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Published on

February 5, 2020
Nathan's Films of 2019: A Top Two, With 23 Runners Up
Golden ages are never recognized as such until after they're over. But sometimes you just have to trust to witness, and acknowledge that what's going on around you is truly amazing. Look at this year's films. What is it about the end of a decade?

The -9's

Although no year in cinema will ever top 1999, what with its explosion* of quality in voices both new and old, the final year in many a decade often serves, for whatever reason, as a landmark in film output. I often point to 1969, which managed to splinter the western into the wholly new and variegated avenues of Butch Cassidy, Easy Rider and The Wild Bunch, along with international classics Z, Army of Shadows, and Kes. Or '79, with the explosion known as Apocalypse Now, alongside Stalker, Tess, Manhattan and more. Nineteen-eighty nine was one of the few highlights of the otherwise dismal eighties (high marks from Stone, Spike Lee, van Sant, Weir and Soderbergh, plus Day-Lewis’s breakout My Left Foot performance); '59 brought us peak Hitchcock, Wyler, Preminger, and Truffaut's breakthrough; and then there's 1939 (Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, Stagecoach aaand Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), second only to 1999 in its laundry list of milestones.

Um Wow

I had an inkling it might happen again this 2019, and boy, did it ever turn out. Anyone who tells you this was a weak year probably says so every year, and definitely didn't seek out enough fare this time around. There’s too many for a top ten, so I’m doing something a little different this time around: a Top Two, plus 23 other films grouped by theme.

Aside from the leading two titles, ordering these things felt ridiculous. How are you supposed to compare the merits of Little Women and Uncut Gems (which, as it happens, I saw together, for the year’s most anachronistic double feature), except to recognize both are excellent in ways that have nothing to do with each other? It's all just so lovely.

I’m ignoring documentaries– not the same medium, strictly speaking; and these aren’t reviews, in the strict sense; I wrote reviews when I lived in Hollywood, and these are briefer, and freer, closer to what I would tell you if you asked me about these titles or wanted recommendations. I’ll try to bring to the table what other critics don’t; investigations into form based on training in theory and practice.

Not Dead Yet

What was the narrative this year in cinema? Journalists have tried to steer it, and you’d be forgiven for believing their story: that cinema exists in two unrelated and oppositional forms– the expensive studio picture, based on an existing property and aimed at male children and teenagers (cough Marvel cough)… and small-budgeted indie and foreign pictures for adults based on original material (the stuff you'll catch me sitting through at the Uptown).

Hey, I believed it. With Disney exerting a stranglehold on theatres by requiring them to use their biggest screens for Disney material only and then clogging the marketplace with their lucrative, tepid and artistically conservative tentpoles, while I sat in empty theatre after empty theatre of exciting new adult dramas, it seemed as true as anything else.

But a quick look at this year’s Oscar nominations shows us that popular studio dramas for adults are not only very much alive, but doing great. The theme this year is how many films were made with no artistic compromise. No wonder they turned out so well. Ford v Ferrari is a $100 million-budgeted adult drama that was also a hit. Joker is a psychological character study masquerading as a studio tentpole, and fully backed by Warners. Sony gave Tarantino carte blanche to make his 9th film, and audiences and critics have flocked to it. Universal let Sam Mendes make 1917 in the most logistically risky manner conceivable, and it’s paid off in spades.

There’s room in the marketplace for an R-rated Korean drama to be a hit with 6 nominations. Little Women has already crossed $100 million at the box office. And then there’s Netflix, giving filmmakers whatever they want after everyone else has passed, and allowing Martin Scorsese to make his dream project at the scale, price, and time frame he pleased. They paid for the building of an all-new Sistine Chapel, after the real Sistine Chapel forbade filming for The Two Popes. They let David Michôd use practical effects for his battle scenes in The King. I don’t know why, but major corporate entities are letting certain artists, at least, make their art. And what’s more– nobody’s noticed.

Table of Contents!

I hope you enjoy. For each film, I’ve included an image, a quote I find relevant, a one-line synopsis because I guess it helps to know what these things are about (though I find myself caring more about the how, don’t you?), the director, as well as the length and width of the movie. The shape a film weighs largely in my estimation of it. As my friends jokingly say, if it’s longer than 2.5 hours and wide, Nathan’s automatically going to love it… Go figure. Maybe it’s a latent desire to feel like I’m getting my money’s worth! I’ve linked trailers, and where possible I’ve linked the trailer I feel most accurately captures the film’s actual essence, rather than the one that’s the most exciting.

On a Theme of Longing [Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Atlantics, Long Day’s Journey into Night, Photograph, Transit, Ad Astra]
On a Theme of Survival [1917, Parasite, The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão]
On a Theme of Goodness [Dark Waters, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Knives Out, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Bombshell]
On a Theme of Power [The King, Loro, Joker, The Laundromat]
On Paolo Sorrentino's Loro
On a Theme of Life [Little Women, Marriage Story, Uncut Gems]
On a Theme of Forgiveness [Waves, Honey Boy]
#2
#1
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*Just a selection: Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Mann’s The Insider, Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead, PTA’s Magnolia, Lynch’s The Straight Story, Fincher’s Fight Club, Almodovar’s All About My Mother, Denis’ Beau Travail, Jonze’ Being John Malkovich, The Matrix, O’Russell’s Three Kings, The Talenteed Mr. Ripley, Soderbergh’s The Limey, Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, and The Green Mile.
Published on

February 4, 2020

Nathan's Films of 2019: On a Theme of Power

1. The King

"This conversation we are about to have... has been had many times before, and will be had many times again for centuries to come, between men of vanity and men of good reason."

