Teamwork is at the heart of these two tonally different yet thematically similar tales of survival against all odds.
Featuring a bevy of Oscar winners and nominees on both sides of the screen, while both pictures are ensemble driven overall, Ridley Scott’s humorous and heartfelt Martian shines particularly bright as a veritable one man show for actor Matt Damon.
From its tongue-in-cheek soundtrack of ‘70s disco era hits (which provide endless opportunities for comedic counterpoint) to its high key lighting and bright color palette, the undeniable appeal of The Martian as an all-around crowd-pleaser is so strong that the film inexplicably garnered multiple Golden Globe nominations and wins in the category of Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
Infusing what in someone else’s hands might’ve been an overwhelmingly bleak and cerebral storyline with unexpected optimism and charm, The Martian benefits from Damon’s most affable and charismatic turn since his breakthrough role in Good Will Hunting.
Hoping to prove that there can indeed be (plant) life on Mars, Damon’s astronaut/botanist Mark Watney is forced to rely on outside-of-the-box thinking after he’s erroneously mistaken for dead by his crew and left behind on the red planet during the horrific sand storm which opens Scott’s strongest character driven feature since his 2003 sleeper, Matchstick Men.
Storms of an altogether different kind factor into director Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest, which (in stark contrast to Scott’s science fiction adaptation of Andy Weir’s eponymous novel penned by longtime genre specialist and former Joss Whedon co-scripter Drew Goddard) is rooted in fact.
Set during the catastrophic climbing season back in the spring of 1996 where over the course of a single day countless souls lost their lives in their quest to the top of the world’s highest and deadliest mountain, Everest aims to make viewers feel as though we’re right there on the mountain alongside its many larger than life personalities.
A globe-spanning epic that, much like the intergalactic Martian has been captured in 3D, while unfortunately I’m unable to judge Martian’s usage of the format since Everest was the only Blu-ray I received for review in 3D, to its immense credit Everest does much more than just dazzle the senses with out-of-this-world three-dimensional cinematography.
Lensed with the stunning clarity of an IMAX documentary, Everest makes the most of the medium’s ability to enhance our understanding of the experience in an experiential approach.
Whether they're dangling us on the edge of the icy ladders alongside the mountaineers or making sure we can practically feel each gust of wind during a blinding snowstorm, the filmmakers do a tremendous job recreating the harrowing events of May 10 as that long, hellish day journeys into an unforgiving night.
Working from an ambitious and emotionally potent screenplay by127 Hours scripter Simon Beaufoy and former Ridley Scott collaborator and Gladiator scribe William Nicholson, Kormákur and his talented cast including Josh Brolin, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Keira Knightley are able to elevate the film beyond the level of a mere visual effects spectacle.
Thematically similar to The Martian in its celebration of mind against matter and creative problem solving, both Everest and The Martian soar in part thanks to the empathy, compassion, and integrity inherent in the performances of the stars that embody the films’ many characters.
Yet, much like their differences in tone, their reliance on the alignment of these stars varies from one film to the next.
Cool, quotable, and compelling right from the start, even though Goddard’s screenplay sets the stage for a much more memorable cinematic experience, intriguingly whenever it cuts away from Damon and chronicles the roles that others (including Jessica Chastain, Donald Glover, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, among others) are playing in trying to bring our Martian home, the film loses a little of its hold on the audience.
Alternatively, in Beaufoy and Nicholson’s thoroughly researched Everest, the actors manage to disappear so seamlessly into their well-written roles to such an extent that we know (at the very least) one or two important character-defining details that sets each one apart from the rest.
Yet surprisingly more often than not when it comes to The Martian, the only discerning characteristic a supporting player has to set them apart from another person in the scene is the name of the celebrity playing them.
Fortunately for Scott's film, this hardly amounts to a major flaw since The Martian is much more focused on Damon’s lead as well as the thrilling scientific innovation that he (and others) will have to rely on to try and reunite Watney with his crew.
Still while both pictures suffer slightly in their rushed final acts as The Martian, in particular stretches our suspension of disbelief near its breaking point, in the end it’s The Martian that leaves a far more lasting impression by knowing precisely the right note it wants to end the film on.
Two thrillingly crafted stories of science and survival that play even better together as a double feature, while both possess minor flaws, the greatest successes for each lies in their commitment to championing those who inspire us to reach new heights by daring to dream.
“Reparations must be made,” Joe Doucett (Josh Brolin) is warned by a man calling himself ‘The Stranger’ (Sharlto Copley) at the other end of an iPhone that was given to Joe that he barely knows how to use but reparations for what, Joe Doucett has no idea.
