(David O. Russell, 2013)
Russell has emerged over his last few films as that rare thing; an auteur with the ability to make truly accessible popular cinema. As such, American Hustle feels ambitious, personal, (relatively) intelligent and well-crafted, while also managing to be raucously entertaining. It gives movie stars meaty roles filled with great, actorly scenes to play, and never skimps on glamour or laughs, while delivering a complex, talky story filled with (often silly and ostentatious) stylistic flourishes.
Set very self-consciously in the mid 1970s (it often feels like it was directed by the costume and production design departments, so enraptured is it with big collars, kitschy decor and huge American cars, not to mention the almost fetishistic approach Russell takes to hairstyles - two scenes here involve characters wearing curlers throughout, while the opening spends a slow minute or two studying Bale as he dons an elaborate hairpiece) it follows Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), a New York businessman and con artist, and his experiences after he meets Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams). They fall passionately in love, despite Irving's marriage to Roselyn (Jennifer Lawrence), a possibly-disturbed, but sexy housewife who retains a hold over him. Sydney adopts a new identity; Lady Edith Greensley, an English aristocrat with banking connections, and her assistance trebles Irving's fraud business. This attracts the attention of frustrated FBI agent Richie Di Maso (Bradley Cooper) who catches Sydney and uses her to persuade Irving to help him mount a series of elaborate sting operations, catching corrupt officials, beginning with Jeremy Renner's New Jersey Mayor Carmine Polito. As they get deeper and deeper, attracting the attention of the mob (a scary Robert DeNiro and Jack Huston) and an ambitious D.A. (Allesandro Nivola, seemingly impersonating Christopher Walken) Irving and Sydney's relationship unravels, and finally Irving must come up with a plan to get them out of trouble unharmed.
Despite the stupid Scorsese comparisons - yes, Russell has seen Goodfellas - his style is determinedly his own. Loose and freewheeling, his camera ceaselessly roams, homing in on his actors as they work themselves up in one of the constant emotional climaxes scattered throughout the narrative.
That is an issue; this film is constantly pitched near hysteria. Each scene feels like an improvisation session near its end, with characters upset or enraged or on the make. It never settles down, never takes a moment. Only Di Maso's FBI boss, played by a beautifully downbeat Louis CK, operates at a different pace. Russell's style, so hyperactive and energetic, compounds this, as does his love for caking his soundtrack in vintage tunes, most of them absolutely unrelated to the story, for all that they add to the sensual pleasure of the film in general.
Actors must love him as a director; all five principals here get big showcase scenes. Bale, Adams and Cooper get several apiece, and each thrives. Bale is building what will seem in retrospect like a stunning career, mixing massive blockbusters with more nuanced character work, and here he seamlessly goes all New York method, shrugging and chewing on his words behind his big '70s glasses. His Irving is the heart of the film, and he carries it, his pain and confusion giving the last act a sizeable emotional sting. Adams - in what feels like a rare part where we get to see how beautiful she is - is equally great, never forgetting to show us how vulnerable Sydney remains even as she plays her part in the big con. And Russell knows just how to use Cooper. So handsome and virile, his star persona is always a little smug and conceited, and Russell identifies just how unsympathetic that can be, making Richie consciously the star of the movie playing in his head while he transforms himself into the villain of the one we're watching.
Through all this Russell uses lots of slow-motion, a free-floating voiceover which flicks between characters, and Linus Sandgren's photography ensures the whole thing is nicely textured and often stunning.
Overall, its a fascinating film; messy, riveting and annoying in equal measure. Its director, though, is now a major figure. Which partly explains just why his work is now so reviled in some quarters.
