Body of Lies: (2008. dir: Ridley Scott) Five full-on stars for Mark Strong; a solid two-and-a-half for the rest of the movie. Without him, it's a decent enough espionage film, well enough acted, well enough put together, that it'd be worth not changing the channel if you ran across it on TV. Throw Mark Strong into the mix as the mysterious head of Jordanian Intelligence, and you have a thing worth seeking out. Earlier this year Strong was the Crowleyesque villain in Sherlock Holmes, but that was a mere two-dimensional foil, the type a man of his skills could play blindfolded and sitting on his hands. In this one, although Scott has given him less screen-time than compadres DiCaprio and Crowe, it's a role he can run with, make something of, and Scott has photographed him remarkably well while he's doing it.
Possessed: (1947. dir: Curtis Bernhardt) Histrionics and psychobabble ensue when Joan Crawford drives herself all the way through crazy and into a coma for the love of Van Heflin. Weirdly, I think this is the first time I've ever watched a full Crawford movie from end to end. Certainly it's the first time I ever saw that she was a little bit pretty: in the beginning she's got no makeup, or very little, and there are nice features there. Later on, when she climbs back into the red-scar-mouth and helmet-haired maquillage/suit of armour, she loses her appeal again, just looking nearsighted and strident. It's a tough role and it needs something extra, something I suspect Barbara Stanwyck might have given it, while Crawford reaches for the obvious choice with every moment.
Raymond Massey is solid and appropriately unassuming as the loyal husband, and it's once again an opportunity for me to marvel at just how great Van Heflin really was. You have only to imagine, say, Robert Taylor or Clark Gable in the role of David Sutton to realize the depth and breadth Heflin gives. Anyone else would've gone too nice, too conflicted, or too cruel in the continued rejection of Crawford's clingy and hysterical Louise Howell.
How about this for a bold position? The undeniable greatness of Spencer Tracy is much ballyhooed, and I'm not denying it, but I can't think of a Tracy role that Heflin couldn't have played as well or better, and I'm including my favorite, that masterful turn in Bad Day at Black Rock. Heflin would have given us a different Macreedy, but one, I suspect, every bit as fascinating. And could Tracy have done as much with Jeff Hartnett in Johnny Eager? or even Dan Evans in 3:10 to Yuma? I have doubts, but I'm willing to be talked out of them.
>SPOILER ALERT IN EFFECT<
the Man Who Wasn't There: (2001. dir: the Coen brothers) This is what happens when a director is addicted to making films but his creative well has run temporarily dry. Lugubrious and annoying, it's like a short story stretched into novel length. No, strike that: not even a short story. It's a series of ideas, some of them interesting, some not so much, as if somebody leafed through the notepad they keep in their shirt-pocket to scribble down passing notions and chose ten or twelve at random. "We'll use the Roswell thing, and I want to parody my daughter's piano teacher, and... I don't know... oh! that thing about how a barber going to the electric chair, how the last thing he'd be thinking of was the haircuts on the people watching." It has no suspense at all, which is odd, since there are murders for which major characters might easily go down. I believe we're meant to think that conventional suspense has been sacrificed in favor of a certain existential detachment, but that's a load of bull-honky. This was a purely technical exercise, and as such ought to have been left in the desk-drawer.
The only interest it holds at all is due entirely to the Coens' technical ability, that and the high quality of actor they attract. The black-and-white is gorgeous, deep velvet, and perfectly lit, and Billy Bob Thornton's craggy face is an ideal subject for it. The details of the lost era (small-town America in the fifties) are not so much realistic as heightened, and there is a strong internal cohesion to this created world. Tony Shalhoub and Richard Jenkins are stand-outs in their bit roles... and that's about all I can think of to recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment