Dinner for Schmucks

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day...

"It is Such a Pleasure to Laugh at the Misfortunes of Others"

Comedy is such a subjective thing. I don't know how many times I've quoted Mel Brooks' line that "Tragedy is when I cut my finger; Comedy is when you fall down a man-hole and die." And, as we are all individuals, one person's Bringing Up Baby* is another's Dumb and Dumber.** I know lots of fine folks who loved Date Night (Steve Carell's previous live-action movie), but I wasn't among them.

My tastes in comedy are not sophisticated; a good spit-take or prat-fall will make me howl with laughter. I like Jerry Lewis, as his movies will be guaranteed to contain at least one instance where I laugh 'til tears come out of my eyes. And I like good word-play, as my love for all things Marxian and Woody will attest. What I don't laugh at is regurgitation—recycled humor that is expected to be laughed at because, hey, it was funny the last time.  Thus, the charm of Mike Myers frequently eludes me.

Now, Dinner for Schmucks—the latest film by the "Focker" and "Austin Powers" franchiser Jay Roach—he also directed the very fine HBO film Recount—is based on the French film Le Diner des Cons, so there is a French charm to it spoken with a flat American accent. An up-and-coming executive Tim Conrad (Paul Rudd) is welcomed into the higher echelon of the investment firm that employs him (run by Bruce Greenwood) by being invited to an executive dinner in which the firm's hoi-polloi bring along "idiots"—persons of a certain unique, and frequently inept, "talent" for the ridiculing entertainment of the host ("No mimes. It's a cliche").  Whoever has the best idiot is guaranteed a certain prestige position in the company, complete with corner-window office.

The idea horrifies his gallery contractor girlfriend (Stephanie Szostak) and only reinforces her instinct to refuse Tim's frequent marriage proposals.  He's just about to sacrifice his career and opt out of the dinner when Fate steps in front of his Porsche in the nerdly form of Barry Speck (Steve Carrell), an IRS drone whose hobby is to make bucolic fantasy dioramas using stuffed mouse road-kill, which he calls his "Mouse-terpieces." ***

Tim's destiny seems set, but the acquisition of the bone-head Speck turns his life upside-down in a series of "Incredible Mess" scenarios that seem to nullify everything he might gain from winning the dinner game.  The film is a self-defeating trap that could have used a more harried leading man than Rudd (or more dead-pan, in which case, hey, Ron Livingston's in the cast!) that might have had more of a comedic pay-off, or at least have produced more dramatic risk out of the situations. As it is, everything feels a little safe, nowhere near creating the sort of comedic frisson this film so desperately needs.

For a movie specializing in cruel humor, it lobs only soft-balls, whether it's at the clutch of crazies at the dinner, a nastily predatory ex-girlfriend of Tim's (Lucy Punch), or the what-comes-around come-uppance of the stuffy execs. Everything should be more manic, more crazy, and have a few more bite-marks that actually draw blood.****

Points, though, for filling the cast with an array of good comedic talent including Kristen Schaal and Jemaine Clement of "Flight of the Conchords" (series and group, respectively), Zach Galifianakis, the afore-mentioned Livingston, and Larry Willmore. The improvisational power of the cast is formidable, and (like Date Night) it feels a little too improvised at times as there are so many scenes that are barely gelled. However, a business lunch that is the definition of "awkward" is a highlight, as is a conversation between Speck and Clement's self-absorbed satyr-like artiste ("There are only two things that matter in life: wonderful, visceral sexy sex...and Death"), that benefits from the two comedians' off-kilter rhythms to big pay-offs. Such moments are few and far between.

* ...which I love.

** ...at which I didn't crack a smile.

*** The most charming part of the film is the title sequence, set to The Beatles' "The Fool on the Hill," of Speck putting the finishing touches on an out-sized version of his hobby.

 **** 2023 Update: Well, with that choice of words, maybe if they combined Dinner With Schmucks with The Menu. That would be...interesting? Maybe even "tasteless?"

