Juno

Every year around the award season a little-film-that-could tends to jump out of nowhere and generate a lot of Oscar buzz. Actually the buzz was heard earlier this year when the extremely low budget musical Once did surprisingly well. Now the talk of this year’s Sundance Festival and Toronto Festival, Juno, is poised to be the dark horse during the award season. Considering Americans’ aversion to musicals and any movie set in a foreign land, I bet Juno is going to have a much wider appeal to the American public than the little cult favorite Once.

It is actually a little deceptive to call Juno a mere comedy and not a musical comedy. The first half hour of the movie has so many songs on the background that it feels pretty much like a musical. Yes, the first half hour of this movie is quite painful to sit through. One has to get used to writer Diablo Cody’s stylized, rapid-fire dialogue that does not ring true and some very caricatured sideline characters. But after the first 30 minutes, the story hits its stride once all the main players are introduced and start to interact with each other.

At first glance, the premise for Juno is rather clichéd, but don’t let that fool you. Cody succeeds in adding new elements and twists to a very used-up concept. Sixteen-year-old Juno (played by Ellen Page) finds herself pregnant after having one-time sex with her best friend, Paulie (played by Michael Cera), a shy and sweet-natured track star. The movie is sort of like Knocked Up meets Little Miss Sunshine. Like Katherine Heigl’s character in Knocked Up, Juno is knocked up after a one time thing and has to face the consequences of her action; like the dysfunctional family in Little Miss Sunshine, Juno’s family at the beginning of the movie appears to have plenty of eccentric behavior. However, Cody combines the two movies’ ideas nicely together in Juno and makes it all afresh.

Once we pass all the unrealistic talk among the high school kids, Juno’s conversations with adults are much more believable. I don’t think Cody really knows the teenagers’ lingo, but she understands human relationships quite well. The witty banter in this movie doesn’t make me laugh out loud much, but the few quiet moments in this film are among the best of this year. Juno’s question to her dad about love and her realization that there is no perfect life touched me deeply.

Director Jason Reitman handles Cody’s material deftly. In a lesser hand, a movie about pregnancy and baby inevitably becomes over sentimental and melodramatic. Not Jason, he keeps those maudlin sentiments to the minimum and concentrates on Juno’s growth in this movie. There are also some beautiful shots in the movie. After a painful realization, Juno drives her car wildly on the street along side a slow moving train. She finally pulls to the side and the train still keeps the same pace. That shot says so much about her state of mind and life. At her age, she may think life moves at a much faster pace, but it isn’t necessarily so. Even when she stops, life still goes on.

Like that train shot, the casting in this film is also picture perfect. Ellen Page is the heart and soul of this movie and I believe she elevates good material into something superior. It is not easy to deliver fast dialogue with a sense of realism, but she pulls it off effortlessly. Her Juno is the coolest kid I would like to meet in high school with a sense of self and sometimes smart beyond her age, but at the same time she is still a kid and still believes in certain kind of fairy tale life. When that bubble bursts, it is heartbreaking to see the pain written all over her face. My favorite character actor, J.K. Simmons, plays her dad. He knows exactly when to act comedic and when to be serious. He can get more comic mileage out of a short witty line than so many professional stand-up comedians can get in an entire show. When he tells Juno about his unconditional love, he turns an easily corny scene into something truly beautiful and moving.

Please don’t walk out or dismiss this movie after the first half hour because I think more than likely you will be like me, totally won over by the character Juno, her loving family and Page’s phenomenal performance.

Margot at the Wedding

In my opinion, writer-director Noah Baumbach’s feature directorial debut, The Squid and the Whale, was the best movie that came out in 2005, so not surprisingly, his follow-up, Margot at the Wedding, pales next to his last movie and is a somewhat of a disappointment.

Margot (played by Nicole Kidman) is a successful writer living in New York City. Her estranged sister Pauline (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) is getting married to an out-of-work painter Malcolm (played by Jack Black) in the Hamptons. Margot and her son Claude decide to attend their wedding and hence set off a storm that threatens relationships and reveals family secrets.

