Review: Mudbound (2017)

* * * 1/2
Director: Dee Rees
Starring: Jason Mitchell, Garrett Hedlund, Carey Mulligan, Jason Clarke, Mary J. Blige, Rob Morgan

Societies are built on bodies. This fact isn't exclusive to the United States, though it may sometimes feel that way because the legacy of those bodies continues to echo so resoundingly through its contemporary social and political climate. Dee Rees' historical epic Mudbound opens by acknowledging this through two of its characters digging a hole and turning up a set of chains followed by the remains of a slave, and then builds by demonstrating how the condition of slavery is perpetuated in spirit if not in name as it explores the relationship between two families, one black and one white, in the years just prior to and just after World War II. It's a great achievement, a period film that does not just have the look of something important, but actually is important, speaking not only to the past but also to the present. It's a vital, brutal, and engrossing movie.

Review: Suffragette (2015)

* *
Director: Sarah Gavron
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Anne-Marie Duff, Helena Bonham Carter

For a story that's all about the tenacity, fervor, and indefatigable spirit necessary to push a social movement towards victory, Suffragette is a weirdly passionless film. Too restrained, too polite, and way too superficial, Suffragette is at best a moderately successful period piece and not at all the searing political piece that it ought to be and wants to be. It's frustrating because there actually is a lot to say about the women's suffrage movement, which isn't just one story but a series of stories about tiered victories in which certain categories of women were granted the vote followed later by women of other categories (these categories determined by class, marital status, age, and, of course, race and ethnicity), but the film ultimately says little of any substance. It touches briefly on a lot of different issues about women's rights, but offers no real insight into any of them, so that the statement it makes is of the most basic kind: inequality is bad and harmful to society. And? The women in the film may gladly call themselves rebels, but there's nothing revolutionary about Suffragette.

Netflix Recommends... The Great Gatsby (2013)

* * *
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan

I had some trepidations about pressing "play" on Baz Lurhmann's 2013 version of The Great Gatsby, not just because of my less than stellar history with Netflix's recommendations, but also because "The Great Gatsby" is one of my favorite books so I'm wary of watching any adaptation of it. Much to my surprise, because of that and because I'm not a huge Lurhmann fan in general, I actually didn't dislike his telling of Gatsby. It has some weaknesses, to be sure, and I certainly didn't love it, but generally speaking I did like it even if it plays like the story as viewed through a funhouse mirror, and even though I found its conception of one of its major characters all wrong.

Review: Far From the Madding Crowd (2015)

* * *
Director: Thomas Vinterberg
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts

"It is my intention to astonish you all." The statement, made by the heroine of Far From the Madding Crowd is a bold one, particularly for a woman in the late 19th century, and it's one of several that she makes. While Thomas Hardy's best known characters are his tragic ones (Jude, Tess, the man known as the Mayor of Casterbridge), Bathsheba Everdene may very well be his best, a strong willed, independent minded woman who, through her willingness to pull up her bootstraps and get her hands dirty in order to get a job done, is sort of a precursor to Scarlett O'Hara. She's one of the great female characters in literature, and in Thomas Vinterberg's adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd she is brought beautifully to life by Carey Mulligan. Even if the film itself doesn't rise to the level of nuance and perfection of that central performance, the performance is more than enough reason to check this one out.

Review: Drive (2011)

* * * *
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks

He's a driver. It's what he does and who he is, no more, no less. Taking its cue from its protagonist, Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive, based on a novel of the same name by James Sallis, launches itself along a deliberate, no frills trajectory, working its way towards the only ending that a story like this could possibly have. That feeling of predetermination, however, does nothing to detract from how thrilling the film is and it comes to transcend the boundaries of its genre. Drive is the rare action movie in which you find yourself actually caring about the characters and what will happen to them.

Review: Never Let Me Go (2010)

* * * 1/2
Director: Mark Romanek
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley

I love the Oscars but there are two things about Oscar season that I dislike. One is films that are so overtly and generically baity that it verges on embarrassing. The other is the way that the hype machine sometimes latches on to a movie sight unseen and builds up a mountain of expectation regarding its Oscar potential. Then, after the film finally is seen, people are disappointed because it's not in the Academy's wheelhouse and suddenly (and despite the fact that it might be a perfectly good movie) it's marked as a failure in the cultural conversation and gets left behind as the hype machine moves on to its next victim. Never Let Me Go, a gentle science fiction romance, is one of those films. It is not "Oscar-y" in any traditional sense, but it's a very good movie and a prime candidate for critical re-assessment in a few years.

