Knight of Cups

KNIGHT OF CUPS (Terrence Malick, 2015)

KNIGHT OF CUPS follows Rick (Christian Bale), a screenwriter lost in the wilderness of Hollywood and all of the temptations it has to offer. Writer-director Terrence Malick compares Rick’s experience with a story about a father who sends his son west to retrieve a pearl, except the boy forgets his mission as he is seduced by what this new land puts before him. Success has brought money and an unending flow of beautiful women to Rick, but it has separated him from his wife Nancy (Cate Blanchett) and brought tension between him and his father (Brian Dennehy) and brother (Wes Bentley). Like Rick, who is referred to in the title, every significant character is given a chapter named after their corresponding tarot card. Each segment looks at how each person affects the wandering dreamer.

Malick continues to push his style to greater abstraction in KNIGHT OF CUPS. This film may show the limits of its utility. Malick employs a thin line of narrative for hanging his meditations in voiceover about the pursuit of God and love and alienation from it amid a world that distracts from the eternal by making beauty and novelty easily accessible to stave off boredom. Characters are heard on the soundtrack before they’ve been introduced and often sound the same, so it can be difficult to parse whose thoughts we’re hearing, although Malick may be more interested in the totality of the statements than assigning any to particular voices. The technique is freeing in that it allows the viewer to float along with the experience and confounding when trying to understand specifically what Malick is saying. For better or worse, the actors are symbols, even more than in his previous film.

After THE TREE OF LIFE and TO THE WONDER, how much one is willing to submit to the ride probably depends on one’s tolerance for Malick’s mystical poetry. The film unspools like a waking illusion, with Rick hazily roaming through the dream factory rich in material things and impoverished spiritually. It helps that cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s ravishing imagery of manmade opulence holds interest even if one loses the threads of philosophy and theology that hold KNIGHT OF CUPS together. It’s a staggeringly beautiful film in which the camera swoops among the people and tilts upward as if in worship and humility.

Christian or faith-based cinema tends to be narrowly defined to the kind of pat homiletics in stuff like MIRACLES FROM HEAVEN. Certainly those very straightforward types of films are more accessible on an aesthetic level than the sound and image pastiche Malick favors, but both are searching for something higher. KNIGHT OF CUPS dwells in the sinful entertainment capital to understand how one can be led astray and might be led out. If there can be multiple denominations within the predominant western religion, why can’t there be different ways for art to contemplate the nature of the divine too?

Grade: B

Carol

CAROL (Todd Haynes, 2015)

In CAROL Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) appears to be on the same track of many other young women in the early 1950s. She works in a Manhattan department store and has a boyfriend Richard (Jake Lacy) who is persistent in wishing to join their lives. Nevertheless, Therese entertains the notion of becoming a photographer and seems to hold Richard at arm’s length. She gives off the distinct sense of not yet knowing where she wants life to take her or how she might arrive at the destination.

That all changes gradually when she meets Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett). The glamorous older woman buys a train set for her daugher from Therese, and they have reason to be in touch again when the shopgirl mails Carol the gloves she left on her counter. Carol meets Therese for lunch as a way of saying thanks and is so intrigued by her that she extends an invitation to visit at her home in New Jersey. Carol is in the midst of divorcing her husband Harge (Kyle Chandler) and seems quite taken with the curious young woman that Therese is, even if the attraction goes unspoken. Therese is intrigued too, and eventually they depart together on a road trip west during the holidays.

Based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, CAROL casts what would have been a socially forbidden romance at the time as a thriller. Phyllis Nagy’s screenplay opens the film in media res with a suspicious air around Therese and Carol conversing in a restaurant while seemingly under someone’s watchful eyes. On the surface there is nothing out of the ordinary about two women sharing a table in a public space, yet the images are charged with the hints of the clandestine. Director Todd Haynes often shoots scenes, particularly their first lunch, with an excess of space above and behind the women. While the framing violates presumed technical rules of composition, it implies the feeling of being observed from behind, of looking over one’s shoulders to be sure that one is not being spied on.

During a brief scene with Therese and friends crammed into a movie theater’s projection booth, one character taking notes remarks that he is tracking the differences between what those on screen are saying and what they are thinking and feeling. It’s as blatant a statement of purpose as possible to describe Haynes’ directorial approach and Nagy’s screenplay. The actions on screen and the dialogue tend to resist making plain the interior lives of the lovers. How Therese and Carol conduct themselves within the frame and what they convey through looks and body language are immeasurably more revealing.

