drive: controlled doses of morphine

*SPOILER ALERT*

Drive: (2011. dir: Nicolas Winding Refn) Drive is ridiculously seductive, nearly impossible to resist, even if you sit there cognizant of the dishonesty lurking at its heart while you watch, even then, resistance is very nearly futile. It begins well, with good lines, an enigmatic, slowly emerging and engaging situation, and with an early nod to Vanishing Point.

Its style is so flawlessly smooth and unimpeachable and cool and jazzy that one doesn't even notice the flaws in story or short-comings of character development; one floats easily along in the effortless current Winding Refn provides.

Its palette is Teal-and-Orange, that omnipresent pairing of puke-colors which seems to be irrestible to production designers these days. (Read about the hideousness here, and join the resistance.) This is, in fact, the Teal-and-Orangest movie I've ever seen, and we've all seen a lot lately, haven't we? It's an absolutely shameless color design, almost to the point of inspiring sardonic admiration, a downright fascistically duo-chromatic piece.

Although this director is relatively new to Hollywood, Drive seems to be full of Hollywood in-jokes, such as the presence of a skilled and savage killer who began as a movie producer. Certainly the scene in which the Driver stages an act of brutality in a room encircled by naked, impassive women must be some kind of in-joke, particularly the lingering shot of a deadly hammer held quivering at his hip-level so that it seems to hover in front of a naked breast. Either it's funny or it's some graphic-novel shade of misogynist nutso (see Vampires review for further rant, below).

It is a great pleasure to see Albert Brooks again, finally manifesting the full complement of humor and darkness which has always played just underneath his facade, and Bryan Cranston is fantastic as the Driver's wrecked and doomed mentor. A lesser actress than Carey Mulligan might have been disastrous in the girl-role, but the girl-role is unworthy of Carey Mulligan.

Part of the impeccable style rises up from short-cut scenes, which leave you with an Impression, while avoiding any messy descent into emotional depth. This style is made entirely of perfectly-deployed and cool distancing devices, in fact, which is what makes such a horrifically violent film so sugary-sweet to swallow. In one of only three or four scenes in which we actually witness a conversation of any emotional depth, this one between the Driver and the long-time mentor who has unwittingly betrayed him, a sort of "I coulda-been-a-contender" moment, Winding Refn lifts us in and out of it, cutting away and back, very gently dropping us out of the scene and back into it so that we... well, so we don't get too upset. So we don't get too emotionally involved. He uses audio in the same way, uses it like a great master, sometimes to build tension, as in the scene where the sound of a stopwatch ticking in silence becomes very nearly unbearable. Mostly, though, he uses it like exact dosages of morphine, so that (for instance) a well-placed, hypnotic song lifts you just far enough above an ugliness that you are untroubled by it.

The film "feels" a little like Soderbergh's hypnotic the Limey and a little like 2010's the American, that George Clooney euro-esque existenz-noir, both of which were probably inspired by le Samourai and those old existential gems from the '60s. I prefer the American to this, largely because it was not so exquisitely controlled, and both the script and the actors were given some room to breathe and move around, with questions raised and left hanging, allowing the coldness of space between characters a very palpable influence.

Still, if you're going to exert iron-fisted control, do it with the mastery that Winding Refn does here. There's a shot, an absurd shot, really, but so brazen I cannot resist it: the Driver has just taken his full plunge into the violence which will subsume him by killing two thugs who have been sent to a motel room to take him out. In the silence amidst the carnage afterwards, his face gore-slimed, he looks around a corner for an extended moment, then slowly backs into the shadow, then around so he disappears, inch by inch, behind the door jamb. It is an absurdly obvious visual metaphor, yet, as is so much of this film, almost euphorically enjoyable.

Winding Refn's last film, Valhalla Rising, seduced me utterly, largely with its use of music and sound, and also, of course, with the ineffable Mads Mikkelsen. In that film, I bought the violence: it seemed he caught the physical heaviness of brutality without flinching but also without overemphasizing it. Drive is a horse of s different color, its exploding heads and gratuitous acts of cruelty pushed to cartoonish extremes, which in itself is a distancing device of another stripe. If you convince us to laugh at the violence, we will not feel its brunt.