"I hate tasteless!"

Flight

Written at the time of the film's touch-down...

 

Flying Inverted
or
Cracking the Whip

It's been years since Robert Zemeckis made a live-action film (the last being Cast Away, all the way back in 2000, the time being taken up with his three motion capture animated films) and this one, Flight, is an interesting choice, quite unlike anything the director has done, but falling in line with his other films about people being left up in the air about fundamental choices in their lives.  

Captain Whip Whittaker (Denzel Washington) is a pilot on cruise-control. Unfortunately, it's a path that will ultimately crash and burn. An alcoholic and coke-head, he'll do a layover with a stew (in this instance, Nadine Velazquez), get wasted, and then to get himself #1 on the runway will do a line, so he can do the "pilot walk" to the cabin—all confidence and casualness for the launching of "souls" into the wild-blue yonder.

Even before he takes off, Whip is flying. But his nonchalance and bon homie gets him through, even through a difficult take-off through low turbulence. He pushes the plane, but clears the clouds early and restores order to the flight, then settles back to cadge some booze samples, smuggle them into his orange juice and catch some sleep. He wakes up just in time for a crisis: the plane bangs, then goes into a steep dive that terrifies the passengers and crew (and me) and merely gives Whip a much needed shot of adrenaline. The only way he can take the plane from pile-driving into the ground is to bank it until he's flying upside down, then skimming the Earth until he can find a clear place to land, then cork-screw right side up and ditching for a landing.

Six people die, two on the crew.  Whittaker wakes up in the hospital with torn ligaments in his knees, lacerations around his eye and no idea how he got there.  First visitor is the pilot's union rep (Bruce Greenwood), then the NTSB who are all "just the facts" and deferential. Next is Whip's "connection" (John Goodman), a Dr. Feelgood who waltzes in (to the tune of the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil;" Whip's is "Feelin' Alright"), tells Whip he's a hero, that reporters are hunting him, and criticizes the doctors' choice in pain-killers: "Amateur night!" All Whip can think about is getting out, but it's not as simple as that. He's under investigation for the crash (his simple response is "it was a broken plane"), has been lawyered up with an attorney (Don Cheadle) who doesn't like him, thinks he's a creep, but is going to do his job, and on top of it all, Whittaker must deal with a pissed-off ex-wife and a son who doesn't know him, and has no intentions to.

In the hospital, he meets Nicole (Kelly Reilly, you'll remember her as Dr. Watson's wife in the Robert Downey, Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies), who's recovering from an overdose and not in a good way.  Whip is attracted—she's female and weak, which seem to be all that's required—and he whisks her away to his family's small farm and failed crop-dusting business in rural Georgia.  He's already ditched all the alcohol, but after a couple days, he's back in the bag, drinking himself into oblivion while Nicole goes to AA meetings.  Whip visits, too, but when things get personal, he takes off.

Washington is brilliant in all of this, showing both the pilot's strengths and pitiful weaknesses. His scenes of bleary drunkenness feel real and incomprehensible, and one watches his constant crashing after attempts to bring himself up are painful to watch. The balance of the film is Whip's cart-wheeling from sober to sloshed, his best instincts superseded by his addictions—a man in constant denial, addicted to lying (and pulling himself out of a crisis) and risk-taking as much as to the hooch. It's a rough ride to be a part of and even observe, Whittaker constantly pulling himself out of his dives, then going into another tailspin, and you just know the only time he'll level off is when he crashes.  The parallels between flight and addiction are obvious (how far can you push yourself before everything breaks and if you survive, how much further can you push?) and audiences who gripe about all the action being in the first 20 minutes, may not realize that they're watching a parallel course throughout the rest of the movie, only far more personal, and maybe (hopefully) not as relatable.  

