Bring Me the Head of Rodrigo Garcia

JUNE 8, 2010 --

Mother & Child
Director & Writer: Rodrigo Garcia

Nothing gets foreignfilmguy's juices flowing more than an aggressively bad movie -- not a campy bad movie, or lowest-common-denominator, make-a-quick-buck bad, or bloated Hollywood mega-production bad -- I'm talking earnest, "let's make a statement movie" bad! Readers, I give you "Mother & Child."

This ill-conceived attempt at filmmaking labors on at a painfully bloated 120-minutes, and arrives stillborn (that's it for my childbirth references, I promise). If I were to "pitch" a movie as a cross between "Juno" and "Crash" I'd be laughed out of every film studio in Hollywood. Except one, apparently, and that is how this misbegotten movie got made.

I am not exaggerating when I make that comparison, for the movie inartfully tries to mesh the story of a pregnant teen who somehow gets it in her head that she is empowered to chose which parents are worthy of the child she is about to give up for adoption, with a strained, let's cast every out -of-work 'ethnic' actor we can find and have their stories crash together conceit that only exists inside a screenwriter's head. At least in Crash, those characters existed in a specific and palpable place and time: a seething Los Angeles of today. The current movie is so poorly made that its characters exist in a cinematic void--a black hole of "we can't afford extras in this scene, so let's pretend everybody in the office went home." (The extras they do employ are noticeably bad actors, so perhaps they made a virtue out of necessity).

The office in question is a supposedly high-powered LA law firm run by the woefully miscast Samuel L. Jackson, who hires the equally miscast Naomi Watts as a driven, amoral single attorney who is adopted (otherwise she wouldn't fit neatly into the script's outline!) and is supposed to be such a hot-shot she can move from firm to firm every three years and still be hired on the spot -- not that the screenwriters would ever stoop to show her in action (that would screw up their carefully-crafted plotline!). They might as well be the only two employees in the firm, for all the mis-en-scene we get from their stilted office scenes together. [Another case in point: when Jackson invites his new hire to a firm welcoming party, he takes up valuable screentime to explain that he didn't invite the other partners because they are 'boring' (not that the director was too lazy or cheap to populate the scene with believable background players).]

The other main character is the teen-mother who long ago gave-up Watts' character for adoption, an event which has haunted her ever since. Now well-past middle age and caring for her dying mother, this embittered, unlikeable woman is the ONLY character with any hint of reality to her ... due solely to the fearless performance by Annette Bening, who alone is able to breathe life into these lifeless, thin as the paper they are under-written on characters. If I come across as too harsh on the screenwriter, let me offer two examples:

1) the great Samuel L. Jackson is asked to play a name partner in a law firm who is seduced -- no, mounted -- fully-clothed, by the lovely Aussie actress Naomi Watts, who orders him not to move during intercourse, all the while keeping his Tucker Carlson bow-tie fully tied. There are so many things wrong with that scene, I wouldn't know where to begin. (Nobody benefits from a scene like that, that's all I'll say).

2) the gratuitous introduction, mid-story, of a wise beyond her years teen character (Juno again!) to interact with the now-pregnant, now suddenly warm and outgoing Ms. Watts -- only the teenager is blind! The blind who can see -- get it? I would make a crack about 'Screenwriting 101' class here, but if I ever came across a script like this in any kind of class, I'd give it a big red 'F.' Why? Because I assure you nothing that comes out these characters' mouths have ever been spoken by a real human being. Ever. They aren't people at all, merely fictional constructs that exist only to further the script's tortured path to its big statement.

Yet the only "statement" Director Garcia seems to want to make is: "Being a mother can turn the most-coldblooded, shut-off woman into a sensitive, caring soul." Early on I sensed the entire course this movie would take; then it dawned on me how far I had to go to get there. Let me say it was the longest 2 hours of my life. I know, certain females might say, "If you were a woman, you'd appreciate the message more." To that I reply: "Well who the hell is Rodrigo Garcia? I'm just as much a mother as he ever will be!" If I were a woman, I'd be offended by such a simple-minded screenplay, blatantly designed to manipulate my maternal instincts. In fact, the only thing Garcia has that I don't is well-connected friends -- the acclaimed directors Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu are ALL listed in the credits.

