This Week in Cinema, I Learned…Nov 10-16 2024
Written by Cameron Geiser
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Welcome to This Week in Cinema, a yearlong film criticism project wherein I will be watching a new film that I haven't seen every single day.
Sadness, hope, fear, guilt, jealousy, shame, envy, goofball humor, passion, and righteous fury this week in cinema has it all. In one of the highest scoring weeks in months, if not the year as a whole, this selection of films runs the gamut of the human experience. From the deep well of sadness that is Manchester by The Sea to the insanely cartoonish world of The Hudsucker Proxy the films chosen this week explore the depths of range possible in artistic expression within the cinematic medium in profound ways. Les Misérables was truly stunning, and I regret not having seen this one sooner, the same goes for the black and white silent film The Artist. Whereas Platoon, Training Day, and I, Tonya all excellently explored reactions to, and because of, violence in outstanding fashion.
The lesson this week was in sharpening your storytelling skills down to the base elements of what your story needs to say or be. All of these films had something to say, and they said it well. Even with the scale of Les Misérables, it was singular in its conviction, its sense of justice, and fiery rebuke of royalty and authority. Some of these films took time to reveal their ultimate message, like Platoon with the taut unraveling of militaristic ideals for an answer as to what the point of it all was. Training Day also took on this notion, by slowly inserting subtle revelations until our lead character realizes that he’s been duped and set up. The remaining films were all more direct in their stances outright through tonal delivery or immediate imagery. The Coen brothers wasted no time showcasing the manipulative corporate shenanigans in The Hudsucker Proxy. While ultimately the reveals come slowly, the tone of guilt and shame that build a road to forgiveness in Manchester by The Sea is present from the beginning. Amongst the love letter to silent cinema and the transition to sound with Talkies, the idea of learning to change with the times arrives early on in the runtime with the introduction of the character Peppy Miller in The Artist. The passionate nostalgia filled with regret and macabre comedy comes in early through the framing device of a mockumentary style with the characters looking back on those true events in I, Tonya. Pointedly, what sets these films apart is the lack of fat in their storytelling, they shaved down anything unnecessary, and they said what they needed to say.
November 10th
Manchester by The Sea (2016)
4.5/5
Casey Affleck stars as Lee Chandler, a placid faced brooding uncle with underlying anger and depression issues due to a tragic past that we learn more about as the runtime chugs along. Manchester by The Sea can be emotionally brutal to get through at times, but it also maintains a dry melancholic humor that works to ease us inbetween scenes of traumatic losses. Lee works as a handyman and is generally content with avoiding all human contact. So when his brother, Joe (Kyle Chandler) passes away in the opening of the film he is shocked to discover at the reading of his brother’s Will that Joe had named him the legal guardian of his teenage son Patrick (Lucas Hedges). Lee greatly objects to this, but in lieu of better options he ultimately decides to make an attempt at being a parent of sorts while Patrick gets through the remainder of high school.
Once the reveals start coming in flashbacks, we begin to understand Lee and why he is the way he is, and I have to say the script and performances are outstanding in handling the concepts of grief and forgiveness in a satisfying, mature way. Casey Affleck expertly utilized a subtle approach to the character of Lee and the emotional hurdles that both Patrick and Lee have to leap together is handled with extraordinary care. Manchester by The Sea is most definitely a horrifically sad story, but it gets such a high score due to how the aftermath of these events are handled and how the story is told with a hard realism edge while not forgetting the many layers of complexity that life offers.
November 11th
Platoon (1986)
4/5
Written and directed by Oliver Stone and partly based on his experiences during his time in the Vietnam War, Platoon was truly an unforgettable War film. The film boasts an outstanding cast including Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, Keith David, Kevin Dillon, John C. McGinley, Forest Whitaker, and Johnny Depp. It's also the first film about the Vietnam War made by a veteran of that War. Which is probably why Platoon viciously showcases the sickening nature of war generally, but specifically why this War cost us our morality and our optimism as a people. If you're interested in learning more about Oliver Stone's story specifically, I highly recommend his memoir Chasing The Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game. This no nonsense War film comes highly recommended.
November 13th
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
Written and directed by the Coen brothers, but *also* written by Sam Raimi who served as the second unit director as well and you can definitely feel his influence on this film. I absolutely adore this film. Not only is it in the running for my favorite script of the year, but this screwball comedy about the nightmare of a hyper capitalistic society is a god damn riot. The satire is *chef’s kiss* perfect and hell there's even a chunk of the film that's just a love letter to His Girl Friday starring Bruce Campbell and Jennifer Jason Leigh. After the suicide of the president and founder of Hudsucker Industries in the beginning of the film, the following power vacuum needed to be filled and Sidney J. Mussburger (Paul Newman) had a plan. Granted that plan was to destroy the stock value of the company in order to rake in hordes of cash- but he needed an idiot to be the face of the company in order to do so, and that idiot was Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins). Throughout the film Barnes’ good natured attitude and “awe shucks” Midwestern optimism made him the perfect foil for Mussburger’s plans. That is until Barnes started having brilliantly simple ideas that kept making Hudsucker Industries untold Millions. The best example of which was the hula hoop. Throughout the movie Barnes kept trying to bring up his idea for a product that was just a drawing of a circle which he would describe as “You know… for kids.” The Hudsucker Proxy is well worth your time, I highly recommend it.
