Lincoln

Noisy and Messy and Complicated 

or 
WWLD?

At the end of John Ford's Young Mr Lincoln, "the jack-legged country lawyer" (as played by Henry Fonda) walks up a blighted horizon in the darkening gloom, as thunder rolls in the background, the rough-hewn fence he trudges along taking on the look of military barricades, as the young Lincoln walks with his long stride into the storm of history awaiting him. Steven Spielberg's Lincoln starts where Young... left off—with the sound of thunder over credits, which evolves into cannon-fire before placing us straight on in the middle of the Civil War, blue-on-gray, white-on-black (and the reverses) amid the blood and the mud of the Earth. The shots of the battlefield are tight, confusing, with no sense of place, no horizon—just a frame filled with humans killing each other by any means. No glory. No higher purpose. Just the immediacy of conflict. 

War is the point at which politics breaks down, and politics is where Spielberg's film is concerned to compare and contrast with today's stew of chicanery, graft, and playing fast and loose with the facts to the purpose of getting your way.  'Twas ever thus, and it was no different in Lincoln's time—they just didn't have cameras documenting everything then.

Young Mr. Lincoln: walking into a History still to occur.

\The approach is as good a starting place as any—that is, ending with Ford's last gambit—linking the two, as both films' main goal is to take the monument out of the man, and put him within reach of attainability, wart and all. The canonization of Lincoln began at the moment of his death with the pronunciation "now he belongs to the ages" and his visage, homely, homespun, ragged sunken and contemplative, has been preserved in nickel, bronze, marble, granite to the point where one can hardly imagine it as flesh and blood anymore. 

As portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln is pitch-perfect, not only in his make-up, but his high tenor rasp of a voice, and—the remarkable part for me—in his still-legged gait that kicks and plants itself on the earth, not too steps away from the ragged dance of Wyatt Earp (Fonda, again) in My Darling Clementine. It's a big, robust cast—I had error alerts for all the names I tried to cram into this article's meta-data labels—but the hub of it all is Day-Lewis' Lincoln. Soldiers (including Lukas Haas) quote his Gettysburg Address back to him (which the President tries to staunch: "Been there, delivered that."*) His wife (Sally Field) constantly badgers him—but then she consistently badgers everybody, his cabinet is frequently frustrated by him, by his prevarications, his story-telling that constantly derails conversations to his agenda, and his thought processes which annoy them. "Actually," says Secretary of State Seward (David Straithairn) after Lincoln quotes verse, "I have no idea what you mean by that."

What he means may be too pragmatic for them, it's just how he expresses it that confounds. In one exceptional scene—Tony Kushner worked on this script for a long time and it shows—Lincoln explains in minute, often harsh, detail how he employed his newly granted War Powers Act and it comes down to what he thought he could get away with, legally.

His concern, in the waning days of the war, is to pass the 13th Amendment, thereby abolishing slavery, and it takes every trick, every dodge, every promise and appointment in the middle of a lame-duck Congress before the war could end. The timetable is critical: Lincoln has just been re-elected and is riding a wave of popularity; a crucial number of Congressmen are in their last days of their jobs and are looking to their futures and not to the wishes of their constituents; and, if the war ends, the urgency to pass the Amendment will dwindle, amidst the rebuilding of the Nation. Lincoln's Republicans will vote for it, but they need to tone down their rhetoric. The Democrats are dead-set against it, but getting Democrats to agree on anything is like herding cats and Lincoln wants to exploit the party's fractures into fissures.  

So, the problem is attacked from several fronts (if only the war had started that way): Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook), prominent Republican and journalist, is sent to the South to negotiate a Southern settlement, which the South is anxious to do (although Lincoln is reluctant). Meanwhile, he wheels and deals with the largesse of power, offering appointments, threats, anything to curry votes, and unleashes a trio of stooge-lobbyists (James Spader, John Hawkes, and Tim Blake Nelson) to press the flesh and pass the greenbacks (not "officially," though). Votes are critical. On the home-front, Lincoln's son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is back from college, but feeling the weight of his kinship with the President and wants to enlist, which sends wife Mary Todd into another accusatory tailspin as she has barely survived the death of their son, Tad.

