The Screengrab : philip kaufman

When Good Directors Go Bad: Rising Sun (1993, Philip Kaufman)

Paul Clark — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Normally, I try not to get hung up on whether a movie is commercial. While it’s undeniable that films that are intended for a large audience have to satisfy a different set of expectations than those that aren’t, I generally do my best to consider the movie based on how well it succeeds in doing what it sets out to do. However, it’s undeniable that some filmmakers have sensibilities that are well-suited to commercial filmmaking, and others who don’t. Some of our best filmmakers (like Martin Scorsese) are even able to move back and forth between big-budget filmmaking and more personal work. Others have a harder time with it. One director who falls into the latter category is Philip Kaufman, and nowhere is this more apparent than his 1993 film Rising Sun.

Rising Sun was based on a novel by Michael Crichton, whose work was experiencing a surge in popularity in the early nineties. Crichton’s novel combined the ever-popular murder mystery genre with the then-current topic of Japanese encroachment on the American business market. Rising Sun wasn’t one of Crichton’s best novels, but there was potential there for an interesting film, and the choice of Kaufman to direct was inspired. Kaufman had been working for almost three decades, directing eccentric twists on popular genre films like 1972’s The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid and the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But his best-known work came in the 1980s, with his rich adaptations of tricky works of literature including The Right Stuff, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Henry & June.

It’s clear from Kaufman’s pedigree that Fox was looking for a classy, A-list adaptation of Crichton’s bestseller. However, I’m not sure classy was the way to go with Rising Sun. This is a story that incorporates such elements as boardroom intrigue, high-tech surveillance, the Japanese “shadow world” of Los Angeles, and a woman who gets off on being asphyxiated. Yet Kaufman directs the film like it’s high drama. The result is lifeless and inert. And if there’s one thing you don’t want in a movie where a character eats sushi off a woman’s bare breasts (with a nipple/sake chaser), it’s inertia.

But if Rising Sun is a washout as a guilty-pleasure entertainment, it’s just as uncompelling as an exposé of Japanese culture. When it was first published, Crichton’s novel drew fire from Japanese-American groups for its portrayal of their business culture as being ruthless and conniving. But even when I saw the film back in 1993, most of the more shocking details seemed pretty quaint. Granted, some of the more supposedly anti-Asian elements were toned down for the movie, but no matter which form it took, Rising Sun had surprisingly little insight into Japanese culture that hadn’t been expressed in a more interesting way elsewhere.

Which leaves us only with the murder mystery, which offers few surprises. Early in the film, Sean Connery’s wise Capt. John Connor tells Wesley Snipes’ Lt. Web Smith, “When something seems too good to be true, then it’s not true.” Not particularly sage advice, but apparently advice that was heeded by Kaufman, Crichton, and co-screenwriter Michael Backes. Why else would they waste almost an hour setting up an obvious decoy villain? Once it becomes clear that the film is content to cycle through every twist and turn we expect from it- the fake villain, the heroes getting thrown off the case, the ugly revelations about their pasts, the emergence of the real villain, and so on- all that’s left is counting down the minutes between “surprise” revelations. And at 129 minutes, that’s a lot of counting.

Kaufman has always had a knack for casting, and in 1993, a movie top-lined by Connery and Snipes still qualified as an A-list production. For his part, Snipes is pretty solid in the film. I’ve long believed Snipes to be undervalued as an actor, due first to his career long being mired in forgettable action fare, then more recently because of his legal problems. Web Smith isn’t a great part- certainly not as flashy as his supporting role in Mo’ Better Blues- but he does all he can with a character who’s essentially playing straight man to Connery. I especially like his slow burn moments, when he tries desperately to maintain his cool in the middle of confounding and/or ridiculous circumstances. Crichton objected to Fox’s casting of Snipes in a role that was written as white man, but I think that it works here, giving the film a complicated yet sympathetic lead in a way that grounds the story.

Connery, on the other hand, is content to coast through the film, propelled largely by his own presence. Crichton famously wrote the role of John Connor especially the Scots legend, but both the character and the performance are something of a dud. Connery’s role consists primarily of being right all the time and deigning to offer advice to those less enlightened than he. Unfortunately, this arrogance extends to the performance itself, with Connery (who also executive-produced) putting forth no more effort than necessary to earn his pay.

