A Ghost Story

A GHOST STORY (David Lowery, 2017)

In the brief time the couple credited as C (Casey Affleck) and M (Rooney Mara) in A GHOST STORY are together, we see how close they can be and the disagreement they have over whether or not to stay in their current home. He feels attached to the place where they share their lives; to her the house holds no special importance.

The difference of opinions about the space continues when they are parted. C is killed in an automobile accident. When he becomes conscious of being on a new plane of existence, he declines to move on. Instead, donning the white sheet that covered him in the morgue, C is drawn back to the house, where he watches M but is invisible to her. What he recalls about his time before being a ghost is unclear, but something keeps him there. M grieves but in time moves on from him and the house. C remains even as the occupants change, rooted to a location where he feels an unexplained loss and unresolved anger.

C can make things go bump in the night and lash out in the ways other stories have conditioned us to think of ghosts, but writer-director David Lowery has other interests than eliciting jumps from an apparition that goes, “Boo!” For one, A GHOST STORY portrays the experience of grief for the deceased. The metaphysics at play are vague, but C appears to have a choice to advance to a different level or stay on this earthly one. The decision to remain haunts him and others like him. These ghosts are like dogs left at home without any way of knowing when or if their owners will return. They are waiting for that happy moment when they are reunited with someone, except they experience time much differently and have little to no memory of why they feel holes at their cores. The ghost’s grief is not specific but a general emptiness with no obvious way of filling it.

Lowery also studies the grief for a place. Time transforms everywhere, so even if a spot has little turnover in residents or a lot through the years, the space is not what it once was. Just as the physical qualities change, the relationship with the location adapts. Mental associations are as much a part of the structure as the beams. C’s link in life and afterlife to the house are all of the emotional ties and memories that it contains, yet what he struggles to realize is that those don’t vanish even with the absence of the four walls around him. In contrast to the film’s minimal dialogue, Lowery spells this out effectively, although somewhat heavy-handedly, with a monologue delivered by a prognosticator played by Will Oldham.

A GHOST STORY unfolds in the style of European and Asian slow cinema so it can better convey the different experience of time and put our years into perspective regarding the universe’s age. Little tends to happen, but when C flits through time in a less comprehensive version of THE TREE OF LIFE’s birth of the universe section, Lowery powerfully evokes the impermanence of what we tend to assume as eternal.

Rather than generating restlessness, the stillness and relative silence in A GHOST STORY create room for meditation and appreciating the visual detail. C’s ghost sheet is gorgeously wrinkled with impenetrably dark eyeholes, more like a haute couture version of a death shroud than a homemade costume from the Charlie Brown Halloween special. The score by Daniel Hart and key song “I Get Overwhelmed” by his band Dark Rooms express the wistfulness in time’s redefining of things throughout life. A GHOST STORY aches for what no longer is but reminds that truly the most valuable things transcend.

Grade: A-

The Discovery

THE DISCOVERY (Charlie McDowell, 2017)

Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford) finds overwhelming proof that the afterlife exists in THE DISCOVERY, although what that other plane of existence is like remains unknown. Two years after he announces the discovery, four million people have committed suicide, often with the expectation of getting a fresh start. Thomas’s son Will (Jason Segel) remains more skeptical regarding what his father’s findings mean and detests the widespread social response to them. He protests that the evidence is not definitive, nor does it promise a better life. Upon hearing that his father has built a new machine, Will returns to their island home, now a fortress-like building where Thomas, his other son Toby (Jesse Plemons), and a group of people whose suicide attempts failed continue the secretive work to learn what exists beyond the veil.

On the ferry there Will encounters Isla (Rooney Mara), the only other passenger making the trip to the island in the off-season. Both dodge explaining why they are going to such a place and part ways without expecting to see one another again for reasons that become clear soon enough. Will does not want his father to reflect on him, and Isla is hiding her intention to kill herself. Later Will spots Isla’s attempt to drown in the ocean and saves her. He also smooths the way for her to receive a spot among the selected in his father’s home. It’s a momentous time there as Thomas now believes he can record what is seen in the afterlife. When the experiment appears to fail, only Will knows that a recording is made, although what he sees is difficult to translate.