Mara may seem a bit alien as Therese, or “flung out of space” as Carol remarks, but the quiet awkwardness she inhabits suits the part. Therese’s trajectory from impassive participant to controller of her destiny pulsates with the excitement of self-awakening. Still, in keeping with the period and the emotional exterior of the character, Mara’s terrific performance demonstrates her character’s development largely through the eyes. Blanchett’s regal bearing is used to great effect because Carol is somewhat like a queen, or one likely to be deposed. If her divorce is completed, she stands to be deprived of a lot financially and emotionally, yet she carries on how she sees fit unashamedly. Carol possesses the wisdom and scars that Therese has yet to receive. Like Mara, Blanchett is expert at employing glances to show how she envies Therese’s unformed qualities and desires to shield her from the pain that may come in the process. Despite the age and experience differences, Therese and Carol’s romance seems neither predatory nor imbalanced. Although unlikely companions who require time and circumstances to be on equal footing, their love story simmers with the passion of what it means to be seen and accepted in total by another.

Grade: A

Cinderella

CINDERELLA (Kenneth Branagh, 2015)

Kenneth Branagh’s CINDERELLA is a mostly faithful live-action adaptation of Disney’s 1950 animated story of the girl who rises from the ashes to become a princess. Ella (Lily James) is a charming young woman who abides by her deceased mother’s gentle insistence always to have courage and be kind. When her father (Ben Chaplin) eventually remarries, Ella cheerfully accepts her new stepmother (Cate Blanchett) and bratty stepsisters Anastasia (Holliday Grainger) and Drisella (Sophie McShera). After he dies while away on business, these family members take even greater advantage of her, but she continues to accommodate them while guided by her mother’s words. Her face is often sullied with ashes from needing to sleep by the hearth to keep warm. Stepmother and stepsisters seize on this and dub her Cinderella.

One day while needing an escape from the cruelty she endures, Ella goes to the forest where she meets the prince (Richard Madden). He is enchanted with her but doesn’t get her name. He’s being pressured to make a politically wise marriage but prefers this simple country girl to the elite and powerful invited to his imminent royal ball. To find her again he wins a concession to invite all maidens to attend in the hope that Ella will come. Although her stepmother forbids her to go, Ella’s fairy godmother (Helena Bonham Carter) provides some last minute solutions.

Branagh finds use for some CGI transformations in his version of CINDERELLA, but otherwise he stays true to a solid, old-fashioned vision of this well-known fairy tale. Contemporary interpretations or subversions of the source material are not welcome here, and that is perfectly fine. In fact, the most modern touches, like the morphing of the coach and footmen, look anomalous among the quaint and opulent backdrops.

Branagh made his name in film with Shakespearean adaptations rooted in their period settings. In CINDERELLA he’s particularly adept at staging scenes of castle intrigue in Chris Weitz’s screenplay. With the prince’s father ill and desiring a secure transition of power, the romantic aspect of the royal ball is tested by prudence and strategy. Branagh seems most in his element navigating the negotiations amid the hustle and bustle of the biggest and most important event in all of the land.

The elimination of the songs in this lavish remake represent the most notable deviation from the cartoon. Considering the overwhelming familiarity with the story and the massive success of FROZEN, it’s a curious change not to have this CINDERELLA be a musical. Ella is unerringly true to the principles she was raised to honor. While Ella doesn’t have much agency in her story, James never plays her as though she’s a pushover. It’s also nice to see a protagonist who, when given the opportunity to deliver a comeuppance to her oppressors, chooses to forgive. There’s not a lot of magic in the events of CINDERELLA, but it certainly exists in this touch of grace.

Grade: B-

The Monuments Men

THE MONUMENTS MEN (George Clooney, 2014)

Dismayed at the immense amount of art the Germans are stealing during World War II and the historic sites being damaged in battles, Frank Stokes (George Clooney) gets approval to lead a platoon of art experts to minimize the cultural losses as much as possible.  The seven-man team in THE MONUMENTS MEN hunts for the missing treasures and gives advice to military commanders about significant buildings they hope will be unharmed in combat.  The motley crew of newly minted American soldiers includes New York museum curator James Granger (Matt Damon) and architect Richard Campbell (Bill Murray) as well as Donald Jeffries (Hugh Bonneville), a Brit with a drinking problem, and Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin), a Frenchman whose sight and hearing deficiencies prevent him from being a fighter pilot.

Intending to protect and locate as much art as possible, the unit is spread across the European theater.  Jeffries, Campbell, and Preston Savitz (Bob Balaban) head to Belgium, with the Brit going to Bruges to secure Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child and the other two tasked with protecting the Ghent Altarpiece.  Granger goes to newly liberated France where he tries to pry information from Parisian museum worker Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett).  Although suspected of being a collaborator, she kept a detailed list of the art that passed through a sorting house while the Nazis employed her. Claire is hesitant to share her records because she thinks that, like the Russians, the Americans will keep the pieces rather than return them to their original owners.  Sculptor Walter Garfield (John Goodman) and Clermont are dispatched to Germany.  The already difficult job of the Monuments Men takes on greater urgency when Hitler orders the destruction of all looted artwork if he dies or Germany falls.

