2008 Film Roundup

It has been a while since I have written any substantial movie reviews, so I wanted to contribute my two cents on a few films from 2008 before the award season draws to a close. While the Academy has been panned from all sides for some its nominations and snubs, and while this year’s crop of films worldwide is considered by many to be inferior to last year’s, this was still a year full of its share of great movie moments. Some of my favorites include:

- A man works up the nerve to kill one of his closest friends, but is thwarted when his friend attempts to kill himself, which shocks the man so soundly that he saves his friend’s life (in more ways than one).

- A tugboat does battle with a U-Boat…and wins.

- An arch-villain introduces himself to the world with nothing but a writing utensil and a five word question and leaves us all stunned.

- A woman throws an illegal Pakistani immigrant’s duffel out of her car fearing it may contain a WMD only to discover that her decision causes a life to hang in the balance.

- A man performs acrobatic stunts in the sky above New York City with only a cable to support him.

- A little boy gets his hero’s autograph, no matter the cost.

So it may not have been the best year for movies, but it had its moments. Here are my thoughts on some of the movies that got people talking this year, most of which are up for consideration tonight.

Movies reviewed:

Frost/Nixon

Slumdog Millionaire

Frozen River

Doubt

Gran Torino

Milk


Frost/Nixon

I was excited to see this film because I knew nothing of the Frost and Nixon interviews, and the Nixon situation has always fascinated me, but I was less than impressed by the film’s use of mock talking-head interviews, which gave the film a surreal vibe and reminded me of This is Spinal Tap, the first mockumentary of its kind that treated its fictional characters as interview subjects in a spoof documentary. But unlike Spinal Tap, Frost/Nixon is about real people, and seeing interviews with the actors as if they are the real people was disconcerting. But beyond its effects on the film’s style, the interviews did little to contribute to our understanding of the story. The old adage is “Show, don’t tell,” but this film shows us, tells us and in case we did not get it the first two times, tells us again through these pedantic interviews.

There are other complaints to be made, and others have sunk their critical claws into this film deeper than I will here, but for me the film had its share of moments that made it a worthwhile experience. In my review of Changeling I mentioned how that film served as a persuasive justification for the role of lawyers in our society, and I felt Frost/Nixon was seeking to serve a similar justification for the role of the interviewer and perhaps even the use of television. According to the film, the interview served as the only trial Nixon would get, and Frost became the only investigator who would cross-examine him before the public. The film shows how this setup results in Nixon finally admitting to the reality that he was wrong, and television is vindicated for its ability to make this confession possible.

In a world of obfuscating politicians who dodge questions with sleight of hand rhetoric, talking points and tangential anecdotes, Frost/Nixon argues that television has the power to reveal the truth behind the obfuscations. While I would contend that TV has played a large role in making such obfuscations necessary in the first place, I did gain more respect for the tenacious interviewer who refuses to settle for political Newspeak.

Ironically, the film also gave me a newfound respect for Nixon, because, unlike any politician in recent memory, he actually admitted that he let the American people down. Perhaps that was the most refreshing part of the film, and perhaps it will serve as a reminder to the image-makers and politicians they coach that honesty in certain circumstances is not a sign of weakness, but strength.

Slumdog Millionaire

I recently returned from a short trip to India with 10 hours of video footage to be used in a promotional video for an orphanage just outside of Mumbai, so naturally a film chronicling the rise of an orphan from the slums of Mumbai would resonate with me. Thus it is a bit difficult for me to offer a pure critique of this film because I was vested in the setting and the situation. The film is definitely guilty of some of the same kinds of foibles that characterized another of my favorite films of the year: The Dark Knight. Both films keep throwing new things at you to keep you off-balance so you do not have time to notice that certain elements do not add up.

There are numerous examples of these kinds of manipulations in Slumdog: from flashbacks that provide wrong answers (Surdas did not write the song "Ankhiya Hari Darshan Ki Pyasi") and flashbacks that don’t give answers (because his brother had a revolver does not mean Jamal knows its inventor) to the fact that the second day’s broadcast is seen by Salim and Latika in real time (those shows are taped and re-broadcast) to melodrama of the highest order (the phone call suspense scene) and occasional weak screenwriting that is designed to give us simple answers just to keep the plot moving (in the mob scene, one of the attackers utters, “Get them; they’re Muslims!” as if his fellow attackers are unaware).