Having been kidnapped and held captive in a monitored hotel room-like prison for twenty years with nothing but a television available to fill him in on the events occurring in the outside world, Joe has dedicated the remainder of his life to figuring out the identity of the man who placed him there and why.
But as the formerly selfish, manipulative adman who lied for a living realizes far too late, the real mystery isn’t why he was taken but why he was released as those reparations come back to the forefront in the film’s final act.
Awakening in the middle of a field in an oversized Louis Vuitton trunk with the aforementioned phone in his pocket along with a wad of cash and sunglasses to shield his eyes from the daylight he hasn’t seen in so long, Joe emerges in a fast-paced, technologically advanced world, physically drained but mentally ready for revenge.
Having been framed for the brutal murder of his ex-wife when his DNA was collected and planted without his knowledge – in addition to finding the person who’d ruined his life and killed his wife, he’s determined to track down his now-grown daughter whose fleeting image he’s seen on true crime television specials over the years.
Though he’d barely made time for his daughter before his capture, in addition to the objects he’s been given, Joe carries with him the only thing he possesses that's of significance from his time away in the form of a pillowcase full of letters he’d written to his daughter over the years.
In fact, it was only after seeing a brief video of her playing the cello on TV that Joe cleaned up his act and made the change from from a prisoner who’d given in and hit rock bottom to transforming into a dedicated man on a mission by giving up alcohol and getting into shape to prepare himself for the release he somehow knew would come.
Relying on a childhood friend (played by Michael Imperioli) as well as a beautiful young community health worker (Elizabeth Olsen) who has overcome her own difficulties, Joe sets out on a journey of his past to find The Stranger that’s determined to control his fate.
A visceral piece of pulse-pounding revenge cinema, Spike Lee’s Oldboy feels like a '70s era exploitation tinged remake of the 2003 Korean word-of-mouth arthouse smash by the same name from director Chan-wook Park.
And while this no-holds-barred picture’s attention to lurid detail ensures that all of the shocking revelations and thrills found in the original show up in some form or another, it doesn’t have the same sense of urgency that the previous film did.
In Lee’s hands, you feel as though you’re being pulled in way too many directions at once and while there are a number of fascinating supporting characters that steal focus, it doesn’t have the rawness or immediacy of the original.
However, to be fair to Lee, there’s no telling how much the final cut of the film is actually the way he’d intended it to be as Oldboy notably lacks his signature stamp of filmmaker approval as a “Spike Lee Joint,” with the credit for the 2013 Sony release listed merely as a Spike Lee Film.
While obviously I’m speculating here, knowing what I do about the filmmaker, his oeuvre and in particular his reverence for Budd Schulberg and Paddy Chayefsky (via films such as A Face in the Crowd andNetwork to which he'd alluded in Bamboozled) and the intriguing use of subjective reality evidenced throughout Doucett’s hotel room television, I wondered if he was aspiring to play up this angle.
Given the final act of the film’s argument that people believe what they see on television, I was curious if he was hoping to add a new pop cultural commentary or satirical spin to what would otherwise be simply a straightforward American remake of a foreign hit.
Though the controversial Greek tragedy worthy twist remains, while all in all, the 2003 work is superior, Lee’s film actually gives Oldboy a darker, more daring, yet eerily fitting conclusion that once again comments on crime, reparations and punishment and will perhaps play even better to Western audiences.
An unlikely addition to Lee’s filmography as it currently stands, while I would certainly love to see his definitive cut of the film, unfortunately besides yet another riveting turn by chameleon-like actor Josh Brolin and some intriguing pop cultural issues that could make for fascinating post-film discussion, there’s not a lot left to recommend in this new look at cinema’s Oldboy.
One of the strongest works of 2007 and quite possibly — along with Miller’s Crossing — one of the Coen Brothers undisputed masterpieces of which a frame shouldn’t be changed; the Best Picture Award Winning smash No Country for Old Men (from Paramount Vantage and Miramax Films) arrives on a 3-Disc DVD and 2-Disc Blu-ray Collector’s Edition that boasts a Digital Copy of the film as well.
Already one of the most impressive DVDs I’d owned as far as sharpness of picture and sound quality goes since you could nearly feel every audible “thwack” of Bardem’s air gun when it fired and one that towered in its digital transfer over the same two studios’ collaboration of my other favorite work of 2007 — There Will Be Blood. Blood, which was diminished on the small screen in DVD finally earned the transfer treatment and high-definition approach it deserved when I witnessed it in Blu-ray a few months back and felt like I was back in the theatre.
Similar to the mesmerizing quality of the Coen Brothers’ lackluster political comedy Burn After Reading from Universal and Focus Features that sparkled like a shiny diamond on DVD — I was curious to see if Country’s newest Blu-ray edition was going to be that much of an improvement in the higher resolution format to warrant the price-tag (especially for those who already own it on DVD or in the earlier Blu-ray version).
