Image Posts My Favorite Films of 2008
Image has posted my whole list of favorite films from 2008. I'll soon post an expanded commentary here.
And by the way, the 20th anniversary issue of Image journal is now available! Inside: My in-depth conversation with Sam Phillips about the writers who have influenced her life and her songwriting.
Registration for The Glen Workshop 2009 is open!
Come join the fun, the inspiration, the awe...
Anne and I will be visiting the Glen Workshop for the fifth summer in a row. It's our favorite week of the year. We call it a "sneak preview of heaven."
And just look at the list of intriguing special guests who will be teaching workshops...Read more
The Island (Ostrov) (2006)
This review was previously published as an installment of Jeffrey Overstreet's "Through a Screen Darkly" column at Christianity Today.
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A certain hunger sets in after film critics have spent the summer chasing down all of the big-budget action movies and sophomoric comedies.
This summer was no exception. We thrilled to the latest special effects (Iron Man), laughed at flashes of inspired audacity (Tropic Thunder), and threw out the trash (Space Chimps, Fly Me to the Moon, The House Bunny). And we rejoiced over a couple of blockbusters that proved to be unexpectedly meaningful (The Dark Knight and WALL•E).
But between May and August, our big-screen treasure hunt feels more like a search for needles in a field of haystacks. The promise of autumn turns our attention to movies whose names might be inscribed on Oscars instead of on Happy Meal toys. And yet even there, it's a challenge to find films that will last, movies that minister not only to the senses and the intellect but also to the heart.
I just found one of those films, a new favorite that's inspired me more than anything I've seen in months.Read more
It Came Upon a Big Screen Clear: An examination of overlooked, underrated Christmas films
Here's the latest installment in the Through a Screen Darkly series at Christianity Today...
It Came Upon a Big Screen Clear
Holiday movies don't often depict the real Christmas story, but when they do, it's a light shining in the darkness.
The Tale of Despereaux (2008)
This review was originally published at Christianity Today.
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Kate DiCamillo's book The Tale of Despereaux is an enchanting story about a mouse with the heart of a hero. Already considered a classic, this Newberry Award winner is a favorite of families and children's librarians everywhere.
And now The Tale of Despereaux — or something vaguely resembling it — is a movie. Director Sam Fell is no stranger to rodents; he directed Dreamworks' Flushed Away. But where Flushed was a cartoon caper, Despereaux is a poetic work of children's literature that deserves a place alongside such classics as Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, White's Charlotte's Web, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Fell and his co-director Rob Stevenhagen respect their source enough to illustrate it with lush and extravagant animation. Newcomers accustomed to frantic, frivolous, disposable family fare are likely to be surprised and enthralled.
But what about DiCamillo's fans? Is this Tale what they've dreamed of seeing on the big screen?
Not exactly. This is more like Despereaux on Steroids—a sprawling, complicated, schizophrenic tale that may be the strangest family film since Babe: Pig in the City.
It's a simple story: Despereaux is born an eccentric mouse with enormous ears. Breaking the rules that all good mice follow — Cower! Scurry! Be afraid!—he follows his super-sized heart right up into the palace, where the beautiful Princess Pea, lonely and sad, is trapped in the gloom brought on by the loss of her mother, who died of shock when she found a rat in her soup. Smitten by this broken-hearted beauty, Despereaux's inner White Knight awakens. He vows to honor and serve the princess.
But fraternizing with humans brings a harsh judgment: Despereaux's fellow mice sentence him to hard time in "Ratworld," a festering underworld where the hateful rats—exiled for scaring the queen to death—are plotting and conspiring.
Meanwhile, one of the princess's servant girls — the unfortunately named Miggery Sow — is cooking up hatred of her own, jealous of the princess's glory. And before you know it, Princess Pea is a damsel in distress, and it's up to Despereaux to save the day and reconcile the Kingdom of Dor with Roscuro the rat—the rodent who accidentally fell into the soup and changed the course of history.
Most of this narrative has made it to the screen intact, illustrated with astonishing artistry that feels like a different art form than the three-dimensional razzle-dazzle of Pixar. Where Disney's style is crisp and shiny, Framestore Feature Animation makes us feel we've gone to the Louvre and walked right into paintings by Vermeer or Brueghel, scenes of breathtaking subtlety and texture.
(And by the way, if anybody tells you that Despereaux steals from Pixar's Ratatouille, they're wrong. This story's been around since long before Remy ever ventured into the kitchen. But isn't it a fascinating coincidence that the villains in both pictures are fashioned to resemble Nosferatu?)
Despereaux's characters are uniquely memorable, and enlivened by a perfect cast. Dustin Hoffman makes Roscuro the Rat both pathetic and sym-pathetic. Ciarán Hinds brings out the malevolent beast in Botticelli. Emma Watson (Hermione in the Harry Potter films) is enchanting as the delicate beauty Princess Pea. Among the many fine talents, Richard Jenkins stands out as the Principal of Despereaux's school, and Tracey Ullman makes the strongest impression of all, playing the disconsolate pig herder Miggery Sow.
