People who go to the movie without first reading reviews might expect to see an updated Airport with Denzel Washington in Burt Lancaster's role, but Flight's story is more about the aftermath than the plane crash. It's nice to see a script that still searches for the big drama in a small world.
We're introduced to Whip Whittaker as he wakes from a hungover, one night stand. We quickly see he's a drunk, coke fiend, and flirt. We get to see him at his worst first: flip, cocky, confident. We follow him to his job as head pilot on a plane carrying 102 passengers. His co-pilot, Ken Evans, who has never met him before is taken aback by his brash manner and inappropriate jokes. Evans may not realize Whip is a drunk, but it's obvious he's highly erratic. But as the flight takes off and they enter a heavy storm, Evans flashes of brilliance through Whip's fog. When the situation demands, Whip is sharp, quick and sure in crisis. He navigates through the storm with a speed that is frightening and risky.
Like Evans, you marvel at his ability but also wonder if he exposed the plane and its passenger to unnecessary danger. Would it have been safer to plod slowly through the bad weather rather than zooming through it as Whip did. For that matter, should he have canceled the flight altogether, given the blinding rain?
That emergency over, Whip sneaks himself some liquor, lets Ken take over the controls and snoozes. Something on the plane breaks down and suddenly the plane is falling. Ken panics while Whip jerks to attention and, with astounding courage under pressure, barks out commands to both Ken and the head flight attendant as he fights to keep one step ahead of the fast falling aircraft. He does everything possible to slow the plane's descent, but is keenly aware it might be a losing battle ordering his flight attendant, Margaret, to say goodbye to her son, so her last words of love can be recorded on the plane's blackbox, just in case the unthinkable happens.
Meanwhile, in the passenger compartments, one hysterical attendant unstraps herself and is bounced about, while another, Whip's one night stand, Katerina, unbuckles herself to save a child's life.
After rolling the plane (turning it upside down) to slow it's drop, Whip crashes it into a field, taking out a church steeple and cross on his way down.
He wakes up in the hospital and first wants to know how many people died. How many crew? He learns that 6 people died in the crash, including two crew members, one being Katerina. A tear falls from his eye and it's tinged with blood. It's in the hospital that we see him as an addict yes, but not a person who only thinks of himself, not even as a person who thinks of himself first. He can't control his drinking, but he thinks on his feet, suppresses impatience and pain and follows protocol between shots.
The fact that Whip did the seemingly impossible and landed the plane has made him a media hero. He numbly watches the tv coverage. When everyone repeats that no one else could have landed the plane like he did, he knows it's the truth. When they all say that it was a miracle, an act of God, he looks at the plane wreckage and wonders what God would have done that.
That's a theme threaded throughout the film. What role does faith play? The answer is unclear. Was Margaret the only flight attendant to survive because she believed in God and hadn't been out carousing with Whip the night before as Katarina had? Whip plays upon her graditude towards him to get her to agree to lie to the FAA and deny knowledge of his drunkenness.
It turns out that co-pilot Ken and his wife are religious zealots who believed that God willed the plane to crash. Whip views them as insane, but is relieved because, thinking that the crash was fated, Ken has decided not to report Whip's drinking to anyone. Whip benefits from others' faith in God, without expressing any himself. It's not clear if the movie sees this as one of his flaws.
In the hospital Whip meets a cancer patient and Nadine, a heroin addict who almost died from an overdose, when they all sneak into the same stairwell to smoke. Having had too many brushes with mortality in the same day, Whip is determined to stop drinking. When his old friend and supplier hippy Harling stops by the hospital to replenish his stash, Whip refuses. Cigarettes are the only vice he wants to keep. He orders Harling to keep liquor and drugs away from him.
The press is camped out at his condo, so he goes to his old family farm to hide out. When he plugs in his cell, he's got dozens of waiting voice mails. I'm impressed because the phone is already fully charged. Even without a crash, an airplane flight always drains my cell battery.
Searching the farm barn and quarters, Whip dumps all the liquor he can find, resisting temptation. But when he hears the FAA is investigating the crash and the fact that he was drunk on the flight, he's angry and indignant. His condition had nothing to do with the tragedy. The plane was falling apart. It was in poor mechanical condition, it broke down in mid-air and he saved it when no one else could have. He feels he ought to be thanked, not investigated and resents the attorney provided for him by the pilot's union. His drinking problem -- it's not a problem. It's not what caused the crash. It's no one's business but his own. Lashing out, he abandons abstinence and soon finds himself driving under the influence to the home of the heroin addict he met at the hospital.
He rescues Nadine from her violent landlord, takes her back to his farm and the two of them embark on a relationship that's surprisingly pure, given its participants.
The pressure mounts for Whip. With 6 passengers dead, he's not only facing an FAA investigation, but criminal charges which could put him in jail for life. Nadine joins AA and gets sober. He supports her progress, but doesn't want to be preached to. He accuses her of finding excuses. She drinks because her mother died of cancer? Lots of people lose loved ones to cancer. They don't drink. He refuses to blame someone else. He chooses to drink. He has an ex-wife and son who don't talk to him, because, "I choose to drink." He denies being unable to control it. But when he ends the night in another drunken stupor, Nadine leaves.
Meanwhile, the FAA case against him appears to be going well. They did a toxicology test on him at the hospital which showed the liquor and cocaine in his blood, but the lawyer got it thrown out. They found two empty liquor bottles in the plane's trash though and Whip may still be asked about those at the hearing. Except for Katerina (who'd been out drinking with him the night before), all the other crew members tested clean for drugs and alcohol and there was no beverage service on the flight, so the passengers didn't drink. The lawyer knows the alcohol was Whip's. Whip bristles curses out the lawyer and his union rep. Only to show up at the rep's house later, with nowhere and no one else to turn to.
He's sober for 9 days, pending his FAA hearing. Things are nearly homefree on the eve of the proceeding and they take him to a hotel in the same building where he will be testifying the next morning. They place a security guard outside of Whip's hotel door and clean the refrigerator of all booze, so he won't be tempted. The night is interminable. Whip is restless. He hears bumping in the night and finds that the door to the connecting room is open. He goes inside, closes the open window that caused the door to bank and is leaving when he hears the hum of the refrigerator. MINI BAR. He opens the door of the fridge which is, unrealistically, stocked with nothing but liquor. Every variety you can think of. It's almost comical. Whip lingers over the contents, takes out a tiny bottle of Blue Goose. Vodka is his greatest weakness of all. He fingers it, but then sets it down on the fridge top and leaves. As the audience sighs with relief (and a whiff of skepticism), we hear a dramatic thump as Whip's hand snatches into the frame and snatches that bottle of vodka, with the speed of a frog's tongue catching a fly.
Of course, by the time the lawyer and union rep show up the next day, Whip is smashed, passed out on the floor.
They think all is lost. The FAA hearing is just 45 minutes away. There's no way to get him sobered up by then. But they call Harling and he has just the cure. Cocaine. It will bring Whip back up and reverse those hangover symptoms. Harling prepares Whip for a snort with the precision of a operating room surgeon requesting instruments. When he asks for a "cocoa puff," Whip's staid attorney suspiciously knows just what he means, suggesting that he must have "experimented" himself back in the day.
The coke up his nose, Whip is soon revived. With consciousness, his confidence also returns. He's alert and assured. Looks like he'll make a decent FAA witness after all. The union rep reminds him that when the investigator asks him questions, it's ok to say he doesn't know. "Don't tell me how to lie about my drinking," Whip orders, "I've been lying about it all my life."
The hearing is a breeze and the investigator is easy, on Whip's side. He's been lauded as a hero and the airplane's equipment has been found faulty and aged. In her mind, Whip is testifying as a witness, not a suspect.
She's at the end of her questioning and comes to the two empty bottles found in the plane's garbage bin. They don't have his toxicology report, but Whip has already denied drinking for the 72 hours preceding the crash. Katerina is the only crew member who tested positive for alcohol, plus she had a history of abuse. She had been in rehab just 16 months ago, in fact. So, is it Whip's opinion that Katarina was the crew member who drank those bottles of alcohol.
This is where my belief lost its suspension. It's the dramatic highlight of the film and Denzel Washington does a triumphant job with these scene, but this line of cross-examination is ridiculous. First of all, the fact that two empty bottles of liquor were found on the plane does not mean that one of the crew members drank the contents. Empty bottles are just empty. Consumption is suggested, but not proven. Secondly, while an expert can provide an expert opinion, a layperson can only testify as to facts within his personal knowledge. Whip may be an expert on flight, but he's not an expert on the likelihood of crew member imbibition. That question from the FAA examiner would have warranted immediate objection and Whip would never have been compelled to answer it in real life.
Of course, the question could have been rephrased. Whip could properly be asked if he saw Katarina drink the liquor or know how the bottles ended up in the trash. But no lawyer would have allowed him to be asked his thoughts or opinions about whether Katerina could possibly have downed the liquor in those empty bottles outside of his presence. Still, his crack attorney and protective union rep apparently asleep on the job, Whip is asked this absurd question not once but three times. He breaks under the pressure and says that Katarina was not drinking on that plane, she was saving a little boy's life. He was the one who drank. He drank on each of the three days before the flight and he drank on the day of the flight. He drank, because he's an alcoholic.
Washington's Whip doesn't break down or crack up. He sweats. He tells the truth. He reacts, without over-acting. It's a performance of subtle depth.
Post-script, Whip is sober and in jail. He'll be there for 5 years or more. He's telling his story to the other inmates, a message of warning and redemption. He's imprisoned, but says that it's the first time he's felt free in years. We next see him in his cell writing studiously. Pictures of Nadine and other friends adorn his walls. He has an unexpected visitor. It's his son. If this was supposed to be an emotional finale, it falls short and pales in comparison to the hearing scene we just witnessed. Whip's son has been a presence throughout the movie, but not a concrete character. More of a symbol of the life Whip fled through alcohol. I suppose now that Whip is sober, it's natural for him to return to those things that he abandoned, but due to an earlier confrontational scene between father and son, the kid isn't likable to me and I'd just as soon have had him remain all symbol, no screen time.
Whip, on the other hand, is pleased to see the boy from whom he's been estranged, Whip is proud when he is asked to help him with a school essay about the most fascinating person he's . . . never known. Taken aback, Whip is hurt to hear that his son considers him a stranger, but he collects himself and wants to start mending fences. He's ready for them to get to know one another. Who are you the kid asks? That's a good question.
I don't remember myself but another moviegoer told me that The Pelican Brief ended in similar fashion.
The film was good, moving without being melodramatic or (too) maudlin. Some elements (like the estranged husband and ex-wife) were cliche, but the hackneyed components played so small a part in the script that they could be forgiven.
Whip was an arrogant, drunk with an abundance of compassionate qualities. Thus, he was likable, but you weren't rooting for him to beat the rap he deserved either. Washington made Whip very human, whether hero or culprit.
The rest of the cast was just as good, Kelly Reilly, John Goodman, Don Cheadle. The only false note was played by Tamara Tunie (Margaret). At Katarina's funeral, Margaret was supposed to be tearful but wasn't. Whip wiped away non-existent drops from her face. It just seemed like we caught the actress pretending.
All in all though, Flight does take off.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Monday, October 15, 2012
Iron Man 2 (2010)
This Iron Man seems to retract, to move the superhero off of the global stage and bring him back to a smaller one. Even though Tony Stark is now an international celebrity and acts more like a rockstar than business mogul, the story seems more local or, perhaps, more personal than Favreu's 2008 installment was.
Mickey Rourke's villain, Ivan Vanko, seems more intent on showing up and destroying Iron Man (to avenge his inventor father's legacy which, he feels, was stolen by Tony Stark's dad) than in controlling the world. Justin Hammer, Stark's business competitor, covets his faame and also wants to bring his rival down.
Ivan shows up at a racing event and uses electrified whips in an attempt to exterminate Stark. Ivan's captured but Hammer breaks him out of prison, hoping that Vanko can help him build his own iron man suit, dwarfing Stark's success. Ivan's brains and braun combine with Hammer's money to challenge Stark's omnipotence, but Stark has other concerns: he's dying.
The chest implants he uses to stay alive corrode quickly, poisoning his blood stream in the process. He can't live without them, but his blood toxicity is reaching lethal levels the longer he depends on them.
While the contrast between Iron Man's invincibility and Tony's human mortality might make the story more compelling, since Tony doesn't share his fragile fate with the person who is closest to him, assistant Pepper Potts, it's hard to take his impending death seriously. The writers seemed to have tamped down the global scope of action for this sequel, to focus on the individuals, but the relationships are handled so superficially that they hardly seem worth the effort.
Consumed with his health problems, Tony drinks and parties too hard, alienating Pepper, who takes over his company during his decline.
Ever jealous and suspicious of superheroes, the government demands that Tony hand over the iron man suits to Uncle Sam. Stark refuses and is supported by his Lieutenant friend, James Rhodes, but as Tony becomes increasingly reckless and irresponsible, Rhodes feels that his fear has been misplaced. He takes one of the iron man suits reluctantly feeling that it might be better off in government hands than in Tony's destructive ones, after all.
Meanwhile, Pepper hires an assistant for Tony, Natasha Romanoff, an undercover superhero herself. Romanoff is working for Nick Fury, scouting Tony Stark for a group assignment they're working on. Their main purpose in the film is to set up Paramount's next blockbuster, The Avengers. With all of this going on, Tony's dying seems somewhat inconsequential. If he could have shared his fear and vulnerability with Pepper, in exchanges where they did more than trade quips, the movie might have developed a pathos that could only have enhanced the action and special effects. That never happened and what you're left with is two hours of hollow charm and chaos.
Pepper's ignorance of his condition is somewhat suspect, since Natasha and Rhodes quickly surmise that he is terminally ill just by looking at the broken blood vessels spread across his neck and chest. It's unclear how he manages to conceal these from Pepper, who is with him a lot more than they are. She's either unobservant or unconcerned. We care most about the characters when they care for each other. Based on the first movie, the audience knows where Pepper's heart lies, but this script doesn't. She feels hurt and ostracized when, prior to handing the entire company over to her, he begins selling his art collection without first consulting her and begins courting even more danger than usual. However, since whatever is plaguing him obviously hasn't changed his feelings for her, when he finally tries to explain himself, you'd think she'd drop her defensive anger and hear him out.
When Stark comes to Pepper's(formerly his) office bearing strawberries as a peace offering, she shuts him out angrily. It's uncharacteristic. They never would have formed the bond that brought them to this point, if she'd always been that blind to his unspoken needs. She's kept out of the loop to further the plot, but the result is quite the opposite.
In an effort to recruit Stark for the Avengers mission, Fury gives him old tapes Tony's father made. Through the vintage video, Tony clichedly learns that his distant dad did love him after all, but the revelation hardly seems to make an impression on him. The footage does give him the clues he needs to design a new element that will keep him alive without destroying his body.
With death no longer looming over his head, Tony slowly begins to pull hismelf together. Rhodes regrets taking the suit, realizing that the military, guided by Justin Hammer, is actually in arch enemy Ivan Vanko's control. Finally united again, Rhodes and Tony spend the last 25 minutes of the movie defeating Vanko. The final fight is not spectacular and, despite the fact that it starts at a crowded event, it takes place largely in one building. Because whole populations, cities and nations are not involved, the effects almost seem low budget.
