The Iron Lady

What a waste! The makers of the Iron Lady had a perfect gem of a performance from Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher to work with. One of the greatest actresses of all time providing a flawless impersonation of one of the greatest and most interesting women of all time, and they did not have a clue as to what to do with it. The focus of the movie seems to be that an aged and disoriented Mrs Thatcher suffers from delusions that her deceased husband is still with her. Is that really the most fascinating element of her life? Is the fact that she has grown old and frail really the most interesting thing about the life of the first female Western leader, the first female Prime Minister of Britain, the woman who transformed the UK economy, one of the most loved, hated and controversial characters of our age, the most important British Prime Minister since Churchill? The film makers had a matchless treasure trove of story material to work from. They have done nothing with it. The telling of historic events is done in a listless, lazy manner, cobbled together with grainy news footage. The present day story of the aged Mrs Thatcher is dull and irrelevant. The mechanism of using conversations with Dennis to move along the story of past events is amateurish. It brings to mind the sort of hastily assembled biopic you might see on the weaker moments of the History Channel. This is a shameful waste. We can only hope that we will see a future, better attempt at telling Mrs Thatcher’s story. Sadly, that would have to be without the wonderful performance by Meryl Streep. Her Oscar nomination is deserved and I’m confident she will walk off with the prize. The writers and directors of this weak effort should apologise to her and realise that they are forever in her debt for rescuing their pathetic effort from complete obscurity.

The Descendants

We are only hours away from the announcement of the 2012 Oscar nominations. I’m sure there will be a few surprises as usual, but one certainty is that George Clooney will be nominated for his lead role in The Descendants. Deservedly so. The Golden Globe is already in the bag. This would be Clooney’s first Oscar for a leading role. He won for best supporting role in Syriana in 2006 and had nominations for Up In The Air (2010) and Michael Clayton (2007). In The Descendants he plays Matt King, a middle-aged man whose life is suddenly turned upside down by his wife being involved in a boating accident. As a result of the accident he learns that she had been having an affair. He is forced into closer contact with his two children, Alexandra and Scottie, two young girls brilliantly played by Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller. He confronts the man with whom his wife had the affair. At the same time he has to make an important decision about the disposal of some prime real estate. The Kings are descendants of an old, established Hawaiian family of landowners who go all the way back to King Kamehameha. Hawaii is one of the stars of this movie. It is set mostly on Oahu and Kauai. The scenery is stunning and you get a real sense of the value of preserving what little of the land remains unspoilt. The Descendants is directed by Alexander Payne, whose previous works include Sideways and About Schmidt. The theme here is similar to those movies, i.e. a man stuck in a rut and then driven through changed circumstance to confront and bring forth his better nature. It’s a deeply engaging and wonderfully crafted film. A career best (so far) for Clooney. Here’s holding thumbs for that Oscar.

Hugo

Surely a new landmark in Cinema. A touching family story, at its heart a love letter to the movies, by one of the greatest directors of all time, Martin Scorsese. It’s not often he has made a movie that the kids can see, but this one they will love, as long as they come with a keen sense of wonderment and adventure. It has a stellar cast, including Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Christopher Lee and Jude Law, but even so, the two young leads (Asa Butterfield and the fantastic, Chloe Grace Moretz) are not overshadowed, but are luminous in the roles of Hugo Cabret and Isabelle. Hugo is, at least in part, the story of Georges Méliès, a pioneer of the moving image. Méliès lived in France between 1861 and 1938. He was an illusionist and filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema. He was a prolific innovator in the use of special effects and accidentally discovered the substitution stop trick in 1896. One of his most famous films is A Trip To The Moon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYRemE9Oeso&ob=av1e). The 3D in Hugo is superb, it is visually breathtakingly beautiful.

