The Young Victoria

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

 "Her Serene Highness"

 

William Jefferson Clinton famously called The White House the crown jewel of the U.S. prison system. Young Queen Victoria (Emily Blunt) says early on in The Young Victoria, "Even a palace can be a prison." As the only heir to England's throne in the Royal House of Hanover, the young princess is managed and controlled, ostensibly for her safety, but also for the power that an unprepared and naive queen can offer her advisers. The last image we see before the title of the film is a gate swinging towards us and slamming shut with a bang.

Go to black. Title up.

There are a lot of shuddering doors in The Young Victoria, as the upstart princess, well aware of the red carpet ahead, defies her manipulaters and her mother (Miranda Richardson), who is cowed by their presence, especially that of Lord John Conroy (Mark Strong—his second villain role this year after Sherlock Holmes—risking typecasting, he'll be playing Sir Godfrey in the upcoming Robin Hood) who viciously seeks to be made regent in case of the death of King William (Jim Broadbent). Ambition is on everyone's mind, except the one who will be getting the power. And ambition is what the young queen must learn, if only to be used as a weapon.

Director Jean-Marc Vallée (and his script-author Julian Fellowes, who wrote Gosford Park and a little something called "Downton Abbey") spend a lot of time concentrating on Victoria's noggin. It is focussed on, framed and discussed. "Look at that demure little head," says Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany) at her coronation. "And all of us wondering what's inside it." He, like the rest of the court, really couldn't care less. If her mind can be changed, then it doesn't matter. But there is enough rebellion, and enough fighting the gold shackles binding her, that can be used to sway her.

It should be noted at this point that one of the producers of The Young Victoria is none other than Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, who endured her own time of constraints while married to Prince Andrew. "Fergie" was known to be quite feisty, herself, and one looks at the movie and wonders how much of its editorial stance originated with her, as it is pretty sly in its view of the monarchy as being both a blessing and a curse. Whatever animosities Ferguson has incurred with the current Royal family, there seems to be an understanding of just what is asked of a monarch, and with The Queen, it shares a similar visual touch—the Royal de-focussing of the eyes that appear to see nothing, but are merely providing a non-commital mask for the public to see, the eyes looking, instead, inward.*

Given that, enter Prince Albert (Rupert Friend) of the Belgians. Groomed as a suitor by his father King Leopold (Thomas Kretschmann), the young Prince also resents being kept in a can, and upon meeting Victoria goes off-script, showing himself to be of equal mind. During a supervised chess game, they compare notes on their similar circumstances. "I know what it means to live inside your own head," he offers. "You must learn the rules of the game, so you can play it better than they can," and as if we don't get the point, he takes her Queen and sweeps it off the board, captured.

Vallée keeps things properly ornate and unfussy in his direction, save for some odd little rack-focuses interrupting the continual focus on Emily Blunt's head of restrained expression. At one point, though, he does indulge. At the Queen's entrance to a Royal Ball, upon seeing Albert, he keeps Blunt locked in position and then yanks her away from her party, as if pulled, floating to her paramour. A neat little trick that, and very dependent on Blunt keeping her muted expression while having her transport taken completely away. It's indicative of Vallée knowing that his best weapon in the movie is Blunt's subtle whisps of expression; one is drawn to her face to see how she'll react, even if, until the last frame, it is reluctant to reveal.

* At the end, there is a title stating that Victoria was the longest reigning British monarch (that would be be 63 years and 216 days). And as if to tweak the ex-mother-in-law a bit, with a wink, a new title emerges below it—"To date." 

Elizabeth II surpassed her great-great-grandmother's reign on September 09, 2015.  She went on to serve 70 years and 250 days. Only the reign of Louis XIV of France was longer.

Wild (2014)

Cheryl Strayed On the Path
or
You'll Never Walk Alone

As you get older, you realize that you run the risk of walking a grooved track, well-worn and familiar. You can, literally, get yourself in a rut. The more you walk it, the deeper, you go—that is, the groove in the trail gets deeper, you don't necessarily go farther. The longer you walk it, the deeper it becomes, and you lose the perspective of the path, and it only gets harder to get out of it. The resolution is to find a different path, fresh yet unfamiliar, to go forward and to get where you need to go.

