Kevin Smith has seen Star Wars, Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith and LOVES IT. (he’s posted an early review, with spoilers, on his website.) Can this really be? After Willow, Howard the Duck, and the atrocious last two Star Wars flicks, can Lucas really be poised for redemption? Part of me wants to believe. (“Who’s the more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?”) The rest of me remembers the unforgivable acting in “Attack of the Clones” and prepares for seppuku. I think fans should plan a massive Jonestown-like suicide party, just in case it does suck. Can you imagine the coverage of the line of stormtrooper corpses piled in front of the WRONG THEATER? Silent Bob’s review gives me hope, though. “You’re all clear, George! Now let’s blow this thing and go home.”
Kingdom‘s Lure
A few days ago a story about alleged right-wing disdain for Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (20th Century Fox, 5.6) appeared in the London Times. **
The paper’s L.A. correspondent John Harlow reported that “Christian hostility” to the film (the righties don’t like it that some of the Crusaders are portrayed as selfish and “mean-spirited,” and they really don’t like it that Saladin, the Muslim military leader, is portrayed in “chivalrous” terms) may prove “damaging” at the box office.
Orlando Bloom during relatively early scene in Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven.
Harlow wrote that “a spate of hostile reviews are due to appear in the increasingly influential religious press this week [that] will urge America’s 80 million born-again believers to avoid the $130 million film.”
Trust me — the righties are loony. One of the things I admire about Kingdom of Heaven is that it doesn’t draw crude stereotypes and is fairly even-handed in its portrayals of Christians and Muslims. Christian foam-at-the-mouth views about this are agenda-driven and skewed.
I wonder, in any case, if fans of The Passion of the Christ care all that much about the reputations of Christian Crusaders? As Revolution Pictures exec (and former 20th Century Fox distribution chief) Tom Sherak says, “That [Times] story is interesting but you know something? If people want to go to a movie, they’re going to go to it.”
And yet it’s significant, I feel, that the right-wing Christians vs. Kingdom of Heaven story is being seen as some kind of good thing. Controversy creates curiosity and leads to ticket sales, etc.
Others suspect it may be a case of too little, too late. The fact is that Ridley Scott’s big-budget epic — a beautifully made, epic-styled drama about the Muslim siege of the Christian-defended Jerusalem in the 12th Century — is looking to number-watchers and data crunchers like a passable performer, at best.
Before I get into this, let me say one thing: forget all this crap and just go. If you’re a fan of fine pageant-level filmmaking, Kingdom of Heaven is an essential. What do you care what others think?
That said, I think it’s fair to ask, as other journalists have done, whether Kingdom of Heaven will do better domestically than Hollywood’s last three historical battle epics — Alexander, King Arthur and The Alamo — which all turned out to be duds.
Especially considering that Heaven opens only a week from today (5.6) and research data suggests that average-viewer interest isn’t where it should be.
How many people really know what Kingdom of Heaven is about, given that the basic story comes off as a bit vague in the trailers?
How many people out there give that much of a toss about the Crusades, or have a clue what they were about?
How big of a mainstream draw is the film’s star, Orlando Bloom? He rules with 15 year-old girls but does he mean anything to the 25-and-over crowd?
Is Kingdom going to be a Troy-styled success, with modest returns in the U.S. but double-sized or better grosses overseas?
Bloom and Kingdom costar Eva Green.
Ask around and opinions vary. Some marketing executives are pessimistic or doubtful; others are uncertain or mildly positive.
A senior marketing executive based at a major studio said a couple of days ago that audience interest in Kingdom of Heaven is, according to tracking data, not that great.
“It’s hard to say what [Fox marketing] could be doing differently at this point,” he said. “But if I were handling this film, I would definitely be very nervous at this point. It’s a difficult story line to communicate…the biggest problem they have is communicating that. But it’s not over until it’s over.”
“I don’t have any delusion that this movie is going to be a colossal blockbuster, but you’ve got to watch the numbers every day,” a seasoned box-office analyst said Friday morning. “If the numbers don’t move after this weekend, they’re in trouble. If they do move, they’ll be fine.”
Two days ago an executive from a marketing boutique agency said, “What’s making me happy about Kingdom of Heaven is that it seems to have a solid older audience, which means it’s the kind of film that won’t drop a lot. People are going to go to it over a period of weeks, and interest among the four quadrants — young males and females and older males and older females — is averaging about 39, which is fairly good. So I don’t think you can count ’em out.”
“Right now, this movie is positioned somewhere in between where Gladiator, King Arthur, Troy and The Last Samurai were,” said Sherak. “This movie is really about Ridley Scott. The question is, will it have any heat going into the marketplace next week? It isn’t Gladiator, but right now the numbers are solid.”
A veteran marketing executive disagrees. He says the film “is an ill-conceived project and it stars Orlando who? Think of Master and Commander without Russell Crowe. The title is lousy, the ending doesn’t work, the creative materials don’t tell you anything, they don’t have an advance-review campaign underway, it sounds like a three-snore picture and I’m telling you that the Fox people are worried sick.”
