Movie Review: "Jupiter Ascending"

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

PG-13

2.5 Stars out of 5

Writer/Directors                Andy and Lana Wachowski
Cinematography                John Toll
Music                                   Michael Giacchino
Art Direction                       Charlie Revai (Supervising Art Director)

Jupiter Jones                       Mila Kunis
Channing Tatum                 Caine Wise
Sean Bean                            StingerApini
Eddie Redmayne                Balem Abrasax
Tuppence Middleton        Kalique Abrasax
Douglas Booth                   Titus Abrasax
Maria Doyle Kennedy       Aleksa

 

In 1984 David Lynch tried to bring to the screen Frank Herbert’s masterpiece, Dune. The movie was visionary in many ways with remarkable artwork and a sense of just how alien a human civilization far into the future could be. That being said, the movie was something of a mess; perhaps a cinematic example of one’s grasp not equaling one’s reach. In the book, Dune was a fully realized world of customs, cultures, characters and yes, the basics of science fiction, technology and action sequences. But can such a wide ranging world vision be also fully realized in a single two or three hour movie? David Lynch failed to do so in “Dune”, and now the Wachowski siblings have failed as well with their 2015, “Jupiter Ascending”. Somewhat like “Dune”, the Wachowski’s have tried to grasp just how alien a human civilization could be (while telling a young woman-centric tale), but like Lynch their reach has just as surely failed to create a story that both incorporates a vision of that alien universe and a coherent story line that has any kind of connection to the viewing audience.

The film starts off in a mildly promising manner as it describes how Jupiter Jones’ (Mila Kunis) parents meet and fall in love in St. Petersburg, Russia. After losing her husband during a robbery, Aleksa (Maria Doyle Kennedy) flees to America with her soon to be born daughter, Jupiter. Jupiter grows to be a young woman that works as a maid to the wealthy. The audience is led to believe Jupiter has dreams beyond cleaning toilets. Meanwhile, the film shifts to the Abrasax siblings: Balem (Eddie Redmayne), Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), and Titus (Douglas Booth). These three scions of a powerful family seem to come straight out of a play by Shakespeare (King Lear?). They war amongst themselves even as their wealth comes from “harvesting” planets such as Earth. The harvest consists of sacrificing the populations of the galaxy’s various Earth-like planets in order to create a type of youth serum. These early parts of the story are reasonably straightforward, but the story then gets intentionally byzantine as it tries to detail how the three Abrasax siblings vie with one another to capture Jupiter. You might reasonably wonder why a toilet-cleaning Russian émigré to America would be such a hot target. Evidently, Jupiter is an exact genetic match for the deceased matriarch to the Abrasax family, and thus a threat or a target of one sort or the other to Balem & Co. Sent in to “rescue” Jupiter is Caine Wise (Channing Tatum), a gene splice from human and wolf genomes. Fortunately for Jupiter, her future beau looks more human than canine. In any event, a series of CGI and live action stunts quickly ensues as everyone jockeys to control Jupiter.

According to statements made by Lana Wachowski, she was inspired by Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” when she co-wrote this movie with her brother. Her intent was to show that strong female characters could find a way to solve their problems without resorting to the tactics employed by males. That may have been her intent, but what she and her brother have produced is a series of meetings between Jupiter, her companion/protector Caine (i.e. Toto) and the three Abrasax offspring; each meeting linked by standard sci-fi CGI pyrotechnics. Admittedly, the stunts and CGI are impressive, most notably an extended fight above Chicago. But the meetings are repetitive and inane: Jupiter is asked in two of the three meetings to sign away her genetic rights, the audience knows this is a big mistake, and at the last moment, Toto/Caine rushes in to save her. This script, poorly defined as it is, is still clear enough for the average viewer to look at it, yawn, and mumble to themselves, been there, done that. Was this script really written by the same authors that wrote “Cloud Atlas” (2012) – a truly thoughtful and coherent film with something to say about the endurance of love, the abuse of the weak by bullies, and the ravages being wreaked upon the Earth?

I am fully willing to grant the Wachoskis’ and their Art Director, Charlie Revai high marks for an intriguing vision brought to the many alien set pieces. Much of the wardrobe and clever notions as to what gene splicing might do, or what a far future robot might look like were quite entertaining. And there were multiple sequences where humor was well done; most notable was a longish segment wherein Jupiter had to run a bureaucratic gauntlet to gain her genetic rights. This latter part of the movie had a scene between robots of identical appearance but opposite agenda contesting one another, and yet one more segment played by Terry Gilliam of “Brazil” (1985) replaying a scene from “Brazil” as he finally grants Jupiter her rights. The other technical aspect of the movie worth commenting on is the score by Michael Giacchino. I may be in the minority based on other reviews I have read (reviews that commented favorably on the score), but I found the score to be bombastic; though it was fully in sync with the whole notion of a movie played as yet one more comic-book inspired film.

If one wants to see a movie propelled by special effects, “Jupiter Ascending” may be the movie to see. But I found it seriously disappointing. The art work, the costumes, and the hints of ideas as to just how exotic a human civilization could become suggest to me a movie with much more depth than just one more action-packed space opera. This movie could have been like “Cloud Atlas” a movie that used science fiction to explore ideas and themes that could not be explored in any other genre. Instead, it settled for one more example of the comic book movie genre, never really getting into any ideas worth thinking about. Frankly, if a fun, mindless space opera is what you want, go see “Guardians of the Galaxy” (2014); it’s better made, more logically written and much more entertaining.

