188. Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s second English film “Youth” (2015): Witty, cinematic, aesthetic contemplation on youth and aging—the past, the present and the future of our lives

Youth is the most rewarding film of 2015. It is not just humorous; beyond the laughs, it has a depth that any inattentive viewer is likely to miss.  It has deservedly won the Best Film, the Best Director and the Best Actor (for Michael Caine) at the European Film awards, and has predictably been bypassed at the Oscars, save for a single unsuccessful nomination for the music, for David Lang, a composer to watch out for. And, most of all, it is a fine example of delightfully composed cinematography (at a level beyond the lovely Swiss exterior shots), amazing sound effects (as opposed to music) and a clever, dense and philosophical screenplay.

The most creditable aspect of the film is the original screenplay by the director Sorrentino. Sorrentino’s films do not rely on other literary works—these are films on tales he conceives himself. He rarely employs a co-scriptwriter. Both Youth and his earlier Consequences of Love (2004) only credit Sorrentino himself as the sole author and scriptwriter. Such films deserve more respect than those that ride on the shoulders of great writers other than the film’s director since most viewers rarely note this important aspect of the credits, concentrating merely of the story rather than who was the true author and/or the scriptwriter or the originator of the tale.

The oldest look most active, the youngest most resigned
(from left to right: Paul Dano, Harvey Keitel,  Michael Caine)

Sorrentino’s four important works: Consequences of Love, This Must be the Place (2011), The Great Beauty (2013), and Youth are all inward looking existential tales—more importantly, all are original Sorrentino tales.  Each of the films is about memories, each is about human relationships, and each is about human life. In Consequences of Love, the principal character Titta overhears a girl sitting opposite him in a hotel lobby read aloud a passage from a book by Louis-Ferdinand Céline on memories, relationships and life that acts as a catalyst for his actions that follow. In The Great Beauty, the lead character Jep Gambardella, attempts to recall and resolve his life on the lines of a quote from Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night, a quote which opens the film-- “To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary, which is its strength.” Youth does not specifically refer to Céline’s writings but reflects on similar subjects. In Youth, retired composer/conductor Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) with just two surviving family members--a wife  struck by dementia or Alzheimer’s disease and their daughter Lena facing a crumbling marriage--reflects  “I'm wondering what happens to your memory over time. I can't remember my family. I don't remember their faces or how they talked. Last night I was watching Lena (his grown –up, married daughter) while she was asleep. And I was thinking about all the thousands of little things that I done for her as her father. And I had done them deliberately so that she would remember them. When she grows up...in time...she won't remember a single thing.”  Those words are not far removed from another Sorrentino film with another interesting original Sorrentino script. In This Must be the Place, the lead character Cheyenne (Sean Penn) confesses on parallel thoughts “I pretended to be a kid for too long. And it is only now that I realize that a father can help and love his child. And that I have no kids makes me really, really sick.” All the four Sorrentino films provide amazing tales for a viewer to contemplate and derive pleasure for a mature, reflective mind.

Cinematographer Bigazzi conceptualizes the aging film director Boyle
recalling all the past roles of his leading ladies
in a composite dream shot.

Sorrentino’s four films discussed above are either about relationships or lack of it, in each tale. In Youth, the aging composer Ballinger visits his dementia stricken wife Melanie, who probably is not physically and mentally fit to listen to her loving husband’s soliloquy about their lives “Children don't know their parents ordeals. Sure, they know certain details, striking elements. And they know what they need to know to be on one side or the other. They don't know that I trembled the first time I ever saw you on stage. All the orchestra behind my back were laughing at my falling in love. And my unexpected fragility. They don't know that you sold of your mother's jewellery in order to help me with my second piece. When everyone else was turning me down, calling me a presumptuous, inelegant musician. They don't know that you too, and you were right, that you thought I was a presumptuous, inelegant musician at that time. And you cried so hard. Not because you sold your mother's jewellery but because you sold your mother. They don't know that we were together. You and I. Despite all the exhaustion, and the pain, and hardship. Melanie. They must never know that you and I, despite everything, liked to think of ourselves as a simple song.” That‘s great scriptwriting—“the simple song” at end of that quote is the name of Ballinger’s composition that would fetch him his knighthood in the film. The love of the old couple for each other is contrasted by Sorrentino to the fragile marriage of their young daughter and young son-in-law.

Lena Ballinger, the composer's married daughter, (Rachel Weisz):
 "..he stroked my cheek for the first time in my life!"

Sorrentino’s lovely script reverses later for Ballinger’s daughter Lena’s (Rachel Weisz) view of her father (Caine) as she confides in her father-in-law and her father’s close friend Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel), a film director trying to work out on the filming of his swansong before retiring from active life. Lena tells Boyle about her father ”You know, sometimes when I'm asleep at night, he watches me... and last night he stroked my cheek for the first time in my life. Only I wasn't asleep... I was pretending to be asleep.” And Mick Boyle sagaciously replies: “Parents know when their children are pretending to be asleep.”  This conversation for an astute viewer is a flipside of the soliloquy of Ballinger in the room of his sick wife.

The film is equally about ageing and memories. Sorrentino’s script includes a dialogue between film director Mick Boyle (Keitel) and a young lady admirer of his work where he asks her to view the Alps through a telescope.  “Do you see that mountain over there? “ he asks her. “Yes. It looks very close,” is the reply. Again you get a response that underscores ageing and memories from Boyle, “Exactly. This is what you see when you're young. Everything seems really close. And that's the future. And now. (He reverses the telescope) And that's what you see when you're old. Everything seems really far away. That's the past.”

