232. Magnolia

Song - Have You Ever Seen The Rain? (Creedence Clearwater Revival)

Movie: Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)

Magnolia is a mess, as it should be. If you are gonna build your film around characters exclaiming things like "As the book says, we might be true with the past, but the past ain't through with us", "I have sickness all around me, and you fucking ask me about my life", "I really do have love to give, I just don't know where to put it", "Now that I've met you, would you object to never seeing me again" and "Respect the cock! Tame the cunt", you better make sure that you are on their level. It's a film about desperate, often grieving, people trying to express themselves, to exorcise their demons, to repair long-broken relationship, and to connect and make sense of the world and the people around them, sometimes all at the same time. It wiuld be a failure if it isn't at least a little unhinged.

You could probably argue that there is a more emotionally piercing film hidden here somewhere, one that is happy to mostly focus on the storylines of William H. Macy, John C. Reilly and Melora Walters, and further build up their characters. But that would require a great understanding of who these characters are and their thoughts and feelings. Anderson lacks that, which only works in Magnolia's favor. He is as unsure about how he feels about what's on screen and about what exactly he wants to say as the people he depicts. He and Tarantino like to compare their work and should consider screening Magnolia as a double feature with The Hateful Eight, which has been critcised for its uninformed/unsophisticated view of history. It is indeed evident that its historic and cultural connections, implications and insights stand on shaky ground, but that's the most interesting thing about it. More films should be able to explore subjects they don't quite know how they feel about.  It's a shame that when talking about diversity in Hollywood the conversation too often leads to urging directors like Anderson and Tarantino to 'stay in their lane', rather than enabling non-white, non-male artists to move out of their lane. Movies whose reach exceeds their grasp tend to go to a lot of unexpected places, and at their best feel like a joyously playful invite to the audience to discover the world together.

Having said that, it is worth noting that Magnolia is more than just an unsophisticated airing of Paul Thomas Anderson's emotional baggage. He famously wrote the film after his father died, but while it sometimes does feel like an attempt to process every feeling he had in the aftermath of that, it's no coincidence that Anderson broke through with a film about the porn industry. What he is above all interested in exploring is how people use, for lack of a better world, performance, to function in the world, to conceal their true feelings and identities and to manipulate others. It's why the discussion around Licorice Pizza was so dumb. That is indeed about a relationship buillt on exploitation, but it ain't Haim doing the exploitation. It is Gary who is using his acting and storytelling talents to sell waterbeds and pinballs and to manipulate his way into money and girls. It covers much of the same ground as Inherent Vice. That was about how the free love movement self-destructed, because it missed the reactionary forces hiding around in its midst, commodifying sex, durgs and rock and roll. In Licorice Pizza, the 'victim' of that commodification is the (independent) film industry. In Anderson's movies the people who are incapable of seeing through others' performance, or who are only able to be their authentic selves, often get the short end of the stick. 

All of this gets extremely to the forefront in Magnolia. Julianne Moore breaks down because she now needs to confront that she really loves her dying husband, instead of merely pretending to so. William H. Macy gets in trouble when he is unable to obtain braces he doesn't need to look more like his crush. His desperation arises out of his inability to function as his adult self, always reverting to being "Quiz Kid" Donnie Smith. Tom Cruise loses it when his true identity is revealed, showing just how much of a pathetic act his mysoginist pick up artist is. He is found out by a black female journalist, played by April Grace, who is likely repulsed by him, but presents herself as simply a kind curious reportrer with genuine interest in his life and work. Philip Seymoru Hoffman gets a breakthrough when he pretends he is acting out in a movie the actual scene he is acting in. John C. Reilly is constantly reminding himself of how much in control he is and puts on the air of a gravely serious cop anytime he is on the beat, concealing how unsuited he is for his profession. Philip Baker Hall is a trusted kids show host, who is secretly a philandering pedophile, and his quiz gets derailed when its latest star's image of being an indefeatable genius can't be reconciled anymore with the reality that he is also a vulnerable kid. Finally, there is Melora Walters, portraying the only character in the film who is at all times herself, wearing her insecurities and pains on her sleeve. It's no coincidence that her finding a sliver of happinness is the final scene of the film. I think that in this context of 'performance' many of the film's famous sequences, such as the frogs falling from the sky, the Wise Up singalong, and the opening narration become more interesting. They add a layer of artificiality to the film, distancing it from reality, as do the many long takes, sweeping camera movements, outsized performances, and the absolutely wonderful self-consciously stylistic dialogue.

