MovieMonday: Gosnell

As films go, this one looks better than it should given its lean budget of $2.3 million.  The subtitle -- "The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer" -- is provocative, and the filmmakers pretty clearly are opposed to abortion, even though some of the law enforcement characters describe themselves as pro-choice.

As narrative goes, this hews to the facts.  Philadelphia police and the FBI get interested in Kermit Gosnell initially because he seems to write an excessive number of opioid prescriptions.  When they go to his clinic, they find unsanitary conditions, inadequately trained medical assistants,  several dozen jars of little tiny feet and plastic garbage bags full of aborted fetuses.

Pretty creepy.  Turns out that Gosnell's office and practice have not been visited by health inspectors for 17 years, at the explicit direction of city officials.  Further research reveals that the doctor has performed very late-term abortions, violating state law, and that at least one woman seeking an abortion died in the facility and her death was never investigated.  His assistants reveal that he has systematically killed live-born babies.

Gosnell, his medical assistants and most of his pregnant clients are African American.  (White patient sare given nicer rooms upstairs.) 

The doctor, as portrayed, is a puzzle.   He seems blithely unconcerned about his legal jeopardy and more devoted to his exotic pet turtles than to his unfortunate patients.  He says several times that he hasn't provided any services that he wouldn't provide for his own daughter.

The doctor is put on trial, convicted of several killings and sent to prison for life.


Resistance

In the 45 years since Roe v. Wade, there have been more than 50 million abortions in the United States.  Americans know that Kermit Gosnell is not the face of abortion, however much the makers of this movie might wish to convey that message.

What is remarkable is the yearslong squeamishness about acknowledging what happened in the Gosnell medical office in Philadelphia.  It suggests a near paranoia about the sturdiness of public support for abortion rights.

Think about it.  Generally, we might expect the story of a doctor's criminal maltreatment of pregnant black women to be grist for a movie of righteous anger.   Just not this story.

Yes, most people in the film industry are progressives and hold pro-choice views.  But they also could be assumed to favor gun control and this hasn't stopped them from releasing many, many shoot-em-up movies.  They don't seem to worry that these will inspire more gun sales or deaths in inner cities.  

In addition, the industry doesn't shy away from stories about actual criminals.  Two weeks ago, I discussed one about a true-life bank robber.  A few weeks before that there was a story about a true-life drug dealer.  Earlier this year there was one about true-life mafia don John Gotti.

And the Gosnell pushback was not limited to filmmakers.  As Daily Beast writer Matt Lewis pointed out in a September article, the Gosnell story and movie have been played down and blocked repeatedly by news organizations, fundraisers, distributers and advertisers.   

One clue is in the distribution of "Gosnell."  As best I can tell, it is showing on only one screen within 50 miles of Manhattan, and not at all in the blue cities of Los Angeles, Denver, Boston, Seattle and Chicago.  In short, theater owners have concluded that those populations want nothing to do with a story about Kermit Gosnell.  

Honestly, I think the fears are misplaced.  

MovieMonday: Beautiful Boy

"Relapse is part of recovery."

This truth about the path out of drug addiction is said early in this movie and again and again as a father and son share the heartbreak and pain of the son's personal struggle.  

The story is a true one and drawn from the first-person books by David Sheff (Steve Carell) and his son, Nic Sheff, (Timothée Chalamet.) 

When the film begins, Nic is a successful, happy high schooler with a doting father who understands that his son smokes marijuana.  What the dad is surprised to learn, however, is that Nic has sampled ecstasy, cocaine and methamphetamine, and that he likes all of them, particularly the last one. 

Around this time, David suggests that he and his son go surfing near their home, apparently in one of the coastal towns of Marin County, north of San Francisco.

They paddle out into the water.  David is submerged briefly, and when he resurfaces, he looks for his son.  After a moment, Nic appears, standing on his board, navigating beautifully across a long, long wave.  

The scene suggests the joy of seeing a child triumph and sets up the contrast of the rest of the story.

Nick tells his parents this:   "When I tried it (crystal meth and eventually heroin as well), I felt so much better than I ever had. So I just kept doing it."  

David mobilizes, getting treatment for his son and taking him to a Narcotics Anonymous group, where we hear the "relapse" theme for the first time.

