Confess, Fletch

Jon Hamm

I had minimal expectations for Greg Mottola's Confess, Fletch, a mid to low budget comedy released with little fanfare last fall, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it to be one of the better American comedies of the 21st century. The film makes no great claim to social significance, hence the muted acclaim by critics, but I think it succeeds in what it sets out to do: evoke the screwball farces of the 1930s in which all characters are satirized and celebrated for their eccentricities. The mystery story frame of Confess, Fletch is as flimsy as the one in The Thin Man. The focus is on the characters in a farce in which the cops are as batty as the suspects.

Mottola and his collaborators have tailored this Fletch to their leading man, Jon Hamm, so the goofy disguises and pratfalls of the Chevy Chase films are absent. Hamm is not quite as idiotic as Chase was in the role, but is equally smug and clueless. It is a canny lead performance, much closer to the Fletch of Gregory Mcdonald's novels than the skit show schtick of Mr. Chase. Fletch's foil, Francis Xavier Flynn, is absent, but there are so many memorable supporting players in the film, he is not missed. Mottola's skill with his actors is evident in his best films, The Daytrippers, Superbad, and Adventureland, all featuring a host of memorable bit players. Ayden Mayeri and Annie Mumolo stand out, but there are no indifferent performances in Confess, Fletch. Mottola may not have much more to impart than a celebration of idiosyncrasy, but, as with Capra, Hawks, La Cava, McCarey et al, it is a comic style of madcap individualism that exudes humanism.

A Distant Trumpet

Suzanne Pleshette spices up A Distant Trumpet

Raoul Walsh's A Distant Trumpet feels like the last gasp of the classic Hollywood Western. Not only was it Walsh's final film, but it sits uneasily on the cusp of the revisionist Westerns that would ascend to dominance in the late 1960s and early 70s. Tentatively revisionist elements are creeping into this picture, protagonist Troy Donahue is sympathetic to the plight of Native Americans and even rejects the Medal of Honor to protest the government's treatment of the Apaches, but do not dominate. Indeed, they are significantly watered down compared to Paul Hogan's source novel. The film, released in 1964, feels more like the Westerns Walsh had been churning out since the silent days and, since audience attitudes were changing, it was out of synch with the times and a commercial failure.

Part of that has to do with Troy Donahue, a black hole of Sixties cinema who was soon facing oblivion as a film star. A worse actor than even Jeffrey Hunter or Tab Hunter, Donahue cripples whatever chance A Distant Trumpet has of succeeding dramatically. Donahue plays an Army officer fresh from West Point who is sent to an obscure fort in Arizona. There, he whips his ragtag soldiers into shape, fends off the Apaches and his fiance (Diane McBain) while falling for the wife of a fellow officer (Suzanne Pleshette). As usual, McBain is dull and Pleshette lively.

As an aside, the revisionist or post-Western swept aside the cobwebs which cling to many major studio Westerns of the Sixties. Included in these holdovers of the past, were the glammed up hair, make-up, and costumes that were predominate in Westerns prior to 1968. The men in most 1960s Westerns were never hairy enough. Troy Donahue in A Distant Trumpet looks like he is about to head out to the beach and hit some waves with Gidget. The hair helmets of the women are even more hallucinatory. Pleshette's hair looks like an unkempt B-52 with a gay 90's fall. 

Claude Akins

The chemistry between Donahue and his two leading ladies is zilch. Curious, since Donahue and Pleshette, who co-starred in 1962's Rome Adventure,  were about pledge their troth. Maybe not so curious, since their marriage lasted nine months. Claude Akins, very good as a scoundrel selling guns, whiskey, and painted ladies, sums up Donahue's screen presence by calling his character "a plaster saint". The other especially good performance is by Paul Gregory as a Tacitus quoting General, based on George Crook, who opts for a peaceful accommodation with the Native Americans.

