The opening goes into maybe too much detail about the sad existence of
Reese (Zooey Deschanel), who’s scrabbling to make it in New York’s fringe
theater scene, using cocaine, sleeping around and living a generally
self-destructive life. On her mother’s death, Reese is offered serious money by
a book agent for the love letters of her estranged dad (Ed Harris), an
alcoholic writer living in retreat in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
(Don’t be surprised if you’re reminded of J.D. Salinger; the Harris
character’s name is Dan Holdin, close enough to Holden Caulfield to make the
point hard to miss. Just to add to the fun, actress Deschanel is named after
Salinger’s character Zooey.)
When Reese arrives at Dad’s door to find the letters, she learns not only
that he’s moved into his garage but also that the household is more or less
ruled by a couple of newcomers (to her): Corbit (Will Ferrell), a quirky
ex-Christian rocker who functions as bodyguard and handyman, and Shelly (Amelia
Warner), a young British woman who’s an ex-student of Dan’s and works as
housekeeper (and maybe more). Reese clearly resents her father’s new “family.”
She will, of course, learn a thing or two about her dad, as well as his
caretakers, who turn out to be something other than interlopers.
Harris, the big name in the cast, does a decent job as the genius in
serious decline, but the role lacks complexity. The picture really belongs to
Deschanel, an appealing performer with a deadpan manner that serves her
shell-shocked character pretty well. She has some maturing to do as an actress,
but overall it’s a creditable job. For Ferrell (who worked with Deschanel in
“Elf”) this is an unusually serious role, but he brings a quirky humor to this
very odd duck of a character.
You can carp about this picture — the suffering-artist motif is pretty
heavy-handed and the upbeat ending isn’t quite convincing — but it’s a
pleasingly small-scale offering with some nice rewards for the viewer willing
to overlook its problems.
– Advisory: Profane language and scenes of sexual activity and drug use.
– Walter Addiego
‘The Libertine’
Drama.
Starring Johnny Depp, Samantha Morton and John Malkovich. Directed by Laurence
Dunmore. (R. 115 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)
Looking like a gloomy Marc Bolan in 17th century ringlets, Johnny Depp
emerges from darkness to open “The Libertine” with a warning: “You will not
like me.” Why not? Because, he boasts, his character is a shameless hedonist
and an unconscionable cad. Coming from Depp’s well-formed lips, this sounds
more like a promise than a threat. Bring on the debauch!
But there is little debauchery to be had in Laurence Dunmore’s adaptation
of “The Libertine.” In fact, hedonism has never looked so bleak. Working from
the play by Stephen Jeffreys, Dunmore presents his subject, John Wilmot, the
second earl of Rochester (Depp), as a garrulous misanthrope for whom pleasure
is a dreary intellectual exercise. Wilmot doesn’t engage in ribaldry — he
mocks it, even while carousing through London’s brothels with his
goblet-swinging, wench-hunting posse of dandies.
To hear Wilmot tell it — and tell and tell it — it’s not easy being
a libertine. He’s bored, so bored, by his own sexuality, and soon we are, too.
A film like “Caligula” at least reveled in campy surplus; here carnality is
signified only by acres of swollen and heaving bosoms punctuated by stilted
dialogue that blends earthy expletives with overripe metaphors. Sadly, the
dialogue is the only stiff thing to be found in “The Libertine”: Wilmot and his
colleagues talk about their exploits at great length, but talking is all they
do. Their lives in ye olde fast lane are stuck in the mud.
Wilmot is briefly roused from his torpor by actress Elizabeth Barry
(Samantha Morton). She’s sassy, dedicated to her art, and uninterested in
anything the earl has to offer, so naturally he falls in love. This final
passion proves both his salvation and his downfall. By the third act, the earl
is spent and wasting away, much to the chagrin of his long-suffering wife
(Rosamund Pike) and his royal patron, King Charles II (John Malkovich, wearing
a formidable prosthetic nose). The rest is history.
To be fair, Dunmore’s preamble cautions us that “The Libertine” will
document the Restoration’s hangover, not its glory days. The problem is that it
succeeds too well. All mud and murky lighting, the England of Charles II really
does look like the aftermath of the world’s longest party and seems about as
pleasant. The point seems to be that too much of a good thing leads to a vast
sense of nothingness and bleak cinematography. Alas, it also results in
transforming a film about a sensualist into a remarkably sexless enterprise.