The film lacked heat and heart. Yes, there was humor and the cast was delightful enough to carry the movie on one liners alone, had the dialogue been sharp or quickfire enough. Alas, it was not.
The movie does ask if iron man's power is more dangerous in the narcissistic Tony's uncorrupt, but unstable hands than in the possession of a world power, but it never bothers to seriously explore the answer. Sure, Tony wrests back control in the end, but even then it seems that the lesser of two evils has prevailed, not justice. Of course, such a moral quandary might make an interesting plot, one which, while suggested, was never pursued in this film.
Mickey Rourke's villain, Ivan Vanko, seems more intent on showing up and destroying Iron Man (to avenge his inventor father's legacy which, he feels, was stolen by Tony Stark's dad) than in controlling the world. Justin Hammer, Stark's business competitor, covets his faame and also wants to bring his rival down.
Ivan shows up at a racing event and uses electrified whips in an attempt to exterminate Stark. Ivan's captured but Hammer breaks him out of prison, hoping that Vanko can help him build his own iron man suit, dwarfing Stark's success. Ivan's brains and braun combine with Hammer's money to challenge Stark's omnipotence, but Stark has other concerns: he's dying.
The chest implants he uses to stay alive corrode quickly, poisoning his blood stream in the process. He can't live without them, but his blood toxicity is reaching lethal levels the longer he depends on them.
While the contrast between Iron Man's invincibility and Tony's human mortality might make the story more compelling, since Tony doesn't share his fragile fate with the person who is closest to him, assistant Pepper Potts, it's hard to take his impending death seriously. The writers seemed to have tamped down the global scope of action for this sequel, to focus on the individuals, but the relationships are handled so superficially that they hardly seem worth the effort.
Consumed with his health problems, Tony drinks and parties too hard, alienating Pepper, who takes over his company during his decline.
Ever jealous and suspicious of superheroes, the government demands that Tony hand over the iron man suits to Uncle Sam. Stark refuses and is supported by his Lieutenant friend, James Rhodes, but as Tony becomes increasingly reckless and irresponsible, Rhodes feels that his fear has been misplaced. He takes one of the iron man suits reluctantly feeling that it might be better off in government hands than in Tony's destructive ones, after all.
Meanwhile, Pepper hires an assistant for Tony, Natasha Romanoff, an undercover superhero herself. Romanoff is working for Nick Fury, scouting Tony Stark for a group assignment they're working on. Their main purpose in the film is to set up Paramount's next blockbuster, The Avengers. With all of this going on, Tony's dying seems somewhat inconsequential. If he could have shared his fear and vulnerability with Pepper, in exchanges where they did more than trade quips, the movie might have developed a pathos that could only have enhanced the action and special effects. That never happened and what you're left with is two hours of hollow charm and chaos.
Pepper's ignorance of his condition is somewhat suspect, since Natasha and Rhodes quickly surmise that he is terminally ill just by looking at the broken blood vessels spread across his neck and chest. It's unclear how he manages to conceal these from Pepper, who is with him a lot more than they are. She's either unobservant or unconcerned. We care most about the characters when they care for each other. Based on the first movie, the audience knows where Pepper's heart lies, but this script doesn't. She feels hurt and ostracized when, prior to handing the entire company over to her, he begins selling his art collection without first consulting her and begins courting even more danger than usual. However, since whatever is plaguing him obviously hasn't changed his feelings for her, when he finally tries to explain himself, you'd think she'd drop her defensive anger and hear him out.
When Stark comes to Pepper's(formerly his) office bearing strawberries as a peace offering, she shuts him out angrily. It's uncharacteristic. They never would have formed the bond that brought them to this point, if she'd always been that blind to his unspoken needs. She's kept out of the loop to further the plot, but the result is quite the opposite.
In an effort to recruit Stark for the Avengers mission, Fury gives him old tapes Tony's father made. Through the vintage video, Tony clichedly learns that his distant dad did love him after all, but the revelation hardly seems to make an impression on him. The footage does give him the clues he needs to design a new element that will keep him alive without destroying his body.
With death no longer looming over his head, Tony slowly begins to pull hismelf together. Rhodes regrets taking the suit, realizing that the military, guided by Justin Hammer, is actually in arch enemy Ivan Vanko's control. Finally united again, Rhodes and Tony spend the last 25 minutes of the movie defeating Vanko. The final fight is not spectacular and, despite the fact that it starts at a crowded event, it takes place largely in one building. Because whole populations, cities and nations are not involved, the effects almost seem low budget.
The film lacked heat and heart. Yes, there was humor and the cast was delightful enough to carry the movie on one liners alone, had the dialogue been sharp or quickfire enough. Alas, it was not.
The movie does ask if iron man's power is more dangerous in the narcissistic Tony's uncorrupt, but unstable hands than in the possession of a world power, but it never bothers to seriously explore the answer. Sure, Tony wrests back control in the end, but even then it seems that the lesser of two evils has prevailed, not justice. Of course, such a moral quandary might make an interesting plot, one which, while suggested, was never pursued in this film.
Friday, October 12, 2012
The Joneses (2009)
I'm sure The Joneses writers were familiar with the Arcadia episode of The X-Files in which Mulder and Scully go undercover as a suburban couple in order to investigate mysterious disappearances in the neighborhood. Even the scene where Mulder snuggled onto Scully's bed and invited her to join him was replicated early in The Joneses. The difference is, by then we'd known Mulder and Scully for 6 years, we don't know Steve and Kate (The Joneses) at all except through the fake family roles they are playing when the film starts.
Steve, Kate and the younger Mick and Jen are high-powered sales people who pretend to be a family of four who move into an upper-class suburban neighborhood to get the area residents' covetous juices flowing, in envy of the expensive clothes, products and gadgets that the Joneses constantly parade. As a domestic quartet, The Joneses subtly promote the gear supplied by commercial clients to their neighbors, inspiring the envious to buy the same merchandise for themselves: cars, appliances, clothes, hair products, etc.
The fact that the Joneses aren't really family members is revealed slowly as we observe their professional and distant interactions when they're alone in contrast to the phony display of sunshiny affection they display when they're around others.
The problem is, we don't know the real people behind the facades when the movie starts and we haven't learned much more by the time it ends. We don't really care about the characters and the movie's humor is mild at best. Laughs alone don't make this a must see and there's not much else left to draw one in.
We learn that Kate (Demi Moore) is the most experienced sales person and she is in charge of the Jones' team. She has her hands full, because Steve is a novice and gets off to a shaky start. She put her career on the line by hiring him. Jen, is ruled by her libido, first climbing into "Dad" Steve's bed (after Kate rejects him) and then falling for a married man, a relationship that threatens to bring the entire sales ruse crumbling down, since Jen is supposed to be a teenager, selling goods to the youth set, rather than angering the middle-aged, would-be consumers around them, with her sexual contretemps.
Mick, the man who plays the Jones brother is a gay man forced to play a heterosexual teen. He's expected to acquire a hip girlfriend and enlist her help in selling products to their peers. He's too attracted to the girl's brother to concentrate on his job and when he throws a party for drunken teenagers, which results in an accident, The Joneses' sales scheme is, once again, nearly overturned.
We're supposed to be touched when the kids' close escapes help bring Kate and Steve together. Kate initially rebuffs Steve's romantic advances and rightly so. We didn't see these people train together. We don't see their work relationship evolve. All we know is that Steve is new on the job and immediately wants into Kate's bed. It doesn't make the beginnings of a great love affair. Kate is not immune to Steve's charms, but she wants to keep things strictly business between them. Alone at night, she re-watches his interview tape on which he reveals he is looking for the woman who will help him become a better man. She is touched by these words, but I think it's an odd thing for a job applicant to say on video and it doesn't humanize Steve for me or help me understand why Kate wants to reach out to him on a personal level.
When Mick's friend is involved in a drunk driving accident, after the party Mick threw at The Jones' house, career-driven Kate feels its her duty to report the incident to their boss (Lauren Hutton) and fears retribution. She sulks at the prospect and when Steve comes into her room to comfort her, they end up sleeping together. This minimal bonding is supposed to be enoough to convince the audience that the two have fallen in love. Without the two having shared much else, Steve is soon trying to convince Kate to give the sales life up and live in the "real" world for a change. Have a true family, instead of a fake one. Come home to meet his parents. She's reluctant and who can blame her. Steve is 45. This is the best job he's ever had and I'm not sure how they would support themselves if they give up the jobs they have.
The movie peaks when a neighbor goes into foreclosure trying "to keep up with the Joneses" and buy all the expensive toys that he sees them with. On the verge of losing his house and the material wife who depends on his money, the guy commits suicide. The neighbors gather in shock. A guilt-ridden Steve loudly confesses to everyone that he's not who they think he is. He's been playing a role, using them. They aren't his friends. They're his customers. During this speech which carries none of the emotional punch that the writers hoped it possessed, Kate is gathering up the rest of her sales team, abandoning the mission and leaving the mess Steve has created as fast as she can. They drive off, while he's still confessing.
Kate, Jen and Mick are soon set up in a new town as a new family, with a new "Dad" playing Steve's old role. Steve finds her and begs her to take off with him. She refuses, but as he is walking away, she catches up with him and they drive off together, into the sunset -- well dusk. The ending doesn't work because none of the relationships they tried to form leading up to it succeeded.
They should have spent 30 more minutes bonding the characters, instead of showing them in sales mode, if they wanted to pull off a finale we cared about. The characters moved through the script, rather than progressed as people. Cold Kate softened because she was supposed to, not because anything really happened that would realistically spark her change.
The fake family premise might have had promise, but it needed to be played for either sharper laughs or deeper feeling to pay off.
Steve, Kate and the younger Mick and Jen are high-powered sales people who pretend to be a family of four who move into an upper-class suburban neighborhood to get the area residents' covetous juices flowing, in envy of the expensive clothes, products and gadgets that the Joneses constantly parade. As a domestic quartet, The Joneses subtly promote the gear supplied by commercial clients to their neighbors, inspiring the envious to buy the same merchandise for themselves: cars, appliances, clothes, hair products, etc.
The fact that the Joneses aren't really family members is revealed slowly as we observe their professional and distant interactions when they're alone in contrast to the phony display of sunshiny affection they display when they're around others.
The problem is, we don't know the real people behind the facades when the movie starts and we haven't learned much more by the time it ends. We don't really care about the characters and the movie's humor is mild at best. Laughs alone don't make this a must see and there's not much else left to draw one in.
We learn that Kate (Demi Moore) is the most experienced sales person and she is in charge of the Jones' team. She has her hands full, because Steve is a novice and gets off to a shaky start. She put her career on the line by hiring him. Jen, is ruled by her libido, first climbing into "Dad" Steve's bed (after Kate rejects him) and then falling for a married man, a relationship that threatens to bring the entire sales ruse crumbling down, since Jen is supposed to be a teenager, selling goods to the youth set, rather than angering the middle-aged, would-be consumers around them, with her sexual contretemps.
Mick, the man who plays the Jones brother is a gay man forced to play a heterosexual teen. He's expected to acquire a hip girlfriend and enlist her help in selling products to their peers. He's too attracted to the girl's brother to concentrate on his job and when he throws a party for drunken teenagers, which results in an accident, The Joneses' sales scheme is, once again, nearly overturned.
We're supposed to be touched when the kids' close escapes help bring Kate and Steve together. Kate initially rebuffs Steve's romantic advances and rightly so. We didn't see these people train together. We don't see their work relationship evolve. All we know is that Steve is new on the job and immediately wants into Kate's bed. It doesn't make the beginnings of a great love affair. Kate is not immune to Steve's charms, but she wants to keep things strictly business between them. Alone at night, she re-watches his interview tape on which he reveals he is looking for the woman who will help him become a better man. She is touched by these words, but I think it's an odd thing for a job applicant to say on video and it doesn't humanize Steve for me or help me understand why Kate wants to reach out to him on a personal level.
When Mick's friend is involved in a drunk driving accident, after the party Mick threw at The Jones' house, career-driven Kate feels its her duty to report the incident to their boss (Lauren Hutton) and fears retribution. She sulks at the prospect and when Steve comes into her room to comfort her, they end up sleeping together. This minimal bonding is supposed to be enoough to convince the audience that the two have fallen in love. Without the two having shared much else, Steve is soon trying to convince Kate to give the sales life up and live in the "real" world for a change. Have a true family, instead of a fake one. Come home to meet his parents. She's reluctant and who can blame her. Steve is 45. This is the best job he's ever had and I'm not sure how they would support themselves if they give up the jobs they have.
The movie peaks when a neighbor goes into foreclosure trying "to keep up with the Joneses" and buy all the expensive toys that he sees them with. On the verge of losing his house and the material wife who depends on his money, the guy commits suicide. The neighbors gather in shock. A guilt-ridden Steve loudly confesses to everyone that he's not who they think he is. He's been playing a role, using them. They aren't his friends. They're his customers. During this speech which carries none of the emotional punch that the writers hoped it possessed, Kate is gathering up the rest of her sales team, abandoning the mission and leaving the mess Steve has created as fast as she can. They drive off, while he's still confessing.
Kate, Jen and Mick are soon set up in a new town as a new family, with a new "Dad" playing Steve's old role. Steve finds her and begs her to take off with him. She refuses, but as he is walking away, she catches up with him and they drive off together, into the sunset -- well dusk. The ending doesn't work because none of the relationships they tried to form leading up to it succeeded.
They should have spent 30 more minutes bonding the characters, instead of showing them in sales mode, if they wanted to pull off a finale we cared about. The characters moved through the script, rather than progressed as people. Cold Kate softened because she was supposed to, not because anything really happened that would realistically spark her change.
The fake family premise might have had promise, but it needed to be played for either sharper laughs or deeper feeling to pay off.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Looper (2012)
I love time travel stories and, since Inception, I've been enjoying Joseph Gordon-Levitt's emergence as a leading man, feeling as if I've "known" him since he was a boy on 3rd Rock from the Sun. Add Bruce Willis dying hard and the Looper cast easily makes you buy a movie ticket. While the film doesn't exactly disappoint, I guess the most I can say is that it was "pretty ok."
JG-L plays Joe, a man living in a future world (in 2044) who makes his living as a "looper" a person who kills people sent from an even more future world (2074). Time travel doesn't exist in Joe's present, but it will be invented in 30 years. It's illegalized, but criminals still use it to dispose of their victims. Decades from now, technology will make dead bodies impossible to dispose of, so bad guys tie their targets up, put a hood over their head, tape money (as payment to the looper assassin) to their backs and dispatch them 30 years into the past at an appointed time where loopers, like Joe, are waiting to kill them instantly, as soon as they are transported. Joe then dumps the body in his world and the victim, now corpse, is erased from the future, as if he never existed.
Looping pays well. The only draw back is that the bad guys in 2074 don't want to get caught, so they haunt old loopers down and send the loopers themselves back into the past, 2044, to be killed by . . . loopers. That's how you "close the loop." Joe realizes the irony of this arrangement and acknowledges that loopers don't think for the "long term." If you are a looper who lives 30 more years, then you know that you will be hunted down and murdered by your own kind or, worse, by yourself.