Showing posts with label David O. Russell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David O. Russell. Show all posts
Saturday, 11 January 2014
Thursday, 22 November 2012
SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
(David O. Russell, 2012)
Its hard to say just what it is that makes Russell's films so distinctive, but distinctive they are. They feel like his alone, in approach, in style, in vibe. I think its a combination of elements. He has a nervy, almost hysterical angle on character. His people are not always likeable, but they are warmly, messily human; complicated, infuriating creatures with personality defects and evident flaws. His style emphasises this, with a fluid facility with handheld work notable in each of his last few films, the camera restless and mobile, indulging in lots of sweeping pans and long zooms. He loves to use classic rock on his soundtracks, too; Silver Linings Playbook makes beautiful use of Led Zeppelin's "What Is and What Should Never Be", for instance, during a manic episode suffered by Pat (Bradley Cooper).
Pat has just been released from a Mental Hospital into the care of his parents (Jackie Weaver and Robert DeNiro) after finding his wife in the shower with a colleague triggered a violent incident. That incident only revealed a long-undiagnosed bipolar tendency perhaps inherited from his father, who deals with his issues through an obsession with American Football and superstitions around the game. Pat is determined to improve himself for his wife, even though she has filed for a restraining order and left town (his repeated assertions of their love and happiness are the chief signifier of his instability). Meanwhile, he meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), whose husband has died, leaving her alternately depressed and manic - perhaps the first manic pixie dreamgirl who actually qualifies - and their initial spark is complicated by both of their disorders, their family situations, and Pat's delusional belief that his wife is waiting for him.
Russell makes the early sections feel like a somewhat frazzled black comedy, filled with dark humour, bitter dialogue, and the many tensions beneath the surface of this troubled family sporadically spurting to the surface. The film then slowly grows more emotional and moving, that bitterness receding to an extent even if it never really quite disappears. The ending is straight romcom, and while some may be disappointed by its outright conventionality, it feels like a triumphant victory over the forces of darkness after the territory plumbed by the material earlier on. Just to make it even more conventional, the last act also has a sport movie tinge, with Pat and Tiffany preparing for and competing in a Ballroom Dance competition, but that sequence is a great example of what makes Russell so interesting: though the stakes are high, he makes a joke of it, with a key move in the routine providing a big laugh.
This is a film focused intently on family, on the damage that our parents can do to us, but about how they can heal us, too. De Niro and Weaver are terrific as Pat's worried parents, the former doing his best work in about a decade. His own explosive issues have informed the way Pat has developed, and yet his love for his son is never in doubt. This is revealed in a handful of great scenes - a couple of emotional, farcelike showdowns in the family home and a tearful confession of fatherly neglect and regret - each of them nicely played without recourse to the usual mugging and stock mannerisms we have seen from the actor in role after role over the last few years.
It is also a film about the world now, with references to the way the economy crushes people, increasing the pressure of everyday life until mental and emotional problems become almost unavoidable. Pat suggests at one point that perhaps he and Tiffany and his friend Danny (Chris Tucker)
are the ones who have seen something the others are simply missing, and you feel the film may agree with him. It certainly sympathises. The world is a cruel, grim place, Russell seems to say, but there is the love of a family and the love between a man and a woman, and that can sometimes make it all alright. That might sound schmaltzy, but his sensibility rejects schmaltz and overt sentiment, preferring a tart view of humanity and a cynical laugh at their ludicrousness, which is a big part of what makes his work, and this film, so compelling.
Apart from all that, and returning to classic rock, has any director ever used Rare Earth on his soundtracks as much as Russell? I think not, and he should be cherished for that...
Its hard to say just what it is that makes Russell's films so distinctive, but distinctive they are. They feel like his alone, in approach, in style, in vibe. I think its a combination of elements. He has a nervy, almost hysterical angle on character. His people are not always likeable, but they are warmly, messily human; complicated, infuriating creatures with personality defects and evident flaws. His style emphasises this, with a fluid facility with handheld work notable in each of his last few films, the camera restless and mobile, indulging in lots of sweeping pans and long zooms. He loves to use classic rock on his soundtracks, too; Silver Linings Playbook makes beautiful use of Led Zeppelin's "What Is and What Should Never Be", for instance, during a manic episode suffered by Pat (Bradley Cooper).