It is a tough, emotional roller-coaster to be a part of, but everything is of a piece. At one point, Cheadle's lawyer puts it succinctly: "Death demands responsibility," and responsibility is one thing Whittaker has never known. The old Irwin Allen disaster movie posters used to scream "Who Will Survive?" The same applies here, even if the audience-grabbing disaster only occurs at the beginning, and we white-knuckle it to see who'll surface from the rubble. This is a smart, troubling, painful movie to watch. But, you can't turn away, either in horror or fascination.

Whip Whittaker's sobering flight is just the first leg on the itinerary.

Deja Vu

John Oliver mentioned this one on Sunday's episode of "Last Week Tonight" —"'Bingo', indeed, Denzel!"—so we're going to go to the "WABAC Machine," via "The Time Tunnel," hit "Rewind" on my Delorean's "Flux Capacitor" and say this was written at the time of the film's release...

Once More into the Time-Breach, Dear Friends, 
or
Stop me if you've heard this one...

I took an "Introduction to Film" course in college (it's why I'm so danged qualified to write these things!). When we got to the study of Russian Cinema, the instructor discussed the differences between their film-making and Hollywood film-making. Russian films were big on "montage." They'd give you pieces of a puzzle and you'd add them up to form the story, and sometimes the juxtaposition of images would react against each other. A shot of a hillside under a sunny sky. A shot of wheat. Another shot of wheat. Another shot of LOTS of wheat. Black smoke appearing over the hillside. A large tire crunches the dirt. The grill of a tractor (for it is a tractor, comrade). People marching (with flags, yet!) beside the tractor in solidarity to the...well, you get the idea. There's a lot of coverage for a simple event.

By CONTRAST, the Hollywood film works like this: a shot of a hillside under a sunny sky; a plane enters the frame.

It blows up.

Déjà Vu is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and with him, you get the best of both film-making worlds--the long drawn out set-up AND something blowing up!! That's art you can take to the BANK, baby! And Bruckheimer does. You can pooh-pooh a lot of his films like Days of Thunder, Bad Boys, Armageddon and Con-Air (and his morgue-TV franchise "CSI: Anywhere," which this film resembles at times) but they draw in the crowds in amazing numbers, especially when Tony Scott (Ridley's brother) is directing (Top Gun, Crimson Tide,), and this is the latest collaboration between Denzel Washington, Scott and Bruckheimer. This film begins with the kind of "America in slo-mo" shots they usually reserve for commercials for something unpleasant like life insurance, or Dupont chemicals. The rule is if you've got kids leaping on the grass at half-speed no one will think anything but happy thoughts when you mention chemical fertilizer. 

Well, we get a lot of that as sailors and their families happily (and sloooowly) board a ferry boat. Then BOOM! It blows up in different speeds at different angles. Lots of coverage of the orange fireball. We've seen this sort of thing from Bruckheimer before. Prolonged normalcy, then instant carnage (is gonna get you). But it's just the beginning of the pattern of referrals, call-backs and out-right "steals" in this moebius strip of a movie.

Enter Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington). He's a crime scene investigator, but instead of being CSI, he's ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms). He's misplaced his partner someplace (yes, it's significant) so he's handling the investigation solo. But that's okay, because like CSI's Gil Grissom, he can spot molecules out of place on a beach filled with debris. In no time at all, he's scored a major lead in the case, while the cops take longer trying to explain where the coffee urn is--no, I'm not making that up. Washington is so ingratiating in the role (doing a grinning spin on his Inside Man investigator) that you're just happy he's on the case.*

Now Gil Grissom actually does show up, but if you blink once or twice you'll realize that it's merely Val Kilmer doing a Bill Petersen imitation. Kilmer's a gifted performer (The Doors, Tombstone, KissKissBangBang), but here he's a little bloated looking, like the love-child of John Travolta and Kurt Russell. 