In spite of these weaknesses the film worked for me because it felt imminently Indian. On the plane ride back from India I watched a Bollywood film, and it was just perfectly awful. Even though it was an Indian movie, I did not feel like I was back in India. I did not feel jazzed to go back; the only thing I felt jazzed to do was watch something else. This is not to say all Bollywood films are that bad, but on the whole, the industry gives one a new appreciation for Hollywood.

Boyle, on the other hand, manages to communicate India so succinctly and with such stirring imagery, he had me wanting to hop on a plane and get back there (I actually woke up the following Saturday at 5 just so I could work on the footage from that trip).

Some critics fault the film, saying that Boyle glamorizes the slums and makes even trash heaps look appealing. Unlike them, I think this is one of the things Boyle gets right. Even in my last trip, visiting a gypsy slum in Navi Mumbai, which would make even some of the roughest stateside project seem luxurious by comparison, I witnessed children laughing and playing with the kind of innocent joy that only a child could maintain in such circumstances. Westerners can be so condescending even with our assistance, seeing only the blights and needs of the poorest of the poor, and then jump to the conclusion that the only solution is to end world poverty. But in our rush to save the world we often do not seek the opinions of those we are so intent on saving and even with all our good intentions, only manage to enact change on the most superficial of levels.

This movie gave me that kid’s eye view of slum poverty, and instead of demanding detached sympathy, beckoned me to come and learn from them, not as an idle curiosity, but to get an insider’s perspective on urban poverty. Slumdog may not give us that perspective, but I think it is a start in that direction-to seek out the Jamals and Latikas of the urban landscape and instead of forcing change upon them from the outside, encouraging and enabling them to transform their environments from within.

Again, for me this movie is almost critic-proof. I am sorry I cannot offer anything more substantial because it resonated with me on numerous levels, but I will say that Ramin Bahrani's film Chop Shop, about a boy who eeks out an existence in a harsh slum near Shea Stadium, is a more subtle and realistic take on slum life and serves as a fitting contrast to Slumdog’s fairytale quality.


Frozen River

Up for best original screenplay and best actress (for Melissa Leo) at the Oscars tonight, Frozen River is the type of independent film that still feels indie. Not all the performances are A-list, but Leo’s is very good, and the film succeeds, not only as a result of her fine work, but also for its tone. There is a foreboding feeling about this film that seems to pervade every scene, but the film does not go overboard and allow the tone to delve into the kind of hopeless nihilism that many other films of its ilk might.

Its nomination for Best Screenplay still feels like a bit of a concession to me (perhaps just to win a little more exposure for the film), because aside from certain strong elements, I found it guilty of some weak dialogue and too-insistent grasps at contrived conflict.

The film is still worth the time if you are at all interested in Independent films. It serves as a good reminder that low budgets can still provide adequate venues for good stories and compelling performances. Like Chop Shop, a film I heartily recommend to anyone who has the patience for subtlety, Frozen River subverts the rage-to-riches formula with a story that examines the merits of the notion that one’s dreams are always positive influences. While we all like underdog stories that make us think that dreams can come true (hello Slumdog), both these films remind us that oftentimes the line between dreams and greed is not so easily defined, and some dreams have the capacity not only to distract us from what is really important, but also to ruin our very lives.


Doubt

You come to Doubt to see the fireworks set off between Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep, but you will probably leave remembering Viola Davis’ performance more than anything else. Hoffman plays his part well, and Streep does fine (aside from an overly melodramatic outburst in the film’s climax, which she punctuates with a gesture that would have better suited the original stage play or a silent movie), but, while they play characters that intrigue us with their competing motivations, Davis, in her one substantial scene, inhabits a mother with a simple motivation: her son’s well-being. This one scene is being hailed as one of the most standout performances of the year, but this year’s crop of supporting actress noms is a tight pack, so there is no telling if she will pull ahead.

Doubt is designed to make you ask questions and perhaps to make you wonder what you would do in this situation, but the film’s primary reason is to create drama-drama that cannot be solved, drama that results in virtually nothing, but pure spectacle. The spectacle is not flashy or glitzy, and though it bears some resemblance to reality, its primary concern is to put characters in a pressure-cooker and witness their reactions.

At the same time, the film does manage to remind us that certainty is a commodity that is both precious and potentially dangerous. There are some situations that beg further investigation and patient inquiry when a rush to judgment seems the only viable solution. Like the situation upon which the drama in Doubt hinges, the film itself poses questions that require rumination. Unfortunately, many of them will be lost in the film's attempt to focus on the fireworks between Streep and Hoffman. It is a shame, too, because with Davis' great performance at the movie's heart, it could have taken us deeper.


