Higher Ground: a provocative and respectful film about faith

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The fine actress Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air, Source Code, The Departed) directs and stars in this drama about a woman in a tightly communal church and how her faith supports and fails her.  Farmiga’s character is not a naturally spiritual person, but lives within an intensely spiritual community.  It’s rare that a film examines the question of religion so personally.  It’s a thoughtful and provocative film that takes a position, albeit a respectful one.

Higher Ground, adapted from a novel, would have benefited from less sexism from the male characters and more contemporary clothing for the female characters;  both distract from the central question of the usefulness of faith.  As a director, Farmiga is not afraid of using some magic realism, which generally works.

The performances are especially strong.  Vera’s little sister Taissa Farmiga, aided by a strong physical resemblance, is eerily perfect as the younger version of the protagonist.  Also especially excellent are Dagmara Dominczyk as an especially vibrant church member,  Michael Chernus as her sincere and dutiful husband and Norbert Leo Butz as the pastor.  The always reliable Bill Irwin (Rachel Getting Married) and John Hawkes (Deadwood, Winter’s Bone) are good, too.

Movies to See Right Now

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Don Cheadle and Breandan Gleeson in THE GUARD

I went to see The Guard for a second time and it was well worth it.  The Irish dark comedy stars Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle.   Sarah’s Key is an excellent drama starring Kristin Scott Thomas as a journalist investigating very personal aspects of a French episode in the Holocaust. The historical drama Amigo benefits from writer-director John Sayles’ typically excellent juggling of interconnected characters and from a fine cast. The Debt, with Helen Mirren, is a multigenerational thriller that addresses the costs of both truth and untruth.  Higher Ground (I’ll comment tomorrow) is Vera Farmiga’s provocative take on persons of faith.

Woody Allen’s sweet, funny and thoughtful comedy Midnight in Paris is continuing its long, long run. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are excellent in the romcom Crazy Stupid Love. Despite Rachel Weisz’s performance, The Whistleblower is a misfire – a potentially riveting story clumsily told.

You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is Road to Nowhere.  Other recent DVD picks have been Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy (1979), Poetry, Queen to Play, Kill the Irishman, The Music Never Stopped and Source Code.

DVD of the Week: Road to Nowhere

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Road to Nowhere could be subtitled Monte Hellman’s Jigsaw Puzzle.  It’s the first film in twenty years from 79-year-old cult director Hellman, and he has delivered a multi-layered riddle that challenges the audience.  There is the story of a crime as it was originally understood, the story of what really happened and the story of a film being made about the crime.  The same actors play the characters in all three stories.  One of the actors in the movie may actually be one of the participants in the original crime.

It’s not a film for everyone.  You must be willing to accept that the story is not going to make sense for a while, and some issues are never going to be resolved.  If you can engage in the puzzle, there’s enough of a payoff.

My guilty pleasures include Hellman’s 1974 Cockfighter with Warrren Oates and his 1971 Two-Lane Blacktop with Oates and James Taylor (yes, the singer-songwriter James Taylor).  Road to Nowhere is far more stylish and ambitious than those films, but far more baffling.

In Road to Nowhere, the director of the film within the film discovers and becomes besotted, even obsessed, with his leading lady – and things do not turn out happily.  I had to think of the female lead in Two Lane Blacktop, Laurie Bird;  Hellman had a relationship with Bird, who later became Art Garfunkle’s companion and committed suicide in Garfunkle’s apartment.

 

Other recent DVD picks have been Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, Poetry, Queen to Play, Kill the Irishman and The Music Never Stopped.

Coming up on TV: TCM’s History of Hollywood

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On Labor Day, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting all seven parts of its series Moguls And Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood.  Most histories of cinema emphasize the technical and creative evolutions of film.  Instead, Moguls traces the business story – how mostly Jewish immigrants started with the early peep shows in old Eastern cities and wound up building monopolistic empires in the sun and glamor of Hollywood.  It’s a great story, and this series tells it very well.

TCM originally broadcast the series in fall 2009.  The DVD set is now available for purchase for about $28.  Here’s the original TCM promo.

Movies to See Right Now

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Helen Mirren in THE DEBT

My top choice this week is still the Irish dark comedy The Guard, starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle. Sarah’s Key is an excellent drama starring Kristin Scott Thomas as a journalist investigating very personal aspects of a French episode in the Holocaust. The historical drama Amigo benefits from writer-director John Sayles’ typically excellent juggling of interconnected characters and from a fine cast. The Debt, with Helen Mirren, is a multigenerational thriller that addresses the costs of both truth and untruth.

Woody Allen’s sweet, funny and thoughtful comedy Midnight in Paris is continuing its long, long run. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are excellent in the romcom Crazy Stupid Love. Despite Rachel Weisz’s performance, The Whistleblower is a misfire – a potentially riveting story clumsily told.

