Epics are their own breed of movie, and no one ever did a better job of creating true epics than David Lean. While my personal favorite of his is The Bridge on the River Kwai, it can be argued that Lawrence of Arabia is one of the greatest films ever made. Epics require a particular mindset to watch, if only because they tend to be so long.
With that mindset, I watched Lean’s last film, A Passage to India, although I knew very little about it going in. I expected, well, I’m not sure what I really expected. What I did not expect was a film about race relations in India during the British Raj. Silly, honestly. I knew it was about British folk in India, so it only makes sense that that’s where it would go.
The film follows the fate of several people, mostly British, but one Indian in particular. A young woman, Adela Quested (Judy Davis), follows her soon-to-be mother-in-law Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft) to India to visit Moore’s son, Ronny (Nigel Havers). Tensions between the British and Indian are immediately evident, mostly because the British refuse to have anything to do with the Indians. Mrs. Moore in particular is offended by this.
Once in India, Mrs. Moore meets a young Muslim doctor named Aziz (Victor Banerjee), and he is immediately taken with her because of her decidedly non-British respect for him and his culture. A meeting between Moore, Aziz, a Hindu professor named Godbole (Alec Guinness) and Miss Quested is arranged. At this time, Aziz’s desperate desire for acceptance from the British gets the best of him, and he invites the women, along with Godbole and a British teacher named Richard Fielding (James Fox) to accompany him on a trip to some mysterious caves.
Unfortunately, Godbole and Fielding miss the train, and Aziz journeys with the women to the site. The main feature of the caves is the remarkable echoes they produce, a series of echoes that startle poor Mrs. Moore, who decides to sit out the rest of the day. Aziz and Adela continue exploring the caves, and are separated at one point. The echoes get the better of Adela, who runs from them, and announces that she has been sexually assaulted by Aziz. Instantly, the British community rallies around her, except for Mrs. Moore and Fielding, who are certain of the innocence of Dr. Aziz.
What results, of course, is essentially a race war. British justice, at least in India, is farcical, and Aziz is guilty until proven innocent. This sets off potential riots throughout the area, and focuses awareness on the inherent racism in the Raj system.
Here’s the thing—while naturally sympathies go to Aziz and Fielding through the course of the movie, but it’s almost impossible to take it seriously, in no small part because of the role of Alec Guinness as a Hindu professor. In many ways, it reminds me of other Lean films like the aforementioned Lawrence of Arabia, with Guinness as an Arabian prince, and Anthony Quinn as the same. It further reminds me of Ben Kingsley playing Gandhi in the eponymous film, or old Westerns in which Native Americans were painted white guys instead of actual native actors. Dressing up a British guy as an Indian is not unlike protesting Jim Crow laws while in blackface. The spirit might be there, but in its own way, it’s kind of offensive.
No doubt A Passage to India is a great film, but I had trouble getting too involved in it, which is something of a problem for a sweeping epic. This style of film should transport the audience to a new place and another time, help them forget their everyday affairs and get them caught up in a great story of momentous impact. I just didn’t see that here. Oh, it’s a great story, certainly, but it’s also, ultimately, a very small story. This isn’t the creation and destruction of a massive bridge during wartime, nor is it about the freeing of an entire people from oppressive rule. It’s a courtroom drama with social elements, and to me, it feels like the scale is wrong.
The hope is that the events portrayed in the film are the sort of thing that eventually led to the destruction of the Raj system and the freeing of the Indian people, but again, this film hardly leads to that conclusion. When the film ends, the British are still trying to make India into a proper colony and “civilize” people who have a many-thousand-year-old civilization. Only a couple of people in the film manage to walk away with anything like enlightenment, and the main situation of the country, except in the persons of those particular players, is essentially the same.
In short, A Passage to India feels about an hour too long. I’d love a chance to re-edit it into something that feels better for the scope of the story. I can’t say I’m disappointed in it, but this is ultimately what I mean when I say that it wasn’t what I expected. It should have been grander, and it just wasn’t.
Maybe that’s just me. After all, the thing was nominated for a metric ton of Oscars, and even walked away with a couple of them. As for me, I’ll take my epics with an ending that does more than change the lives of a handful of people, thank you.
Grade: B
Friday, September 25, 2009
Kumonosu Jo (Throne of Blood)
Too many people I encounter, most of them my students, tell me that they don’t watch black and white movies because “they’re boring.” That’s one of the most ridiculous blanket statements I’ve heard that isn’t racially motivated. Along the same lines, many of the same people refuse to watch a movie in a different language because they evidently can’t stomach the thought of reading. Both statements are so dismissive and short-sighted. Plenty of great movies are in black and white, and plenty of great filmmakers don’t speak English. A case in point is Throne of Blood, one of the true masterpieces of Japan’s greatest director, Akira Kurosawa.
There’s no great mystery as to the source material for Throne of Blood, or Kumonosu Jo (Spider’s Web Castle, although a direct translation is closer to “The Story of the Spider’s Web). This film is, essentially, Macbeth with samurai. The fact that it’s in black and white and subtitled shouldn’t register as a problem here—it’s Macbeth with samurai! Macbeth is a personal favorite story of mine, and samurai just make everything better, especially when they are directed by Kurosawa.
Regardless, if you are not familiar with the basic story, it’s a fairly simple one. Two samurai, Washizu (the great Toshiro Mifune) and Miki (Akira Kubo) have won a great victory for their lord. On their way to his castle to receive his reward, they become lost in the maze-like forest and encounter an evil forest spirit. This spirit tells them their future: Washizu will become the commander of the North Garrison, while Miki will soon rule over the First Fortress. Also, Washizu will soon rule at Spider’s Web Castle, while Miki’s son will rule there in the future. The pair finally makes it to the fortress, only to have the first part of the spirit’s prophecy come true. Both men are promoted.
This is not enough for Washizu’s wife, Asaji (Isuzu Yamada). Taking the prophecy to heart, she convinces her husband to assassinate the great lord so that the prophecy will come true faster. This done, she further pushes him to consolidate his position, getting rid of anyone who stands in his way, framing another samurai general for the murder, and eventually taking out his aggressions and enacting his devious plot against virtually everyone.
There’s no secret that Macbeth was the inspiration for this film, as Shakespeare is given partial author credit here. Virtually everything that happens in the play happens here, and the characters have very similar personalities throughout. This version does concentrate a little less on the supernatural elements, although these do exist, and tends to focus far more on the Macbeth character of Washizu than on the other characters.
Despite the lack of color and the necessity to read to follow the story, Throne of Blood still resonates today, as do many of Shakespeare’s works. Regardless, it is still Kurosawa’s film, and much of the goal here was to translate the source material into something that works as traditional Noh theater in the way it is staged and acted.