I despise Max Steiner's bombastic score, another example of a Hollywood trope that had overstayed its welcome, but there are many pleasures to be found in this film. The visual sweep of Wash's storytelling is helped greatly by William Clothier's cinematography. A Distant Trumpet demands to be see on as big a screen as possible. The comic overstatement of Walsh's fight sequences are where he excels. He is much better at comic donnybrooks than John Ford, a director I revere. Compare the dance that turns into a fight here with the fight in the harbor in Gentlemen Jim or the brawl between fire brigades in The Bowery. Walsh's touch, his bonhomie, is ever present. As for Donahue, by 1964, his pin-up pictures had been replaced on walls by images of four lads from Liverpool. By 1968, he was bankrupt. 

I Dream of Jeanie

Bill Shirley and Eileen Christy

 Allan Dwan's I Dream of Jeanie, from 1952 , barely qualifies as a motion picture. A musical based, very loosely, on the life of Stephen Foster, I Dream of Jeanie consists largely of musical numbers with the barest bones of a plot. The narrative is chiefly concerned with Foster (Bill Shirley) shifting his romantic allegiance from one sister (Muriel Lawrence) to another (Eileen Christy). It's the kind of movie in which Foster, who has been tinkering all film with what will become "Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair", breaks from the embrace of his lady, says "Now I've got it", and starts warbling the title track as the closing credits appear. 

I Dream of Jeanie was an attempt by Republic Pictures to piggyback on the success of MGM's Showboat cheaply by using a public domain score. Ads for the Republic film bore the legend, "Presenting the Immortal Songs of Showboat Days". The leads of the picture all had scant film careers and were more noted for their singing abilities. Production values are minimal and Republic's Trucolor, a cut-rate Technicolor, causes the film to resemble a series of garish tintypes.

I Dream of Jeanie has been absent from television, chiefly because of the blackface numbers recreating the stage show of Christy's Minstrels. This minstrel act, devised by Edwin Christy, was the principle force in popularizing Foster's songs during the 1840s and 50s. Ray Middleton offers the film's best performance as Christy, capturing his grandiloquent bravado. Middleton was operatically trained, but ended up on Broadway in Annie Get Your Gun and South Pacific. 

The film cops to Foster's lack of business acumen, but avoids darker aspects of his story, particularly his alcoholism. As an actor, Bill Shirley is not up to the limited challenges of his role. He does have a wonderful singing voice and it was the primary reason Herbert Yates, Republic's head honcho, signed him to a studio contract before the US's entry into World War 2. Shirley was most successful offscreen. He was the voice of the Prince in Disney's Sleeping Beauty and dubbed Jeremy Brett's singing voice for "On the Street Where You Live" in My Fair Lady.

Dwan does provide a number of stirring moments: Shirley singing "Beautiful Dreamer" under his beloved's window, a brawl in a tavern with a dirt floor, Shirley floundering in despair on the banks of the Ohio river, the minstrels marching into Natchez. Not enough moments, though, to redeem the endless and anodyne parlor trilling. For those interested in the real Stephen Foster, I heartily recommend Ken Emerson's superb biography, Doo-Dah!. 

Scream (2022)

             

Matt Bettinelli and Tyler Gillett's Scream is a workmanlike reboot of the Wes Craven franchise. The screen writers, James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick, have wisely tried to shift the emphasis of the franchise (that is why there is no Scream 5, yet) by introducing a new generation of suspects and victims to the mix. Four veterans of the 1996 original return with Skeet Ulrich back as a guiding spirit. The newcomers are a bland bunch, I enjoyed Jack Quaid the most, but the producers hit box office gold with the super hot Jenna Ortega and Scream 6 has already graced the theaters. Even though this is a reboot, the script pays great fealty to the original and, like all the films in the saga, offers an on-going meta-commentary on slasher film convention. Unfortunately, the directors can't quite generate the white knuckle intensity of Craven at his best: Last House on the Left, Scream, Red Eye, Wes Craven's New Nightmare.

Vortex

             
Gaspar Noe's Vortex takes place largely in the apartment of an elderly couple in Paris. The couple are named Lui and Elle and are played by cinema icons Dario Argento (Suspiria) and Francoise Lebrun (The Mother and the Whore). The film is largely concerned with Elle's descent into senile dementia and Lui's frustrated and futile attempts to deal with the situation.

