Category: Culture

A while ago I posted a review of K. J. Parker’s Colours in the Steel. I finally got around to reading the other two books in the trilogy. At the time, I said “I’m happy to have two more chunks of comfortable reading ahead of me.”

Two, yes. Chunks, yes. Reading, yes. Well-written, yes. Comfortable? Not to any notable degree. In the end, the Fencer trilogy is a tragedy about the Loredan family and their inability to love one another. I would still recommend them, but they are not in any way nice.

Closer is the movie that Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance wanted to be: it’s a story about the pain humans cause one another. It succeeds where Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance failed, because the characters are people and not caricatures and because Mike Nichols recognizes that pain arises from the cruelties we deal one another. It’s very close to being a great movie.

The only flaw in the ointment is Julia Roberts, but let’s leave that for a moment. It’s the best Jude Law performance of the year, edging out his executive in I ♥ Huckabees. He’s still got that surface gloss which detracts a little from his performance, but like his executive, this is a role that fits that gloss. And his body language is a thing of beauty. Particularly during his scenes with Natalie Portman: the pair of them express themselves in exactly the way lovers interact. Not when they’re first meeting — that’s not so hard — but when they’re parting badly, and one of them wants to taste the other’s mouth, and there’s the moment of wanting to give in, to comfort, but no, you can’t —

They had that down perfectly. Body language was the key to both of their performances. If you see it, or see it again, watch how Natalie Portman moves. When she’s unhappy or uncomfortable she’s a feral jittery thing who can’t keep still. She moves, and tics, and tilts her head, and never comes to rest. When she’s on her home ground, she’s a feral calm thing who moves, well, like a woman who knows she has the edge. It’s a great transformation. It’s definitely nomination-worthy.

Apparently the studio is pushing Julia Roberts for the Best Actress nomination, while Natalie Portman is relegated to Best Supporting Actress, but that’s wrong. If I had to pick, and I’d hate to do it, I’d say Natalie Portman has the marginally more important role. Clive Owen is getting pushes for Best Supporting Actor and Jude Law for Best Actor, but that split makes more sense. And Jude Law was a touch better than Clive Owen, although there was nothing wrong with Clive Owen’s performance. He’s not as good an actor, but does he bring the heat? Yes, he brings the angry crude cunning heat. The scene in which he and Julia Roberts break up is so furious that the theater exhaled when it ended.

That was not, I think, a spoiler. Then again, it is, but you would be poorly served if you entered into an act of commerce involving Closer without the awareness that this is a movie about people who hurt other people by granting and withdrawing and withholding their love. You want to brace for it.

And Julia Roberts? She’s a cipher. She is the actress who is boldly playing an older woman, but not really. No crows-feet. The role was originally going to Cate Blanchett, which would have worked out better. There’s nothing horrendous about Julia Roberts, but she’s such a passive actress. Even when she’s playing heated, it’s hard to believe her. The other characters have emotions, but she drifts. This is perhaps in some part the character. It still weakens the film to a degree.

At one level, the movie is about two men fighting; they use their relationships with two women as the battleground. This is exactly as un-feminist as it sounds. Natalie Portman undermines that, though. It’s not that she’s admirable, it’s that she understands the battleground as well as the men. So do they use her as a place to fight? Yes. But she is using them in other, more subtle ways. She’s a person, not an object. I’m not sure I can say the same about Julia Roberts, whose Anna is so passive that at times it seems like she just follows the last man who seduces her, in whatever sense of “seduces” one likes.

Perhaps, again, this was the point of the character. But if so, all I can say is that Julia Roberts was born to play that role.

In the end, mind you, it doesn’t matter because everyone else brings enough anger and passion and desire to the screen to more than make up for any lack on her part. It’s a fine movie which will be on my top ten list in a month or two. I should also caveat that my distaste for Julia Roberts may be irrational; if you would agree with that statement, feel free to disregard the last three paragraphs. A lot of critics really liked her performance.

