Girard’s The Song of Names

It was a legendarily disastrous canceled concert, almost like a classical Frye Festival. The promoter was indeed ruined when Dovidl Rapaport failed to arrive for his much-anticipated concert debut. Unfortunately, that was Martin Simmonds’ father. For years, Simmonds searches for the man who was like a brother to him, hoping to find the closure he needs. It might not be fully satisfying, but at least he will have some answers when he finally tracks down the mysterious Rapaport in Francois Girard’s The Song of Names, which opens Christmas Day in New York.

Shortly before Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland, Simmonds’ father Gilbert took young  violin virtuoso Dovidl Rapaport into their home, promising to nurture his career from the presumed safety of London. Even though young Martin was jealous of Rapaport’s prodigious talents, he too took pride in protecting his surrogate brother. However, the uncertainty of his family’s fate back in Poland tormented Rapaport, causing anxiety that often manifested itself in boorish and anti-social ways. Nevertheless, his talent only grew. By the time he reached his early twenties, he recorded an album that electrified the critics. Everything was fine at the rehearsal and sound-checks, but when it was time for the uninsured concert to start, Rapaport was a no-show.

That betrayal of his family continues to haunt Simmonds for decades. Obsessively, he tracks leads that take him back to Communist era Poland, but to no avail. His wife Helen worries about the financial and emotional strain, but she still mostly accepts his quest for the truth.

It makes sense Girard, who helmed Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, would be interested in bringing music critic Norman Lebrecht’s novel to the big screen, because Rapaport’s artistic temperament is not completely dissimilar from Gould’s. Yet, Martin Simmonds is undeniably the film’s protagonist and the primary character everyone will identify with.

Tim Roth is terrific as Simmonds, humanizing his neuroses and making his obsessive behavior sympathetic rather than creepy. He also has some really smart and appealing chemistry with Catherine McCormack playing his wife, even though her character is somewhat thinly sketched. In contrast, Clive Owen emphasizes all of grown-up Rapaport’s rough edges and standoffishness. Frankly, he does some nice work, but he really helps tilt the film towards Roth’s Simmonds.

Last Knights: There Should Be About 47 of Them

Unfortunately, the early Eighteenth Century band of heroes known as the 47 Ronin were effectively defeated before they ever began to fight. With their lord disgraced and their clan evicted from its holdings, the masterless samurai achieved a measure of payback, but it only delayed the inevitable end demanded by their bushido code. Western concepts of honor and chivalry are somewhat different, but the wardrobe and weaponry are close enough for government work. It is a story Japanese filmmaker Kazuaki Kiriya must have heard countless times growing up. He now brings their classic tale west, resetting it in a Medieval European looking realm for his first English language production, Last Knights (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Lord Bartok is a wise and just clan leader, who also experiments with atonal composition. His forces are captained by Raiden, a warrior who rose up from the peasantry to be renowned for his badassery. While Bartok lands remain peaceful, trouble brews in the capitol, where the Emperor’s chancellor, Geza Mott has become brazen in his corruption. Bartok arrives at court to rally the noblemen against Mott, but he is outplayed by the tyrannical psychopath. Sadly, it will cost Bartok his head and the anguished Raiden will be the one to sever it.

The Bartok clan is dispossessed and dispersed, with his guardsmen assuming civilian jobs. They mostly get on with their new lives, except Raiden, who retreats inside a cask of ale. However, the paranoid Mott cannot believe the Bartok commander is not biding his time, which of course he is. Nevertheless, his honorable but honor-bound lieutenant Ito is convinced Raiden is the empty shell of a man he appears to be.

Evidently, this is the sort of empire Alexander aspired to rule, spanning all the known continents of the Middle Ages. Its relentlessly multi-ethnic composition makes little historical sense, but at least it allows Kiriya to assemble a truly international ensemble, including Morgan Freeman as Lord Bartok, Iranian Peyman Moaadi (best known for A Separation) as the Emperor, Norwegian Aksel Hennie (Headhunters) as Mott, and veteran Korean actor Ahn Sung-ki as his principled father-in-law, Lord Auguste. Some of that casting makes sense, some of it not so much.

Not surprisingly, Freeman gives an exquisitely dignified defiance-in-the-face-of-death speech that the film never really tops. Still, Ahn gives it all kinds of gravitas it would not otherwise have. To his credit, Hennie exhibits no shame or modesty hamming it up something fierce as Mott. It is also nice to see Shohreh Aghdashloo, no matter how briefly, as Lady Bartok. On the other hand, Moaadi just looks and sounds uncomfortable as the Emperor.

