2004 Foreign, Alternative and Independent Films - Page 10

Dave Hackman · 02-12-2005, 08:03 PM

The Assassination of Richard Nixon

Don’t expect anything exciting. Don’t expect an interesting story. Don’t expect it to look real pretty. Don’t expect to feel good when you leave the theater.

Samuel Bicke (Sean Penn) has some ideas that well just don’t add up and actually make his life a real bitch. The people in his life are tired of his inability to think clearly and are distancing themselves for their own sanity. His only real help comes from Bonny Simmons (Don Cheadle) a mechanic friend that has yet to tire from his act.

Sam recently separated from his wife Marie (Naomi Watts), starts a new job as a salesman and within a couple days it appears that he is on his way to rebuilding his life. This is going to be tough because Sam has the uncanny ability to self-destruct from within his own imagination. Sure there are some outside influences that present themselves but nothing which would lead a normal person to his ultimate scenario.

Nixon plays a small part in the story like 6 min. total and is usually just flashed in and out on nearby televisions.

I appreciate the quality acting abilities of all involved and admire the way this story was presented but am put off by the uncreative storyline that just seemed content with it’s newsworthy ending. Not worth seeing.

D-

**HTF Ads**

Michael Reuben · 02-19-2005, 04:13 PM

Fleshing out some of my earlier quickie reviews:

The Assassination of Richard Nixon

I don't grade films, but if I did, this one would get an A+ for doing what it sets out to do so well that I can't imagine it better. But the material chosen by director and co-writer Niels Mueller for his first feature is so discomforting that I doubt this film will be widely seen, despite one of the best performances of Sean Penn's career.

Samuel Byck (spelled "Bicke" in the film; more on that in a moment) was a real historical figure who, in 1974, tried to assassinate President Richard Nixon by hijacking a 747 and crashing it into the White House. In an irony that is emblematic of Byck's entire existence, history has largely forgotten him. Even in the Stephen Sondheim musical Assassins, where Byck appears with more famous figures like John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald and John Hinckley, Jr., Byck gets no respect. He doesn't even get a song, just a couple of shrieking monologues played for comic relief (and based on actual tape recordings that Byck left behind).

Mueller's film closely follows the events in Byck's life immediately preceding his failed assassination attempt, but Mueller makes some interesting changes. First of all, he changes the spelling of Byck's name to bring it closer to a famous fictional assassin from the same time period, Travis Bickle. Like Travis, the Bicke of the film is so completely disconnected from people around him that he frequently has no idea what they're talking about. In both Taxi Driver and AORN, you watch these men intently engage in conversations about which they clearly have no clue, but no one notices because they sit there looking earnest. The difference is that Sean Penn doesn't give Bicke the crackling energy that Robert DeNiro brought to Travis. Through some actor's trick that's so skilled you can't see it, Penn makes Bicke into the human equivalent of a black hole: a non-space into which emotion, energy and ultimately reason just disappear. Even when he's about to commit murder, Bicke never seems to be anything but a schlub -- which makes the violence he ultimately commits all the more shocking for its casual banality.

Consistent with this approach, Mueller's script also leaves out some of the more extreme behavior that characterized Byck's life and that might give the audience some relief, comic or otherwise. The real Byck picketed the White House dressed as Santa Claus. Sean Pean's Bicke doesn't do anything so publicly extravagant. He does, however, dictate tape-recorded letters to Leonard Bernstein, with whom Byck/Bicke felt a special kinship after listening to his music. Sondheim's musical shows the same thing, and what's comic on stage becomes disturbing in the film, because Sean Penn perfectly captures the irrational certainty of a deluded fan who truly believes that an artist he's never met is speaking directly to him.

Mueller also chooses to focus on just one of the many jobs that the real Byck tried and failed at. In the film, he's trying to be a salesman. Now, a salesman-protagonist in an American story can't help but invoke another American loser, Willy Loman, but here the invocation is ironic. Compared to Bicke, Loman was a raging success. Bicke not only can't close a sale, but he doesn't even know how to talk to people. His boss, Jack (played with sly relish by Australian actor Jack Thompson), alternately encourages and torments him with pep talks loaded with positive-thinking cliches, but Bicke is so completely out of step with the rest of the world that no matter how closely he reads and tries to emulate the self-help books Jack shoves his way, it's a waste of time.

In the world of the film, it's salesmanship that finally inspires Bicke to target Richard Nixon, who's constantly appearing on TV screens in the background. In a memorable speech, Jack tells Bicke that Nixon's two presidential campaigns established him as the greatest salesman in America. Jack means it as encouragement, but he inadvertently ends up focusing Bicke on Nixon as the epitome of all that's wrong with his life and the world.