Of all the roles and characterizations, it is that of Lady Asaji Washizu that is the most compelling and disturbing. Her face covered in stark white makeup with eyebrows drawn high on her forehead, she is almost as disturbing a supernatural presence in appearance as the evil spirit of the forest. Her ambition throughout the film is not subtle as she constantly works on her husband to push him further and further in his quest to take the throne of Spider’s Web Castle. Her traditional dress makes her move oddly, taking short steps even when she is trying to hurry, and this again gives her a something-other-than-human presence in the film.
Throne of Blood may well be difficult for many American audience members to take in or understand. There are long sections that do have a purpose, but feel as if they could be cut with little loss. For instance, Washizu and Miki ride through a foggy forest for what seems like an eternity after they talk to the spirit for the first time. It becomes almost comic as they ride off in one direction, then suddenly appear and ride off again in the opposite direction. This slows down the pace of the film, possibly to a point that will disturb many Western or more modern film viewers.
Despite this, Throne of Blood is lovingly and carefully filmed. It is not a true samurai movie in the way that, say Shichinin no Samurai is, nor is it really a political statement. Instead, this film, like the play it is based on, is a film about the nature of obsession and the perils of power. It’s said uneasy likes the head that wears the crown, and nowhere is this more evident than in Mifune’s playing of Washizu. Beset by perceived betrayal at every hand and egged on by his wife, Washizu’s world becomes smaller and smaller even has he dreams of conquering bigger and bigger areas. Eventually, his world consists only of himself, setting up the tragedy of what his life becomes once he takes the power that has been promised to him.
A foreign film will do you some good now and again, and this is one of the best out there. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have some of the best source material ever written as a starting point.
Grade: A
There’s no great mystery as to the source material for Throne of Blood, or Kumonosu Jo (Spider’s Web Castle, although a direct translation is closer to “The Story of the Spider’s Web). This film is, essentially, Macbeth with samurai. The fact that it’s in black and white and subtitled shouldn’t register as a problem here—it’s Macbeth with samurai! Macbeth is a personal favorite story of mine, and samurai just make everything better, especially when they are directed by Kurosawa.
Regardless, if you are not familiar with the basic story, it’s a fairly simple one. Two samurai, Washizu (the great Toshiro Mifune) and Miki (Akira Kubo) have won a great victory for their lord. On their way to his castle to receive his reward, they become lost in the maze-like forest and encounter an evil forest spirit. This spirit tells them their future: Washizu will become the commander of the North Garrison, while Miki will soon rule over the First Fortress. Also, Washizu will soon rule at Spider’s Web Castle, while Miki’s son will rule there in the future. The pair finally makes it to the fortress, only to have the first part of the spirit’s prophecy come true. Both men are promoted.
This is not enough for Washizu’s wife, Asaji (Isuzu Yamada). Taking the prophecy to heart, she convinces her husband to assassinate the great lord so that the prophecy will come true faster. This done, she further pushes him to consolidate his position, getting rid of anyone who stands in his way, framing another samurai general for the murder, and eventually taking out his aggressions and enacting his devious plot against virtually everyone.
There’s no secret that Macbeth was the inspiration for this film, as Shakespeare is given partial author credit here. Virtually everything that happens in the play happens here, and the characters have very similar personalities throughout. This version does concentrate a little less on the supernatural elements, although these do exist, and tends to focus far more on the Macbeth character of Washizu than on the other characters.
Despite the lack of color and the necessity to read to follow the story, Throne of Blood still resonates today, as do many of Shakespeare’s works. Regardless, it is still Kurosawa’s film, and much of the goal here was to translate the source material into something that works as traditional Noh theater in the way it is staged and acted.
Of all the roles and characterizations, it is that of Lady Asaji Washizu that is the most compelling and disturbing. Her face covered in stark white makeup with eyebrows drawn high on her forehead, she is almost as disturbing a supernatural presence in appearance as the evil spirit of the forest. Her ambition throughout the film is not subtle as she constantly works on her husband to push him further and further in his quest to take the throne of Spider’s Web Castle. Her traditional dress makes her move oddly, taking short steps even when she is trying to hurry, and this again gives her a something-other-than-human presence in the film.
Throne of Blood may well be difficult for many American audience members to take in or understand. There are long sections that do have a purpose, but feel as if they could be cut with little loss. For instance, Washizu and Miki ride through a foggy forest for what seems like an eternity after they talk to the spirit for the first time. It becomes almost comic as they ride off in one direction, then suddenly appear and ride off again in the opposite direction. This slows down the pace of the film, possibly to a point that will disturb many Western or more modern film viewers.
Despite this, Throne of Blood is lovingly and carefully filmed. It is not a true samurai movie in the way that, say Shichinin no Samurai is, nor is it really a political statement. Instead, this film, like the play it is based on, is a film about the nature of obsession and the perils of power. It’s said uneasy likes the head that wears the crown, and nowhere is this more evident than in Mifune’s playing of Washizu. Beset by perceived betrayal at every hand and egged on by his wife, Washizu’s world becomes smaller and smaller even has he dreams of conquering bigger and bigger areas. Eventually, his world consists only of himself, setting up the tragedy of what his life becomes once he takes the power that has been promised to him.
A foreign film will do you some good now and again, and this is one of the best out there. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have some of the best source material ever written as a starting point.
Grade: A
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Alien 3
Like most people, I avoid movies that I know aren’t going to be good, although I will make an exception for films narrated by the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000. So when the world effectively said that Alien 3 wasn’t worth seeing, I decided it wasn’t worth it and never bothered. I’ll take a chance on a film if the consensus is divided, but in this case, it wasn’t. At least not until a couple of months ago for me.
At the start of every semester, I ask my students what their favorite movie is, and this quarter, one of my students named this one as his favorite film. Based on that, I thought it was worth it to give Alien 3 a shot, so I watched it.
I feel about this movie in much the same way I feel about a film like Waterworld or the third installment of the Godfather Trilogy. It’s not a great film, and in fact it’s not even a good film. However, at the same time, it’s not nearly as bad as everyone says it is. There are serious problems with the movie, and it’s not nearly what it could have been, but it’s hardly worthless. And in the movie’s favor, it had a huge uphill battle trying to overcome the first two films.
As with the first two films, this one follows the path of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and her continuing saga with the xenomorph from an unknown planet. At the beginning of the film, we see the principle characters from the last film in their cryogenic stasis on the Sulaco. Then, something goes wrong, and a fire starts in the cryo room, and the escape pod essentially launches itself to save the people aboard. It should come as no surprise that there’s an alien that not only started the fire but that tagged along on the escape pod.
Ripley manages to survive the crash, of course, but no one else does. Bishop, the android (Lance Henriksen) is in pieces; Hicks (Michael Biehn, who refused to appear in the film) was impaled; the little girl Newt (Carrie Henn) drowned when the cryogenics failed.
