Film Review | The Grain

I KNOW YOU GOT SOUL: ‘COLD SOULS’ REVIEW

Cold Souls

Written and directed by Sophie Barthes, Cold Souls is the story of the metaphysical and existential crisis of New York actor Paul Giamatti (playing himself). Following a quote from Descartes regarding the location of the soul, the film opens with an utterly convincing soliloquy from Giamatti rehearsing for his role as the titular character in Chekov’s Uncle Vanya for a Broadway production, which neatly conveys his central problem; he is becoming unable to separate himself from Vanya’s miseries emotionally. This well executed scene recalls Laura Dern’s excellent performance in Inland Empire, or Naomi Watts’ star turn in Mulholland Drive, somewhat misleadingly leaving the impression that the tone has been set for dialectic exploration of the borders of the psyche, or the meaning of identity.

The unlikely solution to Giamatti’s concerns seemingly come from an article in the New Yorker – soul storage. The growing (and unregulated) sector offers clients the opportunity to experience ‘lightness’, and even happiness, for a small fee, as their soul is extracted and then stored for them without them losing its particular benefits (in Rhode Island or, if you can bear it, New Jersey). Naturally ‘lightness’ leads to its own problems; Giamatti’s acting is unexpectedly affected, as is his ability to feel emotion, leaving him descending further into crisis before he is forced to confront the issues surrounding soul trafficking from Russia, borrowing others souls and the possibility that his soul is lost for good. The question ‘what is the soul?’ thus underpinning the increasingly, though not always, comedic proceedings.

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(500) DAYS OF SUMMER

(500) Days of Summer

(500) Days of Summer is the directorial debut of Marc Webb, previously most notable for his music videos which have including offerings for acts as diverse as Green Day, Miley Cyrus, My Chemical Romance, and the Backstreet Boys and will also be directing Pink Panther 2 (oh dear god!). Although that may seem like a worrying introduction (a little too reminiscent of McG who delivered us the tripe of Charlie’s Angels on the back of a similar CV) don’t be too concerned, because this is a more than capable debut.

The film itself aims to be an offbeat romantic comedy that subverts the genre, making it not just watchable, but actually enjoyable, and includes some of the staples of the recent ‘indie’ comedy (think Juno, Little Miss Sunshine) – not least a soundtrack that includes Regina Spektor, The Smiths, Pixies, Arab Strap, The Temper Trap, Feist, Spoon et al. The story, a semi-autobiographical script from Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, is of our protagonist Tom Hansen (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt or as I will refer to him, that kid from Third Rock from the Sun), who reflects on his relationship with what may be his first love, Summer Finn (indie darling Zooey Deschanel), and the 500 days for which they knew each other. One day Tom meets the new girl in the office and after some awkward exchanges decides she’s the one; what follows is a recount of the relationship we are all supposed to have had, the one that could have been, maybe should have been, but for some reason, it just didn‘t work. In terms of universal appeal, this concept certainly holds the key elements necessary.

The films centre piece is its non-chronological narrative, with the picture of their relationships built up through scenes that are introduced by a calendar telling you which of the 500 days it is, therefore you see the various highs juxtaposed with lows, and introductions placed in contrast to deeper understanding, and this is essentially what makes the film work. Each day feels framed as a chapter, able to stand by itself and add to aesthetic of the film, shunning the act system. In addition to its non-chronological format, it offers a mixed medium to frame the story, including narration (though this felt slightly jarring and at times misjudged), sections of animation, a song and dance number superbly executed (providing one of the films biggest laughs) and what verges on the protagonist talking directly to the camera, though the film is unwilling to fully commit in this area.

