Category: Drama

CHANGING LANES

By Marc S. Sanders

The title is not meant to just be taken literally.  Roger Michell’s film shot on location in New York City pull the fulcrums which alter the destructive paths of two very different men.  The script beckons them to pave each other’s roads they will follow from here on out.  Their destinations can lead to hope or despair.

Doyle Gipson (Samuel L Jackson) is a recovering alcoholic who is ready to close on a house in Queens that his estranged wife Valerie (Kim Staunton) and two young sons can move into.  Finally, the insurance telemarketer seems to be on the straight and narrow.  He doesn’t want a glass of champagne.  He feels like champagne, bubbly and alive.  His AA sponsor doesn’t rejoice in that comment.  Doyle just has to get to family court and demonstrate that he’s a devoted and loving father and ask the judge to decline Valerie’s plan to relocate to Oregon with the boys.

Gavin Banek (Ben Affleck), the son in law and young law partner of Stephan Delano (Sydney Pollack) just has to make a quick appearance in court to undoubtedly prove that his now deceased client intentionally signed off on dismantling his multi-million-dollar trust leaving the proceeds for the law firm to collect.  The client’s granddaughter argues that her grandfather was mentally incapacitated and therefore the agreement carries no merit.  Gavin has all the documents lined up with clear and original signatures from the client.  This should be a slam dunk.

Car accidents never happen at a convenient time. On one rainy day in the city, Doyle and Gavin meet following a sideswipe collision.  Doyle wants to exchange information.  Gavin is good with giving over a blank check and being on his way. Thus, leaving the scene of an accident. 

In the rush of things though, Gavin has dropped the power of attorney file, glaringly noticeable in an orange binder.  Doyle collects it while being left stranded on the freeway.  Being twenty minutes late works against him, and Valerie is granted permission to leave the state.  

Without that orange file, Gavin is short of proving his argument in court.  He has until 5 o’clock on Good Friday to deliver the document to the opposing council and judge or the granddaughter can file a malpractice suit with claims of fraud and possible jail time for Gavin, Stephan and another partner, Walter (Richard Jenkins).

Two separate stories are at play here, running parallel against each other until the lines collide once, then separate and then collide again and again by the hands of the two men working against each other to get ahead.  

Changing Lanes is a study of willpower for Doyle.  Samuel L Jackson is giving one of his best performances.  He’s continuously being tested.  He can have a temper when he’s in the midst of chaos but as his AA sponsor (William Hurt) will remind him outbursts of anger are not substitutes for the bottle.  So you didn’t have a drink!! You can’t exonerate or excuse however else you behave irrationally.

Changing Lanes is morality piece for Gavin.  He has money and power and resources to fix any kind of scenario and circumvent the boundaries of law to Stephan, Walter and his own advantage.  The question is if he should follow through on what’s in front of him.  His code of ethics is tested and other than Michelle, an associate at the firm (Toni Collette), all are telling him what needs to be done. Not what should be done. Including his wife and Stephan’s silver spooned daughter, Cynthia, played with attractive deviousness by Amanda Peet.  A magnificent piece of dialogue that lends justification to commit to what’s not right and sound may be the actress’ best scene of her career.  A gentle, yet direct Lady MacBeth.

Actually, even Michelle, (Toni Collette lending a catalog of subtle expressions) who’s also Gavin’s mistress and in the “I told you so” position, has ideas that triggers a lot of unwanted turmoil for the men.  Changing Lanes truly puts the corrupt in the driver’s seat while leaving the innocents in the wreckage left behind.  What does that say about us as a society?  I guess I’ll need to atone for a lot more than I thought on Yom Kippur, this year.

The men quickly find ways to locate one another and cause harm and setbacks by their antagonism. Some of these scenarios are definitely convenient over the course of an eight-hour day, especially in a populated New York City.  However, the circumstances are at least sensible.  The plausibility should not be questioned however because the script by Chap Taylor and Michael Tolkin is very insightful and reflective.

There’s a million ways Changing Lanes could have ended.  There’s certainly a button well in place on its finality but what remains are the transformations of these two men.  On the surface, in any kind of setting, Affleck and Jackson come from different cloths and it serves the picture very well, because New York is always the battleground for a variety of walks of life.  Watch how the actors argue with each other.  They might as well be speaking different languages because too often people of different backgrounds fail to see what their neighbors are going through.  Doyle and Gavin must go through a lot of pains before they can see a clear sky on a stormy day.

The trailer for Changing Lanes is thrilling but terribly deceptive.  It’ll make you believe this is a kind road rage action picture, complete with Jackson’s signature temper tantrum that’s found in a number of his films.  Maybe the preview convinces you that Affleck looks like the victimized white guy, and that is entirely unfair to an audience and both actors, as well as the writers and directors.  

I’m bold enough to declare that my write up is a much more transparent offering of what to expect from this fine, forgotten film – a highlight for the resumes of every actor here.  Changing Lanes leaves you thinking about what’s just and what can be done right when temptations and tempers do not collide accordingly with our day.

GOOD WILL HUNTING

By Marc S. Sanders


I went to a prestigious private high school.  I was never a genius but I primarily got As and Bs.  However, when I reflect on my four years there, I believe I always had to bust my ass for those grades simply to keep up with the rest of the class, comprised of sixty students.  The majority of my classmates never looked like they overexerted themselves.  With my dad hammering at me to turn a 96 into a 100, disguised as sarcasm that painfully bit me every time, I was a very insecure kid among this community of students primed for Ivy League.  One student could look at the page of a book for seven seconds and absorb all of the information in print. There’s a quick transitional moment where Will Hunting, Good Will Hunting, exponentially accomplishes such a feat.  Only difference is he reads a renowned therapist’s best selling book from cover to cover in minutes.  Thereafter, he’s able to conclude that the author likely conceals his homosexuality due to shame.  Will Hunting has one of the most gifted minds in history, but hides it beneath what he says with his fists in the Southie schoolyards of Boston accompanied with a brutal vernacular, telling anyone who challenges him to “f’ack off.”

The title character is magnificently played by Matt Damon, who co-wrote this script with his childhood best friend and Harvard classmate, Ben Affleck.  The film was directed by Gus Van Sant and went on to earn Oscars for the original screenplay, and for Robin Williams in a supporting role.  Seven other nominations were also applauded for the film.  

In the year that Titanic ruled the box office, it was Damon and Affleck’s little project that stayed afloat with $220 million in worldwide revenues on a $10 million dollar budget.  I consider their achievements as great as what Sylvester Stallone accomplished when he sold his script for Rocky.  Collectively, they have at least inspired me to follow through with writing my own original plays.

Will is an orphaned twenty-year-old janitor who mops the floors of the mathematics building at M.I.T.  The esteemed and self-confident Professor Gerald “Gerry” Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård) posts an extremely complex math problem on the hallway blackboard allowing his students the opportunity for “greatness” if any of them can solve it before the end of the semester.  Overnight, it has been solved but no one takes credit for it.  It’s only later when Gerry and his faithful assistant Tom (Tom & Jerry!  HA!) realize that Will, the foul-mouthed janitor, is the kid with all the answers.  Amazingly though, he’s serving time for assaulting a police officer while starting a neighborhood gang brawl.  

