Reviews

Okay, it was really annoying at the beginning of every scene not to know what the deuce is going on. I don't see it as a fault in the movie and realize that the director did it on purpose, in order to put the viewer in Leonard's shoes -- disoriented, overwhelmed, desperately clawing at clues which may be deceptive. I think it was a brilliant, unique, and innovative way to tell the story.

However, I think that certain "seeds" of doubt were planted into the story, unresolved questions which are just barely suggested, but not developed as much as one would want to. Here are some issues:

-- Who did kill Leonard's wife? I understand that the lack of an answer is explained by Leonard's unique disorder, but her death remains too shrouded in mystery, I think.

-- Leonard claims to have remembered everything up until his injury. But is it really true? Could have his previous life have been invented, the old memories a product of denial and pained consciousness? For one, I was surprised that the movie did not show a weepy and idealized picture of Leonard's relationship with his wife (a la "The Crow"); the flashbacks show that Leonard probably had a problematic, maybe even troubled marriage. The scenes almost invariably show him in conflict with the woman whose death he wants to avenge. Was Leonard's wife really murdered by an unknown villain (or villains), or did he have something to do with her disappearance from his life?

-- There is more than a fortuitous insistence on the fact that short-term memory loss may be psychological, not physical, in nature. Should one take for granted the fact that Leonard's condition was brought on by a physical trauma? Or could it have been induced by an extremely guilty and troubled mind?

-- In light of that, how exactly was Leonard's wife gone? Was she murdered? Did she commit suicide or simply leave Leonard, causing him to suffer a catastrophic mental breakdown?

Perhaps I am reading into it. Perhaps not.

I was actually pleasantly surprised to hear almost a direct quote from Thackeray's "Vanity Fair": "Mother is the name of God on the lips of children." It is all the more surprising to see this bit of sophistication in a rather flat, if picturesque, movie, adapted from the comics. It was though, a bit dumbed down to: "Mother is the name of God on the lips of children -- all children." Thackeray's words went something like this: "Mother is the name of God on the lips of children; and here was one that was worshiping a stone!"

Julia Roberts -- one of the most beautiful women in the world?? Geez, humans must be an ugly race indeed. Untalented, too. I am so tired of Julia Roberts and her perpetually laughing face; her big teeth; and her nasty attitude. She always plays the same way, from movie to movie -- a jumpy, wound-up, hyperactive, attention-deficit-disorder-afflicted, amphetamine junkie. Somebody please give her a course in acting -- or get her out of my face.

I hate Woody Allen. He's a snob; the upshot of every line is "sink me!". Snobbery in general is a problematic trait, but it is particularly detestable in a writer or a movie director. If you are in a bar and the person next to you starts going off about the territorial architecture in Cote d'Azur, hors d'oeuvres, and life on the Upper East Side, you can just take your drink and move to another seat -- if he happens to make movies, you pay 9 bucks apiece to see and hear him pontificate.

All of Woody Allen's movies take place in Pleasantville, where the Earth is flat, and roads do not travel beyond a couple of Manhattan neighborhoods. His fake, repressed characters fall in love while lecturing each other on fine art and poetry, and never -- I mean never -- venture in that mysterious nether universe that lies below Canal Street. I'd shoot myself if I lived among them!

Not only that, but you also need a degree in Classics or Art History to appreciate Woody Allen's humor, which is generally flat and at its best, only mildly funny. A Woody Allen movie is not social commentary -- it is a social statement -- as is being a Woody Allen fan.

But what of that? The author of this comment grew up in Brooklyn and moved to New Jersey. In Woody Allen's world, it is a Manhattan address (preferably an Upper East Side address) that denotes intellect, sensitivity, depth of the soul, and artistic genius. No person who picks up the phone is possessed of a spirit passionate, energetic, and creative, unless you had to dial "212" before the number. In light of that, I guess the reason I don't like Woody Allen's movies is that I am just too crude.

What a difference local geography makes.

It is inevitable, of course, that the Disney rendition of the Hunchback be a severely scaled down, dumbed down version of Hugo's dark, sad, and hauntingly beautiful story. I understand: Disney is just trying to make a cartoon for kids, for goodness' sake! But the fact remains that Hugo's novel about unrequited love becomes reduced to a farcical mixed salad of song and dance.

