Ramifications

"Got me a movie. I want you to know"

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Happy Go Lucky

What is the relationship of the character to the plot? Is the character merely a means of advancing the plot? Or is the plot merely a journey through which the character will grow? Most would argue that a harmonious balance between the two is the recipe for a watchable movie. Mike Leigh doesn't often agree. Like the great Antonioni before him, he favors people over plot. The people in his movies are everyday people who, through his lense, say something about the world they live in. But most often, they just say something about people.
To work in the service industry is to work with people, period. Everyday I see the spectrum of moods, and each person exudes that spectrum from day to day. But there are a few creatures who seem to operate on one end of the spectrum entirely. They never come in, engage in conversation, or leave without a smile on their face. A genuine, ear to ear, endless ray of sunshine smile. One day on the bus, a man near the front was facing me near the back and smiling. The distance was such that it seemed as if he was just smiling at me. Was he crazy? Was he eccentric and trying to cheer up my dour, "I'm riding the bus to work" face? He looked like he was from somewhere in Africa, where black skin can be as dark as night. The darkness of his skin made his teeth the whitest I have ever seen. Whiter than snow. Whiter than Stephen Colbert. And he was smiling right at me. He wouldn't stop. And after some time, it made me smile. It was so funny. I couldn't help grinning the whole rest of the ride. And the punchline: he was talking to someone right next to him the whole time, smiling at them, not me! Regardless, the smile has an underrated power. In an increasingly crowded society, it shows a subtle strength in the face of people's dourness.
It's the kind of strength that our protagonist, Poppy, carries with her throughout Leigh's latest, 'Happy Go Lucky'. She's a doting grade school teacher who wears clothes as colorful as she is. She talks a mile a minute, jokes constantly, and addresses any obstacle with an effortless smile that suggests everything will be alright. For Poppy, the glass is not half-full - it's completely full. This benevolence and energy spark to life in the hands of Sally Hawkins. With her raven-like hair and wider-than-most mouth, she has a striking resemblance to PJ Harvey. But unlike Harvey, she has a natural radiance that makes us feel she was born unto the role.
Of course, Poppy's benevolence is tested by those she comes into contact with. Otherwise, how can she learn something over the course of her journey? This lesson comes in the form of Scott, her Saturday driving instructor. He is the polar opposite of Poppy: almost totally joyless, misanthropic, refuses to shake hands, and never smiles. Scott is so dour in fact that he notices '666' in the height of the Washington Monument and uses a character in satanic mythology as a teaching tool; "En ra ha"!, he repeats endlessly. He bitches about Poppy's unfit boots, screams over her lack of focus, and meets all of her jokes with silence and distain. Their mismatched ways are seen immediately, but both actors play it so well that it manages to get funnier with each scene. Scott is played by Eddie Marsan, who exudes his character so totally it makes you wonder if he enjoyed the role at all. He never pauses in his ruminations about the world around him and every other student that gets into his cab. There is no cheering Scott up. Marsan has proven himself such a versatile actor that few probably recognize all the big films he's been in up to this point. Here he's way too hard to miss.
As with most confrontations between such contradictory characters in movies, we're expecting Poppy to enlighten Scott, right? Well, maybe he does. But Poppy is the one who walks away from their explosive climax a little wiser. Simply put, Scott snaps. "You have to be adored"! he yells while professing how unhappy her happiness makes him. It's the only time in the film we see Poppy completely taken out of her positive demeanor, and we're able to see that her tendency to inflict her feelings on others is just as good natured as it is inconsiderate of theirs. Whether the disgruntled book store clerk or the homeless man Poppy tries to talk to, her need to connect with others on her level leaves little room for theirs. In the end, nobody has to be so sunny just because she thinks they should be. But one can't help walking away from the film feeling more determined to look a little harder for the silver lining.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Valkyrie

'Valkyrie' opens big with a German military camp being attacked from above. After surviving an initial blast, our hero, Tom Cruise, emerges dazed and helps a fellow comrade into a jeep to make a heroic escape. Naturally, the jeep doesn't start fast enough for them to avoid a second blast. Cruise survives, but minus an eye and a hand. This is the only real action sequence of Bryan Singer's new 'Valkyrie' and is, indeed, not your average Tom Cruise film. Cruise plays Colonel Claus Von Stauffenberg, who emerged from the attack resolved to stop Hitler before the rest of Germany suffered similar destruction at the hands of the world that he set out to conquer. Based on actual events, the film then follows Stauffenberg as he joined a private faction of German commanders who quietly plotted what would be the last attempt on Hitler's life. Sadly, the only thing they succeeded at was getting Hitler's signature on what was, unbeknownst to him, the document which authorized the dismantling of the entire S.S. in the event of Hitler's death (codenamed 'Valkyrie').
But for all the historical significance, the is still a Bryan Singer movie. The events are played out with a pulpy air of suspense, where the drama often feels more like television than cinema. Considering the RAMIFICATIONS, a heightened sense of fear is more than expected from those planning to kill what was easily the most dangerous man in the world. But much of the acting can't help coming off as exaggerated. The primary reason for this is probably the fact that every character is speaking english. Whether sporting accents that are anywhere from American, English, to even German; this is a little too clearly geared towards english-speaking audiences. Documents and wires printed in German are met with reactions spoken in english. National radio broadcasts go out, and even Hitler himself speaks, entirely in English! Now I understand that this is an American film, but one can't help worrying that German audiences might find this little detail pretty ridiculous, if not somewhat insulting. It doesn't help that the film's lead has been THE all-American golden boy for the past two decades.
Cruise, despite reports to the contrary, is not bad. He wears deep fear under his stern face and holds his own against the likes of Terrence Stamp, Tom Wilkinson, and Bill Nighy (standing out here as one of Cruise's terrified Generals). But the real stars here are Singer and his screenwriters. As faithful to the actual events as the film may be, the level of suspense is always at such a welcome high that it hardly matters. Singer seems to use his background in the action genre to give the pacing a meticulous attention to detail, which is especially pleasing during the film's climax. At the end of the day though, this is all just a big, fun, edge-of-your-seat thriller. One could commend the filmmakers for trying to marry it with such an emotional place in history; but, as one character says, "This is a military operation, nothing ever goes according to plan".