The Tree of Life is a song to the human, to the world, to time. It is a sweeping, swooning roller-coaster through the moments that make us alive, the blades of grass that whisper to our fingertips, the ancient stairway that we stumble blindly upward upon.
Terrence Malick, who had been building to these heights of fractured, sweeping gusts of emotion with eddies and swirls evident in his previous four films (spanning four decades), has acheived a magnum opus that defines, in many ways, the feeling of being human.
It's not a film for everyone- in nearly every conventional sense it's not even a film to begin with. The 'narrative' begins by focusing on a family dealing with loss, and as they find themselves unraveled by their own mortality, The Tree of Life blinks and recollects the dawn of time and the universe itself.
But it's a natural shift- the poetry of every frame of Emmanuel Lubezki's artful cinematography, Alexandre Desplat's operatic tone-poem of a score, the affecting, naturalistic performances, and Malick's trademark sparse, rapturous dialogue perform a remarkable feat of parralax.
Suddenly the lines on our palms and the cooling stretches of magma in our planet's infancy seem to have patterns in common. A moment of forgiveness between brothers echoes a passing moment of tenderness between dinosaurs.
When the film returns to our era, it's ready to embrace the conflicts that make us both tortured and beautiful.
A special mention should also be made for VFX GUY's astonishing, largely hand-made visual effects, as well as all five (!) editors that pieced together the scraps and movements and breezes that comprise every moment of this film.
But it's Terrence Malick's unmistakable vision, the movie he's been making all along. A joyous ode that manages to be spiritual without being religious, to be deeply personal and yet as universal as it gets.
So I'm a little too into Oscar predicting. In the last five years, the Pittsburgh Steelers (who I root for because I grew up there), have played in and won two Super Bowls that I watched with only mild enthusiasm.
But during the Academy Awards I groan or fist-pump with every hit or missed call for some reason. So I savor any category with a sure winner.
If only there were such a thing. At the 2007 ceremony, nothing looked safer than Pan's Labyrinth in the Best Foreign Film spot- it even had five 'domestic' nominations, so to speak. It's at number 74 in the top 250, even.
But stealing its thunder (and presently number 56, incidentally) came a German thriller called The Lives Of Others, which walked off with the statue and reviews ranging from "poignant, unsettling thriller" to ""one of the greatest movies ever made!" It was a stunning, awesome debut feature from the awesomely-named Florian Henckel Von Donnersmark.
Hollywood soon came calling, and we all rubbed our hands for his next step.
On paper, The Tourist sounded like a great idea- a thriller based on a little-seen French movie where an unsuspecting average joe is chosen by a Woman of Mystery to be a patsy for her boyfriend, a fugitive millionaire thief.
After a carousel of directors and stars, The Tourist ended up with our man Von Donnersmark and a studio's dream for a leading couple: Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. Surely we could end up with a tense, throwback thriller right in the same ballpark of The Lives Of Others, which mined the former Soviet Union for endless dramatic silences and tense eavesdropping sessions.
The trailer for The Tourist made it clear this wasn't the case, but it just seemed like it was in a different gear- an action-packed romp with two stars that should have breezy chemistry even on an off day.
The problem is, Von Donnersmark tried to make the latter, but only has the skill set for the former. What results is a languid, under-plotted, barely there sketch of a film that's downright boring.
What went so wrong? I'm not sure what passes for glamorous these days, but the decision to have Depp sport a haircut that resembled a dead animal on his head and Jolie to constantly wear so much dark eye makeup that she could be an anime character (she even wore it to bed!) didn't help matters.
Surely two talented, award-winning thespians could manufacture some chemistry even while appearing to be space aliens, but it's not meant to be: every conversation the leads have is hampered by constant awkward pausing, meaningless silence, and pacing straight out of some other film.
It's the same action-packed trailer/dripping-faucet film switcheroo that The American pulled in September, but instead of overwrought somberness The Tourist just has pointless boredom.
Maybe it's the language barrier, but in this film Von Donnersmark displays a Shamylanian talent for getting wooden performances out of talented actors: Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton, and (briefly) Rufus Sewell all go to waste explaining the ridiculous plot to us.
Oh yeah, the plot: it's not worth getting into, really. It's contived, muddy, and culminates in the London Financial Crimes Division straight up murdering some people. There's one big reveal halfway through the film that's wholly uneccesary, and one at the very end that, even though it's wholly predictable, is still ridiculously insulting.
But the plot shouldn't matter! Duplicity had a similarly ludicrous structure, but Clive Owen and Julia Roberts relegated it to window dressing. It was fun. The Tourist is what I'll use from now on to defend Ocean's Twelve when people dismiss it as a pointless Euro-trifle: at least it was fun to watch.