What I regret most is the change and simplification of the characters. In the novel, Phoebus is a womanizer and a coward, a despicable fop who seduces Esmeralda, then leaves her to the gallows in order to protect his own advantageous marriage to a woman of nobility. Esmeralda herself is a shallow, foolish girl, utterly unable to comprehend the men around her and the motives behind their actions; it is no surprise that Phoebus finds it extremely easy to manipulate her, while Frollo and Quasimodo, men who genuinely love her, have their pleas fall on deaf ears. And Frollo -- my God, Frollo! Ever since I read the book at the age of 10 (on a dull rainy afternoon at my grandmother's house), I thought Esmeralda was really stupid to turn him down. Of the three men, he was the most deserving, with his profound passion for her, his powerful intellect, his deep and complex personality, his devotion, his readiness to sacrifice everything for the woman he loved. I admit that it is disturbing that in the end, Frollo would rather see Esmeralda dead than in the arms of another man, but Esmeralda herself seems to be more concerned about his bald spot than about the selfish and possessive nature of his love. Me, I would go for Frollo, with all his faults.

So if you liked the cartoon, trust me -- you won't regret reading the book. It's a real feast.

"Sibirskiy Tsiriulnik" screams: We spent money on this movie! Other than that, it is a stupid love story, built on the idealized version of the Imperial Russia. As an aside, the protagonist's skewed conviction and undeserved severe punishment do not nevertheless render the portrayal of Russia any less idealized. The movie reflects the belief held by certain rusophiles that the Imperial and Soviet Russias are negatives of each other; that whereas the latter was the evil empire, the former was a land of traditions, calm, decorum, wealth, and bounty, and that through the Revolution, Russia lost its innocence. Truth is, Russia before the Revolution was neither innocent, nor calm, nor bountiful. Life in the Imperial Russia was good only for a very small, select group of people, namely the aristocracy and certain wealthy members of the bourgeoisie; poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy and social inequality were prevalent conditions at the time in which this story takes place, and set Russia quite apart from Western Europe and the United States. At the turn of the century, Russia was still in the throws of feudalism. Its legal system was antiquated, inadequate, inequitable, and corrupt. Corruption ran through all levels of government, which was tyrannical and unresponsive to the needs of the population at large. There was no mechanism of social welfare of any kind, and none was in the making. The movie perpetuates a myth -- the Russia it portrays never existed -- except for the chosen few who were blind enough to believe that everyone lived as comfortably as they.

Another component of this movie is the popular notion that Russians are a special breed of people with a particularly deep soul, so complicated that it is incapable of being understood by foreigners; that Russians are spiritual and emotional whereas the rest of the human race is materialistic and unicellular. Of course, it is a ludicrous and ethnocentric idea, which does not merit serious discussion. Suffice it to say that Russians are not unique in ascribing to themselves these flattering qualities; every society tends to idealize itself.

And finally, the love-story subject matter. All right, I admit that I am prejudiced. Love stories are not my cup of tea -- most love stories, at any rate. Most of them are boring -- I mean, nothing ever happens besides kissing, sighing, and perhaps a little nudity now and then -- and most of them are also boilerplate. By "boilerplate" I mean that a garden-variety love story goes something like this: "Hello" -- "hello" -- "this man moves me" -- "there is something about this woman that stirs me up inside" -- "kiss me now" -- "I thought I'd never see you again" -- "the most incredible night of my life" -- "always" -- "never before in my life" -- "forever" -- "remember" -- "world around us" -- "they've got you trapped, Rose, yadda, yadda, yadda", et cetera. You don't even need complete sentences or minimally meaningful conversation -- only key words; throw in a couple of cute costumes, a bit of lavish scenery, and, sometimes, cocky British accent, and you've got yourself a blockbuster.

In short, I hated this film as a two-dimensional exercise in idealism -- idealized history, idealized people, idealized relationships. It's just way too sentimental for me.

Good workmanship though.

"The Tale of Two Cities" is a beautiful classic, and it is fairly faithful to Charles Dickens' novel. (This novel is practically made for a masterpiece movie, and I am surprised why Hollywood has not revisited it in the last five years or so, when it has shown a rekindled interest in period drama and lavish costumes.)

