L'Emploi du temps (Time Out, 2001)

In his previous film, Human Resources (1999), French director Laurent Cantet showed us the complexities of workplace relationships and office politics by bringing a young business school student home for a summer internship in his hometown's factory, where his father works. What makes that film so gripping is Cantet's trust of his actors to convey the fullness of very human emotions, while trusting his own sensibilities enough to let the story flow without underscoring the issues he was probing. By showing so much restraint, Cantet let Human Resources create its own power, and that it did.

But that conspicuous debut only hinted at what Cantet is capable of -- something his follow-up film, L'Emploi du temps (Time Out, 2001), makes even clearer.

Time Out opens with Vincent, a middle-aged man who's looking a bit haggard, sleeping in his car on a gray afternoon. He awakens to field a call from his wife, to whom he tells an entire web of lies -- he's busy, trying to resolve client issues, can't talk now, will call later, etc. He gets out of his car, follows along with school kids who head into a convenience store, buys a few things, then heads back to his car.

This, we soon learn, is Vincent's life and his lie: He has no job because he's been fired from a very good position with a business consultancy, yet he hasn't told anyone. Everyone thinks Vincent is doing as well as always, even his wife, whom he obviously loves dearly. Without a doubt, he's devoted to his family, and yet he can't seem to tell the simple truth that he no longer has a job -- and isn't even looking for one.

To keep his illusion intact, Vincent invents a new job opportunity: a plum position with a firm that consults with the UN. But he needs money, of course, and to create cash flow he lets his lie become an ineptly structured Ponzi scheme rooted in his imaginary job. A businessman who frequents the same hotel Vincent does his "business" keeps an eye on Vincent, figures out his angle, and approaches him with a real offer -- one that promises to bring Vincent much-needed relief from the burden of his deceit, while dragging him deeper into real trouble.

What drove Vincent to this point? That's part of the unfolding psychological mystery behind Cantet's film, and it is absolutely riveting. Time Out is not a film with enormous arcs of drama, and yet its tension crawled under my skin more than once. Vincent's lies lead to a potentially dangerous path, but Cantet doesn't follow the usual route in resolving these tensions that so many films pursue.

In part, he has that luxury because of his gifted cast. As Vincent, Aurelien Recoing -- a first-time film lead whose deep experience is on the stage -- is a revelation. Recoing's masterful use of body language and silent expressions convey the mounting tensions as effectively as Cantet's script; there's no pressure valve until the film's conclusion, and even then, there's a certain emotional residue that carves doubt into the surface.

Recoing is powerfully supported by Karin Viard as his frustrated, yet compassionate wife, Muriel, and especially by Serge Livrozet as the shady businessman who takes an interest in Vincent's plight.

Admittedly, Time Out struck a powerful personal chord with me; my own father pulled this same sort of stunt more than once, and plenty more similar ones, besides. But I daresay anyone who has ever lost a job and felt the sting of doubt, confusion, and fear that landing on your butt can bring will find something very familiar in Vincent and his story. The Cantet made a film that is at once intensely personal and yet utterly universal is part of what makes this an exceptional film, and part of what makes him a remarkable filmmaker.

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Sydney Pollack: 1934-2008

Very sad to note his passing, from the effects of cancer yesterday. Sydney Pollack was a gifted director who could work comfortably within any genre -- very old-school in that respect. An actor and producer as well, Pollack was known for getting top-notch performances from his casts as a director. Actors whom Pollack directed were nominated for Oscars 12 times.

I am particularly fond of Pollack's drama suspense films, including The Swimmer (1968, which he co-directed without a credit), They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), and Jeremiah Johnson (1972), and the ultra-tense Three Days of the Condor (1975).

Pollack was a lifelong friend of Robert Redford and worked with the star on some of his biggest films. They both got their first film roles in an underrated Korean War film, War Hunt (1962). (More trivia: That film gave Tom Skerritt his first film role, as well, and an uncredited Francis Ford Coppola plays an army truck driver.)

Sydney Pollack will be missed.

The Red Badge of Courage (1951)

Some movies are so familiar, and yet so fresh when seen again years later. I had the pleasure of watching this old John Huston classic today, on Memorial Day, and I'm glad I did. The Red Badge of Courage is one example of Hollywood doing a quintessential American novel justice on the big screen.

