The Master

Joaquin Phoenix in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master

*** out of ****

There are so many shots where the unflattering contours of Joaquin Phoenix's face are captured with astounding beauty. For those who saw this movie in a major city where an advanced screening took place, it must have been something beautifully ugly to behold in full 70mm celluloid glory.

The Master is the first studio film in sixteen years to be completely shot in the 65mm/70mm process -an expensive method of shooting film that produces very high-resolution imagery. In the old days, this was reserved for grand-spectacle-epic-cinema like Lawrence of Arabia and 2001: A Space Odyssey. With today’s more advanced film stock this promises even grander results. Even though I was watching it in 2K digital projection, there was still a unique richness, that couldn’t be lost in translation, with every shot.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson has most likely utilized this medium as an advocate for shooting on film with the knowledge that the days of celluloid film-making are numbered. With the typical half-decade lag between his films, this may be his last opportunity. So why not shoot The Master, the way the masters would have?

I’ve never thought of Anderson as much of a storyteller. He’s a director who depends on atmosphere and tone generated by cinematography and sound design to capture his audience. It doesn’t work on everyone. This is probably because his subjects are usually too uncomfortable for a broad audience. “The Master” is no exception by a long shot. 

Set right after World War II, it is a long movie about a hopeless veteran drifter named Freddie (Joaquin Phoenix), who can’t adjust to a post-war domestic lifestyle. He spends time concocting mix-drinks that involve alcohol sources wherever available (paint thinner, for example), fornicating, and getting into fights. After running away from some big trouble, he stows-away on a boat that turns out to be carrying a rich writer named Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) with his family and followers of a new spiritual movement he has started called “The Cause.” All of this strongly resembles L. Ron Hubbard and the early stages of Scientology.

Dodd perceives the damage in Freddie and takes him in as a beast to tame utilizing a therapy technique known a “processing” in a long scene that is easily the best in the film. He gets Freddie to open up and be honest. One might find disappointment with the belief that this scene is a promise that we are to see Freddie get better throughout the film, when he won’t. Even at his best behavior, Freddie is like Alex during the second half of A Clockwork Orange. You can see the pain of restraint on his face when being civil. It is more uncomfortable watching Phoenix in this role than watching his meltdown in the mockumentary, I’m Still Here.

Then there is Hoffman’s Dodd –or “Master” as he likes to be called, who’s like a surgeon who is only qualified enough to know how to safely cut a person open but pretends to know what he’s doing when he’s inside. This pretentious character, what he represents, and his name seem like the perfect invention for a Coen Brothers comedy. His wife, Peggy (Amy Adams), is his most protective supporter and fears Freddie’s violence and impulsive behavior, which she believes to be “beyond help.” Dodd clings to Freddie as a pet project possibly because fixing this repulsive man will prove him to be great, or because he connects to Freddie in an unspoken way. Nothing is certain.

Check out Roger Ebert's Review.

Paul Thomas Anderson avoids certainty about his characters and prefers their motivations to be undefined with the complexity of a human being’s natural animal side fighting the rational. Phoenix painfully conveys this broken human all too well. 

This movie is about someone in need of help getting bad help. It’s gorgeously captured and not fun to watch. This is a pure artistically driven film that is challenging and far, far away from predictable sensationalism. It made me feel awful but it will stick with me. Years down the road I may watch it and feel something different. What is most important, is that it will inspire discussion, one of many things The Master does, that cinema is drifting away from.

Check out The AV Club's review.

2012... So far

With fall starting, we reach what I call the halfway point of the year. Yes, the year is more than half-over, but when adjusted for movies, this is where I stop and think back on everything I’ve seen so far. The studios tend to reserve all their potential awards candidates for the end of the year. This is to make those particular features fresh in the minds of board members, judges, and the general public consciousness when it comes time to pick the nominees.

With all those movies that scream for attention on the way, I like to stop and reflect on what has had an impact on me. What’s the value of doing that? Well, the pretentiousness of the awards season can inhibit the most objective film enthusiast from realizing what movies are destined to become future classics.

I’ll start off on my favorite movie so far this year: Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom. Like all Anderson’s films, it isn’t about anything particularly important and is mostly style over substance. However, unlike my experience with other Anderson films, I had a smile on my face from beginning to end. Co-written by Roman Coppola and Anderson, this adventure story of runaway children on a New England Island in the nineteen-sixties is nostalgic, funny, and just so damn beautiful looking. It is a reminder of the naïve childhood ambition to become independent of the adult world. 

