Category: film reviews

Reviews of current and classic films

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood

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Quentin Tarantino’s 9th and most recent film, One Upon a Time in Hollywood, has been received rapturously by many critics, with more than a few hailing it a ‘masterpiece’. This reaction is best understood when one considers that few subjects are guaranteed to absorb and transfix Hollywood more than…itself. Also, in our current Trumpian binary moment, where hyperbole has never been more rampant, it seems that the reaction to any cultural artifact oscillates between the contrary poles of scathing denunciation and lavish, effusive disproportionate praise with nothing much in between. Since his 1992 debut Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino has achieved an iconic status in modern cinema, and spawned a legion of imitators.  (To mention just one among many, the makers of last year’s Bad Times at the El Royale must certainly owe him royalties.) Surely no contemporary filmmaker has such a rich and highly developed film vocabulary, spanning a diverse spectrum of influences from Akira Kurosawa to David Lynch, Sergio Leone to Brian de Palma among many. Indeed, one is moved to suspect that his many obvious sources of inspiration serve to distract many highbrow critics from what has always seemed to me his primary influence: Chuck Jones of “Merrie Melodies” fame.

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood certainly exhibits all of the cinematic trademarks that Tarantino has refined and deployed continually over the past quarter of a century, and for all its flaws it remains immensely watchable for much of its considerable length, at least until the screenplay falls apart horribly at the film’s denouement. In many ways the film serves as a companion piece to Tarantino’s earlier works Django Unchained and Inglorious Basterds. Like them, it imagines a universe somewhat adjacent to reality but only tangentially related to it.  The film’s title alerts the audience to its intentions; it is ultimately a (very) violent revenge fantasy deliberately set in a period that would become a cultural touchstone in the America of 1969, that being Hollywood in the months leading up to the notorious Manson ‘family’ murders of, most notably, the actress Sharon Tate, pregnant wife of the director Roman Polanski.

Tarantino’s film is also an evocation of the Hollywood, and by extension the America, of the late 1960s, and a lament for its passing. The hydra-headed assault of forces such as Vietnam and the counterculture (whose dark underbelly is personified by Manson and his murderous acolytes) meant that this was an era of profound and rapid change. Tarantino’s is a wistful and largely affectionate portrayal of the decline of an age of baby boomer optimism and unrestrained masculinity. This conflict is personified by the two fictional protagonists: Rick Dalton (Leonardo de Caprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), who are turned into accidental heroes by the happenstance that places Dalton as a next-door neighbour to Polanski and Tate.  Dalton is an alcoholic, middle-aged actor, formerly a leading man in the kind of cowboy and war films that were the once the staple of Hollywood, now desperately trying to hang on to the threadbare remnants of his career by taking demeaning “villain of the week” guest roles in television series.  Booth is Dalton’s erstwhile stunt double and one-man entourage, and where Dalton comes across as a singular study in angst and self-loathing, Booth is much more of an insouciant, knockabout free spirit, although Tarantino hints at a darker hinterland for him by having other characters give voice to the rumour that he once killed his wife.  This is yet another characteristic of a Tarantino screenplay, conveying if not quite benign acceptance of, at least indifference towards, casual sexism and misogyny. Booth’s wife-killing past is little more than an aside and is never explored in any detail; seemingly its only purpose in the narrative is to help prepare us for Booth’s pivotal role in the final spasm of graphic, cartoonish violence. Even the character of Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) is given precious little to do by Tarantino other than wander through the film in a kind of dreamy disengagement.  Tarantino’s alternative universe does spare her the grisly fate that reality had in store for her, but she is nonetheless less of a fully-fledged character than an avatar in a video game.

For me at least, the overall impression is of a film that has many interesting elements but nevertheless still manages to be less than the sum of its parts, a not uncommon reaction, at least on my part, to a Tarantino film.  Having watched more than a few of his films one is very aware of the filmmakers and cinema traditions that he admires and that have left their stamp on him; what seems far less certain is what unique, individual vision, if any, he brings to the craft.  Watching a film like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, one can’t fail to be to be impressed by the mastery of form in evidence and the skillful and painstaking evocation of time and place. But one is left to wonder: what, exactly, is the point?  By having his fictional characters intersect with, and inhabit the same universe as real-life characters such as Manson and Tate, what is Tarantino trying to achieve beyond providing a fanciful vehicle for his typical adolescent revenge fantasy? There is no other plot as such, other than the apparent inevitability of Dalton’s career decline and the consequent cooling of his relationship with Booth, but this serves as little more than prelude to the final, violent culmination. For by no means the first time in the Tarantino oeuvre, the graphic and grisly violence of the finale has a cartoonish quality, and the heavy-handed post-modern irony that is a Tarantino trademark means that the audience is uncertain of whether to recoil, laugh or perhaps do both.