You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.  Other recent DVD picks have been Poetry, Queen to Play, Kill the Irishman, and The Music Never Stopped.

DVD of the Week: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

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In this 1979 miniseries version of the classic John le Carre spy novel, there is a Soviet mole in the highest echelon of British intelligence.  It could be anyone except George Smiley, whom the other top spies have pushed out to pasture.  Smiley, in one of Alec Guinness’ greatest performances, begins a deliberate hunt to unmask the double agent.  Guinness is joined by a superb cast that includes Ian Richardson, Patrick Stewart, Ian Bannen and Sian Phillips.  It’s 290 minutes of pressure-packed whodunit.

The Labor Day weekend is a great opportunity to watch the old master spy drilling down through the characters of his former peers to expose the mole – one of the best mysteries ever on film.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy has been remade into a much shorter theatrical version that will open in the US on November 18.  This new film version will also feature a top tier cast – Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Fassbender, Ciaran Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Jones and Stephen Rea.   The trailer is at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

Other recent DVD picks have been Poetry, Queen to Play, Kill the Irishman and The Music Never Stopped.

A breakthrough year for Jessica Chastain

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Jessica Chastain in THE TREE OF LIFE

If any new face has broken through in 2011, it’s the actress Jessica Chastain.  First, she delivered a fine performance as an enabling 1950s mom in the most coherent part of The Tree of Life.  This week, she followed that with an excellent performance as a 1960s Mossad agent (the younger version of Helen Mirren’s character) in the thriller The Debt. She won critical praise for the trashy but aspiring housewife in a film I haven’t seen – The Help.  So we already know that Chastain is versatile enough to play soft and tough, brittle and sexy, action and romance.

Later this fall, she will have three more films in release.  In Take Shelter, she plays the wife of the mentally disintegrating Michael Shannon.  She’s a tough cop in The Texas Killing Fields.  And then she’s in Ralph Fiennes’ adaptation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.

Six movies in six months – that’s quite a way to start a career.  Here’s a New York Times profile of Chastain.

The essential Holocaust films

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This week, Sarah’s Key and The Debt explore aspects of the Holocaust.  Sarah’s Key is the story of the French round-up of French Jews in 1942, and of how a present day investigation shakes up several lives.  The Debt is about a team of three Mossad agents  charged with kidnapping a Nazi war criminal out of 1964’s East Berlin – and how they must revisit the mission 30 years later.   I recommend both movies.

The Holocaust has inspired many movies.  Here is my list of the 5 Essential Holocaust Films.

One of them is the 2002 documentary Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary.   One of the central questions of the Holocaust is how could ordinary humans tolerate and even enable such monstrous acts?  Blind Spot is the story of Traudl Junge who, as a rural, naive 22-year-old, happened on a job in Hitler’s secretarial pool.  After the war, she lived in obscurity for decades.  Wracked with guilt, she was interviewed for 90 minutes shortly before her death by a filmmaker who lost his parents in the Holocaust.  This 90 minute interview is the core of Blind Spot.

Movies free condemned man from death row

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Last week, three men were released from prison in Arkansas – one of them from death row.  This wouldn’t have happened without two HBO documentaries, the 1996 Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and its sequel Paradise Lost 2:  Revelations.  HBO is rebroadcasting them on Monday, August 29th (the first one) and Tuesday, August 30th (the sequel).

The men had served over eighteen years each for a horrific crime that they apparently had nothing to do with.  Three second grade Cub Scouts were brutally raped, murdered and their bodies mutilated.  The authorities, under understandable pressure to solve the crime, arrested three Metallica-loving teenagers and railroaded them for a supposed Satanic ritual killing.  Although no physical evidence tied them to the crime, one teen with an IQ of 76 was browbeaten into a confession that he later recanted.

The HBO films spawned media interest and public and celebrity support for the convicted men, who became known as the West Memphis Three.

Recently-processed DNA evidence was inconsistent with any of the defendants.  Facing the specter of a futile new trial, the prosecutor accepted a plea bargain that freed the men without their having to acknowledge guilt. Interestingly, the father of one of the victims has gone from the villain of the second HBO film to a supporter of the recently freed men.   Here’s the New York Times coverage.

And here’s a trailer for the first film.

 

 

The Debt: What is the cost of truth? And of untruth?

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A team of three Mossad agents are charged with kidnapping a Nazi war criminal out of 1964’s East Berlin.  One aspect of the mission remains incomplete, and the three must address it 30 years later.   It’s a ripping yarn with some serious comments on the costs of both truth and untruth.  Helen Mirren is brilliant as one of the team, as is Jessica Chastain, playing her younger self.  Directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love).