Short films, big packages - live action, 2021

We saw the first round of Oscar-nominated shorts at the Michigan Theater tonight. It was Live Action; a label that has always struck me as redundant, but I guess there has to be some distinction from animation and documentary. I supposed it could just be "Drama", since they almost always are, but that cuts out comedy and genuine "action" films, so there it is. That said, even with a few funny moments, all of the entries tonight were definitely dramas.

The first was On My Mind, a Danish film using the Elvis Presley hit as an underlying theme. The main character is a man (Rasmus Hemmerich) trying to convince a bar owner (Ole Boisen) and bartender (Camilla Bendix) to let him sing "Always on my mind" as a tribute to his beloved, whom he only identifies as "Trine." It's a character study of a few minutes, talking about the anguish that some are carrying and that the rest of the world either ignores or dismisses in cynical fashion, only to be eventually crushed by the truth in the same way that the carrier has been for who knows how long. It was well played and I appreciated the visual imagery of imagining the records left behind in the condensation of windows and tumblers. But it didn't strike me as strongly as the rest of the quintet of films did. I appreciated it for its craft and the performances, especially Bendix who presented an excellent wily bartender who isn't afraid to show her heart when she knows someone needs it. All the same, at the end I was thinking of it as "Good, but not much more than that." Certainly, it could be from the slightly jarring rendition of the song, of which I had only ever heard Willie Nelson's far more popular version. Almost as poignant as the film was discovering that writer/director, Martin Strange-Hansen, had made the film to deal with the pain of losing his own daughter. Certainly worth your 18 minutes, if you get the chance to see it.

Next up was Please Hold, an American production about a near future where the "justice" system of the US is even more automated and corporatized than the one we have now and still mostly a traumatic experience for people of color and those without the means to properly participate in it. Erick Lopez stars as Mateo, a young guy trying to get to his bad fast food job when he's arrested by a police drone, not told what crime he's supposedly committed, and tossed into a cell where everything from defense attorneys to prison labor is offered up by an automated screen, Internet pop-up ad style. It's funny because it's the same experience that most of us have when dealing with automated phone trees with every product or service merchant in existence that requires a phone call; the trees of which almost never result in a resolution of the problem but serve as a waste of time until we're eventually shepherded to a human on the other side of the planet. It's enraging because it mirrors the experience of too many in the US legal system, as they try to deal with the courts, the paperwork, and the pressure, and often have no one to talk to who can give them an actual answer about what's happening to them... unless, of course, they have the money to pay someone to navigate the system for them. The absurdity of it is what made Please Hold the closest thing to lighthearted among the offerings of the evening. The grim reality that was its primary message is what gave it tremendous depth. Have to give a nod to director, KD Davila and cinematographer, Farhad Ahmed Delvi, here, too, as the sharp camera work and visual storytelling was on point.

Following that was what I thought was the highlight of the evening: Sukienka (The Dress), a Polish student(!) film about a woman working as a motel maid who has limited her hopes because of the way society looks upon her dwarfism, but who still longs to be treasured by someone as every other person does. Flat out, Anna Dzieduszycka kills it in her role as Julka. I could tell from the preview screen that this was going to be a good story, simply from the confidence that you can see in Dzieduszycka's eyes, and my expectations were rewarded. This was the film that felt most grounded to me. Julka and her friend, Renata (Dorota Pomykala), were real people, doing a real job, and dealing with real life. Julka's humorless gaze that she carries from her single bed in one of the motel's unused rooms to the bar nearby where she plays video slot machines as an autonomic distraction is punctuated only by her expressions of longing for physical contact with someone who thinks of her as someone to be desired. When she finally finds someone who clearly has taken an interest, her desperation to fully engage the concept of a date with all the primping and expectation that most put into it is a perfect rendition of someone finally breaking a barrier that others have put around her, but one that she has also put around herself. Her attachment to incredibly rapid chain smoking is just another detail of someone looking for something to pour her existence into. Credit to writer/director, Tadeusz Lysiak, as well for never letting the camera look down on Julka. When we see her, we're always at eye level, which is how she sees herself and how we get to share her existence for half an hour. A really excellent presentation.

