The Favourite (2018)

We All Gotta Serve Somebody (And The First One Now Will Later Be Last)
or
All About Evening the Score...

So, imagine, if you will, that Stanley Kubrick had directed his Barry Lyndon more in the same style of his Dr. Strangelove, with a hint of Fellini's casting abilities, and a bit of the insouciance for time and place of Baz Luhrmann, and you'll have an idea of what it's like to watch The Favourite (note the King's English spelling), the latest film of director Yorgos Lanthimos—who made Dogtooth and The Lobster—but latched onto a script that's been bumping around since 1998, just waiting for "the times" to accept it.

Well, these are them times, with the entire world saturated with egotistical no-accounts (in both political and business circles) and the lackeys, brown-noser's and boot-lickers who circle through their well-appointed revolving doors. It's a comedy based on historical fact with most of the kind of juicy speculation they wouldn't dare put in an historical mini-series on the BBC. One wonder never mistake it for that.

Me, I've wanted to see this thing since I saw Emma Stone do this in the trailer (which I must have seen six times)

Queen Anne (Olivia Coleman) struggles to be a happy Queen in 1708. England is at war with France, her husband, Prince George of Denmark, has just died, and the Lords are revolting—divided now between Tories and Whigs, they are spatting over the raising of taxes to pay for England's expenses (led by Robert Harley—played Nicholas Hoult, "The Beast" of the Young X-Men—although the Whigs were actually IN FAVOR of raising taxes). There's a war going on and despite their loyalty to the Queen, they see no good reason why they should be paying for it. Her childhood friend and confidante, the Lady Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz), the Duchess of Marlborough, advocates for the increases, and as she has the Queen's ear, up the taxes will go. 

The Queen is not only grieving, she suffers from melancholia and the disease of Kings—gout—and her grief over her husband's death has only compounded what she emptiness she feels from seventeen miscarriages and still-births—she has an infestation of 17 rabbits to remind her of each and every one. (I mentioned this was a comedy, didn't I?)

But, it's not like she's missing the conflict of family-life in any sense—into the mix comes Lady Sarah's cousin, Abigail Hill (Emma Stone) who has fallen on hard times and a great deal of horse-flop. Her family is bankrupt, owing to the gambling debts owed by her father, and she has come to the palace in "diminished circumstances" to seek employment and to try and make something of herself, rather than be consigned to the streets.

She is, instead, consigned to the kitchen as a scullery-maid—where she is at the bottom of the pecking order. She is kept away from the Queen (as most are) by the manipulations of Lady Sarah—when Harley approached her "to make a statement to the Queen", she shoots back "State it to me. I love a comedy. Is there cake?"—but, when the Queen's gout flares up painfully, Abigail goes to the nearby woods and gathers herbs, makes a salve, and lies her way into the Queen's bed-chamber to apply it. She is found and ordered to be lashed. But, before too much pain is inflicted, Sarah spares her, as the Queen has been comforted. Abigail may prove useful.

"Is there cake?"

That has been the intention all along. Abigail is made Lady Sarah's assistant, and, as such, she is given much more access to the Queen and her own quarters, away from the jealous maids. Sarah also takes her under her wing—"Let's shoot something!"—acquainting her with Anne's daily life and needs, the better for her to serve. But, she doesn't tell her everything, though—such as that Sarah is having an affair with the Queen, something that Abigail discovers quite by accident when she is in the Queen's chambers looking for books.

Noticing her rise in status, Harley approaches Abigail with the task of influencing the Queen in matters of his interest, and for providing any details in her (or Lady Churchill's) thinking that might allow him to take advantage of the situation and out-maneuver one or both of them. Abigail initially refuses, but, to find a way between Anne and Sarah, she agrees on the condition that Harley arrange a marriage between her and a constant would-be suitor, the Baron Samuel Masham (Joe Alwyn). Despite Abigail being a commoner, Harley agrees to use his influence wherever possible. 

Abigail, in turn, seduces the Queen and maneuvers around Sarah, making her absent for a time, thus allowing Harley to influence the Queen both on taxes and the marriage of Abigail and Masham, making her a baroness, another step higher in the court.

There may be a war going on in France, but it's nothing compared to the battle royale going on in the palace. The two cousins are constantly plotting using their wiles to seduce male and female alike to gain a foothold in the court, and, given the Queen's moods, it is never assured footing. Each is in danger of slipping—at nay given moment—of losing the advantage they have. There is a mounting escalation of stakes and intimacy to the plots with the ultimate price being...well, let's face it, it will always be servitude.

Be careful what you wish for.

It's a deeply cynical movie about manipulating all sides trying to maintain the status quid pro quo in a perpetually changing environment. And director Lanthimos keeps everything a bit on the surreal side, filming with perspective-warping wide-angle lenses to keep the very perpendicular halls and chambers at looming, encroaching angles that threaten to fall and envelop the players in their machinations.

Anybody who's been watching the squall of end-of-year awards, trinkets, tchotchkes, and doo-dads being handed out by "the authority committees" knows that the players are top-notch. Stone has made a career of the telling detail that defines what is going on in her characters' minds. But, in the past, they've been forthright characters who've been transparent in their attitudes and actions and how they're expressed. Here, Stone plays someone who is just-plain devious, only giving vent to what she thinks when someone's back is turned.

