Review: Life (2015)

* * 1/2
Director: Anton Corbijn
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Dane DeHaan

Before his first film (and the only one he actually lived to see released) even came out, James Dean was already on his way to attaining status as an icon thanks to the still images put out to promote him and which captured the restless, hungry cool which was just as vibrantly apparent on film. Some of those photos were captured by Dennis Stock, who ended up immortalizing what would be Dean's final trip home to Indiana, the pictures appearing in Life magazine just before the premiere of East of Eden. Anton Corbijn's latest film is about that trip and what would be the brief friendship between Stock and Dean. Like many biopics, it ends up feeling as if it just skims the surface of its subject, but in its languid way it nicely captures the potentially volatile relationship between the person on one side of a camera and the person on the other as they negotiate the ways and means of representation.

Review: A Most Wanted Man (2014)

* * *
Director: Anton Corbijn
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright, Willem Dafoe

It says nothing good about the collective faith in the motives and tactics of government agencies that the biggest laugh in A Most Wanted Man comes from an agent stating that the goal of an operation is to "make the world a safer place." Not that laughs abound in this chilly political thriller based on the novel of the same name by John le Carre, but it does have a dark wit that breaches the surface every once in a while like a shark's fin. Helmed by Anton Corbijn, director of the stylishly rendered biopic Control and thriller The American, and featuring the final non-Hunger Games performance of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, A Most Wanted Man is a sharp and gripping film, which is all the more impressive for the fact that its depiction of espionage is less of the high action variety and more of the sit, observe, and meticulously collect data variety.

Review: The American (2010)

* * * *
Director: Anton Corbijn
Starring: George Clooney

Patience. Precision. Craftsmanship. All are words that could describe The American both in terms of form and content. It is a slow movie and quiet, which won't appeal to everyone, but it's beautifully shot and well-acted so hopefully audiences will give it a chance because it definitely deserves to be seen. Anton Corbijn's old school style thriller, based on a novel by Martin Booth, is a perfect way to kick off the fall movie season.

George Clooney stars as Jack, or possibly Edward, an assassin who finds that he himself has become the target. He flees to Rome to discuss the situation with his boss, Pavel (Johan Leysen), and is sent to a small village to wait things out. After a quick look around, Jack opts for a different village and tosses the cell phone Pavel has provided for him - even his allies can't be trusted in a time like this. Jack keeps in touch with Pavel through payphones, which is how he ends up with a new assignment, one which he later decides will be his last.

He meets with a woman named Mathilde (Thekla Reuten) and then gets to work on a custom-made gun according to her instructions. Most of his time is spent on the assignment and in dodging people he's certain are out to kill him, but he also has time to make connections with people in the village. One is the local priest (Paolo Bonacelli), who recognizes Jack as a man with a troubled soul and reaches out to him, one sinner to another. The other is Clara (Violante Placido), a prostitute with whom Jack gradually develops a relationship, even though the events of the film's opening moments have taught him how dangerous such connections can be.

We know, due to the benefit of storytelling logic, that either Mathilde or Clara will ultimately betray Jack. It is to the film's credit that it keeps us guessing who it will be as long as it does. There are two scenes that take place in a secluded area by a lake - one with Mathilde, the other with Clara - that are so fraught with tension that all you can do is hold your breath and wait for the boom to drop. The American is a film built on that kind of tension, making you wait for the payoff. An argument could be made, I suppose, that "nothing" happens in this movie, but I would have to respectfully disagree. It's a cerebral and very interior story but there is a narrative progression that is taking place and I found it totally engrossing.

Corbijn, who began his career as a photographer, has a fantastic eye for composing shots and that, in conjunction with the cinematography of Martin Ruhe and the fact that the location itself is stunning, makes this one of the most beautiful looking films I've seen in quite a while. The American is Corbijn's second film, his first being Control, a biopic of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis. I was pretty keen on Control, too, so I can't wait to see where Corbijn goes from here. He's a great director in terms of style while at the same time he doesn't let style overwhelm the content of the story.

As for Clooney, his performance here is probably the best I've ever seen from him. Like the film itself, the performance is very quiet and Clooney has to suggest a lot more than he ultimately reveals. I don't know that we ever truly get to "know" Jack, but I found Clooney to be very effective in the role, articulating a great deal through little more than subtle shifts in his expression. I don't know that The American is high profile enough to get Clooney much attention from the awarding groups at the end of the year, but he'd definitely deserve it.

