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Reviews
My Blind Brother (2016)
A Shrewd Romantic Comedy - Fresh & Original
"I'm a superficial narcissist" "I'm lazy and judgmental."
This is how the two romantic leads in "My Blind Brother" introduce themselves to each other, and I fell in love with them both immediately.
Then, when they both reveal that they perversely wish they could be invalids so they'd have an excuse to lay in bed all day and watch TV, I fell in love with screenwriter Sophie Goodhart. Add in a blind guy, jaded and bored with his own infirmity, who is smoking weed unabashedly in public, even with the police nearby, who says, "I could shoot up in front of cops and they wouldn't do anything," and I love this movie in full. It manages to be morbidly dark, joyfully funny and unsentimentally touching all at the same time.
The storyline itself is genuinely fresh; unlike so many other films at this festival, I can't think of another previous movie to compare it to. Robbie (Adam Scott) is a champion blind athlete and local philanthropic hero doted on by the community (and his parents) and seemingly incapable of wrongdoing. His apparently well-earned egotism is fed by his frequent, televised crusades to rise above his "disability" while also raising money for charity, where after each successful feat, he is surrounded by gushing reporters who never seem to notice that he tells the same, lame joke every time: "You look beautiful today," Robbie the blind guy tells every female member of the press.
Robbie's hapless, unassuming brother Bill (Nick Kroll) knows the real Robbie to be arrogant, selfish and rude, but he still guide-dog- faithfully runs every marathon by Robbie's side and never makes a peep when he doesn't receive any accolades, or when even his own parents continually criticize him. One night, Bill escapes the relentless Robbie- worship by hitting up the local bar, where despite his best efforts to present himself as unworthy and unappealing, he gets lucky with an attractive and like-hearted woman named Rose (Jenny Slate). Bill is guilt-ridden because Robbie's blindness was the result of a childhood accident in which he was involved. Rose is a guilt-ridden because immediately after she told her fiancé she wanted to break up with him, he distractedly crossed the street and was hit and killed by a bus.
After one pitiful, anti-romantic (yet soul-soaring) night together, Rose flees without leaving her phone number. Nonetheless, Bill thinks his karma might finally be coming around and that he's found his sad-sack love-match. But his fantasy is soon squashed when his brother introduces him to his own new paramour - the very same Rose, who (without knowing he is Bill's brother) has started dating blind Robbie in an attempt to make herself a better person. Now Bill must decide if he will put himself second again or finally stand up to his blind brother.
Kudos to writer/director Sophie Goodhart for opting against a "when bad things happen to good people" script and instead going with "when good things happen to bad people." Goodhart's two, guilty, self-loathing characters are amazingly charming and lovable. Robbie makes a wonderfully heroic antagonist, whose capability and determination we slowly come to dislike more and more as the story unfolds. (The fact that actor Adam Scott looks quite a bit like a smugly smiling Tom Cruise doesn't hurt.) And Goodhart's ingenious twist on the conventional love-triangle takes the sentimental weight out of the usual wet blanket that hangs over traditional romantic comedies. This movie is bright and buoyant and makes us laugh at ourselves more than at mere jokes.
Goodhart's head-on attacks of our socially-correct attitudes toward both the physically handicapped and noble self-sacrifice are deftly executed dark humor that captures what's funny about resentment, bitterness, and condescension. Her sharp jabs at "those less fortunate" never feel like bullying and never fall into rude buffoonery. Even as the movie escalates into full-blown wackiness, it still maintains its shrewd edge.
Another strength to this film are the secondary characters. Rose's prissy, eye-rolling, sarcastically unsympathetic roommate (Zoe Kazan) ends up with the stoner blind guy. Ha! It's just another delightful quirk in this defiant film where apathy and under-achievement are treated as virtues and perfection is the problem to be overcome. Finally: a romantic comedy with mutually flawed lovers, where no sacrifice or self- improvement is necessary for them to win happiness and each other.
Just be fair, I will say that there are a few small spots where the script veers into impossible interactions - stupid things that could or would never actually be said. These mini-moments wouldn't stand out so much if all the other moments in the script were not so true and all the other lines were not so witty. I am not usually a great lover of comedies, and the fact that I am calling this film One of the Best of Tribeca 2016 means it is truly something special.
