Good afternoon, all.
Sarah: I’m very testy on the subject of In the Bedroom—I suppose because it got under my skin. It invoked all those sticky vigilante issues in a year in which retribution is on most of our minds (whether we’re for or again’ it). It reinforced my dread—as the father of an only child (so far)—of anything happening to my precious daughter. The one criticism lodged by others that I just don’t get at all is that it’s “arty”; I found all of Todd Field’s sequences simple and expressive. First they’re redolent of vulnerability and dread. Then there are those extraordinary blackouts marking the beats of grief. Then there is the grippingly measured final act, with its step-by-step march toward another killing. Thus, my only serious complaint is with how you’ve characterized it—as less adventurous and free-form than your favorites.
But I’m glad you brought up the rule-breaking thing. I would guess that these movies are an excited response to films we first discussed two years ago—excitedly—in Movie Club ‘99: Being John Malkovich, Election, Three Kings, The Sixth Sense, and even Fight Club. Such works have had a trickle-up and a trickle-down effect. In the boardrooms, development executives have noted the ways in which audiences are turned on by narrative skips and twists and backward-triple-twist-gainers. In the film schools, kids are hot to play with syntax even before they’ve learned it. The other day, I was called on to advise a third cousin on a college proposal for a five-minute film; I tried to explain to the talented young man that six scenes, year-long jumps, and multiple-surprise Mulholland Drive-style shifts between reality and dream-logic were a tad much given the length he had to work with. But maybe I was wrong to quash his ambition.
I’d like to have quashed Baz Luhrman’s ambition, though, Tony. You dislike it but have an affectionate tolerance for its excesses; to me its febrile technique was only marginally more organic than the work of Sylvester Stallone in the Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive, a candidate for the worst movie ever made. There’s the expressive freneticism of parts of Donnie Darko; then there’s Luhrman’s Miracles-Are-Cheap aesthetic, in which everything is underlined 20 times and appended with 100 exclamation points. Nothing—least of all the actors—is allowed to just be. You’re right that “even as we (critics, audiences, filmmakers) still hold to the dogma that movie performances should be true to life, we need to be reminded that life includes moments of extravagant performance”; the problem is that Luhrman doesn’t hold on any of his actors long enough (say, more than 1.5 seconds) to establish the tension between person and persona.
Sarah, I liked lots of good comedies this year, but they were hyphenated. Tragi-comedies, queasy-black-comedies, thriller-comedies, and even, yes, gross-out comedies. The absence of simplicity of form might be the price we pay for all this experimentation and would-be uniqueness. The Man Who Wasn’t There was certainly a good goof on James M. Cain. I’d have liked a little less irony and a little more passion, but it’s hard to complain in the face of so many hilarious performances. And Tony Shalhoub’s earnest invocation of the Heisenberg principle (“Some Kraut came up with it … Fritz or Werner …”) as a courtroom defense is a classic.
I’m game to talk about some some great acting tomorrow. (And I like Kirsten Dunst, too, Tony. I’m laughing with you, not at you. Mostly.) Tonight I’m going to catch up with Spy Kids on DVD and see if my 10-Best goes to a lucky 13.
Sleep well—big day tomorrow.
David
