Tag Archives: biopic

Visualizing the Invisible: Bright Star

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Bright Star movie poster

 

As an Eng­lish Major in another life, I’m not unin­ter­ested in poetry, or Keats in par­tic­u­lar. Movies about poetry are another mat­ter. It’s dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a less nat­ural source mate­r­ial for the emi­nently visual medium of cin­ema than poetry. You can mute the sound, drain the color, or take off the 3D spec­ta­cles, but the one thing you can’t sub­tract from movies is the mov­ing picture.

Other film­mak­ers have tried to visu­al­ize essen­tially invis­i­ble things before: scents (Per­fume), aca­d­e­mic research (The Da Vinci Code), and math (A Beau­ti­ful Mind, Pi). The hand­ful of movies about writ­ing (Capote, Fac­to­tum, Henry & June, Won­der Boys) are nearly out­num­bered by movies about not writ­ing (Shake­speare in Love, Bar­ton Fink, Adap­ta­tion, The Shining).

Abbie Cornish in Jane Campion's Bright Star“Bright star, would I were stead­fast as thou art”

When it comes to poetry, the most inter­nal and abstract form of writ­ing, it’s slightly dis­ap­point­ing that the most writer/director Jane Cam­pion makes of it is to have her char­ac­ters read verse aloud. How­ever lus­cious the cin­e­matog­ra­phy, it doesn’t help that the his­tor­i­cal Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cor­nish) and John Keats (Ben Whishaw) weren’t all that inter­est­ing as dra­matic char­ac­ters. The for­mer is a lovestruck obses­sive and the lat­ter a sickly artiste not meant for this mun­dane world. It’s the stan­dard biopic cliché: the insuf­fer­able wun­derkind and the suf­fer­ing woman that loves him any­way. At least, in this case, Keats wasn’t an addict (q.v.: Fac­to­tum, Bird, Ray, Walk the Line, Walk Hard, etc.).

Fanny reads Keats’ son­net about her “Bright star, would I were stead­fast as thou art” at the close of the film. She lived to wit­ness his posthu­mous recog­ni­tion, and never stopped mourn­ing him.

Offi­cial movie site: www.brightstar-movie.com

Buy the Blu-ray or DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

W.

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W. movie poster

 

I had the same issues with Oliver Stone’s W. that I do with every biopic. As vir­tu­ally every fea­ture film biog­ra­phy attempts to do the job of a book, they inevitably fall into the same trap: they become high­lights reels that merely illus­trate key moments in a real-life figure’s life, span­ning decades. With a few excep­tions (Amer­i­can Splen­dor, Con­trol), any nar­ra­tive through­line is impos­si­ble; mean­ing, there is no story. Stone attempts to tie together his frag­mented exam­i­na­tion of the life of George W. Bush with the theme of his rela­tion­ship with his father, George H.W. Bush. In this view, Junior both loved and hated his father, and both wanted to impress him and to pre­vail where he per­ceived that he failed (it’s clear now even to this staunch paci­fist and Demo­c­rat that Bush the elder was wise to not extend the first Gulf War into a nation­build­ing exer­cise in Iraq).

Oliver Stone W.Gen­tle­men! You can’t fight in here, this is the War Room!

Screen­writer Stan­ley Weiser chooses the con­cep­tion of the phrase “Axis of Evil” as the start­ing point, and ends the film with the infa­mous press con­fer­ence in which the arro­gant Bush was unable to name any mis­takes he may have made in office. Stone flashes back many times to Bush’s prior life as a trust fund wastrel, but skips almost every­thing that I would define as defin­ing moments: becom­ing a born again Chris­t­ian, decid­ing to run for pres­i­dent, announc­ing to his staff that they are going to war in Iraq (it’s a mat­ter of record Bush said “Fuck Sad­dam. We’re tak­ing him out.”) and of course, Sep­tem­ber 11 itself.

John Brolin in W.I’m George W. Bush, bitches!

