Michael

Jaafar Jackson

I was pleasantly surprised by Antoine Fuqua's Michael. Expecting a hagiographic waxworks, I was never bored by the, for now, all-time grossing biopic. I suspect that even if Michael was terrible, it would have been a reasonable hit given the entertainer's still fervid fanbase. This is due to a discography that will appeal to tots, teens, and other music fans until the earth is obliterated and beyond. John Logan's script covers the years 1968 to 1988, so there is no decline. Logan and Fuqua do a good job of sketching Michael's main musical collaborators: drill-sergeant father Joseph (Colman Domingo), Barry Gordy ( Larenz Tate), and Quincy Jones (Kendrick Sampson). Those who are omitted are cited in the film's exhaustive end credits. The main omission, besides Michael's sex life or lack thereof, is Janet. She is not listed among the film's many executive producers named Jackson and is absent from the film. Nary a peep about her.

Given the restrictions inherent in an authorized biopic, Logan does a pretty good job at outlining the rise of a pop icon. The film has a propulsive rhythm to it, with Fuqua aligning the visual choreography in sync with the music. Logan has logically constructed his screenplay. Even the gaps in the narrative, the biggest leap is from 1971 to 1978, make some sort of sense. This leap serves to introduce Michael the young man (nephew Jaafar Jackson) as we say adios to Michael the boy (Juliano Valdi). The gap also eliminates a few speed bumps, like the shift from Motown Records to Epic and the film version of The Wiz, to the film's up, up and away trajectory. Joseph (deceased 2018) is the heavy of the film, though I think he was worse in real life, and, not surprisingly, Mr. Domingo threatens to run away with the film's acting laurels. However, the cast is uniformly excellent. Jaafar Jackson is not the disaster one feared and, in particular, moves as adeptly as his uncle. The filmmakers were wise to blend Jaafar's singing voice with Michael's, as the original was singular. I also appreciated the efforts of Nia Long, Miles Teller, KeiLyn Durrel Jones, Laura Harrier, and, playing another gross and comic record executive, Mike Myers. Fuqua keeps the cast loose limbed and focused.

By stopping the narrative in 1988, the picture avoids the Wacko Jacko lowlights like the accusations of pedophilia and his face falling off. The flick ends with the warning, "the story continues", but I don't think anyone is brave enough to tackle Michael 2. Fuqua and Logan plant the picture with cultural touchstones (Peter Pan, James Brown, The Three Stooges) that underpin Michael Jackson's legacy. As with Elvis Presley, that legacy encompasses all that is good, bad, and weird about American culture. Michael is not as contrary to the facts as such traditional Hollywood biopics as Night and Day. It does feature plastic surgery and Bubbles the chimp. However, Michael does not have the audacity to truly portray how weird the subject was. My fantasy version of Michael 2 would include the vignette provided by that undependable narrator Dr. Z (aka Dana Gould): Bubbles, exiled to an outdoor pen after becoming too big and violent to live in the mansion, hurls his excrement at handicapped visitors to Neverland Ranch.                          

Classe tous risques

Lino Ventura and Jean-Paul Belmondo

Claude Sautet's Classe tous risques is a superb Gallic gangster film from 1960.  It is a fluid genre film that upends some of the conventions of the genre. Lino Ventura stars as Abel Davos, a lifelong hood who we first meet in exile in Italy. He has a wife and two young sons and he yearns to return with them to France even though a death sentence hangs over his head there. In order to finance this move, Abel and his partner in crime, Raymond (Stan Krol), commit a daring daytime robbery in Milan. On the run from the Italian police now, Abel and Raymond hijack a small boat and try to sneak into France with Abel's wife and children in tow. They are met on the shore by gendarmes and a gunfight ensues which results in numerous deaths including that of Abel's wife and Raymond.

The opening thirty minutes of Classe tous risques are a terrific example of terse action cinema with a minimum of exposition and dialogue. Sautet admitted he modeled his style on the lean pursuit Westerns of Budd Boetticher, especially Seven Men From Now. Sautet and screenwriter José Giovanni based the screenplay on Giovanni's noir novel, but reworked the book. The film includes an omniscient narrator, but the narration is more spare and ironic than in the novel. Giovanni was quite a sinister figure and gleaned the source of this tale from a buddy in stir. He penned many a noir tale that ended up as films including Le trou, Le deuxième souffle, and Symphonie pour un massacre. Classes tous risques was Sautet's debut as a director. He had worked as an assistant director previously for such luminaries as Jacques Becker and Georges Franju. He had just filled in on a film after the director had been fired. Ventura had been the lead in that film and, impressed by Sautet, recommended him to Classe tous risques' producer.

