The Green Knight (5/5 Stars)

 

“The Green Knight” is an adaptation of a medieval poem popularly known as “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” I read part of it in my high school English class and in anticipation of seeing this movie, reread the entirety of it. The poem’s origins are obscure, its language long forgotten. The version we have with us today comes from the skillful translation from that great professor of languages, J.R.R. Tolkein. The fact that something written in English in England would need to be translated grants the subject matter an ancient solemnity. After all, if this is the only thing that still survives from a time when the earth was understood through magic and religion, it feels like it should hold profound and time honored wisdom.

Mystical wonder and ancient solemnity is the mood and atmosphere that screenwriter and director David Lowery has set out to achieve here and I would argue, succeeds admirably at establishing. More than anything, “The Green Knight” is an achievement in mood and atmosphere. The colors are lush, the soundtrack evocative, the language profound and poetical. David Lowery has set out to tell a mysterious tale and succeeds perhaps too much. I doubt anyone will completely understand what is happening the first time around (what with the giants and spell sashes and talking foxes). I have seen the movie twice. The second time I saw it with subtitles which helped quite a bit. When the language has that Olde Worlde feel to it, it can be easy to miss words and phrases. Does the movie actually have a point? Yes, I believe it does. The original poem had a definite moral to it made explicit by a verbal explanation of it at the end. This movie inverts the ending and through the magic of movie montage expresses the same moral, but without an explicit explanation. Its actually an ingenious adaptation of the poem in that respect.

Sir Gawain is not a knight. He is called a “sir” because of his noble blood, being nephew to the great King Arthur, the legend that pulled sword from stone. Besides his title though, Gawain is a bit of a letdown. He spends his time in brothels and taverns and does not appear to have any particular ambition. When King Arthur, at a Christmas Party, asks Sir Gawain to tell a tale of himself so that he may know him better, Gawain thinks about it and then relates that he does not have a story to tell. Fortuitously (but perhaps not coincidentally) a tale presents itself at the Christmas Party. The Party is interrupted by an unearthly knight made of green bark. He asks for a challenger to his game. He will let whomever takes up his challenge to strike him if they promise to meet him at the Green Chapel one year hence so that the Green Knight may give back the blow. Gawain takes up this challenge and, rashly bowing to peer pressure, summarily strikes off the Green Knight’s head. Gawain perhaps thought that by beheading and thereby killing the Green Knight he would not have to make good on his end of the bargain. Not so, the Green Knight picks up his severed head, tells Gawain he will meet him in a year, and leaves. It is a great scene, both an effective and faithful adaptation of the same scene in the poem.

The rest of the movie concerns Gawain’s deliberations in whether he should go to the Green Chapel at all (he does not have to) and the quest itself whereupon many strange and dangerous happenings occur. What is the Green Knight? Well, the most apparent metaphor of the Green Knight is death. Less apparent, and equally important, the Green Knight symbolizes the inevitable reactions to a person’s actions (death being the ultimate reaction to a person’s life). By living up to his end of the bargain and facing the Green Knight on the terms he has already accepted, Gawain is taking responsibility for his actions. The word used in this movie for why Gawain does or does not take responsibility is “honor”. Honor, explains Gawain at one point in the movie (and perhaps still not understanding what he is saying), is the reasons why a knight does what he does. Under this interpretation, the movie can mean almost anything from keeping one’s promises, to being faithful to romantic partners, to man’s stewardship of the natural environment. All of this is tied into the concept of honor presented here as the simple act of showing up to face one’s fate without excuses, without spells, without flinching.

Sir Gawain is played by Dev Patel that ambassador of color-blind casting. Dev is British born but of entirely Indian heritage. Here he is in England at the time when only Anglos and Saxons were on the island. It is kind of illuminating as to how little of an issue this is. As I brought up before in the “Personal Life of David Copperfield” (which also stars Dev Patel as a distinctly not-Indian character) since the movie takes place in a time of homogeneous racial identity, the race of the particular actors matters less to how the characters interact with each other. Everyone has the same Olde World accent and none of the characters’ choices take race into account. Secondly, is the otherwordly cinematography of the movie. David Lowery leans into the natural in this movie and presents everything in a lush verdant tone. The greens are dark green. The sky at dusk has an orange hue. The movie’s locations do not quite look like England. Actually, they look sort of like India (a country known for Green and Orange, take a look at its flag) and the color palette of Dev’s skin fits in quite well with the color palette of the cinematography. Third, Dev Patel is a very good actor and performs the role admirably. He just has the right look while wearing chain mail, sporting a kingly beard, and wielding a longsword.

