Italics are mine

Review of "Boyhood"

I saw "Boyhood" at Kendall Square Cinema in August, and forgot to write my review. So, here it is. I first learned about the movie when I read Richard Linklater's profile in The New Yorker, which provided a good background on the movie and motivated me in catching it in theaters. In case you don't know, the movie follows a young boy over a period of 12 years, from age 6 to age 18. It was shot a few weeks at a time every summer, so that the actors truly age in front of our eyes - an interesting choice that has enthralled reviewers of all stripes. The boyhood in question has an almost archetypal quality: nothing too memorable there, except pthat his mother had worse-than-average taste in men, after the boy's father - one wealthy stepfather had a severe drinking problem - and the boy, who hopes to become a photographer, has more originality and creativity than most his age.

Here is the trailer:

I liked the movie quite a bit, but I have to admit I found myself bored at time, since there is no compelling thread propelling the story forward, and you just know the film will end when he is 18. Are we there yet? is a question that crossed my mind more than once when I was calculating the number of minutes left between now and the end of the screening. The best subplots for me were (1) when he gets together with the sorority-type girl who is attracted by his uniqueness at first and then cheats on him with a college lacrosse player and (2) anything involving the sister, played by Richard Linklater's daughter - I felt she was a better-drawn person than her brother, who spends a significant part of the movie looking moody (in an endearing way) and reflective and the tortured-artist-type.

Ellar Coltrane is an outstanding actor, no doubt about that, but the whole hoopla about "there is no young version of the boy to trot out at the movie premiere" is vastly overblown, in my opinion. The truth is, we don't spend enough time with the actors at each age to truly develop a connection with them. If you want to see actors age, just pick movies by your favorite (aging) actor over a twenty years time span or follow someone's career in the theater. I've followed certain stage actors at the Comedie-Francaise for twenty years, and I can think of one person in particular who is enormously talented, and also has aged substantially since his mid-twenties, when he looked like a heartthrob that made every lady swoon. (My understanding is that he smokes too much, although obviously I don't know for sure what has aged him so much: perhaps he works too hard, doesn't sleep enough, who knows. But his looks have, all of a sudden, faded very fast.) Watching the aging of actors in the "Boyhood" movie is also a happy process for the main character, slowly becoming a man - and a non-existence for his mother, played by Patricia Arquette, who looks remarkably the same over those 12 years (good for her!). It only gives you pause when you look at Ethan Hawke, who reminds me of that stage actor I was just telling you about. Aging, when it means people's losing their previously good looks, is a whole different matter than growing up in front of the camera.

Finally, (it's only a detail but I'll say it anyway), I very much disliked how the mother leaves her abusive second husband - the rich alcoholic - and takes her two kids with her, but we never hear again from the two children of said husband, stuck growing up with a violent father. Perhaps those kids could have been part of the party for the boy's high school graduation (we see other characters from his past), or he could have run into them, or one of them, in Austin. I felt they were abandoned twice: by responsible adults who left them with their abusive father, and by the film director as soon as that chapter of the boy's childhood was closed. 

In summary, "Boyhood" is a good movie, but it is also vaguely boring given its 2 1/2 hour running time, and the device of filming a few scenes at a time every year for 12 years might work better for story lines with bigger narrative threads. This being said, you don't see a director trying something so unheard-of too often, and the movie makes me feel hopeful about the state of filmmaking today. No doubt that "Boyhood" will be remembered as one of the most important movies of the year.

Review of "Last Days in Vietnam"

"Last Days in Vietnam" is playing at the Kendall Square Cinema at the moment, and you really should go and see it. It's such a powerful documentary I don't know where to begin, but let me try: it recounts the last days of the American presence in Vietnam in 1975, when U.S. forces found themselves hastily arranging the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Saigon and attempted in the process to also evacuate as many South Vietnamese as wanted to leave along with Americans before the Vietcong's arrival. The movie includes extensive archival footage of the time and many interviews with key participants, especially American officers or embassy personnel involved in the evacuation - whose moral fiber was nothing short of remarkable - but also of South Vietnamese citizens and army officers. This poignant film resonated with me like no other in recent memory. The best movies connect with their audiences through the power of stories, and this one does such a phenomenal job of that in shedding light on a forgotten chapter of U.S. history, I can't imagine any better choice for an Oscar. Seriously. 

Here is the trailer.

I can't decide what moment moved me most: when American sailors notice helicopters hovering around their ship and realize the choppers are full of South Vietnamese airmen and their families, hoping to board the vessel (and escape the imminent arrival of the Vietcong)? The one American sailor speaking a bit of Vietnamese tells them on the radio they are welcome to land, or something along those lines, but there is only room for one helicopter so everyone gets together after the Vietnamese have disembarked and push the chopper to sea so that the next one can land. (Yes, there is extensive footage of that, including the helicopters tumbling over the edge of the ship and slowly sinking in the ocean.)

