FILM REVIEW: PARIAH



Alike (Adepero Oduye) in Pariah.

Invisible lesbian

By Don Simpson

Alike (Adepero Oduye) is very shy and totally unsure of herself. At 17-years of age, Alike attempts to define herself by her tomboy wardrobe, as if wearing a placard that boldly states “Kiss me, I’m a lesbian”; because that is really all she wants, a kiss. Hanging around her bull-dyke best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker), further accentuates her boyish traits. Of course Alike’s overprotective Christian mother (Kim Wayans) does not like that. She wants Alike to wear clothes that flaunt her girlish figure; but that seems to only make Alike rebel more. Luckily, Alike’s father (Charles Parnell) is oblivious enough to his surroundings that she is able to maintain a somewhat “normal” relationship with him while her meddling little sister (Sahra Mellesse) is the only family member who is fully cognizant and accepting of Alike’s sexual orientation.

As much as I like Pariah, and would never want to discount its message, it is very difficult for me to overlook some of the very same issues that I had with Lee Daniels’ Precious. For instance, the images, set design and performances seem more like Hollywood representations of Alike’s world; a hyper-real manifestation of reality. Drama and emotion are tweaked off the charts like some nauseatingly sappy poetry or excruciatingly trite singer-songwriter lyrics. The dialogue seems oh so perfectly manicured, and certain scenes seem all too purposeful. Two scenarios in particular seem especially unreal to me: when an AP English teacher urges Alike to “go deeper” with her soul-baring poetry and when Laura passes her GED only to have her mother slam a door in her face when she tries to tell her the good news. (Oh, and do not even get me started on the conclusion…) The apparent falsities constantly distract me from the emotional core of this heartbreaking tale — which is a crying shame because several of the performances are quite amazing and I really do love Pariah‘s overall message. The story would have really benefited from a more realistic representation and a wee bit more directorial restraint.

Yet I want to conclude this on an uplifting note, because Pariah really is quite effective in portraying how a teenager’s closeted queer lifestyle can lead to friction at home, leaving a crumbling family unit in its wake. This is by no means Alike’s fault; her parents are irritatingly irrational and clueless towards her homosexuality. The overall situation seems brutally honest, as if it is torn directly from the pages of Rees’ personal experience.



FILM REVIEW: TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

George Smiley (Gary Oldman) in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Modestly Blase

By Don Simpson

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is an anti-spy movie. It is not that the film has anything against spies, but it dutifully works in opposition to the traditional tropes of the genre. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is not about suspense, action or thrills; it is about becoming fully immersed in the carefully orchestrated production design of 1970s London. Just as Let the Right One In functions as a character and period study rather than a horror film, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy cares more about the minutia of aesthetics than espionage.

Director Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) presents us with a cast of older men with thinning hair and frumpy frames then shoves them into a series of claustrophobic spaces. It is fitting that Alfredson once directed a film titled Four Shades of Brown, because that sufficiently describes the blase color palate of the smoke-filled interior design of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy while the polluted haze of the London streets is saturated by a drab rainbow of grays. The soft focus of Hoyte Van Hoytema's grainy 35mm cinematography lends the footage a finely aged quality, as if the stock has been shelved in some basement vaults for 30-odd years. Besides Alfredson's sublime fetish for kitschy set design -- especially 1970s technology -- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy may go down in film history as the most unglamorous spy film ever produced.

The plot of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is fairly simple except for occasional flashbacks that are so seamlessly integrated within the narrative structure that it is sometimes becomes difficult to discern the past from the present. Luckily, the different eyeglasses of the film's lead character -- George Smiley (Gary Oldman) -- communicate to us where on the narrative timeline each scene falls. George has been forced into retirement by the MI6, but has been working off the books for their leader -- Control (John Hurt) -- in a clandestine effort to unearth the mole who has been leaking British intelligence to the Soviets. The likely suspects are George's former peers who function collectively as "The Circus" in the top tier of the MI6: Bill (Colin Firth), Percy (Toby Jones), Roy (Ciarán Hinds) and Toby (David Dencik). One would expect there to be an element of mystery and intrigue, but Alfredson almost immediately begins to clue us in to the identity of the mole(s) but leaves poor old George frustrated and exhausted as he sleeplessly attempts to wrap his head around the mystery.