Throughout the film, Noe uses a split screen to present both partner's experiences as they navigate their day. Counterintuitively, this links rather than separates the duo in our mind's eye. We are always being reminded of their interdependence even when they are seperated. This is driven home in an early sequence when Elle leaves their flat and gets lost amidst the myriad notions and gimcracks of a store, spurring Lui to find her and return her to the flat. 

Once his character has been introduced, one of the split screens occasionally follows the exploits of Elle's ne'er do well son, Stephane. In any case, the placid objective gaze of the camera in Vortex remains the same. This is not a realism concocted to pull, subjectively, the lapels of the viewer into an empathic embrace of the characters, as in The Whale. This realism is more akin to the tableaux of Warhol or Akerman. Realism that dares to border on banality in order to invoke real time. 

Like those two titans, Noe has his feet in both pop art and the avant-garde. He utilized the split screen in his previous feature, Lux Aeterna. Both films feature actors playing variations of their persona. This and the usage of the split screen jibes nicely with Noe's theme, taken from Poe and mentioned thrice, that life is a "...dream within a dream." Noe knows that the sprawling detritus of a Parisian apartment or the labyrinth of shelves in a store is enough visual input to let the viewer know all one needs to know about an individual's journey : one of the dreams that populate our collective dream. No directoral sleight of hand is needed.

Vortex is the best memento mori film since The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and equally uningratiating. This is not a film for those who crave long plot arcs or double crosses. Film buffs will grok the Dryer and Godard references (and more), but Vortex's minimal arthouse theatrical opening in America was, especially for a 142 minut film, appropriate. I was especially moved by the film's coda. The couple have both gone to their reward and all we have before us are static shots of the empty apartment as it is being stripped of the couple's belongings. These remnants are all that remain of the departed,  they also have been players in the spectacle we have just witnessed and they are taking a curtain call at the end of the performance. I recall when my son was a tot and he would say goodbye, before we left on holiday, to our house's individual rooms and implements: "Goodbye bedroom, goodbye chair, goodbye potty", etc. 

Ruthless

Sydney Greenstreet and Zachary Scott in Ruthless

Edgar G. Ulmer's Ruthless is a good melodrama from 1948. Zachary Scott plays Horace Woodruff Vendig, a cold and, yes, ruthless financial wiz who tramples friends and relations on his way to the top. The umpteenth iteration of a powerful man who gains the world, but loses his soul. The relatively concurrent examples of Douglas Sirk's Caught and King Vidor's The Fountainhead are good points of comparison. Scott is superb as the sociopathic titan. This role and his lead in Jean Renoir's The Southerner show a range not exploited by his work for the major studios where he was often typecast as the oleaginous cad he assayed so successfully in Michael Curtiz's Mildred Pierce.

Ruthless was produced under the auspices of Eagle-Lion films. Eagle-Lion initially arose at the end of the second world war as a means for the Rank Organization and Pathe to distribute British and French films in the US. It financed independent American productions between 1946 and 1948 including Ruthless. Eagle-Lion had some success with its production of Anthony Mann's T-Men and the stateside distribution of The Archers' The Red Shoes, but the company tended to overspend on its productions, particularly on casts, and soon landed in financial oblivion. This flaw in Eagle-Lion's business plan helps Ruthless. The production values are luxe compared to a picture like Ulmer's Detour and he has a much more tony cast to work with than usual. 

The film's structure utilizes multiple flashbacks centering each around a woman Vendig uses and discards. The device is overly complicated and robs the film of momentum. At least three screenwriters worked to adapt Dayton Stoddart's novel Prelude to Night and this is probably a case of too many cooks. Louis Hayward and Diana Lynn are more than adequate in nothing parts. Lynn portrays Scott's first love, who he swipes from Hayward, and then portrays the illegitimate daughter that is spawned by their union; though this is not commented on as to avoid the censor's scissors. This is always a creepy, but money saving, device and is especially so here when Scott, who is unaware he has issue (and issues), starts macking on his daughter. This device has seemed to go out of style. I recall it being used as late as Otto Preminger's The Cardinal (1963), though I'm sure I'm missing something.

