Photo caption: Patricia Highsmith in LOVING HIGHSMITH. Courtesy of Frameline.
In the revelatory biodoc Loving Highsmith, documentarian Eva Vitija reveals intimate perspectives on the iconic author. Patricia Highsmith’s novels were turned into twisted movie thrillers that include Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and all the Tom Ripley movies, as well as the queer memoir Carol.
Vitija has sourced Loving Highsmith with the firsthand memories of Highsmith’s last live-in lover Marijean Meaker, her Berlin lover Tabea Blumenshein, her Paris friend Monique Buffet, and members of Highsmith’s rodeo-focused Texas family. The insights include:
Highsmith’s Texas roots.
Her heartbreakingly one-way relations with her mother.
The origin of the Tom Ripley character.
Her intentionality in crafting the ending of Carol.
Her obsession with her married secret London lover.
Even those who are familiar with Highsmith will be impressed with this 360-degree portrait. I screened Loving Highsmith for this year’s Frameline in June; it’s now in theaters.
Photo caption: Patricia Highsmith in LOVING HIGHSMITH. Courtesy of Frameline.
In the revelatory biodoc Loving Highsmith, documentarian Eva Vitija reveals intimate perspectives on the iconic author. Patricia Highsmith’s novels were turned into twisted movie thrillers that include Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and all the Tom Ripley movies, as well as the queer memoir Carol.
Vitija has sourced Loving Highsmith with the firsthand memories of Highsmith’s last live-in lover Marijean Meaker, her Berlin lover Tabea Blumenshein, her Paris friend Monique Buffet, and members of Highsmith’s rodeo-focused Texas family. The insights include:
Highsmith’s Texas roots.
Her heartbreakingly one-way relations with her mother.
The origin of the Tom Ripley character.
Her intentionality in crafting the ending of Carol.
Her obsession with her married secret London lover.
Even those who are familiar with Highsmith will be impressed with this 360-degree portrait. Loving Highsmith plays this year’s Frameline on June 21 at the Castro.
Simon Bennebjerg and Birthe Neumann in THE PACT. Photo by Rolf Konow courtesy of Juno Films.
The Pact is the story of a real life Faustian bargain. In 1948, Karen Blixen (Birthe Neumann) was the rock star of Danish literature, having written Out of Africa under the pen name Isak Dinesen. Blixen was also a baroness, and from her seafront country estate near Copenhagen, she presided over a salon of leading Danish intellectuals and artists.
Thorkild Bjørnvig (Simon Bennebjerg) was an unknown poet whose promise intrigued Blixen. Blixen offered Bjørnvig the titular pact – she would help him achieve his artistic potential, but only if he followed all her guidance. She is transparent – she only cares about elevating his writing, not about his family or his personal happiness. Driven by ambition and entranced by her magnetism, he takes the deal.
She immediately finds him a financial patron and moves him into her estate to write without the distractions of his wife and their adorable but chirpy toddler. His writing starts to blossom, but then her direction becomes more and more intrusive. Soon she dictates his daily schedule, where he lives and even who he sleeps with.
She isolates him from his family, and he doesn’t know what, if any, power he still has.
Does a real life Faustian bargain sound farfetched? This really happened. Director Bille August (the Oscar winning Pelle the Conqueror) adapted the screenplay from Bjørnvig’s memoir.
Simon Bennebjerg and Birthe Neumann in THE PACT. Photo by Rolf Konow courtesy of Juno Films.
Although the story is told from Bjørnvig’s point of view, it’s really about what makes the singular Blixen tick. The Pact works because of Birthe Neumann’s exquisite performance as a woman who masks her neediness with a steely willfulness. Neumann had a key role in the 1998 classic Festen.
Tellingly, Blixen says, “It’s you who need to understand that we’re all playing a role in the story.” Not A story, but THE story. Blixen’s story.
Bennebjerg ably portrays Bjørnvig, a character difficult to sympathize with because of his submissiveness and his willingness to expose others to Blixen’s cruelty.
Naturally, Bjørnvig’s wife finds herself whipsawed as he follows Blixen’s whims. Nanna Skaarup Voss is very good in a role that seems doomed to passive victimhood until she delivers a definitive insight near the end of the story.
Asta Kamma August is also excellent as a sweet innocent whose life is upended by Blixen’s manipulation.
Throughout the film, other characters address Bjørnvig as magister, an unfamiliar word for me. Magister is a medieval term for scholar still in use in 1940s Denmark.
The Pact is opening in theaters, including at the Bay Area’s Opera Plaza and the Rafael on February 18.
Photo caption: Filmmaker Robert Weide and Kurt Vonnegut in KURT VONNEGUT: UNSTUCK IN TIME. Courtesy of IFC Films.
Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time is an uncommonly rich biodoc of the social critic/humorist/philosopher Kurt Vonnegut. Most importantly, there’s a heavy dose of Vonnegut himself, which is very entertaining because Vonnegut was so damn funny.
All of the Vonnegut is because filmmaker Robert Weide, early in his career, began to make this documentary of his literary hero, with Vonnegut’s participation. The film had to be paused and restarted several times, mostly due to the usual indie film obstacle of funding. Finally, Weide became very successful as the producer and director of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm and didn’t have the time to finish. As a result, Weide collected hours of filmed interviews with Vonnegut in different decades.
Over the years, Weide and Vonnegut developed a personal friendship that facilitated even more access and allowed Vonnegut to be even more forthcoming.. Weide filmed Vonnegut in visits to the homes in which he had pivotal experiences (including the one where he found his mother after her suicide on Mother’s Day).
In Unstuck in Time, Weide adds lots of file footage and interviews with all of Vonnegut’s kids (he sired three and raised his sister’s four sons).
(Incidentally, Vonnegut’s hometown is Indianapolis, which has embraced him posthumously to the extent there is a multi-story Vonnegut mural in downtown Indy.)
Vonnegut’s anti-war attitude came out of his especially horrific experiences in WWII, and he had his share of peacetime family tragedies. But I need to emphasize that Unstuck in Time is anything but grim because of Vonnegut’s humor. Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time is in some art house theaters and streaming on Amazon and AppleTV.
Truman Capote (left) and Tennessee Williams in TRUMAN AND TENNESSEE: AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION. Photo courtesy of Frameline.
Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation brings us a double-barrelled biodoc of two literary giants, one who remade American theater and the American novel in the 1950s and 1960s. Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams were both gay men from the Deep South, who attained fame and descended into addiction. They also knew each other.
Truman and Tennessee tells their stories from their own letters and from being interviewed on TV by the likes of David Frost and Dick Cavett.
The words of Capote are voiced by Jim Parsons, and those of Williams by Zachary Quinto. There is no third-party “narration”. It’s an effective and increasingly popular documentary technique, used in, for example, I Am Not Your Negro.
The film’s structure allows us to harvest insights about each writer’s artistic process. There are plenty of nuggets like Tennessee Williams’ frustrations with the cinematic versions of his plays, all dumbed down to comply with the movie censorship of the day.
Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation can be streamed from Frameline through Thursday night, June 24, and opens in theaters on June 25.
Dev Patel in THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD
Here’s an unexpected treat: Amando Ianucci’s vivid and brilliantly constructed The Personal History of David Copperfield. Unexpected because I’ve never warmed to the work of Charles Dickins or to any Dickins movies (except for the 1951 A Christmas Carol with Alistair Sim).
Of course David Copperfield IS a storyteller and Ianucci uses the device of David’s storytelling to frame the tale as David remembers it and as his readers and listeners imagine it in their own minds. Ianucci makes the highs in David’s life so vibrant and the lows so piercing, that the total package is a dazzling delight.
Dev Patel, he of the instantaneous appeal and the gleaming smile, is perfect as the quick-witted and charming David Copperfield. Patel’s David suffers grievance after grievance, just waiting for a moment of good luck when he can control his destiny.
That the talented David Copperfield, because of his station, cannot control his destiny in the class-constricted Victorian society is the whole point of David Copperfield, social criticism which Dickins keeps from stridency with his humor.
That’s prime territory for Armando Ianucci. Ianucci is a master of wickedly funny political satire, having directed In The Loop and Death of Stalin and created the television series Veep. (In case you want to know what I do on my day job, I am basically Malcom Tucker in In the Loop, whom you can find on YouTube.) Ianucci’s production designer, Cristina Casali, deserves a shout-out, too.
Peter Capaldi in THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD
It’s a wonderful cast, including Tilda Swinton and Hugh Laurie. The standouts are:
Laurie as the addled, but dignified, Mr. Dick.
Ben Whishaw as one of literature’s most distinctive villains, Uriah Heep.
Peter Capaldi (who played the aforementioned Malcom Tucker) as Mr. Micawber, a character modeled after Dickins’ own father.
Rosalind Eleazer as the even-smarrter-than-David Agnes.
Morfydd Clark as the sweetly vacant Dora Seamans.
Bronagh Gallagher (who played one of the backup singers in The Commitments) as the remarkably glass-half-full Mrs. Micawber.
Dickins wrote this story about white people in Victorian England. As is obvious with the casting of Patel as David, The Personal History of David Copperfield has an interracial cast, based on a premise that any actor can play any role. I’m okay with that, and I think as more directors cast their movies this way, the distracting aspects will evaporate for most viewers.
The Personal History of David Copperfield is streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
