Pop Culture Musing for a Friday 2/22/19

Leading Ladies: A Queen, a housekeeper, a forger, a long-suffering wife – and a rock star thrown in for good measure. Such are the characters depicted by the actresses singled out for lead roles at this Sunday’s Academy Awards presentation. And what a diverse group of performances they represent. Though one may quibble (and I will) about a couple of the nominees, there’s no doubt that in their own way each left their mark on this year’s Oscars in ways big and small.

McCarthy in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”

Perhaps the biggest revelation for me was Melissa McCarthy playing the real-life part of writer Lee Israel in the film adaptation of her memoir, Can You Ever Forgive Me? (The title comes from a sign-off often used by Dorothy Parker, one of the literary luminaries whose letters Israel forged for profit.) Known for her comedic roles, McCarthy plumbs the depths of pathos in this astonishing performance, aided by her also remarkable co-star Richard Grant. (It should be noted that the misfits-come-together theme is reminiscent of last year’s Shape of Water, in the relationship between the characters played by Sally Hawkins and Richard Jenkins.) McCarthy, in the performance of a lifetime, pulls the curtain on a deeply unlikable woman – eventually convicted for her crimes – as someone whose desperation ultimately sprung from the creative vacuum that economic circumstances had placed her in. The scene toward the end of the film, where she explains what propelled her transgressions, is one of the finest I’ve seen in recent memory.

Olivia Colman, as the royally messy British Queen Anne in the jaunty romp, The Favourite, is notable for being able to keep her performance from veering off into camp, though coming close to it on occasion. Supported by Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone in key roles, Colman presents the monarch, who ruled England from 1707-1714, as a daffy, spoiled, but ultimately sympathetic figure. The screenplay’s questionable historical bona fides allow the actress to roam free in her idiosyncratic interpretation of a sovereign whose personal life still remains somewhat of a mystery to this day.

Newcomer Yalitza Aparicio, the salt of the earth at the heart of Alfonso Cuaron’s transcendent Roma, presents a quandary – and an unusual quibble alert. Her performance, if it can be called such, is so organic that I would hesitate to call it acting. Unlike her famous fellow nominees, her anonymity allows a total immersion in what is not so much a role but a life experience.  Aparicio, who was studying to be a teacher when Cuaron offered her the role after a casting call, says that she would like to continue acting after her breakout performance.  I’ll predict that she’ll find it difficult to match the perfection with which she helped elevate Roma to masterpiece status.

I generally love myself some Lady Gaga, but I’m afraid I wasn’t head over heels about her stint as Ally in the latest iteration of A Star is Born.  I refer to acting-wise; her musical scenes were fantastic and carried all the charisma and talent that have made her the superstar she is. But her co-star, Bradley Cooper, had far more emotional resonance it seems to me, and she comes up a bit short with this foray into the thespian arts. We’ll have to wait and see what the future holds in this department, but for now she has bested her counterpart from a previous generation, Madonna, with an Oscar nomination!

Close in “The Wife”

As for the expected winner this year, Glenn Close, what can one say? It’s about time, after six nominations, that this treasure of American film, stage (and television) adds the Big One to her extensive CV. In The Wife, she provides an absolutely masterful exhibit of steely control over seething tension and such is her magnetism that you really can’t take your eyes off her in any scene.

In the end, no quibbles about the fact that it’s been an especially satisfying year of excellence for women in film.

Pop Culture Musing for a Thursday 3/1/18

“The Shape of Water”

If there’s anything that can be said with almost near certainty, it’s that there will be no surprises in the acting categories at the Academy Awards this Sunday. And that’s not a bad thing; all of the actors are more than deserving. To wit: Gary Oldman, for his masterful mix of bravura and benevolence as Winston Churchill in The Darkest Hour; Frances McDormand’s steely determination as a mother robbed of her violently murdered daughter in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Sam Rockwell as the racist cop turned unlikely comrade-in-arms to McDormand in the same film; and finally, Allison Janney as figure-skating’s mother from hell in the Tonya Harding biopic, I, Tonya.

Though there may be no mystery in who’ll be receiving the top acting accolades, I did find some surprises amongst the other nominees (and one shockingly overlooked performance) featured in the most acclaimed movies of the year.

Vicky Krieps in “Phantom Thread”

Luxembourg-born Vicky Krieps was an actress previously unbeknownst to me – and to most, it’s safe to assume – yet what a revelation she is as partner to Daniel Day-Lewis, who plays the tyrannical fashion designer in the moody and evocative period piece, Phantom Thread. Just the fact that she more than holds her own with the titanic talent that is the three-time Oscar winning British thespian (in possibly his final film performance) is sheer marvel. To crib from an Eminem lyric, he’s the tornado meeting the volcano at the heart of Kriep’s character, both patching into each other’s less-than-healthy neuroses in a way that (hey!) works for them.

Krieps’ co-star Lesley Manville, in the role of Day-Lewis’ sister (and crisp as a Scarlatti sonata) grabbed the nomination for supporting actress, but it’s grand theft that she and Krieps could not have at least shared the glory.

Timothée Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name) and Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) will also come away empty-handed, but both left their indelible impact in vastly contrasting fashion — Chalamet’s by way of his soft and wondrous exploration of a young man’s coming to terms with his newly found and ambivalent sexuality; Kaluuya in a riveting turn that’s captured in an image as iconic as Macaulay Culkin’s “scream” visage from Home Alone.

In the male supporting category, I was most moved by the magnificent veteran actor Richard Jenkins, whose lovely effort as the lonely best friend to Sally Jenkins in The Shape of Water was just one of the highlights of what I’m hoping will come away with the Best Picture honors. Director Guillermo del Toro’s exquisite panoply of fantasy and pathos reminds us of the unbounded geography of love, in stunningly visual and emotional terms.