Carlin's ability to see grains of sand out of place attracts his attention--and they make their way to the Guardian of Forever...or Project Tic-Toc...actually, it's a big terra-computer that can see back in time precisely four days and six hours and with it, the investigators hope to be able to track down the terrorists before they can launch the attack, but they don't know where to pick up the thread. That's Carlin's job and he naturally says, "Watch the girl." And before you can sing one verse of "Laura is the face in the misty light" the group is following her every move even into the shower. High Tech Stalking, but, hey, it's all in the past, after all, and it's (harrumph) "National Security." Now, most investigators fall in love with the object of the investigation (the "Laura" trope) when they see them across a room. This guy sees her across a coroner's slab. So to the creepy "stalking" aspect, perhaps we should add necromancy. Or "nec-romance."

I would say that to reveal more of the plot would spoil the movie, but, really, you've there's nothing new that hasn't been done in better and worse films and TV series. And you just know that once the subject of seeing into the past comes up, someone is actually going to try to...(you're probably way ahead of me AND the movie, which is a sort of reverse time-travel--which should upset the time-space continuum...or at least cause the lights to go dim in Robert McKee's screenwriting seminar!). Luckily for the folks involved, though in most movies of this sort, messing with the past can cause some unseen complications, in this movie there are no loose ends**--everything turns out just as it was before, but better. Well, except for the movie, of course. It's not that Déjà Vu is bad. It's just that it's cobbled together from bits of other movies, so, like the phenomenon for which it's named, you get the nagging feeling you've seen it all before. 

And you have.

Boom!

*With that lead comes a red herring--a woman has washed up on the beach--she's burned, but still beautiful--and she got there before the explosion and against the tide. And before you can say "we'll cross that Einstein-Rosen bridge when we come to it," Washington's Carlin inexplicably makes her the locus/focus of the case..and of course, he's right.

** No, I'm wrong. There is a loose end..with this review. Where's the cat-joke? At one point, going through the "girl's" apartment, Carlin feeds her by-now starving cat...which provoked a companion's retort after the movie, "That's 'Schrödinger's cat!'" And, of course, it is. It's also one of the best inside jokes that even Dennis Miller wouldn't have had the stones to use.

Doctor Sleep

Well, We All Shine On (Like Moon-light and The Stars, and You)
or
Wait'll the Talent Scouts Get Wind of Him

There was no reason for there to be a sequel to "The Shining," either the book or the 1980 film adaptation. It told its story and ended. Each told it differently, but there was no ambiguity to either one. King ended his story by having the Overlook blow up in a boiler-room conflagration. And Stanley Kubrick's movie kept the Overlook in one piece, but put the story to an end.

There ARE no reasons to make sequels of any of Kubrick's films—he ended his stories, having said all that needed to be said, even if the ending was ambiguous. There was no next chapter because there was no point. And if you did do a "sequel"—like the ill-considered 2010: The Year We Make Contact—you basically cheapen the story with considerations that are not central to the first conceit and the whole thing gets watered down. "Oh, yeah, and by the way, this could happen tangentially...only it's not as important as the first story, but...blah blah blah—people will have jobs so let's make a sequel."

And so..."Heeeere's...Danny!"

Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor), of Jack (E.T.'s Henry Thomas) and Wendy Torrance (Alex Essoe), is not doing well. One could say he's following in the family tradition—a victim of PTSD from his experiences when his parents were caretakers at the haunted Overlook Hotel, he is drinking and drifting, short-time jobs, the money of which he'll squander on booze and start the cycle again to losing the work and moving on. But, Danny (as we know) has been gifted—or cursed—with "the shining," a psychic ability of some indeterminence, but which played a large part in saving the life of himself and his Mother when father Jack became swayed by the spirits haunting the Overlook. A "very willful boy," he has lost his will since his Mother's death and shines far less brightly these days, the booze having doused it, like water to flame.

For Danny has been plagued by nightmares. Not just nightmares, but the returning spirits of the Overlook, who have followed him and his Mother to Florida—they never wanted to see snow again—and beset Danny until one day he's given a coaching by Dick Halloran (Carl Lumbley), his friend "in shining" at the Overlook, who teaches him about what he used to do as a boy, a trick taught to him by his grandmother. If one of those old spooks comes back to haunt you, you think up a box and just lock them in it, and they'll never bother you again.

