AIN'T THEM BODIES SAINTS - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review written in 2013 for DVDTalk.com.

Let's get this out of the way. Ain't Them Bodies Saints looks like a Terrence Malick film, and there is certainly an influence there. I only bring this up because everyone else does, even though it's like saying some contemporary author writes in a sparse style a la Raymond Carver who also himself writes like Ernest Hemingway. Of course, he does!




While writer/director David Lowery is certainly more akin to that contemporary talent thrice removed, this directorial effort transcends simple homage and becomes its own thing, fitting snuggly in a school of crime-flavored films told with a Southern drawl and a molasses pace. It's a school that star Casey Affleck seems to like a lot, as Ain't Them Bodies Saints could almost be a kind of link between two of his other movies, Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford [review] and Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me [review]. Like that latter film, unfortunately, Ain't Them Bodies Saints never entirely finds its sweet spot, but that doesn't stop it from being worthwhile viewing.




The younger Affleck stars as Bob Muldoon. In the artful prologue to the movie, we see that Bob is kind of an old fashioned outlaw, perhaps a descendent of the aforementioned Jesse James, if not a more direct follower of Clyde Barrow. After a crime spree and a shootout with Texas troopers, Bob ends up in jail, covering for his sweetheart, Ruth (Rooney Mara, Side Effects [review]), who is the one who really shot the cop (Ben Foster, The Messenger [review]) and should have gone to prison. She's pregnant, however, and chivalry is not dead, so Bob falls on that sword, vowing to one day escape and get back to her and their child.




That day comes several years later and serves as the main section of Ain't Them Bodies Saints. Bob has escaped from prison and is trying to make his way back to his family. Meanwhile, the wolves are circling around Ruth. Some of them, like their former benefactor/father figure (Keith Carradine, Thieves Like Us [review]), merely wants to see Bob back behind bars with a minimum of fuss; others, like the wounded cop, have other outcomes in mind. He has fallen for Ruth, apparently as oblivious as everyone else to who really pulled the trigger those years ago.


The distance between prison and home is great, and the consequences even greater. As all of these characters circle one another, their dance absorbs others, particularly as Bob seeks help from friends and enemies come looking for revenge. The main engine of Ain't Them Bodies Saints, however, is the central quartet, all of whom have their own motivations. For the men, it all has something to do with Ruth; for Ruth, it's about protecting her daughter.




Performance-wise, everyone is very much at ease here. Ain't Them Bodies Saints breathes a rare, chilled air, and the tone is consistently quiet. There are very few instances where anyone raises their voice above a conversational volume. Ben Foster benefits the most from being restrained. I can't remember the last time he appeared on screen when he wasn't working some exaggerated tic or overdoing it in some manner. (It probably was The Messenger, actually.) Here he appears lonely and heartbroken--which is also Ain't Them Bodies Saints' standard mood. Everyone is suffering some disappointment, no one has what they originally envisioned and desired for themselves. They live, as the saying goes, lives of quiet desperation.




Ain't Them Bodies Saints is a well-made movie. Its tone is inviting and the clear, understated storytelling makes it easy to watch. The script provides plenty of space for the actors to draw out and work with their characters' inner lives. Lowery doesn't seem concerned about the showier aspects of writing. He doesn't go in for stylized or explanatory dialogue, there is no speechifying in Ain't Them Bodies Saints. The closest he gets to that is in the music, when Daniel Hart's score indulges in a stylistic divergence, such as the handclaps in one of the shootout scenes. Then again, if there is any place it might be acceptable to go a little off model, wouldn't that be when there's serious gunplay? The heightened rhythm mimics an accelerated heartbeat, fitting the mood and paying nicely against cinematographer Bradford Young's naturalistic approach to lighting.




Except given that Ain't Them Bodies Saints otherwise fails to fully engage, it makes such shifts all the more noticeable. There's an element here of too much control and a concern with perfection, and Lowery never really breaks from that. This makes for a movie that often feels like it's going through the motions, hitting its marks, and making sure everything is attuned just so. It lacks the emotional rawness that would give it the kind of depth that would make it truly special.

SELECTED SHORTS V - CRITERION CHANNEL

The Criterion Channel, in addition to hosting a plethora of feature films, also has a varied collection of short films--live action, animated, fiction, documentary; comedy and drama; silent and talkies.

Short cinema--just like short stories--is a unique art form unto itself, employing different conventions, and bringing with it different expectations, but these pieces are no less worthy of consideration than full-length films. From time to time, I will take a look at a selection of what’s on offer. You can read the previous columns here: 1, 2, 3, 4.

