‘A Serious Man’
I attended the star-studded premiere of the Coen Brothers’ latest masterpiece, ‘A Serious Man,’ at the Ziegfeld Theater this past September on the opening night of – who would have thought? – the Friars Club Comedy Festival. Freddie Roman, president of the club, introduced the Coen Brothers, saying that they hailed “from that great bastion of Judaism, Minnesota.” In a way, the setting was ideal for the film, as the September 24th date was between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and the film’s Talmudic themes – of a Job-like character whose suffering in 1967 St. Louis Park, Minnesota (a Minneapolis suburb that has also produced the likes of New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman and my friend and colleague, Razorfish founder Jeffrey Dachis…what it is in the water there, one wonders?) is book-ended by his conniving, pot-smoking son’s Bar Mitzvah and his wife’s demand for a Jewish divorce (a “get,” which provides a running joke). Played by Michael Stuhlbarg (who dazzled New York theater audiences several years ago in ‘The Pillowman’), Larry Gopnik is a physics professor in a Minneapolis community college. His wife, Judith (played by Sari Lennick) has fallen for one of Larry’s colleagues, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed, in a delicious performance as a pompous dilettante), and he is under siege from a graduate student seeking to bribe him for a passing grade while threatening to sue him for defamation. Larry is also under attack from an anonymous poison-pen letter writer, who is seeking to derail his tenure review. Meanwhile, his daughter Sarah (Jessica McManus) is stealing money from his wallet to save for a nose job. The ‘60s pop-culture references that ground the film provide a backdrop for Larry’s quest for spiritual clarity, as he seeks to become “a serious man.” His son’s transistor radio blares Jefferson Airplane, and his neighbor sunbathes nude while puffing on a joint. Larry seeks guidance in between trips to his rooftop to fix the antenna (the better to receive broadcasts of ‘F-Troop’). And, as if that weren’t enough, his brother Arthur (played brilliantly by Richard Kind) sleeps on his couch when he isn’t involved in various illegal activities. The son, Danny (played by Aaron Wolff in a role reminiscent of Seth Green’s character in ‘Radio Days’), seems to be the only character able to adjust to the chaos around him, running away from the bully (and pot dealer) Feigel, while goofing off in Hebrew school. Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis, as he deals with being thrown from his house. The Coen Brothers create a world of period detail that, like their other period masterpieces (‘Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” and “Miller’s Crossing” especially), is so seamless, the character actors and perfectly cast faces are a tableau of American memory. In this case, however, the film seems to gather autobiographical elements that make the film even richer. Performances by Coen Brothers regulars (including Michael Lerner) populate some of the more hilarious scenes, and Adam Arkin turns in a gem of a performance as Larry’s divorce lawyer.
Larry’s nightmares – including a hiliarous one in which he and his brother are hunted by the right-wing, anti-Semitic gun-loving neighbor – are matched in many ways by the reality of his crumbling life.
Danny’s Bar Mitzvah is a success, despite his being stoned, and his sit-down with the rabbi is both hilarious and poignant. The rabbi returns the confiscated transistor radio, and quotes the lyrics to ‘Somebody to Love,’ while naming the members of the Jefferson Airplane, his thick accent declaring that the likes of Kantner, Balin, and Slick are doing God’s work as nice Jewish boys and girls in the rock ‘n roll world. The film’s final scene, as a semi-apocalyptic cliff-hanger, is ingenious as the coda to the fable that begins the film, in which a dybbuk (played by the great Fyvush Finkel) visits upon a couple in the old country (we are meant to believe that these are the ancestors of poor Larry). Finkel was at the premiere, as was Richard Kind, and the crowd included alumni of other Coen Brothers’ films, including John Turturro.
‘A Serious Man’ is certainly one of the Coen Brothers’ most polished works, and adds a new work to the pantheon of great Jewish-American-themed comedies (Woody Allen wishes he could have made this film). Moreover, the film serves to reconfirm the brotherly team as one of the greatest filmmaking duos in American cinema, and certainly one of the most diverse. ‘A Serious Man,’ after all, will be sandwiched between ‘No Country for Old Men’ and the Coen Brothers’ remake of ‘True Grit.’ Oy – go figya!
