MovieMonday: The Favourite

"The Favourite" is perhaps the first comedy from Yorgos Lanthimos, a filmmaker more often described as an auteur than a director.  His previous outings have included realistic-looking stories with strange twists -- a young man who must find a mate or be turned into an animal ("The Lobster",) a doctor whose blackmailer threatens magically to paralyze and kill the doctor's family ("The Killing of a Sacred Deer".) 

This film is set in a little-studied period of English history during the reign of Queen Anne (the very good Olivia Colman), a querulous, gout-ridden, overweight dowager married to a Danish prince (who is not named Hamlet and who is absent from the story in any event.)  The queen's 17 pregnancies have yielded no children who lived past the age of two; the movie exaggerates her pathos by having her dote on 17 cute bunny rabbits who share her bedchamber.

Anyway, England is at war with France, as usual, and Anne is bossed around by Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz,) whose husband is leading the war effort.  Historical reports suggest that Anne deferred almost entirely to Sarah, but not that Sarah necessarily satisfied Anne's sexual desires or that she enjoyed striding around and shooting birds in a fancy white jacket and black breeches.

Into the mix comes Abigail (Emma Watson,) an impoverished cousin of Sarah's who takes a job as a palace maid.  Abigail maneuvers herself into Anne's favor with skin-calming herbs and also sex, threatening Sarah's influence with the queen.  

A battle royal ensues.  The question is whether Abigail is ruthless enough to beat Sarah at Sarah's own game.  This rivalry to influence Queen Anne did in fact happen, but its purpose in the movie seems mostly to accommodate amped-up ribaldry.  

Meanwhile, the English parliament is a bunch of scheming but feckless men in historically inaccurate but extremely styled periwigs and, occasionally, dots of rouge on their cheeks;  the Tories and Whigs are divided on further pursuit of the war.  

In the film fashion of the current moment, the female leads are smarter and bolder than the foppish second-banana male characters.  The formerly gentler sex now is playing catch-up -- understandable, given history.

Some people find "The Favourite" laugh-out-loud funny, and some scenes made me smile.  In the end, however, it's difficult to enjoy the idea that the elites of two centuries ago were just as smutty and crude as the ones we have today.

MovieMonday: Roma

Here is a beautifully filmed movie from Alfonso Cuarón, who won Academy Awards for directing and editing the gripping 2013 film Gravity.

It is a deeply personal effort -- set in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, in a house very like the one where Cuarón was raised, in a family very similar to his own and in the early 1970s when he was a child.  Its main character is Cleo, the housekeeper/nanny who is much like the woman who helped raise Cuarón and to whom the film is dedicated.

It is a beautiful observation of all these moments and people, and many critics think it is the best movie of the year.

I'm not so sure.

The point of Roma is the depiction of a native woman who has come from the country to work for a family.  She is hardworking, loving and kind.  Without a movie like this, we would never have a chance to meet such a woman and appreciate the life she lives -- part employee, part family member.

There are long, leisurely scenes of Cleo at work, Cleo helping the children and Cleo occasionally bearing the brunt of tension between the children's parents, whose marriage is coming apart. 

 Cleo also is passive, which is not surprising given her station in life. So the movie gives her a boyfriend who abandons her when she is pregnant, reports of political unrest and a picture-window view of 1971's Corpus Christie riot in which paramilitary enforcers killed 100 protesting students, plus a very painful childbirth experience.

Cuarón spent more than 10 years thinking about and planning this movie.  He casted it almost entirely with non-professional actors who acquit themselves well, including Yalitza Aparicio, a preschool teacher from Oaxaca whose portrayal of Cleo feels true.  The director also wrote the screenplay and kept it entirely to himself, revealing each day's shooting scenes to the actors just before the cameras rolled.

The result is moving but not the kind of cinema that large audiences are going to find satisfying.  It feels like family life, which, when you think about it, includes events in sequence but not large plot arcs.  Things just happen.  Time goes by.

The film was purchased initially by Netflix, which planned only to stream it for its 140 million subscribers.  Later, after critics lauded Roma following showings at film festivals, the movie was released in a few theaters, perhaps to make it eligible for prizes in the coming award season.  It is now available on home screens and still at some theaters.

Viewers who admire good cinematography should see the movie on a large screen in a theater because, as I keep saying, it is beautiful.


Film Today

The most popular films at the moment are Aquaman, which introduces yet another comic book hero; a sequel to Disney's 1964 Mary Poppins; an eighth, really nice Transformers movie based on the popular children's toys from 1980s and 1990s; and an all-new Spider Man movie, the seventh 

It's tempting to conclude that the point of movies like these is to sell affiliated toys and T-shirts.  

MovieMonday: The Grinch -- and Grinches Past

Here we have the latest iteration of a holiday tale that had its debut in a children's picture book 61 years ago.  Everyone knows the story by now -- a cranky green-furred animal tries and fails to quash the Christmas spirit in a friendly village called Whoville.

This is the first 3-D computer-animated Grinch story, and it comes from the Illumination group that produced the "Despicable Me" series, among other films, all of which were very popular.

The imagery is creative and lovingly detailed, and the characters -- including the Grinch, in his way -- are winsome.  The narrative remains faithful to the original story's large and small elements. 

Small children will enjoy the story, as will teenagers and adults who remember earlier Grinch encounters from their own childhoods.

The themes, secular then and now, are two:  It is good to be nice, and Christmas is about more than decorations and presents.

Perhaps what is most remarkable is the enduring popularity of a very simple story.


The Grinch Evolution

1957:   Book

"How the Grinch Stole Christmas!", a 64-page picture book, was released in time for the holiday season.  Over subsequent years, it became a seasonal standard, selling many millions of copies. The cave-dwelling Grinch and his antics were the story, augmented with bit parts for his dog, Max, and a little girl, Cindy Lou, against the background of the always happy population of Whoville.