A Gentle Night (2017; China; 15 minutes): When a thirteen-old-girl doesn’t return home, everyone but her mother is content to “wait and see.” As her husband sleeps, the woman (Shuxian Li) spends the late hours going to places the child might go, hoping against hope that she’ll be out there and not a victim of the dark.

Yang Qiu’s Cannes-honored short is a drama with a quiet restlessness. The feelings of dread, anxiety, and guilt that overwhelm the mother come through the screen to those of us watching. Details are scarce, but those that do emerge are important. Through dialogue, we learn that the father is overbearing, but the mother is also a disciplinarian. Yet, we also know from her public encounters, perhaps the mother is the only one in the whole world who has a real relationship with the missing girl. The daughter herself is the only one we never learn about. Which just adds to the guilt.

A Gentle Night lacks a definitive resolution, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Yang Qiu is peddling a feeling here, and our acceptance of it determines how we view the movie. Think about it when you’re done. You’ll have an opinion about what happened to the girl, even if you didn’t realize it. Somehow, in just a short time, A Gentle Night moves you toward your own resolution.

Hunger (1974; Canada; 12 minutes): Once a gluttonous man starts eating, he can’t stop, in this animated short from Peter Foldes. Set entirely to music, no dialogue, we watch as the skinny office worker grows into an obese shut-in, blowing through relationships and all trappings of regular life, until there’s no way to avoid his ironic end. Foldes works with an open line style, allowing for the characters to morph naturally, particularly his lead, who goes from stick figure to complete oval in the end. Nothing too surprising or enticing, but well paced and visually intriguing enough to sustain its running time.

Also notable as Hunger was apparently an early trailblazer in computer animation.

The Voice Thief (2013; Chile/France/USA; 22 minutes): A silly narrative poorly performed, this surreal drama by Adan Jodorowsky, working from a story written by his father Alejandro Jodorowsky, stars controversial actress Asia Argento (Marie Antoinette [review]) as an opera singer who loses her voice when her husband (Cristobal Jodorowsky) chokes her. Distraught by his actions, he searches for a replacement, using mystical means to extract the singing voices from three different people he victimizes. With each new voice, the singer takes on the persona of the victim.

Though lush in design and beautifully shot, The Voice Thief is a pretentious dud. Undercut by retro 1970s horror music and overloaded with indulgent symbolism, this is essentially a student film elevated via nepotism.

When We Lived in Miami (2013; USA; 13 minutes): Amy Seimetz (Upstream Color) pulls double-duty as director and performer, portraying a woman facing potentially becoming a single mother while also worrying about the danger of an incoming hurricane. The narrative is strung together with small moments. The camera moves around the participants and the landscape, never quite settling, always searching, and along with the short scene cuts, it makes for an aesthetic that’s pleasantly reminiscent of Terence Malick, trying to draw the family back together even as the editing continues to separate them. Seimetz is incredibly focused here, the grief and the uncertainty permeating every frame.

Premature (2013; Norway; 16 minutes): Director Gunhild Enger creates a shifting, uncomfortable 15-minute car ride full of nervous pleasantries and bizarre social bumbles. A young Norwegian man is bringing home his pregnant Spanish girlfriend to meet the parents for the first time. She doesn’t speak Norwegian, the parents don’t speak Spanish, but they all speak English to some degree. Communication is halting, with different participants slipping into their native tongues for private asides, but since there are no subtitles, ingeniously, the audience is only privy to what they themselves can understand.

Many might recognize their own family here: the mother who means well but can’t stop from putting her foot in her mouth, the frustrated child, the peacekeeping father. Ultimately, though, you feel the most sorry for the girl, who clearly doesn’t know what she has gotten herself into. Premature takes a simple premise and a limiting technique and yet squeezes a whole hell of a lot out of both.

THE TREE OF LIFE (Extended Version) - #942

When Criterion announced their version of The Tree of Life, there was much to be excited about just in the idea that the 2011 film would benefit from an upgrade taking advantage of the improvements in home video technology from the last seven years. The announcement that it would have a new, longer cut of the film, however, was a real bombshell. What would restoring nearly 50 minutes of footage mean? Would it enhance and inform, or would it detract and obscure? Malick’s ongoing revisions certainly didn’t hurt The New World.

Though my excitement for such a thing might normally cause me to rush straight to what’s new, for The Tree of Life, I rewatched the theatrical version first, a warm-up for digging into the new cut. It had been many years and I wanted to refresh my memory in order to compare, lest the extended version supersede my recollection of Terence Malick’s masterpiece [also reviewed here].