Filling out the cast is Sean Harris as King Arthur. He performs the role like Marlon Brandon in the Godfather, with no need to speak louder than a whisper to get all the people in the room to listen. From a very good movie called “The Witch” produced by A24 which also produced this movie, we have Kate Dickie as Queen Guinivere and Ralph Ineson as the Green Knight. These two actors look right at home in the ancient past. Performing dual roles is Alicia Vikander as Gawain’s romantic interest in his brothel travails as well as The Lady to Joel Edgerton’s The Lord. These two prompt Gawain with another game before his appointment at the Green Chapel. Finally there is Barry Keoghan, his sweatiness, who shows up to do something dastardly in the intervening chapters.

“The Green Knight” is a very good movie that has something to say, albeit in sometimes obscure and round about ways. Like reading an old book with strange language, it may take more than usual effort to glean all of its secrets, but like taking the time to understand Shakespeare, it is worth going to it rather than having it come to you in a more modern updated form. Sometimes the place to see something new is the long forgotten past.

Black Widow (3/5 Stars)

 

QANON Marvel.

What a relief. The last movie I had seen in a theater was the underwhelming Wendy in early 2020. It was good to be back and watching a popcorn blockbuster no less, Marvel’s long delayed “Black Widow” starring Scarlett Johansson as the title hero. Critics deride these movies, but having been deprived of watching them on the big screen in a dark room with a bunch of other people for so long, their pleasures are more apparent. I wanted action, funny quips, ridiculous set pieces, and just enough pathos to be interested in the characters. I got that. “Black Widow” is a mediocre Marvel movie about one of their lesser superheroes. That’s fine. Marvel understands (unlike say D.C. sometimes) that not every movie should have apocalyptic stakes. After the end of the Infinity Saga, it was a good idea to scale back the ambition and start anew. “Black Widow” does just that, ridding itself of aliens and magical superpowers, and focusing on martial arts and relatively plausible special effects. Not that a flying fortress is plausible its just more plausible than an infinity stone.

“Black Widow” holds a strange place in the pantheon of Marvel movies. It has been released after the end of the Infinity Saga but contains the origin story of a character that was first introduced in “Iron Man 2” and that has appeared multiple times, with major roles in the Captain America and Avengers films. In the last Avengers film, Endgame, the character died. The main plot of this story takes place between “Captain America: Civil War” and “Avengers: Infinity War”. After taking the time to explain all of this, I can now inform you that it doesn’t really matter. Somehow any standalone Marvel movie can exist by itself. There are references to other events in other movies but I don’t think you really need to know what they are to get what is happening immediately on screen.

Black Widow’s story may be summarized as follows. She has no biological family. She was kidnapped by the Soviet government at birth to be a part of a program that trains/brainwashes girls to become deadly assassins called Black Widows. Her first mission occurred when she was ten (give or take?) and placed in a fake family of other spies that acted as a sleeper cell in the USA. After that mission ended, the family was separated, Black Widow did a bunch of stuff, defected to the Avengers, and after betraying the USA in “Captain America: Civil War” (go Team Iron Man) headed back to eastern Europe to lie low for a bit. There she is contacted by her old “family” and pursues revenge against the man and/or organization that indoctrinated her.

Her family is made up of talented actors that make their first appearances in the Marvel universe. First is David Harbour playing Alexie aka The Red Guardian who was Natasha’s fake father. He is the Soviet version of Captain America, except the government got jealous of his abilities and imprisoned him in a gulag. Then there is Florence Pugh (graduating from great movies to blockbusters) who plays Yelena Belova. She is Natasha’s fake sister that has recently taken the antitoxin that reverses the brainwashing. Finally there is Rachel Weisz who plays Melina, Natasha’s fake mother. She is the scientist behind the brainwashing serum. In one scene they have a fake family dinner and engage in fake family fights. It’s interesting to watch.

