The Beguiled (2017)

11 Friday Aug 2017

Tags

Colin Farrell, Drama, Elle Fanning, Kirsten Dunst, Literary adaptation, Nicole Kidman, Remake, Review, Sofia Coppola, US Civil War

D: Sofia Coppola / 94m

Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Oona Laurence, Angourie Rice, Addison Riecke, Emma Howard

Remakes are ten-a-penny these days, with movie makers deciding that familiarity will attract more moviegoers than not, and if the original movie is one that is fairly well known and/or regarded (and even better, financially successful), then it makes it easier to justify revisiting said original. But it’s unlikely that anyone was clamouring for a remake of Don Siegel’s minor classic The Beguiled (1971), a movie that bombed on its initial release but which has gained a sterling reputation since then. However, on the advice of production designer Anne Rose, writer/director Sofia Coppola watched Siegel’s version and began thinking of ways in which she could update the movie for modern audiences. The result is a movie that is atmospheric, sophisticated, beautifully shot, and yet curiously distant in its evocation of female desires.

As with the 1971 version, Coppola has adapted the novel A Painted Devil by Thomas P. Cullinan. In it a Union Army corporal named John McBurney (Farrell) suffers a serious leg wound during battle and manages to get away from the fighting. He makes it to some nearby woods where he is discovered by a young girl, Amy (Laurence). She helps him up and takes him to the girls school where she resides along with the school’s owner (and teacher), Miss Martha Farnsworth (Kidman), another teacher, Miss Edwina Morrow (Dunst), a teenage girl called Alicia (Fanning), and three other young girls, Jane (Rice), Emily (Howard), and Marie (Riecke). McBurney’s arrival causes consternation and divided opinions amongst the staff and the pupils, with some of them insisting he be turned over to the Confederate Army as a prisoner of war, and others insisting that he be allowed to stay and at least recover from his wound. In the end, Miss Farnsworth decides that he can stay until his leg has healed.

McBurney’s presence gives rise to his being the recipient of overly attentive behaviour from the women and the children alike. Miss Farnsworth tends to his leg, while Miss Morrow hovers around offering assistance at every opportunity. Alicia too is in close attendance, and the rest of the girls all take an exaggerated interest in McBurney’s well-being. As his leg improves he begins to move around the school, and shows an interest in the garden, which he helps to maintain. He begins to spend more time with Miss Morrow, and eventually professes his love for her. They arrange to meet in her room late one night after everyone has gone to bed, but when McBurney fails to turn up, Miss Morrow goes to his room and finds it empty. And then she hears noises coming from another room…

Where the 1971 version traded on a more fervid atmosphere in order to tell its tale, this version remains an austere and measured accomplishment, with Coppola giving limited expression to any desires held by the female characters. While it’s a given that Miss Farnsworth and Miss Morrow would strive to remain aloof in relation to the presence of a wounded yet otherwise virile soldier, and for the perceived sake of the children in their care, thanks to the precise nature of Coppola’s screenplay, their being aloof hampers the effectiveness of the emotional outbursts that occur as the movie progresses. These outbursts are generally well handled by the cast, but in dramatic terms they don’t have the impact needed to make the viewer sympathise with the characters involved, and even though McBurney suffers more than an injured leg, what should be a moment of horror – both for McBurney’s discovery of what’s happened to him, and the ease with which his suffering is agreed upon and carried out – is let down by the restrained melodrama that precedes it.

This distancing between the viewer and the characters has a strange effect on the story and how it plays out. In many respects, and by making the directorial decisions that she’s made, Coppola has taken Cullinan’s novel and decided to explore it from a female perspective. And usually, this would be all well and good. But Coppola, rather than hold to the idea that repressed sexual tension should be the catalyst for the events that follow McBurney’s arrival at the school, instead makes it all to do with a failing of manners and etiquette on the soldier’s part. This may not be the most obvious reading of the story, and it may not have been Coppola’s main intention in telling the story, but nevertheless, what comes across is a tale of one man’s refusal to accept implicitly the hospitality he has been given, and the consequences of taking that refusal to “behave” too far. When McBurney is seeking to fit in, and to reward his convalescence by helping in the garden, he’s a favoured “guest”. Once his true motives are revealed, his benefactors become his gaolers and his transgressions must be paid for. It’s Old Testament retribution wrapped up in New Testament flummery, but determined by an arch, emotional rigidity of manner that suits Coppola’s arthouse style of movie making but which does a cruel disservice to the material.