Book Review: "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997 in English)

4.5 Stars out of 5

Haruki Murakami (translated by Jay Rubin)

613 pages

With thirteen books to his name, Haruki Murakami is the widest sold novelist in Japan. The genre he operates in defies definition: from pop culture to crime to the anti-establishmentarian/existential likes of Don Delilo or the Joycean realm of Thomas Pynchon. He is also a novelist that frustrates many modern Japanese critics. He writes about the Japanese and their lives but sprinkles his books with a very heavy flavoring of Western pop culture, and (presumably even worse to some critics) his writing style and themes are heavily influenced by Western writers, notably Franz Kafka in addition to Delilo and Pynchon. “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”, his novel published in 1995 in Japanese and beautifully translated by Jay Rubin in 1997 is not in many ways an exception to the previous characterization. And yet it is an exception in that this book is clearly a work of art; perhaps slightly flawed art, but art nevertheless. Unlike some novels that achieve commercial success and only strive for critical success, Murakami actually achieves both with “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”. This book is wild mixture of styles and themes, some like the Russo-Japanese battles in Manchukuo during WWII will be new to most Americans, but the deeper stories of spousal alienation, free will and a sense of purpose in modern life will be highly relatable to anyone that ponders such topics.

Like a typical Murakami novel, “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” tells the tale of a Japanese male that seems to differ markedly from the prototypical Japanese male. Toru Okada is unemployed, supported by his hard working wife, and quite content with the situation. To make the contrast all that much clearer, Kumiko, Toru’s wife, has a brother that is Toru’s near opposite: the most alpha of alpha males. The book begins with a missing cat. As Toru searches for Noboru Wataya the cat named for Kumiko’s domineering politician brother, Toru finds an abandoned house on an alley; an alley with both ends blocked to through traffic. He meets also a fellow slacker in the form of sixteen year old May Kasahara. May is out of school following a near fatal motorcycle accident, an accident she caused. Following the first of many quixotic conversations with the death-obsessed May, Toru turns for help in finding the cat to a psychic recommended to Kumiko by her brother, Noboru.

Into the picture in physical and dream form come the Kano sisters, Creta the medium and her sister the former prostitute, Malta. The sisters named for two of the islands in the Mediterranean start Toru on his journey out of everyday Japan into an altered reality involving a Kafkaesque hotel, a mysterious woman and her tormentor. As the book progresses, the wall that separates Toru from “reality” and the hotel’s meta-reality becomes thinner each time Toru makes the passage. Indeed, one significant theme of “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle” is the blurring of the definition of what is real and what is not; and even whether there is any significance to the question of their difference. Aiding Toru in his passage between these alternate realities is the discovery by Toru that if he spends time in an abandoned dry well on the property of the empty house on the alley, he can enter his dream state with less effort; less effort, but not without a kind of price.  For upon the completion of his first experience in the well, Toru emerges from the well with a black mark on his face. The symbologies of his facial mark, sitting in the depths of the well, a trapped woman/”Kumiko”, and a demonic adversary/”Noboru” are also themes that appear in various forms throughout the book.

A significant consequence of the mark on his face for Toru is that he meets yet another woman, Nutmeg Akasaka. Nutmeg is a wealthy woman that like Creta makes her living by helping people (always wealthy, influential women), though in Nutmeg’s case, she does it by absorbing their pain. Nutmeg is losing this ability when she meets Toru and deduces the significance of Toru’s mark is not that of Cain, but quite the contrary. Like Nutmeg, Toru can now via his new mark (which warms with each encounter) take on Nutmeg’s former role as a healer.

These various scenes from Toru’s reality-based and dream-based life are mixed with several realistic tales from Japan’s invasion and subjugation of Manchuria during WWII. The connection between the WWII scenes and the contemporary ones involve the facial marks, dry wells, family connections, and the contrast between the hyper-realism of a vicious war with Toru’s waning sense of reality. In all likelihood, this novel’s depiction of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, their subjugation of the native Chinese, the eventual Russian victory over the Japanese, and their post-war treatment of the captured Japanese soldiers must be especially germane and painful to the modern Japanese. More to the point though, the stories from China lay the groundwork for Murakami’s position on how political machinations can result in incredible pain, and even more so on how such events can shape a nation’s personality. Is the modern Japanese a latent soldier as he works to exhaustion each work day, a kind of robot in the original sense introduced in K. Čapek's play R.U.R. ‘Rossum's Universal Robots’ (1920); that is forced labor; or as the title of the book suggest, wind-up bird. Toru’s slacker vision for himself offers an alternative way in life.

In terms of literary style, the surrealistic hotel and the odd way Toru responds to May’s commentary hearken strongly of Kafka (see “The Castle”, 1926; or “The Trial”, 1925). The most memorable strengths of this book are the beautiful spare language that blends so well with the concept of humanity as little more than automatons; that is wind-up toys/birds. Murakami introduces the wind-up bird via the fact that the sound of a wind-up bird being wound is only heard by a gifted (cursed?) individual such as Toru, and only just before some pending tragedy. The wind-up bird motif is clearly more than just an ill omen, it is a metaphor for each of us as we move through life. Are we merely robots operating according to someone else’s (a politician/demon) programming? Murakmi also explores the concept of language/programming via Nutmeg’s son, Cinnamon. Cinnamon is a brilliant but mute young man who does many things for his mother, including programming her computer. His character serves as yet another metaphor, this one for a sentient being that operates without language and as a kind of introduction to the analogous concept of controlling via a program.

