The Piano

The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993) This award-winning film by New Zealand's High Priestess of Ostracism is an off-putting drama that slowly seduces and mesmerizes.

We first meet Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter in her Oscar-winning role) in a way that no one else does—in her own words. Purposefully mute since the age of six, she finds herself sold by her father after an affair in her native Scotland and bought as a wife to a set-in-his-ways settler, Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill) in a rain forest territory of Kiwi natives, a tribe of Māori. Think of it as a counter-clockwise Western of sorts, Down Under rather than Out West and Campion's themes start to come into focus. Ada and her child, Flora (Anna Paquin, in her Oscar-winning role) arrive by boat in widow's clothes and immediately stand out from the New Zealanders like...well, like a piano stranded on a beach.

Just as she carries her grief in the past with her muteness, she also carries her most prized possession—a grand piano—along on her semi-circumnavigation to the Outback. Seemingly an albatross, the piano is ultimately her most effective means of expression and also her passage to letting go of that past.

Dismissed as pointless by husband Alisdair, the piano is rescued and settled in the home of Baines (Harvey Keitel), who has forsaken civilization and lives with the Māori people. Baines barters with Alidtair, first for the piano, and then for lessons from Ada. Attracted to her, Baines then barters advances for keys of the piano—one key for a touch, two for a kiss. Thereby, Ada can buy back her piano, notes at a time, but there is more in the bargain.

What she's buying back is her soul. What she's buying back is her self. What she's buying back is her sexuality and everything that actually has been bought like a commodity in her arranged marriage to Alisdair. But the piano only reinforces burgeoning ties to Baines, and compromises whatever shaky freedom she attains with it. Alistair and his marriage are a prison that holds her against her will, when she already is so self-contained, of her own accord. That Baines takes possession of it, then acquiesces by offering the freedom of it back is too much for Ada to resist. And so, to have her soul, she must give some of her freedom away. It's a bittersweet rebellion that doesn't take into account her oppressor. When Alisdair hears of her infidelity, his revenge is to sever her connection to the piano in the most intimate way possible.

Campion is a lyrical film-maker who buries her messages as deep as a Kiwi rain-forest, but the films always ring true with a stark brutality that cuts through any mawkishness. In The Piano, her metaphors are more obvious than her past films. When, at one point, Ada is nearly taken to the bottom of the ocean by the piano, one can't help but think of the implications of materialism.

But, one is ultimately led to the thought that a woman needs a piano, like a fish needs a bicycle. And if one so chooses and loses one, there are plenty in the sea.

The Irishman (I Heard You Paint Houses) (2019)

A Tragic Loyalty
or
Tales From the Last Man Standing ("It's What It Is...")

“Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.”

Bruce Springsteen

“I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema. Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well-made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

Martin Scorsese, Empire Magazine interview

Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola say (in their own ways) that Super-hero movies are not cinema and they are right to a certain extent, at least in how it creates a studio myopia on what gets made and what doesn't. Because unless the movie has people with emblems on their chest (and are seriously marketable as action figures), they're consigned to streaming services like Netflix, which, if you think about it, is one step up from premiering on the SYFY channel (which is one step up from direct-to-video..if such a thing still exists).

Nerd's eye opinion of Martin Scorsese.

We could go on about how tent-pole films dominate theater-schedules (when theaters have schedules again once we're past our pandemic focus) and even major film-makers are having trouble attracting studio interest, but that would just be kvetching ("All you kids get out of my theater!"). But, Scorsese did manage to get Netflix to buy into The Irishman, his long-in-the-works adaptation of Charles Brandt's book "I Heard You Paint Houses" when Robert De Niro first proposed it after its publication in 2004, and Scorsese's been working on it since 2007.

Better late than never. And without a Miramax (and Harvey Weinstein) breathing down his neck, one can see what a late-Scorsese film without studio badgering looks like. What we get is a 3 hour film told in nested-flashback of Sheeran's (one must say disputed) reminiscinces of his war experience, brief work as a trucker, and his being enfolded into the world of the Mafia and Teamsters politics as a hit-man and then as body-man for Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa (played by Al Pacino).

