Close to the vest

I’ve long had a weird obsession with Glenn Close. Albert Nobbs is the best work she’s done on film in 20 years. Here’s my review, also found here.

A few weeks ago, I pointed out that 2011 was a great year for queer cinema because of Heartbeats, Weekend, and most recently Pariah. And there’s a fourth film, which is now just opening in San Diego:Albert Nobbs, a period drama about what we would now call transgenderism starring Glenn Close in her best performance in nearly a quarter century. Close not only stars in the film, reprising a role she performed Off-Broadway in 1982, but she also co-wrote the script, the original song and she produced the movie. If you’re trying to see all of the Oscar bait movies before the big show in March, Albert Nobbs should be at the top of your list.

In Victorian London, the titular character (Close) is a fastidious, formal, and, according to those who know him, quite odd butler in a hotel. No one Albert works with is aware that he is actually a woman who straps down her breasts and never appears remotely undressed in front of another person. Albert is not a wink-wink man pretending to be a woman, à la Yentl or Victor/Victoria. When the one person who knows what he is hiding asks his “real” name, he says, “Albert.”

Albert is who he is, and the problem is that he is both lonely and trapped by his secret. Then he meets Hubert Page (McTeer, brilliantly wise and tough), a house painter who is hired to do some work around the hotel. When Albert is told that Hubert needs to sleep in Albert’s room, Albert is terrified. And rightfully: Hubert sees Albert undressing. But Hubert, it turns out, has the same secret. Except that Hubert is successfully living as a married man, working for himself, and is happy. Albert sees hope and possibility and tries to do what Hubert has, and key to this is wooing a maid in the hotel, the young and shallow Helen (Mia Wasikowska).

The smart script is without cliché or pedantic explanations of gender, and it is economically handled by the director Rodrigo Garcia. My only qualm is that it is perhaps too tidy, but it is a Victorian tragedy, and its tidiness fulfills its genre expectations without being either gothic or exploitative.

However, the script and the direction are easy not to even notice because Close’s performance is so entrancing. In the 1980s, when only Meryl Streep rivaled her as the great American actress, Close was often so strong and haughty as to be called mannish. This time, playing a woman who is a man, Close uses that masculinity even more skillfully, almost like a hot potato: It’s there, it’s not – will he be found out? But Albert is not only trying to convince the world that he is who he wants Albert to be. He is also nervous, amused, eager and it seems, in love.

MOVIE REVIEW
Albert Nobbs
Directed by Rodrigo Garcia
Written by Glenn Close and John Banville
Starring Glenn Close, Janet McTeer and Mia Wasikowska
Rated R
At Landmark Hillcrest

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Maudlin & Infuriating

This will run next week in LGBT Weekly, but I just had to get it up today.

About ten minutes after the end of maudlin 9/11 drama Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, I was standing outside the theater, feeling the tears drying on my face and the crying jags subside, and I got angry. I asked my friend who I now feel guilty for bringing along, “Why in the world was it necessary to make this movie?” You can ask that question about all sorts of terrible movies, and usually the answer is “to make money.” The Transformers franchise and just about every Adam Sandler vehicle exist simply as methods to earn cash, to make profits, to please shareholders of multinational conglomerates. But movies like Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close have loftier goals. Sure, everyone involved is making money and wants to make as much as possible, but directors like Stephen Daldry and producers like Scott Rudin value prestige and artistic excellence as much if not more than their bank accounts. Unfortunately and bizarrely, none of these laudable goals are met or even visible in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, which is a cruel and blunt assault on the audience’s basest emotions. I didn’t think I would ever see a movie more offensive than Life is Beautiful, Roberto Benigni’s cynically manipulative slapstick comedy about the Holocaust. But I have.

The plot is admittedly somewhat ingenious. Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) is a precocious, oddly articulate 9-year-old boy who probably has Asperger’s Syndrome, a kind of autism. His father Thomas (Tom Hanks) was killed on 9/11; he was on the 106th floor of one of the towers and probably was one of the jumpers. Oskar’s mother Linda (Sandra Bullock, as good as she’s ever been) is beside herself with grief and depression. About a year after Thomas’s death, Oskar is rummaging through his father’s closet and finds a key in an envelope at the bottom of a vase; on the envelope is written “Black.” Believing that this is a message from his father, part of one the elaborate adventures of investigation that the two shared, Oskar is determined to find what the key opens. This involves talking to everyone with the last name Black in New York City and trying hundreds and hundreds of locks. It is only through this quest that this analytical, emotionally destroyed little boy can find meaning in what happened on “the worst day.” Eventually, Oskar is joined by the mute old man (Max Von Sydow, moving and Chaplinesque) renting a room from Oskar’s grandmother.

