Marvelous Hairy About the Face

Like many filmmakers before me, I have grown a beard. Oh, I denied this at first, claiming it was merely a coincidental gathering of hairs, or insulation for the winter, or a new kind of chin hologram, but there’s no denying it now. Through careful ignoring of my jowl area, I have given rise to a positively Melies-like hair construct.

So to LINCOLN, Spielberg’s hairiest movie ever, hairier even than HOOK, which had Robin Williams in it for God’s sake (“his arm is like an otter” ~ Jiminy Glick). There are all kinds of beards in it. Big beards, small beards, beards as big as your head. Although I note that rather than sporting the full Irish, that strange jaw-fringe, Daniel Day-Lewis looks merely unshaven at the sides, with a tuft on the end of his chinny-chin-chin that’s more like a jazz beard than the half-a-chimney-brush sported by the late president in contemporary portraiture.

The rest of the fine cast have all kinds of facial appurtenances, from the voluminous side-whisker to the billowing moustachios on perspiring ectomorph James Spader. His appearance excited comment from Fiona ~

“He would still be gorgeous if he’d lose weight. Maybe he doesn’t care.”

“Maybe he’d like to lose weight but likes eating, and doesn’t like exercising, and doesn’t want it all sucked out through pipes.”

“They could make a second James Spader with what they sucked out.”

“A wobblier one.”

“Why would it be wobblier?”

“Well, it wouldn’t have any bones.”

“Maybe they could grow some bones and stick them in and then we’d have two James Spaders.”

But sadly, Fiona’s beautiful dream is as yet unfulfilled. I don’t think they’d grow bones for James Spader. They didn’t do it for Ray Bolger, whose need was clearly greater.

Oh yes, Tommy Lee Jones — that vast monster — is awfully good, compelling in a way nobody else in the film can manage, entertaining though some are. (For once, Jackie Earle Haley plays a man stranger-looking than himself; Spader is the third actor to be playing a character called Bilbo in today’s cinemas, surely a record; little Gulliver McGrath who stole the show in HUGO is great as Tad Lincoln; David Costabile from Breaking Bad is a delight as always; Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Abraham Lincoln’s oldest son, Babe-raham Lincoln.)

John Williams pours on the syrup — maybe less than you’d expect, but more than the film needs, since it’s at its best as a dry political procedural. Janusz Kaminski gives Lincoln his Jesus lighting a lot less than I’d expected. More than I’d like, but seriously, far less than I expected. Joanna Johnston puts David Strathairn in an orientalist dressing gown that must by the loveliest thing that fine, stoic stick has ever worn.

AMISTAD.

This is a return to AMISTAD territory, I guess. I liked AMISTAD, but it suffered an imbalance — it devolves from an exciting mutiny, with Africans filmed like Jurassic Park raptors (a ballsy but justifiable choice) to a courtroom drama with inevitable anticlimax. Richard John Berry’s TAMANGO is better. It stays on the boat.

LINCOLN’s script by, MUNICH writer Tony Kushner, makes a good fist of the politicking, though some of the film’s pleasures — smug, nasty politicians being bested by shrewd, good-hearted ones — are inevitably a touch predictable. But it works when the movie keeps its mind on its plot, but this being later Spielberg it isn’t altogether allowed to — the film ends several times, each more ineffectually than the time before, long after the purpose of the story — the emancipation vote over the 13th Amendment — has been brought to its conclusion. The film devotes a lot of screen time to Mrs Lincoln, and Sally Field is very fine, but as the movie seems determined to prove Mary Todd Lincoln sane, or at any rate to avoid showing her genuinely irrational (all her hysterics and histrionics seem perfectly justifiable, if extreme), the role isn’t everything it might have been.

It is, of course, largely a film about white men deciding the fates of black men, women and children. That’s the part of the story the film has chosen to focus on, and it’s most successful when it does focus on it. The stuff showing the Civil War is oddly ineffectual, and attempts to build a role for Gloria Reuben as Elizabeth Keckley feel a little forced at times, though it’s nice that she has more lines than Kerry Washington in DJANGO UNCHAINED.

It’s too tempting to see the Tarantino and the Spielberg films as the two basic choices open to filmmakers: one a gleeful exploitation movie, the other a respectful, dusty hagiography. But this isn’t so. In fact, the dichotomy is false on its own terms, since LINCOLN, though sometimes stodgy, is never as dull as the longeurs in DJANGO, but even if both films enthusiastically did what it said on the tin, there would be a whole wealth of alternatives. One might be to let black filmmakers tell some of these stories. We watched Charles Burnett’s documentary NAT TURNER: A TROUBLESOME PROPERTY, and despite a meagre budget, its true story was more sensational than anything Tarantino’s imagination has conjured up, and it delved deeper into the issues thrown up by slavery, or any other great evil, than Spielberg’s film. And in less than half the running time of either film.

An Oil Man

 

THERE WILL BE BLOOD is so overwhelming on a visceral level that it’s kind of hard to talk about. I will have to see it again.

