Crimson Peak (2/5 Stars)

If you had asked me what I thought about director Guillermo Del Toro before I had seen Crimson Peak I may have answered, “He’s like Tim Burton, but scary.” Both men have this undying affinity for the macabre and their movies are works of art to that end. But whereas Tim Burton has long ago forgotten what scared him about ghastly figures, Guilermo has made at least one great movie, “Pan’s Labyrinth” that tapped into true horror. I was hoping “Crimson Peak” would be more like the latter but unfortunately it is more like former. Whatever shock value the undead may have had in Guillermo's earlier movies has worn off and now he presents them like Burton does, all style and no suspense.

The movie stars Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) as a young aspiring novelist in the era of Victorian Gothic Romance. She is subject to sexism by chauvinist editors who do not like her romantic stories that have ghosts in them. This is not too big a plot point and is more of an excuse for the character to comport herself in an annoying way that suggests she has two centuries foreknowledge of being on the right side of history. 

Her budding feminism takes a back seat when she meets a dark handsome count (Tom Hiddleston) whom she feels she should dislike greatly. He is an Englishman from a declining family who is seeking investors for a clay pit dredger he has designed. They hit it off during a waltz at a ball and it seems like wedding bells until something odious is uncovered by a private investigator. Her father threatens the man to break off the engagement in a cruel and public way or he will reveal to his daughter this dark dishonest lie behind his betrothal promise. Take a moment and review that last sentence. If the secret were told to the daughter she would certainly not marry the man, thereby in all probability breaking off the engagement in a prudent and quiet manner. The father takes his course of action because he loves his daughter. Actually he obviously hates her but the movie does not seem to consider this. Compounding his daughter’s woes he is murdered the next day and she marries the count anyway because of course she has no idea why she should not marry him or even suspect foul play.

If I seem unduly vague about the deep dark secret it is because the movie is too. We are not told what the secret is until the last act of the movie. It should also be noted that Mia’s mother died when she was young and her ghost visits her at night and gives her cryptic warnings. She enters the room in the creepiest way possible and whispers “Beware of Crimons Peak!” This too is because she loves her daughter but really could this ghost be more unhelpful. Although it is not revealed what Crimson Peak refers to for a very long time, it could not be easier to figure out what is meant once Mia moves to England and stares at the Count’s estate for the first time. It is obviously haunted and in fact has been especially designed by Guillermo to to look haunted. This detail escapes our young lady.

There is a true disconnect here between production design and what would be considered honest human reactions. The fault lies all over but it begins with Guillermo Del Toro who has put quite a lot of work into making everything in the movie look extravagantly horrible from the mansion, to the costumes, to the macabre undead ghosts, but does not expect the characters to react to them as if they are seeing them. A good example is when our lady sees her first ghost in the mansion. It is a grosteque anatomically correct blood soaked man with half his flesh ripped off. It stalks toward her. She is frightened but not nearly frightened enough by all human standards. And once she leaves the room she is a little jazzed which is the same to to say that she is impossibly calm. Then there is the sister of our Count played by Jessica Chastain. Hers is an awful one-note performance of disdain and malevolence. She does not even pretend to put a conceit of civility while the Count is courting our young lady. This fazes our lady but not enough for us to believe that she is the intelligent woman the movie would have us believe she is. To say that Mia Wasikowska’s performance is wrong is to cover over the fact that the character itself is unbelievable and the story impossible. 

In conclusion, Guillermo has pour all of his efforts into the production design and treated his characters like afterthoughts. Many times a good production design will help performances by making the world the characters inhabit more believable. Here it does the opposite. Guillermo is certainly a great visual artist but that does not necessarily translate into good storytelling when it forces characters to react in weird and unnatural ways. Not all bad production design is cheap and devoid of love. 

I don’t really a critical thing to say about this but it does merit mentioning: Mia Wasikowska’s hair is both the best possible style (while up) and worst possible style (while down) in this movie.

Given that the ghosts are generally unexplained and our lady’s reactions to them are bewilderingly muted, I started wondering half way through if they were even dangerous. They were certainly not particularly scary at any point. There does happen to be an unflinching exposition of gore at the end of Crimson Peak. I don't have a problem with gore as far as to say that it needs to be earned. The audience should be engaged in the story to a point that when our lady cracks Chastain's head in with a shovel, the reaction is not accompanied by bad laughs and groans. This is a bad movie. Guillermo needs to find something that scares him next time. This is just so much fluff.