November 13th
I, Tonya (2017)
4/5
Margot Robbie stars as the titular Tonya Harding, a fiercely passionate Olympic level figure skater who became internationally known in the 1990s for an attack made on her competitor and friend, Nancy Kerrigan. Structured through a documentary adjacent lens with the characters looking back on the events leading up to the incident I, Tonya maintains a darkly comedic tone through multiple different perspectives that blur the lines between truth, memory, and how the story was reported at the time. The opening of the film sets the stage for unreliable narrators by noting that the film was “based on irony-free, wildly contradictory and totally true interviews”. Margot Robbie helms the picture with an incredible performance as the defiant, fiery, but ultimately naive Tonya. The film goes to great lengths to show how the people surrounding Tonya only fed her worst instincts. Her mother (Allison Janney) was an emotionally abusive firestorm of a parent who constantly whittled away at Tonya’s self confidence and inability to calm her inner rage and sense of “being owed” at times.
While she was the first American figure skater to perform the difficult triple axel, she very well could have been known as the peak performer that she was on the ice rink. However her inability to own up to her mistakes and stay away from all the wrong people, vices, and activities ended up with her constant repetition of “It wasn’t my fault”. Honestly, with the amount of emotional abuse from her mother and boyfriend (Sebastian Stan), her scenes of pure anguish when things fall apart as she tries to avoid association with the white trash redneck stereotype, it does all culminate with a sense of sympathy. The film doesn't exactly paint her in a rosy Hollywood biopic hue though. In the aftermath of the incident, which actually was out of her hands, Tonya is banned from ever participating in figure skating again. It feels unnecessarily harsh, especially when the men involved earned less harsh sentencing. While the filmmaking side of things were competent, confident, and shot with a steady hand, it's really the performances and how the story was told that make this film stand out. I, Tonya is certainly worth a watch.
November 14th
Les Misérables (2012)
5/5
Going into Les Misérables, I knew nothing about the story whatsoever, only that it was an awards darling when it debuted thirteen years ago. Well, that and the fact that Hugh Jackman played a prominent role, but that was the limit of my knowledge of the tale. I was blown away by this musical epic and the totality of its story, the breadth of characters, and the interweaving of characters' life stories as they evolved across decades. A quick rundown of the story is that in 19th century France, Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) serves his prison sentence for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family but ends up breaking his parole and is subsequently hunted by the ruthless officer Javert (Russell Crowe). Years later Jean Valjean, under a new identity, has found himself to be a respectable factory owner and mayor of a small town. He encounters the traumatized Fantine (Anne Hathaway), one of the workers at his factory, as she is physically decimated trying to provide for her daughter Cosette (Amanda Seyfried as adult Cosette).
Jean Valjean decides to protect and provide for Cosette as per Fantine’s dying wishes, and he heads off to the manor of Thénardier (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his Madame (Helena Bonham Carter) who had been housing her in Fantine’s stead, for a fee of course. As the years go by Javert gets closer and closer to discovering Jean Valjean’s existence and hears whispers of him breaking parole and living under a new name. We eventually get to Cosette’s life as a young woman taking part in the revolutionary uprising of the times and falling in love with Marius (Eddie Redmayne), a revolutionary and student of politics. Speaking of Eddie Redmayne, and this is in no way meant to be disrespectful, but his singing in the film is my only small gripe. I just couldn’t take his singing seriously, it sounded like a derpier version of Kermit the Frog belting out revolutionary shtick, which was admittedly funny but it did break my immersion. Sorry Eddie, it is what it is. If you missed this one, or just never thought to give it a watch, please do. It’s worth it.
November 15th
Training Day (2001)
4/5
What a turn on the buddy cop premise. Who knew an action thriller where you don't know if your partner sitting next to you is friend or foe could be so taut, so full of tension, danger, and dark comedy. Ethan Hawke and Denzel Washington turned in outstanding performances for an all timer with Antoine Fuqua behind the camera for Training Day. Detective Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington) finds himself paired with a new partner as the film opens, Officer Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) who is looking to join the tough inner-city narcotics unit. Alonzo takes Jake on a ride through the roughest crime riddled areas of Los Angeles and constantly tests Jake's mettle to see if he is fit enough physically and mentally for the notorious sect of the police force. The star of the show is, obviously, Denzel's charismatic, domineering, and biting performance as Detective Alonzo. Ethan Hawke, though, was also putting in the work as the competent but out of water newbie who eventually catches on to the ruse that is being played on him. Not only is the script succinct and efficient, but the unexpected developments as encounter after encounter with the underworld of L.A. begin to sprinkle in hints and subtleties that eventually lead to some satisfying reveals. All this is boosted by the aforementioned killer performances from the two leads, making Training Day a must watch for anyone interested in the long cinematic history of Detective movies.
November 16th
The Artist (2011)
4.5/5
As a movie that I waved away as “pretentious” when it was all the Oscar buzz in the autumn of my college years, I am now confident in asserting that I was completely and entirely wrong in that base assumption. The Artist is a modern black and white silent film about the transitionary period in Hollywood when sound was introduced where studios and actors alike had to roll with the changes as Talkies began to garner the public's attention in droves. George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) was one of the most bankable silent movie stars in the early 1920s when Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), a young new talent, arrived on the scene. She and George Valentin share a charming rumor mill moment when a photographer snaps a picture where the two had bumped into each other, thus catapulting her to notoriety as an extra but then as a hit performer once sound emerges as a viable filmmaking component.
George finds himself caught against the rising tide of Talkies, which he refuses to do, and the stock market crash as Peppy becomes a household name while his star fades. I really was impressed with The Artist. Not only are the performances a delightful love letter to the magic of silent Cinema, John Goodman plays an old Hollywood studio boss as a fun aside, but there is style all over this film. The way sound creeps in and torments George as the story chugs along reminded me of Sunset Boulevard at times too. When he has a nightmare in which audio invades his dreamspace I couldn't help but think of Norma Desmond watching a microphone descend into frame as she snarls at it, still holding contempt for the passage of time and with it new technology. The Artist is a modern classic and love letter to a century of Cinema, it's well worth a watch, and I highly recommend it.
Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.