Once again, Cohen pulls aside the curtain on deep America and again, the ignorance and hate he bravely wades into and exposes is amazing and horrifying. This is beyond satire, it's anthropology, studies of our society, so misled and corrupted, courtesy of the Republican Party and other frauds who are laughing all the way to the bank. And then there's the new movie star, Maria Bakalova, what a spot-on great performance! Finding her was a stroke of brilliance. I conclude with the same question I kept asking myself during the movie, "How does he do it?"
Reviews
12 Reviews
Don't Look Up
(2021)
Best satire since Idiocracy!
2 January 2022
This movie is incredibly timely as we twiddle our thumbs instead of using knowledge to save our health and our planet. This Netflix original is really well casted and produced. It's not a hilarious comedy but it doesn't intend to be. It's hard to strike a balance but the movie pulls it off well. It strikes a blow against the anti-science we face with Covid and global warming. Take Covid. Everyone has already been vaccinated multiple times against hepatitis, tetanus, flu, diptheria and other diseases. Fine. Now we're up against Covid and 30% plus of the people think they're smarter than CDC and all the best scientists. And our failure to control global warming is even worse. Like "Idiocracy" by Mike Judge, this movie has dopey stuff but hits a lot of uncomfortable truths that many people really need to listen up to. DiCaprio=A; Jennifer Lawrence=A; Meryl Streep=A+
Unforgettable Hell on Earth
19 January 2020
A German soldier's clandestine photographs of the 1941 Warsaw Ghetto are difficult viewing but essential primary history. Why this film remains so rarely available is beyond me. I saw it on Public TV years ago, I think that was during the 50th anniversary of the liberation of some of the concentration camps. The film is apparently shown at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, although I did not notice the film offered for view on either of my visits there. I was able to see the film again only recently, through a friend's academic link. Despite the passage of decades from my first viewing, I remembered many of the photographs clearly. The voiceovers are excerpts from contemporaneous diaries that somehow survived, and like the photographs, they are unforgettable.
Iceman
(2017)
My mistake - I thought it would be realistic
29 June 2019
Warning: Spoilers
Don't ask me why, but I though this film was going to attempt realism. Realistic prehistory seems to be a rather difficult undertaking, but watching this film, I was soon sadly shaking my head until my neck started to hurt. Painful moments in the first fifteen minutes: everyone's wearing and sleeping in skins, so what's she doing at a loom? Water is needed for the ritual with the baby (some things never change), but why does the boy bring water in a large thrown pitcher, with a classically curved handle yet? The house is wattle; where's the daub -- they can't get enough of that freezing wind? And within the house, a floor? Come on. Same with the bed. "Mann Aus Dem Eis" filmmakers need to check out poor places today -- people don't have beds, they have skins (or cardboard or whatever) on the ground. The big wild hairdo's on the blond babes look great but tied back might be a tad more realistic. The total impossibility comes fifteen minutes in, the raid. People subject to raids do not live in a tiny permanent settlement (looked like about 12 people total including children?) with pigs and goats in the pen and a fire burning, advertising your presence for miles, with no lookouts, no security of any kind? They had pigs and goats, so where were their dogs? The raiders walk up and literally stab them in the back! Then the woman with the baby props a stick against her door -- huh? She would take the baby and run like a deer out the back door. Victims of the raid run between the huts -- running straight into the woods might make more sense. Then the raiders, in total control of the hapless settlement, torture the woman instead of raping her, and although there are skins hanging everywhere in the house, they burn it all down. What was the point of the raid again? For a few additional dollars I salvaged the rest of the evening with a romantic comedy.