Pat has just been released from a Mental Hospital into the care of his parents (Jackie Weaver and Robert DeNiro) after finding his wife in the shower with a colleague triggered a violent incident. That incident only revealed a long-undiagnosed bipolar tendency perhaps inherited from his father, who deals with his issues through an obsession with American Football and superstitions around the game. Pat is determined to improve himself for his wife, even though she has filed for a restraining order and left town (his repeated assertions of their love and happiness are the chief signifier of his instability). Meanwhile, he meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), whose husband has died, leaving her alternately depressed and manic - perhaps the first manic pixie dreamgirl who actually qualifies - and their initial spark is complicated by both of their disorders, their family situations, and Pat's delusional belief that his wife is waiting for him.
Russell makes the early sections feel like a somewhat frazzled black comedy, filled with dark humour, bitter dialogue, and the many tensions beneath the surface of this troubled family sporadically spurting to the surface. The film then slowly grows more emotional and moving, that bitterness receding to an extent even if it never really quite disappears. The ending is straight romcom, and while some may be disappointed by its outright conventionality, it feels like a triumphant victory over the forces of darkness after the territory plumbed by the material earlier on. Just to make it even more conventional, the last act also has a sport movie tinge, with Pat and Tiffany preparing for and competing in a Ballroom Dance competition, but that sequence is a great example of what makes Russell so interesting: though the stakes are high, he makes a joke of it, with a key move in the routine providing a big laugh.
This is a film focused intently on family, on the damage that our parents can do to us, but about how they can heal us, too. De Niro and Weaver are terrific as Pat's worried parents, the former doing his best work in about a decade. His own explosive issues have informed the way Pat has developed, and yet his love for his son is never in doubt. This is revealed in a handful of great scenes - a couple of emotional, farcelike showdowns in the family home and a tearful confession of fatherly neglect and regret - each of them nicely played without recourse to the usual mugging and stock mannerisms we have seen from the actor in role after role over the last few years.
It is also a film about the world now, with references to the way the economy crushes people, increasing the pressure of everyday life until mental and emotional problems become almost unavoidable. Pat suggests at one point that perhaps he and Tiffany and his friend Danny (Chris Tucker)
are the ones who have seen something the others are simply missing, and you feel the film may agree with him. It certainly sympathises. The world is a cruel, grim place, Russell seems to say, but there is the love of a family and the love between a man and a woman, and that can sometimes make it all alright. That might sound schmaltzy, but his sensibility rejects schmaltz and overt sentiment, preferring a tart view of humanity and a cynical laugh at their ludicrousness, which is a big part of what makes his work, and this film, so compelling.
Apart from all that, and returning to classic rock, has any director ever used Rare Earth on his soundtracks as much as Russell? I think not, and he should be cherished for that...
Sunday, 30 October 2011
THREE KINGS
(David O.Russell, 1999)
David O. Russell's Three Kings is an unashamedly political film. Russell benefitted from several years of hindsight in his treatment of the first Gulf War. He could more or less say what he liked about it, so his film is highly critical of that Bush Government's treatment of Iraqi rebels who rose up against Saddam when it became apparent that he was losing the War. But Russell was savvy in his criticism - he veiled it in a terrific action comedy which felt, at the time, unlike just about anything else anyone was doing. Indeed, watching the film now it looks like a masterpiece of sorts. It has aged extremely well.
In recent years, American cinema has profited handsomely from the collision of Indie creativity with Studio money. Russell is a great example of this faustian phenomenon. His debut, Spanking the Monkey is a sweatily well-observed, pitch black incest comedy, made for not a lot of money. He followed it with the broader Flirting With Disaster for Miramax, but despite the presence of bigger not-quite stars (Ben Stiller, Tea Leoni) his work managed to retain some of its independent edge. Its there in the off-centre characterisation, the portrayal of America as a zoo for neurotics of various shades. Three Kings is something else entirely. A mega-budget semi-Blockbuster with some rising stars and the backing of one of the big studios in Warner Bros, it asked a lot of a young Indie director. But it was worthwhile. His film manages to feel like a big action movie with an indie sensibility, a fairly unique beast.
