Review: Miracle At St. Anna (2008)

* * 1/2
Director: Spike Lee
Starring: Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller, Matteo Sciabordi

Whatever else you can say about Spike Lee, you can’t say that he’s an artist who is shy about expressing his point of view. In Miracle At St. Anna he explores the experiences of black soldiers in World War II, focusing specifically on the incongruity of asking these men to sacrifice their lives for a country which, in so many respects, doesn’t consider itself their country. One half of this movie is absolutely astounding, the other half is abysmal – it’s almost hard to believe that the whole thing comes from just one filmmaker.

It begins in New York in the 1980s with a postal worker shooting a customer. Shortly thereafter the story flashes back to Italy in 1944 when this same man, whom we learn is named Hector Negron (Laz Alonso), is preparing to cross a river to attack the Nazis on the other side. As Hector and the rest of the company - which includes Stamps (Derek Luke), Cummings (Michael Ealy), and Train (Omar Benson Miller) – prepare to cross, the Nazis blast the radio so that they’re forced to listen to Axis Sally, who asks them why they’re so eager to die for a country that treats them like second class citizens – good enough to die but not good enough to vote. Fighting on the river is fierce but the four make it across where they find themselves more or less abandoned because their white superior officer refuses to believe that they were actually able to accomplish the objective.

While the fighting is still going on Train finds Angelo (Matteo Sciabordi), a young Italian boy who is injured after the roof of a barn collapses on him. Train insists that they bring Angelo with them as they try to make their way back behind American lines and the five set off together, eventually ending up in a small village where they learn that they’re more or less surrounded by Nazis. In the village they meet a series of characters, amongst them Renata (Valentina Cervi), an Italian woman who will prove to be a source of discord between Stamps and Cummings, Peppi (Pierfrancesco Favino), a partisan known as “The Butterfly,” and Rodolfo (Sergio Albelli), a man who has a sinister connection to Angelo.

If Saving Private Ryan is the benchmark for battle scenes, Miracle At St. Anna more than lives up to that standard. The battle for the river and the fighting which will occur later through the narrow streets of the village are amongst the most visceral and finely focused that I have ever seen. Everything about these scenes is top notch and there are several quieter scenes that are just as powerful. There is a lot of debate amongst the four soldiers about why they’re there, what they’re fighting for, what they expect to get out of it when they go home. Stamps confesses to Hector that he feels more welcome in Italy than he ever has in his own hometown, and there’s a flashback in which the four soldiers are denied service in a Southern diner where no one thinks twice about serving four German POWs. There is a great deal of value in these scenes but it’s easy to lose sight of that when they’re sandwiched between scenes and plot elements that just don’t work.

At nearly 3 hours Miracle At St. Anna is bloated by too much story, too many characters, too many subplots, and too many changes in tone. There are scenes which drift unsuccessfully towards the comedic and feel like they belong in a different movie than the scenes I mentioned above. There are other scenes, specifically those which take place in the film’s present day and serve as bookends for the story proper, which are overwrought and border on maudlin. The end result is a film that seems tangled and messy and ultimately quite frustrating.

LAMB Movie of the Month: Eurotrip (2004)

* * *
Director: Jeff Schaffer
Starring: Scott Mechlowicz, Jacob Pitts, Travis Wester, Michelle Trachtenberg

I’ll be honest: I didn’t expect to like Eurotrip. In fact, I might not even have seen it had I not stumbled across it on TV the other night and thought to myself, “Hey, that’s the LAMB's Movie of the Month, maybe I’ll give it a shot after all.” I remained wary for the first few minutes and then it happened: Matt Damon showed up and suddenly everything was okay.

Scott (Scott Mechlowicz), Cooper (Jacob Pitts), Jamie (Travis Wester) and Jenny (Michelle Trachtenberg) have just graduated from high school and Scott has been unceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend. He has a German pen pal named Mieke, which Scott believes to be German for “Mike,” who sends condolences and asks if Scott wants to arrange a meeting. Drunk and thinking that maybe Cooper was right about Mieke being an online sexual predator, Scott tells the “German freak” to leave him alone. In the morning, however, he discovers that Mieke is actually pronounced “Mika” and that she’s the buxom blond girl rather than the tall, gangly guy in the photo sent to Scott. Since Mieke has now blocked him from sending her messages, Scott (with some prompting from Cooper) decides to go to Berlin and track her down.

