Dear all,
Roger, I grew up in Chicago, where I read and watched you with admiration, and your remarks yesterday on reviewing etiquette gave both my admiration and some dormant Chicago chauvinism a shot in the arm. I doubt too many critics in New York squawk and swap their opinions during or even right after a screening. But I bet that too few them demonstrate the consideration for their readers that you do, or your habitual fairness.
Elvis, you raised two really important points yesterday. The dearth of relationship films this year may just be a cyclical thing, I suspect. Beautifully acted but formulaic films like Walk on the Moon suggest we could use a fallow period, a year or two to regroup and think up fresh stories about attraction and trust. The dearth of decent roles for black actors goes deeper, and is much more frustrating. I’ll try to see The Green Mile tonight so I can join in on the debate. But I have to confess I’ve stayed away so far on purpose. The preview was a turnoff, and not just because of the innocent giant in cuffs. For me, the red alert was the sight of Tom Hanks gulping and tearing up. Hanks is a supremely effective actor, I admit, but there are times these days when I can barely stomach him. Wherever he goes, a treacly, white-guy triumphalism seems to follow. He doesn’t even have to be on screen for this to happen. Did you all see the film he directed a few years back, That Thing You Do? The main character is a teen-age drummer in a band that hits it big in the early ‘60s. Hanks clearly identifies with the kid, and the weirdly anti-dramatic thing is this: Nothing bad happens to him in the film. Everything he touches turns into diamonds; he gets to steal his best friend’s girlfriend but retain the moral upper hand; everyone, even strangers, watches out for his happiness. As long as I live, I won’t forget the ending, where a black bellhop with flashing eyes and a big smile and an inappropriately loud, excitable voice takes it upon himself to fix up this kid’s love life. Jeepers, what a cringer. The film is set in ‘63, I guess, before the civil-rights movement kicked into really high gear, and underneath the liberal veneer of many a Hanks film I sense some creepy nostalgia for this simpler time.
Hanks is a bugaboo for me–sorry if I got off track. Anyway, the point I’d like to make to Roger is that objecting to objectified characters is not a matter of p.c, of holding things up to a rigid ideological test. This is a moral problem, and an aesthetic problem, and as I said above, at times for me it is a visceral problem of not wanting to sit still for more of the old false-humility routine. In this regard, I appreciate your praise of Three Kings, Elvis. Yet I actually wanted much more screen time for Ice Cube. Even by the abstract and deconstructive standards of the film he felt underdeveloped to me, undermotivated; complicated though he was, he remained a sidekick, his decisions less closely examined and symbolically freighted and intensely presented than those of Clooney or Wahlberg.
One last, semi-related thought. Again, please don’t take this in the spirit of reductive p.c.–I don’t mean it that way. But don’t believe the hype about men being on the ropes, culturally speaking. I couldn’t help noticing the unabashedly male viewpoint of many of the year’s most interesting films. With the exception of Run Lola Run, Election, with its coolly neutral, dissecting point of view, and Boys Don’t Cry, which had the fascinating point of view of some androgyne god, I noticed a whole lot of guyness in this year’s movies. I found it a little disappointing that something as humane and innovative as The Iron Giant couldn’t put a tiny bit more meat, or sass, or something, into Jennifer Aniston’s part. The fearless Cameron Diaz turned the role of Lottie in Being John Malkovich into a miracle, but its conception, and that of Catherine Keener the emasculator, was based on a tried-and-true and rather juvenile male fantasy (or so my sources tell me). Toy Story 2: Woody. Need I say more? There are so many more examples (highlight: Sean Penn finding peaceful, rewarding love with a deaf mute), but I’ll leave you to chew it over.
This is fun.
Till soon,
Sarah
