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Showing posts with label Russell Crowe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russell Crowe. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
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Noah is completely bonkers in the best possible way. The Biblical epic has fallen out of fashion in mainstream cinema and, buoyed by a love of The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur, Aronofsky is determined to bring it back with style. He does with an incredibly earnest, largely humourless, crazily imaginative and idiosyncratic ecological fable by way of some of the most symbolic and densely written portions of The Bible.
Everyone knows the basics of Noah. God, like someone wrestling with a malfunctioning iPhone, has thrown his hands up frustration at the immoral shit infesting his creation and decided to 'Reset to Factory Settings'. He's basically sticking a paperclip in the back of the Earth and trying a hard reset - starting again from scratch. Well nearly from scratch anyway. He instructs Noah to build a big boat and load up two of every animal on it, the idea being that they'll survive the flood while everyone else dies horribly and when the waters recede he can have another stab at creation. I guess everyone, even God, gets at least one do-over.
What you might not remember from Sunday School are the gigantic murderous rock monsters, the post-apocalyptic industrial civilisations, the guns, steel and welding masks, the generous lashings of incest and Noah going totally nutso and setting his murderous sights on newborn babies. But hey, The Bible is a crazy book full of chatty snakes, donkeys and bushes so the odd rock giant and baby-stabbing really shouldn't be so surprising. Aronofsky clearly finds a perverse freedom to make a crazy film by sticking as close to the text as possible - it's hard to think of a better defence than to refer directly to the text themselves when making a Bible film.
The end product is a defiantly individualistic film with few obvious antecedents. There's elements of Lord of the Rings in the grubbily plausible fantasy world, the wrecked industrial landscape recalls the Fallout series of games, the gangs of grubby raiders are lifted from Mad Max, and the way the giants move and fight are peculiarly reminiscent of Michael Bay's Transformers. Being tossed into this world is a dislocating experience that Aronofsky exploits to the fullest, placing himself in the position of introducing us to an exciting 'new' fictional landscape within one of the most familiar stories of our civilisation.
The weight of myth lies heavy in Noah, blanketing every single decision and action in the film with incredible significance. This intangible element is largely why the film works, arising from a combination of committed performances, excellent production design and weighty cinematography. To various degrees of success the cast throw themselves headlong into the material, and though the younger members of the cast like Emma Watson and Logan Lerman occasionally come a bit unstuck they at least put in the right amount of effort. But Noah is ultimately a film about grizzled old badasses, the performances from Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins and Russell Crowe redefining roaring, confident machismo.
Winstone, playing Tubal-Cain, King of men and direct descendant of Cain, hurls himself into the role with barnstorming gusto. Who wouldn't when you get to stand in front of an army and give a rousing speech vowing vengeance against God? Later on, when he's charging at fallen angels, spear in hand and roaring a throaty cry of rage it's difficult not to have a sneaking admiration for the guy, even though he's obviously the villain. Hopkins as the 969 year old Methuseleh is a little more restrained, interpreting the role as a playful Yoda type, shot through with the steel of countless past battles.
But it's Crowe that utterly dominates Noah. He's so burly, so bearded and so macho that him being able to build a boat to contain all the world's animals begins to seem oddly plausible. Impressively Crowe takes Noah from idealised, kindly all-father right through to homicidal maniac without ever losing the character's thread. He excels in subtly externalising the internal agony of the character, typified by a great shot of him sitting alone in his ark listening to the terrified screams of the hundreds outside being dashed to death on rocks by a vengeful God. Later, when he reaches the coldly logical decision that all humans must die, he portrays a man out to stab some babies to death and still basically keeps the audience's sympathy. There's not a huge amount of actors that can pull that off, even fewer with his astonishing level of physical commitment.
What does all this inspiration, artistry and effort add up to then? In Aronofsky's hands, Noah becomes an ecological parable: a debate between misanthropy and philanthropy. The Antediluvian industrial world of Noah is polluted and violent, threatened by rising sea levels that are the direct result of man's nature. Sound familiar? The meat of the movie is a battle between the idea that humanity is irrevocably destructive; even with the best intentions we destroy our environment and the world would be better off without us in it, and the opposing idea that humans are intrinsically worthwhile as a way for the universe to understand itself and add context to the chaos of nature.
At stake is the beauty of the natural world, the 'innocent' animals the true victims of our unquenchable hunger. Given the broad strokes of the fable it's not exactly surprising that Noah comes out in favour of animal rights, deliberating placing the worth of animals above even human life. Refreshingly it even comes right out and says that eating meat is morally wrong - a position that I happen to agree with - though one I've never ever seen a mainstream movie espouse so plainly.
