Trumbo

TRUMBO (Jay Roach, 2015)

TRUMBO is the sort of bullet-pointed biographical profile that studios love to trot out at awards time. If the subject pertains to Hollywood itself, all the better. Whether the details of the showcased person’s life are familiar to the viewing public or not, they’ll be spelled out with all the subtlety of a grade school book report. In this instance the person at the story’s center was unfairly punished for his beliefs during a shameful period in which the industry and government behaved shamefully out of fear that Communists were working to bring down America from the inside. Despite the events and thematic richness in this tale of injustice, director Jay Roach and screenwriter John McNamara execute it with dutiful monotony.

TRUMBO begins in 1947 with screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) considered to be among the best at what he does in show business. Although he signs a studio contract to make him the highest paid writer in the system, he is conscious that others who work on films are not getting what he believes to be their fair share. A staunch defender of workers’ rights and a member of the Communist Party, Trumbo is visible in supporting his colleagues. Such advocacy draws a target on him from gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren).

The pressure on Trumbo and fellow Communist screenwriters increases when the House Un-American Activities Committee holds hearings to root out the insidious red influence on the nation’s entertainment. Trumbo and those in the so-called Hollywood Ten refuse to answer some of Congress’ questions about their beliefs and are convicted for contempt. Trumbo serves a jail sentence and, like the others, is blacklisted from working again in the industry. To make a living he cannot take credit for what he writes. He persuades a friend to claim to have written his screenplay for ROMAN HOLIDAY. Steady, albeit low-paying, employment comes from Trumbo writing and rewriting B-movies for a small studio that never could have afforded him previously but is happy to utilize his services anonymously. Swimming in garbage screenplays that need polished, Trumbo enlists other blacklisted friends to assist him.

TRUMBO perks up somewhat when the writer connects with Frank King (John Goodman), the co-founder of King Brothers Productions. Goodman portrays the producer as a no-nonsense businessman in the business of selling nonsense. He holds no pretense in acknowledging that he’s bankrolling low-budget product, not art. To him Trumbo and the other ostracized writers merely represent fast, cheap, and high quality labor, with those characteristics in order of their importance. In a film full of commonly known and unknown people, he’s the only one to pop out from those playing classic Hollywood dress-up.

Cranston does solid but unremarkable work that is mostly the byproduct of the script than his acting abilities. TRUMBO lacks fire about the unfair treatment foisted upon him and his associates. Perhaps Trumbo didn’t have time to stew over that when he faced with the pressing need to support his family, but the film is missing the sense of conviction that helped to put the protagonist in these circumstances.

Grade: C-

Race

RACE (Stephen Hopkins, 2016)

In RACE Jesse Owens (Stephan James) arrives at Ohio State University in 1933 as an already established track star, but the time necessary to train and compete may interfere with work so he can send money back home to Ruth Solomon (Shanice Banton), the mother of his daughter. Coach Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis) sees Owens as more than just a star at the collegiate level. He envisions an Olympic champion. Having lost his opportunity to win on the world stage, Snyder is driven to get the most out of Owens’ potential.

Owens and Snyder have their eyes set on the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin, but political matters may interfere with their plans. The rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party force the American Olympic Committee to consider boycotting the event rather than giving an implicit endorsement by participating. Construction company executive and AOC member Avery Brundage (Jeremy Irons) is appointed to visit Germany to observe what is happening there, meet with officials regarding discrimination concerns, and report back.

RACE depicts the best-known events and achievements of Owens’ life at the expense of seeing who did it. For a drama that is ostensibly about the four-time gold medalist, a substantial amount of attention is focused on behind-the-scenes matters in Germany. RACE contains incisive details regarding the politics of athletics, especially the Olympics, yet the number of these instances tend to crowd out the protagonist from his own film. Even when Owens is confronted with a political choice when the NAACP asks him not to go, RACE merely shows his choices at various steps thereafter rather than why he decides what he does.

The sports biography also strangely prioritizes other parts of the story while not seeking to understand Owens. He has a fling with a California beauty, but other than injecting a little conflict into his relationship with Ruth, it’s the sort of thing destined for deleted scenes. In roughly equating Owens with filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (Carice van Houten), RACE is really reaching to compare their bravery in the face of hatred. Riefenstahl made propaganda films for the Nazis, including TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, and directed OLYMPIA, which captured the athleticism at the Berlin Olympics. How complicit Riefenstahl was with the Nazis is debatable, but RACE draws parallels between Owens performing before hateful crowds and Riefenstahl defiantly filming him that are problematic at best.