– Advisory: A landslide of explicit language, some sex and violence and
lots of mud.
– Neva Chonin
‘Before the Fall’
Drama.
Starring Max Riemelt, Tom Schilling and Justus Von Dohnanyi. (In German with
English subtitles. Not rated. 110 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)
To his backers, Friedrich Weimer is the Great White Hope, their best
shot at winning back a league boxing championship. Never mind that in the
compelling drama “Before the Fall,” everyone in Friedrich’s school is white,
the finest specimens of the Aryan race handpicked to attend an exclusive
military academy created by Hitler as a training ground for future leaders.
Friedrich (Max Riemelt) distinguishes himself not only by his right hooks but
also by being the fairest and blondest of them all.
Judging from the number of recent movies on the subject, World War II is
hardly fading from the consciousness of German filmmakers, even if most are far
too young to remember it. Like its singular central character, “Before the
Fall” stands out from the pack. There are no scenes inside concentration camps
– Friedrich’s classmates appear oblivious to their existence — and the
only fighting portrayed is in the ring.
By restricting most of the film to the tight confines of an elite Nazi
school, director Dennis Gansel unveils an insidious indoctrination process that
turns the young and innocent into automatons capable of any atrocity. Gansel
occasionally resorts to sledgehammer filmmaking such as drenching the screen in
red during an ordeal by fire the cadets are subjected to, and their teachers’
extreme cruelty toward them strains credibility.
But Gansel, who based the script in part on reminiscences of his
grandfather, an instructor at one of these academies, hooks you by focusing on
Friedrich’s very human story. It’s a variation on “Golden Boy” with the German
teen using his fists to rise in the world. He’s destined to become a common
laborer like his father when a scout for the military academy sees Friedrich
win an amateur boxing bout.
Riemelt has an expressive face, especially his lively eyes, and he
captures Friedrich’s sense of awe at suddenly being catapulted into such a
rarefied circle. Hardly believing his luck, he’s the first to jump to it at his
instructors’ commands.
Initially, the environment doesn’t seem all that different from any
private school, civilian or military. The older cadets harass the younger ones,
and an enterprising student barters for extra liverwurst in return for a
glimpse of a photo of his sweat-soaked sisters working out.
It becomes harder for Friedrich to see everything through rose-colored
glasses after he becomes friends with Albrecht (Tom Schilling), the son of a
high government official. Albrecht has a highly tuned sense of right and wrong.
Competing in the ring against a student from another of Hitler’s academies,
Friedrich is egged on by his coach to keep hitting the boy when he’s down. In a
critical scene — played with great subtlety by the young actors —
Albrecht confronts his friend and tries to make him understand that just
because a higher-up told him to do it doesn’t make it right. It’s impossible to
miss the larger ramifications of what Albrecht is saying. There’s a
foreshadowing of this when the students are enlisted to hunt down supposedly
escaped prisoners of war carrying weapons, who turn out to be unarmed Jewish
children.
The rest of “Before the Fall” can be viewed as a battle for Friedrich’s
soul. The title seems to be purposely ambiguous, referring to more than just
the downfall of the Third Reich. As a coda to the movie, the production notes
state that students from these academies went on to become well-known
industrialists and political figures who’ve been “reluctant to speak about
their often humiliating childhood experiences.”
– Advisory: This film contains scenes of physical and emotional violence.
– Ruthe Stein
‘Unknown White Male’
Documentary. Directed by Rupert Murray. With Doug Bruce. (PG-13. 87
minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)
This unsettling documentary about an amnesiac trying to put his life
back together both fascinates and frustrates. While the film raises simple but
deeply puzzling questions about memory and identity, the hit-or-miss search for
answers by the subject and assorted experts, family and friends is finally
unsatisfying.
That may simply reflect the nature of severe amnesia and our present state
of knowledge about it, but the movie leaves the impression that director Rupert
Murray doesn’t seem to know where to go with all of this.
