By Brett Blake AMERICAN HUSTLE Director David O. Russell’s latest is a smart, frequently funny, and hugely entertaining romp. Telling a fictionalized version of the ABSCAM scandal from the 1970s, wherein elected officials were caught taking bribes, AMERICAN HUSTLE plays fast and loose with the actual facts of the case, but this is acceptable as it never purports to be a true documentation of what really occurred. Russell has assembled an incredible line-up of performers, and they’re all terrific. As the central character, Christian Bale undergoes yet another physical transformation, but beyond the physical, Bale gets to the core of this person, a con man with a big heart, and it’s one of the most entertaining performances he’s ever given. Even better is Amy Adams as Bale’s partner in crime; it might be the best work she’s has ever done. She’s totally convincing and compelling as a woman dying to become somebody else, and for as strong a person as she comes across, there’s a tremendous amount of vulnerability simmering underneath. Bradley Cooper is pretty much a riot as the FBI agent who ropes in Bale and Adams, and while it veers dangerously close to being too goofy a performance, Cooper pulls it all together, and he’s the comedic highlight of the movie. Also a comedic highlight is Jennifer Lawrence, and most of her scenes are terrifically humorous (a sequence involving her singing and dancing to “Live and Let Die” might be one of the funniest things I’ve seen all year). Lastly, we have Jeremy Renner as a politician and a target of Bale, Adams, and Cooper, and he exudes a humanity that makes for a great contrast to the lunacy going on with the other characters. All of five these actors should be up for major awards consideration; whether or not they actually will be is yet to be seen. Thematically, the movie has much to say about phoniness, in the sense that there are multiple cons going on here. Cons within cons, and the people being conned are often those who give in to the temptation of corruption. Everybody’s a fake on some level, or a person trying to be somebody they’re not. Only Renner’s character actually seems like a truly honorable, above-board fellow… and yet he still finds himself resorting to criminal activity, all the while purporting to be doing it for the benefit of his constituents. It’s not a heavy-handed idea in the movie, but it is there for people to find and examine if they so choose. There’s one other issue that I want to touch on, and that’s the notion that some critics have brought up involving this film being, essentially, some kind of imitation of the works of Martin Scorsese. I can see that argument up to a point, I suppose: there’s voice-over narration, the editing is electrifying, the use of needle-drops for the music is fantastic (REALLY fantastic, in fact; the songs - and their usage within scenes - are killer), and the overall tone and setting is not too dissimilar from Scorsese’s classic, GOODFELLAS. But those are surface similarities. Is any movie set in the 1970s, involving crime, and with a rollicking pace suddenly a Martin Scorsese rip-off? I don’t think so, and AMERICAN HUSTLE exists completely on its own terms. To merely waive it off as Scorsese-lite does a tremendous disservice to David O. Russell’s directorial work here, which is one of the best efforts of this year (and, I’d wager, the film would look and feel very much the same if GOODFELLAS never existed). Bringing up the Scorsese argument seems like a cheap way to detract from the film, and I felt I had to - at least partially - refute it. It might sound like damning with faint praise to say this, but I will anyway: this is a relatively light film, almost a caper, for even at its most grim, there’s such a lightness of touch and a desire to entertain that it’s never less than a completely enjoyable experience, and the conclusion - however improbable or “Hollywood ending”-ish - wraps the whole film up in an enormously satisfying, crowd-pleasing bow. SAVING MR. BANKS Who would have thought that the behind-the-scenes backstory of the making of MARY POPPINS would be this good of a film? Well, obviously, I thought it would, but I was in the tank for this film the moment I heard about it: a look at how Walt Disney - at the height of his Hollywood power - managed to pry the film rights of the Mary Poppins character from her creator, P.L. Travers, is an incident that all good Disney-philes, of which I am one, probably have at least some knowledge of. But what about the mass audience? Could this story really make a compelling film for everybody? I think SAVING MR. BANKS proves the answer to that question is a resounding “yes,” and it’s one of the best movies of the year. The film’s fictionalized version of the real events presents a trip made by Travers (played by Emma Thompson) from London to Hollywood in 1961, where she meets Disney (played by Tom Hanks), as well