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by Leonard Heldreth

 

Examining the joys and sorrows of love
June is the wedding month, and our films this month chronicle the joys and sorrows of love.

 

Death at a Funeral
Strictly speaking, the emphasis in Death at a Funeral is more upon comedy than love, but love inspires one character to stick by her man, and love (or at least sex) in another relationship provides the source for possible scandal and comedy.
Frank Oz is the director, and he combines slapstick, some gross physical humor and quite a bit of wit into a scenario that is made all the more humorous by the characters trying to maintain their British sense of decorum.
The wealthy family patriarch has died, and the family is coming together at his house for the funeral service. Daniel (Matthew Macfadyen), his eldest son, and Jane (Keeley Hawes), Daniel’s wife, have been living with his father and mother Sandra (Jane Asher), but they would dearly love to have sufficient funds to live on their own.
Unfortunately, Daniel’s unpublished novel is not bringing in any money. Flying in from New York is Robert (Rupert Graves), the younger son, whose successful novels are enabling him to live very well—preferably as far from his parents as possible. Is there envy, sibling rivalry and tension in this brotherly relationship? You betcha.
Also attending is Victor (Peter Egan), the dead man’s very proper brother and the father of Martha (Daisy Donovan). Martha is bringing Simon (the consistently effective Alan Tudyk), whom she intends to marry, but who has not yet met her family and is in a nervous state over the prospect of so doing.
On the way Martha and Simon pick up Troy (Kris Marshall), a chemistry student who has hidden his stash of hallucinogenics in a Valium bottle; Simon, wanting to calm his nerves, decides to take a Valium, and the confusion begins.
Howard (Andy Nyman) spends most of his time taking care of Uncle Alfie (Peter Vaughan), who has problems with his wheelchair, especially when he has a sudden attack of internal distress and needs Howard to help him in the bathroom. The resulting scene nearly drives the germophobic Howard over the edge.
The last to appear at the funeral is the height-challenged Peter (the consistently good Peter Dinklage), who has some interesting photographs he is willing to relinquish for a sufficiently large stack of English currency.
Oz manages to keep these plots and relationships moving at a fast clip through scenes that include the coffin tipping over, a naked Simon wandering the rooftops in a psychedelic daze, Peter bound and gagged and stuffed into a handy container, and Daniel finally delivering his eulogy. While some of the jokes do not totally succeed, there are enough to keep the laughter at a consistently high level.
By the end, some of the relationships have been mended, and all agree more tolerance of each others’ foibles and eccentricities would make life much easier for everyone—no small accomplishment for this group of people.
The sets, photography and acting are all fine, and the film itself fits solidly into what used to be called “British comedy,” despite being directed by an American. People who enjoy this genre definitely will want to see it. Top

