239. US independent filmmaker Debra Granik’s third feature film “Leave No Trace” (2018): An unusual tale of a father and his teenage daughter duo, living in the woods in self-imposed exile, far removed from socially acceptable elements of modern living

Director Debra Granik is an independent filmmaker in USA who works outside the Hollywood studio system.  Leave No Trace is her third feature film as a director without support from the influential studio producers and mainstream distributors.  Ms Granik often works with US scriptwriter Anne Rosellini. Their collaboration has resulted in two notable independent feature films: Ms Granik’s second feature film Winter’s Bone (2010) and Leave No Trace. 

The duo picked  up two novels on individuals living on the fringes of society (one on the family of a drug addict, another of a traumatized war veteran), and transformed those into  the scripts of unusually magnetic feature films with very striking performances from carefully chosen actresses, propelling them from near obscurity to world attention. This happened with all three feature films directed by Ms Granik: Vera Farmiga in Down to the Bone (2004), Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone (based on a novel by Daniel Woodrell) and the trend follows with Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie in Leave No Trace.  Ms Granik won top honors as a director at the Sundance Film Festival for her first two feature films and several minor awards at Berlin, Venice, Stockholm and Hong Kong film festivals.

Will (Ben Foster) an Iraq war veteran who becomes a recluse, preferring a life,
with what is left oh his family,  in the woods

The film Leave No Trace is based on a novel My Abandonment written by Peter Rock. The book won an Alex Award, instituted by the American Library Association, for outstanding books “for adults that have special appeal to young adults aged 12 to 18.” The film pivots on a clean father-daughter relationship in the absence of the mother of the girl. As the film progresses, the viewer learns that the father Will (Ben Foster) is a war veteran who served in Iraq and that his daughter Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie) has not known her mother for a long, long while. A newspaper clipping tells us that many of Will’s veteran compatriots committed suicide on their return. Evidently the unusual behaviour of Will to live with his daughter in the forest, devoid of social interaction, is part of a post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) behaviour pattern.  As an army veteran, Will knows the basics of survival and camouflage in the forest. He teaches his daughter techniques of survival and hiding/camouflage and most importantly, good manners.  He even teaches her to play chess and use nonverbal communication.

Will's teenage daughter Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie) etching a

remarkable performance

The daughter reads a clipping carried by her father,
revealing the effect of  PSTD

An arrest by the police and the resulting evaluation of the duo reveal several interesting facts: their relationship is not sexual, the father Will has taught his daughter Tom sufficiently that she is better than other school-going kids of her age and that Will was once a team player and is no longer one.  Attempts by social groups to re-integrate the duo into mainstream society have different effects on Will and Tom. While Will can communicate silently with horses, Tom communicates with rabbits and dogs.  The sight of a helicopter above a Christmas-tree farm triggers a PSTD urge in Will to return to the seclusion of the forest. 

The subtext of the film that honey bees don't sting bare hands if they recognize
the hand of the beekeeper

Ms Granik’s film presents a forest scenario without reptiles, insects or wild animals, which contrasts with reality.  While the film is beautifully made and provides a plethora of comments on society, evaluation of behaviour, interesting techniques to re-integrate people on the fringes of society into the mainstream, honeybees’ relationships with humans, the ending of the film is credible and beautifully executed, much like the Alex award for books –a film “for adults that have special appeal to young adults aged 12 to 18.” It is indeed a great film that shows the respectful and loving behaviour of a teen towards a parent while making a responsible, resolute decision that affects her future.

Will educates his daughter Tom, informally (even in chess), to be as or better
educated than a formally student of her age

The final song Moon Boat,with music by Dickon Hinchliffe and sung by Kendra Smith, raises the level of the film. The words of the song reprise the philosophy of the tale/film and are evidently written specifically for the film.

I wander, this world green and wild,And the things in my mind are likeA red sun gone down. 

And I, I know you must goAnd I think I know whyBut I don't know why.

Still I am thinking we both share a moon and a star.May you be safe may we both find a place with a heart. 

Here, where treasures aboundIn the things I have found, a leaf, a song come from above.

In the wood, where secrets crawlThe earth so small, a place, a home,A dream my own. 

There'll be a tree that joins you and me from afar.And I am certain we all share a moon and a star.

Ms Granik’s films prove that independent films in the US can provide richer fare with lower budgets than Hollywood films. Of course, the lovely works of director John Cassavettes and Jim Jarmusch are ”indies” that rarely made the Oscar nominations but these are film superior or equal in quality to those that do eventually win Oscar nominations. Ms Granik and Ms Rosellini have proved their capability to transform novels into wonderful scripts that ultimately make their films stand out from the rest. Finally, Ms Granik has proven that she can extract remarkable performances from her actors, different lead actresses for each film, and choose the right team to embellish the soundtracks of her films.

The carefully chosen visual frame: two plant stalks in the forest,
one withering and old,
another green and in good health, encapsulating the film

Any future works from team Granik-Rosellini-Hinchliffe-Smith would undoubtedly be worth waiting for. This team has an unusual winner with  a carefully crafted signature closing ballad that has proved to be  be more powerful that than all the elements of cinema that preceded it. Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969) was one film that came close to the achievement of this film decades ago.

P.S. Leave No Trace has already won 17 awards. Recommended reading--an interview of Ms Kristy Strouse with Ms Debra Granik, which includes her thoughts on Ms Kendra Smith, singer of the closing song discussed above, published in Film Inquiry  https://www.filminquiry.com/interview-debra-granik/

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235. US director and scriptwriter Paul Schrader’s film “First Reformed” (2017) (USA): Schrader’s best work, drawing on Bergman’s “Winter Light” and Tarkovsky’s “Sacrifice”

“Wisdom is holding two contradictory truths in our mind, simultaneously.  Hope and despair.  A life without despair is a life without hope. Holding these two ideas in our head is life itself.”  

