Review: "A HIdden Life"

Just a quick mini-review today. I saw "A Hidden Life" a few weeks back in the run-up to awards season, and it kind of got lost in the writing shuffle.

I've admittedly been very tepid to Terrence Malick. I haven't unreservedly loved a movie of his since his first, "Badlands," and that was nearly 50 years ago. I recognize the singularity of his artistic vision while wishing desperately he would take someone's advice and not keep making films that are so long and languid, often tortuously so.

"A Hidden Life" is probably his finest and most engaging film since "The Thin Red Line." There's a great movie inside a much longer one that's merely good. It would be better at just under two hours instead of just under three, but at this point the auteur's aesthetic is written in stone.

Malick gotta Malick.

It's the true story of Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), a conscientious objector to the Nazi regime during World War II. An Austrian farmer of deep religious convictions, he refused to swear fealty to Adolf Hitler, was imprisoned and eventually executed. Thought the movie doesn't mention it, he was later declared a martyr and beautified by the Catholic Church -- one step below sainthood.

Valerie Pachner plays his wife, Franziska; Michael Nyqvist is a helpful local bishop; Bruno Ganz is a sympathetic judge; Matthias Schoenaerts is the reluctant lawyer assigned to defend him.

It's an unspeakably gorgeous film, cinematography by Jörg Widmer and musical score by James Newton Howard. Both should receive Academy Award nominations. Malick's MO is to juxtapose the natural world around his characters so we never forget they are part of a greater organic existence.

The Austrian mountains loom over everything we see, drawing our gasps but also lulling us into a false sense of security. These mighty stone walls can't keep out the seep of human depravity.

It's one of Malick's most traditional narrative structures, even if it's a slow-paced one. His screenplay gives equal weight to Franz' family struggling back home while he languishes in prison, unwilling to compromise his principles. We admire him but also pity his obstinance.

I seethed with rage as fellow villagers ostracize Franziska and even assault her. I can think of no better recent portrayal of the corrupting power of the mob.

"A Hidden Life" won't be for everyone, something you can say about the rest of Malick's oeuvre. I'd guess less than 10 percent of filmgoers can stomach this sort of thing. But for those who possess patience and an openness to a genuine spiritual journey, it's a worthy trek.

Review: "The Danish Girl"

“The Danish Girl” is the true-ish story of Einar Wegener, a well-known Danish painter who became a woman in the early 20th century. Today we would refer to this as a transwoman “transitioning” to her true gender, and use her adopted name, Lili Elbe, and the appropriate pronouns.

But the film is less about conforming to modern-day sensibilities than presenting Lili/Einar as she/he was -- a gentle soul confused about the journey being undertaken, but who steadily gains strength and resolve as the challenges grow.

Directed by Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”) from a screenplay by Lucinda Coxon, based on the historical novel by David Ebershoff, “The Danish Girl” powerfully shows what it was like to question one’s gender at a time and place when such roles were rigidly defined and enforced. Eddie Redmayne, last year’s Oscar winner for Best Actor, is sure to pick up another nomination for his nuanced turn.

The story opens with Einar married to Gerda Wegener. Both young painters with a carefree lifestyle and a strong desire for children, they live rather unequal lives. Einar is feted at gallery shows, celebrated by powerful patrons, while she toils in his shadow. It’s puzzling, since he -- by his own admission -- essentially paints the same thing over and over: pastoral scenes from his drab, lonely childhood.

Gerda (Alicia Vikander, vibrant and emotive) plays Einar’s wife, who actually kick-starts his journey by asking him to don some hose and shoes so she can finish her painting after her (female) model takes ill. Einar finds himself ensorcelled by the look and feel of women’s clothing. The couple playfully continues the game, going to a party with Einar dressed as his cousin, “Lili.” She even attracts the attention of a discerning young man (Ben Whishaw), who pitches woo.

Soon, though, Einar is spending more and more time as Lili, studying the mannerisms of the fair gender and copying them – even to the point of exaggeration. Lili is easily the most girlish woman in any room she occuppies. Redmayne is convincingly coquettish and shy, showing how just because a person’s outward identity changes, the inner soul doesn’t. Since Einar was something of a blushing wallflower, Lili is, too.

