Quick Notes on Recent Films

I've been way too lazy this fall, with posting and all. Not posting. Except about the Red Sox. Which won't start up again, I sort of promise, at least not until they make a deal for Johan Santana. I'm not having much louck finishing any substantial posts - heck - starting any... so let's try some quicker hits. Maybe coming back to films a couple times over the course of a couple weeks will get more accomplished than procrastinating writing full reviews or essays....

So: as Joseph B puts it - with talk of No Country for Old Men still "whirlwinding" around the internet - let's revisit... not at length: just one or two things. The way the story is told, say - it is a model of economy - actually, 2 models of economy. The first half (or 2/3, or whatever it is, literally) is a chase film, almost silent, cutting between chased and chaser, interested as much in how they do things, from locating a fugitive to surgery at home to dispatching an angry dog to crossing the border. Clean and sharp, without much talk, the attention to what happens. Then - Woody Harrelson comes on screen, and there starts to be a lot more talk: he talks a lot, we get some more scenes with Tommy Lee Jones talking, we even get Bardem and Brolin talking. Meanwhile, as the film gets talkier, the narration gets even more elliptical, though without leaving anything out. In the last third or so of the film, we don't see things happening anymore: the killing occurs off camera, often completely elided; Chigurh appears in rooms he shouldn't be in, without all the detail of how he got there we saw in the first part of the film. But what gives this its kick is that it's all been set up: having seen how Chigurh operates, do we need to see him break into a high rise? do we need to see how the scene with the accountant or the chicken truck driver will end? The Coens have shown us the type of man we are dealing with: they can shift their attention - the story remains coherent. And the shift has an interesting effect - at least for me: it focuses our attention on the way the people live, not how they die. How they face the end - begging for their lives, not begging for their lives, doing a good deed or not - it focuses attention on the value of their lives, period. There is more of this in the Coens' work than they usually get credit for: there's a bitter sympathy for their losers and fools, that hangs around despite the (seeming) jokiness of the violence.

Next - totally unrelated (except in that Fernando Croce piece I linked to a couple weeks ago) - I should try to add a few more words about Southland Tales. It was not that impressive when I saw it - and a couple weeks to think about it haven't helped. I suppose some of it is sort of amusing - lots of pop culture parody, which tends to work better the less is made of it - things like Jon Lovitz simply appearing in the film get more laughs than a lot of the jokes... It has moments, though now, the only ones I can remember involve The Rock - playing himself, basically, sending himself up, mocking his attempts to act, his paranoia, going over the top. He is fun to watch, and the film is almost interesting when he's on screen. Granted, in a more coherent film, the character might not work - if the film wasn't so awful, he might not be so amusing... but I'll take what I can get. The rest - if there were jokes, I've forgotten most of them; the story is useless, a dumb pastiche of Brazil, La Jetee and 12 Monkeys, with some self-conscious, and botched, David Lynch moments throughout. It's too bad - you sense something of value lingering in there somewhere, but, just not on screen.

And finally, since I haven't mentioned it yet: Margot at the Wedding was a treat. Not as good as The Squid and the Whale, but still fine. I like what Jim Emerson said about it - calling it a horror film: a monster comes into a house and devours everyone within it.... It's like that. Nicole Kidman pulls it off - her madness has no redeeming features, it is simply sad - and she gives it that sadness. The ability to make it clear that she hates no one more than herself, and just turns it back on people. The film shows this , especially later on - the way she will hold something for an extra beat, something someone says, as if weighing it, considering what she should do - then coming back with something harsh, to stop whatever it was cold. And the horror film structure holds to the very end, when she puts her son on a bus, and watches him go away - he's almost free - but at the last minute, the Monster comes running up and jumps in beside him... Scary!