Joe's best friend Seth, another looper, gets a job assignment. He shows up at the appointed place to kill a man sent back from 2074 only to find out (by the song that the man is singing, a song Seth's mother sang to him, that the victim is Seth himself. Seth's job is to kill himself (albeit a 30 years older version). Seth can't do it. He lets himself run away and that is a no-no. Present day Seth must be killed for letting his victim from 2074 escape. From a plot perspective, one big problem with this set up is you have to wonder why the people from the future didn't make sure that the old loopers they send back to have murdered aren't scheduled to be murdered by themselves. If you didn't want the hit to go awry, you'd take pains to make sure the killer has no emotional ties to his victim, let alone ensure that the killer and victim were not one and the same person.
Joe has been saving up his money. He plans to retire early, leave the business and move to France. When Seth goes on the run and shows up at Joe's place begging his friend to hide him from the Looper boss, Abe, who needs him dead, Joe wishes that he had never been involved. He cares for his friend, but cares more about his self-preservation. He reluctantly hides Seth under a floor board at his apartment, then Abe's goons show up and take Joe in to be interrogated by the boss. Abe's manner is avuncular rather than threatening. He tells Joe he remembers recruiting him as a boy. Joe was a homeless kid who'd lost his mother. Abe found him, gave him a gun and taught him how to support himself by looping. Murdering. Because he's known him so long, Abe has a soft spot for Joe. He gives Joe a choice, either give up half the money he has saved for retirement OR give up Seth. Joe is torn. Abe finds that predictable. He says it's a question we all face: how much will we sacrifice to save what is ours? Joe decides to sacrifice Seth. To keep all of his money and to secure his own future, he tells Abe where Seth is.
Joe asks if Abe is going to murder Seth. One wonders if Joe's choice would have been different if the answer had been yes. If he'd known Seth's reckoning would be a violent one, would he have chosen to give up half his fortune instead? Abe casually answers that they won't kill Seth, because that would alter the future too much. Instead, Abe mutilates present day Seth, which debilitates Old Seth (from 2074 whom young Seth allowed to escape). As Old Seth is running away, he suddenly loses his hands, arms, feet, nose. All nubs, he can't keep running and Old Seth is, literally, stopped in his tracks and killed by Abe's men, while present day Seth lies whimpering, bloody and butchered on the mutilating surgeon's table.
To take the edge off of his guilt, Seth goes to his favorite prostitute. He doesn't want sex. He wants her to stroke his hair, the way his mother used to do before he lost her.
Square with Abe, Joe keeps working. He shows up for a job assignment and awaits, gun in hand, for his victim from 2074 to show up so he can kill him. The guy is late and doesn't appear at the appointed time. Joe starts to get suspicious. When the target finally materializes in the past, Joe's present, he is not wearing a hood. Instead unmasked, the victim is able to look Joe squarely in the eye. Peering into the man's eyes, Joe recognizes himself. He's not going to be like Seth. He plans to kill the future him, Old Joe. But Old Joe is tough. He moved to Shanghai (because in 2044 he was expected to move to France by everyone he knew. By doing the unexpected, he thinks that he can elude his inevitable death easier in China), became an even more accomplished murderer, blowing away present day human beings and not just strangers from an unknown future; and grew into 2074's grizzled Old Joe. Sharp, a bound Old Joe uses Young Joe's slight hesitation to get the jump on his younger self and escape.
As soon as Abe learns that another loop is on the run, he sends his goons after Joe. Abe needs to have both old Joe and young Joe eliminated. The twist is, Joe wants future Joe killed almost as much as Abe does.
So Old Joe is not only running from Abe, but from his own past. Old Joe has a plan. The man in 2074 who is having former loopers sent back in time to be killed is called The Rainmaker (the person who pays loopers salaries by giving them someone to kill). No one knows Rainmaker's true identity, but Old Joe feels that while he's back in time, if he can find The Rainmaker and dispose of him, then he can save his own life, because no one will be around to put a hit on him.
Joe meets up with Old Joe by cutting a waitress' name, Beatrix, into his own arm. When the resulting scar immediately shows up on Old Joe's body, Old Joe remembers where Beatrix worked and knows that's where the young Joe wants to meet up. He goes there and, in one of the few laughs in the movie, reminds young Joe that they know another waitress, Jen. Since her name was shorter, it would have been a lot less painful if Young Joe had carved that name into his skin, rather than Beatrix's.
Old Joe tells the Young one that they have a lot to live for. They will meet a beautiful woman who helps Old Joe clean up his life and finally find peace and happiness. When he is rounded up 30 years from now, to be sent back in the past to his death, his attackers kill his wife in the process. Old Joe pleads with Young Joe that he has to change the future in order to save his future wife, the woman who gives him so much. He tells Young Joe about the Rainmaker. If they find the Rainmaker, a merciless looper assassin in 2074, but still a kid in Young Joe's world, they can erase him before he ever grows up to kill loopers. If they vanquish the Rainmaker now, Old Joe and his wife can live and grow old together, unthreatened, in 2074.
Young Joe is apathetic. He has to live for himself. For the life he has NOW. Old Joe has already lived those 30 years and Young Joe hasn't enjoyed them yet. Young Joe feels that Old Joe should just die quietly, so that Young Joe doesn't lose everything he has. Maybe if Old Joe is killed now, Abe will forgive Young Joe for letting his target, his loop, run in the first place. If Young Joe could just make Old Joe disappear, his own life can be saved -- at least for 30 years.
Old Joe refuses to go easily into that good night. After a violent shoot 'em up in a restaurant that is suddenly empty (somehow Beatrix the waitress has completely disappeared), Old Joe runs off and Young Joe, pursued by Abe's goons, does too.
Since Young and Old Joe are one in the same, one might wonder why Old Joe doesn't know what Young Joe and everyone else in that world will do, minute by minute. He's from the future. It's all happened already and if Old Joe knows his history, then knowledge of everything that will happen should be laid out in his brain like a map. The writers circumvent this dilemma by having Old Joe explain that his memory is (conveniently) foggy. Alternate scenarios float by in his mind, versions of what could happen, and there are so many of them that they create a swirl of confusion. He only knows what Young Joe will do after it has been done. He can't remember what happened in the past independently, even though he's 30 years ahead of the present, but once it happens, then Old Joe will remember it. Clear as mud. This plot device not only creates a fog for Old Joe, but for the audience too. There are a couple of scenes in which events appear to occur but, apparently, didn't. For instance, Young Joe relives the hit on Old Joe and it goes off without a hitch. Old Joe shows up in the past with a hood on and Young Joe kills him sight unseen. It's not until after he's dead that Young Joe realizes he's just killed himself. It's not clear in what alternate universe this has happened.
In another scene Old Joe wakes up in bed with his wife and a baby seems to be crying in the background. The child they always wanted appears to have been born. Does this mean that Old Joe has succeeded in his mission to kill the Rainmaker and won't be hounded in 2074 after all? Who knows. While those 2 things are seen on screen, they don't actually occur in the movie's reality and we don't know why or how we are seeing them imagined as a parallel reality.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Young Joe follows a lead he received in a map from 2074 and goes to an isolated farm, inhabited by a single mother and her young son. Joe discovers that the boy, Cid, is one of three kids born on the same day at the same hospital. One of these 3 children is The Rainmaker, but Joe (neither old or young) doesn't know which one. So, Old Joe sets out to kill all 3 kids. He gets to the other two possible Rainmakers first. The children are barely more than toddlers. He kills the first. The second one belongs to someone he knows. The prostitute he cared about, the one he went to for comfort, whom he asked to run her fingers through his hair, like his mother did. He apologizes before killing her child.
At the farm, Young Joe somehow knows the progress Old Joe has made. Psychic connection? They have a bond sure, but the way Old Joe explained it, he knows what Young Joe will do after it's done, not the other way around. So, it's not clear how Young Joe knew when Old Joe had dispatched the first two potential rainmakers, but he does. Cid is a child prodigy, perfectly acted by Pierce Gagnon. Gagnon's true life age is fuzzy. IMDB lists him as 5-8 years old. But he's dimunitive and Cid seems to be about 4. He dissolves quickly from angry and defiant to a scared and needing little boy in a manner that is so natural and believable that an Oscar nomination for the child actor would not be at all amiss. With his preternatural intelligence and high voice, Cid could be mistaken as your typical creepy movie demon child, especially once we find that he has strong and deadly telekinectic powers that give him the mental strength to create a windy maelstrom, powerful enough to destroy everything around him when he gets angry.
This omnipotence feels like a plot cheat. Although, when narrating the story at the beginning, Young Joe mentions that 10% of the population mysteriously acquired kinectic powers, he says that they didn't live up to expectations. The only thing people could do with them was levitate coins. Then, the powers were never mentioned again, until Cid started psychically throwing things around. If this ability is going to be a chief story point, if it is what gives Cid the power to grow up and be a one-man army, The Rainmaker, then we should know the origins of the strange powers and be given a facile explanation of why Cid's are so much stronger than anyone else's.
Baby Cid can't control his powers yet, they flair up uncontrollably, but Young Joe realizes that when Cid grows older and learns how to guide them, the deadly Rainmaker will be realized. He wants to kill the child and save the world (at least the world of future loopers with a target on their heads), but when he looks at the innocent Cid before him, he realizes that whatever the child might do in the future does not justify violence against the frightened tot today.
Cid's mother Sara abandoned him. Went away for 2 years and let her sister raise him, while she partied on the streets. She tells Joe that she ran into a lot of aimless, lost men out there and it made her realize that if she raised Cid herself and didn't leave him motherless that he didn't have to grow up to be one of them. Needless to say, Joe sees himself in the boy. What would he have grown up to be, if he hadn't lost his own mother. Would he have grown into the man who killed for a living and sacrificed his best friend, Seth, for money? The same Seth who grew to middle-age still singing the song that his mother had sung before leaving him? Young Joe doesn't like who he is now. How will he feel about the man, the child killer, he'll be in 30 years? He helps Sara and Cid go on the run.
Old Joe comes after them. As Old Joe chases Cid, the Rainmaker, determined to kill him before he grows into a man that will threaten Old Joe's future, Young Joe knows (sees) how it will all play out. Sara will die at Old Joe's hands. Cid will escape, but having seen his mother murdered by a looper, he will grow up to be a vengeful looper killer. One motherless boy kills another. One motherless boy creates another. What's Young Joe's response to this alternate vision, this possible future? He changes it.
He turns the gun on himself. He kills Young Joe, so that Old Joe will never exist, which is truly closing the loop.
Why didn't he just kill Old Joe? That would have been enough to save the Rainmaker's life. But not enough to save all the lives Old Joe has taken in the preceding (um, succeeding? proceeding? intervening?) 30 years, from 2044-2074.
When they met in Beatrix's diner and Old Joe asked Young Joe to save his wife's life, to alter the future so that the woman who he will one day love so much can live, Young Joe answers by saying, "Show me her picture. Let me see what she looks like, so I will know to avoid her. That way, I'll never marry her and I WILL save her life." Old Joe won't go for it. He wants his wife to live, but not at the expense of losing her in another way. Rather than to give up his chance to be with her, he'd rather kill everyone who might be a threat to her over the next 30 years. He ends up doing just that, killing Abe, all the loopers, two potential Rainmakers. Everyone except Young Joe and Cid.
For Young Joe, it all came down to what Abe asked: how much are you willing to sacrifice to preserve what's yours? Young Joe had made murder a career for some time, but he wasn't plagued by guilt until he sacrificed Seth to keep the money he'd saved (not that I believe Abe would have let Seth go free, even if Young Joe had agreed to forfeit half of his money and relinquish his dreams of an early retirement in France). Finally, he looked at Old Joe, saw himself 30 years hence and realized that he'd extinguish a lot of other lives for his own selfish "happiness" every additional year that he lived. So, he made the choice to stop living.
I like the way the morality lesson unfolded through Seth's death and the string of motherless characters who all tie together. A string that Young Joe cuts. He decides to end the cycle. It's an interesting slant on guilt. Young Joe doesn't want Cid or Sara to die, but sentiment aside, he really kills himself to . . . save himself. He makes the choice to stop taking in order to keep, while he still can, because that's something he saw Old Joe would never do.
JG-L plays Joe, a man living in a future world (in 2044) who makes his living as a "looper" a person who kills people sent from an even more future world (2074). Time travel doesn't exist in Joe's present, but it will be invented in 30 years. It's illegalized, but criminals still use it to dispose of their victims. Decades from now, technology will make dead bodies impossible to dispose of, so bad guys tie their targets up, put a hood over their head, tape money (as payment to the looper assassin) to their backs and dispatch them 30 years into the past at an appointed time where loopers, like Joe, are waiting to kill them instantly, as soon as they are transported. Joe then dumps the body in his world and the victim, now corpse, is erased from the future, as if he never existed.
Looping pays well. The only draw back is that the bad guys in 2074 don't want to get caught, so they haunt old loopers down and send the loopers themselves back into the past, 2044, to be killed by . . . loopers. That's how you "close the loop." Joe realizes the irony of this arrangement and acknowledges that loopers don't think for the "long term." If you are a looper who lives 30 more years, then you know that you will be hunted down and murdered by your own kind or, worse, by yourself.
Joe's best friend Seth, another looper, gets a job assignment. He shows up at the appointed place to kill a man sent back from 2074 only to find out (by the song that the man is singing, a song Seth's mother sang to him, that the victim is Seth himself. Seth's job is to kill himself (albeit a 30 years older version). Seth can't do it. He lets himself run away and that is a no-no. Present day Seth must be killed for letting his victim from 2074 escape. From a plot perspective, one big problem with this set up is you have to wonder why the people from the future didn't make sure that the old loopers they send back to have murdered aren't scheduled to be murdered by themselves. If you didn't want the hit to go awry, you'd take pains to make sure the killer has no emotional ties to his victim, let alone ensure that the killer and victim were not one and the same person.
Joe has been saving up his money. He plans to retire early, leave the business and move to France. When Seth goes on the run and shows up at Joe's place begging his friend to hide him from the Looper boss, Abe, who needs him dead, Joe wishes that he had never been involved. He cares for his friend, but cares more about his self-preservation. He reluctantly hides Seth under a floor board at his apartment, then Abe's goons show up and take Joe in to be interrogated by the boss. Abe's manner is avuncular rather than threatening. He tells Joe he remembers recruiting him as a boy. Joe was a homeless kid who'd lost his mother. Abe found him, gave him a gun and taught him how to support himself by looping. Murdering. Because he's known him so long, Abe has a soft spot for Joe. He gives Joe a choice, either give up half the money he has saved for retirement OR give up Seth. Joe is torn. Abe finds that predictable. He says it's a question we all face: how much will we sacrifice to save what is ours? Joe decides to sacrifice Seth. To keep all of his money and to secure his own future, he tells Abe where Seth is.
