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Review: Seven Pounds, Doubt and My Brother is an Only Child

By Cinema, Reviews

Seven Pounds posterThis week, three films which trade on a twist or rev­el­a­tion (to vary­ing degrees of suc­cess). First, Seven Pounds reunites the cre­at­ive team behind 2006’s excel­lent The Pursuit of Happyness and is this year’s annoy­ing entry in the “Will Smith Serious Movie Contest”. Smith plays the mys­ter­i­ous bene­fact­or Ben Thomas who appears to be look­ing for deserving strug­glers who need a help­ing hand (like a research­er for “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”) but as the cir­cum­stances are slowly unrav­elled a dark­er pic­ture emerges.

Put togeth­er with con­sid­er­able tal­ent and pas­sion by all con­cerned (sup­port­ing per­form­ances from Barry Pepper and Woody Harrelson are worth men­tion­ing), Seven Pounds suf­fers from a mad­den­ing script and, frankly, a totally mis­guided con­cep­tion which someone should have put a stop to much soon­er. Yet, it con­tin­ues to look beau­ti­ful, and the per­form­ances remain first rate, right up until the most lun­at­ic of loose ends are tied up and you are released once again, bewildered, in to the Wellington sunshine.

Seven Pounds is remin­is­cent of Iñárritu’s mas­ter­piece 21 Grams and is sim­il­arly about atone­ment – but the only atone­ment required here should come from screen­writer Grant Nieporte (whose most high-profile pre­vi­ous cred­it is an epis­ode of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”).

Doubt posterThere’s an example of real writ­ing on dis­play in John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, an adapt­a­tion of his own stage play which was pro­duced at Circa last year. In the Bronx in 1964, a pro­gress­ive young Catholic priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is accused by har­rid­an head­mis­tress Meryl Streep of abus­ing 12-year-old pupil Donald Miller. In a series of lengthy scenes between Hoffman, Streep, wit­ness Sister James (Amy Adams) and the boy’s moth­er (little-known Viola Davis more than hold­ing her own in this heavy­weight com­pany) the invest­ig­a­tion is played out.

Only it isn’t really an invest­ig­a­tion – just a hunch fol­lowed by polit­ic­al and emo­tion­al man­oeuv­ring to pro­voke the down­fall of a pos­sibly inno­cent man. There are many com­plex­it­ies to take account of: Miller is the only black child in a school full of Irish and Italian kids, he’s a sens­it­ive soul look­ing for a fath­er fig­ure, Hoffman insists he is simply inno­cently tend­ing his flock. None of this is enough for the sour old Principal who believes her know­ledge of human nature trumps all.

When Doubt was play­ing on Broadway many crit­ics drew par­al­lels with the Bush II rush to war in Iraq, based on faith rather than facts (which Shanley hasn’t denied), but with a little dis­tance the broad­er implic­a­tions of faith versus doubt are allowed some air.

Shanley hasn’t dir­ec­ted a film since the under-appreciated Joe Versus the Volcano back in 1990 and he proves cap­able enough here, although the film nev­er really escapes the stage. But it’s an intel­li­gent, well-acted, thought-provoking little drama and we should be grate­ful for it.

My Brother is an Only Child posterThe most suc­cess­ful twist of the week comes in the unas­sum­ing Italian drama My Brother is an Only Child, a gen­i­al fam­ily drama, 60s com­ing of age story and polit­ic­al his­tory les­son. In the small indus­tri­al town of Latina, foun­ded by the fas­cists in the 30s and remain­ing sym­path­et­ic to Mussolini’s rule, two broth­ers com­pete polit­ic­ally and romantic­ally. Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio) is the older Benassi broth­er, a fiery left­ist with a rov­ing eye. Younger broth­er Assio (Elio Germano) tries the sem­in­ary and fas­cism before wising up. Between the two boys is the beau­ti­ful Francesca (Diane Fleri), dis­tract­ing them both from the import­ant polit­ic­al mat­ters at hand.

When it comes, the twist is like a kid­ney punch, suck­ing all the air out of you. You’ve grown to like all these char­ac­ters with their pas­sion­ate, express­ive, emo­tion­al Italian-ness and by the end you find you really care – some­thing that the clever-clever Seven Pounds was nev­er likely to achieve.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 21 January, 2009.

