Change Your Image
cyranomish
Reviews
Le beau mariage (1982)
Impressions of Le Beau Mariage during the 2021 US insurrection
How did Sabine come to be so imperious & headstrong? Her younger sister -- still in high school -- seems content with their middle-class home and is making so many friends that Sabine complains that most of the guests at her birthday party are actually her little sister's pals, not Sabine's Sabine's mother, a widow, appears sad but resigned to their situation. And mildly concerned with her daughters' lives, but supportive.
Sabine appears to be part African. I thought of the Algerian situation which pretty much ended France's colonial domination of Algeria in the early 1960s. Sabine mentions that her family "lost everything." I think her father may have been an officer in France's long-standing Algerian Army. I have a theory that Sabine's family suffered a major social set-back when French colonialism ended there, probably when Sabine was still a child. A lot of French/African families were like the American colonial Tories: loyalist outcasts who had to flee for their lives. If so, she may vividly recall more prosperous times and a much richer house staffed with servants in a milder, sunnier climate: like moving from upper class San Diego to lower-middle-class Philadelphia. This come-down might explain why she has been involved in a chaotic love-life with married men (who may or may not resemble her late father, if you want to get Freudian.)
As a former aristocrat, Sabine wants to hoist herself back into her "proper" role as the sheltered wife of a high-earning provider. She MUST do this because it is her proper destiny. Her art history major is the kind of endeavor a doctor's wife or a banker's daughter might select: one can become a volunteer docent and not require a salary. Ever. Sabine has not learned how to be tactful or considerate of others' feelings. Thus, her angry resignation when her boss calls her out for ruining a shop sale. Or her ugly scene with one of the lawyer's clients over a minor issue. Or her demeaning tantrum when the lawyer she covets gently explains that have no future together. She acts like a 16-year-old but is really 25. If you can't conduct yourself well at 25, you'd better be very rich -- or you are in serious trouble.
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
Unfair Comparison?
Just had a retro-noir weekend. Chinatown. Devil in a Blue Dress. Mulholland Falls. A lot more money was spent on the making of DBD and MF. But CT is a superior film by by far. A superior, deeper, and more affecting story.
DBD a visual feast. Lots of period detail: cars, costumes,entire neighborhoods, etc. and a fine score. Protagonist, Easy Rawlins is an everyman in that he has to pay rent/the mortgage, co-exist with eccentric neighbors, and bounce back when an intolerable job is no longer bearable. But Easy is a likeable guy: the violent nutcase is his best friend, who leaves town when no longer needed. Easy is easily the hero. He doesn't get the girl, not even a little bit. But he gets to keep the modest, good home he's made for himself.
The Nick Nolte character, by contrast, is a violent nutcase whose homelife -- though lavished with period detail -- is unnervingly sterile. Main characters pushed to maximum eccentricity: Malkovick's atomic scientist puts Dr. Strangelove to shame. Nolte's best-friend associate is neurotically funny enough to star in a Woody Allen romp. Nolte gets both girls and loses both.
Now to my favorite: Chinatown's Jake is a risky kind of guy. He yawns and reads the racing form at a public hearing on dam construction. But he breaks into the Jack Nicholson anarchist grin we love when farm workers drive a herd of sheep into the courtroom to protest unfair water distribution.Jake loves trouble and chaos, though he makes his living in law and order. He blows up in a hilarious barbershop quartet scene when another customer makes a snide remark that could have easily been ignored. A peace-making barber distracts Jake with a dirty joke. Jake runs back to his office and makes a fool of himself sharing the joke with his colleagues. In other words, Jake is impulsive and careless. "You're always in SUCH a hurry!" Jake chides one colleague. But hurrying is Jake's tragic flaw. It's the flaw that makes him repeat a disaster from his recent past. This is the powerful character flaw that drives the best story-telling. Jake's isn't balanced like Easy. Or off-the-charts-mad like the Nolte detective. He's a very conflicted human. And will probably continue to make the same kind of mistakes.
But all three movies should be seen and perhaps re-seen.
Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
should have been entitled "clueless to the tenth power"
Just a word about the heroine. An economics major who doesn't know that her boyfriend's family are oligarchs until she goes to China? Some economist! I wouldn't let her swipe my debit card. When I was in college, everyone knew who the rich kids were.
Heidi (1937)
Shirley Temple: the empress of can-do
This is a good film to watch during the COVID 19 shutdown. I forgive its over-the-top religious sentimentalism and the cute "Wooden Shoes" song-and-dance dream sequence because ST embodies the human spirit at its best: determined to not only survive but have some fun doing it.
As a child, I was terrified when the law nearly takes Heidi away from the Grandfather: her cries for him are primal to a child's sense of survival.
On the other hand, if the wicked aunt had succeeded in selling Heidi to the gypsies -- the gypsy camp shown briefly as the "descent into death" that all good stories contain -- I feel certain that Heidi would have adapted there right away, found some excellent friends in the camp, and become the gypsy's best street performer ever.
Groundhog Day (1993)
WHO'S a hog??!!
This gem of a movie is a classic. But I see a shadow on this particular Ground Hogs Day. Phil is a prima donna, just like his cameraman Larry notes: and even though he suffers many deaths and indignities as he cycles through that day over and over, his reward is the prima donna's fondest dream come true: He is the best at all he attempts: piano playing, ice statue carving, first aid hero, getting the girl, etc. An egomaniac's festival, which put a bitter edge on this comedy, which is not at all a bad thing. Puts GD into the realm of Candide as satire as well as romance.
