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Trailer Review: Mister Lonely

Paul Clark — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I wasn't a big fan of Kids, Harmony Korine's screenwriting debut, or Gummo, his first feature as director. I was more positive on his subsequent film julien donkey-boy, although that film demonstrated that he still had some maturing to do. In spite of this, and the lukewarm notices from last year's Cannes and Toronto Film Festivals, this trailer has me intrigued about his latest film, Mister Lonely. A lot of it is the film's cast — where else are you going to find Diego Luna, Samantha Morton, and Denis Lavant in the same film, much less playing second-rate impersonators of Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, and Charlie Chaplin respectively? Part of me fears that this moody trailer is hiding some of the thornier aspects of the film, and I don't have the foggiest idea of how Werner Herzog fits into the whole thing, but I'm certainly curious to find out how it all fits together.

Movies We Missed: Les Revenants [They Came Back] (2004, Robin Campillo)

Paul Clark — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:00:00 GMT

I know what you're thinking. You looked at the title of this piece, saw the French title and thought, "there goes Paul again, recommending another French movie. Who wants to bet that this one's existential and deliberately paced, and full of observations and death and social class?" And the thing is, you'd more or less be right. But Les Revenants has something most of those movies don't have:

Zombies. Do I have your attention now?

Why I missed it: Actually, most people missed this movie. After playing at numerous festivals during 2004 and 2005 (including Cannes, Venice and Toronto), it never received a proper theatrical release on our shores. Eventually, it was unceremoniously released on DVD, and I wasn't even aware of its existence until my friend Jason, an unapologetic zombie movie nut, recommended it to me. Well Jason, when you're right, you right. And this time, you were right.

Why I should have known: Les Revenants was Robin Campillo's first effort as a director, but his other work was familiar to me, having co-written and edited numerous films by the talented filmmaker Laurent Cantet. Of particular note is his work on Time Out, which wouldn't seem to be similar to Les Revenants but showed Campillo skilled at mining existential unease, a skill that would serve him well in his directorial debut.

Why I ended up kicking myself: While Les Revenants is a movie about zombies, it's like no zombie movie I've ever seen. Even the zombies themselves are different, neither the lumbering flesh-eaters of classic zombie fare nor the running snarling beasties of more modern genre incarnations. In many ways, it's difficult to tell the "returnees" (as the film calls them from the humans who never died. Even the film's opening shot of thousands of returnees walking out of a cemetery looks like it could just as easily be showing mourners departing a funeral. Aside from a body temperature difference of roughly five degrees and some slowness in their mental processes, the returnees walk and talk like any other human. They fit in fairly well in society, with many of them returning to the workforce.

One of the subtexts of the zombie-movie genre is the idea that the zombies were once our loved ones, and Campillo's film makes this idea explicit. Some of the most fascinating scenes in the film show the different ways in which the living deal with the return of their dearly departed. Some of them are overcome with emotion, such as the parents whose child has returned to them, but others are more conflicted, like Rachel, played by Géraldine Palihas. Rachel's husband Mathieu died several years previously in a car accident, and it's fairly clear she's had a hard time getting over his death. After Mathieu returns, Rachel ignores the fact as long as he can until he finds her and works his way back into her life.

However, it becomes clear that the returnees aren't the same people they once were. Those of working age are given jobs, but while Mathieu returns to his former engineering firm, he can't function at his former level and is put to work in a factory. The returnees' difficulties with communication make a number of people uneasy, and by and large they're treated as second-class citizens. In addition, the returnees are a restless bunch, wandering in the daytime and leaving their houses by night to attend mysterious meetings. What could they be planning?

Campillo sort of answers that question in the final third of the film, although the returnees plans and motivations aren't particularly clear (escape? Sabotage? Recruitment?). Much more fascinating is the way the film's relationships play out near the end. The parents of the returned child disagree on how to treat him- while the father dotes on his son, his wife is growing increasingly freaked out by his behavior. And Rachel, who had been reluctant to welcome Mathieu back into her life, becomes increasingly devoted to him, often to the detriment of her own well-being.

Despite the zombie storyline, Les Revenants is not a gorefest. There are no violent deaths in the film, much less the bloody disembowelments we've grown to expect from the genre. Campillo's film is subtler than that, depending more on the subtle existential dread that comes from finding that someone you love isn't quite the way he used to be. With Les Revenants, Campillo has announced himself as a filmmaker to watch.

Yesterday's Hits: Chariots of Fire (1981, Hugh Hudson)

Paul Clark — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Every year, on the eve of the Oscar ceremony, I like to re-watch with a former Best Picture winner. Normally, I’ll pick a favorite of mine (as I did last year with The French Connection) but this year I decided on a change of pace, selecting a movie that I haven’t seen and have barely thought about in at least fifteen years. And while there’s no denying that Chariots of Fire made an impact on popular culture, its status as an Oscar-anointed “classic” is much less certain.