Real-life war hero Audie Murphy (the most decorated combat soldier in U.S. history) stars as young Henry Fleming, "the youth" who yearns to prove himself in battle -- to become a man, in his own eyes and in those of his comrades. He serves alongside a battle-hardened unit of distinctive characters -- the tall soldier, the tattered man, the lieutenant, and others -- none of whom have names, yet each of whom is made vivid by this towering cast. In particular, veteran character actors Royal Dano, Arthur Hunnicutt, Bill Mauldin, and John Dierkes all breathe life into their portrayals of Union soldiers facing the smoke, carnage, and confusion of the Civil War.

And Murphy just shines as the youth. An amateur with no acting experience when James Cagney was struck by his Life magazine cover (celebrating his truly amazing feats of sheer courage in the European theater), Murphy became a fine actor in his own right. But this is his signature performance, one Murphy invests with a raw emotion and fumbling bravado that makes the youth easy to recognize and utterly sympathetic as he vaults from cowardice to courage in the course of a day. Murphy's young soldier is at once familiar and yet extraordinary. It's such a definitive performance that it's hard to imagine anyone else taking the role (even though Richard Thomas did a fine job with it in a 1974 TV movie version), and it's hard to understand why Murphy received no nominations for nailing this role.

But one of the biggest roles in Huston's telling of Crane's story is you, the viewer, thanks to Harold Rosson's stunning cinematography. Cameras take the part of individual soldiers, elbowing into groups to hear the latest news from the front, or joining the charge against a dug-in Confederate front. Faces emerge from the smoke, then vanish, or fall with a harsh, final plummet. In one heart-rending scene, a delirious tall soldier (Dano) wanders from the retreating column of wounded soldiers to chase a hallucination, all the way to his last breath.

My only big complaint with Huston's film isn't Huston's fault. At a mere 69 minutes, the film moves a little too quickly to let the moral gravity of Crane's great story really settle in. That was famously MGM's work, trimming what was a two-hour epic down to under an hour and a quarter while Huston was out of the country, working on another film. Neither Huston nor Murphy could prevail upon MGM to let them buy the rights and release a longer version -- in fact, when Huston asked, the studio advised him that all the extraneous footage had been destroyed. It is to be hoped that missing footage may one day turn up in a closet somewhere; Huston later related how his favorite scene had been cut from the film.

A real shame, that. But what we have left is still one fine war film, a classic every bit deserving of the name.

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The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)

Movies based on books almost never do their source material justice. There are those notable few that manage to capture the essence of a narrative and project it onto the screen, transcending two very different mediums. Some books just adapt well to film and others do not. Myths often undergo several retellings, each new iteration highlighting themes and motifs that build on the source. The recent adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and The Chronicles of Narnia have produced similar results, and yet cause terrible consternation among those who cherish the original works.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, the latest effort by director Andrew Adamson and Walden Media to bring C.S. Lewis’s masterpieces to the big screen, falls among these efforts. And while the resultant adaptation may cause split reactions among fans, it remains a conscious, devoted effort to maintain myth and grand storytelling to a young audience in desperate need of good stories.

A year since their fateful stay at Professor Kirke’s estate, the four Pevensie children deal with their longing to return to Narnia in different ways. How long, a frustrated Peter asks. How long until we can go back?

Meanwhile, 1300 years have passed in Narnia, and many things have changed. An evil usurper with an eye on the throne has just learned that his wife has given birth to a son. This man Miraz immediately orders the death of the young Prince Caspian to secure his kingship. Caspian flees, aided by a tutor, who sends him away with a familiar old horn. Use it when all hope is lost, he tells the prince.

Caspian heads to the woods, pursued by Miraz’s sinister men. There, Caspian encounters strange creatures; creatures he thought lived only in myth. Desperate and surrounded, Caspian blows the horn – summoning the four kings and queens back to Narnia.

Adamson and company shuffle various story elements of the book in order to avoid some of the challenges a beat-for-beat adaptation would present. Much of Caspian the book is told in flashback, and doesn’t lend itself as well to adaptation as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (LWW). The shuffle helps maintain a more cinematic narrative, keeping the action set pieces closer together, thus keeping a younger audience engaged.

