Death by Lightning (5/5 Stars)

“Death By Lighting” is a miniseries, streaming on Netflix, about the unlikely election and unfortunate assassination of James A. Garfield. Whenever anyone decries the state of movies and bemoans that great movies of the past couldn’t possibly be made in the present, it is perhaps helpful to point out a mini-series such as this, which is an example of a very good cinema that would have been impossible to produce as recently as fifteen years ago.

This miniseries is four episodes of approximately 50 minutes each, so around 3 hours and 20 minutes long. It consists mainly of talking (so a focus on writing and acting), there being only one real action scene, which takes place in the last thirty minutes. Before digital and streaming, a running of 3 hours 20 minutes needed to be an epic movie. There needs to be a great deal of spectacle in order to keep an audience in the seats for that amount of time. We can bemoan the decline of movie theaters, but at the same time, this is something that wouldn’t fit in a movie theater. For the first 100 years of movie history, there wasn’t any long form drama outside of television, which was generally an inferior product, interspersed as it is with commercials and prone to inefficient storytelling due to the perverse incentive to maximise the amount/length of episodes and thus the amount of advertisements shown.

The advent of digital/streaming makes a miniseries like “Death by Lightning” possible. It is longer than most movies, but it is also much cheaper than most epics. (Indeed, because of digital movie-making, it is a bit cheaper than a two hour movie would have been in the 1990s). The exception that was HBO has become the rule. You can watch the whole thing at once (if you wanted to), but the product is best consumed over the course of 2-4 nights. And it is as long as it needs to be, no longer because there isn’t a commercial incentive (i.e. the product is paid for by advertisers) to draw it out unnecessarily.

Because it is cheap to film drama (just writing and acting) and cheap to stream it outside of theaters, Netflix is allowed to take chances on a not-so-obvious subject matter. President Garfield was assassinated within three months of the start of his presidency. So, unlike other murdered Presidents (Lincoln, McKinley, Kennedy) there was hardly any accomplishments to remember him by. You likely do not know anything about him. But that is fine, because the audience’s lack of familiarity with the subject matter only lends to the dramatic unfolding of the narrative. The less you know about a historical event, the less spoilers are involved.

There are two main storylines. The first is Garfield’s (played here by Michael Shannon) unlikely nomination as the Republican candidate in 1880. We are introduced to the party’s main players that form the supporting cast. Roscoe Conkling (played by Shea Whigham) and Chester A. Arthur (played by Nick Offerman) represents the influential and well-funded New York faction. James A. Blaine (played by Bradley Whitford) represents the less influential and less well-funded New England faction. Then there is the second storyline which only has one character, the would be assassin Charles Guiteau (played by Matthew McFayden) who is a delusional nobody who has the tendency to show up uninvited in scenes from the first storyline.

As coincidence would have it (and it is a coincidence because Guiteau is a crazy person), Guiteau’s motivations line up with and seemingly comment on the main controversies of this historical era. The Gilded Age (say post-Civil War and before World War I) is a time of weak federal government, mass industrialization, and the formation of unfettered big business. One thing the TV series could have explained better is why the New York faction has the power that it wields. It is mentioned that three quarters of the economic trade of the country goes through the port of New York City, but what is not mentioned is how exactly that results in most of the federal revenue coming from New York City. The reason is because the federal revenue at the time was based not on income taxes but on tariffs upon international goods. I’m not sure why, but the word tariff isn’t even mentioned.

This situation along with traditional wheeling and dealing amongst politicians induced much bribery for the sale of federal offices and federal land out west. Guiteau believes he is entitled to his fair share of corruption. He is a pathological liar and suffers from delusions of grandeur. McFayden is miscast simply because of his good looks, but apart from that, he does a very good job of portraying a person that at first glance may seem sane enough, but upon further reflection is straight up crazy. It’s all in the eyes.

