. (His second film, "El Sur," plays for four days only next week at the Little Theater, beginning Sept 28.)

It's a rich work, lush and lovely and bustling with activity but paced at a contemplative stroll, like a time lapse recording in first gear. The slow seasonal shedding of the quince tree is more than a metaphor, it's life captured and shaped into a work of art.

Natural Selection - Movies - Village Voice - Village Voice J. Hoberman (Page 2, following his Gladiator review)

Victor Erice's 1992 feature is another sort of Mediterranean epic. This is a movie about the making of a static image, an unscripted (if staged) documentary in which artist Antonio López Garcia tries to paint the quince tree in his backyard—and fails.

Recently voted the best film of the past decade by the Cinematheque Ontario's international panel of 60 programmers and archivists, Dream of Light is an autumnal tale that marks the passing of a single season. It begins in Madrid on September 29, 1990, with López's preparations—making a frame, stretching his canvas, setting up an easel, studying and sniffing around the quince tree. Whether or not the artist is acting, this fastidious method seems appropriate to a filmmaker like Erice, who has made but three features in as many decades.

Nothing rushes the wonderfully alert and capable López. He creates precise spatial coordinates, first in the yard and then on his canvas. He uses white paint-marks to place the tree and its fruit. Other work goes on around him—some Polish laborers are renovating the apartment building. (At one point, they help the artist construct a shelter around his setup.) A colleague, the loquacious Enrique Gran, drops by to reminisce with López about their art-school days. The weather changes. Occasionally, Erice's camera tilts up to reveal a larger world. Meanwhile, the radio reveals historic doings in the Soviet Union and Persian Gulf. Throughout, López (a sort of painterly postimpressionist) keeps his eyes on the tree, working until he abruptly switches medium. He can no longer paint the tree but only draw it. The October light has become too erratic.

Sketching now in a chilly wind, López tells some foreign visitors that "the best part is being close to the tree." Whatever the artist's motivations, Erice is illustrating the notion articulated in André Bazin's "Ontology of the Photographic Image" that the visual arts are an atavistic desire to arrest nature's flux. Hence the film's many references to copies. The old painters keep returning to the subject of a snapshot taken of them 40 years before; López has a room full of busts and life masks; his studio is dominated by a model of the Venus de Milo.

By December, the quinces have begun to fall. In the movie's supreme gesture, López picks one and then another. Time has prevailed. He disassembles his easel, brings his drawing inside, and dismantles the shelter. Erice doesn't end here, though. He provides a coda in which the artist's wife, Maria Moreno—credited as the movie's producer—poses him on a cot for her painting. (Although he might be on his deathbed, she's painting him as a young man.) López falls asleep and Erice provides him with a dream as the camera, seemingly alone in the garden, continues to film the tree and its decomposing fruit.

More analytical than contemplative, never less than straightforward, Dream of Light makes no showy bid for the sublime. This philosophical film blots out vain pomp in suggesting that art is the imitation of nature. Marcus Aurelius would have approved.

Nitrate Online (Eddie Cockrell) capsule review

Talking Pictures (UK) review Nigel Watson

filmcritic.com awakes from this Dream Christopher Null

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [4/5]

The Boston Phoenix review Peter Keough

DVDBeaver.com [Gonzalo Blasco]

DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze

Erksan, Metin

DRY SUMMER (Susuz Yaz)

Turkey (90 mi) 1963

Classic Films Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

Super-weird Turkish film #1. This is an overplayed melodrama about two brothers (a good one and a bad one) whose romantic and economic rivalry threatens an entire village. Baddie has Goodie take the blame for a murder Baddie commits, and while Goodie is doing time, Baddie forces himself on Goodie’s super-hot but virtuous wife. Meanwhile Baddie cuts off the village’s water supply in order to charge the other farmers exorbitant fees. Water / drought as a metaphor for sexual repression is conveyed without a shred of subtlety, and the whole thing – with its mustache twirling and its jarring, high-contrast compositions – recalls an exotic mash-up of Sam Fuller and Russ Meyer. It’s high-camp primitivism that wins you over as it floats over the top and beyond.

Ermler, Fridrikh

FRAGMENT OF AN EMPIRE (Oblomok imperii)

Russia (96 mi) 1929

Women's Space in Soviet Film Narrative Judith Mayne from Jump Cut

Erwa, Jakob M.

HOMESICK B- 81

Germany Austria (98 mi) 2015 ‘Scope Official site

A German battle of wills movie about an odd set of neighbors that grows more psychologically disturbing, accentuating the idea of taking things the extreme. While there are other variations on this theme, including American examples that include D.J. Caruso’s DISTURBIA (2007) or Neil LaBute’s LAKEVIEW TERRACE (2008), where in each case the focus is on the extreme behavior of the demented neighbor, what sets this film apart is its extreme degree of politeness and civility. Shot in Berlin, a young couple, Jessica (Esther Maria Pietsch) and Lorenz (Matthias Lier), are ecstatic about moving into their spacious new apartment, an old building with arched ceilings and windows allowing plenty of light, offering a cavernous interior expanse, already entering into the psychological realm, expressed with a series of cold, austere shots of an empty apartment from cinematographer Christian Trieloff. An upwardly mobile couple pleased at the discovery of such a stylish old-world place to live, she is an aspiring cello student while he’s a physiotherapist at a local school. With help from friends, their apartment soon fills up with furniture and personal belongings, where the young group celebrates afterwards with food and music, causing a bit of a ruckus, as an elderly upstairs neighbor, Hilde Domweber (Tatja Seibt), identifying herself as the building’s unofficial caretaker, knocks on their door requesting quiet, as there are many elderly inhabitants not used to a display of such youthful exuberance. Apologizing profusely, the young couple delivers a peace offering the following morning that is graciously accepted, though Hilde indicates a concern that the demographics of the neighborhood are changing, as many of the longtime older residents are being replaced by a much younger generation that may not share similar interests, offering them in return a strange (and somewhat ugly) figurine as a welcoming gift. Certainly one of the striking aspects of the film is the overall blandness of the youthful characters, where there is nothing drawing attention to any one of them, as they all appear equally anonymous. The gray, colorless look of the interiors adds to this dulled perception, as there’s a bit of gloom in the air.

Jessica, in contrast, is in exceedingly good spirits as she’s recently been selected to represent Germany in an international Young Classical music contest in Moscow, a huge national honor and a matter of great personal prestige, where her outlook looks exceedingly bright, receiving intensive instructions from the music instructor that recommended her, whose message is: “It’s the subtle nuances. They make the difference,” requiring uninterrupted practice time, where she’s seen rehearsing Bach-Cello Suite no.5 In C Minor, BWV 1011 - Prelude (1/6), Pablo Casals (7:18). Once Lorenz is off to school, Jessica plugs in her electronic practice instrument that she hears with headphones, literally inhabiting her own private domain. In keeping with Berlin traditions, the apartment has no curtains, allowing the upstairs neighbor to spy on her practice session from an overlooking window, causing a certain amount of distraction and apprehension, as Jessica feels she is invading her private space. While Lorenz suggests putting a curtain in the window, Jessica is quick to defend the “open” space, claiming she doesn’t want to lose it, as it’s in keeping with the openness of the creative process as well as the special allure of their home. Rather than spend afternoons alone, she brings back a tiny kitten to keep her company, placing a little collar around her neck for identification. Each time she takes out her cello, however, she is interrupted by some mysterious distraction, including repeated rings at the front door, yet there is no one there. Worst of all, someone leaves a large pile of animal feces on her welcoming doormat, though no other pets are known to be in the housing complex. Earlier in the day, when taking out the garbage, Jessica nearly collides with Hilde, as if she has been lurking just outside her door, while late at night, she is awoken by inexplicable hammering coming from the apartment above hers. When her kitten disappears, Jessica is certain she the subject of a harassment campaign, where her neighbor seems to be taking an unusual delight in her misery, though in contrast to the spaciousness of the opening, the four walls seem to be closing in on her, though one thinks she could be succumbing to the enormous pressure of stress as the music competition nears.

The director does a good job blending the reality of Jessica’s everyday life with a blurring of the imagination, where a chain of unfortunate events begins to eat away at her. Jessica and Lorenz attempt to clear the air with the neighbors by having a nice uneventful dinner together, where the glee expressed by Hilde’s husband Helmut (Hermann Beyer) when showing Lorenz his prized gun set should be enough to alert anybody, but Lorenz, especially, who is gone all day at work, remains clueless, showing little empathy for Jessica’s deteriorating condition. When she finds the kitten’s collar hidden in Hilde’s home, she goes ballistic with accusations of cruelty and intentional provocation, which only grow worse when she later discovers the dead animal in the laundry room. Outraged to the point of furious indignation, she once again confronts Hilde on the staircase, hurling charges that bring other residents out into the hallway, publicly condemning the woman as the scourge of the earth, but no one else has noticed anything remotely suspicious, leaving Jessica seething alone in a blistering rage, where Lorenz has to kindly walk her back to her apartment, where the unsettling situation has gotten out of control, where he no longer believes in her credibility, feeling she may have gone over the edge. When her music instructor pulls her out of the competition, noticing her nerves are frazzled and her skills regressing, Jessica only grows more entrenched, going into combative warrior mode, convinced this woman is a menace and determined to put an end to it. The manifestation of her increasing anxiety is all the more alarming by focusing so completely on her restricted and suffocating space inside her apartment, growing increasingly tense and paranoid about the rising dangers of the world outside. It’s an interesting take on the plight of urban living, locked behind sophisticated security systems designed to keep undesirable forces out, turning the concept around where stuck inside with no conceivable way out lies a poisonous atmosphere growing increasingly toxic and insufferable, literally testing the limits of one’s sanity when forced to endure these dehumanizing conditions. While the film remains minimalist and low key throughout, it does a good job accentuating Jessica’s internalized fears and growing paranoia, developing into a twisted and psychologically altered form of hysteria that continually distorts reality, delving into horror territory, where a simple note in the final credits, “Dedicated to my neighbors,” is sure to get a chuckle from the audience.

Chicago Reader JR Jones

A high-strung cellist and her husband move into a new apartment building, where the musician, increasingly agitated over an upcoming international competition, begins to suspect that the old woman living one floor up wants to drive her mad. Austrian writer-director Jakob M. Erwa makes eerie use of the building's high ceilings and wide-open stairwells as the tension between the two women escalates. Eventually the musician begins to seem more paranoid than preyed upon, and the movie turns into a room full of mirrors. Erwa gets most of the credit for this with his cagey plotting, but he couldn't have pulled it off without veteran actress Tatja Seibt as the woman upstairs; her blunt features suggest a harsh intent but can also soften in vulnerability. In German with subtitles.

HomeSick | Eye on Films

Ambitious cello student Jessica moves into a new flat, together with her boyfriend Lorenz. When she receives the honorable invitation to represent Germany in an international contest for classic music it seems to be her great opportunity – at the same time it means enormous pressure.
In her home, Jessica starts to prepare herself meticulously for the contest. However, her own four walls don’t seem to give her shelter as Jessica finds herself more and more exposed to small and major anonymous harassments. What is the neighbour's involvement prying mysteriously behind half-closed curtains? Lorenz doesn’t notice any of this and therefore finds it hard to believe Jessica’s assumptions, which creates conflict between the young couple. The increasing pressure and stress begin to noticeably gnaw on Jessica’s everyday life and pretty soon reality and imagination blur. Eventually Jessica finds her life scattered, caused by her own ambition. In the desperate hope to restore her felicity, she starts to defend her home – at all cost…

Homesick London Film Festival review | Cine Outsider Slarek

When Jessica and Lorenz move into a new apartment all seems to be going well, but Jessica soon starts to suspect that the woman upstairs has sinister intentions. Slarek continues his round-up of films from this year's London Film Festival with HOMESICK, an initially intriguing and icily cool thriller from Jakob M. Erwa.

Things appear to be going well for cello-playing music student Jessica and her teacher boyfriend Lorenz when they move into their spacious new apartment. It's a great place, too, located in one of those old buildings where the ceilings are too high to reach even if you jump and whose living room is big enough to host a debutant ball in. The celebratory noise made on their first night there prompts a complaint from their upstairs neighbour, the middle-aged Hilde Domweber. Lorenz profusely apologises and the next morning Jessica knocks on their door to second his words. Hilde is understanding and even gives Jessica a moving-in present, a cherubic angel statue which Jessica politely accepts in spite of object's ugliness.

When Jessica is nominated to represent her country in an international competition she is understandably excited, but is aware of the pressure this is likely to put her under. All seems fine until she arrives home from a recital to find a sizeable pile of faeces on her doormat. Who could be responsible, particularly as the only animal in the building appears to be their tiny kitten Pikachu, which would be physically incapable of creating such a large deposit? Then again, when Jessica was taking out the trash the day before she almost collided with Hilde, who was outside her door and acting almost as if she'd be caught doing something naughty. And when Jessica sits and practices on her noiseless electric cello, she repeatedly sees Hilde staring down from her kitchen window above. Could she be behind this? But what would be her motive? One thing Jessica does right when she makes this unpleasant discovery – something that still fails to occur to other film characters in her position – is take a picture of the deposit before she washes it off the mat so that her loving boyfriend can't brush it off as her imagination or an exaggeration of the truth. Not yet, at least.

It doesn't end there. One day Jessica's doorbell is repeatedly rung but when she answers the door there's nobody in sight, and late at night she is woken by what sounds like light hammering that appears to be coming from the apartment above. Increasingly stressed out, her music begins to suffer, and matters are made worse by some casual sniping about her financial dependency by her father when her parents drop round for a meal. A night out with friends does wonders for her mood and prompts her to deliver her most passionate recital yet, but when their kitten disappears and Jessica discovers its collar in Hilde and her friendly husband Helmut's flat, her sanity begins to slowly unravel.

The LFF write-up compared Homesick to the early work of Roman Polanski and I can't help but suspect that this claim is partly inspired by the similarity of this film's setup to that of Rosemary's Baby. Both stories revolve around a young couple who move into an apartment block and whose neighbours include an older couple who at first seem to be friendly but who later appear to have sinister intentions. Like the titular Rosemary, Jessica also falls victim to justifiable paranoia and has her fears dismissed by her initially sympathetic but increasingly impatient partner, a too-common trait in male companions in such films that does prove to have some logical foundation here. Where Homesick does differ significantly from Polanski's film is that Jessica is not pregnant and Lorenz doesn't appear to be climbing the career ladder as the result of some Faustian deal, ruling him out as a co-conspirator and steering us away from a satanic explanation.

And for this particular viewer, therein lies the problem. As Jessica's growing conviction that she is being tormented by Hilde starts to negatively affect her mental stability, I began to suspect that all was just as it seemed after all and that the big twist that the story seemed to be building to was that there wasn't actually going to be a twist after all. Partly as a result, I'd worked out what was going on some time before the film delivered it's would-be 'gotcha' surprise ending.

Which is a bit of shame, as the journey to this point is layered with intrigue and peppered with genuinely unsettling sequences. There's a compellingly steely quality to third-time feature director Jakob M. Erwa's observational approach, one humanised by Esther Maria Pietsch's thoroughly convincing performance as Jessica. It's the bond I formed with her that kept me in her corner for a good portion of the story, one that seriously faltered once it dawned on me what the issue really was. I was left with a sense that a film which had done such a good job of hooking me and holding my attention for so long ultimately bailed on me in its final third by building expectations on which it had never had any plans to deliver.

[CIFF '15] Urban Anxiety & Fortress Paranoia in Jakob M ... Brandon Howard

HomeSick | Reviews | Screen Jonathan Romney from Screendaily

meetmrkarma.com [Mr. Karma]

Spielfilm.de [Carsten Moll] (German)

CIFF 2015 Preview: “Anomalisa,” “James White” and Six More Indie Outlook

Multiglom [Anne Billson]

BFI London Film Festival 2015 « Austrian Cultural Forum ...

London Film Festival 2015: Who Dares Wins? | Film reviews ... Nick Halsted from The Arts Desk

Arthouse | daredo-media.com

CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL - ACFNY

'HomeSick': London Review - Hollywood Reporter Stephen Dalton

Berlin: First German Titles Picked for Sidebar - Hollywood ... Scott Roxborough from The Hollywood Reporter

AFM: France's Wide Drives Into Euro Arthouse Genre with ... John Hopewell from Variety

Escalante, Amat

LOS BASTARDOS

Mexico (90 mi) 2008

Los Bastardos Dan Fainaru at Cannes from Screendaily

Much like his debut Sangre, Los Bastardos is another protest film from Mexico's Amat Escalante, which points the finger at the industrialised world, in particular the US, for its treatment of illegal immigrants, and the tragedy that inevitably ensues. Escalante's arguments are valid and the film's horrific climax will shock the audience out of its complacency but the film's style – with its static first shot to a drawn-out ending – places this firmly in the art house niche.

The film's schematic plot follows two Mexican illegals, twentysomething Jesus (Rodriguez) and teenaged Fausto (Sosa) as they search for work and are exploited when they eventually find jobs. They are humiliated by a bunch of young rednecks and break into a private home where a terrified woman is convinced her partner has hired them to kill her, bringing about the film's bloody resolution.

Poverty turns this pair into criminals and frustration causes them to take violent revenge on white America, which is too interested in preserving its own creature comforts to realise what is happening before its eyes. The didactic script, however, does not flesh out any characters here. The American employers here are all either repellent or vicious while their offspring are moronic, drunken and useless d eleted the bit about the script

Narratively, the film flows easier than Sangre did, possibly due to the assistance of Aihan Ergursel (Nuri Bilge Ceylan's editor) and the art direction is more elaborate. Matt Uhry's camerawork is always effective, whether under the scorching sun or in the night sequences, even though Escalante lets the beautifully-framed images linger on screen for longer than necessary.

Working again with non-professional actors lends the characters a degree of authenticity that pushes the movie close to documentary status. There is no doubt that Escalante harbours commendable intentions here but the arthouse audience this film will reach was long ago converted to his cause.

HELI B 89

Mexico France Germany Netherlands (105 mi) 2013 Website Trailer

Open your eyes so you don’t miss the show. —narco gang torturer and murderer

A brutally disturbing look at the effect of the narco drug trafficking war in Mexico, a follow up to Gerardo Naranjo’s acclaimed Miss Bala (2011), both of which show how innocent people are pulled into the deadly affairs of Mexican drug cartels, which have killed as many as 60,000 people since the military declared a Mexican drug war in 2006, while another 20,000 are still unaccounted for, where cartels control 90% of the cocaine entering the United States, which amounts to a $30 billion dollar industry. Both Mexican and the U.S. media have made claims that the Sinaloa Cartel, considered the biggest criminal organization in the world, and the leading drug trafficker, has infiltrated the Mexican federal government and military, and colluded with it to destroy and take over other cartels. Much like the Russian film The Major (Mayor) (2013), both show the devastating effects of police corruption, where there’s reason to believe, according to Los Señores del Narco (Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers), a recent book by Anabel Hernández and Roberto Saviano, the author of Gomorrah, that Mexico’s war on drugs is a big lie, as they don’t believe the government is fighting the cartels, linking the violence of the cartels to the leadership of the Mexican state, which in the eyes of the public are indistinguishable. According to Saviano’s forward to the book, “Narcoland shows how contemporary capitalism is in no position to renounce the mafia. Because it is not the mafia that has transformed itself into a modern capitalist enterprise, it is capitalism that has transformed itself into a mafia. The rules of drug trafficking that Anabel Hernández describes are also the rules of capitalism.” Initially driven by personal outrage, the father of Ms. Hernández was kidnapped in 2000, where the Mexico City police would only investigate if they were paid, which the family refused to do, where her father was subsequently found murdered. Since Ms. Hernández began writing about the violence of the drug cartels, she has received boxes of dead animals left at her doorstep, where Mexico is the fourth most deadly country for reporters, topped only by Syria, Somalia, and Pakistan.

Amat Escalante worked as an assistant director to Carlos Reygadas in BATTLE OF HEAVEN (2005), becoming close friends afterwards, where Reygadas is listed as a producer of several Escalante films, including this one which won the Best Director prize at Cannes, following Reygadas who won the exact same award the year before with 2012 Top Ten List #2 Post Tenebras Lux. A picture of grim hopelessness, the film is set in the Guanajuato region of central Mexico, one of the more lawless, crime-ridden regions, seen as an arid desert of unending emptiness, where Escalante captures the squalidness of Mexico’s drug war in the opening scene, an extended sequence that shows two bound and gagged men laying face down in the back of a pickup truck, with a mud-covered boot stepping on a man’s bloodied face with tape covering his mouth. They stop at a bridge with a pedestrian crossing over the highway, quickly hauling a man’s body up the stairs where he is strung up and left for dead, hung by his neck with his hands tied behind his back in a public execution, a picture of mafia retribution, reminiscent of Mussolini and other Fascists executed at the end of the war, a humiliating act of revenge meant to discourage other Fascists from continuing the fight. The film then backtracks to events leading up to the execution, where Heli (Armando Espitia) is a young factory worker at a nearby auto plant living with his father, both working different shifts, also his 12-year old sister Estela (Andrea Vergara), his wife Sabina (Linda González) and their baby. A portrait of bleak lives, trouble starts when Estela develops a crush on the first boy she meets, the much older Beto (Juan Eduardo Palacios), a 17-year old special forces cadet, seen going through the grueling paces of intensive training, stealing two packets of cocaine intended for burning, thinking perhaps he could buy Estela’s hand in marriage or elope with the money earned by selling the confiscated drugs. When Heli finds the packets hidden on the roof inside a water tank, he tries to do the right thing and dumps the drugs in an unused well.

Government special forces barge in on them, breaking the door down and shooting his father, kidnapping both Heli and Estela, with a brutalized Beto already in the back of the van, where in short order it appears they are handed over to a narco gang, while Estela remains in the hands of corrupt government forces that likely sell her into prostitution, as she simply disappears. Heli and Beto are sadistically tortured in front of younger kids who are more interested in playing video games. Each is given a chance to take a whack at them, as Beto is beaten into losing consciousness, only to be revived for even worse, where the savage cruelty is shown with an alarmingly dispassionate casualness, as if the perpetrators are already numbed to their own nihilism. This leads back to the opening scene at the bridge, where Heli stumbles home in a kind of dazed confusion afterwards, where the film does explore the psychic cost of violence in great detail. The pain of his homecoming is further aggravated by a pair of unsympathetic cops who’d rather grill him with endless questions than offer him treatment for his medical injuries. The cinematography by Lorenzo Hagerman is reminiscent of early Kiarostami, where a lone car dots the desolate landscape with a painterly beauty, or Sabina returns home with groceries in hand only to see a stream of blood on the floor and her family missing, collapsing in the doorway, where the camera tenderly pulls back, as if offering her space for her grief. This is quite a contrast to the matter-of-fact cruelty that is part of the everyday horrors of the region, where even the investigating police are useless, requesting sexual favors from Heli in return for cooperation in finding his sister, who eventually wanders home on her own accord, pregnant and severely traumatized. The portrait is one of a system thoroughly broken at the highest levels, where corruption is so entrenched systematically that it reaches down to the lowest levels of society, leaving its citizens thoroughly disgusted by the extensive reach of the violence, leaving them demoralized by such dim prospects of a better future, where day in and day out, all that’s left is a collective, uncontainable trauma.

Georgia Straight [Janet Smith]

Small wonder director Amat Escalante took home Cannes’s best-director prize: it might be a blistering critique on police corruption, drug violence, and the hardships faced by an entire generation of young people, but Heli has the desolate beauty of the desert landscapes that surround it. A young girl takes up with an older boyfriend who stashes stolen drugs on her rooftop, hurling her working-class father, older brother, and sister-in-law into a seemingly inescapable nightmare. Brutal yet deeply humane. Unforgettable.

PlumeNoire.com [Moland Fengkov]

Although the title doesn’t refer to any religious belief – at least that’s what the director is saying – it is impossible to not establish a connection with the harsh journey a family has to endure in this movie: with Heli, Amat Escalante delivers the uncompromising and violent portrait of contemporary Mexico.

If the film includes a few scenes that will most likely shock the most sensitive spectators – most particularly a long torture sequence orchestrated by kids – violence is the backdrop of this story, omnipresent in each plan, whether it’s in everyday life or relayed through the media. We witness it in various forms, from insults to kicking against a door, the roar of machine guns, the killing of a puppy and bodies left on the side of a road. More importantly, it also follows survivors, threatening their post-traumatic recovery, bullying them into silence, while a – corrupted – police remains powerless. It even comes back to haunt them, as in this metaphoric – or would I say nightmarish – scene where an armored vehicle stops in front of a house and then leaves while making everything shake.

Following Los Bastardos’ brutal depiction of immigrants in Los Angeles, Mr. Escalante offers here a frightening vision of a country caught in the middle of a vicious war between drug traffickers and corrupt cops, with a high collateral body count. The film actually opens with a long, beautiful and disturbing sequence featuring a boot crushing a swollen face, in the back of a pickup truck. The camera first gets close to the body and then moves inside the vehicle to watch the road. This brings us to a bridge where we see criminals hanging one of their victims. Pulling with a dolly shot, the movie then transitions to a flashback, which establishes the premise of this story: Heli, a factory worker, lives with his wife, baby, father and his 12-year sister who’s dating a police cadet. Things however quickly get out of control after Heli gets rid of a couple bags of cocaine stolen by his sister’s boyfriend.

Escalante’s talent lies in his ability to introduce setting and characters in just a few short sequences before letting the camera walk us slowly through the story, making us experience the protagonists’ difficult journey. The scene where the camera follows the wife as she gets home and discovers that her house has been ransacked and that there is a trail of blood on the floor captures the character’s surprise and dismay. And when she collapses on her doorstep, the filmmaker pulls away quietly, like a discreet, silent witness, offering there a great moment of cinema.