One can’t help but speculate that a more satisfying, thoughtful film might have eschewed the absurdity of the ‘alternative history’ and concerned itself more with the reaction of Dalton, Booth and Hollywood in a larger sense to the real-life events of August 1969. But nuance, and an affinity for reflection, have never been in much evidence in Tarantino’s career hitherto.  We are told that Once Upon A Time in Hollywood may be Tarantino’s penultimate film, as he has stated more than once his intention to make 10 films and then retire. It seems that those of us waiting for this prodigiously gifted filmmaker to produce his definitive masterpiece, with a unique distinctive vision, may be destined for disappointment.  Despite the breathless hype, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood does not appear to me to be that film.

Rocketman

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In the opening scenes of Rocketman, Dexter Fletcher’s Elton John biopic, we get our first sight of Elton (a standout, thoroughly immersive performance from Taron Egerton) making a theatrical entrance into a group therapy session. He is coming direct, we are obviously intended to assume, from the stage still sporting his characteristically over-the-top performance garb as a mock ‘devil’ complete with detachable horns.  The early 90s therapy session serves as a framing device for the entire film, wherein Elton takes us through key episodes in his life, interacts with his younger self, and both literally and metaphorically strips away the layers of his ostentatious stage persona to eventually lay his complicated psyche bare.  To its credit, the film does not shy away from the darker, more problematic aspects of Elton’s story, namely the damage wrought by years of substance abuse, dysfunctional relationships and celebrity monomania. 

Despite an unsparing depiction of these darker elements, Fletcher paints his canvas overwhelmingly in lighter hues.  In this endeavour he is helped by having access to exploit Elton’s extraordinary back catalogue, studded as it is with some of the most familiar tunes of the latter twentieth century. Key events in Elton’s life and career are played out against a soundtrack of his most instantly recognisable hits.  Among the standout sequences are an exuberant, Broadway-style rendition of “Saturday Night’s Alright for a Fight” performed as an adolescent Elton and his fellow performers make musical progress through a London pub and a neighbouring 50s era fun fair. Elton’s famous American debut at The Troubadour in Los Angeles is presented via an exhilarating, literally transcendent version of “Crocodile Rock” with no small amount of dramatic licence. But possibly the most convincing and most affecting mix of soundtrack and dramatic recreation is in the use of the poignant “Tiny Dancer”, performed by Elton and his erstwhile collaborator Bernie Taupin (an excellent Jamie Bell) at a louche LA party where a Elton wistfully witnesses a liaison between Taupin and the woman who would, supposedly, be immortalised in the song’s lyrics. Elton, meanwhile, is being seduced by his soon-to-be lover and manager John Reid, played with a beguiling mix of charm and unctuousness by Richard Madden.

Despite its willingness to venture into the darker detours of Elton’s improbable journey, Fletcher’s film ultimately comes across as a celebration. Doubtless, this is because unlike so many of his pop industry peers (as witnessed by the fate of  Freddie Mercury in Fletcher’s recent companion piece Bohemian Rhapsody) Elton’s story has a redemptive narrative arc, as he has apparently arrived in the safe harbour of a clean and sober lifestyle and a stable, loving relationship in his late middle age. In this light, the late elaborate staging of “I’m Still Standing” seems particularly apposite. This is obviously a welcome development for Elton himself, but at the same time provides much less compelling fare for a biopic, which helps to explain why the film’s narrative ends quite abruptly in the early nineties.  Nonetheless, Fletcher’s film is immensely accomplished, directed with considerable flair and imagination, and gives the viewer an engaging and very watchable nostalgic tour through one of the more remarkable careers in popular music.

Sometimes Always Never

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With his towering angular physicality, and mildly eccentric obsessiveness, Bill Nighy has come to embody a quintessential cinematic Englishness in a fashion that a previous generation might associate with Alastair Sim or Dirk Bogarde. Sometimes Always Never, Carl Hunter’s debut feature, finds Nighy in good form as Alan, a fastidious sixty-something tailor with a 70s era board game obsession, engaged in a long and fruitless quest to find his eldest son Michael, whom he hasn’t seen since the former deserted the family home apparently after a Scrabble inspired feud. In this quest he is joined with seeming reluctance by his other son Peter (Sam Riley), and as the film opens the pair are visiting a morgue in Brighton to identify an unidentified body which they are led to believe might be the long-lost Michael.

