Cyrano is a movie I've been wanting to watch for awhile—it did come out in 2021, after all, but it's release, outside of the two major American markets and the Festival circuit, was delayed until 2022—and what attracted me to it was 1) Peter Dinklage, and 2) Joe Wright directed it, and 3) they're not depending on "the nose" thing, which I always found to be...let's say "problematic" when what I really mean is anti-Semitic. French origins and all-that. One suspects coded language going on for the character's "ugly man" persona and why a beautiful Parisienne might refuse to marry him. Reading about the REAL Cyrano de Bergerac only complicates things and brings up what might have been issues in the man's life that original author Edmond Rostand glossed over to create a traditional romance.
The film started as a 2018 stage production of the classic play, adapted and directed by Dinklage's wife, Erica Schmidt with songs by "The National". The production moved to Off-Broadway in 2019, and Wright attached himself to direct in the stylized, theatrical proscenium style which has been customary for him when dealing with well-worn period subjects like his Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, and Pan.
It's well-worn enough that you probably already know the story: Roxanne (Haley Bennett) is a beautiful, eligible woman being pursued by many suitors, all of whom are rich and practical choices (like the Duke De Guiche—played by Ben Mendelsohn, who really needs to get himself out of his villain-rut), but she wants love, the kind of love that inspires her heart and inflames her loins. She falls instantly in love with soldier Christian de Neuvillette (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) while at a theater performance during which Cyrano (Dinklage) offends and upstages a foppish stage-thumper. Roxanne and Cyrano are childhood friends, which has blossomed into his unrequited reverence for her. She confesses her love for Christian to him, and he is heart-broken, but upon meeting Christian he finds enough of value in him, that he serves as the young man's mouthpiece in his pursuit of Roxanne. Christian has the looks and the dash, but Cyrano has the lover's soul encased in a less-than-love-inspiring frame. He is doubly cursed watching his heart's desire falling for another man (using his own inspiration).
And that's the dynamic—superficial-love versus unanswered desire. Roxanne only sees the surface of Christian and not the depths of Cyrano (so, is she worth his devotion?). Both paramours find themselves inadequate and punish themselves for their failings (Cyrano that he's not handsome and Christian that he is not eloquent), but, at the least, Christian has a pleasing veneer that gives him the edge in her affections, even if she swoons at Cyrano's words. Yet, Cyrano is never open about his affections, deceiving Roxanne that she can "have it all" even though, at her first meeting with Christian, she finds him lacking in the words and emotions she has come to depend on. Cyrano isn't handsome. Christian isn't eloquent. Roxanne is shallow. Talk about a twisted triangle. M.C. Escher might have been her perfect man.
This isn't a romance, it's a tragedy. And, as with "Hamlet"—or (Disney...) "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", putting it to music would seem perverse. But, songs are inserted—Roxanne has the de rigeur "I want" song right off the bat. And while they're not terrible, they're not sweepingly romantic, either—the Dessner's, Berninger and Besser's are no Cyrano's. The best of them, "Wherever I Fall," concerns the last thoughts of soldiers at war. And for all the choreographed dancing and prancing, there is nothing useful added to a story of three imperfect people looking for the perfect.
It's the acting that sells it. Bennett makes Roxanne an object of desire, despite her flaws and sells the vacuity of the character as having a spine in a world where women are assumed to depend on the considerable undercarriage of their garments to have them. Dinklage, of course, is the star-player here. He's played very few romantic leads—The Station Agent?—and has usually underplayed things to the point of stoicism. There's a bit of that here—when Cyrano is sure he's doing the right thing but not wallowing in self-pity. But, the rest of the time, Dinklage wears his heart on his short sleeve—the face crumples, the eyes squint in pain even as a brave smile erupts across his face. Cyrano may suffer in silence but his face does all the talking, thanks to Dinklage. It's a wonder no one tumbles to his secret, as it's as plain...(no, "as the nose on his face" doesn't apply)...it's obviously apparent given Dinklage's face in turmoil.
Wright's direction and location work (in Sicily) is masterful, throwing in lovely sub-texts in images that the story doesn't imply, bringing sensuality to Roxanne's cloistered world, or the bleakness of the battlefield, turning the location vaults and bridges into proscenium arches and making all the city seem a stage. At the same time—as in Richard Lester's Rome in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum—Wright's France seems realistic in squalor, overrun by cats, open-air markets properly fetid, and a sense of crumbling dirt everywhere. It makes the scenario go down a little easier when things feel so rough to the touch. In fact, one can say that Wright's direction and sense of the story is as good as it could possibly be. The best presentation, even if the result is a tad mediocre.