Then we had the most unusual entry of the night: The Long Goodbye, a British film which was an accompaniment to an album of the same name by British hip-hop star and actor, Riz Ahmed. Ahmed has been active about raising awareness of issues of racism and racial justice in Britain, especially toward South Asians and British Asians and this film was right in that wheelhouse, as it shows Riz as the brother of a young woman on her way to being married in traditional Pakistani fashion, only for a far-right march to reach their community and assault the family for being who they are. It was the shortest runtime of the night (12 minutes) and, perhaps appropriately, packed the harshest punch. It was a great rendition of people carrying on their normal lives, only to have those lives disrupted without response by either uncaring neighbors or police sympathetic with the fascists. As we continue to confront more and more of these problems in nations around the world, including right here in the US of A with the MAGAts, Proud Boys, and other groups, it's good to be reminded of what people who don't share my fortunate White skin tone have to face in terms of a much greater threat from those that would like to turn the clock back, provided it moved forward for some in the first place. The end of the film was punctuated by some of Ahmed's lyrics from the album. I remember him from the excellent The Sound of Metal and the brilliant Nightcrawler, but he's also done a great deal of other TV and film work and, as noted, is a continuing presence in the music industry, as well. Definitely someone to keep an eye and ear on if you liked him here.

Finally, we saw Ala Kachuu - Take and Run, a Swiss film set in Kyrgyzstan about a young woman subjected to the continuing practice of abduction and forced marriage and the culture of familial pride that is tied to and perpetuates this practice. The film's title is the common name for this custom, which remains widespread in Kyrgyz society. Writer/director, Maria Brendle, was motivated to make the film because of its common presence in the country, but the equally common ignorance to the existence of the practice outside it. She's right in my case, as I had no idea. I spent a lot of the film trying to figure out where it was set, because I couldn't understand the writing of a "Help Wanted" sign that the lead and victim of the film, Sezim (Alina Turdumamatova) saw, but could see that most of the other signage in the capital of Bishkek that she encountered was in Cyrillic. There's a lot that most don't know about the Central Asian former SSRs and this is part of it. But it was presented as a wholly realistic and deeply affecting story about some members of a society trying to transition to a new way of living, while family and older members of that society are less willing to change. Turdumamatova's constant outrage at being swept from the precipice of a university education to being the wife-prisoner of a hinterland farmer resonates from her at every moment of the film, to the point where you find yourself stewing in frustration that this is the fate of both her character and so many other women in the real world. It's practically the definition of someone viewed as an object, rather than a person, and Brendle makes sure that that message comes across, but doesn't beat you over the head with it. Jandat Djamanbaeva also does well as the sympathetic grandmother of Sezim's "husband" who tries to console her new granddaughter in whatever way custom allows, in contrast to all of the surrounding women, who view Sezim as ungrateful, including her own mother. It's a really solid film from a not-often-seen corner of the world.

Like watching rope being braided

If that expression says "Why am I still here?", that was me through the whole film.

The Michigan Theater is decent for previews. Unlike major theater chains that are only too willing to put you through a good 10 minutes of previews before every feature, we often only get one or two films at the Michigan/State or at most three or four and they're usually fairly enticing in terms of what we'd all like to gather and see the following Tuesday. When we first saw the trailer for Power of the Dog, everyone was largely indifferent. The story itself didn't seem compelling and I was immediately disinterested as soon as I saw that it was written and directed by Jane Campion, as her films simply do not work for me. I thought In the Cut was too predictable. I didn't find Holy Smoke! to be particularly funny or interesting, despite it having two actors that I'm quite fond of (Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel) as the leads. And, most notably, I thought The Piano, despite its virtual pile of accolades, was a slog. We spent a lot of time with Holly Hunter looking sternly and imperiously at anything that had the impertinence to either move or speak and an equal amount of time watching Keitel brood. The only high point was the performance of Anna Paquin, perhaps because she was the only person who didn't seem to be taking herself too seriously. So, I am not a Campion fan. But when the various awards lists were splayed out, Power of the Dog found itself leading the (ahem) pack and so when it ended up on the theater's schedule again, trying to ride that wave of Oscar popularity, we gave in and decided to give it a try. That was a bad idea.