Now, for fans of the original Shining—book and/or film (and they're not exactly a group that like both), you know there's an issue: Halloran appears in the book of "Doctor Sleep" because he survived in the book of "The Shining." But, (can it be a SPOILER ALERT for a movie that's 39 years old?), in the movie, Halloran gets cleaved by an ax in an attempt to rescue Danny and Wendy from their predicament. And yet, he appears in Mike Flanagan's movie of Doctor Sleep, to give little Danny that advice about the mental boxes. Flanagan does a bit of finagling to do justice to both book and film, and satisfy the expectations of both (which is no small task) but he does a fairly good job of keeping his feet on both banks of the river simultaneously, but in the process, he kinda hasta change what "the shining" actually is—not that we knew in the first place.*

Problem solved, and if I remember correctly (and I probably don't because I couldn't get through King's novel), that happened in the first twenty pages. Now, Danny may be able to box those demons, but he can't box the ones inherited from his father. And so he spends most of his life wasted and drifting, until he comes to one town, Frazier New Hampshire, where under the stewardship of Billy Freeman (Cliff Curtis) he gets a job, a room of his own, and starts going to A-A where he meets Dr. John (Bruce Greenwood), who becomes impressed with Dan and offers him a job as an orderly at a hospice that seems to suit him.

That's where the cat comes in.

The hospice has a therapy cat, who has a strange ability. At night, when everything is quiet, the cat will wander the halls of the hospice and open a door and jump on the bed of one of the patients. The cat, named Azrael, has a reputation among the internees—when the cat visits you at night, it means you're about to die. Despite this, the cat seems to be popular and not kicked off beds right and left. Soon, Danny starts to follow the cat on its rounds, and comforting the about-to-die, giving them peace in their last moments.

And he gets a nickname—"Doctor Sleep." Roll credits.

All well and good, if that was all there was to it. Danny finds peace giving peace, his "shining" bringing comfort like a spooky version of Last Rites. But, there are other shiners who don't give comfort at all; they're The True Knot and over the years—and there have been many, many of them—the Knot led by its cult leader "Rose the Hat" (a particularly on-point Rebecca Ferguson) have been luring children with shining abilities and ritualistically killing them...slowly, so as to absorb their shining abilities like a life-force, that manifests itself as a mist, giving them rejuvenation and renewed life. They're like vampires, but for shining, not blood. This is a new wrinkle, that the "Shining" has a physicality, that—with an expanded range of abilities—makes it feel more like George Lucas' midichlorian-based "The Force."

The activities of The True Knot psychically alerts a shining adept teen, Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), who is traumatized by the murder of a child (the always amazing Jacob Tremblay) by the group. Abra has been in psychic contact with Danny, the way a HAM radio operator talks with other stations around the world. But the night of the boy's murder, Danny is blasted by Abra's terror and the blackboard the two have used to communicate is covered with the word "MURDER" which Danny first sees in a mirror as an all-too familiar word—"REDRUM"

The movie then turns into a three-way struggle between Danny and Abra and the Knot, and particularly its leader, Rose, a fight that escalates from merely invading each other's thoughts to more murderous physical contact. Pretty soon, everybody is tracking the movements of everybody else and Danny decides to take Abra and stage a last stand at the one place that might be suffused with enough evil energy to defeat Rose—the Overlook Hotel, containing all the ghosts and memories that have haunted Danny's past, including the restless spirit of his father. 

Director Flanagan has done a very creditable job of directing Doctor Sleep, making an intriguing film that stands on its own without depending on the very heavy shadow of Kubrick's film (although he does fall back on it a lot—which we'll talk about later). If there are gripes, they can be directed at King's novel, which gives far more substance (literally) to The Shining ability, which now allows astral projection, mind and body hijacking—"pushing" to use King's phrase from the book and from his novel "Firestarter"—and the capacity to get into people's heads, even those that shine, and messing around with their "files." 

