"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Shakespeare's home life is nearly a blank canvas, but Chloé Zhao's Hamnet (and assuredly, the novel before it) still includes or alludes to everything we do know about it, and in particular Agnes (Anne) Hathaway. The cinematography lets us discover this largely unknown woman from the past, not cutting to her when she speaks but lingering on others, at least at first, until we're on her face during the climax - a fantasy in which Agnes sees a performance of Hamlet, a play inspired by her own son's life and death, and just about the most perfect final act in cinema of the last I don't know how many years. Jessie Buckley gives one of her most emotionally detailed performances, but Paul Mescal's Shakespeare has a couple of devastating moments as well. This is a beautiful film about loss, grief and catharsis, an ahistorical, romantic biography that means "explain" Hamlet as the Bard working through his grief - the self-loathing his own, the misogyny perhaps a reaction to his wife's rejection, the imagery as inspired by life events. That's all as maybe. But it's art within art, and offers theater's crucial catharsis both on the inside and out. I wept all the way home.
At home: Beating out Hamlet 2000 by 13 years, Aki Kaurismäki's Hamlet Goes Business also sets the Danish Play in a business environment, though in his case, the genre is more specifically Film Noir, even if - as per the director's style, even this early in his career - it's deadpan comedy Film Noir. A Hamlet buff like myself COULD take offense at the perpetual takedown of Shakespeare's best play. From the whining dog at the beginning no doubt being an assessment of the character as perceived by Kaurismäki who, reputedly, first read the play and wrote the adaptation two weeks before filming, to a Horatio who doesn't care, and an aloof Hamlet who is more interested in getting gold digger Ophelia to put out than revenge, it's just one lambasting after another. I mean, the Prince is introduced in a scene where he slices off a piece of ham for himself, an outrageous pun! So for my part, I think it's great fun, reminding me in some ways of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead in the way it continually shows the scenes NOT in the play as much as its dry humor.
During lockdown, the National Theatre Live project produced a Romeo and Juliet starring Josh O'Connor and Jessie Buckley - surely two of the most sought-after actors of the mid-2020s - using various rooms in the theater, no audience, or unashamedly FILMIC techniques (editing, scoring, etc.). Very unusual, but I found myself quite touched by the amount of craft. We start in a rehearsal space and eventually cut to costumed (modern dress) semi-sets, a textured testament to the process of putting on a play. Beyond the format, director Simon Godwin made some interesting choices that, yes, cut down certain parts (among them Mercutio), but brought others to the fore. Tamsin Greig is amazing as Lady Capulet, for most enhanced of the side characters, and Jessie Buckley makes for a highly emotional, but particularly thoughtful Juliet. On the one hand, she's playing the character at 30, so she has a natural maturity about her. On the other, he's restoring scenes that are often cut down in other presentations, like her doubt about the priest's potion and more of the mother-daughter conflict. It works wonderfully, and the two women easily steal the show.
Jessie Buckley gives an impressive performance in Beast, as Moll, a young woman suffocating in her home environment on the island of Jersey. She's propositioned by the wrong men, undermined by her family, and owing to a violent school incident years before, treated as a mental case and a sort of prisoner by her mother. Enter Pascal (Johnny Flynn), a rough poacher who allows her to emancipate herself from that reality. Except he becomes a suspect in series of deranged murders, and just because we met him as this was going on, doesn't mean he's guilty, right? That's just movie logic talking, right?! There's an interesting play on accusations, twinning Moll's youthful self-defense and Pascal's presumed guilt, and Buckley is there for it. But I wasn't sure if the movie had anything more to say once we determined Pascal's guilt or innocence definitively, and the last half hour kind of falls apart for me. Twists and turns and yes, some of it plays well with the themes evoked earlier, but it's too restless a finale. Like they didn't know how to end it and therefore used every option. I was all in until I wasn't anymore.
A lockdown-era two-hander between Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott, Sanctuary is all about power dynamics as a man tries to fire his dominatrix. Who has the power in this (or any) relationship? The dominatrix over the dominated? The one who fills a need over the one who needs? The one who pays over the one who is paid? The one who holds the secrets over the one who stands to lose everything if exposed? The one who has money and power over the one who doesn't? The traumatizer over the traumatized? The creator over the interpreter, or vice-versa? The focus keeps shifting in a most fascinating way, and Qualley is, as usual one might say, as brilliant as she is sexy. I love to watch her change gears in response to events and revelations (some of which are her own). It makes for an intense one-act play, and while the ending is perhaps a little wonky, I have to embrace it because I loved everything before it.
An alcoholic (Nicolas Cage) decides to drink himself to death. A prostitute (Elisabeth Shue) falls for his... harmlessness? Leaving Las Vegas is an acting showcase for both players, to be sure, and watching Shue care for Cage is a lot like watching someone care for a terminal patient, one showing signs of dementia. Unrepentant about their dangerous lifestyles (I'm not going to call them "choices" exactly), and initially forgiving the other's, the audience wonders if their unusual virtually-platonic romance will lead to them renouncing the lives that brought them together, or if those lives will split them apart. In other words, are we watching a romantic movie, or a naturalistic one? And in the acceptance and grace they show one another, could they be spelling one another's doom? A textured portrayal of broken people syncing up as they hit rock bottom, Leaving Las Vegas is nevertheless a depressing downward spiral, and as such, feels like of flat.
