The Lost City and The King's Speech

It was coincidence that I watched films that contained historical news footage, two films, both very moving for their historical significance and for their scripts and acting.

The King’s Speech (2010), which won several of this year’s academy awards, captured well both the cultural trauma of a failing empire on the brink of war―actually during the pause between WWI and WWII―and the personal childhood traumas of Albert (George VI) that led to his speech impediment. The skill of Colin Firth to capture the voice that I’ve heard in the old news footage was remarkable, as was his subtle depiction of a man who never wanted the duties of kingship but handled the burden with such care as to endear his subjects to him during the war.

I would expect nothing less of Firth, whose depiction of the character George Falconer in A Single Man still moves me. Geoffrey Rush as the speech therapist Lionel Logue was equally solid. His grandson’s research on the decades that Logue helped Albert in speech and confidence was well compressed into the time frame of the film.

Andy Garcia is one of those strange edgy actors, as is Bill Murray, whose range between comedy and tragedy is pretty impressive, so it was no surprise that Garcia chose Murray for the role of the sardonic writer in The Lost City (2005). I knew Garcia was Cuban, and I knew the story of Batista’s fall and Castro’s rise from the perspective of my Spanish teacher, Mr. Piñero, the Havana newspaper editor who fled Cuba and became a professor at St. Mary of the Plains College in Kansas―what a sad story he told of leaving his grown children behind―but I did not think about how long ago it was that Garcia must have gone into “exile” (as he put it in his commentary on the film).

Being raised in Cuba, having a musician’s and composer’s sensibility, and having to deal with a dictator who used the arts as a social-realist tool, these elements of Garcia’s life came through in the film’s depiction Fico Fellove, a Havana cabaret owner who loses two brothers and an uncle to the revolution and whose parents encourage him to leave Cuba and start over in NYC. In his commentary Garcia explained that the vast majority of the actors in the film are Cuban, and that’s when it hit me, the influence of Cuban musical art on the U. S. So many of the young men and women who fled around 1958-60―some of them were still children―have spent the past 40-50 years contributing to the arts here. They are my own age or slightly older. My whole lifetime has been a time enriched by Cuban art.

The film really captured the music, the style, of Garcia’s homeland. And it captured the political upheaval in the “epic” style of the film and the news footage. Bill Murray said he knew he had to do the film even though he thought no one would watch it. I’m glad he did, for it is in following Murray’s films that I found The Lost City . . . and finally understood what Mr. Piñero was trying to say about his homeland to a lunkheaded Spanish student in 1971.

The New World

In the hands of Terrence Malick, the journal of John Smith becomes a nuanced and troubling encounter between the European world and Native Americana. The New World interlaces simple scenes of the Smith (Colin Ferrell), Pocahontas (Q’Orianka Kilcher), and John Rolfe (Christian Bale) legend with voiceovers representing actual passages from Smith’s and Rolfe’s writings. The technique reminds me of the voiceovers in Malick’s The Thin Red Line, and the effect is stunning, for just like in The Thin Red Line, the voiceover in the Smith/Pocahontas story narrows the scope of audience understanding to the limited perspective of unaware characters even as the cinematographically expansive setting cries out for an expanse of human understanding.

In the case of Smith, his misinterpretation of the ritual Werowance, his driving wanderlust, and his near-cavalier attitude toward indigenous peoples are underscored by the contrast between the action of the scenes and some well chosen statements from Smith’s actual journal. As Ferrell’s journal voiceover details Smith’s “love” of Pocahontas, we see scenes of the native woman losing the respect of her father, Chief Powhatan. As the Smith voice justifies his abandonment of Pocahontas in favor of further adventures in the new world, we see scenes of Pocahontas losing respect for herself. Her despair becomes most palpable when she is told that Smith has died, even as the Smith voiceover reveals this to be a lie, a strategy he justifies as a kindness to his abandoned lover.

The story is part romance―the faithful character Rolfe serving as contrast to the self-involved Smith and gentling Pocahontas back to her well-rooted self―and partly romanticizes the wonders of the new world, including its pure, unsullied lands and its indigenous peoples. At the same time, Malick never lets the film fall into the excesses of romanticization. Pocahontas has her stubborn moments. Smith tender and generous moments. And Rolfe, though not always believable as the patient “saint” he is, is never presented as falling in love with the Idea of the Native. He is shown to be a plain and practical man who wants a sincere, intelligent woman as his helpmeet.

I have to say I came to the film with low expectations, given the popular cultural romanticization and misconstruction of the historical Pocahontas. But I should have known better. Terrence Malick has the ability to tangle his audience up in a tale of complex human motives and relationships in a setting that takes one’s breath away. And he has practiced his art of intricacy as well on this film as on The Thin Red Line and that memorable early film, Days of Heaven. It would seem for Malick, those settings that whisper most insistently for our notice of nature’s unspoiled sublimity also lend themselves best to a cinema of flawed human relations. The New World is finally, for me, the story of a beautiful, blemished human landscape.

