Living With "The Lovely Bones"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 17 December 2009 16:12

Written by Maitland McDonagh / Miss FlickChick

Directed by Peter Jackson
Written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson, based on the novel by Alice Sebold
With: Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon, Michael Imperioli, Rose McIver and Christian Thomas Ashdale

New Zealander Jackson seemed the perfect director to adapt Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, a story of murder and what comes after that’s narrated by a dead girl trapped in the pretty prison of an afterworld that lies somewhere between where she was and where she’s going.

Think back past the epic Lord of the Rings films to Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, a richly imagined story of two adolescent girls caught in a poisonous plasticine fantasy world conjured from their half-formed fantasies. Perfect!

And yet The Lovely Bones is sadly inert. The story shuttles back and forth between a placid 1970s suburbia and an afterlife that looks disconcerting like the cover of a Yes album; both are bloodless, all look and no vitality.

14-year-old Susie “like the fish” Salmon (Ronan) dies on December 6, 1973, raped, murdered and dismembered by George Harvey (Tucci), the creepy neighbor every picture-perfect small town and suburb seems to have. It takes her a while to realize what’s happened; briefly baffled, she flees the cornfield where she died and can’t fathom why no one can see or hear her. But once Susie understands and accepts her state — she’s disembodied but stranded somewhere between life and afterlife — she takes a keen interest in the ongoing travails of her family and friends.

Despite the best efforts of local cop Len Fenerman (Imperioli), Susie’s body is never found, though her bedraggled cap — a godforsaken thing knitted by her mother, Abigail (Weisz) — turns up in a nearby field. It becomes gradually, painfully clear that body or no body, Susie is almost certainly dead, though it’s the almost that torments everyone who knew her. Susie’s father, Jack (Wahlberg), is obsessed with finding his little girl’s killer even as he tries to cling to the hope that she’s alive; his fixation eventually drives Abigail to abandon her family and retreat into a soul-searching sojourn on a hippie-dippy commune.

Abigail’s hard-drinking, open-minded mother (Sarandon) tries to step in, but nurturing was clearly never her bag. Susie fades to near abstraction for baby brother Buckley (Ashdale), but Lindsey (McIver), who grew up in Susie’s shadow, is determined to find her sister’s killer… and she has a hunch about Harvey. Susie’s friend Clarissa (Michalka), who sometimes vaguely feels her presence, begins dating Jake (Nelson), the dishy Brit on whom Susie had her first and only crush.

First and foremost, The Lovely Bones rests on Ronan’s shoulders, and she’s more than up to the challenge: Her performance is the single best thing about the film. Ronan overlays the awkwardness of a sheltered teenager with the devastating weariness of someone who knows that all possibility is behind her. Dead Susie is all she’ll ever be, and the only way she can remain connected to her cruelly truncated life is by watching other lives go on.

Unfortunately, Ronan is hemmed in at every turn by the kitschy afterlife in which she’s trapped. It’s perfectly reasonable that Susie’s imagination, which shapes her limbo, would be shaped by kitschy ‘70s design. But the specificity of the movie’s set design drags Sebold’s ethereal in-between world down to earth with a crashing thud; Ronan’s pitch-perfect voice-over narration is regularly undermined by the goofy landscape she inhabits, even if it is populated by other girls murdered by sex fiends, some even younger that Susie. The whole thing recalls the tacky afterlives of 1998’s What Dreams May Come, a simplistic and painfully unconvincing fable about love’s power to overcome all.

Jackson and screenwriters Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh — Walsh is Jackson’s wife and both women are his longtime collaborators — are nothing if not decorous; there’s no salaciousness in Susie’s death and no morbid fascination with the minutia of Harvey’s psychosis. All of which is entirely reasonable: The Lovely Bones isn’t voyeuristic serial-killer porn. But the film’s relentless good taste renders it dull and hollow; Susie might as well be away at summer camp, and that absence of tragic resonance robs the story of its thorny, haunting heart. To hear the voice of a dead teenager, a girl whose life was brutally ended before it had a chance to start, blithely nattering about the day-to-day affairs of the living should fray your last nerve. But even Ronan’s considerable skills can’t trump CGI’s power to render everything false and inconsequential, and more’s the pity.

For more by Maitland McDonagh: MissFlickChick.com

"Invictus" Makes A Great Try

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 17 December 2009 12:32

Written by Alan Brody

Invictus
directed by Clint Eastwood
starring Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon
If you don't know rugby, a touchdown is called a try. This movie about the great World Cup rugby game at the beginning of Nelson Mandela's Presidency definitely scores. It takes place when South Africa's shaky new multiracial democracy was still finding its feet after years of white rule. Mandela needed to make peace and heal the land. He saw an opportunity to create rapprochement and a national bonding experience by embracing the game beloved by his former enemy and despised by his supporters.
 
However, there are also some fumbles -- the other meaning if you will -- of "try".
 
Without doubt, Freeman gives an Oscar-worthy reincarnation of Mandela - thus putting himself firmly in the King-Poitier-Ali-Crosby-Oprah-Obama pantheon of black people who radically changed white perceptions. Damon too, gives a great aw-shucks performance as an innocent racist who understands how much he has to change.