Instead, consider the elegant cool greys and blues of the film, and don’t be put off by the contrived slow-motion opening sequence which seems so much like just another bad romance opening. The bookend closing sequence parodies it ruthlessly, up to and including the mawkish song. It is a meticulous movie, and I liked it very much.

Embarrassingly, up until very recently I had not seen a lot of Wong Kar Wai. By which I basically mean none. But I am determined to correct my cinematic errors and last night, desperately needing something to clear my brain from the mediocrity that was Alexander, I dug around and came up with Days of Being Wild. It was the right choice; it’s haunting me.

It reminds me of the Bayeux Tapestry. Wong flattens out the passage of time, deliberately eschewing conventional sequential techniques. There’s no build-up, no climax to the scenes. Things happen, flat against the backdrop of the world. The four protagonists shuffle around, touch each others lives, talk in pairs, and shuffle again. Time passes like a metronome, without emphasis.

It reminds me of the 60s, not just because it’s set in the 60s, but because it breathes cool with every understated frame. Wong’s camera, aided and abetted by Christopher Doyle, glides from shot to shot. He has an unerring eye for the significant angles of everyone’s face. Maggie Cheung’s in particular, of course, but he doesn’t stint on Leslie Cheung’s spoiled handsomeness either. Set the pop star actors against Christopher Doyle’s superb cinematography, and you’ve got the most elegant movie in the world.

There’s this fine line Wong walks there: the actors are filmed as beings of glamour, but their characters are bit players living out ordinary lives. Which does not, mind you, deprive them of importance. That’s another underlying truth to the world Wong creates: people are important because love is important because connections are important. They recur, no matter how much one might hide from them. Wong’s a romantic.

In the end there’s a climax to the movie. It only resolves one story, though. Maggie Cheung and Andy Lau and Carina Lau and Jacky Cheung, they’re still floating in 60s Hong Kong, looking for ways to connect, finding little hope.

Days of Being Wild will be playing at the MFA in Boston, February 25 through March 1, 2004. Or cut to the chase and get it from Kino, either alone or as part of their Wong Kai Wai box set.

I have this picture of Oliver Stone going “Yeah, so we’ll do the entire thing in narration, Anthony Hopkins will just tell us what happened, and then we’ll sort of intersperse moments where Alexander says something glorious and inspiring.” Then for some reason everyone else said “Good idea!” It was not, in fact, a good idea.

Val Kilmer was pretty good as Phillip. Hopefully Oliver Stone’s failure will brighten up the prospects for Baz Luhrmann’s Alexander movie. No other silver linings are visible.

House of Flying Daggers is the latest movie from Zhang Yimou, the guy who directed Hero. Depending on how much you counted on Zhang Yimou to keep making beautiful art movies, it’s either the final step in his commercialization or a slam-bang action movie without all that complex flashback stuff. Either way, those who complained about the politics of Hero will hopefully be relieved to find that House of Flying Daggers is light on the political subtext.

What you get is, really, a Shaw Brothers movie for the new millenium, with superb production values. There are rebels and an empire in decay and lovers and jealousy. There is not extended meditation on the nature of truth and lies, and while honor is important, it’s important as the substrate for the passions of love and lust.

Andy Lau really is a pretty good choice for that particular kind of story, too. He’s cute and roguish and all. I’m kind of wishing that Zhang Ziyi wasn’t in all the kung fu art flicks we get on these shores, but I have to admit she’s doing a good job with the roles.

Back to the kung fu: if Hero was Zhang Yimou’s practice run for a kung fu movie, then House of Flying Daggers is where he cuts loose. There’s stuff in here that’s going to be remembered for a while. In particular, there’s a fight scene towards the middle of the movie in a bamboo forest which is startlingly fresh and new, not so much in the actual kung fu but in the way in which he uses the environment. Nobody’s ever done quite that with trees before.

If you’re in LA or New York, you can see it on December 3rd. Everyone else is waiting till the 17th, or you can be a region-free liberated DVD watcher like me and get it early. I’ll see it again on the big screen, though, you betcha.