In the midst of this shuffle, however, the film steps around one of the two key themes of the book: “restoration of the true religion after corruption.” In the world of Caspian the book, storytelling is outlawed, and “Old Narnia,” the world of Aslan and talking beasts is nothing more than a fairytale, and just as easily dismissed. But while the filmmakers have received criticism for leaving this out, it hardly creates a vacuum. Caspian remains, like its source, a myth for kids. And like all great myths, various themes rise out of the narrative that enrich and nourish.

Peter and Susan (William Moseley and Anna Popplewell), largely static in the book, receive a rounder development in the film. Susan remains the most pragmatic of the four, eager to embrace adulthood and leave childishness behind. In the opening moments of the film when she finds Peter fighting with some boys at the rail station, she scowls just like a mother hen. Peter’s aggression, we quickly realize, stems from a growing impatience, both for a return to Narnia, and to reclaim the warrior adulthood he found in that magical place.

Themes unique to the film’s narrative rise from these developments. Susan, even in the context of the books, has always wanted to grow up quickly, a trait that comes into play in the final volume of Lewis’s chronicles. Her attraction to Caspian later in the film, then, touches that same yearning, while still providing a slant for doe-eyed teenage girls in the audience.

Peter’s endures a suffering faith journey throughout the film, constantly trying to discern the will of Aslan while faced with what he feels in an interminable silence from the great lion. His conflict with Caspian, and his temptation by the return of the White Witch, both offer a profound examination of a believer’s struggle to find the right path, while remaining extra-canonical story elements developed for the sake of the film.

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost makes a great point when he writes that most fans are walking away disappointed because they can’t make the leap from reader to movie-goer. The diverging needs of both mediums require different elements in order to successfully tell a story. The added siege on Miraz’s castle, while a big deviation from the book, makes for a terrific cinematic sequence. Caspian, then, becomes a much better film than LWW. The returning cast falls into their roles with greater confidence and poise, and newcomers, such as Peter Dinklage as Trumpkin, breathe real life into characters once bound to a page.

Adamson and his crew have created a stirring war movie, one that gives kids who teeter on the edge of discerning their purpose shining examples of courage, belief, strength and valor (especially in the character of Reepicheep, making the jump from page to screen in bold fashion), played out against immense struggle and powerful doubt.

For an audience that never ceases to express their disappointment in a Hollywood that consistently disrespects their religion, there seems to be little tolerance even for a Hollywood that gets it right, even if it doesn’t hit all the beats one might wish. Is Caspian the movie exactly like Caspian the book? No. Go see it anyway.

“If you have proof, you have to pursue it!”

Cutting a solid trailer has become a veritable art form. They cajole our attention, and they often mislead, all in the effort to plant a seed of interest that hopefully germinates the day we hand over money to buy a ticket to the feature it promotes.

We’re big fans of trailers here at A:R. OK, I am. So when I see one that stokes my imagination and successfully plants that seed, I like to share it with as many as I can.

Playing in front of Prince Caspian is a trailer for the Tom Hanks, Walden Media produced City of Ember, based on the book by Jeanne Duprau. Check out the trailer:

Lights out -- 10.10.08

A note on comments...

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Rio Bravo (1959): A fond tribute

Film critic Charles Taylor has a fine essay in Dissent magazine on Howard Hawks' outstanding Western, Rio Bravo. Taylor wisely points out how Hawks' film reverses the plot of High Noon:

PART OF THE beauty of Wayne’s performance here is the way, even when Chance is refusing help, he never undervalues others. When Chance’s friend, the cattleman Wheeler (the inevitable Ward Bond), derides his deputies by asking, “A bum-legged old man and a drunk—that’s all you’ve got?” Chance answers, “That’s what I’ve got.” It’s the single best line reading of Wayne’s career. There’s a world of respect in the weight he puts on that one word, “what,” an irreducible sense of people’s worth as individuals.

If you've perhaps wondered what the big deal about John Wayne is, watch Rio Bravo (or Stagecoach, or The Searchers, or Red River).

Image: www.moviescreenshots.blogspot.com


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Redbelt (2008)

Even if you miss the opening credits, you won't have to wait long to realize that David Mamet is the writer/director behind Redbelt, his most recent film. It's the dialogue, crisp and telling without revealing too much. It's the muted intensity of the top-notch cast, allowing a scene's dramatic tension to build of its own accord. It's the seemingly chance occurrences that are anything but.

