The Golden Globe nominations are in and have proven what a strange year it has been for Hollywood. While two nods for Meryl Streep is usually an annual affair, two for Sandra Bullock is just about unheard-of; Matt Damon makes the third actor with two nominations. In the non-acting categories, Jason Reitman and Quentin Tarantino received two nominations for directing and writing. As usual, the nominations were all over the board, giving recognition to films most people would would argue don't deserve it (Nine, Avatar, Tobey Maguire... at least if early word is accurate). But the two best moves the Hollywood Foreign Press made were ignoring both Lee Daniels and Rob Marshall in the directing category. I've discussed Daniels previously, but Marshall is quite possibly one of the worst directors in Hollywood. Chicago worked (for the most part) as a result of its source material and Catherine Zeta-Jones, but pay attention to any of the non-musical scenes, and you'll see that the guy can't direct for shit.
So who was missing, in terms of expectations? Invictus for picture, even though ol' Clint got a directing nod; Jeremy Renner; A Single Man in any non-acting category; Samantha Morton and Ben Foster; In the Loop, period; the Coens and A Serious Man in the Musical/Comedy category; and of course Tilda Swinton, though Julia came out so early this year, all the award folk have forgotten. Oh, and also, Mariah Carey. Full nominees, including the television categories and film music ones (Karen O. is now a GG nominee), via the press release.
Best Picture - Drama
- Avatar, d. James Cameron - The Hurt Locker, d. Kathryn Bigelow - Inglourious Basterds, d. Quentin Tarantino - Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, d. Lee Daniels - Up in the Air, d. Jason Reitman
Best Picture - Musical/Comedy
- (500) Days of Summer, d. Marc Webb - The Hangover, d. Todd Phillips - It's Complicated, d. Nancy Meyers - Julie & Julia, d. Nora Ephron - Nine, d. Rob Marshall
Best Director
- Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker - James Cameron, Avatar - Clint Eastwood, Invictus - Jason Reitman, Up in the Air - Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Best Actor - Drama
- Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart - George Clooney, Up in the Air - Colin Firth, A Single Man - Morgan Freeman, Invictus - Tobey Maguire, Brothers
Best Actress - Drama
- Emily Blunt, The Young Victoria - Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side - Helen Mirren, The Last Station - Carey Mulligan, An Education - Gabourey Sidibe, Precious
Best Actor - M/C
- Matt Damon, The Informant! - Daniel Day-Lewis, Nine - Robert Downey, Jr., Sherlock Holmes - Joseph Gordon-Levitt, (500) Days of Summer - Michael Stuhlbarg, A Serious Man
Best Actress - M/C
- Sandra Bullock, The Proposition - Marion Cotillard, Nine - Julia Roberts, Duplicity - Meryl Streep, It's Complicated - Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia
Best Supporting Actor
- Matt Damon, Invictus - Woody Harrelson, The Messenger - Christopher Plummer, The Last Station - Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones - Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Best Supporting Actress
- Penélope Cruz, Nine - Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air - Anna Kenrick, Up in the Air - Mo'Nique - Precious - Julianne Moore, A Single Man
Best Screenplay
- Neill Blomkamp, District 9 - Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker - Nancy Meyers, It's Complicated - Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air - Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Foreign-Language Film
- Baarìa, d. Giuseppe Tornatore, Italy - Broken Embraces [Los abrazos rotos], d. Pedro Almodóvar, Spain - The Maid [La nana], d. Sebastián Silva, Chile - A Prophet [Un prophète], d. Jacques Audiard, France - The White Ribbon [Das weiße Band], d. Michael Haneke, Austria/Germany/France/Italy
Animated Feature
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, d. Phil Lord, Chris Miller - Coraline, d. Henry Selick - Fantastic Mr. Fox, d. Wes Anderson - The Princess and the Frog, d. Ron Clements, John Musker - Up, d. Peter Docter, Bob Peterson
Profoundly peculiar and picaresque, Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s feature debut Innocence ranks among the most startling, magical cinematic portraits of adolescence in recent memory. Set at a mysterious all-girls boarding school where new recruits arrive in caskets marked with a giant star on top, the film tracks three of the near-forty girls who find themselves at this school, hidden away from the world by nature and a giant wall along its perimeter. Iris (Zoé Auclair) is the youngest of her house, wide-eyed and confused, missing her little brother and clinging to the eldest of the house, Bianca (Bérangère Haubruge), who’s in her final year and slowly approaching sexual maturity. In the middle of them, age-wise, is Alice (Lea Bridarolli), an awkward-looking young girl who dreams of leaving the community by impressing the directrice (Corinne Marchand) with her dancing skills.