Unfortunately for Ripley, the escape pod from the Sulaco has crashed into a former prison colony that has been turned into a lead factory. The two dozen or so men who work at the factory, with a couple of exceptions, are all former prisoners, all with double-y chromosomes, and all murders and rapists. All in all, she’d probably have been better off crashing into the sun.
Naturally, the facehugger crawls off the wreck, and this time, it latches not onto a person, but onto a dog. It gestates for a while, then splits out of the animal and goes on its way. This moment is one of the most interesting in the film, because it offers a new insight into the alien creature. Rather than becoming the bipedal alien we’ve gotten used to in the first two films. Instead, this alien is canine-looking, which indicates that the aliens take something of their host into their final form.
So now we have a truly animalistic alien hunting the humans, many of whom are now hunting Ripley. She immediately comes under the protection of Dillon (Charles Dutton), a prisoner who has led many of the other remaining men to religion. She is also befriended by Clemens (Charles Dance), the colony doctor. The rest of the people at the prison colony either despise her or want to rape and kill her, which makes life interesting. Add in a couple of complete psychotics, a few accidents that are actually the alien, and you’ve got a movie plot.
Sadly, though, it’s not a very engaging plot. The attempt here is to take the Alien franchise back to its roots, I think. The first two movies are, arguably, equally great, and the two movies are also completely different. Alien is essentially a haunted house in space where the victims are picked off one by one by an undefeatable, completely unknowable foe. Aliens, on the other hand, is a pure science fiction action romp. This film is very much in the vein of the first one. The atmosphere is extremely claustrophobic and often confusing, which is ideal for this sort of movie. This is great, but with a couple of dozen or so characters to watch, there are simply too many people to watch and care about. This is compounded by the fact that everyone has a shaved head, and so most of them look alike. It’s impossible to distinguish one from the other.
The problem here is plot holes. Ripley, for instance, is far too smart to continually put herself in danger the way she does in this movie. Many of the characters act in ways that no sane character would—this is fine for the obviously psychotic players, but those who tend to act in ridiculous ways are the ones who have shown themselves to be sane.
The action is interesting throughout the movie. There are a couple of good shocks, but the film was doomed from the beginning. The killing of Newt in the first 15 minutes prevented this film from going anywhere worthwhile. Newt was the entire reason for the way Ripley acted throughout the bulk of Aliens, and suddenly, all of that is gone.
It’s sad. In a fairer world, Alien 3 would be seen as a decent, although flawed, science fiction movie with a cool monster and some decent action sequences. Unfortunately, it was the third movie in one of the greatest movie franchises ever created, and it wasn’t anywhere close to the quality of the first two.
The original plan was to bring the alien down to Earth, which would have been excellent (and was, in fact, the source of the film’s tagline: “On Earth, everyone can hear you scream”). Instead, the script was changed, and director David Fincher was so disappointed in how badly the film turned out, he wanted his name removed. I don’t blame him.
Grade: C-
At the start of every semester, I ask my students what their favorite movie is, and this quarter, one of my students named this one as his favorite film. Based on that, I thought it was worth it to give Alien 3 a shot, so I watched it.
I feel about this movie in much the same way I feel about a film like Waterworld or the third installment of the Godfather Trilogy. It’s not a great film, and in fact it’s not even a good film. However, at the same time, it’s not nearly as bad as everyone says it is. There are serious problems with the movie, and it’s not nearly what it could have been, but it’s hardly worthless. And in the movie’s favor, it had a huge uphill battle trying to overcome the first two films.
As with the first two films, this one follows the path of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and her continuing saga with the xenomorph from an unknown planet. At the beginning of the film, we see the principle characters from the last film in their cryogenic stasis on the Sulaco. Then, something goes wrong, and a fire starts in the cryo room, and the escape pod essentially launches itself to save the people aboard. It should come as no surprise that there’s an alien that not only started the fire but that tagged along on the escape pod.
Ripley manages to survive the crash, of course, but no one else does. Bishop, the android (Lance Henriksen) is in pieces; Hicks (Michael Biehn, who refused to appear in the film) was impaled; the little girl Newt (Carrie Henn) drowned when the cryogenics failed.
Unfortunately for Ripley, the escape pod from the Sulaco has crashed into a former prison colony that has been turned into a lead factory. The two dozen or so men who work at the factory, with a couple of exceptions, are all former prisoners, all with double-y chromosomes, and all murders and rapists. All in all, she’d probably have been better off crashing into the sun.
Naturally, the facehugger crawls off the wreck, and this time, it latches not onto a person, but onto a dog. It gestates for a while, then splits out of the animal and goes on its way. This moment is one of the most interesting in the film, because it offers a new insight into the alien creature. Rather than becoming the bipedal alien we’ve gotten used to in the first two films. Instead, this alien is canine-looking, which indicates that the aliens take something of their host into their final form.
So now we have a truly animalistic alien hunting the humans, many of whom are now hunting Ripley. She immediately comes under the protection of Dillon (Charles Dutton), a prisoner who has led many of the other remaining men to religion. She is also befriended by Clemens (Charles Dance), the colony doctor. The rest of the people at the prison colony either despise her or want to rape and kill her, which makes life interesting. Add in a couple of complete psychotics, a few accidents that are actually the alien, and you’ve got a movie plot.
Sadly, though, it’s not a very engaging plot. The attempt here is to take the Alien franchise back to its roots, I think. The first two movies are, arguably, equally great, and the two movies are also completely different. Alien is essentially a haunted house in space where the victims are picked off one by one by an undefeatable, completely unknowable foe. Aliens, on the other hand, is a pure science fiction action romp. This film is very much in the vein of the first one. The atmosphere is extremely claustrophobic and often confusing, which is ideal for this sort of movie. This is great, but with a couple of dozen or so characters to watch, there are simply too many people to watch and care about. This is compounded by the fact that everyone has a shaved head, and so most of them look alike. It’s impossible to distinguish one from the other.
The problem here is plot holes. Ripley, for instance, is far too smart to continually put herself in danger the way she does in this movie. Many of the characters act in ways that no sane character would—this is fine for the obviously psychotic players, but those who tend to act in ridiculous ways are the ones who have shown themselves to be sane.
The action is interesting throughout the movie. There are a couple of good shocks, but the film was doomed from the beginning. The killing of Newt in the first 15 minutes prevented this film from going anywhere worthwhile. Newt was the entire reason for the way Ripley acted throughout the bulk of Aliens, and suddenly, all of that is gone.
It’s sad. In a fairer world, Alien 3 would be seen as a decent, although flawed, science fiction movie with a cool monster and some decent action sequences. Unfortunately, it was the third movie in one of the greatest movie franchises ever created, and it wasn’t anywhere close to the quality of the first two.
