In 1974, Richard Nixon, mired in scandal and disrepute after Watergate, resigned the Presidency of the United States-the only chief executive to do so. He suffered no legal penalty, he did not explicitly apologize, and after his successor Gerald Ford pardoned him (only months later, no doubt just to be done with the whole mess), the American people were left feeling betrayed an deprived of real closure. Nixon, after a brief stay in the hospital (can you blame him?) retreated to California to contemplate writing his memoirs and to duck jokes and angry journalists. Until Nixon's book, it seemed, there would be no "last word" from the ex-president on Watergate and his behavior in office.
Enter David Frost, a low-wattage international celebrity, best known for hosting talk shows in Britain and Australia, and for romancing pretty women. He is not a heavy-hitter. He tells opening jokes and guest-hosts adventure specials. But Frost sees something in the person of Richard Nixon: ratings. An interview with the most controversial politician of the day is sure to capture public attention, and Frost craves that attention. The trouble is, networks and advertisers do not. The American public largely hates Nixon (whom it sees as an unrepentant scoundrel), and the broadcasting establishment largely distrusts Frost (whom it views as a European outsider with no real credentials). And yet, largely through favors, loans, and his own money, Frost scores the interview and the airtime. For four days in 1977, the smiling British talk show host and the grumbly American ex-president sit together to discuss Nixon's time at the head of the U. S. government. For most of the time, Frost soft-pedals and Nixon bloviates. But then, on the last day, something remarkable happens. David Frost gets from Richard Nixon what no one had seen before: real contrition, in close-up. It was incredible, it was totally unexpected, and it made Frost's career.
It also forms the central story of Ron Howard's film Frost/Nixon, based on Peter Morgan's play of the same name, a movie that proves yet again that truth is often stranger and more compelling than fiction. The interviews themselves--long sit-downs between Frost (Michael Sheen) and Nixon (Frank Langella)--are the centerpiece of the film, but we also get let in on the steps leading up to the talks, as well as a coda about their aftermath. Along the way, Frost and Nixon both argue with their staffs about how to best conduct the interviews and share a tipsy late-night phone call, off the record (or so the screenplay, also penned by Morgan, would have us believe). There is no flash or bang here. Howard directs smoothly and efficiently, keeping visual trickery and silly edits to a minimum, and wisely letting the strange story unfold and draw us in all on its own. There are enough stylistic flourishes to remind us that this is not a documentary (close-ups of particular actions, for example, or the slyly ubiquitous presence of monitors and other TV equipment), but nothing too distracting. Given that his current on-screen offering is basically a big-budget episode of "Scooby-Doo" starring Tom Hanks, it's nice to be reminded that Howard can really make movies when he wants to.
The acting is top-notch. Both Sheen and Langella originated their parts onstage, and the experience and expertise shows. Sheen plays Frost as a man smart enough to embrace his public image without always believing it (he lets fans misquote him to his face). Journalists helping him prepare are aghast when Frost's producer describes him as "a performer," but this is exactly right. Frost is not a journalist, but an entertainer, with a savvy eye for what makes good television. Sheen, who has perhaps the most charming wolfish grin in movies, plays Frost with just enough fluff to be disarming and just enough depth to be a believable businessman without tipping his hand too far either way. Langella has the harder task. Richard Nixon is widely and easily caricatured (almost everyone has a head-shaking, V-sign-waving, "Iamnotacrook" to pull out at parties), and Langella rightly decides to sidestep the impression. He looks nothing like the real Nixon, anyway. But what he gives us is the essence of Nixon in presence and mannerism. Nixon, too, was a performer, and Langella, rather than performing "a Nixon," performs the way Nixon performed. It's a shrewd bit of acting-a version of Nixon we haven't usually seen-and it got Langella an Oscar nod.
Sheen and Langella have a fine supporting cast, with Kevin Bacon in Nixon's corner as his no-nonsense top aide, and Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell in Frost's corner as, respectively, a radio journalist and a political historian who help the host prepare his questions. Platt and Rockwell also provide most of the comic relief (it's Platt who gets to do the inevitable jowly Nixon riff as a pre-show stand-in).