If the acting winners look to be set in stone, the main prize is totally up for grabs, and with any luck, the artistic achievements of Water will come out on top in the end (though Three Billboards is giving it a mighty race for the money).

Here’s rooting for the Fish Man!

Pop Culture Musing for a Thursday 2/23/17

“Moonlight”

Faces of Oscar: In 2011, a slight, gimmicky, and not particularly transcendent film swept the awards season, culminating with five Academy Awards after garnering a whopping ten nominations. Shot entirely in black and white and with the added novelty of being a silent picture, The Artist was the toast of Hollywood – yet now, just six years later, is not much remembered.

I feel pretty much the same way about this year’s cinema célèbre – the slight, gimmicky, and also not particularly transcendent La La Land. It’s sweet, it’s cute, and one can appreciate its escapist musical charms at a time when they’re more necessary than ever. But 14 Oscar nominations? My feeling is it’ll be joining The Artist in barely remembered territory a few years down the road.

Count me in the Moonlight camp for this year’s Best Picture. It’s really the one true work of art amongst this year’s nominees, carving a little piece of real estate in that cultural and artistic landscape of the soul. (Yes, this one IS transcendent.) In colors and music and use of silence it paints a coming of age story that sings of hope amongst despair, and those connections that mark us for life, no matter our backgrounds. Though I’ll be more than delighted when Viola Davis wins the Supporting Actress award for Fences, Naomie Harris as the crack-addicted mother in Moonlight runs a close second, and Mahershala Ali, as mentor to the child version of the protagonist, Chiron, is similarly moving.

Isabelle Huppert in “Elle”

In spite of what looks to be a La La Land juggernaut which will likely include its female star Emma Stone as Best Actress, I’ll go on the record that it’s long past due that Isabelle Huppert, known in film circles as the French Meryl Streep, wins her first Oscar. In Elle, a psychological thriller (inexplicably left out of the Foreign Language Film nominations), directed by Paul Verhoeven, she owns a role which I’d venture to say even Streep would find a challenge. It’s a quirkily dark depiction of a woman who suffers from unspeakable emotional damage, yet finds some weird empowering strength in those very elements that would have put anyone else over the deep end. Well, most would actually say she is off the deep end, but Huppert’s steely-eyed performance, devoid of any pathos whatsoever, is a master class in deliberative acting. Not much chance she’ll steal the award from Ms. Stone, but one can hope.

Speaking of theft, the biggest case of robbery in the acting nominations concerns Annette Bening. Though much has been made of the passing over of Amy Adams (for both Arrival and Nocturnal Animals) for a Best Actress nod, the exclusion of Bening for her extraordinary performance in 20^th-Century Women is nothing short of grand larceny.  As much as I adore Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins was really no more than a curio piece elevated only by her usual magnificent presence; another nominee, Ruth Negga in Loving, though luminous in a quiet and stoic performance, could also have been painlessly sacrificed for the inclusion of Bening. Arguably the greatest living American actress whose initials are not MS, one wonders how long she has to wait to claim the prize that’s been rightfully hers — going on the fifth time.

Regarding the men, I had a late change of heart about Casey Affleck, so lauded for his introspective characterization of a janitor carrying the weight of the world on lonely shoulders in the melancholy Manchester by the Sea. Not a change of heart about the performance itself, mind you, which is haunting, fragile yet tenacious, remarkably inward without bordering on indulgent. Nope, Affleck was indeed quite wonderful. But there was something about Denzel Washington in his adaptation of the August Wilson play, Fences, that unexpectedly won me over in its solidity and strength. What a treasure he is. Should he win, it would mark Washington’s third Oscar, a testament to his reassuring survivability.

Sunny Penwar in “Lion”

As for feel-good movie of the year? Let the Lion roar. As engrossing a first half of a film I’ve seen in a while, Lion’s real-life message of hope that cannot be quenched (buoyed by a touchingly absorbing performance by the child actor Sunny Pawar) is one that long lingers. Its place in the wildly creative and diverse jumbo of the Oscar mix this year is more than welcome. And one more reason to tune in and see what happens on Sunday.

Pop Culture Musing for a Thursday 2/25/16

Girl Power: You know it’s an outstanding year for women in film when one of our greatest living actresses is considered an also-ran in the run-up to the Oscars. I’m referring, of course, to Cate Blanchett, who at one point seemed a lock for the Best Actress prize for her performance in the moody and evocative Carol, which proved the critics’ darling — but not so much of the Academy, it seems. How the film wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, with a couple of slots left open in the category, is beyond me. Adding insult to injury was denying a nod to Todd Haynes’ brilliant direction.

I felt for sure that Blanchett would be difficult to beat…until. Three other nominated performances—Brie Larson for Room, Saoirse Rohan in Brooklyn, and Charlotte Rampling in 45 Years — all unexpectedly moved me in distinctly different ways, and all of a sudden Blanchett wasn’t such a sure bet. (Jennifer Lawrence, the fifth nominee, was perfectly serviceable in Joy, but a bit out of her league in this assembly.)

Opinion has coalesced around Brie Larson, as a mother whose ferocious love under unthinkable circumstances saves her son but brings her to the throes of madness in Room. She’s the definite front-runner, and her wins at the Screen Actors Guild and BAFTA awards only solidified that perception. As good as Larson was, and as extremely difficult it was a role to play, I still have to say that Saoirse Rohan in Brooklyn was also a real discovery. A quiet, beautifully shot film filled with nuance and emotion, Brooklyn captures the heart largely through Rohan’s luminescent, inward melancholy, and stamps her as one to watch going forward.