The issue of passion in Coppola’s remains unaddressed by the director herself, and though she elicits good performances from all concerned, the somewhat stuffy dialogue and repressive mood often defeats the cast’s attempts to break free of their acting “chains”. Farrell gets a chance to rage out, but against the restrained nature of the residents of Martha Farnsworth’s Seminary for Young Ladies it’s like witnessing a sudden downpour on any otherwise brilliantly sunny day. The movie does, however, look wondrous, with exquisitely composed exterior shots (moss has rarely looked this beautiful) and tastefully lit interiors that hint of secrets hidden just out of frame. Against the backdrop of the US Civil War, there’s a pleasing sense of deliberate isolationism that may or may not be a reflection on modern US politics, and Coppola wisely exploits the notion of being careful of what you wish for, and on both sides of the gender divide. But all in all, there’s less here than meets the eye, and for that, one shouldn’t be too surprised.

Rating: 7/10 – though Coppola has deliberately dialled down the “hothouse” nature of Don Siegel’s original, The Beguiled lacks for enough passion to make the young ladies of the seminary, and their teachers’ emotional dilemmas, entirely believable; as a thriller it has its moments, and as a drama it’s riveting enough to get by, but technical achievements aside, it’s another movie where Coppola somehow manages to disengage herself from the material too often to provide viewers with a movie that retains an emotional through line.

Hidden Figures (2016)

21 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

1961, Drama, Friendship 7, Janelle Monáe, Jim Parsons, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Literary adaptation, NASA, Octavia Spencer, Racism, Review, Taraji P. Henson, Theodore Melfi, True story

D: Theodore Melfi / 126m

Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, Aldis Hodge, Glen Powell, Kimberly Quinn, Olek Krupa

In 1961, the USA and the USSR were in a race to put a man into space. The Russians had managed to send up a mannequin and a dog on separate missions, while the Americans were struggling to stop their unmanned rockets from blowing up shortly after take-off. The team responsible for this string of non-fatal disasters was based at the NASA complex in Langley, Virginia. In fact, there were several teams working there, including a coloured section overseen by Vivian Mitchell (Dunst). Of the women that worked there, three were best friends: Katherine Goble (Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Monáe). Each had their own specialty: Katherine was a maths genius, Dorothy was a more than competent supervisor (and latent programmer), while Mary was an engineer.

Despite their obvious capabilities, the institutionalised racism of the time ensures that each of them remains in a pool of temps to be drawn on as and when required. Dorothy is the de facto supervisor of the group, but isn’t officially recognised as such. Mary’s desire to be an engineer is hampered by her needing to take a specific engineering course – which is taught only at a non-segregated school. And Katherine’s intuitive knowledge of advanced mathematics is under-utilised on a regular basis. Things begin to change though, when Katherine is seconded to the Space Task Group, the team responsible for calculating the launch and landing coordinates for each rocket mission.

Led by Al Harrison (Costner), the team is as inherently racist as an all-white male environment could be. Only Harrison seems able to look past the colour of Katherine’s skin, but he has too much on his plate to ensure that everyone else does. With her work constantly undermined by Harrison’s second-in-command, Paul Stafford (Parsons), and having to spend too much time checking other people’s calculations, Katherine struggles to make any headway in having her talents recognised. When the USSR succeeds in sending Yuri Gagarin into space (and bringing him back), the pressure is on to do the same with a US astronaut. With the arrival of an IBM mainframe computer that will process mathematical formulae and calculations much quicker than Harrison’s team of “computers”, Katherine faces an even bigger challenge: how to retain a human element amongst all the mathematics, and how to ensure that any future manned space flights remain as safe as humanly possible. It all leads to the first manned orbital flight, and making sure that astronaut John Glenn (Powell) returns home in one piece.

