Drive-Away Dolls

"Personal Effects"

or

"We Didn't Deserve...this Commodification."

It's been a few years since the Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan, made a film—the last one was the western anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (and Other Tales of the Western Frontier) back in 2018. That was for Netflix, and one wondered if they were tired of the business grind of securing funding and distribution deals developing theater-ready product. Buster Scruggs was episodic and eclectic, and it felt a bit like the Coen Brothers' version of The White Album, showing their strengths, but also their divisions, which seemed invisible in their one movie-one story efforts. 

 

The Wisdom of the Tribe (although one hates to credit any Entertainment Press with "wisdom") had always been that Ethan wrote and Joel directed, but the two contributed to each others' jobs so much that there was no clear demarcation line about who did what. They even shared editing duties (using the name "Roderick Jaynes" as a mutual nom de tranche).

So, it was a bit sad to hear that they were going to have a trial separation; one doesn't take this talk too seriously—how many times has Soderbergh quit and how many "last films" has Quentin Tarantino made? But, it seemed like the Coens meant it. Joel made a stark version of The Tragedy of MacBeth--that emphasized stagey minimal sets and maximum shadows, the better to appreciate the performances, especially of Denzel Washington and his wife, Frances McDormand. For his part, Ethan Coen hunkered down with his wife Tricia Cooke to produce a documentary, Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind.* Now, they've made a film of a script the two had been writing since 1999, Ethan directing and Tricia editing.

Drive-Away Dolls—or as its titled in the movie, Henry James' Drive-Away Dykes—is basically, a road movie with serio-comic violence. It tells the tale of a Mutt-and-Jeff lesbian duo—uptight, repressed Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) and free-spirit Jamie (Margaret Qualley)—who take a break from their normal lives and relationship break-ups and the up-coming turn of the millennium ("Y Not 2k?") to go birding in Tallahassee. That's the original idea, although Jamie road-maps it out to visit every dyke bar en route. Then, there's the mode of transportation: they use a drive-away service, which gives them a car for a one-way trip as long as they deliver it to the destination on time.

Sounds great. But, the guy at the service gives them the wrong car. After they drive off, "Chief" (Colman Domingo) shows up with two goons, Arliss (Joey Slotnick) and Flint (C.J. Wilson) looking for it, and upon hearing that it's gone telephones his boss for instructions. Those turn out to be "beat up the service guy and find those girls," which would be easy if Jamie hadn't mapped out such a circuitous route from Philadelphia to Florida. So, while Arliss and Flint begin investigating several wild goose chases (and coming out the worse for it), Jamie and Marian take their meandering time and, inevitably, don't show up at the agreed-drop-off point on-time.

Perhaps if they knew what was in the trunk of the car they're driving they'd be a little more responsible (well, Marian, anyway), but a blow-out along the way forces them to look for a spare and what do they find?

Well, I ain't sayin' (so no spoilers here), but it's a member in the long line of McGuffins and Whats-its in movies from Kiss Me Deadly, Repo Man and Pulp Fiction (well, the last two filching it directly from Kiss Me Deadly) and we've already seen one guy (Pedro Pascal) get killed for it in a prologue at the beginning of the film. And it's what Arliss and Flint and Chief and the guy on the other end of the phone are after and they'll do anything to get it back. Thus, intrigue, threat of danger, and mystery.

But, really, not really. Just from my description you can tell that Drive-Away Dolls hallmarks quite a few Coen Brothers traits—the contrasty duos (but without Steve Buscemi, this time!), the ginned-up danger, the what's-it-all-mean empty space that's supposed to be wrapped up tidily at the end. Except for the lesbian angle, it's a little bit rote, and more-than-a-bit familiar while still striving be be out-RAGE-ous...think along the lines of past Coens like Burn After Reading or Intolerable Cruelty, or even The Ladykillers, where there's something about it that just doesn't gel, although you know they're throwing everything but Joel's kitchen sink at it.

