The process that refines raw life into art is often necessarily harsh. And one thing that seems to work against good art or well-crafted entertainment is when the artist-filmmaker has chosen to absorb life from within the comfort of a protected membrane and is thereby absorbing less of the stuff that tends to inform and clarify and lead to some droppings of insight. It follows, therefore, that an artist who’s been through an especially rough and traumatic patch is on some level better positioned to create something richer and fuller than one who’s been gliding along on his own fumes.

Owen Wilson, Wes Anderson

Nothing too earthshaking in this, but it does, I believe, cast light upon the situation of Owen Wilson and his longtime collaborator Wes Anderson, as well as, accor- ding to Venice Film Festival reviewers, the “smug“, “airless“, “chilly,” “under glass” and “self-satisfied” element that colors The Darjeeling Limited (Fox Searchlight, 9.29), which Anderson directed and co-wrote and Wilson costars in.

Put bluntly and at the risk of sounding insensitive, Wilson’s recent attempted- suicide trauma may very well — in the long run, at least — make him a better artist, a better actor and a much funnier man. (Anderson’s comment during a Venice Film Festival press conference that the recovering Wilson has “been making us laugh” indicates an admirable rock-out attitude.) Lying crumpled at the bottom of a dark pit does wonders for your game if you can climb out of it. Ask any artist who’s been there.

Perhaps Wilson’s near-tragedy will rub off on his good pal Anderson (how could it not?) but what this obviously gifted director-writer with the carefully-tailored suits seems to desperately need — and his critics have been saying this for years, beginning with the faint disappointments of The Royal Tennenbaums — is to somehow climb out of his fastidiously maintained Wes-zone (i.e., “Andersonville”) and open himself up for more of the rough and tumble.

I’m not saying Anderson is necessarily leading a bloodless life (he’s very tough and exacting, and can get pretty damn angry when rubbed the wrong way). And I’m not suggesting that he try to become someone else. Wes has obviously found a highly developed style and a sensibility of his own, and it would be folly to veer away from this in any drastic way. (Jacques Tati was Jacques Tati, Luis Bunuel was Luis Bunuel, etc.) At the same time Anderson needs to…I don’t know, do something.

Maybe there’s no remedy. Maybe we’re all just stuck in our grooves and that’s that. What’s that Jean Anouilh line from Becket? “I’m afraid we can only do, absurdly, what it has been given to us to do. Right to the end.”

What do I know about all this? Not that much. But I know — remember — Wes a little bit, and I know people who know him.

Working with Wilson again on screenplays might help. (Although I’ve been told that Wilson’s writing-discipline issues may have gotten in the way of this in the past.) The general consensus seems to be that the somewhat stilted, self-enclosed qualities have seemed more pronounced in The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited, which Wilson didn’t co-write. Another thing to consider might be to focus more on two- or three-character stories (a la Rushmore) rather than ensembles.

Paul Schrader told me in an early ’80s interview that the two things that tend to kick your art up to the next level are (a) a jarring episode that turns your head around and reorders your thinking and (b) a mentoring by or a collaboration with someone you trust sufficiently to allow for experimentation and growth. Anderson has now had a taste of the former, and there’s nothing stopping him from at least attempting the latter.

A recently-published study in the Journal of Epidemial Community Health, compiled by researchers at the Center for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University, has determined that rock stars are more likely than other people to die before reaching old age — brilliant! “More than 1,000 British and North American artists, spanning the era from Elvis Presley to rapper Eminem, found they were two to three times more likely to suffer a premature death than the general population.” Nope, not a put-on.

“Arriving late in a movie confab like [Telluride], after days of standard film-fest death-and-degradation fare, a blithe-spirited confection like Juno has some odds in its favor when it comes to becoming a festival’s runaway popular hit,” EW/Popwatch‘s Chris Willman has noted. “But Jason Reitman‘s movie earned that unscientific honor here largely on merit, not just its unfair comedic advantage.

Jason Reitman, Diablo Cody

“Even coming down the mountain into the less mirth-deprived or oxygen-deficient environment of the multiplex later this year, Juno is still going to play like gangbusters. Fox Searchlight certainly thinks so. They recently made the decision to start rolling Reitman’s film out on December 14 — which, as screenwriter Diablo Cody says on her blog, ‘is not a messin’-around release date. It’s kind of a scary release date. It’s a we-believe-in-you release date. I believe in me, but I also believe in Crystal Light, so it seems my trust is easily won.'”