Things go on from there. There are marriage troubles as Gerda grows distraught about “losing” her husband. She enlists Einar’s old childhood friend, Hans (Matthias Schoenaerts), on whom he had a boyhood crush, to act as a touchstone. But Gerda ends up developing feelings for him herself.

Doctors of the time are no help, subjecting Einar to radiation treatments that leave him bedridden, then reporting him to the authorities as a deviant when their barbaric procedures bring no result.

There are, of course, many liberties taken with Lili’s story, which flow from Ebershoff’s fictionalized portrait of her. The main one is showing her struggling with her surgical transformation more or less in private, when in fact it was quite a renowned feat at the time. Her autobiography, published two years after her death, was a watershed moment in the transgender movement.

It also depicts Gerda as staying by her side throughout this process and her demise, when in fact their marriage was legally dissolved as a result of Lili’s gender change, and Gerda had moved on to other romantic partners. (She was not even present at the death, hearing about it through the news.)

Still, this falls under the filmmaking rubric of ‘lying in order to tell a greater truth,’ as we saw in the excellent “Steve Jobs” earlier this year. “The Danish Girl” may skirt the historical facts, but it still has the compelling illumination of trueness.

Review: "Far from the Madding Crowd"

I will admit to an embarrassing aversion to a lot of 19th century Western literature in general, and the British kind in particular. I've always found much of this writing long-winded and self-indulgent, as if the authors took pen in hand more for the idolatry of their own prose than crafting a compelling story and vivid characters for their readers.

Even short books like Bram Stoker's "Dracula" seem needlessly inflated with a sense of self-importance. Why write 300 words, the thinking seems to be, when 3,000 will do?

Movie adaptations of this oeuvre tend to do well though, since the process of turning a book into a film is largely a process in elimination -- whittling the narrative down to its purest essence. I've not read Thomas Hardy's "Far from the Madding Crowd," but I have an inkling I like the movie version more than I would the novel.

Carey Mulligan plays Bathsheba Everdene, a spirited young woman who inherits a large farm in the English countryside. A sort of proto-feminist, Bathsheba sets about running the enterprise and a small army of workers on her own, resolving to bring successful crops of wheat and barley seed to market and strike deals with her male counterparts. She will rise before anyone else in the morning and be the last in bed.

"It is my intention to astonish you all," Bathsheba informs her farmhands.

But love, as it is wont to do, invades the Everdene farm. Bathsheba finds herself the object of not one, or two, but three urgent male suitors. Left to her own devices she would prefer not to marry at all. But whether out of a sense of propriety, necessity or just pure whim, she begins to negotiate the minefield of romantic intentions, many of them misplaced.

The first is Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), a sturdy and stoic shepherd who pitched his woo when Bathsheba was still a penniless helper at her aunt's farm. He proposes marriage after they've shared only one or two conversations, and apparently this was not unusual for the time. Back when people saw marriage as a mutually agreeable accommodation; you got hitched and then worried about falling in love.

Bathsheba rejects Mr. Oak, somewhat haughtily, and later he loses his entire flock and becomes a wandering laborer. He eventually finds his way to Bathsheba's farm, and becomes her employee. Their relationship is confusing and strained -- at one point she seeks his advice about a personal matter, then dismisses him after he responds with counsel not to her liking.

(In this, I see that the thought patterns of modern women are not dramatically different from those of their fictional 19th century counterparts.)

In a girlish fit, Bathsheba sends a valentine to William Boldwood (Michael Sheen), a rich and stodgy middle-aged bachelor who reputedly had his heart broken long ago. He interprets this as a romantic overture and, you guessed it, immediately responds with a proposal of marriage. He promises her whatever she wants, including her independence in continuing to run her own farm. She recognizes the promise of such an offer, but again demurs -- after stringing Boldwood along for a few months.

Finally there is Frank Troy (Tom Sturridge), a hot-headed sergeant who gives up the military life to seduce Bathsheba. He had nearly wed Fanny (Juno Temple), one of Bathsheba's former workers, but sees the  monetary benefits of aiming higher up the social scale. Predictably, once Troy and Bathsheba are wed he quickly becomes bored with the life of a country gentleman, drinks and carouses, running up large gambling debts.