It was suggested during research on this story that I examine “comparables” to get an idea how Kingdom of Heaven is doing compared to the awareness and interest levels in Gladiator, King Arthur, Troy and The Last Samurai one week before their respective openings.
The figures come from a private industry tracking service called Cinesys, which provides its data to clients through National Research Group (NRG).
Based on telephone polling, it measures levels of unaided awareness (i.e., people knowing about a film without being told what its title is), general awareness, definite interest, and whether or not seeing this or that film is a first-choice selection.
As of today (Friday, 4.29), one week before opening, Kingdom of Heaven‘s unaided awareness is at 4%, general awareness is at 65 %, definite interest is at 40 % and 7% of the respondents called it a first-choice selection.
A marketing guy says, “One week from the opening and a 7% first choice for a movie of this cost and stature is toilet time, no matter how you look at it.”
One week before its 7.7.04 opening, King Arthur‘s unaided awareness was 4%, general awareness was at 76%, definite interest was at 48%, and 6% called it a first-choice selection. I don’t have the whole spreadsheet before me, but the IMDB says that King Arthur took in just over $51 million domestic.
The next three films had big stars in the lead role, so take these comparisons with a grain of salt.
One week before its 5.14.04 opening, Troy‘s unaided awareness was 17%, general awareness was 84%, definite interest was at 59%, and 18% called it a first-choice selection. Troy took in $133 million in the U.S., but the foreign totals were at least double that.
One week before its 5.5.00 opening, Gladiator‘s unaided awareness was 6%, general awareness was 75%, definite interest was 44%, and first choice was at 13%. It ended up with about $187 million domestic and a very healthy overseas gross.
One week before its 12.5.03 opening, The Last Samurai‘s unaided awareness levels were at 9%, general awareness was 81%, definite interest levels were at 42%, and first choice was at 6%. It was a groaner, but it wound up making $111 million domestic.
One way to build up interest in a high-profile film is to run advance rave reviews from major critics or get Time or Newsweek to run a feature story a week or two out. This hasn’t happened.
A friend tells me he heard a Kingdom of Heaven radio ad this morning that used a plug from CNN talk-show host Larry King. If that isn’t a sign of trouble, I don’t know what would be.
I disagree with the marketing veteran’s notion that Kingdom of Heaven ‘s ending doesn’t work.
I’ll repeat what I said in my 4.18 column: “Has there ever been a big expensive film about warring armies in which one side didn’t triumph absolutely? In which the loser wasn’t totally beaten down and slaughtered?
“I felt amazed and lifted up when this didn’t manifest…when life and sanity, in effect, is chosen over death and fanaticism.
And I think Orlando Bloom acquits himself in the lead role. Grimy and unshaven, he stands up and shoulders his responsibility like a man.
In the previous piece I called Heaven “a textural masterpiece” and “a big-canvas historical drama that dares to be different. It’s a complex and unusual thing… and what got me is the beauty of the brushstrokes. That and the avoidance of the usual usual.”
I’m seeing it again tonight and I`m looking very much forward to this. I only wish more people felt the same way.
Hold On…
There’s some kind of confusion about whether Focus on the Family film critic Bob Waliszewski is leading some kind of San Juan Hill charge against Kingdom of Heaven. It’s been suggested by Fox publicity sources that John Harlow of the London Times may not have it right, but I’m not sure either way because I can’t reach him.
In any case Fox sent me a statement from Bob Smithouser, editor of a site called Plugged In, which casts doubt upon the Waliszewski angle:
“Due to one journalist’s recent misrepresentation of Bob Waliszewski’s comments regarding the new Ridley Scott film Kingdom of Heaven, some people have been misled to believe that Focus on the Family is rallying forces against the movie. That’s simply not true.”
“Mr. Scott’s film about the Crusades actually deserves credit for carefully avoiding the wholesale vilification of either Christians or Muslims. While people of faith may object to individual moments, statements or characters in Kingdom of Heaven, the movie is not extreme or malicious, and we are content to let it succeed or fail on its own merits.”
This has no bearing on the marketing data aspects of my lead article about Kingdom of Heaven. I could rewrite the damn thing and just cut out the right-wing stuff at the beginning, but it’s easier to do it this way…for now.
Crop Calls
I absolutely swear to God there’s a great-looking Warner Home Video DVD of Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957) hitting stores a week from Tuesday (5.10).
It has terrific monochrome values, I mean…sharp and super-clarified and almost color-like in their fullness.
There’s only one problem: WHV technicians have cropped the image too tightly and presented it in what looks to me like a 1.85 (or 1.78) to 1 aspect ratio, with too many hairdos and foreheads sliced into for no reason.
A Face in the Crowd was photographed by Harry Stradling, who started out in the 1920s, shot A Streetcar Named Desire and ended his career working on a string of ’60s Barbra Streisand movies, including Funny Girl and Hello Dolly.
A scene from John Frankenheimer’s The Train, presented in more-or-less correct 1.66 to 1 aspect ratio on the MGM/UA Home Video DVD. Notice the sense of visual balance and breathing space around everyone’s head.
