American Gangster (2007)

Ridley Scott makes fine films and is nothing short of a professional but he seems incapable of making a film that distinguishes itself as the work of a singular artist. For this reason I don’t think Ridley Scott will ever graduate from Filmmaker to the exalted rank of Auteur. He shows us lots of people, places, and things in American Gangster, and all are conceived without error, but this very same craftsmanship tells a story without a vision, without an aesthetic that could only have come from one person and one person alone. He doesn’t really have a signature style or possess the idiosyncrasies necessary to imprint an unusual obsession onto the screen. He does his job very well – and that’s just the thing: bringing this story to life appears to be just a job for him rather than a creative endeavor. Too often Scott’s eye feels like that of a tourist. I want to be submerged into the milieu, not have it showcased to me by a foreigner. Scott shows us junkies lying in decrepit torpor on their dirty mattresses, but it is viewed as if it were a presentation in a slideshow about inner city squalor made by someone who’s just passing through. There’s no weight or impact from many of the images because they are presented in an impersonal manner, mechanically. Again, it is done well, but why must it be done by someone who is not passionate about the material? And why must the material feel so dully familiar?

I consider Blade Runner and Alien to be masterpieces, but those were Scott’s 3rd and 2nd films, early works, visions, in a long career of unremarkable celluloid manufacturing. To say a film is unremarkable is not to say it is bad or even mediocre, but that it contains nothing really weird, or intimate, or uncommon, or extraordinary. Gladiator was stirring when I was 14 and the Hans Zimmer score at the end still moves me, but the rest of it is so drearily conventional, so timid in avoiding the Grand Guignol Savagery a film titled Gladiator deserves. Gladiator’s violence is little more brutal or disturbing than the PG-13 creature killings in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Then again, perhaps it was wise for Scott to play it safe; it's doubtful that David Cronenberg’s Gladiator would have won the Academy Award for Best Picture. But it would have been a hell of a lot more interesting.

American Gangster is as unadventurous as Gladiator. It trudges through the motions that other movies have already exercised, about a small-time hood rising in rank, wealth, and desperation and the dogged cop whose dedication to his work has cost him his wife and child. You get two derivations for the price of one; in fact the entire film is a hand-me-down. A refined and intermittently compelling duplicate of rawer, more dangerous movies, American Gangster seems more concerned with being sufficient than exceptional.

It is paced unevenly as well, only finding peaks and valleys in momentum rather than achieving the uphill propulsion of Goodfellas, a film it wants to evoke (as well as others), especially with its very opening scene, a moment of abrupt and jaw-dropping violence. That opening scene certainly grabbed my attention, and was promising, but the rest of the film, though good and well-acted, just isn’t that potent. Ridley Scott needs to stop making films until he finds one that isn’t just another job, but a communication of his personal demons, an exploration of his mind. Other than that, he’s just making a movie.


Grade: C+

Krzysztof Kieslowski's Krótki Film O Zabijaniu (A Short Film About Killing) (1988)

“To pass your own despair on to other people requires a strong constitution. I don’t think a despairing man can communicate his despair because he is offering his despair as an emotional spectacle. But to transform your despair into a work of art, that takes health, by God, and what health.”

- Antonin Liehm


God. All the most vital works of art are concerned with God or his absence. In his absence, the best of us feel an even more desperate urge to maintain our decency; for to accept the rotten benefits of chaos reduces us to mere matter. Some murderers and criminals are referred to as “cunning” but such a compliment could be rewarded to a conscienceless animal that sees an opportunity and takes it. The homeless who survive on the streets for months, years are as cunning as the craftiest Wall Street trader, more so, because of the frequency of the hustle.

A Short Film About Killing is about such a person, a 19-year-old transient wandering through Warsaw - aimlessly it appears at first, until we realize with dread that it is not. We know nothing about him other than what we see, and what we see looks like trouble.

His story is juxtaposed with that of a rather insinuatingly unlikable middle-aged taxi driver and another young man from a considerably more prosperous background who is, over the course of the film, going to pass his exam to become a lawyer and find himself staring into the eyes of his first client, the 19-year-old transient, whose name we learn, is Jacek. Like Michael Haneke’s Cache, we are introduced to someone who has possessions, a life, a future. He is sheltered from those who are not so fortunate by the very things the unfortunates wished they had in order to shelter themselves from the very people they are. But in both films, the ones who have are forced to confront the misery and squalor that is so alien to them, only to find, paradoxically, that they are the aliens in a cruel, arbitrary arena of limited means. The truth comes in the form of a person. In A Short Film About Killing, Jacek is the dull vessel of the young lawyer’s understanding.

