Something Middling This Way Comes

As you know, I’m an avid supporter of indie film. Thus, I decided it appropriate to devote an entire post to one of the most underpublicized releases in many a moon, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I. But first, let’s wander down memory lane and examine its highly underrated predecessors, box-office flops all. Keep in mind that I’m wearing my movie critic cap at the moment, not my Hoggy-Hoggy-Hogwarts lovin’ Sorting Hat. For example, I can’t deny that the Prisoner of Azkaban movie spliced many a beloved scene, but it’d be downright unfair if I didn’t extol its expert manipulation of mood and impressively mature performances. In short, I’m reviewing what the filmmakers left in, not what they cut out. So, without further ado-

Sorcerer’s Stone-In hindsight, it’s clear that the Potter phenom was only in its infancy when this one hit theaters; that’s probably why this one gives off a faint whiff of flop sweat and lacks the distinctive stylistic sizzle that a Gilliam or Spielberg could’ve lent to the proceedings. This is a tasteful, harmless, gently involving example of paint-by-the-numbers adaptation that pleases all viewers without seriously alienating or truly exhilarating any. B.

Chamber of Secrets-Ah, here we have it, the nadir of the series, a padded, plodding mess that oscillates jerkily between kid-courting whimsy and watch-through-your-fingers violence. It’s the weakest of Rowling’s books, but at least in the novel our blazingly active imaginations could fill in the gaps between the words. Here, what you see is what you get, and what you get is a trio of kids fighting losing battles with puberty and shockingly tacky CGI spiders. There are exactly two saving graces; Kenneth Branagh’s Gilderoy Lockhart, who sets the screen on fire with his unchecked flamboyance, and Richard Harris, whose radiant Dumbledore is great and greatly missed. C.

Prisoner of Azkaban-Alfonso Cuaron does away with the reverential tone of the first two installments, forging a beguilingly bizarre wild ride that thrills even when it skids off the rails every now and then (two words: Knight. Bus.) An essential document of three budding actors blossoming and taking control of the screen, this movie works at a fundamental level on which the first two don’t; indeed, as Harry soars over the grounds of Hogwarts, guided by the wings of Buckbeak and his own swiftly maturing heart, the film series at last captures the ineffable, overwhelming emotional majesty of the books. A-.

Goblet of Fire-Four Weddings and A Funeral proved that Mike Newell got relationships, and he stakes his claim yet again in film numero quatro, deftly handling the romantic roundelays as our heroes experience the first surges of hormonal electricity. He also puts on his action director pants with stunning results; the three Triwizard scenes come off as both exquisitely intricate setpieces and spontaneous explosions of sound and fury. Best of all is Voldemort’s resurrection scene; perhaps the most important sequence in the entire octet, it’s transferred to the screen with all of the dread, awe, and deep, deep sorrow intact. A great book and a very good movie. B+.

Order of the Phoenix-David Yates, who never directed a major studio movie prior to this run, hits the ground running with this breathtaking fifth film. Imelda Staunton and the marvelously malicious Helena Bonham Carter are welcome additions to the cast, and the standby’s carry out their ever-expanding duties flawlessly. The memorable scenes are endless; the Dementor attack, the gathering at Grimwald place, the first class with Umbridge, Harry’s first kiss, Fred and George’s attack, the final duel….Yates orchestrates them all with an eye for detail and a knack for emotional and structural fluidity. A current of true, potent magic flows through this, the best film of the series thus far. A.

Half-Blood Prince-Another expert distillation of what makes Rowling’s books great. More emotional than most melodramas and packed with twice the humour of anything Adam Sandler’s ever made, HBP has it all. By this point in the series, cast and crew alike are so all so good that their work appears to be entirely second nature to them. A decidedly satisfying installment that endears us to these characters more than ever while priming us for what lies ahead….A-.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows-Part I

