SCHLOCK (a lot)...and ART
by Les Phillips
CHOCOLAT is a sort of French Provincial Pleasantville. We are presented with a French village in 1959 - given the totalitarian hold the local church apparently holds on the villagers, and the absence of any countervailing outside influence of any description, 1659 would probably have more credibility. Along comes Juliette Binoche and her little daughter and three duffel bags, to rent the ruin of a vacant patisserie from Judi Dench. Out of these duffel bags come an extremely impressive wardrobe for Ms. Binoche, as well as enough kitchen equipment and gourmet supplies to stock a medium-sized Williams-Sonoma. And a scandalous chocolaterie, symbolic of an expansive, cheerful, uplifting secular humanism, is born.

The Weinstein Brothers have pushed me over the edge. I liked Good Will Hunting well enough; MATT! was enough to make me at least try to ignore Robin Williams. I did not like The Cider House Rules particularly, and I didn't understand why anyone else liked it. I wanted to walk out of Chocolat halfway through, and became even more irritated when the movie successfully manipulated me into not walking out until what I took to be the last ten minutes, where the Bad Guy suffers a vulgar sort of transforming epiphany. I am sick of all of this contemporary humanistic uplift, at least when it's this obvious.

And this contemporary humanistic uplift pointedly despises persons of faith, who are depicted as stupid sheep, if not wife-beaters and criminals. Anticlericalism is of course a potent strain in French literature and thought, but at 212 years' distance from the Revolution, you'd think there'd be a little more nuance. Probably Lasse Hallstrom (or the Weinstein Bros. themselves) should be blamed more than French anticlericalism; I never thought nuance was exactly Hallstrom's strong suit, and haven't liked any of his movies except Something To Talk About, mostly because of the actors (Gena Rowlands, Robert Duvall, Kyra Sedgwick) who did interesting things in it.

I can't say that I dislike Juliette Binoche. I thought she was well cast here, and was never more annoying than the screenplay. Alfred Molina represented Authority in approximately the same key as the attendance officer in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. If Judi Dench wants another Oscar, and she probably doesn't, she should arrange for roles where she has even less screen time than she had in Shakespeare in Love, or for better scripts. Stage actresses of her quality are allowed only enough movie work to maintain a standard of living which befits their station - past that point, they are Plowrighting, and must be dissuaded. (Though apparently Lord Olivier left Lady Olivier rather poor, despite his own substantial cinema-whoring.)

For a person who symbolizes epicureanism and Living Life, and for a person who slips near-aphrodisiacs into candy, Juliette Binoche certainly doesn't appear to be Getting Any. When Johnny Depp shows up and offers to come by sometime to "fix that squeak in your doorway," she really ought to appear more interested. I recognize that her reluctance is an attempt at irony. It failed. Johnny Depp is often a good actor; here he has a worse Irish accent than Brad Pitt in The Devil's Own.

Chocolat works as storytelling, mostly. It succeeds at making cooking look sensuous, though Ms Binoche appears to give about half of her chocolate away to people who seem appealing or are in need, a habit that would not be very helpful in maintaining her fine clothing collection.

As you can tell, this Weinstein Bros. brand of Uplift left me substantially cranky. I promise you, I was in quite a good mood when I entered the theater.

POLLOCK is a very successful film about the great painter Jackson Pollock, and a triumph for Ed Harris, as director and actor. Films about artists, whatever their overall quality, are notoriously bad at depicting or conveying the actual creative process - Jane Fonda crumpling paper and throwing the typewriter out the window in Julia, the hysteria passing for creativity in many of the Ken Russell films (except Savage Messiah), not to mention Lust for Life, and other Hollywood biopics of that ilk.

One obtuse Boston reviewer complained that Pollock does not explain Jackson Pollock's psychology or art, as though that were really possible in any medium, let alone a 120-minute film. I think Pollock comes as close to "explaining" a difficult artist as any film I've ever seen - in this case by letting Harris' silences, his balance between reticent, gentle insecurity and aggression, his sense of a raw and unschooled nature, speak for themselves, portraying an urgent creative instinct. The truth of an artist, and his art, usually lies between, rather than in, paraphrasable explanations.

Less successful, admittedly, is the expository dialogue which tries to highlight the key moments in Pollock's development as an artist. Lee Krasner may well have looked at the first of Pollock's drip paintings and said, "Pollock, you've broken it wide open." That's how people often talk, but that doesn't make it good for the movies.

Sasha Stone's review complains that the film seems to leave Pollock with no redeeming virtues, except the art he produced. I don't quite agree -- I think Pollock was clumsy with people, an isolated person, rather than a malicious one. The art is enough. Krasner realized that; we should too.

The film may have given Peggy Guggenheim some of the charm and attraction that was due Pollock. Everything I've ever read about Peggy Guggenheim indicates that she was an awful woman, despite the good her philanthropy did. Amy Madigan is very good as Guggenheim, and Marcia Gay Harden is even better as Lee Krasner, Pollock's wife and keeper.

Harris gets the slovenly poverty of a struggling artist just right. I am reminded of another film I loved - Robert Duvall's The Apostle - where the actor devoted himself to the filmbody and soul for a period of years and produced a work of tremendous authenticity. Pollock may not play for very long in many cities. Run to see it.

CineScene, 2001