Che
Director/Country/Time: Steven Soderbergh, USA, 235 min.
Cast: Benecio Del Toro, Catalina Sandino
Moreno, Franka Potente
Program: Special Presentations
Headline: Argentine doctor helps facilitate
Cuban revolution; fails to do same in Bolivia
Noel's
Take: There's a
surfeit of ideas—both thematic and visual—in Steven Soderbergh's
four-hour, two-part riff on revolución á Che, and the film definitely lingers
in the mind, like a stimulating conversation. But while Che contains a number of amazing
scenes, they're held together by mush, largely in the form of lengthy battle
sequences that feel slapped-together. The first half of Che resembles one of Oliver Stone's
history-writ-with-lightning projects, as Soderbergh mixes film stocks and jumps
back-and-forth in time to mount a romantic, widescreen ode to Cuba in the late
'50s, and the unlikely success of the ragtag band of intellectuals and peasants
who stormed down from the mountains and seized the country. The second half
deals with Che Guevara's attempts to repeat the experiment in Bolivia, only to
find that outside agitators aren't as welcome there (unless they arrive in
American soldier suits and beat back the rebels). The conventional wisdom on
what Soderbergh is up to here holds that the first half shows the potential of
idealism, and the second shows its limits; but that doesn't really do the scope
of Che justice.
It's also about winning hearts and minds, and the slow, grinding work of giving
citizens a personal stake in their own liberation. (The first words out of
Che's mouth whenever he comes upon a stranger are, "What's your name?") And
it's about how the powers-that-be adjust to upstarts, and how those upstarts
behave when they achieve power. (Though it's not enough about the latter, in my
opinion.) In short: Che doesn't skimp on the depiction of the grinding effort behind Che
Guevara's vision for Latin America, and Del Toro certainly doesn't skimp on his
performance as the thoughtful-but-ruthless Che. But the persistent problem with
Soderbergh's work is that he seems to approach his projects as "You know what
would be neat?" first and foremost, and while he applies his substantial
intellect to every movie he makes, I often wonder about whether he has as much
burning passion for his subjects as he does clever ideas on how to shoot them.
I found Che
fascinating, but as with The Good German, Bubble, Solaris and several other recent Soderbergh films, I also found
myself wondering frequently whether it needed to be made. The visceral, gut-level
connection just wasn't there for me, and without it, the string of wilderness
shoot-outs became something of a chore. A chore worth performing, but a chore
nonetheless.
Scott's
Take: It didn't
seem possible for Soderbergh to make a film as perversely uncommercial as Solaris, but along comes Che, which takes history's most
galvanizing revolutionary (at least, if dorm-room walls are to be believed) and
deliberately sucks the drama out of his story. For four-hours-plus, Soderbergh
focuses entirely on the grinding labors of getting a revolutionary movement off
the ground—first triumphantly in Cuba, with Fidel Castro at this side,
and in the second half Bolivia, where he and his comrades are permanently stuck
in the mud. Soderbergh has said that Che is all about "process," and to that end, it's
admirable for its quiet, uninflected scenes of Guevara slowly gathering a force
from villagers in remote areas hundreds of miles from Havana. What he wants for
them is simple: Hospitals and health care for children, reduced infant
mortality rates, employment, and a government that's responsive to their needs.
That's a decidedly unsexy agenda for a great warrior, but Soderbergh (and Del
Toro, who slips into the role beautifully, never once calling attention to his
performance) keeps his head down and explores the day-to-day life of guerilla
fighters on the march. Still, it's important to note that Che is more compelling in theory than as an actual moviegoing
experience: The action is disjointed, confusing, and never for a moment
dramatized, and the second half, in particular, literally goes nowhere.
(Incredibly, Magnolia Pictures has picked up distribution rights, which have
been in limbo since Cannes. Needless to say, they have quite a marketing
challenge on their hands.)
Noel and
Scott's Grade: B-
The Wrestler
Director/Country/Time: Darren Aronofsky, USA, 105 min.
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan
Rachel Wood
Program: Special Presentations
Headline: Has-been pro wrestler struggles to
make ends meet
Noel's
Take: I can't
imagine a more perfect actor for the story of a wrung-dry former wrestling
superstar than Rourke, whose plastic-surgery-altered face and chemically
altered body doesn't require much make-up to appear worn and abused. And
although I wouldn't have guessed it in advance, I now can't imagine a more
perfect director for a story of wrestling and its discontents than Aronofsky,
who lingers over the lurid details of combat showmanship—the razors, the
barbed wire, the staple guns—and gives what might've been just another
thinly plotted, often obvious indie melodrama a thick shot of viscera. The
biggest flaw in The Wrestler is that much of it is predictable and familiar, including a
subplot involving Rourke's estranged daughter that features a lot of stock "You
were never there for me!" speeches. But even that flaw isn't too big, given that this story takes
place in the milieu of a fake sport that relies on simple, manufactured drama.
