It’s hard to tell you how to go into “Toni Erdmann” as it works as both a comedy and a drama. Some moments are truly hysterical while others are deeply moving as German filmmaker Maren Ade draws us into a story which takes us in completely unexpected directions. These days, only a foreign film can get away with what “Toni Erdmann” does here as it balances out both its hilarious and moving scenes for a nearly 3-hour running time. Yes, it’s that long, but don’t let this and subtitles give you a reason not to sit through it because you will be missing out.
We meet Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek), a music teacher who thrives on playing pranks and practical jokes on unsuspecting victims with tremendous glee. Winifred is eager to reconnect with his daughter, Ines (Sandra Hüller), who is currently working in Bucharest, Romania as a business consultant in the oil industry. Ines is hopelessly addicted to her phone, as many of us are from one nation to the next, and she barely has any time at all to spend with her family as she is constantly called away to work. Following a sudden death, Winfried impulsively travels to Romania to spend time with Ines, but his unexpected visit cannot compete with her seemingly ambitious climb up the corporate ladder. Winfried at one point asks Ines what she enjoys most out of life, and she finds she cannot really answer the question as the term enjoyment is impossible for her to honestly define. These days, with everyone struggling to make a living, it’s very hard not to relate to how she feels.
After feeling quite alienated, Winfried decides to leave Romania and let Ines go about her hectic life. A few days later, however, Winfried reappears as Toni Erdmann, his alter-ego who presents himself as a life coach and consultant to Ines and her friends, and it doesn’t take long for him to draw a crowd with his effortless charisma. Ines is at first horrified by what her father has pulled off as she feels her career might be put in jeopardy as a result, but she eventually finds herself playing along as it gives her life a levity which constantly eludes it.
Watching “Toni Erdmann,” I kept thinking how a Hollywood studio would try to dumb down the material and force the director to cut the movie down to 90 minutes so they could maximize the number of screenings which can be shown in a day. I imagine producers were trying to do the same to Ade, but she apparently said deleting scenes would have hurt the movie’s pacing. Keep in mind, she spent over a year editing the movie and even gave birth to her second child in the process, so you cannot say she didn’t put a lot of thought into what she was doing here. The end result is a final cut which doesn’t have a single wasted shot in it as we watch Winfried and Ines struggle with this crazy thing called life.
Both Simonischek and Hüller are exemplary in portraying characters who could have been played far too broadly in any other movie, and the actors fully invest in the emotional natures of Winfried/Toni and Ines to where we are completely caught up in what’s going on in their minds. Just when you think each actor has given their best moment onscreen here, they come up with another one which has you in awe as well as in hysterics in regards to what they succeed in pulling off.
Winfried could have been a completely obnoxious and annoying father like many are in movies these days, but Simonischek makes him a wonderful presence even when Winfried, in his alter-ego of Toni, threatens to overstay his welcome. When he reveals who he really is to another person and why he is putting on such a disguise, it is a wonderfully moving moment as he is not greeted with disdain but instead with understanding and empathy. I imagine most parents are desperate to keep a strong connection with their children after they move away from home, so it shouldn’t be a big surprise when some resort to desperate measures.
Hüller gives us a character ever so serious in advancing her career in a male-dominated business, but she’s also not afraid of showing the bruises in Ines’ armor which come up when her world becomes too much to deal with emotionally. She also brilliantly takes her character in directions you couldn’t possibly anticipate, and this results in a musical scene and a birthday party, both of which need to be seen to be believed. She fearlessly dives into those moments with sheer enthusiasm as she soon finds herself battling against a lifestyle which has become far too suffocating to deal with.
“Toni Erdmann” is in many ways a comedy, but the comedy doesn’t just come out of its hysterical moments. It also comes out of the painful and awkward ones as humor at times becomes the only way to deal with the emotional hurdles life constantly throws in our direction. There is a seriousness to the subject matter as well as life and death are dealt with in equal measure. Taking this into account, it’s best to go in with an open mind as expectations will threaten your cinematic experience rather than inform it. What you can expect are a number of surprises you could never have expected, if that makes any sense.
Every once in a while, we need a movie which reminds us of the importance of living in the here and now as life becomes far too hectic for us to realize it. “Toni Erdmann” never tries to shameless manipulate its audience into feeling anything as we come to fully sympathize with Winfried and Ines to where we do see the importance of stopping to smell the flowers more often. Winfried’s last scene with Ines drives this point through as they come to realize how quickly time passes everyone by to where it is very hard to slow down for just a second. Please don’t try to convince me you don’t relate to this in the slightest.
I am still thinking about that last scene long after the movie ended, and of how Hollywood would never have let Ade get away with a nearly 3-hour running time. I’m convinced they would rather rush to get to the “live in the moment” scene in a mere 90 minutes because more screenings in a day means more money. Sometimes it is worth it to take the time to tell a really good story.
2016 was a huge clusterfuck of a year, and I was beyond thrilled when the clock struck midnight on December 31st. For me, it started off with a carjacking, left me with a totaled vehicle, far too many people were met by the Grim Reaper, and it all ended with the wrong person being elected President of the United States. Even when I tried to find solace and relief at the movie theater, I was let down way too many times. Granted, the year did make a comeback towards the very end with cinematic masterpieces like “Manchester by the Sea,” “La La Land” and “Silence,” but it did little to cover up just how much Hollywood let us down.
I did manage to skip seeing some of the bigger bombs of the year like “Warcraft” and “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” and others like “Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice” look to have found some salvation through longer cuts on DVD and Blu-ray. Still, 2016 left some awful movies in its wake, and the stench of them gnaw at me months after I sat through them. So, let’s take another swing at these 10 films which had me staring at the screen in sheer disbelief.
“Now You See Me” was both fun and clever, but its sequel tries to outdo the original to such a ridiculous effect to where I came out of it with a massive headache. While it helps to suspend disbelief during movies like these, it quickly became impossible to do so as the magic tricks constantly defied all reasonable logic. By the end, I had long since given up trying to make sense of everything and anything, and not even a talented cast which includes Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson and Daniel Radcliffe among others could use their charisma to make “Now You See Me 2” seem cleverer than it could ever hope to be.
Here’s another sequel, but this was one I really looked forward to seeing. With it being directed by Adam Wingard and written by Simon Barrett, the same two who gave us “You’re Next” and “The Guest,” I figured they would bring a freshness to this franchise which quickly took a nosedive after the abysmal “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2.” Alas, despite some strong reviews which were plastered all over the movie’s poster before its release, “Blair Witch” proved to be the same old thing and terribly unsatisfying. The characters were not the least bit memorable, and after a while it felt more like a bad “Paranormal Activity” sequel than anything else. By the time we reached the movie’s conclusion, I wondered why anyone bothered to make another sequel to “The Blair Witch Project” in the first place.
I am now officially burned out on young adult movies which yearn to be profitable franchises as they all look the same. “The 5th Wave” wants to be a “Hunger Games” for the next generation, but instead it feels like recycled material designed to appeal to a demographic which is now on the lookout for something more adult. Despite some strong turns from Chloe Grace Moretz and Maika Monroe, this young adult adventure feels very uninspired as it borrows elements from other movies far superior to it.
Here’s another movie which tried to stay one step ahead of the audience, and it ended up losing me long before the halfway point. Steven C. Miller’s action thriller has some clever robbery sequences, but the story became so convoluted to where I was surprised I didn’t walk out of it when I had the chance. The plot involves a murder conspiracy which is ridiculously impossible to decipher, and it strands actors like Christopher Meloni, Dave Bautista and Adam Grenier in an infinitely grim motion picture which tried my patience all the way up to the last frame. But worst of all is Bruce Willis who looks like he doesn’t want to be there. While he gets top billing, he’s barely in “Marauders” to where I couldn’t help but think they paid him an obscene amount of money just to show up for a few days’ work. Is this really the kind of crap he has resigned himself to being in on a regular basis?
It is very depressing to realize this is Courtney Hunt’s first directorial effort since her excellent movie “Frozen River” as she gives us nothing more than a routine and banal courtroom drama which wastes the time and talent of Keanu Reeves, Renee Zellweger, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Jim Belushi. As soon as we see the snake slithering across the highway at the movie’s start, we know exactly what to expect to where there nothing can surprise us in the slightest, and the case at hand takes turns which baffle even those audience members who never went to law school. Daniel Craig was originally set to play Reeves’ role but dropped out before filming began. Smart move.
After a year which saw fantastic biopics like “Straight Outta Compton” and “Love & Mercy,” 2016 gave us this giant lump of coal which attempted to dramatize the life of country music legend Hank Williams. In all fairness, Tom Hiddleston does an impressive job of singing Williams’ songs which are not at all easy to pull off, and he got strong support from Elizabeth Olsen who portrayed his first wife, Audrey Williams. But writer and director Marc Abraham does such a poor job here as the movie goes in directions which leave us wondering as to what point we are at in Hank’s life, and he does little to nothing in terms of digging into the singer’s life to see what made his work so unforgettable. I came out of “I Saw the Light” feeling like I learned nothing about Hank Williams. He may have been a great singer, but the movie portrays him as nothing more than a jerk you wouldn’t want to spend time with.
Far and away one of the worst adaptations ever of a Stephen King novel, and that’s saying a lot. What could have been a gleefully twisted satire on our obsession with cell phones turned out to be nothing more than a typical zombie movie, and the fact the studio dumped it in a few theaters upon its release should give you an idea of the confidence they had in it. Director Tod Williams gives us nothing more than a glum motion picture which reminds us of so many others like it which were so much better, and the cast which includes John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson look so bored to where you wonder why they bothered to show up on set. It all culminates in a very badly lit finale which makes you wonder why no one bothered to reshoot it in the hopes it might save such a lifeless motion picture.
For me, this was the single most disappointing movie of 2016. This should have salvaged a summer movie season where even the best offerings only left so much of an impression, but instead it proved to be the final nail in its beat-up coffin. This should have been a motion picture which exhilarated us with the exploits of villains and bad guys, but even with the talented David Ayer at the helm, “Suicide Squad” proved to be a real waste as the characters were largely defanged to where you want to yell at all those Warner Brothers executives, “THESE ARE BAD GUYS! LET THEM BE BAD GUYS!” This movie played it way too safe, suffers from bad cinematography, and Jared Leto’s Joker was a major letdown. Only Viola Davis seems alive onscreen as her character, who is one of the movie’s good guys, proves to be the most threatening one of all. Such a disappointment, I was expecting it to be one of the most entertaining movies of the year.
Watching this movie made me feel physically ill. My body hurt all over as I endured the shameless manipulation and offensiveness of what sadly turned out to be Garry Marshall’s last film before his death. Yes, the man gave us a wealth of great entertainment which included the show “Happy Days” and the movie “Pretty Woman” which made a star out of Julia Roberts, but “Mother’s Day” shows him at his worst as he puts together a terribly contrived story involving a group of unconnected people who somehow come together on yet another holiday (remember, this is from the man who gave us “Valentine’s Day” and “New Year’s Eve”). Did Marshall even realize how insulting to the intelligence this motion picture would be? Everything about it felt so artificial to where I could never stop cringing from start to finish. Marshall may have been old-fashioned in his approach, but it doesn’t excuse the fact this movie was so incredibly awful.
And now for the worst of the worst, and this is a movie I just love to hate with a passion:
Look, Dinesh D’Souza can hate on Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party all he wants; that’s his right. If I have to sit through one of his movies, I will. But his latest political screed proved to be one of the worst documentaries ever made, and that’s considering if you want to call this a documentary. D’Souza doesn’t even deal with Hillary until the movie’s last half hour, and he instead goes over the racist past of the Democratic Party in an attempt to link it to the Democratic Party of today. In the process, he gives an unintentionally hilarious film which treats all democrats as if they were one-dimensional villains from an 80’s slasher flick, and I eagerly await him to make one of his own called “Democrat the 13th.” Like many filmmakers, D’Souza cherry picks facts and presents them in a way which speaks more to his infinite paranoia and burning desire to rewrite history to his heart’s content. “Hillary’s America” presents us with an endless number of re-enactments, each one worse than the next, a look at D’Souza’s time spent in a halfway house which I’m convinced was co-directed by Tommy Wiseau, and acting which redefines the terms “flat” and “one-dimensional.” When D’Souza does finally get around to dealing with Hillary, my jaw just dropped as his portrayal of her as shrew needing to be tamed spoke more of his anti-feminist views than anything else. D’Souza still wants to prove to the world he was a political martyr, but instead he shows us how cut off from reality he is, and the realization of this is far more frightening than anything he shows us here.
So, those are my picks for the worst movies of 2016. Here’s hoping 2017 is a better year for us all on a personal and professional level.
“The Founder” recently had its press conference in Los Angeles, California, and it took place the week before President Barack Obama is set to leave the White House and Donald Trump will move in. While no one brought up their political views during this press conference, the movie felt more timely than perhaps its filmmakers intended as it illustrates the birth of unrestrained capitalism. Considering we have a die-hard capitalist set to be the next President of the United States, it’s hard not think about the corporate world and corporations as we watch Michael Keaton play Ray Kroc, a salesman from Illinois who discovered a different kind of restaurant run by Maurice and Richard McDonald and eventually turned it into a billion-dollar franchise. But in the process, Ray convinces just about everyone around him that he was the one who founded McDonald’s, and he eventually steals the brothers’ business right out from under them.
Directed by John Lee Hancock, “The Founder” deals with a number of different subjects like capitalism (sustainable and unrestrained), business, greed, the corporate world, etc. The movie also makes you wonder if it is even remotely possible to run a corporation without losing your heart and soul in the process. But most of all, it makes you see how everyone doesn’t see the American Dream in the same way.
Laura Dern also stars in the movie as Ray’s wife, Ethel, and it was fascinating to hear her talk about the elements in the story which were hiding just beneath the surface. Also, she talked about seeing the movie with her daughter and how they reacted to a key scene involving the McDonald brothers.
Laura Dern: The piece that interested me, which was probably the piece I knew about Ray Kroc or McDonald’s, was this question of the introduction of the filler. I was fascinated that the film pointed it out, but also this question of how did it turn from real food to how we can make a fast buck and potentially poison people. What is that? And the subversive question which interested me the most was this question of, can capitalism hold compassion, and what is that story? And so, that moved me so much when John (Lee Hancock) first spoke to me about it, and hearing all these amazing people were involved. I would just love to add because I thought it was so incredible, I got to see the film last night with my daughter who is just turning 12, and to hear from her perspective, because I like to think it’s politically subversive and a commentary on this question of empathy versus corporations and can there be a place for both; I was talking about my favorite shot which just brings me to tears of these two gentlemen with their arms around each other watching the McDonald’s section of their sign be removed. I was talking about it, and when we go in the car my daughter said, “Mom, you know when those brothers were holding each other at the end?” I said, “Yes.” She goes, “That’s how I felt after (President Barack Obama’s) farewell address. We just don’t know what’s next.” And that was the film to me, and I just loved for a 12-year-old the details of the story, the point was she got what I think you all intended, and I was really moved by that.
John Carroll Lynch (above on the right) co-stars as the hard-working Maurice McDonald who is excited to see his brother’s restaurant become an even bigger success than it already is. He excitedly spoke about what he knew about Ray Kroc, but more importantly, he described how Ray’s level of thinking has become the typical kind of thinking for everyone in this day and age.
