Movie Reviews
The
Terminal
The Trilogy
Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I have spent too many hours in airports not to have anticipated the very clever idea of a man trapped in an airport as a movie plot. But, a clever idea is almost where the plot of The Terminal terminates. With an A-list cast, including: Tom Hanks as Viktor Navorski, Catherine Zeta-Jones as flight attendant Amelia, the ever wonderful Stanley Tucci as the antagonist, Frank Dixon the story soars on credible acting, but descends rapidly by pandering to self-indulgent sentimentalism and too many directions.
Viktor is a traveler from the fictional country of Krakozhia. He becomes trapped in the international terminal, at a New York city airport, when a coup in his native country invalidates his passport. During this same period Frank Dixon, a mid-level bureaucrat, is anticipating his dreamed-of, well-deserved promotion to Airport Manager. The conflict between these two mounts in proportion to the pace of the movie but never completes a satisfying arc. By the end of the movie Frank seems to become just another fan of Viktor's, and we're left wondering why we watched the struggle between these two for 128 minutes.
Along the way ... Amelia gets in the way. This is the never-ending love story that never needed to be. I'm not sure why this was thrown into what stands alone as a good premise, other than the Hollywood penchant to throw the kitchen-sink at the audience using major star attachments. By the end of the movie I found myself wishing that Amelia's story were different, because it never really goes anywhere. It's one of the few times I have ever felt that the movie would have been better if the boy won the heart of the girl. Stephen Spielberg has surely produced better films than this, but the classic characteristic's of his work are present and provide for a comfortable if not totally engaging ride. It is clean with excellent attention to detail and character movement. The set direction is the best money can buy as an entire terminal was manufactured for the film. With just the faintest of recollection we are harkened back to the earlier Spielberg, the director that provided the heart of such great films as ET. But, this is not that strong a story-line, and a break on the heartstring-tugger should have been a consideration.
What really inspires this piece is the performance of Hanks. The fact that he learns English in less than a couple of days is forgiven while he bumbles through the airport living on free soda-crackers and packets of mustard and catsup. Early on, when he learns of the coup in his country on the airport television, his panic and grief are translated easily, and this, the most touching scene in the film, brings back memory's of 9/11. Another role, that of Gupta, an aging airport janitor, is played superbly by Kumar Pallana who nearly steals the show with this role of man who has been trapped, many years, in the same airport for an entirely different reason.
If you wish that M&M's had another layer of sugarcoating or that all cakes were six-layer instead of three, this might be the movie for you. If you loved the simple, direct sincerity of In America, skip this and go see The Chronicles of Riddick.
Movies offer visual feasts that are unlike the cognitive acrobatics required when reading a novel. Because movies play out visually what's lost to the audience is all of the pre-story, back-story, in-between story. In a novel, even in a well written short piece, much of this information can be related, but movies are limited to strict time-frames. The Trilogy, written and directed by Lucas Belvaux, is a cinematic answer to that problem. Three films, shot simultaneously, describe not only different stories, but each in a different genre. With this, Belvaux gives us film as literature.
All three stories, On the Run, An Amazing Couple, and After the Life are placed in present day Grenoble. The films follow a number of different people, all within a two-week period in their lives. Much like Kurosawa's Rashamon, these three story's are all told from different perspectives with major characters from one film playing minor characters in another. These concentric circles draw the audience in deeply, and by the third film perception begins to take on the feeling of a fun-room mirror at the circus. Belvaux's intent is that we experience the three genres of thriller, comedy, melodrama while dwelling within the same narration, and he does this very well.
On the Run
Bruno Le Roux (Lucas Belvaux) escapes from prison, but he cannot escape reality. On the lam, Bruno returns to Grenoble, where he plans to take care of unfinished business. Primary on his list is to kill the man he believes is responsible for his capture and life-sentence. Secondary, is his belief that the Marxist cause still lives, and that the masses will rise up once he has renewed the terrorist activities that caused his incarceration. But, much has changed in twenty years, and the flame of rebellion is no longer available for his fanatical approach to change. This thriller follows Bruno along a path of killing and hiding. Finally, he is forced to realize that the world has passed him by, yet in true fashion he remains a rebel to the end. While he could simply be smuggled into another country and live his life in freedom he chooses another path, more suited to his style. This movie has one of the most perfect endings I've ever seen.