Clive Owen is relatively solid in the lead, since Raiden is definitely the strong, silent type. Frankly, he is one of the few name actors working today who is manly enough to swing a broad sword convincingly. Nevertheless, Tsuyoshi Ihara upstages everyone as Ito, the retainer disgusted by his master but duty-bound to do his bidding. He has first-class action chops, but also expresses his character’s classically tragic nature.

Knights is so obviously the 47 Ronin, it is weird the film does not make winking acknowledgement in some way, but perhaps the producers were a little skittish about the connection, given the egg laid at the box office by the Keanu Reeves remake. There is some decent swordplay in Knights, but also some awkward personal drama. Most of possum-playing Raiden’s scenes with his long suffering wife Naomi (Israeli Ayelet Zurer) are truly cringe-worthy. At least the film productively gets down to business when it is time to storm the castle. It is also strangely fascinating to spot each new nationality the filmmakers manage to inclusively shoehorn in. Recommended as a guilty pleasure for fans of swashbuckling with no pretense of verisimilitude, Last Knights opens this Friday (4/3) in New York, at the Quad Cinema.

Shadow Dancer: The Informer 2.0

They say peace finally came to Northern Ireland when both sides lost their appetite for killing.  Collette McVeigh’s family has not reached that point yet.  This makes her a potentially valuable source of information in James Marsh’s Shadow Dancer (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Young Collette was supposed to buy her father a pack of cigarettes, but she sent her brother instead.  The bullet that cut short his life would send her down the path of violent terrorism.  Even with a child to raise McVeigh stays active in the cause.  However, her latest mission is an unqualified disaster.  Her bomb fails to detonate, which is somewhat fortunate since she is also pinched by MI-5.  Her interrogator, Mac, has a rather awkward talk prepared for her.  That bullet that killed her brother?  Not British.  More to the point, if she ever wants to see her son again, McVeigh must start informing on her high ranking IRA brothers.

Kind of sort of agreeing, McVeigh stalls for time, but Mac forces her to commit.  Soon McVeigh navigates the perils of a double life, but her handler looks out for her interests as best he can.  Mac is old school.  He believes in protecting assets, so he is troubled by the actions of his superior, Kate Fletcher, who seems rather callously disinterested in McVeigh’s safety.

Shadow is bit of a slow starter, but it is a strong closer.  Largely (but not completely) de-politicized by Marsh, the film speaks more directly to the mindset of Eric Hoffer’s “true believer” rather than the particularly grievances of the Troubles.  Neither side exclusively represents the heroes or the villains.  Some individuals are simply more reasonable than others.  For instance, McVeigh’s brothers illustrate fanaticism at its worst, while Fletcher personifies Machiavellianism at its most cold blooded.

Marsh is a world class filmmaker, who seems to have a knack for gritty noir material, such as the middle (and best) film of the Red Riding trilogy.  In his hands, Shadow Dancer is as much a classical tragedy as it is a thriller.  McVeigh and Mac are both pawns trying to assert themselves in a fatally deterministic world.  In fact, the film’s pessimism is what really lingers with viewers.  Clearly, the terrorist mindset will always opt for blood over an honorable peace.  American audiences will also wonder if the aptness of McVeigh’s name was coincidental or intentional.

Clive Owen is fantastic as Mac, balancing his ruthlessness and humanity on a razor’s edge.  Likewise, Andrea Riseborough’s McVeigh looks like a stress fracture about to happen.  Red is definitely her color, but it is still a bit hard to see her as a potential temptress, which makes the evolution of her relationship with her handler somewhat problematic.  While she is not exactly a multidimensional character, as Fletcher, Gillian Anderson also gives an ice queen performance worthy of Kristin Scott Thomas.

Marsh meticulously sets the scene and methodically escalates the tension.  Adapting his own novel, screenwriter Tom Bradby fully establishes the sad internal logic of the late Troubles era.  Admirably free of sentimentality, Shadow Dancer mostly plays it straight (while not entirely reining-in a lingering bias against MI-5 and the police charged with maintaining public safety).  Worth seeing as a result, it opens this Friday (5/31) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.