Synopsis: Prince Hal, now crowned Henry V, struggles to navigate palace politics and his own inclinations toward power. Trailer.
dir. David Michôd. 140m; 2.39:1.

Brooding is the operative word here. It’s one of my favorite keys for a film to play in; see Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (trailer), whose mythic vastness all but requires its luxuriously slow pace. Ridley Scott’s exquisite Kingdom of Heaven: Director’s Cut also comes to mind.

David Michôd's latest is similar, but specific in its own way. It keeps a modest physical scale while encompassing the largeness of the human soul, a la fellow Aussie Justin Kurzel’s 2015 Macbeth, the best Shakespeare adaptation on record (my thoughts and trailer). Here, Michôd reconsitutes Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Henry V plays for his own purposes, ambandoning iambic pentameter and resorting to historical references instead, changing most especially the Falstaff character in ways that add resonance. There is room for more than one style of adapting these stories.

Michôd and cowriter Joel Edgerton (who also plays Falstaff) have stated that they were either going to preserve all of Shapespeare’s dialogue, or discard it entirely. Michod

“realized that the movie version of what we might want to do would have to be different, because the plays are written, they’re extraordinary things to read, but they’re written to be performed, to be presented on an Elizabethan stage. Unless you treat that in a very particular, formal way, I don’t think it makes for the kind of cinema that I would want to make. …The play, ‘Henry V,’ especially, was written in a very different time. [It] has been presented in the past, very frequently, as a heroic story of great English triumph. It felt really inappropriate for us to make that version of it today. And so instead, we became very interested in the idea of generating a different story, a different interpretation of ‘Henry V’ that would be more about how a young idealistic man might find himself consumed by the institutions.”

Here we plunge into a past in which attention has been paid to veracity, where the rooms are dark and small and words are often whispers. The modus of thinking is not cluttered by the speed of modern life. The score accomplishes multitudes in contributing to the atmosphere; low bass tones shift the ambience to something interior, history as the unstoppable turning machinations of the human psyche.

Adam Arkapaw’s camera (who also shot Macbeth, oddly enough) glides over the ground, relishing shadow and natural light, a mix of Caravaggio and Vermeer; when paired with a stately compositional sense and that sensational ambient score, the effect is hypnotic.

Chalamet carries the film handily, in a performance I found impossible to look away from. It’s an unexpected choice, and an inspired one: “I really loved the idea of taking that kid from Call Me by Your Name and plunking him in the beginning of this movie,” Michod says. Chalamet’s slight, effeminate appearance reveal just how potently personality can be carried in actions only. He is small, but he terrifies us with his confidence, his calculated perception. No need for a brute body or raised voice when you’ve got that smouldering glare.

The dialogue has a real ear for specificity of speech rhythm; the tone is controlled, a collection of people who think before they speak, operating and expecting a level of deductive engagement that is unique. “Earthy and real and human and ... otherworldly” is how Michôd describes the tonal approach, and care is taken to avoid glamour, especially in the action:

“Who knows what 600 years ago felt like? That extended to the battle. So when Hal has his one-on-one fight with Hotspur, I wanted that not to be about super fancy sword play, I wanted it to be about two kids wearing trash cans, smashing the shit out of each other, heaving for breath and rolling around on the ground.”

This adherence to unglamorous realism grounds the proceedings, situates them closer to our experience– a world in which people make do with what they know, who have vulnerabilities and limits to their character, but who nevertheless continue striving, reaching for the light.

Just when you think you've had it with effective portraits of corrosive tyranny, along comes another that proves its worth. Mr. Michôd's portrait understands that violence is ugly, not glorious, has a more contemplative ear than normal, recognizes the dangers of an all-male power base, and holds out a shred of hope for humans working together.

2. Loro (Them)

"I am a man. I am the angel of the night. I know the script of life."

Synopsis: Life as lived by Silvio Berlusconi and the people who wish to gain entrance to his inner circle.
UK Teaser. US Trailer.
dir. Paolo Sorrentino. 158m (int'l cut)/204m (Itali. cut). 2.39:1.

Writing and researching this strange beast got too huge for this page. Click here for more.

3. Joker

"The worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don't."

Synopsis: A mentally unstable man, bereft of treatment or friendship, turns to murder. Trailer.
dir. Todd Phillips. 122m; 1.85:1.

Scorsese chose not to direct Joker for the same reason I both struggle with this film and find it brilliant: Arthur gradually ceases to be a character, and evolves into an abstraction. The film is designed to systematically wean you from the ability to relate with Joker.

That’s why there haven’t been any violent acts, as some less informed media outlets suspected; it’s also why people won’t dress up as this Joker. You start the film liking him, understanding him... even relating to his first act of violence. It’s designed to be relatable. He’s sticking up for that woman on the subway, and also himself, retaliating against bullies– well, over-retaliating. His action is obviously inappropriate, but it’s comprehendible.

All of the remaining acts of violence are not, and they increase in their degree of apathy. At some point you, a reasonable human, will check out. And that’s the idea. We start on Joker’s side, viewing the Bob DeNiro character as crass and cruel; we end on DeNiro’s character’s side, recognizing that what he says in the televised interview makes more sense than what Joker says, though they both have nuggets of truth on offer.