Voiced by Matthew Broderick, Despereaux himself has youthful charm and panache to spare. He's the perfect choice to play this miniature champion.
And what a charming champion he is. Few animated characters rival Baby Despereaux's cuteness factor. The scenes of his education in just how mice should cower before all the things that should scare them are some of the film's most hilarious and delightful sequences.
But he's not exactly the Despereaux of the book. That impetuous spark of a character has become something almost brash, a laughing, leaping swashbuckler. In the book, his love for music awakens him to the beauty of Princess Pea's human world; in the movie, he seems to have lost all interest in the "honey" of the king's melancholy guitar.
But two of Despereaux's most important characteristics—courage and his chivalry—are here in vivid color. With his belt of red thread and his sewing-needle sword, he's a knight worthy of Arthur's Round Table, as gallant as any big screen hero we've seen in Narnia or Middle Earth. DiCamillo's book began with his unforgettable entrance, and readers fell in love, ready to follow him anywhere.
Unfortunately, the filmmakers weren't entirely faithful to the original story. They introduce a kind of magic to the Kingdom of Dor that's nowhere to be found in the book. A bizarre new character made entirely of vegetables, "Boldo the Italian Soup Genie," is likely to have DiCamillo's fans scratching their heads—though the author herself was allegedly part of the filmmaking process from beginning to end, according to writer/producer Gary Ross. The Genie, inspired by the paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, may seem like an unwelcome party-crasher who distracts us from Despereaux. He's sprouted from another magic kingdom altogether.
Alas, Despereaux's become just one character on a very crowded stage. The movie might as well have been called The Tale of Roscuro. It feels more like a movie about a troubled kingdom and the redemption of a fallen rat, than it does about a mouse who shows the world what courage and nobility are all about.
What went wrong? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Sylvain Chomet, director of The Triplets of Belleville, was helming this project till he was fired two years ago. Perhaps his surrealist tendencies explain some of the film's outlandish departures from the novel; the bizarre Soup Genie, for one, was Chomet's invention. Those surreal elements seem to be from a different movie than the scenes of conventional, action-movie set pieces. (How many chase scenes through the castle do we need? How many battles in a rat-packed Colosseum? I half-expected Despereaux, when fighting a nasty feline in the ring, to turn and shout Russell Crowe-style, "Are you entertained?!")
Thus, in the parlance of soup making, there's a lesson here: There were too many cooks in the Dorian kitchens. They overstuffed the soup pot, and overcooked the soup. Competing storylines have made this a jumbled storybook, drawing our attention away from that delicate, central thread about Despereaux's ministry to the broken and the botched.
That's too bad, because the elements of DiCamillo's book that the filmmakers did preserve should have been plenty for a thoughtful film. "What happens when you make something illegal that is just a natural part of the world?" asks narrator Sigourney Weaver. What a provocative question. What happens when people repress, censor, or outlaw good things—like flavor, colors, pleasure, and imagination—for fear of the consequences? The answer is obvious: People will suffer until someone comes along to show them the way.
Thus, it isn't hard to find glimmering strands of what C. S. Lewis called "the myth that was also the truth." Into this broken Mouseworld, a hero is born. He seems to be lowly, meek, and humble. But he can read a higher language. He's tuned in to a heavenly music. He has eternity written in his heart. He will show his fellow mice how to rise up and be what they were meant to be. He will descend into darkness, bringing hope for salvation to those prisoners who long for the light.
So it is a little disconcerting when the narrator dips a ladle into the rich bouillabaisse and draws out a revelation that is altogether tasteless. She solemnly observes that a simple misunderstanding can lead to all kinds of trouble, and we nod in agreement. But then she suggests that all of this disrepair can be redeemed by the power of … good luck??
What does luck have to do with anything? Didn't we just see a story about courage, chivalry, imagination, forgiveness, and grace?
I'm sorry, Good Narrator, but The Tale of Despereaux has much grander blessings than Good Luck on its mind. If ever there was an occasion for the word "Grace" or "Providence," this was it.
We may now never see the movie that captures the delicate grace of DiCamillo's wonderful story. It's as though a simple, elegant model has been taken to pieces and reinvented into something wild, startling, and strange.
Don't get me wrong: The Tale of Despereaux on Steroids is still a delightful, entertaining time at the movies. But reader, you are encouraged — nay, exhorted — to first seek out The Tale of Despereaux in your local bookstore. This treasure of a character deserves the same respect we show to the heroes of Stuart Little, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, The Rescuers, and The Mouse and the Motorcycle — all inductees into the Mighty Mouse Hall of Fame.
And to all a good night.
A Christmas Carol
by G.K. Chesterton
The Christ-child lay on Mary's lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary were the world,
But here is all aright.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary's breast
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary's heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world's desire.)
The Christ-child stood on Mary's knee,
His hair was like a crown,
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.
