You could say Queen
and Slim was the film of 2020 that was unlucky enough to be released in 2019.
There can be few other films that have captured so effectively the injustice
that the killing of George Floyd revealed to the wider world. But watching Queen and Slim reminds many of us in
more privileged positions that the sort of systemic outrages that 2020 has brought
to light existed for decades prior to this.
Our unnamed leads are “Queen” (Jodie Turner-Smith), a criminal
defence lawyer, on an awkward Tinder date with “Slim” (Daniel Kaluuya). The
date is not a huge success – possibly because the determined and ambitious
Queen has little in common with the gentle, Godly and quiet Slim – but their
lives are changed forever when Slim gives her a lift home. Pulled over by an
increasingly aggressive police officer, innocent questions from Slim, and
Queen’s challenge of his authority, lead to his gun being drawn, Queen shot in
the leg and a scuffle with Slim that leaves the officer shot dead. Now wanted
for killing a police officer – and convinced that their side of the story will
never get an equal hearing – they go on the run. But their cause seizes the
public imagination, and “the Black Bonnie and Clyde” end up inspiring others to
take a stand across an unjust system.
Queen and Slim
uses common conventions of a road movie: two young people on the run for a
crime who discover new things about themselves and the world as they travel,
drawing closer together. In that sense there is nothing too revelatory about
it. Indeed half of the film’s impact – rather like Thelma and Louise – is taking expected tropes and presenting them
to us from new perspectives. But what Matsoukas’ film does so effectively is to
add a completely new political and social dimension to this. This road movie
instead becomes a searing commentary on race in America and the injustice of
the system.
Endemic unfairness runs through the entire movie. From the
pulling over of the young couple at the start of the film – a search that
becomes increasingly invasive and aggressive for no other reason than the
officer’s reaction to their colour – to their final confrontation with a
lethally trigger-happy police force, there is no fair crack of the whip for
this couple. Queen’s restatement of her and Slim’s rights when pulled over is
seen as a violent action. The media swiftly turn the couple into ruthless,
dangerous killers. A parade of law enforcement (certainly all of the white officers)
sink quickly to using crude, racially tinged stereotypes. And there is of
course no question that an unjust, one-sided trial ending in (at best) a life-long
prison sentence awaits this couple if caught.
But the film also shows brilliantly another side of America.
On the road trip, Matsoukas’ camera captures the distant, sometimes run-down,
ghettoised communities of non-White groups in America (to the extent that a traditional
picket-fenced house visited late on by the couple seems like a foreign land).
The camera pans through parts of America we rarely see – and also sees the
communities there. These are people who know, in their hearts, that Queen and
Slim are the victims here – that the police are more than capable of shooting
black people who look like they might cause trouble, whether they have or not.
But they also know that there is no chance of justice for them, that they are
destined to become martyrs. And that like them, every Black person in America
could be a breath away from falling victim to police brutality.
This gives the film a real edge, that gains extra force the
more events from the news remind us that issues like this are far from fiction.
It gives a political force to the film that serves as a superb snapshot of
America today. Matsoukas’ film is shot with vibrant freshness and she draws a
great couple of performances from the leads.
Both are contrasting souls, who find themselves drawn closer
together as they slowly absorb each other’s qualities. Jodie Turner-Smith is
superb as the lawyer with a chip-on-her-shoulder, whose unhappy family life has
led to her putting up emotional safeguards that only slowly erode over the
course of the film. In many ways the road journey gives her a freedom she has
never had before – while Slim’s gentleness encourages her to express sides of
herself she has kept long-hidden. Daniel Kaluuya is similarly wonderful as the
devout and gentle Slim, who discovers in himself an anger and resentment at the
injustice he had accepted as part of everyday life.
Queen and Slim
marshals this altogether into a compelling package that will open many people’s
eyes to the truth of racial politics in many parts of America – and the
tensions underneath it.
Cast: Jack Nicholson (Jack Torrance), Shelley Duvall (Wendy
Torrance), Danny Lloyd (Danny Torrance), Scatman Crothers (Dick Hallorann),
Barry Nelson (Stuart Ullman), Philip Stone (Delbert Grady), Joe Turkel (Lloyd),
Anne Jackson (Doctor), Tony Burton (Larry Durkin)
I’ve often had mixed feelings towards Kubrick’s films. He’s impossible
not to admire and there is no doubt many of his films are landmarks in cinema.
But I’ve also often found him a brilliant technician, a striking intellectual
but an emotionally cold and distant director, who seizes the brain and sense
but doesn’t always engage the heart. It’s perhaps unsurprising that a director
who has such control over the tools of cinema should be able to use it to
create one of the greatest horror films of all time. Because what else is
horror but the expert use of technique to unsettle and scare the audience? It’s
like the genre Kubrick was destined to try – and succeed at.
