The Good Dinosaur

Dinosaurs Should Be Pleistocene and Not Heard
or
Bronto's/Meet the Bronto's/They're an Altered Timeline Fantasy

Disney/Pixar's The Good Dinosaur has had a troubled history. Originally intended for theater release November 27, 2013, it was only sent out this Thanksgiving, after much tinkering, the dismissal of the original creator/director, and some extensive re-working. With Pixar, that's usually not a bad thing. In the past—specifically, the excellent Ratatouille and Brave—the results of the re-working have been spectacular. 

Here, not so much.

 

Oh, don't get me wrong. Technically and aesthetically, there is a sizable leap in the results. The movie LOOKS spectacular. It is as if the Pixar animators plunked goofy looking dinosaurs in the middle of a "Nature" documentary—evidently the big digital break-through here is multi-layered clouds and getting them "just-so"—so impressive is the mock photo-realism of the landscapes. And landscapes are a big part of the story as they have to be traversed and conquered throughout the film.

It's just that the story isn't that great. Maybe it wasn't that good to begin with. Maybe it was "improved" and "re-thought" into a a messy goo. Whatever the reason, it's just not that fine a concept, it's just not that good an idea. From any other studio (like Dreamworks, or, god forbid, Nickolodeon) The Good Dinosaur would be a prestigious effort (if only because it wasn't going for the "laff" factor). But from Pixar, which, just this year came out with one of their best films, if not exactly in the animation department, the wise, imaginative Inside Out, this one is a disappointment. Not in the Cars 2 type of balderdash, but in the Monsters University realm.

The idea is that we're in an alternate Universe where the asteroid that struck the Earth 65 million years ago did not do so, saving the indigenous dominant life on the planet—that supposedly being dinosaurs—from extinction. After millions of years of evolution, the dinosaurs have now developed societies and language. We first meet a family of brontosauri (they might be apatosaurs for all I know, because they've been cartooned into having the look of Albert the Alligator from the old "Pogo" newspaper strips). The bronto's, being vegetarian, are farmers, and we see Poppa (voiced by Jeffrey Wright) plowing his plattes with his nose to make a new corn crop for his growing family—his wife (voiced by Frances McDormand) and their new hatchlings Libby, Buck and Arlo, the runt of the litter.

I don't know what I am, but that's probably a stegosaurus

Arlo may be the runt, but he's the one with the most potential—he, after all, hatched from the biggest egg. But he's scrawny, the smallest of the kids, and is always being picked on...by his siblings, and even by the pre-historic chickens on the farm (would they be called Jurass-chicks?). His slight nature makes him capable of only the lightest of farm-work, while his bigger brother and sister are digging and irrigating and irritating each while other doing so. Arlo's good for moving sticks. And moping. And being afraid of...just about everything.

This being "Little Dino on the Prairie," the only way for Arlo to grow as a character is to leave home and get stuck in his own adventure, but that's not going to happen unless disaster strikes. When it does, leaving Arlo alone in the wilderness, he must learn to deal with the greater world and its natural and unnatural dangers. It's a bit like "The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin-back" but with a lead character who doesn't exhibit much will, which is, frankly, not very interesting. "Huck" is capable, but directionless with no moral compass. Arlo has no compass, either, but he's never needed one because he's quite incapable of surviving on his own. If there's going to be a movie at all—besides 90 minutes of dino-bones bleaching in the sun—this "Huck" needs a mentor. He needs a "Jim."

 "Jim" comes in the form of a lost human child that Arlo dubs "Spot" and that immediately establishes the dynamic—"Spot" is the pet, but, at the same time, he is also more capable than Arlo and is someone that Arlo can learn from and, simultaneously, be responsible for.  

"Bam-Bam"

This makes The Good Dinosaur much more than a creationist's validation—altered timeline, people, remember—but it also makes it the flip-side of "The Flintstones" (that other creationists' validation) where the lizards are the dominant species and the humans are the co-habitant workers ("Eh, it's a living...")—"The Flintstones" once removed. Where the story is at its wisest is the infrastructure, the skeleton of the story. The dinosaurs carve out their little corners of the world as to their natures—as I mentioned before the brontos, being vegetarians, are low-impact farmers. But, it goes beyond that as dis[played by the limited number of other dino-types Arlo meets on his journey home: the Tyrannosauri Rex, being meat eaters, are ranchers (and when they're about the film takes a decidedly "western" turn—"Papa" T-Rex, Butch, is voiced inimitably by Sam Elliott); the pterodactyls (the head of whom is voiced by Steve Zahn, as a messianic cult leader) are scavengers, picking the bones of any carcass—alive or dead—they can find.

