Reviews

I had the privilege of seeing this film at the Seattle International Film Festival on Memorial Day and I couldn't have selected more suitable film for the occasion.

In Missing in America, Jake (Danny Glover) is surprised by a fellow ex-Vietnam war vet (David Strathairn) who unexpectedly leaves his half-Vietnamese little girl with Jake to care for. The film follows the emotionally wounded vet as he grows attached to the little girl, played superbly by Zoe Weizenbaun, who will be in the upcoming Memoirs of a Geisha.

Danny Glover's Jake is familiar territory for the actor as Jake is an independent survivor who lives alone in a shack in the woods and is more than a little disagreeable. He drives into to town periodically to buy supplies from Kate (Linda Hamilton) with money made from selling chopped wood. Jake doesn't immediately take to the little girl, Lenny, that is left in his care, but as Jake's character warms up to his new housemate, this film could have become a sweet film about a wounded man who is changed forever by the child in his life, but Missing in America doesn't travel down that path. Instead, it used the arrival of a half-Vietnamese child as a catalyst that allows for the exploration into the lives of the mysterious war veterans that live solitary lives in the woods, not able to forget the horrors they experienced in Vietnam. In Lenny's explorations into the woods, she meets their neighbors, some, like Red (Ron Perlman), are still living as if they are in a war zone and see Lenny as a painful reminder of a war that while being 40 years in the past, still impacts their lives on a daily basis.

Missing in America is a very amazing first feature for director Gabrielle Savage Dockterman. This was a very courageous and sometimes gut wrenching film that feels like a very authentic snapshot of life 40 years after the Vietnam war for some veterans.

'Love is the answer, isn't it? But, sex raises a lot of interesting questions…'

Like so many, I literally cannot recall a time when I didn't know of the work of Alfred Kinsey. The data for Kinsey's texts on male and female sexuality were collected at a time when little was known about actual sexual practices. Sexual education consisted of attempting to prevent masturbation, since it was known to cause all kinds of medical and emotional problems from insanity to unusual hair growth patterns. Likewise, promiscuity was known to cause all kinds of terrifying and disfiguring conditions. And it wasn't unusual for couples to enter into marriage without knowing the first thing about how babies happen or even exactly what it was they were supposed to be doing on their wedding night.

The research done by the Kinsey Institute that was published in two volumes, The Sexual Behavior of the Human Man in 1948 and in 1953 The Sexual Behavior of the Human Female, which went on to become national bestsellers and changed the way we talk and think about sex. To this day, we are experiencing the after shocks of these works as controversy still surrounds Kinsey and his data.

Bill Condon's new biopic, Kinsey, achieves that remarkable task of not only telling Kinsey's story, but it also succeeds at putting it in context, both in the culture that existed while he and his associates were conducting their research, and later when poised for the cultural revolution that was to follow. It also does not commit the sins of so many biopics, as it is much more than a traditional biographical work of the man or a collection of good performances, although it has many. It is a film about ideas, personal growth, drives, passion, relationships and most of all sex.

The film brilliantly opens with Professor Kinsey, AKA Prok (Liam Neeson), imparting his interview techniques to his assistants by himself sitting for a sexual history. In this way, we not only get an idea of exactly how his sexuality data was collected and receive many of his tips for remaining impartial and non-judgmental. At the same time Kinsey's biographical information is being revealed in a direct way that would make the zoologist proud. Among the most startling discovery was the atmosphere of Kinsey's childhood as we learn that his father was a Methodist minister and academic who hoped his son would follow in his own footsteps. We understand the immense sexual repression and guilt that the young Prok endures, finding escape in nature, collecting insects and watching the behavior of living things.

After many years of successful and well respected research on the Gall Wasp, he turns to the study of human sexuality after being asked to teach a class for married couples and finds sexuality education polluted with 'morality disguised as fact', so begins Kinsey's life work. But despite the majority of the film being dominated with Prok's gathering of data for his study, the film never forgets the human elements of this story. Liam Neeson adeptly portrays Kinsey as a man who's head is bursting with ideas, but who doesn't have many social skills and doesn't really grasp human nature, making him a rare impartial observer. His wife, Clara McMillan (Laura Linney) is infinite in her understanding of her husband's nature, sharing his passion, while forgiving him his missteps when he hurts her due to his tendency for a bit too much candor, not really grasping that his words and actions have deeper implications.