The Shining was
itself partly born out of Kubrick’s disappointment at the reception given to Barry Lyndon, his cinematically rich,
but emotionally unengaging (to many) Thackeray adaptation. It garlanded awards,
but praise that was more respectful than fulsome – while audiences had largely
stayed away. Kubrick may be an artist – but he still wanted people to see his
work. He decided to direct a film based on a poplar horror novel – after all
people have been seeing slasher and fright pics for decades, so why not get a
piece of that action? Stephen King’s novel was one of the few that engaged him
(allegedly the famously highbrow Kubrick spent months reading part way into
various horror novels before flinging them across his office in contempt). Sure
Kubrick – much to King’s annoyance – junked many of the author’s themes in
favour of his own. But in doing so he created a terrifying and deeply
unsettling experience that stands as his most effective late work.
In the abandoned, and snow isolated, Overlook Hotel during
off-season, writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is hired as caretaker to keep
the building running. Accompanied by his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and young
son Danny (Danny Lloyd), Torrance hopes to use the isolation time to come up
with a draft of his new novel. However, dark forces are at work at the hotel.
Ten years ago the caretaker butchered his whole family there, and the deaths
have left a psychic legacy on the building. This is picked up on by the
ESP-powered Danny, but also begins to play on the psyche of Jack who slowly
begins to become ever more short-tempered, twitchy and unhinged as time goes on.
The Shining is one
of the most frightening and unsettling films I’ve ever seen. And I attribute
that completely to Kubrick’s mastery of the language of cinema. Every single
frame, every single note on the soundtrack, has been perfectly shaped to
inspire dread in the heart of the viewer. There are no cheap tricks, no jump
scares, no obvious cinematic parlour games. Instead this is Kubrick using his
technical artistry. What else can you say when one of the most disturbing
things in the film is the changing sound of Danny’s tricycle as he cycles round
the hotel (in a single, low angle, tracking shot), going from near silence as
he cycles over carpet to bursts of sound as he cycles over wooden floor? When
the score overwhelms with discordant sound and high notes as Danny simply
stares at a door?
But Kubrick’s genius is everywhere. He understands how the
human brain is unsettled by symmetry. Watch the film again and see how so much
of it is perfectly framed, how still the camera often is, how images – such as
shots of corridors or rooms – are set in such a way to make the image look
symmetrical. Something is off in our minds about seeing a building that looks
so precise. It transfers as well when the actors are caught in the middle of
the frame, with the set either side of them looking identical. Our mind keeps
telling us it’s wrong. It feeds into our own doubts and fears. It disturbs us
completely. Stillness and quiet mix with bursts of colour. For every elevator
door opening to deposit a tidal wave of blood, there is the quiet intimacy of
Philip Stone (absolutely chilling) as a ghostly representation of a past janitor,
urging Jack to “correct” his wife and child.
That fear of symmetry extends as well to Kubrick’s use of
two girl twins as ghosts of the former caretaker’s murdered children (and their
stillness and softness of voice is equally terrifying). The ghosts throughout
this film that urge Jack on in his murderous rampage are almost uniformly
softly spoken, calm and polite – qualities that carry more and more menace.
Even when the horrors begin to erupt, Kubrick keeps the camera movement and editing
slow, gentle and frequently employs tracking shots (naturally leading to the
invention of a new type of Steadicam). Where jump cuts are used they are to
give us flashes of Danny’s ESP visions of the hotel (sudden cuts to the
murdered girls or other horrors), enough to jolt us and working all the more in
the rest of the film’s measured pace and gothic chills.
Kubrick also brilliantly makes use of the psychological
impact of isolation. Out in the middle of nowhere, it’s clear time quickly loses
meaning. The film is punctured throughout with title cards that seem
increasingly random, either naming days (with no indication of how much time
has passed between them) or time jumps that seem unconnected with the previous
scene. It’s quick to see how much the Torrance’s perception of time has been lost
in never-changing surroundings. The impact of constant isolation on a fragile
psyche is perhaps something we are even more acutely aware of in 2020, and it’s
clear that it has a catastrophic effect on Jack, who becomes ever more
susceptible to his bad angels.
