On DVD: Get Low

Robert Duvall has been playing spirited old men for more than twenty years, and now pushing eighty, Duvall has found what might be the best of these roles in Felix Bush, the protagonist of Aaron Schneider's directorial debut, Get Low. Throughout his varied career as an actor and filmmaker, Duvall has established himself as a prolific, professional, committed, and always compelling presence, performing in a strong mixture of big-budget Hollywood movies and tiny independent films - although his contributions to smaller films usually guarantee an automatic enlargement of sorts. Whatever the project's scale, Duvall can be depended upon to provide some combination of down-to-earth sincerity, genuine heart, and, occasionally, an unpredictable ferocity. Get Low is a showcase for Duvall, and the character of Felix Bush is layered in way that allows the actor to explore an uncommonly broad portion of his range.

Get Low opens with Felix Bush chasing children off his property - a grizzled, bearded, ancient old coot living out in the middle of nowhere in a tiny cabin with a small adjacent barn. It's the early 1930s, or thereabouts, and the surrounding town has buzzed with rumors about Felix for several decades - that he's a killer and a beast, and who knows what else. One day, Felix makes his way into town for a meeting with the undertaker, Frank Quinn (Bill Murray) and his associate Buddy Robinson (Lucas Black), and requests that they "make him a funeral party" - at which Felix himself plans to be present. The idea is that all the townsfolk - in fact, all the residents of the nearest four or five counties - will be invited to attend and tell a story about Felix. For this service, Bush promises Quinn a healthy sum. And, to promote the event, Felix offers the bequest of his land, to be awarded by lottery at the "funeral."

The plot turns mostly on Felix's motivations for hosting this bizarre event, which have to do with the reason he's been hiding out in the woods by himself for four decades. When an old flame returns to town (played by Sissy Spacek), things become more complicated.

Get Low is anchored by its uniformly outstanding cast, starting with the powerhouse performance by Duvall in the lead. His Felix is a mysterious, withdrawn manipulator who is also likable, temperamental, and masochistic. Duvall tackles the job with great energy, applying his enormous talent to a role that dominates the picture without a whole lot of dialogue - Bush is a man who uses exactly as many words as he needs to and never repeats himself. Duvall conveys this through an aged confidence and his usual mannerisms: licking his lips, pressing on his chest with his hands, and making bizarre wind-like noises - all of which continue to work wonderfully.

But Duvall's is hardly the lone performance of interest. As Quinn, Murray is perfectly cast. Quinn is a failed salesman from Chicago, who has recently remade himself as an undertaker in this small Southern town. He drinks, dresses flashily, and sports a pencil moustache - all of which contribute to his fish-out-water demeanor. Murray invests Quinn with an urban opportunism that is slowly but surely foiled by Felix's odd combination of decency and determination. As always, Murray is appealing and funny as this would-be shyster who finds himself baffled into honesty. Quinn's assistant, Buddy, is played by Lucas Black as a conservative, earnest young man in whom grows a real affection for the oddball Bush. And the formidable Sissy Spacek is affecting as Felix's one-time lover, who finds herself jilted all over again under a new set of circumstances.

Seasoned cinematographer Aaron Schneider brings a sensitive eye to his directorial debut, which is photographed beautifully by David Boyd. There is a point in the last third of the film where the storytelling becomes confused - almost beyond repair. The solid script by Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell is patient, allowing its characters to evolve and change in interesting, subtle ways - and in this respect, the script is a gift to the film's actors. But in its last third, some strange, seemingly arbitrary things occur that are without precedent - and the film's resolution, while generally sound, is pushed a little off-balance by this handful of scenes. In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I will just say that Bush says and does a couple of things that I felt were out of character, and his motivations begin to feel less consistent than they were up to that point. I also have a couple of reservations about the actual funeral sequence, which, despite its prolonged set-up, doesn't include a single "tall tale" from party guests.

