Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I’m curious about both of these, but NORTHFORK in particular looks pretty great. Ghostboy’s a maven of indie cinema, so I trust what he’s got to say today. Check it out...
Howdy,
No time for formalities! Below you will find many many words, which have been (perhaps ingeniously?) combined to form two reviews, one of which will hopefully inspire you to spend some quality time in a theater. But I'll save that for last, because right now I'd like to discuss...
MASKED & ANONYMOUS
It would be tempting to call 'Masked And Anonymous' a truly awful film, but that would be shortchanging its bizzare appeal. This film came out of Sundance with horrible buzz, but it just sounded too weird to miss. Having now seen it, my opinion is that it is that bad, but maybe it's worth seeing just to marvel at its ridiculousness. It was directed by Larry Charles, who has done fine work behind the scenes of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' and 'Seinfeld.' I'll gently leave him out of the rest of this review and let him move on with his career.
Its chief appeal, of course, is that it stars Bob Dylan in his first non-cinema verite role. Word is that he helped out on the script too, although it is credited to some first timers named Sergei Petrov and Rene Fontaine. In any case, he esentially plays himself. His character is a once reknowned folk musician who is called upon to perform at a political benefit concert.
Also, the film takes place at an indefinite point in the future, in an unnamed country; from the logo on a banner, we learn that it is a combination of North America and Mexico. The country, which is empirical in nature, is at war with some other country, and the benefit concert is scheduled as a morale booster. If it's not clear at this point, the movie is basically a low budget combination of 'Brazil' and 'A Mighty Wind.'
There's a lot of political and social material that is clearly meant to be allegorical in nature, but it's such a random grab bag of ideas that no clear message ever emerges. By the time Ed Harris shows up in blackface, I had long since given up trying to find a point. And speaking of Ed Harris, there are a whole lot of actors in the movie, who I imagine all signed on just to be in a movie with Bob Dylan (I mean, wouldn't you?). They include Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Jessica Lange, Luke Wilson, Mickey Rourke, Val Kilmer. There really isn't any point to having such a huge cast, and since the camera constantly takes delight in pointing each new actor out to us as they appear, their presence becomes distracting. Maybe the satire would be more obvious if we weren't thinking, "Hey look, it's Christian Slater and Chris Penn! Together at last!"
Dylan himself does a fine job playing Bob Dylan. There is no attempt to distance his character from his persona; this is amplified by the numerous classic Dylan tunes on the soundtrack, some of which he performs onscreen in several musical interludes. Perhaps it's supposed to effectively blur the line between fiction and reality, but, well, too late. I was also concerned (but mostly amused) by the fact that Dylan is clearly at least as old as the actor who plays his father.
There are seeds of good films here, scattered about. I wasn't really bored by the film, and every now and then I laughed where I was supposed to, or nodded with interest at a certain idea. Sometimes - maybe once or twice - I even was tempted to think I was missing something and that the film was in fact brilliant. This possibility was negated, however, by the last line in the film, spoken by Dylan. When you hear it, the whole thing will at long last make sense - although I'm not quite sure that was the point of it.
But what I REALLY want to tell you about is...
Northfork
'Northfork,' the new film from the Polish Brothers, is an ephemeral piece of work. It's an accumulation of ideas and themes and images that feel as if their cohesion was almost an accident; that the filmmakers had these fleeting little notions and concepts and they followed their instinct and plucked them out of whatever creative realm they were born from and turned them into a movie.
The lesson, then, would be this: trust your instincts. 'Northfolk' is an astounding tale that is set in on earth but seems to exist a few steps north of reality. It takes place in 1955, and it's title is the name of the small Montana town in which it takes place, a town which is about to be flooded to make way for a new hydroelectric dam. An Evacuation Committee is in charge of making sure all the remaining citizens are sent on their way to higher ground. Some of the people, however, don't want to go.
This antediluvian storyline runs parallel to another one, in which a little boy (newcomer Duel Farnes), abandoned by his adopted parents, lays dying in bed, under the care of the local priest, Father Harlan (Nick Nolte). In his fevered state begins to see angels. These aren't traditional angels, though; they have no wings or halos, at least not anymore. Instead, they have cowboy hats and wigs and safety pins and wooden hands. There are four of them: Cup Of Tea (Robin Sachs), Happy (Anthony Edwards), Flower Hercules (Darryl Hannah) and Clod (Ben Foster). They live in a house on the Montana plains, watched over by a strange dog that stronly resembles the elephants Salvador Dali was fond of drawing. The boy tries to convince him that he is the lost member of their flock, and indeed, he has scars on his back where wings may have once been removed.
But it is only a dream, and in reality he is still dying, just like the rest of the town. The overall theme of the movie seems to be death, and how to deal with it. Plenty of folks are hanging on for dear life; one man has nailed his feet to his front porch, and another has turned his house into an ark. The Evacuation Committee do their best to get these stragglers to safety, often to no avail. Two of them, a father and son team played by James Woods and Mark Polish, are also torn over whether or not they should dig up their dead matriarch and take her with them when they leave.
The story is based loosely on true events; many small Midwestern towns were flooded as hydroelectric power became prevalent. Mark and Michael Polish have taken the idea and used it as the basis for an ascent into magical realism, a sort of American fairy tale. The script, written by both brothers (echoing the Coens, Michael gets directing credit, but one senses that their films are joint efforts), is slow and contemplative, and full of equal parts melancholy and melancholic humor, but it is in the images that the film truly lifts off (so to speak). From the film's first shot, in which a coffin surfaces in a vast body of water, to the huge ark propped up on the countryside. My favorite occurs early on; Nolte preaches to his congregation in a chapel that is missing a back wall, and a heard of livestock can be glimpsed running across the windswept plains behind him as he speaks.
As you watch the film, keep in mind that everything you see is real. There are no computer enhancements or trick photography. The widescreen cinematography by M. David Mullen, which renders the entire film in bleached shades of gray, is by itself a special effect. I've been astonished quite a bit lately by visuals in films, ranging from the editing of 'The Hulk' to the one continuous shot of Russian Ark;' continuing that trend, the Polish brothers have supplied us with images here that I'll never forget. Some critics might bandy about terms like 'trite' or 'heavy-handed,' but I'd suggest that they're automatically invalidated by the film's sincerity.
Aside from Nolte (who both brothers acted with in 'The Good Thief') and Woods (who also produced), the cast includes Kyle MacLachlan, Claire Forlani and Peter Coyote, among others. There are no flashy roles, and many of the parts are merely walk-ons that blend in with the muted scenery. This was clearly a labor of love for the cast, and for everyone else involved, and it shows. The budget was less than two million; somehow, the Polish Brothers and their crew used it to make something that feels like it has no limits.
Apparently their next project is a science fiction epic for Warner Brothers. I'm officially hyped - let's hope it doesn't go the way of 'The Fountain' - and with that, I'm outta here.
Ghostboy
Thanks, man. I’ll try to get that SPY KIDS 3-D review of yours up later today or tomorrow.
"Moriarty" out.
