2008 New York Film Festival
The 46th New York Film Festival was a perfectly timed reflection of the current mood in New York: diminished. Shunted into the majestic (yet ill-equipped) Ziegfeld theatre, the setting was shameful – throwing hundreds of ticket-holders onto W. 54th Street (forced to look into the forlorn windows of the soon-to-be-acquired Wachovia Securities). We were stuck in line, in a light drizzle, for our only screenings at the Ziegfeld (save for my attending closing night’s screening of ‘The Wrestler’ at Avery Fisher Hall). But, what a thrill these turned out to be. Two of the best films of the festival – ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ and ‘Wendy and Lucy’ – were perfectly juxtaposed, and they told the story of what it means to be alive on Planet Earth in 2008 (and, yes, who is going up and who is going down).
Mike Leigh’s ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ was another masterpiece from the bard of English working class cinema, who has shown so many times at the NYFF that it is hard to count (we have seen virtually all of his screenings at the festival – from ‘Naked’ to ‘Topsy Turvy’). Leigh’s latest was screened to an adoring audience who marveled at Sally Hawkins’ portrayal of the lead character, Poppy Cross, whose carefree London existence as a schoolteacher who shares a flat with her friend/girlfriend, Suzy, is a gem of improvisation. In the Q&A, Leigh and Hawkins discussed how they improvised various scenes and character traits, including the invention of Poppy’s name.
The film is more of a meditation on life in its randomness, borne out by Poppy’s unbound joy at living itself. She is only called out once on this seemingly dopey life philosophy, as it is suggested that she tries to make everyone happy all the time. Her response is the antidote to a world in which consumerism and “keeping up” are rotting the soul of earth’s inhabitants: “well, it wouldn’t hurt, would it?” The happy-go-lucky character is a schoolteacher whose obvious skill with young children meets its match in a child psychologist, played by Jack MacGeachin, who is receptive to everything Poppy is (as well as her availability). Leigh’s common themes (bohemians living happy while fighting the encroachingly unhappy strivers) are played out poetically, largely as the camera fixes on a Polly who is a muse and teacher of life for those watching her very real-time chronicle of daily existence in London. Poppy’s brother (the stand-in for Leigh’s suburban dolt) chafes as his shrewish, expectant wife forces him to forego videogame playing for an evening while hosting Poppy and her friend.
Nowhere is Poppy’s soulfulness more evident than her encounter one evening with a homeless, deranged man (played by Stanley Townsend) whose frightening presence is tempered by Poppy’s benevolent approach. Poppy’s dialogue with her driving teacher, Scott (played by Leigh regular Eddie Marsan) are highlights of the film. Poppy’s decision to learn driving is as logical as any other decision she makes – which is to say that her intuition guides her into the next phase of her life, in a quasi-Buddhist version of modern living. Her free spirit, and her unconscious sexuality, make for a stew that Scott cannot resist nor tolerate.
Leigh sets his character in a flat that is the antithesis of the brilliant Mike Newell film ‘Notting Hill’ (the Hugh Grant-Julia Roberts classic) – a wonderful place on the edge of nowhere that has all the desirable qualities of the BoBo 21st century person looking to achieve their next phase in life (for New Yorkers: see South Brooklyn).
The performances, as is usual with Leigh, are all first-rate (keep in mind that his casts are unusually high in Oscar nominations and, as with Imelda Staunton in ‘Vera Drake,‘ Oscar winners). Given the current mood in Hollywood (post-WGA strike; pre-SGA strike), the Poppy Cross character crosses a line between sheer Hollywood Golden Age fantasy and kitchen-sink realism. Sally Hawkins simply must win the Oscar for a performance that is so physically nuanced and held together with such tenacity (mind you, she always appears as someone you know, or knew, in life – her sincerity with this much invented character is extraordinary) that she commands the screen completely.
I would not be spoiling this film for anyone who sees it to say that Sally’s exchanges with Scott in the end are beyond hilarious. Firstly, as anyone who has driven in central London in the past ten years knows, a student driver there must be the most nervous creature imaginable. The site of Poppy as she takes the wheel, and in the passenger seat, give us a roller-coaster ride through life itself.
‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ was a great treat at the Ziegfeld, and Leigh’s mastery of the Q&A was also hysterical. He opened by reminding the audience that he always admires the questions of a NYFF audience (including the reference to the questioner who – after the 1993 screening of ‘Naked’ – asked what the lead character would have done 30 minutes after the movie’s narrative ended). Though no such similar questions appeared, Leigh gave ample time to Hawkins to discuss her shaping of the character. While Leigh would eschew such schmaltzy pronouncements as “a star is born,” the audience wouldn’t have disagreed. Sally Hawkins is here to stay.
Wendy and Lucy
The second film in our NYFF 2008 double feature was the stark Kelly Reichardt film, ‘Wendy and Lucy,’ which features the incredibly captivating Michelle Williams. That the star is best known today for her status as widow of Heath Ledger provides the impetus for seeing a performer who is using her life experience at peak level. The bleak Pacific Northwest landscape of the film, set in the present, features Williams as a young woman escaping her life in the South, and pushing onward to Alaska with some dim hope of securing work on a fishing rig. Her faithful dog Lucy in tow, Wendy is as anonymous and undomesticated as her pet. Driving aimlessly toward her half-hearted destination, Wendy sleeps in her 1980s vintage car, and is caught shoplifting while Lucy is tied up outside the store. She spends the rest of the film searching for, and finding, her beloved Lucy.