Dancer in the Dark (2000)
[This two-film review was originally titled "Portraits of Suffering."]
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High-Risk Heroines
Dancer in the Dark is only playing at arthouse theatres in the U.S. and will quickly disappear, unless the Oscars recognize Bjork's performance, as they did for Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves a few years back. But both films will be talked about and written about among film critics and avid moviegoers for decades to come.
I'll be right there, most likely, continuing to discuss them. Both films impressed me very much. And both troubled me very much.
First, let me join the chorus that praises Bjork for her marvelous performance in Dancer in the Dark. Few big screen performances have ever compelled my attention and convinced me so completely. And kudos as well to her supporting cast. David Morse is intense and fearsome as the policeman. Peter Stormare is funny and sympathetic as the simple, affectionate Jeff.
Guiding this talented cast, director Lars Von Trier shows again that he is a genius of employing digital cameras in order to bring the audience up close into the scenes, so that they are so immediate it is hard to look away. And then he edits them with energy and brilliance.
But there is a more important issue to discuss than the film's technical ingenuity.
Powerful arguments have been made that Dancer in the Dark is a great film. And powerful arguments have been made that it is reprehensible. It is a similar development to what followed Breaking the Waves, Lars Von Trier's other film about a suffering woman. No doubt the debate will go on and on, and you are likely to disagree with my view. It's a difficult issue.
Yes, unarguably these films provoke powerful emotions from audiences. But are these films works of profound, lasting art? Or are they merely demonstrations of emotional manipulation?
I will admit that I was moved to tears by Dancer in the Dark, just as I was similarly moved by Breaking the Waves. But a few hours after leaving the theatre, I realized that I was not thinking much about the story the movie told. I was thinking about how awful it made me feel, how the director had achieved such a visceral response in his audience, and how effectively the actors had done their jobs. I was also thinking about similarities between the two heroines.
Lars Von Trier is very interested in simple-minded, good people. Like a great painter, he seems to be working on a series, like Van Gogh with the sunflowers... different angles on a similar theme. That theme could be described like this: The oppression of the simple and the innocent by the powerful and controlling. It is a universal theme, and surely one worth examining.
Naturally, we find some affection for these characters. Like Forrest Gump, Emily Watson's Bess and Bjork's Selma are admirable for their goodness, even if it does come from naiveté. And, like Gump, they win our pity for their unfortunate mental shortcomings. Thus, we are set up to feel for them when bad things happen to them. And we marvel when they smile in the face of trials, because we could never do that. Their childlikeness is something to learn from. Even Jesus emphasized that to endure life's trials we needed to come "as a child" in faith.
The Trials of Bess in Breaking the Waves
In Breaking the Waves, the central character, Bess (Emily Watson) is a few cards short of a full deck. Her love for her husband Jan is so obsessive that she literally will, and does, do anything and everything for him. Jan goes off for a long time to work on an oil rig. Bess misses him so much that she prays God will send Jan home. In a tragic accident, Jan ends up back home in the hospital. Is God answering her prayer with anger and cruetly? Or is this merely how she interprets things? It is unclear.
It gets worse. Suffering delusions, Jan starts speaking in ways that show he is not himself. While in this state, he asks Bess to go and prostitute herself with other men. It will make him happy. The whole situation seems rigged to punish Bess's loving heart. Naive to the point of being mentally handicapped, Bess is incapable of reasoning that this is unfair. Although fearful, she does as he asks... because she loves him.
For the next hour and a half, the audience is forced to watch this girlish, cherubic, funny young woman pressured into sexual misbehavior with other men. To make matters even worse, her constant conversations with God bring her no mercy, at least not until the audience is nauseous with watching her "sacrifices."
When the bells ring out at the end of that film, some audience members hear a note of grace and mercy; surely, that is what the bells represent. But are they merely a flourish of Bess's delusion? Or do they suggest some kind of redemption?
Breaking the Waves won big honors at the Cannes Film Festival and went on to critical acclaim around the world. Von Trier worked on a television series and another movie, and then came Dancer in the Dark.
The Trials of Dancer in the Dark's Dancing Girl
In Dancer in the Dark, Von Trier introduces Selma, a kind, gentle, imaginative woman who works in a factory and is losing her eyesight. First, we like her for her sprightly personality; second, we like her for her impressive daydreaming, fantasies in which her world turns into a gung-ho musical. When we're in her head, we have a grand time, singing, dancing, dazzled by the music. So what if she slightly confuses her dreams and her real world? Like Bess, she's adorable, delightful, and engaging.
And she is played with astonishing energy by Bjork (first-time actress, full-time rock singer). Bjork is so convincing, we feel as though we are watching a candid-camera documentary. (This same effect was achieved, just as powerfully, in Breaking the Waves.)
Soon, the unbearably cruel "real world" comes crashing in. Selma is failing at her job as her eyesight dims. She will have to drop out of the town production of The Sound of Music, even though rehearsals are well underway. This is bad.