The aspects of the film that were handled most deftly were those following the Kinsey Institute's inner circle. These men that aided Kinsey in performing the interviews also explored their own sexual nature through openly discussing sex and through some experimentation with one another that led to more than a little tension in the workplace. This film could have cast judgments on these behaviors, but instead does nothing more than depict them as and yet another aspect of the atmosphere of this study on human nature. The film also tackles the questions of Prok's own sexual orientation and experimentations with polyamory.

Finally, where Kinsey really shines is its attention to Alfred Kinsey's still very progressive notions about human sexuality. He recognized that puritanical morality created an atmosphere of guilt and shame surrounding sex that crippled marriages and

relationships. He strived to provide scientific data to combat the notion of what is normal, suggesting that there is no normalcy only variation in sexual expression. America was not really ready in the 1940s for these ideas and he paid a high price for speaking his mind and publishing his findings, and these notions are still controversial with religious groups blaming Alfred Kinsey for the fall of decency and morality.

Kinsey is a wonderful film full of humor, exciting ideas and amazing performances. It is also a very moving film. I cannot recommend this film enough.

So I'm going to admit it right up front before beginning, this review of The Company is biased; I was a dancer and trained in a ballet studio for many years. But then, what review isn't a bit biased so I will commence with the gushing.

In The Company, Altman attempted to document the life at a contemporary ballet company and in doing so, he has created one of the only great dance films. Sure, there are some good films about dance, a few horrible films with truly great dancing and many more atrocities that don't manage to tell a compelling story or show good dance. The Company has some of the best dance I have seen captured on film and manages to be an excellent film. This film has been criticized for its narrow focus and its disinterest in grabbing onto any of the tangential narratives about the lives of dancers or the creative forces within the company itself, but I see this as the film's strength. Altman has touched upon the truth of dance theater, it isn't about the people on the stage but about the dance itself. It is in the focus on the rehearsals and the stage that it finds the reality of a life in dance. And this film has the courage to not muddle the message with unnecessary plot developments or a linear narrative.

Like the art form, this film is impossible to describe by retelling the events that occurred. It appears to have followed the Joffrey Ballet for about a year and gives us glimpses of the lives of the dancers, the addictions, the injuries, the poverty of both the company and those within it, the exquisite beauty of the creations, the dedication and skill of those involved and at the creative process that allows a ballet to be born. But it doesn't focus on any of these elements and this is a huge plus for this film. There have been plenty of films made about the abuse of dancers and the creative process. This film instead decided to be about the dance itself. It seemed to realize that the stories best told in the theater are stories that can only be conveyed with movement and it steps aside and lets us see the movement for a glorious two hours.

And really, what better way is there to understand ballet theater. We all have heard the stories of dancers; the struggle to become a company member, eating disorders, drug abuse and retiring at an early age due to injuries. Those stories are seen on dateline and in plenty of other movies. This film instead used the language and tempo of dance to weave a story about the art . Many believe that the language of dance theater is a complex code that must be cracked in order to understand what they see before them. It isn't. The beauty of dance is in its simplicity. We all have a body and we all express and recognize much about our lives in the physical form. How we walk conveys messages about what we are feeling. We can recognize sadness and joy in the posture and gestures of our fellow humans. Dance theater, or rather, good contemporary dance theater capitalizes on this. It harnesses the ability to depict emotional truths through the body or through the interactions of multiple bodies. We do this every day in life and movement theater uses this language that we all already know to tell its stories.

So it follows that Altman would chose to tell the story of a ballet company using their own language. We see the work. We see beautiful conceptual pieces creating geometric shapes with bodies and ribbons, we see eroticism in the coupling of dancers, we see relationship dynamics and passion and primal red monkeys from a children's tale. And most everything we see works on an emotional level. Among my favorites was a tale of sexual passion, fortuitously set to a thunder storm and a beautiful, ethereal dance done as a solo hovering from a swing. When I watch dance, I soar along side the dancers, feeling the emotion behind each movement and when I create choreography, I interpret my emotional state into my physical form. And this is exactly what I watched unfold before me, exactly the story I saw being told.

Now I'm not saying this film will be for everyone. If you need a narrative, you will likely be frustrated with this film. But it succeeds in really capturing the essence of dance on film, which is not a trivial accomplishment. The choreography is amazing, the dancers are breathtaking, the actors (okay actor) was a good dancer and didn't stand out in chorus sequences as "not a dancer". And most amazing, we watch a ballet at its conception head down the road of certain disaster and somehow, become a rather respectable ballet, despite the monkey suits and the presence of a dancer eating giant. This is an amazing and beautiful film that I highly recommend.

As I see no way that Altman could have made a better film about a contemporary ballet company, I gave this film 10/10.