Victoria
(II) (2015)
Amazing! Top rate thriller
13 December 2018
An artist (the beautiful Laia Costa), after pouring her young existence into her instrument, learns at graduation that she didn't make it. She drifts to Berlin, where maybe she can learn the language and try life again. She takes a low-paying job at a coffee shop and makes clumsy attempts to meet people. One night, she's leaving a club, alone, at the same time the bouncers are ejecting four guys. They're losers, like her. But one guy is interested, and he's cute (Frederick Lau). His friends are nuts and slightly menacing, but she's drawn by their unaffected, street-rat antics. It's edgy fun until suddenly, things get scary serious -- the four friends urgently and desperately need help. And so begins "Victoria," a fantastic thriller accomplished by a wonderful German team including director Sebastian Schipper (Deutscher Filmpreis 2015 for "Victoria") and cameraman Sturla Brandth Grovlen (Deutscher Filmpreis/Beste Kamera 2015 also for "Victoria"). "Victoria" is filmed in one single, two-plus hour camera take -- one scene, no breaks. According to reviews, there was a storyboard but almost no script. By brilliant direction, great acting, and maybe some of the fortune that occasionally favors the brave, "Victoria" works -- incredibly well. This is an amazing accomplishment and cinema of the highest class-- easily the finest German film in the many years since "Das Boot," "Heimat," and "Berlin Alexanderplatz."
Have you ever seen a tiny town in the Hunsruck in 1843?
29 September 2016
How many unforgettable images can Edgar Reitz create? Country girls given coins, stare dumbly into their palms. A girl with a malformed leg is ostracized. Country people protest "Liberté!" to returned Prussian authorities. A stone cutter becomes mute on his way to oblivion, but first he cuts an agate slice that contains the world. Where do Reitz, and Casting Director An Dorthe Braker (Downfall, Bader-Meinhof Complex), find actors who seem to step out of a time machine? Where does Reitz get the poignancy of turns of fate changing lives utterly in a world where everything is grown, pounded, turned, and wrested from the earth, if not by yourself and your family, by others who you've known all your life? Under the comet of 1843, hawkers sell passage to paradise to people who never once left the Hunsruck. The damson berries are harvested, and youths become intoxicated on music and dancing. A Prussian lackey reads a hateful decree to an empty street. A lone rider brings more emigration papers. Neighbors and families walk beside their wagons, to Rotterdam and beyond on a journey they cannot comprehend except that there is no return. In Schabbach, the remaining Simons endure, and repair and improve the family smithy. A letter arrives from Brazil after 13 months, and is read to the astonished gathering. We are in Schabbach to witness all of this.
Free State of Jones
(2016)
Astonishing, frightening, and real - unforgettable!
26 June 2016
Warning: Spoilers
I knew nothing about it when I went to the theater. Now I know: the Free State of Jones really happened, and most everything in this movie really happened. There really was a Mr. Newton Knight of Jones County, Mississippi, who had a white wife, and then a black wife named Rachel, and a guerrilla army of escaped slaves and Confederate Army deserters, who functioned as probably the first racially integrated army ever, in the swamps of Mississippi, during the Civil War. It was all real.
They took over a portion of the State of Mississippi, for two years, against Confederate Army attacks. They held, for a while, three counties, and the largest town in the area, Ellisville Mississippi, and raised the Union flag (that's the American flag) over the courthouse there. Knight and his small army were still wreaking havoc on their bitter enemies -- the Confederacy, the slaveholders, and King Cotton -- when the war ended.
They did all this with virtually no help from the Union Army -- William Techumseh Sherman was in the area, and knew Knight's rebellion was happening, but he either didn't trust Knight and his counter-rebels, or couldn't believe it, but in any case he spurned Knight's requests for arms and gave virtually no assistance, and did not even allow them to join the Union Army. All this is in the movie.
Given this amazing story, it would be hard to miss turning out quite a show. And quite a show it is. Writer/Director Gary Ross says after "Seabiscuit," he was directing and screen writing "Hunger Games" and doing other odd jobs while working on this project -- his real passion for the last ten years - learning the history of Newton Knight and the counter-rebellion in Jones County, Mississippi, 1863-1865. This was Gary Ross' special project and he has created a wonderful, monumental film. Matthew McConaughey does a great job as Knight, a backwoodsman who evolved dramatically in his life. McConaughey starts off a subsistence farmer, gets drafted, then made a good soldier (he rose to sergeant), but eventually starts to see what a hideous racket the war is, and how evil slavery is. Gugu Mbatha-Raw does a fine job as Rachel. Mahershala Ali (Hunger Games) is also very good in his supporting role as Moses.