Boyle. the film director, (Harvey Keitel) (left) and
Ballinger, the composer, (Michael Caine)

Sorrentino’s script has two lead characters—one is a composer, the other is a film director. One is interested in music, the other the visuals—both important components of cinema. A fictional actress Brenda Morel (Jane Fonda), the muse and possibly an actress whose career was built by Boyle (Keitel), and probably a reason why Boyle's wife left him never asking him to return to her, (a clever Sorrentino contrast to the steadfast Ballingers) devastates the old man by stating that his last three films were "shit" and that she would not be playing as his lead actress in his new film because she has opted for TV roles in USA instead:  “TV is the future and the present. Life goes on without all that cinema bullshit.”

The film, as any Sorrentino film would, offers dry verbal wit and visual wit in equal measure. While the elderly lead duo of composer and film director joke about their medical prostrate condition by the amount of urine they discharge each day, they need to be surrounded by young people. Ballinger  looks at a Buddhist monk meditating in the garden each day and wryly comments ,“You won't fool me. I know you can't levitate.”  Much later in the film, Sorrentino presents the monk actually levitating.  A young actor Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano) appears more exhausted than the older hotel guests such as Ballinger, Boyle and a Maradonna look-alike who can kick a tennis ball in the air as he did a football in the past. A statement is made towards the end of the film “You say emotions are overrated. That’s bullshit. Emotions are all that we have.” That leads to a suicide. That’s Sorrentino.

Bigazzi's magic

Boyle literally puts his head together with younger minds
in search of a great script for his last film

Cinematographer Luca Bigazzi was responsible for all the four Sorrentino films and his exterior shots are always a treat to watch a she contributes to the surreal humour of the script visually, whether it is the Buddhist monk, the Maradonna kick of a tennis ball, the array of Boyle’s leading lady characters of his past films on the imaginary Swiss countryside or grazing cows with cowbells that bring out memories of composing music in the past for Ballinger. Bigazzi is brilliant in Youth beginning with the introductory close-up of Keitel’s face (just as he dramatically, visually introduced Jep in The Great Beauty) and ending with close-ups of Ballinger conducting “The Simple Song” to the British royalty, prior to being knighted. Every shot of the film is composed carefully with a twinkle in the eye. Bigazzi and Sorrentino make a fine duo.

The most important aspect of the film was the sound management of the film (as opposed to the music) which adds to the surreal humour of the script. When the emissaries of the British monarchy visit Ballinger in the hotel, the viewer “hears” Ballinger’s true response by the sound of candy wrapper being rubbed in silence. The hotel masseuse responds to comments with silence and the sounds of massaging. The cuckoo clocks seem to have a view of their own.  An aged couple who sit at the hotel table by themselves never uttering a word our sound, meal after meal, much to the amazement of other guests are discovered having loud sex in the woods! Youth was top notch in sound management from start to finish and entertains in subtle ways.

Caine gives his best performance to date as the aging composer,
with a resemblance to Jep and Titta,
lead characters in earlier Sorrentino's films

Youth deserved its win as the best European film of the year. Michael Caine has arguably presented his best best performance to date and deserved the Best Actor award at the European film awards. So did Sorrentino deserve his Best Director award.

P.S. The three Paolo Sorrentino films mentioned in the above review---Consequences of Love, This Must be the Place (2011), and The Great Beauty (2013)--have been reviewed earlier on this blog. Youth is on the author’s top 10 films of 2015 list. Mr Sorrentino is also one of the author's 15 favourite active filmmakers

187. French director Marcel Carné’s “Les Enfants du Paradis” (The Children of Paradise) (1945): A memorable film on unrequited love, a film in which everyone smiles in every situation

Mimes and circus clowns are sad personae who are loved by their audiences. Marcel Carné’s The Children of Paradise, if you have had the patience to view it for 3 hours and 10 minutes, will most likely endear you to its characters and remain a film of which you will have fond memories for the rest of your life. Chances are that you will consider it as one of the finest French films ever made, better than any that Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, or Malle ever made.

The title itself could mislead a casual viewer—the film is not about children, it is not about paradise or anything religious. The word “paradise” in the title refers to the poorer sections of society who occupied the top tier balconies (where the tickets cost the least). This garrulous section of the audience could make or unmake stage actors in the 1820s, 1830s, or 1840s France. The critical “children” in the film are adult theatre actors, whose careers are entwined somewhat with the disposition of those who occupy the “paradise.”  However, the film’s depth can be captured when someone representing the poorer sections of society, among the hoi poloi sitting/standing in the “paradise” ironically screams “Quiet! I can’t hear the mime,” when the loud and enthusiastic audience is trying to appreciate the wordless physical movements of pantomime. That is an example of the depth and brilliance of the script/film.

Garance (Arletty)  is suspected of pickpocketing
in the Boulevard of Crime

There are good reasons why one would love this black and white masterpiece. At the lowest common dominator, it is another film about love between the opposite sexes. It is also a multi-layered tragedy. It is a film about the performing arts. But what makes it so different from other films is not the subject of the film but the multifarious home truths (the class conflicts, the duels, or a rag picker named Jericho—wailing about doom to the Parisians just as Jeremiah of the Old Testament cried about the walls of Jericho, a subtle parallelism which would only make sense when one realizes the film was made when France was occupied by Nazi invaders) this cinematic work offers an observant viewer in contrast to most other works of cinema.  

