Project NIM

Written at the time of the film's release.

"More Human Than Human"
or
"If We Could Talk to the Animals (Speaking to a Chimp in Chimpanzee)"

 
"It was the 70's...," says one of the interviewees in Project NIM, as if in explanation.

"It was the species," says I, looking for my tranquilizer gun.

The new film by Man on Wire

director James Marsh examines a scientific experiment by Columbia researchers to teach sign language to a chimpanzee. The chimp, NIM (son of Carolyn) Chimpsky* is taken from its mother almost at birth, to be raised by humans, and thereafter taught to communicate in a language that humans can understand (This immediately raises a red ethical flag—why not take the Goodall route and learn theirs, but if you're going to get all PETA on me, you might as well just picket the theater rather than watch it).

For just as Man on Wire is a study of hubris and the arrogance of man (which results in a marvelous, magical thing), Project NIM does the same thing, while showing just how lousy human beings are, even with the best (or most curious) of intentions. We meet a lot of talking heads in Project NIM and few can be considered the best examples of our species to teach another anything. In fact, Project NIM is more of a study of human behavior than it is anything to do with monkeys'.

The guy who devises the study is Dr. Herbert Terrace (after Project Washoe which was an earlier, more disciplined study and was more convincing of anecdotal evidence), and one wonders what his motivations are, besides the obvious personal ambitions of getting attention and using it as a means of attracting young interns.** The first person to raise NIM is Stephanie, a self-described "hippie-chick," and it's a mystery that Terrace picked her to be the initial teacher for NIM, as she had no desire to keep notes and records, did not know sign language, and eventually grew impatient with all the insistence on "process," preferring to just interact with NIM as a member of her family. Terrace makes some comment about her being a "warm" "empathetic" person and then drops the bomb that the two had had a previous "relationship," (which will prove to be a common—all-too common—theme throughout the documentary, as the humans seem more concerned with "hooking up" than concentrating on their charge—"it was the 70's, after all" says one laughing). Eventually another trainer is found for NIM, Laura-Ann, and it's readily apparent that there is no love lost between her and Stephanie, as some mutual passive-aggressive sniping occurs between the two. Laura-Ann is much more successful in teaching sign to NIM (Stephanie says on-camera "Words are a fucking nightmare to communication..." which makes one wonder about her qualifications even more) and the chimp's knowledge of ASL increases at a fast clip. Terrace and she also begin "a relationship," just as two other therapists begin working in the study. Also, at this point, Terrace steps out of the day-to-day monitoring, that is, unless a camera shows up for a photo op, or a news-story, and there are some amusing out-takes of Terrace trying to handle NIM, but being quite incapable of it. "Herb Terrace was an absentee landlord" grouses one of the researchers.

It becomes readily apparent in Marsh's timeline and necessary compression of the events that the humans were far more concerned with their own lives, and that, however much affection and wonder is expressed at NIM's progress, he is little more than an amusing lab-rat, albeit one you can talk to about food. And, as with "Frankenstein," pretty soon the subject of the study is considered less valuable, and, ultimately, disposable.

 
It cannot end well and it doesn't, even with the best of intentions, and the heroes of the story, if there can be any, come from the most unlikely of places.

What I find amazing is that Marsh, as he did with Man on Wire, can coax such naked honesty in a documentary that makes the researchers look like such creeps. Philippe Petit, the subject of Man on Wire came across as something of a jerk, but his accomplishment was so amazing one could forgive his idiosyncrasies and foibles. These men and women have no such stunts to hide behind, and although they may act like the end justifies the means, in the end, they simply abandoned a project and left the life they'd altered on its own, not quite chimp, not quite human. That ivory tower looks a little less spotless in the aftermath.   

Makes one wonder if this evolution "thing" is all it's cracked up to be, given the evidence.

Two of "the good guys"—Bob Ingersoll and Nim Chimpsky

* After Noam Chomsky. "Get it?"

