After a long hiatus from blogging, I have returned to share my thoughts on films I've seen in the last few months...
Killers of the Flower Moon (director: Martin Scorsese)
Ask me what I think of this film and, depending on the day, you'll get one of two answers. Sometimes I will jokingly call it "an exercise in bladder control!" (Which - at three-and-a-half hours, preceded by up to 30 minutes of previews - it most certainly is. If you don't want to miss anything, prepare to keep your legs crossed!) But usually I tell people, with my eyes earnestly wide, "It's VERY good." And in those cases, my enthusiasm is a tiny bit feigned.
And not because it isn't very good. It's carefully and beautifully made, an ambitious effort that mostly achieves what it sets out to do. The lead performances are also uniformly excellent, particularly the quietly confident performance of Lily Gladstone as Leonardo Di Caprio's long-suffering Native American wife. (We'll just overlook Brendan Fraser yelling his way through a bizarre cameo in the film's climactic courtroom scene.)
Yet it kept nagging at me that I wasn't entirely satisfied with the film, and it took me some time to figure out why. It's both an oversimplification of Scorsese's work and entirely true to say that he specializes in depicting white men behaving badly. And Killers of the Flower Moon fits very comfortably into his wheelhouse. Its central tragedy is the systematic murder of Osage people by white men intent on seizing the rights to the oil-rich Oklahoma land on which they live. But the impact of that tragedy is blunted by the fact that most of the Osage characters are little more than ciphers. The focus here is almost entirely on the criminals - the victims are minor players.
There are two brief scenes in Killers... where Scorsese trains his camera on an Osage man who delivers a powerful, angry history lesson in the exploitation of his people by the white intruders. These scenes were not in the original script; Scorsese actually discovered this actor delivering his impassioned history lesson to fellow actors during a break in shooting. Impressed by the actor's passion, Scorsese asked him to re-tell the story on camera. These scenes comprise an admirable addition to the story, but they're not quite enough. We don't know who that man is or what's been done to him; the history he delivers is important and disturbing, but we don't get to see what it has cost him personally. And sadly that's the case with nearly all the Osage characters. With the notable exception of Gladstone's character, Scorsese's film stands outside their experience, keeping a far too polite distance. He's far more comfortable showing us the cold-hearted menace of Robert De Niro's character, or the fatal cluelessness of Leonardo Di Caprio's.
To his credit, however, the director does deliver a brilliant coda which forces us to see the way we package and distance ourselves from the true heinousness of the most shameful moments in our history.
Killers of the Flower Moon is in theaters now. It will be available to stream on Apple TV with a subscription at a date still to be announced.
Priscilla (director: Sofia Coppola)
Sofia Coppola is the cinematic poet of the loneliness that lurks inside lives of privilege, particularly for women. Here, as in her earlier film, Marie Antoinette, Coppola is specifically concerned with the outwardly pretty but inwardly desolate life of a (too young) woman trapped in the gilded cage of her husband's royalty. (Yes there's a difference between being the King of France and the King of Rock and Roll, but I think the analogy stands.)
I can clearly recall an interview given by Priscilla Presley around the time she published her memoir of life with Elvis. She was quietly insistent that the 'real Elvis' was a sweet and decent man. Coppola's depiction of their relationship lines up with that assessment even as it refuses to back off from the uncomfortable creepiness of it all. It's startling when Elvis' friends invite a wide-eyed, guileless 14-year old to meet Elvis at their home, even weirder when Elvis arranges to install the still teen-aged Priscilla in Graceland by setting up his father as her temporary guardian. He controls and dictates everything from her wardrobe choices to her friendships and even a Catholic school education; he also feeds her pills to help her sleep. Yet he demurely postpones the consummation of their relationship until she reaches legal age, and it isn't clear whether this is evidence of his innate chivalry or the result of frank discussions with his legal team.
Yet Elvis, as impressively portrayed by Jacob Elordi, comes off as an essentially well-intentioned man who got too rich and too famous too fast. There is genuine affection and decency in his portrayal, as well as unreasonable anger and startling dictatorial tendencies. His performance makes it all too easy to understand how Priscilla fell under his spell. He's seductive and terrifying in equal measure.
For her part, Callie Spaeny as Priscilla makes the slow transition from wide-eyed innocence to thoroughly exhausted 28-year-old with seamless authenticity. It's an exquisitely measured performance through which we can always see Elvis as Priscilla must have seen him.
As with most of Coppola's films, Priscilla is also about costuming and set dressing. The opening credits play over scenes of a young woman putting on lipstick and high heels, as Priscilla would do for Elvis. Throughout the film, her wardrobe choices are also the clue to how much control Elvis has over her. By the film's final scenes, she's sporting hippie-ish long hair and peasant blouses with bell bottomed slacks. Even before she puts herself and her toddler daughter into the car that whisks them away from Graceland, we know the love story has reached its end.
Priscilla is in theaters now. It is expected to be available for streaming rental in January and will be available to stream on Showtime with a subscription in July 2024.
