— This is so great: Kim Morgan on Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas: “GoodFellas is a gangster picture, of course, but it’s a rock ‘n’ roll movie if I ever saw one. At times it’s, in an oblique way, one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll movies ever made.”
— I am continuing my 2018 project, started in January, abandoned for about 6 months when freelance work obliterated my free time and brainspace, and now picked up again: reading Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Plays. I should say re-reading, although I don’t think I had ever read Massacre in Paris before. Marlowe was such a fascinating man (putting it mildly), with such a singular viewpoint on what Power means and how it operates. He was not a moralist. To simplify, in his plays, terrible shit happens and then everyone dies. There’s very little soaring belief in the human spirit. He’s tough to take sometimes. This is why I love him. Tamburlaine is my favorite, it’s such a gigantic work of sympathetic imagination … and unbelievable poetry. I wrote about it here.
— This week was the anniversary of the airing of Elvis’ legendary 1968 television special. NBC actually aired it again! It’s certainly something to be proud of. Here’s a piece in the LA Times about the special. Steve Binder, who directed and produced, pushing Elvis to go further, deeper, and to ignore the Colonel’s call for a nice family-friendly Christmas special, is still alive and is interviewed.
— Another Elvis link: Tom Breihan is doing an absolutely fantastic series where he reviews every single Billboard #1 hit, since its inception in 1958. Here, he writes about Elvis’ “Suspicious Minds,” and it’s a great analysis of where that hit came from, its background, and also what Elvis does with it. It’s thrilling to read. “Suspicious Minds” was Elvis’ final #1 single.
— Also continuing my project to read all of Tom Wolfe’s stuff (at least non-fiction), a project I started when he died (actually, weirdly enough, I began slightly before he died.) I’m not as crazy about his fiction, but his essays … my God. I am now making my way through Hooking Up. I remember reading the title essay when it first came out, an examination of the “dating” rituals at the turn of the millennium. It’s slightly “get off my lawn” but Wolfe always had a vague “Get off my lawn” tone: he was an outsider. An outsider in his own generation, and in the world, in general. He forged his own path. He may have been an outsider, but his powers of observation are without rival. I am now reading his lengthy and super-fun history of the formation of Silicon Valley, “Two Young Men Who Went West.”
— Farran Smith Nehme (a friend) has written a gigantic essay called “Bluebeard at the Movies,” about movies where women marry men who turn out to be BONKERS. So many references, so many films!
— Farran, again, with a gorgeous essay about Orson Welles’ voice. This is in conjunction with Criterion’s release of Welles’ doomed-yet-not masterpiece The Magnificent Ambersons, which Welles – of course – narrates.
— Two pieces on Bernardo Bertolucci. I was too busy to note his passing. His movies mean so much to me, and the commentary around him has been … unsatisfying … in the extreme. So two pieces were written in the wake of his death I need to point out:
— I’m behind in my Tana French reading. Starting to catch up now. Reading The Secret Place, and reveling, yet again, in her prose. If you haven’t read her work yet – about the Dublin Murder Squad – then I really can’t recommend it highly enough! I believe she has since come out with two more books, one in the series and one stand-alone, so there’s a lot to look forward to. Much has been written about Tana French, and why she is so good, why she is better than other people writing in this murder-mystery genre. It’s not just her commentary on contemporary Ireland – in that, I think she is even better than Banville. Her Broken Harbor was, in my opinion, THE book on the “Celtic Tiger” and its downfall. She’s excellent on Ireland, but she’s also excellent on emotion, character, sensory observations, mood, subtext. I’m blown away. And she came out of the gate strong with In the Woods. She’s one of my favorite writers writing today.
Mr. Soul! (2018; d. Melissa Haizlip)
The opening night film of Indie Memphis, which already feels like it was 20 years ago. I wrote about it briefly in my recap of the festival for Ebert. It’s a gorgeous film.
Supernatural, Season 14, episode 4, “Mint Condition” (2018; d. Amyn Kaderali)
I enjoyed this episode a lot. It had a fresh and funny energy, with a lot of inventive sequences. I take what I can get these days.
Shoot the Moon Right Between the Eyes (2018; d. Graham Carter)
Another treat from the Indie Memphis festival (which I also wrote about at the link above). We really loved this movie.
If Beale Street Could Talk (2018; d. Barry Jenkins)
The regional premiere of Barry Jenkins’ highly anticipated followup to Best Picture winner, Moonlight. I attended with John Belfuss, a reporter for the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and Robert Gordon – whom I met that night – he was going to be introducing my Elvis talk, so we had a little pow-wow beforehand. Seeing Beale Street for the first time – in MEMPHIS no less – was really special (even though, of course, James Baldwin’s book does not take place in Memphis). Barry Jenkins was unable to attend, and he sent this beautiful video message to all of us, played before the screening. The place was packed. They had to bring in more chairs. I loved the film, AND congratulations to Regina King – whom I have adored ever since Jerry Maguire (“My life does not WORK without him!” Sob!) – for winning Best Supporting Actress in the NYFCC Awards. It was a pretty exciting moment “in the room” when the votes were tallied, showing that she won – evidence of everyone’s love of her work, her career as a whole, and the fact that she will be recognized for her performance in this. She’s such a fantastic actress.
The Hitchhiker (1953; d. Ida Lupino)
I re-watched this gripping gritty thriller in preparation for the Film Comment podcast – subject: Ida Lupino, actress and director. It’s SO good. If you haven’t seen it, what are you waiting for?
Roadhouse (1948; d. Jean Negulesco)
God, I love this weird movie. Starring Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Richard Widmark and Celeste Holm. A murderer’s row.