Throughout, Lincoln keeps his counsel. but sometimes erupts into spasms of frustration—with "Molly" (as he calls her), the congress and his cabinet, choosing his moments and pressing his advantage, knowing no peace except what he can create for himself.

As good as Day-Lewis is, he's matched by Tommy Lee Jones as House Republican Thaddeus Stevens. In chambers, Stevens sits and fumes, then reaches his limit and bursts out in loud insulting harangues, just in control enough to get his point across, and even smiling tightly—very tightly—when when dressed down by Mary Lincoln over his tight reins over The White House purse strings. Jones finds different ways to make his speeches crackle, while never betraying any sense that the words haven't sprung originally from his head. And Spielberg has given special attention to casting key roles with the like of great character actors like Bruce McGill, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Lee Pace who make their relatively small parts punch out and become memorable.

And Spielberg's eye for painterly detail shines, as Lincoln moves through the gloomy corridors of The White House or sets up an eerie dream sequence for the President. And in one lovely scene, between Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant (Jared Harris), where the war's toll on Lincoln is expressed in Day-Lewis' exhausted eyes and the shadows of a long rank of soldiers trudging in front of a setting sun play across his face.  

You can't see the moving shadows

Spielberg's regular team of artists: Kaminski, Kahn, Carter, and Williams construct a great quilt of imagery and dynamics, making Lincoln a fascinating display of historical intimacy writ large.  It would make a superb triple bill sandwiched between Young Mr. Lincoln and The Conspirator.

* There's a nice contrast of Lincoln delivering a dedication at a flag-raising ceremony that lasts a measly few lines.  "That's my speech" he says as he tucks his paper back into his stove-top hat. They can't all be gems.

Nine

Mary Poppins Returns is great. But here's an earlier musical by its director Rob Marshall that stunk, despite a rich subject matter and some great stars. 

Written at the time of the film's foisting.

"How Do You Solve a Problem Like Fellini?"
or
"There Ought To Be Clowns (Don't Bother, They're Here)"

There is a great movie, I'm sure, to be made of the Tony Award winning musical Nine. But this isn't "it." Nor, I think, was "it" an intention for the production company to do so.

In fact, it is hard to determine what "it" is, and what "it" intends to do. Is it a musical adaptation of Fellini's 8 1/2, or of Fellini's life? Is it even an adaptation of the original musical, as there are far more songs left out of it than are in it?* Locations are changed, circumstances and motivations are sliced and diced. One wonders what was so wrong about a hailed musical confection that the late Anthony Minghella and Michael Tolkin (who wrote the script), current director Rob Marshall, and the producers seem to be running away from it.

They aren't the only ones, merely they slowest of the pack. Daniel Day-Lewis was a last minute first tier replacement for the more suitable Javier Bardem when Bardem walked off the project pleading "exhaustion"—but not exhausted enough to flee, evidently. Bardem makes very wise career choices. Nicole Kidman replaced Catherine Zeta-Jones after the producers wouldn't acomodate her demands to expand her part. One wonders why they'd balk about making any more changes for their Chicago Oscar-winner after making so many of their own.

But, truth be told, the thing is a sorry, sorry mess. Not true to its source, its inspiration, or even to itself, one reads the description of the original musical and wonders why it is not the movie. But one gets an inkling. Fellini's film, made about a creator's inability to create a harmonious chorus of the voices in his head, his muses, his collaborators and backers all clamoring for attention had a structure, a purpose and an approach. But it did not have a lift, a creative inspiration until Fellini made it about a director rather than a writer. Fellini had no trouble making it, letting his conscience and unconscious be his guide (or Guido, if you will). On the contrary, he was energized by it. His "film that got away" would not occur until a bit later in his career.

The creators of Nine saw it as about themselves, and the difficulty of achieving a vision. One sees the disconnect with the Fellini inspiration as soon as the musical Guido's obsession with the Folies Bergiere is brought to song. Folies Bergiere? Mama Mia! Where's the Circus? Fellini equals circus! Comprende? But, "Nine" the musical—not the film, that gets even worse—is glitz and spangles and presentation with a smattering of psychological insight embroidered in a mash-up (one can't call it a mixture) of half-inspired and un-inspired songs.

