New movie review

This may seem like blog filler. You're probably right, but here it is anyway. My latest review for film criticism class is about the German nominee for the best foriegn film Oscar. Next week: Puccini for Beginners, a silly, lightweight lesbian romantic comedy that I thought was funny and enjoyable, but everyone else in class *hated*. Enjoy.

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Captain Wiesler's emotionless mask of a face seemingly tells us everything we need to know. As yet another suspected subversive is brought before him, the East German State Security officer coolly prepares to inflict the inevitable hours of psychological torture that will follow. The young man pleads that he has done nothing wrong, but Wiesler tells him, entirely without irony, that "if you believe we arrest people on a whim, that alone is enough to justify your arrest."

The Lives of Others, the feature debut of German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, introduces its main character in bravura fashion. The questioning of the young man is intercut with a lecture Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe) gives at a college, using audiotape of the suspect's whimpering collapse to illustrate proper interrogation technique. When one man in the classroom complains that what is being done is "inhuman," Wiesler discreetly puts a damning mark next to the student's name.

Quite simply, Wiesler appears to be more machine than man, the living embodiment of the declared goal of the State Security Ministry, or Stasi: "To know everything." Yet Muhe's expertly textured performance shows that life in a all-powerful police state can take a profound toll on those in power, as well the people they control.

Set (perhaps not coincidentally) in 1984, the film masterfully recreates the fear and oppression that pervaded life in Communist East Germany. No one is exempt from suspicion and widespread wiretapping means that no one's life is really their own. Bloated, corrupt bureaucrats divide their time between squelching every individual freedom and denying that any such thing could happen in their worker's paradise. Even scenes that don't deal directly with state control still carry a dark air of lurking menace, reinforced by the bleak grey winter setting.

The evocatively titled The Lives of Others follows Wiesler as he is reassigned from the interrogation chamber to a surveillance mission directed at playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his beautiful actress girlfriend Christa-Marie Sieland (Martina Gedeck). Although Dreyman is outwardly supportive of the regime (he’s hailed as "our only non-subversive writer" by one Party official), his association with a blacklisted director makes him suspect.

Once agents enter Dreyman's apartment and, in a chilling, wordless sequence filled with dramatic swells of music, bugs every square inch of it, Wiesler's job is to listen to everything the couple does and says every hour of the day.

At first, Wiesler’s cold stare betrays nothing of his thoughts as he sits wearing headphones and listening to the minutiae of everyday life (although the lingering shots confirm that Muhe bears an uncanny resemblance to Kevin Spacey). But soon, two things become clear that challenge his convictions.

Dreyman is indeed engaged in “subversive” activities -- he is secretly writing an article for a West German magazine about the East’s appalling rate of suicide, which claimed his blacklisted friend. But at the same time, Wiesler realizes that he has come to care for his quarry far more than he expected. The exact moment when Wiesler makes the shift from the couple’s unseen tormentor to their equally invisible protector is so subtle as to be almost imperceptible. But after that, there is no going back.

Ensconced in his surveillance post, Wiesler repeatedly puts his own neck on the line to help Dreyman and Sieland avoid suspicion, all without them ever knowing who he is, or that they are under surveillance. Even with expert help from the inside, however, the tentacles of the police state prove difficult to escape.

The film belongs to Muhe, who conveys Wiesler’s utter transformation from heartless party functionary to stalwart force for good with only minimal dialogue, using his eyes and expression to tell the story. On paper, such a drastic change in character may ring false and unbelievable, but Muhe pulls it off with aplomb.

As Dreyman, a thoroughly decent man caught in impossible circumstances, Koch provides an genial moral center for the film, managing not to be beaten down by oppressive forces until they become overpowering.

Gedeck has the difficult role Christa-Maria, who alternates between heartbreaking loyalty to Dreyman and self-destructive fear of the government. The strength of her performance is evident in a late scene where Christa-Marie is given a choice between doing the right thing and saving herself. The audience knows she could go either way, and her consideration of the question is agonizing.