That "nested flashback" structure is interesting, as it's a bit more complex than, say, Once Upon a Time in America, where Sergio Leone has an elderly De Niro return to New York to investigate a past mystery, or Arthur Penn's Little Big Man where Dustin Hoffman's Jack Crabbe narrates his own fanciful take on History. Here, Sheeran resides in a nursing home and relates his history ("It's what is is..."), flashing back and forth between a fateful trip to the wedding of the daughter of lawyer Bill Bufalino (Ray Romano) in 1975, and the events that led up to that road trip.

It takes a bit of patience and a reliance on our memory of how people look—which is very risky as so much of that is dependent on CGI de-aging technology, particularly of De Niro, Pacino and Joe Pesci—who came out of retirement for this role (and who gives the best and most subtle performance of his career).*

That road-trip is given the most detail and the most dialing-down of information because of its implications in how it affects the rest of the world and in Sheeran's moral decline.

Sheeran briefly looks to us when backed into a corner on the road-trip ("It is what is is")

De Niro's Sheeran is a perpetual foot-soldier, following orders with the same mind-set instilled in him during WWII—you're given a job, you follow orders and you don't question them, but merely carry them out. Yes, he considers the consequences, but there is a moral disconnect of responsibility, whether in war-time, or in civilian duties, to the point where the escalating consequences only produce a larger amount of hesitation before accepting the job." "In for a penny, In for a pound." He carries out his role without a second thought, other than the means to the various ends. 

Sheeran understands his role. He also understands the consequences of not carrying it out, which is always done quickly, coldly and efficiently—the body disposed of (or not) and the weapons used, just one of a growing number tossed into the river. He understands the consequences very well; one of the neat touches that Scorsese tosses in, whenever a new character is introduced, is a short title identifying the person and the date and the means by which they died. You just met them and you already see their death sentence. The rule is: don't get attached. Relationships are short and fragile in that sphere of influence. 

And it is one of influence. The Irishman is one of Scorsese's quietest, more subdued pictures—there's not a lot of fancy camera moves, merely an angular movement done at a steady pace. And there are no acting fire-works...except from Pacino—who seems to have taken on the Pesci "wild card" role in this one—or some of the more volatile actors in the game. But, there is such—I hate to use the term "civility" among mobsters—but shrewd, measured calmness, that when someone does get volatile—or a little out of whack—they're going to get "whacked." It may just be a matter of time.

The Irishman is so measured that you take note of the silences and there are many, especially on the part of De Niro's Sheeran, as he digests what is expected of him, sometimes that takes a little understanding and realization. These aren't mobsters, who come right out and Cagney-like, say "I'm gonna kill ya"—that would be too obvious, especially in a world of wire-tape and undercover cops, and especially as so many are done is social gatherings. The words, when they come, are calm and proceeded by justification, an understanding and presentation of larger issues, arguments that make it difficult to say "no" (except by personal choice and then it's "on you") and that just seems impossible in Sheeran's case.

The final fate of Jimmy Hoffa

Nobody comes out and talks murder or assassination—too obvious and too traceable. The title of Brandt's book, based on Sheeran, "I Heard You Paint Houses"—which is also revealed by a separate title card as a continuation of the title of the film—refers to one's reputation as a killer or hit-man, as "painting houses" refers to blood spray-patterns. That abstract circumlocution is the manner in which things are conveyed—words best left unsaid, but woe if they are not done.

It's all done, so that there is no price to pay. But, there is. Being a Scorsese film, The Irishman does have a conscience, a cost, and for Sheeran, it is placed in his daughter Peggy (played first by Lucy Gallina as a child, and then by Anna Paquin), who early on, when she is pushed by a grocer, Dad goes over and throws the guy through his own glass door. When, Ed becomes involved with Russell Bufalino (Pesci), the older man tries to ingratiate himself—constantly—with the little girl, but she almost has an aversion to him, reverting to a stony silence at the presentation of a present. She does, however, appreciate Hoffa for his efforts to help "the common guy" in his Union, and when Hoffa disappears without a trace, she gets only evasions from her Teamster-father, which estrange him from her forever.