And so things continue.  Nic the person becomes a hostage to his need for dopamine highs.  He goes away and comes back again and again.  David keeps trying to find his son and to talk to him -- but cannot keep his son close and cannot change him.  Nic's emotional states range from denial to anger to lying to regret to seeming despair.   

The tense father-son interactions, while played beautifully, become almost claustrophobic and have the likely unintended effect of minimizing the effect on the rest of the family, including Nic's young step-siblings, his stepmother (Maura Tierney) and his mother (Amy Ryan), who has moved to Los Angeles. 

After seeing the movie, I read a bit about the actual Nic.  In one book passage, as he was handcuffed and arrested in front of his home, his small stepbrother ran out and tried to make the police officer set Nic free.  I would have liked to have seen this scene in the movie, instead of just the worried moms' faces.  I know that such trauma radiates through families and even out to long-ago friends.  

Long story short, this a grim entertainment but one for our moment.  It may function, as David's and Nic's books do, as an offer of hope and fellowship to others in similar situations.  The truth is this:  It is easy to surrender yourself to addiction, but breaking free is extremely difficult and a lifelong struggle.

The final credits acknowledge that Nic has been clean for some years now.  Long may he thrive.

MovieMonday: The Old Man and the Gun

Here we have a film made by and for people who love Robert Redford.

Ostensibly it is about a 73-year-old Forrest  Tucker (Redford) who's a lifelong crook -- bank robber, mostly -- and a 16-time prison escapee.  The twist is that he's really nice.  A gentleman crook, if you will. 

If anybody can pull off a role like this, it's Redford, whose acting career stretches back to the 1960s.  He's still movie-star handsome at 82 with a craggy face and suspiciously good hair.  As Tucker, he looks dashing in jackets and slacks; you can take him anywhere. 

When Texas detective John Hunt (Casey Affleck) senses a trend in recent heists and documents it, he identifies Tucker and his two pals (Danny Glover and Tom Waits) as the likely suspects.  The trio are dubbed the Over the Hill Gang.

Hunt researches Tucker and finds a man who says, "He always had a gun with him, but if you told me that he had never fired it once in his his life, I'd believe it."

He finds Tucker's daughter, who never knew her dad but whose abandoned mother "loved him till the day she died."

Then there are the robberies.  During one, a bank teller starts to cry as she stuffs cash into Tucker's briefcase.

"Cheer up!" Tucker says.

When she tells him it's her first day on the job, he consoles her.   "There's a first time for everything.  Chin up.  You're doing a great job!"

Along the way, Tucker courts a ranch widow, Jewel (Sissy Spacek), and they talk about the meaning of life over coffee and pie at a diner and as they sit in wooden chairs on the front porch of her house.  

In short, everybody likes the guy.  Heck -- what's a million bucks of theft against a winning personality?

There actually was a Forrest Tucker, who stole his first bicycle at 13 and made his first prison break two years later after a conviction for car theft, establishing a pattern that continued through his life.  A New Yorker article by David Grann was the source material for the movie, which shifts some of the timeline but is essentially true to the story.

The acting here calls to mind some of the Redford's previous work, particularly his two good-natured buddy-outlaw films with Paul Newman in 1969 and 1973.  But those were made a long time ago. I wasn't surprised to find that I was the youngest person in the theater when I saw the movie.

The film itself is nicely done and works because Redford is a compelling enough actor to keep an audience interested as he charms everyone he meets, including the detective who pursues him.  Still, the action is thin and there is barely enough of it to fill the movie's economical 93-minute running time.   

If you're a Robert Redford fan, by all means go.

MovieMonday: A Star is Born

This latest Star-Is-Born movie (more about the others later) is, by my lights, the best of the bunch.

The story is well known by now:  An ambitious but obscure young woman is observed by a very successful older male star who drinks too much and whose career has peaked.  They marry, he promotes her rise as his own career declines and there is a bittersweet ending.

What distinguishes this version is character development.  The established star, Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) cares deeply about music and songwriting.  He has a backstory that explains this and gives some context to his alcohol abuse and his contentious relationship with his much older brother and manager, Bobby (Sam Elliott.)  

The action gets going one night when, after a concert, Jackson stops at a drag bar for a drink and hears waitress-by-day Ally (Lady Gaga) sing "La Vie en Rose."   They talk for while and recognize that they have a shared interest.  

