Film: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Genre: Drama
Source: UK (1943)
Rating: Unrated (Probably PG)
Location/Format: Criterion Blu-ray
Grade: A-

It took me a while to get around to watching this classic 1943 British film (sometimes called the finest British film ever made), but when I did I couldn't help but fall for this decades-spanning but ultimately small-in-focus and empathetic film about the nature of age, change, and love. I can only imagine this is a film that will get better over time, as the film itself chronicles how time shapes us, changes us, and ultimately leaves us behind. And amazingly, it allows that idea of the world changing around us to be both poignant and appreciable, rather than the tragedy other (lesser) directors might have made of it. It is melancholy, but it is resolute and even optimistic in its melancholy. In other words, it's all very British, but in the best of ways.

The film wouldn't work without the outstanding performances of Roger Livesey as Clive Candy and Deborah Kerr in three (count 'em, three!) roles throughout the film. Her recurrence as different women in Candy's life is a little bit of a gimmick, but it's a gimmick that works, as we (along with Candy) can't help but fall for her first incarnation, find solace in her second, and look warmly on the third--though by that point Candy is well past the age when he is looking for a paramour. She is bubbly, energetic, and even distinct in all three roles, and I'm surprised she hasn't gotten more attention for her performance.

But really this is Livesey's film, and not only did he blow me away, but I feel a little embittered that I've never seen him before. How did he not become one of those film names that lives on? He deserves to, if this performance is any indication. Livesey ages Candy more convincingly than any number of recent aging performances (Sorry, Brad Pitt, but Livesey didn't have any CGI to rely on). He injects Candy with such dignity, such certitude, and such a sense of humor that I couldn't help but admire him, and though the film's bookended scenes show Candy's way of thinking to be out of date, you can't help but see that conflict play out with empathy for him and for a wish that his standards of decency, gentlemanly conduct in war, and common decency still mattered. Perhaps we cannot rely on "honor" to defeat enemies without honor, but we should not pretend that discarding one's honor has no consequences. The film provides a legitimate argument that one cannot face a threat like the Nazis when following the old rules, yet it also reminds us that as we make war less and less civilized, we are also losing something of our own selves and souls. 

Candy is a man with soul, for better or for worse. We see it in his pursuit of love. We see it in his friendship with his "enemy" Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff, and in his honor. We laugh at him, we cry with him, and ultimately we leave reminded that every individual has a journey that makes them who they are, even if who they are seems removed from our own reality. That's an important message to remember: We are each the center of our own stories, even if the greater narrative of history moves along without us, and perhaps the world would be a better place if we searched for the story in others.

In the end I loved the movie. It has a quality that has stayed with me even two weeks after finishing it, and it has me excited to track down more Powell and Pressburger movies. After watching Martin Scorsese's introduction to the film and learning a little about the two directors' passion for the project, I want to see what other visions these two men pursued. 

If they're anything like Colonel Blimp, I'm in for a treat.

Alternate Film Title: Wait, did I miss something? I don't understand why this is the title. When is he referred to as Colonel Blimp?

Book: Linchpin

Am I alone in thinking that every motivational work book could pretty much be summarized in two or three paragraphs? It's not that I don't enjoy them, because the style of this sort of self-help book tends to be very conversational and with lots of entertaining (or semi-entertaining) examples. But most of the time it seems like the author has about a handful of ideas designed to make you rethink your approach to your job/life/etc. and then spends two hundred plus pages belaboring the point. It's why, though these books are easy to read, I never get particularly excited about reading them.

That said, in Linchpin author Seth Godin did make some great suggestions that have encouraged me to shift the way I think about my career. In essence, Godin suggests that the real key to success, career satisfaction, and (though he downplays it) profit is to make yourself an indispensable part of your organization, to figure out what "art" you have to offer the world/your company/your clients/etc. and then not be afraid to go "off script" and make human connections doing so. He talks about getting out of the mindset that all work is about exchange (I do a service, you pay me) and being taken care of and should be about giving gifts and blazing trails. It's all very shiny, happy, "let's hold hands and sing songs and realize how special you can be if you'll get out of your comfort zone," and some of his advice is still a little pie-in-the-sky (e.g., the best linchpins don't need resumes because their work and what they've accomplished is their resume--they don't fit in as an easily replaceable cog, so why would they apply for the same jobs that everyone else with a resume does), but I like rethinking my job as a teacher as art, and I like rethinking how I teach. 