Ah, well. In an interview, Von Donnersmark said: "I had just finished writing a screenplay for a dark, dramatic thriller, and when I heard about The Tourist, I thought, 'Maybe I'll do this one first.'" So perhaps his next film will be appropriately Lives Of Others-ian and we can leave all this behind.
Meanwhile, maybe whoever edited that trailer can recut The Tourist into a solid, thrilling half hour.
Leftover Thoughts:
-To be clear, I don't think FHVD should make the same film every time, I just get the impression that his skill set is still developing.
-There was some rumor that Sam Worthington and Charlize Theron were up for these parts, and in hindsight that seems like a much better fit- Worthington seems a lot more like a hapless American (Depp is always the villain himself), Theron has a better balance of vulnerability AND allure (Jolie here is all allure with a hint of lizard-eyes).
-You want to know the TWO MAJOR SPOILERS so you never have to see it? Okay: First, Jolie is a London Financial Crimes Unit agent in deep cover! But actually she's gone dark and fallen in love with her target (the rich thief) anyway, so it's really not a twist at all until she decides she's falling for Depp and wants to catch the rich thief after all. Finally, Depp turns out to have BEEN THE RICH THIEF ALL ALONG OMG! Even though he sent her a note telling her to choose a random guy and pretend it was him! And we even saw a dream sequence of Depp's where he kissed her- wouldn't he have his original face in a dream? And he acted all nebbishy and awkward while being chased by random thugs, even though he was actually the dude they thought he was! ugh. It's a good thing I had nothing invested by the end of this film.
In Clint Eastwood's storied career of playing no-nonsense toughguys, and directing no-nonsense, serious films, not once has he touched upon the supernatural. It's been all western gunfights and gritty crime thrillers, alternating with Very Serious Oscar Type Movies.
Which is why Hereafter, three interwoven narratives about death and the afterlife, seemed like such a promising idea. Who wouldn't want to see Eastwood's steady hand (and Peter Morgan's lauded pen) brought to the quote unquote fantasy genre? Sure, the reviews are mixed, but watch the trailer below- it certainly seems like they're swinging for the fences with the premise.
The problem is, it's really more of a sac bunt than anything. Eastwood treats the profound questions involved with his usual straightforward frankness, but Hereafter doesn't offer any answers. It doesn't even speculate about them for too long, really.
Instead, it seems to find itself profound for raising them in the first place, even though pretty much everyone alive has asked them for pretty much all of history. It's as if Eastwood and Morgan (who's mostly written historical dramas about real things and people) had actually never seen anything involving psychics who can talk to the dead, near-death experiences, or ghosts, and thought they had truly original concepts that could do all the heavy lifting for them.
Let's break it down. Matt Damon is a John Edward-type psychic who can speak to the dead, after briefly touching a bereaved loved one. Cécile de France is a French news anchor that has a near-death experience during a tsunami in Thailand and is moved to write a book about it. And Marcus is a young boy who's just lost his twin brother, Jason, and is all sad and stuff about it (amateurs Frankie and George McLaren play the twins, but we'll refer to them by character names since I don't know which plays which).
Eastwood apparently chose to cast amateur twin actors, and it pretty much shows, all the time, whenever they say anything. But Damon and de France are superb, and flourish as most good actors do under Eastwoods fast, hands-off direction. Bryce Dallas Howard shines in a supporting role despite some awful bangs as well.
And this film looks great- the opening, which follows de France through the tsunami, is breathtaking filmmaking, even if it was all CGI (no clue). Even the brief glimpses of the afterlife, which appears to be a bright white endlesses where everyone stands four feet apart in all directions for no reason, are tasteful and hazy.
It's just that Hereafter has nothing to say. The three plots converge in the end for brief moments of predictable frustration, and then the credits come up all at once. It's not really possible to get into this without spoilers, so...
SPOILERS! A FRICKIN' TSUNAMI OF THEM!
Here's Hereafter in a nutshell: during the film, Damon writes two letters. The first is a letter explaining to his brother (Jay Mohr) that he won't be helping him relaunch his profitable medium business because he can't take the bad juju (dreams, making people cry, etc) associated with his ability. The second is a letter he writes to de France after he touches her hand at a book signing, and sees not a dead loved one but a brief glimpse of her near-death tsunami. It's like three pages long and causes her to meet him in a cafe at the end of the film.
Got that? Now which letter do you suppose the film helpfully has Damon read to us via voiceover? You would hope its the second one, full of information about seeing the afterlife, the connection he feels to another important character, and the relief that he's found someone he can touch without being bugged by her dead loved ones, right?
