Guy Maddin's bizarre silent film turns pretension into moving drama. Elsewhere, Once is a tale of music and love (and more music), Knocked Up tries to understand women, and the Arcade Fire prepare for Armageddon.
Sorry, I can’t tell you about Ocean’s Thirteen or the finale of The Sopranos. But if you happened to attend this weekend’s most unique cinematic experience in Los Angeles, then I was there too. Let’s compare notes.
This Guy Maddin silent film plus live stage show (including orchestra, foley artists, castrato, and narrator) is the pretentious mess my suspicious friends predicted it would be. But once you get past that – once you accept that the film is more finely-wrought stunt than artistic statement – its pretensions are part of its charm. With Lemony Snicket author Daniel Handler narrating in his overgrown-boy voice and composer Jason Staczek’s score evoking Days of Heaven’s impossible Eden, Maddin’s tale of horror, lesbianism and a domineering mother works intermittently first as camp before it plunges into one of the strangest (and, therefore, most potent) metaphors for the childhood traumas you try to bury during adulthood until you confront them again at the end of your parents’ lives. Maddin is fatally afflicted with hipster preciousness, but he feels too, and although it takes a while to get there, Brand Upon the Brain! is ultimately about how sarcasm and coyness are trifling defense mechanisms against the indestructible power of the past. In its rambling, artsy way, the movie acknowledges the futility of its own design while transcending it to create a hypnotic event that moves beyond the mannered to the purely visceral.
Knocked Up (Universal Pictures)
Judd Apatow's intimate understanding of a certain type of guy doesn't just keep him from getting women – he's also a little shaky with men who don't fall into his comfort zone. Knocked Up is very funny and rather touching, but as with The 40-Year-Old Virgin plotting is a problem once he lays out his wonderful premise. For an hour, the movie does justice to the singles scene, geek-boy culture, and the lower rungs of L.A.'s entertainment stratosphere (the one where regular people work). But somewhere between Seth Rogen's journey from clueless dork to sensitive father and lover, Knocked Up gets screwed up, unsure whether chicks are, like, totally messed in the head or whether dudes are, y'know, meant to hang with other dudes. Apatow's a far stronger director than Jay Roach or Adam McKay. (And his ability to blend clear improvisation within the narrative is improving.) But he's still a funny man-child trying to figure out adult relationships. Or maybe he's trying to figure out how to make them palatable to the mainstream audience.
This is a thin little wisp of a love story, the kind that needs to be discovered at Sundance when nobody is talking about it and it comes to you like an adorable little puppy, full of pep and heart. In the theatrical marketplace, it almost dissolves on contact, but even if the story doesn't add up to much, good god, is it moving. Not since Nashvilleor A Mighty Wind has a movie worked so effortlessly to show how great songs pulled from the air speak to us in ways that we cannot on our own. Held up to the light of day, Once is really just a sweeter version of Hustle & Flow (another Sundance favorite) with its hopes of a better life tied up in studio time that will hopefully lead to a record deal. But writer-director John Carney’s movie explains what a lot of young creative types already know: Art comes from having your life fall apart, which leads to good art but not necessarily a better life. Writing songs is easier, this movie tells us, than trying to figure out what you're going to do next. The movie also perpetuates one of the great musical myths: Being in the studio is the greatest damn thing in the world. And then there's the ending, which you see coming and yet you don't and is all the more remarkable because of it.
Paris,Je T’Aime (First Look)
If you go in believing the advertising, or even some of its adoring reviews, you'll be disappointed. This is not a love letter to Paris; a city so grand can't hope to be captured in six-minute short films. But as fluffy musings on the nature of love – sex, flirting, partners for life, breakups, the insecurity of the middle ground between "having a good time" and "be mine" – this has considerable upside. The worst pieces are brief enough that you forget them, and the best ones don't need to be any longer than they are. Eighteen of anything can't all be great, but this collection of filmmakers adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Walter Salles shames Babel. Elijah Wood gets roped into something even funkier (and funnier) than The Lord of the Rings. Christopher Doyle demonstrates that, while he should stick to cinematography, he's a pretty gonzo director in his own right. As for the Alexander Payne short, it's genius, as you may have heard, but what I'd like to add to the litany of voices is that it reminds me why I prefer About Schmidt to Sideways. The beaten-down, insecure rhythms of Midwestern life are his specialty, the reason he was put on this Earth. Anybody can make us laugh at his overweight, dull American tourist. I'm not sure anybody else can make us feel that deeply about her.