Gerry has to groom this kid and shape him so that he can take credit for sharing Will’s brilliance with the world.  A judge agrees to release Will under the condition that he routinely meets with a therapist to deal with his anger issues.  Gerry eventually turns to his estranged friend and college roommate Sean (Robin Williams) who grew up in the same neighborhood as Will. Will might discover that he has more in common with Sean than he realizes.

No matter how many times I watch Good Will Hunting, I visualize a strong structure to its character make up, and that gives enforcement to the story.  In the center of this nucleus is Will.  Lines are connected to people who have a concern for him and his future.  

First, there is his pal Chuckie (Affleck).  With their buddies Morgan and Billy (Casey Affleck, Cole Hauser), the guys routinely drive around all day into the night drinking, smoking, and hanging around batting cages and bars.  Eventually, Chuckie will not be able to hold his tongue anymore and will have to lay out what Will should be doing beyond the nowhere life he leads now.

Next is Skylar played by Minnie Driver in a career turning portrayal as a sweet, sensitive and fun Harvard medical student. She shares a love story with Damon’s character that stands apart from so many other movies.  Their relationship builds as Skylar tries to understand all that Will is capable of while he hides behind the biggest of lies, like expecting her to believe that he has twelve older brothers, three of whom he currently lives with. He’s not proud of his super intelligence.  So, he resorts to making up what she might find impressive and unique about him.  

Gerry is proudly pompous as he carries his award-winning mathematical accolades with his designer scarves and sports coats, ensuring that Tom is always his follower, literally pacing a step behind.  Gerry may have Will’s best interests at heart, but it’s only because of his fascination with grooming the next Albert Einstein located within his own town.  As long as he can lay claim to the success of Will, then Gerry wants what is best for his discovery.  The question is whether Will wants what Gerry pursues.

Lastly, maybe the most important connection belongs to Sean.  A therapist and professor at Bunker Hill Community College who still mourns the death of his wife following an agonizing eight-year illness. Following an introduction where Will completely disarms Sean by examining a watercolor painting, Sean realizes that he must find a way to taper the patient’s super powered aptitude.  Will knows everything.  However, Sean must remind Will that he hasn’t experienced anything. Namely, love, responsibility and purpose.  Will’s weakness though is his “what-if” response to any opportunity that comes his way.  That weakness stems from his ability to foreshadow possibilities that he’d rather not face and overcome.  His nature is to see thirty steps ahead where everything derails for him and therefore undoes Will with opportunities for success and love.

Affleck and Damon carved a fully realized subject in their title character.  Their script runs episodically for Will with a different person in nearly every scene.  If Will is physically not in a scene, at the very least the moment still has something specifically to do with him.  In the second half of the movie, Gerry and Sean share moments where they debate and insist upon what they think is best for the prodigy.  Yet, the argument stems from their personal history together long before this kid entered their lives.  There’s a lot of deep thought and sensitivity written for Stellan Skarsgård and Robin Williams to rely upon for their performances.  

Apparently, the role of Skylar was not supposed to be British.  Yet, Minnie Driver delivers an Oscar nominated role by using her native tongue.  I like it because it shows Will encountering someone right for him who originates from outside of Boston, which is all he truly knows beyond the books he quickly skims through.  Skylar is an instinctual person.  She’d have to be to attend Harvard, but unlike Will with the untrained genius capabilities, she wants to learn about people who enter her life. Afar of therapy, mathematics and getting drunk with his buddies, Skylar is a pure, non-judgmental person for Will to share in his life.  He must figure out if he’s ready to take the gamble that she’s up for.  More importantly, as Sean will remind him, Skylar is not perfect and neither is Will.  

Chuckie may just be who Will has to sacrifice for any means of a promising future. I never thought Affleck was given much to do with his role until a concluding scene arrives in the third act.  He and Damon share a magnificent moment that seals the success of their script when the partnered screenwriters finally have to deliver an epiphany to their genius creation who carries a wealth of faults and personal demons. I like to think the context of this scene relies upon the real-life history of the two actors.  Harvey Weinstein, the producer, wanted Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in these roles.  Tell me, do you think that would have worked as effectively?

Good Will Hunting allows for so much to think about.  Will is portrayed more of a curse to himself and the world than anything else.  The role of Tom played by a real mathematician, John Mighton, has at best ten to fifteen lines in the whole picture, but it’s his presence and disapproving response to Will’s behavior that say so much about the overachievers who attend schools like M.I.T. and Harvard.  

One of my favorite parts occurs when an accomplished professor insists to Gerry that a problem cannot be resolved.  Will bellows the answer as easy as breathing and the middle-aged professor is destroyed instantly.  Tom tries to console the poor man before he storms out of the room in unnerving frustration.  As well, Stellan Skarsgård’s character operates with earned conceit but gradually crumbles as his newfound apprentice minimizes all that he’s acquired over his lifetime.  

The only one who can overcome Will’s involuntary penchant for personal destruction is Robin Williams’ Sean who knows that academia and knowledge must not be what truly defines Will Hunting.  Compared to Will’s background, Sean has experienced similar childhood trauma. Chuckie stems from a similar environment.  So, it’s just as well that both Sean and Chuckie are likely the most appropriate to guide Will in the best, most appropriate direction.

Wait!!!! Look at me!!!! 

I’m dissecting the characters of Good Will Hunting and I’ve hardly critiqued the picture.  I’m sorry.  I guess the film does not invite much criticism when it covers so many dimensions related to mentality and environment, strengths and talents, and the side effects which spawn weakness.

Good Will Hunting is not a perfect movie. One particular moment irritates me to no end.  If you’ve seen the film, then maybe you feel the same as I do with the “Retainer!” scene.  Chuckie dons a ridiculous three-piece suit and goes as Will to a prestigious job interview where he capably corners the interviewers into a bribe.  I cannot fathom why this part made the final cut.  It comes off entirely silly and unrealistic and it pulls me out of the movie every time I watch it.  What interviewers for a prestigious firm would literally take cash out of their wallets and lay it dumbfounded on the table for a kid to collect?  I passionately hate this scene because, by comparison, I love the rest of the movie so much.

Anyway…

Robin Williams demonstrates how effective he is with drama and pain.  Perhaps his own personal hurt lent to his performance.  Watch the first scene when Sean meets Will.  The conversation moves from small talk sarcasm to unexpected anger that gets physical.  Watch how seamlessly Williams diverts from broad range describing a World Series game and then into something that his character treasures personally a watercolor painting.  Most importantly, take in his nearly five-minute monologue where Sean evaluates Will on a park bench and deflates the ego that comes with the boy’s natural talent.   He talks about the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and being in love and later mourning a loss.  Williams, with Affleck and Damon’s words, paints one picture after another to demonstrate what Will has no business discussing at all.  Not yet at least. (My wife and I sat on that bench in Boston.  Just to be there in that spot was exhilarating for us.)

