A lot of people were surprised when Willem Dafoe earned an Oscar nomination for “At Eternity’s Gate,” a tiny art film about the last days of painter Vincent van Gogh. But for those lucky few who’ve seen the movie, they know the accolade is well-deserved indeed.
Previous cinematic portraitures of van Gogh have focused on his turbulent life, especially his relationships with his brother, Theo, and fellow painter Paul Gauguin. And, of course, there’s the infamous time he cut off his own ear.
What “Gate” brings to the mix is indelibly linking van Gogh’s mental instability with his art. Director Julian Schnabel, who co-wrote the screenplay with Louise Kugelberg and Jean-Claude Carrière, include lots of examinations of his paintings, including less famous ones like the one from which the movie takes its title, “Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity’s Gate).”
The camera follows van Gogh around the countryside as he looks for scenes to capture, seeing the world through his eyes. Dafoe portrays him as a woman for whom painting is his whole life, because he’s disturbed and thrilled by what he sees and wants to share it with everyone.
It portrays the ear incident and its aftermath, but as simply one more step along the unstable path he trod, instead of a fetishistic totem of self-hatred.
Gorgeous, haunting and insightful, “At Eternity’s Gate” is a harrowing portrait of a mad who embraced both beauty and madness, and joined the two on canvas.
There’s a tendency for small video releases like this to have very skimpy bonus features, but this one is the pleasing exception. There’s a feature-length audio track by Schnabel and Kugelberg (who also edited the film), and three making-of documentary shorts: “Made by a Painter,” “Channeling Van Gogh” and “Vision of Van Gogh.”
Polish filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski (“Ada”) has made a film about love and tragedy that inextricably links the two in a way that is both sad and profound. Very loosely based upon his own parents’ relationship in Soviet-controlled Poland between 1949 and 1964, it is the tale of two very different people who are bound to each other, yet kept eternally apart by fate and their own indelible natures.
They say opposites attract, and sometimes it is the attraction itself that brings about opposition.
When they first meet, Zula (Joanna Kulig) and Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) are both young, talented musicians on the rise. He is part of a team starting a conservatory dedicated to celebrating Polish folk music and dancing. She is one of the young recruits who catches his eye.
Zula’s got a good voice, though others are better, but she’s got a stage presence that makes an impression. There are rumors that she’s a city girl passing herself off as a peasant, and has even served time in prison.
Things go well and their traveling show becomes a hit. These are exuberant set pieces with all the intricacy of a Busby Berkeley musical, but with babushkas instead of glitter gowns. Meanwhile, the couple’s romance blooms behind closed doors.
Wiktor is a classic artist/dreamer type; he plays the piano, writes and arranges compositions, and feels stifled in his Russian-controlled homeland. Nonetheless, when the bureaucrats suggest they incorporate some homage to Stalin and agricultural programs in the show, he is smart enough to know when their sort request something, they aren’t just asking.
Zula is a woman who wants both more and less out of life. She shares Wiktor’s craving for freedom of expression. At the same time, she’s happy being the centerpiece of the troupe. When he makes plans for them to defect while playing a show in Berlin, Zula purposefully tarries in meeting him. We sense this is a test: if he leaves without her, then it wasn’t meant to be.
She craves the ties that bind, preferring love in a constrained society to feeling disposable in an open one.
Several time slips occur. They meet again in Paris in 1954 where Wiktor is eking out an existence as a jazz performer, and she has become the unquestioned star of the show, appearing on the posters. They talk about how they missed their chance, yet neither is ready to cut the cord for good.
Despite other relationships and even marriages, they find ways to meet again, as their story takes them to Yugoslavia and eventually back to Poland. Wiktor finds he wants to take Zula’s test over again, even if the penalties for playing have grown much steeper.
The film was shot in gorgeous black-and-white by Lukasz Zal, who earned an Oscar nomination for “Ida” and should merit another one here.
Co-written by Pawlikowski and Janusz Glowacki, “Cold War” works so well because the stars register as authentic star-crossed lovers instead of just props for a political metaphor. This coupling feels both predestined and cursed. Their love is doomed, but unconquerable.
"The Miracle Worker" is one of those works that has become a staple of popular culture even though many people today haven't actually seen the movie or the play that originated it... including me.
I knew the film mostly through its various spoofs and references. I seem to recall a "South Park" segment in which teacher Annie Sullivan repeats the line, "Water, Helen, water!" to blind-and-deaf student Helen Keller as she magically makes the connection between objects in her world and the words that have been spelled out by hand to her, and then the student chorus picks it up for a kicky musical number.