Scorsese has a daughter—she's the one who challenged her Dad to "make a movie people like" (which resulted in Hugo, which set no box office records, but it's certainly likable)—so, it's no surprise that she would be the cost for his lack of character, for his survival in a world of ultimate costs and truncated lives. It's ironic—what would a Scorsese film be without irony?—that his survival to old-age in a world of short-life expectancy should be lived along and apart and shuttered away from his family. That's the cost for long-life.

The Irishman is getting the best reviews of Scorsese's considerable career, and one can guess why: access. On wide-release, you get one or two chances to see and then the judgment gavel comes down. But Scorsese is subtle, even in excess. And having The Irishman immediately available for repeated consumption, one can see the touches, the intricacies in this, one of his most subtle films.

* An aside on this de-aging thing, especially in regarding The Irishman. Sure, you can erase wrinkles from a man's face, sharpen his nose, shave the jowls, and the loose skin. But you can not put bounce in a step, spryness in a gait, or unhunch the shoulders and the careful, gingerly pace of a 76 year old actor. That's the big betrayal of time. The only way you could conquer that is to replace the actor with a younger man...in which case, you wouldn't have De Niro. The made the best choice by compromising with time...as we all do.

The Good Dinosaur

Dinosaurs Should Be Pleistocene and Not Heard
or
Bronto's/Meet the Bronto's/They're an Altered Timeline Fantasy

Disney/Pixar's The Good Dinosaur has had a troubled history. Originally intended for theater release November 27, 2013, it was only sent out this Thanksgiving, after much tinkering, the dismissal of the original creator/director, and some extensive re-working. With Pixar, that's usually not a bad thing. In the past—specifically, the excellent Ratatouille and Brave—the results of the re-working have been spectacular. 

Here, not so much.

 

Oh, don't get me wrong. Technically and aesthetically, there is a sizable leap in the results. The movie LOOKS spectacular. It is as if the Pixar animators plunked goofy looking dinosaurs in the middle of a "Nature" documentary—evidently the big digital break-through here is multi-layered clouds and getting them "just-so"—so impressive is the mock photo-realism of the landscapes. And landscapes are a big part of the story as they have to be traversed and conquered throughout the film.

It's just that the story isn't that great. Maybe it wasn't that good to begin with. Maybe it was "improved" and "re-thought" into a a messy goo. Whatever the reason, it's just not that fine a concept, it's just not that good an idea. From any other studio (like Dreamworks, or, god forbid, Nickolodeon) The Good Dinosaur would be a prestigious effort (if only because it wasn't going for the "laff" factor). But from Pixar, which, just this year came out with one of their best films, if not exactly in the animation department, the wise, imaginative Inside Out, this one is a disappointment. Not in the Cars 2 type of balderdash, but in the Monsters University realm.

The idea is that we're in an alternate Universe where the asteroid that struck the Earth 65 million years ago did not do so, saving the indigenous dominant life on the planet—that supposedly being dinosaurs—from extinction. After millions of years of evolution, the dinosaurs have now developed societies and language. We first meet a family of brontosauri (they might be apatosaurs for all I know, because they've been cartooned into having the look of Albert the Alligator from the old "Pogo" newspaper strips). The bronto's, being vegetarian, are farmers, and we see Poppa (voiced by Jeffrey Wright) plowing his plattes with his nose to make a new corn crop for his growing family—his wife (voiced by Frances McDormand) and their new hatchlings Libby, Buck and Arlo, the runt of the litter.

I don't know what I am, but that's probably a stegosaurus

Arlo may be the runt, but he's the one with the most potential—he, after all, hatched from the biggest egg. But he's scrawny, the smallest of the kids, and is always being picked on...by his siblings, and even by the pre-historic chickens on the farm (would they be called Jurass-chicks?). His slight nature makes him capable of only the lightest of farm-work, while his bigger brother and sister are digging and irrigating and irritating each while other doing so. Arlo's good for moving sticks. And moping. And being afraid of...just about everything.