In The Squid and the Whale, Baumbach brilliantly explores parent-children relationship, exposes hypocrisy of East Coast (especially New York City) intelligentsia while reflecting the ambience and culture of the 80s. In that movie, the most unforgettable character is Jeff Daniels’ dad, a selfish, shameless, annoying pseudo-intellectual. In Margot at the Wedding, Kidman’s Margot is the female equivalent of Daniels’ Bernard. She even exhibits the same ultra-competitiveness that makes Bernard so annoying. Baumbach’s dialogue is still sharp, witty and full of idioms spoken by East Coast intelligentsia, but Margot is simply not fresh and original any more. We have seen it and heard it before.

Margot at the Wedding is in the same vein of dark comedy that defines The Squid and the Whale, and just like The Squid, the subject matter is sometimes painful to watch. Baumbach seems to treat his film like the lounge chair in a psychiatrist’s office and uses it as his psychotherapy for his painful childhood. Akin to Jesse Eisenberg’s character in the earlier film, Claude is the collateral damage in this movie. The New York elite class may not physically torture their children, but the mental abuse they inflict on the kids may be far more damaging to their soul.

Baumbach does have a unique sense of humor. In the beginning shot of the movie, Claude comes back to his mom after wandering around in the train, but he ends up sitting next to a wrong person. When the woman looks up, she is a dead ringer of Virginia Woolf played by Kidman in The Hours. The woman’s nose is almost identical to the famous fake nose that Kidman wore in that movie.

In Margot at the Wedding, I can sense that Baumbach wants to branch out of his last movie. The result is mixed and confusing. For example, Pauline’s Hampton neighbor is a redneck family, very much like the Leatherface household in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Baumbach even puts in a few seemingly horror moments about the family into the movie. I don’t quite see the connection of that family with the central story. The style is also quite out of sync with the rest of the movie.

Jack Black’s appearance in the movie is also a detriment to Baumbach production. Although Black is much more restrained here than in most of his other movies, he is still way too loud and animated for this movie. Baumbach’s humor requires more subtle deliverance than Black can muster. In The Squid and the Whale, feelings are always boiling underneath the surface; in Margot, we hear many shouting matches among characters. Unfortunately a film that shouts the loudest tends not to affect people the deepest. Margot proves that case.

Margot is not a sequel to The Squid and the Whale, but it is almost impossible to think it otherwise. It has a similar subject matter and the same visual style. Once again, Baumbach has some very telling mirror shots. When Margot and Claude get ready in the bathroom, their faces are caught in multiple panes of mirror on the wall. It reveals their complex codependent relationship. The two movies even boast almost identical atmosphere. If we had not seen Margot with a cell phone early in the movie, we could have thought this story also happened in the 80s because it still have that 80s vibe.

Kidman deglamourized herself in this movie. In this movie she proves that she can play a cold-hearted, manipulative yet vulnerable bitch. However, Daniels’ Bernard is cut to the bone and Kidman’s Margot doesn’t create the same chilling effect.

The ending of The Squid and the Whale implies some hope for Jesse Eisenberg’s son, but in Margot the ending is more ambiguous and bleak.

The Squid and the Whale was mainly based on Baumbach’s own childhood experience and I wonder if Margot is a composite character of any female members in his family. With these two movies out there, it sure makes an uncomfortable Baumbach family gathering at holiday time.

No Country for Old Men

The Coen brothers don’t make bad movies and No Country for Old Men is no exception.

The film is based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name. McCarthy has seen his fame rise after his latest book The Road was chosen as one of Oprah’s Book Club selections, even though he has been writing for last forty some years and is considered one of the major novelists of his time. His unique writing style - dialogues without quotation marks and distinctive Texas dialect – sometimes turn readers away from his books. His deliberate avoidance of any publicity has not helped his popularity until, of course, Oprah changed all that. He was not widely read until the publication of All the Pretty Horses in 1992 which earned him National Book Award of that year. After that book, he has gained a literary following and now with Oprah’s support, a much broader fan base.

It was not an easy read for me when I first read All the Pretty Horses and by the time I read No Country for Old Men, I had grown accustomed to his writing styles. McCarthy has a deep melancholy for the past and writes about people of dying breed in modern society. It is not hard to see what attracts the Coen brothers to this particular book. McCarthy and the Coen brothers share the same view about the evil of money. In Coen brothers’ two best works to date, Blood Simple and Fargo, greed plays pivotal role in the plot lines.