‘Antichrist’
Lars von Trier’s latest film, ‘Antichrist,’ was the only screening that I attended at the 2009 New York Film Festival. And, coming on a Friday night in late-September at the spectacularly revamped Alice Tully Hall, I expected fireworks. The crowd, full of von Trier fans (from pierced leatherboys to young punks), got more than it bargained for in the screening. The story of a couple whose child dies while they are in the heat of orgasmic intercourse goes from dark to darker to darkest in the course of two hours. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe play the couple, in which Dafoe’s character treats his grieving wife in their cabin in the forest in the form of some heavy aversion therapy that produces the most twisted, flesh-rending outcome this side of Quentin Tarantino. Freud’s worst nightmare, this film has it all – graphic slo-mo intercourse, penis-smashing, talking animals – and its allegorical nature grinds through a pace that is dizzying, despite what seems to be an interminable landscape of hopelessness.
The screening that I attended was vintage New York Film Festival – someone in the audience suffered some kind of seizure, and the crowd screamed for the film to be stopped. When a policeman entered to ask where the afflicted audience member was, someone shouted out, “HE LEFT!” Willem Dafoe, a good sport to be sure, was at the Q&A, and detailed his work with Lars von Trier, who had contacted him to say that he was massively depressed, and that he was working on a new film, and then sent Dafoe the script for what would become ‘Antichrist.’
George Romero Lives
‘Survival of the Dead’ is the latest in what is now a 40-year-plus book of zombie work by the legendary independent director George Romero. I had the chance to see this film – which does not yet have a distributor – at a Halloween-themed event that the Science & Entertainment Exchange (The Science & Entertainment Exchange is a program of the National Academy of Sciences that “connects entertainment industry professionals with top scientists from across the country to create a synergy between science and the entertainment community”) screened at the DGA Theater in Hollywood in late-October. For those who would doubt that such a high-minded organization might be based in Los Angeles, remind yourself that this presentation was set in Hollywood with a zombie picture as the back-drop.
A panel discussion followed, with Dr. Steven Schlozman, child psychologist, Harvard University, and author of a study of the zombie brain entitled “Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome,” and Dr. Robert J. Smith, epidemiologist, University of Ottawa and co-author of “When Zombies Attack: Mathematical Modeling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection.” providing their academic perspectives on the zombie brain and the behaviors of viral outbreaks. Entitled ‘Science of the Living Dead,’ the evening’s events were supposed to have been moderated by David Zucker, of ‘Airplane!’ fame, but he was a no-show.
The film, which premiered at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, was shot in SCOPE format, and it has deep, naturalistic tones, which are ironic, given that most of the on-screen characters are, uh, dead (the living dead, to be precise). The story is set off the coast of Delaware, where relatives of the island return to escape a zombie epidemic, only to discover that the island has been overrun as well. Despite the obviously cheesy nature of the story, the film is carried off with pathos and respect for its zombie pedigree. The coastal island, Plum Island, is sort of a Brigadoon-like land that time forgot, the scene of a classic Irish clan rivalry – in this case, the O’Flynns and the Muldoons – and has a western flavor to it. Seamus Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick) and Patrick O’Flynn (Kenneth Welsh) are the patriarchs at the center of the battle, and literally hundreds of zombies are shot, hacked, and tied to posts along the way. No one can pull off gore with a sense of humor in the way that Romero does, and he wraps the zombie shoot-out in a metaphor of society about to self-destruct at the hands of warring egos. Shot in Ontario, where Romero lives (he told me that he moved to Toronto in 2004; I suspect that he was one of those who actually did more than threaten to leave the U.S. when Bush was re-elected), the film had greater resonance in the midst of the H1N1 epidemic, and the ensuing scientific presentations played into this dialogue. The film supposedly will be released in the U.S. in the spring of 2010, and is worth a look, even if one has a merely passing familiarity with the Romero oeuvre.
