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The Sunday film
To catch up with two films I've seen at the cinema: last Sunday, The Illusionist, this Sunday afternoon just gone, Factory Girl. Completely different in any number of ways, and neither likely to set the annals of moviemaking alight, and yet neither anything like bad. The Illusionist is one of those films with unfortunate timing, a victim of the "two buses" effect, in that it and The Prestige arrived at virtually the same time, both about magicians at the turn of the century. Although The Prestige was ornate and handsome, and gave Michael Caine another chance to do his twinkly old man act, it was too predicated on the audience being "fooled" by the stage illusions of Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman. In other words, you were on your guard, and frankly, once you (or indeed, an 11-year-old child) had worked out the "twist", it grew tiresome. Which was a shame, as there were some nice visuals (a field full of light bulbs, a pile of top hats), and David Bowie was better than expected as Tesla. The Illusionist, made by Neil Burger, never attempts to get behind the tricks performed by Eisenheim (Ed Norton) - it's not about that. It's a love story, a fairy tale, in which the peasant attempts to woo the princess away from the wicked prince. Yes, there's a twist, based upon illusion, but I didn't see it coming, as I wasn't looking for it. Again, it looked beautiful, with flickering gaslight, smudgy darkness and sepia effects for the flashbacks, and Norton played his showman quiet and unassuming. It has been said that he's an unsatisfying leading man. Too humble. Too introspective. Well, he kept The Illusionist in check. Paul Giamatti, who used to be an unknown character actor who did this tubby, nasal character, is now an Oscar-nominated characer actor who does this tubby, nasal character - very good as the detective. Rufus Sewell's was the standout performance as Prince Leopold - he almost turned into that other eminent Austrian Adolf Hitler at one point. And always a thrill to see Eddie Marsan, star of the little-seen BBC sitcom Grass in a Hollywood studio picture. If you see this film, you won't wish you hadn't paid the money, but it's not going to have you recommending friends and family to catch it. That's not a crime.
Factory Girl also ended up as a fairly inconsequential piece of work. A rich girl called Edie Sedgwick (Sienna Miller) gets picked out by Andy Warhol to be the Factory's latest "It" girl, takes a load of amphetamines, accidentally falls for Bob Dylan (whose lawyers have made it clear is not Bob Dylan), falls out of favour and ends up back in the mental institutions where she spent much of her youth. It's a fascinating world, the 60s New York art scene, but like any biopic, you have to care about the central character, and icon or otherwise, Sedgwick is presented by George Hickenlooper's film as a victim: flighty, easily led, guileless, wreckless with money. She even carried with her the confused guilt of having been abused by her father, a man she and the rest of the family call "Fuzzy", which would fuck anybody up. An important point to make: Sienna Miller, whipping girl of the British media because . . . I can't for the life of me remember . . . is very good in the Sedgwick role. It suits her, the posh American accent is sound, and she plays the "runny makeup" downfall convincingly. But she's doomed from the start. The clock's ticking from the moment she sees a Warhol flyer in a bus shelter. And if we can't care about her, the Warhol played by Guy Pearce with Stars In Their Eyes accuracy is no more than a pantomime villain: cold, calculating, selfish, fickle, unreliable, cruel. Even after Edie's death at the end, he is seen unable to properly react to the news in an interview. Factory Girl could put you off his soup cans forever. (Actually, that's not true - it's the art, not the artist.) You make a film about Sedgwick, you're really making a film about Warhol, and this doesn't get under the skin of Warhol at all. A few scenes with his Polish mother don't add up to character study. Not in any way badly made, the film captures a fleeting essence of something now passed, and Hickenlooper's grounding in documentary adds a certain energy. It certainly loves New York, but at the same time presents Los Angeles as a safe haven (Sedgwick ends up in Santa Barbara and almost pulls through). The weak link is Hayden Christensen as not-Bob Dylan. This is a performance that sucks the life out of everything around it, and it hobbles the film: unconvincing, stiff, parodic. Who put money on him being able to pull this off? You need an Ed Norton to do Dylan, someone with depth and poetry. For every minute Christensen is on screen, the film is drained of blood. Ah well, as I say, not bad.
Can not-bad films sustain us though?
posted by Andrew Collins @ 8:46 PM
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12 Comments:
I liked The Prestige so much I bought the DVD last week. I think what hurt them was the publicity at the time of the cinema release saying: "Ooh, there's a pretty big twist in this one". I agree, it seems as though you're looking for it all the way through, that is, as you said, until it hits you. But a couple of hours of escapism never hurt anyone.