What’s more, Kaufman and Crichton take every opportunity they can to underline exactly how wise Connor is, most notably by pitting him against vulgar anti-Japanese Lt. Graham (Harvey Keitel), who refers to the Japanese as “nips” and decries their presence in this country. Unfortunately for the film, Keitel’s live-wire performance upstages Connery’s self-important one, with Keitel getting almost all of the best lines (my favorite being his declining of an offer of sushi: “no thanks. If I get a craving for mercury, I’ll eat a thermometer”).

When I look at Kaufman’s filmography, I can’t help but marvel at some of the novels he’s adapted for the screen. After all, here’s a guy who has successfully adapted some near-unadaptable material, including books by Tom Wolfe and Milan Kundera. Who would have thought it would be Michael Crichton who would defeat him? But just because Crichton’s books seemingly adapt themselves doesn’t mean that Kaufman was the right director for the job. As a director who specialized in literate fare, scenes like the one in which Wesley Snipes is attacked in the middle of a raid by an irate nude woman just aren’t in his wheelhouse. Unfortunately, Rising Sun was the beginning of a downturn in Kaufman’s career, leading first to the respectfully yet hardly enthusiastically-received Quills seven years later, then another misguided commercial project, Twisted, in 2004. Hopefully, one of his announced upcoming projects- perhaps his proposed Nicholas Ray film Interrupted- will get him back on track.

Steven Spielberg: Teacher’s Pet?

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:30:00 GMT

The fourth Indiana Jones movie has finally been unveiled at Cannes, and it didn’t take long for the initial critical reaction to hit the intertubes. (In fact, indiewire critic Eric Kohn actually texted his review line by line from the theater as the movie was screening. No word yet on whether this caused Armond White’s brain to explode.) The consensus so far hasn’t exactly been one of childlike glee (with the exception of Roger Ebert, who says “If you liked the other movies, you will like this one, and if you did not, there is no talking to you.”). Manohla Dargis of the New York Times sums it up thusly: “I was bored out of my mind while watching the movie, which makes me think that Spielberg was terribly bored while directing it.”

Peter Rainer of the L.A. Times takes that last idea and runs with it, asking the musical question, “Will Spielberg take a walk on the wild side?” Seems like it might be a little late in the game for that, but Rainer does offer an interesting analysis of Spielberg’s career trajectory. “Steven Spielberg, who at 22 was hired by Universal to a long-term contract, started out his career as the teacher's pet of the Movie Brat generation,” Rainer writes. “While many of his '70s confederates, who also were to include such directors as Terrence Malick, Jonathan Demme and Philip Kaufman, were attempting to work outside the industry, or subvert it from within through sheer force of artistry, Spielberg was directing episodes of Night Gallery and Marcus Welby, M.D. and then moving on to sharks and flying saucers.”

After doing his part to birth the modern-day blockbuster, however, Spielberg followed a traditional Hollywood road to respectability, moving on to important, “Oscar-worthy” work like Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, movies which Rainer argues are “afflicted with a kind of transcendent Stanley Kramerism. We are made to understand that moral lessons are being imparted and that, in the end, tomorrow will somehow be a better day.” Spielberg only truly began to challenge himself, Rainer argues, with the darker fantasy pictures that followed: AI, Minority Report and War of the Worlds. While conceding that these are flawed films, “more fascinating as psychodrama than as drama,” he also makes the case that they “in many ways upend his beloved early work.”

Some are saying the same about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But they don’t necessarily mean it as a compliment.

Take Five: 1968

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Brett Morgen's highly praised documentary Chicago 10, about the fallout of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago forty years ago opens in limited release this weekend. Morgen has claimed since it first debuted last year at Sundance that the film isn't really about 1968, but about 2008, and indeed, it seems to have fresh, albeit grim, resonance today, with the recent death of arch-conservative William F. Buckley, who had a memorable confrontation on the air while covering the convention. Steven Spielberg is himself crafting a fictionalized version of the same events for The Trial of the Chicago 7, and America gears up for one of the most electrifying presidential races in recent memory as an unpopular war rages overseas and tumult grips some of our closest allies. But as relevant as it might seem from a moviemaking perspective, in other ways, 1968 couldn't be further away; the revolutionary consciousness of that bloody year and the infinite possibilites that came with the Paris revolts seem like they happened on another planet. Still, in many ways, it was a magical year that casts a very long shadow over the lives of a number of people, many of whom are filmmakers. Here's a look at some of the better films about or influenced by that impossible year.

