WEST
SIDE STORY (2021)
On
the face of it, the idea of remaking a film that won 10 Oscars, including best
picture, seems foolish at best. Yet again, the original movie version, based on
the landmark Broadway production, was released 60 years ago. It’s really no
different than staging another production of Shakespeare, which, of course, is
exactly what “West Side Story” is: “Romeo and Juliet” relocated in 1950s New
York.
The result surpasses the overrated
original as Steven Spielberg and his team deliver a film version this
musical—some would argue the greatest in Broadway history—deserves. Supported
by hypnotic choreography by Justin Peck (of the New York City Ballet),
incredibly detailed production design by Adam Stockhausen, two-time
Oscar-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski’s colorful day scenes and noirish
nighttime and a script by Tony Kushner (“Angels in America”) that grounds the
characters in real life, Spielberg has brought to life what is probably the
best film musical since “Cabaret” (1972).
Of course, the foundation was laid by some
of the greatest talents in musical theater history: Leonard Bernstein’s music,
as essential to America as the National Anthem, Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics of
impossible love and racial unrest, Jerome Robbins’ energetic choreography and
Arthur Laurents’ story. Theirs was a musical of its time, dealing with
contemporary issues as a white gang (The Jets) fights against newly arrived
Puerto Rican community and its young toughs (The Sharks) for control of an area
of Manhattan in the process of being razed to build Lincoln Center.
In the new film, Ansel Elgot (“Fault in
Our Stars,” “Baby Driver”), plays Tony (the Romeo stand-in), fresh out of jail
and trying to stay clear of the delinquent activies of the Jets. But he attends
a community dance staged to bring whites and Latinos together and falls in love
with Maria (Rachel Zegler, in her film debut), the Puerto Rican sister of the
Sharks’ leader Bernando (David Alvarez of Showtime’s “American Rust”).
You need not have ever heard of “West Side
Story” to know how this will turn out, but the dramatic staging and smoothly
integrated dancing and singing elevated this simple story. And what a
collection of songs this Bernstein-Sondheim collaboration created: “Maria,”
“America,” “Tonight,” “I Feel Pretty,” and the soundtrack’s masterpiece
“Somewhere,” poignantly sung by 90-year-old Rita Moreno, the Broadway legend
who won an Oscar for her role as Anita in the 1961 version (Ariana DeBose
shines in the role in the new film.)
As important a filmmaker as Spielberg has
been over the past 45 years, he’s rarely moved the camera as much as he does
here. In an obvious homage to “Citizen Kane,” the film opens with a traveling
shot over the construction site and then rises over a fence, signaling that
this world is on the edge of extinction.
Unlike the original Tony and Maria (Richard Breymer and Natalie Wood—as
a Puerto Rican!), Elgot and Zegler come off as real people, sincere in both
their love and attempts to bring their feuding communities together. In this
version, the Jets (led by a snarling Mike Faist as Riff) and the Sharks
actually seem dangerous, even as they do pirouettes.
This Spielberg-Kushner version doesn’t shy
away from the racism of the Jets; these are misguided, hate-filled young men
whose offspring are still fighting against immigrants and those who don’t look
or act like them.
So yes, it was a good idea to refilm this
essential musical, getting it right on the second try and introducing its still
timely themes to a new generation of viewers.
THE
POWER OF THE DOG (2021)
If you don’t mind movies that raise
questions, about the story and characters, without answering them you’ll appreciate
Jane Campion’s new film, a Western set in 1925 Montana.
Filled with exquisitely composed visas shot
by cinematographer Ari Wegner, the film seems influenced by Terrence Malick’s
work, his early film “Days of Heaven” and his more recent work that attempts to
present psychologically complex characters with little dialogue. For me, “Power
of the Dog” tries too hard to be murky and vaguely symbolic, filled with
characters whose actions and reactions remain unexplained.
Benedict Cumberbatch plays Phil Burbank, an
Eastern educated man who has dedicated his life to running a cattle ranch with
his brother George (perfectly cast Jesse Plemons). It’s hard to imagine them as
brothers; Phil never stops bullying and berating his brother, whose calm
demeanor feels almost ghostly.
The dynamics change, but not much, when
George marries Rose (Kirsten Dunst), a widow who runs a restaurant in a nearby
town. (I wanted to know what happened with her business when she moves in with
her husband, but that was never addressed.)
