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‘The Queen’
By Chris Cabin
Movie Trailer
In a year already riddled with
modern benchmarks in U.S. history,
Stephen Frears now enters the
deal with a reenactment of a worldwide
tragedy: the death of Princess
Diana and the subsequent rupture
in public faith in the Royal Family.
It’s a tricky proposition: Where
most portraits of the Queen and
her brood are either overly stiff
(for comedy’s sake) or drab-as-death
(for drama), Frears tries to show
the family as no-bull normal people
with dabs of sarcasm, sass and
humor that could rub viewers the
wrong way.
It begins with the landslide
election of Prime Minister Tony
Blair (a shockingly good Michael
Sheen) and moves to the car accident
that led to Di’s death. Frears
then meditates on the decisions
and the struggle between modernism
and tradition that Queen Elizabeth
(Helen Mirren) and her family
must consider in the wake of a
not just familial, but worldwide,
day of mourning.
For those who don’t remember,
after the death, there was major
pressure for the family to mourn
in public, to show their grief
and prove that even though Di
wasn’t part of the family anymore,
they were still in a state of
solemnity.
The year 1997 was a whole nine
years ago, but already we were
seeing the death of the handle-yourself
emotional vibe, the tradition
of not sharing one’s emotions
in any public matter. The Royal
Family embodies tradition, so
the fact that the family and certainly
the Queen didn’t come out of hiding
for an entire week seemed perfectly
fine with them. Only Prince Charles
(a solid Alex Jennings, grappling
with the film’s most uneven character)
shows his face to the public for
his ex-wife and for the sake of
his sons. The fight for a modern
emotional reaction seems to be
at the heart of “The Queen,” and
screenwriter Peter Morgan expertly
uses metaphors and a fascinating
sense of humor to deal with his
characters and their core issues.
Frears has always been a wildly
versatile director, but “The Queen”
might end up being his swan song.
He blundered, hard, last year
with the disastrous “Mrs. Henderson
Presents,” but films like “Dirty
Pretty Things,” “My Beautiful
Laundrette,” and his ridiculously
rewatchable rendering of Nick
Hornby’s “High Fidelity” show
a fearless director who never
binds himself to a genre or a
particular style. Here, he uses
archival footage of the events
and the repercussions and blends
it with Affonso Beaty’s stunning
camera work, which recreates some
television moments and lets others
speak for themselves. Where many
would have expected dry, straight
drama, Frears boldly asks us to
accept these people as humans:
flawed and ill-advised but ultimately
with good reasons.
Then there’s Mirren. Oscar talk
has already spouted from the mouth
of nearly every critic who saw
the film, and her win at the Venice
Film Festival didn’t exactly quell
that clamor. Mirren, always the
classiest one at the table, has
the foresight to see Elizabeth
as the hard nut she is. When her
old car finally breaks down (metaphor!),
she looks at the problem and simply
shouts, “Bugger!” It’s in these
deliveries that Mirren has truly
mastered her character and found
the bigger-than-life persona,
but also has worked hard to bring
such a huge character down to
the level of humanity. It’s nothing
but ecstasy to see her plain expression
as her husband (priceless James
Cromwell) calls her “cabbage”
as they get ready for bed. Much
like the film, she’s a class act
from beginning to end. CV
‘Borat’
By Scott Renshaw
Movie Trailer
There are fans of sincere musicians
and daring visual artists who
profess that their idols are all
about their art. But I dare anyone
to watch Sacha Baron Cohen dash
naked through a hotel ballroom
full of shocked conventioneers
in “Borat,” and tell me that there
is an artist anywhere more fully
committed to what he does — or
who yields such breathtakingly
brilliant results from that commitment.
As anyone knows who has followed
Cohen from the BBC to HBO’s “Da
Ali G Show,” he has spent years
honing satirical characters that
seduce both celebrities and everyday
people into moments of enlightening,
savagely funny honesty. “The Daily
Show”’s deadpan interviewers may
have taken this approach into
the pop culture mainstream, but
with the film debut of regular
“Ali G” character Borat Sagdiyev,
Cohen has taken guerrilla reality
comedy to staggering new heights.
Cohen’s Borat — a television
personality from Kazakhstan whose
personal hygiene is nearly as
offensive as his ideas about women,
Jews and the mentally handicapped
— appeared previously in improvised
“interviews” over the years. But
in this film’s context, Borat
has a more serious purpose. The
lengthy subtitle “Cultural Learnings
of America for Make Benefit Glorious
Nation of Kazakhstan” describes
an assignment by his government
to visit the United States with
his producer Azarat (Ken Davitian)
and bring back information to
help modernize the country. But
after seeing an episode of “Baywatch”
in his hotel room, Borat becomes
obsessed with Pamela Anderson
and undertakes a cross-country
quest from New York to California
to find her.