Wild Life (2018; d. Paul Dano)
This is a wonderful movie. There’s a sort of What Maisie Knew vibe, parental discord as seen through the eyes of a child (although Maisie is younger than the boy here. The boy here knows enough to see what is going on). Beautifully shot. An auspicious directorial debut from Paul Dano.
The Other Side of the Wind (2018; d. Orson Welles)
What is there to even be said? 40 years in the making. Orson Welles’ final film, which he had obsessed over, tried to find funding for, kept coming back to. A legendary project, with reels basically held hostage by the Iranian government, which … only Orson Welles would get himself into such a situation. But with the hard work and devotion of a number of people, the film has been put together – trying to honor Welles’ wishes … An extraordinary project. I almost couldn’t believe I was sitting down to watch a NEW ORSON WELLES movie. I got very emotional. Even better, it’s phenomenal. So ahead of its time it takes your breath away. He saw where we were going. Filmed on all different kinds of “stock” – it’s a film from the POV of the many paparazzi/documentary “film-makers” following the famous director (played by John Huston) around. (It is for this reason that it has taken so long to put this film together. Only now – with digital innovations – could all of this different kind of film be put together.) If you haven’t heard much about it, then … first of all, where have you been? But second of all, there’s been a ton of commentary on it, as well as two new documentaries. It gives good background about this project, and Welles’ desperate attempt to finish it. Well, here it is. Finished. Is it what he would have wanted? How can we know? He had put together much of it already, and left copious notes and shooting scripts and all the rest, all of which were pored over obsessively. Much thanks to Frank Marshall is in order, who was very instrumental in seeing this project through (Marshall had been an assistant on the original shoot). The film is on Netflix now. You really must see it. It’s incredible. I am so grateful it exists now.
A Final Cut for Orson: 40 Years in the Making (2018; d. Ryan Suffern)
On the Netflix page of Other Side of the Wind, if you click on “Trailers”, you’ll get to this. It’s a little bit buried but it is so worth watching. It gives the background of the project. Watch this before you watch the movie.
Roma (2018; d. Alfonso Cuarón)
This is a must-see. We voted it Best Picture at NYFCC. Not best FOREIGN film, but Best Picture.
Homecoming (2018; d. Sam Esmail)
This series was very very enjoyable. Stylized like a 1970s paranoid thriller, it features Julia Roberts in a role which doesn’t allow her to do the things she normally does – rely on her natural charm, charisma, humor – none of that would be appropriate for the character – which is very very interesting, and makes this an interesting – and daring – choice for her. She doesn’t get to be confident, funny. She ALSO doesn’t get to be “the smartest person in the room” – always part of her persona as an actress. She has to play a woman cowed by forces larger than her, a woman who is always 5 or 6 steps behind events, someone who literally does not know what has happened to her. She’s wonderful! It took me a couple of episodes to succumb to the series’ mode – which is rather silly, honestly – but I really liked it.
Deadwood, Season 1, episodes 1 – 6 (2004)
I have never seen it. I know, I know. I didn’t have HBO at the time, and have never gotten around to catching up. Until now. My friend Keith, who ushered me through The X-Files and Millennium is now binge-watching Deadwood with me. We are really good binge-watch buddies. We watched 6 episodes on our first get-together and then I had to wait two weeks for our second meet-up. I almost cheated. Yes, I know, I am late to the party. People have been telling me to watch Deadwood since 2004. And now I understand. The acting is so phenomenal, the characters are all so well-drawn and … the whole thing is in iambic pentameter? WHAT. I’m obsessed.
Tehran Taboo (2018; d. Ali Soozandeh)
An extremely bleak animated film about life in Tehran, and all the taboos (too many to count), and how people get around them – not for pleasure’s sake, but for survival. It’s brutal. Beautifully done.
Monrovia, Indiana (2018; d. Frederick Wiseman)
The new documentary from the masterful Wiseman. It’s amazing. It’s been a year of incredible documentaries. This is one of the best.
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (2018; d. Morgan Neville)
This is the SECOND documentary about Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, also on Netflix, and also essential.
Supernatural, Season 15, episode 5 “Nightmare Logic” (2018; d. Darren Grant)
Truly embarrassing. One of the worst episodes in recent – or even lengthier – memory.
Amazing Grace (2018; d. Sydney Pollack)
Another doc decades in the making. What a year!! If you’re not aware of the backstory: In 1972, Aretha Franklin – at the height of her fame – recorded a live gospel album. To this day, it’s a high watermark in gospel recordings, AND in her career. Sydney Pollack filmed the concert. BUT – and how is this possible – the sound was not synced up. He had somehow forgotten to use the clapper. So the footage has sat in a vault for almost 50 years. Franklin herself did not want the film to be seen, for various reasons (it’s been talked about obsessively. Google is your friend). Once she died, it was time to basically ignore her wishes, and a producer – Alan Elliott – headed up the project to get the sound synced, and the film completed. It’s being given a short theatrical run (only in LA and NY, I think) to qualify for awards, but eventually it will hit streaming platforms and trust me when I tell you: you have GOT to see this. There were moments where I felt like I literally stopped breathing, her performance is so deep and raw and transcendent. Seriously, so many times I’d think to myself, “Okay, that was clearly the climax of the song, because it was so intense I almost can’t bear it” … and then she’d go to yet ANOTHER level. Do not miss this one.
You & Me (2018; d. Alexander Baack)
A film being released on streaming platforms TOMORROW. I interviewed the director about it. It’s beautiful.