Having moved through these various ideas of political manipulation of the people, of what a real man is supposed to be in terms of free will, Murakami brings the various disparate parts of his book together with a final confrontation in Hotel Kafka between Toru and his adversary/”Noboru”. It is not much of a spoiler to say, that Toru physically confronts his foe. He is able to “free” the woman/”Kumiko” but loses her in the process. The point is, Toru has found a path to himself by finding a way of defining himself not as being a particular part of society, a wind-up bird doing what it is programmed to do by social convention, but rather as a man defined by his values.

Murakami’s depiction of Man in “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle” is a brilliant but challenging discussion of the question, what is Man. The one potential weakness is that it is possible he utilizes too wide a variety of stories and means to move through this philosophical territory, and that finding a link amongst all of them to his conclusion is somewhat obscured by the process. As for me, I found the effort to be difficult, but worth making; a kind of strength rather than a weakness. I highly recommend this book.

 

Book Review: "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt

The Goldfinch (2013)

3.5 Stars out of 5

Donna Tartt

784 pages

Donna Tartt’s 2013 bildungsroman “The Goldfinch” has renewed an old argument: can popular books also be great works of art? Tartt has written three novels over the past thirty odd years. Her first “The Secret History” (1992) met with considerable popular and critical success, while her second “The Little Friend” (2002) with much less so from both quarters. “The Goldfinch” was received with great commercial success with its thirty weeks on the NY Times Best Seller List plus the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. And yet and despite critical praise from the likes of Michiko Kakutani, chief critic for the NT Times, there are several critics of note that consider the book to be little more than a variation of the Harry Potter stories in terms of intrinsic merit; this one may be for adults but it suffers from an improbable plot and simplistic language. I must confess, I found the narrative at times engrossing and amusing, but all too often in great need of an editor that should have been forced to trim about a third of the book away. It is clichéd and much too long to say what it has to say. The language can be colorful and many of the similes entertaining, but it is in the end, really not that good a book with respect to dialog, structure or believability.

“The Goldfinch” begins as homage to a Dickensian theme: an orphaned boy surrounded by colorful characters, some exotic, some wicked and mean, and a very few genuinely interested in loving and caring for the boy. Theodore (Theo) Decker as a thirteen year old visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mother. She as an aspiring Art Historian has spent a lifetime admiring a particular painting: The Goldfinch by a Dutch master, Carel Fabritius. A terrorist’s bomb at the museum robs Theo of his mom and thrusts him briefly into the arms of an aged and dying antiquarian, Welton (Welty) Blackwell. As Theo sits in the rubble of the blast with Welty, Welty pushes two items into Theo’s hands. These two objects, Welty’s distinctive ring and Fabritius’ masterpiece are carried out of the museum by a stunned and confused Theo. Theo returns home with both objects not yet knowing his mother’s fate. Even as his situation and his mother’s death become clear, Theo’s straits worsen. Theo’s absent father is an alcoholic that has abandoned his family several years before, and Theo’s only other family is his paternal grandfather, an even more unpleasant character than Theo’s father. For a brief period, Theo gains a brief respite as he spends some interim time with a rich friend’s family, the Barbours. Theo is soon surprised by the return of his missing father to reclaim him; a father that (of course) has more than one motive for returning to his son.

Before Theo’s father Larry can drag him off to Larry’s new home in Las Vegas, Theo makes a trip to Welty’s antique furniture store. Theo was able to piece together some of Welty’s dying comments plus an inscription on the ring to find the store. There he meets the one positive Pole Star in young Theo’s life to be, Hobart or Hobie. Hobie is Welty’s partner and co-guardian of Pippa, another survivor of the bomb blast. It is clear that Theo bonds quickly to the pair; to Hobie for his kindness, to Pippa for their shared tragedy. But in keeping with Dickens, Theo is pulled from this potential homely salvation to the harsh lights and life of his father’s home in Las Vegas. It quickly becomes clear why Tartt’s has chosen Las Vegas for the dissolute Larry’s home. Larry drinks, does drugs, gambles, and ignores his son except to use him in an attempt to steal; into this den of iniquity is where Theo meets his best and possibly worst friend, Boris. Boris is like Theo a lost boy, the neglected only son of another abusive and alcoholic father. Indeed, with the exception of Hobie, there is scarcely a single male character in the entire book that couldn’t inhabit one of Dickens’ books as villain.

The youthful Boris as the “artful dodger” is perhaps the most amusing character in the book as he colorfully swears in his Russian-tinged vocabulary and grammar. Besides providing most of the comic relief in “The Goldfinch”, Boris also introduces the despondent Theo to the world of drugs. Theo and Boris spend several years together “attending” school, stealing food (as of course their fathers’ provide virtually no support), and getting high, drunk, or both. Here was a missed opportunity for Tartt to deal more intelligently with the grieving boy’s desperate state. It was a classic case of telling instead of showing. We are told (endlessly) that Theo gets high, but there is little emotional connection between the reader and Theo’s inner turmoil and depression. This unhappy interlude in Theo’s life is followed by a mildly dramatic flight across the country in a Greyhound bus back to New York once Theo has become truly orphaned.

