Ferdy on Films, etc.

The Illusionist (2006)
Director: Neil Burger

By Marilyn Ferdinand

This is the 200th post on Ferdy on Films, etc. No, unlike the 100th episode of a TV series, I’m not going to be set for life with some lucrative syndication deal, nor am I likely to win a car for being the first blogger with 200 posts on this particular day of the month. It’s simply a way of marking what I and my contributors have accomplished in the way of productivity and especially, how many bloody movies I’ve seen since December 2005 that I have found inspirational enough to write about. Looking back on such films as Make Way for Tomorrow, Habit, Sadie Thompson, and The Call of Cthulhu, to name but a tiny few, I’d have to say I’ve been a lucky film geek indeed.

Believe it or not, I have thought a lot about what film I’d take up for my 200th post. There are so many classics still waiting for me to see and write about, so many directors, stars, and screenwriters who deserve more of a spotlight than they’ve gotten. Ultimately, though, I think I’ve known all along which film would take this “honored" place—The Illusionist, the last film my mother ever saw in a movie theatre, one I was privileged to choose and take her to see.

My mother, who died last November, is the first and greatest inspiration for my love of film. She would regale me and my brother with stories of entire Saturdays spent at the movies, eating the lunch her mother would pack for her while feasting her eyes on serials like Buck Rogers, newsreels, cartoons, and, of course, the feature film. Sometimes she’d take dishes home when the theatre was handing them out as a promotion. She was a big fan of musicals—of Judy Garland, Fred and Ginger, Der Bingle. Of course, she also loved the women’s films like Mildred Pierce and Mrs. Miniver. One afternoon, she and I shared a box of Kleenex as we sobbed our way through Madame X.

As I became a more serious film buff, I began taking her to see foreign-language films. She especially loved The King of Masks, a charming film from China, and soon she wanted to see all the foreign films she could. She accompanied me to Ebertfest several years in a row, enjoying some of the offerings very much and sitting patiently through some of the more experimental films I wanted to see. Mom was a good sport, and she liked to be out among people, sharing the experience of watching a movie.

For a brief period of time after her cancer treatments ended, Mom regained a bit of strength and energy. She didn’t go out much, but whenever she did, it was a joyful event. That’s why The Illusionist holds a very special place in my heart. This tale of a 19th century master magician pitted against a police chief in the pocket of a ruthless monarch seemed just the right mix of costume drama, romance, intrigue, and visual spectacle to delight Mom. We went with the hubby to a cineplex five minutes from our home; Mom picked up the tab.

The film opens on the friendship of young Sophie von Teschan (Eleanor Tomlinson), an aristocrat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Eduard Abramowitz (Aaron Johnson), the son of a cabinet-maker. The young couple fancy themselves in love. Eduard, using his cabinet-making skills and ingenuity at creating trick devices, carves a locket with hidden compartments for Sophie. However, the unsuitability of a commoner as a suitor for Sophie is obvious to her family—though not to her and Eduard—and she is shipped out of the country to a finishing school.

Years pass, and Vienna is all abuzz about the magnificent tricks of Eisenheim the Illusionist (Edward Norton), a renowned magician who has been making a name for himself throughout Europe. Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell) and Chief Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti) consider his show to be exceedingly clever—Uhl is particularly fascinated with Eisenheim’s growing of a small orange tree on stage—but certainly not magic. Leopold charges Uhl with helping him to discover Eisenheim’s secrets. They go to a performance to observe him more closely; the Duchess Sophie von Teschan (Jessica Biel) accompanies them. When Eisenheim calls for a volunteer from the audience for a trick, Leopold urges Sophie to go, hoping she will be able to tell him what happened to her afterward. Eisenheim—in reality her long-lost love Eduard Abramowitz—recognizes Sophie immediately. He captures her image in a mirror and makes it move independently, in another triumphal performance; she can offer nothing of his secrets to Leopold.

The next day, on the prince's orders, Uhl goes to Eisenheim’s workshop to invite him to perform for Leopold and his guests at the palace. He confesses a fascination with Eisenheim’s abilities, and Eisenheim teaches him a very simple trick. When Eisenheim learns Sophie will be present at the palace—though dismayed to learn she is engaged to Leopold—he agrees to come. When Sophie encounters Eisenheim again, she greets him as her old friend, recognizing him belatedly after the show. Leopold watches Eisenheim’s tricks carefully, skeptical of a floating ball stunt. He asks Eisenheim to do something more basic. With this, Eisenheim asks for Leopold’s jewel-encrusted sword. He balances the sword on its tip and challenges members of the audience to lift it, like Arthur removing Excalibur from the stone. None can do so. When Leopold steps up, Eisenheim does not release the sword immediately, vexing the prince and bringing down a vendetta to have his show closed down.

In the meantime, Sophie and Eisenheim renew their romance. He begs her to come away with him, but she says Leopold would never let her go and would hunt them down and kill them eventually. Nonetheless, she determines not to marry the prince. She rides alone to the palace one evening and confronts Leopold with this news. He slaps her. She goes out to the stable to ride off, and he follows. The next image we see is of Sophie slumped forward on her horse as it gallops through the palace gates.

When Sophie’s horse is found with a bloodstain on its neck, the search for the duchess is on. Eisenheim soon finds her floating in a river and rushes to her; she has a sword wound in her neck. He cradles her soaked, pale body in his arms and cries. Uhl goes to view the body in a covered cassion and finds a jewel in the folds of her dress. When he surveys the stable, the apparent crime scene, he sees something in the straw in the stall. But his attentions are diverted to other matters—seeing that Eisenheim, who is accusing Leopold of Sophie’s murder, is removed from Vienna.

Eisenheim decides to close his show. He goes off, only to return several months later to prepare a new show in a theatre he has purchased. The theatre is guarded by Chinese helpers, lending the impression that Eisenheim has been studying some very mysterious arts during his absence. When the new show opens, it appears that Eisenheim can conjure the spirits of the dead.

Championed by the religious faithful for providing proof of an afterlife, Eisenheim tempts fate by conjuring the spirit of Sophie, who provides cryptic information about her death. Whispers about Leopold’s complicity in her murder—he has been rumored to have killed women before—force Uhl to take action to shut down the show and place Eisenheim under arrest for fraud. “Why did you do it?" Uhl implores. “To be with her," answers Eisenheim. A truer word was never spoken.

In fact, Eisenheim never pretends to be anything but an illusionist—indeed avoids the fraud charge and jail by telling the assembled crowd outside the police station that what he does on stage is not real. Perhaps that should have tipped me off that all was not as it seemed, but I completely went with this movie. Even seeing obviously computer-generated illusions that would have been exceedingly difficult to pull off as a mechanical trick in any case, I let Eisenheim trick me. It was fun. Nonetheless, Eisenheim’s plans were, in the final analysis, ruthless and unjust. The film made Leopold look like a slime who deserved whatever was coming to him and did so in the name of love. Maybe that’s fine for the romantics, but it certainly cast a shadow for me.

The cat-and-mouse game between Eisenheim and Uhl was very entertaining. Although Eisenheim clearly found Uhl’s toadying to Leopold disgusting, Uhl’s admiration for Eisenheim’s skill was genuine and ultimately redeeming. Giamatti was never better than as this pragmatic cop with strong powers of observation—yet not quite strong enough. Norton was a convincing lover and charismatic mesmerist, particularly in the period theatres that blazed with flaming torches for footlights. Sewell, a highly underrated actor, brought a steely determination to his character; every action was completely consistent and intensely felt. One feels Biel tried her best, but she really is little more than a very pretty face. That works, however, in this context of eternal love, and she really wasn’t in the film enough to ruin it.

