Mini Movie Memo (and then an afterthought...)

Be wary of billionaire heirs 

I have a great reverence for sport movies that focus away from their sport. Of course, Foxcatcher has wrestling in it, but it isn't defined by it. Instead, erupting from the core and spreading to the peripherals, themes of greed verses resentment and power grappling with vulnerability showcase the darkness of this picture. Predominantly, these thematic roots grow on Foxcatcher Farm, and it is this setting, reminiscent of the Bates Motel from Psycho, where the bulk of underlying madness unfurls and exhibits itself. The story follows two Olympic wrestlers and winners of gold meddles, Mark and David Schultz, who become beneficiaries of billionaire heir, John Du Pont, where he allows them to use his farm to train for the next Olympics, and to house a state-of-the-art gym, in return for Du Pont to act as the Head Coach of the USA wrestling team. Things are not all as they seem though, as the character of John, a socially awkward ermine like creature, becomes enveloped my an insane power that inflicts tragedy upon the Schultz brothers and their family. Everything about Foxcatcher is bleakly captivating, from purposefully awkward dialogue to cold, trenchant direction from Bennett Miller who has just been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. One of his prior films, Capote contained an intrinsic theme of isolation in oneself, which is prevalent to Foxcatcher, and is handled as gracefully as it is bluntly by the helmer. The source of this film's power though exists within the acting. Steve Carell, ripping off his habitual comedy label, performs a chillingly authentic portrayal as John Du Pont, where slowness and restraint are key to exemplify insanity. He is up for Best Actor at the Oscars. Mark Ruffalo is terrific and sincere as David Schultz. He is up for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars. And then there is Channing Tatum, as David's younger brother Mark Schultz. He is not up for an Oscar, yet for me, this is his film. He is brutally honest and dives into deep cavities of emotions whilst being, for the most part, reticent in allowing them to boil over. The Academy's choosing of backing Carell and Ruffalo is just, as they are both brilliant, though Tatum should be celebrating with them. It is comparable with The Fighter three years ago when Mark Wahlberg was snubbed and Christian Bale and Melissa Leo won the plaudits. No matter. It is right that people remember performances, not awards, and that is why Tatum's show as Mark Schultz here won't be forgotten. People will be exhilerated by Foxcatcher; a stark, dark tapestry of tragedy that demands your attention.

Beyond Clueless: Charlie Lyne's Enduring High School Crush on the Teen Movie Genre

The Cube in Bristol, a tuck-away microplex located in Stokes Croft, played host to a screening of the crowd-funded documentary Beyond Clueless last Friday. I went along to attend the showing, which was followed up with a Q&A with director Charlie Lyne.

Beyond Clueless focusses on teen movies of the 1995-2004 period, starting with Clueless and graduating with Mean Girls. The doc is written up as a film essay, analysing the conventions, paradigms and themes of the teen movie clique, but most imperatively, it illustrates Lyne's enduring high school crush on said genre. Talking heads are exempt from this homage, with a more unorthodox knitting together of scenes, which manufactures into a layered quilt of clips from 250 or so movies. Fairuza Balk, star of The Craft, the subject of the prologue, narrates us through Lyne's script. She conveys through her bewitching tone that the mid-to-late 90's and early-to-mid 2000's engineered a, albeit cliché heavy, teen movie rebellion. Everything on show, from conformity to control to cold-blooded murder, is theorized and scrutinized by Lyne. However, when clips from critically panned movies such as The Rage: Carrie 2 and Josie and The Pussycats turn up to class, it does become difficult to be a constantly earnest student of Lyne's analysis. Having said this, many of his points are both interesting and valid, including his comments on the shifting plates of social hierarchy, present in She's All That and Slap Her, She's French, as well as his observation of the pitfalls of strict parental repression, encapsulated by Bubble Boy. Lyne's expose is nowhere near as tenuous as some of the movies he is exposing, and in being open-minded, I found myself conforming to many of his thoughtfully researched suggestions.