It's at least partly frustrating, because I often get what Campion is trying to do. She's trying to tell a story visually, rather than bury people under dialogue. That's fine. I'm all about that. The greatest science fiction film ever made is the director's cut of Blade Runner, which takes advantage of the fact that film is a visual medium and lets said visuals tell the story. The problem with Campion's approach is that she does it in a manner that's aggressively tedious. Aggressively tedious. Like, tedious. You know, aggressively, endlessly, perpetually... tedious. In the same way that I sat and waited for Keitel to actually do something in the tropical forest of New Zealand, I spent just as much time waiting for Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Kodi Smit-McPhee to find something actually interesting to do in the vastness of the Montana plains. (It was actually shot in New Zealand which was, unfortunately, kind of obvious. I've been to Montana. That wasn't Montana.) There is such a thing as too much allusion. What was even worse in this case was that the visual allusion was often repeated to the point where it was hitting you over the head just as much as any scene that has actors constantly explaining what's happening to the audience who can see it in the first place.

Early 20th-century Montana could be a lonely place. Rose (Dunst) ends up in a marriage of convenience on a cattle ranch almost literally in the middle of nowhere with no one she can really relate to; especially not her husband, George. (Plemons; the still eternally-typecast man-who-can't-figure-out-how-to-have-actual-emotions.) Consequently, Rose ends up drinking to fill the void. We see her drinking, everywhere. We see son, Peter (Smit-McPhee) hide her bottles. We see the knowing glances of the two cooks in the house kitchen. We understand that everyone in the house knows that Rose is a drunk. But we keep getting reminded of this, as if Campion somehow felt that the point wasn't getting across. This is when I usually start making the "speed it up" motion with my hand because the story just isn't moving at a decent pace. But this story barely moves at all, to the point where I was seriously considering how rude it would be to just stand up, say "Not for me!" and walk out. It's not something I've often done in a theater, but I was sorely tempted. And, yes, the use of allusion didn't stop there. Phil caressing the length of rope and straddling a pointed fencepost are quite obvious, thanks. One could almost say "ham-fisted" except that this was a cattle ranch, I guess.

The only thing that rescues the film at all are the performances. Cumberbatch presents very well as the hardass rancher, aggressive with everyone as he struggles with his own desires and identity. His scene in his private grove, making motions toward his own sexuality that he can't quite complete, was really well done. Dunst is equally good with her quiet desperation radiating at her lot in life (Or maybe that was me as we sat there in the darkness...?) Smit-McPhee was possibly the best of them, as his slow transition from mousy introvert to confident manipulator once he had a grasp of just who Phil was came through with mostly subtle cues and very believable transitions. Plemons, of course, was still Plemons, emotional void. It was cute and often quite funny in Breaking Bad, but at some point, as an actor, you'd have to get tired of it, right? Many of the most frustrating moments of the film came with Plemons as the focus, with me asking myself: "What purpose does this character serve, other than to highlight the dreariness of their collective existence that we have already been beaten over the head with for an hour now?" Keith Carradine is unfortunately wasted in a couple minutes as the governor, but is also the liveliest person to appear onscreen during the entire 2+ hours.

In short, still not a fan. The fact that all four of us walked out of it feeling like we could've done so after the first half hour makes me think that this is going to be one of those films that makes the vast majority of filmgoers feel like they have no connection to the Academy whatsoever when it wins the fistful of awards that it seems destined for. Certainly, you couldn't fault the voters for the acting awards, but direction and writing and best film...? You're just twisting that rope too much.

The show must go on

Sometimes, it's all about the navigation, be it winding around the islands near Hiroshima or figuring out just how you're going to deal with things left undone and unsaid which can never be completed. Those are just two of the themes in Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car, which is easily among the best films we've seen at the Michigan/State Theater in the past year. I'm certainly a fan of Japanese cinema, as my lifelong affection for Akira Kurosawa will attest, but this goes beyond my fondness for the style (which this film maintains) and instead is simply a response to a story well told, well acted, and so emotionally present that I couldn't help but feel echoes to the turns my own path has taken, both recent and well in the past.

Yûsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a theater actor whose wife, Oto, is a screenwriter who develops ideas through sex and not always just with Yûsuku. Struggling with his own feelings of betrayal competing with his devotion to her, he's not present when she dies suddenly and he's left to deal with his feelings of frustration and survivor's guilt. When he agrees to direct a production of the Anton Chekov play, Uncle Vanya, which he's previously performed in the title role, he encounters not only one of his wife's former lovers among the cast, but a woman assigned to him as a driver, Misaki Watari (Tôko Miura), under the theater company's regulations, which disrupts his usual method, his self-enforced distance from others, and the last real connection he has with Oto, who recorded lines for him to listen and respond to while he drove. Misaki has her own deep-rooted problems from her past and the film ends up being a depiction of how they try to struggle through those issues, with the shadow of Chekov's work all around it.

At its root, this is just a great story, which is always the baseline test for me with any film. It's not especially complex or elaborate on the surface level, as its mostly about the basic relationships and emotions that almost every human encounters and frequently struggles with. But it becomes complex because of its depth and because of the passion with which its expressed, not only by the two leads, but also by a couple of their co-stars, especially Masaki Okada as Kôji Takatsuki and and Park Yoo-rim as Lee Yoo-na, who communicates only through Korean sign language throughout the film. Indeed, language is a key element, as Yûsuke prefers to mix languages in his productions, so that the actors performing Uncle Vanya are speaking in their native tongues, whether that be Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Tagalog, or Malay. It's this natural flow of communication for the speaker which is sometimes unintelligible to the listener that is perhaps the best euphemism for the difficulties of conveying emotion, even for those who've been bonded for a long time; sometimes especially for them.

Nishijima is fantastic as the primary (ahem) vehicle of the film, as all of our action is from his vantage point, and he never once slips into melodrama or emotion for its own sake, even as he portrays the rather self-righteous and demonstrative title character of Chekov's. You can always see the vulnerability of a person so tortured by their longing for someone who hurt them so terribly but it never rises to a rending-of-sackcloth level. Certainly, that's within the style of Japanese drama, so it can't be too surprising, but it's still a brilliant performance. Likewise, the cavernous pain of Miura's eyes, even when she begins as the strictly professional employee and gradually slips into the role of someone who clearly sympathizes with Yûsuke's pain, not only because it mirrors her own but simply because she's a human being who understands that internal conflict, is fascinating to watch. Combining those standout performances with the excellent thematic visuals of roadways, tunnels, and a lonely pair of headlights in the pitch blackness of the Chûgoku countryside is a genuinely standout example of craftsmanship by Hamaguchi and cinematographer, Hidetoshi Shinomiya. One interesting choice in that respect was what may have been the longest cold open of any film I've ever seen, as the credits only appeared a third of the way into the film's three hour runtime; every minute of which was worth it.

Indeed, there was a point about a half hour from the end, when the two leads were reaching something of a crux point in both their own relationship and their understanding of the most important past ones (Oto for Yûsuke and her mother for Misaki) when I had a personal reflection on emotional communication that, as always, in hindsight seems blindingly obvious but which is just a feature of the human condition that makes us sometimes unable to take the simplest steps. But just like the characters in Drive My Car and those in Uncle Vanya, the eventual message is that you have to push through those barriers and the pain and the confusion because, in the end, the show must go on. This is when you know you've encountered a great story that makes you think about things larger than yourself, but which may, in the end, be just about yourself and how you interact with the world around you and especially the other humans who inhabit it. I can't say enough positive things about this one, as you've probably realized by now. Spectacular.

Just pay attention

My friend, Michael, posted recently about having read through Rick Perlstein's series of books about the transformation of American political culture from the latter half of the 20th century onward. The main thesis that Michael drew from those pages is that the Republican perspective is based almost entirely on lies that have more recently manifested in complete departures from reality like QAnon, but have never been based on anything close to reality from the very beginning. My kneejerk reaction to anyone bringing this up is that it's been that way since Barry Goldwater, who realized that the GOP needed a lever to deal with an increasingly urbanized public and a more forward-thinking youth segment of the body politic.