John Carroll Lynch: I knew Ray Kroc in kind of the way that Michael (Keaton) was talking about. I thought of him as the founder even though I knew there were the brothers before him. I also knew that he had owned the (San Diego) Padres, and I also knew that after his death particularly that his wife gave away massive amounts of money, and I would hear her name on National Public Radio all the time. So, that was my personal relationship with it, but knowing the story a little bit and seeing the things that are absolutely bedrock, admirable American traits of entrepreneurship, of persistence, of salesmanship, of a sense of seeing something and how far it can go, of vision, all of those things are incredibly attractive. And what I love about the way the movie unfolds was how there’s a moment when he could tell the truth about the origin of the company, and you might not feel so badly about what happens if he could just give somebody else credit. If he could just be humble enough to go, there were these two brothers who had this amazing idea, and I figured out a way how to make it on every street in America with this other guy’s help. He could have said any of those things, but every moment he has any opportunity to tell the truth, he can’t do it because he needs to be the guy. There’s also a moment in the story where you watch him kind of digest the lie over time, and it becomes the truth to him. That is very indicative of where we are right now which is what we are told is in some ways, to many of us, more important than the actual truth, and we just want to believe the easy part of what’s said and not the hard parts, and I include myself in that. I don’t want to have to deal with the hard parts. I don’t want to have to deal with the fact that people are destroyed or land is destroyed. I really, really like Egg McMuffins (everybody laughs), and that’s where my dilemma is.
Now whatever you may think about McDonald’s before and after you see “The Founder,” their breakfast menu is simply delicious. Even if eating there threatens my cholesterol levels, I have to have a Sausage McMuffin with Egg or an Egg White Delight every once in a while.
Then there was Keaton who talked at length about how the meaning of the American Dream has changed drastically over time into something which is largely unrealistic. The more he talked about it, the more one had to wonder if it even exists in its most simple form anymore. With wages failing to catch with cost of living increases, you have to wonder if it is even within one’s reach these days.
Michael Keaton: I did some press early on in Europe. I heard it there and I heard it from a few journalists from outside the U.S. yesterday, and this morning on the phone they bring it up. It’s interesting because the U.S. journalists don’t bring this up, and that is the issue of the American Dream. This is fascinating to me unless I missed something. We can go on and on about consumerism, waste, greed, etc., etc. Their perception of what the American Dream is, and let me be a little more specific, not to miss the issue with such a generalization, when they talk about the American Dream, they do it in relation to billions and mansions, and they kind of make the assumption of an extravagant lifestyle of private jets, owning islands and everything. That’s fascinating to me because my concept of the American Dream, unless I missed something here, in its simplest form, is work hard enough and there will be a job available and you can buy a house, and you can buy a car to get you back and forth from work so where you can afford that house, and have couple of kids who can attend a good school, you get a good vacation maybe, and maybe a second car. Unless I missed something, that ain’t a bad thing. I think that’s what it was. That’s not what the perception is. It’s this other thing. I want to say it is an ugly thing. I have no problem with billionaires, especially billionaires like Bill Gates who do the things they do or my friend Yvon Chouinard who I keep referring to. Pick one. There are a bunch of them out there. But there’s this other perception out there. Am I nuts? That’s not what the idea was.
Now while these discussions might have taken away from talking about the making of “The Founder,” they stayed with me long after the press conference had ended. The movie is largely about capitalism and of how it can be exercised in both healthy and unhealthy ways, and it’s hard not to think about our dysfunctional relationship with the corporate world in the new millennium. Whatever way you want to look at it, “The Founder” is a compelling cinematic experience which chronicles the rise of a franchise we are all very familiar with and which plays a significant part in our lives whether we want it to or not.
“The Founder” opens in theaters this Friday, January 20th. Be sure to check it out!
Poster and photos courtesy of The Weinstein Company.
Check out the video, courtesy of Movie Maniacs, to view the entire press conference.
Watching Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc, the man who acquired McDonald’s and turned it into a billion-dollar franchise in “The Founder,” reminded me of his role as Hunt Stevenson in “Gung Ho.” Granted, there’s a number of fast-talking characters from Keaton’s long resume which could have come to mind, but “Gung Ho” proved to be one of my favorite Ron Howard films. Like Hunt, Ray is eager to convince everyone around him he knows what’s best for everyone, but while Hunt’s efforts are altruistic, Ray’s speak more to the kind of capitalism which is very unrestrained. Either way, you know you have the right actor portraying someone eager to get things his own way or no way at all.
“The Founder” is, yes, “based on a true story,” but we don’t even need to be told this because it is far too easy to invent a character like Ray Kroc these days. The movie opens up in the 1950’s when Ray, a salesman from Illinois, is trying to sell milkshake mixers to drive-in diners and failing to do so. While his face is filled with confidence, his mind is being subjected to countless scores of rejections as failure haunts him at every corner. As we watch Ray alone in his motel room, listening to a self-esteem record where a narrator talks about the importance of confidence, we see him desperate to outrun failure as he is now in his 50’s, a time where most men hang it up and enter retirement (back in that decade anyway).
Then one day, Ray comes across a little hamburger stand out in San Bernardino, California called McDonald’s. Immediately, he is stunned and amazed by the speedy system its owners have come up with which produces high quality food in a very short period of time. Upon taking the brothers who own the restaurant, Mac (John Carroll Lynch) and Dick McDonald (Nick Offerman), out to dinner, he soon offers to turn their restaurant into a bona fide franchise. From there, we know it’s going to be an interesting ride, albeit one filled with countless speed bumps and strong disagreements.
Now it would have been far too easy for the filmmakers to vilify Ray Kroc as he essentially stole the McDonald brothers’ business right out from under them, but director John Lee Hancock and screenwriter Robert Siegel have more on their minds than reducing this man to a mere villain. From the start, we see the desperation on Ray’s face as he is at the age where most men retire, but he still sees the potential of success waiting for him regardless of how many road blocks get put up in his path. His fear of failure becomes the driving force behind his business decisions, and while it eventually reveals him to be ruthless in his quest for dominance, we can certainly understand where the drive comes from.
The role of Ray was made for Keaton, and it’s impossible to think of another actor who could have played this businessman as effectively as the “Birdman” actor does here. It fits perfectly into his talents as a fast talker and as someone who can convince you he is on your side even when the character he plays is not. As portrayed here, Ray is a complex character whose motivations are controlled by desperation and fear of failure, and Keaton nails every complexity perfectly to where we are completely sucked into Ray’s realm of business dealing even as Ray begins to take credit for things he did not create.
I also admired the portrayal of the McDonald brothers as they are shown to be decent Americans who struggled with failure themselves until they found success with their little hamburger stand. It should be noted that the brothers were never uninterested in turning McDonald’s into a franchise (early attempts to do so did not work out for them), but were instead interested in a form of capitalism which allowed them firm control over the quality of food and service at each restaurant to where they could make a healthy profit and live comfortably without trying to overrun their competition.
It also helps that “The Founder” has two terrific actors portraying Mac and Dick McDonald in John Carroll Lynch and Nick Offerman. Lynch, in particular, has one incredible scene which involves him going into a five-page monologue where he vividly describes how the first McDonald’s restaurant came into existence. It’s an exhilarating moment to watch as the creation of this now globally dominant fast food chain reminds us of the greatness of America as it is a country where just about anyone can succeed in business if they try really hard enough and are persistent as well.
Laura Dern also shows up as Ray’s long-suffering wife, Ethel. Now this could have been a thankless role as we mostly see Ethel staying back at home while Ray is on the road trying to make a sale, but Dern makes the most of it as she shows how Ethel represents the kind of life anyone else would be satisfied with. Dern never portrays Ethel as a constant whiner, but instead as a sympathetic person who struggles to support and understand her husband, a man whose appetites extend far beyond the dining room table and evenings out at local social events.