Those bad angels are partly where Kubrick begins to deviate
from King. Not surprisingly, with Kubrick’s often nihilistic view of humanity,
he introduces the idea that Jack has a history of violent temper and even
striking Danny. This is very different from King’s idea of a good man and
father being bent out of all recognition by the hotel’s evil into a would-be
murderer. It’s possibly the main objection King had against the film’s changing
of the novel. That and Kubrick’s clear disinterest in “shining” – the name
given to the ESP qualities some of the characters display. For Kubrick, what
was more important was the unsettling impact environments can have on people’s
psyches – amplified in this case by terrifyingly bloodthirsty ghosts. For King
the corruption of the good from evil among us was crucial. Both are fascinating
ideas – but you can see why the book’s author would not be pleased to see his
concepts sidelined.
Part of this may also have stemmed from the casting of
Nicholson. Probably the greatest American actor of the 1970s (his hits during
that decade are astonishing), this was the first chapter in a new era. Now
Nicholson became JACK, part actor but part personality, so larger-than-life
that you only had to say his first name for everyone to know who he was. Sure,
Nicholson is (like in A Few Good Men)
a ticking time bomb, but the performance works. It’s the film where Nicholson
embraced for the first time the demonic grin and leer of cruelty he would use
so well. But seeing him attack the film’s gothic qualities, while still having
a touch of humanity for its quiet moments, works a treat. Could any other actor
in the world have pulled off “Here’s Johnny!” and still have us absorbed in the
character and the film? It’s pantomime, but brilliance.
More controversial is Shelley Duvall’s weepy, slightly
pathetic wife. Much of Duvall’s wetness in the role is surely connected to the
reportedly miserable time she had on set. To draw the “right” reactions from
her, Kubrick essentially bullied her on set, putting her through hell.
Sometimes hundreds of takes were done of even the most trivial scenes to get
them right (this film perhaps cemented Kubrick’s reputation for ludicrous
perfectionism), a regime that reduced Duvall to a state of near psychological
collapse. While this was perfect for her performance, it was hardly conducive
to her well-being. And was in itself perhaps another sign of the lack of heart
in Kubrick, a director concerned only in the end with effect not emotional
truth.
So it’s a black mark against the film. But The Shining is still a masterpiece,
perhaps one of Kubrick’s greatest films. The film was so dependent on its
technical wizardry, detailed perfection and preciseness that its impact becomes
almost unbearable. It focuses on all Kubrick’s strengths and almost none of his
weaknesses – indeed his basic dislike of people becomes crucial to its effect
rather than running counter to an audience’s need to invest. Tense, unsettling,
troubling and in the end deeply scary, while never feeling cheap or
exploitative. It’s a landmark in both its genre and its director’s career.
Dancers a go-go in John Huston's Moulin Rouge (not that one!)
Director: John Huston
Cast: José Ferrer (Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec/Comte Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec), Zsa Zsa Gabor (Jane
Avril), Suzanne Flon (Myriamme Hyam), Claude Nollier (Comtess de
Toulouse-Lautrec), Katherine Kath (La Goule), Muriel Smith (Aicha), Colette
Marchand (Marie Charlot), Georges Lannes (Sgt Patou), Theodore Bikel (King
Milan IV), Peter Cushing (Marcel de la Voisier), Christopher Lee (Georges
Seurat)
John Huston’s biography of Toulouse-Lautrec is less well
known than its exclamation marked name-sake. It would be easy to say there is
little in common, beyond the name and setting, between Huston’s film and
Luhrmann’s operatic jukebox musical. But that’s to overlook the sprightly and
confident shooting that Huston gives many of the scenes in the Moulin Rouge, and the mood of depression
and corruption that underlies all the glamour of the club. These are two films
very much drinking from the same well – even if the aesthetic and style of both
are drastically different.
This artist biography focuses mostly on the last decade of
Toulouse-Lautrec’s life. Played by José Ferrer (who also does double duty as
the artist’s patrician father), it’s an exploration of the self-loathing and
depression that drives the artist and funnels itself into his art. Art which is
bold, animated with strikingly unique use of colours and movement. It’s all
very different from the more timid, self-conscious crippled artist, the growth
of whose legs was arrested after an accident in his childhood. Huston's film
front-and-centres Toulouse-Lautrec’s quest for love, but it has enough to say
about the rest of its subject’s life.
Similar to his later work on Moby Dick, Huston aimed for a very particular look for his film,
inspired by the colours used in the artwork of its subject. Shooting in Technicolour
– and much to the objection of that company, who believed all films should
showpiece it’s particularly striking bold colours rather than the muted colours
Lautrec at times used – he manages to assemble a picture that fills like it
completely captures not only the style of the artist, but also captures
something of the more grimy and seedy side of the Parisian streets he walked.