maximilian schell-fest: evening four

St Ives: (1976. dir: J. Lee Thompson) A Philip Marlowe story, but about a different guy and set in a later Los Angeles. Charles Bronson is Ray St. Ives, a down-and-out crime-writer with a penchant for backing losing football teams. He takes a typically Marlowe gig: acting as go-between when a rich fellow needs to buy sensitive personal items back from a thief. Then he starts getting framed for murders, and beat up by thugs (in this case, Robert Englund and a very young Jeff Goldblum as a wide-eyed, first-time offender). The story probably doesn't stand up to scrutiny, but the twists are enjoyable. Jacqueline Bissett is badly cast, her talents largely wasted on this femme fatale, and Schell is the rich fellow's shrink who winds up, like everyone else, being both more and less than he appears. A highly enjoyable waste of time.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Vampires: (1998. dir: John Carpenter) A throughline of easy blues acts as rigging to episodes of intense brutality and the kind of half-baked misogyny which generally only springs up from the world of graphic novels, although this one seems to have found that pubescent level on its own. James Woods is the Catholic Church's chief Vampire Slayer in America, and the bulk of his team gets wiped out early on by a rogue Master. The verbiage and wisecracking are akin to tough-guy, less clever Buffy; the slaying is uglier and messier to clean up. The acting is good, especially Sheryl Lee as a hooker who takes a bite early and spends most of the film in bondage to one of the Baldwin brothers while she's making the transition. Graphic novel romance is often like this: stunning babe winds up with the guy who inhabits a space further down the food-chain because she is brutalized, tortured, and forced into love, all for her own good. Schell is the presiding Cardinal, and, as always in Hollywood horror films, any Catholic holding the office of Bishop or higher is always in league with the Devil, or, anyway, working against the good of mankind. (Seriously. Check it out. Always happens.) I suppose Schell took the job because he has a seriously creepifying moment towards the end where he gets to rejoice in his bland, cold evilness. The best I can say about it is that it's not the worst vampire movie I've ever seen: the music is invigorating and the palette is rich and warm.

Heidi: (1968. dir: Delbert Mann) Apparently Julia was not the first Schell movie I ever saw, after all. Apparently I was watching him play Heidi's amiable Uncle Richard from a time before my memory fully reaches. How could I forget this? That little paraplegic girl, abandoned and dragging herself across the face of an Alp? I would think that would have scarred me, made me mistrust adults entirely (and, now I think of it, maybe it did and I JUST DON'T REMEMBER. How disturbing is that?). I don't recall the book, but this film seems to be a message about how all of our troubles, even being crippled and wheelchair-bound, are self-inflicted, and with sufficient mental prowess, strength of will, and societal cooperation, all can be overcome. It sounds like a Nazi thing when I say it that way, either Nazi or New Age. In any case, it's not much of a film, in spite of Schell, Michael Redgrave, and Jean Simmons; the kids are too simple and the adults exist solely as foil and help-meet to the young 'uns. The only bit I really enjoy is the piece of class-obstructed love story between Schell and Simmons' governess, played with dignity and restraint on both parts. The scenes in which they acknowledge their awkward feelings, then backpedal miserably in order to save face, are sweet and, alas, never satisfactorily resolved, because the kids' issues take precedence.

(Read about the "Heidi Football Game Controversy" on Wikipedia.)

maximilian schell-fest: evening three

The Deadly Affair: (1966. dir: Sidney Lumet) What is it with John le Carre and faithless, nymphomaniac wives? This government snoop, played by James Mason, might be George Smiley under not so very different circumstances. As usual with le Carre, there's espionage afoot to be coaxed to the surface and crushed under heel by a rather ordinary, unassuming, and secretly heartbroken civil servant. This time it's communists causing mayhem in mid-'60s London, and we get to venture more than once into the thriving heart of the theatre scene in pursuit of the bad guys, running into Lynn and Corin Redgrave and David Warner en route, Lynn Redgrave in particular giving a lovely, warm turn as a committed but ditzy stage manager.

As in most le Carre, the world here is a shabby one, peopled largely by schmoes of one stripe or another struggling to find some dignity in day-to-day life and largely failing. The plot and characters are engaging, albeit slightly depressing (again, welcome to le Carre's world), and for the most part well-played (how I love Harry Andrews, this time as a patient, hard-working DCI with a menagerie in his bachelor flat, no tolerance for guesswork, and a marked tendency to nod off when between tasks). If this screenwriter had found the graceful device which last year's Tinker Tailor did, in which we never experience the heartbreaker wife directly but only through the husband's perceptions of her, the story might more readily have found its wings. As it is, the subplot of uxorious devotion and its continuing betrayal, although germane to the story at large, clunks awkwardly along the ground because le Carre's cheating wives tend to come across as wafer-thin and falsely reported, as this one does.

There is one especially wonderful piece: a climactic scene taking place in the audience during an RSC production of Edward II, in which Schell gives us a magnificent, tacit soliloquy of intensifying emotions as he figures out what to do. After that, his soft-spoken end-scene is just right.