The Rider (2018; d. Chloé Zhao)
This is in my Top 5 of 2018.
Write When You Get Work (2018; d. Stacy Cochran)
Some really interesting stuff here, I reviewed for Ebert.
Juliet, Naked (2018; d. Jesse Peretz)
I really enjoyed this!
Love & Mercy (2014; d. Bill Pohlad)
God, I love this movie. I’ve watched it many times at this point. Wrote about it here.
The Land of Steady Habits (2018; d. Nicole Holofcener)
I love Holofcener’s work so much. It’s detailed, it’s observant, it’s funny too. Her latest is pretty bleak, moving into John Cheever territory. A guy, a “winner,” who made a killing on Wall Street, has retired early and has completely exploded his life. On purpose. Ben Mendelsohn is great as a guy who is OLD to be this lost, to be this … silly, really. But this is what happens. He can’t be married, so he left his wife, and yet he can’t stop himself from stopping by, going to visit. The habits of the title are the habits engrained in him, the habit of marriage but also the habit of indiscriminate unsatisfying sex with others. It’s depressing in the same way John Cheever is depressing. Catharsis really isn’t on the table. I loved it. On Netflix now.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018; d. Desiree Akhavan)
Two movies about gay conversion therapy in one year (the other one being Boy Erased). Of the two, this is the one to see. Jennifer Ehle is the stuff of nightmares. Very very effective, and really goes at the underlying pathology of those who ran organizations such as Love in Action.
Magic Mike XXL (2015; d. Gregory Jacobs)
One of my favorite movies of the last 20 years. I had such a strong response to it I think I saw it 3 times in the movie theatre. And wondered if it would “hold up.” It does. Men who haven’t seen this movie because it doesn’t seem like it’s “for them” (it’s more for YOU then it is for US, by the way: we already KNOW all this stuff) – or who scoff at it, or who don’t get it – need to really listen to what other people have to say about it, and then try to open your mind. You will have no excuse then if you still say baffled shit like “what the hell do women want”. Maybe to be treated with affection, maybe to have our happiness taken into consideration, maybe to not be punished for wanting sex with you or whoever else? It’s not rocket science.
Supernatural, Season 15, episode 6 “Optimism” (2018; d. Richard Speight Jr.)
This had many enjoyable aspects, and Speight has shown himself to be one of the most talented directors on staff. I mean, I watch “Just My Imagination” all the time. It’s perfect.
Black Panther (2018; d. Ryan Coogler)
End of year means screeners start piling up in my mailbox. I hadn’t seen this in the theatre so I was catching up. It’s so much fun.
Never Look Away (2018; d. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
A wonderful new film from the director of The Lives of Others: a sweeping panorama of life in East Germany spanning the years 1937 to 1968 or something like that. Based somewhat on the life of painter Gerhard Richter. I loved it. My review is up at Ebert.
The Lives of Others (2006; d. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
A re-watch in preparation for my review of Never Look Away. It’s such an extraordinary film.
Cold War (2018; d. Pawel Pawlikowski)
The follow-up to his celebrated (understatement) film Ida. Cold War looks at the history of Poland during the “cold war” through the lens of popular music (which also played a big part in Ida, if you recall). A fascinating look at the Politburo’s “campaign” to elevate Polish “folk music” basically to show … happy peasants frolicking in traditional dress … as part of the propaganda for their Socialist Utopia. See how everyone is happy? The film is much more than that. It’s also a love story. And the impossibility of life under the regime in Poland, pre-1989. Stunning black and white cinematography. I loved it. We gave this Best Foreign Film at NYFCC.
Shoplifters (2018; d. Hirokazu Koreeda)
This movie, people, this movie … I cannot get it out of my head. In my Top 10 of 2018. Great great film.
The Guilty (2018; d. Gustav Möller)
What an amazing film. Similar to Locke (wrote about it here), which featured Tom Hardy in a tour de force performance, managing multiple crises from his car phone. No other human beings appear in it, just their voices on the other end. In The Guilty, a disgraced cop – demoted to emergency dispatch call center – gets a call from a woman who claims she has been kidnapped. He tries to help. The entire film takes place in one room, and while there are other characters in the background – he is the focus. You never see the woman on the other end, or the many many other people he calls to try to manage the situation. Jakob Cedergren is phenomenal.
Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, Season 3, episode 1 (2018)
Season 3 up and running. I admire so much what she is doing. I can’t even believe it is happening, to be honest.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018; d. The Coen brothers)
I’ve seen it twice now. The first viewing, I was so taken with the chapter called “The Gal Who Got Rattled” it overtook my response, especially in regards to the final “chapter.” I was missing some of the subtleties. It was necessary to go back and watch a second time. The second viewing was almost more gratifying, since I could settle in and notice the details. Not just that, but also feel the Arc of the overall thing – which is very strong, even though I couldn’t really FEEL said Arc on first viewing. I really love this film.
The Favourite (2018; d. Yorgos Lanthimos)
I loved it. Lanthimos brings up strong responses in people. This may be his best, his most assured. It’s kind of crazy, too. Olivia Colman is extraordinary.
Vice (2018; d. Adam McKay)
Went to the screening at SVA, with Adam McKay, Amy Adams (and a host of others) in attendance. I loved The Big Short. There are moments in this I enjoyed (the Shakespeare scene, the false ending), but in general, I didn’t really care for it. I know I’ve told this story before, but my uncle punched Dick Cheney in the face for being a drunk asshole in the O’Malley home. I am proud of this. It was actually an O’Malley brothers brawl, my dad included – as they all basically threw him out into the street, like, “Go the fuck home, drunkie.”
