January 11: Argo (2012 -- Ben Affleck)

★★★

I’m at a loss to explain all the accolades Argo has been receiving.  Of course there are things I like about the film very much.  For one, the art direction evokes 1980 so well that, from the cars to the clothes to the colors, I can’t deny a bit of a nostalgia tug.  The film looks so familiar to me and yet so forgotten; I like that sensation.  There’s also some good cinematic story-telling here in Affleck’s resurrecting action thriller narrative techniques while sparing the viewer the now-common explosions and frenetic chase scenes we're so used to.  Scenes like the opening assault on the embassy, conversations among the Americans at the Canadian ambassador’s house and the tense exchange in the Iranian market all have a deft economy that creates tension and uncertainty.  And the humor and parody in Argo are fun, too.  Credit Alan Arkin and John Goodman with pulling off some very funny pokes at Hollywood, though the film ultimately goes on to show us how patriotic Hollywood actually is.

And it’s that heavy hand of conventionality that keeps Argo from soaring.  Affleck shows us he can build suspense effectively, but we see he doesn’t sustain the suspense as the film loses its balance at the very points near the end that should be the closer.  There’s tension at the airport as the guards begin to question the Americans, but the sequence goes on far overlong, eventually including the predictable character reversal of the dissenting American escapee.  And shortly after that, when we watch the soldiers chase the airplane in jeeps just as the plane takes off, Hollywood cliches have taken over so visibly that it’s hard to remain in the spell of the movie.  Conventions more hoary than those two would be difficult to find.

Which is only to say that Argo is good, capable entertainment even if it doesn’t break new ground or offer new insights.  There’s some controversy about the film drumming up anger against Iranians in our own time of American/Iranian tension, but the opening historical background certainly explains the anti-American anger of 1979 Iran.  And if that’s not enough, the Iranian housekeeper lies to the Revolutionary Guards in order to protect the Canadians and the Americans and has to go into exile as a result.  Through the history and through the housekeeper character, Argo goes to some length not to condemn the country or its people.  And it manages to create a fun cinematic thrill while doing it.

January 5:Grave of the Fireflies/Hotaru no haka (1988 -- Isao Takahata)

★★★★★

January 4:The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012 -- Peter Jackson)

★★★
The Hobbit is a film to see in Imax and 3D.  There’s no character development and little character to develop, but the story moves along as a series of chases and fights.  The pleasures of this Middle Earth are mostly visual, so the better you can see it, the better the experience.  And it looks great.

As I recall, Tolkien’s Hobbit is lighter fare than his trilogy, and Jackson and his co-producers reach to other Tolkien material to fill out a trilogy based on this prequel.  As a result, there’s some depth to the world that Bilbo is running around in, but the film lingers long on episodes like the dwarfs assembling at Frodo’s or having adventures among the goblin caverns.  It feels like there’s an effort here to fill out the film’s three-hour running time.  And, too, the narrative line sometimes takes a breather to give us a bit of flashback history that provides context for the action but doesn’t succeed in elevating the film’s stakes.  And the bottom line here is that we’re not very invested in the object of the quest: Foreshadowing aside, restoring Erebor to the dwarves lacks the impact of the earlier quest trilogy to save the world from encroaching evil by destroying the ring. 

Even though none of the characters is terribly engaging and we don’t feel there’s a lot at risk in the film, The Hobbit is still a load of special effects fun and lets fans linger once again in The Shire and Rivendell.  That’s not enough to create cinema with the heft of the trilogy, but it’s not a bad way to spend several hours at the movies either.

December 16:Wreck-It Ralph (2012 -- Rich Moore)

★★★

October 17: The Leopard/Il gattopardo (1963 -- Luchino Visconti)

October 15: Le Notti Bianche (1957 -- Luchino Visconti)

★★★★

The ending of Le notti bianchi was no surprise to me since I was thinking of Brief Encounter all the way through.  The movie is a scaled-down, black-and-white love story propelled by the dynamic of two characters managing a love attraction that the man is ready to act on but that the woman has reservations about.  The woman’s reservations triumph and the man is left alone.  I saw it coming.

But that’s a glib comparison because Le notti bianche emerges naturally from Visconti’s career and because it moves to a more philosophical statement than the sad romance of Brief Encounter.  In the Lean film, we follow Laura’s perspective more than we do Dr. Harvey’s, and the sadness we feel at the end stems from our understanding of the dreary, middle class, married life that Laura is returning to.  Le notti bianche, though, follows Mario’s perspective, and his character trajectory leads to a philosophical statement rather than a personal disappointment as he goes from loneliness to hope for human contact and back to loneliness.  Mario’s struggle is an existential one, a desire not to be alone that is frustrated by a world of individual agency rather than communal.  And Mario’s philosophical voyage bears the mark of Visconti’s neorealist roots.  The world in Italian neorealism oppresses and frustrates characters who struggle against it in the same way Mario’s efforts are thwarted by the world of Le notti bianche.  Through no fault of his own, Mario’s best efforts are unable to overcome the isolated, individual situation he confronts.