Theo returns to NY and Hobie. He spends a few years learning (as does the reader in considerable detail) Hobie’s trade as a restorer of antique furniture. However, rather than following in Hobie’s restorative footsteps, Theo turns to the sales’ side of the business, and in keeping with his now mature character, turns to a new life of crime. In the meanwhile, he has stashed the Fabritius painting in storage, never even opening its wrapping to look at it. To be sure the painting is a metaphor for Theo. The painting of the chained and somewhat forlorn but also somewhat hopeful bird is certainly a good stand-in for the recently bereaved Theo at thirteen. However, the hidden and unexamined painting is also a good stand in for the directionless and self-deceived twenty-something Theo. Into this life, an angry victim of Theo’s adult larceny enters the story, Lucius. Lucius has pinned together information to both prove Theo’s chicanery with “antique” furniture sold as authentic and the theft of the missing painting. “Fortunately” for Theo his old friend from Vegas, Boris also reenters the scene. Boris has like Theo become an adult criminal, though Boris’ criminality is of an undefined sort. In any event, he and Theo make a rapid trip to Europe to get Theo out of the fix he and Hobie are now in due to Theo’s fraudulent antique furniture sales. The book ends with one of the most disappointing book endings I have ever read; a bizarre attempt to place Theo’s life and thus the book on some kind of moral and philosophical plane that is far higher than the events described in the book.

There are aspects of the book that I admire. Tartt has clearly gone to considerable effort to learn the intricacies of how antique furniture is restored, of the hidden messages by the Dutch Masters in their paintings, and in developing a voice for a Russian émigré to an English speaking world. However, each of these positive points are countered by negative effects: for example, how many of the 784 pages were spent in service of describing the importance of matching wood grains when doing a restoration, of how scratches are made in long used furniture and how color of wood stain fades based on use? It can be an interesting subject, but in what manner does it add to this book. Is the reader to assume that like wood grains Theo and Boris are somewhat alike and yet not? This seems pretty unlikely. Or to what end is the endless description of how Theo and Boris got high or Theo’s multi-day hallucinations in his Amsterdam hotel help us to understand the characters, their lives, let alone the human condition? And while I did find Boris’ voice frequently amusing, Tartt has him say a variety of what to me seem anachronistic (language-wise) comments. Additionally, his conversations with Theo followed such a pattern you might just as well describe and re-describe a groove in one of Hobie’s antiques. Boris would start an explanation, a usually befuddled Theo would mumble “what”, Boris would veer off topic, Theo would threaten to leave, Boris would say something not really explanatory but sufficient to capture Theo’s attention, and then finally (mercifully) Boris would explain whatever it was that Theo needed to hear. This problem of two people leaving things unsaid and the consequences that come after drives me nuts in a sitcom; words fail to describe how irritating or how often Tartt uses this trope.

Tartt closes the novel in a most exasperating manner. Theo has reached a kind of plateau in his life. He seems to have finally found a path to follow that is truer to Hobie and his lost mother. That is all well and good. But then as his character is at last nearing his final departure, Theo launches off into a series of strange soliloquies of his and Boris’ lives, and of the meaning of life. The reader is at once led to understand that Theo is not truly nihilistic (despite a lengthy diatribe that clearly shows the contrary) but that Theo’s purpose in life like anyone that finds beauty in art has found that which is truly eternal. Meanwhile, Boris sums up his life with a variation on Popeye’s “I am what, I am”, “I do heroin because I want to, not because I have to”. The problem here isn’t the triteness of either philosophy (though one could make such an argument), it is rather that Theo’s commentary is such a jarring excursion from the narrative form of the novel. Instead, it seems like little more than Tartt having realized she has failed to illustrate her point via the life of Theo she must now have him explain himself to her presumed adolescent readers. Because in the final analysis, this is a book written with simplistic, graceless language, stock characters, a story seemingly about a young man’s early life but in fact about his unbelievable adventures with his druggie buddy. To whom is this book intended, someone interested in the human condition, if so, turn away. If a long unbelievable story about a drug abuser’s adventures is your métier, here is your book. It might have been a popular book, but it does not appear to be a work of art to me.

 

Movie Review: Love and Mercy

Love and Mercy (2015)

PG-13

4.0 Stars out of 5

Director                                Bill Pohlad
Writer                                   Oren Moverman and Michael Alan Lerner
Cinematography                 Robert D. Yeoman
Music                                    Atticus Ross

Elizabeth Banks                  Melinda Ledbetter
Paul Dano                            Brian Wilson (1960’s)
John Cusak                          Brian Wilson (1980’s)
Paul Giamatti                      Dr. Gene Landy
Graham Rogers                  Al Jardine
Kenny Wormald                 Dennis Wilson
Jake Abel                             Mike Love
Brett Davern                       Carl Wilson
Erin Darke                           Marilyn Wilson
Bill Camp                             Murry Wilson

 

The standard bio-pic for musicians is such a tried and true formula: happy obscurity, struggle into early success, rising success/initial drug and/or alcohol abuse, severe substance abuse/faltering career, intervention, relapse or two/decaying career, final redemption and minor career recovery. It happens every time. Well not every time, “Love and Mercy” is the exception that may prove the rule. The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson’s story as depicted in “Love and Mercy” definitely hews to a different, not necessarily refreshing musical career path. “Love and Mercy” is a definitely different examination of a musician’s life, but it is also most definitely not an easy film to watch. Painful is a much better one word description of Brian Wilson’s musical and personal life.

Director Bill Pohlad and writers Oren Overman and Michael Alan Lerner have written and adapted a screenplay that compares the life of Brian Wilson in the mid-sixties (well played by Paul Dano) when his musical genius was coming into full flower to his life in the mid-eighties (equally well played by John Cusak) when Wilson lived under the complete control of his psychologist, Dr. Eugene Landy (ominously played by Paul Giamatti). During the sequence in the eighties, Brian meets a Cadillac salesperson, Melinda Ledbetter (played by Elizabeth Banks). Cusak portrays Wilson as a very diffident, halting individual, afraid to make any move that would meet with the disapproval of Dr. Landy. His first meeting with Ledbetter is presented in a manner to emphasis his helplessness. She is naturally confused but attracted to him, perhaps because of his evident need. As they become more involved with one another, his mental problems and subservience to Landy becoming increasingly clear. These scenes interspersed with scenes from the sixties are squirm-inducing they are so painful to watch. Cusak’s depictions of Wilson as little more than a husk of a man are heart breaking.