MEDIUM COOL (1969)

In many ways, the definitive film about the events of 1968, at least from an American perspective, will always be Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool. The first nondocumentary feature film directed by the legendary cinematographer was meant to be a highly fictionalized treatment of chaos and mayhem breaking out at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; but it quickly transmogrified into something altogether stranger, blurring the line between truth and fiction, as reality quickly began to outstrip Wexler's fictionalized vision. Eventually, while filming, he found himself caught up in the (unstaged) action of the riots and police brutality that wracked the city and altered the political landscape of America, and one of his crew uttered the immortal warning: "Look out, Haskell! It's real!" (This later became the title of a very worthwhile 2001 documentary about the movie.)

PUNISHMENT PARK (1971)

Though it was neither filmed in nor set in 1968, one of the most famous — or infamous — of Peter Watkins' inventive pseudo-documentaries is completely suffused with the spirit of the times. The director himself has admitted to being highly galvanized by the events of that year, both in the United States and in Europe, and some of the nonprofessional actors he recruited to play roles in the film were participants in the Chicago riots. The film itself concerns a grueling trek through the desert by a handful of dissidents, escorted by a grim-faced group of soldiers in some sort of vicious game. It quickly degenerates into a terrifying realistic showdown between the forces of law and order and the voices of revolution and dissent; its creepy verisimilitude serves to remind us that maybe those days aren't as long past as we'd like to think.

IN GIRUM IMUS NOCTE ET CONSUMIMUR IGNI (1978)

Guy Debord, provocateur, poet, philosopher and filmmaker, was one of the key members of the Situationist International, and as such, one of the hidden architects of the bizarre, almost miraculous events of Paris, May 1968. Made in the decade following those events, this experimental film (the title means "In the night, we turn and are consumed by the fire") puts to work his theories of detournement — of taking cultural images and repackaging them with subversive intent — in service of both celebrating and eulogizing the near-revolution. Intriguing, frustrating, brilliant and flawed, much like the man himself, In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni is a movie worth seeking out. If nothing else, you have to love the audacity of a film that features a hand-typed note from God, claiming that if he'd known that it would eventually have produced a film so offensive, he would never have created the world.

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1988)

Paris and Chicago weren't the only places deeply embroiled in chaotic upheaval in the year 1968. All over the world, from Italy to Japan, protest movements, government misconduct, and a seemingly unstoppable youth movement put nations in turmoil. One of the biggest hotspots was Czechoslovakia, where Milan Kundera sets his famously erotic, tragic and beautiful novel. It sets a promiscuous young doctor at odds with his own desires and emotions on the eve of the Soviet invasion, which is used as both political and personal backdrop against a timeless human story. Ably directed by Philip Kaufman and beautifully acted by Juliet Binoche, Lena Olin, and in one of his first major roles, Daniel Day-Lewis, The Unbearable Lightness of Being perfectly captures the tone of the days, twenty years later on.

REGULAR LOVERS (2005)

A number of European filmmakers have attempted to capture the Spirit of '68, both in documentaries and in narrative film. It's a difficult task, if for no other reason than that the causes of the revolt, as well as its ultimate collapse, are still poorly understood and subject to the endless predatory claims of those who say it belongs, ideologically, to them. This little-seen film by French director Phillippe Garrel perhaps comes closest, simply by being so messy, ambling and chaotic; by not attempting to frame an overweening narrative structure over those dreamlike days in Paris, Garrel gives us a rather astonishing evocation of them in all their rambling, inchoate, erotic glory. He quietly succeeds where Bernardo Bertolucci's earlier, and similar, film The Dreamers noisily failed.