There seems to be something overly schematic about Innocence, like an unbreakable code surrounding physical attributes of the young girls, based on the specifically colored ribbons that adorn their hair, which signify the age, or grade, the girls are in. A not-so-small detail that is hard to ignore is that the young girl who disappears early in the film is the only one of her peers to tie her hair in a straight ponytail as opposed to side pigtails. It’s not a coincidence surely, but Hadzihalilovic never makes breaking this code simple, if even possible, an act that keeps the narrative’s focus from feeling as clean as it appears.
Instead, Innocence comes across like a dream-like fable of pre-menstrual female adolescence (the girls are sent away from the school around the time they have their first period). Gorgeously rendered by cinematographer Benoît Debie, who shot Hadzihalilovic’s husband Gaspar Noé’s two most recent films Irrèversible and Enter the Void, Innocence never drops its visual spell, making the girls’ journeys formed out of a balance of obedience and childlike curiosity. It’s hard to know what to make of the two adult teachers, played by Marion Cotillard and Hélène de Fougerolles, who are both sympathetic to the girls’ maturation and working toward a strange archetype of feminine elegance. Innocence is a haunting parable, one that’s neither easy to decipher nor quick to leave one’s mind.
With: Bérangère Haubruge, Zoé Auclair, Marion Cotillard, Hélène de Fougerolles, Lea Bridarolli, Alisson Lalieux, Astrid Homme, Ana Palomo-Diaz, Olga Peytavi-Müller, Corinne Marchand, Sonia Petrovna Screenplay: Lucile Hadzihalilovic, based on the novella Mine-Haha or the Corporeal Education of Girls by Frank Wedekind Cinematography: Benoît Debie Music: Richard Cooke Country of Origin: Belgium/France/UK US Distributor: Leisure Time Features/Home Vision
Premiere: 10 September 2004 (Toronto International Film Festival) US Premiere: 16 March 2005 (Rendez-vous with French Cinema)
Awards: Best New Director (San Sebastián International Film Festival); Bronze Horse, Best Cinematography (Stockholm Film Festival); FIPRESCI Prize – International Competition (Istanbul International Film Festival)
Blogs have many uses, and some of those uses might actually benefit humanity. Compared to Ben Goldacre's Bad Science, or the very wonderful Daily Hate Myself, this blog often feels like it does little more than allow me to list my likes and dislikes at painful length, when not harping on about Rock Band. Last week, I whined about Stephen Sommers movies. This week, I will be rather boring about Michael Mann.
Though I don't want to do a Harry Knowles and spend the next fifteen paragraphs talking about how I'm the biggest Michael Mann fan ever so there, there's no way I can talk about Public Enemies and not admit that I am, as Canyon called me yesterday, a Mann apologist. I liked Miami Vice. I forgave Collateral its flaws. The Keep is a misunderstood and flawed classic that deserves to be seen in its full glory. Heat is the best crime film of the last twenty years. Yes, I like it more than Goodfellas, though not by much. Tracking the practically incremental alterations in his style is as fascinating to me as assessing Spielberg's late-period career reinventions, or Zemeckis' technological experiments, or Scorsese's slow descent into what would be termed irrelevance in any other filmmaker.
And yet Public Enemies didn't excite me that much. Middling reviews and a boring trailer did little to increase my enthusiasm, though part of it was disappointment with the film year so far. Only a couple of films have really impressed me: In The Loop, Kathryn Bigelow's haunting Iraq movie The Hurt Locker, the few minutes of Up I could concentrate on between disturbances by the kids behind me. Public Enemies was on my must-see list just because of Mann and Depp, but the played-out subject matter and my annoying ennui conspired against it. Case in point: it was released weeks ago, and I only saw it yesterday. This is not my usual behaviour.
