"She's different...in every way."

Pictured: Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig

Many people have been presenting David Fincher’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” under the misnomer of “remake.” Of course, the best-selling Steig Larsson series was adapted in 2009 into three Swedish-language films, but the two variations are almost incomparable beyond the fact that they are based on the same source material.

Obviously, the most stand-out point of departure that has indeed been the focus of virtually all attention paid to this film, is the performance of Rooney Mara as the iconic character Lisbeth Salander. Mara handles herself well, but at times reveals a bit too much of her own intimidation of the character. Her Lisbeth is steady and calculating but with a level of insecurity and vulnerability that Noomi Rapace for the most part lacked. Mara’s Salander was much more devoted to a sense of personal justice rather than justice for all. When she goes back for revenge on the man that violated her, it is more to make things right for herself rather than to act as crusader to the universal victim.

The black and white perception of morality that so defines the character is there, but not to the universal degree that it was with Rapace, which was, in my own opinion, the greatest strength of her interpretation of the role. Mara’s strength is her ability to connect with the emotional life of the character, honing in on the few things she genuinely does care deeply about. With a role that can so easily descend into “badass female” cliché, Mara’s frailty combats her appearance into a very complicated, if not quite as remorseless sense of the character. This is not to say one is better than the other, but each actress gave what the other lacked. Combine the two performances into one, then we would have the true Lisbeth Salander of Larsson’s novels.

In what does become a rather convoluted plotline (all those Vangers!) Fincher characteristically keeps the story fast, but evenly paced, while still presenting a surprisingly comprehensive adaptation of the novel. What changes were made were excusable and necessary to maintaining the atmosphere of Fincher’s vision of the story, which seems to be to create the effect of retreating ice as one by one the events unfold.

Daniel Craig, as disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist, the man hired to investigate the 40-year-old crime that makes up the plot, successfully de-Bond’s himself into a curious but self-conscious makeshift detective. His chemistry with Mara is spot-on as a kind of platonic if not paternal figure, but they still remain completely believable as not only business, but romantic partners. Fincher has repeatedly stated in interviews that for him, the heart of the story lies in the relationship between Blomkvist and Salander as a new breed of good-cop bad-cop, and it is clear that this was his chief conceptual focus. I would certainly not be the first to say it was extremely successful. Mara and Craig, Mara in particular, turn an extremely plot-driven thriller into an intimate portrait of two lost souls, and indeed that seems to be exactly what Fincher, and quite probably Larsson himself, had in mind.

She's Just a Picture

Pictured: Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes



Aside from its difficulty to say in a conversation, the title of Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene in fact gives you all the information you really need in summing up this mysterious and unsettling piece. For even in its final frames, the film bravely refuses to answer its most burning question: who is this girl?

MMMM gives us Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) a young woman who has spent two years living in upstate New York as a member of a small, subsistence-oriented cult, centered around a man named Patrick (John Hawkes). It is here that she gains her three extraneous names. We first meet Martha as she escapes from them, finding refuge with her somewhat-estranged sister Lucy (Sara Paulson) and Lucy’s husband Ted (Hugh Dancy), an affluent early-30s couple who live in a Connecticut lake house, where they invite Martha to stay with them. It quickly becomes apparent that their lack of understanding of what Martha has been through is not only damaging to Martha’s recovery, but to their own sanity as sister, wife, and husband.

Mr. Durkin allows his audience to know what is happening now and what has happened immediately prior. No more, no less. This leads to some frustrating holes in understanding the character of Martha, but is clearly a crucial element in the way Mr. Durkin has chosen to tell his story, as her anonymity is part of what makes the film so chilling. There is an eeriness to the blunt immediacy of this kind of storytelling, and given its subject matter (the seduction of cult lifestyle and the rejection thereof) such an undefined heroine allows us to project ourselves onto her vulnerability and ask that terrifying question of “Could this happen to me?”

With so little to take from the script as far as character history and relationships, Elizabeth Olsen’s performance can be considered nothing short of extraordinary. The camera focuses so often on her young, wide-eyed face that by the end one can interpret that one flinch of an eyelid speaks to the world of confusion and frustrated hurt beneath its surface.