Red White and Royal Blue (director: Matthew Lopez) Sitting in Bars With Cake (director: Trish Sie)
Contrary to popular belief, I don't require every movie I watch to have profound artistic or intellectual significance. Like everyone else, I sometimes need a movie that is sweet and silly and doesn't demand too much of me.
(Within limits, that is. Even by these standards, I could barely make it through the very clumsily directed cash grab that is My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3.The original film was slight but delightful; the entirely unnecessary sequels have only tarnished the memory of its goofy sweetness.)
I can't defend either of the films listed in the heading above as great cinema, but I can recommend them for those nights when the world seems sad and awful and you just want to get under a blanket, drink cocoa and watch nice people being good to each other.
Red White and Royal Blue, based on a best-selling romance novel, is about the seemingly impossible love between the son of the U. S. president and a prince of Great Britain (the spare, not the heir, which gives a bit more hope for a happy ending). In the best screwball rom-com fashion, the two start out hating each other, but wind up being up head over heels in love. The roadblocks to their union are predictable, but you end up cheering for them in spite of it.
More importantly, the casting and writing hint at a world we aren't quite yet living in, but (most of us) would like to. Without comment, it gives us a female U.S. president (Uma Thurman, rocking a wobbly southern accent), a black female British prime minister(Sharon D. Clarke), and a host of other characters who are generally tolerant and kind. Despite a few strong hints that the British public may not accept this relationship, there's very little overt homophobia on display.
Sitting in Bars with Cake, by contrast, is an old-fashioned tear-jerker in which a bright young woman, Corinne, is stricken with a terminal illness. But the main story belongs to her friend Jane, a painfully shy law student who is too scared to talk to men in the local pub until Corinne convinces her to bring along one of her scrumptious, beautiful homemade cakes to serve to the other revelers. Men and women alike love her cakes and she gradually comes out of her shell and begins dating. But that trajectory is complicated by her dedication for supporting Corinne throughout her grueling medical procedures and final illness.
Although its premise may seem a bit contrived, Sitting in Bars... is, in fact, based on a true story. It is earnest and effective not only in its portrayal of a deep and devoted friendship, but in showing that our youthful ambitions sometimes morph into quieter vocations that better suit our gifts and talents. Both of the young lead actresses - Yara Shahidi as Jane and Odessa A'zion as Corrine - have an appealing chemistry. Bette Midler also appears, briefly, as Corrine's cranky boss. She's not particularly well used in the role, but succeeds in giving the story a curmudgeonly little kick.
Red White and Royal Blue and Sitting in Bars with Cake are both available to stream on Amazon Prime with a subscription.
Saltburn (director: Emerald Fennell)
And now, we reach the other end of the cinema spectrum, light years away from the feel-good vibes of the just previously mentioned films...
Emerald Fennell made a spectacular directorial debut with her feminist revenge dramedy, Promising Young Woman. But where that film had insight and a genuine sense of heartbreak, her sophomore effort seems to be motivated by nothing more than a quest to inflict the maximum amount of grossness on her audience. To borrow a phrase that another critic used about another, equally disturbing film (Anti Christ), she doesn't just push the envelope, she burns down the freakin' post office.
Saltburn starts out pleasantly enough, but evolves into a relentlessly creepy tale, often extremely difficult to watch. In the course of two hours and ten minutes you'll be forced to see all of the following: A young man slurping the draining bathwater from a tub in which another man has just masturbated. The same young man copulating with a freshly dug grave. And again, that same man ripping the ventilator tube out of a critically ill woman's throat like he's brandishing a bullwhip. The actor in all these scenes (and at least one other that is arguably worse) is Barry Keoghan. According to interviews with Fennell, Keoghan often suggested his character do something more extreme than the director herself had envisioned. Hence the bathwater slurping and grave boinking. And there's plenty of full frontal nudity along the way; I'm pretty sure Keoghan's penis gets enough screen time to qualify for its own Best Supporting Actor nomination. I've lavishly praised this actor in the past, but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to look at him again.
The story has a tenuous connection to earlier, better ones like Brideshead Revisited where unprepossessing middle class university students develop crushes not only on beautiful, aristocratic fellow students, but also on their beautiful, aristocratic families and the beautiful, sprawling estates they call home. (There are also glancing references to Peter Medak's corrosive satire The Ruling Class.) Keoghan plays nerdy, socially awkward Oliver Quick who becomes infatuated with the rich and gorgeous Felix Catton. (Jacob Elordi. Yes, the same Jacob Elordi who played Elvis in Priscilla. This dude has range!). Felix invites Oliver to his family's estate, Saltburn, to spend summer break with his eccentric family. Oliver morphs from a shy bumbler to a cold-eyed, manipulative shit literally overnight with a much-too-rushed build-up to that sudden personality shift. This jarring transition sets up the ensuing parade of aforementioned "WTF?" moments. Saltburn is not without its merits. There are fine comic performances by Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, and Carey Mulligan, plus a particularly tantalizing tracking shot through the estate house that sets up Oliver’s fixation on the Cattons and their glamorous abode. But, on the whole, it's a deeply unpleasant experience.
Saltburn is in theaters now. It will be available to stream on Amazon Prime with a subscription at a date still to be announced.