The film shares this spiritual/humanist intelligence with Aronofsky's earlier The Fountain. I met Aronofsky after I saw Noah and asked him about this connection. He informed me that the two films comprise a loose duo - both dealing with the consequences of Eden - one with the Tree of Knowledge and one with the Tree of Life. In addition the seed pod that's so significant in The Fountain reappears in Noah as the trigger to begin construction of the Ark. After their respective apocalypses both films conclude with the seeds of a brighter future being sown in the soil. It'd be all too easy for both films to conclude that life is pointless and that humanity is a cancer on this planet, yet even after all the misery and pain Aronofsky proves an optimist, his films finding worth and purpose in the teeming, smelly, vicious mess of mankind.
Noah is far from perfect. Often it's frankly a bit of a mess, but a beautiful, intelligent mess packed with astounding visual imagery (that Creation sequence - woah!) and yet another awe-inspiring score by Clint Mansell and the Kronos Quartet. It's nice to know that there's people willing to splash out tens of millions of dollars to realise Aronofsky's idiosyncratic vision. The result is a fascinating piece of cinema that defiantly stands apart from the crowd and resists easy classification.
★★★★
Noah is on general release from April 4th
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
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'Les Misérables' certainly doesn't skimp on the miserable. The movie is adapted from the enormously popular musical of the same name by Alan Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, which is itself adapted from the 1862 novel by Victor Hugo. It's a story of the dispossessed and the destitute desperately and tragically fighting against an uncaring, cruel society. Our protagonists find themselves kicked into the dirt over and over again by cruel and unbending justice, exploitation of women, child slavery and eventually the sheer might of the military. Some of them survive their battles, some don't. All of them end up physically and mentally crushed. 'Miserable' is the exact right word for it.
For the most part this is an achingly serious film about universal injustices. But, obviously, 'Les Misérables' is a musical, and not just a musical where the characters occasionally break into song, everything is sung. The plot is a sequence of (for the most part) solo numbers, sung directly into the camera. The film isn't embarrassed in the slightest about this, and this gung-ho attitude makes it easy to admire. The audience's familiarity with the musical makes this weirdness easy to overlook, but seeing characters bare their souls in such an intimately shot way is like few other things I've seen in the cinema. A point of comparison that springs to mind is Dreyer's 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' (1928), a silent film that is entirely carried on the facial performance of Maria Falconetti.
Musicals are generally filmed by recording the soundtrack and playing it back on set for the actors to lip-sync along to. 'Les Misérables' dispenses with that, having the actors singing live on set while they perform, allowing them to more easily incorporate facets of the song into their performance and vice versa. It works fantastically well. Musicals require multiple layers of artifice to function, relying on an audience to willingly suspend their disbelief. But, by stripping away some of the barriers between actors and the audience, the characters of 'Les Misérables' become more personal and much more emotionally accessible than in an average musical.
Much has been made of the decision to cast actors rather than professional singers in these parts, and much snobbery has been aimed in the direction of the actor's singing. I really couldn't give a toss about the technical perfection of a character's vocals. If the underlying acting performance is solid and moving, that's what's important. If I was reviewing a performance of the musical in concert my priorities might be different, but this is a very different beast. On stage an actor must play to the entire theatre, working in the knowledge that their voice is the leading factor; people sitting in the back rows simply won't be able to see any physical subtlety. But a large part of the power of this adaptation is entirely conveyed through physical (especially facial) subtlety.
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| Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean. |
A major highlight is Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean. Jackman is clearly enthused about getting to work out his pipes on camera, and throws himself both physically and vocally into the role. His physical transformation over the course of the film, from bearded, filthy prisoner, through to dapper man about town, back to filthy again and so on is impeccably conveyed through Jackman's body language and eyes, which grow sadder and wearier the as the film goes on. This is a character that makes several huge sacrifices for others, yet Jackman's humble performance prevents him from becoming unrelatably pious.
The opponent of this intrinsically good and likeable man is Inspector Javert, played by Russell Crowe. I say opponent rather than villain because Javert is not a evil man, rather someone whose inflexible moral code naturally sets him in opposition to our hero. Crowe has been given some stick for not being able to sing as well as the rest of the cast, but I thought he was great. Javert is introverted, sexually and emotionally repressed, a man who is literally tightly buttoned up for most of the film. For a character whose beliefs are under this much stress to be marching around singing beautifully doesnt' add up. Crowe sings his songs in a growl, injecting a testosteroney fierceness that feels more appropriate than soaring operatic extroversion. What Crowe excels at is to showing us Javert's inner turmoil when reality repeatedly fails to conform to his beliefs, and if you've nailed that, then you've nailed the performance.
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| Russell Crowe as Inspector Javert |
Every actor in this film must push themselves into a heightened emotional state, and there's no-one that comes out of it looking silly. A few of the performances are less affecting than others, but this is primarily a problem with the material than the film. Amanda Seyfried as Cosette is perfectly fine, but it's a thankless role with little of the depth of the other characters. Eddie Redmayne's Marius falls into the same trap, being slightly less boring than Cosette, but in no way someone we're eager to find out more about.
