TIFF: "Jeff...," "Hysteria", "Take Shelter" and "Amy George."
Saturday, September 17, 2011 at 2:30PM [Editor's Note: Apologies from Nathaniel, I've been under the weather and Paolo, who has been so dependable at sending capsules and reviews our way, now has a log jam of them. So many movies to discuss. Enjoy. TIFF wraps this weekend. -Nathaniel R]
Paolo here, discovering that HYSTERIA, a film about inventing the vibrator, isn't based on the recent Broadway play "In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play" although they tackle the same subject. However, some scenes here still look like you might see them in a stage play, set in offices of upper middle class Londoners. These are perfectly designed offices, with the requisite deep trendy colours of today's period films. The character played by the unrecognizable Rupert Everett is an electricity geek. A generator occupies his office, a Rube Goldberg like thing connected to a feather duster. However, protagonist Mortimer Granville (a composite of three actual doctors played by Hugh Dancy) sees something else in this feather duster.
The comedy in the film is repetitive; how many 'strong hands' jokes can one take even if Jonathan Pryce, playing Mortimer's boss Dalrymple, delivers them so capably? Dalrymple's daughter Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal) enters the plot, a welcome break from the 'paroxysms' of Mortimer's clients. Her story line gets dramatic when her East End connections land her in prison but there isn't enough of a struggle to convince us that something bad might truly happen to her. Gyllenhall plays Charlotte with an optimism rarely seen in her darker films. She's also required to speak in a West End English accent alongside real English actors but she's not enough to elevate this film into a genuine crowd pleaser.
HICK, based on Andrea Portes' novel, is a movie set in the middle of nowhere and ends up there, despite the wishes of a thirteen year old girl named Luli (Chloe Moretz). Luli is very knowledgeable of her provenance, her mother Tammy (Juliette Lewis) giving birth to her in a bar. Her father's no different, the kind of guy who drives into playground monkey bars without hiding the bottle of whiskey in his hand. She decides to run away to Las Vegas even if she's too young to be part of the workforce. The film from this point forward becomes a road movie, taking place inside cars or at pit stops.
Despite of the film's light tone, Hick is where Moretz endures a certain rite of passage that many female child actresses endure. She wears an "Iris" like wardrobe, quotes westerns and eventually has to deal with questionable adults. She talks to other characters as if it's just for play, trying too hard to muster a bravado she doesn't have the maturity for. Meanwhile Blake Lively and Eddie Redmayne do Southern accents but don't breathe life into their roles and Juliette Lewis adds enough humanity but gets excised way too early to be defended.
The new Duplass brothers dramedy JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME is what I imagine Cyrus, their previous film, to be with less distracting hair. The titular character (Jason Segel) is a thirty something that didn't turn out exactly how his mom (Susan Sarandon) wanted him to. It seems like just a regular day when his mother asks him to go to Home Depot...
Since he's doing this errand stoned on pot and after having received mysterious phone call, he is out looking for signs. (Like the movie Signs, which he regards as a masterpiece.) What ensues are a bunch of happy coincidences that allow him to run into his mother and other people he's close to. This day will also make characters rethink their relationships and the people around them. That's the premise. One ridiculous element is how Jeff can maintain a high over such a long, unmarked period - although thankfully Segel doesn't overplay this. Jeff... also has a lesbian character who's pretty cool but the way she courts someone can be skewed as stereotypical.
It's a 'bad things that happen to good people' film without the sadism. I like a mystical, metaphysical-esque theme in a comedy film, where bad things might happen to good people at first before they receive a fate that they finally deserve. There's xylophone-y synthesizer music that might not have been used since Malick or any movie about Africa and it surprisingly fits the film's tone. I also love myself a good comedian. Ed Helms of Daily Show, The Hangover and Cedar Rapids fame plays Jeff's brother Pat and has a great anti-rapport with Judy Greer, playing his wife. Helms, in an early scene with Greer, can turn punctuation into little yet effective punch lines and he makes the switch for the film's dramatic denouement.
TAKE SHELTER is an acquired taste with its slow pace in portraying Ohio man Curtis LaForche's (Michael Shannon) unraveling mind. Reminded of the AICN quote in the trailer
This film blew me away starting from its opening shot."
I paid close attention to the film's visuals, the dimension it brings to the leaves shaken by the wind or the brownish drops of water that falls on Curtis' hand.