Normally, I would bristle at the idea of giving a real-life assassin such a prominent role in a story, and I especially liked Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” for its example of not taking that route. But here it works, because, well, the character of Guiteau, all nerves and bristle, is a foil to Garfield, who lets face it, is kind of boring. In fact, if the miniseries was mainly Garfield, it would be a boring miniseries. But instead, Garfield is just one character among many men who are either crazy, cynical, or just kind of weak. This has the effect of making Garfield’s presence, when he appears, a pleasant one. Indeed, out of all these flawed men, you would very much want the stoic and serious Garfield to be the President of the United States. When he is picked out of the crowd for an unlikely dark horse nomination at the Chicago convention, you feel, as a citizen, to be tremendously lucky. And when he becomes the victim of a freak assassination, you feel, as a citizen, to be tremendously unlucky. The miniseries makes a strong argument that Garfield could have been a remarkable President.

What is interesting about this story is that its historical constraints inhibit standard character development. Guiteau, because he is crazy, cannot really change as a person. Garfield, because he is assassinated before he can accomplish much, cannot really change either. This leaves a supporting character, Chester A. Arthur, who was nominated as a Vice President because he was part of the New York machine but not the head of it (that would be Roscoe Conkling). Chester A. Arthur is a corrupt soul, beholden to machine politics and grieving the recent death of his wife with more drinking and partying than usual. He is outright disloyal to President Garfield and sees his ascent to the Vice Presidency as a bit of a joke. He is gobsmacked when he is not asked to immediately resign by President Garfield and horrified by the prospect of actually becoming President.

But, and there is historical evidence to this, the good nature of President Garfield apparently induced a moral change in Arthur and when Guiteau kills Garfield under a deluded belief that Arthur, upon ascending the Presidency, would grant him a federal appointment out of gratitude, it deeply affects Arthur. Arthur breaks off his ties with the corrupt New York machine and helps pass civil service reform out of a duty felt to the now deceased President Garfield. So, in a way, Chester A. Arthur is the main character of this miniseries because he is the one that changes. Nick Offerman (typecast as a cynical politician) gives one of his best of many performances as a cynical politician. (A sequel anyone?)

Assassinations are senseless and it is sometimes foolhardy to insist that we can learn anything from them. The motivations of the perpetrators are almost so depressingly irrelevant. Still, “Death by Lightning” perhaps succeeds more than usual, even if in a contrived but forgivable fashion. As Guiteau is awaiting his execution, he is visited by the widow of Garfield, Crete Garfield (played by Betty Gilpin), who gives a great if kind of unbelievable speech about how nobody will remember the assassin because she has exercised her influence to exact her own form of revenge, buying up the manuscript of his autobiography for the purpose of burying it. And we in the audience are also given one last moment of comfort during the execution of Guiteau via McFayden’s performance. The historical reality of Guiteau is that he wouldn’t have come to any late realization of his errors, and the miniseries mainly hews to this reality, except for that one last moment, when we see it in his eyes and we hear it in his last word, “oh”.

This is contrived, but then again, when someone does something terrible because they want to be remembered, sometimes the best revenge, if it is impossible to forget them completely, is to remember them in the exact opposite way they intended. “Death by Lightning” is a great mini-series and the best anything to be made about our interrupted leader, James A. Garfield.

This miniseries was created/written by Mike Makowsky and directed by Matt Ross, who is best known for playing tech mogul Gavin Belson in the HBO TV series “Silicon Valley.”