All in all, this is a clever, visually exciting film—well-paced, well-acted, and especially intriguing for mystery lovers. I want to thank everyone responsible for making The Illusionist for providing this great send-off for my mother, a loyal film fan to the end. l

This Strange Passion: Luis Buñuel Blogathon

The Young One (La Joven, 1960)

By Marilyn Ferdinand

When I first offered to write a piece on my favorite director for Flickhead’s Luis Buñuel Blogathon, I wanted to write about Buñuel’s use of prosthetic limbs. I’ve always found his eroticized artificial body parts (see Tristana and Ensayo de un crimen especially) a fascinating and funny aspect of his oeuvre.

Then I read Jonathan’s Rosenbaum’s “Southern Movies, Actual and Fanciful: A Personal Journey" in which he says “…other good examples of those who took the trouble to get things right would be…rather surprisingly, Luis Buñuel, whose underrated and neglected 1960 Mexican feature, The Young One, set on an island off the coast of Georgia, is uncommonly smart and accurate in its depiction of Southern Baptists." I’ve had The Young One among my collection of unwatched DVDs for a year or so now, and my interest was mildly piqued because the hubby spent many years in Georgia and we had recently visited some of the islands off the Georgia coast. What clinched it was setting out to watch The Grudge 2 last night and being roped instead by the absolutely fascinating and first-rate “Hillbilly: The Real Story" on the History Channel (airs again Thursday, September 27—don’t miss it). Something out there was telling me I had a new blogathon assignment!

This drama of a rough game warden, an orphan girl, and a black musician from the north is based on the story “Travellin’ Man" by Peter Matthiessen, an author I know mainly for his nature writing. Putting Luis Buñuel and Peter Matthiessen together in my head was bizarre enough; add to that a Mexican production filmed in English with mainly American actors and a screenplay co-written by Buñuel and blacklisted screenwriter Hugo Butler (as H.B. Addis), and you have one extremely unique entry in the Buñuel canon. If not for Rosenbaum’s reassuring words, I might have feared for the outcome.

Ever faithful, however, to the ingenuity of my hero, I started this journey to the backwater island on which the action takes place with hope—much like Traver (Bernie Hamilton), the northerner on whom the film opens. We watch him row his boat to shore and tug it out of view behind some bushes. Suddenly a yell: “Rape!" Voices jumbled, footfalls on pavement, a well-dressed colored man fleeing—it's Traver. He is startled from his reverie by shots—very real and very nearby. Miller (Zachary Scott), the game warden, has bagged a rabbit. He goes over to the quivering creature, bangs it on the head below the horizon of the frame, and carries it back to his homestead.

A main cabin and outbuilding sit on the site. Miller moves into the cabin and is furious that the breakfast dishes are unwashed and the place unkempt. He swears at that damn girl Evvy (Key Meersman) and goes off to find her lazy ass. Evvy— Evalyn—is sitting at the feet of Pee Wee, her grandfather and Miller's caretaker, who lies dead on his bed in the outbuilding. Temporarily subdued, Miller sends Evvy off quietly to fix his supper. Lifting a glass off the table, he passes his verdict on the cause of death—an excess of drink. He tells Evvy he intends to send her away to the mainland to be looked after by the church people, aka, an orphanage.

Once in the cabin, Miller resumes his usually harsh treatment of Evvy, berating how Pee Wee let her run around like an animal, not even brushing her hair. He sends her off to fix herself up. When she returns, he suddenly realizes how attractive she has become. Buñuel fans are by now familiar with that look of semi-incestuous lust in his eyes. "You're not a child anymore," says Miller. "How old are you?" Evvy, dumb as a stump, isn't sure. “You can tell the age of a horse by looking at his teeth," Miller offers, “but it’s flesh and weight that count on people." He tells Evvy to give him her leg to feel. “It’s got some heft to it," he says, satisfied for the moment but itching for more. When he touches her neck, she recoils, runs off, and locks herself in with her dead grandfather.

Jackson (Crahan Denton), a ferry operator from the mainland who is working with Miller to bring a clubhouse to the island for rich hunters, comes by and says the deal is finally on. Miller tells Jackson he has to help bury Pee Wee. At the grave, Evvy hands Miller a bible, but he shies from reading from it; he may be irreligious, but I suspect he can't read. He says they will fetch a preacher from the mainland to do a proper burial. Evvy plants Pee Wee's whiskey bottle on top of the grave, but Miller snatches it up. "That's a waste of bad whiskey," he barks. Miller, fixing to go to the mainland with Jackson, changes his mind about taking Evvy with him to the church people. Angered, Evvy smashes the bottle against a tree.

After Miller and Jackson leave, Evvy goes out to Miller's beehives to harvest some honey. As she returns home, Traver accosts her. He's hungry and tries to steal some of the honey. "That's Miller's!" she protests. He's surprised that she's not afraid of him. She says he reminds her of an old colored man she used play with when she was younger. He comes back to the cabin to get something to eat. She doesn't understand a lot of what he says—he's a jazz musician schooled in jive talk—but he teaches her some phrases and befriends her to a small extent. She is fascinated at night when she hears a sweet and strange music coming from outside. Traver is playing his clarinet—never calls it a licorice stick 'cause that's a term squares use.

Traver, a nickname he got because people said he was a lot like his always-travelling—make that absent—father, goes through Miller's cabin, taking food and gasoline. His outboard motor has run out of gas, and he shows Evvy the blisters on his hands from rowing. He also grabs an old rifle and some shells. Evvy protests that he is stealing. He gives her $20 to pay for what he's taken. He plans to be out on the water again within the hour.

Ah, the best-laid plans. Traver throws the rifle into the boat, and it discharges and blows a hole in the bottom. Back he goes to the cabin to get supplies to mend the boat. While he is out making repairs, Miller returns to the island. When he learns that a nigger has made off with some of his property, he runs after him to kill him. Traver chases through the woods and brush and finds a skiff Miller uses on the estuaries of the island. Miller spies him and shoots; Travers hits the water.

Miller returns to the cabin. He has a surprise for Evvy—a fine dress and high heels that he helps her into. He notices a $20 bill pinned to the hem of her old dress and asks her where she got it. She tells him the truth—from Traver. He is enraged to think that Evvy prostituted herself. Evvy runs out, with Miller fixing to follow her. Just then, Traver—having played possom on the water—bursts in. He confirms Evvy's story about the money. The men are very wary of each other, with Miller's reflexive racism pitted against Traver's northern black pride. Miller agrees to let Traver stay in the outbuilding, but moves Evvy's bed inside the cabin. "You won't think I'm a racist because I don't want Evvy to sleep in the same building as you," Miller says. In fact, Miller takes advantage of the situation to seduce Evvy. "Don't be afraid, Evvy," he says as he forces a kiss on her.

The next day, the men learn a bit more about each other, including that they were both in Italy during the war. Miller tries to belittle Traver for being in supply whereas Miller was in the infantry, but Traver makes him concede how dangerous the supply troops' job was. "We was out of food and supplies and trapped on a hill," recalls Miller, "and this little guy comes up the hill all shot through carrying 100 pounds of supplies. He died in my arms." Yet, he continues to call Traver "nigger" until Traver shoots a can at Miller's feet. "I don't let anyone call me that, not even when I was in the service." Miller modifies his behavior and offers Traver Pee Wee's job.

Of course, Traver has to keep moving, especially after Miller learns from Jackson, who has returned to the island with the Rev. Fleetwood (Claudio Brook) to conduct Pee Wee's service, that he's wanted for raping a white woman. The two men search for Traver—they find him when Evvy naively volunteers that Traver is in the cabin, injured after catching his ankle in an animal trap. Jackson is brutal with Traver, but the preacher believes in his innocence. It is up to Miller to decide Traver's fate.

For a director so well known for being a surrealist, Buñuel shows with The Young One how deftly he could construct well-observed, realistic films. The actions of the characters are rich, particular, and accurate, and quite reminded me of De Sica's characteristic style and mise en scene. For example, watching Evvy harvest honey was as real as it gets, every detail completely accurate and adding to the texture of the film. Although the film was shot in Mexico, Buñuel found a location that completely mimicked an outer banks island.