An early scene from Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd, presented with an overly severe aspect ratio (seemingly 1.85 to 1) on an upcoming (5.10) Warner Home Video DVD. Notice the top of the frame scissoring into Andy Griffith’s pompadour.
Trust me when I say that old-fashioned guys like Stradling never used the top of the frame to crop into people’s heads, unless there was an emotional or compositional point to be made by doing so.
DVDs of almost all non-Scope movies shot in the 1950s and ’60s should be presented with 1.66 to 1 aspect ratios. I don’t care if the dp on a certain ’50s or ’60s film composed the shots with an expectation that 1.85 aperture plates would be used in theatres (because 1.85 was being used back then) — just use 1.66 and don’t think about it and don’t get creative and just shut up.
That is, except for special-dispensation films like Shane and Dr. Strangelove, which look much better when presented with a full-frame aspect ratio of 1.33 or 1.37 to 1.
MGM/UA Home Video’s DVD of John Frankenheimer’s The Train does it right. There’s a perfect sense of balance and proportion in every shot, and here are no scenes with anyone’s hair or forehead sliced into except when this kind of shot is appropriate and intended.
Face-Off
On Tuesday afternon I saw a DVD of Paul Schrader’s Exorcist prequel flick, which has been titled as Dominion: A Prequel to The Exorcist. Warner Bros. will release it on May 20, and it’s about friggin’ time.
Do I have to recount the whole Exorcist mishegoss over the last two or three years? Are there people who haven’t read about Morgan Creek’s James Robinson shelving the Schrader because he felt it wasn’t scary or pea-soupy enough, and then hiring Renny Harlin to shoot a slicker, aimed-at-the-youth-market version, blah blah?
Stellan Skarsgard (r.), star of Dominion: A Prequel to The Exorcist, and costar Billy Crawford (l.) in burning demonic possession mode.
The story of the Schrader version, which was shot between late ’02 and early ’03, coming back from the dead and finding release is in this week’s Entertainment Weekly , in a “News and Notes” article by Missy Schwartz.
What I have to say may not muss your hair and knock you out of your chair, but it’s the truth. Schrader’s version is the better film.
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By that I mean smarter and more grounded and being actually about something. It’s one of Schrader’s most thematically satisfying films, and there’s a caring and compassionate tone in the third act that feels unusual coming from the writer of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Hardcore and American Gigolo.
Okay, it has a couple of lumpy elements (one or two CG shots that don’t quite cut it, a lead female performance by Clara Bellar that feels stiff and awkward), but nothing to throw you off the rails.
The Schrader isn’t as juiced as the Harlin and it doesn’t have Izabella Scorupco (who has, for me, a close-to-breathtaking shower scene in the latter), but the Schrader is so much fuller and richer and more rooted than the Harlin it’s not even funny. It’s an actual movie, as opposed to a thrill-ride reel.
And the star of both films, Stellan Skarsgard, delivers a tenderer, more expressive performance in the Schrader version. His acting actually left me feeling emotional allegiance and admiration for a Catholic priest character, which I frankly haven’t gotten from any theatre-viewed film since…well, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist .
When I see a priest in a movie, I usually think “pederast alert!” or “okay, here comes the obligatory guy-who-doesn’t-get-it” or something along these lines. Schrader’s film manages to punch through all this and come up with a real hero in Skarsgard’s Lankaster Merrin, a Dutch priest who will eventually grow old and turn into Max von Sydow and meet up with Linda Blair and die of a heart attack in her refrigerated bedroom.
I saw the Schrader after watching Harlin’s Exorcist The Beginning, which came out last August and hit the DVD shelves on 3.1.05. I never bothered to see the Harlin, and I probably wouldn’t have even rented it on DVD if it hadn’t been for the arrival of the Schrader.
I have to say that I half-liked the Harlin…at first. Because it’s so beautifully photographed (by the great Vittorio Storaro, who also shot the Schrader version) and because it has that expensive texture and accelerated rhythm and feeling of sublime polish that big-budget films always have because people are somehow comforted by them (as I was myself, to a limited extent).
But it gradually gets worse and worse (i.e., stupider, tackier, more desperate) and by the time it’s over it’s hard not to hate it.
The Harlin is a better cheap-high movie than the Schrader, granted, but in what kind of perverse universe do we applaud cheap highs?
If you go to the Schrader saying, “Okay, I want to see some really cool stuff I can talk about with my friends later on,” you may be disappointed. In fact, I was a tiny bit disappointed…at first. But it gets better and better, and by the time it’s in the home stretch it’s paying off on a fairly profound level.
There are loads of similarities between the two films, and a few key differences.
The Schrader takes place in 1947. The Harlin happens in 1949. Don’t ask why. Even Schrader, whom I spoke to this morning, says he doesn’t have a clue.
Both films are about how Merrin re-connects with his belief in God and the righteous scheme of things after losing faith in just about everything after enduring a horrible Sophie’s Choice-like incident during World War II.
