Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Mr. Beaks pops up today with reviews of two smaller films that he thinks deserve your attention. Check it out:
No moviegoing year has any right to start off as sensationally as 2004 did, nor is there any excuse for cinema to collectively face plant out of the blocks as it has in 2005. In lieu of any certified, to-the-pantheon-born masterpieces on the order of ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND or KILL BILL VOL. 2, I would gladly settle for a SPARTAN or a SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD; however, up until a few weeks ago, if forced to pick through 2005’s sere crop, I’d have been reduced to exalting the B movie virtues of Florent Siri’s HOSTAGE. Laugh freely; I’m not joking.
It’s not typically the role of the summer movie season to renew one’s faith in the medium, and though it’s a tad premature to definitively declare the year saved, this May’s slate of ‘splosions is at least getting off to an auspicious start with two boldly inventive films – DALLAS 362 and BROTHERS. Though both are limited releases traveling well below the radar of behemoths like KINGDOM OF HEAVEN and THE LAST STAR WARS MOVIE EVER (WE HOPE), these pictures, crafted with uncommon skill and powered by narratives that unfurl in thrillingly unexpected ways, remind us that innovation need not be of the top-to-bottom, paradigm shifting, SIN CITY variety to capture the viewer’s imagination.
Sometimes, a simple tracking shot will do. For instance…
DALLAS 362 (w. & d. Scott Caan)
Maybe Scott Caan’s plan all along was to get us underestimating him via a succession of lunkheaded turns in films of high (OCEAN’S ELEVEN) and low (READY TO RUMBLE) pedigree so that he could shock us with the rowdy grace of his directorial debut. If so, then well played, sir. If not, then what the hell took so long, dude?
DALLAS 362 literally comes out swinging with a pool hall brawl that pays homage to MEAN STREETS while asserting Caan’s own expertise behind the camera via a brief, single steadicam take that, on its way out of the seedy establishment where the melee has just gotten underway, seemingly drifts through a wormhole to finish only several seconds later with its two main characters, Rusty (Shawn Hatosy) and Dallas (Caan), cuffed and stuffed into the rear of a police cruiser (on second thought, it’s either a single take that required a good deal of sprinting, or a cut was hidden somewhere). This cheeky defiance of time and space comes naturally to the filmmaker, who doggedly rebels against the conventional trappings of his bildungsroman narrative by flouting formal convention in a refreshingly unpretentious manner that recalls Soderbergh at his erstwhile peak. Whether innate or the result of having grown up around film sets, there’s no denying that this is a remarkable level of facility rarely seen in a first film.
After a raucous opening credit sequence done in animated black-and-white stills, Caan economically sets up the script’s major conflict; i.e. will Rusty break away from Dallas’s immature influence and quit Los Angeles to pursue a life in the rodeo? It’s a decision further complicated by Rusty’s mother, Mary (Kelly Lynch), who refuses to let her son take up the very profession that tragically killed his father. These conflicting impulses are bewildering enough to land Rusty in therapy with a shrink named Bob (Jeff Goldblum), who’d be an ideal confidant if he wasn’t working pro bono on account of screwing Rusty’s mother, a fact candidly acknowledged by all three parties.
This only leads to more aimlessness, which strands Rusty with plenty of time to kill in the company of Dallas, who moonlights as muscle for The Bear (Heavy D), a mysterious, reclusive and, most importantly, loaded mobster. Dallas’s work detail necessitates several hugely entertaining drop-ins on Christian (Val Lauren), a massively high-strung compulsive gambler who ascribes his wagering incompetence to a conspiracy spearheaded by “the heartless college quarterbacks”. Understandably, Dallas is tiring of shaking down such lowlifes, so, when a chatty speed freak (Isla Fisher) with whom he’s hooked up for a one night stand blabs on and on about her roofer boyfriend’s plans to knock over a local schmuck who keeps huge stacks of cash laying all over his house… well, it’s just too lucrative a scheme to pass up. Never mind if the job sounds awfully sketchy – just shrug and accept that, as the boys are fond of saying, “It’s a whole thing”.
Whereas most rookie filmmakers would knock themselves out attempting to showcase their cleverness with a rapid succession of storytelling twists and double-crosses, the heist is barely even secondary here. Though Caan is certainly a deft hand with narrative, he’s too in love with his characters to give them over to such rote mechanics. Armed with a solid, if inchoate ear for stylized dialogue (there’s some overwriting, but that’s forgivable on a first feature), Caan develops his characters through a mix of genuinely witty banter and moments of unforced honesty ably essayed by a very skilled cast. It seems like ages since Goldblum was this fully committed to a role, while Val Lauren makes glorious tatters of the ratty scenery at every opportunity. And Hatosy turns in what is easily his most accomplished work to date, wisely underplaying off of his co-star/director’s ingratiatingly boorish title character.
