The Oncoming Hope

Canadian indie band Stars once sang that when there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire. I can think of no better way to convey the shocking final 15 minutes of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing.

When you watch the film, you'll marvel at how fresh it feels. Following a credits sequence that hits you in the face with "angry-dancing", we're introduced to the social world of a Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Then, as now, the outstanding existential threat is gentrification.

Spike Lee chooses to face character complications head-on, and no one's free of scrutiny. Giancarlo Esposito's "Buggin' Out" , the film's would-be Malcolm X, swings easily from overblown concern at the lack of black faces on the wall of Sal's Pizzeria to inviting universal ridicule when a cyclist scuffs his Air Jordans. Lee's camera treats his affectations unkindly, the upward zoom adding extra heft to his already comical hairstyle. Even so, much like Falstaff, this thoughtless dilettante sets the film's tragedies in motion.

Sal, our pizzeria owner, professes love for the people of Bed-Stuy, citing his pride that the young adults in the neighborhood grew up on his pizza. Nonetheless, he does not hesitate to call them "animals" and "niggers" when the mood takes him. And yet, there's little doubt that he loves the people he serves, even as a deep-seated disrespect for them wins out over his seemingly better nature.

Disrespect really is the order of the day here: whether you're Mookie, Tina, Radio Raheem, Sal, or even Sal's useless sons, how you deal with disrespect defines your character (at least up to a point). Mookie does nothing for so long that his big act almost feels like a triumph. Raheem hides behind his music, and when that's disrespected, he explodes. Sal's deep-seated racism comes to the fore. He's not an anti-social racist like his son, but guilty of ugly prejudice none the less.

The exception is the Greek chorus. They constantly comment but never act. They are less characters than narrators, involved less with the specific lives of the neighborhood than in defining the shapes of the setting. Lee treats them to some of the most beautiful videography in film history as they lounge under umbrellas against a wall painted the brightest red ever seen outside a Tarantino film.

I don't want to linger on the ending; if you haven't seen the movie, you need to experience it for yourself. I will say this, however: la plus ça change, la plus la même chose.

I know that the latest episode of Doctor Who seems a bit slight on the surface, but like Gridlock, which had a number of thematic similarities, there are joys to found in the depths. It's been a long time since I could describe this show of having any subtlety whatsoever, but even while maintaining the usual loud tempo in the A-plot, the episode still offered little reveals about the Doctor, and more importantly, about Clara.

Despite the fact that this episode centered on the loss of a parent, there wasn't a big emotional crying scene. I've realized more and more that when the characters' histrionics overwhelm the scene, there's no room left for the audience to connect emotionally.

In just ten quiet seconds, we feel the weight of the moment when Clara's forced to give up her mother's ring. The Doctor asking her to make that sacrifice clearly plants a seed of doubt in her mind about him, and reminds us that no matter how much he walks the walk, he's not actually human.

Nor do we need a big dramatic scene to understand the significance of the fact that when asked for a physical totem of cherished memory, he can only offer his sonic screwdriver. That's even though he once brought his (assumed long dead?) granddaughter to this very place.

(And because you should see it if you haven't, the scene where the Doctor abandons Susan on Earth for Not!AdamScott is one of the loveliest moments of the classic series. Middleman did a riff on this scene, for those of you who enjoy such things).

I've heard it said on Twitter that the episode relies on the usual Doctor Who deus ex machina that is The Power of Love. For once, I think there's something far deeper going on. Clara doesn't feed the monster with love, but with the infinity of loss. It's neatly scientific, wrapped up in a human bow. People who are grieving don't tend to dwell on moments had, they think of moments missed, moments lost. Every time I miss my grandmother, for instance, I don't think about my youth spent with her, I think about how she isn't here, how she isn't sitting next to me, enjoying Doctor Who with me (and enjoy it she did).

There's an infinity of those moments, and you'd go crazy if you try to understand how enormous those missed moments are. No one can comprehend infinity. You just shut down when you go too far down the path.

Which is my long-winded way of saying, well done Who, for having an vaguely comprehensible ending for once.

OTHER STUFF:

Clara Clara Clara. SO MUCH LOVE. She's the first companion in the New Era who I'd actually want to meet, and can imagine myself befriending.

