Review: Lady Bird (2017)

* * * *
Director: Greta Gerwig
Starring: Saoirse Ronan

Lady Bird is the movie that most coming of age movies wish they were. It's funny and sharp and sweet, its characters are so well-realized that you want to both hug them and smack them, and its performances are so great that it's hard to pick which one is best, though Saoirse Ronan might get the edge by virtue of being the film's star and the focus of nearly every scene. As an actress, Greta Gerwig has long-since established herself as a darling of indie film, and as a writer she has established herself as a keen comedic observer of Millennial anxiety. Now she begins to make the case for herself as a director to be reckoned with, one capable of making the absolutely ordinary into something exceptionally compelling. Lady Bird is easily one of the best movies of the year and one of the best films of its type.

Review: Brooklyn (2015)

* * * 1/2
Director: John Crowley
Starring: Saoirse Ronan

In less volatile times, a film like John Crowley's Brooklyn, adapted from the novel by Colm Toibin, might seem too gentle to be really important in the wider social context of our day-to-day lives. Right now, released in theaters at a time when politicians are competing with each other to see who can take the most vile and closed-minded position about people who didn't have the good fortune to be born in a place of democracy and/or opportunity, it's a film that touches a nerve and is a reminder that the vast majority of those people who have in the past and are right now undertaking the long journey away from everything that they have ever known and starting over in some place where everything is entirely foreign to them are doing so not to hurt anyone or destroy anything, but to try to have a better life. Brooklyn is, at its core, a love story, but it's also an immigrant story about the bravery it takes to pick up and move into the unknown half a world away, and the opportunities for kindness available to be taken by those who already happen to be there.

Review: Byzantium (2013)

* * 1/2
Director: Neil Jordan
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Arterton

Neil Jordan's Byzantium is an odd duck of a film. In its first half it's a sleepily gothic romance, and then in the second it roars to life as a pseudo-feminist story about women seizing power denied to them by male dominated institutions. I liked the second half better, though the first half isn't bad, merely rather slow. A melancholy vampire story that manages to be both brutally and beautifully horrific (the image of a waterfall of blood is at once ridiculous and sublime), Byzantium is fairly transfixing once it gathers some steam and realizes which of its two female protagonists is the more interesting one.

Review: Hanna (2011)

* * *
Director: Joe Wright
Starring: Saorise Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana

“I just missed your heart.” Oh, no, Hanna. You got it. This time last month who would have guessed that of the two movies about teenage girls kicking ass and leaving a trail of bodies in their wake, audiences would embrace the vaguely art house one with the (comparatively) quiet ad campaign rather than the CGI extravaganza with the huge marketing campaign? Of course it helps to be as thoroughly awesome as Hanna is.

Review: The Lovely Bones (2009)

* * 1/2
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Saorise Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz

With the crash and burn that was one-time hopeful Amelia's release now a distant memory, it seems that The Lovely Bones has officially usurped the title of Awards Season Punching Bag. There has to be one every year. Is it deserving of the amount of vitriol it seems to have inspired? No, but in a sense I can understand where all that is coming from because it's such a mixed bag of a film. Parts of it are absolutely glorious and others just don't work at all - I can't remember the last time I left a film feeling so divided about it.

The Lovely Bones tells the story of Susie Salmon (Saorise Ronan), who at 14 is raped and murdered. The film works its way up to that event, first taking time to establish the relationships that will be severed and damaged by her loss. Although there are some underlying tensions in her family - her parents (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz) love each other but have grown apart, and Susie is in the midst of that particularly dramatic stage of adolescence defined largely by awkwardness and unprovoked hostility (I remember it well) - it's a close knit group and, in a general way, happy.

One evening Susie walks home alone and is lured into a trap by Mr. Harvey (Stanley Tucci), one of her neighbors, and never seen again. Her father becomes obsessed with tracking down various leads, some of which he's invented; her mother deals with it by not dealing with it at all; her grandmother (Susan Sarandon) tries to breathe life back into the household; and her sister Lindsay (Rose McIver) becomes increasingly suspicious about Mr. Harvey's behavior. Meanwhile, from a place in between heaven and earth, Susie watches over them and in some instances tries to guide them towards the truth about her murder.

I should preface this by saying that I've never read The Lovely Bones, but from what I understand it's more an exploration of how the Salmon family deals with their grief rather than a thriller about bringing a killer to justice, which is what the film version is more than anything else. In certain respects it works as a thriller - the scene in which Lindsay breaks into Harvey's house is particularly taut and effective - but, at the same time, it shifts the story's focus, taking it away from the victim and giving it to the killer. I think that that's the primary reason why the scenes in the in-between place fail to resonate as deeply as they should. Of course, there's also the fact that the afterlife is made to look like a glossy, candy colored, CGI explosion, but I think that this visual aesthetic could have worked if the story was constructed differently. One of my favourite scenes actually takes place in that CGI paradise as Susie watches a series of ships in bottles (like the ones she used to make with her father) crash against each other and the rocks of the shore. However, as beautifully realized as the imagery in the scene is, it's ultimately not very meaningful because by reducing Susie to a glorified secondary character, the film leaves itself with nothing to anchor the story.