Despite all these fine performances, it's Anne Hathaway's Fantine that effortlessly stands head and shoulder above everything else in this film. Fantine is a relatively minor part, but it's this astonishing performance that neatly encapsulates everything the film is trying to say. She's desperately trying to provide for her daughter, but is victimised by society and slips into a Hogarthian nightmare. She loses her job, her hair, her teeth and finally her hope in an heartwrenching sequence that's like a musical version of 'Requiem for a Dream'.
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| Anne Hathway as Fantine |
As the last gasps of her hope slip away, she sings 'I Dreamed a Dream' in one unbroken shot closeup. I've always seen 'I Dreamed a Dream' as an impossibly sappy, self-indulgent song, soporific talent show shite. But, in one unbroken take with the camera inches away from Hathaway's face she gasps torturously as she sings, weeping with a crushed vulnerability. The effect is the illusion that she's making up the song as she goes along, realising bitterly that everything she's singing is the truth. This window straight into a character's soul is what Hooper must have had in mind when planning this, and it's an instantly unforgettable moment in cinema. It's so amazingly good that it makes the rest of the film suffer in comparison.
While the tactic of placing a camera right in Hathaway's face pays off in spades, the film keeps using the same trick over and over again. Each time the effect is diminished, until by about the two hour mark you're desperate for something more dynamically visual. This is one of the most successful musicals of all time, and you sense that Hooper wants to give us something we can't get on stage, namely the facial performances of the actors. But practically every song is a character baring their miserable, tortured soul to the camera in closeup and there's so much emotion to deal with that you find yourself becoming a bit numb. There are some more cinematically adventurous moments, notably during 'One More Day' when we neatly cross-cut between each character singing a segment of the song. But with the film having proved that it can stay visually interesting if it wants to, it slips back into a neverending series of closeups.
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| Helena Bonham-Carter and Sacha Baron-Cohen as the Thernardiers and Isabelle Alan as young Cosette |
This all adds up to an obstinately uncinematic experience. Surely there's enough going on in 'Les Misérables' to fill the screen with fascinating visuals? One consequence of sticking closely to the stage version is that when a sequence begins, we're going to stay with that set for as long as is humanly possible. These sets are curiously stagey and claustrophobic rather than cinematic. The worst offender is the street set for the barricade sequence; we spend much of the second half of the film in one street corner which quickly becomes very dull to look at. Another factor that adds to this sense of claustrophobia is that the film is shot in 1.85:1. It's an understandable enough decision, it'd be difficult to compose as many tight closeups in a wider aspect ratio. But the epic nature of the film, in particular the opening and revolution sequences are crying out for more room to breathe cinematically.
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| Aaron Tviet as Enjolras |
But even leaving this aside this is a film with big narrative problems, most of which stem from the musical its based on. The first half of the film is impeccably constructed, with a tight focus on Jean Valjean and Javert, whose relationship is a near perfect example of how unsympathetic authority can conspire to crush a good man. It's a personal story, and this, tied with Fantine's downfall is compelling and utterly moving.
By the time we get to the Paris and the revolution I was ready to see a new society being built, but it's at this moment that the film introduces to us to a load of new characters that simply aren't as interesting or complex as Valjean and Javert. The importance of social change is lost at the very moment we need to care about it most, and even worse, is sidelined for a romantic relationship between two cyphers. Cosette and Marius' intense love is what fuels this half of the play rather than revolution, a love that exists purely because the story says it does. Maybe I'm being a bit cynical, but I want characters that fall in love for reasons a little more complex than that they've glanced at each other across a crowded street.
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| Amanda Seyfried as Cosette and Eddie Redmayne as Marius |
This means the story winds up in an extremely unsatisfying place. We're masterfully shown through Fantine's fall that life is utterly terrible for the poor. Then we're told why it's so terrible, that this fantastically unequal, starving society is the creation of the aristocracy, thus justifying the revolution that we implicitly want to see succeed. The revolution heroically fails and the young, charismatic revolutionaries become martyrs. After this, the 'happy ending' is a son of the aristocracy rejoining the bourgeoisie and dragging Cosette into his social class.
I'm sorry, but that's just not good enough. It's the anti-'Casablanca'! When that film tells us that 'the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world' it's a fantastic line because it's absolutely right! Just saving Cosette from poverty isn't good enough. What about the starving masses? What about the thousands of victimised Fantines out there? We end with nothing changed in the slightest other than Cosette living a slightly more comfortable existence.
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| Anne Hathaway has that Oscar in the bag. |
It's not that 'Les Misérables' isn't worth seeing, it's ambitious in all the best ways and works as a film in its own right rather than simply as an appendage of the musical. The numerous problems with the cinematography and more cruciallythe narrative don't cancel out the amazing performances. It's butt numbingly long, but it's just about able to justify its length. And, above all that, it is literally worth sitting through the entire thing just to see Anne Hathaway sing 'I Dreamed a Dream', a moment that reminds you how effective the spell that cinema weaves can be.
***/*****
***/*****
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