The back-and-forth between the two worlds of past and present gives the story not only its structural complexity, but moral as well. Though no audience member could ever approve of the cult’s practices (one of which requires all newly inducted women – girls, rather - to be drugged and forced into sex with their leader, Patrick), its “acceptance of all” values and the soft warmth and charm of John Hawkes as Patrick make us realize that maybe Martha’s choice to leave the group was not so simple as we would feel comfortable believing. After all, she meant something there, her life had purpose, even if it was only to be the favorite of the man who controlled her.

That said, we are never led to believe she regrets her decision to escape. No, what we are left with at the end is a young woman who cannot reconcile the life she led, the life she was promised, and the life that awaits her in a world much bigger than the one she has come to know living on a farm in Upstate New York. She has abandoned one vision of right and wrong for another, one that allows her to own her body and her choices vs. one where she is scolded for swimming nude. When Lucy finally begs of Martha, “What happened to you?” and Martha, overwhelmed, collapses her head in her hands and sobs, “I don’t know!” we have no doubt this is the truth.

A second Earth, a second chance

There is a moment in Another Earth in which one of the many voice-over commentators suggests that we are always striving to step outside of ourselves. To see ourselves objectively and converse as if our mind were a separate person entirely. Screenwriters Mike Cahill and Brit Marling (the director and the film’s star, respectively) take this thought to its most literal extreme: What if there was in fact an alternate earth that held an alternate you with perhaps even an alternate life?

Another Earth tells the story of Rhoda Williams, a young woman who, on the night it is discovered we may not be so alone, causes a fateful car accident that claims the lives of a pregnant mother and her young son, leaving the father in a coma. This exposition, as well as the initial introduction to the sci-fi conceit, sends the film off to a rocky start in terms of pacing, but finds its footing once we catch up to Rhoda four years later upon her release from prison.

The film seems to be frustrated by its need to explain the semantics of the concept surrounding “Earth 2” as well as the sequence of events that leads Rhoda to scoring a ticket aboard the maiden voyage, and it is in these moments where the greatest disconnect occurs. Details and plot devices are either carelessly tossed into dialogue, making it at times groaningly heavy-handed, not to mention the preposterous essay contest Rhoda enters to try and win a ticket, which she of course does.

The heart of the film lies in its human story, and Cahill is wise to pay most of his attention there. Rhoda, unable to live with what she has done, seeks out the sole survivor of the accident: John Burroughs (William Mapother), who has emerged from his coma to become a depressive recluse. She knocks on his door with the intention of apologizing, but when nerves get the best of her she fabricates a story about a cleaning service that leads her much farther into his life than she had expected, or perhaps wanted to go.

Once the film enters its second act, in which Rhoda and John become perhaps dangerously close, the two plotlines converge into the film’s true purpose: exploring the preoccupation with “what ifs” inherent in us all. Surely someone who has been through what Rhoda and John have would spend every moment of their days with such analysis. The idea of “Earth 2” allows them the rare chance to take these maddening questions seriously, on the promise that perhaps somewhere out there they really had made a different series of choices and none of this tragedy had ever occurred.

By the conclusion of the film, one is left with several unexpectedly existentialist questions, the biggest of all coming in the final image. With delicate (if at times uneven) performances from its leads, superb direction and editing from Cahill (the repeated image of Rhoda walking beside the looming Earth 2 on the horizon is breathtaking every time) Another Earth succeeds in its goal as a meditation on regret, forgiveness, and the infinite complexities of life which none of us can control. If nothing else, this is a unique film that deserves to be commended for its originality and spirit.



Pictured: Brit Marling and William Mapother

On the Early Marketing of David Fincher's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"

In the last few months, the early stages of marketing began for David Fincher’s adaptation of the Steig Larsson novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The announcement of this adaptation has been met with some polarized opinions as several believe it diminishes or ignores the quality of the already existing Swedish films starring Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist.

Before any of this marketing began, casting of the film came under great scrutiny as fans waited for the announcement of which lucky ingénue would snag the role of Lisbeth Salander, and perhaps even more importantly, would she be able to fill the combat boots of Noomi Rapace, whose performance inspired an (ultimately unfulfilled) campaign to get her considered for an Oscar.

That lucky actress wound up being Rooney Mara, most recently seen in her brief but notable appearance in Fincher’s The Social Network. The benefits of casting an unknown in this role are fairly obvious, it’s a part that cannot come with any expectations, because any actress called upon to play it will have to undergo such extreme transformation that any prior knowledge of her work or skill would inevitably interfere with our perception of this character. In other words, with a role as extreme and anti-Hollywood as Lisbeth Salander, it benefits the audience to have never seen her before. She is an entity all her own.

