Untroubled

Kenneth Branagh's latest film, Belfast, has its roots in The Troubles which increasingly dominated his childhood in the 1960s in his native city. Given that reality, it's easy to see why he chose to present the work largely from the perspective of the child that he was then. That perspective steers it away from being turgid or overly dramatic or triggering the kind of visceral responses that many of these films often fall victim to (see: In the Name of the Father.) But it's worth questioning whether his touch was so light and the story so goodhearted that it missed the chance to deliver its message with the impact that he, perhaps, was hoping for.

First and foremost, the performances are excellent and they're what truly carry the film, beyond any considerations for plot or history. Jude Hill (Buddy), who was all of nine when the film was shot (in other words, just about the same age as Branagh when the Troubles kicked into high gear), is a delight. Even at the point where one could accuse him of overacting, he does so in situations when almost all children would overact (expressing surprise, showing obvious distaste for something, etc.), so it seems perfectly natural. And that's really the key here: all of these actors (with one exception) seem perfectly natural in their roles. These aren't actors playing inhabitants of Belfast. They are inhabitants of Belfast. And in many cases, this is almost the literal truth, as Branagh went to some effort to cast mostly Northern Irish actors- and, in many cases, Belfast natives -to fill the roles. They act like this is their home because it basically is their home. That one exception is Colin Morgan, who plays Unionist Billy Clanton, and that may be a factor of the part he was given, more than any lack of capability on his part, as he spends most of his screen time giving grandiloquent speeches about why Buddy's "Pa" (Jamie Dornan) should join their efforts to drive out their Catholic neighbors, rather than the more subtle chats on the stoop or in the neighborhood pub that were the regular paths of recruitment. He's the one local who carries the story into a broader scope than what could be seen as the petty disagreements of said locals, until you incorporate the presence of British troops. Billy takes the story past the child's perspective/coming-of-age tale that otherwise suffuses everything. That's not necessarily a flaw, as it was a larger situation with roots hundreds of years in the past, but it just loses that veneer of "naturalness" when that character is involved.

Both Ciarán Hinds (another Belfast native) and Dame Judi Dench (hidden behind an impressive amount of makeup and daunting spectacles) are excellent as Buddy's grandparents; doling out sage advice as if they'd lived in the world, rather than having been handed a script. Likewise, Caitriona Balfe, as "Ma", plays an excellent, harried mother, trying to protect her children in the midst of chaos and the frequent lack of a partner/husband, but displaying just as obviously how devoted she is to him when they are able to enjoy life together. (The dancing scene at the local hall is a particular highlight.) I'm spending a lot of time talking about those performances because, again, the do make the film. The story really isn't much to speak of past the usual "here's daily life as a 9-year-old in unusual circumstances" approach and me, being Story Guy, would usually be hung up on that point. But it doesn't matter as much here, since you're so preoccupied with watching these people live their lives amidst the new life of barricades, riots, and soldiers on what used to be a pretty mundane street in Belfast which is, of course, exactly the point.

Branagh took care to spend time on the details, which is no different from most of his other films, citing the type of candy he might've been talked into swiping as a kid but which he didn't really like, as well as using Belfast native(!) Van Morrison for much of the soundtrack, including a new track composed just for the film. It won't deliver profound insights or give a new perspective on The Troubles (there are many, many other ways to do that, if you're interested. And you should be.), but it will give you a look into life as it often was and from the standpoint of a bunch of actual humans caught in a situation that almost none of them wanted, especially the small humans. Despite the lack of intriguing story, definitely recommended.

Endings, timely or otherwise

Spoilers! 