** I seem to be coming down hard on Terrace ("That's DR. Terrace..." he says at one point in the film), but he comes across as smug, arrogant...and a tad clueless in Marsh's film (Don't these folks know how they're going to come off?).  Also, slightly retributive.  After his slap-dash study—heavy on the personal agenda—ends he writes a book about the study saying "Nah...chimps don't use language because they have no syntax"—merely parroting words they've been taught to get what they want, without proper sentence structure, or tense. True. It's the same way I communicate with my dog, Smokey. We pick up on each other's "cues" of behaviors and words we recognize and respond appropriately. For example, if I command my dog to go to the bathroom (he does this by suggestion) and he doesn't "have to go," he'll simply sit.  Which tells me "No, really, it's not necessary. How about a cookie, though?" NIM was doing this with his trainers and with other apes...and taught other apes basic ASL (shades of Planet of...), just as he communicated with ape-cues to other apes. The thing that struck me about NIM (which I remember from some of the docs made when the study was going on), was that he learned to curse.  If he got mad at something, he'd make the sign for "Dirty," which was related to his toilet training. Nobody taught him that "Shit!" was an expression of frustration. He came up with that on his own. Explain that.

One Day (2011)

Supposedly, there's a mini-series of this on Netflix released this year. I saw the movie version  in 2011, and I wrote about it at the time of the film's release.

"July 15ths with Emma and Dex"
or
"Same Time Next Year"

Can a man and woman "just" be friends? (the question posed by When Harry Met Sally)  I've gone 'round and 'round with this one. I've said "Yes" for many years, and then that became "No," then back to "Yes," and now, it's something of a toss-up. "It's possible," I say noncommittally (which is the basis for many of the male-female problems, friendship or no).

But anything is possible.

 
"One Day" was a nifty best-seller by David Nicholls, smart, tight and funny, a romance told in snap-shots of one day that was realistic about the vagaries of life and love and the "yin" and "yang" of both. What makes the novel special gets distilled somewhat in celluloid form, making One Day feel a bit less exceptional, the humor muted somewhat, and given the twenty year time-span of the movie, some of the anniversaries celebrated are given short shrift, skipping to the more complicated "good parts," as opposed to those years when nothing much happens...you know, like "life."*

Dexter (Jim Sturgess) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) have "just met" at their graduation as they string along with their mutual friends, a couple. Emma is bookish, unstylish, a bit of a character—has a "nice personality"—Dexter is boyishly handsome and knows it, and Emma is "crushing." An awkward "overnight" happens, where it is unclear what transpired, but it's important enough that Dexter is helping Emma move when the next 15th of July occurs, but not important enough that Dexter isn't moving to Paris to teach.

July's come and July's go, as Emma suffers through waitressing at a London Tex-Mex restaurant and Dexter jumps from job to job, eventually becoming  the smarmy host for a late-night dance teen program. Where Emma is a busy bee, droning through know-where jobs until she catches her big break, Dex is a moth attracted to the brightest (or blondest) thing in the room. They're devoted to each other, but only so far. As her star rises, his sets—first Mom (the ever-reliable Patricia Clarkson) dies of cancer, then his fortunes go South, followed by years of over-indulgence. Before you can say "This is Mrs. Norman Maine," he is seeking her out, where she has nearly given up. As traditional as this is, what is nice about One Day is that Emma does just fine without him, she makes her way in the world without a man's help (and frequently, they're a hindrance), whereas in most films of the romantic genre, everything can be solved by anything in pants.

The director, Lone Scherfig, previously made An Education, which, while well-acted and elegantly directed, suffered from a distinct lack of heat and a little too much posh. The former problem still applies here. The film is decidedly chilly in tone, and while this is a welcome change from the day-glo color, syrupy music rom-coms that chirp incessantly about Moon, June, (premarital) Honeymoon," poking you in the heart-area that "Love is Great, right? RIGHT?" One Day makes it hard to feel anything beyond "Gee...that sucks."

Maybe it's the skipping around from year to year, but there's a distinct lack of focus in the story, as it spreads itself around a bit too thin, the ancillary characters populating the movie to make life difficult for Emma and Dexter, necessary irritants and bothers that will drive them into each other's arms every year. Plus, the story arcs of the two main characters run precipitously up and down, without any jolts of happiness amidst the gloom, or hurdles to happiness on the ascent.**

Things settle down as people "settle" and, although One Day manages to avoid many of the cliches of the romantic genre, it also hasn't found anything as compelling to replace them. Plus, with the mutual reversals of fortune, there seems to be a dramatically required "leveling of the playing field" in order for things to resolve "the way they should".