Henckel von Donnersmarck’s direction skillfully maintains suspense throughout the 2 hour and 20 minute film by emphasizing the potential threat to the characters from several angles. We worry first that Dreyman will be turned in by Wiesler for subversion, then that Wiesler will be found out for helping Dreyman, then that the whole scheme will collapse under its own weight.
When there’s endless danger, there are endless opportunities for drama, and even if some of the characters and subplots in the middle of the film feel extraneous, they don’t distract from the story, which ends satisfyingly with a coda set after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

According to a May 2006 story in the Boston Globe, the fictional film caused a political commotion in Germany when it was released. Up to that point, the Stasi surveillance and the totalitarian Communist regime had almost never been publicly discussed in the country before that, either in popular culture or politics.

“It's forbidden by law to deny the crimes of the Nazis,” German historian Hubertus Knabe says in the article. “But it's almost forbidden by custom since reunification to really discuss the crimes of the regime that turned East Germany into a prison."

The Lives of Others was credited with opening a dialogue and counteracting a movemen by former Stasi officers who had been trying to rehabilitate their image, claiming that everything they did was to protect the country from its enemies. The film was a box-office success in Germany, won seven German Film Awards, and now has a chance to add an Oscar, as one of this year’s very deserving nominees for best foreign language film.

Royalty in Harlem

Prince Charles visited my neighborhood today. (I was holed up in the library all day). That is all.

My first review for class

This is the first review I wrote my film criticism class, about director Anthony Minghella's new film Breaking and Entering, if anyone is interested in reading it. Today's movie, and next week's review, is the German nominee for the best foreign film Oscar, The Lives of Others.

For now, back to the thesis. *sigh*

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Writer-director Anthony Minghella's three previous films were based on novels that among them had won an Edgar Allen Poe Award, the Booker Prize, and the National Book Award. Perhaps emboldened by his success at transforming classy books into classy films (which earned him Best Screenplay Oscar nominations for The Talented Mr. Ripley and The English Patient), Minghella strikes out on his own with an original screenplay for his new film Breaking and Entering, but proves that perhaps he should stick with the high-toned literary fiction for inspiration.

A departure from the grand scale of several of his previous films, including Cold Mountain in 2003, Breaking and Entering is decidedly small-time, with a plot that would barely support an hour-long TV drama, never mind a two-hour film. In brief: successful architect Jude Law mounts his own investigation into a series of break-ins at his London office, tracks the teenage suspect home and complicates matters by falling for the young man's lonely, wounded mother (Juliette Binoche), while hiding the affair from his long-time partner (Robin Wright Penn). That's about the gist of the story, at once simple and artificial. The film proceeds pretty much exactly you'd expect from that outline, but is larded with so many misguided subplots and big ideas introduced and left dangling that it gives the impression of a short-story collection tossed in a blender.

For starters, the young thief and his mother are refugees from Bosnia, with Binoche's character struggling with the trauma of the war a decade later and the son having fallen in with a poorly-sketched gang led by his family's criminal side. Law's architect is working on a project to revitalize the blighted King's Cross neighborhood where his office is located, prompting many comments that he's made himself a target for crime. Law and Penn bicker over their stalled, decade-long relationship which has yet to result in marriage, and about his alternately warm and cold relationship with Penn's autistic teenage daughter (Poppy Rogers). None of these issues are treated with insight beyond mere platitudes, and few result in any dramatic payoff, since there's no real need for the characters to be Bosnian, autistic, or building a socially controversial project. The details seem designed mostly to prop up the flimsy plot by referencing Important Issues, rather than to move the story along. And I haven't even mentioned the suspicions cast on the office's Carribean cleaning staff after the robbery, the infatuation Law's business partner has with one of the cleaners, a farcical but chaste but encounter with a local prostitute, or the mystifyingly symbolic fox howling in Law's garden. The film shifts gears so often, it should probably have its transmission checked.

Despite having so much going on, it never feels as though there is much of anything at stake in the film. The young burglar's bleak future should he be arrested is unconvincingly discussed several times in what ends up amounting to a central theme, but the question of why we should care about any of these people hangs over the film. An odd sense of pacing doesn't help matters, with major characters dropping out of sight for long stretches of time, only to re-emerge and become less interesting.

