Review: "The Personal History of David Copperfield"

I admit I haven't read a lot of Dickens; like a lot of people I associate him with long, dreary tales of woe. "It is a far, far better thing" and all that. He sort of gets stuck in that continuum of “stuff you were made to read in school.”

Yet here is an adaptation of perhaps his most famous work that is full of light and color and joy. "The Personal History of David Copperfield" does some modernized tweaking of the story, but really it's the perspective that has shifted.

There are still untimely deaths, and pitiful poverty, and hissable evildoers, and unhappy marriages, and all the other attributes of Charles Dickens' semi-autobiographical tale. And yet director Armando Iannucci, who co-wrote the script with Simon Blackwell, manages to mold all that into a vibrant, upbeat story about perseverance and hope.

Jairaj Varsani plays Copperfield, a scrappy young boy raised in a home where he was showered with attention and love, including his widowed mother and beloved maid, Peggotty (Daisy May Cooper). Then he is mistreated by his new stepfather, Murdstone (Darren Boyd) and his sister (Gwendoline Christie), and eventually sent away to work in a wine bottling factor as a child laborer.

At this point Dev Patel takes over the role, as his fate and the name he is called continually change. For awhile he is a proper gentleman, supported by his wealthy aunt (Tilda Swinton), who insists upon calling him Trotwood, her married name. He goes to school with upper crust boys, fearful of his sordid past being found out by the likes of Steerforth (Aneurin Barnard), a snobby but charming sort who calls him "Daisy."

Later he becomes an apprentice proctor, which is a sort of lawyer (though Dickens, who himself was one, admits he never did figure out exactly what sort of law they practice). He becomes entranced by his boss' daughter, the daft but harmless Dora (Morfydd Clark). But then things come crashing down when his aunt loses all her money and Davis is faced with returning to the squalid ways he thought he'd left behind.

Let's stop a moment and talk about the mixed races of the cast. Dickens was, of course, a Brit and the characters in his books were overwhelmingly in the pale spectrum -- as was England in the 19th century. So what's going on with an Indian in the main role? And folks of African, Asian, Latin, and seemingly every other ethnic heritage bobbing all about as if this was any kind of accurate representation of the place and time?

I'm sure it will bother some people, but it doesn't me. The film aims to be a celebratory, colorful version of Dicken's novel, and that is deliberately extended to the hues of the people as well.

There purposefully isn't any rhyme or reason to it, so for instance all of David's relations are white even though he's a lovely deep brown. And Mr. Wickfield, the humorously drunken lawyer who is a friend to his aunt, is played by Chinese actor Benedict Wong while his daughter, David's best friend Agnes, is portrayed by a black Brit, Rosalind Eleazar.

Strangely we have reached a point in our societal (d)evolution where people from the extreme wings of both ends of the spectrum would object to this casting, one calling it racism and the other calling it cultural appropriation, though they both end up meaning pretty much the same thing.

They can all sod off.

Back to the movie. There are some really terrific supporting performances, starting with Tilton, whose Mrs. Trotwood is somehow both extremely rigid, furiously chasing donkeys off her property, while also being persuaded to listen to her inner heart. Her companion, Mr. Dick, is played by Hugh Laurie as an addled, nervous wreck who can be a genius when he settles down long enough for his mind to calm. He is convinced that the thoughts of King Charles I invaded his own after his execution, never mind that it happened two centuries earlier.

I also quite enjoyed Peter Capaldi as Mr. Micawber, an itinerant huckster who was David's landlord when he was a boy in London. Micawber owes money all around town, and most of his time is spent dodging collectors using trickery and disguises. He turns up again in David's life in college and thereafter, still grifting but somehow eternally occupying a warm place in his heart.

(Not surprising, considering Micawber is supposedly based on Dickens' own dad.)

Ben Whishaw makes an impression as the irrepressible Uriah Heep, a servant at David's school who is famous for his cloying, obsequious manner. Like Macawber he turns up again later in the story, though to no credit of his own.

The story moves along at a pretty good truck, and rather than risk getting sunk into the many subplots and characters of the book, the filmmakers choose to dance upon the lily pads above them. Don't feel bad if you can't keep track of everyone's names -- I had to look them all up in writing this review, with the exceptions of Copperfield and Heep.

This version of "David Copperfield" is so enjoyable, in fact, that I'm tempted to take another crack at the book.

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: "In the Heart of the Sea"

“In the Heart of the Sea” works as a rousing sea adventure story, the inspiration for “Moby-Dick,” though it suffers from more grandiose aspirations that largely go unrealized. And some bad Boston accents.

