Friday, September 8, 2017

Logan Lucky

Within Logan Lucky the film itself gives you the most succinct description of what it is: Ocean's Seven-Eleven. Steven Soderbergh returns to the comedy heist genre replacing Las Vegas with West Virginia, the equivalent of a casino on boxing night being a big Nascar race at a track, and instead of a swanky pair of slick criminals we have a couple of lovable, white-trash brothers who you should not underestimate. While not as innovative and novel in style as his original foray into this type of movie, I'm glad Soderberg's back with Logan Lucky.

One of the things I think Lucky might have over Ocean's 11 are the main performances, though not by much. Clooney and Pitt are undeniable talents, and the ensemble of the Ocean's films made those instant classics. Here the key players really stand out, as well. I think a big part of it is the innocence Adam Driver and Channing Tatum bring respectively to the roles of Clyde and Jimmy Logan, a pair of brothers from a family everyone says is cursed. After losing his job Jimmy is fed up and frustrated as he tries to make ends meet enough to be able to spend time with his little daughter every other weekend, fearful that the influence of his ex-wife (Katie Holmes) and her wealthy husband are having on her. Apparently not surprised by his brother's ideas, Clyde settles in to hear Jimmy out on his hair-brained idea. They both use the southern accent to their benefit, drawing you into their welcoming, unassuming demeanor. They're teachable even as they have some secrets and tricks up their sleeve that, much like the Ocean's trilogy before, you don't get the full scope of until the end. While any heist movie certainly has to have some amazing set-pieces and a keen ability for misdirection, it is a good sign that you can enjoy the movie even if you don't fully understand what happens at the climax.



While certainly not an impeccable motion picture, Logan Lucky  packs a punch with its comedy. Tatum plays the straight man and while his little girl is sweet, Driver as Clyde is a relief with his dry sensitivity, and the prosthetic arm is used to full effect. At the end you may not wholly understand every aspect of the job but the laughs are what keep you interested in what is a surprisingly breezy 2 hours. A lot of fun characters fill out the gang but especially delightful is Daniel Craig as Joe Bang, along with his two less-than-bright younger siblings. The brothers require a moral justification before they can commit a crime, though any novice in the art of spin should be able to concoct a noble cause simple enough to get these guys on board. Riley Keough rounds out the main players as Tatum's & Driver's kid sister, on board to break the family's run of luck. On the villain side, Dwight Yoakam as a corruptible prison warden and Hillary Swank as a silently terrifying FBI agent both dig into their roles, obviously enjoying themselves.



Soderbergh has famously been in "retirement" from filmmaking. Really it was a hiatus and he has been very busy with other things like TV (The Knick) and any number of other projects which you can read about on his website. The funny thing is that it's only been four years since his last directorial feature, 2013's HBO film Behind The Candelabra. That's the normal lag-time between projects for many directors but Soderbergh has always been efficient and prolific. When he won his Oscar for Best Directing for Traffic he had double the chances of winning as he was also nominated for Erin Brokovich the same year. He's said that he gets his work ethic from his father and his artistic interests from his mother. That's the perfect combination for a director, especially if you're a Hollywood studio exec. Except the difficulties and dwindling resources of that business are what lead to his stepping away. Hopefully at this point he's come to peace with that and found a way to do it that means we'll get more from him sooner rather than later.

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Cameraperson


Cameraperson is a memoir film from documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson. She took moments from throughout her 25 years behind the camera for other people's films and created this movie that summarizes her experience, using her visual perspective to talk about who she is and how she sees life. Rather than a linear storyline, the film organizes scenes around themes that express the range of joy and pain unique to her job and life. Just as a camerperson can choose exactly where to focus on an image to say something without words, Cameraperson uses a lifetime of filming to say something unique and beautiful without having to actually say anything at all.

Like so many of the best documentaries, this is a personal film. What makes this unique is that Johnson has these vignettes recorded from throughout her career where she is focusing on something outside of herself that when you pull together, using specific pieces, tell a lot about who she is. Johnson uses her own natural visual eye - always through her camera - to tell the story on its own without any direct narrative or description. She had originally created a more direct cut with voiceovers, focusing on the most traumatic and moving things she's captured. Eventually, though, Johnson and her team relied on the visuals to speak for themselves, using shots and scenes, juxtaposed in meaningful ways, to create a deeper meaning than you could ever really explain using words. More importantly is how the little bits they choose to use key into who she is without showing her at all.

