Right Out

We saw the trailer for Knives Out a few months ago and my kneejerk reaction was: "It looks like Clue: The Movie, but with better actors." And it is quite the (middling to real) star-studded cast, with Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Evans, Toni Collette, Don Johnson, and Lakeith Stanfield. There was enough intrigue there (Don Johnson, back on camera? Jamie Lee Curtis, likewise? Daniel Craig, seemingly attempting a Southern accent?) to at least make me curious. But then, seriously, it looked like the plot of a Clue-type boardgame. I suffered through enough Agatha Christie adaptations as a kid and have never been a fan of police procedurals, be they Angela Lansbury vehicles (Murder, She Wrote makes a cameo on a TV screen) or modern, CSI-type stuff. So, I waved a hand at it, thinking I wouldn't bother.

And, then, the snowball started. Audiences were flocking to it. Critics were singing about it (97% on Rotten Tomatoes!) So, I was thinking, maybe I was being too cynical. Maybe there was something here that writer/director Rian Johnson (now famous/infamous for The Last Jedi) was onto. Maybe Daniel Craig doing a faux Louisiana drawl wouldn't be that bad for two hours? So, when the opportunity came to sit down and watch something on Amazon, we decided that we'd watch one of the nominees for best original screenplay...

So, here's where you automatically say to yourself: "Always trust your first instinct. That's why they call it an 'instinct', defined as 'an inherent inclination towards a particular complex behavior.'" My particular complex behavior? Avoiding awful fucking movies, because that's what this is. It's tedious. It's obvious. It's completely predictable. I was seriously bored halfway through it while waiting for Craig to chew through another one of his monologues, none of which are memorable, half because he wasn't saying anything interesting and half because his accent is so bad as to distract from anything interesting he might've been saying. I seriously considered just doing a La La Land and turning to Tricia and saying: "Yeah, I can't watch this." But we'd paid for it, so I kept going, in the desultory hope that something positive might happen (I think I snorted a couple times, but I'm not sure if it was at an actual funny moment or in derision at their attempts to produce one.)

Best original screenplay! This film! For writing! I can't even... OK. Back up. There are generally two ways that a screenplay gets nominated: Clever writing and good storytelling (sometimes, you get both!) An example of the first is Pulp Fiction. All you have to do is say the phrase "Royale with cheese!" and you'll get most people spewing other lines from that opening dialogue between Vincent and Jules in the car on their way to a hit job. It's a totally natural conversation between two friends/colleagues and they deliver it with aplomb. Most of the lines in the film are delivered that way and that's why most of them are memorable. That's why actors clamored to be in the 'next Tarantino' because they saw that and wanted to be the next cool cat on the screen saying that cool shit.

An example of #2 could also be derived from Pulp Fiction, given its non-linear approach and sharp camera work, but my favorite is always Blade Runner, the director's cut. Blade Runner is a brilliant example of visual storytelling. Most people, indeed, think of dialogue when they think of screenplays, but the writer is also responsible for laying the groundwork for the director to build on and Ridley Scott does an excellent job of telling the story just with what you see on the screen. The idiots at Warner Bros. decided to ruin the theatrical release by adding Harrison Ford's voiceover, but you don't need that because the story is in front of you and everything you need to know about Deckard, Rachel, Roy, and everyone else appears in the words they speak and the faces they show. Those are proper screenplays; proper stories; and, often, great films. But there's an old moviemaking aphorism: You can make a bad film out of a good screenplay, but you can't make a good film out of a bad screenplay.

Knives Out has neither of those two key aspects (dialogue, storytelling.) I can't think of a single memorable line from the entire movie. I can't think of a single moment that said to me: "Yeah. I'm watching something interesting develop here." Most of these characters are intended to be contemptible. The problem is, they have to be interesting, as well, if you're going to continue to enjoy watching them, and they simply aren't. In some ways, it reminded me of another film where the patriarch (also a writer) dies and the family comes together for his funeral: August Osage County. That had an ensemble cast, as well, and the story was similar; in that old, family dynamics reemerged and chaos erupted as people remembered just how much they can't stand each other and why they left Osage County, OK in the first place. Many of those characters, likewise, were contemptible in their own ways. But they were also human and the story was heartfelt. These characters were plastic and two-dimensional, which means that there was no depth in them to be suffused with any of the genuine emotion that came from AOC.