Lust, Caution
After winning the Academy Award for best director for the boundary-stretching Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee demonstrates his determination to go his own way by making a film in Mandarin Chinese dealing with a destructive heterosexual relationship during the Japanese occupation of China.
The screenplay by Wang Hui Ling and James Schamus pads out Eileen Chang’s short story to nearly 160 minutes on screen, and one might argue that some scenes in the first part of the film could have been reduced or eliminated, yet it’s hard to pick out specific examples. The second half of the film moves quickly enough that little could be cut.
Set from 1938 to 1942, the film traces the way a young girl from the Chinese resistance movement ingratiates herself into the confidences of a collaborating official with the intention of assassinating him.
Like Paul Verhoven’s film, Black Book, which tells a similar story about the German occupation, the infiltrator becomes involved with the man she is setting up, and her loyalty becomes divided. The first part of the film shows how a group of young drama students in Hong Kong form their own resistance cell (making all the typical mistakes such inexperienced people would make) and how Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei) attracts the attention of Mr. Yee (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) but fails in her mission when he and his wife move to Shanghai.
This part includes some humor and an excruciating scene when a collaborator is stabbed to death. As Hitchcock did in Torn Curtain and other films, it demonstrates how hard it sometimes is to kill a human being.
The second part of the film picks up in Shanghai in 1942 as Wong Chia Chi contacts the Yees again and starts a brutal sexual relationship with Mr. Yee in order to position him for assassination. This part of the film focuses on the sexual relationship and what it does to the two participants. The film received the dreaded NC-17 rating for these scenes and for the stabbing scene, but Ang Lee refused to cut them, thereby ensuring that the film would receive only limited distribution.
Despite their explicit nature, the sex scenes are not gratuitous, nor are they very erotic; they are essential to understanding the two people, as she becomes aware of the depths of sadness in Lee (as well as the callous cruelty) and he becomes aware of how much he is coming to care for her after starting their relationship with a rape.
Like the Mahjong game that opens the film, sex is a contest between them, hinting at motivations even they may not realize. It’s a curious dynamic, not totally explained in the film, but without the violent sexuality, it would be incomprehensible.
Tang Wei, the actress playing the dual role of Wong Chia Chi and Mak Tai Tai, has a challenging task in what seems to be her debut role, and she meets the challenge. At first she projects the innocent high school girl, then the extravagant wife and finally the masochistic sex partner.
Opposite her is one of the Orient’s biggest stars, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, who was extraordinary in In the Mood for Love and 2054. Here he plays his first villain, and through what is extraordinary acting skill, makes him both sadistic and sympathetic. It’s a remarkable, understated performance.
One of the most impressive aspects of the film is the recreation of Shanghai and Hong Kong under the Japanese occupation. Lee says in the supplements that one of the things he wanted to do was recreate that time so that young Chinese today would know what it was like to live under the occupation when no one could trust anyone. The sets are stunning, the costumes, cars and rickshaws equally impressive. If Lee sometimes lingers over these scenes, it’s an understandable failing. Despite its length, I did not find the film slow—it simply takes a while to set up the relationships before everything begins to move in the second half.
This film won Lee his second Golden Lion in three years at the Venice Film Festival. Lust, Caution should appeal to anyone who enjoys films from another culture and language, especially when they are done with such psychological daring, craftsmanship and attention to period detail. Top