Nels Bangerter, Editor for Cameraperson, was tasked with starting the process anew a few years into the project by taking several disk drives' worth of video and paring it down to tell a story. Rather than show some of the most objectively significant or traumatic things she'd shot, he focused specifically on the moments where we are aware of her presence, though rarely when we see her onscreen. Normally, a camerperson's directive is to go unnoticed, allowing the subject to be the focus rather than the person behind the camera. He said, "We began to realize that these tiny moments on the edges of other films is where her presence comes from...In essence we were making a very thoughtful, emotional, and revealing outtake reel." The mechanism by which this is done is often simple yet ingenious, like the short montage of many quick moments of Johnson walking with a camera, often backwards, and attempting to follow one or more subjects. Or a supercut of the moments where people realize they're being filmed. The observations are often weightier and become more personal as the movie progresses, her mother's experience with Alzheimer's and then eventual death playing a big role.

Using the visuals to tell the story leaves a bit more mystery in the film and allows us as the audience to arrive at conclusions on our own. At times Johnson uses the voices of her own subjects to comment on and share her feelings. For example, during a heart-wrenching scene in a Nigerian hospital we spend a few minutes watching a midwife work with a baby struggling to breathe. We then cut to an entirely separate sequence, distinct in date and time, of a man reflecting on having relived an intense moment of his past. He comments on how he can feel that emotion again so readily when he's not expecting it. While this is interesting, it becomes clear why we're watching it when we jump directly back to the hospital in Nigeria. Johnson is using his words to express how she feels watching and thinking about that baby and that hospital. And then, in the more meta context of Cameraperson, how these stories and experiences affect her life and stick with her. By showing us these principles, rather than telling us, we feel what she feels more readily just as we see what she sees through the camera. It's a brilliant way to communicate, even more so because when we as the audience make the realization on our own we may even jump to our own personal experiences and connect the idea directly to our own reality. And that's how storytelling like this can make an impact.

Friday, August 25, 2017

Pather Panchali

Pather Panchali, translated as song for the little road, is a simple, heartbreaking story of a poor Bengali family. Like most families, money is their biggest concern, although the mother and father seem to feel differently as to what degree. The mother is mostly left alone to care for her daughter, son, and an old aunt. She feels the pains of their poverty most potently as her husband, a self-declared poet whose ideas rarely come to fruition, is often gone for weeks at a time or more looking for work. Although this is the first in what became known as the Apu trilogy following the life of the young boy, in this film he is mostly observer of the women around him who struggle to live together. They clash in the natural ways that young girls often do with their mothers or a woman might with extended family living as not-so-welcome house guests. There are moments of relief along with some moments of terrible tragedy. These are problems faced regularly by families in almost any culture but here the consequences are, at times, more severe.



Along with displaying the reality of the relatable drama of life, director Satyajit Ray takes the time to explore and follow the digressions of life that always surround us, even amidst turmoil. Siblings argue constantly but just as easily reconcile and play. Neighbors and friends stop by and help but also add obstacles and make demands. The camera is especially descriptive as it focuses on small details, both mundane and divine. He's not afraid to sit and watch insects on the surface of the water or a pond of water lilies. Whether in the home or out in the jungle as children play, it's all very natural. The eye for beautiful frames is a great example of raw talent combined with beginner's luck and a clear purpose overcoming a complete lack of experience on the part of almost all the cast and crew. Although he's not as central to the drama, the bright-eyed boy Apu reminds us that children aren't fully aware of the extenuating circumstances that make up their lives and are always just themselves, finding it as easy to complain as to forgive.