The Hunger Games was so surprisingly engaging as a dystopian science-fiction film, I decided to catch up with everyone else and read the book too. I am very sure, that this is a great adaptation. The film is handled with insightful creativity by director Gary Ross. Jennifer Lawrence led a great cast that makes the nightmarish bizarre future feel intensely real.

Margaret was a film made in 2006, which ran into legal troubles during post-production and wasn’t shown until recently. Early reception was not positive as the first cut made the film feel messy. This year it was released on Blu-ray and included a bonus disc that contained a three-hour cut of the film, which finally gave this drama about the emotional crisis of a New York teenager (Anna Paquin) the right kind of pace. Director and playwright Kenneth Lonnergan (You Can Count On Me) has made a movie that is wonderfully acted and strangely experimental at times. It is one of the most unique dramas I’ve seen in a long time.

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry -An excellent in-depth documentary on the daring Chinese artist and activist. The film is directed by Alison Klayman who started the project after producing several PBS and NPR stories from China.

The Avengers –Leave it to Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly) to do a balancing act that gathers characters from multiple movies, putting them together in one, and pulling it off. No nitpicking allowed with this one. I will be surprised if this works a second time.

There were a couple of movies this year that satirized the horror genre better than Scream did, with unusual twists. The first, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, was filled with huge laughs involving two well-meaning hillbillies trying to enjoy a summer in their creepy cabin while inadvertently terrifying the college-age campers across the lake. Fatal horrific accidents ensue inspired by paranoia. It’s dark and hilarious all the way through. Second, is the Joss Whedon-produced The Cabin in the Woods, which lets you know with its pre-title sequence, that you are in for an atypical ride of absurd entertainment. It’s scary, funny, and you won’t believe where this movie goes.

The Grey, directed by Joe Carnahan and starring Liam Neeson, is a no-nonsense survival movie about stranded men in Alaska who are stalked by wolves. It handles the survival theme boldly by having the characters know that they are doomed without a chance but fight for their lives anyway. It’s also a movie that has a very truthful portrayal of manhood and dismisses the all the macho B.S. associated with this subgenre.

Other stand-out films include the seemingly exploitive but straight-forward Magic Mike; Disney’s underrated John Carter; Seth MacFarlane’s mostly-hilarious Ted; the Karina-esque pre-apocalyptic Beasts of the Southern Wild; David Koepp’s urban bicycle-chase thrills in Premium Rush; the shoestring-budgeted psychological thriller, Sound of My Voice; Kill List –a brutal British thriller that goes in very unexpected directions; and the poorly-written but beautiful-looking, Prometheus, directed by Ridley Scott. 

Aside from a huge list of movies I have yet to catch up with, I am looking forward to Rian Johnson’s Looper, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, Ben Affleck’s Argo, the Wachowski’s and Tom Tykwer’s Cloud Atlas, Sam Mendes’ Skyfall, Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina, David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.

There are many more movies that I am curious about as well as independent and foreign releases I probably won’t find a good way to see until 2013. Until then, I will continue to obsess.

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

Ai Weiwei stands in a room filled with millions of hand-crafted sunflower seeds

***1/2 out of ****

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is a documentary about a famous Chinese artist and political activist who I am ashamed to say I’d never heard of. The movie portrays him as an uncompromising crusader of social justice. His status as a world-renowned contemporary artist gives him a strong voice when criticizing the Chinese government, an act that sounds quite scary.

He has art exhibited all over the world. He collaborated with Swiss architects on the design of the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympic games (Though openly criticized the Olympics following this commission). His work ranges from installations of sculpture, photography, performance art, and video. A lot of his activism in this documentary focuses on his reaction to the great Sichuan earthquake which led to seventy thousand deaths, many of which he feels were due to substandard government buildings. When he decided to investigate the deaths of five thousand child students in poorly constructed schools, the government would not release their names.

While Ai Weiwei has fought for many causes, he has been subject to police brutality and many government enforced shut-downs of outlets he used for spreading his thoughts. His current choice of media is a Twitter account, which the government can’t touch. The documentary makes great use of this fact by using displays of his tweets as a regular narrative passage.

Ai is a very fun interview subject. His artistic sense of humor (He painted “Coca-Cola” on a Neolithic vase) and uncompromising views are all conveyed with a very calm and soft voice. He’s doing his best to enjoy the notoriety he’s created for himself in his country. His art and activism are one and the same. What he feels compelled to produce comes from his frustration of repression. While his acts of defiance are at times immature, they are always entertaining and he feels them to be the appropriate response to, what he feels, is a bullying force. His activism may not utilize the right tactics but it has the artistic power of influence. 