Still, the real fascination is the story, which Morgan's script compresses but leaves largely intact (I haven't researched it, but I suspect the late-night call is more an excuse for a Langella monologue than a bit of history). The writing does set up the interviews as a "contest" between the two men (my wife pointed out that it's structured very like a boxing movie, where the opponents meet, bout, and return to their corners for critique and pep-talks), but the confrontation aspect isn't overdone. Frost is not a "good guy" and Nixon a "bad guy" here. Instead, the movie leaves room to ponder the nature of things like guilt and reputation, and also the role of media in government and society. The film shows how Frost and Nixon operate on a different level than their respective "handlers." Frost's team wants an expose; he simply wants a good interview. Nixon's aides want a political affirmation; Nixon wants a personal one. Frost's people think he's "losing" and doesn't understand politics (they're so single-minded that when Frost invites everyone to a "celebratory" dinner, the Platt character immediately sneers, "What is there to celebrate?" Frost's reply: "My birthday."). What Frost does understand, however, is the intimacy of television, and the celebrity ego. He really did want to interview Nixon, the man, and perhaps beneath his bluster, Nixon, lonely and tired of the banquet-hall lecture circuit, sensed that. The film does not let us believe that Frost somehow "plays" or "outsmarts" Nixon. Instead, he gives Nixon the room to outsmart himself. It's not a trap, just an opening that the beleaguered ex-president can't pass up. For a man who loves to talk, a good listener may in fact be more dangerous than a good questioner. Frost's journalist consultants didn't get that. Frost did, and so he got Nixon.
It's worth noting that the story is strangely prescient. Today, when politicians line up to talk to the likes of David Letterman and Jon Stewart, and when texting and twittering make slips of the virtual tongue an everyday occurrence, what Frost accomplished sadly seems rather ordinary. We cringe these days as the lines between politics and performance blur and cross, but Frost/Nixon chronicles a moment when that blurriness worked, and, ironically, helped clear the air. At the time, a breakthrough like Frost got, in the forum he got it, was extraordinary--especially with a veteran evader like Nixon. It was unusually good TV because it was an unusually compelling story. The same goes for the movie.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
The book behind The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is one that both begs for and resists filming. The book is the self-told story of a French magazine editor, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffers a devastating stroke and learns to communicate despite his limitations. This, in outline, is not a remarkable story. But the particular circumstances say differently: Bauby was left by the stroke with "locked-in syndrome." His mind was fully functional, but his body was completely paralyzed except for his left eye. He could only communicate by blinking. And yet he wrote a book. See the appeal? See the problems?
To attempt to film this, you'd have to be very creative, and maybe slightly mad. A good thing, perhaps, then, that the director who did attempt it is Julian Schnabel, a visual artist as well as a filmmaker, who is possessed of both unique vision and strong temperament. I've read interviews with Schnabel. He can come off as a mass of quirks and pretensions. My fear going in was that his movie would as well. Fortunately, it doesn't.
Schnabel's film works because he remembers two things: that this is Jean-Dominique Bauby's story, and that that story is plenty remarkable all on its own. He makes the choice to start the movie with Bauby's situation. Literally. We begin inside his head, as he slowly emerges from his post-stroke coma. We see what he sees, and since Bauby (played by Mathieu Amalric) is paralyzed, this means what we see is limited. We hear Bauby's thoughts as voiceover, trying to make sense of what has happened. Almost all of the first third of the movie is filmed this way (including the sewing shut of Bauby's useless right eye), and the effect is startling and uncomfortable. But notice that it does two things: it establishes that the film is Bauby's subjective experience, and it establishes that the emphasis will be on the consciousness inside rather than on the damaged body. It is many minutes, in fact, before we plainly see an "outside" shot of Bauby at all. This is a film about a man, not a condition.
