Just got back from seeing The Artist at Hyde Park Picture House. Fantastic film. Really moving. Gorgeous. And if you haven’t seen it yet, and you’re reading this, stop right now – there’s nothing worse than knowing even the smallest little thing about a film you’re going to see. I can’t even watch the opening credits anymore – spoils the surprise of who’s going to be in it. And don’t get me started on trailers…
Anyway, like I say, it was fantastic. Beautiful. Poignant. Funny. Magnifique. I had tears and I had smiles and I was thoroughly engrossed from start to finish. What acting! What a perfect lead man. What a gorgeous leading lady. What a cute dog.
Which is basically me saying that I really, really liked it. Ten out of ten. Etcetera.
Now, onto the flaws.
The movie opens – seriously, you’d better not be reading this if you haven’t seen it – with a movie within the movie in which the star (of both movies) is told by some baddy interrogators to speak and he says, no! I will not speak! (via a caption) and there you go: some far from subtle foreshadowing of what’s to come. I knew the film was about a silent actor whose career is killed by the arrival of talkies – I believe there’s at least one other film that tackles that subject – and I don’t think I was far off groaning at this. I know in writing there’s an idea that you use the first paragraph to set up the premise for your whole story – but I think it’s supposed a bit more understated than that.
Likewise, the only other thing that springs to mind as a flaw: a scene when he’s down on his luck and all alone and unwanted in the world – and he walks across a road in front of a cinema advertising the movie “Lonely Star”.
I guess things like that seem like a good idea at the time – and they are – but they just need to be presented a bit more cerebrally, to my mind. Symbolism. Hidden meanings. Not in-your-face obvi-isms.
Tsk! What a nit-picker I am – but I told you that’s what I was gonna do. Perhaps it’s just the frustrated artist in me who, rather than working on something he knows could only be a fraction of one percent as good as a film like The Artist instead picks fault with the tiniest little thing and finds shallow satisfaction in that. Oh well. It feels like there’s some merit in it, maybe.
And I have said I thought it was terrific.
Now, while I’m on the subject, let me just mention that I watched American Beauty again the other week – have seen it several times before, remembered it as one of the best films of the last twenty years – and, yes, it was great, and really good, and I liked it a lot – but there were also things about it that irked me; things I hadn’t noticed before. Number one, Kevin Spacey. Yeah, yeah, I know he’s great – but that’s the problem: he’s great. Kevin Spacey, the man, is too confident and smooth and otherworldly to pull off the saggy eyed dork-ass loser that Lester Burnham’s supposed to be at the start. Sure, he spills his briefcase and that’s funny – and he does it well – but his transformation’s too rapid, too complete to buy. One minute he’s Lester Burnham, the next he’s Kevin Spacey, kick-ass wise-cracking Hollywood movie star with a fast car and self-assured smile and the thing that oozes out of Kevin Spacey is suddenly oozing out of loser Lester. He pumps iron, he smokes weed, he’s funny and cool and he doesn’t give a shit about anything. He really is living all our dreams. It’s too much.
It’s also like…is he actually acting? ‘Cos he always seems the same. He does the Kevin Spacey thing and generally that’s good ‘cos the Kevin Spacey thing is cool – but it’s mainly cool when he’s playing weird maybe aliens or head-cutting off psychos or pretend limping criminal geniuses: in a nutshell, being strange and confident and exactly like Kevin Spacey seems in real life. But Lester Burnham? No, Lester Burnham needed someone who could sell ‘loser’ in the way that Kevin Spacey sells ‘winner’ – someone who could do both. Don’t ask me who – but I don’t think Kevin Spacey’s a good enough actor to do something other than be who he is.
Sort of like Jack Nicholson, right? God, Jack Nicholson is good! But he’s always Jack, huh?
Someone who can act, however, is Chris Cooper. Chris Cooper who plays the repressed gay army colonel neighbour. The same Chris Cooper who played the tooth-missing, long haired orchid thief in Adaptation. Same Chris Cooper? Same Chris Cooper. Except, by God, it ain’t so easy to believe. Now there’s some acting: being someone completely different.
What else was wrong with American Beauty? Fine film that it is. Oh yeah: too many stereotypes. Office workers who sit in cubicles and hate their jobs. Smarmy efficiency experts making out they’re the good guy when really they’ll suck the blood right outta your balls. Lifeless suburban life. Families who eat together but don’t talk. I’m sure there’s truth in all of that – but it’s also a bit like, come on, it’s been done already, and I guess a little bit lazy. TV and movies are education and I spent the first quarter century of my life thinking I’d be better off shooting myself than taking an office job. But whaddya know: I got myself an office job, in a cubicle, doing filing and data entry and stuff like that – and I loved it. The people were great, the vibe was good and civilised and fun, and it’s probably the only job I wish I’d never left. I realised I’d been sold a lie.
Maybe the suburbs and eating dinner with your children and working for a corporation and growing older and not having so much sex ain’t so bad either.
Finally, though it really is a terrific ending I do gotta wonder why the hell Annette Bening goes so mental and sets out to do something probably crazy with a gun. So she got found out cheating on her husband. So she thinks he might divorce her and get half her stuff. But is it enough to drive her to murder? To have her sitting there in her car going loopy and saying, I will not be a victim, I will not be a victim? Maybe: but I don’t think so. It fits the situation to have her as a potential shooter – but a little too conveniently, I’d say.
Oh, and Lester’s whacking off euphemisms – another cheap and well-used ‘joke’.
But, bloody hell, it’s still a good film. Mena Suvari’s acting, I think, is excellent, and though I don’t think her pretty, she’s still dirty hot. Except, wow, so all-of-a-sudden young when it comes time to do it. All film through you’re thinking, she’s a sexpot – but then next to big hairy manly Kevin Spacey with no top on she might as well be ten-years-old; she looks like she’d fit in the palm of his hand. What a transformation. What a lesson for all the grown men among us who sometimes think, yeah, I could get with a fifteen-year-old. Nu-uh: they’s just kids.
And so that’s my flaws-in-films done for the night; I shall resist the urge to pointlessly point out a couple of continuity errors I spotted in Bridesmaids the other day. Likewise, I won’t say anything about Citizen Kane, which I finally got around to watching but couldn’t see what all the fuss was about (no doubt groundbreaking for its time). Na-night, me lovelies.
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