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“Burn After Reading”
Spy Hijinks
By Sean Chavel
Movies are typically defined in specific genres. There are action films, comedies, dramas, thrillers, mystery, and so on. But with the films of Joel and Ethan Coen a simple categorization can not always be made. Burn After Reading, the latest mesmerizing conundrum by the Coen Brothers, is a film that teases and perplexes your sensibilities. Just when you think you have the film defined in one set category it pulls the rug out from under your feet. You follow a myriad of intersecting stories that traverses in unforeseen course of directions. But you have to wait and watch until you are able to clearly declare as to what it all is. What's the clear-cut label?
As characterized from their other films, "Burn After Reading" manages to find the comedy in tragedy. It's been generally been tagged as a spy comedy, which very much it is, and the Coens find comedy in macabre violence in its key moments. It's a comedy of errors, but it's a comedy of complicated errors. To further describe, the Coen Brothers employ the same kind of non-sequitur storytelling as they did with their dude-whacked 1997 comedy "The Big Leb-owski." It's a story without a plot; it's all a commotion of accidents spilling into the next string of accidents. Also like the Coen Brother's "Fargo."
For awhile, the film is character-driven episodic introducing one odd character or government specialist after another. John Malkovich is a CIA analyst who is demoted because his boss says he has a drinking problem. George Clooney is a married federal marshal who is having an affair with Malkovich's wife, played by the glacial and heartless Tilda Swinton. Another set of characters are introduced, of a lower social stratosphere, a staff of employees at a fitness gym. Frances McDormand is fretful when her insurance company refuses to pay for her plastic surgery. Richard Jenkins is the bashful manager with an indiscreet crush on McDormand. Brad Pitt is a fitness trainer who is overly ecstatic, and foolish, in getting involved with other peoples' lives.
The world for McDormand and Pitt changes when they stumble onto a missing CD-rom in one of the gym's locker rooms. The CD retains private information on CIA analyst Osborne Cox, the Malkovich character. McDormand and Pitt quickly learn that the disc holds sensitive materials. They decide immediately that the disc is worth something and so they try, in amateur and incompetent fashion, to blackmail Cox. When Cox refuses to pay, the stumbling duo takes the CD-rom to the Russian embassy. Cohort with the wrong individuals in the wrong methods causes a misshapen chain reaction.
We wonder how George Clooney, a mystery man with unclear agendas, is going to get thrown into this mess. He is as said before, sleeping with Malkovich's wife. Swinton is on the verge of a marriage separation and planning to liquidate all bank assets from behind Malkovich's back. Malkovich is simply an alcoholic who is dabbling with a memoir autobiography - he mistakenly believes that the CD-rom disc is simply a stolen outline for his book. Within this tangle, spies are watching Clooney's every move. The paranoia is seeping inside Clooney.
In the basement of his home, Clooney is working on a secret homemade project that is sealed away from the audience's sight. What is it? A top secret weapon? Is Clooney really a government agent or a traitor? Or it simply a hobbyist's homemade machine of some sort? Clooney could be as much a workaholic as he is a philanderer. He likes to go on five-mile runs following liaisons with multiple women. Perhaps he'll sleep with the wrong woman at the wrong time. Instead of keeping a low profile, Clooney continues his usual rendezvous despite having spies on his tail. It's only a matter of time before he descends into trouble.
The only motives made clearly upfront are those of McDormand, who simply wants to cash-in on the value of CIA disc so she can get her tummy-tuck and facelift among other things. J.K. Simmons also co-stars as a CIA director whom is hasty in cleaning up this jumbled indistinct mess. Rash decisions are made that erupt into bewildering comic situations. The mess snowballs. The accidents outpour. Unlikely characters crash into each other. Sexual apparatus devices play a significant part.
Nothing more can really be said about the story without revealing too much, all that can be said is that by the end the (thinking) audience understands more what is going on than most of the characters do. Characters are trapped in their own inquisitive box, only the audience can have the objective sight to have seen what has all gone on, how things happened, and why they resulted in crimes and misdemeanors. This is a one-of-a-kind film that breaks the standards and rules of commercial films.
