The Big Lebowski (1998) **

A plethora of who’s who comprises the cast of this 1998 Coen Brothers comedy about a case of mistaken identity gone terribly awry.  The Big Lebowski is chock full of memorable performances and has a far-out plot loosely based on the 1939 Raymond Chandler novel, The Big Sleep (which was first made into a movie in 1946, starring Humphrey Bogart as Detective Philip Marlowe). Like many early Coen Brothers’ films this was not a commercial success; however, over the years it has become a cult favorite. While I’m not a huge fan of this, I do admire the acting and the bizarre plot.

Jeff Bridges plays “The Dude” (AKA Jeffrey Lebowski), a white Russian-drinking and pot-smoking slacker who likes to bowl.  The Dude’s world becomes complicated when a porn kingpin named Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara) sends his goons to the wrong Jeffrey Lebowski’s house looking for payment of Jeffrey’s wife Bunny’s (Tara Reid) debts. The thugs soon realize they have the wrong Lebowski, but not before one of them urinates on his rug. Why is this important?  Because after relaying this story to his bowling buddies one of them, a crazy Vietnam vet named Walter (John Goodman), convinces him that he should make the other Lebowski pay to have the rug cleaned. This is how The Dude meets the Big Lebowski (David Huddleston), a wheel-chaired millionaire married to a slutty trophy wife.  Soon after Bunny is kidnapped and The Dude is asked to serve as the bagman for the ransom. What ensues is one of the most peculiar story plots in the history of motion pictures—but what should you expect, it is the Coen Brothers after all.

What I like about most Coen Brothers’ films is that they are always unique in their own special way.  This one has a quirky hippie vibe—what with The Dude always smoking a doobie and Walter constantly referring to ‘Nam—but it also has a biting edge to it, especially when depicting the art world and nihilism.  Somehow these people from completely different social spectrums meet and create a chaos that is, well, rather paradoxically, a form of artistic nihilism.  While the story has some fat that could be trimmed (specifically the two appearances of Sam Elliott as “The Stranger”), overall most of the pieces of the messy plot come together in the end.

As for the acting, just about every character is memorably played by some of the finest actors in Hollywood today. However, there are three performances that standout above the rest.  First, John Turturro is virtually unrecognizable as Jesus, a bowling rival of The Dude’s team.  Playing a Latino with a heavy Cuban accent who went to prison for exposing himself to an eight-year-old girl, Turturro plays on every stereotype you can imagine.  Jesus’ clothes are way too tight, he is overtly sexual, and his machismo is beyond measure.  For such a small part, it turned out to be one of Turturro’s most memorable.

The second standout performance has to be Julianne Moore as Maude Lebowski, the Big Lebowski’s estranged daughter.  When you make your entrance in an overhead harness completely nude you must have gusto.  Playing an avant-garde artist with no inhibitions, Moore makes you pay attention to every word that comes out of her mouth in a clipped, faux British accent.  Maude would be pretentious if she weren’t so damn serious!  Some of the words that come out of Moore’s mouth would sound so wrong if they weren’t delivered by an actress who knew how to play her part to the fullest.

Finally, while I know Bridges is the star of the movie, it is Goodman who is the standout.  I don’t know what it is, but he has a habit of stealing whatever film he is in—even as a co-star or in a cameo performance.  His Walter is the most memorable thing about The Big Lebowski. Extremely gifted when it comes to voice inflection, body language, and most definitely facial expressions, Goodman turns what otherwise would have been an irritating idiotic sidekick into an exasperating psychopathic wingman. Whether he is jumping out of a moving car or interrogating a teenage boy, or most memorably throwing a paralyzed man to the ground, Walter is outrageously believable.  For me, if there is one reason to watch The Big Lebowski it is Goodman—he is most assuredly not an amateur.

Overall, this is a typical Coen Brothers’ comedy: uniquely written and strongly acted. Other than a few standout performances and an unusual plot there is nothing that makes me want to watch The Big Lebowski over and over again.

Read More

The Night of the Hunter (1955) **1/2

Renowned screen actor Charles Laughton played some of the most memorable cinematic characters ever: Captain Bligh, Quasimodo, Nero, Dr. Moreau, King Henry VIII, Captain Kidd, and Sir Alfred Robarts, just to name a few, but like most actors, he thought he’d like to direct.  He’d had experience directing plays but wanted to helm a film that would make moviegoers "sit up straight again” at the theater and take notice.  And, so when he became enthralled with David Grubb’s best-selling novel, The Night of the Hunter, Laughton decided he would make it into a film. Unfortunately, it was both a commercial and critical failure and Laughton never directed another movie before his death in 1962. Today, his The Night of the Hunter (1955) is regarded by critics as one of the best films of the 1950s. I’m sure a man with such an ironic sense of humor as Laughton’s would have found this somewhat depressing. 