The Bikeriders (3/5 Stars)

“The Bikeriders” was adapted by writer/director Jeff Nicholas (Take Shelter, Loving) from a book of the same name by journalist Danny Lyon. This is not a book I’ve read or one which has piqued my interest from watching the movie. It would seem to me that as a journalist, he spent a lot of time interviewing the wrong people. This story is ostensibly about a motorcycle club named the Vandals from the Midwest, but his main interviewee is not a member of the club. Instead, she is the wife of one of the members and she admittedly doesn’t understand the appeal of the club or motorcycles in general and appears to be entirely ambivalent as to whether it exists at all. It doesn’t even seem to think her insights are really worth the recording and seems to be participating as a lark. Now, if you were interested in this material, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that she isn’t the best tour guide

Her name is Kathy (played by Jodie Comer) and the view of this motorcycle club is seen through her eyes mainly. Indeed, the movie’s narrative opens up not with the formation of the club, but her first random foray into it, going to bar the club frequents to meet up with a friend of hers. She immediately doesn’t like it since the place and all the people in it give off dangerous uncouth vibes. Still she sticks around after deciding to leave when she notices one club member that is much better looking then the others, Benny.

Benny has one and one only redeeming attribute: he looks like Austin Butler. Now, I’m not saying that Beeny is a bad person. No, I’m saying he is a boring person, but for the fact that he looks like Austin Butler. I don’t recall him doing a single interesting thing in this entire movie. We are told he is not good at riding motorcycles (he keeps crashing), doesn’t appear to have a job (do any of these guys have jobs?) and is not good for conversation. He mainly broods and like every other man in this movie binge drinks and chain smokes in every scene. Clearly, Kathy's attraction to him is built on lust. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t explore or even admit that this is what we are watching. When asked why she liked him, Kathy just says she doesn’t know, especially since Benny is kind of stupid and gets her into all kinds of trouble. Frankly, this woman isn’t a good tour guide for her own love life.

There might have been a character that would have made sense to build this story around, and that would be Johnny (played by Tom Hardy), the leader of the club. This may have answered, if there was such an answer, the big looming question: what is a motorcycle club, like what is it supposed to be doing with its time? Because it appears like they mainly ride their bikes, have picnics, and drink.. It is revealed that Johnny got the inspiration for the club from watching The Wild One, a motorcycle movie starring Marlon Brando. That character is described as a rebel. Someone asks him what he is rebelling against, and he replies “What do you got?”.

This nihilistic response can be an inspiring call to action for men who don’t really fit in anywhere else. But of course, you can’t just meet and do nothing all the time. If you can’t afford gas, you aren’t going anywhere. Like everything else in life, even don’t-give-a-shit rebels need money, and, if your organization has no purpose and is full of unemployable ne'er do wells who don’t want to work, well, is it any surprise your network is eventually taken over by a criminal element. The last half of the movie has a lot of former members complaining about how the organization went south.

I’m reminded of Banksy from Exit Through the Gift Shop commenting on how the anarchist rebellious movement of street art was capitalized upon by Thierry, a man devoid of any artistic instincts. “I don’t think Thierry played by the rules, in some ways, but then there aren’t supposed to be any rules. So I don’t know what the moral is.” 

But not only that, your wife is unimpressed.

The Shape of Water (4/5 Stars)

“Unable to perceive the shape of You, I find You all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with Your love, It humbles my heart, for You are everywhere.”

Legend has it, writer-director Guillermo Del Toro read that the above poem somewhere, perhaps in an old Islamic text and forgot who said it first and could not find after looking. Then he wrote a movie around it.

“The Shape of Water” is a striking combination of movies, part “Creature from the Black Lagoon” part “Amelie”. It centers upon a single middle-aged woman named Elisa Esposito who happens to be a deaf-mute and works as a janitor in a top secret government in the midst of the cold water. The big bad American government, represented incarnate by a man named Richard Strickland, played by Michael Shannon at his most type-cast, has captured a fish-man from a river in the Amazon. The fish-man’s strange abilities, for breathing underwater and regenerating itself, persuade the government to perform experiments and/or pointlessly torture it. Elisa, played by a fine Sally Hawkins, falls in love with the fish-man.

Writing this after the fact, I can’t think of a logical reason why Elisa would fall in love with the fish-man other than their commonality of being outsiders (deaf people are outsiders, right?). But during the movie, I felt it. This has much to say about the style and direction of Del Toro and the masterful craftsmen he employs. Technically, the movie takes place in Washington D.C., but it feels like Paris at its most romantic. The color palette is brown and wet and green and warm. There is french accordion music playing in the background.

