Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the return of Memento Man's Sundance coverage. Here he tackles BRICK, again, plus the first word on FORTY SHADES OF BLUE (which sounds typical forgetable Film Festival fodder) and THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Catherine Keener, which was one of the flicks I was most looking forward to hearing about out of what I included in my Sundance preview. I'm glad to hear it blew Memento Man away!
Here are the three films I saw today:
BRICK * * * (Rian Johnson, 2005)
Stylish teen noir. Fascinating, if not wholly successful, experiment to create a film noir set in contemporary times with high-school-aged characters. Joseph Gordon-Leavitt is Brendan Fry, the streetwise protagonist who is suddenly brought into a world of corruption when he tries to figure out who killed his old girlfriend. A wonderful use of all the classic film noir elements of style: extreme high and low angle shots, low-key lighting, the creation of subjective space of the protagonist, fragmented shots of various characters. There were also all the familiar film noir narrative conventions: a femme fatale, the head of crime organization (played by Lucas Haas), the crime boss’s thug (Noah Fleiss). The dialogue was brilliantly written, witty, street-smart dialogue right out of the noir films of the 40s (or, if you like, the pulp novels of the 20s and 30s.) The danger the film risks is in occasionally crossing the line into silliness. Hearing that street-slang dialogue from a bygone era coming out of the mouths of high school kids occasionally makes one think everybody is just sort of playing dress-up or putting on a bad high school production of GUYS AND DOLLS. Nevertheless, because of its creativity in mimicking film noir conventions and its sharp script, I was willing to forgive some of its more blatant flaws.
FORTY SHADES OF BLUE * (Ira Sachs, 2005)
Chloroform in celluloid. This film had the most walkouts of any I’ve seen in the Festival so far this year. And rightfully so. It tells the story of Laura, a Russian woman now living with the much older and quite creepy Alan. Alan cheats on her. Then Laura sleeps with Alan’s married son, Michael. Then Laura hooks up with a random man in the woods. Then . . . oh forget it. In any event, the acting was wretched (Dina Korzun, who plays Laura, could barely deliver a line), the cinematography was uninspired (how many shots can we have of the back of Laura as she walks away?), and worst of all, the film is agonizingly long. Caroline Libresco should be spanked for her blurb in the notoriously adjective-prone Sundance catalogue. She labels this mess of a film “a contemporary drama with . . . profound emotion.” She calls Dina Korzun’s performance as “riveting” and “coiled” (what? like a rattlesnake?). And she says the film confirms Sachs as “one of the most exciting voices in American cinema” (p. 22). Did she see the same film that the rest of us saw?
THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE * * * ½ (Rebecca Miller, 2005)
A rich, beautiful, and original film about Jack (Daniel Day-Lewis), a man who is raising his daughter, Rose, alone in a commune that was built on a thinly populated island of the eastern coast of the United States during a social experiment of the 60s. Now, as Jack is dying, he brings his girlfriend (Catherine Keener) and her two teenage boys into the house to be a support system for Rose. Daniel Day-Lewis gives another jaw-dropping performance in this film. You can see individual shades of thought and feeling cross his face as he experiences them. This is right up there with Joan Allen’s peformance in THE UPSIDE OF ANGER. Also very good is Camilla Belle (who was 16 years old when filming started) as Rose. THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE is a multi-layered text that, like many of Rebecca Miller’s father’s plays, offers many issues to ponder after it’s over.
This is Memento Man, signing off!
