Movies
I've not read the original James Baldwin novel, so this is just my hunch based on what I saw here. But I suspect that Barry Jenkins's movie is just a tad too reverent in adapting its source material, which explains the over-reliance of voiceover and the elliptical, literary-novel storytelling. There's never a moment where you forget this story came from a novel. The thing is, though—it works, and not just mildly so either but terrifically, totemically. Well, the voiceover hardly ever works, and it brings at least a few otherwise transcendent sequences down to earth. But the rest is magnificent. The movie's positioning of itself as synecdoche for the entirety of the 20th-century African-American experience somehow miraculously never smothers the intimacy of this film's specific story; every human who walks into the frame carries with them a whole teeming history, both of themselves and of society's relation to them—Brian Tyree Henry's character is on screen for maybe ten minutes total, and Emily Rios's character even less than that, but either one of them could fill an entire movie. The movie's delights don't end with its narrative, either: Nicholas Britell's score is probably the best film music that 2018 gave us, to say nothing of the exquisite sound mixing. And every movement of the camera is its own mini-masterpiece. I doubt if this will connect with people long-term as tenaciously as Jenkins's Moonlight did, being much more diffuse and by-design a lot less emotionally close. But the more I think about Beale Street, the more I think it's only one or two clicks below being that previous movie's equal. Grade: A
It's not often that protagonists who are in the 4-to-6-year-old range appear in films and even less often that they regarded with as much empathy and insight as Mirai gives its protagonist. The movie's opening minutes—a gentle and naturalistic slice-of-life depicting Kun, our preschool-aged protagonist, meeting his baby sister as his parents arrive home with her from the hospital—are both a perfect introduction for the film's key concerns (the psychology of this young child) and also completely inadequate at preparing viewers for just how deeply seriously it will take Kun as a character nor how vibrantly inventive its rendering of Kun's psychology will be. Basically a series of disconnected scenes that set up domestic situations that we then see Kun deal with through colorful flights of fantasy (and occasionally horror), Mirai is the best cinematic dramatization of the interior life of a child this young I've seen since Where the Wild Things Are. Like that film, this one recognizes that the transition from early childhood into the middle years of the first decade is wracked by the severe identity crisis of realizing that, for better or for worse, you are defined in relation to those around you, and that with that definition comes a crushing set of responsibilities to the humans with whom you come in contact, especially your family—which, by tandem, you are also increasingly realizing isn't defined by the routines by which you have known it but rather the smashing together of histories and personalities into a larger whole. I think we adults tend to belittle or forget entirely this journey, but it is world-shattering for the children who experience it, and it's no wonder that kids spend so much time crying. All this is a long way of saying that I was not expecting to be in tears by this movie's end. Grade: A-
Reactionary cinema in ways that feel alternatingly cathartic and irritating. But mostly irritating. The frenetic style can be uproarious and kind of punk rock in a really fun way, but only in pieces. An early party scene uses some of the very coolest split-screen footage I've seen in a long time. Then there's the rest. Ironically detached violence? A joke at the expense of trigger warnings? How profound. I'm too out of touch with the vanguard of teen digital life to know if its depiction of high schoolers is sharply satirical or of the "kids these days" variety, but I do know that the film barely gives any depth to anyone here, and it honestly just kind feels like a pileup of the worst elements of A Clockwork Orange's busily nihilistic attitude, just with bass drops instead of the ol' Ludwig Van. Just as aggravating is the film's commitment to playing both liberal and conservative sides of the "online shaming is problematic!"; the movie's shotgun approach to social commentary, wherein it just rapidly fires sprays of charged ideas and modern internet slang into the air, largely negligent of how each piece actually lands in relation to the others, yields some occasionally interesting juxtapositions but just as often results in discourse salad or, worse, some legitimately edgelord-ish implications. What the movie gets right most consistently is the idea that whatever mixed feelings we all might have about internet mobs in general, they have been most dangerous when targeting women and the queer community, something the movie dramatizes very well. But lord, this movie just can't pull it together into a cohesive whole. Grade: C
