Off the Map

I'm a little sensitive about movies that deal with mental illness. In our culture, stigma is in the groundwater and the mentally ill are usually portrayed as psychopathic killers (author's note: big difference between someone who's psychotic and someone who's a sociopath.) Perhaps that's why I found this little movie charming. This film explores a very real mental illness - clinical depression - in a gentle and sympathetic fashion.

Charley and Arlene Groden (Sam Elliot and Joan Allen) are not your average couple. With their precocious daughter Bo (a delightful Valentina d'Angelis,) they've elected to live "off the map," growing their own food and bartering for everything else in a tiny town in New Mexico. Charley has sunk into a deep and lasting depression for no apparent reason, and as Arlene struggles to hold the family together they are suddenly visited by the IRS for several years of failing to file income taxes. The agent (Jim True-Frost) finds himself enamored with the Grodens, particularly Arlene, and ends up staying on and pursuing his own demons right along with Charley.

Campbell Scott has directed a sensitive, magical look into the hearts of his characters. Elliot and Allen are perfectly cast as our starcrossed oddballs. It may require some suspension of disbelief, but this is a sweet little modern fairy tale about love and letting it be. More info here.

Death of a President

The controversy surrounding the release of this film in 2006 was brief, noisy and enough to spur my curiosity. Directed by Gabriel Range (who also co-wrote the screenplay,) this British made film broke a lot of taboos by depicting the fictional assassination of a living and sitting US President, George W. Bush. Hilary Clinton called the film, "despicable." The Bush Administration refused to comment. Reviewers were all over the place - calling it everything from a silly marketing ploy to real genius. It won the International Critics Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. It never hit a movie screen in the US.

Although I spent a good deal of the film trying to figure out just what the message might be, I still found it intriguing. Whether you love the Deciderer in Chief or loathe him, it's bound to make you mighty uncomfortable to watch his assassination - a point that makes you wonder if the filmmaker took into account how that discomfort will effect your overall take on the film. It is, however, fascinating to watch how live footage is seamlessly morphed into an apparent documentary complete with the melodramatic real time interviews we all know and hate. (The state funeral must have been Gerald Ford.)

By the way, the message does finally become apparent in the last 10 minutes or so of the film - and it is a worthy one. So I guess I fall into the category of reviewer who found it worth the watch; it was just that thought provoking, even if it does push the limits of taste. You can see the lackluster website here.

Jindabyne

It's the rare director that can set a tone in the opening of a film and maintain that same tone through another 100 or so minutes. Ray Lawrence manages to keep you miserably uncomfortable from the first tense minutes as you watch something bad about to happen right through to the aching end of this haunting and beautiful film. I found myself biting my nails and squirming all the way.

Jindabyne happens to be set in a particularly bleak but gorgeous part of Australia, but it could have been anywhere. The central story line is one of four good old boys on a fishing trip who happen upon a young woman's corpse in the river, and opt to fish first and report later. Well, she was already dead now, wasn't she? The consequences of this thoughtless act then avalanche through the town - made all the more poignant by the fact that the dead girl is aboriginal (read this Mexican, Black, or Minority of Your Choice.)

Stellar performances from all concerned, including Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne, should be noted but it is the screenplay and direction that make this film amazing. Every character has an open wound; they are all profoundly human and all questioning their own motives in every tidy scene. Lawrence doesn't waste a minute or a line. In the end, you feel you know these people and you hurt right along with them. That's genius. Here's another review.

Letters from Iwo Jima

I was really looking forward to this second part of the Iwo Jima saga as envisioned by Clint Eastwood. I thought it was the coolest idea - to shoot two movies looking at the same battle from the opposing viewpoints. This one was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and won for Best Sound Editing. Even more I was looking forward to the story as told by the losers... after all, twenty thousand Japanese soldiers died on that little chunk of rock and held off the overwhelming American forces for 40 endless days. The stuff of epic...

I was HUGELY disappointed in this film. Where do I begin? I'll start with the writing (best screenplay?) which I found so loaded with stereotypes as to be almost comical and so obviously written by an American; her surname may be Japanese but it is very clear that her native culture invented McDonald's. There are the repetitive battle scenes straight out of Flags of our Fathers with little change in perspective, all cleverly tied together so that the two movies mirror each other - neither offering any insight into the other. And after a half hour of reading subtitles of uninspired dialogue and watching even talented actors like Ken Watanabe overact all over themselves to give this mess meaning, I was ready to commit hari kari.