I got an email this week from a former student who was amazed and thought I would need to know that he got his first college essay assignment and that the teacher said they didn't want a standard five-paragraph essay. This was a student who I had repeated conversations with about understanding the form and organization and why it mattered. I wrote him back to tell him that--shocker--I agreed with his teacher. The five-paragraph essay is boring, it's flat, and any "formula" for good writing eventually grows stale and, well, formulaic. But the basics of learning how to write a five paragraph essay (what I had hoped I was teaching him) give you the groundwork to explode the formula. Once you know how to organize and clarify your thoughts, you can go a million different directions with them. Yes, I also stopped (for the most part) writing five paragraph essays after high school. But that's because I knew how to structure my thoughts in ways that were (for the most part, I hope) clear and understandable. Once you can do that, then it doesn't matte whether you're writing one paragraph or a thirty-page essay. The form provides a base, but the art comes from the ideas and insights that the form helps you to make clear.

I wonder if I'm teaching my students that enough. I don't want my students to all produce the same end product. I want them to discover their own voices and ideas. Every essay, even with tenth graders, I try to tell them that there's not a "right" essay that I'm looking for. There's not a single answer to an essay prompt, there are many. It's taking their unique insights, supporting them, and presenting them in a clear, meaningful, and convincing manner. I think that's what Godin's getting at. Quit thinking that you have to be the same kind of teacher (or web designer, banker, etc.) as everyone else, and figure out what you have to bring to the table that's unique. That's your art, and that's what you can nurture and develop and share with the world. Doing so turns you from a cog into a linchpin--and what do you know, it makes your job more enjoyable as well.

That's not a bad message. It's one that has had me reconsidering how I approach my subject and what it is I want my students to walk away from my classes thinking, feeling, and understanding. It's got me thinking about what unique abilities I have as a teacher that I can bring to bear more fruitfully--things like patience, and my sense of humor, and my expectations, and my tech savvy-ness, and so on and so forth. So I guess, for all the fluff, I like what Godin's saying here. (And what do you know, I explained it in five paragraphs after all.)

Grade: B

Film: 2 Guns

Director: Baltasar Kormakur
Genre: Action
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Glynn Place Stadium Cinema
Grade: C

Honestly my main problem with 2 Guns, which is a perfectly serviceable buddy action movie, is not the silliness of the plot or the climax, and it is certainly not the fun that Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, and especially Bill Paxton seem to be having with pretty standard action movie flare. It's not the generic set pieces, or the hazy role the military seems to be playing in the film's plot (mostly, apparently, just to have some military guys involved). It's not even the awkward editing (why did we need to start with one scene, then flash to one week before, and then have no more flashbacks after that? What purpose is your structure serving, Baltasar Kormakur? None, that I can tell).

All of those things are forgivable, and some of them even turn out to be downright enjoyable. Bill Paxton, I'm looking at you. Please find some more jobs, because you are so over the top that you can't help but be entertaining.

No, my main problem is that for a film that is deliberately designed to be twist heavy, the film's preview gave away half of the best twists. 

Hollywood, we have a problem. Please let your movies have some mystery. If Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington aren't getting your target audience in the door, how will revealing several of the film's double crosses and surprise revelations help? This is a trend I've been noticing to be increasing lately, as more and more trailers seem to be attempting to cram the entire film's plotline into three minutes of clips. Stop it. You're taking the fun out of the movies.

2 Guns is an enjoyable enough little action movie, perfectly suited for a Saturday afternoon or a dollar theater visit. It's not memorable, and I'd like to see Denzel Washington play a few roles besides the world weary and on edge cop/spy/action hero that he's been playing for a while now (Flight being a notable exception in his recent oeuvre) but it is not terrible at being mindless escapism. The two leads have a good rapport, and explosions occur in large amounts, so if that's what you're looking for, you could do worse. You could just do a lot better too. Preferably on a movie that hasn't already told you the plot before you sit down.