The combat scenes are realistic, and wrenching, as are the depictions of the rapes, tortures, dog maulings, hangings, family separations ("How far is Texas," asks Mahershala Ali, as Moses the escaped slave). And the film continues into the anarchic "Reconstruction" era, when hooded terrorists reduced many newly "freed" blacks to a condition, in some ways, worse than slavery. When they were slaves, their lives at least had money value.
From the impressive history professors and professional historians listed as consultants in the end credits, the film appears well researched. Unfortunately, the list of consultants has not made it into IMDb as of this writing -- can someone please add this?)
Some reviewers are lukewarm. They say, not enough character development. Not enough love story. Too long. Explanatory historical facts pop up between scenes. Flash forwards confuse (the film jumps to the 1940's trial of Newton and Rachel Knight's grandson, who was actually convicted under Mississippi law of being "1/8 black" marrying a "white" woman. You can't make this stuff up). Some reactions are outright negative -- why? Maybe because Free State of Jones, despite a great script, fantastic sets, a story by turns astonishing and frightening, is not exactly entertaining. Because it's too real. We've created a comfortable myth of the Civil War, in which men became brothers again once all people were free. But the myth doesn't hold up to the reality. The Civil War erupted along huge differences -- deep rifts in this nation's society, which will not heal, unless we grasp the legacy of slavery, and sectarianism, which persist to harm us.
They took over a portion of the State of Mississippi, for two years, against Confederate Army attacks. They held, for a while, three counties, and the largest town in the area, Ellisville Mississippi, and raised the Union flag (that's the American flag) over the courthouse there. Knight and his small army were still wreaking havoc on their bitter enemies -- the Confederacy, the slaveholders, and King Cotton -- when the war ended.
They did all this with virtually no help from the Union Army -- William Techumseh Sherman was in the area, and knew Knight's rebellion was happening, but he either didn't trust Knight and his counter-rebels, or couldn't believe it, but in any case he spurned Knight's requests for arms and gave virtually no assistance, and did not even allow them to join the Union Army. All this is in the movie.
Given this amazing story, it would be hard to miss turning out quite a show. And quite a show it is. Writer/Director Gary Ross says after "Seabiscuit," he was directing and screen writing "Hunger Games" and doing other odd jobs while working on this project -- his real passion for the last ten years - learning the history of Newton Knight and the counter-rebellion in Jones County, Mississippi, 1863-1865. This was Gary Ross' special project and he has created a wonderful, monumental film. Matthew McConaughey does a great job as Knight, a backwoodsman who evolved dramatically in his life. McConaughey starts off a subsistence farmer, gets drafted, then made a good soldier (he rose to sergeant), but eventually starts to see what a hideous racket the war is, and how evil slavery is. Gugu Mbatha-Raw does a fine job as Rachel. Mahershala Ali (Hunger Games) is also very good in his supporting role as Moses.
The combat scenes are realistic, and wrenching, as are the depictions of the rapes, tortures, dog maulings, hangings, family separations ("How far is Texas," asks Mahershala Ali, as Moses the escaped slave). And the film continues into the anarchic "Reconstruction" era, when hooded terrorists reduced many newly "freed" blacks to a condition, in some ways, worse than slavery. When they were slaves, their lives at least had money value.
From the impressive history professors and professional historians listed as consultants in the end credits, the film appears well researched. Unfortunately, the list of consultants has not made it into IMDb as of this writing -- can someone please add this?)
Some reviewers are lukewarm. They say, not enough character development. Not enough love story. Too long. Explanatory historical facts pop up between scenes. Flash forwards confuse (the film jumps to the 1940's trial of Newton and Rachel Knight's grandson, who was actually convicted under Mississippi law of being "1/8 black" marrying a "white" woman. You can't make this stuff up). Some reactions are outright negative -- why? Maybe because Free State of Jones, despite a great script, fantastic sets, a story by turns astonishing and frightening, is not exactly entertaining. Because it's too real. We've created a comfortable myth of the Civil War, in which men became brothers again once all people were free. But the myth doesn't hold up to the reality. The Civil War erupted along huge differences -- deep rifts in this nation's society, which will not heal, unless we grasp the legacy of slavery, and sectarianism, which persist to harm us.