Based on a fascinating true story, THE MONUMENTS MEN strives for grandeur but amounts to something ordinary under Clooney’s execution as director and co-writer with Grant Heslov.  The effort to recover and preserve millions of cultural objects is earnestly recounted.  The nobility of the mission isn’t in question, but relentless reminders of what is at stake feels like a failure to give audiences credit for understanding it.  Although the Monuments Men suffer casualties, precious little about their assignments feels urgent.

Clooney keeps the tone relatively light, almost as if this operation is a fast one that the Allies pull on Hitler, yet he resists indulging the comedically broad or darkly humorous. INGLORIOUS BASTERDS or a wartime OCEAN’S ELEVEN this isn’t.  The human cost of the war rests heavily on the proceedings often enough not to be forgotten.  One of the film’s best scenes comes when a record from home is played over the camp radio.  The touching moment reminds of what is left behind during wartime and how objects have value beyond their components’ worth, yet the melancholy it brings is an awkward fit with the overall weightlessness of the characters’ experiences.  The impulse not to be too jokey is understandable, but Clooney never quite gets a handle on balancing the mission between a lark and life-or-death matter.   

With members of the team working in various part of the continent, THE MONUMENTS MEN often feels scattered.  The individual stories unspool like a jumble of decent anecdotes that add up to less than their sum.  None of the Monuments Men define themselves beyond being slight variations of one another.  The underutilization of this cast stands as the film’s biggest disappointment.  THE MONUMENTS MEN plays well enough as an old-fashioned call to live according to lofty ideals, yet the fulfilling of this pursuit is more humdrum than spirited.

Grade: C+

I'm Not There

I'M NOT THERE (Todd Haynes, 2007)

How can someone truly know us as individuals? We are who we say we are. We are who others want and believe us to be. We are more and less than the sum of our dreams, failures, contradictions, consistencies, genetic predispositions, and environmental imprintings. We are our families, friends, and acquaintances. We are our work.

How can we truly know someone else, especially if the person is famous? That question is at the center of I'M NOT THERE. Todd Haynes' masterful portrait of Bob Dylan scrutinizes the musician-poet-actor-artist-husband-father-outlaw and leaves him at once as mysterious as ever and yet somehow knowable.

Jung wrote of archetypes within us all, universal parts of the personality that reside deep inside regardless of if they are visibly manifested. In presenting Dylan the character--none using his name, incidentally--Haynes makes the Jungian concept tangible. Dylan's film biography doesn't put him forward as just a Jewish singer-songwriter from Minnesota. Played by six actors to correspond to different periods of his career, he's also an African-American child, a woman, and Billy the Kid.

It isn't necessary to be steeped in Dylan lore to keep up with the shapeshifting I'M NOT THERE , but let's be honest, it helps to know at least a few things about the man's history. Haynes' challenging film sets out to see how the disparate pieces of Dylan's persona fit together, if they're even part of the same puzzle. Edited like a puzzle worker's trial-and-error method of searching for what goes where, I'M NOT THERE juxtaposes eras in a structure that suggests chronology but avoids hewing to it.

Haynes demands patience from the viewer. Through his bold directorial choices and the film's technical prowess--Edward Lachman's striking cinematography, most notably--it becomes easier to grant it to him. The complex and opaque nature of I'M NOT THERE is in keeping with its subject's body of work. While renowned as a top notch lyricist, Dylan's songs also have a reputation for being difficult to penetrate.

The actors smooth the path through the rough landscape of metaphor. Christian Bale impresses with his earnest and impassioned work as protest singer Jack Rollins turned born-again Pastor John. Heath Ledger lends destructive magnetism to brooding screen idol Robbie Clark. It's Cate Blanchett, though, who outshines everyone as DON'T LOOK BACK Dylan, Jude Quinn. Playing the wisecracking rebel to the hilt, Blanchett has a merry time staggering through the mid-'60s as though the world is his (hers?) for the taking. Like the infamous moment when Dylan went electric, I'M NOT THERE gets an unexpected charge from Blanchett's chameleon-like transformation.

After looking at the many faces of Dylan and failing to pin him down, I'M NOT THERE leaves us with his songs. Perhaps that's the driving factor behind his reinventions. In obscuring who the author or the singer is, the focus turns to the art he creates. Isn't that the point in the first place?

Grade: A-