When it comes to this one, the beginning of the end for one of cinema's most consistently satisfying and mind-bogglingly lucrative franchises, don't believe the hype. By that same token, don't believe the hate. Contrary to the hyperbole perpetrated by the ramped-up Rita Skeeters of film criticism, Deathly Hallows isn't David Yates's career-crowning Empire Strikes Back, but it isn't a horsemen of the cinematic apocalypse out to Hoover-maneuver your hard-earned dough, either. It packs the visceral wallop you'd expect from a finale ultimo, but it lacks the structural fluidity of its two Yates predecessors. Exceedingly exciting setpieces are sandwiched between messily directed scenes that either serve no purpose, or, worse, are flat-out detrimental to the story's momentum. Here's a movie that manufactures wonder after million-dollar wonder, then seems to do its damnedest to undercut it's own successes. Part I is equal parts exhilarating and exasperating, a magical mixed bag, a beautifully designed, emotionally charged mess. If you're turned off by the contradictions in the above sentence, prep yo' ass; this review will be full of them.

The plot sounds deceptively simple, though readers of the book know it to be a study in epic complexity. In short, we have Harry, Ron, and Hermione scouring Europe in search of seven Horcruxes, pieces of Voldemort's soul that most be destroyed before they can kill off aforementioned noseless Nazi. As their search dovetails into a hunt for the titular objects, whose owners can reign over immortality itself, exhaustion, fear, and petty jealousy take hold of our heroes, and their friendship, not to mention the fate of the magical world, stands on the edge of a knife...

Sounds positively Middle-Earthian, doesn't it? But unlike Rowling's detractors, I don't see Hallows resemblance to the Rings trilogy as a negative. Great epic literature, from The Odyssey to the Bible to The Road, hinges on the Journey. Sending characters out into the elements is the ultimate test of our love for them and their love of each other, and I applaud Rowling's decision to follow this tried and true tradition. It's not just Harry vs. Voldemort in book seven-it's Harry vs. the World. Yates's failure to understand this crucial piece of information becomes the picture’s Achilles heel. There’ll be plenty of praise for the movie at the end of this review, but steel yourself, Mr. Potter-you're getting torn to pieces in the next few paragraphs.

Those of you who've read the book know that, like all of the Potter novels (hell, all novels), it is flawed. Rowling never writes a boring sentence, but she has a frustrating habit of including wonderfully written, memorable scenes that do nothing to advance plot or deepen character-take a look at the endless descriptions of food in Sorcerer’s or the Deathday Party in Secrets and you’ll see what I mean. In Hallows, she flounders briefly by including implications of a Harry-Hermione almost-romance and a spitefully jealous Ron. By this point in the canon, both Ron and Hermione are sure enough of their feelings for each other (as is Harry of his attraction to Ginny) that such soap-opera drama comes off as little more than glorified dilly-dallying. It slows down the train-off-the-tracks pacing that’s necessary for a successful race to the finish.

Luckily, Rowling only wastes a few pages on this pointless peccadillo of a subplot. Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves all but make it the heart of the film. This installment starts with a slam-bang opening act-highlights include a profoundly affecting prologue, a white-knuckle wand-duel/dog-fight hybrid, and one of the coolest standalone action sequences in the series, a sort of magical Mission: Impossible break-in. Then, in the middle, it just sort of stops. Our heroes are in a forest, and they sit there. And sit there. And mope. Harry and Hermione flirt. Ron becomes sullen. Hell, emo. The threesome get in an argument that feels so obligatory and blatantly manipulative that you wonder if George Lucas wrote the dialogue on the sly. This whole exercise in lavish stupidity peaks as Ron suffers a hallucination of Harry and Hermione making out in the nude. As I watched the needless display of flesh, the horridly choreographed ballet of brooding and sexual ennui, I felt as if I were viewing an entry in the Twilight series. Why Yates would try to emulate a decidedly lesser franchise is beyond me, as is whether he did so intentionally, but I could bitch-slap him for his decision to expand the book’s flimsiest plot-point in an attempt to satiate the Drooling Over Daniel crowd.

He’s a better director than that.

These are better movies.