Joe asks if Abe is going to murder Seth. One wonders if Joe's choice would have been different if the answer had been yes. If he'd known Seth's reckoning would be a violent one, would he have chosen to give up half his fortune instead? Abe casually answers that they won't kill Seth, because that would alter the future too much. Instead, Abe mutilates present day Seth, which debilitates Old Seth (from 2074 whom young Seth allowed to escape). As Old Seth is running away, he suddenly loses his hands, arms, feet, nose. All nubs, he can't keep running and Old Seth is, literally, stopped in his tracks and killed by Abe's men, while present day Seth lies whimpering, bloody and butchered on the mutilating surgeon's table.
To take the edge off of his guilt, Seth goes to his favorite prostitute. He doesn't want sex. He wants her to stroke his hair, the way his mother used to do before he lost her.
Square with Abe, Joe keeps working. He shows up for a job assignment and awaits, gun in hand, for his victim from 2074 to show up so he can kill him. The guy is late and doesn't appear at the appointed time. Joe starts to get suspicious. When the target finally materializes in the past, Joe's present, he is not wearing a hood. Instead unmasked, the victim is able to look Joe squarely in the eye. Peering into the man's eyes, Joe recognizes himself. He's not going to be like Seth. He plans to kill the future him, Old Joe. But Old Joe is tough. He moved to Shanghai (because in 2044 he was expected to move to France by everyone he knew. By doing the unexpected, he thinks that he can elude his inevitable death easier in China), became an even more accomplished murderer, blowing away present day human beings and not just strangers from an unknown future; and grew into 2074's grizzled Old Joe. Sharp, a bound Old Joe uses Young Joe's slight hesitation to get the jump on his younger self and escape.
As soon as Abe learns that another loop is on the run, he sends his goons after Joe. Abe needs to have both old Joe and young Joe eliminated. The twist is, Joe wants future Joe killed almost as much as Abe does.
So Old Joe is not only running from Abe, but from his own past. Old Joe has a plan. The man in 2074 who is having former loopers sent back in time to be killed is called The Rainmaker (the person who pays loopers salaries by giving them someone to kill). No one knows Rainmaker's true identity, but Old Joe feels that while he's back in time, if he can find The Rainmaker and dispose of him, then he can save his own life, because no one will be around to put a hit on him.
Joe meets up with Old Joe by cutting a waitress' name, Beatrix, into his own arm. When the resulting scar immediately shows up on Old Joe's body, Old Joe remembers where Beatrix worked and knows that's where the young Joe wants to meet up. He goes there and, in one of the few laughs in the movie, reminds young Joe that they know another waitress, Jen. Since her name was shorter, it would have been a lot less painful if Young Joe had carved that name into his skin, rather than Beatrix's.
Old Joe tells the Young one that they have a lot to live for. They will meet a beautiful woman who helps Old Joe clean up his life and finally find peace and happiness. When he is rounded up 30 years from now, to be sent back in the past to his death, his attackers kill his wife in the process. Old Joe pleads with Young Joe that he has to change the future in order to save his future wife, the woman who gives him so much. He tells Young Joe about the Rainmaker. If they find the Rainmaker, a merciless looper assassin in 2074, but still a kid in Young Joe's world, they can erase him before he ever grows up to kill loopers. If they vanquish the Rainmaker now, Old Joe and his wife can live and grow old together, unthreatened, in 2074.
Young Joe is apathetic. He has to live for himself. For the life he has NOW. Old Joe has already lived those 30 years and Young Joe hasn't enjoyed them yet. Young Joe feels that Old Joe should just die quietly, so that Young Joe doesn't lose everything he has. Maybe if Old Joe is killed now, Abe will forgive Young Joe for letting his target, his loop, run in the first place. If Young Joe could just make Old Joe disappear, his own life can be saved -- at least for 30 years.
Old Joe refuses to go easily into that good night. After a violent shoot 'em up in a restaurant that is suddenly empty (somehow Beatrix the waitress has completely disappeared), Old Joe runs off and Young Joe, pursued by Abe's goons, does too.
Since Young and Old Joe are one in the same, one might wonder why Old Joe doesn't know what Young Joe and everyone else in that world will do, minute by minute. He's from the future. It's all happened already and if Old Joe knows his history, then knowledge of everything that will happen should be laid out in his brain like a map. The writers circumvent this dilemma by having Old Joe explain that his memory is (conveniently) foggy. Alternate scenarios float by in his mind, versions of what could happen, and there are so many of them that they create a swirl of confusion. He only knows what Young Joe will do after it has been done. He can't remember what happened in the past independently, even though he's 30 years ahead of the present, but once it happens, then Old Joe will remember it. Clear as mud. This plot device not only creates a fog for Old Joe, but for the audience too. There are a couple of scenes in which events appear to occur but, apparently, didn't. For instance, Young Joe relives the hit on Old Joe and it goes off without a hitch. Old Joe shows up in the past with a hood on and Young Joe kills him sight unseen. It's not until after he's dead that Young Joe realizes he's just killed himself. It's not clear in what alternate universe this has happened.
In another scene Old Joe wakes up in bed with his wife and a baby seems to be crying in the background. The child they always wanted appears to have been born. Does this mean that Old Joe has succeeded in his mission to kill the Rainmaker and won't be hounded in 2074 after all? Who knows. While those 2 things are seen on screen, they don't actually occur in the movie's reality and we don't know why or how we are seeing them imagined as a parallel reality.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Young Joe follows a lead he received in a map from 2074 and goes to an isolated farm, inhabited by a single mother and her young son. Joe discovers that the boy, Cid, is one of three kids born on the same day at the same hospital. One of these 3 children is The Rainmaker, but Joe (neither old or young) doesn't know which one. So, Old Joe sets out to kill all 3 kids. He gets to the other two possible Rainmakers first. The children are barely more than toddlers. He kills the first. The second one belongs to someone he knows. The prostitute he cared about, the one he went to for comfort, whom he asked to run her fingers through his hair, like his mother did. He apologizes before killing her child.
At the farm, Young Joe somehow knows the progress Old Joe has made. Psychic connection? They have a bond sure, but the way Old Joe explained it, he knows what Young Joe will do after it's done, not the other way around. So, it's not clear how Young Joe knew when Old Joe had dispatched the first two potential rainmakers, but he does. Cid is a child prodigy, perfectly acted by Pierce Gagnon. Gagnon's true life age is fuzzy. IMDB lists him as 5-8 years old. But he's dimunitive and Cid seems to be about 4. He dissolves quickly from angry and defiant to a scared and needing little boy in a manner that is so natural and believable that an Oscar nomination for the child actor would not be at all amiss. With his preternatural intelligence and high voice, Cid could be mistaken as your typical creepy movie demon child, especially once we find that he has strong and deadly telekinectic powers that give him the mental strength to create a windy maelstrom, powerful enough to destroy everything around him when he gets angry.
This omnipotence feels like a plot cheat. Although, when narrating the story at the beginning, Young Joe mentions that 10% of the population mysteriously acquired kinectic powers, he says that they didn't live up to expectations. The only thing people could do with them was levitate coins. Then, the powers were never mentioned again, until Cid started psychically throwing things around. If this ability is going to be a chief story point, if it is what gives Cid the power to grow up and be a one-man army, The Rainmaker, then we should know the origins of the strange powers and be given a facile explanation of why Cid's are so much stronger than anyone else's.
Baby Cid can't control his powers yet, they flair up uncontrollably, but Young Joe realizes that when Cid grows older and learns how to guide them, the deadly Rainmaker will be realized. He wants to kill the child and save the world (at least the world of future loopers with a target on their heads), but when he looks at the innocent Cid before him, he realizes that whatever the child might do in the future does not justify violence against the frightened tot today.
Cid's mother Sara abandoned him. Went away for 2 years and let her sister raise him, while she partied on the streets. She tells Joe that she ran into a lot of aimless, lost men out there and it made her realize that if she raised Cid herself and didn't leave him motherless that he didn't have to grow up to be one of them. Needless to say, Joe sees himself in the boy. What would he have grown up to be, if he hadn't lost his own mother. Would he have grown into the man who killed for a living and sacrificed his best friend, Seth, for money? The same Seth who grew to middle-age still singing the song that his mother had sung before leaving him? Young Joe doesn't like who he is now. How will he feel about the man, the child killer, he'll be in 30 years? He helps Sara and Cid go on the run.
Old Joe comes after them. As Old Joe chases Cid, the Rainmaker, determined to kill him before he grows into a man that will threaten Old Joe's future, Young Joe knows (sees) how it will all play out. Sara will die at Old Joe's hands. Cid will escape, but having seen his mother murdered by a looper, he will grow up to be a vengeful looper killer. One motherless boy kills another. One motherless boy creates another. What's Young Joe's response to this alternate vision, this possible future? He changes it.
He turns the gun on himself. He kills Young Joe, so that Old Joe will never exist, which is truly closing the loop.
Why didn't he just kill Old Joe? That would have been enough to save the Rainmaker's life. But not enough to save all the lives Old Joe has taken in the preceding (um, succeeding? proceeding? intervening?) 30 years, from 2044-2074.
When they met in Beatrix's diner and Old Joe asked Young Joe to save his wife's life, to alter the future so that the woman who he will one day love so much can live, Young Joe answers by saying, "Show me her picture. Let me see what she looks like, so I will know to avoid her. That way, I'll never marry her and I WILL save her life." Old Joe won't go for it. He wants his wife to live, but not at the expense of losing her in another way. Rather than to give up his chance to be with her, he'd rather kill everyone who might be a threat to her over the next 30 years. He ends up doing just that, killing Abe, all the loopers, two potential Rainmakers. Everyone except Young Joe and Cid.
For Young Joe, it all came down to what Abe asked: how much are you willing to sacrifice to preserve what's yours? Young Joe had made murder a career for some time, but he wasn't plagued by guilt until he sacrificed Seth to keep the money he'd saved (not that I believe Abe would have let Seth go free, even if Young Joe had agreed to forfeit half of his money and relinquish his dreams of an early retirement in France). Finally, he looked at Old Joe, saw himself 30 years hence and realized that he'd extinguish a lot of other lives for his own selfish "happiness" every additional year that he lived. So, he made the choice to stop living.
I like the way the morality lesson unfolded through Seth's death and the string of motherless characters who all tie together. A string that Young Joe cuts. He decides to end the cycle. It's an interesting slant on guilt. Young Joe doesn't want Cid or Sara to die, but sentiment aside, he really kills himself to . . . save himself. He makes the choice to stop taking in order to keep, while he still can, because that's something he saw Old Joe would never do.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
As Wes Anderson's take on a coming of age movie, Moonrise seems more heartwarming than his other entries, but not in a mushy way. In an awkward, whimsical, misfit way that is impossibly real, in the end, despite the wackiness that defines it. Chock full of stars, a collection of caricatures combine to create something that feels human.
The movie centers around Suzy and Sam, 12 year old loners who are defined as "troubled," but are in no way odder or more disengaged than the adults around them. Sam is one of the boys at a scout camp run with a strange balance of discipline and carelessness by Scout Master Ward (Ed Norton). When he runs away from the camp, Ward learns that Sam is an orphan whose foster parents calmly wipe their hands of him upon hearing the news of his escape.
We learn that Sam has been in contact with Suzy for the last year. She is one of Walt and Laura Bishop's four children. The eldest and only daughter. The Bishops are a charming and dysfunctional bunch, none of whom talk to each other. Walt and Laura, both attorneys, refer to each other as "Counselor" and discuss their cases from their twin beds at night, in lieu of pillow talk. The young Bishop lads spend their time listening to classical music, while Suzy reads fantasy books and watches the world through binoculars, because they make objects seem close -- even when they aren't far away -- it gives her a sense of having a secret power. Walt drinks and Laura only seems to talk to her family when barking orders through a bull horn. Like the binoculars, Laura uses the bull horn to talk to people who are close to her as well. Maybe its her secret power.
From camp, Sam sends letters to Suzy planning a run away adventure, set to last 10 days. They meet at the appointed time and set off on foot with camping gear, books, a record player (stolen from Suzy's brother) and Suzy's kitten. Once united, they bond with childish intellectualism. They are a serious, practical, and dispassionate duo, but ardent in their quiet dedication and understanding. Though chided for her temper at school, when together neither Sam or Suzy indulge in melodrama, but the unconditional nature of their loyalty, bespeaks the kind of feeling that should be at the foundation for all romances. That's what makes you root for them and evokes compassionate reactions to even things that are silly: like the beatle earrings Sam makes for Suzy, which he then inserts by piercing her lobes with fish hooks or the way he warns her that he might wet the bed at night. He hates to bring it up, but he wanted to tell her beforehand, lest she becomes offended. "Of course, I wouldn't be offended," she says with quick supportiveness that even people who don't wet the bed can only hope to receive from their partner.
Unaware that his foster family has already cast him off, Sam tells Suzy he has hopes for his life with them. He thinks they are building something that isn't what she has with her parents and brothers, but might be very fulfilling nonetheless. The grass is always greener on the other side and Suzy reveals her quixotic fantasies of orphan life. She says she wishes she did not have parents, like him. He answers, "I love you, but you don't know what you're talking about." She responds, "I love you too."
Of course, nothing good can last forever. The camp notices that Sam is missing first. Ward organizes a search party with his troops, but they lack enthusiasm because Sam was the least liked among the boys. No one seems to know why this is. He was an orphan. That seemed reason enough to dislike him originally. Then, once some decided they hated him, others just thought they'd follow suit, as a matter course. More justification than that is seldom necessary. And so, Sam was neatly ostracized by his peers, by his foster parents, by the world. Finding him was more an assignment than an urgency for the scout troop and Scout Master Ward. They only hoped he'd turn up before they had to miss the Hullabaloo that evening.
Ward calls the police and the Captain Sharp(Bruce Willis) begins to canvass the area to look for Sam, stopping at the Bishop house. Outside of her husband's presence, Laura catches up to Sharp, we don't hear their conversation, but she shares his cigarette and holds his hand a little too long, before they part. Later that night when she bull horns Suzy to come to dinner, she finally discovers that her daughter is missing along with Sam. Before she and Walt can call the police, they open the door and find Captain Sharp already parked outside of their house. Walt is more surprised to see Sharp there than Laura is, which is all the reveal that their affair will get.
Sharp, Ward and the Scouts and the Bishop family all head off to find the wayward runaways.
After a rather violent escape from the scouts who find them (Suzy stabs one of them in the back with scissors when he grabs her) Suzy and Sam flee and find an island. It's identified on the map only as a marker point. They agree to name it something else, as soon as they think of something fitting. They cook fish, swim in their underwear, dance and solemnly kiss. Sam has to spit because he had sand in his mouth. She thinks she feels his penis and it seems hard. She assures him that she likes that, then permits Sam to touch her chest and informs him that she believes her breasts will grow eventually. They fall asleep in their tent together, embracing chastely. They awake to the sound of a helicopter and people swarming. Sam zips open the tent to see everyone approaching, the Bishops and their 3 boys, Ward, Captain Sharp. He realizes there is no escape. He zips the tent flap back up and he and Suzy huddle together in their underwear, awaiting the inevitable. Walt snatches the tent, their only cover, up and away. Laura grabs Suzy and drags her away. Captain Sharp takes Sam away.