Alfredson goes to great lengths to comment on the man's world of the British intelligence in the 1970s, populating the mise-en-scène with masculine images and colors. Other than occasional shots of a typing pool, women rarely appear onscreen; nonetheless, Alfredson finds one opportunity to cleverly sneak in a background shot of women's lib graffiti, thus implying that change may be on the way.

There are three reasons to watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: the top notch production design (Maria Djurkovic); Gary Oldman's weary, detached and nearly silent portrayal of George; and Alfredson's masterfully meticulous and restrained direction. (And Alberto Iglesias's score is certainly not chopped liver either.) Unfortunately, I am not sure if Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy's meandering plot will be enticing enough to keep audiences in their seats. Let's just say that if you are looking for something along the same line as the Bourne franchise, you should go elsewhere.

FILM REVIEW: NEW YEAR'S EVE

A scene from New Year's Eve.

Should all films be so rotten

By Don Simpson

Valentine’s Day is a cruel and bitter reminder that film critics do not wield much influence — at least in certain realms of cinema — because even though Valentine’s Day is scoring a lowly 18% on Rotten Tomatoes it went on to gross $214,976,776 and New Line Cinema deemed it worthy of a sequel (an extremely loose concept of a sequel at that). What does this say about film criticism and their relationship to film audiences? Not much. People were going to see trash like Valentine’s Day no matter what critics said about it, just as people are also going to see New Year’s Eve regardless of my review.

Fans of Valentine’s Day — whomever those poor suckers are — will probably scream that a highfalutin critic such as myself is inherently biased against films like New Year’s Eve; and, admittedly, I did enter the screening of New Year’s Eve assured that I would hate it. Considering my excruciatingly low opinion of Valentine’s Day, I figured that the odds were somewhat in favor of New Year’s Eve being a little bit better… But… Heavens to Murgatroyd! It turns out that New Year’s Eve is a mindless clusterfuck of ridiculousness!

Thanks to the relentless barrage of characters (most with fleeting roles that would normally be described as cameos) and no narrative to speak of (people are in love, people are dying, people are having babies, the ball at Times Square is stuck, blah blah blah…), writing a brief synopsis of New Year’s Eve is impossible. As with Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve relies so much on Hollywood stereotypes and tropes that anyone can flawlessly determine how each character’s storyline will end within minutes of their introduction. New Year’s Eve serves two purposes: to showcase a menagerie of Hollywood stars as if mere mannequins on a conveyor belt and to provide a few forced opportunities for Jon Bon Jovi to sing a few songs on screen.

It is quite fitting that Hollywood still churns out thoughtless, assembly line holiday films like Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve, since it is Hollywood that created the myths behind these holidays in the first place. The situations and dialogue (more like mindless dribble) found within Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve are by no means realistic — trust me, this stuff only happens in the movies. I am not a trained psychiatrist, but I suspect that the reason so many people get depressed during holidays like Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve is because they cannot live up to the unrealistic expectations set by Hollywood. I will leave you with one question: Why do people watch these films if, in the end, these films are just going to make them feel like shit?

FILM REVIEW: YOUNG ADULT

Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) in Young Adult.

Better than Bachmann

By Don Simpson

Meet Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), a horrible person whose life is falling apart. First and foremost, her career as a ghost writer for a young adult serial has come to an abrupt end. Oh, and she is also divorced. So, in order to restart her seemingly failed life, Mavis leaves Minneapolis to visit Mercury, the hick suburban hellhole of a town where she grew up. Essentially, Mavis wants to relive her teenage years when she presumably listened to Teenage Fanclub’s “The Concept” on repeat, was the most popular girl in high school, and dated Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson). Sure, Buddy is happily married — he recently had a baby with his wife, Beth (Elizabeth Reaser) — but that does not stop Mavis from trying to win Buddy back. (Oh, Mavis! Will you never learn that men are not prizes to be competed for and won?)