That's a big jump from the psychological manipulation and thought-reading that had been the extent of the earlier versions. Think about it: if the shining ability was originally presented the way it now is, little Danny wouldn't have had to do what he did in the original to spare himself and his Mother. All he would have to have done is take over Daddy Jack's mind. Problem solved.

That aside, there is a bit of diffusion of the original story—the True Knot is too big a group that has lasted too long to not be noticed, even at the time of the first book. In a way, it overshadows the first story, even threatening to swamp it.

Flanagan ignores that, giving the Knot its due, and deftly combining both versions of The Shining, book and film. He takes a lot of tricks from the Kubrick film, not just in creating a near duplicate of the Overlook sets—that was probably a chore—using key images, like the swooping Main Title sequence, digitally altered for effect, recreating the "Here's Johnny" sequence that is so spot on, you will initially think they used the sequence with Shelley Duvall, but, no, that's Alex Essoe playing it perfectly. The film is also bracketed with the same music (Wendy Carlos' distortion of "Dies Irae" and the old tune "Midnight, the Stars and You") as well as the thumping heart-beat Kubrick used to underscore tension.

But, his best weapon is employing the same creepy technique Kubrick used in The Shining, which is purely cinematic—the framing. Kubrick imbued his film with his usual trope, the one-point perspective.** But, with The Shining, he gave it an extra element—nothing. For much of the film, Kubrick centers his one point on a negative space, giving the film a vertiginous depth despite its horizontal perspective.

Most of the time it works, but there are moments when it's jarring—like a shot of Greenwood's Dr. John in his office that is so influenced by Kubrick's shots of the Overlook's manager, Ullman, in his office—in the Overlook Hotel, mind you—that for a moment it took me right out of the movie. That seemed a bit slavish...and unnecessary—an irrelevant echo that is a complete mis-match, despite its adherence to the original.***

But, we can overlook that as maybe taking a good idea too far. For the most part, Flanagan has taken an old haunt and managed to bring it back to creepy life.

Maybe Kubrick was right—how could The Shining be a down-beat movie when it suggests there is life after death? Perhaps there's a corollary of that thought to sequels, as well.

* I suspect it has something to do with midichlorians, but I might be confused...

**

*** That's what I'm talking about

Meek's Cutoff

Ever since seeing The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, I've been looking for my review of this wonderful Western, which has stuck in my mind ever since I saw it, back in 2011. This was written at the time of the film's release.

"Trudging to the End of Knowledge"
or
"This Was All Written Long Ago"

One must now ask the chicken-or-the-egg question: where does Michelle Williams consistently find these great awards-worthy roles to play in indie films? Or do they find her?  Whichever came first, Williams has again found a great role that, if there is any justice come awards season, will garner her attention for her acting in Meek's Cutoff.*

It's a western, directed by Williams' collaborator on Wendy and Lucy, Kelly Reichardt, and is as spare as the genre can get, in a field that has many a furrow in it from the trails blazed by John Ford and Howard Hawks—the wagon train. The Tetherow-Gately-White Party, however, has slightly derailed. 

When we first encounter the group, three families, three wagons pulled by oxen, a clutch of horses and guide Steven Meek (an unrecognizable but nicely gruff Bruce Greenwood), they are fording a river—Meek and his horse first, then the three women (Williams, Zoe Kazan, Shirley Henderson) carrying precious cargo in what looks like slow-motion—they're actually fighting the current—while the men (Will Patton, Paul Dano, Neal Huff and Tommy Nelson) hang back with the wagons.