Nothing else in Bicke's life anchors him. His ex-wife, played by Naomi Watts, wants no part of him. His only friend, played by Don Cheadle, becomes the victim of Bicke's attempt to open a tire dealership with stolen merchandise, and his brother, played by an almost unrecognizable Michael Wincott, has clearly given up any hope that Sam will ever be anything but an embarrassment.

Bicke is already so withdrawn and alienated when we first meet him that it's hard to imagine him becoming more so. Somehow, though, Sean Penn makes Bicke visibly withdraw even more as the film progresses -- until finally, at the end, he virtually disappears before our eyes. As it was in history, the assassination plot is ill-conceived and ineptly executed. When the violence comes, it's not cathartic as it was in Taxi Driver; it's just stupid. And yet people get killed.

AORN is the most uncompromising portrait of a loser I have ever seen. There is no bright spot, no respite, no hint of grace in any part of the film's roughly 90-minute running time. You're forced to share the company of someone who's lost beyond redemption and who you probably wouldn't even want to see redeemed. But people like Bicke exist. They change lives. With a lucky break or two, they can change history. If we try to pretend they don't exist, they'll find a way to remind us. As was said of Willy Loman, "attention must be paid".

M.

Edwin Pereyra · 02-19-2005, 11:04 PM

Quote:

I really can't wait for Edwin to see Goodbye Dragon Inn, though, considering what he thought of What Time Is It There?

Even less happens (we're almost talking Gerry-like amounts of plot), but it's strangely fulfilling.

I put it on just now. But I had to stop it after 5 minutes to read the synopsis on the disc jacket. It just came to me that it is from the same director of What Time Is It There? Now, I'm debating whether I should even invest the time to finish it.

~Edwin

Edwin Pereyra · 02-20-2005, 01:06 PM

Goodbye Dragon Inn

This is not the type of film for individuals with Type A personalities.

It made it on my watch list only because it got a couple of mentions in the 2004 Critics Top 10 lists that I tallied this year. Well, if 13 Going on 30 can make it to a critic’s list, I am not surprised this one would also. After the first 5 minutes of watching it, I had to stop it to get some information about it. I had forgotten that this film is from Tsai Ming-Liang, the same director who made What Time Is It There? I almost decided not to continue watching it. But I figured, what the heck, I might be surprised.

Well, let me just say that this film will not be winning any Writers Guild Awards domestically or internationally any time soon. The film is an observation of a local cinema palace that is about to close down and its various patrons on its last night of business. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get what the director was trying to say. But for a foreign language film, there are really only no more than a dozen lines that needed to be subtitled or translated. The rest of the film is an exercise in testing audience limitations and patience as it goes for nostalgia and melancholy. Nothing is subtle here. So I don’t know why they needed to translate the film that was being shown in the theater when that is all superfluous and inconsequential. Well, it didn’t fool me.

Every year we are treated to a spe-cial film like this one. 2002 was What Time Is It There?, 2003 was Gus Van Sant’s Gerry, 2004 this and now I wonder who that spe-cial director will be that would tackle this spe-cial type of film in 2005. I can’t wait. In the end, I guess, there is an audience and appetite for these types of spe-cial films. I just do not happen to be one of them.

As always, your mileage may vary.

~Edwin

Jason Seaver · 02-22-2005, 09:34 AM

Quote:

Every year we are treated to a spe-cial film like this one... In the end, I guess, there is an audience and appetite for these types of spe-cial films.

Okay, what the heck is the deal with "spe-cial"? I get the feeling it's supposed to be mocking or insulting, but it's not connecting on that level.

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for a foreign language film, there are really only no more than a dozen lines that needed to be subtitled or translated...Nothing is subtle here. So I don’t know why they needed to translate the film that was being shown in the theater when that is all superfluous and inconsequential. Well, it didn’t fool me.

Um, what didn't fool you? I figure they translated the scenes from Dragon Gate Inn because it's dialogue that the audience would be assumed to understand; no hidden significance, real or pretended. I do think it's useful to see what kind of movie Dragon Gate Inn is, so that you can contrast that with the grandfatherly members of the cast who are in the audience for this last show at the theater where their movie premiered.

Also, I kind of wonder if there's a certain irony to watching this movie on video, and if it has an adverse effect on how you perceive it. I saw it at the Brattle Theater, a hundred-year-old building that has been showing foreign/independent/boutique films for over fifty years and has only recently been renovated. In an environment like that, the line between your theater and Ming-Liang's blurs; I don't know that the same effect would be possible watching it on DVD or in a multiplex. It really is a movie for those who love movie theaters as much as we love movies.

It's not a perfect film - Ming-Liang drags a few scenes out far too long, even by his own standards. But I don't know if you're giving it a fair shot; the disparaging comment about it not winning any Writer's Guild awards (as if Tsai Ming-Liang particularly cares about a conventional narrative) makes it look like another case of judging it mased on what you want it to be, rather than what it is.