Those with a good memory for last year’s Oscars will remember the outcry over the Academy appearing to be racially biased against black and ethnic movie makers. Stars such as Will Smith boycotted the Oscar ceremony, while contention reigned over the nominations the Academy had made in the first place. A year later, and we have Hidden Figures, a movie almost designed to address the issue, and which should see itself gain a slew of nominations. However, the movie is the victim of felicitous timing, having gone into production a full year before last year’s Oscars. Nevertheless, it’s the kind of feelgood, inspiring, let’s-throw-a-light-on-a-little-known-aspect-of-recent-US-history movie that charms audiences and critics alike. And it doesn’t hurt that co-writer/director Theodore Melfi has assembled a great cast to do justice to his and Allison Schroeder’s screenplay, itself adapted from the book by Margot Lee Shetterley.

While Hidden Figures doesn’t necessarily stand or fall on its performances, having such a (mostly) seasoned cast pays off tremendously. Henson is terrific as Katherine, the unsung hero of the Friendship 7 mission who is more than just a maths genius, while Spencer and Monáe provide equal measures of grit and determination as Dorothy and Mary, guiding their real-life characters through the many professional, personal, and racial pitfalls the two women experienced at the time, and their inspirational, dedicated responses to each potential setback. Both actresses are equally as terrific as Henson, even if they have a little less to do in comparison, but as a trio they prove to be inspired casting. The same can be said for Costner, playing yet another (fictional) fair-minded, no-nonsense authority figure, but doing so with a great deal of charm and delivering his lines with the necessary amount of gravitas and persuasion. The only character who sticks out as unnecessarily stereotypical is Parsons as Katherine’s racist, jealous colleague, who constantly feels threatened by her presence and her abilities. Reduced to giving her glowering looks and blocking her attempts at personal recognition, Parsons’ performance does the actor no favours and will have many viewers thinking, “he’s just playing an evil version of Sheldon Cooper”.

As Mrs Mitchell, Dunst at least gets to see the error of her ways by the movie’s end, while there’s solid support from Ali and Hodge as Katherine’s love interest and Mary’s husband respectively. And there’s a mischievous turn from Powell as John Glenn, who won’t take off unless Katherine has checked the numbers. With so many enjoyable, and finely-tuned performances, the movie is free to explore the ways in which Johnson et al became so integral to the success of the Friendship 7 mission after so many failures. There’s subterfuge (on Dorothy’s part), legal wrangling (by Mary), and pure dogged persistence by Katherine. While it’s true that all three were in the right place at the right time, it’s still equally true that they took advantage of the chances given them, and made the most of those opportunities. In doing so, they forged a path for women (and not just black women) that is still being benefitted from today, and the movie is eager to highlight their achievements – which is as it should be.

But though these achievements are rightly recognised and celebrated, and the tensions inherent in the efforts to put Glenn into orbit are confidently addressed and shown, it’s when the movie steps away from the base at Langley and tries to paint a wider picture of the period that it proves to be less successful in its efforts. There are references to the growing civil unrest in the country, and we get to spend time with the trio’s family and friends on various occasions, but Katherine’s romance with Colonel Jim Johnson (Ali) aside, much of these scenes and sequences feel like filler, particularly the political discussions between Mary and her husband, which seem like they’re prodding the movie in another direction, but which ultimately amount to nothing.

Otherwise though, Hidden Figures is a lovingly rendered tribute to three women who smashed through not one but two glass ceilings and contributed greatly to the US winning the space race and eventually landing on the Moon. That their contributions have taken so long to be recognised and honoured by the wider public is a travesty that the movie addresses with no small amount of style and grace. Melfi is to be congratulated for taking such an inspiring, untold tale and doing it full justice, and in the process, making one of the most enjoyable, inspiring and rewarding movies of recent years.

