Mike Leigh Double Feature

This entry was conceived for the students at my school.  The crew of bloggers I advise (I use that term VERY loosely) invited me to guest blog, so I thought I ought to just do whatever it is I do (admittedly slightly toned down in the interest of job security)...

Before we get going here, I just want to thank and congratulate my once-upon-a-time Creative Writing student, Molly Cinnamon, and her crew of H-W voices on a terrific first year.  You did it! 
It’s quite the honor to be invited to join these voices.  Since I dabble in bloggery myself (at last count I have more than half a dozen followers!), I’ll offer up the autobiographical film fandom approach I semi-regularly revisit on the blog: Q-Bump.  The purpose of the blog I share with lifelong collaborator, John Maurer, is to champion great films, films that may otherwise have slipped under the radar of the busy film buff, while noting how each impacts our admittedly stormy internal landscapes as new(ish) parents and struggling writers. 

You see, as fathers to young children (we each have a son and daughter—that’s 4 total under the age of 5), we have no social lives.  Dinner out, what?  We don’t go to shows anymore.  We don’t even go to movies.  The Cinema!  That great refuge of the imagination and psychological escape—alas, it’s now my living room and my Netflix Queue, thus the name of our blog which implies…Bump it to the top of your queue!  I don’t know if I’m convincing anyone, but darn it, I care an awful lot.

So, in that spirit, what follows is a must see double feature from a filmmaker who… yes, cares an AWFUL LOT. 

1.

Title: Secrets & Lies
Writer/Director: Mike Leigh
Year: 1996
Starring: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Brenda Blethyn (I’m a BB fan club member), Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, and Claire Rushbrook’s permanent grimace. 

In the entire universe of film, there exist only three filmmakers whose planets I could inhabit indefinitely without need for food or sleep—each quintessentially American, British, and French, respectively. I’m talking about Robert Altman, Mike Leigh, and Francois Truffaut.  I could just have easily picked a double feature from Altman or Truffaut for this rant (maybe Nashville & M.A.S.H. from fellow Missourian Altman, or Small Change and Day for Night from Truffaut), but something tells me those two icons get more love and traffic than the decidedly less flashy Mike Leigh.  Despite sharing an alma mater with Altman (go tigers!), it’s Leigh who feels like my great uncle, projecting his working class Londoners onto the screen as if in a black box theater.  There is no escape, as the first title might suggest, from the psyches of the players; and for two hours, they become your family too.  You might find that cathartically appealing or completely repelling, but either way, it’s simply great filmmaking.  The dialogue crackles, the camera rests in brutal stillness, and the silence allows the actors’ expressions to drive daggers right through the rib cage. 

In Secrets & Lies, 30ish Hortense has just discovered she was adopted.  Her attempt to find her mother and reconcile her questions of personal identity is the engine of the movie, but the keys belong to Cynthia, played by the insanely brilliant Brenda Blethyn.  All roads lead to and through the nutty, lonely, wounded, obsessed, possessive, yet strangely kind hearted Cynthia.  For days afterward, you might just find yourself in conversation, for no apparent reason, adding Blethyn’s desperately cockney sweet’art! to the end of every question and declaration.  I suspect it’s not just those of us who have a “crazy English” side of our family who will find Cynthia more than familiar (and haunting).  Even if she’s not an exact match for anyone in your particular tree, chances are her combination of injured martyrdom and frenzied need for love will strike a tearful chord.  Oh Sweet’art! 

Q-Bump is not about spoiling plot, or even explaining plot at all, but rather takes the “just trust me” approach.  We can’t be sure, but we’re hopeful that we earn it with the vigor of our cheerleading.  So I’ll end this rah-rah-sis-boom-bah for Secrets & Lies by saying that any fan of the great, subtle, human performance will have to spend at least 15 minutes in some kind of “safe room” when the credits roll.

2.