Matt Damon delivered the third of a trifecta of super talented young characters who had to mold their best traits.  See Rounders and The Rainmaker.  This leading performance sealed the success of his outstanding career.  Think about it though.  Matt Damon is such a wise, studious actor.  He learns the unique languages and behaviors of his characters.  Look at these movies, but also look back on his portrayal of super spy Jason Bourne, another kind of savant with extraordinary talents that get beyond his personal control.  Parts like these seemed catered for Damon, not fellow actors like DiCaprio, Wahlberg, or Affleck.  Damon’s characters go through similar arcs, but each is entirely unique.

Good Will Hunting was a new kind of coming-of-age film, far ahead of the James Dean and John Hughes fare from prior decades.  For the film to effectively work, its script had to speak as smart as its characters.  Gus Van Sant recognized the insight and internal conflicts of guys like Sean, Gerry and Will.  All three men are incredibly smart, but they never found a way to live with each other nor had they yet to uncover inner peace.  By the end of this movie, perhaps you’ll agree they all have, especially good Will Hunting.

12 YEARS A SLAVE

By Marc S. Sanders

I’m grateful for those brave filmmakers who defy what is so glaringly oppressive in order to uphold a truth.  Steven Spielberg accomplished this with Saving Private Ryan and especially Schindler’s List.  I own both films on 4K, but I’ve only watched them each a handful of times.  I recently completed my second watch of Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave.  While Schindler may feel more personal to me as a Jewish person who has met several Holocaust survivors, McQueen’s movie is uncompromising in its cruelty to black people , recklessly referred to as n!gg@rs, being held as property within the southern antebellum confines of slavery during the mid 1800s just ahead of the Civil War.  It’s one thing to read about lynchings and whippings.  It’s another to see it visualized; to see the life being breathlessly taken from a human being.  Not a slave.  A human being.

From such an ugly period in American history, the isolated story of this film follows the North Eastern free black man Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor, giving the performance of his career – heartbreaking, smart, emotional, fearful and brave at the same time).  He is a happily married father of two who earns an honest trade as an entertaining violinist in a well to do upstate New York Community.  When his family leaves town for a few weeks, Solomon is approached by two happy, colorfully dressed charmers with top hats (Scoot McNairy, Taran Killam).  Solomon believes he is being recruited to perform for some events across state lines for a significant sum of money.  He’s wined and dined by the men for a few weeks.  However, following a lavish dinner among the three, he awakens to find himself in southern Georgia, chain shackled at his four limbs.  

Despite his protests, insisting he is a legal free man, he is slapped, screamed at and trudged along to Louisiana and sold to a wealthy Plantation owner (Benedict Cumberbatch), who is comparatively kinder than his property keeper (Paul Dano).  Dano especially stood out to me this time as I reflected on Quentin Tarantino’s regard for the character actor. I question if the director, infamous for tossing the n-word around in nearly all of his films, has even seen 12 Years A Slave and had an opportunity to observe Paul Dano’s appearance. Dano’s character is genuinely mean spirited and hateful with that southern redneck naive racism for the black man. It’s what is demanded of this piece. His performance cruelly teases the black slaves with a song that sounds like a nursery rhyme but chants like a horror film while his screams insist they clap along. McQueen is wise enough to edit Dano’s voiceover singing as the slaves are getting accustomed to the new property, they are forced to tend to and live upon. Later, Dano and Ejiofor will conflict with one another, and the scene is terrifying of what it implies will arrive. So, there’s my two cents on actor Paul Dano (also known for There Will Be Blood, The Batman, and Prisoners). I’ll throw two more cents around and ask Mr. Tarantino to go reflect on his meritless position on this fine actor.

This picture also features Paul Giamatti headlining a horrible scene, working like a car salesman as he slaps the naked physiques of Solomon and other black people. His purpose is to demonstrate the value and endurance of these “properties” for potential buyers.  The novelty of used car salesman tactics seemed to originate here.  With no regret, black children are torn away from a helpless, anguished mother.  McQueen with John Ridley’s Oscar winning adapted screenplay includes this scene to show how quickly a transition into slavehood occurs.  Solomon and many of these other folk were free moments ago.  Now, they are delivered off a boat and are being sold like cattle, to be used not just for work but for sexual appetites and playthings.

The second half of the story finds Solomon as a sold property slave of the viciously harsh Edwin Epps.  Michael Fassbender has never been more terrifying with intense rage that hides any other memorable performance in his impressive career.  He more than serves the antagonism of this film the same way that Ralph Fiennes did for Schindler’s List.  This is a monstrous individual.  Strong, oppressive, with no way to be endeared.  If he’s mad, for whatever reason, he’s going to be mad at his faultless slave workers who do nothing out of line and work solely to satisfy Edwin’s demands.

As the title implies, Solomon’s captivity carries on for twelve years with no access to his family or proper legal authority.  He also dare not reveal he can read or write, lest he will come up as a threat to those that violated his legal rights as a free northerner.  Solomon Northrup was always to remain trapped.  Even his talents with the violin are compromised as he’s awakened in the middle of the night to marshal the entertainment for Edwin as he compels his property to dance naked among themselves in his drawing room.  

As horrific as Solomon Northrup’s story is, later accounted for in his published book, it’s a fast paced and engrossing tale.  McQueen assures an understanding of how harsh it was to live within the dense, stale heat while picking pounds of cotton for the slave owners and their wives.  The whispers of flies and mosquitoes, along with tall grass and dragonflies often found in the south bring an awareness to the mundane and exhausting life of picking cotton from sunup to sundown.

The work was never the worst though.  The younger black girls were groomed to be continually raped.  A telling moment occurs when Edwin prances around the property in just a loose, sweaty shirt (no pants) with a child holding his hand. It is easy to grasp what’s to become of this girl, especially considering how Edwin treats Patsey, a teenage slave, who is repeatedly raped and beaten by him while infuriating the jealously of the Mistress Epps (Sarah Paulson).  

Lupita Nyong’o is Patsey, in an Oscar winning performance.  Nyong’o’s anguish matches Fassbender’s rage in equal fashion.  (He was Oscar nominated too.) Ahead of shooting days, the actors maintained rigid exercises together to preserve a direct trust during the abusive scenes.  Though thoroughly convincing in their dialects and performances of tears and brutal anger and screams, I cannot imagine it would be healthy for either actor to go full method here.  Had they actually done so, I’d argue they’d never return to a sense of acceptable balance, mentality and perception between one another.  What they do together, just like this whole cast, is hard, brutal work. Just look at how red faced Fassbender gets. See how glossy Nyong’o’s complexion gets behind the screams and tears. Not all of this is just makeup spray water.

Steve McQueen takes large sections of his two-hour film to demonstrate the carryover of time.  I’m not necessarily talking about twelve years.  Rather, minutes and hours.  One section has Solomon strung up from a tree by the neck.  The only thing keeping him from crushing his windpipe is to continually tip toe on the wet mud beneath his feet.  Morning turns into sweltering afternoon and into night.  McQueen does not rush this moment.  He wants the audience to realize that black slaves were regularly hung from oak trees.  It’s one kind of understanding to endure the hanging with literally no aid or sympathy to rely on.  What’s worse? A quick hanging that ends in blacked out death, or the kind that only dangles a person to the absolute brink of death?