Similarly, the racial tensions in the film are painfully raw and show the insecurities of the white men in high contrast to the pride and tactics Traver uses to help even the score. Whenever Miller calls him "nigger," Traver is quick to respond with "white trash." The hurt and anger from Miller tell us everything we need to know about the chinks in his armor that Traver and, later, Rev. Fleetwood use to appeal to his better nature.

Fleetwood is a rare clergyman in Buñuel's universe. Neither scorned nor mocked by Buñuel or his film's characters, he has a strong moral compass mixed with pragmatism, and a fearlessness that could never be mistaken for the fecklessness of other Buñuel holy men and women, such as Nazarin and Viridiana. The religiousness of the South is born from fierce independence, not the blind sheep mentality Buñuel tends to ascribe to the faithful in many of his other films. While the hubby disagrees with Jonathan Rosenbaum's assessment of this film as a depiction of Southern Baptists, he recognizes Fleetwood's emphasis on community as a Southern Baptist characteristic.

Even with these many "uncharacteristic" aspects, The Young One displays some of the director's signature touches—flayed carcasses (a skinned rabbit), insects, leg shots, incest, and the deflowering of youth. Interestingly, however, whereas the seduced girls in Tristana, Viridiana, and Belle de Jour (all films that came later than this one) reveal a kind of corruption that comes from sexual knowledge, Evvy seems to maintain her innocence. Perhaps this will change once her relationship with Miller is legitimized and mainlanders come to the island to hunt from the clubhouse. But I rather think that her relative ignorance of life will continue in the semi-isolation of the island and a culture more unburdened by sexual guilt.

I've written quite a bit about this film's plot, but believe me, I haven't even scratched the surface. At 95 minutes, it packs a richness films twice its length often don't achieve. The Young One was a brilliant revelation to me about a director I really thought I knew. I hope all Blogathon readers and participants will seek out this gem, now available on DVD. l

The Passenger (Professione: Reporter, 1975)
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

By Marilyn Ferdinand

It’s not often that I think the English translation of a title is better than the original, but in the case of Antonioni’s haunting search for identity and meaning, The Passenger is clearly the better title. If this film were really only about the objectivity of a reporter, it would not have grown larger in my memory instead of receding like most films tend to do. In fact, this film largely eschews objectivity and reporting, allowing the audience unusual freedom to create an experience from the raw materials and choices made by Antonioni, his actors, and the rest of the crew.

Who is the passenger? He is David Locke (Jack Nicholson), a British reporter raised in America who is working in an unnamed African nation. We learn from flashbacks and viewing interview footage later in the film that he has already spoken with the dictator of the country. But when we first meet Locke at the beginning of the film, he is moving from one contact to another, exchanging cigarettes for information on where he can find the leaders of a rebellion against the current government. This daisy chain of contacts is the first ride on which Locke will be taken, one that results in another—the proverbial “being taken for a ride." After a long trek through desert sands, his guide hides him from the group of soldiers, riding by on camels, he specifically came to see. Angered, Locke walks back to his Land Rover and promptly drives it into a sand drift. His frustration bubbles over, and Locke bashes the sides of his vehicle with a shovel he started to use to dig himself out. In the next scene, it is apparent that Locke has walked back to the village and motel at which he is staying.

Asking for water and informing a hotel employee that there is no soap for his shower, Locke wanders to the room of another guest, Robertson (Charles Mulvehille). He finds Robertson sprawled on his bed, which makes Locke chuckle at his langorousness. Then he notices that Robertson is not moving. He’s dead. Locke flashes back to the conversation they had during a bored evening at the motel. Locke reveals his profession and why he is in the country. Robertson says only that he is a businessman, one without family or friends. “What business could you possibly do out here?" asks an incredulous Locke. “I provide people with things they need. They understand this perfectly." Robertson comments on how beautiful the landscape at dusk looks. Locke dismisses the observation: "I prefer men to landscapes."

We soon find out that the memories of Robertson are induced by a tape recording of the conversation Locke made surreptitiously. This action is the first hint of an enigma at the center of Locke’s being, since he obviously had no reason to assume that anything Robertson said would be salient to his reporting. Locke's professional training in reflexive suspiciousness and mediated encounters seem to filter into even personal encounters. In another flashback scene later in the film, we will hear Locke's now ex-wife Rachel (Jenny Runacre) accuse him of talking but not really engaging. This assessment probably was true up until the moment Locke hatches a plot. He decides to steal Robertson's identity and pass the dead man off as himself. Although Nicholson and Mulvehille bear some resemblance to each other, I grinned thinking that the old saying “they all look alike" certainly would apply for the Africans in this film charged with contacting the authorities about the dead man.

The recording gives Locke valuable information about Robertson's life and outlook. His passport, clothes, plane ticket to Munich, and appointment book give Locke a new direction. At first, the aimlessness and freedom this action brings seems exhilarating. As Robertson, Locke rents a car from Avis and can’t tell the agent where he plans to go or for how long. He chooses Yugoslavia purely at random. He looks in Robertson’s appointment book and sees a locker number and a location. He goes there and opens the locker, from which he retrieves an soft attaché case that contains some papers that have images of guns on them. He drives away and stops impulsively at a small church where a wedding is underway. There he remembers some details of his own fraught marriage. He hides while the wedding party exits the church in a flurry of flower petals. The petals grind under his feet rather poignantly as he moves toward the altar.

Two men, one black African and one German, have followed him to the church. We saw them before at the terminal where Locke retrieved the papers. They ask him if something went wrong, why he hadn’t approached them. Improvising, he says there was a problem. He understands they want to see the papers. The African remarks with approval that he has nearly everything they asked for, save for anti-aircraft weapons. Locke, now unequivocally aware that Robertson was a gun runner, apologizes and hopes the lack of the anti-aircraft fire power is not too much of an inconvenience. The pair gives Locke a large sum of money as down-payment for the weapons. “I’ve heard about you, Mr. Robertson," says the African. “You’re not like the others. You believe in our cause." Locke looks more than nonplussed by this statement of feeling. He agrees to meet them again in Barcelona to finalize the transaction.

Robertson had mentioned that he wanted to go back to England, that he hadn't been there in three years. A mix perhaps of Robertson's and Locke's wishes push Locke to head to London and let himself into the house he used to share with Rachel. He goes to their bedroom, reads a note on the door jamb, and moves through the room. A POV shot of him coming toward the bedroom door and exiting allows Antonioni to fix his camera on the contents of the note, a message of love from a new man in Rachel's life.

Antonioni chooses to reveal more about Locke through Rachel. Learning of David's death, she goes to the television studio where he used to work and views videotaped interviews he conducted, some, like the interview with the African dictator, for which she traveled with him. Her memories of this particular interview are not pleasant—she castigates him for asking questions of people he knows will lie to him. "It's part of the game," he answers in a weary acceptance of his role in the propaganda machine. Rachel, caring more for David now that he is dead, wants to find the man who discovered the body—Robertson. David's producer Martin (Ian Hendry) agrees to help her find him.

This fascinating set-up creates a psychologically interesting dilemma—Locke as Robertson is running away from himself into a fantasy identity. One part of the conversation between Robertson and Locke comes significantly to mind. Locke says, "We translate every situation, every experience into the same old codes. We just condition ourselves," to which Robertson retorts predictably, but truthfully, "We are creatures of habit." In fact, however, Locke is truly starting to transform into Robertson.

By this time, David has gone to Barcelona, following Robertson's appointments for lack of something else to do. Inside one of Antonio Gaudi's magnificent buildings, he encounters The Girl (Maria Schneider), an architecture student from France. She will remain with him for the rest of the film, urging him to meet Robertson's appointments because Robertson believed in something. Her dogged loyalty leads Locke to say more than once, "Why the fuck are you with me?" She never gives him an answer. She doesn't have a name. He saw her in Munich before he actually met her in Barcelona. She appears to be symbolic or an agent of his destiny, his better self.