We walk out somewhat dazed, chagrined, reconsidering what we were expecting. We've been alienated from the ability to sympathize with violent acts, something most films expect us to go along with, but which Phillips and co. here portray, accurately, as troubling, complicated, and wrong. We understand how Arthur got there, but we couldn’t stay with him once he did. It’s quite daring and incredibly bold. This careful construction leaves us with a downer feeling, not excited by violence but disheartened by it. Ingenious, you'll agree. If only there were more depressing violent films, like this or The King, than inflammatory celebrations like John Wick 3.

For this, and for its truly stunning craft work (those blues! Those oranges! That production design, the attention to film grain, period details, and more) and a blistering central performance deserving of every accolade thrown its direction, brilliant is an appropriate turn of phrase, even if no catharsis exists other than our act of walking away after the end credits. I'm not even sure if I recommend the film. But I was handily impressed by it.

A note: despite your worst assumptions, the filmmakers did not intend the music cue and cut upon Joker’s leaving Sophie’s apartment to imply that he killed her. He has no reason to, as explained by DP Lawrence Sher in this interview on camerawork.

4. The Laundromat

"Bad? Bad is such a big word... for being such a small word."

Synopsis: A widow investigates an insurance fraud, chasing leads to a pair of Panama City law partners exploiting the world's financial system.
dir. Steven Soderbergh. 95m; 1.85:1.

I might stop short of saying this is great, but I’m including it because experimentation should be welcomed, and what Steven has to say here is of real import. What will it take for us to agree, as a society, to abandon the social contract of money? Such a crossroads could only be reached if there were a compelling functional alternative, and as the beginning of this film illustrates, for societies as large as the ones in existence today, we just don’t have one. Soderbergh stretches the bounds of narratival cinema here and offers a series of delights, not least of which is a hilarious, densely researched, crackerjack Scott Z. Burns script, and a laugh-out-loud Gary Oldman performance. I was losing it just watching him look at a computer screen. Lots to chew on here, presented in unexpected fashion.

Nathan's Films of 2019 Index here.
Published on

February 4, 2020

Nathan's Films of 2019: On a Theme of Longing

This is part of a series of top films of 2019. Explanation and index here.

1. Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)

"In solitude, I felt the liberty you spoke of. But I also felt your absence."

Synopsis: A female painter is hired to clandestinely paint a woman who refuses to pose. Trailer.
dir. Céline Sciamma. 121m; 1.85:1.

If this were a numerical list (it isn't, despite that #1 there, simply for appearance), Portrait would place somewhere very near the top. Because of that ending. Among other things. That ending and all that builds to it, that we might feel everything we feel, and be trusted into the shock of learning something new– not a fact, but an insight. I dare not translate it to words. This is what cinema is for.

Sciamma makes a film about adult characters for basically the first time, recasting frequent collaborator Adèle Haenel in a an entirely new light; there are a lot of pure cinema moments conveying all the feeling in a gaze or glance. She opts for digital in an 18th century period piece, a risky choice but a deftly handled one– this is the past not as past but present, clean and vibrant and colorful and new, as the 1770s once were.

The screenplay understandably won at Cannes, and reframes the Odyssey narrative and its famous glance back into something entirely new to me, a celebration of the poignant ephemeral. You learn about life watching this one, deepen your experience of what it is. Or at least that’s what it did for me.

2. Atlantics

"Souleiman is here."

Synopsis: The boys have gone missing... or have they? Trailer.
dir. Mati Diop. 106m; 1.66:1.

Diop’s debut deserves every bit of the considerable praise thrown its way. She cites Michael Mann in inspiration for her aesthetic– specifically the way Mann captures night in 2006’s Miami Vice. Both films are steeped in mood and atmosphere, but Diop’s voice is her own. I’ll let better writers than I engage with how she tackles immigration, arranged marriage, female agency, and the transformative power of love to transcend death, space and time; let me instead highlight the fusion of those delicate images with Fatima Al Qadiri’s otherworldy score.

The effect is of elements beyond the eye, beyond the known, and what they might have to do with our lives; the sense of mystery is at once bewilderingly large and oddly comforting. Diop casts the ocean much as Soderbergh does the planet in his woefully underrated Solaris: an entity that seems to be changing how the people near it behave, how they think… even who they are.

When the world is bigger than we know, secrets lie just around the corner, more of them reassuring than not. Diop and editor Aël Dallier Vega cut with a specific gossamer-light grace that recalls early Sofia Coppola; Diop’s touch is soft, but powerful. After years of shorts (and a standout acting role in Claire Denis’ 35 Shots of Rum), this, her first feature, is remarkably assured. It’s such a spectacular piece any follow-up will likely be viewed as a disappointment by some, but that’s shortsighted. I’m excited for anything more from this voice.

3. Diqiu zuihou de yewan (Long Day’s Journey into Night)

"The difference between films and memory is that films are always false."

Synopsis: A collection of events and memories revolving around two characters and having to do with lost love, time, and longing. Trailer.
dir. Bi Gan. 138m, 1.85:1.

The spark is still burning. This is the shape of longing, of love tinged with melancholic mystery, translated into images and only nominally tied to narrative. It’s Wong (especially 2046) plus Tarkovsky (particularly Stalker; note the reference in the trailer) with a dash of Lynch (in the vein of Blue Velvet). What more could you want?