The hardest sequence is an unbroken four and a half minute shot.  The director’s camera circles around Patsey’s scarred, bound, naked body, as she gets bloodier and bloodier by the unending whippings from Edwin’s unreasonable rage. When the taskmaster forces Solomon to take over, a sad irony is that Patsey begs Solomon to resume the whipping.  She’d rather take her punishment from him, than the slave owner.  

Paulson is in the background of this scene too.  She never flinches, always looks justified in permitting this action to carry on seemingly like a Lady MacBeth.  Nyong’o allows herself to be weakened to nothingness with horrifying screams.  Fassbender seems to never tire of flinching his arm with the whip in hand.  Ejiofor does not rush into what is forced upon him but once he begins, he’s out of breath with terrible suffering for what he is compelled to bestow upon this helplessly tied up woman.  Again, McQueen never breaks this into quick edits.  It is all one shot, as you see mists of sweat, blood and body heat emanate from Nyong’o’s back with every swiftly delivered lash.  It is so unfair.  That’s a terrible understatement, but it’s what comes to the forefront of my mind.  What person ever deserves this kind of treatment?  What reason could there ever be to whip a person into a bloody, stinging, charred up pulp?  This is never, ever fair.  

The scene is so harrowing that I have yet to discover how it was safely put together for filming purposes.  What these actors went through. It’s uncanny how real it looks.

None of what you see in 12 Years A Slave is ever forgivable. Long after these doers of evil are dead as well as their offspring and their offsprings, it remains as never excused and should never be offered repentance.  Some would actually say “Well you have to understand, that’s what it was like at the time.” To hell with that. Today, moments like these are actually being dismissed and erased from our institutions as attempts are made to “make America great again.” There are places in this world where this kind of treatment still occurs.  It’s fascinating that generations have not learned from the sins of ancestors.

McQueen’s film is assembled with amazing craftsmanship.  John Ridley’s screenplay contains a dialogue that performs with intellect, even if there are characters that we presume were denied formal educations.  Brad Pitt offers a cameo as a white man with a conscious devoid of prejudice.  Listen to his dialogue against that of Fassbender’s.  On a sweltering summer day on the plantation, these two sides of the slave ownership argument operate like a congressional debate.  Ridley incorporates vocabulary that lend to another time, long outdated, but telling of the limits that some people will never adopt. Ejiofor, as an educated Solomon, has been diminished to look like a censored man, but even his shredded, dirty slave wear does not prevent him from realizing there is a hope for common sense and good nature, even in this unseen corner of the world.

The antebellum plantations are vast and isolated from a civilization with architecture of tall posts on white porches.  These areas look like contained miniature empires; maybe adapted from grand landmarks of ancient Rome or Greece. The costumes deliver a wide contrast of social status.  The cast of slave actors perform scenes nude in dirty field settings, broken sheds and dark, smelly cattle barns. The white aristocrats are dressed in the finest fabrics.  12 Years A Slave does not just describe. More importantly, as a very well-done film, it shows how wide a berth these people are separated from one another.

This is a necessary, monumental biography to watch and explore.  In social media I continuously remind people that the Holocaust happened less than ninety years ago, and it could easily happen again.  The same is equally true for slave history.  If the acceptance of this mentality can be taught, it will be learned and then it will be executed.  It can happen so easily and so swiftly.

History is unclear of what became of Solomon Northrup after he wrote his book, ahead of his death, but his story will never be forgotten.  It’s fortunate that McQueen’s picture was bestowed an enormous number of accolades including winning the Oscar for Best Picture.  An Academy Award is not simply recognition for artistic greatness.  Its reputation allows a piece of filmmaking to constantly be recalled for years to come among an elite collection of accomplished achievements.  If anything, that should ensure the terrible chapters of American slavery are never, ever forgotten.

MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Frank Lloyd
CAST: Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 96% Certified Fresh

PLOT: First mate Fletcher Christian leads a revolt against his sadistic commander, Captain Bligh, in this classic seafaring adventure, based on the real-life 1789 mutiny.


For me, what makes the 1935 version of Mutiny on the Bounty special is not just the cast, although it’s exceptional, or the performances – the only film in Oscar history with three Best Actor nominations – or the rousing story.  It’s the fact that the film provides a clear villain in Captain Bligh and appears to provide a clear hero/anti-hero in Fletcher Christian, while also making a great case that Fletcher was, in fact, wrong to incite the mutiny that made him famous.  Bligh gets what he richly deserves, but does Fletcher Christian have the right to give it to him?  I was reminded of Jason Robards’s classic line from the closing sequence of Crimson Tide, also about a (fictional) mutiny: “…insofar as the letter of the law is concerned, you were both right.  And you were both also wrong.  This is the dilemma…”

Gable as First Mate Fletcher Christian may not feel entirely appropriate in the role when we first see him, “press-ganging” unlucky sods into the crew of the Bounty in 18th-century England, prepping for a 2-year round-trip voyage to Tahiti.  He’s taller than just about everyone else, handsomer, and speaks with no trace of an English accent.  But his mere presence exudes “I’m the hero”, a quality not everyone can pull off just by standing there.

As the authoritarian Captain Bligh, Charles Laughton is incomparable.  He generates instant antipathy when he’s first seen boarding the Bounty, not because of how he looks, but because of what he does: he commands a punishment of 24 lashes to be applied to a sailor convicted of striking his Captain…even though the sailor has already died from his injuries.  When a crewmember faints at the spectacle, Bligh refuses to allow other crewmen to help him up.  As an omen of things to come, that’s hard to beat.

But before we get to the classic struggle between Bligh and Christian, we first have to put to sea, and there’s an exhilarating sequence/montage of the Bounty getting underway.  Nautical terminology flies fast and furious, commands are repeated, men scurry up the rigging faster than I can walk in a straight line, and I was reminded of my favorite “sailing-ship” movie of all time, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.  The effect, while simply accomplished, is palpable and thrilling.  Director Frank Lloyd and ace editor Margaret Booth work hard to keep that adventurous element present throughout the picture, a fact not lost to audiences who made Mutiny on the Bounty the box-office king of 1935.

After the Bounty gets underway to Tahiti, Bligh’s nasty streak gets even worse and worse.  I’ll spare you the details, but his mean-spiritedness and petty cruelty knows no bounds.  Meanwhile, Christian befriends a novice midshipman, Roger Byam.  Like virtually the entire crew, neither man can stand Bligh’s behavior, but they remember they are sworn to the King’s service and follow their orders.

Their friendship is put to the test on the voyage home after their brief, almost idyllic stay on Tahiti.  When Christian incites mutiny, the movie leaves no doubt that it’s the right thing to do.  He’s had all he can take of Bligh, and so has most of the crew.  But there are some who still swear loyalty to Bligh, not because they agree with his methods, but because, one, it’s their duty, and two, mutiny is punishable by death.  After Bligh is cast adrift in the ship’s longboat with men loyal to him, Byam wants to go, too, but there is no more room.