"Nine," the movie, is a whoring down of that concept. Big stars. Small ideas. A polyglot of a tribute to a movie it doesn't understand, and the Broadway production that the money-men didn't feel had enough pizzazz** to put keisters in the seats (Because nothing makes you want to "Fosse, Fosse, Fosse" and booty-shake like ennui and creative stagnation!***). So, we've got Day-Lewis (he's fine—not too believable, but at least he's not doing a John Huston imitation this time).**** We've got Nicole Kidman and Penélope Cruz (wonder what they had to talk about on-set?), Kate...Kate Hudson (??), and....Fergie?(!!). Then, to give it some ethnic legitimacy they throw in Sophia Loren***** and Miramax staples Judi Dench and Marion Cotillard. Cotillard is heart-breaking as the Giulietta Massina look-alike wife—played by Anouk Aimée in Fellini's film (she's even got Massina's brave smile down). Dench does fine by her number, silly and irrelevant as it is, but as if to gin up any excitement, they work over-time trying to make it entertaining. Cruz gets a sizzling number as director Guido Contini's mistress-played by Sandra Milo in the original film. Kidman plays Contini's past star Claudia (based on the Claudia Cardinale character in 8 1/2—which would have tied in with Zeta-Jones' participation, but goes back to the original inspiration, "ice queen" Anita Ekberg for Kidman's participation). Loren plays Contini's domineering Mamma, usually a grotesque in Fellini's films. Director Rob Marshall undercuts the material by over-cutting, editing all the momentum out of the music, which veers from worthwhile ("Be Italian" given a rip-roaring rendition by...give her credit, she's the best thing here...Fergie of "The Black Eyed Peas") to the filler ("Cinema Italiano" given sass by Kate Hudson, but shot and edited like an MTV version of the old '60's "Shindig!" program).

I was looking forward to this one, but very high expectations leave the biggest craters when they fall. Not a fan of musicals, Nine only confirmed why I've rarely enjoyed them, as they can be false and irrelevant to anything resembling life or the impulse to song that it might evoke.

This adaptation of an adaptation of a somewhat autobiographical work by the artist, even though titularly and musically adjusted for inflation, just isn't worth as much as the original. Artistically, it is bankrupt.

* Three new songs were written for it, all of them unmemorable—in a bid to score more Oscar nominations for The Weinstein Company which oversaw this sorry mess.

** Imagined conversation: "Y'know? Everybody's singing about their feelin's an' everything! There's not enough dancing with women with big bazooms, and Alfa Romeo's and Fiat's!! Know what I'm sayin'?" 

*** Although Fosse did make a musical based around a heart attack.

****...which reminds me, the last movie I've seen that ended (like Nine) with the director-figure saying "Action" was Clint Eastwood's White Hunter, Black Heart—where Eastwood was playing (and imitating) John Huston!

***** Did it occur to the makers that the only Italian in their film celebrating Italian cinema is Loren? And that she didn't work with Fellini?

Phantom Thread

Life, After a Fashion
or
"For the Hungry Boy"

Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread may be his emerging into his Max Ophuls stage, as it is so very well appointed, but where Ophuls usually had a complicated story tinged with irony, Anderson has managed to fashion a taut two hour film out of some thin material. 

Nothing wrong with that, Phantom Thread manages to be engrossing and curiously entertaining in how its short story progresses, rather than making something more dense that might have taken three hours to whittle down to a coherent story. And considering it's story-roots, it manages to boil the essence of it down to what really matters in the film from a character point-of-view without the intrusion of a plot device from third parties that would force a false solution to what really matters—the complicated relationships between men and women.

Meet Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) of The House of Woodcock, a fashion couture for the discriminating (hard to place the date but it would appear to be the late 1950's). Reynolds is fastidious and prim, he is a perfectionist when it comes to his creations and his taste—he will broker no argument that he might be mistaken or less than diligent if it comes from any source other than himself. He is a master of his craft, and he creates a world of comfort for his customers that nothing will be left to chance and any fears that they may have in their lives will be easily dismissed with the confidence that his frocks will instill in them. He is very good at his work, which is more of a craft than a profession, something he has done since the age of sixteen when he personally made his Mother her wedding dress for her second marriage. 

