Movie Review: "Youth"

Youth (2015)

R

3.5 Stars out of 5

Director/Writer                 Paolo Sorrentino                             
Cinematography               Luca Bigazzi
Music                                   David Lang

Michael Caine                    Fred Ballinger
Paul Dano                           Jimmy Tree
Jane Fonda                         Brenda Morel
Harvey Keitel                     Mick Boyle
Rachel Weisz                      Lena Ballinger

 

“Keep true to the dreams of your youth.”            Friedrich Schiller

“All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.”     

                                                                                    Wm. Shakespeare, As you like it (Act II, Scene II)

 

If a person walked into a theater to see Paolo Sorrentino’s 2015 film, “Youth”, a movie starring movie veterans Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel and Jane Fonda, based on the title alone one might well expect to see a film dedicated to issues at the “end of the road”, that is those last stages of life where one is still capable but quite definitely past the arc of one’s career. However, it seems to me Sorrentino has another purpose in mind for this movie, and that is an exploration of “identity”, an identity that stands independent of age. A priori, one might have expected the Schiller quote shown above to be a guidepost to this movie, but in point of fact, Shakespeare’s quote comes much closer to the truth. Sorrentino has written and directed a movie that is superficially about life in Shakespeare’s seventh (st)age, but he really seems to want to talk about the reality of the adult stages. What acts do we put on as we move through life, and maybe, just maybe do we ever become aware it is all just an act when we come to that final scene?

An American film goer raised as we have been on Hollywood endings might have hoped/expected that the two lead characters, Fred (Michael Caine) and Mick (Harvey Keitel) when they reached their personal endings would have gained some wisdom, or at least some perspective beyond the narrow purview of their own lives; but this movie would leave one largely disappointed in that respect. I suppose there is verisimilitude in writing two such self-focused characters, inasmuch as most of us suffer from the same malaise. Still…it would have been nice to have one character, even a minor one display a little knowingness about life and where each one of us fits into it – surely, such people exist? Instead, the viewer is treated to two protagonists speaking constantly in platitudes, platitudes that carry the appearance of wisdom but are actually simply banalities designed to pass from one of life’s minor moments to the next.

This move/play is staged in an exclusive Swiss resort, high in the Alps. It is peopled by guests that largely tend to the very aged, and certainly to the very wealthy. Music fills this stage and is used marvelously in the opening and closing scenes – in fact, these two scenes alone are worth watching the movie, most especially the moving operatic singing of Sumi Jo coupled with the artistic camera-work covering her performance at the movie’s end. The camera-work directed by long time Sorrentino collaborator, Luca Bigazzi is simply brilliant. Bigazzi under Sorrentino’s direction takes the camera from facial close-ups framed by significant background scenery to classic cinematic “mis en scène” of juxtaposition - consider well the two aged men in the pool staring in amazement at a nude Miss Universe (Mădălina Diana Ghenea) as she enters the pool, completely oblivious of their presence, let alone their stares (see a family version of this scene below). Added to these scenes are camera shots of various guests as if they were simply (and nothing more) “still life paintings”, and also the grand exterior shots of “heavenly” views of the skies as backdrops to the characters that are so close to entering Heaven in a more real sense.

 

 

The story centers on a retired composer (Fred) and his lifelong friend, a movie director, Mick. Their children have married: Lena (Rachel Weisz) is Fred’s daughter and manager, Julian (Ed Stoppard) is the nattily-dressed but caddish son to Mick. During their stay at the resort, Mick and Fred have the opportunity to interact and watch (mostly watch) their fellow guests. These guests include an American actor, Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano) preparing for his new role (as an aged Adolph Hitler), a very aged and ill due to obesity (I guess) retired Argentinian soccer hero, Diego Maradonna, and an extremely aged and silent couple of dining companions. That Fred and Mick split their time watching and analyzing their fellow hotel guests leads the viewer inevitably back to the concept of an “audience at a play” that will during the intermission, self-consciously spin their “informed “ opinions to all around them, as well on every minor event in their individual lives.

Fred is the true master of these platitudes and metaphors, despite the fact that at one point he will label Mick as the “magician of metaphors”. It is really Fred that for the most part spouts non-stop metaphors of “wisdom”.  He will pass through what’s left of his life commenting in meaningless sayings, meant to pass as his learned wisdom, or maybe to cover up his hidden pain. This mindless commentary is itself (cinematically speaking) Sorrentino’s metaphor for the way we live our lives, hardly differing from an actor reciting his lines. He adds to this message by having Mick guide a group of his writers working on a new movie starring Jane Fonda (oops, aged Marilyn Monroe stand-in, Brenda Morel). These self-important little writers will as characters mouth their suggestions to Mick for ending his as yet un-finished play. Each one is clearly written by Sorrentino as an archetypical character: the intellectual writer, the funny writer, the female writer, the writer in love. They are all so shallow, it is painful watching them speak lines in the movie. And how does Mick finally end his movie? Well with a melodramatic death that happens off-stage is all I’ll say, but it does provide one of the movie’s two twists. However, the twists are not the point, it is actually the manner in which each of the characters in the movie play people that are playing characters in real life (if that tortured sentence makes any sense).

