May 6, 2012

Best performances by a non-actor/inanimate object

By Vanessa Graniello

This “best of” list is by no means an original idea. I first came across a similar such superlative in the NYTimes Magazine around Oscar season.  It seemed like a fun diversion from my usual “close-reading” reviews, and as I have been short on time for creative dabbling, it is ideal for a time-efficient blurb-type post. Most of these films, I believe, were release in the past year.

If any readers out there have any more suggestions, don’t be shy! This is an ongoing list.

Hokay, here we go!

1. The hot-pink script credits in “Drive.”

The obvious route to take here would have been The Driver’s (Ryan Gosling) notorious scorpion jacket. But the neon-pink  opening credits that come across the screen over the shot of the L.A. highways sets the tone for this inscrutable movie. “Drive” is either making fun of itself or boldly inhabiting a dated early 1990′s genre of undercover cop fair such as “Point Break” or “Miami Vice.” It is a clever move to begin “Drive” in such a fashion because from this moment on, because as we are gaping at the hot-pink script, we are wondering just how seriously we are supposed to take this movie. And, when/if we do start taking it seriously, we are either being skillfully manipulated or realizing that “Drive” actually may be, in all of its super-stylized, silent hero-without-a-name glory, a serious movie. The beauty of this is you can watch it both ways and it still works. It’s not perfect, but it works.

2. The planet measurement device in “Melancholia”

It’s been named “the doom-o-meter” and “mortal coil” by Michael Vazquez of The Huffington Post. I like to call it “the downward spiral.” A rudimentary device crudely fashioned out of wire by a young boy, this apparatus is repeatedly utilized towards the end of the movie and is at firs the source of comfort, and inevitably, dread. It’s method of use is to hold the circular coils to the sky so that it frames the planet Melancholia, thus revealing it’s distance from the planet Earth by its size in relation to the tiny coil. The doom-o-meter spends most of its screen time clutched in the spindly, tense fingers of Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who anxiously peers through the mortal coils only to see that Melancholia is looming larger, and getting closer and closer….

3. Sigmund Freud’s cane in “A Dangerous Method”

“Fascinating,” proclaims a sardonic Mr. Freud (Viggo Mortensen) through a mouthful of cigar as he observes a young female patient of emerge from a “therapeutic” bath. In this scene at a psychiatric hospital and in virtually every scene in the movie, Freud is clutching his faithful cane–and (he would be the first to admit), his penis. In one later scene, after the defiant Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) liberates himself from Freud’s overbearing patrimony, Freud becomes ill and collapses. His cane can no longer steady him and he flings it through the air, almost comically, leaving Freud prone on the floor. The father–and the phallus–have been castrated.

4. Lisbeth’s Salander’s t-shirt in David Fincher’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”

Self-explanatory.

5. The shelter door  in “Take Shelter”

At the climax of this haunting film from director Jeff Nichols, Curtis (Michael Shannon), his wife, Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and young daughter, who is deaf, are sequestered in the storm shelter during a tornado. Curtis has been suffering from terribly lucid visions/hallucinations (the difference is the crux of the film) of an apocalyptic storm, which is his reason for building the shelter. After the duration of the storm, Samantha is more than ready to emerge from their subterranean refuge; the paranoid Curtis refuses, believing the storm–or something much worse–is still raging above. Throughout the film, Curtis’ visions and paranoia make him a frightening and fallacious figure–whenever he is on screen, he is the subject of uncertainty, of dread–the lines between delusion/dream/reality  are always  blurred. The shelter door represents this boundary between what is real and imagined, sane and insane. The moment when Curtis refuses to unlock the shelter door, he is at his most terrifying–the suffocating fear that he has stifled inside is ready to explode, and this  fear makes him so unpredictable that it is entirely possible for him to do a number of things–including trap himself along with his wife and daughter in this shelter for the remainder of their lives. What lies outside that shelter door  is the moment of truth as to whether or not Curtis is some kind of a portentous soothsayer or a paranoid schizophrenic. The claustrophobia of the shelter–a sealed, impassable portal–combined with the trepidation of what may lie beyond it made this scene unbearable to watch.

6. The shattered windshield in “A Separation”

 Sin–the act of sinning, of absolving one of sin, and the self-sacrifice of bearing the burden of a loved one’s sin– is one of many profound themes in this devastating Iranian domestic drama. Hojjat, unhinged, unemployed and hot-tempered, beats himself in the head repeatedly on various occasions to punish himself for his sins. It is implied that he used to beat his wife but has since reformed, and now takes the sin out on himself. When we see a crack the size of a human head in the windshield of the car belonging to the family with which he and his wife are in a heated dispute (a dispute which is the crux of the film), it brings self-flagellation to a new and frightening realm. As the family–husband, wife and teenage girl–make the tense drive home, the wind hisses through the cracks in the windshield. When a windshield is shattered, the cracks form web-like designs which disperse to form  multiple tiny spider webs, each representing the fragmented psyches of a different character in this film and how they are interconnected.

 


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March 31, 2012

“Turn Me On, Dammit!” Norway’s tribute to adolescent female horniness.

By Vanessa Graniello

American teenage-angst films can learn a thing or two from “Turn Me On, Dammit!”, Norway’s answer to the likes of “American Pie” and “Superbad.”  Director Jannicke Systad Jacobsen explores uncharted territory: a coming of age story about teenage sexuality from the female perspective.  Abandoning verbose, snarky dialogue in favor of unpretentious, blunt exclamations of the feral adolescent variety, “Turn Me On, Dammit!” is a dead-pan and bold depiction of female horniness. Helene Bergsholm plays Alma, the sexually charged heroine who feels trapped by the constraints of her boring, provincial town. She and her best friend, Sara (Malin Bjorhovde), ritualistically flip-off the town’s sign on the school bus. In droll voice-overs, Alma describes her life as an un-superlative list of “empties” and “stupids: “empty road, empty yard, stupid trampoline, stupid kids jumping on stupid trampoline.” In the midst of all of this banality shines one beacon of light for Alma: her unrequited love for Artur (Matias Myren). Alma becomes an outcast when word gets out of an arousing but awkward encounter between her and Arthur, and “Turn Me On, Dammit!” authentically depicts the self-loathing and self-empowerment that come to pass as a result of being deemed “abnormal.”

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February 22, 2012

“The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch”: A Mythological Globetrotter

By Vanessa Graniello

“The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch” begins with foreboding silence, followed by a brief but menacing phone call and a grisly murder. It is a sequence that, despite its thrills, plays out with a steady, smooth efficiency and detail, characteristics that are common of French director Jerome Salle. Salle directed the original European version of “The Tourist” (originally titled “Anthony Zimmer”) which was remade in 2011 starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp.  Salle may be making a name for himself with these rumbustious escapades, but in “Largo Winch,” he does not sacrifice character study, humor, and yes, a bit of Shakespearean and Biblical allegory for blaring, mindless action.

Based on the Belgian comic book series by Philipp Francq and Jean Van Hamme, “Largo Winch stars German newcomer Tomer Sisley, who brings a peripatetic spirit to the role that belies Largo’s odd name.  In musical compositions, largo means to be performed “slow and stately.” Slow, Largo Winch is not; as a small toddler, unable to walk, he is first seen swiftly crawling away from his nurses in a Croatian orphanage. Largo’s precociousness catches the eye of Nerio (Miki Manojlovic), a billionare owner of a world-renown financial corporation, and Largo, even as a child, matches Nerio’s stare with a wide-eyed and intense gaze. Nerio’s adoption of Largo is the catalyst that propels the plot of the film. When Nerio dies unexpectedly, Largo is the company’s only heir, and his very existence as Nerio’s adopted son is unbeknownst to even Nerio’s closest associates, namely his right-hand woman, Ann (Kristin Scott Thomas, channeling Tilda Swinton’s shrewd but scary ambition in “Michael Clayton”). Thus begins the globe-trotting quest to find Largo and place him in his rightful seat of power.

Salle’s film seamlessly weaves flashbacks with present action and takes us from the pristine offices of the Winch corporation to the roach-infested prisons of Brazil, and Mr. Sisley aptly manipulates his limber and sturdy form to adapt to his surroundings. Whether he is diving from rocky sea cliffs or sitting in a conference room full of business suits, Mr. Sisley retains a sense of physical grace and sharp inquisitiveness. The deftly choreographed fight sequences paired with a resourceful, lethal action hero makes “Largo Winch” comparable to the immensely popular “Bourne” series, starring Matt Damon. “Winch” is different in that it does not take itself quite so seriously. During a car chase scene, Largo maneuvers his way through a narrow, serpentine mountainside road with no working brakes, only to swerve out the way of a stampeding truck by driving off a cliff. His car completes an impressive feat of airborne gymnastics, where, upon landing, it narrowly escapes the very same truck as it roars towards his overturned vehicle. Largo and his passenger, Freddy, (a gruff but affable Gilbert Melki), who also happens to be Nerio’s trusted confidant, exchange sly, knowing looks, as if winking at the improbability of what just happened.