The evil conspiracy herein deserves to be delved into a little bit. There is this secret Soviet organization that is so powerful that it has outlived the Soviet state. It kidnaps and trains girls from a young age to be martial arts assassins and employs them covertly around the world. Such girls work for shady elites that use their skills at infiltration and coercion to control foreign governments. Does this sound at all like QANON to anybody? There are distinct parallels. QANON says that the world is governed by a secretive elite that worships Satan and runs a global child-trafficking scheme. The only thing really missing here in Black Widow is the pedophilia. The absence of sex doesn’t quite make sense (and I believe Black Widow was introduced way back when with super sexual wiles) because if an evil super secret organization is going to take the time and effort to kidnap and brainwash girls exclusive to boys, why would they use them only for violence. But hey, Marvel is a Disney corporation. Otherwise the sheer ridiculousness of the evil scheme is on the same level as QANON. I wonder sometimes whether a company like Marvel should exert some more thought in how it constructs the reality and philosophical outlook of its blockbusters given just how many people around the world are bound to see its movies. Have you seen the trailer for “The Eternals”. Isn’t Marvel basically creating a new religion? Is it okay for this company to make and market nonsense to hundreds of millions of people? I think it probably is okay, by the way, I’m just asking out of curiosity.

A notable absence from “Black Widow” is any preaching about feminism. This is very welcome. It could have been done in all sorts of places, but instead of the movie “telling” us all about it, it instead just “showed” us and had enough trust that the audience would get it. This is the first time I have seen in which thirty girls in a room perform a martial arts battle royale brawl. I had fun watching it and was grateful that no-one in the movie told me that I should have fun watching it. The movie was directed by Cate Shortland who has proved handily that a woman can make a corporate work of art bereft of individual style as well as any man. She’s got a long and lucrative career ahead of her in this business.

The stupidest thing in the movie is its main set piece. There is plenty of talk in the movie about how the secret organization cannot be found and is not on any map. Turns out, people can’t find it because its a sky fortress that, I don’t know, hides behind clouds or something. It is at least nice to know that our enemies are just as capable of wasting a gigantic amount of taxpayer money on ridiculous bullshit just like the Americans did by building that flying aircraft carrier in “The Avengers”. But I am being unfair here. As it concerns the flying fortress, Marvel follows that sage movie wisdom of “Bridge on the River Kwai”: If you build it, it must be destroyed. The best action in this movie involves Black Widow’s aerial escape from an exploding sky fortress. I must admit, it was pretty cool.

The last thing to mention is Scarlett Johannson’s lawsuit against Marvel. Her deal involved her getting a portion of the box office receipts of “Black Widow”, which would have ran in theaters for many months before being released on DVDs or streaming. However, due to COVID-19 pandemic, Marvel changed the plans for the movie’s release, making it available to stream on Disney+ on the same day of its wide release in theaters. On Disney+, one can rent “Black Widow” for thirty dollars and presumably Scarlett does not get any portion that. It seems to me like she has a case and since the damages may very well be in the millions of dollars, it warranted a lawsuit. I would be very interested to hear how this one turns out.

OSCARS 2021

As I mentioned before in a blog post, 2020 was the worst year for movies in my lifetime. First, there were fewer movies. Second, you could not see those movies in their ideal setting, a movie theater. Third, counterintuitively, since movies were not in theaters, they may have found themselves behind paywalls for a streaming site, which made them harder to see. In finally, the world of criticism continues to fracturing under the weight of ever increasing content making it harder for a cultural consensus to form as to what movies are worth watching. Still, I saw some very good movies this last year. Below are my picks. Bold denotes a winner

Like the Academy, I'm considering movies that did not come out in theaters for the first time. So the HBO movie "Bad Education" is nominated when otherwise it would not have been considered. I probably will keep with that trend moving forward. HBO movies are of significant quality.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Another Round

Judas and the Black Messiah

Minari

Palm Springs

Sound of Metal

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

The Father

First Cow

The Invisible Man

The Personal History of David Copperfield

Nomadland

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

Emma

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Pinocchio

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Emma

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

Mank

The Personal History of David Copperfield

Pinocchio

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

Emma

The Father

Mank

Tenet

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

The Invisible Man

The Personal History of David Copperfield

Tenet

BEST SOUND EDITING

First Cow

Mank

Soul

Sound of Metal

BEST MUSIC SCORE

First Cow

Mank

Minari

Soul 

Wendy

BEST USE OF A SONG IN A MOVIE

Another Round: "What a Life"