But like many lines from the movies that have become immortal, Annie (Anne Bancroft) never actually says those words in the film -- at least not in that sequence and context. For the record: Bogie never actually says "Play it again, Sam" in "Casablanca," either.
Keller became famous in the early 1900s for her scholarship and writings, especially her 1902 autobiography, "The Story of My Life." (Less well remembered these days is her political activism and embrace of socialism.) She and Annie became lifelong companions, and her autobiography chronicles their journey from the time they met when Helen was 7 until about age 22, when she became the first deaf-blind person in America to graduate from college.
William Gibson turned it into a television play in 1957, and then a smash Broadway hit in 1959 that won Tony Awards for Gibson, Bancroft and director Arthur Penn. This provided the impetus for a film version, though at first the studio wanted a bigger star than Bancroft, suggestion Elizabeth Taylor instead. But Penn stuck with his leading lady, as well as Patty Duke reprising the role of Helen, even though she was 15 years old by then.
It turned out well, launching the film careers of Bancroft and Duke, who won the Academy Awards for best actress and supporting actress, respectively. It also revived the Hollywood viability of Penn, whose only film to that point, 1958's "The Left Handed Gun," was re-edited against his wishes and ended up a flop. He had a rather short but vibrant heyday with "The Chase," "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Little Big Man."
If it were coming out today, I think "The Miracle Worker" would be quickly pegged as an "Oscar bait" kind of movie. It's a period costume drama set in the South -- the sort of thing where men wear three-piece suits to dinner and black people occupy the background as live-in servants, seen but not heard. It's got a lot of quotable lines and emotional scenes that would serve nicely as the clip during the Academy Awards ceremony.
In today's lights it's a finely crafted film, well-acted, a bit stiff.
In 1962, though, my guess it was seen as a powerhouse movie with a lot of dynamic rule-breaking. Annie is hardly gentle in imparting her lessons to Helen, manhandling her and even slapping her in a way that would probably land a teacher in jail these days. At one point she effectively keeps Helen hostage for two weeks, ensconced in a
dilapidated old cottage so she can exert her will on her stubborn pupil
without intrusion or contact from the parents.
The 10-minute scene where they wrestle around the dining room, smashing everything in sight as Annie forces Helen to eat from her own plate rather than just grabbing what she wants from others', is notable for its sweaty physicality.
You didn't see too many movies back then where women work themselves into a lather. (We still don't.)
Bancroft's Annie is a strong proto-feminist figure, an independent woman with limited sight herself who was raised in hellish conditions inside an institution for orphans, the elderly and the unwanted. The scene where she recounts her and her little brother playing with the bodies of babies stacked in the "dead room," as if they were broken dolls, will make you catch your breath.
Duke, of course, does not speak in the film, other than trying to utter the word "water" during the pinnacle scene. She does I think a decent job portraying a sightless person who also cannot hear. There are several times in the movie where she's reaching around a room with her hands and comes within a hair's breadth of knocking something over that's outside her peripheral vision. I wonder what sort of training she did for the role.
The other three notable characters are her mother, Kate (Inga Swenson); her father, Arthur (Victor Jory), a Civil War veteran whom everyone addresses as "Captain," even his wife; and her brother, James, (Andrew Prine), a snotty man/boy who loves playing the contrarian, even expressing an attraction to Annie that he would never act upon since his type sees hers as below his station.
(I should note the movie excises three other real-life siblings of Helen's for expediency.)
Annie finds that she needs to craft a way to relate to each family member. To Kate, she adopts a bit more of a matronly attitude, though careful not to intrude about her motherly domain. Annie sees James for what he is, a self-important prig, and gives him just enough attention to propel him to unload his verbal droppings and then go about his business.
The relationship with the Captain is the most interesting of the bunch. Annie manages to ingratiate herself through embracing her own sternness and using martial allegories to compare her rough teaching tactics to his own deeds during the war. When he objects to Annie refusing to let Helen have her food after misbehavior, she guesses that he was not above cutting off the enemy's supply chain when necessary.
Jory was 30 years older than Swenson, in a May-November onscreen pairing that was not all that unusual for the time. Nearly 60 when they shot the film and not a large man, the actor has one scene where he's required to carry Bancroft over his shoulder while climbing down a ladder, and another where he picks up and carries the teenage Duke, and clearly struggles to do so.
I should mention that Duke starred in a 1979 television remake, this time playing the Annie role to Melissa Gilbert's Helen.
I respected "The Miracle Worker" more than I enjoyed it. Some old movies still seem vibrant and alive; others are like moldering artifacts stuck behind glass for us to pass by, glimpse and move in. This movie is closer to the latter.
