Compared to my marked indifference to the films, the Harry Potter books continue to charm me long after I move beyond YA fiction. The endless exposition does get to me at times, but there's a reason these books caught on: the relatable characters, the engaging plot and the element of surprise that remains in these works after numerous rereads and a general understanding of its wholesale ripoff of classical hero archetypes. I've cheered on Neville or been smitten by Hermione as much as I've been affected by any characters in fiction. So, to offset the light cynicism of my film post, allow me to take a more pleasant stroll down Memory Lane with Rowling's novels.
7. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Rowling's second book has wild tonal inconsistencies between more gosh-gee whimsy and sudden dips into darkness without any kind of balance or transition. The added characters, such as Colin Creevy and Ginny, are largely pointless and suck ridiculous amounts of time from the rich cast of characters already introduced and interesting enough to warrant further analysis. Gilderoy Lockhart makes for a great buffoon, his fame-hungry attention seeking a key counterpoint to Harry's humility, something called into question by so many in the later books. Overfilled with exposition, lacking almost entirely in solid character growth and erratic in tone and thrust, Chamber of Secrets is by far the most frustrating of the novels.
6. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
It's a shame that the most thematically interesting novel of the series is also the most cumbersome and unfocused. The main plot, dealing with an arch-conservative, isolationist propaganda war designed to silence news of Voldemort's return, offers heady social commentary for youth fiction, and the couching of this plot in the loathsome toad Dolores Umbridge, who is terrifying for all the reasons one wouldn't expect, is genius. But Rowling burdens this story with wayward hormones, which she has to spruce up with magic and possession, an attempt to link these asides with the overarching importance of Voldemort's return that ultimately leads only to absurdly OTT and blithely selfish outbursts from a Harry who has never been more unlikable. Tack on the interminable sideplots and what might have been a vicious take on government's unending, counterproductive desperation to never let on that something has gone horribly wrong instead feels like a distended, scattershot rant on puberty.
5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
I've read this book four times and I still don't remotely understand the arbitrary creation and subsequent all-importance of the rules of wand ownership. It's such a random way to handle the climactic duel that I just assume Rowling pointed a wand at her ass and yelled "Accio resolution!" Having only introduced the concept of Horcruxes in the previous book, Rowling leaves most of the object hunting to this entry, leading to awkward plot jerks between hiding out in the woods away from detection and constantly coming into conflict with enemies to destroy Voldemort's soul fragments. Like all concluding entries, Deathly Hallows has to tie up a lot of loose ends, but there is a perfunctory feel to many character returns and subplot payoffs, thrown in just to get a cheer rather than as a narratively justified insertion. Nevertheless, it's a thrilling read when elements fall into place, and the utter disappointment of the convoluted finale cannot undermine a overriding feeling of relief at this poor boy's ordeal finally ending. And it made me care about Dobby, which is kind of like making me mourn Jar-Jar Binks.
4. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Granted, even by Rowling's standards, this trades mood for exposition, but then this is obviously the most child-oriented of the series. Besides, its giddiness is infectious; from the moment Hagrid arrives to remove Harry from his Dickensian trappings, Philosopher's Stone is whimsical, charming and wondrous. It manages to cordon off allies and enemies quickly while giving sufficient reasons why those lines will more or less maintain over the whole of the series. Even the climax, with its multi-stage progression to the final confrontation, is more exhilarating than dark. Not a "great" novel, per se, but certainly the most delightful of the books. It's no wonder this captured so many imaginations, and continues to do so.
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
It was obvious in Chamber that Rowling wished to go to less savory realms with this saga, but the pall that hangs over Prisoner of Azkaban is still surprisingly unsettling. The mystery of Sirius Black drives much of this atmosphere, but even in retrospect this book feels dirty and ominous. When the most helpful and gentle character is as rough-looking as Remus, you know you're not in for a sunny year at Hogwarts. Dementor attacks, disappearances, the feeling of always being watched and threatened, Prisoner of Azkaban markedly splits the series from children's lit into the more demanding levels of YA fiction, the rapidity of maturation reflected in the choices Harry himself must suddenly make. While the falling action of time travel and abetting criminals is thrilling, it is the climax in the Shrieking Shack that proves not only the most intense moment of the book but of the whole saga, forcing moral choices of not only Harry but Ron and Hermione that show how adult they really are.
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Where Azkaban went full-tilt into darkness, Goblet eased back and bit and offered the best balance between the light-hearted wonder of the early books and the darkness to come. The best-paced of Rowling's books, Goblet even manages to go off on its tangents—Rita Skeeter's tabloid hack, the unwelcome return of Dobby—without disrupting the flow, and in many cases she only enriches the book. For example, Krum is an extraneous character, but he serves to bring out the tension in Ron and Hermione's relationship for the first time, or at least to clarify the edge they always had as a show of mutual affection. Furthermore, this is the one book that shifts tones with smooth, natural transition, moving from glee to bombast to creeping menace to full-on horror without flagging. It doesn't get across as much character as the two books to either side of it in my rankings, but the exceptional plotting more than makes up for the relative lack of growth.
1. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
With the exception of the random repositioning of Ginny, the least developed major character of the series, as Harry's sudden love interest, Half-Blood Prince is a nearly perfect character study, incredible given how late in the series it arrives. The dips into Voldemort's past not only elucidate his character but add more depth to Harry, Dumbledore and the relationship they have. Ron and Hermione dig into their tension so fully that its continuation into the final installment frankly feels a step too far because they have nowhere else to go as a will-they-won't-they couple. Though the final book flat-out dives into Nazi imagery, I find Half-Blood Prince, with its sinisterly scribbled textbook, uncomfortably humanizing and literally de-humanizing progression through Voldemort's life, and the horrific ordeal in the cave and ambush at Hogwarts, to be the darker work. And yet, it also weaves a thread of genuine wistfulness into the pages, taking stock of the home Harry and his friends will have to leave behind in the coming war, and it's remarkable how poignant such scenes feel. None of the books is perfect, but the combination of tonal sophistication and meaningful character insight makes this by some degree my favorite installment in the saga.