The last shot, which lasts an hour(!), is remarkable– handmade, delicate, an earnest and resonant piece of choreography. It’s rougher around the edges than the polish Deakins achieves with 1917, but not lacking as a result; a better comparison is 2015’s Victoria, which like this film’s last hour actually is an unbroken take (though an unbroken take of any length is undeniable achievement) accomplished on a small budget.

This film’s language is its own, separate from the intense fluidity of those films and more aligned with Slow Cinema, something out of Reygadas or Weerasethakul but with more penache: stillness is the aim here, the thoughts that come from turning inward. The final shot feels like a journey through a mind, an actualization not of a place but a state of being, a dream that lasts so long we start to wonder if time and love are the same thing.

The spark is still burning.

[This is a 2018 release, which I’m including here because it first played in Seattle in 2019. ]

4. Photograph

"When I saw the photo he took of me, I didn't see myself. I saw someone who looked happier than me."

Synopsis: A struggling street photographer in Mumbai, pressured to marry by his grandmother, convinces a shy stranger to pose as his fiancée. Trailer.
dir. Ritesh Batra. 110m; 2.39:1 aspect.

Films, as a medium, seem like they lend themselves to being about extroverts, but we only think that because the medium is underutilized, too often merely filmed theatre. Pure cinema uses images and sound to express what words can’t, and is thus ideally suited to articulating the lives of quiet people– such as the two leads of this delightful, tentative and very touching film that accomplishes multitudes with the gentlest of approaches.

As with his 2013 hit The Lunchbox, Batra believes in the magical goodness of unknown people, hidden lives burgeoning over with reflection and feeling. The ‘scope frame adds dimension and heft to these unknown lives, a more expansive sensation than the expected choice that 1.85 ratio would be for this material.

5. Transit

“Who is the first to forget? He who is left, or she who left him?"

Synopsis: A man attempting to escape occupied France falls in love with the wife of a dead author whose identity he has assumed. Trailer.
dir. Christian Petzold. 101m; 2.39:1.

How can I explain to you how much it made sense? Perhaps if I described it as a dream, wherein the present 21st century day and the 1940 Nazi takeover of France were happening simultaneously. Somehow that works here. You wouldn’t question the contradiction in a dream, and if films are other people’s dreams, well, that’s where this one lives.

We aren’t ever able to shake that dreamlike spell in this film, though the emotions and desires feel as potent as any reality. The sunswept tides and open windows form the sort of hangdog afternoon light too warmly lazy to change; in our inability to experience the present, maybe the act of waiting is our greatest salve.

Like 2016’s underrated masterpiece L’Attesa (trailer here), Transit is about the resistance toward acknowledging that death has happened. It’s about the dreams we force ourselves into, in order to hold ourselves together. It has the fraught and dreamy tropicality of Koch or Greene, a belief not in the mythmaking urge of memory persay but in the need for such an urge.

Perhaps life has meaning; if it does not, we have to give it meaning. And we must believe the meaning we choose.

6. Ad Astra

"Father, if you can hear me, I am trying to communicate with you."

With Brad Pitt.
Synopsis: A rumination on legacy and loneliness and the search for knowledge outside our grasp. Trailer 2.
dir. James Gray. 123m; 2.39:1.

The above line, as read in the film, is not a prayer, but of course it reads like one. It may as well be. Pitt’s character reads it out in a message to be sent into deep space, to a father he unsure is still alive. James Gray has finally made a masterpiece, after a decade-plus of films I consider to always have been Very Good, without ever cracking the Great realm– for me, at least.

Sometimes you find a piece that moves you, and it’s almost not worth trying to explain why. It may not play for others, but this particular organization of sounds and images seems the perfect answer to my life’s current questions. This is the film that moves my soul now, this contemplative, absorbing, introspective, beautiful gem, the likes of which I still can’t believe got made at this budget level.

Theatrical films for adults don’t get big budgets very often in these latter days of Disney domination. But there continue to be exceptions, and this is one. Robert Philp Kolker posited that all great films are actually about loneliness, and this one fits that thesis to a tee. It’s not a major surprise that space is an ideal setting for such rumination, and we’ve had a glut of recent pictures that are actually dramas in sci-fi clothing (Arrival; Interstellar; First Man; Gravity).

What does it mean to let go? It means to let someone be who they are. To allow them to be themselves. Allow them the freedom, for them and for the health of our minds, the peace of ourselves. The film’s final lines and their dedication to love as an act of giving feel definitive. You watch it thinking, are there other films? What could be more important than this?

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Nathan's Films of 2019 Index here.
Published on

February 4, 2020

Nathan's Films of 2019: On Paolo Sorrentino's Loro

"I am a man. I am the angel of the night. I know the script of life."

Synopsis: Life as lived by Silvio Berlusconi and the people who wish to gain entrance to his inner circle.
UK Teaser. US Trailer.
dir. Paolo Sorrentino. 158m (int'l cut)/204m (Ital. cut). 2.39:1.

There are multiple ways of saying the same thing, as you know. One is to simply say what you mean. Another is to say the opposite, and then take it to an extreme, such that your viewer has no choice but to agree with your intended point. That’s satire in a nutshell, and the level of satire on display in Paolo Sorrentino’s latest, Loro, borders on the sickening. But it’s all the more effective for doing so.