Supernatural, Season 15, episode 7 “Unhuman Nature” (2018; d. John F. Showalter)
I liked a lot of this, in particular the Jack/Dean scenes. And the Impala getting shown off. There’s so much that is – on almost a cellular level – wrong with this show now, so much that’s “off” … it’s sometimes hard to hang in there. All I see are missed opportunities. And again with the Supernatural Tuberculosis? But there were some good scenes here.
Boy Erased (2018; d. Joel Edgerton)
This is what happens when a heterosexual Australian makes a movie about a gay American kid. Nope. No sense of critique of the underlying sinister nature of conversion therapy (see Miseducation of Cameron Post, written by a queer author, directed by a bisexual director – these things don’t ALWAYS matter, but sometimes, boy, they do), and no sense of who the hell this boy is. The parents are let off the hook, and this wasn’t helped by the shallow performances of Crowe and Kidman (it hurts me to say this, they’re usually so good). Everything was bleak and dark and grim. Yes, a grim story, but again, see Cameron Post to see a more human treatment. Edgerton is a total outsider in every way, and it shows in the movie. I’ve liked his work before. This is a misfire.
What Haunts Us (2018; d. Paige Tolmach)
One of the screeners that arrived in my mailbox this month. Popped it in just to check it out. It’s a powerful piece of work, upsetting, infuriating, very well done.
Deadwood, Season 1, episodes 6 – 12 (2004)
Spent the day, again, over at Keith’s, watching the final 6 episodes of season 1, with Kyle, another huge fan of the series. The rain poured down outside, and I was just so sucked into this Deadwood world, these people! I was in tears OFTEN (the final shot of Season 1. STOP IT.) We already have our date for Season 2 binge-watch. I’m beside myself. It’s so good. I am late to the party, AS ALWAYS. But at least I got here eventually!
The byzantine rituals of the British class system may seem like a strange topic for the Kansas City-born Robert Altman, a high-risk gambler with an antiauthoritarian streak 10 miles long. But as a staunch outsider to the mainstream, he spent his career – in films as diverse as M*A*S*H, Nashville, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Short Cuts, The Player – dissecting hierarchies, and what could be more hierarchical than British society? The society on display in his 2001 film Gosford Park is presented with such fetishistic detail it becomes obvious these meticulously observed rituals were designed to raise the bar for entry. “Upstairs” was built to be impenetrable. Poet John Betjeman lampooned this in his poem “How to Get On In Society“, one verse of which reads:
Phone for the fish knives, Norman
As cook is a little unnerved;
You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes
And I must have things daintily served.
Novelist Nancy Mitford gleefully exposed the secrets of her class in her 1956 book Noblesse Oblige, where she observed, “An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut off: it may run about in a lively way, but in fact it is dead.” Her pal Evelyn Waugh, also a documenter of the End Days of the British aristocracy, contributed an “open letter” to Noblesse Oblige, including this passage: “There are subjects too intimate for print. Surely class is one? The vast and elaborate structure grew up almost in secret. Now it shows alarming signs of dilapidation. Is this the moment to throw it open to the heavy-footed public? Yes, I think it is.”
Robert Altman loved throwing open the doors of closed worlds “to the heavy-footed public” and Gosford Park opens doors within doors within doors. The film takes place in December 1932, just one month before Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Nobody in the film, upstairs people or down, has any idea their interconnected life is headed for the cataclysm. In Altman’s hands, English murder-mystery is a portrait of a world about to vanish from the face of the earth. In less than a decade, that grand old house will probably be commandeered by the military for troop barracks and hospitals.
Longtime friends Bob Balaban and Robert Altman had always discussed working together, and when Altman mentioned how much he wanted to do a murder-mystery Balaban saw the possibilities. Altman loved riffing on familiar genres. As Robert Holker observed in his book A Cinema of Loneliness, Altman needed “[Hollywood’s] conventions as material to dismantle and reconsider.” In their initial discussions, Altman made it clear he was more interested in the “downstairs people,” the black-clad servants who normally float by in the background in such films. What if the aristocrats were seen primarily through the servants’ eyes?
This was the spark that lit the flame. They reached out to Julian Fellowes, an actor and television writer, who knew this world first-hand, to write the script (which would win the Oscar). Altman and Balaban described the film as “Ten Little Indians meets Rules of the Game.” The connection to Jean Renoir’s 1939 masterpiece is instructive. Gosford Park dissects the rigid class system of aristocratic England in the same way Rules of the Game goes after the decadence of aristocratic France. In both films, you can see the cracks in the facade of an entire society. Altman achieves this initially by taking us into the house via the servants’ quarters not the front door, and throughout he never shows an “upstairs” person without a “downstairs” person present.
In a confusing collage (made even more confusing since the servants are referred to by their masters’ and mistress’ names), we meet all the characters in the first 20 minutes of the film. Upstairs, Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas) and William McCordle (Michael Gambon) greet their guests. Their sulky daughter Isobel (Camilla Rutherford) is embroiled in an increasingly fraught argument with the married Freddie Nesbitt (James Wilby). We only learn what this argument is about close to the end of the film, and even then it’s gone so quickly you might miss it. Freddie’s dowdy wife Mabel (Claudie Blakley) suffers the scorn of the other guests for being so publicly humiliated by her husband (and also she doesn’t travel with a maid). Sylvia has two married sisters, Louisa (Geraldine Somerville), in the midst of some sort of affair with William, and Lavinia (Natasha Wightman), whose desperate husband Anthony (Tom Hollander) makes a nuisance of himself asking William for money. The great Maggie Smith plays Sylvia’s persnickety Aunt Constance, terrified that William will cut off her allowance. Over-reliance on “the help” is apparent in one of the earliest scenes where Constance asks her brand new ladies’ maid Mary (Kelly McDonnell) to twist the cap off the Thermos bottle for her.
