REVIEW: Henry Poole Is Here (dir. Mark Pellington)

Cast: Luke Wilson, Radha Mitchell, Adriana Barraza, George Lopez

I seem to have developed something of a rebellious streak with regards my choice of films recently. After so many years of watching only the most critically acclaimed cinematic milestones (and the most ‘difficult-to-pronounce-in-their-original-language’ Michael Haneke films) my experience of ‘King of California’ has opened up a whole new world of lesser-known American ‘Indie’ films.

I was going to coin a phrase there – post-‘Indie’ – but as soon as you attach a prefix to this most ugly of words it begins to sound like you are referring to films inspired by a certain maverick archaeologist.

With my newfound adventurousness, and spurred on by the presence of a highly apathetic friend who ‘just wanted to watch whatever was on’, I decided to watch Luke Wilson’s ‘Henry Poole Is Here’. I attribute the film to Wilson because he is the only recognisable name on the project and, I am confident, was probably the only reason the project ever got off the ground.

This is the story of Henry Poole, a man who returns to his childhood neighbourhood to die in peace after he finds out he has a terminal disease. Needless to say… peace is one thing he certainly isn’t going to find!

The first antagonist is a well meaning, but headache inducing, Hispanic woman who finds the face of Christ in a damp patch on the wall of Henry’s new home. He is dismissive, but nothing can stop this stubborn old busybody from inviting her priest and half the Catholic diocese to pray before Henry’s stained stucco wall.

Add to this a naïve, Marx-loving check out girl who doesn’t understand why Henry buys so much alcohol if he isn’t having parties, and you have possibly the least peaceful passage to the afterlife since Rasputin.

But, of course, this is secretly just what Henry needs. He is a lonely creature who, we must assume, has run away from everything in his life. And if it weren’t for these nosy citizens he would have absolutely nothing to distract him from his impending death. Perhaps this is what friends are for… simply to distract us from the inevitable slipping away of time.

But none of these characters quite seem to fulfil the archetypal ‘saving grace’ that can draw Henry out of his depression and give him the fulfilling and visceral finale that every human deserves… queue the arrival of Radha Mitchell as the unfeasibly attractive ‘single-mum-next-door’.

What follows is an oddly interesting examination of Henry’s refusal to accept the miracles that keep occurring outside his house (it turns out it may actually be the Second Coming), and his need to release his fears and anxieties about dying.

This is certainly not the most original film you have ever seen – it is a coming-of-age story where the guy eventually gets the girl – but there is something oddly appealing about it. It is one of those films that keeps flashing back into your consciousness at weird moments, running down an escalator or ordering a drink at the bar.

I have been trying to work out what is so unique and appealing about this film, and I think it is the fact that it falls short of being a real ‘Indie’ film (for anyone who doesn’t know what I mean by ‘Indie’, just watch anything by Wes Anderson, David O. Russell, or Gus Van Sant).

By rights it should be the epitome of ‘Indie’ – it is a low(ish) budget American film set in suburban California and starring Luke Wilson – but it manages to be understated and subtle throughout.

I think that, in reality, the film hasn’t consciously subverted or avoided the tropes of American ‘Indie’ cinema… it has just fallen short of them. After all, this is only Luke – and not Owen – Wilson, and the writer and director are both first-timers. But even if that is the case, it doesn’t change the fact that the charm of this film is in its willingness to just go about its job of watching Henry, without pandering to the Sundance crowd.

The director, Mark Pellington, cut his teeth on U2 videos and tour DVDs… and you can really tell. Any director that actually uses Blur’s ‘Song 2’ as a non-diegetic song is surely ill advised to do so. It is his directorial touch that allows certain quirky ‘Indie’ tropes to enter into the aesthetic of the film, but fortunately his inexperience also seems to have limited his willingness to mess around with the script.

Wilson’s performance reflects perfectly what I have been trying to explain about the general feel of the film. After living in Owen’s shadow for so many years, this may have been his attempt at a career-changing leading role in a gritty drama. But if he has made any attempt to conjure up an award-worthy, reputation-shattering performance, he has failed. What he has succeeded in is creating a truly desperate and careless character that is worthy of all the pathos we can muster.