Directed by Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg based upon a screenplay by David Nicholls, "Far from the Madding Crowd" is a gorgeous-looking film, lush with color and beautiful imagery.

The story is all restrained emotions and unspoken declarations in that very British way. This is the sort of the movie in which characters take an hour and a half to say, "I love you," and even then they don't just blurt it right out.

It's sort of a pastoral version of "The Remains of the Day." Carey Mulligan is an endearing screen presence as always, and her three would-be husbands all display some aspects of the Byron-esque romantic ideal man, though they all are found wanting in other areas.

I enjoyed the movie for what it is, which is to say if you've "Remains" or "Room with a View" or "Little Women" or any of a few dozen other films, you pretty much know you are getting the same thing.

Review: "The Drop"

"The Drop" is an intriguing, atypical movie. It starts out with a lot of disparate characters and story elements, some of them related, much of it not. Over time they gradually float towards each other, each piece locking into place in a way that might not have seemed obvious at first.

The experience of watching it is like stumbling upon a disassembled pocket watch, and then witnessing the little gears and springs drag themselves, with almost gravitational pull, into a cohesive whole again. The actual process of putting itself back together can be a bit tedious at times, but at some point everything clicks together.

This is another film based on the writings of Dennis Lehane, who also penned the screenplay. Movies based on his work have been up ("Gone Baby Gone"), down ("Shutter Island") and vastly overhyped ("Mystic River"). Here is a film that seems to contain the Lehane mythos boiled down to its inky essence. The story happens almost entirely inside one seedy bar, and the few frozen city blocks around it.

Tom Hardy plays Bob Saganowsky, who sloshes drinks at Cousin Marv's Bar. Bob speaks in a clinched little croak, almost whiny; he isn't terribly bright and is passive almost to the point of transparency. There are rough types who come into the bar, and some try to get a rise out of Bob, but they leave unsatisfied, because it's like kicking a sweet puppy who only comes back for more.
He is, in short, a mook.

Cousin Marv is mostly a figurehead these days, an aging hulk who barely moves from his corner table. His name's on the bar, and he used to run a little action on the side -- he was, he says, somebody who made people sit up when he walked in. But he got pushed by some tougher Chechen mobsters, and flinched, and now it's their bar and he just runs it.

James Gandolfini could play controlled rage better than just about anybody, so Marv is a fitting final screen role for him.

The title comes from the process of picking one bar at random to be the place where all the gambling and other dirty money winds up for the night -- "the safe for the entire city." It soon becomes clear that somebody's looking to hit Marv's the night it's the drop, and Bob gets caught up in the tide of events.

One night Bob is walking home from work and comes across a bloodied puppy dumped in a trash can. The woman who lives there, a waitress named Nadia (Noomi Rapace), helps him patch the dog up, but insists Bob adopt him as his own. He blanches at first, but finally takes on the little pitbull, whom he dubs Rocco. This is, for him, a major addition to his tiny universe, which essentially consists of just the bar and keeping up his dead parents' tidy brownstone.

Accepting the responsibility of the dog changes something in Bob ... or does it? Hardy's performance is one poker face behind another, so we're never quite sure what's going on the other side of that lunkhead mien. Dribs and drabs of information leak out to suggest there's more there. He and Nadia start seeing more of each other, hesitatingly -- it's like two wounded animals sniffing the other's wounds.

Other characters' orbits intersect with that of the bar. There's a perpetually smiling police detective (John Ortiz) who sees Bob at the same church every morning, and wonders why he never takes communion. He starts investigating a stick-up at the bar, and then noses into old crimes that have become part of the neighborhood lore.

There's Eric Deeds (an imposing Matthias Schoenaerts), a hustler with a past connected to Nadia. He casts a baleful eye at Bob for seemingly mysterious reasons, stopping by the bar or his house, claiming Rocco is actually his dog, and dropping idle threats. (Somehow, he makes an umbrella seem weapon-like.)

And then we have the Chechen boss, Chovka, chillingly played by Michael Aronov. He expects Marv and Bob to recover the money stolen during the robbery. You can see the wheels turn in Bob's head, slowly, and in Marv's head, slightly less slowly -- if they could find the money, wouldn't that imply they were in on the job?

