Very minor Woody Allen, to say the least. Absurd ending united Colin Firth and Emma Stone characters, although there was no reason to think they were meant for each other, or would last more than a few weeks in marriage. Colin Firth was either miscast or misdirected; in any case he was unconvincing and not much fun to watch.
Wonderful acting by Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig conveys the closeness of twins. Everyday nature of the story was refreshing, but it also meant plot ran out of steam well before the ending. Still, a fine effort.
Perhaps this was Canada’s version of Magic Realism, or perhaps it was cinema-by-collage. However it can be described, it certainly was bizarre. Start with the casting of Jake Gyllenhaal, who was convincing neither as a college history professor nor as his more financially successful doppelganger. Instead of an attempt at reality, I had the feeling I was watching an allusion to another movie – just as the opening scene, unconnected to anything, reminded me of Eyes Wide Shut, the helmeted motorcycle rider reminded me of David Cronenberg’s The Fly, the never-used key in the envelope reminded me of a Hitchcock McGuffin, and everything reminded me of David Lynch. The soundtrack score was so creepy and prominent, there was no need for the actors to convey or evoke emotions. I will say that I, like the entire Film Society audience, was riveted, in the expectation that all would be explained. Nothing was, but at least in searching for a possible explanation (of anything), we had been made to think. [Smoking – 2; early and extraneous]
Expecting an Oscar-worthy, country-music-tinged dose of European realism, I found myself watching a 7-year-old girl die of cancer, her father lose his mind and her mother commit suicide. Where was the redeeming art? Despite their longing looks, there was a strange lack of chemistry between the lovers, and the director constantly bounced back-and-forth between the past and present to artificially manufacture some depth that wasn’t there. By movie’s end, instead of the story’s coming together, it had shot off in three or four different directions and thudded off the rails. [Smoking – 2]
Notes from the Tribute Evenings at the 2014 Santa Barbara International Film Festival
January 30, David O. Russell: I didn’t “get” I Heart Huckabees when it came out, and apparently I wasn’t alone. David O. Russell seemed almost willing to disown it, saying his life was at a bad point when he directed it and he quickly picked up on Roger Durling’s lukewarm praise for it. The clip of Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin was the bad outlier of the evening, and the best that could be said was that it was, in some unspecified way, a necessary prelude to the much better work that followed.
As for that better work, Durling grouped The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle as a related trilogy about second chances in American life. Be that as it may, the grouping reinforced the lukewarm reaction I had to Hustle: I tingled with electricity at the clips from the first two, but felt nothing from the third; it simply did not make the same emotional connection. Jennifer Lawrence was hysterical in Hustle, but in Silver Linings she was magnetic.
February 6, DiCaprio: As big as the SBIFF has become, one is reminded by nights like this of the still-amateurish level of the undertaking. The first setback for the Tributes was Emma Thompson’s canceling out of her “Modern Master Award” on the final night. I suspect that when she failed to get an Oscar nomination for Saving Mr. Banks she decided to skip the awards season in California altogether and lined up an acting job at home. Santa Barbara profits from its proximity to Hollywood, but it isn’t special enough to bring in a star by itself. Tuesday was an even bigger disappointment. After we were seated for the Virtuosos Award night, we were told from the stage that three of the seven honorees were “working” and couldn’t make it. Without Daniel Bruhl, Eve Exarchapolous and Oscar Isaac the evening lost much of its luster. Michael B. Jordan, Brie Larson, Jared Leto and June Squibb were appealing and convivial, but their respective bodies of work were meager and the evening left us looking for more. Tonight, the problem was the opposite: Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese showed up, but so did many more pass holders than anticipated, with the result that at least 100 people who had purchased tickets for the event were turned away. Including us. By allowing pass holders to show up and take a seat, without reservations, the Festival doesn’t know how many tickets it can sell. The safer, more professional route would be to sell fewer advance tickets and then fill the theater with rush tickets once it can be determined how many seats are left. The current system, which the festival cel admitted was “a crapshoot,” detracts some luster from the operation.
February 7, Robert Redford: We arrived earlier for tonight’s sold-out event, with borrowed passes, to avoid a repeat of last night’s shutout. Even so, the main hall was full and we were relegated to the balcony, which is okay if you’re on an aisle, as we were. When it started, Redford made the wait worthwhile. He was forthcoming, charming, humble, insightful, and above all seemed glad to be here. At 77, he neither looked nor sounded a day over 60. The clips from his iconic films of the ’70s brought back memories, but mainly they were opportunities to bask in his transcendent smile. Young, middle-aged, slightly older, he looked fabulous. The final highlight was an emotional Roger Durling saying that Redford had asked that he, Roger, be his trophy presenter. It was perfect: not only would any other presenter have paled in comparison to Redford, but by implicitly acknowledging Durling as a fellow festival director, it elevated the entire SBIFF.