Scent of a Woman
(1992)
May the next version be the best one yet
27 January 2016
The story concerns an old man and a young man. The old man was once formidable. He saw and achieved much. Then, at the height of his powers, he was struck down by an accident that left him disabled and dependent on others. He takes refuge in cynicism, bigotry, and bullying the few people who can still stand to be around him. The young man, as the story opens, is just a kid. He has promise of a sort. He studies hard, takes jobs at school and on the outside for extra cash, and knows how to obey authority. He may be destined to be just a cog, but he's going to be a cog in a classy wheel somewhere.
One long weekend, the old warrior needs a substitute caretaker, and the young man needs an extra job for money to see his family. They meet, to their mutual dismay. The old man considers the boy a scrub-faced wimp and tells him so, between gulps of whiskey, puffs of cigar smoke, and ghastly war stories. The shocked young man looks frantically for a fire exit. The man decides he's going to see some old stomping grounds and make the weekend an adventure, with his temporary valet in tow. The boy feels obligated to go. After all, his default mode is obedience, even if the boss is a raving, obnoxious nut case.
This wonderful plot idea has yielded first, a 1969 novel by Italian author Giovanni Arpino (who also wrote the book on which "Divorce Italian Style" is based); and two movies - Dino Risi's Profumo di Donna in 1974, with Vittorio Gassman, and Martin Brest's 1992 work, Scent of a Woman, which earned Al Pacino an Academy Award for Best Actor (yes, it should have been Denzel Washington for "Malcolm X," but that wasn't Pacino's fault).
Bo Goldman's 1992 screenplay builds on the first two works. Here, the old warrior plunges into his last wild foray into a world that was once his, bent on showing goody two-shoes what it's all about. The young caretaker finds himself overwhelmed and unable to break away. Beyond that, our young man has just landed, the Friday before the crazy weekend during which the film takes place, by bad luck and no fault of his own, he has landed in deep, career-threatening trouble back at school. So for both members of this mismatched pair, it is a last weekend of sorts -- and a time to consider the problems the other person is facing.
The Italian versions of this story are very European -- touching, troubling, realistic. Life isn't always fair, and Italian cinema doesn't kid about that. There are many movie lovers who feel the Italian approach is artistically, intellectually, and morally superior (see several comments here for example). They decry the Hollywoodization of this poignant story. And what they say is absolutely correct. But it is also true that to Hollywoodize this story into a more positive direction yields more opportunity to develop the plot, and this, to an extent, we get in Scent of a Woman. It may be film school heresy to say this, but in some ways, the 1992 film is the better version, because it adds interplay and drama between the two characters. They both have to face the world. The new ground broken here isn't quite credible but it's interesting in the evolution of this tale. Maybe the story on which Scent of a Woman is based is one of those plots that will be retold and improved again and again. It seems too good to end here. May the next version be the best one yet.
One long weekend, the old warrior needs a substitute caretaker, and the young man needs an extra job for money to see his family. They meet, to their mutual dismay. The old man considers the boy a scrub-faced wimp and tells him so, between gulps of whiskey, puffs of cigar smoke, and ghastly war stories. The shocked young man looks frantically for a fire exit. The man decides he's going to see some old stomping grounds and make the weekend an adventure, with his temporary valet in tow. The boy feels obligated to go. After all, his default mode is obedience, even if the boss is a raving, obnoxious nut case.
This wonderful plot idea has yielded first, a 1969 novel by Italian author Giovanni Arpino (who also wrote the book on which "Divorce Italian Style" is based); and two movies - Dino Risi's Profumo di Donna in 1974, with Vittorio Gassman, and Martin Brest's 1992 work, Scent of a Woman, which earned Al Pacino an Academy Award for Best Actor (yes, it should have been Denzel Washington for "Malcolm X," but that wasn't Pacino's fault).