The Bishops tell Suzy she will never see Sam again. As Laura bathes a sullen Suzy, the girl reveals that she knows what Laura does with the "sad, dumb" policeman. Laura objects that Captain Sharp is not dumb. But he is sad. The movie shows us that they all are: Sharp, Ward, Walt, Laura, in each other, Sam and Suzy have found what has eluded all the adults around them: an answer to loneliness.
Laura tells Sharp that she'll have to stop seeing him. At least for awhile. That evening she tells Walt she's sorry. He wonders what transgression she is apologizing for and she says whichever ones still hurt. He sees that his pain is mostly self-inflicted and she has nothing to be sorry for.
Sharp calls Child Welfare to tell them that Sam has been found. Tilda Swinton is Social Services, literally. She identifies that job as her first and last name. She mechanically tells Sharp that the boy is her responsibility now. She will take him, examine him. See if he needs electric shock therapy (!) and then place him in Juvenile Refuge, because given his history, it would be useless to try to place him in foster care again. Both Sharp and Ward are appalled by Swinton's cold words and, for the first time, neither is going through the motions. It's emotion now.
They had been wearing Scout and police hats, playing roles, supervising the search the way they lived their lives, without much concern or purpose, in a lazy community where nothing much happened and never mattered when it did. But Ms. Social Services presented a future for Sam that had consequences, bad ones. The thought left Sharp unsettled.
Sam spends the night in Captain Sharp's trailer. Sharp cooks for the boy, serves him a beer in his milk cup and philosophizes about love. When Sharp says that he himself was in love once, but the woman didn't return the feeling, we wonder if he is talking about Laura Bishop.
Meanwhile, the scouts have a change of heart too. They decide that they have mistreated Sam. Their metamorphosis does not seem as real as Sharp's. Hours earlier they had all comically taken up weapons in their search for Sam, just in case (or in the hope) that he'd have to be taken by force. They didn't talk to Social Services, don't know that Sam is slated to be sent to Juvenile Refuge and, from what we know of them, wouldn't care. So, it feels like an artificial plot twist when they spontaneously reverse course and decide to help Sam.
That night, they break Suzy out of the Bishop house and then rescue Sam from Sharp's trailer by dropping a rope through the chimney. They then kayak to a nearby island where a camp master, Ben, (Jason Schwartzman, cousin to Moonrise co-writer Roman Coppola and Wes Anderson alumni) who is a cousin of one of the boys, will help them get away. The motley crew march together, a mass of people on the same mission. In a jaunty beret, Suzy reminds one of Patty Hearst with her own Symbionese Liberation Army, only Suzy's wearing knee socks and her Sunday shoes.
For $76, Cousin Ben will help Suzy and Sam, but first he draws blood and "marries" them, as their comrades look on. Husband and wife are on their way to freedom in a small sailboat, when suddenly they have to turn around. Sam must go back because Suzy left her binoculars behind. She can't go on without them. They are her secret power.
A (clearly metaphoric) storm of apocryphal proportions then starts. Stranding Suzy, Sam and all the scouts. Tents fall, bridges collapse, lightning strikes Sam, a river parts and the kids take shelter in a chapel. Soon, the Bishops, Sharp and Ms. Social Services all show up at the church. The kids hide in the choir loft in costumes that disguise them and watch the authority figures fight over them. When Captain Sharp looks up and recognizes them (due to Suzy's binoculars and Sam's familiar coon hat), he keeps it to himself, deciding that he is not going to let the strident Social Services (a dictatorial Tilda Swinton) take Sam.
Realizing that their gig is up, Suzy and Sam run up the church tower and climb outside of it, the rain and lightning whipping around them, as they stand perilously on a ledge. As they prepare to jump on the count of 3 (just as they plunged into the lake on their island) realizing that the fall might kill them, Sam thanks Suzy for marrying him. The kiss they share is electric. Literally. Suzy thinks Sam still has a little lightning in him. Just as they are about to leap, Sharp stops them. On his walkie talkie (which seems to dangerous to use in that rain storm) he negotiates a hasty deal with Ms. Social Services, brokered by the attorneys Bishop. Sam will come and live with Sharp. He won't have to go to Juvenile Refuge. Does he accept this offer? Suzy nods that her husband should. The fugitives give themselves up.
One year later, we see Suzy sitting in her window case, absorbed in a book, with her three brothers listening to classical music on the portable record player, just as they were when the movie starts. The only thing that has changed is that her kitten has now become a cat. When Laura bullhorns the kids to come down to dinner, they scurry and we suddenly see that a fifth child has been sitting in the distance painting. It's Sam. He's dressed in a police uniform now, in place of his scout garb. As Suzy starts downstairs to dinner she and Sam exchange a long look. "I'll see you tomorrow," he whispers earnestly, before descending out of the second story window. It's unclear whether her parents know Sam is there with her, but his guardian certainly does, because Sharp and his police car are down on the street waiting to drive Sam away.
The Bishop playroom is now empty, but the camera pulls back to reveal a canvas that Sam was painting. He has drawn the island that he and Suzy discovered. It seems that they decided on a name for it: Moonrise Kingdom.
The movie centers around Suzy and Sam, 12 year old loners who are defined as "troubled," but are in no way odder or more disengaged than the adults around them. Sam is one of the boys at a scout camp run with a strange balance of discipline and carelessness by Scout Master Ward (Ed Norton). When he runs away from the camp, Ward learns that Sam is an orphan whose foster parents calmly wipe their hands of him upon hearing the news of his escape.
We learn that Sam has been in contact with Suzy for the last year. She is one of Walt and Laura Bishop's four children. The eldest and only daughter. The Bishops are a charming and dysfunctional bunch, none of whom talk to each other. Walt and Laura, both attorneys, refer to each other as "Counselor" and discuss their cases from their twin beds at night, in lieu of pillow talk. The young Bishop lads spend their time listening to classical music, while Suzy reads fantasy books and watches the world through binoculars, because they make objects seem close -- even when they aren't far away -- it gives her a sense of having a secret power. Walt drinks and Laura only seems to talk to her family when barking orders through a bull horn. Like the binoculars, Laura uses the bull horn to talk to people who are close to her as well. Maybe its her secret power.
From camp, Sam sends letters to Suzy planning a run away adventure, set to last 10 days. They meet at the appointed time and set off on foot with camping gear, books, a record player (stolen from Suzy's brother) and Suzy's kitten. Once united, they bond with childish intellectualism. They are a serious, practical, and dispassionate duo, but ardent in their quiet dedication and understanding. Though chided for her temper at school, when together neither Sam or Suzy indulge in melodrama, but the unconditional nature of their loyalty, bespeaks the kind of feeling that should be at the foundation for all romances. That's what makes you root for them and evokes compassionate reactions to even things that are silly: like the beatle earrings Sam makes for Suzy, which he then inserts by piercing her lobes with fish hooks or the way he warns her that he might wet the bed at night. He hates to bring it up, but he wanted to tell her beforehand, lest she becomes offended. "Of course, I wouldn't be offended," she says with quick supportiveness that even people who don't wet the bed can only hope to receive from their partner.
Unaware that his foster family has already cast him off, Sam tells Suzy he has hopes for his life with them. He thinks they are building something that isn't what she has with her parents and brothers, but might be very fulfilling nonetheless. The grass is always greener on the other side and Suzy reveals her quixotic fantasies of orphan life. She says she wishes she did not have parents, like him. He answers, "I love you, but you don't know what you're talking about." She responds, "I love you too."
Of course, nothing good can last forever. The camp notices that Sam is missing first. Ward organizes a search party with his troops, but they lack enthusiasm because Sam was the least liked among the boys. No one seems to know why this is. He was an orphan. That seemed reason enough to dislike him originally. Then, once some decided they hated him, others just thought they'd follow suit, as a matter course. More justification than that is seldom necessary. And so, Sam was neatly ostracized by his peers, by his foster parents, by the world. Finding him was more an assignment than an urgency for the scout troop and Scout Master Ward. They only hoped he'd turn up before they had to miss the Hullabaloo that evening.
Ward calls the police and the Captain Sharp(Bruce Willis) begins to canvass the area to look for Sam, stopping at the Bishop house. Outside of her husband's presence, Laura catches up to Sharp, we don't hear their conversation, but she shares his cigarette and holds his hand a little too long, before they part. Later that night when she bull horns Suzy to come to dinner, she finally discovers that her daughter is missing along with Sam. Before she and Walt can call the police, they open the door and find Captain Sharp already parked outside of their house. Walt is more surprised to see Sharp there than Laura is, which is all the reveal that their affair will get.
Sharp, Ward and the Scouts and the Bishop family all head off to find the wayward runaways.
After a rather violent escape from the scouts who find them (Suzy stabs one of them in the back with scissors when he grabs her) Suzy and Sam flee and find an island. It's identified on the map only as a marker point. They agree to name it something else, as soon as they think of something fitting. They cook fish, swim in their underwear, dance and solemnly kiss. Sam has to spit because he had sand in his mouth. She thinks she feels his penis and it seems hard. She assures him that she likes that, then permits Sam to touch her chest and informs him that she believes her breasts will grow eventually. They fall asleep in their tent together, embracing chastely. They awake to the sound of a helicopter and people swarming. Sam zips open the tent to see everyone approaching, the Bishops and their 3 boys, Ward, Captain Sharp. He realizes there is no escape. He zips the tent flap back up and he and Suzy huddle together in their underwear, awaiting the inevitable. Walt snatches the tent, their only cover, up and away. Laura grabs Suzy and drags her away. Captain Sharp takes Sam away.
The Bishops tell Suzy she will never see Sam again. As Laura bathes a sullen Suzy, the girl reveals that she knows what Laura does with the "sad, dumb" policeman. Laura objects that Captain Sharp is not dumb. But he is sad. The movie shows us that they all are: Sharp, Ward, Walt, Laura, in each other, Sam and Suzy have found what has eluded all the adults around them: an answer to loneliness.
Laura tells Sharp that she'll have to stop seeing him. At least for awhile. That evening she tells Walt she's sorry. He wonders what transgression she is apologizing for and she says whichever ones still hurt. He sees that his pain is mostly self-inflicted and she has nothing to be sorry for.
Sharp calls Child Welfare to tell them that Sam has been found. Tilda Swinton is Social Services, literally. She identifies that job as her first and last name. She mechanically tells Sharp that the boy is her responsibility now. She will take him, examine him. See if he needs electric shock therapy (!) and then place him in Juvenile Refuge, because given his history, it would be useless to try to place him in foster care again. Both Sharp and Ward are appalled by Swinton's cold words and, for the first time, neither is going through the motions. It's emotion now.
They had been wearing Scout and police hats, playing roles, supervising the search the way they lived their lives, without much concern or purpose, in a lazy community where nothing much happened and never mattered when it did. But Ms. Social Services presented a future for Sam that had consequences, bad ones. The thought left Sharp unsettled.
Sam spends the night in Captain Sharp's trailer. Sharp cooks for the boy, serves him a beer in his milk cup and philosophizes about love. When Sharp says that he himself was in love once, but the woman didn't return the feeling, we wonder if he is talking about Laura Bishop.
Meanwhile, the scouts have a change of heart too. They decide that they have mistreated Sam. Their metamorphosis does not seem as real as Sharp's. Hours earlier they had all comically taken up weapons in their search for Sam, just in case (or in the hope) that he'd have to be taken by force. They didn't talk to Social Services, don't know that Sam is slated to be sent to Juvenile Refuge and, from what we know of them, wouldn't care. So, it feels like an artificial plot twist when they spontaneously reverse course and decide to help Sam.
That night, they break Suzy out of the Bishop house and then rescue Sam from Sharp's trailer by dropping a rope through the chimney. They then kayak to a nearby island where a camp master, Ben, (Jason Schwartzman, cousin to Moonrise co-writer Roman Coppola and Wes Anderson alumni) who is a cousin of one of the boys, will help them get away. The motley crew march together, a mass of people on the same mission. In a jaunty beret, Suzy reminds one of Patty Hearst with her own Symbionese Liberation Army, only Suzy's wearing knee socks and her Sunday shoes.
For $76, Cousin Ben will help Suzy and Sam, but first he draws blood and "marries" them, as their comrades look on. Husband and wife are on their way to freedom in a small sailboat, when suddenly they have to turn around. Sam must go back because Suzy left her binoculars behind. She can't go on without them. They are her secret power.
A (clearly metaphoric) storm of apocryphal proportions then starts. Stranding Suzy, Sam and all the scouts. Tents fall, bridges collapse, lightning strikes Sam, a river parts and the kids take shelter in a chapel. Soon, the Bishops, Sharp and Ms. Social Services all show up at the church. The kids hide in the choir loft in costumes that disguise them and watch the authority figures fight over them. When Captain Sharp looks up and recognizes them (due to Suzy's binoculars and Sam's familiar coon hat), he keeps it to himself, deciding that he is not going to let the strident Social Services (a dictatorial Tilda Swinton) take Sam.
Realizing that their gig is up, Suzy and Sam run up the church tower and climb outside of it, the rain and lightning whipping around them, as they stand perilously on a ledge. As they prepare to jump on the count of 3 (just as they plunged into the lake on their island) realizing that the fall might kill them, Sam thanks Suzy for marrying him. The kiss they share is electric. Literally. Suzy thinks Sam still has a little lightning in him. Just as they are about to leap, Sharp stops them. On his walkie talkie (which seems to dangerous to use in that rain storm) he negotiates a hasty deal with Ms. Social Services, brokered by the attorneys Bishop. Sam will come and live with Sharp. He won't have to go to Juvenile Refuge. Does he accept this offer? Suzy nods that her husband should. The fugitives give themselves up.
One year later, we see Suzy sitting in her window case, absorbed in a book, with her three brothers listening to classical music on the portable record player, just as they were when the movie starts. The only thing that has changed is that her kitten has now become a cat. When Laura bullhorns the kids to come down to dinner, they scurry and we suddenly see that a fifth child has been sitting in the distance painting. It's Sam. He's dressed in a police uniform now, in place of his scout garb. As Suzy starts downstairs to dinner she and Sam exchange a long look. "I'll see you tomorrow," he whispers earnestly, before descending out of the second story window. It's unclear whether her parents know Sam is there with her, but his guardian certainly does, because Sharp and his police car are down on the street waiting to drive Sam away.
The Bishop playroom is now empty, but the camera pulls back to reveal a canvas that Sam was painting. He has drawn the island that he and Suzy discovered. It seems that they decided on a name for it: Moonrise Kingdom.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Hope Springs (2012)
Anyone going to see Hope Springs thinking it is 2012's version of It's Complicated may be disappointed. This is not a broad comedy. It's more a drama presented humorously. It's warm, pleasant and rather realistic.
Kay and Arnold have been married 31 years. To say they're in a rut would be an understatement. But Kay wouldn't mind doing the same things in and out, if they did them together. Instead, they're often in the same room (though not the same bedroom) but worlds apart. Arnold doesn't hear or see her anymore.
She doesn't just want a change. She needs one. Their marriage, maybe her sanity, depends on it. She's inspired by a marital self-help book and books a weeklong counseling session in Maine, with its author, Bernard Feld (Steve Carrell). She tells Arnold she's already booked the trip, having paid for it with $4000 from her CD. He's annoyed that someone at his (accounting) office helped her access the money and he knew nothing about it. He tells her she can just go alone.
