Category: Jean Smart

GARDEN STATE

By Marc S. Sanders

The irony of Zach Braff’s Garden State is that the protagonist he portrays is heavily medicated to subdue any variation of depression or anger induced mood swings.  Yet, it seems like everyone else in the picture should be off the drugs, and those that aren’t taking any, should revert to some appropriate pharmaceuticals.  STAT!

Braff wrote and directed this quirky comedy-drama loosely inspired by his upbringing in northern New Jersey.  He plays Andrew “Large” Largeman.  He’s an actor living in Los Angeles when his father calls him to let him know that his quadriplegic mother has drowned in the bathtub.  Andrew seems like what Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off might have become a few years after he kicked his dad’s prized Ferrari out the glass garage.  This guy is sullen, sedate and when speaks or responds to a question, you might think he’s catatonic as well.  He’s just so numb from the medicinal products he takes.  They were prescribed by his psychiatrist, who also happens to be his father, Gideon, played with quiet tension by Ian Holm.

At the graveside funeral, Andrew comes upon some childhood friends who never left Jersey behind.  Peter Sarsgaard is Mark who vaguely remembers Andrew and invites him to a party later that night which is likely just like last weekend’s party and the weekend before that.  Mushrooms, weed, coke, alcohol.  It’s all there.

The next day Andrew meets a precocious young lady named Sam (Natalie Portman) who recommends he fend off a humping seeing eye dog by kicking him in the balls.  This unexpected introduction is what will meaningfully break Andrew of his stupor. The bond between Sam and Andrew will carve out the rest of Garden State following a meanderingly weird exposition.  I’m grateful for that because just when you think this film is going nowhere fast, even if it is told at a slow pace, the story absorbs a sweet narrative shared between two very likable characters.

There’s a lot of eccentricities in Zach Braff’s film which he admirably wrote and directed as well.  Living in New Jersey for fourteen years of my childhood, I don’t recall anything within my nearby Jewish suburban neighborhoods being this oddball.  Then again, Braff is maybe a little too ambitious to have one strange character turn up after another.  A woman at the funeral makes him a shirt that matches the wallpaper of the hallway.  A dim-witted cop asks how he did when he procedurally pulls Andrew over.  Another guy shoots flaming arrows into the air in the backyard of his mansion for Sam and Andrew to haphazardly dodge their descent. 

Mark is not only a grave digger in the cemetery, but a robber as well, stealing the jewelry from the remains in the coffins.  Sam lives with her mom and adopted Nigerian brother amid Dobermans and a hamster jungle gym that stretches the entire course of the house and serves as a hazard for one poor rodent after another.  Sam has a well populated little pet cemetery out back.

Amid all these strange visuals and discoveries, there is a background to Andrew’s need to be drugged by his father.  He was the cause of his mother’s disability when he was age nine and pushed her down, causing permanent paralysis. 

There are colorful backgrounds to Andrew and Sam and a curiosity to learn more about them.  Still, the film seems to stretch its running time with too much unusual, oddball material.  I responded to most of it with a smirk or chuckle, but I ask myself why.  Why is so much of this here?  It builds up a setting, perhaps.  I’m just not sure.  There’s an overt weirdness to every single character seen in this film.  Nevertheless, I don’t believe Braff’s intentions were to duplicate a Wes Anderson formula.

Fortunately, Zach Braff offers a wonderful character arc where Andrew becomes more and more awakened as the film moves on, while clinging to Sam’s company and abandoning his father’s prescriptions.  Natalie Portman seems to mature over the course of the picture. Sam’s quirk is that she tells tall tale lies in rapid succession.  That façade nicely breaks down to show the genuine person Sam truly is later.  When her mother boasts a video recording of an ice-skating routine that Sam did while dressed as an alligator, the embarrassment on Natalie Portman’s face is so naturally telling.

Ian Holm should also be recognized as he portrays the opposite of whatever dialogue Braff wrote for the father character.  That’s a great challenge.  A scene in the kitchen has Gideon dressed in a bland, beige sweater and tie and he seems to hide within the pale walls of the room.  There’s no life to the guy.  Nothing stimulating, despite how educated the man may appear.  So, it seems unjustified for Gideon to tell his son later that he wants them to be happy like they used to be.  Braff’s character wisely responds by being unable to recall any time when they were ever happy.  Moments like these are the strength and intelligence immersed in Garden State.  The assortment of side quirks does not have this kind of staying power, though.

I like Garden State but there’s no way I could love it or embrace it.  There’s just too much moroseness within the strange residents amid their sleepy conversations to make me want to stay with any of these characters.  The benefit of watching the film is to see what Zach Braff, Natalie Portman and Ian Holm lend to the picture – three wonderful performances.