There’s also strong support on hand from actors like Patrick Wilson, B.J. Novak, Ric Reitz, Justin Randell Brooke and Wilbur Fitzgerald who play characters that come to inform Ray’s business interests, interests which soon evolve into infinitely greedy ones. Another great stand out is Linda Cardellini as Joan Smith, the woman who would eventually become Ray’s second wife. Cardellini is fantastic as she sees in Ray a strong ambition which she wants to help advance, and she proves to have a strong chemistry with Keaton right from the first moment he spots her playing the piano.
Most of Hancock’s movies, “The Blind Side,” “The Rookie,” “The Alamo” and “Saving Mr. Banks,” have dealt with true-life stories, and like those movies, “The Founder” conveys these stories in a way which feels remarkably down to earth. No one involved in this motion picture gets overwhelmed by the iconography of McDonald’s or the people involved in its making and its dominance, and it makes for a deeply involving cinematic experience. Hancock gets all the period details down perfectly to where we are believably transported back to a time where it seemed unthinkable to eat any meal without the use of silverware.
In some ways, I wished “The Founder” had dug even deeper into its subject matter to where the McDonald brothers were included more in the story, but it is still a compelling motion picture which makes the term “based on a true story” feel like it means something for a change. I also love how it is a movie which cannot be boiled down to one sentence. It deals with many things like the American dream, business, greed and the cost of success to a fascinating degree. But looking back, it is primarily about capitalism and of how it can be both good and bad. And considering how capitalism has become such an unrestrained thing to the detriment of many, it makes this movie all the timelier as it shows where capitalism in its most dominant form was born, and Gordon Gekko isn’t even in it.
“The Founder” ends with footage of the real Ray Kroc as he explains how McDonald’s came into being, but in his own way. Many things can be said about Ray as the final image of him in front of a McDonald’s restaurant leaves us in silence as he clearly claimed something which wasn’t even his to begin with. Then again, would it have become such an enormous enterprise without him? It’s hard to say otherwise.
Had “Selma” been released a number of years ago, people would probably just see it as another movie which chronicles a historical moment which has long since passed us by. But with all the upheaval in places like Ferguson, Missouri where violence against people of color is increasing substantially and the Voting Rights Act having taken a very unnecessary hit, this movie could not be timelier. What we see in “Selma” now feels like prologue as the fight for equal rights continues on to this very day. By now we should very well know we’re not living in a post-racial society.
“Selma” takes us back to the year 1965 when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (played by David Oyelowo) and several others led marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in an effort to obtain equal voting rights for African Americans. It was tough times indeed as Dr. King faces an uphill battle with everyone including President Lyndon B. Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) who is not quick to pass a Voting Rights Act as he is still dealing with civil unrest in the South which he is desperately trying to get under control. But King knows this is not an issue that can wait much longer to be addressed.
I have got to start off by saying David Oyelowo is a powerhouse in his portrayal of Dr. King, and he holds our attention completely from the very first moment he appears onscreen. It should be noted how Oyelowo campaigned for this role for seven years and managed to keep it even after the original director, Lee Daniels, departed the project. I have seen Oyelowo do memorable work in movies like “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” “Lincoln” and “A Most Violent Year,” but I couldn’t find a trace of him in “Selma.” It felt like I was really watching Martin Luther King Jr. resurrected and walking among us again. Not once does Oyelowo succumb to doing a mere impersonation of the man who had a dream we still want to see become a reality. There’s a saying that in the theater you play a character and in film you are the character, and Oyelowo is definitely the man here.
The other big star of “Selma” is its director Ava DuVernay who brings this ever so important story to life so vividly. Granted, in some ways her presentation of the 60’s feels a little routine, and some scenes feel one-sided when they shouldn’t. Her portrayal of the marches, however, is appropriately devastating as she makes you feel ever blow inflicted by those afraid of change. These scenes do not leave the mind easily. King and his supporters are determined to protest in a non-violent way, and it’s hard not to feel for them when their supporters are being beaten senselessly. Deep down you want to see them fight back against the brutality even though we’re aware to do so will be giving the opposition far more ammunition than they deserve.
“Selma” also features a wealth of great performances from actors like Oprah Winfrey who channels her inner Sofia (the character she played in “The Color Purple”) for her role as Annie Lee Cooper who, at the movie’s start, is cruelly denied the opportunity to register to vote. I also enjoyed Tom Wilkinson’s performance as Lyndon B. Johnson as he adds layers to the former President which the screenplay doesn’t always give him. Tim Roth also turns in a strong performance as George Wallace, the always welcome Wendell Pierce is excellent as Hosea Williams, and Dylan Baker is ever so effective as J. Edgar Hoover to where I ended up trying to remember the actor’s name while watching this film.
Another performance worth giving special note to is Carmen Ejogo’s as Coretta Scott King. Ejogo played this role previously in the 2011 movie “Boycott.” She and Oyelowo have a great scene together when she questions him about his alleged infidelity, and no music score is needed to empower it as DuVernay wisely focuses on the actors for all they are worth. Watching these actors here makes for one of the most compelling scenes I have seen in any 2014 movie.
Is “Selma” accurate to what actually happened in history? I don’t know, and I don’t really care. All that matters to me is that it is true to the spirit of the facts more than anything else. We are beyond the point where we should expect movies “based on a true story” to be completely accurate to what actually occurred because dramatic considerations have to be taken into effect. While some argue Johnson was more open to King’s request for voting rights than he was shown to be here, there’s no denying the one most passionate about this issue was King himself. Whether or not this movie fails on a historical accuracy level, it does succeed on a dramatic one.
Having said all this, I kind of wished “Selma” didn’t paint a number of its character in such broad strokes. I guess I was expecting something along the lines of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” which observed its characters, regardless of color or nationality, with a lot more thoughtfulness and dimension. The fact that “Selma” doesn’t quite succeed in doing this is a bit frustrating, but it doesn’t take away from the powerful effect the movie will have on those who take the time to see it.
“Selma” doesn’t just take us back to an important period in history; it reminds us of the things we as Americans should be fighting for. The movie shows many people of different races and religions joining Dr. King in this fight for an equality no one should have to fight for in this country. But here we are years later, and it turns out the fight is far from over. Once again, we have a lot to learn from history.
Happy Birthday Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. You had a dream. A dream that, after all we have been through these last few years, I would still love to see realized. And that’s regardless of how much damage has been caused around the world, let alone in America. Paranoia is getting worse and worse, and ignorance continues to be utter bliss for those in power.
Where is the America you dreamed of? Why does it always seem so far, far away? Your vision is one which needs to be embraced, and yet the world seems to keep descending into an endless abyss which it looks unlikely to escape from. Yet we celebrate your life because you had a dream and none of us, however depressed and demoralized we get, are ever willing to let it die.
You were willing to live and die for what you believed in, and this is the kind of bravery we sure could use today. We have been scared to speak our minds of the truth we are trapped in, and when we do speak it we are not heard by those in charge. People are still judged by the color of their skin even when we try to convince ourselves this should never be the case. The powerful voices of truth keep getting muffled by the powers that be, and it usually takes some illegal activity to get to the facts, facts which are now more malleable and less permanent than ever before.
Where is your dream, Dr. King? I guess that’s what I want to write about. I want to believe it is still possible that we can all be free at last. I just don’t know. The world keeps getting scarier and scarier, and I keep hiding away from it all. It gets to be too much sometimes, but it never did scare you, did it? So, who am I to complain?
Whatever happens and whatever befalls us, you will never be forgotten. Thanks Dr. King, and not just for the day off from work (that’s a coincidence more than anything else). Thanks for being a brave voice in a scary world which you refused to be intimidated by. Thanks for your dream which will never die. Ever. Thanks for remembering the most important of things, that we need to work together even when life seems to be bringing us all down.