The most obvi­ous fail­ure of biopics is that they typ­i­cally become oppor­tu­ni­ties for famous actors to do impres­sions of his­tor­i­cal fig­ures. In this case, the sub­jects are so fresh that many of them are still in office and on tele­vi­sion every night now, so the dan­ger is that W. could come too close to the easy satire of Sat­ur­day Night Live Week­end Update. That said, Josh Brolin is excel­lent as George W. Bush, in a per­for­mance that cap­tures many of the man’s pecu­liar tics but doesn’t come across as a forced car­i­ca­ture. Sim­i­larly, Richard Drey­fus is remark­ably restrained as Dick Cheney, a role that many other actors would have been tempted to use as an excuse to chew the Oval Office scenery. But unfor­tu­nately, Thandie New­ton (as Con­doleezza Rice) struck me as the only cast mem­ber doing a forced impression.

Offi­cial movie site: www.wthefilm.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

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Walk Hard The Dewey Cox Story

 

This Dork Reporter finds most so-called biopics want­ing. The two to three hour fea­ture film is more akin to an essay or short story than a book, and as such is ill-equipped to sum up the entire life of a human being in more than a string of high­lights. And yet stu­dios and film­mak­ers keep keep churn­ing out parades of Clas­sics Illustrated-like films that seem to exist mostly to grant actors Oscars and Golden Globes based on their abil­i­ties to imi­tate his­tor­i­cal fig­ures. The best of them ought more deservedly to be rec­og­nized for their abil­i­ties to cre­ate new char­ac­ters from whole cloth.

But I reserve a spe­cial degree of hate for musi­cal biopics; I’m look­ing at you, Bird, Ray, Walk the Line, La Vie en Rose, and El Can­tante! They all seem to forged from the same tem­plate of trou­bled genius beset by addic­tion, and the women that love them. Com­fort­ingly, the exis­tence of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story proves I’m not alone in bemoan­ing this most pathetic genre. Walk Hard touches on each cliché in turn: phys­i­cal infir­mity (Cox is trag­i­cally “nose blind”), drugs, dis­ap­prov­ing par­ent, dead sib­ling, etc.

walkhard1.jpgpssst… your bouf­fant is cramp­ing my style

At its best, direc­tor and co-writer (with Judd Apa­tow) Jake Kasdan’s Walk Hard is a his­tory of pop­u­lar music and nar­cotics from the 1950s on. The chameleonic Cox evolves with the times, begin­ning as a diamond-in-the-rough Ray Charles, break­ing through like a young Johnny Cash, becom­ing a pop super­star Elvis Pres­ley, pass­ing through a Bob Dylan folkie stage, and end­ing up as a Brian Jones, an obses­sive pop genius unable to com­plete his unachiev­able mas­ter­piece (like Jones’ own noto­ri­ous Smile). The best run­ning gag in the movie involves Cox’s con­cur­rent drug addic­tions (pot, cocaine, heroin, pills, and, well, every­thing…), which no doubt gave the MPAA a heart attack.

Lest I sound like I’m prais­ing the film for being clever, here’s the bad news. The self-proclaimed “The Unbear­ably Long, Self-Indulgent Director’s Cut” DVD edi­tion repeats the same jokes over and over. Its idea of hilar­ity is to repeat the name “Cox” as much as pos­si­ble, which should give some hint as to the over­all level of sophis­ti­ca­tion. Each char­ac­ter explic­itly ver­bal­izes and expli­cates the genre clichés and their own char­ac­ter types: the unsup­port­ive starter wife, the doomed sib­ling, the venal music stu­dio boss, and the dis­ap­prov­ing father (whose refrain “The wrong kid died!” fol­lows Cox through his life as both curse and moti­va­tion). His­tor­i­cal celebrity cameos are repeat­edly sign­posted with their full names, lest any­one in the audi­ence not catch on that the batch of four candy-colored lads from Liv­er­pool noodling on sitars in an Indian ashram are, in fact, The Bea­t­les. It is great fun, how­ever, to see Jack Black, Jason Schwartz­man, Paul Rudd, and Jack White do their best Paul McCart­ney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, and Elvis Pres­ley, respectively.

walkhard2.jpgThe 70s were a decade of taste and restraint

One lit­tle quib­ble: as the char­ac­ters age, the makeup jobs are actu­ally too good, far bet­ter than, say the out­ra­geously silly age makeup for Jen­nifer Con­nelly and Rus­sell Crowe in A Beau­ti­ful Mind. This unfor­tu­nately ruins the gen­uinely funny gag that John C. Reilly plays Cox as a teenager with no attempt to hide his age. Why not carry it through to the end, with Reilly look­ing exactly the same as Cox is sup­posed to be 70?

