Behind the Candelabra

Stephen Soderbergh’s putative swan song, Behind the Candelabra, is like an Old Testament prophet’s rage against the vanity, corruption and futility of his smug, affluent society. As he’s dying of AIDS, Liberace (Michael Douglas) seems like a memento mori. Shrunk to a skull, his head seems too small for his body, as if fleeing it. As Soderbergh retells the memoir of Liberace’s young lover Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) his recurring theme is the human failure behind the star’s sparkling success. 

That’s the point of the title. Liberace’s signature candelabra denotes wealth, brilliance, flash, glamour, romance. The film exposes the darkness that pretense can’t dispel. Liberace is an artist who no longer plays for pleasure but for professional performance. He is cashing in on his undoubtable -- but trivialized -- skills. What emotions he pretends to are similarly turned into routines, like the loneliness and pathos by which he seduces his continuing diet of young studs. This indulgence proves fatal. 

Even his gushing love for his mother (Debbie Reynolds) proves false when her death leaves him feeling “free.” When Soderbergh doesn’t show Scott’s visit to his foster mother’s funeral he leaves open the degree to which even his most private emotions have been contaminated by his generous patron. That generosity is exposed to be a selfish form of dominance, an oblique way for the open-handed, closed-hearted giver to really take instead. This is especially true when Liberace forces Scott to undergo plastic surgery to make him look like the “son” he promises to legally make him. The supposed gift of adoption continues the enslavement Liberace felt from his mother.

Of course Liberace’s candelabra is intended to show him off to his advantage. His life is a matter of performance, not feeling, of fakery. His entourage bristles with barely concealed animosities and suspicions. The onstage performance spreads into his private life, with the keyboard replaced by the key players in his private life.

The harshest scenes in this exposure are the plastic surgery the stoned Dr Jack Startz (Rob Lowe) performs on Liberace, to smooth over his aging, and on Scott, to smooth over his difference from Liberace. The gruesome slicing and blood are from another world than Liberace’s glitter, the most dramatic reminder of the grim reality behind the candelabra. (Incidentally, these scenes recall the brilliant horror in Michael Rubbo’s unforgettable documentary, Portrait of Daisy, a film well worth hunting down).

For an Old Testament prophet’s fervid sermon the film offers some revelatory pleasures.  Both lead performances are brilliant, as are the supports by Reynolds, Lowe, Paul Reiser, Dan Aykroyd. The candid treatment of the characters‘ homosexuality is a welcome reminder of the healthy shift in the culture’s understanding of it. The central gay lovers are played by two certified Hollywood hetero studs. Reiser also plays his lawyer against his (comic) persona, Lowe his stoner hedonist in extension of his own. These are genuine performances that bring life to a fiction, in contrast to this Liberace's selfish theatricalization of his life and emotions.     

Iron Man 3

If you look past (i) Robert Downey’s quirky charm as narrator and as ironic hero, and -- this is even harder -- (ii) the spectacular noise of the sci-fi technology and its massive destruction, then Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 is a handy summary of current currents of American paranoia. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. As has been noted, the price of liberty is eternal belligerence. Pointedly, Stark’s new armour shell -- a red white and blue homage to Captain America -- is named The Iron Patriot (originally one name of Spider Man’s nemesis). When the kidnapped President Ellis (William Sadler) is carried off in the Iron Patriot suit one flashes back to soldier President George W. Bush in his Mission Accomplished photo-op. 

The plot interweaves a host of American anxieties: freelance terrorists, the radical global mass murder organization, the oil spills and the political system that defends them, the dread empowerment of women, the infiltration of federal government by self-serving traitors, fatherless children who turn to weapons and charismatic leaders, and the apparently unstoppable seduction of innocence and idealism by which every technological advance breeds a new weaponry. In the face of all this, this Iron Man is still the super-powerful -- both in intellect and wealth -- force but here debilitated by self-doubt, even anxiety attacks. He’s so insecure that his security head Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), promoted from bodyguard, after a few scenes of efficiency spends the rest of the film in a coma. As Hogan is played by the director of the earlier Iron Man films, Stark is left unprotected by not just his guard but his earlier maker.

There are two key battles in this seemingly nonstop cataclysm. After Stark challenges the vile Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) by publicly announcing his own Malibu home address, the villains destroy the house and apparently all its sci-fi tech. (Really, Stark’s gadgetry is still ahead of the neighbour’s top-line Lexus. Unbelievable.)  In the climactic blow up Stark seems doomed by the self-regenerating Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce). The hero prevails by unleashing from the depths below his destroyed mansion an army of robot Iron Man replicants. The suit he used to fill can operate empty, with his direction. They’re humanoid drones. Summoned from the deep, they’re emblems of his subconscious, figurations of his will. In an entertaining nod to world peace, Stark has them blow themselves up after the major battle is over. Come peace we won’t need weapons. Yeah, right. 