Screen International [Jonathan Romney] also seen here: Heli

Mexican director Amat Escalante has come to specialise in startling, borderline-surreal scenarios of brutality, but his third feature Heli –following 2008’s US-set Los Bastardos - is all the more distressing for being drawn from headline reality. Set against the background of Mexico’s current drug wars, Heli is about innocents drawn by chance into the inferno of narco killing.

Stylistically a slow-burner, Heli is nevertheless remorselessly confrontational, observing violence unflinchingly and – many viewers will feel – in barely tolerable detail. While the film is deeply realistic at base, Escalante’s stylistic mix of long takes, elliptical editing and unexpected camera moves pushes it into the realm of bad dream.

Unapologetically tough viewing, Heli will be a difficult sell, and potentially a headache for certification boards. Just how rewarding its harsh vision is, that’s another matter - and while Heli’s competition slot will boost his auteur prestige, it’s not quite the decisive coup de cinema that Escalante’s admirers might have hoped.

Set in the Guanajato region of Mexico, the film begins with a brilliant extended shot that starts with a close-up on two bloodied bodies in the back of a truck. The sequence ends startlingly with a hanging, then backtracks to show the events leading to this summary execution. Heli (Espitia) is a young factory worker living with his wife Sabrina (Linda Gonzalez) and their baby, his father and his sister Estela (Vergara).

The latter, though only 12, is besotted with 17-year-old police cadet Beto (Palacios) who’s constantly putting the moves on her. Beto – seen going through humiliating paces as part of his cadet training - lays his hands on a stash of cocaine that has escaped burning as part of a government PR routine.

He hides it in Estela’s family’s water tank, but when Heli finds it, the well-meaning young man tries to do the right thing by dumping the drugs in a well. This instantly leads to reprisals, and to Heli and Beto being handed over – seemingly by government militia - to a narco gang.

At this point, things get grueling. While Estela is whisked away who knows where, the two captives are tortured by gang members. This extended, coolly observed scene makes for a challenging watch, with Beto beaten before having his penis set on fire – yes, you read that right. It’s a horrifying spectacle, only just about watchable because you can’t help being distracted by the question of how it was actually filmed.

Released relatively intact, Heli returns home only to find himself quizzed by a duo of unsympathetic cops. The story ends, against all odds, with some hope offered that, no matter how grim things have got for the family, there may conceivably be reconciliation in sight.

Heli is dispassionately filmed, the crime story recounted with a largely forensic matter-of-factness, although stylistic flourishes and deliberate pacing subvert the realism and load it with an eerie, dream-like quality - especially when an elegant, completely unexpected crane shot pulls back from Sabrina discovering the chaos that’s erupted in her home.

Even so, glimpses of TV news suggest that we’re watching a film very precisely rooted in recent Mexican reality, with some considerable anger to vent against corruption and incompetence in official approaches to drug crime.

At any rate, this is a state-of-the-nation drama of a very uncomfortable kind – arguably more uncomfortable than Gerardo Naranjo’s similarly themed Miss Bala, which tended to glamourise its subject with action-movie overtones.

It’s moot, though, whether the merciless lucidity of Escalante’s gaze entirely pays off. It’s hard not to feel that the torture scene is too graphically confrontational to have any substantially emotive effect; and the tactic of making us complicit in the violence (underlined by bored boys playing video games in the background) revisits ground well worked over since Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. What works strongest for Heli is its understated compassion towards its hapless characters, thanks to a sympathetic cast whom Escalante encourages to underplay, at times, almost to a Bresson-like degree.

'Mexico's war on drugs is one big lie' | World news | The Observer Ed Vulliamy book review of Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers, by Anabel Hernandez and Roberto Saviano, from the Observer, August 31, 2013

Kevin Jagernauth at Cannes from The Playlist

David Jenkins at Cannes from Little White Lies

Review: Emptily accomplished 'Heli' starts Cannes competition on a bleak note Guy Lodge at Cannes from Hit Fix, with more background here: Cannes Check 2013: Amat Escalante's 'Heli'

Heli, Young & Beautiful, The Bling Ring Keith Uhlich at Cannes from Time Out New York, May 16, 2013, also seen here: Keith Uhlich

Cannes 2013, Day One: Sofia Coppola offers the first misfire of the festival Mike D’Angelo at Cannes from The Onion A.V. Club, May 16, 2013

Fabien Lemercier at Cannes from Cineuropa

Tim Grierson at Cannes from Paste magazine

Stephanie Zacharek at Cannes from The Village Voice

Brief notes on some Cannes films, 2013 | Neil ... - Jigsaw Lounge Neil Young at Cannes from Jigsaw Lounge, also seen here: Neil Young

Movie Mezzanine [Tom Clift]

Cannes Virgin Festival Diary 1: From 'Gatsby' to 'Heli' and Back ... Tom Christie from Thompson on Hollywood, May 16, 2013

Daily | Cannes 2013 | Amat Escalante’s HELI David Hudson at Fandor, May 16, 2013

Amat Escalante, post-BASTARDOS Anna Tatarska interview from Fandor, May 16, 2013

Hollywood Reporter [Stephen Dalton] at Cannes, also seen here: Heli: Cannes Review - The Hollywood Reporter

Variety [Scott Foundas]

Dave Calhoun at Cannes from Time Out London, May 16, 2013

Time Out New York [Keith Uhlich]

Guardian [Catherine Shoard] at Cannes, also seen here: Cannes 2013: Heli – review and here: Catherine Shoard

Robbie Collin at Cannes from The Telegraph

'Great Gatsby' opens Cannes, while 'Heli' shows the grim reality of ... Ann Hornaday at Cannes from The Washington Post, May 16, 2013

Michał Oleszczyk at Cannes from the Ebert Blog

Manohla Dargis at Cannes from The New York Times, May 17, 2013

Escorel, Eduardo

LOVE LESSON (Lição de Amor)

Brazil (85 mi) 1975

Brazil Film Update Randal Johnson from Jump Cut

Before directing LICAO BE AMOR, his first feature, Eduardo Escorel had established himself as the foremost editor in Brazilian cinema, working on films such as Roche's LAND IN ANGUISH (1967), Diegues THE INHERITORS (1968), and Andrade's MACUNAIMA. His short documentary, VISION OF JUAZEIRO (969), is now being distributed in this country by the Latin American Film Project.

Based on the first novel by Mario de Andrade (the author of Macunaima, 1928), LICAO BE AMOR deals with a wealthy landowner and small industrialist in Sao Paulo in the 1920's, who hires a young Germano-Brazilian woman to serve as governess for his three children. In reality, the governess' purpose is to sexually initiate Carlos, the industrialist's 16-year-old son. Using a subdued and discrete style based on nuance and suggestion, much in contrast to the novel on which it is based, the film is a subtle analysis of the defense mechanisms of Brazil's bourgeoisie. While it may seem that the father has a very modern attitude toward his son, in reality he is exercising an extremely castrating authority designed to protect his own dominant role in the family and, by extension, in society. It is thus one of the first Brazilian films to deal seriously with the bourgeoisie as a socially dominant role in the family, and, by extension, in society. It is thus one of the first Brazilian films to deal seriously with the bourgeoisie as a socially dominant class. As Escorel himself observes, "Today we need to get away from schematic visions and deepen our level of analysis and perception of the bourgeoisie." There is also in the film a subtle critique of the sexism inherent in Brazilian social mores. The filmmaker has explained that the children's parents "are capable of identifying their son's anxieties or his sexual necessities, but they are totally incapable of thinking that the same type of problem might exist for their daughter."

Anisio Medeiro's scenography is one of the most exquisite period reconstructions in the history of Brazilian cinema. As yet unreleased in this country, the film was one of the most highly acclaimed films released in Brazil in 1976 and won more awards than any other film of that year.

Estrougo, Audrey

AIN’T SCARED (Regarde-Moi) B+ 91

France (93 mi) 2006 ‘Scope Official site Trailer

Since the riots of 2005 [2005 civil unrest in France - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia], filmmakers have been focusing their attention on the housing projects outside Paris, known as the banlieue region, with hopes of getting a better understanding of what provokes such anger and hostility from these regions. While this film is not a social commentary drawing moral or political conclusions, it’s more interested in exploring various states of mind in a fictionalized depiction of the way things are in one day in the life of a housing project populated by non-professional actors chosen because of their own personal connection to the material, with the thinking being that their natural inclinations and reactions are exactly what the filmmaker was looking for. Having spent some time in the projects herself, the first time writer and director has created an incendiary, rapid fire, living theater piece on über aggression written almost exclusively in urban slang, where educated French speaking viewers may themselves feel the need for subtitles.

Unlike other depictions, this one barely touches on drugs, guns, or gang infested criminality. There are no drive-by shootings and the illicit criminal activity is almost entirely offscreen. Instead this is more like living in a world of continuous taunts, where every second of your life, every breath you breathe is being challenged by someone else, where the struggle to determine the dominant Alpha male and female is on display 24 hours a day. A distinguishing characteristic here is showing who you are, not just being who you are, which would be considered a very stuck up white attitude, as in this depiction of the projects one spends very little time indoors, which is where the mothers and babies are. You have to face your public, subject to the judgment of others where every move anyone makes is scrutinized and usually ridiculed. The Alpha female in this picture is temporarily kicked off the throne, subject to such relentless teasing that she’s literally beaten and kicked until run inside where she is forced to brood alone until she can return with an even stronger vengeance.

With few exceptions, which might include a shot of the city at night, almost everything in the film takes place in or around the projects, where initially the males are featured, friendships and business relationships are explored, guys seem to end up doing what they believe they have to do to survive while at the same time protecting their little brothers and sisters from being victimized by their own friends. Guys try to hit on girls, who play hard to get, and have to deal with getting their feelings hurt in public, as other guys will dog them on this incessantly. The typical banter here revolves around sex, as guys talk about it all the time, pretend they have it all the time even when they aren’t, and present a sexual façade to others, especially the opposite sex, that hides their real self. Even in the bedroom it’s surprising how much importance is placed on what others will say, where that actually takes precedence over their feelings for one another, as word will get out. People will talk, and they will have to face their public. Simply from a viewing standpoint, this feels like watching the theatrical rivalry of opposing Greek choruses. There is no individuality, which would again be seen as a white notion. Instead the individual is always expressed within the context of the group, such as a soccer player or an athlete on a team. Individualism in this context is closer to leadership, star power, the ability to do things so well that you attract the attention and admiration of others. Leaders are looked up to, but they constantly have to prove themselves or they will be replaced. This is the natural order of things.

As we see the rhythms of the day unfold, the filmmaker interestingly returns to many of the same scenes from a different character’s standpoint, altering the timing and pace as the female perspective is introduced. Like one wave following another, most of the characters initially introduced vanish entirely from the screen as they are soon replaced by their female counterparts. The women are extremely possessive and protective about the men they know, even the ones they claim they are no longer interested in, as despite the enormity of the housing projects, there appears to be only a few good men worth fighting over. It is here that race raises its ugly head, as for black women it is unforgivable for black guys to have white women, claiming “Whites and Blacks shouldn’t mix.” In this Greek chorus mentality, white woman will have to face the angry wrath of black women, where this vicious desire to punish the offending party resembles the mob vengeance and open hostility displayed in medieval witch hunts. The disturbing imagery turns raw and wretchedly ugly, reaching a point from which there is no return, namely criminality. Until this graphic finale, nearly all of the other violence is expressed through vehement verbal confrontations, but this film shows how relentless escalating provocation can eventually lead to incendiary mob violence.

Festival of New French Cinema JR Jones from The Reader

Audrey Estrougo spent her teenage years in a housing project on the outskirts of Paris, and her intimate knowledge of that treacherous landscape informs this funky debut feature (released in France as Regarde-Moi, or “Look at Me”). Like Abdel Kechine’s Games of Love & Chance (2003), the movie explores the lives of modern teens, though Estrougo is even more direct in addressing her little community’s harsh racial and sexual codes. For the most part, the movie covers a single day, focusing on the boys in the first half and then rerunning the same sequence of events to focus on the girls in the second. The gulf between black and white is dwarfed by the one between men and women: in one scene a boy pressures his girlfriend for sex, but she worries that he’ll tell everyone; she tries to get him to say he loves her, but he worries that she’ll tell everyone. 93 min.

Jigsaw Lounge [Neil Young] Crossing Europe Film Festival (Linz) report

Phoney-feeling, structurally-gimmicky tale of youth disorder and romance in Paris's banlieue. Story is told first from the perspective of the male participants, then - after a startling "rewind" at the 50-minute mark - from that of the females, but in both sections the shenanigans only intermittently ring true. It doesn't help that the film has such a slick, conventional look and feel - at odds with its gritty choice of subject-matter. Depiction of how various races, cultures and religions rub along in such urban settings isn't without interest, and some effective contrasts are drawn between how the kids behave in private (alone or with familes) and in public (among their peer-groups). Over-ambitious picture can't, however, shed an air of ersatzness and nagging pointlessness, predictably opting for a "harrowing" finale of "shocking" sexual violence.

Rendez-Vous With French Cinema - Film - Series - Review - New York ... Stephen Holden from The New York Times

One place the film’s vision of Paris doesn’t encompass is the city’s outlying areas, where severe riots have broken out in recent years. The only film to go there, the 23-year-old director Audrey Estrougo’s “Ain’t Scared” (“Regarde-Moi”), is set in a housing project seething with ethnic tension. Here the boredom and rage of impoverished teenagers has created a youth culture so mired in hopelessness that aspirations to a better life elsewhere, or even to find love inside this toxic environment, are treated as weaknesses to be viciously crushed.

The movie views the same events through the eyes of a group of boys and then a group of girls. The language spoken is the same profane, dehumanizing argot heard in American cities. Your heart goes out to these young people forced to suppress any tender feelings in a culture of toughness and negativity.

The biggest difference between there and here, of course, is the lack of guns. Yet there is still violence. In the ugliest scene the girl who has the best chance of escaping is attacked, beaten up and possibly raped with a stick by a gang of jealous female peers.

12th Annual Festival of New French Cinema Facets Multi-Media

An astonishing debut for 23-year-old director Audrey Estrougo, Ain't Scared chronicles one day in the emotional life of a Parisian housing project. It focuses on a group of young people, each of whom tries in his own way to express deep feelings for someone else while simultaneously maintaining the hard emotional shells needed to survive in these mean streets. This is a very moving story of teenage boys and girls and the struggles that plague them, both large and small. By simply documenting a day in their lives, Ain't Scared reveals itself as a startling, piercing insight into banlieue life, the likes of which have rarely been explored in cinema since Mathieu Kassovitz's Hate. Filmmaker Audrey Estrougo lived in the banlieues for several years, and Ain't Scared is her first fiction feature as a writer and a director. Since the mid-1990's French filmmakers have turned their cameras on the banlieues, the working-class housing projects of France and Ain't Scared presents some of the ways in which French banlieues and their inhabitants are depicted in film. There are significant misrepresentations of the banlieues in modern culture and the social crises facing their inhabitants. It is particularly difficult for women to cope with the harsh reality of gender roles in the banlieues and the unwritten code that determines who you can and cannot date. Directed by Audrey Estrougo, France, 2006, 35mm, 93 mins. In French with English subtitles.

GreenCine [Sean Axmaker]

From my decidedly distant perspective, Ain't Scared, the debut feature from French director Audrey Estrougo has echoes of Abdellatif Kechiche's L'Esquive (aka Games of Love and Chance) in its portrait of the Paris projects, or in French lingo, les cities, but has its own sensibility and its own vivid surprises. There is little sense of racial divide or tension as we watch the young men of these ghettoized suburbs filled with minorities, the poor and unemployed, a cultural mix of French-born citizens of African, Arab, white, Jewish, and Asian ancestry, talk and play and flick shit at another (race does come up in the insults, but it is equal opportunity and decidedly non-aggressive).

But halfway through the film, which surveys a day in the life of the neighborhood as their local hero, Jo, prepares to leave to play football for Arsenal in England, the whole thing begins again, this time from the perspective of two of the young women: Julie, the white girl, and Fatima, the angry black girl who moons over Jo. Suddenly race is front and center. "Whites and Blacks shouldn't mix," the black girls (which, by their definition, encompasses both African and Arab) state to the camera in a scene as confrontational as anything in Do the Right Thing.

User comments from imdb Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California

Like Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 La haine and Abdel Kechiche's multiple-César-winning 2003/5 L'Esquive, this is a fiction feature about young inhabitants of the troubled Paris peripheral urban ghettos known as "la Cité" or "la Banlieue." Director Estrougo, for whom this is a first fiction feature, moved from the Marais quarter of Paris to the Banlieu at thirteen when her mother remarried and lived there for four years, and declares she has been digesting the experience ever since (she's only 23 or 24). Less interesting or appealing in plot or character terms than those earlier films, Ain't Scared/Regarde moi is arguably more sensitive as a "choral" or "ethnographic" portrait of the multi-ethnic, multi-racial adolescent boys and girls of the milieu, and particularly for its focus on the difficulties of being female in this urban-suburban jungle. The film deals with the two sexes schematically by being divided into two halves, both traversing approximately the same twenty-four-hour period; but while desultory and superficial at first, it achieves some depth at the end by zeroing in on two of the young women.

In the first half the males dominate. Yannick (Paco Boublard) is a jumpy, people-pleasing white boy involved in petty crime and on a mission to win back his black girlfriend, the beautiful Melissa (Djena Tsimba). He's pals with the athletic black guy Jo (Terry Nimajimbe), who's got a golden ticket out of the ghetto: he's been tapped by London's Arsenal football team. Yannik pals around with Jo's younger brother, Khalidou ((Jimmy Woha Woha), who's Jo's responsibility, there being no parents in evidence. Except for Jo, it's a given that most of the boys are stuck, but their constant concerns are impressing each other, working their little deals, and above all losing their virginity (the word "virgin" is a as bad a put-down as "fag"). Seduction was as central in L'Esquive as violence was in La haine. Here again it has somewhat the upper hand. In fact the movie begins with Mouss (Oumar Diaw), who's black, practicing in the mirror the rap he'll use to score with Daphne (Salome Stevenin), who's white. The girls are hard to get because they're afraid; there's not much of a comfort zone for anybody in this world. Paradoxically, perhaps, or simply because this is essentially a girl's story, the most violence we see is girls-on-girls.

The first half identifies the main girls in this loosely defined group, but the focus is always on the boy's concerns: getting a girl, gaining recognition among the guys. Though there's plenty of reference to race, the races intermingle freely. In fact every couple is mixed-race, and there's one Asian who seems completely at home with the rest of the boys.

Then, without anything particular happening, the focus shifts to the girls. In one scene they gather together to shout their hatreds and beefs at the camera: it's almost like a musical. The image of these girls shifts to black and white for a minute, as if to signal the starkness of the issues. It is a given that a girl who uses makeup or jeans is taken for a prostitute. All must protect themselves by downplaying their femininity, and sweat pants and "baskets" (running shoes) are their uniform.

Finally the focus is on just two girls, Julie (Emilie De Preissac), a white girl with an alcoholic father who's involved with Jo, though for most of the film she seems to be avoiding him; and the black Fatimata (Eye Haidara), whose still-traditional African mother can't possibly understand the grief she comes to when she goes out wearing a blonde wig. There are only the two parents visible. Fatimata's mom only smacks her. and Julie's dad is forever comatose in front of the telly. When she's been battered, she can only snuggle up to his inert body. It's the saddest and most moving image of the film. Both of these girls come in for beatings by other girls, Julie's the more severe (and so is her reaction). It's not always clear what'd going on. Americans may be lucky to have subtitles. Some avowedly "middle-class" French viewers of Ain't Scared have complained that the fast talk and Banlieue slang are so hard to follow they too need subtitles.

In an interview Estrougo says she initially chose the would-be cast members who had the most interesting personal stories, without screen tests. No doubt about the fluidity and conviction of the action and the authenticity of the settings. The scenes flow with so much good humor and speed, especially among the boys, that at times Ain't Scared, despite its ostensibly tough subject matter, can be a joy to watch. It has its occasional longeurs, but it doesn't harangue you like La haine. If you pay attention, there's also a lot of information here. Mulitple viewings might be necessary to grasp everything; unfortunately there aren't the usual dramatic "hooks" or catharsis that motivate repeats, and the appearance of superficiality (very much a valid representation of how adolescents communicate).

This film lacks the shock value of La haine or the charm of L'Escquive and it has not and will not do anywhere near as well as they (it gained some recognition, but not a lot of praise from French critics). The final resolution, though efficient, is a little bit feeble. Maybe Estrougo will do something that concentrates message and effect better next time; she does know her chosen milieu, and works brilliantly with non-actors.

Opened September 26, 2007 in Paris. Shown as part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center, New York, February 29-March 9, 2008.

The Auteurs' Notebook Daniel Kasman in Berlin

Strictly Film School Acquarello

Variety review Lisa Nesselson

Etheredge-Ouzts, Paul

HELLBENT

USA (84 mi) 2004

HellBent Ed Gonzalez from Slant magazine

When HellBent's hero, Eddie (Dylan Fergus), a pretty boy with a 1985 hairdo who works a desk job at a West Hollywood police department, is nearly killed by the story's iron-muscled killer, he asks his friend at the station, "Don't let them turn this into a fag bashing." This appeal is loaded, because it not only points to Eddie's fears and insecurities as a gay man but also serves as a calling card for the film, which insists on being treated just like every slasher film before it. But against all odds, or, rather, against all expectations, HellBent is better than most films of its ilk. Though the characters do everything wrong and die in the order you might expect them to, it's not without reason, and the film is distinguished by its set pieces, which aren't just some run-of-the-mill tableaux morts (some of the juiciest and most convincing decapitation sequences since Argento's Trauma), but frank expressions of frustrated gay identity.

On their way to a Halloween party in West Hollywood, Eddie and his friends are followed by a Tom of Finland type responsible for the deaths of two gay boys the night before. One by one, this silent killer picks off Eddie's friends, who share a reasonably complicated camaraderie with one another and whose deaths are not only underscored by a crushing sadness but also evoke a diversity of problems that effect the gay community. The homely Joey (Hank Harris) dies after finally experiencing an inkling of romantic bliss, Chaz (Andrew Levitas) while strung out on Ecstasy and unable to tell if the stab marks on his torso are real or flights of his drug-addled imagination, and Tobey (Matt Phillips) after showing the killer that beneath his drag couture he's all man. Even if Tobey's predicament doesn't inspire sympathy (it's obvious he wouldn't have a problem getting laid if he had gone out dressed as, say, a fireman), his death still reflects the residual damage the idolatry of masculinity has on the perceived lower ranks of gay culture.

The boys in the film are beautiful, but the film's target audience may be disappointed by just how little skin director Paul Eteredge-Ouzts allows them to show. Which is not to say HellBent starves for eroticism. When the smiley Eddie first lays eyes on the badass Jake (Bryan Kirdwood) inside a tattoo shop, he's seduced by a trail of blood sliding down the biker boy's back. When the tattoo artist stops the blood from making it past the small of Jake's back, Eteredge-Ouzts has fun making Jake and his audience complicit in the film's conflated violent and erotic streaks. The moment is a classic dick-teaser, a term that could apply to the protracted sense of dread that anticipates the film's murders.

Eteredge-Ouzts has a keen visual sense, and not just for attractive men. When Eddie takes the too-cool-for-school Jake back to his apartment and they indulge in some erotic shotgun toking, he frames them elegantly between a poster of Cuba. Though this doesn't say anything particularly profound about Chaz's cultural heritage, it does call attention to the tweaker's absence from the apartment. It's interesting that while Eddie admonishes Chaz earlier for leaving Joey alone in the bathroom at MeatLocker, Eddie does the same to his friends as the story progresses. Eteredge-Ouzts implicates his lead character, if not as a conspirator in the deaths of his friends, then as a hypocrite for abandoning them as soon as scoring with Jake became a certainty. HellBent is a gay slasher film with gorgeous bodies on display, but it lets us know that it has a brain as well. Could Eddie's self-obsession, then, be read as a comment on how the gay community is failing itself?

Argento's films are obsessed with motifs of sight and sightlessness, with blind men figuring prominently in The Cat O'Nine Tails and Suspiria. Perhaps taking a cue from the great giallo director, Eteredge-Ouzts has Eddie struggle with a bad eye, using the character's inability to see the world properly as a recurring motif; it's not only a measure of his sexual insecurities and self-obsession but something of a fetish object for the film's killer, who becomes increasingly beside the point as the focus of the story moves toward the difficulty Eddie and Jake have catching each other's wavelengths. As a character, Eddie isn't particularly complex, but his damage is, and the extent of his condition, both physically and emotionally, and what it means to the aloof Jake, interestingly unspools as the film moves along. So, even as the ending reveals itself as a flurry of hoary backstory and subtext moving to the fore (thank God for that shoebox in the closet and for Jake taking Eddie to target practice!), HellBent is distinguished by it's uniquely perverse obsession with disability. One could say that the film, like Eddie and Jake's night, proves to be a real emotional eye-opener.

Interview: Boy Meets Knife: An Interview with Paul Etheredge-Ouzts from Slant magazine

Étiévant, Henri

SIREN OF THE TROPICS (La sirène des tropiques)

France (86 mi) 1927 co-director: Mario Nalpas

DVD Talk [David Cornelius] from the Josephine Baker Collection (excerpt)

In June 2005, Kino released Josephine Baker's first three feature films - "Siren of the Tropics," "Zouzou," and "Princess Tam Tam" - on DVD. Those individual releases have now been collected into one box set, simply titled "The Josephine Baker Collection." No changes have been made to the discs, still in their original single-wide keepcases; a cardboard box housing the discs is the only addition. Those looking for just one or two of these titles would do fine to buy them separately.

John Sinnott reviewed all three discs for DVD Talk during their original release, and I'll be linking to those reviews throughout this article, to avoid repetition of information and to allow for a second opinion.

"Siren of the Tropics" remains best known today for Baker's outstanding Charleston dance routine and little else - which is about right, because the rest of the film is clumsy, flat melodrama. The filmmakers (among them a young Luis Buñuel as assistant director) make the dreary mistake of building a story that essentially shoves its star into the background again and again, to the point where Baker could be removed completely with little change to the overall plot.

In another film, perhaps this could work, but in "Sirens," where Baker is the only lively aspect of the entire picture (and even then, her acting is amateurish and sloppy; only her dancing saves her), her character's continual insignificance to the proceedings brings the film to a screeching halt.

The plot involves the villainous Marquis Severo (Georges Melchior), who has fallen for his goddaughter, Denise (Regina Thomas). Denise, meanwhile, has fallen for André (Pierre Batcheff), an engineer under the Marquis' employ. The Marquis allows the two to marry, but only if André takes an assignment in the Caribbean first - an assignment from which the Marquis schemes to ensure André never returns.

Upon arriving in the Caribbean, André finds the native girl Papitou (Baker), and over the course of several adventures, the two end up befriending each other, with Papitou falling in love with the Frenchman. When André sets out to return to France, Papitou slips on board the ship as a stowaway, in hopes of reuniting with her true love.

The result is a love triangle that's never properly presented - at times the movie is all about André and Denise and how they will soon find happiness, and at other times the movie is all about how Papitou can work to cram herself into a story where she doesn't actually fit. The movie strains to squeeze her into the proceedings, and once she's in, it becomes a series of awkwardly placed showcase pieces for Baker's natural talents. But even then, she never shines (slapstick pantomime scenes fail to inspire laughs; her attempts at drama never amount to much) until the finale, when Papitou has somehow become a stage sensation, leaving her to break out into dance. Her take on the Charleston - the perfect dance for the energetic performer - is brilliant, but to get to this point, the audience has to slog though too much uninteresting, undercooked melodrama.

John covers the muddled backstory of the film in his review, so I won't repeat those legends here, other than to say Baker's own selfish behavior more or less sabotaged the production from the beginning, leaving everyone else on set unhappy to work with the diva. And yet Baker's behavior alone cannot be to blame for the film's failures, as the script is such a lazy work that it never really gets around to doing what it set out to do - namely, making Baker a screen star to match her stage fame, with some pleasant romance along the way. Instead, Baker's first film is also her worst, too dull and too clumsy to be worth one fine dance routine.

DVD Talk (John Sinnott)

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Mark Zimmer)

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice Phil Hall

Eustache, Jean

blue collar dandy - jean eustache - at the walter reade theater (excerpt, as part of a retrospective)

To those who know his name at all in America, Jean Eustache may be a one-hit wonder. But in France he’s far and away the most important filmmaker of the post-New Wave era. Eustache left an indelible mark on French cinema, and he’s exercised a profound influence on such directors as Olivier Assayas, Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis, Philippe Garrel and Benoit Jacquot. Eustache was born into a working class family in the south, and was a delivery man and railroad worker before he tried his hand at cinema in the early 60s.

In due course, he turned himself from a country mouse into a citified dandy, a metamorphosis chronicled with loving care throughout his small but formidable body of work.

His 1973 THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE is the kind of movie that few filmmakers even allow themselves to contemplate, let alone make: brutally honest as self-portraiture, as frank about human relationships (sexual and otherwise) as movies have ever gotten, and the last word on post-’68 bohemian Paris. But as great as that film is, it’s only one item in an always surprising career. Eustache was like a pitcher with an infinite number of moves: rigorous documentary portraits of French rural life (LE COCHON, the two versions of LA ROSIÈRE DE PASSAC), precise behavioral investigations (SANTA CLAUS HAS BLUE EYES), inquiries into the nature of art and perception (LES PHOTOS D'ALIX, HIERONYMOUS BOSCH'S GARDEN OF DELIGHTS), and, in his 1974 masterpiece MES PETITES AMOUREUSES, a portrait of adolescence so concentrated and exquisitely detailed that it virtually stands alone. Meanwhile, the jaw-dropping 1977 UNE SALE HISTOIRE, which presents two versions of the same encounter (a rap session on the subject of scopophilia), is all but unclassifiable.

Eustache died before his time — by his own hand, in 1982. Though he’s often likened to John Cassavetes, he doesn’t need the comparison — he was just as great an artist.

Jean Eustache R.F. Cousins from Film Reference

Although untutored in film, Jean Eustache refined his understanding during the 1950s at the Cinémathèque and developed his critical values through Rohmer and Godard at Cahiers du Cinéma, After his stultifying adolescence in Narbonne, the diffident village boy from Pessac rejoiced in the intellectual vibrancy of hedonistic Paris. The sixties brought experience initially as Vecchiali's assistant for Les Roses de vie (1962) and in small film roles, but principally as an editor. In 1963 he resigned as a TV researcher to make Du côté de Robinson. This début 16–mm autobiographical film contains thematic and stylistic elements characteristic of later work. Two disaffected Parisian youths, failing to pick up partners, rob a married woman who rejects their advances. In quasi-documentary style, Eustache captured contemporary adolescent attitudes so skillfully that an enthusiastic Godard provided unused film stock from Masculin-Féminin for a second semi-autobiographical film, Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus (1966). Daniel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), employed as Santa Claus, discovers a confidence with women that deserts him out of costume. Successfully exploiting Léaud's talent for playing diffident males, Eustache constructs an unforced account of the impoverished, class-conscious Daniel's failures in a dull provincial town. The simple, direct camerawork bringing immediacy to everyday experiences places Eustache within the seemingly artless traditions of Lumière and Renoir. These first films were marketed collectively as Les Mauvaises Fréquentations (1967).

Eustache developed his ethnographic, cinéma-vérité style (a label he testily rejected) though groundbreaking TV documentaries such as La Rosière de Pessac (1969) and Le Cochon (1970). The first chronicles Pessac's festival honoring the village's most virtuous girl, and seeking an unmediated, unobtrusive record of events, 'the recording of reality without any subjective intervention or interference', Eustache employed three independent camera crews, insisting on minimal camera movement with long takes simply edited in chronological order. A decade later, exploring evolutions in moral and social values, he made a second version (La Rosière de Pessac, 1979). Collaboration with Jean-Michel Barjol in 1970 extended the detached, anti-auteurist style with Le Cochon, a matter-of-fact record of slaughtering a pig to make sausages. To avoid a single, dominant viewpoint, the co-directors filmed independently and, discarding TV's traditional normative voice-over, left explanation in local patois.

Eustache's most personal seventies documentary was Numéro Zéro (1971) in which his blind, eighty-year old grandmother Odette Robert talks directly to camera for two unedited hours about her memories of village life. Initially refusing to falsify this exceptional, intimate journal by editing, in 1980 he finally sanctioned a truncated TV version, Odette Robert. Eustache's unmediated images of provincial life mirror Jean Rouch's non-interventionist records of African ceremonial, Les Maîtres fous, (1955) and Parisian lifestyles, Chronique d'un été (1961).

This defining ethnographic style was central to his critically acclaimed, black-and-white feature, La Maman et la putain (1973). With a meager 700,000–franc budget, Eustache economized by filming in his own apartment and local cafés to produce a remarkable three-and-a-half hour testimony to the moral angst of individuals grappling with the sixties sexual revolution. Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud), unemployed and aspiring intellectual, jettisons his pregnant girlfriend Gilberte (Isabelle Weingarten) for an accommodating, self-sufficient businesswoman, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), before falling for Veronika (Françoise Lebrun), a promiscuous nurse. With its authentic settings, naturalistic dialogue, and discreet camerawork mostly using natural light, the film has a distinctly raw documentary feel. The characters' uncompromisingly frank exchanges about sexual experiences and faltering relationships delivered to camera in medium close-up, may still shock, particularly Veronika's closing, drunken monologue where in crude, visceral terms she pours out her confused feelings about sex and a woman's needs in a relationship. Despite apparent spontaneity, all was pre-scripted with Eustache allowing few deviations.

Success at Cannes allowed a long-cherished autobiographical project: Mes petites amoureuses (1974). In a film that arguably mirrors Truffaut's Les Mistons (as La Maman et la putain might be considered a bleaker Jules et Jim), Eustache achieves a typically sensitive depiction of fumbling adolescent sexual experiences, though narrative development, dependent on voice-over, is uncharacteristically episodic.

Eustache's interest in the blur between real and fictionalized experiences is confirmed with a dramatization of scopophilia in Une Sale histoire (1977). Here, a male simply tells a female audience of his erotic pleasure in secretly observing female pudenda while hidden in a café toilet. Two versions, one filmed as fiction with Michel Lonsdale as narrator, the other filmed as direct cinema with Jean-Noël Picq, the author, telling his story, provide comparisons between the listeners' reactions to a personal, seemingly unrehearsed, account and a staged narration. This experimental double telling distinguishes previous films, from Les Mauvaises Fréquentations, through the twice-made La Rosière de Pessac to the private and broadcast versions of his grandmother's memories.

In the eighties Eustache's career was defined by TV work: a well-received programme reflecting on Bosch's vision (Le Jardin des délices de Jérôme Bosch); a short about finding employment (Offre d'emploi); and an award-winning short about an actress recounting her life to a young man (Eustache's son, Boris) though her photo album (Les Photos d'Alix). Here word and image vie for truth as Alix's reminiscences seem to misrepresent the visual evidence.

With only a slim portfolio of films and TV documentaries, Jean Eustache has nevertheless left his mark as a pioneering exponent of direct cinema which frequently privileges the spoken word within the visual medium, and as the director most accurately reflecting attitudes and anxieties of the sixties post-war generation. By refusing to compromise exacting personal standards to commercialism while severely testing loyalties through his difficult, self-deprecating, yet defensively assertive personality, he effectively condemned himself to mainstream cinema's periphery. His male-centered films may be viewed as inherently sexist, upholding traditionalist patriarchal values and subjecting passive females to the dominant, sexualized male viewpoint. Yet his sixties females, Marie or Veronika, project an assertiveness and professional self-sufficiency frequently lacking in his ill-adapted, immature, and feckless males. Largely autobiographical, Eustache's films capture both the passing of provincial traditions and the confusions of an uncertain generation facing the destabilizing challenges of newfound political and sexual freedoms.

Feeling neglected by critics and public alike, Eustache grew increasingly self-absorbed and depressed. Leaving a TV short, La Rue s'allume, half-completed, on 5th September 1981, he shot himself.

Jean Eustache - Culture biography and filmography

Desire and Despair: The Cinema of Jean Eustache Jared Rapfogel from Senses of Cinema

allmovie ((( Jean Eustache > Overview ))) very brief bio from Sandra Brennan

village voice > film > Swing the Body Electric by Amy Taubin Amy Taubin on a Eustache retrospective, from the Village Voice, October 31, 2000

Gene Siskel Film Center Martin Rubin on a Eustache retrospective

Harvard Film Archive on a Eustache retrospective

The Dryden Theatre -- The Rediscovery of Jean Eustache Jim Healy from George Eastman House

Thanks for the Use of the Hall: Jean Eustache's Circle: French ... Dan Sallitt on a Eustache retrospective

CINE-FILE Chicago capsule review for a few Eustache screenings

montreal.com - film Jim Jarmusch explains his film dedication to Jean Eustache for BROKEN FLOWERS, also see Jarmusch’s comments on THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE here: Hidden gems of the arts | | guardian.co.uk Arts

Cineuropa - Interviews - Philippe Garrel • Director Philippe Garrel explains his film dedication to Jean Eustache for Les Amants Réguliers

THE THREAD (An obituary of Jean Eustache) obituary written by Serge Daney, published in LIBERATION November 16, 1981, translated by Steve Erickson

Film Fest Journal: La Peine perdue de Jean Eustache, 1997 The Lost Sorrows of Jean Eustache, a documentary about Eustache and his work by Angel Diaz (52 mi, 1997), by Acquarello from Strictly Film School

Chicago Reader: Now Showing capsule review of The Lost Sorrows of Jean Eustache by JR Jones from the Reader

Jean Eustache - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

LES MAUVAISES FRÉQUENTATIONS (Du côté de Robinson) B 86

aka: Bad Company (Robinson’s Place)

France (40 mi) 1963

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle)

Talk about disturbing. ""Bad Company'' (French title: ""Mauvaises Frequentations'') penetrates the madness of the teenage imagination with a story that feels both authentic and chilling. A 15-year-old girl falls in love with a young man who exploits her affections by turning her into a prostitute.

What keeps the film from being a wallow in salaciousness is that it's not so much about sex as it is a character study. Delphine, played by the tiny and big-eyed Maud Forget, enters into the most degrading and revolting of situations with a kind of twisted conviction that, in so doing, she can prove her devotion. She is beyond the reach of words, beyond the reach of reason. She is in that state of unreasoned certainty common only to teenagers and crazed fanatics.

In case anyone has forgotten, this movie is the reminder that the teen years are rough. Delphine meets Laurent in a nightclub, and soon she is having sex with him on a living-room floor. With her clothes off, she looks about 13. It's creepy to watch.

Lou Doillon plays Delphine's friend Olivia, who is tall, has dreadlocks and looks like a wild woman in the making. But when their boyfriends suggest that, in order to raise money for a trip, the girls perform some 400 acts of oral sex, 200 each, in a public toilet somewhere, it's innocent Delphine who sees this as her chance to become the biggest French martyr since Joan of Arc.

Oh, the horror of being a parent. Director Jean-Pierre Ameris and writer Alain Layrac outdo any outrage Larry Clark ("Kids," "Bully") ever dreamed of. Clark's kids seem destined for degradation to begin with, so who cares? But what happens to the girls in "Bad Company" can make your skin crawl.

Desire and Despair: The Cinema of Jean Eustache Jared Rapfogel from Senses of Cinema (excerpt)

His first short, Les Mauvaises Fréquentations (1963), is a New Wave-esque, picaresque portrait of two male friends, bored and on the prowl, and their encounter with an equally aimless young woman. The central character is a blueprint for Alexandre in The Mother and the Whore, arrogant, unself-critical, and absurdly confident. He and his best friend see a woman in the street whom they accost and convince to accompany them to one club and then another. The two men-who are all talk-turn out to be failures in practice. While they bask in their reflected self-satisfaction and lecture each other on being more aggressive, a series of men ask the woman to dance. Eventually, the two main characters steal her wallet (an act that is particularly cruel because she has just finished telling them that she has two kids and no job and has been living in a hotel) as punishment for unveiling their impotence ("That'll teach her to fuck with us"). Afterwards, they show not a hint of remorse, remarking only "I'd love to see the look on her face."

These are repellent, worthless characters, but more than their actions, what makes the film so depressing and claustrophobic is the sense of despair that permeates every moment. Les Mauvaises Fréquentations has a resourcefulness and a looseness, an infectious rhythm, that's not so different from early Godard or Truffaut. But the looseness doesn't take; it distracts us, but not for long. The characters here are always on the move, always full of snappy and entertaining conversation, but it gradually occurs to us that all their talk and aimless activity is meant to keep them a step ahead of the depression and emptiness that's at their heels, tugging at and constantly threatening to overtake them. And so it is with the film as a whole-it's entertaining and humorous on the surface, but a wave of profound despair looms overhead, never quite breaking over us but blocking out all the light.

SANTA CLAUS HAS BLUE EYES (Le père Noël a les yeux bleus) B 87

France (50 mi) 1966

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]

Jean Eustache (The Mother and the Whore) directed this touching portrait of small-town life in his native Narbonne, where a poor young man trying to meet girls gets a job dressing up as Santa Claus. The film was shot on black-and-white 35-millimeter stock left over from Jean-Luc Godard's Masculine Feminine and stars Jean-Pierre Leaud, the lead actor in that film and in many ways the principal icon of the French New Wave. 47 min.

User Reviews from imdb Author: Karina from NYC

Made with leftover film given to him by Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Eustache interwove the stock from the former director's 'Masculin/Feminin' with his own 52-minute study of a group of young men in a small French province and their attempts to earn money and meet girls. Jean-Pierre Leaud (who starred in both films) is Daniel, the protagonist/narrator. As in the Doinel films by Truffaut, Leaud acts as a sort of alter ego figure for Eustache. Desperate to buy a stylish winter coat, Daniel accepts a local photographer's offer to dress up as a sidewalk Santa Claus to pose for photos with passerby. Once his identity is concealed in costume, Daniel discovers, the town's inhabitants treat him far differently; namely, attention from the girls who'd earlier brushed him off. An amusing document of a few days in the life of small-town French youth.

Something about the giddy energy of the New Wave seems to lend itself to the short form, which might be why Varda's short and Jean Eustache's featurette, Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes (1966), screening Saturday at 8 p.m., are the weekend's most satisfying, even most fully realized offerings. Part of a boys-on-the-make double bill, Santa Claus stars New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud as a young man trying to live stylishly on a shoestring budget. The knotted silk scarf around his neck speaks of bourgeois aspirations, but he's forced to take odd jobs just to save up the money for a fashionable duffel coat. One of these finds him posing as an absurdly skinny street-corner Santa, where he finds himself in possession of a strange, if temporary confidence; as long as he's wearing the suit, he can call out to girls he'd never dare to speak to otherwise, even set up dates with them -- although sadly, he can't bring the suit along. "In civilian clothes, I was a flop," the narrator notes. Drawing heavily on Léaud's performance in Truffaut's Antoine Doinel cycle (especially the short Antoine and Colette), Santa Claus is slight, perhaps, but perfectly airy.

Strictly Film School Acquarello

Droll, charming, and picaresque, Jean Eustache's Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes chronicles the empty hours, petty capers, and amorous misadventures of Daniel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), an unmotivated (and consequently fired) erstwhile bricklayer and modern day dandy who, rather than admit to his blue collar roots, has concocted an elaborate tale of paternal conspiracy and social consciousness for his perennially cash-strapped circumstances and habitual unemployment. But with few prospects to win a girl's heart without going (and more pressingly, spending money) on a date, and the impending arrival of colder weather, Daniel and his equally fashionably underemployed friend Dumas (Gérard Zimmermann) arrive at the conclusion that the answer to their winter doldrums lies in saving enough money to buy a stylish, a la mode duffel coat for the new year. To this end, he decides to accept a job offer from a photographer (René Gilson) to work as a sidewalk Santa, soliciting people in the street to have their pictures taken with him for a fee. Donning full costume, the roguish young Santa freely chats up women on the street who eagerly stop to pose for a picture (and unwittingly, an opportunistic grope from the all too insinuating Father Christmas), and bewilder unsuspecting acquaintances as he catches them off guard with his seemingly omniscient personal knowledge. In disguise, Daniel soon finds paradoxical liberation in his newfound anonymity. In its lyrical and ribald treatment of idle (or more appropriately, stunted) youth, it's easy to see the rudiments of the posturing, self-absorbed loafer, Alexandre (also played by Leaud) of Eustache's magnum opus The Mother and the Whore taking shape in this brisk and delightful early collaboration. Ironically, devoid of the political context that pervades The Mother and the Whore, Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes becomes an even more incisive contemporary portrait of an adrift, postwar generation, where the aimless pursuit of the here and now reveals the giddy anxiety of lost identity.

Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus (1966) James Travers from FilmsdeFrance

Goings On: Online Only: The New Yorker see April 1, 2008, Richard Brody from The New Yorker

LA ROSIÈRE DE PESSAC (THE VIRGIN OF PESSAC) B- 80

France (55 mi) 1968 (version seen unsubtitled)

User Reviews from imdb Author: (edwartell@hotmail.com) from Austin, TX

Director Jean Eustache was born in Pessac, France. He returned there in 1968 to film the annual ceremony in which the town's most virtuous girl is elected. First, we see the town meeting, where nominees are named, votes are taken, and the decision is made. The committee then walks to the girl's house, and informs her. Then we see the march in to the church, the church sermon, the mayor's speech, and the commemorative dinner.

This movie (incredibly hard to get to see) is perfect for those who want to see ordinary daily life unfiltered and without commentary. Eustache simply films the events described above. It's a very amiable film and a very enjoyable one. It's the way France was, circa 1968. However, to understand this film completely, you then have to watch the 1979 version...

LE COCHON (THE PIG)

France (50 mi) 1970 co-director: Jean-Michel Barjol

Jean Eustache's 50-minute documentary (1970), codirected with Jean-Michel Barjol and shot over one day, is a remarkable materialist rendering of everything that happens to a pig in central France from its slaughter to its conversion into sausages. This was produced by the great critic-filmmaker Luc Moullet, and bears an interesting thematic relation to his own Genesis of a Meal (1978), about the routes and processes of various raw ingredients on their way to a simple meal.

Desire and Despair: The Cinema of Jean Eustache Jared Rapfogel from Senses of Cinema (excerpt)

The Eustache film I love the most (I've seen them all except Numero Zero (1970), his filmed interview with his mother, and Odette Robert (1980), a shortened version of the same film, both of which were missing from the retrospective) is Le Cochon (1970), a beautiful, sensitive, big-hearted short documentary that shows not a trace of the despair and defeat radiating from Eustache's fictional films. Le Cochon, which Eustache co-directed with Jean-Michel Barjol, records the slaughter and dismemberment of a pig and the process of transforming the dead animal into various food products. It's Eustache's most beautiful film because it's his most curious and graceful. He and Barjol filmed the movie over the course of a single day, shooting footage separately and then editing together; their purpose was primarily to observe, to record. There's a great affinity between this film and the documentaries of Frederick Wiseman-a similar directness (there are no voice-overs, explanatory titles, or interviews) and a similar luxurious freedom from preconception or interpretation. Wiseman, passionately and with an almost missionary desire, shows us things neglected by almost all other filmmakers-the banal, allegedly undramatic daily experiences of cops, teachers, welfare workers, hospital workers, judges, soldiers, and so on (experiences that of course prove to be almost ridiculously dramatic and full of interest). The same attitude radiates from every moment of Le Cochon - the delight of making a faithful record of an experience, both the experience of the filmmakers over the course of one day and the daily experience of the farmers. The movie begins with the slaughter of the pig, a wrenching thing to witness-but instead of passing judgement on the farmers, it opens out into something much more generous and understanding, a portrait of a way of life, an appreciation of physical work, of daily toil, of the process of transforming one thing into another.

Strictly Film School Acquarello

NUMÉRO ZÉRO

aka: Odette Robert (TV title)

France (107 mi) 1971

Jean Eustache R.F. Cousins from Film Reference (excerpt)

Strictly Film School Acquarello

Composed as an uninterrupted conversation with Jean Eustache's sprightly, talkative, nearly blind, septuagenarian maternal grandmother, Odette Robert, Numéro Zéro prefigures the studies in narrative construction of Une Sale histoire in its illustration of performance and interpenetrating film reality. Inspired by their conversation during an afternoon stroll, the film reflects Eustache's assumed role as archivist, creating a two camera composite, unedited recording of Odette's memories of village life. Told with self-effacing humor and bracing candor, Odette weaves organically through the extraordinary density of her seemingly "ordinary" human experience, from the trauma of her mother's death from tuberculosis when she was seven years old, to her strained relationship with her demanding stepmother, Marie, to the austerity of life during the war, to her turbulent marriage to a skirt-chasing war veteran, to the deaths of her three young sons from childhood illnesses, to the care of her elderly, terminally ill father and stepmother during their final days, and lastly, to her arrival in Paris (at Eustache's invitation) to help take care of her great-grandson son, Boris. As in the Le Cochon and La Rosière de Pessac, Eustache captures, not only an overlooked, rapidly disappearing way of life, but also the continuity of a collective history itself, a passing between generations that is implied in the film's silent preface showing Boris accompanying Odette to a corner shop, before briefly walking away on another errand (similarly, in La Rosière de Pessac, the oldest living Rosière symbolically passes the torch to the next generation). Moreover, in maintaining the footage of clapperboard marks - often, interrupting Odette in mid thought to signal the necessity of a reel change - Eustache also creates a sense of intersecting reality, briefly disengaging Odette (and the spectator) from the reality of her vivid memories towards the parallel reality of her role as storyteller in Eustache's latest film (an awareness of the artifice of film construction that is further reinforced in a Dutch television representative's coincidental call to Eustache inquiring about purchasing rights to Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes). It is in this dual role as personal testament and performer that Numéro Zéro also becomes a metaphor for coming full circle, where life and film are integrally connected to the evolutionary cycle of chronicling complex, human history.

THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE A 100

aka: La Maman et la Putain

France (219 mi) 1973

THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE, one of my all time favorite films, without which I never would have learned to appreciate the unique genius of John Cassavetes. Eustache, like Cassavetes, created a completely improvisational drama while carefully scripting each and every word. One of the mysteries of motion cinema is simply allowing the camera to capture the essence of human emotion, its best and its worst, in this case raw and unedited, filling the screen with imperfect people allowed to reveal their imperfections in full bloom. Mistakes are made. Attention must be paid. People must learn to tend to the business of being people. And it is films like this that help us do so. This is not a happy film, as it comically slithers and slides through infantile silliness and pretension before plunging us though the depths of self-pity and despair. I always thought of this as a film about adolescence, the end of a youthful innocence. Leave it to film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum to find a political message attached to that.