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga - "Song-Along"

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga - "Husavik"

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom: "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Sound of Metal: "Cet Amour Me Tue"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Allison Janney - Bad Education

Amanda Seyfried - Mank

Olivia Colman - The Father

Olivia Cooke - Sound of Metal

Yuh-Jung Youn - Minari

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Ben Whishaw - The Personal History of David Copperfield

Charles Dance - Mank

Dan Stevens - Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

Mark Gatiss - The Father

Paul Raci - Sound of Metal

BEST ACTRESS

Viola Davis - Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Frances McDormand - Nomadland

Elisabeth Moss - The Invisible Man

Anna Taylor Joy - Emma

Krisin Wiig - Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

BEST ACTOR

Riz Ahmed - Sound of Metal

Anthony Hopkins - The Father

John Magaro - First Cow

Mads Mikkelsen - Another Round

Steven Yuen - Minari

BEST FILM EDITING

The Father

First Cow

Mank

Nomadland

Sound of Metal

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

First Cow

Mank

Nomadland

The Personal History of David Copperfield

Pinocchio

BEST DIRECTOR

Lee Isaac Chung - Minari

Darius Marder - Sound of Metal

Kelly Reichardt - First Cow

Chloe Zhao - Nomadland

Thomas Vinterberg - Another Round

BEST DOCUMENTARY

Collective

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

Another Round

Collective

BEST PICTURE

Another Round

The Father

First Cow

Palm Springs

The Personal History of David Copperfield

Minari

Nomadland

Sound of Metal

Also here is a picture from Palm Springs, most 2020 movie?

Judas and the Black Messiah (3/5 Stars)

 

There is an inherent conflict in the mythology of the Black Panthers. Its supporters want it to be an important group and at the same time deems its enemies as overzealous. The title of this movie, directed by Shaka King, is illustrative. The Black Messiah is allegedly a descriptive title given by J. Edgar Hoover, then director of the FBI, to Fred Hampton, the leader of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers. Such a title imposes an importance on Fred Hampton akin to Jesus Christ. This movie wants you to think of Fred Hampton as an important, potentially dangerous, man. It also wants you to believe the FBI was wrong to treat him as such.

What I knew about the Black Panthers walking into this movie was scant. First, their name post-dates the Marvel comic Superhero by a few years. That is probably coincidental. Second, they were heavily armed and “patrolled” neighborhoods with the vague mission of defending the residents therein from the police. Third, they had some ancillary connection to the ideology of Malcolm X.

I was wrong about the third one. Whereas Malcolm X was staunch in his belief that black people had the right to defend themselves, with violence if necessary, I don’t recall him preaching civil war in his book. He seemed to be more interested in black self-reliance, going so far as to advocate segregation. To put it another way, he seemed less interested in affecting the white man and more interested in the white man not affecting the black man.

The Black Panthers, at least the Fred Hampton led ones in Chicago, are Marxists. They are preaching a racialized Marxist ideology. The movie does not shy away from this. Fred Hampton preaches revolution from the stage, and because he uses the terminology of Marxism, it is no metaphor. One listening to it would be justified in believing that Fred Hampton means to bring about a violent revolution, starting with the overthrow of the Chicago Police Department. The movie believes that the FBI thought that.

The movie makes a big deal about Black Panthers’ charitable works in the community. Apparently they ran food services for hungry children. This is hardly relevant as to whether the FBI deems them dangerous and no excuse for them to be considered harmless. Many dictators, gangsters, and totalitarian governments give away bread and circuses to the poor. It is not something only good and peaceful people do. It can be noted however that when good and peaceful people do it (like say the church) they don’t also walk around heavily armed.