It’s likely that many won’t see 45 Years, which is a shame, as Charlotte Rampling — star of a number of art-house films in the ‘60s and ‘70s — carves a breathtakingly intelligent performance as a woman whose world is rocked after decades of marriage to a man she only thought she knew. Rampling’s fortunes in the Best Actress category fell precipitously after some inartful comments regarding the “Oscars-so-white” controversy, but her performance is nevertheless a revelation: the damage of a belated emotional betrayal conveyed in all its confounding complexity.

An interesting conundrum takes place for Best Supporting Actress, with the awards season’s “It” girl, Alicia Vikander, nominated for The Danish Girl. The performance is no more “supporting” than Lawrence’s was in Joy, but, alas, the Academy moved her out of the main group into this competition, which also includes another Jennifer (Jason Leigh), as well as Rooney Mara, Rachel McAdams, and Kate Winslet.

The truth is Vikander’s haunting role as an AI creation in the magnificent Ex Machina is the one that deserved the supporting nod, and she should have gotten a double nomination for leading actress in Danish Girl. (Guess the voters were afraid of showing too much love.) Eddie Redmayne, playing a pioneer in the annals of the LGBT movement, may have received more of the attention, but Vikander’s turn in Girl largely made his wonderful performance possible.

As for the others, Rooney Mara’s chances have sort of faded in the same way as Blanchett’s for Carol, leaving Kate Winslet as Vikander’s main competition in the category. An actress I usually rave about, Winslet fell off my Oscar radar with a major technical glitch – not of the computer kind – in the biopic, Steve Jobs. A third of the way into the movie she whips out an Eastern European accent that comes from seemingly out of nowhere, totally disrupting the continuity of her character. A rare faux-pas for an artist at her level. (Throw some shade director Danny Boyle’s way, also, for letting it pass.)

But no matter a boo-boo here or there, it’s one of the strongest years in recent memory for female performances. Let’s not forget it wasn’t that long ago that Sandra Bullock actually won an Oscar for the forgettable The Blind Side.

Whoever wins this Sunday, I doubt I’ll come way disappointed.

Hearing Brando

Surprisingly overlooked in the feature documentary category at this year’s Academy Awards is an unforgettable depiction of the man considered the greatest American actor of the 20th Century — as told in his own words, and culled from private audiotape recordings that served as a therapeutic escape for one of the most complex and fascinating personalities to ever appear on a movie screen.

Listen to Me Marlon (which David Edelstein of New York magazine has called “the greatest, most searching documentary of an actor ever put on film”), is directed and edited by Stevan Riley in mesmeric fashion, complementing the jarringly personal narrative of Brando’s often stream-of-consciousness thoughts with rarely-seen video footage perfectly in sync with each moment.

The film begins amid scattered scenes of the lonely refuge that was the actor’s Los Angeles home, and Brando’s voice describing himself as a “troubled man, alone, beset with memories, in a state of confusion, sadness, isolation, disorder…” Brando, who died in 2004, was speaking in the years after his son, Christian, was convicted and sent to prison for manslaughter in the death of his half-sister’s lover. (Cheyenne, Brando’s second child, herself committed suicide just a few years later.) Facing the press after the Christian incident, a shaken Brando sadly commented, “Misery has come to this house…”

The emotional turmoil that tore him apart in his later years was epilogue to the psychological trauma suffered throughout his youth at the hands of a physically abusive father and an alcoholic mother. In tapes that he labeled “self-hypnosis,” he drifts back to his early childhood in Omaha, Nebraska, attempting to recapture “the state of peace of the boy you remember, watching the elm leaves coming down…” The reality was far harsher. “When what you are as a child is unwanted…you look for an identity that will be acceptable.”

That identity found its form in acting, and was largely shaped by the legendary teacher Stella Adler, whom Brando hooked up with at the Actors Studio after arriving in New York in the ‘40s (“with holes in my pocket, holes in my mind”). Adler’s espousal of what was known as “method” acting, based on the theories of Constantin Stanislavski, was a perfect fit for the young thespian’s talents. After beginning work with Brando, Adler presciently told him, “The world is going to hear from you.”

Which of course it did, and quite loudly, but even worldwide fame and acclaim don’t always win you accolades from those whom you want them most.

In one of the most striking scenes in the documentary, the newly lauded actor (at the time, he was the youngest to ever have won the Oscar for Best Actor, for On the Waterfront in 1954, a record he held until 1978) is shown in a television interview with his father, who’s asked, “I can imagine you’re just a bit proud of your son right now, aren’t you?” “Well,” answers the elder Brando, “as an actor not too proud, but as a man, why, quite proud.” The son’s reaction is priceless, a subtle mixture of ‘huh?’ and WTH that justifies a description of his old man as someone with “not much love in him.” (When Christian was born, Brando swore he would never let him near his child.)

It’s not all about unhappiness. Listen to Me Marlon (which can be seen on Showtime) features remarkable footage of a joyous and unfettered Brando at his most liberated, in the place that he loved best: Tahiti. On the 12-island atoll, Tetiaroa, which he bought in the ‘60s, he was free to be himself and revel in the people whom he said “just took love for granted.” “It was everything I longed for,” he recalled. If he ever felt “closer to a sense of peace, it would be there.”

In the end, after the countless words and analyses that have pondered what lay at the heart of Brando’s genius, it’s also refreshing to learn that the artist himself did not see it as all that complicated. “Acting is just making stuff up. But that’s OK.”

We hear you, Marlon.

