“Women Talking,” directed by Sarah Polley and now playing in theatres, is a very specific portrayal of the aftermath of sexual abuse, with a universal message of standing up for one’s self, family and community.
Based on a 2018 Miriam Toews novel of the same name, in the film, the women of a tightly knit religious colony gather in the wake of terrible, on-going sexual abuse by the men. For years the commune’s husbands and sons have tranquilized the women with cow medication, raped them regardless of age, and then convinced the victims the abuse was the work of Satan or their “wild imaginations.”
“We know that we’ve not imagined these attacks,” says Salome (Claire Foy), the mother of an abused child. “We know that we are bruised, and infected, and pregnant, and terrified.”
In the wake of the allegations, the men, sequestered in the city for their safe keeping, have given the women two days to forgive them. If they don’t, they threaten to expel from the community women which means they will be denied entry into the Kingdom of Heaven.
“Surely,” says mother-to-be Ona (Rooney Mara), “there must be something worth living for in this life. Not only the next.”
Now, gathered in the hayloft of one of their barns, the women, including the rancorous Mariche (Jessie Buckley) and community matriarch Agata (Judith Ivey), debate their three options: do nothing in retaliation, stay and fight, or leave.
The spirited deliberations give way to a variety of points of view. “Is forgiveness that’s forced upon us true forgiveness?” wonders Mariche. “We have been preyed upon like animals,” says Greta (Sheila McCarthy). “Maybe we should respond like animals.” Others wonder what life would have been like if none of this ever happened.
Set in 2010, timely social issues of justice, autonomy and unanimity among victims collide in a movie that captures the extended conversations, highlighting their harrowing nature, while slyly mixing in some unexpected humour.
Polley, who wrote as well as directed, ensures that each of the characters bring dynamic notions to their performances, and aren’t just placeholders representing opposing ideas for the sake of drama. The set-up, based on true events in a religious community in Boliva, offers a fascinating window into a fight for survival and the opportunity to examine the situation from a variety of thoughtful viewpoints.
A film, largely set in one room, whose action is verbal, not physical, could have been dry or, at the least, feel stage bound but Polley’s deep dive into the human condition crackles with life. She has carefully calibrated every line, every pause, to create forward momentum as the life-changing deliberations move toward their conclusion.
“Women Talking” is elegant filmmaking buoyed by emotional intelligence and powerhouse performances and is sure to be Oscar bound.
Don’t go to “Nightmare Alley,” a remake of the 1947 Tyrone Power film noir, now playing in theatres, for the warm fuzzies. Guillermo Del Toro’s new movie is as cold and icy as the season in which it is being released. Any movie that begins with the burning of a corpse and ends, well, you’ll have to buy a ticket to find out, isn’t exactly geared to make your season bright, but film fans should find this to be a gift.
Set in the days leading up to World War II, the story begins as drifter-with-a-dangerous-past Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) takes a job at a travelling carnival. Paid a dollar a day plus a hot meal, he does grunt work, putting up the big top tent and doing physical labor.
His gift of the gab soon earns him a promotion, working as a barker for the theatrical mystic Zeena (Toni Collette) and her magician husband Pete (David Strathairn). Stan is a quick study, and becomes an expert on how to bilk folks out of their hard-earned cash.
Longing for something bigger, he takes his own mentalism act on the road with the help of assistant and love interest Molly (Rooney Mara). It’s all fake, the two communicate through a series of veiled verbal clues, but audiences eat it up. They are making money performing at upscale nightclubs, but the offer of doing private readings for prominent people comes with a price tag Stan can’t resist.
Del Toro is known is creating intricate worlds populated by amazing people and creatures but don’t expect a replay of “Pan’s Labyrinth” or his Best Picture Oscar winner “The Shape of Water.” There are no supernatural elements in “Nightmare Alley.” The monster here is Stan’s cold hard ambition.
