April 15th:
The Falcon and the Snowman. 1985.
Ebert Rating:****
A few years ago there were stories in the papers about a couple of California kids who were caught selling government secrets to the Russians. The stories had an air of unreality about them. Here were a couple of middle-class young men from suburban backgrounds, who were prosecuted as spies and traitors and who hardly seemed to have it quite clear in their own minds how they had gotten into the spy business.
One of the many strengths of "The Falcon and the Snowman" 'is that it succeeds, in an admirably matter-of-fact way, in showing us exactly how these two young men got in way over their heads. This is a movie about spies, but it is not a thriller in any routine sense of the word. It's just the meticulously observant record of how naiveté, inexperience, misplaced idealism and greed led to one of the most peculiar cases of treason in American history.
The movie stars Timothy Hutton as Christopher Boyce, a seminarian who has a crisis of conscience, drops out of school and ends up working almost by accident for a message-routing center of the CIA. Sean Penn is his best friend, Daulton Lee. Years ago, they were altar boys together, but in recent times their paths have diverged; while Boyce was studying for the priesthood, Lee was setting himself up as a drug dealer. By the time we meet them, Boyce is earnest and clean-cut just the kind of young man the CIA might be looking for (it doesn't hurt that his father is a former FBI man).
And Lee, with a mustache that makes him look like a failed creep, is a jumpy, paranoid drug dealer who is one step ahead of the law.
The whole caper begins so simply. Boyce, reading the messages he is paid to receive and forward, learns that the CIA is engaged in dirty tricks designed to influence elections in Australia. He is deeply offended to learn that his government would be interfering in the affairs of another state, and the more he thinks about it, the more he wants to do something. For example, giving the messages to the Russians. He doesn't want to be a Russian spy, you understand, just to bring this injustice to light.
Lee has some contacts in Mexico, where he buys drugs. One day, in a deceptively casual conversation by the side of a backyard swimming pool, the two friends decide to go into partnership to sell the information to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City.
Lee takes the documents south and launches them both on an adventure that is a lark at first, and then a challenge, and finally just a very, very bad dream.
These two young men have one basic problem. They are amateurs.
The Russians, don't necessarily like that any better than the Americans would; indeed, even though the Russians are happy to have the secrets that are for sale, there is the definite sense in some scenes that the key Russian contact agent, played by David Suchet, is almost offended by the sloppy way Penn deals in espionage. The only thing Penn seems really serious about is the money.
"The Falcon and the Snowman" never steps wrong, but it is best when it deals with the relationship between the two young American spies. The movie was directed by John Schlesinger, an Englishman whose understanding of American characters was most unforgettably demonstrated in "Midnight Cowboy," and I was reminded of Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo from that movie as I watched this one. There is even a quiet, understated quote to link Ratso with the Penn character: A moment in a parking garage when Penn defies a car to pull in front of him, and we're reminded of Ratso crossing a Manhattan street and hurling the line "I'm walking here!" at a taxi that dares to cut him off. Instead of relying on traditional methods for creating the suspense in spy movies, this one uses the energy generated between the two very different characters, as the all-American Boyce gradually begins to understand that his partner is out of control.
"The Falcon and the Snowman," like most good movies, is not really about its plot but about its characters. These two young men could just as easily be selling stolen IBM, programs to Apple, instead of CIA messages to the Russians; the point is that they begin with one set of motives and then the implacable real world supplies them with another, harder, more unforgiving set of realities.
Just as with "Midnight Cowboy," it's hard to say who gives the better performance this time: Sean Penn, with his twitching intensity as he angles for respect from the Russians, or Timothy Hutton, the straight man, earnestly telling his girlfriend that she should remember he really loves her - no matter what you may hear about me in a few days from now." Here it is only January, and already we have one of the best movies of 1985.
Cast & Credits
Christopher Boyce: Timothy Hutton
Daulton Lee: Sean Penn
Mr. Boyce: Pat Hingle
Mrs. Boyce: Joyce Van Patten
Alex: David Suchet
Mikhael: Boris Leskin
Orion presents a film directed by John Schlesinger and produced by Gabriel Katzka and Schlesinger. Screenplay by Steven Zaillian, based on the book by Robert Lindsey. Classified R.
copyright 2005, rogerebert.com
The Legend Of Bagger Vance
Release Date: 2000
Ebert Rating:***½
By Roger Ebert Nov 3, 2000
Look how silky this movie is, and how completely in command of its tone. Robert Redford's "The Legend of Bagger Vance" could be a movie about prayer, music or mathematics because it is really about finding yourself at peace with the thing you do best. Most of the movie is about an epic golf tournament, but it is not a sports movie in any conventional sense. It is the first zen movie about golf.