Early on, everything is comic. That first shot of featureless desert horizon punctured by the incongruously surreal vision of a young Iraqi waving a white cloth from atop a small bunker/hill, the helmet of a US soldier in the bottom corner of the frame; sets the tone as just slighty askew. This is not how big studio War movies start. That this movie will be different is only underlined by its first dialogue, beginning an instant later, and shouted across the desert floor, a dunderheaded, repetitious exchange between grunts, part Beckett, part Abbott & Costello.
Russell treats the grunts with a cynical detachment - he likes his heroes, you feel, but he is aware that they are all flawed individuals. His montage of their victory celebration paints them as jingoistic, meathead fratboys, a depiction much of the remainder of the film works hard to balance. Even so, there is something of the Coens in his sensibility, the notion that he feels somewhat superior to his characters and periodically cannot resist patronising them, even sneering at their idiocies. The conversation about "perfectly good substitutes" for racial terms of abuse for Iraqis is a good example. Russell was clever enough to cast likeable actors, however, and his film is structured cunningly so that the action and drama kicks in suddenly, and the audience is dragged along with the narrative's momentum, the heroes abruptly established as such.
The comedy, while it lasts, is a mixture of effects. Russell uses whatever may produce a laugh: slapstick, satire, sight gags and funny dialogue all feature. This is a film which depicts an exploding cow, while also featuring a character mistake bullion for "them little cubes you put in hot water to make soup" and employing a sudden, and frankly, quite brilliant cut to Chicago's "If You Leave Me now" in the tense preamble to an action sequence. Russell makes it all work, and it makes the film feel richer, more electric.
If Three Kings has a direct ancestor, it is Kelly's Heroes, Brian G. Hutton's 1970 Clint Eastwood vehicle about a heist by a platoon of GIs in Nazi-controlled Italy. That too was an action-comedy, though it entirely lacked any political dimension and it's action was far tamer than Russell's. He had never directed action before, and as a result those sequences are often sloppy and obviously the work of a director new to this type of material. And yet this inexperience is a boon - the action scenes are entirely lacking in the baggage of a seasoned pro, they seem almost to come without influences. As a result they feel fresh, with more impact and resonance than most action scenes. Russell signals his intentions with the early scene in which Clooney explains how a bullet can cause sepsis and the camera zips into and out of a body like an invisible scalpel, capturing the spurt of bile from a ruptured organ from the inside. Russell takes this violence seriously, it seems, he feels every bullet, and he seems determined to ensure that audiences do too. This pays off later when we see the anatomy of the escalation of the initial gunfight, the camera woozily cutting and panning across the spaces between combatants as a domino effect of thunderous shots and visceral impacts pulses through a town square, leaving men dead. Later on, characters we care about will be shot, even die, and Russell wants us to feel that too, to see the lunacy of it all.
Stylistically, the film is mainly handheld, giving it a jittery immediacy. The colours are washed out, bleached by the desert sun, most obviously in the earlier scenes. This over-exposed look has been much imitated since. Russell also indulges in some strange, almost disturbing frame compositions, and makes a few references to other movies - that first action scene is notable for its self-consciously posed close-ups of Clooney and Ice Cube, filtered light discolouring them, clouds streaming by unnaturally fast overhead. These shots seem like ultra-pop homages to Sergio Leone (which makes sense, given the duel that has just occurred) , and stand out because they are so different to the way the rest of the film is shot. Is Russell underlining that this is the moment priorities changed for these men, or ironically mocking their own possible self-images as bad-ass American fighting men? The way Russell portrays Clooney's character as a cool customer throughout, the latter suggestion seems unlikely. He gives the men credit for following their consciences, the poor treatment afforded to Iraqi villagers snapping them out of their greed and forcing them to intervene. Here he sets the standard so many later Iraq films cling to - he lauds the men on the ground while attacking the politicians. But this is not a simple issue and Russell does not avoid its complexity, either. He makes it clear that these men are conflicted about helping the rebels in the longer term, beyond the initial situation in the town square. Indeed, they are more or less blackmailed into lending aid after their own lives have been saved. Wahlberg's character emerges from a torture-and-lecture session with more empathy for everybody - he is in severe shock - and falls in line with the others, who have all seen the light during their journey. At the end, the Rebels and their safe passage seems more important to the men than the gold. Of course Russell undercuts this with the final hint that even then, some of the gold was looted.