There is a neat little scene in the middle of the film where Lautrec argues with
a printer over mixing his own specialised colours, rather than the more
traditional colours he works with. Hard not to see that as a commentary on
Huston’s own struggles with Technicolour.
It gives the film though its own very distinctive look, in
which Huston uses a number of cinematic approaches that really capture the
vibrancy of the Moulin Rouge. The opening scenes, that showcase a flashy
can-can dance at the club is shot with an immediacy, with the camera roving in
amongst the dancers, throwing us into the atmosphere and excitement of this
ground-breaking night club. Alongside which – within the confines of the Hay’s
Code – we get a sense of the sexuality of the nightclub, captured in the
tempestuous clashes between the dancers and the pettiness and suddenness of
feuds that spring up over every subject matter.
The film doesn’t quite continue all this vibrancy into the
rest of its length as it focuses more on Lautrec’s own personal life. José
Ferrer, always a distantly patrician actor, is perhaps a little too stilted to
really invest us in the emotional pain of a man who didn’t believe he was worth
loving. However his commitment to playing the part physically can’t be faulted.
To play the diminutive Lautrec, Ferrer wore a contraption that folded his lower
legs up behind him (he could only wear it for about 15 minutes before he had to
restore the circulation to his legs), wearing this even in scenes he could not
be seen full length, so as to get the posture of Lautrec correct. It’s a shame
that Ferrer’s slightly reserved manner and precision leaves you feeling like
the character is being studied at arms length rather than up-close and
personally.
This affects slightly the focus on romance that the film
takes – art gets its place, but the style very much looks at these in context
of romantic struggles. Lautrec is presented as man convinced of his own
ugliness and the barrier of his disability, who could never find a woman who
would love him. This drew him, it seems, either towards destructive
relationships (in particular with a ‘prostitute’ – not that you would know
thanks to the Hays Code – played with an Oscar-nominated richness by Colette
Marchand) or to relationships he convinced himself could only be hopeless,
platonic obsessions (Suzanne Flon as an art-lover who only the most
self-loathing of men couldn’t tell is devoted to Lautrec).
The film interestingly rather misses a sense of fun that you
might expect from a nightclub scene. Lautrec is of course miserable for most of
his life, self-medicating his physical pain and depression with drink. His
parents are either guilty at the accident that crippled him, or frustrated at
his choice to spend his life painting the dancers of the Parisian night-life.
Huston does get a great sense of the compulsion of the artist – Lautrec is
rarely seen not sketching something – and his film is very successful at
capturing the loneliness that can accompany art.
If the film does sometimes become a slightly old-fashioned
a-to-b story of an artist and his inspiration, it counter-balances this with
the flashes of creativity and vibrancy Huston brings to the film. Huston was
himself critical of the film in the future, thinking it a missed opportunity –
I would suppose due to the general lack of sex in a story set in an environment
soaked in it – but working within the limitations he had, it’s a fine piece of
work. While you could wish for a slightly more engaging lead performance, it
certainly works very effectively to bring its setting and story to life.
Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis hit the road in Thelma and Louise
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Susan Sarandon (Louise Sawyer), Geena Davis (Thelma
Dickinson), Harvey Keitel (Detective Hal Slocumb), Michael Madsen (Jimmy
Lennox), Christopher McDonald (Darryl Dickinson), Stephen Tobolowsky (Max),
Brad Pitt (JD), Timothy Carhart (Harlan Puckett)
Two people on the run, dodging the police and doing what
they can to survive. It’s a well Hollywood has gone back to time and time
again. But in most cases the people were either two men, or maybe a man and a
woman (romantically involved naturally). It was unheard of to make that most
masculine of genres, the outlaw road movie, into one led by women. But that’s
what we get here, in a movie that has become iconic in more ways than one, Thelma and Louise.
Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon) is a tough,
independent-minded waitress. Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis) is a shy housewife,
whose husband Darryl (Christopher McDonald) is a jerk. With Darryl away for the
weekend, Thelma and Louise head off for a weekend away together, to let their
hair down and feel a bit of freedom. Unfortunately, disaster happens when
Thelma flirts with a sleazy guy in a Texas bar (Harlan Puckett), who tries to
rape her in the car park. Louise saves her – but guns the guy down. The two
women now find themselves on the run from the law, terrified that no one will
believe their side of the story. But as the women find themselves on the road,
the experience changes them, with Thelma flourishing in an environment where
she can make her own choices and Louise becoming more able to open herself up
emotionally. But can they stay ahead of the law?