There is of course more to the film than the standard boy meets girl scenario; it aims to explore relationships (and our rose-tinted memories of them) immediately announcing that this is not a love story, but despite this, many of the norms of the genre are still incorporated (see Tom’s pals offering ‘comedy’ relief as is the norm in all teen/coming of age/rom-com films) . Tom is a hopeless romantic, a believer in destiny and fate, the one who over analyses and thinks about every nuance, while in contrast Summer is the sceptic, the one who believes no happiness can come from a long-term relationship, and laughs at the fancy of destiny. She is looking for something casual, he is head over heels. So in the films centre there is a fairly unsubtle gender shift, the inverse ideology of the Hollywood standard (and hardly post-feminist view) that the female protagonist must believe in true love, she is the one who over over analyses. It is a move that the director and writer maintain was not intentional despite being directly referred to in the film when Tom and Summer, in an early drunken meeting in a Karaoke Bar, are establishing these contrasting views of love when Toms friend Mackenzie (Geoffrey Arend) declares ‘I get it you’re a dude’ to Summer, or the moment (in the trailor below) when Summer states she is Sid and Tom is Nancy.

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JOHN HUGHES: A EULOGY – HOME ALONE REVISITED

The king of the happily-ever-after-rites-de-passage-teen-movie, John Hughes, is dead. And unlike the death of Michael Jackson, which seems to be raising ever more ludicrous questions, there is really only one question to ask concerning Hughes: what was his greatest film?

Undoubtedly there are a number of great titles to choose from, but I’d like to stake a claim for a film that probably isn’t very high up on many peoples’ greatest ever Hughes films list. That film is Home Alone. Now, there are as many reasons to dislike this film as there are to like it. For every positive attribute – for every genuinely funny moment or great scene, there is a cringe-worthy slab of over-sentimental Americana. Ultimately though, this film, now twenty years old, is a success because of the three Johns – Hughes, who wrote it; Williams, who wrote the music; and Candy, who quite spectacularly steals the show in his handful of scenes.

Reason number one why this film isn’t perhaps top dog in the Hughes pantheon: Hughes didn’t direct it. When you think about the Holy Trinity of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (all of which Hughes wrote and directed) they have a distinct, one-man’s-vision, feel to them. It is clear that Hughes has written the lines, knows exactly how they should be delivered and tells the actors how to deliver them. Home Alone (in places) doesn’t have quite that same stylistic consistency and unmistakable John Hughes feel to it. However, it’s always worth remembering your target audience, something Hughes did in this film by appointing Chris Columbus as director. Columbus is a kids’ film director par excellence; before Home Alone, he’d had sizeable successes with The Goonies and Gremlins and has since cemented that reputation with the first two Harry Potter films. Had Home Alone been directed in the manner of The Breakfast Club, some of the endearing childishness of the film would most likely have been lost.

This brings us to the biggest potential problem with the film – its surface of saccharine, childish commerciality. However, looked at a bit deeper, Home Alone can be interpreted as a deliberate attempt at smashing to smithereens all the traditional hallmarks of the family holiday film; in HA the moral message is not so much spelled out for the audience as ceremonially dumped over them with a cement mixer. Read the rest of this entry »

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK AND YOUTH

Synechdoche, New York

Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut has met with some mixed responses. For every critic praising it, there is one whose reaction has been one of bafflement. Kaufman, who has the (possibly unique) position of being a script writer as famous as half of the directors in Hollywood, has followed up his collaborations with Spike Jonze on ‘Being John Malkovich’ and ‘Adaptation’, as well as the Oscar winning Michel Gondry collaboration ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’, with a film that again embraces an unconventional narrative.

Synecdoche, New York[1] is the story of Caden Coutard[2] (played impeccably by Philip Seymour Hoffman) a regional theatre director struggling with his life and relationships (as well as the belief he is will die imminently). He receives a MacArthur ‘Genius’ grant and chooses to produce a work that will finally realize his desire to be brutally honest, and in which he can immerse himself in an attempt to provide authenticity. He gathers his cast in a hangar in New York, and starts his production as a recreation of the surrounding city, instructing his cast to re-enact the mundane, quotidian details of life as he has experienced it. As time goes on, the play is increasingly populated with actors playing their real life counter parts, including Caden himself, and his ‘life’ begins to slowly disintegrate. His relationships fall apart as his body gradually begins to shut down as a result of an unspecified disease, increasingly burdened by the weight of his attempt to present truth and his own life failings.