Mavis’ entire trip to Mercury is spent in an alcohol-fueled stupor. Out of lonely desperation, Mavis befriends Matt (Patton Oswalt) the “hate crime kid” from high school. Matt seems to have no problems with helping Mavis remain drunk ad nauseum, because a frumpy comic geek like him is powerless when faced with Mavis’ natural beauty. Besides, we can only assume that Matt is holding out hope that Mavis will become drunk enough for a good old-fashioned sympathy fuck.

Um… Yeah… Okay… Well, I have got to say, Young Adult truly left me speechless. That is not true, actually, because I am left with a hell of a lot of questions. What the fuck did I just watch? Why did I just watch it? Why would Diablo Cody write this script? Why would Jason Reitman direct it? Why would Theron take this role? And can you please repeat your answer to why I just watched it? Well, no matter what your answer is, can I please have those 94 minutes of my life back?

I am not sure if Cody and Reitman want the audience to hate Mavis, feel sorry for her, laugh at her, or like her — all I know is that I felt absolutely nothing. Was I really supposed to feel something for this ex-prom queen who is in the midst of a cartoonish absurd existential crisis? Mavis’ beauty, bitchiness and pathetic attitude all seem to just cancel each other out. In the end, Mavis is just cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, pure and simple; in other words, she is like a shallowly written cartoon buffoon. Immediately after the two or three times that I laughed during Young Adult, I immediately thought about what I had just laughed at and felt really disgusted with myself. Young Adult left me feeling really, really dirty.

Additionally, since Young Adult is written from Mavis’ perspective that presumably gives the film an excuse to be brutally condescending and patronizing towards the populace of the quaint Minnesota town. Everyone in Mercury is presumed to be a simple-minded hick with no goals or aspirations; you know, because all of the smart and ambitious people relocated to the Mini-Apple (Minneapolis). Young Adult is essentially just a vehicle for Cody to exercise her utter disdain for the strip mall culture of middle America. Trust me, I do not like returning to the strip malls and chain restaurants of the suburban town where I grew up either. I moved away for a good reason, because I did not belong there. It is not the population of my hometown’s fault that I have very little in common with them, but in the case of Young Adult, it seems as though Cody is blaming everything (especially Mavis’ penchant for booze) on the people of Mercury and it is this holier-than-thou tone that will keep me from watching Young Adult ever again.

FILM REVIEW: MY PIECE OF THE PIE

France (Karin Viard) in My Piece of the Pie.

Sliced

By Don Simpson

Writer-director Cédric Klapisch's My Piece of the Pie  (Ma part du gateau) begins in Dunkirk with a birthday cake yet amidst the celebration, France (Karin Viard) attempts suicide. The quite purposefully named France is a single mother of three who is suffering from depression after the unexpected closure of the factory she had worked at for two decades.

Meanwhile in London, we learn that an evil power broker named Steve (Gilles Lellouche) recently closed a deal that prompted the shuttering of France’s employer. As a bonus, Steve accepts a job transfer that delivers him to Paris.

Meanwhile in Dunkirk, France — who is still recovering from her suicide attempt — cannot find another job; that is until she abandons her fellow factory workers and enters a housekeeper training program in Paris. The training program is designed for immigrants, so France must pretend that she is a foreigner so the other students do not get suspicious of national favoritism. (This could easily be interpreted as an anti-immigrant stance on behalf of Klapisch, as he “proves” to us that French Nationals actually want and deserve the lower class jobs that immigrants are stealing.)