But mostly I believe the love story because I believe Sally Hawkins. I expect it is a tough role to pull off. She has to make us believe she finds the fish-man, played with extensive make-up by Doug Jones, attractive. She does so. She also has to be deaf and sign all of her lines. This she does also with a confidence that makes it seem like she is completely fluent in sign language. It is her greatest performance and her best opportunity for one since “Merry Happy”.

The romance is also helped by the sinister forces that aim to keep the lovers apart, and thus encourage the audience the root for the love as it stands against hate. Norah Ephron once remarked that there were two kinds of love stories, the Christian and the Jewish as she would put it. The conflict in the “Christian” type of story comes from without as in the case of “Romeo and Juliet” (whereas the conflict in the “Jewish” type comes from the imperfections of the lovers themselves). “The Shape of Water” stands directly in the “Christian” form of love story. It is almost taken for granted that the fish-man loves Sally Hawkins and the other way around. What drives the story is the evil Richard Strickland.

It may simply be my affection for the actor Michael Shannon, but I feel for Richard Strickland in this movie. Think about it. Every single character in this movie is an outsider but Richard Strickland. Sally Hawkins is deaf. Her friend and work colleague (played by Octavia Spencer) is black. Her neighbor (played by Richard Jenkins) is gay. The empathetic scientist who works at the lab (played by Michael Stuhlberg) is communist. The fish-man is a fish-man. Michael Shannon, the true-blue patriot who believes in positive thinking and 1950s conformism and commercialism, is all alone. Every other character who isn’t playing a bit role is an outsider.

Are minorities really minorities when they outnumber the supposed majority? Can a movie stand for non-conformity when the supposed conformist is the one character not conforming to the rest? Sure it can. This is America. Anyone can be whatever they want to be.

Mud (3/5 Stars)

‘Mud’ is the third feature of one of the more exciting new American directors, Jeff Nichols. Nichols first came upon the scene in 2008 with “Shotgun Stories,” one of the more impressive no-budget films I have ever seen. He progressed in leaps and bounds with his second feature, “Take Shelter,” which I still consider the best movie of 2011. That movie added to Nichols repertoire the kind of special effects only achievable with a decent budget. With “Mud,” Nichols adds the presence of movie stars, something a small movie can generally only achieve when the makers have a reputation for quality work.

Two kids, Ellis and Nick, take a motorboat out to an island in the Arkansas part of the Mississippi river.  They are adventuring to check out a boat that somehow found itself in a tree. They find the boat but they also find a man named “Mud” (this is not a made up name apparently as all the other characters in the story call him that too) who is hiding out there away from the authorities. Mud (played by Matthew McConaughey asks for help and weaves a story about killing a man out of love for his woman Juniper (played by Reese Witherspoon). Ellis, whose parents are talking of divorce in the background of home scenes, decides to help Mud. Because as he explains at one points these two love each other. The kid does not do a whole lot of explaining his actions, which is accurate as he is just a kid after all and probably wouldn’t be able to articulate what he wanted to say even if he wanted too. The other adults in the story however take notice of his odd behavior and sneaking about and provide many opportunities for advice. The advice varies of course but most of it is about love and it is as helpful as basically anything you can tell a fourteen year old in vague, uncertain, and metaphorical terms (the funniest advice comes from Michael Shannon character, uncle to Nick. He uses a ceiling fan he dredged up from the Mississippi river to make his point). Some things, kids just need to figure out for themselves.

It is a good question as to what Ellis (played by Tye Sheridan) actually learns from the experiences he has in this movie other than women are unpredictable and it (maybe?) is not a good idea to fight with other guys over them.  I am going to keep from talking too much about the storyline here because there isn’t much more to the movie than the limited twists to the plot. I could talk a bit about the performances but I couldn’t really propound on the specialness of them that much. My best observation I think would be how Tye Sheridan must have a helluva right hand because he keeps landing punches in the faces of guys twice his size. It looks a little awkward because he has to reach up so high. I wouldn’t think the jabs would have much impact but they keep on doing so. I suppose I could also mention that the Mississippi river looks pretty neat.