Since it is clear to the old man and to the audience that this quest is going nowhere, watching Oskar run around the city, desperately searching for a grand meaning to 9/11 seemed sadistic to me. That Oskar is at times adorable, but is also at times dreadfully mean, makes this even more problematic and discomfiting. But the biggest problem is how Daldry zeroes in the grief of this boy and his poor mother; I felt as if I was a finger rooting around in a gaping wound. At one point, the old man tells Oskar – via his notepad – to stop playing the answering machine messages Thomas left while the tower was burning. Stop. He can’t take it anymore. The entire audience is crying, and I wanted to scream at the screen just what the old man had written.

Extremely Loud is based on Jonathan Safran Foer’s second novel, which was published four years after the September 11th attacks. In addition to a great deal of praise, it earned a great deal of criticism similar to what the film has: that it was sentimental and obvious and attempted to create false and unbelievable profundity. I didn’t read the book; my experience of 9/11 and its aftermath was traumatic enough that descriptions or images of the events sent me into a tizzy of grief and anxiety. However, it took me ten years to write about it, but I have. I can listen to Bruce Springsteen’s brilliant album The Rising now without crying. But I still cannot bear to be asked, “Oh, you lived in New York then? What was it like?” It was awful. Awful. Why any filmmaker would want to berate an audience with this awfulness or why anyone would want to pay $12 to experience this awfulness is simply beyond my comprehension.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Directed by Stephen Daldry
Written by Eric Roth
Starring Thomas Horn, Sandra Bullock, Max Von Sydow
Rated PG-13
Opens January 20 in San Diego
At your local multiplex

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My 10 favorite films of 2011

[Note: In a different form, this was supposed to run in LGBT Weekly last week, but it was cut for space.]

Before you read through the list of my 10 favorite movies of 2011, I want to provide you with a disclaimer. I haven’t seen every movie that came out this year. Yes, part of the reason is that many of the movies that are probably going to be nominated for Oscars only open in New York and Los Angeles before January 1, and they won’t open in San Diego for weeks. However, there are also some movies that have opened in San Diego that I should have seen but haven’t had the time or something was preventing from getting to the screening. For example, I ran out of gas on the 15 on the way to see Tintin. (I didn’t see until after it had been out for three weeks.) Some other big movies that I haven’t seen that could have made this list include War Horse, Take Shelter, Melancholia, A Separation, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. However, the reason Hugo, The Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Shame aren’t on the list that I just didn’t like them that much. And I really liked Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, but not more than the other ten in this list.

With all of that in mind, here are my favorite movies of the last year.

10. The Help. I could not resist the easy morality of this story of a quiet revolution waged by black housekeepers in early 1960s Mississippi. Viola Davis’s quiet suffering is almost agonizing to watch, while Octavia Spencer is funnier than anyone in Bridesmaids. But most of the white characters are nearly as interesting or layered. (On DVD.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_ajv_6pUnI

9. Albert Nobbs. It doesn’t open in San Diego for several weeks, but I managed to see a DVD screener of this quiet and intense drama about gender politics in Victorian London. Glenn Close’s uncanny and deeply moving portrayal of the sad, scared butler Albert Nobbs is the one of the great performances of 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-BF1YE9BEM

8. Bridesmaids. Easily the funniest movie of the year, Bridesmaids is not just about female friendship, but also class warfare, gender politics, and food poisoning. Melissa McCarthy steals every scene she’s in as the bizarre butch future sister-in-law. The film’s jokes are neither cruel nor racist, as they were in the movie I hated more than any other last year, The Hangover, Part 2. (On DVD.)

7. Heartbeats. Barely anyone saw this stunning French Canadian story of a bisexual love triangle. Written and directed by Xavier Dolan, who also starred in the film, it’s gorgeous, avant garde piece of art that seems impossible to have come from someone only 21 years old. (On DVD and Instant Netflix.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znpU_Aup-Bg

6. Beginners. It’s a gay movie made for straight people – it does little too much Homosexuality 101 – but as Ewan McGregor’s father who comes out after turning 70, Christopher Plummer is as sweet and giddy and confused and awake as a kid in a candy store. Mike Mills, who wrote and directed the movie, uses some brilliant editing and witty voiceover to make something extraordinary, moving and funny. (On DVD.)