A German officer (played by the same actor in both films) is threatening to kill a large group of Dutch villagers if someone doesn’t confess to killing of a German soldier. He orders Merrin, the local Catholic priest, to select the guilty party…only one person at first, and then, after Merrin initially refuses, ten.
Schrader’s film begins with this episode, and is much more psychologically intriguing (by the virtue of being better written) than it is in the Harlin film, which flashes back to this episode in piecemeal fashion.
The Harlin film is totally shameless in having the German officer shoot an innocent little girl in the head. The Schrader isn’t any less traumatic than Harlin’s version, but it doesn’t feel like it’s exploiting a terrible situation.
Establishing title card in the Harlin version…
..and in the Schrader film.
The main story line of both films is about Merrin facing fundamental evil during an archeological dig in Kenya, where an ancient cathedral is being excavated…along with some long-buried demonic forces.
This unholy emergence not only forces Merrin to eventually confront a living devil, but to rediscover his lost faith…mainly, obviously, because it’s the only weapon that will work.
The Schrader is much more layered and ambivalent in some ways about the way native Africans regard the emissaries of Christianity. Some characters feel that Christianity is a bringer of a kind of plague. There is one male character, embittered about losing his son, who picks up a framed painting of Jesus Christ at one point and smashes it on a desk and then throws it to the ground.
And yet the conclusion of Schrader’s film is one of the most spiritually centered I’ve ever seen. Skarsgard’s Merrin is standing tall and firm and fully resolved about who he is and what he needs to do as a priest in order to fight evil. Merrin is also a priest again at the end of Harlin’s film, but the undercurrent isn’t as strong.
There’s a female doctor in the Schrader film played by Pellar. The doctor in the Harlin version is played by Scorupco, perhaps not in a fully believable way (female doctors are rarely this attractive, in my experience) but she’s still a better actress that Pellar. And her slightly-older-fashion-model, eastern-European quality (she’s Polish-born) is highly stimulating.
The great Izabella Scorupco in Harlin’s Exorcist: The Beginning
Scorupco’s breasts are (or should be) objects of sincere religious worship. They require abasement and groveling on the church floor. They made me feel born again, or do I mean newly born? Harlin deserves full credit for getting her shower scene just right.
Gabriel Mann plays a young and ardent Catholic priest in the Schrader version, but he is replaced by a somewhat less passionate, altogether less reliable priest, played by James D’Arcy in the Harlin.
There’s a local native guy named Chuma (played by Andrew French in both) who is Merrin’s closest and frankest ally. He seems more of a typical secondary character in the Harlin film, and a more intriguing and layered fellow in the Schrader version.
The Harlin film has a young African boy of about nine or ten falling victim to demonic possession. The possession host in the Schrader is a 20-something character named Cheche, played by pop star Billy Crawford. Sickly and spindly at first, his demonic inhabiting doesn’t turn him into a Linda Blair-type monster but an androgynous-like Hindu God figure with his physical maladies gone and his personality warped by ego, ferocity and manipulation.
Painting of Satan as it appears on buried cathedral walls in Harlin’s version.
Billy Crawford in Satan mode in Schrader’s film.
This is far, far more interesting than the usual possessed by Beelzebub or the demon Pazuzu or Izusu crap in the Harlin version.
On the DVD I saw, the Schrader version looks like it was shot in 1.85 (i.e., standard Academy ratio) and the Harlin version is clearly framed in 2.35 to 1.
Schrader said that his version was actually shot in Univision, a system devised by Stroraro which has a wider aspect ratio than 1.85, and will be projected in theatres as Scope.
Schrader’s is more political than Harlin’s in the character of some British troops. They are portrayed as seriously belligerent pissers in his version but they barely figure in the Harlin film, except for the suicide of a certain officer character. (He shoots himself in the mouth in both films.)
Skarsgard seems to weigh a bit more in the Schrader version. He might be ten or fifteen pounds lighter in the Harlin film. His hair might be a touch blonder and he even seems a bit tanner.
Slightly fuller-faced Sarsgard as he appears in Schrader’s film…
..and as he appears in Harlin’s.
The pacing of the Schrader film has been slowed down. “I wanted to make it feel like an older film,” Schrader told me, “rather than follow the typical pace of another jacked-up, pumped-up horror film.”
Schrader was contractually obliged to keep his yap shut last year before the Harlin film opened, but the gloves are off now.
“I saw in the Harlin film every bad idea that I had fought off,” Schrader told me. “Every bad Jim Robinson idea that I rejected, re-surfaced in the Harlin film, so I think the issue of true authorship is pretty clear.”
Schrader’s film cost about $30 million; the Harlin cost another $50 million. The total domestic gross for the Harlin as of last November was about $42 million. I don’t know what it’s made worldwide and on DVD, but probably another $50 or $60 million, at least, and maybe a lot more.
Would the Schrader film have earned as much? I doubt it. It’s not a mass-audience film. But when it’s over, you know you’ve had some nutrition. The Harlin makes you feel like you’ve just wolfed down a Big Mac and some fries.