Rating: 8/10 – shining a light on an overlooked story from the early Sixties, Hidden Figures is a generous, captivating movie that plays equally well as both an historical drama and a comedy of manners; with a trio of memorable performances, and richly textured direction from Melfi, this is an object lesson in bringing history alive and making it completely accessible.

Midnight Special (2016)

12 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Adam Driver, Drama, FBI, Jaeden Lieberher, Jeff Nichols, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Michael Shannon, Mystery, NSA, Review, Sci-fi, The Ranch, Thriller

D: Jeff Nichols / 112m

Cast: Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Jaeden Lieberher, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver, Bill Camp, Scott Haze, Sam Shepard, Paul Sparks, David Jensen

It’s only taken writer/director Jeff Nichols four movies to become a movie maker whose projects carry an enormous weight of expectation. First there was Shotgun Stories (2007), then there was Take Shelter (2011). He followed that up with Mud (2012), and now he brings us Midnight Special, a tale about an eight year old boy who may be an alien, or an emissary from God, or something else completely. It’s a measure of Nichols’ success that he’s taken what could have been an awkward, unconvincing story – in lesser hands – and made it into an articulate, gripping tale that’s also exciting and thought-provoking.

The movie begins with the police searching for a missing child called Alton Meyer (Lieberher). He’s been abducted from a religious compound known as the Ranch. It’s head, Alton’s adoptive father, Calvin Meyer (Shepard), wants him back, and within the next four days. But Alton – who has to wear blue goggles during daylight hours – has been abducted by his real father, Roy Tomlin (Shannon), and he, along with his friend, Lucas (Edgerton), are trying to keep Alton safe and also get him to a certain place in four days’ time. There, something momentous will happen, but neither Roy nor Calvin Meyer knows what it is; and at this point, Alton doesn’t know either.

The FBI, and the NSA – in the form of agent Paul Sevier (Driver) – are also trying to find Alton, as they have become aware that he has been including coded intelligence in the sermons he’s written for Meyer. But Alton has other gifts, and one in particular, connected to his sight. When Ray decides to stop off at an old Ranch member’s home, that particular gift almost causes the house to shake apart. From there, the trio drive to the home of Alton’s mother, Sarah (Dunst), but not before an incident at a gas station reveals that Alton’s heat signature is similar to that of a nuclear bomb. Now a foursome, they travel on to the location that Alton must reach, however, they’re unaware that two members of the Ranch, Doak (Camp) and Levi (Haze), are tracking them with the intention of kidnapping Alton and returning him to the Ranch.

Before they are able to, Alton, who has been getting sicker and sicker, and has to avoid direct sunlight, tells Roy that he can no longer continue to keep hidden from the sun. Roy exposes Alton to a sunrise, and it has an extraordinary effect: he can now walk about unaffected in daylight, and knows exactly what he needs to do and why he needs to be in a certain place at a certain date and time. As he tells Roy: he doesn’t belong here.

Whether or not Alton makes it to his rendezvous is, ultimately, neither here nor there. What’s important is the journey he makes getting there, and the way in which he and his parents, and Lucas, make it there. One of the strengths of Nichols’ impressive and layered screenplay is the way in which Roy’s parental determination to not let anything stop him from getting Alton to his rendezvous, sometimes presents itself as unfeeling and harsh. When he and Lucas encounter a state trooper, Roy is unequivocal: he tells Lucas to shoot him. Roy doesn’t care about anyone else, only Alton, and his zeal and willingness to put moral certitude aside makes him one of recent cinema’s more interesting and intriguing characters. Shannon is perfect for the role, morally absent when he needs to be, but a committed, loving father as well, and fully able to show these two sides of Roy’s character without any sense that he’s a Jekyll and Hyde personality and able to call on either side when necessary.