Gran Torino

Some critics are going gaga over Eastwood’s performance as Walt Kowalski in this film. Even Adam Kempenaar, from my most trusted film source, the Filmspotting Podcast, cited this as his fifth favorite performance of the year. Suffice it to say that while Eastwood holds this film together I do not think his performance is that good. The film is not without merit, but aside from Eastwood’s, very few of the performances even approach the level of a high school play, bringing to mind a film that did not garner much critical praise this year-the Christian film Fireproof. That film was rife with the performances worthy of bad church skits, but Eastwood’s cast fares no better in a film that has won several awards.

For me, though, it was not just the acting that made this film difficult to watch, but also the script, which may as well have provided superimposed arrows onscreen to point out who is bad and who is good. The writer communicates that Walt's family is composed of self-serving yuppies with the subtlety of a nuclear warhead, and then further insults us with their conversations, which never amount to more than exposition. At other points in the film it is Eastwood's direction that draws undue attention. Walt drops a shot glass in reaction to a violent act with the same setup and dramatic emphasis he used in Changeling (there using a different tool of vice, a cigarette) and the moment works less here, partly because, like most of this film, it feels so staged.

But the reason the film is garnering such praise is Eastwood. His crass wisecracks and liberal use of equal opportunity racial slurs win most people over, especially as his heart begins shining through as the movie progresses. The film is touching in spite of itself, showing how an old man can come to cultural understanding (kudos to the screenwriter for making this development believable), how a child can learn to become a man (a little less successful here), and how the best response to conflict is a third path merging the competing virtues of justice and grace.


Milk

While I am not sure that any of the films nominated for best picture should lay claim to the title (I would pick Wall*E over all of them), I think that of the available choices Milk should take the award home tonight. Like the other films it faces, it is not without faults-a generic biopic plot arc, some tired storytelling methods (tape recorder as narrative device)-but it has something the other films on the list do not: a pertinent message.

So we are all on the same page-I am a Christian, and I do believe homosexuality is a sin. Call me a bigot if you want, but that is my belief. That being said, I also think that lusting after another man’s wife is a sin, that gossip is a sin, that drunkenness is a sin, that divorce is a sin (unless in reaction to adultery), and any other number of actions the Bible clearly enumerates as missing God’s mark (most of which I have been guilty of on repeated occasions). Until recently I felt that as Christians we should seek to keep the line of marriage clearly marked lest future generations push it further and further back, but for me, Milk served as a nice epitaph to that notion, which was recently laid to rest for me, in the wake of the passing of Amendment 2 in FL and Prop 8 in California.

In his review in The Matthew's House Project, Ken Morefield put into words my largest complaint with the film, that while Harvey says, “They need to see us as people,” the film does not give us enough personal time with Milk to get to know him as such. Milk’s private life is a catalogue of relational tragedy. The only bright spots in these people’s relational lives seem to be their sexual encounters. And I know that there are plenty of sex-fiend heteros around, too, but typically even movies that feature such characters strive to show that there is something deeper to these characters’ relationships than sex. I never saw such in this film. So, for a film depicting the life of a man who wanted to serve as a bridge between the gay community and the community at large, it does not succeed in giving us people we can fully relate to on a personal level, not just a political or ideological level.

Nonetheless, Milk does succeed in telling a story that needs to be told. I never knew about Harvey Milk before the buzz about this film hit the mainstream, and after seeing the film, I want everyone to know the circumstances surrounding his death, and the particulars of the rights battle in which he was pitched. In 1978 Harvey Milk fought the passage of Proposition 6, which would force homosexuals out of their jobs as teachers. Milk helped lead the way in voting the proposition down, but today of course we have just witnessed (and some of us have been party to) the passing of legislation that prohibits gay marriage. I have written short summary elsewhere cataloguing
my reasons for not voting to pass Amendment 2, but I hope to give a better explanation shortly.

In the meantime, I think this movie is one that needs to be seen. It may seem overly political to vote a film in solely on the basis of social agenda, but one must realize that the Academy operates under such a conviction very often. An Inconvenient Truth was not the best documentary from 2006, and Melissa Etheridge’s song for that film was certainly not the best song, but both won because they were deemed important socially. I am not sure that in those cases the Academy was at all justified, because the contenders Gore and Etheridge faced were more deserving. But Milk does not face any films that really need to win in my opinion. I love Slumdog. It was one of my most entertaining film experiences of the year, but it was not my favorite filmgoing experience of the year, so if we are not going to celebrate the best cinema, let us celebrate the cinema that forces us to deal with an issue we have been avoiding for too long: equality under the law.