I mean, was this supposed to be a modern Death on the Nile? Was Daniel Craig supposed to be a Hercule Poirot reference, just in case a contemporary audience hadn't seen murder mysteries from the 70s where the entire plot had to be re-told, step by step, at the end? One envisions a young Liam Neeson explaining to an equally young Jim Carrey that it's "not a ripoff. It's an homage!" in The Dead Pool (not that Deadpool...) Was Craig's Benny Blanc(o) (from the Bronx!) an homage or a parody? Were we ever going to get an explanation as to why the local cops were so willing to put up with his antics? Or why the insufferable family considered a PI some kind of voice of authority? Or why the suspicious death of a multi-million selling author wasn't immediately TV newsworthy, but his leaving all of those millions to a young, Hispanic woman somehow was, in this, our Internet age of conspiracies and Twitter hordes? Wait. Am I venturing too far outside the canned, Hallmarkian plot? Sorry. I guess I should have stopped thinking.

Every time I sit down to read a book or watch a film or an episode of a TV series, my main desire is to be told a story. It doesn't even have to be an original story. Just tell me a good one. Give me a reason to say: "Yeah. That story was good because..." This film didn't do that and, what's worse, it didn't provide any other reason (performances, cinematography, visuals) for me to think that I didn't waste two hours of my life because I, once again, didn't trust my first instinct. Every time that happens, I say: "Never again." And, yet...

Miserably good

I've only seen the original Les Miserables once. It was the 1982 version, directed by Robert Hossein, and I've never read the novel. I do, thankfully, know the story pretty well, since it's one of the fictional hallmarks of anyone that's ever been involved in progressive politics: oppressed populace with little outlet, desperate hero steals to keep his family alive, and is then pursued to the point of futility for this "crime." It's a story about economic trauma, personal obsession, and the basic ethics of society: cooperation or competition?

But I was instantly entranced upon seeing the trailer for the latest adaptation by Ladj Ly, both because it was covering a very modern premise (the immigrant slums of Paris and the general indifference shown to them by the government) and because that premise meant the story was likely going to veer pretty far from the one I already knew so well. That expectation turned out to be accurate. Thankfully, my anticipation for the quality of the story was met, as well. The story centers around a special police unit that is used to contain the projects, rather than "serve and protect", as it were. The trio of officers who carry the story spend most of their time following groups of youths who may or may not be doing anything illegal, but in true, Javert style, are determined to catch them, regardless. Competing with the police are various other entities (a community leader/racketeer; the local mosque; the thoughtful owner of a kebab shop) who are also attempting to direct the kids into what they think are constructive directions (whether for their own purposes or the actual benefit of the children.) When a confrontation between the police and their targets becomes violent and that encounter is filmed by another youth with a drone camera, it's akin to dropping the match into the puddle of gasoline.

From an American perspective, it's interesting that the encounter that the police are so determined to cover up is actually a non-lethal one. The weapon that ends up injuring one of the kids isn't really capable of killing and one could almost assume, given the circumstances, that the use of it was accidental. But, even in a situation where much of the French public is somewhere between ignorant and contemptuous of the conditions in this housing, the police are terrified that what they've done could be seen as an overreaction. I'm sorry to say that much of the American public would look at what happened as entirely justified, if not simply easily dismissed. In this instance, as in so many others, the European perspective is the more ethical one, even if the police don't generally share that perspective. But, in turn, one of the best things about the film is that Ly takes the time to show the emotional impact of the events on the three officers of the unit: the abrasive, ego-driven leader (Alexis Manenti); the jaded sidekick who grew up in the projects (Djibril Zonga); and the new guy who can't believe that this is what his job has become (Damien Bonnard.)

For all of its well-developed characters and social leanings, however, the film doesn't shy away from the action, as the final scene is both intense and compelling, dispensing with the spotlight moments that are so prevalent in Hollywood action films, which remove any doubt about the outcome. The results here, both in terms of what happens to the characters and whether any kind of resolution has been reached, are left open to question, which is almost always the ultimate sign of a good story.