Interleaved with the evolving relationship between Cusak and Banks in the eighties is a second, separate evolution of Brian Wilson, this one as a young man in the sixties. Early in the sixties scenes is a panic attack experienced by Wilson on an airplane. It is but the beginning of a singular path for Brian away from the Beach Boys, his two brothers (Dennis and Carl), cousin (Mike Love) and friend (Al Jardine). Following the panic attack, Brian asks for and receives permission to withdraw from a planned tour in Japan. While the rest of the group is touring, Brian begins an experimental phase in rock music that has been critiqued by music critics as singular. Brian institutes the use of session musicians to create a “sound” that is as instrumental (no pun intended) to the overall musical effect of the group as the lead singer. The movie emphasizes the painstaking and driven manner in which Brian works with various session members, leading them and pointing them in the direction he wants and can hear in his mind; it is as if Pohlad wants the viewing audience to imagine the inner workings of a modern composer, one that might be on a par with any of the various musical geniuses down through recent history. A priori, I would have thought depicting this process would be as uninvolving as watching someone write a letter, but in fact Pohlad achieves this film’s highest point of artistry in conveying the process of layering various tracks of music and of getting the various musicians to achieve a kind of perfection (to Brian’s ears) on each of those tracks.

The sixties sequence is brilliantly paired and interleaved with the eighties sequence via some inspired film editing. In the sixties, we watch Brian grow and achieve a kind of apotheosis in his music, even as his life and mental stability spiral down and out of control. Paired up to the sixties, the sine wave of his life turns positive as he slowly leaves the mental trough that he has lived in under the control of Dr. Landy. According to the film, Melinda’s love and concern for Brian coupled with his slow movement away from Landy permit Brian to finally regain some independence and certainly better medical care. The movie strongly implies much of this late in life success comes as a result of Melinda’s intervention. A careful examination of Brian’s life from sources other than the movie would strongly suggest the movie has greatly simplified these two decades in Brian’s life. In fact, the movie implicitly suggests that after the mid-sixties, Brian achieved very little for the next two decades;  a quick review of the albums released by Brian in solo efforts, collaboration with other artists and with the Beach Boys would clearly indicate, nothing could be further from the truth. He remained busy right up the present day.

If unlike me you are a Beach Boys fan, you might enjoy the musical interludes where brief renditions of their various hits and a few of their non-hits are played. However, this is a movie about a composer, his path to the various end products of his efforts, not so much about the musical final products. If you are interested in watching how modern music can be created in a studio by adding one track to another, and how musicians are asked to work through multiple versions of a piece of music until the man driving the process is at last satisfied, then this could be your movie. But mostly, this is a movie about a man that is a musician that has is life derailed by drugs and some personal mental issues that were likely exacerbated by those drugs. There are other actors in the drama of Brian Wilson’s life (a demanding father, a fellow member of the band that wants to go in another musical direction, a bad doctor and a loving second wife), but to my eyes it seemed mostly a tragedy of a life with no clear reason for the tragedy. Was it mental illness, drugs, an abusive father, or some combination of these and other factors? I found this to be the biggest flaw in the movie – what was it that ailed Brian the most? In any event, if you enjoy dramas that are intricately edited, professionally acted that depict the rise and fall of a gifted artist, then this is definitely your movie.

One final point, besides the inspired parts of the movie showing Brian in the studio, a second part that is substantially moving is the end credits. As they roll, the audience is presented with a view of the actual Brian Wilson in the early 2000’s playing his music to an audience. One can easily see that still extant mental struggle of this now not-so-young man as he stares out into his audience, but even more clearly evident in his face is what seems to be some new found joy in playing his music for his fans. The song he plays: Love and Mercy.

 

Book Review: "No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II"

No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (1994)

5 Stars out of 5

Doris Kearns Goodwin

759 pages

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer Prize winning book “No Ordinary Time” describes the war years of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Goodwin begins her chronicle in May of 1940 and largely concludes it in April 1945 after FDR’s death from a cerebral hemorrhage. Goodwin relies on extensive interviews with the people that knew the pair as well as an exhaustive review of their private correspondence and other key secondary historical sources. “No Ordinary Time” is not in the definitive biography category, but it is a good example of the style that Goodwin has also brought to her biographies of Theodore Roosevelt/William Howard Taft and her study of Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet. In each of these books, Goodwin’s research and style of writing lend her books both great historicity and a sense of personal connection to her subject material.

For me, the best part of “No Ordinary Time” is the section devoted to 1940. Having grown up in the sixties, I have had an inborn sense that America was always ready and willing to defend herself; in fact, ready to defend any country or group of people that needed defending from the tyrants of the world. To be sure, there is considerable naiveté in such a belief. Like any country, the US will always ensure that her needs are first being met whenever she ventures into war. But the willingness to intervene or the actual lack thereof were striking features of the period leading up to WWII and indeed continued well into the war as FDR and his advisors actively chose not to defend the rights of Americans of Japanese extraction, or only reluctantly chose to move to defend the rights of Black Americans, and in awful fact chose not to take certain actions to reduce the carnage experienced by the Jews of Europe.