Dutch villager-killing German officer as he appears in Schrader’s film…
…and as he appears in Harlin’s version.
And of course, people like junk food. They know Big Macs are mostly chemicals and ground-up noses and ears and hooves and fatty sauces and most people don’t care. They just want the rush, and guys like James Robinson knows this.
By all means see the Schrader when it opens, but the more interesting thing to do is to watch these Exorcists prequels in tandem on DVD, like I did yesterday. Robinson and Warner Bros. should have put them both out simultaneously in theatres, a plan I suggested in this column on 8.11.04.
I quoted film critic and essayist David Thomson in that particular column. At one point he attempted a reading of why Schrader, who has never been and never will be a horror film kind of guy, took the deal to make the Exorcist prequel in the first place.
“There had to be an understanding on Paul’s point of view what a troubled route he was taking,” Thomson said. “He must have known what problems he was in, and I guess he took a gamble that they would argue it and change it a bit, and then let it go. I assumed he had made a bargain with himself that he could do [this film] to please himself and Morgan Creek at the same time.
Billy Crawford in third-act scene from Schrader’s Dominion.
“I don’t know why they hired him,” Thomson continued. “It must have been clear in the script there were not great torrents of vomit.” Thomson saw a version of Schrader’s cut early on, and said in the piece that it “didn’t really seem like a continuation of the Exorcist franchise, and to that extent one could foresee trouble. Schrader had made a film about spiritual isolation…a study in a crisis of faith.”
Except it’s not a troubling experience to watch. Okay, the first part is, a tiny bit, but you get past that soon enough, and then it gathers force and it ends like gangbusters.
Schrader’s film may not work for your 15 year-old son or nephew, but unlike 97% of the horror films cranked out these days, it has an actual undercurrent. It’s a film about a spiritual tug-of-war by a guy who has written and directed more films about spiritual (and often volatile) conflict than anyone else I can think of.
If you don’t believe me or you’re not sure, click on Schrader’s IMDB page and read his credits.
Design for Flying
We’ve all seen that Man of Steel get-up that Brandon Routh will be wearing in Bryan Singer’s currently-rolling Superman Returns (Warner Bros., 6.30.06). And Movie City News recently ran a photo created by some fanboy site with a more routinely designed outfit, which is obviously meant as a suggestion.
The message, which I sense is probably endorsed by a good number of those who are jazzed about the Superman mystique and are looking forward to the film, is that Singer not do to Superman what Joel Schumacher did to Batman with the ass closeups and those pointy nipples on the chest plate.
The Singer suit uses burgundy instead of traditional fire-engine red for the shorts, cape and boots, and has Routh wearing hot go-go dancer bikini briefs instead of the standard gym shorts that Chris Reeve used to tool around in.
The fanboy designer, whomever he or she is, will eventually learn to live with the burgundy, but he/she obviously doesn’t like that bikini shit. The alternate design is pure D.C. Comics and straight out of the 1930s (or 1950s, a la George Reeve). The fanboys can see what’s going down and…well, draw your own inferences.
Of course, the boat has sailed and whatever kind of Superman Routh is going to be (and whatever his suit may end up conveying), it’s a done deal and the fanboys will have to make their calls as they see ’em.
Singer gave the X-men movies a certain dimension, I think, by subtly portraying the sense of social apartness that mutants feel in terms that any socially aware gay guy could relate to. I’m not saying this was overt, but it was there.
Remember that hilarious Roger Avary riff that Quentin Tarantino acted in Sleep With Me about the subtext of Tom Cruise’s Maverick character in Top Gun? “Go the gay way, go the gay way…you can ride my tail,” etc.?
I used this to mess with Jerry Bruckheimer and the late Don Simpson during a Crimson Tide junket interview about ten years ago. I told them, “Guys, you’re missing out on a whole marketing angle here. You should do an Advocate cover story and talk about the gay subtext in all your films, starting with the submarine in Crimson Tide.”
Monster Talk
“Your source wasn’t lying about Monster-in-Law being a hit waiting to happen.
“Unless the anti-Lopez sentiment keeps the crowds away, it should be a hit. I saw it this morning, and the audience went nuts for Jane Fonda’s wonderfully whacked-out performance as Viola Fields, a Barbara Walters type who loses her grip when she’s replaced on her talk show, ‘Personal Intimacy,’ by a ditzy hottie.
“The movie seemed to strike an especially strong chord with women who might have endured similar situations in their own lives.
“Still reeling from her abrupt fall from grace, Viola freaks when her son, a doctor (Michael Vartan, whose role is so perfunctory we never really even learn what his specialty is), proposes to Charlie (Lopez), a dogwalker/yoga instructor/aspiring designer, who also works as a temp in a doctor’s office.
“Viola throws the couple an engagement party and invites numerous celebrities and diplomats, just so she can introduce her future daughter-in-law with ‘this is Charlie — she’s a temp!’
“For those in the audience who have fantasized about seeing J.Lo humiliated, insulted and hassled, most of the rest of the film is going to be a delight. Wanda Sykes also got more than a few laughs as Viola’s put-upon assistant, who is caught in the crossfire between Viola and Charlie.