Still they probably were mostly harmless. They were not, as argued by an FBI agent using a false equivalency, like the Ku Klux Klan. The Black Panthers did not have the same amount of numbers, had little to no political support in any level of government, and although they had guns, had no knowledge of tactics. A commendable thing about Director Shaka King movie is that even though he is clearly sympathetic to the Black Panthers, his movie is still honest enough in its portrayal to allow them to perform acts of extraordinary stupidity. At one point, after a Black Panther has initiated a shoot out with the police, several police cars nonchalantly stake out the Black Panther headquarters. One particular cop taunts the Panthers with a megaphone. A member of the Black Panthers reacts to this by opening the window and brandishing a shotgun. What results is the world’s most predictable shootout with the world’s most predictable ending: the cops win. What was the plan? Did the Black Panthers really believe that a show of force would intimidate the cops? Did they think that once the shooting started, that the cops would give up and go away?

(For all the bad things said about the moral impact of the video game Grand Theft Auto, one particular mechanic of the game should be taken to heart by all would be revolutionaries: Once you shoot a cop, the only option is to run. Because the cops will keep coming and coming until you are dead, at least in America.)

Fred Hampton is played by Daniel Kaluuya. The title “Judas” is Bill O’Neal, played by Lakeith Stanfield, the Black Panther head of security and also an FBI informant. Interestingly, although Hampton and O’Neal are the characters with the most screentime in the movie respectively, both Kaluuya and Stanfield were nominated for Oscars in the Supporting Actor category, Kaluuya winning. Kaluuya is a fine actor and Stanfield is a favorite of mine. Having said that, both are miscast. Fred Hampton was 21 at the time of his assassination (Kaluuya is 32). Bill O’Neal was 20 at the time (Stanfield is 30). The actors bring a gravitas to their roles that is misleading and blinds the audience to reasons for their behavior that would be obvious if younger actors had played the roles.

For example, Bill O’Neal’s career as an FBI informant started when he was a teenager. He had been caught impersonating a federal officer while trying to steal cars when he was 17. If you wanted a good reason why he was so impressionable and would betray all the Panthers for steak dinners, money, a car, and a business, all you need to know is that he is just a stupid kid. As for Hampton, it is illustrative of the actual pedigree of the Black Panthers (as opposed to their mythologized status as a dangerous terrorist group) that the head of the chapter is barely old enough to drink alcohol. In his wisdom he appointed a paid informant as head of security. These were kids playing dress-up, wearing silly fatigues and berets, walking around with guns they hardly knew how to use.

Really, the main character of this story is Bill O’Neal’s FBI handler Roy Mitchell (played by Jesse Plemons). He, along with the rest of the FBI are the adults in the room. They are the ones with the moral dilemma on their hands, the ones that have agency. The Black Panthers are outmaneuvered and outgunned at every turn, their ranks rife with informants. The movie ends with what can be categorized as an act of war by the FBI against the Black Panthers. It was a surprise attack in the dead of night with overwhelming force, no due process, ending in the assassination of an unconscious Fred Hampton. When such tactics are used against citizens, that’s called fascism. Who is the real Judas here? It’s the FBI and they betrayed all of us.

Godzilla v. Kong (3/5 Stars)

 

Godzilla v. Kong is the fourth film of the so-called Monster-verse that started with the 2014 Movie Godzilla. I reviewed that original movie, gave it two stars out of five, and did not see the next two movies: Kong: Skull Island (2017) and Godzilla: King of Monsters (2019).

My 2014 review is full of snark and outrage about the amount of casual death and destruction in a PG-13 movie. This movie is not all that different from the 2014 movie, but my general attitude I believe has changed and for several reasons I enjoyed the latest movie far more.

First, the pandemic. When I saw Godzilla in 2014, a blockbuster special effects bonanza was something that seemed to come out every single week. The prospect of giant things fighting each other in a city was not particularly unique. Fast-forward to April 2021 and I had not seen something so big and dumb in more than a year. Its amazing how fresh a Godzilla v. Kong movie can be after a year bereft of mind-numbing spectacle. I am so done with this whole pandemic thing. Godzilla v. Kong, reminded me of normal life. I enjoyed it just for the sake of nostalgia

Second, I watched the movie on HBOMax with a friend on a Zoom call and we were talking through the whole thing. We made jokes about how stupid all the people were. For instance, there is this character, played by Brian Tyree Henry, who is attempting to steal official secrets (about Godzilla) from a top-secret military base. He has a podcast about his efforts in which he talks about what he just did and what he plans to do next. We had a spirited discussion about whether the movie was stupider for having a character his broadcast efforts at industrial sabotage on a podcast, or to have this stupid character somehow succeed in his industrial sabotage (along with a couple of plucky teenage detectives) because no one at the top-secret military base figures out how to stop him.