Eustache carefully uses the length of the film to disassemble the persona of these blighted lovers, using confessional dialogue that exposes their raw internal distress and desperation that in this drama becomes an emotional marathon. Though it has the appearance of improvisation, the entire dialogue came from the director's own life and was scripted entirely from conversations Eustache had or had heard, and Françoise Lebrun, who had never acted in a film before, reenacts, as Veronika, a part she played in life as Eustache's lover. Filmed on 16 mm high contrast black and white, the force of the film is its focus on the subjects, entirely without pretense, rigorously observant, terribly funny, deeply sad, the film is a searing confessional masterpiece that unfurls in exhausting, exhilarating detail, a beautiful gut-wrenching choreography of fallible human beings, the force of which is its elegant simplicity. According to the director, "I wrote this script because I loved a woman who left me. I wanted her to act in a film I had written. I never had the occasion, during the years that we spent together, to have her act in my films, because at that time I didn't make fiction films and it didn't even occur to me that she could act. I wrote this film for her and for Léaud; if they refused to play in it, I wouldn't have written it." The film is dedicated to the real-life person for whom the part of Marie was written, who wound up killing herself, as did Eustache in 1981 at the age of 42.

Paraphrasing a wonderfully written review Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert at his best in 1999, where his words cry out to be used and repeated here, the film stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, whose best film performance was his first, Truffaut’s 1959 film THE 400 BLOWS, playing a fierce young 13-year old roaming the streets of Paris, idolizing Balzac, and escaping into books and trouble as a way of dealing with his parent’s unhappy marriage. His adult performances have all been an extension of that character, grown up. Here he plays Alexandre, who smokes and talks incessantly about himself in the cafés of Paris, Les Deux Magots and La Coupole, literally performing his life theatrically for women, wearing a dark coat with a long scarf around his neck sweeping to his knees. His best friend dresses the same way. He spends his days in cafés, holding, but not reading, Proust. “Look, there’s Sartre – the drunk,” he says one day in Café Flore, Eustache supplies a quick shot of several people at a table, one of whom may or may not be Sartre. Alexandre talks about Sartre staggering out after his long intellectual chats in the café and speculates that the great man’s philosophy may just be alcoholic musings.

Alexandre lives with Marie, Bernadette Lafont, who earlier starred in Truffaut’s film short THE MISCHIEF MAKERS (1958), also Chabrol’s BEAU SERGE (1958) and LES BONNES FEMMES (1960), playing a beautiful boutique owner who supports him. He’s just broken up with Gilberte, Isabelle Weingarten, who was introduced in the Robert Bresson film Four Nights of a Dreamer (Quatre nuits d'un rêveur... (1972), who rejected his proposal of marriage, and his way of dealing with this despair is to date the first woman he sees that looks like her, Veronika, Francoise Lebrun, a nurse from Poland, subjecting her to a great many of his thoughts and would be thoughts. Much of her initial screen time consists of closeups of her listening to one of Alexandre’s endless monologues, his eyes always following the progress of other women in view. One of the wonders of the film is the way women can let a man like Alexandre talk endlessly about himself while they regard him like a specimen of aberrant behavior. Women keep a man like Alexandre around out of curiosity about what new idiocy he will next exhibit. Of course, Alexandre is cheating on both women, but his style is to play with relationships, even bringing both to bed at the same time just to find out where it will all lead. In this case, it leads to the emotional devastation of both women. While Marie mostly weeps in silence or plays her favorite records, Veronika is frank about herself, sleeping around because she likes sex, as it takes her out of her low self-esteem. She has a passionate monologue near the end of the film, a torrent of self-pity describing her sexual needs and her resentment that women aren’t supposed to admit their feelings, describing the miseries of loveless sex, confessing in front of Alexandre and Marie that she loves him and she loves having sex with him, so why should she be shamed of that? It is the lower class, working girl Veronika who throws the pretense of people like Alexandre and Marie to the wind, literally exposing the middle class as one big lie, a blown up dream, “The Working Class Goes to Paradise,” people who have the economic good fortune to be able to comfortably hide behind their world of illusions and deceptions without having to pay the price that others unfortunately must pay for their mistakes. Alexandre accompanies her back to her room, where she rejects him in disgust, explaining she may be pregnant with his child. He leaves, but then runs back and proposes marriage which she accepts while vomiting into a wash basin, and Alexandre collapses on the floor against the refrigerator, shivering in agony.

A friend Barry Goetsch made an interesting observation about the title. By all accounts, Veronika is considered the whore, as she willingly calls herself one, but by the end of the film when we learn she is the mother carrying Alexandre’s child, we discover it is Alexandre who is the whore. The difference of each gender in approaching sex is the theme that runs throughout the film. Men can have sex with anyone with no complications, even marriage can be proposed frivolously, as Alexandre does twice in this film, in the beginning and at the end. Only women can bear children, which carries an enormous commitment that men simply cannot overlook, always and forever, ironically, a phrase men use to express their commitment of love to women.

Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum says this is the film that slammed the door on the French New Wave and is one of the strongest statements about the aftermath of the failed French revolution of May 1968, literally a definitive expression of the closing in of Western culture after the end of an era of hope and optimism about a changing future known as the 60’s. Innocence lost? He suggests the director’s suicide confirms the film’s painting such a bleak portrait, a terminal collapse of will and hope, that it accurately describes “not just where we are today but of who we are,” that Alexandre’s expression of hopelessness about social change and human possibilities is in fact an expression of defeat, and accurately reflects the defeatist times we’re currently living through. Some of Alexandre’s expressions: “To speak the words of others, that’s what freedom must be,” or “My only dignity is my cowardice,” or “Nausea is a noble sentiment. The world will be saved by children, soldiers, and madmen,” to which Veronika replies, “I don’t know if you make them up or not, but you say some very beautiful things. In a bad film it’d be called the message.”

Eustache links the dreams of May 1968 to the memories of the Nazi occupation. Alexandre’s unnamed friend has a fetish for Nazi paraphernalia and carries a book entitled SS and the Gestapo – The Reign of Terror, also plays a record of Zarah Leander songs Zarah Leander: Ich weiß, es wird einmal ein Wunder gescheh'n ... YouTube (3:36), which prompts Alexandre to lament being born after the time when girls swooned over soldiers in uniforms, that now “business has replaced the uniform, young professionals in sports cars.” One of the climactic shots focuses on a bereft Marie drowning her sorrows by repeatedly listening to a 1948 recording of Edith Piaf singing “Les Amants de Paris” YouTube - La maman et la putain YouTube (3:05). Eustache’s choice of actors cannot be separated from their link to the New Wave and its aftermath. When Alexandre reproaches Gilberte for forgetting their love and resigning herself to “mediocrity,” he says, “After crises one must forget everything quickly. Erase everything, like France after the occupation, like France after May 1968. You recover like France after May ’68,” later recalling a time, “There was the Cultural revolution, May ’68, the Rolling Stones, long hair, the Black Panthers, the Palestinians, the underground. And for the last two or three years, nothing anymore.” And still later, he describes with envy, “In May ’68 I went to a café, everyone was crying. It was beautiful. A tear-gas bomb had exploded, a crack in reality opened up. I’m afraid it will all be gone.”

La Maman et la putain Don Druker from the Reader

A major work, not because of its exhausting length (215 minutes) or the audacity, brilliance, and total originality of its language, but because of writer/editor/director Jean Eustache's breathtaking honesty and accuracy in portraying contemporary sexual and intellectual mores. This is the film that "explains" Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, vividly and compellingly dramatizing the confusions, uncertainties, and complexities of thoroughly modern human relationships.

User reviews from imdb Author: Karina from NYC

One of the last classics of the French New Wave. For direction, cineaste Jean Eustache drew from the simplicity of early-century cinema; for story, Eustache drew on the torments of his own complicated love life. So many things can be said of this film - observationally brilliant; self indulgently overlong; occasionally hilarious; emotionally draining...etc. etc. In my mind, whatever complaints that can be leveled against this film are easily overshadowed by its numerous strengths. Every film student, writer, or simply anyone willing to handle a 3 hour film with no abrupt cuts, no music video overstyling, no soap opera-like plot twists, and no banal dialogue should make it a point to see this movie. Everything is to be admired: the writing (concise, clever, surprisingly funny), acting (everyone, quite simply, is perfect in their respective roles), and, simple direction (the viewer feels like a casual observer within the film) make this film unforgettable. This is undoubtedly a film that stays with you.

Time Out

Three-and-a-half hours of people talking about sex sounds like a recipe for boredom; in Eustache's hands, it is anything but. There is no 'explicitness': the film is about attitudes to, and defences against, sex and the body. Using dialogue garnered entirely from real-life conversations and sticking entirely to a prepared script (no improvisation), Eustache has provided us with a ruthlessly sharp-eyed view of chic, supposedly liberated sexual relationships, revealing them to be no less a disaster area of tragic dimensions than their 'straighter' counterparts. Veronika (Lebrun) cripples herself by regarding herself entirely through male eyes; Alexandre (Léaud, playing a character eerily close to his standard screen persona) is revealed to be the victim of a greedy, self-regarding, and desperate chauvinism; Marie (the superb, strong Lafont) is a less fully delineated character, sadly allowed only two fierce rejoinders to Alexandre's blind demands. Each of the three holds part of the 'truth' about their situation; none can put the pieces together. The Mother and the Whore is an icy comment on the New Wave, informed throughout by Eustache's striking visual intelligence.

La Maman et la putain (1973) Leo Charney from All Movie Guide

One of the most important French films of the 1970s, Jean Eustache's marathon drama focuses on three twentysomething Parisians in a bizarre love triangle: Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is a seemingly unemployed narcissist involved with both a live-in girlfriend (Bernadette Lafont) and a Polish nurse (Françoise Lebrun) whom he picked up at a café and with whom he begins a desultory affair. Clocking in at over 3 1/2 hours, the movie focuses less on plot than on the confused and ambivalent interrelations of these three lost souls. As such, it becomes a searing document of the aftermath of Paris's social and sexual revolutions of the Sixties, particularly the uprisings of May 1968. These characters know that they are supposed to be free and liberated, but they don't quite know how to go about it, or how to make it work in practice, and their efforts don't seem to make them any happier. In the guise of a plotless style seemingly borrowed from cinéma vérité documentaries, Eustache unfolds a critique of both the illusory liberations of his social moment and the dead-end heritage of his cinematic moment. By casting Jean-Pierre Léaud, an icon of the French New Wave who first made his name as the star of François Truffaut's pioneering The 400 Blows (1959), Eustache sets out to rewrite the conventions of a French New Wave that had changed from a revolutionary film movement into a formulaic mainstream style. Despite its deceptively rambling manner, the film effortlessly intertwines its characters' psychological dilemmas with a portrait of its cultural moment with a revision of a wide swath of film history from Truffaut's Jules and Jim to Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game to Ernst Lubitsch's Design for Living. This experimental classic is not for all viewers, but it's an unforgettable, and historically indispensable, experience for those who can stick with it.

Jean-Pierre Leaud: Unbearable Lightness Philippa Hawker from Senses of Cinema (excerpt)

After seeing La Nuit Américaine, Godard sent Truffaut a letter. And he enclosed a letter for Léaud, which Truffaut read and returned to the sender, saying he thought it was "obnoxious of [Godard] to kick him when he's down ..."

The complexities of the Godard-Truffaut relationship - cinematic and personal - are far outside the scope of this piece. But it's worth noting that Leaud was an actor whom these directors could struggle over, and that here he is being treated as a symptom, a pretext, a litmus test. Léaud is supposed to have said that Truffaut was his father and Godard his uncle, which sounds very cosy - but if this meant that Truffaut and Godard were therefore brothers, then at this particular point they exhibited the fraternal spirit of Cain and Abel, the family values of the House of Atreus.

"Yes," Truffaut wrote, in response to what must have been Godardian criticism of the actor, "Jean-Pierre has changed since Les 400 Coups, but I can tell you that it was in Masculin-Féminin that I noticed for the first time how he could be filled with anger rather than pleasure at the notion of finding himself in front of a camera. The film was good and he was good in the film, but that first scene, in the café, was a painful experience for anyone looking at him with affection and not with an entomologist's eye."

But it is the fact that is possible to watch Leaud in both those ways - affectionately, and with scientific detachment - that makes him such a powerfully interesting performer. His performances don't invite identification: yet they compel it at the same time as they keep it at a distance. And his strongest performance is undoubtedly a painful experience, of the most riveting kind: his role in La Maman et la Putain.

In the film that Eustache wrote and directed, Léaud is Alexandre, a man in his twenties living with an older woman, Marie (Bernadette Lafont): he has no job, but occupies himself with the business of occupying himself. At one point he decides that he will treat his visits to a cafe as his equivalent of a working routine.

Alexandre is fluent, charming, clever: impulsive, in a somewhat calculated way, he has an anecdote and an allusion for every moment, a fund of historical and cinematic references, a fondness for generalisations and rhetorical flourishes. There are many ways in which he seems quintessentially "Léaud" (although Eustache, writer and director, put many of his own utterances directly into Leaud's mouth - a curious echo of the actor's ability to make someone else's words his own, just as Doinel did with Balzac.)

This is a loquacious but in some senses extremely restrained representation: the gestures are at a minimum, Eustache often shoots him in shadows, or from behind, and frequently it is the gaze, fixed on the person he is speaking to, that reinforces the dialogue. There are a few (only a few) moments where Alexandre shows a conspicuous tenderness and gentleness - the gesture of a hand on the shoulder, a lively interest in a question and its response - that make him seem likeable.

At first, it's a film which seems to revolve around Alexandre, but gradually he loses his centrality, his command, any semblance of authority. Leaud's performance - in which his character gradually finds himself out of his depth, devastated, in which a carefully constructed masculinity proves insufficient to the messy demands and challenges placed on it by two women, Marie and Veronika (Françoise Lebrun) - is painful to watch, but it's also fascinating to see him going quietly, as it were. He has less and less to contribute, in an overt sense, to what is going on in the film. It's this withdrawal that is so powerful. The final image is of Alexandre, having been confronted by Veronika ("You're despicable, I love you, I may be pregnant by you"), sitting on the floor in her room, while she vomits into a basin. She tells him to look away, not to watch her. He cannot look at her, and he has nothing to say. It's impossible to imagine where to go from here.

It's a film that undoubtedly has much to say about "1968" and the New Wave - it's often hailed as a sort of denunciatory epitaph for the political, social, sexual, cinematic revolution that both did and did not take place in France. But its power, I think, stretches far beyond the local, topical, historical references. It's a film which puts us through raw and hopeless vision of the relationships between men and women. It is as harrowing to watch now as it was in the Seventies, and it shows Leaud prepared to take his character to a point of absolute numbness and despair.

User reviews from imdb Author: moimoichan6 (moimoichan6@yahoo.fr) from Paris, France

"La Maman et la putain" is the beautifulest film of all time. And what's most moving about it may be the relation between reality and art the movie deals with, which is directly inspired by Proust's "A la Recherche du temps perdu".

Indeed, "La Maman et la putain" and "In search of lost time" apparently tell the same story : the one of the failure of love, which repeats itself endlessly. The first woman's name is always Gilberte, and the second woman appears like a twisted and deformed double of Gilberte : Veronika is like a "whore Gilberte", beautiful like the night, whereas Gilberte was pure, and "beautiful like the day". After the failure of the first love, a second love begins, but this one is like already doomed by the first one. Veronika takes the place of Gilberte, in Alexandre's life and in the movie. She progressively eclipses her, first by time to time, Gilberte's still coming when Alexandre waits for Veronika, then totally. That shows it's the same sad story repeating itself, the same "unfaithful woman", like Alexandre says, who appears endlessly - and unfaithful is for Proust the higher point in love, which makes it exist, but which also underlines its illusions.

Art is what causes the passage between what's outside - the illusion of love - to what's inside, which is the truth, and is a learning of this truth. For instance, when Veronika notices the strange way Alexandre makes is bed, he answers that he saw it in a movie, and then, that a movie, "it's made for that, to learn how to live, how to make a bed". Alexander wants to live like he was in a film, he wants his life to be art.

This conception of art comes from Proust, with whom Eustache shares the same rejection of "political art" and realism in art. "La Maman et la putain" fights against a conception of art "principaly political" - see for example the ironical review of a political movie by Alexandre. Like Proust says : "Art doesn't care for all this proclamations, and only exists in silence." First of all, art is introspection. And that also why realism or naturalism is rejected : art needs to transform reality to exist. Proust writes : "I discover the illusion of realism, which is a lie". That's why "La Maman et la putain" doesn't hide its artificiality, underlines by the way the actors "say" their text : "the more you seem artificial, the higher you go", said Eustache.

Eustache and Proust both share this idea that the artist is a "translater" of a inner truth. But, Alexandre failed where Eustache succeed. "La Maman et la putain" tells us the failure of a character to be what he truly is. You can sens the tragedy arise when you go further in the movie, which becomes saddest. You can see it in the face of Alexandre, who looks more and more like a living-dead. You can see it by the fact that the scenes become longer, and that after a while, nothing happens outside. At the end of the movie, when you see Alexandre writing, and Veronika asking if he's writing his life,you can gess that he's not, that even literature failed. The end of the movie shows the symbolic death of Alexander, who is smashes by the heaviness of reality. And in this tiny nurse's room, Alexandre looks more like Albertine than Marcel.

To explain this failure, we can say that Alexandre is a Balzac's reader. In "Forme et signification", Jean Rousset explains that, in Proust's, the readers of Balzac, who are Swann and Charlus, are unable of any artistic creation, because they're stuck in reality, which they mistake with art. They see reality in art and "are not aware of the transformations that necessarily exist between the life of an artist and his work, between reality and art". And that's exactly Alexandre. He claims for instance that he "loves a woman for parallel reasons, because she played in a Bresson's for example". He's like Swann, who falls in love with Odette because she looks like a Botticelli's woman.

"Life is perhaps not my vocation". This thought is indeed by Eustache, who committed suicide, even if it's said by Alexandre. Nevertheless, there is a difference between Alexandre and Eustache : if Eustache is absolutely Alexandre, Alexandre is like a double without art, a horrible vision of the artist, which crystallizes his fears.

By fallowing Veronika at the end of the movie, Alexandre is condemned to illusions. It's death that remind me the last frames of the movie, in the face of Jean-Pierre Léaud as well as in the endless pucking of Veronika. Or maybe it is already hell that describes the end, like in Sarte's "Huit-Clot", and absolutely not like in the final liberation of "Le Temps retrouvé". If Eustache had read Proust, Alexandre could never have finish the book , always perturbed by life and Veronika when he tries to read it at his apartment or in the cafés. "La Maman et la Putain" is like a inverse double of "In search of lost times", which tells how Alexander doesn't become an artist, whereas "A la Recherche du temps perdu" tells how Marcel becomes a writer (Genette).

If, like Baudelaire says, an artiste tells "reality at the light of his dream", it is his nightmare that Eustache tells us in "La Maman et la putain".

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert at his best in 1999

When Jean Eustache's "The Mother and the Whore" was released in 1973, young audiences all over the world embraced its layabout hero and his endless conversations with the woman he lived with, the woman he was dating, the woman who rejected him and various other women encountered in the cafes of Paris. The character was played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, star of "The 400 Blows" and two other autobiographical films by Francois Truffaut. In 1977, Truffaut made "The Man Who Loved Women." This one could have been titled "The Man Who Loved to Hear Himself Talk."

At 3 1/2 hours, the film is long, but its essence is to be long: Make it any shorter and it would have a plot and an outcome, when in fact Eustache simply wants to record an existence. Alexandre (Leaud), his hero, lives with Marie (Bernadette Lafont), a boutique owner who apparently supports him; one would say he was between jobs if there were any sense that he'd ever had one. He meets a blind date named Veronika (Francoise Lebrun) in a cafe and subjects her to a great many of his thoughts and would-be thoughts. (Much of Lebrun's screen time consists of closeups of her listening.) In the middle of his monologues, Alexandre has a way of letting his eyes follow the progress of other women through his field of view.

Alexandre is smart enough, but not a great intellect. His favorite area of study is himself, but there he hasn't made much headway. He chatters about the cinema and about life, sometimes confusing them ("films tell you how to live, how to make a kid"). He wears a dark coat and a very long scarf, knotted around his neck and sweeping to his knees; his best friend dresses the same way. He spends his days in cafes, holding (but not reading) Proust. "Look there's Sartre--the drunk," he says one day in Cafe Flore, and Eustache supplies a quick shot of several people at a table, one of whom may or may not be Sartre. Alexandre talks about Sartre staggering out after his long intellectual chats in the cafe, and speculates that the great man's philosophy may be alcoholic musings.

The first time I saw "The Mother and the Whore," I thought it was about Alexandre. After a viewing of the newly restored 35-mm. print being released for the movie's 25th anniversary, I think it is just as much about the women, and about the way that women can let a man talk endlessly about himself while they regard him like a specimen of aberrant behavior. Women keep a man like Alexandre around, I suspect, out of curiosity about what new idiocy he will next exhibit.

Of course Alexandre is cheating--on Marie, with whom he lives, and on Veronica, whom he says he loves. Part of his style is to play with relationships, just to see what happens. The two women find out about each other, and eventually meet. There are some fireworks, but not as many as you might expect, maybe because neither one would be that devastated at losing Alexandre. Veronika, a nurse from Poland, is at least frank about herself: She sleeps around because she likes sex. She has a passionate monologue about her sexual needs and her resentment that women aren't supposed to admit their feelings. Whether Alexandre has sex with Marie is a good question; I suppose the answer is yes, but you can't be sure. She represents, of course, the mother, and Veronika thinks of herself as a whore; Alexandre has positioned himself in the cross hairs of the classic Freudian dilemma.

Jean-Pierre Leaud's best performance was his first, as the fierce young 13-year-old who roamed Paris in "The 400 Blows," idolizing Balzac and escaping into books and trouble as a way of dealing with his parents' unhappy marriage. In a way, most of his adult performances are simply that boy, grown up. Here he smokes and talks incessantly, and wanders Paris like a puppet controlled by his libido. It's amusing the way he performs for the women; there's one shot in particular, where he takes a drink so theatrically it could be posing for a photo titled "I Take a Drink."

The genuine drama in the movie centers on Veronika, who more or less knows they are only playing at love while out of the sight of Marie. We learn a lot about her life--her room in the hospital, her schedule, her low self-esteem. When she does talk, it is from brave, unadulterated self-knowledge.

"The Mother and the Whore" made an enormous impact when it was released. It still works a quarter-century later because it was so focused on its subjects, and lacking in pretension. It is rigorously observant, the portrait of an immature man and two women who humor him for a while, paying the price that entails. Eustache committed suicide at 43, in 1981, after making about a dozen films, of which this is by far the best known. He said his film was intended as "the description of a normal course of events without the shortcuts of dramatization," and described Alexander as a collector of "rare moments" that occupy his otherwise idle time. As a record of a kind of everyday Parisian life, the film is superb. We think of the cafes of Paris as hotbeds of fiery philosophical debate, but more often, I imagine, they are just like this: people talking, flirting, posing, drinking, smoking, telling the truth and lying, while waiting to see if real life will ever begin.

The Way We Are | Movie Review | Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum, Januray 21, 1999

Jean Eustache's LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN - JonathanRosenbaum ... Jonathan Rosenbaum from Sight and Sound, Winter, 1974-75

JonathanRosenbaum.com » Blog Archive » Cannes Journal (1973) Jonathan Rosenbaum Cannes coverage from Film Comment, 1973

The Mother And The Whore Gerald Peary

The Onion A.V. Club [Nathan Rabin]

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti Gary Mairs

CineScene.com [Chris Dashiell]

Strictly Film School Acquarello

La Maman et la putain (1973) James Travers from FilmsdeFrance

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle)

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times in 1974

Read the New York Times Review » Nora Sayre

AvaxHome -> Video -> Genre -> Drama -> Jean Eustache-La Maman et ... Exquisite still photos from the film

La maman et la putain Bernadette Lafont (Marie) listens to a song on YouTube (3:04)

the Mother and the Whore (1973) Alexandre listens to a song with Veronika (3:15)

La maman et la putain- Jean Eustache & Diabologum from YouTube (6:01)

La mamain et la putain (7:33)

MES PETITES AMOUREUSES (My Little Loves) A- 94

France (123 mi) 1974

After The Mother and the Whore, Eustache turns his attention here to pubescence in provincial France. The tone is somewhat reminiscent of Malle (Le Souffle au Coeur, Lacombe Lucien) in its attempt at an unsentimental depiction of the sexual awakening of a 13-year-old boy; but ultimately it's more tough-minded, recognising as it does the effects of class and social status on the boy's development. More important is the continual stress on his essential aloneness in coming to terms with sexual experience; he rarely smiles, and finally comes across somewhat like a Bresson protagonist. A minor irritation is the relentless accumulation of short scenes, some with very little to add.

