Mission Impossible 4: The Ghost Protocol

Imagine you’re Ethan Hunt. You’re chilling out at a plush beach resort, knocking back a cold beer and eyeing the cheese. Your bikini-clad waitress brings you one of those drinks with an umbrella in it. You clearly didn’t order it but it does look interesting, and you aren’t inclined to say no to her. But then, that umbrella turns out to be a messaging device that says something on the lines of:

A megalomaniac has obtained control of a nuclear device and is likely to detonate it in x hours. The world teeters on the brink of destruction. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to stop said megalomaniac and save the world. If you are stupid or unlucky enough to get caught while doing this, we strongly recommend suicide, ’cause we’ll disavow you and you really don’t wanna drop the soap in the showers of those foreign prisons. This message will self-destruct in five seconds.

It’s that highlighted phrase that always gets to me. Ask yourself how likely it is that you’ll say: “Nah, I’m having too good a time here. You carry on without me. I’m sure there are other  agents chomping at the bit and hoping I’ll turn this one down so that they can get a nice bullet point on their resume.”

Maybe it does happen sometimes. Maybe, like Terry Pratchett says, in some other universes this would be a very short movie. But he does choose to accept it, and it isn’t such a short movie after all, but it does manage not to outstay its welcome.

As thrill-a-minute rides go, though, this one is more entertaining than most. For one thing, the action set pieces are as spectacular as one would hope. For another, the movie plays like the other MI/Bond movies would play if all those cool gadgets worked like they really do in the universe we inhabit. The device conveying the mission brief doesn’t always self-destruct on schedule, for instance.

And yet our intrepid heroes keep plugging away and finding ways around all those little glitches, even if they’re hanging from a glass wall on the Burj Khalifa. And while they do this, they find time for the odd wisecrack or two. The actors inhabiting these roles (Tom Cruise, Paula Patton, Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg) do a wonderful job of making it all work. The villain (Michael Nykvist, who plays Mikael Blomkvist in the Swedish film versions of the Steig Larsson novels) doesn’t have much to do, primarily because his opponents are more busy debugging than saving the world from him. But what little screen time he has, he uses effectively. Anil Kapoor is present primarily for comic relief (although I am not entirely convinced that this was intentional).

Here’s the thing, really: I watched the entire movie questioning every little thing that went wrong, asking myself how it would all get explained in the end by some grand plot twist. With that came the realization that, had it not been for the labyrinthine deceptions that characterized the first movie in the series, I would probably have just leaned back and let things go bang all around me.

Baradwaj Rangan, in his review of the movie, says:

They could design a game from these films. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to recount the plot in detail.

Personally, I liked it better when that mission was impossible.

 

Women at work

Over the past few months, I have watched three wonderful films that have made a deep impression on me. All three involve strong women who start from humble backgrounds and work their way up.  The men along the way are sometimes supportive, sometimes not. But these stories are not really about women versus men — they are about women finding within themselves, the strength to shape their destinies. That there are unsupportive men around is simply one more obstacle for them to negotiate.

Conviction

A man is wrongfully convicted of murder and spends the better part of his adult life in prison before his sister proves his innocence and has him released. The story is not about him, though — it is about how a high school dropout and housewife and mother of two decides to get her high school diploma and then put herself through college and law school so that she could fight her brother’s case herself. If it weren’t a true story, I’d probably have dismissed it as one more instance of Hollywood putting dramatic impact above plausibility.

That the man is played by Sam Rockwell might not come as a surprise, but it is easy to imagine a number of other talented character actors in the role. But can you think of anybody else except Hillary Swank in his sister’s role?

There is a moment when she visits her brother in prison after he has just tried to kill himself. Watch the way she reacts to this and gently extracts from him, a promise never to do that again. I was reminded for a moment of Laura Linney’s performance in Love Actually, where she reacts to her brother losing control and trying to hit her. It is not a note readily suggested by the plot, but it is what lets Swank differentiate this character from the other strong women she has played before.

Made in Dagenham

As late as the second half of the last century, most companies in the industrialized world still paid women less than men for doing the same work. Then a bunch of women who used to stitch the upholstery on Ford cars at one of their plants in the UK decided to go on strike in protest. It snowballed into a nationwide movement, embarrassed the Labour Government which was in power at that time and led to the creation of new legislation mandating equal pay for women and men. Other nations followed suit.

The movement is spearheaded by a woman named Rita O’Grady (a composite character based on a number of real ones), played by Sally Hawkins. This is the first movie I have seen her in and, if this performance is any indication, I will eagerly look forward to watching anything else starring her, even if it turns out to be a commercial for some brand of fabric softener.