However, in my opinion, the 1935 film gives a completely wrong picture of the characters of Lucie Manette and Madame Defarge, thereby destroying the beautiful symmetry and the subtle symbolism of Dickens' novel. It has been said by a critic that "The Tale of Two Cities" is really a tale of two men -- Charles Evremonde and Sydney Carton -- who not only look like identical twins, but whose life paths intertwine, and who must ultimately redeem each other. It seems to me that to a lesser extent, it is also a story of two women -- Lucie Manette and Madame Defarge. (Another symbolic pair: the two brothers Evremonde.)

The movie portrays Lucie Manette as an ideal 1930's heroine: strong-willed, intelligent, and brave. One almost expects to see her wearing an antique aviator costume, ready to embark on some perilous adventure. She is a great character, but not what Dickens has given us. Madame Defarge, on the other hand, is a raving, filthy wench with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The novel treats them in an entirely different manner. Dickens' Lucie is a boilerplate Victorian good girl -- she is doll-like, mild-mannered, loving; she spends most of the novel crying, waiting, tending to others, passing from being a gentle daughter to gentle wife to gentle mother. She is very bland, she has no fire in her. Madame Defarge, on the other hand, personifies everything that the Victorians believed a woman should not be: she is passionate, intelligent, belligerent, and armed; she has interests which have nothing to do with Tolstoy's "three k's" (kitchen, kinder, kirk). She leads an existence independent of her husband; she has an agenda -- and a gun -- but apparently no children. And to top it all off, she is French. (Yeah, Lucie is half French by birth, but, to paraphrase Charlotte Bronte, her Frenchness was probably corrected by her English upbringing.)

Even though English people of the era would have shrunk from a woman with Madame Defarge's characteristics, I always thought that Dickens secretly admired her. The novel gave me the image of her that she was fairly young and attractive -- not in the silk-and-porcelain, ballroom kind of way -- but with a dark, rugged beauty of a strong peasant woman. And with all these qualities -- passion, intelligence, strength, resourcefulness, and a profound belief in certain ideals -- Madame Defarge was an admirable counterweight to the blubbering, lackluster Lucie Manette. Rather than make her villany two-dimensional or poorly excused, as the movie did, Dickens showed at length for the reader the awful misery of Madame Defarge's existence, the full extent of her tragedy and loss, the unimaginable atrocity of the crime which the older Evremondes committed against her, and the deliberate, methodical cruelty with which the they tortured and then exterminated her family. The movie showed Madame Defarge as bloodthirsty sewer vermin; the book showed her as a woman who had the last shred of humanity beaten out of her, with a soul destroyed by the despair into which the Evremondes had cast her.

I think that the film should have left Lucie Manette and Madame Defarge's characters the way they were in the book -- without embellishing Lucie's character or making Madame Defarge quite so hateful.

I hated high school. In my opinion, it is a shameful aspect of the American culture. Overconfident students, complacent teachers. The popular kids, the scapegoats. High school cultivates many of human flaws in young people, the worst of which is hypocrisy. What's needed to get ahead in high school: a big mouth. That's all. And then there are all those "activities". What is the purpose of all those "extracurricular activities", except to beef up one's college application? Why not invest the extra time and energy into learning? No -- instead, students engage in meaningless after-school activities, whose beneficial value is absolutely zero. I think individual reactions to this wonderful movie depend on personal experiences of viewers; as a top student in academics in my high school, I was often pressured by school administrators "not to devote quite so much time to studying and to do something for the school." It is a strange suggestion, coming from a supposed place of learning. Not surprisingly, I really enjoyed the movie. It shows just why American high schools produce students who think themselves the smartest, while they are in fact, the most ignorant.

Well, here is how to make 136 minutes seem like a lifetime. One hundred and thirty-six -- one hundred and thirty-six minutes devoted the theme of yet another disadvantaged youth yet again struggling to make something out of his life -- which is not only unnovel, but in this case also built on excruciating cliches. Come on -- most of us struggle towards personal and professional growth -- this story does not have any grain of uniqueness that would deserve so much tape. The story line is drawn out, the dialogue is boring and predictable, and the great cast just does not remedy the sheer poverty of the plot. What a waste.