Happy Birthday Dr. King. May your dreams be realized.
On the surface, “Miss Lovely” might look like a typical Bollywood movie, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s a Hindi feature film which digs deep into the sordid back alley of India’s film industry of the 1980’s which churned out countless horror and soft-core porn movies. In the midst of this sleazy atmosphere are the Duggal brothers, Sonu (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) and Vicky (Anil George), who are among the most prolific producers of trashy C-grade films for Mumbai’s underground market. But while Vicky has no problem with what he does, Sonu is desperately looking to escape this underground reality. When he meets the beautiful actress Pinky (Niharika Singh), Sonu sees not only his chance for escape but also the opportunity to make a real romance movie with her as the star. But as he works to make this a reality, he ends up going down a road from which there is no return.
“Miss Lovely” was directed by Ashim Ahluwalia who is said to be part of a new generation of Indian filmmakers who prefer to avoid working with Hindi film stars, and his films have been described as unconventional in how they blur the lines between documentary and fiction. This is certainly the case here as Ahluwalia’s film deals with an industry he has seen up close, and he invites us to journey into its murky depths. It was originally supposed to be a documentary, but when Ahluwalia couldn’t get those working in the C-grade film industry to be involved, he decided to make a fiction film instead. What results is an unforgettable motion picture which is as unsettling as it is intoxicating to sit through, and it’s one of those movies I sarcastically describe as being good fun for the whole family.
I got to speak with Ahluwalia while he was out to promote “Miss Lovely,” and he was super excited to talk about it as the movie looks at an industry which has long ceased to exist due to changes in technology and the widespread availability of pornography on the internet. It was fascinating to hear him talk about this as filmmakers today are dealing with a shift in technology from film to digital, and it’s a shift many are not quick to embrace.
Ben Kenber: I was blown away by it and it was not at all what I expected. It’s more of a movie you experience than just watch.
Ashim Ahluwalia: Exactly. I think that’s really a good way to describe it.
BK: I especially liked how you shot this movie on Kodak Super 16 and 35mm film as it gives the movie a really rough feel which in turn captures the sleazy nature of the business these characters are engulfed in.
AA: Yeah, it was also about the end of celluloid. The whole period that these films were made in was kind of the end of celluloid and then you have VHS replacing it. In a way, that was the precursor to the digital age and this whole way of consuming sleaze I guess. It just moved to the internet in the 2000’s and then that was the end of that. So I think a lot of it has to do with this material that was so critical in the way these films are made and consumed. It’s crazy to think that they were shooting that sleaze on 35mm (laughs), and now people would just die to get their hands on that kind of access to celluloid, so it’s pretty much part of what the film is about.
BK: Now some have suggested that “Miss Lovely” is part of a new wave of Indian cinema. How do you feel about the reaction this movie has had so far?
AA: It has random individuals doing random things and they’re not really connected, and that has more to do with the fact that now people are more exposed to cinema and they’re getting excited by what’s happening in the rest of Asia and the possibility of digital, etc. I think this whole idea was kind of overblown. It was sort of a moment when they were trying to tie everything together. I think “Miss Lovely” is a very odd film honestly. It’s not unique. It’s not odd just to India; it’s just odd generally because it’s such a hybrid film. It’s just taking very comfortably in a way that most art-house movies don’t just take it from the musical, taking from a 50’s noir, taking from sex horror, taking from porn, maybe documentaries or experimental films and stuff like that. I don’t think it represents a new specific type of film from India, but I think this is definitely a moment where there is new stuff and it’s not just Bollywood, Bollywood, Bollywood.
BK: To be honest, I’m not too familiar with Bollywood films…
AA: Well you’re lucky (laughs).
BK: I think the closest I’ve come to Bollywood so far is “Slumdog Millionaire,” but I’m not sure if that counts.
AA: Well yeah but it’s borderline Bollywood honestly. New Bollywood is kind of like that.
BK: How difficult was it to re-create the Mumbai of the 1980’s as you remember it?
AA: It was really hard because most of the places were being bulldozed as we were shooting them. So sometimes at a location, half the building was already knocked down and we just got them to hold for like a week until we shot a scene. It was literally shooting the last remnants of that kind of 80’s one-hour hotels and cabaret halls and stuff. I would say that about 60 or 70% of the locations are gone now and it’s not even been two years. It becomes kind of a document of those places and that kind of time. It doesn’t exist anymore.
BK: I read that you were not looking to romanticize or do a parody of the 1980’s. How did you manage to keep yourself from doing that?
AA: Well I think there’s sort of like a hipster 1980’s thing and I really wanted to stay away from that. I didn’t want to just make like fetishes of all those little 80’s objects. For me, the reason is because I spent a year and a half hanging out with a lot of these people from the C-grade industry because I initially wanted to make a documentary. So, by the time I was done with that one-and-a-half-year period, it was very hard to poke fun at anyone because these are people that you spent so much time with and saw so intimately. It was hard to caricaturize them.
BK: During the movie, we don’t see a lot of the real world outside of the one the Duggal brothers inhabit. When it does intrude on their sleazy underworld, you feel almost as lost as the characters do as they desperately try to escape their circumstances.
AA: Yeah, it’s kind of claustrophobic. I wanted the film to be like this kind of maze that you were trying to get out of and you can’t. The whole point is this kind of escape ends up being a fantasy of a film that could maybe get you out of there, but it’s sort of like endless passageways that lead into other passageways. It’s just a very interior, claustrophobic kind of environment which I think, for me, I relate to that. When you work sometimes in film you feel like that. You don’t have to really only work in secret cinema, but sometimes a bad day job can be like that. So, I think that idea of you were always trying to escape but you can’t, I like that somehow.
BK: This is your first feature film as a director, and your previous film was a documentary. What was the transition like for you from making documentaries to directing an actual feature film?
AA: The first film I made was “John & Jane” and that was a documentary, but it was shot on 35mm and looks more like a dystopian sci-fi film than a documentary. Somebody told me that my documentaries look more like fiction and my fiction looks more like documentaries, so I’m really interested in this idea of what a fiction film is and what a documentary is. “Miss Lovely” is not a conventional or traditional film. It’s still quite loose in terms of its language and it’s quite experimental, so I don’t find much difference. I feel like I could slip in and out between these two worlds quite easily in some ways.
BK: You once said that the raw energy of these C-grade filmmakers reminded you of why you set out to make films in the first place. What was it specifically about them that reminded you of that?
AA: Well I think what happens is that when you start working in any capacity like in an industry or an environment, what ends up happening is that you become quite jaded as a filmmaker. You’re just like always thinking about how do I get money, do I put it in this thing, if I put this person in it then I get this money and then if I work with that person then I get this distribution, etc. I think what ends up happening is that you lose that energy and spirit of why you really love cinema. You don’t watch films anymore because you’re so jaded by it. But when I experienced these guys making films, although the films are very bad admittedly, the way that they would make the films would be so like run and gone. It would be like, “Oh are we running out of film stock? What we do? The actor’s not available? Get another actor to stand in for the guy.” So the character is now played by a different actor, or if you don’t have a shot then you put a stock shot in, or the police are coming into the building so you have to finish the scene like within 15 minutes. The whole anarchic energy of the way the films are made really reminded me of what independent film should be; just making it with such passion. It’s like the passion is going to make the film happen. It really inspired me in a way to just make something which I really love with some degree of madness and passion which I think sometimes gets filtered out of you.
BK: I’m always waiting for the independent film world to explode again like it did in the 1990’s.
AA: Yeah exactly, and then you see how it’s just been co-opted and it feels like such a tired kind of thing.
