(Adam McKay, 2015)
It starts out all Goodfellas-by-way-of-amped-up-1990s-Oliver Stone; rapid changes in film stock, music pumping, loads of voiceover, exposition but delivered with wit and gags and style; angry and exhilarated and loud and energetic.
Thats lasts about 15-20 minutes, and then The Big Short settles into what it actually is: a sort of real life financial heist story. Oh, every so often McKay throws in a little splash of post-modernism - here's Selena Gomez or Margot Robbie or Anthony Bourdain, as themselves, explaining some complex financial concept in layman's terms, here's Ryan Gosling's narrator figure addressing the camera - but mainly it stays on the straight and narrow, and just tells its story.
Luckily that story is inherently interesting. How the global financial crash came about is just one more story beat here; and when Steve Carrell's Mark Baum realises what is about to happen and is sent reeling away from a restaurant, stunned by the knowledge, The Big Short reaches a nice pitch of hysterical black comedy and sober despair at what was allowed to happen. His character has his own Fund, and he and his team bet wildly against the housing market at the behest of Gosling's slick trader Jared Vennett. They have been beaten to the punch by oddball genius hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Christian Bale), who defies all his clients and incurs at least one lawsuit by doing the same thing a year or so earlier. Then there are the two small town traders who happen across this deal and, aided by their ex-Wall Street Hotshot neighbour Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) buy into the same game.
From then on, its just a waiting game, and McKay conjures impressive tension, considering the fact that we all know what eventually happens.
In the interim McKay shows his characters shock at just how rigged and corrupt the banking industry in the USA was back then, but always keeps the actions and locations varied - Wall Street is prominent, but his characters visit Miami condos, Vegas casinos, Devon Pubs and lap-dancing clubs along the way. Even if the humour is pitch black, he drops the odd bombshell of realism to shock the audience: Pitt chiding his young proteges by recounting the human cost of what will happen being perhaps the highlight.
The starry cast makes it all that much more painless. Gosling can play smug and slick in his sleep, Carrell makes Baum's emotional implosion not only queasy but touching, Pitt is convincingly eccentric, and Bale steals the film with his surges of energy (soundtracked to heavy metal drumming) and inability to socially connect.
McKay keeps it busy and colourful, and ends on a nice note of triumph for his heroes, but defeat for his country, which is probably as it should be, with this story.
Showing posts with label John Magaro. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Magaro. Show all posts
Thursday, 7 January 2016
Tuesday, 2 April 2013
NOT FADE AWAY
(David Chase, 2012)
On the surface, Not Fade Away might seem like quite a safe, even banal little coming of age drama set in the era-defining tumult of the US in the late 1960s. But that would be to underestimate the ambition and skill of writer-director David Chase. Rarely, in fact, has a filmmaker made a first film which is so perfectly honed, balancing a truly personal sense of artistic expression with accessible, populist storytelling. But then, while this may be Chase's debut feature, he was the creator and guiding force behind almost a decade of HBO's The Sopranos, and the sensibility evident in that show - the lyricism and incisive portrayal of characters in just a few brief scenes - is again on display here.
It tells the seemingly autobiographical story of Douglas (John Magaro), a teenager growing up in New Jersey in the '60s, who forms a band with some of his high school friends. Along the way, he also clashes with his conservative Italian father (James Gandolfini) and begins a relationship with the ethereal middle class goddess he worshipped through his school years, Grace (Bella Heathcote).
Again, that all sounds a bit like the kind of mid-budget studio films that proliferated in the '90s, heavy on the period detail, with a soundtrack filled with obvious, nostalgia-inducing '60s hits, perhaps featuring Alec Baldwin and an unmistakeable suggestion of The Wonder Years.
But Chase is too refined as a storyteller for that. His film is elliptical, skipping through years and crucial plot points, ensuring the audience has to be attuned to gesture and nuance to understand his characters. These bandmates are a credible, breathing portrayal of late teens and the tensions and dynamics crackling between them - a complex, often uneasy stew of loyalty, affection and jealousy, with different goals and needs compromising what begins as a shared dream. Douglas is a painfully true character; pretentious and a little conceited, only half-aware of how important music and film - art! Chase is unafraid of declaring - will be in his life. His clashes with his old-fashioned father are, again, beautifully shaded; with paternal frustration and love mingling in some bitter arguments as the two men grope for empathy and understanding.
The arc of the band's development runs parallel with Douglas' relationship with Grace. Early on their competence and the excitement of the music - a lot of pumped-up blues covers, influenced mainly by the Rolling Stones, a comparison underlined by the audacious opening scene where we see a young Mick Jagger and Keith Richards meet on a London train, then hear our narrator, Douglas' little sister, compare that meeting to his founding of his own band - wins them fans and Chase show us triumphant early gigs at house parties and raw jamming sessions. Meanwhile he and Grace are slowly falling in love, little telling moments in conversation assuming massive importance, just as they do in life. Then the band cuts a demo, Douglas becomes singer and things are going well, just as Grace and he are a steady, loving couple.