The “Trump of Italy,” for those who don’t know Silvio Berlusconi, was the most powerful man in Italian politics and culture for a period of decades, legendary for his wild parties and laundry list of corruption, up to and including the list currently detailed on Wikipedia: abuse of office, defamation, extortion, child sexual abuse, perjury, mafia collusion, false accounting, embezzlement, money laundering, tax fraud, witness tampering, corruption and bribery of police officers, judges and politicians.

Sorrentino is in a unique position. What more is there to say about Berlusconi, after the heavily documented travails above? No, the systematic breakdown of wrongs does not interest him; others have done that well. Nor even does a humanizing approach, exploring what made Silvio become Silvio, a la liberal director Oliver Stone’s downright sympathetic take on Richard Nixon. No, Sorrentino’s interest is in us, and how we look at such self-serving and rampant liberties– with repulsion, and yes, also with attraction. His concern is with the act of looking. The gaze. We are drawn in by our repulsion. We love being repulsed, because we can then judge, as we live out our id’s worst impulses, usually at the expense of others in life, and of ourselves on screen.

How Sorrentino achieves this is quite a different approach then any number of other rise-and-fall narratives. The first half of the film doesn’t even feature Berlusconi, but rather the people who want to be Berlusconi, who want to get close to him. That attitude is the subject of the film: the title translates to Them. It’s not about Berlusconi persay. It’s about the impulse to become one of them, the In Crowd, free from both guilt and rules at the expense of others.

It’s among the more important films on these lists, because that is the focal point of the new apathetic nationalism sweeping the globe. It says what it needs to say by saying its opposite, guiding us through a seething, vacant cesspool of humanity such that by the time we get to that closing shot of the construction workers, we have a new basis for what we find repulsive and what we’re drawn to. We’ve been partied out, and nothing looks so good as the truthful exhaustion of a team of guys on a work break.

There’s a corollary here to Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street, except that ended with a condemnation of the American public’s impulse toward greed; this one has a different focus, concluding with a redefining of what’s compelling. I read it as slightly more hopeful. Sorrentino expects the viewer to pay attention on multiple levels– the sensual, the moral, ethical, sociocultural and of course, the political.

How does he manage to make those parties feel so unsettling? It’s all the more remarkable because he doesn’t detract from their sensual dynamism; he revels in it. I defy a viewer to name a film with a more formally sophisticated and visual aesthetic than what’s on display here. Look at those images in the trailer. As with The Great Beauty and Youth, Sorrentino continues his streak of unbridled visual feasts of color and shadow, expanding his flair for contrasting the old and the new, the sacred and the profane, light and dark. There isn’t a single frame that doesn’t glow with precision and radiant photographic excellence.

The formal daring here, the oblique method of address to the viewer, and offer of periodic clarity amongst the endless sordidness make for a bleakly hopeful and entirely engaging experience. Like the Rob Reiner character in Wolf, Sorrentino tips the hat of his personal opinion only once: in the form of Alice Pagani’s Stella, a dancer who stands in for every silent but thoughtful figure on the periphery, but whose voice we get to hear.

She has eyes for things beyond what Silvio considers the ultimate, and can perceive– easily– what he can’t begin to. Silvio’s insecurities keep his conversation with her on his mind for years, but even a decade later he has to defend himself to himself, instead of listening to the truth she’d once shared. But what else are we to expect? Who’d be able to hear a voice beside their own after a life lived like this, and for that long? Good thing we only need to watch this movie, rather than live it.

A difficult work like this benefits from context from its maker. Far more relevant than anything I can contribute are these, a few words from Mr. Sorrentino:

On whether we should find Berlusconi sympathetic

To the LA Times, actor Toni Servillo says: "No, I certainly don’t want people to feel sympathy for him. I would like audiences to observe this film with a critical slant to reflect about what happens when people who have nothing to do with politics get into politics. And that degenerates the nature of the political spectrum. It creates a system of stalemate. I would like people to be aware of the fact that there are very few scenes in the film that take place in the political chambers because you have people who trained and shaped their approach to life outside of the political arena. And when that happens, they end up protecting the interests of the few and not the interests of the people."

Sorrentino adds: "No, I didn’t want to humanize Berlusconi. I concentrated on the man and not the politician. To latch onto what Toni was saying before, Berlusconi as a politician did not produce any extraordinary results. Berlusconi’s political life is known to everybody. What is more mysterious is the human aspect. And that is what I found more interesting for the film. I just wanted to tell his story the way I understood it, that at the bottom of his behavior there is a great deal of fear, fear of aging, a fear of getting old. And there’s a complex relationship that the ultra-rich have with themselves. They are frustrated by the fact that their wealth does not ensure them something more than what everybody else has."

On female bodies

Variety asks, "There are a lot of naked female bodies in the film, which of course reflects the bunga bunga period. But some Italian critics have said you harped on the titillating aspect a bit much, in a way that could be perceived as exploitation. What’s your response?"

Sorrentino: "I don’t agree. It’s the representation of a certain specific period 10 years ago, a world that had a rather limited intellectual component and relied on bodies as a communication tool. That’s a fact that I didn’t make up. I just put it on screen."

To GQ, on recreating the parties: "All I did was stick to what the press relayed. I didn't go beyond that because I would have been just making guesses which is not what I wanted to do. I really strictly followed what was all over any newspaper. In terms of the style and mise-en-scène, my focus was... There is a side of mankind that is deeply attracted by vulgar things. There is a certain sensuous nature to vulgarity. So this was the issue."