1964:  Cartoon

The estimable Chuck Jones (creator of Wile E. Coyote and other Looney Tunes stars) organized a hand-drawn Grinch television cartoon with the help of author Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel.) They added a couple songs -- notably "You're a Bad One, Mr. Grinch" -- and enlisted Boris Karloff, the famed horror movie actor, to narrate.  The cartoon ran about 22 minutes, 25 minutes with credits, and was perfect for a 30-minute children's show.


1994: The Musical

A Minneapolis children's theater group produced a musical play that later became a holiday staple at a San Diego playhouse, then moved to Broadway for seasonal runs from 2006 to 2008 and fanned out in road companies around the country.  The stars were all costumed humans, and the story was stretched, presumably with humorous pranks and songs, into a 90-minute entertainment appropriate for family audiences.


2000:  The First Movie

Director Ron Howard released a more detailed film that starred Jim Carrey as Jim Carrey the Grinch.  The story was padded substantially, giving the Grinch an origin story and paying more attention to Max and Cindy Lou.  Other characters were added, including Cindy Lou's postmaster father and her ga-ga-for-gifts mother, a pompous Whoville  mayor,  and, yes, a sort-of Grinch love interest.  Actors playing the citizens of Whoville were fitted out with unusual upturned noses and pouchy upper lips (see Cindy Lou's father at left), and new songs were added to the cartoon's music.  The whole business clocked in at just under two hours.





2018: The Second Movie

The new film is not quite as long as the 2000 one, but still is much longer than the original story.  It also is attuned to the current moment.  Cindy Lou has an overworked single mom. Whoville has a female mayor. The relationship between the Grinch and his dog is more fully developed and resembles that of  Wallace and Gromit from the popular claymation series of the 1990s.  Before outfitting Max with the book's pseudo-reindeer horn, the Grinch recruits a real reindeer, a sweet plus-sized fellow named Fred, to lead his sleigh.  In addition to a Grinch-Whoville reconciliation, the film ends with a Christmas feast.  Old Grinch songs are sung, plus traditional carols and new hip-hop numbers.


Conclusion

The original Grinch story was an abbreviated version of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" aimed at the K-3 crowd.  The basic story elements never have changed.

The appeal never seems to subside.  The original storybook is on teachers' and librarians' lists of the best 100 children's books of all time.  Regional theater troupes still perform the musical version in December.  Families still gather around the television to watch the 1964 cartoon and the 2000 movie on television and streaming channels, respectively.  The current film either will get a second theatrical release in 2019 or start streaming on premium channels as well.

For a country that increasingly seems to be populated by non-Christians and adamant atheists, that's pretty remarkable.

MovieMonday: Free Solo

More than 30 people have fallen to their deaths trying to climb El Capitan, a 3,200-foot granite peak in Yosemite National Park.  

In June 2017, two climbers, working together and with ropes to protect them, fell to their deaths.

The next month, Alex Honnold became the first person to climb El Cap "free solo," alone and without ropes.  The climb took him less than four hours and was the culmination of an eight-year ambition.  His preparation and that climb are the subjects of this documentary.

Honnold is an unusual guy who began climbing things -- trees, mountains, buildings, whatever -- when he was 11 years old.  He is now the most prominent climber in the world.  He's been featured on multiple magazine covers because, well, pictures of people tempting death while hanging on sheer mountain faces are pretty darn dramatic. 

The film, from National Geographic, which also ran a Honnold cover, was organized and shot by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, who also made "Meru," a well-received 2015 doc about a Himalayan climb.

"Free Solo" has had a limited theatrical release and soon will become available for streaming online.    Still, even as it shows in fewer theaters, ticket sales per screen have remained relatively high.  

The movie itself has thrilling photography shot from the ground, by camera-bearing climbers perched on nearby ledges and by aerial drones.  These images, which show best on large theater screens, seem to appeal mostly to men who thrill to stories of physical challenges.  (Yes, there are also some intrepid women climbers.)

Then Honnold is put in context in the observations of other climbers, who describe an unusual sport and small community that I had not known existed, and also the falls that have cost the lives of dozens of them.  

As for Honnold, we hear about a distant but not abusive family upbringing and how he started to learn how to hug people when, he says, he was "about 23."  Almost 10 years later, he adds, "Now I'm a pretty good hugger."  He's an unusual character, but by no means an unpleasant one.

We see him with his head tucked into an MRI machine for a study that reveals his amygdala is virtually dormant, which is not particularly surprising.  The amygdala is the area of the brain that, in the rest of us, reacts automatically to frightening or threatening stimuli.  

Then we learn about Honnold's home, a well-appointed van, and his demanding exercise routine and his girlfriend, a nice person but one who can be a distraction when he is climbing.  (In not entirely credible style, the two are filmed discussing their relationship and their plans and feelings, which looks like acting and seems a bit out of place in a documentary. But this is nit-picking.) 

As one climbing friend observes, "Free solo needs mental armor.  Having a close romantic relationship removes that armor, and you can't have both at the same time."

Anyway.  Alex may be fearless, but he is disciplined.  He practices every part of the El Cap climb multiple times with ropes, and he fills notebooks with observations that he memorizes about every step and handhold of his planned ascent. His girlfriend drives off as the day of the climb grows near.

Then comes the climb itself, which is condensed into less than 20 minutes, not as much as I'd have liked to see.

By the movie's end, it's tempting to wonder what next challenge Honnold will set for himself  and what it will cost him.  It reminds the viewer of the climbing friend's comment earlier on.

"If you're pushing the edge, eventually you find the edge."