The weakness of Sorrentino’s movie is at times one of its strengths, and that is the style he has chosen to employ throughout the movie. It seems clear that minus the circus props and characters, Sorrentino reaches at certain times for a very Fellini-like feeling. He uses this very effectively on two occasions: when he has Fred, wandering in his thoughts and fading memory, crossing a narrow bridge above a large pool, and where Fred must pass closely to the statuesque Miss Universe. It goes without saying the rising waters reflect not just his physical image but more closely Fred’s sense that he is drowning; he’s losing it. The second occasion is a comparable scene where an almost equally confused Mick (following his argument with his diva Brenda and where Mick proclaims his own identity as a brilliant director of women) sees arrayed on a hillside every woman he has ever directed. They are all there, even the previously recalcitrant Brenda, though now lacking the 1 inch thick shellac of make-up he last saw her in. These were good uses of surrealism, but Sorrentino over-does it. The sense of surrealism suffuses the entire movie. For example, what is the purpose of having Paul Dano dress as an octogenarian Hitler, except to make a pointless point about shock value; or maybe to allow Dano his moment in this movie to prove how good an actor he is?

Everything else aside, the acting is the best reason to see this movie. For the most part, professional critical attention has focused on Caine, and with good reason. Long lauded as one of the best actors we have had for the past 40 years or so (ever since “Alfie”, 1966), Caine has shown time and again how capable he is of dissolving into his chosen character. Additionally, Fonda and Dano also have their big emotional scenes, and both do an excellent job. But the highest movie plaudits for this movie belong to Weisz: her scene of her anguish at her husband’s infidelity, her anger at Fred for his distance during her childhood, and most subtly her remorse as her father finally explains his refusal to direct an orchestra any more in his most famous piece, Simple Song. Her range of emotions in her acting is just awesome.

In the final analysis, this movie is most definitely not for everyone. The over-use of surrealism is the only reason I do not give this movie a perfect score. Almost everything else screams for such a score: clever imagery, great music and cinematography, some of the year’s best acting (the lack of Oscar nominations notwithstanding), and finally the clever way Sorrentino weaves two important parts of life as themes into the story. Even if the deeper point of identity is ignored in this film’s narrative, it is a compelling movie just for the depicted views of how each of us looks at ourselves in life’s mirror. This is definitely a movie for adults eager for a story about difficult subjects and told in a manner that demands thoughtful appreciation from the audience.

Movie Review: Interstellar

Interstellar (2014)

Four and half Stars out of Five

Cooper: Matthew McConaughey

Brand: Anne Hathaway

Murph: Jessica Chastain

Director/Writer: Christopher Nolan

Writer: Jonathan Nolan

Cinematography Director:  Hoyte Van Hoytema

Music: Hans Zimmer

Christopher Nolan has consistently shown himself willing to take on difficult-to-tell stories (the reverse time flow of Memento is a good example). As the director and co-writer with his younger brother, Jonathan, Nolan has found with Interstellar an incredibly challenging story to tell. If one focuses on the science and time sequence issues, the story might be as confusing as 2001: A Space Odyssey. On the other hand, if one instead focuses on the father/daughter tale, it is a wonderfully emotional story than anyone can follow and appreciate.

The story is of a future Earth (with oddly contemporary trucks and cars) where a “blight” is systematically destroying the Earth’s food crops and converting the atmosphere to an oxygen-free version of today’s air. We are introduced to Cooper played by Matthew McConaughey and his immediate family, which includes a pre-adolescent daughter, Murph (Mackenzie Foy). These early scenes are often oddly comic in dialog but deeply sinister in foreshadowing. Borrowing sequences from Ken Burns’ documentary on the American dust-bowl, the viewer is shown that the Earth and her inhabitants have no future in this second dust-bowl.

Through a largely unbelievable story line Cooper is engaged by NASA to pilot a vessel to Saturn, enter a worm hole and venture out to three prospective new worlds where Humankind might begin again. There are logical inconsistencies in setting this stage, and the physics (despite being advised by Cal Tech’s Kip Thorne) require on several occasions much from the viewer, but then this is fiction, science fiction, and one must make allowances for this kind of tale.

The stage is a fantastic one, but like television’s The Walking Dead, the viewer is allowed to take in situations and people on this stage that are completely believable in this context and to take part in several scenes of overwhelming emotional intensity. This has always been for me the hallmark, even the raison d’etre for good speculative fiction, whether of a scientific or fantasy nature. That is to say create a stage where the story-teller can give the audience a tale that will involve them emotionally and inform them intellectually; and ideally tell such emotions and ideas that simply cannot be told without that fantastic stage.

The Nolan’s in Interstellar have created a story that makes intimate and completely requisite use of time dilation, of Einstein/Hawking attempts at a theory of everything (and of course, they get one – hey, it’s Hollywood), and to involve the audience in the effects of the former, and the necessity of the latter to save Mankind. Such a fantastic stage this is. And yet, because of the time dilation effects of immense gravity near a black hole, we are treated to a story of life-long love between a father and a daughter that simply cannot be told in any other way.

The acting by McConaughey and Chastain as the adult Murph are as in last year’s Texas Buyer’s Club for McConaughey and 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty for Chastain are easily Oscar-worthy performances. Indeed, this movie is filled with superb acting: John Lithgow as Coop’s father-in-law, Michael Caine as Brand’s father, Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway as fellow astronauts. But for me the highlight scene involved McConaughey reacting to a message from home – it was almost too painful to watch for its intensity.

Another great aspect of using the science fiction stage was the incredible special effects depicting the worm hole and black hole (though I must say, some of the space ship exterior scenes seemed oddly of a lower caliber). The editing near the end of the movie and the music score by Hans Zimmer throughout were of very high quality. The use in particular of an absence of sound for various space scenes to help give a feel for space versus the soaring music for other scenes of great emotional intensity were often spectacular.

I loved this movie and wanted so badly to give it five stars, but alas the science and logical inconsistencies won’t let me. But I did love this film and want everyone to see it. I’ll write elsewhere of the problematic parts that keep occurring to me after walking out of the theater.