Goodwin spends some little time explaining the personal histories of FDR and ER. He was the only and thoroughly adored child of a wealthy couple made up of an aged father and doting, younger mother. The death of FDR’s father and the now enhanced attention his mother could now foist on him helped create a remarkably secure but terribly secretive (as regards his inner life) adolescent, and in time adult. ER’s situation could not have been more different. She grew up in a loving and nearly equally prosperous family as her fifth-cousin FDR, but unfortunately for her, also in the home of an alcoholic father – one who would die and leave his family in some fiscal and emotional straits. Fortunately for ER, her uncle, the older brother to her unfortunate father was Theodore Roosevelt. TR took an active interest in the family of his younger brother and did make various attempts to help ER’s family situation. But like FDR, the situation of her youth, the cauldron from which she would arise shaped ER just as surely as FDR’s far more secure childhood shaped his. ER would grow with an unquenchable desire to intervene on the behalf of the less fortunate, but quite likely just as insecure in her most intimate relationships as FDR was secure in all of his. It is easy to over generalize but based on Goodwin’s recitation of the events leading to the adulthood of FDR and ER, it is tempting to draw some conclusions about their remarkable and troubled marital union.

Goodwin uses a layered approach to her biographies wherein she begins a description of (say) the events of May 1940 when Hitler is on the very cusp of waging a devastating aerial bombardment of England and how and why FDR and ER would respond to both the international events in FDR’s case or the plight of the American Negro in ER’s case. Having narrated an historical record for both FDR and ER, she uses inference and occasionally more direct explanation for their action. Why was FDR so driven to help England and his close friend Winston Churchill; why was ER as equally driven to improve the situation for America’s Negros (I use the term the Goodwin has chosen and presumably the times chose to use), or the mine workers, or union members, or enlisted men, or and the list is a very long one of Americans not well served by the wealthy and powerful.

As noted above, I found the efforts made by America and FDR to first move from a position of absolute unpreparedness to become the “Arsenal of Democracy”, to move from strict isolationism to waging wars over two oceans, to move from being a bystander to world events to being a shaper of world events. Goodwin narrates a long involved tale that describes the various legal and legislative machinations made by FDR when he set up Lend Lease to first help England and later the USSR and Joseph Stalin. Added to the considerable difficulties FDR faced in moving a very recalcitrant congress to establish the means to help these two erstwhile allies, he also faced immense hurdles in turning American’s peacetime manufacturing energies into wartime powerhouses: making tanks and airplanes instead of cars, making gunpowder instead of ceramics, and making transport ships at a rate faster than the German U-boats could sink them – something they did not do very well until 1942. However, by 1943 America was supplying her own military and that of the English and the Russians, and doing it at a pace that was several factors higher than the early targets for planes, tanks, ships and armament that were initially thought to be impossible to achieve. Goodwin goes to great lengths to demonstrate just how integral FDR’s vision and most importantly his leadership went into creating this powerful force for good.

At the same time, ER continued her work as America’s conscience. Prior to the outbreak of war and following the near catastrophic (in a marital sense) discovery by ER of FDR’s romantic relationship with Lucy Mercer (ironically one of ER’s aides), ER had sought to find her own way; a way that supported FDR but was in many ways independent of FDR. Throughout their marriage, ER protested time and again her love for FDR, but her actions clearly show her first priority was a passionate desire to be busy; to be busy working tirelessly helping others. ER travelled the US in the years prior to WWII always acting as the eyes and ears for a president limited by his job requirements and physical condition. Their dinners on the evenings of her returns to DC appear to have been one half familial reunions, one half business meetings. According to Goodwin, this type of life was essential to keeping FDR more fully informed of the effects of his social legislation, was essential to ER’s desperate need to help the downtrodden, but perhaps most of all, critically important to ER’s sense of self. On those occasions when events conspired to force her into a traditional First Lady role, she chafed; on the many other occasions when she could break free and do some good, she bloomed.

Thus when WWII dawned in Europe and even more so following 7December1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and forced America to finally enter the war as more than an arms merchant, ER was very ill prepared for the second place (or worse) position the previous decade’s social programs had to take. FDR was overwhelmingly preoccupied with conducting the war, and after a long day of having done so, was rarely prepared to face ER at dinner and her constant push for the rights of Black America, of Americans of Japanese descent, of housing for workers, of European Jew immigration to America, and of many other “rights of man” types of issues. Worse for ER and her goals was the simple fact that the level of racism in 1940’s America would startle an American in 2015. Racism was rampant in the government and the military. The mere concept of equal protection under the law for Black Americans in the Navy, for example, was so non-existent, the longest battle fought during the years of 1940 to 1943 was whether Black sailors could perform any job outside of the mess hall. In Detroit as the burgeoning population of workers swelled to work in the arms industry based there, fights over housing became violent and always seemed to have a racial component. Americans in the 40’s not only did not have any sense of equal protection, they did not seem to think it was ever even a question; it was simply natural that WASP rights superseded all others – there was never any question of this basic fact. And when ER as she so often did in her daily newspaper column called for recognition of such rights, she would receive letters of startlingly insensitivity telling her she was a troublemaker, the source of the various riots over the denial of such rights, and that she really should just go home and take care of FDR as any good wife would. Needless to say, ER did not do any such thing.

The war years for FDR and ER were difficult years for them as a couple, for ER’s passionate pursuit of rights for all Americans, and for FDR’s physical health. According to Goodwin, by mid-1944 FDR’s health was in a dangerous decline. America and her allies had both the Japanese and Germans in retreat, but the path for FDR to help get them there had ruined his health. He suffered from extremely high blood pressure, his heart was greatly enlarged, and his strength was failing. Now was the time, if ever she was going to do so, that ER should at the very least curtail her activities and spin more time with a man that desperately needed such companionship. But that was not in her nature; she did not seem to see the need in his eyes and she certainly never changed her behavior to meet his needs. Instead, their daughter Anna who had being filling the role of substitute First Lady for nearly a year met her father’s request to arrange an reunion with FDR’s old flame, Lucy Mercer. This relationship continued up to the day of FDR’s death. It was an unfortunate position to place Anna, and yet was a strange kind of symbol for the unusual partnership between FDR and ER. That someone that loved them both, which wanted to help them both was forced to try and find a middle way to please them both at the very end of their marriage.