The King

The King (James Marsh, 2005) , a small-budget film with Gael Garcia Bernal playing a character named Elvis and William Hurt playing his found-religion-and-became-a-preacher-so-he-can’t-claim-his-illigitimate-son-Elvis father. The father, David Sandow, repudiates Elvis, a 21-year-old just out of the Navy, and hides the truth from his two teenage children and parish as a way to protect his middle-class lifestyle built on a lie of righteousness. As a way of getting close to the family, the son strikes up a friendship with his half-sister, Malerie (played by Pell James). In a moment fraught with doubt and guilt, Elvis crosses the moral line and starts a romantic relationship with his half-sister, resulting in her brother confronting Elvis, demanding that he leave her alone. In a fit of emotion Elvis kills his half-brother, Paul (played by Paul Dano), and sinks him in a swamp. In the meantime Malerie gets pregnant. Elvis tells her that he has killed Paul, and they say prayers at the swamp. In his grief over the “disappearance” of his teenage son, David takes in Elvis, and then in front of his congregation claims Elvis as his son. Malerie tells her mother, Twyla (Laura Herring), as Elvis watches from an upstairs window. He shoots them with his rifle and goes to his father at the church to confess, saying “I need to get right with God.”

This is the last spoken line of the film, followed by a shot of the digital sign outside the church, giving the “Pastor David Sandow” name and announcing the “Worship & Praise,” “Bible Study,” and “Prayer Meeting” schedule. The title of the film comes from a scene in a restaurant, just after Malerie has learned she is pregnant by a man who is her half-brother. In that scene Elvis puts on a paper crown, and his expression is eerily one of innocent ignorance. The film blurs the lines between innocence and culpability and, especially, between transgression and confession, where confession itself has the quality of a transgressive forced innocence.

Concerning the film style, except for the scene where Elvis knifes Paul, the action is quietly presented with subtle religious symbology and little dialogue. Even the murder of the daughter and her mother is represented only after the fact, with Elvis laying their bodies tenderly on a bed and in the process bloodying his shirt and hands. The final scene, where the audience sees the face of David sitting at his desk and Elvis’ back to the camera as he stands before his father, is not subtle, but it is deliberately slow paced. It puts the Christian imagery of the film into full, blatant dissonance with itself: Elvis’ bloody hand is not at his side but raised at a 45 angle, palm facing the father and, thus, turned away from the camera. The effect is a sort of double image, of one standing in supplication before his father but also one taking the stance of a martyr.

Tideland . . . after seeing The Last Station

What a contrast in films, to watch The Last Station and then Tideland. I hadn’t seen Tideland when it first came out. Don’t know how I missed the Gilliam film. The actor who played the central character Jeliza-Rose was pretty phenomenal. I haven’t seen Jodelle Ferland in any film since (or before) 2005. She seems to be featured only in B-movies. Too bad she’s already been typecast. There’s real talent in Ferland. And the phrase “hundred-years ocean” was poetic in its synesthesia . . . a haunting phrase of impossible times and places..

This American Life

Here are two amazing episodes of This American Life, one about a man trying to track down a "kidnapped" child in Baja, Mexico, only to realize he is probably interfering in a family conflict, albeit a family involved in drug-related activities, and the other about a "lifeboat debate" at a college and an English Professor who plays the devil's advocate, analyzing the decline of good debate in the U. S. and potential results of pandering to college students.

The Last Station

The Last Station was amazing. Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, James sMcAvoy, and Paul Giamatti all were wonderful. The storytelling was simple, with the focus on characters—Tolstoy, his wife, the writer’s assistant, and the influential Marxian organizer—and the deep tensions between the aristocracy and rising middle class.

Jarmusch's Dead Man still the best . . . Broken Flowers just OK

I missed the Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers when it came out in 2005, finally saw it this past weekend. And it was OK but not his best. Mystery Train is still my second-best favorite. Maybe I’m just nostalgic for that peculiar mix of different cultural viewpoints―the Japanese couple wanting to experience the land of Elvis―and the mixture of genres―the mysterious gunfire repeating through the scenes, the layering of the quest for identity upon a murder mystery. But my favorite Jarmusch film is still Dead Man. And it’s not just Johnny Depp’s performance and the soundtrack by Neal Young . . . although both actor and musician are amazing. It’s that “vegetable soup” of the cultures: a man with William Blake’s name and a cynical Native American who is a member of the educated class, they running into a rough outlaw band that includes a cannibal. The film borders on farce, a farce of the profundity of the Western experience and Native American life. At the same time, the film really IS profound in its exploration of the randomness of human experience and the utter failure of stereotyping. Every character, right down to the monster played by Billy Bob Thorton, escapes the boundaries of the type depicted. The true individuality of the characters comes through.

This is true of the character Bill Murray plays in Broken Flowers. His sadness over a misspent life, his quest for a purpose in life, hoping to find out whether he is indeed a father, struggling with depression after his last of many girlfriends has left him, all of these add depth to the IDEA of the film. And the Jarmusch blackouts between scenes, hyperreal flashes of memory, and lack of soundtrack in most scenes are solid as usual. But the film didn’t deliver its idea fully. It was flat in the end, not drawing out the depths of the complex motives of the character, Don Johnston. The scene in the cemetery needed flashbacks, maybe even scenes of Johnston with the girl (or was it a woman?) he loved.

