Emilia Perez (2/5 Stars)

I’ll give “Emilia Perez” this, it is consistent and it is original. That is, it has a vision and follows it without distraction or compromise. It is a great example of Roger Ebert’s insight about the worst movies being made by some of the best talents. His point was that those who lack skill generally make mediocre movies that inspire neither admiration nor hatred. Those movies are simply boring. It takes great talent to make a great movie. But it also usually takes great talent to make a truly awful movie. Only the best of us have the ability to take a bad idea and unapologetically and unwaveringly run it into the ground. “Emilia Perez” is one such movie.

A movie can be good in two ways. It can be technically proficient, the set can be correctly lit, the sound can be correctly mixed, the makeup can be correctly applied etc. It can also be personally enjoyable: that is, the subject matter can appeal to the personal preferences of the audience. (I never saw last Christmas’s viral hit “Hot Frosty” but I bet the people who watched it were probably pleased with the product without it needing to be all that technically good.) A movie can also be bad in two ways. It can be incompetently made. But a movie can also be technically proficient, but offensive on a personal level. These categories overlap obviously. Most mediocre ones are technically deficient but personally appealing. The last category, technically proficient and bad, is the most rare. Since movies are such a collaborative medium, and are made for people, it is rare that a team of talented people, working well together, make a truly offensive movie.

To illustrate what makes a movie “bad” in the second sense, take the character of Rita Mora Castro, a lawyer played by Zoe Saldana. We are introduced to her as she is preparing the defense of a client that the movie strongly implies murdered his wife by throwing her out of a window. Zoe Saldana does a song and dance (this movie is a musical) in which she uses her legal acumen to thrwart the meanings of words like “love”, “justice”, and “freedom” in favor of someone she knows is guilty. At the same time, she complains and pities herself that her legal talents are not appreciated by her superiors. At no point in this song does Ms. Castro express sympathy for the murder victim.

Movies and television shows are replete with characters of dubious moral nature. But just because a movie is about a bad person, does not mean that the writers/directors/producers of this movie are justifying that character’s behavior. Some of the best cinema about bad people, think Walter White of “Breaking Bad” or Tony Soprano of “The Sopranos”, are made by creators with well honed moral compasses who know exactly why and how bad their characters choices are. That well honed morality lends greatly to the dramatic arc of the story line. The problem with “Emilia Perez” is that it supports its sleazebag attorney. She could be a good person, but she isn’t because she wants money and power. The movie is fine with that and even goes so far as to give her a song and dance at a later time in which she accuses everyone else of being worse. The argument essentially is that her character’s lack of candor and dubious morality is justified because people don’t deserve her integrity. That is offensive. As a lawyer myself, that is specifically offensive to me. Her position and education demand that she hold herself to a higher moral standard, which, at a minimum, means she doesn’t make bullshit excuses like not being able to start her own law firm (where presumably she would be able to practice law without moral compromise) because, and I quote her, she’s black.

Ms. Castro’s efforts in support of the rich and powerful are not ignored though. She is approached by the boss of a drug cartel who wants her to help him fake his own death so that he may engage in a voluminous amount of cosmetic surgery to the end of transforming himself into a woman. The plan, carried out to song and dance, is successful. He fakes his death, abandons his wife and children in the process (he did not bother to seek their counsel about it), and resurfaces from the bandages with, among other things, new skin, new breasts, a new vagina, and a reduction in his adam’s apple. Importantly, he pays for all of this by embezzling money from his drug cartel. Like a lot of money. So although he starts a new life, shorn from the responsibility of running a large organization, he still has all the money and lives his new life as a new woman in luxury in a big house with maids and newly hired goons. Imagine the CEO of the company you're working at doing something like this. Imagine your spouse doing something like this. Imagine your father doing something like this. Imagine a movie not giving a shit about your feelings and instead insisting that you should feel a great joy in this person’s journey of self-actualization.