Despite the mess, a screwball mess if you will, the Coen Brothers devote the same technical precision and discipline as they invested with their Oscar-winning "No Country for Old Men." These guys refuse to go the easy route and play soft. Their films are continually challenging, stimulating and diversions into strange scenarios.
This year so far, "The Dark Knight" and "Burn After Reading" have given me more pleasure than any other trip to the movies. What they have in common is the unwillingness to settle into the conventional, instead incidents pile up on incidents and so do the surprises. But at last, what category label should "Burn After Reading" be given? In my mind, it is easily one of the brainiest comedies ever made. And it's even funnier once you leave the movie and reconsider how each character misread every situation they were hurled into. Ingenious, one of the Coen Brothers five best films.
'THE DUCHESS'
REGAL KNIGHTLEY
By Sean Chavel
Aside from star power, The Duchess has location! location! location! It's the latest high pedigree historical drama. This one taking place primarily in England with shooting in the Somerset House in London. As history dictates, characters are inevitably strapped by class formality and etiquette in costume dramas. Yet Keira Knightley's Georgiana Spencer, who became the Duchess of Devonshire in the 18th century, is a forward speaker and social daredevil ready to out-debate any man who comes her way. Unfortunately, she was married to a dull and cold-blooded Duke (Ralph Fiennes).
A pair of opposites, Knightley and Fiennes are the most tenuous of a screen couples with anxiety heightened by the fact that the Duchess had trouble bearing the Duke a male heir (she kept giving birth to girls). Fiennes relishes in his banal snobbery in his role - his Duke cares more for his dogs than his own wife - and he doesn't quite seem like a bullying threat at first impression. You get the sense that he's priggish but not quite a prick. Then the bastard within is revealed. The Duke seduces Georgiana's closest friend (Hayley Atwell) and decides to makes her into his live-in mistress. The extravagance of this regal household becomes oppressive to our heroine. Soon she has to withstand the gossip that shadows her everywhere.
Here's a portrait of a lady with no love in sight, not until she begins to mingle with rising politician Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper). Duty demands that the Duchess not act on her emotions. But there's a tingle that moves inside Georgiana that is elicited when she's in the presence of Grey, contrary to the stilted feelings to her own husband. Will she act on her desires or won't she? If she does, it's an act of the forbidden. But then again, she is Duchess.
And one of the most celebrated of her class, too. The real Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was a multi-talented novelist, poet, musician and women's advocate. But the film only dabbles with her traits, and so this historical drama loses sight of her multi-facets. She's a cipher, but Knightley's trademark elegant vivaciousness shines through at appropriate moments, of course, making her once again the go-to actress of costume dramas.
There are a contradictory themes running through the film. It wants to insist that Georgiana was the most celebrated and influential woman of her time but most of the time is spent with her trying to maintain a dignified private life. Beyond confused intentions, the film is truly elevated by Keira Knightley's star power - few actresses play happiness and sadness, effervescence and despondency, with such equal aplomb. And the lavish production values gives genre fans what they would want from a picture like this. Ralph Fiennes is as loathsomely snotty as ever - he buckles the film with a palpable antagonism.
FLOW
FOR LOVE OF WATER
By Terry Westhoff
In a world where certain people seem to own everything, is there anything that is free? Countries fight over rights to own gas, oil, and land, but there is another commodity that could soon be joining the list: water. FLOW delves deep into this subject as it explores impoverished countries that must pay for water, the bottled water empire, and the critical future of the world's water supply.
The film threads a common universal theme that any culture can understand, which is that water is the source of life and every living life form needs it to survive. But, in some countries, this necessary element costs a price.
The story takes the audience to a poor section of Bolivia and the destitute inhabitants of a neighborhood that are fighting to keep their water supply. Several different locals tell their story of how the World Bank is charging for water. As a result, many locals turn to the polluted streams for water. The pollution causes diseases and death in many and citizens must fight to gain back free water.
Africa, India, and even America also have similar effects of big business' influence on the world's most natural resource. In Africa, the local townspeople have the same problem as the people in Bolivia. Water costs money which the townspeople cannot afford. Just like in Bolivia, the people have to fight back against the big business (Coca-Cola), to gain their water back.
