Movies, Drama
Do novelists and poets change the world or do simply please and entertain us? I suspect that the best novelists sense the early signs of a new mood and outlook. If truly gifted, they are able to put in words and stories such a new outlook, infect the rest of us with it, and thereby pave the way for sometimes dramatic social changes. In his novel A Passage to India, E. M. Forster exposes the hypocrisy the British engaged in while in ruling India. While thinking of themselves as the most civilized people on earth, they treated Indians as subhuman. British rule was already questioned in 1924 when Forster’s novel was published. Yet it took another 23 years until Indian independence. Watching the film version of the novel, it seems to me that British readers of Forster’s novel would have been infected with the sense that British rule is unjust. The first 60 minutes of the film are slow and I was about stop watching. But then the drama picks up and the next 90 minutes are wonderful.A Passage to India
Movies, Drama
George Cukor, the director of this extraordinarily fun film, admitted: Give me a good script, and I’ll be a hundred times better as a director. My Fair Lady is based on the play Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts by the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw. The writer won the Nobel Prize in literature (1925) and later an Oscar for the film version of Pygmalion (1938). Shaw, who was also the co-founder of the London School of Economics, delivered to Cukor great material about a low class girl (Eliza Doolittle) and a professor (Higgins) who takes a wager that he can turn the impulsive, crude, uneducated flower girl into a lady. The professor’s goal is to use his scientific expertise in how people learn to speak language properly to teach Eliza and pass her off as an aristocrat at the Queen’s ball six months later. My Fair Lady
Everything about the film is perfect. It represents Hollywood at its best. I don’t see how the remake of the film planned for 2012 can top the 1964 production.
Movies, Drama
Madame Bovary is a masterpiece. I mean both the BBC film adaptation of Flaubert’s famous novel as well as the story itself. First a few words about the film and then about the story. Especially in the first half, the director moves us quickly through the life of Emma Bovary. The 19th century setting is beautifully staged. Gustave Flaubert’s 1856 book, regarded by many as of the ten best novels ever written, operates on many levels. It is so rich that right after watching the film I am tempted to read the book itself to see how Flaubert communicated the psychological drama with words alone. On one level, Flaubert demolishes the idea so central in Western culture over the past centuries, namely, that romantic love of one other human being and the feelings it creates in our hearts is the only road to happiness. In her quest to feel the excitement of romantic feelings that she believes are required for meaning and happiness, Emma Bovary dedicates her entire life to escaping what she regards a boring relationship.Madame Bovary
Movies, Drama
The first 10 minutes of Apocalypse Now are magnificent. My eyes were glued to every pixel on the screen. But following Captain Willard on his long journey from Saigon up a river to Cambodia where he is supposed to assassinate a U.S. general gone mad becomes tiring. The Redux version of the 1979 film is definitely too long. I have seen my share of Vietnam movies. This one is short on action and long on setting scenes like a painter would have. (I have never been to Vietnam and I found the landscape cinematography beautiful.) Apocalypse Now focuses on the psychological damage the war did on American soldiers. It does very little to explain why the American government got sucked into this war. The documentary The Fog of War is much better on this front. You can skip Apocalypse Now but not the The Fog of War.Apocalypse Now (Redux)
Movies, Drama
This is Wes Anderson’s best film to date. It reaches the same depth of Rushmore, but instead of staying in the same Chicago suburb, the director takes us on a wonderful road trip to India. Unlike Life Aquatic, which also wanted to be an adventure film, The Darjeling Limited is never boring because even when the pace of film slows down, we learn to know more interesting bist about the characters. Three brothers have not seen each other for over a year after their father’s funeral. Their mother never had much of a motherly instinct and apparently spent much of her maternal career running away from the family. The oldest son, who just was in a teribble car accident, wants to recreate at least the strong bonds between brothers by going on a joint trip spirtiual trip. I know a number of people who went to India to fix their spirits, but returned unhealed. Will the brothers suffer the same fate? Go watch this film to find out.The Darjeling Limited
Movies, Drama
When historians sit down to write the history of first decade of the 20th century, they would have likely used a few years ago labels such as the Rise of the Internet or Googlemania. If Facebook continues to grow and add functions at its current pace (email will soon be integrated with its message service), historians may simply refer to our time as the Age of Facebook. 500 million plus people have now signed on to Facebook. If you have a Facebook account, you will not want to miss the exquisite film about the beginnings of Facebook and its now 26-year-old founder, Mark Zuckerberg, who—just like Bill Gates—dropped out of Harvard to seize a rare business opportunity. The film is made by real pros who know how to create drama. Even if some stuff is invented to add more drama to the story, the film captures the heart the Facebook story and is a facinating watch. The ad for the film is one of the best promotional line I have ever read: You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.The Social Network
Movies, Comedy
My Wes Anderson Film Festival continues. This week I screened his fourth film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004). While Anderson pushes the cinematography onto a higher plane than in Rushmore or Bottle Rocket, the characters here feel more constructed and synthetic. Owen Wilson co-wrote the first two Anderson films. Perhaps he brought greater depth to the characters. The motor driving The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is the imaginative power fueling the script and the love for constructing detailed sets for each scene. Think of a Jacque Costeau documentary, Finding Nemo, and All About Schmidt or Sideways rolled into one. The eye is enchanted. Yet at times the film felt slow because we never sense that something dramatic is about to happen with any of the characters.The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
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