SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY
Plot in a Nutshell:
Tentative friendships and romances spring up in a rural Thai hospital, and then it all sort of happens all over again in a modern, urban hospital.
Thoughts:
This is the second film I’ve seen by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (the other being Tropical Malady), and part of me wonders what my reaction to them would be if I came to them “cold”... if I hadn’t already been “primed” to like them by a lot of critics I admire. They’re both beautifully made, but Weerasethakul has a wispy, elliptical storytelling style (if you can even call what he does “storytelling”) that, if I’d come to these films in a different frame of mind, could easily have seemed like a frustrating shortcoming instead of a strength. He seems like one of the rare filmmakers where it’s a good idea to read a few sympathetic reviews of his movies before seeing them.
I’m glad I saw Tropical Malady (which left me a little cold) before Syndromes and a Century (which I loved)—it reminded me of the way I didn’t care much for Terence Davies’ Distant Voices, Still Lives, but was grateful that it prepped me for his follow-up, The Long Day Closes, which remains one of my all-time favourite films.
Part of me wonders whether I’m still appreciating Syndromes for the “wrong” reasons—for all the more conventional scenes of human connection (especially the warm, lovely scenes between the monk, who once wanted to be a DJ, and the dentist, who sings pop songs in his off-hours) and not the more puzzling moments, where the same conversations take place, with minor variations, in different time periods—was Weerasethakul inspired by Hal Hartley’s Flirt, or it this “repeated dialogue” gimmick a common technique in Asian cinema?
I also adored the delightfully out-of-the-blue final scene, in which Weerasethakul, for reasons known only to him, takes his camera to a public park where a fitness instructor is conducting a free aerobics session. A big part of my delight is due to the fact that the bouncy song everyone is dancing to is one I’ve been listening to on my iPod for two years: “Fez (Men Working)” by Neil & Iraiza. I don’t care that it sounds like it could be the theme music for a TV bloopers show; it makes me bounce around too!
RATING: 4.5/5
I WANT SOMEONE TO EAT CHEESE WITH
Plot in a Nutshell:
Overweight Chicago actor goes looking for love, gets screwed over by Sarah Silverman instead.
Thoughts:
Is Larry David as self-absorbed as he looks? He seems to bring out the best in everyone he works with. Without Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld turns into an overexposed prick, Jason Alexander turns into a second-string Nathan Lane, Michael Richards turns into a flake with no internal censor, and Jeff Garlin (who plays David’s manager on Curb Your Enthusiasm)... well, Jeff Garlin is still a likable, unpretentious guy, but without Larry David getting him into trouble (or Susie Essman screaming at him afterwards), he’s not really interesting enough to put at the centre of a movie.
When Elvis Mitchell invited Garlin onto his radio show The Treatment to talk about I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With (which Garlin wrote, directed, and stars in), Garlin’s almost compulsive modesty and humility were his most charming characteristics—every time he talked about the directors he admired or a simple artistic choice he made on the set, he’d get embarrassed and apologize, as if he was afraid of sounding like he was putting on airs.
That makes him a great talk-show guest, but not a great director: I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With is low-key to a fault. Garlin has a down-to-earth demeanour that inspires a lot of audience goodwill—he’s the rare overweight comedian who prefers his humour underplayed; he’s like Paul Rudd in Chris Farley’s body—but you can only sit through so many ramshackle, semi-improvised scenes between Garlin and his various comedy pals (including Bonnie Hunt, Amy Sedaris, Richard Kind, and Scott Adsit) before you start getting a little impatient. Sarah Silverman gives the film a dose of energy as a counter girl at an ice cream parlour who briefly becomes Garlin’s girlfriend, but her weirdly conceived character seems to belong to another movie. (I can’t think of another actress worse than Silverman at adapting her energy to the movie around her; even on her own TV show, she doesn’t seem to know how to integrate herself with the rest of the cast.)
There’s one terrific scene in here though, in which Garlin and Silverman do a bunch of roleplay games while shopping at a variety store—pretending to be a military cadet and a hippie chick, or a high school science teacher and a former student. This little sequence reminded me of that magical scene in the music store from Once—two strangers, a guy and a girl, getting to know each other through a small, private act of spontaneous creativity. Someone should make a movie like Once, only set in the world of improv theatre. They should cast Garlin in it too—but maybe get someone tougher to direct it.
RATING: 2/5
WE OWN THE NIGHT
Plot in a Nutshell:
Drugs, gangs, nightclubs, cops, and brotherly honour in 1988 Brooklyn.
Thoughts:
This one took me completely by surprise. I had no interest in seeing writer/director James Gray’s good brother/bad brother cop melodrama when it was in theatres, but when I saw it had scored a surprise César nomination for Best Foreign-Language Film (alongside such critical heavy-hitters as 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, Eastern Promises, and The Lives of Others), that whiff of French-approval appealed enough to my nostrils' pretentious tastes to inspired me to check it out.
Am I crazy for thinking this movie is some kind of genre classic? The plot and the broad outlines of the characters are cops-and-robbers boilerplate, but in Gray’s hands, the familiar surroundings, that willingness to honour cop-movie traditions, becomes a source of strength—they’re like the sturdy iron girders underpinning a classic piece of architecture. But Gray doesn’t just repeat hidebound clichés, either: his frame is always filled with fresh, lived-in details—the foil trays of macaroni on a buffet table at a police party, the half-eaten salami sandwich resting on a fingerprint card in a cop’s office, the grimy pattern on the inside of the bag the Russian gangsters throw over Joaquin Phoenix’s head when they’re driving him to the building where they repackage cocaine for distribution to the street.
And there are always "extra" characters hovering in the background of every scene—Tony Musante doesn't get to say much in this movie, but my God, did I love seeing his face (and his luxurious, almost feminine hairdo) standing behind Robert Duvall whenever we visited police headquarters.
The cinematography by Joaquín Baca-Asay, with its rich browns, blacks, and blues, is the equal of anything Michael Ballhaus did on GoodFellas in its evocation of a seamy yet nostalgically seductive criminal milieu. (Amazingly, the same guy also shot Super Troopers, with the Broken Lizard comedy troupe.)
Even more so than Gone Baby Gone or Eastern Promises (both movies I really liked), We Own the Night struck me as the year’s best example of “classic” moviemaking in the crime genre—I’m betting that this is the one that, 25 years from now, will have aged the best. (I bet its dutybound "shape up and join the cops" theme will look better over time as well—evidence of moral sturdiness instead of squareness.) It’s a 21st-century equivalent of movies like The Big Combo.
Good work, French film snobs! Keep it up!
RATING: 4.5/5
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