The villain’s arch power is to turn the physically disadvantaged (what we politically incorrect used to call cripples) into self-regenerating superpowers. He wins over Vice-president Roderiguez (Miguel Ferrer), who has a one-legged little daughter whom he could thus empower. This replays the assumption that global terrorism is rooted in the frustrations of the disadvantaged, whether physical, economic or societal. That may be reassuring but it flies in the face of the fact that so many recent terrorists -- from Ben Laden to the Boston bombers -- have left lives of full comfort and advantage.

As the virtuous hold back, anxious, the evil forces regenerate themselves (as Al Qaeda survived the loss of its ostensible head, Ben Laden). In this science the villains can grow new limbs and reunite their severed parts, threatening an eternity of recomposing villains. Yes, like the endless sequels of action hero flicks. Exactly.

The Mandarin is a short Ben Laden with a wispy beard, hooded robe and calculated mystique.  But he’s actually a false front, a British actor (whose Lear was the toast of Croydon), cast to deliver stentorian threats on highjacked TV. Ben Laden goes to Oz. Stark dismisses him as Sir Laurence Oblivion. The real villain is Killian, a brilliant blond scientist still resentful that Stark disdained him at their first encounter. 

The two women are Stark’s long-suffering blonde live-in Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), his dark-haired Ex, who betrays Stark and Potts in hopes of recruiting him to Killian’s cause. Neither are passive characters. Hansen led the discovery of self-regeneration. Pepper survives a plunge into a fiery death  by herself becoming briefly robotized. Like Stark and his sidekick Colonel James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), Potts is made vulnerable by sensitivity but turned into steel by the flying armour. Stark, of course, is electromagnetic from the schrapnel in his heart (from another movie). His acerbic wit and detached air are like that steeled heart. But even he runs out of wit: After Pepper saves his life he admits “I got nothin’.”

Mud

Jeff Nichols’ Mud is a very traditional boys’ story. The young boy who encounters a mysterious dangerous adult recalls figures as diverse as Magwitch and Long John Silver. The friendship between the two 14-year-olds who freely explore the Arkansas swamp evoke Huck and Tom. Typically, the self-reliant boys can seem more mature than the rascally men. 

In fact the film parallels several forms of male relationbship. Young Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) are two very distinct characters, with an obviously close bond. Tom Blankenship (Sam Shepard) was a surrogate father to Mud (Matthew McConaughey) but their close friendship is resurrected once Mud finally gives up on Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), his unfaithful passion. 

Domestically, Neckbone is raised by his laddish uncle Galen (Michael Shannon). Ellis grows closer to his taciturn father Senior (Ray McKinnon) when his mother Mary Lee (Sarah Paulson) decides to leave the ramshackle waterboat she grew up in and move up to town. The dark side of male bonding is the vigilante gang that King (Joe Don Baker) hires to kill Mud, to avenge the murder of his son. He loses his other son in the process. In contrast, Mud and Tom sail off into the unlimited sea at the end.

The film’s central symbol is the old boat stranded high in a tree. It begins as an image of something out of its element, something left high and dry, stranded. That’s how Mud feels from Juniper’s betrayals (a juniper is a tree and he’s stuck in the mud below, until he sails off with Blankenship) and how Ellis feels from his capricious treatment by his first “girlfriend,” the slightly older May Pearl (Bonnie Sturdivant), whose name evokes both freshness and the treasures for which Galen dives to the deep oyster beds. This film is not very casual with its metaphors. 

The film has a captivating sense of place, especially in the young boys’ carefree and confident exploration their neighborhood waters. They’re in their element, so they’re able to help find what Mud needs when he’s stranded on the island. (His name suggests a meld of their water and his island of earth.) 

As Ellis in particular moves out of his boy’s world into the man’s -- i.e., meets girls and becomes interested in love, enough to serve Mud’s and Juniper’s  -- he loses that confidence and control (like the treed boat). Like Mud, his first jealousy prompts him to punch his rivals. He may be tempted to give up on love. He witnesses Galen’s frustrated girlfriend’s revolt, his father’s insensitivity to Mary Lee, and is disillusioned by Juniper’s infidelity. Fortunately  Mud teaches him -- by words if not example -- not to lose faith in women or in love. The film closes on Ellis confidently smiling at the girl in the new neighborhood. The river rat has moved into the townies’ territory but Ellis’s recent experience has prepared him to succeed. His new t-shirt matches the colours and lines of his tenement bricks. He’s moved into a new world but he’s no longer a fish out of water, or a boat in a tree. Like that boat, a good man suffer his heartbreak but will plunge back into the swim of things.