File it under "Disappointing Romance"; "Love is a form of Insanity" sub-section.
Knowing(Alex Proyas, 2009) The director's last film was the "in-name-only" bastardization of Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot," with its rule-breaking chrome figure-models that couldn't take apart a car convincingly. The movie benefited from Proyas' dark imagery and sense of imagination, but in the end it was another sci-fi film that finished with a fist-fight among the art direction. How....uh, "retro." The best thing about it was it gives somebody another chance to do Asimov right.
One walks in to Knowing, with the same kind of dread—another apocalypse movie, oh joy—only to come away impressed. More than that, you come away thinking thoughts that maybe Proyas knows science fiction better than most film-makers today, because Knowing does what really good science fiction does—show us an aspect of "now" that we don't consider and "us" that we finally recognize.
And that's where the title comes in: we go through out lives sure of our mortality, and aware of the clock ticking in our chest, but we ignore it—we don't face it. It's penciled into the Day-Planner like that trip to France, but we never firm it up, we just delay it a day at a time. Some day, not today. Manana. There's no "drop-dead" deadline.
Until there is. And then, you have to face it and walk the Kubler-Ross steps, knowing (knowing) time's a-wastin.' And the priorities and everyday details knock over like those endless arrangements of dominoes, revealing what needs to be done right here, right now. You can rant, you can rave, you can find God (Hint: He's always the last place you look), you can put your affairs in order, have your last meal and cigarette and say your good-byes at the door. That's just all delaying the inevitable.
But the first thing is, it's all out of your hands.
This isn't about "you." It's about what "you" leave.
And that's what knowing (and "knowledge" is what the word "science" means) and Knowing is all about.
There's a reason Roger Ebert was the one critic in the country who didn't just dismiss this movie. He's been to the cross-roads. He's on the other side, waving and smiling at us.
And laughing.
That's the thing about smarter people. They're so "elitist."
DeusExMarvela
or "Trust Me, True Believer" (My Flurken Swallowed My McGuffin)
The first of 2019's "Captain Marvel" movies is here,*and it has a lot of significance for movies, Marvel movies, and Women-in-Films, and as a result it's stirring up "the usual" dust-up's on increasingly unreliable review aggregates and social media. It's like the perfect storm of click-bait, but it has nothing to do with the movie itself. ...Which is good, clever (in the details stream) and provides a great role for the peculiar talents of Brie Larson, who's been a joy to watch in everythingI'veseenherin. It's a good entertainment, but not a great movie. But, worth seeing...if only because you're going to get a hint of how The Marvel Movie-Makers are going to solve the issues caused by the cliffhanger of Avengers: Infinity War—which, in short-hand, is "they're going to cheat" by some story-telling sleight-of-hand while they were distracting you with other stuff. Fair enough.
After an atypical Marvel Studio's logo—the "R.I.P Stan Lee" version—we meet "Vers" (the afore-mentioned Ms. Larson), who is having nightmares and can't sleep. The dreams have something to do with a crashed ship on a blasted landscape, where Vers is bleeding green blood and looking at a woman (Annette Bening) as she's pointing a weapon at an alien form (a Skrull, if you're familiar with Marvel comics) and wakes up. She goes and wakes up Yon-Rogg (Jude Law), her commander in the Starforce, based on the planet Hala of the Kree Empire (yeah, that's a lot of exposition there) is annoyed, but still accedes to her demands for a fight-work-out where he tells her she needs to tamp down her emotions and not rely on her abilities of using force-blasts out of her hands (luckily for him), a gift of the Kree for her abilities (and, of course, if she's not a good little girl-soldier, those powers will be taken away). Face front, soldier.
Rogg assigns his Starforce Squad to rescue a Kree spy from captivity, but the mission is a blind, designed to lure the Starforce agents into ambush by a band of Skrull warriors led by Talos (Ben Mendelsohn, who we don't get to see enough of). Vers is captured and subjected to a memory scan in which she starts to remember that many years ago, she was a human on Earth, an Air Force pilot, working for a Dr. Wendy Lawson (Bening). Her memories of her past inspire her to escape, she grabs a convenient space-pod, jets out of there and crashes on the most convenient planet nearby, C-53 according to the Kree.
That would be Earth circa 1995.
You can tell. You can just tell. Well, Vers' checks out a couple video's, then tries to find a way to contact Yon-Rogg, which she does by hot-wiring a telephone—in a booth—and telling him that she's on the hunt for Skrulls and don't wait up. Thing is, with Skrulls, they can shape-shift. Makes it easy to detect...except if you start asking them questions because any memory they might have of their shifted shape is only a few seconds old and they're no-good at long term memory.