“How easily they talk about prayer, those who have never really prayed.” 

----- thoughts written in the diary of Rev Ernest Toller, via “voice over”,  in First Reformed, scripted by Paul Schrader

Any evaluation of the film First Reformed would be considerably enhanced by some knowledge about the American Trappist monk, theologian, social activist Thomas Merton (1915-68), who had interacted with Buddhist monks, and  studied Hinduism, Jainism, Sufism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and published his thoughts in his bestselling  autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain and other works. In the film First Reformed, the principal figure Rev Ernest Toller (Ethan Hawke) writes a diary (read by "voice over") on his thoughts just as Merton had put his thoughts on paper that eventually became a best seller. Director and original scriptwriter Paul Schrader makes the connection visually by showing us the stack of Merton’s published works in Toller’s room and at least two references to Merton verbally in the film.

Rev Toller (Ethan Hawke)  delivers his sermon in his church

The writing of the diary and the “voice-over” reading of the written lines are not just a connection to Merton’s and Tolller’s habits in Schrader’s film but an important device employed in the script that becomes critical to unravel the ending of the film.  At the end of the film, there is no voice over, there is silence.

Toller and Esther (Victoria Hill): Esther expresses
concern for Toller's health

Schrader’s script revolves around Rev Toller, the pastor of a historical church that once had served as a refuge for runaway slaves in USA. Toller was once married and had a son he lost in the Iraq war as a US soldier. Toller himself served in the US army as a chaplain, and had encouraged his son to enlist. The eventual death of his son wrecked his marriage.  Early in Schrader’s film there is a shot of the near empty church with one bespectacled lady, Esther (a very convincing Victoria Hill), sitting prominently in one of the nearly empty benches. Any viewer of Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light(1963) will recall Rev Tomas looking at the bespectacled Marta in that film in a similar situation. As First Reformed progresses, the viewer learns that Esther is in love with Toller with fervent hopes that he would marry her just as Marta and Tomas in the Swedish classic. Much later in the film First Reformed, Toller is introduced to a troubled environmental activist Michael who wishes to abort his wife’s foetus because he does not want his child to be born in a polluted world run on business interests. Michael’s worries are not far removed from those of Jonas’ (Max von Sydow) worries of China developing nuclear capability that he confides with Rev Tomas in Winter Light. Both films’ priests are concerned with Christianity they preach and forced to look at external realities.

After those common threads, Schrader’s script grows on its own merit—the development of the thinly attended First Reformed Church of Toller under the umbrage of the Abundant Life Church with Rev Joel Jeffers (Cedric the Entertainer a.k.a.  Cedric Kyles) who functions as a big brother senior priest towards Toller—mainly because Jeffers’s church is flushed with “abundant” money and members that include a successful businessman who own industries that pollute the countryside. The troubled Michael commits suicide, while Toller realizes that the Abundant Life Church is run by the very forces that the late Michael had hated and feared.  This Abundant Life Church in turn supports the First Reformed Church of Toller.

Toller and Mary (Amanda Seyfried): Mary wants to resist aborting her foetus,
an action her husband Michael wants her to take

Rev Toller, the viewer soon realizes, is suffering from a serious ailment (he is urinating blood) but continues to consume significant quantities of liquor in private. He is also consulting a doctor. Toller’s church member and admirer Esther too is concerned about his health but he rebukes her for it. Jeffers too is worried that Toller is spending too much time in the figurative Garden (the biblical Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed to God to remove the cup of suffering/wrath if He willed it).  Toller simultaneously gets psychologically and emotionally closer to the pregnant  Mary (Amanda Seyfried), the wife of the late Michael. Mary plans to leave town to be with her sister. In spite of an Andrei Tarkovsky-like levitation sequence [The Sacrifice (1986); The Mirror(1975)] there is no suggestion of a carnal relationship between the two.

Toller and Mary: at the funeral of  Michael

Schrader’s script emphasizes that First Reformed is less about Mary, Michael, Esther or Jeffers—it is more about Toller and his diary, which is essentially spiritual. Toller knows that he is about to die from a serious medical condition. Influenced by Michael’s suicide, Toller is tempted to blow up the enemy of Michael with Michael’s own devices but changes his mind when he sees Mary with her unborn child in his church. What is debatable is whether Toller is more concerned about the unborn child of Michael that he had wanted to be born into this world earlier in the film or his platonic affection for Mary suffering from depression in her recent widowhood. Perhaps, both.

Toller wears his "crown of thorns"

Where Schrader scores most is his diligent effort to weave in biblical quotations that reflect Merton’s and Toller’s views into the script. The loaded final conversation between Jeffers and Toller is punctuated with such quotes. While one wondered why Schrader showed Toller picking up the barbed wire fencing near the church’s graveyard which had killed a hare, the ultimate use of the barbed wire in the film is visually reminiscent of the crown of thorns worn by Jesus.

Schrader’s true winner is the ending which a keen viewer would not accept at face value.  There are several clues to decipher what actually happened: the replacement of the alcohol in the glass with a chemical liquid, Toller changing into a white cassock (throughout the film he wears a black one) with fresh blood stains, the embrace of Mary who does not seem to be affected by the barbed wire under the cassock, and the sudden silence. The film’s initial sequence outside the church is also silent. Toller's final action can be connected to the initial words scribbled in his diary: A life without despair is a life without hope.

First Reformed has won 55 awards already.