Lucile Bremer and Sydney Greenstreet are fairly tedious and are part of the reason the last section flags. Greenstreet, whom I am a fan of, seems weak and unfocused. However, the ill-used Martha Vickers is terrific here as are Edith Barrett, Dennis Hoey, Joyce Arling and, as Scott's feckless Dad, Raymond Burr. Ulmer pulls no punches with the material. Dollying in for emotional impact and using a whip pan to gauge reactions to revelations, Ulmer is able to transcend the tired conventions of story often told and offer a melodrama with vigor.

She Said

Maria Schrader's She Said is deadly dull Oscar bait. The film chronicles, in earnestly straightforward fashion, The New York Times' investigation into Harvey Weinstein's extensive sexual misconduct. Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan have a nice Mutt and Jeff appeal and Jennifer Ehle is outstanding in her four or five scenes, but, ultimately, it is to no avail. 

I think Ms. Schrader and her screenwriter, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, erred in eliminating Weinstein visually from the film. We hear him berate reporters and editors over the phone and we see the back of his head in a meeting, but to express horror visually one must give a glimpse of the monster. In contrast I prefer Abel Ferrara's underrated Welcome to New York, a similarly themed film based on Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest for sexual assault. Gerard Depardieu plays the Strauss-Kahn figure and, believe me, I saw more of Mr. Depardieu than I ever want to again, but I was left repulsed by his character's actions in the film.

What we are left with in She Said is a journalistic procedural with little characterization or drama. The climax of the film is Patricia Clarkson clicking "Publish" on a computer screen. The film wants to be All the President's Men, but ends up as an advertisement for The New York Times.
 

Quick Takes, April 2023

Witching and Bitching

Alex de la Iglesia's Witching and Bitching, from 2013, is the most fun and free spirited of the Spanish director's horror romps. The film starts out as a heist flick with characters disguised as Jesus, GI Joe, and SpongeBob fleecing a pawn shop in Madrid. Trying to cross the border into France, the robbers are waylaid by a coven of witches in a Basque village. Carnage and hilarity ensue. With Carmen Maura and members of the director's stock company including Carolina Bang (the director's missus), Pepon Nieto, and Macarena Gomez. I would also recommend de la Iglesia's Thirty Coins, a series airing on HBO Max, for horror mavens. The series also features Ms. Gomez and Mr. Nieto.

The Wachowskis' Speed Racer, from 2008, is a glittering, yet empty vessel. The film lost a ton of money for Warmer Brothers, but has developed a cult following over the years. The original animation series was a slight affair aimed at the pre-pube set and the movie largely follows that template, albeit with a mise-en-scene that resembles a Nintendo game (especially Mario Kart) more than it does the original series. The players, as usual in a Wachowski film, range from terrible (Emile Hirsch, Roger Allam), to those picking up a nice check (John Goodman, Susan Sarandon), to laudable (Christina Ricci, Matthew Fox). The plot is threadbare and the use of multiple flashbacks give it an incoherent and bloated feel. Yet, I can recognize what the film's fans see in its dizzyingly bright, candy-coated facade. The CGI is bolstered by old fashioned techniques like matte painting and rotoscoping to good effect. The film's bold look keeps one's eyes glued to the screen even when one's mind drifts.

John Sturges' Mystery Street, from 1950, is a routine, yet mildly engaging forensic procedural set in a Beantown devoid of skyscrapers. Ricardo Montalban stars as a detective trying to solve a murder after a skeleton is found on a Cape Cod beach. Montalban was using more hard edged roles, such as his successful turns in Battleground and Border Incident, to become a full fledged leading man after first appearing in Hollywood films as Latin fluff in The Kissing Bandit and Fiesta or aquatic fluff such as Neptune's Daughter. It was not to be and he was soon again appearing in film with titles such as Sombrero and Latin Lover. Mystery Street's script was written by Stanley Boehm and Richard Brooks in the then fashionable style of noir inflected realism. Sturges' no-nonsense approach helps things along, as does John Alton's black and white location and studio shooting. Featuring entertaining supporting turns by Elsa Lanchester, Bruce Bennett, Betsy Blair, and Jan Sterling

William A. Seiter's Belle of the Yukon, from 1944, is a comic, musical Western mish-mash set in Alaska. Far from being a good movie, the film has a threadbare plot with inane comic routines interspersed amongst the musical numbers. Dinah Shore, then a top pop and jazz vocalist, is featured warbling some so-so Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke tunes. Shore was no great shakes as an actress, somebody should have told her that it is OK to close your mouth occasionally, but was not helped by Seiter's minimalist direction. Male lead Randolph Scott is paired with Gypsy Rose Lee, primarily famous as a burlesque performer who specialized in striptease routines. Needless to say, her talents are underutilized here, but she does display some chemistry with Scott. 

