Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a look at the little secondary fest that follows up the big ol' Telluride. This one is called Telluride By The Sea that plays a few of the more popular hits from the biggie a few weeks after Telluride. This review is from a person who attended the fest and decided to chime in on CAPOTE (sounds awesome), Neil Jordan's BREAKFAST ON PLUTO and Stuart Gordon's Mamet adaptation starring William H. Macy called EDMOND. Enjoy the reviews!
Harry,
Did you know there are actually two Telluride film festivals?
The famous one happens on Labor Day weekend in Telluride, Colo., with 25 new films this year and the requisite hoopla of celebrities, tributes and retrospectives.
Then there’s the little-known Telluride by the Sea, a late September coda that plays in New England – more precisely, the oceanside community of Portsmouth, N.H. (Telluride’s co-founder Bill Pence and his wife, Stella, make their home there.)
Now in its seventh year, Telluride by the Sea (TbtS) is an established event, a special six-film weekend the Pences share publicly with local film aficionados. (The community of Portsmouth itself could bestow a little more civic dignity, however. The powers-that-be in the small city permitted a rinky-dink bicycle race to close the venue’s surrounding streets on Sunday. That dubious decision made TbtS a cultural island at its charming Music Hall theater location.)
TbtS’ movies this year played in this order: director Neil Jordan’s “Breakfast on Pluto,” the David Mamet-written “Edmond,” “Capote” with Philip Seymour Hoffman, the Palestinian-made “Paradise Now,” the Holocaust-steeped “Fateless” and the French mystery “Caché.”
Now here are a few caveats: Most of these films won’t open until months from now. You won’t find them likely at a multiplex. You won’t see them on cable TV or at most DVD outlets. So find an urban art screen and pay attention when these limited-promotion movies play. Otherwise, thank God (or some requisite deity) for Netflix!
And a final caveat: one of these films produced a by-God (or, again, some requisite deity), palpable, truly audible, audience gasp of shock and horror. (You’ll never reasonably determine which one, though.)
(For the sake of length, the reviews will be separated into two posts.)
Friday night: “Breakfast on Pluto”
Neil Jordan’s latest is a completely Irish story, a labor of love spoken (at times) in undecipherable dialect. (There’s some charming subtitles, but they won’t really help!)
“Breakfast on Pluto” is a bit like Lemony Snicket for the GLBT-friendly set – the joyful journey of an Irish transvestite blissfully coming of age (if never quite wholly maturing). Only hardened homophobes will object to this crowd-pleaser. From author Patrick McCabe’s novel, Jordan weaves the fairy tale-like chapters of a young protagonist’s light-hearted adventures with serious depictions of parental abandonment, personal identity, sexual awareness, Catholic repression, social stigma and IRA terror. (No time period is specified, but the events and popular period music point to the early 1950s through the mid to late 1970s.)
“Breakfast on Pluto” is populated with the able likes of Liam Neeson, Stephen Rea and Brendan Gleeson – as well as a surprise turn by a famous singer! – but the acting begins and ends with a tremendous central performance by Cillian Murphy. As Patrick “Kitten” Brady, Murphy is flamboyant as all get-out, yet fetchingly beguiling.
Kitten is in nearly every scene of the 135 minutes of “Breakfast on Pluto,” but Murphy never seems to be acting! Of course, he is, and it’s a striking accomplishment. (For what it matters, Murphy is heterosexual and married in real life.)
According to other TbtS viewers, Murphy delivered a sinister performance in “Batman Begins.” I passed on the latest caped crusade, but Murphy has to be absolutely antipodal here, the equivalent of Dr. Niles Crane to his Dr. Jonathan Crane. His Kitten is Oscar worthy, though it’s doubtful that the Academy will recognize such a non-mainstream, probably little-to-be-seen performance.
Beyond homophobia, the innocence of this film – think “Forrest Gump” in drag – will be too sugary for some viewers to accept. Plus the movie doesn’t end so much as it just stops.
Comparisons were made to Jordan’s “The Crying Game,” “Interview with a Vampire” and “The Butcher Boy.” I found myself thinking of Jordan’s “The Miracle,” another implausible, yet enchanting picture.
If you saw Almodóvar’s “Bad Education” last year, do yourself a favor. Cleanse your palate with “Breakfast on Pluto”!
Saturday afternoon: “Edmond”
My wife loves me. I know this because, in spite of her constant distaste for the consistent work of David Mamet, she continues to sit through his movies with me.
Only this time she’s right!