The original plan was to bring the alien down to Earth, which would have been excellent (and was, in fact, the source of the film’s tagline: “On Earth, everyone can hear you scream”). Instead, the script was changed, and director David Fincher was so disappointed in how badly the film turned out, he wanted his name removed. I don’t blame him.
Grade: C-
Friday, September 4, 2009
Suspiria
There are many times when I become interested in a movie because of who is in it, or because of who directed it, or because of the general plot. That’s pretty normal, I think. There are other movies that pique my interest for something quite a bit more unusual. Suspiria is one of those movies for me. I can remember seeing a trailer for this movie when I was 9 or 10. It involved a skeleton with a full head of black hair, wearing a red turtleneck. That image was weird enough that I never forgot it. When I came across this movie again, I was definitely curious. Then I found out director Dario Argento’s vision. He wanted to make a movie that would look like a horror film as created by Walt Disney. That, for me, sealed the deal. I knew I had to watch it.
The story follows a young American dancer named Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper, who has a real Karen Allen quality to her) who heads to Germany as a student in an exclusive ballet school. When she arrives during a thunderstorm, another girl is leaving. We follow that girl for a bit as she arrives at a friend’s apartment. This girl, named Pat Hingle (Eva Axen), has just been expelled from the school. She’s acting oddly, though. She indicates that there’s something wrong at the school. We won’t find out what it is, though, because Pat is brutally murdered moments later in what is quite possibly the most graphic murder filmed up to that point in movie history. Her friend is a casualty of the assault as well.
Things continue to be strange at the school. Suzy suffers an attack after being bewitched by one of the servants, and that night, the school is suddenly attacked by a horde of maggots falling from the ceiling, allegedly from crates of spoiled food. All of the students are temporarily moved into the gym of the school, and that night, Suzy and her neighbor Sara are awakened by disturbing snoring behind a dividing sheet. This, Sara says, is the directress, who the students were told was not at the school.
The next day, the blind piano player’s dog attacks a child and he is expelled from the school. That night, the dog turns on him and kills him, continuing the string of weird deaths and occurrences at the school. Sara and Suzy begin to investigate what is happening. Suzy can’t stay awake or really be awakened at night, and as Sara starts to come closer to the truth, she too is horribly murdered in a scene that involves a razor blade and barbed wire (and yes, it’s as brutal as it sounds). The rest of the students including Suzy are told that Sara has simply left the school.
Suzy continues to investigate on her own, and she discovers that the school has a connection to the occult (pronounced AH-cult by at least one of the actors). Naturally, Suzy is convinced that the connection is not necessarily still in the past, and as the strange happenings continue, she is further convinced of the need to discover what is behind everything.
Suspiria is a fascinating movie on a number of levels. Argento originally conceived of the actors in the film being considerably younger than the girls here. In the original script, the school was for girls of 12 and under, but it was quickly realized that the sorts of degradation and horrifying murders that take place here would’ve gotten this film banned everywhere if they happened to kids.
What’s interesting is that while Argento changed the ages of the actors, he didn’t change much else. Much of the dialogue, for instance, seems written for children and seems odd and naïve coming out of the mouths of girls in their late teens and early 20s. Additionally, when he created the set, Argento had the sets designed to make the actors look in ways like smaller children. Doorknobs, for instance, are set much higher than normal so that the actors were forced to reach up for them, much as small children would have to. It creates an otherworldly mood to the film, a dark fantasy world that is similar to ours, but subtly different.
While these things are subtle, other parts of the film are not so in creating that other world. Significant portions of the film are lighted with primary and secondary colors, creating giant blocks of solid bright reds, blues, greens, and yellows, and giving many of the scenes a childish, simplistic look. Allegedly, Argento asked his cinematographer to use Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a model for the film’s color scheme, and that’s certainly evident.
Equally important to creating the strange mood and bizarre atmosphere both of the school and of the film is the soundtrack by the Italian progressive rock band Goblin. It is, I think, the most disturbing soundtrack I have ever encountered. At times, it sounds strangely like a child’s music box and is reminiscent in a way of the music from The Exorcist. At other times, when the drums and the howling vocals kick in, it is a driving force behind the horror being created on the screen. In addition to driving the action, the soundtrack also adds to the unreal atmosphere created by the story and the visuals.
If nothing else, Suspiria is inventive. While not a particularly terrifying movie, it is a disturbing one. There is a haunted quality to many of the shots, but this is not a romantic haunting. It’s one that’s aiming directly for the jugular of the audience, and aggressive haunting. It’s almost as if Argento wants not to scare his audience but to harm them physically if he can. Rather than depicting a realistic world in which supernatural things happen, Argento creates a dark fantasy world in which the fantastic is uniformly and completely horrible. If you can imagine Pan’s Labyrinth with more aggression and hatred, you’ve got the basic idea.
Is Suspiria a great movie? Maybe. I’m still not sure if it’s great, but I am sure that it’s a movie that should be watched for a variety of reasons. The vision here is so interesting and the world created in the film is so unlike anything before or since, that it needs to be experienced to appreciate what Dario Argento wanted to create. So is it great? Maybe. Is it worth watching? Definitely. With respect to horror films in general and Italian giallo films in specific, Suspiria is one of the most important films ever created.
Grade: A
The story follows a young American dancer named Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper, who has a real Karen Allen quality to her) who heads to Germany as a student in an exclusive ballet school. When she arrives during a thunderstorm, another girl is leaving. We follow that girl for a bit as she arrives at a friend’s apartment. This girl, named Pat Hingle (Eva Axen), has just been expelled from the school. She’s acting oddly, though. She indicates that there’s something wrong at the school. We won’t find out what it is, though, because Pat is brutally murdered moments later in what is quite possibly the most graphic murder filmed up to that point in movie history. Her friend is a casualty of the assault as well.
Things continue to be strange at the school. Suzy suffers an attack after being bewitched by one of the servants, and that night, the school is suddenly attacked by a horde of maggots falling from the ceiling, allegedly from crates of spoiled food. All of the students are temporarily moved into the gym of the school, and that night, Suzy and her neighbor Sara are awakened by disturbing snoring behind a dividing sheet. This, Sara says, is the directress, who the students were told was not at the school.
The next day, the blind piano player’s dog attacks a child and he is expelled from the school. That night, the dog turns on him and kills him, continuing the string of weird deaths and occurrences at the school. Sara and Suzy begin to investigate what is happening. Suzy can’t stay awake or really be awakened at night, and as Sara starts to come closer to the truth, she too is horribly murdered in a scene that involves a razor blade and barbed wire (and yes, it’s as brutal as it sounds). The rest of the students including Suzy are told that Sara has simply left the school.
Suzy continues to investigate on her own, and she discovers that the school has a connection to the occult (pronounced AH-cult by at least one of the actors). Naturally, Suzy is convinced that the connection is not necessarily still in the past, and as the strange happenings continue, she is further convinced of the need to discover what is behind everything.
Suspiria is a fascinating movie on a number of levels. Argento originally conceived of the actors in the film being considerably younger than the girls here. In the original script, the school was for girls of 12 and under, but it was quickly realized that the sorts of degradation and horrifying murders that take place here would’ve gotten this film banned everywhere if they happened to kids.
What’s interesting is that while Argento changed the ages of the actors, he didn’t change much else. Much of the dialogue, for instance, seems written for children and seems odd and naïve coming out of the mouths of girls in their late teens and early 20s. Additionally, when he created the set, Argento had the sets designed to make the actors look in ways like smaller children. Doorknobs, for instance, are set much higher than normal so that the actors were forced to reach up for them, much as small children would have to. It creates an otherworldly mood to the film, a dark fantasy world that is similar to ours, but subtly different.
While these things are subtle, other parts of the film are not so in creating that other world. Significant portions of the film are lighted with primary and secondary colors, creating giant blocks of solid bright reds, blues, greens, and yellows, and giving many of the scenes a childish, simplistic look. Allegedly, Argento asked his cinematographer to use Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a model for the film’s color scheme, and that’s certainly evident.
Equally important to creating the strange mood and bizarre atmosphere both of the school and of the film is the soundtrack by the Italian progressive rock band Goblin. It is, I think, the most disturbing soundtrack I have ever encountered. At times, it sounds strangely like a child’s music box and is reminiscent in a way of the music from The Exorcist. At other times, when the drums and the howling vocals kick in, it is a driving force behind the horror being created on the screen. In addition to driving the action, the soundtrack also adds to the unreal atmosphere created by the story and the visuals.
If nothing else, Suspiria is inventive. While not a particularly terrifying movie, it is a disturbing one. There is a haunted quality to many of the shots, but this is not a romantic haunting. It’s one that’s aiming directly for the jugular of the audience, and aggressive haunting. It’s almost as if Argento wants not to scare his audience but to harm them physically if he can. Rather than depicting a realistic world in which supernatural things happen, Argento creates a dark fantasy world in which the fantastic is uniformly and completely horrible. If you can imagine Pan’s Labyrinth with more aggression and hatred, you’ve got the basic idea.
Is Suspiria a great movie? Maybe. I’m still not sure if it’s great, but I am sure that it’s a movie that should be watched for a variety of reasons. The vision here is so interesting and the world created in the film is so unlike anything before or since, that it needs to be experienced to appreciate what Dario Argento wanted to create. So is it great? Maybe. Is it worth watching? Definitely. With respect to horror films in general and Italian giallo films in specific, Suspiria is one of the most important films ever created.
Grade: A
Friday, July 31, 2009
Watchmen
You can always tell when you talk to a fanboy. Oh, it may not be obvious when you talk about the weather, or local sports teams, or what they do for a living, but when you get to a couple of topics, the truth of that person’s nature comes out. One topic is movies like Watchmen. Fanboys have two opinions on movies like this. About half will decide that since it is based on the greatest graphic novel ever written, the movie is therefore the greatest film ever created. The other half will decide that because the movie necessarily deviates in places from the source material, it is the greatest travesty ever perpetrated on mankind.
Fortunately, for you the reader, I am not a fanboy. I’ve read the graphic novel in question here, but only quite recently. The movie is necessarily ambitious, because of the source material, and in most respects, the film is pretty faithful to the original book.
The story begins in 1985, but a very different 1985 than any of us experienced. An event previously in history changed the world in significant ways, although this is not apparent in the beginning. What is evident in the beginning is that an old man sitting quietly in his house soon becomes the victim of a brutal murder. This, in and of itself, is not too important, until it is revealed that the old murdered man, Eddie Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who looks a lot like Robert Downey Jr.) was better known as The Comedian, a violent superhero who worked for the government.
Superheroes, in general, have now been outlawed, and most of the costumed crimefighters have given up the cape, as it were. A few still exist. The most well-known are Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), the victim of a terrible accident that provided him with godlike powers, and Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode), also known as Ozymandias, the world’s smartest man. Veidt revealed his identity and now runs a huge multinational corporation. Other former heroes, in particular Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson), who was the Night Owl, and Sally Jupiter (Carla Gugino), known as Silk Spectre, have faded into history and now live their lives as well as they can.
The final hero, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), is still fighting crime, but now fighting it illegally, and is a wanted man. The death of Blake sets him on the path of believing that someone is hunting “masks,” as he calls them—other superheroes. This is confirmed when a hit is placed on Veidt, foiled by Veidt himself. Things become more complicated when one of The Comedian’s arch-villains shows up dead, and Rorschach is framed for the crime.
Watchmen, like the graphic novel it is based on, reveals itself slowly, frequently bouncing around in time to show glimpses of the past that help make sense of the film’s present. I’m primarily impressed with how accurately in general the players look like their counterparts from the graphic novel. Patrick Wilson, for instance, really looks like the drawings of Dan Dreiberg. Matthew Goode is perhaps too reedy to really present the presence that Ozymandias does in the comic, but he still pulls off the role well.
And while this may sound very fanboyish to say, the characters really do look cool. Rorschach, with his hood that constantly changes in a shifting array of symmetrical patterns, looks precisely like I wanted him to. Dreiberg, in full Night Owl costume, looks like a true superhero character.
This fails for me only in the obviously CGI Dr. Manhattan, whose glowing blue body looks fine, but who looks amazingly animatronic when he speaks. Computer technology has advanced quite a bit, but it hasn’t quite advanced far enough to make something computer generated really look human when it speaks.
Overall, Watchmen handles its difficult source material well, although it certainly does leave out a number of subplots. It tackles the major ones, and often handles these major stories much more efficiently than the graphic novel does. While the novel has the space to truly investigate characters and situations in particular ways, the movie does not. To compensate, many of these extended stretches in the novel are compressed here, and compressed effectively.
There are certainly things I’d change. I found the extended sex scene between Dreiberg and Jupiter to be gratuitous and almost entirely unnecessary. A few seconds of it, and jump cut to the next scene—what’s important here is the realization the Dreiberg is impotent unless he wears the Night Owl costume. That’s a nice character bit, but we don’t need the extended humpy-bumpy to help us understand. I’d have liked to have seen more of the interaction between Rorschach and his psychiatrist. To me, this was the most interesting part of the book, particularly as the psychiatrist comes to realize who his patient is behind the mask, and how this affects not only his professional life, but his personal life.
I liked it. It’s not the greatest movie ever made, but it’s certainly not the worst. It is a visual feast, and if nothing else, it’s worth watching for that. However, beyond that, it tells a fantastically interesting story, reaches an unexpected conclusion, and makes it work convincingly enough that most fans of the original story will find this a satisfying version. For those who don’t, lighten up. After all, it’s only a movie, right? Take a page out of The Comedian’s handbook—ultimately, everything is a joke.