February 8, Bruce Dern: We got free tickets from the DiCaprio fiasco, we had the night free from the Thompson cancellation, and we were downtown anyway from the SBMA cocktail party, so why not go see the final tribute, to Bruce Dern. Of course, there is the issue of the half-hour wait for the event to begin, another problem the festival should address. It is one thing if the crowd outside demands the star’s attention and she is late coming into the theater, but tonight the theater was half-full, there was no crowd outside and things could have started at 8:15 without any problem. Unlike, say, New York, the Santa Barbara crowd is docile and uncomplaining and, as Siri pointed out, everyone has a cell phone to play with in the meantime. Dern himself was good company. He didn’t have the starring roles of Redford, DiCaprio or Blanchett – the year’s other honorees – but he made something of being “the third cowboy on the right.” He had a story for every movie clip, some more interesting than others, but he more than held up his end of the bargain.
February 8, Writers Panel: By far my favorite event each year, the writers panel features five articulate, usually humorous screenwriters who seem to enjoy each other’s company. Best of all, they all seem to realize this is probably their only time on this stage, and they feel lucky, not entitled. Rather amazingly, this year’s panel featured every one of the Oscar nominees, and their experiences ranged from Bob Nelson (Nebraska), who wrote his first screenplay at 45, to Eric Singer (American Hustle), who admitted, this is the only thing he knows how to do. Most charming was Craig Borten (Dallas Buyers’ Club), who smiled readily at all his colleague’s jokes and had had to wait 20 years for his film to be made. What impressed me the most was just how hard it was to get a film made – and these were all really good films. As Eric Singer said, when everything comes together, it’s like catching lightning in a bottle.
This had everything Quentin Tarantino could want in a movie – suspense, outrageous gore, great characters and humor everywhere – which is presumably why he calls it the best movie of the year. The plot contains just enough ambiguity to keep you guessing, and the shocker of an ending either explains it all or leaves you wanting to ask someone, what just happened? The humorous bits – the villain’s mother calls on his cell phone just as he is about to pull off his victim’s toenails – balance the tension but don’t relieve it. We are told very little about the characters, but we quickly recognize their distinct personalities. And best of all, said the man next to me in the men’s room, the bad guy looked just like Dick Cheney. (How much are foreign films – this one is Israeli – helped by having actors we’ve never seen before, in other roles?)
I can’t think of a single credible, or logical, scene in the entire movie. So, okay, take it on its own absurdist terms, and it was pretty funny. The trouble, though, for me at least, was that this was based on real events and real people and a real business, which made it hard to accept it as fantasy. This was far and away the most I’ve like Leo DiCaprio in a movie, and Jonah Hill, Jean DuJardin and Kyle Chandler were comparably good. Many others were cardboard cutouts, which is all that was required of them, I guess. At the end, after almost three hours of leisurely pace, watching strippers, doing drugs, the most psychologically interesting developments are presented bang-bang-bang in confusing manner, a finally unconvincing nod to events as they actually happened.
After five years of faithful attendance at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival I am prepared to let it pass me by this year. Part of the reason is the lackluster quality of the films I have seen the last two years. For several years, festival entries dotted, and even topped, my Top Ten lists; the last two years, nada. Some films, like the one about the Chinese bicyclist, have been excruciatingly bad. Furthermore, if there is a film that people generally rave about, there’s a good chance that it will open commercially: this certainly was the case in 2013, as I caught Caesar Must Die (excellent), The Sapphires (mediocre) and Hannah Arendt (disappointing) in the months that followed.
Second is the experience itself. Why show up an hour early to get a number, sit in a grubby theater (Metro 4) in a packed house, often in the front row or two, and in place of trailers have to watch the same tired Film Festival lead-in? Even worse are Opening and Closing Nights, when the line at the Arlington snakes around the block, all for a movie that, if good, you will be able to walk into with no wait a month or three later. The price may not be significant, but it, too, doesn’t favorably compare to films in commercial release.
I like the buzz, it’s good for the community, it can be fun running into people and talking to strangers in line, and I may miss the scene. But for one year, I will see if I can do without it.
A movie director’s first obligation to his audience is to provide appealing, or at least interesting, characters. Not far down the list, however, is providing dialogue that the audience can understand. I don’t want to sit there thinking, what did he say? – even if, as in this movie, it probably doesn’t matter. (If I want to strain my auditory faculties, I can go to the theater.) The combination of Texas accents, taciturn roles and muddled sound-mixing left us wondering what Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara were saying, although Mara’s wonderfully expressive face made up for a lot. Terence Malick’s Badlands is the obvious precursor, and there were not a lot of surprises along the way, but the mood and hardscrabble atmosphere enveloped and washed over us. We knew Casey Affleck’s character would not come to a good end, but when that end came, it felt real and honest.
The power and brilliance of Shakespeare has never, for me, shone more brightly than in this semi-documentary of a prison production of Julias Caesar. Italian criminals brought a peculiar resonance to the depiction of Roman senators, and the fact that they looked like people I know (Richard Blake as Cassius?) made the message even more timeless and universal. What stood out were Shakespeare’s words and psychological insights. The dialogue and scenes that weren’t from the play came across as banal, which only made Shakespeare’s contribution stand out all the more. This stands alongside Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus as the best modern Shakespeare I have come across.
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