And that may be the issue. There's a formality to Joel Coen's direction that just isn't here—a rigor amidst the dishevelment—that cements things into a cohesive package that feels of a piece. Brother Ethan just ratchets up the lampoonery as if he was trying to goose the material with false energy. Compound it with Cooke's editing whimsy with some graphic transitions that are a bit too Tarantino-cute on top of it all. It doesn't pay off. And there's maybe a couple flash-backs too many, although the out-of-left-field psychedelic sequences (with cameos by Miley Cyrus) associated with the contraband aluminum suitcase ultimately seem more essential the more one thinks about it.

It sure tries hard (and the actors, which also include Beanie Feldstein and Matt Damon, give above and beyond, with Qualley and Viswanathan the stand-outs as the fast-talking and the dead-panning hub around which everyone revolves) but Drive-Away Dolls, even with its pedal to the metal, never quite achieves the anarchic spirit it so desperately wants to convey.

The word is that the Brothers are re-uniting to make a horror movie. I get shivers just thinking about it.

* I've seen it, but won't write about it much. It consists of archival footage of Lewis performances and interviews, edited by Cooke in a fairly tight summation of his life and career. But, interestingly, it has little editorial point of view, other to note at the end that Lewis lived longer than his musical  peers, two of his kids, and a couple of his seven ex-wives...and that, he was a self-taught piano player...even re-teaching himself after a 2019 stroke. Amazing, given his instinctual, visceral keyboarding.

News of the World

When the Reckoning Comes

or

"To move forward...you must first remember"

It is 1870, five years after the Surrender at Appomattox Court House, and Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks), late of the 3rd Texas Infantry, is making his way between Indian Territory and Texas with ultimate goal of reaching—maybe—San Antonio. His peculiar job is to read the news as he travels from town to town, charging the attendees a Liberty dime for the privilege of hearing news that might not otherwise reach them by post or by messenger. He's careful about what he reads, as the bitterness of the Civil War still festers in the souls of the Southerners, only enhanced by the presence of "Blue Coats" maintaining military order in the restless, discontented villages. What Kidd finds in his listeners is a belligerence, born of Union occupation without any promised Federal help, if anything, Federal interference. When protests break out, all he can do is assuage and sympathize and encourage. "Times are hard. We all need to do our part. All of us. We're all hurtin'. These are difficult times."

He might as well be speaking to us.

Outside of Wichita Falls, he comes across a wagon overturned by some violent, unnatural means. He dismounts, warily taking his rifle, and moves down the road, ears sharpened and eyes peeled for signs of life...or malice. What he finds is a black man hanging from a tree, with a notice that Texas is a White Man's Territory. He has barely enough time to register this atrocity when a rustle in the scrub alerts him to someone else watching him. It is a young girl (Helena Zengel), blond, dressed in buckskin, and resistant to being captured, although capture her he does. The wagon's contents contain papers from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, giving the responsibility of returning this girl—named Johanna Leonburger—recently survived of a raid on Kiowa land to her nearest kin, allegedly living in Castroville, Texas.

A passing Union patrol provides no help, and just instructs Kidd to take her to the nearest Bureau office and drop her off, even as he protests that he can't be bothered with transporting a child—a child twice orphaned as it happens. The patrol has other concerns and his aren't theirs. At a checkpoint, Kidd talks to the closest Union official and is informed that the Bureau rep is on the reservation and won't be back for three weeks, so Kidd can either stay or deal with it himself. He chooses the latter, grousingly, and gets outfitted with a wagon, supplies, and a contraband gun—Kidd only has bird-shot in his rifle—by a former Infantryman of his, who warns him that the kid is wild, and then is proven right, when "Johanna" disappears while Kidd is off reading the news. Kidd finds her that night in the pouring rain on a riverbank pleading with a passing Kiowa caravan to take her back, that neither hears her, nor seems to care.

That burden, that pilgrimage, takes up the bulk of News of the World, maybe the most leisurely film director Paul Greengrass has ever made (but then he hasn't made a Western before...). Adapted—rather freely—from the best-seller by Paulette Jiles, it follows Kidd and Johanna (her Kiowa name is "Cicada") on the long trip to Castroville, episodically beset by obstructions natural and man-made that impede their journey, usually in the vicinity of some hard-scrabble settlement that will one day turn into a strip-mall suburb in modern Texas.