5. Drive. A violent, searing, and ultimately gorgeous homage to 1980s LA noir films like American Gigolo and Blade Runner, Drive is also Ryan Gosling’s best performance of the year, and that’s saying a lot. Taciturn, serene, and dressed a bit like Steve McQueen in Le Mans, as the Driver Gosling is the new ultimate example of cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe6eOqheva8

4. The Artist. A silent movie about the silent movies, and as good as the best silent movies made at their height, The Artist is an exquisite, perfect film that features a performance by Jean Dujardin that is so charismatic and sexy that when the movie is finished, you want to watch it all over again just to stare at him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK7pfLlsUQM

3. Moneyball. How could a movie about baseball statistics be so enthralling, even exciting? The answer is Brad Pitt, who plays former Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane when he revolutionized baseball recruiting. Pitt is funny, arrogant, nervous, sly, and sexy; it’s a marvelous movie star performance.

2. The Tree of Life. The winner of the Cannes Film Festival, Tree of Life divided audiences, half of whom thought it was pretentious nonsense, and half of whom thought it was a masterpiece. I’m in the latter camp; I cried in awe during the film’s montage of the history of the universe. A meditation on family, anger, creation, and memory mostly set in 1960s Texas, the film still haunts me six months later. Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain will be rewarded for other movies this year, but is in The Tree of Life that they did the best work of their careers. (On DVD.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXRYA1dxP_0

1. Weekend. I will just repeat what I wrote in my review three months ago: “It is about what it is like to be gay and in love now. It is an immediate, intimate, and honest examination of love, sex, and longing in 2011. It’s also gorgeously shot, sensitively acted, and sexier than any gay film I can remember. Andrew Haigh’s sensitive direction and editing and Urszula Pontikos’s cinematography turn what is basically a two-person parlor play into an intense, almost epic work of beauty.” It’s my favorite movie of the 2011. (On Instant Netflix.)

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I’m not running. I’m choosing.

This review isn’t going to run until next week (if it runs), but the movie is out now, and I want y’all to see it.

Pariah
Written and Directed by Dee Rees
Starring Adepero Oduye, Pernell Walker, and Kim Wayans
Rated R
At Landmark Hillcrest

As it turns out, 2011 was a really great year for independent queer cinema. I’ve mentioned multiple times over the last few months my love for Weekend, one of best gay movies ever made. And now San Diego is getting to see Pariah, one of the best lesbian films I’ve ever seen, which has won awards at Sundance and other festivals and is nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards. That Focus Features, the distribution company that puts out such highbrow star-vehicles like Brokeback Mountain and Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy, would get behind a gritty first feature with virtually unknown actors and a lengthy scene about a strap-on dildo is testament to how affecting Pariah is. They know that the word-of-mouth on this movie will be great. Let me add to the praise.

The title of the film refers to someone who is an outcast, usually someone stigmatized but sometimes someone who just chooses to live outside of the community in some way. The most obvious pariah in the film is Alike (pronounced uh – lee – kay, and played by Adepero Oduye), a 17-year-old African-American lesbian who is closeted to – if suspected by – her family, but a bit too green and unsure of herself to comfortably fit in with the young lesbian social world where Alike’s butch best friend Laura (Pernell Walker) is so at ease. But Laura is a pariah, too, since she has been kicked out her home by her disapproving mother and subsequently quit school to make enough money to live with her sister. And Alike’s mother, Audrey (Kim Wayans), is a pariah in her home, where she has alienated both her husband and her oldest daughter, and at work, where she is visibly prickly at the thought of interacting with her more boisterous co-workers.

While the title is apt, I found it a bit too extreme. When I think of pariahs, I imagine ragged lepers or mentally ill hermits. And as hard as these women have it, their plights don’t quite compare; there is too much love and hope and humor in the lives of the characters Dee Brees has created in her flawless script. Even in the most intense conflict, between Audrey and Alike, is based on motherly love, even if the mother is damaged and her priorities are disordered. Audrey wants Alike to have the perfect life, so she makes her husband Arthur (Charles Parnell) work overtime as a police officer to pay for the house in Fort Green and the designer clothes for Alike and her sister. This also means that Alike needs to be the perfect girl, wearing pretty clothes, dating boys, and not hanging out with Laura. Audrey is the antagonist of the film, but she is not a monster. She simply does not have the ability to deal with what life has brought her.