But “Largo Winch” is more than just fast-paced high-jinks, and I did promise you Biblical and Shakespearean allusions. Despite “Largo Winch’s” ability to poke fun at itself, it still retains a sense of literary depth. Nerio’s downfall  is foreshadowed by his constant ingestion of apples—the harbinger of original sin and mankind’s fall from grace. The father/son storyline—Largo avenging the murder of his father, haunted by his ghost—has some serious Hamlet undertones. Largo and his father, though not blood-related, are kindred spirits. Nerio, not the man of action that Largo is, still holds a quiet, dogged determination and boldness that is subtle but menacing—traits which he has passed down to his son. Moreover, Largo’s ascent from an impoverished orphanage to heir of a powerful corporation echoes the lines of Edmund, the bastard son of Gloucester in King Lear, who strives to rise from his “baseness”: “I grow, I prosper/Now, gods, stand up for bastards!” Pay close attention to the way Salle uses setting—particularly highs and lows—to underscore Largo’s upward mobility (and downward spirals) throughout the film. Finally, in a touch of Greek mythology, Largo receives a tattoo at the beginning of the film which shields him from harm—if Achilles’ heel was his one weakness, Largo’s tattoo is his mark of invincibility.

The crucial difference between Largo and the villainous Edmund is Largo’s love for his family and his reluctance and wariness about inheriting his father’s power. Moreover, if Jason Bourne was a lone-avenger with no identity, Largo holds close ties to both his father and his childhood caretakers, Hannah and Josip (Anne Consigny and Ivan Marevich). “The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch” may be an escapist action/adventure romp, but is also holds fast to the principles of familial love, loyal friendships and the struggle to amend the corruption of power.

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February 6, 2012

“Angels Crest:” A sober tribute to the precarious art of parenting

By Vanessa Graniello

Thomas Dekker in Angels Crest

Don’t be fooled by Thomas Dekker’s boyish good looks—the long, effeminate eyelashes and angular, delicate lines of his face can contort into expressions of terror, shock, confusion and profound sorrow. Mr. Dekker’s unforced performance as a grieving and guilt-ridden young father is the driving force behind the gritty, unrelenting drama that is “Angels Crest.”

Directed by Gaby Dellal and adapted from the eponymous novel by Leslie Schwartz, “Angels Crest” is named for a small town nestled in the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains. The wintery, rural landscape and dark storyline are akin to Debra Granik’s “Winter’s Bone” (2010), but “Angels Crest’s” theme of childhood death within a close-knit community shares more similarities to Atom Egoyan’s widely praised 1997 film, “The Sweet Hereafter.” Also based on a novel (by Russell Banks), “The Sweet Hereafter” explores the conflicting sentiments of the townsfolk after nearly all of its children are killed in a tragic bus accident. “Angels Crest” also deals with the loss of a child, but examines grief and guilt on a more intimate level, directing its focus on the dynamics of young parenthood.

The aforementioned Mr. Dekker (“Foreverland,” “Kaboom”) plays Ethan, whose seemingly innocent but thoughtless actions play a role in the tragic death of his son, Nate. On the morning of the first snow of the season, Ethan takes Nate for an early morning drive with plans for some serious snow-man building and ends up parked at the edge of the wilderness. Ethan is lured from his truck by the sight of a herd of deer, and leaves his son sleeping in his car-seat with the heat turned up and doors locked. Ethan returns after a short time to find that Nate is no longer in the truck, and a panic-induced sequence of events soon unfolds with a sense of urgency so strong, it feels as though it is happening in real time. The town’s residents, including Angie (Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino), the owner of the diner, and Ethan’s best friend, Rusty (Joseph Morgan, from television’s “The Vampire Diaries”) form the search team that struggles desperately to find Nate alive.

