April 26, 2010

DVD REVIEW: Brothers



Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman, Sam Shepard, Bailee Madison

FILM:
The brothers Cahill are mirror images of one another – there is something captivatingly similar about them, yet they are polar opposites in every way. Sam (Maguire) is the pride of his military family, and if it isn’t him on all those Army Recruitment adverts then it is someone exactly like him from a family down the road. Their father Hank (Shepard) is a Vietnam veteran, and everything about their yawning, grey town stinks of the peculiarly American backwardness that leads great legions of youngsters into the army… or the penitentiary.

Younger brother Tommy (Gyllenhaal) has followed the second of these inevitable paths, serving a stint for armed robbery. When Sam picks Tommy up from prison their reunion is not tarred with bitterness or scowls. They share an understanding that their lives are following chaotic and dangerous paths over which they have little control, and as dissimilar as they seem, their two paths are very much intertwined.

Sam is reported missing, assumed dead, soon after returning for his second tour of Afghanistan; and his weeping but mature wife Grace (Portman) is left to care for their two young daughters. Tommy – desperately trying to cling to a straight and sane life despite the emotional battering of his cruel father – tries to help Grace around the house, doing all the odd jobs that Sam would have done. At first she is reluctant, she has never approved of her stepfamily’s tearaway, but eventually she relents. It isn’t hard to surmise that two lonely mourners thrown together by loss might grow to rely on each other and, to the extent that love is a form of reliance, to love each other.

But unbeknownst to the fragile young couple, Sam is alive in Afghanistan and struggling to survive at the hands of a ruthless militia. He is forced to kill a fellow soldier shortly before US troops rescue him. And when he returns home the central focus of the story becomes less about death and revenge and more about jealousy, identity, and guilt within a tight-lipped family.

This is certainly a film that relies on tangible and electrifying emotions being held just below the skin, where the audience can sense their power but not feel bombarded by them. And who better than the wise man of cinematic family dramas, Jim Sheridan, to direct? With a filmography that includes ‘In America’, ‘In the Name of the Father’, and ‘The Boxer’, Sheridan is a force of nature with an extraordinary ability to uncover the subtlest of nuances in a scene and then guide actors to find it themselves.

Sheridan brings a clarity and subtlety to the complex story, which allows the drama to feel sparing but always emotionally engaging. The film might be criticised at times for feeling slightly cold or ‘distant’, and it is certainly difficult to work out who we should be ‘rooting for’, but this is not a failing in the film, it is a success. The cast, the score, and the setting combine to evoke expectations of a melodramatic ‘Douglas Sirk’ drama masquerading as a post-New-Hollywood Indie film in the mould of Gus Van Sant or Ang Lee. What this film really is, is a staunch and uncomfortably honest Skandinavian film masquerading as a Hollywood Indie.

The performances, while being inseparable from Sheridan’s direction, do a lot to recommend this cast of young but experienced actors. Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire, and Natalie Portman are three of the most experienced actors working in Hollywood today, which, considering their ages range from 29 to 35, is quite remarkable. With credits like Donnie Darko, Leon, Closer, and The Cider House Rules between them, it is unusual that these actors do not demand more respect. Perhaps it is the fact that they are all young and beautiful and life is far too easy for them already without adoring masses of people massaging their egos.

They all hold their own in this subtle, and very European, Hollywood Indie. Maguire is boyish and harmless before his ordeal, but there is still a cold ruthlessness about him that erupts on his return. Gyllenhaal manages to turn his doe-eyed innocence into a hardened glare as the harmless ex-con. And Portman’s quivering and aching performance as the wife who must lose her husband twice (first to death, and then to madness) is absorbing.

The most surprisingly moving performance (perhaps because this is really a film about vulnerability and the difficulty of harnessing and understanding difficult emotions) is that of 10-year-old, Bailee Madison. Her powerful performance perfectly harnesses the unspoken and crippling feelings of the adults, and without her tear-stricken screams the film would lack a certain irascibility.

EXTRAS:
Before examining the DVD ‘extras’, it is important to take note of one essential factor of this project that was not mentioned in the above film review… this is a remake of a 2004 Danish film, Brødre, by Susanne Bier. It is important to know this because it is the only topic discussed throughout the entirety of the ‘extras’. One of the three extras is actually an overt attempt to justify the remake, and the others (Sheridan’s commentary and an investigation into Sheridan’s mastery of the family drama) rarely escape from constantly referencing the original and desperately explaining why this version is so different and ‘important for America’.

Sheridan’s commentary is interesting if you care about filmmaking and the ways in which a filmmaker can elicit performances from his cast. His constant references to Bier’s original exemplify how seemingly small changes (such as deciding to show Gyllenhaal’s character physically leaving jail) have a profound thematic and dramatic impact on the story, and force any number of changes further down the line (such as having Maguire’s character act more sympathetic, rather than judgemental, of his wayward brother).