All of the narrative clutter would be annoying, but not fatal, if the central storyline was able to build momentum and interest. Unfortunately, the Law-Binoche romance is not only hopelessly contrived, but even baffling. Law chances across Binoche's character on the street (he gives her a towel after she falls in a puddle) shortly before he discovers her son is behind the titular crime. When he scopes out the apartment on the pretense of taking advantage of her home seamstress operation, there's little to suggest he's interested in anything another than finding evidence against her son -- until he kisses her and the film veers off into another direction, where it will remain mired for the rest of its running time. The reason for their attraction is never made clear, apart from rudimentary suggestions that Law's relationship with his girlfriend is on the rocks and Binoche is a beautiful immigrant abroad without a man. Such whisper-thin ideas are hardly enough on which to support an entire film, but that's what Breaking and Entering tries to do. The truth of the story is tough to swallow as it is, but when Law later concocts an even more convoluted fictional version of events in court late in the film, a lawyer speaks for the audience by exclaiming, "Are we supposed to believe this?"

Throughout the film, Law (in his third collaboration with Minghella) is something of a cipher, pleasantly babbling in his foppish Hugh Grant manner while utterly masking the character's real feelings and motivation. How does he feel about his cross-cultural affair, his ostensibly high-minded but potentially problematic community development project, or even his sweet but difficult stepdaughter? If we have any idea, it's mostly guesswork, since Law's unchanging demeanor (and Minghella's script) betrays almost none of the character's thought process. He could be a cad, or well-meaning but confused, or some combination thereof, but mostly he's mysterious, and not in a good way. If only in contrast, Binoche and Penn fare somewhat better, embodying thanklessly limited roles with more believability and charisma that Law is able to provide.

Absent the words of authors like Patricia Highsmith and Charles Frazier to work from, Minghella's screenplay is almost comically clunky. "I don't know how to be honest. I guess that's why I like metaphors, " Law says (really) in one climactic scene. This after painstakingly explaining the concept of the metaphor in earlier scenes to his literal-minded stepdaughter, whose autism prevents her from understanding terms like "fed up." For a script so seemingly concerned with literary devices, it never once displays confidence that the viewer is capable of understanding them. And yet, the film is mistakenly confident that audiences have a desire to see a standard adultery plot recycled once again, with little to distinguish it besides the names on the marquee.

The science of procrastination

While immersed in one of my usual procrastination binges, I came across this article about why people procrastinate. Very meta. Is reading scientific research about why people procastinate a form of procrastination? I submit that it is not, provided one makes use of it to avoid procrastinating. To wit, I'm hoping that by posting it here, I shall will myself into doing work by forcing quotes like this into my brain:

"On the one hand, it's easy to trivialize procrastination. We joke about it," says Timothy A. Pychyl, a psychologist at Carleton University who studies procrastination.

"But procrastination is self-defeating. It's a breakdown in volitional action. I have an intention and I'm not following through on it. You're not able to follow through on what you want to do."

There's a handy-dandy formula at the bottom of the story that illustrates the optimum conditions for procastination, and certainly rings true. Now, back to work. Right?!?

Another class with my name on it

Today I was joined by four of my J-school classmates in scoping out the “TV as Dramatic Medium” class in the film school. I think we were all sold within the first few minutes, when the professor said “This is a class for people who LOVE TV. If you don’t really like TV, or you’re skeptical about it, that’s fine, but you’re in the wrong class.” The idea is to study TV as an art form in terms of plot and character development, and how the shows are created and written, the same way film is studied seriously.

The syllabus she handed out includes a long list of 16 shows we’ll be discussing and TV as an art form, from The West Wing to Deadwood to Scrubs. Actually, a lot of these shows I haven’t seen, but now I’ve got an excuse: I’ve got to watch them for class! Between this class and the film criticism one discussed below, this is going to be quite the semester. Studying TV and movies for school…oh man, so psyched. (Kate, C, and my other fellow entertainment-obsessives: if you ever happen to be in New York on a Tuesday at 2 p.m. or a Wednesday at 10 a.m., maybe you could sit in!)

Too bad I didn’t bring my TV with me to New York, on the premise I’d be too busy to watch TV, but my I guess my Netflix account is going to get a workout. Right after class, one of my friends signed up for Netflix for the purposes of the class, and I got to watch her face as she discovered the marvels of the site for the first time: “They’ve got everything! This is like Christmas!” Sweet.

Getting ready for Sunday's game

Today the Globe considers the question of "Just how devastating would an Adam Vinatieri game-winner be for the Patriots?" I think the less time I spend thinking about the former New England hero kicking for the Colts, the better, but I found their scenario pretty funny:

Adam Vinatieri has never missed in the RCA Dome.