You what this movie reminds me of? Those classic Criterion Collection European films. Ones like “The 400 Blows” and “Au Revoir Enfants.” These are movies that my book “The 1001 Movies You Need to See Before You Die” keeps telling me to see, but for the life of me I cannot understand what makes these movies great. I understand why they aren’t bad, but why would they be great? They accomplish perfectly what they set out to accomplish but in the end it is exactly what it is, not much.  

It is a sort of critical paradox that the more a movie tries to do, the more ways it can fail. I think that may be the reason why ‘Mud’ which does is a very good not so ambitious movie can score around 98% on Rotten Tomatoes while Michael Bay’s ‘Pain and Gain’ and probably Baz Luhrman’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ (I say probably because I have yet to see it, will so this weekend) are hovering around 50% even though they are very dense movies that aiming to accomplish quite a lot.

Take Shelter (5/5 Stars)

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Have you ever noticed that the easiest way to get a person to talk/confess/give up secrets in a movie is not to beat them up or threaten them? It is instead to bring into the room a loved one and threaten to hurt them instead. The scene usually goes like this.

Bad Guy: You will tell me what the secret code?

Good Guy: What are you going to do, kill me? Go ahead and do it. I’m not afraid of death.

Bad Guy: Oh I’m not that naïve. That’s why I don’t plan on killing you. I plan on killing her.

(Bad guy henchmen bring in abnormally attractive love interest bound and wailing)

Hot Girl: Don’t do it, don’t tell them the secret!

Bad Guy: I will count to three

(He points a gun at the hot girl)

Bad Guy: One….Two… (cocks pistol)

Mr. Bond: Okay okay, I’ll talk, I’ll talk!

Bad Guy: I thought you would, hahaha!

This is a cliché, but as with every cliché, it rubs up against a fundamental truth. Good people (i.e. the heroes of movies) don’t want to see the innocent get hurt. Such a concept scares them even more than themselves getting hurt or even being killed. And it is this truth that “Take Shelter” takes advantage of to great effect. Where most horror movies mine their scares from anatomical dissections, this movie simply presents an ordinary good person and imposes upon him terrible dreams of poison rain, mysterious bad men, vicious animals, and other forces that would harm, perhaps even kill, his loving family. This is a very scary movie and one of the best of the year. 

Curtis, played by Michael Shannon, has a loving family, a beautiful wife, played by Jessica Chastain, and a little daughter. He has a good job in construction. It provides him with a decent enough salary to afford a nice house, a vacation to Myrtle Beach every year, and a medical plan. And then one day Curtis has a vivid nightmare. There are gigantic storm clouds on the horizon. It starts raining a brownish kind of poison water. The family dog goes insane and attacks him. When he wakes up in horror the next morning, he can still feel the bite marks in his arm. What’s more is the sense of dread he feels in his bones. Something bad is coming.

Curtis has reason to worry. His family has had a history of mental illness. His mother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was ten. She left him in the car at a supermarket and never came back. Such a thing happening to Curtis reasonably frightens the hell out of him. His family needs him. His daughter needs the medical plan. They still have loans on the house. Gas prices are through the roof. Either his dreams are portentous and a huge storm is indeed coming or he is going crazy. Curtis decides to prepare for both. He becomes obsessed with rebuilding the tornado shelter in the backyard and seeks help from a counselor about his nightmares and day delusions. There is a great scene where he walks into the counselor’s office, and calmly explains that he took the quiz in the back of their clinical magazine, and has found that he has 5 of the 12 symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. All he needs is two more to be diagnosed. Please doctor, what do I need to do to stop this before his wife, his daughter, all his friends, and the whole town figures out what is going on. He doesn’t want his wife to leave him and take his daughter. That would be a reasonable thing to do if they found out he was crazy. Curtis has so much to lose and the coming storm is threatening it all. It is hard to think of anybody conveying this more effectively than Michael Shannon does here. Shannon is not an attractive leading man. He has the height, face, and demeanor of a bouncer, elite soldier, or killer assassin character. To see this type of stoicism fall apart at the seams makes the journey that much more frightening. I’ve said before that it is rare when movies allow men to be brave because being brave requires an acknowledgement of vulnerability and that sort of thing is not considered masculine. This movie is the exception. What a brave man this Curtis is trying to be. Michael Shannon deserves an Oscar Nomination for the performance. 