P.S. Thomas Merton was in Darjeeling in the late 60s and early 70s interacting with Buddhist monks and Jesuits, the very years this author was a student there in a Jesuit high school. What a coincidence!  Could we have passed each other on some street or corridor? Bergman’s Winter Lightis one of the author’s top 10 films ever made and has been reviewed on this blog. Tarkovsky’s The Mirror has also been reviewed in detail on this blog. (Click on the names of the films in this postscript to access the reviews)

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230. Vietnamese director Ash Mayfair’s debut feature film “The Third Wife” (2018) (Vietnam) based on her original story: Gorgeous cinematography, interesting visual allegory, female characters and actresses add value to a film that ought to make Vietnam proud!

Debut films of several directors worldwide have often been unforgettable, even when compared to their later works:  Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), Ridley Scott’s The Duellists, Steven Spielberg’s Duel, Jean-Pierre Melville’s The Silence of the Sea, Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Claude Chabrol’s Handsome Serge, Bertrand Tavernier’s The Watchmaker of St Paul...the list goes on.  That stamp of unmistakable awesome standards of filmmaking is apparent in Ash Mayfair’s debut feature film The Third Wife.

Within minutes of the film’s opening credits an observant viewer gets a clue of the quality of the film that follows—intelligent use of visual editing in presenting the title of the film and the aesthetic and delicate balance between silence and music on the soundtrack. The Third Wife is an original tale written by the film’s director. It is set in the 19^th century Vietnam involving a rich nobleman living comfortably far away from the towns, with a retinue of servants, three wives of different ages, their progeny, and his father. The nobleman’s writ is the law in this remote household.  The film is set in a time frame in which men made the rules, when child marriages were acceptable, and when the birth of a boy was held at a premium for the parents over that of the birth of a girl.

May (Nguyen Phuong Tra My) as the 14-year old third wife

The title character of the film, May (Nguyen Phuong Tra My), is a 14-year-old child bride who has to travel by boat to reach her future husband’s abode.  She is welcomed by the entire family and household staff with pomp and feasting. The first wife Ha (Tran Nu Yen-Khe, who had earlier graced two significant Vietnamese films Cyclo and Scent of the Green Papaya) and the second wife Xuan (Mai Thu Huay Maya) welcome May with genuine warmth. The film narrates the tale economizing on spoken words but revealing much more visually by the brilliant camerawork of the lady cinematographer Chananun Chotrungroj, twice a winner of the Nestor Almendros (of Days of Heaven fame) award for cinematography. If the Spanish/Cuban maestro was alive today, he would have been delighted with the mastery of the visual elements from start to finish in The Third Wife.

The tale weaved by writer/ director Ash Mayfair, deals with the child bride’s interactions with the family members of various age groups over a period of approximately a year, learning quickly that to gain favour of her husband she has to bear a son and not a girl. Ms Mayfair’s tale is often visually edited to link her tale with the allegorical of life cycle of the silkworm—caterpillar, cocooning, fresh cocoon, cocoon with pupae, and finally a silk moth.  Why the silkworm? Evidently nobles of 19^th century Vietnam saw silk as a valuable income source. And lots of silkworm pupae are killed while preparing the cocoons for making the silk threads. The tale of the film has obvious parallels between the mute silkworms and the human characters.

The pregnant third wife spends cordial time with the first and second wives

...and cordial interactions in the evening indoors.

The film has a predominantly a female production crew (writer/director, cinematographer, editor, etc.) and naturally the perspective is from a female viewpoint. Yet the feminism in the film is subtle, only making a silent but powerful statement towards the end.  Bereft of spoken words, the last ten minutes of the film is a fascinating recounting of critical past images from the film as recollected by the third wife May, who has matured over a year witnessing incest, patriarchal preferences to indulge boys over girls, the fate of children born out of wedlock among the servants, and the humiliation of a bride not accepted by her future husband.  The casting of May’s cute female child and the facial expressions of the infant captured by the film crew are highlights of the film. 

May's cute baby girl looking at her mother holding the
the yellow flowers, very significant to the tale

Though the ending of the film is ethically unacceptable, one gets a premonition that the last ten minutes of the film will be slowly accepted as one of the most powerful and sophisticated endings ever devised to end a feature film in recent years.

When director Ash Mayfair dispenses with spoken lines, she has two other tools beyond the camera. The music and wordless vocals (used for the end credits) composed by Ton That An (a Vietnamese male composer), and sound mixing (by Roman Dymny) that are ethereal. In a crucial point within the film, prior to a tragic development, the sound department introduces the sound of crows cawing though you don’t see them on screen (Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev has employed this effectively in his 2011 film Elena). To Ms Mayfair’s credit, at no point in the film does the soundtrack seem overpowering—when you hear sound/music, it is soothing and calming to the viewer’s senses complementing the incredible camerawork.

Even interior shots are elegantly captured: a pregnant May,
 with the second wife's daughter

If there is a loser in this lovely film it would be the lack of emphases for details of realism. The film is a picture postcard view of Vietnam in the 19^th Century.  Everything you see in the film is picture perfect, every detail of exteriors and interiors are dust free, polished and colourful.  The silk linen clothes hung out to dry in the sun are the whitest of white, the absence of mud and dirt on the feet of women walking in the night is unbelievable in a tropical country. So too are the absence of insects and reptiles beyond the silkworms and a single lizard on a mosquito net. Are there no snakes and other insects/ reptiles found in vegetated tropical Asian countries then and now?  Especially near bamboo groves at night?