One should be grateful that one is asking these questions about a romance movie (haven't done that in a while), so it's nice to see somebody making the attempt. But, one gets the idea that the same old "Love Potion No.9" is being hawked. All they've done is change the shape of the bottle.

* One of my favorite quotes is by Anton Chekhov: Any idiot can survive a crisis; it's the day-to-day living that wears you down.

**  Well, that's not entirely true, but we don't want to give anything away. 

Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Written at the time of the film's release.

 

Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock passed away May 23, 2024 at the age of 53.

"False Advertising"
or

 "Oh, Trailers are Commercials, too, Ya Know...and Movies are Products"

 

Is it a surprise to anyone that product placement is so prevalent in films?  With budgets bursting (the next "Batman" movie will cost 250 million dollars), movies turned to corporations to have them co-finance their films by making sure their products were featured prominently with labels out.  It's a form of advertising that is the basics of making your product known—get it in front of eyeballs. Each image of your product burned into a cornea is called an "impression"—an impression that builds familiarity and is a push to induce the buying of it. And if those eyeballs are lid-locked while watching a movie at your local cine-plex (heck, you even paid to see it!), so much the better—there's no chance you'll be going to the 'fridge to miss the "message." E.T. famously ate Reese's Pieces because M&M's passed on a movie deal. The little sugar-nodules sales soared. Every James Bond film bristles with banners—billboards are crashed into, every electronic monitor had to include the "Sony" name, and car companies supply the cars and fill them with cash—you didn't think all those disposable Aston Martins came without gratuity, did you?*

Fact is, your basic present day blockbuster couldn't be made without a recognizable label turned towards the camera. And if there was a way for historical epics to put "Budweiser" on the Mead-sacks and "Wilson" on the cross-bows they'd do that, too.**

Even independent films do so...as Everything Must Go and its ubiquitous cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon attests. You can argue that it is for verisimilitude, but I doubt the studios would care how much their films resembled The Real Consumer World if there wasn't some cash passed under the table.

Morgan Spurlock has taken the approach to the logical extreme: his Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is a documentary about product placement in films that explores the process while simultaneously exploiting it to completely fund itself. It's a film of the corporate interests, by the corporate interests and (however cynically he might have gone into the thing) for the corporate interests. The entire movie about product placement in the movies is about acquiring the product placements to fund the movie.

It is a little bit brilliant. Essentially, he walks into boardrooms with a video camera recording the whole process just to say "this is what you're buying...right now.  How much are you going to give me?" Name above the title goes for a cool million. Sporadic Spurlock ads (there are three) go for 50 grand. In addition, he is able to secure helpful "aids to production"—hotel rooms, gas, even a fleet of seven cars—if he can ink a deal to make sure that they are shown in the film...and they are. Interviews are conducted in gas station cafes, drinking the advertisers products—even the shoes-leather that Spurlock burns to hit the pavement to meetings is paid for. Not only that, he makes deals for promotional cups that promote his movie and his clients.

There are so many hands washing each other that you almost expect a cameo by Howard Hughes. But who he gets to talk about movie-marketing is good enough.  Industry insiders talk about the business of branding (Spurlock turns out to be "Mindful"/"Playful"), increasing opportunities, testing the efficacy of the images (through MRI brain-scans—even the trailer is tested on Spurlock to see how his brain reacts).

Experts on societal influence (Noam Chomsky) and consumer protection (Ralph Nader...at his relaxed puckiest), advertising (Bob Garfield from NPR's "On the Media" and Advertising Age's Robert Weisberg), discuss the dangers of dealing with the devil and mixed messages. A fascinating clutch of interviews with film-makers seems to gloss over the impact and influence that corporatization has on the movie decision-making: John Wells (seen editing Company Men), J.J. Abrams, Brett Ratner, Peter Berg and Quentin Tarantino weigh in on how it affects their process—Rattner is alarmingly blase ("Artistic integrity?  Whatever..."***) while Berg is pragmatic ("GE is my boss and they don't give a fuck about Art") and Tarantino chortles over how, for years, he's pushed to shoot his restaurant scenes at a Denny's (he loves Denny's), but is constantly rebuffed (still, he's done a lot for the European McDonald's market). Even an amused Donald Trump shows up—probably a little miffed that he didn't come up with Spurlock's scam.