No Time to Die is Daniel Craig's last excursion as James Bond 007 which, in a way, seems fitting as, in the macro sense, the overall impression that I got from it was that they'd kinda run out of ideas. It's well-constructed and director Cory Fukunaga still has action scenes down to a science. But what most attracted me to his work on the first season of True Detective was the intrigue and moody atmosphere that he was able to convey in every, single, well-paced scene. When I heard that he was the director for this film, I anticipated that kind of thoughtful storytelling. But what I got was a James Bond film, most of which haven't been lauded for their stories, despite the often subtle approach of novelist Ian Fleming. In fact, the one film that does stand out for story is Craig's first effort, Casino Royale, which remains as the best Bond film ever made. So, you can say that NTTD was an example of competent filmmaking, but it was hard to shake the feeling that we've seen it all before.

There was a point from about You Only Live Twice onward that Bond became mostly about the hi-tech doohickeys, both used by him and used against him. Then the Other JB, Jason Bourne, films emerged and demonstrated that, yes, you could use advanced technology in action spy movies and still be serious about what was happening on the screen, rather than smarmy and goofy like Roger Moore and Pierce Bronsnan had been (We should really just forget about Timothy Dalton.) Casino Royale was the turning point in the series because it not only returned Bond to being a serious spy, but also saved him from being a better-dressed Inspector Gadget. As Roger Moore himself once noted, Craig's Bond was the closest to the character depicted in Fleming's novels than anyone who'd done the role before; an ice-cold killer, mission above all, but still a "good guy" in true Cold War fashion. The key to Casino was that it took the emotionless, impermeable operative and forced him to confront those emotions that he'd suppressed. Craig's films have largely continued in that theme, as his evolution of the character has shown him repeatedly driven by passion, whether affection or rage, as well as his struggle to contain that passion so that he can put the work ahead of anything personal. That's a solid read on the character, but you can only keep doing that for so long before there should be a breaking point, either within the story or with the audience. I think we probably passed that breaking point in Spectre, leaving NTTD as something akin to a TV series that ran a season too long.

Thankfully, as the Craig version has progressed, his supporting cast has continued to grow and get stronger, having real purpose as opposed to the sideshow carnival that a lot of them were reduced to in the Moore years. There's been a notable growth of stronger women in the Craig era, departing from what almost become hallowed tradition of damsels in distress (A View to a Kill is perhaps the most execrable depiction of that, among its many other flaws) and NTTD was no exception. Indeed, the most entertaining character in the whole film was Ana de Armas' Paloma, who managed to kick ass in a designer gown and heels with "only three weeks training" and a delightfully casual attitude about the whole thing. All of that support combined with Craig's ability to actually act (something not especially common among previous Bonds...) in order to convince us that these were actual people, for the most part, going through these extraordinary circumstances. In the best Bond films, the villains have been part of that ensemble when it really works. But good characters need a combination of two things: good writing and good acting. Rami Malek, as Lyutsifer Safin, had the latter but not the former. Most Bond films are about a personal contest of wills between Bond and whomever the main villain is. One is trying to enact a nefarious scheme and the other is trying to stop him. But part of that personal contest is getting to know said villain as something other than simply a force of evil; a Sauron ("I am mean and angry... because I am mean and angry!") In the early films, they usually did that with Bond meeting said villains and exchanging pleasantries in an "espionage is a gentleman's game" style.