On depiction vs endorsement

Vulture asks, "Whenever someone makes a film about men who live extravagant lives of sin — we saw this with The Wolf of Wall Street not too long ago — detractors will accuse them of indulging in the same extravagance they’re condemning in the film. How do you respond to such charges?"

Sorrentino: "This is an old controversy that has gone on forever, with regards to violent films. 'If you make a violent film, you must be glorifying violence,' and so on. Any person, regardless of how abject or deplorable they can be, is potentially worth being put on screen. Because putting something on the screen allows you to understand what can otherwise seem distant or incomprehensible.

"The objective is not to glorify, at least not for me, nor is it to point a finger and decide which men are good and which men are bad. That’s the wrong approach for art in general, whether it’s a film or novel. This film gives us an opportunity to get an in-depth understanding of all sides of this man, and that’s why it had to be two and a half hours long. Reaching that understanding means exposing certain bothersome facts. If aspects of this film bother and audience, that is a crucial step on the way to understanding.

"For example, this film is about a triumph of vulgarity. I don’t think it should be my job to say, 'Look how ugly vulgarity is, and how ugly these vulgar people are.' That would be an excessively Manichean way of looking at the world. This ambiguity can be unpleasant and uncomfortable, and doing it this way gets fewer positive responses from viewers, but it’s necessary to show the beauty of vulgarity. It is beautiful. Why else would it be so popular? I am more interested in interrogating what is so attractive about a life we can also find repulsive."

On older male protagonists

GQ asks, "Another common thread in a few of your last films is that the main characters are these aging men who they're struggling with their loss of relevance. What is it about that kind of psyche that you want to unpack?"

Sorrentino: "I don't ask myself a lot of questions [about] the choices I make and the reasons behind them. But having said that, what you just stated is undoubtedly very true. I do like to talk about these characters who are caught at the moment of their decline and they tend to turn towards a melancholic attitude. They are afraid of death and they inevitably make wrong decisions and it's something that does happen when in aging they try to have one last stroke of vitality and this can become pathetic and ridiculous.

"These kind of mood and feelings are very much in tune with how I feel and I like talking about them. It is true that I've focused on male characters and older male characters….I will no longer make movies about that kind of man. I did two on two politicians and then I did the pope series. So I believe that the chapter of my life about that kind of subject is over… Now I want to focus more on women and on young people. Maybe when I was young myself, I was interested in older people. Now that, unfortunately, I'm turning toward that other stage of life, well I'm going to flip my attitude and look back at you now."

To Time Out: "For me, it was about capturing a time in life where you are attempting to grab back at youth, even if your body is going in the other direction."

He adds to Variety: "[Berlusconi] always had this narrative about himself as someone driven by uncommon pride, by an iron will, by an indestructible determination. We’ve never understood whether behind this there were some pockets of pain, of failure, of melancholy."

On two films vs one film

Vulture asks, "Loro was released as two films for Italian markets. Could you talk us through the process of condensing them into one?"

Sorrentino: "The first part of the film was where I did most of the cutting for the international version, because it mostly dealt with the courtiers surrounding Berlusconi. The story delves more into these ancillary characters, who are more recognizable to people reading the Italian news and keeping up with the country’s current events. The average foreigner probably isn’t aware of all this minutiae, so I cut that from Part One, and it didn’t compromise what I’m trying to say with this abbreviated version in the least."

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Nathan's Films of 2019 Index here.
Published on

February 4, 2020

Nathan's Films of 2019: On a Theme of Forgiveness

1. Waves

"Lord knows I've held onto way too much hate in my life."

Synopsis: A brother, a sister, their parents and lovers, on a journey involving forgiveness, and the gradual processing that comes with taking time. Trailer 1.
dir. Trey Edward Schults. 135m; 1.85:1, 2.39:1, and 1.33:1.

A trailblazer in every regard. Schults’s experimentation with a bifurcated mirroring structure, emotionally motivated aspect ratio changes, and shifts in tempo pay off tremendously. The camera documents the human figure in ways I’ve never seen before. Trey and DP Drew Daniels take advantage of the smaller digital camera body to execute unique moves in tight spaces (the rotating shot in the car that opens the film, for instance). They shot the whole film at an unheard-of 3200 ISO, going for a more filmlike tone curve, retaining highlight detail and a quick shadow fall-off. The attention to color, fluid movement and saturation levels make this one a sensual experience unlike any other film.

The blues and pinks, the intricate interweaving of songs with the Trent Reznor-Atticus Ross score, the stillness infusing the brilliant second half, the acute understanding of how grief changes our perception of time… this is a new master in the intoxicating first moments of hitting his stride. A masterpiece.

2. Honey Boy

"You can walk on water until someone tells you that you don't know how to."

Synopsis: About Shia LaBeouf's complex real-life childhood and relationship with his abusive father. LaBeouf plays his father in the film. Trailer 2.
dir. Alma Har’el. 94m; 2.39:1.

As a screenwriter, LaBeouf has the self-awareness that only comes from years of considered distance. The final line reframes our understanding of his abusive father with a humanity that brought me to tears. His friendship with the quiet neighbor would in any other picture be described as illicit or else eliminated entirely; here it is transgressive solely in its kindness, and redolent with the absurd specificity that comes only from real life events.

The film is peppered with many such moments, and the long-running father-son conversations go places most dialogue scenes don’t allow themselves the length and depth to probe to. Ms. Har’el’s capable direction nimbly handles the subtleties with flair, color and resonant style, despite it being her first feature. An intensely cathartic experience.