It often happens that when you experience something personally groundbreaking that's contemporary to you, you imagine it's ideas are novel and innovative. Then, as you go through life you realize an earlier work did it first and better and your respect for that initial artifact diminishes in accomplishment, if not in its personal impact: "There is nothing new under the sun." An example of this is the Charlie Kaufman-written film Adaptation, directed by Spike Jonze. The movie is the story of itself. It follows its own screenwriter attempting to adapt a nonfiction memoir on orchid thieves for the big screen. As you watch you feel it is being written and produced before your eyes. Years later, in making my way through come of the cinema greats I would come to watch Fellini's masterpiece 8 1/2, a story of an acclaimed director attempting to come up with and produce his next feature only to end up creating a movie about the process itself. I learned Fellini did it first and best. This is all a meandering way to say that Ray's debut film Pather Panchali is the spiritual ancestor to Richard Linklater's longsuffering 2012 film Boyhood. Although I love that film, as with Fellini, Ray did it first and best.


This film, while not purposefully ambitious to the degree that Linklater's 12 year-long production was, it's struggles to get financing coming in starts and stops meant filming took place over three years. This meant big risks in relying on key cast members to be continually available, especially those so young and old as some of the key players here. More importantly than the logistics, though, Pather Panchali is similar in how sits in the life of a family. I laughed as the wife mentions home repairs that keep getting pushed back while the husband requests she look at life more positively even as he ignores the problems he's avoiding. The results of his procrastination have some devastating effects. But many of these scenes ring quite true to some that have played out in my own home. Undoubtedly some aspect of this movie will do the same for you.

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

The language of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a bittersweet tale of love, rich with 1950's & 1960's style and color. It is most recognized for its innovation: every line of dialogue is sung. While that is novel, and was certainly surprising in 1964 when it debuted, I think there's more behind its legacy. While so completely French, director Jacque Demy's vision is remembered and rewatched the world over. That's because it creates a new language melding film and music that transports the audience for a more direct emotionally moving experience.

One of the things about speaking in a new language is that you are released from your inhibitions. When I served as a missionary in Mexico for two years the first big challenge I had to overcome was, of course, speaking Spanish. I wasn't fluent and even after a solid two months of intensive language preparation, I still was only at a basic high school level. When I arrived in the country, however, I was paired with a native speaker that knew no English. And so with complete immersion (all I did all day was walk around and talk to people) I was soon dreaming in Spanish. That's when I found I began to speak more openly about emotions and feelings, both in what I shared and in what I asked about. It's a more direct, less complicated language and I had none of the social training that would've taught me to cringe at a curse word or shy away from direct expression.




Watching The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a film where 100% of the lines are sung, was a similar language-learning experience. My impression of the singing style was awkward, at first. I don't know French so one issue is that I initially struggled trying to fit the English subtitles somewhere into the music. There's a learning curve that comes through the length of the film. What seemed strange at first and without melody, turned into a new dialect, of sorts, with an underlying bit of fantasy and a more direct emotional connection. As I succumbed to the constraints and rules of this mode of expression and stopped looking for the old musical language I knew, I began to really enjoy it.

The singing is sweet but the actors aren't virtuosos. There is none of the showboating of the big Hollywood musicals of the era. Demy reasoned that in traditional musicals you have starts and stops of the story with a cycle of exposition, dialogue, then song, then the story continues until it stops for another song, and so on. His goal was to create a musical atmosphere that flows continuously throughout the film's running time. While I still love the bombastic showtune-style of the greatest musicals like Singing In The Rain, Umbrellas uses music in a different way. It is the more direct influence of the recent hit La La Land, so if you liked that and want more or it didn't fully connect and you want to understand where it's coming from, watch this 50 year old predecessor that broke that ground first.



Umbrellas is fund of beautiful melodies and musical lines, but there is no delineation between separate songs. Instead it is one continuous musical experience. Demy and composer Michel LeGrand literally sat down at a piano with the screenplay and a blank sheet of music paper side by side and went through, page by page, adding notes to the written lines. In an interview, LeGrand admitted to struggling through the process. A key breakthrough came as a bit of inspiration when they translated the natural timbre of the spoken line for a scene, keeping the same rhythmic melody. That became the one truly memorable musical theme from the film, and the rest followed. The core meaning of the words and action are paired with the emotional message of the music. For me, the effect took root and started to swell as the story progressed. And yes, there is a story. It's about young love, loss, and the path that life leads. It's almost a "tale as old as time."