However, before we get into the extra features and technical aspects, first I’ll present you with a refresher of my original review published back in 2007 during its theatrical run which was not only amazingly linked to in UK’s The Guardian online (a feat of which I’m still humbly in shock) but was also easily my most read review from that entire year.
These words are used by two different characters in the beginning of Joel and Ethan Coen’s latest film just before a gun goes off. The first speaker is sociopath Anton Chigurh — a man for whom the term hit-man may be a gross understatement — who utilizes this request just before he dispatches his second of many victims that follow with a livestock air stun gun to the brain. The second character is cowboy Llewelyn Moss who makes the foolish mistake of greed, vanity and arrogant pride when he takes off with a satchel filled with two million dollars after he tracks an animal while hunting and stumbles upon the brutal remnants of a drug deal gone horribly wrong with most of the participants bathing in blood and west Texas sunlight.
“Hold still” may be in the script but the action that follows it is anything but still and the Brothers Coen may just as well have been talking to audience members who are now fully aware that they’ve unsuspectingly purchased tickets to one of the wildest western noirs in years and will just have to sit back for the ride.
Taking its title from W. B. Yeats’ poem “Sailing to Byzantium,” No Country for Old Men is based on Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel and although its old men whose values from the past and melancholy remembrance of a time when sheriffs didn’t need to carry a gun is put to the test at the forefront, they're just one of the victimized groups in the movie alongside the younger men, women and animals executed in the bloody two hours.
Quickly into the film, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) packs up his pretty young wife (Kelly Macdonald) and sends her off to her mother’s place when he leaves their trailer park to go on the run from not only the law and Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), along with the hired man who comes looking (Woody Harrelson) but most notably killer Anton (Javier Bardem) who walks softly but carries a big weapon.
Blood, it seems to the Coen Brothers, is no longer quite as simple as the name of their oft-praised debut film implies and the writer/directors follow in the grand tradition of western and film noir allegory to paint a bitter and dark portrait of the evil lurking in the hearts of men. As one character states, “This country’s hard on people,” and that seems to be the recurring theme throughout.
Set in 1980, we meet men who’ve served in Vietnam like Brolin, who sees his plan for the dangerous and dumb long-shot that it is and goes for it anyway, wanting to try anything to rise from his station in life as a cowboy in a land without any real need for them (except in country songs) and residence in a trailer park with a wife who works at Wal-Mart.
Relying on his natural persona, Tommy Lee Jones settles instinctively into his role and even without his folk wisdom filled voice over and Texas vernacular that opens the film, he’s a man who believably exudes the law and seems like the ideal choice. Jones’s lawman asks questions first and prefers to shoot later, letting younger officer Wendell go through the door of a trailer first with his gun drawn, and later making the impulsive decision to drink milk left by perpetrator Anton left on the coffee table instead of locking down the crime scene or dusting for prints in a theatrical Dragnet style.
But most of the talk surrounding the film is in regards to Javier Bardem’s chilling Anton who is a mostly silent villain with a cruel quirk of sometimes using a coin toss to coolly decide the fate of those standing in his path. And to this end, it’s fascinating that the one who refuses to play along with what Anton surely feels is a logical game is a woman who calls him on the fact that it’s not logical at all and just a scapegoat since he’ll do his will anyway.
Bardem, given a purposely horrid haircut discovered by the brothers in an 1890’s photo of a brothel patron (IMDb), is referred to as a ghost in the film and some of his scenes are setup painstakingly similar to the finale of Blood Simple. Although, after making films for more than two decades in a world that’s getting increasingly unpredictable, we’re never sure just what the Coens will have happen until a surprising finale left some critics angered by its anti-climactic out-of-the-blue quality that would surely have earned the screenplay an "F" in most college writing courses.
I was prepared not for the exact details of the ending but the fact that it stunned others and while admittedly I was a bit dismayed at first, later I realized that it still seems to fit with the man vs. man mentality of the piece and the unpredictability of life itself that's a recurring Coen theme. Life is a coin toss after all and the fact that there's no overt payoff corresponds to the rules of the darkly existential, old testament style game being played.
Ultimately it's quite an enviable literary achievement that's worthy of McCarthy instead of the same three act structure that's been forced down our throats again and again and boasts the same nihlistic sense of dark fate from which Anton was born in the first place on McCarthy's page.
To quote one of the more memorable titles in Elmore Leonard’s crime novel oeuvre, No Country for Old Men is “Freaky Deaky” indeed — alternatively pulsating between moody contemplation and tense action perfectly depicted by one of our most gifted cinematographers, the incomparable Roger Deakins. Nominated for the ’07 Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, not only is this vicious masterpiece sure to be one of the most discussed films when looking back at the very best of the Coen films but it’s also one of the best movies of 2007.