This film makes one wonder what exactly the heroine worked so hard for. A young girl from a small town comes to Moscow and becomes pregnant. Her lover repudiates her, the lover's mother humiliates her, telling her that she is not a good fit for her big-city dandy son. Rather than leave Moscow and go back to her parents, or try to perform an abortion on herself, the heroine has the baby. She works hard at the factory, getting up at 5 AM every morning, passes grueling entrance exams into college, becomes an engineer -- all while raising her little girl as a single parent and an unwed mother. Bold subject matter for a Soviet movie made in the seventies.

Then -- a compromise: the heroine who, sixteen years after her ordeal, has a good life, a good home, and a prestigious managerial job, falls head over heals for a man who treats her like dirt.

"Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" was made almost at the same time as the equally celebrated "Workplace Romance" ("Sluzhebnyj Roman"), and they are, in a sense, competitors. Both movies are about single women in their mid- to late thirties who made a brilliant career but were never married. Both heroines are presented as strong-willed, independent individuals in managerial positions, whose lives are nevertheless missing something. But if "Sluzhebnyj Roman" says that life is incomplete without love, "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" says that life is incomplete without a man.

Women of the older generation are all in love with "Moscow"'s main male character -- the heroine's ultimate husband. I cannot fathom why -- the actor's cute, but his character is unnerving. One does not need to be a feminist to have a strong urge to throw this man down the stairs. He stifles every impulse of individuality in her; he presumes to know what she wants, what's proper for her and what's not; he patronizes her; he pushes her around. On the train, he begins their acquaintance by commenting: "You have the eyes of a woman who is not married." (What kind of eyes are those?) I cannot see why one would find any charm in such familiarity and cocky self-assurance from a stranger.

It's worth noting that the corresponding character in "Sluzhenyj Roman" -- an excessively mild-mannered, shy man -- learns to stand up to the bossy heroine, but does so without disrespecting her. The character in "Moscow", on the contrary, puts the heroine in her proper place -- which is to be quiet and follow orders.

I think that a Western critic would perceive the ending of "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" as ironic and sad. The heroine, a woman who spent her life making something of herself by overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles, is last shown fussing around her kitchen for the benefit of a man who was not with her on that long journey, who dares to raise his voice at her in her own home, while eating her food, and who acts as if his very physical presence at the table confers a rare privilege on a woman whose clock is ticking.

A corporation-like cooperative, under the auspices of a research institute, is constructing car garages for its members, most of whom are research scientists at the institute. Suddenly, the government appropriates a portion of the construction site, so the cooperative cannot build as many garages as it planned -- which means that some members must go. The predictable happens -- the Board of Directors summarily expels the four weakest shareholders, who have no leverage in the institute's power structure.

Of course, the expelled kick and scream; of course, the rest of the members hurriedly grab their coats so as to leave as soon as possible the place of their shameful act. And then, an unexpected twist. One of the members -- who, incidentally, was not expelled -- raises her voice in protest of the Board action; when other shareholders refuse to heed her, she locks everyone in the conference room, hides the key, and vows not to let anyone out until the matter is resolved in an alternative way -- namely, by throwing dice. What results is a delightful mix of powerful social tensions, envy, resentment, gossip, herendous accusations of non-conformism, unabashed intimidation, veiled threats, and petty personal attacks -- all of which nearly erupts into violence when the Board and its supporters attempt to strip-search the dissident, believing the conference room key to be hidden on her body.

This situation is not unique to the Soviet reality. The movie shows the complex and treacherous balance of power in a small organization where high stakes are involved, as well as the weaknesses and pitfalls of corporate governance.

Even a person unacquainted with the Soviet wolrd, but familiar with the corporate culture and environment prone to cultivate the worst of human flaws, will appreciate this fine and subtle film.

"Traffic" makes a valuable observation that the War on Drugs does not meaningfully address the problem of demand at home, focusing instead on the supply side. However, it gives no suggestion on how to reduce demand, and frankly, I don't know if it could. There are too many social problems and personal factors which induce the use of drugs -- peer pressure, rebellion, plain curiosity, you name it.