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In Theaters: Biutiful

I walked out of Biutiful, so take this review with an appropriate measure of skepticism. I haven't walked out of a movie in years, but Biutiful seemed to be daring me to leave within its first twenty minutes. Despite an arresting pair of opening moments, Biutiful devolves into a sluggish, meandering, dour assemblage of scenes that are utterly - shockingly - without momentum. At two-and-a-half hours, Biutiful is not the longest of movies, but after nearly half of that length, I felt like I'd spent a whole day in the theater without getting anywhere. I could not stand to spend another minute in the presence of co-writer and director Alejandro González Iñárritu's dire worldview and Javier Bardem's tragic, self-hating face (a good performance though it is).

Biutiful is packed with characters, incident, and plot, but part of the film's problem is a lack of emphasis. Every scene, every interaction between characters, and every complication of the plot has the same relative value. The movie never feels like its moving anywhere. We appreciate that Bardem's character, Uxbal, is a dying man with a disordered life that includes an estranged wife, two young children, and a career split between petty black market crime and serving as a medium, relaying messages between the recently dead and their loved ones. As his own death nears, Uxbal is driven to set some of the many wrong things in his life right.

Despite walking out, I cannot say that Biutiful approaches true "badness." It just offers little to the viewer in terms of a connection to the proceedings unfolding on-screen. We are positioned as voyeurs, taking a casually-observed tour of one man's sloppy, unhappy life. But there's no voyeuristic thrill in Biutiful, nor is there sense that the things we are spying on have been judiciously selected for maximized impact. Instead, everything is lumped together, from the most mundane to the most significant. Every scene has the same relative dramatic weight, which is the same as saying that they have none at all.

Bardem gives a performance of unfathomable depth. His engagement with the material displays nothing less than a complete dedication to his character. But his efforts are betrayed by Iñárritu's bizarre insistence that each scene be structured and paced with an exacting sameness; even the screen time of each scene seems to be the same. There is no pacing. Although the photography is technically and aesthetically accomplished, the look of the film also suffers from stagnancy. After a few scenes, the film ceases being visually dynamic, neither from photographic nor editorial standpoints.

Although the filmmaker's outlook is dour, that's not what made me realize there were better ways to spend a Sunday. It was the film's glacial pace and a complete lack of storytelling mojo. It wasn't the kind of story that Biutiful tells, it was the extraordinarily tiresome way it chose to tell it.

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On DVD: The Films of Rita Hayworth (DVD)

Cover Girl (1944) is a bouncy musical starring Hayworth as Rusty, a showgirl who goes after an opportunity to be on the cover of Vanity Magazine's anniversary issue. Her dance hall boss and paramour Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly) is too proud to ask her to stay on at her nightclub gig once she's offered the magazine cover, so he sends her packing. Rusty goes on to become a Broadway star, on the verge of marrying a big-shot producer, when Danny returns for the inevitable reunion. 

Cover Girl's story is formulaic, but the Kelly-directed dance sequences are just dazzling. Charles Vidor's crisp direction keeps us moving quickly past the more groan-inducing plot points, keeping the musical numbers snappy and fun, despite the fact that some of the songs lack staying power. Hayworth and Kelly are joined by Phil Silvers as Kelly's sidekick, and by outstanding Technicolor photography courtesy Allen M. Davey and Rudolph Maté. 

Cover Girl's lasting reputation owes more to Kelly's genius than to Hayworth's star power, although her allure is on full display here; without her combination of beauty and vulnerability, the character dynamics in Cover Girl would be a drag.

Tonight and Every Night (1945) is a wartime "the show must go on" story, purporting to tell of a London theater that manages to maintain an uninterrupted performance schedule during the Blitz. Hayworth plays the hall's star performer, Rosalind Bruce, who, along with her fellow dancers, keeps a stiff upper lip throughout nights of bombing, putting on show after show and falling in love with a British pilot (Lee Bowman) to boot.