Greengrass' game-plan is simple: begin with a slow drone-driven shot of the landscape (most of the film was shot in New Mexico), then locate Kidd and kid in it, and take it from there. The hardships include a gang of ruffians who seem hell-bent on buying (if it comes to that) Johanna for their own purposes, an abattoir of a settlement slaughtering buffalo and ruled by an autocratic kingpin, a wagon disaster, a Kiowa band that keeps an eye on them, and a sandstorm that seems to come out of nowhere...all that besides the usual hazards of running out of provisions—especially water—and the usual feeding schedules of horses.

Only in the wagon-wreck is there any semblance of the Greengrass shaky-cam, cuisinart-editing that we've come to associate with his Bourne films or past work. The camera is still a might' restless, but, generally, the film provides good screen-capture material without the customary blurring that usually comes with Greengrass. It's not leisurely, by any means, and the editing still cuts away just before you expect it to, which provides a fair amount of subliminal tension, even if you're wondering just how long this trip is going to be without a bathroom break.

But—as in a lot of Westerns—it's the journey that's important. There's more to Kidd's traveling than news-gathering. He's avoiding something, going back to San Antonio, where he left his wife to go off to war. He hasn't been back since, and the extended travel gives us time to slowly come to terms with Kidd and to Johanna and their shared slice of life and journey. They're both untethered souls—Kidd with his memories and Johanna, twice-orphaned and belonging nowhere, form a bond of necessity and circumstance.

As they travel, Kidd tries to teach her English, and to that end—and because it makes her responses easier—he learns Kiowa, and is stunned to learn that she also can speak a little German, remembered back from before her first family was killed in a Kiowa raid, and, once adapted into a Kiowa family, seeing them killed in a Cavalry ambush. Though they're traveling the same path, Johanna's retraces the past, while Kidd's journey is one trying to forget it. Same route, different destinations.

Hanks' character in the book is supposed to be 71, and that's a far stretch for the actor. The screenwriters make him younger, without the long history of soldiering; Hanks' Kidd has had enough of it with his participation in the most recent one. Hanks does lend a weary, lived-in feel to his Kidd, but is so internalized that he's a bit of a mystery. Hanks is best when he has someone to play off of, and his work and the movie come alive when he comes across his stray charge, who's short of talk. Zengel has a performance both studied and spontaneous, where it seems like she's making it up as she goes—despite having to speak in three languages, English, Kiowa, and German—it is a naked and guileless performance. I don't care how good Hanks is, the movie lives and dies by her work in this film, and the movie seems to heave aloft whenever she's on the screen. 

News of the World doesn't jolt along as most Greengrass films do. It meanders, but doesn't poke. And has that tense element of film-storytelling that entices: with a big frontier out there, wild and loose, what will happen next, what lies around the next bend? With the nation cleaved in two, suspicions of the next stranger you run into, the corrupt grasping for power, and a sizable distance of time and space between rumor and truth, anything can happen, and one's hopes and future can seem, at best, tremulous. 

What strikes one as one watches News of the World unfold is that nothing has changed much...except the guns have gotten better.

Joker

Why So Scorsese-ish??
or
"Never Rob Another Man's Rhubarb!" 

Well, the rifleman's stalking the sick and the lame,
Preacherman seeks the same, who'll get there first is uncertain
Nightsticks and water cannons, tear gas, padlocks,
Molotov cocktails and rocks behind every curtain,
False-hearted judges dying in the webs that they spin,
Only a matter of time 'til night comes steppin' in

"Jokerman"  Bob Dylan

The origin of the comic-book character, The Joker, has always been one of some controversy. In real life (what comic aficionado's call "Earth-Prime"), there has been some differing of opinions if it was Batman "conceptualist" Bob Kane, writer Bill Finger, or "ghost" artist Jerry Robinson who initially came up with the concept of a Moriarty-like villain to The Batman. The character had not one, but two stories in the first issue of Batman comics—he was supposed to be killed off in the first one, but editorial demands kept the character alive for future stories.