Downstairs buzzes with its own equally fraught cast of characters. There’s the stern Mrs. Wilson (Helen Mirren), head of the household, who says at one point, “I’m the perfect servant. I have no life.” Mrs. Croft (Eileen Atkins) is the proprietary head of the kitchen, in a bitter struggle with Mrs. Wilson for dominance. This relationship ends up being the key that unlocks the most secret door of the film,. Alan Bates plays Jennings, the stern proper butler, and Richard Grant, Derek Jacobi, Jeremy Swift and Adrian Scarborough play footmen and servants. Clive Owen is Robert Parks, a servant for one of the visiting guests, whose mysteriously independent spirit is cause for much gossip. Emily Watson plays Elsie, the head maid, who takes newbie Mary under her generous wing (and, as a bonus to us, explains how the household works). There’s Bertha (Teresa Churcher), a kitchen maid who appears to be the only person on the premises enjoying an active lusty sex life, and maid Dorothy (Sophie Thompson), in a state of unrequited love for Mr. Jennings.
To remind us of the insularity of this world, Altman gives us four outsiders. The aforementioned Mary is the naive newcomer who turns into an amateur Girl Detective, the only one who discovers the truth of what happened and why. Real-life movie star Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam) steps into this fictional story, visiting his cousin Sylvia, his Hollywood “career” condescendingly tolerated by his relatives. Novello has brought with him Hollywood producer Morris Weissman (Bob Balaban) and Weissman’s “servant” (i.e. paid-lover and undercover actor) Henry Denton (Ryan Philippe), who affects a Scottish accent, and wears a black derby like a figure from Magritte.
The murder of William McCordle happens at almost exactly the midpoint. Altman does not bury the lede. Early on, long before the murder, there’s a show-stopping zoom in to a cluster of bottles marked, conspicuously, “Poison”. Later, Bertha stands over a row of carving knives, remarking that one is missing. There’s another zoom in to a bottle of poison, with a voice saying, off-camera, “Everyone’s got something to hide.” The film is so filled with red herrings it’s a wonder the characters don’t trip over them. As the film progresses, it becomes clear Gosford Park is not a “whodunit” at all. Altman joked in a 2001 interview at the AFI that it’s more of a “who-cares-who-did-it”.
What could have been an exercise in style is instead a richly textured, funny, and occasionally heartbreaking film about the human condition. There isn’t just one secret onscreen. The air rustles with the ghostly whispers of thwarted hopes, disappointments, dead dreams. Altman’s films are filled with people withholding information and yet who constantly give themselves away. A perfect example is the nightclub scene in Nashville when Keith Carradine sings “I’m Easy,” and multiple women in the audience assume he’s singing about them, including Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin), but she’s the only one who’s right. Gosford Park is one of those films that reveals more and more depths with repeat viewings.
Altman gave only one direction to the huge cast of Gosford Park: “All of you are the lead. Whenever you’re on the screen, your story is the main story.” Some of the cast members were living legends, others had only a couple of credits to their name. It’s not every director who could convince the illustrious Derek Jacobi to take such a small role, but as Corey Fischer (who appeared in M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, and McCabe & Mrs. Miller) observed, Altman wanted an “entourage of actors who were not playing primary characters who would enliven those edges and give the final work a special feel that he became known for.” Altman was always more interested in the edges than the bullseye.
This informed his signature camera movements, the zoom, and the slow drifting pan. Closeups are rare in his films. The cinematographer for Gosford Park was Andrew Dunn (in his first collaboration with Altman; they would pair up again for The Company), and in the film the camera floats through those gorgeous rooms, with seemingly no purpose, rarely landing. When the camera zooms in on something, the voices continue above and around the image, disembodied from the camera’s actions. Robert Holker observed in his book that Altman’s zoom creates a “subjective sense of vagueness and disorientation,” and makes any given environment “a place of inquiry rather than accepting it as a preexistent whole.” Fellowes observed that “[Altman] creates this illusion in the mind of the spectator that they are directing the camera. It becomes an autonomous being that is moving around the room. Because you are the viewer, you take responsibility for the image.”
Because this is a film with two completely separate worlds, coursing along in parallel lines with only occasional intersections, the stylistic differences between upstairs and downstairs are acute. The upstairs was filmed in an actual country estate, and the colors are cool and elegant, pale greens and pinks, ivories, with lots of space for people to wander. The servants’ areas (created with meticulous detail on a sound stage by production designer Stephen Altman), are dark and deep, punctuated by shafts of light from the outside (these images are straight from a Vermeer, a Rembrandt, a Caravaggio). The shadows are pitch-black, threatening to engulf entire rooms. Some of the “downstairs” sequences – servants settling down to their dinner seen through mottled panes of glass, Clive Owen lounging on his bed smoking, surrounded by dark shadows – are among the most beautiful and painterly shots in Altman’s entire career.