The VERY old West: T-Rex's 'round the camp-fire; 'dactyls acting like rustlers

That part is entertaining-and shows the potential of the story showing what might have happened if dinosaurs ruled the Earth. But the rest of it is less compelling. The pterodactyls are a constant threat and they wear out their welcome quickly. One finds oneself drifting off, admiring the scenery, which is not what you want to do in an animated movie, or a movie about dinosaurs. You want to say "grow up, already" to Arlo, but the best the filmmakers can come up with is a variation of "there's no place like home." But, the lesson is learned more in wanting to leave the theater and be home, rather than in the telling of the tale.

And, there's something else that bugs me: a lot is made of the concept of "family"—at one point, Arlo teaches Spot about it and how important it is and why he mopes because he's away from "the herd" (which makes me think that a really good animated film could be made of the dynamics of elephants rather than dinosaurs). One could make a good case for going the "Huck Finn" route of embracing of the opening of the closed circle Arlo uses to illustrate the "family" concept and accept a not-one-of-your-kind," such a non-lizard like Spot into the fold. There's a good lesson there, a universal one—Twain published his in 1884—and any parallels making the dinosaurs less prone to tribalism than the human inheritors of the Earth might have been a good contrast and object lesson to those familiar with how things are.

But, no, the movie doesn't go there, replacing that lesson with a "you go your way and I'll go mine" ending that only encourages segregation of the different. That left me scowling and thinking Pixar's dinosaurs were no better than us in our "you're okay as long as you're in your place" prejudices. "There goes the neighborhood" and NIMBY-ism are just as at home in the domiciles of this parallel Universe, and left me more than happy that the dinosaurs became extinct, if this is how they evolved. If only xenophobia and tribalism had gone extinct, too.

Arlo, like the story, is stretched a little thin.

Maybe I'm expecting too much deep-tissue philosophy from a cartoon (although I don't think so). But, I do expect more from Pixar, which for the last couple of decades have been expanding my mind, not only with movie-making and story-telling techniques, but also in the concepts that they employed those methods to tell. The Good Dinosaur is a little narrow-minded in that regard. Maybe they'll find their way back on track with Finding Dory.

Don't Make a Scene: Everybody Deconstructs Rick I

Through the month of December, we're going to be showcasing classic scenes from Casablanca, the 1942 Warner Brothers "studio" picture, which is a long-admired favorite (quite rightly!) and seems to be the one movie that is pointed to as validating the old Hollywood studio system.

Well, yes and no.

The Story: Through a happy confluence of studio politics and a muddled shooting schedule (and a script that was constantly in flux), this film managed to optimize into the roaring crowd-pleaser it is today (and always has been). But it would have been a different story if the film had starred (as was proposed) Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan (hot after their pairing in King's Row). Director Michael Curtiz, a craftsman of no specific genre or strong-suit other than a flair for filling the frame with exotic eye-pleasing images, was wrestling a bag of cats with this picture: it had no ending, and the players—the usually cranky Bogart, the nervous Ingrid Bergman worrying about her American debut, and the imperious Warner's romantic star Paul Heinreid—dutifully went through their paces and hit their marks without a clue how the story would resolve. *

It didn't make one jot of difference in this legendary film. And the difficulties during its construction only add to the legend.

But the movie hinges on the character of Richard Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), man of local mystery. The story is his character arc, how he goes from a man who "sticks his neck out for nobody," to returning to his roots as a partisan. Rick is a  surly saloon owner in a dead-end corner of Africa who plays both ends against the middle, and carries a whiff of corruption. Bogart's on-screen 80% of the time and when he's not, people are talking about him, speculating about him, sucking up to him, watching him out of the corners of their eyes, semi-resplendent in his white and black tuxedo—a good-bad man.