Arrival of the third wife, May, by boat, to her husband's house

Ms Mayfair has thanked American director Spike Lee (of The BlackKkKlansman fame) among many others in the film's closing credits for the Spike Lee Fellowship she won as a student of New York University which enabled the development of the film.  Ash Mayfair has thanked the Government of Vietnam that lent a helping hand in making this high quality film in that country. The film’s highly talented cinematographer Ms Chananun Chotrungroj is also an alumnus of New York University and a recipient of the Ang Lee Fellowship. This film ought to encourage successful film directors to invest a part of their life’s earnings to develop new talents in filmmaking who otherwise would have never made a mark. Finally, Ms Mayfair choice of the actresses who played the three wives and their performances and her choice of the music composer also contributed to the incredibly well-made debut film. Even the poster of the film says a lot of the care taken to communicate the tale of the film intelligently.

The citation for the Gold Hugo for The Third Wife at the Chicago Film Festival reads:

"The Gold Hugo goes to The Third Wife. Ash Mayfair's lush, assured debut feature which follows a 14-year-old girl as she enters a wealthy household. Mayfair's unshakeable vision grants the women of this world an individuality their society rejects, treating them as creations as wondrous as the natural world that surrounds them, as the film builds to a staggering climax that devastates and thrills in equal measure."

P.S. The film has already won the Gold Hugo award at the Chicago Film Festival and the Royal Bengal Tiger Award for the best international feature film at the Kolkata International Film Festival. It won minor awards at Toronto and San Sebastian Film Festivals. The film was also part of the recent Denver Film Festival. The film is one of the best 10 films of 2018 for the author.

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222. Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky’s US film “Shy People” (1987): An original story/screenplay by the film’s director with notable performances and cinematography, all worthy of greater recognition than bestowed

To appreciate the nuanced merits of Shy People, the viewer would be better advised to know a bit about its Russian director and story-writer Andrei Konchalovsky. 

First, Konchalovsky is equally renowned as an original scriptwriter as he is as a director. Few are aware that Konchalovsky and Andrei Tarkovsky (who is now accepted worldwide as a cinematic maestro) were classmates in film school. Fewer are aware that three of Tarkovsky’s films (Tarkovsky’s diploma film made for his film school and two later celebrated feature films Andrei Rublyev and Ivan’s Childhood) were coscripted by Konchalovsky. Both these Russian directors are equally well-versed in Christian theology, a fact that most viewers not sufficiently exposed to that aspect will miss out on, in almost all their works. Konchalovsky, more than Tarkovsky, is more exposed and devoted to great writers (playwrights Chekov, Turgenev, Pushkin, Shakespeare and contemporary ones such as Tom Kempinsky, and novelist Dostoyevsky) and scripts and writings of the Japanese master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa (The Runaway Train) as is evident from his cinematic and dramatic output.  His interests and knowledge are staggering—music, sociology, politics, to mention a few but often Russia-centric.

Drugs and sex: the young girl from Manhattan, Grace (Martha Plimpton) woos
her "jailed" cousin Tommy (John Philbin)

There are three phases in his career—his pre-US output in film and theatre within Russia, his short-lived US career, and his current post-US work on his return to his native land. By any evaluation, his career in USA had its highs and its lows. Shy People is one of the three remarkable films made in this period, the other two being The Runaway Train and Maria’s Lovers. The weaker works of this period included the film version of Kempinsky’s play Duet for One, Homer and Eddie and the very commercial Tango and Cash (which Konchalovsky did not write but merely co-directed under intense interference by studio executives). A major contributing factor for the low popularity of Shy People was the demise of the Cannon film company, which coincided with that film’s completion and release. Shy People, after winning the Best Actress Award at Cannes, suffered a limited release within USA and no Oscar nomination. This is in sharp contrast with the success of The Runaway Train (a film that won a Golden Globe for Jon Voight as Best Actor and three Oscar nominations, and a nomination at Cannes), Duet for One (a Golden Globe nomination for actress Julie Andrews), and Homer and Eddie (winner of the best film award at the San Sebastian International Film festival). Thus even the bad films of the uneven US period actually resulted in critical recognition, with the exception of Tango and Cash.

The post-US phase that began in 1991 has resulted in higher international acclaim for Konchalovsky.  Two of his films in this phase (The Postman’s White Nights and Paradise) have won the Best Director award and a third (House of Fools) a Grand Jury Prize at the Venice film festival.

A prison within a house, created by a mother for a son Tommy (John Philbin),
while his mentally challenged brother Paul (Pruitt Taylor Vince) is free to roam 

Thus, Shy People, which was to be his final film of his US phase, uncannily anticipates his eventual return to Russia, because there are several elements in the film that are very Russian for a keen observer. What is Russian in Shy People, one might ask? If you knew the basic information on the director and a little bit of Stalin’s Russia, the huge portrait in the living room of the Sullivans has an unmistakable resemblance to Joseph Stalin. Joseph and Joe (the film’s character) are other hints.  The fictional character of Joe closely resembles the famed brutality of the Russian dictator. The isolation of the fictional Louisiana family in the bayou devoid of friends and technological progress complete with a prison within the compound of the house would bring back memories of Stalinist Soviet Union with its penal colonies in Serbia. A Konchalovsky devotee who has seen his much later work The Postman’s White Nights(2014) made in the post-Stalinist, post-Glasnost Russia that reprises the lonely and sometimes scary boat rides of the Louisiana bayou after a 30-year gap will wonder at how his mind was focused on life in his homeland while he filmed in USA and how he transposes the filmed imagery in USA to modern Russia.  The basic statement in both films remain the same—some people live in a time warp removed from scientific progress rubbing shoulders with good people and bad people, essentially carbon copies in both countries. Both films give a lot of importance to memories, metaphorically presented as photographs of the past—the 2014 film begins with such a sequence, while Shy People includes it in the middle. In Shy People there are townsfolk in smaller US towns living in awe of color TV programs, while in The Postman’s White Nights there are isolated rural communities, the inhabitants of which are ironically penalized for fishing in their nearby waterbodies while influential military personnel can do that without restraint and Russia continues to send vehicles into space in a facility not far removed from them.