Alternate Film Title: "Lots of Guns, Really"

Film: Strange Days

Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Genre: Sci-Fi
Source: USA (1995)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Netflix Instant Watch
Grade: C

Kathryn Bigelow has had such an awesome 2000s resurgence with The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty that I was excited to watch a semi-sci-fi future (set just four years after the films 1995 release) from her, but I ended up a little disappointed. Strange Days isn't bad, in fact it's got a lot of future noir elements that are really interesting, and by the end of the film there are some great visual touches that show a director really finding her footing. But I just didn't engage with it like I wanted to.

Partly it's just that it felt so 90s. I know, I know, it's a movie from the 90s set in the 90s, so what am I talking about? But it didn't age as well as it could have. Juliette Lewis just goes in and Juliette Lewises up the place, and she typically leaves me a little flat, since she delivers most of her lines (in most of her movies) like a stoner in need of a ride to Taco Bell. I'm not even sure what that metaphor means, but she didn't work for me here. Fiennes is better, but the pseudo-noir babble he's spouting feels just too hammy. Maybe this is supposed to be subtle comedy? Is that what I missed? Lenny's lines like, " You can trust me, 'cause I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I am your main connection the switchboard of the soul. I'm the magic man. Santa Claus of the subconscious . . ." Just . . . no. It's too cheesy to work. 

I like the idea of "Look how close we are to dystopia." And I like a lot of the actors here. And the main device, the mini-disc recording device that allows you to record your whole sensory experience and/or live/feel/watch someone else's moments is really clever. But the movie as a whole just left me a little flat. Bigelow has found her feet, for sure, but I feel like here she's just tossing as much into the movie as she can to see what sticks. Maybe that's the James Cameron influence crowding her out.

In the end Strange Days has got a little style and a little substance, but not enough of either to really pull me in.

Alternate Film Title: "Angela Bassett's Dreadlocks Bring You To Your Knees"

Film: Jobs

Director: Joshua Michael Stern
Genre: Drama/Biopic
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: PG-13
Location/Format: Island Cinema
Grade: C-

Jobs is a strange beast, in part because it can't decide what it wants to be. Does it love Steve Jobs or hate him? Is he a visionary or a monomaniac? In trying to show him as both, without a clear perspective on why its doing so, the film seems strangely flat, lifeless, and unsure of itself. It's a film that does a lot of things ok, but nothing well. And though it could have been a lot worse, you also get the feeling there's a much more focused and interesting story to tell.

The good news: Ashton Kutcher is better than expected. He has clearly spent a lot of time working on mimicking Steve Jobs' physicality, to the point that it's distracting at times. When he focuses it down to the small smile/grimace it works. When he takes it to the big awkward walk, it draws attention to itself. I went in to the film thinking, "Oh man, Kutcher doesn't have the chops for this." I walked out thinking, "Hey, Kutcher does a pretty solid Steve Jobs impression." But never did I lose myself in the performance, or think "Jobs is a fascinating character" instead of  "Kutcher doing Jobs is interesting to watch." I don't think he has the strength yet as an actor to get to the meat of the character, but he does try, and maybe it will open him up to more serious opportunities. 

In other news, however, the film's lack of a handle on Jobs comes through in myriad ways. It feels too long even while huge and pertinent sections of Jobs' life are glossed over. How, for example, does he repair his relationship with his daughter? Who is his wife? Going back further, how does he actually get interested in computers in the first place, since the film sets him up in college as being more interested in art and spiritualism than in tech, but then cut to the next scene and he's working at Atari. It seems like there's an interesting journey happening in the ten or so years the film skips over, and yet the film never bothers to do anything with it. It's so excited to show Jobs the genius (how many pictures of Einstein can we place him under?) and Jobs the asshole that it never quite figures out how to show Jobs the human. He was a prophet, it seems to say, showing him almost at times as a religious figure, and thus unappreciated. His vision, the film seems to suggest, was always right, and if a few people got run over to get there, that's the price of genius. It doesn't make a compelling argument for why that is. It's not that I want it to "solve" another human--that's a tall order--but I want it to do a better job of having a point of view regarding why that is the case. It's ok to be ambiguous, but only if that ambiguity engages the audience to deeper thought on their own; not if that ambiguity comes from not being sure what you want to say.