When Cindy, Nate’s estranged, alcoholic mother (played by Lynn Collins, who starred alongside Al Pacino in 2004’s“The Merchant of Venice”), arrives at the scene, her shear sense of panic is portrayed with an brutal realism that can be painful to witness, even from our safe distance in the movie theater. Cindy desperately calls Nate’s name, and demands to know why the search party isn’t doing the same; in one chilling moment, Cindy scrawls Nate’s name in red lipstick on a car window, as if the scarlet red letters would serve as a beacon for his safe return. When Ethan discovers Nate’s body a mere quarter mile from his truck, Ms. Dellal’s sensitive directional eye does not linger on the child’s lifeless form, and instead chooses to express the unspeakable horror through Ethan. As Ethan carries his son’s lifeless form and howls into the unresponsive rocky bluffs, one cannot help but recall the wails of sorrow from Shakespeare’s King Lear, as he cradles his dead daughter, Cordelia, and scorns stoic bystanders for their impassiveness—“O, you are men of stone.”

Nate’s death causes a fissure among the residents of Angels Crest between those who blame Ethan  and those who pity him. This conflict causes tension within the town’s most intimate relationships, especially between gay couple Jane (played by Golden Globe-nominee Elizabeth McGovern of PBS’s “Downton Abbey”) and Roxie (Kate Walsh, of television’s “Private Practice).  The level-head but compassionate Jane sympathizes with Nate, and remains his loyal friend despite the misgivings of Roxie, who accuses Ethan of being an irresponsible father. Charges are eventually pressed against Ethan for criminal negligence, and Jeremy Piven (television’s “Entourage”) plays Jake, the prosecuting lawyer who we learn has also suffered the loss of his child. Thankfully, “Angels Crest” does not succumb to the banalities of a courtroom drama, and remains an intense character study for the effects of extreme grief and guilt without falling into clichés of the genre.

Some dramas that deal with the death of a loved one have characters that conform to the strict rigidity of the Kubler-Ross model for the Five Stages of Grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Ms. Dellal spurns such conventions. Ethan and Cindy articulate their mourning with a surprising fluidity that lends a realistic and visceral blow to our judgment. Just as we begin to pity Ethan for his loss, we rebuke him for playing violent video games with his buddies the night after the funeral. Likewise, we wonder whether Cindy’s rampant alcoholism is her way of mourning, or if she is using Nate’s death as an excuse to drink herself into a stupor. And, when Ethan supplicates his naked body to the frozen, snowy ground so that he might experience the last dying moments of his son, one begins to wonder why blame and guilt is not a sixth stage of grief. Reflection and loneliness are sometimes added to versions the Kubler-Ross model, and are conveyed in the quietly devastating final scenes of “Angels Crest.”

Any parent will no doubt be haunted by “Angels Crest,” both by the fearlessly vulnerable performance of Mr. Dekker and the troubling questions posed about parental awareness/consciousness. In fear of spoiling some small but crucial plot points, I will only say that if Ethan bears any responsibility for Nate’s death, it is because he underestimates his son’s capabilities. The level of awareness that parents must have concerning the actions and abilities of their children must be so vast and yet so acute that the mere thought of the enormity of that scope of cognizance can take one’s breath away. “Angels Crest” is an unflinching study of sorrow; but above all, it is a sober tribute to the precarious art of parenting.

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January 12, 2012

“Late Bloomers”: A love that’s always ripe for change

By Vanessa Graniello

Late Bloomers

In the first moments of “Late Bloomers,” Julie Gavras’ light-hearted new comedy about age, long-married London couple Mary and Adam share an intimate, non-verbal exchange. They can sense and interpret each other’s thoughts and feelings with a simple glance and gesture. Adam and Mary’s nuanced interaction accentuates the intricate and wonderfully mysterious nature of an enduring, seasoned romantic relationship that has become scarce in recent romantic comedies.

Isabella Rossellini and Academy Award-winner William Hurt play the aforementioned husband and wife whose bond is so sophisticated that they are capable of speechless communication. They are lovers but also share the knowing rapport and petty squabbles of best friends. Tension arises between the couple when they begin to notice tell-tale signs of their own inevitable aging. Mary suffers a brief moment of memory loss (Adam’s rehearsed series of questions—“how many children do we have?”—suggest it has happened before), while Adam, an architect, receives the equivalent of a “Lifetime Achievement” award.  Adam is wary of Mary’s acceptance of growing old, and strongly disapproves of the grips and railings that she has installed around the house, along with her purchase of a big-button telephone. Mary also joins the Grey Panthers, a like-minded organization that fights the injustices of “ageism.”