  Barabara Hershey as Ruth (left) and Jill Clayburgh as Diana (right) are cousins
meeting for the first time. The jewelry, hats, clothes and demenor are
contrasting. Looking on is Ruth's mentally challenged son Paul (Vince).

Shy People is a lovely essay on family relationships contrasting the stronger binding forces in rural, isolated communities to the weaker, cosmopolitan urban communities—here Louisiana’s bayou versus the freedom of the upper crust living in Manhattan in New York. Two mothers are contrasted from the two different represented geographies, both dealing with wayward offspring.  One mother is religious and indirectly quotes a passage from the Bible’s book of Revelations on being “lukewarm and not being hot or cold.” There is no mention of religion in the spoken passage, but the director is able put it in context by adding the end-quote at the end of the film, soon after the urban mother decides to be “hot” (taking assertive control) about influencing her wayward but intelligent daughter on the flight back home to New York

The end-quote appearing in the night sky through the
aircraft window on the return flight

  “I know thy work, and thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth” Revelations 3: 15-16

The choice of names by scriptwriter Konchalovsky seems to be deliberate and alludes to Biblical characters, e.g., Ruth in the film and the Bible, while Diana is very Greek and non-Biblical. The three sons of Ruth have Biblical names. Both Tarkovsky and Konchalovsky reflect their spiritual beliefs in their films, often deliberately.

For those who are familiar with Russian films, the importance of the bonding between mother and her offspring recurs with poetic flourish in Aleksandr Sokurov’s masterpiece Mother and Son (1997) and way back in the silent era with Vsevolod Pudovkin’s Mother (1926). Sokurov explored connected subjects—grandmother and grandson in Aleksandra(2007) and father and son in Father and Son (2003). A recent Cannes award-winning film Closeness (2017) deals with the reverse—the bonding between a daughter and her parents.

A casual viewer of Shy People is likely to dismiss the film for being unrealistic—which it is, in some ways. Can a writer of Cosmopolitanmagazine throw her weight around in a small town in Louisiana and influence the local police? Can a woman injure a man in public with a gun wound and get away with it? Is it a ghost story or is it not?

Repeated viewings of the film will reveal the depths of the film and magical combination of inspired acting (Barbara Hershey and Jill Clayburgh, in particular), the cinematography of Chris Menges, the art direction/production design of Leslie McDonald, the music of Tangerine Dream,  and the director’s script. This is a masterpiece of American cinema, crying to be discovered and acknowledged as such and definitely a Konchalovsky gem ranking alongside his The Runaway Train made two years earlier.

.

P.S. Shy People is one of the author’s top 100 films. It won the best actress award for Barbara Hershey at the Cannes Film Festival. Several films mentioned in the above review, the US film The Runaway Train (1985) and the Russian films The Postman’s White Nights (2014) and Paradise (2016) have been reviewed earlier on this blog. (Click on the name of the film in this post-script for a quick access to those reviews on this blog.) Thankfully, the film has been uploaded on Youtube by a kind soul making it available for wider viewing.

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213. US director Michael Almereyda’s film “Marjorie Prime” (2017) (USA): Commendable adaptation of a good American play on film with noteworthy performances and musical choices

“Nobody is who he was. Nobody will be who he is now” 

--lines spoken in the film, adapted from Jordan Harrison’s play Marjorie Prime, a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize and the winner of the 2016 Horton Foote Prize for an Outstanding New American play

US director Michael Almereyda made some fine decisions to make Marjorie Prime. He chose an amazing play that would only be enhanced by the tools of modern cinema, if used with restraint and class. He achieved that partly by scripting the film himself. His next winning decision was to retain actress Lois Smith in the role of the old Marjorie, a role she had played earlier on stage. The director’s next winner was the casting of actress Geena Davis as Marjorie’s daughter Tess and actor Tim Robbins as Marjorie’s son-in-law, Jon. The fourth bright decision was to choose the talented Mica Levi to contribute the original music of the film. All win-win decisions.

The film/play deals with real people interacting with holograms (“Primes” created through memories of others) that can intelligently respond to you.  The responses of these artificially intelligent (AI) creations are as interesting as the responses of robots in the recent fascinating sci-fi film from UK, Ex Machina (2014). Playwright Harrison does not delve into the science of developing the holographic characters but instead concentrates on how real humans react to the responses of the holographic characters whose knowledge is based on information provided by the interacting humans themselves.  Harrison is an alumnus of Stanford University, where interesting developments in AI have been emerging and continues to emerge. When Marjorie Prime won the Sloan prize at the Sundance Film Festival the citation was itself revealing of the maturity of the film. The jury awarded the film for its "imaginative and nuanced depiction of the evolving relationship between humans and technology, and its moving dramatization of how intelligent machines can challenge our notions of identity, memory and mortality.”

Marjorie (Lois Smith)  interacts verbally with the hologram of
her husband Walter (Jon Hamm), as he looked when he was 40.

Film has a clear advantage over theatre when it comes to holograms. Early in the film, Marjorie (Lois Smith) walks through the leg of her dead husband Walter’s hologram (Jon Hamm).  As the film progresses, real characters keep interacting with holograms of persons who died recently as well, when they are alone. (Harrison and Almereyda are more interested in the psychological reactions of humans to spoken words of holograms)  These interactions can be switched off at the human’s will. These possibilities are fictional at present but could soon be reality as AI makes rapid strides with time.

The Harrison/Almereyda tale is reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman's films going back in time to discover and rediscover facts and incidents and record reactions that unfold new perspectives of the present day characters by these discoveries.  The artificial holograms act as a catalyst for humans to unravel what they had subconsciously kept hidden.

