Favorite Films of 2008

5) Slumdog Millionaire

Ever wonder what might have happened if Frank Capra directed a script based on a Charles Dickens novel? What if the gritty neorealism of Indian films of the 50’s somehow were to merge with the shiny happy musical romances of today’s Bollywood? Finally, what if it was all put together by a quirky British director best known for films about drug addicts and zombies? The answer to all those questions is the joyously original Slumdog Millionaire.

That’s original only in its execution. The story itself is pure Hollywood in the old fashioned sense of the word – Poor boy makes good, tries to win girl’s heart. The difference here is in the setting. Director Danny Boyle’s camera lovingly explores both the tourist attracting beauty of India and its gritty underbelly. Through an infectious soundtrack and a playful editing style, Slumdog Millionaire has a real kinetic energy that’s hard to resist.

The standard plot is given some new twists. Jamal, a young man from the Mumbai slums finds himself on the Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” No one, least of all the authorities, can understand how this dirt poor kid with little education can know all the answers. We find out how through a series of flashbacks to the adventures of Jamal and his friends at different ages of childhood.

Scenes of suspense sit comfortably with the humor and romance. Other films on this list may be deeper and more substantial, but why so serious? Slumdog Millionaire is the most enjoyable MOVIE movie of the year.


4) Frost/Nixon

What is it about Richard Nixon that has inspired such consistently compelling films? From Oliver Stone’s Nixon (possibly his best work) and Robert Altman’s one-actor-film, Secret Honor, all the way back to All the Presidents Men, a masterpiece in which Nixon did not appear, but was a constant presence, Richard Milhous Nixon never ceases to fascinate. His on-screen incarnations tend to elicit the sympathy that he never received in real life, mostly due his fall being depicted as the stuff of Shakespearian tragedy.

Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon (also, possibly this director’s best film) carries on this tradition. Frank Langella, one known for having played Dracula, provides Nixon with menace and vulnerability, but unlike previous portrayals, a healthy dose of humor. This Nixon has already been through his darkest days and is now seeking a comeback via a televised interview with British journalist/entertainer David Frost.

Langella is so spot on as Nixon, that Michael Sheen’s Frost might get overshadowed if he weren’t matching him note for note. David Frost, as it turns out, also has something to prove, as he’s been dismissed as a lightweight pretty boy who could never hold his own against the former president. He has to deal with, to quote the title of a completely unrelated film, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

What follows, interestingly enough, takes on the structure of a great sports movie. We see each camp in “training” with aides (kudos to Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell and Kevin Bacon for bringing their A-games to the supporting roles.) The interview itself takes on all the aura of “the big game,” complete with an underdog seemingly outmatched and in search of a comeback.

The politics are really beside the point. Just like the play on which it was based (featuring the same lead actors), Frost/Nixon is about the mindsets and foibles of these two very different men who may have more in common then they suspect.


3) Let the Right One In

In reading reviews of Let the Right One In, there seems to be a movement to consider it something other than a horror movie. Yes, this Swedish import is about vampires, but it’s also a coming of age drama about the friendship between an awkward 12-year-old boy named Oskar and a vampire girl who also appears to be 12 (but, as she says, has been so for a very long time.)

It is, in fact a horror film, one of the spookiest and best to come out in many years. Just because it’s ambitious enough to be about more than scares does not remove it from the genre which, at its best, can be just as rich as any other type of film. Carrie was also coming of Age story, The Shining about a family falling apart and Dawn of the Dead was a political allegory about consumerism in the Reagan era. Let the Right One In is about loneliness.

Its visual style is dark (set in the frigid Swedish winter), but the realistic tone begs the question, what would it actually be like if vampires existed in our world? We learn about the “young” vampire, Eli, at about the same rate as Oskar does and, despite her dietary needs, we like her. It does establish very clearly, however, that it worse to be a vampire than a vampire’s victim.

Because we are so involved in their relationship, when scenes of horror do arrive they are incredibly unsettling. One sequence, taking place in a school swimming pool presents its violence in such an unique way that I was spellbound. Even more impressive than any overt terror, is a very subtle plot thread that could easily be missed, but, if you think about it, makes even the more innocent moments scarier than most horror films would dare to be.

With my #2 choice having already been seen by just about everyone and my #1 pick just as likely to be hated as loved, Let the Right One In is the 2008 film I most strongly urge my fellow film buffs to seek out.


2) The Dark Knight (SPOILER WARNING)

Most of what’s great about The Dark Knight is obvious. It’s a superior example of its genre. The action, suspense, special effects and pacing make it not just one of the best superhero movies ever made (joining the first Superman and Spider-Man 2 in that exclusive club), but one of the great thrillers in the tradition of Se7en.

Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker has been justifiably lauded as one of cinema’s most chilling villains. The actor’s untimely death has focused much of the discussion of the film around this performance, but it would not have been as effective without the quality that surrounded every aspect of the production. Credit must also be given to Batman Begins for so thoroughly exploring the title character that the sequel was able to seamlessly move forward onto fresh territory.