Cooper is in slickster mode here, playing Stan as a smooth-talking manipulator whose bad deeds stack up like some sort of ethically challenged Jenga game. He is an enigma. Willing to do whatever it takes to survive. He is a flawed but coldly ambitious man whose eyes are always trained toward the future. It is his biggest asset and, ultimately, his downfall.
Cooper does a good job at exposing Stan’s layers. He’s a complicated character, an amoral seducer with a seemingly charming disposition and Cooper only allows brief peaks at his desperation and brutality.
As good as Cooper is, it’s Cate Blanchett as the femme fatale psychiatrist Lilith Ritter who steals the show. From her overpainted red lips and seductive nature to her quick intelligence and vulnerability, she is the film’s most interesting and dangerous presence. Nice office too. It’s an Art Deco lover’s paradise.
Above all though, “Nightmare Alley” is Del Toro’s film. He doesn’t need one of his trademarked creatures like the Pale Man or The Asset to shock. Here he takes a methodical, detailed approach to the story, gradually building to some shocking violence and psychological horror. His interest here is the sinister, not the supernatural, and while the first hour gets bogged down with set-up and a major plot point is telegraphed (NO SPOILERS HERE!), his ability to create atmosphere is singular. Nobody casts a shroud of menace like Del Toro.
“Nightmare Alley” takes its time to set up its dark pleasures, but emerges as a memorable tribute to film noir whose images will stick in your mind long after the theatre’s lights are switched on.
“Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far on Foot” isn’t as much about the story of John Callahan, the Portland based quadriplegic who became a famous, if controversial cartoonist after a car accident, as it is about his personal journey.
The film starts at the end, beginning after the accident and backing up into Callahan’s story of misfortune, self-discovery, and redemption. Our first glimpse of Joaquin Phoenix as the cartoonist comes at a settled place in his life. From there director Gus Van Sant moves along the timeline of Callahan’s life. We see him on the bender that resulted in the car accident that left him in a wheelchair, his treatment,
Alcoholic’s Anonymous meetings presided over by sponsor Donnie (Jonah Hill) and at home with his helper (Tony Greenhand).
It’s fragmented approach that focuses on the themes in Callahan’s life rather than the events. His journey is a metaphysical one, from unhappy, aimless slacker to someone who embraces community. Van Sant and Phoenix explore the artist’s psyche, detailing how being put up for adoption at birth fuelled his alcoholism and unresolved feelings of abandonment. Phoenix, limited in his movement for much of the film, hands in a rich performance, both volatile and vulnerable.
He’s aided by a talented supporting cast lead by Hill. He’s tough love personified, a tell-it-like it is A.A. sponsor who calls his charges Piglets. The meetings at his home are a whose who of interesting casting from Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon as a Valium addict with a propensity of getting naked in public, Udo Kier and musician Beth Ditto’s unrestrained presence steals every scene she is in. Jack Black, in a small but pivotal role, gets to showcase both his gonzo and sensitive sides.
John Callahan is best known for his macabre drawings but the film of his life ois anything but. “Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far on Foot” is a breezy, life affirming look at a man whose misfortune was his salvation.
Based on the play Blackbird by Scottish playwright David Harrower, the new film Una is an uncomfortable look into an uncomfortable subject.
“In the theatre it is kind of like a verbal boxing match,” says Una’s director Benedict Andrews. “You are trapped in the same room with the two protagonists as they face each other off. There is a profound shift that happens once it becomes cinema. After living with the film for a while I think the film hurts a lot more than the play ever did.”
Rooney Mara plays the title character, a 20-something who takes action after seeing a picture of Ray, played by Ben Mendelsohn, in a magazine. The two have a past. Fifteen years earlier, when she was 13 and Ray was a middle-aged man, he seduced her, a crime he paid for with four years in prison.
Convinced his actions put her in a downward spiral, she goes to his place of work to confront him. He’s re-established himself with a new name, wife and job. She demands to know why he did what he did, and why he abandoned her when they were about to make a run for it and leave England to start a new life together.
Andrews first directed the play in November 2005 but had no interest in revisiting his previous work.