James brings quiet determination and awareness to Owens. His initial deference to Snyder, with eyes down, conveys how society expected him to interact with white people. James shows Owens carrying himself as a hero whose actions make a greater impact than any words. Sudeikis struggles to seem sincere as Snyder. It’s almost as if he’s playing the caricature of an old-timey coach in a comedy sketch.

RACE is made with apparent good intentions, but in attempting to take a wider view of Owens at the 1936 Olympics, it’s closer to a false start than a victory.

Grade: C+

Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram Story

EXPERIMENTER: THE STANLEY MILGRAM STORY (Michael Almereyda, 2015)

In EXPERIMENTER: THE STANLEY MILGRAM STORY social psychologist Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) studies obedience at Yale beginning in 1961. Volunteers in the experiment are given the role of teacher to a man they’ve met but who is not visible in the adjoining room during the test. This person is referred to as the learner, and he is asked to remember word pairings. If the learner supplies an incorrect answer, the teacher is instructed to give an electric shock of 45 volts. The voltage increases with wrong replies up to 450 volts. The learner is not actually being shocked but makes exclamations of pain and requests to stop, which can be heard through the wall. Although an observer in the room with the teacher will tell the participant to continue with the experiment, the teacher could quit. Milgram found that most do not. The experiment makes him famous but draws criticism that follows him through life.

EXPERIMENTER is staged as if it takes place within an artificial environment. Obvious chromakey backgrounds are used for period settings. The confines of the research space, the classroom, and other private spaces suggest the feeling that every action and utterance is presented for observation behind a one-way mirror. The muted visual strategy points to the clinical nature of this biographical portrait, although it’s not an outsider looking into who the experimental psychologist is. Sarsgaard as Milgram frequently addresses the camera directly, as if the film is the experimenter’s investigation into himself.

With this unconventional approach writer-director Michael Almereyda avoids the trappings of biopic cliches. While EXPERIMENTER touches upon Milgram’s most famous work, it isn’t a checklist of big life moments but a psychological probing of how his background and obsessions informed him to study the banality of evil. Sarsgaard conveys the seriousness of Milgram’s pursuit but retains awareness of the humor and absurdity that can emerge in such labor.

Grade: A-

Steve Jobs

STEVE JOBS (Danny Boyle, 2015)

As the title character in STEVE JOBS, Michael Fassbender is a prickly and ruthless assessor of those surrounding him, especially when others’ visions don’t match his in the computer business. Director Danny Boyle’s film is broken into three parts as Jobs prepares for product launches. The first, set in 1984, shows Jobs in the final minutes before revealing the Apple Macintosh. The machine’s voice demonstration isn’t working, which is thoroughly unacceptable to Jobs. Meanwhile, he has to deal with other Apple employees who want to talk and ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston), who has brought along Lisa, the daughter that Jobs has vociferously denied is his. The film jumps to 1988 with Jobs, now on his own after Apple’s business struggles, preparing to introduce the NeXT computer. The final section takes place in 1998 as Jobs readies the debut of the iMac.

In adapting Walter Isaacson’s Jobs biography, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin treats the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple as an incomparable genius, jerk, and tragic figure of Shakespearean proportions. He’s brilliant and stubborn to a fault. These traits serve him well as he strives for excellence with the computer but cause friction with co-workers and friends. At Apple Jobs insists upon a closed system. Sorkin makes the leap that Jobs gained control in the devices his company manufactured perhaps as a substitute for that which he couldn’t exert in life.

STEVE JOBS mostly takes place backstage and in the auditorium, giving the protagonist big areas to move about, yet Boyle creates a visual sense of being self-contained similar to how like the plastic shells housing the computer hardware. The fly rigging in the background of one scene hints at being beside a massive circuit board. The papers Jobs lays out in a grid resemble a tile interface.

Fassbender portrays Jobs as believing he’s the biggest brain in a room with plenty of stiff competition. He speaks like a logician and bristles when what computes perfectly in Jobs’ mind doesn’t with yield the same calculation by others. The film’s verbal dexterity is one of its chief pleasures, with comedic insults and oneupmanship in great supply. STEVE JOBS touches upon the personal side of the business icon, but ultimately it gets to know him how he would have preferred: through his work.