 

Yesterday, the once venerable Guardian published an execrable pile of garbage entitled "Will America be able to stomach the Les Misérables film", by a hack named Hannah Betts (a list of her credits include other such useful commentary as "Why I'm happy to wear fur," and "Feminism and flirtation are by no means unlikely bedfellows").

In a piece that even 13 year old bloggers would be ashamed to write, Betts tags her piece: "The new Les Mis film plays down the bromance and plays up the pox, boils and bad European teeth."

God forbid a socio-realist novel about French poverty attempt to look somewhat authentic!

But it gets worse:

I'm not sure how it's going to play in the US, though. For a start, the bromance is subdued for a nation that brought us Top Gun's bros riding bros' tails.

Moreover, the various poxes, STDs, boils and not just British but also French teeth are likely to inspire hysteria in the neurotically sanitised US of A. And this before the male leads spend several scenes literally covered in shit. Still, it will serve to confirm everything Yanks feel about contemporary Europe.

Has Ms. Betts been lying in a coma since 1984? Are there no movies between Top Gun and Les Miserables? And who the hell think there's a bromance between Javert and Valjean?

Finally, what does this film have to do with what Yanks may or may not feel about contemporary Europe? The only thing this article serves to confirm is that Hannah Betts should be banned from the printed word. The Guardian should be ashamed of itself for allowing such tripe to bear its name.

As a side note, the Guardian appears to have some sort of vendetta against Les Miserables, running a "trailer review" that perfectly complements Ms. Betts in wretchedness and sour grapes. It's not even worth quoting, given that Stuart Heritage appears to never have heard of the book, the musical or Victor Hugo before being paid, somehow, to write a bit of unfunny nonsense.

There's no way to discuss this without talking about the ending. In other words, HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

Let me start by saying that I loved Skyfall. I can comfortably state that it's one of the top two Bond films (I'm unable to declare it better than Goldeneye without seeing that old favorite again). Skyfall finds the perfect balance between acknowledging the tropes that make Bond such a treasured film commodity and acknowledging their quaintness.

But the problem, as the film so ably points out, is that Bond (and the whole of MI6) can't be judged by its activity in the past, but must be judged by the needs of the present. As a result, it becomes impossible to ignore that Skyfall gives us the most regressive gender politics since the Sean Connery era.

Two female characters are bedded and disposed of (quite literally in one case) with zero fanfare or sentiment. One is LITERALLY TOLD TO SHUT UP by her male colleague during a court proceeding. Meanwhile, in series regular territory, we're back to having a posh toff male heading up MI6, while our clever and highly competent field agent suddenly reveals her life's aspiration to be "sexy secretary". That's zero for five, Skyfall.

Let's start with Eve, who inspired this post. She spends the entire film being punished for a small mistake she makes under M's orders, while Bond goes around screwing up so badly that he can't even pass the physical fitness exam. Even worse, despite saving Bond's (and everyone's) lives twice in the interim, she somehow decides that she's not competent to be a field agent, simply based on a throwaway comment from Bond. The kiss of death? It turns out that she not only decides to be a secretary, she's actually gonna be that secretary (you remember the one. In fifty years of Bond films, she's notable for alternating "sexy" and "nagging" and "why don't you ever return my calls?".

To be honest, if she started the film as a secretary who went out into the field and then decided she wanted to stay behind the desk, I might have hand-waved it. But to invite the audience to smile knowingly as a capable agent surrenders her power to a man who was once her equal palls.

And why the hell did she end up shaving Bond? Is she his wife? Fail.

The head of the government inquiry may have been a touch long-winded, but her points were neither hysterical nor invalid. And as any student of the British government knows, long-windedness is not an affectation, but an expectation. Mallory's flippant shutdown of her right to speak (she's the fucking head of the inquiry!) is both against the way government inquiries work, and just flat offensive. And also, the audience is supposed to laugh. Women talking too much! Hilarious!

The whole Séverine subplot was incredibly bizarre. Bond finds her both traumatized and full of fear from being sold first into sex slavery and then to Silva, and nonetheless chooses to have her by sneaking up on her in the shower. Of course, James Bond is basically male privilege made flesh, but come on dude, she's TERRIFIED. She doesn't want your dick. Also, if he was so desperately taken with her, one would think he'd have slightly more of a reaction to her death-by-dick-measuring-contest. But la-di-da.

M comes closest to success, but we've spent enough time with her to know her pretty well (remember her fantastic introduction in Goldeneye?) Nonetheless, she dies pretty stupidly. She has no facility with a gun, knows it, but still sits out as a target, despite a wonderful escape route? Sure, she set off some exploding chandeliers, but what was the plan here? She's the head of the MI6, not some domestic terrorist. So we not only get Mallory accusing her of incompetence, she proves him right. M, who never makes a false step, makes a series of them in Skyfall. So she dies, freeing Bond of the only female who can stand up to him in every regard.

After the women are handily put in their places, Skyfall leaves us with the image of Bond and Mallory talking shop, drinking whisky and smirking about a job terribly done (guys, the head of MI6 is dead! I don't know how you define a job gone horribly wrong, but I am PRETTY SURE THAT'S ONE OF THEM). Mallory failed to track Silva despite Q's technical wizardry, and he still ends up boss. All the women end up dead or demoted, and the men get promoted.

I haven't even discussed the queerification of Silva ("Sure, he's killed a lot of people and blown up buildings, but what's really horrifying is that he might be homosexual!"), but that may be a topic for another day.

So long and thanks in advance for your polite, well-reasoned comments.

I didn't set out to watch a "Black" film on Black Friday, (nor do I wish to pretend that "Black Friday" deserves codification as anything other than a commercial black hole). An interview with Martin Scorsese, who described a certain moment in the film as the one that forced him to become a filmmaker, led me to pluck Black Narcissus from the quicksand of my Netflix queue.

Like me, dear reader, you may have the wrong impression of the film (and the Netflix description certainly doesn't help, with its vague intimations of a crisis of faith in exotic lands, tagging the film in the "faith and spirituality" bucket).

Black Narcissus has elements of horror, romance, and the subtly erotic (the horror scenes are perhaps the most unexpected, and the most beautiful). It's more in the vein of In The Mood for Love than of the "stiff upper-lip" films that transfixed post-war Britain. Sex and desire are ever-present, even through our leads spend most of the film wearing nun habits.

Five nuns, led by Deborah Kerr's Sister Clodagh, move to a remote palace in the Himalayas, kindly lent by an Indian general in exchange for providing schools and medical services to the local children. The sisters are forced to rely on Major Dean, a Brit who know his way about the locals. Needless to say, sparks fly in many directions.

Clodagh's studied restraint sits against the animal attraction between the Indian prince and Kanchi, a lower-class girl rejected by her family for being too open in her many affections. Rather than suggesting that this is some native savagery, Sister Clodagh comes to envy their youthful impetuousness, troubled by regrets of her own.

 

Now, despite being set in the remote hills of the Himalayas, Black Narcissus was fully filmed in Britain, at the Pinewood Studios. Which perhaps accounts for the one jarring weakness in the film.

Despite carefully researching the architecture, the climate and the foliage of its remote setting, the powers-that-be still chose to brownface the female Indian lead, Kanchi.

In an incredible scene, we see Simmons do traditional Indian-style dancing, and to her credit, she's very good at it. But why not hire an Indian actress trained in classical dance? Which, as anyone who's seen even a single Indian movie knows, is literally every Indian actress (I could explain the reasons for intersection of dance and theatre in both classical and modern Indian culture, but I'll spare you).

It's even more jarring when you consider how carefully the film deals with "otherness". Certainly our good nuns believe they're bringing enlightenment to the savages, but Powell and Pressburger make no such judgment. In fact, with one line from our extremely handsome male lead (WWJD), the filmmakers reveal the inherent silliness of such beliefs, that if bringing the "light" means turning a man against his own family, it cannot possibly be more righteous.

(Clodagh and her sisters do come to recognize this, and certainly this contributes to their turmoil. If the motives of the Holy Order could be so wrong about one thing, why can't they be wrong about others, especially the right of a woman to be a woman?)

Basically, the filmmakers are saying that being one of the darkies is in fact a perfectly acceptable (even beautiful) human condition, unless of course you're in a mainstream movie. In which case, bust out the brown foundation and raven-colored hair dye.

Powell and Pressburger's film is well regarded as one of the first masterpieces of technicolor filmmaking, and I'd go so far to say that it's still one of the most beautiful films in existence.

Despite its one great failing, Black Narcissus still stands up as a great study of what makes us human, even under the most stringent rules in the most trying of circumstances. Go watch it, then come back and play in the comments.

Having purchased it years ago, I'm embarrassed to admit that I've only just got to Tana French's wonderful Faithful Place, a magnificently propulsive murder mystery set in the forgotten spaces of a swiftly gentrifying Dublin.

In Nick Hornby's slightly hysterical call for a quota on "literature about literature" in The Polyphonic Spree, he elucidates why novels like Faithful Place are so impressive:

"Writing exclusively about highly articulate people...Well, isn't it cheating a little? McEwan's hero, Henry Perowne, the father and son-in-law of the poets, is a neurosurgeon, and his wife is a corporate lawyer; like many highly educated middle-class people, they have access to and a facility with language, a facility that enables them to speak very directly and lucidly about their lives (Perowne is "an habitual observer of his own moods"), and there's a sense in which McEwan is wasted on them. They don't need his help. What I've always loved about fiction is its ability to be smart about people who aren't themselves smart, or at least don't necessarily have the resources to describe their own emotional states....It seems to me to be a more remarkable gift than the ability to let extremely literate people say extremely literate things."

So here we find ourselves, with Frank Mackey, back in Faithful Place, where working class" still counts as mere aspiration. Faithful Place has a very particular geography, all secret paths and abandoned buildings and dangerous cellars. And like most communities within communities, it has its own set of rules, blunt and simple:

"No matter how skint you are, if you go to the pub then you stand your round; if your mate gets into a fight, you stick around to drag him off as soon as you see blood ... even if you're an anarchist punk rocker this month, you go to Mass on Sunday; and no matter what, you never, ever squeal on anyone."

In a street of bruisers, its all too easy to let the characters go undefined, to have them inhabit archetypes of thugs, thieves and scoundrels that readers are all too familiar with. But that's where French's easy facility with language comes in. She takes us on a tour of Faithful Place and introduces us to Mackey's estranged family members one by one, his abandoned friendships, the very conversations that polluted the air during his ill-fated romance with Rosie Daly.

The mystery of who kills Rosie Daly certainly has its own interest, but the characters really shine here. Faithful Place is also very funny:

"My parents didn't like people with Notions; the Dalys didn't like unemployed alcoholic wasters."

I know I'm late to the party here, but if you somehow missed Faithful Place over the past couple of years, I highly recommend picking it up.

In A Nutshell: The most perfect novel I've read this year, if not the last few years. Gillian Flynn, a unique literary voice, produces the most twisted psychological tale in recent memory, and does it with black wit and beautiful writing. All the while, she manages to make subtle and effective commentary on the nature of marriage, aging, and gender.

---

A few pages into Gone Girl, lulled into the subtle lyricism of Gillian Flynn's impeccable voice, you'll probably wonder, "How did things get so bad?" How did Nick and Amy Dunne's perfect marriage end up so mundanely terrible after such a promising start?

By the time the novel's finished, you'll wonder, "how on Earth did things get so much worse than when we started?"

Gone Girl, a masterclass in tension, plotting and character, takes you on a bumpy ride through the minds of some of the most twisted characters in recent fiction. Just when we settle into the novel's Rashomon-like storytelling (we seesaw between Nick and Amy's diary entries, his at the end of their marriage, hers at the beginning of their relationship), the cracks start to spill out of the diary entries and into reality. Little details infect the air in ways you wouldn't expect.

But Flynn's not content to leave this as a post-modern mystery for the reader to solve. At the halfway mark, she introduces a third character, one we vaguely glimpse in the first half of the novel, and one who shocks us most thoroughly. That's when things really get going. She takes all the suspense (oh, so much suspense) she built in the first half, and then lights it on fire, and the bonfire continues through the end of the novel.

I can't say anything more about the plot without spoiling the read. But I can't recommend this one enough. I freely admit that I love many books that I wouldn't recommend to all. Not Gone Girl. What Gillian Flynn achieves with form and narrative is truly worth your time.

***Spoilers***

What really impresses me about the novel is the meta-narrative sleight of hand Flynn ultimately inflicts upon us. For the first half of the book, "Nick" is merely a construction of Psychopathic Amy. By the end, Nick actually becomes "Nick," a mere character in Amy's narrative, not a real human being in his own right.