The film makes a half-hearted attempt at a man-corrupts-nature environmental theme, and begins a Christian-vs.-Bligh type of conflict between the ship’s first mate and captain, only to drop it halfway through. Based on a nonfiction book by Nathaniel Philbrick, the screenplay by Charles Leavitt has some structural problems, with a big dead spot about two-thirds of the way through.

But director Ron Howard ably helms the action scenes, including the thrilling bout with the massive white sperm whale. And the movie brings a great sense of authenticity about what it’s like to be aboard a Nantucket whaling boat in 1820 -- the sun-creased faces, the creaking of the sails, the ever-present fear of a squall, the way men’s personalities rub against each other after a year at sea.

Howard reunites with Chris Hemsworth, who starred in the criminally overlooked racing movie “Rush.” Here he plays Owen Chase, a seasoned whaler who thinks he’s in line to become captain, but is instead put under the thumb of George Pollard (Benjamin Walker), a greenhorn with the right family name and financial backing.

As a “landsman,” the son of a poor farmer, Chase has had to work his way up from the bottom, and naturally resents the aristocratic captain. Pollard insists on showing the crew who’s boss, and nearly sinks the ship on their second day out of port. They spar, but agree to put their differences aside long enough to collect 2,000 barrels of whale oil.

Eventually they make their way into the Pacific Ocean, where they hear tales of a remote spot where the whales are bountiful. The story turns out to be true, but so does the warning of a giant bull who does not take kindly to having his colony attacked.

Their ship, the Essex, is sunk and the survivors are forced to flee on small boats thousands of miles from land, and things quickly grow dire. The actors make a believable transformation into starving skeletons -- unlike the recent “The 33” -- with the help of a little CGI.

The film uses a framing device of Thomas Nickerson, a 14-year-old member of the crew, being interviewed by Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) 30 years later as inspiration for his most famous novel. Now a mean old drunk played by Brendan Gleeson, he’s reluctant to share the true story of the Essex, which was officially recorded as having run aground. Tom Holland plays him as a boy.

(There’s a certain amount of historical shenanigans going on here with the storyline. Chase actually published an account of the Essex disaster immediately afterward, which was what inspired Melville. It was another writer who interviewed Nickerson, convincing him to write his own book. Interestingly, the film largely gets the events that happened at sea right but finagles with the epilogue.)

I’m not sure whose idea it was to have all these actors of different English-speaking vintages talk in realistic 1820s Nantucket accents, but the result is a mishmash of bent vowels and oft-indecipherable dialogue. At one point Hemsworth greets Cillian Murphy as an old comrade and they share a jaunty banter, of which I couldn’t understand a thing.

(Hemsworth is Australian, Murphy and Gleeson are Irish, Holland is English and Walker is American.)

Another swing-and-a-miss is the attempt to correlate 1820s energy challenges with our own. Whale and petroleum both lit the world in their respective eras and neither is a renewable resource (except as fast as adult whales can spawn new ones, anyway). The parallel is given a few feeble gestures, then dismissed.

“In the Heart of the Sea” is a great-looking picture; Howard is a top-drawer visual storyteller. It’s a good movie that could have been a much better one, either by being less ambitious, or more. Sometimes you have to drown your darlings.

Review: "Suffragette"

In America we think of the suffragette movement in glowing, benevolent terms. Our public consciousness invokes halcyon memories of a non-violent, high-minded debate in which brave women who advocated for the right to vote were subjected to little more than frowning disapproval and comments about their diminished prospects for marriage, with jail time for a hardened few.

In actuality the movement took decades and included police brutality, mass arrests, hunger strikes, forced feedings and the separation of mothers from children. “Suffragette” is an attempt to shine a light on the darker, grittier side of the crusade, focusing specifically on a small group of working-class British women who kicked the push for the vote into high gear in their country.

It’s a well-intentioned film, which jumps through the tropes of the ‘inspiring historical drama’ genre 1-2-3. It takes miserly few chances with its story and characters. The actors are an impressive lot and the production values are fine, but it’s a rather dour affair with a scarcity of surprises.

Carey Mulligan plays a familiar type of protagonist: the indifferent youngster who falls in with the rebellious crowd, gets caught up by circumstance and ends up as hardest of the hardcore.

Her character is entirely made up, as are all the others but two: Meryl Streep has a bit role (two or three scenes) as Emmeline Pankhurst, the real-life founder of the Women’s Social and Political Union, who essentially operates as the leader-in-exile, flitting from place to place in secrecy for fear of arrest. And Natalie Press plays Emily Davison, a tertiary figure who only becomes important late in the proceedings.