Director Michaël R. Roskam takes his time -- too much, really -- building up the suspense, but the plot of "The Drop" eventually gets there.

Review: "Rust and Bone"

"Rust and Bone" isn't about the relationship between two characters so much as their intersection.

These are people leading separate and very different lives until a random encounter at a bar. She gets into a drunken scrap, and he is the bouncer who helps her get home. Things would probably have ended there, except that she suffers a horrible tragedy and reaches out to someone, anyone who can serve as a lifeline. He's available and willing, and they form a bond that is something more than friendship, but less than soul mates.

Marion Cotillard gives a brave, understated performance as Stéphanie, a woman who trains orca whales at the French equivalent of Sea World. She loves her job, though it's clear from her expression during a performance that it's gotten a bit stale for her. Then an accident occurs, the stage supporting the trainers crashes into the water tank, and Stéphanie wakes up in the hospital to find both her legs have been amputated.

"What have you done with my legs?!?" she shrieks at the helpless nurse, in a scene that pierces us with its emotional thrust.

Director Jacques Audiard ("A Prophet"), who co-wrote the screenplay with Thomas Bidegain based on a short story by Craig Davidson, is circumspect about what exactly happened to her. Shots of the killer whale approaching with teeth thrashing would suggest that the panicked animal bit off her legs. No one else from the show was apparently injured, so this seems the best explanation.

Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a young roustabout with a 5-year-old son, Sam (Armand Verdure), in tow. When we first meet them, they are riding on a train, hungry and desperate. Ali scrapes together leftover food from the empty seats to keep them fed. He boosts a phone from a store, fleeing the security as Sam stands a few feet away.

We're not exactly sure what has happened, but the pair is completely indigent. They are traveling to Ali's sister, Anna (Corinne Masiero) for refuge. Ali has worked itinerant as a security guard, and manages to cobble together a couple of jobs at the bar and night security at a big-box store.

At the latter he meets Martial (Bouli Lanners), who installs secret cameras throughout the store. Ostensibly these are to monitor the customers, but Martial confides they are actually to spy on the employees. Martial also runs a side business managing street fighters, and recruits Ali. It's fast money, and a lot of it, so he's eager to dive in, shrugging off the threat of injury.

Neither Ali or Stéphanie are perfect, or even necessarily good, people. Stéphanie confesses that her relationships with men involve her teasing and taunting them, getting them turned on and then dumping them when she soon grows bored. There's no hint of what happened to her current beau after her accident, but either he took off her she shut him out. She spends a few months isolating herself in a convalescence home, seeing virtually no one until she gives Ali a call out of the blue.

Ali is both easier and harder to understand. He exists as pure id, a man comfortable with physical brutality who does not seem to spend more than a few seconds pondering anything. When people ask him how he is, he tends to just say "normal" or "OP," meaning operational. To him, as long as there is food, work, a place to sleep, someone to watch over his kid (something he tends to slack off on) and occasional sex, life is grand.

To say that Ali is not in touch with his feelings is an understatement; he's not in touch with anyone else's feelings, either. Sometimes we get the sense he's unacquainted with the very concept of feelings.

The push and pull of their relationship goes back and forth. At first she is the driver, leaning on Ali (literally) to help get her out of her shut-in funk. He takes her to the beach for a swim, out to social events, and even offers to sleep with her to find out if her libido has survived her ordeal. (It has. Libidos tend to survive just about everything.)

But then Ali starts to subtly push her away. He waits until they're fairly deep into their friendship before he even reveals he has a son. He takes her with him to his illegal fights. He takes her to a club and then picks up another woman and leaves with her.

I enjoyed "Rust and Bone" for its strong performances, even as I never really felt like I got under the characters' skins. Ali exists as a Stanley Kowalski-esque primal beast, and her attraction to him is laced with an undercurrent of repulsion that's difficult to grasp.

The story is organic to the point of feeling unstructured, as events unspool without much rhyme or reason. The characters drift about, crashing into each other and then sliding away, so the impacts aren't as forceful as they might be. A little more narrative coherence would have served the filmmakers better.

2.5 stars out of four