Title: Happy-Go-Lucky
Writer/Director: Mike Leigh
Year: 2008
Starring: Sally Hawkins (anyone want to start a fan club—let me know), Eddie Marsan, and Alexis Zegerman

The concept of this fantastic smile and outright gut-laugh inducing film easily could have been a Hollywood rom-com from the Meg Ryan era.  I don’t know, maybe you throw Dennis Leary in there, and you’ve got 90 minutes of an entertaining, fairly schmaltzy, mostly forgettable, post-Harry/Sally affair.  Bright and cheery and cute girl meets angry and cynical but ultimately good guy. Thank goodness (in this case Mike Leigh) that didn’t happen. 

Hey, you know what, I’ll admit it, I like French Kiss.  But just you try, you film kids, just try to watch Sleepless in Seattle more than once.  Or just try to even get through You’ve Got Mail without regurgitating.  If you can do that, you are infinitely more tolerant and magnanimous than I—no great achievement, but still.

Here with a swig of Pepto Bismal and a knee-gash-sized band-aid for all of it is Poppy, played by an inspired and inspiring Sally Hawkins.  If I could guarantee that Poppy would be there on my son’s first day of kindergarten (she’s an elementary teacher in the film), instead of whoever it is that waits behind door #3, I’d snatch her up in a heartbeat.  Alas, Poppy is not for everyone in this ultra-jaded world—least of all Scott, her driving teacher, played by an equally inspired and unnerving Eddie Marsan.  You see, much to Poppy’s chagrin, her bike was lifted off the street; and now, she reasons it’s time to learn how to drive.  Though the movie floats along with effervescence for the first 15 minutes, it doesn’t begin in earnest until Poppy gets behind the wheel with Scott. 

The world hasn’t been kind to Scott, nor has Scott been kind to the world.  Poppy’s very being both infuriates and tantalizes him, as she mocks his absurd, ruthless authority as driving teacher; which, along with his indignation and bigotry, is all he has left in the world.  It’s this dynamic that separates Leigh’s approach from what we’d see in star driven fluffiness.  Where we might cringe at others’ attempts to reconcile cheerfulness vs. rage, we can trust Mike Leigh to give it to us straight, unrelenting, but always with an eye for humor. 

You know the showdown is coming between these polar opposites, and you honestly don’t know how it’s going to turn out.  To not be ahead of a movie like this, essentially a comedy, to feel actual danger—that is the beauty of Mike Leigh.  That, and his ability to pull ridiculously genius performances from every one of his actors, no matter how large or small the part. 

If ever life is just starting to feel just a tad bit phony, just not quite as authentic as you’d like, do yourself a favor and take a walk down Leigh St.  It’s not always pretty—maybe it’s rarely more than tolerable—but it’s often hilarious, and it’s always real. 

Ryan Wilson

Tiny Furniture

Tiny Furniture
Written & Directed by Lena Dunham
Year: 2010

Bumper: Ryan Wilson

No, that’s not our protagonist to your left… that’s her adorable 17 year old sister, Nadine.  This movie would be about the precocious, truth telling, budding artist Nadine if it were a Hollywood movie selling itself as independent.  This movie, however, is an elongated piece of the video-performance art that writer/director Lena Dunham’s anti-hero, Aura, displays on Youtube. 

Should you choose to press play on Tiny Furniture do not be surprised to find yourself watching at least a third of it with your hands covering your face, peeking through fingercracks.  An array of causes might send your hands there, as if they might rescue your burning eyes from Aura.  Let's make a list.

                1. Embarrassment.  Prepared in a large vat and scooped generously onto your plate.

                2. Your memories (or any horrific thought of your future) of being 22.

                3. The thought of your own mostly or completely naked body on screen.

                4. Sex.

   5. Horror of anything connected to being a parent to Aura, or anyone in Aura-like situations either presently or in the future.

                6. Realization that you too might be or have been an asshole recently (currently). 

                7. The fear that you might be semi-consciously fucking up important parts of your life.

I’ll stop at 7.