231. City of Hope

Song - Dancing in the Dark (Bruce Springsteen)

Movie: City of Hope (John Sayles, 1991)

Everybody wants some!! That's not just Richard Linklater's greatest work, but also a fantastic premise for a movie, and a good basis for understanding the world. John Sayles knows it, and in the wonderful opening scenes of City of Hope the film slowly introduces its characters as they walk, drive, bicker, and above everything else, negotiate their interests on the main street of an unnamed city in New Jersey. There is great urgency to every conversation, as the city is a busy hotbed of different, often opposing needs, where finding the right connection at the right time can make a huge difference in your fortunes. It's not as great (and certainly not as laid back) as Slacker, Linklater's breakthrough that came out a year before, but it takes a similar approach, especially during those early scenes. It finds a group of people as they walk through the street, follows them on to a convenience store, only to leave them behind when it discovers a more interesting set of folks scheming in an aisle. It decides to follow them around for a bit, until it changes direction when some other exciting characters cross its path. It's great when it's essentially just a portrait of the city and its inhabitants, patiently revealing the different (mis)connections between them, and a little less great in the second half when, having established what its main characters and storylines are, it cuts more conventionally between them. 

The centerpiece of the film is Nick Rinaldi (Vincent Spano), the layabout son of property developer Joe (Tony Lo Bianco). Joe owns, and feels sincere responsibility for, an apartment block in the poorest part of town that the municipality wants to destroy to let Japanese investors build expensive condos. The residents of the apartment block are politically represented by the idealistic councilman Wynn (Joe Morton), who has to work hard to gain both the trust of the white men in power and his black constituents who see him as an Uncle Tom. He is not, but as the husband of college professor Reesha (Angela Bassett) it is undoubtedly true that he and his wife have different class interests than most black people in town. That becomes an even bigger problem when two black kids falsely accuse a (liberal) professor of inappropriately touching them in the park. The eventual reveal of the proferssor's subject of expertise is so knowingly on the nose, it becomes one of the many great touches of levity in the film. But the funniest scene is a robbery gone wrong.  It's one of those scenes American (indie) directors seemingly perfected in the 90's of young overcondident motormouthed men clumsily executing a mischievous illegal scheme that was badly and irrationally thought out in the first place, leading to consequences that are both darkly tragic and sublimely hilarious. In this case, the robbery (thwarted by Wynn's brother-in-law, an ex-con night watch on his first day of work) sets into motion a series of events that allow Joe to be blackmailed and put the lives of his apartment's residents in grave danger. 

Beyond creating a city portrait with vividly drawn characters, Sayles is critical of the organisation of society around the idea of trickle-down economics. He presents it as a gateway to clientelism and corruption, not just in politics, but in every aspect of life, giving the rich and powerful inherent advantages and plenty opportunities to exploit  ordinary citizens, especially when they are non-white. In those opening scenes on the street, the exclusive aim for everyone in almost any conversation is to obtain something that will give them an advantage in life, in their career, or in politics. This idea that people are purely assets that only serve to be sold or bought is a bit too bluntly literalised through Asteroid, a mentally deficient man who goes around town repeating marketing mantras he hears on TV. It's an immensely thankless, useless character that goes nowhere interesting, somehow portrayed by David Strathairn, one of Sayles' most trusted and talented collaborators. One more, final, critical point worth making is that, when push comes to shove, Nick is the film's most heroic character. He is (indirectly) resposnible for most of the despair, but the film goes to great lengths to make clear that all his actions are a form of resistance against the culture of clientelism. It rings false here to turn him into the character with the most (however misguided) integrity, the one who is most willing to take on the film's self-identified 'villain'.

