Review: Carol (2015)

* * * *
Director: Todd Haynes
Starring: Rooney Mara, Cate Blanchett

It isn't until Carol's final, breathtaking scene that you can appreciate just how masterfully director Todd Haynes has controlled the film's tone. For most of its 118 minute running time, it's a tightly contained piece that holds a lot back, but in that final moment the dam finally breaks and it becomes clear that the degree of restraint Haynes has demonstrated in unfolding the story up to that point has been very much a deliberate choice. In terms of the story, it's also a wholly appropriate one, given that the narrative turns on something which must remain hidden due to circumstance, but which ultimately can't be denied. While Carol might seem at first to be too cold and closed off to connect with, it tells such an inherently simple and human story, and is so profoundly moving, that in the end connection becomes easy.

Review: Velvet Goldmine (1998)

* * *
Director: Todd Haynes
Starring: Christian Bale, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ewan McGregor

Todd Haynes has made a lot of films for grown ups, but his 1998 film Velvet Goldmine is a film that is best encountered for the first time during adolescence. Like The Catcher in the Rye, it's a work that you can appreciate as an adult, but which has the greatest impact if you're a teenager because it's so calibrated to speak to the ways that teenagers experience the world as a place full of both possibility and phoniness that puts the lie to the notion of possibility as they stumble their way through the building of their identities. Though it received mixed reviews and low box office on its release, it's a film that a lot of people seemed to have adored as teenagers (and which teenagers are apparently still discovering today). When you see it as an adult, it may have lost just a bit of its sparkle, but it remains an entertaining and engrossing film.

Review: Far From Heaven (2002)

* * * *
Director: Todd Haynes
Starring: Julianne Moore, Dennis Haysbert, Dennis Quaid

Todd Haynes is a filmmaker I’ve been aware of for a while now but until recently I’d never actually seen any of his films. I’d been meaning to see Far From Heaven for years but for some reason or another never got around to it. Recently seeing I’m Not There inspired me to seek out Haynes’ previous effort and I’m so glad I did, otherwise I’d have really missed out.

Inspired by the Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s, the film stars Julianne Moore as Cathy Whitaker, a housewife whose life seems picture perfect from the outside. She and her husband, Frank (Dennis Quaid), appear to be the model couple but even before Cathy discovers that Frank is leading a secret life, she knows that there’s something a little off about their relationship. When she and her girlfriends sit around the kitchen table discussing the frequency of their sex lives, she knows that her marriage is very different from those of other women, women whose husbands aren’t always working late and always too tired. She has no idea what, exactly, is wrong in her marriage until she sees Frank with another man and he confesses to having “a problem.” While he’s seeking therapy, Cathy develops a friendship with Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert), which quickly becomes the talk of the town due to the fact of Raymond being black.

The way that the film deals with issues of race is very compelling, especially when combined with its treatment of homosexuality. Both Cathy and Frank are horrified by Frank’s secret life, but his homosexuality is seen as something that he can “recover” from and is further seen as something which can be kept a secret – if people saw Frank and another man together on the street, they wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the two were lovers. Cathy’s relationship with Raymond, however, is something that people can see and Cathy being seen with Raymond is something that people talk about, something which has consequences for Cathy and her family in a social sense. The story may take place in the “progressive North,” but that doesn’t mean that racism isn’t any less socialized into people than it is in any other place.

The film gets a lot of things really right. The color pallet of the costumes, especially, is very evocative of films made in Hollywood in the 1950s with their rich, bright colors. Anyone familiar with 50s melodrama, particularly the films of Douglas Sirk, will recognize many of the themes and tropes of the genre in this film, as well as the more subtle language of coding. For example, while Frank is openly acknowledged by the film as being gay, there’s another character who appears briefly in one scene who is openly coded as being gay through his dress, mannerisms and speech patterns (you’ll know him the second you see him).

In its dealings with issues of race, Far From Heaven made me think of another relatively recent film: Pleasantville. While Pleasantville is heavy with irony, emphasizing the ways that the protagonists and the film itself are aware of and acknowledging the ways that values have changed since the 1950s, Far From Heaven approaches the subject in a way that is entirely sincere, reflecting the values and mores of the 1950s as if it was actually made in 1957, and not just set in 1957. This makes for really effective storytelling because it keeps the film from being preachy or winky and forces one to reflect on the ways that subtle and more overt forms of racism are still socialized into us today.

This is an incredibly thoughtful and well-made movie. The performance rendered by Julianne Moore, playing a woman who seems destined by her time and place to always be somehow unfulfilled, is excellent, perhaps one of the most unsung performances of the last decade. I’m only sorry it took me so long to finally see it.

Review: I'm Not There (2007)

* * * 1/2
Director: Todd Haynes
Starring: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw

This is how it’s done. Rather than forcing a narrative through-line on someone’s life, Todd Haynes’ fractured, jig-saw puzzle of a movie instead breaks the narrative apart and works to distil the essence of its subject, exploring the various personas of the man commonly known as Bob Dylan. Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, Marcus Carl Franklin, and Ben Wishaw are all on hand, each embodying a different facet of the man and the myth.

The six actors play six different characters (seven, depending on how you gage it): Bale is Jack Rollins, folk protest singer who eventually becomes Father John, the preacher; Ledger is Robbie, an actor who portrays Jack in a film; Franklin is Woody Guthrie, a young musician trying to reconcile those who have influenced him with the time in which he himself is creating; Blanchett is Jude Quinn, a self-consciously quirky star; Gere is Billy the outlaw; and Wishaw is Arthur, who is in the process of being interviewed. These different stories weave in and out of each other, comment on each other and, in some respects, work against each other to highlight the ways that "Bob Dylan" the public figure is ever changing, a series of different personas that have been given the opportunity to take center stage. Not all of these stories are successful - for me, the Billy sections were a little rambling and unfocused and I consistently felt my mind wandering. The film would have worked better, I think, if they’d cut this particular story out entirely.

However, even though I didn’t particularly care for his section of the film, Gere himself is quite good in the role. Billy is the most understated and unaffected of all the central characters, perhaps because he’s the only one who isn’t a direct evocation of Dylan himself but of a figure who inspired him. All of the actors playing facets of Dylan are very good, though Wishaw isn't given the opportunity to show much range in his portrayal. Everyone talks about the performance by Blanchett, and it must be admitted that something magical happens when she appears on screen, perfectly embodying the Dylan of Don’t Look Back, that maddening, self-constructed prophet and eccentric. This section of the film also features Bruce Greenwood as a British reporter who becomes Jude Quinn’s antagonist, seeing through his bullshit and challenging him on it. Greenwood is really great, matching Blanchett blow for blow, and also appears in the Billy sections as Pat Garrett, the man who (supposedly) killed Billy the Kid.

As far as a plot goes, there isn’t really that much to say. It’s an episodic film focusing on bits and pieces of public, private and musical life that are, obviously, reminiscent of or inspired by Dylan’s own life. These moments unfold in different ways, with the Robbie and Jack/John sections being the most straightforwardly told and the Jude, Woody and Billy stories playing out in a more dream-like fashion, surrealist in their construction, while Arthur acts as a connecting figure, a sort of Greek chorus waxing poetic as he’s being interviewed. The music, too, is a way of connecting the stories with the songs not only commenting on what’s going on, but also being used to segue from one story to another.

This is a really inspired film and, like La Vie En Rose, a welcome change of pace from the by the book musical biographies that have come out in the last few years.