"I think you might be a songwriter," he observes, and in fact she is.  He admires her work and pulls her onstage to perform at his next mega-concert.  Ally, reluctant at first, sings one of her compositions to an arrangement that Jackson has prepared especially for the moment.  From there her career and their relationship take off.  

Eventually Ally gets an agent, Rez (Rafi Gavron,) who promotes not just her music but Ally! -- a star with a new orange hairdo and flashy dance numbers.  This redirection from pure music, together with Jackson's personal problems, cause stress in their marriage.  And so it goes.

In addition to acting in this movie, Cooper co-wrote the script, and directed and produced the piece  The more-nuanced-than-usual plot plays to his strength -- he's been nominated for three acting Oscars -- and gives first-time actress Gaga support while her singing and her character's career trajectory balance her end of the story.   It works well.



Early Iterations



"What Price Hollywood," a 1932 film directed by George Cukor is the story of a waitress who catches the eye of a bibulous film director.  He helps her become a star as his own life spirals downward.

This film is the template for the four subsequent "Star Is Born" movies.   Some are better than others, and each in its way reflects the moment in which it was made.   

The 1937 version of "A Star Is Born" is about Esther Blodgett (Janet Gaynor,) a naive young woman who lives on a farm in North Dakota and wants to be a movie star.  Her granny dips into savings to send Esther to Hollywood, where, after much disappointment, she meets a handsome movie star, Norman Maine (Fredric March,) whose "work interferes with his drinking."

Maine courts Esther and promotes her to his studio, first getting her a small part and then a starring role.  The studio pros rename her Vicki Lester, her career takes off and the two marry.

The love of a good woman straightens Maine out -- they drink milk at dinner -- but he loses his studio contract and slips back into his old habit.  

Like "What Price Hollywood," the film depicts a glamorous industry that must have appealed to a country mired in the Depression.  Scenes are set in the film studio, at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, at the see-and-be-seen Ambassador Hotel swimming pool, as well as (then) Grauman's Chinese Theater and Sunset Boulevard's Walk of Fame.  

The 1954 version of "A Star Is Born," resembles the 1937 in almost every detail, but with music.   Esther Blodgett is played by actress/singer Judy Garland.  

As before, Norman Maine (James Mason) has a drinking problem, but Esther Blodget/VickiLester (Judy Garland) likes the guy.  "Drunk or not, he's nice," she observes.

They become a couple as he promotes her career and then marry.  Her rise and his decline proceed apace, punctuated with some great musical numbers typical of the era, most notably "The Man That Got Away."  

"A Star Is Born" was revived again in 1976 with a plot updated for the rock and roll era.  It has a notably dissolute star, John Norman Howard (Kris Kristofferson,) who meets Esther Hoffman (Barbra Streisand) in a coffee house where drinking is banned, darn it, after a big stadium concert.  

Inexplicably, the two take to each other, and he promotes her music, which is nothing like his own.  The movie pairs an intensely focused Streisand with an amiable Kristofferson stumbling, falling, drinking and snorting cocaine, which may reflect the actors' relative personalities and levels of ambition.  

The story parallels its predecessors, but the whole thing is a mess.  This may be why nobody wanted to make another star-is-born movie for the next 40 years.  

Notes

Viewed with 2018 eyes, these movies present some interesting male-female dynamics. 

         

All the films feature a man whose career declines as he helps his wife's career explode.  Not one of the movies speculates out loud that the man feels himself reduced as a man by his diminished status.  

        

In the last three films, the female roles -- obscure women who triumph -- are played by already-famous stars.  Before her 1954 performance, Judy Garland had established herself as a singer and acted in 30 films, including "The Wizard of Oz."  Barbra Streisand had appeared in nine films and recorded 20 popular albums.  Lady Gaga's pop music was so popular that she was the halftime star in the 2017 (LI) Super Bowl.

I don't know what if anything to make of all this, but we talk a lot about the patriarchy these days.  These stories and their players don't quite fit the narrative. 

----- 

        

"I just wanted to look at you again,"  is a line that Norman Maine says twice in the 1937 film -- first as his relationship with Esther is developing and then toward the end.  

It's a simple and moving way of bracketing the plot arc.  Not surprisingly, it was picked up and used in all three subsequent movies.