A very good story told well, not biting off too much or chewing anything too hard. Seemingly filmed in brown-and-white, the film captured a moment in our nation’s history that is worth preserving and thinking about, raising questions of what is different 50 years later and what isn’t. The acting was excellent – including Oprah – and if things seemed slow or occasionally hard to see, the gravity of events always kept our attention.
If a little Matthew McConaughey – as, say, in Mud – goes a long way, more than two hours of him saving the human species is a very long trip. Anne Hathaway is more to my liking, but like Sandra Bullock in Gravity she was quite buttoned up. “Interstellar” seemed to refer to all the stars that were assembled for even bit parts: beyond the three names above the title, we were treated to Michael Caine, Matt Damon (miscast), Casey Affleck, Ellen Burstyn, , David Oyelowo, John Lithgow – even my old favorite, William Devane (although I have no recollection of his role). Almost none created a character beyond their persona, which was partly due to the comic-book nature of the script. The conclusion, instead of bringing things together, was one big contradiction, which kept me from thinking too seriously about the movie, if I had been inclined to in the first place.
This was a schizophrenic film: was it about Alan Turing’s cracking the Nazis’ Enigma code, or was it about Britain’s cruel criminalization of homosexuality? The film’s scenes jockeyed back and forth, up to and including the closing credits. Fortunately, both stories were quite good, although my two biggest reservations sprung from the latter: Benedict Cumberbatch’s excellent acting went over the top in his final scene with Keira Knightley, and the boy Turing was too adorable to justify being picked on so brutally. My other complaint relates to the film’s trailer, which we saw a good half-dozen times: every one of the best lines, and I do mean every one, had been given away before we could experience them in context. What I especially liked in the actual film were the cooly, crisp characters played by Mark Strong, Charles Dance and Matthew Goode. The complete competence and intelligence displayed by MI6’s Menzies (Strong) was refreshing in a government official. The period sets and costumes drew me in right away and I remained engrossed until the end. The character played by Keira Knightley (not to mention others) may have wildly diverged from historical accuracy, but there is little I wouldn’t forgive for the chance to watch Keira Knightley.
Another entry on my list of “Based on a true story” makes a bad movie. Characters and events were so extreme that no reasonable screenwriter could have sold them, but the fact that something like this actually happened helped remove the no-one-will-believe-this filter. Steve Carrell’s John DuPont was such a one-dimensional obvious nutcase from the beginning that it wasn’t even interesting to watch him. That USA Wrestling would give him their program, regardless of the money he offered, was just as absurd as the military’s giving him a machine-gun-mounted tank. Presumably, both of these occurred, but that didn’t make them dramatically convincing, or even relevant. Mark Ruffalo stood out by playing a relatively sane person, but again casting him as Channing Tatum’s brother required an imaginative stretch I wasn’t prepared to make.
As much as I admire, and in awe of, Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, this wasn’t much of a movie. It was static, very limited in scope and didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. How did Snowden get everything and take it with him to Hong Kong? How could he communicate it to Greenwald so quickly? And most of all, how could Greenwald understand everything so easily and translate it into comprehensible stories for the public? The brief glimpses we were given of the outside world – government officials testifying, CNN reporting – were teasingly brief. To me, this film was more document than documentary.
Every scene was an art shot, and in case you hadn’t noticed, the movie ended with a tableau of Bingham’s Jolly Flatboatmen. The story, however, wasn’t quite Lonesome Dove, despite Tommy Lee Jones and the incident-beset cross-country trek (who knew Nebraska was west of Iowa?). Why anyone would’ve done anything they did, or how they could’ve done it, made no sense, nor did the characters. Tommy Lee’s Mr. Briggs was such a self-contradiction that he canceled himself out. And while John Lithgow disguised himself decently, Meryl Streep was a bit obvious.
Once one accepted that this was a stage play, not a docudrama, the philosophical back-and-forth between German General Chotlitz and Swedish Consul Nordling could be appreciated as an intellectual exploration of human motives, rather than a somewhat incredible portrayal of how Paris was saved from Nazi destruction. There was no reason Chotlitz would have allowed Nordling’s presence for a movie-long dialogue, but the set-up allowed us to analyze and weigh the thought processes of a Nazi commander and the wall between soldier and human. Personally, I didn’t find Chotlitz’s change of heart credible: the reasons for his change were present from the beginning, although they were a surprise when revealed to us near the end. We were equally unprepared for the sudden resistance of the collaborating French architect that effectively saved the city. (Since all these figures lived many years after the war, perhaps there is a more factual basis to the dramatization than I allow.)
Wonderful performances by Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, embodying, respectively, physical deterioration and maturation. Inasmuch as we sort of knew Stephen Hawking’s story it was, in a way, more interesting to follow the path of Jane Wilde, who started cute as a button then had to deal with a crippled husband, three children and her own emotional needs. And even though I couldn’t understand it, it was fun to be in the company of genius, especially accompanied by wit and rather normal human feelings, and failings.
Considering this film took place at night, in stressful situations, featuring many working stiffs, in a very noir setting, it was remarkable that no one smoked. Maybe, then, it was no coincidence that at the very end of the credits, where they usually disclaim hurting any animals during filming, there was a line that no money was received for placing tobacco in the film. Is this a new cause? Or are they saying that no one smoked because no one offered them any money?
Jake Gyllenhaal’s bug eyes and intense characterization were wonderful, although you wondered why someone with his ambition and instincts was only clipping chain-link fences when the story began. The cheap swipe at TV news was fun, even if there was only a kernel of truth in it; what drove the movie was Gyllenhaal’s depiction of Louis Bloom’s flowering, petal by petal, picking up something from every contact, morality be damned, and getting away with it.
Let’s hope Jon Stewart keeps his day job. I was never engaged and could have walked out at any point; I did so after about 70 minutes. Gael Garcia Bernal was an odd choice to play the lead; it felt like he was a tourist, floating through. When I think of how gripping Argo was – the previous prisoner-in-Iran film – it just made this film seem even more bloodless, like it had rosewater in its veins.
© Copyright 2019 Robert Marshall | All Rights Reserved.