Evening and The Hours

I just saw Evening, based on Susan Minot’s novel but not following it closely. The script was revised down to a well focused story by The Hours novelist, Michael Cunningham. The scenes shift well from the dying mother’s memory of the lover, Harris, to the scenes focused on the daughter, Nina, played by Toni Collette. Nina is afraid of living, afraid of having a child, afraid of loving her significant other of three years. But she is surrounded by people who offer her advice and example, subtly or blatantly, that living is not to be seen as making mistakes or making wise choices, just a matter of giving oneself to the process of living. Her mother Ann, played by Vanessa Redgrave and Claire Danes in the younger scenes, as well as the night nurse, the sister (Natasha Richardson), the significant other/father of her unborn child, and Ann’s best friend all offer Nina ways of engaging in life. Even the earlier scenes of Ann at her best friend’s wedding and with her best friend’s brother bring unity to the theme that there are no mistakes in living, just living.

Nowhere in Africa and a plague of locusts

The “plague of locusts” scene in Nowhere in Africa (2001) took me back to a harvest grasshopper “plague” when I was a child. I don’t remember the exact year, just my parents reflecting on the level of destruction by the hoppers, the ruined fields, the question of whether it was worth getting the combine in working order that summer. The film’s depiction of the stark beauty of the area of Kenya where the story is set also reminds me of southwest Kansas . . . and the desert southwest. Sparse land, spare lifestyle, a world of deprivation and beauty. The film’s story is simply told by the Jewish child, Regina Redlich, uprooted from Germany in 1938 and finding how well she fit into the culture, not of European colonizers but the natives of the area. The cook, Owuor, was for me the heart of the film, the moral center of it, with the child’s mother, Jettel, learning to overcome racism against Blacks―a blatant irony to her fleeing Germany because of anti-Semitism―and the child’s father, Walter, learning to relax patriarchal expectations of wife and daughter. The director of this film version of Stefanie Zweig’s novel (autobiographical?) was Caroline Link. I will have to see what other films she has directed.

A Single Man and Colin Firth's performance

Colin Firth’s depiction of the character George Falconer in A Single Man was amazing, emotionally complex, and very artistic. The fashion designer Tom Ford directed the film and that may explain the almost impressionistic painting-like quality of some of the images and scenes: bodies falling through water juxtaposed against swimming scenes; the posed image of George’s lover Jim lying dead beside his car with George walking toward him juxtaposed against the final scene of George lying on the floor of his bedroom in a similar pose, and Jim walking toward him; the series of scenes showing the buildings and cars and clothing and social behaviors of 1961. These were the backdrop for a beautiful and sad story of a man who cannot come out of the closet because of the closed mindedness of the 1960s American culture. The references to prejudice against communism, fear of U.S.S.R. bombs, and general mistrust of individual, social, and political differences provide the historical context for George’s careful, quiet, “single” existence.

George is presented as a literature professor who, like many lit professors, has a strong appreciation for art and for the motions and behaviors of people. His character is gentle, ethical, and appreciative of others, and in a key scene as he talks to his students about the destructive capability of humans who are prejudiced, he is pleading for understanding and acceptance without being able to reveal his sexual orientation. His example is the Nazi hatred of the Jews. He tells his students that the Nazi hatred was “not without a cause . . . just that the cause wasn’t real . . . it was fear.” He says that there are “all sorts of minorities” and if a “minority is somehow visible, then the fear is much greater.” The professor’s discussion of prejudice is lost on most of his students . . . except for Kenny Potter, who both guesses his professor’s orientation and is himself either gay or bisexual. Kenny comes on to George in a shy and intellectual way, and George responds in an ethical and caring manner, as an older man who would never take advantage of a younger person, as a conscientious professor.

The lack of any sort of tawdry action or twisted characterization was refreshing and reminded me that good filmmaking can make great art of emotionally stable people interacting in emotionally healthy ways. Even the one character who is a bit on the edge, George’s friend Charlotte who has been in love with George for years, has moments of clarity about the depth of George and Jim’s love and George’s pain after Jim is killed in the auto accident.

And while it may seem impossible, the film contained one of the quirkiest, funniest scenes of an utterly failed suicide attempt I have ever seen. Fastidious and thoughtful George, not wanting to make a mess for his friend Charlotte to find, crawls inside a sleeping bag with his gun. The viewer sees the outside of the bag as George inside of it is obviously trying to get the gut to his head. He is twisting and turning in a farcical manner, and the phone rings just then. He unzips the bag, answers the phone, and puts the gun away in the drawer. The moment has passed. The scene elicits laughter and relief at the same time.

But it is finally the love between the two men, the depth of George’s grief, and his need to understand the process of Jim’s death, of any person’s death, that stays with me. Beautiful film, tender film, such an honest film about loving and being loved, of a marginalized person living life with grace and finally facing death with that same grace. And what an ending! Absolutely stunning, absolutely perfect line and perfect image when George says “and just like that, it came.”