Much of the political context is made explicit in the dialogue. The film has an entire subplot about one Reporter searching for a story amidst a sea of reporters earching for stories, and indeed begins and ends with TV news report footage. As if that was too subtle, a character says "This is a media War" at one point. Clooney refers to "Bush" with a near-visible sneer, and uses him as a figurehead, with great irony, in his speech to rouse rebellion : "God bless America and God bless a free Iraq!" The speech fails, a possible allusion to the co-opting of American patriotism together with Iraqi nationalism. Clooney's superior, played by a brusque Mykelti Williamson, asks him a prescient question when he wonders what the purpose of the War was, if not to dethrone Saddam: "What do you wanna do, occupy Iraq and do Vietnam all over again?" But the most chilling scenes of political comment are the torture sequences wherein Said Taghmaoui's Captain tortures Wahlberg's frightened grunt for no particular reason. He just seems to want to teach him a lesson. And he does, pouring oil down his throat to ensure he understands the real motivation for the War. Wahlberg's dazed replies to his enquiries: "to maintain the stability of the region" etc, his lack of understanding of why he is there; are perhaps Russell's most pointed comment on his countries role in that conflict.
One of Three Kings other great strengths is obvious in that scene - this is unequivocally a film about the modern world, about how we live now, how things are and will be. American cultural imperialism is a given, so alongside torturing Wahlberg, Taghmaoui wants to discuss Michael Jackson with him, all the while awkwardly - and hilariously - using American slang terms to address him : Bro, Mymainman. His men watch MTV on stolen Kuwaiti televisions and risk their lives for Levis. Everybody has an intimate knowledge of Lexus models and Easy Listening tapes hide in Arab cars. Then there is the casual and brilliant realism of many of the references in Russell's dialogue - his soldiers discuss American Football, cars, religion, are at first awed by the violence they encounter. Ice Cube is a devout Christian, Spike Jonze an ignorant hick ("from a group home"). When Wahlberg rings his wife she asks him if she should apply for a job for him. The leader of the Iraqi rebels was educated in the US. Clooney ends up as a consultant on Hollywood action movies. This density of detail gives the movie texture, allows its narrative to breathe because the characters feel real and lived-in. Again, this makes their eventual loss and peril more affecting, meaning that the climax has a real power to it. Even better, Russell ends with a euphoric little coda, and perhaps the best ever, only-slightly ironic use of U2 in film.
David O. Russell's Three Kings is an unashamedly political film. Russell benefitted from several years of hindsight in his treatment of the first Gulf War. He could more or less say what he liked about it, so his film is highly critical of that Bush Government's treatment of Iraqi rebels who rose up against Saddam when it became apparent that he was losing the War. But Russell was savvy in his criticism - he veiled it in a terrific action comedy which felt, at the time, unlike just about anything else anyone was doing. Indeed, watching the film now it looks like a masterpiece of sorts. It has aged extremely well.