On this new viewing, I was struck by how clear the movie’s themes were: the cycles of nature, how human experience is primal and consistent, how violence sometimes begets mercy, and how love sometimes is vicious. The struggle to be good, to be worthy. The bonds of love and trust amongst family and how we test them. The role of faith in all these things, but also science; fate vs. human determination. The failure of earthly rewards, the various necessary states of fealty, the triumph of connection. We are not original, our experience is not new, this has been going on since the dawn of existence and will continue long past our presence here--a notion that is illustrated visually by The Tree of Life’s feeling of constant moving, of short cuts and the camera in motion. But also those dinosaurs. A reptilian schoolyard bully exercising restraint.

And hanging over it all, grief. Grieving the loss of self, grieving the loss of others.

Which is what Malick leans into from the start of this new version, moving the middle child’s death to the front of the film, focusing more on the parents (Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt), and then the grown Jack (Sean Penn), who aches over the loss just as acutely decades on. Rather than feeling a part of all existence, in this edit, at least in the early sequences, the humans appear small within the universe, and their faith is tested. If when we pass, God lifts us in his hands, then are we completely on our own while walking this Earth?

Newly added scenes in Jack’s adult life show that his troubles follow him--just as his father warned. The narrative of his youth is now more linear and comprehensive, losing some of the scattershot resemblance to the patchiness of memory, more expressive of his adolescent troubles, including the negative influences that shine a light on the hypocrisy of adults--his prime motivator being they do what they tell kids not to do. In particular, when his father is gone on an extended trip, Jack assumes his role; when the man returns, the child resents it and lashes out.

This extended cut is all about more. Not in an excessive sense, but in the sense that at one time Malick had planned out the whole of The Tree of Life, but then treated it as a giant block of marble and chipped away, sculpting something else, something more ephemeral. For instance, this fuller version offers more nuance in regards to the parents, particularly the mother, who is more of an interior figure, a symbol, in the other cut. Here she has regrets about her choices, about dreams lost. She frets over her husband’s behavior, but also has more resolve in terms of her devotion to her family. She could leave, but she stays. Jessica Chastain was a revelation when The Tree of Life first came to theaters, and seeing more of her performance only bolsters her strength as an actor and reinforces what Malick first saw in her.

Likewise, expanded scenes with R.L., the middle boy (Laramie Eppler), show he is more favored by the father, who indulges his gentle spirit. They bond over music, and he cuts R.L. slack in ways he never does Jack. This gives added layers of resentment to Jack’s cruel dares, pushing the sensitive boy to touch the inside of lamp or put his finger over a gun barrel, only to immediately regret the violation of trust. Jack is the dinosaur stepping on the weaker creature’s head.

By all accounts, this is not Malick’s preferred version, that would be the theatrical edit; rather, this is the master dipping back into his early draft and reconstructing it, reexamining his original impulses. With both the hour of extra material and a fair amount of editorial reshuffling, there is a lot to absorb, including whole subplots previously left on the cutting room floor. For instance, the mother now has a brother with a nervous condition, and one of Jack’s friends suffers very real abuse at the hands of his own father, which makes Brad Pitt’s disciplinarian seem a little less villainous. (Has Pitt ever been this stoic and conflicted in any other movie? The petty defeats this man suffers gives explanation to his behavior, though not excuse.) The additions even go beyond the interpersonal. A storm about three-quarters in puts the family directly at odds with nature. All those beautiful glimpses of the universe that color The Tree of Life suddenly turn deadly, another reminder of how small man is in the face of whatever higher power he believes in.

Had this expanded The Tree of Life been Malick’s official version in 2011, the film certainly would not have received the same high regard. Leaving less to the imagination, its engagement of the viewer is entirely different. Where previously, Malick had removed all the in-between moments, compelling us to connect the dots  on our own, his expanded The Tree of Life brings the full image into focus. Or was it the other way around, the theatrical cut was nothing but in-between, and we had to piece the larger puzzle together? Regardless, as an additive supplement, fans of the movie will find much in the extra hour and the narrative remix to appreciate, even if viewing it only proves to be a one-time thing. If nothing else, we now have that much more of Malick to watch, which is never a bad thing. Now, where is that full-length version of The Thin Red Line?

Note: The screengrabs in this review are from the 2011 home video release and not the Criterion disc under review.

THE TREE OF LIFE (Theatrical Cut) - #942

This review was originally written for the theatrical release of the film and published on DVDTalk.com in 2011.

Writing about Terrence Malick's new movie, The Tree of Life, is a bit like trying to describe a particular segment of a backwoods stream--a beautifully lit and photographed segment of stream, mind you, but a stream nonetheless. The task is like living out the old Heraclitus quote about how you can never step in the same river twice. The water moves too fast, by the time you dip your toes in, it has moved on.

I also struggle with writing about it, because to do so, I feel like I will break the spell it has cast over me. The Tree of Life hasn't left my thoughts since I left the theatre. To do so is to also pretend that I got it, which I don't think I did--at least not entirely. My impressions at this point are shallow. To stick with the river analogy, I am maybe in up to my ankles, I have yet to get to the deep middle.