I owe a personal apology to Hello, Tailor for not watching X-Men until now. Sometimes, when people get unreasonably excited about things, I assume I won't enjoy it as much and then I just feel guilty when I don't.

In this case, I was wrong.

After 15 minute of breathless stupidity, after which I very nearly switched the film off, Rose Byrne graced the screen (mmmm...Rose Byrne). The movie quickly shifted into something far more interesting, almost an espionage thriller.

Did you notice that Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender were wearing the same black turtleneck in one scene?

Like they are both fighting for Xavier's soul. Mystique longs for X to be a better man than he actually is, while Magneto longs for approval/ pragmatism. In a lovely twist, they both lose him and join together instead.

It's only fair, because Xavier doesn't deserve either of them. He's continually phrased as this radical idealist who cares neither for people nor politics, just a mythical idea of what's right. Until the end of the film, it's far too easy to hate him, especially considering the way he treats my beloved Jennifer Lawrence.

Seriously, Xavier's such a dick to her that I'm surprised she leaves him with such equanimity. A punch in the face seems like a bare minimum.

THE FUTURE

This movie sets up a far more interesting X-Men narrative than is likely: one where the villains are only in the eye of the beholder. I'm aware that X-Men isn't Homeland; there's only room for a certain amount of complexity in a blockbuster movie. That said, I'm still hopeful they can achieve something thought-provoking and cerebral with this team of actors.

We've got the younger mutants like Havoc and Beast to provide the action pyrotechnics and comic relief, so the adults should be left free to behave like...adults. After all, working for the CIA doesn't exactly place Xavier's team on the side of righteousness. It makes him a collaborator in the destruction of his own people, and it makes sense that Magneto would rebel against that.

"Mistah Kurtz, he dead." ~ Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad

REVIEW IN A SENTENCE:

Ann Patchett's State of Wonder is a marvelously atmospheric novel with more twists and turns than a 12-foot long anaconda.

PLOT IN A NUTSHELL:

After receiving word of the mysterious death of a beloved colleague named Anders, Dr. Marina Singh is persuaded to venture deep into the heart of the Amazon to find out exactly how he died. Her employer also tasks her with finding out what happened to the pharmaceutical research spearheaded by the mercurial Dr. Annick Swenson, who's been lost to the field for decades. Swenson is researching the women of a local tribe who are able to continue to conceive well past middle age, in order to develop a billion-dollar fertility drug.

As Marina gets closer to learning the truth about Anders and the miracle drug, she faces everything from snakes to hippie sycophants, deadly danger to impossible choices.

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE MARINA:

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with explorers and adventurers, far-fetched tales of those people who possess the bravery and wit to venture into new lands, no matter how strange or threatening. What you don't think about as a curious child is that these explorers require money, and the purse-holders always have their own agendas -- usually a greed for power, land, and/or money.

Patchett never lets us forget this for a second -- it's difficult to predict Marina's actions as she is sent to find Swenson by Vogel, a giant pharmaceutical company who is more interested in protecting their bottom line than in any human cost. The potential human cost, here, is very high indeed, in ways that Vogel doesn't even know about. Marina is bound not only by her loyalties to the hippocratic oath, she's romantically entwined with Vogel's director, the ominously named Mr. Fox. With every new moral/ethical quandary, Marina is forced to balance these opposing loyalties, which often leads to inertia (seriously, I have never met a character who's less inquisitive. She prefers to wallow in questions of self and ethics rather than make decisions).

At least Swenson's merry band of followers justify their behavior, excusing ethical impropriety with canards like "Not everyone follows the American way of doing things," "it's too slow," "we don't have the resources here and have to improvise," etc. Their lack of strong principle is made up for narratively by the fact that they, under the iron fist of Annick Swenson, are devoted to a mission.

But Marina spends too much time thinking and not reacting to the extremely exciting things going on around her.

She goes a bit like this*:

"The airline lost your suitcase."

"That's ok, I'm now thinking that not having a magical phone of infinite signal is marvellously freeing."

--

"Oh no, the Lakashi have stolen your [mysterious second] suitcase!"

"It's ok, I'm sure that by the time this is over I'll forget that normal people wear nightgowns. Or mosquito repellant."