Heart of a Dog (2015)
This Film Has Heart: Perhaps Best of 2015
In her poetic film collage essay, Laurie Anderson is more beautifully and thoughtfully herself than ever. She has had a long career, but was most well-known in the 80's as an experimental performance artist, composer, and musician who especially explored the mix of spoken word and music. Those who know her albums such as "Big Science" and "Home of the Brave" will appreciate the return of the fragmented rhythm and quizzical tone of Anderson's speech, opening with voice-over sentences such as "This is my dream body – the one I use to walk around in my dreams."
Despite the film's seemingly stream-of-conscious, no-plot, hodge- podge approach, Anderson has meaningful ideas to express, and she's woven together an elegant and smartly structured tone-and-picture poem. The movie combines her personal stories and musings with quotations from renowned philosophers, ink drawings on paper, printed words, animation, scratchy old 8mm home-movie clips, new footage of landscapes, surveillance camera footage with time codes, graphic images such as computer icons, and her ingenious use of music. As always, Anderson excels at language, and here she combines various types of on-screen text with her own lyrical voice-over. I often leave a movie wanting to run home and download the soundtrack, but in this case I am yearning for a transcript. These are words worthy of reading and contemplating. "Try to learn how to feel sad without being sad," is just one of the many sentences that could use more time to resonate than one viewing allows.
But one of the surprises of this project may be Anderson's sophisticated and inventive cinematography. As the film explores a variety of deaths – the death of Anderson's dog, the death of her mother, the death of her husband (Lou Reed), and the mass deaths of 9/11 in New York, it seems the movie is often shedding its own tears. Many sequences are shot through a pane of glass that is dripping with water, like life itself is crying. And then she turns footage of an ocean upside down, with the foreground still raining, so the sea that has become the sky is weeping too. In front of everything, Anderson seems to be saying, is a gentle, pervasive sadness.
And yet, the movie is not even remotely maudlin. It discusses 9/11 in way that actually adds fresh insight, which seems impossible after so many anniversaries full of remembrance ceremonies, and so many other films that have also integrated that tragic event.
Perhaps the strongest moment in Anderson's film is when she takes her dog outdoors in a big field and enjoys watching her run and play in tall grass and aromatic dirt, as dogs do. And the camera pans up to the bright blue sky; it is such a beautiful day. And then we see pretty white trails in the sky, moving in circles. Anderson tells us they are birds. And then she sees that they are hawks. And she describes the look in the eyes of her dog, Lolabelle, as the dog peers up and realizes that she
is prey. The dog understands that these birds have come for the purpose of killing her. And Anderson bemoans the new reality that now the dog must not only be aware of the ground and the grass and the other earthbound creatures, but also that huge, untouchable expanse of sky. The sky is now a danger. And the dog will never view the sky the same again. Cut to footage of 9/11 as Anderson compares her dog's feeling to hers, and ours, when we suddenly understood that "something was wrong with the air"; the sky brought danger and those flying planes were there for the purpose of killing us. And "it would be that way from now on."
Anderson goes on to talk about the strangeness of living in a post- 9/11 surveillance state, where we are always being recorded. But she does not take the obvious path of complaining about the social injustice. Instead, she takes a clever twist and points out that all your actions are now data. And that data is always being collected, but it will not be watched until after you commit a crime. Then your story is pieced together, in reverse – footage of where you went and what you did, being viewed backwards from the most recent moment. And then she throws in a quote from Kierkegaard: "Life can only be understood backward but must be lived forward."
And intermixed with philosophy, Anderson keeps her wry sense of humor. At one point, she talks about a dream in which she gives birth to her dog. She illustrates the tale with bizarre comic drawings, and then she tells us that the dog looks up at her and says, "Thank you so much for having me," as if it has just been invited to a tea party. Ha. Later she talks about her own childhood memory of a trauma and reveals how our minds naturally clean up memories, leaving out certain details, and in that way you are holding onto a story and every time you tell the story, you forget it more. Cut to the computer icon of Missing File. The associations keep piling up, and they do indeed add up. It uses a complex and intellectual style, very astutely, to access emotional and intimate realities that are difficult to reach through overt methods. This film does tell a story, in its own subtly layered way.
It is sometimes a meditation on how to go on living despite despair – "the purpose of death is the release of love," but it is also clearly Laurie Anderson's own personal tale. This is a tender memoir. It's Anderson's love story, about her dog, her mother, her husband, and her city. In the most uncommon and evocative way, this film has heart.