It is always hard to adapt a literary work to screen, but the Coen brothers have done a terrific job. They cut most of the personal stories in the book and have the movie solely concentrate on the chases – hitman Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem) after antelope hunter Llewelyn (played by Josh Brolin), sheriff Ed Tom Bell (played by Tommy Lee Jones)’s attempt to find Llewelyn in order to protect him from the psychopath killer and another hitman Wells (played by Woody Harrelson) in turn stalking Chigurh.

McCarthy doesn’t write fancy dialogues and that suits the Coen brothers just fine. Their movie Fargo has dialogues very much akin to McCarthy’s style – lean and bare, sounds mundane but with hidden every day truth. If All the Pretty Horses shows the hardships for cowboys in 1940s Texas/Mexico border, No Country for Old Men has painted an even bleaker picture of Texas in 1980. McCarthy has some quite conservative streams running through his books. In No Country for Old Men, sheriff Bell is his mouthpiece condemning young people’s more liberal way of life as the main cause for a darker and more pessimistic future. In the book and the movie, violence dominates the story and occurs pretty much every few pages or every ten or so minutes.

The Coen brothers capture the essence of the suspense in the book. Although I have read the book and know what to expect, I still covered my eyes several times in the scenes when Chigurh is coming after Llewelyn. However, the movie is limited by its source material and carries the same problem that I have with the book: mainly it is hard to be attached to any particular character. McCarthy writes without any conventional style in mind. He introduces characters, but has no qualms to kill them a few pages later. After many body counts, it is hard to care one way or the other. If you do get attached to certain character, when the slaughter time comes you may feel quite cheated after going through emotional highs and lows. Thankfully, the Coen brothers also follow the book’s lead and after a few graphic killings, most violence is insinuated off screen, because there are just so many innovative ways to kill and even the most bloodthirsty audience may get bored after a while.

The Coen brothers, along with cinematographer Roger Deakins, create a desolate and wide-open Texas desert and highland. Rundown little border towns Llewelyn encounters on the run further emphasize the unique Texas culture and environment. Texas, in McCarthy’s pen and under Coen brothers’ direction, is indeed a whole new country, quite different from other parts of the States.

The cast is first-rate. Javier Bardem has pulled a Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley. This Spanish heartthrob may have looked aged and bald in The Sea Inside, but he has never looked this hideous and scary before. His Chigurh is pretty much what McCarthy has imagined on the paper: pure evil with no empathy whatsoever. Unlike many clichéd killers with some moral backbones, Chigurh kills as pure need and for pure pleasure and he has a completely twisted “code of ethics”. Bardem conveys Chigurh to the bone. When he looks into the camera, you feel the chills on your spine. Josh Brolin is surprisingly good in this movie. He has matured as an actor and is quite comfortable in his own skin. His Llewelyn is a decent guy at heart, but has many human weaknesses: chiefly greed. His years in Vietnam do not prepare him for the depth of evil Satan may possess. His disarming smile and fundamental goodness is a sharp contrast to Chigurh’s heartlessness. One may say Tommy Lee Jones is typecast here, but there is a reason why he has cornered the market for sheriff roles. Jones is right at home playing a Texas sheriff. His Texas drawl and his offhand demeanor make it hard to imagine anyone else in the sheriff’s role.

Because the Coen brothers had to cut a big chunk of the book for the movie to be tight and make the two hour screen time, certain parts of the movie do not flow smoothly and lose its meaning on the audience who have not read the book. One major killing scene is quite unclear as to who and how the crime is perpetrated. Also, if I remember correctly from reading the book a few years back, the Coen brothers omit some conclusive ending for a certain character and instead leave it wide open for the audience to ruminate.

The key scene between Jones and actor Barry Corbin is confusing because the audience doesn’t really know the relationship between Jones’ sheriff and Corbin’s character, but Corbin utters some most insightful comments on Jones’ ultra-conservative view. If McCarthy has the conversation in the book, I must have missed it since the book left some bad taste in my mouth after all those preachy remarks from Sheriff Bell. In the scene between Jones and Corbin, Corbin points out that there have always been fights between good and evil. Cruelty and heartlessness are not something new in modern society. That is one view I wholeheartedly share. As times change, each society will face different problem and obstacle in their progress. We cannot wish time to stand still simply because there may be evil lurking underneath growth. Human beings have to fight their inside demons in any period of history.