Immediately, you're struck with differences: this first sequence is silent, except for the effects track—indeed, you don't hear any dialog until a night-time reading of Genesis, just the white-noise of the river, the thunder of the wagons through the dirt, punctuated by the squeaks of the wheels; the wagons are not tarped as tight as a bonnet as with most trail-films, the coverings hang loose and look like there's been some shifting going on, and the wagons are painted with washed-out colors, not for decoration, but as a vain attempt at preservation.

It's not your TV-"Wagon Train," with a cook and several scouts and organized dancing. This is work. The women get up in the hours before dawn, gathering sticks for fires and grinding coffee. The men get up with the sun and hook up the animals and talk amongst themselves about what they should do next, voting the direction. The women hang back and tend and mend, listening to the muted conversation, their opinions not wanted or appreciated.

It's tempting to call it a "feminist" Western, even though the roles of the women are in marked contrast to the spunky women of past cinema wagon-trains, who would up-braid their cow-like men and take charge during hysterical child-births. It is only "feminist" by omission—the women are strong (as they'd have to be on such a trek), but they are clearly the low men on the societal totem pole, offering opinions, but not expecting them to be taken seriously, and often completely dismissed. More's the pity as the party appears to be lost in the desert, with no water in sight and mutterings that Meek might not know what he's doing and may be deliberately leading them astray...although why is never thought through.

Austere and simple, with moments of truly inspired beauty, Meek's Cutoff is a study in bare-bones story-telling, where, like travelling a desert with no end in sight, the details are important...even critical. The sameness of the journey is only broken by fleeting incidents, often at the edge of sight, and sometimes on the far side of reason. At some point, the possibilities of a future life recede into memory and are replaced by hopes to survive the day, and plans are discarded, like the furniture routinely tossed out of the back of the wagon, because they might be an unnecessary burden—a useless extravagance.  

Slowly, but surely, you realize that this is the message of Meek's Cutoff right up to the point where the film ends—in a way that is sure to aggravate some viewers (there was quite a bit of grumbling at the showing I attended). But, there is no other way to end it. The destination of the movie has been made—the point has been reached. And even if the pilgrims are not where they aim to be, geographically, they are, spiritually, at the point where civilization can begin, on the far side of knowledge.

* It's fairly historically accurate if you're familiar with the high desert areas of the Williamette section of Eastern Oregon, leading to the Deschutes River to approximately where Bend, Oregon is today.  There was a Steven Meek, he did lead wagon trains, he had a bad reputation for getting lost, but the historic trail still bears his name.

I'm Not There

Relatively 4th Street 

If Robert Zimmerman did not exist, we would have had to invent him. And then we'd have to invent Bob Dylan like he did. Then we'd have to re-invent him. And re-invent him again. And again. And that would only cover his public persona--not the myths and misinterpretations and the thousand unnatural transferences imposed on him by a public trying to possess the unpossessable (He famously said "Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything."). 

F. Scott Fitzgerald said that there are no second acts in American lives. Well, Dylan is somewhere in the dozens now (and we won't even count the Victoria's Secret ads!) in his quest for a place in the American song-book. Todd Haynes has tried to capture some of the sides and asides of early Dylan in the kaleidoscopic and appropriately named I'm Not There (although it could have just have easily been named "It Ain't Me, Babe")

In an attempt to capture Dylan at the creation, Haynes has made the movie episodic, with a collection of stories with a handful of actors playing stages and aspects of Dylan, none of them forming a complete picture, but making a collage of impressions of the artist in his first 15 years in the limelight.

They are: 1) Woody Guthrie--an 11 year old black kid (Marcus Carl Franklin) who rides the rails escaping from a bad situation with just his guitar and his wits to keep him going. He eventually ends up making a pilgrimage to the New Jersey Hospital where the real Woodie Guthrie is dying of TB (Guthrie died in 1967).

2) Jack Rollins--Christian Bale plays the young activist folk singer who ardently sings "finger-pointing songs" and when he finds himself used by political groups, rebels, turns away from them and towards Christian Evangelicism.

