The Savages

The Savages begins with a strangely funny and surreal sequence: a group of old ladies all wear age inappropriate, cheerleader like uniforms, come from behind a row of sculpted topiary and dance in unison to an old Peggy Lee tune. This bizarrely charming scene sets the tone for the entire movie. Writer/director Tamara Jenkins’ script is an intimate portrait of old age full of pain and heartache, but also filled with love and compassion. I can’t deny that the subject matter is depressing, but Jenkins provides some comic relief here and there to alleviate the dark mood.

Wendy Savage (played by Laura Linney) is an aspiring writer living in New York with some temp job. Her older brother, Jon (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman), is a college professor of theater at SUNY Buffalo. Their father, Lenny (played by Philip Bosco), has been diagnosed with vascular dementia. The siblings have not been close to their father over the years, but as their father’s health state deteriorates rapidly, they are forced to deal with his care. I love the fact that Jenkins never wastes much time explaining in detail the estrangement between the father and children. We get a good sense of what kind of parent Lenny may be simply from a few fleeting conversations between Wendy and Jon.

A lesser writer/director could have easily turned this movie into some cliché melodrama, yet Savages is as far from a melodramatic film as a film can get dealing with such a bleak subject. Jenkins chooses a good location for the nursing home in the film. Buffalo, especially in winter time, is quite befitting for the tone of this movie. The calm observational detail of its visual strategy brings out brings out the eloquent, ashen gray and silver tones in a wintry world that seems deprived of any liveliness. The grainy images in the movie reflect well the harsh realities depicted.

Jenkins’ script gives vivid reality to aging and difficult choices both parents and children have to face. She delivers a relatable dark dramedy that allows us to peek into the lives of the Savage family to get a glimpse of what many of us may have already experienced or will surely face in the future. The best moments of Savages tend to be those most ironic and contradictory scenes such as the opening sequence. When Jon and Wendy drinks at a restaurant/bar in Sun City, AZ trying to figure out what to do with their ailing dad, an old couple is singing an old tune for the diners. The song is about a couple acting like little tots. It is funny to see this old couple perform like two youngsters, yet also sad to realize how much the old people want to hold on to that sense of youth. I guess that is what a place like Sun City all about – try to make elders’ lives full of activities, make their lives seem normal so that they could put the thought of death and senility behind. However, time will catch up with all of us. Forgetting doesn’t mean death won’t come knocking. When Jon calls Wendy and tells her the news about the nursing home he finds for their dad, the nursing home’s name is Valley View, but all we see is the dreary view of a deserted wintry street. Later to soothe her sense of guilt, Wendy looks through promotional materials for different nursing homes. We see videos of sunny and pleasant places, but when Wendy takes her father to one of those sunny places for an interview, it is just as depressing as Valley View.

Jenkins is a master caster. The cast of Linney, Hoffman and Bosco is just about perfect. None of the characters is exactly likable, but these able actors have the ability to make their roles incredibly human. They have flaws just like you and me, and they have to struggle with issues that face many of us in similar situations. They are just ordinary people doing their best under desperate conditions.

I am a bit disappointed about the movie’s ending. Throughout the entire movie, I feel Jenkins has been trying to be as honest as she can, but the ending is a surrender to Hollywood conventions. Every loose end is tied so perfectly that the movie loses its sharp edge. However, overall Jenkins has done a terrific job. It has been almost ten years since her last movie, Slums of Beverly Hills, was released. It is good to know that she still writes awfully sharp dialogue and all her good dramatic senses are intact.

The Band's Visit

The Band’s Visit is an unassuming, sweet little film from Israel. It has been in the news lately for its disqualification for the Motion Picture Academy’s Foreign Language Film category. I am not sure that the movie is strong enough to be picked as a nominee, yet it is ironic that a movie very much about language and communication is shut out of the competition in that category.

Visit tells a story about a small Egyptian police band’s visit to Israel to perform at the inaugural ceremony of an Arab cultural center. The band is hopelessly lost in a desert Israeli town in the middle of nowhere. A sassy restaurant owner and her two customers take the men in for the night, and both sides discover that they have much in common despite their different background and religion.

The plotline is quite predictable. I think audiences can easily see that the Arabs and Jews in the picture will get along in the end, however, writer/director Eran Kolirin still manages to keep the situations and characters fresh, interesting and alive. Kolirin belongs to Jim Jarmusch’s school of filmmaking. There are many prolonged, purposefully awkward silence in the film to stress the characters’ discomfort, unfamiliarity and carefulness with each other. There are no big hilarious comic gags in the film; all the humor comes from realistic little moments such as the scenes in which three band members, with their Jewish hosts, sing off-key the American song Summertime, and in another instance, the stud in the band, Haled, tries to teach his Jewish friend how to woo a girl.

The acting in the film is superb. All the band members feel like non-professional actors because they all have that kind of originality and rawness amateur players are sometimes capable of bringing to a movie. The leader of the band, Colonel Tawfiq, is played beautifully by Sasson Gabai. The restaurant owner Dina is clearly attracted to him and his relationship with Dina in the film is touching and truthful. A less able filmmaker may have Tawfiq kiss Dina on the cheek or hug her at the end of their night, but not Kolirin. He keeps Tawfiq within his character and makes him consistent throughout the movie and that makes you love him and this movie even more.