If you read a GOP platform from the 50s, anyone can recognize that it would get utterly shredded on Fox News as the most radical form of communism (Creation of massive federal programs (SBA, Interstate system, Dept. of Health and Welfare), affirming the right for labor to organize, free vaccines(!)) There's the usual routine about tax cuts, but Tucker Carlson would go into conniptions if half the stuff mentioned in that document were to be suggested by a Republican (or anyone) on his show today. In that way, the differences between Democrats and Republicans at the time were more about emphases, which can still be true today. But with the issue of race becoming front and center in the early 60s, Goldwater realized that the way to recruit Southern Democrats was to keep feeding them the same line that they'd gotten since Reconstruction: "It's not the rich, White guys who own all the land that are keeping you poor. It's the even poorer Black guys!", but cranked to 11. That lie became the GOP identity. It didn't work in 1964 against Johnson because he was still carrying the sympathy vote for Kennedy, but it was something to build into and that mindset has gradually infected every policy decision and platform that the GOP has produced ever since. While the Democrats have continued to try to be the "inclusive" party (which always somehow includes very wealthy corporations, typically at the expense of actual people) and fervently moderated their message in the name of doing the right thing and continuing to serve the 1% that dumps money into their campaigns, the GOP has just gotten more and more hardcore and had to continue to invent lies to sustain that narrowing focus. 

You could speculate that the Dems departing from "let's please no one most of the time" and going full bore into their more fervent supporters might have put "moderates" (e.g. people mildly interested in change unless it affects their wallets or might scare the children) on a precipice: Support the Nazis or go along with actual change. But that's speculation because it's hard to know how people will react to those choices until they're actually presented with them. The GOP lies don't just work on actual GOP voters. You can see their effect every time the New York Times prints a story about someone's burrito going up 50 cents and tacitly blames it on whichever Democrat is currently in the White House. Don't think that corporations aren't fully aware of that cultural mindset. Setting up circumstances to blame the "might think about change people" keeps them in line, garners profits, and potentially puts the "won't ever think about change" people in a better position, which is all to the utter benefit of the ownership class. People, including reporters, tend to follow programming, even if a moment's consideration will reveal that it's bullshit and you might consider actually speaking up when your coworkers continue to spread that bullshit, instead of rolling your eyes and walking away silently. Speaking up takes effort and a willingness to pay attention, which is not something people are generally inclined to do. This is the same situation that existed with the original Nazis, when people went along to get along, even if a lot of them were perfectly aware of what was happening to their neighbors. They'd been culturally trained- by the media, by their education, by many of their other neighbors -to think in a way that allowed the fascists to take power.

This is what's happening today. It's not too suspicious a thought to consider that the NYT continues to insist that the only real Americans are people in a small-town diner with opinions that favor either things remaining as they are or even reverting to what they were because the Times is one of those massive corporations that benefits from that perspective. At the very least, it generates clicks from many whom would never admit to reading the Times, as well as the regular readers motivated by outrage. That's money and the pursuit of it, not news. It's basically the plot of Broadcast News, where Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks were objecting to the presentation of their work as "infotainment", used to distract and pacify the public, rather than inform and motivate them. Every time the Times and other entities in the collective media present a story about regular people filling in for what should be a basic public service, the deception that circumstances are what they are because that's the way the world irrevocably works, rather than what the ownership class wants, is perpetuated. That, too, is a central lie to the Republican modus operandi. Witness the regular belligerence of both parties on the world stage and the government's "lethal aid" euphemism and its quick adoption by the media. That is yet another foundational lie perpetuated by the GOP ("Someone, somewhere, is out to get us!") and willingly absorbed by "the news" and, frequently, the Democrats, as well.

But all of this stuff has been present for decades. None of it is a new development. The transition of the Republican party from one obsessed with tax cuts to one determined to kill people (COVID) and return women to being second-class citizens (Texas abortion law) and exclude people based on their skin tone (voting suppression laws) is just a more overt form of the fascism that they've been promoting for decades. We're in the home stretch here and the party unable to govern and represent a majority of the public in a democracy is now unwilling to do so and their sometime opposition on the other side of the aisle is still partially made up of those whose loyalties are divided between keeping quiet and making money or speaking out for the people who need it most. All of this has been written on the wall for a very long time. All it takes to stop it are people willing to pay attention and say something. I was telling Tricia the other day that that's probably going to be the inscription on my tombstone: "Pay attention." That's all it takes to see what's happening in the world. Stop accepting the lies. Point them out. It's either that or more guns in the streets than we already have, as that will be the only way to stop them from completing their goal.