The crucial exchange, for me, is one she has with her husband late in the movie when he claims to have been a good husband because he doesn’t get drunk or abusive. Her response to that is: That is as it should be.

Another gem of an exchange comes when reporters ask her how they would cope if the Government refused to support their demands, she responds with: Cope? We’re women. Don’t ask stupid questions.

Queen to Play

This one’s quite different from the other two, in that it is a little story about a Corsican maid who learns to play chess under the mentorship of one of her employers and finds, within the logical labyrinth of this fascinating game, the keys to her own life. The relationship between the maid and her mentor seems poised on the edge of sexuality sometimes — there is a scene involving them playing a sort of blindfold chess that puts the Steve McQueen-Faye Dunaway scene from The Thomas Crown Affair to shame. But what really drives it is the respect they have for each other’s minds and talent. A bit like Girl with a Pearl Earring and Once.

The leads are perfectly cast. Kevin Kline shows himself capable of investing a line like “Knight to d4″ with more emotion than I would’ve thought possible. Sandrine Bonnaire looks like a woman you might cross on the street without noticing, but when she smiles, well… But for much of the film’s running time, you just see her thinking. I didn’t think it would be so absorbing to watch someone do that, but she makes it so. It takes a special talent to be able to do without dialogue like “Knight to d4″.

 

Raindrops on roses etc.

A few weeks ago, when my 15 year old cousin was visiting and wanted to watch a funny movie, the first one the came to mind was Arsenic and Old Lace. He loved it, of course.

Once I managed to convince my cousin that my recommendations weren’t hopeless, I went on to recommend The General, Chupke Chupke, Michael Madana Kama Rajan, Pushpak… all of which would make my list of all-time favourite funny movies. Had he been older, the list would’ve included a few more gems. But even if I had a Groundhog Day experience and found myself having to recommend a funny movie to my cousin ad infinitum, I suspect I’d always pick Arsenic and Old Lace first. So there you go.

Drama is a tougher genre, but if I had to come up with just one recommendation, it would be The Shawshank Redemption. There’s a reason why that film is perched atop of IMDB’s Top 250 films list, even above The Godfather.

Action is easier — Sholay, no question. If someone were to screen the movie today in a multiplex and sit among the audience, he’d probably find a whole bunch of voices mouthing the dialogues in sync with the characters. Including mine.

Musicals — Top Hat, I guess. The sight of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing is enough to make anyone smile. Even those who have memories of its remake (Hadh Kar Di Aapne), intruding upon the experience, and that’s saying something.

Romance is tougher. I don’t know if I could pick Mouna Raagam over Once or When Harry Met Sally, or vice versa.

I could go on about other films that stand out in memory. Rashomon, for instance, has had a greater impact on me than any other film I have seen. Citizen Kane inspired me to write the short story I am fondest of.

But here’s the thing I realized while trying to compile this list. As much as picking a “favourites” list is subjective, the very act of picking a favourite presupposes, I think, a desire to find someone who likes your favourites as much as you do.

Even when I pick a film like Before Sunrise as my all-time favourite (and it is), I know it isn’t a movie that will appeal to everyone. But by making this statement, I am also expressing the hope that someone who hasn’t seen or heard of this film will be tempted to seek it out. Come to think of it, that is as good a reason for blogging about the movies as any other.

Because let’s face it: there’s a certain pleasure to be had in hearing someone else shriek in delighted laughter when Cary Grant says in Arsenic and Old Lace, “When you say others, you mean… others? As in, more than one others?”

Through their experience of discovering those films for the first time, I relive my own.

ps: This post is an entry to the Reel-Life Bloggers contest organized by wogma.com and reviewgang.com.

 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

So it all ends.

And I am left with the feeling that maybe, just maybe, it could’ve ended a little bit better. The fault lies, I think, with Voldemort.

As much as the focus of the series is Harry growing up to face his destiny and defeat one of the greatest wizards of his time, its dramatic power derives from the dark side. The principal theme of the series is the psychology of fear. Voldemort, a creature of fear and shadows at first — almost a MacGuffin in his own way — is the key. As the series progresses, he and his Death Eaters slowly gain more and more definition until that absolutely brilliant moment in the graveyard after the Triwizard tournament when he returns as a creature of flesh and blood. In fact, the choice to leave him almost entirely out of the picture in the fifth book and to give us tantalizing glimpses of his childhood in the sixth are what get us to primed to enjoy the rollicking adventure that the seventh one is. The series is not without its faults, but overall, it’s a masterpiece of construction and build-up. That is precisely why, when Harry calls him Riddle in that final confrontation and responds with an “Yes, I dare!” to his shocked response, we feel exhilarated.