“Edmond” is director Stuart Gordon’s unpleasant adaptation of Mamet’s play, a foul “meditation” on the pluses and minuses of domesticating (read: “modern feminizing”) of man. Where Mamet is as violent as he’s ever been in language and concepts, Gordon is brutally graphic. “Edmond” is certainly a stage-worthy assault on the senses. But it’s hardly a movie, and the difference between stage and screen offerings could hardly seem more stark.
In front of a small audience attuned to edgy theater, “Edmond” on stage can offer its testosterone-driven account and (eventually) thought-provoking ideas. On the screen here, however, Gordon is compelled to depict violence so gruesomely that it does a disservice to Mamet’s language. The disturbing images in “Edmond” push audience members away – literally some into the aisles and out of the movie theater in disgust!
Other than the odd humor in its early sexual forays, “Edmond” is nasty and viscerally repugnant. Bill Macy plays the Angry White Male incarnate with best hopes and worst fears. The macho bullshit is more vulgar in word and, particularly, deed than anything in this summer’s “The Aristocrats”!
Because “Edmond” is not a character piece, Gordon correctly uses a “Sin City” type of cast – Macy, Joe Mantegna, Julia Stiles, Mena Suvari, Denise Richards, Ling Bai, Debi Mazar, Dylan Walsh and (who else but) Rebecca Pidgeon – to buttress the box-office potential.
But Robert Rodriguez greatly succeeded in bringing film to the service of the graphic novel. Gordon and his collaborators turn “Edmond” the play into agitprop that alienates the very type of audience who might otherwise listen.
“Dogville” wed theater and film well last year. If only Gordon et al. had the cinematic ability to transcend a play’s limitations. Gordon doesn’t, and this ugly little movie is the result. Fortunately, other than Gordon, no one will hold it against the actors or Mamet.
Other than my wife, of course!
Early Saturday evening: “Capote”
There once was a larger-than-life literary fellow, a fey raconteur who sure could write (“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “In Cold Blood”). He may have been our modern-day Oscar Wilde, give or take that his heyday was in pre-cable TV America.
Of course, my warmer regard for the late Truman Capote doesn’t quite gibe with the makers of “Capote,” which focuses solely on the author’s actions surrounding “In Cold Blood.”
“In Cold Blood” is the genesis to the true-crime stacks at any library or book store, a genre on the wan thanks in part to Hannibal Lecter. (The banality of evil can’t compete with the banality of sequelized fictional evil.) Capote’s book tells the real-life story of two criminals set to die for the botched robbery and bloody murder of four family members in their Kansas farm home. Thanks to his previous success with “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Capote was already a star author of international renown when he decided there was literary merit to a quadruple homicide.
The highlights in “Capote” include Philip Seymour Hoffman’s acting and Bennett Miller’s directing debut.
As one of four executive producers of “Capote,” Hoffman makes a great performing judgment. He’s a fine actor who really fills the screen in this part. He’s not at the level of Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, but no actor should be held to that biopic standard. Hoffman does find the voice, charisma and personal drama that the real man possessed.
The director Miller, cinematographer Adam Kimmel, editor Christopher Tellefsen and production designer Jess Gonchor do a whale of a job in telling “Capote” as a mid-Sixties period piece. This movie is a terrific-looking production, a legitimate companion in that sense to “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Badlands.”
Miller parses the script for the necessary drama. He finds all the quiet intensity in it. There’s little, if any, musical soundtrack, and Miller relies instead on the characters and subject matter.
“Capote” doggedly follows the writer throughout his “In Cold Blood” quest. Not shown, but referenced at the end, are the remaining 20 drug- and alcohol-addled years that kept Truman Capote from ever writing anything of note again.
Still, one wonders about the intent of “Capote.” Hoffman’s portrayal may be realistic, but there’s no way to juxtapose Truman Capote’s actual charm and writing ability against the relentless presentation of such a narcissistic, dissolute, self-aggrandizing, reprehensible, manipulative scoundrel-user of people and events! Based on the movie’s quiet determination, you wonder not only about Capote the person, but also Miller the director and Hoffman the performer.
This is the limited-appeal biopic you fear your little brother or sister might tell about you. That no matter how much you achieve, someone knows something far less kind about you. And it’s credible enough to convince others to feel the same way.
“Capote” does have other fine performers – Catherine Keener as author and friend Harper Lee, Chris Cooper as the county sheriff and, especially, Clifton Collins, Jr., as the key doomed killer. Nevertheless, is “Capote” necessary? Will this be the only Truman Capote – as a lowlife in high society – that some people will ever know?
May we all have someone take a more charitable view of our existence, warts and all.
- L.P.o.P.