The next day she gives him his boarding pass and says she hopes he will be on the plane when it leaves the next day. She will be. Now, since we've seen Arnie at work and know he hasn't arranged for vacation time off, I think it's a little much that she basically gives him an ultimatum that he has to be prepared to leave for a week the very next day . . . or else.
Afraid of the "or else" (based on the fact that his co-worker's wife left him), Arnie gets on the plane at the last minute, grumbling all the way.
They meet with Dr. Feld who Arnie thinks is a quack. Carrell plays the role completely straight. So, don't go expecting wackiness from him. One wonders why Carrell accepted the part. It requires no effort from him. Perhaps, he just welcomed the opportunity to work with these stalwarts.
This movie works because the characters are believable. They have grown apart, but it's no War of the Roses. They don't fling wild accusations. There were no affairs, no impotence, no devastating trauma. They're two people who loved each other once, still love each other, but have grown apart. Arnie hurt his back years ago and slept in the guest room due to the pain. He never ended up going back to the master bedroom. They haven't had sex in almost 5 years.
We see him rebuff Kay's overtures early in the movie, but in therapy they reveal that it was Kay who stopped the sex first. Arnie says that sex stops being fun when you know the other person doesn't want it. So, he stopped asking. He doesn't say it, but eventually the lack of intimacy created a wall between them that he couldn't knock down, even when she asked. He still desires sex, desires her, but can't expose himself and open up without great difficulty.
The exercises that Bernie gives them work -- and that's the problem. When Arnie finds himself aroused, it creates more distance between them, not less. The focus is on the sex, but it's just a metaphor for the couple's psychological divide. Kay says she doesn't know why it's so hard to touch someone that you love. But the fear of being pushed away outweighs the potential thrill of being welcomed. Closed doors, closed hearts. Kay is in the Econolodge bed masturbating, something she hadn't done for years, because it only reminded her of what she and Arnie no longer shared. Arnie lies outside on the pull out couch, hearing her sighs, wanting her, but unable to move.
We see them make inroads in therapy, but Arnie runs away when Feld probes too deep and Kay is ready to end it and get a refund, exhausted from pushing too hard against an impenetrable force and, when Arnie is receptive, too afraid of making a fool of herself. We see them at their hotel packing to leave. But the next day they are back at Feld's office, ready to try again. We don't know how they worked through the road block, but it's clear that Arnie can't bear the thought of losing Kay, even if he doesn't know how to keep her. For her part, she tells Feld that Arnie is everything to her. Still, she thinks that if they can't come together, it would be less lonely being alone than it is staying with him. These two love each other and know they're loved, but don't feel wanted and are unable to fight through their insecurities, to find support on the other side. Bernie asks them isn't their marriage more important than their pride and they both say it is, but they say it to Bernie, not to each other.
Finally, things take an upturn and they have a perfect romantic evening, both straining to please the other and enjoying themselves immensely in the process. Kay had mentioned in therapy that Arnie scrunched his eyes closed when they kissed, as if he didn't want to see her. She felt he just wanted the sex, not her love. On this momentous night, as Arnie reaches a climax, she reaches up from beneath him and twists his head so he's looking down directly at her. That's when everything falls apart and Arnie's passion subsides. Kay takes this as proof that she no longer appeals to him. When he said he wanted her physically, he lied. Arnie objects, "It has nothing to do with that," but doesn't elaborate. Defeated, they return home. Arnie carries in the suitcases, leaves Kay's in the master bedroom and, though the audience is hoping he'll deposit his bag right there too, it is not to be. He walks down the hall to the guest room and closes the door.
One egg and one strip of bacon for breakfast. He'll be home from the office at 6 o'clock. Tax talk at the dinner table. Arnie is ready to fall back into their old routine, but Kay says she doesn't know if she can go back.
She packs a bag to leave. She's only supposed to be cat-sitting for a friend, but when we see her pack family pictures, we know she soon plans to leave for good. We hear her sobs from behind the bedroom door. It's not clear whether Arnie hears them too, but he certainly stops at the door, fingers its grooves. Wants to open it, but can't. Somewhere in the middle of the night, he finds the courage, goes into the room and he and Kay finish the mending that started in Maine.
Over the closing credits we see them renewing their wedding vows, with Dr. Feld presiding over the nuptials, then celebrating with the family. That might seem too sappy, but since it happened during the credits, one doesn't have to accept it as the true end of the movie, if it feels too contrived for your tastes. Since much of the movie felt so real, swallowing the obligatory happy ending is not especially difficult.
What resonated most with me though was not what ended well, but the night that went wrong. Arnie never explained why he couldn't consummate that romantic evening in Maine. Kay thought it was because he couldn't look at her, but I think the truth was he couldn't bear for her to look at him. The camera focused on Tommy Lee Jones' red face, engorged, every fleshy pock mark emphasized as Arnie heaved over Kay. There were no glamor angles in this movie, no gauze on the lens. The wrinkles showed and made the path into Arnie's head so easy. You really sensed how hard it can be to see yourself through someone else's eyes, if you don't feel their love is unconditional.
So often, rejection is just uncertainty. Arnie and Kay didn't get through to each other, as much as they let the other in.
Jones' "Arnie" possesses a gentleness that isn't apparent in the trailers. This movie isn't a masterpiece, but it doesn't take as formulaic a route as one might expect. The script is original not because it's brilliant or sharp, but because most of the words feel real. And if you go in thinking Meryl Streep could convey that realness more effectively than Jones, you'll be surprised.
Kay and Arnold have been married 31 years. To say they're in a rut would be an understatement. But Kay wouldn't mind doing the same things in and out, if they did them together. Instead, they're often in the same room (though not the same bedroom) but worlds apart. Arnold doesn't hear or see her anymore.
She doesn't just want a change. She needs one. Their marriage, maybe her sanity, depends on it. She's inspired by a marital self-help book and books a weeklong counseling session in Maine, with its author, Bernard Feld (Steve Carrell). She tells Arnold she's already booked the trip, having paid for it with $4000 from her CD. He's annoyed that someone at his (accounting) office helped her access the money and he knew nothing about it. He tells her she can just go alone.
The next day she gives him his boarding pass and says she hopes he will be on the plane when it leaves the next day. She will be. Now, since we've seen Arnie at work and know he hasn't arranged for vacation time off, I think it's a little much that she basically gives him an ultimatum that he has to be prepared to leave for a week the very next day . . . or else.
Afraid of the "or else" (based on the fact that his co-worker's wife left him), Arnie gets on the plane at the last minute, grumbling all the way.
They meet with Dr. Feld who Arnie thinks is a quack. Carrell plays the role completely straight. So, don't go expecting wackiness from him. One wonders why Carrell accepted the part. It requires no effort from him. Perhaps, he just welcomed the opportunity to work with these stalwarts.
This movie works because the characters are believable. They have grown apart, but it's no War of the Roses. They don't fling wild accusations. There were no affairs, no impotence, no devastating trauma. They're two people who loved each other once, still love each other, but have grown apart. Arnie hurt his back years ago and slept in the guest room due to the pain. He never ended up going back to the master bedroom. They haven't had sex in almost 5 years.
We see him rebuff Kay's overtures early in the movie, but in therapy they reveal that it was Kay who stopped the sex first. Arnie says that sex stops being fun when you know the other person doesn't want it. So, he stopped asking. He doesn't say it, but eventually the lack of intimacy created a wall between them that he couldn't knock down, even when she asked. He still desires sex, desires her, but can't expose himself and open up without great difficulty.
The exercises that Bernie gives them work -- and that's the problem. When Arnie finds himself aroused, it creates more distance between them, not less. The focus is on the sex, but it's just a metaphor for the couple's psychological divide. Kay says she doesn't know why it's so hard to touch someone that you love. But the fear of being pushed away outweighs the potential thrill of being welcomed. Closed doors, closed hearts. Kay is in the Econolodge bed masturbating, something she hadn't done for years, because it only reminded her of what she and Arnie no longer shared. Arnie lies outside on the pull out couch, hearing her sighs, wanting her, but unable to move.
We see them make inroads in therapy, but Arnie runs away when Feld probes too deep and Kay is ready to end it and get a refund, exhausted from pushing too hard against an impenetrable force and, when Arnie is receptive, too afraid of making a fool of herself. We see them at their hotel packing to leave. But the next day they are back at Feld's office, ready to try again. We don't know how they worked through the road block, but it's clear that Arnie can't bear the thought of losing Kay, even if he doesn't know how to keep her. For her part, she tells Feld that Arnie is everything to her. Still, she thinks that if they can't come together, it would be less lonely being alone than it is staying with him. These two love each other and know they're loved, but don't feel wanted and are unable to fight through their insecurities, to find support on the other side. Bernie asks them isn't their marriage more important than their pride and they both say it is, but they say it to Bernie, not to each other.
Finally, things take an upturn and they have a perfect romantic evening, both straining to please the other and enjoying themselves immensely in the process. Kay had mentioned in therapy that Arnie scrunched his eyes closed when they kissed, as if he didn't want to see her. She felt he just wanted the sex, not her love. On this momentous night, as Arnie reaches a climax, she reaches up from beneath him and twists his head so he's looking down directly at her. That's when everything falls apart and Arnie's passion subsides. Kay takes this as proof that she no longer appeals to him. When he said he wanted her physically, he lied. Arnie objects, "It has nothing to do with that," but doesn't elaborate. Defeated, they return home. Arnie carries in the suitcases, leaves Kay's in the master bedroom and, though the audience is hoping he'll deposit his bag right there too, it is not to be. He walks down the hall to the guest room and closes the door.
One egg and one strip of bacon for breakfast. He'll be home from the office at 6 o'clock. Tax talk at the dinner table. Arnie is ready to fall back into their old routine, but Kay says she doesn't know if she can go back.
She packs a bag to leave. She's only supposed to be cat-sitting for a friend, but when we see her pack family pictures, we know she soon plans to leave for good. We hear her sobs from behind the bedroom door. It's not clear whether Arnie hears them too, but he certainly stops at the door, fingers its grooves. Wants to open it, but can't. Somewhere in the middle of the night, he finds the courage, goes into the room and he and Kay finish the mending that started in Maine.
Over the closing credits we see them renewing their wedding vows, with Dr. Feld presiding over the nuptials, then celebrating with the family. That might seem too sappy, but since it happened during the credits, one doesn't have to accept it as the true end of the movie, if it feels too contrived for your tastes. Since much of the movie felt so real, swallowing the obligatory happy ending is not especially difficult.
What resonated most with me though was not what ended well, but the night that went wrong. Arnie never explained why he couldn't consummate that romantic evening in Maine. Kay thought it was because he couldn't look at her, but I think the truth was he couldn't bear for her to look at him. The camera focused on Tommy Lee Jones' red face, engorged, every fleshy pock mark emphasized as Arnie heaved over Kay. There were no glamor angles in this movie, no gauze on the lens. The wrinkles showed and made the path into Arnie's head so easy. You really sensed how hard it can be to see yourself through someone else's eyes, if you don't feel their love is unconditional.
So often, rejection is just uncertainty. Arnie and Kay didn't get through to each other, as much as they let the other in.
Jones' "Arnie" possesses a gentleness that isn't apparent in the trailers. This movie isn't a masterpiece, but it doesn't take as formulaic a route as one might expect. The script is original not because it's brilliant or sharp, but because most of the words feel real. And if you go in thinking Meryl Streep could convey that realness more effectively than Jones, you'll be surprised.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
After the movie ended, I sat there until the last credit rolled waiting for the Easter egg peek at the next villain: it never came. It was then that I remembered that this was supposed to be the last part of a trilogy, so of course there are no spoilers to reveal for the next installment.
I realized then that it will seem hard to get excited about another Batman that does not have Christoper Nolan at the helm. It's not Christian Bale that I will miss. It's the look, the feel. Nolan's Gotham. Nolan's angst. Will anyone else be able to deliver anything that -- not satisfying -- but filling again?
At the end of this 2:45 hour epic, I realized that I'd spent the first 90+ minutes just waiting for all the puzzle pieces to come together. It wasn't that I didn't know where they all already. I just sat there waiting for them to move into position and suddenly, knowing created as much anticipation as not knowing.
We know from the start that Cat Woman and Batman will end up as allies. It's fun to watch that bond form. We may not know from the start that Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is Robin, but it gradually becomes quite clear. His dimunitive height is a clue. The fact that he is an orphan is another. The crowning revelation is not his first name, but when Batman tells Blake that if he's going to rescue people, he should wear a mask, not to protect himself, but those he loves. Blake's determination is just one of the reasons that I don't want this series to end. I want to follow him into superheroism, if not by Batman's side then on adventures of his own.
Finally, once Alfred leaves, we know that he will return and that was really the movie's high point for me. Maybe it's because this movie frequently relies on events that took place in the first two, building up our investment in the relationships. Maybe it's because Michael Caine is 79, has provided us with 50 years of wonder and I don't know how many times I'll see him act again or maybe just because it's hard to say goodbye, even when it's a happy parting, but I cried so much over Caine's last scene you would have thought I was at a showing of Terms of Endearment.
This movie is being reviewed everywhere and there's nothing I can add to everyone's impressions. I just want to write these notes for myself so that if I should rewatch the series at some point in the future I can remember what seemed significant to me today, in contrast to what sticks out to me then, when I've moved to another stage in my life and may perceive things differently.
First I'd like to address the complaint that Batman is not seen enough in the movie. Since I'm not a fan of action flicks, the more time the hero spends out of the costume is, for me, the better. I like to know what motivates him to put it on and what it covers rather than see how its aerodynamic qualities help him soar. I'm not there for the "Kapow" but if I was, it can hardly be said that this movie doesn't deliver on that punch. No matter how many minutes Batman spends on screen, there are plenty of fights and bat gadgets to ogle and the movie is certainly more about him than Catwoman, Bane or John Blake, so I don't get the airtime gripe.
On to the story: when we meet Anne Hathaway's Cat Woman she is a server at a party hosted at the Wayne estate. I know who she will come to be, but don't realize that she has already attained her villaint. After his last battle with Two-Faced in which he was left disabled, branded a murderer in the eyes of the public and lost his beloved Rachel he has become a recluse. He no longer manages his company or fortune and doesn't even attend events held in his name. Since the timid maid (Selina Kyle, aka Cat Woman) seems to be part of a catering group and is not a member of Wayne's staff, I'm not sure why Alfred tells her to take a tray up to Wayne's room. How does he know this strange woman is not a security risk? It seems like lax butlering to me. When she enters Bruce's cavernous, seemingly empty suite, I can't believe she starts poking around. How can she be sure she's not alone? In fact, since she was told that Wayne never leaves his room, she should be sure that she's not alone. Thus, her nosiness seems like great folly to me and I'm shaking my head.
Little did I realize that Selina could not care less if she is caught. She's not a burgeoning criminal, but already a skilled burglar and adept athlete, who easily escapes anyone who apprehends her even, or especially, Bruce Wayne. He comes upon her after she has already broken into his family safe and stolen his mother's pearls. They spar verbally. Since his legs are shattered and he only walks with the support of a cane, he's not much of a match for her physically. She easily escapes, the Wayne pearls encircling her neck.