Most regrettably, some problems are so very much at the core of our civilization, that they cannot be eradicated. Take Caroline, the judge's daughter, for example -- ah, let me give you a little sequel about Caroline.

I don't know if the use of drugs among the upper class youth is higher than in the middle class, whether it is comparable with the level of use on the lowest economic rungs of the society, but I would not be surprised if it were indeed so. Boredom, in Baudelaire's words, is the greatest of all evils, a monstrous beast seeking to swallow a human being whole. Caroline's problem is not your garden-variety teenage brooding -- it is the very real and inescapable lack of control over her own life.

So what will happen to Caroline? Regardless of her success (or lack thereof) in school, regardless of her therapy progress, she will -- she WILL -- go to an Ivy League college, most probably in the upper level, like Harvard, Yale, etc. She will not anxiously await a letter, sit by the mailbox with a pounding heart, surmise whether a small envelope means a rejection -- she will just be accepted everywhere she applies. It is that simple. After college, she will go to a top law school, her entry similarly assured. Why law school? Because. Three hundred years ago, girls from genteel families went to convent school. A hundred years ago, they went to finishing school. Today, they go to law school. It is where daughters of top government officials go. It is the way. It is a social convention. After law school, Caroline will work for a major law firm, practicing some dull yet fashionable, non-conflictual area of law. She will make partner within five years or so. And then she will become a judge. At no point in her life will her own abilities, work, and success be relevant, unless in later years she runs for an elected office. At no time will the harsh rules of academic and market competition demand that she consistently outdo herself, always reaching new levels of excellence. Everything in her life will forever be assured.

For most young people, the future is a mystery, and the present is a struggle. For some, like Caroline, it is a pre-constructed road map, drawn and approved by others. And on top of all that predictability, all that boredom and convention -- the sickening, crushing realization that all you have you owe to your daddy. In sum, little Caroline will spend most of her adult life drifting between the cocktail lounge and the shrink's recliner.

Does she realize all this? I think so. For her, the drugs, the prostitution are an escape towards the unknown. How do you fix something like that? It is just as improbable as eliminating poverty. The society has built-in mechanisms of degeneration, and such mechanisms are occasionally represented by seemingly innocuous phenomena -- a cushy existence and well-intentioned, well-moneyed, well-connected parents.

(That was sarcasm.)

Hollywood's general portrayal of the English is puzzling. (Not being English myself, I make this comment as a neutral and detached observer.)

First, you have your garden-variety romantic comedy. An English person in a typical romantic comedy is a moderately cute blond guy dressed in unprepossessing catalogue attire and touting an exaggerated British accent, which passes with the general public not only as a sign, but as the very essence, of sophistication. Indeed, what a hottie a British man is: foreign enough to be exotic, but not too much so; just enough accent to make English sound like a foreign language; and yet, you don't have to learn a language to communicate with him -- which, given the Americans' overwhelming aversion to foreign tongues, is of utmost importance.

Then you have the other genres, in which the English characters range from sterile and repressed to downright demonically villainous. THE PATRIOT adheres to the latter stereotype. I cannot begin imagine how offensive this movie is to the English viewer.

And what of history? The American revolution was the revolution of the intellectuals; it was over taxes, fine points of political participation, the meaning of citizenship -- it was not prompted by acts of extreme terror and genocide, as the movie seems to suggest. There was violence to be sure, but it occurred on both sides, and it was neither the long-term cause nor the trigger for the American Revolution. And let us not forget those colonists who were severely punished by expropriation of their property, banishment, imprisonment, and execution merely for refusing to renounce their allegeance to their original sovereign.

Of course, the sophistication of the revolution's causes does not mean that the colonists were unjustified in rebelling. But the Americans are forever plagued by a nostalgia for a story of woe more compelling than that saga of resentment over the stupid stamp taxes. We envy older nations their titanic struggles, their big chunks of suffering. WE did not have a Hitler. WE did not have to struggle for our very survival as a people and a culture (yet). For all that lofty verbiage in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, the grievances that follow it seem boring and petty.

To that extent, THE PATRIOT is a miserable cry of that nostalgia rather than a conscious indictment of the English. Though I doubt that would make the English viewers feel better.