230. Tender Mercies

Song - Easy Livin' (Uriah Heep)

Movie: Tender Mercies (Bruce Beresford, 1983)

I got what the film's title was going for, but wasn't aware of its actual meaning, or that it comes directly from the Bible. Rosa Lee (Tess Harper) baptises her kid, sings in her church's choir and prays for 'tender mercies'. She has lost her husband in Vietnam and now lives as a single mother on the Texas backroads. Here she owns a farm, a hotel and a gas station, surrounded by nothing but grassland. Rosa Lee takes the teachings of her faith seriously when she provides shelter and work to Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall), a broken down alcoholic and a formerly great country/western singer who has lost his fortunes, as well as any contact with his ex-wife and daughter. For Mac, this is a good opportunity to sober up (Rosa Lee agrees to him staying only if he stops drinking) and put his life back on track. In most cases, this would be what the whole movie is about. Here this all happens in the first 10 minutes, covering about 5 months, and a marriage, It turns out that Tender Mercies will not be a film about Mac's alcoholism, but about the ordinary domestic trials and tribulations of Rosa Lee and Mac. Aside from a major tragedy near the end, this is a subdued, plain film, that is mostly interested in exploring how the values and histories of its characters affect their lives. I liked it much more than expected, especially for how deftly it avoids embellishing conflicts and emotions. 

Bruce Beresford is from Sydney and like his countrymen he knows how to frame his characters against a backdrop of isolated emptiness - near the end, Mac and Rosa Lee's conversation, filmed in one shot, at their allotment is an especially stunning example of this. And the film's only 'suspenseful' sequence works by emphasising the silence around Rosa Lee's motel and heightening our awareness of every car that passes it by. More importantly though, Beresford understands how the isolation shapes its characters' behaviour. It's more urgent to believe in God when you can't depend too much on other people saving you, and when most of those other people you meet in church. Similarly, the film understands there is a reason why in seemingly every country, New Year's concerts are dominated by stars like Dixie (Betty Buckley) who may not be the greatest artists in the world, but are extremely capable of bringing the audience along for the ride through overtly emotional peformances and lyrics that may be trite, but express highly recognisable feelings. Sometimes the point of music is not to be art, but to create a community. The film doesn't present the activities of the church or the country bars as particularly fashionable, or its characters as sophisticated, and sees this neither as a source of pride or of shame, though it is notable that Mac Sledge's first singing performance in the film, his long-awaited come back, happens just after being baptised (together with Rosa Lee's son). On stage, he looks extremely cool in his cowboy hat, flanked by a giant Texas flag

The film takes a similar approach in showing the relationship between Mac and Rosa Lee. It's unquestionable that their love is real, but it is not driven by romance. Beresford doesn't show the wedding and their decision to get married happens after a couple of scenes in which they work together, and help each other with their daily tasks, way before the film shows any sort of emotional or physical bond between them. A short kissing scene, later on, is not the epitome of chemistry either. It would go too far to call this a marriage of convenience, but it's much closer to being that than a marriage of love as we conventionally understand it. The film shows that the choices Mac and Rosa Lee make are rather sensible in context. They have few feasible options that would make their lives better and happier than getting married. What makes Tender Mercies much better than too many contemporary films that are unabashedly conservative, is that it knows that values are shaped by behaviour, feelings and personal and societal contexts, rather than the other way around. As a result it doesn't insist that its conservatism is inherently moral, but shows that it is simply a matter of circumstance. 