That Guy! Classic: Warren Oates

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:00:00 GMT

As character actors go, they don't come much more iconic than Warren Mercer Oates. A tall Marine Corps vet from rural Kentucky's Muhlenberg County, Oates came west in the 1950s and, after working a number of menial jobs, started to get a string of acting jobs in western movies and televisions shows, thanks largely to his hunched six-foot frame, throwback looks, and thick rustic accent. But it was his acting chops that won him the attention of some of Hollywood's greatest directors; over the years, he worked with, among others, Norman Jewison, Monte Hellman, Stephen Spielberg, John Milius, William Friedkin, Terrence Malick, and Philip Kaufman. But it was with Sam Peckinpah that Oates found his greatest success; the two shared a no-nonsense approach to filmmaking and a similiarly straightforward (and sometimes abrasive) personality. After first working together on Ride the High Country, Peckinpah and Oates worked together repeatedly over the years, and Peckinpah even gave Oates one of his few leading man roles in the controversial and underrated Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Extremely prolific during his 25 years in Hollywood, Warren Oates and his sneering, crooked smile became one of the few character actors as immediately recognizable as many lead actors of his day. Sadly for the many fans of this gifted actor and storyteller, he didn't live to enjoy his greatest success: he died unexpectedly of a heart attack just months after completing Stripes. His role as the straight-edge Sgt. Hulka won him legions of new fans and scored him more money than he'd made in any of his previous movies, but he would make only three more films, both of which were released after his death. Since then, a posthumous cult has grown up around Warren Oates, and it's hard not to read various bits of casting without imagining what he'd do with the role. Luckily, he left us with a lot of good work to chew on.

Where to see Warren Oates at his best:

THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

Outside of Stripes, Warren Oates' best-known, and most beloved, film role is that of the bandit Lyle Gorch in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. Gorch combines Oates' two most common roles in western genre pictures — the craven and the brute — into an incredibly memorable, whore-chasing, washer-stealing character. Better still, Oates is paired in the barrier-busting revisionist western with Ben Johnson, another genre great, as his conniving brother Tector. An essential role in an essential film.

TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1971)

Monte Hellman was the director Warren Oates worked with most often outside of Sam Peckinpah (Oates claimed that he would work with either man at any time on any film for any reason). This bizarrely minimalist existential road picture was probably their finest collaboration, though Cockfighter has its partisans: Oates plays "G.T.O", an enigmatic, constantly self-inventing figure who becomes embroiled in a cross-country road race for the same reason men climb Everest: because it's there.

BADLANDS (1973)

Oates has only a minor role in Terrence Malick's stunning retelling of the story of Charlie Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, but it's an undeniably effective one. Playing the father of Sissy Spacek's Holly Sargis, Oates' laconic performance contains unexpected depth, and his character, by acting as the barrier between the two callow young lovers, is the one who sets off their oddly casual, affectless killing spree. Proof that even in small parts, Oates could make a huge impact.

Daniel Day-Lewis Speaks

Phil Nugent — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:04:00 GMT

"Actors should never give interviews. Once you know what colour socks they wear, you'll remember it next time you see them performing, and it will get in the way. It is not in anyone's interest." That's how Daniel Day-Lewis begins an interview, so I guess that Peter Stanford, who conducted this one for the London Telegraph, deserves credit for not shaking his hand and heading off to the library to cobble together quotes from back issues of People. (Stanford: "Can I ask you about your method?" Day-Lewis: "God help you.") Still, for a guy who clearly regards the work of promoting a movie as a regrettable necessity, Day-Lewis sure does seem like an open guy, especially where his work process is concerned. One surprise is that he regards his fine performance in Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being as "a mistake": "If I'd really shut out the din and looked at that script, I'd have known that I wasn't ready for that. I felt I was short-changing them somehow because I was missing the centre of it. It was sliding away from me. . . And apart from anything else, the exploration of sexuality in the film was just — well, I was in no way prepared for how that would feel."

Since then, Day-Lewis has been selective enough about his roles that it was a calculated gamble for Paul Thomas Anderson to write There Will Be Blood with him in mind for the lead — a part that requires Day-Lewis to be onscreen for damn near the movie's entire, long running time — but the gamble paid off. "I'd loved his films," Day-Lewis says of Anderson. "And the idea had occurred to me that we might enjoy getting up to the same kind of mischief, but when this script came it really took me quite by surprise in the most wonderful way. The bag was packed once I'd read it." As for the idea that the movie is meant to be taken as a comment on contemporary events, "Paul's not unaware of what is going on in the world but our focus had to be a much narrower and more selfish one. If you enter into the realm of trying to create a parable or cautionary tale, you've already strayed so far off course that you might as well stay in bed. So no, it was utterly and specifically that man in that story in that place at that time in America's social history." As the actor sees it, the screenwriter "honestly told unblinkingly the story of one man's life from the first scene to this outrageous conclusion. I couldn't begin to imagine where some of that had come from because it didn't always appear to have a logic, and yet it appeared to me to have its own innate logic."