BABYLON

By Marc S. Sanders

Director Damien Chazelle has come a long way since his first major motion picture, Whiplash, a small film about a young, tortured drummer.  Since that accomplishment, he seems to get more and more elaborate with each project.  Babylon certainly exceeds ambition in any select 3–5-minute scene it offers within its grand opus.  The main title card doesn’t appear on screen until after the first thirty minutes and by then you are exhausted, yet completely awakened.

Babylon begins in the mid-1920s, during the pioneering times of Hollywood filmmaking where silent films were fresh and were regarded outlets for escapism and entertainment.  Big studios like MGM were not quite on the scene just yet and movie makers experimented with their films having no regard for rule and caution while constructing them.  On a busy day of shooting at around 3:15pm, an open field sword and sandal battle might turn up an extra in an accidental death with an impaled spear.  No matter.  Must keep shooting before daylight is lost and everything runs off schedule. 

It was at this time that a star like Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), rugged with a square jaw and dashing with a pencil thin mustache, offered greatness in movie houses that showed silent pictures.  A new discovery like Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) who seemingly came in off the street captured producers and patrons alike with her wide-eyed expressions and lanky, yet appealing posture.  These were the first celebrities of the advancing twentieth century.  They were starlets that brought people back and back again to the cinemas to witness battles of roman conquest or dancing on top of a bar while batting their long eyelashes for a mug at the camera.  The filmmakers loved to work with them. 

These performers ruled Hollywood until the Talkies appeared on the scene.  Movies with sound revolutionized the industry, but these famed individuals couldn’t keep up with the evolution.  Audiences and filmmakers couldn’t accept a compatibility.  Try to imagine a Jack Conrad listen to a packed movie house chuckle at one of his romantic speaking scenes.  It’s heartbreaking to watch.  He was admired, but now he’s a joke.

When the sun would set, the parties soaked–make that drenched–in orgy and debauchery would begin and nothing was off limits.  Naked women would happily get high and drunk and tossed over a large crowd.  Prop penises would be inserted into one partygoer and then another and then another.  Fat ugly men would happily accept getting urinated on.  Endless amounts of liquor and especially cocaine would be gulped and snorted and the greatest dares imaginable would always try to top themselves.  Have you ever heard of a party getting so out of control that someone would go so far as to wrestle a rattlesnake in the middle of the desert?  Jack happily watched all this decadence go down.  Nellie joyfully became the outrageously intoxicated and fearless ringleader. 

I have offered only a sliver of description for Chazelle’s over three-hour film.  To sum up, Babylon offers a hard-edged response to the family friendly interpretation found in Singin’ In The Rain.  Both films delve heavily into the transition of silent filmmaking to talking pictures and those who were left behind.  Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s G rated picture will have you giggle at their Lina Lamont with the squeaky voice and pratfalls who’s all wrong for the next phase.  The heavy R rated dramatic interpretation is offered in Chazelle’s script with Margot Robbie’s Nellie LaRoy and her Jersey accent, accompanied by unrefined posture and behavior.  Her drug binges are no help either.  Margot Robbie is fearless in her performance.  She is messy, sloppy, harsh and frenzied with her character.  One thing that came to mind as she is snorting line after line of coke is that at that time, there was no such thing as a means for rehabilitation like today.  No one was even looking out for the harm that drugs and alcoholic binging could have on people.  People were left to their vices to just drown in their poison of choice.  For silent pictures, you could plaster them in makeup and costume and let them mug and bat their eyes for the camera.  It didn’t matter if their speech was slurred.  Talkies required much more concentration of their performers.

The main player of the film is newcomer, Diego Calva, as Manny Torres.  A Mexican who inadvertently finds himself in the Hollywood nightlife while pushing an elephant up a steep hill only to get shit on.  (The elephant serves no purpose except to make an appearance at one of these crazy parties.)  Manny has an instinct for what’s to come in the movies and builds himself up into a studio executive.  While he’s dangerously falling in love with Nellie, he’s also discovering next big things like a Negro entertainer who’s magnificent with a trumpet, Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo).  Manny is a good man who swims above the dangerous life of Hollywood partying and decadence.  He’s an innovator that’ll never receive credit for what he uncovers.  That’s for the white executives to profit from.

A minor but welcoming story is Sidney’s.  He’s soon hung on posters outside movie houses, and performing with big bands.  Hollywood awards him with riches he could never imagine and never asked for.  However, ironically, his complexion comes off too white against some of his other band players and the idea of caking himself in charcoal makeup is insisted.  How will Sidney respond to this humiliating request? The wealthy also have a particular regard for him.  His status as an entertainer.  Do they see him as a showboat clown or the artist he values himself to be?  How does Sidney want to be considered?