Almereyda’s film makes visual connection with two images and one feature film. The two images are the saffron flags installation called "The Gates" in New York’s Central Park by Christo and Jeanne-Claude (see http://christojeanneclaude.net/projects/the-gates ) and a painting that reminds you of Alain Resnais’ surreal images in his black and white film Last Year at Marienbad (1961). The film referred to within the film is the Hollywood film My Best Friend’s Wedding  (1997). The common factors in all three are wistful recollections of human relationships from the most abstract to the least abstract. The saffron flags of ‘The Gates’ made a connection in Marjorie’s mind to her beloved dead son.  The images of the painting recalling Last Year at Marienbad could nudge a cineaste to parallels between the two pairs of couples in Marjorie Prime (Marjorie/Walter and Tess/Jon) and the unnamed man and woman in the French film. As in the Resnais film, you--the viewer--question the veracity of all the statements of the three principal living human characters when the hologram versions innocently and logically question what was stated earlier by the three humans. As in the Resnais film, memory and visual association (e.g., the saffron flags of ‘The Gate’ which are never shown in Marjorie Prime but discussed verbally) are crucial. Even the marriages of the two pairs of spouses in Marjorie Prime are tenuous.  As in the My Best Friend’s Wedding plot, there is a third person in the Marjorie/Walter relationship.  Much of these one suspects are likely to be the contribution of the director/screenplaywriter Almereyda. The final shot of the film is truly arresting—the waves of the ocean seem to have frozen in time just as the painting that recalls the Resnais film.

Two real people, Jon (Tim Robbins) and his wife Tess (Geena Davis) interact

One of the fascinating conversations occurs between Tess and the hologram of her mother Marjorie. The hologram comments “Pronouns are powerful things” following a statement of Tess for the hologram’s benefit.  Tess is taken aback and answers “That would be more her. No, you,” indicating Tess’ confusion between the real Marjorie and the hologram of Marjorie.

In a film where visuals and spoken words take the centre stage, music is not to be overlooked. Composer Mica Levi is a rising star—proving her mettle in Jackie(2016) and Under the Skin (2013). Almereyda’s choice of Poulenc and Beethoven pieces and Ms Levi’s original music combined with intelligent soundtrack editing by Kathryn Schubert (who had worked with Jim Jarmusch on Only Lovers Left Alive in 2013) embellish the film.

Tim Robbins was never as interesting as he is in this film providing interesting variation to his character. Lois Lane is a delight to watch as the real Marjorie and the holographic Marjorie. Geena Davis and Jon Hamm do not disappoint. 

Son-in-law Jon (Robbins) briefs the hologram of his 'dead father-in-law Walter
with secrets about Marjorie's and Walter's past
(Note the hologram's robotic posture)

Marjorie Prime ought to be a frontrunner in the Oscar race in several departments—acting, music, screenplay and editing. It is one of the most engaging sci-fi films since Ex Machina but a casual viewer, who misses out on the details, might find it unworthy of acclaim. The sci-fi element is minimal but the film is more concerned about memory, aging, and how people react to emotionless, logical questions of robotic creations. In many ways, the balance of sci-fi and human behaviour changing with time in Marjorie Prime is close to the balance achieved by Andrei Tarkovsky in Solaris (1972).

This low-budget film will be a strong contender for being included among the top 10 films of 2017 for this critic.

P.S. The film Marjorie Prime won the Alfred P Sloan prize for feature films at the Sundance Film Festival. Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972) has been reviewed on this blog.

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211. US director Sofia Coppola’s film “The Beguiled” (2017) (USA): An interesting but “amputated” female perspective of a quaint but intelligent American novel

It is imperative that when a director adapts a novel into a film that one ought to compare how that effort changes or enhances the entertainment of the viewer/reader. That exercise is further compounded if an interesting earlier film had been made—making it useful to compare the three creative products—the novel, the original movie and the remake.

The Union Corporal (Colin Farrell) and Alicia (Elle Fanning) 

Sofia Coppola’s film The Beguiled is an adaptation of a novel and a remake of a 1971 film of considerable importance. Ms Coppola won the Best Director award at Cannes in 2017 from a jury that did not use that perspective but merely evaluated its strengths compared to the 20 odd films in competition at that edition of the Festival. 

The tale is set during the American civil war. An injured Union soldier is given refuge in a seminary/boarding school in a southern Confederate state inhabited by religious women/girls of varying ages. A series of unfortunate incidents lead to his death. 

Sofia Coppola is the director and screenplay writer of 2017 version of The Beguiled. Her approach to the film's subject is simple, obvious, and measured —while retaining the basic story of the novel, she would tweak it to serve us a female perspective of the novel. (Note that even the color of the film's title on poster is pink!) The original novel was written by a male author Thomas Cullinan. The original screenplay was written by Albert Maltz and Irene Kemp for the original film The Beguiled (1971), directed by Don Siegel. Ms Coppola uses that screenplay of Maltz and Kemp as the basis of her own adapted screenplay, while changing crucial elements of the preceding works. 