Again, Clint Eastwood is a lazy storyteller. I guess I understand shooting battle footage once for the sake of the budget, but could we have altered the camera angles or something? He used the same soundtrack, for heavens sake. Maybe I could have been kinder if I had seen this movie first... but I doubt that there was a need to make it at all. At least Flags had a point. Website here.

Jesus Camp

Documentaries can be borrring. I can tell you that this one is anything but. It's harder to look away from than a train wreck and was rightfully nominated for Best Documentary. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, who admit to having no previous experience with the Evangelical movement, managed to make a film that walks the most incredible line ever imagined. The religious subjects of their film were delighted with it. And anyone not of that bent will be horrified. As I was.

Jesus Camp follows three intelligent, articulate children (Levi's 13, Rachel's 10 and Tory is 11) as they experience the "Kids on Fire" summer camp in Devil's Lake, North Dakota. Pastor Becky Fischer is the force behind the children's ministry where kids as young as 6 are taught to become dedicated soldiers for Christ. Becky shares, the kids share, their parents share the very passionate beliefs they hold about child rearing and the evils of the secular world(read abortion and Muslims.) The only voice of dissent present in the film is that of Mike Papantonio of Air America as he reiterates our rights of separation of church and state.

These brilliant filmmakers manage to remain completely neutral as they present this material for you. So much so, that of all the folks in the film, only Ted Haggard felt misrepresented (all this prior to his fall from grace.) You can call it what you like, but whipping 7 year olds into hysteria about their need to repent is child abuse in my opinion and was not easy to watch. Still this film puts a spotlight onto a movement in America that is moving more and more into the mainstream. This is an important little film. Official website here.

Flags of Our Fathers

I have a love / hate relationship with Clint Eastwood as a director. On the one hand, I think he has an amazing gift for pulling the absolute best performance out of any actor. On the other, I think he tends to be a lazy storyteller, relying too heavily on those actors. Both his gifts and his flaws are on display in Flags - a moving anti-war film that works despite choppy editing and poor story structure.

Flags of Our Fathers isn't about the battle of Iwo Jima, it's about the famous photo of the flag being raised on Mount Suribachi. The photograph, taken by Joe Roesenthal on the fifth day of the siege on the island, was on the wire service around the world with 18 hours of being taken, and became an icon of victory for Americans. It also launched the six ordinary soldiers caught raising a replacement flag (the first raised was coveted by a high ranking officer) into a weird superstardom. The three who survive long enough to become "the heroes of Iwo Jima" are cast into a propaganda circus, and struggle to make sense of the horrors of it all - war and war machine.

Eastwood gets his performances, most notably from Ryan Phillipe and Adam Beach - who's teary, tender moments are heartbreaking. But it's hard to follow the story as he jumps from narrator to narrator. I got the drift in the end, and it's a good one - that soldiers don't fight wars and become heroes for a cause or even for their country... they fight for the men they eat with, their friends, their mentors. For all it's flaws, this movie puts Saving Private Ryan to shame. Official website (with some nifty history) here.

The Lives of Others

When Pan's Labyrinth lost the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, I was shocked. After all, that brilliant little Mexican offering had already won several technical awards usually reserved for our domestic product. It was a tough call, I'm sure, but I have to agree with the Academy on this one. The Lives of Others is a gem.

Set in the German Democratic Republic (read East Germany) before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the film follows a time in the life of Capt. Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe,) a respected officer of the Stasi (read Secret Police) whose job it is to know everything about the"lives of others." After being assigned to watch a squeaky clean playwright and his actress girlfriend, Wiesler discovers that this investigation has less to do with politics than with the sexual aspirations of a ranking official for the girl. His dedication to his work becomes further eroded as he watches the couple drawn deeper into the intrigue of revolution, and with his involvement comes a terrible choice. Surrender his career or let them slip to their doom.

The Lives of Others is a splendid examination of the paranoia bred of oppression and the humanizing effect of "becoming involved." This message is terribly relevant today, complete with unregulated surveillance, blacklisting, and torture. Ulrich Muhe is amazing, making Capt. Wiesler a character who will be hard to forget. We need more films about people making moral choices. Don't miss this haunting masterpiece. Great website here.