BK: The characters in “Miss Lovely” are basically composites of the people you met in this industry. You said you originally wanted to do a documentary, but a lot of the people you talked to didn’t want to be involved in it because of the illegal nature of what they were doing. How accurate is this movie to those types of filmmakers?
AA: A lot of the people that were going to be in the documentary initially, I got them to just play themselves in the background. So all the background characters are all like real C-grade people. All the secondaries are actually people that, when I cast them in a fiction film, were like, “Okay I’ll do it.” But they didn’t want to be in the documentary somehow. So, a lot of those real elements I just kind of brought back into this movie in another way through another backdoor and just brought the realism back into it.
BK: That’s surprising to hear that they did find a way to be in this movie without compromising their true identities.
AA: Yeah, and as long as they were in costume they felt like they weren’t revealing too much of themselves, but they were playing themselves essentially. That just gave the whole thing a bona fide genuine authentic atmosphere that is just almost impossible to re-create artificially with actors who don’t know anything about that world. I felt it just brings another energy to it.
BK: The cast is just spot on with their performances. What was the casting process for “Miss Lovely” like?
AA: Well a lot of them are real people that, when you meet them, are so performative anyway. There’s a midget casting director, the little guy, and when I met him he was just so charismatic when he was talking to me about what he did. He is actually a casting director in real life, so he just had to do what he always does and he was really comfortable. A lot of them were really comfortable around the cameras somehow. It’s almost like they were waiting all their lives to be in front of the camera, and suddenly they just did that thing. And of course, if I gave somebody lines, finally they would never remember the lines but they would do their own thing which would be better than the lines I wrote. I would be like, “Yeah let’s just keep that. It’s much better.”
BK: All the actors seem to have a wonderfully natural quality whenever they appear onscreen. It’s like there inhabiting the roles instead of just playing them, and it really sucks you into the atmosphere of the movie even more.
AA: Well that’s because a lot of them really are those people, so that’s partly it. And the others who were more professional actors were now having to match their performance with someone who’s so bona fide and so real that they are like, “S—t! I need to get better at what I’m doing because I’m looking fake now in relation to this person.” So, putting nonprofessional and then professional actors in the same space together creates a very interesting dynamic.
BK: “Miss Lovely” reminded me a bit of the Coen Brothers’ film “Barton Fink” as both movies have protagonists who really want to make a difference in the industry they’re working in, and then they see their dreams get shattered in the worst way possible.
AA: Yeah, I like that film a lot actually. That’s a very atmospheric film. The atmosphere is very much a character in the film, and it’s not just about the narrative. It’s just about the texture of that space and stuff. It’s a good reference I think.
BK: Another movie reminded me of was “Boogie Nights” and the scene where the producers are talking to Burt Reynolds about switching from celluloid to videotape since it’s a lot less expensive.
AA: Yeah. I think probably there are similar interests from filmmakers because we grew up in a certain time and a certain place, and you’ve seen this shift happen to digital and it’s such a radical change in terms of what it means to make a movie or what a film even is. I think it’s all about a certain generation of filmmakers grappling with the shift.
I want to thank Ashim Ahluwalia for taking the time to talk with me. “Miss Lovely” is now available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital.
“May in the Summer” may look like the typical romantic comedy on the surface, but it’s really much more than that as it delves into a culture many of us have not seen. Cherien Dabis who wrote, directed and stars in this movie as May Brennan, a sophisticated New Yorker and an acclaimed author who travels to her childhood home in Amman, Jordan to prepare for her wedding. But shortly after reuniting with her sisters and her divorced parents, May begins to question whether she should go through with the marriage after experiencing a number of familial and cultural conflicts.
It was a pleasure talking with Dabis while she was in Los Angeles. While she talked at length about her movie, she also described just how much Jordan has changed from when she was a child. In addition, she spoke of the challenges she faced of acting and directing at the same time, what she was proudest of being able to capture onscreen about Jordan, and she talked about how actors Bill Pullman and Alia Shawkat came to be cast.
Ben Kenber: What I really liked about “May in the Summer” is that it gives us a unique look into a culture that most people have seen from a distance, and in some cases a rather biased distance. How was it for you capturing Jordan on film?
Cherien Dabis: It was great. Jordan’s a country I know very well. I’ve been traveling there since I was a kid. My parents are Palestinian and Jordanian and I was born and raised in the US, but we would return to Jordan almost every summer. For the last three decades I’ve watched the country grow and change so much that it’s been really shocking the amount of growth and change. I knew I always wanted to do something there because what I find really particular to Amman specifically is that it’s not only become super westernized, but it’s also quite Americanized. There’s a lot of American schools popping up, there are a lot of young people who are speaking English with an American accent, there’s so much American culture and American products; there’s fast food chains and Starbucks. So it’s just the side of the Middle East that I didn’t think people would find really surprising, and I wanted to feature that and to be able to feature the country and parts of the country that I’d been going to since I was young and places where I really discovered myself. It was really, really cool.
BK: You both acted in and directed this movie. Initially, you were looking to cast someone else in the role of May, correct?
CD: Yeah, I didn’t write the role for myself. I spent about a year looking for someone to play the part and I wasn’t finding someone who I felt was really authentic to the culture and language, but also someone who really embodied the spirit of the character. At the same time, I kept getting people, like random people, who would suggest that I consider myself for the part. It was really shocking to me that people kept saying that to me, but enough people said it that I just finally was like okay, this somehow feels like I am meant to do this. I am meant to consider this, that maybe this is part of my journey. I think ultimately that’s what I found. I very hesitantly put myself forward. I put myself on tape, I watch myself back and it’s always such a trip to do that for the first time. It took a little while for me to find a sense of objectivity or at least as close to objectivity as I could, but I saw something there that was raw enough that felt like I could work with it and that embodied the spirit of the character and what I had been looking for, and I surprised myself a little bit. So I called myself back, I made myself go through this rigorous casting process only to discover that wow, I think I might be able to do this. It was kind of an amazing journey and one in which I kind of paralleled May in a way. May is on this journey of self-discovery, and by putting myself in the film I was also on a journey of self-discovery in having to make myself vulnerable just like the character in the film. And when I realized that I was like oh God, now I really have to do it. It really feels like the right choice for the film, but it was a tough one to make given all of the hats that I was wearing.
BK: In terms of acting, did you have someone looking out for you when you stepped in front of the camera?
CD: I did. When I made the choice to do it, I brought on someone who became a very good friend. He’s an acting teacher in Brooklyn and he became somewhat of an acting coach to me. So I worked with him for about a year and a half before making the film, and it was great because my training was really about getting as much experience in the skill of acting and directing and not back and forth in directing myself. It is a very specific skill and I wanted to have as much experience in it as I could before getting to set, and it was really important that I did that because I would’ve been a mess if I hadn’t. But he came to set and he was there for me. He was sort of my eyes and by then we had a short hand because we had been working together for so long, so it was really great to have them there.
BK: I really loved how the Dead Sea looked in this movie. It’s just beautiful to the point where the name seems a little contradictory considering how lively the atmosphere out there seems.
CD: Right, and yet strangely appropriate given what’s on the other side of the Dead Sea. It’s (Palestine) so close. The Dead Sea’s so small and narrow, and the other side of the shore is the West Bank. It’s sort of shocking when you’re standing there looking out and you’re at a resort where there are these really beautiful infinity pools and spas and food and drinks and people partying by the pool. It’s a very contradictory paradoxical experience, and that was something I wanted to capture in the film.
BK: What would you say you were the proudest of being able to capture in this film about Jordan and its culture?
