L'Avventura

Of the two Italian filmmakers who came to prominence in the '60s -- Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni -- the former seems to be today's popular and critical favorite. Antonioni has mostly been relegated to the status of "important" (a kiss of death) or the product of his time.

Criterion, the company that does superb restorations of older films, has worked their magic on Antonioni's L'Avventura (1961). The movie is now on Blu-ray disc in a dazzling transfer. The image is crisper than you would have experienced it in most theaters when it was initially released, and the sound has probably been upgraded as well. 

If you've only seen L'Avventura in ill-focused, scratchy prints but found it worthwhile, you owe it to yourself to watch the Criterion Blu-ray version. The musical score doesn't strike me as particularly important in this work, but the black-and-white photography is a celebration of tones. And you get a good impression of Sicily more than half a century ago.

The knock on L'Avventura is that it's too long and under-dramatized. Long it is, about two-and-a-half hours, but except for a scene or two I found it captivating. The editing is more leisurely than is the norm nowadays, but the film is dramatic in its own idiosyncratic way. (And at least you can follow the story, which is more than can be said for many contemporary movies.)

The external action isn't particularly complicated, although what is going on beneath the surface is sometimes hard to fathom. A group of rich Romans go on a yacht trip in the sea off Sicily. Among them are Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti); his maybe-fiancée Anna (Lea Massari); and Anna's close friend, Claudia (Monica Vitti). They explore a volcanic island. When it's time to leave, Anna has gone missing. After calling in the coast guard to no avail, all except Sandro and Claudia return to Sicily, and they soon follow.

The rest of the picture focuses almost exclusively on Sandro and Claudia. He seems unconcerned about Anna, but strongly attracted to Claudia. At first Claudia resists Sandro's attentions, then discovers a passion for her missing friend's suitor.

The movie is somewhat disjointed, like a puzzle where certain pieces don't fit. For instance, the transition between Claudia's rejection and acceptance of Sandro is abrupt. Maybe she has fancied him all along, but I didn't notice any signs of it. Whatever isn't entirely clear, though, this is a movie about grown-ups with grown-up emotions, not the adolescents of all ages that predominate in American films today.

Antonioni at this point in his cinematic career had his own style, far from that of the visionary Fellini. Antonioni was more subtle, but most of his film is beautifully composed without calling undue attention its its director. L'Avventura is replete with knowingly framed shots and backgrounds that offer value added.

(I suspect this artist envied the greater attention given to Fellini, and later let himself be "influenced," partly successfully in Blow-Up, disastrously in Zabriskie Point. His last major film, The Passenger, was a recovery that played to his strengths.)

The central characters are strongly acted. And Monica Vitti -- oh, my. An almond-eyed Byzantine Madonna with wild locks of golden hair.

Crime scenes

There's a crime wave on television. Detective series are all the rage. Sometimes it seems they're cranked out like sausages, and inevitably they struggle -- or don't bother to -- against a load of clichés: The surly unsympathetic boss; the mismatched, hostile partners; the public and media baying for an arrest; the obvious suspect who turns out to be innocent (especially if said subject belongs to an ethnic or sexual minority); "What've we got here?" from the detective arriving at the murder scene; etc.

The viewer who has seen and heard it too many times is tempted to jack the whole genre, especially after such duds as George Gently and the hash made out of the novels based on Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus and Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford.

But a lot of us, obviously, are drawn to detective series. I confess, without even consulting a lawyer, that I am one. With each new program I nurse the hope for something special.

Broadchurch has been a big-time ratings success in the U.K., maybe the hottest show since Downton Abbey. It's available in the States via Netflix DVDs. Broadchurch is above the baseline, though not especially because of the script. Screenwriting is virtually a lost art, most of all in well-trodden fields like police dramas. But Britain has a seemingly bottomless store of acting talent to call on, and it's evident here.

The thing is set in a small seaside town in Dorset, in southwestern England. The odd-couple detectives are Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman) and Alec Hardy (David Tennant); in the first episode we learn that Hardy, who has been transferred from outside the local cop shop, has taken the lead position Ellie was expecting. Thank goodness, though, the series doesn't make a meal out of her resentment or a conflict between the two -- for the most part, they work together smoothly despite various procedural disagreements.