Note the propensity toward lens flares; she’s unafraid of backlighting. A convincing patina of grain lends a filmlike image, along with a pungent tone curve saturated with rich blues and oranges. Note her precision in ramping down from slow motion to regular speed while pulling up on lights during the pie-to-the-face shot: TV as comedy becomes cinema as tragic metaphor, all through the execution.

There are so many levels of genius here, but none surpass the film's studied, delicate fragility, its sensitive knowing heart. Hopefully the above trailer expresses how special this one is, the sort of picture you walk out of different than you were before.

Nathan's Films of 2019 Index here.
Published on

February 4, 2020

Nathan's Films of 2019: On a Theme of Goodness

1. Dark Waters

"I’m seeing documents I don’t understand."

Synopsis: Corporate defense attorney Rob Bilott takes on an environmental lawsuit against a chemical company that exposes a lengthy history of pollution.

dir. Todd Haynes. 126m; 2.39:1.

This is the most important film on the lists. You have to watch it. Just do it. And then get rid of your non-stick pans.

It’s a true story about an unlikely hero– a high-powered attorney who went from defending megacorporations to attacking them, and sticking with the fight for twenty-odd years because it was what he needed to do. Sometimes we are compelled toward goodness and right action, and the outcome is less important than the effort, and the effect of trying alone is worth it.

There are resonances here with Bombshell and Hidden Life: historical figures who took a stand and didn’t expect to have much of an impact, if at all. And yet: goodness has a way of multiplying.

I don’t think anyone was expecting the director of Far From Heaven to follow up Carol with this, but Haynes brings his customary thoughtful attention to the proceedings. Note the filmlike patina; Haynes and regular DP Ed Lachman go digital for the first time, likely to be able to more accurately approximate which film stocks would’ve been in use during which years of the 25-year span of the text.

In terms of color choices, it’s very muted; says Lachman, "I was looking for a way to help feel the images becoming toxic and contaminated in our character’s lives, in our story as it is revealed.” Somewhat like The Irishman, the aesthetic of the camera– workmanlike, effective, lacking in flair– matches the protagonist’s dogged character, and conveys the determination of this ordinary man under extraordinary pressure. The 2.39 ratio helps sell the size of the narrative.

Haynes underplays beats that other filmmakers would emphasize, and such as they are we appreciate their real-world context with more power. One such moment is when Tim Robbins yells at the other attorneys seated around the conference table. I know of no other director who would run that in a wide shot. The discipline makes for a fresh take on moments that might otherwise come off as overfamiliar from lesser legal pictures.

Personally, I was struck by the fact that Bilott kept going. We know through hindsight that the positive outcome of this information being made public was worthwhile; but he would’ve had no way of knowing that, nor knowing if he was any closer to success for years. A remarkable human interest and triumph narrative and a vital piece of public health information, packaged in an entirely absorbing narrative drama format that sends its message much more potently than any documentary.

2. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

"Sometimes we need to ask for help. And that's okay."

Synopsis: A retelling of the creation of Tom Junot's 1998 Esquire profile on Mr. Rogers. Trailer.
dir. Marielle Heller. 109m; 1.85:1.

It’s not the greatest film. It isn’t even great. It’s not Heller’s best moment of creative direction; this is staid compared to the visual rambunctiousness of Diary of a Teenage Girl and the pleasing natural-light shallow-depth lensing of Can You ever Forgive Me. But we forgive that, because of the content.

Tom Junot’s famous and justly awarded 1998 Esquire article is the subject here, with a fictional standin playing the Junot character as lead; Rogers is a supporting role, and the subject is how Rogers brought the cynic journalist around. It’s about goodness, in other words, and learning to see it.

Rogers inspires me because reading about him, watching him, learning about him– all normalizes the behavior of compassion and love. He makes you feel brave enough to slow down, to really listen to others. To care. Hanks is riveting. He doesn’t look like Mr. Rogers, but no one else could’ve played him. Goodness is best when it stems from truth, and Hanks channels his own persona into something deeper here. Fabulous work.

3. Knives Out

"The complexity and the gray lie not in the truth, but what you do with the truth once you have it."

Synopsis: Agatha Christie for the 21st century, with an unexpected amount of heart. Trailer.
dir. Rian Johnson. 131m; 1.85:1.

What a piece of misdirection the marketing campaign is. Knives is so utterly not about what the trailer leads us to think it's about. I almost didn't see the film. I'm so glad I did. To wit:

Todd Phillips made one compelling dramatic feature before making Joker. 2016’s little-seen and underappreciated War Dogs (trailer) was advertised as a comedy, but wholly functions as a (spectacularly well-photographed) drama, effectively tugging our emotions as it charts the sad dissolution of a friendship between two arms dealers.

War Dogs was also the first place I saw Ana de Armas. In it she plays “the girlfriend,” and like all “the girlfriends” in movies her character is compelling for two reasons: being underused and therefore curiously compelling; and playing a key role in the film’s emotional arc. Unlike many “the girlfriend” roles but in keeping with what all great actors do, Ms. de Armas makes the most of an underwritten role. I found myself watching the picture waiting for her to reappear.

Later, she would play the role that would largely define her in my consciousness until now: the robot in Blade Runner 2049 (trailer). She occupied the role with such charisma I forgot I’d ever seen her before. She enlivens that magisterial, stoically paced masterpiece not with pep or quirk or any other element out of keeping with Villeneuve’s slow-moving mythic grandeur, but with something else.