There are a number of good, little details, as well; from Buzz (the drone flyer; Al-Hassan Ly) being bullied by the local girls basketball team, showing how normal the fight for hierarchical status is, no matter where kids are; to examples of The Commissioner's (Jeanne Balibar) casual corruption and opportunism; to the name of the kebab shop ("Ali Boumaye", the chant that the Zairean public issued to Muhammad Ali before and during the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974 (It basically means "Ali, murder him.")) All of these details provide a textured image of a story and a community with many facets, which shows the care and attention that Ly took in shaping the story (he was also a co-writer) and delivering the final product. I've never been a tremendous fan of French cinema, but this one stood out as exceptional and is well worth the effort of tracking down.

Contrast in motivation

We had a bit of a hiatus over the holidays, so I actually wrote the review for Uncut Gems before I did one for Dark Waters, which we saw before Christmas. The problem I ran into was that I didn't feel like there was much to say about Dark Waters. It's a good film. It will make you angry, since it's the same sordid tale of corporate greed and the suffering of everyone around them (employees, local residents, investigators trying to uncover their crimes to the detriment of their lives and relationships) when it's finally uncovered and admitted to. In fact, part of my low motivation to write about it is that it's quite similar to another film about the same, damn thing: A Civil Action.

In the latter film, it's the story of a successful personal injury lawyer who gets sucked into a massive case of multiple companies poisoning the drinking water of a small Massachusetts town. It's kind of a lesson in what really matters in life, as the lawyer in question, Jan Schlichtmann, went on to become something of an environmental activist, pursuing that type of case around the country. In Dark Waters, the lawyer in question, Robert Bilott, is actually part of a firm that defends chemical companies from precisely the type of lawsuit that he ends up bringing against DuPont. So, it's a different "man comes into the light" type of tale, but not really that different. It's a good film. It's an entertaining film. But there was nothing in it that left me thinking about the story or the way it was shot or Mark Ruffalo's performance or basically any aspect of it. Maybe it's because I've been too close to those stories in my life or read about too many of them, but I didn't find myself with much that was compelling, in the end. Thus, the limp recounting here.

Strangely enough, I had the same trouble with the film we saw this week, which was 1917. I'm not particularly motivated by war films these days. I know too much about why they're started and why they're stupid to derive much entertainment from tales of heroism based in or around them. World War I is perhaps the stupidest of modern wars, based almost solely on two things: 1) Europe having gone a few decades without a large combat and 2) as Jack Reed (Warren Beatty) notes in Reds: Profits. (Aren't they all?) Now, there are differences from Dark Waters, in that I think some of the technical aspects of the film were fascinating. They attempted to show it as one continuous take; a technique that showed up most prominently in recent times in the fourth episode of True Detective (there is only one season, trust me) when an action sequence was shot in one almost seven minute take. They actually shot the sequence three or four times, but when it was finally "printed", it was done all at once. Sam Mendes, the director of 1917, tried a similar approach with this entire film, in an effort to try to include the audience in the immediacy of the action, the urgency of the plot, and the desperation and emotion of its main characters. If you pay attention, you can see the transitions where they smoothed over separate takes with CGI, but unless you're a technical nerd like I am, you likely won't notice them because the action, in truth, is compelling.

While the framework is simple (average trooper must save others in the midst of pointless violence), the delivery is excellent. You can feel the despair at the nature of the zero sum game that they're all engaged in; where men give their lives for yards of territory, only to lose it back to the enemy days later. In a way, bringing the audience past that despair with the constant nature of the production and action is probably the best way to deliver a story about World War I, without falling back to the naiveté of 1914, when everyone's heroes marched off to win a little squabble that would last six weeks. You can combine the dolor of the people involved, fully aware that their lives were irrelevant to the high command and knowing that virtually nothing would be improved for them if they emerged victorious, with the compulsion to perhaps make it so a few hundred more lives weren't senselessly wasted, at least for today. George MacKay was excellent as the lead, adding thoughtfulness to a role that required a lot of desperate panic and emotion. It was also nice to see Mark Strong show up in a small role, as well as Richard Madden for the first time that I've seen him since his performance as Robb Stark in Game of Thrones.