Third, I had money on this movie. The marketing materials stated, nay promised, that “One Will Fall”. So clearly, this means that either Godzilla is going to kill Kong or vice versa. Of course, the last time such a promise was made in Batman v. Superman neither died because a bigger jerk showed up in the end that the titular characters had to unite to defeat. But everyone hated that, right? The powers that be would not pull that shit again, right? Right? I put $25 dollars on Godzilla. I figured he had armor, could swim, and had a ranged attack. No way Kong survives. Well, they got me good. Neither Godzilla nor Kong die because MechaGodzilla shows up and Godzilla and Kong have to unite in order to defeat MechaGodzilla. Total bullshit. I had a lot of fun complaining about broken promises. Oops, I forgot to include a spoiler warning.

It is to this movie’s credit that it understands the basic pull of the Godzilla and King Kong franchise, which is to have big monsters fight each other in close city centers. Although there are plenty of human characters, their character development is minimal, and really is limited to getting the movie from one battle location to another. This is fine because what I really want to see is Kong punching Godzilla in the face. I don’t need any human drama distract from Kong punching Godzilla in the face. Well, I got what I wanted. Three stars.

 

Sound of Metal (5/5 Stars)

 

It may seem like an odd comparison but watching “Sound of Metal” reminded me of watching the science fiction movie “The Martian” starring Matt Damon. When I reviewed that movie, I remarked that narrative stories usually derive conflict from characters: antagonists, love triangles, class warfare or crime, kiss kiss bang bang, but that movie had no conflict between characters. The problem was scientific (Matt Damon marooned on Mars) and all the characters were aligned in helping him solve this scientific problem (how to survive for a particular amount of time before rescue). The “Sound of Metal” is like that. It stars Riz Ahmed as Ruben and Olivia Cooke as Lou. Ruben and Lou are members of a heavy metal band. She plays guitar and sings. Ruben plays the drums. They are doing well, touring the country by day and playing at night, until one day, just like that, while perusing a record store, Ruben loses his hearing. It is stunning scene, made brilliantly real by the tour de force sound design of Nicolas Becker (give him all the Oscars) which (and I looked this up) mimics what losing your hearing actually sounds like (in Ruben’s case he loses the higher frequencies first, resulting in the ominous low thrumming sounds of the lower frequencies. But after this, and throughout the rest of the movie, there is not a single character that is not united in helping Ruben with his problem. Music was his life and the basis of his most important relationships. He has lost it and with that a host of other mental and emotional problems automatically crop up, not the least of which is his history as an addict.

Of course, “The Martian” was about engineers solving engineering problems. One of Ruben’s first steps, an incredibly wise one, is to call up his AA sponsor for advice. His sponsor finds him a deaf support group. This deaf support group is run by Joe, played by Paul Raci. As an introduction, he explains that what they do there is seek a solution to this (he points to his head) and not this (he points to his ears. “The Sound of Metal” does have doctors, and those helpful and competent doctors that Ruben sees do solve medical problems. But even more than this, the “Sound of Metal” has humans solving human problems, things that go beyond mere hearing loss and enter the realm of what can be pretentiously called the problems of living, or even more pretentiously, enlightenment. The “Sound of Metal” is a great movie and it has been so long since I’ve seen a great movie as a new release. I’ve missed the feeling.

            Movies are a collaborative effort and “Sound of Metal” is such a beautiful demonstration of that reality. Riz Ahmed’s performance is brilliant, but it is made more brilliant by the sound design which so perceptibly puts the audience into the experience of his hearing, which made even more brilliant by the choices of the writer/director Darius Marder as to when to tell the story through Ruben’s experience (in which we hear what he hears) and when to tell the story from a third-person vantage point (in which we hear what he should hear). These choices are flawless as far as I can tell. Some of them, and I am thinking of a particular party in which we hear a duet on piano transform from perfect clarity to the static discordance perceived by cochlear implants, have great emotional weight to them in the context of the story and of course the performances of the actors.