Judgment at Nuremberg: (1961. dir: Stanley Kramer) For years I have railed against the unfairness of a world which refused to give Paul Newman his richly-deserved Oscar for the Hustler, tossing him instead a belated bone for his pale reprise in its sequel, the Color of Money. This seemed to me a plateful of contumely which no such beloved and hard-working Hollywood royalty should be forced to stomach.

Although I still love that performance, I have suffered my moment of revelation while watching Nuremberg for the first time in many years, and for the first time in its entirety. Schell's Oscar-seizing performance as the brilliant defense counsel for the Nazi judges inhabits an area just short of stunning, particularly in its context. Imagine, if you will, a huge studio venture starring Spencer Tracy, Marlene Dietrich, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, and Judy Garland. Imagine going to the cinema to see it on its release. Now imagine the shock of seeing, against the backdrop of this collection of Hollywood's Eminences Grises (all accomplished to the point of greatness, but in that comfortable, studio manner), a performance, delivered in a language not his own, with such intelligence, exactness of gesture and spontaneity of expression as Schell gives here. It must have knocked the Academy sidelong, and suddenly it looks like a gesture of uncharacteristic honesty, lauding the new European kid on the block over our own beloved blue-eyed boy.

I left Montgomery Clift off the list because the scene in which Schell gently and ruthlessly dismantles his slow-witted baker's assistant is one of the most painful you'll ever see, and that's due as much to Clift's spontaneous gestures of vulnerability as to Schell's easy mastery. My favorite scene, though, occurs not in the courtroom but in an antechamber: Lancaster's prisoner has declared he will make a self-damaging statement and his lawyer has this one chance to talk him out of it. Schell's monologue is a perfect blend of emotional honesty and the lawyer's tendency to histrionicize, and I think I will never tire of it.

Kramer is already playing with the extreme camera moves which will make Ship of Fools so visually striking, using slow pans behind characters and the occasional quick zoom to arresting effect. The way he reveals Dietrich in her final scene is perfect, and the moment in which, after extended and stubborn silence, Lancaster rises in the courtroom to demand, "Are we going to do this again?" is one of the greats in cinema.

horror double feature: outcast and the wicker tree

Outcast: (2010. dir: Colm McCarthy) A fascinating story (with very good actors, including Kate Dickie and James Nesbitt) about a war of magicks between Irish gypsies in Edinburgh. It allows sufficient ambiguity to power the "alleg'ree", but you never feel the filmmakers are cheating by not knowing the answers to their own questions. It is set in a modern slum, a world of some ugliness emphasized both by the palette of browns and oranges used and by the abuse of the camera, which never, poor thing, gets set down to do its work properly. I suppose all the fancy camera-tricks were meant to flash up the low-budget aspects, and it's not the worst cinematography I've ever seen, but I'm taking up a collection to send this guy a tripod anyway.

Because of the strangeness of it, its boldness of story, that and the quality of the acting, I recommend it in spite of its flaws.

the Wicker Tree: (2011. dir: Robin Hardy) I was so looking forward to it, and it is so beyond dreadful. Looking back, who can put a finger exactly on what it was that made the original Wicker Man great? It is very nearly stuck in low-budget camp, and yet it survives as a true classic of horror filmmaking. This one is not fit to hold its elfen boots. This one is like some hippie renaissance faire gone awry. This one is crap.

Where is the tension? There is none. The first held us in its grip because our innocent wayfarer placed himself out of the best intentions in a place of increasing eeriness which began to tighten around him vice-like until he was crushed by it. This one places a pair of rather incredible innocents (a newly Born Again Texan couple: she is a famous country singer, recently shed of her previously sluttish image and now squeaky clean, he is a charming cowboy who still drinks without guilt but has sworn chastity until marriage) in a grim situation which we all understand from the outset, and the tension is supposed to come of watching them rise into the horror of comprehension, but it doesn't. The initial misstep is that they are there not to solve a crime but to bring souls to Jesus, a mission that is treated by both filmmaker and nouveau-Summerislanders (reset in the Scottish village of Tressock) with a sort of amused pity from the get-go, and so we are discouraged from relating to these already barely tenable lead characters.

Because we go in with pre-knowledge of its destination, the movie's best hope, really, is to charm us with the pleasure of the company of those natives, and this the script does not allow. The characters are loosely and blandly written, and so the gorey set-pieces do not touch us in that visceral place for which they are aiming. Honeysuckle Weeks's pale and thin hetaira is beggared in comparison with Britt Ekland and the dance which inspired a thousand wet-dreams, the plot is convoluted without being particularly interesting, Christopher Lee is in it for maybe thirty seconds (part of an inane flashback), and we, Hardy's Once-Hopeful Audience, are left adrift in an ever-expanding wake of disappointment.