Grade: B+
Fortunately, for you the reader, I am not a fanboy. I’ve read the graphic novel in question here, but only quite recently. The movie is necessarily ambitious, because of the source material, and in most respects, the film is pretty faithful to the original book.
The story begins in 1985, but a very different 1985 than any of us experienced. An event previously in history changed the world in significant ways, although this is not apparent in the beginning. What is evident in the beginning is that an old man sitting quietly in his house soon becomes the victim of a brutal murder. This, in and of itself, is not too important, until it is revealed that the old murdered man, Eddie Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who looks a lot like Robert Downey Jr.) was better known as The Comedian, a violent superhero who worked for the government.
Superheroes, in general, have now been outlawed, and most of the costumed crimefighters have given up the cape, as it were. A few still exist. The most well-known are Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), the victim of a terrible accident that provided him with godlike powers, and Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode), also known as Ozymandias, the world’s smartest man. Veidt revealed his identity and now runs a huge multinational corporation. Other former heroes, in particular Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson), who was the Night Owl, and Sally Jupiter (Carla Gugino), known as Silk Spectre, have faded into history and now live their lives as well as they can.
The final hero, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), is still fighting crime, but now fighting it illegally, and is a wanted man. The death of Blake sets him on the path of believing that someone is hunting “masks,” as he calls them—other superheroes. This is confirmed when a hit is placed on Veidt, foiled by Veidt himself. Things become more complicated when one of The Comedian’s arch-villains shows up dead, and Rorschach is framed for the crime.
Watchmen, like the graphic novel it is based on, reveals itself slowly, frequently bouncing around in time to show glimpses of the past that help make sense of the film’s present. I’m primarily impressed with how accurately in general the players look like their counterparts from the graphic novel. Patrick Wilson, for instance, really looks like the drawings of Dan Dreiberg. Matthew Goode is perhaps too reedy to really present the presence that Ozymandias does in the comic, but he still pulls off the role well.
And while this may sound very fanboyish to say, the characters really do look cool. Rorschach, with his hood that constantly changes in a shifting array of symmetrical patterns, looks precisely like I wanted him to. Dreiberg, in full Night Owl costume, looks like a true superhero character.
This fails for me only in the obviously CGI Dr. Manhattan, whose glowing blue body looks fine, but who looks amazingly animatronic when he speaks. Computer technology has advanced quite a bit, but it hasn’t quite advanced far enough to make something computer generated really look human when it speaks.
Overall, Watchmen handles its difficult source material well, although it certainly does leave out a number of subplots. It tackles the major ones, and often handles these major stories much more efficiently than the graphic novel does. While the novel has the space to truly investigate characters and situations in particular ways, the movie does not. To compensate, many of these extended stretches in the novel are compressed here, and compressed effectively.
There are certainly things I’d change. I found the extended sex scene between Dreiberg and Jupiter to be gratuitous and almost entirely unnecessary. A few seconds of it, and jump cut to the next scene—what’s important here is the realization the Dreiberg is impotent unless he wears the Night Owl costume. That’s a nice character bit, but we don’t need the extended humpy-bumpy to help us understand. I’d have liked to have seen more of the interaction between Rorschach and his psychiatrist. To me, this was the most interesting part of the book, particularly as the psychiatrist comes to realize who his patient is behind the mask, and how this affects not only his professional life, but his personal life.
I liked it. It’s not the greatest movie ever made, but it’s certainly not the worst. It is a visual feast, and if nothing else, it’s worth watching for that. However, beyond that, it tells a fantastically interesting story, reaches an unexpected conclusion, and makes it work convincingly enough that most fans of the original story will find this a satisfying version. For those who don’t, lighten up. After all, it’s only a movie, right? Take a page out of The Comedian’s handbook—ultimately, everything is a joke.
Grade: B+
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
I imagine that there are certain books that are daunting to transfer to film. A few years ago, the pressure of adaptation fell to Peter Jackson with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. These days, there can be no films more anticipated or more closely scrutinized than the series of Harry Potter films. With that in mind, I took the older of my two daughters to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince this weekend.
One of the main reasons that this film is so daunting from the point of view of the filmmaker is that there is a history already in place. Most of the films of the Potter milieu have been at least decent, so producing a complete flop could certainly ruin a career or two. Second, just as there are those who will almost certainly love this film because it’s Harry Potter, there will also be a segment of the public who hates it because it’s Harry Potter. And then again, there will be another segment of the public who hate it because it isn’t as good as they imagined it would be.
I fall into none of these categories, fortunately enough. I read the books because I read them to my daughter, but would likely not have gotten past Chapter 3 of book 1 were I reading on my own. They weren’t written for me, and I don’t understand the fascination that adults have with Harry Potter. They’re great books for kids, and I support anything that gets kids to read. But as an adult, I see only the plot holes and problems, and the cribbing off of older and better tales.
Regardless, as with other films, I’m not going to bother with a plot summary here. Either you’ve read the books (or seen the first five films) and have likely already seen this one, or you don’t care even a little bit about all things Potter and won’t see this movie. So a plot summary doesn’t really mean that much to you or to me, because you already know it or you couldn’t care less about it. Fair enough.
Because that’s true, there are plenty of things here in the film that are here specifically for the true fans of either the books or the movies—but predominantly the books. My daughter and I read through the book version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince several years ago, and because I’m not completely enshrouded in the Potter mythos, I have forgotten quite a bit of the story. There is very little here to remind me of what I may have forgotten. For instance, the love interest of Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) isn’t named fully at all in the course of the movie. In fact, her name (Lavender Brown, played by Jessie Cave) is brought up only once, and that toward the end of the film. Naturally, the true fans know exactly who she is. The rest of us don’t remember, and we’re never told.
And this is the real problem with the film. There are so many plots to juggle and characters to introduce and re-introduce that many of them are here only as scenery rather than true characters. Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane), who has been a significant presence in the previous films, both as comic relief and as one of the few bedrocks in Harry’s life, is virtually absent. Gryffindor students like Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) and Dean Thomas have only a couple of lines, while others like Seamus Finnigan may as well be pieces of furniture. The same is true of Harry’s Slytherin foils like Crabbe and Goyle, neither of whom say a word. Their previously malevolent presence shows up here almost not at all.
This is the real shame. It feels like a substantial part of the story simply isn’t here. That’s always true of a book adaptation, but here it feels as if things were removed without explanation. Harry’s opposite at Hogwarts has always been Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), and while Malfoy is certainly all over this film (frequently dressed in an ominous black suit), his almost total lack of lines makes his presence felt much less than it should have been. The same is true of the Weasley twins. The older Weasley children are absent completely, and as I recall, there are some significant things that happened to them or because of them in the book.