 

            Previously to “Sound of Metal”, the most prominent movie to deal with deafness would have been 1986’s “Children of a Lesser God” which was heralded as important to the deaf community and resulted in the first Oscar win for a deaf actor (Marleee Matlin). It is interesting to note the differences between the movies as a measure of society’s understanding of disability. “Children of a Lesser God” was about a teacher of deaf teenagers whose main goal was to persuade his reticent pupils to speak verbally, an important part of communicating with the outside world. He has a romantic affair with a colleague (Marlee Matlin) who refuses to speak. The movie’s climax occurs when she is finally bullied into speaking and we hear her decidedly ugly voice in a loud outburs. Roger Ebert had a particularly good criticism when he noted that in a scene which was supposed to give the audience the feeling of deafness (a swim in water) the sound of silence was completely overwhelmed by the musical score. The “Sound of Metal” has a completely different mission. The deaf support group would have Ruben learn how to be deaf, as this is what is most likely to bring him emotional peace and help him avoid a relapse into addiction. The deaf community is shown as its own culture, perfectly happy people who are fine with not being completely included in the outside world (although it should be noted, that the unsung hero of this group is the church whose donations make it possible). The climax of this movie is not an audible explosion, but a moment of silence.

            Riz Ahmed has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor. It feels like the Oscar this year will be granted to Chadwick Boseman, a beloved actor who should have been nominated before (I’m thinking “Get on Up”) but was not until this year and only after he shockingly died of cancer way before his time. I know it would be hard arguing against it, and a little classless too, but I would rather Riz Ahmed won. He put in the better performance and the Oscars, if they have any value, are as a guide for future cinephiles looking for recommendations for great movies to watch. “Sound of Metal” is a great movie. “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is not (see “Get on Up” instead). The more awards that go to the former, the more people who will see it, and so much the better.

Nomadland (4/5 Stars)

 

Nomadland, a feature by relatively new writer/director Chloe Zhao, seems to be part fictional narrative and part documentary. It has the thinnest of plots, Fern (played by Frances McDormand), lived her life in a one-factory town in Nevada. Her husband died and then the factory died, so she packed up her life in a van and has been living out of it ever since. There are many people out there like her in the sparsely populated areas of the American West, and I as far as I can tell, the real people show up in this movie and talk about themselves while Frances McDormand sits there and listens. A woman in an Amazon fulfillment center lunchroom talks about her tattoos. A man gives an impromptu educational lecture on the practical dos and don’t for a life on the road to a crowd of passerbys. An elderly woman sells the little that she has and embarks on one last road trip to Alaska.

Most movies have conflict or plot. Nomadland is adamant about having neither. Banking on the fact that you are likely not familiar with the subject matter, it believes your natural curiously can hold your interest with just showing you a novel way of life with its capable inhabitants acting as tour guides. It is right. Nomadland is lovely little movie filled with the beauty of the open West and the good nature of the nomads that make it their home.

The negatives of this type of life are generally overlooked, lest it spoil the mood and cast shade on the very real people here. One I can think of would be a lack of security either from nature or other people or both. How do you guard your stuff from random people in the middle of nowhere? This is not explained. Fern experiences trouble with her van’s engine. She conveniently has a sister she can call and ask for a loan. We believe Fern when she is good for the money, but that is besides the point. The point is that she has someone to call. I am reminded of Kelly Reichardt’s movie Wendy and Lucy starring Michelle Williams. When Wendy has car trouble, she calls family but they have no interest in helping. Unlike Fern, she ends up selling her car for parts.

The difference between Fern and Wendy is that Fern still has some support. Not only from her sister, but also from the federal government. She looks to be old enough to be receiving social security and be covered by Medicare. She works part of the year in a federal park, which incidentally provides services to nomads like her. The life is not so bad a life and plenty good the movie wants to show. Fern has little wants, makes what she needs to provide them, and has access to community and infrastructure, albeit loose, to support her. The best line is when Fern is asked by a teenage girl if she is ‘homeless’. Fern replies that she is ‘houseless’ and that there is a difference. Fern is not poor, she is simply living on the cheap. There are nomads out there that are truly poor, but we don’t know enough about the people we meet here to know which of them are in that number.