Tender Mercies also unflinchingly observes the ills of its society. Tess Harper has a great monologue explaining to her son how the American government lied about her husband's death in Vietnam, while we also learn that she got her kid at 16.  Almost every character in the film comes from, or leaves behind, a broken family and is shaped by an ill-advised teen marriage. It's fitting too that the film ends with a game of catch between father and son. Aside from the Vietnam War, the framed posters of the Dallas Cowboys in the kid's room are basically the only reference points to the whole society that exists beyond its characters' narrow reality. Finally, it's worth noting that while Robert Duvall is (reliably) great and won an Oscar, the real knockout here is Harper. She is fantastic portraying Rosa Lee as a way too young matriarch who has learned to be strong-willed and doesn't quite realise that the weight she has on her shoulders is deeply unfair. 

229. The Departed

Song - Gimme Shelter (The Roling Stones)

Movie: The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006)

Martin Scorsese is getting a little overrepresented here, but if you are connecting movies to songs and don't link Gimme Shelter to Scorsese, you may as well pack it up. More to the point, his use of this song in The Departed is a great example of how great his famous collaboration with editor Thelma Schoonmaker works. We hear Gimme Shelter twice in the movie, first during the opening scenes giving the film an immediate jolt of energy, further amplified by Jack Nicholson's delightfully smirky narration. The second time we hear it, it's during one of the more calmer scenes. In both cases the song perfectly fits and shapes the mood the film is going for. The Departed makes use of both an original score by Howard Shore, and previously recorded songs, and many times they blend together. The second time we hear Gimme Shelter it can hardly be characterised as a needle drop. The song seems to flow naturally out of the preceding soundtrack. And everything is just synced perfectly to the rhytms of the editing and the movements of the actors. 

I don't think The Departed is among Scorsese's greatest works, but, aside from After Hours, it's mabye his most seamlessly flowing film, even if some shots look a bit uncannily fake. It sometimes feels as if Scorsese is struggling to get the same authenticity out of Boston, as he gets out of New York. Still, it's hard to find many films with more entertaining performances. It asks some of the greatest, most compelling actors alive to play exactly to their strengths, givest them juicy dialogue, and then helps them even further by having every shot, camera movement and music choice perfectly match their energy and their character's vibe. Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg could deliver their banter in their sleep and make it funny, but The Departed pretty much hands them their lines and performances on a silver plate. It's quite a shame that because of their pompous egos we are unlikely to see similar performances of Wahlberg and Baldwin any time soon. It's even more unfortunate that this looks to be Jack Nicholson's last relevant movie. Though Nicholson fully takes advantage of his freedom to show off, it's not a vain performance. His Frank Costello is steaming out of every pore, and in close ups you can almost smell the saliva and snot of his face, His highly visible squalidness is both a symbol of his decay and of his remaining power.

Leonardo Di Caprio and Matt Damon are equally great as, respectively, the undercover cop and Costello's mole who have to identify each other. Damon has pretty much perfected playing overeager overambitious strivers who are way in over their head, but pretend they have everything under control, and he gives probably the best performance. This is also though where the film's weaknesses come in. Stylistically Scorsese turns The Departed into a pulpy thriller, but narratively this tries to be a serious crime drama. In that regard the film is not so succesfull as it never bothers to put any thought into how the lives and actions of its main characters would look like if they were more than just plot devices. It's a shame that the film treats such a great setup with such flippancy and as a result many scenes are not as tense as they should be. It's often too obvious that everything is only happening because the film needs it, rather than because it makes sense in the context of the characters. It's especially a miracle how Damon's Sullivan survives for as long as he does. He should be found out way before the film's halfway point. 

228. Star Wars

Song - Con Te Partiro (Andrea Bocelli)

Movie: Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)

I had never seen it before! Annie Hall will always eat its lunch, but it's real good. Calling something a 'space opera' will quickly turn me into another direction, while few things sound more appealing than a hangout movie taking place over the course of a single night. American Graffiti was always the Lucas classic that had my priority and after intensely dislking that (the cheekily cynical end title cards were the final nail in its coffin) my interest in Star Wars waned even further. That was also connected to Star Wars seemingly becoming more a business property than a piece of entertainment. I was put off by its seemingly eternal inescapability, obnoxiously finding its way into every corner of pop culture, forever. In doing so, it basically became the model for current Hollywood blockbuster cinema which, led by Marvel, has turned movies into content generators perfectly designed to make profits and not do much else interesting. 