With a terrific (Oscar-winning) script from first-time
writer Callie Khouri, Thelma and Louise
offers a dynamic and daring twist on the Hollywood road movie. By placing women
at the centre of a story like this, a fascinating new light is shed not only on
the law, but also on the culture of the American South. It also gives what
would otherwise be familiar situations, a fascinating new light as two underestimated
people are forced to prove time-and-time again how ahead of the game they are.
Ridley Scott directs the film with a beautiful, confident
flourish. The John Fordian iconography of the West is a gift for a painterly
director like Scott, and this film hums with the sort of eye for American
iconography that only the outsider can really bring. The film brilliantly
captures the dusty wildness of the West as well as the neon-lit grubbiness of
working class American bars. It looks beautiful, but also vividly, sometimes
terrifyingly real. Scott then, with a great deal of empathy, builds a very
humane story around this, with two characters it’s nearly impossible not to
root for.
He’s helped immensely by two stunning performances from the
women in the lead roles. Susan Sarandon’s is perfect for the brash and gutsy
Louise, not least because she’s an actor brilliantly able to suggest a great
emotional depth and rawness below the surface. Louise is a women juggling
deeper traumas – past experiences (its implied a historic rape) that leave her
in no doubt that the justice system will not be interested in hearing about a
woman’s suffering. It’s the hard to puncture toughness that softens over the
course of the film, as Louise becomes more willing to explore her emotions and
allow her vulnerability to show.
Particularly so as the lead between the two is slowly taken
over by Geena Davis’ Thelma. This is certainly Davis’ finest work, her Thelma
starting as a beaten down housewife, just trying to let her hair down in a bar,
into a scared victim, a horny teenager lusting over Brad Pitt’s hunky JD then
finally into a road warrior who discovers unimagined determination and
resources inside herself, toting guns and robbing stores. It’s the sort of
once-in-a-lifetime part Davis seizes upon. She’s sensational and totally
believable at every turn.
Placing these two women at the centre of a story like this
puts the feminine perspective front-of-centre – and it’s alarming to think how
little some things have changed. Can we imagine today that there wouldn’t be
policemen and lawyers willing to blame Thelma – or claim she asked for it – for
her near rape in a bar? Or that there wouldn’t be a fair crack of the whip in
the system for Louise for gunning down an unarmed rapist? On top of that, the
majority of the police tracking the two women (with the exception of Harvey
Keitel’s decent cop – Keitel is very good in this) find it hard to take “these
girls” seriously, finding it hard to imagine them being anything other than a
joke.
Mind you the attitudes of men are laid bare at every turn.
Thelma’s husband Darryl (a very good performance of selfish patheticness by
Christopher McDonald) is a waste of skin, a man who can’t imagine a world where
Thelma could be his equal. Timothy Carhart is all charm until Thelma denies him
the sex he believes he was due for in exchange for a night if flirting and
drunks, and promptly turns extremely nasty. The cops – gun totting with itchy
trigger-finger – just seem to be waiting for an excuse to throw the ladies down.
Even JD (a star marking early performance by a deeply attractive and
charismatic Brad Pitt), who seems so charming – and proves the sort of generous
and skilled lover Thelma has never experienced in her life – has no qualms
about robbing the ladies of their life savings, leaving them hung out-to-dry.
Many men at the time complained (pathetically) about the
presentation of men in this film (as if men haven’t had any films where they
were sympathetically placed front and centre), but I think it’s a pretty clear
judgement that women are not held to the same standards. Khouri’s script shows
time and time again the casual sexism (and sexualisation) the women encounter –
to the extent that when they finally confront (and pull guns) on the sexist,
aggressive truck driver who has been following them for most of the film, you
cheer along with them when they shoot out first his tyres, then his oil tanker.
We’ve even had a warm-up with Thelma turning a tough intimidating cop into
quivering jelly by taking control of the situation.
But that’s what this film is about – the unexpected taking
control. Because this isn’t just a feminist statement because it puts women
into a male genre. It does so by showing how few choices these women have in
their lives before they take into the road and how liberating it is to be able
to make their own choices. Because these characters have had all their choices
made by men, from Thelma’s smothering marriage to Louise’s undefined past as a
victim. And their futures are as much out of the control, likely to find
themselves on death row for shooting a rapist. On top of all that, men continue
to see them both as sex objects.
How could you not be moved by this? It’s why the films
iconic ending carries such impact. These are women discovering they have the
power to make their own choices and their own mistakes. It has an undeniable
power to it. It’s a power that runs through the entire film, perfectly
shepherded by Scott’s astute and sharp direction, with Davis and Sarandon
superb. It will still give you shocking insights today into what life is like
for women in a world still dominated by men.