Tennant speaks in a Scottish accent you need a pickax to get through (unless you're Scottish). He's a bear with a permanent sore paw, who looks like he sleeps in his suit (the tie always knotted below the top shirt button) and would still wear a scowl if he were being massaged with a peacock feather.

This actor is, I understand, the most recent Doctor Who. I don't watch Doctor Who, but my wife does, and she says he was excellent. Tennant makes a strong impression, more by his portrayed unpleasant temperament as any attempt to win the audience's favor.

But it's Olivia Colman who steals scene after scene. She appears to be wrapped up in her police work to hide, especially from herself, some deep sadness. Colman has the gift of being able to express several moods at once.

The supporting roles, especially the parents of the murdered young boy who is the subject of the investigation, ably hold up their end.

We are told that the series was shot in the sequence of the episodes, with the writer and director keeping the cast in the dark about who the guilty party was until the final revelation. Supposedly this was to keep them from unconsciously signaling anything to viewers in advance. That sounds like public relations bunk, to give the media something to write about. Actors of this caliber aren't going to drop any hints by mistake. Whatever, Broadchurch is well worth a look for fans of this kind of entertainment.

Let me tell you about something even better.

A while back I wrote about the British TV series based on Swedish writer Henning Mankell's inspector Wallander, with Kenneth Branagh in the lead role. Other than the compulsively watchable Branagh, I didn't find a great deal to cheer about.

There had also been two Swedish-made series centered on Wallander: The first, which ran between 1994 and 2007, starred Rolf Lassgärd. I don't think it's ever been available in the U.S. or U.K.

I was aware of a second Wallander production, first shown in 2005, but either Netflix hadn't distributed it yet or I was tired of the character and setting. Recently, though, when three seasons of the second series were offered on Netflix, curiosity drove me to check them out.

Wham. This production beats that with Branagh all hollow. For one thing, it pays attention to the rest of the cast in the investigations, not just Wallander. These are genuine ensemble pieces, not just settings for the central character.

The mood isn't exactly light -- these are murder investigations, after all -- but this Kurt Wallander doesn't wear a rain cloud for a hat like Branagh. He's troubled, but the troubles are not so much individual as  the kind that aging people have to contend with: health problems, upcoming retirement, isolation. The director keeps the tension up, without periodic interruptions for picture postcard countryside scenes.

And what a great choice for the Wallander role! Krister Henricksson amazes me every time I see him (I'm about halfway through the second season). No subtlety seems beyond him, but he can be thrillingly forceful when he needs to be. Watch the last 15 minutes or so of season two's opener, "The Revenge" (not that I'm suggesting you view it out of context) to see a top-class actor at work.

As with Broadchurch, the rest of the cast is firmly in charge of their part of the stories.

Netflix has dropped the ball, unfortunately. Before I could watch the whole first season, it took discs 5, 6, and 7 out of circulation or streaming. So you must miss about six episodes and then start with the second season, where one prominent cast member is missing and several new ones have appeared.

Johanna Sällström, who played (very well) the important role of Linda, Wallander's daughter and a uniformed policewoman in his outfit, committed suicide in real life. It's just incomprehensible. I am not against assisted suicide for the very old who have incurable illnesses and are in constant pain, but what could drive a beautiful young woman, who had already reached a high level of achievement in her profession, presumably had plenty of money, and was in good health, to peg out by her own choice? The human mind is an insoluble mystery. 

Anyway, Linda had to be written out of the script, but I would have liked to see how it was handled as well as to have the pleasure of watching Henricksson more. (Off topic: I am guessing that Swedish names by now are conventional, and that Krister Henricksson didn't have a father named Henrick.)

Netflix customers are now writing to complain that season three is only in Swedish, with no subtitles.

Whatever frustrations it entails, I can easily recommend this series.

It's not a detective story, but I'll mention the 2000 German production (with a strong Turkish component) In July. I found it so appealing I've seen it twice. The story is too lightweight to take time describing, but it's a romance balanced with just the right degree of tough-mindedness to temper the sweetness. There's something about astrological sun and moon signs that makes no sense to me, but adds a little metaphysical note to the mix.