Movies about truly poor people are kind of rare. This is not helped by the fact that writers’ need their characters to have some sort of money in order to be able to make choices and do things. Movies are generally about people who have the opportunity to do make choices and do things. I can think of two good modern examples of people being poor, not just living on the cheap like Fern, but poor like do not “have a sister who could loan money if in a tight spot” poor. Wendy and Lucy by Kelly Reichardt is one. The other would be the TV-series Atlanta. The character Earn (played by Donald Glover) is poor, like truly poor. I have never been truly poor, but I’ve lived on the cheap for a few years and certain scenes in that show really made me uncomfortable. There is one episode where Earn takes his girlfriend out to a place that he believes has a cheap burger special and a happy hour that goes until midnight but upon arrival finds out that management has turned the place into a seafood restaurant that specializes in tiki drinks. That, as they say, was real. Nomadland instead is a bit like its last piece of sage wisdom. “One of things I like most about this life is that there is no final goodbye. I’ve met hundreds of people out here and I’ll don’t ever say a final goodbye. You just say, I’ll see you down the road. And I do, I see them again. And I can be certain in my heart. That I’ll see you again.” Well that’s pretty, but not, as they say, real.

Minari (4/5 Stars)

It is a good business idea. Tens of thousands of Koreans immigrate to America every year. Would they not miss Korean food? Korea is too far away to ship vegetables that would be fresh on arrival. Why not grow the Korean vegetables here and sell same at Korean markets? It is this shrewd entrepreneurialism that brings a Korean family to 1980s rural Arkansas to start a farm. Their efforts and travails form the basis for writer/director Lee Isaac Chung’s movie Minari, the name being a native Korean plant that, it turns out, grows well in the heartland of America.

The visionary in this business quest is Jacob, played by Steven Yuen of Walking Dead fame. The antagonist to his vision is Monica, his wife (played by Yeri Han). You would think that Monica would be a little more supportive given that their previous situation in California involved working in a dead end job sexing chickens for an agricultural corporation. For those unfamiliar, sexing chickens means looking at the hindquarters of chicks to determine whether it is male or female and sorting them likewise. The female chicks grow into hens that produce eggs. The male chicks, the movie infers, are killed immediately. Jacob and Monica do this a thousand times a day everyday. I think, compared to that, living in a prefabricated house in flyover country would be preferable if it meant you had your own property and business. Jacob argues about this with Monica all the time.

I am being a little unfair to Monica. Their son, Paul, has a heart condition and Monica is convinced that if they are not near a hospital in case of an emergency then they are being unforgivably reckless with his health. Understandable, but those of us familiar with the childhood of Theodore Roosevelt are optimistic about the kids chances if he grows up in rural area and engages in farm work.

The fighting amongst the parents comes to a head when the lights go out during a storm and they mistakenly believe they might be hit during a tornado (not a Korean thing I hear). The short term solution is to import Monica’s mother to live with the family (played by Yuh-jung Youn). This movie takes place in the 1980s so that would mean this woman would have lived through World War II and the Korean War and be a tough old lady. She does not disappoint. She likes to watch professional wrestling and curses while playing cards with the kids. Paul points out that she is not a real grandma because she doesn’t bake cookies. She is a good sport about it. A very good grandma, exactly the kind Paul with his condition needs.

There is something that feels very American about this film. It’s actually not to different in tone than those many movies where some city slicker ventures out West to do something different with his life, is awed by the natural wilderness, and interacts with the otherworldly natives. Except, here, instead of a white guy being introduced to Native Americans, it is a Korean family being introduced to evangelical Christians. The most otherworldly, played by Will Patton, seems to have his own church of one. Like all good immigrants, the Koreans politely keep their opinions to themselves and shrug off the natural misunderstandings that would occur between otherwise good people of different cultures. At one point, Jacob takes his family to church, not because he is any sort of convert, but because he wants his family to make friends in the local community. That is a great reason to go to church. Several minor things occur that certain people today might categorize as 'microaggressions' but what the makers of this movie seem to instead be offering up as "jokes", as if the people involved don't have to be natural enemies. I don’t know anything about Lee Isaac Chung and had not seen any of his other movies before watching this one. I'm not surprised to learn that his parents were immigrants who moved to Arkansas while he was a child to start a farm. This movie has a very personal feel to it.