Altman spent a lifetime in resistance to the establishment, and despised snobbery of all kinds. The snobbery on display in Gosford Park is extreme (watch for Lady Sylvia’s expression when Weissman asks her where the telephone is, or Aunt Constance’s reactions to … everything). However, the upstairs people in Gosford Park are not monsters. In many ways they are more trapped than the downstairs people. In their rejection of modernity, their disinterest in movies and current music, they wed themselves to the past, to irrelevance. When Ivor Novello entertains the guests at the piano with contemporary songs (the real-life Novello was also a composer), the reactions range from smiling tolerance to outright scorn. But the servants, drawn to the music, drift upstairs, loll on the dark staircases, huddle in nearby rooms, in a reverie of rapt listening. They are the future. Elsie, smoking cigarettes and flipping through movie magazines, staunchly walking away from her job into the unknown, is the future.
Gosford Park was critically acclaimed upon its release, and a hit with audiences. The film was nominated for Best Picture, Best Art Decoration and Best Costumes. Altman received a nomination for Best Director, and Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith were both nominated in the Best Supporting category. Only Julian Fellowes won for his Script. But the film’s stature, if anything, has risen in the intervening years. Stephen Holden, in his review for the New York Times, states the case plainly, “What makes the achievement of Gosford Park all the more remarkable is that Mr. Altman is 76. If the movie’s cool assessment of the human condition implies the dispassionate overview of a man who has seen it all, the energy that crackles from the screen suggests the clear-sighted joie de vivre of an artist still deeply engaged in the world.”
Robert Altman has almost no heirs, although Paul Thomas Anderson (hand-picked by Altman to take over Prairie Home Companion should he become too ill to continue) is in that rare ballpark. Altman could not be classified as an optimist, or even a “humanist.” He knew people were selfish and often cruel, and he did not shy away from that in his films. (Just ask poor “Hot Lips” in M*A*S*H.) But he was a curious man, and curious about people, who they were, why they did what they did. He always said he wanted to see things he hadn’t seen before. He wanted to discover it along the way. Kenneth Branagh, who worked with Altman in 1998’s The Gingerbread Man observed, “He was not a man who talked much about the first act or third act or the story-arc stuff. He didn’t want knowable, tangible coherence.”
Who murdered William McCordle is not exactly irrelevant, it’s just that it’s not the point. What is the point is the tender and yet electric possibilities in Mary and Robert’s connection. What is the point is the coiled intensity of Mrs. Wilson folding napkins, vibrating with bottled-up pain, or the two maids dancing together as Ivor Novello plays an uptempo song in the next room. What is the point is Elsie’s proud indomitable walk out of the house, head held high. She’s going to be fine.
Robert Altman once said, “The greatest films are the ones that leave you not able to explain, but you know that you have experienced something special. I’ve always had this feeling that the perfect response to a film or a piece of work of mine would be if someone got up and said, ‘I don’t know what it is, but it’s right.’ That’s the feeling you want – ‘That’s right’ – and it comes from four or five layers down; it comes from the inside rather than the outside.”
The people in Gosford Park are obsessed with and devoted to the “outside” of things, the forms of politeness, the placement of silverware, the proper pouring of tea. And yet the film itself comes beautifully from the inside.
In the past month alone, this lovely actress has been discussed so much – in my world anyway – because of the talk I gave on Elvis in Memphis – and the affection I have for the 1968 forgotten screwball, Live a Little, Love a Little. After my talk, I had a really fun discussion with Brad Jenkins, who ran lights for my talk, about our shared love for this unfairly ignored comedy. I went over to him to thank him for his job in the light booth and all his help, and suddenly he murmured, almost like it was a shared secret, “Thank you for bringing up Live a Little Love a Little.” And we were off to the races. Instant bond! Carey, a perfect foil for Elvis, as well as hilarious in her own right, plays a beach-bunny kook – with multiple names – who runs around in a babydoll nightie and gogo boots, determined to HAVE HIM (and who can blame her). She WILL have him, even if she has to roofie him (which she does!)
I’ve written a couple of things on the film – mostly about his performance – but their pairing is delightfully screwball.
Michele Carey was stunningly beautiful, with a strong distinct fact, and eyes that blazed blue. She is probably most well-known for her performance in El Dorado, opposite John Wayne, where she gives a wonderful performance.
I cherish her for her performance in Live a Little, Love a Little, a totally forgotten film, one that is – as Jeremy Richey says – ripe for rediscovery.
“They said I’d be traumatized when I hit fifty. They were right. I’ll tell you the truth. I haven’t recovered my balance since turning fifty … You suddenly look up and see where you are.” – Marion in “Another Woman”
Time has been very kind to “Another Woman,” Woody Allen’s 17th feature, and his third “serious” film. Greeted by critics upon its release in 1988 with a mixture of frustration and disappointment (as well as a couple of outliers, Roger Ebert giving it 4 stars), “Another Woman” now seems totally successful in what it set out to do, and the film includes a couple of stand-out scenes that rank among Allen’s best. “Another Woman” is not a story so much as it is a meditation on death, a contemplation of living with regret, and a probing emotional X-ray of the character at the center of the film, the chilly intellectual Marion, played by the great Gena Rowlands, known mostly for the blazing supernova performances she gave in the films directed by her maverick husband, John Cassavetes. What interested Allen was the idea of a woman’s long-ignored emotional life manifesting itself as a voice coming through a grate.
Allen told biographer Eric Lax, “I put all I felt about turning fifty into Marion. It took me at least a year to get over it.” Philosophy professor Marion, ostensibly happily married to her second husband, successful surgeon Ken (Ian Holm), “looks up”, and what she sees in her life destabilizes her entire foundation. Allen told filmmaker and journalist Stig Bjorkman, “… she has kept everything personal in her life totally blocked out. And finally she reaches a point in her life, where she can no longer block out things in this way. They literally start to come through the walls, the sounds of her inner turbulence start to come through the walls to speak to her.”