It’s hard to read “No Ordinary Time” and not be simultaneously impressed and disappointed in ER and FDR. They were both people of towering abilities, leadership and vision, and yet so very human. FDR couldn’t not flirt or worse with a significant number of women that came into his life, while ER could hardly extend the love she wrote of so often in her letters to FDR or her children. His extroverted, overly self-confident pursuit of any relationship he wanted stood in stark contrast to her constant withdrawal into the introvert’s private seclusion any time she felt over-whelmed by events. And yet, between the two of them, it is impossible to find any couple in American history that have done even half as much as the two of them did during the war years of WWII. Goodwin’s book won’t tell the reader too much about the war at the front, but it will tell you a lot about two very gifted people and what they accomplished for America. This book is a must read.

Movie Review: The Martian

The Martian (2015)

PG-13

3.5 Stars out of 5

Director                              Ridley Scott
Writer                                 Drew Goddard, Andy Weir (book)
Cinematography               Dariusz Wolski
Music                                  Harry Gregson-Williams

Matt Damon                      Mark Watney
Jessica Chastain                 Melissa Lewis
Kristen Wiig                        Annie Montrose
Jeff Daniels                         Teddy Sanders
Michael Pena                     Rick Martinez
Sean Bean                           Mitch Henderson
Kate Mara                           Beth Johanssen
Chiwetel Ejiofor                 Vincent Kapoor

 

Like similar tales that have come before (“Gravity” – 2013, “Cast Away” - 2000, “Apollo 13” - 1995, even “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” – 1964, and many more), Hollywood loves a good survival story. What could be more compelling than a resilient hero pushed to his or her limits fighting the environment and their own personal demons in order to survive? Combine this cinematic trope with some spectacular cinematography illustrating Martian landscapes, sprinkle in some reasonable acting from Matt Damon and the under-used Jessica Chastain; borrow some scenes from “Apollo 13” and “Gravity” (apparently when all else fails in space, you simply have to jump really, really hard in order to save yourself), and some (let’s say) irritating music from the Disco era, and you have the recipe for “The Martian”. That being said, it was a fairly entertaining film.

Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is on a mission to Mars with his disco music loving commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) when a very nasty storm rolls in. Are such storms even possible in Mars’ thin atmosphere, and if they are what’s NASA’s plan for their escape module to avoid falling over in such a wind? These questions and more may run through your mind as you watch Mark get left behind by Melissa and the rest of her crew, Beth Johanssen (Kate Mara), Mark’s wisecracking buddy Rick Martinez (Michael Pena), and a couple others too insignificant to list here. Commander Melissa is led to believe by events that Mark is dead and as such leaves Mars with a heavy heart before her escape pod falls over and they are all stranded. Mark, of course (spoiler alert) is not dead. The bulk of the movie depicts how he is going to “science the heck out Mars” in order to survive. Needless to say, he has a few setbacks, but where there is a will, there is a way (at least in Hollywood).

To the movie’s and the writers’ credit, there is considerable time spent watching the team at NASA in Houston and JPL in Pasadena work with Mark to help him help himself. This movie borrows the scene from “Apollo 13” wherein some tape and a bunch of stuff on the table must be used in order to create a jury-rigged oxygen generator. “Apollo 13” had the benefit of being based on actual events; “The Martian” does not. Instead, we are asked to believe that Mark can solve a leaking space suit helmet with duct tape (it’s silvery, so maybe it’s NASA duct tape) and then shortly thereafter seal up his compromised habitat with the same tape and some plastic sheeting – remember, this is the same planet that had winds which just about toppled the escape pod. Oh well, its “science” fiction; emphasis on the fiction.

This type of movie follows such a set formula, you can almost set your watch to the events on screen: Mark solves a problem, next problem coming up in 3, 2, 1 seconds – bingo, go solve another one Mark. The writers do address this scenario in the very end during a lecture to new astronauts: they must be prepared to do just that, solve one problem, then another. So, maybe, this really is the way space travel is and will be conducted; or maybe, it just some kind of cinematic alarm clock that must be adhered to. However, formula or not, “The Martian” as directed by Ridley Scott and written by Drew Goddard based on a book by Andy Weir is exciting. You know problems are coming, you know solutions will always be there, so don’t worry about the predictability, just sit back and enjoy the ride. And it is an entertaining ride, a ride made the more enjoyable by the remarkable sceneries created to stand in for Mars coupled with some very poetic cinematography by Dariusz Wolski.

The technical tools used to make this movie, the build –up and release of tension and the frequently wry comments made by Mark as he addresses his seemingly hopeless situation help make this a fun movie. It quite probably would have been a better candidate for the summer blockbuster season, but considering how well it has done in the market place, it would seem the studio knew what it was doing when it released “The Martian” during the roll up to the Oscar-contending film release season. One other curious note about the movie is the use of large amounts of Disco music in the soundtrack. The screenplay has Mark complain fairly non-stop about Melissa’s musical choice, and I presume the viewers must assume she is the only one to have brought any music to Mars, but what was Ridley Scott and Drew Goddard thinking? Is there some musical or thematic reason to use this musical genre? Are they trying to drive the audience that much closer to the edge of their seats with musical anxiety? In any event, “The Martian” can fall into my guilty pleasures category. There are no surprises, no deep currents running in this movie, but it was a fun and thrilling ride to spend a rainy afternoon watching.