Let us briefly cease the analytical chewing and mark presentation. A dizzying, spell-binding soundtrack by pop duo Summer Camp clicks instantaneously with the subject matter, and powerfully accelerates the film's running time around the track. Doodles drawn by Hattie Stewart act as a whimsical aesthetic, covering Beyond Clueless in graffiti throughout and gratifying Lyne's own teenage nostalgia. Fairuza Baulk narrates with conviction, although once or twice an uncertain intonation creeps in, like when describing Euro Trip's homoerotic subtext, as if she is unsure of its own credibility. Reverting back to the director, his amalgamation of teen movie tragedy with teen movie comedy is very insightful, as it shows us the similarities in imposed character traits. For instance, Elephant, set in the day of a high school shooting, and concentrically a severe rebuke of the lackadaisical gun laws in America, involves body conscious teens, nerds and jocks. This same layout of characters exist in American Pie and 10 Things I Hate About You. This may well be Lyne's criticism of the pseudo-reality structure of these films, which procreates stereotypes from preceding teen movie incarnations. Or then again perhaps it's not a criticism. You see, this is no burn book. Lyne is clearly enamoured with the genre, being respectful of the good and the bad of it, and being mindful of the fact that the good is most definitely outweighed by the bad. He is glorifying a lot of terrible teen movies, and I like so totally don't care.

The Q&A was a revelation. Charlie Lyne, a charming and witty cinephile, is a likeable film critic. They are sparse in number, and it was refreshing to see someone who has reviewed for the BBC Film Programme and his very own Ultra Culture, to swim across the channel to the risky world of film-making, which saw him kick-start his crowd funding campaign on Kickstarter. He was self-deprecating; on answering a question about why he made the movie, 'nostalgia mostly, and also I wasn't the type to go out in my teenage years to get pissed, I lived my social life vicariously at home watching old VHS tapes.' A confession that he was proud of, and that he should be. In addition, his getting hold of Fairuza Balk was a brilliant anecdote, 'Fairuza was top of our list. She owns her own candle company now, and the only way I could contact her was through the complaints section. Luckily she replied three minutes later and was excited by the pitch that I gave her, and she ended up coming aboard.' A very nifty way of getting hold of a narrator. The complaints department. The most intriguing answer came from the question, 'why the unconventional method without talking heads?' Lyne responded with enthusiasm, 'it's a love-letter to the genre, embracing the mad, overwrought aesthetic of that world'. This to me made a lot of sense after watching Lyne's film, as at its nucleus, Beyond Clueless is a celebration of the good, the bad and the ugly of the teen movie from 1995 to 2004. Plus, talking heads could disparage his beloved genre. And he wouldn't want that now would he.

There are a few, casual moments where it needs to tuck its shirt in, yet overall, Beyond Clueless wears its uniform well.

Beyond Clueless is released Friday 23^rd January

Enemy: ‘A Tale Of Identity, Duality And Causality’

Directed by: Dennis Villeneuve. Written by: Javier Gullon. Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Melanié  Laurent, Sarah Gadon and Isabella Rossellini. Released on the 2nd January 2015

I do hope people go see Enemy, Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of José Saramago’s novel O Homem Duplicado, which translates as The Duplicated Man. It follows a Toronto based college professor named Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal), who lives a mundane and repetitive routine, livened up only by his nightly sexual encounters with Mary (Melanié Laurent). His suppressive paradigm of no-pleasure-whatsoever transcends to astonishment when he witnesses his exact look-alike as an extra in a movie. Learning his screen pseudonym to be Daniel St Claire, real name Anthony Claire, Adam tracks him down. Anthony (Yes, Gyllenhaal again) is also Toronto based, and a jobbing actor who has a six-month pregnant wife by the name of Helen (Sarah Gadon). His life is much more active and seemingly more involved than Adam’s is. When Anthony becomes aware of his doppelgänger, and finally meets him, the initial obsession Adam had disintegrates, and in a reversal of misfortunes, a more dangerous obsession ignites inside Anthony.