But Safin is introduced in the first few minutes as an implacable assassin, hidden behind a Noh mask. He doesn't deviate from that approach for the rest of the film, despite losing the mask and having a couple scenes fairly loaded with exposition. We don't really get to know the villain as a person. He's just The Villain, like a Sauron. Despite Fukunaga's claim that Safin was "more dangerous than anyone Bond has ever encountered" and a "hyper-intelligent and worthy adversary", we get none of that from this character. He's simply a malevolent force and one more in the list of guys that Bond has knocked off for almost sixty years. There isn't the panache of Christopher Lee's Francisco Scaramanga or the ferocity of Robert Shaw's Red Grant or the desperation of Mads Mikkelsen's Le Chiffre and certainly not the eerie charm of Christoph Waltz's Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who upstages Safin in this very film. On top of that, while it's great to see Léa Seydoux getting lots of work lately (I wrote about her just last week), her scenes as the female lead are largely so angst-ridden that it feels like we move past the "help Bond with his emotions" stage and straight into genuine soap opera at some point. Yes, she's a Bond woman and not a Bond girl. She takes care of herself, largely makes her own choices, and even guns down a few bad guys in true action movie form (Alas, no one passes the Bechdel test.) But in the second half of the film, when she's largely the caretaker of Matilde, we end up doing a bit of the Helen Lovejoy scenario. Yes, it's important to save the child, especially because it's Bond's child, but it's equally important to save all of the other lives that have just as much value. Dropping Matilde into the clutches of the villain to be dangled in front of Bond until he supposedly debases himself is so stock Hollywood filmmaking that it's almost boring. And, again, we've all seen stock Hollywood more times than we probably care to count, which is not what I expected of Fukunaga, who also had a hand in writing the screenplay.

The little touches of classic Bond were funny to see, like the Aston Martin DB5 with the smoke and guns; the recreation of the title shot sequence in the hallway on Safin's island base (near Japan; I half expected the extinct volcano from You Only Live Twice); using Louis Armstrong's "We Have All the Time in the World" which is prominent in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which is also about Bond dealing with emotional loss; and so on. Obviously, these were people trying to tend to the IP as well as continue to tell their version of it. But what might have compounded the flaws of the film is it's mildly ridiculous length, as it runs almost three hours, which is longer than any Bond film before it and longer than this story needed to be. Yes, it's Craig's sending off and there's a certain level of emotion attached to that but you could have excised chunks of some of the longer action sequences and a lot of the dithering with Valdo Obruchev (David Dencik), among other things, and it might have felt like the film's pace didn't descend to the turgid at times; again, not something I'm accustomed to from Fukunaga's previous work. One also can't understate the genuine level of emotion involved in many of the performances. Craig, Seydoux, and others do really well in that respect with what they're given to work with.

So, yeah. Not great, not terrible. If you're a hardcore Bond fan, it's a decent entry. If not, I can't say you'll be missing much that you haven't seen before.

Haute couture

It's very easy to spot a Wes Anderson film. The limited color palette, the offbeat characters, the feeling like every one of them is some kind of caper, even if the story is far more sedate and intricate than that; all of these little details make an Anderson film instantly recognizable as soon as a trailer for one of them begins. When Jaime and I were sitting through the previews before Bergman Island a couple weeks ago and the first moments of The French Dispatch appeared on the screen, we both thought two things: "That looks like a Wes Anderson film." and "That looks amazing." It's a telling reminder of his consistent style (noted by most film scholars as being a central figure in the "American Eccentric" mode), as well, since Jaime is more a fan of his earlier work (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) and I'm more attached to more recent offerings (Moonrise Kingdom, Grand Budapest Hotel) but we both were instantly moths to the flame at the brief glimpses into the concept of The French Dispatch. There's little doubt that he's a huge hit to those of us who are fond of films that go a bit beyond standard offerings and, likewise, little doubt that he's just as popular within the film industry itself, considering the legion of names he was able to entice into taking bit roles in this project (everyone from Christoph Waltz to Henry Winkler), but it's just as true that his style is unusual enough that it's easy to understand how it doesn't make a connection with a lot of regular movie fans. As far as Dispatch is concerned, it's fair to wonder how much of that possible disconnect was style and how much was substance when compared to previous efforts.