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Thursday, July 14
Capsule Reviews: In the Heat of the Night, Something Wild, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison, 1967)
I put off watching this film for years because it struck me as Hollywood moralizing that would inevitably resort to stereotypes and a skewed sense of self-righteousness. (I know it's wrong to pre-judge a film, but come on, didn't I just describe 99.9% of Hollywood racial dramas?) But In the Heat of the Night was everything I thought it wouldn't be: even-handed rather than polemical, nuanced and not bludgeoned, artistic rather than cheaply ripped from the headlines. Virgil Tibbs, the displaced Philadelphia homicide detective, wants to get out of the Mississippi town in which he finds himself involved in an investigation as much as the local cops want him gone. The chief, Gillespie (Rod Steiger), doesn't hide his prejudices, but he also notes Tibbs' own to goad the officer he knows is talented into staying. He knows that a man like Tibbs would like nothing more than to solve the mystery and prove himself better than all these country hicks, and Poitier's steely gaze cannot hide his agreement with the assessment.
This revelation of Tibbs' own racial hangups is not an attempt to soften the whites but to deepen and humanize the racial commentary. Admittedly, Jewison's action scenes somewhat undercut the wisome and depth of the dialogue and acting with such on-the-nose visual cues as a Confederate flag emblem on the front fender of a car pursuing Tibbs to some obvious angling of shots of lynch mob members. Nevertheless, this is a powerful document of racial tension that has aged remarkably well, buoyed by two dynamic performances by Poitier and Steiger and scripted with intelligence. I'd like to mull this over a few more times before I'd write a full-length review, but in the meantime read Adam Zanzie's excellent piece on the film. Grade: A-
Something Wild (Jonathan Demme, 1986)
Jonathan Demme's stylish descent into yuppie hell plays like a more class-conscious take on Martin Scorsese's After Hours. Where Griffin Dunne eventually wound up right back where he started, forgetting his mad fever dream, Jeff Daniels' Charlie does not get off so lightly. His corporate VP gets swept away by a dynamo who goes by the name of Lulu (Melanie Griffin) and endures such a mad and, eventually horrific, plunge off the deep end that he must reevaluate everything he believes in. The three main characters (including a striking Ray Liotta as Lulu's insane ex-husband) are all white, but they move trough a background of multiracial and multiclass people, and Charlie's interactions with them change him. On the flip-side, the more they stick together, the more Lulu begins to domesticate, becoming the sort of bourgeois trophy wife that the normal Charlie would love to be with, though he's already become used to the wild minx version.
Demme turns the film into an exercise in duality: The film's tone switches from comedy to horror. The cinematography transitions from pastel-colored romp to cold, metallic tones so quickly the effect is at once barely noticeable and deeply unsettling. "What are you going to do now that you've seen how the other half lives?" Lulu asks, furthering the dualism by clarifying "The other half of you." The other film that makes for an easy point of comparison with the film is David Lynch's Blue Velvet, a connection made in their mutual view of small-town America as no bastion of morality in the face of rotting cities. Yet unlike Lynch's despairing suburban hell and Scorsese's expressionist frenzy, Something Wild has a real sliver of hope running through it, the idea of recognizing one's duality and finding spiritual middle class in the sharply divided racial and class system of the '80s. That's such a lofty idea I nearly forget you have to fight your way past a crazed Ray Liotta to get to it. Grade: A
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953)
Howard Hawks' brassy, vibrant Technicolor musical at first glance seems a depiction of vacant gold-digging, but the more one pays attention, the more one can only see the film as a vicious attack on the commercialized notion of romance, a deconstruction brought about by its two female leads. Russell and Monroe are so dynamic and forward they seem to grab a hold of the camera itself and manipulate our view of them. They make an unstoppable duo, Russell's Dorothy consumes every hunk in sight, while Monroe (cannily satirizing her own public image) uses airy, wide-eyed bimbosity to set traps for rich schlubs looking for a trophy of her caliber. I don't know if a film has ever torn down the male gaze so thoroughly, not only hijacking it to show how women have sexual desires (the "fairer sex" has always been more sexually experienced than the men in Hawks' films, but here they are almost unfathomably to the males) but in the pair's manipulation of that gaze to position men right where they want them. Even if the men are sitting in a theater.
Hawks' use of musical interludes in his films (think Rio Bravo and To Have and Have Not) has always been rich in character, and the grand sequences here are as clever and telling as they are dynamic and artistic. From the opening moment, as Monroe and Russell appear in ruby-red sequins to instantly monopolize the attention, Hawks positions the musical numbers to demonstrate their utter power over men and the uninhibited expression of their own desires. Perversity gets stacked on top of perversity here, but maybe I only use that word because it's so unorthodox to be shown the female desire instead of the male gaze. This is damn near a perfect picture, as funny as it is transgressive, and one of my three favorite Hawks pictures, along with Rio Bravo and Only Angels Have Wings. Grade: A+
I put off watching this film for years because it struck me as Hollywood moralizing that would inevitably resort to stereotypes and a skewed sense of self-righteousness. (I know it's wrong to pre-judge a film, but come on, didn't I just describe 99.9% of Hollywood racial dramas?) But In the Heat of the Night was everything I thought it wouldn't be: even-handed rather than polemical, nuanced and not bludgeoned, artistic rather than cheaply ripped from the headlines. Virgil Tibbs, the displaced Philadelphia homicide detective, wants to get out of the Mississippi town in which he finds himself involved in an investigation as much as the local cops want him gone. The chief, Gillespie (Rod Steiger), doesn't hide his prejudices, but he also notes Tibbs' own to goad the officer he knows is talented into staying. He knows that a man like Tibbs would like nothing more than to solve the mystery and prove himself better than all these country hicks, and Poitier's steely gaze cannot hide his agreement with the assessment.
This revelation of Tibbs' own racial hangups is not an attempt to soften the whites but to deepen and humanize the racial commentary. Admittedly, Jewison's action scenes somewhat undercut the wisome and depth of the dialogue and acting with such on-the-nose visual cues as a Confederate flag emblem on the front fender of a car pursuing Tibbs to some obvious angling of shots of lynch mob members. Nevertheless, this is a powerful document of racial tension that has aged remarkably well, buoyed by two dynamic performances by Poitier and Steiger and scripted with intelligence. I'd like to mull this over a few more times before I'd write a full-length review, but in the meantime read Adam Zanzie's excellent piece on the film. Grade: A-
Something Wild (Jonathan Demme, 1986)
Jonathan Demme's stylish descent into yuppie hell plays like a more class-conscious take on Martin Scorsese's After Hours. Where Griffin Dunne eventually wound up right back where he started, forgetting his mad fever dream, Jeff Daniels' Charlie does not get off so lightly. His corporate VP gets swept away by a dynamo who goes by the name of Lulu (Melanie Griffin) and endures such a mad and, eventually horrific, plunge off the deep end that he must reevaluate everything he believes in. The three main characters (including a striking Ray Liotta as Lulu's insane ex-husband) are all white, but they move trough a background of multiracial and multiclass people, and Charlie's interactions with them change him. On the flip-side, the more they stick together, the more Lulu begins to domesticate, becoming the sort of bourgeois trophy wife that the normal Charlie would love to be with, though he's already become used to the wild minx version.