Without going into detail, Jacek finds himself in need of a car. Jacek does not have the luxury of abstract thought and his scarcity of resources and options is conjured effectively with the four corners of the screen obscured so that there is almost a circle in the middle of a black frame encircling Jacek whenever he is onscreen, creating for the viewer the very sort of tunnel vision that no doubt plagues the mind of the desperate Jacek. There is no gimmickry here, and it is insulting to Kieslowski’s purposes to suggest it.

The existence of Jacek is a scrounge and the grime and mud of an already bleak Warsaw winter are shot for maximum visceral impact, but also with the kind of ironical distance that I am so fond of. The distance is not only an indication of the filmmaker’s sophisticated sensibilities but also an appropriate representation of a world witnessed aloof by an indifferent or absent God. There is a murder conducted midway through the film that is horrifying in its sloppiness. A precise killing is chilling in its concise execution, but an incompetent killing seems more plausible in its fumbling brutality. There is one of each in Kieslowski’s film, and it is left to the viewer as to which was more senseless.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season 6 - Episode 2, "The Anonymous Donor"

In “Meet the Blacks” I was irked at how pushy Ted Danson was with Larry, commanding him to come inside his house more than insisting, and now Danson is becoming overly friendly with Cheryl, calling her cell phone to chat, and playfully patting her shoulder in person. Larry theorizes on this behavior to Jeff: “That’s like, you know, sex for platonic friends. Because they can’t touch each other; it’s forbidden, so they…do the playful slap.”

And Cheryl eats it up too – she does the “flirtatious tap” right back to Ted when Larry and she arrive at an NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) function where Larry has had a wing credited to him for his donation. The other donated wing has been credited to ‘Anonymous’, which immediately sets Larry off because it makes his donation look less selfless and honorable. Cheryl informs him that Anonymous is actually Ted Danson.

Later when Larry is talking to Sen. Barbara Boxer at the function, Ted comes up behind him, grabs both his shoulders and says to the Senator, “Isn’t he great?” So not only is Ted Danson flirting with Cheryl, but he’s patronizing Larry. Also, he’s a Pharisee.

Meanwhile, Larry, Cheryl, and the Blacks have moved into a new house. An unexpected visitor shows up in the form of Leon (J.B. Smoove), an affable black guy who turns out to be Loretta’s brother. When he enters Larry’s house with his suitcases, Larry asks if he was in the Hurricane too. Loretta: “No he lives here in L.A.”

The next morning, Cheryl, looking troubled, asks to speak to Larry. She tells him she found a stain on Leon’s blanket that could be nothing other than evidence that Leon has been masturbating with impunity on their linen. When Larry confronts Leon about the stain in question, Leon denies it. Later, at the NRDC function, Jeff admits to Larry, while the two chat with Ted, that he is the culprit of the trespassing semen. On the drive home, Cheryl tells Larry she knows it was Jeff who masturbated on their blanket and that he is banned from their house. Larry correctly assumes Ted told her and is angered that he tattled to Cheryl while Cheryl is angered that Larry is angry about the tattling and not the masturbating. Ted Danson is effectively driving a wedge in Larry and Cheryl’s marriage on multiple fronts.

When Larry goes to Jeff’s house to let him know he’s banned, Susie comes in and wants to know why.

After a shitstorm of Susie Greene-style obscenities and rage, Susie bans Larry from her house.

Larry goes to the dry cleaners to drop off the soiled blanket and to pick up a Yankees jersey. When he can’t find his jersey, he is told by Gina Gershon’s character that when the wrong customer accidentally takes an item of clothing, there’s nothing to be done - somebody else now owns his Joe Pepitone N.Y. Yankees jersey. He is not consoled when she explains that it’s the Unwritten Law of Dry Cleaning.