What’s also important is that Roy believes in Alton, albeit in a different way from Calvin (he and his followers believe that Alton’s rendezvous is also the time when they will all be judged by God). He believes in his son, wholeheartedly, and even if what he knows is incredibly far-fetched. If it wasn’t for the light that can stream from Alton’s eyes when he’s exposed to sunlight, the viewer would be hard pressed to believe in the same way as Roy does. Nichols doesn’t keep the viewer in the dark for long (no pun intended), and any doubts are dispelled when Elden (Jensen), the ex-Ranch member has to have “another look”. From then on, Alton’s gifts/abilities/powers are assimilated into the narrative in a way that both explores them and allows them to drive events forward. As the otherworldly Alton, Lieberher does a fantastic job of balancing his closeted childhood with his increasing awareness of the skills he really possesses (he reads a lot of comic books and at one point asks about Kryptonite as if it were real).

Nichols orchestrates all this with a tremendous amount of flair, even as he keeps a tight rein on the more overt sci-fi elements of his screenplay. The subplot involving the Ranch members sometimes comes across as more of an afterthought, or late addition to the script, while the inclusion of Sarah doesn’t give Dunst much more to do than look concerned and hesitant. And there’s one very important question that Nichols leaves right until the very final shot to explain (in many respects it’s the most important question). But with such a high level of confidence on display, Nichols can be forgiven a couple of narrative faux pas, and his handling of the action sequences is bracing and not at all derivative (a major feat in itself). The whole thing is beautifully shot by Nichols’ regular DoP Adam Stone, and there’s an insidious, disorientating score courtesy of another Nichols’ regular, David Wingo.

Rating: 8/10 – Nichols continues his run of impressive features with a movie that asks what it is to be human, and comes up with some unexpected answers in the process; Midnight Special is an intelligent, original, and supremely well executed sci-fi drama, as well as a fantastic example of what can be done with a well constructed script, a more than willing cast, inspired direction, and all on a modest budget.

The Two Faces of January (2014)

14 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Athens, Drama, Fraud, Hossein Amini, Istanbul, Kirsten Dunst, Oscar Isaac, Patricia Highsmith, Review, Thriller, Tour guide, Viggo Mortensen

D: Hossein Amini / 96m

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, Oscar Isaac, David Warshofsky, Daisy Bevan, Omiros Poulakis

Athens, 1962. Rydal Keener is an American working as a tour guide. He meets an American couple on holiday there, Chester and Colette McFarland (Mortensen, Dunst). They invite him to dinner and he accepts, mainly because he’s attracted to Colette. Later, after dropping them off at their hotel, Rydal discovers Colette has left a bracelet behind in the taxi. He decides to return it. Meanwhile, the McFarland’s have another visitor, a private detective named Vittorio (Warshofsky). It transpires that Chester has defrauded several people in an investment scam, and it’s this money that is allowing the McFarlands to travel around Europe. Vittorio and Chester scuffle and the private detective is killed. As he attempts to get Vittorio back to his own room in the hotel, he’s discovered by Rydal. Chester convinces Rydal that the man is merely out cold from drinking too much, and together they get him into his room.

Chester convinces Rydal that he and Colette need to leave Athens as soon as possible, but their passports are being kept by the hotel. Seeing a way of scamming some money out of Chester, Rydal agrees to help them; it also gives him a chance to be nearer to Colette. He arranges for new passports to be given to them in Crete, where they all travel to next. Without identification papers they’re forced to wait on the quayside for the next day’s bus to Chania. While they are there, Colette visits Rydal in his room while Chester is sleeping. Back on the bus, Colette panics when she sees photos of her and Chester in a newspaper and thinks they’ve been spotted. At a rest stop, Colette gets off the bus and the two men chase after her. They walk on and eventually reach the ruins of Knossos.