Thursday, February 23, 2017

Oscars Week: Manchester By The Sea

The reality is that death comes and we should all be expecting it. Except that it happens so rarely and so we become so far-removed from it. That's not true for everyone across the world, of course, and for Lee Chandler (played by Casey Affleck in an Oscar-nominated performance) it may seem to happen a bit more often. In Manchester By The Sea we watch this character face not only the death of his brother, resulting in his inheriting guardianship of his 17 year old nephew, but also a more intimate tragedy from years before. It is this earlier horror that really hangs over everything happening in the real-time of the film and which underlines Lee's grief. The film uses these situations to really examine the reality of death from the perspective of those left living.

And that's what Manchester By The Sea does so well. It takes a look at those moments around the death of loved ones that, when you imagine them happening to yourself, make you say, "I don't know what I'd do." This film sits in those periods of time seconds, hours, days, weeks, months, and years after the unimaginable happens. It's not a film with emotional grandstanding or heavy on the tears. Instead it is like a real-life guide of what to do when someone close to you dies. There's a list of things to take care of and Lee is too busy getting to the business of hospital paperwork, wills, and funeral arrangements to face the fact that a person that was there is now gone.

Because, at least according to this film, there are a lot of logistics and worldly affairs to take care of right after someone dies. Sure, we all know this, but who really knows the right thing to do in those moments? How do you negotiate funeral prices and make life choices with long-term impact in a state of arrested grief? Well those that have been through it know what they did and Manchester By The Sea seems to have been crafted by someone who has been through that and knows those struggles.

Kenneth Lonergan, who wrote and directed the picture, relieves the audience from having to face the overdone, melodramatic, and tedious scenes you expect but that, thankfully, never actually come. Don't get me wrong, there are some heart-wrenching scenes in this film. A lot of pain is communicated, but there's growth and understanding as well. Lee Chandler was a loving and happy husband and father before he went through what he did and the frustration of dealing with tragedy takes its toll, always bubbling below the calm yet hostile surface and manifesting itself with random angry punches.

Lucas Hedges plays Patrick, the surviving son of Lee's brother Jon, and received an Oscar nomination for the role. He delivers a take on how a millenial teenager might react to what is a not wholly unexpected death - his dad was known to have congenital heart disease and had been in the hospital several times before. I wondered if it was unrealistic how easily he seems to take the news and keep a sense of humor, but in time you see what he goes through.

The uncle-nephew relationship takes center stage as it explores a situation where there's love but also struggle. Kyle Chandler plays the father and has plenty of screen time in flashbacks which come and go quite easily to the point that they don't really feel like flashbacks at all. My one regret for this movie is that while Chandler does get dialogue, he's a bit more of an ancillary presence. Maybe that's because I remember him affectionately as Coach Eric Taylor from Friday Night Lights and here he plays a sort of version of that character with his matter-of-fact, let's-get-moving approach to adversity.

Rounding out the cast is a lovely Michelle Williams performance and I certainly wouldn't have minded to see more of her character's journey and relationship with Lee. A touching random encounter on the street near the end of the film underlines what Lee hasn't yet fully faced and why his improving relationship with his nephew Patrick benefits from mutual understanding. Death is a permanent part of life and it can't be forgotten.

Manchester By The Sea is currently available for rent or purchase through iTunes & Amazon.

Friday, January 6, 2017

Sing Street

John Carney drew a lot of attention when his small, very low-budget film Once made a splash at Sundance several years ago. It shot him to prominence, at least in the indie-film world and lead to his first bigger-budget movie, Begin Again, which brought with it some star power in Keira Knightly, Mark Ruffalo, and Adam Levine. Now in his third outing, Carney gets even better with the warm and fun film Sing Street. If you've ever wanted to bottle-up the essence of positive youthful possibility and fearlessness, mixed with mid-1980's music culture, then look no further.