1917 (2019)
What Goes Around...
So many heartfelt reviews here. I want to focus on what delighted me most about this beautifully-shaped tale of a horrible war. English lit lovers take note!
The story opens in a lush April meadow where young Corporal Schofield blissfully dozes amid red poppy flowers, calling to mind an iconic WWI poem
which begins:
"In Flanders fields the poppies grow/
Between the crosses, row on row/
That mark our place, and in the sky/
The larks, still bravely singing, fly/
Scarce heard amid the guns below./
We are the Dead. Short days ago/
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset,/
Loved and were loved, and now we lie/
In Flanders fields."
Corporal Schofield, so pale and reedy, seems doomed beside his friend Corporal Bates, who looks much more vivid, alert and capable of pushing forward into their uncertain future. Later on, for instance, the two young men walk through a cherry orchard that's been deliberately destroyed by the retreating enemy: Bates confidently observes that the orchard can be restored with proper care and grow even better than before.
Soon after this scene, we encounter a war-battered officer, who quotes a popular verse from Rudyard Kipling's much-loved 1888 work "The Winners:"
"A friend in a pinch is a friend indeed,
But a fool to wait for the laggard behind
Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne
He travels fastest who travels alone."
One corporal falls by the wayside, the other proceeds alone. Does the survivor reach his goal unassisted? The movie's closing moments find us in another spring meadow beneath a ravaged but still living tree. What the corporal takes out of his pocket is a resounding answer to Kipling's poem and a message of hope.
PS: In response to remarks that no Africans fought in WWI and the appearance of black soldiers in some scenes is "too PC." Britain, France, Belgium and Germany all had African colonies at the war's outbreak, and those colonies sent support troops. One million soldiers from 50 countries are buried in Flanders Field, which lies across southern Belgium and NW France. The US didn't enter the war until near the end, but segregated black American troops were among our contribution. After the Armistice, some black soldiers stayed in Europe rather than return to the US, where Jim Crow law reigned. Race riots broke out in northern US cities when returning black vets pushed back against the outrageous racist treatment that black Americans had taken for granted before WW I.
The Assistant (2019)
The Wonderful World of Work.
With or without the Weinstein scandal, this is an important and very grown-up film. It's not about Weinstein types. It's about people who work with them. Meet Jane. Plain Jane, every-working-stiff Jane, Jane Eyre observing society's high-rollers from the relative safety of the sidelines.
I knew this was a story about my world from the opening moments when Jane climbs into a taxi to go to work extra early and get off to a solid start in the career of her choice, no matter how mundane/sordid some of her tasks might be.
I love the warm, buttery light in those office interiors as Jane goes about reading the mail, preparing coffee; like the light in one of Vermeer's Dutch Interior paintings. With her melancholy, watchful eyes and her long, sensitive face, Jane resembles the mysterious girl in Vermeer's famous portrait of a veiled young "Girl in a Pearl Necklace." (Vermeer's model rumored to have been his own daughter, an accomplished artist in her own right, and her father's right-hand assistant.)
Mysterious Mr. Big -- who is never seen -- is like the weather: Is it going to be a sunny day or an arctic blast? Who knows? How Jane deals with today's weather is the question. Doesn't matter whether Mr. Big is big in law, government, media, etc. Jane's two office mates are sometimes infuriating, sometimes hilarious watching to see how she'll handle the same curve balls that Mr. Big has been firing at them for a long time.
Jane gets unnerved when a younger, prettier assistant moves into the desk across from hers. Are Jane's days numbered? Is her subsequent visit to HR due to feminist concerns? Or self-preservation? Both? It's the movie's key scene, and HR guy's parting remark is an evil gem.
This is a white collar job movie to treasure alongside The Apartment or Mad Men. If you seek a livelier, swift-moving look at the film industry, check out Robert Altman's The Player. Elegant Dina Merrill as Celia, Mr. Big's assistant, is Jane in twenty years, if she plays her cards right. Celia's parting line to Mr. Big's cast-off girlfriend still applies: "I'm not just my job, honey, but I AM my job."
Orfeu Negro (1959)
It's Carnival Time!
Growing up in very provincial northeast Ohio, I first viewed this on a CBC broadcast across Lake Erie from Windsor, Ontario, where television was less censored than here in the land of the free...etc. What a revelation, seeing blacks and whites living close together in a distant land whereas in my hometown it wasn't clear to 12 year-old me exactly where the local black people lived since only one or two of them ever attended my K - 8 school at a time.
On first viewing Black Orpheus , I thought Rio was one big non-stop party. Years later, after attending Carnival in Trinidad, I realized what a major event Carnival is: it's your one day in the year to be a star. So by autumn you need to get yourself into a carnival "crew" (your neighborhood, your workplace, whatever) and start planning your themes, designing your costume, and practicing practicing practicing your songs & dances for your big pre-Lent moment to shine in the grand Carnival parade, hopefully wowing the judges with your crew's awesome performance.
The people in Black Orpheus are rehearsing for their crew's big moment. If their crew's theme song and dance become popular after Carnival ends, they all win. But death's always lurking around -- as represented by the skeleton man, whom the heroine is powerless to escape. When Orpheus claims her body at the morgue the morning after carnival, we see many other attractive young folks laid out on the slab alongside her. Then the door closes as he exits with his burden, leaving us viewers in the dark to remember that we too will someday be left behind in the dark.
And, yes, little children who somewhat resemble us will carry on. But we need to claim our share of the fun right now.