Does any­body remem­ber when John C. Reilly was a seri­ous actor? I’m happy for him that he’s no doubt build­ing a sig­nif­i­cant nest egg off his recent string of low­brow come­dies (Tal­ladega Nights, Step Broth­ers, etc.), but I hope we will see more of the fine actor of Syd­ney (aka Hard Eight), Boo­gie Nights, and The Hours?

Offi­cial movie site: www.walkhard-movie.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

I’m Not There

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I'm Not There

 

This Dork Reporter always finds it inter­est­ing to pon­der his pre­con­ceived notions of a movie once he has seen it. The mar­ket­ing and buzz on I’m Not There mostly cen­tered on two talk­ing points: the quirky device of mul­ti­ple actors all play­ing incar­na­tions of Bob Dylan, and Cate Blanchett being just plain amaz­ing as usual (what else is new?). The first point is what gave me pause: how much sense would this film make to some­one who is not a Dylan fan and scholar?

All I really know about Dylan comes from the Mar­tin Scors­ese doc­u­men­tary No Direc­tion Home, and even that paints a sketchy pic­ture of the man. Dylan has been an enigma through­out his long his­tory in the pub­lic eye, often speak­ing in rid­dles, and (at least in his early years) invent­ing a fic­tional back­story. The press and even his own pay­ing audi­ences were often openly antag­o­nis­tic, so it’s no won­der he was so famously com­bat­ive and eva­sive. Pre­fig­ur­ing the modern-day chameleons David Bowie and Madonna, Dylan pre­sented a series of per­sonas: Amer­i­can roots folkie, polit­i­cal agi­ta­tor, rock ‘n’ roller, born-again Chris­t­ian, Hol­ly­wood actor, and so on. The ques­tion being: how much of this evo­lu­tion was sin­cere growth and change, and how much was per­for­mance art? Who is “Bob Dylan”?

I'm Not ThereAn Oscar nomination’s a-gonna fall

Direc­tor and co-screenwriter Todd Haynes, hav­ing already decon­structed David Bowie in Vel­vet Gold­mine, tack­les the many aspects of Dylan per­haps the only way pos­si­ble: frac­ture his key facets into mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters. As with the Bowie ana­logue Brian Slade in Vel­vet Gold­mine, none of the Dylan fig­ures are actu­ally named Dylan, but then again nei­ther is Dylan him­self, whose actual sur­name is Zim­mer­man. Chris­t­ian Bale plays Jack Rollins, inter­pret­ing Dylan’s Chris­t­ian period, and Richard Gere plays Billy the Kid, a pretty lit­eral inter­pre­ta­tion of Dylan’s years in the wilder­ness after his fame peaked for the first time. Adding an extra layer of post­mod­ern com­plex­ity, the late Heath Ledger plays Rob­bie Clark, a film actor famous for play­ing one of the fic­tional Dylans in a biopic. And of course, Cate Blanchett is amaz­ing. As Jude Quinn, a reluc­tant celebrity fend­ing off the attacks of the press, she tri­umphs by avoid­ing mere impres­sion. Sure, she’s wear­ing a fright wig and shades, but her expres­sions and body lan­guage cap­ture Dylan’s para­dox­i­cally wordy elusiveness.

The result is part faux doc­u­men­tary, part fic­tion, but pro­vides a truer over­all pic­ture of Dylan’s com­pli­cated char­ac­ter than a mere biopic ever could. Per­haps at some point after his death (may that be a long time from now), we will see a con­ven­tional musi­cal biopic made of his life story (à la Bird, Ray, or Walk the Line), but I cer­tainly hope crit­ics and audi­ences will remem­ber I’m Not There.

I'm Not ThereHey mr. gui­tar man

The DVD edi­tion is the only I can think of that incor­po­rates long on-screen text intro­duc­tions (more than one, in fact). Does this reflect a lack of con­fi­dence on the part of the film­mak­ers or dis­trib­u­tors in the home view­ers being able to com­pre­hend the film, or is it more in the vein of the schol­arly intro­duc­tions that pref­ace Pen­guin Clas­sics vol­umes? Either way, it only rein­forces the impres­sion that you have to be a Dylan scholar to appre­ci­ate the film (which, inci­den­tally, turned out to not be the case).