Similar to the grasping arms plunging out of the hallway walls to grab Catherine Deneuve’s Carol in Roman Polanski’s 1965 film “Repulsion,” the sounds of Mia Farrow’s anguish coming through the grate of Marion’s rented apartment/workspace, plunges Marion into a fugue state of increasing panic that unravels her personality from within. The unraveling is so total that after repeat viewings the ending of “Another Woman,” with Marion trying to connect in meaningful ways with the people in her life, feels like whistling in the dark rather than something more salutary.
“Another Woman” wears its Ingmar Bergman influence on its sleeve, including the fact that Allen chose Bergman cinematographer Sven Nykvist to shoot the film instead of his regular cinematographer Carlo DiPalma. (Nyqvist would go on to shoot three other Allen films, “Oedipus Wrecks” in “New York Stories”, “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and “Celebrity.”) Allen admired Nyqvist’s extraordinary work on “Persona” “Cries and Whispers”, and “Fanny and Alexander” in particular. Despite its extremely verbal atmosphere, the guts of “Another Woman”, its harrowing essence, is told entirely in the series of unforgettable closeups of Rowlands’ face (as Vincent Canby put it in his New York Times review, her face with its “ravaged beauty and genuine pathos she allows the camera to find…”) After Bergman died, Allen observed in his 2007 New York Times remembrance essay: “Bergman would put the camera on Liv Ullmann’s face or Bibi Andersson’s face and leave it there and it wouldn’t budge and time passed and more time and an odd and wonderful thing unique to his brilliance would happen. One would get sucked into the character and one was not bored but thrilled”. Allen, with his love of the master-shot, has never been a “close up” director; he uses them extremely sparingly. Most of the close ups in his career occur in “Another Woman.”
Many have mentioned Bergman’s 1957 “Wild Strawberries” as a clear inspiration for “Another Woman,” with its story of an elderly man on a road trip confronted with memories of his past so intense that they stroll into the corporeal plane. The device is inherently theatrical, calling to mind two of the great mid-century American plays, Tennessee Williams’ “Glass Menagerie” and Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” where the line between the present and the past is porous. In “Salesman,” Willy Loman becomes lost in reveries of his mostly painful memories, and he is so “back there” that his family has to snap him back to the present moment.
“Wild Strawberries”
So, too, with Marion in “Another Woman,” who has been so in control of herself from a very young age that nobody knows what to do with this new distracted Marion, “another woman” emerging from behind the cool and perfect mask. As the memories crowd upon her, the perfect Marion is revealed as a woman so driven she has trod upon many people in her life, unaware of the damage she has done. She has left a trail of wreckage in her wake, her brother, her childhood friend, her first husband, her former lover. When confronted with how much she has hurt them, Marion shows complete confusion. She had no idea.
Leading her down the rabbit hole into her past, is the white rabbit of Mia Farrow’s Hope, who sobs out suicidal anguish or flat-affect apathy to her psychiatrist, unaware that Marion crouches by the grate on the other side. Is Hope even real? Or is she just a manifestation of Marion’s psyche, the deepest subconscious part of Marion screaming to be expressed, pulling out all the stops (dreams, flashbacks, hallucinations) to get Marion’s attention?
And what better actress to plunge into the bottomless pit of regret – regret so acute it is close to actual madness – than Gena Rowlands? Through the late 60s, into the 70s and 80s, in a series of performances in her husband’s films that still astonish today, Rowlands gave us characters so on the edge that she redefined what “on the edge” actually looked like, and how deep it was possible to go. She set the bar. Actresses of her raw emotional calibre are rare (Anna Magnani, Liv Ullmann, and Isabelle Huppert the first three that come to mind). When Rowlands goes deep, as she does in those brutally long close-ups in “Another Woman” it appears that she will never come back from that pit. As Nietzsche wrote, “If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” That’s what’s on her face.
What is most extraordinary about Rowlands’ performance is the difference between Marion and the characters she played in her husband’s films, lonely outsider Minnie in “Minnie & Moskowitz,” Mabel, shattering into a psychotic break, in “A Woman Under the Influence,” tough-talking gun moll Gloria in “Gloria,” the desperate abandoned Sarah in “Love Streams,” and nutty alcoholic actress Myrtle in “Opening Night” (Worthwhile noting that in “Opening Night”, a film about a woman confronted by perhaps hallucinatory former and future selves, Myrtle is in the process of rehearsing a play for its Broadway opening, a play called “The Second Woman”.)
“A Woman Under the Influence”
Roger Ebert, in his review of “Another Woman”, clocks the magnitude of Rowlands’ performance with an observation very few other critics even noticed. Ebert wrote: “Cassavetes is a wild, passionate spirit, emotionally disorganized, insecure and tumultuous, and Rowlands has reflected that personality in her characters for him…Allen is introspective, considerate, apologetic, formidably intelligent, and… Rowlands now mirrors that personality, revealing in the process how the Cassavetes performances were indeed “acting” and not some kind of ersatz documentary reality. To see “Another Woman” is to get an insight into how good an actress Rowlands has been all along.”
Meeting Rowlands in intensity (no small task) are all of the actors playing secondary roles, some of whom have only one scene. Betty Buckley, quivering with devastation and rage, plays Lydia, Ken’s first wife, whose marriage was ruined when Ken began an affair with Marion. Buckley’s unforgettable performance lasts less than 5 minutes and nearly overturns the entire movie. It is impossible to view Marion as an oblivious innocent after seeing the damage her behavior has wrought in Lydia’s life.