Here’s an audio interview with Reitman and Cody, recorded at Telluride.

So which films were upped, elevated and enhanced by showings at the Telluride and Venice film festivals (i.e., the first half of the latter), and which ones were dinged, damaged or dismissed?

The praise showered upon Joe Wright‘s Atonement at Venice has apparently put it into the running for the Best Picture Oscar race. (Although, as I’ve said, that status won’t be confirmed until Toronto reactions are fully absorbed and considered.) Sean Penn‘s Into The Wild flew pretty well at Telluride with just about everyone calling it Penn’s best film ever. And the pleasures (or is “contentments” a better word?) generated at Telluride by Jason Reitman‘s Juno is sending it into Toronto with a full head of steam.

The hard-to-classify trio of Woody Allen, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach took some lumps. Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream and Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited suffered severe Venice slapdowns. Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding didn’t fare very well at Telluride either.

Ang Lee‘s Lust, Caution, which played Venice, took some serious hits also.

Andrew Dominik‘s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford emerged as a hotly debated title although the vast majority offered ecstatic raves. Reactions to Brian DePalma‘s Redacted were sharply divided at both Telluride and Venice with a slight majority tipping negative.

Todd Haynes‘ I’m Not There is another title awaiting further discussion at Toronto, although the Telluride reactions seemed to elicit a fair share of half-and-halfs, whatevs and passive-aggressive chortles. Nobody I read or heard from was doing cartwheels, I can tell you that.

Julian Schnabel‘s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly picked up refrains of the deserved praise that came its way during Cannes, but Alison Eastwood‘s Rails and Ties pretty much went thud in Telluride.

The strongest buzz after Atonement was generated by the 20-minute Telluride reel of Paul Thomas Anderson‘s There Will Be Blood. Hard festival experience has taught time and again that reels can’t be trusted, of course, but that hasn’t curtailed expectations about this reportedly longish (155 to 160 minutes?) epic about greed and black gold (“really, really, really, really loosely based on Upton Sinclair‘s “Oil“, according to star Daniel ).

The ghastly incident that consumes Brian DePalma‘s Redacted — the real-life rape and murder of a 15 year-old girl and her family by U.S. troops in Mahmudiya, Iraq, in March 2006 — “was almost the exact same incident we [dramatized] in Casualties of War,” the filmmaker has told Variety‘s Anne Thompson. “You can’t tell the insurgents from the people they’re supposed to be protecting. In Casualties of War they were abducting a farm girl. There was the usual frustration trying to tell someone about it. It was impossible to get justice. Everyone wants it covered up and forgotten. I wanted to tell that story again, about Iraq.”

Profound sadness about the passing last night of 42 West publicist Robert Garlock, who’d “been sick for a while,” I was told this morning. A longtime PMK (and then PMK/HBH) veteran, Garlock joined 42 West in May 2005 as a partner and chief of the talent division. He’d personally repped Penelope Cruz, Uma Thurman, Clive Owen, Hilary Swank, Hugh Grant, Sigourney Weaver and Kate Winslet. He also helped guide campaigns on more than 40 feature films, including Pulp Fiction, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The English Patient and The Hours.

Robert Garlock, Uma Thurman

Andy Warhol once said “there’s nothing more middle-class than being afraid to look middle-class.” By the same token, in the realm of film columnists and critics there’s…now I can’t figure the analogy. I’m trying to say that if you’re afraid to sound downmarket and/or gut-level in your opinions, you’re lacking a certain degree of integrity.

Not that anyone is obliged to sound like Oscar Madison or Rufus T. Firefly or Roger Avary after three cans of beer in discussing new films, but most of us have these guys (or aspects of them) living inside us. And yet most high-end critics accept or at least recognize that they’re all obliged to express themselves in a manner that will be deemed “aesthetically correct” by their peers.

The secret to good writing is having the brass to begin a sentence with only a half-formed notion — and certainly without knowing exactly — what you’re about to put into words, but pushing ahead and writing it down anyway, knowing or at least trusting it’ll come out right in the end.

Did anyone go to the 3:10 to Yuma sneak last night? Obviously tens of thousands did. Reactions, intuitions, leg twtichings? Any insect antennae readings about how it played with the crowd? What about Russell Crowe‘s horse hearing his whistle 40 or 50 feet away over the chug-chug-chug of the locomotive engines, and then galloping alongside the train with a special lock-picking skeleton key between his teeth?