And it gets worse. This man refers to this decision as if a woman, someone named Emilia Perez, is telling him to do it. And this is another striking example of this movie being tone deaf and in dramatically poor taste. After the transformation, Emilia Perez, feeling sorry for all the mothers of Mexico whose children have been disappeared in the drug wars, starts a non-governmental organization that denounces the cartels that are conducting this orgy of violence, and the corrupt government that allows it. This NGO aids in the retrieval of bodies from mass graves so that these poor mothers can adequately mourn. (This Emilia Perez is quite adept at doing  this because she intuitively knows where the bodies are buried.) The character, and the movie, are under the impression that engaging in a sex-change operation absolves all sins and makes the character a truly different person. Emilia Perez feels no need to turn herself into the police or give back the money she has gained via the blood of innocents. She didn’t commit those crimes. The man did.

There is an old joke about the rich man and his toupee. This egocentric guy, growing old and growing bald, decides to invigorate his looks with some youth by wearing a hair piece. It looks ridiculous and everyone can tell it is fake. But no one says it to his face because he is rich. So he just goes around looking ridiculous ensconced in a delusion that only the wealthy can afford. This is the same with all transgender people who choose to engage in cosmetic surgery. We simply do not have the technology to affect what they desire and, most of the time, they end up in the uncanny valley, approaching something to what they intend to be but obviously, and unsettlingly, not what they intend to be. So, even with all this surgery, which I believe the actor Karla Sofia Gascon actually received (for personal reasons, not for the movie), there is an unspoken dirty little secret that hangs over the movie. Karla Sofia Gascon looks ridiculous and fake. This is clearly a man we are looking at. It says a lot about this movie that it chooses to engage in this pandering sensibility so much so that even in front of all the television cameras that Emilia Perez preens for, not a single person in Mexico recognizes the drug lord. Even her wife (played by Selena Gomez) and children don’t recognize him. Emilia Perez pretends to be a long lost and very rich aunt of the deceased drug boss and no one suspects a thing. It says alot about the Academy that they have decided to sustain this pandering delusion by nominating Karla Sofia Gascon in the category of Best Actress. SHE’S A MAN!

“Emilia Perez” has an ending reminiscent of the one in “The Room”, in which writer/director/star Tommy Wiseau, after dragging us through an awful awful movie, at least unwittingly granted the audience the concession of watching the hated main character commit suicide. “Emilia Perez” provides this same type of relief when we are treated to a large fireball that kills enough people to spare us a sequel. The movie believes the characters are martyrs and that this should be very sad (there is funeral parade in which the poor peasants of Mexico appear to be canonizing the memory of Emilia Perez), but we know they more or less got what they deserved and the scene works as a cleansing purge that washes away much of the repugnant build-up of toxicity and entitlement that came before it. Can this movie become a cult classic at midnight screenings with running commentaries by derisive drag queens? I don’t know, I think it might be too technically proficient of a movie, but maybe. As for the music, well there wasn’t any particular song or melody that stood out as good or distinctly memorable. The dancing was fine I guess. Whether or not the lyrics were eloquent (or even rhymed) is beyond me because I do not speak Spanish.

And now we have to address the elephant in the room here, which is that “Emilia Perez” has been nominated for thirteen Academy Awards, the most of any other movie this year. It could very well be named Best Picture. Although there is a perverse part of me that likes the idea of a movie as original and daring as “Emilia Perez” winning the top prize, I can’t help but imagining that such an honor bestowed would come off with the general populace like the movie itself, tone deaf and in dramatically poor taste. It would be a few notches worse than giving Will Smith a standing ovation after he slapped Chris Rock in the face. I suppose it is hard for certain insular groups to consider the feelings of other people. The Academy is no exception (weird though, since the point of art is to do just that). For political reasons, “Emilia Perez” should be nowhere near the Best Picture race. Maybe their high-priced attorneys can explain this to them in such a way that it doesn’t unduly hurt their feelings. If the Academy wants to be daring, it can bestow the prize on “Anora”, a movie that presents with clear eyes how the delusional entitlement of very rich people affects the rest of us. Or the Academy can be safe and honor whatever this year’s version of “Green Book” (“Wicked”, anyone?’). Almost everything we do is political and certainly at this level with so many millions of people watching. We just experienced a political election in which a manifestly defective nominee just won the popular vote. One can sit back like Ms. Castro and complain about other people, or one can take stock in this simple reality: that the American people looked at Donald Trump and then the alternative and then, after ruminating about the choice for many many months, decided that the alternative was worse. The way to get back is to get better.