Two mehs and an old favorite

We've watched a few things in the past couple weeks and I thought I'd cover each of them in brief here because I didn't feel like I really had enough to say about any of them in a longer post.

Starting with the good news, we saw Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth at the Michigan Theater. Macbeth is probably my favorite work of Shakespeare's, not least because I've performed it twice; once in high school and once with a tiny theater group while I was at Michigan. I was the lead in both cases (which is part of why I did it the second time, since I had the experience.) On top of that, with one half of the famous Coen Brothers manning the helm, I figured it was going to be a worthwhile effort and I wasn't disappointed. Like most modern productions, they cut some lines but still preserved the important moments and elements of the story. Unlike many modern reproductions of The Bard, they stuck to a very minimalist presentation, as if we were watching it on stage and the sets could only accommodate what "real life" allowed for. Filming in black-and-white while keeping a high level of contrast between background and foreground was smart, as the story is very much a contest between the dark and the light, albeit with shades of gray. Frances McDormand was excellent as Lady Macbeth, being cunning and scheming without being comedically so and then recognizing their failure and doom without being melodramatic about it. Denzel Washington made me question his selection early on, because he was carrying the intensity (the same that he used so well in Flight) that one is accustomed to seeing in the later, clearly dropping-to-madness Macbeth. But the role is one of Shakespeare's that is perhaps open to some of the widest interpretation and it's fair to ask whether Macbeth was actually unstable from the opening page and the encouragement of his wife was just the final straw that led him to derangement. In the later scenes, of course, Washington excelled at being the villain who still draws sympathy from the audience for the way fortune turned against him ("Out, out, brief candle!") Alex Hassell was also great as the opportunistic Ross and furthered Coen's presentation of the material as spooky and uncertain throughout. Well worth it, even if you're not really a fan of The Bard.

But then we stayed in roughly the same time period and watched The Last Duel. My dismay at the descent of Ridley Scott from storyteller to spectacle ringmaster has been mentioned here before. He's drawn back the reins a bit in recent years, but the focus of his films is still more about making a visual splash than actually telling a story or making a point. He picks a solid framework this time, based on a book about the duel between Jean Le Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris and retelling it in a style reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa's classic, Rashomon. Given that the latter is perhaps my favorite Kurosawa film, one would think that I'd be the prime audience for this one. But the truth is that the story is essentially a medieval soap opera and the entire scenario lacks the basic question presented by Rashomon, where "truth" is a matter of interpretation and perspective. In Last Duel, there is only one basic truth: Marguerite was raped as the most prominent example of the misogynistic nature of medieval French society. You've seen the basic "truth" of the matter as soon as you get through part one, the tribulations of the vainglorious Le Carrouges being just window dressing to that fact, and then you have to sit through two more versions of it which tell you the same thing. There's a bit of titillation so that people can discover the fact that, yes, society was every bit as oriented around sex and ferocious violence as it is today. And due credit has to be extended for the careful attention paid to individual fighting styles, as the fencing techniques employed in the titular duel were appropriate for the time. But the mass combat was, as usual, subject more to Hollywood tropes than reality and despite Matt Damon doing well as an egotistical knight and Ben Affleck likewise performing well as the contemptuous (and frequently contemptible) Count Pierre d'Alençon, there really isn't a whole lot here that you wouldn't have seen on Days of Our Lives with more misogyny and plate mail and certainly not something that should've lasted two-and-a-half hours.

Similarly, Bob Odenkirk's Nobody is essentially a 5-minute skit stretched out into a 90-minute film. There simply isn't enough story here to turn into a feature film. Maybe it would've been better on something like Black Mirror, except that Nobody was a film where thinking was definitely not required and, in fact, was better if you didn't try. There are so many plot holes and moments where suspension of disbelief isn't just lost but is dropped down a very deep hole, never to be found, that the whole thing becomes an exercise in topping the excess of violence that passes for today's action films and, in fact, attempts to top itself from moment to moment. The inclusion of such regular action stars as a much-heavier Michael Ironside, a much smaller Christopher Lloyd, and a not-actually-seen-until-the-last-10-minutes RZA does nothing for the film, although the latter's inclusion at least provided some much needed moments of levity amidst the barrage of angst and shell casings. That's something that Odenkirk normally would have provided, but this was clearly an attempt to "do something different" as an exception to his usual roles. Unfortunately, it didn't really do anything at all. You'd be missing nothing except the greater desire to see Better Caul Saul finally return.