The films, on the other hand, are completely hamstrung by Voldemort. As good an actor as Ralph Fiennes is, there’s only so much he can do when every feature in his face has been eliminated by make-up. The look of the character is so distractingly bad that it takes away from the performance and characterization.

The other major compromise comes in the way the final confrontation between Harry and Voldemort is played out. In the book, it’s a long conversation culminating in a short duel, much like the finale of Kill Bill. The film chooses to make them fight, run up and down staircases, even hit each other in the odd instance. What is magical in the book is mundane in the movie. Sad, really.

Outside of that, there’s little to complain. The special effects are on par with any good production, the performances are top-notch, as usual. The highlights, for me, were:

• Helena Bonham Carter playing Emma Watson playing Carter herself, when Hermione drinks some polyjuice potion to transform into Bellatrix.
• Maggie Smith commanding the statues to come to life and guard Hogwarts, and ending with an excited little giggle and the line: “I’ve always wanted to use that spell!”
• Rupert Grint and Hermione Granger sharing an excited little smile after their first kiss.
• The epilogue, whose tone is closer to a quiet smile than a laugh, and contains essentially the only line that made the epilogue necessary — the one about Snape.

But despite the positives, I keep coming back to what bothers me about this film. Maybe he must not be named, but must he not have a face either?

 

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (3D)

Right at the beginning of POTC4, there is a moment where you see Capt. Jack Sparrow in a wig. A little later, Capt. Hector Barbossa also makes his appearance in attire entirely unsuited to his demeanor. These moments, although not entirely unexpected, produce a sigh of satisfaction. The three POTC movies that have come before were bloated, meandering adventure yarns held together by the sheer relish with which Messrs. Depp and Rush chewed up the scenery. Even though you don’t walk in expecting Casablanca this time around, at least there is the satisfaction of being back in the company of these fine actors.

Sadly, this proves to be far less than enough. If you count the commute to a multiplex playing the 3D version, POTC4 represents four hours of my life I could’ve spent doing something far more valuable, like watching a slab of cheese develop a layer of mold.

There is more of a plot in this film than there was in the third instalment, although that isn’t really saying much. Sparrow finds himself on a ship commandeered by Capt. Blackbeard, one of the few pirate legends who hadn’t made his way into the franchise until now. The first mate is his daughter, a woman Sparrow once seduced and abandoned and still has feelings for. Destination: the Fountain of Youth. Two other parties are on the same quest: a British ship commandeered by Barbossa and a Spanish ship commandeered by a man whose name I cannot recall. Not that it matters, really. The story is about how they get there after much ado, and what happens when they get there.

This is as much plot as is found in most movies involving a search for mythical objects/places. Plus, it involves Depp and Rush. And, Penelope Cruz plays the girl. On paper, this shouldn’t have been the steaming pile of plankton poop it turns out to be. The blame, I think, rests on three things:

1. The script, which is gloomier than something Ingmar Effing Bergman would come up with when he’s having a really bad day. Blackbeard is such a bastard, and Ian McShane plays him so straight that you don’t sense anyone even wanting to have fun around him. Not even Sparrow, which is saying something. Penelope Cruz, whose talent for kookiness ought to have made this franchise a fantastic fit for her, looks like she is going through the motions.
2. The 3D experience, which I found to be darker than I would’ve liked. Half the time, I couldn’t even follow the action and felt sort of disoriented. I don’t know if the fault lay with my glasses, but the experience on the whose was a pain in the posterior.
3.  The action sequences, which simply don’t have the sort of momentum or wild invention required to grab us by the short hairs and keep us engaged for most of the running time.

Despite all that, I guess the film will make enough money for the suits to bankroll another instalment. Maybe someday they’ll get it right and make a POTC movie that deserves its cast. And maybe there really is a fountain of youth where I can get a drink while I wait for that to happen.

 

RIP Sidney Lumet

As a director, he made some of the most memorable films I can recall: Twelve Angry Men, Network, Dog Day Afternoon…

As a writer, he gave me, through his book Making Movies, a much better understanding of the craft of filmmaking than anything else I have read.

Goodbye, Mr. Lumet. You will be missed.

 

 

Easy A

Nowhere, not even in the more improbable outreaches of the Hollywood High School multiverse, would someone looking like Emma Stone be ignored by the student populace and not get so much as asked out by any heterosexual male with at least two brain cells to rub together. And if there really exists a high school in California in the present day where a girl losing her virginity would be the biggest news on campus, then you might as well place your money on Schrodinger’s Cat blasting its way out of its box wearing a leather jacket and riding a Harley Davidson.