For the first hour, I struggled to commit to it. Much comment has been made about Mann's decision to use the same digital processes he used in Collateral and Miami Vice (That piece being one of the most interesting articles about it), with criticism aimed at it for being muddy and ugly. Personally, I love the look of Mann's digital movies, but am aware that debate about his use of this technology in his previous films has sometimes come down to a matter of personal taste. In Public Enemies, the argument has altered slightly. It's no longer a debate about whether it looks nice or not. It's more about why Mann would use what some see as alienating and anachronistic digital photography in a period piece.
If anachronism is meant to be avoided, then surely it should be filmed in black and white on analogue film, but I do get the point. This technology is modern enough that only a few filmmakers are committing to it, and the novelty of seeing this startling and textured imagery has not yet disappeared. Shots of Depp and Cotillard (playing Dillinger's lover Billie Frechette) together in bed are dizzying, with cinematographer Dante Spinotti getting the camera in so close you can see every pore on their faces, lighting the scene with one stark light mimicking the brightness of the moon. The look of the movie is a world away from even John Milius' Dillinger, let alone the monochrome of William Wellman and Raoul Walsh.
So why do it? Partially because Mann is attempting to create a continuum between now and then. The movie already explores contemporary issues, such as the use of torture and technology to fight a threat to the nation, the march of progress leaving behind those who are unwilling to adapt, the cult of celebrity, and the narcissism of those who become addicted to the limelight. Instead of cracking out old film, Mann is saying that was then and then was now. We've barely moved on from those times, a point that is especially affecting considering that we're watching a film set during the Great Depression while teetering on the brink of our own economic collapse. The timing of this film's release couldn't have been better.
If you're going to use a historical crime setting to highlight failings in our own modern culture, why not use a visual template that is utterly modern? Plus, it is one of many aspects of the movie that connects with Mann's other movies. The visuals remind one of Mann's last two projects. The look of Billie's cell in the final scene, the reliance on technology to pursue lawbreakers, and the beautifully shot night-time raid scene are all reminiscent of Manhunter. The portrayal of a man who ended up shaping the world around him comes from Ali. Elliot Goldenthal's stirring soundtrack is occasionally reminiscent of the more grandiose moments of Last of the Mohicans. And then, of course, there are the myriad similarities with Heat.
A friend of the blog has already made an arch comment to me about how Mann has been making the same movie for the past twenty years, which is harsh but obviously not far from the truth. The parallels between Public Enemies and Heat are many, with Mann showing two "professionals" engaged in a battle against each other from opposite sides of the law. As with Heat, they have similarities. Hanna and McCauley are both perfectionists, surrounding themselves with similar professionals, whose personal lives are affected by their determination to do what they do as well as they can do it.
Dillinger and Purvis (Christian Bale's ambitious and ultimately deluded crime fighter) have a similar attitude to their work, and surround themselves with a tight group of compatriots, but they are also forced to work with people who cannot match up to their standards. Though McCauley is brought low by the failings of his team, Dillinger distances himself from the losers in his crew, and is eventually undone by events outside his influence. More surprisingly, while Hanna is never compromised by his team, Purvis is forced to watch as his team becomes ever more desperate and foolish. Billie is tortured, innocent civilians are gunned down (he is directly responsible for at least two grisly deaths), and it is late in the movie before he realises how low he is willing to sink in order to get his man.
Heat also shows the toll this life takes on a man. The most memorable scene is the beautifully played meeting between Hanna and McCauley, a scene so powerful that not even the wretched Righteous Kill could not retroactively fuck it up. (Note that Pacino and De Niro share the frame, wearing similar grey suits, though with different coloured shirts).