The movie is based on a rarely-staged play "Everybody Comes to Rick's" (Does anybody try to revive it? Do they even bother?), and it does indeed seem like the whole of Casablanca assembles every evening in this one formal night-club to drink, gamble, do a little business, and watch the guy in the corner table drinking alone and working out chess strategies. Who is he? Where did he come from? Why is he here? Can he save me (us)?

For the sleazy little grifter Ugarte (Peter Lorre—one of the many films he did with Bogart) it's "will he legitimize my existence by acknowledging me?" A minor player in the black-market of Casablanca (where there are "vultures, vultures everywhere") he acts like a big shot around Rick, but can be shot down for the minor-leaguer he is with merely a glance. Like most everyone, he doesn't know a lot about Rick, and is just one more of the Café Américain patrons speculating on the owner. Tonight, he gets Rick to notice him on the night of his greatest triumph...and his worst mistake. Another mistake is thinking that if Rick will do one favor for him, he'll do another. And as we know by this point, Rick "sticks (his) neck out for nobody."

But, still, they speculate, playing their guessing game about who he is, where he came from, and what he may be doing there. Everybody Comes to Rick's, yes. But also:

Everybody De-Constructs Rick Vol. 1: Ugarte

The Set-Up: It's a busy night at Rick's Café Américain. There are deals being made to flee the country in hushed tones. Tourists are getting fleeced by pick-pockets. There's quite a police presence. And Rick's United Nations of a staff is practicing diplomacy and politely discouraging any concessions from the owner. In fact, Rick has just barred the head of the Deutsche Bank from the casino. Small time hustlers like Ugarte, however, have no problem getting in and bending his ear.

Action!

Ugarte: Heh. You know, Rick, watching you just now with the Deutsche Bank one would think you'd been doing this all your life.
Richard Blaine: Oh? What makes you think I haven't?
Ugarte: Oh! Oh, nothing. Er, but when you first came to Casablanca I thought...
Rick: You thought what?
Ugarte: Oh, what right do I have to think?
Ugarte: May I? (He sits down at Rick's table, while the owner barely acknowledges him) Too bad about those two German couriers, wasn't it?
Rick: They got a lucky break. Yesterday they were just two German clerks. Now, they're...the honored dead.
Ugarte: Heh. You're a very cynical person, Rick, if, if you'll forgive me for saying so.
Rick: I forgive you...
Ugarte: Thank you. Will you have a drink with me, please?
Rick: No!
Ugarte: Oh, I forgot, you never drink with any...I'll, I'll have another, please.
Waiter: Yes M'sieur.
Ugarte: You despise me, don't you?
Rick: Well, if I gave you any thought, maybe I would.
Ugarte: But why? Oh. You object to the kind of business I do, huh? But think of all those poor refugees who must rot in this place if I didn't help them. Well, that's not so bad...through ways of my own I provide them with exit visas.
Rick: For a price, Ugarte. For a price.
Ugarte: Heh-heh. But think of all the poor devils who can't meet Renault's price. Oh, I get it for them for half! Is that so...parasitic?
Rick: I don't mind a parasite, I object to a cut-rate one.
Ugarte: Well, Rick, after tonight I'll be through with the whole business and I'm leaving, finally, this Casablanca.
Rick: Who'd you bribe for the visa? Renault or yourself?
Ugarte: Myself. I found myself much more reasonable. Look, Rick.
Ugarte: You know what this is? Something that even you have never seen. Letters of transit signed by General DeGaulle.
Ugarte: They cannot be rescinded. Not even questioned. One moment.
Ugarte: Tonight, I'll be selling them for even more money than even I have ever dreamed of. And then, adieu, Casablanca.
Ugarte: You know, Rick, I have many a friend in Casablanca, but somehow just because you despise me, you are the only one I trust.
Ugarte: Will you keep these for me please?
Rick: For how long?
Ugarte: Oh, perhaps an hour. Perhaps a little longer...
Rick: I don't want them here overnight.
Ugarte: Don't be afraid of that. Please keep them for me.
Ugarte: Thank you. I knew I could trust you. Waiter!
Ugarte: I'll be expecting some people. Uh....If anyone asks for me, I'll be right here.
Waiter: Yes, M'seur.
Ugarte: Rick, I hope you're more impressed with me now. If you'll forgive me, I'll share my good luck with your roulette wheel.
Rick: Now, just a moment. Hey, I heard a rumor those two German couriers were carrying letters of transit.
Ugarte: Oh, I've heard that rumor, too. Poor devils.
Rick: Yes, you're right, Ugarte. I am a little more impressed with you.