When he is driving around with Leon later, he spots a man wearing his pilfered jersey, and after pointing the man out to Leon, Leon is quick to get out of the car and reclaim it. Later Larry spots another guy wearing a jersey that looks like his and after inspecting the first reclaimed jersey, realizes it’s not his, but that one is. Again, Leon is in the guy’s face, and before long, Larry and Leon are sitting in Larry’s house playing cards in matching Yankees jerseys.


Choice Lines

Cheryl: “I know who it is…It’s Ted, Ted is Anonymous...Isn’t that great? He donated the whole wing and didn’t want anybody to know.”
Larry: “He told you. So apparently he wanted somebody to know.”
Cheryl: “He told me…Okay?”
Larry: “Who else did he tell?! How do you know he just told you?!”
Cheryl: “I don’t know – the point is that he didn’t need all the fanfare…”
Larry: “Fanfare?! What fanfare?! I don’t like the fanfare! Are you saying I like fanfare?!”


Leon: “I wonder if cooking good is hereditary. You know what I mean?”
Auntie Ray: “Yeah, see, Loretta put her foot in it this time.”
Leon: “Loretta put her foot in it, turned it around, and kicked you in your own asshole!”


Larry: “I just spoke to my wife…and she found…a stain…on your blanket…”
Leon: “A stain on my blanket, huh? What, like, uh, juice, syrup, maybe syrup or something like that?”
Larry: “No”
Leon: “Gravies maybe…something in the gravy category?”
Larry: “Unh-uh. No.”
Leon: “What kind of stain was it?”
Larry: “……Ejaculate…”
Leon: “E-wha?”
Larry: “Ejaculate.”
Leon: “Ajackalit?”


Susie: “You what?! You jerked off in their house?!”
Jeff: “Yeah…”
Susie: “Oh, that is sick! You have wrought your semen outside our home, Jeff?!?!
Jeff: “Yeah.”
Susie: “You masturbate in this house and this house alone!! Maybe a hotel! Not at a friend’s house!!”
Larry: “I have to, I have to agree with her, really…”
Susie: “Alright, you know what Larry? I can handle this. He’s my husband. Shut the fuck up, okay?
Larry: “Okay.”
Susie: “It’s sick Jeff. You don’t jerk off in somebody else’s home!” (To Larry) “And Cheryl kicked him out?”
Larry: “Yeah, she’s banned him.”
Susie: “Who the fuck is she to tell my husband what to do?”


Stray Observations

- Cheryl Hines is hot.


- Larry tries the playful tap out on Susie. Does that mean he subconsciously wants to have sex with her? No. Can it?


- Leon adds much comic momentum and provides Larry with considerable to work with.


- I have long taken for granted how well Curb weaves the various story threads together in a single episode. I’d take issue with contrivance, only it’s a half hour comedy show.


- I can’t decide what is the bigger ethical quandary: Masturbating on a friend’s blankets or breaking the unspoken agreement of not squealing on a buddy’s transgression, especially when it has nothing to do with you. Both Larry and Cheryl have valid points. But seriously, Jeff: come on.


* Larry’s Biggest Act of Assholery: Allowing Leon to intimidate the Yankees Jersey off two different guys comes close, but Larry isn’t doing something he knows is wrong – he’s just retrieving his stolen property. Plus he really can’t be blamed for not being able to stop the loose cannon that is Leon. So, no assholery as far as I’m concerned, just standard Larry pettiness: “So you know not one person, not one thanked me for the donation.” If anything, Ted Danson is the biggest asshole of the episode, the smug chucklehead.

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

With The Ice Storm and Grand Canyon, I found myself rediscovering a deep appreciation for Kevin Kline, and so it was only natural that I get around to watching a film which I should’ve seen long ago, the supposedly iconic comedy for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award.

While I did laugh uproariously at times during A Fish Called Wanda, I really didn’t see anything especially distinctive about the film as a whole outside of Kline’s character, Otto, and his perpetual need to call British people out en masse for being stuffy, prim, and reserved. You know – all those clichés of Brits. Despite there being some truth to the clichés, there are plenty of British people, like Ray Winstone’s character from Nil By Mouth, who would’ve ripped a hole open in Otto’s throat for his obnoxious confrontations. But this is a screwball comedy written by John Cleese, and it is written that Otto bullies and harasses various uptight Brits for comedy’s sake and comedy is not forsaken in the creation of Kline’s colorful sociopath. Otto is hysterically funny, and can be whipped into knee-jerk rage by being called “stupid” as suddenly as Marty McFly can by being called “chicken.” Otto reads Frederic Nietzsche and fancies himself an intellectual. But just in case his wits cannot be summoned, he has a gun with his trusty silencer attached.

