After voting for Obama, I drove over to Minneapolis to see Happy-Go-Lucky (so as to avoid the internet and CNN). Mike Leigh’s latest functions as a kind of yin to Naked’s yang, centering on a truly happy woman who carefully and successfully negotiates the angry, xenophobic, violent, unfair world that streams around her. Sally Hawkins delivers a lovely, quirky yet believable performance. Her Poppy may be happy but she’s no flake. An elementary school teacher who has traveled the world with her best friend and flatmate Zoe (fine, grounded work by newcomer Alexis Zegerman), Poppy likes to party about as much as she enjoys taking the piss out of life’s rude awakenings. The film opens on one such event when her bike is stolen and Poppy is forced, for the first time, to learn how to drive. It is her driving lessons with Scott (Eddie Marsan channeling David Thewlis) that provides the main thrust of the dramatic action.
Like many of Leigh’s films, there are scenes that feel contrived and/or unnecessary (an odd encounter with a homeless man being the most egregious) and relationships that feel under-explored (a visit to Poppy’s younger sister’s house in suburbia offers a mere glimpse into Poppy’s family life); still, while it may not live up to the glories of Life is Sweet or High Hopes, Happy-Go-Lucky is worth the effort.
Let The Right One In may not be a knock out of the fjord (I know a lot of folks have been disappointed by its lack of teeth, or, to reframe the concern, the horror in this Swedish film is quiescently disquieting), but its images have been knocking around my head for weeks. Twelve-year-old Oskar is a psychopath in training. Terribly bullied at school and working through his parents’ divorce, this frail, shy boy shuts himself up in his room pouring over a scrapbook of newspaper stories reporting acts of violence as well as pictures of knives and guns cut out of magazines. Upon befriending the new kid in the housing complex (director Tomas Alfredson fills his frame with thick blankets of snow and mist as well as functional, unadorned architecture—everything bathed in a variety of socialist grays), Oskar falls strangely in love. Eli (Lina Leandersson, who may be twelve or, perhaps, thirty; it’s really hard to tell) seems to care for Oskar as well, and while Eli’s caretaker (father?, lover?) is out attempting to drain the blood of teenage boys, s/he develops a close, protective bond with the boy next door. What little violence is rendered in dreamy, uncanny bursts (there is a sequence in a swimming pool that is masterly). As Oskar becomes more and more aware of the potential truths underneath the surface of his friend’s exterior, he’s drawn even closer to Eli’s mysteries. Why indeed does Eli refuse to be called a girl (is it because she is an old woman or is something else afoot) and what’s up with that strange scar? Uncomfortably erotic and tender yet leaving the spectator with more questions than answers, Let the Right One In is a horror/coming-of-age hybrid filtered through a decidedly queer sensibility—all wrapped up in the atmospherics one would expect from a Tarkovsky film. I look forward to seeing it again.
Last night I watched Man on Wire, which has received much critical praise and plenty of Oscar talk. It’s a great story but not a very compelling film. Borrowing from the Errol Morris school of documentary filmmaking, director James Marsh mixes archival footage, home movies, cinematic recreations and talking heads to tell the story of a French provocateur (tight-rope walker, unicyclist, magician and pantomime artist) who spent forty-five minutes in 1974 cavorting on a high wire—one-hundred and four floors above the earth—connected between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The critics compare the film’s structure to a heist film but there was no suspense. And the central player is so full of himself you can’t help but root against him (ok, I didn’t want him to fall but somehow I didn’t want the 2008 version of Phillipe Petit to succeed, if that makes sense). The film, at best, functions as a kind of post-9/11 nostalgia trip.
we recently watched man on the wire as well and i was about to start a new thread on it, but this relieves me from having to write anything very substantive. i too thought it was great material but not a very good film. i would have preferred to see errol morris make this. unlike morris, the director of this film has no grasp of the art of pushing the form of the film against the edges of a odd, complex central figure. nor does he have a sense of poetry. if on the one hand he does not develop any psychological tension, on the other, he is completely oblivious (in a formal sense) of the experience of the sublime that the feat at the heart of the film evokes in everybody associated with it (except, curiously enough, petit himself). in the absence of all this i would have preferred a more conventional, linear documentary–one which spells out how this piece of performance art was put together (and financed) and just what went wrong between the central figures in the time after it. and less cheesy re-creations would have been good as well.
but jeff, what did you receive critical praise and oscar talk for?
My butt. I know, I read that sentence a few times to myself. I will now fix that sentence for the English profs on the site.
I wasn’t as impressed with Jeff’s butt. Oh, it had a kind of Sam-Mendes flair to it, a theatrical oomph that seemed to heighten our attention to its supple curves. But the acclaim seems exaggerated.
I felt that way about Man on Wire, too. And I am dying to see the vampire flick, but I decided to read the novel first….
Like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Jeff’s butt has “Oscar” written all over it. With crayon. I hope it washes off.
anyway, why are all of you watching documentaries about arrogant French pantomimists? Is Netflix out of EVERY OTHER MOVIE?