The other problem was perhaps unavoidable, but is noticeable all the same. Watching the last couple of entries in the series, readers of the novels probably noticed the missing plot points piling up like names in the Goblet of Fire. “This information is absolutely essential….how will they reveal it?”, we thought to ourselves. The answer? Very awkwardly. All the magic-babble snipped from the previous pictures pops up here, with such frequency and speed that non-readers will probably contract migraines within the first half hour. Characters such as Rufus Scrimgeour and Mundungus Fletcher, introduced earlier in the novels, appear for the first and last time here, receiving so little screen time that they come off not so much as people but as walking pieces of exposition. In a way, Part I is this series’ Personal Jesus, suffering for the structural sins of its predecessors and saving Part II from the hell of excess explanation.

And yet, for all its considerable issues, I ultimate left the theatre satisfied and hungry for more, for several reasons. Firstly, there are the performances, which continue to get better and better; the adult ensemble is stronger than ever, and even when saddled with clunky dialogue, Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson shine, and will continue to soar when interpreting the even more demanding material of the story’s final half. Alexandre Desplat contributes a commendably propulsive score, and Eduardo Serra lends a grimly immersive European palette to the visuals. Scribe Steve Kloves continues to astound in his effortless blending of the enchanted and ordinary world (a well-known Nick Cave song comes on and fits right in).

Best of all, in an ironic twist, while the picture botches some of the most movie-ready scenes in the series, it captures wonderfully an element of the novel that I was dead certain would be lost in translation; the anything-can-happen trepidation that hangs over the story like a mourner’s veil. After Dumbledore’s death in part six, we are left with the distinct impress that no one and nothing is safe. There are evil people, there are ruthless people, and there are good people who will die for no reason. I feared that, after a PG-rated Half-Blood Prince, Yates might step away from the frankness needed for the final part of this story. But Hallows skimps on nothing. From its chilling evocation of the new Totalitarian ministry to its blood-curdling scenes of torture and abuse to the frequent mentions of the dead, dying, or missing, this installment stakes the odds high and mighty against our heroes, and is thus the perfect set-up for what’s sure to be a slam-bang final film. Notice I said perfect set-up. By no means is Deathly Hallows a perfect movie. Still, that unique Potter magic isn’t gone. It’s just sporadic. I expect it to be back and better than ever eight months for now, when this saga of ambition, emotion and sky-high receipts comes to one helluva close. B-.

It Don't Worry Me...

NASHVILLE

Nashville is not the best written film of all time, but it is perhaps the most successful at convincing us that it is not written. Here's a movie bursting at the seams with over 30 characters and jam-packed with at least ten full-length musical performances and almost three hours in length. But yet each individual moment seems startlingly spontaneous; every action these people take seems like an extension of their gloriously idiosyncratic personas instead of a function of the screenwriter's sweaty-palmed desire to move the story along. You'd think Robert Altman's pitiless, perceptive Polaroid of red-state, post-Watergate America would've aged like cheap milk, but, as with many immortal works of art, this one finds astonishing universality in its specificity.

The plot? Non-existent. There's a presidential convention going on in Nashville, and the camera weaves in and out of concert mobs, plants itself in the back of smoke-choked bars, lurks in the corners of sad little hotel rooms and houses, giving us brief, biting vignettes of the people who happen to be in town at the time and what they're up to. Scenes flash past with blink-and-you'll-miss-it brevity-a gospel singer (Lily Tomlin) converses with her deaf son, a whacked-out patriot (Henry Gibson) labors over the production of a trite bicentennial tribute, a gaga BBC reporter (Geraldine Chaplin) ambles around a junkyard mumbling gibberish into her tape recorder, an Opry starlet (Ronee Blake, best in show) has an onstage meltdown and so on. And, thank god, in no way do all these little pieces add up to some soppy sobriquet about how We're All Really The Same (o hai, Crash!)