King Vidor's Bardelys the Magnificent, from 1926, has John Gilbert frolicking in a Rafael Sabatini penned swashbuckler. The romantic scenes are swoon worthy, particularly a punt ride through willow branches with Eleanor Boardman, and the action scenes cock a friendly snoot towards Douglas Fairbanks. This was the third and final collaboration between Vidor and Gilbert. There is a sense of this film being concocted for the marketplace to compete with rival studio blockbusters like The Black Pirate (with Fairbanks) and Don Juan. No matter, if you enjoy similar films with Fairbanks or Errol Flynn, you will enjoy this. 

The Whale is Darren Aronofsky's worst film since The Fountain. Mother!, at least, had some batshit manic energy, but The Whale lies beached. The cast is fine, Brendan Fraser's fat suit will find a place in the Academy museum alongside the eyepatch from True Grit and Nicole Kidman's nose from The Hours. Aronofsky returns to the realistic style of The Wrestler and the weaknesses of Samuel D. Hunter's play (shallow characterization, silly and predictable plot machinations) are magnified by this kitchen sink approach. Beware.

Bergman Island

Vicky Krieps in Bergman Island

I don't think I was consciously avoiding Mia Hansen-Love's Bergman Island, though I've enjoyed all I've seen of her previous films, but I was wary of it. As a recovering Bergmaniac, I was deathly afraid that this tale of two partnered filmmakers toiling away at seperate screenplays while on a retreat at Ingmar Bergman's former estate would be Scenes from a Marriage, part deux. Scenes... is a film I respect, but am not eager to revisit. Furthermore, Hansen-Love was the longtime romantic partner of a fellow cinematic genius, Olivier Assayas, and I was not aching to see a roman a clef like Divorce Story, no matter how skillfully told. Instead, I was delighted with the intellectual and emotional vibrancy of the film, Hansen-Love's best yet. A truly cinematic and open-hearted work, Bergman Island ranks among the top films released in 2021.

The film had a tumultuous production history. Lensed over the course of two years, Hansen-Love had great difficulty settling on her two leads. Greta Gerwig, Owen Wilson, and John Turturro were at some point attached to the project, but the director and screenwriter was fortunate to end up with Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth. Krieps' character, Chris, is the main focus of the film and a stand-in for Hansen-Love. The Bergman estate on Faro island is part research lab, museum, tourist trap, and pilgrimage site. Likewise, Hansen-Love contrasts views of Bergman's legacy, be they appreciative, critical, dismissive or humorous. Tim Roth's character, Tony, endures the "Bergman Safari", a bus touring the island. The actual staff of the museum are part of the cast and one describes Scenes from a Marriage as a film that "caused seven million divorces."

Hansen-Love had enough of an obsession with Bergman to make this film, but knows her idol has feet of clay. Bergman had nine children with six women. Like Donald Trump and Genghis Khan, he wanted to spray his seed and fill the world with his progeny, but being a dependable Dad and husband was not on the agenda. Chris points out bluntly that this option is not open to her, especially if she wants to be as prolific an artist as the restless Ingmar. This conundrum and various other domestic quandaries complicates her relationship to Tony. Hansen-Love is perhaps the best director working today in portraying the ebb and flow of  intimate relations. Krieps and Roth play off each other magnificently whether engaged in conflict or sharing moments of beauty and joy amidst the severe beauty of Faro.

That is the difference in this film, Hansen-Love's first masterpiece. The director takes her inspiration from Bergman, but stands on her own as an artist with a unique vision. Bergman used Faro Island to reflect the inner psychology of his tormented or cruel characters. Instead of Bergman's boxy black and white, Hansen-Love opts for color and Cinemascope. This choice greatly increases our appreciation of moments in the film when Chris and Tony quietly revel in the beauty and solitude of the island. The Faro of Bergman Island contains the ghosts of Bergman's oeuvre, but also a broader sense of the island as it exists in the world. Hansen-Love's characters are more in flux, more open to life's variety than those in the deterministic void of Through A Glass Darkly and Persona. 