Robert Neil Butler devised the term “ageism” in the late 1960s, and as the film progresses, Mary and Adam take diverging paths that fulfill its multifaceted definition. Mary feels the unwanted pangs of age discrimination from a condescending volunteer leader in her late twenties who asks her to “bake cakes.” To make matters worse, Mary takes offense to a young man’s offer to give up his seat on the bus, misinterpreting his benevolence for pity. Adam experiences his own share of ageism stereotypes; while surveying a nursing home for a potential architectural project, he is mistaken for a patient. The orderly assumes that the confusion on Adam’s face is a sign of dementia, when he is actually distraught about his love life. Fervent for change, Adam shuns Mary’s age empowerment and embraces the company and culture of his younger staff, donning hoodies and chasing pizza with Red Bull.

The film’s finest moments are expressed through Ms. Rossellini and Mr. Hurt as they undergo these transformations and experience quiet but profound moments of realization. In one scene, Ms. Gavras’ lens lingers on Ms. Rossellini’s elegantly lined face as her expressions wordlessly shift from pleasure, to bemusement, to wistful; likewise, the camera follows Mr. Hurt’s entranced gaze as he surveys the alien contents of a younger mistress’s bedroom. Affairs with younger lovers are insinuated on both ends, but Ms. Gavras, in a moment of frustrating (but perhaps deliberate) ambiguity, does not reveal whether their illicit love is consummated.

At one point in the film, a proprietor of state-of-the-art nursing homes (played by Simon Callow) tells Adam that he wants his facilities to be places where older generations “can actually look forward to getting old.” “Late Bloomers” proposes that no such places are necessary. The possibility that lovers—and love—can change and thrive in unexpected and surprising ways are reason enough to look forward to prospects of growing old.

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January 2, 2012

Thank You, Ms. Dargis

By Vanessa Graniello

Here is a link to a fascinating analysis of the first scenes of Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia” by NYTimes film critic, Manohla Dargis. In quite an impressive feat of research and close-reading, Ms. Dargis manages to uncover allusions ranging from Hamlet to the riderless horse in John F. Kennedy’s funeral. Thank you, Ms. Dargis, for reminding us that insightful and imaginative film writing still thrives.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/movies/awardsseason/manohla-dargis-looks-at-the-overture-to-melancholia.html?ref=movies

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December 16, 2011

“Young Goethe In Love”

By Vanessa Graniello

The exploration into the origins of creative genius is not unfamiliar movie territory, and Philipp Stolzl’s semi-biographical Young Goethe In Love joins the similarly titled Shakespeare In Love with its fusion of poetry and romance. Both films propose that the eponymous renowned writers were inspired by a female muse, although the factual accuracy of this insinuation is questionable—at least for Shakespeare. In his youth, Johann Goethe did have a romantic obsession with Charlotte Buff (given the moniker Lotte in the film), which is expressed in intimate detail in his most famous literary work, The Sorrows of Young Werther. In a way, the movie itself is a more buoyant and vibrant retelling of The Sorrows of Young Werther; a clever intimation of the events and relationships in Goethe’s life which may have influenced his writing of the novel.

The film begins in 1772 Germany, almost a decade after The Seven Years War and right in the midst of the Sturm and Drang (literally translated “turbulence and urgency”) romantic movement, which emphasized free emotional expression in the arts. The vivacious Johann Wolfgang Goethe (Alexander Fehling) is a disciple of this movement, but in the beginning of the film, he is a bumbling, inept law student who botches his verbal bar exam so terribly that a judge laughs in his face and concludes that he must be out of his mind. Goethe’s revenge on the judge is both delightful and, yes, a bit crazy. Even from the first scenes, it is refreshing to see director Philipp Stolzl’s portrayal of Goethe as an energetic, lively and mercurial force rather than as a brooding, sullen poet. In addition to being a free-spirited romantic, Goethe is also kind and compassionate. Sent away to a work in a court in a small provincial town by his frustrated father, Goethe quickly befriends a shy loner named Wilhelm Jerusalem (Volker Bruch), whose stutter and clumsiness make him the subject of ridicule among his peers. The fast friendship that develops between the two young men may be overshadowed  by Goethe’s romance with Lotte (Miriam Stein), but nevertheless proves to be a crucial plot point that will serve as one of Goethe’s strongest influences when writing The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Goethe’s romance with Lotte is the film’s centerpiece. In this sense, Young Goethe is something of a literary “marriage plot”—that is, most of the surrounding action is propelled by the consequences of their love affair and the mores of marriage and courtship in 18th century Germany. When the two first meet at a dance, Lotte is tipsy but retains her sharp wit, spilling her drink on Goethe’s jacket one moment and verbally sparring with him the next. They are so alike in their sensibilities that they play a humorous cat-and-mouse game of courtship: both lovers eagerly await correspondence from the other, until they simultaneously embark to each other’s villages, and meet halfway.