That said, ignore for a moment the fact that this and the many other contrivances that Easy A piles on top of one another are all completely implausible. Focus, instead, on how well each individual scene plays out. The dialogue has more wit than most high school comedies put together, the cast is top-notch and the key performance by Emma Stone is absolutely fantastic.

Easy A tells the story of a girl who lies to her best friend that she lost her virginity to a college student she met over the weekend (when in reality she just bummed around the house) and finds that the news has spread like wildfire all over the school. To add fuel to the fire, she then pretends to do it with a gay friend of hers so that he wouldn’t get bullied because of his orientation. Soon, she’s developed a little sideline in bestowing social misfits with a reputation. But while business is booming, she finds herself becoming lonelier and less comfortable with her choices.

While the plot itself keeps getting more and more implausible, we keep watching because of the wonderful actors involved. Emma Stone never steps wrong throughout the film, letting us see her sassiness and vulnerability and making us care. Stanlet Tucci and Patricia Clarkson play her parents, and steal every scene they are in. It goes a long way towards explaining why she doesn’t go completely nuts when she is ostracized by her peers. With parents like those, why bother with friends at all?

Underlying all of it are the references. The obvious one is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter which inspires her to emblazon a scarlet A on her dresses, but there are also assorted digs at a bunch of other books and movies (a sly dig at 10 Things I Hate About You is especially amusing). My favourites, however, are the references to the movie adaptation of Hawthorne’s novel starring Demi Moore. I never thought I’d say this, but Demi Moore in a bathtub doesn’t come close to being as watchable as Emma Stone bantering with Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson.

 

Thoughts on the 2011 Oscars

Oscarcast…

• As award ceremonies go, this one has to rank among the worst in recent memory. Anne Hathaway, an actress I otherwise admire immensely, looked like she was having as much fun as a thirteen year old girl watching Princess Diaries 2. Watching her performing co-host duties, however, was about as much fun as I, a thirty-something male, had while watching said movie. (Yeah, I’ve watched it. So sue me.)
• James Franco looked like he was on pot, but without the more hilarious after-effects he displayed in Pineapple Express or in the similarly themed snippet he and Seth Rogen did a couple of years ago at the Oscars. Seriously, how do you go through a whole Oscarcast without a single funny line?
• Most of the laughs came from brief appearances by Billy Crystal and Bob Hope. There’s a reason why these guys have hosted this ceremony 8 and 18 times respectively. Crystal even got a standing ovation, which says a lot about how the attendees felt as well.
• Why did they have to embarass Kirk Douglas by calling him up on stage? It wasn’t as entertaining as they made it seem. Those repeated you-knows seemed more about senility than suspense.
• I absolutely loved Spielberg’s comments before presenting the award for Best Picture. Put the award in perspective very nicely.
• High point of the whole event: Vodafone’s 3G launch ad. If I get around to updating my Favourite Superhero Movies list, this one will get an honourable mention at the very least.

Winners and acceptance speeches…

• As acceptance speeches go, David Seidler (who took home the Best Original Screenplay statuette for The King’s Speech) ranked highest. It took away at least a bit of my frustration about Chris Nolan not winning for Inception. I liked how Speech took a simple story and invested it with so much drama, but in terms of sheer achievement in telling a more or less impenetrable story and making us care, Inception ought to get more brownie points than it did, don’t you think? Was it simply a case of being too difficult to understand?
• Then again, this has happened before — Adaptation lost to The Pianist in 2002 for no apparent reason other than that it was too complex. As good as the latter movie was, I thought the former was a bigger achievement in adapting a virtually unadaptable book. I mean, how often does your imaginary twin, whom you created for the purpose of telling the story, get nominated for an Oscar along with you? (They did make up for it and give Kaufman the award for Eternal Sunshine a couple of years later. Is that why Inception didn’t win? That the academy quota for awards to mind-raider scripts was over?)
• I’m glad Inception took home most of  the technical awards, though. Rolling up a city is tough to argue with, I guess.
• Colin Firth’s speech was lovely as well. Long, thanked a whole bunch of people, but made it work. I sometimes wonder if academy voters are partial to Brits because they do such a good job on stage after collecting their award. Even Kate Winslet, after she had gotten her post-orgasmic thank-yous out of the way at the Golden Globes, did pretty well, what with asking her dad to whistle and everything.
• I’m glad The Fighter won the two awards it deserved. Melissa F-word Leo and Christian Bale were absolutely outstanding  in that film. There were a few other deserving nominees in those categories for sure, but these two weren’t undeserving winners.
• The Social Network took home the awards it deserved as well. As for the award for Editing, I am not quite clear how one goes about judging that one. Is it about trying to present a lot of material in a cogent manner (in which case, wouldn’t it be about the screenplay as well), or aboout effectively presenting a fragmented narrative, or… what exactly does one have to do to win this award? Part of my confusion arises from Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies where he talks about how difficult it is to talk about editing simply by watching the movie. The only movie I can think of that was an obvious contender for an editing award is JFK. Nothing else compares, really.
• Speaking of editing, why does it take the folks back home a whole week to edit and telecast the Filmfare awards, while the Oscars have no more than a tape delay? Does it have to do with all those crappy medley performances with long pauses for costume changes in between?