It’s this fresh territory that distinguishes The Dark Knight from even the better popcorn thrillers. Very serious political and social themes are delved into under the cover of entertainment. The character of The Joker himself is as different from traditional movie villains as the current terrorist threat is from Nazis or Cold War enemies. The Joker has no rational goal and values nothing, not even his own life. He kills for an anarchist ideology that knows know rational motivation.

Faced with the threat of pure chaos, it’s fascinating to see how the good guys respond. In fact, with one exception, every character from Batman himself to idealistic prosecutor Harvey Dent to Commissioner Gordon, Lucius Fox, Alfred the butler and boatloads of Gotham citizens end up compromising their own integrity in facing The Joker. Most provoking is Harvey Dent’s gruesome transformation into Two-Face and the resulting idea that true justice is so meaningless that it may as well be left to the toss of a coin.

In the wake of the Iraq War, many films have come out questioning U.S. foreign policy and how we respond to the terror threat. They have tended to be dogmatic and none have been successful. What Christopher and Jonathan Nolen have done right is to pose these important questions without providing pat answers. That, and by remembering their primary objective was to make a great and entertaining movie. Mission Accomplished.


1) Synecdoche, New York

I strongly believe that Charlie Kaufman is the most daring, original and creative screenwriter currently making films. If you’ve seen Being John Malkovich, Adaptation or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you already know that his high concepts are mind benders leading to unpredictable places. Knowing this will not prepare you for Synecdoche, New York, Kaufman’s directorial debut and a work of mad genius. Charlie Kaufman without a net.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays a neurotic theater director, who, if you can’t guess is based on the real Charlie Kaufman at the beginning of the film, you will surely know by the end. His family is falling apart and he suffers from real and imagined illness. His personal life is a mess, but his work is so successful that he is given a massive grant to produce his masterpiece. His new project will be nothing short of a theatrical replication of his own life, along with everyone he knows and the city in which he lives.

At about the point where Hoffman’s secretary moves into a perpetually burning house, the movie stops making any rational sense and proceeds till its conclusion with dream logic that will either enthrall or alienate you. I can’t imagine one feeling neutral about this film. It’s a love it or hate it proposition. I actually did start to dislike it at certain points only to discover some of what I love most about the film days after the screening.

I’m actually not a big fan of surrealism and have a hard time with some acclaimed directors of the style like Fellini and Bunuel. The difference with Kaufman is, even as the story and images become more surreal, he keeps us grounded by never severing our empathy with the protagonist. Of course, that’s probably because he is dealing with the universal subject of the fear of death and, as in Adaptation, he has made himself his own protagonist. As in that earlier film, the image of a snake eating its own tail applies here as characters are doubled and doubled again until finally they become individuals.

Synecdoche, New York is a film to be engaged and challenged by. To be a passive viewer would be missing the purpose because this is a film as much about the audience as about its characters. It will not provide the missing puzzle pieces. That’s my job and yours. I felt rewarded with a deeper understanding of some very human themes (and an amazing filmgoing experience.) What you get out of it will depend on what you bring into it.

MYSTERY TRAIN by Greil Marcus (book review)

Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music
by Greil Marcus
1975


Greil Marcus’ Mystery Train is the closest thing to literature that I’ve ever experienced reading rock criticism. That may be because it’s also the closest to fiction. Defiantly subjective, Marcus assumes his readers are already familiar with his subjects and dives right into his primary thesis, that rock music is a lens by which we can understand American culture as a whole and vice versa.

He divides his subjects into “ancestors” and “inheritors,” the former being legendary bluesman, Robert Johnson and a relatively obscure novelty folk singer named Harmonica Frank. The latter are The Band, Sly & the Family Stone, Randy Newman and, in the longest and most interestingly named piece (Presliad), Elvis Presley.

Marcus’ love of these artists is palpable in every sentence of Mystery Train. This passage discussing Robert Johnson’s song, “Stones in My Passway” demonstrates an ability to elevate his own listening experience to epic level:

“The song is enormous. I cannot put it any other way. The image of the words is subsumed into Johnson’s singing, his guitar, into the eerie, inevitable loudness of the song. The music has its claims to make: no matter how low you set the volume, the music creeps up louder, demanding, and the only way to quiet it is to shut it off.”

While having great admiration for Robert Johnson as the most vital of the early bluesmen who set the stage for rock n roll, I was not affected by “Stones in My Passway” as Marcus was, but his eloquence in making his case renders agreement or disagreement irrelevant. I believe him when he claims to have spent many months listening to nothing but Robert Johnson (whose recorded catalogue includes only about 30 songs.)