This movie is the second feature of a young director named Jeff Nichols. Nichols’ first feature, Shotgun Stories, also starred Michael Shannon. It is a very good partnership. “Shotgun Stories” was an impressive movie, like most first movies of great directors, for what it accomplished with a budget of almost nothing. In “Take Shelter,” Nichols is aided with a little bit more funding and it has allowed him to add the special effects necessary for some serious storm clouds. They are threatening but never in an over the top distracting way. This movie is put together with such simplicity in theme, camera style, and plot that it is almost surprising how effective it is. Like a Hemingway novel, its effectiveness comes from the inherent truth within the frame. The fears are universal and the dread is real. We know that gas prices will never go down to what they once were. We worry about our risky home loans. We don’t want to lose our jobs. We need our health and our health care desperately. Freakish weather, due to climate change, is here to stay and only going to get worse. The sense that everything is getting worse and that times may never be as good as they once were is a palpable feeling in the air. If people one hundred years from now wanted to know what it felt like to live in 2011, they could do a lot worse then, “Take Shelter.” It is a movie of our time, told perfectly. It should be nominated for Best Picture.

Try to go and see it in a theater if you can. It should be perfect for Halloween.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (4/5 Stars) December 20, 2009

Iguana Law in Full Effect

Watching Bad Lieutenant, I found myself unable to guess where the story was going. Being an avid movie watcher, not knowing what would happen next has become rarer over the years. Most movies follow a certain genre outline and then vary on the theme. I found no such outline here. The dialogue, the camera shots, the characters, the locations all felt like they had been built up organically. Of course I never saw the movie that this movie is based on. Maybe it isn't as original as I think it is. I am at least sure though that there weren't any long shots of iguanas in the first one. Surely that is a signature touch from the director Werner Herzog, a man who dearly loves his animals. (Grizzly Man, Aguirre Wrath of God)

Nicolas Cage stars as a newly promoted lieutenant. We first see him being honored for saving the life of an about to drown prisoner in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. During the ordeal he hurts his back. The doctor informs that he will be experiencing back pain. How long? he asks. He is told, for the rest of his life. The pain is so bad that after awhile the painkillers just won’t do. The lieutenant becomes addicted to cocaine, a substance he spends a good amount of movie time trying to figure out how to get more of. One way is to stake out a nightclub and shake down especially doped up people leaving from it in the name of the law. What a bad guy. 

But this movie isn’t just about addiction. Fifteen minutes into the film the lieutenant is put on a penta-homicide. A drug dealer named Big Fate (played by Xzibit) murdered five people in a house in New Orleans ninth ward execution style. Then there’s other subplots involving Cage’s girlfriend prostitute (Eva Mendes) troubles with a local crime lord, Cage’s several overdue gambling debts Cage, and difficulties in getting a witness to the murder to testify. It’s a lot on the plate for a constantly doped up cop to deal with. 

This is the first real great role that Cage has had in a long while. It’s the sort of performance that usually would get attention (he’s stooped over, high on crack, sporting an accent, and is way over the top!) if Nicolas Cage hadn’t already been honored for that sort of performance before (Leaving Las Vegas, that time with alcohol). 