Meanwhile, Skrulls have chased Vers to Earth where they start doing good human imitations and looking for her. They should just ask around because she's walking around L.A. "dressed like she's ready for laser-tag." That line is from a young agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. named Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who with his partner Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), is getting a lot of reports about a woman going around Los Angeles looking a little surly, dressed in rubber armor, and freaking people out, like the Security Guard outside that Blockbuster whom she approached and asks "Do you understand me? Is my Universal Translator working?"
This is where casting is kind of important. A lot of actors would play up the confusion, the fish out of water aspect, but not Larson's Vers. She walks around like she owns the place and doesn't give a rip if people are giving her second and third glances. She's got a job to do and she charges through it, with an attitude like she's dealing with morons—which she might be and probably is, so just go with it—it seems to be working with these monkey-people. No "Prime Directive" issues here. Just go with the "direct" approach.
Meanwhile, Fury has his own encounter with a Skrull, while he's simultaneously doing a "French Connection" style chase with an elevated train with an escalated fight between Vers and one in disguise. Taking the body of Fury's Skrull back to S.H.I.E.L.D., Fury decides to find "Blockbuster Girl" and find out what the hell is going on because he's never encountered anything like this before, and his desk job is getting a little dull.
Turns out they're looking for the same thing—Vers' identity, and between a visit to Project Pegasus, where Dr. Lawson had worked on a top-secret "light-speed engine" and the crystal containing Vers' extracted memories, they discover that Lawson was killed in a mysterious plane crash, where all were lost, including the pilot, a USAF flier named Carol Danvers. That's part of her memory. Afterwards, she was evidently taken straight to Hala...for some mysterious reason, given abilities by the Kree and enrolled in their Starforce. Why?
After pouring over the files from the crash, Fury and Danvers take a flight to Louisiana to talk to a friend of Danvers', a fellow pilot named Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) and she is recognized instantly by her and her daughter, Monica (Akira Akbar), and they fill her in on the woman she's forgotten to be. At the same time, Talos appears, with a story of his own, and the adults in the room determine that it's time to do things the right way...for once.
Carol Danvers: [Referring to the front of the baseball cap that Fury has given her ] What is this? Nick Fury: It's a S.H.I.E.L.D. logo. Carol Danvers: Does announcing your identity with branded clothing, help with the covert part of the job? Nick Fury: ...said the space soldier who's wearing a rubber suit.
Okay, there's a lot going on here, as fully 3/4 of the movie is a grand setting up of a story that the last quarter completely subverts. Even stalwarts who've been reading the Marvel "Captain Marvel" stories over the years are going to be a little confused at how the five screenwriters (all but one are women) have turned and spun the "Mar-Vell" stories on the tip of curved blade atop the Starforce's helmets—the film-makers allude to this by making Danver's hair part of that design, which I found very clever. Trust me, there's a lot of back-story to tell, but it managed to be done in 2 hours and squeeze in a lot of credits (with inserts—one is advised to stay to the very end).
What they've done is turn the comics' Carol Danvers from the standard Marvel "girlfriend" who got lucky enough to acquire superpowers, to a person who grew up determined to be the best she could be—who then got lucky enough to acquire superpowers. She already HAS the responsibility before she gets the great powers. It's an improvement, if hewing a bit close to the Lantern Corps story. But, Carol already knows right from wrong and her responsibility before being rewarded by the..."thing"...event...that gave her powers.
Now, she just has to decide who's side she's on.
Performances are good, all the way through, with Larson being the stand-out, but a shout-out has to go to Jackson who does his most prolonged...and...best performance as Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Especially, as he's got to play a much younger version of the character than he ever has before. Yeah, okay, he's been pixelated to lose a few years in appearance, but, hand it to the guy, he STILL has to play a character 25 years younger, and that takes attitude, bearing, and energy and he's all that here (the actor is 71 years, ladies and gentlemen).
And he's a great match-up with Larson—as they were in Kong: Skull Island, but this time's the roles are reversed (I kept expecting her to say to him: "Bitch, please..."). Fury is looser and more of a smart-ass, while she's regular Army in the uniform of a renegade and their banter may not have the wit, but it has the speed of old Howard Hawks banter, which combined with the duo's abilities to change expression on the thinnest of dimes, well, they're just a fun couple, and Fury's regard for this super-soldier from the sky explains a lot about everything he's done in the Marvel Universe movies.