I also enjoyed the detail that Mendes indulged in for the trench scenes and the realities of warfare over a century in the past. While I thought, at one point, that the trenches might be a little too clean and/or dry than the reality, the truth is that region of France doesn't particularly have a "rainy season", so it was as likely to be dry as not. There was enough dirt present to make the audience aware of what a struggle it was to live in the ground, without having to deal with mud. In at least one respect, both films were about determination in the face of daunting odds; one told rapidly and the other slowly, but both with the intent of showing some degree of hope at the end, even if challenges remained. What that says about my lack of motivation to write about either of them is beyond me, at the moment.

Rough stones

I have never been an Adam Sandler fan. His kind of loud, screeching, sophomoric humor is just not my thing; even in a "It's funny to see someone else make a fool of themselves" kinda way. So, now that's he's doing dramas in the same kind of loud, screeching, sophomoric manner... Yeah, it's still not my thing. I was about 30 minutes into Uncut Gems and was thinking: "This is really tedious."; mostly because they were doing the New York Brofus culture, non-stop, where everyone is constantly loud and constantly shouting over each other in an attempt to win an argument by making the other person realize that no one is communicating and shutting up first. This was basically the entire film. It was like a New York version of La La Land, where the latter was an insipid presentation of acting culture in LA and this was an Iphone recording of the right field seats in Yankee Stadium with better production values.

The divide on Rotten Tomatoes over this one is significant, with 92% of critics favoring it and only 53% of moviegoers. The normal thought process is that regular audiences aren't cinema freaks who can't really understand the deeper meanings or hidden subtexts of the critics' favorites or choose to ignore those things in favor of being entertained. But I suspect that this is more like the difference between an insider's world and the actual world, where critics are tossing Sandler a bone because he's "paid his dues" on the comedy circuit and is now trying serious drama, and the audience is objecting to being shouted at for two hours. And, of course, drama still needs to be entertaining in some fashion and this film simply wasn't. I'm all about the main character being an asshole. I'm totally down with the "anti-hero" concept and stories about people that are generally difficult to live with. What I'm less enthused about is when every, single person on the screen is an asshole, which is what we had here. You couldn't feel sympathetic toward any of these people. Not even the kids. Even Kevin Garnett was presented as a callous prick and I've read enough interviews with the guy to know that he's actually a pretty decent human being.

And perhaps that was the point? If you show all of these people at their worst, it makes it into kind of a freakshow, where the audience just laughs and shakes their heads in wonder at the idiotic situations that all of these characters end up in. That's a fairly good summation of the bulk of Sandler's comedy, so I guess it can't be a surprise that that's how he ends up doing dramatic roles. What's surprising is that so many critics seem to find that acceptable or in any way original or worthwhile. Again, if that was the point and I'm simply missing it... OK. Again, it's just not my style. Sandler has many fans and many people loved him on SNL and in his various films. I'm clearly not his target audience.

To Sandler's credit, he does well with the role. If he weren't so loud and stupid, he'd be a genuinely sympathetic character, as he constantly thinks that he's found the next big thing that will send him on his way, whether it be because he's the only one who thought about obtaining opals from Beta Israel or because he's the one who "feels" that the Celtics will win tonight ("And no one else feels what we feel!") The problem is that we never see Howard actually fail. We see his schemes get interrupted or delayed or him run into various mishaps of his own devising. But the usual sad sack story of the born loser who finally thinks he's hit it big? That's not this story. Howard runs a jewelry business in the diamond district and can drop five figures on a sports bet. That's not a 'born loser' story. That's a gambling addict story, but it's one with very little heart because, again, everyone is loud and conceited and stupid. If you want to see a good, introspective film about a gambling addict, go see Mississippi Grind. I have to say that I was also impressed by Eric Bogosian, as Arnold, Howard's brother-in-law and the world's most reluctant loan shark. He did really excellent work conveying just how troubling it was to be dealing with his business inside the family.

So, the film doesn't entirely lack high points. They were just largely drowned out by the unending torrent of screeching low points. And, of course, a lot of Sandler's pals were dropped in, like Mike Francesa as his bookie, The Weekend, John Amos, Trinidad James, and so on. Again, La La Land, but in New York, talking about how wonderful it is to be an incredibly wealthy, loud, obnoxious New Yorker. If that's what you're into, then this is the film for you. Myself, I'll stick to things that don't make me want to lower the volume.