This seems, on the surface, like dark, gut-wrenching territory better suited to Mike Leigh, but Hunter directs the film, from a script by Frank Cottrell Boyce, with a light touch and a note of whimsy that is at odds with what could easily be a fraught family drama.  This whimsical approach extends to the cinematography and production design; even though the film’s setting is contemporary, the set design and props are unmistakably retro as if to evoke the 70s, as if to suggest that the characters, Alan especially, are frozen in a former time and unable to move on and confront an uncomfortable modern world.  Alan, after all, is a bespoke gentleman’s tailor by profession, an occupation that itself belongs to a passing age; the film’s enigmatic title comes from tailor’s parlance describing the convention of utilising the three buttons on the front of a man’s jacket.  Alan’s obsession with Scrabble also suggests a defiantly retrograde world view, with one of his few concessions to modernity being his proclivity to play Scrabble on-line on his grandson’s computer.  This character quirk furnishes one of the film’s key plot points, as Alan comes to believe that one of his anonymous on-line opponents is actually Michael reaching out to him. The resolution to this should not surprise the attentive viewer, but one suspects that it is not the intention.

The distinctive retro style that is intrinsic to Hunter’s visual style seems to extend to the casting of supporting roles.  Tim McInnerney and Jenny Agutter, both actors who seem to likewise embody a bygone age, play Arthur and Margaret, a reticent couple encountered by Allan and Peter in their Brighton hotel who are implausibly engaged on the exact same grim mission as they; Margaret reappears later in the film in an equally unlikely reprise.  And just as unlikely is the unexpected and largely superfluous cameo by Alexei Sayle, which seems tacked on and, while amusing, does nothing to advance the screenplay, which at times seems to meander aimlessly, and is just a trifle too besotted with its own determined quirkiness.

Nighy is an immensely watchable actor, and his presence gives the film much of its energy and impetus even if his quest seems diffident and less than earnest, but notwithstanding his sterling efforts, and despite a promising beginning, the screenplay seems run out of puff well before the end. And thus is the viewer is left to ponder what its ultimate purpose is other than a labored retelling of the Biblical parable of the prodigal son. There are a number of subplots which are frustratingly left as loose threads, such as Margaret’s and Alan’s confused extramarital dalliance, which seems very contrived and quite at odds with all that the audience has hitherto learnt about these characters. Much the same can be said of a tepid romantic subplot involving Allan’s grandson (Louis Healy) and a classmate [Ella Grace Gregoire), just another underdeveloped plot element that fails to cohere into a more satisfying whole.  The film’s denouement arrives in a scene that seems deliberately to evoke Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, but the viewer is left uncertain whether this homage is meant to be ironic, or a sincere pointer to a deeper existential truth that sits oddly with the film’s oh-so-English glibness.

Sometimes Always Never is at pains to create its own unique world which exists at a tangent to reality, but despite some fine performances and a spasmodically wry and witty script, at the end the viewer is left at the end with the impression of an underdone first course, and a dessert course that never actually arrives.

Vice

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In The Dark Knight (2008), the second instalment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, there is a telling scene where Batman locks himself in a room with the Joker and bars the entrance to prevent any intervention from the law enforcement officials in the next room.  The inference in the scene is clear; the self-appointed vigilante Batman is prepared to use whatever methods necessary to interrogate the villainous Joker, unlike the public officials who are hidebound by laws, codes of practice and the niceties of those pesky constitutional rights.  The film, and this scene in particular, was embraced by many right-wing pundits and commentators as a cinematic endorsement of the Bush Administration’s post 9/11 outlook and philosophy.  This was a philosophy that sought to radically redefine the strategy of the “War on Terror” with a willingness to shed the long-established conventions and pieties of international relations, and resort to extreme methods as a necessary means of engaging and defeating extremism.