Hemingway & Gellhorn: Papa Met His Match

Ernest Hemingway deliberately cultivated his notoriously macho image.  Yet, he somehow he found four women willing to marry him at various points of his life.  That was a lot of optimism, on everyone’s part.  Though she had the shortest tenure as a “Mrs. Hemingway,” war correspondent Martha Gellhorn was the most notable.  Matching and at times surpassing his feats of war zone journalistic daring, Gellhorn fired his passion and inspired his professional respect and jealousy.  Their tempestuous relationship is dramatized in Philip Kaufman’s HBO Film Hemingway & Gellhorn (trailer here) now currently airing on the network.

When ambitious young magazine writer Martha Gellhorn first meets the funky, grungy Hemingway in a Key West bar, they can barely resist tearing the clothes off each other.  The fact that he is married hardly matters to either of them.  However, their animal attraction will have to briefly wait until they reunite covering the Spanish Civil War, at the behest of ardent Spanish Republican supporter John Dos Passos.

Working with Dutch Communist documentarian-propagandist Joris Ivens, Hemingway and Dos Passos film The Spanish Earth (with Gellhorn tagging along), for the purpose of rallying American audiences to the Republican cause.  Frankly, it is considerable more compelling to watch their run-and-gun shooting process in H&G than the historical documentary itself.  That adrenaline also fuels the war reporters’ torrid affair.

Just like Hemingway and Gellhorn’s relationship, the film really clicks during their time together in Spain.  Viewers are served a liberal helping of Nationalist atrocities, but the portrayal of the Soviet forces is also refreshingly unvarnished, particularly with respects to fatal purging of heroic Loyalist soldier Paco Zarra, a stand-in for Dos Passos’ doomed friend José Robles.  While the literary power couple is shown fawning over Chou En-lai and sneering at the gauche Chiangs in China, Gellhorn also reports from Finland, unequivocally siding with the Finns against the Soviet invaders.

Unfortunately, the film loses vitality with the aging Hemingway, sliding into the long denouement of his dubious u-boat chasing Cuban years and sad final days in Idaho.  By the time America enters WWII, screenwriters Jerry Stahl and Barbara Turner clearly suggest Gellhorn was more of a man than Hemingway.  Of course, this is a common problem with bio-pics.  To be accurate, they can almost never end with the good stuff.

Regardless of his character arc, Clive Owen totally goes for broke as Hemingway.  One of the few actors working today who can come across as both manly and literate, he bellows and carouses with relish.  It is a larger than life performance, bordering on camp, yet he is still able to convey Hemingway’s inner demons and nagging self-doubts.  He also manages to dial it down periodically for some saucy Tracy-and-Hepburn bantering with Nicole Kidman’s Gellhorn.  Likewise, Kidman is on a very short list of actresses who can play smart, sophisticated, and alluring, simultaneously.  In fact, she could be channeling Hepburn and the Rosalind Russell of His Girl Friday as the fast-talking, khaki-wearing journalist crusading against injustice, which is frankly pretty cool.

In addition to the strong chemistry between the leads, H&G boasts a strong supporting ensemble.  David Strathairn is particularly engaging as the disillusioned idealist, Dos Passos, serving as a subtle corrective to Hemingway’s ethical malleability.  Metallica’s Lars Ulrich adds notable color as Ivens, while Tony Shaloub conveys a sense of both the menace and tragedy of the Stalinist true believer Mikhal Koltsov, who is considered to be the source for the Karkov character in For Whom the Bell Tolls.  Again, the most inspired work comes during or prior to the Spanish Civil War sequences.

Frequently approximating the look of black-and-white news reels and Ivens’ documentary footage, H&G is highly cinematic (getting a vital assist from cinematographer Rogier Stoffers).  Kaufman is a big canvas filmmaker, with sufficient artistic stature to merit a recent MoMA film retrospective—a high honor indeed.  While steamier and gossipier than The Right Stuff, it is downright staid compared to his Henry & June and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. 

An appropriately messy film sprawling all over the place, H&G is rather rowdily entertaining, capturing good deal more historical insight than one would expect.  Definitely recommended for those who appreciate the Hemingway oeuvre and persona (as well admirers of Gellhorn or Dos Passos), Hemingway & Gellhorn airs again on HBO June 2^nd, 7^th, 10^th, 11^th, 15^th, and 19^th and on HBO2 on June 4^th, 6^th, 12^th, 17^th, 21^st, 25^th, and 30^th.