In the end, the film is like Kutcher's performance and the film's interpretation of Jobs: lukewarm. It wants greatness, but doesn't really know how to get there.

Maybe Aaron Sorkin will do it better..

Alternate Film Title: "iEgo"

Film: Repulsion

Director: Roman Polanski
Genre: Horror/Drama
Source: UK (1965)
Rating: Unrated (PG-13 or R?)
Location/Format: Turner Classic Movies
Grade: B+

Some movies are all about atmosphere, and throughout Repulsion director Roman Polanski slowly sucks all the oxygen out of the room until you realize you're suffocating and can't draw a breath. With only one viewing I don't feel like I fully "get" the movie, but the imagery and camera work Polanski uses in fleshing out Carol's psychosis, as well as Catherine Deneuve's no-holds-barred performance, make this one of the most effective takes on mental illness I've seen in a long time.

So much creepiness! It's not hard to connect the dots between this and Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, just a few years later, but in some ways the black-and-white film here makes the film even more claustrophobic and blurs the lines between reality and insanity even more effectively. The walls, of course; the man in the bed; the potatoes; the rabbit. Polanski doesn't have to dwell on them any longer than he does, because each in their own way become the visible representation of Carol's madness. The piece of meat in Carol's bag . . . perhaps one of the most off-putting special effects I've ever seen, if only because you can't quite tell what it is--fleshy but unformed. It is disturbing. It is repulsive.

Add to that the effective sound editing--where we're never quite sure if what we're hearing is actually happening or just Carol's subjective madness, since often what we see doesn't match up with what we're hearing--and you've got a recipe for success. Polanski takes risks in presenting Carol's world in this fashion, but it pays off incredibly well.

Though the film's world is highly effective, it wouldn't work if Carol wasn't believable, but Polanski has a fantastic star in Deneuve. Her haunted gaze and unkempt hair signify in her person just what we're seeing in the rest of the film as well, and yet she often looks so wide-eyed and lost that you're never sure whether to fear her or pity her.

Altogether, this remains a disturbing film nearly fifty years later. I feel like it's another of those films I could show younger audiences who think old movies never did anything original, or that hasn't been done better since. Polanski's twisted look here at sex and psychology is as engaging and disturbing as anything since.

Alternate Film Title: "You'd Think Somebody Would Notice the Smells in Carol's Apartment"

Film: It's a Disaster

Director: Todd Berger
Genre: Comedy
Source: USA(2012)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Netflix Instant Watch
Grade: B

Entertaining enough little film that takes your typical rom-com indie movie characters (the wild ones! the lonely one! the not-so-perfect perfect couple! the other ones!) and throws them into the end of the world. As they come together over petty jealousies, betrayals, and comic tableau, the world outside their little home is (perhaps literally) going to hell, with chemical weapon attacks, unseen attackers, and quite possibly World War III.

Of course we as an audience don't see any of that, because our little ensemble seals themselves inside the house (increasingly disturbing exterior shots are played--I think--for laughs, but do a good job gauging the increasing severity of the situation). Even if they hadn't, however, one of the film's objects of ridicule seems to be the self-obsession and naval-gazing of late twenty/early thirty something hipsters who are the "ideals" of so many other indie movies. These guys can't even stay focused on the apocalypse--they always bring it back to themselves, their relationships, their own point of view. In actuality, there's something to that, I think. If disaster were to strike right now, but it didn't immediately upset your surroundings, how many of us wouldn't keep up the day-to-day rhythms of our lives, including whatever cosmically small challenges we are dealing with? We all live in our own little shells, and it's hard to break through them.

Lots of well played comic performances here. America Ferrera didn't quite stand up to the rest of the ensemble. She's not bad, she's just not as funny as more gifted comedians like David Cross and Erinn Hayes, and she doesn't have the acting chops of Julia Stiles. She was really the weak link, but just because the other seven were so much more engaging. 

Not bad overall. A relatively light and surprisingly enjoyable way to watch the world end.

Alternate Film Title: "Least Believable Aspect: Everyone Commenting on How Cute David Cross Is"