The story - which takes place in an alternate reality in which clones are created in order to provide donor organs - spans decades and follows the short, doomed lives of Kathy, Ruth and Tommy (played as adults by Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, and Andrew Garfield). It begins when the three are children at Hailsham, a special boarding school where, as one of their teachers states, they know their purpose but don't really understand what it means. That teacher is Miss Lucy (Sally Hawkins), who is deeply affected by her brief time at Hailsham. When she tries to give the children a greater understanding of what they are, she becomes distraught, but the children themselves accept these facts calmly. They have been raised and socialized to accept that their time on earth is limited, that they have a purpose to serve, and that this is simply the way things are. They know no other option, they have been lead to believe that there is no alternative. Because of that they do not rage against injustice but rather accept their fate as a sad fact.

Broken up into chapters, the film takes place at various points in the trio's lives, punctuated by changes in their relationships. As children Kathy and Tommy are in love but, both being shy, Ruth is able to step in, take control and have Tommy to herself. She and Tommy are still together when the three graduate from Hailsham and are sent to "the Cottages," though they break up shortly thereafter. As adults, Ruth's guilt gets the better of her and she takes steps to bring Kathy and Tommy together before there is no longer time left. Rumor has it that if two donors can prove that they are genuinely in love, it can buy them a few extra years before having to complete their donations.

This story, beautifully told by director Mark Romanek and screenwriter Alex Garland, is interesting for a number of reasons. One of the things that stood out for me is the decision to set the story in the 1970s, 80s and 90s with a quick background explanation that reveals that the scientific breakthrough that made cloning possible took place in 1952 and reached perfection in the late 60s. Since one of the story's major themes is the ethics of creating human beings simply to be harvested (ergo of intentionally and explicitly creating beings who will live a second tier existence), I find it interesting that the science of the story is concurrent with the real-life civil rights movement. The characters have no rights, no public voice, they are segregated, and they are not human beings in any legal sense of the word; they are simply medical beasts of burden. But what makes them different from "originals"? They look human, they interact as humans do, they think, they feel - what, aside from their lack of status, truly sets them apart? One of the things that the story is exploring is the way that we, as a society, talk ourselves into seeing minor distinctions as major and set about trying to define the world according to difference. On the surface Never Let Me Go might be about clones coming to terms with their destiny, but beneath that it is about the humanity which exists in "the other" and how no matter how many social rules and categories we create for each other, on a fundamental level the similarities between us will always run deeper than any of the differences.

One of the questions at the story's center is whether a clone can possess a soul. Late in the film Kathy and Tommy are informed that the artwork collected from the children at Hailsham was a means of determining whether they did, in fact, have souls, which in turn might have forced a public discussion of ethics that would save their lives. I would argue that the simple fact that they hope - not to live but simply for more time - is all the proof necessary that they have souls, that they are human beings just like any other. It would be one thing if they just wanted to escape and live - the instinct for self-preservation is present in all living creatures; but the fact that they understand time in such a way that even a little bit of it is precious to them is, I think, proof enough that the distinction between originals and duplicates is only a matter of societal attitude. The film doesn't spend a lot of time exploring the big picture in terms of how people feel about cloning or the lives of clones themselves, but whenever it touches on the subject, it makes it count.

Never Let Me Go tackles a lot of big themes but it manages to do so on a very intimate scale by creating distinct and engaging characters. It's a shame that the Best Actress field is so crowded this year and that the film itself has already been written off as an also-ran in many circles, because Mulligan's performance here is wonderful and deserving of attention. In her hands Kathy is a character of quiet endurance, a pillar of strength at the story's center that helps keep it from sinking in sentimentality. Her final moments in the film are devastatingly perfect, wrenching in fact. Never Let Me Go is a profoundly sad film, but a very good one that deserves better than the lacklustre response it has received thus far.