I want to apo­lo­gise to reg­u­lar read­ers for the poor qual­ity of the prose in this week’s review. I knew it was pretty crappy when I sub­mit­ted it but the com­bin­a­tion of only one day in Wellington before dead­line meant I had to write it and send it before return­ing to work on Tuesday. It could def­in­itely have used an extra polish.

Review: Unknown, Stephanie Daley, Rush Hour 3, La Vie En Rose and Deep Water

By Cinema, Conflict of Interest, Reviews

Unknown posterAs recoun­ted by cel­eb­rated neur­o­lo­gist Oliver Sacks in a recent New Yorker, amne­sia is a fas­cin­at­ing con­di­tion. In the art­icle he tells the story of clas­sic­al musi­cian Clive Wearing who, due to enchaphal­it­is more than 20 years ago, can retain new memor­ies for no longer than a few seconds. The dev­ast­a­tion of his case is tran­scen­ded by two things: the love of his wife (which he is aware of even though he sees her as if for the first time every day) and his music­al abil­ity which remains complete.

In Hollywood, amne­sia (like oth­er dis­orders) is rarely por­trayed as a tra­gic con­di­tion with ser­i­ous and fas­cin­at­ing psy­cho­lo­gic­al impacts but instead is usu­ally just a plot device. New thrill­er Unknown, star­ring Jim Caviezel, Greg Kinnear and Barry Pepper, tries a little bit of both.

In a remote aban­doned chem­ic­al ware­house five men wake up with no memor­ies of who they are or how they got there. Two of the group have been kid­napped, the oth­ers are the gang. But who?

While all the evid­ence points to Caviezel being one of the kid­nap­pers (he was­n’t tied up at the begin­ning for a start) he does­n’t feel like one and, des­pite the shift­ing alle­gi­ances and Lord of the Flies power-plays, he attempts to bind the group togeth­er so they can all escape before the ringlead­er returns with the ransom. It’s an inter­est­ing exist­en­tial­ist pro­voca­tion although, in the end, fur­ther psy­cho­lo­gic­al insight is sac­ri­ficed in favour of yet anoth­er plot twist.

Stephanie Daley posterInsight is what forensic psy­cho­lo­gist Tilda Swinton is after in Stephanie Daley. Heavily preg­nant, and still mourn­ing the loss of a pre­vi­ous unborn child, she is asked to inter­view the eponym­ous school­girl (Amber Tamblyn) who is accused of con­ceal­ing her own preg­nancy and then mur­der­ing the new-born baby. Her exam­in­a­tion will decide the fate of the tim­id young Christian girl who may indeed be too inno­cent to real­ize what a drunk­en date-rape can lead to. Stephanie Daley is a well acted drama with a fine sense of place, loc­ated in snowy upstate New York, and a lot going on under the surface.

Rush Hour 3 posterBack at the mul­ti­plex, Rush Hour 3 is one of the poorest excuses for enter­tain­ment it is been my mis­for­tune to wit­ness. And to think that part-timer Chris Tucker was paid $25m to star in it (a fee which evid­ently did not require any time at the gym to pre­pare). Jackie Chan is show­ing his age too. Abject.

La Vie En Rose posterI spent most of the time watch­ing La Vie En Rose think­ing that I’d seen the film some­where before. A beau­ti­fully art dir­ec­ted recre­ation of the life of a troubled artist from the wrong side of the tracks, dev­ast­ated by drug addic­tion and guilt, it could have been Ray or Walk The Line except for the fact that little Edith Piaf did­n’t have time for the redemp­tion and tri­umph that the Hollywood biop­ics demand.

Piaf was an extraordin­ary char­ac­ter, a huge and vibrant voice in a frail and tiny frame. Writer-director Olivier Dahan makes con­sist­ently inter­est­ing choices (par­tic­u­larly a death-bed mont­age at the end which amaz­ingly con­tains noth­ing that we have seen before) and Marion Cotillard plays Piaf with all the fierce and demen­ted self-destructive energy she can sum­mon up. She’s a force of nature and it is one of the per­form­ances of the year.

Deep Water posterFinally, superb doc­u­ment­ary Deep Water finally gets the prom­ised com­mer­cial release and I urge you not to miss it. And, if you already saw it at the Festival check it out again as it’s quite a dif­fer­ent film second time around.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 3 October, 2007.

Full dis­clos­ure: Unknown is dis­trib­uted in New Zealand by Arkles Entertainment who pay me money to do stuff for them from time to time.