Fate then rears its ugly hand and France is hired as Steve’s housekeeper. France — our working class heroine — is blinded by her income, especially as her salary multiplies upon becoming the nanny for Steve’s son (Lunis Sakji). France quickly learns that the millionaire lifestyle, however subservient her role may be, is not all that bad. Steve’s life, on the other hand, is devoted to the endless pursuit of profit at the expense of less privileged people, as My Piece of the Pie unspools into a cock-eyed message about how seemingly harmless business decisions have broader consequences than anyone could ever imagine. (Themes of financial accountability in this dog-eat-dog capitalist world come up again and again and again.)

And though she constantly ridicules Steve for not spending enough quality time with his son, France has all but abandoned her daughters in Dunkirk at the home of her sister (Audrey Lamy) in favor of spending more time with Steve’s son and thus making a lot more money. Nonetheless, we are supposed to believe that France is a decent, hard working woman who just so happens to have hit a lucky-yet-reckless streak. When France eventually sacrifices herself for her comrades at the factory back in Dunkirk, it is too little too late.

FILM REVIEW: CRAZY WISDOM

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpochein Crazy Wisdom: The Life & Times of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

In the material world

By Don Simpson

Crazy Wisdom: The Life & Times of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche contemplates the teachings of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a pivotal figure in the dissemination of Tibetan Buddhism to Western society. Trungpa was a Buddhist meditation master and holder of both the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages, the eleventh Trungpa tülku, a tertön, and supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries. He was also an adherent of the ri-mé ecumenical movement within Tibetan Buddhism, which aspired to bring together the teachings of different Buddhist lineages, free of sectarian rivalry.

Trungpa’s journey to the West began during the 1959 Tibetan uprising against the Chinese communists when he escaped Tibet with his own party of monks across the Himalayas into India. In 1963 Trungpa received a scholarship to study Comparative Religion at Oxford University. In 1967  Trungpa and Akong Rinpoche were invited by the Johnstone House Trust in Scotland to take over a meditation center, from which they cultivated Samye Ling, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the West. (David Bowie was one of Trungpa’s meditation pupils at Samye Ling.) While in Scotland, Trungpa married a wealthy 16-year old girl, was paralyzed after crashing his car into a joke shop and chose to give up his monastic vows in favor of working as a lay teacher.

Trungpa relocated to the United States in 1970 and dove headfirst into the vibrant and youthful counterculture. He established Tail of the Tiger, a Buddhist meditation and study center in Vermont (now known as Karmê Chöling) and Karma Dzong, a Buddhist community in Boulder, Colorado. In 1974, Trungpa founded the Naropa Institute — which later became Naropa University (the first accredited Buddhist university in North America) — in Boulder. He hired infamous Beats such as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Diane di Prima to teach at Naropa University.

Despite his success in delivering Tibetan Buddhism to the Western world — establishing more than 100 meditation centers — Trungpa is best remembered for his non-traditional behavior. He was a purported alcoholic (there are also some allegations of an expensive cocaine habit), smoked cigarettes and had sex with his female students.

Twenty years after Trungpa’s death, Johanna Demetrakas’s Crazy Wisdom seems to approach his life with kid gloves. Yes, Demetrakas’s access and use of exclusive archival material is impressive, but the documentary’s talking heads are comprised mostly of former disciples of Trungpa, many of whom are culled straight from Trungpa’s inner circle. They seem to lack the objectivity needed to discuss Trungpa without bias. In fact, their statements seem eerily cultish. The talking heads write off Trungpa’s alcoholism as his own unique way of testing the limits of “crazy wisdom” — a Buddhist concept suggesting that acts of foolishness and excess can lead to deeper meaning in the right context; and his promiscuity is interpreted as an exercise in corporeal agitation and a method of cultivating “true” love unbridled by extramarital temptation. Some of the interviewees willingly became Trungpa’s faux-British house servants in Boulder — they dressed as British servants and were taught by Trungpa to speak only in Queen’s English — and do not seem to have any reservations about having done so.