Inevitably, there had to be an origin story—in "The Man Behind the Red Hood!" (published in Detective Comics #168—February, 1951—and written by Finger), it is revealed that the Joker was a criminal who decide to rob the Monarch Playing Card Factory of $1 million (no, let's just go with it...) and during the attempt was stopped by Batman and, to avoid capture, jumped into a vat of toxic waste, which had an outlet to the Gotham River (this is pre-EPA). Returning home, he discovered that the sludge had turned his face white, his hair green and his lips red and, that snapping his psyche, he became the Joker ever after. In Alan Moore's graphic novel "The Killing Joke" he was a failed comedian who couldn't provide for his family and is co-erced to pose as "The Red Hood" and falls into the vat. His pregnant wife is killed in retribution and that's what drives him insane. Moore has a lovely line in the piece where the Joker says he doesn't remember some details: "If I'm going to have a past, I want it to be multiple choice!"*

In other media, The Joker has been different with every actor that's portrayed him, but the biggest jump came with Heath Ledger's portrayal in The Dark Knight, with the character as less of a criminal so much as a self-mutilating nihilistic sociopath (although you can't even depend on that description). Curiously. writer-director Christopher Nolan imagined that character without an origin story, but simply being a fully-formed agent of chaos—he even has him change his story about how he got his "Glasgow smile" a couple of times. This Joker is so unreliable, he even changes his tactics and despite a spoken hatred of "schemers" comes up with some elaborate crimes. Ledger's character can not be trusted in any way. Multiple choice.

So, despite that, we get a movie that tries to cement how "The Joker" came to be. I suppose it's a natural instinct ("inevitably"), especially if a character captures the public's imagination and you want to exploit it. It's probably born of the hit that Ledger made with his performance (even winning an Oscar for it), and it's an invitation to actors to go to extremes. With such a crazy character, how can anyone say you're wrong?   

Director-writer Todd Phillips (he of the "Hangover" movies) has an interesting choice. He sees The Joker born out of societal neglect, with a certain amount of psychological deficiency thrown in for good measure. We meet "The Man Who Would Be Joker" Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix, who is scary-good) as he's working his clown-job  spinning a sign for a store going out of business. He's accosted by street-kids who steal his sign and he gives chase, following them into an alley** where one of them smash the sign across his face and, once he's down, start kicking him, leaving him writhing and crying. Welcome to Gotham City, circa 1981 (judging by the music choices and a later theater marquee). There's a garbage strike and the city is looking shabbier than usual.

After that incident, Arthur is at a meeting with his counselor with the Department of Human and Health Services, who is doing the standard grilling about how things are going, can I see your journal, etc etc. Then, he gets a little truculent: "You don't listen, do you? You just ask the same questions every week. "How's you job?" "Are you having any negative thoughts?" All I have are negative thoughts." Arthur is not happy, although he tries to put on a happy face. He asks if he can have the dosage of his medication "upped" and is told, as if he didn't know, that he's on 7 medications already, but they don't seem to be doing any good. "I think I felt better locked up in the hospital." 

On the train home, he's sits sullenly in the back and notices that he's being stared at by a child. He smiles and starts to do some funny faces for the kid who giggles at the funny man. The child starts to giggle, which puts the kid's mom at alert. She turns around and tells Arthur to stop disturbing her child. The sequence is key. Arthur, out of nervousness, begins to laugh uncomfortably. He has a neurological-psychological condition that causes him to laugh-tourette's like—without any control. It's not a laugh that's contagious, inspiring other laughter. It sounds painful, and whether it's a natural condition or his attempt to suppress it, it has a similarity to gagging. It doesn't happen all the time, but it's not a laugh that inspires mirth.

For Arthur, laughter is something of a curse. But, then the whole world is something of a curse to Arthur. Living with his mother (Frances Conroy), who is clinging and supportive of her son), his joy is to slump home to her and they share watching Arthur's favorite show—a local talk show with host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Arthur watches, rapt, as he imagines being recognized by Franklin for his care for his Mother and his philosophy of making the world happy.

Arthur has a rich interior life, which will become apparent as you watch the movie. Phillips will take you down rabbit-holes that will mis-direct the audience into thinking they're reality. But. they are Arthur's reality, which is not reality at all, but a fantasy of his capability and his view of what his talents can actually achieve. 