Casablanca

Words by Murray Burnett, Joan Alison, Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch

Pictures by Arthur Edeson and Michael Curtiz

Casablanca is available on DVD from Warner Home Video.

* There's a famous story of director Curtiz setting up a shot of Bogart nodding, and the Warners contract-player, not yet their super-star, badgering the director with questions about what he was nodding at. Curtiz told him it didn't matter, and the actor dutifully stood on his mark and nodded, meaningfully, at "he-had-no-idea-what" at the call of "Action!"

It's the shot that tells the Cafe band to play "La Marseillaise."

What difference would it have made if Bogart knew? I'd have to say not much, though Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg would probably spin emotively in their graves. The shot's only a couple of ticks long, and sometimes the power of montage trumps motivation, as Kuleshov pointed out.

Spotlight

Let Us Prey (How Do You Solve a Problem Like Pariah?)
or
The Feast of the Epiphany

Spotlight has been getting a lot of Oscar buzz (worthy, I'd say) for its depiction of the journalistic tracking of the systemic abuse of the Catholic Church in its shuffling of known sex-offender priests from one parish to another in order to avoid local scandal. The film is not prurient, not sensationalistic. If anything, it just concentrates on the story of getting the story in the tradition of most "press" movies—a genre usually sneered at by the press. Scrutinizers don't like to be scrutinized in the same way doctors don't like to go under the knife.

Or, as William F. Buckley chortled when asked why he supposed Senator Robert F. Kennedy refused to appear on his conservative discussion show "Firing Line": "Why does baloney reject the grinder?"

But, the reporters of the "Spotlight" feature of The Boston Globe praise Spotlight, even if it does not show them in the best of lights (other than being portrayed by film-stars) because ultimately, through fits and starts, sins of omission and hubris, they did get the story that had been buried under bureaucracy and doctrine and a "gentleman's agreement" between power brokers of government and clergy. They dared to shine a light on the dark corners of the church that had been sheltered in stained glass and "community good" while incidents of sexual misconduct had occurred against the very parishioners most vulnerable and in need of the church. Those victims were lambs to the slaughter, against wolves in shepherd's clothing.

It's enough to shake your faith...in everything.

Keaton, Shreiber, Ruffalo, Adams, Slattery and James...scrutinizing.

The only reason the scandal came to light was due to outside influence. Inside influence had been going on for so long it was routine. The film begins with one such incident where a priest is in lock-up, distraught mom and kids are talking to detectives, and a lawyer drives up and is escorted into the back-rooms. Then a priest rushes in. The cops out in front treat it like another day at the office. "And then this happens..." The priests and lawyer skulk back out into the night and drive off, leaving a witness, silently observing. We never learn who that is. It doesn't matter who sees. Nothing will be done about it.

At The Boston Globe, an editor is retiring, and we see his farewell party, the guy getting joshed good-naturedly by owner Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery) and "Spotlight" editor Walter "Robbie" Robinson (Michael Keaton). The "Spotlight" staff hangs back, they're in the middle of doing a piece on crime stats in Boston, and it's not going well: Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) is on the phone with the Boston PD getting "no comments;" Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams—thoroughly making up for her role in "The Hunger Games" series) and Matt Carroll (Brian D'Arcy James) are at the party having cake and gossiping about the new editor coming in. That seems to be the topic of conversation—Bradlee and Robinson are having the same discussion as well, with Robinson doing the reporter thing—he's taking him out to lunch...to scrutinize. The new editor, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) is not from "around here." So, the townies have to size him up, see who's going to be doing the most bending, them or him.

Baron has been around, and he sees how the newspaper market is changing—the internet is taking over classifieds, other media are faster even though less reliable—so he has it in his head that The Globe has to matter to the people of Boston (not unlike Charles Foster Kane wanting his newspaper "The Inquirer" being as "important" as the gas in a lamp). It has to provide a service that no other source can provide. If the Globe isn't "essential" it will not survive. The "Spotlight" team is one of the things that make the paper stand out, even though "Spotlight" has a reputation for taking things slow, slow, slow in order to do a thorough, grinding job of reporting. Baron spikes that crime report in favor of reviving the old "Geoghan case."

