Max Manus

Aksel Hennie

Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg's Max Manus is a World War 2 film that was released outside of Norway as Max Manus: Man of War, presumably to draw in the action audience. The  2008 film revolves around Manus, Norway's most famous Resistance saboteur when it was under Nazi occupation. The film's structure is trifold. We witness Manus' exploits during the war, mostly scuttling German shipping. We also get a recurrent flashbacks of Manus' volunteer days with Finnish forces fighting off a Soviet incusion. These experiences left him deeply traumatized. Thirdly, we witness the pursuit of Manus by a slick and unrepentantly evil SS officer named Siegfried Fehmer who is well played by Ken Duken. The script by Thomas Nordseth-Tiller does a good job of delineating the doomed band of comrades that joined Manus to fight his country's occupiers. Even actors who only appear briefly, like Petter Næss and Ron Donachie as sensitive superiors, make an impression despite their brief screen time.

Though superior in its characterization than most wartime sagas, the film is better at delineating the nuts and bolts of the saboteurs' operations than fleshing out the film's parallel and ambivalent love stories. The two romantic tales have too many ellipses in their relationship arcs. The film limps to a conclusion with Manus an alcoholic suffering from PTSD. There are two scenes with Manus having visions of his dead comrades, one too many. Aksel Hennie is excellent at portraying Manus as hollowed out by his service to his country. Hennie has had continued success appearing in such international hits as The Martian and Sisu. The directors' acute sense of craft is best displayed in the action sequences which smoothly combine CGI with practical effects. Their skill gained them entrée into Hollywood, but their output has been polished but anonymous. This makes me think that what makes Max Manus a good, if not outstanding, genre flick, is the screenplay. Unfortunately, Max Manus must stand as Mr. Nordseth-Tiller's sole testament. He died of cancer in 2009. He was 28 years old. 

Wild Horse Nine

Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich

I was reasonably entertained by Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine, but have grown weary of the thematic and schematic repetition of his cinematic efforts. The man can write dialogue, especially duologues for men, but seems to think that history is psychopathology writ large. His male protagonists are invariably flawed and even, as in Wild Horse Nine, when they are authorized to enforce order, they live outside the law. The problem with Wild Horse Nine is that McDonagh uses the trappings of realism, with 70s period detail and music. to portray the CIA as cartoon villains. I've known CIA agents, even way back in the 1970s, and none of them dressed in the Starsky and Hutch castoffs that Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich don here. Malkovich is a 72 (!) year old cancer ridden agent who wants his younger partner (Rockwell) to ice him while they are taking a vacation on Easter Island. Malkovich is shooting morphine and his superior at the agency (Steve Buscemi) is a heroin addict.

A dark, wacky CIA then. Now I think the CIA is fair game for satire, but Wild Horse Nine boasts few genuine laughs. Malkovich does what he can, his gay cheese countries diatribe will probably win him an Oscar, but Burn After Reading is a funnier film. McDonagh over loads the film into a mythic tableau about Amerika. Malkovich's agent was not only involved with coups in Guatemala, Chile, and the Congo, but also oversaw the JFK assassination on the grassy knoll. This is over egging the pudding. Anyone who believes the CIA were competent enough to off JFK should brush up on their history. When we see Malkovich's estranged brother (Tom Waits), we find he is a hermit living amidst the splendor of, get ready for the over statement, Monument Valley. In a similar vein is the treatment of the wild horses on Easter Island. As in John Huston and Arthur Miller's The Misfits, the wild horses are some sort of half-assed statement about lost freedom, but what they really are is a metaphor too far.

That said I really enjoyed the interplay between Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. It is a pleasure. McDonagh doesn't write as well for women, but I appreciated the efforts of Parker Posey and Mariana di Girolamo. McDonagh facility with dialogue attracts stellar casts, but it seems like, in terms of cinematic output, he has been spinning his wheels since Seven Psychopaths.

The Currents

Isabel Aimié González Sola

Milagros Mumenthaler's The Currents is a riveting portrait of a woman's mental disorientation. Isabel Aimié González Sola plays Lina, a chic designer who we see receive an award for her work in the opening scene. She thereupon bins the ugly trophy (see above) and takes a leap off the nearest bridge into the Rhine. The authorities are not too concerned with her and deposit her back to her luxury hotel. Lina travels back to her home in Buenos Aires, but her husband, Pedro (Esteban Bigliardi) and daughter, Sofia, both sense that she is preoccupied and distant. Her able assistant Julia (Ernestina Gatti) also gleans Lina's disconnection.

Lina leads an enviable bourgeois life. The film's display of stylish shoes, dresses lipstick, make-up, and hair treatments stands in contrast to Lina's emotional desolation. Pedro is a bit dim emotionally, but is well intentioned and a doting father. His parents are fabulously wealthy, their home a veritable museum. Lina's lineage remains a mystery till well into the movie and when we finally meet Lina's mother, the audience has more than a clue in regards to the source of Lina's discontent. 

The film is stylish and knotty, but not overly so. As one of the film's characters puts it, there is enough "artifice to fill the void." A light house scene in which Lina blanks out while we see other characters revel in ecstasy and community seems too artsy-fartsy to me, but the film, on the whole, does a good job showing something that often seems invisible. Ms. Sola gives us one of the year's most multifaceted performances. The psychic terrain of Lina is mapped out by Mr. Mumenthaler using Ms. Sola's body. This meditation on the female form presents thanatos rather than eros looming. A brief glimpse of the expanse of Lina's hair across the back of a couch achieves a keening sense of horror and mortality. Highly Recommended.