It gets worse. Her son, whom she loves dearly, is destined to lose his eyesight as well if Selma doesn't raise enough money for his operation. The two of them live in poverty in a trailer that sits in their landlord's backyard. When it's time to pay the rent, Selma is always on time, in spite of what is costs her; she doesn't even have enough money to buy her son a birthday present.
It gets far worse even than that. Someone is trying to get at what money Selma has been able to collect for the operation. Before you know it, there has been a struggle, and Selma is responsible for killing somebody in self defense. Now the law is after her. With her eyesight failing completely, she is plunging headlong into a flight, a nightmarish courtroom drama, and a far more harrowing conclusion than any other you will see in theatres this year.
Making People Cry... and Cry...
Many will defend Dancer in the Dark, saying they were moved by Selma and her sacrifice. Many were moved by the martyrdom of Bess in Breaking the Waves as well. Some will poo-poo the holes in the plot and compare Lars Von Trier's movies to opera, a work of pure emotion.
I won't argue. I was devastated by these films. The actors were all superb. The camerawork was innovative and engaging. The stories portrayed definite good and definite evil, and glorified good in the end (at least by saying that virtue is honorable). Plot holes didn't bother me much, as plot didn't seem to be the focus.
What bothers me, in both films, is this: It is the easiest thing in the world to do... move people by destroying something beautiful.
Recently I was flipping through various TV channels and stopped, shocked to the edge of my seat, by ESPN. The sports channel was showing a replay of a baseball moment, where a pitcher threw a pitch and his arm bone snapped. Ouch. I nearly became sick seeing it. But then, something very strange happened. The program showed it again, in slow motion. And again. And again, from other angles. Close-ups on the man's face as he cried out in agony. And again. I couldn't bear it. But I couldn't turn away. I couldn't change the channel. They had me, hook, line, and sinker. They knew I would keep watching, desperate for them to give me relief, an answer. They knew I would wait until I saw why they were doing this to me.
Suffering sells. Programs are on the increase that merely string together footage of terrible accidents. Often, when a real-life tragedy occurs, you can watch the prime-time news programs trying to outdo each other with raw, emotional broadcasts about the damage done. A student shoots people at a school. Right away, networks air hour-long programs featuring the family members of the victims as they weep for the camera and cry "Why? Why? Why?" Soon, prime time specials feature interviews with relatives and friends, lasting just long enough to show them breaking down once again. These programs never fail to move me, as it is so easy to feel sorry for victims and to wish you could help them. But there is also that bitter taste left in the mouth, because the networks are putting this show on the air to get ratings.
In short, what these news shows provide is emotional pornography: Gratuitous emotion, removed from its appropriate context, robbed of respect and meaning, just as pornography accentuates carnal sex outside of a meaningful, beautiful context. There is no respect shown for these people and the importance of private moments in traumatic circumstances. The reporters use the grief of the victims for their own gain. Did we really need to see all this misery? Do the directors think we are so insensitive that we need to be shown tears in order to shed any?
That is the feeling I get after Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark. There has not been enough storytelling. There has not been enough interest in what good comes of these sacrifices. There has been instead a powerful man building something we like and then slowly, painstakingly, destroying it before our eyes.
The Pain, the Whole Pain, and Nothing But the Pain
Lars Von Trier knows his audiences will be moved by graphic suffering. Especially if it's a woman that is suffering. Especially if that woman is naive, and doesn't understand what is about to happen to her. The camerawork has that "home-movie"quality, which gives us this unnerving feeling that, hey, shouldn't that cameraman put down the camera and HELP THIS WOMAN? Like the woman alone in the house in a horror movie, she has our full attention, because WE know what terrible things might happen, but she doesn't.
Suffering works. That's why even a non-religious person may weep at a Passion Play. We weep when a person suffers unjustly. But the Passion Play offers more than this: it offers stories of that person loving others, doing good, speaking truth, etc. And then there is resurrection. Relief. Hope. Meaning.
Yes, there is evidence that God honors righteousness at the end of Breaking the Waves. But regardless of whether God's mercy on Bess moves you at the end of the film, ask yourself: Has Lars Von Trier shown mercy to you? What is the purpose of showing the audience so much of Bess's suffering? Does he really think we'll miss the point? Could he not have come to the same conclusions about Bess's goodness without subjecting the audience to so much of her humiliation?
In Dancer in the Dark, Von Trier shows more restraint, although the final half hour is extremely difficult to stomach. It would have been a stronger film if he had fleshed out more of the supporting characters, filled in more of the gaps, instead of dwelling on the misery so much.
In my opinion, Von Trier goes much too far in Breaking the Waves. He takes advantage of his talents and uses them to drag us through the mud, so we come away reeling, unable to shake the images, unable to think. It is as though he does not trust us to think, so he must hammer the lessons home, like an abusive parent teaching his children with shouting and violence. He shies away from chapters that might fill in important gaps in the story, and focuses on the hours of doom.