III. The Blu-ray
While there is a slightly noticeable difference in depth perception between the DVD and Blu-ray in a back and forth comparison, honestly the dark-tinged work of cinematographic genius Roger Deakins isn’t overly enhanced by the full 1080 pixel experience, at least in the night scenes or ones set when there is little light.
Although you can hear every whisper of the wind in the Texas desert and Brolin’s introduction to audiences as he soldiers out into the desert, armed and ready makes you feel as though you’re in West Texas as well, you’ll definitely need to adjust your color settings and possibly move to “vivid” (which still is even a bit muddied) in some of the film’s most intense chase scenes.
This is especially necessary during the film’s nail-biters as we take in the titular men’s version of cat and mouse as Brolin hides under the truck before he eventually must jump into a stream with a dog only seconds behind him before it turns to daylight (fortunately) and later when Bardem unscrews the light-bulb in the hotel hallway and the two men have a showdown that goes on for blocks in one of the film’s greatest sequences.
Additionally, it would have been beneficial for the manufacturers to insert more chapter stops so you could jump directly to some of the film’s most iconic scenes either as a fan or a film geek and while a few of the familiar features had appeared on the film’s initial release on DVD, it’s a treat to take in all of the extras.
Described as a movie about “a good guy, a bad guy, and a guy in between” by Joel Coen, a cross between a “comedy,” “horror” and “chase” movie by the good-humored and baffled Tommy Lee Jones, a “very emotional, very primitive” work by Josh Brolin, and a “very powerful” tale about violence and the many paths that can be taken by Javier Bardem—perhaps the most astute observation in the making-of-featurette comes from sweet, Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald who rightly calls it “a Coen Brothers movie; they’re their own genre.”
It continues to fascinate as the mini-documentary breaks down everything from the challenges of developing Anton Chigurh who was only referenced as being a person “without a sense of humor” in Cormac McCarthy’s book in both the Coen Brothers and Javier Bardem’s assessment that the audience doesn’t need to know everything or have everything explained about the man Brolin’s character calls “the ultimate badass.”
Additionally, discussing the potentially lethal dangers of some of the film’s most violent scenes including the opening handcuffed strangulation as well as an insight into the way all of the elements including costume designed subtly helped to the story by making Anton’s boots look like a weapon — the “making-of” extra segues nicely into a short piece entitled “Working With the Coens.”
Intriguingly revealing that Bardem’s first confession upon his arrival in the United States from his native Spain was a desire to work with the Coen Brothers—the rest of the cast and crew members (several of whom have collaborated with them for countless pictures) further explain their reputation as a two-headed director who never argue, know exactly what the want, and can finish each other’s sentences.
Also including a piece about Jones’ character—the two standout extras that truly make this a collectible edition include Josh Brolin’s hilarious short “Unauthorized Documentary,” wherein he, Bardem, Woody Harrelson, the producers and others take on roles as though they had been chronicling a horrific Apocalypse Now/Hearts of Darkness experience as they reveal the “dark side” of the Coens, rambling on strangely to great effect but the ultimate film buff achievement of the Blu-ray is serving up an in-depth "Press Timeline."
Including podcasts, interviews, Q&A’s and major coverage from the film that would go onto win several Academy Awards—the intellectual celebration of the modern classic continues on the back of the Blu-ray box (inside the outer protective cardboard holder) as mini-paragraphs and extended quotes from some of the nation’s top critics fill the desert landscape design of the front and back wraparound cover.
Film is subjective. What we bring to it and what it brings to our lives is a two way street and no two people see a film the same way. As much as we want to pretend it's objective and/or mere entertainment, it's not. We react to things because in some way they touch something inside of us and it can be a range of emotions from love to hate or a simple understanding that it's a humanistic medium that's not only a valid part of our history and society but one that continually reminds us that we're all in this together.
There is a reason that I don't rate films with a star system consisting of some arbitrary number of four or five stars or assigning a subjective numerical value out of ten and it's the same reason that I seldom make Top Ten Lists at the end of the year to discern which films are my favorites in a particular order. Namely, it's because I feel it shortchanges the work and tries to indicate that it's going to have some sort of stamp on it that will apply in the exact same way to everyone watching a given film. So instead, I share their strengths and weaknesses and how they affect me.
Likewise, there is absolutely no way to guarantee you're going to see every single film that has come out in a year as even somebody who dedicates themselves to watching as many films as possible from around the globe can tell you. Milk was such a case for me and a film I'd call more of an "experience" than a movie.