After she's gone Wayne researches her identity with awe, rather than frustration over the theft, even when he tells Alfred that Selina also stole his fingerprints and he's not sure what nefarious use to which he might put them.
The fascination with Selina brings Wayne out of the shell, not to mention the house, he's been in for 4 years. Pretty soon he's out gathering information and Batman gadgets again. This to Alfred's chagrin. When Wayne finds there's a terrorist, Bane, building an invincible underground army, he warns Wayne that he's not powerful enough to fight him. Yes, he can recover his physical strength, but he does not have the mental will to live. Wayne has only known loss. He's come to expect it. It's become a self-fulfilling prophecy. He thinks that he must fight to the death, but Alfred thinks he should walk away. He doesn't remain tied to Gotham out of loyalty. He does it because he has a death wish and Alfred is tired of watching Wayne's die. This one will have to do it without him.
In one of those Good Will Hunting moments Alfred says that before Wayne returned 8 years ago he'd hoped he'd stay away. When he vacationed in Florence, he always daydreamed about sitting at a cafe and seeing Bruce at another table with a wife and maybe two kids. There Bruce would be basking in sunshine and happiness, things that Gotham can't offer. He'd see Bruce across the cafe and their eyes would lock, but they wouldn't even speak. Alfred would just know that Bruce was happy and leave. Well, I knew what happened when Chuckie painted a similar scenario for Will Hunting, but I didn't quite know where Alfred's statement would lead. I only knew that when Alfred and Bruce argued and then parted, their separation couldn't last.
Of course, the way that Alfred turns Bruce against him harkens back to The Dark Knight. He informs him that Bruce's love, Rachel, left a note saying she chose Harvey Dent (the Two-Faced villain) over Bruce and that Alfred burned it, to spare Bruce's feelings. He tells Bruce this now so that he won't use Rachel's memory as an excuse to stop living. Bruce thinks/hopes Alfred is only lying to manipulate Bruce into doing what he wants. He bids him a final goodbye and, the next day, Bruce wakes up in his mansion all alone. Later he finds he doesn't even have a key to enter the place. He's never needed one before. There was always someone to open the door.
Meanwhile, Bane is beginning to wreak havoc in the city and we meet Blake, a young uniformed cop determined to halt the evil uprising. Unfortunately, his boss, Foley(Matthew Modine) is more concerned with nailing Batman than fighting actual criminals. Sure, Batman was falsely accused of murder, but that was 4 years ago. What has he done to Foley lately? Bane has just entered the Stock Exchange, shot hundreds of people and stolen enough electronic information to clean out everyone's bank account, but when Blake tries to go after him Foley asks, "what's more important, catching a robber or catching Batman?" Huh? At that point, Bane was not a mere robber. He was a mass murderer. In fact, he still had hostages taken from the stock exchange with him. Foley's disinterest has classic seeds. The traditional law enforcement agencies always distrust the Superhero. They feel threatened by him, no doubt jealous of the worship bestowed upon him by the citizenry. The hero not only has to fight evil, but to combat the skepticism of good people. This is common, but it doesn't usually reach the extremes that Foley takes to ignore vicious crimes in his mad chase of the Masked One. At one point, I think he needs to be destroyed as much as Bane does.
As for Bane, he's rather mortal and pedestrian for a comic book villain, a body builder in a gas mask. Aside from his eloquent speeches, he smacks more of reality than imagination. I would have expected it would take someone more otherworldy to bring the creation that is Nolan's Gotham to its knees. However, as an allegory, perhaps the more concrete the evil is, the less likely the story can be dismissed as only fiction.
As Batman races to stop Bane's rampage, in the wake of the Stock Exchange rubble, an older policeman hears his bike approaching before Batman is even in view and he remembers the good old days. He turns to his young partner and says, "You're in for a show, tonight." The youngster helpfully shoots in Bane's direction, while Batman is trailing him. Batman gives him an impassive look and, chagrined, the rookie quickly backs off. 'Oops. Sorry.'
Batman tries to rally the troops against Bane and, basically, chooses Cat Woman as his second in command. For some reason, he thinks she's good at heart. I'm not sure why. All he knows is that she grew up poor. I suppose he feels she's still the needy girl, hungry, rather than greedy. She nurtures this belief by expressing her disdain of the wealthy and privileged, assuring him that she only takes from those who can afford it. Whatever her personal problems, he seems to place his trust in her before they've even come close to being resolved. He tells her to take him to Bane. She does, leading him right into Bane's trap.
With tears falling, she watches from outside a cage as Bane beats Batman to what looks like the death and breaks his back in two, pulls off his mask and tosses it aside, like so much rubbish. Selina then tries to leave Gotham before Bane comes after her. I don't understand Alfred, Selina and all of these people talking as if leaving Gotham will bring safety and protection. Alfred wasn't a recluse for 4 years himself. He kept up with undergound gossip. Like Selina, he knew that Bane's plans spread well beyond a city of $12 million people. He is threatening nuclear disaster that will destroy the world. So, I'm not understanding this "get out of town" mentality. Still, Selina makes a run for the airport, where she's detained by Blake. Bane has Batman. Is he dead, Blake asks. Selina's broken whisper is sincerely moving, "I don't know."
So, back at the ranch Bane has thrown Batman into a pit. The pit faces up to the sky, but no one can climb out of it. So, your despair is always tinged with hope that you can somehow make it up to the sun. The hope makes the misery even sharper. Many men have tried to get out, but only one has succeeded. I'm not sure how they all failed since the walls of the pit are lined with a series of protruding stones that look a lot like those rock climbing walls you see at the wall. With footholds that wide, even I could climb out of the pit. If they're going to pretend like it was such an impossible feat to get out, at least make the walls leading up slick and smooth, not the most easily scalable pit on the planet.
The other prisoners, broken old men, who have all tried to leave many times, rising up to the opening of the pit on a rope, only to come crashing down, battered on the jagged rock walls during descent, tell Bruce about the story of the only prisoner who ever got out. It was a child. The mother was thrown down there pregnant. That's where the baby was born and never knew any other life. Maybe that's why he alone got out. When he trapped Bruce, Bruce tried cutting the electricity to gain an advantage. Bane told him that he, Bane, was born in darkness. He didn't see light until he became a man. As the Batman, Wayne made himself accustomed to the darkness, but that's all Bane ever knew. Darkness was never a detriment for him. It's the light that he finds blinding.
Bruce now understands that Bane must have been the child in the pit. One prisoner says that when a plague hit the prisoners decades ago, acting as a doctor he tried to save Bane, but in doing so, he injured him badly and only having the mask over his face lessens the pain. I'm not sure how a gas mask (as opposed to a nice cushy bandage) helps deaden pain. I'm also not sure what treatment you can give a plague victim that would basically destroy their face. So, as far as an "origin story" goes, I think Bane's is pretty stupid. But whatever.
Anyway, the old men tell Bruce he will never make it because he's not afraid to die. If you have nothing to live for, you won't fight hard enough. Bruce says he's not afraid to die, but he's not going to die there. So, he tries to get up on the rope twice and fails. But then the men tell him that he should go the way the child did, without a rope. Duh? Why didn't they share that bit of info with him to begin with? Seems like passive/aggressive concealment to me. First of all, I've seen staircases more difficult to navigate than that wall, but that's a design problem I shouldn't hold against the plot. While the men might assume it's easier to ascend with a rope than without, since the only one to escape had no rope, why wouldn't any of them give that a try? Once Wayne gets a clue, he skeddadles pretty fast. It's all pretty hokey to me. But the higher he goes, the louder the cheers from the men below get, men who will never escape themselves, spurring him upward. They chant in a foreign voice, but their words mean "Rise! Rise! Rise!" As Wayne reaches the top with that chorus below, I get chills. I can't imagine a more thrilling trail to the movie's title. When Batman makes it out, my thoughts stay with the men who never will. But Bruce doesn't look back at them. He's headed towards Gotham.
Batman and Catwoman hook up. Bane has taken over the city, released all of the prisoners and launched a reign of terror, where the innocent citizens are overrun by the criminals. Batwoman enlists Selina's aid again -- even after the stunt she pulled the last time. She can't believe. How does she know that she doesn't like Gotham this way. Maybe she revels in the anarchy. Whether she does or not, Batman tells her that Bane has a nuclear reactor that's going to go off in a few hours, so it's going to be the end of everything, good and bad, unless she helps him. She concedes and hops into his bat plane. "My mother always told me not to get in the car with strangers," she intones. "This isn't a car," he replies.
Blake is on the ground trying to help the citizens, chief among them the boys from the orphanage that he grew up in. For whatever reason (given that a nuclear bomb is about to explode), he wants to get them on the bridge out of Manhattan, um, Gotham. But the police have been told not to let anyone exit. Blake tells them that the plans have changed. He's one of them. They can trust him. They need to have faith. They say that if keeps coming forward they will shoot him and if he persists further, they will blow up the bridge. Blake tests them. If he was hoping that they would stand down rather than injure a fellow cop, he was wrong. They shoot at him (his vest protects him) and then they blow up the bridge. He is livid, calling them SOBs. The priest caring for the boys is resigned. What would getting off the island would have done? The bomb would still have killed them all, the Father said. What's the difference? The difference is hope. Now, the boys have none, Blake tells him.
And that's a nice tie. Bane wanted to give Batman and the other prisoners hope of escaping to make their agony greater when they couldn't. Bane told Batman that he'd crush every last hope that he had, "Then, you have my permission to die."
Blake, on the other hand, thinks hope is the only thing that makes even certain death bearable. Blake sees no way out, but across town the Gotham police commissioner is about to face an icy death when someone throws a firecracker at his feet. He smiles and gets a phone call. A familiar voice on the other end tells him to light it. When he dies, a string of flame travels across the ice, runs up a building and lights up Gotham's bat signal, a symbol of hope that has long been dark. An incredulous Blake sees it miles away and knows he, the orphans, the world, all still have a chance. Is it believable that Batman would take the time to build a trail to the bat signal during that chaos? Yes, if it was the one thing that was needed to give desperate, frightened people the resolve needed to keep fighting.
In another location, Batman is cornered by Bane, but it turns out that his girlfriend, philanthropist Miranda Tate is the real villain. She was actually the baby born in the pit who managed to escape it. Bane was only a fellow prisoner who helped her. Her father (villain Henri Ducard from Batman Begins) hated Bane because his face was disfigured, but Bane's only crime was showing her love. Bane, a gloating brute up to this point, listens as she recounts her history, tears falling from his eyes. It was because her father left her mother that the pregnant was thrown into the pit where Miranda was born. So, she had always grown up hating the man . . . until Batman killed him. Then, she plotted her revenge in her father's name. She used the very weapon that Bruce Wayne's inventor, Lucius, (Morgan Freeman) built to defend the city to destroy it, by turning it into a nuclear reactor. What's even more ironic is that Bruce himself sold the weapon to her. After Bane's stock market electronic thefts left Bruce broke on paper, he thought that Miranda Tate was the only one left with enough money to preserve his defense projects. He was so grateful for her purchase that they ended up in bed together earlier (which was rather a hasty development for a man fresh out of seclusion and surprising, since I had expected Cat Woman to be his only love interest). Now, he realizes she was the enemy. Bane was just her servant.
She tells Bane she's off to launch the reactor, but warns him not to kill Batman. She wants him to live long enough to see the fire. Once she trots off Bane, wipes away his tears and is like, "You know you're going to die now, don't you? You'll just have to imagine the fire." Hilarious way to end the sentimental mood Miranda's words had created. Breathing payback Batman tells Bane he's going to see his plot demolished first, "Then, you have my permission to die." They battle and Bane is winning when Catwoman bursts in and just blows Bane away with an airy aside to Batman, "You know your position against guns? I'm not sure I feel as strongly about it as you do."
This movie doesn't have the humor that the other two possessed, but there are 4 or 5 moments that evoke deep laughs.
They get to the nuclear reactor and, seconds before it's about to go off, Batman hooks it up to the bat plane and flies it out to the ocean, so that it will detonate under water, hurting no one. His plan works, but an atomic plume goes off over the water, totally engulfing Batman's plane.
He's buried at the Wayne mansion which his will has bequeathed to the orphanage, to house parentless boys forever. An inconsolable Alfred tends the gravesite, blaming himself for having failed Bruce just when he needed him most.
Batman may be gone, but this time the police commissioner makes sure that Gotham will always remember him for the hero he was. A statute is erected in his honor. Blake thinks it small recompense for the price Batman made to save the lives of many who were ungrateful to Batman. He takes off his police badge and, undoubtedly, remembering his stand off with the cops on the bridge, tosses it aside, disillusioned.
He leaves the city with only a back pack. When a woman checks his identification she tells him he should use his first name because she likes it: Robin. We think he is leaving the city, but we find him walking instead towards underground waterfalls. Robin has found the bat cave.
Alfred is at a European side walk cafe. A lone diner, reading the newspaper and sipping coffee. He glances up briefly and something catches his eye. It's Bruce Wayne seated a few tables away, facing Alfred. A pony-tailed woman sits opposite him. When she tosses her head, we see Selina Kyle's profile. Bruce nods at Alfred, slightly lifts his coffee cup in tribute. Alfred tilts his head in answer. Folds his paper. Rises and walks away. He says nothing, so that catch in his throat that I hear as he leaves is only really there in my heart.
I realized then that it will seem hard to get excited about another Batman that does not have Christoper Nolan at the helm. It's not Christian Bale that I will miss. It's the look, the feel. Nolan's Gotham. Nolan's angst. Will anyone else be able to deliver anything that -- not satisfying -- but filling again?
At the end of this 2:45 hour epic, I realized that I'd spent the first 90+ minutes just waiting for all the puzzle pieces to come together. It wasn't that I didn't know where they all already. I just sat there waiting for them to move into position and suddenly, knowing created as much anticipation as not knowing.
We know from the start that Cat Woman and Batman will end up as allies. It's fun to watch that bond form. We may not know from the start that Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is Robin, but it gradually becomes quite clear. His dimunitive height is a clue. The fact that he is an orphan is another. The crowning revelation is not his first name, but when Batman tells Blake that if he's going to rescue people, he should wear a mask, not to protect himself, but those he loves. Blake's determination is just one of the reasons that I don't want this series to end. I want to follow him into superheroism, if not by Batman's side then on adventures of his own.
Finally, once Alfred leaves, we know that he will return and that was really the movie's high point for me. Maybe it's because this movie frequently relies on events that took place in the first two, building up our investment in the relationships. Maybe it's because Michael Caine is 79, has provided us with 50 years of wonder and I don't know how many times I'll see him act again or maybe just because it's hard to say goodbye, even when it's a happy parting, but I cried so much over Caine's last scene you would have thought I was at a showing of Terms of Endearment.
This movie is being reviewed everywhere and there's nothing I can add to everyone's impressions. I just want to write these notes for myself so that if I should rewatch the series at some point in the future I can remember what seemed significant to me today, in contrast to what sticks out to me then, when I've moved to another stage in my life and may perceive things differently.