CD: That’s a really good question. I think the surrealism almost of being in a place. I have not seen that yet in a film, and I do think that what sets this movie apart from other Middle Eastern films, or Middle Eastern themed films, is that it really explores family. It’s a story about family and it’s a story that’s really relatable about relationships, and it looks at divorce but through a wedding. In some ways, it’s a sort of a divorce drama disguised as a wedding comedy. So it’s this really relatable film that’s set in this really specific part of the world, and it shows a part of that world that we don’t ever really get to see. The surrealism of that world I think is really interesting. Being in a place like Jordan which is just surrounded by conflict is at times really surreal because you can find yourself living this totally seemingly normal existence where you are going to cafés with friends or going out to dinner. You’re just going about your work, your life and you’re interacting with family, and then a fighter jet flies by and it rocks your entire world and you suddenly remember where you are and you remember that anything could happen at any moment. It gives you this incredible sense of perspective on your life where suddenly what you’re going through is not so bad and your problems seem really trivial and you remember the greater suffering in the world. I think it affects you in your life and your choices and who you are in a way that’s very unique to that part of the world, and that’s something I really wanted to capture and I think that’s something that’s there in the film. It’s something that I don’t think you get to see very often.
BK: We see a number of women in “May in the Summer” wearing a full hijab (a veil which covers the head and chest). Is it something that’s still imposed on women in Jordan or is that something women do by choice?
CD: Both. I think a lot of women do it by choice, but for a lot of women it’s not a choice. It’s imposed on them by their families or by society or by the culture. I do think this is a movie that looks at expectations like that. Our main character is definitely on a journey of self-discovery where she’s trying to figure out what kind of future she wants. She’s trying to strip away a familial expectation, a parental expectation or a societal expectation or even a political expectation, and she’s really trying to connect with her own inner voice and her own truth. That’s the only way she can really move into her own future, so it looks at those levels of expectations.
BK: Bill Pullman plays your character’s father and it’s great to see him here. Was it hard getting him cast in this movie?
CD: Surprisingly not and I was really presently surprised by that. My producer sent the script to his agent and he really responded to the script and the role. He’s just a very adventurous spirit so he wanted to travel to Jordan, he wanted to have that experience and he really wanted to go to Petra which was amazing. He was just fabulous. The moment he arrived in Jordan he just immersed himself in the culture and he wanted to just soak it all in. He was making friends right and left and he was having dinner with people he just met on the street. Within the first day of shooting, he knew everyone’s names. He was really just a special, special person and I’m so glad that he came over and wanted to be a part of that. People appreciated him so much for being so open in the culture.
BK: Alia Shawkat, who plays your sister Dalia, is also wonderful here, and she was also terrific in “The Moment” where she acted opposite Jennifer Jason Leigh. How did you go about casting her?
CD: Well I had worked with Alia on my first film, “Amreeka.” I was a huge fan of hers from “Arrested Development.” I just loved her. My executive producer on “Amreeka” actually told me that she’s half Iraqi which I had no idea, but I was very excited by that because I’m always looking to cast very authentically. So when I found that out I approached her for a role in my first feature, and when I met her she just so was that character in my first feature. When I worked with her I just absolutely loved her. We had a great time and we became friends and we kept in touch. When I conceived of the idea for “May in the Summer,” I immediately thought of her for the role of the sister, Dalia. She just has such a similar voice to that character; witty, sarcastic and subversive.
BK: Was there anything that you wanted to put into “May in the Summer” but were not able to for one reason or another?
CD: Well there are always things like that. You quickly realize when you’re making independent films that you have limited resources and there always comes a time when you have to make really painful decisions, and I definitely did on this film. I had to cut things out that I think would’ve added a lot of fabric and texture. There were a number of sequences, one where May goes downtown and we see a whole other part of the Middle East and we see it go from the really nice sort of upper-class neighborhood to the more downtown, shoddy kind of refugee camp neighborhoods. We are more used to seeing that probably on the news, and I wanted to show that transition and a little bit more of the society and give a little bit more of the political context of Jordan and the refugee situation. But ultimately the heart of the story is this family, and I had to keep the essence of that story. When I had to make those difficult decisions, Fort Lee a lot of that texture had to be cut out because we just didn’t have the time or the resources to capture it.
BK: My understanding is there’s a film industry growing in Jordan right now.
CD: Yeah that’s right, there’s definitely a burgeoning film industry. The Royal Film Commission in Jordan is great; they’ve been there for I think about 10 years now and they help facilitate production. They were enormously helpful to us and the crews are gaining a lot of experience. Kathryn Bigelow’s last two movies were shot there and a lot of the people I worked with worked on those movies. Also, John Stewart’s movie (“Rosewater”) was shot in Jordan which was another great experience for the country. It was exciting to be a part of that, to be a part of the really up-and-coming film community.
My thanks to Cherien Dabis for taking the time to talk with me. “May in the Summer” is now available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital.
The thought of a long-distance relationship is frightening as it thoroughly tests the bond between a loving couple to where it looks like they are destined for disaster. One relationship is put to this test in “10,000 Km,” a romantic drama co-written and directed by Carlos Marques-Marcet.
Alexandra (Natalia Tena) and Sergi (David Verdaguer) are a loving couple living in Barcelona, Spain, but they also struggle to balance out their careers while trying to start a family. Then Alexandra accepts a one-year residency in Los Angeles which could really jump start her photography career, and Sergi has no choice but to stay in Barcelona where he works as a teacher. Luckily, they have modern technology which allows them to keep in touch on a daily basis, but what is helping to keep them together may also tear them apart.
“10,000 Km” proved to be a powerful meditation on the struggle of a long-distance relationship, and it starts off with a scene which lasts several minutes and captures the characters in their most intimate state. I got to talk with Marcet while he was in Los Angeles, and he talked about how that scene came about and how long it took to shoot. In addition, he also clarified how much of the movie was shot in Spain and Los Angeles, how he came to cast Tena and Verdaguer, and of how he kept the actors separated during shooting.
Ben Kenber: It’s interesting to see how this relationship evolves once the two lovers are separated by continents and use technology to keep in touch with one another. Was it hard to balance out the benefits of technology with the human element in this movie?
Carlos Marques-Marcet: No. We knew from the beginning that the driving point was to portray the relationship which derives from the human element. The technology was the tool and the human part was the means somehow, so it wasn’t so much about finding a balance but trying to see how to use these tools to convey the means.
BK: The opening sequence of “10,000 Km” is amazing as it lasts several minutes and features the two lovers being intimate with one another, and then one of them receives an unexpected job opportunity. How did you go about setting the scene up?
CMM: It was a long process to arrive there. It was originally not such a long scene, but then we looked at the script and it suddenly made sense to have this very long scene where you see them together. It’s a two shot of them and you are with them, then afterwards the rest of the movie we shot over shot because they have no other possibilities. There’s a symbolic element to it, this raw thing of being with two people together that weren’t there together. The making of it involved a lot of preparation. The location was the producer’s house, so I knew where I was going to shoot. It was a combination of working with all the departments, the actors and rehearsing. It was like a dance.
BK: This scene must have taken a very long time to shoot.
CMM: 17 takes and three days of shooting. We planned it and we wanted to do it with the dollies. There was no handheld camera. We wanted it to be grounded to the ground. I think it was an interesting way of how to go about it.
BK: Natalia Tena and David Verdaguer are both terrific in this movie. What was the casting process like?
CMM: So basically, we found David about a year before shooting. I had just graduated from UCLA and I didn’t want to shoot another short. I just took a couple of scenes from the movie and shot them just as an experiment with another actress. I watched a lot of You Tube videos and interviews. I like to see how actors move and how they talk, and I was looking for another actor, not David, and then I saw him in this video he made with a cell phone of two friends. Then I saw that he was an actor and I proposed to my producers that we bring him in for casting, but then it turned out that he’s actually known as a comedian. I had no idea. He’s like a “Saturday Night Live” comedian. Actually, he’s done a lot of theater, very serious theater, but people love him for his comedic aspect. But then he came into the casting process, and it was a very long casting process with two people for hours. I like to work with the actors instead of just having them come in to read. I like to meet people. It was David for sure, no doubt. And then with Natalia, it was a last-minute thing. We were actually going to shoot with another actress and she had to cancel, and when we finally found Natalia it was like a miracle. It was very clear that they had chemistry, and they became very close friends instantaneously.