The woman lead, Christiane Paul, is the world's most beautiful actress (or was in 2000), even with her corn-row hairstyle.

American Sniper

 

I'll keep this reasonably short, since by now you have (a) seen the film, or (b) read and heard enough about it that your brain is ready to crash, or (c) both.

Let me get this out of the way: American Sniper is not a great movie. Some of it isn't even very good. 

But it is impressive, despite a few dead spots (most in the domestic scenes when Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle is between his four tours of duty in Iraq). I didn't think anything new could be done showing lethal street fighting after all the movies Iraq has spawned. But while Kyle (Bradley Cooper) works with various teams in the urban killing grounds, the focus is definitely on him. And this is different, because what we experience most intensely is one-on-one, not opposing armies tossed into a blender.

"Experience" isn't too strong a word for the battle scenes. And one surprise for me was that director Clint Eastwood showed himself capable of imagination in supervising camera placement, cutting, and atmosphere in those scenes. The sound design is so extraordinary it adds a scary additional dimension. I was lucky enough to catch American Sniper in the Cinerama Dome at the Arclight Hollywood, with a state-of-the-art sound system. But in any reasonably up-to-date theater, the soundtrack should be startlingly effective.

I wouldn't have thought Eastwood had it in him. He has been constantly hyped as a brilliant director, for reasons I could not understand; at most he seemed an efficient professional who avoided big mistakes. But in American Sniper he has stepped out of the conventional often enough.

Another virtue of the film is that it seems to have no agenda. The anguish of war is convincingly demonstrated (although with no more gore than necessary), but nothing types it as an "anti-war" film. Yet Kyle has an outburst of patriotism when watching the 9/11 attack on television with his family.

For a movie about a recent and ultra-controversial war, it's even-handed. It doesn't ask us to admire Kyle for defending the country. It doesn't make him out to be a sentimentally naive flag waver. It says, this is one man of our time, what he felt, what he did.

People at various points of the political compass can argue about its political message, but I doubt it intends to have one, and is all the better for that. Still, Sniper's overwhelming attendance figures suggest it connects with deep values and convictions that many moviegoers have been starved for. It is shaped by an outlook no movie has delivered in a long time. 

This isn't a story driven by plot points (the script is no great shakes) or acting (strong from Bradley Cooper, with the other players mostly reduced to scenery around Cooper). It's about the Code of Heroism that, for good or ill, dominated human values until the past century and for many continues to cast a spell. After 2,800 years, we read The Iliad for its poetry but also because we're drawn to characters whose lives are meaningless without heroism, risking all for honor. Achilles, Agamemnon, Hektor tell us about a way of life that exists today -- insofar as it exists at all -- mostly in the military. The Iliad also shows the tragic cost to others involved with heroes, like Hektor's wife, Andromache. 

It doesn't reach the heights of The Iliad, but if American Sniper has a "message," it's one that resonates with a long history.

A Most Wanted Man

I'd been looking forward to A Most Wanted Man, based on the John le Carré novel of post–Cold War espionage. I like the spy genre and le Carré, for all his sour attitude about the trade (understandable, since he himself used to practice it), usually writes a good story.

But a bunch of things have gone wrong with the film version, including that it's impossible to watch without knowing uncomfortably that it was Philip Seymour Hoffman's last role before he died of a lethal mixture of heroin and prescription drugs. We might as well get that aspect of the review out of the way first, since it appears in the lead of almost every article about the picture.

I haven't seen all his films, but it's obvious that he was one of the handful of actors working at any given time who is more than technically proficient. (Acting craftsmanship is quite an achievement and I'm not damning it with faint praise, but theatrical schools these days must be doing something right, since they turn out lots of players who are up to the job.) But Hoffman had, besides technique, a special haunting presence that drew you in, made you identify with him even if you hated the character.

I'm mad at him -- the person, now in the afterlife. He doesn't seem to have intended to kill himself, but he was surely smart enough to know heroin is dangerous, let alone in combination with other drugs. He not only cheated himself out of what would have included other exceptional roles, but deprived the profession and the public of them as well.