These are not the kinds of thoughts I want to be having at 4:30 in the morning, when I watched this film, or any other time.  I simply wish to live my life the best I can, be someone who leaves this world 1/7,000,000,000^th  better than I found it.  Love well.  Be a source of, if not pride exactly, then anti-shame to my children.  Perhaps enjoy some success in something I love doing.  But Lena Dunham is having none of that pretty-polly bullshit.  None of it. 

There is a key difference I think between this film and, say, Neil Labute’s early stuff, and Dunham’s “mumblecore” contemporaries.  And I’ve never heard her interviewed, or read her writing—she could be as repelling as Aura is in her film.  And it doesn’t even matter.  Ain’t nobody trying to get nobody to like nobody in this movie, and it’s damn… no… refreshing is not the right word.  It’s revoltingly necessary. 

You could make a list of reasons to hate Aura.  She’s rich and entitled, inconsiderate, dishonest, narcissistic... I can confidently say Dunham would say, yeah, keep going.  The way she exhibits herself, as her sister points out, is fucking desperate.  But, if you are as honest as Dunham is in displaying this character on screen for us, you will admit, Aura is not without hope.  And neither am I.  And neither are you.  And there you have it.  Desperate character, desperate filmmaking for a hungry audience.  You might just hate it—HATE IT.  But if you need it, it’s there. 

HANNA

HANNA
Director: Joe Wright
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett's gums
Year: 2011
Bumper: Ryan Wilson



So I teach this seminar course to sophomores in high school.  It's about navigating the thorny teenage American information soaked life, making good decisions, that sort of thing.  Some days I do a pretty good job, and the kids earnestly think about some issue and opine passionately.  Others I stand up there and yap at them for 45 minutes, then descend to the cafeteria to buy a chocolate muffin to counteract the feeling of failure.  The ratio of good/bad days is pretty much equal to the ratio of my good/bad decisions in real life. 

One of the topics we cover is Gender.  We talk about stereotypes, some very light neuroscience, media portrayals of masculinity and femininity--and most of the kids pretty much hate it.  Or, perhaps more likely, hate me for bringing it up and making a big deal about it.  It makes them feel bad for being duped all the time, subscribing to the tropes that get rolled out over and over again by advertisers, TV shows and movies that are really just extended commercials.  Most of the kids like their ads and stereotype reinforcing TV, thank you very much, you leftist, anti-capitalist, broke-ass, Utopian fool--what kind of car do you drive?  A station wagon?  Exactly.  Fair enough--masculinity is hard to wrap your parts around at sixteen.  Expanding the definition to include things other than football, money, and hyper-heterosexuality just makes things muddy.  Black and White!  Cut and Dried!  Callous and Macho!  Still, it's my job, guys.

But the girls are in a different and even trickier spot.  The somewhat recent addition to the trash heap of shallow female cliches is "Action Hero Fuck Toy," you know what I'm talking about.  I don't go see these movies, but here's a list made by some geek that demonstrates the effect: 10 Hottest Action Figures on the Market. 

The woman seems to be a bad-ass killah, thus empowered, uttering double entendre catch phrases that promise sex and death as one ecstatic, hollow, ejaculatory moment in time.  You know, like porn.  About the only movies to counter this have been animated and imported from Japan (Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind).   Perhaps Kill Bill.  Perhaps. 

Enter Hanna.  For those of us who can't even engage action movies without receiving at least a bone thrown to character, here it is, rolled up and sealed in a helluva sparkly/grizzly package.  This movie is a gender bending thrill-fest.  We've got super-assassin and woodsman, Eric Bana, as nurturer.  Maniacally bleach-smiled, bloody gummed, high heeled Cate Blanchett as state sponsored killer.  Oh, and the ultimate!  The whistling German short-shorts wearing mercenary with a swoop of artificially blonde hair, fixing his sadistic eyes with equal intensity upon his victims and some poor hermaphrodite performing some kind of fairy-tale mime show in a bar.  I haven't even gotten to the protagonist yet!  Hanna is that rare movie animal that is divinely gorgeous, and yet somehow manages to avoid being cheaply objectified.  The movie never lingers on anything implying sexuality when it comes to its heroine.  Instead, it opts for silent close-ups of her tractor-beam face that reveal her complex mental state.  She was born to be a killer--and killer she is.  Fuck Toy, she is not. 