The political figure most associated with this policy approach, even more so more than President Bush himself, was his enigmatic Vice-President, Dick Cheney; how ironic is it that the actor who portrayed Batman in Nolan’s film, Christian Bale, is the same actor who now plays Cheney in Vice, Adam McKay’s biopic of the former vice-president and left-liberal bogeyman.  Bale’s is far and away the film’s standout performance; as Cheney, he physically disappears into Cheney’s familiar impassive, humourless, hunched, shuffling presence, including his nuances such as his distinctive clipped, brusque manner of speech. Bale’s is by far the stand-out performance, and a bravura turn in a large and mostly underused ensemble cast, although Amy Adams as Lynne Cheney does well in a thankless role, although she struggles to rise above a screenplay that seeks to portray her as a Lady Macbeth-type accomplice to her husband. Less impressive are Sam Rockwell as George W Bush and Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld.

Overall, however, the efforts of Bale and his castmates are not done justice but what seems an underdeveloped and unfocussed script which hovers uncertainly between outright satire and serious character study.  There are many moments when McKay’s screenplay seems to betray his origins and as a comedy skit writer on Saturday Night Live. Indeed, Bush and Rumsfeld seem more like broad caricatures in one of that show’s politically-themed sequences than fully realised characters in a screenplay with serious things to say.   In large measure, McKay’s film appears to share its DNA , along with is political outlook, with a Michael Moore film, particularly in its scattergun approach and its gimmicky digressions designed to convey weighty abstract concepts in more digestible form. These gimmicks include a scene in an imaginary restaurant, where Cheney, Rumsfeld and their fellow travellers are invited by an unctuous, fictional waiter (Alfred Molina) to select from a menu that includes ‘rendition’, ‘enhanced interrogation’ amongst other dubious options (Cheney’s triumphant declaration is, of course, “We’ll take them all!”) and a scene where Dick and Lynne mull over the wisdom of joining George W Bush’s ticket in a pseudo Shakespearean exchange.  The forced and contrived nature of the transitions between a conventional narrative and these heavy-handed flights of fancy tends to undermine and confuse the film’s impact, especially the mock Shakespearean scene which takes the viewer out of the film and only serves to highlight the comparative paucity of the script.

Perhaps these defects are in some form unavoidable.  Cheney was, and remains, a deliberately obscure and imperviously opaque figure who defies most attempts to gain meaningful insight into his mind or character.  McKay attempts to deal with this challenge by spotlighting a couple of famous public episodes; his invitation to veteran senator and foe Patrick Leahy to, ahem, ‘go forth and multiply’ on the floor of the Senate and the incident where Cheney accidentally shot a friend, Harry Whittington, during a quail hunting expedition.   The latter is seen as a significant indicator of the power and aura that Cheney had managed to gather around himself, so much so that the victim, Whittington, felt compelled to apologize to Cheney, one assumes for the inconvenience he caused by placing his body in the way of the Vice-Presidential bullet.  Another of McKay’s rare attempts to convey some light and shade is his portrayal of Cheney’s somewhat unexpected, albeit understated support of same sex marriage inspired by his daughter Mary’s lesbianism, a stance which caused no small measure of confusion and distress with his conservative support base.

But these interludes offer little insight into Cheney’s character or motivations, beyond the familiar, predictable left-liberal characterisation.  It invites the conclusion that Cheney, despite occupying a privileged and massively influential position at the very heart of power, remains a largely unknown, and seemingly unknowable enigma. Vice, despite a being a watchable and engaging retelling of recent history, really falls between two stools and fails in its aspirations to shed any new light on its subject. It is too heavy-handed and obvious to succeed as satire, using a sledgehammer as its weapon of choice when a scalpel would have served better. But ultimately it is also too indulgent, undisciplined and eager to confirm the bias of its target audience to serve any real serious intent.

Perhaps there is a good film to be made about the controversial life and career of Richard Bruce Cheney. But, unfortunately despite its best attempts and some fine performances, Vice is not that film.

The Favourite

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Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest film, The Favourite, like much of his previous work, is a curious beast indeed.

At first glance it plays as a period piece, a baroque and farcical comedy of manners set in the court of Queen Anne in the early 18th century. This is an impression reinforced by its setting in a sumptuous palace (the real-life Hatfield House in Hertfordshire) full of hidden doors, labyrinthine unlit staircases, shadowy galleries and long, serpentine passageways, which lends itself to eavesdropping, conspiratorial gossip and the sudden discovery of people in rooms in which their presence is undetected or inappropriate.  However, the ornate setting is a mere surface veneer that does little to mask the cynical and profane mendacity, and political and personal malevolence that characterises the royal court.