When David learns that Rachel and Martin are on his trail, not knowing initially that they are really looking for Robertson (who, paradoxically, David is becoming), he goes on the run with The Girl. In a scene that somewhat parallels his sand-bound truck scene, the oil pan of their car springs a leak far from a repair shop. David gives The Girl some money to catch a bus and ferry out of Spain. He says he will meet her after he finishes Robertson's final appointment. Naturally, The Girl shows up at the hotel where Robertson/Locke finally become one. Only The Girl, not Rachel, will recognize David at the end of the film.

Antonioni's film has a timeless quality, with dusty, open streets, desert landscapes, the landscape-inspired buildings of Gaudi, and ancient villages providing an archetypal setting for Locke's encounter with his Other. The passive destruction of the objective reporter who plays the game has its counterpoint in the active destruction of the gun runner who believes in a cause. Without this belief, of course, there would have been no need for Locke to trade in his identity; there would have been no escape from his ennui, only a new way to express it.

Antonioni's long takes similarly slow down the observer. Locke is taken into the desert by a young African, who sees a camel far in the distance and bolts from Locke's side. Like Locke, the audience is forced to watch the slow, steady approach of the camel and its passenger, wondering if this is what he has been waiting for, wondering if the encounter will be peaceful or violent. In fact, we only wonder these things because of the actions of the young African, who seems to invest the scene with a meaning we never discover.

The remarkable long take through the barred window of the room in which Robertson/Locke rests near the end of the film is the textbook example of the possibilities of the long take. Capturing the ordinary rhythms and scenes of life in the village brings the audience inside the frame to perform an action Robertson/Locke repeatedly asks of The Girl: "What do you see?" But Antonioni does more. Rather than put the audience in the reporter's seat, he uses The Girl to inject meaning into the scene. Asked to leave by Robertson/Locke, The Girl wanders around the square. A couple of vehicles move in and out of the frame; then a vehicle carrying some men who have been looking for Robertson moves into view. What happens throughout this scene is completely conveyed, but only through knowing the meaning of what we are seeing. Ultimately, this is the lesson for which Locke—and we—have taken this ride. l

“Our Backstreets" #16
Tarr-Nation

By Marilyn Ferdinand

September 16 marked the long-awaited arrival of Hungarian director Béla Tarr to Facets Cinematheque to preface his “popular hit" Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) and join in a discussion of his career with three well-respected members of the film community—critics Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader) and Scott Foundas (LA Weekly), and retired film professor David Bordwell (University of Wisconsin—Madison). I’d been looking forward to the event for several weeks and promised to blog on it for fellow cineastes unable to attend in person.

Unfortunately, one of those cineastes was Tarr himself. Well, that is not precisely true. He hand-delivered the print of Werckmeister Harmonies from Minneapolis, where he had conducted a similar dog-and-pony show, introduced the film hurriedly, and then sped off to attend to a family emergency. In addition, according to Rosenbaum, Tarr is by no means a cineaste. He claims not to be influenced by any other filmmaker (though he admires a few, including John Cassavetes) and largely does not watch movies.

Still, having just been mesmerized by his visually striking, metaphysical examination of harmony and chaos in an unnamed Hungarian town, the hubby and I chose to remain for the two-hour conversation, moderated by Facets employee Susan Doll. It was an interesting, if ultimately unsatisfying, afternoon because of the absence of the principal upon whom we focused our attention.

Facets has been at the forefront of exposing Chicago audiences to Tarr, screening his early works, Family Nest, The Outsider, and The Prefab People. Because she came to Tarr’s career in a chronological fashion, Doll said she had a special fondness for these musicless examinations of domestic strife. The members of the panel did not feel the same way, but commented favorably on Tarr’s close examination of faces. Rosenbaum mentioned that Tarr sees faces as landscapes; whereas his later films are caught up in vistas, Tarr sees his earlier focus on faces to be exactly the same thing.

Rosenbaum, Bordwell, and Foundas all agreed that Satantango, a 7.5-hour film “about" betrayal was his masterwork. They railed that people don’t seem to mind committing themselves to miniseries, but shied from watching this lengthy movie. It didn’t seem entirely obvious to them that spending a whole day watching a movie is not exactly the same as spending successive nights at home watching a miniseries a bit at a time (or recording it for future viewing if one day in the series was inconvenient). But these are cineastes, of course.

A great deal of the time was spent talking about Tarr’s use of long takes. Bordwell quoted a statistic that the average Hollywood movie has 1,100 takes per one hour of film, whereas Werckmeister Harmonies has 39 takes in total. An interesting discussion transpired about edits versus choreographed long takes, and how a long-take director like Tarr or Tarkovsky can use camera movement and precise blocking to create similar effects. Many directors like editing because they like to direct the audience’s attention specifically to the action they feel is important to observe. Other directors, particularly Antonioni, favor a static camera and long takes to allow the observer to make choices.

Rosenbaum spoke about how much of a master illusionist Tarr is, creating effects even in the long-take verite style that are completely artificial. He compared Tarr with Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami in this respect, saying that even when Kiarostami intentionally shows the artifice of filmmaking (e.g., the actors and crew shown interacting after the “last" scene of A Taste of Cherry), he is creating additional illusions.

Both Bordwell and Rosenbaum talked about Tarr’s resistance to interpretation. He refuses to interpret his films or answer questions about other people’s interpretations of his works. One thing he will acknowledge about his films is that they are about humanity and the dignity of human beings. He lives in a village in Hungary with “real peasants," a class of people he clearly prefers to intellectuals. He eskews intellectualism when applied to his films and is suspicious of it, according to Bordwell and Rosenbaum.

Audience questioners included a Hungarian woman who helps run the Hungarian Film Club of Chicago. She was cornered after the event by local film buffs eager to attend their screenings. l

I'll review Werckmeister Harmonies this week along with Antonioni's The Passenger, paying special attention to the long-take formats to illuminate some of the above discussion.

Jindabyne (2006)
Director: Ray Lawrence

By Roderick Heath

Ray Lawrence reappeared on the map 16 years after his cinematic debut—the unwatchable Bliss (1985)—with the much-praised drama Lantana (2001), an Altmanesque multi-strand drama following a group of mostly middle-class Sydneysiders and what happens to their psyches and relationships following a woman’s disappearance. Lantana proved that adult drama could be a box office draw here in Australia. I found the film as insufferable as a high schooler trying to act serious and troubled in order to impress chicks; brows were furrowed, moody words were uttered, intrigue was developed, dingy colours filtered every scene, and in the end, as Bob Dylan once sang, nothing was revealed. The film put on the trappings of a dramatic thriller and proved to be a shaggy dog story. L’Avventura it was not. Antoniononi’s film understood the nature and power of ambiguity—the mysteries of its plot were matched by the mysteries of its characters, whereas the dramatic situations of Lantana took the psychological acumen of a Dr. Phil episode and matched it to scenes that came across precisely as what they were—acting exercises straight off the stage.

Jindabyne also pays a nod to Altman by way of being based on the same Raymond Carver short story “So Much Water So Close To Home" that Altman used as part of the texture of Short Cuts (1993). As with Lantana, Lawrence uses a genre plot to make a domestic drama. Jindabyne is a popular resort spot in the Southern Alps, the southern end of the same mountain range I live in, built above a lake formed for the huge hydroelectric scheme built in the Snowy Mountains in the 1950s. The old town lies under the lake, a detail played for maximum symbolic value, as it was in Cate Shortland’s unusually good Somersault (2004)—submerged lives, ghosts of the past, and all that jazz.