What made Chariots of Fire a hit?: Chariots of Fire was the festival favorite of its day, winning accolades at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival and taking home the audience award at Toronto that fall, and it became the word-of-mouth hit of the year. Much of the credit for the film’s success belongs to its story, about two young runners whose competitive drive is rivaled only by their principles. The film’s producer David Puttman supposedly wanted to make a film akin to A Man For All Seasons in which the principle characters are guided by their consciences, and in the stories of Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams he found an ideal vehicle for this theme. Chariots of Fire is a straight-laced British production, but it’s also an inspirational sports movie that focuses on characters who are both heroic and relatable.

But let’s not overlook some of the other factors in the film’s success. Consider some of the major world events of the era. Just one year before, the United States boycotted the Moscow Olympics, and it’s possible audiences turned to the cinema to get the Olympic fix they weren’t able to get on their television. In addition, 1981 saw a groundswell in anglophilia following the lavish nuptials of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. And let’s not underestimate the impact of Vangelis’ theme music from the film, which was one of the few instrumental pieces of the day to get regular airplay on top 40 radio.

What happened?: Along with the aforementioned factors, much of the appeal of Chariots of Fire lie in its underdog status. At the 1981 Academy Awards, the film was the night’s unlikely success story, beating out such high-profile nominees as Reds and On Golden Pond for Best Picture. But once the film took home the big prize, it was no longer an outsider, but the establishment’s choice. What’s more, an unassuming film like Chariots often has a difficult time standing up to the scrutiny such a high-profile honor can bring, and it’s easy to imagine moviegoers who first experienced the film after its Oscar win wondering what the fuss was about.

In addition, few (if any) of the people involved with Chariots of Fire capitalized on the film’s success. Leading men and Royal Shakespeare Company alums Ben Cross and Ian Charleson failed to parlay their roles into movie stardom, with Cross finding a steady career onstage and in big-screen character work (usually playing villains), and Charleson succumbing to AIDS in 1990. Director Hugh Hudson found brief success in Hollywood with 1984’s Greystoke, but his star plummeted after the box-office and critical drubbing of 1985’s Revolution. Vangelis’ theme music helped to kick off a decade of often-regrettable synthesizer scores, as well as spawning a host of cheap and easy parodies of the film’s signature scene.

Does Chariots of Fire still work?: In some respects, yes. What distinguishes the film from other inspirational sports movies is its bifurcated structure, with the stories of Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams running alongside each other but only occasionally intersecting. By choosing to tell the story this way, Hudson and screenwriter Colin Weiland give the audience two characters to root for, while at the same time setting up an eventual showdown between them. Unfortunately for the film, real life didn’t quite work out this way, and instead of a race in which we feel conflicted about the possible outcome, Chariots of Fire gives both of its heroes a moment of gold medal glory.

Also, while Puttnam succeeded in his goal to make a film about characters driven by conscience, Chariots of Fire often neglects to paint these characters in much depth. Liddell in particular talks about little else besides his Christian convictions, and while Ian Charleson is fine in the part, the character doesn’t quite come alive as he should. Ben Cross’ Abrahams is the more complex of the two roles, an ambitious young man who sees winning as a victory against the anti-Semitism he experiences every day. Abrahams is such an interesting character that he might have carried a film unto himself, something that can’t be said of the film’s conception of Liddell.

But even in light of the parodies that we’ve seen over the past quarter century, the running scenes still work beautifully. In my experience with sports movies, the most cinematic sports tend to be the ones that have (a) momentum, and (b) simple rules, which would explain why basketball is better-suited to movies than football. In this respect, running may be the most cinematic sport of all, and few of any films capture this better than Chariots of Fire. Hudson does an interesting thing in the running scenes by focusing less on the outcome of the race than on the faces and bodies of the runners, showing in detail their physical and psychological exertions. Chariots of Fire may not be the classic the Academy once decreed it to be, but its racing scenes are every bit as effective now as they were on the film’s release.

Trailer Review: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Paul Clark — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Normally, I'm not the biggest fan of domestic trailers for foreign films, but this is pretty striking stuff. For one thing, distributor IFC Films doesn't shy away from the subtitles, unlike most studios who want you to fool you into thinking they're advertising English-language films where the characters just aren't very chatty. But beyond that, the editing of the trailer does a good job at playing up the suspense element in the film. Having missed 4 Months at Toronto, I can't attest to how true the trailer is to the spirit of Cristian Mungiu's film (last year's Palme d'Or winner), but I do know that the premise of the film — two girls trying to procure an illegal abortion in Communist Romania — has a considerable amount of built-in tension. By spotlighting this tension, the trailer does exactly what a good trailer should, satisfying the people who are already interested in the film (that's me) while intriguing those who are as yet unfamiliar with it.