On “Gone with the Wind,” 75 Years Later

Though it’s considered one of the great love stories of all time, I’ve always been more amazed at how much of an antiwar film Gone with the Wind really is. When one realizes that the movie, which marks its diamond anniversary this year, was released prior to the most crushing conflict in world history, the perception is even more remarkable.

Amidst the spectacle, the emotions, the sheer volume of it all, the underlying “war is hell” theme can be easily overlooked; at best it usually doesn’t leave an overriding impression. In hindsight, however, Gone with the Wind can be incorporated as part of an important group of socially significant films which flourished during the late ‘30s and ‘40s — particularly those of Frank Capra (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town) — that have yet to be equaled in their capturing of folk America with a populist comment.

I think of one scene that is forever etched as far as its depiction of the brutality of war. Shot in silhouette (a technique used often and effectively in the film), a man loses a leg by amputation without the benefit of chloroform, as a horrified Scarlett O’Hara, played by Vivien Leigh, looks on. Though more remembered is the famous panoramic shot of Scarlett as she makes her way through a vast landscape of dead and dying soldiers, the aforementioned scene is infinitely more frightening in its simplicity.  A less sensitive director may easily have deleted it; instead we are left with a moment that is timeless in its depiction of suffering. The depth of the emotional effect is shattering. Its crudity makes it hard to swallow, even in these days when one is inured to superfluous violence — and it’s done without the use of any graphic elements whatsoever.

The Brilliance in Boredom

If the conceptual weirdness of Sleep, the experimental film by Andy Warhol that marks the 50th anniversary of its premiere this year, can still launch a conversation or two, one can imagine the response when it appeared a half century ago. The reception at the time was less than rousing; reports were that of the nine people who attended the debut screening, two left within the first hour.

You couldn’t really blame them. It takes some endurance to sit through a nearly six-hour depiction of a man (John Giorno, Warhol’s then partner) in various stages of slumber, in a mind-numbing and intentionally soporific display that played off the artist’s fascination with the theme of monotony. (“I like boring things,” Warhol once commented.)

But in retrospect, Sleep’s avant-garde contribution to the annals of film, and art in general, gets back to his idea that “we spend much of our lives seeing but not observing.” The element of repetition in Warhol’s work, with the Campbell’s soup cans, the Coca-Cola bottles, the Eight Elvises as examples, is almost his way of saying, “Hey, I don’t think you’re gonna get it on one try. I’m going to have to hit you over the head with this.”

Undeterred, and probably spurred on by the enraged critical reaction to Sleep, Warhol later followed it up with an even longer slow-motion opus, Empire, eight hours of static footage of the Empire State Building taken over an evening in July 1964. Vindication came with the addition of Empire to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress 40 years later.

Leave it to Warhol to discover the art behind the tedium.

Forever Vivien

“Invisibly spotlit.” As the 100th anniversary of her birth is commemorated today, it’s hard to think of a more splendid description of the woman who can arguably be called the most beautiful to ever light up a movie screen.

I’ve long been entranced by Vivien Leigh on so many levels, and this occasion, a preamble to the 75th anniversary of Gone with the Wind, coming up next year, is an opportunity to remember why.

Her marriage to the great Laurence Olivier constitutes a large part of the fascination, a union of two acting giants and a love story that is forever captivating. (As glam couples go, they put today’s offerings to shame.) Her Scarlett O’Hara is one for the ages, but for sheer charm, my favorite Leigh performance is in That Hamilton Woman, one of three films in which she appeared with Olivier, and for me the blithest and sweetest of all her portrayals. Perhaps it’s not a surprise that it coincided with the early years of that larger-than-life love affair.

“That Hamilton Woman” (1941)

There’s always a poignancy about legends and their vulnerabilities. She was self-conscious about her hands, which she thought too large. And, haunted by debilitating manic-depression, it’s even more remarkable that Leigh managed to enact the part of Blanche DuBois for nine months in the 1949 London staging of A Streetcar Named Desire and lived to tell about it. (Surely harrowing for even the soundest of mind and body.) She was later to say that playing Blanche, a role that won her a second Oscar, “tipped me over into madness.”

The burden of great beauty was one she carried throughout her career. In a lovely accolade, the fabled British actress Gladys Cooper said, “She should be in a museum, for history’s sake, as the famous beauty of the English stage.” Yet Leigh was scathed on this count by more than one critic, most particularly the acerbic Kenneth Tynan, who often ridiculed her stage performances — only to recant his previous opinions after Leigh’s death from tuberculosis, at the untimely age of 53, in 1967. (Ironically, Tynan eventually died at the same age.)

Original glam: Leigh and Olivier in the ’40s

 

 

 

 

 

 

In later years, the fading looks bring a touch of sadness, especially in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, shot during her divorce from Olivier. It was a subdued, withdrawn, almost somnambulistic display, during a time when she was quoted as saying she “would rather have lived a short life with Larry [Olivier] than face a long one without him.” (As a point of trivia, playwright Tennessee Williams actually called the 1961 film the best of any of his works. Of Leigh’s rendition of Blanche in Streetcar, he famously commented that she was “everything that I intended and much that I had never dreamed of.”)

Writer Garson Kanin, author of the marvelous “spotlit” quote, once said of Leigh, “Great beauties are infrequently great actresses — simply because they don’t need to be. Vivien was different; ambitious, persevering, serious, often inspired.”

Her legacy far surpasses the shortness of her years, not the least of which includes two dramatically dissimilar Southern belles who remain eternally resplendent in the annals of both film and theatre.

That’s one spotlight that will never be invisible.