It's the first time a woman has directed a Marvel movie, or co-directed one, and one wishes that Ann Boden and her co-Ryan Fleck had more of a command on things behind the camera as they do in front of, but it's just not so. They are well-regarded for their indie flicks, but their action scenes will leave you scratching your head about what's going on and who's doing what to whom. It might be they haven't figured out how to separate individuals who are all fighting in same uniforms, or the best way to hide a stunt-double, but the early fight scenes are a mess, and when the action turns cosmic, they shoot from a distance (to save on the rendering, or because we've gotten tired of super-heroics on a Richter scale?). No pun intended, but it gives it less of an impact. And, as we're just a little clueless about what Danvers' powers are, exactly, a little closer demonstration might have been nice—Marvel, whether in comics or movies, tend to be a little vague about power-scales/distributions.
Without going into too much detail (now's my chance to be vague), as much as I enjoyed a lot of Captain Marvel, there's the sense that The Studio was holding this one back (or something else in the "I dunno know what it is, but it sure packs a wallop" side of the Marvel school of cosmic speculature) as its "Ace in the Hole" for writing itself out of the "How are they going to get out of THIS one" dilemma posed by the Thanos-culling of the MCU in Infinity War—and that is by telling you about somebody you didn't know about, with some powers that haven't been figured out yet, but will when it becomes convenient in the upcoming Avengers: Endgame. In the meantime, just put in a "TBD" for that power-level and expect it to be risky and that "I've never gone this far before, I don't think I can handle it..." to be uttered at some point. I sure hope not. In the idiom of the internet, that would "suck."
So, the result is a movie with minor joys and good intentions that will eventually be enough to solve the Marvel Saga's immediate problem, and maybe—just maybe—allow the idea of more female-centric superhero movies in the Marvel Universe (how long has Scarlett Johansson been waiting for her "Black Widow" movie? Quite awhile, and enough that you can imagine her studio contract expiring before they get around to it).
Oh, and one other neat little idea in Captain Marvel—Stan Lee's cameo. The movie's setting being 1995, we see him on the elevated train trying to memorize his scene from Kevin Smith's upcoming Mallrats** (which came out about that time), a neat little call-back for his next-to-last cameo in the Marvel movies. As irritating and non-essential as they could be, one already misses the prospect that he won't be around for more of them, and that's a sad thing. Excelsior, true believers. (Just don't say "Shazam!")
*It's a loooong story and since this post is about this current version of the trademark "Captain Marvel" we won't get into it. We will give this one it's due.
Full Tilt Boogie (Midnight at the Oasis)
or Virtual Encounters of the Shallow Kind
During the break that was required for the extensive special effects inReady Player One, Steven Spielberg prepped, cast, shot, edited and released The Post, a very fine film that did get some attention for its historical material that, given the world at large, seemed all the more relevant today.* Ironically, the gee-wizardry of his new film does not feel relevant—unless someone has lived under a rock or in Mom's basement since the 1980's—as RP1 is a monument to nostalgia of the most puerile and shallow kind, piling on pop-culture references on top of each other as they flash, then die, on the 3-D IMAX screen, only to be replaced by others upon others along the way. This movie could conceivably fund its own edition of Trivial Pursuit next Christmas—and it is sure to be the most "paused" movie of the last (and next) quarter-century. Look, I'm not a gamer. I choose to waste my time watching movies and writing about them on this worthless blog (so, who am I to judge?), so to see Spielberg do his "take" on the immersive experience with the same peripatetic verve that he gave to The Adventures of Tintin is not my idea of the director progressing as an artist, no matter how much of a roller-coaster thrill ride this film might be. It hearkens back to the Spielberg, who grew up frightening his sisters with his horror stories. It's the same Spielberg of the intimate, brilliant detail—like cutting away (in Jurassic Park) while a jeep is trying to out-pace a Tyrannosaurus Rex to a shot of a side-mirror, with the etched warning that "Objects May Be Closer Than They Appear." That Spielberg is here in abundance, unafraid to toss in asides and joking references, which he'd never dared with his more serious films like Lincoln, Bridge of Spies, or The Post. This is Spielberg on top of Play-Mountain.
Oklahoma, City in the Year 2045, not so soon after "The Corn-Syrup Shortage" and "The Band-width Wars," and the cultural hub of the world, while looking like a dystopian nightmare that would depress Calcutta and Jo-burg. The populace lives in "The Stacks," literally motor-homes and trailers stacked on top of each other, under a drab pollution-filled sky. One imagines we're in Oklahoma City because the coasts have since flooded and drowned, and that things are in such a sorry state because through every window of those trailers, people are escaping their realities by entering "the Oasis."