Mia madre (2015)
Sorrowful Life and Comical Death
When was the last time you heard a great last line in a movie? So great it made you burst into tears? The final line in "Mia Madre" is not a brilliant sentence in itself. (Then again, is "rosebud" profound in itself?) But in context – the way it references an earlier conversation in the film, as well as sums up the theme of the movie, and most importantly creates a definitive and meaningful end to the story (and endings are always difficult, even for the best filmmakers), in that way, this was an enormously powerful and stirring end – probably the best final line to a movie that anyone will hear in this 53rd New York Film Festival. And it literally made me cry out loud.
Basically, this is a story about a woman whose mother is dying. But, don't imagine grim or depressing. Those Italians, they understand Sorrowful Life and Comical Death in ways that Americans just do not. It's like writer/director Nanni Moretti ("The Son's Room") is tapping into an ancient source of pure emotion. And he does it so gracefully. The film is gently, deeply astute. The lyricism in the language adds to the effect; Italian is such an elegant language. It's all part of this organic sensation that comes from the film – this gorgeous feeling that grows out of my stomach and blooms in my chest.
In conversation after the screening, Moretti actually says that he wants the audience to feel that the movie is digging inside of them. That's exactly what I felt. Or, I felt the movie carving into me. As I watched, I felt like I was being sculpted. I felt as if a great master, Michelangelo, was carefully cutting, chiseling into me, and so he – the sculptor, the director, the writer – is making us – the audience – into his magnificent carved creation. And in that way, Moretti is elevating us with his talent, his vision. He is making us sublime.
Except it really wasn't "us." It was just me alone and that movie. It was so intimate. I start off watching the movie from outside and thinking about it – thinking I will "review" it, and then I am in the movie. I am living it. It is living me. I am not audience observing a film; we are involved in each other in some palpable way. It's almost physical – like I can literally feel it touching me. It brings me to life in an odd way; I can feel my heart inside my body.
Of course, the death of a parent is a universal experience, but this film manages to make it feel uniquely personal. I feel as if this director has been watching me in my life, with my family, and is now explaining myself to me. Although, I suspect it's an explanation that will feel relevant or resonant to nearly every adult. Perhaps the film score helps me to feel so fully enthralled – a variety of music from Leonard Cohen, Philip Glass, Nino Rota, and Arvo Part.
Other critics may focus on the story that binds the film's emotions together. The lead character (played with glorious subtlety by Margherita Buy) is an Italian filmmaker who is shooting a movie while her mother is dying in a hospital. Actually, this is a semi- autobiographical film in that Mortetti had his mother die while he was shooting a previous film. However, I think that fact is more significant to the personal life of Moretti than to the body of this film; having an experience and elevating that experience to an art form are two very different things.
In this movie, the story functions to bring in the outside world and its pressing realities and complexities. The specifics of what job the central character has are mostly inconsequential. Although, it is worth noting that the character's persistent and diligent return to the stress of her work environment, after each vigil beside her dying mother, shows that life goes on.
But the story also functions by bringing smartly implemented humor. John Tuturro plays an American who is a hilariously bad actor in the film that our lead is trying to make. Tuturro's approach is broad and exuberant, which is startling in this otherwise quiet movie, and ultimately Tuturro's excited approach not only works but becomes essential to Moretti's message. I am laughing, I am crying, I am laughing, I am crying
I am exalted.
Another running joke in the film is when our protagonist director repeatedly tells her actors to "be the character you are playing at the same time as you stand outside the character." No one understands this instruction, and finally the director herself admits that she doesn't know what she means. But I see this as appropriately consistent with my unusual experience of the film; I am both standing outside it, watching, and in it, experiencing.
Fundamentally, this is a story about emotion. It's an exploration of humanity. It is life and death – beautiful and heartbreaking, devastating and inspiring. It was excruciating to watch a scene where our lead character is stripped naked and exposed (metaphorically); she's made vulnerable and cut to shreds – destroyed. Then, she goes and sits silently beside her dying mother, and that gives her new life. It revives her. It saves her. Death is breathing life while life is killing her.
In the press conference, Moretti is talking, with his lovely Italian accent, and I hear
"love erupts in solitude." I don't even know what that means, but I totally feel it. I leave the theater feeling newly alive.
Carol (2015)
Carol Disappoints: Empty and Mundane
The movie "Carol," a lesbian romantic drama that is based on the book "The Price of Salt" by Patricia Highsmith, is getting named Best Film of the Year by just about everyone, it seems, and making all the award short-lists. And Helen is Highly disappointed. Let me add up front that the film was costumed by Sandy Powell, art directed by Jesse Rosenthal, and filmed by Edward Lachman, who will all likely (and deservingly) receive awards for their work here. But I have issues with director Todd Haynes and screenwriter Phyllis Nagy.