At the midpoint of Bergman Island, a film within the film is introduced. Chris describes her nearly finished screenplay to Tony and we see it enacted onscreen with Mia Wasikowska as Chris' stand-in, Amy. The up and downs of relationships that Amy experiences mirrors Chris' relationship to Tony and other people she interacts with on the island. By the end of Bergman Island, the line between the artist's personas are as blurred as they are in Bergman's 1966 film. 

The three leads in the film have never been better, and that is saying something, but Hansen-Love handles her non-professionals with equal adroitness. I enjoyed Raphael Hamburger's score and admired the way the director used pop songs, from Lee Hazelwood to The Go-Betweens, to comment on the action and not just exist as an aural backdrop. All in all, Bergman Island is a treat for the mind, eyes, and ears.

Rams

Grimur Hakonarson's Rams surprised and touched me. The film portrays two long estranged Icelandic brothers who must work together when a virus threatens to destroy their beloved sheep. Both brothers' love for their animals is sensitively portrayed and is contrasted by the harsh conditions under which they live. This duality prevents the film from either being too mawkish or pitiless. Hakonarson's camera is attuned to the small details of his characters lives and how they assert their humanity in the midst of vast, indifferent nature.

Hakonarson's camera placement serves him well here. Whether establishing his community's isolation in a landscape shot or focusing on the protagonist's gnarled toes in close-up, he continually finds the right shot that serves his narrative's purpose. The film is so well constructed that none of its 93 minutes lag. The tone and photography are realistic, but infused with longing and affection through the daily struggles of the protagonist, Gummi.

Sigurour Sigurjonsson plays Gummi with a professional's assurance, never mugging or playing cute. The rest of the cast is amateurish, but in the best sense like Bresson or, especially, Kaurismaki. A ram judging contest early on has the same deadpan comic feel as Kaurismaki. But as the plight of the flocks worsen, the tone grows more heartfelt and builds to a moving last shot that is a Pieta like evocation of brotherly love. (9/6/16)

 

The Swindle

Isabelle Huppert and Michel Serrault in The Swindle

Claude Chabrol's The Swindle, from 1997, is, for the director, a relatively spritely story about two con artists. Elizabeth (Isabelle Huppert) and Victor (Michel Serrault) work a honey trap swindle, preying on conventioneers who have let their guard down while on holiday. They operate out of a Winnebago, quickly escaping to the next scam when they have made their score. They run into trouble when Elizabeth targets Maurice (Francois Cluzet) who carries large sums of money for the mob. This proves to be a greater challenge than the wayward duo are used to and they soon face real danger.

After the heavy melodramatics of L'enfer and La Ceremonie, it would appear Chabrol wanted to tackle something less brooding. All three leads had worked for the director before and their easy rapport is the chief pleasure of the film. Huppert appears to be having a ball. This is the most playful of her numerous appearances in Chabrol's films and it is a hoot. Her affinity with Serrault is obvious and he handles his role with aplomb. On set, Chabrol was a spontaneous director who eschewed storyboarding and chose not to burden his cast and crew with numerous takes. On his more somber efforts, this had the effect of sometimes causing scenes to seem amateurish and hurried. This is particularly true when he attempts to ape the action and suspense sequences of his hero, Hitchcock. However, the speed and lightness of touch with which he worked are ideal for a project like The Swindle. 

The Swindle's French title is Rien Ne Va Plus, literally "nothing goes anymore". It is what the croupier says to close off the betting at his gambling table. Like a con man himself, Chabrol pulls a few sleights of hand on his audience. We don't know the exact nature of Elizabeth and Victor's relationship until we are well into the film and I am not going to play the spoiler. Eduardo Serra's cinematography takes advantage of the location shooting in Switzerland and Guadalupe. This is one of Chabrol's best looking and audience pleasing films. 