Of course, infinite praise is due Joan Tewkesbury's screenplay, a marvel of structural ingenuity. It show us the struggles of these sad, strange individuals while addressing the problems that plague our country at large. The storytelling here doesn't mask the social commentary; it is the social commentary. One of my favorite moments in the picture comes at the beginning of songstress Connie White's (Karen Black) Opry performance. Working the crowd, she gives an autograph and a photo-op to a young boy flanking the stage. "Study real hard!", she proclaims, "You can be the next president!" But her ad-lib flops; there's a smattering of golf-clapping and then a moment of devastating silence before she launches into her first song. Within about half-a-minute, Tewkesbury has planted two questions in our head. First of all, what place do Connie and her music-patriotic to the hilt-have in an age of irony and countercultural sprawl? But just after our heart breaks for her, a second thought comes to mind: What's wrong with our country when the phrase "You can be the next president" seems more like a threat than a compliment? Moments like this one abound in Nashville. You find yourself in a pleasant predicament; you want to run out of the theater now now now and discuss these pearls of wisdom with everyone, but you also hope the picture will run forever, will keep getting at more and more of what makes America American and humans all too human.

The other unique aspect of the script is rather sad; it is, to this day, one of the only major Hollywood classics penned by a woman. As such, the film's portrayal of American women is deeper, angrier, and more honest than most any other. Roger Ebert says it best; "They are prized for their talent, their beauty, their services in bed, but never once in this movie for themselves." Tewkesbury gets at a sad truth here. It's not that men don't praise women; even worse, we praise them for the wrong things. We extol their looks, skills, and sensual prowess so often that some of them begin to think those are the only aspects worth improving. Look at Sueleen (Gwen Welles), a talentless singer who hits paydirt because she's willing to strip when she sings. Or Martha (Shelley Duvall), whose all-consuming desire for physical intimacy sidetracks her journey to the sickbed of a dying relative. Or, for Tewkesbury's most piercing evocation of sexual cruelty, watch the film's most famous scene-insolent but ingenious folk-rocker Tom Frank (Keith Carradine) serenades a bar full of women. He has slept with all of them. He loves none of them. They have come because they believe that after the show, he might, just might, take them home. By objectifying their appearances and tuning out their personalities, he has created in them a want that can neither be fulfilled nor forgotten.

If the script's the tinder, Robert Altman's the match. Ah, the Altman Style, perhaps the most distinctive directorial touch in movie history! Not only would he encourage his actors to riff on the written dialogue (causing many a screenwriter many a conniption), but he'd often station the characters (and his camera) in the midst of a crowd, then encourage extras and ensemble members to have in-depth conversations of their own-and talk over the leads! By refusing to a) provide meat-and-potatoes plot-pusher dialogue or b) hone in on one particular exchange, Altman makes you work. You must listen up, you must choose what's important and why. You can watch Nasvhille three or four or five times and focus on different strands of conversation, different people on the fringes of the frame. By broadening the soundtrack and the shot angles, Altman brilliantly refutes the moronic-but-abiding notion that a movie must mean the one thing to all people. The picture is a Homeric odyssey, with you as Odysseus; each viewer has an individual journey, as opposed to the conventional group experience. You know I like a movie that believes in its audience. This picture is one giant cinematic trust fall.

Now that I've devoted a full paragraph of idolatry to Altman, it's time I turned my attention to the cast. Students of performance would be wise to check this one out. I don't know what combination of written word and internal choice was involved, but here are thespians entirely devoid of vanity. Take Blake's work, for example. The role of a country diva collapsing under the enormity of her self-sustained legend offers enormous showboating potential. Instead, as a disturbed person would be more likely to do, she plays her character with the frenzied desperation of someone trying to pass as sane, and when she does lapse into delirium, it is petty and pathetic. There are myriad examples of such note-perfect realism here-by staying true to even the ugliest impulse, these actors endear us to their characters twice as much as if they'd attempt to make them "sympathetic". Appropriate for this tough-love classic, a timeless portrait of tortured souls caught in the sometimes treacherous, sometimes triumphant act of surprising themselves-and us.

Oh, and one more thing. During the making of Nashville, one of the great apocryphal stories of cinematic folklore was born. As Altman geared up to shoot the final scene, he was over-budget, over-drugged, and caught in the midst of a brewing storm. At the end of his rope, he shut off the camera, stretched out his arms, and yelled "STOP RAINING!". The rain, knowing a great director when it heard one, did just that. Or so the story goes.