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by Leonard Heldreth

 

A little experiment...

Experimental films usually are short, have a miniscule budget often supplied by the director or an “angel” and frequently violate many of the traditional expectations of character or plot. They generally show up at film festivals or in special showings. Sometimes, as in the films for this month, a well-known actor or director will use his influence to make a feature-length experimental statement.
The people sitting in the writer’s and director’s chairs for these films are Todd Haynes, Francis Ford Coppola, John Turturro and Anthony Hopkins.

I’m Not There
Haynes’ previous film, Far From Heaven, was both a homage to and a deconstruction of the films of Douglas Sirk. He used parallel characters and plots, but made explicit (or at least more obvious) the themes of sexual suppression, racism and frustration that Sirk camouflaged with a sleek suburban facade.
Haynes’ I’m Not There is a more extreme homage and deconstruction of Bob Dylan, one that offers a new definition of cinema biopics, such as Ray, Coal Miner’s Daughter, I Walk the Line or La Vie en Rose. They all follow the same trite plots of youthful poverty, early success, drug addiction and decline, and rehabilitation followed by new and greater success. The actors playing the successful people usually are nominated for Academy Awards and often win, as in the case of the four films used as examples.
Haynes’ film about Dylan could have followed this pattern with very little tweaking, but instead, he blows it sky high and lets the fragments fall where they may. Instead of one or two actors in various degrees of makeup playing the lead, he uses six, including a woman and an African American. Instead of following narrative logic from youth to old age, he intercuts the sequences, and, except for a glimpse of the man himself at the end, no explicit reference is made to Bob Dylan or Robert Zimmerman or any other of the singer’s many personas.
The film opens with an African American boy, Marcus (Carl Franklin) riding the rails and calling himself Woody Guthrie; but the time is not the Great Depression, and at one point Marcus talks himself into the hospital room where the real Woody Guthrie lies dying. A woman who gives the young hobo a free dinner tells him he needs to learn to live in his own time, not the past. This section is in vivid color.
A second character is the poet Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw, star of Perfume) who spends most of his time on camera being interviewed by the press and giving enigmatic answers to their questions. This section is in black and white.
A third character is Robbie (Heath Ledger), who, with his wife Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) represents the domestic aspects of the singer’s life and the pressures that fame bring to bear. A fourth character, Jack/Pastor John (Christian Bale) represents the young man who changed his name and bluffed his way into the Greenwich Village coffee house circuit and who then became a born-again Christian. This section and the Robbie section are in color.
A fifth character is the brief persona Dylan used as he was going electric and touring England, and Jude Quinn is played by Cate Blanchett in a virtuoso performance—all angles and frizzed hair wrapped in cigarette smoke with Joan Baez in the background—that won her an Academy Award for best supporting actress. This section is in high-contrast black and white and is loaded with allusions to other films (the spa, traffic jam and human kite sequences from 8 1/2, as well as sequences from the Beatles’ Help and from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg).
The last character to appear is Billy the Kid (Richard Gere), who supposedly is living in a nineteenth century Wyoming town called “Riddle” (a name which might be applied to the entire film), but the town has to be moved to make way for a new four-lane highway. This section is full of surrealistic touches—dead bodies displayed in their coffins, people in clown make-up, faux Indians and ostriches coming down the alleys between the false fronts. It ends with Billy jumping on a passing freight and, like Huck Finn, lighting out for the frontier. That he finds in the boxcar a dust-covered guitar that had been used by Marcus in his section (many years later) adds a little to the surrealism.
The best sections, at least for this viewer, were the Jude and Billy the Kid sections. Blanchett is extraordinary, the silvery black and white photography is striking and the Fellini film references are fun. Some of this section is a shot-by-shot remake of D. A. Pennebaker’s 1967 Documentary on Dylan, Don’t Look Back. Critics in general disliked the Riddle section of the film, and while Gere isn’t as impressive as Blanchett, he’s competent, and the town’s strange scenes and people were like images from a dream (Haynes acknowledges the influence of the book Wisconsin Death Trip on Riddle, an influence that is appropriate since the book itself was as fabricated as the Dylan myth).
Dylan gave Haynes permission to use his music in the film, and some of the performances are by him while others are by other performers doing his songs. Clearly, for Dylan fans, the soundtrack is one of the film’s major attractions, although there seems to be some discontinuity between the songs heard during the film and the ones on the official soundtrack—probably copyright problems again. The film is full of enough esoteric references to Dylan’s writings, the previous films made about him and his songs to please the most obsessive fan.
Does it work? If you’re looking for a definitive treatment or understanding of Bob Dylan, no, it doesn’t, although you may know more about him at the end. If you’re looking for an exciting, challenging, funny and allusive film about some characters who, to paraphrase the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, are not totally unlike Bob Dylan, the answer is a resounding yes. Top