Carver’s story, cited as a masterpiece of his minimalist style, presents a wife who recounts how her husband Stuart and his friends said they had found a girl’s corpse in the Naches River whilst on a fishing vacation, tethered it for the duration, and got down to their usual business of boozing and fly-casting. The men are infamous for this, and the wife is troubled. She later encounters a man on the road who may be just a creepy letch—or the girl’s murderer. Reports come through of the killer’s arrest. The wife says to a friend, “They have friends, these killers. You can’t tell," indicating she thinks perhaps her husband and his friends may have been involved. However, balance seems to be restored when the wife responds to a come-on from Stuart. It’s a work whose effectiveness stems from the wife’s attempt to read her husband, and men in general, comes up a total blank, female emotiveness helpless before male taciturnity. It evokes a certain type of American male who would rather be shot than use the word “feeling" in a sentence, and how ambiguous, even menacing, such a trait can be in this circumstance.

Most Aussie males are similar, so theoretically the new locale makes a good fit. But Jindabyne can’t quite do this story, nor can it do the story it has to tell. Such a story involves a rupture in the everyday fabric, but Lawrence’s film piles on portent you could cut with a knife. Like Lantana, which visually referenced an a true crime moment in a sequence involving a roadside dummy dressed like the missing woman patterned after a real-life police stunt in looking for the killers of two teens in the 1990s, Jindabyne recalls Bradley John Murdoch’s attack on Joanne Lees and Peter Falconio.The killer, played by Chris Haywood (who, if he hasn’t been in every Aussie film ever made, it sure feels like it), shadows the highway and, in the opening, gets a young Aboriginal woman named Susan (Tatea Reilly) to pull her car over. The moment is charged, especially when Haywood screams schizophrenic ravings. For some reason, Susan sits there and waits to be murdered instead of driving off, as Lawrence’s camera flies back.

Stuart (Gabriel Byrne) is an Irish champion rally driver who has retired to a dull, overworked life running a car repair shop in Jindabyne. Surveying his greying hair, he dyes it. He has a son, Tom (Sean Rees-Wemyss), by his American wife Claire (Laura Linney), who, in a fit of postnatal depression, left Stuart with the baby for 18 months. Stuart’s mother Vanessa (Betty Lucas) also lives with them, frustrating Claire’s maternal authority. Their neighbours Carl (John Howard) and Jude (Debora Lee-Furness) have a worse pain to hide, the death of their daughter, which left them saddled with their inherently weird, budding Goth granddaughter Caylin-Calandria (Eva Lazzaro). Tom and Caylin play together, engaging in activities like trying to sacrifice their schoolmates’ pet guinea pig to dark forces. Billy (Simon Stone) works for Stuart and lives with hippie girlfriend Elissa (Alice Garner) in a campervan. Rocco (Stelios Yakimis) is married to Aboriginal schoolteacher Carmel (Leah Purcell). The four families congregate at a dinner before the four men set off on the trip that fills their dreams. We see the killer dump the girl’s body in a river; he keeps her car in a shed on his property. Stuart finds the body and freaks out; Carl twists his ankle, and, deciding they can’t do anything about it, they tether the corpse in the water where the chill will prevent it rotting, and go about their fishing.

Billy tires first of the charade, and after two days, they all hike out of the hills and phone the police. They are, of course, soon lambasted by cops, media, and family. Worst of all, the racial identity of the girl causes local Aboriginal youths to throw bricks through windows, upturn offices, and generally abuse the four men. Carmel is livid, and her marriage with Rocco seems shattered. Jude, very Aussie, is as dismissive of the event as she was with Caylin’s rodent killing. Claire is deeply affected and ashamed, very American in her desire to heal and connect; she takes up a collection to help pay for the funeral, which the family rebuffs, questioning her motives. Stuart remains incommunicative, and Claire becomes more frayed.

I’d like to say the slow burn of guilt, recrimination, and shadowy threat combusts, but really it just squelches. Claire and Stuart have a bust-up, in which Stuart admits he rejoiced in escaping his overworked life in the glory of nature for a few days. Caylin seems to be tempted to let Tom drown in another of her death experiments, but then saves him. Bill and Elissa leave for the north coast, abandoning Stuart to work alone in the garage. Claire threatens to leave Stuart, and gives the money she collected to the local pastor (Bud Tingwell). Haywood’s working at the church and follows Claire, getting her to pull off the road; he eyes her with menace but then seeming to decide she’s a bit close to home, and drives away. She goes to the Smoking Ritual, a rite held by Susan’s family and tribal folk to exorcise the hills. Stuart, Carl, and Rocco arrive on their own accord, and Stuart apologises to Susan’s father (Kevin Smith), who throws dirt in his face and spits on the ground. Stuart and Claire, nonetheless, kiss and make up. Haywood continues to sit in wait for prey on the highway.

Spurning manhunt or melodrama, Jindabyne claims to be a social, familial, and moral study; if a bogeyman really does start terrorising us, how will we act? The tacked-on racial theme seems present mainly for its topicality, and distracts from Carver’s theme of misogyny. Because we know the men didn’t kill Susan, the tension of responsibility is discharged. But it is unfair to compare constantly to Carver. Jindabyne is its own creation, distinct in purposes from Carver’s story (and also Altman’s, whose approach was a blackly humorous absurdity as the fisherman garrulously enjoyed themselves whilst regarding the body as equivalent to rubbish). Making Stuart and Claire foreigners might emphasise disconnection, but also alienates them from the crucial sense of normality, and of questioning of a cultural imperative that is urgent in the matter. Lawrence’s consistent theme is the pain that lies underneath ordinary lives, and Jindabyne is at least not as arch as Lantana, a film so obsessed with its style it felt like a lawn clipped with scissors. But Lawrence can’t resist these put-on narratives, and never seems to arrive at saying something indelible. His resolutions trail off into mutterings under his breath.

Restrained emotionalism reigns, but the closeted hysteria that is always the flipside of such behaviour (and situations) is absent. Lawrence tries to show decency essentially maintaining itself—Caylin’s decision to save Tom mirrors the men’s fronting up to their shame with Susan’s family—but the film is so afraid of the powerful events and feelings with which it want to engage it fails to fulfil itself in the most crucial way: Why should we care? The men are all far from heroic, but also not convincingly foolish or self-absorbed enough to make their actions believable. The closest of the characters to the psychological type Carver was studying is Carl, who, when Billy mentions that Elissa is bisexual, henceforth describes her as “The Lesbian" who commands him, the film’s sole acknowledgement of a kind of aggressively macho mindset, the only element of the film that hints at real meat instead of pussyfooting. But Lawrence keeps reducing this to a punchline, and Elissa plays no part in the story.

Because Lawrence shows us the men finding the body, etc., the ambiguity of the situation is almost entirely lost; we know they didn’t kill her, that they got no special thrill from it, and we’re left with one slightly strained reading of the situation. (Couldn’t one of them have walked to the top of the hill and called the cops? It would probably have ruined their weekend less; alternatively, why weren’t any of them clever enough to think, hey, why don’t we say we didn’t find it until the last day? Because then there’d be no story!) Lawrence can’t portray real sexism, racism, carelessness over the dead, bloodshed, marital strife, or anything, just more furrowed brows. Dramatically the film walks on eggshells, afraid to ruffle things up with something rude or not absorbed into its glowering mediocrity.