(This year's Palme d'Or winner at Cannes, Rosetta, is a fine example of communicating just as clearly the sufferings of a heroine while at the same time exercising restraint. I recommend you view that film if you want to compare and contrast the differing levels of restraint.)
Again, I want to emphasize that I do not think these stories are without merit. Christ-figure stories are important stories. They remind us of the importance of love even in the face of oppression, even "unto death." But I fear that if Lars Von Trier were to make a movie of the life of Christ, three-fourths of it would be the gory details of the crucifixion, and we would miss so many important chapters. I shudder to think what he would have put Forrest Gump through.
In Beth's passion, we see her grinning at the wedding and murmuring to God, but most of all, we see her humiliation. In Selma's Passion, the story is not much more than a setup. All we really know about her is that she can daydream very powerfully, and that she loves her son. There are glimmers of hope in the story, yes. Maybe Selma's money will save her son after all. Maybe her sacrifice will be someday be understood. But we don't get to see any of that, to learn what her sufferings bring about in the end. We only get to see her slide downward into darkness, until she is left groping for the fantasy-life that gives her some relief. As in Neil Labute's Nurse Betty earlier this year, it seems the only way an endangered woman can cope with trials is to escape into a false world.
This false world does nothing to stop the encroaching doom, but it does provide the audience with a few moments of relief from the inevitable apocalypse. They're like commercial breaks during the newscast after a bloody tragedy.
Maybe that's what Von Trier is saying with these films. A prayer life like Bess's in Breaking the Waves, or an obsession with musicals like Selma's in Dancer in the Dark, or... in our case... movies themselves: these are the moments of delusion that we dearly love because they allow us to escape the hard reality of life. If that is what Von Trier is saying, again, what a lousy thing to do to an audience for two or three hours.
If these films continue to enjoy the kind of critical acclaim they are currently winning, imagine what might happen. If more and more aspiring directors are impressed by Von Trier and appreciate what these films do to audiences, we will have a lot of hours of suffering in theatres to look forward to. Storytelling, subtlety... these make vital art. Pounding an audience emotionally to make them sit up and notice... that can do more damage than good.
Now, imagine what might happen if someone as talented as Von Trier wanted their audience to experience joy? Or enlightenment? Or laughter? Or healing?
What might moviegoing be like then?
The Departed (2006)
[This is an expanded version of a review <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/octoberweb-only/061012.html">originally published at <i>Christianity Today</i></a>.]
You might be a cop. You might be an undercover agent. You might be a crime kingpin, or a sexy psychiatrist. No matter who you are, it's like the Bob Dylan song says... "You gotta serve somebody."
In The Departed, Martin Scorsese's hyper-violent remake of the Honk Kong crime classic Infernal Affairs, everybody has secrets, agendas, and a willingness to pull the trigger. And underneath their carefully composed disguises, all of them are devoted to the service of somebody-either a criminal, a cop, the cause of justice, their family's honor, or their own selfish hearts.
And God? Well, one of the villains served as an altar boy, but he's left faith far behind. And it's easy to see why: there's little evidence of God in these streets. Does the Almighty even care about the plight of the righteous man in this town anymore?
The question remains unspoken, almost cynical. As Scorsese explores the mean streets of South Boston, he doesn't find much in the way of spiritual inquiry. Instead, he finds the cops at war with an organized crime operation run by ruthless Irish-American thugs. And the farther he takes us into this conflict, the more we realize that both sides are thoroughly corrupt. Undercover operative Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is struggling to maintain his integrity as he works his way into the inner circle of crime kingpin Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). He comes from a family with a sin-smudged history, and he wants to be the exception. But the closer he gets, the more he must involve himself in reprehensible deeds, and his hopes of redemption grow bleaker with every step.
Meanwhile, one of Costello's fellow conspirators, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) has crept up in the ranks of the Boston police to become a prominent investigator. And once he's there, he's cocky enough to wrestle with old-timers like Captain Ellerby of the Special Investigation Unit (Alec Baldwin, in a role that's almost self-parody).
It's hard to find someone worthy of our admiration or sympathy in this fight. Attack a bad guy, and he might turn out to be an undercover cop. Trust a good guy, he might turn out to be a villain. How's a guy supposed to know if he's a "good guy" or not? And if he makes a mighty sacrifice for the cause of justice, it might not make any observable difference-in fact, it might only make things worse.
And when Sullivan discovers that there's an equal and opposite bit of stealth going on in Costello's team, the game is afoot. Which mole will expose the other? Whose cover will be blown? It's hard to guess, but we know one thing: it's going to end in blood.
It's not Shakespeare, but it is a fantastically entertaining crime thriller, crackling with energy from beginning to end. The Departed is a film of superior craftsmanship, with dialogue as jarring and relentless as the gunfire, cinematography that takes us on a tour of a shadowy underworld, editing that winds up the tension to almost unbearable levels, and some of the year's most compelling performances.