Nope. It's the brief note to his brother, which we can easily guess says "sorry, can't do this anymore," because that's what he's been saying the WHOLE FILM. It even paraphrases the film's worst line, which is about how it's not a gift, it's a CURSE, to have this ability, boo hoo, etc.
De France reads the second letter and this real emotional music plays, like there must be some really profound stuff there, but not one clue do we get on that front.
The other main plot intersection, when little Marcus runs into Damon as well and pesters him until he does a reading, is done well enough, but offers nothing unexpected. Marcus feels sad, Damon tells him his brother says to be strong, and so on. Then Damon says Jason, the dead brother, has left. Where did he go? Marcus asks. Damon doesn't know. Even after all those readings, he doesn't know.
So that's it, then. Huh.
Eastwood's dramas sometimes have a procedural, obligatory feel, but it's easy to forgive in things like Changeling and Mystic River (a literal procedural) because they build to some intense, cathartic scenes. Hereafter builds to one scene (Damon and Marcus) that's shrug-worthy and one unread letter/brief cafe meeting- there is one weird vision (Damon's... I guess?) of the two of them kissing, but then the film literally ends on them shaking hands.
It takes away nearly all of the weight any earlier events seemed to hold. I enjoyed the subplot where Damon's gift ruins a budding relationship with Bryce Dallas Howard, his partner in a cooking class, and maybe if the film had been framed as some-sort of death-tinged romantic comedy or something the ending with de France would have been satisfying ("Who can find love with all these CRAZY GHOSTS flying around!? This fall catch Matt Damon in Paranormal Connectivity!").
PRETTY MUCH THE END OF ANY SPOILERS
There's a scene halfway through Hereafter wherein Marcus runs away from his foster parents (his mom's a junkie, much time is spent on this for no reason at all) and goes to a series of crackpots and wannabes to communicate with his dead brother. Even with another subplot (via de France's book) about how legitimate afterlife research is shunned and scoffed at, the film wants to smirk and roll its eyes at these poseurs and charlatans, too.
Too bad Hereafter is right there among them, distracting us with tsunamis and subway explosions to hide the fact that it's got nothing real to offer us.
Leftover Thoughts:
-Gotta say the marketing really failed on this one. Look at that poster up there- it's all blue with the freaky scifi lines and all. And the shadowy figure in the distance- definitely thought we'd spend more than a few seconds in the afterlife. The trailer, meanwhile, puts the tsunami two thirds of the way through, making it seem like an escalation of events rather than the trigger of one of the plot threads. It seems more like "Hey some people were curious about the afterlife AND THEN EVERYTHING BLEW UP AAAAH."
-Fun to see Bobby Baccala from The Sopranos stretching his range to play an Italian chef. Jay Mohr, meanwhile, is always a slick douchebag who wants to exploit people, in everything.
-Just so we're clear, I might have enjoyed Hereafter in spite of its lack of answers if it had not answered them in a more interesting way. It's just that it seemed to be purposefully building to de France and Damon and the little kid meeting, and then backed off when they all got in the same place and had no idea what to do. Once Damon decides to go meet de France there's a scene where he asks for her in the lobby of her hotel and she isn't there. What purpose is served by him having to leave the MacGuffin note and meet her two scenes later?
-I realized I haven't seen very many but my favorite film about the afterlife is still Wristcutters: A Love Story
There's a moment halfway through The Social Network, wherein Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), Napster co-founder and proverbial devil on the should of Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), relates to the budding billoinaire the story of Roy Raymond- a man embarassed to buy lingerie for his wife in a department store, who had the idea to open a chain of lingerie specialty shops and an accompanying mail-order business called Victoria's Secret.
After five successful years, Raymond sold the business for $4 million, and ended up jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in 1993, while the company grew exponentially without him.
Zuckerberg, stone-faced and inscrutable as ever, wonders "Is that a parable?"
Of course it is. And The Social Network, David Fincher's even more salient take on dissaffection than the Generation X rant Fight Club, is an uber-parable for a new generation, a wired-in, fast-talking, flashing banner ad in the corner of the screen, loudly telling us that we've opened a door to a new world, we've won billions of dollars, we're hip and now, and all we have to do is ignore the phone buzzing and the knocking on the door and Click Here.
It's a study of many things at once- as much as it comments on the unique type of isolation that's bred by being connected in too many ways to too many people, it tells an age-old tale of greed and betrayal. How else could a film that almost everyone scoffed at upon its announcement ("A facebook movie? Really?") end up drawing somewhat-legitimate comparisons to Citizen Kane?