Same and Story

Once again, I'm doing two films in this review, largely because of the nature of them, i.e. directors doing the same thing means I don't really have that much to say. It's an interesting side note to Hollywood's obsession with IP, where everything is a sequel to something that came before (Frozen 2!), rather than an original idea/setting/character.

Right from the start, I will admit to not being much of a Pedro Almodóvar fan. I like his films because they're always well-crafted and his storytelling technique is a solid one. His characters are human, they react in very human ways, and there's always a solid foundation to build from. My detachment comes from the fact that it very often seems to be the same story, despite variations in setting and characters. Pain and Glory, his latest, is no different.

All artists draw from themselves and their own experiences. Given the semi-autobiographical nature of Pain and Glory, it probably shouldn't be that surprising that it seems like a rehash of themes that Almodóvar has used before. And, again, that doesn't mean it's bad because the final product is a good one. It's an interesting film and the story moves well and there's the usual passion from the characters that are, again, emblematic of his films. But it's also largely like the films he's done before. You know how the story is going to proceed and even the little meta twist at the end isn't anything that's particularly memorable. This is Antonia Banderas and Penélope Cruz and, especially, Asier Etxeandia doing really well with their parts and creating believable people with genuine emotion attached. Those performances alone make it a good film. But the story is still regular Almodóvar and if you've seen one you've, unfortunately, seen most of them. If you're a fan, it's definitely worth seeing. If not, it's an Amazon or Netflix choice.

Speaking of Netflix, we come to Scorsese's latest, The Irishman, which suffers from exactly the same circumstances, except worse and longer. The film is based on Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran's book, I Heard You Paint Houses. I read it years ago, around the time of its release, on someone's recommendation for an insight into "actual" mob doings. It's a good book. Unfortunately, the film is also basically a note-for-note retelling that often saps the life from the story. Sheeran wasn't trying to craft a story when he wrote it. He was just offering up an experience that he'd lived and allowing people to draw from that what they might, including the details on the Hoffa situation. Scorsese chose to highlight that moment with Hoffa by using two framing devices when telling the story: one from Sheeran's perspective waiting to die in a nursing home and one from his perspective while taking a drive to Michigan a couple days before Hoffa was sitting outside the Machus Red Fox in 1975. That turns what could have been a tight two-and-a-half hour film into an occasionally tedious three-and-a-half hour film. Scenes of the drive were repeatedly presented to try to drive home the "mob life" point that we'd already gotten and the emotional impact that Sheeran was suffering because of the nature of the task before him, which we'd also largely already gotten. That meant that they felt like filler.

What's worse is that this is the same ground that Scorsese has trod many times and with the same actors. DeNiro? Pacino? Pesci? Romano? The gang is all here and you can throw in Harvey Keitel along with them. There comes a time when a director has used an actor in the same type of role so often that all you can do when seeing the new film is be reminded of the old ones. Witness anything Clint Eastwood has done directing himself in the past 20+ years. This is what happens here, when all we think about through most of the film is how similar it is to Goodfellas or Casino. This is a Scorsese gangster film! Anyone excited?

Like Pain and Glory, the performances are somewhere between solid and excellent, although Pacino's booming voice is a marked deviation from Hoffa's which was a real problem when trying to look at him as anyone but Al Pacino. It was interesting to see the CGI effects that made them appear to be 40-year-old versions of themselves, rather than attempting a ridiculous amount of makeup. Problem is, making someone look like they're 40 doesn't affect the fact that most of them still move around the set like they're 80, because they are. So even 40-year-old Frank Sheeran made you feel like you were just seeing the same scenes that you'd watched before. And this is the root of the problem: We've all been here before. This film gives us nothing new. It's just more "mob life" stuff. They even include dates and methods of death for a lot of the minor characters, most of which had absolutely nothing to do with Sheeran's life in general or the Hoffa situation in specific, but were actually connected to the Philly mob war in the early 80s. What does that detail offer us, except "This is another Scorsese mob film"?