Into the Wild

Sean Penn’s new movie, Into the Wild, is an extremely moving and heartfelt tale of one person’s relationship with nature and the people around him.

That one person was Christopher McCandless (played by Emile Hirsch), who abandoned all his worldly possessions after graduating from Emory University and embarked on an adventure that eventually led him to the Alaska wild. His adventure was detailed in Jon Krakauer’s book of the same title.

Into the Wild is the first movie this year that I foresee as a true Oscar contender. I love the small musical Once, but it may be too small to garner enough Oscar attention (I hope I will be proved wrong here.). Into the Wild does not dwindle on any frivolous relationships in everyday life, but pursues something far deeper. McCandless was a genuine Renaissance man. While we all have our own ideals, few of us have the courage to break the status quo and passionately pursue it. McCandless saw life differently and found it meaningless to conform to anything he does not believe in. During his journey, he worked for a guy named Wayne (played by Vince Vaughn). When he talked to Wayne about his plan to go to Alaska, Wayne said to him, “you are young.” Yes, he was young. When do we lose all that purity and innocence that come with youth? When do we stop seeing the beauty all around us?

I feel this movie is very close to director Sean Penn’s heart. Formerly a “wild boy” actor, I suspect that he connects his own rebellious spirit with McCandless’ story. He deftly divides McCandless’ life into five chapters to create a provocative film about a young man’s journey to discover himself and life. The movie would have been far less effective if Penn had dwindled too long on McCandless’ unhappy family life. Instead, Penn touches on McCandless’ upbringing sporadically in each of the five chapters. We are acquainted with his background while at the same time spared any melodrama.

Cinematographer Eric Gautier has done a wonderful job to mix the landscape seamlessly into the story. The film was shot in the actual locations where McCandless traveled and the scenery is spectacular. One look at what nature has provided us and you can understand McCandless’ desire to be part of that nature. Penn and Gautier use quite a few panorama shots to show how tiny an individual is in relation to nature. While looking down at McCandless’ minuscule form from the high camera angle, the viewers can feel the awe McCandless must have felt countless times in his surroundings.

As much as the movie is about McCandless’ love for nature and freedom, Into the Wild is even more of a human drama. McCandless’ outlook on life and his idealism has forever transformed people he met on the way to Alaska. Even though none of them could ever be as brave and pure as him, every single one of them has been touched by him and they have influenced him as well. Hippie couples Jan and Rainey (played by Catherine Keener and non-professional actor Brian Dierker) were his surrogate parents; Wayne was his surrogate older brother; Tracy (played by Kristen Stewart) was his could-be sweetheart; and old man Ron (played by Hal Holbrook) may be the most important supporting character in McCandless’ story. Ron was another loner like McCandless, but they chose very different path. Ron appears in the last chapter of the movie – Getting of Wisdom. It was my favorite part of the movie. It pits conventional wisdom held by Ron against McCandless’ idealism. In the end, Ron admired McCandless’ determination and dream even though he might have suspected the price McCandless might have to pay for his dream. The scene between the old man and the young man is exceptionally touching and your heart aches for them.

The cast of the movie deserves a lot of credit. Maybe because Penn is an actor himself, he knows not to crowd his actors and gives them room to express themselves. All the performances are stellar, but Hirsch shines above all. I am glad that Penn decided against having Leonardo DiCaprio play McCandless. The role needs a fresh face, one closer in age. Young actor Hirsch has appeared in a handful of teen movies, but this movie is a defining point for his career and can possibly be the highlight of his career. After all, a role like McCandless may just come along once in a lifetime. Occasionally the twinkle in Hirsch’s eyes betray his movie star quality, but most of times he is completely believable as the innocent youth uncorrupted by materialism all around us. He and all other actors enjoy each other’s on-screen company and it is infectious. When the time comes for him to part with each of the characters, the feelings are full and true.

In the 1950s, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road was published and defined a whole new Beat Generation. McCandless’ story is “On the Road” for 90s young people, except that I find him far superior than Kerouac: he didn’t need alcohol, drug or sex to fulfill his love for freedom, all he needed was the natural bond between him and nature. The tragedy lies in the end when McCandless realized that “happiness is only real when shared”. Youth has its endless beauty, yet it also has its limitation of knowledge that comes with age.