Gladiator II (2/5 Stars)

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.”
Errol Morris

Edward Gibbon’s landmark The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (published 1776-1789) is distinct from most history texts in its general direction. Most histories start at the infancy of a civilization and follow it through to its maturity. The Decline and Fall starts at the maturity of the Roman civilization and follows it aaaaallllll the way down. The best and most famous of its historical characters are all at the beginning and as the story continues they get worse and more obscure. There are many reasons why the Roman Empire declined and Gibbon’s book has several thousand pages of them, but I will very briefly outline the very basic problem that occurred after the death of Marcus Aurelius (circa 186 A.D.) and continued for the next 100 years until the advent of the reign of Diocletian (circa 284 A.D.). The authority of the emperor rested on the army, and, more specifically, the Praetorian Guard which was that part of the army that was stationed in Rome. Starting with the reign of Commodus and moving forward, many emperors were killed via the honorable usurpation of a crazy tyrant or the dishonorable assassination of a competent prince, but no matter how the transfer of power occurred, the first thing that the new emperor would do would be to pay off the Praetorian guard with a donative, basically a bribe for the army’s loyalty. This first act of business was so ingrained and predictable that it created a moral hazard. After all, the more the army assassinated emperors, the more they benefited financially. For those 100 years, there were an estimated 30-35 emperors/usurpers, only one of which, Septimus Severus, died of natural causes. The rest were murdered.

[Gibbon tells of an extraordinary interregnum after the murder of the Emperor Aurelian (circa 275 A.D.) wherein the army asked the Senate to recommend a successor and the Senate, in turn, asked the army to recommend a successor, and this back and forth went on for eight whole months while the throne remained entirely vacant. Nobody wanted the death sentence.]

Surely, in this context, there is a prurient, exploitative, and lurid story to be told in blockbuster cinematic form. There isn’t really a moral to be found in the circuitous killing of so many princes over such a long period of time, which itself presaged only a further and total decline in the empire, but at least the story would have no lack of sensational violence. It may come as a surprise then that Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, a story that takes place circa 211-218 during the reigns of Geta, Caracalla, and Macrinus does not use any of it. The most this movie takes from history is the names of those three emperors, but the real crimes of these men are not explored and their interactions with each other, though dramatic and fatal in real life, are not shown and indeed cannot be said to even inspire the plot of the film. It is just generally bewildering to me that the writers could have such a mountain of material to work from and disregard all of it in favor of a storyline that, essentially, could only appeal to an audience entirely ignorant of the historical context in which the movie supposedly takes place.

Modern dramatists come across a very basic problem with interpreting material that either originates or takes place in the past. Shakespeare is a good example. There is always this temptation to update the language and locate the action in venues that are more easily identifiable. The problem is that the best thing about Shakespeare is the language, not the plot, and if you are updating the language, you lose what brought you to the material in the first place. The fact is that the past is old and hard to understand. To truly appreciate it, the audience needs to go to the past, not the other way around. The best Shakespeare performances are those that strip out all distractions from the words themselves and focus almost entirely on helping the audience understand what is being said.