An Amazing Couple
C cile Costes (Ornella Muti) and Alain Costes (Francois Morel) are a happily married couple until a stream of poorly communicated events threatens to tip their life into disaster. C cile is a high-school teacher, and Alain is a successful attorney who loves his wife so much that he decides to hide an upcoming surgery from her so that she won't worry. What ensues is a scene by scene revelation of two people who are so paranoid and suspicious that one communication error leads to another with both feeling that the other has something to hide. C cile believes that Alain is having an affair, while he begins to believe that she is plotting to have him killed. She has him followed, tracks his moment by moment activities and goes through everything in his office. He convinces his secretary that C cile is trying to do away with him, and the two of them work to overturn the fantasized plot. This comedy is sometimes darkly illustrated but it has tremendously funny moments.!ar
After the Life
This is the most riveting performance of the three films. Pascal Manise (Gilbert Melki) is a cop whose daily involvement in the grimier side of Grenoble life is only a side-show event to his personal life. Agn s Manise (Dominique Blanc), his wife, is addicted to morphine, and the central conflict arises from the fact that he has become her supplier in order to keep her love. When events from the other movies interfere it becomes impossible for him to supply her habit, and their once stable relationship begins to unravel. Dark from the start, this film tells us a story about a man we thought we knew, but in the end a totally different opinion is formed about the character of Pascal.
There are many surprising moments in these three films. I would love to tell you more but take the time to go to Madstone and see all three. This is, I predict, one of the better film events of the year.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
"God gave
us our memories so that we might have roses in winter."
J.M. Barrie
The word chosen for the quote above is "roses" not lily's or carnations, and this is to remind us that life's attractions always come with a prickly price, even as mere memories. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind explores this by taking the viewer through the agonizing pain of love, to hate, and then back to love again.
The quality of this film is not what the players do as much as what they don't do. Jim Carrey, as Joel, doesn't use talking-butt gags, not once. Kate Winslet, as Clementine, doesn't do wide-eyed gorgeous. And Charlie Kaufman, the writer, doesn't pen past the heart and soul of the story but fills this strange thesis with careful moments that bring it full circle, something his past films have not accomplished. Kaufman is something of an aberration, being just about the only writer in Hollywood whose name can brand a film in the general public's mind. With past hits such as Human Nature, Being John Malkovich and Adaptation Kaufman has garnered a name for complex, thought provoking fare but often a bit twisted in the telling. This tale is torqued right from the start when, after fifteen minutes into the film, the credits roll and suddenly you realize the ride has just taken its first turn.
Joel and Clementine are two lonely people searching for love. From the start it seems that they will find what they seek in each other, but as this is a Kaufman story, that is really the end of the film and the warped journey to come, nearly costs them the love they desire. Soon, after meeting, these two discover what everyone discovers about romantic involvement ... it's hard work and there are bad moments which we would all wish away, but these are the moments that define the solidarity of a couples true intent and they will never simply go away. Clementine is a total ditz, whose hair color changes with her moods. In one particular moment of ditzyness she decides that she has had enough of Joel and has the memory of him erased. This is only a little bit of science fiction but it's done well enough to stand up within the story. Joel learns of this erasure and in a period of love-lorn choler finds Dr. Howard Merzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) of Lacuana, Inc. and asks! for the same, the removal of the memories of Clementine. What neither one understands is that love is not a memory, love cannot be erased and before the end of the story they find each other again as if they had never met. At this point it seems that they might just make it as a totally new couple or a couple caught in a loop but they soon discover what they each have done and that has it's own consequences. This too is resolved in a tenuous moment of clarity and understanding between the two searchers.
If you are a Kaufman fan this movie is a must, it is simply his best to date. If you're not a Kaufman fan this film is still worth seeing. It has moments that seem a bit too long, a little overdone but the story is one that provokes thought past the exit doors. The other bit here, worth notice, is the performance by Jim Carrey. Like Nicholson in About Schmidt and Sandler in Punch Drunk Love, Carrey expands his range past the goofiness of Dumb and Dumber and the melodramatic nonsense of The Majestic and rolls out a truly meaty performance.
Marc Calderwood is an Eternally Optimistic writer in Albuquerque.