As Costigan, DiCaprio delivers his most impressive performance since his legend-making turn in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? He's matched pace for pace by Damon, who continues his unbroken string of impressive performances. Mark Wahlberg, in a supporting role, manages to make an equally memorable impression. With so many talented actors working at the top of their game, Scorsese ends up with the most compelling drama he's made since 1995's Casino.
But the film falls short of greatness on several counts. First, Jack Nicholson's outrageous over-acting becomes a distraction. What could have been character development looks more like Oscar-begging; what could have been a complex and fascinating study of the criminal mind is instead, well ... Jack.
Second, the film's only prominent female character — a sophisticated psychiatrist named Madolyn (Vera Farmiga) - is implausibly reckless and unprofessional. The film celebrates her lamentable errors in judgment as she tumbles into bed with two of her troubled patients. While Farmiga is a charming screen presence, her character is the film's weakest link.
And finally, Scorsese fails to give sufficient attention to the most admirable character of the bunch. Martin Sheen plays Oliver Queenan, the chief of the Boston Police Department, and a Catholic. In the film's spectrum of characters caught in varying compromises, he represents the film's most upright and principled man. And yet, Queenan is all but ignored, so minor that reviews in The New York Times and The New Yorker don't even mention him. He gets lost in the chaos of bullets and double-crossings.
It's a shame that Scorsese, in expanding on Infernal Affairs, is so much more interested in embellishing his characters' sordid behavior than he is in examining marks of virtue and principle. The film that inspired him was so much leaner, and directors Andy Lau and Alan Mak kept us focused on the two principal characters. It feels like Scorsese's a bit giddy with the excitement of finding wickedness under every rock, and while that makes for a bigger, more involving film, it doesn't lend any greater resonance to the central narrative.
This may cause concern for anyone anticipating his next film — an adaptation of Shusaku Endo's Silence, that magnificent and harrowing novel about a Christian missionary whose faith is put to the test. The project gives Scorsese the richest, most profound source material he's ever had to work with. Let's hope that he finds himself more inspired by the passion of the missionary than by the malevolence of the devils who try to discourage him.
The Devil Came on Horseback (2007)
A review by Jeffrey Overstreet
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Directed by Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern
Directors of photography - Jerry Risius, Phil Cox, Tim Hetherington, William Rexer II, Anne Sundberg and John Keith Wasson
Editor - Joey Grossfield
Music - Paul Brill
Producer - Anne Sundberg, Ricki Stern, Gretchen Wallace, Jane Wells, Ira Lechner, and Eileen Haag and Cristina Ljungberg
International Film Circuit. 85 minutes. This film is not rated.
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We've seen a lot of American heroes saunter across the big screen with their shotguns in hand. But if you want to be truly inspired by a real-world hero whose camera is more powerful than any firearm, watch The Devil Came On Horseback.
And then join the struggle, because this clash of good versus evil is still going on, even as you read this.
Accustomed to carrying weapons, former U.S. Marine Captain Brian Steidle felt rather useless, pointing and shooting with his camera while shocking violence played out before his eyes. Steidle patrolled the African country of Sudan in 2006, and he captured essential evidence about what is happening there. It's genocide, carried out in broad daylight, against men, women, and children, while the world does nothing to stop it.
What Steidle witnessed there - no human being should have to see such horrors. And yet, Steidle is on a mission to wake up the world's conscience. He wants to startle us into action. So he fills this movie with images that will be hard for you to forget.
We watch as African natives are slaughtered by the Janjaweed barbarians. And we cringe as he learns how the Arab-dominated Sudanese government is funding and supporting these killers. Most of us know that the U.S. has declared the atrocities against the Africans as fitting the textbook definition of genocide. But Steidle makes it clear that this situation will not be resolved by declarations, or protests... or documentaries for that matter.
Exposing evidence no one else could seize, he hopes his vivid photographs will inspire us to rise up and demand action. He wants our government, and others, to reach out and stop this holocaust before it is too late.
His experiences are hard to believe. He shows us the pictures of unbelievable carnage, the aerial views of the villages as they are being looted and burned, and zoom-lens shots of the butchers moving on in their trucks. We are making eye contact with the killers. The truck is bristling with rifles like spines on a porcupine.
For some, the film will seem to focus too much on Steidle's personal experience. Director Rickie Stern explained to the audience at the City of the Angels Film Festival that Steidle had to be persuaded to become a focus. Stern believed, and rightly so, that the story would be more immediate and affecting if we got to know Steidle. If we travel with him into the territory, and participate in his dawning realization of what was happening, we will share in his intensifying zeal to get involved and to change things.
The images take their toll. After the screening, I felt like I'd been run over by a truck. It's hard to know what to do with a surge of desire to make things right. Send money? Write letters? The answer is... yes.
But the answer has to be more than that.
It must involve prayer.