Somehow, Joe Wright achieves something close to unthinkable.  He makes all of this plausible while piling on the psychedelic imagery and weaving in a great Chemical Bros. score.  This, friends, is real bad-ass action. 

A TOWN CALLED PANIC

A Town Called Panic 

Director: Vincent Patar, Stéphane Aubier

Starring: Horse, Cowboy, and Indian

Year: 2009

Bumper: Ryan Wilson

All for One...

Okay, so you have an hour and fifteen minutes left of consciousness.  It's been a LONG goddamn day and you want to laugh.  You could go with Woody--he's short and sweet, and there'll be laughs of course, though probably more of the chuckle variety.  Or, you could throw yourself out the window and into a pool of psychedelic clay.  Which is it then?  Exactly. 

I stumbled into our quiet time in the house after walking the dog, exhausted, probably still hung over, though I don't remember for sure, and looked at the screen, incredulous.  Somewhere between the hours of 2 and 4, since the death of the nap, we engage in movie time--usually a few episodes of Kipper the Dog or Oswald the Octopus.  Granted, not white-hot material, but our gentle son enjoys pleasant characters being kind to one another, sorting out banal conflicts with understanding and ice cream.  And we enjoy lying prostrate, nearing alpha phase, attempting to block out the external world for 60 - 90 minutes.  Enter the mayhem that is Panic.

"What the hell is this?" I asked, rubbing my eyes.

"It's raw genius.  Sit down," Sarah said.

For the initial viewing, I missed the first fifteen minutes during which "the plot" is unveiled.  Horse, Cowboy, and Indian live together in Horse's lovely house in the French countryside.  Cowboy and Indian have blown it, forgotten Horse's birthday, so they scramble to get a gift to the party in time.  They settle upon a brick barbecue grill, which they plan to build together.  After accidentally ordering 50 zillion bricks instead of 50, all hell breaks loose and stays broken... and loose. 

Underwater finned creatures, mad, sadistic scientists, holes in the earth leading to pools of magma, foals clobbered by giant snowballs--there's too much to list with any degree of coherency.  But that is this film's genius.  It is coherent and insane--because friendship, forgiveness, and a sense of lusty fun win the day. 

Our 3 and 1/2 year old is rapt watching this subtitled film, completely oblivious to the fact that what's being said is an actual language (and what's being said is almost as funny as what's on the screen).  The visual storytelling and the claymation are profoundly beautiful, detailed, and specific.  It takes a special film to supply equally potent left hooks of raw comic brilliance to the jaws of children and parents.  And no, Pixar doesn't do this.  Aside from the brilliant-on-all-levels Wall-E, Pixar winks at parents with knowing pop culture references while dazzling the kiddies.  Pixar is undeniably awesome in scope, craft, precision, and marketing power, but the films lack what Panic offers--a pure, madcap soul. 

THIRTY-TWO SHORT FILMS ABOUT GLENN GOULD

THIRTY-TWO SHORT FILMS ABOUT GLENN GOULD
Director: François Girard
Starring: Colm Feore (as Glenn Gould) and some real-life people doing interviews
Year: 1993