All right, the movie. It's almost needless to say Hoffman is the sun around which everything revolves. As usual, he's compelling, although I think he has one overplayed moment at the climax. Otherwise the casting is a mixed bag, and no mistake. Nina Hoss, Willem Dafoe, and Robin Wright are good. But Rachel McAdams, the female lead, supplies nothing but attitude spinning.

The yarn concerns Issa, an illegal Muslim Chechen refugee who shows up in Hamburg to give away a huge financial legacy from his father, a brutal and corrupt military man. Maybe my mind was wandering, but I never got why he had to sneak into Germany, a country that for years has welcomed immigrants unrestrictedly with such generosity that lately street demos in Dresden have begun to bust out.

Grigoriy Dobrygin (Issa) is so inexpressive that he disappears before the scenes he's in are over. He does have one moment of character development: he shaves off his beard. Homayoun Ershadi, as a respectable, supposedly charity-supporting money launderer for terrorists who wants to bag Issa's treasury, seems to be trying to make an art form out of boredom.

Günther Bachmann (Hoffman), a German intelligence officer operating outside the official agencies so he can do things they aren't allowed to, is forced to try to convince various bureaucrats of the other intelligence services of his plan to trap the big-time money launderer. Naturally they are all portrayed as gray, inhuman functionaries -- a standard le Carré theme. It may be realistic but this is supposed to be a drama, not a wax museum.

A Most Wanted Man must have had a fairly big budget to include well-known actors, but you wouldn't know it from Anton Corbijn's direction. With most of Hamburg available, the whole movie looks like it takes place in five or six locations, including that contemporary cliché the spies in a trailer full of listening and recording instruments. 

Other settings, too, lack originality. All we see is that this city seems sleek and soulless, a monument to empty materialism. That may be realistic as well, since Hamburg was largely burned to ashes by Allied bombers in 1943 and the postwar rebuilding presumably took the form of metallic and glass modernism. But none of the background has any story to tell, any impression to add to the obvious.

Le Carré appears in one of the DVD's special features, typically explaining in his Oxford-educated drawl how rotten the West is and how prejudiced against Muslims.

 

Brideshead Revisited, revisited

The 2008 theatrical film version of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited has enough in it that's good to make it worth watching; enough not so good that it's frustrating.

Many people thought that the celebrated miniseries broadcast in 1981 (Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, Diana Quick, Laurence Olivier et al.) was so definitive that condensing the new script into two and a quarter hours was bound to come up short, in both senses. I had my doubts and stayed away from the DVD until last week. But that was presuming too much. No movie is definitive, although some have a lot of audience identification a remake has to overcome to succeed.

It's said that comparisons are odious, and you should look at the work itself. It's good advice and almost impossible to follow sometimes, but I'll try to as much as I can here.

All right; what's good in the latter-day Brideshead? Foremost is Emma Thompson as Lady Marchmain. (Anybody interested in this posting is probably familiar with the story, either from the previous video incarnation or the book, but if not you can easily find a plot description on the Web.) Thompson steals the show. It would not surprise me if she, like most in the theatrical profession, is a leftist who despises the English aristocracy. But she gives the matriarch her due. There is no condescension, no easy caricature: Lady Marchmain is portrayed as reserved but not cruel, with her Catholicism honest rather than conventional.

I believe many English Catholics are still defensive in what was until recently a strongly Protestant country; they haven't forgotten the destruction of the monasteries and persecution in the time of Henry VIII.  Moreover, Lady Marchmain has been through the disheartening experience of being left by her husband, Lord Marchmain, who some years earlier headed to Venice, shucked off his Catholicism, and is living with a mistress.

Speaking of Lord Marchmain, the role has gone this time to Michael Gambon, and as usual he has an almost hypnotic power. I think a lot of that is down to his voice, which is like the lower notes of a cello. Listening to it, you can imagine it as music.

The three central characters are Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), the Marchmains' son; Julia (Hayley Atwell), their daughter; and Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode), who meets Sebastian at Oxford, befriends him, is invited to Brideshead, the stately country house (played by Castle Howard in Yorkshire, the same location used for the TV series), and becomes thoroughly involved with Sebastian's family. What shall I say about the performers, whose work necessarily sets the tone for the whole story?