Though, ironically, it's the middle of the movie that is easiest to grasp. The front and the back are what make The Tree of Life a mesmerizing conundrum. It's as if Malick took the first and last reels of 2001, cut them up, reassembled them randomly, and then grafted them on to a story about a family in the 1950s. The O'Briens (played with alternating fury and vulnerability by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain) have three boys whom they are trying to steer through early life. Their parenting is a bit all over the place, balancing religion with an appreciation for art (or, specifically, music) and a Protestant work ethic with a laissez-faire day-to-day playfulness. The three kids run free with other neighborhood boys, causing trouble, testing the limits of their own perceived invulnerability. The two parents pull at them, particularly trying to mold the eldest, Jack (Hunter McCracken), into the man they want him to be. Both want their offspring to end up on the straight and narrow, but in that endeavor, one is strict where the other is lean.

Malick doesn't tell his story in any linear, sequential, or conventional manner. He prefers relaying information in short puffs of cinematic smoke. Small gestures stand in for greater events, and suggestion is preferable to explicitly laying out any greater meaning or intention. An individual moment as trivial as walking down the street might be shown in three different ways, from three different angles, at three different speeds. In this way, the real story blooms into being, revealing that Malick kept a tight grip on his narrative seedlings in the early portion of the film and is only letting things take shape after he has properly nurtured them. Family life for the O'Briens goes from idyllic to troublesome. Carefree romps in the woods turn to deadly games and dangerous dares. Malick also teases us with tragedy that is to come, one that nestles somewhere in the middle of his timeline. In a few brief scenes, we see Sean Penn playing Jack as an older man, contending with his past. As an adult, he is out of step with his environment, no longer at harmony.

Those scenes with Penn mark a fascinating change for Malick, who for the first time films modern cityscapes rather than the nature scenes he is most known for (the wheat fields of Days of Heaven [review], the Asian-Pacific jungle of The Thin Red Line). He and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Burn After Reading [review], Children of Men [review]) shoot the towering skyscrapers the same way they would shoot a forest of redwoods--in awe of their majesty and from the vantage point of a puny human who is but a speck on the timeline by comparison. The Tree of Life is full of Malick's trademark visual poetry. The camera is rarely at rest. Instead, it circles and tracks and zooms; the whole of existence is constantly in movement.

If, as many would posit, the overall theme of Terrence Malick's filmography is the interconnectedness of all life, then some of the outlying sequences start to make sense. The director takes the viewer through time and space, to the farthest reaches of both, threading a slender line through various modes of existence. In some of his technique, one can see Stan Brakhage; in other spots, particularly the introduction of neon tracers as we enter the concrete jungle, Wong Kar-Wai (The Gradmaster [review]; In the Mood for Love [review]). There is also a touch of Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman [review]; Babel [review]) in the metaphysical final act--though in this, it is the master taking the pupil to school, showing Iñárritu how to evoke providence via simplicity rather than self-importance. (Hint: You look outside, not inside.) (Also, one could easily argue that Malick could school Wong Kar-Wai in aesthetic technique; as much as I love Kar-Wai's movies, one assumes the Chinese director was influenced by the American one, not necessarily vice versa.) It all comes together rather amazingly, though upon first viewing, I can't entirely decide if I'm just impressed that it ended up anywhere at all. My gut reaction is that Malick is saying something profound about grief, symmetry, and the eternal endurance of the human spirit, but there are so many pieces to put together here, I don't feel confident that I have it after just a single sampling. The Tree of Life demands more time, a commodity I will happily give in exchange for a chance to see its dreamy images again.

The Tree of Life is sure to be a movie that is hotly debated for some time to come. The first thing anyone heard about the movie coming out of Cannes last month was how it was both booed and cheered, by some reports in equal measure, with others suggesting the response skewed to one particular side. (The Tree of Life eventually took the festival's top prize.) Those with a predisposition for Malick will go see the film regardless, and I have no idea how to assess what a newcomer to the man's work will make of this ambitious endeavor. Part of me worries that The Tree of Life is almost too sincere for most audiences, be it the common man or the critical establishment. Too many are quick to reject honest sentimentality. (He's carrying a Bible! Run!) Good or bad, Malick means everything this film is trying to say. It's a deliberate, deeply felt artistic expression of the like few filmmakers are capable of. At least try to meet it on its own terms before you judge. It would be easy to fold your arms against it or to embrace it wholeheartedly because of the name above the title; instead, walk in with your hands at your sides, and let the film lift them all on its own.

FILM SOCIALISME - FILMSTRUCK

This review was originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2012, and sometimes refers to features on the DVD release.