Pretty soon, it becomes apparent that the whole thing is a perpetual motion money-pushing machine and that money buys a lot of movie-magic. What is most disturbing is the offers Spurlock gets, unbidden, once he proves he's willing to play ball in an advertiser's field. "How do you say 'No' to that?" he painfully asks at one offer.

As I said, it's all a little bit brilliant. He delivers his message while they deliver the goods. If there is a down-side to Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, it is that there is so much to say, so many Madison Avenues to explore that the film rather breezily loses its focus. But, one should expect that when traversing a slippery slope, no matter what kind of shoes you're wearing.

I was the only one in the theater watching this (a shame, really), but as I was exiting the theater, I was flagged by the ticket-taker—a woman I've had a jocular joshing relationship with at my local art-house. She handed me a complimentary chilled bottle of Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice for watching the movie. I laughed all the way to the car.

 

I didn't drink it because I didn't take it.

 

* Yes, Bond DID drive an Aston in the novel "Goldfinger," and the movie's gadget-weighted DB5 became "the most famous car in the world," but Ford also provided their prototype Mustang for the '64 film, which made that new model a hot seller.  Sony and MGM plan to get $45 million for product placement in the next Bond—an all-time record.

** The biggest scam for blatant advertising is MTV. When it started, it was the first 24 hour TV station broadcasting only commercials—those "promotional" videos made to promote record sales.  Now, the videos are more popular than the recordings themselves.  Nothing succeeds like excess.

 *** How dare he?  Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go see Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides—the fourth movie inspired by a Disneyland ride.

War Horse

Written at the time of the film's release...

"The Lives That Pass Through a Horse"

or

"Come On, Joey! Come On!"

The one-two punch of two Spielberg movies opening within a week of each is almost an embarrassment of riches, and in going from Tintin to War Horse it's a journey from the ridiculous to the sublime. We've seen what happens when Spielberg tries to make a Kubrick film (A.I.: Artificial Intelligence), a David Lean film (Empire of the Sun) or cut up like Hitchcock (Jaws), but what happens when he makes a John Ford film?

The answer is War Horse, based on the 1982 children's book by Michael Morpurgo, which was subsequently staged as a play adapted by Nick Stafford at London's National theater. Somewhere on this journey, Spielberg got wind of it, and the tale of World War I told from a horse's point of view became Spielberg's second Christmas release. Horse movies have all the sentimental elements of fables, which is why children love them, but the circumstances of this one have little to do with childhood concerns, but have more to do with kinship between man and beast in an unsentimental, often brutal world of adults. 

It has all the elements of Ford: the Irish flavor as it begins in Devon, with the Narracott family acquiring a noble, unbreakable horse for plowing their hard-scrabble field; the horse—named Joey—learning to trust its first master, young Albert (Jeremy Irvine); the family being threatened with eviction by an uncaring bank (personified by David Thewlis' examiner); the "it takes a village" atmosphere that Ford engendered in his films (and not necessarily to come together in a common purpose, so much as to comment and gossip on it); the low comedy relief of animals—Spielberg makes goofy use of a particularly belligerent farm-goose and Ford favored horses that acted against training and merely acted like horses. Even the town of Devon looks precisely like the 20th Century Fox back-lot recreation of the Welsh mining town in Ford's How Green Was My Valley.

But tough economics trumps sentimentality here and the horse is sold into service in WWI to keep the family going, and The Great War passes the horse from hand to surviving hand, some gentle, some harsh as the battles change the landscapes and fortunes of those in the European theater.

The war goes from planned charges to muddy trench warfare, Spielberg opens it up with a spirited run where, Joey, alone and ownerless for the first time in the film, makes a desperate gallop for freedom (something possibly learned by a former caretaker), through, over and past the soldiers huddled in the trenches and ironically ending his gallop in the middle of No Man's Land, where warring parties must watch and wonder at the sight between them that has nothing to do with the concerns of Man.

But, where War Horse most resembles Ford's work is pictorially—Spielberg sticks to close shots for moments of drama, but when he opens up, it calls to mind advice that the old Commander gave the young director when he was still dreaming of making movies (see video below). He's definitely paying attention to the horizon in this one, and the film, especially in its final moments, seems to come from a different era, one more rich in design and purpose.