What especially amuses me about Jindabyne is that it owes all of its attempts to capture and hold interest by stealing the tropes of genre filmmaking, but holds itself above such disciplines of generic storytelling. Jindabyne lays on menace with a trowel and reminded me a half-dozen horror films on the way as well as self-consciously referencing Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975). A couple of days before watching this film, I watched a Canadian omnibus film called The Uncanny (1977), an episode of which features an orphaned girl whose mother invested her with magical-gothic trappings. The resemblance to the Caylin-Calandria character was striking, and Lawrence uses Caylin for exactly the same kind of injection of spooky charge. She and Tom believe that the submerged village is the home of zombies, and that the adults are being infected by zombiedom, which tries to add to the moody portent but also amusingly conjures the episode of The Simpsons in which children misinterpret adults’ sexual dalliances as evidence of a conspiracy of “reverse-vampires." A moment where Billy stands under weirdly singing power lines, presaging the upcoming discovery of the body, is a direct quote from Sidney Hayers’ In the Devil’s Garden (1971). When the men are in the bush, Lawrence has shaky POV shots from the bush, as if they’re being watched, one of the oldest stunts in the book. Haywood’s truck, his grizzled threat, and the deliberate irresolution evoke another film based on Bradley Murdoch; yes, Jindabyne is the arthouse equivalent of Wolf Creek.

Lawrence obviously thinks he’s made a troubling, incisive drama about the frailty of average human lives. In fact, all he’s really done is prove how weak-kneed his approach is compared with the attack of Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left or The Hills Have Eyes, which don’t just ruffle the feathers of the family unit, but eat them alive. Jindabyne is closely related to a film like In the Bedroom (2001), a film that also curiously failed through an overly artful approach so concerned about avoiding exploitativeness that it missed something crucial about life-and-death situations. Of recent films of this type, by far the best is the French thriller Feux rouges (2004), adapted from a Georges Simenon novel, a masterpiece of personal observation and slow-cranking tension that successfully avoids generic solutions without making a show of it. l

Mission: Impossible III (2006)
Director: J. J. Abrams

By Marilyn Ferdinand

As much as cinephiles love to rail against Hollywood and the dearth of good first-run movies in the popcorn days of summer, there’s a lot to be said for some exciting, escapist entertainment. This past weekend, deep in a grief-induced depression, I plunked myself in front of my television for a double-header of mindless immersion. First, I gobbled X-Men: The Last Stand, the third installment in this fantasy franchise that I love just for being about superheroes. It makes no sense, of course, but that’s what’s so great about it. The X-Men are just totally awesome, and their school is kind of a Hogwarts without the wands.

Then, only somewhat less ridiculous was Mission: Impossible III. I haven’t been as diligent about following this franchise as I have with X-Men and the Bourne capers; I enjoyed the first film well enough, but my fondness for the television series has kept me from completely buying into the emotionalism of the film versions. Barbara Bain, Martin Landau, Greg Morris, Peter Graves, and Peter Lupus were just so cool, almost wordlessly getting their impossible mission accomplished and never cracking, even when tortured. By contrast, the new IMF team of Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), Luther (Ving Rhames), Zhen (Maggie Q), Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), and Benji (Simon Pegg) are wisecracking, adrenalin-pumped, friendly sorts who use the techniques of the TV IMF, but give the impression that they are always winging it, even when their plans are meticulously structured.

Having said all this, I must say that the M:I franchise is near the top of the heap of action movies. If you like explosions, chases, breathless cutting, and a likable hero to root for, these films—and particularly M:I 3—are for you. What M:I 3 does that would be unthinkable in the TV series is give Ethan Hunt a life. We all know that a spy’s life is a lonely one. Ethan dares to defy that convention, recklessly putting his beloved in danger because he doesn’t want to be out in the cold, because he wants to remember the world for which the IMF is fighting, to be a part of it. This point of view stands squarely at the center of the “you can have it all" ethos of the past 20 years. It makes Ethan a character more easily identified with, less a superhero than an athletic superstar. The film emphasizes this with a lot of trick photography that makes the 42-year-old Cruise look like he’s running as fast as Lance Armstrong can cycle and move with reflexes Jackie Chan in his prime couldn’t begin to approach.

The film begins on a scene that won’t happen until the film is more than half over. Ethan, banged up and tied down, watches as a villain we will later find out is black marketer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) holds a gun to a woman’s head and starts counting. Ethan begs him not to shoot, that he wants to help Davian get what he’s after. A pained tear runs down his face as Davian reaches 9. A pleading look, the count of 10, and bang! We’re into the movie.

Retired IMF agent Ethan is at his engagement party to the young and winsome Julia (Michelle Monaghan). Partygoers gossip with Julia about how she met Ethan. She tells them about a lake they went to, but can’t remember the name. Ethan, who has been watching her with the eyes of love through some glass doors, comes in and mentions the name to her. Everyone wonders how he could have known what they were talking about. We know. He’s an IMF agent who is a master of lip reading, of course. A call comes to Ethan’s cellphone. The caller with a seemingly innocuous message puts a worried furrow into Ethan’s brow. Ethan takes the ice cooler, dumps its contents, then tells Julia he has to go out to get more ice. He slips off and intercepts that package that self-destructs in 5 seconds after conveying the mission—retrieve captured agent Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell), Ethan’s protégé and a key operative in taking down Davian.

The emotional connection Ethan has to Lindsey forces his hand. He signs on and meets up with his old pal Luther, who introduces him to the rest of the team. They execute a nearly perfect rescue mission, but Lindsey has had an explosive implanted in her brain. Just seconds before a defibrillator on the helicopter charges to short-circuit the device, the explosive goes off. The clouding of Keri Russell’s eye after this happens really is effective, a grisly image Ethan can carry around for future reference.

Intelligence has it that something called Rabbit’s Foot will pass from Davian to some unknown buyers, and this would be a very bad thing. The IMF force is sent to a reception at the Vatican to stop Davian. In a classic M:I caper, Zhen dresses to the nines and infiltrates the reception in her late-model, cherry-red Maserati. Ethan sculpts a perfect disguise of Davian, uses some cool voice-simulation technology to copy his voice, and takes his place. The real Davian is captured for interrogation. It’s a very, very tasty operation that ranks with the best of the TV show’s stunts and improves upon them with better locations and gizmos.

Davian has vowed to hunt down anyone Ethan loves and kill him in front of her/him/it. He gets the chance when some black ops forces from Davian’s buyers spring him in a spectacular bridge attack sequence. (It wasn’t as cool as Magneto tearing the Golden Gate Bridge in half and swinging it to form a bridge to Alcatraz in X-Men 3, but you can’t have everything!) Davian, of course, snatches Julia, and forces Ethan and his IMF buddies to steal the Rabbit’s Foot from a fortresslike office building in Shanghai and deliver it to him. The scene where Ethan comes up with the parachute scheme to get into the building—drawing on a window to outline the buildings they would assault—is the brilliant kind of lunacy you would expect from an IMF leader caught in an emotional frenzy.

Events unfold in their inevitable way, with Ethan unable to deliver the Rabbit’s Foot, and that brings us to where the film opened. The denouement really strains credulity past the breaking point, but what the hell.

I found the parts of the film that remained true to the M:I spirit entirely satisfying. Other elements now de rigueur in action movies—explosions, low-flying helicopters threading through visually exciting obstacle courses (lots of vehicles of all types, in fact), double-triple-double crosses—I just accepted as part of the baggage. I didn’t think Philip Seymour Hoffman was a particularly chilling bad guy; unlike John Lithgow in similar roles, he was unwilling to chew the scenery even though he’s entirely capable of it. Ving Rhames was fun in an essentially humorless film. Billy Crudup and Lawrence Fishburn didn’t add much as higher-ups in IMF, but they did what they needed to do.

