SPRING CLEANING
by Les Phillips

Gosford Park
(Robert Altman). Bucketloads of excellent acting, the upstairs of the country house just sumptuous enough (avoiding Merchant-Ivory decor overload - not that I ever minded, but some folks do), the downstairs convincing also, and the director displaying everything he knows about directing movies, which is a lot. I want to see it again - not because I loved it, but to see if I have the same claustrophobic reaction on a second viewing. Claustrophobia isn't really the word; just more plot and character than I wanted to handle in a small amount of time (and I never keep up with plots anyway). The Stephen Fry and Maggie Smith characters are perhaps a little too cute.

Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff). My expectations were too high. Steve Buscemi's Award-Winning Performance was just a Steve Buscemi performance. Nothing wrong with that, but isn't he a little too young for Lifetime Achievement Awards, even if they are given by the NY Critics Circle? Ghost World does demolish the contemporary high school experience neatly and incisively, with originality, in ten minutes; too many films spend their entire running time trying to do that. The first forty-five minutes or so - slacker rebel girls on the prowl for Experience (an approximate description, though nothing quite does it justice) - is fascinating. Then it settles down into something (comparatively) conventional, and not so interesting. Girl performances more blank than I thought they should be. The film quotes/alludes to The World of Henry Orient (George Roy Hill, 1964), another film in which outsider-teenage-girls-seeking-Experience is the theme, sort of, but the similarities between the films end there, so I don't quite see the point. Yet Ghost World should certainly be seen; it's not like anything else.

It's difficult to say much about Todd Field's In the Bedroom, partly because it's so close to perfect, partly because there are plot twists that shouldn't be given away. Middle-class married couple (Tom Wilkinson & Sissy Spacek) living in Camden, Maine; their college-age son (Nick Stahl) is having an affair with a young married woman (Marisa Tomei) who also has young children. Tomei's estranged husband menaces and threatens; eventually murders Stahl. That's really the beginning of the story, not the end. Though there's ultimately much more "action," the film is really about the dynamics of family - the guilt, recriminations, many-layered deceptions that are laid bare by tragedy. I can't think of a recent film that tells you more about the central characters more economically and artfully. Wilkinson, Spacek, and Tomei are absolutely masterful in their roles; it's as though the perfectly Platonic screenplay and actors had found each other. The last scenes are as suspenseful as anything in first-rate Hitchcock - not because the director plays them as suspense, but because we understand the characters so well and are waiting for the emotional, psychological violence that's about to happen (the physical violence is the least of it).

I'm reminded of another film that I had high hopes for, Before and After (Barbet Schroeder, 1996) - also about a family shattered by violence, and about the resultant guilt and family dynamics (and also set in New England). It had Meryl Streep, Edward Furlong, and Liam Neeson, among other excellent actors; it had an experienced director; but somehow it failed to communicate. That Todd Field could pull off such a delicate exercise in his first film is miraculous. Spacek, Wilkinson, and Tomei have been hailed for their performances in this film, and all of that praise is deserved. They are truly exceptional. Go see this film.

Ocean's Eleven
(Stephen Soderbergh). A lot better than I expected. Nothing like the original, which was barely a movie at all. Andy Garcia very good as a slick, predatory casino magnate, smoldering and controlling without quite going over the top. Lovely supporting performances from Elliott Gould and Carl Reiner. Matt Damon quite solid. I think I was supposed to believe that the elegant woman played by Julia Roberts was, at her core, quite common, and I don't believe that about Julia Roberts, ever. Brad Pitt miscast playing a smart person. George Clooney very suave, which is all that is really required. I can't believe that Clooney's character was ever powerful or smart enough to conceive and pull off this insanely complicated heist, but then nothing about the insanely complicated heist could ever be believed, anyway. The trick is to keep it moving, keep it amusing, make sure the audience doesn't really notice or understand how implausible it all is. I never follow complicated crime or suspense plots anyway, so I'm a good audience for Ocean's Eleven. Soderberg is artful without calling attention to himself. Not great, but far from disappointing.

Waking Life (Richard Linklater). I suspect I had the median reaction: delighted and fascinated by the technique, annoyed by the continuing harangues of amateur philosophers, perhaps more annoyed because it was coming from animated figures. I'm also not certain, after this, Mulholland Drive, and Vanilla Sky, how much more rumination on illusion and reality I care to deal with. I loved the music. This film seemed like Slacker, but with less charm and idiosyncrasy, and more talk talk talk.

Legally Blonde (Robert Luketic). This is a big, broad cartoon, in places much stupider than a big, broad cartoon, but Reese Witherspoon is absolutely wonderful. In many ways this is a more challenging performance than the one she gave in Election. I was almost shocked at how good she was. Nearly every other performance in the film is utterly bland. I would characterize the picture as Clueless meets The Paper Chase, with much less IQ than either film; but Witherspoon really carries it.

Quills (Philip Kaufman). I still haven't forgiven Geoffrey Rush for Shine, and I've always been bored by the Marquis de Sade, so I guess I'm not the ideal audience for this film. Let's just say I wasn't disappointed.

No one can complain that Wes Anderson doesn't "create a world" in The Royal Tenenbaums. The setting is allegedly New York, but there are no skyscrapers and no people on the streets; the houses and neighborhoods we see look more like East Berlin than Manhattan; the awful taxicabs seem to be from Cuba or Albania. (There are no actual New York street or place names in the film, either.) The time is today, but we know that only because of the dates on some family tombstones. The streetscapes are striking at first; then they're just sad, and there is more than enough sadness in this film already.

Anderson's previous film, Rushmore, was strong on tableau, weird excess or neurosis, odd verbal or visual jokes, and weakened more or less immediately when it really had to present plot, character, human relations. In interviews Anderson seems relaxed and self-deprecating, but Rushmore seemed furiously attentive to itself and annoyingly proud of its eccentricities. Well, it was undeniably adolescent in nearly every way, fun in places, irritating in more places, but at least it had some energy.

The Royal Tenenbaums is more confident; it's the weird and obnoxious adult Rushmore, wandering around the party assuming that it's impressing people, with no notion of how tiresome it's becoming. Scene by scene, The Royal Tenenbaums is quite accomplished visually - but, scene by scene, especially early on, it's a series of Kool Kartoons. Gene Hackman, Angelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, and the ubiquitous Wilson brothers are given elaborately constructed personae to fill. Once the clothes, the decor, the house, the weird occupations and obsessions establish the cartoon premises, there is very little left for the actors themselves to play; no real characters are written here.

This film features the first Gene Hackman performance I've ever disliked, but it's not his fault; he's trying to create a character in a situation where that isn't really possible. Huston is beautiful and authoritative, Paltrow is beautiful and sullen, Stiller is angry and silly. This is a very, very underemployed group of actors. And it's a cold film, with no real human chemistry, a story that winds down into nothing, with nothing to say.

One of Wes Anderson's great virtues is his affection for Pauline Kael. He was desperate for her to see Rushmore before it opened, and actually rented a cinema in western Massachusetts just for the two of them, so that he could take her to see it. By Anderson's own account, she was polite and noncommittal ("I'm not quite sure what you've got here, Wes..."). The Royal Tenenbaums takes Anderson's talent to the next level. I think it's pretty much exactly the film he wanted to make. And Kael would have loathed every minute of it.

©2002 Les Phillips
CineScene