And it's one fine Mamet film -- until an ending that nearly snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

Chiwetel Ojiofor is Mike Terry, teacher and proprietor of a jiu-jitsu studio in Los Angeles who believes in a pure warrior's code and has no interest in competing in the burgeoning arena of mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting. His star pupil is a police officer, Joe Ryan (Max Martini), an honest officer struggling to earn his black belt with much encouragement from Terry. Terry's wife, Sondra (Alice Braga), keeps the books for the business, but also has her own enterprise designing and making her own line of dresses.

The film opens as Terry is concluding a lesson, encouraging Ryan to think his way through a sparring session with Snowflake (Jose Pablo Cantillo), one of Terry's more skilled and experienced fighters. Outside, a panicked woman (Allison Karman) is struggling to locate a pharmacy before it closes, only to lose focus and sideswipe a truck -- Terry's truck, actually. She enters the studio, flustered and jittery; within moments she overreacts to Ryan's movement, grabs his gun and fires a shot into the studio's window, shattering it. That sets in motion a plot as layered and convoluted as ... well, as Mamet at his best.

And that's the real focus here. For while Redbelt is ostensibly a film about the increasingly popular sport of MMA, that's merely the backdrop for Mamet's twisted tale of right-crossing, double-crossing, and dueling loyalties. Before the movie's reached a third of its run time, Terry's high ideals will be sorely tested by the people he loves and those he's just met.

Much of the film's power rests on Ejiofor, and he is more than up to the task, delivering a leading performance that grabs hard and never lets go. Braga is quite good as his pragmatic wife, who vents her frustrations over Terry's lack of material ambitions just enough to prod him deeper into the quagmire. Karman really shines, also, as the harried woman (an attorney, as it turns out -- importantly enough) with a big secret that will bind her to Terry in more ways than one.

Good as the leads are, the supporting performances (featuring several Mamet regulars) give the film much of its power and texture. Ricky Jay is outstanding, as always, as a corrupt promoter who sees in MMA a chance to cash in. He's hardly alone in that regard; Joe Mantegna shines as a film producer who pulls a few strings to drive the twisting plot along, and Tim Allen has a very nice turn as a slovenly action movie star who just happens into a barfight where Terry happens to be, effectively dragging Terry into his world. Ah, happenstance ... never what it seems in a David Mamet film, and it certainly isn't here, either.

While they're not the primary focus of the film, Mamet's fight scenes are appropriately frenzied, relying on hand-held camera work with in-tight shots. There's a difficult intimacy throughout the film, in fact, as the camera and actors crowd each other at every turn, ratcheting up the tension while Terry tries to get to the bottom of what's really going on. The buildup to the concluding sequence is masterfully wound; Mamet introduces key elements in gradual reveals that clue Terry into a plot far bigger than anything he imagined, but also clearly indicate, at last, the path he must take to redeem all that has gone astray. It is a very hard path, indeed, and Mamet propels it along splendidly ... until the very end. It's the ending that really disappointed me. Granted, resolving so multifaceted a story is no mean feat, even for as skilled a filmmaker as Mamet; but the closing sequence is so far-fetched it left me slack-jawed, given how tightly plotted the story's arc is and carefully motivated the characters are until that point.

Redbelt will probably disappoint viewers seeking a straight-on action film, but I daresay even MMA fans who could care less about Mamet will find much here to like. Likewise, those who had no idea what MMA is should not be put off by that. This is no garden-variety action film, by any stretch; it's a powerful reflection the profound difficulty of living by one's code of ethics in a world that refuses to acknowledge honorable intentions or honest deeds. Even with its gob-smacking ending, Redbelt delivers more than enough intelligent drama to reward Mamet fans and those looking for an intriguing film alike.

Shyamalan's “Happening” catching some heat

Suspense auteur M. Night Shyamalan’s new film caught some bad buzz earlier this week with a less than stellar take (and that’s being polite) from an anonymous reviewer who caught an early preview screening. Now that an extended scene from the film has shown up on Yahoo, Ain’t it Cool News has already joined the chorus declaring that headlining star Mark Wahlberg’s performance, well, ain’t that great.