I hope and believe Glenn Close will win an Academy Award for her superlative performance in “The Wife.” That’s because a) she’s been nominated six times without winning; b) it would be a welcome career-capper for an actress who, at almost 72, probably isn’t going to get many more shots; but mostly c) because she so richly deserves it.
She masterfully plays Joan Castleman, a promising writer who gave up her career to raise a family with her husband, Joe (Jonathan Pryce). As the story opens they are edging into their golden years, seemingly happy and about to welcome their first grandchild. Joe, a respected novelist, receives a phone call tell him he is to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.
As they fly off to Sweden for the ceremony, cracks in their tranquil façade appear. There are flashbacks to their young lives decades earlier (played by Annie Starke and Harry Lloyd) when we see things weren’t going so well. Joan wasn’t taken seriously by a patriarchal publishing industry, and Joe’s early drafts floundered. They fought and knew anguish.
Problems that started then will come back to haunt Joan in the modern setting… but also liberate her. Close is so good because it’s the epitome of an inside/outside performance. Joan is putting on a face for the world -- a lie, if you will -- and it’s one she’s become very good at maintaining. At the same time, we sense that she has grown tired of this mask and is ready to cast it off.
It’s a brilliant performance inside another performance.
As much as I admire the other lead actress performances vying for awards -- Melissa McCarthy, Lady Gaga -- Close is head and shoulders above the rest.
Bonus features are rather modest. There is a Q&A session with Close and author Meg Wolitzer, who wrote the book upon which the movie is based. Plus a conversation with all of the leading cast members, and a making-of documentary short, “Keeping Secrets: Glenn Close on The Wife.”
“Stan & Ollie” is a melancholy look at the relationship between one of film’s great comedic duos: Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Though their place in the pop culture consciousness is closer to distant reverence than relevance these days, they were as big in Hollywood as you could get in the 1930s and ‘40s.
In their onscreen act, Oliver Hardy was the portly, overbearing one while Stan Laurel was the skinny numbskull. But as the film makes clear, in real life Stan was the stodgy brains of the outfit who wrote all their material, while Oliver was the joyful retiring sort who was happy to let his partner handle the business side of things.
They are played by Steve Coogan as Stan and John C. Reilly as Oliver. Both are completely believable, physically and otherwise, in their parts. Coogan gets by with just a little Brylcreem and altering his voice; Reilly uses a fat suit and impressive facial prosthetics. We quickly look past the exterior finishing and concentrate on the souls behind the legend.
The film, written by Jeff Pope and directed by Jon S. Baird, is set in 1953 after their fame has mostly faded. Oliver is now in his early 60s and in poor health, while Stan has been cut down by his attempts to buck the Hollywood system. An opening scene from 1937 shows them butting heads with studio chief Hal Roach (Danny Huston), demanding more money, which briefly led to them splitting up the act for a time.
It’s all water under the bridge for Ollie, but Stan still has a chip on his shoulder. He’s organized a stage tour of the United Kingdom, which is to build hype for a film they’re planning to shoot playing off the Robin Hood legend. They keep working on different bits for the movie, even though the man in charge of putting the financing together isn’t returning Stan’s calls.
What this lovely film shows is how people can be a perfect fit onstage but not really get along off it. They don’t detest each other or anything like that. They’ve played golf and double-dated with their wives -- whichever ones they had at the moment; both men have married and divorced repeatedly, which has cut into their finances -- without ever really becoming true friends.
Comedy is their shared language and point of reference for, well, everything. Playing seedy theaters before small audiences and staying in third-rate hotels, they make a joke of their circumstances while seething about it. But at the urging of the vaguely slimy producer handling the tour, Bernard Delfont (Rufus Jones), they do some publicity stunts in the different locales.
The crowds start to get bigger, and the boys find themselves actually enjoying working together again. What's more, they find themselves bonding in a way they hadn't before.
Around the midway point “the girls” arrive: Stan’s wife, Ida (Nina Arianda) and Ollie’s wife, Lucille (Shirley Henderson). Both men finally got it right after several tries, and found women they remained married to until they died. Ida is surly and Russian, and keeps prattling about her own dubious showbiz career. Lucille is a little shy and snarky, and worries that Ollie is endangering his health with the tour.
The women soon set to bickering, but the boys are still overjoyed to have them around.
There isn’t a whole lot of story to “Stan & Ollie.” It’s the story of two guys whose stars were inseparable, but whose personalities didn’t quite mesh. And yet, they managed to create something that endures. Sometimes just doing good work is enough.