Never missed.

You just know that has to be a source of concern for them this week, a potentially devastating regional nightmare if he were to be the one to vault the Colts into the Super Bowl with a game-winning kick.

If it comes down to a Vinatieri kick this time around, perhaps the only way Indy fans don't go home happy is if Vinatieri is pulling a setup with Belichick, simultaneously shanking the kick wide right and tearing off his Colts jersey to reveal Pat Patriot on his chest, the greatest undercover gag ever.

Back to class (and the blog)

To bookend things with my last post, which was on the night before the last day of the first semester, I thought I’d write today, the night of the first day of the second semester. What have I been up to for the last month? Less than I can really believe. I went home to Maine for about a week and a half between Christmas and New Years, where I spent a lot of time with my family and relatively little else. On New Years Eve, my friends and I went to L.L. Bean! Since they never close (they say the doors don’t have locks) they hosted the only free New Years event I could find in Maine. It was very…Maine-y. Down East comedian Tim Sample was the MC for the thing, which was held outdoors in the freezing cold next to a big statue of a boot. They apparently couldn’t get fireworks for some reason, so at midnight, so they showed pictures of fireworks on big screens and played fireworks sound effects. Woo! Maine!

I came back to New York on Jan. 2, ostensibly to get down to brass tacks working on my thesis. I did some interviews and wrote up my notes, but a lot of time was spent staring at my computer screen thinking about how I’m ever going to write 10,000 words, as unproductive hours sped by at a rapid pace. I’ve still got two weeks before the rough draft is due, so I’m counting on my ability to respond well to deadline pressure and get things done in the clutch (although right now, I’m writing this blog before going to an J-school welcome back party, so coming through in the clutch will have to wait for now…) That skill did serve me well in the first semester. (One of the stories I wrote, about an exhibition of art made out of Tupperware, was conceived at about 6 p.m. the night before it was due. I went to the exhibit at 7 p.m., stayed until 9 p.m. or so, then went back and wrote it until 1 a.m. I’d lost all ability to tell if it was any good at that point, but my professor really liked it. Which led to me doing the same thing, in a less rushed fashion, on other assignments.)

With memories of my insanely busy first semester schedule still in my mind, I decided to take last weekend to do something completely ridiculous and frivolous while I still could. I went all the way to my relatives’ house in Springfield, Mass. and back in one day, just to watch the Patriots came. My cousin suggested it, and while ordinarily that would seem like a totally crazy thing to do, I took her up on it. Travel time considerably exceeded the length of the game, but it was worth it to see the awesome and to get out of town for probably the last time until graduation in May. I left my apt. at 10 a.m., took the 11 a.m. train from Grand Central, and got to New Haven at 1 p.m., where my cousin (seen below in the massage chair) picked me up and drove the hour to Springfield. The game started at 4:30 p.m. and ended at 8 p.m., whereupon the entire maneuver started again, getting me home at 1 a.m. Like I said, silly, but surprisingly fun.

A class with my name on it

For the second semester, we’re required to take two classes outside the journalism school, and I think I’ve found two good ones. Number one: “TV as Dramatic Medium” (which starts tomorrow.) Number two: “Writing Film Criticism.” Woot! I sat in on the film criticism class today, and it was unusual, to say the least. The professor is Andrew Sarris, the film critic for the New York Observer, who’s 78 years old and had previously written for the Village Voice since 1960. He’s rambly and funny and said things like “I’m on my last legs” and “I don’t want to teach this course, but they make me.”

But it seems like it’ll be fun. Every week in class, we just watch whatever movie he’ll be reviewing for the paper, then talk about it and write our own reviews for next week. I’m not sure how much I’ll actually *learn* doing this, but since I pretty much came to Columbia with the intention of one day being a movie critic, I don’t think I can pass that up. Also we get to see movies no one else has seen yet -- today we watched Anthony Minghella’s new film “Breaking and Entering” with Jude Law and Juliette Binoche. It was pretty lame – very simplistic adultery plot adorned with lots of “big ideas” that go nowhere – but I think I’ll be fun to write about. If I stick with the class, I’ll post my reviews on the blog.