Mulligan is Maud Watts, a 24-year-laundress who keeps her head down in 1912 London. She started working at 12 and was made forewoman at 20. Her factory is a brutish sweat shop, complete with a piggish manager (Geoff Bell) who sees taking liberties with the young girls as a perk of the job. Her husband Sonny (Ben Whishaw) is a kindly but sheepish fellow who also works there. They have an adorable scamp of a son, are desperately poor but essentially happy.

The government is taking testimony from working women about getting the vote, and Maud is conscripted at the last minute to fill in for a fiery co-worker (Anne-Marie Duff) who has to demur. Her plain-spoken words seemingly move the chief official, but needless to say more challenges await.

She makes the rounds befriending the suffragette crew, including a wealthy benefactor (Romola Garai) and Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter), a female doctor who’s been jailed nine times and repeatedly urges more militant action, including breaking shop windows and blowing up mail boxes.

(Fun fact: Bonham Carter is the great-granddaughter of H. H. Asquith, who was Prime Minister during this time and a noted opponent of voting rights for women. Take that, great-grandpa!)

Brendan Gleeson has a nice turn as Steed, a cunning police inspector who outfoxes the suffragettes for a time. He views Maud as just an impressionable young woman and targets her for recruitment as an informer.

Things go on as you might expect. Maud is shocked when peaceful channels prove fruitless, agrees to more strident acts, is jailed and disgraced, her husband is mortified and warns her not to defy him again, the heroines make quotable pronouncements off the cuff, etc.

“You want me to respect the law? Then make the law respectable!” goes a typical refrain.

I didn’t dislike “Suffragette,” but it feels so workmanlike and even drab at times. Director Sarah Gavron and screenwriter Abi Morgan (“The Iron Lady”) might have been better served by focusing on actual historical figures instead of concocting a bunch of make-believe folks. These characters feel less like people and more conduits for a message, however noble it might be.

Video review: "Paddington"

“Paddington,” a British film adaptation of the popular books by Michael Bond, opened in the U.S. without much fanfare or media. In the biz this is known as ‘being dumped into theaters’ -- a practice usually reserved for low-budget fare of dubious quality.

I’m puzzled as to why “Paddington” received this treatment, since it’s probably the best live-action family film thus far in 2015.

Paddington is a young bear from Peru whose home is destroyed, and his elderly aunt and uncle forced into the old bears’ home. He decides to seek out the British explorer who befriended his family years ago and introduced them to the miracle that is marmalade.

He takes the name of the London railway station where he’s stranded and is taken in -- albeit temporarily -- by the Brown family (Sally Hawkins and Hugh Bonneville play the mum and dad).

Paddington is portrayed using some excellent CG animation and the tender voice of Ben Whishaw. He’s a wondrous creation, with his shy charm and signature floppy red hat.

Director Paul King, who write the screenplay with Hamish McColl, keeps the tone light and the action delightfully goofy -- such as a flooded bathtub on the Browns’ top floor that goes for a ride.

Samuel Joslin and Madeleine Harris play the Brown kids, and Nicole Kidman rounds out the cast as the villainess, who’d like to see Paddington stuffed -- and not with marmalade. She’s got a great Cruella de Vil vibe going on.

Here’s hoping this wonderful, gentle movie finds a home of its own on video.

Video extras are a bit skimpy. The DVD has several making-of featurettes: “Meet the Characters,” “When a Bear Comes to Stay” and “From Page to Screen,” plus the “Shine” music video. Step up to the Blu-ray and you add only “The Making of ‘Shine’” featurette.

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Video review: "Cloud Atlas"

A grand, brave, often mesmerizing but just as often puzzling cinematic experience, “Cloud Atlas” takes a book generally thought to be unfilmable and delivers something rather astonishing. The Wachowski siblings, best known for the “Matrix” movies, team up again (also joined by co-writer/director Tom Tykwer) to create a sprawling story that encompasses dozens of characters spread over several time spans, with a universal message about the sanctity of the soul.

If that sounds a little full-of-it grandiose, well, that’s because it is. But even as you struggle to understand the accents of Tom Hanks and Halle Berry or even figure out where and when you are, most observers should find the experience thrilling.

Hanks and Berry are joined by a number of other actors, each playing several roles – though it’s often a challenge to recognize them buried under layers of costume and prosthetic makeup. The action jumps from the 19th century Pacific Islands to America in the 1970s, and then to a dystopian future Korea and a post-apocalyptic time in which the Earth is nearly deserted.

Though it may not be up everyone’s alley, “Cloud Atlas” is an innovative and ambitious piece of science fiction drama that’s worth a look.

Extras are rather decent, though you have to upgrade to the Blu-ray edition to get the best stuff. The DVD version only comes with a making-of documentary.

It’s not surprising that the notoriously publicity-shy Wachowskis chose not to record a commentary track, but they make up for it with six more featurettes covering everything from casting to special effects, plus philosophical musings about reincarnation.