Atonement
Ian McEwan’s best-selling novel has been adapted to the screen by Christopher Hampton (who adapted Dangerous Liaisons and The Quiet American) and directed by Joe Wright, who won almost universal kudos for his film interpretation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.
Most reviewers praised the adaptation of what essentially was a novel about writing, as did McEwan himself, although a few were less enthusiastic while acknowledging the film was relatively faithful to the book.
Atonement divides into three parts—a fairly long section at an English country house in 1934, an equally long section in 1939 with scenes alternating between London and Dunkirk, and a conclusion in 1998. In the first part Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) are living with their parents at their expansive country estate; temporarily staying with them are their cousins, a prepubescent girl named Juno and her twin younger brothers.
Also living there are Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), the same age as Cecilia, and his mother the family housekeeper (Brenda Blethyn). Robbie has been educated by Mr. Tallis and intends to continue on to medical school.
On this day Cecilia is planning a party to celebrate the arrival of her brother and one of his college friends. Before the day is over, however, events and misunderstandings, especially on the part of Briony, will lead to the family being torn apart and Robbie sent to prison.
This first section emphasizes Briony’s desire to be a writer as well as her jealousy of the relationship between her sister and Robbie. It also is photographed in a nonrealistic style that makes lights flare, softens landscapes and gives everything that “Masterpiece Theatre” patina that, on first viewing, I found irritating. The sound of typewriters is integrated into the musical score, and the typing of one four-letter word appears in huge, thundering letters across the screen.
The second section cuts to Robbie and two other soldiers lost in France and trying to find their way to Dunkirk. The horrors of war—French school girls slaughtered in a field and the Dunkirk scenes—are perhaps the most effective shots in the film.
Shell-shocked and dazed soldiers wander about on the beach among the remains of ferris wheels and carousels while equipment is destroyed and horses are shot to keep the Germans from salvaging them. Robbie and his friends take refuge, waiting for the rescue ships to come.
In London, Briony (now eighteen and played by Romola Garai) and Cecilia, who has been cut off by her family, work as nurses in separate locations; Cecilia and Robbie meet at a tea shop; and Briony seeks out Cecilia to try to make amends. One critical scene with Robbie, Cecilia and Briony ends with Robbie refusing to accept Briony’s apology until she tells a magistrate the truth.
The concluding section shows a television interview with Briony (Vanessa Redgrave), now seventy-seven, describing her newest and last novel and explaining how it is based on the biographical material shown in the film (the interview is conducted by Anthony Minghella, who directed The English Patient). This last section raises further questions about Briony’s veracity.
The acting is excellent throughout, with Knightley and McAvoy fine as the romantic leads, and the three actresses playing Briony merging into one character that climaxes in Vanessa Redgrave.
One of the film’s greatest strengths is the cinematography by Seamus McGarvey. Beautifully shot throughout, the film has many examples of exceptional work. One is a five-minute continuous tracking shot that follows Robbie and his companions along the beaches of Dunkirk and, by its end, has amply captured the madness and surreal quality of the Dunkirk disaster. In another scene, Robbie enters a movie theater where a man and woman are kissing in close-up on the screen, and, overwhelmed by his loss of Cecilia, he stands in silhouette against the screen, holding his head in his hands.
Some of the scenes and shots could be shortened or cut with little loss. For example, a scene between Briony and a dying French soldier could have been eliminated. What it tells us about her growing maturity could have been incorporated into other scenes.
More annoying are the extended zoom shots of characters, especially Briony, that hold on their faces for several seconds longer than necessary. One occurs on a train, but the most obvious example occurs near the end of part one as she looks out the window at the police taking Robbie away. The camera, with little apparent reason, zooms in on her eye until it’s almost as large as Kim Novak’s in Vertigo.
Despite these problems, most of the film works well, especially in retrospect (you may want to watch this twice). Wright may not have made the perfect adaptation of Atonement (whatever such an adaptation might be), but he has directed a film that, looked back on from the ending, has succeeded in creating a complex, fleshed-out world that probably mirrors a fairly literary novel as well as it can be done. Top

Silk
French director Francois Girard made his reputation with Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould and The Red Violin, and, with Michael Golding, wrote the screenplay for Silk from Alessandro Baricco’s novel.
The novel, which I read recently, is short (about eighty pages) with chapters that average one or two pages in length; it’s told in omniscient narration, and the style is spare except for the detailed listings of places the hero covers between France and Japan. Adapting it to film, like adapting Atonement, presented some challenges; unfortunately, the film Silk fails miserably in almost all respects.
The novel has a minimal plot, which probably had to be expanded, but most of the expansion is unnecessary padding—courtship scenes, a wedding scene—and the added dialogue is full of banal cliches: “You’re back!” “Yes, I’m back!” A sub-plot about the couple wanting a child seems to have little to do with anything else, and the integration of the story of silk with the story of the hero is barely discussed.
Perhaps worst of all is the voice-over narration—a weak device in film under the best conditions, and here it exhibits the traditional problems, e.g., repeating on the soundtrack what is obvious in the visuals while the hero explains his actions ad infinitum and bores the listener with his monotone.
The only actor who displays much ability is Alfred Molina (Baldabiou), who brings some life to the proceedings when he’s in a scene. Keira Knightley, who has demonstrated her acting ability in Atonement and Sense and Sensibility, really has nothing to do here and doesn’t do much with it; the part could have been walked through by any aspiring young actress.
The worst problem, however is Michael Pitt, who provides the vacuous center to this unfortunate production. Demonstrating an acting range from B to C, he looks as if he’s sleepwalking through most of the action and mumbling in the process.
The photography is quite attractive in places, especially the lily gardens, but much of it also looks like pretty picture postcards, the framing and composition as predictable as the dialogue.
Silk represents everything that can go wrong when a novel is badly adapted to film. Avoid it. Top
—Leonard G. Heldreth

 

Editor’s Note: All films reviewed are available on DVD or VHS from local stores. Reviews of earlier films cited can be found at www.mmnow.com

 

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