Jean-Luc Godard's 2010 cinematic essay, Film Socialisme, his first major new work since 2004's Notre Musique [review] (and, of course, followed several years later by Goodbye to Language [review]), opens with the image of a roiling sea. The water looks black, almost like oil, a visual juxtaposition that is clearly intentional, as the first subtitled narration is three choice words: "Money Public Water." It's an intentionally vague statement, a provocation from a master provocateur. But as where that term has become a negative referring to empty sensationalists, the great French filmmaker is working on a whole other level. He wants to stimulate political discourse through cinema. He is poking at your brain, not at your libido.

The darkened ocean is not actually the first image in Film Socialisme. That is actually the short flash of two brightly colored parrots that appear just before the start of the credits. This is likely meant to be a joke, Godard the prankster poking fun at the chatter that is to follow. Film Socialisme is not a narrative film, not in any conventional sense. It's also not a documentary. It's more the latest fruit born of an ongoing experiment that the director has been engaging in since his first feature, Breathless [review], more than 50 years ago. Godard structures Film Socialisme as a three-point argument. The first segment takes place on a European ocean liner, with Godard's camera following passengers, young and old, on their journey of never-ending pleasures, from buffet to nightclub and back to the buffet again.

The travelers are of every stripe and every nation, the cruise ship is world culture in microcosm, bringing us all together (a major theme of Film Socialisme), even if it's just for banal synchronized dancing. Shot in digital, the images range in quality from beautifully realized high-definition to cheap and pixilated. Godard and his team both observe the unaware and track specific characters, all the while using their monologues and disconnected voiceover to cover a range of topics, largely centered on the self-absorption of modern culture, sins of the past (Germany, Moscow, and Israel/Palestine are regular targets), and the role of popular art in curtailing man's self-destruction. Amongst the invented personas are also real people, including musicians Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye and economist Bernard Maris.

This initial portion establishes Film Socialisme's difficult aesthetic. It's not just the images that are disjointed--there is no such thing as a "complete" scene here--but also the spoken word. Or, more specifically for English speakers relying on subtitles, the written word. Godard has chosen to make Film Socialisme even more challenging for his Western audiences. Rather than subtitling every word you hear, he has chosen to translate the material into "Navajo English." The name is a rather risky joke, referring (one assumes) to the style of broken English spoken by Native Americans in old Westerns. Thus, something like, "I am hungry, and I want to eat" will instead be "Me want food." While Kino Lorber has offered a fully translated subtitle option on their home video release (as well as the choice of none for those who speak the multiple languages heard onscreen), to go with those almost seems like a cheat, like watching Memento in its chronological order. Film Socialisme is a leading puzzle that beckons the viewer to follow the fractures and divine his or her meaning from the clues left along the way. The incomplete subtitles add another layer to what is being shown. The combination of words can be perfectly clear at times, but they can also be laced with a double meaning, loaded with ironic context or sharp political rhetoric.

The second part of the film leaves the cruise ship and goes to a small, family-run gas station that is struggling to survive in the lopsided world economy. The politically minded nuclear family is being visited by a film crew who are, for all intents and purposes, shooting a film within a film, though often to the reluctance of the subjects. Some of what they capture is "documentary," some of it is purposely staged; yet, Godard suggests that all culture is now imitation. The young son of the family is a bit of a precocious prodigy, mimicking orchestra conductors, blowing his straw like a saxophone, and painting his own version of Renoir masterpieces from memory. While his family worries about money and the possible change in public policy due to an upcoming election (one which family members are also candidates, so threatening domestic policy, as well), the boy worries about not revealing where his talents come from. That, and the camerawoman's posterior. (Oh, Godard, you rascal.) Social change and governmental policy are all theatrics; there is no longer a line between the authentic and the contrived.

The last third of the film shifts completely from any pretense of traditional storytelling and becomes full-on collage. This, one could surmise, is really the meat of Film Socialisme. Godard begins the segment with footage of the cruise ship landing, as if to suggest that we, as an audience, have finally arrived at our destination (being, of course, all in this together; entertainment is the truest form of socialism in current times). Using archival footage from news networks, historical records, and old motion pictures, Godard lays out a history of war and oppression, touching again on Palestine and Nazi Germany, as well as military dictators like Stalin and Franco, not to mention dialing all the way back to the origins of civilization itself. Title cards and an alternating male/female narrative team (those parrots from the opening?) explain, in their way, what we are seeing, working with the visuals to build to a crescendo of stimuli. The last words of the movie are "No Comment." Again, this is loaded with meaning. It could be that Godard has no more to say and no intention of explaining himself, or perhaps it's really a comment on the film audience at large. We passively view our blockbusters without ever asking what price we pay as a species by not demanding more of what is easily the most influential and potent art form of the past 100 years.