Review: Control (2007)

* * * *
Director: Anton Corbijn
Starring: Sam Riley, Samantha Morton

I feel like I've been waiting for a movie like Control for a long time. It's a biopic that not only seems to really "get" its subject - Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, masterfully played by Sam Riley - but also finds the exact right balance between the professional achievements and ambitions that made him famous and the personal life that inspired and, in some ways, derailed him. It is a beautifully rendered and poetic film.

The film spans from 1973 to 1980, beginning with Curtis meeting his future wife Debbie Woodruff (Samantha Morton) and ending with his suicide. It is a film that is as much about a marriage as it is about a band, which is not surprising given that the screenplay is adapted from Woodruff's memoir "Touching From A Distance," and that she acted as co-producer on the production. Curtis is depicted here as both a sensitive, artistic type and as someone oddly detached from the very emotions he expresses in his poetry and music. At times it almost seems as if he understands emotions but doesn't really feel them himself, that for him love is less about what he feels for another person than about what they feel for him. He is a strangely muted presence when he's not on stage, a passive figure who doesn't seem to make decisions so much as surrender to inevitabilities. When he casually says to Debbie, "Let's get married" (and, later, "Let's have a baby"), it seems less like something that he's decided he wants than something that, for the moment, seems to him like the thing to do.

He and Debbie do get married and they do have a baby and he joins the band that will become Joy Division. He throws himself into the work (many of the performance scenes show him dripping with sweat, looking exhausted and exhilarated) and soon discovers that his career ambitions are at odds with his family responsibilities. Out on the road, he drifts into an affair with Annik Honore (Alexandra Maria Lara), a Belgian journalist, and he struggles with epilepsy. The epilepsy, the pressures of fame, and his feelings of being torn between domesticity and freedom - the sense that in every way, he's lost control - all converge one night when he hangs himself from the clothes line in the kitchen.

His final act is interesting when you consider the way that the film frames his relationships with Annik and, particularly, Debbie. Though he enters into his marriage with (presumably) good intentions, by the time he starts to find success he's come to resent Debbie and the middle class milieu to which she's tied him. His relationship with Annik represents freedom, but only in a very tentative sense. She can't actually free him, he has to do that himself by making a decision, but since he's such a passive character he instead ping pongs between the two women, at one point insisting to Debbie that one relationship doesn't have to do with the other. Even when Debbie essentially makes the decision for him, he still feels bound to her and what she represents and trapped between that life and the life represented by Annik. When he commits suicide he not only claims the freedom he had hoped to get from Annik, he also effectively repudiates the way of life represented by Debbie by hanging himself from the clothes line, a symbol of domesticity.

The screenplay creates a nicely layered pscyhological portrait of Curtis, but it would all be for naught without Riley's wonderful performance. He disappears into the role, portraying Curtis as wounded, sometimes frustratingly remote, sometimes casually cruel. The film's best scenes are those between him and Morton, an actress who with each role convinces me that she's one of the best (if not the best) actresses working today. The role of "the wife" can easily be thankless but Morton makes it matter and in scene after scene she acts as the emotional core. I can't remember the last time I saw a scene as raw and resonant as the one in which Debbie confronts Ian about his affair and, frustrated by the fact that he has completely shut down, just loses it on him. Riley and Morton's performances are not only great in their own right, they totally complement each other's.

For those for whom the primary draw for a movie like this is the music, rest assured that it plays as big and as important a role as Curtis' personal relationships. Like his marriage, his music brings becomes a trap through the fame that it brings and in its own way leaves him feeling powerless. I wasn't born yet when Curtis died but as someone who came of age in the '90s, it was hard for me not to think of Kurt Cobain when the film version of Curtis started talking about how he just wanted to make music and not be adored or famous. The music has allowed him to express himself in perhaps the only way that he truly can, but it has also boxed him in and introduced more pressures and responsibilities than he can handle. That pressure, combined with his romantic turmoil and his inability to control his illness, leads to his end.

Filmed in stark (and beautiful) black and white, the film has a look that I think will serve it well in the years to come. There's a sense of timelessness to it, both in terms of the content of the story and the way that the story is presented, that I think will keep it from becoming dated. There's nothing about Control that stands out for me as a weakness; it's pretty much perfect from top to bottom.