Higher Ground

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

"Blessed Assurance"

or

"Jesus Is __________"

The first thing I ever saw Vera Farmiga in was The Departed in "the girlfriend" role, and I was none too impressed. Then, came Up in the Air and her wistful performance as a "fellow traveler" who hooks up with George Clooney—two "stop-overs" that pass in the night—and it was an amazing performance.

Now, with her first film as director, Higher Ground, she stakes out indie territory as something of a maverick. It's a film about religion without hysterics, without condescension, without judgement, without prejudice...which is a far cry from the scripture Hollywood habitually reads from.

Higher Ground tells the story of Corinne (Farmiga, and played at younger ages by her sister Taissa and McKenzie Turner), daughter of divorced parents (Donna Murphy and John Hawkes), who answers the call of her minister (Bill Irwin) to accept Jesus into her life ("He's knocking at your door...") but finds herself standing at the threshold, believing but not wholly accepting, finding herself, as a woman, relegated to a role "submitting" to her husband and the male hierarchy of her church, seeing her best friend, the earthy Annika (Dagmara Dominczyk) finding her own personal way in Life and Faith and coveting it (When Annika effortlessly speaks in tongues—an act frowned upon by her church—Corinne blurts out "I want that!" but never manages it-in fact, one of the best scenes is Corinne, alone in the bathroom, exorting Jesus to speak through her, and finally schlumping out in frustration).

What makes her study of a woman struggling with Faith (with a capital "F") within a strict Christian community (albeit of somewhat counter-cultural "flower"-children) different is that it never wavers from the precept that religion is good.  People are flawed, yes, as her believers are, but faith is a nurturing, fulfilling way of Life that sustains and helps throughout our trials. This is a far cry from the way faith is usually portrayed these days, where the Believer is at least a hypocrite and at worst, some kind of predator. One could argue the point, but Higher Ground revealed to me some of the conditioning such repetition has achieved over the years in me, an agnostic. Here, one expectantly waits for any hint of a gouge in the old wooden cross, where any of the characters is guilty of anything, but sanctimony—the most intense that fear occurs is at a talk with an in-faith marriage counselor who insists on seeing Corrine alone without her husband (Joshua Leonard), which makes one wonder if he's going to fulfill the role of "the creepy one," but, no, all he wants to do is good, offering sage advice more for her faith than for her marriage.

Not that there aren't others who fulfill those roles, and, Lord have mercy, if it isn't the non-believers who turn out to be the hypocrites and suspicious ones (exemplified by a welcoming neighbor who stops by to warn Corinne and her visiting Mother of "religious nuts" who might live nearby, while the woman of faith keeps her counsel, instead stuffing her face on a gift of offered doughnuts that might have a bit of a bitter quality to them), and the Irish mailman on her block who takes such an interest doesn't turn out to be all that's delivered. The points are not written with judgmental heaviness or pulpit-pounding, but are merely observations of a perpetual outsider looking in.

As someone who has struggled with religion all his adult life, I found refreshing the simple expression that faith can lend grace to one's life, without hammering the point home as many of the "message" movies have a tendency to do. And that the film chooses to portray Corinne's struggle as difficult, even heart-rending, and faith being anything but easy, only makes the faith of those not embroiled in such a battle seem stronger by comparison. I admire that so much. If there are any complaints to be made, it is that sometimes the film veers into Corinne-fantasy mode for easy laughs, or too-easy satire. The film doesn't require or it or need it, and director Farmiga should have had more faith in the simple power of her film to stay clear of it.

Can't wait to see what she does next.

2022 Update: Still waiting....

The Fountain

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

Tapping a Dry Well

First off, this is the best-sounding film I've heard from 2006, with a subtle, supple sound design that makes great use of the stereo field to direct your attention. Secondly, it's one of the most beautiful--a truly different looking set-bound "green-screen" film that doesn't go for vast (and busy) pixilated papier-mache-feeling vistas ala Sky Captain or The Lord of the Rings. There is a perpetually claustrophobic feel to it, despite the exotic locales that extend from an ancient Mayan temple to "the vast reaches of space."

And yet....one expects great things of a Darren Aronofsky film—not just in the images, but also in the ideas. Both Pi and Requiem for a Dream were visually and thoughtfully stunning, so one wanders into The Fountain expecting to be transported to new places, not only visually and aurally, but within the mind as well.

That's why I found The Fountain very disappointing. Though trying to say something profound, it offers up an idea so obvious that it occurs to me only every time I sit down for a meal, and that is: Out of Death Comes Life. To make its point, there are three time-lines in the film: the first takes place in the present day as a researcher named Tom studies treatments of brain tumors in a frenzied race to save his wife Izzy's life. He is so bent on finding a cure that he loses all the precious moments he could be sharing with her. 

Izzy is writing a fanciful book of a Spanish explorer named Tomas (wait, wait...don't get too far ahead yet. I mean, you're right. it's that obvious, but bear with me for a couple more sentences) who invades a Mayan tribe trying to find a fountain of youth (which is actually the sap of a specific tree) for his doomed queen Isobel—the story's a sort of parallel-o-gram to the researcher to wake up and see what he's missing. 

The next time-line features an older Tom, beneficiary of his research that has found the secret of long life (which involves the bark of a certain South American tree), in space-transit to restore his wife...from a tree...by means of the energy of a star (Xibulba) that figured in the Mayan legend of the explorer...well, everything relates--all the elements fall back on themselves in a self-referential heap.* 

All the Tom's of the film (portrayed by Hugh Jackman) are after Eternal Life in some form or another for their Queens...but mostly for themselves, while the Isabel/Isobel's (played by Rachel Weisz) know they will never achieve it. It takes him a near-eternity to learn that life is an eternal process (only not individually!) and that death is a necessary ingredient for it. 