Carney has made himself the resident expert of a certain subgenre of musical film using the possibility of music as a career to therapeutically tackle and trascend whatever difficult situations life throws at you. Music is sound-in-motion, and paired with the medium of film--or pictures-in-motion--has been an exciting combination since it was first conceived. Music videos, while becoming a distinct short-form art medium delivering pop culture at scale through MTV in the 80's, have always been a part of film since sound was incorporated in some way. While silent film had a different soundtrack every time it played depending on who your house organist was, that flexibility allowed it to be always changing. The moment sound was added to movies music came right along (The Jazz Singer, 1927). In fact, one of the most timeless movies of all time, Singin In The Rain, is about the story of sound and music in film. While true musicals are few and far between nowadays (La La Land just stole our hearts) music in film as both a storytelling tool and as a narrative subject has never been better.

Sing Street takes this to the limit with it's surprisingly moving storyline about a young man and woman in Ireland in the 80's. The economic crisis there is dire and families are suffering. Conor Lawlor, our protagonist, is forced to attend a lower-class school as his parents work through marital and financial troubles. What I love most about Conor is that even as a generally introverted character, he has bravado in the moments that count and through that he becomes an unexpected leader. When he sees a pretty girl on the stoop across from his new school he builds the courage to talk to her and then, in a moment of desperation, he lies that he has a band and that she'd be good in their new video. As he walks away after having successfully gotten her number he hastily whispers to his friend, "We need to form a band." He's good at making it up as he goes along in the fake it till you make it category.


The core of Conor's journey in the film is his relationships with the girl, Raphina, and his brother. In both of them he sees a level of experience and worldliness that he seeks after while both learn unexpected lessons from his less-cynical and free spirit. The relationship with his older brother, Brendan, is one of the sweetest and most encouraging parts of the movie. How Brendan chooses to assist Conor in freeing himself from the confines of their complicated home life is one of the greatly nuanced and mature aspects of the story. He helps Connor see his parents from a more adult point-of-view that both helps him appreciate their struggles and recognize their flaws. Brendan also tells him step by step what he needs to do if he's going to be successful in using music to get girls. He asks, "You want to have actual sexual intercourse, right?" Connor is confused, "Yeah. Wait, what?". "The girl, it's all about the girl, isn't it?" Brendan asks. Conor obviously hadn't quite fully considered his more innocent intentions. This is a pretty basic part of the older brother job description (and probably why I never had any luck in that area in high school, not having any brothers).

One of the continual joys of the film is the many ways creativity and song-writing become the choice Connor uses to deal with a situation. Whether he's anxious to impress a girl, angry at all the oppressive forces at school, stressed about his family situation, deliriously happy, or working through any other number of things, he uses music as a positive tool to process what he's feeling. And we benefit. Songwriting team Carney and Gary Clark channel the 80's feel but with a modern sensitivity that makes the original songs instantly lovable. After watching Sing Street I went right out and bought the soundtrack. While it includes several of the genuine 80's songs used throughout the movie from groups like Duran Duran and Motorhead, I skip over those and go straight for the originals. Carney prioritized casting actual musicians so the group of kids are more genuine in their performances. They sound great.


Within the film, the songwriting scenes are some of the most enjoyable to watch. There's the typical "get the band together" sequence where Conor and his new friend Mark round up all the musicians they know to create a ragtag group. Mark is the resident "real" musician and seems to know how to play every instrument under the sun. He becomes Conor's song-writing partner. By the end of the film you get excited every time Conor shows up at Mark's door to write a song. In a similar fashion to the scene in Begin Again where Mark Ruffalo's character envisions a full band accompanying Keira Knightley's solo acoustic performance, we'll see a time lapse of the writing of a song as you hear it with new band members joining in at key points as it develops. And combining Carney's own loves for both film and music, the music video sequences are especially joyful and hilariously cheesy.

While I've heard others disparage the ending of Sing Street, I don't know what they see. Without giving it away, the very final scenes, accompanied by a great song sung by Adam Levine (and co-written by Levin, Carney, and Once's Glen Hansard), it captures symbolically the hope and uncertainty of youth and someone determined to give his dream a chance when the odds are slim. It is the emotional climax, well-earned from the depth of relationships and struggle that Conor experiences throughout the film's story centered on both romantic and brotherly love.

Streaming now on Netflix