Goethe and Lotte’s spontaneous and fervent romance is a stark contrast to the constraints placed on them by the rigid conventions of their society, where the purpose of marriage is to obtain higher social status and stability. Because of this, Lotte is forced into an arranged marriage with none other than Goethe’s superior at the court, Albert (Moritz Bleibteu of “The Baader-Meinhof Complex”). In a painful display of dramatic irony, Albert asks the wordsmith Goethe for guidance on is proposal speech, which he cheerfully provides, both to please his boss and because he genuinely enjoys playing with words, especially those of the impassioned variety. What follows in this love triangle is a crafty display of meta-theater (a kind of “play-within-a-play”) in which Goethe arrives at Lotte’s house bearing her a gift that he constructed—a miniature stage production of her favorite play, no less—only to walk straight into her engagement party. Moreover, Albert’s marriage proposal is a staged farce it itself; he recites the lines fed to him by Goethe, who is unaware that he is proposing to his Lotte, while Lotte’s family serves as the audience, eagerly watching this proposal “play.” Lotte also dutifully acts her role as grateful fiancée, tearfully accepting Albert’s hand in marriage.  Little does Albert or her family know that they are tears of sorrow, not joy.

Goethe’s discovery of Lotte’s engagement leads him on a downward spiral, but his personal distress sparks his most creative endeavor yet—a semi-autobiographical account of his heartbreak called The Sorrows of Young Werther.  For anyone unfamiliar with the book or Goethe’s literary prowess, to go into detail about the novel would be to spoil some key plot points in the film. One of the virtues of “Young Goethe In Love” is that the film is lively enough in its characters and story to appeal to the general audience, while also appeasing the literati with cleverly placed lines and hints to Goethe’s future works. There is a haunting allusion to Goethe’s last dying last words (“more light, more light!”) that was seamlessly weaved into the script by writer Christoph Muller and writer-director Stolzl. There is also a duel and a hallucinatory sequence in which libations of Belladonna are consumed by Goethe and friends. All of which make for a satisfying, if at times too lighthearted, film about the coming-of-age of an ingenious, daringly original and fearlessly romantic individual.

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December 9, 2011

“We Need To Talk About Kevin”

By Vanessa Graniello

You’ll never eat a chestnut or listen to the cacophony of a jackhammer the same way after watching “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” the intense and unnerving new film from Lynne Ramsey (Ratcatcher,” “Movern Callar”). “Kevin,” which won Best Film at BFI’s London Film Festival, chronicles the events leading up to, during and after a horrific school shooting of which fifteen-year-old Kevin (Ezra Miller) is responsible. In a narrative twist, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is not told through the point of view of Kevin, a homicidal sociopath, but is rather an exploration into the psyche of Kevin’s mother Eva, played by Tilda Swinton (“Michael Clayton,” “I Am Love”).

The film, which was adapted from Lionel Shriver’s eponymous novel, undertakes the evolution of the excruciating guilt that Eva feels for her son’s heinous actions. Kevin is her first child, and Ramsey gives us flashbacks of Eva when she is pregnant with Kevin, and deeply depressed.  To emphasize Eva’s formerly free-spirited, pre-Kevin existence, Ramsey also begins the film with another flashback of Eva in a state of ecstasy during Spain’s La Tomatina, crowd-surfing atop a mob of tomato-stained flesh. In a clever transition from a blissful, Kevin-less past to a nightmarish present, the following scene finds Eva in her dilapidated house, her skin misted red not from tomato gore but from the scarlet paint that she laboriously attempts to scrub from her vandalized house. Eva also ritualistically eats scrambled eggs (and in one self-flagellating scene, she crunches on pieces of broken egg-shells). It is as if Eva is attempting to annihilate her birth to Kevin through some twisted, symbolic form of cannibalism that would fit nicely into Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus.”