They all have fine acting technique. No doubt they studied the book and script scrupulously and did everything they could to internalize the characters. But they lack the weight to deliver the picture. They're watchable, occasionally involving, but for me mostly distant, on the other side of a window or gauze curtain. Your mileage may differ.

Another problem is the filmmakers' overall concept, which just doesn't connect with much of the depth, the seriousness, of -- here comes an odious comparison -- Waugh's novel. I'm not complaining about scenes and characters left out or passed over quickly, which a film adaptation has to do. But the focus has been changed. The Catholicism theme is reasonably well captured (although I think Lord Marchmain's deathbed conversion, or readoption, scene is botched), but too much psychological complexity has gone missing.

A presentation of this length had to drastically cut the World War II prelude and postlude when Ryder as an army officer finds himself with a unit that has taken over Brideshead for the duration. But that diffuses the poignancy of time's stab during the "revisiting."

A decision was taken to have Wishaw play Sebastian as overtly homosexual. He practically camps it up in the early sequences. The friendship (attraction?) between him and Charles is less, not more, dramatically effective as a result. A viewer isn't asked to bother his poor little head about any ambiguity. By the way, the wonderful scene in the book where the young men are boozing it up and devising fanciful descriptions of the wines they sample feels routine here, as though it had to be included because so many people would expect it.

Production values are first class, the marble coldness as well as the rich artistry of the house's decor immaculately captured, the exteriors nicely framed, costumes attractive. Director Julian Jarrold keeps things moving along but also knows when to linger. If only ... but maybe it's no use wishing for more. We live in an if-only world.

American Hustle

I know, there's been quite a gap since the last posting. Whatever happened to me? (I've been asking myself that for years.) Actually I've been writing on a brontosaurus of a project. The kind I get paid for, which subtly influences my priorities. Plus I have been spectacularly uninspired to come up with anything new worth saying. That may still hold true with this squib. I blog, you decide.

American Hustle is now available from Netflix in Blu-ray format. I thought I'd borrow it and see what all the fuss is about. I was mistaken. I've watched it and don't see what all the fuss is about. It's a modestly entertaining junk movie about con artists and political corruption in New Jersey circa 1978. (What would filmmakers do without NJ as a metaphor?)

Nothing about it is original or creative, and while I've read it described as a modern "screwball comedy," it isn't particularly screwy and if a comedy is supposed to make you laugh this is not a comedy.

It's left to the cast to save the movie, or not.

Christian Bale is Irving Rosenfeld, a would-be big-time scammer although he seems to be a farm team player. I couldn't connect with his character; he appears unsure what Rosenfeld is about or why we should find him interesting. A sharper screenplay or a better director than David O. Russell might have helped.

Rosenfeld  and his partner in crime, Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), get sucked into the gravitational field of an FBI man, Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). The grifters and the fed man try to bamboozle each other. Cooper plays his role in flashing neon, punching his lines without let-up. The camera likes him and he'd probably be good if he'd dial the histrionics back about 50 percent. Maybe somebody told him he was playing in a screwball comedy.

I said the picture was modestly entertaining, and that's almost entirely down to other lead actors. Jeremy Renner, as the mayor who signs on to the scheming, resists the temptation to sink to caricature. He's convincing as a crook but you can't help liking him a little -- he lets you see the streak of decency in the man. He wants to line his pockets, sure, but sincerely believes that bringing in casino gambling will help the town's wretched economy.

Notwithstanding his relationship with Sydney (it's hard to tell if he has genuine romantic feelings for her or just finds her a useful business partner), Irving is married. Jennifer Lawrence is cast as Rosalyn Rosenfeld. I take it she's about the hottest star in movies currently. Would you believe I've never seen her in anything? No, I'm afraid I was doing something else when everybody was running to the Hunger Games movies.

I had gotten the notion she was a teenage waif, but either I was mistaken or she has grown quickly into a near-zaftig shape. Like everybody else here she has a cliché part, but makes it highly watchable. Impressive.