Still Mine

If you haven’t seen Michael Haneke’s Amour (see blog below), then Michael McGowan’s Still Mine will prove a very good film. Craig (James Cromwell) and Irene (Genevieve Bujold) are solid New Brunswick octogenarians confronting their looming senescence together. 

But if you have, this film will seem thinner -- in the rhythm, the performances, the harshness it confronts, the stiffness of the dialogue, the depth of the films‘ respective ellipses, and in its framing of the narrative in social satire -- ooh, that nasty bureaucracy -- rather than in Haneke’s more sweeping depths of personal responsibility. Even allowing for her fading memory, Irene is marginalized in the film,  undeveloped, especially in contrast to the Emmanuele Riva role in Amour. Irene's relations with her children are omitted altogether.

Still, it’s a beautiful, moving film. Much is in the opening shot. In close up we see the grizzled rheumy old man’s hands fumble to fix his tie, an unaccustomed formality. The couple is defined by their hands. While Irene is still connected to reality she gardens. Craig caresses the pew, the harvest table he built her, and spends much of the film exulting in his carpentry as he builds her a small, more serviceable house -- against the local regulations. 

The title resonates: his skills are still his, his will and courage are still his, and he marshalls all he has to retain the responsibility to care for his wife. In the last shot she’s out of touch, fumbling with the scissors as she plans and plans again to trim his hair. With Irene unexplored, even the film is still his.

When the hero bursts into tears at his friend’s funeral we get a rare moment of uncertainty, an emotion not entirely explained. Is he grieving for the fate racing towards his wife and himself or because he didn’t get a chance to correct his anger at his friend, to thank him for having brought in the press’s support of his cause? Otherwise everything is spelled out, even to the happy ending apparently still required this side of the Atlantic.

The Great Gatsby (2013)

     After all the reviews to the contrary, I was surprised to find Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby to be (i) an inventive yet faithful adaptation of the narrative, themes and values of the original novel; and (ii) a responsible, meaningful use of 3-D.

     The working title of Citizen Kane, The American, could also apply to the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Like Jay Gatsby (nee Gatz), Welles’s American pursues an incorruptible dream through a sordid world and retains some purity, and achieves immense power but remains ultimately helpless. As Gatsby Leonardo DiCaprio plays an Orson Welles raffishness. He introduces himself with a Harry Lime smile. Like the typical Welles hero, e.g., Kane, Quinlan, Falstaff, Lime, he’s a dreamer whose very success prevents his satisfaction. Gatsby and Kane both begin as poor mid-West folk who achieve great wealth and power but fail to find their peace. Daisy (Carey Mulligan) is another Rosebud. (Luhrmann's 3-D grows out of Welles's deep-focus, but more on that later.)

     Luhrmann’s key change is to have the film’s narrator Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) write the story as therapy back home in a mid-West sanitarium. The lines of handwritten text and the floating letters of the alphabet reiterate the film’s literary source. The clinical setting is justified because Carraway does say he was maddened by his anger at the carelessness of the people around him. As it diagnoses modern life as a destructive fever, the story suits a rehab center.The device also evokes Shakespeare’s line, life being a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. 

     The 3-D amps up that sound and fury to a raucous vacuity and luxurious apathy. The roaring 20s reflect very well upon our whimpering post-meltdown teens. Most obviously, the power of the new 3-D celebrates a technical advance, like Gatsby’s supercharged yellow Rolls Royce, without its destructive end. But it works for more than that. For one thing, the depth becomes a perfect means to expose the partying horde’s shallowness. With so many people and so much luxury crammed into a frame the self-absorbed hedonists shrink into anthills.

     The 3-D serves other purposes. It quietly confirms the uncrossable gap between Gatsby’s new mansion and his dream Daisy’s, her emblematic green light seeming to flash Go but really saying Stop. In the early party scenes the camera swooping down and across from on high shrinks the humans but also implicitly suggests a god’s eye view, a higher judgement. That connects to the old optician’s billboard of the eyeglasses staring out on the coal-hell and the maddened mechanic’s murderous confidence that God sees all, which itself recalls Gatsby’s childhood sense of himself as an omnipotent son of God.