As I've mentioned here many times, I'm a story guy. If I'm going to appreciate what you're doing, you first have to tell me a decent story. That's been true of all of Anderson's films to date and one of the things that supports his style. He has quirky characters doing odd things, but they're all rooted in a solid, meaningful story that provides the foundation for the slightly off-kilter worlds that they're told in. Dispatch is no different except that this time, it seems like his motivation for doing this film was to present an homage to The New Yorker and the various long-time writers who worked for the magazine, instead of coming up with a new world all his own. That's not really a story and, indeed, Dispatch is made up of three separate tales connected by an overarching framework which is the fictional French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun. It's a way of connecting small town Kansas with equally small town France, in this case the fictional Ennui-sur-Blasé (literally "boredom on apathy".) That provides a basis for Anderson's odd scenarios and characters, but it also detracts from the driving central theme that usually inhabits his work. It's more of a survey than a novel, which seems appropriate because, again, he was writing it as something of an homage, rather than solely telling a story as he's done before. I certainly don't object to directors and writers trying something new. After all, everyone has to stay interested in their work if it's going to be what they want it to be, but I can't help but think that the departure from the story as the prime motivator may have left this film lacking a bit of the magic that usually inhabits his creations.

The three segments are almost as odd as ever: an artist imprisoned in Ennui's Prison/Asylum (as always, the wry allusions to modern circumstances are everywhere in Anderson's productions) who becomes famous in the art world because of a fraudster imprisoned with him (The Concrete Masterpiece); a reporter who has an affair with a leader of a student protest and helps him write his manifesto (shades of Jack Reed) (Revisions to a Manifesto); and another reporter who writes about a dinner with a police commissioner which is interrupted by the kidnapping of his son who can only be rescued by the police chef who prepared the dinner (The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner.) I say 'almost as odd' because, as noted, Revisions is quite similar to something that can be drawn straight from history. That can't be totally surprising as, again, Anderson was doing this as something of a love letter to The New Yorker, which was and is a prominent voice of journalism. But it also means that we're veering away from the usual Anderson fantasies (Isle of Dogs, etc.) and into something where "offbeat" is perhaps not the best descriptor. In that respect, Revisions is also the most forgettable of the three stories and "forgettable" is not a word one often uses about a Wes Anderson film.

But, also per usual, many of the performances are excellent and show the willingness of the actors to completely immerse themselves in an Anderson world. Particular standouts are Tilda Swinton, Benicio Del Toro, and Léa Seydoux from Concrete (the latter with less than half a dozen lines); Timothée Chalamet and Lyna Khoudri from Revisions; and Jeffrey Wright and Saoirse Ronan from Private. Wright, especially, hit the combination of world-weariness but still earnest inquiry that seems to fit the conception of a veteran New Yorker writer. (He was one of the many highlights for me from Boardwalk Empire and one of the few from Westworld, too.) It was a treat to see so many well-known faces show up in minor roles; among them Winkler and Waltz, as noted, but also Edward Norton, Lois Smith, Liev Schreiber, Willem Dafoe, and Owen Wilson as the travelogue writer who sets the stage for the whole piece, among many others.

So, overall, it works as both a film and a Wes Anderson film. I certainly want to watch it again to see some of the many details which I may have missed and to convince myself that I haven't simply missed out on the magic of this one. But it's certainly not among my favorites of his oeuvre and not something I would suggest that people rush out to see unless they already enjoy his work. At the very least, it was entertaining, which is the bottom line for any film.

Shorted

There's a certain strain of acting role that you can identify with particular performers who've seemingly made said roles part of their public image, intentionally or not. Despite what range they may have (sometimes considerable), it's not out of the realm of reason to suggest that some things are "a Nick Cage role" or a "Jon Hamm role." When a film's main character is "eccentric English artist who has difficulty functioning in society and interacting with other people", I don't think it's too far a stretch to suggest that that's a "Benedict Cumberbatch role", based primarily on his most notable performance as Sherlock Holmes for the BBC's Sherlock. So when I saw the trailer for The Electrical Life of Louis Wain and saw who was starring in it, it immediately looked like a "Benedict Cumberbatch role" to me and, in that one small respect, it didn't disappoint. In most other respects, there wasn't a lot to be said for it.

