BIRTH
DIRECTED BY Jonathan Glazer
STARRING Nicole Kidman, Cameron Bright, Danny Huston, Anne Heche
US/UK 2004 100 mins.
Our rating: ***
THE INCREDIBLES
DIRECTED BY Brad Bird
WITH THE VOICES OF Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Samuel L. Jackson
US 2004 121 mins.
Our rating: ****
(for very young or sensitive kids: *)
By Preston Wilder
‘MOVIE Magic’. The phrase, suitably Disneyfied, has become a cliché – yet it usually refers to special effects, running the gamut from computerised orcs in Lord of the Rings to the more genuine magic of E.T. taking flight on a bicycle. It’s hardly ever used for something like Birth, an eerie drama starring Nicole Kidman as a woman confronted by a 10-year-old boy who claims to be her dead husband. Yet Magic is exactly what the film creates, and also (in a sense) what it’s about.
“I’m going to break this spell,” says Nicole’s frustrated fiancé as the boy’s story starts to take hold. If the kid stands for anything, it has to be Magic, a stubborn belief in the irrational tied to a search for solutions to repressed, buried feelings; we all ‘know’ the dead don’t come back, but that knowledge pales beside the pull of hidden emotion. The film’s most extraordinary shot is a close-up of Ms Kidman as she listens to a concert. The camera just stays on her nearly-immobile face as the music swells and dips around her, charting the ebb and flow of a trouble so deep she probably won’t even admit it exists. It’s no accident the plot is kicked off (and later resolved) by a cache of buried love-letters.
The film too weaves a spell, which is probably where most viewers will part company with director Jonathan Glazer. Having gone for hyperactive flash in the splendid Sexy Beast some years ago, Glazer now withdraws into a recessive, trancelike style, playing the story for creepy abstraction, hints of dark comedy and a hushed sense of stillness. The film plays out among nerveless New York sophisticates who speak of the premise as if it were unreal, or happening to someone else; one scene has Kidman and the boy in an ice-cream shop, discussing the situation over scoops of vanilla. If they lived together as man and wife, “could you satisfy my needs?” she wonders. “I know what you’re talking about,” replies the tyke. “Have you ever made love to a girl?” she asks, without cracking a smile. “You’d be the first,” he says calmly, licking off a stray bit of ice-cream.
Scenes like that obviously contributed to the fuss over ‘paedophile’ overtones, as did Kidman and the boy sharing a bathtub, both apparently naked. But the bathtub scene was actually done by trick photography (each actor filmed separately), and of course Nicole only does it – i.e. in the story – because she thinks the kid is her husband. There’s no paedophilia in this movie, except in the viewer’s dirty mind.
More importantly, though, Glazer doesn’t care if the duo are naked in a bathtub – or rather, he cares only to the extent that the bathtub fits with the recurring motif of Water, from an early shot of a submerged baby to Nicole walking sadly by the ocean at the very end. Water is the most magical element, full of hidden depths, impossible to master (Magic, again). Water is primeval – it’s where we all come from. It’s what our clever, educated heroine secretly yearns for, trying to make sense of her loss. It’s what the film is into, telling a story through visual motifs.
I don’t think Glazer’s very interested in people, at least not as much as he cares about style and subtext. This slow, super-arty film is the kind that empties theatres. But it’s all about the detail – the wintry light and classical tableaux, and such little bits as the breeze that ruffles Kidman’s hair when the door opens bringing in the letter from the boy, like a spirit’s invisible caress. This is a film touched by magic.
What could be more magical than kids’ cartoons? The Incredibles is being named Best Animated Film of the year by all and sundry, and richly deserves that honour. It’s just exhilarating, the best cartoon from the mad geniuses at Pixar Studios since the original Toy Story; even the delightful likes of Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc. didn’t swoop and pulse so excitingly. It’s a great cartoon. But it’s not magical.
Let me repeat that: The Incredibles – though indeed incredible – is not magical. It hustles and bustles, and is likely to scare very young or sensitive kids. The villain is a scary psycho with flame-coloured hair and a whiny, wheedling style that’s far more chilling than the usual megalomania. There are adult themes, as when Mr. Incredible (former superhero, now forcibly retired) lies to his wife about going back into action.