In recent years, American cinema has profited handsomely from the collision of Indie creativity with Studio money. Russell is a great example of this faustian phenomenon. His debut, Spanking the Monkey is a sweatily well-observed, pitch black incest comedy, made for not a lot of money. He followed it with the broader Flirting With Disaster for Miramax, but despite the presence of bigger not-quite stars (Ben Stiller, Tea Leoni) his work managed to retain some of its independent edge. Its there in the off-centre characterisation, the portrayal of America as a zoo for neurotics of various shades. Three Kings is something else entirely. A mega-budget semi-Blockbuster with some rising stars and the backing of one of the big studios in Warner Bros, it asked a lot of a young Indie director. But it was worthwhile. His film manages to feel like a big action movie with an indie sensibility, a fairly unique beast.
Early on, everything is comic. That first shot of featureless desert horizon punctured by the incongruously surreal vision of a young Iraqi waving a white cloth from atop a small bunker/hill, the helmet of a US soldier in the bottom corner of the frame; sets the tone as just slighty askew. This is not how big studio War movies start. That this movie will be different is only underlined by its first dialogue, beginning an instant later, and shouted across the desert floor, a dunderheaded, repetitious exchange between grunts, part Beckett, part Abbott & Costello.
Russell treats the grunts with a cynical detachment - he likes his heroes, you feel, but he is aware that they are all flawed individuals. His montage of their victory celebration paints them as jingoistic, meathead fratboys, a depiction much of the remainder of the film works hard to balance. Even so, there is something of the Coens in his sensibility, the notion that he feels somewhat superior to his characters and periodically cannot resist patronising them, even sneering at their idiocies. The conversation about "perfectly good substitutes" for racial terms of abuse for Iraqis is a good example. Russell was clever enough to cast likeable actors, however, and his film is structured cunningly so that the action and drama kicks in suddenly, and the audience is dragged along with the narrative's momentum, the heroes abruptly established as such.
The comedy, while it lasts, is a mixture of effects. Russell uses whatever may produce a laugh: slapstick, satire, sight gags and funny dialogue all feature. This is a film which depicts an exploding cow, while also featuring a character mistake bullion for "them little cubes you put in hot water to make soup" and employing a sudden, and frankly, quite brilliant cut to Chicago's "If You Leave Me now" in the tense preamble to an action sequence. Russell makes it all work, and it makes the film feel richer, more electric.
If Three Kings has a direct ancestor, it is Kelly's Heroes, Brian G. Hutton's 1970 Clint Eastwood vehicle about a heist by a platoon of GIs in Nazi-controlled Italy. That too was an action-comedy, though it entirely lacked any political dimension and it's action was far tamer than Russell's. He had never directed action before, and as a result those sequences are often sloppy and obviously the work of a director new to this type of material. And yet this inexperience is a boon - the action scenes are entirely lacking in the baggage of a seasoned pro, they seem almost to come without influences. As a result they feel fresh, with more impact and resonance than most action scenes. Russell signals his intentions with the early scene in which Clooney explains how a bullet can cause sepsis and the camera zips into and out of a body like an invisible scalpel, capturing the spurt of bile from a ruptured organ from the inside. Russell takes this violence seriously, it seems, he feels every bullet, and he seems determined to ensure that audiences do too. This pays off later when we see the anatomy of the escalation of the initial gunfight, the camera woozily cutting and panning across the spaces between combatants as a domino effect of thunderous shots and visceral impacts pulses through a town square, leaving men dead. Later on, characters we care about will be shot, even die, and Russell wants us to feel that too, to see the lunacy of it all.