Manchester by the Sea

Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea

Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea is another solid addition to his oeuvre, but does seem to display his limitations as a maker of films. Casey Affleck plays a traumatized super who must travel to the titular town to bury a brother and assume guardianship of his sixteen year old nephew. He is extremely reluctant to take on the latter task, in part because he is still grieving from the loss of his own three children in a fire.

The film follows Affleck's character as he sorts through his brother's affairs and attempts to reach a rapprochement with his nephew. The nephew, well played by Lucas Hedges, is not eager to uproot his life. He enjoys his school friends, playing hockey, and sowing his oats with two girlfriends. He represents a vitality that Affleck's character has lost. Affleck's Lee Chandler is haunted by his past, which is shown in flashback sequences, and tries to drawn his pain in alcohol and misdirected violence.

If this all sounds a bit lugubrious, well it is. I especially found the choral music on the soundtrack by Handel and the like to be over-egging the pudding. Yet. Affleck's justly praised performance keeps this film from wallowing in a pit of morbidity. Indeed, as in Lonergan's two previous films, the quality of the acting is exemplary: Kyle Chandler, Michelle Williams, Gretchen Mol, Tate Donovan, C.J. Wilson and Matthew Broderick all shine.

Lonergan here reminds me of another talent with roots in the theater, Ingmar Bergman. Particularly in his "faith" trilogy in which modern men and women grapple with overwhelming despair. Casey Affleck hearing of his nephew's sexploits reminds me of Harriet Andersson teasing her younger brother in Through a Glass Darkly about his porno mags before she succumbs to her demons and starts envisioning God as a giant spider. I get the sense of a talented artist wrestling with his concerns about family, faith, and forgiveness, but miss the more polyphonic strains that ran through You Can Count on Me and Margaret; both of which were hardly upbeat. Manchester by the Sea is one of the better American films of 2016, but it is also one of the least ingratiating ones.

If anything. I am being overly harsh on the film. Like Bergman, Lonergan is not among the most visually dynamic film directors, but, through his moral seriousness and the psychological complexity of his characters, he has emerged as a significant voice. A key to this film may be Lonergan's cameo as a bloviating passer-by who berates Affleck for bad parenting. Judge not, is the moral implied, lest ye be judged. A useful message for all, especially would be film critics. (3/8/17)

All Good Things

Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst in All Good Things

Andrew Jarecki's All Good Things, from 2010, misuses the considerable talents of Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst in a mystery scant of suspense and surprise. Chiefly a documentarian, Jarecki is able to evoke local flavor in New York, but cannot flesh out his main characters. The script makes out Dunst's character to be a one dimensional dupe, so in love with troubled rich kid Gosling that she doesn't see the flashing warning signs. Away from the clutches of a Manhattan real estate magnate Dad (Frank Langella), Gosling and his lady love enjoy an idyll selling organic produce in Vermont, but Daddy coaxes him back to wicked Gotham. Haunted by the suicide of his mother when he was seven, the Goose goes bonkers and, off screen, dispatches his increasingly beset upon missus. 

Dunst's character is an unbelievably virtuous victim. The film perk up a bit after she dies; despite Ms. Dunst's skill. Philip Baker Hall and Lily Rabe are superb as the Goose's only allies once he loses his marbles. Diana Venora etches sharply a cutthroat attorney. However, Gosling is at sea in his portrayal. An actor of charm and assurance, he lacks the ability to register neuroticism and does not attempt to mimic the speech or posture of New York Jewish power broker. Gosling seems as Jewish as Canadian bacon. This would not be fatal in a moody thriller that gets inside its characters' heads, but Jarecki strives to present his characters objectively. 

The film is based on a real life case and the scenario sems shoehorned to reflect the facts, The drug use of Gosling and Dunst's characters may mirror the actual events, but seems extraneous to the film's thematic content. Jarecki seems to want to expose the ability of the rich to escape the reach of  the judiciary, but even that timely theme makes little impact during the course of this muffed project. Jarecki pursued the actual events of this film in his documentary, The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, supposedly to greater effect. Perhaps Mr. Jarecki's true métier is the documentary form, but All Good Things, despite my catty qualms, is a half decent first feature. (9/1/16)