I also believe him when he claims that Johnson’s songs were musically structured in such a way that, had he used a full band and amplified sound, rock music, as we know it, would have been invented in the 1930’s. Of course, Johnson’s mythical selling of his soul to the devil is the stuff of legend that Marcus thrives upon throughout the book. What’s most affecting about the Johnson chapter is his observation that the blues is such a purely American art form because it’s the first to embrace the American dream and then demonstrate the tragic results when it does not come true.

Nowhere is Marcus’ free association taken to such an extreme as in his chapter on Sly and the Family Stone. He actually only wants to talk about one of Sly’s albums, There’s a Riot Goin’ On. Earlier releases by the group were feel good late sixties funk, but Riot was a sullen and depressing album, purposefully distant and cold. It was the sixties ending before our ears, with brotherhood replaced by racial divisions and drug induced highs inevitably leading to dark withdrawals.

From this album Marcus riffs, at length, about how Riot was really under the influence of an African-American murder ballad, literally covered hundreds of times, called “Stagger Lee.” The song differs slightly in all its many iterations, but is basically the story of a badass gambler who kills a man for stealing his hat and usually gets away with it. Loosely based on an actual incident, Stagger Lee became the black equivalent of Jesse James and the Western outlaw legends.

Marcus uses this song as a general umbrella for a more aggressive stance taken by many black artists in the seventies. It was the Stagger Lee influence that led The Temptations, for instance, from the Motown fun of the mid-sixties to a song as bleak as “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.” Stagger Lee was also the father of blaxploitation movie anti-heroes like Superfly. It’s an impressive feet of the book that an analysis of Sly and the Family Stone culminates with a detailed look at the obscure (but worth a rental) violent Blaxploitation police thriller, Across 110th Street.

His take on The Band also relies on symbolism, but of an even less tangible kind. Their first two albums, Music From Big Pink and The Band are widely hailed as masterpieces of Americana. If they are concept albums, it is not readily apparent, but Marcus finds all kinds of fascinating connections. If the American Dream seems unattainable in the African-American experience (remember, this was written in 1975), for The Band it is a possibility, but first must be defined, or in some cases even desired.

Take this passage from Big Pink’s most well known song “The Weight”:

“I picked up my bag, I went looking for a place to hide
Then I saw Carmen and the devil, walking side by side
I said, hey Carmen, come on, let’s go downtown
She said, I gotta go, but my friend can stick around”

There’s more to be noted about these lyrics than there’s space for here, but what’s most fascinating to me, is how Marcus contrasts the devil imagery in “The Weight” with Robert Johnson’s legend and songs like “Me and the Devil Blues.” For The Band, the association is more nebulous, while Johnson’s spelled doom.

The Band, by the time of their self titled second album, was able to see America from a variety of perspectives, with voices ranging from the farmer of “King Harvest” to the Civil War rebel of “The Night They Drove old Dixie Down.” Randy Newman, on the other hand, also looked at this American landscape, but through much darker glasses.

Newman, who would cast himself as the devil in his version of Faust, writes with absolutely wicked humor. Marcus compares him, not to other musicians, but to pulp crime novelist, Raymond Chandler. The Newman song most discussed is “Sail Away,” which is melodically beautiful, but tells its story from the point of view of a slave trader in Africa, selling the idea that the natives would be happier as slaves in the colonies. It’s a mark of Newman’s craft that, despite his narrators being the most unpleasant sorts, his songs are so rife with irony that we never confuse his storytelling with approval.

Shifting gears, Marcus ends with Elvis Presley. By this time in the book, it’s no surprise when Presley is described as a combination of Huckleberry Fin and Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab. More biographical than the rest of the pieces, Presliad traces Elvis from the ambitious poor boy to visionary artist to (in his opinion) Vegas hack. Marcus states:

“Beside Elvis, the other heroes of this book seem a little small time. If they define different versions of America, Presley’s career almost has the scope to take America in.”

Of course, Elvis doesn’t need Greil Marcus to tout his legend. That job’s been done. Instead, Marcus looks at his rockabilly roots, particularly those early sessions at Sun Studios. He cites “Good Rockin’ Tonight” as a defining example of the previously unmatched energy that would define rock ‘n’ roll. The unresolved tension of “Mystery Train” and “Hound Dog’s” sexual danger are also considered indispensable turning points.

Then, as the fifties ended, he went into the army and spent most of the next decade making interchangeable and forgettable movies. In 1968, Elvis launched a televised “Comeback Special” that marked the first time since he became The King” that he had something to prove. Marcus believes that, with the song “One Night,” Elvis captured the essence of his greatness and marked the high point of his career.

Mystery Train ends with a discography. Actually, to call it a discography is a bit of an understatement as it takes up a good third of the book. Updated to 1997, the discography not only details the recorded works of the artists featured, but also other musicians who influenced or were influenced by them. Anecdotes abound and, frankly, Marcus just goes off about whatever he wants to. He’s earned that right.

Mystery Train is a sprawling book that perfectly matches the sprawling nature of its subject, and that can apply to both rock ‘n’ roll and America.