The dynamic here really took me by surprise.  Byam is as clean-cut as they come, but he’s no naif.  His ethical stance is not to be taken lightly.  When Christian calls Byam to his cabin for a talk, Byam refuses to look Christian in the eye, while Christian himself is apologetic and realizes that something has broken between them that may never be repaired.  To me, this exchange was eye-opening.  In many – not all, but many – other films from the Golden Age, the hero’s decisions and motivations are deemed pure and “right.”  But here, to contrast Gable’s “righteous” image, we have another “righteous” character who implies that mutiny was absolutely NOT the way to go, no matter how vicious Bligh had become.  Is it possible that Christian is the “bad guy” in this scenario?

(Towards the end of the film, there’s a court-martial scene.  In another example of the film’s even-handed storytelling, after the verdict is handed down in favor of Bligh and against the mutineers, Bligh seeks to shake the hand of the judge presiding over the court-martial…but the judge refuses, telling him in so many words, “Your superb seamanship is not in doubt, but as a captain of men…”  In other words, the law is the law, but I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you.)

I love that Mutiny on the Bounty refuses to take sides, all appearances to the contrary.  It turns what could have been a straightforward story about black and white into a surprising exploration of the gray areas in between.  The sterling performances from Laughton, Gable, and Franchot Tone (as Roger Byam) are worth the price of admission.  And there are some facts about the historical mutiny itself and its fallout that I did not know or remember, so I feel like I learned something in addition to being superbly entertained.  What more could you ask for?

EL TOPO (Mexico, 1970)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Alejandro Jodorowsky
CAST: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, Mara Lorenzio, Paula Romo
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 80% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A mysterious black-clad gunfighter wanders a mystical Western landscape encountering multiple bizarre characters. (THERE’S an understatement.)


Having only seen one other film from Alejandro Jodorowsky (Santa Sangre, 1989), I thought I was prepared for El Topo.  I mean, how weird could it be after watching a movie featuring a funeral for an elephant and an armless serial killer who murders by proxy via her son’s hands?  In my review of Santa Sangre, I used words like “fever dream” and “raw emotional power” and “phantasmagorical imagery.”

Now, thinking about El Topo, different words come to mind, but not necessarily in a negative way.  “Demented.”  “Over the top.”  “Cryptic.”  Here is a movie that does for Westerns what Quentin Tarantino did for kung-fu, but through a hallucinogenic filter.  Indeed, at the time of its release, it was dubbed the first “acid Western.”  I leave it to more educated cinephiles than I to tell us if there was a second.

Right from the opening, Jodorowsky lets us know we’re in for something different.  A black-clad gunslinger, El Topo (“The Mole”) rides his horse out of the desert accompanied by a naked boy.  He dismounts and tells the boy to bury a teddy bear and a woman’s photo.  “You are seven years old.  You are a man.  Bury your first toy and your mother’s picture.”  They ride off, and thus begins an epic quest as El Topo searches for four gunfighting masters, seeking to defeat them in single combat.  But first he must liberate an unnamed woman from the clutches of an uncultured colonel and his four lackies, who have laid waste to an entire town…

Since this is basically the second grand image of the film, I feel justified in going on about it a little bit.  The town is a literal bloodbath.  One body is impaled near the top of what looks like a telephone pole.  The main street is dotted with pools of blood, and I don’t mean little puddles.  Bodies of villagers lie alongside the corpses of disemboweled horses.  One survivor crawls up to El Topo and begs to be put out of his misery.  El Topo draws his gun…and hands it to the boy instead.

Put off yet?  This movie should come with “trigger warnings.”  Suicide, disfigurement, sexual assault (with female AND male victims), nudity, animal cruelty, child endangerment, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff I’m forgetting.  The last time I watched a movie with this much controversial content (The Last House on the Left, 1972), I was left with a bad taste in my mouth.  This time, with El Topo, I felt there were parts of it that I could have done without, but I also felt a sneaky admiration that some lunatic was able to get this all on film, and not only did it succeed, but it became a legendary cult classic.

I can understand that, without being an outright fan of the film.  I mean, the whole movie is nothing but a series of WTF moments.  I haven’t even touched on the second woman encountered in the desert, or the colony of rabbits that starts dying spontaneously when El Topo arrives (some of them for real, it looks like), or the fortune teller with the live lion chained to her wagon, or the community of little and differently-abled people trapped inside an underground system of caves (“We are deformed, from the continuous incest”).

I would put El Topo in the same family as John Waters’ Pink Flamingos or Lynch’s Eraserhead, a cult classic that sort of dares you to watch, just so you can say you did it.  Like Santa Sangre, it’s full of unique imagery that you just won’t find anywhere else.  And, also like Santa Sangre, any deeper meanings to the story are either there for the gleaning, or it could just all be an acid trip.  I would accept either interpretation.

MARKETA LAZAROVÁ (Czechoslovakia, 1967)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: František Vláčil
CAST: Josef Kemr, Magda Vášáryová, Frantisek Velecký
MY RATING: 5/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 100% Fresh

PLOT: In medieval central Europe, a young virgin promised to God is kidnapped and raped by a marauder whom her religious father seeks to kill in return.


In an interview on the Criterion Blu-ray of Marketa Lazarová, a British scholar of Czech film history acknowledges the film’s density and purposely obscure/unclear editing.  In so many words, he says, “But it’s unique, and you don’t always have to understand something unique.”

I mean…maybe not, but it couldn’t hurt.  Marketa Lazarová was named the best Czech film of all time in 1998, sports a 100% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and is included in the invaluable compendium 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.  It is loaded with visual style and inarguable beauty in widescreen black-and-white.  The production and costume designs are utterly convincing, placing us firmly in medieval Europe with a degree of authenticity I’ve rarely seen even in modern films set in that era.  But a model of storytelling it is not.  This movie further reinforces my tendency to shy away from “avant-garde” films of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

(And yet I really enjoyed watching Godard’s Weekend…go figure that one out.)

In broad strokes, the story begins with marauders raiding a traveling party and kidnapping the son of a nobleman.  The marauders are all the sons of a battle-scarred local lord, Kozlík, who rules his territory from a medieval castle and treats his sons barely better than he treats his prisoners.  Word of the kidnapping reaches the King, so Kozlík sends his eldest son, Mikolás, to pressure their neighbor, Lazar, to join forces with Kozlík in case the King decides to retaliate.  Lazar refuses, so Mikolás kidnaps Lazar’s virginal daughter, Marketa, just as she was about to join a convent.

Seems pretty straightforward, right?  “A” leads to “B”, “B” leads to “C”, and the gears of a bloody revenge story are set in motion.  But, man, I don’t know if I was in the wrong headspace or what, but I was unable to follow what was going in.  We’re presented with shots that, even with subtitles, don’t clue us in on who we’re looking at, or why.  Some of these shots are straight-up visions/dreams, intermixed with shots in the present, going to a flashback, then to a flashback IN the flashback, then back again and round and round.  Honestly, I felt like I was failing some kind of test.  I had to watch the special features to realize that one of the film’s sequences showed someone having sex with his sister…but even now, I’m not sure they meant with his OWN sister or someone ELSE’S sister.  When I need a flow-chart to follow a film’s progress, I’m not inclined to keep watching.