Unlike most other films, the entire film The Children of Paradise is not about larger-than-life heroes and heroines—it is on the contrary about misfits, the dregs of society, the losers, the criminals, the murderers, the beggars, the homosexuals--insinuated by two characters in the film, the criminal Larcenaire and Avril--and the cheats. The tale might well be considered as fiction, but the characters were apparently built on real colourful personalities in France, who lived there less than a century before the film was made. The entire idea of the film was a creation and joint collaboration of three brilliant minds—director Marcel Carné, scriptwriter Jacques Prévert, and actor and mime Jean-Louis Barrault (who plays the mime, Baptiste, in the film). The film has proved to be the zenith of individual achievement of all three gifted gentlemen and of the lead actress in the movie, Arletty, in their respective areas of expertise. Even the two comparably better characters Garance and Baptiste, may be lovers but have their own flaws. Both prove to be losers and misfits in their own comparatively honest lives amongst the more despicable low life brought to our attention in the film.

Baptiste (Barrault)  courts Garance (Arletty)

The tale is simple—an attractive, street-smart, enigmatic lady Garance (played by the delightful and magnetic Arletty) is wooed by four gentlemen. One is an erratically-employed theatre actor named Frédérick with an oversized ego and ambition, and who can charm ladies with sweet talk, but is floored by the poise of Garance. The second gentleman is Baptiste, an unmarried (at least “unmarried” for most part of the tale) mime actor with an honest and a simple predisposition. The third gentleman is the criminal Lacenaire, who is well educated and thus can write letter for the illiterate common folk, a profession that is a mere front for his more sinister criminal activities. These three who woo Garance have names linked to the real individuals whom the French viewers could apparently recall even a century later.  The fourth gentleman is an aristocrat Édouard comte de Montray, a character again built around a real person Charles de Morny (Duke of Morny) who made a fortune in sugar beet industry and improved his social standing by marrying a Russian princess. In the movie, de Montray does win Garance’s approval due to circumstances and and the power of his wealth rather than true love amongst the four suitors. Édouard’s beautiful new spouse, Garance, improves his social standing even further.

Baptiste (Barrault): Is he smiling or is he sad?

While the tale appears simple, the film is not. The elliptical tale is split into two parts. The first is called Boulevard of Crime and the second The Man in White. The two parts are separated by a 6-year gap in the narrative. The fourth lover of Garance, comte de Montray, who has a minor role in the first part, gets a prominent role in the second. The second part’s title refers to Baptiste, one of the four lovers of Garance, the mime, who wears white costumes and paints his face white while performing, as clowns often do.

The first part, Boulevard of Crime, does deal with criminals as the title suggests. Lacenaire (Marcel Herrand), one of the four lovers of Garance, is a criminal, who passes off as a letter writer. The character of the Lacenaire was developed by director Carné and scriptwriter Prévert based on the life and times of a real criminal, who was guillotined in France earlier.  Jericho, a rag picker, one of the first faces you see in the film, is a common thief with no morals. Blind beggars collecting alms on the street prove to be petty criminals who can see quite well when indoors. Even Garance, a relatively honest character frustrates men who pay to see a nude beauty, only to see her nude body from neck upwards, sitting in a barrel of water. The film subtly suggests the bisexuality of Baptiste and the homosexuality of Lacenaire but nothing is explicit in sexual terms. This was probably because of the constant scrutiny of the Nazis on what the filmmakers were up to and what they could be allowed to do. As the original Baptiste, the famous mime/actor Jean-Gaspard Deburau, who was also popularly called Baptiste, was appreciated by the Germans, any film with a character named and resembling the original mime had no problem getting the approval of the occupying army.  But any film exceeding 90 minutes could not get their approval. Hence, the filmmakers made it in two parts. One can possibly blame the Nazis today for the length of the film but for some every bit of the film is a delight, especially if you are aware of the history of the making of the film.

Barrault as Baptiste, the Man in White,
the toast of those who occupy the Paradise

Unlike the first part, the second, The Man in White, involves duels and killings. The dramatic words of Lacenaire “I will spill torrents of blood to give you rivers of diamond,” as he woos Garance in Part I of the film becomes chillingly real in Part II.  Part II focuses more on the attraction and love between Garance and Baptiste. While in Part I, Baptiste was struggling for recognition from his audiences, in Part II the mime is the toast of theatre-goers. Similarly, Frédérick Lemaître (based on a real actor called Lemaître) who was an unemployed actor in the early part of Part I evolves into a well-established and a spendthrift actor in Part II.

There are many aspects of filming that one admires in The Children of Paradise. However, the most prominent one relates to the clever and loaded dialogues. To Lacenaire’s dramatic words “I will spill torrents of blood to give you rivers of diamond,” Garance coolly replies “I would settle for less.” Later when Édouard comte de Montray woos her with the words “You are much to lovely to be truly loved,” Garance’s loaded riposte is “Not only are you rich, but you want to be loved as if you are poor.”  That is Prévert at his best.

One loves the film as one watches it but that pleasure is enhanced when you know the conditions under which the film was made. The filming of this classic can be admired on various counts. The opening shot with crowds (extras) thronging the “Boulevard of Crime” involved a set that gives the viewer an illusion of depth when special effects had not come into vogue in cinema. Then that elaborate set was destroyed halfway by an accidental fire and had to be rebuilt.

The unusual conditions included the fact that resistance fighters, pro-Nazis, and Jews contributed to the filmmaking under the watchful eyes of the Nazis. Materials required for the filming were in short supply. Lacenaire’s negative character could only be included in the film as the film as the film was sold as one revolving around Baptiste, since the Nazis were admirers of Deburau, the original real Baptiste. If that was not all, during the filming the actor who originally played Jericho was exposed as a Nazi-collaborator and executed. Another actor replaced him and the scenes were reshot. Ironically, the enigmatic Arletty who played Garance was herself imprisoned after the filming concluded for having a relationship with a Nazi officer and thus could not attend the premiere of the film.