You'll barely recognize this bulked up version of Damon and his South African accent is flawless. But, for the most part they are stock characters - you don't really know what makes Mandela tick and you can't fully grasp the transformation of Pienaar (Damon), the rugby captain, because you just don't know that much about him.
 
While the movie works well at the storytelling level, it also rings somewhat hollow. You see this momentous change in a terrible political situation through old newscasts but not through the cast. The black presidential security detail has to make peace with white special service cops who may once have jailed them. The white cops are now reporting to people who may once have tried to blow them up. But you see none of this in personal backstories.

The pacing is slow but it is steady and it builds. The end may be predictable but the audience still applauded. If you have no idea what rugby is you will leave the theater unenlightened and those of us who know about rugby can see the ball was somehow dropped.
 
Therein lies the problem: this is a movie about symbols, the kind that can bring everyone together, make peace and bind a nation. If you can't really explain the true nature of rugby, you can't really explain its significance in this story. As for the title: what is a nice Latin word like Invictus doing in an African movie? Shouldn't Mandela - just one generation away from living in a hut with a polygamous family - be reaching back to an African poem for inspiration? Wouldn't you expect something more African than classical?
 
In a way, it echoes the story of the kouros statue the Getty Museum once acquired. Scientists analyzed the stone and lawyers certified the paper trail. But when Thomas Hoving of the Met took one look at it, he knew it was fake because it looked "fresh" - something you don't expect in a 3,000 year old statue. In fact, it was a modern reproduction made from authentic stone from that period.
 
That is not to say this movie is a fake but it is obviously made - well made, mind you - by people of a different age, place and time who have fused the authentic with something that isn't quite right. The author is a British journalist who covered South Africa, the screenwriter is a non-rugby loving ex-patriate South African living in Morro Bay, California.

The supporting actors and Damon's voice coach are all authentic South Africans but the director and the two lead actors are American. As good a job as they did technically, something got lost in the mix. Instead of being too lively, this movie is, if anything, muted - even somber. You'd have to wonder what it would look like if a South African director had made it. What if, say, Gavin Wood (diector of Oscar winner Tsotsi) or an up-and-coming African director had done it, how different would it would be?
 
First, you would get a visceral sense of the times. People were very scared, very divided but also hopeful. The townships were bursting with exuberance. The whites experienced fear, loathing but also optimism. You see it in Invictus but you really don't feel it. The celebration of the blacks matched the viciousness of the old white regime while the crime spree justified their old fears. Houses once designed to be open - even admired - became surrounded with walls, then barbed wire, power gates and finally, electrified fences.

Yet the whites felt somehow liberated too and to understand that you'd have to see how war and rebellion-weary they had become. You never quite feel the two different cultures - an African world drenched in music, dance and excitement versus a stiff, though cordial white world where the music is at best, restrained.
 
Most of all though, you would understand why rugby really matters. It is not just that the white Afrikaners were the country's exclusive payers of rugby, it is that it's a territorial game. Rugby is played around the scrum, that beehive formation of men from each team pushing against each other in contention for a ball thrust in its midst at the beginning of each play. Whichever team plucks it out - usually by foot - gets to run with the ball.

The traditional advantage of the South African team is that they are one of the heaviest in the game. That is why Damon filled up on pap 'n worse for the role.  The heavier the scrum the better the chance they have of pushing the other team out of the way and grabbing the ball.
 
The point about rugby in South Africa is not just that it is the game of the oppressors but a kind of reenactment of the way they pushed the indigenous people off the land to get at its resources. That explains why the formerly great Bokke had lost their mojo. Thanks to majority rule, they were being pushed off their land and they just couldn't pull off their old act on the rugby field any more. At least, not until they had gotten permission, marching orders and reassurance from the new black president.
 
The poem, Invictus, is never fully fleshed out and in truth it was an obscure 19th century poem written by a 12 year old who'd lost his leg to TB. While understandably awkward as a poem it ends with these two resounding lines:
 
"I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul."
 
 In fact, Mandela never sent that poem to Pienaar. He had been inspired by it in jail but he actually sent the rugby captain a version of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Man in the Arena" speech to inspire him.
 
Regardless of the actual poem, what matters is that Mandela reached out to a third place - a non-African heritage - to bring these former warring Africans of different races together. How do you explain that to Americans? They see these great aerial shots of Cape Town, the sophisticated cities contrasted with the black shantytowns (although you never go into any of these "informal" houses) and they must wonder: What Africa is this?
 
That is not say this isn't a very good movie. It is not Biko, Gandhi or even Chariots of Fire though it is at least at the very front of the second tier. There is an academy award nomination or two in this and Clint deserves kudos for taking on something so far afield from his usual fare: Dirty Harry reincarnated as a couple of near-saints.

As a feel-good movie it does indeed score: almost everyone wins - the whites, the blacks (he did forget the Jewish guy, Joel Stransky, a kind of South African Sandy Koufax who actually won the game with the drop kick.) The New Zealanders - ironically called the "All Blacks" on account of their uniforms - get to be the losers here even though they were a much more racially integrated team.
 