We have no doubt from his complete lack of impulse control that he is dangerous, but he is also a windbag, which makes for many volatile exchanges between him and whoever is unlucky enough to cross his path (1. because he is dangerous and 2. because he is oppressively obnoxious). He also has a streak of sadism, as exhibited when he forces Michael Palin’s character, Ken, to watch as he eats the bound Ken’s precious and beloved fish one by one out of Ken’s fish tank.

I’ve spent a whole paragraph describing the Kline character and nothing else, because really, that’s all that’s worth discussing. The rest of the film is formulaic diamond-heist triple/double cross, sexy lady (Jamie Lee Curtis) seduces stuffy British guy (John Cleese) for ulterior motives screwball comedy caper. The Kline character adds a much needed dose of sardonic humor which in turn overflows into the other characters a bit, such as when Ken, a sweet-natured animal lover (who stutters! Comedy!) is taunted by Otto that he will be unable to kill a witness, an old woman, who is testifying against the apprehended member of the quadruple diamond burglar team (the other three are Palin, Curtis, and Kline).

Ken, knowing Otto is right, but hating Otto for bullying him, is adamant in his refusal to lose the bet – he will kill this old lady. The old lady is portrayed as a broad comic caricature (she has three small dogs). The three small dogs are portrayed comically too. When Ken the animal lover goes to pet one, the sweet little thing almost takes his finger off. The old lady is presented as unsympathetically as her dogs. First Ken enlists a rabid Doberman (who bloodied Ken while he was muzzling the beast) to attack the old woman. He struggles with the dog in the back of a truck, comically urging it to “Kill! Kill!” and then opens the truck’s back doors and releases the Doberman, who proceeds to dart right past the old woman and snatches up one of her small dogs in its teeth. This is followed by a funeral service for the small dog. Then Ken attempts to run her over with a car, but can’t do it, and swerves before hitting her, while still managing to squash one of the two remaining small dogs. There is another funeral service. Finally he takes a sniper rifle to an upper floor of the building across the street from where the old woman lives. When she steps outside with her one remaining dog, he cannot bring himself to shoot her. But beside the entrance to her building is a construction scaffolding from which hangs a heavy block of cement. He fires a bullet into the rope connecting the block to the scaffolding but instead of landing on the old woman, it lands on her final pooch. Upon noticing resistance on the leash and finding it leading to underneath a heavy cement block, the old woman suffers a heart attack and drops dead.

Reviews of A Fish Called Wanda from back in 1988 will lead one to believe that it was some sort of revolution in comedy (Roger Ebert compares one scene to the Marx Brothers). What I think is that critics were so distracted by Kline’s buoyant antics that they failed to see the unremarkable film surrounding him; the other characters are merely sounding boards. In 2008, A Fish Called Wanda still holds up as an entertaining diversion, but remove Kevin Kline, and it’s all rather more insipid than the jubilation would indicate.

Grade: C+

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season 6 - Episode 1, "Meet the Blacks"

Like Season 6, Part 2 of The Sopranos, Season 6 of Curb Your Enthusiasm opens with our beloved hero asleep in his bed.

Larry and Cheryl are awoken in the middle of the night by a smoke alarm in the kitchen. Larry gets up on a stepladder and unscrews the alarm, but can’t deactivate it. After a hilarious close-up of Larry’s face twisted in aggravation, he fixes the problem with a baseball bat. Naturally, the absence of the fire alarm will prove to be a liability later in the episode.

Larry, Jeff, and Richard Lewis congregate in the changing rooms of Larry and Jeff’s country club while the television broadcasts news of “Hurricane Edna.” Richard acts pissy while Larry and Jeff devise an alibi to explain to Marty Funkhouser why they were not at his party the previous evening. Larry decides he’ll tell Marty he confused tonight with yesterday. Jeff says he'll use his young daughter as an explanation, which Richard finds reprehensible. Larry: “It’s a perfect excuse. No one can argue with that…It’s a great reason to have kids.”