It gets worse. The couple’s kids – prepubescent Dash and shrinking-violet Violet – end up killing various baddies, making for a red-blooded Message on the order of ‘The family that slays together, stays together’. Indeed, the film can be understood as saying that the culture of political correctness – in which everyone is “special” and competition is discouraged – is compromising America’s ability to fight a new kind of enemy. This villain isn’t like the ones you see on Saturday-morning cartoons, Mrs. I. tells Dash and Violet: he “won’t exercise restraint” just because you’re children. “Doubt is a luxury we can’t afford anymore!” proclaims someone, and it could just as well be George W. Bush on the ‘war on terror’.
Indeed, for the second time in less than a month (Shark Tale being the other), I’m faced with a cartoon that’s more appropriate for parents than tiny tots. What’s the world coming to, eh? The Incredibles is in fact an action flick, a James Bond pastiche complete with faux-60s score packed with brassy riffs and a ‘Q’ figure of sorts in the diminutive figure of Edna ‘E’ Mode – hilariously voiced by director Brad Bird – the fashion queen who sews the family’s super-costumes. Yet it’s been years since the Bond films moved with such fleet, breathless panache, or featured fight scenes so witty and inventive. Even the credits at the end are… incredible.
Best of all, the action is dovetailed with the trademark clever humour of previous Pixars, as well as the loveable detail of Bird’s underrated The Iron Giant (1999). We begin with black-and-white ‘mockumentary’ as Mr. and Mrs. Incredible are quizzed about their lives, a scene in the same spirit as the closing-credit outtakes in A Bug’s Life. As they lean into the camera they go out of focus (!), and their speech rhythms brilliantly approximate the hesitant sobriety of such documentaries (“I don’t think so,” says Mrs. I., and then again, as we fade to black: “I don’t think so…”). Later on, there’s such lovely touches as Mum’s encouraging grimaces as she feeds the baby, or sulky Dash fiddling with a stalk of broccoli. Mr. Incredible in his tiny cubicle is more like a gone-to-seed Johnny Bravo, the hulking Cartoon Network macho.
I only expected to like The Incredibles mildly. Finding Nemo was Pixar’s most successful film ever, and it seemed only fair to expect another trawl in family-friendly waters. Instead they’ve gone up a level with this hard-edged, stunningly designed, enormously thrilling action comedy, aimed at adults as much as youngsters. Dubious Message aside, it’s a dazzler, one of the best films of the year. ‘Movie Magic’? That stuff’s for kids.
THE CRITICS’ AWARDS
First things first: rather than worry about pre-Oscar handicapping, Nicosia readers should go see The Yes Men at the Cine Studio, an acclaimed documentary about a real-life pair of pranksters who crash seminars pretending to be from the World Trade Organisation, making outrageous speeches – which of course their listeners politely accept, nodding dutifully. Sounds terrific, and it’s only 80 minutes long. See you there.
If, on the other hand, you really want to know about pre-Oscar handicapping… well, this is certainly the week for it, with three major announcements in the US (and one in Europe, if you count the European Film Awards). The New York and LA Critics’ Associations made their picks, and the Golden Globes announced their nominees. The Oscar race is starting to clear up.
Obviously, the big winner – wry comedy Sideways, which won Best Film both in NY and LA and leads the Golden Globes pack with seven nominations – is unlikely to win the Best Picture Oscar; it’s too low-key for that, too character-based. But it’ll definitely get a nomination, joined by Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby (Best Director in New York, runner-up Best Picture in LA) and Martin Scorsese’s biography of Howard Hughes, The Aviator (six Golden Globe nominations, plus the kind of epic scale that traditionally wins Oscars).
In other news, British actress Imelda Staunton (winner in New York, LA and European Awards) seems sure to be nominated for Vera Drake, and Spanish actor Javier Bardem (European Awards, Golden Globes) should also score a nod for The Sea Inside – though Best Actor surely belongs to Jamie Foxx, as Ray Charles in Ray.
A couple of other things are becoming clear. The Jude Law – Julia Roberts drama Closer is indeed proving slightly too abrasive for mass appeal, though the Globes gave it five nods and the NYC critics named Clive Owen as their Best Supporting Actor. Finally, the early hype for The Phantom of the Opera turns out to have been just hype: it might still sneak in among the more ‘serious’ contenders, but so far it’s won no awards and only three Globe nominations. Thank heaven for small mercies…