In India, water is seen as a sacred, religious resource which no monetary value can match. People use the Ganges River as a means of a rite of passing for the deceased. These images are juxtaposed with images of streams in Michigan where the Nestle Corporation filters water into its plant, bottles it, and sells it back to the community. The dubious issue of water takes several turns as scientists, business owners, community activists, and lawyers all lend their opinions to the lingering problems with water and what will happen in the future if the world doesn't act in the areas of water shortage and the pricing of water.
FLOW, directed by Irena Salina, is an entirely one-sided, informative documentary attempting to stir a plan of action from the audience. Similar to AN INCONVIENT TRUTH, the film mentions global warming as a threat to the world's water supply and if something isn't done, eventually, fresh water will become scarce. But, while the film does pose intriguing questions about water and faceless corporations attempting to privatize the fresh water supply, it doesn't offer the view from the other side. What do the large corporations have to say about their actions? While this may have diminished the film's purpose to provoke a particular response from the audience, the opinions from Nestle, or Coca-Cola would have provided more balance to the story.
Irena Salina conceived this idea from a news article about the privatization of water in New Orleans. Salinas expands the matter to make it a global issue. While many people may not know or think about the ramifications of privatizing water, it is rapidly becoming a concern that could escalate if not taken seriously. Salinas illustrates her point through a narrative technique of using water as a universal symbol of survival that every culture and every country has as a common connection.
Technically, the film does have its flaws. Some of video shot in Bolivia is grainy with some audio problems, and the film confusingly jumps from one country to the next and back that makes it difficult to follow at times. While the video and audio troubles are the result of location shooting, the abrupt jumps in the narrative structure doesn't affect the overall message of film poses on water predicaments, but it might distract the audience and pull them out of the story.
At the very core, the film creates an interesting central question; do people have the right to privatize the world's water supply? People already spend millions of dollars each year buying bottled water. Who's to stop these companies that produce bottled water from taking control of rivers and streams, and selling water to people that the companies obtain right from their own backyard? FLOW has a concerning message which should be seen.
'A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS'
BEFORE TIME RUNS OUT
By Sean Chavel
You know you are at a gentle film when its entire time passes without any thrusting camera work and slam-cut editing. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is a quiet, meditative film that considers the estrangement between an old man and the daughter he hasn't seen in ages. It's a simple but affective story with the father making attempts to bond with his resentful daughter, a jaded career woman who has no interest in a family reunion. By the end of the first day of the elderly Mr. Shi (Henry O) flying in from China into America for the first time, the daughter Yilan (Faye Yu) can't wait for him to leave.
For one, Yilan has a secret boyfriend who isn't Chinese. Her first marriage dissolved, for reasons that have never been made clear to the father who now pries for an explanation. Family tradition frowns upon separations and divorces, this is a knowledge Yilan is very much aware of which is why she chooses to keep silent. The next best thing for Mr. Shi is to see his daughter married off to somebody else. But Yilan doesn't want her father to become a part into any of her own business.
Mr. Shi wakes up early in the morning to make his daughter breakfast in their comfy community apartment complex, but Yilan doesn't care for morning food as she rushes hastily each day to get out the door fast to get to work. Mr. Shi prepares multi-course meals for when his daughter arrives home from work. When father and daughter share time each night at the dinner table - the tight two shot of them sharing intimate space together is contrary to the anxious body language that suggests much tension and discontent between father and daughter.
By the end of the first week, Yilan concocts excuses in order to miss dinner and avoid her father, even at one instance defying a return home one night because she had a "party" to go to. In the middle bulk of the day, Mr. Shi journeys through the neighborhood, making friends with an elderly Iranian woman (she is also experiencing family woes) and shopping for small gifts and decorations for his daughter's home. In these small purchases, there beget suggestive touches that Mr. Shi wants his daughter to be a more traditional Chinese woman.
There are other modestly humorous touches. Mr. Shi is a long ago rocket scientist in his home country, and when he meets a young blonde who's a budding engineer it looks as if they might have conversation to share. The blonde is willing, but Mr. Shi is bashful because of her bikini (she is sunbathing at poolside), and he veers his eyes away. Most of his reflective time, however, Mr. Shi is pondering at how his daughter doesn't care for him. He is looking for bittersweet closure with her at best.