Which leads me to comment on the film's Crash- and Babel-worthy casting:
- Jimmy Smits as a too decent to be true co-worker I have no complaints with (his platitude-spouting daughter is another story, however);
- the many African-American actors who populate the pregnant teen's world are all one-dimensional, yes, but not offensive;
- the Hispanic housekeeper/caretaker of the old woman who stays on to help the hostile daughter (Bening) against both her and her own daughter's self-interest, is purely a plot device;
- but when Elizabeth Peña pops-up in two throw-away scenes that could have been portrayed by any anonymous character actor, regardless of race, sex, creed or gender identification, this critic must say "No mas!" You really are plumbing the depths of pandering to an ethnic group when your casting Rolodex lands on Elizabeth Peña!

In fact, coming out of the theater, I tried to think of the last time I has such a miserable experience watching a film made by amateurs. Then it dawned on me: "The Lost City" (2005) directed by actor Andy Garcia. (New Rule: If your name is Garcia, you are forbidden from making a movie ... ever). That film has many things in common with this one: cardboard characters, simplistic plot, egregious miscasting (remember Bill Murray AND Dustin Hoffman?), an interminable running time, and , of course ...

ELIZABETH f*cking PEñA!!

Enter a Michael Haneke film at your own risk!

Even if you do not recognize the name, you most-likely encountered Austrian director Michael Haneke early last year with his much-debated 2006 French-language feature Cache ("Hidden"), which is still generating conversation at many a dinner table, thanks to its second life on DVD (and thanks to an increasing number of foreign film lovers who have permanently foregone a trip to the movie theater in favor of passively waiting to update their Netflix queue -- shame on you people!).

That film was thought-provoking and challenging in the way it implicated you, the audience -- you know, the guy who just plopped down $10 to be 'entertained' -- in this upper class couple's voyeuristic nightmare. Just who the culprit was in this scheme to destroy this man's unexamined life is endlessly debatable.


My first foray into this Austrian director's ouevre was 2001's excellent The Piano Teacher starring the wondrous Isabelle Huppert at her depraved and debased best. Nobody does debasement better than Isabelle! (The European title, "La Pianiste" may have lead to confusion with Roman Polanski's contemporaneous "The Pianist." Both films stand on their own as exceptional works of art.)

Haneke's latest -- Funny Games -- a shot-for-shot remake of his 1997 Austrian feature of the same name, and his first effort in English -- does not so much provoke conversation as it provokes violent reactions from film critics. Just listen to these blurbs: "soul-grinding;" "ponderous nihilism;" "a grueling ethics exam;" "a perverse kind of cinematic sadism;" and "a long spectacle of wanton and gratuitous brutality." (If that's not a Thumbs-Up, I don't know what is!!)

As a committed fan of the lovely Naomi Watts, I feel an added discomfort witnessing the physical and emotional violence she (her character) is subjected to in this movie (even though, as executive producer, she has no one to blame but herself!). As brave and unrelenting as is her performance, this is not an actor's movie: her performance is subsumed by the director's mission: which is to browbeat the audience into admitting its culpability in today's culture of violence.

Isn't she pretty?

The movie intentionally offers no succor to the audience for witnessing this unrelenting violence--no justice, no vengeance, no tidy resolution that moviegoers come to expect--even demand--from their filmed entertainment. Haneke's point is precisely that: this is not entertainment, it should not be entertainment, and their is no redeeming social value to its depiction on screen. At its best it harkens to A Clockwork Orange in its amoral, unrelenting depiction of violence. At its worst, you want to say, "Okay, I get the point: shame on us for expecting to be 'entertained' by this. Now, what else do you have to say?"

Funny Games works more as a polemic than it does a movie. In other words, you can sit back and think "I understand the point he is trying to make" but you still have to sit through a very uncomfortable 110 minutes of movie. Not that the violence is any more 'gratuitous' than any other depictions of violence we have come to expect from our movies. But one questions the effectiveness of his diatribe if, as in my screening, the people he is trying to reach have walked out at precisely the moment he begins to make it extremely uncomfortable for the audience. [For those of you in the know, my reference is to the 'cat in the bag' game.] So for the rest of the movie, Haneke is preaching to the converted: i.e., those adventurous movie-goers who want to be challenged, provoked, but not necessarily 'entertained.'

Two effects he uses to drive home his point: 1) he never actually shows the violence that is committed in this film; and 2) he deliberately denies the audience any cathartic release one expects from a piece of entertainment: no vindication, no justice, no release from the violence you have just witnessed. Much is made of Haneke's "breaking the fourth wall" (four times by my count). Even more shocking than that, but less-discussed, is his breaking the taboo of depicting violence against children. That is what turns most people against this movie.