“There will continue to be fine productions of the play because it really is one of the best chamber plays of this century,” he says.
“It is rich material for actors and provocative and rich material for audiences. Neither of us wanted to make a well-made version of the play. It had to become distinct. I sometimes see them as two children coning from the same DNA. In many ways I’m trying to respect and amplify the core of the play.”
What might have been a straightforward story of a search for answers defies preconceived audience expectations with the ethical landmines Andrews and Harrower (who also wrote the script) plant along the way. In its most startling turn Una asks the audience to consider the interaction between Ray and Una, the abuser and the abused, as some kind of love story.
“This is about two people who see each other after 15 years,” he says, “the chemical charge of that meeting and their encounter is a profoundly cinematic idea. I was interested in how the camera might be able to pursue a special intimacy, the scar tissue opening up again between these two characters, and being able to microscope in on that scar tissue.”
Although the play was first performed 12 years ago, Andrews calls it “prescient” in the wake of recent events that have shone a light on sexual abuse in Hollywood.
“Part of the intelligence of the play is the way (Harrower) unpacks the moral problems of the survivor and the abuser relationship,” Andrews says.
“Thankfully that silence is breaking in journalistic and legal ways. We’ve seen that over the course of the week with the dam bursting about the systemic abuse of actresses within the Harvey Weinstein story. From my point of view it wasn’t necessarily a conscious thing although I think the play absolutely touches a raw nerve now and is part of a conversation that needs to happen about a topic that was kept in silence.”
Based on the play “Blackbird” by Scottish playwright David Harrower, “Una” is an uncomfortable look into an uncomfortable subject.
Rooney Mara is the title character, a twenty-something who takes action after seeing a picture of Ray (Ben Mendelsohn) in a magazine. The two have a past. Fifteen years earlier, when she was thirteen and Ray was a middle-aged man, he seduced her, a crime he paid for with four years in prison. “You wanted to be treated like an adult,” Ray says. “That’s what children say.”
Convinced his actions put her in a downward spiral, she goes to his place of work to confront him. He’s re-established himself with a new name, wife and job. She demands to know why he did what he did, and why he abandoned her when they were about to make a run for it and leave England to start a new life together.
What might have been a straightforward story of a search for answers defies preconceived audience expectations with the ethical landmines Harrower (who also wrote the script) plants along the way. In its most startling turn “Una” asks the audience to consider the interaction between Ray and Una, the abuser and the abused, as some kind of love story. Rooney and Mendelsohn, both very good in difficult roles, explore the thin lines the story draws between abuse and love, between right and wrong, between desire and guilt. It’s complicated and messy as Ray is forced to confront a past he’d rather subvert while Una looks for answers. “I don’t know anything about you except you abused me,” she says.
“Una” lurches headlong into controversial territory, unflinchingly presenting a painful story that offers no easy answers.
Less a story than a conceptual art piece, “A Ghost Story” delivers on its promise of a ghost but, by design, does not deliver any thrills or chills. Instead it’s a ponderous look at love, loss and legacy.
Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara star as characters simply identified as C and M. Married, they are planning to move from their country bungalow when tragedy strikes. C is killed in a car accident on the road next to their home. In the morgue M identifies the body, seen in a sterile white tile room, covered in a starched white sheet. When she leaves the room he rises from the slab, covered head-to-toe à la a children’s Halloween ghost costume, complete with two holes cut for eyes.
The ghost returns home and, unbeknownst to M, watches her as she grief eats an entire pie, drunkenly kisses a man on the stoop and packs up the house for her eventual relocation. M leaves and he turns increasingly violent when a new family moves in becoming Casper-The-Not-So-Friendly-Ghost, breaking plates and scaring the kids. Tenants come and go. He communicates with another sheet-wearing spirit a few houses down. Time passes; days, weeks, months, years even centuries. When the house is torn down, replaced with a skyscraper, he pads around the offices, haunting meetings until entering a meta time cycle that sees him thrust into the distant past.