However, true to form, the marketing machine of Hollywood has taken the reigns of her image and put forth a series of posters and promotional photos that quite frankly would upset any fan of the novel or the original Swedish film. For example, the poster. We see Daniel Craig as a threatening Mikael Blomkvist, his arm wrapped protectively around a topless Mara, her face blank if not helpless. Now, I will be the first to admit that this poster does a fantastic job of shocking its audience, as the film will inevitably do, but the effect is achieved at the expense of one of the fundamental themes of not only Salander’s character, but the novel itself.

The original Swedish title of the novel is Man Som Hatar Kvinnor, which translates to “Men Who Hate Women.” Lisbeth Salander is described as a “woman who hated men who hated women.” And yet here she is, naked, guarded by the strapping Craig, totally exposed. We go further into the images and see her getting a tattoo on her rear, her back arched with a seductive cigarette hanging out of her mouth. Is it badass? Absolutely. Is it meant to be titillating? This is Hollywood we’re talking about.

The entire foundation of Salander’s character is rooted in her feelings toward men, particularly the negative feelings. This is a young woman who clearly does not care about how people view her, including if not especially in a sexual light. This is something the Swedish films captured superbly, and at no point was Rapace made to be any kind of sexual object, a crucial point at that considering how victimized she is throughout the novel.

I am still very eager to see the film and I have high hopes for Mara’s performance, if her physical transformation is any indication to the lengths to which she has gone to embody Lisbeth. Obviously the marketing campaign is not necessarily indicative of the film or the filmmaker’s goals, but it does once again bring to an interesting light the absurdity of Hollywood’s obsession with finding something to sexualize, even in a film whose message is about the evils of just such a philosophy.

Where the Lost Generation is Hiding

Pictured: Adrien Brody steals his scene as Salvador Dali


Paris in the 1920s. The subject of universal fantasy, whether you’re the intellectual who feels he has been born in the wrong era or the student ogling at the idea that these mythic figures of art and literature were in fact real people, let alone close chums. This fantasy is captured to dazzling perfection in Woody Allen’s latest Euro-city-centric film, Midnight in Paris.

Screenwriter Gil (Owen Wilson) is suffering a crisis of conscience on two levels: one being that he longs to revisit his dream of being a novelist, but fears his novel isn’t any good, the other being that he’s beginning to discover he might not truly be head over heals for his shrill fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams). The couple are visiting her parents in Paris, where Gil once dreamed of living the ex-pat lifestyle in the vein of his idols (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein, the whole gang). In an effort to get the creative juices flowing, so to speak, Gil becomes fond of late night strolls through the inexplicably enchanting city. The trick? Each night at the stroke of 12, a buggy arrives promptly, filled with partying flappers (or TS Eliot and Hemingway) to transport him back into the 1920s, where he fits right in rubbing shoulders with the literary and artistic giants of the era.

Perhaps the best decision Mr. Allen makes regarding his whimsical storyline is that he at no points attempts to explain it. Naturally Gil is in disbelief at first, and wonders offhandedly if he is suffering some kind of neurological disorder, or as Inez puts it when he attempts to confide in her his secret for a second time, “Your brain tumor is acting up.” However, it doesn’t take much time for him to just go with it. It takes the audience even less.

What Mr. Allen seems to understand the most, and is in my opinion the primary reason the film is as successful as it is (both structurally and at the box office) is that people quite simply enjoy picturing Paris as this kind of fairytale world of culture and ideas, as well as their perception of those who gave it this reputation.

For example, the Fitzgeralds play a major role as Gil’s initial guides into the nightlife of 1920s Paris. Now, we know plenty about the complicated relationship between Scott, Zelda, and Hemingway, and where the film could have taken the opportunity to delve below this surface, it rather affirms it, giving a light-hearted touch to our clichéd knowledge that Zelda was crazy and Hemingway hated her. Case and point, Gil and his companion Adriana (an exquisite-as-always Marion Cotillard) happen upon Zelda (Allison Pill) preparing to leap into the Seine and end her own life. To diffuse the situation, Gil offers a valium. Also worth note, the scene in which Gil attempts to explain time travel to a table of surrealists including Dali and Bunuel...naturally they think it makes perfect sense.

