Hey folks, Harry here... I'll be seeing SUNSHINE STATE as my first film at CINEVEGAS this Saturday as I begin my week long run at the Palm Casino in Las Vegas at that Film Festival, which will include the wonders of BUBBA-HOTEP with Bruce Campbell.... Shivering shakes and rattling rolls. However, there is a film that Harold Hellman reviews that I am interested in... Quite a bit. 101ST KILOMETER sounds quite interesting as I love pre-Fall of Communism Soviet subjects. Being a child from the tailend of the Soviet Empire world, as the Cold War raged... I love films that have those subjects at heart. It goes hand in hand with my love of most everything late Seventies / Early Eighties. Well, enough of me, here's Harold Hellman...
SIFF Day 9: EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES, SUNSHINE STATE, 101st KILOMETER
THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES - directed by Alan Taylor;
screenplay by Kevin Molony, from a novel by Simon Leys
Clever and amusing, but ultimately inconsequential, "The Emperor's New Clothes" clearly wants to capture the audience that enjoyed "Shakespeare in Love." It's cute, but it isn't anywhere near that good.
The formula is intact: Take a historical figure, one the mainstream audience will recognize and may know a little about (here, it's Napoleon). Toss in a couple of obvious historical details so the audience can feel informed and educated (e.g., Waterloo, Josephine, and Napoleon's exile). Use this backdrop for an entirely fictional plot, one that involves a Romantic Interest, Lessons of Life, and a Happy Ending. Oh, and it's a comedy, with occasional moments of drama. Did I leave anything out?
"The Emperor's New Clothes" posits that Napoleon, after years of chafing in exile, has concocted a plot wherein he will be replaced in his island prison by a double while he sneaks back to Europe using that man's identity. Once all the pieces are in place, the double will reveal himself, and Napoleon, appearing "suddenly" in France, will be swept back onto the imperial throne. The plan, of course, goes amusingly sideways, and Napoleon has to hold his position, continuing to pretend he's a commoner, while attempting to improvise an alternative plan.
The best part of the movie, without question, is the fact that Napoleon is played by Ian Holm. This is the second time Holm has created a revisionist take on the Emperor, following his classic performance in "Time Bandits" (and a more conventional portrayal on British TV in the 1970s). Here, instead of a comedically psychotic villain, Napoleon is the hero, so the emotional palette is, unsurprisingly, much more limited. Still, Holm is constitutionally incapable of giving a bad performance, and he finds all sorts of fun wrinkles and detours while charting out the man's path from rigid, regal dictator to... well, I won't spoil it, but it isn't as if you won't see it coming. Holm also plays the smaller part of the double, an ordinary man thrust into an important role, and successfully creates a separate personality while getting some good laughs.
The problem is that Napoleon just isn't that rich a character for this type of treatment. In "Shakespeare in Love," the titular playwright is young, vital, and headstrong, and his vocation allows all sorts of amusing, clever parallels to be drawn between the storytelling of Shakespeare's art and the storytelling of the film. Napoleon, by contrast, is older and coldly ambitious: His sole motivation is that he still wants to take over Europe. It's therefore harder to identify with him, and while Holm works hard, it takes us a lot longer to warm up to his character.
"The Emperor's New Clothes" is fun, and it has a great cast; besides Holm, we have Tim McInnerny, Nigel Terry, Hugh Bonneville, and as the love interest, Iben Hberle (from "High Fidelity"). Some of the dialogue follows the anachronistic precedent set by "Shakespeare in Love," and is fitfully funny (Holm's wry delivery of the 90's psychology-speak phrase "a danger to himself and others," for example, is marvelously subtle). But the trifling nature of the project is inescapable; this film will appeal most to people who say they don't like brainless trifles, and who will be fooled by the pseudo-historical setting that this is actually important. It is, of course, nothing but fluff from top to bottom, but it's well-done fluff.
***
SUNSHINE STATE - written and directed by John Sayles
John Sayles's new film "Sunshine State" sees him working in the broad-canvas mode of "City of Hope" or "Lone Star" rather than the more-focused style of "Limbo" or "Passion Fish." There are a half-dozen significant storylines, and perhaps three times that many characters to keep track of. As usual, Sayles is so good at stage-managing all of this, and making it look easy, that some people may miss just how difficult the storytelling really is. However, more than usual, the issue Sayles is examining is not one that will grab most viewers by the throat.
As is usual in Sayles movies, he quickly establishes a specific socioeconomic theme in a particular setting, and then sets a number of characters in orbit around that theme. This time around, the place is modern Florida, the land of greed and opportunity described in the columns of Carl Hiassen and others. Specifically, we're in a smaller town further north up the coast, and there's a big land deal afoot as the developers from the big resort complexes down south are ranging further and further afield for their tourist-magnet projects. The townspeople, naturally, are unhappy at these events, and political tensions run high.