Face to Face (Part 2)

Jay Z and Marina Abramovic in “Picasso Baby”

An unexpected deja vu-like moment came while watching the premiere of Picasso Baby, rapper Jay Z’s foray into performance art, in a short film that debuted Friday on HBO (and that’s now streaming all across the Internet).

In a post entitled “Face to Face” from last year, I wrote about the “grandmother” of performance art, Marina Abramovic, and a 2010 retrospective of her work, The Artist is Present, at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (a related documentary also later appeared on HBO). The highlight was Abramovic sitting silently in a chair as members of the audience took a seat across from her — for as long as they liked — no speaking allowed. Eye contact only. The impact was memorable.

Taking their cue from the Abramovic show, Jay Z and director Mark Romanek modeled Picasso Baby along similar lines, but in decidedly louder fashion (the title’s from a song on the latest album, Magna Carta…Holy Grail, with the opening lyric, “I just want a Picasso, in my casa”). The event, held last month at New York City’s Pace Gallery, was six hours in length, though the film itself is only about ten minutes long.

It features an infectiously engaging Mr. Carter (Z’s real surname, for the few unaware), rapping and dancing one-on-one with an array of participants (and celebrity guests) that included musicians, actors, a ballerina, street dancers…and, lo and behold, Marina Abramovic. 

There’s a hush when Marina ascends the platform for her surprise turn in the proceedings, providing an imprimatur for the project by way of her credentials in the genre. Gracious and effusive about the effort (and seemingly not in the least bit annoyed by the copycatting of her own previous presentation), she’s heard saying, ”So much energy…it’s hot!”

It’s all quite a joyful affair, and Jay Z explains the intent as being one of bridging the worlds of art and the hip-hop culture (“We’re artists, we’re alike, we’re cousins”).

His newfound creative connection with one of the legends of performance art is certainly proof of that.

(Update: a fun mashup of Picasso Baby, set to Taylor Swift’s “22,” has hit the rounds. Now there’s another face-to-face encounter that would be interesting to watch…)

Fate of a Femme Fatale

There are movie stars, and then there are goddesses. Reading an entry from Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations by Peter Evans, published this month and excerpted in Vanity Fair,  I struggled to come up with a contemporary equivalent. (Julia Roberts? Don’t think so. Angelina Jolie? We’ll see. Suggestions welcome.)

Not that claiming a place in the Hollywood pantheon didn’t have its earthly downside.

Gardner played a big part in a childhood memory. The scenario reminiscent of an installment from Travels with My Aunt, my first trip to Europe came when I was 13, and the first stop was London. At the same time, I was rather precociously reading a biography of Frank Sinatra, captivated by the chapters detailing the legendary crooner’s almost-mythical romance with the woman once dubbed “the world’s most beautiful animal,” in a time before I was born.

So we’re having lunch at a restaurant in the London neighborhood of Knightsbridge, when my aunt Nena says, “Look who’s sitting over there… Ava Gardner.” I turned to see a frowsy-looking, middle-aged lady (Gardner was actually only 48 at the time), not even close to resembling the stunning siren I was enthralled by in the bio I was currently immersed in. I was so convinced my aunt was mistaken that she called a waiter over to confirm her intuition. (I asked her how she could possibly have figured out it was Gardner. “The eyes,” she said, perspicacious as always.)

Gardner in later years

The life of this feisty femme fatale (who died in 1990, aged 67) is ironically personified by the same song, “My Way,” so associated with her great love, Sinatra. Talk about a life fully lived…other husbands were Mickey Rooney and bandleader Artie Shaw, and her list of lovers ranged from Howard Hughes to an assortment of Spanish bullfighters, as well as a volcanic affair with actor George C. Scott. A rollicking relationship with Ernest Hemingway was a union of soulmate-like temperaments. (She starred in three adaptations of his works, most notably The Killers and The Sun Also Rises.) 

Gardner’s saucy and down-to-earth southern style (a favorite Ava quote: “Deep down, I’m pretty superficial”) was a side better known to her intimates. To the rest of the world, she was simply one of the most exquisitely sensual presences to ever grace a movie screen.

For me, she also remains a startling introduction to the poignant evanescence of beauty and fame, symbolized by an ordinary lunch where a woman who once had the world at her feet (and eventually one of cinema’s biggest legends) sat quietly unrecognizable.

Sometimes illusion really is everything.

Alfred and “Anna”

The problem with Hitchcock, an ironically harmless retelling of the making of the 1960 horror classic, Psycho, is both the largeness (girth aside) of its protagonist, and the prodigious talents of the actor who portrays him. Though a hugely successful chapter in the career of the “master of suspense,” the film’s focus is way too limited to adequately accommodate a legend of Alfred Hitchcock’s magnitude, and — apart from one or two noteworthy moments which rise above caricature — a performer of Anthony Hopkins‘ caliber.

Helen Mirren (who’s already garnered both SAG and Golden Globe nominations) plays the no-nonsense spouse who provides indispensable grounding for the corpulent and driven director, in her role as Alma Reville, his partner of eventually 54 years. In truth, Mirren really has only one important scene in the production, so it’s baffling as to why Hopkins is not similarly feeling the love as far as award-season plaudits are concerned. His orchestral-like conducting of the screams from the audience at the Psycho premiere, as he surreptitiously stands outside the doors to the theatre, is inspired.

But a handful of good moments do not a memorable movie make, and in the end, Hitchcock is a missed opportunity for what could have been a fascinating combination of great actor and subject material.

If I was anticipating more from Hitchcock than was delivered, I have to say that Anna Karenina in some ways surpassed expectations. Director Joe Wright’s imaginative interpretation of the epic Tolstoy novel demands suspension of disbelief from the beginning: its theatrical setting serves as a fluid backdrop that continually transforms itself in quite remarkable ways, and though perhaps initially cumbersome, you soon adapt to the creative transitions of the unorthodox mise-en-scène without a second thought.