Garance (Arletty) frustrating men in the 'Boulevard of Crime'

While it is true that the film is a great testament for the individual capabilities of Carné, Prévert, and Barrault, one cannot forget The Children of Paradise today mainly because of the charm exuded by Arletty on screen, an actress who was once a model for Ingres, the famous neoclassical painter.

Ingres chose well.

P.S. The Children of Paradise is one of the author’s top 100 films.

186. US directors Frank Perry’s and Sydney Pollack’s “The Swimmer” (1968): Social satire on the typical WASP US male, an abstract morality tale, rewinding in time, presented with intelligence, rarely encountered in Hollywood cinema

Short stories have made interesting feature films. In the UK, short-story writer Alan Sillitoe adapted his short story The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner into a film screenplay to make a film classic—Tony Richardson’s The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner (1962). A few years later, in USA, John Cheever’ s short story published in 1964 (in the New Yorker magazine) was made into a 1968 Hollywood  film directed by Frank Perry and Sydney Pollack called The Swimmer (1968). But unlike the British film, in the case of the Hollywood film, it was not the author Cheever who wrote the screenplay but director Frank Perry’s wife Eleanor Perry, a feminist, who did. Cheever merely played a cameo role in the film, probably to lend his tacit approval to the project. And happily for us Ms Eleanor Perry, substantively improves the Cheever story.  In fact this screenplay ought to be studied and appreciated by potential screenplay writers.

Having read the short story, one appreciates Cheever’s ability at writing thought provoking fiction and his engaging skill of keeping the reader hooked.  Then along comes Eleanor Perry who introduces more characters into the tale and develops the tale by changing the chronology of events and making the lead character Ned (Neddy in the short story) Merrill into a vain, WASP womanizer (played by Burt Lancaster). While the original short story begins with Ned’s wife Lucinda speaking a line about drinking too much the previous night, the film’s screenplay never includes her spoken words and never allows the film to show her physically on screen and only builds up Lucinda’s character by other women’s acidic comments about her.  One comment from Ned’s  friend  Shirley (Janice Rule) describes Lucinda as "an aging Vassar girl in an understated suit" (an Eleanor Perry add-on, not be found in the short story).

In the story and in the film, Ned swims an abstract river he calls the “Lucinda” river ("Pool by pool they form a river, all the way to our house," are the words of Ned/Neddy) where his wife Lucinda is waiting for him and his four daughters are playing tennis. The banks of this imaginary river of swimming pools are figuratively populated in the movie by all his neighbors, friends and acquaintances. 

Ned  (Lancaster) the ladies' man

The clever screenplay alludes to the temperature of the pools gradually changing from the warm water to the cold as the film progresses.  The cleanliness of the pools, the sophistication of the cleaning processes deteriorates pool by pool, until the last one is cleaned by mere excess of chlorine. And so does the wealth of the users, pool by pool in the screenplay, until you come to the pool used by shopkeepers and the working class.  (This final progression is absent in the short story.)   The sunny blue sky at the beginning of the film gradually becomes cloudy until the film ends in a heavy, cold downpour (all within a span of a day, film begins in the morning, ends in the evening). (In the Cheever short story, Ned encounters the storm midway on his strange odyssey.) The two writers agree on one fact though—while nature can be kind and lovely, it can be equally chilly and dirty. People, as well.

Now, dear reader, one would assume that most studios and producers would have been excited by the cinematic product.  The reality was just the opposite. Actor Burt Lancaster, who loved the role, was the only one who believed in the film but chose to butt heads with director Fred Perry, the husband of the film's praiseworthy screenplay writer Eleanor Perry. The rancor reached a level where director Perry who had almost completed the film was fired by its producer Sam Spiegel (Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge on the River Kwai, On the Waterfront, etc) at Lancaster’s cajoling and replaced him with  newcomer Sydney Pollack, who reshot two key segments of the film, one with Janice Rule replacing the original actress. Sam Spiegel did not realize what a wonderful film was being made and voluntarily took his own name off the credits sensing it was a disaster! The studio, Columbia, responsible for the film, stopped financing the film towards the end. It appears that Lancaster put his own money in to complete the film, which doesn’t mention Sydney Pollack as a director in the film credits.  (The two segments unofficially attributed to Pollack as the director are the pool sequence with Janice Rule and the sequence with Ned running a race with a stallion.) While actor Lancaster probably is the one  who made the completion of this lovely film possible, a close evaluation of the Frank Perry directed sequences proves beyond doubt that those segments are equally commendable.

Today, as the film is gaining in appreciation worldwide, the Hollywood studio and Spiegel have been proved wrong in their initial assessment of the film's worth.

Ned (Lancaster) realizes that his lovely hot dog wagon has
been sold by his wife Lucinda, and he is thrown out by the owner
of the pool and wagon for being  a gate crasher

The film begins with an unforgettable credit sequence. Birds and animals scurry away frightened in the woods. We do not know why they are frightened. We hear sounds of an animal or human being. At the end of the credits, we realize the sound was created by a barefoot man wearing nothing save his swimming trunks.  By the end of the movie, the credit sequence takes a new dimension of our perception—did the animals and birds recognize the psychological state of the man? After the first swim in the first pool, Ned is served his gin and lime without being asked by a lady friend as he tries to climb out of the pool. The camera zooms in on Ned’s face partly obscured by the glass holding the drink. That shot gains importance for the viewer in retrospect. Similarly, the public swimming pool sequence where the financial condition of Ned is brought to light, Ned escapes the public frantically climbing the rock face like a lizard. The man who scared animals and birds at the beginning of the film seemed to resemble a reptile at the end. (Again, this sequence with all the colorful conversations at the public pool, was not part of Cheever’s story—it is a contribution of Eleanor Perry and possibly, Frank Perry.)

