"In the world which is upside down, the true is a moment of the false."
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| rock and roll means fuck "In the world which is upside down, the true is a moment of the false." |
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Sunday, October 19, 2003 a movie i can't get out of my head... first, let me just say that i 've seen three great movies in the past month. i'm on a hot streak after a pretty lackluster summer. first, i finally saw american splendor. believe the hype. it really is that good. one hell of a piece of filmmaking and some absolutely flawless performances. should paul giamatti be nominated for an oscar? no doubt. will he be? not bloody likely. easily one of the top five films of the year so far. i can't suggest it more strongly. then i saw school of rock. is it cheesy and full of glaring logical inconsistencies? you bet. does any of this matter in the end? nope. it's really rare to find a film that tries to use rock and roll as subject matter that actually gets it. all the referrences are dead on. i would want my drummer to know who neal peart was/is. i would expect my keyboard player to know the key solo in roundabout. besides the undeniable infectious charm of jack black, the key to the success of this film is the casting of kids who are musicians as opposed to actors. if you haven't already, go see this movie. bring a kid. you'll both love it for entirely different reasons. my own feeling is that this film will enter the pantheon of films that are quoted from a generation or two after their release. think caddyshack. think animal house. think office space. which brings to me to a film i saw for the third time today. i believe the last film i saw three times in the theater was the empire strikes back when i was but a wee young lad. i rarely see a movie twice. i've seen this sucker three times in two weeks. i can't get it out of my head. the film i am referring to is lost in translation. even after three viewings i am still just absolutely blown away. i think it's the best above-ground american film i have seen in years. it's absolutely beautifully photographed (same guy who shot 'buffalo '66'), wonderfully written, flawlessy acted, perfectly edited and just such a total fucking joy to behold. even today it made me all weepy in all the right spots. there is just something so honest about it. this is how people really interact. this is how they really speak to one another. this is what real life really looks like. some praise where praise is due... the first thing that really strikes me is that this sofia coppola's second film. she is 32 years old. her first film, the virgin suicides, was a wonderful piece of work. it stood head and shoulders above anything else by a first time feature director around that time and above pretty much anything else that even vaguely resembled it. it really should have been a wake up call to anyone paying attention that there is a new kid on the block, so to speak, and you had damned well better take freaking note. the subject matter of lost in translation, in just about anyone else's hands, could easily have become cliche', boring and dumb. this film is anything but. it is emotionally complex, it is not easy to classify by genre and it is above all almost disturbingly genuine. it's visual vobulary is rich and effective. the dialogue, penned by mrs. coppola herself, is pitch perfect. this girl can write. she can write dialogue in a way that sounds and feels perfectly natural. she isn't trying to advance the plot as much as tell a story through the words and interactions of these wonderfully drawn and rich characters in a way that just seems, well, for lack of a better term, real. then there is the fact that some of the most moving and effective sequences in the film are completely wordless. the old axiom of film directing, 'show, don't tell' has rarely been more effectively utilized than in LIT. some of the scenes in the tokyo after hours madness are completely without dialogue and they are the most moving of the entire film. the scene outside the karaoke joint where charlotte is smoking alone and then is joined by bob packs more visual, emotional and subtextual punch in thirty seconds than most films achieve in two hours, if at all. and there isn't a word spoken. he takes the smoke, takes a drag, gives it back to her, she lays her head on his shoulder and he folds his hands in his lap. perfect. charlotte's trips to kyoto and to the buddhist shrine are lyrical in their utter silence. voice over would have killed it and, in less deft hands, that is exactly what we would have gotten. in less skilled hands the story could have easily veered in to the realm of the impossible may december romance or into something altogether lurid. fortunately it does neither of these. the soundtrack helps enormously here as well. i would like to nominate LIT for the "best incorporation of a 'my bloody valentine' song" in film ever. actually, come to think of it, it is the only time i can think of such an occurence. the soundtrack, BTW, rocks. i have recently realized that the almighty mr. kevin shields actually scored the film himself. more bonus points for sofia. 
to sum up my appreciation of mrs. coppola, let me just say this to the hollywood establishment: give her lots of money, let her do whatever the fuck she pleases, and, please, for the love of god, get out of her way. just let her make movies and don't get too involved. you'll fuck it all up. she knows what she is doing and she makes most, if not all, of your product look like the pure, unmitigated ass that actually is. hands off. i mean it. moving on. is there a finer comic actor working today in english language film than bill murray? really. name one. bill murray has come so fucking far as an actor in the past 5 years or so. i credit wes anderson for getting him to do rushmore. there is a certain depth of feeling and complexity of emotion that informs his work over the past few years that i just don't think anyone, mr. murray included, ever presumed was there to mine. it makes all the others in the field look, well, silly. bill murray has progressed so much as an actor in the past decade that it's just scary. he's slowly becoming an absolute virtuoso at this stuff. he's the best we've got. period. hugh grant couldn't shine the man's shoes. which brings me to scarlett johansson. i really loved her in ghost world, the only other film that i have ever seen her in. what really impresses me about her in LIT is the fact that there isn't a second of her onscreen that seems even remotely false. she is absolutley perfect as charlotte. many other actresses would have played the part as a syncophant to bob, someone absorbed in the comic/tragic genius that is bill murray. someone who needs a man to show her the way. there isn't a note of that in her performance. not an iota. to put it simply, she is a major talent and she is only eighteen years old. there are dozens, if not hundreds, of actresses who have made long, profitable, lifelong careers in this industry who don't have a tenth of the chops that this young lady has. can i mention again that she is only freaking eighteen years old? she is a natural. it's as simple as that. finally let me just say that the first time i saw this film, i had a moment of horror at the end (spoiler alert! read no further LIT virgins!) of the film when bob stops the car to run after charlotte on a tokyo street. i thought, 'fuck! she has spent the last 90 minutes or so constructing this wonderful thing, this priceless ming vase of sorts, and now the studio is gonna make her take a hammer to it and fuck it up beyond all recognition.' he'll confess his love for her. she will reciprocate. they'll leave their spouses and run off in to the sunset. la di da.. but they don't. he finds her and holds her for a moment. then he tells her something we can't hear (we aren't supposed to. it's not for us.) he kisses her and then they part. (all of this action takes place with the jesus and mary chain's 'just like honey' playing underneath. beautiful. the film ends with the same music. genius.) she walks off frame looking as satisfied as he does returning to the limo and we all realize that this is exactly the way this is supposed to end. it's perfect. it is the way the world really works. and we are left with this feeling of both absolute joy and absolute melancholy. i don't know a better way to properly describe what we know as the human condition. do you? the replacements "skyway" " oh, then one day i saw you walkin' down that little one way. at the place i catch my ride most every day. there wasn't a damned thing i could do or say ...up in the skyway..." posted by downtown | 11:20 PM |
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Cost of the War in Iraq
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