Weisz, on the other hand, turns in a performance that is so opaque that she barely betrays any genuine emotion at all—and if she does, it would do well not to trust it. But it is Coleman who is the revelation. The last few years, she has been on the edges of productions, as the curiosity that gains notice but one can never quite place. Now, given a part of some heft, she dominates the scenes she's in—perhaps because she is without restraint—showing the weakness of Anne, while also knowing full well who's in charge—even when she's not in charge of herself. It's a funny, dangerous performance. No matter what transpires in the wars surrounding her, she is untouchable, and Coleman plays out the benefits and down-sides of it, in bizarrely comic way, which can evoke barks of laughter or pity, even when is not sure when it is actually deserved.

All hail.

Portrait of Queen Anne (1707-1714)

Our Kind of Traitor

Our Man in Nirvana
or
It was My Mother...You Get Sentimental.

It seems to be another good year for John le Carré adaptations. The BBC did a quite honorable version of his 1993 "The Night Manager", and this, Our Kind of Traitor—one of David Cornwell's shorter books—is just concise enough to make it to feature film length without feeling like cheating the source. I have a particular love for le Carré's books, as I've been reading them since the Cold War days with their intricate chess strategies between spy networks, undermined by human frailties and loyalties, often drawn with Dickensian complexity and piquancies. With glasnost, le Carré's antagonists moved from behind the Iron Curtain and into the boardrooms of friendly nations, criminals by nature but with an undercover veneer of prosperity and prominence. Their goals were not political (were the others, really?) so much as a craven desire for power...and more of it and taking down any threats to acquiring it. Although the targets were different, the battles were business, as usual.

His protagonists are not larger-than-life secret agents hiding in plain sight, but government functionaries, rumpled men, flawed and quite extraordinary in their ordinariness, or Hitchcockian innocents caught in the gears of machinations they were quite unaware of working in the background. 

Le Carré's characters either are professionals keeping secrets or amateurs having secrets thrust upon them, but are compelled by their Nature to do the best they can, even to the point of sacrifice. Sometimes they suffer for their efforts and sometimes they can't accomplish their goals with 100% satisfaction. In the current political climate, such might be labeled "losers." They've always been heroes to me, even if they're mourned rather than lauded.

But, the stakes have changed. In the earlier simpler times, they've fought for ideals, for governments. But, around the time of "The Russia House," that changed. In that version of Casablanca-turned-on-its-head, it is not that "the problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world," but they weigh a lot more in a topsy-turvy crazy world of overstuffed bureaucracies in which ideals are sacrificed for not much and for the most worthless of McGuffins. The loyalties are spoken very plainly in that novel (and film) by it's ex-pat Brit: "You're my country now." When the country of your birth proves undeserving of loyalty, better to take it personally, on a human level, and protect what you can...and what you should.

Perry Makepiece (Ewan McGregor) is good at keeping secrets. A teacher on Holiday in Marrakech with his lawyer-girlfriend Gail Perkins (Naomie Harris), he's trying to patch things up with her after having an affair with one of his students. But Gail is diffident, not trusting him, and business back home pulls her away from a dinner at an expensive restaurant, leaving Perry alone. What do you do to fill the gaps left by absence?

Perry is invited by a fellow restaurant patron, a garrulous, gregarious Russian, Dima (Stellan Skarsgård, looking the worst for wear but giving one of his best performances) to join him for some after-dinner drinking. Drinking leads to gamesmanship and an invite to a party with sex, drugs and rock and roll, but when Perry stumbles on a rape in progress, he interferes despite being physically outmatched by the perpetrator. Dima interjects, and perhaps noting Perry's tendency to "white knight," invites him and Gail to his daughter's birthday party. When Perry comes back in the morning, his lawyer-lover cross-examines him about where he's been and why he's scruffed up, suspecting that he's catting around again. But, Perry tells her about his encounter with Dima and mentions the birthday party. Gail is reluctant, but accompanies him.

At the party, the two are overwhelmed by Dima's extravagance (his daughter is given a camel for her birthday...a camel, not a pony) and by his generosity with his time and his family. But, at some point Perry and Dima disappear, leaving Gail fuming a bit, but this may be one of those times when it's best not to find out too much.

Dima gives Perry a flash-drive, which he wants delivered to "MI6." Dima is a money launderer for a Russian drug cartel, which is going through a spate of extremely hostile take-overs by a kingpin calling himself The Prince. A friend of Dima's, a fellow "account manager," has been murdered, along with his wife and oldest daughter and Dima suspects his organization's next, and when that happens...Perry is tasked to contact Intelligence so that Dima can get his family, and with luck himself, to the West. Perry agrees. He doesn't tell Gail.

At customs, Perry reveals what he's got and authorities detain him, bringing in investigator Hector Meredith (Damian Lewis) and Luke Weaver (Khalid Abdalla) to question him for hours, leaving Gail quite peeved. When she finds out about all the hub-bub at the airport hub, she thinks Perry has gone mad—what has he gotten himself into now? A suspicious alliance forms between Perry and Hector, who has his own reasons for handling all this personally—he's on the "outs" at the Service, due to the arrest and incarceration of his son for drug possession, a prosecution pushed for by a government official (Jeremy Northam) Hector has been investigating for collusion with the Soviets. He's warned by his boss, Billy Matlock (Mark Gatiss, co-creator and "Mycroft" of the new "Sherlock") to not take it too personally or any gains might be "disappeared" again.

But, it's personal for everybody. As personal as family. And governments, bureaucracies and spies know bupkis about "family values." They know little about trust. And act accordingly.

Performances by the cast are measured and assured throughout, everyone having outstanding moments and director Susanna White keeps things low-key and lived-in. Its another fine adaptation of le Carré with no false notes or grand-standing. Definitely recommended, it's my kind of movie.