Now let's talk about Amy Adams. Another newcomer to me, she is both magnetic and clearly an accomplished actress. She puts nuances into lines that have none. The costume designer has installed her in slutty-elegant clothes that show off her figure to great advantage.

Sydney is alluring and smart -- at least in a calculating way. Part of the time the story asks her to speak in an English accent (which she does poorly, but I'd bet that's part of her characterization: she admits her origin was Albuquerque, which to the movie industry big shots is probably the ultimate loserville). So it's hard to understand why she's with a doof like Irving. She's the brains of the outfit. Not to mention the body.

In the unlikely event any feminist ideologues are reading this, I am charged with male chauvinism and "lookism." Guilty as charged. Me and a few billion other people. We all react to looks, although on closer acquaintance other qualities come into play.

Respectable authority is on my side. According to Montaigne, in his essay "On Physiognomy," when Aristotle was asked why men spent longer in the company of the beautiful than others and visited them more often, Aristotle replied: "No one that is not blind could ask that question."

Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is one of the few 19th century romantic novels to retain its popularity in our anti-romantic time, partly because it is much more than a conventional romance. It involves emotional undercurrents, the uncertainty of human wishes, social class, money, and the way of life in a remote corner of northern England.

The 2011 film version of Jane Eyre seems to have come and gone without much notice, but it's as fine an adaptation of a classic in its genre as I've seen -- more affecting than any of the slick, big budget versions of the Jane Austen books that have inundated us in recent years.

Hats off to Cary Joji Fukunaga's lively but un-gimmicky direction and Adriano Goldman's rich cinematography, beautifully conveyed in the Blu-ray transfer, but what mainly raises this Jane Eyre high enough above the ordinary to warrant a blog post is the casting of the central characters: Michael Fassbender as Mr. Rochester and Mia Wasikowska as Jane.

Fassbender gives us psychologically acute portrayal as the sad aristocrat who is drawn to Jane, a governess for the girl child in his care. Almost every line reading seems to suggest a meaning beneath the surface. This is unobtrusively superlative acting.

I had never before heard of Wasikowska, who hails from Australia. She is Fassbender's match in subtlety while confidently holding the screen. When Jane's heart was broken by the last-minute prevention of her marriage to Rochester, mine broke a little too. What greater compliment can I pay an actress?

As an aside, the Brontë family seemed always to be close to an abyss. It included novelists Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, two other sisters, and a brother, Branwell. I've visited their parsonage at Howarth, Yorkshire, along with the nearby church where the clergyman father, Patrick, was in charge. Even today you sense some finely tuned bleakness in the environment, the air charged with mystery. The film captures the strange atmosphere of the remoter parts of Yorkshire, although it was shot in Derbyshire and Oxfordshire.

The Reverend Patrick Brontë outlived his wife and all his children. It is scarcely possible to imagine what his final years were like for him.

Screen shots

Money-back guarantee: Not a word about President Obama-Jarrett!

Notes on three DVDs fetched from Netflix recently:

Kurosawa's 1985 Ran may be an art film enclosing a commercial film, or a commercial film enclosing an art film. Let's just call it arty commercial.

Of course Ran has ingredients that make cinéastes indulge in fawning contests. It's foreign (unless you're Japanese); set in remote times; plenty of picturesque violence; goes on and on and then on some more; and boasts a solid literary antecedent, King Lear by the unknown author who goes by the name Shakespeare.

This being old Japan, the warlord/Lear can't give his kingdom to three daughters, which would have been unthinkable in that time and place, so they are transgendered. Presumably to keep the film from being suffocatingly masculine, Kurosawa and his screenwriters introduce a seductive woman, Lady Kaede (Mieko Harada), to goad the Bad Son now on his father's throne into indulging in affirmative vicious action. Maybe Kurosawa got King Lear confused with Macbeth. Even in antique high fashion and makeup that look bizarre to modern Western eyes, she's a lovely viper. Once she wraps herself around Villain 1, it's Kaede bar the door.