Director and co-writer Charlie McDowell imparted a TWILIGHT ZONE-like quality to his debut feature THE ONE I LOVE, and he does it again with THE DISCOVERY. Both films take place in worlds very much like ours except in one specific aspect that recontextualizes everything we know. The consequences of the discovery mostly take place off-screen and emerge in anecdotes, but the impact hangs heavy over the proceedings. Thomas is as driven as ever because he bears the weight of all the people who interpreted his pioneering finding in a way he likely didn’t anticipate or desire. The film eludes questions about the religious implications, yet Thomas has constructed something like a cult around him. Whether intentional or not, THE DISCOVERY recalls THE MASTER in shots of the ocean and Thomas’s private, personal interview method for determining who can stay. (Both also have small roles for Plemons.)

THE DISCOVERY is most compelling as it dives deeper into the search for answers. McDowell wisely does not get into the speculative science involved, leaving it to suspension of disbelief to accept the film on its own terms rather than getting bogged down debating the viability. He explains what developments mean more often than allowing the viewer to do the math, which takes some of the fun out of THE DISCOVERY, but he draws out the hunger to comprehend what new information signifies. Humans want to bring order to the unknown, so it is imperative that the film satisfies that craving. McDowell’s most prominent stumble occurs at a climax that seems like it should be revelatory yet, more than anything preceding it, confused me in the Christopher Nolan-like layers upon layers. The romantic element between Will and Isla comes off as more forced than credible even as it becomes more integral.

Although the material is treated seriously, THE DISCOVERY carves out room for some humor. As the more dutiful son, Plemons displays a cavalier attitude about the research and arrangements that highlight what those deeply embedded in something weird accept as normal. Mara lends a sarcastic edge to Isla, particularly when she identifies the strangeness of her and Will selecting and returning a corpse.

Whether one believes in eternal spiritual existence after death or not, THE DISCOVERY asks a provocative question: does the inability to know with complete certainty what comes next invest more meaning in life? The film’s answers could be more rigorously considered but are thoughtful nonetheless.

Grade: B

Lion

LION (Garth Davis, 2016)

Based on a true story, LION tracks a boy from rural India who gets incomprehensibly lost in 1986, is adopted by an Australian couple, and uses technology twenty-five years later to search for his family. Saroo, played by Sunny Pawar as a boy and Dev Patel as a young adult, falls asleep on a train platform while waiting for his older brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate), who has taken off to work during the evening. When Saroo awakens, Guddu is nowhere to be found. He looks for him on a train but gets stuck on one that is not carrying passengers and takes him more than a thousand kilometers away from home.

The five-year-old boy arrives in Kolkata unable to speak the different dominant language in this part of the country. He doesn’t know his mother’s name, and no one can find the town he calls home on a map. For awhile Saroo must survive on his own on the streets, including eluding those looking to take advantage of him. Eventually a stranger takes him to a police station, but with no responses to the notices placed in newspapers, he is put in an orphanage. John and Sue Brierley (David Wenham and Nicole Kidman) adopt Saroo, so he is flown to Tasmania to begin a life with a new family. As a young man he feels the urge to find his biological family. With the emotional support of his girlfriend Lucy (Rooney Mara) and a landmark image from his memory, Saroo obsessively scans Google Earth to locate where his home is.

The events in LION are primed for the most persistent heartstring-tugging, yet director Garth Davis holds the story at a cool remove. It’s the difference between recognizing a dire situation and feeling it. The Dickensian first half features its share of harrowing moments. Saroo quickly learns that trusting anyone is dangerous, which only serves to keep him on the streets longer. Even when help of a sort is provided, the boy is trading one bad situation for another. His adoptive parents are extraordinarily kind, but moving from one continent to another is also laced with trauma. Davis expects these developments to be moving at face value. Instead LION flirts with a wallow in miserabilism.

In the second half Saroo is a young adult who identifies more with his Australian upbringing than his Indian heritage. His newfound longing seems more like dramatic convenience than something that has been eating at him every day for most of his life. The search itself, while an incredible feat, is not dynamically portrayed. LION gets caught up in the process of Saroo’s story. Here’s how he got lost, here’s how he was saved from bad circumstances, here’s how he tries to answer what has been a mystery for many years. The particulars aren’t uninteresting, but they come at the expense of empathizing with Saroo’s experience.

Saroo struggles at the two stages depicted, yet LION mostly shows him rolling with whatever he faces. Perhaps the person whose life inspired the film was so easily adaptive, but smoothing over his emotional journey robs the material of the power inherent in it. What Saroo endures as a kid is inconceivable, but it’s handled from the point of view of an uninvolved observer than the subject. Although Patel does the most with what he’s given to express the character’s anguish, he’s challenged to find multiple ways to keep striking the same note. What could have been a potent tearjerker in LION ends up resembling a skillful but unmoving recreation of a remarkable tale.