I watched it aware of what a delicate touch Redford brings to the material. It could have been punched up into cliches and easy thrills, but no: It handles a sports movie the way Billie Holiday handled a trashy song, by finding the love and pain beneath the story. Redford and his writer, Jeremy Leven, starting from a novel by Steven Pressfield, are very clear in their minds about what they want to do. They want to explain why it is possible to devote your life to the love of golf, and they want to hint that golf and life may have a lot in common.
I am not a golfer. It doesn't matter. Golf or any game is not about the rules or tools, but about how you conduct yourself. Civilized games make civilized societies. You look at the movie and you see that if athletes are not gentlemen and gentlewomen, there is no reason to watch them. Michael Jordan is a gentleman. Roger Clemens is not. You see how it works.
"The Legend of Bagger Vance" takes place in Savannah, Ga., in the first years of the Depression. A man builds a great golf course, goes broke and shoots himself. His daughter Adele (Charlize Theron) faces ruin, but risks everything on a $10,000 tournament. She invites the two greatest golfers in the world: Bobby Jones (Joel Gretsch) and Walter Hagen (Bruce McGill). And she also persuades Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon), who was the greatest player in Savannah until he went off to World War I and something broke inside. He spent the 1920s drinking and playing poker.
Junuh doesn't much want to return to golf, which for him also means returning to civilization and to his own better nature. Three people encourage him. One is Adele. Before the war they were in love. One is a boy named Hardy (J. Michael Moncrief) who dreams about golf. And one is Bagger Vance (Will Smith), a caddy who appears out of nowhere and assigns himself to the rehabilitation and education of Rannulph Junuh.
We have here the elements for a cruder movie. We can imagine how Jones and Hagen could be painted as hard-edged professionals, how the caddy could be sketched with broad strokes like some kind of an angel in a sitcom, how the little kid could be made insufferable and cute, how Adele and Junuh could fight and make up and fight, all according to the outlines they hand out in screenwriting class.
That's not how this movie goes. Nothing in it is pushed too far; it is a masterpiece of tact. Not even the outcome of the tournament is pumped up for effect; quietly, the movie suggests that how the tournament is won is more important than who wins it. As for the romance, it's in a minor key good for regret and tremulous hope; Charlize Theron's wise, sweet Adele handles Junuh like a man she wants to teach about tenderness.
Every actor makes the point, and then pauses, content. Matt Damon's Junuh is not a comeback hero but a man who seems surprised to be playing golf. Jones and Hagen are not the good cop and the bad cop. They're both good--sportsmen who love the game but don't talk a lot about it. Jones is handsome, a golden boy. Hagen is dark and has a gut and smokes all the time. Jones plays a beautiful game. Hagen is always getting into trouble and saving himself. Both of them are . . . having fun. Just fun.
Will Smith could make Bagger Vance insufferable, but the part is written and played to make it more of a bemused commentary. He has theories about golf, and ways of handling his player, and advice, but it is all oblique and understated. No violins. Is he a real person or a spirit? You tell me. Oh, and the kid: He's necessary because he has to grow up and become an old man (Jack Lemmon) and tell the story, so that you can see that lessons were learned.
The photography by Michael Ballhaus makes the great course look green, limitless and sad--sad that every shot must fall and every game must end. There is a dusk here that is heartbreaking, like the end of every perfect summer day. The spectators do not make spectacles of themselves, but seem to identify with the aspirations of the players. Hagen and Jones know each other well, and during the marathon tournament they watch Junuh carefully, and decide that he will do. Redford found the same feeling in "A River Runs Through It," where the standards a man forms through his pastime give value to his whole life. Golf, Bagger tells Junuh, is "a game that can't be won, only played."
Cast & Credits
Bagger Vance: Will Smith
Rannulph Junuh: Matt Damon
Adele Invergordon: Charlize Theron
Walter Hagen: Bruce McGill
Bobby Jones: Joel Gretsch
Hardy Greaves: J. Michael Moncrief
Dreamworks And 20th Century Fox Present A Film Directed By Robert Redford. Written By Jeremy Leven. Based On The Novel By Steven Pressfield. Running Time: 127 Minutes. Rated PG-13 (For Some Sexual Content).
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May 6h:
The Fast Runner
Release Date: 2002
Ebert Rating:****
By Roger Ebert Jun 28, 2002
We could begin with the facts about "The Fast Runner." It is the first film shot in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit peoples who live within the Arctic Circle. It was made with an Inuit cast, and a 90-percent Inuit crew. It is based on a story that is at least 1,000 years old. It records a way of life that still existed within living memory.
Or we could begin with the feelings. The film is about romantic tensions that lead to tragedy within a small, closely knit community of people who depend on one another for survival, surrounded by a landscape of ice and snow. It shows how people either learn to get along under those circumstances, or pay a terrible price.
Or we could begin with the lore. Here you will see humans making a living in a world that looks, to us, like a barren wasteland. We see them fishing, hunting, preparing their kill, scraping skins to make them into clothing, tending the lamps of oil that illuminate their igloos, harvesting the wild crops that grow in the brief summertime, living with the dogs that pull their sleds.