This being "Little Dino on the Prairie," the only way for Arlo to grow as a character is to leave home and get stuck in his own adventure, but that's not going to happen unless disaster strikes. When it does, leaving Arlo alone in the wilderness, he must learn to deal with the greater world and its natural and unnatural dangers. It's a bit like "The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin-back" but with a lead character who doesn't exhibit much will, which is, frankly, not very interesting. "Huck" is capable, but directionless with no moral compass. Arlo has no compass, either, but he's never needed one because he's quite incapable of surviving on his own. If there's going to be a movie at all—besides 90 minutes of dino-bones bleaching in the sun—this "Huck" needs a mentor. He needs a "Jim."

 "Jim" comes in the form of a lost human child that Arlo dubs "Spot" and that immediately establishes the dynamic—"Spot" is the pet, but, at the same time, he is also more capable than Arlo and is someone that Arlo can learn from and, simultaneously, be responsible for.  

"Bam-Bam"

This makes The Good Dinosaur much more than a creationist's validation—altered timeline, people, remember—but it also makes it the flip-side of "The Flintstones" (that other creationists' validation) where the lizards are the dominant species and the humans are the co-habitant workers ("Eh, it's a living...")—"The Flintstones" once removed. Where the story is at its wisest is the infrastructure, the skeleton of the story. The dinosaurs carve out their little corners of the world as to their natures—as I mentioned before the brontos, being vegetarians, are low-impact farmers. But, it goes beyond that as dis[played by the limited number of other dino-types Arlo meets on his journey home: the Tyrannosauri Rex, being meat eaters, are ranchers (and when they're about the film takes a decidedly "western" turn—"Papa" T-Rex, Butch, is voiced inimitably by Sam Elliott); the pterodactyls (the head of whom is voiced by Steve Zahn, as a messianic cult leader) are scavengers, picking the bones of any carcass—alive or dead—they can find.

The VERY old West: T-Rex's 'round the camp-fire; 'dactyls acting like rustlers

That part is entertaining-and shows the potential of the story showing what might have happened if dinosaurs ruled the Earth. But the rest of it is less compelling. The pterodactyls are a constant threat and they wear out their welcome quickly. One finds oneself drifting off, admiring the scenery, which is not what you want to do in an animated movie, or a movie about dinosaurs. You want to say "grow up, already" to Arlo, but the best the filmmakers can come up with is a variation of "there's no place like home." But, the lesson is learned more in wanting to leave the theater and be home, rather than in the telling of the tale.

And, there's something else that bugs me: a lot is made of the concept of "family"—at one point, Arlo teaches Spot about it and how important it is and why he mopes because he's away from "the herd" (which makes me think that a really good animated film could be made of the dynamics of elephants rather than dinosaurs). One could make a good case for going the "Huck Finn" route of embracing of the opening of the closed circle Arlo uses to illustrate the "family" concept and accept a not-one-of-your-kind," such a non-lizard like Spot into the fold. There's a good lesson there, a universal one—Twain published his in 1884—and any parallels making the dinosaurs less prone to tribalism than the human inheritors of the Earth might have been a good contrast and object lesson to those familiar with how things are.

But, no, the movie doesn't go there, replacing that lesson with a "you go your way and I'll go mine" ending that only encourages segregation of the different. That left me scowling and thinking Pixar's dinosaurs were no better than us in our "you're okay as long as you're in your place" prejudices. "There goes the neighborhood" and NIMBY-ism are just as at home in the domiciles of this parallel Universe, and left me more than happy that the dinosaurs became extinct, if this is how they evolved. If only xenophobia and tribalism had gone extinct, too.

Arlo, like the story, is stretched a little thin.

Maybe I'm expecting too much deep-tissue philosophy from a cartoon (although I don't think so). But, I do expect more from Pixar, which for the last couple of decades have been expanding my mind, not only with movie-making and story-telling techniques, but also in the concepts that they employed those methods to tell. The Good Dinosaur is a little narrow-minded in that regard. Maybe they'll find their way back on track with Finding Dory.