Dramatizing the 2008 terror attack on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel as an action thriller could have easily gone off the rails, but Hotel Mumbai instead takes a horrific realistic route, and if I were a survivor of this tragedy, or had family who died there, I should never ever watch this film. There's only one explicitly real person - the chef who corrals guests and staff to help keep them alive - because it would have been too exploitative to show real people getting massacred for 120 minutes, but even composites will be recognizable to SOMEone. So this isn't Dev Patel pulling a Die Hard even though he plays a heroic staff member, nor Jason Isaacs doing a Taken even if his Russian character has a certain set of skills. Director Anthony Maras has two goals, one of which is traumatizing you by placing you inside a terror event, the other to showcase the bravery of hotel staff and (to a point) guests during the ordeal. No one is safe, and it's a miserable experience. I respect it for what it is, but it's not my kind of thing, thanks.
Almost an anthology film, Neighboring Sounds follows several residents of the same city block somewhere in Brazil - the housewife who self-medicates because she can't stand the howling dog next door, a nice romance between the blocks' young super and a woman who just moved back, a private security service (basically three guys) who offer their help protecting the street from low-level crime... Class struggle is a theme running throughout, so the ending makes sense in that context, but the third act was... strange, for me. Sudden, unprovoked "horror" moments are jarring, characters disappearing or appearing randomly in the third act, moments that seem important but don't lead anywhere (except very obliquely)... It's a messy third act that sacrifices what I most loved about the film - its light comedy touch. Oh well. I still rate it, but not as much as I otherwise would have had it found its way more naturally.
One Film for Every Year Since Film Existed[1923] The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Victor Hugo's classic melodrama is well suited to silent cinema. The Gothic gargoyles, the deformed lead, the cast of thousands, and the heightened emotions are all very VISUAL, and I think every well-remembered adaptation of the novel owes something to the iconography set down here. Lon Chaney, in his most iconic role, gives a very physical performance, with Patsy Ruth Miller very cute as Esmeralda (maybe it's my personal bias, but I don't find her particularly sensual in the way I think the character should be), and everyone else well cast. The set is immense (19 acres?!) and always filled with people (off the street, including Pinkertons to keep the common criminals in check?!)... the trivia section on this movie is as interesting as the film itself! Seeing as it still holds production records today, it's still one of the biggest American films of the 1920s, perhaps ever, and worth the watch.
[1924] The Last Laugh: Murnau paints a tragic portrait of a vain, doorman of a luxury hotel who ages out of the job, at least according to his bosses, but with his daughter's wedding later that day, dare not lose face in front of his peers. It's a tragedy that will come to us all, though some would bear it with more grace than Emil Jannings's character. Jannings gives an amazingly physical performance (he was only 40), showing the mental and physical deterioration of the doorman, but he has to! Aside from a couple of intertitles, the only text ever shown on screen is what the characters might be reading. Murnau shows great craft by forbidding all dialog and at no point do we not understand what's happening. It's beautifully done, with some very cool hallucinations besides. And then there's that epilogue. It's something of a dream or fantasy, and I get that Murnau opted to give his audience hope, but it needed some kind of ambiguity. As is, it's like he betrayed his own vision for ticket sales.
Books: Fourth in Kotaro Isaka's Assassins cycle, Hotel Lucky Seven returns to the world's unluckiest hitman, "Ladybug", from Bullet Train, and now he's similarly "trapped" in a hotel. It's a hoot. We have a new cast of wild "professionals", but the events of Bullet Train haunt many aspects of the story. Everything revolves around a women with perfect memory, hunted for certain passwords snugly held inside her head. Ladybug has nothing to do with this, but bad luck will rope him into it, a chaotic element that makes everyone else's plans spin out of control. The author makes it a fun ride, with lots of well-described and unusual action (the blowgun team make for great villains), and his trademark humor, of course. As with Bullet Train, there's a cool chapter heading conceit, with room numbers instead of train cars, which helps choreograph the story. I also find it charming that he feels the need to tell the readers the world of Assassins is fictional and that this hotel doesn't exist. The Japanese hospitality industry no doubt thanks him.
Ham-Let: A Shakespearean Mash-up is a little like Shrek, but with funny animals and all of Shakespeare's creations co-existing in a kind of comedy remix. Writers Jim Burnstein and Garrett Schiff don't always hit the mark, but most of their jokes are amusing, and most of their references easy to get if one has read the major plays. But a lot of charm comes from Elisa Ferrari's art, which is perfect for anthropomorphic animals who are as adventuresome as they are comic. Hamlet is, of course, a pig, but a goodly pig, tasked with avenging his father, and so on. But while Hamlet's key events are tent poles, the story goes in different (and more upbeat) directions. Sometimes asking a "what if" of the original, and I like those modifications a lot (they could even be staged). Sometimes just to include more of the Bard's characters - so Horatio runs an acting troupe out of Midsummer Night's Dream filled with animal versions of Lear, Othello, Macbeth, and others; there's an Iago betrayer, etc. - or simply hark to events from other players - Ham-let is often mixed in with Henry V, for example. Fun, clever, and open to a sequel. Well, so am I!
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