Edwin Pereyra · 02-22-2005, 09:45 AM

Jason, you take things way too seriously. That's all I'll say.

~Edwin

Jason Seaver · 02-22-2005, 10:10 AM

Yeah, I do have a problem with wanting my opinion to be clear and useful.

Seriously, what "didn't fool you"?

Edwin Pereyra · 02-22-2005, 01:45 PM

Quote:

Also, I kind of wonder if there's a certain irony to watching this movie on video, and if it has an adverse effect on how you perceive it.

If I had seen this at the Castro theater in San Francisco or the Paramount in Oakland or the Crest theater in Sacramento, it still would not change my mind. In my view, it is what it is regardless of the venue it is playing.

Quote:

It really is a movie for those who love movie theaters as much as we love movies.

I also love movie theaters, however, this one did not have an affect on me.

Quote:

the disparaging comment about it not winning any Writer's Guild awards (as if Tsai Ming-Liang particularly cares about a conventional narrative) makes it look like another case of judging it mased on what you want it to be, rather than what it is.

No, it is not a disparaging comment at all. Just the truth. I'll add to that no Actors Guild wins either.

~Edwin

Michael Reuben · 02-24-2005, 01:55 PM

Getting back to film reviews, here's another extended version of an earlier quick review:

The Merchant of Venice

Al Pacino may have top billing, but the real star of this film is director Michael Radford. Not only does Radford reinvent the play as a cinematic event, but he also rediscovers much of the resonance that the play must have had for Shakespeare's audience. Contemporary stage productions typically try to "humanize" Shylock. You can always tell when they get to the "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" speech, which modern actors can't resist turning into a plea for tolerance. (I saw Dustin Hoffman play the role on Broadway 15 years ago, and I can still remember his rendition.)

Not in Radford's version. When Pacino delivers the speech, the emphasis is on the word that stands out in the last line: revenge. Pacino and Radford restore Shylock to what Shakespeare's audience instinctively understood him to be: the villain. Yes, he has wonderful speeches explaining why his actions are justified -- but so do most of Shakespeare's villains. That's why actors love the parts.

Having made Il Postino, Radford knows something about filming in Italy, and he puts his cast in richly detailed period dress and sets them in locations that take you to another place and time. An opening screen crawl provides a concise description of the position of Jews in 16th century Venice (something that Shakespeare's audience wouldn't have needed explained to them), and Radford moves immediately to the bustling streets where Shylock and Antonio (Jeremy Irons) play out a scene that the play only references indirectly -- Antonio passing Shylock in the street and spitting on him. The scene defines their relationship for the rest of the drama, and by showing it on screen, Radford sets up the rest of the action more effectively than any other version I've seen.

For all the attempts by modern productions to redeem it, Merchant is a deeply racist play, and Radford and his cast make no attempt to hide it. Pacino plays Shylock without any attempt to win the audience's sympathy; his Shylock is an embittered, angry man, and you can see how he could become so obsessed with revenge on Antonio that he pursues his "bond" without thought for the consequences. (BTW, I've always found it to be a mark of great acting when someone can perform a major Shakespearean role without putting obvious quotation marks around the famous speeches. Pacino manages this admirably.)

With the dark and ugly core of the play on full display, the fairy tale romantic subplot involving Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes) and Portia seems even more trivial and ridiculous, and I suspect that's a modern reaction that no production can overcome. I've always found the "trial of the three boxes" to be one of Shakespeare's most mechanical and unconvincing plot devices. It isn't any better here, but at least the actors are entertaining to watch. The same is true for the "rings" gimmick that leads to the conclusion of the romance subplot.

Casting Jeremy Irons as Antonio was a masterstroke, because Antonio -- the "merchant" of the title -- is one of the most unmemorable leading men in Shakespeare. He doesn't even have that many lines. Irons brings his considerable presence to the role, and when the film is over, you remember who Antonio is.

Lynn Collins, a relative newcomer, has received generally favorable reviews for her Portia. I found her adequate but underwhelming. Then again, having seen Geraldine James play the role on Broadway, it's very hard for me to be impressed by anyone else.

(Casting trivia: Fans of The Lone Gunmen will spot Zuleikha Robinson, a/k/a "Yves Adele Harlow", as Shylock's daughter, Jessica, and fans of The Office will spot Mackenzie Crook, a/k/a "Gareth Keenan" as Shylock's former servant, Launcelot.)

Modern productions often soft-pedal the ending of the play, in which Shylock loses his daughter and his fortune and is forced to convert to Christianity. Not this film. The final shot of Pacino's Shylock, a broken man standing alone, is heartbreaking, even though he's done nothing to win the audience's sympathy. It's a fitting and horrible end to a brilliant but horrible drama.

M.