The film kicks into full Freudian when
Rose’s son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) returns from medical school. A rail-thin,
well-scrubbed effeminate young man in a world of tough-guy cowboys, he’s
endured a lifetime of harassment and it continues at the ranch. But what is
also clear, almost from the opening frames, is that Phil is a closeted gay
whose belligerence can be traced to his frustrations over his sexuality. Yet,
why, as a gay man in the 1920s, did he return to Montana instead of finding a
freer world on the East Coast?
A friendship emerges from the bullying
between Phil and Peter, which seems destined to end badly. (The picture’s
much-discussed ending—no matter how you interpret it—doesn’t bring much clarity
to the script.)
One of my central problems with the film is
Rose and her decent into depression and alcoholism after she marries George.
Here is a woman who lost her husband, put up with ornery cowpokes in her
business and dealt with what had to be a fraught childhood of her son, yet
finding herself between her passive husband and his snarling brother descends
into darkness.
Dunst, one of the finest actresses of her
generation, does her best to work out her character, but she’s let down by
Campion’s script (based on a novel by Thomas Savage)
Cumberbatch, as usual, offers a memorable
performance as this deeply conflicted man who seems to relish berating everyone
who comes near him, including his parents and brother. Though I’m partial to
his hypnotic portrayal of Julian Assange in “The Fifth Estate” (2013), the
British actor gives his best film performance as the intensely sad Phil.
The 25-year-old Smit-McPhee, an Australian
who played Viggo Mortenson’s son in the desolate “The Road” (2009) and was
Nightcrawler in a couple of X-Men films, gives a breakthrough performance as
Peter, a teen whose outward appearance belies what is going on in his head.
Campion, the second woman to receive a
best director nomination, in 1994 for “The Piano” (the first was given to Lina
Wertmuller, who just recently died at age 93), hadn’t made a feature film since
2009’s “Bright Star” and certainly has failed to live up to expectations for
her career. Positive critical appraisal for “Power of Dog” seems to guarantee
she and the cast will be contenders during the award’s season, but, for me, the
film falls short of the basics: telling a clear, interesting story with
understandable characters.
DEAN
STOCKWELL (1936-2021)
In the big picture of Hollywood cinema,
Dean Stockwell was a minor figure. But I’d argue that if he hadn’t turn his
focus to television work, he might have been one of the leading actors of the
1960s and 70s.
Stockwell, who died at 85 in November, was
the son of a pair of Broadway actors, which led to his film debut at age 9 in
the Gregory Peck movie, “The Valley of Decision.” Before he was 14, he was in the
war musical “Anchors Aweigh,” the Oscar-winning “Gentleman’s Agreement,” and as
the title character in both “The Boy With Green Hair” and the adaptation of
Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim.”
But it was in the late 1950s and early
1960s when he looked to be right there with Paul Newman (who was 10 years
older) as the most talented young actor of the era.
In the brilliantly acted Eugene O’Neill
adaptation by director Sidney Lumet, Stockwell plays Edmund, the sickly younger
son, who goes mano-a-mano with brother Jamie (Jason Robards) in some of the
most emotional scenes ever put on film.
Rather than becoming a star, he turned
into a familiar face on episodical TV, occasionally popping up in
counterculture movies, including “Psych-Out,” “The Last Movie” and “The
Loners.” Near the end of the 1970s, he quit the business and worked in real
estate.
Not until 1984, in German filmmaker Wim
Wenders’ “Paris, Texas” did he reestablish himself as a mainstream movie guy.
He was also in David Lynch’s “Dune” that year, which led to being cast as the
twisted Ben, part of Dennis Hopper’s hopped-up crew in Lynch’s masterpiece
“Blue Velvet” (1986). His lip-syncing of
Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” remains one of the creepiest moments in recent film
history.
Stockwell became a go-to character actor at
this point, peaking in 1988 with two fabulous performances, as mobster Tony
“The Tiger” Russo in “Married to the Mob” (which scored him an Oscar
nomination) and as Howard Hughes in Francis Coppola’s underrated “Tucker: The
Man and His Dream.”
The following year he was tapped to
co-star in the TV series “Quantum Leap,” which became a huge hit, continuing
until 1993. Though his last memorable performance was as the judge in Coppola’s
“The Rainmaker” (1997), he continued to act in both TV and film until 2015.
Of course, could have beens/should have
beens are a dime a dozen in show business, but few 20th Century
actors have shown such screen presence and understanding of creating characters
as Dean Stockwell displayed in a 70-year career.