Demme turns the film into an exercise in duality: The film's tone switches from comedy to horror. The cinematography transitions from pastel-colored romp to cold, metallic tones so quickly the effect is at once barely noticeable and deeply unsettling. "What are you going to do now that you've seen how the other half lives?" Lulu asks, furthering the dualism by clarifying "The other half of you." The other film that makes for an easy point of comparison with the film is David Lynch's Blue Velvet, a connection made in their mutual view of small-town America as no bastion of morality in the face of rotting cities. Yet unlike Lynch's despairing suburban hell and Scorsese's expressionist frenzy, Something Wild has a real sliver of hope running through it, the idea of recognizing one's duality and finding spiritual middle class in the sharply divided racial and class system of the '80s. That's such a lofty idea I nearly forget you have to fight your way past a crazed Ray Liotta to get to it. Grade: A
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953)
Howard Hawks' brassy, vibrant Technicolor musical at first glance seems a depiction of vacant gold-digging, but the more one pays attention, the more one can only see the film as a vicious attack on the commercialized notion of romance, a deconstruction brought about by its two female leads. Russell and Monroe are so dynamic and forward they seem to grab a hold of the camera itself and manipulate our view of them. They make an unstoppable duo, Russell's Dorothy consumes every hunk in sight, while Monroe (cannily satirizing her own public image) uses airy, wide-eyed bimbosity to set traps for rich schlubs looking for a trophy of her caliber. I don't know if a film has ever torn down the male gaze so thoroughly, not only hijacking it to show how women have sexual desires (the "fairer sex" has always been more sexually experienced than the men in Hawks' films, but here they are almost unfathomably to the males) but in the pair's manipulation of that gaze to position men right where they want them. Even if the men are sitting in a theater.
Hawks' use of musical interludes in his films (think Rio Bravo and To Have and Have Not) has always been rich in character, and the grand sequences here are as clever and telling as they are dynamic and artistic. From the opening moment, as Monroe and Russell appear in ruby-red sequins to instantly monopolize the attention, Hawks positions the musical numbers to demonstrate their utter power over men and the uninhibited expression of their own desires. Perversity gets stacked on top of perversity here, but maybe I only use that word because it's so unorthodox to be shown the female desire instead of the male gaze. This is damn near a perfect picture, as funny as it is transgressive, and one of my three favorite Hawks pictures, along with Rio Bravo and Only Angels Have Wings. Grade: A+
Harry Potter Films, Ranked
With the final installment of the Harry Potter film franchise at last upon us, allow me to briefly take stock of a film franchise that has often failed to capture the magic of its magical source material yet continues to suck me in almost against my will. I noticed as I compiled this list how few of the films really held any pull over me at all these days, and in nearly every case, when I revised my opinion of a film, the film in question went down in my estimation. Still, there are moments to treasure in all of these films, even the worst ones. When the franchise's impeccable casting and generally competent setpieces are allowed front-and-center over awkward comic relief and endless exposition, even the weakest film shines, if only for a moment. To give a sense of my opinion of these films as films, I included ratings next to each entry, along with how I originally rated them back when I rewatched the films two years ago before Half-Blood Prince. So without further ado, let's take one last tour through Hogwarts.
7. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rating 1.5/5; Original Rating 1.5/5)
It is difficult to believe that Chris Columbus was once something of a protégé of Steven Spielberg, given his utter inability to capture anything like wonder in his direction. Spielberg considered doing the first film (though admittedly he had the utterly stupid idea of doing it as a cartoon), but I would have given anything for him to have directed this. Imagine the director of Jaws handling the basilisk's frenzied whispers in the pipes, the best part of the book (incidentally also the weakest of the written franchise) almost totally brushed aside here. Columbus needed to truly capture the magic and joy of this realm before things went dark with the third installment, and his failure to do so is, I think, what undermines not only this film but the whole franchise. See it for Ron's last gasp as a true equal among the three friends before his subsequent marginalization, and for Kenneth Branagh's note-perfect performance as Lockhart.
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Rating 1.5/5: Original Rating 3/5)
If The Order of the Phoenix ironed out too many of the subplots of Rowling's most lugubrious book, excising the good with the bad, Half-Blood Prince devotes far too much focus to the extraneous details of the richest novel of the series. Admittedly, it's a hard juggling act to go between nostalgia for a world the characters will soon see fall and the perilously dark trips into Voldemort's past and the unexpected recesses of previously worshipped characters. But again, Columbus' failure to establish the HP universe's awe negates the former, creating a lopsided oscillation between lilting and despairing that ultimately makes the film's tone one of mass indifference. In my original, more positive review, I noted Tom Felton's performance, and it's only gotten better to me since. Always the best of the child actors, Felton doesn't miss a beat translating Rowling's deepening of the character, and this movie is worth watching multiple times for him alone. Shame that's that only reason for watching it.
5. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone (Rating 2/5; Original Rating 2/5)
Columbus' hackdom isn't as noticeable here as even with his banal direction, he simply cannot destroy the feeling of pure giddiness radiating from the children as they step into this world. I don't know if Daniel Radcliffe ever topped the moment when Hagrid arrives and tells him a wizard; the look of confusion giving way to elation and hope is one of the franchise's most powerful moments. Still, the rest of the film feels like perfunctory franchise establishment rather than true immersion into the unknown and fantastic and again, it's hard not to lie back and imagine what might have been if a better director got a hold of the material. Oh, and it features one of John Williams' absolute worst scores, an unsubtle, clanging contraption that sounds like some noisemaker Fred and George might have set off in the prefects' bathroom.
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rating 2.5/5; Original Rating 3-3.5/5)
At last, we move to a film I could possibly recommend, though Goblet of Fire suffers from rush-job pacing and misplaced humor as it barrels through its three tasks. The most action-packed of the films, at least until the protracted climax that is the final installment Goblet of Fire traded its predecessor's ethereal spook for blunt blockbusting, but there are still moments (like the possessed Krum in the maze) that unsettle as well as anything in Cuaron's macabre vision. But overall, Newell's Goblet does not capitalize on the mixture of solid plotting, unforced wit and mounting atmosphere that make the book maybe the sturdiest of Rowling's set. Nevertheless, its setpieces are splendid enough that its straightforward manages to combine the popcorn sheen of Columbus' films with Cuaron's more shadowy realm in a largely inoffensive manner.