Desire and Despair: The Cinema of Jean Eustache Jared Rapfogel from Senses of Cinema (excerpt)

The conversations in The Mother and the Whore go on much longer than they need to, they have a wholeness and a fullness, a sense of having been liberated from the pressing demands of the narrative, that you'll find in very few other movies (although this is another strong connection to Wiseman's work). It's a quality that contrasts sharply with Eustache's next work, Mes Petites Amoureuses, an autobiographical film about his childhood. Mes Petites Amoureuses has moments of great beauty and, at the end, a certain tenderness. But mostly it's every bit as unsentimental and despairing as the earlier film-the main character, another Daniel (this time played by Martin Loeb) proves to be right at home among Eustache's other creations, attacking an innocent classmate ("For no reason, without knowing why, I hit him. I looked in his eyes-he wasn't even angry"), firing a cap gun in a little girl's face when she fails to acknowledge him, and groping several girls. Here, though, the unrelenting sordidness is conveyed through brief, stunted scenes, memory-flashes rather than chunks of experience.

girish: A Cinema of Sensations

Jean Eustache's color follow-up to his black-and-white masterpiece The Mother and the Whore (1973), detailing his adolescence in the south of France, has never been distributed in the U.S., but some devotees of the director's work actually prefer this 123-minute feature to its lengthy predecessor, and there's no question that it seems to get better and better over time. Writing in these pages, Dave Kehr called its unsubtitled version "an original and disturbing treatment of that most commercial of themes, a young boy's coming of age. Eustache's protagonist (Martin Loeb) is a dark, lonely child who is taken from his grandmother's home in the country to live with his mother (Ingrid Caven) and his Spanish stepfather in the city; he discovers not only sexuality but work, boredom, isolation, and--as in The Mother and the Whore--the unbreachable otherness of women. Photographed in summer colors by Nestor Almendros, the film is quiet and visual where Mother was verbal." This 1974 feature also has one of the most memorably erotic film references in the cinema--a showing of Albert Lewin's terminally romantic Pandora and the Flying Dutchman in a movie house.

User Reviews from imdb Author: arenn (arenn@urbanophile.com) from Evanston, Illinois USA, also seen here: review

My Little Loves is a charming and at times troubling semi-autobiographical film detailing a year in the life of a stand-in for Eustache in the south of France. During the course of the film, we see him transformed from a bright but somewhat shy rural boy to a blossoming teenage hoodlum in a larger town. Ripped away from the comfort of his grandmother's home in the country, he finds himself sleeping on a cot in his mother's one room flat in town and working as a mechanic instead of attending high school. There is plenty of time for drifting, and he falls in with an older crowd of delinquents at a local cafe, much of whose activities revolve around groping girls and searching for that elusive score.

The molestation of women might be offputting to some. But it is supposed to be somewhat offputting. Becoming an adolescent is a painful process in the best of times, and Eustache's young self has more than his fair shares of troubles. He can't relate to women except in the most base sense of groping them. This essential failure is a metaphor for all of his youthful inabilities to cope. And despite what we might think of some of his behaviors, we certainly empathize with him. Especially any guy who is old enough to have gone through this experience will. The only weakness here is perhaps a bit of excessive audience manipulation to evoke sympathy for him, through bludgeoning us with his being yanked from school despite being a very bright student and the like. Still, I enjoyed this one quite a bit.

Gabe Klinger in 2000:

Mes Petites Amoureuses (1974) and The Mother and the Whore (1973) both end abruptly. When I first saw Mother and the Whore, I predicted that for a three-hour movie about an intense love triangle, at least one of its protagonists would fall dead at the hands of another. (Those familiar with the film know that no such thing occurs.) Mes Petites Amoureuses suggests optimism at the end, though the main characters of both it and The Mother and the Whore are essentially left unresolved.

One could say that Leaud's Alexandre in Mother is a boy stuck in a man's body. Martin Loeb's Daniel in Mes Petites is a man stuck in a boy's body, literally . Daniel is a teenager who from birth defect has stopped growing since 11. At the beginning of the film he is brainy and quite morbid, punching a classmate in the stomach and observing: "I hit him and I didn’t even know why. I looked into his eyes and I didn’t even see anger." Once in high school, he grows more unresponsive: he is obviously alienated by his peers.

Eventually Daniel's mother forces him to quit school to take a job at a bicycle shop. Along the way the job doesn’t work out and he moves to another town as a result of his mother marrying a Spanish man. Daniel now has a lot of free time on his hands, which he eventually spends in the pursuit of young women. When romance finally comes, his character is authenticated— he becomes a real teenager.

As a child, growing up outside of Paris and long before living up to his alter-ego personality Alexandre in The Mother and the Whore, Eustache’s moviegoing days were spent like an average adolescent’s, portrayed quite innocently in Mes Petites. Early in the film, Daniel arrogantly asserts to his schoolmates, "Paramount Pictures sucks!" In another scene, the cinema is a temple for blind kisses.

Eustache, for someone who claimed to "only see suffering", has a lot of warm insight into the lives of his young characters. The fact that his career was stunted because of alcoholism and lack of money would not seem apparent to anyone watching Mes Petites Amoureuses, which was also, incidentally, his last complete work. The film was not successful on first impact, but today it offers to us a continuation of his aesthetic after the revolutionary Mother and the Whore: from grainy 16mm to sumptuous 35 and from heavy vocalization (Rohmer) to visual formalism (Bresson). This gem should be in distribution.

Mes petites amoureuses (1974) James Travers from FilmsdeFrance

12 year old Daniel is living contentedly with his grandmother in a rural French town. He has many friends, he is doing well at school and he looks set to have a happy and successful future. Then his mother turns up and takes him back with her to her home - a one room flat - in Narbonne. His mother works at home as a seamstress and lives with a labourer, José. Through lack of money, Daniel must abandon his education and work as an apprentice boy in a repair shop. As he adjusts to his new life, he discovers that he is attracted towards girls of his age...

Adopting a cinematographic style which is somewhere between Truffaut, Rohmer and Bresson, Jean Eustache paints a nostalgic, yet somewhat troubling, portrait of childhood and sexual awakening. The film is intelligently written, beautifully photographed by Nestor Almendros (a favourite of the New Wave directors), with a captivating performance from the young Martin Loeb.

Mes petites amoureuses is a total contrast to Eustache’s immediately preceding film, La Maman et la putain (1973), a dialogue-heavy masterwork centred around a love triangle which spends much of its time philosophising about love and spirituality. Mes petites amoureuses is a much less daunting film which is also concerned with love, albeit less single-mindedly.

Through the experiences of a young boy, this film shows how a life of bucolic innocence is corrupted as a result of both external and internal influences. Externally, the boy is marked by the new people he meets when he changes town; internally, he is equally influenced by changes that are taking place in his own body as he enters adolescence. When he returns to his former home in the country at the end of the film, Daniel is shown to have changed in ways that are both subtle and shocking, reminding us of the precious innocence of childhood.

What makes this an unusual film is how the superficially attractive cinematography is combined with a story of intense personal turmoil and unhappiness. The opening sequence of the film emphasises this, by showing barren images of monuments depicting France’s glorious past whilst playing Charles Trenet’s sentimentally nostalgic "Douce France". What we see on screen is pure visual sentimentality, but what we feel is something quite different. The film stays with its central character, Daniel, throughout, so that the audience ultimately ends up sharing his feelings. It is an approach which some of the other New Wave directors employed to a greater or lesser extent, but probably not quite so successfully as here.

Through both his writing and his direction, Eustache combines poetry and realism with great flair, clearly drawing on his own experiences. As in much of Eustache’s work, contrasting moods are vividly conveyed, with glimmers of optimism providing intermittent relief from an enduring sense of regret and suppressed melancholia. If the writer/director is looking back on his own childhood, it can hardly be a pleasurable experience for him. He might almost be looking for an explanation for his current state of emotional distress. We can only speculate to what extent Euchache’s childhood played in his decision to commit suicide in 1981, but this film contains a few unsettling pointers.

The Auteurs' Notebook Acquarello

Mes petites amoureuses (1974) Cinema Talk, March 22, 2009

My Little Loves Pacific Film Archives

AvaxHome -> Video -> Genre -> Drama -> Jean Eustache-Mes petites ... Exquisite still photos from the film

The New York Times (Vincent Canby)

Mes petites amoureuses - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

UNE SALE HISTOIRE (A Dirty Story) C+ 77

France (50 mi) 1977

Une Sale Histoire from Les Films du Losange

A man tells three women how he became a voyeur in a local café, and why he was addicted to it for a period. He explains how he was intrigued by the behaviour of some of the café’s patrons whenever a woman would go to the ladies’ room: how he checked out the premises and confided in a friend who was expert in such perversions: how the friend found the solution to the problem, thereby allowing the man to return to the café and, undetected, observe women’s genitals at his leisure. A discussion about sexuality and the lifting of taboos then follows.

User Reviews from imdb Author: (edwartell@hotmail.com) from Austin, Texas

In this short film from Jean Eustache, unavailable in the US on video (I saw it at a Eustache retrospective), a group of friends sit down and, with little prelude, listen to their friend (Michel Lonsdale) recite a story about when, as a young man, he discovered a peephole in the ladies toilet at a small cafe. He describes the etiquette surrounding this peephole for the resident perverts in the cafe, and relates how viewing female vaginas soon became his sole obsession, and, finally, how he overcame this obsession. His friends listen, discuss, and the movie ends.

At least, the scripted portion does. Then we see the same story, with nearly identical dialogue, related by Jean Noel-Picq, for real. This second monologue is actually a documentary filming: the first monologue was actually filmed second, with professional actors this time. Naturally, hearing the exact same story twice in a row takes much of the edge off. At first, it's a hilarious, oddly compelling story. The second time, we are subjected to it because, according to the introduction to the screening, Eustache wants to show that there's no such thing as objective truth. Fine...but that's not exactly a new idea. By the end of this little experiment, we feel as if we have seen an overly obvious point beaten into our heads. And a bit dazed from it all. A curious short, nonetheless (please, PLEASE attend a Eustache retrospective if you're lucky enough to get one in your town).

Strictly Film School Acquarello

Composed of two separate, near verbatim vignettes - alternately framed as a documentary, then as fiction film - Une Sale histoire is told from the perspective of a recovering peeping tom who tells his sordid tale of voyeuristic obsession before an intimate, predominantly female audience. In the first part, the spatial relation between the speaker, played by actor Michael Lonsdale, and the listener, played by film critic Jean Douchet - a distance that is reinforced by the latter's invitation to sit on a couch to tell his story - suggests the role of subject and interviewer (or perhaps, patient and analyst), as the glib, animated speaker recounts his accidental discovery of a cleverly concealed (and intentionally created) gap in the doorway of the ladies' room while using the public telephone of a local bistro, and the figurative Pandora's box that his newfound secret, erotic gateway unleashes in his quest to find the perfect woman whose physical appearance complemented the images created by his aroused fantasies. In the second part, the deliberation and exactness of the speaker, this time, played by the author of the story, Jean-Noël Picq, suggests a formal re-enactment of the earlier "interview" - the staging of a non-fiction fiction. Upending conventional roles by casting actor as storyteller (Lonsdale) and storyteller as actor (Picq), Jean Eustache creates a radical and intriguing exposition into the nature of narrative and performance itself, proposing that the boundaries of filmmaking do not exist between reality and fiction, but within layers and permutations of equally modulated fiction.

d+kaz . Screening Log

NGA - Film Series: Jean Eustache: Film as Life, Life as Film a still photo of Eustache with Alix Clio-Roubaud (1977)

LA ROSIÈRE DE PESSAC (THE VIRGIN OF PESSAC)

France (67 mi) 1979

User reviews from imdb Author: (edwartell@hotmail.com) from Austin, TX

You'll understand the importance of Eustache coming back to film the same thing 11 years later. We must remember that this was after the financial failure of Mes Petites Amoureuses had sent Eustache back to making shorts and documentaries (or just short documentaries). It was time, it seems, to come back to Pessac and film the ceremony again. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out the other Rosiere De Pessac on Eustache's filmography, where I described it.

That movie was in black-in-white. This one's in color. But don't worry, this one's better. For one thing, Eustache is considerably more bitter and disappointed with things in general. Last time he was content to merely show. This time, he wants to show you some things. Like the fact that the people in Pessac are now dwarfed by two gigantic, horrendously ugly apartment buildings. Or how the ceremony has now become a politicized event covered by TV news crews. Or how long the gap is between the choosing of the virgin and the actual ceremony. Or the interminable number of times the virgin must be kissed by an interminable number of people.

This is a considerably more cynical film. Eustache does make some stabs at filming this film the same way as the last one (a shot going from the mayor's head to a bust above it, for example; the direction of the camera's movement is reversed), but seems to be less interested now than he was in 1968 than simply "showing truth." But the joy does return in the final scene, where we see the outdoor celebration dinner, where the rowdy residents goodnaturedly bang on their tables and cry out for more champagne. Eustache's camera slowly retreats into the distance as the credits roll, a magnificent closing shot. Together, these two movies provide an interesting study in contrasts. Things have changed indeed.

LES PHOTOS D’ALIX

France (15 mi) 1980

Winner of the best short at the Montreal Film fest in 1982

Jean Eustache R.F. Cousins from Film Reference (excerpt)

User Reviews from imdb Author: EMan-14 from United States

This is a true art film in the literal sense of the word. In an unadorned room, a woman shows a book of her photographs to young boy. Their relationship is brilliantly vague; their ages perfectly spaced so that they could be mother/son, teacher/student, even lovers. The entire film consists of the woman simply describing the photos to the boy. We see each one as she turns the page. The effect is surprisingly gripping, and possibly the reason for this can only be grasped in retrospect: at a certain point - and that point is probably different for each viewer - you realize that the detailed "descriptions" the woman gives for each picture bears no relationship to them. They are, in effect, random bits of descriptive text joined with random photographs. The moment of this realization is as surprising, exhilarating, and chilling as the third act surprise reveal in any good thriller. We immediately question everything we've seen before. What we're left with is what any good work of art leaves us with, more questions, not answers. What is the relationship of words to pictures? What does is mean for a description of something to be "accurate?" Do words "change" how we perceive visuals? If you believe Magritte's "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" opens a profound can of worms, this is a film you must see. Remember the actual name of that Magritte painting? It's called "The Treachery of Images."

Strictly Film School Acquarello

Ostensibly an informal guided commentary through personal photographs taken by Alix Cléo Roubaud for a young interviewer (Boris Eustache), Jean Eustache's Les Photos d'Alix ingeniously explores the nature of reality and perspective within the framework of documentary filmmaking. This sense of trompe l'oeil is prefigured in an early double exposed photograph of Alix's husband, novelist Jacques Roubaud taken from a London hotel room, explaining that the duality had been intentionally developed in order to simulate an elongated profile that more appropriately conforms to the traditional notion of a Hollywood style bed, a manipulation of image that is also illustrated in a subsequent photograph of an induced sunset created by selective masking. Eustache's approach to the film similarly expounds on Alix's photographic experimentation, juxtaposing the curious image of a smiling, shirtless man seemingly disembodied below the rib cage against Alix's comical, if askew anecdote on plying a friend with alcoholic beverages in order to look more relaxed as she takes his picture on a couch. In another humorous episode, Alix conveys the fond memories her father through what she describes as the most iconic image of him from her childhood, revealing a shot of a driver's ear and receded hairline taken from the back of a car, his face partially visible only through the reflection of the rearview mirror. Soon, the conversation grows even more puzzling, as the young man apparently fails to recognize himself in a photograph, Alix incongruously points out the admirable physicality of an unknown man who was accidentally captured on film, as a naked, overweight man stands on the side of the frame, and her revelry on the coincidence of having two former romantic interests converging in the same shot is seemingly reduced to the banal image of a pair of worn boots. As Alix's insights into her sources of inspiration and creative process become increasingly dissociated from the images, Eustache illustrates the point of rupture between the visual and aural, where filmed storytelling lies, not in the symmetry of information, but in its chance intersections and disjunctions.

HIERONYMOUS BOSCH’S GARDEN OF DELIGHTS (Le jardin des délices de Jérôme Bosch) B- 81

France (34 mi) 1980 (version seen unsubtitled)

Chicago Reader

This unsubtitled French short (1979) by Jean Eustache (The Mother and the Whore) features the director's friend Jean-Noel Picq describing and discussing the Bosch painting. 34 min.

Strictly Film School Acquarello

Filmed by Jean Eustache for the television program, Les Enthousiastes, Hieronymous Bosch's Garden of Delights presents a series of unstructured observations, free associations, and interpretations on the third panel of Bosch's well-known oil on wood triptych by Eustache's friend, Jean Frapat before a small captive audience. From the onset, Eustache creates a wry and playful ambiguity to Frapat's dry intellectualism and occasionally untenable rumination, juxtaposing Frapat's serious-minded struggle on the genesis of a vignette that shows a pig dressed in a nun's habit (suggesting that an anthropomorphic transformation must have taken place before the captured moment), with the implicit humor of the sacrilegious image itself, then cutting to the shot of a woman with an enigmatic expression who then places her hand against her head, perhaps shifting unconsciously out of boredom or subtly expressing her own skepticism over the guest speaker's tangential discourse. At times, Frapat's observations are insightful, noting the absence of expression at moments of death and humiliation, the attribution of animal and mechanical characteristics to the human form, and the Freudian symbolism implicit in repeated acts of stabbing and piercing that dominate the panel. On other occasions, his drawn conclusions seem too ambitious and insupportable (most notably, in Frapat's suggestion that the third triptych is replete with symbolic depictions of the seven human orifices - the six common to all humans, and the seventh, female - but cannot point out an instance of the seventh when challenged (perhaps, not surprisingly, by the same woman shown shifting her head near the beginning of the film), and instead, cuts the inquiry short by suggesting its vague ubiquity throughout the painting). It is interesting to note that while Frapat moves upward during his commentary from the amorous, habited pig in the lower corner, to the images of men fused with instruments, to the "ear cannon" that suggests the man-made nature of warfare, to the decimating conflagration the dominates the upper panel, Eustache films the panel in the opposite direction, incisively illustrating the cycle, not only of the grotesque dehumanization that comes with eternal damnation and the idea of humanity as self-perpetuating, tarnished mechanisms of abject life and death, but also of the interrogative - and provocative - nature of art itself.

Ewing, Heidi and Rachel Grady

JESUS CAMP

USA (87 mi) 2006

Jesus Camp JR Jones from the Reader

A chilling close-up of the religious right, this documentary by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (The Boys of Baraka) centers on Becky Fischer, a Pentecostal children's minister, and her annual "Kids on Fire" summer camp in North Dakota, where the next generation of Christian fundamentalists is being programmed for the culture wars. If scenes of preteen children chanting, weeping, speaking in tongues, and performing war dances in army fatigues and camouflage face paint aren't enough to scare you silly, Fischer's apocalyptic sentiments should do the trick ("Democracy is designed to destroy itself, because we have to give everyone equal freedom"). George Ratliff's Hell House (2001) presents a more nuanced and affecting portrait of the same subculture, but Ewing and Grady precisely document the alienation and moral separatism that's incubating an American Taliban. PG-13, 87 min.

The Village Voice [Rob Nelson]

God is in the details no matter what you believe, but this red-state-baiting doc is content to introduce its appalled exposé of evangelical Christian youth culture with shots of a fast-food- and flag-lined highway and the words "Missouri, USA." Welcome to hell, kids. Art-house horror has rarely been scarier than it is in the hands of filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, for whom a drive-through car wash illustrates the evils of American cleansing. Missouri— yikes!—is also the home of Pentecostal minister Becky Fischer, a super-size general in the army of the Lord who commands young attendees of her Kids on Fire camp to worship a cardboard Dubya, clutch tiny fetus dolls, and sing along to spiritual hip-hop ("kickin' it for Christ," y'all). The doc these kids would make with flea market camcorders couldn't possibly be as ugly as this absurdly hypocritical critique of the far right's role in escalating the culture war. The classier indoctrination to which Gap-shopping urban Democrats subject their kids might look damn spooky, too, but it probably wouldn't sell.

The Onion A.V. Club review Keith Phipps

For documentary filmmakers, one of the nice things about finding a subjects who believe they are absolutely right is that they tend not to be camera-shy. So it is with the subjects of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's Jesus Camp, which follows a group of kids from Kansas to an evangelical Bible camp in North Dakota called "Kids On Fire" and back again. Framed by the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor and subsequent appointment of Samuel Alito, it makes no attempts to hide the fact that it's also telling the story of a general change in American politics and the ever-growing power of the Christian Right. Trouble is, one story has a bad habit of overshadowing the other.

The film's never more interesting than when it digs into the details, as in an early scene capturing some home-schooling in which a boy watches educational videos hosted by a dinosaur puppet who mocks both evolution and the Big Bang Theory. His mother later continues the science lesson with a laughing dismissal of global warming. Even before they reach the camp, the film's kids live in an environment designed to keep anything that might challenge their faith at several arms' lengths.

At camp, it only gets more intense. Kids On Fire director Betty Fischer never appears less than earnest. She's no charlatan and clearly believes that her flame-drenched, scare-tactic PowerPoint presentations will set her kids on the right path. But for anyone who values free thought and open discussion, there's a serious creep factor to the way she speaks almost admiringly of the training camps of "the enemy" (which seems to be all Muslims) and the way she encourages near-idol worship of a cardboard George W. Bush.

These moments speak for themselves, so why do Ewing and Grady feel the need to tip their hand by underscoring it all with creepy ambient music or by using Air America host Mike Papantonio as a Greek Chorus expressing the voice of reason? It's as if they'd taken the techniques of the Jesus campers too close to heart: Admit no doubt and keep preaching until they've got the point.

Reverse Shot (Joanne Nucho) review

Pajiba (Daniel Carlson) review

Bright Lights Film Journal review Innocence Lost or Regained? by Alan Jacobson, February 2008

stylusmagazine.com (Learned Foote) review

Slant Magazine review Zach Campbell

filmcritic.com (Norm Schrager) review [4.5/5]

Ruthless Reviews review Matt Cale

Creative Loafing [Felicia Feaster]

Old School Reviews [John Nesbit]

Chicago Reader [J.R. Jones]

Flipside Movie Emporium (Rob Vaux) review [B]

eFilmCritic.com (Collin Souter) review [5/5]

Epinions [Macresarf1]

PopMatters (Louis R. Carlozo) review including a brief interview with the directors

Reel.com review [3.5/4] Tim Knight

Salon.com [Andrew O'Hehir]

FlickFilosopher.com [MaryAnn Johanson]

New York Magazine (David Edelstein) review (Page 2)

Variety.com [Ronnie Scheib]

Time Out London (David Jenkins) review [4/6]

Austin Chronicle (Marrit Ingman) review [3.5/5]

Boston Globe review [2.5/4] Wesley Morris

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review William Arnold

San Francisco Chronicle (Neva Chonin) review [3/4]

Filmmaker Magazine [Brandon Harris]

Eyal, Ron and Eleanor Burke

STRANGER THINGS B 85

Great Britain USA (77 mi) 2010 Official site

This kind of social realist film may represent the future of independent cinema, as it has a small budget, a minimalist low-key approach, using a simple concept of boy meets girl, though meeting under unusual circumstances, and at 77 minutes couldn’t be more concisely told. Written by a husband and wife collaboration where the husband also directs, while the wife shoots and co-edits the film, what’s particularly effective is this small, quiet work has the intimate feel of a personal investment, feelings that are transferred to the audience as well, where a bare bones script never over-explains, where so much is communicated wordlessly, leaving something to think about afterwards. It would be such a pleasure if more films could set out to accomplish those few goals, where the focus is on writing and acting, developing character, without ever revealing too much. Part of the beauty is how much remains a mystery, where one can ponder various possibilities of what might eventually happen in the end. The oceanside location on the English Channel in East Sussex, England couldn’t be more picturesque, and if you don’t believe it, check this out: 1,280 × 857 pixels, where that endless stretch of green leads directly into the back yard of one of the lead characters, Oona (Bridget Collins), who arrives at her mother’s seaside cottage after her recent death. While the home is in a state of disarray, it’s also evident that Oona hasn’t been there for awhile, tidying up the place and resuscitating memories while she quietly sifts her way through much of the memorabilia. Looking as if she’s having a hard time of it, especially getting it ready for sale, a friendly neighbor insists that she spend the night, where she spends much of the time recalling moments with her mother, who was apparently as socially awkward as her daughter appears to be. Oona tapes the conversations, adding it to her collection of recordings as an anthropologist, where she’s attempting to establish an identifying train of thought that defines and brings her closer to her mother.

When she returns the next morning with a real estate agent, she’s alerted by strange sounds, grabbing a mop and smashing the face of an intruder, screaming at him to get out. Mani (Adeel Akhtar) is homeless, seen earlier traveling with a sick, elderly companion known as Bagman (Keith Parry), who he apparently left alone on the beach while he sought shelter, finding what he thought was an abandoned home to spend the night. After sorting things out and collecting her thoughts, she finds a sketchbook left behind, where Mani had been drawing things her mother made, as she was something of an eccentric artist herself. Moved to remorse, she runs down the road to return it, where the two have an awkward meeting filled with hesitations, but she invites him to spend the night in a small shed in the garden that used to be her playroom, also bringing him blankets and cookies. Not much is said, but it’s clear her intentions are friendly, as she often smiles nervously and tries to be a gracious host. Mani, on the other hand, is Middle Eastern, dark-skinned, and probably hasn’t been treated kindly since he can remember, but he’s not one to turn down a generous offer. In the morning, she gives him some money and some bread, and resumes her cleaning. When he returns again that evening, she’s initially mortified, but he’s completely non-threatening, so this time she offers him a bath, recalling the grimy bathwater in GUMMO (1997), and they share a meal, but they learn little about one another. At first Oona tries to interview him, like one of her anthropology projects, but he’s obviously disturbed by her questions, probing areas of his life he’d just as soon forget. In fact, they each remain a mystery to one another throughout, and to the audience as well, where they are a college graduate and a homeless person, where we can only imagine their pasts.