Enemy first premièred at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013, though the distributors have been kicking their heels in the mean time as it has only just arrived over here. This might be to do with the film itself having its own doppelgänger in the form of Richard Ayoade’s The Double. If both movies were released simultaneously, it is arguable that they would have both faltered at the British Box Office, plagued by their own parallels. However, it is also arguable that Ayoade’s film would have survived this plague; its vaccination being the refreshing dark comedy that Enemy lacks. This is not to say that the film is not at all versatile; the formula of course is not original, but Villeneuve’s handling of his own puzzle takes us to previously locked levels. There are allegorical references to totalitarianism, which the director admits was purposeful, he says, ‘sometimes you have compulsions that you can’t control coming from the subconscious… they are the dictator inside ourselves’. I have to say, that this perception has some holes, one would think that a history teacher would recognise his own totalitarian state of mind when his individuality is compromised. Enemy also has palpable sexual themes – frustration but predominantly lust, which lie down at the forefront of Villeneuve’s sixth feature. This raw, carnal display reminded me most of Blue Velvet, though perhaps Isabella Rosselini’s role as Adam’s (and possibly Anthony’s) mother, swayed my reminiscence toward Lynch’s classic.

I did say, that I hoped people go see Enemy, and I do, because in spite of certain issues, it is a very well made movie, and Gyllenhaal is, as he has been in his last three performances, fascinating and fantastic in the lead role(s). It is a shame then, that the women in this film are vacuously written, as I feel Helen especially is the key to this intriguing story. Villeneuve’s film is opaque on the surface, though beneath the nebulous ‘double’ concept lies, I believe, a multi-stranded explanation. ‘Chaos is order yet undeciphered’ is a line from Saramago’s novel, and the film’s opening, but the chaos is decipherable. Both Adam and Anthony exist in the subconscious, yet only one of them is of conscious existence. My hypothesis is that Adam was in fact a failed movie actor, who is now a depressed history teacher living with his wife Helen, and both are at very vulnerable stages in their lives. I also feel that the story is being told through Helen’s eyes, which is why it is a shame her character isn’t more well founded. The representation of both Adam and Anthony are how she views her husband on a daily basis, and Mary is Helen’s paranoia of what Adam is seeking; a sexy and successful, no-strings-attached business woman. What we are seeing is in fact a mirage of what is developing in Helen’s psyche. Now my view could be way off the yellow brick road, but with a story that has so many tangled facets to it, there is no reason why this notion mightn’t be viable.

Talking of tangled (no not the Disney film), I must mention the giant spider. Its presence in Enemy is a metaphor for the unfurling events in the film. What is a metaphor of? Well at the beginning it is used in what appears to be a sex dungeon, where a female volunteer slides her foot in front of it, and it also appears in the denouement cowering in the bedroom, in replace of Helen. It could be a metaphor of either Helen being misunderstood; that Adam is being pushed away by her, but in fact she is just being vulnerable, rather than antagonistic. On a wider scale, or a world-wide-web if you like, it could serve as Adam’s position in this dictatorial regime that is his life, which is contextually relevant to Canada’s state at the moment, according to varied opinions. Adam is stuck in this web, unable to express his identity, which is why the failed-actor aspect of Anthony is pertinent, because acting is a freedom of expression.

Enemy holds a well woven narrative hiding inside it, ready to be unravelled by audience guess work. Gyllenhaal is proving to be a ready actor for Oscar consideration, although this film won’t be nominated, as it has been sporadically released over the world for the past year. Here’s hoping he gets a well deserved nod for Nightcrawler. Villeneuve shows his understanding of Toronto with understated class and style. His influences are particularly significant, with Dead Ringers beeping at me for the duration, with shades of Rosemary’s Baby cropping up also. Villenueve made Enemy before he went on to make Prisoners with Gyllenhaal, though in my opinion Enemy runs at a more consistent pace, and is overall my preferred film of the duo. It is a tale of identity, duality and causality, and their conscious existence in a subconscious mind.

For my next posts, I will be submitting The Seven Best Tom Cruise Films and, before that, I shall be gifting you lucky people with another Mini Movie Memo (and then an afterthought...) post. Keep your eyes peeled.