The film’s main plot point is supposedly the rivalry between Lady Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz), Anne’s advisor, confidant and (as the film contends) lover, and her impecunious young cousin Abigail (Emma Stone) who aspires to the usurping of Sarah’s role both in the Queen’s favour and her bed, an ambition that she eventually realises. Whilst this competition between Sarah and Abigail gives the film its chief impetus and energy, the domineering presence is that of Queen Anne herself (Olivia Colman), a physically frail and mercurial character, apt to sudden and inexplicable tantrums, typically  when confronted by the spectacle of others enjoying themselves in music or dance.  The Queen’s court is a perpetually tense, paranoid environment where her servants, courtiers and assorted hangers-on are forced to tiptoe on eggshells for fear of earning her capricious wrath. The script by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara portrays Queen Anne’s court as a cynical, profane, political bearpit, where all friendships and relationships are no more than strategic alliances intended to earn advantage for the principals.  Indeed, the chief motivation for Abigail’s manoeuvring is depicted as being driven less by genuine feeling for the Queen (unsurprising since Anne seems singularly incapable of exuding any genuine warmth or affection) and more by the opportunity that the Queen’s favour would afford to advance her own social standing. The court itself is seen as a dissolute and acrimonious place; the film’s events take place against an unseen but ever present background of war in Europe, and the social and political foment in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution. These events intrude only occasionally into the story, most notably with Queen Anne’s attempts, urged on by Sarah, to gain parliamentary approval for her proposal to raise property taxes on her wealthiest subjects to finance her military adventurism.  Despite the epic events being played out off-screen, Queen Anne’s court is portrayed as dissolute and venal, where courtiers and members of the Queen’s household are more concerned with their own agendas and appetites than with the compelling questions of national destiny being played out elsewhere. 

The film’s defining performance is doubtless that of Colman as Queen Anne; she masterfully injects empathy and even genuine pathos into a role that could easily have lapsed into Blackadder-esque caricature. The script gives us just enough insight into her tragic personal backstory for us to have an appreciation of the deep well of loss and grief that has formed her jaundiced and irascible personality. Lanthimos and his scriptwriters are, for the most part, unconcerned with accurate historical reconstruction; they have taken significant liberties with the many gaps in the historical record, and have not been averse to filling them with what cannot be other than pure invention.  One product of this would also seem to be at least one noteworthy omission; Prince George of Denmark, Anne’s husband and consort, with whom she is known to have had a close and loving relationship, is a character entirely absent from the film. 

But this is a minor quibble with a film whose obvious intent is not to be a painstaking period reconstruction, but an engaging, energetic and irreverent farce which dares to make complex female relationships, however fictionalised, its main subject, and  the fulcrum on which the entire film rotates.

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

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Much attention has been lavished on Melissa McCarthy’s performance as the celebrity biographer (and notorious forger) Lee Israel. It has been widely seen as a dramatic and serious role, and hence a radical departure from the customary broad comic persona which first propelled her to prominence in mainstream fare such as Bridesmaids. But the departure, it appears to me, is not so great as it might initially appear. Israel, in McCarthy’s hands, is still essentially a comic creation, as profane and as caustically and savagely witty as any of her previous out-and-out comic roles. But it would seem that the discipline imposed by the portrayal of a real-life character and a nuanced and subtle screenplay drawn from Israel’s own memoir, serves to curb McCarthy’s trademark excesses and allows her the time and freedom to explore her character’s more complex inner depths and motivation.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? is that most rare cinematic beast: a film which has at its heart a portrait of a friendship between two lonely, middle-aged outsiders. We first meet McCarthy’s Israel as a down-on-her-luck celebrity biographer, attempting to eke out a diminishing living as a fringe-dweller in New York’s 1980s literary set, living in a ramshackle apartment, unable to enthuse her long-suffering publisher (Jane Curtin) about the marketing prospects for her latest subject, Fanny Brice, and so impecunious that she cannot afford medication for her elderly ailing cat, seemingly the only relationship in her life that she has any genuine investment in. When she happens accidentally across, and impulsively purloins, a letter from the aforementioned Brice, she discovers a pathway not only out of her desperate circumstances but a means of avenging herself on the literary world that had snubbed and ignored her. The key to both her short-term success, and hence her ultimate downfall, lies in her realization that she can make these literary artifacts more marketable by “juicing” them up with her own fabricated additions. It is a small step from this happenstance to her to creating and selling outright forgeries of supposed correspondence from such luminaries as Dorothy Parker and Noel Coward.