Make no mistake, Film Socialisme is not going to be to everyone's liking. It's intentionally hard work, and it requires the viewer to accept and go with its strange and often maddening flow. The closest thing I can liken it to in recent memory are the seeming tangents of Malick's Tree of Life [review], the segments showing the universe being born and developing that on first blush might come off as the worst kind of self-indulgence. In both cases, however, for those who want to give it a go, there is far deeper and satisfying treasures to be found by jumping in and digging through the primordial ooze. You might not "get" either the first time--I just wrote 1,000 words about Film Socialisme and I don't even really get it--but nothing that is truly enriching ever really is. Getting there requires a little faith in the artist, and also in yourself.

THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO - #485

Of all of Whit Stillman’s films, The Last Days of Disco is by far my favorite. It’s the most full realization of his unique vision, and the most watchable on repeat viewings, offering multiple complete story arcs for its ensemble of characters. It was also what, for many years, we thought would be his final film. In a move worthy of Terrence Malick, Stillman would wait 14 years to release his next movie, 2012’s Damsels in Distress [review]. For all we knew, we were never getting him back.

Released in 1998, The Last Days of Disco takes us back to the early 1980s, when disco was enough of a cultural phenomenon to inspire mass hatred across America. (One spliced-in news report of a public burning of disco records is so exaggerated you’d not believe it were it not real.) The screenplay follows a handful of twentysomethings over the better part of a year, as they realize the young professional life they were promised is not exactly as described. They are fresh enough that what university their peers attended still matters, but on the precipice of having enough experience to discover it really doesn’t matter at all.

The group that Stillman follows congregates at a Studio 54-esque nightclub, mostly at the behest of Des (Chris Eigeman), one of the club’s managers. If they can’t get in through the front door, he sneaks them in through the back. This doesn’t always earns him points with his bosses. Junior ad man Jimmy (Mackenzie Astin) is persona non grata, but he keeps weaseling his way in, convinced it’s the access that keeps him employed.

More important to the social group are Alice (Chloe Sevigny, Manderlay [review]; Big Love [review]) and Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale, Snow Angels [review]), two assistant editors at a major publishing house who, despite attending the same college, weren’t really friends until now. Mirroring their roles in Stillman’s latest, Love & Friendship, Sevigny’s Alice is more naïve and impressionable, while Beckinsale’s Charlotte spews advice incessantly. Her helpful hints are often born of jealousy and intended to position herself better, whether she realizes it or not. In fact, as Alice’s fortunes rise both in romance and at work, Charlotte pushes to get in ahead of her. She even ends up dating Jimmy not long after Alice has moved on to Tom (Robert Sean Leonard, DeadPoet’s Society).

The characters in The Last Days of Disco bear a striking resemblance to those in Metropolitan [review], just a few years further down the line when they are no longer living at home and no longer able to rely on the same level of handouts from their family. All are anxious to make their mark in the world, but at the same time, they find that it’s not as easy as they expect. As Jimmy and Des complain at one point, they keep being branded as “yuppies” despite the fact that neither has a job that feels upwardly mobile or professional, much less lucrative.

But this is where disco comes in. Stillman has cast he discothèque as a metaphor for cultural change. The dancefloor bouillabaisse mixes all types together, and the scene offers different promises to each. Charlotte sees it as the harbinger of a real sexual revolution where women will have control, whereas Josh (Matt Keeslar), a freshman district attorney, sees it as a great equalizer where anyone can be whomever they want. His interpretation is particularly ironic, since being who they want to be is exactly what these young adults are failing at.

As episodic as Barcelona [review], and yet as socially contained as Metropolitan, The Last Days of Disco provides Stillman with his most pronounced opportunity to place his idealized caricatures within the real world. Released from the manicured confines of their Manhattan apartments or the exile of a foreign land, the ensemble here steps closest to a recognizable world of any of the films. In fact, though released last, it fits the trilogy as a middle piece. A cameo of Audrey and Jack from Metropolitan shows us that there is some hope for these anxious wannabes, while an appearance by Ted from Barcelona (Taylor Nichols pulls double-duty) points a way of escape for the young men. The fact that unlike the other films, however, the characters all find their place by the end, or at least believable direction to the same, gives The Last Days of Disco a greater sense of finish. (We are still completely ignoring that Barcelona epilogue.)

By this go-around, Eigeman had perfected the fast-talking cynicism routine that had serviced him through Stillman’s previous efforts. Des fully embraces his role as a scoundrel, and his well-rehearsed routine of dumping women by telling them he has realized he is gay is tinged with equal parts savvy and machismo. And if we ever doubt Stillman’s sympathy for the cad, there is a Tarantino-worthy debate between Josh and Des over whether The Lady and the Tramp reinforces an unhealthy obsession with the bad boy or shows that a gadabout can really change.