It's a good little trick. We're seeing everything from Arthur's point-of-view, which is dependent on what he's being told, which is frequently a lie, a suspicion, or just plain crazy. He is frequently led to think one thing, suspect another, and then, forced into realizing a reality that had nothing to do with either. It begins to feel like he's living a lie, that he actually is a lie or even a delusion—to the point where he can't trust his fantasies and he can't trust his reality.

His world is a house of cards—all jokers—and it is tenuous at best, and fragile to the extreme. Arthur's hopes and dreams are built on flights of fancy and a certain amount of narcissism. He thinks he's giving the world joy, but he's basically seeking approval for his actions, some sort of acclaim. He wants his own love of himself to be reflected back to him.

That would be fine if he was in any film except Joker. For if there is a flaw in the film, it's that it steadfastly refuses to give a positive counter-point to the constant depiction of corruption, hatred, apathy, and nastiness that suffuses the film. In that, it betrays the comic-story that it is spun off from, and the film-inspirations from which it culls—and steals—its basic blue-print. 

Arthur puts a smile on young Bruce Wayne's face

At some point, everyone betrays Arthur, whether its his Mother, Murray Franklin, his neighbors and co-workers—everybody. And the movie goes so far as to add those attributes to one character who you'd think would be a bit more idealistic. That would be the character of Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen)—doctor, Gotham scion, and city-father (as well as the father of a young son, Bruce)—who has ambitions of becoming mayor, and who, rather than being a philanthropist, sees the poor and down-trodden as (wait for it) "clowns." A vigilante killing on a subway—committed by a clown-clad Arthur, Bernie Goetz-style—gets this response: "Gotham's lost its way. What kind of coward would do something that cold blooded? Someone who hides behind a mask." Oh, the bat-irony. Would this character inspire his son? Don't think so.

Arthur as hypocrite—ignoring someone in distress

The basic DNA of the story is not at all original—in fact, it is so unoriginal that everyone, even the most casual of movie-goer's, spots it. Joker takes a lot of its DNA from two of Martin Scorsese's most disturbing films—Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy (both starring Robert De Niro, of course)—Phoenix's Fleck is a combination of those film's protagonists, Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin, fringe-people who self-isolate as much as they are isolated, to avoid the conflicts with their world-view and who become dramatically unhinged without the benefit of perspective or inspiration. Both films share a jaded view of celebrity, as two seriously off-kilter and demented characters are ultimately—and mistakenly—seen by society at large as being heroes or celebrities. For Scorsese, with his Catholic roots, the films were imbued with a moralistic horror that we would come to this, and the very real perspective that this was wrong and something to be examined and rectified.

Joker has no such perspective. It has no such aspirations. It has no such ambiguity. It's a stacked deck—akin to Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange—where the only reason we're drawn to its protagonist is that we're in his constant thrall, and everybody else in the film, antagonist or ally, is portrayed as loathsome and deserving of a beat-down. There is nothing that gets in the way of Arthur Fleck's demented vision, and, if there's nothing to make one feel extraordinary sympathy for the character, there is also nothing to suggest that he might be wrong, or punished for that matter, either. This Joker is just plain evil, and there are no consequences in sight. It's like watching a biography of Charlie Manson, but without the life imprisonment to let us sleep at night.

The fact of the matter is (and everybody associated with this movie should have realized it before they began this fool's errand), The Joker's a lousy character without The Batman to serve as contrast. In fact, without the latter, there really isn't need for the former. A villain makes a lousy hero.

Get thee to thy film-maker's editing room. Make him laugh at that.

Kyle Baker, Carmine Infantino and Alex Ross' Jokers

 Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right, Here I Am!

Ceasar Romero, Jack Nicholson, 

Heath Ledger, Jared Leto

Brian Bolland's definitive Joker

Marshall Roger's work on The Joker (Steve Engelhart does the words)

Yeah, Doesn't Seem So Funny NOW, Does It?

* Recently, it has been revealed in the comics that DC Creative Head Geoff Johns is doing a mini-series called "The Three Faces of The Joker" for its Black Label imprint. Not sure if it will explain anything in a way to make "continuitists" happy, so much as a way to explain away why the character is so different in different writers' hands. Then again, it might be just a way to drive comic-book sales.

** There will be another attack in an alley later in the film—in fact, there are enough parallel incidents with situations happening in two's that one might think it was the Harvey Dent story.