Not only that, but the All Blacks began each game with a fearsome Maori wardance called a Hakka which seemed to be lead by the blondest player. All the Bokke could do was glare back. But any South African knows they have their own ceremonial weapon, which is just as formidable: the Zulu War Dance. Yet no one mentions it - perhaps because Afrikaner rugby players don't dance like that - ever - and Mandela was Xhosa as were most of the ruling ANC party and they were feuding with the Zulus.

The New Zealanders even had rugby's first true superstar, Jonah Loma, a terrifying figure who could simply plough through the opposing team with legs as thick and as unstoppable as tree trunks rolling down a cliff.
 
Nevertheless, Mandela's support, Afrikaner determination and a little Hebrew footwork won the day and put the country on the track toward unity. In the end, this movie wins the cup but you get the idea there is more to be drunk from it along with a few more visits to the well.
 
© Alan Brody 2009
 
[Guest reviewer Alan Brody has written White Shaka Boy, a story about a New Yorker who discovers his heritage as the biracial heir to a Zulu Kingdom in South Africa. Inspired by a true story, Brody -- a journalist who first brought the story of Mandela's impending freedom from jail to New York Newsday -- created this Graphic Novel to tell the complex story of South Africa's four races, the legacy of King Shaka, the origin of Gandhi's passive resistance, feminism and the transformative possibilities of the New Africa. Its long awaited sequel will be available on  Amazon, select Graphic Novel stores and on the White Shaka website: http://whiteshakaboy.com]

Pulitzer Winner Letts' Dark Comedy

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 14 December 2009 03:46

Written by Lucy Komisar

Superior Donuts
Written by Tracy Letts
Directed by Tina Landau
Starring Michael McKean, Jon Michael Hill, Robert Maffia, Cliff Chamberlain, Kate Buddeke, Yasen Peyankov

There’s a whiff of television in Tracy Letts' dark comedy about a '60s radical coming to terms with his life and a society that continues to have an underclass. The story is intriguing if a bit formulaic. It's as if Letts said, "Well, we need a middle-aged white ex-hippie with a pony tail, a brash young black man, a couple of cops of mixed colors and genders and some bad guys to prevent the story from cloying too much." That said, there is some charm in what he came up with, even if it’s not great drama. Landau directs at an agile pace that highlights the laughs.

Arthur Przybyszewski (McKean) runs a shabby donut shop in a black section of Chicago. In the sixties, he was an activist and in 1968 was beaten by Daley’s police. That would be at the Democratic Convention when protesters marched down the lakefront Michigan Avenue and shouted "The whole world is watching." (I was there, too.) He went to Toronto to escape the draft.

His father, a Polish immigrant, died while Arthur was in Canada, and he returned home to run the shop. His life hasn’t turned out very well. His wife left him, and he hasn’t seen his daughter in years. He is a loner who lives in the past and doesn’t connect with anyone. McKean does a persuasive turn as the laid-back Arthur who still wears the T-shirts of the bands of his era.

Business in the donut shop is bad, and to add to it, when Arthur opens up that morning, the door is smashed and "pussy" is scrawled on the mirror. He hardly seems to care.

Later that day, in walks Franco Wicks (Hill), a young black man who needs a job. Hill is lively and engaging in the role. He persuades Arthur to hire him as an all-around helper and also sets about offering some good advice. Arthur is missing the evening trade, he needs to fix the place up. It’s seedy, with a Formica counter and metal stools with red plastic seats. (The set is by James Schuette.) He needs music, and "How’s about poetry reading. I’ll produce a coffee house." Arthur acknowledges the competition of a new Starbucks, and Franco quips, "They’ve got Starbucks in wheat fields."

Franco also tells him to improve his appearance: "Let me tell you who looks good in a ponytail, girls and ponies." And he suggests he pay more attention to the lady cop (Buddeke), who finds all kinds of reasons to stop by the shop.

The young man seems to be down on his luck now, but he has hopes for the future. He is writing the Great American Novel called America Will Be, after Langston Hughes’ poem. He wants Arthur to read it. Letts needs to give Arthur someone to care about, and that could be Franco.

Till now it’s pretty light stuff and could be any family TV story. It gets darker when a couple of mobsters (Maffia and Chamberlain) come around to collect on a debt. Seems Franco had been a runner for gamblers and had fallen into the vice himself. Meanwhile, Max Tarasov (Peyankov), a Russian who owns the DVD shop next door, wants to buy Arthur out. Eventually, all the pieces fit together. I could have done without the gratuitous brutality and a rather corny dénouement.

But the plot does grab your attention, as any good TV drama might, and there is some clever, funny dialogue and good acting by all, especially McKean as Arthur, Hill as Franco, Buddeke as a cop, Peyankov as the Russian store owner and Michael Garvey as his nephew, Kiril.

For tiimes and ticket details go to:http://www.broadwaysbestshows.com/shows/superiordonuts/index.php

Superior Donuts
Music Box Theatre
239 West 45th Street
New York City
212-239-6200
Opened October 1, 2009; closes January 3, 2010

For more by Lucy Komisar: TheKomisarScoop.com

Photo credit: Robert J. Saferstein