The Last Days of Disco really belongs to Sevigny and Beckinsale, however. Though Alice bristles at being compared to a kindergarten teacher, Sevigny has never been more wholesome or confident, disguising her real charm as plainness. And Beckinsale’s performance is marvelously knowing. She treats Charlotte’s bullshit with the utmost sincerity, so much so that at times you can’t help but nod along and say, “Yeah, but she’s right, you know.” Frankly, by the end, I kind of feel like Charlotte and Des are the ones who’ve really got if figured out. They don’t see the value in conventional delusions.

The best part about The Last Days of Disco, though, is that it’s pragmatic without lacking hope. Stillman appears to judge his characters less, and to embrace their foibles without the wry irony of his earlier films. Perhaps it’s his own heartfelt  love of disco, just as he loves all dance crazes, and his full embrace of it that allows him to spread his wings a bit more. Or perhaps it’s just the confidence that comes from having made a few films. Regardless, The Last Days of Disco remains his crowning achievement. Nearly two decades later, it’s fun, and touching, and just plain likable.

Which makes it all the more ironic that if The Last Days of Disco has one real flaw, it’s that the dance-obsessed Stillman is not very good at directing the dancing itself. The club scenes are stiff and subdued, and never match up to the rhythms of the soundtrack. The discothèque is too brightly lit, removing any mystery or allure; it never feels like the type of place you’d really want to be. That may be the only advantage the “true-to-life” 54 has over its rival. Mark Christopher’s grim mess was released just a few months after Stillman’s triumph, to much more fanfare and failure proportional to the same. It’s coked out and seedy and mired in the 1970s, and Christopher makes Studio 54 look like a real good time, whereas Stillman is stepping forward toward the neon 1980s with little lingering nostalgia, a move that makes all the difference.

THE GREAT BEAUTY - #702

“You've changed. You're always thinking.”

It's ten minutes into The Great Beauty that Jep appears, almost as of he is but an incidental player in the narrative. Yet, it is his story, and his birthday party when he is revealed; the man is everything and nothing. As he is introduced, an aging television presenter long past her prime, the number 65 decorating her breasts, making her a grotesque combination of birthday cake and New Year's Baby, shouts, "Happy birthday, Jep! Happy birthday, Rome!"

Because Jep and his city are one and the same. The seasoned author, Jep Gambardella (played suavely and with great interior depth by Toni Servillo), is the chronicler of these tales, a watcher of all things Roman, his life and work and his society being both what he seeks and all that lends The Great Beauty its name. On Earth, he is Marcello Mastroianni from La dolce vita; as omniscient observer, he is the angels from Wings of Desire [review], careening through our collective existence, whispering in our ear. Half of those early 10 minutes are spent looking at the Roman dead while Paolo Sorrentino (Il Divo [review] establishes his visual style. The camera is continually moving. It pans, zooms, recedes, never lingering, building a kinetic memory board, as much Terrence Malick as Fellini and Wenders. The reverent journey gives way to a dance...literally. Both the gravesite and the conga are monuments to life and living, and with the author as narrator, only Jep has the ability to slow either. He first speaks to us smoking a cigarette while his celebrating guests form a chorus line on either side of him.

A writer's life is reflection, even as he is busy living it. A vapid actress at Jep's party says she is retiring to write her Proustian novel; an equally empty-headed actor pretends to know what she means. It's an ironic commentary. The novelist known for his books on memory is only remembered as such, just as Jep's legacy is largely built on his earliest accomplishments. He is more than happy to remain in that moment as a creator. It gives him all the more room to enjoy the current moment. He's not chasing the past so much as he's living in a continual present, time taking on the elastic Vonnegut quality of happening for him all at once.

But then, what happens when he stops moving? When the camera settles and the editor puts down his scissors? I suppose that's what the people around him wonder, and what they insist on provoking him to ask about himself. Where they fail, the milestone of 65 and the unexpected passing of his first love succeed. Jep’s book, revered as a masterwork of Italian literature, is called The Human Apparatus. It seems the fundamental question is, “How does this all work?” It’s a question Jep has never answered, as life is as fluid as the reasons he gives for never writing another novel.

And as an audience, we must be fluid with him. Impressions of both the main character and of Sorrentino’s movie change from episode to episode. Though Jep may see all of his history as a straight line, The Great Beauty’s narrative track doesn’t really follow one. Rome is full of random encounters. Everywhere Jep goes, he knows someone, be it a friend from three decades hence or an actress he remembers from her movies (a brief, lovely cameo by the luminous Fanny Ardant). It’s now that time and his own mortality are weighing on him that Jep is trying to put these moments together. He fears there are no answers, and even says as much in a rather brittle scene with a Catholic cardinal (Aldo Ralli). More than that, though, I would argue that what Jep really fears is missing anything.