Their realisation that they are so similar is enough to create a bond between them. At the end, Hanna guns down McCauley, and the final shot has them sharing the frame again, Hanna comforting McCauley as he dies (and yes, I cry every time I see it). From the beginning of Heat to the end, the two characters converge. Public Enemies is different enough that the criticism that it is a remake of Heat can be dismissed, though I appreciate there is enough similarity there to raise eyebrows. While McCauley and Hanna become closer in spirit, Purvis and Dillinger start off similar and become more different, and never reach that moment of reconciliation.
In the first half of the film Dillinger is a shallow popinjay who thrives on public approval, and Purvis, who is more buttoned-down, is more than happy to milk the attention he gets after shooting Pretty Boy Floyd by attaching himself to J. Edgar Hoover, quickly adapting to his role as Eliot-Ness-style G-Man hero. At film's end, Dillinger has lost the love of his life, but has achieved a kind of immortality. He infiltrates (with no effort at all) the Dillinger Squad office in the Chicago Police Department building, and sees first-hand the efforts made to capture him. He walks through the room in what looks like a state of rapture, delighted by his importance and his ability to dodge capture even at the heart of the web. Following that, the superb finale shows him watching Clark Gable playing a Dillinger-esque gangster in Manhattan Melodrama, a smug grin spreading across his face.
Purvis, on the other hand, has seen the law compromised and broken, his own morality dented, and his partner murdered. He too is alone, but doesn't even have someone who would sacrifice their own freedom for him, and though his team is responsible for catching Dillinger, it is Charles Winstead who fires the killing shot, and he is forced to watch as this event unfolds in front of him. The look of misery on Bale's face is ambiguous. Is he sad to see Dillinger die, as Hanna is to see McCauley die? Is he jealous that he didn't get to kill his nemesis? Or is he selfishly thinking about how he has lost everything, and all he has to show for it is the tawdry sight of a corpse on a high street, a brokenhearted but noble woman left loveless by his actions, and a career that forces him to be the stooge of a boss who doesn't believe in him?
Unlike Heat, criminal and cop do not share the screen in the final moments. Whereas Mann used colour to show play up the similarities between Hanna and McCauley, in Public Enemies he uses it to show the contrast. Bale's scenes are almost exclusively rendered in gun-metal grey, filmed in impersonal concrete buildings filled with drab, unglamorous furniture. Depp's scenes are mostly brown, occasionally rich and warm, but mostly muted, as if the glamour and lushness has been drained from the screen. One short scene at a racetrack is almost sepia tone, evoking memories of the past as Bale, surrounded by metal, machinery, and flashing lights, references the inevitable future.
Nevertheless, Dillinger is aware that by maintaining the public image of a dashing outlaw he will become a legend, and Depp plays up to that subtly, walking with a confident swagger and adding an Elvis-like twinkle to his speech. In one of the film's highlights, we see how thrilled he is, after being captured by Purvis' men midway through the film, to be transported from a flare-lit airport along a gauntlet of adoring bystanders, lauded by the public as a man of the people fighting against the monolithic banks. That confident mask only ever slips when members of his gang screw up (Mann's protagonists are perfectionists, as ever), or when he loses Billie and cannot get her back without jeopardising himself. Tragically, he never finds out that she protects him from capture at the risk of her own life.
These little glimpses of the scared boy inside the man leak out more as the film progresses, just as we see Bale's frustration and confusion manifest in expressions of despair and panic. Even as his quarry lies dead on the floor, Bale's face shows no relief, merely pain, lit by another flare as Dillinger's notoriety generates one last media frenzy, the same kind of berserker rage from a public who never cared if Dillinger was alive or dead, just that the outlaw tale was being told right in front of them.
As I mentioned earlier, it took me a while to settle. Parsing Mann's choices distracted me so much I foolishly lost track of the plot and performances. After an hour the movie began to grip, but even so, I didn't expect what happened next. Good movies can make me forget my troubles, but great movies transport you out of your body. Closer to the end of the film, Mann's visuals become ever more abstract, and his lighting more and more stark. The third act begins with a motel raid that ranks with the bank raid and subsequent street battle in Heat, or the nightclub shootout from Collateral. Its impact is visceral and terrifying, battering the audience with beautifully edited sound: one gunshot was so loud and clear that it rattled my chair and drew a shriek of terror from someone sitting behind me. During this scene we see Purvis crack. Losing his partner sends him momentarily over the edge, and he abandons his search for Dillinger to go after the truly awful Baby Face Nelson. Their showdown is breathtaking.