It must involve educating family, friends, and especially children... so they know how to make a difference over the long term. As Frederick Buechner has written, "If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces." Steidle takes us into the experience of the Sudanese people. It is a terrible place to be. But Christ dwells in places like this, and to serve him we must follow him.
Distant (2004)
A review by Jeffrey Overstreet, originally published in The Other Journal, April 2005.
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Writer, producer, director, director of photography - Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
Editor - Eyhan Ergursel and Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
Art director - Erbu Ceylan.
Released by New Yorker Films.
110 minutes. Unrated. In Turkish, with English subtitles.
STARRING: Muzaffer Ozdemir (Mahmut), Mehmet Emin Toprak (Yusef), Zuhal Gencer Erkaya (Nazan), Nazan Kirilmis (Lover), Feridun Koc (Janitor), Fatma Ceylan (Mother) and Ebru Ceylan (Young Girl).
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There's a scene in Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's film Distant that most moviegoers will relate to. At the end of a long day, a man slumps onto his comfy chair and turns on a movie. It's a slow-moving, challenging art film by Andrei Tarkovsky (cinephiles will recognize it as Stalker). The man watches it for awhile, then loses patience and puts in a porn flick.
Okay, most moviegoers probably wouldn't stick in a porn movie. But it's likely that all of us, at one time or another, feel that impatience, that shortage of attention and energy to invest ourselves in fine art when we'd really rather just be entertained. Perhaps we'd switch to Late Night with David Letterman, or a video game, or the news ... something fast-moving, flashy, easy-to-read.
For Ceylan's central character, Mahmut (played with brusque indifference by Muzaffer Ozdemir), this is not just an occasional incident. It's more like a disease gaining power over someone who was once intellectual, engaged, and alive. And Ceylan seems to suggest that this condition is tied to the spread of Western Civilization and its technology and economy.
Distant is set in present-day Istanbul, where it follows the decline of an intellectual and an artist into laziness, apathy, and an insulated existence that is disrupted by the arrival of his unemployed cousin. The film is full of insight, breathtaking cinematography, intuitive performances, brilliant sound design, and unconventional narrative twists. But, like the central character himself, moviegoers are likely to steer clear of this film because it asks us to do the opposite of what most of us want to do when we watch a movie... it asks us to think things through. Those willing to meet the challenges of Ceylan's masterful work, however, will be rewarded with an unforgettable experience. It's not the kind of movie that you leave the theatre raving about or getting back in line for a second viewing. It's the kind that haunts you, and many days later you may find yourself unable to shake questions about it, so that eventually you're drawn back for another exploration of its spacious silences, its mysteries, and its confounding characters.
The thing about Mahmut-he appreciates fine art. In fact, he's gained some status and renown as an art photographer. So how has it come to this... that, to avoid embarrassment, he only engages in it when others are looking on?
The answer, it seems, has something to do with leisure. And leisure has come from the success of his commercial photography. Mahmut is stuck in the doldrums of distraction. The reputation he earned in days of inspiration has won him a circle of intellectual friends, and while he's still up for some heated debate over drinks with them, he grows irritable when they speak up about his decline into mere commercial photography. His passion for artmaking has been replaced by a stagnation brought on, it seems, by consumerism. The instant gratification now available to him through media and technology seems to have short-circuited his more resilient, questing spirit. Instead of embarking on artistic investigations, he merely satiates shallow appetites with cheap sex and superficial pleasures. He keeps to himself, except when desire drives him to intimacy in the form of a business transaction. We see him sitting on the edge of his bed, his heart a blank, as an out-of-focus hooker rises and leaves. Surprised at his desk by his houseguest, he quickly adjusts his computer monitor, probably to conceal a certain sort of Web surfing.
But it's not mere laziness that's paralyzed him. There's also been a trauma-his slow realization that he bears some responsibility for the collapse of his marriage. In one scene, he follows his wife, clearly desperate and dismayed at the way she's slipping from his life, but he seems paralyzed to do anything about it. He watches her through barriers, a world of glass and reflections, easily within shouting distance but made to look half a world away. Lady Macbeth washed her hands obsessively, unable to wash murder off her conscience; unable to face his own withdrawal from engagement with the world and from the marriage he now misses, Mahmut tidies his apartment methodically. Something as small and disorderly as a mouse in the apartment becomes a threat to his sanity.
Mahmut's houseguest is having his own problem with engaging the culture around him, but not for lack of trying. Purposeful and anxious, Mahmut's burly cousin Yusuf (Mehmet Demin Toprak) has come to the big city from the country, looking for work in the shipyards after his factory closed down. Undaunted by the lack of advertised openings, he spends his days lurking sullenly around the snow-smudged piers, more than willing to strike up conversations with complete strangers. While Mahmut has no patience for movies in which travelers ride trains and watch the countryside roll by, Yusuf lives out that very scene, riding the bus and scanning the landscape for an opportunity. He may be slovenly and brutish, but he's interested in female companionship, drawn by a yearning that's more innocent and substantial than lust.