The experience of watching Synecdoche, New York reminded me, in a number of ways, of J.M. Coetzee’s semi-autobiographical novel Youth, and the comparison is an interesting, illuminating one. In S,NY Kaufman has made a creative leap forward: his quintessential concentration on neuroses, and his preoccupation with the creative process bizarrely and multifariously refracted in his narratives is still present, but here this tendency is combined with a pathos and a sense of the struggle to carry the weight of searching after purpose and accomplishment, with the constant prevailing threat of death and mortality, and ultimately Kaufman succeeds in attaining to a depth of personal emotion that many thought were lacking from his previous efforts.

Youth is far removed from S,NY in many respects, but what links the two works is the neo-existentialist focus on their protagonists’ quest for meaning in their lives, in their art, the evocation of that indescribable feeling that you are slowly wasting your life, never to be productive, or creative, or anything you ever believed you could be. They are both quests for identity, for truth, for purpose. The feeling of yearning for achievement, worn down by the weight of ambition, whilst the real world gradually recedes into the distance pervades both works, and they are both centred on one man’s perspective.

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GORDON GEKKO SAYS ‘GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN”

Get Rich or Die Tryin

It is easy to dismiss the 2005 Curtis Jackson film vehicle as another value-less part of the money-generating automaton that 50 Cent became (if he was ever anything else). However, ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’’ might deserve a very prompt re-assessment in light of current events.

Apart from defying most of the basic rules of good cinema and storytelling in general, it does offer some sort of reflection of popular culture in the last ten years and therefore some of the ideas that have gained currency in society as a whole, not least the self-centred short sightedness of personal greed and unrestrained capitalism.

With reports of the current financial crisis being rammed down our throats on a daily basis there have been calls for a new Gordon Gekko, the Michael Douglas character from Oliver Stone’s eighties classic Wall Street. This has even resulted in the news that a Wall Street sequel is lined up so we can all utter the phrase “greed, for lack of a better word, is good” in a disparaging contemporary way at these bastard bankers and politicians. However, we seem to have missed the fact that a film that better summed up these times has already been made. Get Rich or Die Tryin’ was Wall Street 2, and for a new slogan to rival ‘greed is good’ just look at the bloody title. 50 Cent’s film neatly bundles all of our misplaced values into a tidy little package. We haven’t been seeking intrinsic value, only the monetary value we have created, and a generation of people aspire to nothing more than money. The archetypical hero du jour is, or at least should be, good old Fiddy, who in his biopic tells us how he got rich, while caring about very little else, and lacking any real discernible talent. Just don’t blame him, blame yourself for funding him.

The film tries to follow that all-too-familiar rags to riches storyline, popular since at least as far back as Dickens, coupled with all the usual clichés prevalent in all the weak hip hop biopics and those films that I will call ‘Nouvelle Vague Blaxploitation’ (in an effort to make myself sound intelligent; you know, young man struggling in the ghetto/it’s a hard knock life).

A young Curtis Jackson, who is fatherless, which is apparently the reason for his later misdemeanors, loses his mother, a part time prostitute/crack head/crack dealer/hoe bag. He attends the funeral. He does not cry. Curtis is then shipped off to live with his blue collar grandparents before falling into a life of gangs and street crime (although it just looks like petty drug deals to me). Understandably he pursues this life initially to fund the purchase of new trainers that he really really wants. He then embarks on a life of blow, money and gang rivalries. He gets shot lots of times. He does cry. He then fulfills his (apparently long standing) dream of becoming an MC and somewhere in the middle he gets a girl (by making a mix tape and rapping about ‘cuming in her hair’) and has a kid. There’s some internal gang politics in the mix as well.
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