3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rating 3/5; Original Rating 2.5/5)
It is a sign of sensitive fandom when one gets excessively hung up on an omission in the translation from book to screen, but the complete marginalization of Neville is so grating I take it out on this film, which has enough other issues to spread out my annoyance. Matthew Lewis, without ever calling attention to himself, wonderfully progressed Neville in his flakes of screen time throughout this franchise, and I was looking forward to see him shoulder the heavier reveals about his character, but that gets promptly thrown out. Instead, we get all of Harry's moping without any of the offsetting properties of the book. The climax in the Hall of Mysteries is an exercise in tedium, sapping all the delirium and terror from the book's run through madness and making for a dully linear romp. However, everything to do with Dolores Umbridge, from Imelda Staunton's ingenious performance to the mounting rebellion against her, is more than solid. Also Luna Lovegood and Bellatrix Lestrange feel just the way they do on the page. Additional silver lining: we must suffer none of Hermione's house-elf campaigning.
2. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rating 4/5; Original Rating 4/5)
If Chris Columbus never properly conveyed the more whimsical nature of Hogwarts and the wizarding world, Alfonso Cuaron had no problems whatsoever bringing out that universe's capacity for nightmarish darkness. His version of Hogwarts feels as much an elaborate prison as Azkaban itself, a more pronounced visualization of the buried suggestion of this parallel in Rowling's writing. Though Cuaron cuts or modifies too much for his own good—the climactic scene in the Shrieking Shack, for example, loses much of the intensity of the written sequence, perhaps my favorite moment of Rowling's entire series—but mostly the changes all aid Cuaron's Grimm's fairy tale atmosphere. And again, the damn casting in this movie: whoever picked David Thewlis to play Remus should get a fruit basket or an awkward shoulder-punch or something. Furthermore, John Williams' final score for the franchise makes up for the music-box-from-hell din of his Philosopher's Stone soundtrack with one of the most understated scores of his career.
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (Rating 4.5/5; Original Rating 4/5)
Rereading Rowling's convoluted, calculatedly base-covering conclusion convinced me that the movie could have done with mass trimming rather than bifurcation. Yet Yates managed to not only make the plodding first half work as a standalone film, he finally overcame his limitations and put out the finest film of the franchise, loaded with rich, understated character growth. Where his previous Potter films had moments of unintentional ennui, Yates' Hallows deliberately plods and makes sure to record its characters reactions to their banal situation. Frankly, Yates captures their frustration of being secluded from the action and often left with no clue of how to progress better than Rowling, and his light tweaks, such as the Platonic dance between Harry and Hermione, are wonderful. Radcliffe and Watson, the least compelling major actors of this franchise and the ones to whom so many other actors' time has been sacrificed, finally justify that monopolization of screen time with their finest work yet. Bonus points for the Lotte Reigner-inspired animated segment of the Three Brothers story, one of the most striking moments in the whole franchise, and even of 2010 film.
7. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rating 1.5/5; Original Rating 1.5/5)
It is difficult to believe that Chris Columbus was once something of a protégé of Steven Spielberg, given his utter inability to capture anything like wonder in his direction. Spielberg considered doing the first film (though admittedly he had the utterly stupid idea of doing it as a cartoon), but I would have given anything for him to have directed this. Imagine the director of Jaws handling the basilisk's frenzied whispers in the pipes, the best part of the book (incidentally also the weakest of the written franchise) almost totally brushed aside here. Columbus needed to truly capture the magic and joy of this realm before things went dark with the third installment, and his failure to do so is, I think, what undermines not only this film but the whole franchise. See it for Ron's last gasp as a true equal among the three friends before his subsequent marginalization, and for Kenneth Branagh's note-perfect performance as Lockhart.
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Rating 1.5/5: Original Rating 3/5)
If The Order of the Phoenix ironed out too many of the subplots of Rowling's most lugubrious book, excising the good with the bad, Half-Blood Prince devotes far too much focus to the extraneous details of the richest novel of the series. Admittedly, it's a hard juggling act to go between nostalgia for a world the characters will soon see fall and the perilously dark trips into Voldemort's past and the unexpected recesses of previously worshipped characters. But again, Columbus' failure to establish the HP universe's awe negates the former, creating a lopsided oscillation between lilting and despairing that ultimately makes the film's tone one of mass indifference. In my original, more positive review, I noted Tom Felton's performance, and it's only gotten better to me since. Always the best of the child actors, Felton doesn't miss a beat translating Rowling's deepening of the character, and this movie is worth watching multiple times for him alone. Shame that's that only reason for watching it.
5. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone (Rating 2/5; Original Rating 2/5)
Columbus' hackdom isn't as noticeable here as even with his banal direction, he simply cannot destroy the feeling of pure giddiness radiating from the children as they step into this world. I don't know if Daniel Radcliffe ever topped the moment when Hagrid arrives and tells him a wizard; the look of confusion giving way to elation and hope is one of the franchise's most powerful moments. Still, the rest of the film feels like perfunctory franchise establishment rather than true immersion into the unknown and fantastic and again, it's hard not to lie back and imagine what might have been if a better director got a hold of the material. Oh, and it features one of John Williams' absolute worst scores, an unsubtle, clanging contraption that sounds like some noisemaker Fred and George might have set off in the prefects' bathroom.
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rating 2.5/5; Original Rating 3-3.5/5)
At last, we move to a film I could possibly recommend, though Goblet of Fire suffers from rush-job pacing and misplaced humor as it barrels through its three tasks. The most action-packed of the films, at least until the protracted climax that is the final installment Goblet of Fire traded its predecessor's ethereal spook for blunt blockbusting, but there are still moments (like the possessed Krum in the maze) that unsettle as well as anything in Cuaron's macabre vision. But overall, Newell's Goblet does not capitalize on the mixture of solid plotting, unforced wit and mounting atmosphere that make the book maybe the sturdiest of Rowling's set. Nevertheless, its setpieces are splendid enough that its straightforward manages to combine the popcorn sheen of Columbus' films with Cuaron's more shadowy realm in a largely inoffensive manner.