Before pushing his luck with a denouement that runs one scene too long, Caan mostly avoids any significant missteps. Though occasionally too earnest for its own good, it’s the playful, offhanded style that lingers; most notably, an ingenious streamlining of heist particulars that finds Dallas splitting expository chores with his redheaded conquest as he relates his plan to Rusty. It’s a marvelously executed sequence that employs flashback and shifting perspective with the ease of a veteran filmmaker.* There’s a lot of dazzling technique crammed into DALLAS 362, but Caan’s personal connection to the story keeps it from feeling empty or ostentatious. It’s an unexpected achievement: a whole, surly, witty, heartbreakingly beautiful thing.
M.I.A. since causing a stir at the 2003 Toronto Film Festival, DALLAS 362 is at last seeing a domestic release, opening this week at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in Los Angeles. See it. Or, if you like to mix politics with the personal, maybe you’d like to try…
BROTHERS (d. Susanne Bier, w. Anders Thomas Jensen)
I went into BROTHERS expecting a melodrama dressed down in Dogme ’95 rags, a companion piece to, OPEN HEARTS, the filmmaker’s officially certified effort from two years ago. And that’s essentially what you get – that is, until the film starts exploring and exacerbating the shell-shocked psychosis of its co-lead, at which point it becomes a horrifying study of a ruined life that has only one feasible way to resolve itself.
As is the case with any tale of emotional devastation, BROTHERS is not an easy film to stomach; in fact, given the way it calculatingly lulls you into a false sense of genre security before embracing no-frills naturalism, it’s ultimately not a very easy film to like. But it’s performed and shot with such unfettered honesty, that you find yourself helplessly invested in the rising and falling fortunes of its two main characters. Ulrich Thomsen (Christian from Vinterberg’s THE CELEBRATION) plays Michael, a morally upstanding husband, father and soldier preparing for deployment in Afghanistan. On the eve of his departure, his younger brother, Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), is released from jail after serving a lengthy sentence for assaulting a female bank teller. Unconditionally loving, the older brother welcomes Jannik into his home, where he’s at first greeted indifferently by Michael’s wife Sarah (Connie Nielsen) and their two adolescent daughters, Natalia (Sarah Juel Werner) and Camilla (Rebecca Løgstrup). On the other hand, Jannik receives a chilly reception from their father, Henning (Bent Mejding), who lavishes all of his macho admiration on the brave Michael.
As the soap opera plot mechanics dictate, no sooner does Michael touch down in Afghanistan than is he shot down and presumed dead, leaving Sarah and her children plummeting into an emotional void from which only Jannik can pull them back. Gradually, Jannik wins the trust, then love of the children and, precariously, the grief-stricken Sarah, who begins to seek more than platonic solace from her brother-in-law. This is especially dangerous in light of Michael’s unbeknownst survival; consigned to a dusty POW camp with one fellow, badly frightened inmate, Michael initially proves a model of steely resolve in the face of his captors. But Michael is eventually broken, and when he is, as expected, rescued, he returns home a wobbly, conscience-plagued ghost of his former self.
What follows is an excruciating portrait of a broken man acutely overcome by survivor’s guilt, which serves as both effective character study and questionable commentary on the psychological perils of the currently in vogue interventionist philosophy. As Bier fearlessly drives toward the inevitably violent endgame, she gets up close with her camera and elicits exemplary performances from her entire ensemble. Thomsen skillfully manages the difficult segue from gentle to maniacal without ever lapsing into stock hysterics. (I’ve only seen Thomsen in films intermittently since THE CELEBRATION, and he’s so good here that it’s surprising he hasn’t made a bigger impact in the States.) Nielsen, acting onscreen for the first time in her native language, makes good on the promise shown in DEMONLOVER with what is easily her best work to date. Even the children are superlative; the oldest, Lerner, has perhaps the most affecting moment – a tense backyard encounter with her father after his first outburst that concludes with her wiping away unforced tears as she does her best to maintain a composed façade for her little sister. It’s perfectly shattering stuff.
As with DALLAS 362, this is a film that labors a bit in its final scene, though it does earn a few points for sounding a note of forgiveness without hinting at an unlikely reconciliation. Bier’s uncertainty reflects to a degree the global angst at squaring bloodshed in the name of peacekeeping and nation building – a rough paradox regardless of political orientation – especially when the cause is hazily stated and randomly prosecuted. But BROTHERS is not an overtly political film; it is, instead, an admirable, post-Dogme attempt at naturalistic melodrama that finds in the familiar a germ of truth.
BROTHERS opens this Friday in New York City at Lincoln Plaza and the Angelika, and turns up in Los Angeles on May 13th at the Nuart.
Faithfully submitted,
* It’s somewhat reminiscent of the interrogation sequence at the end of Fleischer’s THE BOSTON STRANGLER.
Thanks, Beaks. I love that trailer for DALLAS 362, so I’ll be checking the film out ASAP.
"Moriarty" out.