As Larry and Cheryl drive to a party at Ted Danson’s house, Cheryl proselytizes about how the “Edna” victims need help desperately and how they should adopt one of the displaced families. Larry says he’ll need a couple of months to “…mentally prepare for that.” Larry tells her they need to make a quick stop by Marty’s so Larry can lie to him about the party. Larry and Cheryl show up on Marty’s doorstep displaying faux bewilderment at the lack of party guests. Marty insists that they stay. Cut to Larry slouched in Marty’s living room.

Jeff and Susie show up with Larry’s stolen excuse. Jeff, Susie, Cheryl, Marty, Marty's wife, and Larry eat cake, delicious, delicious chocolate cake whose bakery Cheryl asks the address of from Marty.

The three couples play the Newlywed Game and when the question “If you could have sex with one of your friends’ wives or girlfriends, who would it be?” comes up, Larry makes the mistake of saying Cha Cha, Richard Lewis’s new girlfriend, which pisses off Cheryl enough to exile him from their bedroom later that night. Standing outside the bedroom door holding blankets, he says he’ll do anything. She opens the door, “Anything?”
Larry: “Well, you know…short of adopting this Hurricane family…”

Cut to Larry and Cheryl driving to the airport to pick up the displaced family they’ve adopted. But Larry tells her they have to make a quick stop by Ted Danson’s house, whose party they missed last night because they got stuck at Marty’s. Faux bewilderment. Ted insists they stay.

Cut to Larry slouched in Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen’s living room. Richard Lewis and Cha Cha (Tia Carrere) show up using Larry’s excuse.

Cheryl and Larry pick up the family, the Blacks, who are black and consist of Loretta (Vivica A. Fox), her Aunt, and her two kids, Keysha and Daryl . Loretta smokes cigarettes, which Larry does not want her to do in his house. Cheryl decides to throw a party to welcome the Blacks.

Cheryl and Larry stop by the 26th Street Bakery, the one Marty recommended to them, and I couldn’t help but be distracted by the giant erect penis exhibit in the background of the store. Then the guy behind the counter places a giant brown penis on the counter, confusing Larry, which is a reasonable reaction from someone who has asked for cake and finds himself staring at a penis. He is told that the giant brown penis is the cake and that he and Cheryl are standing in an erotic bakery, an establishment I had never been introduced to, though whose existence does not surprise me.
Larry (to Cheryl): Funkhouser! He knowingly served us penis!! What is wrong with that guy!! What an idiot!!” (and then to the baker) “Cake is uh…delicious by the way…

At the party, Jeff brings over a cake from the 26th Street Bakery, and before Larry can stop it, one of Loretta’s children has been traumatized.

Cut to Larry sitting alone at his kitchen table eating the penis cake. Loretta, cigarette in hand, comes down to talk to him.

He asks her if Keysha is okay and then asks if she could perhaps not smoke in the house. She then rudely extinguishes her cigarette in his plate of penis cake. The plate ends up in the wastebasket at the foot of the wall formerly manned by a smoke alarm, and the episode comes full circle as Loretta’s not quite snuffed out cigarette begins a fire in the kitchen.


Choice lines

Cheryl: “I can’t stop thinking about the Hurricane”
Larry: “Oh my nose is really itching me....”


Cheryl: “Imagine for one second if you lost every single thing you had in your life.”
Larry: “What do I have? I dunno…What do I have? I like this sport jacket…”


(Jeff and Susie compete with Larry and Cheryl in offering excuses to Marty Funkhouser about why they can’t stay any longer)
Larry: “My dad has a virus…
Susie: “Your dad always has a virus.”
Larry: “Fuck you – he doesn’t always have a virus.”


(Ted Danson offers Richard Lewis a drink.)
Richard: “I’m a recovering alcoholic."


Cheryl: “Where have you been?”
Larry: “Ate some penis.”


Stray Observations

- I am flummoxed as to how a nebbish little goblin like Richard Lewis could bag Tia Carrere.


- Why Jeff is cooler than Richard Lewis:


Larry: “You stole my ‘wrong night’ bit!”
Jeff: “I didn’t steal it - I gave you full credit! It’s a brilliant idea! I told Susie it was your idea.”


Larry: “What’d you steal my thing for?!”
Richard: “What thing?!”
Larry: “Showing up the wrong night thing!”
Richard: “What - you have a fucking copyright on this stupid little thing?!”