More recently its writer and stars pointed out that the film
actually ended up changing very little for women in Hollywood. There was no new
wave of daringly different female-led movies, with “women’s drama” still mostly
restricted afterwards to family drama and romances. There are still few
exciting opportunities for female filmmakers. (And it’s a sign of the times back
then that the very idea of a woman directing
this feminist film was never even raised as a possibility.) Perhaps that’s why Thelma and Louise remains such an icon,
because it’s still such a one-off. Either way, it’s a film that hasn’t aged a
day since it was released.
Kevin Costner goes on a quest for the truth in Oliver Stone's crazy but brilliant JFK
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Kevin Costner (Jim Garrison), Sissy Spacek (Liz
Garrison), Kevin Bacon (Willie O’Keefe), Tommy Lee Jones (Clay Shaw), Jack
Lemmon (Jack Martin), Walter Matthau (Senator Russell B Long), Gary Oldman (Lee
Harvey Oswald), Joe Pesci (David Ferrie), Donald Sutherland (Colonel X), Laurie
Metcalf (Susie Cox), Michael Rooker (Bill Broussard), Jay O. Sanders (Lou
Ivan), Edward Asner (Guy Banister), Brian Doyle-Murray (Guy Banister), John
Candy (Dean Andrews), Sally Kirkland (Rose Cheramie), Wayne Knight (Numa
Bertel), Priutt Taylor Vince (Lee Bowers), Tony Plana (Carlos Bringuier)
When great events happen, it’s hard for us to accept they
might take place for random reasons. Rather than freak occurrences or boring individuals,
we’d rather see them taking place due to an impenetrable web of shadowy figures.
There is something in us that rejects randomness and embraces order. Conspiracy
theories are the (ironic) result of these, with their exponents often the most
passionate believers in the all-pervading genius of big government. Events like
the death of President Kennedy can’t be because some nobody shot him. Instead
it must be part of a wider junta of baddies, with every man you see merely a
front for a cabal of the wicked. It’s hard not to be swept up by the lure of
the conspiracy theories (they invariably have the best stories after all) – and
Oliver Stone’s JFK is perhaps the
definitive mainstream conspiracy theory essay.
Taking the campaign of Louisiana DA Jim Garrison (Kevin
Costner) to find out the “truth” about the murder of President Kennedy, Stone’s
film is part a fascinating presentation of half-truths and “might-have-beens”
and part a sprawling mess of irresponsible nonsense. Either way it’s assembled
with astonishing panache, a level of filmic skill that makes it (literally) almost
impossible to tell whether what you are seeing is true and what is invention.
Stone’s film superbly interweaves a variety of film stocks and effects to seamlessly
splice together newsreel footage, Zapruder film and his own reconstructions so
brilliantly it frequently becomes hard to tell which is which.
The same logic also applies to the script. JFK is frequently engaging and
fascinating. But you have to remember that it is the equivalent of meeting the
most literate and articulate street corner “End-of-the-Worlder”. Such is
Stone’s skill he could, I am sure, have created an equally compelling film
which would have you questioning the Moon Landings or the shape of the Earth. JFK throws an army of questions,
objections and theories at the screen. And while it rarely provides much in the
way of answers, only points that it wants you to think about, these theories
frequently fascinate. Imagine JFK as
a sort of video essay, linked together with dramatic scenes, with its points
delivered by authoritative and trusted actors like Donald Sutherland, Jack
Lemmon and Walter Matthau.
There is absolutely no doubting the technique of Stone here,
or his mastery of the language of cinema. The work of Robert Richardson’s
photography, with its myriad styles, and of Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia’s
editing, pulling together a host of images, snapshots and flash cuts into an
insidiously convincing whole, is breathtaking. Light in particular is superbly used, casting some characters in shadow, flaring up to (literally) blind others - light frequently plays across Garrison's glasses, a visual metaphor for his own struggle to see the light. The speeches he writes for his
characters are superbly done, and make their points with great skill –
Sutherland (superb) has a hugely convincing story of military black ops action
(and inaction) before and after the assassination that fills almost 20 minutes
of screentime.
There are compelling arguments made about the ability of
Oswald to fire the shots, the triangulation of fire, the spurning of an easier
shot before the fateful turn, Oswald’s seemingly illogical movements after the
shooting etc. etc. There is decent reasoning behind all of this, and the points
are marshalled very well. But, like all extremist theories, suddenly it will
turn into something just a little batshit (Lyndon B Johnson ordering the hit or
some sort of cabal of Cubans, CIA, FBI and Secret Service working together to
conduct a coup).