It’s also not hard to find neorealist imagery within the stark artificiality of Le notti bianche.  The film’s elaborate set, though clearly artificial, includes bombed and burned out buildings that would look fine in Open City, and the film spends time in working class neighborhoods peopled by characters who work hard to transcend their circumstances.  Natalia’s aged grandmother repairs rugs and hosts lodgers to make ends meet, and the prostitute who continually solicits Mario eventually gives in to her frustration and calls out the thugs to beat him though she soon recovers her basic sense of human fairness.  She’s a neorealist figure.  And Mario’s landlady creates a whole community with her bustle and shouting as she tries to get Mario out of bed in the morning and out the door.  She’s a lower-class figure of enormous charisma.  We see even more energy in the dance sequence at the working class dance hall when the hipsters gyrate frantically to Bill Haley, eventually catching up Mario and Natalia in their energy.  Even the forlorn dog that is Mario’s only friend at the beginning and the end of the movie hearkens to films like Umberto D.  So despite the unlikely theatricality in Le notti bianche, there is more than a little neorealism.

Natalia also hearkens back to an earlier moment in Visconti’s career, Senso.  Livia, the obsessed heroine of that film, drives most of the action in that film with her monomaniacal fixation on Franz.  Her obsessive, passionate love for him compels her to ignore the duties and dangers around her as she pursues the object of her love.  Three years later, Visconti’s Natalia does the same thing in Le notti bianche.  Despite the oppressive, neorealist world of the film, Natalia dedicates herself to a man she doesn’t fully know, and she ignores everything around her, including her budding love for Mario, in fixation on a near stranger who left her a year ago, the Lodger.  One would expect that such a naïve love would only find neorealist frustration, but Le notti bianchi instead rewards her obsessiveness by reuniting her with the object of her affection.  However, the film must do this because its real focus is Mario.  The message here isn’t that obsessive love gets rewarded, because the focus of the film isn’t on Natalia.  Instead, the film shows how Natalia’s abandoning Mario leaves the main character still alone and victim to the vagaries of an arbitrary and uncaring world.  These philosophical implications prevent Le notti bianche from being mere melodrama and move it into something more profound.

Le notti bianche is a gem.  Staged and artificial, Visconti’s film still honors its neorealist roots while transforming that into portrayal of man alone in the world.  It's far more than a story of frustrated love.

October 14: Senso (1954 -- Luchino Visconti)

★★★★

When I think of Visconti, I think of rich visuals, and that’s right on the money with Senso.  The film starts in the gilded La Fenice, replete with candle light and lavish mid-1800s costumes, and then it moves out to sweeping views of Venetian plazas and canalways that Livia walks along as Visconti paints the stained walls with light.  Some shots resemble a David Lean image with a small figure slowly moving through a large landscape.  

The personal interiors are no less impressive.  Livia’s homes have classical staircases and frescoes, which themselves add interest and content to the film, and her bedrooms are furnished with swags of cloth, rich upholstery, and ornate items.  Throughout, mirrors expand the space in the frame while creating more visual interest.   There’s a similar attention to detail, though of a different sort, with respect to Franz.  While Livia’s rooms are always rich, tasteful and arranged, Franz’s quarters are usually simple and disorderly, as at the military barracks.  When Franz has his own apartment, it’s furnished with items that seem slightly crass and are tossed about in a haphazard manner, visual indications of the difference in background between him and Livia.  In fact, Visconti’s attention to detail in Senso goes beyond finding props appropriate for the characters and into the settings being expressions of the characters.  In the way he uses the settings of the film to develop the characters rather than merely reflect them, Visconti reminds me of Soderbergh in Erin Brockovitch and Magic Mike. The settings in all these films communicate information that's important to the characters rather than simply being suitable.

Not only does Visconti’s camera love the public and private spaces, but it also lingers appreciatively on his actors.  At La Fenice, Alida Valli looks like an impossibly perfect statue that moves as she wears her stiff, gauzy wrap, and Farley Granger’s impeccable white uniform shows not a wrinkle or a stain.  The two move like characters from a dream.  Later, we see them in more intimate surroundings, slightly disheveled and lounging comfortably or touching while the camera positions us as part of the intimacy.  This cinematography, too, keeps us involved with the two protagonists.

All the intimacy and beauty in Senso make its terrible characters doubly shocking.  Franz is a ladies’ man and a con from early on.  While we share Livia’s initial trust and attraction to him, we soon begin to have doubts as we find he’s lied about having her cousin Roberto exiled and, when he tosses her lock of hair in order to pawn its expensive container, we have real doubts.  He’s soon missing their rendez-vous, and we realize he’s not interested in her.  Livia, however, doesn’t, and it’s at this point that we begin to sense something amiss with her, too.  Her love for Franz becomes so obsessive that she ignores society, nationality, politics and even family in her pursuit of him.  When he makes a gallant appearance at her countryside estate, she even gives him the money entrusted to her by Roberto to fund the partisan resistance to the Austrians.  The low point of her self-debasement, and his abuse of her, comes when she flees to his apartment and he reproaches her, telling her how he’s been using her before throwing her out.  Furious, she denounces his evasion of military service, and he’s executed.  There is little in these two characters to match the beauty of their surroundings.

With such extremity, it’s not hard to see opera in the background of Senso.  The film starts in an opera house, and the intense, one-dimensional emotions have an operatic feel.  Much of the movie is over-the-top, from the military battles through the ornate scenery and the stakes for the lovers.  And the film is touching in the way opera can be, too, with its heightened sense of love and dark betrayal leading to death and madness.