The clip looks plucked from the opening moments of the second act. It’s nothing special, certainly not a moment for the film that inspires any investment in the characters. Without any greater context, I can’t say it generates any more enthusiasm for the movie, but it doesn’t detract from it either. Other than Wahlberg’s nasally voice (a complaint from the review), there just isn’t enough to go by.

Though the trailers and promos do a good enough job of building the suspense angle, various trades had already outlined the plot way back when Shyamalan first got the green light. Anyone who remembers reading them (like me) already knows one of the plot’s key surprises. And it’s not a compelling gut-puncher like the dénouement of The Sixth Sense. That, coupled with the negative breeze wafting out from among the influential likes of AICN, indicates nothing good.

There’s a reasonable amount of dread for this film among Shyamalan devotees who have lost their faith in “the next Hitchcock.” Audiences, depending on who you ask, were split right down the middle on Shyamalan’s last film, Lady in the Water, which critics almost universally panned.

The sour reception for The Happening might draw more from malcontented fret than from any real discernment. If Shyamalan has any of Hitchcock’s mojo, and I believe he does, then there’s every possibility he can make this work as well as Hitch made Cary Grant standing in the middle of the desert work in North by Northwest. But only time will tell.

The Happening (alright, I have to say it--that's a terrible title) lands on Friday, June 13.

(image (c) Touchstone Pictures)

Cloverfield (2008)

Few filmmakers can market a movie solely on their name. J.J. Abrams took a shot at it with Cloverfield, a film billed on nothing more than a premise, and Abrams’s established talent for creating hot stories.

The monster movie in American cinema has found itself in serious disrepair over the years. Out of the motivation to invigorate the genre, screenwriter Drew Goddard penned a screenplay that rolled into quick production under Abrams’s creative oversight, and brought to life under director Matt Reeves, all of whom have shared various creative rolls on fan-favorite television productions, most notably Lost.

Innovative marketing built a quick base of enthusiasm, and promised an event as huge as the monster its trailers hinted. A solid trailer can make even mediocre films look like a Spielberg movie. And while Cloverfield isn’t mediocre, it is most certainly not what its marketing led audiences to believe.

It’s Robert Hawkins’s last night in Manhattan. His friends have all gathered to wish him well while one compadre totes a video camera around to capture everyone’s goodbyes. Everything we see happens through his lens.

As the party gets into swing, romance blossoms and withers. The woman Hawkins loves dares even to bring another beau to the party. But before anyone has any real time to hash out the ensuing gossip, a jolting earthquake grinds everything to a halt.

Everyone heads to the roof of this posh Manhattan apartment complex to see all the action in the streets, just in time to witness a cataclysmic explosion erupt in the city, spewing debris. Hawkins and his buddies evacuate the building, just in time (again) to see the head of the Statue of Liberty crash into the streets of New York. A monstrous thing has invaded the city!

Much of the movie does a hit-and-miss strafing run at the audience. It’s a quick ride—lasts only about 73 minutes. The filmmakers have said they wanted to shoot for something more in the vein of the original Gojira, and in some ways, they succeeded. Cloverfield plays just like another monster movie, albeit with better special effects. There are no deep or meaningful examinations of any real theme, just a simple tale, played out against violent upheaval. It’s a perfect recipe for a fun flick. It just lacks the magic to make it memorable.

Characters develop more as soap-operatic caricatures than real human beings. A few moments capture the rhythm of genuine spontaneity—a key selling point for a picture running on the premise that everything you see was supposedly culled from home video footage—but they’re moments too few and too late in a picture that pushes angst more than actual terror and grief. When the scares come, there just isn’t enough investment there to nail the impact. One such fright (watch for the infirmary) edges so close to earning an iconic place in the genre that you wish it weren’t so delimited by cliché.

So many scares spurn utterances of “I-seen-that-one-coming” that you wonder why the movie bothers to take itself so seriously. Critics have drawn numerous parallels between this and The Blair Witch Project, and comparisons should end with the inclusion of the video camera. Blair Witch tapped a more elemental terror; it played on base fears, building on that oft ignored rule that what you can’t see is much scarier than what you can. Where Blair Witch terrifies, Cloverfield only invites a plaintive scorn.