I saw The Illusionist on a plane journey recently - I didn't really feel moved to put on the headphones, so I experienced it as a silent movie, and I have to say Giamatti in particular managed some real silent movie acting - top gurning. I probably wouldn't have noticed that if I was listening to the soundtrack too.
(The only film I put the headphones on for was Woody Allen's Scoop, which... I think the distributors are right not to be exactly jumping up and down in joy about it, although it would all have worked a lot better if he'd set it in the 1930s - he wouldn't even have had to change the script. He needs someone to tell him things like that, and not to have the characters spend precious screen-time explaining not-very-interesting things to each other. I think he suffers from being surrounded by people who have been paid to be vaguely deferential to him. Because it was quite a nice enough idea, but he needed to go back and reshoot half of it like he did in the old days.)
I've heard it said (and repeated myself) that Johnny Depp is a great example of a silent actor born too late. Watch him with the sound turned down.
As for Woody, I'm sure you're right, John, that nobody will tell him anything he doesn't want to hear. That's geniuses for you. I can't imagine anyone telling David Lynch off either - luckily, he works in an area where indulgence often produces great results. I used to think that a bad Woody Allen film was better than a great film by most other directors. And then I saw Match Point.
Rich is right about the The Prestige: watch it without looking for a twist. This is going to be difficult though, especially with a false beard knocking about that rivals Diana Rigg's in Theatre Of Blood, or Jeremy Beadle's as a traffic warden in Beadle's About.
Ah well only one more magician based film left to be released this year starring PC and Mac.
Though not turn of the century this time.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472071/
Another magician film Guy Pearce as Harry Houdini. Should get a release this year.
I enjoyed The Illusionist up until the end. I thought the 'Usual Suspects' revelations at the end cheapened it. Rufus Sewell's Oliver Reed type villain was fabulous.
Many films seem over reliant on twists, so that now they are expected- a formulaic plot device.
Mainstream US TV drama is now far superior to US mainstream movies.
Why do two similar films often come out together? Like The Prestige and The Illusionist? It happened with Meteors hitting the earth with Deep Impact and Armougedden. Sky Diving with Dropzone and Terminal Velocity. And there were those two animated ant movies.
I agree with Valentine's provocative statement about US TV being better than US movies. It's never been truer.
And good point, Matt. Also, Shark Tale and Finding Nemo, and the two Capote films, and Volcano and Dante's Peak. I have no idea why these clashes are allowed to fruition when films take so long to come out - presumably both studios think theirs will be the superior one and blow the other out of the water. Perhaps it's just so that we can have the fun of saying which is the best. I preferred Dante's Peak to Volcano, for instance.
I, too, saw "The Illusionist" on a plane (but with headphones). I chose it partly because of Edward Norton and partly because I was attracted to the "flickering gaslight, smudgy darkness and sepia effects" which are all I remember it for. Re Andy Warhol; I heard an audio tape of him talking to his brother after his mother's death, and it was disturbingly dry and heartless (mainly underlining that the funeral should be as cheap as possible and to keep the media out). I do think there was some underlying wisdom below Warhol's cold bloodedness though. The more I read, the more uncomfortable I become, and the more natural I feel. Warhol was notoriously unresponsive in interviews, so perhaps it was an accurate (and completely useless) addition to the movie? In a somewhat related aside - did you see David Bowie as Warhol in "Basquiat"? He, and the entire movie, was inspired. In a less related aside, I need to urgently state I've seen about 15 movies on planes in the last 2 months and the only one that stood out was Sean Penn's "All The King's Men", which was verging on being a masterpiece.
Have yet to see All The King's Men, domboy, so will rectify that. It got some terrible reviews. Nor have I seen Basquiat, which, again, I must sort out. I love Jeffrey Wright (that's the film that got him noticed, isn't it?), and have a soft spot for Bowie's acting.
Yep, I saw video clips of the real Basquiat after I saw the movie and I recognised him immediately by his mannerisms. After that I’ll watch anything with Jeffrey Wright – I even sat through “Casino Royale” to see him. I heard “All The King’s Men” was tough to watch because of the thick accents; did I hear that on your show? I had no problem though, even in an aero plane environment with the sleepless buzz of alcohol and constant distraction of beautiful flight attendants. Did you see Bowie as “the Elephant Man” on stage in London? I think it was around 1991. I didn’t, but I heard amazing reviews. No costume, no effects – just acting. Oh, oh, and did you hear the Lou Reed / John Cale album “Songs For Drella” about Andy Warhol? It is a masterpiece, a veritable bible. All children should study it in school. I have to stop, I’m getting visibly excited.
Looking forward to seeing it, if only for the fabulous Rufus. As you may remember, I ama fan of him ;-)
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