I saw two movies this week that run the gamut from art to pointless waste of film. Reviewing chronologically, I'll start with the latter.
Damsels in Distress
Dir: Whit Stillman
I always had pleasant memories of Whit Stillman's 1990s films (while I've always thought his debut film "Metropolitan" (1990) far superior to his 1998 follow-up "The Last Days of Disco," in between he created a gem with 1994's "Barcelona"). He has inexplicably waited 14 years to direct again, and his talents as a writer-director have plummeted precipitously, judging from the vehicle he chose to make his comeback: "Damsels in Distress" is dreadful on so many levels, it will be hard to list them all.
All attempts at wit, humor and pseudo-intelligence that Stillman crams into his script fall flat, like lead. I suspect he dusted off a screenplay he wrote BEFORE his breakthrough hit, and refused to change a word of it! (A sadder alternative is that he has been living in a bubble for the past 20 years, and has no idea how young people think, act or talk nowadays). Of course his fans will say this is all a deliberate exaggeration, you know for comedic effect! The best comeback to that argument? It's not in the least bit funny. Released on the heels of HBO's new series, the anti-'Sex & the City' for Generation Y, "Girls", this movie feels even more dated and out-of-touch.
Nothing in this film has the slightest connection to reality (anyone's reality). The male students who inhabit this college come straight out of 'Animal House'--but with less wit and intelligence (you read that right). The female students speak like only a middle-aged white patrician would imagine a liberal arts major would speak -- circa 1950, perhaps (but I doubt even then).
I prefer to remember the good times!
The lead damsel, poor Greta Gerwig ("Greenberg"), is fast-earning a reputation for doing nice work in utterly unwatchable movies (let's hope her next one, "Lola Versus," fares better). The other young actors, all attractive and intelligent, make the most of the very little they have to work with.
The movie has two minor things to recommend it: 1) one character is a practicing Cathar, that 13th century Christian sect in the south of France that was persecuted out of existence by the Inquisition (it's about time they had a revival!); and 2) the incongruous song-and-dance number at the very end of this disaster is refreshing, given the overall inanity of the rest of the film. But even that moment recalls a similar scene in a much better movie: "500 Days of Summer," which has 10 times the wit, humor and intelligence that Damsels so obviously strives to achieve, AND it has a better song-and-dance sequence!
The Deep Blue Sea
Dir: Terence Davies
Speaking of incorporating song (and music) into a film, no one does it with more artistry than the British director Terence Davies who, like Stillman, has waited over a decade between feature films, but in this case, his absence only makes us miss and appreciate his undiminished talents. Davies has always had a very narrow focus. His films ("Distant Voices, Still Lives" (1988); "The Long Day Closes" (1992)) are quiet reminiscences of a time long past: Britain during and just after the War. To call them nostalgic would be damning with faint praise: his films are reverent meditations on the specific past of their creator. For his latest, he chooses material that nicely fits into his ouevre: Terrence Rattigan's 1950 stage play "The Deep Blue Sea."
The opening title tips you off that you are watching a play: "Around 1950" (film is too concrete a medium to fudge on time like that). Then for the next five uninterrupted minutes the movie wordlessly takes you under its spell, as the strains of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto sweeps you back in time to homes heated by gas (only after you inserted a shilling into the meter), without phones or television, as the camera lingers over furniture, pictures, and finally, Rachel Weisz's lovely bare legs. The story takes off from there, but Davies' gift is in keeping his audience in his world for the next two hours, so much so that you can hear the crack of the fire, every squeak in the floorboards, and can almost smell the old-fashioned gas furnace and the mixture of smoke and beer in the pubs.
The story, costumes and staging evoke David Lean's "Brief Encounter" -- a classic of the time period depicted here (1945), and a personal favorite of mine. The film's finest moments involve the music of the era (remarkably, some of the most emotional scenes have no dialogue): patrons in a pub sing along to "You Belong to Me"; Londoners wait out an air raid in the Underground during the Blitz while singing the haunting Irish traditional "Molly Malone." This is pitch-perfect filmmaking.
Ms. Weisz truly inhabits the depressive main character, Hester Collyer. You are willing to follow her downward spiral from bored wife to neglected lover because you can't take your eyes off of her. Her male counterparts are both fine -- Tom Hiddleston as Freddie and (especially) Simon Russell Beale as her spurned husband.
True, Davies cannot entirely overcome the play's inherent staginess: it does gets talky in the second half, and it is rather depressing throughout. But before it sinks too deep, Barber's majestic music brings the story to an emotional and uplifting close. Even during the closing credits, I was treated to Eddie Fisher's "Anytime" (I'm sure my mother knew that song) while I learned that the Barber recording used in the film was the same recording I've been listening to all these years: Hilary Hahn's excellent version with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, which the lovely Ms. Hahn autographed for me at the Kennedy Center on March 27, 2003. No wonder I have an emotional attachment to that piece!