Movie Review: Bridge of Spies

Bridge of Spies (2015)

PG-13

4.5 Stars out of 5

Director                               Steven Spielberg
Writer                                  Matt Charman, Ethan and Joel Coen
Cinematography                Janusz Kaminski
Editing                                 Michael Kahn

Mark Rylance                     Rudolf Abel
Tom Hanks                         James Donovan
Amy Ryan                           Mary Donovan
Gary Francis Powers         Austin Stowell
Will Rogers                         Frederick Pryor

 

“Bridge of Spies” tells a tale from the Cold War, a time when children were taught to “duck and cover” to avoid the effects of a nuclear detonation, a time when both the American and Soviet governments planted spies in the other country's territories even as they searched for foreign spies within their own. Director Steven Spielberg has created a thoughtful and seemingly balanced film that describes this tense time. Courtesy of his expert direction and the film editing of Michael Kahn, Spielberg tells the story in a fashion that displays the parallel ways in which the two cold war adversaries viewed one another from the perspective of their own national defense. In many ways, each country's behavior is understandable, it is in the details (as is so often so) that the differences between the two societies becomes clear – what do they stand for, if they stand for anything at all.

The movie begins with a clever over the shoulder view of a painter executing a self-portrait. While it is clear who is the painter, and who the reflection, this opening scene does a good job of creating a metaphor for the coming test of wills over national intentions and identities. The painter is actually a Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance). He speaks with a faint Scottish accent that apparently derives from his early years, but his adult years have been spent in the USSR. He now plies his trade as a spy for the Soviet Union in Brooklyn NY. He is caught by the FBI but that has been done so with only scant attention paid by the FBI to the normal criminal proceedings with respect to search warrants. He is to be tried in a local criminal proceeding, and the US government wants him to have a proper legal defense. To that end, insurance attorney James Donovan (Tom Hanks), someone with a criminal defense background is brought in to represent Abel.

Rylance and Hanks put on a set of the most subtle and nuanced performances that I have seen in the past several years. This movie is easily worth watching just to watch the two of these seasoned actors portray their roles. Abel is a decent man; true he works for the enemy and to the destruction of our way of life. But in the end he is a soldier for his country. He acts constantly throughout this film as a man of principle. Hanks too can only be seen in these very same lights. Despite the overt opposition from the judge (who has convicted Abel in his own mind even before the start of the legal proceedings), the covert intrusion from the CIA and the various threats against Donovan and his family for defending Abel, James Donovan does not ever veer from his own set of values – values that he clearly defines as American. Take for example his discussion with a CIA agent; the agent states there is no rule book for the situation that Donovan has found himself in – the agent like most everyone in the film, believes their only goal is to convict Abel. Donovan corrects him by stating there is a rule book and it is the US constitution. He goes on to state that despite his own Gaelic heritage and the agent’s German, what unites them is their allegiance to American ideals and laws. This is not a subtle point in the movie, but it is a highlight.

Donovan is unable to save Abel from the judge, but he is able to convince the judge to “save” Abel by not executing him; the reason being, the US may need Abel for some future prisoner exchange. And once Francis Gary Powers is shot down over the USSR, just such an exchange is needed. Due to some convoluted reasoning, Donovan is brought back into this sordid play between nations to act as a mediator. The problem becomes even more complicated when the location for the exchange is the Glienicke Bridge in East Berlin. Since it is in East Berlin, the East Germans are now part of this complicated pas de deux, which has now become a ménage a trois. And the Germans have their own American prisoner, an American graduate student, Frederick Pryor (Will Rogers). The CIA wants Donovan to forsake Pryor, the Germans want to be included and thus recognized by the American government, and the Soviets just want their spy back before he spills any state secrets. Of the participants, only Donovan wants what seems to be the moral thing: an exchange of prisoners. He does not have any hidden or nationalistic agenda items.

Spielberg and writers Ethan and Joel Coen, and Matt Charman have created in this film an excellent comparison of nationalistic views. Americans see Abel as a traitor (even though he is not American), as an enemy to be caught, tried, convicted and executed. The Soviets see Powers in quiet the same lights, as an enemy agent flying illegally over their sovereign lands; essentially he has invaded them. The East Germans may well have the least to complain about; their prisoner is little more than an unfortunate American pawn caught up in their game. There is little right or wrong to distinguish either the Americans or the Soviets. Both feel they are acting in the best interests of their homelands. But there are differences, and Spielberg with his writers makes sure we see them: Abel is given a real lawyer and a decent cell, while Powers is instead treated to sleep deprivation and a miserable cell filled with ice cold water. Is it only in the details that the Americans and the Soviets differ? It is unlikely that Spielberg intends this, else he would have given far less time and attention to Donovan’s several small speeches on how Americans are defined by their ideals, not in effect by their jail cells per se. But if one thinks about even the jail cells some more, maybe even there in such small places and details as a jail cell, where even a prisoner is accorded or not accorded the basic necessities that any human, even a spy is entitled to.

“Bridge of Spies” may have a title dreamed up in Hollywood, but it has some of the best acting, directing and writing to come out of Hollywood in years. The pace of this movie may annoy some viewers, but in a time when Americans too often define themselves by their political party with their narrow interests and not by  the broader ideals that define the American way, this movie is a good primer on some of things that do justify a sense of American exceptionalism. This is easily one of the best movies for 2015.