Review: An Education (2009)

* * * *
Director: Lone Scherfig
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard

There’s more than one way to get an education – the formal, institutionalized way that will prepare you for the workforce, and the unofficial, haphazard way that will prepare you for life. Neither is simple as Jenny, the clever, spirited heroine of An Education, can attest. In that role Carey Mulligan shines, a total natural as she navigates Jenny’s journey through the perilous final stages of the transition from child to adult. “I feel very old,” she says towards the end, “but not very wise.” I think she’s giving herself far too little credit.

The film takes place in the 1960s and opens at an all girls’ school where posture is a part of the curriculum right along with cooking and the lesser subjects of English and Math. It is hoped by Jenny and her parents that getting good grades at such a prestigious school will help her get into Oxford. For similar reasons she has learned to play the cello, hoping to impress the admissions people with such a refined hobby. The importance of creating this image is stressed by Jenny’s father (Alfred Molina), who believes that it’s important to put on a show but doesn’t believe that the value of what Jenny is learning is the knowledge itself. Knowledge itself is secondary, which is why she has to be able to say that she can play the cello but she’s not actually allowed to practice it because the important part (learning to play) is over.

Waiting at a bus stop in the rain with her cello she meets David (Peter Sarsgaard), who charms her into letting him give her a ride home. It isn’t difficult for him to impress her because not only does he have a nice car and know about all the beautiful things that Jenny wants to know about (art, music, good food, etc.), but he’s so different from the boys that Jenny has heretofore been surrounded by. Graham (David Beard), a boy her own age who likes her, is easily flustered by her father and seems childlike in comparison to David, who is so self-assured and cool that he ends up making her father nervous and eager to impress. If Jenny were older and had more experience, she’d be wary of how expertly David is able to manipulate her very protective, very guarded parents. If someone seems to know the exact right thing to say at all times, they’ve probably had a lot of practice.

As Jenny and David’s relationship grows more serious, her future at Oxford becomes more obscure. To her shock, this is just fine by her father who has so strictly directed her life up until this point for the purpose of getting into Oxford, and she realizes that what she’d always been told was her future was in reality just a backup plan until she could find a suitable man to take care of her. “What was the point?” she asks repeatedly, wondering why, if all she was ever really expected to be was a housewife, all those other things were necessary. At a certain point she finds herself having to choose between David and Oxford and in light of all that she’s just learned, it seems to be an easy choice. The consequences of that choice, however, prove to be a very hard lesson indeed.

The screenplay by Nick Hornby is strong and, coupled with the direction by Lone Scherfig, allows the characters plenty of room for layers and details. David is not a cardboard villain, though we never really trust him for obvious reasons. He seems genuinely to care about Jenny and be affected by how things turn out and it’s surely evidence of Sarsgaard’s skill that you end up feeling a bit sorry for David – not as sorry as you end up feeling for other characters, of course, but at a certain point being able to feel anything for him is a victory on Sarsgaard’s part. There’s something very sad about David, whose existence is built entirely on illusions and deceit, and it’s heartbreaking (though expected) when Jenny finds that out.

I don’t think there’s anything I can say about Mulligan’s performance that hasn’t already been said, and better, by other people. She’s a star – charismatic, nuanced, and assured. She seems to inhabit Jenny easily and her instincts as an actor are solid. Molina, as her father, is wonderful, particularly in scenes where he’s dealing either directly or indirectly with David. David makes him nervous, not because of his interest in Jenny, but because he seems to come from a higher social order. He wants to impress David and he’s so taken in by David’s flashiness that he practically shoves Jenny into David’s arms. His speech to Jenny about how he, too, has been hurt in the situation is really moving and one of the film’s best moments. I would be remiss, in speaking of supporting performances, if I didn’t also mention Rosamond Pike, who I thought was absolutely delightful as David’s faux sophisticate, blank slate friend Helen. The expressions on her face alone were enough to win me over, but she gets some great (and ridiculous) lines as well.

I think, in the end, that An Education’s greatest strength lies in its ability to do what so few of its characters seem able: to recognize that knowledge can be valuable in and of itself. The lessons Jenny learns are painful and in some respects hold her back, but she knows more than she did before about things that can’t be gleaned from books. It might not help her at Oxford, but there will be life after Oxford and she’ll be ready for it.

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