But I did.  Because, doggone it, there are striking cinematic flourishes that qualify this film as a visual tour de force.  The theme of hunting is referenced right from the start with a pack of wolves (or at least wild dogs) running through the snow toward an unseen quarry.  More than once, we see shots of antagonists and protagonists creeping stealthily through tall grass or tree branches either towards their prey or away from their tormentors.  Two particularly arresting shots look like they were taken from the Stanley Kubrick playbook; you’ll know them when you see them.

Which brings me to something I was thinking about while watching this movie: Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.  There is no denying 2001’s place in cinema history as a genuinely important film.  But show it to someone who’s never read the book or the infinite number of essays on the film, and give me odds on whether they will correctly interpret the last twenty minutes, at least in terms of the novel’s explanation.

Marketa Lazarová is not quite as cryptic as 2001, but it is definitely the same species.  In a movie that runs two hours forty-two minutes, I finally got a grasp on the basic nuts and bolts of who was who around the 90-minute mark.  The style and cinematography are stellar, but they were not enough to keep me as interested as I would have been had it been edited more conventionally.  I could go into more details about the story, about the girl Marketa’s plight, how she falls in love with her captor/rapist, the gritty battle scene, the film’s elaborate intertitles separating discrete sections of the film from one another, but it would feel false, because, ultimately, the film’s storytelling method left me not caring what happened one way or the other.

There are plenty of other films that broke new cinematic ground and still managed to be engaging and compelling, so many that I won’t even try to list any here…you know what they are.  One day, I will watch Marketa Lazarová again, perhaps with my Cinemaniac buddies, to maybe catch what I missed the first time around.  On that day, I will welcome a lively discussion of my rightness and/or wrongness of my first experience with this film.  For now, my opinion is that uniqueness alone is not enough to make a film enjoyable.

SOME CAME RUNNING (1958)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Vincente Minnelli
CAST: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Arthur Kennedy
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 78% Fresh

PLOT: A war veteran returns home to deal with family secrets and small-town scandals in his small Indiana hometown.


Before getting into the nuts and bolts of Some Came Running, let’s just take a second to admire its pedigree.  It’s based on a novel by James Jones, author of the novel From Here to Eternity; that film adaptation won eight Oscars in 1953.  It was helmed by acclaimed director Vincente Minnelli, whose prior credits included The Bad and the Beautiful, The Band Wagon, An American in Paris, and Meet Me in St. Louis, among many others.  In fact, his film Gigi, released the same year as Some Came Running, would go on to win an astonishing NINE Oscars.

It stars Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, two of Hollywood’s most bankable stars of the day, along with an adorable 21-year-old Shirley MacLaine as a pixie-faced gamine, among the first in a long string of memorable roles and Oscar nominations.  The supporting cast is headed by 5-time-Oscar-nominee Arthur Kennedy, who may be unfamiliar to the casual moviegoer, but whom I recognize from memorable turns in Lawrence of Arabia and Elmer Gantry.

With all of that going for it, Some Came Running looks like it should hit a home run in all categories.  The story is edgy, the characters are not all totally lovable (no, not even Shirley MacLaine’s), and the ending definitely does NOT cave in to sentimentality…which is all very appealing to me when done right.  However, while I am definitely not calling it a failure, I have to say that I was not moved by the plight of these characters.  The fact that it dares to show the hypocrisy of polite small-town society in the ‘40s and ‘50s was interesting to me, but I never got into a lather over it.  (By contrast, a movie like The Big City from India, with a no-name cast and a modest budget, also centering on a family’s plight, made me genuinely care about the characters.)  But I must acknowledge the daring nature of the film’s story, some of its uncompromising language (to a degree), and its chutzpah to cast Dean Martin as a lovable, comic character who nevertheless refers to women as “pigs.”

The story does take a little while to get rolling.  It’s 1948.  Dave Hirsh (Sinatra) is a military vet who arrives by bus to his small hometown of Parkman, Indiana.  He’s astonished when Ginnie Moorehead (MacLaine) gets out with him, wearing too much makeup, a disheveled pink dress, and a purse made out of a stuffed dog doll.  She has followed him from Chicago based on a drunken invitation, but he wants nothing to do with her, so he gives her $50 and sends her on her way.

That’s not chump change, equivalent to over $650 in today’s money…what’s a military vet doing splashing out that kind of cash?  Turns out Dave is also a published author, but he’s given up writing at the moment.  He’s come home because…well, we never get a real answer to that question.  Maybe he has nowhere else to go.  But he doesn’t exactly get a hero’s welcome.  His brother, Frank (Kennedy), runs a jewelry store and is also on the board of a local bank.  When he learns that Dave has deposited $5,500 in a COMPETITOR’S bank, that raises eyebrows around town and earns Dave a mild reprimand.  Frank’s wife, Agnes, vows not to be home if Dave visits because of something he wrote in one of his books.

Despite the small-town hominess of Parkman, the only place that welcomes Dave with open arms is the local bar, Smitty’s.  It’s here that Dave meets Bama Dillert (Martin), a slick talker in a cowboy hat, a loose-fitting suit, and a tumbler seemingly permanently attached to his hand.  The chemistry between Sinatra and Martin is instant, fueled by the fact they were fast friends offscreen, and their friendship drives some of the major plot developments later on.

The rest of the movie does an excellent job of deconstructing the mythology of small-town life.  Dave meets an underage cad who tries to get him to buy a bottle of liquor for him.  We later learn he’s dating Frank’s daughter, Dawn, and no one seems to be aware of his fondness for liquor.  Agnes relents and agrees to host a dinner for Dave, but does nothing but snipe about him behind his back.  Dave meets Gwen French, a schoolteacher who has read his books, but who rebuffs his romantic advances until a peculiar later scene where she seems to turn on a dime because she simply lets her hair down.  When Dave gets in a scrap with a drunk outside of Smitty’s, the incident is reported in the small-town paper, and Agnes worries about what that will do to her reputation at the country club…not to mention that Dave has been spotted with Ginnie hanging on his arm, a woman who looks anything but reputable…

I think you get the idea.  Some Came Running does for small-town Americana what American Beauty and Blue Velvet did for white suburbia, perhaps not as intensely, but still pulling no punches.  I was also reminded of Rebel Without a Cause, and it occurred to me that they might make an interesting double feature, since there are more than a few scenes in Some Came Running featuring gaggles of teenagers in the background loitering on street corners, or even “parking” on a remote dirt road.  The feeling I got was that these problems exist, whether you paint over them with a centennial celebration or not.