In its color, both in sentiment and photographically, War Horse hearkens back to another period of cinema, one that was simpler and more direct, but it never betrays anything less than sophistication of subject matter and maturity of purpose, while still maintaining a high level of entertainment value. At this point in his career, Spielberg is presenting a master class in film-making, evoking the past when it suits him, but maintaining a personal growth that seems to never flag.

J. Edgar

The F.B.I. (Love) Story
or
"What Determines a Man's Legacy is Sometimes That Which Isn't Seen"

J. Edgar Hoover ruled the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 45 years under the Department of Justice. Over the course of his tenure, he made the FBI his personal weapon in defending the nation from threats as he saw them, even as they changed form—from Bolshevik radicals to hayseed bootleggers and bank robbers to Communists to Civil Rights Activists to his very bosses. He did this unsubtly and unequivocally with press-trumpeted raids and whispered-about secret files that, if it didn't make him (as the phrase goes) "the most powerful man in the country," he was certainly the most feared. It was always assumed that Hoover had "the goods" on everyone, and guaranteed his long-held government post with weapons in manila files.

When he died (in office), Hoover's mug had the well-known face of a haggard bulldog—keeping secrets is something that can age you rapidly—and keeping secrets is something Hoover did best. Not only those of others, but his own.  Rumors swirled about the nature of his relationship with FBI Associate Director Clyde Tolson—that they were secretly gay lovers rather than "gentleman cops," that Hoover was a cross-dresser, and that the reason Hoover didn't pursue the gangsters of La Cosa Nostra in the '40's and '50's was because of compromising photographs in the hands of Meyer Lansky. Nothing has ever been confirmed. It's all just rumor, the smirking kind that the powerful get (but there's never any proof).

Which is why news of a Hoover bio-pic, written by Dustin Lance Black and directed by Clint Eastwood seemed so intriguing. Eastwood isn't afraid to take chances, turning cliches on their ear and Black's clear-eyed script for Milk garnered an Oscar. Their film J. Edgar promised "red meat," of the kind that could be delightfully and salaciously chewed.

And the two men have taken chances...but not with the result you would think.  Rather than being a rant or skreed, J. Edgar is actually a sympathetic look at the FBI director and his peccadilloes and shortcomings. There's nothing hysterical (save for one fist-fight that breaks out between Leonardo DiCaprio's Hoover and Armie Hammer's Tolson) in script or direction, but it offers a look at a severely closeted man who had to be in the times he lived and with the mantle he carried. Ambitious, yes. Paranoid, certainly. Vain and glory-hunting, without a doubt. Hoover craved the spotlight and his role in being "Head G-Man," while at the same time operating in the shadows, single-mindedly hoarding the secrets of others, while keeping his own is the height of ironies. At the same time that he espoused the Bureau ethic for red-blooded American males as agents, one wonders if it is done for appearances' sake, a beard that would mask his own leanings while also serving as a "hiding-in-plain-sight" revelation of his own taste in men.

Black and Eastwood conduct the story-telling in flashback, as Hoover in his latter years, decides to set the record straight, dictating his memoirs to an amusingly rotating number of agent-stenographers who disappear as soon as a point is questioned, or a weakness revealed. The story is a white-wash, reflecting the man's "official" view of the Bureau's history in a mix of incident and myth. At many times, J.Edgar is a bit reminiscent of Citizen Kane, with its fracturing point-of-view, shifting perspective, and ironic commentary on some of the incidents.*

It also shares Kane's sense of the unattainable summation of a life. C.F. Kane's had little to do with "Rosebud," just as Hoover's gay leanings was a small part of his whole story. It began with a controlling mother (Judi Dench), determined to keep young John Edgar from becoming a drunk like his father. Groomed to become "the most powerful man in the country," Mother Hoover controls her son's life to make him the image of the perfect son, diction lessons to force past a stammer, impeccable grooming, and the enforcement of all of her prejudices. And the nullification of any behavior less than manly. He is made in the image of his Mother's "perfect son," even though that image may be completely counter to reality. It sets him on a lifelong course of fighting her battles, never really being his own man, as much as posing in the presentation he wanted to project. A performance. An act. Myth and lies.