“The Hate U Give” may be the best movie of 2018 most people haven’t heard of. This smart, heartfelt and riveting drama is perhaps the finest cinematic exploration of race relations in American in the past decade.
It takes as its jumping-off point the shooting of an unarmed African-American man, but this isn’t a heedless Black Lives Matter screed. Amandla Stenberg plays Starr, a smart kid from the bad part of town who attends an upscale, predominantly white high school on a scholarship. She narrates about traversing these two worlds, show us how she speaks and behaves around her white friends, including boyfriend Chris (K.J. Apa), and her black family and friends.
One day she meets up with an old childhood friend she’s sweet on, and he winds up getting shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop. For a while no one in either her white or black communities know she’s a witness, and Starr struggles to find a middle way that will protect those she cares about.
The terrific supporting cast includes Russell Hornsby as her dad, who has a powerful scene where he gives “The Speech” about how black teens should behave around law enforcement; Regina Hall as her mother; Common as her uncle, who’s also a member of the LAPD himself; and Sabrina Carter as a white friend who turns out to be not as woke as Starr thought.
Directed by George Tillman Jr. from a screenplay by Audrey Wells, based on the book by Angie Thomas, “The Hate U Give” offers no easier answers but many nagging -- and important -- questions.
Bonus features are quite good, cemented by a feature-length audio commentary track by Tillman, Stenberg, Hornsby and editor Craig Hayes. Such commentaries are always better when they include cast and crew.
There are also three extended scenes six making-of documentary shorts.
I don’t think when “Unbreakable” came out 19 years ago anyone believed it would become a trilogy. I don’t think even M. Night Shyamalan thought of that notion when he first came up with the idea for “Split” from 2016.
(He claims otherwise, but creative types love to tell you they had a plan all along.)
But now it’s all come together, strangely but rather satisfyingly, in “Glass,” which wears the clothes of a supernatural action/thriller but is really more of an exploration of the modern superhero myth.
You may remember that in “Split,” James McAvoy played Kevin, a man with dozens of personalities, some of them friendly, many of them not. They were dominated by the Beast, a mad, feral manimal who exhibited extraordinary abilities -- including bending steel bars, climbing walls and surviving shotgun blasts.
In “Unbreakable,” it was Bruce Willis’ modest security guard, David Dunn, who discovered that he had similar abilities after surviving unscathed from a horrible train wreck the killed everyone else aboard. This also contained the revelation that (sorry, no spoiler warnings after nearly two decades) Samuel L. Jackson’s Elijah Price, a genius comic book dealer burdened by a fragile skeleton, had rigged the train wreck to prove that superheroes really do exist.
Flash forward to present day, and Dunn is still secretly chasing bad guys with the help of his admiring son (Spencer Treat Clark), running a family security business by day. Lately they’ve been chasing Horde, a mysterious criminal who kidnaps and brutally slays teenage girls. You might have guessed this is the handiwork of the Beast.
Events transpire to bring all three men together in Raven Hill, a hospital for the mentally ill. Elijah, who dubs himself Mr. Glass, has been incarcerated there all along, kept heavily sedated most of the time.
You may think it odd that the person whose name is the film’s title spends the first half speechless and motionless, vegging out in his wheelchair while sadistic orderlies taunt and tease him. Jackson’s name even appears last in the credits.
Running this little cuckoo’s nest is Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), a psychiatrist who specializes in treating the delusion of people who think they’re superheroes. She undercuts the mythology of comic books and works to convince the trio that their supposed abilities are imaginings spurred by past trauma: David’s childhood near-drowning; Kevin’s abuse at the hands of his mother; Elijah’s brilliant mind being trapped in such a breakable body.
For a time, they start to believe her. The Beast goes into remission and David starts to question his past experiences. Elijah still just stares woodenly at the floor.
Of course, we don’t believe any of this. Eventually the men are going to get the chance to prove they’re the real deal… right?
McAvoy has the flashiest part, flexing and growling like a demon is trying to pop out of his skin. I kept worrying he was going to give himself an aneurism. His fight scenes with Willis are curiously restrained; the older man seems more perturbed than frightened.
Anya Taylor-Joy is brought back from “Split,” though this movie doesn’t really know what to do with her. Charlayne Woodard plays Elijah’s mother, horrified at his deeds while unable to hide her pride at such an extraordinary child.
The first two films featured twist endings and “Glass” is no exception. I doubt even if you’re looking forward you’ll guess what it is. I can’t say I found it the most plausible thing in the world. But then this is movie that posits that ordinary-looking people can flip cars over.