Gladiator II could have been a much better movie with this approach. As it is, the plot concerns Lucius, the son of Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe’s character in the original) becoming a gladiator about twenty years after the events of the first film. He is a jaded malcontent that speaks derisively of the Roman Empire and yearns for his grandfather Marcus Aurelius's “Dream of Rome” in which power is returned to the Senate and the empire is once more based on freedom. There is a subplot in which a returning army is going to overthrow the corrupt duo of emperors Geta and Caracalla and enthrone the daughter of Marcus Aurelius (Connie Nielson, still alive from the original, where apparently she totally got it on with Russell Crowe and bore his son. I think we all missed that part) as the rightful heir to Marcus Aurelius with the presumed plan of returning the empire back to the old days of the Republic.

That bullshit plot is historically absurd. The Roman Senate was not a model of republican virtue and indeed had very little semblance with our modern institutions. The Romans did not believe in freedom and certainly no emperors, generals, senators, or sons and daughters of any of them would have paid lip service to a plan to expand "freedom" by granting more power to the Senate. Nor does this confused conspiracy have even internal logic. One cannot support freedom and republican virtues through the assumed authority of hereditary power. And there is no reason to believe that the daughter of Marcus Aurelius has more right to rule than the duo of emperors who are also the sons of emperors. Besides, I very much recall that in the original movie (and also in real life), Marcus Aurelius’ main mistake was giving over the empire to his worthless son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) instead of adopting a competent successor like Maximus. But here we are to assume that Lucius has some legitimate claim to the throne based on who his father and grandfather is. The movie ends with an incredible confrontation and denouement that suggests the “Dream of Rome” has a plausible chance of becoming a reality, perhaps as soon as the next movie. Of course, in reality, the Roman Empire declined and fell. Indeed the very next emperor after Macrinus, Elagabulus, was a teenage orgy enthusiast. He does not make an appearance here and is sorely missed.

There are good elements to the movie. I for one have no problem with the absurd spectacle of an armored Rhinoceros or a naval battle replete with sharks within the Coliseum. Those were fun. Also fun was Denzel Washington’s machiavellian portrayal of Macrinus. While all the other characters are enunciating their lines in “swords-and-sandals” fashion, he just chews through his dialogue as if this was the sequel to Training Day. He didn’t get the memo on how to act in the ancient past. Also, with one exception, this is a good example of color blind casting. Given that race didn’t matter in the Roman Empire (citizenship certainly mattered, but that wasn’t based on race), it doesn’t affect the inherent drama of any particular scene by having a black man play a character that historically wasn’t black. And since Denzel Washingon is one of our best actors, why not hire him to play what, in this historical context, should be a race neutral role. The only exception to this is the plot point, found in this movie but not in history, that Macrinus was once a slave, which for no apparent reason, makes Denzel Washington’s blackness seem relevant when it isn’t.

I’m not sure what the point is in morphing the distant past to pander to modern sensibilities. Most movies take place in the present and already do that. One of the best things about a movie that takes place in the past is that it can provide the modern audience a new experience, a story about humans that have an entirely different worldview. A very good example of this is the recent TV series Shogun, which is a fictional account of feudal Japan that takes pains in helping the audience understand what characters living in early 1600s Japan thought, felt, and were motivated by. I don’t think any of us would condone ritualistic suicide the way that feudal Japan did, but with a well produced story, the audience can understand why the characters do it and how it affects the plot. 

You don’t have to agree with characters in order to find them interesting. To only value the past to the extent that it justifies our actions in the present is a narcissistic, narrow, and numbingly tedious way to interpret historical events. After all, if there is no difference between then and now, then there is also no novelty in setting a story in Ancient Rome. And if all one considers important about the the past is that which comments on the present, then history does repeat itself, but only because one is too vain to consider those elements that are different. This is why movies made by Communists are so stupid and boring. Ridley Scott is usually better than this. 