(There's something to be said for the eternal purity of stimulus: response.)
Besides, this movie has its milieu down cold, from the under-filled small-town
arenas that host the after-market wrestling circuit to the upbeat '80s metal
and seedy strip clubs that form the foundations of the hero's habitat. There's
a lot in The Wrestler about people who sell their bodies (including the turn by Tomei,
playing an over-the-hill stripper not sure how to react to her only fan), and
about the wreckage left behind once the milling throng loses interest. (There's
a scene in an abandoned beachside fun park that's particularly effective.) But
mostly, the movie rides on Aronofsky's wintry suburb-scapes and Dardennes-style
follow-shots, and on the performance of Rourke, who plays a genuinely decent
guy who doesn't let his dawning self-awareness get in the way of his knack for
giving the fans a show.
Grade: B+
Scott's
Take: Because the
script for Aronofsky's new film was written by Rob Siegel, former
editor of The Onion and a personal friend, I have to recuse myself from
registering my thoughts on it in public. I will say, however, that The
Wrestler is easily
Darren Aronofsky's funniest film to date—and you can quote me on that.
Tokyo
Sonata
Director/Country/Time: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 119 min.
Cast: Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyoko Koizumi,
Koji Yakusho
Program: Masters
Headline: For the downsized in Japan, the
unemployment line is just the beginning.
Scott's
Take: Kurosawa
originally made a name for himself with fine J-horror films like Pulse, Séance, and Cure—though the latter defies the
label in many ways—more recent films like Bright Future and Doppelganger have been drifting into new
territory, albeit with the same penchant for the bizarre and eerie. Tokyo
Sonata lurches from
austere family drama to whimsical comedy to something altogether
unclassifiable, but if you can hang on for the tonal rollercoaster ride, it's a
lot of fun. The beginning starts out like the great French film Time Out: Kagawa plays a businessman who
loses his job, but rather than suffer the embarrassment of telling his family,
he puts on his suit in the morning and pretends to go to work. Before long, he
discovers that there's a whole subculture of unemployed men in suits who line
up for food handouts in the park and loiter in the library during the day.
Kagawa's shame eventually manifests itself in ugly ways at home and here the
film suddenly takes a turn towards dark domestic melodrama. Then Koji Yakusho
shows up and things just go completely haywire. It's hard to know what to make
of Autumn Sonata,
because it's so unsettling and off-balance, but Kurosawa gets at the dreams and
frustrations of the average Japanese family at a time of great instability. And
on that level, at least, people in these dismal economic times can relate. Grade:
B
The Other Man
Director/Country/Time: Richard Eyre, UK, 90 min.
Cast: Liam Neeson, Antonio Banderas,
Laura Linney, Romola Garai
Program: Gala Presentations
Headline: Desperate husband tracks down and
toys with wife's lover
Noel's
Take: There's not
much I can say about why this tasteful Euro-mystery doesn't really work without
ranging too far into spoiler territory, but suffice to say that there's a key
piece of information that's kept from the audience for roughly the first 70 of The
Other Man's 90
minutes, and since I guessed early on that the big curve was coming, I couldn't
help but groan at the many unnecessary contrivances required to keep the
secret, and to think about how much better the movie would be if it played the
story straight. Wasted in the narrative gamesmanship is an interesting dynamic
between Neeson (playing an aloof upperclass type who starts to lose his shit
when he discovers evidence of wife Laura Linney's affair) and Banderas (playing
Linney's ex-lover, eager to hook up with her again). Neeson tracks Banderas to
Milan, and disguises his identity in order to draw Banderas out over a daily
game of chess. Neeson prompts Banderas to spin anecdotes about his trysts with
Linney, in what might've been fodder for a darkly twisted psychological study.
But that's not the kind of movie this is. It's just a twist-delivery machine,
incapable of the emotion we humans call desire.
Grade: C
Detroit Metal City
Director/Country/Time: Toshio Lee, Japan, 103 min.
Cast: Kenici Matsuyama, Rosa Jato, Yasuko
Matsuyuki, Gene Simmons
Program: Midnight Madness
Headline: Hard rock band has soft pop
frontman
Noel's
Take: I made it through about 30 minutes of
this broad Japanese comedy before I gave up, thoroughly exhausted by the way it
kept belaboring the same joke. Granted, the joke's not bad: a wimpy
musician—who longs to make music that's "serious, yet trendy…like
Cornelius"—is drafted to be the frontman for a death metal band, and
risks losing the girl of his dreams because he screams songs about "raping 11
chicks in one minute." Based on a popular manga series, Detroit Metal City is very much a live-action cartoon,
but even if it were animated, it would still be annoyingly shrill and one-note.
Grade:
W/O
Tomorrow:
Bill Maher takes on religion, the grossest French horror film ever
(supposedly), and the Paris Hilton movie Paris Hilton doesn't want you to see!