Indeed there are impressive things in Ran. Kurosawa has a good eye for visual composition; when things get otherwise tedious there's usually something worth your attention in the background. He shoots and edits action well; the scene of the fiery attack on a castle is gripping. There are also compelling, quiet moments (but not enough). Toru Takemitsu's music score provides effective commentary.

"Shakespeare's" Lear opens a window into all the contradictions of human life: power and powerlessness, the wisdom of age and geriatric misjudgment, the bonds of love snapped in an instant by death's sharp tug, and so much more. Kurosawa, however, presents the theme as stilted, schematic -- disloyalty to your father is wicked, war is hell.

The acting is all over the place stylistically. The leaders of the various armies lined up for battle chew the beautiful scenery. Tatsuya Nakadai, as the Lear figure Lord Hidetora, is curiously artificial. Just say Noh? The androgynous Fool -- I thought at first he was a woman -- camps it up mercilessly but undeniably holds the attention. Yet other characters, including Lady Kaede, are played naturalistically.

Ran is no ran-of-the-mill film -- it's clearly a director's "statement," for good and ill.


Oliver Stone's Alexander may be a commercial film enclosing an art film, or an art film enclosing a commercial film. Let's just call it ... never mind.

This DVD was (I think) the "Final Version" of Stone's epic, which has at least three iterations, the other two being the "Theatrical Version" and the "Director's Cut." I'd seen the (I think) "Theatrical Version" (the shortest), also on DVD. Despite its faults, I had found it interesting enough to be curious about what had been left out. In this latest version, it would seem nothing much was omitted, as it ran (or walked, or stumbled) for well over three hours.

While his politics are not mine, Stone has directed some strong films including Salvador, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors, Nixon, and the underrated Heaven & Earth.

In an extra-features introduction, Stone says something to the effect that if you liked the short version you'll like this even more, and if you hated the short version you'll hate this even more. I found that I liked and disliked both in about the same proportion. Starting here I'll be talking about the maybe-ultimate-final Alexander I watched most recently.

It was chance that I saw it right after Ran -- they happened to succeed one another in my Netflix queue. But that made me notice some surprising resemblances. Both are big on battle scenes. Both have father-son conflict, although Alexander tosses in for good measure a semi-incestuous mother-son relationship, as well as an implied homosexual one. 

Like Kurosawa, Oliver Stone is a highly visual director -- one of his keenest talents, which he doesn't get enough credit for. The shots of the Macedonian and Persian armies, the long march through Asia to India, the court scenes are highly intensified by their pictorial quality. Like Kurosawa, Stone uses nature to heighten mood.

There are two huge battle set pieces, one in Persia and one in India. That in Persia -- Gaugamela -- is presented convincingly and powerfully, but at exhausting length. Once the action begins, onscreen titles helpfully inform us when we are viewing the Macedonian right, left, and center lines. The trouble is, the charging soldiers in the right look quite a bit like those in the left, and both strongly resemble those in the center. 

Gaugamela seems like an all-day engagement, not just in 331 BC but in the movie. The cross-cutting between different parts of Alexander's army starts to bring up thoughts of military history writing where General X's cavalry "wheels around" to attack General Y's left flank while Count Z's artillery forces advance slowly against heavy resistance, etc.

One virtue of the extended version is that we get to hear more of Anthony Hopkins's voice-over narration (carnage recalled in tranquility). Not only does Hopkins help us understand the events better, but it's a pleasure just to hear a first-rate actor.

But whatever clarity Hopkins provides in sabotaged by Stone's insatiable urge for flashbacks and flash-forwards. Again the onscreen titles tell us where and when we are, but the jumping between past and present (which accelerates later in the movie) becomes annoying. We don't watch a picture like Alexander to sit in as Dr. Freud analyzes the childhood and youth of the Macedonian king, stretched out on the couch.

A lot of Stone's cinematic past suggests he is an excellent director of actors, but his ability along that line deserted him here. Colin Farrell (Alexander) lacks the magnetism and range of inflections to carry such a huge part, although it should be said that Stone's insensitivity to words -- his greatest weakness, as usual -- doesn't give Farrell a lot to work with. Val Kilmer as the father, Philip of Macedonia, is cartoonish. In the big roles, only Angelina Jolie, as Alexander's slyly loving mother, holds the screen.