It’s a lush, captivating experience, which may have proven even more so had it not been for an essential lack of chemistry between the principals at the heart of the time-honored drama.

Keira Knightley‘s beauty serves her well in the role of the tragic heroine, and I was looking forward to seeing who would be paired with her as the fateful paramour, Count Vronsky. Alas, Aaron Taylor-Johnson sorely disappoints (yes, I like my Vronskys tall, dark, and handsome — not inauthentically blond and pouffy) — and though shallowness is not necessarily a bad thing for this part, Taylor-Johnson has nowhere near the kind of magnetism that can make you believe that the title character, living a highly comfortable and respectable life in 19th-Century czarist Russia society, would leave her husband and young son, bear a child out of wedlock, and endure the ostracization that ultimately ends in her suicide, all for the sake of being at his side. (Fortunately, the real depth in the acting department is provided by a nearly unrecognizable Jude Law, as the long-suffering husband, Karenin. It’s a performance that’s stoic, understated, and quite moving.)

Despite the key miscasting, the film is grandly transporting, and unexpectedly lingers in the mind. It’s gorgeous to watch and a standout addition to the crowded list of Karenina remakes.

The Kubrick Eye

An exhibition setting from “The Shining” (1980)

It’s a testament to the breadth of the genius of film director Stanley Kubrick that even the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to his work barely touches on one of his most extraordinary ancillary talents: the uncannily perfect choices in music he so exquisitely utilized for his classics, from 2001: A Space Odyssey to his final opus, Eyes Wide Shut. Just this aspect alone would probably require an exhibit in itself.

Diane Arbus, “Identical Twins”

So we’ll leave his brilliant musician’s ear for another occasion and take in some of the visual-arts influences that permeated his films and are among the themes explored in Stanley Kubrick, which has opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for a six-month residency, after appearing at a number of European cities before landing in the U.S. this month.

An installation comprised of over 600 objects and materials including props, cameras, scripts, and sketches, it’s the largest compilation to date of the director’s contributions to modern cinema. (Kubrick died at the age of 70, in 1999.)

It’s no surprise that the relationship between the filmmaker and art would pervade any examination of the Kubrick legacy. A striking example is revealed in the ghostlike twins, top, who made a memorable appearance in The Shining; it’s safe to surmise that the seminal photograph, Identical Twins by Diane Arbus, above right, made an impression on the director, who was a photojournalist early in his career.

Likewise, another scene from the same film, which has Jack Nicholson slumped over next to his typewriter before he begins a nightmarish descent into psychosis, harbors elements of the creepy 1799 etching by Francisco Goya, with the unforgettable title, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. (Also featured in the collection are the geometric planks by artist John McCracken that are believed to have influenced Kubrick in the creation of the mysterious black monoliths that figured so prominently in 2001.)

Film as canvas: “Barry Lyndon” (1975)

But the artistic apotheosis is probably the long-neglected masterpiece Barry Lyndon, now considered one of Kubrick’s greatest achievements, where the 18th Century was brought gorgeously to life in settings — inspired by such painters as Gainsborough and Watteau — that are stunning in their period beauty. Kubrick scoured numerous art books devoted to the epoch in order to accomplish the effect.

I can’t think of another director with quite as many levels of sensibility as Kubrick. I ran across a quote from colleague Martin Scorsese where he said, “Watching a Kubrick film is like gazing up at a mountaintop. You look up and wonder, how could anyone have climbed that high?”

And how lucky for film lovers, who’ve been privileged enough to share the incomparable views.

A young Kubrick with camera, in the ’40s

At Hitchcock’s Place

Whenever I think of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, I think of… apartments. Not out-of-control birds or psychos in showers, but apartments — in all their Hollywood-constructed artifice. I was reminded of this as I saw Vertigo again, recently voted the greatest movie of all time by the British Film Institute, supplanting Citizen Kane, which had held that slot for the last 50 years.

In Vertigo, it’s Barbara Bel Geddes’ faux bohemian pad, right, with San Francisco’s Coit Tower as a backdrop, where the easel she employs as an aspiring artist is center stage when Jimmy Stewart drops by to chat. Likewise, Stewart’s own bachelor abode, where his character likes to toss throw pillows in front of the fireplace, especially when Kim Novak comes for an unexpected visit.

Rear Window, of course, would provide a justifiable explanation for my Hitchcock apartment fixation; after all, the film revolves entirely around Stewart’s voyeuristic snooping on the strange occurrences transpiring at a building across the way. And how about Grace Kelly, right, lounging languorously on that incongruous bed in the living room as Stewart nurses a broken leg in the wheelchair?

There’s also Dial M for Murder, with its overpowering desk where the pivotal telephone resides, as well as the always-drawn drapes that signal the claustrophobia of bad things waiting to happen.

But the real reason is Rope, right, my all-time favorite Hitchcock film. It’s hard to match a setting that features a buffet arrangement atop a chest that’s really a repository for a just-committed homicide. As a panoramic Manhattan looms in the background, the ‘40s-chic dinner guests (a little blood with that champagne, please) are oblivious to the surreality of their situation as unknowing visitors at a murder scene. For the viewer, the tension in the air is almost as strangling as the actual crime. (Recalling one of the director’s mordant quotes: “Some of our most exquisite murders have been domestic, performed with tenderness in simple, homey places like the kitchen table.”) Rope is, for me, Hitchcock at his most sardonic.