Set amidst the West Virginian countryside during the Great Depression, this is a movie that is one part gothic fairy tale and one part morality tale.  It is written in 1 Timothy 6:10 that “the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” This pretty much sums up ‘Reverend’ Harry Powell’s (Robert Mitchum) sociopathic existence.  Plagued with a pathological disgust of women (calling Dr. Freud) but an insatiable need for money to bankroll his false prophesies, Harry finds himself compelled to kill widows.  After being incarcerated for stealing a car, Harry shares a cell with a man (Peter Graves) sentenced to death for killing two people in a bank robbery where he stole $10,000 that was never recovered.  Once released from prison Harry sets out to find the man’s widow and the missing money. The problem is the widow, Willa Harper (Shelley Winters), has no idea where the cash is stashed, but her two young children, John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce), do but have promised never to reveal that it’s hidden in Pearl’s doll. What ensues is a true battle of good versus evil.

The Brothers Grimm and German expressionism obviously influenced Laughton’s vision of this film. James Agee is credited with the screen adaptation of Grubb’s novel, but in reality it was Laughton and his assistant directors, Terry and Denis Sanders, who wrote most of the script that ended up on the screen. Much like the novel, the film focuses on the duality of good and evil, which is quite literally etched on Harry’s knuckles, with one hand reading Love and the other one Hate.  When a film starts off by quoting Matthew 7:15: “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves,” and the next thing you see is a man in clerical garb, wearing a hat that looks like it has satanic horns, then you know this isn’t your everyday story of good versus evil.  Somehow the fact that Harry is perceived as a man of God makes his evil ways even more dark and sinister—a fact that would have not been lost on the Brothers Grimm.

There are two particular shots in the film that are obvious nods to the likes of Fritz Lang and Robert Wiene, pioneers of the German Expressionistic movement. The first comes early in the film when John is telling Pearl a bedtime story about a bad man looking to do harm.  Standing in a moonlit window as he relays the story, the boy finds himself silhouetted by the outline of a Puritanical hat belonging to a man singing his abased version of “Lean on Jesus” which he sings as “Leanin’”.  When film teachers instruct students on the power of a good foreshadowing scene this is beyond an obvious choice.  The other tip of the hat to Lang and Wiene comes in the bedroom scene where Harry kills Willa.  By this point in the story, Willa has become a brainwashed disciple of Harry and is so far gone that she can’t see him for the demon that he is, even when it is right in front of her face.  As she prattles on about her spiritual shortcomings, the scene is framed in such a way to make the bedroom appear as a church (steeple included)—she quite literally can’t see behind the shadows of delusion. 

While the first half of the film is dedicated to the depiction of evil, the second half focuses primarily on good. This is where Lillian Gish comes into the story.  Laughton desperately wanted Gish for the role of Mrs. Cooper and did what most could not do: he convinced her to come out of retirement and play what he thought was the lynchpin role of the film. Mrs. Cooper’s Christian compassion and charity are the perfect dichotomy to Harry’s greed and hatred.  As she says, she is a “strong tree with branches for many birds.” Reminiscent of the Old Lady in the Shoe, Mrs. Cooper is the caretaker of orphaned children and she takes John and Pearl in when they run away from Harry.  She is a formidable adversary to Harry, which is showcased in their pivotal showdown of wills and, well, religiosity. Never has there been a stranger duet than Harry singing “Leanin’” with Mrs. Cooper chiming in to sing the correct version of the song, “Lean on Jesus”. It is here that good and evil meet and only one can win—it helps that one brought a knife to a shotgun fight, though.

Mitchum campaigned hard for the role of ‘Reverend’ Harry and it shows in what is perhaps his finest performance.  Cool and cunning, as well as evil and deranged, never looked so good on a man.  There are very few actors who could pull off being both vile and charming, but Mitchum does it exceedingly well.  It is a shame that he was overlooked by the Academy Awards, but perhaps the world of 1955 wasn’t ready for such a dark and disturbing film. 

Overall, I enjoyed The Night of the Hunter. The story was gripping and Stanley Cortez’s photography was inspired. If I have one complaint about the film it has to be the character of Pearl. Was there ever a more helpless child in the world?  If I had to see John drag her up steps or attempt to put her uncooperative self in a boat one more time I may have screamed., “O come ye little children indeed!”