A key scene is another where Jep assassinates a few characters. He’s an expert at eviscerating unworthy opponents. At one party, he dismisses a poet for having written the line “Up with life, down with reminiscence.” It’s is a line that offends him. What is life but the accumulated nostalgia? This is why his first love, the one that got away, is so important. Jep despises artists who demonstrate no insight, and people who stand for nothing. Yet, these people, these friends, labor at their pursuits, their empty politics and bad stageplays...and he just lives amongst their nothingness. His own comeuppance arrives later, when on one of his walks through a Roman relic, he stares into a metaphorical abyss to have a very real youth tell him, "You're nobody." Sorrentino frames the scene so as to isolate his man: we are down, looking up, the child ourselves, faceless even when our identity is revealed later, the lens panning down from the man, past the mother, to her daughter. There is much we can infer from these three levels, as really there are many levels to every shot in The Great Beauty. In one interpretation, we have a construct of age; in another, we have a religious trinity. As it is above, so it is below.

Two essential figures enter Jep’s mid-life to shake things up, and both bring death with them. First, there’s the one he doesn't take seriously, the troubled young man (Giorgio Pasotti) prone to dramatic gestures and quoting other writers, including Proust, about mortality. Jep’s dismissal of the boy’s difficulties and preoccupations proves to be tragic. By implication, the boy takes drastic measures in part because Jep ignored the pleas from the young man's mother (Pamela Villoresi) and gave neither of them the help they required. By the time of his funeral, when Jep tells the mother she can count on him, the hollowness of the words prove inescapable. Despite his insistence that attending the funeral is akin to performance, one where you must measure your own grief so as to not upstage the suffering family, true feeling overwhelms Jep here, and he breaks.

The second essential figure is also the only one to know Jep’s stoic intentions and thus how true his display of emotion is Ramona (Sabrina Ferilli), a fortysomething exotic dancer whom Jep has taken on as a lover. The daughter of one of his oldest friends, and a woman who has seen much herself and thus earned her cynicism and distrust, Ramona represents the individuality that the rest of Jep’s social circle could be seen as lacking. Of course, then, Jep’s affair with her is branded a "disappointment" by his old crowd. The somewhat younger woman is someone who has pursued her own path with no compulsion to explain; yet the cost of this is that, despite how she presents herself, she is fragile. Not in the “tough lady is really a wilting flower” sense, but her body just refuses to cope.

Still, in their time together, we get to see truly genuine affection between two people. Sorrentino creates a remarkable juxtaposition when the two leave a modern art party and are granted a clandestine late-night tour of one of Rome’s most beautiful art collections. At the soiree, ironically, a little girl who is being billed as a brilliant modern artist angrily throws paint against a giant canvas as the partygoers stand agog, cooing and gasping at what they see as a gimmick, failing to see that it’s their demands and their reactions that are causing the child to lash out in this way. Her act of creation is the only genuine thing in a contrived situation. Jep and Ramona leave this gathering and, once away from prying eyes, share their own true and private artistic experience. They are ushered into a secret pocket, a place of trust.

There is much in The Great Beauty that speaks to these alternating impulses, between honest expression and indulgent mollycoddling (and given Sorrentino’s extravagant style, he risks being labelled as the latter himself). Take, for instance, the two different photography projects that Jep is witness too. Both photographers take self-portraits, and both do so daily. The first is by a woman whom Jep has a one-night stand with, and she snaps the self-portraits in service to vanity, to study her fading beauty and fish for Facebook compliments. The second is done by a man carrying on a tradition begun when he is a child, a photo a day to remember, to observe, and to create and commemorate that continual timeline. Jep can’t even bring himself to look at the woman’s, but he is deeply moved by the man’s.

Which is indicative of where our author eventually swings. For all the disappointments and con artists, the moments of truth win out. “The future is a marvelous thing,” Jep tells the Marxist writer Stefania (Galatea Ranzi), sharing a warm reconciliation after a vicious falling out. This is not a man who has resigned himself to the past, but is still open to the miracles of life--including a genuine miracle awaiting him just a few scenes after.

“What lies beyond, lies beyond, it is not my concern,” Jep tells us as The Great Beauty concludes. It’s the beginning of the new story he has developed, the hypothetical second novel that will fill us in on all the wisdom and emotion he has accumulated in the forty years since The Human Apparatus. That novel ended with his protagonist giving up on love and thus life; fittingly, in the movie of his own existence, then, Jep Gambardella’s final word is “Yes.” The older man lays claim to what his younger self could not.

This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.