Grade: C

Kubo and the Two Strings

KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS (Travis Knight, 2016)

Childhood for the one-eyed boy named Kubo (Art Parkinson) is magical and mystifying in the stop-motion animated KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS. He brings origami to life as he tells enchanting stories to the villagers near the cave where he and his mother are hiding out. Kubo can shred his three-stringed musical instrument, a samisen, like MAD MAX: FURY ROAD’s Doof Warrior, although no fire shoots out of the neck. While these are marvelous skills for a kid wield, there is much for him to be concerned about. His mother is ill, and and his grandfather, the Moon King (Ralph Fiennes), has killed Kubo’s samurai father and is responsible for the eyepatch the boy must wear. Kubo’s mother insists that he always carry a monkey totem and be home before sundown lest her two sisters (Rooney Mara) and the Moon King find them and complete the task they did not finish.

One night Kubo stays out past his curfew with the predicted tragic results. The Sisters torch the village and try to harm Kubo, but his mother uses her magic to save him and send him on quest. To defend himself from the Moon King Kubo must search ancient Japan for an unbreakable sword, impenetrable armor, and invulnerable helmet. Helping him on his journey are Monkey (Charlize Theron), which is the enlarged totem brought to life, and the samurai Beetle (Matthew McConaughey), a forgetful, wise-cracking insect.

KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS comes from the animation studio Laika, which, with the films CORALINE, PARANORMAN, and THE BOXTROLLS, has developed a reputation for delivering quality children’s fare that is unafraid of handling material that can be visually and thematically darker. The deep oranges and dark blues dominate the palette for a story steeped in legend, like something witnessed through the flickering flames deep in the belly of a cave. The stop-motion animation provides a tactile sense of wonder at the imaginations tapped to bring this fantastical and early historical world to life in the style of folded paper.

KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS puts two kinds of immortality in opposition. The Moon King offers Kubo the chance to live forever with him among the stars, although the price to be paid is his one good eye. Alternatively, the boy can find strength and inspiration in the memories of his deceased parents to resist the Moon King and, in turn, survive through generations because of the bravery he shows. This may sound like rather heavy subject matter--and it is, implicitly--but director Travis Knight and screenwriters Marc Haimes and Chris Butler treat this as a grand challenge to be met with the spiritual guidance of his mother and father than an oppression heaped upon a protagonist unsuited to deal with it.

The film is not left wanting for humor, however. Theron’s voicework reveals a delicacy in the figure entrusted to assist Kubo, but she also brings a sarcastic edge to Monkey, especially as she clashes with Beetle. At face value McConaughey seems like a curious casting decision, as he makes no effort to alter his Texas drawl, but the warmth and orneriness in his voice serves the act-before-thinking character well. The love-hate dynamic between Monkey and Beetle produces some amusing sparring. Likewise, Kubo’s journey encompasses the spectrum of emotion, concluding with a beautiful testament to the ties that bind. The importance of family is hardly a new theme for children’s entertainment, but the gentleness and unsentimentalized handling of it in KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS allows the idea to be seen anew.

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

Ain't Them Bodies Saints

AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS (David Lowery, 2013)

The latest armed robbery by husband and wife Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck) and Ruth Guthrie (Rooney Mara) goes south when it leads to them and their partner getting holed up in a shack shooting it out with the cops in Texas hill country.  In the exchange of gunfire their accomplice Freddy (Kentucker Audley), the son of their criminal mentor Skerritt (Keith Carradine), is killed while Ruth wounds police officer Patrick Wheeler (Ben Foster).  The outlaws have no choice but to surrender, and Bob accepts all of the blame to keep his pregnant wife from also going to the penitentiary.  Although they are being forced apart, he promises he’ll be with Ruth and their unborn child soon.

Nearly four years later Ruth and daughter Sylvie (Kennadie Smith and Jacklynn Smith) have something resembling a normal life in a small town.  She leaves her wild ways behind to support her kid.  Skerritt sees to it that they have a home next to his, although his charity may just as well be a means of keeping an eye out for Bob if he ever manages to break out of prison.  Indeed, on his sixth attempt, Bob escapes.  Based on the passionate letters he wrote to Ruth for the duration of his incarceration, their former associates and law enforcement expect him to turn up eventually at her door.

AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS is set in what looks to be the 1970s, and the style is reminiscent of that decade’s new Hollywood even if the scenario belongs to classic westerns taking place in the Old West a hundred years prior.  Through spare storytelling, magic hour cinematography, and naturalistic voiceover writer-director David Lowery’s film displays the influence of Terrence Malick, BADLANDS in particular.  Although Lowery zips through considerable plot, he’s far more interested in mood than narrative details.

AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS swells with regret and romantic longing.  Bob imagines a future with the woman he loves and the little girl he has yet to meet.  The intense singular focus undiminished by the circumstances bestows nobility on the character despite the shortcomings that led him and Ruth to be separated.  Affleck transforms Bob into a sympathetic figure by wearing his heart on his sleeve and seeming naive to the situation’s reality, yet his overwhelming passion is also a weapon for making a reunion with Ruth possible.

Ruth’s feelings for Bob are harder to discern, not because she has reason to love him less but because his presence will complicate the stability she needs to care for Sylvie. Mara maintains the film’s internal tension by being difficult to read as she processes what Bob’s escape means and how she needs to respond.  Ruth has made it through recent years by hiding the truth, so there’s suspense in determining her real motivation in entertaining Patrick’s shy flirtations and sadness in knowing she is probably stuck in a spot unresolved without at least one person suffering grievous injury.  

The characters in AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS receive sanctification of a sort through self-denial. They are permitted to express affection but only from a distance, for direct contact possesses too much mortal or emotional danger.  Lowery’s achingly beautiful film vibrates with the knowledge that sometimes love means depriving oneself from giving in to it.

Grade: B+

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (David Fincher, 2011)

Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s three posthumously published Millennium novels are an international sensation and already were made into a film trilogy in his native country.  Now comes the first in a presumed American remake trilogy with THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) has just lost a libel case and is likely on the verge of losing his magazine when wealthy Swedish industrialist Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) approaches him with a tantalizing offer.  Vanger will pay him a tidy sum and provide damaging information about the businessman who defeated Blomkvist in court.  In return Blomkvist will come to the Vanger family’s island estate under the guise of writing their history while his real work is investigating the disappearance of Henrik’s niece Harriet nearly forty years earlier.  Vanger believes a family member killed her and is continuing to taunt him by sending pressed flowers, which Harriet used to give him on his birthday.

Meanwhile, computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), who did the background check on Blomkvist, finds her well-being subject to the whims of a newly appointed guardian.   Although in her twenties, Lisbeth remains a ward of the state because of a diagnosis of mental incompetence.  She eventually teams up when Blomkvist needs a researcher and is directed to her.

Having seen the Swedish film version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, it’s somewhat difficult to approach director David Fincher’s take on the pulpy mystery without recognizing how remarkably similar the two are.  Perhaps out of allegiance to the popular source material, both films are crammed with more plot than feels necessary and seem as though they always have just one more thing to wrap up.  The central mystery struggles to sustain interest because Blomqkvist and Salander are sorting through an information dump rather than mixing it up much with the suspects in the Vanger clan.  Nevertheless, Fincher directs the dickens out of scenes involving research with computers, archival records, photographs, and personal mementos.

The story is mostly the pits in both, but Fincher’s THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO fixes some of its predecessor’s problems and is clearly the superior of the two.  Although slightly longer than the other, this adaptation cuts through the narrative details like a hot knife through butter.  That it plays more efficiently while taking more time indicates editors Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall’s skill at keeping a brisk pace.

This time around Lisbeth is more of a person, and a highly damaged one at that, than the cartoon avenger she’s positioned as in the Swedish version.  Mara plays her as a feral animal taking tentative steps toward socialization.  Taking this angle on the character makes a big difference in explaining the dubious sexual relationship that develops between Lisbeth and Mikael.  Whereas Mikael’s irresistible magnetism in the Swedish film reeks of authorial wish fulfillment, Fincher’s THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO shows Lisbeth initiating this contact as her attempt to crack her shell while still asserting control.  Likewise, the suffering and revenge she experiences, while still horrific, are less exploitative under Fincher’s command.

Despite these improvements, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO can’t quite transcend its junk foundation or, at least for me, the familiar beats of the other adaptation.  Applying the sheen of cinematic quality to a lurid airport novel only goes so far when the cheap thrills have lost some luster because they’ve already been had.

Grade: C+