The not-so-frail Ms Martha (Nicole Kidman) in candle light

The crucial differences of the remake with the original film are the following:

1.  The total deletion of the sympathetic black slave girl Mattie of the novel renamed Hallie in the original film by Don Siegel. In the original film. Hallie in a crucial scene during the second leg operation, courageously remarks “There is frailty in you” as Ms Martha (played by Geraldine Page) avoids looking at the face of the soldier. In Ms Coppola’s version, there is very little frailty in Ms Martha (played by Nicole Kidman). Further, both the original version and the remake of The Beguiled portray the character of Edwina (Elizabeth Hartman in the original, and Kirsten Dunst in the remake) as a white lady, while the character in the novel is of a mixed race.
2.  The soldier’s character and his views are reduced to the minimal in Ms Coppola’s version allowing very little sympathy to develop in the viewer's mind  for the soldier. 
3. The sexual encounter sequence is minimized in screen time in Ms Coppola’s version to the credit of the director, when compared to the original version. In any case, that sequence is not important. 
4. The cinematography in the night sequences is captured in candle light in Ms Coppola’s version (as it ought to be) unlike Mr Siegels’ version. It reminds one of the cinematography and lighting in Stanley Kubrick’s film Barry Lyndon (1975). 
5. The trees and the woods in Ms Coppola’s version are spectacular compared to Mr Siegel’s version. Even the fallen dried leaves in the veranda add to the intelligent details adopted in Ms Coppola’s version. 
6. In Ms Coppola’s version, the soldier’s body is left unattended outside the gate in a covered body bag, which is odd indeed. In Mr Siegel’s version the ladies carry the covered body far away from their mansion. One can assume the ladies were not capable of digging a grave in both film versions leading to this action. 

Edwina (Kirsten Dunst) replaces the Edwina of mixed race of the novel

Religion and reality of the beguiled

The following is the intelligent and measured text of a statement issued by Ms Coppola to counter some criticism of her omissions in her version: 

 “My film is set in a Southern school for girls at the point in the Civil War when the men had been away fighting for some time and the Union had gained momentum. According to historians and several women’s journals from the time, many slaves had departed, and a great number of white women of the South were left in isolation, holding on to a world whose time had rightly come to an end—a world built on slave labor.” 

 “I wanted to tell the story of the isolation of these women, cut off from the world and in denial of a changing world. I also focused on how they deal with repression and desire when a man comes in to their abandoned world, and how this situation affects each of them, being at different stages of their life and development. I thought there were universal themes, about desire and male and female power dynamics that could relate to all women.” 

“The circumstances in which the women in my story find themselves are historically accurate—and not a distortion of history, as some have claimed. From “Mothers of Invention” by Drew Gilpin Faust: “War and emancipation revealed that many white women felt themselves entirely ignorant about how to perform basic functions of everyday life…A war that had at the outset made so many women feel useless and irrelevant soon demanded significant labor and sacrifice from even the most privileged southern females…” 

 “Throughout the film, we see students and teachers trying to hold on to their crumbling way of life. Eventually, they even lock themselves up and sever all ties to the outside world in order to perpetuate a reality that has only become a fantasy. My intentions in choosing to make a film in this world were not to celebrate a way of life whose time was over, but rather to explore the high cost of denial and repression.” 

 “There have been some questions regarding my approach to my new film, The Beguiled. More specifically, there have been objections to my decision not to include the slave character, Mattie, in Thomas Cullinan’s book on which my film is based. I would like to clarify this.” 

 “My film is set in a Southern school for girls at the point in the Civil War when the men had been away fighting for some time and the Union had gained momentum. According to historians and several women’s journals from the time, many slaves had departed, and a great number of white women of the South were left in isolation, holding on to a world whose time had rightly come to an end—a world built on slave labor." 

"Isolation of women, repression and desire" captured
by Sofia Coppola

 “I wanted to tell the story of the isolation of these women, cut off from the world and in denial of a changing world. I also focused on how they deal with repression and desire when a man comes in to their abandoned world, and how this situation affects each of them, being at different stages of their life and development. I thought there were universal themes, about desire and male and female power dynamics that could relate to all women.” 

“In his 1966 novel, Thomas Cullinan made the choice to include a slave, Mattie, as a side-character. He wrote in his idea of Mattie’s voice, and she is the only one who doesn’t speak proper English—her voice is not even grammatically transcribed.” 

“I did not want to perpetuate an objectionable stereotype where facts and history supported my choice of setting the story of these white women in complete isolation, after the slaves had escaped. Moreover, I felt that to treat slavery as a side-plot would be insulting.” 

“There are many examples of how slaves have been appropriated and “given a voice” by white artists. Rather than an act of denial, my decision of not including Mattie in the film comes from respect.” 

 “Some have said that it is not responsible to make a film set during the Civil War and not deal directly with slavery and feature slave characters. I did not think so in preparing this film, but have been thinking about this and will continue to do so. But it has been disheartening to hear my artistic choices, grounded in historical facts, being characterized as insensitive when my intention was the opposite”. 

“I sincerely hope this discussion brings attention to the industry for the need for more films from the voices of filmmakers of color and to include more points of views and histories.” 

Exterior cinematography under natural light
with dried leaves on the floor

Both the film versions have their strengths and weaknesses. Both films and the novel compare the importance given to religion and the contrarian actions of the persons who profess to practice it. Both films and the novel discuss how good individuals change with circumstances that affect their ego or their possessions. Even a child can change if it's pet is deliberately hurt! Don Siegel’s 1971 version captures a larger canvas of male characters (soldiers of the Confederate army interacting with the ladies)---several brief yet important sequences. Ms Coppola’s version avoids those distractions as she is more interested in focussing on the ladies. Both versions have their strengths. Don Siegel’s 1971 version gave importance to acting, while Ms Coppola’s somewhat notable version is essentially a director’s, the art director's and cinematographer’s film--little else. Despite directorial maturity of the remake, the original is the winner with a notable Clint Eastwood performance to boot.

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205. US director Jim Jarmusch’s film “Paterson” (2016) (USA): A delicate, well-conceived film on a bus driver turned poet constantly noting beauty in ordinary subjects, thanks to his contented life with a supportive spouse

Paterson would appear to be a simple tale; but it is not. It is a film where Jim Jarmusch the original scriptwriter over-shadows Jim Jarmusch the director. Yet they are both the same individual in two roles. The script is trenchant; it is brilliant. The direction follows the script. A script on a week in the life of a bus driver who writes poetry.