The film is memorable for its bold design, inventive musical numbers, and lush color photography. Directed by Victor Saville without a whole lot of concern for story or character, this is a vehicle for the film's visual team, including Rudolph Maté (DP, again) and production designers Lionel Banks, Stephen Goosen, and Rudolph Sternad, as well as costume designers Jean Louis and Marcel Vertès. The skeptical viewer will have a hard time accepting the flawlessness of this theater's purported productions and the richness of their design during the strictures of rationing, to say nothing of the presumed inability of the cast and crew to obtain new materials and equipment in bombarded London. But Tonight and Every Night is successful as a spectacle, helped immeasurably by the dancing of the great Marc Platt.

Gilda (1946) is one of the greatest, and most twisted, films in the noir catalog. Charles Vidor again directs Hayworth as the title character, whose creepy husband, Mundson (George Macready), operator of an upscale underground Buenos Aires casino, has just hired a hapless would-be grifter named Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) as the casino's new manager. Little does he know that Farrell and Gilda were once lovers, a relationship that scarred Johnny, and left him with feelings for Gilda that veer wildly, from disgust to lust.

Gilda's screenplay, by Marion Parsonnet, from a story by EA Ellington, is one of the most quietly bizarre and unpredictably grotesque in film history. The plot's twists and turns are all bound up with Farrell's perverse, extreme feelings of love and hate for Gilda, and with the twitchy dynamic tension that builds between Farrell and Mundson character. 

Vidor's direction is oddly but deliberately paced, lingering here and there on strange moments with just the right sense of voyeuristic observation. The musical numbers are seductive. Rudolph Maté returns as cinematographer, and he tempers his elegant sensibility with a smart infusion of deep shadow. Able support is provided by the great Joseph Calleia as Detective Obregon, who investigates Mundson's criminal activities. Gilda is an unmitigated classic with great, strange depth of feeling - the tension between Hayworth and Ford is one of the most striking things in noir history.

Miss Sadie Thompson (1953) is a neutered adaptation of Maugham's story "Rain," previously filmed at least twice during the silent era, but more memorably as Rain (1932) with Joan Crawford. Rita Hayworth was an excellent choice for the remake, but the timing was poor. The early 1950s was a bad time for honesty in Hollywood cinema, and Miss Sadie Thompson's script is a good demonstration of an industry afraid of human nature.

In this adaptation, Maugham's prostitute is simply made into a woman with a shady past, and when she arrives in American-occupied Samoa, the Marines (who include Aldo Ray, Charles Bronson, and Rudy Bond) compete aggressively for her attention. The preacher who wants her sent away (Jose Ferrer) is not a shady creep in the way Walter Huston was in Rain - he's just some generic Puritanical authority figure. Thanks to the Production Code, the whole story has been made so vague, we're not really sure what the hell's going on. It's surprising anyone was inspired to adapt the material at all, under the circumstances. Miss Sadie Thompson does share one noteworthy aspect with the other films in this set: outstanding photography, in color, by Charles Lawton, Jr.

Salome (1953) is a perfunctory Biblical non-epic with a stage-bound look and a talented cast who mostly appear as if they would prefer to be elsewhere. Hayworth plays the temptress of the title, and Charles Laughton plays Herod with less deliciousness that we expect. Cedric Hardwicke, Judith Anderson, and Stewart Granger are also on hand to deliver stilted dialogue without much inflection; Anderson is the only one who offers any sense of drama - the others seem like they're mostly thinking about what they're going to have for lunch.

Director William Dieterle doesn't appear to have had a concept for the movie. He seems to have been relying upon star power and the familiarity of the storyline. Even the Dance of the Seven Veils has no real appeal - Hayworth is a capable dancer, but her movements look like they were designed and directed by Robby the Robot. Salome is one of the weakest of the '50s many religious adaptations. 

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Essay: Mid-Winter Sun

Yes, I'm posting something about the weather of all things, but bear with me:

I'm not one of the millions who adore California's weather beyond all reason.  I like marked seasonal shifts.  I like variety.  I like seasons to feel like their names, even if that entails snow and ice and real storms.  Where I live, this type of thing is far from the norm, but I've lived in places where it is, so I know what I'm missing and I know what I've got.