In a film industry that is obsessed with mining the familiar in order to guarantee ticket sales from those who seemingly never seem to tire of watching the same stuff, over and over, like sitcom reruns, these two films, despite not following that trend of "IP first, story second", actually end up doing so, anyway. It sounds incredibly ageist to suggest that these two masters of the craft should probably rest on their laurels and open up space for others if Almodóvar and Scorsese still want to work and others still want to work with them. But I'm pretty much done with the experience that they're offering and I'd much rather see something else by someone like Bong Joon-ho, if only because it won't distract me by reminding me of everything he's done before.

Watching Watchmen

I've had a number of people ask me if I'm planning on watching HBO's Watchmen series and, presumably, writing about it. The short answer is: No. I'm not planning on it.

The long answer is: I'm not radically opposed to the concept. If people want to do that and if more people want to watch it, go nuts. I'm just not really enthused about it because I tend to agree with creators Alan Moore and Brian Bolland, who have been largely irritated and confused, respectively, about most of the projects that DC has engaged in (like the prequel limited series) that are taking advantage of the story they completed back in the 80s. Watchmen was a completed story in 1987. They said what they had to say and it was done. Fin. They both moved on. They had a different take on the later film version, because Moore had become alienated by Hollywood over the debacle that was the film version of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, while Bolland wasn't quite so embittered and was at least eager to see his work brought to life in another format.

But the TV series is something different. In essence, DC and HBO are saying that this is kind of a continuation of a completed story. You can all see the contradiction there, right? It's as if HBO is coming in with a continuation of Moby Dick: "Oh, but NOW we have the continuing adventures of Ishmael where he, like, finds someone obsessed with hunting down a giant SQUID! ... Yeah! ... 'Cuz that's, y'know... cool." Except that, no, it really isn't. It's just grafting. I haven't seen any of HBO's series but have had much of it explained to me and there's really no reason for it to be set in the world of the Watchmen except for brand recognition. You could do the same story in a whole new world and not be constrained by any of the easy segues or "Gotcha!" moments and, instead, have a whole tableau in front of you that was genuinely original (Please don't @ me with any of that "There's nothing new under the sun" nihilist bullshit.) But, instead, they've done the typical grafting routine that has been endemic to American TV since the 70s, where there'd be a hit and they'd decide to do a spinoff because they had an automatic audience from the previous show. The problem is that most of them were shit because they didn't do the actual creative work necessary to make them good or because the original story they told was, well, already told, just like this one. The lone exception was one of the first in the form of The Jeffersons and that may have been because they were, for once, giving actual insight into how Black people are just like White people, which was a novel concept back then and (sigh), for some people, remains so today.

So, Watchmen drew in viewers because it was WATCHMEN. Will it be good on its own? Who knows? Was it developed to be good on its own? I don't know that, either. I know that it reminds me of something Dave Sim, of Cerebus (and, unfortunately, rampant misogyny) fame used to tell people at comic conventions, back in the day. People would show him their artwork and complain about how they couldn't get noticed by Marvel and DC. Their artwork would usually be of the most popular books of the time. He'd tell them: "Look, you clearly have talent. But if you really want to do The X-Men, go ahead and do The X-Men and just call it something different." What he meant was for them not to tie their participation in the field or their sense of self-worth as artists to the two corporate behemoths of the time. If they wanted to be comic artists, they should go out and be comic artists. If they wanted to do superheroes, they should go out and do superheroes. Hell, John Byrne, as mainstream a comic artist as you could get, showed them how to do it by producing The Next Men for Dark Horse, which was always kind of an inside joke that the pronunciation made super obvious (and super ironical, since Byrne had once been the artist for X-Men...)

In other words, there's no harm in being original. HBO, of all producers, has enough clout to just say: "We're doing a superhero story. It's in the vein of Watchmen." People would have flocked to it because it's a new HBO series and they used a buzzword for comic fans (and fans of the film. If they exist.) I would have been interested and far more so if they'd said "like Watchmen, but not Watchmen" because, as noted, I agree with Moore and Bolland. Watchmen has been done. Tell me a new story. I don't really care what the omnipotent Dr. Manhattan is doing (kinda like Superman) or what fanatics inspired by Rorschach or The Comedian are doing. I can get that just by reading 4chan. You want to tell me something new about a superhero in our "real world"? I'm all about it. Just make it your own thing. This is why I'll always respect Neil Gaiman for getting DC to sign a contract with him that basically said he'd only keep working on (and eventually finish) The Sandman series, if they agreed that they'd never produce anything else with that character unless he was involved. That way, he'd ensure that whatever stories were told were within the confines of his vision and didn't become marketing crap. Moore and Bolland didn't get that chance. You'd like to hope that Melville would have.