Much of Stone’s passion for finding the truth (the film’s
mantra) is rooted in his own romantic view of Kennedy, as some sort of lost
“Prince Who Was Promised”. To Stone, Kennedy would have withdrawn us from
Vietnam (news I am sure to the President who started and escalated America’s
involvement in it), ended the military industrial complex (contrary to his
platform when elected of a stronger US military), bought the Cold War to an end
(again, running against his sustained opposition to the Soviet Union) and
introduced full Civil Rights (a cause he was lukewarm on at best – unlike his
brother or his successor Johnson).
But Kennedy was a romantic figure who had the ability to
invite people to invest him with whatever qualities they wanted (both good and
bad), a magic cemented forever by his untimely murder. In reality there is no
indication that JFK would do (or want to do) any of the things JFK
argues he was assassinated for. But that’s all part of the magic of the
conspiracy. Facts and events can be marshalled into whatever you want them to
be. (Tellingly the only member of Garrison’s investigative team who questions
these theories is shown to be a creep in the pay of the conspirators.)
So Kennedy can be a saint, and the film can outline (with no
evidence at all beyond a series of coincidences and unlikely or random events)
a grand vision of master schemers reshaping America over the body of a dead
President. Does it really stand up? Well no of course not. But I will say it is
compelling viewing – even if it is essential to keep an open mind about it.
Stone later wished he had made clearer that much of the work here was pure
fiction (and speculative at best). Certainly it’s a point to keep in mind.
Perhaps Stone should also have looked again at some of the
other beats in the film. The film’s version of Jim Garrison as a kind of
saintly campaigner for justice flies in the face of many (then and later) who
believed the Louisiana DA a shameless self-promoter – an argument made easier
to believe by the real Garrison’s cheeky cameo in the film as his ‘nemesis’
Earl Warren. No mention is made in the film that the case he brings against
Clay Shaw was dismissed by the jury after less than an hour, and the film
avoids explicitly showing his lack of evidence. Costner delivers the final speech,
with its famous “back and to the left” commentary on what seems like Kennedy’s
unnatural movement after being hit by a bullet and breakdown of the “magic
bullet” (both theories now largely discredited), with aplomb, but the film puts
a halo on Garrison which doesn’t really stand up.
But again at least it’s entertaining. Other parts of the
film don’t even manage that: the baseline narrative that links up the various
compelling conspiracy lectures is frequently dull, insipid and lamely written.
Sissy Spacek has perhaps the most thankless role in film history as Garrison’s
wife whose nearly every line is a variation on “Honey please stop reading the
Warren Report and come to bed”. Even that though pales against the exploration
of the 1960s gay scene in Louisiana (which Clay Shaw and his “fellow
conspirators” were leading members of) which has an unpleasant stink of
homophobia, playing into a host of deeply unpleasant (and false) stereotypes of
gay people as perverted, promiscuous and preying on the straight. One suspects
there was more than a little truth in the idea that Garrison’s fury at Shaw was
at least partly motivated by homophobia.
These sequences work considerably less well today – and
frequently go on far too long – but when the film focuses on its Kennedy
theories it is at least compelling, even if it’s all rubbish. The film made it
mainstream to believe Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy in which Oswald was,
if he was involved at all, only a patsy. How different would the world have
been if Oswald had lived and been made to explain why and how he killed
Kennedy? But then chances are, being such an average an unremarkable man,
people wouldn’t have believed him anyway.
Stone’s film is a triumph of agenda-led fantasy. Stuffed
with faults it makes you at least ask questions – even if you wisely use those
questions to affirm many of its points are questionable at best. But any film
buff will love the skill it’s told with and the beauty of its technical
assembly. Costner was perhaps a little too bland to drive the thing along
(although the film uses his innate morality very well), but there are several
good performances not least from Gary Oldman who is brilliant as put-upon, used
but unknowable Oswald. Nuts, crazy and packed with compelling nonsense, it at
least always encourages you to find out more about the actual history.
Bette Davis and Joan Crawford rant and rage in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Director: Robert Aldrich
Cast: Bette Davis (Jane Hudson), Joan Crawford (Blanche
Hudson), Victor Buono (Edwin Flagg), Marjorie Bennett (Dehlia Flagg), Maidie
Norman (Elvira Stitt), Anna Lee (Mrs Bates), BD Merrill (Liza Bates)
Age isn’t kind on the careers of Hollywood actresses. Move
into your 40s and the part offered quickly becomes “the grandmother”. It’s a
fate that saw the careers of some of the greatest actresses of the Golden Years
of Hollywood crash screeching to a halt. However, these actresses remained
popular with many cinema goers. So it occurred to Robert Aldrich, why not throw
a couple of them into the sort of roles t
hat can riff on their careers and
public images? Match that up with jumping on the bandwagon of films like Psycho and you could have a hit on your
hands.