"The Oasis" is its own alternate reality, with its own rules, its own culture, and its own economic system, built on lives and bonuses accrued during play. It is the product of a company called Gregarious Games, a somewhat ironically named corporation as its messianic co-founder, James Halliday (Mark Rylance in a performance that resembles a morose version of Rick Moranis' accountant in the original Ghostbusters) is hardly the gregarious type. He and his former partner, Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg) established the gaming platform, which has virtually and literally supplanted the drudgery of real life, in which the participants can compete against each other using avatars of their choice accumulating personal fortunes that can be used to improve their game and their alternate lives.
The Game 1 Grand Prix containing such vehicles as the Back to the Future Delorean, the 1960's TV Batmobile, Steven King's "Christine," the V8 interceptor from Mad Max, the van from "The A-Team", K.I.T.T. from "Knight-Rider", and the Mach 5 from "Speed Racer".
The story revolves around Halliday's be-quest announced after his death of his challenge for control of the Oasis and Halliday's personal fortune of over a trillion dollars, which can be one by winning three particular games, each rewarding a key that will unlock the ultimate challenge to win the Oasis' easter egg that will give control to the virtual kingdom. Obviously, this is a really big deal to the world at play, setting up ultimate challenges between "gunters" (the term for "egg-hunters") and a corporate conglomerate (only one?) named Innovative Online Industries—an Oasis outfitter, run by a former Gregarious intern Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), who wants to corporatize the Oasis for his own ends—he has already run studies that he can commercialize 80% of the Oasis' playing surface before his flashing graphics induce seizures in players.
The High Five's—Sho, Aech, Parzival, Art3mis and Daito— talk to the Curator of the Oasis archives.
That's the hissable villain. Who are the heroes? They are the "High Five," competing gamers who form their own coalition to study notes, compare strategies and research Halliday's life—in the Oasis' virtual archives—to gain an advantage in the competition, dubbed Anorak's Quest. They are Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), a somewhat doughy 18 year old who plays as the avatar Parzival, his mechanic friend "Aech" (revealed to be Lena Waithe), the brothers "Daito" and "Sho" (Win Morasaki and Philip Zhao) and the mysterious "Art3mis," (she's ultimately Olivia Cooke), Wade's chief rival and finally partner in the quest for the keys. While they're all putting their minds together virtually, Sorrento is trying to learn their secrets in the real world to gain an advantage in the game.
Aech blows away Freddy Krueger and sets his sights on Duke Nukem.
Spielberg sets up the duel-matches as full-tilt battles royale whether in the neon -graced corridors of The Oasis or the begrimed back-alleys of Oklahoma City—it's just that the Oasis side has so much merch and copyrighted imagery that it's tough for the real world to compete (it's not too distant from another Spielberg production—Robert Zemeckis' Who Framed Roger Rabbit?—where the real world suffers mightily in comparison to the wonders of "Toontown"). And the three game-set-pieces are so splendidly realized (especially, for me, the second one which I won't reveal other than the clue that inspires it—"The creator hates his creation") that one's interest is drawn to the world within a world, which is probably the point, even while Spielberg is showing the exploitable madness of it all, frame by meticulous frame. I mean, didn't you rather live in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory—the thread and thrust of which this film has in its digital marrow.
So, yeah, everybody wants to be in the Oasis—it's bigger, flashier, and something of a shit-storm for the hyper-active and hyperbolic. So, why is the movie so melancholy, especially when, after the solving of every puzzle, the film goes into a post-traumatic depression when contemplating the inner life of Halliday, The Man Who Built Everything? It's because the whole thing is an Oz-ian "there's no place like reality" info-mercial designed to teach the sad lessons of Halliday's life...by example. By the end of it, the most deserving will win the prize, but only by appreciating the clues along the way and learning the lessons to the keys of life that are merely trinketed as competition goals. The ultimate victory in the competition is in appreciating life beyond the Oasis. He who desires it least wins the most.
There's something almost biblical there. And, as with the Bible (or Willy Wonka and Chocolate Factory), in Spielberg's fable, the winner is the one who can look beyond the competition, and look deeper to the lessons inherently learned, and—in that gaming environment—put away childish things, including hero-worship, to become one's own hero, avatar's be damned.
Ready Player One is a smart little reflection of one of the simplest goals of a game—to get a life. And walk away from the table.
* He did, basically, the same thing back in 1990, where, while prepping the special effects for Jurassic Park, he oversaw the production of Schindler's List—which he was only allowed to make if he did the more popcorn-oriented film.
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