The man's story emerges thanks to his speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze), who devises a system of dictation: she recites the alphabet in order of most frequent use, and Bauby blinks to choose a letter. In this way he spells out words. And in this way, he decides to take advantage of an existing book contract and write a sort of memoir (the "conversation" with his incredulous publisher is one of many priceless moments). The movie is true to the dictation method, although those around Bauby become adept at "guessing" his words, no doubt thanks to time constraints in the screenplay. In some scenes, the method is eventually abandoned, and just Amalric's voiceover kicks in, but the device is used enough that we do not forget it. In this way, we learn things about Bauby before his stroke: he edited "Elle" magazine. He has three children, a wife, and a mistress. He has a father (Max Von Sydow), who keeps tabs on his son's social situation with wry European wisdom ("Having a mistress is no excuse for leaving the mother of your children; the world has lost its values," he says. Try that line in Iowa.). He lives fast; he likes sports cars. The movie wisely does not judge Bauby. Before the stroke, he was what he was: a successful, high-spirited Frenchman who loved both his children and his mistress. What praise he deserves after his stroke is for his strength of spirit, not his morality. His memoir chronicles his finding a way beyond his situation (hence the title images), not a reform of his character. It is enough that this man, in his state, became an author without his also becoming a saint. In flashback and fantasy, Amalric (more recently James Bond's nemesis in Quantum of Solace) plays the mobile Bauby with enough low-key charm that we can root for the man without approving of all his behavior, and his voice-over as the paralyzed Bauby is serious and humorous as is appropriate without overselling either.
That a remarkable situation is presented so matter-of-factly is the film's strength. Yes, it has its obviously artful moments, and yes, it has some wonderful cinematography once it is allowed to. But what sticks with me are the "real" moments: the way few of Bauby's early visitors really look him in the eye, the way Bauby's limited vision takes in whatever it can (from his therapist's breasts to billowing curtains to a distant lighthouse) whenever it can, the way he finds uncomfortable situations funnier than his caretakers do. It is also refreshing to see a movie where a father-son relationship is poignant without being overwrought or overlaid with pop-Freudian baggage. There are no false crises here, nor are there any miracles beyond the basic existence of Bauby's story.
There are countless ways to have gone wrong with this material, all of which Schnabel and his collaborators avoid. In doing so, they have made a remarkable film about a remarkable man. Perhaps it took an artist to make this film. After all, a good artist is said to have "a good eye," and Jean-Dominique Bauby's story shows what can be done with only one good eye. Those of us who fancy we have two should take notice.
To attempt to film this, you'd have to be very creative, and maybe slightly mad. A good thing, perhaps, then, that the director who did attempt it is Julian Schnabel, a visual artist as well as a filmmaker, who is possessed of both unique vision and strong temperament. I've read interviews with Schnabel. He can come off as a mass of quirks and pretensions. My fear going in was that his movie would as well. Fortunately, it doesn't.
Schnabel's film works because he remembers two things: that this is Jean-Dominique Bauby's story, and that that story is plenty remarkable all on its own. He makes the choice to start the movie with Bauby's situation. Literally. We begin inside his head, as he slowly emerges from his post-stroke coma. We see what he sees, and since Bauby (played by Mathieu Amalric) is paralyzed, this means what we see is limited. We hear Bauby's thoughts as voiceover, trying to make sense of what has happened. Almost all of the first third of the movie is filmed this way (including the sewing shut of Bauby's useless right eye), and the effect is startling and uncomfortable. But notice that it does two things: it establishes that the film is Bauby's subjective experience, and it establishes that the emphasis will be on the consciousness inside rather than on the damaged body. It is many minutes, in fact, before we plainly see an "outside" shot of Bauby at all. This is a film about a man, not a condition.
The man's story emerges thanks to his speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze), who devises a system of dictation: she recites the alphabet in order of most frequent use, and Bauby blinks to choose a letter. In this way he spells out words. And in this way, he decides to take advantage of an existing book contract and write a sort of memoir (the "conversation" with his incredulous publisher is one of many priceless moments). The movie is true to the dictation method, although those around Bauby become adept at "guessing" his words, no doubt thanks to time constraints in the screenplay. In some scenes, the method is eventually abandoned, and just Amalric's voiceover kicks in, but the device is used enough that we do not forget it. In this way, we learn things about Bauby before his stroke: he edited "Elle" magazine. He has three children, a wife, and a mistress. He has a father (Max Von Sydow), who keeps tabs on his son's social situation with wry European wisdom ("Having a mistress is no excuse for leaving the mother of your children; the world has lost its values," he says. Try that line in Iowa.). He lives fast; he likes sports cars. The movie wisely does not judge Bauby. Before the stroke, he was what he was: a successful, high-spirited Frenchman who loved both his children and his mistress. What praise he deserves after his stroke is for his strength of spirit, not his morality. His memoir chronicles his finding a way beyond his situation (hence the title images), not a reform of his character. It is enough that this man, in his state, became an author without his also becoming a saint. In flashback and fantasy, Amalric (more recently James Bond's nemesis in Quantum of Solace) plays the mobile Bauby with enough low-key charm that we can root for the man without approving of all his behavior, and his voice-over as the paralyzed Bauby is serious and humorous as is appropriate without overselling either.