Cloverfield has all the ingredients for a classic, but may only end up developing a small cult-like following. It certainly doesn’t strike the universal palette like a Back to the Future, or even the weaker moments of Indiana Jones. J.J. Abrams possess the creative talent to establish himself among the giants that innovated the blockbuster explosion of the early 80s. He is a master at dreaming up and selling big theatrical concepts, and despite fandom’s compunction to vilify his work, most of his efforts earn laudable and reasonable success. Cloverfield just does not quite reach for the stars, just hovers more or less near the stratosphere.

Joan Crawford: the star shines on

I am a Joan Crawford fan, admittedly. She was a powerhouse actress and a star of the first order, even when she was making ultra-cheap films I found her in as a child in the 1960s. As an adult, though, I've come to appreciate her as a grand dame of the silver screen, the sort of which simply don't exist any longer (not that many did then, for that matter).

I can enjoy Joan in her really good performances (Mildred Pierce, 1945) and at her over-the-top, vampy best, as she is here, in her 1953 comeback film, Torch Song:

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Ressources Humaine (2000)

When France introduced the mandatory 35-hour work week in February 2000, it represented either a breakthrough for workers' rights, a clever ploy by corporate managers to implement job cuts, a further entrenchment of cradle-to-grave socialism on and/or a stranglehold on that nation's ability to create new jobs -- depending on who was offering their opinion.

Director Laurent Cantet zeroes in on the dramatic effects the law has on one close-knit family in his powerful feature-film debut, Ressources humaines (Human Resources). If the personal is sometimes political, Cantet is quick to show that the intersection between the two realms can have devastating results.

Franck is a business school student who takes on a summer management internship at his father's manufacturing firm in his provincial hometown. He's excited at the opportunity, but it doesn't take long for Franck to realize that he's walked into a tense situation. Franck's father is a humble man who just wants to finish out his 30-year career with dignity and move into retirement without creating waves, all while supporting Franck with love and wise guidance as he begins to establish his own career.

As he settles back in to his old haunts for the summer, Franck learns that you really can't go home again. He is also confronted with a new distrust from his hometown friends -- some of whom work at the factory, as well -- over his motives for taking the internship. Meanwhile, the acidic union representative makes her hostility toward Franck clear from the outset, even as his management superiors praise him for a bold new idea: to have the workers fill out a questionnaire in order to divine their attitudes toward the new law.

The union is hostile to the idea, and the workers are hesitant to open up, fearful of the consequences. But they do so anyway, giving management just the data they need to implement a strategy they had concealed from Franck. When the young intern learns of management's plans, Franck decides on a course of action that seems the most honorable to him -- but at great cost to him personally, professionally, and within his own family.

Cantet's script (co-written with Gilles Marchand) is remarkably balanced and nuanced; all sides of the debate get a hearing, yet always within the context of the interpersonal dramas that drive the story to a hard conclusion. Cantet never lets the broader political points detour the dramatic tension that propels this masterful film all along, trusting his terrific cast to flesh out characters who continually engage the heart and head with their fears, concerns, and conflicts. There are no easy answers where the heart of a hard worker meets the cold reality of the global marketplace, and Cantet wisely respects the difficulties, never succumbing to the temptation to simplify the controversies.

While enjoying this first-rate drama, I kept thinking it would make an interesting double feature with a very different film that covers similar ground -- Alexander Mackendrick's The Man in the White Suit (1951). But Human Resources really needs no context other than its own, and Cantet is a terrific filmmaker. I am anxious to see the films he's made since.

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Welcome to Aspect Ratios

This is the blog home for some of the former movie writers (and hopefully other Christian film writers who want to join us!) from Infuzemag.com. When Infuzemag.com went down in January 2008, some of us movie writers wanted to keep what we thought was a good thing going.

So we started a blog. Here we'll review movies, share our thoughts on movies past and present, and hopefully start conversations about cinema and the Christian worldview -- two phenomena that are very hard to nail down, in some ways. But that's part of the reason why we write about both.

We aren't here seeking to convert anyone, or to engage in apologetics. We're Christians writing about film, so our views will reflect our worldviews (and that is plural intentionally; we all agree on some things, disagree on others, even though we share our faith).

We hope you enjoy this and will feel led to share your thoughts, as well.