So that’s the set-up which leads to the following: Scott and Cooper, low on funds, agree to courier something to London as a means of getting to Europe then wander into the wrong bar and end up being adopted by a gang of soccer hooligans. In Paris they run into Jamie and Jenny, who agree to accompany them to Berlin with a few stops (both planned and unplanned) along the way which leads to a lot of drinking, sex, and one very wrong kiss.

There are a few things which ultimately won me over:

1. Scotty doesn’t know
2. Robot fight (“You are not a robot!”)
3. Random Eastern European dog with a human hand in its mouth
4. Xena: Vundersexxx dominatrix
5. Scotty doesn’t know – I realize that I already said that but damn that song was catchy

Eurotrip is a very silly movie but it’s also pretty funny and a lot less offensive than most teen sex comedies. It’s refreshingly equal opportunity in terms of nudity, eagerly showcasing both naked women and naked men, though it should be noted that the women are of the young and nubile variety while the men are of the middle-aged and saggy variety. Progress occurs in small increments. Eurotrip isn’t a great movie but I don’t think it’s aspiring to be either; I think this is exactly the movie that it wants to be so it would be difficult to argue that it isn’t successful.

A Few Words About Paul Newman

1925-2008

If memory serves me right, the first Paul Newman movie I ever saw was Slap Shot. I was probably about 10 and my dad had rented it in order to keep my brother and I occupied for a couple of hours, having remembered liking it but apparently having forgotten all the things that might make it a bit objectionable for two kids to watch. In the years since I continued to discover and rediscover Newman in other films and found him to be a consistently solid actor and consistently likeable – even when he was playing characters you shouldn’t like under any circumstances.

If I had to choose my favourite Newman performance, I suppose that I would ultimately pick his portrayal of the title character in Hud. I know from having read interviews that he was uncomfortable with the fact that Hud ascended to a kind of heroic status in pop culture, but I’m not sure that it could have ever been any other way. Newman is so good in this role, brings so much dimension and vitality to it, that even when you hate Hud, you also empathize with him. It’s a testament to Newman’s ability that the character strikes such a resonant chord and that so many of his other characters do the same.

Newman was one in a million. He was just as talented as Marlon Brando or Montgomery Clift and just as cool as James Dean or Steve McQueen, but he lacked their self-destructive tendencies. He didn’t flame out or let off-screen antics overshadow his talent. Instead he gave us five decades of solid work in front of and behind the camera, creating a varied tableau of films and characters that any actor would covet.

Given the frequency with which the media reported on his failing health over the summer, Newman’s passing isn’t particularly surprising, but it does make me particularly sad. I find myself feeling the way that I felt when Katherine Hepburn or Gregory Peck or Marlon Brando died, as if another inch of the curtain was falling on an era when being a movie star meant more than just being a famous actor. Newman had that old school glamour, that old school charisma that can’t be faked or imitated, that just is. They don’t make 'em like this anymore and he leaves behind a void that will never be filled.

Rest in peace, Mr. Newman. You've earned it.

Review: Witness For The Prosecution (1957)

* * * *
Director: Billy Wilder
Starring: Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power

It doesn’t get much better than this: a well-constructed courtroom drama with a great twist (crafted by Agatha Christie, no less), Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, and Billy Wilder. I've seen this movie a few times and each time I find myself falling in love with it all over again. It's the mark of a good mystery that even when you know the secret, you can still feel excited watching the revelation play out again.

Charles Laughton stars as Sir Wilfred Robarts, a celebrated barrister recovering from a heart attack and now saddled with a bossy nurse (Elsa Lanchester) who is determined to break him of all his bad habits and make sure that he gets the rest he needs. However no sooner is Wilfred back home than a case comes to him that proves to be irresistible: Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power) is accused of romancing and then murdering a wealthy older woman – a crime which he insists he didn’t commit. His wife (Marlene Dietrich) backs up his protestations of innocence but does so in a manner which inspires more questions than it answers. It isn’t such a great shock, then, when she turns out to be the prosecution’s surprise witness. What is shocking is what happens next, which I wouldn’t dare reveal.

The joys of this film are myriad and begin with Laughton who brings a sharp intelligence to his crusty character. Whether he’s arguing points of law in the courtroom – which, as a slight aside, occurs with refreshing frequency here; this is easily one of the more realistic courtroom dramas I’ve ever seen – or telling his nurse to “shut up,” he brings a kind of rough charm to the role. If the film consisted entirely of just one long monologue by Laughton, it would still be entirely worth watching, listening to him is that enjoyable.