 Disorganised thoughts:

The opening, wordless twenty minutes have rightly commanded attention. I loved how the first dynamite explosion BLASTS blue sky into the frame, in what feels like the first intense colour apart from blood-red of the single opening title.

If Anderson’s previous work has often danced close to the shadow of Robert Altman, in terms of locations, themes, structure and casting, this one feels more like his Terence Malick movie, with its natural light, landscape cinematography, and indirect approach to plot.

The images of the burning oil well actually seered into my retinas — I’m not being poetic, I literally had an afterimage stuck there, and when I blinked there was a tiny silhouette of Daniel Day-Lewis dancing about under my eyelids. Bastard.

I wonder if Day-Lewis’ performance is not only a John Huston imitation (and a damn good one, though Clint Eastwood got quite close in WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART without doing very much) but a John Huston PORTRAIT. It’s not just the accent and voice, but the bandy gait, the cigar, the mannerisms, and the whole WAY of speaking. If the dialogue hasn’t been drawn straight from the Upton Sinclair book (and those in the know seem to agree that the novel is a fairly distant ancestor to the movie) then it’s firstly a very fine piece of consistent and engaging and unintrusive faux-period writing, and secondly a very good encapsulation of the way Huston speaks in interviews.

This might make sense of P.T.A.’s constant screening of THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE during the shoot. Because I’m not convinced the two films have so much to do with each other, but I do think Daniel Plainview has a lot to do with John Huston.

(Refresh your memories of Huston’s delivery with the above.)

He lacks Huston’s twinkle, of course. But both men share a devilish charm, which is seen when Plainview speaks to crowds and seduces them with carefully chosen words and an air of supreme confidence and paternal concern. And Huston’s cruelty is pretty well documented. Asked why he would be particularly mean to anybody who appeared vulnerable or unstable, he would reply, “Their heads are on the block, kid, their heads are on the block.” Which almost makes bullying (the most indefensible activity) seem sort of quirky and whimsical.

While Paul Dano also gives a stunning performance (he should have got an Oscar nomination for his WALK alone), his character doesn’t have quite the mystery of the Day-Lewis monster. He is revealed as a false prophet, and we discover that he himself knows it too. We also discover Plainview’s anti-religious side, without having it actually EXPLAINED to us. We can only guess at its causes, while reflecting that it’s another trait in common with Huston (WISE BLOOD is one of J.H.’s few really heartfelt films).

One thing that’s unusual about the P.T.A. film is the extent to which it forces you to really think about the Plainview character. He has an attempt at explaining himself to Kevin J. O’Connor’s character, but enough of his motivation is left in shadow to make him an urgent discussion point as you leave the cinema. All he can say is that he’s angry, and hates most of humanity, and he seems to regard this anger as an inborn trait he can do nothing about.

Was Huston angry? It’s a theory, at least. Much of Huston’s behaviour seems to have been in defiance of his poor health in childhood. Did the drive and determnation that forced him to repeatedly throw himself into a rapidly-flowing river as a boy, to prove his need to live, bring with it a rage against all weakness — a projection outwards of the vulnerability he wished to destroy in himself?

This psychiatric stuff isn’t really my natural element, but the film seems to force one to it, which is part of its peculiar strength. I’m reminded of André Hodeir’s fine piece on the Marx Brothers (recommended by David Ehrenstein here on the blog), where he comments in passing on the scene in DUCK SOUP where Groucho psychs himself into a state of outrage at the thought of something which hasn’t even happened (“I hold out my hand to him and that hyena refuses to accept it!”). Hodeir observes, “the psychological mechanism of anger is displayed here with great comic subtlety,” and I think the same might be said of Day-Lewis’ whole performance here. As in real life, anger leads to more anger. When Plainview starts to finally unleash it, it can’t be stemmed and even after he’s fully revenged himslef it continues to flood out, with horrible consequences.

Perhaps that’s why he’s so chipper in the last shot — has he finally been freed of a monster that was gnawing his insides?

You can see the Groucho version here:

The moment is 3 minutes 50 seconds in, but the rest is all good too — you can see Charles “Emperor Ming” Middleton reprise his role of prosecutor from Von Sternberg’s AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY (a film which seems to have obsessed Groucho, judging by his further reference to it in HORSE FEATHERS).

Greenwood, Plainview, Skeffington and Copland

 

I thought I better write the comparative study of MR. SKEFFINGTON (1944) and THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007), before anyone else does.

Seriously, the two have nothing in common so this is the usual exercise in absurdity but both films did make me think about MUSIC a lot.

Of course, Jonny Greenwood’s monumental work for T.W.B.B. is extremely praiseworthy and interesting and has rightly provoked much discussion. And the fact that this major work has been denied a place in the running for an Oscar is an outrage — it’s more obvious than ever that the Best Score award is a closed shop and non-Americans need not apply. Ennio Morricone, f.f.s, has never won, despite a nomination for THE MISSION, one of his great works — when Bette Midler read his name from the podium, the applause brought the house down — “Ennio has a fan,” observed Ms. Midler. Nino Rota for THE GODFATHER and Michael Nyman for THE PIANO were barred on the same grounds as Greenwood: their scores used previously existing themes (but, perversely, Rota was allowed a half-share in a golden swordsman for THE GODFATHER II, even though that movie features predominantly themes written for the first film,) In the absence of an award for “Best Adapted Score,” the system should be altered so that an Oscar need not be denied to the year’s best soundtrack. 