The long-haul version of Alexander, presumably assembled to Oliver Stone's own specifications, shows again that enough is enough and too much is too much.


When I reviewed Wong Kar-Wai's 2046, I headed the posting "The first great film of the millennium?" On a second viewing, I find I agree with myself. I still know of none better.

The second time around was even more enjoyable than the first. Although not authored in Blu-ray (unlike the others discussed here), the color palette was even more sensuous than I remembered, possibly because I now have a different DVD player and monitor. 

2046 is a work of brilliant imagination as well as craft. Because of retaining a general overview of the story, I didn't have to spend as much time trying to understand its fluid complexity (although there are still a few puzzling bits). I was able to concentrate more on the acting, and do not believe it is exaggerating to call it profound. What the performers give us puts to shame the posturing in Alexander.

Wong Kar-Wai has made other fine movies, some of which I've written about in this blog. But 2046 remains his masterpiece.

Lawrence rides again

David Lean's immense 1962 biographical film Lawrence of Arabia has been re-released in Blu-ray, and not before time. The splendid new digital transfer captures both its majesty and detail as no earlier video has done. It's a greater movie than I remembered it from the two earlier versions I saw, one in a theater and one as a VHS tape.

Technically this is about the best Blu-ray disc authoring that has ever come my way. On a decent home theater system, it probably boasts more natural color tones and sharper outlines than you would have seen in almost any movie theater on its original release -- and the sound is unquestionably upgraded. Of course it's in the original widescreen aspect ratio, probably 2.35 to 1.

One courageous thing David Lean did in Lawrence was being the first director to use the widescreen dimensions for something other than cast-of-thousands spectacle. Even the battle scenes are on a human scale, probably historically correct: the Arab tribal "armies" seem to number in the hundreds, or sometimes a few dozen.

Not that there isn't plenty of eye food. I won't bang on about the landscapes -- they're part of the movie's legend, sometimes imitated but never surpassed, and overpowering in Blu-ray. The atmosphere of the British headquarters in Cairo and Jerusalem is designed with loving care.

The script, credited to Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson, isn't afraid to settle down and explore the ambiguities of Lawrence's relationship with the British army command. The result is an artful blend of the psychological (at least on the British side -- the scenes with the Arabs are less convincing) and the emotionally stirring.

Another courageous act on Lean's part was casting Peter O'Toole, then unknown to movie audiences, in the lead of a very expensive picture. The financiers must have been sweating blood. O'Toole was brave as well. He has to fixate the camera in his aura for a good part of the three and a quarter hour running time (this edition; others have been re-cut in various ways), a daunting task for any actor.

In addition, he constantly risks being upstaged by distinguished character actors like Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Claude Rains, and Jose Ferrer. (The last-named is pure genius. His portrayal of a sinister Turkish army officer who watches the beating of Lawrence and, presumably, later rapes him is unforgettably chilling. Yet on the surface he seems to be doing practically nothing. Well, as Larry Olivier said to Dustin Hoffman after Hoffman stayed up all night to play a character who'd been up all night, "Dear boy, it's called acting.")

Peter O'Toole rises to the occasion. It's a pleasure to see him before he developed an extremely high opinion of himself and drank his meals.

The rest of the cast lets the side down one way or another. Omar Sharif chews the scenery, infinite though it is, as an Arab tribal leader called Sherif Ali. There should have been a new Sherif in town. Anthony Quinn, as the head of an opposing tribe, plays his character brilliantly -- the trouble is, the character he plays is Anthony Quinn. Anthony Quayle, renowned English stage actor (I used to listen to records of him reading poetry), is curiously bland. As an American reporter following in Lawrence's dust and trying to write his legend, Arthur Kennedy is suffocatingly dull.

The journalistic subplot strikes me as the movie's only serious misstep. What are we supposed to infer from it? That the famous Lawrence was a creation of a newspaper hack? But the whole rest of the film illustrates quite the reverse. 

Never mind. Lawrence of Arabia is a "great film" that actually is a great film. And at last it's presented in a format that allows its brilliance to be appreciated anew.