DIRECTED BY Alfonso Cuaron
STARRING Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor
US/UK 2006 109 mins.
A GOOD YEAR **
DIRECTED BY Ridley Scott
STARRING Russell Crowe, Marion Cotillard, Albert Finney
US 2006 117 mins.
Writing in TIME magazine, Richard Corliss recently took his critical brethren to task for valuing doom and gloom over feelgood. “Movie critics can’t agree on much,” admitted Mr. Corliss, “but there’s one assumption most of them hold deeply without ever discussing it. It’s that a film that says life is crap is automatically deeper, better, richer, truer than one that says life can be beautiful … Feeling is mushy, girly – for fools. To be soft-hearted is to be soft-headed.”
True? Well, maybe. But it isn’t just critics. Sunday poets typically save their inspiration for those times when the darkness closes in; they don’t write poems about life being great (they go out with their friends instead). At the Oscars, comedies rarely win Best Picture, even if they have audiences rolling in the aisles; gloomy films reap most of the attention, and the gloomier the better. It’s a fair bet Children of Men will feature in the year-end critics’ polls and awards ceremonies, yet its message isn’t terribly encouraging. In a nutshell, it says: “You know how things are bad in the world right now. Well, what if they got even worse?”.
Things do get worse in 2027, which is when this dystopian drama is set. Nuclear war, brought on (it’s implied) by terrorism, has ravaged much of the planet. Illegal immigration has become an epidemic, and Britain – one of the few countries left standing – has become a police-state, hunting immigrants down and caging them like animals (TV ads enjoin people to be vigilant in reporting illegals; posters on the streets of London read “Jobs for the Brits”). Above all, for whatever reason – genetic mutation, nuclear radiation, general exhaustion – human beings are no longer reproducing. The last baby was born 18 years ago, and the species faces extinction once current generations die out.
The film is determinedly topical. A refugee prison-camp where the p.a. system warns inmates “Do not support terror!” is clearly meant to evoke Guantanamo, though director Alfonso Cuaron also compares it, none too subtly, with a Nazi concentration-camp (refugees alternately seem to be Eastern European quasi-Jews and Arab Islamists). The terrorist threat – the fear of bombs suddenly exploding, TV newscasts giving news of casualties – clearly stems from the here-and-now, even as a radio DJ plays a song from “back in 2003” when people didn’t realise what lay just around the corner. The film’s strong suit is in making 2027 London look much the same as 2006 London, so the differences – the sudden appearance of an angry mob, a sign for one of the Zones into which the city is divided – become much more startling and powerful; the lighting (by Emmanuel Lubezki, who also photographed The New World) is also remarkable, a closed-off grey sky that evokes both the real London and the deadness of a world without hope of regeneration. “It’s odd,” muses our hero (Clive Owen), “what happens in the world without children’s voices.”
Owen is a former radical, approached by an ex-comrade (Julianne Moore) to help transport a very special young woman – and since it was in the trailer I might as well divulge that the girl is pregnant, so what’s at stake is the future of humankind itself. She’s also black, poor and foreign, elucidating the film’s main theme: Western culture is sterile, lost in contemplation of its own past – the future (if any) belongs to the Third World. Children of Men’s crowning set-piece is a battle inside the refugee camp, shot in a single jaw-dropping take with our heroes dodging gunfire, explosions and constantly-shifting allegiances – leading to the Moment for the Ages, an entire battlefield stilled by the wails of a newborn baby.
The film is full of such felicities. I like the way Cuaron scores it with songs of the 60s and 70s, creating both a sense of a different time and a suggestion of lost idealism (just like our hero has lost his ideals). I like the way he trusts Owen’s ravaged face when we learn about his dead child, Owen in the foreground with the story related – out of focus, in a single take – in the background. The film also works as hectic pell-mell action thriller, with a car-chase and a prison break. There’s a lot of first-class detail in Children of Men – but what’s the point? Is it just that ‘The Future Looks Grim’? There’s nothing good about feeling bad.
On the other hand, feeling good can also be overrated – at least when it comes in a package as twee and simplistic as A Good Year, in which Russell Crowe succumbs to the charms of Provence and becomes a softer, more sensitive fellow. He’s a City trader, known for his ruthlessness; “Today is Greedy Bastard Day,” he announces to his fellow “lab rats”, and proceeds to make a killing – but then he finds out he’s inherited his uncle’s chateau, where he used to spend summers as a child, and goes back to check out the place so he can sell it. The rest you can probably imagine.
“Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing!” is Russ the Bastard’s credo. Not so, it turns out – there’s also fixing up a dilapidated farmhouse (this takes about 10 minutes), talking terroir with the resident vine-grower (“I live in them! I breathe in them! They tear my hands!”), playing tennis in the clay court in the garden, sparring with the inevitable French cyclists, sitting in the picturesque village square where the band plays ‘Boum’ and a makeshift screen shows clips from beloved French movies. Then of course the women – a blushing notary, a buxom housekeeper with a crush on our hero’s backside, a young American visitor, a fiery lass from the local caf?…
The film is clearly a diversion for director Ridley Scott (who himself owns a place in Provence) and Crowe, who tries to be relaxed and doesn’t quite make it. He doesn’t embarrass himself (he’s too good an actor for that) but Crowe without his intensity is like Julia Roberts without the smile, and he doesn’t look happy doing physical comedy; when a dog pees on his leg you get the sense he can barely restrain himself from kicking the beast right across the picturesque pine-scented terrace.
Everything’s cute in A Good Year, even the scorpions in Mr. Crowe’s bedroom (it’s the lavender that attracts them); only American tourists spoil the idyll. Not only is the film banal, but each time it threatens to go in an interesting direction – e.g. when Russ seems on the brink of Daddy Long-Legs self-sacrifice, so the girl will never know her true benefactor – it snuffs out the threat and veers right back into banality again. It probably deserves a one-star rating … but its two hours pass pleasantly enough, and the women are gorgeous and the French landscapes are charming – and besides, I’m troubled by that Richard Corliss quote. Can it be I give ‘dark’ films a pass, and resent those with nothing more tortuous to impart than simple joie de vivre? It’s not true, I tell you: I love life! That still doesn’t make A Good Year a good movie.
NEW DVD RELEASES
Here’s our regular look at the more interesting titles released on DVD in the US and UK over the past few weeks. Some may be available to rent from local video clubs, or you can always order over the Internet: dozens of suppliers, but http://www.amazon.com (for US) and http://www.play.com (for UK) are among the most reliable, if not necessarily the cheapest. Note that US discs are ‘Region 1’, and require a multi-region player.
NEW FILMS
THE BREAK-UP: Actually not bad, for a Jennifer Aniston movie, and the extras are intriguing: Vince Vaughn and Aniston commentary, deleted scenes, alternate ending (!), im
prov with Vaughn and Jon Favreau, and more. [US]
SLITHER: Best monster movie (and/or zombie movie) of the year! Deleted scenes, featurettes on the special effects, and more. [US/UK]
ATOMISED: Mixed reviews for this German film version of Michel Houellebecq’s seminal, probably unfilmable novel – but it may be worth a look. Extras include interviews with cast and director. [UK]
FORTY SHADES OF BLUE: Another so-so drama, but worth renting (or even buying) for a great performance by Rip Torn as a monstrous record producer. Extras include deleted scenes and interview with director Ira Sachs. [UK]
WARRIOR KING: It’s Tony Jaa, Thai martial-arts king – and the most athletic action star since Jackie Chan. Seeing is believing. [UK]
OLD FILMS
MARLON BRANDO COLLECTION: A mixed bag from a variable actor, highlights being Mark Antony in a superb Hollywood ‘Julius Caesar’ (1953) and a crypto-gay Major in the demented ‘Reflections in a Golden Eye’ (1967). Set also includes ‘The Teahouse of the August Moon’ (1956), ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ (1962) in a 2-disc Special Edition, and ‘The Formula’ (1980). Pretty good value for about $40 plus shipping. [US]
THE FALLEN IDOL (1948): Classic version of Graham Greene story about confused young boy causing tragedy, presented by the impeccable Criterion Collection. Extras include Greene’s original story and a documentary on director Carol Reed. [US]
CAROUSEL (1956): 50th Anniversary Edition of slow-paced but touching musical drama, songs including Liverpool FC anthem ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. Masses of extras include an entire other film: Fritz Lang’s excellent 1934 version of the same story, entitled ‘Liliom’! [US]
THE ULTIMATE HAMMER COLLECTION: ‘Hammer’ as in horror, for the uninitiated: a great (if pricey) Christmas gift for the blood-and-gore fan in your life. 21 films, not all good but including gems like ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ (1967), ‘The Nanny’ (1965) and ‘The Devil Rides Out’ (1968). Not exactly a steal, but very good value at about £90 from most online retailers. [UK]
OH! WHAT A LOVELY WAR (1969): All-star anti-War pageant, reinterpreting WW1 as a (rather dark) musical. Extras include commentary by director Richard (now Lord) Attenborough. [UK]
THAT’S MY BUSH! (2000): All eight episodes of Dubya satire, made just after his inauguration (and pre-9/11) by the ‘South Park’ guys. Funny stuff. [US]
ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: SEASON TWO (1955): Before ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ came these neat tales of the macabre, hilariously prefaced by Hitchcock himself. 39 episodes on 5 discs. [US]