3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rating 3/5; Original Rating 2.5/5)
It is a sign of sensitive fandom when one gets excessively hung up on an omission in the translation from book to screen, but the complete marginalization of Neville is so grating I take it out on this film, which has enough other issues to spread out my annoyance. Matthew Lewis, without ever calling attention to himself, wonderfully progressed Neville in his flakes of screen time throughout this franchise, and I was looking forward to see him shoulder the heavier reveals about his character, but that gets promptly thrown out. Instead, we get all of Harry's moping without any of the offsetting properties of the book. The climax in the Hall of Mysteries is an exercise in tedium, sapping all the delirium and terror from the book's run through madness and making for a dully linear romp. However, everything to do with Dolores Umbridge, from Imelda Staunton's ingenious performance to the mounting rebellion against her, is more than solid. Also Luna Lovegood and Bellatrix Lestrange feel just the way they do on the page. Additional silver lining: we must suffer none of Hermione's house-elf campaigning.
2. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rating 4/5; Original Rating 4/5)
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| Everyone chill. I got this. |
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (Rating 4.5/5; Original Rating 4/5)
Rereading Rowling's convoluted, calculatedly base-covering conclusion convinced me that the movie could have done with mass trimming rather than bifurcation. Yet Yates managed to not only make the plodding first half work as a standalone film, he finally overcame his limitations and put out the finest film of the franchise, loaded with rich, understated character growth. Where his previous Potter films had moments of unintentional ennui, Yates' Hallows deliberately plods and makes sure to record its characters reactions to their banal situation. Frankly, Yates captures their frustration of being secluded from the action and often left with no clue of how to progress better than Rowling, and his light tweaks, such as the Platonic dance between Harry and Hermione, are wonderful. Radcliffe and Watson, the least compelling major actors of this franchise and the ones to whom so many other actors' time has been sacrificed, finally justify that monopolization of screen time with their finest work yet. Bonus points for the Lotte Reigner-inspired animated segment of the Three Brothers story, one of the most striking moments in the whole franchise, and even of 2010 film.
Wednesday, July 13
A Perfect World (Clint Eastwood, 1993)
After a tranquil but confusing shot of a man lying in a field next to a Casper mask and some fluttering cash in the wind, Eastwood moves back in time to show a strict Jehovah's Witness keeping her children inside on Halloween and refusing candy to any kids who wander onto her doorstep. Eastwood breaks up these scenes with shots of the prison breakout, as Robert "Butch" Haynes (Kevin Costner) and Terry Pugh (Keith Szarabajka) crawl out through the ventilation system and hold up a prison official to make him drive them off the grounds. The connection is clear: for the young, repressed son, Phillip (T.J. Lowther), his home is as much a prison as the literal institution, though he's done nothing to deserve his incarceration. When the two cons break into the house and take him hostage, they ironically facilitate his own freedom despite using him as leverage. Along the way, he and Butch affect each other in profound ways, mainly because Eastwood, a director I've often found overly insistent, never forces the point.
Being on the road unleashes the ids of not only the pent-up convicts but Phillip. Pugh, an uncontrollable fiend, is only made more wild: he fires a pistol at water towers, even into the roof of the getaway car. One suspects that Butch takes the boy hostage instead of the mother or the daughters as much to ward off any sexual shenanigans on Terry's part. When that proves to be insufficient, the trio is quickly reduced to two, and the protective bond between Butch and Phillip is sealed. Phillip's freedom is far more joyous: Lowther's look of longing and sadness as he watched neighborhood kids vindictively egg his house for receiving no candy laid the groundwork for his desire for rebellion, and he experiences the first real happiness of his life riding with Butch. Junk food, riding on top of a car, going on trick-or-treating (amusingly facilitated by Butch threatening confused adults), Phillip finally gets to experience a bit of life.
On paper, this film sounds like the worst kind of pop psychology, the notion of a criminal becoming the father he never had for a boy who also lacks a true father figure opening up the possibility for sub-Spielbergian schmaltz. But Eastwood's workmanlike elegance has rarely, if ever, served him better. The scenes between Costner and Lowther are natural and in the moment. Costner's own limited range actually serves the film well in this respect; a more confident and versatile actor might have tried to show off, to make sure we saw the symbolic importance of the warming relationship between criminal and hostage, boy and man. Instead, he simply reacts off Lowther, bringing out Butch's own hangups in natural, contextual ways instead of telegraphing them at every step. His parental issues manifest in the form of sharp but brief glances at yelling mothers or abusive fathers, while Lowther also proves to be an understated performer. The boy actually progresses in his affection for the man who holds him hostage rather than resist until some vague shift that turns him into a devoted companion.
I've never been the biggest booster of Eastwood, but even in his weakest moments, he has a command of the camera that finds an unlikely balance of simple construction and grace. In the film's early moments, he connects the prison, Phillip's home and, shortly thereafter, the Texas Rangers who take on the case to track the escapees; disparate locations all, but the director always finds some way of smoothly linking them. The aforementioned metaphorical significance links the prison with the house, and Eastwood transitions between wholly non-matching shots of the suburbs to the office in Dallas by maintaining the same elegant track-forward, cutting from the camera moving toward the devastated mother to moving with a Ranger walking toward the office of Red Garnett (Eastwood), the Ranger in charge of the case. This steady progression makes sense of the spatial leaps, and this almost unnoticeable display of professionalism sets the bedrock for the film's human complexity.
He also knows how to set up a layered joke, and A Perfect World does much of its character building through moments of human comedy. Butch flashing his gun to get a housewife to play along with Phillip's belated trick-or-treating, or his subsequent stick-up of a family riding in their brand-new car, are funny, but these moments deepen the characters. In the case of the latter, Phillip himself cannot help but laugh at the sight of the family gaping dumbly after the stolen car, but Butch admonishes him, nothing that the father did the right thing by surrendering a material good rather than starting an altercation that might have led to Butch shooting the man or even the whole family. The scene where Butch has to explain sex to the boy after the kid witnesses him making out with a waitress is predictable, but Eastwood trusts the actors to make something amusing and fresh out of the situation, and to see the escaped convict suddenly blanch is indeed funny.
Likewise, Eastwood builds the relationship between Red and Sally (Laura Dern), a criminologist assigned to his search party to his annoyance, through comic tension. Eastwood has never had that strong a grasp on progressive women, and Sally could have been an absolutely horrid stereotype of a career-driven woman trying to prove herself. Instead, Dern plays her as someone so confident in her abilities that she does not remotely care what Red or the other men think. Her indifference only makes them look more foolish, such as the scene where Red has the driver of their mobile command center keep inching forward as she tries to get in. And because she simply does her job, Red comes to respect her much faster and to see her as more than just a bureaucrat weighing down the investigation*.