Bridge of Spies (4/5 Stars)

Steven Spielberg has been around so long now that it is fair to say that his style isn’t like old school filmmaking as much as it is old school filmmaking. His fluid framing, the polish of the dialogue, and the frequency of virtuous themes represent the Platonic ideal all other filmmaking either imitate, elaborate upon, or reject. “Bridge of Spies,” has all the hallmarks of a very by the book movie. There are no missteps mainly because the movie takes very few chances. If you are acquainted with Spielberg, you will recognize a lot of his signature moves that he has already proven are effective in many other movies. “Bridge of Spies” is the safest movie in theaters right now. I doubt there will be many people who won’t like it. But isn't like this is Spielberg's best movie as much as it feels like a breather between great movies.

“Bridge of Spies,” is a historical period piece set in the Cold War late 1950s about an admirable man named James Donovan. He was an insurance lawyer who was summoned to represent in court a captured soviet spy named Rudolph Abel (played by Mark Rylance). Nobody really wants Abel to not be anything other than guilty but at the same time there is this whole American Constitution thing and everybody deserves a capable defense. Donovan proves capable enough to save his client from execution.

Then things take an interesting turn when an American spy named Francis Gary Powers is shot down over Russia. Donovan is called upon to negotiate an exchange of spies. This will all know from our history books, he succeeds at doing. What makes this story new (and probably why Spielberg chose to make a movie about it) is the revelation that Donovan went out of his way to also exchange a release of an American student named Prior from East Germany at the same time. The U.S. government really doesn’t care whether the student gets released as long as Powers comes back so Donovan’s mission is entirely altruistic and self-imposed. He is in fact negotiating not only with the Soviets, the East Germans, but also the C.I.A. And he deserves every bit the title of master negotiator. Donovan is played by Tom Hanks perfectly cast as a smart idealistic American everyman.

The movie is but a series of conversations and it is to the credit of Spielberg and the writers (which happen to include Joel and Ethan Coen) that there is an intriguing amount of trick storytelling that interrupt the what could have been easily stale scenes. Actually we can look a little further into some specific scenes because it is a really good example of superior filmmaking. Take for instance the scene where James Donovan brings up the idea of representing the spy to his wife and children around the dinner table. What needs to happen in this scene is he has to tell his wife about the case and she has to voice the reasons not to do it: social shame, helping the soviets, somebody else’s problem, etc. The scene has a subplot to it. In the previous scene Donovan has his assistant cancel a dinner date to work late on the new case (it is after all just a Tuesday.) At the family dinner Donovan’s daughter reveals that she was just stood up by her boyfriend. It becomes clear that the daughter and the assistant are dating but Donovan doesn’t know it. This is pretty funny and is good for a couple of laughs. Now the interesting part: the scene ends and the daughter and the assistant are never heard from again in the entire movie. That is to say the subplot is a red herring whose sole function is to provide some laughs during the dinner table scene not because these are important characters. Or take the scene where Donovan meets the East German ambassador for the first time. The ambassador pours two drinks while his back is to Donovan. He turns around with the two glasses. The camera tilts down to look at the glasses and then tilts back up to see Hanks’ quizzical expression. This camera move and the expressions stereotypically imply that the drink might be poisoned. The drink isn’t poisoned and there will never be a poisoning in the movie but Speilberg inserted those moves in for purposes of suspense for the sake of suspense. After all the audience does not know whether the drink is poisoned (or whether the previously mentioned romantic subplot goes anywhere) so it does not really matter whether it is or not as long as the audience feels that it might be for a moment and becomes more involved in the scene. This sort of thing shows off Spielberg’s knowledge of a movie audience's general attention span. Right when a talking scene might start to get boring he will figure out a way to instill some suspense or some joke whether it has anything to do with the storyline or not and it always works. 

 

One more thing should get some notice and that is the performance of Mark Rylance as the Soviet spy Rudolph Abel. He underplays the role in such a sublime way that it becomes almost comedic. He is not afraid of the U.S. government as much as he is just resigned to everything. He does not particularly care whether he gets a defense or not. At one point he comments, “The boss is not always right, but he is always the boss.” What an incredibly Soviet thing to say. Whereas when an injustice happens to an American he may actually get mad about it or worry about the outcome. The difference I suppose is that in America our ideals and rights give us hope that justice may prevail and so a fight for justice is worth it. 

Why do I feel like somebody is trying to teach me something. Anyway good movie, Dad.