Non-festival films
Lest you may think that I only see movies at the PSIFF – I confess herein that I have seen six films since the festival stopped that I want to comment on. Two of them were shown during the festival, but I missed them; “Rust and Bone” and “Stand up guys”. Then there was a “Sliver Lining Playbook”, “Zero dark thirty”, “Django” and “Sessions”.
“Rust and Bone” a French/Belgian production is a hard riving melodrama. A very physically strong young man, Alain, and his 5 or so old son arrive in Southern France, result of a failed marriage. The father does not seem too emotionally mature, gets a job as a bouncer in a noisy, busy nightclub. His son is a bit neglected. There he meets Stephanie, who may be a bit underdressed and has a bloody nose and gives her a ride home from the club. Appearances notwithstanding Stephanie is a lead trainer in a Sea World type park where she works with Orcas, aka killer wales. In a terrifying accident she loses both her legs. Perhaps because of his initial kindness, at a really low point in her life, she calls him and he responds. He in the meantime now tries to make a living as fighter/kick boxer where wages are being made and the fighting is brutal. They are both pretty scarred, but they somehow care for each other, and in this complicated path, not at all obvious, but intensely physical in many ways, they find and and end up caring for each other. A potentially deadly accident with the son brings a measure of more self-aware responsibility to our fighter. Not your usual romance – but pretty intense.
“Stand up guys” serves up Al Pacino, playing Al Pacino, Christopher Walken playing himself – he always is Christopher Walken, and Alan Arkin, playing the same role we have seen for last 10 or so years, washed up, all knowing guy who can summon the cahones when duty calls ( did you see him in Argo or Little Miss Sunshine etc.) definitely a guys movie – comedy to boot. Pacino, a stand up guy, has been in prison for 28 years – being a fall guy for his buddies. Arkin the old getaway driver is sniffing oxygen in a nursing home. Walken is Pacino’s best friend, but unfortunately, he is under order to kill his best friend by 10 am the next day. Through fistfulls of viagara, huge steaks for every meal, a handful of self-help robberies – our geriatric trio stands up. Funny and enjoyable.
The remaining four have been reviewed and written about ad nauseum. I love Tarrentino and so I liked Django – saw it as a modern days metaphor where the sheer sadism of the southern slave culture produced and produces black rage and the incredible white fear of it – and I saw the movie as such. Slavery in the movies is seldom this starkly portrayed – this is a no hold bar portrayal and I think in the conversations and PC criticism of that portrayal the reflect the force of that historical memory to this day. Definitely a guy movie as most revenge movies are.
“Silver Lining Playbook” as Manhola Dargis writes in NYT is “the exuberant new movie from David O. Russell, does almost everything right. The story tracks the feverish, happy, sad, absurdly funny ups and downs of a head case named Pat Solatano, played by a surprisingly effective, intensely focused Bradley Cooper, just as he returns to his parents’ home after eight months in a mental institution. Pat had been put away for a scarily violent crime, but now, having shed fat and the defense it offered him, and feeding on the shiny philosophy of the title instead, he feels ready to tackle the world. The world may not be ready.” It is a funny as well as moving and informative portrayal of a bipolar disorder. Like the French movie above it is both a fast paced melodrama and a comedy. One of the better American films of the years.
“Zero Dark Thirty” was not well put together – the climax was not that climactic – the controversy seems to be about the earlier scenes, where our liberal arts educated CIA agents torture to get information, and seem to have obtained a lead that leads eventually to Bin Laden. Some people objected to the implication that torture can work, of that American’s can be adept at it. I think the salient point is that we used it, and however problematic – it has been used before and by others, not because it is totally ineffective, however beneath our apple pie standard of goodness we try to deny it. The movie is valuable precisely because of the torture scenario, so we can understand what was going on and might not be to surprised if there might be some blowback to our efforts in this field. This your chance to understand water boarding and make your own decision about it.
“Sessions” is again a melodrama – not intensely so, clothed as comedy. A forty something paraplegic – without the use of hands and confined for periods of time to an iron lung (ravages of polio) want’s to go out with a bang. He is a poet and has accepted or adapted to his fate with enormous amount of equanimity – his caretakers, young university female students all form strong emotional attachment to him. He is also from an intensely catholic background and William Macy plays a priest who has a special relation with him and helps him around some catholic sex taboos. Luckily he connects with a sex surrogate in Helen Hunt – who leads him to simultaneous orgasm in only four session (he bought six). You get to see Helen in all her glory and she plays a terrific surrogate. A true story that is inspiring by showing human determination in overcoming pretty powerful life limitations.
There are other festival films that are being released, so I will comment on them as I catch them. In the meantime we are hoping a ride to Cuba with Roads Scholar (aka elder hostel) for two weeks beginning February 20th – and I will try to have something to say about it.