Earlier in 2008, my favorite film of the year was In Bruges -- a film I didn't think would be rivaled and nearly wasn't until I saw Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire which recently earned the Best Picture Academy Award at the 2009 Oscar ceremony. When I pulled together the obligatory year in review in late December, it was Slumdog that I named my favorite work of last year of the movies I’d seen anyway and it's one that's still a marvel to me on a number of levels.
However-- eager to vote for the first time ever in the Independent Spirit Awards-- I felt it was only right to try and see as many of the nominated works as possible including the ones I'd missed them the first time around. Thus, I saw Milk in a crowded screening on a Saturday night and by then the buzz was huge as it had been listed on countless Top Ten Lists for the year.
It was a far cry from the quiet afternoon press screenings or rowdy evening screenings that bring in a crowd full of excited movie fans all clamoring for a free pass. And simply attending as a typical moviegoer made the Milk screening extremely fascinating to me. Of course, there was a built in audience for the film since it told the story of the first openly gay man ever elected to United States public office in 1977. And I believe most assumed that it would garner tremendous support (as did Focus Features' Brokeback Mountain years earlier) from the gay and lesbian community, but much like Mountain-- the crowd was jam-packed and extremely diverse.
While on the surface every demographic seemed to be represented but upon closer inspection, I noticed that there was a good majority of individuals in attendance who would've been around in the era of Harvey Milk who probably still recall learning of the man's horrific assassination in 1978 along with Mayor George Moscone by City Supervisor Dan White.
And therefore is only seemed fitting that-- although it was incredibly annoying to the film lover in me--throughout the movie the sound of chatter filled the theater as it became a collective experience of people whispering their remembrances of where they were, the shock of Anita Bryant's hate filled rants, and the incredibly faithful recreation of a particular time and place of San Francisco in the 1970s.
So, in addition to Danny Elfman’s Oscar-nominated score, the strains of Puccini's Tosca that echo throughout, the memorable speeches contained in Dustin Lance Black's Academy award-winning screenplay, we heard the sounds of individuals-- almost involuntarily-- wanting to share their experiences whenever actual historical footage was intercut into director Gus Van Sant's film.
Coming off of what is arguably the most important presidential election of my lifetime so far, Harvey Milk's incessant message of hope and his populist speaking style to unite the us's against the "thems" (or the political machine) seemed like it was perfectly in tune to reflect the society that elected the first African American candidate to the United States presidency. However as we all know with the recent and shocking ban on the gay marriage bill in California and other states,Milk could not have been released at a timelier moment.
It would be extremely easy to write off the film as being solely for the gay and lesbian audience or preaching to the left-wing choir, but-- as the movie continues-- we realize that it is a film that champions the American dream and necessity of fighting for civil rights. Moreover, at its core-- and much more than just a biopic-- Milk is a humanistic story and the issues that Harvey Milk was fighting for in the 1970s are the exact same things the Democratic candidates were fighting for in 2009.
Simply put, we've come a long way since that mind-bogglingly tragic day when Dan White fired five bullets into Harvey Milk after coolly executing San Francisco Mayor George Moscone since ultimately Milk's message didn't die with him and his actions inspired an entire movement. However, his fight for equal rights for the disabled, women, minorities, senior citizens, the blue-collar working class-- and yes-- the gay and lesbian community continues on to this very day.
And just like we do for Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, or Robert De Niro -- by now we've begun to take actor Sean Penn for granted. Over the last few decades, we've seen him play tough, we've seen him play a stoner, we've seen him play a mentally challenged man, we've seen him play a death row inmate and we've definitely seen him play real-life characters before but Penn's complete chameleon-like ability to bring Harvey Milk to life makes Gus Van Sant's film work better than any other American film in 2008.
And of course, although part of me still would've loved to have seen Mickey Rourke win that richly deserved Oscar for his turn in The Wrestler since everyone (and especially Harvey Milk himself) loves an underdog-- ultimately, upon a second viewing, I believe the Academy made the correct choice.
While the filmmakers of Milk had Rob Epstien's 1984 Oscar-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk to go on-- what strengthens this film is the startlingly naturalistic screenplay to move away from the trappings of biopics to making the film feel fresh, flawed, and relatable. Penned by the impossibly young and talented screenwriter of HBO's TV series Big Love-- Dustin Lance Black--this retelling is intimate, human, erotic, unexpectedly funny, warm, melancholy, and empathetic much like Harvey Milk himself.
In what can only be described as Gus Van Sant's dream projects for fifiteen impossible years which found him trying to find the stars aligning to bring him the right cast and crew at the right moment in time-- Gus Van Sant makes his strongest work to date. And despite the fact that it's been more than three decades since his death and the painstaking authenticity and involving those who knew Harvey Milk best like Cleeve Jones, Anne Kronenberg, and Daniel Nicoletta who all offered a historical wealth of information as producers-- there is something undeniably urgent and contemporary about the film that cries out to those of us watching today.