I generally try to ignore the asinine decisions arrived at annually by the academy, but when the best film score of the year or maybe DECADE is excluded even from the privilege of being overlooked by numb-skulls, something has got to be done. Or, at any rate, said. Or blogged.

End of Oscars digression. Start of MR. SKEFFINGTON digression. A product of Warner Bros’ esteemed Masochism Department, this wartime weepie takes Bette Davis and Claude Raines through one marriage and two world wars, and is one of the few Hollywood films to mention Jews and concentration camps. The propaganda element is very delicately stitched into the overall pattern, while the central theme, “A woman is only beautiful when she is loved,” is wielded like a length of drainpipe in the hands of an enraged Viking (how the Viking got his hands ON the drainpipe is outwith the purlieu of this piece, which is an exercise in film criticism rather than Scandinavian ethnography or plumbing).

Vincent Sherman, who made one of our favourite gangster / women’s picture crossovers, THE DAMNED DON’T CRY, is here a smooth and sensitive channel for what they call the Genius of the System, creating an elegant and emotional studio picture that isn’t anonymous but isn’t exactly personal either, but is extremely GOOD.

Jerome Cowan turns up as an aging suitor, bringing home to the heroine the reality of her advancing years — a function he repeated years later in Mitchell Leisen’s great Twilight Zone episode, “The 16mm Shrine”. I’m certain Leisen must have seen and remembered him here.

Walter Abel does what Walter Abel does, marvellously. Imported from Broadway and unsuccessfully cast as D’Artagnan, Abel found his footing in second banana roles, bringing cut-throat timing and toothy wit to his comic work.

But Claude Rains is MISTER WIT. A film automatically gets wittier when he’s around. Here, as in CASABLANCA, he has the Epstein brothers supplying him with some great material, but he always makes more of it than anyone else. “When a man becomes repetitious, it is time to see the District Attorney,” is a lovely line in context, but C.R. makes it soar over our heads, flip round in a vertical 180°, and skewer us right in the occipital lobe.

Bette Davis presides over the whole affair with an iron hand, in a velvet glove, clutching a length of drainpipe (a different one). She plays the lighter scenes with the whimsy turned up to 11 (a whimsical Bette in full flow may be too much for those of a delicate sensibility) and throws herself into the third-act suffering with the zeal of a flagellant. It’s a terrifying lesson in Star Power.

But the music… I love Franz Waxman. His score for THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN is of Total Importance in the history of Hollywood music, and is a joy to the ears. When angels and demons have interspecies sex with each other, this is what they listen to. Waxman also brought the same wit to another, more obscure, James Whale movie the same year — in the opening party scene of REMEMBER LAST NIGHT? Waxman appears to provide a jazz tune as source music, but is actually underscoring a series of little dialogue vignettes in the most precise way: foreground music masquerading as background. And that’s just two films out of five scored in one year out of a thirty-five year career (which also includes that Twilight Zone episode…)

But for some reason, Waxman can’t quite get a handle on MR. SKEFFINGTON. Faced with a film that starts mostly light and journeys into dark and tortured terrain, Franz attacks the comedy like it’s a Carry On film, while overstressing the subtle hints of tragedy to come like Bernard Herrmann accompanying the sinking of the Lusitania. Once the film settles into weepie mode, the score finds its correct register and things progress smoothly, but it’s a rocky first hour.

This dovetails with what I wanted to say about Mr. Greenwood’s exciting score for THERE WILL BE BLOOD, because one of the striking things about that, apart from the sheer impact and originality of the sonorities, is the way the highly emotive and forceful music DOESN’T synchronise with the moods onscreen. While Waxman is slamming emphasis onto each flutter of an eyelid, Greenwood lays thick aural layers of terror over scenes that don’t have any apparent terror in them — he’s preparing you for the NEXT scene, which will have plenty. When Plainview (John Huston [Daniel Day-Lewis]) is promising wealth and health and education to the townsfolk, the music is plangent and heartbreaking, playing the mood of some upcoming scene, an hour away at least, where they find out they’ve been cheated, and playing it so effectively that the scene doesn’t even have to be included in the film.

Unusual!

The score is actually so overwhelming that if it DID synchronise precisely with the tones onscreen it might seem hammy and bombastic — instead it manages to be poetic and allusive without pulling any punches whatsoever.

It did remind me a very tiny bit of Aaron Copland’s score for THE HEIRESS, but Copland only gets ahead by a few seconds. Nevertheless, it’s a remarkable thing he does — by signalling an emotional change, a realisation or a plot development before it’s happened, he’s actually re-writing the movie. Copland and Greenwood both show how a score can be far more than an accompaniment or a mood-enhancer, it can be both part of film story-telling and an abstract force whose role can extend beyond the moment.