The plot twists and turns and slowly but surely the cop gets deeper and deeper into a massive hole he’s digging for himself. Along the way we meet several familiar faces in supporting roles. Val Kilmer as his partner, Michael Shannon as the property room attendant, Fairuza Balk as a lady traffic cop, and Jennifer Coolidge as his beer guzzling mother in law. These are the type of character actors you like in every role you see them in and wish they had better and bigger roles in other movies. It’s always a pleasure to watch them interact with each other. 

And then what do you know, there is a somewhat happy ending, which possibly could happen in real life but almost never does in the movies. Why not? Because there is usually such a thing as movie justice. If a character has been bad the entire time, even a main character, he either repents, gets his comeuppance, or tragically receives both. Here that doesn’t really happen.

This is the first Herzog movie I have reviewed but it certainly isn’t the first I’ve seen. I have also seen Grizzly Man, Rescue Dawn, Fitzcarraldo, and Aguirre The Wrath of God. As different as all of those movies are, they all take place in an unforgiving world where men suffer at the uncaring whims of mother nature. This nihilism is sort of on anti-display here. The bad lieutenant gets away with everything and even gets to save the day while doing it. In short, he gets very lucky. Nature in the form of soulless crocs, iguanas, and other coldblooded reptiles simply look on. It sort of makes you feel like going to an aquarium, stare at the fish, and wonder in awe as to what the hell the world is all about.

Revolutionary Road 03/22/09 (4/5 Stars)

Call it the feminist argument against Suburbia even though there is no explicit statement to that effect. What this movie illustrates though is why and how the suburban housewife becomes desperate. If I recall correctly, this is the second movie in the year 2008 that Kate Winslett killed herself in. And if I’m not mistaken, she has received a Golden Globe for this one and an Oscar and another Golden Globe for the other (The Reader). Surely, this will spawn jokes about actresses jumping at roles in which they die tragically in order to bait the Oscars. Hilary Swank has gone by that way twice already (Million Dollar Baby, Boys Don’t Cry). Anyway back to Revolutionary Road. I will admit that I liked this film, enjoyed it even. But that isn’t because it’s warm or funny or romantic. I liked it because it makes manifest in artistic form everything I believe about suburbia, in that, it describes it as empty and hopeless. This movie is preaching to the choir. I already thought that such a story was completely possible, and very rational. Call this movie Max Propaganda. I have had ideas of buying the DVD and hosting an anti-suburbia party in my New York City apartment. In it, we would play ‘Revolutionary Road’ on mute in the living room and celebrate the fact that we don’t live in such desperate, empty, and hopeless places. I really want to watch this movie in Paris. See the film, you’ll know what I mean. 
Anyway, now really back to Revolutionary Road. It concerns the volatile marriage of Frank and April Wheeler (played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslett respectively). They live in a suburb. Every morning Frank gets into the only car they own and commutes into the city to work at a job he hates. April stays at home, and stranded in the morass of nothingness that is suburbia (and with no way out because Frank took the only car to work) she does household chores and slowly goes insane with boredom. There is a particularly good shot of her taking out the trash and standing silently in her driveway looking down Revolutionary Road. You would expect tumbleweed to blow through the place is so dead. The only respite she seems to have from this existence is when a neighbor stops by. Then she has someone to drink coffee with for about five minutes. Other than that, she spends the day completely alone. After a couple of fights, April comes up with a crazy idea. Why don’t they completely ditch the godforsaken place and move to Paris. She would get a job and he would have time to find himself. Frank thinks about it and says that he will. April falls in love with him again because he seems to understand.
But does he really? There is this idea out there about suburbia in general. That the way it is set up and structured is fundamentally unfair to women. The effect of its design nullifies the responsibilities of the man to his family. He commutes to a distant place where he has free rein to do whatever he wants (Frank in this movie has an affair). In contrast, the wife is stuck at home and forced to raise the kids on her own. Is it a control thing? Did men (all the city planners were men) purposely design a system of living that gave themselves freedom to screw around while encapsulating the women in isolated places, thereby constricting their freedom. Whether there was malicious intent or not, the result is a system where women are deprived of the ability to take care of themselves and thus are dependent on their husbands for everything: money, shelter, and especially social connections. So when Frank decides not to go to Paris, April, of course, cannot also. Is it any wonder that the women of the baby boom generation, which grew up in these homes, took their college educations, got jobs, and exploded the divorce rate in the seventies? Surely they must have noted in some abstract way that the life of a suburban housewife is some sort of scam. 
Frank’s character in this story is given the benefit of the doubt. Once he is offered a raise at his job and April becomes pregnant, he thinks that the choice to stay has a certain amount of logic to it. Like many men, he doesn’t get why April would be unhappy. They have a beautiful house, nice kids, and all this stuff. And if she really feels bad about it, they now have enough money to send her to a shrink. This conveniently forgets the idea that stuff doesn’t make up for a lack of a life and a semblance of independence. (If that were true there would be a hell of a lot more women becoming nuns.) But whatever, you know, I suppose that’s a hard concept to grasp what with all that American Dream house with a white picket fence and two cars propaganda garbage. 
The director Sam Mendes has made good films about suburban malaise before (American Beauty) but they were never as biting as this. I loved a few scenes that brought back vivid memories of my own experience. A father asks his kids what is on TV and is answered with vacant stares directed at static, the whole presentation aspect of playing house: where so much energy is expended to impress the rare guest, and when the couple gets double parked when they visit a local bar they can’t leave because the local bar is too far away from their home. Just the overall quietness of the entire thing, where nothing is happening, nothing has happened, and nothing will happen was eerily familiar. There is possibly no truthful way to tell a story set in suburbia without it being boring. That’s why very few movies are set there. 
Michael Shannon got an Oscar nomination for his role as a crazy man that basically reiterates the only sane way to look at Suburbia. (See my comments above). For once I would love to see a rational person say these things, but I guess a mental patient is better than nothing. He does a very good job. He’s one of those actors you wish were better looking and thus would get better roles. See him in ‘Shotgun Stories’ if you want to see that guy do some great work in a leading role.