Mr. Allen’s choice to promote the caricatures of these figures rather than portray them as the destitute, suicidal alcoholics so many of them were (somehow Hemingway is one of the funniest characters in the film?) is the key to helping Gil (and the audience, for that matter) not only fulfill his fantasy, but realize that life can go on without it. Ultimately, life’s worth is not measured by time or nostalgia, but by places and above all, people.

Cannes 2011: Lars, Lars, Lars.

I've pretty much abandoned this blog entirely, but I feel particularly compelled at the moment to discuss the recent Cannes Film Festival and the events surrounding one of my favorite filmmakers, both for his work and his insanity as a human being: Mr. Lars Von Trier. A little background on dear Lars and the Cannes Film Festival. Two years ago, his film Antichrist received an Anti-Award from the Cannes Ecumenical Jury, declaring it the most misogynistic film ever made. Yet somehow, Charlotte Gainsbourg still ended up winning the Palme d'Or for Best Actress.

Since then, Von Trier has retreated quietly into the shadows to make his new film, Melancholia, which also just saw its premiere at Cannes. In true Von Trier fashion, he elected himself official shock-jock of the festival and in a garbled rant that, while completely tasteless, was misinterpreted as a blatant confession of antisemitism and sympathy for the National Socialist party. Von Trier prides himself on being a provocateur. Not to mention, he threw his heroine under the bus in the same press conference, announcing to the audience that Kirsten Dunst struggled with deep depression shortly before signing on for this film and he was able to manipulate that for his purposes. A class act, always.

That aside, Melancholia (which also stars Von Trier vets Aleksander Skarsgaard and Charlotte Gainsbourg) was very well-received and earned Dunst the Best Actress award. Von Trier apologized for his comments but, after two years of essentially deciding he was the most pig-headed filmmaker on earth, the Cannes Film Festival has finally put itself out of its own misery and banned him from ever returning. And while I do understand this decision to an extent, I also have to ask: Cannes, have you ever met Lars Von Trier? He is notorious for his complete inability to interact with other human beings in any kind of normal social convention. He has blatantly confessed to the world that he hates women. I mean, The man was cracking jokes about directing a porno starring Dunst and Gainsbourg for heaven's sake...while they were both sitting next to him. Well...at least now we can just watch his movies in peace without having to hear the nonsense that comes out of his mouth. Still...



I'm going to miss you, buddy.

"You could be brilliant, but you're a coward."

Pictured: Natalie Portman in "Black Swan"

What is the price of perfection? Can it be achieved through destruction, not just in spite of it? And ultimately, is it worth it? These are just a few of the questions audiences are left with at the end of Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” a cerebral hellscape of a young ballerina’s descent into madness. Although perhaps the most confounding question I and others were left with was quite simply, “What did I just watch?” I mean this not in a negative sense, but in the sense that it was so visceral yet alienating that I truly was unable to liken it to any film-going experience I have had in recent memory, if ever.

The story tells of Nina (Natalie Portman), a precocious ballerina devoted to the technique and skill of her craft, but not necessarily the art of it. However, she must confront her perfectionist attitude head-on when she is cast as the Swan Queen in her company’s upcoming production of Swan Lake, which will call upon her to play the naïve White Swan as well as the dark, seductive Black Swan. As the parallels between the ballet and the narrative race toward the climax, we see that perfection, for Nina, will cost no less than her very sanity, if not her soul. Add to this the threat of ambitious newcomer Lily (Mila Kunis) and the suffocating presence of her overbearing mother (Barbara Hershey), and it is no wonder Nina finds herself unraveling so quickly.

The performances are relentless and unforgiving. Portman throws herself from scene to scene, daring you to call her dainty. Indeed, she herself must play two roles: the aggressor and the victim in one woman, a challenge she meets with ferocity and poise. Kunis offers rich contrast as the effortlessly sensual Lily, embodying the care-free spirit Nina both resents and longs for more than anything.

However, the brilliance of the film lies in its first-person storytelling. You blur the lines of reality and fantasy as Nina does, your skin crawls as hers does. It is as internal a journey for the audience member as it is for its leading lady, which makes for an extremely uncomfortable viewing experience, but one I consider truly unique. Even the sequences that take place during the dancing itself are shot on a single-person handy-cam, placing you directly into the fray and frenzy of it, which seems to be a crucial element in articulating Aronofsky’s ultimate goal: to show ballet for the blood sport it can be, and the lengths to which some artists will go not to achieve perfection, but to discover what it truly is.