That quest is more or less an
excuse to get Borat out on the
road, where he can mix and mingle
with real heartland Americans.
And the “real” part of that equation
is what makes Borat so extraordinary.
Cohen is at his finest when taking
his fish-out-of-water routine
straight to the people. A gun
shop owner responds to Borat’s
inquiry about the best weapon
to hunt a Jew without hesitation:
“9 mm.” A rodeo attendee hears
Borat describe his home country’s
(fictional) capital punishment
policy for gays, and gleefully
wishes it were the same in America.
A trio of road-tripping frat boys
shares less-than-enlightened views
on male-female interactions. It’s
mind-boggling, jaw-dropping, and
funny in a way that only the most
painful truths can be.
But it only works because Cohen’s
dedication to the identity of
Borat is so complete. It’s impossible
to watch “Borat” and not realize
that Cohen puts himself at bodily
risk to get some of his best material,
and not once — when any sane person
would consider it prudent to remove
the mask and tell people to smile
because they’re on “Candid Camera”
— does Cohen visibly break character.
Some writers have compared Cohen’s
brand of full-contact humor with
that of Andy Kaufman, but Kaufman
often seemed more interested in
sustaining a gag than in entertaining
anyone else with it. “Borat” marks
the creation of a performance
as satisfying as it is ground-breaking;
it’s the comedic equivalent of
watching Marlon Brando bringing
the Method to the masses for the
first time.
“Borat” has already inspired
hand-wringing by Jewish groups
and others afraid that some viewers
may not get the satirical joke
behind the character’s unabashed
bigotry. Someone undoubtedly also
thought that Swift’s suggestion
about turning Irish babies into
lunch wasn’t such a bad idea,
either, but some realities can
only be exposed by sneaking past
the defenses of ignorance with
strategic hyperbole. Sacha Baron
Cohen has made a film that soars
precisely because it hasn’t been
timidly focus-grouped and scrubbed
clean of anything that could possibly
give offense. Like Cohen himself,
it’s utterly fearless. C
‘Catch a Fire’
By Cole Smithey
Movie Trailer
Australian director Philip Noyce
(“Rabbit-Proof Fence”) applies
his authentic sense of cinematic
storytelling to the real-life
story of Patrick Chamusso (Derek
Luke, “Antoine Fisher”), an apolitical
South African oil refinery engineer
who joins a revolution against
the violent apartheid regime after
government goons torture him and
his wife (Bonnie Henna).
Tim Robbins plays Police Security
Colonel Nic Vos, who takes a special
interest in keeping tabs on Patrick
after he is released from suspicion
of carrying out a bombing at the
Secunda oil plant. Filmed on location
in Johannesburg, Cape Town and
Mozambique, “Catch a Fire” is
an incendiary movie about an individual’s
desperate decision to battle a
corrupt government system after
being mentally and psychologically
abused. Here, one man’s story
illuminates the way that government-sponsored
torture polarizes human beings
and gives birth to terrorists.
Although Patrick Chamusso’s story
occurred between 1980 and 1981
in Africa, it resonates with escalating
social oppression within the United
States by a government obsessed
with fomenting the exact conditions
of terror that it claims to prohibit.
Patrick’s social awakening comes
after he experiences anguish typical
of what victims of serial killers
and sociopaths suffer. His brutal
interrogation is aggravated by
the simultaneous defilement of
his wife, with whom he shares
a jail cell.
Through Patrick’s punishment we
witness an ordinary man transformed
into a vengeful soul. Few people
would argue that they would not
respond with vengeance if they
or their spouses suffered a fraction
of the abuse that anti-terrorist
organizations practice on their
victims, and the filmmaker makes
no case for Patrick’s perceived
options of leaving the country
or turning the other cheek.
Patrick is a loyal family man
who volunteers his time as a soccer
coach for local kids, but he maintains
an adulterous life with a woman
from his past, and it’s this indiscretion
that contributes to his fallibility
as a suspect. Patrick’s capacity
for deception foreshadows his
decision to abandon his family
in order to train with the African
National Congress freedom fighters
in Mozambique before going to
Angola for indoctrination with
the ANC’s military branch, the
MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe). Derek
Luke builds layers of tension
over his character’s emotional
wounds, and conveys a ferocity
that is staggering for its depth.