That’s what he got as well with Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) is a
former “infant phenomenon” on the stage, whose career fell apart as soon as she
hit puberty. Her sister Blanche (Joan Crawford), on the other hand, grew up to
have a promising career in Hollywood – which then collapsed when a late-night
driving accident (which Baby Jane is widely believed to be responsible for)
left her paralysed from the waist down. Now in middle age, Jane and Blanche
live in domestic disharmony, Blanche trapped upstairs at the mercy of Baby
Jane, whose longing to rebuild her career sees her head down an ever steeper
spiral of insanity.
Whatever Happened to
Baby Jane started a new genre in Hollywood – the freak hag-horror or
psycho-biddy genre (those names alone show that at its heart this genre was
basically demeaning) which saw Hollywood Grande Dames (frequently Davis and
Crawford, though others got a look-in as well) parley their reputations into
ever more formulaic riffs. Films like this quickly became cult viewing. Their
extremes of make-up and performance, matched with the arch camp of the leading
ladies hamming it up, made the genre extremely popular – and left films like Whatever Happened… far more fondly
remembered than they deserve.
It’s popular to see Sunset
Boulevard as a sort of precursor to this genre, a first try-out in taking
an older era of Hollywood and turning it into a ghastly waxwork show. But Sunset still has affection for what it shows (and above all captures the
tragedy of the death of Silent Hollywood, treating its characters as people
rather than freaks), while Whatever
Happened has none, basically seeing the past as a parade of monsters, and
these relics as waxworks to be mocked. There is no affection here for the past
successes and glories of either star, instead we are invited to sit back and
wonder at how far they might be willing to go to see bums on seats again. All
of this to make money for the producers. Far from the art of Sunset Boulevard, this feels more like the
exploitation of screen greats.
Although of course both stars were more than happy to get
involved, even if they were less than happy working with each other. The
background to the film, to be honest, often carries more interest than the very
long, often slow, horror/black comedy during the film’s over-extended run time.
Famously Davis and Crawford were long-standing rivals and their relationship
over the course of making and promoting the film disintegrated into cheap
one-upmanship and bitter recrimination. While the feud does probably give some
edge to the screen antics, the very fact that it’s nearly the first thing
people remember about the film probably tells you how memorable the actual
experience is.
Davis throws herself into all this with creditable abandon.
(She was Oscar nominated and Crawford wasn’t – although Crawford got the last
laugh, having arranged on the night to collect the Oscar on behalf of eventual
winner Anne Bancroft, performing on Broadway that night.) Davis designed the
freakish but iconic look of Baby Jane, all painted face and little girl
mannerisms, and her demented attempts to recreate her childhood act in her 50s
(culminating in a bizarre and skin-crawling “Writing a Letter to Daddy” dance
which was weird enough watching a 12 year old perform) can’t be faulted for commitment.
Davis also manages to invest the bullying and cruel Jane with a deep sense of
loss, regret and guilt (for her sister’s accident) that frequently bubbles over
into resentment. It’s certainly a larger-than-life performance and Davis
frequently dominates the film, even if the role is basically a cartoon invested
with Davis’ own grace and glamour.
It doesn’t leave much for Crawford, whose Blanche is
frequently left with the more po-faced, dull and reactive lines. Crawford
doesn’t often make Blanche as sympathetic as you feel she should be – although
the part plays into one of her strong suits of playing the martyr – and the
film saddles her with a late act twist that doesn’t have enough time and
development to really make much sense. However again you can’t fault her
commitment, either to screams or to a scene where she attempts to climb down
the bannisters of the stairs from her trap on the upper floor, where the
effort, strain and pain on Crawford’s face are astonishingly real.
Those stairs dominate many of the shots of Aldrich’s
serviceable and efficient direction – although he lacks any sense of the mix of
cruel poetry and dynamite sensationalism that Hitchcock bought to similar
material in Psycho. But it works
nicely to give a sense of Blanche’s confinement and as a visual metaphor for
the trap the house feels like. Aldrich also throws in a couple of other decent
flourishes, not least as Davis’ lounge turns into a proscenium stage as she
imagines returning to the big time.
But the film itself is, despite it all, lacking in any sense
of kindness or warmth really for either its stars or old Hollywood. We are
instead invited to gasp at them in horror, while the film drags on at great
lengths, stretching a very thin plot (barely a novella) into over two hours of
screen time. There are effective moments, but it’s a film that seems barely
serviceable today.