This is most evident in the sequences wonderfully edited together in which we become familiar with the Harvey Milk platform. As a director, Van Sant has always had the ability to move effortlessly from the darkly comedic satire utilized in To Die For to his wildly successful Good Will Hunting up through the experimental and tragic Cannes Film Festival award-winning Elephant. Yet we realize once Milk begins that those fifteen years of dreaming were vital as he's now able to freely blend his independent filmmaking roots, inherent sense of artistry, his compassion for the human struggle, and love of a good American story to a richly rewarding achievement. Yes, it is a cliche but he got better with age-- much like Harvey Milk.
On Universal Studios Home Entertainment's extraordinary Blu-ray transfer of the Focus Features production Milk-- Dustin Lance Black recalls growing up as a young man in San Antonio, Texas struggling with his sexual identity before he ultimately moved with his parents to San Francisco. Emotionally, he remembers the impact of witnessing the 1984 Oscar-winning documentary about Harvey Milk and the way that a particular moment stood out in his memory wherein Milk argues that the reason he was fighting was for the next generation and for those everywhere such as a kid in San Antonio, Texas. And it was this passion that drew him to the story and again it is this passion to capture Milk as a human being that inspired the young Dustin Lance Black the same way his incredibly intuitive script manages to inspire us as we watch.
As Harvey Milk so often stated on the box he labeled with the word 'Soap,' "My name is Harvey Milk and I want to recruit you," and Gus Van Sant's film does recruits you the same way Barack Obama recruited a whole new generation of voters by drawing us right into the fight in a credit sequence that illustrates the cruel way that homosexual men were persecuted, pulled from bars and arrested. However, this quickly gives way to a subtle romantic pick-up of the soon to be forty year old Milk as he meets his partner Scott (James Franco) in a work that's structurally book-ended by Milk's narration of his life only to be played in the event of his death to a work that's surprisingly as life-affirming and uplifting as it is powerful and desperately haunting.
At the beginning, we meet Harvey Milk as a New York Republican businessman who's still extremely discreet about his sexuality (hiding in the shadows and barely out of the closet). This couldn't be a further cry from the Harvey Milk we would all come to see years later after he and Scott relocated to San Francisco where the two opened the Castro Camera shop and-- having faced prejudice-- by the small merchants association started to become politically active in their neighborhood which evolved from its Irish Catholic conservative roots to a gay mecca.
And just as soon, Harvey Milk's camera shop became the center of everything and with police brutality was on the rise, quickly Milk and others pulled together to realize they were stronger as a group whether in protest or in getting things done. And ultimately, Milk understood that just like the black movement needed black leaders and other minorities needed their leaders to represent them in the government system he fiercely believed in, somebody should step up for his community as well.
He began on a local level in an extremely grass-roots campaign strategy working with those around him including Scott as his campaign manager through three failed local elections until finally and sadly at the cost of alienating Scott who always had to share Harvey with everyone else and every cause he was elected to office as the city supervisor in 1977 along with the handsome former Vietnam veteran, police officer, and fireman Dan White (Josh Brolin). The opposite of everything Milk stood for-- at least on the surface-- although in Brolin's complex Oscar nominated portrayal, we realize perhaps they were more alike than one thinks as Milk implies that White could've been "one of us," yet to his credit, Van Sant never tries to draw any certain conclusions on what led to that fateful day when bullets rang out in city hall.
Instead, by illustrating the fight and all those involved-- he shows us the entire process from the ground up as Milk evolved from the meek "closet case" to a national icon likened to Martin Luther King Jr. and Ghandi by Brolin in another Blu-ray extra feature. To watch Milk is to become alternately amused, inspired, and enraged as it's more than a film but an experience and one that feels so much more urgent than any other contemporary film playing today. Since in the end-- thirty-two years after he was elected-- Milk is still recruiting us with his legacy, minus the soap box and through this tremendous portrait crafted by Van Sant, written by Black, and embodied by Penn.
Given its inventive camera cuts and cinematography by Harris Savides (in his fifth collaboration with Van Sant)-- the Blu-ray of Milk actually surpasses its theatrical experience with the sharpest of picture and sound. It also contains the benefit of educating new Blu-ray owners on the best way to maximize their experience of the film with a friendly user's guide (especially helpful given the format's typically confusing menus), the pop-up bar to show you precisely where you are at any given moment, optional subtitles in three languages and three worthwhile featurettes.