It's no surprise that director Wayne Wang ("The Joy Luck Club," "Anywhere But Here") is an admirer of Yasujiro Ozu - this film shares a thematic commonality with 1953's "Tokyo Story" among others by Ozu (a filmmaker name admittedly often strange to modern audience vernacular). "Thousand Years" is about how we take for granted our parents while they're still alive, which is also the point, and aching tragedy, of "Tokyo Story." When they're in front of us, we don't want their wisdom or to sit still long enough to listen to them. We all seem to want that when it's all too late. "Thousand Years" is contemplative towards this idea. Undoubtedly all of this is sad but there is a silver lining at the end. In majority English with some Chinese subtitles.
GHOST TOWN
HEAVEN CAN WAIT
By Sean Chavel
Can a movie be faulted for being nice and genial entertainment? Ghost Town is a dependably laid-back comedy, a lightweight lark about the living communing with the dead. Our living hero is a shy hermit who gets a shove by the dead to become… less of a grump and more social. Quick: Can you start counting off the movies that might have inspired this one?
Manhattan dentist Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais, BBC's "The Office") is a social avoidance type who interacts as little as possible with patients and co-workers, steers away from as many street crowds as possible, and relishes his solitude when he arrives to his squeaky clean flat every night. When he checks into the hospital for a simple operation he is derisive of every clerk, nurse and surgeon that patronizes his visit. He learns later that because of his use of a general anesthesia led him to be dead for seven minutes before he was revived.
After Bertram checks out from an overall successful operation he starts to see dead people. The dead gather as a mob to hound him for information. They all have unfinished business, you see. Ubiquitous Greg Kinnear (channeling his "Little Miss Sunshine" people-pusher) is a pestering ghost that somehow gets first dibs on the dentist's sixth sense talent. Kinnear, as the deceased Frank Herlihy, wants Bertram to talk his widowed wife out of marrying a new guy (Billy Campbell), a probable money-grubber with ill intentions. Also funny is that this is the second ghost movie this year, following "Over Her Dead Body," where the ghosts cast shadows against walls. Call it a technical goof.
The widow Gwen (Téa Leoni) is a career respected archaeologist with an aversion to our hero dentist. Bertram, who just happens to share the same building with Gwen, has rudely stolen her cab and not held the elevator door for her in the past. His attempts at compliments turns abrasive, his conversational timing is awkward, his eye contact at others… give the living the creeps. But after some practice, Bertram shows that he can be a cuddly nice guy with a wry sense of humor. What do you know? Being likeable works! The rotund dentist, in short, falls for this svelte archaeologist. Dead Frank doesn't much mind as long as it steers his widowed wife away from that other guy.
What we eventually get to are scenes where Bertram tells Gwen only things her dead husband could have known with the inevitable disbelief that follows. Spirits talking through people is impossible, Gwen insists. Other elements of the ghost movie genre are familiar. Obligatory moments of Bertram appearing as if he is talking to himself in public - this is one gag that usually is funny no matter how many times you've seen it - but here's a sure thing running gag that is poorly executed in this movie, done with little wit. The special effects, too, are outdated shamelessly copying what they did in "Ghost" from 1990 with spirits walking through objects via overlapping composite shots with a little bz-z-z-z on the audio soundtrack.
All this could be what some audiences are looking for. An affable and pleasant comedy that doesn't shove gross gags or off-color language in your face. Featuring characters with overall decency and heart with short flaws that can be overcome and redeemed. As familiar as all its plot retread goes, this nonetheless an easygoing movie that demands little from its audience. But if affable and pleasant is what this movie is going for, it's got to bring more wit to the table. Do you really want to pay to see a laid back movie like this one when you can make a more adventurous and rousing choice to see other movies right now like "The Dark Knight," "Burn After Reading," "Tropic Thunder," and "Man on Wire?" DVD was invented for movies like "Ghost Town." Then again, maybe all you want a lightweight and easygoing movie that doesn't pummel the senses. Then "Ghost Town" is your movie.