In a way, the women inside the dresses disappear once inside them—the dress becomes the focus of attention and they are mere passengers. The dresses are the art, meant to enhance the woman, who has been reduced to a series of measurements very quickly in the process—the time he spends with them is short, very deliberately; he sees them at the fittings and the final presentation, as everything else is about the dress, which is stable, has no moods, and has no questions.

Reynolds is in the final stages of his relationship with a model, who has made the unspeakable wrong of complaining about his coldness during morning breakfast when he is doing rough sketches for future concepts. He leaves it to his sister, Cyril (played very remotely by Lesley Manville) to discard her, while he, having taken care of a big job, goes to the remote family home to decompress. At breakfast, his waitress is Alma (Vicky Krieps) who immediately gets his attention by stumbling into the dining room, but smiling once she's recovered; she is able to take his order efficiently and perfectly, even after he requests to take her order pad away—she will remember, and, indeed, she does. Reynolds is so pleased that he asks her out.

The meal is dinner and a showing of his house and long silences as he stares, pleased, at her. He then asks her to follow him to the loft. But, rather than showing her his bedroom, the loft is his work-place, where he asks if he can make a dress for her. They are soon joined by Cyril, who dutifully jots down her measurements, meticulously, and he sets to work, measuring, cutting and producing for her a comely dress for their next date. This unnerves her, somewhat, but Cyril reassures her that it is alright—Reynolds is relaxed and this is what he does. This is what he loves.

Alma becomes a part of his life, moving into the posh townhouse that is The House of Woodcock, with her own separate bedroom, becoming a part of his work and his life, which are one and the same. But, it soon becomes clear to Alma that though she is a part of his life, she is part of his fiefdom, and she struggles to find a way to be essential to it, when it has such a narrow focus and his boundaries are exact and not to be crossed. How do you negotiate something so intractable?

Although Cyril is intimidating to Alma, she also professes to Reynolds that she is "quite fond of" Alma—a revelation that is a bit startling—when he becomes piqued with Alma's completely innocent indiscretions into his habits and moods.  And he has no compunction to withhold his dissatisfactions, whereas Cyril behaves like a complete cipher, unreadable even to her own brother. But, Alma does not want to be an adornment, a model, a help-mate; she wants to be essential, the fabric to his life that cannot be cut away when it proves to be extraneous. How do you become necessary and not just artifice?

If you're looking for clues about what it all means, look to the literature of the 19th century—Alma is a modern "Jane Eyre", or if you want to go to the previous century's equivalent, "Rebecca". She is a simple, humble woman thrust into a fairy-tale land that is both a dream and a nightmare. The environment is rife with ways in which she can be materially happy, but can wound her soul and her self-worth. She has it better than her predecessors—there are no forbidden wings or unmentionable scandals—but, those are merely plot-devices that obfuscate the real issue—is she deserving of this life that she has been hand-held into? Is she a part of it, or another adornment? Will she fall out of taste or fashion? How can she be equal to the man who controls things, when he does not accept an equal and has become absolutely calcified to his life and his ways of doing things.

Phantom Thread cuts right to the chase and the icy heart of the problem—the man is just unwieldy and his authority is unquestioned, and any woman who trespasses must realize that it is "his way or the highway." That is apparent enough with his clients, but she is not a client. But, what she cannot quite figure out is...what is she? And what must she become to survive in his world? How does she get to this man's heart?

That's where revealing anything must stop, because that's where Phantom Thread leaves the road paved by Bronte and DuMaurier and goes its own way, but not going too far astray from the sensibility of Rebecca's director, Hitchcock, who would chortle at Anderson's solution, even while mopping his own brow in worried identification. It might be a bit base, given the trappings of civility that Reynolds overrules, but it gets the job done, and, in a lovely bit of perverse thinking, makes the two lovers co-conspirators. All's fair...

I can't say I've ever been too terribly fond of Anderson's work. Oh, he works hard at it and you can certainly admire the effort of what he's done before. One is often left wondering what the point of it all is, though. But, Phantom Thread is my favorite of everything he's done in that he is so scrupulous, so refined, and so focused on what is important. It's amazing, and fits in very nicely with the surge of feminist-tinged movies that have hit theaters at just the right time. This one is both lovely to look at, and lovely to consider.