This is a shame. Many of these kids, who have essentially grown up in front of us in the lives of other characters have turned into good actors. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry), Emma Watson (Hermione), and Rupert Grint have some skills, and it would be nice to see these skills really put to use. The same is true of Felton. Even in his few scenes in this film, it’s evident that he’s got the chops to really act, and because of this, his absence in all but a few scenes is missed here.
Additionally, much of the drama of the sixth book (as I remember it) is more mental than anything else. There are a lot of cat and mouse games going on, and while there are certainly a few big battles, a lot of the story takes place on a different plane. That’s certainly true here, but that plane isn’t well represented in this film. Instead of the major battle at the end of the book, we’re given a short sequence in the middle that was supposed to take its place, and it really doesn’t because so little happens.
In short, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince feels like short shrift. What should have been pushing the Potter machinery toward an exciting climax in the next year or so instead feels like a let-down and a step backwards. I’m not willing to go back and read the books again right now (I likely will when daughter #2 is old enough to want to read them with me), and I genuinely feel that there is quite a bit that I don’t remember and should have been reminded of in this film. Characters I remember being important at least in presence are, because they weren’t central to the story, virtually ignored here. This will make completing the series difficult, since so much was left out.
However, as stated earlier, yet another review of this movie isn’t going to convince you to go or not go. You’ve already invested enough that you’re going to see it, or you’ve already gotten to the point where you no longer care, if you ever did. If this is how these films are going to go from this point on, I’m ready for the end of the series so I can be done with it.
Grade: C
One of the main reasons that this film is so daunting from the point of view of the filmmaker is that there is a history already in place. Most of the films of the Potter milieu have been at least decent, so producing a complete flop could certainly ruin a career or two. Second, just as there are those who will almost certainly love this film because it’s Harry Potter, there will also be a segment of the public who hates it because it’s Harry Potter. And then again, there will be another segment of the public who hate it because it isn’t as good as they imagined it would be.
I fall into none of these categories, fortunately enough. I read the books because I read them to my daughter, but would likely not have gotten past Chapter 3 of book 1 were I reading on my own. They weren’t written for me, and I don’t understand the fascination that adults have with Harry Potter. They’re great books for kids, and I support anything that gets kids to read. But as an adult, I see only the plot holes and problems, and the cribbing off of older and better tales.
Regardless, as with other films, I’m not going to bother with a plot summary here. Either you’ve read the books (or seen the first five films) and have likely already seen this one, or you don’t care even a little bit about all things Potter and won’t see this movie. So a plot summary doesn’t really mean that much to you or to me, because you already know it or you couldn’t care less about it. Fair enough.
Because that’s true, there are plenty of things here in the film that are here specifically for the true fans of either the books or the movies—but predominantly the books. My daughter and I read through the book version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince several years ago, and because I’m not completely enshrouded in the Potter mythos, I have forgotten quite a bit of the story. There is very little here to remind me of what I may have forgotten. For instance, the love interest of Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) isn’t named fully at all in the course of the movie. In fact, her name (Lavender Brown, played by Jessie Cave) is brought up only once, and that toward the end of the film. Naturally, the true fans know exactly who she is. The rest of us don’t remember, and we’re never told.
And this is the real problem with the film. There are so many plots to juggle and characters to introduce and re-introduce that many of them are here only as scenery rather than true characters. Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane), who has been a significant presence in the previous films, both as comic relief and as one of the few bedrocks in Harry’s life, is virtually absent. Gryffindor students like Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) and Dean Thomas have only a couple of lines, while others like Seamus Finnigan may as well be pieces of furniture. The same is true of Harry’s Slytherin foils like Crabbe and Goyle, neither of whom say a word. Their previously malevolent presence shows up here almost not at all.
This is the real shame. It feels like a substantial part of the story simply isn’t here. That’s always true of a book adaptation, but here it feels as if things were removed without explanation. Harry’s opposite at Hogwarts has always been Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), and while Malfoy is certainly all over this film (frequently dressed in an ominous black suit), his almost total lack of lines makes his presence felt much less than it should have been. The same is true of the Weasley twins. The older Weasley children are absent completely, and as I recall, there are some significant things that happened to them or because of them in the book.
This is a shame. Many of these kids, who have essentially grown up in front of us in the lives of other characters have turned into good actors. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry), Emma Watson (Hermione), and Rupert Grint have some skills, and it would be nice to see these skills really put to use. The same is true of Felton. Even in his few scenes in this film, it’s evident that he’s got the chops to really act, and because of this, his absence in all but a few scenes is missed here.
Additionally, much of the drama of the sixth book (as I remember it) is more mental than anything else. There are a lot of cat and mouse games going on, and while there are certainly a few big battles, a lot of the story takes place on a different plane. That’s certainly true here, but that plane isn’t well represented in this film. Instead of the major battle at the end of the book, we’re given a short sequence in the middle that was supposed to take its place, and it really doesn’t because so little happens.
In short, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince feels like short shrift. What should have been pushing the Potter machinery toward an exciting climax in the next year or so instead feels like a let-down and a step backwards. I’m not willing to go back and read the books again right now (I likely will when daughter #2 is old enough to want to read them with me), and I genuinely feel that there is quite a bit that I don’t remember and should have been reminded of in this film. Characters I remember being important at least in presence are, because they weren’t central to the story, virtually ignored here. This will make completing the series difficult, since so much was left out.
However, as stated earlier, yet another review of this movie isn’t going to convince you to go or not go. You’ve already invested enough that you’re going to see it, or you’ve already gotten to the point where you no longer care, if you ever did. If this is how these films are going to go from this point on, I’m ready for the end of the series so I can be done with it.
Grade: C
Saturday, July 18, 2009
While You Were Sleeping
It’s not much of a secret that I’m not a big fan of the typical romantic comedy. My problem with them in general is that I find them to be neither romantic nor comedic. I don’t generally have a lot of interest in movies when I’m fairly sure of the outcome, and romantic comedies are pretty easy to peg. There will be a comedy of errors, misunderstandings, mistaken identities, and it will all end happily. The sort of behavior that makes women say “Awww” when they are watching a rom-com is virtually identical to the sort of behavior that makes them press charges for stalking in real life. No, that’s not coming from personal experience. However, as someone who has been mildly stalked (don’t ask), it wasn’t fun, sweet, or cute. It prevented me from going to one of my favorite lunch places for nearly a year because she worked there.
With that in mind, we turn our attention to the film While You Were Sleeping. This movie hits a couple of romantic comedy nerves in that it stars Sandra Bullock as Lucy. Lucy works at the Chicago Transit Authority, where she takes tokens for the el. She has the stereotypical lonely existence (with a cat), and every day she takes a token from a good looking guy (Peter Gallagher) and daydreams about him. All of this changes around Christmas when he is mugged on the platform and falls onto the tracks. Lucy runs out and drags the poor guy off the tracks right before he gets mowed over by an oncoming train and calls the paramedics.
