There's No Place Like Exile
by Chris Dashiell

Most movies about children, unless they're tragedies, tend to be too cute and syrupy. Screenwriters present kids acting in ways that fulfil adult wishes - innocent, wise, happy, easy to love, easy to dismiss. At first glance, the scenario for THE CUP - young Tibetan monks go wild for the game of soccer - would seem to fit that mold. But - surprise, surprise, it doesn't go the Disney route at all, but earns every bit of its sweetness through sharp observation of the way kids, even Tibetan kids, really act.

The setting is a monastery in India, to which Tibetans are smuggled over the border, some of them boys to be dedicated to the Buddhist life through the wishes of their parents. One of the kids is a smart aleck named Orgyu, played deliciously by Jamyang Lodro. He is small in stature, but tough and cocky and full of himself. He is also a serious soccer fan. The World Cup tournament is being played at the time, and Orgyu is the ring-leader who persuades other young monks to sneak out to the village at night to watch the games.

The Cup was written and directed by a Tibetan lama named Khyentse Norbu. Instead of an air of holiness or solemnity, he shows us kids chafing under restrictions just as they would in a boarding school or a summer camp. One kid is always falling asleep during meditation. A boy behind him sews his robe to the prayer mat so that when the meditation is over and he stands up, the mat stands up with him. They hide their soccer magazines, and pictures of American supermodels, under their beds. The abbot knows that Orgyu is the troublemaker, but the wonderfully arrogant kid just keeps on going. Describing this makes it sounds cute, but it really isn't - it's funny in a deeply human, grown-up way. This is helped by the director's style and pacing - he takes his time to paint the texture of life in this secluded environment. There is no condescension to children or adults. When the clash between the ancient ways and modern culture comes to a head, it is handled with such equanimity and compassion that both ways of life seem for a moment to be as one.

I admired this movie for its down-to-earth depiction of spirituality as practised by fallible people rather than saints. But most of all I loved Jamyang Lodro. I don't know where Norbu found him, but in my book he was born to be a star.

Another comedy of exile, BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE depicts grimmer aspects of the world. Bosnian writer/director Jasmin Dizdar weaves a tale involving half a dozen major characters with a host of minor ones, as displaced Bosnians interact with the English in London, and some English folks find themselves dealing, sometimes quite directly, with the reality of Bosnia.

In the title sequence a Serb recognizes a Croat on a London bus and attacks him, both of them ending up in the hospital. Meanwhile, a doctor (Nicholas Farrell) going through a painful divorce, must counsel a Bosnian couple who want to abort their child because it was conceived through the mother being raped by soldiers. A young skinhead heroin addict (Danny Nussbaum) who hangs out with a couple of racists, ends up through a circumstance too funny to spoil by describing, having to experience the plight of the Bosnians first-hand. A journalist goes off to cover the conflict and becomes unhinged by the carnage he witnesses. A nurse (Charlotte Colman) falls for a Bosnian refugee (Edin Dzandzanovic) who barely knows any English, and takes him home to her stuffy upper class family. He hands the mother a bouquet, saying "Thank you for your hostility."

Yes, it is a comedy, but one in which the most extreme conflicts and hatreds are confronted head-on. Beautiful People derives its humor from the ridiculousness and pettiness of political strife. People continue to kill each other out of stupid habit rather than any fundamental differences. The film's main characters, Bosnian and English, seek to bridge the gap with decent human feeling. They fail and succeed in varying degrees. Dirzan shows that political madness isn't going away any time soon, but his point of view is hopeful. The film says that people can get along, if they're honest with each other and work hard at the task of love.

With its multiple interlocking stories, the characters all connected to each other in one way or another, Beautiful People has been compared to Magnolia. But it's much less stylized, with a gentle touch and natural performances from the actors, focusing on the subtle misunderstandings that occur between people. At times Dirzan makes his points with a broad brush, and my one major criticism is that niceness wins out too easily - it's a bit much when even the skinhead's scummy friends turn all warm and cuddly. On the other hand, a stunning revelation towards the end puts everything in a new light, and had me thinking about the film for days after.