The mini-documentaries contain interviews with not only the cast and crew but also the real life consultants who are brought to life in the film and adding a richer understanding of their role and the way that Milk affected their lives including discussions with Cleeve Jones, Daniel Nicoletta, Carol Ruth Silver, Anne Kronenberg, and Allan Baird in "Remembering Harvey." Further going into the making of the feature, we join Van Sant and company on the hunt for the utmost in authenticity in "Hollywood Comes to San Francisco" and "Marching for Equality," making the disc a great achievement for the Blu-ray format and one that also engages the viewer into wanting to learn more.
Whether it's in researching the life of Milk and his colleagues to getting involved in your own community to fight for what's right, the bottom line is-- if you're unmoved by Milk, you may need to check for a pulse as this viewer has been recruited in what I now firmly feel was the best film of last year and ultimately the one which should've earned the Academy Award.
On Tuesday, March 10 cast your own vote by picking it up-- but do so with the warning that it's an experiential event and not just a film. Additionally, it's one wherein you must check your apathy at the door as it reminds you again as great cinema should that we're all in this together and we're all united more by our similarities than we would initially assume are our differences since in the always critical effort to ensure civil rights, we're fighting for each and every one of us regardless of our racial, sexual, gender, and political identity. In other words, consider yourself recruited and get to work.
"We were not out to demean or hurt the man. That is not the right motivation for me to direct. Too much time is involved. Who needs a negative mindset? We let the man speak it in his own words. We set out to show his reasoning for the Iraq War as a function of who he is, his personal history. The hope is when you can walk out of the movie, you say, 'I understand that guy. I may not agree or like the result, but I understand.' And that's drama. I can't say I liked Oedipus when I walked out of 'Oedipus,' I can't say I liked Agamemnon, I can't say I like many of the Greek heroes. Some of them are outright assholes. But you watch them, you follow their story. That's drama. It may be easier or more palatable to have a character with whom you sympathize-- studio executives love that word. But it's tricky: if we sympathize with everyone, we create a manufactured values system. It's much more interesting and real if you try to empathize and understand, if not always approve."
-- Director Oliver Stone on W. in the Lionsgate Press Release
There's a recurring metaphor running throughout director Oliver Stone's controversial biopic W. Opening the film and ultimately closing it, the avid-baseball fan and team owner George W. Bush (as portrayed by Josh Brolin) is way out in the outfield with his eyes on a pop-up ball heading straight towards him in center field, just out of reach. Stone has never been one to relish the joys of traditional narrative structure and instead symbolism, ingeniously ironic musical cues, and clever editing have always made their impact for better or for worse during his legendary career but this time, his eye is on the ball (if you'll excuse the cliche) in depicting what has spiraled into the decision and event that will become synonymous with W's name. Of course, specifically that is the Iraq war which has developed into such an incredibly complicated mess that no one, not even the man who made the decision to go in following 9/11 knows quite how to catch and stop it. There's no calling a time-out-- although this upcoming election will find us trading players with the possibility of a whole new starting lineup if (as I'm truly hoping) Obama is elected, what has happened has happened and Stone knows better than to try and tack on some sort of conclusion that would ultimately mean as little as W's "Mission Accomplished" speech.
W. is the type of film that Stone argued it would be from the beginning-- a fair and balanced, overwhelmingly even-handed and at times slightly too polite portrait of the President from a young man to the leader of the free world. It's one that I doubt he would've made in exactly the same manner in the early 1990's, although he managed to make one of the finest and most underrated films of his career with his masterful biopic about Richard Nixon, yet this time, running just under two hours, W. is also one of his most succinct fact-based works.
Independently financed long before a studio was on board to distribute, Stone and his longtime collaborator and Wall Street scripter Stanley Weiser decided around Christmas of 2007 that "if we didn't do the Bush movie at that moment, it wouldn't have been made, not for a long time." Striving for the "long-shot chance of getting W. out before the election," Stone wanted to fight against his belief noted in the release that "attention spans in this era, particularly as to history, seem to have the shelf life of a fruit fly."
While it's sure to divide critics and audiences, no matter which political party you're affiliated with or what you think of the man himself, Stone and Weiser managed to do the impossible of reading every single book available on the man himself as well as the Presidency and made the decision early on not to cover his entire life or every event during the eight years he served (and continues to serve) as Commander-in-Chief, specifically "focusing on that crucial era between October 2001 and March 2003, when he finally went to war with Iraq." Intriguingly Stone continued that, "not much was known about the Presidency during the 2000-2004 period because the Presidency was veiled and propagandized. But after 2004 there seems to have been increasing scholarship into the inner workings of the Bush Administration."