Stylistically, the film is mainly handheld, giving it a jittery immediacy. The colours are washed out, bleached by the desert sun, most obviously in the earlier scenes. This over-exposed look has been much imitated since. Russell also indulges in some strange, almost disturbing frame compositions, and makes a few references to other movies - that first action scene is notable for its self-consciously posed close-ups of Clooney and Ice Cube, filtered light discolouring them, clouds streaming by unnaturally fast overhead. These shots seem like ultra-pop homages to Sergio Leone (which makes sense, given the duel that has just occurred) , and stand out because they are so different to the way the rest of the film is shot. Is Russell underlining that this is the moment priorities changed for these men, or ironically mocking their own possible self-images as bad-ass American fighting men? The way Russell portrays Clooney's character as a cool customer throughout, the latter suggestion seems unlikely. He gives the men credit for following their consciences, the poor treatment afforded to Iraqi villagers snapping them out of their greed and forcing them to intervene. Here he sets the standard so many later Iraq films cling to - he lauds the men on the ground while attacking the politicians. But this is not a simple issue and Russell does not avoid its complexity, either. He makes it clear that these men are conflicted about helping the rebels in the longer term, beyond the initial situation in the town square. Indeed, they are more or less blackmailed into lending aid after their own lives have been saved. Wahlberg's character emerges from a torture-and-lecture session with more empathy for everybody - he is in severe shock - and falls in line with the others, who have all seen the light during their journey. At the end, the Rebels and their safe passage seems more important to the men than the gold. Of course Russell undercuts this with the final hint that even then, some of the gold was looted.
Much of the political context is made explicit in the dialogue. The film has an entire subplot about one Reporter searching for a story amidst a sea of reporters earching for stories, and indeed begins and ends with TV news report footage. As if that was too subtle, a character says "This is a media War" at one point. Clooney refers to "Bush" with a near-visible sneer, and uses him as a figurehead, with great irony, in his speech to rouse rebellion : "God bless America and God bless a free Iraq!" The speech fails, a possible allusion to the co-opting of American patriotism together with Iraqi nationalism. Clooney's superior, played by a brusque Mykelti Williamson, asks him a prescient question when he wonders what the purpose of the War was, if not to dethrone Saddam: "What do you wanna do, occupy Iraq and do Vietnam all over again?" But the most chilling scenes of political comment are the torture sequences wherein Said Taghmaoui's Captain tortures Wahlberg's frightened grunt for no particular reason. He just seems to want to teach him a lesson. And he does, pouring oil down his throat to ensure he understands the real motivation for the War. Wahlberg's dazed replies to his enquiries: "to maintain the stability of the region" etc, his lack of understanding of why he is there; are perhaps Russell's most pointed comment on his countries role in that conflict.
One of Three Kings other great strengths is obvious in that scene - this is unequivocally a film about the modern world, about how we live now, how things are and will be. American cultural imperialism is a given, so alongside torturing Wahlberg, Taghmaoui wants to discuss Michael Jackson with him, all the while awkwardly - and hilariously - using American slang terms to address him : Bro, Mymainman. His men watch MTV on stolen Kuwaiti televisions and risk their lives for Levis. Everybody has an intimate knowledge of Lexus models and Easy Listening tapes hide in Arab cars. Then there is the casual and brilliant realism of many of the references in Russell's dialogue - his soldiers discuss American Football, cars, religion, are at first awed by the violence they encounter. Ice Cube is a devout Christian, Spike Jonze an ignorant hick ("from a group home"). When Wahlberg rings his wife she asks him if she should apply for a job for him. The leader of the Iraqi rebels was educated in the US. Clooney ends up as a consultant on Hollywood action movies. This density of detail gives the movie texture, allows its narrative to breathe because the characters feel real and lived-in. Again, this makes their eventual loss and peril more affecting, meaning that the climax has a real power to it. Even better, Russell ends with a euphoric little coda, and perhaps the best ever, only-slightly ironic use of U2 in film.
Sunday, 13 February 2011
THE FIGHTER
(David O. Russell, 2010)
The Fighter indulges in every boxing movie cliche imaginable. Here is a working class young man from a troubled background in an unfashionable part of America, taking beating after beating, his career and life seemingly going nowhere. And here is his sudden rise, buoyed by the love of a good, formidable woman, ending in a final shot at glory. Best of all, it's based on a true story. But David O. Russell really isn't interested in boxing cliches. Instead his focus is on the troubled, working class background. The young mans brother, a former golden boy contender turned chatterbox crack addict, is just as central to this film as the boxer himself, and his terrifying hydra of sisters and peroxide blonde mother are it's antagonists more than any of his opponents are.