Or the sad smile of one of the 400+ South Vietnamese left behind at the American embassy when the evacuation ended? Binh Pho, a student at the time, says on camera that he later learned that the American ships at sea let everyone board - you just had to find a boat to get there - but he hadn't known it so he couldn't escape in time. In the film credits at the end you understand the reason for his sad smile: he spent a year in a re-education camp before he was able to find his way to America.

Or the comment of the South Vietnamese officer, Dam Pham, interviewed at length during the film, who asks himself - very rhetorically - when Saigon falls whether that was what his friends had died in combat for, what the Americans had fought to achieve? It is revealed in the credits that he later spent 13 (thirteen!) years in a re-education camp. There are no words to describe what he must have gone through.

Or the thoughtful interviews of American personnel determined to do the right thing for the Vietnamese who had worked for them, and those who arrived at the embassy with wives and babies? It is estimated that their actions ultimately helped 77,000 South Vietnamese escape Saigon. Stuart Herrington, Joseph McBride, Richard Armitage are among the Americans who made me proud with their tireless efforts to rescue South Vietnamese by truck, boat or helicopter.

Or the moment where, after Ambassador Graham Martin is described as someone who staunchly refused to contemplate an evacuation (making the actual evacuation more difficult because postponed until the last possible moment, and fitting the quintessential picture of the clueless U.S. official), it is revealed he lost his only child - his adopted son - in combat, so that the continued presence of Americans in Vietnam was an intensely personal cause to him? To his never-ending credit, the ambassador, when the evacuation happened, helped South Vietnamese tremendously by refusing to leave the embassy on one of the first helicopters, to the dismay of the pilot who had been instructed to pick him up and fly him to safety.

Or the moment, early on in the movie, where it is explained that the Vietcong, who thought Richard Nixon was crazy, were convinced he would bring U.S. troops back to Vietnam if they violated the Paris accords, which kept them in line - until Watergate happened and Nixon was forced out of power. He left the presidency in August 1974. Saigon fell in late April 1975. I don't have the best opinion of Nixon (euphemism... but my opinion of Henry Kissinger is even worse) so I'm not going to suggest the world would have been better off if Nixon had not resigned, but you have to pause and ponder the vagaries of fate: it seems clear that the situation in Vietnam would have been very different if Nixon had remained President. The movie states in the final credits that it is not known how many South Vietnamese were murdered following the Vietcong invasion, but the number of South Vietnamese sent to re-education camps is estimated at 1 or 2 millions. (I don't remember the exact number quoted.)

The movie shows survivors, and while it is very poignant it also is rather satisfying, in the sense that the American personnel behaved with great honor, you admire the people who took action and feel proud of your country, and the people interviewed for the movie - by definition - survived, so for them the story does have a happy ending. If I had to make one criticism about the film, it would be that it lacks testimony from relatives of South Vietnamese killed by the Vietcong following the fall of Saigon - or, at the very least, a description by Binh Pho or Dam Pham of the re-education camps they were sent to. It would've been good to show the full consequences of America's refusal to put its foot down when the Vietcong violated the terms of the Paris peace agreement. Yet, this is only a small flaw in what is a remarkable movie. I'll see it again if I can.

 

 

"The Lowland" by Jhumpa Lahiri

This book started as an awful, mediocre piece of writing and ended as a masterpiece. How awful? This is a family saga about two brothers, and the one the 3rd-person point of view follows closely is the "doormat". (Sigh.) Lahiri is a gifted writer, but you need more to captivate the reader than pretty, polished sentences. The part of their youth is so utterly boring I can't even put it in words. Then, the other brother - a student political activist who has just gotten married to a girl his parents disapprove of - is murdered.

The doormat brother marries his brother's widow, who doesn't love him but wants to escape her in-laws' house, and goes with her to America to pursue his PhD. (Lahiri's whole world, as described in her previous short story collections, seems to revolve around Indians who came to America to get a PhD.) The brother's widow ultimately leaves him and the daughter she had had with her first husband and starts a new life elsewhere in America. Lahiri writes with a clinical precision that goes well with the main characters' being very out of touch with their feelings.

The book becomes a masterpiece toward the end, when the main characters have gotten old and the young girl who never met her father (murdered when his wife was barely pregnant) has become a mother herself. The love of the widow for her first husband, so many years later, really shines through. Life and time just haven't been able to diminish the love she had for that man. Her second husband ultimately finds love again, to a woman who loves him back. His step-daughter (his brother's daughter) also finds love, and peace. I think what made the end of the book frankly amazing was the peace that all characters were able to achieve with the way their lives have unfolded and the quiet strength they drew from having walked that path. It has often be said that Lahiri is more of a short story writer than a novelist. With this book she utterly proves her critics wrong.