The main problem I have with this film is the pacing. It is probably very slow by most audiences’ standards. I don’t want to sound like an advocate for constant action, but a film, in order to capture mass audiences’ attention, needs to have a faster pace. A few prolonged silent scenes are all fine, but having too many of them will only alienate some audience and lose its novelty factor.

A foreign movie always has a hard time attracting a large audience in this country. In this foreign picture, the characters speak English in over half of the screen time, so don’t be intimidated by the foreignness of its poster. It is a little delight to watch and you won’t have to read subtitles that often.

There Will Be Blood

2007 may go down in movie history very much like 1939, the height of the golden age of Hollywood. In 1939, Hollywood produced such classics as Gone With the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach and The Wizard of Oz. In 2007, we have films such as Sweeney Todd, Atonement and Once. Each of those films can be appreciated even years later. Now I have just seen Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest work, There Will Be Blood, and it is simply his best work to date.

Ever since his feature film debut Boogie Nights in 1997, Anderson has been considered a boy genius, very much like Orson Welles was in the 1940s. His 1999 follow-up Magnolia puzzled many audience and some critics. I didn’t particularly like Boogie Nights, but was quite intrigued by Magnolia, especially the singing sequence and biblical references. Anderson is a filmmaker who is not afraid of trying anything and clearly wants to break the conventional narrative mold. His third film in 2002, Punch Drunk Love, is a weird dark comedy/drama starring a big commercial asset Adam Sandler. It is a very light film in his standard and it lost me.

Now five years later, Anderson comes back with an epic that may astonish even his strongest supporters. His three earlier films simply don’t prepare you for the greatness that shows in this film. One reason that this film stands far above his other three works may be the star in this film: Daniel Day-Lewis. Day-Lewis has long been regarded the best actor in his generation. In Blood, he gives a performance that will be taught in film schools for years to come.

Like the other three films, Anderson wrote the script for Blood, loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil!. I have not read the book, but according to most critics, Anderson’s film is quite a departure from the original book. Blood is very much a fable dealing with two biggest American obsessions – greed and religion.

Daniel Plainview (played by Day-Lewis) is an ambitious, greedy oil prospector at the turn of the century. The first 10-15 minutes of the movie has little dialogue and shows us clearly the harsh conditions in the early days of oil business. We see Plainview’s humble beginning and how he slowly and steadily accumulates his fortune. Anderson has always been eager to break movie traditions, but ironically, in his best film, his narrative style is very much old-fashioned. It may still be looked upon as slow paced by audiences used to Hollywood action films, but moves much more quickly than his other three films. It is not too artsy aloof like Magnolia to keep the audiences interest. There are many conflicts around in Blood to keep us interested.

The landscape used in the movie for the Texas location is ideal for the purpose. Its vast emptiness represents all the wealth waiting to be discovered and the loneliness experienced by Plainview. The lands may be his only friend in his quest for fortune. Through the years, he has alienated his few loved ones. His relationship with his son is a perfect example of his complicity: he loves his son while he also has no qualm using him as a tool in his business dealings; when his son becomes disabled, he cannot accept the consequences and does something unthinkable of a parent; even when he realizes his mistake and tries to rectify it, he still cannot face it in a rational way. Ruthless is in his blood and gentleness is alien to him.

I also love the way Anderson pit greed against religion. Plainview’s nemesis in the movie is young preacher Eli Sunday (played by Paul Dano). The best scenes in the movie are the ones they face each other. Dano is clearly quite green next to Day-Lewis, but that is exactly the effect Anderson needs for the movie: Dano’s seemingly innocent piety vs. Day-Lewis’s shrewd and hard-hearted greediness. Even though the film deals with serious moral issues, Anderson’s script is not all dry and heavy. There is humorous dialogue and many small details in the movie, especially those scenes between Dano and Day-Lewis. It is such a delight to watch how Day-Lewis uses both word plays and his actions to torture Dano.

Day-Lewis is an intense actor. One can argue that his Plainview character may not be that different from his last Oscar-nominated role, Bill “the Butcher” in Gangs of New York. They are both cruel yet vulnerable and they even look alike with their mustache. However, Daniel Plainview is a much better written and developed character. If Day-Lewis was robbed of an Oscar in 2003, 2008 is definitely going to be his year to shine. He is not really acting in this movie, he has become Daniel Plainview. Plainview suffers some physical hardship at the beginning of the movie and later on when we see him, Day-Lewis always walks with a slightly bent stiff back and a slight limp in his legs. These special character quirks add to his credibility as the character. Even when he laughs, you feel worried and can sense some terrible things that he may utter or do. That is how good he plays this character.

Near the end of the movie, Blood feels very much like Welles’ Citizen Kane. Plainview may be rich beyond his wildest imagination and lives in a mansion probably far bigger and grander than his childhood dream, yet he is so lonely and isolated in that big house, the same way Charles Kane was in his final days.

The best part of this movie is no doubt Plainview, but he is also the main flaw of this movie. In the end, Anderson cannot escape the tendency by many filmmakers to make their characters too dramatic. It seems that all complicated characters have to be insane in some way to complete their character arc and I was disappointed when Plainview sort of falls into the same trap. I don’t quite buy the film’s ending. To me, Plainview would have enjoyed his victory over Eli financially and emotionally. However, this tiny flaw does not diminish the greatness of Anderson’s film. It is truly a powerful masterpiece for all to see.