Shirley (Janice Rule) deflates the ego of vain Ned (Lancaster),
in a segment directed by Sydney Pollack

Screenwriter Eleanor Perry is the real heavyweight in the wonderful film. She contributed to the inclusion of Ned’s debtors in the public swimming pool sequence, never included in Cheever's story. She invented the humiliating forced cleaning of Ned’s feet before entering the swimming pool. She added on the hotdog cart element in an earlier swimming pool sequence, which was also not in the Cheever story. She adds on other vignettes to build the authenticity of Ned’s character. Ned is a whiz at rectifying engines that are out of sync, as he rectifies a golf cart’s engine without being asked, because his ears could pick up the fault. Eleanor Perry ensures the viewer realizes that Ned’s character (a WASP or a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) has a good knowledge of the Bible enough to quote from The Song of Solomon correctly. She builds up the character of Ned as a betraying husband, a bad father, an unreliable friend, and an uncouth neighbor. He is apparently a successful technocrat who has made a lot of money and is never ready to listen to advice from well-meaning males, but is able seduce a lot of women, who in turn idolize him due to their immaturity or for their devious personal desires. Ms Perry, a feminist, is plucking the feathers off a male peacock, as a once successful old man looks back at this past, his youth, his physical ability to nearly out-run a horse, with a large dose of vanity mixed in his cocktail drinks.

Ned comes across a swimming pool without water--and for once
speaks with concern for others, this time to a lonely rich boy

Eleanor Perry cleverly juggled the public swimming pool sequence to be the last pool in the “Lucinda” river of pools, while Cheever had inserted the public pool  in the middle. By doing so, she ensured, Ned’s worst unmasking was at the end of the film among the string of pools. She also ensured the gradual descent of the rich to the poor, pool by pool, among Ned’s neighbors, friends and acquaintances. After the rich pools, Ned comes, across an empty pool, where he meets a young boy. That is a single sequence in the film that allows the viewer to admire Ned’s concern for the lonely child. This again is an added contribution of the screenplay writer to Cheever’s tale—which merely makes a passing mention of an empty pool. Ms Perry balances the script well—it begins with swimming pools full of inviting clean water, moves on to a pool without water, followed by pools with poor quality water for which you have to pay, and finally cold rain lashing at a dirty house without a pool. In the Cheever story, a character Enid Bunker (included in the screenplay) speaks of just having spoken to Lucinda over the phone. In the film, (and Ms Perry’s script) Enid Bunker does not mention Lucinda at all. Others refer to Lucinda in the past tense in the film. The subtle change Ms Perry has made to Cheever’s story only strengthens it. Cheever's tale was a social satire. and Ms Perry, as a feminist, makes him the quixotic male chauvinist who lives in a world of vanity and, ultimately, make believe. Cheever's Lucinda was partly real, Ms Perry's Lucinda seems to be more unreal and more a female character inhabiting a disintegrating male mind. 

Ned reaches his home after swimming across all the pools in his neighborhood,
after slowly realizing the mistakes of his past vain and inconsiderate life

The couple Frank and Eleanor Perry had made Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970) which was at best an above average work.  But Frank Perry had the courage to make Monsignor (1982) from Abraham Polonsky’s screenplay subsequent to Polonsky’s blacklisting by the McCarthy hearings in 1951.

Thanks to the Perrys, Sydney Pollack, and Burt Lancaster, we have a gem of a Hollywood film in The Swimmer.

P.S.  The Swimmer narrowly missed being included on the author’s top 100 films, which currently includes another Sydney Pollack and Burt Lancaster film Castle Keep made a year after this film. The Swimmer is the second film in which a rich actor influenced the making of an important film in the way we see it today. Actor Kirk Douglas influenced the acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick to change the ending of Paths of Glory (1957), reviewed earlier on this blog.

185. Soviet/Russian maestro Sergei Eisenstein’s “Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot” (completed in 1946, released in 1958): Cinematic art beyond a veiled critique of Stalin

The early works of Sergei Eisenstein such as The Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October: Ten Days that Shook the World (1928) were indisputably testaments of the visual power of montage, crowd scenes and camera angles on a viewer that are, even almost a century later, considered as masterpieces of cinema. In 1987, when Brian De Palma openly recreated the Odessa steps sequence from The Battleship Potemkin in his Hollywood film The Untouchables for his Union Station sequence, few realized that de Palma was paying homage to Eisenstein. But Eisenstein’s early works were obvious Communist propaganda films as well. In 1946, Eisenstein made an even more seminal work Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyar’s Plot that was a veiled criticism of his own patron, the communist dictator Stalin. Stalin, who had loved the nationalist Ivan the Terrible, Part I, banned Part II and destroyed most of the footage of the partly shot Part III. Both Stalin and Eisenstein had died by 1958, when Khrushchev’s Soviet Union released the masterpiece Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyar’s Plot for the world to admire. 