And finally, I detected a few ref­er­ences to direc­tor Richard Lester: Rob­bie Clark (Ledger) walks through the set of the 1968 film Petu­lia, dur­ing an early scene in which women in neck braces leave a freight ele­va­tor before a party to pro­mote high­way safety (attended by the likes of George C. Scott, Julie Christie, and the Grate­ful Dead, so it’s not at all unlikely Dylan could have been there too). But even bet­ter is the best Bea­t­les trib­ute I’ve ever seen: the Fab Four breeze through as the epit­ome of care­free fun, lit­er­ally speak­ing and mov­ing in fast-motion. They tempt Jude Quinn’s (Blanchett) desire to escape, until they are chased away by A Hard Day’s Night’s scream­ing sycophants.

Offi­cial movie site: www.imnotthere-movie.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Le Scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

 

Julian Schn­abel is an artist turned film­maker, evi­dently pre­oc­cu­pied with the lives of other artists and writ­ers: Jean-Michel Basquiat in Basquiat, Reinaldo Are­nas in Before Night Falls, and now Jean-Dominique Bauby in The Div­ing Bell and the But­ter­fly. Sev­eral years ago, This Dork Reporter designed Fine Line Fea­tures’ offi­cial web­site for Before Night Falls. But frankly, I had trou­ble work­ing up the enthu­si­asm to watch a biopic (absolutely not one of my favorite gen­res) about a tetraplegic. But please do not be dis­suaded by the admit­tedly depress­ing sub­ject mat­ter. The Div­ing Bell and the But­ter­fly is utterly beau­ti­ful in every way, and moved this hard­ened Dork Reporter to tears in the end.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Math­ieu Amal­ric (who resem­bles a more sym­met­ri­cal Thom Yorke) plays the real-life Bauby, a fash­ion mag­a­zine edi­tor who suf­fers a stroke. He sur­vives with “locked-in syn­drome,” the prover­bial fate worse than death: near-total phys­i­cal paral­y­sis but with full men­tal fac­ul­ties intact. In the true spirit of a French film, Bauby is sur­rounded by beau­ti­ful women. No less a French hot­tie than Emanuelle Seigner plays Céline, the estranged mother of his chil­dren. In a moment of bit­ter­sweet humor, the despon­dent post-stroke Bauby is par­tially con­soled when he first meets his two utterly gor­geous phys­i­cal and speech ther­a­pists (Marie-Josée Croze and Anne Consigny).

The Diving Bell and the ButterflyThe cam­era loves Emanuelle Seigner

Accord­ing to the DVD bonus fea­tures, screen­writer Ronald Har­wood con­ceived of the pow­er­ful visual device of using the cam­era as Bauby’s point of view, sim­u­lat­ing his sole means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion: blink­ing. He is, bless­edly, able to move one eye, and painstak­ingly dic­tates his biog­ra­phy let­ter by letter.

The sound­track is excel­lent, includ­ing Tom Waits, Joe Strum­mer (a really great song, new to me, called “Ram­shackle Day Parade”), and the best pos­si­ble use of U2’s “Ultraviolet.”

Offi­cial movie site: www.thedivingbellandthebutterfly-themovie.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

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Elizabeth the Golden Age movie poster

 

I’ll have to gang up with the gen­eral crit­i­cal con­sen­sus around Eliz­a­beth: The Golden Age, best summed up as: Cate Blanchett is astound­ing, as usual (yawn — the Acad­emy Award nom­i­na­tion was vir­tu­ally assured before the cam­eras rolled), but the movie is a dis­ap­point­ing sequel to a pow­er­ful original.

Oh, and did I men­tion that Cate is great? Oh yeah, you don’t need me to say that.

Cate Blanchette in Elizabeth the Golden AgeCate is great; what else is new?

The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is lovely but the edit­ing a lit­tle choppy for a time­line that spans so much time. The stag­ing is some­what less than epic; even large CG set pieces like the Pirates of the Caribbean–style sea bat­tle between the Eng­lish and Span­ish armadas seem under-staffed by back­ground actors. A typ­i­cal line of dia­log, quot­ing from mem­ory, is the dash­ing Sir Wal­ter Raleigh killing two cliches with one stone with a humdinger like “We’re only human; we do what we can.”

Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh in Elizabeth the Golden AgeSir Wal­ter Raleigh sails away from the Kraken

Erm, that’s about it. I’ll try to think of some­thing smarter to say about the next one.

Offi­cial movie site: www.elizabeththegoldenage.net

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to me.