---

"We've long ago stopped pursuing what Vogel asked of us! We've found a magical new side effect that will save millions of children!"

"I think Mr. Fox is going to be kind of mad. Will he sleep with me? Is he thinking of me now? Should I be having children even though I'm forty-five[ish]?"

(I kid, I kid)

Which is not to say that she's obnoxious, cause she isn't, just that she never seems fully present. All the other characters are so well-drawn, even the minor characters, that it's a shame that Marina never becomes more than an interloper. But it's possible that, in the end, she's merely the lens through which we judge and understand Dr. Annick Swenson, Patchett's play on Conrad's mysterious and powerful Kurtz. Swenson is the reason to read this book.

What surprises me is how early we meet her in the novel; in the initial setup, I was expecting to meet her only in the final pages, possibly covered in native blood. Early on, it's presented that young people fall prey to her force of personality (and forceful she is, she has the entire city of Manaus wrapped around her little finger). But that's not enough; her cult of personality are all weak in their own way; clever, certainly, but weak. It wouldn't be anything particularly revolutionary to have weak moths obsessively circle a strong flame.

That's when Patchett turns the screws. Swenson doesn't give a damn about her followers, only about her work. She is watchful, diligent and careful where her research is concerned, and has the courage of her own convictions. She may act outside the bounds of Western medicine, but just as she's willing to experiment on the Lakashi, she's willing to experiment on herself. Her sense of ethics is no less defined than Marina's, it's just completely different.

Every new revelation about Swenson should shock us, but Patchett has so carefully designed the character that she does seem like a real person, a person that many educated people would dedicate their lives to following. What's genius is that we fall for Swenson as well, even knowing how much she's scammed everyone, lied, acted unethically, immorally, and probably illegally as well. She's bought off half the city and runs her camp like a dictator. But in the scene where she guides marina through a C-Section, she becomes real, she becomes formidable, she becomes worthy of respect.

The troubles come when Swenson keeps reiterating in the last quarter of the novel that Dr. Singh is the only worthy successor to leading her studies in the field. For all the reasons I've discussed above, it's impossible to believe this is true. Marina has no conviction about anything, no personality to lead others, and no willingness to make tough choices/sacrifices. But perhaps we are meant to realize this, that there is only one Dr. Swenson.

VERDICT

State of Wonder is an immensely enjoyable read. It's not without its problems, but it's a page-turner. You'll be forced to question many of your core beliefs about medical testing/research, while joining Marina on an old-fashioned adventure. The ending is absolutely terrible, but the rest is certainly worth your time.

 

*Entirely made up by me, not Patchett.

If you are to believe the entertainment machine, Boston is the worst city in the United States (a dear friend of mine who's been transplanted to Boston for the past few years assures me that yes, it is in fact the worst city in the United States, for a variety of reasons I won't go into here). Just think about the last few Boston-set entertainments you may have encountered: The Town (Boston is characterized by poverty and gang violence), Infinite Jest (Boston is characterized by drug addicts and Canadian wheelchair terrorists), The Departed (...poverty and mob violence), Mystic River (...rape, poverty and murder), Rescue Me (...rape, crime, poverty, murder and Dennis Leary), On Beauty (...racism and terrorism), Fringe (...space-time vortices and wormholes).

Gone Baby Gone wastes no time in introducing the horribleness: the camera pans around showing emaciated prostitutes and a whole lot of people weeping in various white trash locales. This first scene is a real shame considering how good the rest of the film is; it sets the film up to be melodramatic feel-baddery rather than the taut and suspenseful crime thriller it becomes.

The main plot-line kicks off as Helene McCready (a nearly unrecognizable Amy Ryan) awkwardly begs for everyone to help her find her missing daughter (the awkwardness may be explained by the fact that Helene's natural, off-camera speech tends to be 8/10 profanity, 1/10 article and 1/10 pronoun). Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennarro, private investigators who also happen to be lovers, are called in to "augment" the police investigation by Helene's distraught sister, Bea, and Bea's husband. The police aren't too keen about Patrick and Angie's "help," but give them latitude since Patrick's a local boy who can get the neighborhood kids talking.