Bumper: John Maurer


Did you ever meet an artist and think to yourself afterwards, “I loved his art, but I have to admit—that guy was kind of a prick!” No doubt these experiences are fairly run-of-the-mill. The artist’s profession is well-stocked with megalomaniacal egotists (not that other career paths aren’t!)—a crowded koi pond of mechanically gaping holes hoping to snag a few pellets of your fish food. I’ve met amateurs whose attitude alone could boost them into the big leagues. In fact, it almost seems to be a requirement. And many who lack the knack adopt an affected-yet-effective snobbishness, seemingly to allay all doubts or fears we may have that their genius is indeed genuine. Ever see Miles Davis perform? When he turns his back to the audience because who gives a fuck about those people? Exactly. But dang. Good stuff, right?? Like any real-world situation worth subscribing to, it’s conflicted. We tolerate these prima donnas so long as they dish up somethin’ tasty in return. But come’on. A friendly artist now-and-then (who can still pack a punch artistically) would be a delightful departure from the norm. More Andre Agassi and less John McEnroe; more Brett Hull, less Eddie Belfour.

I don’t know where in history this “mad genius” stuff gets launched, but I’m thinkin’ Beethoven, maybe? (Also queue bump Immortal Beloved.) In any case, it’s likely tied up in that whole Romanticism gig; like one’a those meat-zealous entrées that gets wrapped in bacon (and while I’m on the subject, bacon bits in salad is another pork-inspired culinary aberration that invokes my gag reflex). During that period, the individual gets put on a pedestal and artist-worship surpasses art-appreciation. The People magazine of the day would have profiled Marie Antoinette beside “Wolfie” Mozart, comparing wigs, white stockings, and bedroom wit. But enough about that rant: this movie’s about one of the usual suspects—an asshole that shits gold.

And speaking of launch parties, this guy got invited to a pretty big one. His performance of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier Prelude No. 1 was sent packing for deep space aboard Voyager, where someday some so-called intelligent life-form may give it a whirl after piecing together the binary arithmetic that is engraved in a gold platter (good luck, guys!). (Ironically, this album cannot be purchased on Earth for copyright reasons.) The rewards will be sublime. Assuming you’re into that kind of thing and your mood is properly tempered to receive it—it’s a little pastel for my liking. Saucier fare featured in the film includes Bach’s Invention No. 13 performed at break-neck speed in Gould’s head in the section entitled “45 Seconds and a Chair” (at his level, an actual piano becomes a superfluous appendage, apparently—any chair alone will suffice) and the second movement from Beethoven’s Sonata No. 13 (uncannily, another number thirteen) aired from his Hamburg hotel room while nearly holding the chambermaid hostage as audience (for which she later thanks him for the imposition).

But my hands-down favorite would have to be his “contrapuntal radio documentary,” The Idea of North—the first installment in his Solitude Trilogy, in which he orchestrates recordings of several people rambling ad nauseam, as if they were instruments in an hour-long symphony (no piano music here, folks). The piece is made palpable through a behind-the-scenes peek at him (er, Colm Feore) passionately conducting the pre-recorded radio show from scripts of the spoken text. Without listening, you would think something grandeur and operatic was being performed (think Ode to Joy), not three Canadian hill-billies droning on about the weather. Gould had obviously begun to lose his marbles, and that’s usually where I begin to get interested. A corollary to this phenomenon would be the shady, misunderstood father from Strictly Ballroom (if you’ve not seen this classic, queue bump now!). I’ve always been fascinated by this champion-turned-chump—how his hapless flirtation with the avant garde brings about his imminent demise. But I liked his squirrely dancing, dammit.

Another famous pianist-turned-recluse who’s playing is a little more my bread-and-butter also warrants comparison: Thelonious Sphere Monk (queue bump Straight, No Chaser). That’s right: Sphere. No confusing the guy for a Square. Gould quits playing in public at 31 (thus the division of the movie into 31 parts plus the end credits, I’m guessing; and/or, alternatively, it could have something to do with Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which has 32 movements that, like the film, open and close with an aria—incidentally, his performances of this composition are widely considered definitive and his tombstone features the first few measures). Monk closes shop at 54. They both pour on plenty of gravy until we’re all salivating for more, and then… bam!: pair of cold turkeys. No comeback tour either; though the two of them performing together as a duet (playing pianos, playing chairs, orchestrating hill-billies, whatever) is a savory hypothetical consideration.