Listen to the review by John Powers.

Aside from a tremendous amount of coverage following Ai with friends and family as he plans and attends art installations, we get interviews with journalists, artists, and cultural critics who discuss this man’s impact and what it means to challenge current-day China. It is rightly pointed out that Ai is only able to function as an activist today because of a modern China that is comparatively more democratic. Ai is adamant in fighting national complacency and the attitude that things are good enough.

Overall, this is a documentary that feels personal, funny, informational and finally, open-ended. The artist is currently dealing with possibly fabricated charges of tax evasion with no chance of leaving the country, and was forced to comply with the demand that he stop speaking out. There is a point late into the documentary when Ai has been released on probation after a long absence and interrogation. It is scary to see this normally brave outspoken man afraid in his refusal to make a statement. Naturally he’s back at it.

My familiarity with Chinese artists is, like most things, through film. What I know about Chinese film-makers, is that even when they seem like they are being subversive, they never admit to it. Ai Weiwei is an artist with bold statements as an advocate for democracy. This movie captures a brutally honest yet warm personality that gives us re-assurance that the art world still has very courageous heroes.

The documentary is directed by Alison Klayman and won the Special Jury Prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. 

You can hear an All Things Considered interview with Klayman here.

MY TAKE ON Directors As Critics

David Cronenberg didn't like The Dark Knight Rises?

Do you know one of my many favorite things about Quentin Tarantino? I suspect that he is a very good critic of movies, but he may have learned from the mistake of others in his profession, that it can be damning to an artist's reputation to criticize the work of others. Tarantino carries on and on about new movies he loves but seems to keep quiet about the movies he dislikes. Spielberg's the same way.

I don't know if they hold the same belief that I hold. The belief is that the investment of the artistic process can inhibit the ability to be a good audience member. Recently, a great filmmaker criticized a movie that may not have impressed me, but he seems to dislike it for all the wrong reasons. David Cronenberg criticized superhero movies using The Dark Knight Rises as an example of why it is silly for adults to praise and enjoy something that was invented for kids. He went on to praise it's technical greatness but said it was working with a genre that didn't have any chance of being great art.

Cronenberg is just the right guy to hold an opinion like this. What makes his drama and horror movies amazing, is the rejection of everything that makes a superhero movie amazing. He is the extreme opposite. He doesn't even believe in story-boarding! That makes him about as anti-comic book as you can get. A History of Violence, a famous film of his, was based on a graphic novel. He only read the screenplay adaptation and never looked at the graphic novel. The results were excellent but you would never think of a comic book when watching it. His films are a psychological journey that he doesn't want decided for him in the visuals ahead of time. I respect his opinion but isn't he the last guy who should even be talking about comic book movies? It's like me talking about sports!

Needless feuds have existed like this and I can remember a handful from my own lifetime: Terry Gilliam bashes Spielberg and Lucas; Spike Lee bashes Tarantino, Eastwood, and Zemekis; William Goldman bashes everyone! These artists were not wrong to dislike the others work, but the notion that their contemporaries needed to be impugned for the betterment of culture or just a way of trying to look artistically superior did nothing good for them.

When you're a good artist, you are on a mission to represent your unique vision. That unique vision sets one apart from the different vision of another. It's hard to give advice that doesn't involve telling someone, "Here's how to be more like me." An ambitious artist, steeped in their work isn't likely to be holding a worldly view of what makes everyone good in their own way. 

Directors are better suited to criticize through their work as a motivator to create something better or different. In 1959 Howard Hawks made Rio Bravo as a response to other Westerns at the time, namely High Noon. Both are celebrated films to this day but are made with very different attitudes on what heroism is. 

Pointing this stuff out is what film critics are for. There is a minimal amount of personal artistic bias brought to the viewing of a movie when all you think about, is the variety of different philosophies that lead to great works of art.

Hope Springs

Tommy Lee Jones, Meryl Streep, and Steve Carrell in Hope Springs

**1/2 out of ****

Is Hope Springs a movie that irresponsibly gives people in tired old relationships false hope? I don't want to speak ill of a movie for being positive, but I feel like this is a film that puts a shiny gloss finish on subject material that demands more truth than classic cinematic crowd-pleasing tactics. 

Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep play a couple who have wound up visiting a small coastal town called Hope Springs, for intensive marriage counseling sessions. This is from her insistence and very much to his dismay. Steve Carrell plays their counselor who knows how to ask all the necessary uncomfortable questions in a perfectly professional and relaxed tone.

It is directed by David Frankel, who made the formulaic yet fun, The Devil Wears Prada. Here, he directs Streep again in a dramatically different role (Isn't it always?) which is heartbreaking because she's so incredibly sweet and just wants to feel loved again by her husband. Jones is maybe even more impressive as a husband of repressed emotions who has always assumed he has done a satisfactory job at doing everything technically required in a marriage. His bombardment of this therapy retreat brings out anger and frustration that transitions into complex guilt. If there is something very potent in Jones' work here, it is how he so accurately represents so many people who are afraid of therapy.

The real shame here, is that this is one of those movies where the cast seems much stronger than the material given to them. The process of the experience the characters go through has it's drama but plays it safe. Some may disagree because the subject of sexuality involving older couples may seem unappealing to a mainstream audience. It goes to the limit I would expect, which is what I can say about most of this movie. I think people will find something to connect to in this movie's subject but I don't think it has many interesting revelations and I am also annoyed by the convenience of it's happy ending. 

I don't need this movie to have a happy ending or a downer ending. I'm not interested in resolutions here. I want a movie about the complexity of long-lasting relationships and the challenge of connection. Hope Springs may be about that very thing, but not enough.

Check out Roger Ebert's Review.

Celeste & Jesse Forever

Rashida Jones as Celeste, the main character in Celeste & Jesse Forever

**1/2 out of ****

Celeste & Jesse Forever is relationship dramedy with doses of When Harry Met Sally, Cameron Crowe, Judd Apatow, and polished with a standard bland-color digital indie film aesthetic. It is directed by Lee Toland Krieger, with a co-written script by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack.

It is steeped in the world of Yogalatteiphoneville. Let's call it L.A.. The main character's profession is that of a "trend analyzer." If the person with a job like that is the more successful, the next one is naturally a struggling artist (God-forbid we get a relationship story featuring people with boring jobs like everyone else). There's a Halloween party where no one is dressed up as anything remotely threatening. There are characters ranging from neo-hippies, comic gays, a goofy weed-dealer, cellphone follies, and a running gag on the subject of cutting in line as an allegory for how you conduct your life.
     
This is all stuff that distances me from the film while at the same time I can't fault it for these characteristics. This is a movie written by Hollywood celebrities (Jones being Hollywood royalty) who are honestly writing from what they know and broadening it to be more accessible. While I think it will reach an appreciative audience, it still didn't quite reach me.

Check out The AV Club's review.

This story involves a recently separated couple, played by the wonderful Rashida Jones as Celeste and a subdued Andy Samberg as Jesse. They are convinced that they can maintain a close friendship. Their chemistry suggests they are two people who will always be comfortable with each other and constantly on the same page in social situations. Despite their functionality, they don't feel they're meant for each other and know that they will move on to better relationships. Then Jesse moves on -in an unexpectedly big way, leaving Celeste drowned with the realization of her loss. 

The title and billing mislead a bit, as this story is more Celeste  and less Jesse. There are only a few scenes that feature Samberg's Jesse in a separate environment or by himself. Without these scenes the movie would be more centered in it's essence as a self-realization story from the point of view of Celeste.

I love Rashida Jones for her bravery in writing and playing a high-standards borderline snob of a character who is embarrassing herself in the face of deprivation. There was a scene near the end when she has to make a speech in front of a lot of people and it almost goes in the direction of Kristen Wiig's antics in Bridesmaids, but thankfully it doesn't. For the most part, this is a movie stays true to itself.   

So why did this feel so boring to me? I guess I didn't find anyone in the movie to be very fun. By "fun," I don't mean likeable. I mean engaging. Sadly this is attempted with weak comic-relief characters and a scene during a bridal shower in which Celeste has hit rock-bottom and drunkenly makes an ass of herself in a style that is a little over-the-top. I was reminded of Campbell Scott in Singles when his once-clean house became a comic ruin due to a breakup -it's a rare part where the movie lowers itself for a cheap laugh. Rashida Jones is an appealing person to me and she has helped create a film that shows more potential from her than we've seen before. It is very possible that if she brings her writing ability and acting talent to another collaborator, we will see bolder results.

Listen to this interview with her on All Things Considered.