While there is a level of aloofness on Oona’s part, where Mani continues to belong to some “other” category, where her well meaning efforts can appear patronizing, the larger issue seems to be her own insecurities and loneliness, where both appear to have problems connecting with other people. Oona dreams of traveling the world and learning to appreciate “other” cultures, not realizing those mysteries exist all around her. In fact, she seems to have had a fairly distant relationship with her own mother, none of which is ever explained. It’s this unknown aura that draws us to each of them, as they are likely not the people they would wish to be, and they really don’t know how to change the circumstances that led them there. It’s of particular interest that Oona fabricates reality to make the world easier to live in, lying about how close she was to her mother at the end, while Mani avoids reality altogether, so caught up in daily survival, which plays into the finale, which remains grim, but is perhaps overly hopeful. Coming together by accident, they’re both completely unfamiliar how to get past this awkward stage, both products of difficult pasts, where bits of flashbacks reveal a few troubled moments, followed by tight close ups where they remain puzzled by the enormous distance between people. Apparently the cast and crew lived in this house while they were shooting, perhaps adding an element of unvarnished truth to these unglamorous lives. This is a quiet film, without a musical soundtrack, that never reveals its secrets, that instead forces the viewer to examine what societal walls are constructed to keep “others” out, where we routinely walk past people on the street every day, or avoid faces on the bus, without knowing the least bit about them, often making judgments about their unpleasantness. It’s an impersonal world that makes even death feel like a stranger has passed, where we often have little to no connection with our own families. This film also examines social class and the collective baggage we all carry, where more often it’s easier to simply look the other way, but this has accumulative effects, leaving us further isolated from ourselves and one another, even those we care about the most.

Chicago Reader Ben Sachs

A soft-spoken college student returns home to take stock of the family property after her mother dies; while in town she makes the acquaintance of a homeless drifter, and the two enjoy a brief though meaningful friendship. There are no great revelations in this British indie drama (2010), yet first-time writer-directors Eleanor Burke and Ron Eyal tell their simple story earnestly and with obvious sympathy for their emotionally wounded protagonists. In its emphasis of character over narrative incident, this feels closer in spirit to a short film than a feature, though it's still short enough not to wear out its welcome.

STRANGER THINGS Facets Multi Media

A grieving Oona (Bridget Collins, Lacuna) returns to her mother's house to take care of her possessions and property. While there, however, she discovers a mysterious homeless man, Mani (Adeel Akhtar, Four Lions), squatting in one of the rooms. Making a hasty escape, Mani leaves behind his sketchbook, revealing to Oona his considerable artistic talent. She decides to search for him and finds herself inviting Mani to stay in the garden shed. These two isolated people tentatively form a connection and warily begin to know each other, but Mani is reluctant to abandon his vagrant life, thereby creating a peculiar dilemma about their future.

Set against the backdrop of a quiet seaside village in England, this beautifully shot tale of one stranger reaching out to another, Stranger Things is the feature debut of Eleanor Burke and Ron Eyal. Together they have crafted a film that explores grief and loneliness, but has at its heart a unique and distinctive pair who are able to find solidarity and surprising intimacy in one another's company. Through minimal and nuanced filmmaking, Stranger Things examines the nature of human contact and how extraordinarily capable we all are of compassion and kindness.

Village Voice Heather Baysa

Ever caught yourself watching a stranger who was oblivious to your eye, and become fixated for so long that the situation began to feel weird, almost intimate? The debut feature by Eleanor Burke and Ron Eyal produces just this effect. As she confronts the unseemly business of clearing out her recently deceased mother's cottage on the East Sussex coast, London journalist Oona strikes up a quiet friendship with Mani, the homeless man who has been squatting there. Bridget Collins and Adeel Akhtar, the leads, express more in their stark, make-up-free faces than in any line of dialogue—which is wisely kept sparse. Much of the film is a study of the peculiar things people do when they think they're alone. Mani absently examines an old radio. Oona plays with Legos, and does so beautifully. As she sits skimming the back cover of a novel or throwing sticks across a pasture, we might feel as though we're watching Wyeth's Christina's World adapted into film, but in chilly, distinctly British gray-and-blue-based hues. The extended silences—there's no soundtrack save for one jaunty little ditty, a found childhood relic—serve to advance the central relationship, and the directorial team crafts these shots so that instead of feeling drawn out, they seem that they've just been allowed to happen. Same goes for the awkwardness between Oona and Mani, which is far from indie-standard adorable. In fact, it's downright uncomfortable. But as a result the bond between this university graduate and the ragged drifter comes to seem vital and true, undercutting the full-blown sentimentality of the conclusion.

ArtInfo [Graham Fuller]

Two gentle British films playing at this month’s BAMcinemaFest explore what miracles may or may not occur when a disheveled male intruder, having taken refuge on private property, is discovered by the unsuspecting heroine. Bryan Forbes’s directorial debut Whistle Down the Wind is fifty years old and justifiably beloved, though little seen these days. The small independent film Stranger Things arrives in Brooklyn having won prizes at four recent festivals for its first-time feature writer-directors, Eleanor Burke and Ron Eyal.

“Only connect”—E.M. Forster’s recognition, expressed through Margaret Schlegel in Howards End, of the need for people to transcend class barriers—is the unspoken watchword of Stranger Things. Oona (Bridget Collins), an uremarkable, seemingly repressed young woman, travels to a seaside cottage near St. Leonards in East Sussex. It belonged to her mother, an arty eccentric, who has died, and Oona comes to sort out her belongings and sell up.

Rather than spend her first night at the decaying cottage, she stays with a neighbor, who blithely regales her with anecdotes that testify to the mother’s social awkwardness; Oona tapes their conversations, partly to preserve maternal memories, partly because she has ideas about drawing on her anthropology degree in some unspecified manner. While she’s away, a vagrant, Mani (Adeel Akhtar), climbs through a window and beds down, thinking the place unoccupied. He’s still there the following morning when Oona shows the cottage to a real estate agent. When, eventually, they meet, she strikes his face with a broom handle and bellows at him to leave.

He drops his sketch pad as he flees, and Oona, remorseful, finds him on the road and returns it. She offers him the shed, her old playroom, to sleep in and a plate of cookies. Well-meaning but patronizing and naïve, she in unsettled when he asks her for money—she guiltily gives him a note—and especially by the jokey (but unfunny) marriage proposal he makes when departing. He heads into town, but comes back again that evening. Oona, flummoxed, heads out to the field behind the cottage to hyperventilate.

An uncertain intimacy, born of loneliness, develops between them. Oona tries to interview Mani about his itineracy at the cost of his ease, and, instead, we learn more about her being raised by her mother alone and her filial neglect. At one point, Oona talks to a self-involved friend on the phone, but we deduce that, like her mother, she is a solitary figure, unused to forging relationships. Mani may be less well-adjusted than Oona in socially normative terms, but he is comfortable enough with other street people. Among other skeletons in his closet, there’s the ailing tramp he abandoned on the beach before breaking into the cottage. This old man has been Mani’s protector in the past—stumbling along together, the two cut a Dickensian pair in a film little given to rhetoric—and it dawns on Mani that he doesn’t want to make the same mistake in relation to this parental figure that Oona made with her mother.

Although Stranger Things doesn’t carry much allegorical weight, Mani’s Middle Eastern features and complexion complicate Oona’s suspicion of him. If Kelly Reichardt’s revisionist Western Meek’s Cutoff is a post-9/ll film, then Stranger Things is, too, whether the filmmakers intended it to be so or not. Prejudice falls away. A gesture made by Oona to Mani at the end of the film, indicating how strongly she has connected, may strike some viewers as too contrived or implausibly wish-fulfilling, but the refusal of cynicism is refreshing.

Burke (who photographed the film) and Eyal directed Stranger Things in a crisp realist style, favoring extremely tight close-ups that get under the skin of characters who are at first unfathomable. The nuanced performances by Collins (a major talent) and Akhtar (hilarious as the inept jihadist in Four Lions) fully bear out the directors’ belief in an actor-driven cinema.

Stranger Things (2010) Movie Review - Film School Rejects Rob Hunter

GordonandtheWhale.com [Joshua Brunsting]

Tiny Mix Tapes [Matt Biancardi]

Film Review: Stranger Things - Film Journal International David Noh

Slant Magazine Drew Hunt

The 50 Best Movies of 2013 :: Blogs :: List of the Day :: Movies :: Paste Shannon Houston

IONCINEPHILE of the Month: Eleanor Burke & Ron Eyal (Stranger ... Eric Lavallee interviews the two directors from Ioncinephile, April 8, 2013

Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck

Variety.com [John Anderson]

TimeOut NY David Fear

The Capital Times [Rob Thomas]

'Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters,' 'Stranger Things,' Ann Hornaday from The Washington Post

New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis

Eyre, Chris

Chris Eyre - Native Networks

Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/Arapaho) has been described as "the preeminent Native American filmmaker of his time" by People magazine. In 2007 he was selected for two prestigious artist awards — the United States Artists Fellowship and the Bush Foundation Artists Fellowship in Film/Media. In 2007 he also received an All Roads Film Project Seed Grant for Lazarus Rises (working title). Eyre has been awarded many other artists honors and fellowships. He was one of three established filmmakers selected to participate in the inaugural Tribeca All Access program in 2004. He was a 1995 recipient of the Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship (now a fellowship program of the Tribeca Film Institute).

Eyre recently has been chosen to direct three of the five films in the groundbreaking Native American history series We Shall Remain, produced by PBS' American Experience and scheduled for broadcast in 2009. He has also been working with emerging filmmakers as an executive producer and producer, and recent works include Imprint (director: Michael Linn) and California Indian (director: Tim Ramos (Pomo)). Eyre's first feature, Smoke Signals, was one of the five highest-grossing independent films in 1998. It won the Audience Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, and Eyre was awarded the festival's Filmmaker's Trophy.

In 2004 Eyre was again honored at Sundance when Edge of America, based on a true story of a reservation high school girls basketball team's road to the state finals, was selected for the festival's Salt Lake City opening night. In 2006 Edge of America, produced by Showtime, received the Peabody Award, one of the most prestigious awards in electronic media. The film also received the 2005 Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement from the Directors Guild of America and the 2006 Parents' Choice Award. In 2005, for the opening of the new National Museum of the American Indian, Eyre produced the museum's signature film, A Thousand Roads, and has been invited to be a selector for NMAI's 2009 Native American Film + Video Festival. His other films include A Thief of Time and Skinwalkers, based on the novels of Tony Hillerman, for the PBS series Mystery!, documentaries and music videos. He currently resides in Rapid City, South Dakota, with his daughter, Shahela.

"With my work I like the shades: very rarely are our thoughts really black or white except in the case of our own bias and the limitations of our own experience. We tend to be so limited in our perceptions of what AMERICA is. We don't know about our own history, about being real with those that aren't of us. We need some more social/shared understanding and laughter. There is no one truth to our diversity."

Chris Eyre : Filmmaker official website

Chris Eyre biography from Foster Care Month

Chris Eyre @ Filmbug bio and filmography

Chris Eyre from Friday Night Lights - at Film.com biography

NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Chris Eyre profile page

Mystery! American at pbs.org

Filmmaker Chris Eyre Telling It Like It Is, Jon Bowman from Native Peoples magazine, March 1, 2002

Democracy Now! | Filmmaker Chris Eyre and Marquetta Sheilds ... On a screening of SKINS at the 13th Annual Human Rights Watch Festival, June 28, 2002

Chris Eyre and Scott Garen Form New Production Company for Native ... AAA Native Arts feature, April 14, 2005

SMOKE SIGNALS: DIRECTOR CHRIS EYRE Interview by Prairie Miller after SMOKE SIGNALS (1997)

(Smoke Signals) Interview with Chris Eyre The @sk Hollywood Interview in 3 parts after SMOKE SIGNALS (1997)

Chris Eyre Interview Transcript (Sep '02) - Interview - Stumped ... Chris Neumer interview from Stumped magazine, September 2002

SKINS GAME: Film Freak Central Interviews Skins Director Chris Eyre Interview by Walter Chaw, October 2, 2002

Edge of America - Interview with Chris Eyre and James ... Interview with Chris Eyre and James McDaniel, January 21, 2004 on YouTube (4:18)

Interview with Chris Eyre Interview with Chris Eyre (Southern ... Andrew McLean interview from the Hemispheric Institute Video Library, June 7, 2006 (39 minutes)

"On the Issues with Nicholas Ballasy" featuring Chris Eyre TV interview by Nicholas Ballasy, March 27, 2008 on YouTube (16:17)

There is an enemy among us Video by Chris Eyre - MySpace ... Anti-drunk driving commercial (starring Gary Farmer) targeting New Mexico natives, on YouTube (1:03)

Chris Eyre YouTube statement to young indigenous native people (1:17)

Chris Eyre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chris Eyre - Visual Wikipedia

SMOKE SIGNALS B+ 90

USA (89 mi) 1997

It's a good day to be indigenous!

Adapted by Sherman Alexie from the short stories of his book, “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight into Heaven,” which just about describes this film, supposedly the first written, directed, and co-produced by Native American Indians, and as one character mentions, “This ain’t ‘Dancing With Salmon,’” a sly reference to the fishing culture of the Coeur d’Alene Indian reservation in Idaho where the film takes place. The story features two friends from birth, Victor superbly played by Adam Beach, the handsome, strong silent type, while Thomas, played by Evan Adams, is a peculiar, nerdy looking guy who bears an uncanny resemblance to Roger from the old TV sitcom “That’s My Mama.” Thomas is the film’s narrator, an incessant talker, a storyteller carrying on the oral traditions, but he is also a pain in the ass to Victor, who grows tired of him always asking about his absent father, telling him “When Indians go away, they don’t come back.”

The film weaves back and forth in time, opening with a 4^th of July fire that killed both of Thomas’s parents, while at the same time, a local KREZ disc jockey declares “It’s a good day to be indigenous!” switching back to a traffic reporter, one guy sitting atop a van in a quiet, rural expanse where there is nothing to observe. Arnold is Victor’s father, a huge presence of a man played by Gary Farmer, who actually saved Thomas in his parent’s fire, but also guzzles beer, slaps his wife and kid around, and is always disappearing from his family, joking with his son on another 4^th of July, “Are you feeling independent today? I’m feeling magical...white people are gone, poof. I wave my hand and the reservation is gone, poof...I’m so good I can make myself disappear, and then I’m gone.” He is seen leaving in a pickup truck one day and never returned until one day Victor’s mom receives a phone call that he died in a trailer home in Phoenix.

The two young men decide to leave the reservation to retrieve Arnold’s ashes, with Victor setting down a few rules for Thomas, “Don’t you know how to be a real Indian? Quit grinnin’, Indians aren’t supposed to smile like that. Get stoic, look like a warrior. An Indian man ain’t nothin’ without his hair, and you’ve got to get rid of the suit.” They sing a stupid song about John Wayne’s teeth as they travel across America on a bus. When they arrive in Phoenix, they meet a young, attractive Suzie Song, played by Irene Bedard, who tries to help a reluctantly bitter Victor come to terms with his father, revealing another side of him, one that always wanted to go back home, who mourned his loss at having left his family, telling him a story his father told her when he and his son were playing 2 on 2 basketball against two Jesuits when Victor was 12. He was proud of his son for making the tie-breaking, game winning shot, claiming Victor was “an indigenous angel,” that you have to have faith, that he was the Man on that day. “The Indians against the Christians, for at least one day, the Indians won.” Victor, however, remembered what actually happened when he missed that final shot, and that his father invented that lie to make his son look good. Alone, looking over his father’s belongings, Victor discovers a family photo of himself with his mother and father, written on the back is the word – home, which sparks a violent reaction causing him to cut off his hair.

The two boys return in Arnold’s pickup, but have an explosive argument, Victor insisting his dad was a drunk, that he beat both his wife and his kid. For the first and only time in the film, Thomas stands up to Victor, “Yeah, but that’s not all he was. You left when your dad left. You make your mom cry. All you’ve been doing is feeling sorry for yourself for the last 10 years. What about you?” Suddenly they swerve into another car that was just sitting on the side of the road. The next day, Thomas tells Victor, I think we had 2 accidents last night.” When they return home, Thomas asks, “Do you know why your dad really left?” Victor responds, “He didn’t mean to,” and in a gracious gesture, splits Arnold’s ashes with Thomas, who vows to take them to Spokane Falls, where he searched for a vision in his youth, discovering instead a wonderful personal memory of Arnold, confident this time his sacred remains will rise, like a vision. The end of the film, however, finds Victor at the Spokane Falls bridge, with thunderous water flowing underneath, where a primal scream is captured in silence. “How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream. How do we forgive them for leaving us all too often? Shall we forgive them for shutting doors, for speaking through walls, or never speaking, or never being silent? If we forgive our fathers, what is left?”

Not that anyone else ever saw this film, but this reminded me of an Asian-American film, STRAWBERRY FIELDS, where a young Japanese-American girl searches the desert for the spirit of her deceased parent’s forbidden memories, as they were interned there in concentration camps during WWII, but refused to ever speak of it. The bitterness of the present trying to come to terms with an extinguished past is a powerful subject. I loved Victor’s bitterness in SMOKE SIGNALS, I could feel his anger, you could see it in his face, but in the end he was too apologetic, all too forgiving, and I felt cheated, as if this was an easy resolution. Like his father, Victor was a powerful presence in the film, perhaps a Bigger Thomas-style character from Richard Wright’s “Native Son,” a physical force, but he became another Thomas, a weaker, more awkward, emasculated James Baldwin-style character, or as the film suggests, “not the Lone Ranger and Tonto, but two Tonto’s.” Victor was a better Lone Ranger than the Lone Ranger, yes, he was an Indian, but he was definitely not a servile Tonto in my book.

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

The first feature made wholly by native Americans isn't quite what you'd expect. About two argumentative friends who leave their Idaho reservation to go check out the pathetic trailer park estate left by the late, estranged father of one of them, the film deals with history, social injustice, crisis of identity, poverty and other pertinent issues. But it does so in a delightfully witty, offbeat way that simultaneously sends up and celebrates supposedly typical aspects of Indian culture. The gags, visual and verbal, generally hit the spot, including a nice dig at Dances with Wolves. The film looks terrific, the 'mythic/mystical storytelling' bit is handled with just the right amount of tongue in cheek, and the performances are very engaging. Original, audacious, entertaining, and an all-round impressive debut.

"Smoke Signals" is a landmark in movie history, being the first film written, directed, and produced by American Indians. Happily, it is also a good film, full of fire and humor and magic. Victor (Adam Beach) goes on an odyssey to collect the remains of his father, who left when Victor was a boy. Thomas (Evan Adams), a nerdy kid who tells stories, goes with him. The storytelling is handled in an engaging, magical way, and we slowly learn what really happened. The movie blows away Indian cliches and misconceptions. "Smoke Signals" also features the gorgeous Irene Bedard, who was the model for Disney's "Pocahontas," and Gary Farmer, from Jim Jarmusch's "Dead Man." "Smoke Signals" was written by Sherman Alexie, adapted from his short stories, and directed by first-timer Chris Eyre. It won the Audience Award and the Filmmaker's Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival, and was featured at the Dockers Classically Independent Film Festival at the Castro.

Smoke Signals Gerald Peary, also seen here: The Boston Phoenix review

Smoke Signals, the first feature film conceived, written, directed, and (mostly) acted by Native Americans, is cause for jubilation just for been financed and made. With big-time Miramax as its Great White Distributor, this movie should be seeable by tribal people all about the country. (It opens this Friday at the Harvard Square.)

But the historical breakthrough is not the only reason for celebration. The first Native American film is simply an all-out wonderful American film. This Chris Eyre-directed picture from a sublime screenplay by novelist/poet Sherman Alexie is so sweet and funny, and also so fearlessly emotional. You'll certainly laugh a lot, and feel sad a bit, watching the lovely story unwind; and you'll certainly savor the ensemble, some of the most capable, and charismatic, Native actors in North America. But Smoke Signals dares travel beyond its quiet verities. The movie climaxes in a truly universal flood of anguish, pain, anger, forgiveness, release. I've seen Smoke Signals twice and, in its final moments, sobbed twice: big, gloppy, purgative tears.

Here's a bit of the story. Victor (Adam Beach) lives on Idaho's Coeur d'Alène Indian Reservation with his resilient mother (Tantoo Cardinal) and his alcoholic father (Gary Farmer). When Victor is 12, his dad takes off for Arizona, abandoning wife and son. A bitter Victor, grown into early manhood, receives the harsh news one day that his wandering dad is dead in a trailer, in the desert outside Phoenix.

Should Victor care at all? He does care, but he has no money for a Greyhound bus to Arizona to claim the body. He's forced to bring along someone who'll pay both their ways, a four-eyed, uncool geek named Thomas Builds-the-Fire (Evan Adams). This Thomas is prone to shut his eyes and weave long, weird, impossibly opaque, Indian stories. Thomas, get normal!

The road trip becomes, of course, a mythic pilgrimage, a psychic journey. Victor's poisonous anger toward his father, toward everyone, is tamed a bit by Thomas's unwavering kindness, openness, morality. Thomas's stories are actually holy ones, spinning through time. He's a magic Christian, a griot, a Solomon. And it's Thomas who, at the end, is charged with dropping Victor's father's ashes off a Spokane bridge.

That's where Smoke Signals soars to the universal, a wailing wall of sorrow, with a voiceover reading of Dick Lourie's mighty poem "Forgiving Our Fathers." The poem is, without naming names, about Telemachus and Odysseus, Victor and his dad, your dad, my dad: "How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream."

The moment is akin to John Huston's chilling voiceover reading of the last paragraph of James Joyce's story at the end of The Dead (1987), with snow falling all over Ireland, over the world, blanketing the living and the deceased.

That's what I told Sherman Alexie when we had lunch in Cambridge. Alexie had seen The Dead many times but never made the conscious connection to Smoke Signals. "Damn! I'm going to go to the video store and rent it again," he said. Then he surprised me: Dick Lourie is a local. He lives in Somerville, teaches at U Mass-Boston. He was Alexie's poetry editor at Hanging Loose Press.

Alexie: "I've seen the film hundreds of times, and the ending still gets me, maybe because I didn't write that poem, when the film goes from a simple, tender domestic drama and becomes spiritual, universal, tragic. The movie is about these Indians, but it seems to affect everyone's life. It's been astonishing: I had no idea of the huge, aching, father wound, of all genders, colors, races.

"After one screening, a woman told me, 'I'm going to call my father. I haven't talked to him in 12 years.' I saw her in the lobby on the phone."

Smoke Signals is based on stories in Alexie's collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfighting in Heaven. He wrote that extraordinary book in an alcoholic haze. "I've been in recovery for eight years, but I drank from ages 18 to 23. I'd buy a case of beer, rent six or seven video movies, and start drinking, get up only to change the movies, pass out. Nothing romantic, no Lost Weekend, no Nick Cage in Las Vegas. I was drunk, dirty, and disgusting. But I'd write. I'd get up, and there would be 12 pages by my word processor, and I wouldn't remember writing them."

And his screenplay for Smoke Signals? "So many people write outside their experiences. Here, there's no emotional distance. It's who I am and what I know. Everyone at Miramax thinks I'm more Victor, maybe because I'm a jock and I'm 6'2". But I have a compulsive need to talk like Thomas, and there's not much of a filter between my brain and my mouth."

His father? "I've spent my life mythologizing him. He lives at home with all my siblings. He's a decent, ordinary man."

Soon, Alexie will write and direct a screen version of his novel Indian Killer, with Evan Adams, the 5'2" Indian leprechaun who triumphs as gentle-souled Thomas, transformed into a sociopath.

"Evan is a perfect combination of sheep and tiger, the sacred and the profane, William Blake personified. Before Smoke Signals, I saw an audition tape of him, and his spirit came roaring off my TV. Now, I like to tease him. 'Evan, you could be my De Niro.' "

CultureCartel.com (John Nesbit) review [4/5]

filmcritic.com (James Brundage) review [4/5] also seen here: James Brundage review

Louis Proyect review

Goatdog's Movies (Michael W. Phillips, Jr.) review [4/5]

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [3/4]

Harvey S. Karten review

Beyond Hollywood review Nix

Joe Barlow review [4.5/5]

The Onion A.V. Club [Joshua Klein]

Murali Krishnan review [2.5/4]

The Providence Journal review Michael Janusonis

Movieline Magazine review Stephen Farber

Entertainment Weekly review [B+] Lisa Schwarzbaum

Austin Chronicle (Marc Savlov) review [3.5/5]

San Francisco Chronicle (Peter Stack) review

Los Angeles Times (Kevin Thomas) review

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [3/4]

The New York Times (Janet Maslin) review

SKINS

USA (84 mi) 2002

Lobo Howls (Judith Wolfe) review [6/10]

Director Chris Eyre pulls no punches in his sophomore effort, an angry portrait of life on the impoverished Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Frustrated reservation cop Rudy (Eric Schweig) centers this knotty drama, based on the novel by Adrian C. Louis. Unable to prevent the self-destruction of his community from alcoholism, crime, spousal abuse and murder, he simmers under his bearish friendliness while impotently picking up the pieces of the latest violent episode.

Adding fuel to his angry indignation is the embarrassment of his dropout older brother, Mogie (Graham Greene), the former football hero and Vietnam vet turned bitter drunk. Flashbacks show the legacy of alcoholism and abuse in their family and the bond of brotherly love that still holds them together despite the arguments and insults that dominate their contentious relationship today.

When Rudy finds a boy senselessly kicked to death in a drunken spat, his bottled-up rage explodes in a mission of midnight vigilante justice. Schweig's avenging figure is pure rage and punishment, and the rush of righteous vengeance feels empowering until the destructive reign of terror backfires with catastrophic consequences.