The wayward Wendy is as real a portrait of American youth today as we’ve seen on screen. Reichardt captures a bleak landscape that features Wendy trapped.
The film unfolds like a slow-moving one-act play – its 80-minute length is almost reminiscent of a silent feature, which is what this film resembles. Wendy has a Chaplinesque/Keatonesque quality to her face; Reichardt’s close-ups of Williams capture the despair and the fear in a character who is running away, but seems desperate beyond measure.
Character actors abound, from the always reliable Will Patton, who plays the garage owner who tries to shake down Wendy, to the wonderful Will Dalton, whose security guard is a surrogate father figure for Wendy.
Reichardt gets the most out of her Oregon setting, which seems like a land that time forgot. At the Q&A, she and Williams discussed how they came to work on the project. Williams, dressed in a white dress, radiated a forlorn, and courageous demeanor. One could not help think how bittersweet this gem of a performance was for her; eight months after the tragic death of her ex-husband.
The film was preceded by a Chinese short, ‘Cry Me a River,’ by Jia Zhangke, which tells the story of a reunion of post-Tiananmen Square students with their teacher, on the occasion of his birthday. The prosperous young Chinese (one of whom has had his company listed on the Hang-seng exchange) are a sharp contrast to the U.S. of ‘Wendy and Lucy,’ which seems to be heading backwards, aimlessly. Zhangke does communicate a sense of longing in his students, who head down-river, not fully knowing where they’re headed, and longing for a romantic past. The fact that this film was screened 12 days after the collapse of Lehman Brothers only added to the timely sense of place.
The Wrestler
The graphic realism in Darren Aronofsky’s ‘The Wrestler’ is a welcome relief to the reality-show culture in which the first decade of the 21st-century is steeped. That the film heralds the return of Mickey Rourke, 1980s bad-boy, is another triumph in a film that is somehow sentimental in its keyhole view into the life of a down-and-out professional wrestler.
The irony in the film is that there is nothing “fake” about Randy “the Ram” Robinson, despite the fact that he has false hair extensions, a stage name (Ramzinski is his surname), and probably more body work than most models. The gritty trailer-park existence of the protagonist is a back-drop for a modern-day ‘Rocky’ (which is a revelation to see today). Aronofsky seems to drop us back into a period – the 1970s – where filmmaking had chutzpah and the kind of balls that rejected Potemkin village fakery. If you were a bum, you were a bum (even Rocky Balboa had no illusions – well, at least in his initial fantastic burst onto the scene). The Ram is reminded everywhere of his past – he even plays an old cartridge videogame in his licensed, faded-pixel self performs his famous “Ram Jam,” where he stands on the ropes and leaps onto his prostrate opponent.
Rourke, since his motorcycle accident, has mostly down-and-outers, but his appearance as the tragic Randy is heroic. Forced to take odd jobs, he has an outburst at a supermarket deli counter when a fan recognizes him. This scene, as with other difficult public outbursts, is so well-shot and performed; it has an almost operatic quality.
Indeed, ‘The Wrestler’ is somewhat of an anachronistic, operatic production: separated into several acts, with moments of high-pitched drama and incredible, shrieking angst. Randy’s ingénues are his daughter, played by the radiant Evan Rachel Wood, and his friend Cassidy, a stripper played with intense pathos by Marisa Tomei. As Stephanie, Randy’s daughter, Evan Rachel Wood is a sympathetic figure who cannot understand her father’s fate, but seems hopeful that she can provide some guidance. She is the only “real” person in Randy’s life, and he seems to recognize this, despite being wedded to his stage persona.
As Cassidy, Tomei is spectacular and – as anyone who saw her in last year’s NYFF entry, ‘Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,’ can attest – not shy about her body. While not wanting to fraternize with her favorite patron, Cassidy is as lost as Randy, and seemingly as entrenched in her performing career as he is. Their interactions make for some of the most intense scenes on the American screen this year, and not merely for their seedy setting.
Aronofsky chooses some of the grittier parts of the Garden State for the film’s settings (one hilarious scene has Randy being welcomed, in hard-core style, by a denizen of Rahway), and his lighting (as with his other films) conveys some sort of perpetual twilight. The affection with which Aronofsky unfolds the story demonstrates nostalgia for the boyhood fantasy wrestling heroes of an earlier, pre-Internet era. Randy is constantly reminded of his status (“my brother had a poster of you”) as a faded icon, but he revels in it. There is a touch of German Expressionism in this film that makes one think of how a Pabst or Lang might have treated this material. Aronofsky has similarly poetic, if outwardly unsympathetic, views toward the people in his films.
The film’s insights into the wrestling profession are part of the charm of Robinson’s character. He sets up the scene with other wrestlers, who show great deference, and takes a younger wrestler under his wing. The gruesome aspects of the trade, including a scene in which Randy inserts small razor blades into his taped hands and arms, are highlighted. Not for the faint of heart or stomach is this film; one scene shows abuse with a staple-gun (an agreed-upon prop by Randy and his opponent).
Randy ultimately triumphs in his comeback, despite briefly succumbing to a bad heart. He has made his peace in life, and he will live or die in the ring.
Epilogue: I ran into Gregg Bello (a high school friend), who plays the wrestling promoter Larry Cohen, after the film. He noted that the film had taken off after winning the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival this year, and that the award had caught them all off-guard. Bello has appeared in all of Aronofsky’s films, and it will be interesting to see how the Golden Globes and Oscars treat this film. With a massive cultural sea change underway in America, Aronofsky’s vision may find a much more receptive audience for his daring work.