Bo Goldman's 1992 screenplay builds on the first two works. Here, the old warrior plunges into his last wild foray into a world that was once his, bent on showing goody two-shoes what it's all about. The young caretaker finds himself overwhelmed and unable to break away. Beyond that, our young man has just landed, the Friday before the crazy weekend during which the film takes place, by bad luck and no fault of his own, he has landed in deep, career-threatening trouble back at school. So for both members of this mismatched pair, it is a last weekend of sorts -- and a time to consider the problems the other person is facing.
The Italian versions of this story are very European -- touching, troubling, realistic. Life isn't always fair, and Italian cinema doesn't kid about that. There are many movie lovers who feel the Italian approach is artistically, intellectually, and morally superior (see several comments here for example). They decry the Hollywoodization of this poignant story. And what they say is absolutely correct. But it is also true that to Hollywoodize this story into a more positive direction yields more opportunity to develop the plot, and this, to an extent, we get in Scent of a Woman. It may be film school heresy to say this, but in some ways, the 1992 film is the better version, because it adds interplay and drama between the two characters. They both have to face the world. The new ground broken here isn't quite credible but it's interesting in the evolution of this tale. Maybe the story on which Scent of a Woman is based is one of those plots that will be retold and improved again and again. It seems too good to end here. May the next version be the best one yet.
The President's Analyst
(1967)
Merciless, delicious send-up of the establishment
7 September 2015
"President's Analyst" distills 60's culture, popular ("total sound") and hippie (the promiscuous "Snow White" handing out LSD) and urban neurotic (urgency of couch psychiatry). Not to leave out the Cold War co-dependence, even camaraderie of the Soviet and U.S. spy agencies and the struggle of the smaller players (even Canada!) to make the big scene. It exposes and satirizes the FBI-CIA schism and then there's unseen but pervasive corporate dominance over both. Don't forget academic myopia {"I need to write a paper for the Institute on this")and racism (wounds of being called a "nigger" in childhood). Never heard of this James Coburn, Godfrey Cambridge gem? This film is still too hot to handle for most film lists and libraries. One of the very best!
Moulin Rouge
(1952)
Not a very good movie. Can't tell you how glad I am I saw it.
1 August 2015
Warning: Spoilers
True fact: When Moulin Rouge came out in 1952, it reached heights of popularity not seen since Gone With the Wind. Even if you're not all weepy about the Old South, you gotta admit, well, it's Gone With the Wind. Compared with that, how on earth did this unwitty, wooden dialog, character-less, false french-accented, set-piece art history lesson become so popular, even getting nominations? Well it was 1952, the abysmal nadir of fear and repression in America. We feared anything different, and sex was verboten. Toulouse-Lautrec was different enough. In one of the film's few moments in which John Huston actually produces some directional art, Toulouse gets up from his cafe table and ... he was already up. His legs are short. As for the sex, there's many women roles, all of them prostitutes. Result: a 1952 smash. To be fair, there's a story woven in: deformed aristocrat falls in love with unintelligent, untalented, unappreciative prostitute, and she breaks his heart for life. Completely unconvincing and doesn't fit anything else in the story. And if you look it up, it appears "Marie Charlet" either never existed, or if she did, she was just one of Toulouse's many prostitute friends. Character development, plot interest, dramatic tension, credible situations, dialog, who needs any of that in 1952, when Jose Ferrer is a wealthy alcoholic freak going out with a pretty prostitute?
Unsuccessful as a story with characters, the film nevertheless contains achievements that are formidable. First, the Moulin Rouge, a night club in 1890s Paris, is portrayed in detail, faithfully to reviews of the time and to our very best source: Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings. Moulin Rouge was a nightly exorbitant over-the-top party of drinking, prostitute hookups, and floor shows such as Paris had never seen. In particular, the show included that dance, the can-can, done in their own outrageous style. Which brings us to the second achievement of this film: the choreography. We know how can-can looked at Moulin Rouge, from Toulouse's paintings; and there are reviews of what it sounded like: the girls shrieked loud and joyous as they did their stunts. William Chapell, credited only as "Dance Director," did fine choreography in this film. The point of the dance was to show the girls' legs and flash their white lace bloomered crotches, as wide, as long, and as often, and in as many angles, spins, jumps, and tumbles as the human body permitted. It's all here and it is wonderful.