After the shootout on the beach, the film changes tone somewhat and becomes a mournful meditation on friendship, or the lack thereof, and fatalism. Ventura's hangdog looks are perfect for a tale that limns an arc of decline. Abel has to hole up in Nice with his two young sons. I don't recall another noir that has its protagonist in such a predicament. Thus, Ventura gets to show two sides of his talent in this role. Ever since his film debut in Touchez pas au grisbi, Ventura, a former champion wrestler, had been stuck playing, as he put it, "gorilla' roles. He does get to show off this aspect of his talent in the film, dispatching a number of opponents with brute strength in striking, well-directed action scenes. However, Abel's scenes with his sons display a vulnerability and sensitivity heretofore unexplored. Sautet even coaxed spontaneous and believable performances from those kids. Abel knows that he must ditch the tikes, but needs help. He calls up associates from his old criminal days in Paris. They seem reluctant, but do eventually agree to hire an ambulance and a driver in order to squire him and his sons covertly to Paris.

Sandra Milo and Belmondo

The driver is named Eric Stark and is played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, on the verge of stardom. Retroactive advertising for this picture made him the co-lead, but this is Ventura's picture. Belmondo pops up forty minutes or so into the flick. Abel is initially suspicious of Stark, but bonds with him after finding out he was a friend of Raymond's. He doesn't even mind when Stark picks up a skirt named Liliane (Sandra Milo), an actress they witness being abused by her manager by the roadside. Ms. Milo was the girlfriend of the producer and was foisted on Mr. Sautet, but holds her own in sterling company. Maybe it was not so hard to appear to be turned on by Mr. Belmondo, then at the height of his beauty/ugliness. More importantly for the film, the cocky young bantam Belmondo has a great rapport with the taciturn bull Ventura. Stark proves a friend  when Abel needs it, for his former companions prove slippery indeed. Noted scene stealer such as Marcel Dalio and Claude Cerval etch a memorable rogue's gallery. Abel has his revenge, but it is muted, limited, and not passionate. It is served cold by a heart in winter. Abel has had enough and walks resignedly to his fate. He melts into a crowd, as if Sautet is saying: they walk amongst us. 

Even the smallest roles in this movie give it texture and bite: an old friend of Abel's who works in at a maritime museum, a bratty step-daughter of Dalio's fishy fence, and an innocent maid at Belmondo's hotel are all memorably drawn and executed. Sautet is not a particularly distinctive stylist, but his work does seize upon the world at large in all its breadth. If I had to type him it would be as an analytic objectivist like Otto Preminger. Which makes sense since Sautet like Preminger was feted by the Mac-Mahonists in Paris. Sautet had many ups and downs in his career. Classe tous risques was initially a flop, but has built up enough of a following to land in the Criterion Collection. When Sautet was not directing, he worked as a very successful script doctor, akin to Elaine May or Robert Towne in our country. He did leave us many excellent films that he directed himself including Max et les Ferrailleurs, Un cœur en hiver, Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud, and Classe tous risques.

Miroirs No. 3

Paula Beer

Christian Petzold's Miroirs No. 3 is another rewarding and disquieting expansion of the German writer/ director's oeuvre. At 86 minutes, it is a terse yarn with crisp and telling editing by Bettina Böhler. The film centers on Laura (Paula Beer), a depressed music student who we learn is studying in Berlin. Traveling through the countryside, displayed in the film in all its autumn finery, Laura and her boyfriend experience a horrible auto accident and the boyfriend is killed. Dazed after the crash, Laura is taken in by a seemingly kind older woman named Betty (Barbara Auer). However, it soon seems that Betty is the one in need of support.

I must warn the reader that I will now spoil the plot. Petzold does so himself, following Hitchcock's dictum that the audience will experience the thrill of anticipation if the audience knows a ticking time bomb is about to explode rather than just detonating a bomb without warning. At one point early in the proceedings, Betty calls Laura "Yelena", a slip of the tongue that told me and I'm sure many other viewers that Betty is using Laura as a daughter substitute. We soon meet Betty's husband and son who seem partially estranged from her. They both operate a slightly shady garage. Not much really happens except for unhealthy family dynamics until the son blurts out the truth about Yelena. There is a twisted sense of healing achieved for all concerned. Laura starts out being treated like a child by Betty who tucks Laura in like a toddler. When she ultimately learns the truth about Yelena, she acts outs like a teen. She ditches Yelena's wardrobe which Betty had given her and dons again the psycho grungy duck sweater she wore at the film's beginning. She leaves her temporary nest, as all children must do.  

I feel Miroirs No. 3 is an autumnal and ironic comedy, like Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry. This explains Beer's Mona Lisa smile in the final shot. In this bourgeois satire, the characters are too terse to communicate. The males tinker with their gadgets while the females have at least the balm of culture in the form of painting and music. There is no score per se, but this heightens our awareness of the film's use of songs. They range from Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons to Ravel, part of whose piano suite gives the film its title. The music expresses what the characters feel more that the feeble words they provide for one another. In some respects, this mirrors the formal intent of Petzold. This film is not one of his magnum opus masterpieces (which include Barbara, Phoenix, and Undine), but it is a first class étude. All the actors are superb and Hans Fromm's cinematography is as striking and unsettling as a Courbet.