At his best, Eastwood's camera not only pulls back to let the actors do their thing but actually works in harmony with the performances. While riding in the trailer with the other lawmen, Sally abruptly starts playacting as Butch, relating facts from the man's past. The cuts in this scene only move away to catch the reactions of the confused men, who start to address her as Butch the way baffled audience members will often speak to a puppet rather than the puppeteer. Dern never oversteps her boundaries, never goes for OTT histrionics or analysis of Butch's life. She just relates the facts to gently guide the men to interpretative conclusions, and without Eastwood's simple but effecting cutting scheme, it would have been too suggestive and obvious. Elsewhere, Eastwood places a lot of faith in Costner to sell the suspenseful scenes, the judicious editing working with Costner's small but unmistakble gestures of worry and menace rather than around them. His camera subtly positions itself as a series of shifting perspective shots of nervous bystanders catching sight of his gun or a threatening gesture and Costner keying in on a radio newscast that will alert someone to their real identity or of a hand reaching for a telephone.
The film's climax is perhaps the most bravura moment in Eastwood's filmography, an extended hideaway at a farmhand's home that begins innocently and escalates so smoothly that the sudden snap somehow seems inevitable in retrospect. Costner has never been finer, the slow burning of long-repressed feelings finally exploding on this poor family as Phillip suddenly has to come to terms with the sort of man Butch can really be. The wife pleads with the criminal, saying she knows he's a good man, and the matter-of-fact coolness with which Costner replies "No, I ain't a good man. I ain't the worst neither. Just a breed apart" is horrifically troubling. The sequence appears to end several times before it does, finally culminating in a payoff that is both dynamic yet oddly anticlimactic.
As much as I've criticized Eastwood's works, that sensitivity to his weaknesses is offset by my total inability to pin down just how he pulls off his best stuff, which is typically better than anything any other director, at least in this country, can do. Eastwood essentially devotes the last half hour to the extended climax, which moves through multiple moods and payoffs between Butch/Phillip and the poor black family whose own behavior is not so clear-cut as we are first led to believe by the patriarch's kindness to strangers. And then Eastwood can maintain that climax into the confrontation with the law, which itself subverts expectations despite the expected outcome, and outcome that also contextualized the bizarre opening shot and replacing the strange beauty with intense tragedy. When at last we learn of the true reason for Butch's intended destination, this haunting frame recalls another great auteurist statement from 1993, Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way. Both films depict men chasing impossible dreams, perfect worlds away from their constricting, fatal lifestyles. But like Sally earlier told a condescending lawman, "In a perfect world this wouldn't have happened in the first place." Just as Carlito Brigante's fantasy of the perfect, tranquil retirement is borne of the imperfection of his occupation, so too is Butch's dream the result of unhealed psychological wounds, wounds that only began to be treated by the boy who ultimately symbolizes a dream no less intangible for him.
*Eastwood's disregard for bureaucratic justice might seem like a conservative hatred of desk jockeys: when the team discovers the prison official forced to help the men escape murdered in his trunk, Red casually says, "Well, there's our bureaucrat." But it is worth noting that his depiction of a flawed system does not stem from a belief that paper-pushers and regulations hold back the sweet revenge of rough justice but that broadly applied laws allow for no leeway in extenuating circumstances and emotionally and psychologically varied scenarios. Ergo, the problem is not, unlike in Michael Bay films, that ball-busting bureaucrats take all the fun out of executing someone, it's that they expedite disproportionate responses and then bury the outrage in paperwork.
Tuesday, July 12
TEFL Conference - SP
TEFL has been a great conference. Excellent presentations and professionals from the Casa Thomas Jefferson, ALUMNI - SP and IBEU - RJ eager to share their knowledge. If you have attended it, leave your impressions here, please. It is a pity it will end tomorrow.
Brian De Palma: Carlito's Way
This mix of the daring with the quotidian might explain why so many mistook the film for a mildly original take on a tired subject. But to see how the film subverts and analyzes clichés, one need look no farther than the opening, a monochromatic framing device that spoils all pretense at suspense by showing the titular hero murdered by way of introduction. De Palma uses the sequence not only to set in motion his aesthetic approach—using his Steadicam shots as POV representations of Carlito's view, up to and including the slow pivot upside down and pull back as Carlito's soul leaves his body—but to make sure that we spend the film not wondering what happens to Carlito but why this doomed scenario occurs.
As the film moves into flashback, we see Carlito (Al Pacino), a convicted heroin dealer, getting out of prison after serving five years of a 30-year sentence. His lawyer and friend, Dave Kleinfield (Sean Penn), gets him off not for good behavior or truly appealing the case but pointing out D.A. corruption. Pacino uses the court scene to get out his hoo-hah mania he exhibited in the previous year's Scent of a Woman (a movie I maintain is Animal House with stunt casting and a sense of self-importance). He carries on about being a changed man, shouting over the judge who has to take it because he, too, was complicit in the evidence tampering that put Carlito away. "I've been cured! Born again, like the Watergaters," Carlito shouts gaily and sardonically, and it's impossible to see the sincerity underneath his spiel. But Pacino soon calms down, and his Carlito proves to genuinely wish to quit the game, to quietly exit the world where he built up a considerable reputation.
The contrast between Tony Montana and Carlito Brigante is less a means of making one a response to the other but of establishing them as polar opposites. Tony, young, brash and oblivious, climbs the ranks of Miami's criminal underworld through sheer brutality. His mantra, "The World is Yours," summarizes his approach: seize power until you sit in a king's throne, regardless of what you sacrifice to get there. Carlito, on the other hand, is older, wiser and wearier. Like Tony Dayoub says in a brilliant piece tackling the mirror effect of the two films, he is "almost but not quite the elder statesman Tony could have grown into had he outlived his impetuous youth." Tony also noted the color-coding of the two Hispanic protagonists, a key reversion of usual white-black color significance. Tony, who wears ostentatious white suits, is the villain, his clothes reflective of his drug of choice, his desire to be seen in Miami's underworld and, perhaps, his attempt to join the privileged race he thought he could by and screw his way into. Carlito, the one wants to get out of the game and go straight, wears stereotypically villainous black. But this is his futile means of trying to disappear in his surroundings, hoping to quietly move out of the underworld after becoming disillusioned with it. Carlito just needs $75,000 to retire. Tony Montana spent more on wing collars.