The fact that these two brothers are infinitely similar and yet worlds apart is certainly one of the most important elements of the story, and the fact that Sheridan and Gyllenhaal found a way to introduce this new complexity that was absent from the original in such a subtle and seemingly inconsequential way is fascinating to anybody interested in the art of filmmaking and storytelling in general.

However, for the 95% of viewers who are not specifically interested in the technical art of filmmaking, this may prove a drawn-out and uninteresting affair. Sheridan is undoubtedly an enigmatic and fascinating character, but his constant need to explain why he changed things from the original means that he gets bogged down in deeply technical elements of storytelling and only rarely provides interesting ‘on-set’ anecdotes.

Similarly, the two ‘featurettes’ (concerning the adaptation of Bier’s film and Sheridan’s ‘auteur’ sensibilities) become bogged down in “they did this but we changed it to that” comments and rarely provide an entertaining, anecdotal insight into the making of the film.

Of course any film concerning the domestic consequences of a botched foreign policy will be particularly pertinent for the USA, a nation that has been at war with everybody, including itself, for over half a century. But there is no way of justifying a remake on social grounds without first admitting to one moot point… American people just wont read subtitles.

In short, this is an excellent, if slightly distant, psychological drama with a stellar cast and a master director. But the extras do little to add to the experience and could be ignored without really missing anything.

April 07, 2010

REVIEW: Lebanon (dir. Samuel Maoz)


Cast: Yoav Donat, Itay Tiran, Oshri Cohen, Michael Moshonov, Zohar Strauss

‘Lebanon’ tells the story of four young Israeli soldiers, barely out of their teens, who are forced together to operate a tank as the First Lebanon War begins. It is an incredibly ambitious and difficult project, and one that has allowed director Samuel Maoz to create a veritable cinematic masterpiece. ‘Waltz with Bashir’ employed a vast range of techniques (animation, documentary, non-narrative interviews, etc) to deal with the emotions and psychological issues created by the same war; but ‘Lebanon’ never leaves the damp, explosive confines of the tank, and uses this claustrophobic microcosm to explore the power-struggles, crippling moral torment, and emotional anguish that defined this horrific event in world history.

Herzl (the headstrong loader), Shmulik (the timid gunner), Assi (the hesitant commander), and Yigal (the scared, ‘momma’s boy’ driver) make up the tank’s crew. They are clearly from different Israeli backgrounds (at least in terms of wealth and education) and there is some resentment between Herzl and Assi over who should be in charge. We join the story as the crew is ordered to cross the border into Lebanon and block a dusty road over night. The following morning, when a car approaches and refuses to stop, they are ordered to blow up the car. Shmulik refuses to do so, and as a result some troops in their battalion are killed. A few minutes later another truck appears, and Jamil (the battalion commander) doesn’t bother with a warning but simply orders Shmulik to shoot. Shmulik overcomes his anxiety and blows the truck up… and it turns out to be an innocent chicken farmer, who is left crawling across the dusty ground with his entrails hanging out. Thus the tone is set for a truly raw and unapologetic look at the horrors of modern warfare.

The battalion moves across villages and areas of countryside that have already been decimated by Israeli air strikes, but the rubble provides ample cover for the legions of Lebanese troops still trying to protect their land. Through Shmulik’s cross-haired peephole we see small gun battles breaking out, resulting in deaths on all sides (Israeli and Lebanese troops, and innocent civilians). And when we turn back into the tank and see the effects this brutality is having on it’s beleaguered and devastated crew, we realize that a soldier is just an innocent civilian in khaki uniform.

When the tank breaks down, the crew seems relieved at the prospect of being airlifted out of the warzone; but orders from above explain that they cannot be reached because they are too deep into enemy territory. The tank crew is then left completely alone, save for one maverick gangster and a captured enemy soldier, to find their way out of this hellish world.

There may be nothing especially surprising about the underlying message of this film. This is a cathartic exercise for Maos, who was forced to fight in the Lebanese war himself, and the film is unremittingly negative about the concept of war and the effect it has on those involved. But while criticism of war may be an obvious position to take, it is still an infinitely fascinating and complex one that even Sun Tzu and Wilfred Owen were unable to solve, and Maoz has found an original and ensnaring way of investigating his own feelings about war. The relationships between these four troops – the forced machismo, the unspoken dependency, the choking back of tears through angry tirades – are so real and engaging.

But what all of this really boils down to is the setting: this film would not have been possible without the inspired decision to set it entirely inside the tank; and it is this that elevates this film into the ranks of memorable, must-see cinema. Aesthetically, the claustrophobia and stuffy, menacing dankness of it are represented perfectly… it is exactly what you wish ‘Das Boot’ had looked like. In terms of narrative, the relationships between the characters are perfectly conceived, performed, and captured. The naïveté, camaraderie, loneliness, and vulnerability are constantly written across the faces of the characters; and we can never turn away or take a step back… we are never more than a few inches away from this disturbing reality.