What makes Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyar’s Plot different from his earlier films? Unlike the earlier films of Eisenstein, there were two departures.  Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyar’s Plot was the first work of the director where propaganda took a back seat—even Ivan the Terrible, Part I, can be considered as an essentially nationalist propaganda film. Secondly, this work presents Eisenstein’s capability to make a thought provoking film on the psyche of the lead character and why he behaves in the manner he does.  This is a film that is not merely presenting history but presents Eisenstein’s view of the mind and temperament of the monarch. It is essential to note that the script/screenplay was Eisenstein’s own and he assumed he was famous enough within the Soviet Union to present his views on Stalin in a veiled manner in this film. The intellectual film theoretician Eisenstein who had once written “The hieroglyphic language of the cinema is capable of expressing any concept, any idea of class, any political or tactical slogan, without recourse to the help of a rather suspect dramatic or psychological past,” does indeed take the help of the “dramatic or psychological past” in Part II.

The key shot of Part I, repeated in Part II,
where the Tsar (Cherkasov) watches the line of people
coming to his residence to request him to lead Russia
(cinematographer Tisse and Eisenstein's most famous shot)

The lonely Tsar of Part II

A crucial part of Part II deals with a powerful man Tsar Ivan (Nikolai Cherkasov) who begs for friendship. As the film opens, the viewer is reminded of what was already disclosed in Part I—one of his two close friends Prince Kurbsky (Mikhail Nazvanov), a secret admirer of the Tsar’s Queen Anastasia, has turned traitor and is plotting against the Tsar with the Polish King. The Tsar’s only other friend Fyodor Kolychev, now Archbishop Philip, who with Kurbsky has accompanied him on his coronation, agrees to remain close to him on condition that he could defend the Boyars that Tsar is accusing of crimes against the state.  Eisenstein shows the Tsar crawling and tugging Philip’s robe, pleading for his friendship he had enjoyed in the past. The only other true friend of the Tsar who remained loyal--his Queen--has been murdered by the Tsar’s aunt in Part I.  The Tsar is a lonely man indeed.

The young orphaned Tsar is made to wear royal robes and crown
 but has no elders to guide him

Young Ivan on the throne being manipulatedby Boyar elders
 (the painting of Mary is large in the background)  

The Tsar's innocent cousin, sitting on the throne is a pawn
in the hands of the Tsar and his henchman---Eisenstein's visual comparison
of two innocents being manipulated in different circumstances
(the religious drawing in the background is smaller)

Eisenstein goes even further to take recourse to the psychological past of the Tsar by showing his childhood in Part II. The visual genius takes pains to show the young Tsar sitting on the throne when his legs have grown to touch the floor and the Boyars are selling off his kingdom’s land to foreign powers under his seal without asking his approval. The boy Tsar (Erik Pyryev) who has grown up without his father and has seen his mother poisoned to death, takes his first important decision in life by asking his guards to arrest the elderly Boyar lord who mocks him and lies down on his dead mother’s bed laughing.

Kabuki theatre influence in the colour segment as the plot
to kill the Tsar is unraveled (yellow in foreground, red in the background)

Faces watching the play--strength of  Eisenstein of of the silent era

The Tsar learns of the plot to kill him while sitting on his throne
from his own simpleton cousin

Considering that all the six preceding films of Eisenstein was in black and white, Part II is the first and only work that the director uses colour and that too for an important sequence. Two colours dominate the two reels of the film: red and blue. Yellow is used for the kabuki-like theatre sequence (Eisenstein knew Japanese language and wrote about what termed as “Theatre of Attractions” after he became a fan of kabuki theatre form.). The film reverts to black and white when the crucial part reveals the plot and the plotters.  One needs to recall that the film was made in 1946 when colour films were not common—Hollywood’s first Eastman colour films came out in 1948. It is another matter that the banned film was released only in 1958, 12 years after it was made.

Eisenstein’s sound films Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible, Part I and Part II, saw his collaboration with the famous Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. Many of us are in awe of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001-A Space Odyssey (1968) which uses Richard Strauss’ music from his composition Also Sprach Zarathustra in the sequences when the apes throw the bones up in the air and stone monoliths appear. Compare that with Eisenstein’s choice of music towards the ends of both Ivan the Terrible, Part I and Part II and one will note a striking resemblance. All three films are asserting new found power. Though the musical pieces are different and the composers are different, the effect is almost identical.  It is well documented that Stanley Kubrick was influenced by the works of Eisenstein, though this particular connection on the use of music reminiscent of Ivan the Terrible, Part I and Part II seems to have eluded critics.

Shadows indicating politics superceding religion (trinity of candles):
Eisenstein's architectural knowledge in evidence

Now Eisenstein had studied architecture and could have ended up in that profession.  And as a filmmaker, his set designs in Ivan the Terrible, Part I and Part II are ascribed to Iosif Shpinel (credited as Production Designer and Art Director Isaak Shpinel).  Shpinel’s contribution to the films is just awesome and probably ought to be acknowledged as the finest in the history of cinema in those depatments. Evidently Eisenstein’s architectural background helped him to pick up Shpinel.  Of course, he needed the brilliant Eduard Tisse’s camera to accentuate the indoor details so skilfully as the exteriors. 

Religion plays a major role in most Russian/Soviet films over time as the Russian Orthodox Church influenced its history and most Russians continued to be religious even during the peak of Communism. Now Eisenstein was Jewish, not Christian. Apart from the coronation sequence in Part I, Part II has one major church sequence.  A play relating to a tale from the Old Testament of the Bible dealing with King Nebuchadnezzar (634-562 BCE) is staged within the church.  It is a significant choice of a tale by Eisenstein as he is a Jew—as Jews believe in the Old Testament and not the New. It’s a tale of the King commanding all to bow down before an idol he has created and three religious officials refusing to comply. Those three are cast into a furnace but survive causing the King to change his religious beliefs for himself and his nation. According to ancient texts other than the Old Testament, the King had a bout of insanity at the height of his power in ancient Babylon and recovered. What better tale to pick up for subtly criticizing Stalin!