But, of course, one does not merely walk away from crime, and De Palma highlights the naïveté of this facile camouflage by colorizing the mise-en-scène to such an extent that the film occasionally looks like it came right out of Old Hollywood. Blue-lit nights expose him, as do the bright-red walls of smoky dives and the chrome-plated realm of the nightclub Carlito invests in to raise the money he needs to escape to the Caribbean for a new start. (Incidentally, the club, El Paraiso takes its name from the food stand Montana opened in Scarface). That club brings out the fatalistic romanticism of the movie, a weak approximation of Carlito's escapist fantasy that looks like a mock-up of a cruise liner interior and feels, for all its coke-addled disco dancers, more like a perpetual high school dance than a cesspool of drugs, sex and crime. The innocence under its veneer of tacky '70s "class" somehow makes the place more constricting and repellent, as if the building too is aware of its fate but still locked into its servicing role.
That romanticism explodes as Carlito tries to make his peace with former partners and to rekindle a relationship with Gail (Penelope Ann Miller), a dancer with whom he broke up before going to prison. He did so not to hurt her, but he broke her heart anyway, and the chemistry between Pacino and Miller subverts the usual male chauvinism of the mob world: when he first tracks her down, Carlito stands on a rooftop across from the dance studio in the pouring rain holding a trashcan lid over his head as a low-rent umbrella. In this moment, De Palma's appropriation of Hitchcock's voyeurism transmutes from obsessive quest for power into pure, innocent longing. This is not a man who feels his love "belongs" to him but someone who never stopped caring for her. After they reconcile, Carlito watches her dance with another man with a smile on his face, completely non-threatened by the harmless display, even when other men raise objections to seeing his woman dance with someone else. Carlito feels like a better man around her—note that Montana wanted to feel white around Elvira, who constantly brought up and mocked his Hispanic background, while Gail is the only person to call Carlito by the Anglicized name "Charlie"—and one almost forgets the inevitability of his attempts to escape when watching the two of them plan their retirement.
Yet Gail soon discovers how trapped Carlito is within the system, and her voiced complaints often make plain the self-evident truths Carlito cannot quite see. For all his talk of not recognizing the mid-'70s world of cocaine and disco in relation to the sociopolitical revolution he left behind, it is Carlito, not everyone else, who has changed. Bound by a code of honor not to rat on his allies and to remain loyal, Carlito never snitched on his old partner, who appreciates the gesture but feels no financial or personal debt to his old partner despite the fact that he got filthy rich while Carlito was away. For all Carlito's efforts to avoid violence and crime, such things seem to find him anyway. He gets roped into going to a drug deal with his young cousin that goes awry, and later he must deal with Benny (John Leguizamo), an upstart little shit clearly looking to make his name by tearing down Carlito. Benny is reminiscent of Tony Montana, a connection that then links back to Carlito when another gangster accurately tells Carlito "This guy is you 20 years ago."
Torn between his sense of code, his awareness of the vicious nature of the streets and his desire to go straight, Carlito can't ever seem to win: he reacts stubbornly when he shouldn't, agreeing to help an increasingly unstable Dave settle his own debts out of the loyalty he owes the lawyer for springing him. On the flip-side, he shows clemency for Benny, the man who, frankly, he should have killed, an idea that antithetical to a normal sense of morality*. But we're talking about the criminal world, where rules have been warped and ethics muddied. Bewildered by these conflicting notions of right and wrong, Carlito occasionally voices his pressure, saying, "The street is watching. She is watchin' all the time," as if the city itself is bearing down on him, waiting for his moral tug of war between desire for self-improvement and perceived obligation to others to stretch him to the breaking point before delivering the coup de grâce.
To De Palma and writer David Koepp's credit, they do not let Carlito off the hook for wanting to do the right thing. In the aforementioned drug deal with his cousin, Carlito knows instantly that something is off in the bright red pool hall where the deal occurs. De Palma's camera has rarely been better as it sets up Carlito as a knowledgeable killer. Just because Carlito wants out does not mean he was just someone who got caught up in the trade: as POV shots dart to an ajar door where a thug awaits and the camera moves around the pool table as Carlito sets up a trick shot as an excuse to keep circling and take stock of the whole room, we see how professional he is in this underworld. He's skilled enough to know what's about to happen and to position himself to kill his way out of the situation. In The Godfather Part III, Pacino's Michael growls, "Just when I thought I was, they pull me back in," but that is just Corleone's usual obliviousness to his own culpability. Carlito is not someone who just "made a few mistakes" in life, but he genuinely wants to reform where Michael wishes to have his cake and eat it too. It is Carlito, far more than Michael, who is trapped by something not of his design.
By the same token, it's almost impossible not to sympathize with him, also as a result of the most elegant camerawork of De Palma's career. He creates a tone so romantic that a conversation between Carlito and Gail through the crack of a chain-bolted door is not intimidating but teasing and charming, to the point that when he kicks the door in after a playful striptease involving a mirror, it's a comic, even loving payoff rather than a tense moment of sexual dominance. De Palma has used a circling shot more than once, but here the camera actually dips and tilts as it revolves around the kissing couple, swooning with them. The camera moves incessantly but does so with grace, a beauty that feels far more natural than the more forced and restrained formalism of, say, The Untouchables. At last, De Palma finds the perfect balance between his mainstream aspirations and his underground, morally probing aesthetics, a union bolstered by the fact that, for once, De Palma is using his camera to poke around the moral implications of his characters in a wholly un-ironic fashion. It's not the first film of his to be sincere, but it is the first to channel his penchant for deconstruction entirely into the characters and genre clichés, gently picking apart stereotypes to see the humans who inspired them.