Don't confuse Haneke's movie with those films that spend 90 minutes wading in the excesses of violence-as-entertainment, then tacks on a morally-superior "Shame on you for enjoying this" message at the end. [The most-recent example of this: 2007's The Kingdom.] Other critics have gone so so far as to mistakenly lump it into the category of "high-toned torture porn with an edge of self-righteousness." This is not even in the same universe as the pornography of movies like Hostel, David Edelstein (you idiot!)! Even if you detest his movie, Haneke is not a 'fraud' (A.O. Scott).

The last film I remember being this uncomfortable to sit through was the disturbing-to-the-point-of (almost)-unwatchable rape scene in French enfant terrible Gaspar Noe's Irreversible (2003). Is an unwatchable film worth watching? Absolutely. Irreversible made my "Top Five Foreign Films" list that year (with a strong caveat to my more sensitive readers).

[Sidebar: FFG still does not have the guts to sit through the ultimate expression of this genre -- the pinnacle of the unwatchable film: Italian master Pier Paolo Pasolini's notorious "Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom" (which, the last time I remember it being shown publicly, the manager of the Dobie Theater in Austin was threatened with child pornography charges! And this was in liberal AUSTIN!!).]

A film with the guts to force its audience to face the unfaceable -- that base instinct that draws us to hear every salacious detail of the latest rape-torture-murder victim on cable news -- the same instinct Hollywood has relied on to make hits of 'Death Wish' to 'The Brave One' to the various incarnations of Hannibal Lechter, not to mention every slasher film churned out by Hollywood since Roger Corman first picked up a camera.


Does that make "Funny Games an enjoyable experience? Not in the least. (Nor is it supposed to be). Does it make it a worthy counter-point to the dominant culture's (i.e., America's) obsession with violence-as-entertainment? Absolutely.

EASTERN PROMISES

I was lucky enough to be in one of those 'select theaters' recently to see the Toronto Film Festival award-winning feature by David Cronenberg, "Eastern Promises." This movie has it all: blood, death, dismemberment ... and Naomi Watts!

Now, you are able to experience it for yourself at theaters nationwide. Imagine a movie combining the unease and foreboding of A History of Violence with the dark societal underbelly of Dirty, Pretty Things -- the director and screenwriter, respectively, of two of my favorite recent movies have teamed up for this one -- and you have a sense of what awaits you: another great time at the movies!

The revelation in this movie is the lead perfomance by Viggo Mortensen: the dude can act! He plays a sympathetic Russian underworld underling, to Naomi Watts' sympathetic British nurse (reviews insist on calling her a 'midwife', which I don't understand at all). This will be my last mention of Ms. Watts, not because she isn't her usual captivating self, but her part doesn't utilize the full range of her immense talent (compared to her lead role in last year's shamefully overlooked The Painted Veil). She does get to ride around London on a cool motorcycle, though, wearing an even cooler designer black leather motorcycle jacket (the name -- Belstaff -- went straight from the closing credits to my Christmas list: another reason to stay and watch the end credits!).

The story might seem familiar: a Russian version of Goodfellas, if you will. But because the milieu is different, and the directing so assured, you don't mind spending another two hours of your life with mobsters. The piece-de-resistance of the movie is a four-minute fight scene in a public steam room. The bathhouse fight is already being hailed as a classic, and rightly so. It will take your breath away, not least because it involves two fully-clothed Chechen assassins with ornate, long knives attempting to kill a completely nude Viggo Mortensen. Completely!

While critics have equated the sequence to the car chase in French Connection (1971), a more apt comparison is the homoerotic nude wrestling match between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed in Ken Russell's Women in Love (1970). Let's face it: full frontal male nudity still has the power to shock a mainstream audience, even those with HBO subscriptions. Regardless of sexual orientation, a viewer's mind is in a whirl: you cannot believe the audacity of the filmmaking while you wonder: "What should I be looking at?" and "How long is the director going to put his actors (and us) through this?" It leaves you unsettled, off-balance, and exhausted in a way that makes all other choreographed fights in action movies, no matter how well-done, look and feel 'staged.' Of course they are staged -- It's a movie, after all -- but the director's goal is to make a viewer forget that, to take him out of his reality and into the film's reality. Proof enough of Cronenberg's success in bringing that reality to his audience are the critic's giddy comparisons to classics from the Seventies.

No one who is serious about making an annual Top Ten Movie list should miss "Eastern Promises."

STOP the Presses -- again!

Actress Naomi Watts has given birth to her first child, a boy named Alexander Pete Schreiber. Alexander was born on Wednesday in Los Angeles and weighed 8lb and 4oz. Watts was born in Kent but moved to Australia with her family at the age of 14, where she first met close friend Nicole Kidman at a casting call. CONGRATS TO THE NEW MOM !