Geoghan had a history of sexual abuse of young boys and was the subject of 87 civil law suits, all public records of which had been suppressed by a court order asked for by the Boston Archdiocese. It is Rezendes' job to get those records, and Baron says he will ask for a court order to release the public records. To a person, the response to this action is: "You want to sue the Church?" No, that's not what he wants to do. But in the Boston bubble, it amounts to the same thing—The Church doesn't want the records released, so to petition to have them make the public records actually public, you have to "fight" The Church.

Rezendes also tries to get more background from prickly lawyer Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci, who is brilliant in this, as he usually is in everything), who has been representing sexual abuse victims for years, and is reluctant to give anything to the press, as they've been ignoring his entreaties for years. Plus, he has a reputation for being difficult. He's one of the lawyers accused of "turning child abuse into a cottage industry."

Pfeiffer goes another direction: she starts to interview victims of the attacks, provided to her by an organization (SNAP-The Survivor's Network of Those Abused by Priests) that has been cataloging and offering support to abuse victims—the head of the organization also has a reputation as flighty, unstable and a flake, but his distrust of the press is even greater than Garabedian's, as he's sent information to the Globe in the past, only to see nothing for his efforts. The kids, now adults, are reluctant to come out of the shadows, left with psychological issues, shame, self-loathing, and a sense of betrayal that makes them suspicious of everyone. Robinson oversees the project, throwing his weight around so that Pfeiffer can talk to the local prosecutor (Billy Crudup) who settled most of the cases in court and out of the public eye. He also meets with a friend, attorney Jim Sullivan (Jamey Sheridan), who has represented the Church in some cases, and who advises him Robinson that "off the record, I can't talk about it."

Meanwhile, a pattern starts to emerge: by checking the yearly publication of priests and parishes on record in The Globe's archives, the accused priests that have been shuffled off to other parishes, or taken to "treatment centers" are listed as either on "sick leave,""absent" or "unassigned"—official code words to avoid scrutiny or investigation. A telephone interview with a psychologist (an uncredited Richard Jenkins) studying the problem says that it's estimated that 6% of all priests are chronic abusers, a figure the Spotlighters don't believe, until they go through those records and find that, statistically, they add up—87 of Boston's priests have been coded, made to "lie low," then re-assigned to other parishes by the Archdiocese. It's a conspiracy done behind closed confessional doors, orchestrated by the Church, carried out by the courts in secret. As one character remarks "If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse them."

For the staffers, it is a growing nightmare that they are slow to accept—except for Baron, they're all Catholics, and being in the Boston social circles means they have frequent business with Church hierarchy, and the representatives from sectarian institutions and charities associated with it. Plus, the Archdiocese's Cardinal Law (Len Cariou) is a highly political man who makes sure he is well-connected in the Boston community, even requesting that Baron meet with him when he's first starting his editor job. All the better to influence and manipulate. Manipulation is a strong tool in the Catholic Church...or any church, for all that.

It is the staffers' crisis of faith that is the most interesting aspect to Spotlight. And it's not just faith in their Church that is troubling them (although that is articulated frequently by the Catholic staff, that sense of betrayal). It is also faith in themselves as reporters and "guardians" of the public trust. This is not articulated—by them, but is brought up by Garabedian, by the victims with a "Where were you?"—but is shown in stray looks at each other, by a wordless scene where Pfeiffer shows an old Globe clipping from the archives to Robinson, for whom that failure is very personal. While they're strutting around, thinking themselves noble arbiters of truth, at best they are only making up for lost time, reporting on a cold case, the damage being done long ago. That sense of guilty futility is done without words, eked out by a brilliant cast under the unpretentious direction of Tom McCarthy (he directed The Station Agent, Win Win, The Visitor, all superb films—he also wrote the story for Up with Bob Peterson and Pete Docter). This is a great film, and not in the "hoo-rah" easy kind of crowd-pleasing way. It is tough, in subject matter and on its subjects, and it is one of the best films of the year.

Bradlee, Rezendes, Carroll, Pfeiffer, Baron, and Robinson