Ramsey is no stranger to harrowing themes and stories, especially true in her debut feature, “Ratcatcher.” But in spite of its grisliness, “Ratcatcher” was a coming-of-age story as well as a unique period piece; a candid, unflinching glimpse into an obscure time and place—the garbage strike in 1970s Glasgow. “We Need to Talk About Kevin” does not have the aesthetic or narrative grandeur of her first film; at times, especially the scenes depicting Kevin’s early childhood menace, the film is downright depressing. It is the fearless performance of Tilda Swinton that saves “Kevin” from drowning in its own morbidity. Ms. Swinton can contort her alabaster, porcelain features into a grotesque mask of grief like no other actor I’ve seen (in ‘I Am Love,” her transformation from maternal warmth to a mother paralyzed by grief and guilt is almost supernaturally chilling). And despite the grim tenor of “Kevin,” Ramsey does allow Swinton to have some darkly humorous moments, such as her matter-of-fact, straight-faced response to religious solicitors who knock on her door: “I’m going straight to hell.” Another wickedly droll scene is when Eva takes the teenage Kevin (Ezra Miller) out for miniature golf and dinner. Eva counters Kevin’s nonchalance and smugness with her own shrewd awareness that their efforts towards a mother/son relationship are merely a role-playing farce.

Aside from Swinton, the redeeming element of “Kevin” is the air of uncertainty surrounding any possible explanations for Kevin’s heinous actions. Ramsey takes the audience so deep inside Eva’s fraught head and heart that we don’t know whether Kevin’s sociopathic behavior, especially as a young child, is tangible or exaggerated by Eva as a symptom of post-partum depression. Because of this ambiguity, Kevin and Eva form a perverted symbiotic relationship in which both are victims of each other’s behavior; Kevin of his mother’s coldness and at times, physical abuse, and Eva of her son’s inscrutable malice.  The question after any unspeakable act of violence is always “Why?” Eva does not ask her son that question until the film’s coda, and perhaps it is because she is afraid that his answer will expose her own inherent responsibility for his actions. It is also a question that is must be posed about this film: Why make a film on such a problematic subject and choose to portray an atrocious act of mass murder other than to exploit shock and provoke? Regrettably, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” fails to do little more than just that.

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December 1, 2011

“Melancholia”

By Vanessa Graniello

“Melancholia” is Lars von Trier’s intelligent, melodramatic, achingly beautiful and wickedly funny new film. It tells the story of Justine (a transcendent Kirsten Dunst), a severe depressive, and her doting and practical sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Justine’s depression takes the corporeal shape of a planet called Melancholia, which is on a steady collision course with Earth. In the film’s stunning prologue, Mr. von Trier tactfully relieves the audience of any suspense concerning Earth’s fate, allowing the tone to shift from an end-of-the-world thriller to a character and relationship study. “Melancholia” uses the premise of an apocalypse to expose the frays in familial bonds—specifically, the intricate dynamic between two sisters. Justine and Claire’s bond is both affectionate and cruel, supportive and insensitive.

The film is divided into two parts named after each of the sisters.  Although part one is named after Justine, the “melancholic” sister, this section of the film proves to be the most humorously absurd. Mr. von Trier is—gasp—having a bit of fun as we follow Justine through the grand charade of her wedding celebration. He has reined in all of his pals from films past to play members of the wedding party, including Charlotte Rampling and John Hurt as Justine’s backbiting parents, and Udo Kier the prim and fretful wedding planner. And despite Justine’s deep sadness during what is supposed to be the happiest day of her life, Ms. Dunst is luminous. Instead of portraying Justine as incessantly bleak, Dunst’s performance during this half the film is almost sphinxlike in its spontaneity. She does not skulk around in her wedding dress (although she does, at one point, gracefully urinate in it beneath the moonlight), but rather ventures in and out of the festivities like an elusive specter. And because von Trier has revealed the fate of these characters in the first ten minutes, the audience can empathize with Justine as she views her wedding with a growing sense of dread and indifference.

Part two is named for Claire, Justine’s pragmatic but anxious older sister. Although Claire grows weary and frustrated with Justine’s erratic behavior, she understands her sister’s illness and knows how to take care of her. Claire’s relationship with Justine becomes increasingly complicated in the film’s second half, as she grapples with her own growing anxiety over the path of Melancholia while simultaneously caring for Justine, who has become incapacitated by her depression. In contrast to the darkly sumptuous aesthetic of part one, with an alluring Justine  wreaking havoc in a wedding dress, part two is more subdued and more painful to watch. Justine has lost her enigmatic glow, and von Trier, who has long suffered from depression himself, depicts her descent with alarming candor. It has been suggested that Mr. von Trier uses female characters in his films to represent his own struggles with depression. If  “Antichrist” was considered by many to be too vicious and misogynistic, his rendering of Justine’s anguish in “Melancholia” is as upsetting as it is compassionate.

