Fargo

If ever there was a movie to deglamorize crime, this is it.

Fargo opens with Jerry Lundegaard driving through a near white-out pulling a flatbed trailer to an epically tragic soundtrack. The thing on the trailer might well be a coffin instead of a tan Sierra. This sets the tone for the whole movie.

Dante’s Inferno is often criticized because the Devil is far more interesting than God. A lot of stories about the fight between Good and Evil have this problem, and the usual cure is the anti-hero, like the Dark Knight (Batman).

You won’t find that in Fargo.

Good in this movie is ordinary people doing ordinary things, epitomized by Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), seven-months-pregnant Chief of Police. Ordinary life in this movie is really....ordinary. It's about things like eating lunch, shovelling the drive, making breakfast for your wife before she heads off to a crime scene, checking into a hotel, and jumpstarting the car.

Think the homespun, quiet life of the local yokels is boring? Try spending some time with criminals Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stomare) and Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi). They are holed up in an unheated cabin, eating TV dinners. One of them barely speaks and the other one won't shut up. Their kidnap victim (Kristin Rudrud) is hooded and bound and reduced to a token to be redeemed for ransom money.

In a brilliant scene the camera flips faster and faster between the silent and slack-jawed Grimsrud, the dehumanized victim, Showalter cursing and banging on the TV trying to get reception, and the snow and white noise on the TV itself. And just when you have had enough of that the camera moves seamlessly to the Gundersons, snuggling and dozing in bed. Unless you are a real masochist, my bet is you would rather snuggle up with the Gundersons than hang out with Grimsud and Showalter, much less be their victim. This perfectly illustrates the message of Fargo, which Marge sums up at the end for Grimsrud (which I won’t share here in case you are one of the few people who have not seen this movie yet).

The appeal of this movie is the character development. You may not like the characters but you will find them fascinating to watch. The acting is so good that Steve Buscemi will forever be known as “the funny looking guy” and Peter Stormare has a band called The Blonde from Fargo. (Look him up on IMDb. He is a totally different person when he smiles.) And it’s not just the acting, it’s the characters themselves. No cliches.

Character is what drives the plot in this movie and not the other way around, unlike most of what comes out of Hollywood passing for entertainment. Fargo’s outcome is inevitable but not predictable.

There are lots of great shots in this movie. An overhead shot of a snow-covered parking lot dotted with trees in diamond shaped planters would be perfect as a print for curtains. Stark images of the white and empty Minnesotan winter abound. What does it represent? Well, you can figure that out for yourself.

I want to avoid commercial successes (because, let's face it. you've heard of them and probably seen them) but Fargo is just too good and fits the bill too well to overlook. It is timeless. I was thrown a bit by the CRT TVs and landlines and 90s hair because otherwise this movie isn't dated at all.

Jah, Margie.

On IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116282

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The Fountain

The Fountain is my favourite movie of all time. I have watched it several times, and it makes me cry every time. It’s appeal has not worn off.

The first time you watch the movie it is a bit hard to follow. It helps if you know that there are three parallel stories going on. The first is a novel that Izzy (Rachel Weisz) is writing, in which Queen Isabel of Spain has sent Conquistador Tomas (Hugh Jackman) to find the Fountain of Youth for her. It will save her from the Inquisition, which is taking over Spain. She gives him a gold ring and promises that they will be together, like Adam and Eve, when he returns from his mission.

The second story is set in present day. Dr Tommy Creo is desperate to find a cure for the brain cancer that is killing his wife Izzy. So desperate the he alienates his colleagues and neglects Izzy. He refuses to accept her fate.

The third story is a continuation of the first, set in the future, in which a virtually immortal Tommy Creo, in a bubble-like spaceship, is trying to resurrect Izzy. He has abandoned science for spirituality, and this is an all-or-nothing quest. It is his last resort.

Tommy has his own quest in each storyline, but Izzy has given him another one: to finish her novel. This request plagues him. He doesn’t know how the story ends.

If you can’t follow the story very well on first viewing, you can just sit back and be dazzled by the visual beauty of the film. Everywhere is golden light - lamps, candles, stars, sparks from welding, torches, sunrise. Tomas/Tommy is perpetually in gold-lit gloom. Brilliant daylight is available to him, and Izzy goes toward it, but not Tommy.

There are also repeated motifs: the straight line of roads and highways (watch for the crossroads); the stylized flower pattern/Mayan depiction of the star Xibalba; the fine hairs on the back of Izzy’s neck; the wedding band that Tommy loses while scrubbing up for surgery. If you are an English student and you want to analyze symbolism, this movie is rich with it. 

The love between Isabel/Izzy and Tomas/Tommy is profound and unshakeable. It is romance without mushiness or melodrama - the kind that the kid in the Princess Bride would find acceptable, despite some kissing. Watch it with someone you love.

And yes, Hugh Jackman can act.

On IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414993/

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The Perfect Host

I hate movies/shows/stories that are predictable. If you do too, then The Perfect Host is the movie for you.

The movie begins with John (Clayne Crawford) who is having a bad day. The cops are on his tail and he needs a place to lay low. Fortunately John is also a master con artist and talks his way into the opulent home of Warwick (David Hyde Pierce) with a sob story about being mugged and claims that they have a mutual friend.