Grade: B

The Imitation Game

THE IMITATION GAME (Morten Tyldum, 2014)

When 27-year-old mathematician Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) interviews with a British military commander in 1939 for a top secret program in THE IMITATION GAME, he is anything but humble about being the man for the job. Alan has figured out that they’re trying to crack the Germans’ code machine, known as Enigma. The challenge is steep. They have an Enigma that Polish intelligence smuggled out of Berlin, but it’s determined that 159 million million million possibilities exist for the settings. Alan and his team have eighteen hours each day to break the code before it changes. More time to decipher Enigma’s messages means more lives that are lost.

Alan’s social deficiencies threaten to have him lose his team and his position at Bletchley Park, but he gradually learns how to work with the others and gain their respect. Help comes in part from Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), a valued member of the decryption team who has needed to be savvy about getting along with others in a male-dominated world. Alan devises to build a machine that will break every message every day instantly. As smart as he and his fellow codebreakers are, they face numerous setbacks, not to mention pressure from higher-ups because of the investment in their work that has yet to yield anything productive.

At first Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Turing puts this real life person on the verge of appearing as a buttoned-up Sheldon Cooper from THE BIG BANG THEORY. He’s the incredible genius with little comprehension of or need for social niceties. Thankfully his initial ignorance and arrogance is dialed back as the character acclimates to the high stakes matter at hand. Think more of the actor’s version of Sherlock Holmes than a sitcom brainiac. Cumberbatch does well at seeming like someone often lost in his head. Although he approaches interactions like equations to be solved, he shows how he makes the strategy work for him in most instances.

THE IMITATION GAME is most poignant regarding the importance of keeping secrets, although it’s not so much in relation to Turing’s homosexuality, which was considered criminal in his lifetime. Once he and his team cracked Enigma’s code, decision makers had to be selective about how they used it so that the Germans wouldn’t know the Allies had access to the messages being sent. That withholding meant deaths, although doing so was in service of preventing a greater number of them.

With its important subject, handsome MASTERPIECE THEATRE-like production design, and British accents, THE IMITATION GAME resembles an awards-collecting machine, which isn’t to dismiss it. THE IMITATION GAME is an entertaining piece of fictionalized history that crackles with the excitement of watching intelligent people and a primitive device achieve something considered impossible. Director Morten Tyldum smoothly guides developments along, although some war montages and end title cards assume the audience’s historical knowledge is so low that it feels a little condescending. The film can be so insistent to trumpet its own import and prestige that it has to underline some things too much. Nevertheless, THE IMITATION GAME provides an involving look at the greatness human minds in cooperation can achieve.

Grade: B

The Theory of Everything

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING (James Marsh, 2014)

Stephen Hawking’s ideas as a theoretical physicist produce more questions than answers for the layperson because of the complexity of his thoughts. THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, a gauzy biopic about his first marriage, also leaves plenty to consider, although not by reason of great intricacy in what it presents. Rather, it can be maddeningly vague in what it leaves unexplained or tastefully hints at. Based on his ex-wife Jane Hawking’s book, the film gives the impression of a story that has been sanitized to secure the subjects’ authorization.

The film opens in 1963 at Cambridge, where Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) is a doctoral candidate searching for a topic. At a party he meets Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones), an arts undergraduate studying French and Spanish. They hit it off that night, and Jane gives Stephen her phone number, which he often examines as though it’s an equation to be solved. Although she belongs to the Church of England and he doesn’t believe in God, the difference doesn’t keep them from being happy together.

To this point Stephen has exhibited some clumsiness that he doesn’t think twice about, but after a nasty spill one day he is diagnosed with motor neuron disease. A doctor informs him that the neurological disorder is gradually weakening his muscles. Eventually he will not be able to control his body. His brain will not be affected, but the average life expectancy for someone with this affliction is two years. Burdened with this news, Stephen avoids Jane and doesn’t tell her about his condition. When she learns the truth, he’s ready to break things off to spare her the pain and allow him to focus on his work. Instead she proclaims her love. They marry, have children, and see him become internationally lauded as his body deteriorates.

In math one must show the work. In THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING a tidy calculation is arrived at while scrubbing away the arithmetic that could support it. Director James Marsh and screenwriter Anthony McCarten use montages to gloss over important stretches that could make the case for the great love that get Stephen and Jane through difficult times. The film jumps from post-ALS diagnosis to married life with a child, ignoring the transition to a more incapacitated state while he finishes his doctoral paper.

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING also makes another leap in which choir director Jonathan Hellyer Jones (Charlie Cox) becomes integrated into the Hawking family as a caretaker. At her mother’s suggestion a stressed Jane takes a brief time to herself by singing at church. Prior to the montage the unspoken attraction between Jane and the widowed Jonathan implies that she may turn to him for comfort in crisis. After the sequence of Jonathan assisting Stephen and becoming like a member of the household, Jane informs their helper that she is pregnant. Because of this elision the audience wonders if they have been intimate--Stephen’s parents certainly suspect it--yet Jane gives a vociferous denial before the two confess their feelings to one another.