Bus driver Paterson (Adam Driver) at work

Optimistic, poetic Paterson  lives in Paterson City, where commercial activity
obviously is in distress (see signage on the walls)

Why is this original script brilliant? Paterson, in the movie, refers to several things—it is the name of the lead character (the bus driver and amateur poet); it is the name of the city in New Jersey, USA, where the story takes place; it is the name of the volume of the collection of poems of Pulitzer Prize winning US poet William Carlos Williams who worked as a paediatrician in Paterson, New Jersey. 

Scriptwriter Jarmusch’s lead character is a bus driver who likes poetry, writes poetry, and lives in a house with book shelves full of books of poetry by Williams and other poets. A 10-year-old girl with a penchant for writing poetry in a secret notebook who meets Paterson for the first time amiably describes him after the brief encounter as “a bus driver who likes Emily Dickinson” (the poet). The bus driver writes his poems in his own secret notebook, before and after driving his bus. These poems are odes to his partner Laura, of Iranian lineage. Now, Jarmusch’s choice of the name Laura for bus driver Paterson’s partner is not accidental—the Renaissance Italian poet Petrarch (1304-74) too wrote all his poems to his muse Laura de Noves, the wife of a Count, whose beauty made Petrarch leave priesthood even though their relationship was platonic.

Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) paints and wears black and white
and even put black and white icing on her cupcakes

Jarmusch’s creation of Laura is equally amazing. Laura is equally a creative individual as Paterson is. She loves to paint at home with white and black colours. She goes to the extent of painting her clothes while wearing them. When she bakes cupcakes, the icing is again black and white. Even her guitar that she orders on-line is painted black and white! When she takes her spouse Paterson to a movie—the movie is in black and white. Yet Laura is odd—she is devoted to her husband and recognizes his gift for poetry. She is equally devoted to her pet dog.  Her life seems fairly limited to home management and an interest in music. Yet she manipulates her husband to agree to buy a costly guitar on-line but makes up for the cost by making equal or more money selling cupcakes at the local farmer’s market.  And guess what? She had dreamt it first.

Now writer Jarmusch elegantly contrasts the life of the loving couple, who love each other intensely, despite their quite different likes and dislikes, constantly encouraging and supporting each other, while other couples in Paterson do not seem to get along with as much élan despite being together. The love between Paterson and Laura helps the bus driver Paterson to see beauty in ordinary objects and mundane situations.

Marvin the dog on a Persian carpet at home.
(The dog got a rare award at Cannes! And the film is dedicated to it, as well)

Paterson (Driver) takes Marvin out for a walk,
 before entering a pub for his daily glass of beer 

The third most important character in the script is an English bulldog called Marvin who waits outside the pub dutifully each evening as Paterson has his daily glass of beer. The dog is apparently fond of Laura more than Paterson. But the apparently docile dog is cunning enough to make Paterson wonder who is tilting his mailbox. And when Marvin is left alone in the house he wreaks revenge on Paterson the bus-driver in his own way.

Laura recollects having dreamt of having twins with Paterson. The script introduces us to several pairs of twins in Paterson and motley people all interested in writing poetry. The sets of twins include elderly men sitting on a bench, passengers on the bus, twins in the pub, the 10-year old girl poet who possibly has a twin sister, and so on. Poets include a 10-year-old girl, a man waiting to get his laundry washed, and a tourist. The recurrence make you marvel at Jarmusch’s interest in adding details that would have been inconsequential in most other screenplays.

Paterson (Driver), having lost his secret notebook. gazes at the waterfall
in solitude

Japanese actor Masatoshi Nagase as a Japanese poet, arrives at the waterfall
viewing site and later sits down with Paterson and discusses poetry.

All that, of course, would be limited to characters and character development. Towards the end, the script shifts gears as it introduces magic realism. Peterson, who has lost his secret poetry notebook, wistfully gazes at the waterfall in Paterson city, sitting alone on the bench. An amazing encounter with a Japanese poet leads to Paterson being gifted with an empty notebook—as though the tourist knew of Paterson’s recent loss. Paterson the bus driver-cum-poet renews his writing after this unexpected gift from a guardian angel—a tourist who is meeting him for the first time.

The final line Paterson writes is “Would you be a fish?” This might intrigue many people viewing the film. A fish might look good but it cannot read or write. And in spite of its agility in the water it can get caught and end up as food. Ergo: being a poet is better than being a fish.

The importance of supportive couples is contrasted with one that does not

A word about the actors in Paterson. Is the casting of Adam Driver as the bus driver a mere coincidence? Is the casting of the Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani as Laura who dreams of Asian images of elephants and furnishes her floors with Persian carpets, another coincidence? Is the casting of the Japanese actor Masatoshi Nagase [the lead actor in Naomi Kawase’s equally reflective Japanese film Sweet Bean(2015)] yet another coincidence? Quite evidently Jarmusch builds on details while writing his script, while casting and directing.

This film establishes Jim Jarmusch as one of the top two directors working in USA today alongside Terrence Mallick.

P.S. This critic is disappointed that this original screenplay did not even get nominated for an Oscar. It is far superior to others that were nominated in 2017. The film is one of the best films made in 2016. Unfortunately, this critic viewed it only in 2017 and, therefore, Paterson is likely to find a place in the top 10 films of 2017 of this critic. Earlier on this blog, this critic had reviewed Naomi Kawase’s Sweet Bean (2015) with actor Masatoshi Nagase. Mr Jarmusch is also one of the author's 15 favourite active filmmakers

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