Youth Without Youth
After ten years of building his vineyards and wine business, Francis Ford Coppola has directed a new film, this time going to Romania to save money and invigorate himself with new surroundings and crew. Coppola wrote a screenplay based on a novella by the philosopher Mircea Eliade; the result is a beautiful, sometimes perplexing, exploration of time and history.
In 1938, the seventy-year-old Dominic Matei (Tim Roth) decides he will go to Bucharest from the small town where he lives and teaches, and he will commit suicide because he is alone and unable to finish the book on the origins of language that has become his life’s work.
As he crosses a rainy street, he is hit by a bolt of lightning and wakes up in a hospital, badly burned and traumatized, but, unbelievably, alive. He is watched over by Professor Stanciulescu (Bruno Ganz), a doctor who is astonished not only by Matei’s survival, but by the speed at which he heals and by the fact, shown by X-rays, that he is growing new teeth, which are pushing out the old ones. Also, the lightning seems to have created a “double” who advises Matei, but whom no one else apparently sees. There are other “powers” that he slowly becomes aware of.
Matei’s interesting condition soon attracts the attention of the Nazis, who want to study him, since one of Hitler’s favorite doctors has been studying the effects of electricity on the human body, and the scenes of his laboratory with sparks flashing recall those of Universal Studio’s Frankenstein. Matei goes into hiding in Switzerland, but the Nazis pursue him until he finally makes his getaway.
After the war, hiking in the mountains, he encounters Laura (Alexandra Maria Lara), who also has been struck by lightning. She, however, is being regressed to earlier lives by the shock, and he studies the various civilizations and languages through which she moves. At last, he can find the answer to the origin of languages that he has pursued all his life.
But the process affects Laura, and he must decide whether to pursue his goal or to abandon it for her sake. He and his double have an extended discussion over the value of the individual in relation to the species. His decision and the consequences of it for himself and Laura form the remainder of the movie.
The acting is good to excellent, and the photography—with Coppola directing Mihai Malaimare, Jr.—is gorgeous. The framing, the colors, the choice of locations—such as the snowy steps that end the film—are all superb. The original music by Osvaldo Golijov is impressive, as he uses unusual instruments and soloists to give an originality often missing from film scores; this is Golijov’s first film work.
Whether the plot and its philosophical underpinnings ultimately satisfy the viewer is an individual question. Any viewer, however, will be impressed by the lush visuals, the music and the major questions raised about human existence and the goals of civilization. Top

Romance and Cigarettes
John Turturro completed Romance and Cigarettes in 2005, and it was shown at various film festivals, but because of ownership changes at the studios, it was not distributed until 2007, when Turturro distributed it himself in limited form. Finally, with video disk distribution, the public gets a chance to see one of the most original and audacious musicals ever made, with a cast that most directors would kill for.
The musical numbers are handled in a way that recalls Dennis Potter’s British television masterpieces, Pennies From Heaven and The Singing Detective. In Potter’s versions, the actors pantomime the songs, but in Turturro’s film, they sing along with the original artists, heard on the soundtrack. It’s the closest anyone has come to imitating the way we incorporate popular music into our personal histories.
The plot is simple. Queens steelworker Nick (James Gandolfini) has been married to Kitty (Susan Sarandon) for many years and has three daughters; he is having an affair with Tula (Kate Winslet), a red-headed Cockney bombshell whose foul mouth and voluptuous body guarantee an “R” rating for the film. Tula even kids Nick about his belly and his age, expressing a genuine affection for him and knowing she doesn’t intend to stay with him forever.
Kitty finds a poem Nick has written about Tula (or about one part of her), and she threatens to emasculate him. The daughters (Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker and Aida Turturro) side with Mom, as does Mom’s brother Bo (Christopher Walken) and Nick’s mother (Elaine Stritch). Only Angelo (Steve Buscemi), Nick’s work partner, shows any sympathy for him.
The rest of the film details how Nick and Kitty argue about the affair until the film, in the last twenty minutes, turns away from comedy for a different kind of ending—perhaps not the best choice, although some critics were enthusiastic about it.
In the meantime, the audience is treated to some of the most innovative musical numbers they will ever hear, although these are deliberately as unpolished as the characters performing them. When Kitty throws Nick out, he breaks into Engelbert Humperdinck’s “A Man Without Love,” and local garbage men join in, along with electricians and other strangers going by, to do a choreographed song-and-dance number—and these are not graceful dancers, but men in coveralls with big bellies and bald heads carrying garbage can lids.
Other spectacular numbers include Tula dancing to a Connie Francis song or wiggling up a storm to the Buena Vista Social Club as she stands in the window of a burning building while the firemen below look up at her with their hoses in their hands. Sarandon sings Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart” while Eddie Izzard plays the church organ, and Christopher Walken tears through the lyrics of Tom Jones’ “Delilah” in a way that arcs beyond preposterous into sublime. (Walken did a show-stopping strip tease in the British version of Pennies from Heaven). Nick gets circumcised for Tula while singing Cyndi Lauper’s rendition of “Prisoner of Love.” And if the musical numbers aren’t enough, there’s Elaine Stritch coming into a hospital room with Buscemi and Gandolfini; her performance blows them out of the water.
Any one of these numbers makes the film’s shortcomings—its predictable plot, the genre blending, the low budget production values—unimportant. It you watch this film, you will never forget it. And you’ll never think of Winslet as a demure British heroine again. Top