I couldn’t come up with a consistent name responsible for the subtle genius behind the creation of these memorable set designs (no Bernard Herrmann-like collaborator, who scored several of the great Hitchcock films), as the director worked with so many. Which makes it obvious that most of the myriad architectural motifs were probably a result of the master’s own singular imagination.

Imagination, one is reminded, that was as wonderfully creative as it applied to the mysterious as well as the mundane. Like apartments.

(Illustration / top: Stanley Chow)

Pop Culture Musing for a Thursday 6/7/12

Passage to India: Having the option of seeing either The Avengers or The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was a no-brainer for me (and it has little to do with “demographics”). The opportunity to watch actors of the caliber of Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, and Maggie Smith at the top of their games shouldn’t be passed up no matter what your age. (Witness how the film has quietly made its way to the top ten in U.S. box-office receipts.)

Set in Jaipur, Marigold tells the story of a group of retirees who by choice or necessity (mostly necessity) leave England for (unbeknownst to them) misleadingly photoshopped lodgings in the center of the bustling Indian metropolis. Plot really matters not that much, as the film focuses more on the spiritual awakenings they undergo when faced with the tumult and fascination of the Hindu culture. The quality of the acting is such that one feels less an observer than a participant in the zone of emotional realism occupied by these seasoned veterans.

What more can be said about Dame Judi (shown left and reunited here with John Madden, who directed her Oscar-winning performance in Shakespeare in Love)?  Her intelligent eyes raise the bar for the IQ of actors allowed in her presence. Bill Nighy, who has probably the singular dramatic moment in the movie, as a sensitive man senselessly clinging to a loveless marriage, is typically excellent (though alas, he and Dench lack the chemistry to make their eventual attraction to each other believable.) Maggie Smith is Maggie Smith, dry and wonderfully wry as always. And then there’s the awesome Tom Wilkinson, who provides the most moving and understated performance of the whole lot. His character’s sad yet ultimately liberating reasons for returning to the country of his youth make for a memorable and haunting segment of the film. (For the younger crowd, Dev Patel, previously of Slumdog Millionaire, provides Red Bull-fueled freneticism as the novice manager of what was once his father’s hotel.)

A celebration of all the changes that can be possible no matter how late in life, Marigold is also an affirmation of human resiliency, or as the Dench character narrates at one point, “The only real failure is failure to try, and the only measure of success is how we cope with disappointment.” An uplifting message at the heart of a sweet and satisfying film.

The Marvelous Meryl

With the start of the award-season accolades for Meryl Streep, which began Sunday night at the Golden Globes (this time for The Iron Lady), I’m reminded of how often this crown jewel amongst American actresses has been passed over for performances that her peers could only dream of aspiring to. The 2010 Academy Awards were the lowest case in point, when Sandra Bullock bested Streep and her flawless interpretation of Julia Child in Julie & Julia. Could anyone else, much less Bullock, have crafted such a memorable take on that idiosyncratic icon of the American kitchen? (Bullock’s role in The Blind Side could have been played by a younger Streep in her sleep.)

Likewise, it wasn’t until last month that the Kennedy Center finally made Streep an honoree at its year-end gala, despite previously bestowing it on others less obviously deserving (Steve Martin and Dolly Parton, to name but two).

And in another example of “overlooking the Streep,” one remembers that despite a record 17 nominations, 2012 will mark almost 30 years since Streep’s last Best-Actress Oscar (for 1982’s Sophie’s Choice) and that, incredibly, Hilary Swank (and Jodie Foster and Sally Field, for that matter) actually hold more Best-Actress statuettes (two) than their far more luminous colleague.

And while I’m on a roll, let’s not forget just a few of the films for which Streep did not win the Oscar (regretful trivia): Silkwood, Out of Africa, The Bridges of Madison County, and more recently, Doubt and The Devil Wears Prada.

No Place Like It

Midnight in Paris reminds again that Woody Allen is the proverbial phoenix of filmmakers, often discounted after a less-than-stellar project or another, then hitting one out of the park that you didn’t see coming. Over just the last few years, for example, the terrific Match Point (2005) was followed by the forgettable Scoop and Cassandra’s Dream; and then… Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). Next, the minor-leaguers Whatever Works and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger; and now… Midnight in Paris.

So the cycle continues. It’s difficult to not love a movie that opens as a visual paean to the beauty of Paris, an appropriate preamble to the chimeric confection that follows. Plot thin but fantasy rich, Midnight in Paris is held together by the Allen alter-ego here played by Owen Wilson, an actor I never thought to like as much I did in this performance – a soft, musingly dazy portrayal that is never less than enchanting. His character, Gil, a Hollywood scriptwriter who yearns to be a novelist, is in the City of Light on a business trip with his prosaic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams), a not-so-soulmate for an aspiring artist with a dream driving his heart.

It all unfolds with bells at the stroke of midnight, as a wandering Gil is picked up in a backstreet alley by revelers in a classic Peugeot that is clearly from another time. And then the real party begins. We’re back in 1920s Paris, with a cast of characters that makes Gil feel like the ultimate stranger in paradise. Scott and Zelda, Cole Porter, Ernest Hemingway…and that’s just the beginning.

“Eyre” – and Heirs

The latest– and umpteenth– remake of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (with accolades for Mia Wasikowska as the title character) is a might-as-well moment to think about some other films based on classic novels that go ‘round in the cinematic carousel of the mind. A brief few:

Barry Lyndon: Took a very long time for the consensus to catch up with what was always the case: Stanley Kubrick knew exactly what he was doing with William Thackeray’s novel (though the 1975 film was parodied at the time as “Borey Lyndon”). Every nuance reflects the masterful director’s touch (and as usual, his choice of music was uncanny).