That a remarkable situation is presented so matter-of-factly is the film's strength. Yes, it has its obviously artful moments, and yes, it has some wonderful cinematography once it is allowed to. But what sticks with me are the "real" moments: the way few of Bauby's early visitors really look him in the eye, the way Bauby's limited vision takes in whatever it can (from his therapist's breasts to billowing curtains to a distant lighthouse) whenever it can, the way he finds uncomfortable situations funnier than his caretakers do. It is also refreshing to see a movie where a father-son relationship is poignant without being overwrought or overlaid with pop-Freudian baggage. There are no false crises here, nor are there any miracles beyond the basic existence of Bauby's story.
There are countless ways to have gone wrong with this material, all of which Schnabel and his collaborators avoid. In doing so, they have made a remarkable film about a remarkable man. Perhaps it took an artist to make this film. After all, a good artist is said to have "a good eye," and Jean-Dominique Bauby's story shows what can be done with only one good eye. Those of us who fancy we have two should take notice.
Star Trek (2009)
The questions surrounding the new “Star Trek” film directed by J. J. Abrams are legion: Can it revive a beloved-but-musty franchise? Will it keep old fans and bring in new ones? Can it succeed with only one original crew member involved? Can other actors inhabit arguably the most well-known science-fiction roles of all time? Most of all, is it entertaining? I’ll leave it to those more attuned to “Trek” lore and box office receipts to answer most of these, but the last one is easy: yes, it is.
“Reboot” movies seem to be the hot commodity of the day. It worked for Bond and Batman, and so it’s only fair for Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and their intrepid crew to get a chance at a new lease—or, perhaps, a new reel—on life as well. The marriage of the popular “origin story” and the (until recently) highly successful Trek universe is, from a box-office standpoint, logical (as Spock might say). But it’s also full of dangers. Star Trek is a cultural icon. People who don’t know a black hole from a Black Russian still know who Kirk and Spock are, and our slang is rife with Trek nods (“Beam me up, Scotty,” “I’m a doctor, not a [some other occupation],” just to name two). How much change in these iconic characters will people accept? Star Trek’s screenwriters thus make the wise decision to tell us less about how these familiar people came to be who they are than about how they came to all be together as the iconic Enterprise crew.