Will Yusuf get a chance to talk to the woman he's spotted on the street? Will there be an opening for relationship, for work, for the money he desperately needs so he can bring it back home? Or will Mahmut, fed up with the chaos that Yusuf leaves in his wake, lose patience with him and evict him?
Most American directors would have made these unfriendly housemates the subject of slapstick comedy, playing up their intolerance for each other's habits. In a sentimental climax, they would suddenly recognize their weaknesses, reconcile, and live happily ever. There would be a lot of sarcastic sparring, perhaps competition for a woman. In Distant, Mahmut and Yusuf say very little to each other; in fact, they hardly speak at all. They're brought together only in a few uncomfortable clashes-when Mahmut's obsessive mouse-trapping finally catches something (a scene that starkly contrasts their characters), when Yusuf gets an upsetting phone call, and when Mahmut loses something important to him. Ceylan isn't interested in playing to audience expectations, nor is he interested in helping these lost souls get found. He's interested in their disillusionment, their detachment, their differing despondency. He's asking us a question: What is this alienation creeping into my once-passionate existence?
The conclusion may, in fact, confound and frustrate viewers accustomed to resolution. If there is any closure in Distant, it is to be found in the smallest of gestures, a willingness to partake in something previously despised, an appreciation of something only after it has passed, one man's willful taste of something from the other's world. Perhaps repeated viewings will reveal further resolution in Distant's enigmatic final shot. That's the value of a work like this-it is the kind of art with which you develop a dynamic relationship, something you digest and by which you are nourished, not something you merely consume.
There is a rare quality to Distant that moviegoers only learn to recognize with practice-a sense that the storyteller is searching for something instead of trying to appease the audience or persuade them of something. It's the poetic sensibility that characterizes the timeless masterpieces of works by Tarkovsky, Ozu, Bresson, and Dreyer. Ceylan's camerawork echoes Bergman in the precision of its positioning, and it moves only when absolutely necessary to bring more essential information into the frame; thus, everything is imbued with severe significance. Here's one of those rare directors who understands that cinema is primarily a visual medium, and that he can communicate just as much or more with images than with revealing banter.
We are often placed at intersections, where we see not only the large room Mahmut has to himself, but an adjoining corridor that only adds to his distance from other activity and life.
The film's most memorable image consists of Yusuf walking along the shipyards, and the camera keeps pace, slowly revealing the object of Yusuf's focused attention in the background: a tilting, grounded ship like the hulking carcass of some prehistoric monster, something of an era long past. It's the most awe-inspiring, frightening, and strangely beautiful image this moviegoer saw onscreen all year. The other memorably riveting image is simple: a small animal, trapped, distraught. Both of these images pose the question: What does this have to do with Mahmut and Yusuf?
Ceylan also recalls Krzysztof Kieslowksi in that he has an inclination to ethical inquiries, which he accomplishes through subtle juxtapositions, like the sight of Mahmut setting up his cameras dispassionately in order to photograph Muslims intently worshipping in one of Istanbul's mosques, or the clever shifts between Yusuf's questing and Mahmut's stasis. He's fond of dividing the frame with the edge of a doorway or a window, so that we can see Mahmut floundering at his desk while Yusuf stares numbly out at the frigid cityscape on the balcony. Each instance of these contrasts is a question: What do they have in common? What is different about them? Is there hope for either of them? Will they ever connect?
But that sense of searching also comes from Ceylan's tendency toward autobiography. Screenplay, direction, production, camerawork, editing-this is his work. Mahmut's apartment is, in fact, Ceylan's apartment. Earlier titles-The Small Town (1997), Clouds of May (2000)-received less notice and, thus, less acclaim. But he has revealed that these were based largely on his own experiences, and, in fact, he starred in The Small Town with his parents and cousin. It's almost as if, by serving up distorted reflections of his own emotional territory, he has a chance as a voyeur to try and understand it himself. By distancing himself from it, perhaps he'll gain the insight he desires.
Thanks to the film's success at Cannes-it won the Grand Jury Prize and Best Actor awards for both Muzaffer Ozdemir and Mehmet Demin Toprak-the film played on screens in various U.S. cities this year, and now New Yorker Films is distributing Distant on DVD. Whether Ceylan's cinematic search satisfies him or not, he is gaining a larger and appreciative audience that awaits his next work with great anticipation.
A colleague of mine excitedly offered another interpretation of the film's title: Ceylan refuses to serve these characters up to us; he makes us come to them, and only the inquisitive and dedicated viewer who makes the effort to investigate and care about these men and their subterranean dilemmas will stand a chance of catching the gold rushing by in the stream of ponderous imagery. In this way, Ceylan both exposes a problem, implicates himself and us in that problem, and offers a route for addressing it. The world is cold, forbidding, lonely, and full of temptations that could draw us off the best path. But those who choose this less-traveled way of watching a movie, which requires discipline, desire, and some measure of selflessness, for them it will make all the difference.