Roundabout conclusions

I walked out of Jojo Rabbit last night with a similar impression to what I had after seeing Tel Aviv on Fire. Both were good films that I don't regret seeing. Both involve tendentious political/sociological situations that are sure to invite controversy. I went into both expecting some seriously sharp wit... and came out having seen a far sweeter story than I expected and feeling like something was missing.

Unfortunately, I get that there's a pretty thin line you have to tread when writing (and directing) a movie about a Hitler Youth member whose secret friend just happens to be the organizational namesake, so you kind of have to be careful about when and how you take your shots. That said, I really wish that Taika Waititi had taken more of them. On the face of it, this is clearly what you'd call an absurdist fantasy, But the thing about absurdism is that you really need to be incisive to make it work. A classic example is Monty Python. A lot of their material is rooted in the classical educations that most of the troupe received at Oxford and Cambridge. Despite something like the Philosophers' Football Match sketch being absurd on a number of levels, the humor in it is actually pretty elevated once you get to the decision to actually put the ball in play (in a manner of speaking.) You don't need an actual philosophy degree to get it, but you have to have some awareness. My assumption is that anyone who goes to see Jojo Rabbit is going to be someone that has that level of awareness, so there would have been no problem with writing to that level.

Instead, he largely ducked the humor approach and instead went with a more emotional story about dispelled dreams and the wisdom gained from new circumstances; in Jojo's (Roman Griffin Davis) case, the discovery of a young Jewish girl hiding in his house whom he discovers to be as human as he is, plus the knowledge that his mother was the one who helped her get there and is now opposing the state religion that he believes he should be a part of. That's a decent story, albeit one that we've seen many times before, and certainly redolent of modern times in the US as we wait for Trump supporters to realize that that's probably not something they really want to be a part of, either. And that's valid reason enough to keep telling this kind of story, as we watch "Germany in the 1920s" mildly materialize around us. It's just not the type of story I went into the theater expecting to see. That doesn't make it bad. It just means that I went into the film kind of expecting to see more scenes like the Gestapo raid/Heil Hitler chorus, when much of the cast comes close to breaking the fourth wall as they engage in the idiocy that's layered over what is otherwise a very serious moment in the story. I suppose it might be the difference between the genuine political cynics among us (raises hand) and those who aren't when it comes to appreciating Waititi's approach here, in that I already assume that most humans are complete idiots that will let this happen again and don't need to be warned about the seriousness of it. (Waking up at 2 AM on election day three years ago and bursting out laughing would be a huge tell.)

To the film's credit, most of the performances were really excellent. Scarlett Johansson was the perfect, efficient German matron, always encouraging her uncertain offspring while working at cross purposes to him. (I had to wonder if the diehard Tom Waits fan encouraged Waititi to use him in the film's soundtrack.) Sam Rockwell continued his tour of excellence, contributing to some of that absurdity with subtle acknowledgments of the gallows humor of it all in the waning days of the Reich. And both Davis and new friend, Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) appropriately provided some of the more heartfelt and genuine moments, while their worlds crumbled or were reborn around them. One highlight was Jojo's best friend, Yorki (Archie Yates) and his implacable levity ("I know! It seems I just can't die!") in the film's more serious moments. And it has to be acknowledged that Waititi chewing scenery as Hitler is open to question: Since Hitler himself made that kind of bombast a signature of his public performances, can we accuse Waititi of overdoing it? Or was he just playing to form? Or, in fact, playing to what a child's interpretation of his hero would have been? There are so many layers and they're so wonderfully open to interpretation in the same way that I appreciate his willingness to not shy away from treading that thin line and actually making this film.

So, even if I wanted him to go farther and wanted more mockery and more humor and somewhat less drama, I have to say that I think the film succeeded in what its visionary was trying to accomplish. Even if you don't know or care about Hegelian thought, I think this film is well worth it.