Most of all, however, I liked Tom Cruise in a performance that was clearly inspired by his newfound love of Katie Holmes. Michelle Monaghan is a bit of a ringer for Holmes, and the love scenes between her and Cruise were absolutely convincing and deeply felt. I don’t care what anyone says about Cruise’s couch jumping or odd religious beliefs—this is one fellow who has finally found love and who is not shy about showing it, even in his movies. This is an action film that manages to be a darn good romance, too. l

The Good Thief (2002)
Director: Neil Jordan

By Roderick Heath

One of the most pleasant surprises of the decade’s films thus far, the almost completely ignored and wonderful The Good Thief, should not have been such a surprise. Neil Jordan long has walked the line between artistic zeal and commercial responsibility, making personal films in regular alternation with potboilers and blockbusters and, in the process, racking up one of the stranger resumes around. In between those films that get big attention, like Cannes Palme D’Or Winner Mona Lisa (1986), multiple Oscar nominee The Crying Game (1993), and blockbuster Interview with the Vampire (1994), he has produced a lot of films that get little attention. Some, like High Spirits (1988), We’re No Angels (1990), and In Dreams (1999), are tripe. But some under-regarded gems of his career include The Miracle (1991), a softer, teenage-romance variation on the image/reality dynamic in Mona Lisa and The Crying Game; his bizarre take on Hammer Horror and classic fairytales, The Company of Wolves (1984); and Michael Collins, the 1995 film about an Irish nationalist hero that should have won the Oscar for Best Picture, not the moronic Braveheart.

The Good Thief made zilch impact, probably because at first glance, it seemed like another of the run of heist flicks at the time. But it stands as a candidate for the best noir film of the decade. The Good Thief is based on Jean-Pierre Melville’s thriller Bob le Flambeur (1955), itself an adaptation of a novel by Auguste Le Breton, who also provided the basis for Rififi (1955). Jordan’s remoulding of the material is far from another Hollywood cash-in on vintage product, but one of the warmest crime films imaginable, a condensation of many of Jordan’s pet themes, and a dense and loving mash note to film noir, the French Riviera, old-school tough guy romance, modern art, rock ’n roll, and everything else beautiful and sexy and a bit seamy.

Bob Montagnard (Nick Nolte) is a half-French, half-American gambler, heist artist, and heroin addict. Permanently exiled from New York (“I can’t go back there no more" is the limit of his comment), Bob is a legendary denizen of the Nice underworld, beloved of everybody, including Roger (Tcheky Karyo), a detective who keeps a watchful eye on Bob’s dealings. He’s at the absolute end of his tether, cursed with a losing streak, shooting up in the toilet of a sleazy sex and gambling dive, in the act of which he is seen by Anna (Nutsa Kukhianidze), a fawnish 17-year-old refugee with legs up to her armpits. She’s from Bosnia (“Is that what it’s called now?") and has been set up and paid for by Raoul (Gérard Darmon), owner of said dive, who’s got her passport for keeps. Bob suggests that Roger arrest her now and skip all the misery she’s about to go through. “All I see is a girl on a motorcycle." Roger sighs as she and Raoul ride off together.

Bob, who seems like the definition of loser despite his fancy talk, picks a fight with Raoul, and gets the crap beaten out of him—and a chance to lift Anna’s passport from Raoul. Later, when Raoul attacks him, Bob deftly lets him fall under the hooves of a horse. It’s the first sign we have of Bob’s genius, a genius he’s been deliberately suppressing “since my last five convictions." Nadia is now free, but homeless. Bob takes her into his apartment; ironically, she’s far more interested in him than he is in her. He passes her along to Paolo (Saïd Taghmaoui), another stray Bob has adopted. Paolo idol-worships Bob and imitates his style.

When Bob blows the last of his cash on a losing horse, his friend Remi (Marc Lavoine) presents him with his last shot—a heist of priceless Impressionist and Modern paintings that hang on the walls of a newly renovated Monte Carlo casino—or seem to; in fact, the real paintings are kept in a vault in a nearby manor house, guarded by a formidable security system. Bob decisively throws away his drug paraphernalia and handcuffs himself to his bed to get clean, with orders to Anna and Paolo not to free him even if he begs. Anna enjoys taunting Bob as, in withdrawal, he pleads with her for the key to the cuffs—the first time she’s ever had someone in her power. When he rises from his bed and from addiction, Bob strides out into the world, ready to take it on.

With so many great schemes undone by informers, Bob’s new idea is to cultivate a snitch—specifically, drug-dealing Algerian miscreant Said (Ouassini Embarek), a snout for Roger who Bob once prevented from blowing Roger’s head off. The idea is to put out word on the jungle drums that their intent is to rob the casino the night before the Grand Prix, to distract from their actual target. The instigator of this job is the designer of the security system, Vlad, a Russian technowhiz played in a delightful piece of casting, by the great Croat director Emir Kusturica. A guitar-playing longhair who also designs laser shows for concerts (“Fuck rock ’n roll! You heist guys are easier to deal with."), he has a family in St. Petersburg who want to get out of there. He’s determined to rip off his former employers to make that happen.

Jordan throws in more of his choice oddball supporting characters, including one of his traditional gender-bending touches, Philippa (Sarah Bridges), a transsexual weight lifter and con who professes herself “the same bad-ass motherfucker…except for spiders." There’s also Albert and Bertram (Mark and Michael Polish, also directors), Irish twins who pretend to be one person working on the casino’s security team. They have their own plan to rob the casino’s vault, and, having made Bob and his crew, try to interest them in their plan. The most disturbing is Tony Angel (Ralph Fiennes in a ferocious cameo), a seedy art dealer to whom Bob sells his prized portrait by Picasso of his last wife Jacqueline Roque, which, according to legend, he acquired thanks to a bet made with Pablo over a bullfight.

Jordan’s eye for evoking lowlifes and seedy dens is impeccable, particularly in his use of scenes bathed in conflicting primary colors that resemble Toulouse-Lautrec paintings, which instantly references Mona Lisa. Bob, and Jordan, are entwined by their desire to fill their lives with beauty, and pay tribute to a host of cultural influences. The Good Thief breaks up the cinematic flow by using freeze-frames constantly at the end of shots and scenes, as if trying to catch a cubist texture, and liberal use of lens and editing table effects, thus making the film’s visuals pay homage to Impressionism, Modernism, and Pop Art. Likewise, the soundtrack bustles with ’60s French pop, Franco-Arabic rap, big-beat dance anthems. In fact, the film is keyed by two songs, the splendidly mopey Leonard Cohen dirge “A Thousand Kisses Deep" and a Bono version of “That’s Life." In one hilarious scene of Roger trailing through the hills above the Riviera, the soundtrack blares with Johnny Halliday’s cool-as version of “Black Is Black"; when Roger crashes, Bob helps him, asking with dry insouciance, “Why are the French so bad at rock’n’roll? We’ve given you Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and what do you give back? Johnny fucking Halliday!" Unlike in Mona Lisa, Jordan’s milieu is actually sexy, especially the buzzing night- club where Anna gets a job dancing and waiting tables. Kukhianidze is radiant as the throaty-voiced ingénue who’s at least 10 years older than her body and delivers her own epitaph in her inimitable monotone: “I must be made of gold, everyone wants a piece of me!"

Anna acts as Bob’s lucky charm, but sends the males who compete for her around the bend. Said feeds her crack cocaine to extract details of the heist from her, Raoul hovers around looking for a chance at revenge, and Paolo, when he finds out about this, over-reacts and shoots Said when he’s talking with Roger, forcing Bob to order him to drive to Italy. Even worse, Tony Angel and a thug set upon Bob and Anna; the painting’s a fake. “But it’s a good fake," Bob assures him. “What I do to both your faces will definitely be cubist!"? Angel promises if he’s not repaid in several days. Everything appears headed for disaster, and indeed the robbery is a comedy of errors, as Philippa cannot bring herself to turn off a gas main because the wheel’s encrusted with spider webs. Meanwhile, Bob and Anna arrange to be visible all through the heist by playing at the casino tables. “What you’re going to see is fake glamour, real money, and a lot of bad plastic surgery," Bob promises her. It all builds to a glorious finale I won’t spoil here.