Shot in a boxy 1:33 aspect ratio, director David Lowery presents “A Ghost Story” with rounded corners like an old photograph. It’s just one of the many sentimental touches in this strange story. At its heart it’s a rumination on the melancholy of feeling helpless as the spirit of C is actually the one being haunted by the living. The inversion of the usual ghost tale deepens the film’s surreal mood, which is both romantic and discomforting.
It won’t be for everyone. The aforementioned five-minute pie-eating scene and a shot where we literally watch paint dry may test the patience of the restless viewer but if you can get on board with the conceit of a ghost dressed in a child’s costume there is much to mull on. What is legacy? How do you move on in the face of great loss? What is the true meaning of love? These are big questions and the movie occasionally gets lost in its philosophical enormity but as audacious, experimental looks at love and life go, it’s unafraid and unapologetic.
I think it’s time Terrence Malick and I called it quits.
I used to look forward to his infrequent visits. Sure, sometimes he was a little obtuse and over stayed his welcome, but more often than not he was alluringly enigmatic. Then he started coming around more often and, well, maybe the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt is true.
For most of his career he was a tease, a mythic J.D. Salinger type who burst on the scene in a blinding flash of brilliance, made two of the best films of the 1970s, then left us hanging. Like spurned lovers we waited for him to return for two decades and at first were happy to see him again. He told wondrous stories about personal connections and the nature of relationships.
Then he started repeating himself. In the beginning I didn’t mind but soon his whispered philosophical asides became tiresome and I began to look for reasons to avoid him.
Now I have one.
It’s been said that the essence of cinema is beautiful people saying interesting things. In his new film Malick gets it half right, parading good-looking heart throbs like Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender and Natalie Portman around in a pointless exercise called “Song to Song.”
Fassbender plays a Machiavellian a record producer who uses his wealth and power to seduce those around him, including aspiring musician Mara, rising star Gosling and waitress-turned-wife Portman. The willowy women and mumbling men run barefoot through the loose story—which often feels cobbled together from scraps of film found on the editing room floor—pondering philosophical questions in hushed tones. “How do you know when you were lying to yourself?” they whisper. “Is any experience is better than no experience?” All the while Malick’s camera, light as a feather, floats above it all capturing his puzzling whims. For the entire running time nobody looks like they’re having any fun even when they’re dancing, being goofy or laughing. They’re not having any fun and neither will you.
Airy and disjointed, it’s a collage of feelings and shards of life strung together on a fractured timeline. Malick indulges himself to the point that the film is less a movie and more like an experience, like going to “Laser Floyd.”
There are highlights. Val Kilmer singing to a festival crowd, “I got some uranium! I bought it off my mom!” before hacking off his hair with a giant Bowie knife is a memorable moment and cameos from Patti Smith and John Lydon are welcome, but at its heart “Song to Song” is a movie about people trying to connect that keeps its audience at arms length.
There’s a quick shot of a tattoo in the movie that sums up my feelings toward my relationship with Malick. Written in flowery script, the words “Empty Promises” fill the screen, reminding us of the promise of the director’s early work and amplifying the disappointment we feel today. “Song to Song” is the straw that broke the camel’s back, the Terrence Malick movie that put me off Terrence Malick movies.
I’ll be nice though and say, it’s not him, it’s me.
“Lion,” the heart-tugging true tale of Saroo Brierley, is the story of one determined man’s attempt to connect with a past he barely remembers.
When we first meet Saroo (played as a child by Sunny Pawar) he’s a lively five-year-old boy living in abject poverty in a small town in India. His mother is a labourer, moving rocks to eek out a living for her family. Saroo and his brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate) help out, stealing coal from passing trains to make money to buy milk. When the boys get separated while looking for work the youngster ends up on a train, destined for Calcutta, 1600 km from home.
