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Reviews
Another Country (1984)
disappointing lack of insight
Why did this one Guy Burgess, of the multitudes (according to the movie) who engaged in gay sex at prep school, end up betraying his country and class to the Stalinist soviets, and why should we care? You'll never learn from this movie. As best I can tell from it, Burgess cared nothing about the rights of the working classes, and had no particular issues with the extreme privileges of the oligarchy in England. Homosexuality certainly wouldn't have stood in his way if he had been more discreet. In fact he seems to have ratted out of a fit of pique over being outmanoeuvred in the competition for the most privileged rank.
I saw no reason to admire the Burgess character. The villain Fowler was only guilty of petty stiff-neckedness, as far as I could see, Judd was perhaps admirable, but flat, and in fact the most interesting character was Barclay, the reasonable prefect.
This was an interesting introduction to the intricate politics of elite British boys' schools. The boys were certainly good looking, but it was not a sexy movie, the drama fell pretty slack towards the end, and I'm just as ignorant of the interesting career of Guy Burgess as I was before.
The Illusionist (2006)
Director lacks the magician character's command of illusion.
This movie is pretentious. It's really light-weight romance/mystery, dressed up in some beautiful clothing: sets, cinematography, and wonderful score by Philip Glass.
My chief complaints are: Edward Norton is not convincing as a supreme master of illusion.
The Crown prince is a cartoon character.
The story is not convincing. It depends on the audience knowing practically nothing about European history or customs. There are huge holes in the final plot illusion. (No spoilers here.) The concept is weak: a potentially interesting historical time and place are only dragged in for exotic interest, not for any intrinsic reason, there's no great emotional truth involved. The movie doesn't deliver on the significant drama it hints at.
My chief grudge is that I have seen two *truly great* movies about illusionists setting who come into terrifying conflict with power, in Hitler's Germany: Hanussen(1988),and Mephisto(1981),both by the Hungarian director István Szabó. Both movies were beautify, breathtaking, heavily weighted with fate and great events, and important things to say about the role of the artist. This movie seems like a cheap knockoff by comparison.
(Szabó made another impressive movie, Colonel Redl / Oberst Redl (1985), about a working class boy whose rising military career in the Austro-Hungarian Empire is wrecked on the reef of the aristocratic establishment. The Illusionist seems to have drawn some important elements from it.)
It's too bad the director didn't take as many pains over his movie illusions as the magician in the story. I hate it when I can see all the strings.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
Unique visual appearance. Bitter-sweet. Peewee's playhouse?
The art direction really made this movie. Without its charming, unique appearance, it would have been tedious, lame, and veeery long.
The child-like, sweet, soft and bright-colored sets and animatronic objects, joined to the sun-saturated, parched ancient Mediterranean locations, gave an effect I've never seen before, and probably will again. You could easily see derivation from "The Yellow Submarine", but compared to that, this is softer, bitter-sweet, gentler, not so manic. It was more like the appearance of "Peewee's Playhouse", or a children's book illustration. Even after I had granted to my fellow-viewers that it had only a hollow shell of a story, I was still enjoying the glowing pale yellow, golden, and aquamarine tones with splashes of geranium red that appeared everywhere.
I have to admit that the actors took this whiffle ball and ran with it. They were all oozing charm. Cate and Owen look gorgeous. Angelica Houston filled out her role admirably. I had gotten pretty tired of Bill Murray's schlocky world-weariness, but it was revived in this setting.
I think maybe the fault of many movies today, is that film-makers have learned to give an extremely realistic veneer (by cinematic style and acting technique) to very artificial constructs of plot and ideas. It is refreshing to see one that is sophisticated, and carefully made, that makes no pretense of reality.
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
A story whose time has come
I felt as soon as I heard about this movie, that its story was a fruit ripe for plucking. I realized that the attraction *between* the rugged, laconic men of the great outdoors, adds fresh life to and a modern perspective, to a genre that many Americans loved for a long time.
I am of the baby boomer generation, raised on western TV shows, movies, even radio: from corny or straight-ahead Hop-Along Cassidy, Gene Autrey, the Lone Ranger, Gary Cooper in High Noon, Henry Fonda, Rowdy Yeats of Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, through more updated ones like Bonanza, Sugarfoot, The Rebel,and hip, wiseacre ones like Maveric, and post-modern ones like Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns, I watched them all.
I never could stand John Wayne, though, and didn't care much for James Arness. The shoot-em-up at the end was satisfying for a long time, but eventually it started to seem cheap and shallow to me. (Someone bit the dust in almost every one of those shows, five nights a week for ten years or so.) The lonely, laconic, tough, austere, hard-tried man, with a hidden vulnerability or sensitivity revealed only through great crisis: that's what I liked. As I child, I deeply resented it when female characters even made an appearance in those shows, except, perhaps, Miss Kitty, who knew her place and stayed in it.
Brokeback Mountain has all those elements in abundance. In feeling, to my definition, it's a classic western, much improved; realistic and believable: dust, hard work, horses, big sky, rugged country, austere morality enforced by threatened violence, and two tough, rugged, self-sufficient, laconic, handsome, suffering guys.