Monk stopped talking in general the year before signing off, so the reasons remain obscure. Gould, in contrast, loves to hear himself pontificate and circuitously explains in “Gould Meets Gould” how he stops publicly performing on moral grounds: the artist shouldn’t have to pander and, in turn, the public shouldn’t have to praise. (Luckily, writers can often just hide behind the covers of a book and avoid all that awkwardness—spoken word aside.) He continues to record, however, since it provides a comfortable anonymity, greater longevity (think Voyager!),better outcomes (i.e. the pursuit of perfection through multiple takes in the studio), and, well, a sustained income. Ironically, his recordings are marred by the sounds of him humming along to his own playing, so the “perfection” part requires a little imagination on the listener’s part. Sure, people in the know say his recordings are amazing and that you start to tune out his unnerving vocal accompaniment after the umpteenth listen. But really?, must I? Strangely, none of the recordings in the film have one iota of humming in them, which is a bit of an unfair representation. For the same reason, I can’t stomach much Keith Jarrett either, and I realize he’s widely-considered primo in jazz circles (er, spheres). Humming always reminds me of old ladies at church, and I didn’t sign up for that. Sorry.

Anyway, I always imagined myself in some fashion living in Gould’s world. Not Gould’s, specifically (how presumptuous!). But the eccentric hermetic lifestyle, locked away from society in a virtual cave (usually a slummy downtown apartment, in my imagination) to cultivate in solace various avant thoughts and to nurse multiple creative afflictions: piano, poetry, painting, etc. This would not only be partly by choice but partly out of necessity, since: a.) I can’t seem to turn off the voices (and have grown somewhat attached to them, besides which), and since b.) my experience thus far had proven lackluster in the relationship department; likely due in part to my stellar lack of generating enough personal space to let another person in. But as Gould demonstrates, even a voluntary loner may eventually grow desperate for contact—subjecting casual acquaintances and distant family members to lengthy monologues at odd hours and pill-popping what time remains to quell the emptiness.

To my great fortune and lasting satisfaction, somebody busted down that door and helped tidy up those inner spaces for me, and we’ve been co-habitating in harmony (staccatoed with occasional dissonance, like any healthy composition) ever since. Sure, the voices are still there. But they no longer enslave me. For the most part.

Thirty-two Short Films is a quirky, creative take on a quirky, creative dude. (OK, Gould’s a little debonair for “dude” status. But you get the picture.) Cultivate your Inner North and explore a version of genius. Scarf and gloves recommended!

Fin.

THE HOUR OF THE WOLF

THE HOUR OF THE WOLF
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Starring Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, and them.
Year: 1968

Bumper: Ryan Wilson




 For those of us whose idea of the horror, as Colonel Kurtz calls it, falls somewhere between “The Shining” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” I’d like to raise an outstretched arm and point a bony finger in the direction of Bergman’s “The Hour of the Wolf.”


An artist friend of mine—well, his predilections have grown so dark lately that I felt I had to dust this one off just to be able to talk to him about anything other than our respective, absurd jobs. In the way of darkness, there really isn’t much floating around in the ocean beyond “The Hour of the Wolf.” It’s a sort of end, really. A bath of fear. Instead of a towel to dry off with, you get a shower of broken glass. It’s an awful lot like being eaten, in courses, internally, beautifully, in black and white, and in Swedish (Sweden, it turns out, can be a hard place to leave).


“Some years ago the painter, Johan Borg, vanished without a trace from his home on the Frisian island of Baltrum. His wife Alma later gave me Johan’s diary, which she had found among his papers. This diary, together with what Alma herself told me, is the basis of this film.”