Wain was an English artist whom I confess to have never heard of prior to seeing the film. Said film is a depiction of his life as an often-struggling artist in Victorian England, his rise to fame with his stylized pictures of cats and kittens, and his difficulties in dealing with the commercial and economic side of making a living at what was the foremost of his many, many hobbies. Seems like a decent story to be told, yes? And for the first third of the film, it's clearly set up to tell that story. Wain's personal foibles are examined, his devoted but brief relationship with his wife is explored, and his relationships, professional and familial, are all on display. Act I of Storytelling 101 is fairly fleshed out. The problem occurs when we try to move on to Acts II and III. Most stories have some kind of conflict to be resolved. Wain's story has conflict, in that he doesn't socialize well and is awful at managing money in a situation where, as the male of the household, he's expected to care for his sisters and indolent mother. But that conflict never changes and no resolution ever occurs. We're introduced to that situation in the first 10 minutes of the film. Thirty minutes later, it hasn't changed. Sixty minutes later, it hasn't changed. In fact, other than Wain's direct living conditions and slowly deteriorating mental state, basically nothing changes as the film moves along. He's still drawing cats. His family is still hard-up for money. His eldest sister continually reproaches him for not having that money. The overall situation is as static as it was at the beginning of the film. It's like watching a Wikipedia article come to life: "This is what Louis Wain's life was like, from beginning to end." Even the first other character we see besides Louis, Dan Rider (Adeel Akhtar), reappears at the film's conclusion to talk about how he still enjoys Wain's artwork. Overall, nothing much happens in the story and it's mostly a vehicle to display pictures of cats.

Now, there is such a thing as being detached and whimsical. Many filmmakers have used that style to show somewhat off-kilter stories with little moments of import that aren't filled with drama, so much as they are odd quirks that make the story and the film memorable. Wes Anderson has built a career on that approach; as has Taika Waititi, who actually has a small role in this film. But there really isn't anything memorable in this film because the only genuinely interesting character is Louis and he just does the same thing, over and over. The most interesting part was Act I, where director and co-writer, Will Sharpe, sets the stage for Louis' life. We reach a moment in the film where the whimsy comes to the fore, as we see the cats that Louis enjoys more than people begin talking to him in a fashion he finds perfectly understandable. But Sharpe doesn't persist with that and, instead, we just go back to Louis drawing and painting and his economic situation persisting and nothing really changing. There are no real moments of delight that either let us laugh at how Louis interprets the situation before him or, instead, give us insight as to why he sees things that way. At some point, I was expecting an assertion on his part in the same way the children's view of the world is explored in Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom or something similar. But, instead, Louis remains tediously detached from us, as we watch him go through the same routines and avoid the same problems and receive the same flack from his sister, Caroline (Andrea Riseborough) and on and on.

There's a known writer's issue in that storytellers sometimes find themselves in what feels like a perfectly-created world and they shy away from really telling a story for fear of wrecking that perfect image. There is no real change or transformation or development that happens in that story because that would be a change to the original creation. It takes a certain amount of will and desire to step past world creation into actual storytelling. Somewhere, Sharpe and co-writer, Simon Stephenson, didn't take that step. Is it because there really wasn't much story to tell about Wain other than what is shown in the film? That's debatable. In reading the actual Wikipedia entry on his life, it seems like there was more to draw from that which might have shown his progression into madness or even an accumulation of smaller facts, like the contrast between his seeming obsession with personal electricity that Sharpe and Stephenson repeatedly emphasize and how he returned from his time in New York with even less money than he came with because of an investment in a new type of oil lamp(!) There does seem to be room to explore in the story of his life, even if Sharpe wanted to maintain the seemingly whimsical approach. But the film just doesn't go there and ends up more like a display of his artwork with dialogue.

In the end, it feels like Sharpe and Stephenson are great fans of the artist and this was simply a paean to that fandom; as if just having Louis Wain on screen should be treat enough for the audience, especially given that he's portrayed by the perfect casting of Cumberbatch. But most biopics are actually a story of someone's life and this film simply didn't have much story to tell, by the cats or otherwise.