All of Us Strangers (5/5 Stars)

Adam (played by Andrew Scott), a writer, sits alone in his apartment not writing. His building was recently built and so is almost uninhabited. One night the fire alarm goes off, Adam evacuates, and finds that he is the only person to do so. As he looks up at his building, he sees an apartment with a light on, the only apartment in the building with a light on, and a man looking down at him. They notice each other. Back in his apartment he hears a knock on his door. It is the man he had a moment with earlier (Paul Mescal). He introduces himself as Harry and offers his friendship in this lonely building, maybe more than that. Adam considers it but declines.

He thinks twice of it in the coming days and when he notices Harry again in the building lobby he strikes up another conversation. They start an intimate relationship. Around the same time, Adam visits his old neighborhood and indeed, the house he grew up in. He finds, without explanation, the ghosts of his deceased parents, frozen in age right before they died in a car crash when he was about nine years old.

What follows is a series of extraordinary conversations between Adam and his Mom (Claire Foy) and Dad (Jamie Bell). They are curious as to how his life turned out and how he is doing. Adam comes out as gay to his mother who is mainly worried, in a 1980s way, that such an identity would lead to stigma and illness. Adam explains that things are different nowadays. Then he has a conversation with his father who with bemusement explains that he already knew he was gay. That conversation turns when Adam questions his Dad as to why he didn’t comfort him when he was being teased at school because of it. After considering the matter in full, perhaps for the first time, his Dad apologizes in a moment of sublime warmth.

Adam’s interactions with his parents are not confrontational and his parents aren’t defensive. Instead, Adam is curious about why his parents did or did not do things and the explanations given, generally, are that his parents are human beings that sometimes make mistakes. Maybe if they lived long enough, they could have gotten it right eventually, but they died when Adam was still young. His parents are happy that Adam has found in his new relationship with Harry. The plot turns in a way that I won’t reveal when Adam attempts to introduce them to each other.

“All of Us Strangers” was adapted by writer/director Andrew Haigh (Lean on Pete) from a Japanese novel entitled Strangers by Taichi Yamada. Without reading the novel, you can feel the Nippon seeping through the screen. It makes a lot of sense that the original story is about a man in Tokyo feeling lonely. Meeting ghosts as a matter of course without the obligatory “this can’t be real” scene is very Japanese. But reading the synopsis of the novel’s plot one gets an idea of how great an adaptation this could be. (I won’t know for certain until I read the book, which is now on my list. Ask me in a couple of years about it.) Apparently the homosexual identity of Adam and the very personal conversations about sexuality with his 1980s parents were all superimposed by Andrew Haigh on a Japanese novel about ghosts.

Sometimes when the emotions of a story are so raw, it helps to have a creative barrier to better aid the audience to digest the story. Japanese movies in particular can be so intense that sometimes I feel the subtitles help the experience. After all, when you don’t understand the language, you kind of assume that the acting is perfect and don’t find it distracting. (It is hard to imagine Grave of the Fireflies, a movie about fire bombings and starvation, being endurable without the helpful emotional salves of a foreign language and anime.) It is then commendable that All of Us Strangers, a live action movie in English, hits all of its notes with appropriate delicacy. In particular, the performance of Andrew Scott is meticulous in its execution. This movie excels in the Japanese art of small things.

There is one very special moment in this movie that is a lock of my annual award of Best Use of a Song. One of the ghost encounters has Adam travel back in time to the night of his parents’ death as they set up a Christmas tree in the warmth of the family home. Playing on the radio is “Always On My Mind” by The Pet Shop Boys. This song, like the movie, is an exceptional cover that transforms a heavy handed lyrical ballad sung by the likes of Elvis Presley into a normal brit pop tune with 1980s synthesizers and beats that only upon further introspection reveals tender and moving lyrics. Movies, music, poetry, I mean art in general has a utility in our lives that this scene is a shining example of. For most of us, it is hard to articulate exactly how we feel, either by lack of talent or by lack of nerve and probably both. But sometimes you can just point to a song, a dialogue, a phrase, a picture and say this, this is how I feel. All of Us Strangers is one of the best movies of the year.