This chilling, no-nonsense message is delivered in titles by the pen of Bergman himself, of course. Behind the titles we hear a film crew setting up, laughing, hammering, scooting things around. This little meta-touch has a calming effect: a film crew is there. So nothing can really happen, I mean, they’re filming, so everything is okay, they’re just faking and funning… and though you know it’s a fiction, that fact doesn’t serve you when the awful, true, horrible details begin popping onto the screen, mercilessly slow.


Feeling anxious lately? Try enjoying an early scene in which everyone’s favorite good time Charlie, Max Von Sydow (wearing Johan Borg like a glove), subjects his wife to an entire sixty seconds hunched over his watch, eyeing the tiny hand tick by in mad agony. Great fucking cinema. Dynamite way to help yourself or a loved one throw up.


Now, I happen to be drowning in my job at the moment (in fact I was screamed at on the phone today for 51 minutes straight!), always a nice reminder how casually wonderful it feels not to be drowning far more often. I happen to be going a bit insane too, cagey like, but watching Wolf doesn’t serve the same reassuring purpose; that is, to poke you in the ribs and say, hey, at least you’re not losing it like this poor fella. It feels more like an admonition from beyond—should you choose the wrong fork in the road, you will be digested by cannibals, and this is what it will look like.


Bergman sketches Johan and his wife Alma (Liv Ullmann silently tears the part a new asshole) in such a way as to make sure everyone with creative leanings can see himself or herself in their love, the pushing and pulling, from warmth to creation to ego to self-loathing to detached horror, and back through each, repeated ad nauseam. And so, of course, while watching, I envision myself and Sarah, standing atop a hill on a blustery day, looking off to sea, an anguished yet stoic look on my face, Sarah forlorn and sleepless. I’ve been a terrible asshole, but worse, I’ve lost my grip on the point of it all, and I’m sliding, sliding, sliding away… to them, for good, disappeared.


I won’t talk of them, because any description of them kills it. The horror shouldn’t be sullied with description, but rather experienced in the shiny, fresh present moment. All you should really know going into this one is that the hour of the wolf is…. is… is… the hour before the dawn, the hour of the most deaths and births. No tricks, just darkness, no escape, real gone.

THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX

Drawing by John Maurer.

THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX
Director: Wes Anderson
Starring: George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, William DeFoe, Michael Gambon, Jarvis Cocker, Helen McCrory
Year: 2009

Bumper: John Maurer

“No. Don’t talk!”

This my 2.61-year-old exclaimed to me with fanned hands outraised to help illustrate the point. The point being, simply, that I should shut up and stop tarnishing the piece of beauty we were co-witnessing. My talk was cheap; and sacrilegious; in such a context; obviously. Let the movie speak for itself, my intrepid young son was exasperating—whether he could read the textual cues or not was beside the point. Equal to this scenario, do you bring a dance aficionado to the ballet to help label each new step and twirl for you? No—you soak in the pirouette and arabesque penchée anonymously, and it does nothing to diminish their sublime appeal.

And now that I mention it, Fantastic Mr. Fox flashes across the screen as nimble and lithe as a prima ballerina… or, well, a fox. The edges might be a little rough—slightly crude, sort of choppy stop-motion puppet animation—but intentionally so. Lends a healthy dose of grit and spit to the film’s hilariously deadpan and yet dapper dialogue. Like those M&M’s and chocolate chips you sometimes find cavorting in an otherwise au naturel trail mix at Trader Joe’s. Ingredients you would expect in any Wes Anderson opus, of whose collection I would honor this one with the dub of “magnum.”

At this point, I will interject that my son obliged us to watch the first half twice before allowing the film to mosey onwards. It’s so unlike his usual fair—the charming yet predictable Disney Pixar flick—that this animation had him scratching his head at first and longing to savor its many quips and quirks. Maybe that’s not exactly what was going through Dezi’s toddler-mind, but him not being thick in vocab yet, that’s my take on it. As proof, he did ask at several points, “What’s going on, Daddy??” It’s a little hard to get across that two well-dressed foxes and a scatter-brained opossum are attempting to steal fine cider from the cellar of the local (human) farmer, a crass and wealthy marksman, but I say as much and Dezi nods in understanding (it seems) and returns his unblinking, laser gaze on the ensuing scene. As do I.