"Macbeth" at PSF

(Picture credits: Lee A. Butz, more pictures of the play by Lee Butz here, more pictures of PSF shows by Lee Butz here) I saw "Macbeth" at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival over the summer, and if you didn't see it (and care about theater) you definitely missed out. It never ceases to amaze me how PSF and deSales University in Center Valley, PA where PSF takes place (and which has an amazing theater program in its own right) are able to create top productions year after year. This one had all the attributes of my favorite productions: sleek, no-frills design, abstract sets, strong color scheme, important topic that makes you think about broader issues. The production was directed by PSF's Producing Artistic Director Patrick Mulcahy, and there is no doubt I'll go and see anything by him after that.  Ian Bedford and Susan Riley Stevens, as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, were phenomenal and truly showed what great acting can look like. (Riley Stevens deserves an award for her mad scene when she tries to clean imaginary blood stains from her hand: Out, damned spot! Out, I say!) They were helped by an amazing supporting cast, including Anthony Lawton (Banquo), Deanna Gibson (Bloody Captain and Witch), Perry Ojeda (Macduff) and many more. 

The PSF website has many valuable resources about the play. If you've forgotten the story line, it is basically a story of unbridled ambition and lust of power by Macbeth and his wife, which begins when Macbeth is told by witches that he will be king. He then proceeds to kill the king and put the blame on the king's two sons so that the prophecy can come true. He now rules as king and commits atrocities such as having the wife of a rival chieftain Macduff and his three young children murdered while the chieftain is away. The king's heir, Malcolm, has escaped to England, where he raises an army against Macbeth. Lady Macbeth, in the meantime, is driven mad. Macbeth prepares to fight against Malcolm, Macduff and their army. I won't give away the ending... 

This was theater at its best, not only because the production was superb, but because it made you (or at least me) think about how those broader themes can affect today's lives: power, ambition, people who will stop at nothing to become "kings" of their domain, people (sometimes the same ones) whose conscience haunts them, people who revolt and rebel and drive out the tyrants. Of course, Shakespeare's setting of life and death among kings is a lot more powerful than boardroom battles, but you could easily imagine a modern setting where the lust for power drives certain people to do very wrong and unethical things. There is a timelessness to the play that certainly explains its continuing appeal.

I didn't get a chance to see Kenneth Branagh in the version he staged (with Rob Ashford) and starred in at the Park Avenue Armory in New York alongside Alex Kingston as Lady Macbeth, but you can see videos and more here. The Main Stage at PSF and the Armory are very different spaces that work best for different stagings - no surprise there. The New York Times praised the Armory production as "thrilling", "soaking everyone in it in adrenaline - make that everyone watching it, as well." About the Armory production, which used the venue's military history to apparently great effect, the NYT reviewer writes: "this production, like no other I’ve seen, translates that sense of inevitability into sensory terms, and we start to feel the anxious resignation of being swept up in a crowd that keeps moving forward en masse." Now I really wish I'd seen that production too, although I still think the PSF one is more in line with my own tastes.

Different venues, different productions but one Macbeth - and always, the same themes that linger in spectators' mind long after the curtain calls. 

"Mildred Pierce" Miniseries

I liked this miniseries starring Kate Winslet better than I thought I would after reading the reviews... I have to admit I was interested in it for the atmosphere of Los Angeles in the 1940s (clothes, hairdos, etc, because of what I was working on before my current project - the "LA in the 40s" story is now on hold) so I watched some of the episodes at fast speed, which made it perhaps more bearable. I was impressed by the nuances of the actors' interpretations, especially Winslet and her daughter (both the actress potraying her young and the one portraying her grown-up) - the summary at the beginning of each episode makes the plot seem trite but really it  doesn't do the storyline justice. For instance, a big part of why the daughter behaves the way she does is that she's trying to escape her overbearing mother - Mildred Pierce, the first helicopter parent who wants to live through her offspring... - any way she can and steels herself to manipulate people on her way to financial freedom and fame. The miniseries does not portray her in a flattering light, but at least in the first 5 of 6 episodes, the characters are multi-dimensional and the story advances at the proper pace. The last episode is too rushed and doesn't prepare enough the reader for what's to come, such as (spoiler alert!) the daughter running away with the mother's second husband. It is as if the writers had been forced to pack too much information in a single episode to finish the series, and Episode 6 stretches the viewer's credulity. But it was a good watch, and a great resource for someone like me researching the time and place. Maybe I'll read this as a follow-up, once it's out on paperback.

"The Hollow Crown": Best Henry V movie!

I had high expectations of the 1944 movie starring Sir Laurence Olivier, but ended up finding it unwatchable (boring). I haven't seen the version with Kenneth Branagh beyond a couple of excerpts on YouTube that I didn't much care for. In the end, the best movie adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V that I'm aware of is the one in the "Hollow Crown" miniseries (2012), with Tom Hiddleston in the title role. He gives the king much thoughtfulness and gravitas without being caricatural, and the visuals (castles, costumes, horses) are just stunning. (The movie with Laurence Olivier starts by showing us Shakespeare's theater company playing Henry V, and only transitions into the world of Henry V in the second act. An interesting take, but I didn't enjoy the acting of the stage actors very grating. The Hollow Crown version starts by showing us the funeral of the king, 10 years later - an interesting way to remind us that today's victories won't count for much later.) Read/watch more about it here. This would make anyone love Shakespeare. Highly recommended.