3) Robert Clark--Heath Ledger plays an actor who played Jack Rollins in a film, and must deal with the effects of fame, notoriety and their demands on his ideals, private life, and marriage.

4) Arthur Rimbaud--Ben Whishaw plays Dylan the poet, answering straightforward questions at a police booking with wistful asides that aren't really answers (but will do in a pinch). Whishaw has the least to do, and like the next aspect of Dylan gets the lion's share of the best lines.*

5) Jude Quinn--the most hyped stunt-casting of the movie has Cate Blanchett playing Dylan on tour in London, where he is famously heckled by audiences for abandoning folk music for electric rock and challenged by the press trying to understand or categorize this strange creature from the States. This segment is shot in black and white (looking remarkably like the Dylan documentary "Don't Look Back") and heavily influenced by the style of Fellini. Quinn is perpetually bedeviled by esoteric questions that he either dismisses or vaguely answers and rails against the needling inquisition of one reporter (Bruce Greenwood) for whom Quinn writes "Ballad of a Thin Man" in one of the few instances where Dylan's music is used as fore-ground comment.

6) Billy the Kid--Richard Gere plays a Dylan aspect, alone and hiding out in isolation in a freak-filled town called Riddle, Missouri, where he lives under different identities and speaks up for the town when it is threatened by domineering Commissioner Pat Garrett (Bruce Greenwood, again). It's done in the style of Sam Peckinpah in a fever dream with a slow-tracking camera and a wandering editing style, and a narration by Kris Kristofferson (who played Billy in Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, of which Bob Dylan was an integral part.*

And the bizarre thing is, the bloody thing works. It helps to be hip on Dylan or you'll miss some of the in-jokes.** But it's enough Dylan and just enough kinda Dylan that one can't be too anal-retentive about getting the facts right. The film is more about the myth, and the persona and mystique (and expectations) of the artist than the real thing, and the use of Dylan songs edge along and suggest deeper meanings than, say, a cultural mis-fire like Across the Universe (which used its Beatles covers to tell you that A = A). Dylan's songs—some the traditional recordings, some enthusiastic "live" versions, some covers (there's a wonderful segment of Richie Havens and Franklin doing his "Tombstone Blues") form a suggestive background soundtrack, as his music did for us, that merely suggest, but doesn't hit us over the head, with the exception of that "Ballad of a Thin Man" segment.

Does it succeed in explaining Dylan? Nah. Some aspects of him are presented, and the acknowledgement that there ARE aspects puts this head and shoulders above the standard Hollywood "CliffsNotes" bio-pic (Ali, anyone?). And the film is filled with references and reverberations enough to fill several movies and a few lives, and that is an artistic victory in itself. And the tackling of the splintering of the artist for changing his art and himself—the holding of the mirror up to the flightiness and provinciality of audiences is a brave act, indeed. I came away not knowing Dylan any more than I did, but glad for the journey and reflected on three quotations on the way out.

"I don't think any one word can sum up a man's life" (Citizen Kane)

"He was a man. What does it matter what you say about people?" (Touch of Evil)

"No decent career was ever founded on a public." F. Scott Fitzgerald

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* Including these seven Dylan Rules of Thumb:"Seven simple rules of going into hiding: one, never trust a cop in a raincoat. Two, beware of enthusiasm and of love, both are temporary and quick to sway. Three, if asked if you care about the world's problems, look deep into the eyes of he who asks, he will never ask you again. Four, never give your real name. Five, if ever asked to look at yourself, don't. Six, never do anything the person standing in front of you cannot understand. And finally, seven, never create anything--it will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life."

And, of course, he doesn't follow any of them.

** Dylan played "Alias," a member of Billy's gang, and also created the film's blue-grass score, which included his song "Knockin' on Heaven's Door."

*** My favorites--at a party Quinn is assaulted by the Tommy Boyce-Bobby Hart "I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone" a faux-Dylan piece of silliness performed by the Monkees, and Brian Jones is introduced as belonging to "a really good cover band."