The pleasure and greatness of The Good Thief is its relative relaxedness; it has the same grizzled friendliness, put-on skill, and insouciant charm as its hero. Jordan isn’t pushing for either high moralism or fat-free thrills. It possesses a cultural resonance and combination of high class and true grit, and the emotional weight that comes from both, that the Ocean’s films never approached. Jordan could not care less either about the mechanics of the crime or for the morality of our naked desire for Bob to win through. This is not the same as saying the film has no moral centre, far from it; it’s simply that it’s on the side of the losers, the professionals, and the wits. The title is expostulated when Bob explains gaining inspiration from the story of the saved thief who hung beside Jesus on the cross. “Bob doesn’t want money, he just wants what money can get him," Anna wisely states. Bob wants to fill his life with colour and glory, but can’t compete with mega-rich corporations that own the artworks he wants to own and run the house game. In the end, Bob succeeds not through a scam but by walking in the front door and looking grim fate right in the eye. The film’s one moment of real violence, when Paolo shoots Said, is to Bob a violation, and Paolo gets ejected for the lapse. But Paolo later gets a reward, because of extenuating circumstances; he was trying to protect Anna, to grow up, to live up to his hero. The film has the same respect for codes of human interaction and inter-reliance of a classic Howard Hawks film. Jordan maintains a balancing act between threatening melancholy and ebullience that is triumphant.

For Nolte, it’s a tour de force. Long a great actor without great films to work in, Nolte hit his stride with his amazing lead in Paul Schrader’s Affliction and here delivers a performance that combines the steely existential quality of Sterling Hayden in The Killing and the light touch of Cary Grant when he slummed. He goes to town with Jordan’s dialogue, which is quotable right through and often betrays Jordan’s roots as a poet. The lingo in the film is as pretty and barbed as a recitation of Bukowski, Amiri Baraka, or Tom Waits. The only problem is that with the jangling soundtrack and heavy mix of mumbles and accents, you might have trouble hearing it. But the true greatness of the film is the love it shows for its characters; whilst not shying away from what ails them, it loves them all the way to the finishing line. l

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)
Director: Martin Ritt

By Marilyn Ferdinand

"What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not! They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: drunkards, queers, hen-pecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong?"
-- Alec Leamas, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

It’s doubtful most of 1965’s moviegoing public thought anything like the above quote. We were awash in the fantasy spy adventures of James Bond and the hilarious hijinks of Our Man Flint. On television, comedy writers gave us Get Smart, fantasy writers gave us The Prisoner, and an industrial mindset that recognized the world’s eternal love of gadgets gave us Mission: Impossible.

Like a spy “out in the cold," novelist John Le Carré, a former civil servant in the British Foreign Service, was himself working on the fringes of the West’s thrilled fascination with Cold War intelligence operations, creating a vision of bleak, bureaucratic squalor in place of diamonds and dames. Le Carré’s large body of work often includes operative George Smiley as his central protagonist. By contrast, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Le Carré’s fourth Smiley book and the one that put him on the literary map, has Alec Que Leamas as its central character, a spy bone-weary of the game who must complete one more mission before he can come out of the deep-freeze of the Cold War.

Martin Ritt has made a number of stylish films of mixed quality that are more hot than cool (Paris Blues, The Long, Hot Summer). I’m not sure how he got the nod to do Spy, but this film is definitely his best showing. Helped greatly by the moody black-and-white cinematography of Oswald Morris, Ritt captures the isolation of the men in the shadows that are the perfect embodiment of the desperate, life-and-death play acting of T. S. Eliot’s Hollow Men.

The film opens with a high-angle look down on Checkpoint Charlie, the flashpoint of the physical absurdity that is the Berlin Wall. Leamas (Richard Burton) is standing in the Western sector telling a guard that he has a man coming through and that it would mean a lot to him if they left the man alone. The guard shrugs. “They shoot, and we are told to shoot back." Leamas spots his man, Karl Riemeck, walking his bicycle to the gate. The gate lifts, then another, and it looks as if he’s home free. Then the siren sounds. The man mounts his bike in a desperate attempt to outrun the bullets that come flying at him. Leamas watches with a kind of stony horror as his agent falls, a tangle of legs and machine on a wet, cobblestone street.

Back in London, Leamas meets with Control (Cyril Cusack), who recognizes that his agent needs a break. He suggests a desk job, but Leamas insists he’s an operative. In a soothing tone, Control suggests that Leamas would like to come in from the cold, but he is needed to do one more job—get the German agent Mundt (Peter van Eyck) who killed Riemeck, a double agent Leamas had spent a great deal of time turning. The need for revenge and his desire to keep at the job lead Leamas to agree. He is to offer himself as a double agent to get inside German Communist headquarters and implicate Mundt as a double agent, leading to Mundt’s execution.

To set up his cover, Leamas goes to an unemployment office and is referred to a library for a job as a cross-indexer (an ironic turn for someone about to offer himself up as a double-crosser). He meets Nan Perry (Claire Bloom), an idealistic British Communist who works at the library. Leamas does a very convincing job of acting the disillusioned agent who has been “made redundant." He drinks constantly, lives on the cheap, and in a drunken fit, beats a grocer who refused him credit and lands in jail. Naturally, Nan makes a play for him. So do the Communists.

Leamas is contacted by Peters (Sam Wanamaker) and Carlton (Richard Hardy), who blow him to a nice dinner and all the whiskey he can drink at a strip joint. Leamas agrees to tell all he knows for a large sum of money and a nice place to live in the East. He meets once more with Control at the home of George Smiley (Rupert Davies), then goes to say good-bye to Nan. He is transported to Amsterdam for what he thinks will be two weeks of questioning. When he sees his picture in the paper as a missing agent, we get an enormous reaction shot of Burton looking completely betrayed. His interrogator, Patmore (Bernard Lee), is unimpressed with the information Leamas has provided. He is sent to Germany, where he will most likely be killed. This is what Leamas has been waiting for.

Once there, a cat-and-mouse game ensues, with Leamas pitted against Fiedler (Oskar Werner), Mundt’s assistant, who is trying to get more information. In fact, Fiedler wrests enough data from Leamas to hang Mundt—just what Leamas wants. Then, things really start to get nasty as the true ruthlessness of the spy game snares innocent and guilty alike in traps they failed to anticipate.

The plot of Spy is tight and diabolical, though the film’s denouement is inevitable from the start. Leamas is more than tired—he’s completely adrift. Although he takes the assignment, one senses that he already is out of the game. Burton plays Alec’s disaffection so convincingly that the beginning of the film is extremely confusing. Is he on the mission, or has he really gone off the deep end? This instability makes the film a little difficult to settle into. Burton gives us a little more, however, to help us understand that Leamas is an actor almost as good as the one playing him. When Alec sees the newspaper story about himself, for example, we get a chance to witness the spy create his character before his interrogator returns to the room.

Claire Bloom is wonderful as Nan. The script doesn’t really build the reasons for Nan’s affection for Alec, but if the romance comes up a little abruptly, it certainly seems genuine. The change of the character’s name in the book from Liz Gold to Nan Perry may have been an attempt to distance the character from a perception that she is Jewish and soften what would have been a more strident variety of Jewish Communism to one that emphasizes world peace. This choice works in making the romance between Nan and Alec seem more genuine, and has the additional benefit of isolating Fiedler as the lone, identified Jew in the film. His opposition to Muntz, a former member of the Hitler Youth, sets up an ideological struggle—perhaps the only genuine one in the film—that makes the pragmatic choices of both sides look very bad indeed.

There are some interesting cinematic choices as well. The whoring aspects of spying come strikingly into focus as Leamas and Carlton sit across from each other in the strip club with the stage in the background and the stripper near the end of her act framed squarely between them. It’s a startling shot, even today. Throughout the film, Burton is lit to highlight a mole that sits under his right eye. It’s distracting, mars his good looks, and provides a metaphor for what his character is in an extremely subtle, archetypal way. The final shot will take your breath away with its clinical simplicity.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was very much a film of its time. Nonetheless, it’s a cautionary tale whose message is scarily appropriate for our stricken political times. l