The cast of characters is, unsurprisingly, large and varied. Desiree (Angela Bassett) is a former local, married in Boston but bringing her husband Reggie (James McDaniel) back to town to visit her mother Eunice (Mary Alice), who's hooked up with with Dr. Lloyd (Bill Cobbs), probably the most vocal opponent of the developers. Meanwhile, Marly (Edie Falco) is tired of running the motel and restaurant left to her by her father (Ralph Waite), and is considering giving in to the vultures and selling the property; she finds herself flirting with a landscaper (Timothy Hutton) brought in by the developers, while fending off the harebrained investment schemes of her ex-husband (Richard Edson). Then there's the local bureaucrat with a gambling problem (Gordon Clapp) and a scatterbrained wife (Mary Steenburgen); his financial troubles make him vulnerable to the advances of a pair of amoral land speculators (Perry Lang and Miguel Ferrer). Plus there's a disturbed teenager (Alex Lewis) who joins a drama class taught by Marly's mother (Jane Alexander), a Greek chorus of golfers led by Alan King, a college football player whose career was cut short by injury (Tom Wright), and so on, and so on, the way only Sayles can do it.
As is typical of Sayles movies, the world is rich and complete; he's a one-man sociologist, researching a place and its issues and then regurgitating them in fictionalized form. The characters are all interesting and vibrant, and except for the land speculators are complex individuals, neither totally heroes nor villains. The subtext is deep with ironies, and the people and events are consistently layered with the inextricably linked themes of property and history. Sayles tells stories about real people and real problems, and "Sunshine State" is, without question, a John Sayles movie, drenched in its environment and constructed as finely as literature.
The downside? The overriding concern in the film is real estate, a subject that most people will find less than dramatically compelling. Even though Desiree spars with her mother about communication, trust, and other family issues, everything eventually comes back to property, which makes "Sunshine State" sort of a primer on land assessments. There is value to this, of course; anyone familiar with Florida politics knows how out-of-control development has gotten in the last couple of decades, and, in fact, there's a scene late in the movie that seems to be there solely to suggest a strategy to the little people staring into the barrels of the speculators' fountain pens. But sociopolitical outrage isn't enough to make a satisfying movie, and I suspect that many viewers will find themselves less than engaged by the subject of the film. I should also mention that the resolution of the primary plot, the disposition of the property in question, feels awfully convenient, like a deus ex machina that has more to do with wish fulfillment and happy endings than it does the reality of the situation. On reflection, it's closely tied to the established themes of history and property, and is therefore of a piece with the overall story, but it still, atypically for Sayles, feels like a sop.
Nobody makes movies like John Sayles, so each one we get, even if it lacks the narrative urgency of his best work, should be regarded as a treasure. "Sunshine State" is bursting with great performances by an amazing cast, the script is precisely efficient and well observed, and the story concerns a subject that doesn't get anywhere near the amount of attention that it should. Even so, if people feel like they'd rather not see a movie that could easily be retitled "Lessons in Real Estate," that's totally understandable.
***
101ST KILOMETER - written and directed by Leonid
Maryagin
More a collection of scenes that forms a portrait of a time and place than a coherent story, "101st Kilometer" will appeal to viewers who have a strong connection with the details of Soviet (i.e. pre-fall of Communism) society, especially on the fringes. Unfortunately, those without this connection will probably fail to be enthralled.
The title refers to the 100-kilometer circle around Moscow, the exclusion zone for those who have completed their prison sentences but are still not allowed back into the city. A strange culture has sprung up at the edge of this circle, full of malcontents and criminals who don't care about country or party. The main character is a young man who doesn't especially enjoy being stuck in his crummy little town, but has decided that as long as he's there, he might as well engage in some petty thievery in order to get by. He interacts with his stern, Party-obsessed teacher; his girlfriend, whose mother hates him; the local kingpin, who sort of takes him under his wing; and a few other thugs who loosely report to the same kingpin but still want to rough him up. Events include a couple of burglaries (one of a block of cheese the size of a side of beef), a confrontation in which the protagonist reveals he has a gun, occasional midnight meetings with the girlfriend, and so on.
It's a measure of how much familiarity with the world this film demands of its viewers that the title isn't explained until the film is almost over, and then just barely. In addition, there are few obvious clues to the time period, apart from a reference to Stalin's funeral; anyone who doesn't know much about Russian history (in which group I include myself) has to work hard to figure out when and where we are. (The biggest clue for me, oddly, was a brief clip of a Soviet-era musical that had been excerpted in the documentary "East Side Story.") The tone of the film is somber, which is appropriate given the political and economic desperation of the setting, but there are a handful of pretty good laughs, such as the bit with the portrait in front of the electrical outlet.
Narratively, the film is constructed extremely loosely. We watch a series of largely disconnected events, taking them as an broad evocation of Soviet-era despair rather than a tidy, linear storyline. After the protagonist meets his would-be attackers with gun in hand, for example, and they flee, there's no triumph or sense of victory; instead, he shambles dejectedly up the middle of the street back to his broken-down apartment, remembering to shove the gun in his pocket only when a gaggle of housewives stops and stares at him.
The shadow of Jarmusch looms large over this film. Just as his "Stranger Than Paradise" speaks most strongly to would-be hipsters of a particular New York generation, so will the slow, minimalist "101st Kilometer" connect primarily with people who either lived its reality or have an abiding interest in it. Everyone else, unfortunately, need not apply.
__________________________