Those comparisons stem mostly from structure- a flashback laden narrative of billionaire tycoons that alienated everyone they cared about to get to where they are. But we can't all be Orson Welles- Fincher's eye is as refined as ever, and Aaron Sorkin's script runs hyper-verbose laps around Citizen Kane's episodic chapters, tied together by a dying man's last word.
Instead of a reporter pondering the MacGuffin of "Rosebud," The Social Network uses lawyers in twin depositions to relive the story of Facebook's disputed origins. As Zuckerberg faces lawsuits from former best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) and a trio of undergrad elites that hired him to program a Harvard-exclusive dating website, both lawyers try to get at the underpinnings of Zuckerberg's motivations.
Any such motivations are where the film departs the most drastically from the real-life evidence. In real life, there's nothing to suggest that he was motivated to get into exclusive "Final Clubs," or was jealous of Saverin for doing so. There's little to support the idea that he created precursor site facemash.com (a 'Hot or Not' style site using the pictures of other undergrads) because he was just broken up with- in fact, facemash actually included both male and female photos for peer-ranking (not just female ones, as in the film).
But would a normal, even-keel Mark Zuckerberg that just happened to get into legitimate legal disputes make for an interesting anti-hero? Of course not.
If Web 2.0 has created an ovearbearing disconnect with the interpersonal relationships we're supposed to cultivate when we become adults, then why shouldn't a film about one of the key founders of this portray that founder as overcompensating for an inability to connect to anyone? For as bad as it makes him look, the Zuckerberg of the film comes off remarkably sympathetic, flailing slightly as he mourns the twin deaths of privacy and intimacy- we can all relate, not because we're all antisocial billionaires, but because we live in new spheres of connection that Zuckerberg inadvertently created.
Maybe you have to have been in college during facebook's founding to consider this film as dramatic as I do (Mark Zuckerberg is, after all, two months younger than I am). But given the 48-year-old director and 49-year-old screenwriter, I doubt it. I can't wait for the film adaptation of Sorkin's stage play "The Farnsworth Invention," as I hear it tells a similar tale of innovation followed by litigation.
Every role seems expertly cast. Eisenberg, the twitchy, somewhat abrasvie "thinking man's Michael Cera," anchors the whole thing together with a shy brilliance. Andrew Garfield provides an entry point for the audience -not only is he the most sympathetic and likeable, but at one point his character even sheepishly admits he doesn't know how to update his own facebook relationship status despite being the company's CFO- a relief of sorts for anyone who doesn't consider social networking a second language.
Justin Timberlake is perfectly suited for the role of a flashy, seductive epitome of 'cool,' which the narrow-focused Zuckerberg is obsessed with maintaining in regard to his website. Rooney Mara and Rashida Jones bookend the film well with honest reductions of Zuckerberg's character. Max Minghella and Armie Hammer (twice) liven up the lawsuit scenes, though the subtext of the Saverin suit carries more weight. Hammer especially is great, as both Winkelvoss twins- though I suspect Fincher cast him instead of real twins just because he likes doing tricks in post-production.
Of course he's as technically flawless as ever- the lighting is muted but crisp, the editing propulsive and seamless (even told in double-flashback), and the rapid-fire dialogue woven with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's wonderful score to great effect. The Nine Inch Nails frontman and producer create a rhythmic, digitally-tinged landscape that seems to make the events onscreen grow in importance.
Is it perfect? Is it the best film ever? Is it, you may ask, really the next Citizen Kane. No. Sorkin's characters sometimes sound a little too much like Sorkin characters (my favorite over-the-top line is when one of the Winklevi threatens to beat Zuckerberg up: "I'm 6'5", 220, and there's two of me!"). The film's strong adherence to real-life events leaves the ending abrupt and somewhat resolution-less, emotionally.
The larger-world effects of facebook aren't really addressed beyond making the creators very rich- this isn't too much of a drawback, but the film's brilliant trailer seemed to promise more context with that opening montage.
But even as a personal parable of the breakdown of trust, The Social Network has plenty of meaning. By all means go see it. If you like it, I bet there's some way you could recommend it to all of your friends at once.
Leftover thoughts:
-In a hat-tip to the current economic crisis, the Winklevi take their troubles to Larry Summers, once and future Treasury Secretary of these United States and then-president of Harvard. In a hilarious scene in which I expected him to say "Did I nicturate on your rug?", Summers blithely dismisses any potential value that "thefacebook.com" might have.
-Would highly recommend splurging $5 on the score at Amazon. Minimal piano like Andrew Newman's work on Donnie Darko, at least one track that incorporates clicking keyboards a la Dario Marinelli's typewriter-laden Atonement score.