Back to India, this time in 1971 during the war with Pakistan. Sturla Gunnarsson's SUCH A LONG JOURNEY traces the inward displacement and estrangement of Gustad Noble, a middle-class Parsi, from the comfort of his own world. It is adapted from a book by Rohinton Mistry, and it has that big, sprawling feel that you get from an ambitious novel. Noble is played by Roshan Seth, who conveys a sense of frustrated, confused struggle with his surroundings, thereby lending the film some conviction. He gets involved, through an old friend, with an illegal scheme that has far-reaching political consequences and threatens to destroy his family. I wish that the script (Sooni Taraporevala) and the direction came up to the level of Seth's acting. But time and again the movie relies on melodramatic effects and cliched, expository arguments between the characters. Except for Soni Razdan, who plays Noble's wife with grace, the rest of the performers range from merely adequate to embarrassing. I wanted to get into this movie, to really care about the fate of these people. And some of the elements are genuinely interesting, such as Noble's persuading a street artist who draws sacred pictures to paint the wall around his house, effectively turning it into a shrine and therefore forestalling the government's plan to tear it down for a street-widening project. The trouble is, the interesting elements don't cohere into an artistic whole - the writing doesn't support the episodic structure, and the direction is lackluster. Even Seth and Razdan can't make a lot of their lines sound real. Ultimately I couldn't shake the sense of listening to something that's been written - the fictional dream of Such a Long Journey doesn't get off the page.

My fourth offering has little to do with exile, unless you stretch your interpretations quite a bit. But I'd just like to put in a plug, albeit a little late, for Curtis Hanson's WONDER BOYS. No, it's not profound or a masterpiece of any kind, but it is a modest, entertaining film that has a certain charm and relaxed playfulness. This is Hanson's follow-up to L.A. Confidential, and I like the fact that he didn't feel the need to top himself with some sort of blockbuster. It's a low-key adaptation (by Steven Kloves) of a Michael Chubon novel, about a writer named Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas), a creative writing professor at a college who has been struggling for years trying to write the great novel which will fulfil the promise shown by his first. His wife has just left him, he is having an affair with a married woman (Frances McDormand) who is also the school chancellor, and his agent (Robert Downey Jr.) arrives in town expecting to see the new book. In the meantime, one of Grady's students, a weird loner named James Leer (Tobey Maguire) has his own manuscript, and may be a rising literary star, if he can avoid the police.

I found myself grinning, against all expectation, throughout the picture. Douglas has not seemed so relaxed and personable in years. The role of the vain, rumpled, aging writer suits him well. I normally don't care for Downey - I thought he was genuinely hilarious in this, and relatively restrained by his standards. Even Maguire's somnambulistic acting style works here, because it fits the character so well. I liked the movie's nonchalant attitude towards gay sex and recreational drugs - what a relief to see people getting high and being themselves without any moralizing or undue emphasis. Also, a middle-aged woman plays a genuine love interest - admittedly in contrast with Douglas's real-life proclivities, but nice to see on film for a change.

The picture is good at spoofing the hermetic atmosphere of academia without going overboard into parody or caricature. Of course, when we actually hear anyone's writing, such as James Leer's novel which is supposed to be so great, it's godawful. This seems to be the constant, unintended weakness of films about writers - you can't fake good literature. I'm prejudiced, nevertheless, in favor of films about writers, if they show some wit, and I say bravo to Wonder Boys for having the nerve to be a small movie that amuses without insulting my intelligence.

Was I dreaming, or did I walk into a theater the other night and catch the end of a trailer for a movie in which John Malkovich plays F.W. Murnau, and Willem Dafoe plays Max Schreck, and they're making Nosferatu, and it's some sort of a comedy where Schreck is a real vampire who is killing crew members? Tell me it's not true. Tell me they're not going to turn Murnau into some kind of wacky comic buffoon. If it's all a dream, I promise I'll go see Sandra Bullock in U571 or whatever you want. That Jamie Foxx movie where he gets held hostage by the Dukes of Hazzard. Or even Dr. Laura's new TV show. Well, no, not really......

 

CineScene, 2000