But then Russell is clever. Understanding the cheap potency of those boxing cliches, he delivers them anyway, and they are as powerful and satisfying as ever, perhaps even moreso, because his choices are interesting. Reflecting the period in which the film is set, he shoots much of these sequences on cheap video - or at least film treated to look like video - and always includes the comentators on the soundtrack. Such fidelity to the unwritten rules of cinematic portrayals of pugilism is echoed in his cross-cutting between the ring and the reactions of spectators and the way the momentum and advantage swings between the fighters. He even throws in montages and distorts the soundtrack during slow motion instants. The film ends on a triumphant freezeframe, an almost self-parodic moment. Then Russell undercuts and denies the cliches at every turn. His characters are complex and difficult and the pain and awkwardness of their relationships is never downplayed. The big lesson he seems to have learned from Scorsese's Raging Bull is that the fights can be a relief from the emotional and psychic violence of interpersonal relationships, that the straightforward physical contest seems pure and almost wholesome by comparison.
Russell has always worked well with actors and here Christian Bale - as the crackhead brother - and Melissa Leo - as the peroxide blonde mother- are the real standouts, especially powerful in a couple of fierce scenes together, while Mark Wahlberg is all quiet, hurt dignity as the title character.
What separates the film from a legion of superficially similar boxing biopics is the energy it crackles with, there in Russell's mobile, live wire camera, the selection of classic rock and pop on the soundtrack, the intimate capture of a real community in Lowell, and in Bale's itchy bodypop of a performance.
All this and it works pretty much as well as Rocky, as feel good boxing films go.
The Fighter indulges in every boxing movie cliche imaginable. Here is a working class young man from a troubled background in an unfashionable part of America, taking beating after beating, his career and life seemingly going nowhere. And here is his sudden rise, buoyed by the love of a good, formidable woman, ending in a final shot at glory. Best of all, it's based on a true story. But David O. Russell really isn't interested in boxing cliches. Instead his focus is on the troubled, working class background. The young mans brother, a former golden boy contender turned chatterbox crack addict, is just as central to this film as the boxer himself, and his terrifying hydra of sisters and peroxide blonde mother are it's antagonists more than any of his opponents are.
But then Russell is clever. Understanding the cheap potency of those boxing cliches, he delivers them anyway, and they are as powerful and satisfying as ever, perhaps even moreso, because his choices are interesting. Reflecting the period in which the film is set, he shoots much of these sequences on cheap video - or at least film treated to look like video - and always includes the comentators on the soundtrack. Such fidelity to the unwritten rules of cinematic portrayals of pugilism is echoed in his cross-cutting between the ring and the reactions of spectators and the way the momentum and advantage swings between the fighters. He even throws in montages and distorts the soundtrack during slow motion instants. The film ends on a triumphant freezeframe, an almost self-parodic moment. Then Russell undercuts and denies the cliches at every turn. His characters are complex and difficult and the pain and awkwardness of their relationships is never downplayed. The big lesson he seems to have learned from Scorsese's Raging Bull is that the fights can be a relief from the emotional and psychic violence of interpersonal relationships, that the straightforward physical contest seems pure and almost wholesome by comparison.
Russell has always worked well with actors and here Christian Bale - as the crackhead brother - and Melissa Leo - as the peroxide blonde mother- are the real standouts, especially powerful in a couple of fierce scenes together, while Mark Wahlberg is all quiet, hurt dignity as the title character.
What separates the film from a legion of superficially similar boxing biopics is the energy it crackles with, there in Russell's mobile, live wire camera, the selection of classic rock and pop on the soundtrack, the intimate capture of a real community in Lowell, and in Bale's itchy bodypop of a performance.
All this and it works pretty much as well as Rocky, as feel good boxing films go.
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