     3-D is offered as an advance in realism but it’s not. Our eyes don’t see depth in real life as extreme as a 3-D shot presents it. Rather it’s another form of expressionism, which is to say it tilts toward psychological rather than physical realism. In long and middle shots 3-D shrinks the human figure. So for the most intimate scenes Luhrmann skips the 3-D pizzazz in favour of a closeup. As the lady committed to profound shallowness says, large parties are intimate; there’s no privacy in small ones. 

The Company You Keep

The last shot of Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep is a long view of the hero Nick Sloan (Redford) reuniting with his 11-year-old daughter and explaining how he had to run away to clear up a 30-year-old charge that --  as a radical in the Weather Underground -- he murdered a security guard in a bank robbery. The two stand between two lines of trees, in a quiet enclave beside the rush of traffic. We see him explaining and her reacting but we don’t hear a word. Of course the explanation would be redundant. We know it from the action. But prolonging that unheard conversation confirms the film’s respect for privacy.

Two characters grow up through the course of the film. The first is the young reporter Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf). In a clear echo of Redford’s role as Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men, the journalist’s investigation uncovers sensational secrets. Climactically, Shepard learns from Sloan’s advice that for a journalist as for a true revolutionary it is vital to understand your motive. So the journalist who has stomped on Sloan’s brother’s privacy and embarrassed his FBI agent ex-girlfriend kills his expose of the retired sheriff’s adopted daughter’s real parents. This salutary reticence may be an implicit criticism of Woodward's self-aggrandizement after his Watergate triumph.

The second is Mimi Lurie (Julie Christie), the actress reviving her persona as the dream girl of freedom from her debut, Billy Liar, on through Darling, Tess and Don't Look Now. Unlike the now domesticated rebels, Mimi still fights the system -- though now her idealism is reduced to smuggling drugs. That undermines her claim that the present political corruption and violence requires their revolution more than ever. When she decides to turn herself in to save Sloan it’s because she has grown up -- as Sloan hoped she had. She has shaken the simple notion that she has to assert her own liberty and realizes her generation’s overriding responsibility is to their children’s. When Sloan remarks “We’ve become our parents,” that’s a virtue that his younger self would have disdained. Now he understands that the most important objective is to improve the next generation’s life instead of selfishly asserting their own.

That’s also the point in the first rebel who decides to turn herself in, Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon). She waited till her children were old enough to understand but not too old ... perhaps, for their relationship to survive serving her sentence.

With the exception of the man who falsely claimed Sloan killed the guard, all the old radicals support each other. Whatever other ideals they have compromised that one remains. Mimi has to relearn that, to save Sloan. The title, of course, is half an adage: You are judged -- because you are influenced -- by the company you keep. 

This is very much an old liberal’s film. Hence the casting of such familiar icons as the leads, Nick Nolte, Richard Jenkins, Sam Elliot, in the radical geezer roles. But the revolution is treated with such a sensible, principled balance that Republicans shouldn’t run out screaming either. Indeed another dramatic instance of its discrete reticence is the omission of the Redford-Christie sex scene. The morning-after scene suggests it may have happened, as the stars' casting perhaps promises. But we don't see it. And what would be Redford's motive to show it? 

42

Beyond the particular Jackie Robinson story, 42 is about the gap between the law and the code. As Dodgers owner Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) is warned early, breaking the law can earn you respect and admiration; violate the unwritten law and you’re ostracized. That’s what makes this film reflect upon current America, Obama’s America as much as Robinson’s. The America that defeated fascism and that professes all citizens’ equality is contradicted by the various codes of prejudice, whether based on race, on religion, on geography, or on class.

Brian Helgeland’s film plays Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) as a man of passion, anger, sensitivity, a rebel with more than enough cause to explode. As Rickey teaches him, though, he has to have the guts not to fight back. He has to suffer the stings and narrowness of a bigoted, violent culture without losing his cool. He has to play his game whatever he suffers. He has to overcome not just his opponents but his own teammates -- and his own reactions. 

The predictable love story enforces the softness and sensitivity of that heroic sufferer. The closing song, which equates baseball and religion, coheres with Rickey’s early confidence that Robinson will succeed as the first black player in major league baseball because he -- like Rickey and, of course, like God -- is a Methodist. There’s Methodism in what appears to be Rickey’s madness. The religion theme works not just to represent Robinson’s calvary but to remind us that our moral values are in constant test, especially when we might think they are not, as in our business, in our politics and in our play. 

America has come a long way since those redneck 40s. But as the opponent manager who taunts the black man mercilessly, then asks to pose for a picture with him, demonstrates, even a profound change can remain shallow. The pool of prejudice, hatred and fear runs deep. This is a film made in supposedly post-racial America that reminds us how the prejudice persists. As the codes aren’t ruled by the laws, the reality falls short of the pretense.