World Trade Center 10/27/06

I have always been an Oliver Stone fan, from the first time I watched Platoon and JFK. After seeing those I quickly raided Blockbuster of everything Oliver Stone: Wall Street, Midnight Express, Scarface, Nixon, Natural Born Killers. Ive even seen Any Given Sunday and somewhat like Alexander. This movie is so different from the rest of those movies. So different.
There was somewhat a consensus when this movie was first mentioned that it shouldnt be made. It was too early and please anybody but Oliver Stone. A gifted filmmaker yes, but his works are great thrillers that include angry monologues, sensationalist spectacles, and controversial topics. How can that type of filmmaker be trusted with September 11th. Most people thought it couldnt. I can truly say Oliver has proved everyone wrong.
This movies main feeling isnt fear or anger or pathos of any kind. What permeates this movie is love. Its a whole big fat basket of good American apple pie and Jesus love. He doesnt show planes hitting the towers, he doesnt mention terrorists at all. He limits the movies view toward those that responded to the attacks with only the desire to help. The most cynical piece of language uttered is the word "bastards." This is said by a cop in Sheboygan, Wisconsin who afterwards took his whole company to New York, set up a barbeque at ground zero, and fed everyone.
Nicolas Cages performance is also a bit of a triumph. It probably wasnt easy creating a character who doesnt move for that last hour and a half of the film. 
I assume that every character in this film is an actual person. That makes me proud to be an American. I felt proud when the cops stepped forward to go into the building and try to save some of the people even though the sight of the fire was especially frightening. There is also a great scene in which Jimeno is carted out of the hole and there is a great line of firemen and cops there to help move him quickly and safely to the hospital. This is the type of goodness that moves people. I would guess that most people who cry at this movie are probably doing so because they are touched by the charity of those involved in the aftermath not because of the horrible acts that occured beforehand.