I just wish it had grabbed me by the collar more than it did.  I never got tired of watching Shirley MacLaine’s performance – she outguns everyone, even Sinatra, in my opinion.  Dean Martin’s acting looks deceptively simple – just Martin being himself – until a plot twist late in the film gives it a deeper dimension.  But the movie, as a whole, never achieved liftoff.  Or, maybe it achieved liftoff, but never got into orbit before splashing down.  Some Came Running has an enviable pedigree, but it’s an example of how even the most sensational casting and directing isn’t enough to carry a movie all by themselves.  Whatever the “X” factor is, I didn’t find it in Some Came Running.

BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1955)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: John Sturges
CAST: Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Anne Francis, Walter Brennan, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 97% Fresh

PLOT: Shortly after the end of World War II, a one-armed stranger arrives in a tiny desert town whose residents, for no apparent reason, behave in a hostile way towards him.


A stranger arrives by train at a small desert town.  The conductor tells him it’s the first time the train has stopped there in four years.  The stranger carries a briefcase in his one good arm.  The residents are apprehensive about him, hostile towards him, and do everything short of pointing a gun at him to force him back wherever he came from.  Who is he?  Why is he here?  And why does everyone get nervous when he asks how to get to a place called Adobe Flat?

This sounds like the setup for one of Clint Eastwood’s “Man-with-No-Name” spaghetti westerns, and if those films weren’t at least subtly influenced by this one, I’d be extremely surprised.  John Sturges’ Bad Day at Black Rock is a mystery-thriller as lean and mean as you can possibly get.  With a running time of a scant eighty-one minutes, this is one of the best examples of a film that wastes no time on side-plots or unnecessary filler.  Get in, get out, nobody gets hurt.  Well…in this case, that’s not entirely true…

The story takes place in October, 1945.  Spencer Tracy plays John J. Macreedy, a military veteran – he lost the use of his left arm in Italy – even though he looks a bit old to have been a combat soldier.  But I’m willing to believe he was an officer of some kind.  The locals, including Reno Smith (Robert Ryan) and his heavies, Coley (Ernest Borgnine) and Hector (Lee Marvin), wheedle and needle him non-stop, trying to get a rise out of him.  At first, I wrote this off to the Hollywood convention of the backwater burg whose citizens simply don’t like strangers for no reason at all.  As the movie plays out, the reason for their behavior becomes clear…a depressingly relevant reason still today.

Because the movie is so short, and because the plot turns so decisively on the revelation of what Macreedy is doing in Black Rock, I can’t divulge any more plot details.  But I admire the movie’s methodology.  Enemies become allies, and vice versa.  Some of the dialogue is reminiscent of Mamet.  Some examples:

  • “I’m half-horse, half-alligator – you mess with me and I’ll kick a lung outta ya!”
  • “She must have strained every muscle in her head to get so stupid.”
  • “You’re not only wrong.  You’re wrong at the top of your voice.”

There’s a kind of poetry there that I usually only find in films-noir.  I don’t think Bad Day at Black Rock qualifies as noir, but I guess someone forgot to tell the screenwriter.  I have no problem with that.

I also admired the plot revelation concerning Macreedy’s business in Black Rock.  I’m no film historian, but I’m willing to bet there weren’t very many movies in the years immediately following World War II that dealt specifically with this issue.  The fact that this one was made by a top-tier director with such a powerhouse leading man surrounded by a talented ensemble, in CinemaScope…I’d love to do some more research to learn the general public’s reaction to the picture and its message.  I know it’s critically acclaimed now, but I just wonder…

Bad Day at Black Rock is best experienced in a vacuum.  If you’ve read this far, don’t read anything else about it before seeing it.  Let the story come to you organically with no pre-conceived notions.  This is a great film.

THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA (1954)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
CAST: Humphrey Bogart, Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien, Marius Goring, Rossano Brazzi
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 100% Fresh

PLOT: The life of a Hollywood star whose candle burned briefly and brightly is told (mostly) by the writer/director who helped discover her.


Towards the beginning of The Barefoot Contessa, I let my expectations get the best of me, as I tend to do.  There were scenes between movie producers and directors and conversations about actors and the movie business and dialogue about bad dialogue at the movies, and I settled myself in for another scorching “behind-the-scenes” movie like Sunset Blvd. or The Bad and the Beautiful.  Heck, it was written and directed by All About Eve’s Joseph L. Mankiewicz, so how could I NOT expect something similar?  But I was wrong.  True, the film takes potshots at the industry, but later on it all feels incidental, a necessary sideshow to lead us to the main attraction.

The Barefoot Contessa is a character study about a woman named Maria Vargas (Ava Gardner), who is discovered dancing in a Madrid café by B-movie writer/director Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart) and kajillionaire producer Kirk Edwards…whose resemblance to Howard Hughes had to be toned down under threat of legal action from Mr. Hughes himself.  They are scouting for new talent along with Edwards’s gofer, Oscar Muldoon, played by Edward O’Brien, who won an Oscar himself for the role.

Maria is convinced to do a screen test, not by Oscar or Edwards, whose wealth has turned him into a spoiled child, but by the gentle persuasion of Harry Dawes, who quickly sizes Maria up as someone who is not to be bullied or cajoled.  One thing leads to another, and she makes three films in America, all directed by Dawes, and she becomes an enormously popular star, beloved by millions…and three weeks after her fairy-tale wedding to an Italian count, she’s dead.  (That’s not a spoiler; the film opens at her funeral.)

There are so many stories of Hollywood stars who achieve overnight success only to die young for one reason or another.  The Barefoot Contessa tries to get into the mindset of one such actress, but only from the outside, as the public knew her.  Not her friends, because she really only had one: Harry Dawes, the only person who really knew what made her tick, thanks to a heartfelt conversation outside her impoverished Spain apartment.  How much of this conversation reflects what really goes in any actor’s head?  Probably a lot.  She talks about childhood fears, a desire to be loved, her unhappy home life with her parents, insecurities, superstitions (she refuses to wear shoes whenever possible)…there isn’t an actor walking this earth who couldn’t identify with at least two of those issues.

We follow Maria as she moves to Hollywood, changes her last name to D’Amata because it’s more exotic, and becomes a superstar almost against her will.  Ava Gardner plays Maria as someone for whom acting is not a dream job, it’s just a job.  If the by-product is fame and fortune, well, that’s just a lucky break.  Maria is looking for the fairy tale, but it doesn’t involve limos and red carpets, nor does it involve finding a prince who’ll put the slippers back on Cinderella’s feet.

The Barefoot Contessa shifts narrators a couple of times, but it all leads to her fateful meeting with, and eventual wedding to, the dashing Count Vincenzo Torlato-Favrini, an Italian nobleman who “rescues” her from a verbally abusive paramour.  The Count, though, harbors a secret that Dawes, with his “number six sense”, is bothered by, but can’t quite pin down…and since I knew Maria would be dead soon, I thought I knew what that problem was, but boy, was I wrong…

This film may not spark and crackle like All About Eve, but it’s chock full of ideas.  There were times when it felt like it was trying just a little too hard to be a “great” movie, and I know that’s vague, but it’s the best way I can think of to describe it.  I think I need to watch it again, now that I know more or less what’s going to happen, and appreciate what it’s trying to say in the context of stars like Jean Harlow, or Heath Ledger, or Marilyn Monroe, or James Dean.