This part of the film helps Eisenstein in two distinct ways to further his commentary. Stalin is being equated with the historical King Nebuchadnezzar. However, Eisenstein takes umbrage in the fact that it is the wicked Boyars and the custodians of the Church influenced by the Boyars that are putting up the religious play in the church. So Mr Stalin don’t blame Mr Eisenstein, blame the Church—seems to be the escapist undertone of the film. But we know the script was Eisenstein’s. The formidable enemy of the Soviet Russia was the powerful Russian Orthodox Church which Stalin could never subjugate totally. The players in the play openly term King Nebuchadnezzar as “an unlawful king, ..a satanic king...a sacrilegious despot..” and that the “earthly ruler will be humbled by the heavenly king.”

But wait, the best stroke of Eisenstein is a young kid in the church watching the play, who shouts out innocently, “Is that the terrible heathen king?” pointing at the Tsar, after the Tsar and Archbishop Philip have a war of words within the church. Cineastes will recall a similar use of a child and its innocent behaviour in the church to criticize the relationship between the Church and the State in Russia in the recent Andrei Zvyaginstev 2014 film Leviathan’s end.

Glee of  a murderess: Efrosinia (Serafima Birman)
as Eisenstein returns to black and white

Eisenstein’s film compares two mothers and their love for their sons. Early in Part II, the Tsar recalls the love of his mother towards him as she slowly dies poisoned by his foes.  He treats her bed as a sacred spot and arrests a boyar who defiles it years after she has died. In contrast, is the love of the Tsar’s aunt Efrosinia (Serafima Birman, who plays arguably cinema’s most evil female character) and her love for her feeble-minded son and the Tsar’s cousin Vladimir Andreyevich Staristsky. One is a motherless child missing his mother, the other a mother dominated child in a man’s body.

Soviet film director Mikhail Romm cross-dresses as
England's Queen Elizabeth I in Eisenstein's Part III's surviving footage

And one can glimpse Eisenstein’s true mettle in the few minutes of Part III’s footage that survived Stalin’s wrath. Eisenstein dressed up his contemporary Soviet director Mikhail Romm as Queen Elizabeth I of England. What a cross dressing role! What a film Part III could have been!

P.S. Ivan the Terrible, Part II, is one of the author’s top 100 films. The Indian TV serial Chakravartin Ashoka Samarat (2015) (script-writer Ashok Banker) dealing with the rise of the historical Emperor Ashoka (269-239 BCE) has several similarities to Eisenstein’s tale. Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan (2014) has been reviewed on this blog earlier.

184. US director Bennett Miller’s “Foxcatcher” (2014): Transcending the sport and the true events

Foxcatcher is an amazing work of cinema from USA that recalls the quality of evolved filmmaking that one associate with Coppola’s The Conversation (1974), Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) or Ridley Scott’s British directorial debut film The Duellists (1977).

There are two likely reasons why many cineastes would skip watching Foxcatcher.

One, the filmmakers and the distributers of the film highlight the fact that the subject is about the sport of wrestling. It is. And, yet, it is not. By a coincidence the director Bennett Miller had a made a film called Moneyball (2011), all about another sport baseball, which turned out to be truly a poor cousin of Foxcatcher as it did not offer much  beyond  baseball and those who manage/manipulate the sport.

Second, the film Foxcatcher highlights the fact that it is based on true events. That’s yet another common thread with Moneyball and with yet another Miller-directed film, Capote (2005). One is then led to assume Foxcatcher too will be all about an individual or the famous du Pont family as in Moneyball or Capote. Actually the film Foxcatcher is not about the famous family but more about three very different individuals, of which only one, John Du Pont, is from the illustrious business family. What is more, the director Bennett Miller urges the viewer to look beyond the three prime individuals in the film. Miller’s film (possibly through mere deduction, the credit ought to go to co-scriptwriter E. Max Frye rather than co-scriptwriter Dan Futterman, as the former was the sole scriptwriter of the less colourful Capote)  urges the viewer to look at priorities of the American society, if not of the larger  developed world, that the actions of the three individuals represent. And how subtly Miller and Frye does that won Miller the Cannes best director award in 2014. Predictably, the Oscar voters for whom subtlety is a weakness rather than strength overlooked the five major nominations for Foxcatcher (two acting awards, one for direction and one for screenplay) and bestowed them on lesser works. [Even the lovely impressive Oscar nominated work of British director Mark Leigh Mr Turner (2014) was ignored by the Oscar voters.]

"My name is Mark Schultz. I wanna talk about America,..."
Mark (Channing Tatum) speaking to school kids

Early in the film the viewer hears the following lines spoken by a lead character to a group of school kids: “My name is Mark Schultz. I wanna talk about America, and I wanna tell you why I wrestle.” Miller, Frye, and Futterman make it amply clear—the film is a social statement about the nation as well—if not the developed materialistic world.  It’s only later as the film progresses that nationalism recedes, and egos and materialistic factors emerge to the fore.

Foxcatcher is a complex true story of the multimillionaire John Du Pont (Steve Carell) sponsoring and “training” two US Olympic wrestling gold medallists Mark and Dave Schultz (Channing Tatum and Mark Rufallo) for personal aggrandizement and how it wrecks the lives and families of all concerned.