The last real achievement of this film, and it is huge, is the art. Paul Sheriff won the 1952 Oscar for art direction of this film. Without knowing the competition, I'll agree it was deserved. The sets are composed from Toulouse's paintings. Toulouse's actual works, which were often sketched at his cafe table, are composed in the movie, which shows us Toulouse creating the works. And what works they are. For some reason I had never really looked at Toulouse's paintings. I didn't take them seriously I suppose, because of the subject matter and because some are poster art and they are not, you know, Manet or Cezanne or Van Gogh. Well I got what a snob deserves because I missed years of loving the wry, sensitive, brooding, and gorgeously drawn and splendidly colored art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Unsuccessful as a story with characters, the film nevertheless contains achievements that are formidable. First, the Moulin Rouge, a night club in 1890s Paris, is portrayed in detail, faithfully to reviews of the time and to our very best source: Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings. Moulin Rouge was a nightly exorbitant over-the-top party of drinking, prostitute hookups, and floor shows such as Paris had never seen. In particular, the show included that dance, the can-can, done in their own outrageous style. Which brings us to the second achievement of this film: the choreography. We know how can-can looked at Moulin Rouge, from Toulouse's paintings; and there are reviews of what it sounded like: the girls shrieked loud and joyous as they did their stunts. William Chapell, credited only as "Dance Director," did fine choreography in this film. The point of the dance was to show the girls' legs and flash their white lace bloomered crotches, as wide, as long, and as often, and in as many angles, spins, jumps, and tumbles as the human body permitted. It's all here and it is wonderful.
The last real achievement of this film, and it is huge, is the art. Paul Sheriff won the 1952 Oscar for art direction of this film. Without knowing the competition, I'll agree it was deserved. The sets are composed from Toulouse's paintings. Toulouse's actual works, which were often sketched at his cafe table, are composed in the movie, which shows us Toulouse creating the works. And what works they are. For some reason I had never really looked at Toulouse's paintings. I didn't take them seriously I suppose, because of the subject matter and because some are poster art and they are not, you know, Manet or Cezanne or Van Gogh. Well I got what a snob deserves because I missed years of loving the wry, sensitive, brooding, and gorgeously drawn and splendidly colored art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Enemy at the Gates
(2001)
Not great but Still a Must See
11 March 2015
What was the Battle of Stalingrad like? Probably nobody knows exactly, even if they survived it. We can guess -- house to house, floor-to-floor, and room-to-room killing in the bombed remnants of stone and concrete shells of buildings, basements, sewers, and wreckage, throughout a large, destroyed city, hundreds of thousands of men intent on killing each other, all this going on month after month for how long -- it had to be a hellish pandemonium that defies imagination.
This film tries to bring us into that pandemonium. To an amazing degree, it succeeds. Maybe not everything shown is accurate. But many scenes ring true enough. More than one source has claimed that Russian Army punishment was severe for retreating soldiers, and that families were threatened if their son got captured, or surrendered. We know some of the Volga crossings were bloodbaths, as were clashes throughout the ruined downtown. The bombings, the shelling, the snipers, the civilian and military life driven into and under the rubble, we know these things happened. This movie brings us there, in so much detail, you can't get it all in one viewing. The sets are simply amazing.
Along with all that great stuff, Jude Law is cute, and same for Rachel Weisz (somehow she defied the odds and grew even more beautiful 11 years later in the Bourne Legacy).
So what's missing? Well, the writing could be better. Jean-Jacques Annaud made his first (and apparently only) try at feature screen writing in this film. Why they let him do that, who knows. What couldn't a real writer do with this material? Stalingrad was the the mother of hell on earth! The Nazis were in a mortal drive to the Caspian oil fields. And the legendary Russian snipers! The film brings us Vassily Zaitsev, a real life legendary shooter. Why stop with him? Some of the best Russian WWII snipers were beautiful young women! The lovely, 19-year-old Ludmilla Pavilchenko (over 300 kills) was honored -- while the war was raging -- in London and Washington, even receiving gifts of a 1911 Colt and a Winchester rifle at the White House, before she returned to the war. Another sweet young killer, Roza Shanina, had 54 confirmed kills. It gets even more perfect: Vassily perfected a system of snipers working in threes. You want a story, maybe with a love triangle? The drama practically writes itself. Annaud does put one young woman sniper in the action (played by the lovely Austrian Sophie Rois), but her role is horrible, and short -- she knows how to work her trade in a bombed-out rubble of a department store, but when a wave of German bombers flies over, she panics and runs out into the Nazi shooting gallery.