-I don't see what the real Mark Zuckerberg's problem with The Social Network might be- it somehow manages to portray his alleged betrayals of multiple parties while maintaining sympathy for him, even while Eisenberg is sort of rock-star arrogant in the deposition scenes. With all the well-publicized innacuracies out there, I don't think the general reaction is going to be "What an asshole!"
-Speaking of, I have no problem with the movie taking liberties, but I have no interest whatsoever in Ben Mezrich (who wrote the book the movie was based on) and his "I made a bunch of this up" brand of non-fiction writing. I feel like there's some sort of unspoken contract with general veracity in non-fiction, but maybe that's just me.
-I especially liked the juxtaposition of Zuckerberg's creation of facemash with the party bus of women that the Phoenix club rounds up. Just taking an analogue convention of superficiality and making digital.
Ben Affleck's directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, was an unexpected delight- assured, authentic, and relatively taut. The plot, from Dennis "Boston is the new Purgatory" Lehane, got a little murky in the end; Ben's brother Casey and Amy Ryan had to work overtime to cover for weak performances elsewhere, but such flaws were easy to overlook after going in with one eyebrow raised skeptically.
Expectations for his sophomore effort, The Town then, were considerably higher- tempering them once again is his decision to take the lead in front of the camera as well. Despite quiet, solid work in Hollywoodland, State Of Play, and Extract his last leading role was in Jersey Girl, at the height of Bennifer-related inanity.
But he's more than up to the task- The Town trades some of Gone Baby Gone's atmospheric intensity for straightforward heist action, and Affleck himself plays a solid leading man, but is an even better casting agent- every supporting role is superbly cast and superbly inhabited.
The film starts with perhaps fancifully enhanced claims about Boston's Charlestown neighborhood producing more bank robbers per captia than anywhere else. That may not be true (at least since the Irish mob was gentrified out in the 90s), but The Town does an excellent job at drawing from the real-life close knit feel of the place to create a fictional, moody haven for thugs and hard-living wiseguys.
It's a different flavor than the Boston of Scorsese's The Departed (almost clinically austere in comparison) or the hidden malice lurking in Gone Baby Gone (which turns out to be a smokescreen). The cops in The Town's Charlestown turn their heads when the odds aren't in their favor, everyone (except Affleck's character) drinks and does oxy or coke. The cloudy sky rushes over the Bunker Hill Monument in time-lapse in two different shots- life goes on in twilight.
Piercing the clouds, and literally mentioning sunny days in key dialogue, is Rebecca Hall's love interest. She gives it her best, but the role isn't really there. Affleck's foursome of masked bank robbers takes her briefly hostage to begin the film, and the ensuing romance, unknowingly with one of her captors, never feels real enough to be worth the reveal we all know is coming. Hall's gift might be for wry understatement (like in Vicky Cristina Barcelona or Please Give), but I felt like she might have sold the melodrama of this part if it had more depth to it.
The time spent on the love interest, then, seems like the main culprit that deprives us of more time spent with Affleck's livewire best friend, an ex-convict brought to life beyond the cliche by Jeremy Renner.
Or perhaps we could have gotten more time with Jon Hamm's squinting, bluntly smug FBI-agent as he rapidly closes in. The "Mad Men" breakout star absolutely nails the one face-off he and Affleck have, and gains steam as the film goes on and we see he's just as unconcerned with the people that get in his way as any bank robber.
But if those characters seem underutilized, Chris Cooper's single scene as Affleck's incarcerated father and Blake Lively's handful of key moments as Affleck's former flame are perfectly paced and timed. Cooper's scene is almost a brief intermission, halfway through the film, that underplays a key plot element and leaves a realistic amount unspoken- Lively is perhaps the most memorable of the entire casy, if only because her raw performance is the least expected.
There's something unyieldingly linear about The Town that I admire the more I think about it. It ends with a minor flourish, but the majority of the screenplay establishes clear stakes, sets us dramatic revelations for the last third of the film (all of which are thankfully not overdone in the slightest), and then leaves the heavy lifting for the more-than-capable cast.
As perhaps unexpectedly autuer-like Affleck has been as a director so far, it helps that he started out as an internationally famous movie star- The Town boasts the same cinematographer (Robert Elswit) and editor (Dylan Tichenor) of P. T. Anderson's There Will Be Blood, Oscar nominees (with Elswit winning) for their work. (This after double winner John Toll lensed Gone Baby Gone). The result is a film seamless in aesthetic and pace, making the possibility of a Best Picture nomination seem less and less like a longshot.
In a slow September, it's easy to recommend an artful, gripping thriller like The Town.
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