In this enterprise Israel is aided, firstly as confidante and then as accomplice, by Jack Hock, another disreputable, somewhat dissolute reprobate played with a winning self-assurance by Richard E Grant. They seem to be drawn to each other by a mutual misanthropic world-weariness, but where Israel is by nature solitary and withdrawn, Hock is sociable and voluble, perhaps dangerously so for the sake of their joint criminal endeavour.

It does great credit to the skill of both McCarthy and Grant that they manage to invest their essentially unlikable, morally dubious characters with considerable pathos and a certain rumpled dignity. This achievement is all the more noteworthy given the fact, as made clear by Israel’s statement to the court near the end, that she feels no regret in a moral sense for her deception, but her regret lies mainly in the fact that she was caught. The film does hint at one other source of regret for her, however; one of the victims of Israel’s deception is an impressionable bookseller, Anna, played by Dolly Wells, with whom Israel had made halting and diffident attempts at forming a relationship prior to the exposure of her scheme. This provides one of the true moments of pathos, when Israel appears to realise that Anna could have potentially provided an alternative path to redemption, a pathway she had squandered, like so much else, through her own mendacity.

All told, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, despite being one of the more unlikely subjects for a mainstream biopic, is an original and assured one, distinguished by a keen directorial evocation of time and place by Marielle Heller, a witty and nuanced screenplay by Nicole Hofcener and Jeff Whitty based on Israel’s own memoir, and note-perfect performances from its principals.

Fahrenheit 11/9

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Anyone remotely familiar with American film-maker Michael Moore’s filmography would not be surprised by the undisguised, unambiguous slant of his latest venture. Fahrenheit 11/9, his cinematic polemic directed at the Donald Trump era in American politics.  Indeed, Moore nails his colours to the mast in the film’s title: the deliberate juxtaposition of the numbers 9 and 11 is a nod to Moore’s renowned 2004 film, Fahrenheit 9/11, his inquisition of the then Bush administration’s response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath. 11/9 is intended to refer to the date November 9 2016, the day after Trump’s surprise election victory; the inference is far from subtle, in Moore’s customary style, and unmistakable: Trump’s unexpected elevation to the White House is a disaster equivalent to the events of September 11, 2001.

However, the film’s devotes little running time to a familiar excoriation of Trump’s various outrages and misdemeanours; Trump himself is almost an incidental character in Moore’s version of events.  For him, the true villains of the piece are his enablers, those who by their complacency or malfeasance made the unlikely Trump presidency possible.  The culprits are numerous: Hilary Clinton and her inept, tone-deaf campaign, Clinton’s sponsors in the Democratic Party who allegedly rigged the primary process to bestow the nomination on her rather than Bernie Sanders (clearly Moore’s preferred candidate), and the generation of Democrat politicians, up to and certainly including Barack Obama,  who had, through their compromise and lack of conviction, betrayed and disenfranchised their progressive, working-class constituency.  And, preeminently, much of the blame for the Trump ascendancy is laid at the feet of the mainstream media who, dazzled by Trump’s ‘celebrity’ status and the colour and shade he brought to an otherwise insipid election year, gave him  an enormous amount of non-critical coverage in the early stages of what was widely assumed to be an unserious ‘vanity’ candidacy. And Moore, to his credit, does not exempt himself from the (dis)honour roll of Trump’s inadvertent media enablers.

Unfortunately, the central message of Moore’s film is somewhat undercut by his trademark scatter-gun approach.  The laundry list of grievance is long and runs the gamut from Democratic political corruption, the water lead poisoning scandal in Michigan, family separation in immigrant families, gun violence in schools, exploitation of low-paid workers in Virginia, and much more besides. At the end of the day, Moore’s attempt to cover so much ground only dissipates and dilutes the passion and urgency of his message.   In particular, Moore can’t seem to help himself from indulging in his familiar stunts; spraying the garden belonging to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder with tainted water, and attempting to place the self-same Snyder under citizen’s arrest in person. The comedic impact of these episodes is minimal at best; they feel forced and contrived and could have been left on the cutting room floor without detracting in any way from the finished product. On the contrary, these sequences seem more than a little obligatory and under-graduate, and give the impression of Moore straining to satisfy the expectations of his loyal audience. The overall effect, it seems to me, is to undercut and trivialise the gravity of the very serious allegations that Moore is making: in Snyder’s case, no less than willful manslaughter.