‘Up in the Air’
Jason Reitman follows up on ‘Juno’ with ‘Up in the Air,’ a film that captures the national mood with such dead-on accuracy that it is destined to be a classic. In a 21st-century nod to Frank Capra, ‘Up in the Air’ details the work of a “termination specialist,” (a.k.a. corporate Grim Reaper) Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) whose life’s goal is to become one of handful of people to have achieved 10 million air miles on American Airlines. The film’s title derives its cheekiness from the double-entendre of a man whose life is spent on airplanes and, like the people he fires, has a life that is in perpetual flux. Reitman solicited the help of extras who had been fired, largely from the Detroit area (where many of the film’s scenes were shot), and the end-credits play a song submitted by one such laid-off worker, with the eponymous title. Clooney’s livelihood, as a privileged corporate killer who moonlights as an inspirational guru, is exemplified in its shallowness through his embrace of air travel as a sanctuary. He meets his match in Alex (Vera Farmiga), whom he seduces at an airport bar in Dallas while trading quips about rental cars, hotels, and his American Airlines concierge key (Alex, in response to Ryan wondering if his telling her his air-mile goal would “cheapen” their relationship, says “we’re people who get turned on by elite status; cheap is our starting point”). His road trysts aside, Ryan avoids any human contact, including his family, and particularly his younger sister’s pending wedding. Called off the road for a “game-changer” meeting at his company’s home office in Omaha, Nebraska (where Ryan states that he spends only 43 miserable days a year), Ryan returns to his empty one-bedroom apartment, where he is greeted by a neighbor (and former lover) who delivers his sister and her fiancé, in the form of a cardboard cut-out two-shot that they want to have photographed in as many locations as possible, a la the Travelocity gnome. Ryan is then completely flummoxed by the presentation of young Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), who suggests that the firm adopt a “Glocal” approach to its firing practices and, instead of globe-trotting, adopt an IP-based videoconferencing system with which to fire people. Ryan bristles at this suggestion and the young Cornell grad is summoned to accompany Ryan on the road to learn the trade. The life lessons imparted may be predictable (how to pack for a trip; how to spot the right group to follow in a TSA security line), but lead to the blossoming of Ryan’s relationship with Alex, who accompanies Ryan and Natalie at a tech conference party they crash (great touch here, as the conference has booked hip-hop has-been YoungMC, now portly, to belt out ‘Bust a Move’ for the overly white crowd). The Ryan-Alex pair head to his sister’s wedding in Northern Wisconsin, in his hometown, where they break into his old high school to visit the basketball team’s display case, where pictures of Ryan, as a point guard for the team, appear (there’s an inside joke here, as Alex is amazed that Ryan played ball; Clooney is an avid hoopster). The pair arrive at the Swiss lodge-themed hotel (where Ryan cannot jump the line to the “Matterhorn Program” line) to find Ryan’s older sister, played by Amy Morton (a Steppenwolf Theater member who originated the role of the older sister in ‘August: Osage County’), staying at the same hotel, having been separated from her husband. Ryan’s transformation over the weekend (he helps motivate his brother-in-law, after having suffered cold feet, to “go get that girl”) is flipped the following week. After a painful scene in which he and Natalie trial the videoconferencing termination, and endure a moment in which they must realize their own destinies, after dispensing “what did you want to be?” advice to a terminated employee (played by Reitman regular J.K. Simmons), Ryan then decides to buck his warrior code and go after Alex in Chicago, only to discover she’s more callow or, literally, “grounded” than he is, as a married woman with children. Ryan’s reprieve comes in learning that Natalie has left the company, and that his firm has shelved its Orwellian methodologies. After finally making his first real contributions to humanity – courtesy of a glowing letter of recommendation for Natalie for her new gig in San Francisco and a gift of a round-the-world trip to his sister and brother-in-law – Ryan goes back to the skies, more as a constellation of corporate flux than an angel of death. This is a tight film that has more reality in it than several season’s worth of “reality t.v.,” and yet it barely scratches the surface (funnily enough, its Michigan settings come on the heels of Michael Moore’s recent masterpiece, ‘Capitalism: A Love Story,’ and would be a great double-feature some day).
2009 Top 10 List
In no particularorder, the following are what I consider to be the most significant films of 2009.
‘Invictus’
Clint Eastwood’s film focuses on one of modern history’s greatest political achievements – Nelson Mandela’s backing of the Springboks rugby team in its quest for World Cup glory in 1995 – and how it galvanized a nation. Matt Damon’s South African accent is near-flawless as Springbok captain Francois Pienaar, and Morgan Freeman’s Mandela captures the spirit of the man without becoming a caricature/
‘Up in the Air’
Jason Reitman’s tightest film is also his most poignant and timely. The Great Recession will adopt this as its theme, must as the Great Depression adopted the likes of My Man Godfrey and I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang as important social films.