It is a story soaked in ironies: the man who kept secrets on everybody, but the biggest being his own; the investigator who saw no harm in exposing other's private lives, while keeping an iron grip on his own; the policeman who targeted and made war on many enemies, the primary one being himself. Black and Eastwood present a case for sympathy, even empathy, for a man who shaped, and was shaped, by his times, who rose through the ranks of power in society, to not be shunned by it, and who searched for verifiable fact while living in denial, and closeted by the bureau of his own making.

Hoover and Tolson at their regular table at The Stork Club.

* Not to mention that DiCaprio's "old-man" make-up makes him look more like the aged Charles Foster Kane than the jowly Hoover (still, it's better than the never convincing make-up that Hammer sports as an aging Tolson), and the shots of Hoover witnessing the Inaugural parades of Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon are shot from the same angle as the "newsreel" shot of Kane in a balcony appearance with Adolph Hitler.

The Adjustment Bureau

"I Guess The Lord Must Be in New York City"
or
"Dicking Around with People's Lives..."

The stories of Philip K. Dick have provided all sorts of story-fodder for the movies for both good or ill: Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly, Next, and Impostor.

 

They feature the sort of high-concept story-spine that easily translates into genre-bending sci-fi/fantasy films that are the easiest thing to translate to the screen short of a superhero property. Just put a slight spin on a story concept—a police force that stops crimes before they happen, spies and detectives who are mentally undercover, a guy who can see into the future, but just eight minutes out—all odd concepts that illuminate the character dilemma in a way that a straight story might not highlight. You don't have to be a genius to "get" what the movie says. And the inevitable SFX look great on trailers.

So, here's The Adjustment Bureau, a paranoid conspiracist's validation of all things manipulated. Young senatorial candidate David Norris (Matt Damon) is about to lose an election big-time, due to some ill-considered party-decisions earlier in his life. In the men's room of the Waldorf, he practices his contrite, yet defiant acceptance speech, only to find that he is being overheard by Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt), who is evading hotel security after crashing a wedding upstairs.  It's a "meet-cute" as the two banter about Norris' loser-status and Elise becomes intrigued enough to plant a lip-lock on him. His campaign manager (the always welcome Michael Kelly) walks in just in time to catch this and bust it up to get Norris to the ballroom to admit defeat. I'd've fired him on the spot.

It's some time later and Norris is working for an investment capital firm with his manager. He's running a little late, so he doesn't notice a team of angular men in business suits and fedoras are shadowing him. One in particular—Harry (Anthony Mackie)—has an assignment: Norris must spill coffee on his shirt by 9:05 am, not any later. It's his job, says Agent Richardson (John Slattery), so don't screw it up. 

But, if he didn't, there wouldn't be a movie.

There's no use crying over un-spilled coffee, but as a result, the rest of the movie is the Team attempting to solve the mess the non-mess creates: Norris is able to catch his bus on-time, where he once again encounters Elise, and gets to work just in time to see the Pre-Destinators (my term) sweeping the office, the personnel frozen, and key players receiving a "mind-wipe." Norris catches on quickly, and tries to evade the invaders, only to find them around every office corner, calmly telling him that, really, he should take it easy and cooperate and "this" will all go a lot easier.

He wakes up in an empty warehouse, with his pursuers deigning to tell him the truth about things: "You've just seen behind the curtain you never knew existed."  They're a team of agents who manipulate events among humankind—a kind of Uber-illuminati ('"sometimes it's chance, sometimes it's us")—at the behest of "The Chairman." They lay down the law: He can't have a relationship with Elise, which David objects to ("Your entire world just changed and you're thinking about a woman?") as it's not in "the plan," and if he tells anybody about what he's seen, they'll make everyone think he's crazy, and "reset" him, leaving him basically lobotomized.* 

Norris is too much a free-thinker to obey the "button-down men of Fate" and the rest of the movie entails him "changing the curtains," as it were. It's very clever and director George Nolfi, (who wrote the screenplay for the similarly time-trippy Timeline, had fun adapting his screenplay "Honor Among Thieves" into what would become Ocean's Twelve, and was one of the team who wrote—and re-wrote—The Bourne Ultimatum) ingeniously keeps things moving at a good clip, while also staying one jump ahead of the story-complications inherent in the plot...while also doing enough cinematic sleight-of-hand to keep the Doubting Thomases in the audience from falling into plot-holes. He gets good performances out of everyone—allowing enough ad-libbing in the scenario to make it seem real and fresh, sort of a real-life version of the film's conceit of re-writing History in pencil before the Cosmic Ink dries. It's fast, fun, and fresh and avoids pretentiousness or taking itself too damn seriously. It is only after a little Time has passed that it feels a bit slight, but who could have anticipated that?