Lucy follows the guy to the hospital, and (take your pick here) is either so concerned or so obsessed with him that she wants to follow him into the room. However, since she’s not family (she just pulled the guy’s ass off the tracks), she can’t. While talking to herself about how she’s going to marry the guy, she is overheard by a nurse who immediately assumes she’s really the guy’s fiancée, and lets her in. Then, when his family shows up, she is introduced as his wife-to-be who evidently no one knows about, but she is immediately accepted into the fold of coma-dude’s wacky family.
Naturally, this isn’t enough crazy for a romantic comedy, so a few additional wrenches are thrown into the works. Lucy discovers that the guy in the coma is named Peter, and that he has a brother named Jack (Bill Pullman). Additionally, Peter’s home phone rings. Naturally, since he’s in a coma, he doesn’t answer. But the message left is from his real girlfriend, who is accepting his proposal and is returning from Europe. And, just to add more to this, Lucy’s landlord’s son Joe Jr. (Michael Rispoli) has a significant crush on her, and is delusional enough to believe that he and Lucy are an item.
I’m not going to jump into all of the various twists and turns, because they are relatively predictable. Even more, the characters themselves are fairly stock. Peter and Jack’s family is exactly the sort of romantic comedy family that tends to show up in this type of film. They move in a herd, rarely appearing on screen by themselves at any time, and they are all conveniently wacky. They’re sitcom next-door neighbor wacky, the sort of wacky that makes you smile and wish you had family and friends like that. What they are not is realistic in any way. Most people have wacky and crazy families, but they’re the sort that you hide from the people you’re dating.
What’s more, we discover quite a bit about Peter along the way. What we mainly discover is that while he may be pretty, he’s not a very nice person. And naturally, Jack is a very nice and talented (and rich) person, and Lucy falls for him. Peter, in the meantime, has what Roger Ebert has called a “movie coma” which essentially requires him to lay in bed until the plot requires him to wake up.
Ultimately, what I object to with the typical romantic comedy is that the entire movie could have easily been prevented if Lucy had merely said “I think there’s been a misunderstanding” in the hospital. The movie doesn’t need to exist, and the plot wouldn’t if anyone had a spine or a brain.
All of this is true, and should you decide to sit down and watch While You Were Sleeping, you’ll find the same thing. However, you’ll find a movie that is mildly charming despite itself. Yes, it’s a dumb movie, and sappy, and works because of an idiot plot and idiot characters. But Lucy is oddly endearing as a character, and I’m not exactly sure why. She has a charm to her despite her ditziness and inability to maintain anything like a normal life. I’m less sold on the other characters, Jack in particular, who is just as movie-perfect as his family is movie-wacky.
This is not a great movie, and really only mildly a good one. However, if you are forced to sit through a romantic comedy, you could do quite a bit worse than this one. While I can’t say that I loved this movie, I can say in all honestly that I didn’t hate it. And when it comes to romantic comedies, sometimes that’s really all you need. Don’t buy it, but consider renting it as a nice gesture for your spouse.
Rating: B-
With that in mind, we turn our attention to the film While You Were Sleeping. This movie hits a couple of romantic comedy nerves in that it stars Sandra Bullock as Lucy. Lucy works at the Chicago Transit Authority, where she takes tokens for the el. She has the stereotypical lonely existence (with a cat), and every day she takes a token from a good looking guy (Peter Gallagher) and daydreams about him. All of this changes around Christmas when he is mugged on the platform and falls onto the tracks. Lucy runs out and drags the poor guy off the tracks right before he gets mowed over by an oncoming train and calls the paramedics.
Lucy follows the guy to the hospital, and (take your pick here) is either so concerned or so obsessed with him that she wants to follow him into the room. However, since she’s not family (she just pulled the guy’s ass off the tracks), she can’t. While talking to herself about how she’s going to marry the guy, she is overheard by a nurse who immediately assumes she’s really the guy’s fiancée, and lets her in. Then, when his family shows up, she is introduced as his wife-to-be who evidently no one knows about, but she is immediately accepted into the fold of coma-dude’s wacky family.
Naturally, this isn’t enough crazy for a romantic comedy, so a few additional wrenches are thrown into the works. Lucy discovers that the guy in the coma is named Peter, and that he has a brother named Jack (Bill Pullman). Additionally, Peter’s home phone rings. Naturally, since he’s in a coma, he doesn’t answer. But the message left is from his real girlfriend, who is accepting his proposal and is returning from Europe. And, just to add more to this, Lucy’s landlord’s son Joe Jr. (Michael Rispoli) has a significant crush on her, and is delusional enough to believe that he and Lucy are an item.
I’m not going to jump into all of the various twists and turns, because they are relatively predictable. Even more, the characters themselves are fairly stock. Peter and Jack’s family is exactly the sort of romantic comedy family that tends to show up in this type of film. They move in a herd, rarely appearing on screen by themselves at any time, and they are all conveniently wacky. They’re sitcom next-door neighbor wacky, the sort of wacky that makes you smile and wish you had family and friends like that. What they are not is realistic in any way. Most people have wacky and crazy families, but they’re the sort that you hide from the people you’re dating.
What’s more, we discover quite a bit about Peter along the way. What we mainly discover is that while he may be pretty, he’s not a very nice person. And naturally, Jack is a very nice and talented (and rich) person, and Lucy falls for him. Peter, in the meantime, has what Roger Ebert has called a “movie coma” which essentially requires him to lay in bed until the plot requires him to wake up.
Ultimately, what I object to with the typical romantic comedy is that the entire movie could have easily been prevented if Lucy had merely said “I think there’s been a misunderstanding” in the hospital. The movie doesn’t need to exist, and the plot wouldn’t if anyone had a spine or a brain.
All of this is true, and should you decide to sit down and watch While You Were Sleeping, you’ll find the same thing. However, you’ll find a movie that is mildly charming despite itself. Yes, it’s a dumb movie, and sappy, and works because of an idiot plot and idiot characters. But Lucy is oddly endearing as a character, and I’m not exactly sure why. She has a charm to her despite her ditziness and inability to maintain anything like a normal life. I’m less sold on the other characters, Jack in particular, who is just as movie-perfect as his family is movie-wacky.
This is not a great movie, and really only mildly a good one. However, if you are forced to sit through a romantic comedy, you could do quite a bit worse than this one. While I can’t say that I loved this movie, I can say in all honestly that I didn’t hate it. And when it comes to romantic comedies, sometimes that’s really all you need. Don’t buy it, but consider renting it as a nice gesture for your spouse.
Rating: B-
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