This was a boys’ night home alone, Mommy having departed earlier in the day for a business sojourn depositing her halfway around the planet. We were sad and lonely and the box of Hot Wheels I had bought him earlier had already lost its charm. After having spent the last three hours picking through sticks and rocks and other 2-year-old curios around our apartment complex while Daddy covered all the bases to prevent unexpected mishaps from the world’s numerous threats to those of short stature and spurious attention—oncoming cars, freakishly high curbs, hills with steep slopes, and sharp winds that might blow his ball away—it was a much invited change in pace to relax with a local microbrew (Dad) and Horizon organic chocolate milk (Dez) in front of the latest Netflix arrival, who’s timing could not have been staged more appropriately. I merrily unperforate its contents and slip it into our 9”-screen travel-DVD player set atop a child’s play-table and position ourselves on the couch. (We normally watch flix on our laptop, but that’s presently airborne along with my wife.)

Dezi was immediately enamored in a world of clothed animals and a jaunty soundtrack. I, hanging on to their every expression and spoken word and smiling helplessly along the way, relish zealously in what I knew far in advance was the most absurd and best movie I may ever see.

But wait. Oh yeah. You want some actual details? Not just dribble about me and my son? I get it. OK. Onward, then…

Thesis (or one of them, anyways):

“At the end of the day, we’re all just wild animals.”

Outside the obvious irony that foxes and beavers are wild animals, this message hits plenty home in human circles, too, I think. Another irony being that these animals act more civilized than many of my own neighbors.

It’s an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book. I haven’t read it yet, curiously, but I intend to rectify that omission from my library immediately. I’ve loved all his other stuff, so this decision is an easy one. (On a sidenote, Dahl didn’t just write “children’s” books and I highly recommend reading his more “serious” literature: his Collected Stories being a personal all-time fave.)

Dahl being a bloke himself, the farmers all have British accents in the film. But it’s otherwise obviously set in Americana Tennessee (or vicinity), with plenty of banjo-twang overtones and even a speakeasy scene with a badger in a suit-and-tie playing Prohibition Era Art Tatum at the piano that very much spoke to me (Tatum is a god in my book).

Expect plenty of intentional hodgepodge, sharp wit, intelligent humor, camaraderie, an appreciation for detail, and characters struggling to balance their strengths and weaknesses for the better good of their community/pack. As with other Wes Anderson works, his penchant for glorifying the little things and trivializing mainstream/Hollywood sensibilities is used as a springboard for both underhanded satire and slyly revealing deeper meanings.

There are other details abounding, of course, and rather than filofax (filo-fox?) them here, I heartily invite you to discover them for yourself. Suffice it to say, despite what it may seem on the surface (an animated kid’s flick), this foxhole is sophisticated as Guggenheim’s interior; or even the abstract architecture of… who’s that guy again?—oh yeah: Frank Gehry (sidenote: also queue-bump Sketches of Frank Gehry).

So, for those of you with little rugrats of your own, did it hold Dezi’s attention through to the end? As many questions require, the answer is yes-and-no. There was a spell about ½ to ¾ of the way through where admittedly his attention was diverted to scribbling in my notepad with pens in a variety of colors that I fetched (at his vociferous becking) from various nooks and crannies of our rapidly encroaching bachelor-pad-squalor. The very notepad I wrote this review in along the way, actually. He had so many curly-Q’s and scribbles on each page, I could barely make out many parts of it later on. He did come back to it, though. And when the credits rolled, he summarily blurted, “Yey!” And coming from a critic of his age, I’d say that’s pretty tall praise. He then managed to knock over the table and spill the few sips left of my beer in his mania to exit the couch, but so you have it: we’re just wild animals, afterall. And (to borrow the film’s favorite word) cuss the rest of it!