Time and again THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING fails to dig into the emotional nuances and challenges, preferring to scurry along to the next key moment. The film collapses time so that the Hawkings’ marriage and Stephen’s professional success appear to endure because of predetermination. For circumstances rife with emotional and physical struggles, it all looks remarkably light on conflict. Redmayne is good at conveying the wit, rambunctiousness, and intellect trapped inside Stephen even as his body betrays him. Jones suffers beautifully as a woman devoted to a man reliant on her. THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING stops short of making them both saints, but in smoothing over their conflicts, it does a disservice to the hardships they bore. It’s not that every complication needed to be detailed but that Stephen and Jane’s relationship shouldn’t be simplified to where they become sentimental mascots for vowing to stick with someone through sickness.

Grade: C

Get On Up

GET ON UP (Tate Taylor, 2014)

Like many other biopics GET ON UP assembles the highlights from its subject’s life, but in a twist, this film about James Brown (Chadwick Boseman) shuffles the chronology of key events. Screenwriters Jez and John-Henry Butterworth keep the story from settling into a predictable rise-and-fall rut, but their structure also resists picking up any dramatic momentum. It’s like a greatest hits CD that’s not sequenced according to when the songs were released or any logical order. It permits making connections across decades that might not have seemed apparent otherwise, but the groove struggles to be sustained from track to track.

GET ON UP tracks the life of the influential singer from his childhood in Augusta, Georgia. First his mother (Viola Davis) abandons him, and then his father (Lennie James) takes off, leaving him at the whorehouse Aunt Honey (Octavia Spencer) operates. While in prison at age 17 for stealing a suit out of a car, he meets Bobby Byrd (Nelsan Ellis), who’s performing for the inmates with his gospel group. Bobby’s parents help James get out by giving him an address to call home.

James joins Bobby’s group and gradually takes over as the star attraction of what comes to be known as The Famous Flames. They play on the chitlin’ circuit and attract the interest of a record company in Cincinnati. In their end they really just want James. He tries to keep the rest of the band as salaried employees, but the news doesn’t sit well with them, although Bobby continues to work with James during his lengthy career.

Early in GET ON UP Brown is wielding a shotgun and putting the fear of God in a group meeting at his strip mall in 1988. One of them used his private restroom, and he’s not happy about it one bit. When a woman fesses up to being the guilty party, he tells her, “You did right by yourself. There ain’t no other way to live.” It’s the defining statement in a film that shows Brown always looking out for number one, often to the detriment of the people around him. He fines band members for infractions and does not take kindly to being challenged. He pushes back against the concert promotion system so that he can keep more of the gate. James Brown’s early years did not feature anyone who put him first, which explains why he came to prioritize his interests to a fault as a guiding principle, yet the tragedy of his success by these means also led him to a lonely place even if surrounded by people.

The plentiful musical performance scenes keep the proceedings lively. Boseman brings swagger, charisma, and toughness in a magnetic piece of acting as the soul singer. Playing a well-known individual, especially one with a larger than life personality, runs the risk of mimicry, but Boseman brings the human dimension to the legend, thus avoiding merely imitating his moves and voice like a sketch comedian.

Revisiting such a broad portion of Brown’s life makes it impossible to cover everything. The unseemlier parts of his history and legal tangles are given short shrift, most notably. GET ON UP does a fine job of reminding how influential Brown has been on popular music, but in trying to understand the man it comes across like a radio edit: safe for mass consumption.

Grade: C+

The Iron Lady

THE IRON LADY (Phyllida Lloyd, 2011)

The Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep) seen at the opening of THE IRON LADY is anything but the tough and focused politician that comes to mind at the mention of her name.  She’s introduced as a confused old woman trying to remain self-sufficient despite being regularly engaged in conversation with the hallucination of her dead husband Denis (Jim Broadbent).  As she goes through their possessions, she remembers her humble beginning as a grocer’s daughter to her ascent to membership in Parliament and eleven and a half years as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

THE IRON LADY is akin to a procrastinating student’s hastily written term paper about Thatcher.  It’s poorly structured, free of context, and superficial.  There’s this lady who got sick, but she did a bunch of stuff leading Great Britain and here’s some of those things.