First I'd like to address the complaint that Batman is not seen enough in the movie. Since I'm not a fan of action flicks, the more time the hero spends out of the costume is, for me, the better. I like to know what motivates him to put it on and what it covers rather than see how its aerodynamic qualities help him soar. I'm not there for the "Kapow" but if I was, it can hardly be said that this movie doesn't deliver on that punch. No matter how many minutes Batman spends on screen, there are plenty of fights and bat gadgets to ogle and the movie is certainly more about him than Catwoman, Bane or John Blake, so I don't get the airtime gripe.
On to the story: when we meet Anne Hathaway's Cat Woman she is a server at a party hosted at the Wayne estate. I know who she will come to be, but don't realize that she has already attained her villaint. After his last battle with Two-Faced in which he was left disabled, branded a murderer in the eyes of the public and lost his beloved Rachel he has become a recluse. He no longer manages his company or fortune and doesn't even attend events held in his name. Since the timid maid (Selina Kyle, aka Cat Woman) seems to be part of a catering group and is not a member of Wayne's staff, I'm not sure why Alfred tells her to take a tray up to Wayne's room. How does he know this strange woman is not a security risk? It seems like lax butlering to me. When she enters Bruce's cavernous, seemingly empty suite, I can't believe she starts poking around. How can she be sure she's not alone? In fact, since she was told that Wayne never leaves his room, she should be sure that she's not alone. Thus, her nosiness seems like great folly to me and I'm shaking my head.
Little did I realize that Selina could not care less if she is caught. She's not a burgeoning criminal, but already a skilled burglar and adept athlete, who easily escapes anyone who apprehends her even, or especially, Bruce Wayne. He comes upon her after she has already broken into his family safe and stolen his mother's pearls. They spar verbally. Since his legs are shattered and he only walks with the support of a cane, he's not much of a match for her physically. She easily escapes, the Wayne pearls encircling her neck.
After she's gone Wayne researches her identity with awe, rather than frustration over the theft, even when he tells Alfred that Selina also stole his fingerprints and he's not sure what nefarious use to which he might put them.
The fascination with Selina brings Wayne out of the shell, not to mention the house, he's been in for 4 years. Pretty soon he's out gathering information and Batman gadgets again. This to Alfred's chagrin. When Wayne finds there's a terrorist, Bane, building an invincible underground army, he warns Wayne that he's not powerful enough to fight him. Yes, he can recover his physical strength, but he does not have the mental will to live. Wayne has only known loss. He's come to expect it. It's become a self-fulfilling prophecy. He thinks that he must fight to the death, but Alfred thinks he should walk away. He doesn't remain tied to Gotham out of loyalty. He does it because he has a death wish and Alfred is tired of watching Wayne's die. This one will have to do it without him.
In one of those Good Will Hunting moments Alfred says that before Wayne returned 8 years ago he'd hoped he'd stay away. When he vacationed in Florence, he always daydreamed about sitting at a cafe and seeing Bruce at another table with a wife and maybe two kids. There Bruce would be basking in sunshine and happiness, things that Gotham can't offer. He'd see Bruce across the cafe and their eyes would lock, but they wouldn't even speak. Alfred would just know that Bruce was happy and leave. Well, I knew what happened when Chuckie painted a similar scenario for Will Hunting, but I didn't quite know where Alfred's statement would lead. I only knew that when Alfred and Bruce argued and then parted, their separation couldn't last.
Of course, the way that Alfred turns Bruce against him harkens back to The Dark Knight. He informs him that Bruce's love, Rachel, left a note saying she chose Harvey Dent (the Two-Faced villain) over Bruce and that Alfred burned it, to spare Bruce's feelings. He tells Bruce this now so that he won't use Rachel's memory as an excuse to stop living. Bruce thinks/hopes Alfred is only lying to manipulate Bruce into doing what he wants. He bids him a final goodbye and, the next day, Bruce wakes up in his mansion all alone. Later he finds he doesn't even have a key to enter the place. He's never needed one before. There was always someone to open the door.
Meanwhile, Bane is beginning to wreak havoc in the city and we meet Blake, a young uniformed cop determined to halt the evil uprising. Unfortunately, his boss, Foley(Matthew Modine) is more concerned with nailing Batman than fighting actual criminals. Sure, Batman was falsely accused of murder, but that was 4 years ago. What has he done to Foley lately? Bane has just entered the Stock Exchange, shot hundreds of people and stolen enough electronic information to clean out everyone's bank account, but when Blake tries to go after him Foley asks, "what's more important, catching a robber or catching Batman?" Huh? At that point, Bane was not a mere robber. He was a mass murderer. In fact, he still had hostages taken from the stock exchange with him. Foley's disinterest has classic seeds. The traditional law enforcement agencies always distrust the Superhero. They feel threatened by him, no doubt jealous of the worship bestowed upon him by the citizenry. The hero not only has to fight evil, but to combat the skepticism of good people. This is common, but it doesn't usually reach the extremes that Foley takes to ignore vicious crimes in his mad chase of the Masked One. At one point, I think he needs to be destroyed as much as Bane does.
As for Bane, he's rather mortal and pedestrian for a comic book villain, a body builder in a gas mask. Aside from his eloquent speeches, he smacks more of reality than imagination. I would have expected it would take someone more otherworldy to bring the creation that is Nolan's Gotham to its knees. However, as an allegory, perhaps the more concrete the evil is, the less likely the story can be dismissed as only fiction.
As Batman races to stop Bane's rampage, in the wake of the Stock Exchange rubble, an older policeman hears his bike approaching before Batman is even in view and he remembers the good old days. He turns to his young partner and says, "You're in for a show, tonight." The youngster helpfully shoots in Bane's direction, while Batman is trailing him. Batman gives him an impassive look and, chagrined, the rookie quickly backs off. 'Oops. Sorry.'
Batman tries to rally the troops against Bane and, basically, chooses Cat Woman as his second in command. For some reason, he thinks she's good at heart. I'm not sure why. All he knows is that she grew up poor. I suppose he feels she's still the needy girl, hungry, rather than greedy. She nurtures this belief by expressing her disdain of the wealthy and privileged, assuring him that she only takes from those who can afford it. Whatever her personal problems, he seems to place his trust in her before they've even come close to being resolved. He tells her to take him to Bane. She does, leading him right into Bane's trap.
With tears falling, she watches from outside a cage as Bane beats Batman to what looks like the death and breaks his back in two, pulls off his mask and tosses it aside, like so much rubbish. Selina then tries to leave Gotham before Bane comes after her. I don't understand Alfred, Selina and all of these people talking as if leaving Gotham will bring safety and protection. Alfred wasn't a recluse for 4 years himself. He kept up with undergound gossip. Like Selina, he knew that Bane's plans spread well beyond a city of $12 million people. He is threatening nuclear disaster that will destroy the world. So, I'm not understanding this "get out of town" mentality. Still, Selina makes a run for the airport, where she's detained by Blake. Bane has Batman. Is he dead, Blake asks. Selina's broken whisper is sincerely moving, "I don't know."
So, back at the ranch Bane has thrown Batman into a pit. The pit faces up to the sky, but no one can climb out of it. So, your despair is always tinged with hope that you can somehow make it up to the sun. The hope makes the misery even sharper. Many men have tried to get out, but only one has succeeded. I'm not sure how they all failed since the walls of the pit are lined with a series of protruding stones that look a lot like those rock climbing walls you see at the wall. With footholds that wide, even I could climb out of the pit. If they're going to pretend like it was such an impossible feat to get out, at least make the walls leading up slick and smooth, not the most easily scalable pit on the planet.
The other prisoners, broken old men, who have all tried to leave many times, rising up to the opening of the pit on a rope, only to come crashing down, battered on the jagged rock walls during descent, tell Bruce about the story of the only prisoner who ever got out. It was a child. The mother was thrown down there pregnant. That's where the baby was born and never knew any other life. Maybe that's why he alone got out. When he trapped Bruce, Bruce tried cutting the electricity to gain an advantage. Bane told him that he, Bane, was born in darkness. He didn't see light until he became a man. As the Batman, Wayne made himself accustomed to the darkness, but that's all Bane ever knew. Darkness was never a detriment for him. It's the light that he finds blinding.
Bruce now understands that Bane must have been the child in the pit. One prisoner says that when a plague hit the prisoners decades ago, acting as a doctor he tried to save Bane, but in doing so, he injured him badly and only having the mask over his face lessens the pain. I'm not sure how a gas mask (as opposed to a nice cushy bandage) helps deaden pain. I'm also not sure what treatment you can give a plague victim that would basically destroy their face. So, as far as an "origin story" goes, I think Bane's is pretty stupid. But whatever.
Anyway, the old men tell Bruce he will never make it because he's not afraid to die. If you have nothing to live for, you won't fight hard enough. Bruce says he's not afraid to die, but he's not going to die there. So, he tries to get up on the rope twice and fails. But then the men tell him that he should go the way the child did, without a rope. Duh? Why didn't they share that bit of info with him to begin with? Seems like passive/aggressive concealment to me. First of all, I've seen staircases more difficult to navigate than that wall, but that's a design problem I shouldn't hold against the plot. While the men might assume it's easier to ascend with a rope than without, since the only one to escape had no rope, why wouldn't any of them give that a try? Once Wayne gets a clue, he skeddadles pretty fast. It's all pretty hokey to me. But the higher he goes, the louder the cheers from the men below get, men who will never escape themselves, spurring him upward. They chant in a foreign voice, but their words mean "Rise! Rise! Rise!" As Wayne reaches the top with that chorus below, I get chills. I can't imagine a more thrilling trail to the movie's title. When Batman makes it out, my thoughts stay with the men who never will. But Bruce doesn't look back at them. He's headed towards Gotham.
Batman and Catwoman hook up. Bane has taken over the city, released all of the prisoners and launched a reign of terror, where the innocent citizens are overrun by the criminals. Batwoman enlists Selina's aid again -- even after the stunt she pulled the last time. She can't believe. How does she know that she doesn't like Gotham this way. Maybe she revels in the anarchy. Whether she does or not, Batman tells her that Bane has a nuclear reactor that's going to go off in a few hours, so it's going to be the end of everything, good and bad, unless she helps him. She concedes and hops into his bat plane. "My mother always told me not to get in the car with strangers," she intones. "This isn't a car," he replies.
Blake is on the ground trying to help the citizens, chief among them the boys from the orphanage that he grew up in. For whatever reason (given that a nuclear bomb is about to explode), he wants to get them on the bridge out of Manhattan, um, Gotham. But the police have been told not to let anyone exit. Blake tells them that the plans have changed. He's one of them. They can trust him. They need to have faith. They say that if keeps coming forward they will shoot him and if he persists further, they will blow up the bridge. Blake tests them. If he was hoping that they would stand down rather than injure a fellow cop, he was wrong. They shoot at him (his vest protects him) and then they blow up the bridge. He is livid, calling them SOBs. The priest caring for the boys is resigned. What would getting off the island would have done? The bomb would still have killed them all, the Father said. What's the difference? The difference is hope. Now, the boys have none, Blake tells him.
And that's a nice tie. Bane wanted to give Batman and the other prisoners hope of escaping to make their agony greater when they couldn't. Bane told Batman that he'd crush every last hope that he had, "Then, you have my permission to die."
Blake, on the other hand, thinks hope is the only thing that makes even certain death bearable. Blake sees no way out, but across town the Gotham police commissioner is about to face an icy death when someone throws a firecracker at his feet. He smiles and gets a phone call. A familiar voice on the other end tells him to light it. When he dies, a string of flame travels across the ice, runs up a building and lights up Gotham's bat signal, a symbol of hope that has long been dark. An incredulous Blake sees it miles away and knows he, the orphans, the world, all still have a chance. Is it believable that Batman would take the time to build a trail to the bat signal during that chaos? Yes, if it was the one thing that was needed to give desperate, frightened people the resolve needed to keep fighting.
In another location, Batman is cornered by Bane, but it turns out that his girlfriend, philanthropist Miranda Tate is the real villain. She was actually the baby born in the pit who managed to escape it. Bane was only a fellow prisoner who helped her. Her father (villain Henri Ducard from Batman Begins) hated Bane because his face was disfigured, but Bane's only crime was showing her love. Bane, a gloating brute up to this point, listens as she recounts her history, tears falling from his eyes. It was because her father left her mother that the pregnant was thrown into the pit where Miranda was born. So, she had always grown up hating the man . . . until Batman killed him. Then, she plotted her revenge in her father's name. She used the very weapon that Bruce Wayne's inventor, Lucius, (Morgan Freeman) built to defend the city to destroy it, by turning it into a nuclear reactor. What's even more ironic is that Bruce himself sold the weapon to her. After Bane's stock market electronic thefts left Bruce broke on paper, he thought that Miranda Tate was the only one left with enough money to preserve his defense projects. He was so grateful for her purchase that they ended up in bed together earlier (which was rather a hasty development for a man fresh out of seclusion and surprising, since I had expected Cat Woman to be his only love interest). Now, he realizes she was the enemy. Bane was just her servant.
She tells Bane she's off to launch the reactor, but warns him not to kill Batman. She wants him to live long enough to see the fire. Once she trots off Bane, wipes away his tears and is like, "You know you're going to die now, don't you? You'll just have to imagine the fire." Hilarious way to end the sentimental mood Miranda's words had created. Breathing payback Batman tells Bane he's going to see his plot demolished first, "Then, you have my permission to die." They battle and Bane is winning when Catwoman bursts in and just blows Bane away with an airy aside to Batman, "You know your position against guns? I'm not sure I feel as strongly about it as you do."
This movie doesn't have the humor that the other two possessed, but there are 4 or 5 moments that evoke deep laughs.
They get to the nuclear reactor and, seconds before it's about to go off, Batman hooks it up to the bat plane and flies it out to the ocean, so that it will detonate under water, hurting no one. His plan works, but an atomic plume goes off over the water, totally engulfing Batman's plane.
He's buried at the Wayne mansion which his will has bequeathed to the orphanage, to house parentless boys forever. An inconsolable Alfred tends the gravesite, blaming himself for having failed Bruce just when he needed him most.
Batman may be gone, but this time the police commissioner makes sure that Gotham will always remember him for the hero he was. A statute is erected in his honor. Blake thinks it small recompense for the price Batman made to save the lives of many who were ungrateful to Batman. He takes off his police badge and, undoubtedly, remembering his stand off with the cops on the bridge, tosses it aside, disillusioned.
He leaves the city with only a back pack. When a woman checks his identification she tells him he should use his first name because she likes it: Robin. We think he is leaving the city, but we find him walking instead towards underground waterfalls. Robin has found the bat cave.
Alfred is at a European side walk cafe. A lone diner, reading the newspaper and sipping coffee. He glances up briefly and something catches his eye. It's Bruce Wayne seated a few tables away, facing Alfred. A pony-tailed woman sits opposite him. When she tosses her head, we see Selina Kyle's profile. Bruce nods at Alfred, slightly lifts his coffee cup in tribute. Alfred tilts his head in answer. Folds his paper. Rises and walks away. He says nothing, so that catch in his throat that I hear as he leaves is only really there in my heart.
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