With all of the parties and drinking and drug use to go around, Babylon goes off in a hundred different directions before it finds an even keel outline that switches storylines from Jack to Nellie to Manny and Sidney.  Chazelle strives to one up what other filmmakers before have attempted.  I could not help but think about Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights which follows the porn industry in the late 70s and early 80s.  Happiness abounds until time and technology and constant self-abuse cause everything to unravel.  Babylon follows a very similar trajectory.

A friend of mine found Babylon too be overly gratuitous.  She’s not wrong, but while she took it as a complaint with the film.  I take how superfluous the movie is as a major compliment.  There are long scenes where Chazelle will not surrender for the audience.  He shows how drug raged Nellie is when no one will fight that rattlesnake by having her violently pick it up, swing it around and thus it will eventually latch on to her neck while she’s running around amid a gang of naked partygoers.  Then we get to see another starlet cut the snake off below it’s head, rip its fangs out of Nelly’s skin and proceed to suck the venom out.  Oh, you’ll squint and squirm through the whole scene.  What do we learn from this?  Drugs are bad.  Really bad, and they will delude you into acting with no vices or boundaries.  So, let’s be completely honest about it.

When Nellie is recruited for a talking film, we see take after take after take of her trying to make her mark while it is shouted over and over again to the crew to shut the fuck up.  There can be absolutely no noise from anywhere that the mikes can pick up and it doesn’t matter if a crewman is getting dangerously overheated in a soundbox.  (No air conditioning could be allowed because the hum would be picked up by the microphones.)  It’s a brilliantly, well edited, long and tortuous scene of flaring tempers, sweat, heavy light and stress.

I remember reading an interview with Henry Hill, the mobster who was the focus of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas.  Hill said with no uncertainty that the characters portrayed by Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro were not even close to how frightening and violent their real-life counterparts were.  So maybe even Scorsese glossed over how harsh that world ever was.  Damien Chazelle is a relentless filmmaker with Babylon.  Nothing is whitewashed.  Most of what you see is shock value, but that’s the message he’s conveying and per his research he must be convinced the life of this era was actually this outrageous and way over the top. He’s certainly not forgiving with how manic these people lived, particularly with Margot Robbie’s character.

At the same time, he calms the film down to offer a harsh truth to a quickly becoming has been like Jack Conrad, Brad Pitt’s character, no longer in his prime.  Jean Smart portrays a gossip columnist reminding Jack that the height of his career is long gone, but fifty years from now, new generations will be rediscovering his achievements.  He will be a legend for all eternity.  Chazelle is speaking to us, those that appreciate what Turner Classic Films and other formats like videotape and DVD offer to see the first of these kinds of pictures where it all began with legends like Jack and maybe Nellie and especially Chaplin. Chazelle was an important student of this later generation.  This is the best scene of the picture with a magnificently written monologue, and I won’t be surprised if Jean Smart gets an Oscar nomination that no one ever saw coming.  I’m inclined to declare she should just get the award.  It’s such a telling moment for all kinds of movies.

Chazelle loves to make films.  The epilogue to Babylon demonstrates his affection as his story jumps to twenty years later, and an older Manny watches Singin’ In The Rain in a theatre. From what he inadvertently brought to the fold all those years ago, movies have evolved and continue to develop into bigger scales of what we could never have thought possible.  Chazzelle edits in a sequence where it started with silent films like A Trip To The Moon and Keystone Kops over to grand musical ensembles and adventures like Ben-Hur and then on to special effects with quick cuts of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Terminator 2, and Avatar.  Flashes of color appear on the screen and then quickly cut back to these captions in celebrated films and film stock.  I don’t believe any of this spoils anything of the film, but I like to recognize how Chazzelle takes inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s bewildering conclusion to 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Movies are going on and on and on.  Whoever is hot now and presently significant will have to adjust to an ever-changing industry.  Once celebrated puppeteers working for guys like George Lucas have no value in an age of computer graphic engineering.  Big box office stars might not be able to uphold their careers during a time of streaming films that come to us by means of our flat screen TVs we can affordably buy at Walmart.  Kardashian girls are more widely recognized than maybe a Jack Nicholson or a Meryl Streep.  (Someone I know had no idea who Carol Burnette is.)

It’s hard to sum up everything captured in a film this big and ambitious and yes, gratuitous.  Perhaps, the best I can tell you is simply that a hard truth to accept is that casualties come from discovery in a film like Babylon.