- In the wrong hands, the erotic bakery gags could have been terrible. Maybe it’s just me and my unreasonable faith in Larry David, but he made penis cake pretty goddamn hilarious.


- Couldn’t they have gotten somebody better than Vivica A. Fox to play Loretta Black?


* Larry’s Biggest Act of Assholery: He was pretty well behaved in this episode, and wasn’t really an asshole. Lots of faux pas (“Your last name is Black? That’d be like if my last name was ‘Jew.’”) but nothing that bad. So far.

Happy Birthday Samantha Morton

Steven Spielberg's Minority Report (2002) has a scene where Tom Cruise's character has brought Agatha (Samantha Morton) with him to see the proprieter of a futuristic virtual reality entertainment place and when he finds the guy, the guy takes a look at Agatha, stares in disbelief, crosses himself, and kneels in her presence. He recognizes Agatha as one of the 3 PreCogs (precognitives) who serve as the bedrock of the Department of Pre-Crime, who use the PreCogs' visions of future murders to prevent them from happening. The film goes to great lengths to repeat that Agatha is the most powerful of the three, the most gifted, so it is understandable if people of the future would look upon her as a sacred deity. You look at Samantha Morton, head shaved, still not acclimated to being yanked out of her Matrix-like pod, cowering against Cruise's character, those big soulful eyes darting every which way, and it's like she is absorbing all things at once like some sort of superconsciousness. There's something mystical about Samantha Morton that just puts her on a higher level than most other actresses of her generation. She has a numinous alien presence that lends well to playing naïfs, such as Hattie in Sweet and Lowdown (1999) but was also employed for her spooky portrayal of Myra Hindley in HBO's Longford (2006).


It wasn't until I watched Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar (2002) that it really hit me how singular a personality she has, a weird aura. I've heard people dismiss Morvern Callar as morbid navel-gazing, but if a character is compelling, I'm willing to watch them.

Morvern Callar, set in Scotland, begins with as grim an opening scene as I've ever witnessed. Morvern (Samantha Morton) is lying on the hardwood floor of her flat. A few feet away is her boyfriend's dead body. He has killed himself. On the computer is a note he left while she was asleep: "It just seemed like the right thing to do."

If the dead body had been the boyfriend of any other female character, this scene would have been nothing special, but because the body is the boyfriend of Morvern, Lynne Ramsay gets to explore the alien reaction of one of the strangest characters in recent memory. Any other girl would have done one of two things: 1)panicked and begun sobbing hysterically or 2) numbly stared at the aftermath in disbelief. Both would dash from the apartment sooner or later to get away from the dead body. What at first appears to be the second reaction reveals itself to be not numbness or disbelief, but a sort of eerie curiosity - she strokes the fresh corpse's back, lies next to it, the red glow of the Christmas tree lights flashing in the dark room. She then methodically opens her presents - her boyfriend has gotten her a cool jacket, and a custom mix tape of songs. She listens to the music on her Walkman while smoking a cigarette. She reads the rest of the suicide note on the computer, where he leaves instructions for her to send a manuscript of his novel to a Book Publisher whose mailing address he has provided. She deletes his name as the author and replaces it with her own. She has done all of this with the dead body lying on the floor. I imagine some people would find this young woman to be a sick individual they'd have no desire to spend time with. This might be sick behavior, but I was fascinated by her reaction, or lack thereof. Morvern may very well be insane, but it is a very quiet insane - she has a preternaturally calm demeanor, and it is especially puzzling in the face of such a cruel tragedy. Other than her boyfriend, Morvern has no one but her good friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott), who works as a supermarket clerk with her. But even Lanna doesn't know what kind of oddness Morvern is capable of - the girl is in her own timezone.

Samantha Morton is the only person who could've played this role. I spent a lot of time wondering what her character Hattie (who is mute) was thinking in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown (1999). What goes on in this strange creature's head? There is something inscrutable about her lovely face; it's a poker face. That's why she was perfect to play Myra Hindley in Longford where the whole driving force of the movie was whether or not she was telling the truth about not being complicit in the Moors Murders with her serial killer boyfriend, Ian Brady. She can seem so innocent, but the next instant, one can see the glassy-eyed malevolence of a shark. She is awe-inspiring, and holds a mystery that more revered actresses like Cate Blanchett cannot match. And besides her tremendous work in Longford, Jesus' Son (1999), and Sweet and Lowdown, it is of my opinion that the crowning achievement of her 18 year acting career is her confounding performance in Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar. Check it out.