The joy of the familiar

Paul Thomas Anderson films are most often psychological dramas of one kind or another. He's most noted, of course, for things like Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood. In both of those instances, his characters, while determined to move forward, also faced situations that questioned who they were or who they were presenting themselves to be. In that respect, his latest project, Licorice Pizza, continues in that vein. Lead character, Gary (Cooper Hoffman), is a precocious child star who is determined to not let the obstacles of age or teenage social norms stand in his way as he sets up businesses, mingles with the Hollywood set, and mostly pursues Alana (Alana Haim), who is 10 years his senior. Along the way, it becomes perhaps the most fun and sentimental film that Anderson has ever done.

That suffused the COVID-inhibited production, as well. While he had begun writing the screenplay 20 years before, by the time he got around to completing it, he had decided to cast family friend, Alana Haim (and all of her family, who make up the band, Haim, for whom Anderson has directed a number of videos.) Consequently, he needed someone that he felt interacted well with her "naturalistic" acting and, after a lengthy search, finally came upon Hoffman, son of frequent Anderson collaborator, the dearly-missed Philip Seymour Hoffman. At that point, it might be safe to assume that all of the pieces fell into place, especially given that the story is set in Anderson's youthful home of the San Fernando Valley which was also the setting for his first big hit, Boogie Nights. Anderson has mentioned that those factors and the limitations set by the pandemic are what made Licorice Pizza into something of a "friends and family" creation and that sensation suffuses everything about it. Hoffman's character is based on producer Gary Goetzman, who was also a child actor. Anderson secured permission from Jon Peters to represent him in the film on the condition that Peters' favorite pickup line was used in the script. Everything about this is rooted in people and environments with whom PTA is intimately familiar and, indeed, those of us who grew up in the 70s (waves hand) could instantly identify with the look and feel of everything and everyone on the screen in front of us.

What's even more remarkable about it is that these were Hoffman and Haim's first major roles. Certainly, being born into families that are part of show business makes them somewhat natural fits, just as with Gary in the film itself. But the aplomb with which both handled their roles is still really impressive. You almost never get the impression that they're out of place or that the scenes are particularly stilted or set up to execute. Most of it just seems like teenage, coming-of-age drama of which I'm not particularly a fan, but which works well here and is constantly entertaining in its shift from typical relationship/family problems ("Is your dick circumcised? Then you're a Jew!") to far more unusual scenarios ("Do you know who my girlfriend is?" "Barbara Streisand?" "Barbara Streis-sand. Like 'sands'. Like the ocean.") That sense of familiarity continues even when far more notable names like Bradley Cooper (as Peters), Sean Penn, and Tom Waits(!) appear onscreen as simply one more part of Gary's world that he continually entices Alana into, despite her biggest concern being how often she hangs out with a bunch of teenagers and pre-teens.

What makes all of this work is the film's focus on story, which I'm constantly droning on about in these posts. Anderson has always had a firm grasp on it and it's no different here, even in what seems like its weakest point (the bar scene with Penn and the motorcycle jump) and you never lose track of what the ultimate goal is: Gary proving to Alana that he's worth her time and attention; something already subconsciously realized and admitted to by her and which we're all just waiting for her to come to grips with by the latter half of the film. That, too, is an admission of familiarity and while those stories can often seem too familiar and, thus, tedious, that isn't the case here. Licorice Pizza is a marked step away from things like There Will Be Blood and The Master, but it's still wholly worthwhile to sit with friends and family and soak up the entertainment that doesn't let up for a second.