Black Book (Sony Pictures Classics)
If Paul Verhoeven was gonna make a World War II movie at this stage of his career, of course it would be like this. What Starship Troopers did for the sci-fi horror flick, Black Book does for Schindler's List: add tons of sex appeal and a touch of ludicrousness while playing everything straight. He's hemmed in by the sheer glut of WWII films out there, but he makes up for it by being shamelessly entertaining. Action sequences in these types of dramas are supposed to be efficient and a bit cumbersome, aren't they? Ya know, to be respectful to the era? Nope, his are a total blast. His movies always run too long. But after a series of films starring hot dames, he finally finds one who can really act, even when she's topless.
Arcade Fire, Neon Bible (Merge Records)
Lest you think I’m one more indie-rock white guy who loves everything they’ve ever recorded, remember I wasn’t the biggest fan of Funeral. And I’m still not: When I popped it in recently, I was reminded that I liked the band’s ambition but wished they’d lighten up. Turns out that wasn’t what was needed: Win Butler just had to shout less and sing more. Neon Bible is not conceptually as ambitious as its predecessor, but it’s sung far better, perhaps because Butler and his wife aren’t worrying about turning family deaths into metaphorical ice storms and vampire attacks, spending their free time instead turning the news into an aural phantasmagoria. Starting with an opener that’s as dark a statement on self-deception as a popular twenty-something has come up with, and ending on a track that turns the church organ into the sound of society falling over a cliff, this thing is a sonic wonder, even when you wish the lyrics didn’t wander into the strident and the oh-god-you-didn’t-just-say-that-did-you.
Rufus Wainwright, Release the Stars (Geffen)
Rufus has yet to make a bad album, but Want One is starting to look more like an anomaly, a great record that harnesses his bratty flamboyance for an emotional, cathartic, full-bodied experience. Everything else he’s done has had its share of terrific songs, but he’s too cute by half, and it can be hard to feel sorry about the romantic plight of a sheltered, privileged child of music-industry professionals, no matter the homophobia he’s undoubtedly faced. So Release the Stars for me represents a sort of begrudging acceptance of his strengths and weaknesses – he has great moments, which are no big surprise, and there are songs here that twitter away into nothingness, which isn’t a surprise either. His Dear John note to America is pretty and moving. His European adventures and hotel loneliness are autobiographical and interesting. But I wish he was tougher on his material, which isn’t helped by the fact that he’s producing himself now and includes a dedication to his mother “who still whispers in my ear that I’m great.” You’ve got the potential to be great, Rufus. Wanting to get there is your biggest challenge.
LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver (Capitol)
Overpraised when it came out and then undervalued when the backlash kicked in, LCD Soundsystem’s 2005 debut album stands as a great dance-rock record, one that was even better than I remembered when I compared/contrasted with the new disc. Those who love Sound of Silver exalt James Murphy’s apparently newfound discovery of emotions, regurgitating the thoroughly boring record-review narrative of the talented wiseass who finally learns to care. And while “Someone Great” and “All My Friends” are proof of a loving person who knows the world beyond the studio, I’d suggest they fit comfortably up against the first album’s “Never as Tired as When I’m Waking Up.” And even if he is being more explicit about his emotions, the songs don’t evoke as strongly as before – there are a few too much aural curlicues this time around. “North American Scum,” the album’s advance single, got my hopes up. Turns out it’s the high-water mark of a disc with some vast improvements and some major holding actions.
Consumables is a biweekly overview of popular culture.