I have to confess I have thought that Pierce was brilliant ever since I first saw him in the short-lived sitcom The Powers That Be, so this review might be biased. His role as Niles Crane on Frasier is almost a reprisal of that role. And you might think he is playing the effete and mild-mannered Niles again as Warwick.

But you won’t think that for long. John’s day is about to get so much worse.

There isn’t too much I can say about this movie without giving away the twists and turns of the plot. Go watch The Perfect Host and then come back and reflect on these questions:

What happened to Warwick’s dinner guests?

Do police lieutenants really make enough to live in that style?

Did you take a close look at the photos in Warwick’s album?

What will happen to Morton?

Now watch it again. Pierce's performance holds up on second viewing. The movie is still enjoyable, even though you know what happens, because now you are in on it from the beginning. You become a co-conspirator.

So...what did happen to Warwick’s dinner guests? 

On IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1334553 

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Only Lovers Left Alive

If age brings wisdom, what would happen if you lived for centuries? What kind of a library could you amass? How well could you hone your creative skills, like writing or composing music?

Only Lovers Left Alive explores the question: what makes life worth living? Vampires Eve (Tilda Swinton) and Adam (John Hiddlestone) have different answers to that question. Eve’s diet might be limited to blood, but she is an intellectual omnivore. The secret of Eve’s longevity is her curiosity, and her ability to see the beauty in everything. Eve is white-haired, dresses in light colors and lives in a city of close, white-stuccoed buildings. Adam is “romantically suicidal,” an artist who wants his music to be played, but can't risk being in the limelight. He dresses in black and drives aimlessly around the “wilderness” of a decaying and abandoned Detroit. Opposites attract. Sorrow needs joy, and day needs night. Adam and Eve’s love spans centuries and continents.

The vampires in this movie are the antithesis of Dracula. They don’t revel in death and debauchery; they don’t want melodrama (especially in the person of Eve’s little sister Ava [Mia Wasikowska]). They want to live quiet and anonymous lives, Eve with her books, and Adam with his music. Blood, at its best, is a drug; at its most basic it is necessary sustenance. It is not obtained by stalking scantily clad virgins. Adam’s and Eve’s sources are more circumspect than going to the grocery store, but not much more exciting.

But, as in the lives of mere mortals, shit happens, and hard decisions have to be made in the interest of survival.

Only Lovers Left Alive is an atmospheric movie, rich with visual details and a moody soundtrack. Eve’s home in Tangiers is full of books and tapestries and beautifully embroidered robes; Adam’s house in Detroit is cluttered with a marriage of antiques and electronics, rare and beautiful musical instruments and kick-ass sound equipment. Both are the kind of place you want to explore, like an exotic market or an antique shop.

In the middle of this richness is a strikingly stark image of the lovers, naked and asleep, their bodies white against black satin sheets. What does that image mean? I will leave that up to you.

Note: I am deducting half a star for the cheesy font used for the title.

On IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1714915/

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This Must be the Place

This is a movie you have to pay attention to. There is no backstory conveniently fed to you via flashbacks or dialogue; you have to look at what is going on in the present and piece that together yourself. Every scene is pared down to it’s essentials.

It’s a challenge. Are you up to it?

What drew me to this movie was the cover image - a closeup of an aging and intensely blue-eyed Sean Penn in drag. It’s a good image for the movie, as Penn’s character, retired and reclusive rock star Cheyenne, is either medicated, anxious, depressed, burnt out or autistic - or some combination of all of those. With just a little exaggeration and a focus on detail the movie portrays how intensely he experiences everything.

At first it is hard to understand why Jane (Frances McDormand) has stayed married to him for 35 years. It’s not the money - she has a career. Cheyenne is stuck in the past. His career as a heavy metal singer is long over and he cannot move on. But as Cheyenne is revealed, bit by bit, you see his appeal.

When he gets word that is father is dying in New York, Cheyenne ventures, alone, across the Atlantic. He has not spoken to his father in 30 years. Cheyenne’s father was on a mission to locate the Auschwitz guard who tormented him when he was a prisoner. Cheyenne picks up the trail, aided, at some points, by a jaded Nazi hunter (Judd Hirsh).

All of the characters Cheyenne meets along the way are never quite what you expect them to be, from the tattooed man in a motel bar that Cheyenne has a 2-minute conversation with, to the Auschwitz guard himself. They all open up and talk candidly with Cheyenne, and although that is not what people in real life do very often, it makes for great dialogue and great movies.

The movie is full of quips (“Without realizing it, we go from an age where we say: ‘My life will be that’ to an age where we say: ‘That's life.’”) and subtle humour. We see Cheyenne, in full heavy metal regalia, trudging off to the grocery store with a wheeled cart and zippered red, white and blue plastic liner (exactly the same one my grandmother had).

Fans of David Byrne will love the soundtrack, and Byrne himself makes an appearance, helping to place the fictional Cheyenne in the real world music scene.

Cheyenne's quest is transformative (as a quest should be).

On IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1440345/

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