In the end, it's only about winning

There's a popular thought among those of us who aren't anti-vaxxers, Trumpanzees, or general resistors to the concept of reason and compassion, if not all of the above. That thought is that those people, from those who simply refuse to wear masks at Home Depot to those who attacked the Capitol building a year ago, are simply confused or misled or ignorant and, consequently, aren't really responsible for their actions. This is not the case. These people are liars because the lying contributes to the causes that they promote. They're not confused by a charismatic(?) demagogue or by what they read on Facebook. They're doing this with full intent, playing along with the lies being promoted by sources like Fox News because it serves their self-interest and self-image to do so. It's really the only explanation for how an idiot like Donald Trump could become as successful as he has: he's really good at lying and convincing others to accept those lies.

Take Ted Cruz, for example. On his podcast last Friday, Cruz stated that if the GOP retakes the House in November, they'll impeach Joe Biden "whether it's justified or not." That's not someone acting against corruption or serving the interests of government and the public weal. That's someone who's committed to lying because it serves the interests of his office, his party, and the voters that put him there. There was a great story by Zoe Tillman of Buzzfeed last summer about Anna Morgan-Lloyd; one of the first people to be sentenced for crimes committed in the attack on the Capitol. She cried at the sentencing hearing that she'd been there just to show support for Trump and was ashamed that it had turned into something so violent. The judge accepted her claims and gave her probation. The very next day, she was on Fox News claiming that there had been no vandalism ($1.5 million in damages) and that the "protestors" were "very polite" (140 Capitol police injured, 1 killed, 17 still dealing with long-term injuries, 4 have since committed suicide.) The judge, Royce Lamberth, was reportedly furious that he'd been lied to. But that's what these people do because that's what their approach to policy is all about: winning. Lying to people and getting away with it is a form of winning. You've put one over on those poor suckers. Victory!

It's the same thing when it comes to health policy and immigration and the economy and police and racism and every other thing where there is verifiable, scientific evidence that what they support is contradictory to what benefits society-at-large and often even themselves. Letting the scientists be "right" is letting someone else win and when your entire worldview is about not letting someone else win, you take any measures necessary to make sure it doesn't happen. The entire attack on the Capitol is about that very issue. No one was there just to support the orange buffoon. They were there to support the lies that they know are lies. They know he lies to them. That's fine. He's on their "side", so supporting the lies benefits their sense of worth/victory/entitlement/whathaveyou. Tucker Carlson, lead liar of Fox News, regularly rotates between descriptions of January 6th, 2021 as a) not an insurrection, b) an insurrection that was a "false flag" by antifa, and c) that the insurrectionists on the ground were justified in their actions. The fact that those three statements contradict each other is of no concern to him or to his viewers. Again, they're all in on the joke. They know they're lying, but those lies serve their interests which, in his case, is mostly to get money and approbation from those who know that he's lying.

I said in the immediate aftermath of last January that those participating in invading the Capitol building should have been shot as soon as they set foot inside the doors, because it's what I'd expect if I'd invaded a government building with the intent of overthrowing said government. But it was also because I knew, like anyone reasonable knows, that these people were lying and had arrived there with malicious intent. They wanted to win, even if it wasn't justified, as Cruz states. These people aren't deserving of sympathy. They certainly have no sympathy for you and me. This is about winning and they'll do anything to make sure that they win. That's what civil war is usually based on and the events of last January were just the opening salvo; the Beer Hall Putsch, as it were. Continuing to sympathize with the people who are willing to lie, commit crimes, and whom want to kill you is a sure way to watch the vague semblance of democracy that we currently enjoy disappear into the ether. All of your "fellow Americans" this and "come together and unite" that is just going to make you the fool and them the winners because they'll just appeal to your better nature and then laugh at you when you walk out of the room, just like judge Lamberth, and then lock the door behind you.

If people want to continue to lie and suggest that I'm trying to "outlaw conservatism" or some such absurdity, I have one response for you: You're basically right. Because if your version of "conservatism" is based on lying, rejecting science, racism, the unbridled accumulation of wealth, and everything else about the modern right-wing ideology that is destructive to society, then it should be outlawed. It should be condemned in the same way that Nazism and other forms of fascism have eventually been condemned (almost always after extreme violence) because that's what it is: fascism. The original fascists built their case on lies, too (made the trains run on time, etc.) This phenomenon is no different. As I noted last year, America has a long history of people who flock to that kind of idea. It's an element of human nature to lie and to do so in order to win. But it's time to call out the people doing so, for the sake of the majority.