A Few Best Men

A frothy bit of fun, perfect for the Outdoor Cinema. Set mainly in the gorgeous scenery of Sydney’s Blue Mountains, it’s the story of a wedding that goes horribly wrong mainly thanks to the bumbling friends of the groom. Slapstick and mayhem abound, helped along by a prize sheep in drag, a gun, cocaine, loads of alcohol, a gimp mask and a crazed drug dealer. It lacks the sophistication of similar Hollywood romcoms, and comes nowhere near Death At A Funeral (written and produced by the same team), but is still very funny in parts.

I Vitelloni

A real charmer from Fellini. The story of five young men who have grown up, and seem to be stuck in, a small seaside town. Fausto, having seduced the sister of his friend Moraldo, is forced to marry her. He takes a job at a small shop selling religious artefacts, but the couple, with a baby on the way, have to stay with Sandra’s parents until they can afford a place of their own. Marriage does not change Fausto’s womanising ways and he is still forever chasing women, including his boss’s wife, which gets him fired. His friends are of similar temperament, content to be idle, chase women and leave the job hunting to others. The film is funny, the story told with great humanity. Some early beginnings of the imagery that would come to feature so strongly in Fellini’s later movies (life as a circus, humans as performers) is present in the carnival scenes. The film is said to be partly autobiographical of Fellini’s early life in Rimini. A lovely movie, genuinely touching in parts and a joy to watch. I saw this as part of the Art Gallery of NSW’s current Picasso Goes To The Movies series, an excellent program to coincide with a major Picasso exhibition. Next week: La Strada!

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (again)

Ah, the remake. I’m afraid I have never been one for the remake. I just don’t see the point. Oh sure, I see the commercial sense. Many more people, including those unable to read quickly enough to keep up with subtitles, will now see this story. Writer Stieg Larrson’s heirs will have more royalties to tussle over, but from my point of view once was enough. It was done, and done well, in Swedish with Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist. Repeating the same story blow-by-blow with new actors, speaking English in Sweden, is just unnecessary. I’m not saying Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara have made a bad job of it. On the contrary, they are very good and it’s a good, very well made film, but it adds nothing new to Mr Larrson’s novel. In fact, apart from the language, the only new element that stood out was the somewhat overblown graphics behind the opening titles. Very foreboding, abstractly dark and dramatic, backed by some noise from Trent Reznor. I would say that as an introduction it actually detracts from the experience. The Swedish version started out very low key and quiet, making the sudden violence all the more unexpected and impactful. You also don’t need a man of Craig’s physicality to play Mikael Blomkvist. I kept expecting him to whip out some Bond moves.

Tree of Life

Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life, one of the stand out movies of 2011, is the type of film that will continue to generate reams of discussion for years to come. Already the web is sagging under the weight of words written about this film. The most commonly used phrase to describe it is that it is a hugely ambitious undertaking. So it is. It is also magnificently ambiguous, wide open to interpretation. It demands many repeat viewings, if only I could afford the time. So many movies, so little time. After one viewing I can only say two things for certain about Tree of Life. One, it will stay with you. It will rattle around your head for days to come. You will find yourself thinking about it at the strangest moments. Two, it is visually beautiful in every respect. From the grand scale visualization of the Big Bang, to the scenes involving dinosaurs, to the seemingly mundane scenes of family life, every shot is lovely. As far as deeper interpretation goes, we will all have our personal views. This is indeed what makes a great work of art. I’ll leave that to other, deeper thinkers to write about, or perhaps to Malick himself. This is an extract from an early version of his script: Is nature mere weather, doing and undoing without end? What does it work toward? What purpose does it have in view? [...] The first fishes with amphibian traits gain the shore. Swamp and marshland have replaced the wide, windy plains of the preceding agers. The forms of vegetation are simple, few. There are no reeds or grasses. No flower breaks the gloom. The earth is a vast, wet Eden. Except near the poles, there are no seasons. Each year is like the last. Reptiles emerge from the amphibians, and dinosaurs in turn from the reptiles. Among the dinosaurs we discover the first signs of maternal love, as the creatures learn to care for each other. Is not love, too, a work of the creation? What should we have been without it? How had things been then? Silent as a shadow, consciousness has slipped into the world.