The same could be said about one of the film’s final sequences, where historical footage of Nazi rallies and Hitler’s oratory is spliced and overlaid on audio from Trump’s speeches.  This, too, seems obvious, heavy-handed and arbitrary. and rather sells the audience short.  History (and one might dare hope, the US electorate) may well deliver a very negative judgment on the Trump presidency, but the US has had plenty of venal, corrupt and incompetent presidents in its history.  You don’t need to draw a false, somewhat overblown equivalency with Hitler to prosecute this case against Trump, and to do so verges on an insult to the viewer’s intelligence.

Moore’s lapse into over-inflated hyperbole is a shame, because Fahrenheit 11/9, at its best, makes many telling and salient points about the existential crisis of American democracy in the age of Trump.  Perhaps most salient is Moore’s insistence, counter to at least one prevalent view, that Trump is no mere aberration who fell out of a clear blue sky, but instead the most recent culmination of an anti-democratic trend whose origins predate Trump, and seems likely to outlast him.

It is worth reflecting on the fact that Moore’s earlier film, evoked in the title of this one, Fahrenheit 9/11, was clearly intended to contribute  to the defeat of George W Bush in the 2004 presidential election. Instead, history tells us that, in 2004, the Republicans secured a majority of the popular vote for the only time in the last seven presidential elections.  It would be unfair to blame Moore for this outcome, but his film obviously did little in the end to prevent it. He does his best to find a hopeful note in the apparent, reinvigorated progressive activism of a younger generation, and, like him, one can but hope.  But the lasting impression left by Moore’s film is still most likely to be a distinct chill running down the spine.

First Man

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Our first meeting with the main subject of “First Man”, Damian Chazelle’s Neil Armstrong biopic is revelatory; Armstrong, played in a taciturn, restrained, understated key by Ryan Gosling, is flirting with disaster after a potentially disastrous test flight of the X-15 aircraft leaves him skipping along the upper edge of the earth’s atmosphere without navigation control.  As with much of the film, our experience of manned flight in both the atmosphere and above is very much the perspective of the pilot.  Chazelle’s film eschews many of the usual space travel or sci-fi “blockbuster” norms. There are no Kubrickesque big-screen panoramas of the earth (or moon) from space accompanied by swelling, symphonic chords on the soundtrack.
(In fact, the film’s climactic sequence, the first moon landing, plays out in total silence.) Also, there are no obvious, elaborate CGI sequences design to elicit awestruck wonder and no exhaustive exposition of the technical wizardry that made manned spaceflight possible.

On the contrary, the Gemini and Apollo missions, for all their mythology and veneer of well-nigh superhuman sophistication, are often portrayed in the film as somewhat makeshift, seat-of-the-pants, Jerry-built endeavours.  The astronauts really are loaded, sardine-like, into cramped canisters atop vast, volatile solid fuel boosters. Karen Armstrong, Neil’s wife(Claire Foy), a model of stoic, at times barely-repressed anger, gives voice to this anxiety when she confronts her husband’s NASA colleagues:

“You’re just a bunch of boys. You don’t have anything under control!”

It is tempting to interpret Armstrong’s/Gosling’s closed-mouth reticence, and his immersion in engineering minutia, as a coping mechanism deployed in response to the various existential crises that he confronted, from his various near-death encounters as a test pilot and astronaut to his bereavement following the death of his infant daughter.  But it should be remembered that Armstrong and his fellow space pioneers were products of a wartime generation that came of age with the expectation that they, like their fathers, might be called upon to offer up their lives in military service, and this expectation must have informed his perception of his possible role in history.  The film is tightly focused on the lifespan of  the Apollo mission, and we are only afforded brief glimpses of the wider, roiling turbulence of 1960’s American society.  But Armstrong was a Naval aviator during the Korean War, and the film’s time frame incorporates the Vietnam War, JFK’s assassination and the Cuban missile crisis. Mortality, and the fear of mortality, is an ever-present character in the film, dealt with most poignantly with the death of three of Armstrong’s Apollo colleagues, including his close friend and neighbour Ed White,  in the Apollo 1 launchpad fire in February 1967.

Chazelle defies the expectations that one might have of a contemporary Hollywood crowd-pleasing spaceflight blockbuster, and his film instead delivers an intimate, interior, domestic portrayal of the this epic landmark moment in scientific and human history. And his film is so much the richer, and more compelling, for it.