By that point, my previous qualms were forgotten. As Dillinger and Purvis approach their destiny outside the Biograph theatre, all of the careful set-up that I had mistaken for distraction pays off with astonishing cumulative power. As the final scene unravels, with Goldenthal's beautiful soundtrack rising over Marion Cotillard's moment of heartbroken revelation, I succumbed to awestruck tears. Mann did it to me again, that talented bastard.
In a parallel with my experience during the film, opinion might be swinging back in its favour. This brilliantly perceptive second look is far more in step with my own experience (and contains way more insight than this blogpost, so do yourself a favour and check it out), and these reviews by Nigel Andrews and Manohla Dargis make me wonder whether it will be reappraised by the end of the year.
I hope so. In a year that has provided so little of interest, and some thoroughly contentious toy-movies, this is one of a very small group of films that has generated passion in me. More than that, Public Enemies actually overwhelmed me in a way nothing else has since I saw Rachel Getting Married earlier this year. If things go right, by the end of 2009 critics will have had a chance to mull over this intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging work of art, and will shower garlands and rose petals over Depp, Cotillard, and Bale, co-stars Jason Clarke and Branka Katic, writers Ronan Bennett and Anne Biderman, and especially Mann, who just made his best film since Heat. My head is still ringing like a bell 28 hours later. Goddamn, I love cinema.
I've often joked that Abel Ferrara, like Sam Fuller before him, isn't so much "an American filmmaker" as he is the French's idea of "an American filmmaker." He's pulpy and seedy, particularly when addressing issues of philosophy, spirituality and religion. It's recently dawned on me that more than just that, he's the French's idea of an American Ingmar Bergman. As peculiar as that seems, Ferrara's torrid relationship with Christianity appears to have eluded my thoughts until he tackled the issue head-on in Mary. In Mary, Ferrara places Forest Whitaker in the Harvey Keitel role, a total cod whose bad behavior karmicly releases the ultimate test of faith as he's haunted by the performance of Marie Palesi (Juliette Binoche) as Mary Magdalene in yet another Jesus flick. Now, Ted Younger (Whitaker) is no stranger to Jesus and faith; he hosts a popular television program examining the origins of the Christian messiah. However, when his job becomes more important than his relationship with his pregnant wife (Heather Graham) and suspicion is raised about his extramarital affair with actress Gretchen (Marion Cotillard), he seeks understanding from the elusive Marie in his path of redemption.
Like most of Ferrara's work, Mary is deeply flawed. It's a filthy orgy of controversial ideas, none of which come to a simultaneous climax, or even a coherent one. In researching other people's thoughts of Mary, I discovered that the film's crossover appeal (as in an appeal to anyone outside of Ferrara's small fanbase) is pretty much null, almost entirely attributed to the film's shaky stance on faith in chaos. However, to the Ferrara admirer, Mary works beautifully into his oeuvre, a fascinating mess of frustration and admiration.
Where Ferrara succeeds in Mary is in his character placement. Marie, played phenomenally by Binoche, is undoubtedly the most captivating figure in the film and most of her fascination comes from the realization that Ferrara doesn't understand her at all. After taking on the role of Mary Magdalene, Marie spirals into a moral and spirital abyss, unable to shake her own performance, which (according to Whitaker) is shattering. Part of the blame can be placed upon the film's writer/director/star Matthew Modine, a deplorable megalomaniac whose delusions run much deeper than simply casting himself as Jesus. According to Cotillard, it's Modine's self-importance and incompetence as a director which keeps Binoche from leaving Jerusalem. Binoche's personal crisis shrouds the entire film without becoming its central focus. Outside of Lili Taylor's Kathleen in The Addiction (and Drea DeMatteo's nameless character in 'R Xmas, which I hadn't seen at the time), she's the only Ferrara woman I can think of that doesn't fit into his dual idea of women, the simple Madonna/whore complex seen in its fullest between Béatrice Dalle and Claudia Schiffer in The Blackout. It's perhaps in Binoche's obsession with Mary Magdalene, a whore according to certain gospels, Jesus' number one disciple according to others, that her Marie breaks the mold of a typical Ferrara woman in becoming something entirely separate, something he clearly doesn't "get." In keeping Marie in the background while still placing her as the driving force of Mary, Ferrara turns her into a haunting figure as enigmatic and impenetrable as the mysteries of Jesus himself.
