Sundance London 2012 - LIBERAL ARTS

LIBERAL ARTS is a trite, cliché-ridden, entirely unbelievable movie that runs too long, and bores during its run-time.  Written by, directed by and starring Josh Radnor aka Ted in HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, the movie reads as a mash-up of rom-com set pieces, with pretensions at saying something more profound.  

That profound insight is basically that most of us reach a point where we're happy in our small contained world, and once we leave it, life is basically a series of disappointments. For some kids, that'll be high school. For others, when they leave college.  For some lucky folk, it's when they retire. The point that the movie wants to make is that no matter how tempting it is to go back to that place of nostalgia, it isn't healthy. You have to move on and grow up.

All of which is fair enough.  I can relate. That could've been the backbone of an interesting movie. But what we get instead is half a film showing a soupy meet-cute and falling-in-love story between Radnor's 35 year old arrested development book-worm and Elizabeth Olsen's 19 year old Liberal Arts college student.  They share music mixes and feel uplifted by Schubert!  To make this bearable, Radnor needed to be a lot more self-aware and ironic with the material than he was. The second half of the movie zings all over the place, with one plot twist involving Olsen that rang hollow - another plot twist featuring a depressed student called Dean ( a very impressive turn by John Magaro - want to see more of him) that seems to come from another film altogether - and so many resolutions and endings that the film drags itself out worse than RETURN OF THE KING.

In the midst of all this, Richard Jenkins' reluctantly retiring Professor gets too little screen time. Allison Janney's brilliantly acerbic Professor gets just enough but steals the show. And Zac Efron has a charismatic cameo. But all this does is to reinforce the feeling that what we have here is an ill-written jumble of scenes, some of which work, some of which don't - a hammy sensibility aiming at something better. All of which is coupled with a pretty basic technical package.

Move along. There's nothing to see here. 

LIBERAL ARTS played Sundance and Sundance London 2012 and will be released in Australia on September 20th 2012.

George Ghon comments on MARGARET

Kenneth Lonergan’s long-awaited follow up to YOU CAN COUNT ON ME has – after a four-year-long editing squabble, and a final edit by Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker – finally been released. It seems to attract considerable attention among a British audience - a diverse crowd filled the outdated screening room at the Odeon Panton Street just off Leicester Square on a recent Sunday afternoon to watch the GANGS OF NEW YORK writer’s contemporary take on Upper West Side city life. MARGARET is a daring coming-of-age tale that lets the 17-year old Lisa (Anna Paquin) become witness of a traumatic accident that proves to be formative on her young life. During the 2.5 hours of the final edit we watch the different emotional states the troubled teenager goes through during her rite de passage of becoming an adult. The woman who got rolled over by a bus after a quick meeting of the eyes by its driver with Lisa, is a sacrificial victim to the development of the main character, who, in turn, is searching for different ways to overcome her guilt.

Differing from an American school of teenage drama (Larry Clark & Harmony Korine) that almost solely relies on casual sex and the abuse of illegal substances within a culturally impoverished environment, Mr Lonergan’s MARGARET aims high and interweaves the quotidian, classroom life and family trivia with high brow references. The title is referring to Gerard Manley Hopkin’s poem spring and fall, dedicated to a young child. The outlook therein is bleak:

‘...Ah! As the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.…’

Growing up is not an easy business; plenty of tears will need to flow before a certain level of emotional maturity can be reached.

My take on this film is, furthermore, that it aims to assert the role of so called high culture and allows a largely disenfranchised society to rebuild its values according to those guidelines drawn out by classic drama and poetry, to some extent. The Met plays an important part in the movie. Bellini’s Norma opens her heart to Ramon (Jean Reno), which has a profound effect on his relationship with Lisa’s mother Joan (J. Smith-Cameron). La nuit d’amour in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmanntriggers the cathartic reunion of mother and daughter. The classroom is a frequent topic, where contemporary politics in the aftermath of 9/11 are juxtaposed with the musings of King Lear. Avoiding the pitfalls of intellectualization, Mr Lonergan does not use those references to show off, or distract from the story he is telling, but just melds them into his trope of big city life.

An ode to New York and its culture it is, but not an unambiguous one. 

MARGARET went on limited release in the US in September and in Canada in October.  It is on such limited release in the UK that it's only playing on one screen in Central London! Catch it while you can, or wait for the French release in August 2012.

THE HELP - the Driving Miss Daisy de nos jours

Tate Taylor, director of the anonymous 2008 comedy PRETTY UGLY PEOPLE, somehow managed to get the studios to allow to write and direct THE HELP, a soupy drama based on the best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett. Not having read Stockett's novel chronicling the travails in 1960s racist Mississippi, I don't know whether the emotional manipulation and superficial politics come from her of from the director.  Either way, the resulting movie looks handsome, and made me shed a tear in the final reel, but has all the genuine engagement with the issues of DRIVING MISS DAISY.  It's a bland feelgood movie about a topic that should make us angry and agitated.  It's a movie in which the main African American character's son is lynched and yet we come out feeling warm and fluffy.  Double plus not good.