Alone and lost, he desperately tries to find his way home, but without knowing the name of his town or mother—“Her name is Mum,” he says.—he wanders the streets, his only possession a piece of cardboard to sleep on. For weeks he navigates through the dangerous city streets, learning who to trust and when to run. Found and sent to an orphanage, he is then adopted by Australians Sue and John Brierley (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham). “Did you really look for my mom?” he asks as his caseworker signs off on the paperwork.
Cut to twenty years later. Saroo (now played by Dev Patel), raised by loving parents, has grown into a handsome young man, but is increasingly troubled by the question marks of his early life. “I’m lost,” he says to girlfriend Lucy (Rooney Mara). “Do you have any idea knowing what it is like knowing my real mother and brother spent every day looking for me?” Thoughts of his early life plague him until he begins to piece together the details of where his journey began.
Nicole Kidman may be the Academy Award winner in the cast, and she is very good, but the performances you’ll remember come from the two Saroos, Sunny Pawar and Dev Patel. Two actors, one character; both looking to find themselves, physically and spiritually. It’s an engrossing and often heart-wrenching journey and the pair keep us interested for the whole trip.
Pawar is a wide-eyed charmer, innocent but fearless, who conveys both the desperation to get home and the will to survive in dangerous situations. It’s a performance completely free of the preciousness that often mars kid’s work; one that effortlessly cuts through to the core of the character.
Patel navigates a different part of Saroo’s journey. As an adult he speaks English with a heavy Australian accent and can no longer remember the Hindi of his youth. Thoroughly westernized it isn’t until he accesses some long repressed memories that his need to find his real home surfaces. Patel embodies the emotional battle between the home he has grown up in, with all the comforts of a loving adopted family, and a need to understand where and who he came from.
“Lion” isn’t perfect—some of the Google Earth searches are as interesting as you might imagine a Google Earth search on the big screen to be—but it is emotionally engaged with all of its characters, and you will be to.
“If you must blink, do it now!” So says Kubo (voice of Art Parkinson), a young street performer in his village. He doesn’t want anyone to miss a moment of his show, but he might have been talking to the theatre audience watching “Kubo and the Two Strings.” The fourth feature from stop motion animators Laika the others are is a marvellously engaging tale that sits comfortably on the shelf beside their other films “Coraline,” “ParaNorman” and “The Boxtrolls.”
An original fantasy masquerading as an ancient Japanese myth “Kubo and the Two Strings” centers on Kubo, a one-eyed boy who lives with his mother in a cave. By day he performs in the local fishing village, spinning fantastical musical stories about a samurai warrior, but, whether the tale is done or not, when night falls he must hurry home so as not to reveal his location to his grandfather, the mystic and evil Moon King (Ralph Fiennes, once again playing a supernatural baddie) who has pursued the boy from birth.
Running late one evening he gives away his position. To protect himself and friends he goes on a Joseph Campbell-esque mission to assemble a magical suit of armour. The suit has been dispersed because, as legend has it, “any man who finds the magic armour would be too powerful.” With the help of Monkey (Charlize Theron), a wooden toy come to life, and a goofy bug warrior named Beetle (Matthew McConaughey), he goes on a quest and discovers his true nature. “Do you ever say anything encouraging?” Kubo asks the irascible Monkey. “I encourage you not to die,” she says.
“Kubo and the Two Strings” is a mix of the sublime, the surreal and the silly. The beautiful stop motion animation (with some computer generated images) perfectly compliments the film’s fanciful elements—like a giant skeleton monster—while bringing with it a handmade, organic feel that compliments the film’s use of exotic, DIY origami creations as characters. It’s a wonderful blend of form and subject that allows director Travis Knight to indulge in wonderful visual artistry. It’ll make your eyeballs dance, but some scenes may be too intense for very young viewers.
Big lug Beetle is the film with comic relief, mainly providing the silly when things get intense.
This story of magic, monsters and memories works on two levels. Visually it will engage and impress, but it doesn’t skimp on the emotional content. Kubo’s journey is ripe with primal energy. Betrayal, melancholy, greed and evil are touched on in a new story that already feels like a classic.