While the focal point is undoubtedly Iraq, W. does disappoint slightly (perhaps due to its hasty production) in not including more on not just the controversial, hot-button topic of the 2000 election as well as Hurricane Katrina, yet possibly this-- along with the curious neglect of the days following 9/11-- may have been because Stone either felt that Bush had already been so much in the media spotlight that we knew it all so well or that it's been covered before such as in Spike Lee's Katrina documentary When the Levees Broke.
Further citing the even-handedness of the screenplay, Jeffrey Wright (who quietly gives one of the film's best performances in an Oscar worthy turn as Colin Powell) cited that W. is much like Stone's World Trade Center "which had a similar type of balance and sophisticated tone," and Brolin who initially turned the project down both due to the subject and Stone's "very controversial reputation," instead discovered the screenplay left him "taken aback, moved... impassioned, really, because I was saddened by it. And above all, I identified with it."
Although it chronicles his young wild days surviving frat initiation at Yale, drinking and driving, bar brawling and rebelling against the family political dynasty until he became a born again Evangelical Christian at the age of 40, sobered up and went into the family business for himself, at its heart, W. takes a cue from the Greek tragedies cited by Stone in presenting the never-ending tug of war and battle for love and respect that occurs between fathers and sons. Whether he's feeling like the black sheep next to his picture-perfect brother Jeb or being told off repeatedly by his father (portrayed by James Cromwell) that he's deeply disappointed him, in depicting W's life story, we find out that what perhaps drove him more than anything was trying to prove his worth to his father.
While daddy-issue tales are nothing new and it's hardly the only individual who held sway over our 43rd president, it's a more relatable and humanistic approach to the man where the time line and the film's three distinct acts are all mixed together as we see the new version of the Bush family in his Presidency of others who may have wielded their power more than they should've in steering the leader in certain directions. Rounding out the cast we witness Richard Dreyfuss' wicked turn as Dick Cheney, Toby Jones' geeky, off-in-the-shadows Karl Rove, Scott Glenn's Donald Rumsfeld, Thandie Newton's Condoleeza Rice, Bruce McGill's George Tenet, Wright's Colin Powell, Stacy Keach's Earle Hudd, Rob Corddry's Ari Fleischer, Ellen Burstyn's Barbara Bush, and nice support by Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush.
While the ads and marketing strategy have seemed to posture the film as a straight comedy and indeed there are some truly hilarious moments pulled right from actual events, more than that, it's a heartbreaking tragedy that goes beyond its initial SNL like characterizations that first kept me at an arm's length early on (especially as audience members laughed throughout Thandie Newton's first entire speech as Condi) and during Brolin's earliest scenes. And admittedly no doubt there will be much debate afterward over whether or not Stone went far enough or created a worthwhile enough portrait to justify its being made before the President has even ended his term in office (and regarding both issues-- I find I'm still torn). Not to mention, tons of discussion will ensue regarding whether it will have any resonant impact in the upcoming election as there were a few walkouts of bored young voting age attendees who may have learned far more about just how and why the war was waged if they'd adjusted their frame of mind from the promised "broad comedy" to the drama that surrounds the events.
Was it rushed? My, my, my yes as I felt like Stone was censoring himself in a few places and the overwhelming importance of the picture still seems to weigh heavily as the press release revealed that Stone's in the process of creating a website that "will include all the anecdotes and are mentioned in the film, their source and the rationale for how, why, and when we used them." Of course, all sources should be cited but this isn't the type of action one would've expected him to have taken years ago and sometimes it seems as though he reeled in his true intentions so much that there were a few loose threads that seemed to hang off the edge of the screen at times but politics aside and just as a film, it's an intimate, high quality and revealing look at a complicated man told in a way none of us were expecting.
While I predict it will do big business during its opening weekend given W's disastrous approval rating and an American population so tired of politics as usual, the true test of Stone's film will be if viewers are able to remain objective when presented not with the straight satire they were hoping but a very humane approach about an overwhelmingly controversial, morally and emotionally trying Presidency and war-- the results of which we're all suffering globally every day. Just like Stone's World Trade Center, it may be a little too soon to view with any real perspective since the wounds haven't yet healed (and they possibly never will) but cinematically I applaud the wonderfully executed effort and above all its fearless cast.
Walking Movie Encyclopedia at Film Intuition; 3-Time National Award Winning Scribe; Film Reviewer; "Watch With Jen" Podcast Host; Screenwriter; Movie Discussion Host; BA in Film Studies & Communication.
” indeed — alternatively pulsating between moody contemplation and tense action perfectly depicted by one of our most gifted cinematographers, the incomparable Roger Deakins. Nominated for the ’07 Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, not only is this vicious masterpiece sure to be one of the most discussed films when looking back at the very best of the Coen films but it’s also one of the best movies of 2007.