BELFAST
(2021)
After a 32-year career as an
actor-director, 60-year-old Kenneth Branagh has tapped into his own childhood,
1969 Belfast amid the Northern Ireland Troubles, for his most recent picture.
Though the black-and-white remembrance has
its share of heartfelt moments and touching performances, the film’s episodical
script and overuse of uplifting pop music undercuts the serious nature of the
situation faced by the story’s young family.
The nine-year-old Buddy (a very natural
Jude Hill) seems to have an idyllic life contained in his close-knit Belfast
neighborhood until the violence of the centuries-old feud between Catholics and
Protestants erupts anew.
Between the scenes of menace, Branagh’s
script offers the usual coming of age moments for his young stand-in---a
classroom crush, bullied into shoplifting, talks with Pop, his grandfather,
superbly portrayed by Ciarán Hinds---until the family must consider leaving the
only home they’ve ever known.
Too often, Branagh relies on the
comforting spell of the songs of Irish blues master Van Morrison to camouflage
the story’s shortcomings in connecting disconnected scenes.
Belfast native Hinds, who has been a
reliable supporting player on both side of the Atlantic since the mid-1990s,
shines as Buddy’s grandfather, the lived-in face of 20th Century
Ireland. As his wise-cracking wife, Judi Dench, as always, delivers a perfectly
calibrated performance. Less memorable are Buddy’s parents, played by Jamie
Dornan and Caitriona Balfe.
Branagh has never realized his promise as
an actor-director predicted by his “Henry V” (1989) when he was 29, and then
“Hamlet” (1996), both among the finest Shakespeare adaptations put on film. In
recent years he’s directed “Thor,” “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” and a remake of
“Murder on the Orient Express.” In the
last 20 years, Branagh has had more success finding interesting character
roles, including his doomed detective in the British TV series “Wallander,”
probably his finest work as an actor; as Laurence Olivier in “My Week with
Marilyn” (2011); the commander in “Dunkirk” (2017) and the despicable Sator in
“Tenet” (2020).
Though it falls short of its ambitions,
“Belfast” is probably director Branagh’s best film since his Shakespeare
movies, and, I suspect, will reap plenty of nominations come Oscar time.
PASSING
(2021)
Actress Rebecca Hall, daughter of British
theater director Peter Hall, seems an unlikely candidate to bring to the screen
Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel about the lives of two
upper-class Black women. In fact, Hall, in recent years, discovered that her
American mother was part African American, who, in some ways, spent her life
“passing.”
This thoughtful, understated picture,
appropriately shot in glistening black-and-white, begins when Irene (a quietly
intense Tessa Thompson) pushes her bonnet to cover half her face and gains
entrance to a high-end café in downtown Manhattan, far from her Harlem home.
There she is spotted by an old friend from school, the fearless, outgoing Clare
(Ruth Negga) who is not only passing for white in the café, but has married a
white man who remains clueless about her race. (Though he has noticed her
growing “darker” as she ages and has an offensive pet name for her.)
While Irene’s life in her large home with
a housekeeper, her doctor husband and two children seems ideal, especially when
considering what most African Americans faced in 1920s America, she feels like
something is missing. When Clare becomes part of their lives—her husband seems
to constantly be away on business---Irene’s feelings of inadequacy grow as her
husband and children embrace the charming Clare.
Despite the lack of plot (and actually
little about passing), Hall’s adaptation offers a fascinating psychological
study of the African American life, focused on the two women who have sought
out happiness in very different ways.
Both actresses are superb. Thompson, who
plays Michael B. Jordan’s girlfriend in the “Creed” films, has the more complex
role as she navigates Irene’s path out of her depression. Negga, who in “Loving”
(2016) played a Black woman whose legal fight to marry a white man was a
landmark case in the 1960s, is perfect as the life of the party who, unlike
Irene, lives life one day at a time.
Hall seemed destined for stardom after her
turn in Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” (2008) and the British TV
thriller “Red Riding 1974” (2009), but nothing much happened for her after
that. She received good notices for “The Night House,” a thriller released
earlier this year. If her work behind the camera in “Passing” is any
indication, she may have just carved out a new career.
HOUSE
OF GUCCI (2021)
Ridley Scott, while one of Hollywood’s most
accomplished filmmakers, is hardly a stranger to over-heated melodrama. “The
Gladiator” (2000), “American Gangster” (2007) and “The Counselor” (2013) are
among his films that have ratcheted up the histrionics, which makes him the
perfect director for this barely believable, hot-blooded revenge tale of the
Italian fashion family, the Guccis.