This year hasn't been an average one, though, for northern California.  It's been cool and damp.  After a dreary few months here, the sunshine has broken through this week, and it feels special for once instead of routine and oppressive. It's that bright semi-warm winter weather that makes you feel like anything is possible. 

Seasonal Affective Disorder is really just a matter of degree, isn't it?  Who feels happier after weeks of nonstop cloud cover?  This rare instance (for our area) of the sun actually feeling fresh and restorative is a welcome one - although I know all too well how the coming spring and summer will likely feel: head-poundingly hot, dire with the whitest sunlight imaginable, and occasionally even overwhelming.

But for now, the feeling that the routine has shifted is therapeutic - the sense that things can change, that all directions are available.  That's the value of these surprise shifts in environment, mood, and "tone" of the day-in, day-out chores we all perform.  When the things around you change, even slightly, whether as a result of internal will or external force, you feel like you are being offered an opportunity.  Even on this minimal scale, it's weirdly exciting.

On DVD: Luther: Series One

The BBC police drama Luther, starring Idris Elba as a London detective, generates suspense and entertainment value without ever doing anything outside of genre conventions. Its grittiness is too slick to feel dangerous, its characters are familiar, and its larger story arcs too predictable. Yet Elba is forceful and appealing, and his DCI John Luther has more than enough flaws and dark places to make the character compelling.  The show displays a certain awareness of its own edge, but I wanted it to push the envelope even more, despite moments of real polish and even excellence.

Created and written by Nick Cross, the first series of Luther comprises six episodes that maintain a careful balance between episode-specific plots and series-long story arcs. John Luther is a cop tormented by a sense of empathic injustice he feels on behalf of the victims of the crimes he investigates. In the opening episode, Luther is seen extracting information from a child-killer who hangs above a gaping chasm. After getting what he needs out of the killer, Luther watches, frozen, while the killer slowly loses his grip and falls several dozen feet.

In this scene, as in many others, Elba's characterization captures the fidgety dueling impulses within Luther. We see him at once grappling with a desire to punish the killer, as well as with an understanding of the limitations of the laws he upholds. Luther is a good man, no doubt, but he has to manage some serious self-destructive tendencies.

The killer survives the fall, and spends much of the series in a coma. Luther, however, is cleared of wrongdoing by an internal investigation, and is back to work after a few months. His first case involves what looks like a home invasion gone bad: a middle-aged couple is gunned down, along with their dog. Luther almost immediately suspects their daughter, a chilly, intelligent red-haired siren named Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson). But without physical evidence to connect her to the crime, Luther has to let her go. Luther and Alice are both intellectuals with a complex grasp of right and wrong, and of their respective and somewhat iffy positions on either side of the criminal divide. This relationship continues to develop throughout the season, at some points reaching odd and interesting places, and at other times appearing too contrived. In particular, Alice's more moustache-twirling, Moriarty-esque moments are a bit rich with vaudevillian villainy.

Also at the forefront of the ongoing plot is Luther's relationship with his estranged wife, Zoe (Indira Varma), who has taken up with another man, but who remains in a precariously vulnerable position of with respect to Luther's rage over their split and Alice's ongoing stalking of her.

Elba is commanding, to say the least, in the title role. His charisma is probably the major reason Luther works as well as it does; the series, as written, could have easily been much more hackneyed. Luther's brilliance as a detective often comes across as too convenient. His investigative techniques are never explored in any depth. Instead, he intuitively hits on right answer after right answer. We never really know how he thinks through his police work. The plot-oriented conflicts that Luther contends with - his relationship with Zoe, his rivalry with Alice - drive the story's momentum, and Elba works hard to keep things afloat, turning Luther into a fireball of energy who is unpredictable and quick-witted. He makes the character fascinating to watch, despite being under-written. 

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