as the creative team he’s assembled to bring Mary Poppins to the screen. Story conferences, arguments, and trips to Disneyland ensue. Beneath that, we are also told the story of Travers’ childhood (where she’s portrayed - very effectively - by Annie Rose Buckley) in Australia, and her relationship with her father (played by Colin Farrell), a free-spirited, big-hearted man with too strong an attachment to alcohol. The first thing that has to be said is that, as Travers, Emma Thompson is phenomenal. It would be very easy to portray her as some kind of unlikable nightmare, a picky control freak who cannot be pleased by anything, and while Thompson certainly does convey a certain amount of that, she adds so much more depth and pathos to the part (something aided, no doubt, by the thoughtful script from Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith). As Travers, Thompson’s tough-as-nails exterior is concealing immense vulnerability, which assures that her more rough edges and attitudes never become tedious. It’s a marvelous characterization, and it’s one of her best performances. Then there’s Tom Hanks’ Walt Disney, which - if I’m being honest - is what I was really looking forward to out of this movie, and Hanks goes not disappoint. He’s got all the folksy charm and warmth and enthusiasm of which the real Disney displayed bucketfuls… but there’s a whole lot more going on under the surface, a resolve and a savvy that befits a man who was a self-made mogul, and one of the most powerful men in the entertainment industry. I expect many people will claim, given the fact that Walt Disney Pictures is the production entity behind this film, that the movie’s some kind of hagiography, a depiction of Disney-as-saint; the movie never presents Disney as anything less than a tremendously decent man, so those looking for him to be shown as some kind of tyrannical taskmaster will surely be gravely disappointed. I’ve read many books about Disney’s life, so I like to think I’ve got a good handle on the sort of person he really was, and I tend to think this film’s depiction of him is pretty darn close to who the real guy was. The supporting roster adds a lot of nice color to the film, as well. Bradley Whitford, Jason Schwartzman, and B.J. Novak portray the inner circle of creative minds working on MARY POPPINS, and their frequent exasperation with having to meet the demands of Thompson’s Travers is pretty entertaining. Through these characters, the movie also does a surprisingly great job of illustrating the creative process itself, and how collaboration is often a difficult - but necessary - enterprise, and one that frequently strengthens the final product. Paul Giamatti pops up as Travers’ Hollywood chauffeur, and he adds a nice, “aw shucks” normality to his part that makes the character’s slowly-growing friendship with Travers interesting, and not quite as cliched as it could have been. Finally, we have Colin Farrell as Travers’ father, and he gives a very strong, even passionate performance as a deeply flawed man who tragically cannot live up to the idealized version of himself that his young daughter sees. The film heavily employs the use of flashbacks - something the marketing has hinted at, but mostly shied away from - to tell this story young Travers and her father. At first, the flashbacks felt hastily-edited, and as if they were interrupting the flow of the present day storyline. Eventually, though, the editing falls into a nice rhythm, and there’s some intercutting/juxtaposing of events from one time period with events from the other that makes for some pretty powerful moments. Technically, the movie is rock-solid. The period details of both turn-of-the-century Australia and early-1960s Hollywood feel well-observed, and the cinematography captures them in rich, warm detail. Thomas Newman’s musical score is also effective (though, I’ll add, exactly the kind of score we’ve heard from him a few times before); however, the movie gets the most musical mileage out of the actual songs that Richard and Robert Sherman wrote for MARY POPPINS. It’s particularly fun to see the two brothers actually hashing out lyrics and melodies, many of which don’t sit well at all with Travers, but the moment when she finally does connect with one of their songs is as joyous a sequence as has been captured on film this year. SAVING MR. BANKS has no pretensions of being an “important” film, despite attempts to place it into an “Oscar bait” category. It’s concerned with telling an interesting story in compelling and entertaining fashion, and it more than achieves that. The phrase “feel-good film of the year” is a horrible, overused cliche, but sometimes it is an apt description. It certainly is in this case, as I can’t imagine somebody walking out of SAVING MR. BANKS without a smile on his or her face.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
January 2023
Categories
All
|