But part two is named “Claire” for a reason. As Melancholia becomes more of a threat, (the planet and the illness) Claire becomes fraught with worry that the end is near, and the sisters’ reactions to the planet begin to diverge.  Justine begins to emerge from her depression and becomes more lucid, but is callous towards Claire’s distress. Justine feels a kinship with Melancholia; she embraces the planet as an actual representation and justification for her chronic illness. Yet, just as Claire strove to comfort Justine during her lowest points, Justine’s coldness turns into an intense stoicism, and eventually, into her own display of compassion, especially towards Claire’s son, Leo.

In “Melancholia,” the end of the world is not rendered with mass hysteria or with an overblown sequence of natural disasters, but rather with understated beauty. Bugs creep up from the soil, hail the color of pure white flower buds falls from the sky, all as Melancholia—massively exquisite in itself—looms closer and closer overhead. Despite its morbid theme, bone-rattling soundtrack straight from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, and the fact that it’s a Lars von Trier film, the tone of “Melancholia” is almost soothing. Mr. von Trier proposes that the end of the world, like his film, may just be a thing of beauty.

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November 23, 2011

“Take Shelter”

By Vanessa Graniello

Haunting, unsettling, terrifying, anxiety-inducing—you name the adjective and it’s been used to describe Jeff Nichols modern day apocalyptical masterpiece, “Take Shelter.” So what more is there to say? “Take Shelter” is indeed all of the above, and the brilliance of the film is that it is so understated that you don’t realize or understand its impact until it has had time to settle under your skin and into your psyche.

It is always a challenge to watch a movie in which the expectations have already been set sky high. Oftentimes, when experiencing any art form that has garnered a wealth of critical praise, I find that I am forcing myself to feel certain emotions and be moved in some meaningful way by the art. The feeling is not genuine, but rather what I think I am expected to feel. This does not happen often, but it is extremely disappointing when it does. And to be honest, I was forcing myself to feel unsettled and disturbed early on in “Take Shelter,” when the images of Curtis’ (Michael Shannon) nightmares begin to unfold. I had read so many articles describing the eeriness of these dreamlike events that I felt desensitized to them; the ribbon-like formations of the birds, the churning black clouds, the rust-colored rain. I was on the verge of a glorious let-down when a tall drink of water and force of nature that surpasses the portentous storm named Michael Shannon pulled me out of my disenchanted stupor.

Shannon’s restrained performance as the anguished everyman-prophet was the most distressing element of the film, more so than the impending unknown terror of his nightmares and visions. To see Shannon, who is 6’3, give such a physically and emotionally internalized performance was a spectacle in itself. During a particularly intense episode, Curtis suffers so viscerally from a nightmare in his sleep that his wife, Samantha (the omnipotent Jessica Chastain, and welcomingly so) fears he is having a stroke and dials 911. It is an agonizing scene to watch because of the vulnerability of both Curtis and Samantha, who has thus far been kept in the dark about her husband’s inner torment. Scenes such as this heighten “Take Shelter” from a doomsday thriller to a sensitively rendered domestic drama.

“Take Shelter” has garnered praise for being a painfully realistic cautionary tale for our own demise. Curtis’ troubling visions represent our own very real financial and environmental apocalypse, and the fact that Curtis is sane enough to question his own insanity makes his prophecies all the more tangible. But Mr. Richards’ nuanced and natural depiction of the family’s bond and dynamic in the midst of Curtis’ struggle gives the film its heart. There are  crucial and surprising moments in which Samantha does not shun Curtis for his possible psychosis. In one scene, when Curtis finally unleashes his turmoil in a bout of hysteria during a Lion’s Club dinner, Samantha does not walk out on him with her daughter, but, at the risk of becoming an outcast in her community, embraces him, and the three leave together in a display of unconditional love and solidarity. At risk of spoilers, I will not describe anymore such scenes, but I will say that the interaction between Curtis and Samantha, and the realm of emotions that they can convey with so few words, was, like the film itself, quietly breathtaking.

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