“Monster-in-Law is not a comedy classic, but it’s good fun and an excellent reminder of how sharp and funny Fonda can be.” — James Sanford.
Heads Will Roll
The stand-out thing about The Ax, the new Costa-Gavras satire that opened the San Francisco Film Festival on Thursday night (4.23), isn’t that it’s utterly black. That’s obvious and easily digestible from the get-go. We’re used to this, in any case.
The money element for me — the selling point — is that it’s so bracingly dry. And tightly plotted and suspenseful. And the fact that it never quite tips into being a reassuring “comedy.”
The Ax director and co-writer Costa-Gavras, producer (and wife) Michele Ray-Gavras during reception at home of Frederic Desagneaux — Friday, 4.22.05, 7:10 pm.
That in itself means a lot of people are going to find it a little too cool for their liking. This would be short-sighted of them, of course, because what Costa-Gavras has accomplished here is a very impressive balancing act.
The lead character, a kind of cold-blooded killer, could have been repulsive or at least alienating if the director’s mood and attitude had been off just an inch or two off. The Ax is lightly, ironically, mordantly humorous…and at the same time needling and nerve-wracking.
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If you’ve seen The Corporation (which recently came out on DVD in a great two-disc package), you know the bedrock theme is that corporations are psychopathic. The Ax, which is taken from a 1997 Donald Westlake novel, flips this over and asks, what if a guy in a tough financial spot acted with the same win-at-all-costs, social-mores-be-damned attitude of a typical corporation?
What if an out-of-work guy, in other words, decided to increase his chances of finding a new job by killing the guys who appear to be his chief competitors?
Bruno Davert (Jose Garcia), 41, is a former top-level executive at a French paper mill who’s been fired (along with several hundred others) because the company decided to go with cheaper labor in another country. He hasn’t found a new job in over two and a half years, but he’s got his eye on a position at a big paper company called Arcadia.
The only thing (or things) standing in his way, he figures, are six or seven unemployed guys whose qualifications are as good if not better than his own. So he decides one day to eliminate them. He turns out to be a sloppy hit man, but he’s persistent and gets the job done.
Then the cops come knocking because they’ve noticed that a string of murders all involve male victims who worked for paper companies. And then the screws tighten further.
The twists and turns that follow make it a natural thing to root for Bruno, despite his constant murdering. There are few things in a drama as unnerving or even surreal as a truly sympathetic fiend. The Ax isn’t exactly “realistic” — the slightly arch and aloof tone underlines this — but it’s real enough to sink in and feel like something that’s part of our world.
Costa-Gavras seems to be saying to his audience, “Go a little easy on this guy. He may be killing one innocent victim after another, but he can’t find work and he’s really hurting and so he’s not really that bad. In fact, he’s almost blameless. If you want to blame someone, blame the corporations…blame globalism.”
The final irony of this film is that Bruno, his story and the underlying morale are not extreme elements. Every character, everything that happens is presented in moderate terms.
Bruno is a basically moral, considerate, middle-class family man who has been pushed into a state of almost animal-like ferocity. And yet he crosses the line as discreetly as he can manage, and then he is the recipient of incredible luck, and things finally work out. It’s all very neat and tidy.
The more I think about The Ax, the more I’m convinced it’s Costa Gavras’ best film — the most focused and most satisfying — since Missing (’82).
I respected his last film, Amen, which was based on The Deputy, a play about Vatican immorality during World War II, but I wasn’t blown away by it.
The Ax is certainly more assured than Mad City , Costa-Gavras’s 1997 film that was also about an average guy (John Travolta) pushed to desperate acts after losing his job.
The Ax joins a group of films that have come out over the last two or three years about the effects of corporate-think upon average middle-class people.
The most respected of these among elite film critics is Laurent Cantet’s Time Out, about a middle-aged husband and father who embarks on a massive charade in order to hide from his family the fact that he’s been laid off.
I’m not a huge fan of this film, personally. I respected it but I vaguely hated it. I felt drained by the passively dull and pig-eyed main character and the oppressive lethargy that seemed to seep out of the film at every turn.
There was also Cantet’s Human Resources, which portrayed the scruples of a young white-collar comer who finally decides to reject the rules of the game.
My favorite so far has been Jean-Marc Moutout’s Violence des Echanges en Milieu Tempere, which I saw at the Locarno Film Festival in the summer of `03. The title roughly translates into Violent Changes In The Workplace, although the English title is Work Hard, Play Hard. It was never distributed in the U.S. or even, as far as I know, put out on DVD.
I wrote back then that “as a portrait of what it means to be an agent of icy efficiency in a heartless business scheme, it’s one of the most riveting and quietly unsettling moral tales I’ve seen in a long while.”
Streets of San Francisco
San Francisco Film Festival Executive Director Roxanne Messina Captor receiving a Chevalier Order of Arts and Letters medallion from French Consul General Frederic Desagneaux — Kabuki Theatre, 4.22.05, 8:12 pm.