Why do I respond to her so?

[Spoilers]

This is the question I found myself asking after Knives Out, and only with Knives Out can we find the answer, because we are lucky enough in that she plays the lead role. But before I could answer I had to think about what I was really searching for. The question is much broader, and I’ll ask your forgiveness in bringing up: what do we find attractive?

The easy answer is that I respond to Ana de Armas because she’s pretty– and she certainly is. But in the world of cinema, everyone’s pretty. Everyone has a trim figure and clean skin and symmetrical features. So what is it about her?

I like Ana de Armas because she reminds me of certain kind people who have had the huge impacts on my life. She reminds me of those people because she is good.

Tom Hanks recently explained to NYT why he doesn’t play villains: “I recognized in myself a long time ago that I don’t instill fear in anybody. Now, that’s different than being nice, you know? I think I have a cache of mystery. But it’s not one of malevolence. It’s because I never get them, because bad guys, by and large, require some degree of malevolence that I don’t think I can fake.”

I would argue Ana de Armas possesses a similar quality. In the way Rachel Weisz and Cate Blanchett prove the notion that it’s very hard to hide the fact that you’re intellectually smart if you are (although the extremely well-read Ben Affleck completely disproves this hypothesis!), de Armas and Hanks suggest in their performances that there are elements of goodness which are so genuine they can neither be faked nor hidden. She prevails not by being clever, although she is and that’s part of it, but through her most essential quality, as spelled out by Daniel Craig at the close. He recognizes this goodness because he possesses some of it himself.

To have the film end as it does gives me an existential shuddering release of joy, the relief that things in this dream world turn out right after all. The images reinforce what can be possible. They carry the joy that concludes Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, except without the pugilistic aftertaste of extreme violence. I don’t mean to say it’s a better film than that one (it isn’t), but I would easily say it’s far more than an effective genre exercise. It invites a consideration not of who did what, but of who did what why, and more crucially who had good intentions and who didn’t. Intent being the thing– a less common focus than you'd imagine.

Chris Evans will be arrested, among other things, for attempting to kill ADA, because in this country, attempting a crime is legally identical to committing a crime. Because it’s about where we’re coming from, even more than the hard facts of who did what. I took enormous comfort in this movie having such a big heart to reach out and understand her, give her safe haven among a cast(e) of people inclined otherwise. I was beyond thrilled to gradually realize she was the centre of the film. I could hardly be happier with the dream the film offers us, the dream I want to believe, that I try to make happen every day I continue as the fragile and joyful person I hope to be.

4. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood

"Naturally, we never succeed, but it's the pursuit that's meaningful."

Synopsis: Sharon Tate, a fading TV actor, and his stunt double coexist in Hollywood in the summer of 1969. Trailer.
dir. Quentin Tarantino; 165m; 2.39:1.

Everything I’ve ever wanted to say or will say about this film and Tarantino's oeuvre can be read on this site's biggest post, here.

5. Bombshell

"Someone has to speak up."

Synopsis: A group of women take on Fox News head Roger Ailes and the toxic atmosphere he presided over at the network. Trailer.
dir. Jay Roach. 109m; 2.39:1.

It’s safe to assume, at this point, that the negative reception and turgid box-office performance of the 2015 Will Smith vehicle Concussion, about the trauma that concussions have on football players, was a result of successful sabotage by the almighty NFL and its affiliates. If the information in that film had been widely seen, the financial damage to the NFL could have been significant. And we all know how much the NFL doesn't want that.

I wonder after a similar theory regarding Bombshell, another film that exposes the unambiguous wrongs of a massively popular corporation. How on earth does this film have such mediocre reviews from so many major establishments when it is so obviously excellent? Should I be surprised that the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post both gave the film bad reviews, when those institutions are housed in the same building as Fox News?

No. I am not surprised. I am happy, though, that the film exists, and that it offers a highly compelling portrait of women standing up for themselves and coming forward despite enormous pressure and personal cost, to right systematic evils and reconfigure what’s acceptable in the workplace.

The three leads (plus Kate McKinnon) are terrific, dimensional figures played with zest and magnetism. John Lithgow makes the despicable Ailes character dimensional as well, and his work plus Charles Randolph’s script offer a glimpse into how this train wreck of a personality may have gotten started. The aim isn’t studying Ailes though, which I see as an exercise with useful but limited returns, but rather articulating what was going on for the ladies, what happened next, and what that felt like.

Roach gets significant mileage out of Robbie’s ability to convey a lot with silence (which she does to ample effect in her excellent perf in Once… Hollywood), helping any audience member understand exactly how much mere words can still be a violation. The picture snaps and crackles with energy, and part of me wishes it was longer; what fascinating people these are, and how curious and comforting to reflect that even people who believe working at, watching, or even thinking about Fox News is a good idea… still share quite a bit in common with the rest of us when it comes to what constitutes human decency.

Now who would’ve thought that possible?

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Nathan's Films of 2019 Index here.

Nathan's Films of 2019: A Top Two, With 23 Runners Up

Nathan's Films of 2019: On a Theme of Power

Nathan's Films of 2019: On a Theme of Longing

Nathan's Films of 2019: On Paolo Sorrentino's Loro

Nathan's Films of 2019: On a Theme of Forgiveness

Nathan's Films of 2019: On a Theme of Goodness