David Poland wrote this morning in the Hot Blog that “the big films at Telluride have been the big films that were expected to fill that need and will be, with a few additions, the big titles at Toronto as well: The Diving Bell & The Butterfly, I’m Not There, The Savages, Into The Wild and Juno.” Fine, but take Juno out of the equation and that’s a fairly elitist assessment.

From those with the ability to recognize impassioned, cliff-leaping filmmaking, Butterfly will win respect and applause even if the actual watching of it, in the final analysis, is somewhat akin to gentle root canal surgery….the dentist’s drill boring into your jaw as you’re filled with spirit-lifting, life-affirming thoughts, as well as ones about claustrophobia, straight-jackets and total body entrapment.

Into The Wild is Sean Penn‘s absolute best film, but the more you think about and read up on the real Chris McCandless the next day the more it starts to tick you off. I was impressed by Penn’s passion (and I love the ending), but I wasn’t persuaded that his take on McCandless reflects what really happened, or who McCandless really was. A must-see, naturally, but for a film to be “big” it has to generate serious excitement and emotional rapport.

The Savages is sad, smart and very well acted. But it’s drearier than shit — right away you’re saying to yourself, “Wow, excellent indie character piece but how much longer before it’s over?” It makes you half-wonder why Phillip Seymour Hoffman can’t hold on to his Capote weight. (Sorry for the ticky neurosis, but it bothered me.) Phillip Bosco‘s angry-old-man-with-dementia performance — “good” as it is — filled me with an urge to bail. “I’m not going to watch this guy spit saliva and groan about the end of his life for another hour or so,” I told myself. Then, thank God, he went away.

Everyone will, of course, need to see I’m Not There, but from what I’m reading and where I’m sitting it seems to have been pretty much written off as a loopy in-joke for Dylanologists. Not “written off” as in “don’t see it” as much as “Blanchett aside, don’t expect all that much.”

From the Venice Film Festival, The Independent‘s Gerry McNab reports that “many critics” who saw Woody Allen‘s Cassandra’s Dream yesterday declared it “feeble and dispiriting fare — the work of an old master in decline.”

McNab also calls it “a stuttering drama” that even conveys “a sense that cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and the composer Philip Glass [are] working at half-throttle.”

“No one [at the press conference inside the Venice Casino] picked up on the slack tempo of Cassandra’s Dream, its bizarrely genteel portrayal of London, (at times, the film resembles an episode of EastEnders) or its dramatic lacunae.

“When Allen came on stage in Venice’s Casino yesterday, he cut a strangely fragile and melancholic figure,” McNab writes. “Flanked by young British actress Hayley Attwell and the two males stars,. Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell, he sat there silently in his headphones, waiting for an interminable opening question from an Italian journalist to be translated into English. When he finally did speak, his voice sounded faint.

“In Italy, as in France, Allen is still adored. He is still the ‘maestro,’ even if his films are increasingly lacking in the comic zest and ingenuity that once characterised them.

“The response he was given in Venice yesterday was gentle and solicitous. No curve balls were thrown in his direction. It was as if a beloved elderly relative had come to town. Sure enough, there was at least one Italian journalist ready to stand up and congratulate him on his latest ‘masterpiece,’ seemingly oblivious to the fact that this is surely one of his weakest films.”

I’m not trying to be snarky or petty by suggesting a “separated at birth” thing. I’m only mildly suggesting (which is different than “asserting” or “declaring”) that there may be a variation on a genetic theme to be considered. Whatever.

James McAvoy, W.C. Fields

EW‘s Mark Harris has posted two dead-on reasons why people should see Charles Ferguson‘s No End In Sight, that infuriating doc (in a good way) that I’ve written about two or three times about how U.S. officials totally cocked up the Iraqi occupation and all but incited the insurgency with their outrageous bungling.

One is that “it’s made by someone who knows more than you do,” Harris writes, “so you’re guaranteed to come away from it smarter…[plus] the precision with which Ferguson lays out [the mistakes] is riveting.” And two, “the movie doesn’t fetishize outrage. It seems to have been made with the kind of calm focus that is bred by deep anger, but it always stays on mission. In an era of shout-first-ask-questions-later filmmaking, Ferguson’s frosty intensity is exciting.”