The story: a love triangle. Smart guy makes a good try, but loses pretty brilliant girl to honest farm boy. But it doesn't hold interest, with the exception of a great love scene. Subplot 11-year old becomes a double agent, somehow passing from the German-occupied rubble mounds to the Russian-held sewers and basements pretty much every day, never even getting very dirty! The final shootout seems tacked on without much thought.
Back to those incredible sets. If you get pay per view, make sure there's a rewind option for this one.
This film tries to bring us into that pandemonium. To an amazing degree, it succeeds. Maybe not everything shown is accurate. But many scenes ring true enough. More than one source has claimed that Russian Army punishment was severe for retreating soldiers, and that families were threatened if their son got captured, or surrendered. We know some of the Volga crossings were bloodbaths, as were clashes throughout the ruined downtown. The bombings, the shelling, the snipers, the civilian and military life driven into and under the rubble, we know these things happened. This movie brings us there, in so much detail, you can't get it all in one viewing. The sets are simply amazing.
Along with all that great stuff, Jude Law is cute, and same for Rachel Weisz (somehow she defied the odds and grew even more beautiful 11 years later in the Bourne Legacy).
So what's missing? Well, the writing could be better. Jean-Jacques Annaud made his first (and apparently only) try at feature screen writing in this film. Why they let him do that, who knows. What couldn't a real writer do with this material? Stalingrad was the the mother of hell on earth! The Nazis were in a mortal drive to the Caspian oil fields. And the legendary Russian snipers! The film brings us Vassily Zaitsev, a real life legendary shooter. Why stop with him? Some of the best Russian WWII snipers were beautiful young women! The lovely, 19-year-old Ludmilla Pavilchenko (over 300 kills) was honored -- while the war was raging -- in London and Washington, even receiving gifts of a 1911 Colt and a Winchester rifle at the White House, before she returned to the war. Another sweet young killer, Roza Shanina, had 54 confirmed kills. It gets even more perfect: Vassily perfected a system of snipers working in threes. You want a story, maybe with a love triangle? The drama practically writes itself. Annaud does put one young woman sniper in the action (played by the lovely Austrian Sophie Rois), but her role is horrible, and short -- she knows how to work her trade in a bombed-out rubble of a department store, but when a wave of German bombers flies over, she panics and runs out into the Nazi shooting gallery.
The story: a love triangle. Smart guy makes a good try, but loses pretty brilliant girl to honest farm boy. But it doesn't hold interest, with the exception of a great love scene. Subplot 11-year old becomes a double agent, somehow passing from the German-occupied rubble mounds to the Russian-held sewers and basements pretty much every day, never even getting very dirty! The final shootout seems tacked on without much thought.
Back to those incredible sets. If you get pay per view, make sure there's a rewind option for this one.
Daresay this does Dickens Proud!
16 March 2013
I'd have to write like Dickens to praise this properly. If I'd been at the Old Vic I would have attempted to thank everyone in this production. And apparently, the available DVD rendering is a bit of a botch job on what was even greater. To praise individual members is to detract from many dozens of fine artists under expert direction. I cannot resist, however, David Threlfall as Smike. How on earth did he do that? These people are actors, with honed talents and memories like elephants -- a far cry from youngster "idols" who manage a 5-second cut the twelfth time around. The direction! Whom even do I praise for the concept of leaving inactive cast and crew on stage, a silent Greek chorus supervising with amusement, concern, astonishment, and horror? In some places, where they edit the original -- no sacrilege intended -- they improve it. But most all the script of this wonderful production needs no editing, because it is straight from the quill of the great Charles Dickens.
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