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By Cole Smithey
‘A Mighty Heart’
Movie Trailer
“A Mighty Heart,” like the other
post-9/11 Hollywood movies (“United
93” and “World Trade Center”),
is a would-be documentary subject
inflated with promotion in its
incarnation as a narrative feature.
The turgid emphasis on sentiment
and emotion is intended to overpower
the viewer into believing and
agreeing with everything on the
screen, lest he or she be thought
of as callous or insensitive.
All of the oh-so-sincere earnestness
seems to say, you are either with
us or you are a bad person. “Hokey”
is a word that springs to the
lips when I think of these films,
but not hokey in a cool Humphrey
Bogart in “Casablanca” way. No,
these movies are meant to be perceived
as “important” and “serious” because
they ostensibly reveal “heroes”
that we the audience should aspire
to, but could never be, since
we were not in the enviable position
of the suffering person onscreen.
The “mighty heart” of the film’s
title refers more to the long-suffering
wife of the deceased Wall Street
Journal reporter Daniel Pearl
than it does to the man himself.
We know this because the climax
of the piece arrives when the
protagonist, a pregnant Mariane
Pearl, goes into an extended primal
scream session after hearing news
of her husband’s long foreshadowed
death. Never more has the Shakespeare
quote from Hamlet, “the lady doth
protest too much” applied so obviously
to a crisis decision in a movie.
Daniel Pearl and his wife were
acutely aware of the dangers of
his job. He was in Karachi trying
to get interviews with known terrorists.
That Mariane Pearl chose to improperly
apply for the 9/11 victim’s relief
fund, even though her husband
did not perish in that event,
informs her unflinching sense
of opportunism that carried over
to writing a book and participating
in making a film about her husband’s
death.
Somehow, all of this obvious
motivation escaped director Michael
Winterbottom, the film’s producer
Brad Pitt and his wife Angelina
Jolie, because they bought into
Mariane Pearl’s money grab pity
party hook, line and sinker. Never
mind that the linear story isn’t
capable of maintaining a three-act
structure merely because actress,
star and supermom Angelina Jolie
plays the rather homely-looking
Mariane Pearl with every curly
hair flawlessly in place. If only
Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of
London” played on the soundtrack,
then we’d know for certain that
her “hair was perfect.” CV
By Cole Smithey
‘1408’
Movie Trailer
Adapted from a short story by
Stephen King, Swedish director
Mikael Hafstrom (“Derailed”) skillfully
helms this twisting one-man showcase
in terror. Horror novelist Mike
Enslin (John Cusack) is a debunker
of paranormal myths. He tackles
his latest book project, “Ten
Nights in Haunted Hotel Rooms,”
with the been-there-done-that
cynicism of a wizened professional
knocking out yet another routine
assignment. Things get exciting
when Enslin reads a news clipping
about a mysterious “room 1408”
in New York’s Dolphin Hotel, where
more than 50 guests have perished.
With his curiosity properly piqued,
our plucky author disregards the
earnest warnings of the hotel
manager Mr. Olin (snappily played
by Samuel L. Jackson), and enters
the room with tape recorder in
hand. The alarm clock begins a
one-hour countdown as walls move
and the landscape of the room
becomes a demonic presence taunting
the author to lose hold on his
already loosened sanity. The triumph
of “1408” rests squarely on John
Cusack’s perfectly pitched performance
as an unshakable disbeliever repeatedly
pushed to the brink of suicide
by memories of his own past. “Room
1408” presents a psychological,
paranormal and physical juggernaut
that will curl your insides in
knots.
“1408” falls neatly into the
category of Stephen King stories
like “The Shining” and “The Secret
Window.” A tough guy author becomes
trapped in the confines of a place
where the laws of physics don’t
seem to apply. Separated from
his wife Lily (Mary McCormack)
after the tragic loss of their
daughter Gracie, Enslin masks
his concealed personal crisis
by immersing himself in his work.
Here is a man attempting to displace
his own reality with other people’s
imaginary demons to overcompensate
for his slipping grip on reason.
It’s an effective gambit until
the demons become real. “We don’t
rattle” is the mantra that Enslin
repeats to himself as the room’s
alarm clock unexpectedly blasts
a Carpenters’ song and paintings
shift their images. Observing
paranormal occurrences is not
as prosaic and charming as our
protagonist might have imagined.
And so it is, for the audience,
that the scares we have waited
for turn out to be more potent
than we imagined.
Unable to escape from the room’s
door, Cusack’s unraveling character
puts aside visions of former visitors
leaping from the window as he
climbs out onto the ledge in the
hope of reentering the hotel from
an adjacent room. On the surface,
it seems like a classic scary
movie trope when the hotel’s windows
vanish and Enslin is left facing
nothing but brick, however the
visual slight-of-hand works like
a magician’s trusty card trick.
That’s us, the audience, stuck
on that high ledge. Like the Jack
Nicholson character in “The Shining,”
Enslin suffers from a psychosis
that his immediate environment
exacerbates. Right up until the
end of the movie, it’s unsure
how much of the room-morphing
episodes are real and how many
are cooked up in the character’s
plagued subconscious mind.
Special effects supervisor Paul
Corbold (“Children of Men”) metes
out the room’s slippery descent
into hellish realms with a modulated
crescendo of violence that gently
bruises your psyche before walloping
it with a concussive double climax.
The devil is in the details, and
in room “1408” every nightmare
element holds a deeper meaning
to the secret of Mike Enslin’s
mental breakdown that drops him
in rough seas within a cracking
ship.
Cusack is such a polished performer
that it’s easy to forget how effective
he can be at creating characters
capable of emphasizing extreme
emotional and physical states.
Here, the actor delivers a tour
de force performance that punctuates
the survival aspects of the story
every time the camera focuses
on his pained facial expressions.
There is plenty of Freudian subtext
that Cusack’s character mocks
as an invitation to the emotionally
cathartic experience he subconsciously
demands. You’ll have to think
your way through this thriller
as it twists like the road to
Hana, and you’ll be on the edge
of you seat the whole time. CV
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