Later everything gets messy, and the story shifts gears in the final act after a few small personal tragedies have rocked their young lives. Through all this, Chase is intent on the reality of experience. Mundane scenes in suburban kitchens and bickering relatives jostle with Douglas' important discoveries of Antonioni, Orson Welles and Leadbelly. His own relationship with blues music is cast in an uncomfortable light by a black co-workers love of Tony Bennett. The final scene is a breathtakingly bold move towards abstraction, and it finally suggests Chase's true goal here - to make a film about a young man's journey towards his calling, his discovery that art is what is truly important to him. The ending leaves a relationship in an ambiguous place - just as The Sopranos did - but thematically Chase has made himself clear.
What helps make this such a great little film are the details. All of the performances are good, and the period trappings feel authentic without ever splurging over into overstatement. The soundtrack is, predictably, superb, and Eigil Bryld's cinematography is richly atmospheric. But its the casual mastery of Chase that lingers. Like a great pop song, Not Fade Away is short and simple, yet somehow complex and even quietly profound.
On the surface, Not Fade Away might seem like quite a safe, even banal little coming of age drama set in the era-defining tumult of the US in the late 1960s. But that would be to underestimate the ambition and skill of writer-director David Chase. Rarely, in fact, has a filmmaker made a first film which is so perfectly honed, balancing a truly personal sense of artistic expression with accessible, populist storytelling. But then, while this may be Chase's debut feature, he was the creator and guiding force behind almost a decade of HBO's The Sopranos, and the sensibility evident in that show - the lyricism and incisive portrayal of characters in just a few brief scenes - is again on display here.
It tells the seemingly autobiographical story of Douglas (John Magaro), a teenager growing up in New Jersey in the '60s, who forms a band with some of his high school friends. Along the way, he also clashes with his conservative Italian father (James Gandolfini) and begins a relationship with the ethereal middle class goddess he worshipped through his school years, Grace (Bella Heathcote).
Again, that all sounds a bit like the kind of mid-budget studio films that proliferated in the '90s, heavy on the period detail, with a soundtrack filled with obvious, nostalgia-inducing '60s hits, perhaps featuring Alec Baldwin and an unmistakeable suggestion of The Wonder Years.
But Chase is too refined as a storyteller for that. His film is elliptical, skipping through years and crucial plot points, ensuring the audience has to be attuned to gesture and nuance to understand his characters. These bandmates are a credible, breathing portrayal of late teens and the tensions and dynamics crackling between them - a complex, often uneasy stew of loyalty, affection and jealousy, with different goals and needs compromising what begins as a shared dream. Douglas is a painfully true character; pretentious and a little conceited, only half-aware of how important music and film - art! Chase is unafraid of declaring - will be in his life. His clashes with his old-fashioned father are, again, beautifully shaded; with paternal frustration and love mingling in some bitter arguments as the two men grope for empathy and understanding.
The arc of the band's development runs parallel with Douglas' relationship with Grace. Early on their competence and the excitement of the music - a lot of pumped-up blues covers, influenced mainly by the Rolling Stones, a comparison underlined by the audacious opening scene where we see a young Mick Jagger and Keith Richards meet on a London train, then hear our narrator, Douglas' little sister, compare that meeting to his founding of his own band - wins them fans and Chase show us triumphant early gigs at house parties and raw jamming sessions. Meanwhile he and Grace are slowly falling in love, little telling moments in conversation assuming massive importance, just as they do in life. Then the band cuts a demo, Douglas becomes singer and things are going well, just as Grace and he are a steady, loving couple.
Later everything gets messy, and the story shifts gears in the final act after a few small personal tragedies have rocked their young lives. Through all this, Chase is intent on the reality of experience. Mundane scenes in suburban kitchens and bickering relatives jostle with Douglas' important discoveries of Antonioni, Orson Welles and Leadbelly. His own relationship with blues music is cast in an uncomfortable light by a black co-workers love of Tony Bennett. The final scene is a breathtakingly bold move towards abstraction, and it finally suggests Chase's true goal here - to make a film about a young man's journey towards his calling, his discovery that art is what is truly important to him. The ending leaves a relationship in an ambiguous place - just as The Sopranos did - but thematically Chase has made himself clear.
What helps make this such a great little film are the details. All of the performances are good, and the period trappings feel authentic without ever splurging over into overstatement. The soundtrack is, predictably, superb, and Eigil Bryld's cinematography is richly atmospheric. But its the casual mastery of Chase that lingers. Like a great pop song, Not Fade Away is short and simple, yet somehow complex and even quietly profound.
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