This movie isn’t so much a “at-what-price-fame” kind of story, though, like Walk the Line or [insert title of musical biopic here].  It’s more like a portrait of someone who beat the system, who was able to reap the benefits of stardom without being consumed by it, much to the consternation of everyone around her.  (But it’s not what killed her; write that up to her desire for the fairy tale.)

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (1965)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Orson Welles
CAST: Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Margaret Rutherford, John Gielgud, Keith Baxter, Fernando Rey (!), Ralph Richardson
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 96% Certified Fresh

PLOT: King Henry IV’s heir, the Prince of Wales, is befriended by Sir John Falstaff, an old, overweight, fun-loving habitual liar. Through Falstaff’s eyes we see the reign of King Henry IV and eventual ascendancy of Henry V.


[This review contains mild spoilers.]

There are so many layers to Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight that I had trouble figuring out how to start this review.

For starters, putting aside the significance of this film’s subject matter and where it falls in its legendary director’s body of work, it’s Shakespeare, and I have a spotty record when it comes to enjoying films of Shakespeare’s plays.  The only ones I’ve every been truly entertained by were the semi-recent The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, and – God help me – Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996).  With the Macbeth film, I was transfixed by the performances from two of the best actors of their generation, and with Luhrmann’s film, what can I say?  The deliriously over-the-top visual style frames the over-the-top performances perfectly.

With every other Shakespeare film I’ve seen, the language has very nearly put me to sleep, not because it was delivered poorly, but because it has always been difficult for me wrap my brain around the Bard’s syntax, occasionally so tortured and roundabout that even Yoda would ask, “Say what did he?”  Such is the case with quite a bit of Chimes at Midnight.  Watching Welles and Gielgud act are the highlights of the film, but after about 15-20 minutes, I had to put on the subtitles so I could pick up on the nuances of the language.

Can you follow the plot of the film without subtitles?  Yes, to a degree, but it was difficult for me to keep track of the numerous side characters: Hotspur, Northumberland, Westmoreland, Worcester, Percy (who is also Hotspur, didn’t put that together until late in the film), etc.  But I concede that, yes, without understanding every single word, it is possible to follow the broad strokes of the story, much like you might be able to follow E.T. with the sound off.  Don’t know why that’s the comparison my mind jumped to, but I’m sticking to it.

So, as pure entertainment, Chimes at Midnight suffers, through no fault of its own, from a lack of comprehension on my part, except for the extensive battle scene at about midpoint and the emotionally shattering finale, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Now.  If we set aside the pure entertainment value and look at Chimes at Midnight a little more analytically, there is a gold mine of information here, especially for dedicated Wellesians like my good friend, Anthony…hope you’re reading, bro.

First, there’s the production itself.  Chimes was the last non-documentary film Welles completed in his lifetime.  On the Blu-ray Criterion disc, Simon Callow, himself a Welles fan and biographer, makes the observation that, prior to Citizen Kane, Welles had nothing but a string of great good luck, and nothing but atrociously bad luck afterwards, almost as if Welles had struck some kind of Faustian bargain to get Kane made.  The lost footage and criminal re-editing of The Magnificent Ambersons, studio interference with Touch of Evil…the list goes on.  To get funding for this film, which had been a passion project of his for years, he had to go to Spain, and even then, he had to pinch pennies.  (The film is officially a Franco-Swiss production and never received a full American release due to the film’s ownership that was bought and sold, or something like that…watch the interviews on the Blu-ray for the whole story.)

But even on such a limited budget, Chimes at Midnight looks like a million bucks.  There’s nothing overly flashy about the camerawork, and there is a low-budget vibe to some of the scenes that reminded me of Kevin Smith’s Clerks, which I mean as a compliment to both films.  I specifically noticed scenes shot with Gielgud as King Henry IV in his castle, with cathedral ceilings and high windows casting shafts of sunlight into the vast space like an Ansel Adams photograph.  The battle at the center of the film looks and feels like something out of Kurosawa, but even more chaotic, which was Welles’s intention.  He specifically wanted a non-glamourous battle to evoke the passing of English history from an age of gentility to one of barbarism.

It’s the towering performance by Welles as Falstaff, though, that elevates this film past my issues with its entertainment value.  I know relatively little of Shakespeare’s plays, but I knew the name of Falstaff before going in.  I knew that he was a larger-than-life figure…I always pictured Brian Blessed or Robbie Coltrane when I pictured him in my head.  After seeing Chimes at Midnight, I will only see Welles’s version.  Wearing a fat suit to give him even more girth, until he looks like a caricature, Welles brings a sense of nobility to Falstaff’s shenanigans.  He is utterly devoted to young Prince Hal (Keith Baxter), whom he knows will one day be king.  He spins tall tales, sometimes it seems just to give Hal pleasure in catching him out in a lie.  There is a charming scene where they do a little playacting: Falstaff pretends to be Hal’s father, sitting on a makeshift throne and using a cooking pot as a crown.  He makes solemn proclamations with a sour face and a twinkling eye, like a soused Santa Claus indulging his elves at the North Pole.

But it’s the film’s climactic scene at Hal’s coronation that really makes my quibbles with the language seem superfluous.  Up till now, Hal has spent virtually all of the preceding film carousing with Falstaff and his cronies, faking robberies, wooing women, thumbing his nose at his father, and so on.  But by this time, Hal has stood at his father’s side as he watched him die, and the awesome responsibilities of the kingdom have settled on his shoulders, willing or not, and he has become a changed man.

So, when aged, corpulent Falstaff more or less crashes the coronation and cries out, “My king!  My Jove!  I speak to thee my heart!”…and Hal, now King Henry V, faces away from his former mentor and says, “I know thee not, old man.” … I mean, I was devastated.  And watch Falstaff’s face, as Welles displays a succession of emotions, each individually definable, each one lasting for just a second or two: surprise, disbelief, shame, puzzlement, and finally realization.  I won’t lay out the rest of Hal’s rebuke to Falstaff here, but it contains some of the most cutting language that Shakespeare ever wrote.

Added to all this is the fact that Welles was in the last phase of his career, that he perhaps realized it, and he was playing a character who, towards the end of his life, was being shut out by a man who once loved him like an uncle, perhaps even a father.  Much like the Hollywood industry, after giving him his big break, had essentially shut Welles out after Kane?  That might be an oversimplification, but it feels accurate.

Welles was always full of ideas, always experimenting.  What if…we made a movie about the life of a media mogul, told backwards, then forwards, then backwards again, with a mysterious code word that the characters never solve?  What if…we open this crime thriller with a long uncut take following a car bomb through a Mexican border town?  What if…we adapted Shakespeare to follow just Falstaff through all the different plays he appears in?

Welles was never content with the conventional.  Chimes at Midnight may feel conventional at first – and if you’re not a fan of Shakespeare to begin with, it might even seem a little boring.  But there is treasure to be found here for those willing to take a chance on it.