I saw "Carol" at the New York Film Festival, where just about every film was more interesting than this gigantic slice of Boring. After watching the film, I assumed most people would dislike it as much as I did, so I was shocked when I did a quick Google search and saw the Variety review pop up saying "High expectations don't quite prepare you for the startling impact of Carol, exquisitely drawn, deeply felt
" No way! My first order of business is to change Variety's intro line: "High expectations don't quite prepare you for": the slow emptiness of this mundane, overly precious, pointlessly detailed movie.
Listen, I adore Cate Blanchett as much as anyone. And no one can say she is not gorgeous. At one point in the film – at a party, her estranged husband concedes to her that she is the most beautiful woman in the room. Well, that never changes. She is the most beautiful and the best dressed and best groomed person in every scene. So, let's all agree to put Cate Blanchett's face in the dictionary under the word Perfection, and then we can all go home and save ourselves two hours of lifeless artifice. And if Cate were selling lipstick, or stockings, or fur coats, I would buy them all. But I would not recommend this movie to anyone.
I'm happy for Cate that she got such a glamorous star vehicle in which to show off. But why is no one else stating the obvious – that this is essentially a vanity project for Cate Blanchett? Unfortunately however, in this movie, we cannot see Cate's rich inner life through her the heavy cover of makeup and fur. Remember the episode on "Mad Men," where Don Draper is trying desperately to find the ideal, alluring model to put in his fur coat ad? Todd Haynes' Cate Blanchett should get that job! She is precisely what Don was looking for – an impossibly beautiful fantasy of aspirational glamor and exquisite opulence. Women want to be her and men want to have her exactly because she is so flawless and empty; you feel nothing for her as a character – no complicated emotions to ruin the high-gloss illusion. And honestly, Cate, you are better than this; you don't need to advertise your quintessential (surface) beauty. That Don Draper gig, and this movie, are beneath you; you can act.
This brings me to the lesbian theme of the story. Helen Highly objects to the portrayal of Carol and her younger lover (played by Rooney Mara) as a Hollywood male fantasy of woman-on-woman sexuality. Due to Haynes' decision to maintain the look-and-feel of a 1950s flick, the movie refrains from overtly explicit sex scenes, but still it has the tone of cheesy pin-up porn – made for men, and not about real-life women who have ambiguous thoughts and difficult feelings. Highsmith's 1953 book, "The Price of Salt," became a lesbian-romance cult-novel, due largely to its being the first authentic expression of lesbian love that did not have the punishing ending that was prescribed by 1950s morality. Highsmith was a lesbian herself (a fact she denied throughout most of her career), and this story is semi-autobiographical, telling the tale of when she was a shop girl who fell into a romantic obsession over an older married woman who was a customer at the store. But let's stop there for a moment. (Well, there's not much else to tell; the movie mostly repeats variations of the first scene.)
So many people are eager to say how this film is "important for women" – as if it were still the act of sexual bravery and social revelation it was in the 1950s. And that is simply not the case. Today, the storyline is outdated. The book was ground-breaking and radical; the movie is conventional and banal. And this is the fault of the screenplay, which does not capture the emotional intensity or poetic eroticism of the book.
The book meticulously detailed the interior lives of these two, passionate yet confused women; the film, instead, meticulously and ploddingly details a story that was only loosely referenced in the book (because Highsmith was interested in tortuous desire and fearful loneliness, not a who-gets-the-kid divorce case). In the movie that Nagy and Haynes made, the tale becomes a simplistic, self-righteous, politically-correct after-school-movie. Haynes attempts, it seems, to depict the women's emotions with an endless series of long, still- life gazes. And so it seems that Haynes cares more about his visual style than he does the psychology of his characters. And to those who like to say that "Carol" is comparable to "Strangers on a Train," I say: Yes, Hitchcock and Highsmith shared an affection for frosty blonds (perhaps Todd Haynes does as well). But Haynes is no Hitchcock. (And "Carol" is no thriller.) Hitchcock knew how to make an ice-queen come alive on the screen, BUT he also understood plot; he knew what was a compelling story and what was not. "Carol" is not. So, Cate Blanchett and Todd Haynes can wish she were Grace Kelly or Kim Novak all day long, but she's not going to touch a hair of their blond locks with this script and this director.