BK: When it came to shooting the scenes when she’s in Los Angeles and he’s back in Spain and they are using Skype to keep in touch with one another, did you purposely separate the actors?
CMM: Yeah. Originally I wanted to shoot it in Los Angeles and in Barcelona at the same time, but Natalia had some scheduling conflicts. It wasn’t that cheap to do it. I wanted to shoot it in my own house in Los Angeles, but schedule wise it was not possible. So we put them in two different apartments in Barcelona and I actually after shooting the first scene said that it would be nice if they didn’t see each other, but that lasted like two or three days (laughs). After three days I was like it’s fine if they hang out with each other. I wanted to create the feeling of missing somebody, and three days was totally enough. In the end, they were hanging out together every night playing cards, going over the lines and drinking wine, and in the morning they had to be separated. So, for them being in touch every day and then during the day not being able to be together was very frustrating, and I think that shows up somehow in the movie.
BK: When “10,000 Km” begins we see this couple at their most intimate, and they still have that intimacy throughout the movie to a certain extent. I don’t want to give away the ending, but I loved how you ended the movie on an ambiguous note. It’s not the kind of movie that begs for a solid or more definitive conclusion.
CMM: Yeah, that came about during the editing. Actually, the script was much more clear, but while we were editing there was a bunch of dialogue that we decided to take out because I felt that already through the images we could tell what was going on. Then we took it out and then for some people it became more ambiguous than it was in the script. I like it. It was not in the plan of how I shot it. I have my own vision of it, but I also like to let people imagine whatever they want.
BK: “10,000 Km” is not designed to give anyone a definitive answer to whether long-distance relationships can work or not, but I came out of it hoping these two would find a way to make things work out.
CMM: That’s a very optimistic view (laughs). We leave it so that the very optimistic people can think that (laughs).
BK: Despite the scheduling conflicts, were you able to shoot any of the movie in Los Angeles, or was it mostly shot in Barcelona?
CMM: Mostly in Barcelona, and then I shot some of the stuff in LA. There are some shots where you see my home in Echo Park with the webcam and everything, but mostly we shot it in Barcelona. We faked the LA interior in Barcelona. It was not possible to do it the other way around. In Los Angeles, you won’t find interior like you would in Barcelona. I didn’t want to shoot in a studio. I wanted to shoot in a real location so they have the feeling that they are in a house or a real apartment.
I want to thank Carlos Marques for taking the time to talk with me. “10,000 Km” is now available to own and rent on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.
There are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It’s never easy recovering from grief whether it involves loss of a loved one or dealing with the now inescapable fact that Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States. Watching Casey Affleck’s character in “Manchester by the Sea,” I wonder if he will ever get past the first stage. If he’s lucky, he just might make it to the second. While some are able to get past their grief, others are doomed to be stuck in it for an eternity.
Many movies about grief have been made over the years, but few feel as bitingly honest as “Manchester by the Sea” does. It is the latest work from writer and director Kenneth Lonergan who previously gave us “You Can Count on Me” and “Margaret,” and he really tops himself with this one. While this may, on the surface, seem like a depressing movie, it is one filled a surprising amount of laughter and a wealth of interesting characters whom we watch struggle with the steep hurdles life has thrown at them as well as the snowy weather which chills all those who live in Massachusetts during the winter months.
Affleck plays Lee Chandler who, as the movie starts, works as a janitor and lives in the tiniest of apartments in Quincy, Massachusetts. He is a quiet man and one who is not quick to make friends, especially with those who stare at him for a couple of seconds too long. His face seems as frozen as the snow he constantly shovels off his front porch, so we know the movie will be a journey into discovering how Lee ended up looking so bereft of life.
One day, Lee gets word his brother, Joe (Kyle Chandler), has passed away after suffering a heart attack. This forces Lee to drive to his hometown of Manchester-by-the-Sea to meet up with family members and relatives he has long since become estranged from, and his reaction to seeing them all seems strangely serene as if he has been preparing for this moment in a way no one else would bother to. But as the movie goes on, we come to see why Lee can never again be comfortable in his hometown as it is filled with memories and ghosts he may never ever put behind him.
Now in many ways this movie sounds like a typical one about someone reflecting on the memory of a friend who is no longer living, but Lonergan never tries to take the easy way out here. He presents us with characters who are ever so real, and their reactions to the tragedies thrown in their faces feels honest as one never responds to something so painful in the way you might expect. Everyone is far from perfect and no one here is easily likable, but the characters grow on you as they attempt to navigate past the wreckage of their lives.
Lonergan’s talent as a writer has never been in doubt, but what astounded me most about “Manchester by the Sea” is how confident his direction is. His cast ends up giving such naturalistic performances to where they inhabit their characters more than play them. I never felt like I was watching a movie, but instead it seemed like I was eavesdropping on people whose lives and problems feel more real than we ever could expect. Pulling something like this off requires major talent, and Lonergan has it in massive supply.
All eyes are on Affleck who gives what is far and away one of the best performances of 2016. His character of Lee Chandler reminded me of William Hurt in “The Accidental Tourist” and Nick Nolte in “Affliction” in that those actors played characters so damaged by horrific tragedies in life to where they could no longer process a wide range of emotions. Affleck has a tricky role here as Lee looks to be experiencing intense grief from start to finish, but at the same time he is constantly running away from circumstances which will cause those emotions to overwhelm him in a way he feels he can never handle. This must have been an exhausting role to play, but it’s no surprise to see Affleck rise to the challenge.
There is not a single weak link to be found in the cast here as each actor, no matter how small their role is, creates a multi-dimensional character worth following. Michelle Williams in particular has a show stopping moment as Lee’s ex-wife, Randi, as she tries to make peace with him after all they have been through. Williams has always been fearless in exploring emotions many of us have tried to numb ourselves to whether we realize it or not and, just like she did in “Blue Valentine,” she digs deep into the tragic nature of her character as Randi appears far more ready to deal with past than Lee is.
I also have to single out Lucas Hedges who gives an honest portrayal of a teenager as Lee’s nephew, Patrick. So many teenagers in movies these days seem designed to appeal to a popular demographic regardless of whether the target audience can relate to them or not. But Hedges gives us one who quickly reminds us of how we juggled a number of girlfriends (if we were lucky to, that is) while dealing with a tragedy no one that young should ever have to deal with. Hedges is a real find as he makes Patrick a far more mature character than his emotionally wounded uncle, and he is as unforgettable as Affleck is in this movie.
In a year which proved to be a mediocre one for motion pictures, “Manchester by the Sea” is easily one of the best for many reasons. If it has any flaws, they are hard to see on the first viewing. But even if you do spot any flaws, they are not enough to take away from how great a movie this is. Lonergan has given us a cinematic masterpiece which demands your attention as it deals with a subject that is never easy to grapple with. While the movie’s ending proves to be understandably ambiguous, he never leaves these characters without a sense of hope for the future.
Watching this movie reminded me of an episode of “Homicide: Life on the Street” entitled “Pit Bull Sessions” in which Frank Pembleton and Paul Falsone interrogate a man whose pit bulls have been trained for dogfighting have killed his grandfather. This man, who was played by Paul Giamatti by the way, cares for his dogs far more than he does for any member of his family to where he shows little, if any, remorse for what has happened to his grandfather. Falsone is incensed over how the son seems indifferent to what has happened to a member of his family, and it leads to a classic exchange between him and Pembleton.
The Ultimate Rabbit 