An intermittently funny riff on that old indie staple of the "dinner party of strangers." The movie moves along at a good, reasonably interesting clip, and the cast is winsome (Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Jason Schwartzman, Judith Godrèche), which is far and away the best thing about the film. It doesn't really have the guts to get as weird or as prickly as it needs to to make its "crucible of marriage" back half have much impact, which is fine; the movie doesn't want to be much more than a low-stakes, pleasantly off-beat 79 minutes, and it succeeds. I probably won't remember much about it a few years from now, but I enjoyed myself enough while watching it. Grade: B-
There's something uncomfortable about how whenever Studio Ghibli releases a movie without fantasy elements, people are lukewarm on it—as if all we want from Ghibli is "Disney, but cooler." Seems like an unnecessary limitation for the medium of animation. Anyway, at the risk of immediately contradicting myself, I don't think there's any way I could muster up the enthusiasm to rank this with the studio's best. But at the same time, it's a lovely little period piece that deploys "Ue o Muite Arukô" perfectly, so I can't help but feel that people slept on this one. Grade: B
As if stuck in my own Hong Sang-soo film, I keep watching these strikingly similar but crucially different films one after the other, and the little minute variations slowly build into what seems like the whole thesis of my viewing. They all remind me of Woody Allen, but with each Hong iteration, the relationship between the two fluctuates: how key is the fact that Allen's foundational text is the work of Freud, while Hong's seems to be that of quantum physics? Is Hong's relative self-awareness of the limitations of his "auteur" archetype preferable over the often messy and inconsistently reflexive tropes of Allen's typical protagonist? Or is Hong's studied nuance-upon-nuance-upon-nuance a more dangerously calculated self-justification than Allen's apparent guilelessness to his own reactionary iterations of his own (equally self-serving) ideas? In the cases of both filmmakers, the answer lies not in one single film but in the accumulation of their life work, one minor variation piled upon another. The Day He Arrives finds Hong Sang-soo in something of a Shadows and Fog mode, not just for its vividly monochrome aesthetic but for its chronologically slippery, repetitive narrative of a man adrift in a city among psychological and sexual foils—which is different from the Deconstructing Harry of On the Beach at Night Alone or the Melinda and Melinda of Right Now, Wrong Then. Perhaps I'll find that my comparison between these two dudes is reductive, but having not experienced nearly enough iterations of Hong's central story, I can't say for sure yet. So I guess I'll keep chipping away at them until a clearer picture forms. My chilliness toward these movies remains, although this is probably my favorite since Right Now, Wrong Then, if only for the gorgeous b&w cinematography set in a curiously underpopulated and exquisitely snowy Seoul—the ideal aesthetic for a movie (for a filmography) this insular and interior. Grade: B
An unmitigated disaster on a storytelling metric, essentially pushing fast-forward through the first half of Tolkien's trilogy with a few judicious edits (bye, Tom Bombadil) alongside a few injudicious ones (Treebeard has, like, one scene, and a completely incongruous one at that). Whether or not this is also an aesthetic disaster probably depends on your feelings about Ralph Bakshi's obsession with perversely jamming together cel animation, rotoscoping, and live-action footage. I myself have mixed emotions about it, but I certainly cannot deny that it is an Aesthetic with a capital A, and at times—particularly regarding the Black Riders—it is stunning, though it is just as often stunningly ugly (the character designs of the principal cast are an abomination). This is all undoubtedly visionary, both in awe-inspiring and mad-scientist kinds of ways, and I'm apparently not the only one who thinks so; one of the biggest shocks of watching this now is realizing just how much of the film (especially in the Fellowship of the Ring sections) was lifted nearly whole-cloth for Peter Jackson's 2000s trilogy—not just specific shots and setpieces but also entire stylistic devices (e.g. the borderline camp use of slow-motion footage). It turned out better the second time around, I think we can all agree, but still, credit where credit is due. Grade: C
Television