One thing is for sure: I gotta get me one of them hats!

* At that point I flashed on former CBS news-anchor Dan Rather walking down a New York Street and being attacked by men and all they said was "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"  Everybody acted like Rather had had "a spell," but I wonder if his attackers were wearing hats.

Buck (2011)

"From the Horse's Mouth"
or
"Can't We All Just Get Along (Li'l Dogie)?"

Is it possible, at moments we can't imagine, a horse can add its sufferings together—the non-stop jerks and jabs that are its daily life—and turn them into grief?

What use is grief to a horse?

Equus by Peter Shaffer

©1973 by Peter Shaffer

Dan "Buck" Brannaman

is a laconic talker, a cowboy who looks like he was born on a horse. As a kid, he was a popular prodigy doing rope tricks, while at home his dad was employing rope tricks of his own, getting drunk and whipping scars into the backs of his kids. When his mother died, and with no one to defend the kids from his abusive father, Brannaman, at the age of 6, thought his life was over...or soon would be. With the intervention of a school coach—Buck wouldn't take his shirt off to shower to hide the whip-marks on his back—the boy and his older brother were delivered into the care of a foster-family and a loving, nurturing environment that emphasized work and value and brought the boy out of the shell the scars had created.

Eventually, through study of a mentor's methods (and because he found some insights on his own from his own damaged childhood) he began employing a method of dealing with "problem" horses, and an alternative to "breaking them" in to saddle riding. Because of his advisory work with novelist Nicholas Evans (and subsequently Robert Redford) on the book and film The Horse Whisperer, he became pegged with that name (and all the false "woo-woo" associations with it), despite the fact that what he does is use animal psychology to build a trust with the horses, rather than having to fight against their fears. It makes the training easier and subsequent behavior less problematic. 

Buck is a documentary that follows the man around while he conducts clinics on "dealing" with horses...but more importantly, their owners. His philosophy is along the same lines as good dog obedience classes..." there are no bad animals, just bad owners."* And usually, he has to show folks what they're doing wrong that freaks their animal out. A lot of it involves restraint—not of the horse, but of the owners and their emotions and fears, which a horse can "read." That's not telling any horse-person anything new. But, it may be new that beating a horse into submission doesn't make it trust you. And Buck Brannaman learned that lesson from his father, and painfully. Subsequently, what he teaches about trust could literally come from the horse's mouth.

It is an inspiring story, not so much that Brannaman can teach these lessons so well—and it took years for him to get over the shyness that his father's abuse had hammered into him—but that his message (and his life) points out that no one is unredeemable, not even an animal—that is, an animal with the right instincts (and...properly fed).

Well, almost. One painful sequence has Brannaman trying to deal with a horse so ornery and uncontrollable that it has been turned into "a predator." As its owner tries to convince the horse into its trailer on its way to be shot, Brannaman finally takes control of the situation. "Don't do anything," he finally says shortly. Then, for a long time, he sternly works with the horse, keeping a distance, his jaw set, until it finally makes its way inside. The camera then follows him, as he wordlessly walks off to his trailer, the set of his shoulders and his silence the only betrayals of his frustration and feeling of hopelessness. It is a powerful scene, made only more so by its quiet and lack of comment.

The End Titles are Pearl Jam's "Just Breathe," a song I've fallen in love with.

* Okay, we're not including Great White Sharks in this, but you don't have to spend too much time in nature to know that the way things work in the big Circle of Life is there are eaters and there is meat, and that "life is red in tooth and claw."  Horses are traditionally on the receiving end of fangs, so they tend to be a little skittish when something tries to jump on its back.  Instinctually, they don't like it much, no matter who's bailing the hay.  Brannaman doesn't "baby" the horses and tuck them in at night, so much as gain their trust, and get 'em used to the idea that "Hey, pal, you got a job to do, so let's make this easy and safe for each other."