San Francisco Film Festival programmer and Telluride Film Festival kingmaker Tom Luddy (l.) and the festival’s French cinema programmer Michel Ciment at an outdoor opening night party for 48th annual San Francisco Film Festival at Girhardelli Square.
The great Bobby Yang on violin during a performance of a four-piece quasi-jazz group at VIP lounge at Ghirardelli Square.
A jazz-lite group performs during Thursday night’s outdoor opening-nighter at Ghirardelli Square.
In north-facing living room of the home of Frederic Desagneaux, French Consul General of France, during 4.22 reception, at 7:20 pm.
Fine Madness
It’s out about eight months too late but there’s no sense crying over spilt milk and it doesn’t really matter anyway, because Nicholas Jarecki’s The Outsider is a surprisingly strong film.
It doesn’t simply capture the essence of director-writer James Toback in all the right ways (smartly, perceptively, humorously), and I don’t mean to imply that doing this alone would be some kind of marginal accomplishment.
I know Toback personally, and can say with some authority that Jarecki gets all the right quotes and insights and whatnot, and determines the measure of one of the nerviest and most relentless uber-mavericks in the film business today.
I’ve said several times in this column over the last five or six years that I admire Toback for his wit and smarts and maverick spirit. I’m especially taken by his moxie and tenacity in making his films his own way.
Harvey Keitel, James Toback during shooting of Fingers some 27 or 28 years ago.
And with one exception, I really like his movies. I loved Two Girls and a Guy and Black and White. I was even okay with most of Harvard Man. The irony is that the one Toback film I’m not terribly keen on is When Will I Be Loved?, the making of which is the focus of Jarecki’s doc.
But even a second- or third-tier Toback film is worth seeing, I feel, because of the aliveness of the personality behind it. Go to Jarecki’s site for The Outsider and listen to Toback’s comments during a radio interview with Joe Franklin, and you’ll have a clue about what I mean.
The Outsider is showing this evening (Saturday, 4.23) as an attraction of the Tribeca Film Festival at the Regal Battery Park, at 8:30 pm. It’s also showing at the Pace Schimmel Center on Friday, 4.29, at 9 pm, and on Sunday, May 1st, at the Regal Battery Bark at 1:15 pm.
Toback made When Will I Be Loved? because his producer, Ron Rothholz, found a financier who would put up a few million to make a film for tax reasons, but Toback would have to shoot the whole thing in about three weeks’ time, and with almost no time to prepare.
A Manhattan-based relationship drama shot in a semi-improvised fashion similar to his Black and White, When Will I Be Loved? is a somewhat cynical, more-than-frankly-sexual drama that stars Neve Campbell, Fred Weller and Dominic Chianese.
(l.) The Outsider director Nick Jarecki, When Will I Be Loved? costar Neve Campbell at reception; (r.) Jarecki and Harvey Keitel.
It’s hard to make a really exceptional film, much less a good one, in three weeks’ time, especially if you’re working from a script that has only been generally blocked out and needs to be somewhat improvised, as was the case here. It says a lot for Toback’s fast footwork that When Will I Be Loved? turned out as well as it did.
In the view of Roger Ebert, Christian Science Monitor critic David Sterritt, Newsday‘s Gene Seymour and other front-line critics, it was more than a pretty good effort. But Toback and Rothholz had a seriously rough time finding a distributor, and for a while there it looked like it might have to go straight-to-video.
What gives Jarecki’s doc that extra dimension is watching Toback face resistance from distributors and perhaps (and I’m basically talking impressions here) start to wonder deep down about whether he’s played it right this time. There’s something about seeing a guy who’s usually very confident and even a bit of a boaster and a swaggerer go through anger, denial, bargaining, additional shooting, etc.
The irony is that When Will I Be Loved?, which was finally acquired by IFC Films, performed decently where it played, and the DVD has brought in about $5 million so far, which isn’t nothing.
I spoke to Jarecki a few days ago. He called himself “the new Leni Reifenstahl,” and I leave readers to interpret that one all on their own.
Neve Campbell (l.) and Toback on the set of When Will I Be Loved?.
He concurs that The Outsider‘s final act, in which Toback suffers his moments of doubt and pain, lend an extra dimension.
“The reality is that you make a crazy movie that doesn’t play by the rules and everybody says what the fuck is this? The reality is that he got hurt by the response to it. Jim makes his films up…and his personality in general is partially an example of how you have to be in the movie business, because he builds up a tremendous defensive wall.”
The talking-head admirers in The Outsider include Woody Allen, Robert Downey, Jr., Harvey Keitel, Mike Tyson, Neve Campbell, Norman Mailer, Brooke Shields, Barry Levinson, Robert Towne, Brett Ratner, Roger Ebert, Damon Dash, Woody Harrelson, Jim Brown, John Calley, Bijou Phillips, Jeff Berg, Dominic Chianese, and Power from Wu-Tang Clan.
We’ve all read George Bernard Shaw’s quote about how “reasonable men always try to adapt themselves to fit the world around them, while unreasonable men persist in trying to adapt the world to fit themselves, and therefore all progress is made by unreasonable men.” Or words to that effect. Take the point or not.