The film is at its strongest in the build up to Susie's death, as it focuses on the dynamics of the Salmon family. When it moves away from this and, essentially, splits into two narratives - Susie is heaven, the family and her killer on earth - it ceases to be cohesive and instead becomes a series of set pieces. Some of these pieces do work, but others fail and the lack of any real grounding in the story results in something that's kind of soulless - ironic, given the premise.

In the end, I think that The Lovely Bones is a noble failure. The performances are strong (Tucci seems to be getting the most notice but I thought Wahlberg was really great as well) and the film itself is occassionally brilliant, but Jackson's vision of this story is too muddled. Too often it feels false and hollow - Susie's version of heaven might be accurate to her, but Jackson certainly didn't make me believe in it - and just doesn't connect with the audience.

Review: Atonement

This is one of the most moving films I've seen all year. Well-crafted, well-acted, beautiful to look at, and featuring a fantastic score, this film worked for me on every level. Easily one of the most faithful adaptations I've ever seen, this is a film that I absolutely loved it from beginning to end.

The fim is faithful to the book on which it is based not just in terms of the plot, but also in the way that the story is told, going back and forth, splintering between one perspective and another.It begins with Briony Tallis (Saorise Ronan), a thirteen-year-old girl who is too smart for her age, and not mature enough for her intelligence. She tells a lie which results in the separation of her sister, Cecelia (Keira Knightley) from Robbie (James McAvoy), the son of their family's housekeeper, when Robbie is taken away to prison. There are a few reasons why she tells the lie, all of which feed into each other. First, she's seen a few things during the day that have gone on between Robbie and Cecelia (an incident at a fountain, a letter mistakenly sent, a tryst in the library) that she doesn't really understand, though she believes that she does. What Briony is lacking is the ability to really discern the context in which she is seeing these things and so rather than seeing the various shades of gray, all she sees is black and white.

Second, Briony has a crush on Robbie and is obviously jealous of what she sees transpiring between himself and Cecelia. If Robbie isn't going to be Briony's hero (and Briony's alone), then she will make him into the villain. Third, and perhaps most important, is the fact that Briony is an aspring writer and sees the situation as a story for herself to guide. The problem is, she lacks the maturity to guide it properly (i.e. honestly) and doesn't seem to understand the consequences of what she's doing, the fact that once “written,” her conclusion cannot be erased.

The early scenes establish Briony perfectly. Despite her age, she obviously considers herself very grown up, already thinking of herself as a Capital A artist as she completes the play she hopes that she and her cousins will perform that evening. Part of the reason why she begins developping her “Robbie is a sex maniac” story is to gain the upperhand on her cousin, Lola who, like herself, is young but attempts to behave and carry herself as if she's older. Being the story teller gives Briony power and allows her to play at being more grown up than she is.

Following Robbie's arrest, the story jumps ahead four years, to when he's a soldier in France, Cecelia is a nurse, and Briony (now played by Ramola Gari) is training to become a nurse and finally beginning to grasp the nature of what she's done. She wants to make amends, even though she suspects that it's too late. These scenes are also effective, conveying a different side of Briony, as she begins to see herself as we see her in the first act of the film. The end of the film, where Briony is played by Vanessa Redgrave, is heartbreaking on a number of levels, not only because we know what becomes of Robbie and Cecelia, but also because we know how deeply Briony regrets what she's done, how much she wants to take it back, how greatly she's punished herself for it, and how much it has come to define her life.

Although this is Briony's story, the central character is actually Robbie; and although Briony is the character who must atone for what she's done, the atonement of the title can also be seen as referring to Robbie, who is the Christ figure of the story and will suffer for Briony's sin. One of the more obvious visual allusions for this is when Robbie, ill from an infected wound (his wound, too, can be read as an allusion to Christ) and having walked a long distance to the beach of Dunkirk, hallucinates that his mother is washing his feet. This scene comes towards the end of the film, shortly after a tracking shot that lasts nearly five minutes and can only be described as epic. The shot follows Robbie and his two companions across the beach at Dunkirk, where thousands of other soldiers are waiting to be evacuated. In the background there's a ferris wheel turning, in the foreground we see the various ways that the other soldiers are killing time, including a group that's gathered to sing as a choir, a handful who are playing around on a carousel, and the unlucky ones who have to shoot the horses that won't be transported back. All the scenes of Robbie in France are great, but this shot is particularly beautiful, one of the most memorable ever to grace the screen. It should also be noted that it was apparently accomplished without the use of CGI.

This is an incredibly engaging film, one that brings you right in rather than holding you at arm's length. By the end, I found myself emotionally exhausted, the ending able to move me even though, having read the book, I knew what was coming. It is rare in my experience to see a film that so exactly evoke its source material right down to the minute details (the best example I can think of is the tryst in the library. See the film then read that section of the book: it is exactly the same, right down to the way Cecelia turns her head) without the source seeming almost like a crutch, like the filmmaker was so in love with the way it was originally written that he or she can't bear to make a change that would otherwise soften the transition from page to screen. Atonement the film manages to exist in its own right, becoming its own entity separate and apart from the book even while staying faithful to the book. This is an absolutely excellent film.