Sweet and Lowdown (1999)

It takes a while to warm up to Emmet Ray (Sean Penn) in Woody Allen’s 30th feature film, the fictional story of a fictional jazz guitarist which presents itself as a biopic and then further presents itself as if it were a PBS special on the man, complete with talking head interviews who document the life of Emmet Ray, his musical legacy, his presence in the musical canon in the context of history. Watching it, I was amused by how Woody Allen incorporated segues to specialists in the field discussing the life of the real Emmet Ray and then shot the scenes from his life as a film. When I learned that there is no Emmet Ray, there never was an Emmet Ray, that the entire narrative is fabricated, I was even more tickled by the slyness of it all.

Sean Penn plays Emmet Ray, who, we are told in faux documentary interviews, was the greatest jazz guitarist in the world, trivia that Emmet never hesitates to mention to anyone who will listen, but is always followed by Ray’s grudging confession that, well, actually, he’s the second greatest, after Django Reinhardt, a recurring obstacle that never failed to generate humor. But Ray can be comforted in the fact that he agrees with this ordering, and admits that whenever he hears Reinhardt’s music, it makes him cry. We don’t know much about Reinhardt besides that, but we do know plenty about Emmet, and as I said, he spends much of the film being a displeasing rascal. That he is almost always rather genial offsets his conceited self-regard, but does not forgive his thoughtless treatment of Hattie (Samantha Morton), the mute woman whom he lives with for a year, which would make her his girlfriend, though he’d never admit to this formal label.

He is vocal about his philosophy of life: he is an artist, and an artist cannot be tied down by a woman, though he enjoys their company. We see him with a couple girlfriends before he meets Hattie, and both have more invested in the relationship than Ray does. He resists their attempts to deepen the intimacy and bluntly refuses to express any genuine affection for them. He reserves his deep affection for three things: himself, his music, and his beloved guitar.

When he is introduced to Hattie, he behaves like a jackass and speaks to her as if she is a child. After sleeping with Hattie with alarming swiftness, Ray begins spending time with her, and is actually startled when he realizes that they have been together for a year when she gives him a present and a card on his birthday. Samantha Morton is just delightful as the mute Hattie. She has the adorableness of a puppy and even Emmet comes close to doting on her, but like Zampano in Federico Fellini’s La Strada, Emmet remains stupidly unaware of the treasure in his midst. One night he leaves $500 next to the sleeping Hattie and takes off. He meets Blanche (the very funny Uma Thurman) and continues with his music career. One night he awakes suddenly from an intense dream and is told by Blanche that he was calling out Hattie’s name. Interestingly he decides to marry Blanche right after this incident as if by doing so he can put an end to the nagging feeling that has been bothering him. It is not until later that Emmet will understand what precisely the source of that nagging feeling is. Eventually his absent-minded solipsism breaks him and the movie concludes in the same manner as Fellini’s La Strada, with a weeping man regretting the opportunities for happiness that he foolishly discarded. Sean Penn’s final scene is almost as affecting as Anthony Quinn’s final scene on the beach. Woody Allen’s influence on Sean Penn’s performance results in one of the finest performances in Penn’s uneven acting career. Sean Penn is reined in and sculpted by Allen to play the weaselly Emmet Ray and with this actor playing this part with the period haircut and the little mustache and the porkpie hat, Allen has captured lightning in a bottle.

Woody Allen capably achieves the milieu of 1930’s pool halls, motel rooms, nightclubs, and the boardwalk. Special mention must also go to his masterful shot of Emmet Ray chatting with two bums on the steps of a building next to some train rails. This is a world I wanted to spend time in, and the low-key instrumental jazz that pervades is soothing. Having just watched Paul Thomas Anderson impose grandiosity on his own film in Magnolia, I found Woody Allen’s clever little biopic to be a relief - He has no interest in making a remarkable, exceptional film. So when he does, there is a comforting absence of pretension. Woody Allen has gifted us with a wonder: a modest portrait of a show-off.


Grade: A-