Sandy Dennis plays Claire, Marion’s childhood friend who became an actress, and has one of the best scenes in the film when she confronts Marion about what happened in their past. Gene Hackman plays Larry, a successful novelist, who shared a brief passionate relationship with Marion (from the looks of it, very brief: an afternoon together and one kiss in the rain) and begs her to choose him over his cold and judgmental friend Ken. Hackman has made a career playing slightly dangerous, wild, or morally compromised characters, and here he is at his very best as a transparently sexy romantic leading man. (Casting Hackman in this particular role, like casting Rowlands as the elegant and “together” Marion, is an example of Allen’s often brilliant and intuitive casting choices.) Martha Plimpton, John Houseman, Blythe Danner, and Philip Bosco play other characters who provide the texture and fabric of Marion’s life, its past, its present.
Over the years, Allen has expressed mild dissatisfaction with “Another Woman,” wondering to such interviewers as Stig Bjorkman and Eric Lax, if Marion was too cold and unpleasant a person to be the emotional center of a film. American audiences expected comedies from him, and many critics bemoaned the fact that Allen did not appear in “Another Woman” at all. They thought the ironic comic sensibility of his persona would have at least lightened the mood. Watching “Another Woman” now, it is difficult to understand what on earth those critics were complaining about. Yes, “Another Woman” is slow-paced, with a wintry grandeur to its mood and style. However, these qualities are descriptive of the film, rather than negative criticisms. Not every film is meant to be a comedy.
Allen’s idea – eavesdropping on a psychiatrist’s sessions – initially did have a comedic bent (and he would re-visit it almost 10 years later in his musical “Everyone Says I Love You”). But drawn as he always was to the weighty existential films of the European masters, Allen yearned to explore his pet themes in a serious manner, most of all his fear of encroaching death. Angelina Jolie’s beautiful meditative film “By the Sea,” (ignored and dismissed by critics) is a “nod” to “Another Woman,” with its tale of a deeply unhappy woman (Jolie) who is titillated, disturbed, and unnerved when she discovers that a hole in the wall of her hotel room gives a clear view of everything that happens with the happy couple in the next room.
Eavesdropping and spying through the hole in the wall becomes an obsession, and Jolie’s character – like Rowlands’ character – is not entirely sure of what is being stirred up and unleashed within her by all that she sees and hears. “Another Woman” is not usually on the list of Allen’s most commonly imitated films, but Jolie’s use of it shows a deep understanding of the potential in Allen’s original idea.
One of the patron saints of “Another Woman” is German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, a poet Marion loves, a poet whose obsession with death rivals Allen’s own. Two poems are referenced in the film. First, “Panther”, with its image of a black cat pacing in a cage, doing “a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.” And then “Archaic Torso of Apollo” with its urgent final lines: “For here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life,” words that rock Marion to her core. Rilke’s poem “Memory” is not mentioned, but it may very well be the perfect expression of what “Another Woman” is all about:
And still you wait, expecting one thing alone
that your life could endlessly renew,
some great and singular thing to be shown,
something like the awakening of a stone,
some secret depth, returning to you.
Your books shine upon their stands
in volumes of brown and gold,
and you think of all the traveled lands,
the images and tattered strands
of all the women you could not hold.
And suddenly you realize: there’s nothing there.
You rise to your feet, and before you appear
the fear and form and empty prayer
of the absence of another year.
My review of Never Look Away, directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (whose The Lives of Others won Best Foreign Film almost 10 years ago), is now up at Ebert.
I knew nothing about it going in, and in the final third of the movie, when the lead character starts to have his artistic breakthrough, painting what he wants to paint, I thought, “Huh. Is this based on Gerhard Richter, I wonder??? The art looks familiar!”
There is value in not reading press notes because then you get to feel really smart when you put things together on your own. Here are some of the Richter works I reference in the review:
“Motor Boat,” 1965
“September,” 2005
“Erhängte,” October 18 1977 series, 1988
“Arrest 1,” October 18, 1977 series, 1988
At any rate, lots to discuss. Go check out my review, and definitely check out the film.
. I should say re-reading, although I don’t think I had ever read Massacre in Paris before. Marlowe was such a fascinating man (putting it mildly), with such a singular viewpoint on what Power means and how it operates. He was not a moralist. To simplify, in his plays, terrible shit happens and then everyone dies. There’s very little soaring belief in the human spirit. He’s tough to take sometimes. This is why I love him. Tamburlaine is my favorite, it’s such a gigantic work of sympathetic imagination … and unbelievable poetry. 
. I remember reading the title essay when it first came out, an examination of the “dating” rituals at the turn of the millennium. It’s slightly “get off my lawn” but Wolfe always had a vague “Get off my lawn” tone: he was an outsider. An outsider in his own generation, and in the world, in general. He forged his own path. He may have been an outsider, but his powers of observation are without rival. I am now reading his lengthy and super-fun history of the formation of Silicon Valley, “Two Young Men Who Went West.” 
, and reveling, yet again, in her prose. If you haven’t read her work yet – about the Dublin Murder Squad – then I really can’t recommend it highly enough! I believe she has since come out with two more books, one in the series and one stand-alone, so there’s a lot to look forward to. Much has been written about Tana French, and why she is so good, why she is better than other people writing in this murder-mystery genre. It’s not just her commentary on contemporary Ireland – in that, I think she is even better than Banville. Her 
was, in my opinion, THE book on the “Celtic Tiger” and its downfall. She’s excellent on Ireland, but she’s also excellent on emotion, character, sensory observations, mood, subtext. I’m blown away. And she came out of the gate strong with 
. She’s one of my favorite writers writing today. 