“Unknown White Male” follows the experiences of Doug Bruce, a former New
York stockbroker who, in July 2003, found himself on a subway to Coney Island
but had no idea how he had gotten there or who he was.
While he eventually learned his name and the facts of his pre-amnesia
life, he never regained a real connection to that past or to his old self —
he had to get to know his father, sisters and friends as if he were a stranger.
It’s a frightening situation.
We learn details of his former life. Bruce comes from a well-to-do English
family, which he visits in their comfortable retirement in Spain in his attempt
to find out who he is. In work he had been so successful that he could quit
Wall Street in his early 30s to become a photographer, living in an impressive
Manhattan loft.
Bruce’s attempt to reconnect is a genuine battle — he even has to
reacquaint himself with fundamentals like what it feels like to crush a handful
of snow. Those who knew the pre-amnesia Bruce suggest that he’s also undergone
a personality change, having become both friendlier and more inward.
Director Murray, who had met Bruce years before his memory loss, does a
good job early in the picture of communicating his subject’s disorientation.
But the film runs out of steam, and it isn’t helped by Murray’s fondness for
fancy montages and other tricks. It’s possible that Murray was impeded by his
prior relationship with his subject — perhaps more critical distance would
have helped.
In the end Bruce remains opaque, and the film’s observations and
speculations about his condition aren’t all that incisive.
(Several newspaper and magazine articles have raised questions about the
veracity of this documentary and of Bruce’s amnesia, but the filmmakers say it
is genuine.)
– Advisory: Contains minor drug references and some strong language.
– Walter Addiego
‘The Ister’
Documentary. Directed by David Barison and Daniel Ross. (Not rated. 189
minutes, with intermission. At the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.)
If you see just one movie this year about Martin Heidegger, make it
“The Ister.”
Sure, there are some Heideggerian questions raised by the popular “Final
Destination 3″ — Is it possible to know when we will meet our end? Will it
be on a beat-up roller coaster? Why did we pay $10 for this oxymoronically
titled tripe? — but teenage moviegoers may be surprised to learn that “The
Ister” is still a more penetrating inquiry into the controversial German
philosopher’s views.
“The Ister” is like few other films you have seen. Unless, of course, you
have already watched three hours of footage of the Danube River intercut with
talking-head interviews of intellectual heavyweights discussing such concepts
as Dasein. (Forget your Ontology 101? It means, essentially, existence.)
Australian directors David Barison and Daniel Ross call “The Ister,” their
first-ever cinematic undertaking, a “videofilm.” It’s a sort of illustrated
lecture on philosophy, a modest, low-budget project made with little adornment.
But this doesn’t mean that “The Ister” isn’t rewarding viewing. The film is
often a very engaging analysis of Big Ideas that one seldom sees on the big
screen.
What Barison and Ross set out to do is examine talks that Heidegger — a
member of the Nazi Party — delivered in 1942 on a poem about the Danube (the
Ister) by Friedrich Hölderlin. In the documentary, three philosophers and one
filmmaker interpret the meaning of Heidegger’s words (Barison and Ross are
virtually absent from their film) as a camera takes viewers on an 1,800-mile
journey up the Danube, from its mouth in Romania to its source in Germany’s
Black Forest. Most watchable is Bernard Stiegler, a brilliant and amused
Frenchman who must have the distinction of being the only ascot-wearing
philosopher who once served five years in prison for armed robbery.
Along the way, viewers learn about Greek myths and complex notions of time
and place, of memory and forgetting. What begins innocently enough — an
exploration of an ancient Greek and Roman past in Romania — becomes more
disturbing as images of war-ravaged Yugoslavia and what had been the Mauthausen
concentration camp fill the screen. In a very real sense, the film’s tour is a
trip into the heart of darkness.
But “The Ister” is far from perfect. The concepts expressed in it
certainly need time to be fully explained, yet some editing wouldn’t have hurt.
Like the editing, the camera work is clumsy, and shots of the river are often
deadened by a lack of ambient sound. And as compelling as the interviewees can
be, it’s unfortunate that they were mostly filmed while sitting — yawn —
at a desk. A film about profound ideas deserved more imagination.
– John McMurtrie
Walter Addiego, Neva Chonin, Ruthe Stein, John McMurtrie