I’d say Werner Herzog could handle a film like Man on Wire better than Errol Morris. That is, if the man on wire was attempting to traverse two peaks of the Peruvian Andes, above the Incan Sacred Valley, while fending off Buick-sized bats with whom he had mistakenly believed he co-wrote poetry.
Paramount published a one-page piece from Elle magazine praising Benjamin Button in today’s Times. This strikes me as an act of desperation rather than of faith. So I’ll skip the film. But I must take a moment here and say a word about Kurt Geiger’s latest collaboration with iconic fashion jeweler Erickson Beamon. I keed.
Happy-Go-Lucky sounds intriguing; a nice counterpoint to Todd Solondz’s Happiness? I’ll check it out. Thanks, Jeff.
am watching man on wire now (three takes thus far…) and feeling all of the above, plus some. really flat film. unlike you jeff, though, i like petit quite a lot. in fact, i’m in love with someone with this much focus, purpose, and obvious charisma (he gets a lot of people to take a lot of chances for him, and they clearly love him). but poetry (nice choice of word, arnab) and suspense, yeah, totally missing. and the story doesn’t seem to make much sense, either. WHAT IS GOING ON???? i agree with arnab that if the director can’t summon the poetry, at least he should give us the details. i want to know how to wire was launched between the two towers of notre dame. i want to know how petit’s parents felt about a kid who couldn’t stay out of the air. i want to know about the drive and the beauty and the dare and the compulsion. i want to know about fear and fearlessness. i want to know what it is that makes some people so single-mindedly focused that their lives appear, at least from the outside, to be entirely purposeful and full and joyous, in spite of the fact that they don’t discover anything, write no books, produce no children, make no money. i want to know, in other words, about the monomaniacal artist life, something that, it seems to me, we are sort of losing, as a culture, now that so much money can be done with so little talent and the conglomerate media are so eager to throw absurd sums money at popular but fuzzy projects, killing real art in the process (lolcats and things-white-people-like as runaway bestsellers????). also, i wouldn’t mind knowing about the love this man elicits, and the dedication of his companion, and, maybe, the love and joy he brings to others.
I think Man on Wire is very good, and I have to agree with Gio and Jeff. But I think I found it a little more moving than you two? Maybe no? A very small defense here: I think Marsh made a good decision in the way he conveys the sublime moment Phillipe takes to the wire above the Twin Towers. Wasn’t Jean-Louis’s speechlessness enough? To see him break down was incredibly moving. To me he said everything by not being able to say anything. I suppose Herzog or Morris would have found some cinematic way to press upon us the thrill and beauty of that singular moment. Can’t argue with that. But I think there is some value in a cinema (at least documentary cinema) that “lays off” a bit at appropriate times. A similar example is the scene where the band members Luna says their final goodbye in Tell Me Do You Miss Me. They are seated around a table, and it is clear that something made them all break down, sobbing. A word, a memory, an old in-joke. But we don’t know. Buzzell’s camera didn’t intrude. It didn’t need to. And a side note: the choice of Satie may seem cliche to some, but not to me. I think it was perfect choice. I think Gymnopedie is about laughter and poise.
Anyway, let me go further with Gio’s criticism. Marsh should not have relented when Phillipe speaks of his “indulgences” after the event. The sex (did he say “I know the flesh is disgusting, but”?), the fame, and so on. I found this fascinating–or that it could have been fascinating. A kind of “we blew it, man” thing. Was it that Phillipe desperately needed to fill the void somehow, now that it was, finally, over? How much sex, drink, drugs, fame equals a tightrope act 400 meters above lower Manhattan? And what the fuck was he thinking? To lose someone as beautiful as Annie? As sweet and kind as Jean-Louis? Doesn’t Marsh know his audience will need his camera to tend to these matters?
warning about let the right one in dvd release. subtitles are apparently all fucked up.
hold your outrage. the question is whether netflix will re-stock their copies or clearly mark which edition they have.
I’ll hang on to my outrage. I bought a copy, and now I’m stuck with the fucker.
ha-ha!
download a screener, watch it for the subtitles, then watch the film on your big screen for the visuals. I too bought a copy and sent a very indignant e-mail to Magnolia (dvd@magpictures.com). I haven’t watched it yet, but the screen captures do indeed suggest the DVD to be dumbed down. I see this as something approaching fraud. we’ll see if I receive a reply from Magnolia/Magnet.
ha-ha!
Let The Right One In: Crappy subtitles or not, this is a wonderful film. It doesn’t rely much on dialogue. We are presented with a barren, lower middle class version of Sweden, complete with tower blocks, half empty pubs, and concrete as far as the eye can see. I don’t know the film-maker’s intent, but he hews closely to the image of a drab social democracy: comfortable but emptied of passion and meaning. The result is that, whatever her human status, Eli is the most alive thing in the movie; no wonder Oskar is enchanted. It is hardly original to make a coming of age movie out of violence and horror, but this one is much better than most. The real beauty is in the imagery: snow, blood, a middle-aged man trying to drain a body, and, as Jeff noted, a lovely scene in the school swimming pool. Highly recommended.