But even with De Palma's masterful camerawork, the film wouldn't work without an understanding lead performance, and Pacino clearly demonstrates he knows exactly where De Palma is coming from for the second time. He acted like a Pre-Code madman in Scarface, but here he is so gentle that I remember the softer, vulnerable side to Pacino from the '70s. In his prime, no one had better control of what he could say solely through his eyes, and that skill returns here. His longing, anger, despair and fantasy dances across his face in beautifully understated terms, and he delivers lines with quiet force. I don't know that Pacino has ever been more heartbreaking; his whole performance is like the look of devastation on his face in Dog Day Afternoon when his lover publicly rejects him, stretched out over two and a half hours. When he first hugs Gail after reuniting, he softly smells her, triggering his memory with its most connected sense, and his ragged breath is as stoic a display of unspeakable joy as exists in the movies. When Dave drags him into a ludicrous attempt to bust an Italian mob boss out of prison, Pacino's face registers disgust more than anger at the addled lawyer's horrific change of plans and eventual betrayal, a recognition of the uselessness of the code that binds him and seems to let everyone else behave as he pleases
Reveries and dreams have always been a staple of De Palma's films, but usually in a literalized, nightmare form. Here, the dreams are less literal and more yearning, and the only nightmare comes with the impossibility of their fulfillment. A symbolic shot of Carlito trapping a cockroach under a glass and letting it go reflects the error of leaving Benny alive and outraged, but the roach might as well be Carlito, trapped at the mercy and amusement of forces so vast they feel existential. The film climaxes with a nimble cat-and-mouse chase through the subway that ends in the only dastardly cruel twist in the film, impressive considering we know the true outcome already. But as the film returns at last to its framing device as Carlito fades from this world, the last shot settling on a billboard advertising a Caribbean getaway. As Carlito dies, the subjective view of this poster alters, the woman dancer frozen in a snapshot suddenly turned into a dancing Gail, the dream fatalistically actualized in hallucination. As this shot holds over the credits, Joe Cocker's "You Are So Beautiful" begins to play, the gravel-voiced singer undercutting his ode even as the pained growls make it all the more sincere. It's the perfect swan song for the film, a plaintive yet doomed piece of (capital- and lowercase) romantic genre film, in which the last shot is both bitter and beautiful. In a sense, Carlito's Way may be the cruelest film De Palma, who delights in tricks and dramatic catastrophe, ever made, a lengthy explication of a dream that does not come true. But if it is so rending, that is only because, better than any other film in his canon, the director makes us truly care for his characters, and his cosmic sense of irony is at no one's expense, save poor Carlito's.
*Elsewhere, though, Carlito's clemency is more justifiable and even redemptive. An old associate (Viggo Mortensen), now paraplegic from being shot, wears a wire to a conversation with him as the D.A. looks for any excuse to put Brigante back in jail. By rights, Mortensen's character should be promptly shoved into the nearest river tied to a concrete wheelchair. But Carlito relents: he looks at the man who has had so much taken from him by the life Carlito has come to despise, and he pities the paraplegic wreck. Not only is it a true moment of forgiveness, it is also a practical moment of conscience compared to the fatal mistake of letting Benny go: releasing Lalin is a shrewd move that proves to cops that he really is reforming, not simply grandstanding to return to crime.
One False Move (Carl Franklin, 1992)
Look at the way we meet Dale Dixon, a sheriff far away from the grisly murder scene, in Star City, Ark.: though the film cuts away to him via the brilliantly scary match of a screaming child in the first sequence, our true introduction to the character comes in the form of a phone call the LAPD makes to him after clues point them in the direction of Star City. Bill Paxton, mostly off-camera, establishes his character with aplomb, his fast-talking simplicity revealing an insecurity and open desire to ingratiate himself with big city cops. We also get a taste of his oafishness but also his drive. We later learn that townsfolk call him "Hurricane," which may reference either the blustering hot wind he puffs out in gales or his energetic In-person, Paxton only deepens Dixon's clumsy but capable sheriff, the character's unlikely balance of stereotyping and originality a microcosm for the film's broader overview of this Arkansas town and the storm working its way there from Los Angeles.
Thornton's screenplay does have its fun out in Star City, from a "Who's on first?" routine Dixon has with Ray's half-deaf, bumpkin uncle to Dixon's own aw-shucks goofiness around the two L.A. detectives he wants so badly to impress. In the aforementioned phone call, Franklin juxtaposes the large, professional office where the L.A. cops sit and the tiny shack that it is the Star City police office, a place so laughably tiny and obsolete the hissing and chirping of crickets buzz all around its empty surroundings. Compared to the horrifying 10-minute setpiece in L.A. that opens the film in bewildering ultraviolence, the drunken rambunctiousness and casual domestic disputes seem quaint despite the seriousness of the crimes that Dixon tends to sort out without busting anyone.
Nevertheless, Thornton and Franklin not only deepen their view of the South, they do so without resorting to easy clichés of glamorizing the simple life. Instead, they chip away at Dixon and his surroundings, not only bringing out an unexpected intelligence and grace but hidden secrets that connect the characters and complicate their pasts. Dixon has an easygoing relationship with everyone in town, save a black child who causes him to stare silently and uncomfortably whenever he sees the boy. Does the child bring out Dixon's latent racism, a charge potentially supported by his use of the n-word around McFreely, the black L.A. detective? Possibly, but that interpretation, I think, deliberately plays upon audience's expectations of the racist small-town hick; even Dixon's casual use of a racial slur seems less a revelation of prejudices than a mature display of vestigial social programming.
Indeed, race almost feels like an appendix in this movie, a relic of a bygone, unevolved age that can nevertheless flare up painfully. The film is tacit in its establishing of interracial bonds, from Ray and Fantasia's relationship to the partnerships of Ray/Pluto and Cole/McFreely; for that matter, McFreely's surname suggests interracial coupling in his own family tree. The blurring of race relations shows progress without it being paraded around by the filmmakers as an accomplishment, but ingrained tensions come to the fore in key scenes and dialogue exchanges: Fantasia may be the least guilty of the three criminals, but she knows she "looks guilty" and will get destroyed by a jury, while Dixon's own past comes back to both haunt and motivate him in the final stretch.
In true Southern fashion, the more the film settles into its location, the more relaxed it gets. But Franklin never lets the tension nor the engaging flow of the character development sag. His direction puts the characters front and center but also shows off his framing talents: I don't know that the interior lights of cars have been so beautiful and haunting than they are in a scene where a suspicious patrolman tails and finally (and fatefully) pulls over the murderous trio. The lights illuminate both car interiors entirely, plainly visible islands in the darkness. The effect is isolating and vulnerable, its equal exposure noticeably suggesting that the cop is as naked in this situation as the criminals. Franklin later precedes the climax with a gently paced but tension-raising series of edits that feel like a Southern-fried Leone standoff, complete with edgy harmonica. The climax itself is one final burst of violence that is as over as soon as it starts but shakes one past the credits. Franklin displays a skill with gore not unlike that of late-career David Cronenberg, the talent of showing violence at its most plain and vicious without fetishizing the image.
I first heard about One False Move by surfing old Siskel & Ebert videos online; I can't remember what they said about it, but I'll never forget the tone of their support. It was the same sort of fierce, almost personal advocacy that showed them at their best, the kind they exhibited to even greater extent with their borderline-Crusade for Hoop Dreams. It topped Siskel's year-end list and came second on Ebert's, and I can't say I fault their decisions. One False Move was anything but a hit upon its release, and I haven't met that many people who've seen it in the intervening years, but this neo-noir moral drama may well end up on my list of the best films of the '90s. It's certainly one of the smartest, least exploitative films about the South I've ever seen.