Alike, however, has the self-possession of the smartest and coolest girl in school. She is nervous about finding a girlfriend and playing into the butch-femme role-playing that seems to govern the lesbian culture she and Laura hang out in. But her bravery, not only in her poetry but in her willingness to give up everything she knows for freedom, is inspiring. Oduye has a rich role to play, and she does it with naturalistic, nervous toughness that reminded me, at times, of both Claire Danes in My So Called Life and Michelle Rodriguez in Girlfight. As Laura, Walker is similarly striking, effortlessly switching from wise to scared, sensitive to rough. And Wayans, known best for her insane impersonation of Whitney Houston on In Living Color 20 years ago, gives the kind of fraught but controlled performance that in a bigger movie might earn her an Oscar nomination. You can only achieve these sorts of performances with a great director, and Brees proves that she is just that.

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Yes, it’s a silent film.

Okay, I totally dug The Artist. My review, which can also be found in LGBT Weekly:

Usually, I do a little bit of research about a movie before I see it. At least, I’ll scan the entry on IMDb.com, just so that I have an idea about what I’m about to see – some plot threads, the resumé of the actors or director, and the like. Though I won’t read anyone else’s reviews if I am planning on reviewing it myself; some critics are too good at their job and their arguments cloud mine. But I was very busy the day I saw The Artist, and I went in only knowing that it had been named by the New York Film Critics Society as the best movie of the year. I didn’t even know that the movie was silent, or that it was in black and white.

When I realized about 15 minutes in that both its black and whiteness and its silence were going to last for, probably, the whole film, I thought back to it being named the best film of the year by groups of critics, and I thought, “Well, there must be some avant-garde twist – it’s going to be colorized, or the sound will come in halfway through, or it will turn into a cartoon.” And I waited, and it didn’t happen. No, The Artist is a silent black and white movie, and that’s all that it is.

But it’s an amazingly entertaining black and white silent film, as skillfully made as any movie released this year. The only thing that makes the film modern is the plot, which is meta enough to be called post-modern: It’s a silent film about silent films. It tells the parallel stories of super star silent film actor George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), whose career and life fall apart with the advent of talkies in 1929, and up and coming ingénue Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), whose movie career starts after a chance meeting with Valentin and then sky rockets after sound changes the industry.

The plot is somewhat reminiscent of A Star is Born, but it has very little of the pathos or melodrama of any of the versions of that classic. George’s decline is sad and dark, but silent film, especially one using the style of film of the 1920s, does not lend itself to the sort of subtle realism that contemporary moviegoers expect from their emotional dramas. Instead, the Belgian writer and director Michel Hazanavicius uses bold but not heavy symbolism, expressive and almost mime-like facial expressions, and chiaroscuro cinematography that reminded me, at times, of the shots of Busby Berkeley, Fritz Lang and Orson Welles. With a rollicking, pitch perfect period score by Ludovic Bource, the film really feels as if it was snatched from the late ’20s.

And Dujardin could have been a matinee idol in the 1920s, and if he had been, he would have rivaled either Douglas Fairbanks or Rudolph Valentino, who George is clearly modeled on. Dujardin is not only almost inhumanly handsome, but his ability to emote without a single word and with such gorgeously choreographed gestures and expressions makes his presence on screen simply tantalizing. As sweet and perky as Bejo is as Peppy, whenever Dujardin was gone, I yearned for his return. It’s a stellar performance.

I was surprised by how much I liked The Artist. It is a perfect film. But I am somewhat perplexed by it. Why make a silent film almost exactly as it would have been made in 1929? (I say 1929, not 1928, because there are a few moments of non-musical sound, and that wouldn’t have been possible until the last year of the 1920s.) As I watched The Artist, I wondered whether it was the greatest film school exercise of all time. Then I realized that Hazanavicius was simply paying homage to a period of history and period of art that has been forgotten, and he does it with skill that rivals if not surpasses his idols..

MOVIE REVIEW
The Artist
Written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius
Starring Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo and John Goodman
Rated PG-13
Opens Dec. 23
At Landmark Hillcrest

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