‘Avatar’
James Cameron has created the milestone event for 3-D cinema – what ‘the Jazz Signer’ was to talkies – with a powerful anti-corporate message wrapped in a fantastic, other-worldly domain. The suppression of indigenous peoples (cue ‘Trail of Tears’) is played out in a 22nd-century landscape that involves avatars infiltrating the Na’vi people of the planet Pandora, in a latter-day ‘Dances with Wolves’ scenario. While the former film garnered multiple Oscars in 1991, ‘Avatar’ will take a few awards, but will be remembered for making 3-D a viable art form and entertainment platform, not a gimmick. Cameron provides some vintage homages to his earlier work, with Sigourney Weaver (Ripley, from the ‘Alien’ franchise) as Dr. Grace Augustine, and central character Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) battling commander-turned-nemesis Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) in the final scene with a robotic module reminiscent of Ripley’s ultimate fight against the mother alien in ‘Aliens.’
‘Public Enemies’
Michael Mann recreates the John Dillinger story with such enthusiastic period detail (we are talking about Michael Mann, after all) that we wonder how many other stories of this era might benefit from his treatment. Johnny Depp sinks his teeth into Dillinger, with an exceptional supporting cast (particularly his female companion, played by Marion Cotillard), and never lets go.
‘Up’
The Pixar team creates is most sentimental film yet, with strong adult appeal, and characters that can spin many stories. The ‘Married Life’ sequence alone makes this one of the best films in recent memory – animated or live action.
‘The Hurt Locker’
Kathryn Bigelow’s best film combines all of the gritty aspects of her previous work in a timely tale of American displacement. The performances are all first-rate, in an ensemble bolstered by Jeremy Renner, whose expertise as a bomb detection squad star is a damning statement of American military power misapplied and stretched to its limits. At the screening and Q&A at the DGA Theater in New York that I attended, Bigelow detailed her extensive multi-camera shoot in Jordan (up to 21 cameras were used in a semi-improvisatory fashion).
‘A Serious Man’
The Coen Brothers deliver a film that is so profoundly contemporary, despite its 1967 setting, that it bears repeat viewing. Tightly edited, with a classic narrative, ‘A Serious Man’ is a masterpiece of subtle psychodrama – as if Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Woody Allen were all somehow channeling the angst of a Job-like character whose life is hilariously unraveling before us.
‘Star Trek’
The J.J. Abrams reconstitution of the classic Gene Roddenberry franchise is as epic an event as anything in 2009 (save Barack Obama’s inauguration). The pre-quel to everything we know about Spock and Kirk and the gang, this stylish epic is painstakingly rendered for an audience that may forget everything it ever knew about the 45-year-old franchise.
‘Precious’
This is the toughest film of the year, and deserves every accolade heaped on it. My hope is that, in a year after ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ took the Oscar, ‘Precious’ becomes a model for more courageous producer choices for realistic films about the growing underclass in America and elsewhere. We spend too much treasure depicting the few who have benefited at the hands of the many, and it has cheapened our artistic output. ‘Precious’ is a cinematic call to arms.
‘This is It’
The limited release film of Michael Jackson’s comeback tour is an extraordinary gem, and is filled with enough heartache to last a lifetime. Kenny Ortega’s orchestration of the rehearsals – with a masterful MJ – is a gift, and makes one realize just how much we lost with Michael’s untimely death. Kudos to Sony Pictures for making this picture happen.
Honorable Mentions:
‘Crazy Heart’
Jeff Bridges – who will win the Oscar for his role as fading country star Bad Blake – carries one of the finest redemption films ever made. Ironies abound here, as his co-star and producer, Robert Duvall, won himself an Oscar for a somewhat similar role in ‘Tender Mercies’ and Bridges himself played the reclamation project D.J. in ‘The Fisher King,’ opposite the eventual Oscar winner Mercedes Ruehl. Bridges is joined in a tremendous cast by Maggie Gyllenhaal, in her finest role, and the somewhat subdued Colin Farrell as his protégé-turned-employer Tommy Sweet.
‘An Education’
A sweet rendering of a teenage girl’s “education” at the hands of an older man in 1961 London, this film will be remembered more for the ensemble cast than for anything else (the costumes and set design are first-rate as well). Peter Saarsgaard’s David Goldman is the seducer who is spurned, and Carey Mulligan is the Oxford-aspiring girl who truly finds her own way, despite an oaf of a father, played by the wonderful Alfred Molina.