There's a chilling relevance to Binoche's Marie, escalated by the death of Heath Ledger, which happened around the time I first saw Mary. As far as most reports go, his death may have been caused by the inability to shake his last role, that of the Joker in Batman. To those unfamiliar with the method of acting, both Marie's conversion and Ledger's death haunt to the bone, a possession of which those outside of the field could never fully grasp. I understand it even less than Ferrara seems to, and it's in this ignorance, or more specificially the impossibility of empathy, that Binoche's performance, reminiscent of Liv Ullmann's Elisabet in Persona, becomes so breathtaking... and scary. There comes a point where Whitaker's tribulations reek of familiarity in the context of Ferrara, but it's Binoche's looming presence that holds the film to where it needs to be. Like Ullmann's disastrous effect on Bibi Andersson, Binoche drives Mary into its frenzy.
With: Forest Whitaker, Matthew Modine, Juliette Binoche, Heather Graham, Marion Cotillard, Stefania Rocca, Marco Leonardi, Luca Lionello, Mario Opinato, Elio Germano, Emanuela Iovannitti Screenplay: Abel Ferrara, Mario Isabella, Simone Lageoles, Scott Pardo Cinematography: Stefano Falivene Music: Francis Kuipers Country of Origin: Italy/France/USA US Distributor: N/A
Premiere: 6 September 2005 (Venice Film Festival)
Awards: Grand Special Jury Prize (Venice Film Festival)
The Golden Globe nominations are in and have proven what a strange year it has been for Hollywood. While two nods for Meryl Streep is usually an annual affair, two for Sandra Bullock is just about unheard-of; Matt Damon makes the third actor with two nominations. In the non-acting categories, Jason Reitman and Quentin Tarantino received two nominations for directing and writing. As usual, the nominations were all over the board, giving recognition to films most people would would argue don't deserve it (Nine, Avatar, Tobey Maguire... at least if early word is accurate). But the two best moves the Hollywood Foreign Press made were ignoring both Lee Daniels and Rob Marshall in the directing category. I've discussed Daniels previously, but Marshall is quite possibly one of the worst directors in Hollywood. Chicago worked (for the most part) as a result of its source material and Catherine Zeta-Jones, but pay attention to any of the non-musical scenes, and you'll see that the guy can't direct for shit.
So who was missing, in terms of expectations? Invictus for picture, even though ol' Clint got a directing nod; Jeremy Renner; A Single Man in any non-acting category; Samantha Morton and Ben Foster; In the Loop, period; the Coens and A Serious Man in the Musical/Comedy category; and of course Tilda Swinton, though Julia came out so early this year, all the award folk have forgotten. Oh, and also, Mariah Carey. Full nominees, including the television categories and film music ones (Karen O. is now a GG nominee), via the press release.
- Avatar, d. James Cameron
- (500) Days of Summer, d. Marc Webb
- Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
- Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
- Emily Blunt, The Young Victoria
- Matt Damon, The Informant!
- Sandra Bullock, The Proposition
- Matt Damon, Invictus
- Penélope Cruz, Nine
- Neill Blomkamp, District 9
- Baarìa, d. Giuseppe Tornatore, Italy
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, d. Phil Lord, Chris Miller
- Avatar, d. James Cameron
- (500) Days of Summer, d. Marc Webb
- Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
- Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
- Emily Blunt, The Young Victoria
- Matt Damon, The Informant!
- Sandra Bullock, The Proposition
- Matt Damon, Invictus
- Penélope Cruz, Nine
- Neill Blomkamp, District 9
- Baarìa, d. Giuseppe Tornatore, Italy
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, d. Phil Lord, Chris Miller