In a serious misstep, screenwriter Abi Morgan organizes this whirlwind tour of Thatcher’s life and career around the illness in her later years.  Whatever one thinks of Thatcher’s political achievements, they are what make this story worth telling, not her failing health.  Sporadic flashbacks break up THE IRON LADY’s first half hour, which wastes time looking at her current daily life.  This section and the recurring visits to present day are in service of making her a pitiable character.  Putting her declining mental acuity in the foreground has no dramatic value other than as a cheap ploy to enhance an already sympathetic biographical portrayal.

THE IRON LADY skims over a miniseries worth of events and crises in its timeline, particularly from Thatcher’s stint as Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990.  Without a foreknowledge of British politics much of it passes by as archival news footage and recreations in which Thatcher sticks to her guns and gets the results she wants.  Little effort is given to exploring what challenges she faces and how she arrives at her decisions.  (For the most part, it seems her guiding principles stem from a speech she heard her dad give long ago.)  In trying to treat the conservative leader fairly, THE IRON LADY largely avoids digging into the difficult issues or dissenting opinions.  It’s a matter of needing dramatic balance and narrative coloring rather than ideological evenness.  THE IRON LADY just assumes Thatcher is always correct and leaves it at that.       

Thatcher advances and triumphs because that’s what her biography states.  Streep delivers a fine technical performance, as is to be expected, but there’s only so much she can do with a role that’s as flimsy as a construction paper figure in an elementary school student’s diorama.  The barriers to winning a bigger role in the party and government are laid out in a scene with political strategists, yet what was presumably a defining period of time in her life is quickly smoothed over by Thatcher asserting that she must wear her pearls and taking a vocal lesson ripped from THE KING’S SPEECH.  With everything, including the most pivotal moments, rendered in shorthand, THE IRON LADY diminishes the accomplishments of the person whose story it tells and the actress working so hard to offer a well-rounded embodiment of her.

Grade: D+

Invictus

INVICTUS (Clint Eastwood, 2009)

In INVICTUS a newly elected Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) turns to an unlikely group to help heal the racial divide in post-apartheid South Africa. After spending 27 years behind bars, Mandela is freed from Robben Island Prison in 1990 and continues working toward his goal of making the country a multi-racial democracy.

Four years later Mandela is the president of a nation still deeply split along racial lines. While black South Africans look forward to benefiting from having one of their own as the country's leader, the Afrikaners fear what they might face as a minority population under the rule of a black man.

At a rugby match Mandela observes that old tensions still thrive. Blacks in attendance cheer against South Africa's national team, the Springboks. To them, the Springboks represent the prejudice and oppression they were subjected to under apartheid.

With South Africa hosting the 1995 Rugby World Cup, Mandela sees a unique opportunity for blacks and whites to rally around the team and perhaps build national harmony. Springboks captain Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) is tasked with the duty of making the team an inspiration for all South Africans.

Sports can breed deep and ugly rivalries, but they also have a way of unifying people from uncommon backgrounds and interests, whether it's the players or those cheering them on. This is especially true in international competitions, even if the sports themselves may not be ones that viewers are concerned with except every four years.

In INVICTUS director Clint Eastwood does a sharp job of showing Mandela's political genius in utilizing a team that symbolized the old white establishment--and which had only one black player--to demonstrate how South Africa's present and future could unify former opponents.

It was a risky maneuver and not one encouraged by his advisers, but just as Mandela understood that he needed to integrate his personal security team behind a common purpose, he also knew that the nation needed something to strive for collectively.

Carrying over the wise, fatherly influence he brings to other roles, Freeman applies a firm but calming presence to his portrayal of Mandela. It's a persuasive performance that leads one to see how this man could overcome the enormous odds of bridging the gap in South Africa's racial relations.

While INVICTUS fits into the biographical and inspirational sports movie traditions, Eastwood resists sanctifying Mandela or giving in to unabashed emotionalism on the pitch. The director references Mandela's shortcomings as a man bearing a heavy weight and allows the actions to say more than speeches.

Although INVICTUS is not strictly a Mandela biopic, this particular accomplishment of his cuts to the essence of who the South African is and what he fought for. INVICTUS could do a better job of explaining the basic rules to rugby neophytes, especially with so much of the final act devoted to the big match, but that's a minor quibble when the gist of gameplay can be picked up by observing.

INVICTUS draws its title from the name of a William Ernest Henley poem that inspired Mandela during his incarceration. Likewise, the film serves as a reminder that no matter how dire the circumstances, truly remarkable change is possible.

Grade: B

(Photos courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)