Sixty miles from Mount Rushmore, Pine Ridge encompasses the notorious site of the Wounded Knee massacre, and its legacy (which Eyre movingly parallels with My Lai) seems to permeate the land. Where Eyre's debut film, "Smoke Signals," favored communal warmth and lovely landscapes, there's no majesty to the desert scrub lands defined by dust, desolation and the Third World poverty of the Oglala Sioux community tearing itself apart. He shoots with an almost colorless look and images that emphasize emptiness and isolation.

Eyre confronts his issues bluntly and boldly (if not always deftly), and his fury and fiery passion make this portrait burn with indignation. This is a film about anger, shame and helplessness, and it offers no answers, merely hard questions and angry challenges. He seems to be asking: Do the stone presidents feel shame as they look down on the people this country has abandoned?

Story: I've had a lengthy fascination with the sad saga of the American Indian. Director Chris Eyre (I loved his first film, Smoke Signals) brings us another film about the res (reservation). Stories about the contemporary American Indian usually fall into the same tragic fold and this film is no different. Based on the '95 novel by Adrian C. Louis and scripted by Jennifer D. Lyne we find ourselves on the Pine Ridge Reservation (Wounded Knee) not far from Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

We meet two brothers, one a Vietnam vet who is an alcoholic and the other who serves on the Indian Reservation Police force. His job mainly deals with domestic abuse and the problems of alcoholism. They both find different ways to express rage at their plight.

The story deals with social injustice, alcoholism, poverty, anger, revenge, reconciliation and cultural genocide. While, I admit, none of these topics is upbeat, the film manages to leave one with hope.

Acting: Graham Greene, as the drunken brother, has most of the good lines and is very effective. Eric Schweig (Last of the Mohicans) is passionate as the other brother.

Critters: Dogs and spiders

Food: Uneaten dinners and some mystery meat on a spit.

Visual Art: Not much disposable cash on the reservation for the purchase of fine art in one's home.

Blatant Product Placement: Lots and lots of beer including Colt and Pabst. One of the main characters sported a T-shirt with Madonna's face and Like a Virgin for most of the film.

Soundtrack: Excellent mix of native and contemporary tunes.

Opening Titles: None. Please sit through the closing credits. The names of some of the Indians involved in the making of this film are fun to read. My favorite was, Gary Left Hand.

Theater Audience: Four men and me. The fellow sitting in the first row was laughing very hard at some of the film. I am not sure why.

Predictability Level: High

Tissue Usage: one

Oscar Worthy: No

Nit Picking: Just the frustrating plight of the Indian.

Big Screen or Rental: Rental would be fine. How about some of Graham Greene's other films, such as: The Green Mile, Thunderheart and of course, Dances With Wolves.

eFilmCritic.com (Brian McKay) review [4/5]

The second feature film by director Chris Eyre (SMOKE SIGNALS) begins with an almost documentarian approach, with news footage and a narrative voice-over describing the nearly third-world conditions that exist on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Located practically in the shadow of Mount Rushmore, it also resides near the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre. But while a documentary on this subject would have been fascinating, the dramatic film that these opening scenes segue into is no less gripping.

Primarily the tale of two brothers who grew up and still live on Pine Ridge, Skins focuses on Rudy Yellow Lodge (Eric Schweig), who is a Pine Ridge Police Officer, and his older brother Mogie (Graham Greene), a Vietnam vet and hardcore alcoholic. In addition to dealing with drunken brawls and brutal incidents of domestic violence, Rudy spends a good portion of his time taking care of Mogie’s messes. Although the kid brother, Rudy is the grown-up, while jokester Mogie still acts like a rowdy teenager and is always quick with a funny but caustic remark. Despite his efforts to help Mogie out and include him in his life, when Mogie embarrasses him in front of his fellow officers at a police picnic, the two have a bit of a falling out. However, Rudy also runs into an old flame, Stella (Michelle Thrush), who is married-but-separated (apparently the latest round in a constant cycle) and invites Rudy over for the inevitable rekindling.

When a young man from the reservation is found murdered at an abandoned house, Rudy gives chase to one of the killers, only to fall and hit his head on a rock. He seems to experience either a vision or delusion, depending on one’s interpretation – but whatever you want to call it, the result is that Rudy begins to act outside the bounds of his normal law-enforcing behavior. When he finds two young men he thinks are responsible for the murder, he follows them and listens in on their campfire conversation, where he hears them talking about the crime. Rather than take them in, however, he finds himself covering his face with nylons and grabbing a baseball bat from the trunk. When the teenagers later drag themselves to the hospital with broken kneecaps and confess their crime to him (having no idea that he’s the guy who just gave them a royal beat down), Rudy begins to wonder if he can accomplish more outside the law than within it.

However, when he begins to take more impulsive actions that he think will help his people in the long run, he ends up reaping devastating personal consequences for both he and his brother. Characteristically, however, when he admits to Mogie that “I’m a vigilante”, his brother merely chuckles and asks, “What, like Rambo?” While Rudy struggles with his conscious, Mogie is confronted with his own mortality and the realization that he has let down his son, Herbie (Noah Watts), even though the young man loves him unconditionally.

Like the preceding Smoke Signals, Skins is a rich and engrossing look at modern Native American reservation life that makes great strides in dispelling ignorant stereotypes while also presenting the world with the cold facts about a proud culture plagued by unemployment and alcoholism. Like Smoke Signals, the film is also imbued with strong themes of familial ties and spirituality that are powerful and moving without stooping to base melodrama. Comments from detractors have criticized the film for its “heavy-handedness” and “obvious Native-American Agenda”. Regarding the former - on the contrary, the themes are presented in a straightforward manner that feels neither forced nor contrived. As for the “agenda” comments, all I can say is – well, no shit! It’s a film that has a Native American director, cast, and crew, and which is based on a novel by a Native American. What the fuck were you expecting, Sweet Home Alabama? If there are any minor quibbles to be found with the film, one could be that many of the smaller supporting performances are pretty leaden. However, since most of the players were recruited from the Pine Ridge community, and are not professional actors, this is pretty easy to overlook. Another problem, however, is that sub-plots are introduced and then subsequently brushed aside, such as the romance between Rudy and Stella. After a few initial scenes, Stella is never seen again and only mentioned in passing once. In addition, the belief system and cultural mythos that drive Rudy to go vigilante are touched upon rather lightly, and a deeper exploration of these themes is merited.

However, Most of the main actors are solid, especially the always-dependable Greene and a standout performance from Schweig. Also, Elaine Miles appears in a brief role that is such a 180 from her Marilyn character on Northern Exposure that it’s a small joy to behold. The result is a film with strong characters that one can readily identify with, and a wide range powerful highs and lows.

In the “making of” feature, director Eyre comments that although he has been offered the opportunity to do more Hollywood mainstream films, he feels compelled to continue working on small independent projects like this one that expose the world to the modern Native American condition. As long as his work remains as consistently good as it has been so far, the world should feel compelled to keep watching

CultureCartel.com (John Nesbit) review [3/5]

epinions.com Review [Macresarf1]

The Onion A.V. Club [Nathan Rabin]

Harvey S. Karten review [2.5/4]

CultureCartel.com (John Beachem) review [2/5]

Film Freak Central review Walter Chaw

filmcritic.com (Max Messier) review [2.5/5]

Offoffoff.com, the guide to alternative New York David N. Butterworth

The Village Voice [Mark Holcomb]

Entertainment Weekly review [C+] Lisa Schwarzbaum

Variety.com [David Rooney]

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [3.5/4]

Washington Post [Desson Howe]

Washington Post [Stephen Hunter]

The New York Times (Dave Kehr) review

SKINWALKERS – made for TV

USA Great Britain (100 mi) 2002

This is the first of 3 made for TV movies (so far) adapted from Tony Hillerman stories, using a terrific Indian cast, set on the Navajo Reservation, and adhering to native rites and customs, showing a cultural respect, yet remaining faithful to the humorous interplay between the characters, in particular Adam Beach as officer Jim Chee, and the indispensible Wes Studi as Lt. Joe Leaphorn. Throw in Graham Greene, something of a Christian con-man, Alex Rice as the smart public defender and love interest for Chee, Eyre himself plays a judge, and a few other ornery folks who have an innate suspicion of visitors, preferring to live alone in this desolate country. Chris Eyre has directed two of them, the first and third (A THIEF IN TIME), while the second was COYOTE WAITS.

The flavor of each is determined by Hillerman, who is not himself an Indian, but he served in World War II with Indians who were brought in as codebreakers, the American military believing the Nazi’s would not be able to comprehend their native language, so Navajo language was used quite effectively in top secret military operations. From that experience, Hillerman immersed himself in Navajo culture and has become something of an expert in knowing and understanding in great detail the overall landscape of Navajo land. Some read his books with a map at their side to confirm the accuracy of his writings. But what really works is his obvious love for the people living on the land, their unique humor, sacred ways, individualism to the point of stubbornness in adapting to outsiders, and an appreciation for their largely unwritten history.

The writing credits for SKINWALKERS goes to Robert Redford’s son, James, an industry name that probably got the project financed. That’s life. But the obvious attempt to employ Indians as actors and director lends a voice of authenticity that can only help provide a more accurate depiction of an Indian culture that has been stereotyped and misrepresented for over two hundred years. Hopefully, projects such as these, which are filled with gorgeous scenery, delightful details and fascinating, articulate people, will get more funding, as the Leaphorn-Chee battle of wits is always profoundly interesting.

User comments from imdb Author: TemporaryOne-1 from Orlando, Florida, USA

Skinwalkers is the first film featuring Native American police officers Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, who are responsible for officiating crime on a Navajo Reservation.

A Skinwalker is a sorcerer or witch that takes animal form, and commits terrible crimes, including murder. Traditionally, Navajos never say the word Skinwalker, for fear that a Skinwalker will take their life. Skinwalkers practice "bad medicine".

In Skinwalkers, a Native American Medicine Man (Healer) is found dead, his body surrounded by animal-like footprints, and his hand lacerated by a human-bone arrow, a traditional weapon of a Skinwalker.

Chee, struggling between his professionalism and traditional beliefs, feels the killer is a Skinwalker. Leaphorn, a city-reared Native American who's beginning to understand his Native roots, has no doubt the killer is a man who is hunting down Healers.

Together, Leaphorn and Chee seek to protect another Healer from the mysterious killer, and they slowly decrypt Navajo evidence that could lead to a ghostkiller or mankiller.

Skinwalkers weaves together thrilling Navajo folklore and art, mesmerizing copper-hued glowing landscapes, meditative musical lines, and harsh Native American reality - poverty, violence, anger, hurt, and an excruciatingly painful elimination of Native American tradition.

eFilmCritic.com (Jay Seaver) review [3/5] also seen here: Jay's Movie Blog

As I've mentioned before, where mystery franchises was once dependable workhorses for studios, they've mostly been banished to TV in recent decades. Even there, PBS has scaled Mystery! back from a weekly Thursday-night series to a late summer fill-in for Masterpiece Theater. The upside is that WGBH has also started adapting American mysteries along with their English counterparts, so far producing one new adaptation of Tony Hillerman's novels per year. Skinwalkers, is a solid first entry, although it still has room for improvement.

The story is solid enough - when a local medicine man is murdered within the confines of a Navajo reservation, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (Wes Studi) is assigned to investigate, with uniformed officer Jim Chee (Adam Beach) assisting. The murder weapon is an arrowhead made out of human bone, something associated with Skinwalkers. Leaphorn immediately dismisses evil shapeshifters as fairy tales, but it's interesting pathology. When the attempt to consult with another medicine man on the subject turns up another dead body, the mystery deepens.

Though the murder mystery is often looked upon as a somewhat limited genre - there are thousands of individual tales to be told, but a perception that they are basically variations on a theme - there are at least three distinct areas of focus. There is the Agatha Christie-style puzzle mystery, perhaps best experienced as short stories, where the reader is encouraged to test their wits against those of the detective. There is the procedural, which currently rules network television (and cable - my last roommate would happily watch four hours of true crime every night) in the form of Law & Order, CSI, and the like. And then there's a third, more mainstream type, where the crime mainly provides structure for an exploration of characters and issues.

Skinwalkers is clearly the third type, as concerned with what it means to be an Indian in the twenty-first century as it is with detailing the hunt for a murderer. You can see that in the contrast between the leads: In a switch from convention, the younger Chee embraces Navajo culture, training as a medicine man when not on duty with the Navajo Nation Police Department, while Leaphorn is a veteran Phoenix detective who left the city for his wife and doesn't feel much connection to the land and way of life. This conflict between traditional and western ways of life is a recurring theme, as when Chee and a doctor at a local hospital (Michael Grayeyes) discuss how to treat an injury.

Though this sort of thing makes for strong characters and gives the viewer more to chew on than just who done it, there is also a risk that the movie will lose its focus. There are digressions that don't really contribute much to the mystery plot, even as red herrings. While the discussion of Navajo versus American jurisdiction is interesting, and the look at how common unemployment and alcohol abuse is affecting the next generation of children growing up on the reservation is something worth bringing to the rest of America's attention, someone mainly interested in who killed the medicine men may find such things extraneous. Indeed, one lengthy set-piece seems like a drawn-out way to introduce a potential love interest (in future installments) for Chee, public defender Janet Pete (Alex Rice).

There is some decent talent attached to this picture, perhaps more than expected of a movie made for American broadcast television (even PBS). Robert Redford serves as an executive producer (his son writes the screenplay). Director Chris Eyre's debut feature, Smoke Signals, got a fair amount of buzz when Miramax released it, and his follow-up, Skins, did well enough on the festival circuit to get a limited release. He's not yet a Native American Spike Lee in terms of having the pure talent to command immediate attention even when not making films tied to his ethnic background, but he does well by his material. This is a pretty good-looking film produced on what must have been a pretty tight budget.

The cast is a bit of a mixed bag. Studi is rock-solid, as might be expected from an old pro. Beach doesn't quite measure up to Studi, seeming a little over-eager, too determined to come across as friendly and/or nice. Most of the rest of the cast is adequate, although I found myself wondering just how deep the casting pool of Native American actors is afterward. Though there aren't many bad performances, just about every cast member comes from a different nation. I'm all for casting the person who will give you the best performance even if it means fudging ethnicity, but others may differ. It would be a bigger deal if these people being a tight-knit ethnic community was a bigger plot point.

It's a good start. I look forward to more adaptations of the Chee/Leaphorn books, hoping that Beach's performance improves or grows on me.

Mystery! American at pbs.org

Tony Hillerman, Novelist, Dies at 83 Marilyn Stasio from The New York Times, October 27, 2008

Tony Hillerman, 83, dies; bestselling mystery author provided insight into the native people and culture of the Southwest Dennis McLellan from The LA Times, October 28, 2008

EDGE OF AMERICA – made for TV

USA (105 mi) 2003

User comments from imdb Author: scott-551 from Washington, DC

An above-average TV movie that avoids the pitfalls of cliche.

This movie began airing as "On The Edge" on the Dutch Hallmark Channel in December 2003. It's a solid piece of work on all levels, well above average for family-oriented TV movies. James McDaniel performs with typical power as Kenny Williams, a racially aggrieved black schoolteacher and basketball coach who has relocated from his home in Texas to the Three Nations Reservation in Utah. There the coach takes over the hapless girls' basketball team. Predictable culture clashes, high-school social conflicts, family tensions, and athletic drama unfold from there. But the story remains relatively spare, relying on believable characterization rather than its timeworn plot elements to carry the film. Williams' struggle to adapt to, and find acceptance in, his new community dominates the story. At one point, not long after a parent from a nearby white high school has all but called Williams a "nigger," the mother of a girl on the team dismisses him as a "white man."

It's surprisingly compelling material, but it means that the Native American community drops into the background despite the able performances of a large cast. This is a movie about a black coach in a Native American community, not a movie about a Native American community with a black coach. The latter would have been a more compelling story. The very similar "Stand And Deliver" devotes more attention to the students in the story and is a better movie for it.

The movie is beautifully shot. Interior scenes convey a feeling of authenticity with their lived-in-ness, and the exterior shots do justice to the majestic landscapes of the American West. Also, the soundtrack features several new recordings by singer/ songwriter Annie Humphrey. "Edge of America" and "Good Medicine" might be her best work to date.

Thankfully, the new coach is not able to turn his team into state champions overnight with a motivational speech at the end of the first act. Instead, we see Williams repeatedly making mistakes and struggling to learn from them for the sake of his own pride and the team's progress. His relationship with the girls on the team is complicated by their appreciation of his efforts and their frustration at his shortcomings. The story concludes with a satisfyingly low-key scene of homecoming for the team and their coach that steers clear of either the triumphalism or mawkish melodrama that mar most sports dramas.

Variety.com [Scott Foundas]

Purportedly inspired by actual events, "Edge of America," the latest pic by Native American filmmaker Chris Eyre ("Smoke Signals," "Skins"), echoes films like "To Sir, With Love" or "Hoosiers." Story of an African-American English teacher coaching the girl's basketball team at an all-Native-American high school is formulaic to a fault. That said, this Showtime production (which screened as Sundance's Salt Lake City opening night film and will air on the cabler later this year) is more compelling and touching than it has any reason to be, thanks to sensitive execution and excellent performances from reliable screen veterans and spirited newcomers.

Having relocated from Texas to fill a mid-semester job opening at Three Nations High School, English teacher Kenny Williams (James McDaniel) isn't like anything the locals have seen before. For starters, he's black, which causes even the school's seemingly unflappable, white principal (Michael Flynn) to do a double take at their first meeting. Beyond that, he's completely ignorant of -- and, at first, more than a bit insensitive to -- local customs.

Still, the obvious set-up by Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Willy Holtzman, who contributed pic's script, contains at least a spark of originality: The new black teacher on campus is a fish-out-of-water not because he isn't white, but because he isn't red.

By-the-numbers plotting includes Williams earning the respect of his students -- a moody, sarcastic bunch of slacker Indian teens, most of whom have never seen a black man before -- though at least one, a hip-hop-spouting tough Franklin Tom (Eddie Spears), seems to think he is black.

Challenged soon thereafter by beautiful fellow teacher Annie (Irene Bedard) and colorful local auto mechanic Cuch (scene-stealing Wes Studi), among others, to turn around the fate of Three Nations High's winless Lady Warriors basketball team, Williams reluctantly accepts the coaching role and begins to assemble his team.

Of course, it turns out class "bad girl" Carla (Delanna Studi, cousin of Wes) can shoot hoops like nobody's business (and is also really smart, but plays dumb so as to fit in with her friends). Meanwhile, the equally promising Baby (Trini King) must convince her traditionalist mother (Geraldine Keams) that the sport is not an affront to their way of life.

"Edge of America" soon becomes an inevitable countdown to a championship-game finale, complete with rousing speeches and lessons about how it's not winning or losing that matters, but rather what one learns along the way.

Too often, Holtzman opts for the easy way out, particularly during the Lady Warriors' two encounters with rich, seemingly all-white (and presumably Mormon) Zion High, depicted as underhanded and racist. Entire pic, in fact, boils down to a generic metaphor for racial harmony and finding one's place in the world -- with only a precious few scenes committed to providing a sense of those identity issues unique to Indian cultures.

But the cliches are rendered more than tolerable thanks toEyre's genuinely heartfelt direction, coupled with the cast's ability to give performances that subdue (if not quite transcend) stereotype.

McDaniel, late of "NYPD Blue" (where he was Emmy-nominated), is particularly forceful as a man whose tough-love philosophy is both his greatest strength and his most blinding weakness. The students also impress, particularly Delanna Studi, who has a spunky, full-bodied charisma.

In the end, pic manages to lift spirits without leaving the audience feeling manhandled.

Tech package is pro, albeit suggestive that the film was never intended for more than the small screen.

A THIEF OF TIME – made for TV

USA (94 mi) 2004

A made for TV movie adapted from another Tony Hillerman novel, featuring a first rate recurring Indian cast of Gary Farmer as the Indian Police Captain (rarely seen), Adam Beach as officer Jim Chee, and the indispensible Wes Studi as Lt. Joe Leaphorn. Throw in Graham Greene, something of a Christian con-man, Alex Rice as the local public defender and love interest for Chee, a few other choice folks who are used to living alone and surviving in this isolated territory, and Peter Fonda, of all people, shows up as a mixed up, grizzled old white guy – perfectly cast. As always, there’s a healthy cynicism between Indian police officers and those from outside the Indian grounds, who usually have higher authority, better equipment and greater funding. Studi is a mix of both, as he’s returned to Navajo country with a taste of education on the outside, so he has a distrust of Indian mythology and lore. His wife, on the other hand, Emma Leaphorn (Sheila Tousey), is afflicted with cancer, has undergone chemo, the white man’s medicine, but also turns to officer Chee, who is studying the old ways of healing. The interplay between these characters is always terrific, with back and forth chiding, plenty of humor, but always a healthy dose of respect. All of Hillerman’s novels are set in actual Navajo lands, and the attention to detail, as well as the richness of the characters, is what makes this series interesting.

User comments from imdb Author: bfree-2

Joe (Wes) & Jim (Adam) re-acquaint us with the beauty, isolation (psychological as well as physical) and utter terror of "murder most fowl" in the Navaho Southwest. Characterizations, settings and plot continually build .. . even if at times the personal asides leave us wanting "more" .. . with some interesting alternative choices as to "who done it?" Flashbacks (e.g. Peter Fonda . .. good to see him) provide clues but they don't go where you might think. Comic asides (e.g. the Preacher) are mild and appropriate. Where "Skinwalkers" and "Coyote Waits" start to drag .. . "Thief" engages the clutch and four-wheels you around the next corner, never quite sure what's there. Disagree with Joe Leaphorn's manic comment to Jim Chee to "slow down" for the potholes. Wrong ... there are no potholes in the plot, just tracks to follow. On to the next episode! Great photography (as always), appealing characters and more to explore!

eFilmCritic.com (Jay Seaver) review [3/5] also seen here: Jay's Movie Blog

Sometime, over the last ten years, I stopped getting my murder mystery fix from books and started relying on procedural TV series like Law & Order. There were several reasons, but one that stands out is my developing skepticism with continuity.

It was fun to see Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn get married, and reading "The Adventure of the Empty House" without "The Final Problem" is kind of pointless, but I was young and catching up on a hundred years of detective fiction - even if the order mattered (which it generally didn't), I could inhale the books one after the other at the library. Once I was caught up to the point where I had to wait for Sue Grafton's latest alphabet murder, the recurring characters and continuing threads started to become a nuisance; I just didn't remember them well enough from the last time I was immersed in this author's world, twelve months earlier. And if you've read them out of order, well, you probably won't have the guilty party spoiled, but you can cross some people off the list of suspects.

That's what seems to have happened with A Thief of Time; though it's the third Leaphorn & Chee movie produced for Mystery!, it appears to take place between Skinwalkers and Coyote Waits. Or maybe not, but the way Jim Chee (Adam Beach) flirts with local attorney Janet Pete (Alex Rice) and talks about a possible transfer to Washington that is a source of bitterness in Coyote certainly suggests it. So does how Emma Leaphorn (Sheila Tousey) mentions her chemo will leave her bald despite stating her hair had grown back in the previous movie. Thus, when Graham Greene shows up as hustling Christian preacher "Slick" Nakai, who also appears in Coyote Waits, it certainly seems unlikely that he'll be heading to jail this week. In addition, Lt. Joe Leaphorn (Wes Studi) finds a link to someone from an old case (Peter Fonda), and the reveal feels like it should be familiar to the audience as well. Perhaps it's from one of Tony Hillerman's early Leaphorn solo stories.

It's not just the continuing story that's familiar from Coyote Waits; the individual mystery seems similar, too. Once again, there's a missing archeologist/anthropologist on the trail of something extraordinary (this time, support for a theory on how the advanced Anasazi tribe disappeared) somehow connected to a crime Chee was unable to prevent in the opener. Everything here is initially much more muted, though - I don't think we have an actual corpse until halfway through. The low key nature of this investigation figures into the subplots: Leaphorn, a former big-city detective, is semi-retired and unfulfilled by a job which frequently has him merely serving summonses; he feels guilty when one of the academics flirts with him. Meanwhile, Chee's apparent lack of drive to go on to bigger and better things frustrates his girlfriend Alex.

Chris Eyre is in the director's chair again, and he maintains a tighter focus than he did with Skinwalkers. The movie mostly sticks with Chee and Leaphorn as they investigate, and doesn't make a whole lot of diversions into "Navajo life in general". The weakness comes from the writing, though it's unclear whether Alice Arlen's script or Tony Hillerman's novel is at fault. The link to Leaphorn's old case feels shoehorned in, and since that drives much of the movie's last act (telegraphing the final confrontation far too clearly), it kind of feels like a cheat. And if there's one thing a mystery story can't even seem to be doing, it's cheating.

And yet, if WGBH and Granada produce another Leaphorn/Chee movie next summer, I'll be all over it. Wes Studi is just too good in this role to pass it by. Maybe if some enterprising studio exec were to talk to Hillerman about a weekly Leaphorn series...

Mystery! American at pbs.org

Variety (Ronnie Scheib) review

Tony Hillerman, Novelist, Dies at 83 Marilyn Stasio from The New York Times, October 27, 2008

Tony Hillerman, 83, dies; bestselling mystery author provided insight into the native people and culture of the Southwest Dennis McLellan from The LA Times, October 28, 2008

A THOUSAND ROADS

USA (40 mi) 2005

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice review [4/5] Peter Hanson

A quietly inspiring tone poem from a director previously known for down-to-earth character pieces, “A Thousand Roads” is beautiful enough to be shown in a museum. And that’s exactly what’s going to happen, for in April it will become the signature film of the recently opened Smithsonian Museum of the Native American in Washington, D.C.