Slipstream
John Turturro is not the director of Slipstream, but he plays the small role of Harvey, a movie director so wrapped up in his own ego that he carries on phone conversations even after the wires to the cell phone have been cut. Screaming and chewing up scenery, he ends up confined to the computer hard drive of Felix Bonhoeffer (Anthony Hopkins). Hopkins is the writer, director and music composer for Slipstream, a film about a screen writer trying to salvage a film for which he wrote the original screen play.
Early in the film, two characters named Matt Dobbs and Geek, played by actors named Ray (Christian Slater) and Margolis (Jeffrey Tambor), shoot Mort (Michael Clarke Duncan) and terrorize Gina (Stella Arroyave), Betty Lustig (Fionnula Flanagan), and the diner staff, including Bonnie Sylvester (S. Epatha Merkerson). Halfway through this Petrified Forest pastiche, Ray collapses and dies, apparently from overexertion in the heat, although it could have been from overacting.
Production on the film is called to a halt by the director Gavin (Gavin Grazer) who is carrying his baby in a sling around his neck. Lacking the money to reshoot, they bring in the screenwriter, Felix Bonhoefer (Hopkins) to rewrite, so they can complete the film. Since some of the characters are based on people in Bonhoeffer’s life, sometimes he sees them as the people he knows and sometimes as the characters in the film. The identity problem is made more difficult, as there are external identities for the characters. For example, Stella Arroyave plays the part of Gina in the screenplay Bonhoeffer is writing; she is Bonhoeffer’s wife in the film, and, in real life (whatever that means) she is Hopkins’ wife. It’s a little like the scene in 8 1/2 (a film which creeps in everywhere this month) in which the director is casting the film about his life and trying to find someone to play his wife while his wife looks on.
As Bonhoeffer starts changing scenes and cutting lines, characters begin complaining. Mort comes to Hopkins one night with his brains hanging out of a gunshot wound and says he was promised more lines when he signed on for the part; Barbara, the continuity person for the halted production (Camryn Manheim), is killed off in the script in an accident and comes back to complain about it.
In addition to directing and acting in the film, Hopkins wrote the music and the screenplay. He references a number of films, including some Bette Davis performances (Bette Lustig’s costumes reflect Davis also), but the film that dominates is another one in which most of the characters’ identities are up for grabs: the original Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. Clips from the film are included, and its star, Kevin McCarthy, now a spry ninety-three, has a small part in Slipstream, and rides off into the desert with Bonhoeffer before disappearing into thin air. An amusing character is a buxom woman with heaps of blonde hair and a red mouth who owns Dolly’s Diner. When asked her name, she replies, “Dolly Parton Lookalike.”
At the end, Bonhoeffer is taken away in a scene in which the paramedic is played by Gavin Grazer and the burly cop by Michael Clarke Duncan. Does all of this make sense? Maybe. Roger Ebert assures us it’s a fever dream of a man who’s on major medication, and Hopkins said he thought up the film while in a hospital recovering from major surgery. One of the deleted scenes on the DVD ends with Gina and Betty Lustig chatting in the diner, and one of them said Hopkins died some time ago, but Gina looks out the window, and he waves to her from the camera boom.
Slipstream may be confusing, but it’s often funny as Hopkins ridicules directors, camera men, actors and everyone associated with the film industry in a script that Steven Spielberg liked. How often can you find entertainment that stimulates your sense of humor and imagination? 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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