 

Black Swan

 

To begin with, let me state that I am decidedly ambivalent about films that are open to interpretation. The line between an intelligent film that raises questions in the viewer’s mind and an overly metaphorical exercise in style that does not engage the viewer is pretty thin. Besides which, the more the ground shifts under my feet, the more suspicious I am of the filmmaker’s own grasp of the story he is telling. Rashomon is an obvious exception — the point Kurosawa was making was that nobody could really know. 

Having said that, Black Swan is as good an exercise in this particular sub-genre as any I have seen. I am still not sure what happened, and I suspect this situation will not improve much upon repeated viewing. However, in terms of evoking an emotional response, it is just about perfect.

Instead of attempting to unravel the plot itself, let me simply state the premise: Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is a ballerina who is auditioning for the part of the Swan Queen in a performance of Swan Lake. This is a challenging role, because it involves playing two characters who are completely opposed to each other. Her technical perfection makes her the obvious choice for the virginal white swan, but playing the more “imperfect”, seductive black swan odes not come easily. The reason why she can play the white swan better is obvious from her home life: her eerily co-dependent relationship with her mother (Barbara Hershey), her bedroom decorated in baby pink and an army of stuffed toys and the apparent lack of anything resembling a life outside work.

The one who can play the black swan perfectly happens to be Lily (Mila Kunis), a free-spirited new addition to the ballet company. To Nina, who is so monomaniacal about her dancing as to be practically asexual, Lily presents a challenger and role model in equal parts. Add to this mix a ballet director (Voncent Cassel) whose predatory instincts seem like unconventional coaching methods at times — is he trying to loosen Nina up for the part, or simply for himself? Probably a bit of both, we suspect.

Now, this is, in itself, not a complicated premise, except that Nina is slowly losing her grip on reality while all this is happening. And since the story is told from Nina’s point of view, there is nothing objective about the narration. Scenes constantly contradict each other, not just in their depiction of reality, but also in the way she perceives the characters, especially Lily. In a sense, Nina’s journey mirrors the play itself: the black and white swans within her battle each other while trying to attain their goal — the perfect performance.

Although the plot has cut itself loose from its moorings, our connection with Nina’s character remains firm. This is as much a credit to the writing (Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, John McLaughlin) as to the performances. Portman is absolutely fantastic in the lead role and will probably take home most of the acting honours this year. To depict an inexorable descent into madness is hard enough as it is, but to do it when the story is told through the eyes of the person going mad is nigh impossible. Portman never severs the link with the audience throughout this journey. Equally commendable is Kunis’ performance as Lily. Since we see Lily as Portman sees her, which is constantly changing, she has to play more than one character. It is to her credit that she pulls this off perfectly. Cassel and Hershey deliver pitch perfect performances. Winona Ryder shines in a brief cameo.

The last time Darren Arofonsky got behind the camera, he was responsible for the rebirth of Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. At the Independent Spirit Awards, Rourke spoke of how demanding a director Arofonsky was, both physically and emotionally, but that the rewards outweighed the challenges. Of the actors aspiring to work with Arofonsky but worried about the challenge, he said something on the lines of: “If they can’t bring it, f*** them.”

The cast of Black Swan ought to get t-shirts made that say, “We brought it.”

 

 

 

Movie technology I’d like in real life

I wrote this for the GE Global Research blog – Edison’s Desk. An excerpt:

We go to the movies for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is vicarious wish fulfillment. For the more scientifically inclined among us, much of this aspect has to do with the cool gadgetry in the movies. It’s almost like a litmus test: which of the scenes in a Bond movie do you like best? The ones with Q or the myraid action sequences? If you fall into the former category, read on. Otherwise… well, humour me for a few minutes and read on anyway.

You can read the rest of this post here.