short film reviews, criticism, and occasional musing.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

The Leopard (1963, Italian)

There’s nothing quite like a 3-hour Italian period drama to entertain you when you’re home sick from work. Yesterday, I watched The Leopard, Luchino Visconti’s 1963 film about the decline of the Italian aristocracy in the latter half of the 19th century. Not knowing much (if anything) about this period in Italian history, a lot of the background was lost on me, but the film was still well worth watching for its amazing period style, characters, and family drama.

However, I always find it strange when directors cast non-language-speaking actors in prominent roles, and then have them dubbed over. It doesn’t seem to happen that often anymore, but I have seen easily a half-dozen European films from the 60’s and 70’s that were cast this way. I’ve always wondered how this works for a director. For example, Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon are the primary characters in The Leopard, and neither speaks a bit of Italian. The dubbing is quite obvious, and also rather discombobulating at first. What was the reasoning behind casting these particular actors? Did Lancaster and Delon have a certain look that made their lack of Italian language skills a secondary consideration? It’s true that both men fit their roles perfectly, but as with foreign films that have been dubbed for the international market, I always feel that there is something particular missing when the actor’s physical presence doesn’t match his dialog. When films are subtitled, it may be difficult at times to take in both the translated dialog and the visual components, but at least the originality of the actor’s delivery and individual voice is retained. In this case, watching Lancaster was a bizarre transaction – an actor speaking in English, then dubbed over in Italian, and then subtitled again in English.

Overall, this language matter doesn’t detract too much from the impact of what is generally an extremely good film. The cinematography is especially lovely, filled with many long, wide shots of the Sicilian countryside, a locale that is drawn into the narrative in a surprisingly negative way. For all of its great beauty, Visconti tells us, there is something feral in the landscape that has existed for ages, and shows no sign of abatement in the modern age.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997, Canadian)

I have only recently discovered the films of Guy Maddin, and if I were to describe his work to another newbie, I might compare him to Peter Greenaway. If such a comparison indeed holds up, perhaps Twilight is Maddin’s Prospero’s Books - inspired by Greek myth and the director’s own fancy, Twilight takes place in a fairy world where the sun never goes down, and goddesses still seem to have some sway over the lives of their worshippers. Ghastly and beautiful at the same time, the lack of darkness in this imaginary land is the key to both the visual and thematic elements of the story – because sleep can never be entirely peaceful, the inhabitants are unable to dream properly, and therefore pull their nightly fantasies into their waking lives.

More than anything else, Twilight is about he madness of love. The main characters try to find physical and emotional fulfillment with various partners, to no avail, and though it is obvious that Maddin believes in true love, he also seems to believe that it is nearly impossible to find.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006, USA)

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, is nothing if not supremely entertaining. Actually, without the entertainment quality, there’s not a lot of there there. In any case, despite clocking in at nearly two and a half hours, the pace hardly lags, and while perhaps not such a surprise as the first film, its campiness makes it feel like a classic B-movie.

Of course, this is a B-movie with A-list actors. Along with Johnny Depp’s vampy return as Captain Jack Sparrow, welcome additions to the cast include Stellan Skarsgard as “Bootstrap” Bill, father to Orlando Bloom’s (still-nascent) hero, and Bill Nighy, truly owning the role of Davey Jones, despite having his face entirely concealed by a writhing mask of tentacles (no offense to Hugo Weaving, but the Wachoswki brothers could have used this kind of energy behind the mask in V for Vendetta). Bloom’s acting has improved since the first Pirates, but Keira Knightley’s character is occasionally bogged down with girlish simpering, which takes the energy out of generally fine performance.

The special effects are, on the whole, pretty amazing. A special note should be made of the work in creating the crew of the Flying Dutchman – the film is worth repeated viewings just in order to observe the variation and attention to detail on the dozens of crew members.

The plot may not make a whole lot of sense, but who really cares? The entire purpose of the film is to lead into the final (?) chapter, to be delivered Memorial Day of 2007. As much as I may generally scoff at seeing trailers for movies that are about a year away, ten months seems a short time to wait for another installation in the Pirates franchise.

In America (2002, Ireland/UK)

Jim Sheridan’s In America is a heartfelt, if predictable, film about the difficulties facing an immigrant Irish family that moves to New York City in the 1980’s. The acting is first-rate across the board, with fine turns by Paddy Considine and Samantha Morton as parents who are dealing with both a new environment and the loss of a child, as well as sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger as the daughters who bring a sense of wonder to their new life.

Morton is billed first, but it is Considine who anchors the movie with his performance as an emotionally withdrawn father, struggling to make it as an actor in Manhattan while keeping his family barely above water. But despite the quality of the acting, and the genuine feeling evoked by the story, the arc of the plot is entirely too predictable. There is also some difficulty with the exotification of the character played by Djimon Hounsu, an AIDS-stricken artist who lives a floor below the family. His “primal” creative nature and tragic story are intertwined in an uncomfortable way with the narrative of the primary characters. Though it is a well-meaning and honestly quite lovely film, it has better luck with its depiction of familial relationships than as an examination of multicultural immigrant life.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Ultraviolet (2006, USA)

Perhaps it's unfair to review a film that I didn't actually finish watching. Then again, I'll buy a beer for anyone who can sit through the whole of this thing - I knew it was a lost cause in the first five minutes, and think I fell asleep before the hour mark.

Seeing that I enjoyed Kurt Wimmer's Equilibrium enough to see it not once, but twice, and having a soft spot for Milla Jovovich's athletic heroine routine, I figured that this film might well be dumb, but could be good dumb fun. Wrong. The plot is senseless and the effects are bad. It's not even worth renting to ogle Milla, seeing that she, along with everyone else in the movie, is airbrushed to near-anonymity. (While I'm at it, shame on you, William Fichtner. I hung on to that glacial alien invasion t.v. show for you, but this might well be the last straw.)

I never thought I'd say this, but if you're really in the mood for a futuristic girl-in-skimpy-clothing-saves-the-day movie, rent Aeon Flux instead. Or revisit the good old Milla days with The Fifth Element.

Dr. Akagi (1998, Japanese)

Dr. Akagi is another example of Shohei Imamura’s bittersweet evocation of Japanese village life, this time linked with his dark view of the national psyche during the last weeks of World War II. The film stars Akira Emoto as the titular doctor, a stolid man who spends the bulk of his days running up and down the streets of his seaside town, practically eager to continue his diagnoses of a hepatitis epidemic (the film’s Japanese title, Kanzo Sensei, translates as his village nickname, “Dr. Liver”). Focusing on the doctor’s prime obsession, Imamura uses the disease as a metaphor for the way that war has infected even this seemingly remote locale. The period and local atmosphere are wonderfully expressed, down to the air-raid helmet that Akagi constantly wears slung across his back as he travels from door to door (the helmet, along with his charmingly out-of-place white linen suits and English-style straw hat, make Akagi a visually comic character, though his personality is anything but).

Akagi is the middle film in what can be seen as the director’s final trilogy – like The Eel and Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, it deals in tandem with the qualities of small-town Japan and the personal crisis of a middle-aged male protagonist, the latter of which develops to form a focal point in the community. While similarly charming and thoughtful, Akagi is nonetheless a bit more transparent and straightforward than the other two films, and the final scenes in particular, though visually quite lovely, hammer home Imamura’s themes in an unfortunately obvious manner.