dsng.net - the daryl sng blog

Once

Once is a small, perfectly formed film about some very big themes. Most obviously, it is about the power of music to connect - after all, it is a film about an Irish busker meeting a Czech immigrant in Dublin, and them making (very beautiful) music together. But it is also about the possibility of a brief, intense connection reverberating throughout one's life, something that is probably true for many people, but rarely depicted well in films - perhaps only the Before Sunrise / Before Sunset diptych do it properly.

Musicians Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova play the unnamed Guy and the Girl respectively, and their relationship, shot through a long lens, feels appropriately real rather than the stuff of film: lots of faltering words, awkward pauses, and missteps. There's no meet cute. No fireworks. Just the natural progression of two people coming together, trying to figure out the boundaries of their relationship, falling slowly.

And natural is the right word. Once is probably the least forced "musical" (if you can call it that), and one of the least forced films around. The songs come in precisely at points that musicians should be singing, rather than any unnatural burst into song; the long tracking shots are a nice, realistic counterpoint to the staccato cuts of rom-coms; and Dublin itself is presented in all its dear, dirty glory - while there's clearly the more upscale pedestrianised shopping areas of the Celtic Tiger's capital, it's also a city of bedsits and migrants crowding around to share TVs.

And the bittersweet ending (which, in a way, is the opposite of the famous ending to The Graduate) is a just-right moment of perfect joy and sadness mixed into one. It lingers, just like the relationship continues to reverberate for the Guy and the Girl, just like the Hansard/Irglova songs stay emblazoned into the mind. You fall slowly for Once, but by the time you get to its end, it has taken your heart.

Labels: film

Away From Her

Less a real review of Away From Her, more a rave: Julie Christie is brilliant in the film. Not just brilliant in her acting - which she is - but brilliant as in luminiscent. Full of the vitality and life that makes you understand why her husband (played by Gordon Pinsent) never wants to be away from her, and that makes her decline from Alzheimer's all the more sad - and all the more puzzling. Sarah Polley directs with a spare touch that seems perfectly Canadian, and imperfectly wise beyond her years.

Come to think of it, between Dr Zhivago, McCabe and Mrs Miller, Shampoo, Afterglow, and this, I've seen over 4 decades of Christie's work, and it is a fantastic, devastating combination of acting chops, beauty, and, well, brilliance.

Labels: film

The Departed

Watched The Departed over the weekend, and my thought was: now this is how you do an adaptation. Scorsese at his finest - no one mixes the sheer brutality and the lyricism of violence like he does. Top notch acting all around, and some beautiful cinematography - I thought the final scene was a marvel of composition, and then I watched parts again and noticed all the "X"s in the scene whenever someone died. And for anyone's who spent any time in Boston, the clear echoes of Whitey Bulger are compelling.

Labels: film, review

Stranger Than Fiction

I watched Will Ferrell in Stranger Than Fiction a couple of nights ago, probably the first time I can remember Ferrell in a role other than "overgrown fratboy" - indeed, here he plays an IRS auditor, so he's very much the epitome of the straight man here. It pleasantly surprised me that he held his own acting against Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal (who, incidentally, I'm convinced has one of the sexiest voices in Hollywood).

Stranger Than Fiction asked thought-provoking questions on mortality, and the value of accepting the inexorable progress toward death - in the grand scheme of things, of course, we will all die (and Hoffman points that out), and what we leave behind as our legacy, I suppose, is our art. (A concept that made me think of Shelley's "Ozymandias".) But what happens when ars longa becomes the direct cause of vita breva? Thompson, playing the author Karen Eiffel, finally seems to be ending her struggle with writer's block by coming up with a way to kill her lead character, the generally average Harold Crick (Ferrell). Except that Crick's a real-life person, capable of real love (played by Gyllenhaal, subject of an acrimonious audit and later object of amorous affection).

How much do we accept the inevitability of death? How much will we sacrifice for art? And how do we lead a life that seems to have a mix of free will and predestination?

Labels: film, review

I, For One, Welcome Our Animated Overlords

I'm a huge Simpsons junkie - smartest show on TV, even if it might never hit the seasons 4-8 peaks of consistency - and I'm really looking forward to the Simpsons movie, but with a bit of trepidation - what if it just becomes some extended shaggy-dog story (not that that couldn't be funny) on the order of Saddlesore Galactica (Worst. Episode. Ever.)?

Still, even this little snippet on the plot from the NY Times made me laugh:

The plot seems to involve the town of Springfield dealing with an environmental disaster that Homer accidentally starts. (Also, for some reason, Homer has a beloved pet pig.)

Pet pig! (Homer-like-chuckle.)

In anticipation, here's 101 jobs of Homer Simpson:

Labels: film, simpsons

Dreamgirls: And I Am Telling You

Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls

Dreamgirls is shot Bill Condon style - lots that reminded me of Chicago. Or is that just because there are so few movie musicals these days? In any case, for an avid, avowed Motown fan such as myself, Dreamgirls was a great exercise in spot-the-parallels (ooh, and just as I typed that, the Supremes' "Where Did Our Love Go?" came on): the Dreamgirls = the Supremes, Curtis Taylor Jr. = Berry Gordy etc. etc. (although obviously it isn't a direct adaptation, and Paramount has been careful to make clear that it's a fictionalised account).

But enough rambling. The fact is, Dreamgirls, like the musical it was based on, is a show of two acts, and the first act, which belongs to Effie White (Jennifer Hudson), is bang on in terms of that early Motown infectiousness (it must be really hard to write songs for a musical based on Motown, but Henry Krieger has the chops). And it's not news, but good lord, "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" is a showstopper. Jennifer Hudson's performance is electric - her voice is defiant and vulnerable at the same time - and it made me want to get out of my seat and just whoop in applause (it's up there with the version Jennifer Holliday did at the '82 Tonys). It's the kind of moment that show what musicals are capable of, that show how music can take a film to places that ordinary dialogue can't.

Incidentally, random trivia bit on "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going": Jim Carrey sang it on the last episode of The Garry Shandling Show. I'm not kidding. It was amazing. Sammy Davis did it on The Tonight Show in 1982, but didn't do it as well as Jim Carrey. (Link) Man, would love to see the Carrey take.

Back to Dreamgirls: the second act, while solid, is more focused on Curtis Taylor (Jamie Foxx) and Deena Jones (Beyonce Knowles) and the trouble is, Effie is a character of such vim and emotion that the rest of the film post-"And I Am Telling You" pales in comparison. But perhaps that was Motown for you: after its 1960s heyday, where was there to go?

Labels: film, review

Friends With Money

Watched (and re-watched) Nicole Holofcener's Friends With Money this week. It's good. A film for grown-ups (as one friend told me), and that's always good. Although I have to say Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand, and Joan Cusack act rings around Jennifer Aniston. How good is Keener? I can't think of a film I've disliked her in. Although I admit I didn't watch S1m0ne.

Incidentally, I was amused by the "Scene of Intimacy" warning on the DVD box. The sex scenes with Aniston are the least intimate possible.

Labels: film

Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson

Watched Half Nelson at the Picturehouse on Sunday. Ryan Gosling does a fine, fine job as Dan Dunne, teacher, budding writer, and basehead. Worthy of the Oscar nom, and certainly living up to the acting potential he showed in The Believer. I can see Ryan Gosling following in the footsteps of Edward Norton, going the Serious Actor With Good Looks route. Or is it just because The Believer and American History X naturally invite comparisons?

Labels: film, review