The other great performance is by Dietrich who appears coolly elegant and wholly detached but is harbouring hidden depths and secrets. Mrs. Vole is a German immigrant, rescued from the post war rubble by Leonard and brought to England for a better life. I’ve long felt that Dietrich is at her best in roles like this one and those she played in Judgment At Nuremberg and A Foreign Affair, where she plays survivors of German post war reconstruction and the filmmakers allow her to hit on subtle notes of xenophobia (part of the reason Wilfred thinks she'd make a bad witness for the defense is her accent and, indeed, the courtroom audience's reaction to her adds credence to that) and misogyny. When she and Leonard meet, she’s performing in a cabaret where the soldiers treat her like she’s up for grabs and later she and Leonard make an agreement to trade coffee for sexual favour – post war reconstruction is never a good time to be a woman, but in none of these roles does Dietrich ever seem desperate. Instead she brings a strength and grace to the roles which make it clear that she’s playing women who will always find a way to survive (one of my favourite movie speeches is her “I kept going” speech from A Foreign Affair).

Laughton earned a well deserved Oscar nomination for his role, while Dietrich was passed over for her great supporting turn (a fact which was, by all accounts, quite devastating to her because she was so convinced that she would be nominated). Both actors absolutely shine, as does Lanchester in her small role. As for Power, he’s never really quite clicked for me in this role, partly because it’s hard to buy him as an Englishman when he makes absolutely no attempt to alter his very American midwest accent. For me, though, Power is the only flaw in an otherwise perfect film.

Canadian Film Review: Days of Darkness (2007)

* * * *
Director: Denys Arcand
Starring: Marc Lebreche, Diane Kruger

It would be easy to call Days of Darkness an American Beauty retread, as Denys Arcand’s film centers on an unhappy suburbanite who is disrespected by his children and married to a woman (a realtor, no less) who has no interest in him sexually or otherwise, and who has a terrifically active fantasy life which threatens to usurp his real life in importance. The comparisons come easily and criticism based on those comparisons are, to an extent, valid. However, to dismiss the film so easily would mean missing the absolute charm of this very intelligent and very funny film.

Jean-Marc (Marc Labreche) is a middle-aged civil servant who hates his job, is unhappily married and ignored by his two daughters, helpless in the face of his mother’s terminal illness, and spends most of his day escaping into fantasies, most of which involve a revolving cast of women in various states of undress. However, his fantasies aren’t solely about scantily clad women who find him irresistible; he also fantasizes about becoming somebody, writing a book or being elected into office – anything different from his actual job. Jean-Marc uses his fantasies just to get through his days, but soon these aren’t enough: His wife (Sylvie Leonard) leaves him to run off with her boss to Toronto, his mother dies, he walks out of his job and crashes his car. It’s time for him to make a change, to start living life outside his head, and set himself on a path towards happiness.

The world in which Jean-Marc lives is like our own but slightly exaggerated, making for situations and problems which can seem both far fetched and frighteningly feasible at the same time. He works for the government, sitting behind a desk as various people come to him seeking help for problems that he has no ability to solve. One man lost his legs when a street lamp fell on him and now the government expects him to pay half the cost of putting up a new one. A woman’s husband is taken away by the police, suspected of being a terrorist simply because he’s Arab. There’s nothing Jean-Marc can do; his best suggestion is that she try to become friends with a celebrity and thereby bring enough publicity to the situation to embarrass the government into letting her husband go. Despite the fact that no one is ever actually helped by the ministry, there’s always a long line-up downstairs, one which often becomes unmovable due to the fact that the employees are constantly being taken away from their work to attend meetings to boost morale or find ways to achieve greater harmony between yin and yang in the office set-up.

There are a lot of really great sequences in the film, but I think my favourite involves Jean-Marc’s attempt at speed dating. After meeting with several women who dismiss him immediately for various reasons including the fact that he’s had a vasectomy, doesn’t work out, and drives a Hyundai, he finally meets a woman who has as rich a fantasy life as his own (two words: medieval festival). However, she turns out to be a little too into her fantasy world, reaffirming for him that a little bit of reality can go a long way.

The central performance by Labreche is engaging and, to various degrees, relatable and there are fine supporting performances by the actresses playing the myriad women in his life, including Diane Kruger, who appears as his go-to fantasy woman. Comparisons to American Beauty are inescapable but, for me, this is the more resonant film. I've always been a little put off by the casual misogyny of Sam Mendes' film, while this one is self-aware enough to be able to diffuse those "iffy" elements by consigning them to the realm of fantasy and making it clear that these fantasies, rather than empowering Jean-Marc, simply act as crutches and hold him back.