Th dream sequencesdon't often have a change of colour making them as real as the moments when Curtis is awake. Directore Jeff Nichols uses a lot of close-ups and Shannon and the rest of the cast bravely work under this revealing, claustrophobic framing. You can see the blueness in his eyes andy every little expression in the cast's faces. There is also an appropriate grayness to the film, but the images on the screen have such sharp, digital-like quality. If I'm right that it was filmed in digital, it might just make me a convert of the medium.
Most audiences will be in tune with the film's psychological and environmental ramifications. There is, however a Socratic element at work here which is more haunting because Curtis building himself a cave to protect himself from nature's forces. His wife, Samatha (Jessica Chastain) is at first stern, trying to curb his 'attitude' but later becomes his teacher, her pathos and character arc as strong as his. As to awards speculation, Michael Shannon does have a histrionic, scenery chewing scene at a Lions' Club meeting. Nonetheless he is most subdued and multidimensional throughout. He does have a lot of rivals for the Best Actor shortlist, though. Jessica Chastain's competition, with her 'seven films in one year' ubiquity, is herself.
In AMY GEORGE the thirteen year old Jesse gets an assignment in school to take a self-portrait without it being too literal -- it could be an object that he likes, etc. Taking his camera everywhere he becomes more observant of his family, friends and female schoolmates. Throughout this period, his mother notices the changes within him, telling him stories about his 'when he was little.' Although he's still physically small, the audience is eager to believe that he's no longer a child. But unlike other films about adolescence, this event isn't a catalyst to a total loss of innocence; it's arguable that the events in the movie don't add up to a tangible character arc or even a plot.
As a Torontonian, I couldn't help but notice inaccuracies within the story's presentation. Set in a diverse city, there are no major characters of colour other than a Filipino maid who callously gets blamed for theft even if a family friend clearly did the deed. There are other things that grate: how can rich parents too young to have Jesse afford a multi storey house in a gentrified neighbourhood but they won't even get a proper bed for their child? Small details like this make the film seem somewhat short-sighted and exclusionary for diverse audiences.
But Amy George looks warm on-screen and the mise-en-scéne helps show the characters' personalities: the hidden pornographic collection of its protagonist, thirteen year old Jesse, his house littered with his parents' vitamin bottles, the greenery of a sloped park in Riverdale (a neighbourhood in Toronto) with a playground and ravines where the family would hike, little toys arranged on the windowsill of one of the girls whom Jesse is courting, him climbing a tree to get a picture of her.
Amir warned me that Bela Tarr's TURIN HORSE contains a thirty minute potato boiling scene. He exaggerates; there are four potato boiling scenes that last five minutes tops. Those naughty European auteurs being obtuse for indulgence's sake! I'll give other numbers involving this film. 1889, the year a horse became a witness to Nietzsche's mental incapacitation. Two, the members of a household, a father and a daughter, taking in that horse. Six, the days in which the audience watches this same family's life disintegrate for reasons we can only speculate upon.
A 146 minute film with long takes and repetitive scenes in black and white will drive some insane. Tarr prolongs scenes to make us listen to the music or realize that the film's compositions are to die for (which I don't mind). The film is also simple in comparison to Tarr's earlier human yet convoluted Werckmeister Harmonies. It's these elements' alchemy, making us wonder what we're watching. My interpretation of it is that we're watching a case study wherein this isolated family receives the negative results of the change that's beyond them - Nietzsche's ideas spreads into the small town as quickly as his death horse has entered. A storm comes, the horse becomes unable to be driven, Gypsies come to raid the well, God makes people suffer without reason.
It's like watching decay without nihilism or seeing a part of civilization die out. One can only feel so much sympathy towards individuals affected by the inevitable. inevitable. Maybe Tarr's slow and mundane pace negotiates the pain? (Other directors would have doled it out with intermittent shocks). Yet this family makes a decision under these circumstances. Marvellous.
P.S. I tweeted about Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights but Amir will discuss the film further in an upcoming post.
Reader Comments (5)
Wow thanks so much for these write-ups. Been wondering about Turin Horse and your words make me want it even more.
Mikhael: Turin Horse is a very rewarding experience, although I probably needed a venti beforehand.
yes thanks for these writeups. I've been struggling with my own reaction to Take Shelter but I think we're mostly at the same place with it.
I didn't have the easiest time taking in Take Shelter, even if I admire and even like it now. I'm also projecting here, but most audiences will probably pay more attention to how Jeff Nichols' tells his story than to what he's trying to say, which might be a more interesting discussion.
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