Chris Eyre, the Cheyenne-Arapaho helmer of “Smoke Signals” and “Skins,” steers this 40-minute piece with a sure hand. Utilizing all the toys for which a filmmaker could ask -- location shoots stretching from Alaska to the Andes, Super-35mm film that captures spectacular detail, breathtaking aerial and time-lapse footage -- Eyre crafts an elegant ballad about how contemporary Native Americans ground their lives in ancient traditions.

Framed with montages featuring narration written by poet Joy Harjo and spoken with mellifluous grace by artist-activist John Trudell, the deftly assembled film connects four short vignettes depicting Native Americans encountering everyday crises.

In the most affecting storyline, 10-year-old Dawn (Riana Malabed) is relocated from Seattle to Alaska when her mother ships off for military service. Eyre and screenwriter Scott Garen employ sharp visuals and the magical facial expressions of non-actor Malabed to illustrate the collision of two worlds; a scene in which Dawn watches her Inupiat relatives cut meat from a whale is especially vivid.

In an effective act of dramatic construction, each vignette is more rooted in Native traditions than the preceding. The first involves a New York stockbroker who has all but excluded her ancestral Mohawk culture from her life; the last features a South American healer who performs Quechuan rituals handed down through the centuries.

The theme connecting these stories is that no amount of modernization can dilute the identity pulsing through Native blood. As Trudell intones in Harjo’s artful narration, “We all belong to the story of our people.”

One might scoff that the heartening, sun-kissed images in “A Thousand Roads” sand the edges off modern Native life, but to do so would miss the point. Eyre has powerfully depicted the rigors of reservation existence in other films, and will surely return to tougher material in the future. But in this instance, he uses his considerable skills to dream on film of a people empowered by respect and unity.

In this bleak time when Americans seem more connected to their cell phones than to the human community, it’s comforting to encounter a vision of the power inherent to a larger concept of identity.

In that regard, perhaps the most lasting image of “A Thousand Roads” is among the smallest. Even though the movie dazzles with views of the Northern Lights and the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu, a visual of great power resides in the New York sequence.

As the stockbroker works at her desk, readouts flashing on her computer and the city bustling outside her window, she carefully arranges and rearranges a row of polished stones. Her modern life is chaos, but this enigmatic Native ritual is clearly her balance.

Details such as this one elevate “A Thousand Roads” past its role as a museum showpiece and identify the film as personal expression that just happens to unfold on a grand scale.

Eyre, Richard

THE PLOUGHMAN’S LUNCH

Great Britain (107 mi) 1983

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [4/5]

Ian McEwan must have whooped for joy when the Falklands war erupted, transforming his script from an examination of the Suez affair into a much spicier story of shabby English values, set during the Falklands crisis but filtered through the perspective of Suez. Sadly, the resulting film veers wildly in quality, and fails to cast much illumination on either past or present. Pryce turns in a creepingly accurate performance as an ambitious BBC newsroom hack who is commissioned to write a book on Suez while the Falklands war is in progress; but much of the film is concerned with his pursuit of a rich bitch (Dore), whom he fancies precisely because she is (literally) out of his class. It all culminates neatly, but with typically facile signposting of its political analysis, at the 1982 Conservative Party Conference, with the old guard (for which read resurgent Tory traditionalism) triumphing over the middle class upstart (opportunistic liberalism). It's all far too literary for its own good (McEwan indulges himself by including portraits of his bookish mates), and these aren't people you love to hate, they're just people you hate.

BFI Screen Online Simon Brown Show full synopsis

Funded in part by Channel Four and released in 1983, The Ploughman's Lunch (d. Richard Eyre) is an 'issues' film, commenting on the state of affairs in Britain in the early 1980s. It uses a very contemporary setting to criticise the policies of the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher, particularly the promotion of self-interest, of ruthless dedication to obtain a desired goal. Each of the film's main characters embraces these ideas, but in a negative way, using each other to get ahead. Journalist James (Jonathan Pryce) uses Susan (Charlie Dore) to get to her historian mother (Rosemary Harris), then sleeps with the mother so she will continue to help him with his research. Embarrassed by his working-class parents, he tells people they are dead.

The subtext of the film is the way countries and people re-write their own history to suit the needs of the present. James' book is about the 1956 Suez Crisis, which was a disaster for Britain and then Prime Minister Anthony Eden. But in the light of the 1982 Falklands War, which for many presented a new image of Britain as a strong and brave country, James re-writes the story of Suez to make it look like a victory. James also writes the news for the radio, so as he re-writes past events to fit a new British image, he also shapes the news as it happens. He also shapes himself, moulding his opinions to fit whoever he is talking to, in order to make the right impression.

The film presents a bleak Britain with little hope for the future. There are almost no sympathetic characters and at the end James learns no lesson. He improves his image, but loses his soul. He gets what he wants, at a price he is prepared to pay.

The Ploughman's Lunch Remembering or Forgetting History, Tony Williams from Jump Cut, May 1991

Channel 4 Film capsule review

Austin Chronicle [Marcel Meyer]

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]

IRIS B+ 90

Great Britain USA (91 mi) 2001

Slant Magazine review Ed Gonzalez

Richard Eyre's free-associative Iris cuts back and forth between Iris Murdoch's libertine early years as a budding wordsmith and her later days as an Alzheimer's victim; in effect, the most terrible thing to wilt for a novelist/philosopher is memory itself. There isn't much to Eyre's visual landscape, airy compositions and oftentimes-loopy transition work. Kate Winslet, as young Iris, stares offscreen, thus triggering scenes of the stagnating world and mind of the older Iris (Judi Dench). Winslet's Iris swims, fornicates and relishes her relationships with her lesbian friends while Dench's Iris fumbles through television interviews, watches Teletubbies and lets her home go to seed. Stuttering paramour John Bayley (Hugh Bonneville) is the young dolt who falls prey to Iris's witty charms; for her, language is not the only way of understanding as words themselves become the machines for making falsehoods. Eyre carefully establishes Iris's fondness for the exactness and pervasiveness of words (not to mention perpendicular coition), which, in turn, serves as the antithesis to the aged Iris's mental dilapidation. An older Bailey (Jim Broadbent) painfully takes lifelong resentment out on his crippled wife, heightening the director's accept-me-as-I-am thesis. Despite Eyre's flowery direction, there's a brave humanism at work here as Iris dares to lend humor to the Alzheimer proceedings. While Jim Broadbent is wonderful as the older Bayley, it is Dench's show (without her, Iris would be inconsequential). Dodging the easy rain-woman schtick, Dench (eerily resembling Ellen Burstyn during Requiem for a Dream's breakdown sequence) lets empty stares and sagging wrinkles tell the tale of Iris's erasing mind; yes, that's Oscar knocking.

During a prolific stretch from the '50s to the '80s, Iris Murdoch wrote two dozen novels, but that period of her life is relegated to a footnote in the trite biopic Iris, which only covers the first and the last book—and barely, at that. Working from a pair of best-selling biographies (Elegy For Iris and Iris And Her Friends) by Murdoch's devoted husband John Bayley, director and co-writer Richard Eyre at least sidesteps the common pitfall of trying to cover the entirety of his subject's life. But the fragments he settles on are perplexing, almost perverse: If Murdoch's work remains her enduring legacy, why are the filmmakers so uninterested in it? Aside from offering a few vague scraps of erudition, mostly in a speech Murdoch delivers to a university staff, Eyre shows far less interest in her writing skills than the disease that ultimately quashed them. In a crosscutting scheme that repeats its rhymes on too many occasions, Eyre volleys back and forth between the young, vibrant, independent Murdoch and the old, helpless, dependent shadow of her former self. Played in youth by Kate Winslet, who embodies the role with unfettered confidence and vitality, Murdoch has casual affairs with numerous male and female suitors, taking special pleasure in flouting conventional morality. Yet she falls in love with her opposite, the shy and socially awkward Bayley (Hugh Bonneville, all tics and mannerisms), who finds her exciting enough that he can tolerate her promiscuity. From scenes of the young couple frolicking on land and sea, Eyre cuts to the elderly Murdoch and Bayley (tenderly wrought by Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent) in a dank, filthy home, as they combat the ravages of her rapidly progressing Alzheimer's. As Murdoch grapples with her waning intellect, Bayley tries to care for a woman who bears an increasingly distant resemblance to the one he married. Among the obvious contrasts—young and old, alert and senile, liberated and stifled—the one true connection between the two periods is that a crucial part of Murdoch's imagination could never be accessed by anyone, even her dearest companion. But since the fruit of that imagination seems so incidental to Eyre, Iris could be about any couple struggling with Alzheimer's, instead of one exalted by celebrity alone. Considered as an anonymous pair, Dench and Broadbent respond to each other exceptionally well, subtly charting the demise of an intimate long-term partnership that suddenly loses its comforting familiarity. Dench, especially, burrows into a role that would trip up a showier actress; she loses herself (and her ego) in scenes that require her to give only the faintest hint of recognition. But their performances would be better served by a disease-of-the-week picture about an elderly couple named John and Jane Doe, without all the literary pretense and other baggage that attends this true story. As a biopic, Iris fails on the most fundamental level, because it never expresses why Murdoch's life, specifically, was important.

Movie-Vault.com (Avril Carruthers) review

CultureCartel.com (John Nesbit) review [3.5/5] also seen here: Old School Reviews [John Nesbit]

The Filmsnobs (James Owen) review

Nick's Flick Picks (Nick Davis) review [B]

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [3.5/4]

Film Freak Central review Walter Chaw

Nitrate Online (Gianni Truzzi) review

Salon (Charles Taylor) review

eFilmCritic.com (Andrew Howe) review [3/5]

Eye for Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review [2.5/5]

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [3.5/4]

filmcritic.com (Frank Ochieng) review [4/5]

Philadelphia City Paper (Cindy Fuchs) review

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Arthur Lazere

The Village Voice [Joy Press]

eFilmCritic.com (Charles Tatum) review [4/5]

DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson) dvd review

The UK Critic (Ian Waldron-Mantgani) review [1.5/4]

Xiibaro Productions (David Perry) review [3/4]

The Providence Journal review Michael Janusonis

Movie House Commentary Johnny Web and Tuna

DVD Verdict (Barrie Maxwell) dvd review

DVD Town (Yunda Eddie Feng) dvd review

Reel.com review [3/4] Rod Armstrong

hybridmagazine.com review Roxanna Bogucka

CineScene.com (Les Phillips) review

CineScene.com (Nathaniel Rogers) review

Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [2/4]

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [3.5/4]

VideoVista review Debbie Moon

Washington Post [Desson Howe]

Austin Chronicle (Steve Davis) review [3.5/5]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review Paula Nechak

filmcritic.com (Don Willmott) review [4/5]

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [2/4]

The New York Times (Elvis Mitchell) review

NOTES ON A SCANDAL B 84

Great Britain (92 mi) 2006

An odd deliciously wicked sort of film, adapted from the novel “What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal” by British writer Zoë Heller, which dramatizes a typical tabloid obsession with a high school sex scandal by honing in on the internalized psychological mechanisms of one of the perpetrators who secretly exposes and then exploits the situation, her mind kicking into high gear when another young attractive teacher is caught having sex with one of her students. Well acted to be sure, this film blends a steamroller-like narration with sublime, meticulously phrased diary entries, so the thoughts swirl around with a viciousness bordering on utter disdain that is so precise in its cold, calculating observations that initially it feels hilariously candid, turning afterwards into a mysterious psychological trap, where by the end, all joy is lost to a subverted hideousness.

Judi Dench, once again working with this director, is superb as Barbara, the aging, no nonsense school teacher, calling herself a battle ax, who shares no joy at seeing the high school students evolve in her lifetime from silliness and pranks to thugs and young criminals. Her diary entries reflect her scornful contempt of others, conservative to the core, yet she lives alone, apparently without a friend in the world, looking like the spitting image of Imelda Staunton’s Vera Drake, a relic from the post war years, yet with a lethal acerbic wit. Like their previous work together, this film hints at lesbian overtones while staying strictly and repressively deep within the closet. All of the other teachers turn in the headmaster’s request for class goals and analysis with small notebooks worth of thought and recommendations which she has reduced to a single page. So at least initially, veering into her mindset is a delightful eye opener, despite the Philip Glass musical score that overreaches and soars beyond her close to the vest demeanor, as she reveals nothing to others, believing that is what is expected of her.

Enter a new art teacher, the young, overly flamboyant Cate Blanchett as Sheba, dressed in Bohemian layers, full of energy and affection, nearly always smiling anxiously, which men interpret as flirtatious. Her mere presence becomes the center of attention, not just of the young boy students, but also the staff as well, who feed off her novelty as a fish out of water, as her youthful charm and enthusiasm certainly doesn’t fit their profile of hardened, burnt out, and cynical. She’s a free spirit that catches Barbara’s interest, seeing the others paw at her like moths to a flame, and despite their age difference, she thinks this may be the one, a friend at last, we think, and immediately she’s invited over for a family dinner, where she meets the twenty-years-older husband, Bill Nighy, her moody pubescent daughter and a son with Down syndrome. They are a lively uninhibited household with a tradition of dancing after dinner, the complete opposite of Barbara’s hermetically sealed, embalmed existence.

Almost immediately, Barbara catches Sheba having sex with one of the students. In Iago-like manner, thinking this is her opportunity, she calculates that by protecting her, by doing nothing, she will forever lure this girl into her lair. She holds this incident over the young girl, but insists on a full confession, like to a Mother Superior, demanding that she put an end to it immediately, which Sheba promises to do. But the 15-year old is persistent, relentlessly pursuing her, much like a stalker, and she can’t resist his advances, remarking incredulously afterwards that she felt “entitled” after spending so much time being good all her life. Barbara is beside herself at this point, like Sheba has refused an order from God, and starts making demands upon her which are impossible to keep, which comes to a head in an agonizingly awkward, embarrassing scene on the street in front of Sheba’s house in front of her entire family, leaving her husband exasperated.

From that point on, the film’s equilibrium reflecting the state of mind of the characters deteriorates drastically, pushing unbalanced melodramatic limits as Glass’s music rises to near hysterical proportions. Sheba starts regressing to an earlier phase in her life and at one point throws herself upon the mercy of the paparazzi, while there’s even a bathtub scene with Dench, which is simply out of the ordinary and just plain weird, as it’s fully designed to make the audience as uncomfortable as possible. As the film progresses, all humor disappears, replaced by a relentless, ever-increasing uncomfortable factor. Unfortunately, much of what we’ll remember is a rather forgettable tabloid storyline, not the affecting performances that are lost on this project.

Ray Pride from New City (link lost)

An exquisite harrumph just shy of arty balderdash, Richard Eyre’s "Notes on a Scandal," adapted by "Closer"’s Patrick Marber from Zoë Heller’s novel, gives Judi Dench the regal role that eight Oscar-winning minutes in "Shakespeare in Love" could only hint at. But as Barbara Covett, a scheming, sour, never-married schoolteacher who discovers she can crush a younger colleague (Cate Blanchett) whom she adores and disdains, takes the bait and runs with it. The bait is of the "jail" variety: while married to an older man (the deftly louche yet always galvanic Bill Nighy), Blanchett’s Sheba Hart falls to the urgency of a younger man, who just happens to be 15. Think of Barbara as the Grinch for the NPR crowd: Dench’s delivery of Barbara’s pointed, perfervid voiceover is as dearly oppressive as Philip Glass’ score, propulsive with doomy inexorability, but also amusingly jaunty. The production design satisfies the eye even as the wickedness and cluelessness roil. As in the dank, literate, superior mouthfuls of dialogue in Marber’s own "Closer" (2004), why should you resist passages like these? Sheba’s mea culpa: "This is going to sound sick, but something in me felt entitled. I`ve been good all my adult life. A decent wife, a dutiful mother. This voice inside me was going, `Why shouldn`t you be bad? Why shouldn`t you transgress?"; Barbara’s ruminant "Her fetish for the boy was simply her snobbery manifested: `He’s working class and he likes Art.’ As if he were a monkey who’d just strolled out of the rain forest and asked for a gin and tonic" and Nighy’s blistered, blasted, blissful delivery of "If you meant to destroy us, why not do it with an adult? That’s the convention, it’s worked for centuries." Oh cruel joy!

If you don't already worship at the Church of Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal may be the film that causes your conversion. Dame Judi tears into the meaty role of secretive spinster teacher Barbara Covett with relish. You won't soon forget the look on her shriveled face as she commits outrageous acts of emotional blackmail.

Narrated by Barbara from her own diary entries, what we have here is a classic case of a very unreliable narrator, but one with a quick wit. As the new term begins at a bustling lower-class middle school, history teacher Barbara, who is utterly burned out and simply going through the motions (she calls education "crowd control"), is beguiled by the new art teacher Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), a 37-year-old upper-class beauty who really believes in teaching.

Overwhelmed by the throngs of rowdy kids, Sheba needs help, and Barbara steps right in, aggressively pushing her friendship onto the grateful Sheba and insinuating herself into Sheba's family, to the annoyance of Sheba's much older husband Richard (Bill Nighy).

Things begin to spin wildly out of control when Barbara encounters Sheba having sex with one of her art students, the pouty 15-year-old Steven (Andrew Simpson), a "tower of testosterone" (as Barbara puts it) with a lilting Irish accent. Frenzied with rage and jealousy, Barbara quickly realizes that she can extort permanent friendship from Sheba. They share a secret that could destroy Sheba's life. It's a brilliant power play, and the grateful Sheba succumbs without a fight.

Sheba vows to break up with Steven, but his hard-luck stories (and that cute accent) keep her coming back for more. As it turns out, he's enjoying his own little power play. When Barbara realizes that her "best friend" has betrayed her again, the situation devolves into near chaos, leading to several wild scenes of outrage, histrionics, recriminations, and revelations of disturbing secrets.

This is fun stuff, and Dench revels in it. Shot in extreme close-up and looking every one of her 72 years (and then some), Dench is utterly without vanity and a complete horror. In the course of the film Barbara is called, among other things, a "crone" and a "vampire," both apt descriptions. She is a joy to watch. It's easy to see the madness hiding right behind her squinty eyes.

Blanchett is a perfect foil. In a film that's ultimately about the amazingly toxic effect of chronic loneliness, she makes it easy to see how even a busy wife and mother of two can feel alone, trapped in a soul-crushing marriage and looking for any kind of stimulation. Some of the most emotional climactic scenes, shot within the confines of Barbara's claustrophobic basement apartment and propelled by one of those urgent and nervewracking Philip Glass soundtracks, give us the pleasure of watching two real masters at work.

Here's hoping Dame Judi gets many more chances to strut her stuff. Do 007 for your bank book, Judi, but do these films for us.

The DVD includes a commentary track from Eyre, two making-of featurettes, an interview with Blanchett, and promotional webisodes for the film.

Slant Magazine review Jason Clark

For those surprising very few who think Helen Mirren is completely miscast in Stephen Frears's overrated trifle The Queen, Exhibit A of why is illustrated in Judi Dench's ultimate depiction of corpulent geriatric cunning in Notes on a Scandal. To play a desexed monstrosity (or at least that's how The Queen wanted it) like Queen Elizabeth II, the film needed an actress who you wanted to run from, with a face like a slapped ass. Certainly not Mirren's relatively suave and, frankly, too voluptuous rendition, and after seeing Dench plumb the lower recesses of unpleasantness here, you wish The Queen had a bit more bite. It's the role that many of her fans have wanted from her for years now, instead of these genteel, dottering old biddies. Of course, Dench is the best thing about this deliciously overheated melodrama, directed with too-brisk economy by Richard Eyre (Stage Beauty) and scored with typical whiplash by Philip Glass, whose orchestral headaches actually work in this context.

The movie is an unapologetically lurid dive into female longing, not unlike those tawdry black-and-white curiosities that play in the background of tacky gay bars. Ratty-haired, cat-loving Barbara Covett (Dench), a harsh disciplinarian, narrates the tale of her involvement with the radiant Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), the luminous new art teacher who very quickly gets it on with one of her 15-year-old students (Andrew Simpson). She is stuck in a loveless marriage to an older chap (Bill Nighy), with a tarty young daughter and a son with Down Syndrome (who Barbara hilariously refers to in her narration as a "tiresome court jester"), and is turned on by the attention of youth. The drama spirals out of control as Barbara uses her knowledge of the affair to her advantage, spinning the tale into a sort of Single White Female for the aging Sapphic set.

If only the movie's early momentum were kept intact. Like that film, it crumbles in its third act, rushing plot points together as if the air in the theater would vanish if it weren't wrapped up in under 95 minutes. Too bad, really, because Dench takes the performance to the max, unafraid to look horrifying and ridiculous, as in the funniest of these moments, when she approaches Blanchett's family car when one of her children shrieks, "Oh God, look!" as if Quasimodo were about to hop in. Blanchett is always less convincing when playing desperate women, but she makes the character's anxiety fully palpable, and as far as being a woman people put themselves in danger for, she more than fits the bill. Nighy, usually a great go-to guy for enlivening creaky narratives, is disappointingly one-note here, with outbursts that feel off-center even in a movie as unhinged as this one. But his character feels like an afterthought anyway; in fact, it might have been more effective if the movie didn't try to humanize him. Low on subtlety (Blanchett's character's full name is Bathsheba, for chrissakes), it is nonetheless very entertaining in that way you don't quite know how to admit to. I don't know what Eyre, screenwriter Patrick Marber (Closer) et al. thought in the making of the picture, but they just may have created the gay camp classic of 2006.

Pajiba (Jeremy C. Fox) review

The claws draw blood in “Notes on a Scandal,” a misanthropic game of cat and mouse from which no one emerges unscathed, including saps like us who think we’re watching a film about other people. Based on the novel “What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal” by the British writer Zoë Heller, the film stars Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett as colleagues nearly undone by desire.

Skip to next paragraphMs. Dench plays Barbara, an unmarried teacher with a dedicated fondness for vulnerable women of the sort personified by Ms. Blanchett’s Sheba, a married art teacher who has just joined her secondary school. Barbara wants Sheba, but what Sheba likes, wants and eventually gets is a 15-year-old boy with a downy chin and knowing smile.

What is “Notes on a Scandal”? Well, for starters, it is a painstakingly classy package. The film’s director, Richard Eyre, ran the National Theater in London, and the screenwriter, Patrick Marber, wrote the play “Closer,” which became something of a bigger cultural event when Mike Nichols decided to transpose it to the screen. (The composer for this film, doodle-doodle-doodle, is Philip Glass.) The actors in “Notes on a Scandal” are equally distinguished: Ms. Dench and Ms. Blanchett are among the finest on the market today, and each can deliver expert performances, even when, as is the case here, their roles are false and hollow. The performers sell the goods, but the goods are cheap.

Among the cheapest is Barbara Covett, an unmarried, bristly woman of a certain age, vague sexuality and clichéd contour: think sensible shoes, regrettable hair, tweedy skirts, “The Children’s Hour,” Gertrude and Alice. Much like the title character in Patricia Highsmith’s shiver-inducing novel “Edith’s Diary,” Barbara keeps a journal that serves her needs rather than the truth. In time, Edith goes completely around the bend. Barbara hasn’t arrived there yet, and though she’s well on her way, the filmmakers initially try to keep the news under wraps. An early scene of her publicly showing up the school’s fatuous principal with withering efficiency seems intended to make Barbara appear not just rational, but also a no-nonsense holdover who refuses to be gulled by New Age types and their feelings.

The entrance of the beautifully disheveled Sheba Hart changes everything. Like a tornado, she sweeps into the school and instantly upends everything, including Barbara. At first the older woman offers some resistance. She scrutinizes Sheba as if examining a pinned butterfly and criticizes her youthful attire in a voice-over that, like her put-down of the principal, appears calculated to win our sympathies if not our affection.

Sheba’s apparent kindness and solicitous behavior soon melt Barbara’s reserve and her resistance. Small gestures of friendship and shared lunches ensue. By the time Sheba invites her new colleague to lunch at her house, the floodgates have opened completely. Barbara’s diary entries and heart swell with mounting passion and hope, noisily telegraphed by Mr. Glass’s serial intrusiveness.

The plot thickens after Barbara meets Sheba’s much older husband, Richard (Bill Nighy, the reliably entertaining), and two demanding children. Sheba confesses to Barbara that she yearns for something more than domestic comfort and puttering around in her workshop. This confession, Richard’s age and the entire scene inspire Barbara’s contempt: “They do things differently in bourgeois bohemia,” she confides to us in voice-over while dining with the outwardly loving family. But as Barbara eyeballs Sheba dancing in her living room, her long torso swaying seductively to the music, it’s very obvious that she would be happy to put her prejudices aside. She gets her chance when, not long after, she discovers Sheba sexually servicing one of the high school students, Steven (Andrew Simpson), in a classroom.

There are tears and a confession, murmurs and shouts, as Barbara realizes her advantage. She pounces, but Sheba’s lust for underage flesh interferes with her plans. Slander, scandal and a conveniently dead cat add to the mix as the actresses plead their cases to the last row in the house.

Is this Judi’s film or Cate’s, Barbara’s or Sheba’s? Barbara inspires shudders and may be off her rocker; Sheba is totally hot but also a sexual predator and, it emerges, rather stupid. Judi looks a fright, but that works to her actorly advantage as much as her marvelous enunciation. Cate slinks around, soaking up male and female attention with confidence. Of course both characters are utterly despicable, as is the story that invites us into its trap just to prove that we all have our self-serving reasons, including the filmmakers.

Christian Science Monitor (Peter Rainer) review [A]

Eye for Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review [4.5/5]

outrate.net (Mark Adnum) review

FilmStew.com [Brett Buckalew]

The Onion A.V. Club review Noel Murray

Old School Reviews [John Nesbit]

Plume Noire review Adam Balz Terry