Read More

A Room with a View (1986) **1/2

There’s a reason I’ve seen just about every film in Helena Bonham Carter’s oeuvre: she’s one of the best actresses of her generation. Her acting ability is often overlooked (especially by the Academy Awards, which has only granted her two nominations) due to her quirky roles, but even quirkiness requires talent and Carter has loads of that. At the ripe old age of nineteen she appeared (and starred) in her first feature film, A Room with a View (1986)—a movie that garnered eight Academy Award nods and three wins. Her endeavor in this Merchant and Ivory production led to her being cast in several period pieces over the next ten years (one being The Wings of a Dove in 1997, for which she received a Best Actress nomination), but it wasn’t until her turn in Fight Club (1999) that her particular quirkiness was allowed to be on full display from that point forward.  It helps that she became romantically involved with one of the quirkiest film directors ever, Tim Burton, in 2001, and that due to this relationship she has found herself paired in six films with Johnny Depp. For someone unfamiliar with her earlier work, A Room with a View might be a bit of a shock, as it is a film about British social conventions at the turn of Twentieth Century and Carter is somewhat restrained by this. Still, there are slight glimpses of what is to come.

Adapted from E.M. Forester’s (Merchant and Ivory’s author of choice) novel of the same name, A Room with a View tells the story of how Miss Lucy Honeychurch (Carter) inappropriately found love in the Tuscan countryside with a free-spirited philosopher named George Emerson (Julian Sands).  It is this inappropriateness, which is hilariously pointed out by Lucy’s chaperone and cousin Charlotte (Maggie Smith in an Oscar-nominated turn) that causes a rift in the relationship.  It takes an unbearable engagement to an exhaustingly boring and affected Cecil (Daniel Day-Lewis in an Oscar-nominated role) and the publication of Eleanor Lavish’s (Judi Dench) scandalous novel about Lucy and George’s Tuscan tryst to convince Lucy that there is more to life than social constraints, namely love and happinesss.

What I like most about the film is the acting performances. With a cast full of then and future Oscar winners director James Ivory had a pretty easy row to hoe with this picture, and I suspect he would be the first to say that his Best Director Oscar nomination and the film’s Best Picture nomination were due in large part to his cast.  As I’ve pointed out in previous reviews, Daniel Day-Lewis is an exceedingly gifted actor. He can play any part and make it completely his own, and that’s what he did with Cecil.  In the hands of a lesser actor Cecil may have turned into a caricature of the cuckolded fiancee. Instead, while Cecil is boorish and priggish he is also engaging to watch because Day-Lewis turns him into a character you don’t necessarily like but want to watch.  The same can be said of Smith’s role as Cousin Charlotte. No one plays exasperatingly idiotically polite characters like Smith, and that is exactly what Charlotte is. Smith expertly uses body language and facial expressions, not to mention that memorable voice of hers, to turn poor Charlotte into someone you first want to shake and then into a woman you want to embrace. 

The pairing of Carter and Sands is an interesting one.  Here are two actors who found themselves on the same career trajectory following the critical acclaim of this film, but one ended up on the A-list and the other on the D-list.  By far Sands’ portrayal of George Emerson is his best—perhaps he peaked too early in his career?  Still, one of the reasons I wasn’t completely enamored with Lucy and George’s pairing was because it was obvious that Carter was by far the more superior actor of the two. There are several layers to Lucy that must be peeled slowly away as the story progresses and Carter shows an unusual depth of character development for an actress so young. Never is Lucy more enchanting than when she finally tells Charlotte and Cecil what she really thinks of them.  Plucky and perky suit Charlotte, not to mention Carter, quite well.

Of course what would a Merchant and Ivory film be without beautifully designed period costumes (Oscar winners Jenny Beavan and John Bright), expertly crafted sets (Oscar winner), and pristine cinematography (Oscar nominated Tony Pierce-Roberts)?  All of the hallmarks of what comprises a Merchant and Ivory production are present here.  Edwardian clothes don’t excite me, but breathtaking shots of Florence and the Tuscan countryside do.  The first part of the film, which takes place in Italy, is where most of the visually stunning images are captured.  I suspect that is why Cousin Charlotte so desperately wanted a room with a view in the first place. 

Overall, A Room with a View is an interesting study in upper-class social etiquette in Edwardian England.  The movie benefits greatly from a stellar cast and a somewhat engaging story. 

Read More