The two we follow in are James T. Kirk and Spock, who are, we both learn, more or less outsiders. Kirk (Chris Pine) is a cocky farmboy trying to live down (or drink down, the film would have us believe) his starship-captain father’s self-sacrificing legacy. Spock (Zachary Quinto) is an uptight space nerd trying to deal with his mixed-species background on Vulcan, where his emotional human side makes him an object of prejudice. Both determine, for different reasons, to work out their ancestral grudges by joining Starfleet. At the Starfleet Academy, they study starship stuff alongside other familiar space cadets, such as sexy language expert Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and cranky medical man Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban). Of course we know that Kirk and Spock will be standouts at opposite ends of the logical spectrum. And of course we know that this will lead to a confrontation. But before this can fully play out, the cadets are rushed into action to save the planet Vulcan from an attack. The culprit is a vengeful Romulan named Nero (Eric Bana, in a return to onscreen villainy), who has a planet-sized axe to grind with Starfleet in general and the Vulcans in particular. Soon Spock (by orders) and Kirk (by trickery) find themselves, along with Uhura, McCoy, and guys named Sulu and Chekov, onboard the USS Enterprise, a brand-new ship commanded by Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood). When Nero captures Pike, it’s up to the junior officers to save their captain and stop the Romulan rampage…if only they can learn to work together. Fortunately, they get a big assist from a certain pointy-eared officer of the future (or, in cinematic terms, the past) who has traveled back in time in order to…
Never mind. The technical aspects of “Star Trek” plots have always bordered on the ridiculous, and never more so than when they deal with timeline shenanigans. I’ve given up trying to figure out time-travel in the “Trek” universe(s). I just accept it, like the endless flimsy gender-swap disguises in Shakespeare, and move on. Its inclusion here does three things: it gives a big goofy nod to the temporal hijinks of the original TV series, it allows for an uncertainty element lacking (for example) in the recent “Wolverine” prequel, and it allows Abrams and his writers to rewrite Trek history as they see fit. And they do so well. The key part of the story—the genesis of the Enterprise crew as we know it—is solidly handled, and the pacing is kept brisk enough that the sillier aspects of the story aren’t obvious while the movie is running. Character, not realistic science, has always been the heart of Trek’s appeal, and the movie spends the right amount of time developing its cast. The movie makes us care enough about Kirk, Spock, Bones, and the rest to have a stake in what happens to them. They’re likable on their own, not just because they are familiar names. It’s in the movie’s favor that it makes memorable characters out of so many people in such short time. Our cultural memory helps, of course, but some thought went into the writing here and it shows.
The main acting ensemble has big shoes to fill. Fortunately, like the young crew they play, they’re up to a challenge. Again, someone made some wise choices here: all the actors bear a decent physical resemblance to their “classic selves,” and no one is allowed to get away with straight-up imitation. Pine captures the swagger and charm the young William Shatner brought to Kirk while still being his own man, and Quinto has the right mannerisms for Spock, even if his take on the character is softer in certain ways than Leonard Nimoy’s (that he survives onscreen comparison with Nimoy here is achievement enough). Most of the film’s comic relief comes from Urban (allowed to play a real character and not an action figure for once) as the cranky McCoy and from Simon Pegg as dependable-but-beleaguered engineer Montgomery Scott (yes, he gets to beam people up). Saldana’s Uhura has more to do than she used to on TV, though not much more once things get going, and John Cho and Anton Yelchin settle nicely into the bridge swivel chairs as, respectively, pilot-cum-swordsman Sulu and heavily-accented math whiz/navigator Chekov. Leonard Nimoy, who has been doing this forever, adds a nice graceful touch, as well as an implicit seal of approval, as the future Spock. Eric Bana’s Nero will not go down in the Star Trek villain hall of fame, but that’s not really the fault of his performance. The character is underwritten and is mostly a personified threat—he has motive and some wicked tattoos, but not much depth.
Best of all, the movie captures the original Trek spirit whereby the human (or Vulcan or whatever) element trumps the whiz-bang element. At their best, the assorted Trek TV series used their sci-fi trappings to engage real issues, from race relations to politics to environmental concerns and so on. This movie doesn’t go quite that deep, but the beginnings are there, and themes of responsibility and identity bubble along beneath the surface along with the much-discussed-in-the-present-moment Trek hopefulness about people and species working well together. Yes, this is a big shiny franchise machine, but there’s a soul in it. Shatner and the rest have been icons (and objects of occasional fun) for so long that we forget that people love and relate to the Trek characters for a reason. There is something about having new faces in the old roles that reminds us of that. Of course, humor always was a key part of the Trek formula, too (tribbles, anyone?), and the movie has its fair share. It’s sprinkled through with sly references to the original series for those who can spot them. Just as “Shakespeare in Love” was funny, but funnier the more you knew about the Bard of Avon, “Star Trek” is fun, but more fun the more you know about its TV source.
The movie is not perfect. Some action sequences are oddly edited in that now-popular way that really should have been brought to heel after the first “Bourne” movie, I’m not sure the ice-planet beastie needed to chase Kirk for so long, and the Romulans do get a raw deal (in several ways) from the screenplay. But like Kirk and his crew of ace cadets, the film ultimately does many more things right than wrong. This is the first really good big-ticket film of the summer (that I’ve seen, anyway), and it’s worth boldly going to see.
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