Or we could begin with the story of the film's production. It was shot with a high-definition digital video camera, sidestepping the problems that cinematographers have long experienced while using film in temperatures well below zero. Its script was compiled from versions of an Inuit legend told by eight elders. The film won the Camera d'Or, for best first film, at Cannes, and was introduced at Telluride by the British stage director Peter Sellars; telling the story of its origin, he observed, "In most cultures, a human being is a library." We could begin in all of those ways, or we could plunge into the film itself, an experience so engrossing it is like being buried in a new environment. Some find the opening scene claustrophobic. It takes place entirely inside an igloo, the low lighting provided only by oil lamps, most of the shots in closeup, and we do not yet know who all the characters are. I thought it was an interesting way to begin: To plunge us into this community and share its warmth as it shelters against the cold, and then to open up and tell its story.
We meet two brothers, Amaqjuaq (Pakkak Innukshuk), known as the Strong One, and Atanarjuat (Natar Ungalaaq), known as the Fast Runner. They are part of a small group of Inuit including the unpleasant Oki (Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq), whose father is the leader of the group. There is a romantic problem. Oki has been promised Atuat (Sylvia Ivalu), but she and Atanarjuat are in love. Just like in Shakespeare. In the most astonishing fight scene I can recall, Atanarjuat challenges Oki, and they fight in the way of their people: They stand face to face, while one solemnly hits the other, there is a pause, and the hit is returned, one blow after another, until one or the other falls.
Atanarjuat wins, but it is not so simple. He is happy with Atuat, but eventually takes another wife, Puja (Lucy Tulugarjuk), who is pouty and spoiled and put on earth to cause trouble. During one long night of the midnight sun, she is caught secretly making love to Amaqjuaq, and banished from the family. It is, we gather, difficult to get away with adultery when everybody lives in the same tent.
Later there is a shocking murder. Fleeing for his life, Atanarjuat breaks free, and runs across the tundra--runs and runs, naked. It is one of those movie sequences you know you will never forget.
At the end of the film, over the closing titles, there are credit cookies showing the production of the film, and we realize with a little shock that the film was made now, by living people, with new technology. There is a way in which the intimacy of the production and the 172-minute running time lull us into accepting the film as a documentary of real life. The actors, many of them professional Inuit performers, are without affect or guile: They seem sincere, honest, revealing, as real people might, and although the story involves elements of melodrama and even soap opera, the production seems as real as a frozen fish.
I am not surprised that "The Fast Runner" has been a box office hit in its opening engagements. It is unlike anything most audiences will ever have seen, and yet it tells a universal story. What's unique is the patience it has with its characters: The willingness to watch and listen as they reveal themselves, instead of pushing them to the front like little puppets and having them dance through the story. "The Fast Runner" is passion, filtered through ritual and memory.
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Cast & Credits
Atanarjuat: Natar Ungalaaq
Amaqjuaq: Pakkak Innukshuk
Atuat: Sylvia Ivalu
Oki: Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq
Lot 47 Films Presents A Film Directed By Zacharias Kunuk. Written By Paul Apak Angilirq. In Inuktitut With English Subtitles. Running Time: 172 Minutes. No MPAA Rating.
Tarnation
'Tarnation' a labor of love for director
Release Date: 2004
Ebert Rating:****
Roger Ebert / Oct 15, 2004
The child is the father of the man. --Wordsworth
Renee LeBlanc was a beautiful little girl; she was a professional model before she was 12. Then Renee was injured in a fall from the family garage and descended into depression. Her parents agreed to shock therapy; in two years she had more than 200 treatments, which her son blames for her mental illness, and for the pain that coiled through his family.
"Tarnation" is the record of that pain, and a journal about the way her son, Jonathan Caouette, dealt with it -- first as a kid, now as the director of this film, made in his early 30s. It is a remarkable film, immediate, urgent, angry, poetic and stubbornly hopeful. It has been constructed from the materials of a lifetime: Old home movies, answering machine tapes, letters and telegrams, photographs, clippings, new video footage, recent interviews and printed titles that summarize and explain Jonathan's life. "These fragments I have shored against my ruins," T.S. Eliot wrote in "The Waste Land," and Caouette does the same thing.
His film tells the story of a boy growing up gay in Houston and trying to deal with a schizophrenic mother. He had a horrible childhood. By the time he was 6, his father had left the scene, he had been abused in foster homes, and he traveled with his mother to Chicago, where he witnessed her being raped. Eventually they both lived in Houston with her parents, Adolph and Rosemary Davis, who had problems of their own.
Caouette dealt with these experiences by stepping outside himself and playing roles. He got a video camera and began to dress up and film himself playing characters whose problems were not unlike his own. In a sense, that's when he began making "Tarnation"; we see him at 11, dressed as a woman, performing an extraordinary monologue of madness and obsession.