Nic Vos is a walking contradiction
of family man and ruthless government
pawn. Robbins’ problematic casting
creates a wavering narrative disconnect
in spite of the skilled actor’s
best efforts at fleshing out what
is obviously a composite person
created by screenwriter Shawn
Slovo, the daughter of the late
South African Communist Party
leader Joe Slovo. If anything,
Robbins keeps such a tight a lid
on his character that we can only
gauge his hostility and underlying
fear as part of a larger alien
machine called apartheid. Robbins
falls back on his favorite prop,
a toothpick that flutters from
his lips to remind us that Nic
Vos is constantly on a hair trigger.
The film escalates into a third-act
crisis that seems like it was
pulled from an old Bruce Willis
action movie. Patrick uses his
intimate knowledge of the Secunda
oil plant to attempt a sabotage
operation that will bring down
the entire refinery. The pushy
action overture comes off as little
more than a perfunctory chase
scene with a predictable outcome
that undercuts the more serious
tone of the movie. Philip Noyce
fudges the script contrivance
with a closing episode that allows
an older Patrick to quietly bury
the cycle of cruelty that consumed
his conscience. The shorthand
narrative gesture is too abrupt
to be completely effective, but
it does support the idea that
forgiveness is always an option.
CV
‘Riding Alone for Thousands
of Miles’
By Mark Jenkins
Movie Trailer
Although several of his films
have been suppressed in his homeland,
and for years he was more acclaimed
overseas, Zhang Yimou has never
shown any interest in artistic
defection. All his films are of
and about China. That shifts,
but only slightly, with his latest
effort, “Riding Alone for Thousands
of Miles.” The bulk of the movie
is set in the dusty province of
Yunnan, which offers the sort
of picturesque rural vistas characteristic
of Zhang’s work. The story does
open in Japan, and its principal
character is a Japanese man who
travels to China in a symbolic
quest to reconcile with his son.
But the film’s essential format
is equivalent to that of Zhang’s
previous peasant-challenges-bureaucracy
fables, such as “The Story of
Qiu Ju” and “Not One Less.”
“Riding Alone” begins with a Chinese
opera aria, then a view of an
austerely lovely seashore, nearly
an ink painting in shades of black
and gray. This is the home of
Takata (veteran Japanese cinematic
tough guy Ken Takakura), a widower
who lives at great emotional distance
from Ken-ichi, his estranged son.
Now Ken-ichi is seriously ill,
and his wife Rie (Shinobu Terajima)
summons Takata to Tokyo. When
Ken-ichi refuses to see his father,
Rie gives Takata a videotape.
It seems that Ken-ichi is a scholar
of Chinese folk opera and was
planning to return to Yunnan to
videotape a performance of a traditional
work, “Riding Alone for Thousands
of Miles.” With no other idea
of what he can do for his son,
Takata decides to go to China
and document the performance himself.
On one level, “Riding Alone” is
Zhang’s most sentimental film,
with lots of tear-jerking and
even some outright blubbering.
It’s also a remarkably sanguine
portrait of the Chinese penal
system, which proves unconvincingly
receptive to the fixation of one
bull-headed Japanese tourist.
Yet the film, for all its emphasis
on unresolved father–son relationships,
is as much a comedy as a drama.
It’s also, like so many of Zhang’s
films, a romance between director
and actor. For the first time,
the director has replaced such
formidable beauties as Gong Li
and Zhang Ziyi with a man — but
one who inspires an equal amount
of admiration. Takakura appeared
in some of the first foreign movies
imported into China after the
Cultural Revolution, and Zhang
has described him as a “childhood
idol.”
Since his more recent films often
emphasize visual beauty over content,
and because his early critiques
of Chinese society have turned
softer, Zhang has seen his reputation
slip in the West. His latest movie,
with its crying jags and conventional
humanism, won’t change that. Yet
the film’s melodrama is twinned
with humor, so that a few poignant
moments — a revelation about Ken-ichi’s
character, a shot of Rie dressed
in black — have unexpected power.
And while the cross-cultural scenario
might seem a logical move from
a director whose spectacular “Hero”
and “House of Flying Daggers”
brought him into expanded contact
with Hong Kong and Japanese collaborators,
Chinese–Japanese friendship is
not so innocuous a theme on Zhang’s
side of the border. After all,
Japanese invaders were the villains
of his debut, 1987’s “Red Sorghum,”
whose brutal finale was set in
the 1930s. That the director can
now make a parable of reconciliation
is no small thing, and if “Riding
Alone for Thousands of Miles”
is not as starkly elegant as Zhang’s
early work, it is richer, warmer
and funnier. CV
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