Lady Gaga, still a work-in-progress as an
actress but with screen presence to spare, plays Patrizia Reggiani, the ambitious
daughter of a small-town trucking firm owner who sets her sights on Maurizio
(Adam Driver), the wide-eyed, law-student son of Roldolfo Gucci (a corpse-like
Jeremy Irons), half-owner of the fashion house.
Against the family’s wishes, they marry.
Then, seeing an opening, Maurizio’s uncle Aldo Gucci (perfectly cast Al Pacino,
back in “Godfather” milieu) bring the newly minted lawyer into the fold,
looking to undercut his brother.
The film is so overstuffed with plotting
that it would take longer to explain than the picture’s excessive 2 hours and 38
minutes running time.
Jared Leto provides the most entertaining
performance of the picture, unrecognizable under heavy makeup playing Pacino’s
comically inept son who longs to have his own fashion brand.
He soon finds himself—this played out in
the 1980s and 90s—in the middle of a family-crushing takeover scheme set in
motion by Patrizia and Maurizio.
Scott’s film plays like a condensed
version of a streaming series, with many crucial details left out or
unexplained, but the director, as always, keeps the action moving and guides
his actors to spirited performances.
The script, by Becky Johnston and Roberto
Bentivegna based on a book by Sara Gay Forden, sometimes struggles to make
sense of the idiocy of the truth, but this isn’t a documentary. It’s an Italian
soap opera as seen through the equally extravagance of Hollywood.
SPENCER
(2021)
I’m not sure what to make of this
psychological study of Princess Diana, circa 1991, ten years into her misguided
marriage into the suffocating world of the British Royal Family.
I’m not even sure how to label the film:
deep-dish fan fiction? A metaphorical diagnose of a troubled celebrity?
Certainly, as I’ve argued for decades, most feature films about real people or
events should be viewed as an uncomfortable mixture of truth and fiction, in
the best-case scenario, uncovering the underlining truths without becoming a
documentary.
Chilean
director Pablo Larraín, who made the compelling “Jackie,” starring Natalie
Portman as Jackie Kennedy, along with screenwriter Steven Knight (“Dirty Pretty
Things,” “Eastern Promises”) paint a disturbing picture of 30-year-old Diana
(an impressive Kristen Stewart) unraveling during a Christmas gathering at the
royal’s country estate, Sandringham. The stress of her husband’s affair, her
nonexistent relationship with the Queen, her eating disorder, her conversations
with 16th Century Queen Anne Boleyn and her frustration of playing
the good wife and mother all culminate in this weekend filled with traditions
going back hundreds of years.
While there are a few scenes in which
Diana interacts directly with Charles (Jack Farthing) or his mother (Stella
Gonet), the royals are mostly seen in the background as the camera swirls
around the Princess, seeing everything from her POV. She does confide in her
dresser (the always wonderful Sally Hawkins), a sympathetic chef (Sean Harris)
and earns a bit of respect from the steely head butler (Timothy Spall, who’s
become the go-to old guard Brit), but the script is much more concern with what
goes on inside Diana’s head. Adding to the Freudian reading of her life, within
walking distance from Sandringham is her childhood home, now boarded up and
crumbling.
But, and that’s a very serious “but,” the
story is an invention of the filmmakers. Other than the basic premise that the
royal family repairs to this country estate for the holiday, the film has
little basis in fact, creating events and confrontations that might have
happened, but probably didn’t, to represent how Diana saw her life, they think.
I’m not sure if there’s real merit in this
kind of fiction featuring real people. Yet my criticism may be biased.
After watching “Spencer,” I thought about the
classic bio-pics from the movie studio era that pretended to be telling the
true story of athletes, politicians, soldiers, scientists and writers while
spinning tall tales of flawless heroes. For some reason, I accept the fiction
in these stories even when I know better, but expect something more in
contemporary films.
Judged as a piece of fiction about a woman
in crisis, “Spencer” is an inventive, insightful film; as a story of the late
Ms. Spencer, who knows?
Photos:
Ariana DeBose and dancers in “West Side Story” (Twentieth Century Studios)
Dean Stockwell, right, with Jason Robards in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (Embassy Pictures)
Tessa Thompson in “Passing” (Netflix)