Casey Affleck plays Patrick perfectly; he's quiet and self-effacing but immeasurably tough. He plays his emotions so close to the chest that everyone in this film wants to tell him not what he should feel guilty about, but what he will feel guilty about. The bad men in this film, in their supreme arrogance, are convinced that not only is corruption the game they must play, but that it is the only right thing to do. They do not believe that anyone on this earth might actually have principles worth defending. Both Patrick and Angie are living counterpoints to this sort of moral flexibility, albeit in very different ways.

Once the story gets going, it doesn't stop for anyone. It snakes around from one life-threatening moment to the next, each one more tense than the previous. Patrick charms his way through mainly with words, and by the time he pulls a gun, things get very serious indeed. As the case takes its toll on both Patrick and Angie, his decisions become more erratic, more unpredictable, and when he stumbles upon the answer to the mystery its as much an accident as anything else, and we share his surprise at the truth.

Which brings me to the one mystery that's never quite cleared up: what's the story with our protagonists? Both of them seem to be unhealthily touched by the case, which hints at some past trauma or related sadness. In Patrick's case, at least, its suggested that his concerns stem from a stern Catholic upbringing, but in Angie's case, it's never quite made clear. To say she takes the case personally is a massive understatement. She is a strong character who breaks like a desiccated leaf when she accepts that the little girl is dead. Patrick, of course, doesn't accept that the girl is dead, and becomes a crusader in reuniting the girl with her deadbeat mother. Not only that, he commits himself to making sure that his decision to reunite them becomes the right decision, taking it upon himself to become a sort of guardian to the child.

The film would be captivating enough on its own, but its true strength comes from its superb cast. I mentioned Casey Affleck, riveting in his youthful interpretation of a soft-boiled detective. Amy Ryan humanizes a performance that could descend so easily into caricature. I kept comparing her performance mentally with the "bigness" of Melissa Leo in The Fighter, who played her character as the Norma Desmond of working class Boston (hey, another white-trash Boston movie!). And then there's the supporting cast: tight-lipped brass played by Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris (seriously, get that man an Oscar!), two of the best actors in Hollywood today. Oh, and of course, a shout-out to Ben Affleck's tight and effective directing of the film.

If there's one problem with the film, I'd say its the casting of Titus Welliver as Helene's brother-in-law. While it's not entirely his fault, I find it impossible to see him as anything other than a snake-in-the-grass villain.

Go watch it! Then come back and tell me what you think. What the hell's going on with Angie? Does anyone else think that Casey Affleck looks like a less plastic John Barrowman?

Enter Filling the Gaps, a series about the films that you're 'meant to have seen,' that you never got around to (and when I say you I mean me, though more than likely you as well.) I will try to keep you unspoiled, and will undoubtedly fail. Complain in the comments.

After watching Sunset Blvd for the first time, I really had to reflect on why this was considered an all time classic; it's not that I didn't enjoy it, in fact I stayed up until 3 AM to finish it.

(Bizarre childhood confession: while this is the first time I've seen Bill Holden in a film, I am ashamed to say that my first introduction to him was in a very late episode of I Love Lucy, one of the really terrible ones, where he plays himself as a crush of Lucy and Ethel.)

Leaving that aside...


It's the earliest example I can think of in so-called 'canon' movies that uses a multitude of literary tropes: an unreliable narrator, in-medias-res story form, and most importantly, metafiction.

But, the greatest accomplishment of the film, without question, is getting former silent movies stars to put aside their egos and play failed versions of themselves in a 'talkie'.

What a rogue's gallery, described by our narrator as "The Waxworks": Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson as a thinly veiled parody of her own career. Buster Keaton, looking almost skeletal, Hedda Hopper, Anne Q. Nilsson and H.B. Warner, amazingly playing themselves, as actors trapped on their pedestals even though their fans have long deserted them.

Cecil Demille also plays himself, in one of the most honest roles in the film, setting a  counterpoint to  Norma Desmond's delusions while William Holden's Joe Gillis is content to play along and pacify her. Until he isn't, of course. I do wonder, though, how many films since this one have hinged their final act on the hero suddenly 'finding a conscience.'

I'm not sure this is a movie that everyone would enjoy, but I certainly did, and it improves in my mind the more I think about it.

CANONICAL QUOTES
-"You're Norma Desmond...you used to be big." "I am big. It's the pictures that got small."
-"All right, Mr. Demille. I'm ready for my closeup."