The Hollywood business practices influneced/enabled by Star Wars still deserve criticsm, but having seen it now, it's hard to blame people for craving and creating ever more Star Wars content. It's the result of the film's greatest artistic achievment; its world and creature design is simply spectacular. The sequence at spaceport Mos Eisley in particular is astonishing in how matter-of-factly it presents strange life forms of different shapes, sizes, colors and organisms, most of whom can not be (and are not) identified by any recognisable category. We learn of course that Chewbacca is a wookie, but have no idea what that is, what it can do, or what the other creatures we meet are. Yet they are all designed with great attention to specificity and detail,  and presented as fully functioning residents of this world, who speak to each other using strange sounds we can hardly identify or understand. There are no rules established to this world, no explanation given to its existence. It is just a fully realised completely alien world, not beholden to any constraints. It's easy to imagine a limitless amount of different stories happenning in it. 

It's at Mos Eisley that we first meet Han Solo. As played by Harrison Ford, that's another aspect of Star Wars that fully lives up to its reputation. I have sometimes found Ford a stuffy and dull actor, but his brashy laconic confidence as Han Solo (it absolutely helps that this, and Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader are just fantastic character names) is pretty much iconic from his first frame. Ford, like Alec Guinness, hated his dialogue, but it's worth noting that he gets some really good lines that are both exquisite zingers and build up his character without tiresome backstories. It's a good example of how good dialogue is also about what is not being said. We get to know The Force similarly to how we learn about Han Solo. There is no major explanation for why and how Jedi have access to it, or what it exactly is. We (like the characters themselves) are simply asked to have faith that it's some sort of special power that gives them special abilities. That too separates Star Wars positively from modern superhero blockbusters, which go to great lengths to establish why and how Iron Man, Thor or Captain America obtained the powers they did, creating very specific rules and circumstances for what makes them special. That limits the imagination of what's possible rather then expanding it. 

Star Wars is unfortunately a bit less successful in its action scenes. In particular the climactic destruction of the Death Star takes too long, and consists of shots of green lasers coming out of airships, exterior shots of the planes flying through an extremely narrow walled path, and interior shots of the pilots excited frenzy as they are flying their planes towards their destination The whole sequence repetitively cuts between a version of these three shots, and fails to build any momentum or tension. It doesn't help that Mark Hamill doesn't have the charisma and screen presence of Ford and Guinness (neither does Carrie Fisher). For the most part though, that doesn't matter too much. Ford and Guinness are so good they manage to lift their co-actors up whenever they share the screen together. The final, joyously happy, hug, between Han, Leia and Luke makes you immediately want to see their next adventure together. 

I have actually seen The Force Awakens and the Last Jedi (as well as The Phantom Menace, when I was very young at a friend's birthday in the cinema. I remember really liking it). I am eager to see The Empire Strikes back and can understand some of the criticism of the latest trilogy for failing to reunite Ford, Fisher and Hamill. The bigger problem is that I don't see how any modern Star Wars film can recreate the magic of the first film/trilogy. Even now that you know eveything that came after, Star Wars, the actual 1977 film, plays as the little movie that could. Annie Hall is now maybe an underdog, but it's easy to see how in real time a film about neurotic intellectual New Yorkers discussiong their love lives, childhoods and worldviews, featuring cameos by Marshall McLuhan and Truman Capote was a more obvious Oscar winner, a more obvious choice of the establishment, than a film that starts with anthropomorphised scrap making weird sounds as it walks through a desert. The sweetly corny ethos of that opening sequence is maintained throughout the rest of the film. The Americans went to the moon with rusted metal and Swiss Army knives and it looks like that may have inspired Lucas. Many of the sets deliberately look like they are held together by duct tape, with doors and walls that are visibly scratched, and technology that looks secondhand, giving the film a DYI look and feel, even when deploying the most expensive special effects to that point in film history.