Rain causes them to seek shelter in the ruins. Chester lures Rydal down into the lower levels and knocks him unconscious. When Colette realises what he’s done they argue and she falls to her death from some steps. Chester flees, leaving Rydal to come to the next morning and be seen by a group of schoolgirls and their teacher as he leaves. Rydal hurries to catch up with Chester, who has collected the new passports and is heading back to Athens on a ship. There is a confrontation between the two where each tries to outwit and out-threaten the other, but both come to realise that they are bound together by their actions over the past couple of days, and would find it easy to implicate the other if either informed the police. But when they get to Athens airport, Rydal finds that Chester has one more trick up his sleeve.

Adapted from the novel by Patricia Highsmith, The Two Faces of January is a ponderous, though well acted drama that never quite gets off the ground, despite an intriguing storyline and some glorious location photography. As written and directed by Amini – something he’d been working on for around fifteen years – there is a distance between the audience and the main characters that stops them from ever becoming likeable or sympathetic. We never get to really know them either. Chester is a cheat but it’s just accepted that he’s a cheat; there’s no back story to explain why. Colette is aware of his duplicity and has obviously chosen to stay with him but we never find out why either. It’s confusing as well when their previous happiness is so quickly overturned by the arrival of Rydal in their lives: does she really love Chester or is she too a fraud? And Rydal’s past, with his father issues and need for independence, is also glossed over, with the questions, “Why Athens?” and “Why a tour guide?” completely unanswered.

There is one clear motivation that drives them all however: escape. But it’s clumsily used as a device to keep the narrative and the characters moving, and while Amini uses it to show how each is trying to escape themselves (and more so than the authorities), this is also clumsily done. What we’re left with as a result is a mini-travelogue where it seems that the characters are constantly outwitting each other – or appear to be – but in actuality aren’t doing anything of the sort. Chester imagines all sorts of deviousness in Rydal’s behaviour (and Isaac’s performance goes a long way to suggesting this, even though it’s not true), and he’s continually on his guard for some new twist. But ultimately he’s the author of his own downfall, and has no one to blame but himself for what happens.

Amini never reconciles Rydal’s willingness to keep in with the McFarlands, even after he knows what they’ve done, and while his attraction for Colette is an understandable reason in itself, there are moments where he’s making decisions about carrying on but we never find out what his reasons are. It ends up being a problem for the narrative when it just feels that if he didn’t, the plot (and the movie) would grind to a halt.

In adapting Highsmith’s novel, Amini has jettisoned the homo-erotic subplot between Chester and Rydal in favour of a more conventional love triangle approach, and in doing so he robs the movie of a potential, and valuable, source of tension. For otherwise, the movie plods along looking good but feeling empty, its characters relying heavily on plot contrivances such as Rydal just happening to know someone who can provide forged passports, and Colette getting so easily frightened and leaving the bus.

As Chester, Mortensen puts in a good performance but even he can’t reconcile the character’s initial fearfulness and vulnerability with the more callous character he becomes. Dunst has a couple of emotional scenes that show off her skills as an actress, but again she can’t reconcile Colette’s initial happiness with her husband with the antipathy she shows toward him once they leave Athens (she already knows they’re on the run, why should this make her feel any different? And this is before she learns of Vittorio’s death). Rounding off the trio, Isaac portrays Rydal as a conspiring victim, unsure of himself as he gets in deeper and looking for a way out, even though he can’t see one. It’s a confident performance, not as conflicted as Mortensen and Dunst’s, but unfortunately, still a little shy of being satisfactory.

With the scenery providing a welcome (and thankful) distraction from the unwieldy and undercooked melodramatics, the movie adds a particularly awkward scene at a customs hall where Chester and Rydal act so suspiciously it’s a wonder they aren’t picked out of their respective queues sooner. And the denouement, included to add some much needed excitement, is so poorly edited that any sense of vitality is diminished quite rapidly. There’s a great movie to be had from Highsmith’s novel, but alas, this isn’t it, and for that, Amini is the only one to blame.

Rating: 5/10 – with its cast unable to elevate the material or make up for Amini’s lack of directorial control, The Two Faces of January fails to provide any tension or mystery; plodding, and with a weak resolution, the movie looks great throughout but offers little that’s arresting to occupy the viewer’s time.