I've done some hiking (so I'm an expert for this movie, right?) and even gone on a pilgrimage or two. Even if you're walking with a group, it's a solitary exercise, making you aware of your surroundings, but, more profoundly, of yourself. You become more aware, often painfully, of your body on the journey. Each step, of the thousands you make, giving you feedback on how you're doing, updating you about your condition, the muscles in your legs, the blisters on your feet, the grooves in your shoulders made by the burden you carry. Mentally, you carry burdens, too, that in your solitude with no ability to confront them, you let them go. The mind fills with memories, stray thoughts, snippets of song and life that un-spool, keeping you company on the long journey of the path and the mind.

Wild, the new film by Jean-Marc Vallée (who made last year's The Dallas Buyer's Club) captures more than any movie I've seen the parallel tracks of road and mind that you encounter when you walk alone. Based on the memoir of Cheryl Strayed (née Nyland), it chronicles her (in the form of Reese Witherspoon, who also produced) taking on the Pacific Crest Trail after her life spiraled out of control following the death of her mother, Bobby (Laura Dern) at the age of 45.

We start at the low-point of the trip, at the top of a mountain. The view is gorgeous, awesome, intimidating. Cheryl's focus, however, is on her feet, specifically the right one. A too-loose pair of boots causes her feet to slide around in them, despite the cushioning of her dense socks. The toe-nail on her big toe is loose, so she makes the decision to pull it out (by comparison, it took James Franco 127 Hours—and 3/4 of that film to cut off his arm). The intense pain causes her to knock over her monstrous back-pack which kicks her boot—the right one, of course—into the ravine and out of sight. She freaks out, horrified, at the idea of retrieving it in bare feet. She screams at the Universe, then throws her other boot into the ravine, doubling her problem.

She probably could have saved herself a few hundred miles right there; she's got impulse control problems. In which case, every painful step she takes is a repudiation of her instincts.

The film starts there, then bounces back and forth in time and space along the trail (including the moments and life-choices that got her there). = Fleeting moments along the way recall the flashbacks and as she walks along snippets of song echo ghost-like in her head, along the lines of Springsteen's "Tougher Than The Rest,"  Wings' "Let 'Em In," "Homeward Bound," by Simon and Garfukle. The one that shows up the most is Los Incas' melancholy version of "El Condor Pasa," lyricised by Simon and Garfunkle to evoke want, basic life-choices and becoming. Apt choices—they make nice upbeat soundtracks for trudging in the dirt.

Wild keeps to a minimum the cliché of the shot looking-down-at-your-feet as you walk, instead there are many long shots held for a time as Witherspoon makes her way slowly through the frame. Memories of songs, overlayed by her vaporous accompaniment, the flashbacks bursting in with hard cuts to reveries of her mother, her life and death, and Cheryl's response by imploding her marriage with one-night stands followed by a heroin chaser, make up the bulk of the film. Stability crumbles, her foundation shatters, therapy is a joke, relationships disappear, and the only thing that lasts is a tattoo acquired in the divorce (to mark the occasion and her right shoulder). Then, just as quickly, we're back on the trail with another obstacle or encounter. The flashbacks are shot as a combination of recollection and impression, sparked by not-too-obvious cues (refreshingly). They're random and create a puzzle of influence as to why Cheryl went off the rails and one suspects (if one is to believe Nick Hornby's screenplay) it's because she focused on her mother's views in a moment of weakness, as opposed to her everyday wisdom. At one point, Cheryl says her mother is "the love of my life." Although Hornby never provides a moment of true epiphany, the realization that life needs to be taken in the macro, rather than the micro-incidental is articulated throughout. As Hemingway wrote: "There's no one thing that's true. It's all true." It's not the steps (or mis-steps) you take, but the journey that matters.

So, yes, you can throw your boots occasionally, but the important thing is that you keep walking, no matter which direction you find yourself going.

You'll get there.

Cheryl...Strayed

Dallas Buyers Club

The Adventures of Lone Star and Tinkerbell
or
"Worst Case Scenario Being What?"

Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), electrician and bad ol' Texas boy, does not look well. Maybe it's the drinking and drugs. Maybe it's the whoring around and the bad betting he does at the rodeo that gets him beat up a lot. Hey, that's Texas and that's Woodroof. But when an accident at his work-site finally knocks him out so that he can't crawl home and self-medicate, he gets a medical analysis. Somewhere along the way he's acquired the HIV virus and the prognosis is not good: he has 30 days to live and is advised "to get your affairs in order."

What order?

After storming out of the hospital, he starts his thirty days by bingeing himself blind, but he can't escape a glance at a calendar. Not being the sharpest tool in the woodshed, he doesn't know anything about Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and the five stages of grief, he goes from denial to anger and stops at bargaining—he starts to investigate what's happening to him. Libraries, medical journals, he pores over them to find out why a straight man could contract HIV, and finds that doctors and Big Pharma are starting to run tests on an experimental drug, AZT. With cash in hand, he goes about his business like he would looking for cocaine—go to the place that has it and offer money. But, the hospital is only running trials for the FDA, and only some of the subjects will be getting the real drug. The doctor (Jennifer Garner) offers him a support group.  "I'm dying, and you're telling me to get a hug from a bunch of faggots?" But, that's all she can offer. The support group offers some literature, but that's it.

Meanwhile, word of his disease gets around to his cronies, who have as much tolerance for the LGBT community as he does, but, by now being a quick study, he spits at them, scaring them off, and becomes determined to find a cure for his disease. That involves a trip to Mexico and a discredited doctor (played by an unrecognizable Griffin Dunne) who has a lot of information on AZT—not good—and has been getting good results with vitamins, minerals, and an experimental drug called Peptide T. They work for Woodroof—at least preventing debilitating seizures (foreshadowed in the film by the whine of tinnitus) and so, he smuggles years worth of the stuff over the Mexican border, attracting the attention of the FDA.

Jared Leto as Rayon and Matthew McCounaghey as Woodroof

But, Woodroof is nothing if not an entrepreneur, seeing an opportunity and a need in the HIV patients in his community.  He cannot sell the drugs he's brought over—that would be illegal—but taking a page from other parts of the country, he sells membership in a club, providing the recommended dosages of the meds at no additional cost. Being a straight redneck, it's a little difficult to form a trusting relationship in the gay community. For that, he forms a partnership with another HIV transgender patient, Rayon (Jared Leto), who provides him street-cred and an unlikely ally.

The character of Rayon did not actually exist, but is emblematic of many people Woodroof worked with in his efforts that started as a money-making venture and turned into a cause and a quest for better (and less toxic) medical solutions. There's a lot of "sugar-pill" scenario-writing going on between the actual events and the way they're depicted. lt "plays" better for Woodroof to be the rebel fighting the evil system of Big Pharma and the snail's-pace approval process of the FDA. There's also a lot of drama on the early AZT testing, which was done at levels that were too high and too toxic for the human body to take, but this was done, not to harm, but because there was no previous testing of the much in-demand drug—and the experts did not know the effects ahead of the tests, hence the reason for tests in the first place. It is also consistent with the constant battling Woodroof had to endure to save his own life, his own system, and finally, the people who depended on his efforts.  If Woodroof is an unlikely hero, the filmmakers want to make it unambiguous—yeah, he's a jerk, but, ultimately he's doing the right thing.

Those issues of authenticity aside, the filmmakers, in front of and behind the camera, do a nimble job of keeping the detailed, jargoned and acronym-filled story clear and concise and human—they probably had to cut many, many detailed corners throughout the film's ten year development to get there. McConaughey, as he's been proving for a while now, gives a great performance, pulling no punches with his portrayal of Woodroof, while also losing a scary amount of weight, and contnuing to lose it as the movie, and the disease, progresses. He's only topped in the film by Leto, who runs far afield of caricature and makes Rayon an endearing, if fatally flawed, recognizable human being (even if the actor is not recognizable in it, at all), and their scenes together, starting with a prickly-bitchy card game in a hospital room, keep the film yin-yanging with a tension that starts out at odds, and ends up feeling more like family.

Ron Woodroof