"Coach is the father.. mentor...a great power in an athlete's life":
John du Pont (Steve Carell) and Mark (Channing Tatum)

The marriage of good direction and screenplay writing comes through details—an Olympic gold medallist reduced to eating quick fix noodles bought from grocery stores with hardly any nutritional value.  He evidently needs money to eat better food. The quality of direction and screenplay comes through the lack of spoken dialogue.  It comes through bizarre, disassociating conversations that remind you of Welles’ Citizen Kane as when the mother of an adult multimillionaire discusses disposing the toy train of her son. It is not the train that matters. It is not even shown in the film.  What that little but important sequence does is that it fleshes out the characters indirectly of both John Du Pont (Steve Carell) and his caring mother Jean du Pont (Vanessa Redgrave). Ms Redgrave has very little screen time and speaks very few lines—but it is her gestures and demeanour that talk a great deal. Of course, there are the critical observations John makes of his mother Jean, revealed to Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) during an unguarded moment.  Such indirect character development is rare in cinema. The periods of silences in Miller’s Foxcatcher speak loudly and help develop the bizarre true story.

Equally stunning is the first show of a gun in the film Foxcatcher. John Du Pont arrives at the wrestling training area on his own estate with a gun and dramatically shoots at the roof.  One is reminded of the bizarre actions of the trainer in Whiplash, another 2014 film from USA. For what? To make his wrestlers train harder to win at a forthcoming wrestling event. The gun culture in USA was relevant centuries ago, but guns in a secure contemporary world of the du Pont estate, is not. It not merely recreating a possible true event John du Pont’s life for Miller but a visually critical statement of the man and the segment of society his wealth represent,  if one studies the camera positioning to capture the scene directed by Miller.

Mark (Tatum) being coached by elder brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo)

The fictional Kane in Citizen Kane and the real John du Pont in Foxcatcher are both immensely rich egomaniacs. Both films are similar in developing the characters of the super rich Americans. Both are lonely individuals and both films seek clues to flesh out their characters from their childhood toys and possessions (Kane’s sleigh vs John du Pont’s toy train). A cineaste will note the parallels between Jean du Pont (Vanessa Redgrave) in Foxcatcher and the fictional Mary Kane (Agnes Moorehead) in Citizen Kane, towards their respective sons.

It is important and interesting to note the obvious devaluation of women characters in Foxcatcher. There are only two women characters in Foxcatcher: Jean du Pont who hardly speaks in the movie and Dave Schultz’ wife Nancy (Sienna Miller, who incidentally is not related to the director Bennett Miller though they share the same surname) and both are not major figures in the film. Mark Schultz does not have a girlfriend in the entire film Foxcatcher and is never shown to have a private life. His only friend is his elder brother Dave who is happily married. Even the John du Pont in Miller’s Foxcatcher does not seem to be interested in anyone sexually. The real Mark Schuitz stated that he was privy to the fact that John du Pont was a eunuch, following a horse riding accident.  (It is not surprising to find the line spoken by John in the film..  “I do not share my mother's affection for horseflesh.”) More importantly, both John and Mark are loners, desperate for recognition, in contrast to Dave who is happy with a happy married life and two kids. As loners, both don’t care to have friends of either sex.  The only friend for Mark is his elder brother Dave, and that has its own psychological ramifications as he is also his true coach.

But the attraction of money changes the life of the two wrestlers in different ways. And tragically, at that.  On the other hand, money for John du Pont could buy brief fame as an Olympics wrestling coach, which he was not and could never be.

Steve Carell's nose (beak for ornithologists) accentuated
 in the poster... 

...and the cinematography

The real life John du Pont and the movie character John du Pont are both ornithologists.  At several points in the movie the screenplay writers bring in metaphors of birds. John asks Mark to address him as Eagle, or Golden Eagle, if he wishes to do so.  John asks Mark to watch the birdlife on the estate and gives him binoculars to that—an overt touch of friendship (“You are a good friend, Mark,” says John later). Even while describing himself, John put himself as an ornithologist first and then a philanthropist. Here are other bird metaphors from spoken lines: ”When we fail to honour that which should be honoured, it's a problem. It's a canary in a coal mine. Do you bird-watch?... You can learn a lot from birds. I'm an ornithologist. But more importantly, I am a patriot. And I want to see this country soar again. “  Birds connect with the nation and the larger social commentary in the film Foxcatcher.

Money can buy fame--Olympic Gold Medalist (Tatum) in the background,
John du Pont (Carell) a 'wannabe' coach takes the foreground

The importance of Foxcatcher as a good film is not just in its direction and commendable script but its lead actors. Beyond the brilliant casting coup of getting Steve Carell with his beak –like nose to play “Eagle” John (his profile has been used so well in some posters of the film), Carell proves that an actor typecast as such can play a complex dramatic role with a flourish. One is reminded of the comic genius Danny Kaye playing the ragpicker in Bryan Forbes’ The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969) introducing a side of Kaye the actor rarely recognized. Carell is top notch and it is truly unfortunate that he was not honoured with an Oscar for which he was nominated. Mark Ruffalo was nominated for the supporting actor Oscar but one wishes the nominators had considered Channing Tatum as well who was able to show a range of emotions, subtle and not-so-subtle.

Finally, director Miller’s choice of music that plays on the soundtrack is apt and embellishes the script.  “Für Alina” by Arvo Pärt is perhaps the most apt piece of music for the movie (director Andrei Zvyagintsev used it in his film The Banishment), followed by David Bowie’s “Fame” and Mychael Danna’s “I thought he was a very nice gentleman.” How appropriate!

The film proves to be a testament on the frailty and loneliness of the rich and famous. It equally proves that chase for lucre can wreck the lives of those not fortunate to be born rich. And it looks at distorted self aggrandizement in the garb of nationalism.


P.S. The film won the best director award at the Cannes film festival in 2014. Ridley Scott's The Duellists (1977), mentioned in the above review, has been reviewed on the blog earlier.