The thing that makes this film so appealing is the fact that it failed. It didn’t register at Sundance, it didn’t get a cinematic release, it didn’t launch the careers of its writer and director, and it hasn’t garnered any Oscars for Luke Wilson. But it did spend 99 minutes following a genuinely interesting cast of characters around their unassuming suburban neighbourhood… and that really is refreshing.

REVIEW: Network (dir. Sidney Lumet)

Cast: Peter Finch, William Holden, Faye Dunawaye, Robert Duvall

“You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even ‘think’ like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, YOU people are the real thing! WE are the illusion! So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off! Turn them off right in the middle of the sentence I'm speaking to you now! TURN THEM OFF...”

I hate television. I’ve thought long and hard about it and I can’t see any other way of describing my on-off relationship with that fickle and transitory creature, TV. She promised us so much at the beginning of our relationship: information, education, and entertainment. She persuaded us that we no longer needed literature, art, public discourse, or any other activity that, for centuries, had formed the basis of human social and mechanical intelligence.

And so we became dependent upon her. We allowed our young to suckle on that cathode-ray tube in the corner of the living room. No more Scouts, no more debating societies, no more Classics, no more camping trips with Dad… just the box.

But television has proved to be a venomous and disloyal harlot. She teases us with the greatness we knew she could achieve: awe-inspiring nature documentaries, gritty and damning social dramas, carefully plotted and intricately decorated period pieces.

But the passion of those early years has crumbled into a cold and calculated abuse of our unquestioning love for her. We are forced to stomach any vacuous tripe that Simon Cowell or Endemol decide to throw at us.

The relationship is stale; we just don’t have the courage or independence to end it. I only hope that, eventually, mankind will realise this poisonous relationship with television is not a marriage but a brief, regrettable affair; and we will someday return to Hemingway and Proust with our heads hung in shame.

One man who, I am confident, shares my feelings towards television is Paddy Chayefsky, the writer of ‘Network’. The rants, like the one above, that Chayefsky stuffs into the mouth of his hero Howard Beale (an Oscar-winning performance by Peter Finch) are angry and bitter and raw, and yet so beautifully paced and honest.

At one point in the film – when Beale orders his millions of viewers to go to their window, open it, and scream “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!” – I had a tear of passion in my eye. Just imagining that many people achieving momentary unity through their unvoiced confusion and rage, I was so overwhelmed with that odd, transcendental love for humanity that I literally welled up.

The story concerns news anchorman Howard Beale, who has been laid off due to dipping ratings. On his penultimate broadcast, he announces that he will kill himself live on TV during his final broadcast. He persuades his bosses to allow him back on air to apologise for his momentary loss of sanity, but then proceeds to excuse himself by explaining, to his millions of viewers, that he just ran out of bullshit to tell them. His career, and the future of the entire news team, seems ruined. But when his broadcast achieves a record jump in ratings, the powers-that-be decide to use the mentally frail Beale as a ‘raging prophet’.

The script is far from perfect. At times it feels as if the story has been stuffed in between the powerful monologues just to fill the time. This is not the case, although the film might be better if it were. The real problem here is that the film tries to deal with too much. The damning critique of network television is complete enough without the examination of extremist politics and multi-national companies.

The relationship between Faye Dunaway and William Holden is a perfect representation of the dangers of a humanoid, TV generation that Beale espouses on his show. Dunaway is one of the first generations to be “brought up on Bugs Bunny.”

She is a ruthless career woman, but what is truly tragic is that she really does see her life through the kaleidoscopic lens of television. She is incapable of connecting with any thing in her life – love, sex, family, etc – without comparing it to the simplified and intentionally warped three act structures that she has been brought up on.

This is not the perfect film. But if anybody reading this has ever wanted to have their niggling discontentment with television, corporatism, and the general state of malaise that seems to exist across every strata of our struggling and careless species voiced by an enigmatic news anchorman with millions of viewers and nothing to lose… watch this film.