Doesn’t Matter
I don’t think it matters that much if some of the big-name critics are taking shots at Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter (Universal, opened 4.22). All that counts is whether it’s been smartly promoted and, more to the point, whether or not there’s an appetite out there for this level of sophistication.
But it’s a curious thing to see a film you absolutely know to be a smart, above-average thriller be hammered and picked apart by people who know the difference between crap and good-enough quality, and who seem to have a stick up their ass.
You may not come out of this movie weeping or needing a double Jack Daniels to calm your nerves, but you’d have to have a pissy attitude not to admit that it’s a totally assured,bump-free ride. Smooth and crafty and well-ordered, and no trouble to sit through at all.
Sean Penn, Nicole Kidman in Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter.
That sounds like damnation with faint praise. What I mean is, The Interpreter is a finely tuned engine. It’s a Bentley. Once it kicks in there’s no shifting in your seat or looking at your watch.
I’m a little perplexed by Eleanor Ringel Gillespie’s review in Friday’s (4.22) Atlanta Constitution. She calls it classy, well-honed, deftly organized…and then out comes the knife.
“As sleek and solid as a late ’50s Cadillac, The Interpreter is very much your father’s — perhaps, your grandfather’s — thriller,” she writes. “And that’s a good thing.”
Gillespie means that the kind of careful, exacting craft that Pollack put into making this film is a dying discipline. But she also knows that the notion of any movie being seen as appealing to fathers and grandfathers terrifies studio executives, agents, producers. She couldn’t have wounded Pollack more if she had literally stabbed him.
The Seattle Post Intelligencer‘s William Arnold is another wounding admirer: “Made with the intelligence, glossy production values and classic filmmaking technique that characterizes Pollack at his finest,” he calls The Interpreter “an elegant entertainment of the old school.”
Obviously there’s a consensus of opinion here. I even heard the term “old school” (or “old-fashioned”) from a guy who worked on the film, so I guess I’m in denial.
I suppose there are things in The Interpreter that feel a bit shop-worn. I just hate equating good craftmanship with “old-school.” Jesus, think of the implications.
Are they saying it moves too slow? They’re nuts. William Steinkamp’s cutting is about as brisk and economical in the service of this kind of complex story as anyone can expect, and it’s faster and punchier than the cutting Pollack used for his last New York thriller, Three Days of the Condor, which came out in ’75.
In all the important ways, The Interpreter strikes me as fully caught up in the here and now. It just doesn’t have that visual-energy-for-visual-energy’s-sake thing that a lot of 40-and-under directors love to put in their films. And the naysayers are telling me that’s a bad thing?
Is it really such a rickety, old-fashioned pleasure to enjoy careful strategic weaving of dozens of story strands that have to fit together just so and pay off in just the right way?
Are we saying that thrillers that don’t necessarily add up or which try to wallop their way past difficult plot points are the kind of films that younger paying audiences prefer?
I give up. I’m talked out on this film. The duel is over. It’s in the public’s hands now.
Saturday figures suggest The Interpreter will earn in the vicinity of $20 to $22 million this weekend. Not bad. Something tells me the hold factor won’t be all that great next weekend, but let’s keep our cynicism in check.
DVD Commentaries
I’ll be popping in some of the letters I got about this subject on Sunday morning. I don’t know why it’s taking me so long to put this column up, but I feel like I’m covered in gelatin and stuck in some kind of eerie slow-mo realm.
Absent Ace
“I recently came across the fantastic Billy Wilder film Ace in the Hole (re-released as The Big Carnival). Unfortunately, it’s only available on a rare VHS copy (I found it at Vidiots in Santa Monica) and the dialogue is out of sync for most of the film.
“You often use your column to promote films deserving of the deluxe DVD treatment and I think this one more than qualifies. This is a media satire, after all, that is possibly even more relevant today than when it was released.
“I was going to point to Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg’s A Face in the Crowd as another example of both a great media satire and a film criminally overlooked on DVD, but Amazon now shows that a DVD version will be release on May 10.
“Just thought I’d bring that to your attention. Do with it what you will.” — Chris Casper , Los Angeles, CA.
Wells to Casper: I love Ace in the Hole and yes, of course, it should be digitally restored and released on DVD. It’s not that bitter by today’s standards, although it was seen as overly so in 1951 when it was first released.
I’ve always loved Ace in the Hole‘s dialogue, which came from Wilder, Walter Newman and Lesser Samuels.
I adore that rant from Douglas’ newspaper reporter character about how he prefers those “four spindly trees” in front of Rockefeller Center over the vast wonders of nature commonly found in Hicksville because he can’t stand the hicks.
Jan Sterling to Douglas after an abusive verbal smack-down: “I’ve known some hard-boiled eggs in my time, but you’re twenty minutes.”
Room #501, Rex Hotel, 562 Sutter Street, San Francisco.
Schmoozers at Castro theatre prior to opening-night showing of the new Costa-Gavras film, The Ax (i.e., Le Couperet).