The Age of Innocence: Martin Scorsese’s 1993 interpretation of the Edith Wharton tome set in 1870s New York City was beautifully brought to life by his attention to period detail, as well as the simmering earnestness of Daniel Day Lewis’ performance as the tormented suitor obsessed with the unconventional Countess Olenska, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. (Which reminds me, what happened to her?)

Death in Venice: Hopefully, this will remain the last (and only) film rendition of the Thomas Mann novella, as it’s impossible to replicate the perfection of Dirk Bogarde as the tragic von Aschenbach (or the inspired use of the “Adagietto” from Mahler’s 5^th Symphony as the musical backdrop for this melancholy masterpiece, directed by Luchino Visconti).

The Great Gatsby: Feel strangely contrarian to the general opinion of the 1974 version with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. Especially thanks to my bow-down admiration of the Fitzgerald novel. But always liked it! Even Farrow! The movie had a not-big-name director (Jack Clayton, though the script was written by Francis Ford Coppola) and forever widely panned, but still get pulled in whenever I run across it. Maybe I’ll be able to replace this guilty Gatsby pleasure when the latest adaptation, directed by Baz Luhrman, with Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby and Carey Mulligan as Daisy, eventually reaches the big screen. (It begins production this August.)

And lastly, Wuthering Heights, William Wyler’s 1939 Hollywood recreation of the Emily Bronte Gothic weepie, with the eternally lovely Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff. Merle Oberon was kind of pretty as well.

Pop Culture Musing for a Monday 2/28/11

(Quick) Oscar Impressions:

— Best achievement award for not running overtime.
— Franco/Hathaway: Bit of a bipolar pair. Didn’t find them especially annoying, except for Franco’s silly drag moment.
— Over-the-top line: Hathaway introducing Oprah: “Lucky we can breathe the same air.”
— Tactful: Finally, no clapping/popularity contest during the “In Memoriam” segment.
— Nostalgia: The warm reception for Billy Crystal.
— Director: Should have been David Fincher. Social Network was the total package (zeitgeist included). Thankfully, Aaron Sorkin won for screenplay, Trent Reznor for music.
— Actress: And Annette Bening keeps waiting. Looks like she’ll follow Streep in the most-deserving-but-don’t hold-your-breath department. But what will it take to win her first? (And depressing how hubby Warren Beatty has deteriorated.)
— Actor: Colin Firth, no problem.
— Best Picture: Knew it was in the can when I heard the King’s speech-over in the nominees recap.

Of Swan Queens and Stuttering Kings

Demons of the Dance: I had heard that Darren Aronofsky’s psychological “thriller,” Black Swan, was an all-or-nothing proposition: either you loved it or hated it. It was a little of both for me. Some of Natalie Portman’s performance I loved; some not so much. As the (mentally) unbalanced ballerina Nina, she captures the rudiments of the visual vocabulary remarkably well for a non-dancer; the skinny silhouette is dead-on, and the beautiful face doesn’t hurt. And she is quite gripping in certain key scenes. (Still, the furrowed brow – and the sighing that seemed a supplemental soundtrack to the Tchaikovsky score – are distracting.)

She plays a girl/woman haunted by a duality of personality that echoes the White Swan/Black Swan roles in Swan Lake she is picked to perform by a demanding artistic director (Vincent Cassel), despite misgivings about her ability to portray the darker character. This launches an (inner) exploratory journey with descents into madness and gore that the hate-it crowd would cite as over the top. (Like Fatal Attraction, but the stalker here is the hidden side of Nina’s own self). Winona Ryder has a more or less cameo appearance as a fading ballerina, a reminder of what a shame that she’s had a dearth of parts since her shoplifting follies of several years ago, and I barely recognized Barbara Hershey, who plays Portman’s mother and frustrated former dancer (with a couple of screws loose herself).

I actually think Aronofsky was having some fun with all this, and if I’m not mistaken, I don’t remember another major theatrical film release dealing with the world of ballet since 1977’s The Turning Point. Maybe an unintentional by-product of this movie will be a renewed interest in the art, which has steadily declined over the past few years.

All Hail Colin Firth: The King’s Speech, directed by Tom Hooper, is in itself not terribly memorable, but one will long recall the king with the stammer, George VI, as a result of Firth’s performance. He should be a lock for the Oscar this year, and kudos also to Geoffrey Rush as the miracle (word) worker, and a sweet (and subdued) Helena Bonham Carter as the future, beloved Queen Mum.

Genius In That Midst

The French film, Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, leaves one again amazed at those times in artistic history when geniuses waltzed and worked and loved amongst each other.

The magnificent opening depicts the premiere, in 1913, of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring at Paris’ Théâtre des Champs-Elysees, with a ballet (long since relegated to oblivion) choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky. The jeers (“An insult to music!”) from the crowd evolved into chaos, the police brought in to restore order. So there’s Stravinsky…and Nijinsky…and Sergei Diaghilev (who consoles a despondent Nijinsky with “God tests those He loves the most’)…and Chanel, in the audience. (Enough geniuses for everyone?)

This is an elegant rendition of the relationship between the two titans of 20th-Century music and fashion, of which, frankly, I was not aware. A meeting of ice-on-ice personalities, whose respective fires only really burned for their work. See the passion of Stravinsky at piano, hammering out the chords of Spring; Chanel’s intense focus on the finalization of the scent that became “No. 5.”

The film is beautiful to look at, the actors, Anna Mouglalis (who crystallizes Chanel) and Mads Mikkelsen (who brings the sexy to Stravinsky), both up to the task of recreating path-blazing icons. Oh, to have been a fly on those walls…