The film makes the mistake of telling the stories of these African-American maids through the lens of a perky white wannabe journalist - Skeeter (Emma Stone) - a move that immediately tells us we're in a world where a harsh tale has to be made palatable for a mainstream audience.  Ironic, also, in a movie that makes such a big deal about going right to the source.  Skeeter serves as the vessel through which the maids will dish the dirt and get their story published.  The movie is scrupulous in telling us that Skeeter is sharing the royalties with her informants - but while she gets a cool job in New York out of it - they are at risk of being sacked, imprisoned or lynched. The risks and rewards are clearly completely asymmetric, but the film doesn't embrace and mine that fact - it would mess up the fluffy finale.

Worse still, there is no subtlety in the characterisation - no shades of grey. You're either a good-hearted liberal white (Skeeter, her shamed and reformed mother, Jessica Chastain's character Celia), or a nasty racist white (Bryce Dallas Howard's Hilly and her acolytes).  And as for the African-American women they are largely painted in tones of full-on heroism, with even the thief seen as a martyr to a mean mistress.   As for the subject matter, awful, horrible petty racism is seen on screen, but racial violence is referred to rather than shown.  Ditto the subject matter of domestic abuse.  And I couldn't help feeling insulted that the subject of vengeance against racism was reduced to a scatological joke. 

All this isn't to say that the production isn't handsome - with lush on location lensing from DP Stephen Goldblatt (JULIE & JULIA) and wonderful period costumes.  And the female cast is good quality and does the best with the narrowly written characters they are given.  In particular, it was a joy to finally see Jessica Chastain able to round out a character - rather than just being a virtuous icon, as in THE TREE OF LIFE and CORIOLANUS.  

But this movie, so hyped, so likely to win awards, is not a good movie. It's politics are dicey - it's reluctance to truly grasp the profundity of what it's tackling frustrating - it's emotional manipulation dishonest.  I have no time for it.  

THE HELP was released in the autumn in the US, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong and Sweden. It was released in October in Portugal, Finland, Norway, Lithuania, Singapore, France, Ireland, the UK and Spain. It was released in November in Spain, Hungary, Poland, Malta, Estonia, Denmark, Greece, Kuwait and India.  It opens on December 8th in Germany; on December 28th in Belgium; on Dcember 29th in the Netherlands; on January 20th in Italy; on February 3rd in Bulgaria and on February 6th in Brazil.  THE HELP is likely to be feted during awards season judging by the studio campaign and early indications from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Hollywood Film Festival.

London Film Fest Day 3 - LIFE DURING WARTIME

Todd Solondz is back in the place he loves best: contemporary Jewish-American middle-class suburbia where normal looking people deal with drug addiction, perversion, pedophilia, suicide, neuroses, and anything else you might deem "inappropriate" to talk about in front of the kids. Solondz picks up characters from his previous, brilliantly disturbing films WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE and HAPPINESS and has them deal with events from those flicks. In the case of the family recovering from the father's child rape conviction, the action takes place in sunny Florida rather than the more typical Jersey ("a state of irony") bu the grim humour remains the same. In short, if you like Solondz you'll love this film.

Tech credits are, as ever, polished, with sunny-suburban production design contrasting with the painful subject matter. Casting is superlative. Special praise is due for Allison Janney as the wife of the convicted paedophile, and Shirley Henderson as her sister, who works with convicts and whose lovers have a habit of topping themselves. Ciaran Hinds skulks around as the pederast and achieves something very difficult: he evokes our sympathy. Charlotte Rampling is typically strong in a cameo as frustrated older woman. The glue that binds all these characters together is the idea of forgiveness.

LIFE DURING WARTIME played Telluride, Venice (where it won Best Screenplay), Toronto, New York and London 2009.

AWAY WE GO - twee

AWAY WE GO is a great step forward for Sam Mendes, whose previous directorial efforts (AMERICAN BEAUTY, REVOLUTION ROAD) have been story-boarded and designed to within an inch of their lives. In this film, he hangs loose, allowing his story and characters room to breathe. The movie looks and feels lo-rent, almost casually thrown together, rather than distracting us with a high-gloss finish. Great.

Problem is, Sam Mendes hasn't moved beyond his other fatal flaw as a director - being patronising. I have yet to see a Mendes movie that does carry with it an air of smug self-satisfaction. AWAY WE GO features John Krasinki and Maya Rudolph - two actors better known for comic roles on TV - in a semi-serious character driven drama. They are well-adjusted, right-thinking, warm-hearted, in-love and pregnant. When his parents decided to move to Antwerp on the eve of the birth of their child, this prompts a crisis. Well, no, they are too banal to ever have a crisis. Rather, the young couple are concerned that they haven't figured out how and, indeed, where, to live. So follows a road trip, visiting friends and family, hoping to learn.

The couple are basically good people (and indeed, are portrayed by good actors). As shown here, they don't really have anything to learn. This is a road-trip with no real emotional journey. The couple are confronted with a series of increasingly caricatured couples, and it's a no-brainer that these are not the guys to learn from. In particular, the hippie couple depicted by Maggie Gyllenhaal and Josh Hamilton were so absurd they completely took me out of the film. And then it all winds up with an ending that is as schmaltzy as it unbelievable.

AWAY WE GO was released earlier this year in the US, Canada, Greece, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Israel and the Netherlands. It is currently on release in the UK and opens next week in Belgium. It opens in October in Finland, Norway, Germany, Australia, and Romania. It opens in November in New Zealand, Portugal, Sweden, Argentina and Spain. It opens in Russia on December 10th.