In some respects, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel's second season is a return to what everybody loved about the first: the rat-a-tat banter, the effervescently prickly characters, the roundabout pathos, the gorgeous sets and costuming, the long takes (those long takes!). But in other ways, Season 2 is oddly challenging—not in any sort of avant-garde way, but just for the sheer amount of off-format content (to the degree that a show with only one prior season has a format). For example, nearly a third of the season takes place at a resort in the Catskill Mountains (which, for the record, seems like the vacation from Hell—summer camp for adults, and isn't the whole point of summer camp is that the usual adults aren't there?); there's an ongoing subplot involving military espionage; Midge's parents live in Paris for a few episodes. It's an unpredictable, diffuse set of episodes without nearly the dramatic forward momentum that the first season had, which is both sort of frustrating but also admirable, that the show, just like its protagonist, will not rest on its laurels; nor will it, like so many direct-to-streaming series, allow its serialized stories to take over to the extent that its episodic structure turns to mush—say what you will about the season, but Mrs. Maisel still knows how to craft a tight hour of television, which is welcome. So this second season clearly is not just idly losing the thread of its series; there's a real intentionality to every weird decision it makes, and those decisions all pay off, even if it takes a meandering path to get to that payoff. It's purposeful television. Which is why (for now) I'm going to abide what the show is doing with Joel—for now. I would have been content to have had the Season One finale be the last we ever saw of him. But here he is back and whiny as ever, and his presence is the biggest liability in this season. The intent seems to be to give him something of a redemption arc after being such a total heel last season, and while that's interesting in theory, what this "redemption" actually boils down to is not giving him any sort of moral reckoning but instead making him more "marriageable" in that old, Jane-Austen sense—i.e. having him gain wealth so that he can "provide for his family" or some such nonsense. The fact that this seemingy ignores that the biggest problem with Joel's behavior was not his career stagnation or money problems but that he left his wife for his secretary. But... well, like I said, the show seems to know what it's doing, and maybe it's playing a long game here that's smarter than it seems. For now, though, he's reminding me a lot of Christopher from Gilmore Girls, which is a big red flag in this otherwise delightful season. Grade: B+
Music
The legendary hip-hop trio's sophomore release is an intentional subversion of De La Soul's feel-good-classic debut, 3 Feet High and Rising—if the dead flowers and broken pot on the album cover didn't clue you in, then certainly the music makes it clear that these guys are leaving the D.A.I.S.Y. Age behind. There are songs about drug addiction and abuse ("My Brother's a Basehead" and "Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa," respectively—both highlights on the album, too), and while the group maintains its sample-heavy approach to song structure, the results are decidedly less sunny. Then there are the skits, which bitterly mock "hardcore" hip-hop fans alongside De La Soul's previous fanbase. It's a sprawling, twisty album fragmented by this darkness, and the record is both intermittently compelling and quite a bitter pill. I can't blame them; to be hip-hop's ambassadors of peace and love is undoubtably wearying, but also, I can't help but prefer the fun times of 3 Feet High and Rising. Does that make me shallow? Grade: B+
I've only read If Beale Street very hastily and need to revisit it, but I can say that while the movie is extremely faithful to the parts it kept, it does cut the book heavily. So I would say the voiceover probably wasn't a case of "we have to do everything the book does," but a deliberate choice-- which actually worked well for me, although it's hard to explain why.
ReplyDeleteThe structure is also basically identical to the novel although, again, condensed quite a bit. I'm not sure what you mean by "elliptical, literary-novel storytelling"; to me there's nothing un-cinematic about telling a story in this style.
Totally agree about everything else. It's great.
I forgot to say, in case you're curious, I think there are basically two things that the movie added, and one that it noticeably changed the effect of. 1. The ending-- the book doesn't tell you what happens at all. 2. The cute bit with Fonny and Levy moving the imaginary appliances. 3. When Tish loses her virginity, Baldwin has her be extraordinarily impressed with how great it is, whereas Jenkins keeps it on a somewhat more realistic note (IMO) where she seems to be withholding judgment for now.
DeleteBy "literary-novel storytelling," I just meant the way that the movie often includes scenes that are their own little cul-de-sacs, not exactly advancing the plot but instead building toward a sort of thematic mosaic. For example, the lengthy scene with Brian Tyree Henry's character--it's a mostly self-contained little vignette that does little to advance the plot; its purpose is more connected to the development of the film's ideas regarding the African-American experience in relation to those in power, the physical and psychological effects of imprisonment, etc.
DeleteI guess you're right that there's nothing inherently un-cinematic about it, but it is a technique that I associate more with literature than with film, which is more often concerned with efficient, cause-effect storytelling.