The only original idea in the film is to state that to aspire to immortality is, rather than overcoming death, to deny the process of life and renewal. The idea should be profound, but it comes across as simplistic...and obvious. And dramatically inert. The tag-line for the film is "What If You Could Live Forever?" and the answer appears to be "Then You'd be a Selfish Bastard!"

Still, there is a sense of relief in, for once, seeing a film where death is the inevitable conclusion and you don't start whispering "So DIE already!" underneath your breath (curiously, part of the gorgeous sound-design has the film saying it for you...though not those exact words...frequently through the movie), but it did plant the seed of Elton John's "The Circle of Life" in my head for days for which it must be held accountable. And needless to say, The Fountain won't be at the top of the NetFlix list for the Schindler household.

The View from 2021: Aronofsky has gone on to make The Wrestler (which we'll re-post a review of tomorrow), Black Swan, Noah, and mother! and I'll still go to see any of his movies in a theater because even if he doesn't deliver on story, he does deliver on image, making him one of the more interesting film-makers working. And when he delivers on story...well, the movie will haunt you for days, maybe the rest of your lifetime. Aronofsky is one of the really good ones, even if individual movies are less than satisfying.

* The Fountain had a troubled production history. Millions of dollars were wasted in the first attempt at it (when it starred *shudder* Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett—they would subsequently star in Babel and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). One can only wonder if, when re-started with half its original budget, whole sections of the screen-story that might have given it depth, were ash-canned (I haven't read Aronofsky's graphic novel, which ala Neil Gaiman's "Signal to Noise" might be closer to his original vision) which is a pity. But I don't know. Aronofsky was supposedly inspired to attempt this film by The Matrix, which is just one more thing that overrated geek-flick needs to answer for.

The Bourne Legacy

Written at the time of the film's "a-bourning."

Baby, We Were Bourne To Run
Or
Pursued By Our Inner Damon's

The "Bourne" series laterals the ball to another player in The Bourne Legacy, the fourth film of the series, which, by now, has nothing to do with the Robert Ludlum books on which they are titularly based (which is fine, as I read the first one decades ago and found it one of the worst reads ever).

When last we left Jason Bourne, he'd jumped into the East River to make a desperate escape from his pursuer/handlers, a nice turnaround from when the series started with him being fished out of the water with no clue as to his identity. We start there again, but this time, we're Bourne again in another body of water with Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) on a training mission way out in nowhere, Alaska (all the better to see Russia, apparently), while the events of the previous Bourne trilogy play out in the States, sending a panic through the intelligence community and an order to purge the Treadstone Project (or is it Operation Outcome...or Operation Blackbriar...only Tom Clancy could keep track of this...and then he'd start a book-series (ghost-written) on each one!).  

Whichever project is being scorched to the Earth, the talents from the previous movies (Scott Glenn, Joan Allen, David Straithairn) are dealing with the ramifications of Bourne's re-appearance, another intelligence head* (Stacy Keach-welcome back, sir) puts another middle-management type (Edward Norton) in charge of damage control (an impossible task in any recent spy film).**

As it becomes readily apparent on Renner's training mission, we didn't know diddly about the Bourne project (whatever name it was), as there are other agents like him, who are not only trained, but drugged to enhance their physical endurance, but also mental faculties (take the green and blue pills, but the yellow one you should really take with water or it gets stuck in your throat, evidently). Just as Cross is about to rotate stateside, he and another agent get a drone-launched nasty-gram stating unequivocally that the mission is over.

That's how it starts, and goes all over the world, subsequently, even while it doesn't really go anywhere.  Oh, things happen, and things explode and people run around a lot (Rachel Weisz is a really good runner, by the way), but it's mostly just movement without any story momentum.  Most movies have a beginning a middle and an end, but this one is content to merely have a beginning, a middle and a chase.  

Tony Gilroy (who cracked the code for the first film—taking the germ of the idea and stream-lining it into a bare essentials man-on-the-run movie—directed the brilliant Michael Clayton and the disappointing Duplicity, one of those "I-get-the-drift-but-it-doesn't-work" movies) co-wrote this one and directed, employing the same kind of Paul Greengrass "run and shoot" style, but taming it down a bit, so it can be followed, as opposed to experienced in barely discernible flashes.*** 

It's a risk because the Greengrass adrenaline-fueled style keeps one from asking too many questions about the slowing-down factor of injuries and leaps in story-logic.  All well and good, I suppose, but one still gets the sense that Legacy is half-baked, with the kernel of an idea, some complications to keep things from getting too stale and large holes in the script filled with "a fight breaks out," "a chase happens," and "hero jumps from a fire escape into a window." 

These all happened in the previous films, but I'll be damned if I can remember which specific ones—I suspect the answer is: "All of them." They all blur together as the most memorable things are the action sequences, and there's a remarkable...uh...consistency to them. The stakes are only the agent's own and most of the film's have very little resolution to them. Legacy has none. It just ends.

While one can admire the proficiency with which it is done, there's nothing all that memorable about this one...or the last one.  Even with fresh faces and a new idea of two, it's the same old thing, hardly worth being "Bourne" at all.

* You know, one could make a case for the excesses of "Big Gov'mint" just by noting the cast of good character actors in the "Bourne" series and all the different intelligence branches and mid-levels.

** Who fixes things in these films-and why haven't the unemployment rates dropped as a result?

*** This helped by a change in the style of Dan Bradley, who seems to have taken a film directing class in the interim, because his second unit direction in the chase sequences actually have some shots that feature relationship perspective going so far as to even including both participants in the chase in the same frame.  That's some kind of break-through after his disastrous work on Quantum of Solace.