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Review: "Cloud Atlas"

Having not read the novel by David Mitchell, my guess is that "Cloud Atlas" is one of those books that was considered untranslatable to the big screen. The Wachowski siblings, the creative team behind the "Matrix" films, and their writing/directing partner Tom Tykwer, have accomplished about as successful an adaptation as could be hoped.

It's a sprawling, ambitious, troubling, occasionally glorious and often vexing film. A hair under three hours long, it links dozens of characters across a multitude of time settings, with the same set of actors playing multiple parts. These stories do not  unfold in temporal sequence, but instead cut back and forth with no transition for the audience. The abruptness is intentional.

So, one moment you can be watching Tom Hanks playing Zachry, a suspicious but good-hearted hunter in a post-apocalyptic primitive society hundreds of years into the future, and in a blink he has become Dr. Henry Goose, a nefarious physician/charlatan in the Pacific Islands circa 1849.

The theme here is that these actors are not simply inhabiting different roles, but represent different incarnations of the same eternal soul replicated over and over again throughout the eons, but facing much the same challenges in each reincarnation.

For instance, Hanks' character(s) struggle with summoning the courage to do the moral thing. For Dr. Goose that battle was obviously lost some time ago. For Zachry it's an ongoing struggle, with the forces of suspicion and hatred represented by Old Georgie, a devil in a top hat who whispers vile thoughts into his ear.

Zachry's time era is probably the most critical, acting as a framing device for the other stories. Sometimes we see the same person decades apart in their lives, but for the most part it is new incarnations each time around.

In Zachry's time, he is suspicious of Meronym (Halle Berry), a representative of a more technologically advanced alien culture, or possibly the remnants of humanity that survived the "Big Fall" of mankind. Meronym and other people of her ilk seem to have electronic devices implanted under the surface of their skin, while Zachry and his people have extensive facial tattoos.

Meronym has ingratiated herself into the people of the valley's tiny community, where they struggle to survive against wretched tribes of cannibals who raid from time to time. Meronym says she's there to help, and indeed heeds Zachry's plea to save the life of his niece, but it's clear she's there with an unspoken mission.

Other significant settings are the Pacific Islands in the mid-19th century, Cambridge of 1936, 1973 San Francisco, modern-day London and Korea somewhere in the 23rd century.

Jim Broadbent plays Timothy Cavendish, an itinerant publisher who hits the big time when his thuggish author executes the dream of what every writer wants to do to a critic, becoming a celebrity in the process. But money troubles and a hateful big brother leave him incarcerated in a mental hospital, which builds up to a septuagenarian version of "The Great Escape."

Ben Whishaw is Robert Frobisher, a brilliant but poor musical genius who takes on a position as assistant to a once great but now forlorn composer. Jim Sturgess plays Adam Ewing, a young man making a highly profitable business trip for his slavemaster father-in-law, and encounters the unexpected friendship of a runaway slave (David Gyasi).

In 1973 Halle Berry plays Luisa Rey, a crusading young journalist who uncovers a nefarious plot at a Three Mile Island-ish nuclear facility, and finds her life in peril.

Perhaps the most evocative setting is Neo Seoul of the future, a nightmarish landscape that seems to combine the worst elements of "Blade Runner" and "The Matrix." Here Doona Bae plays Sonmi-451, a "fabricant" -- aka synthetically created human slave -- who serves as a waitress  in trendy restaurant. One day she's liberated by a leader of the rebellion against this totalitarian society, and finds herself becoming the image and voice of a movement (and later, in Zachry's time, something much more).

"Our lives are not our own," Somni intones, underscoring the film's message. "From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present. And by each crime and each kindness, we build our future."

I will say that time does not drag while watching "Cloud Atlas." I looked at my watch exactly once, and was astonished to see that 2½ hours had already gone by.

But the various actors each playing three, four, five or more roles ended up being distracting, especially as I attempted each time to puzzle out who was who under the heavy layers of prosthetic makeup. I found that the mental energy I expended in this exercise left me unable at time to get emotionally engaged the characters' plight.

I also admit to being uncomfortable with some of the transformations. At various times Caucasian actors are made up to look Asian, and Asians as Caucasians, and African-Americans as whites or Asians or Latinos, and none of it very convincing. I did note that at no time was a non-African-American actor made up to look black. Consciously avoiding that risk of an unpalatable accusation of blackface only serves to make the other cross-racial portrayals seem even more squeamish.

"Cloud Atlas" is a bedazzling cinematic experience, though one that will no doubt leave some audience members confused and frustrated. For me, there was enough enchantment to overcome the head-scratching.

3 stars out of four