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Showing posts with label Steven Spielberg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steven Spielberg. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
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Putting Tom Hanks in front of the American flag and having him wax lyrical about the rights granted by the American Constitution can't help but recall Mr Smith Goes to Washington. Spielberg's Bridge of Spies lands firmly in the same liberal humanist territory; a noble Atticus Finch-a-like lawyer suffering the slings and arrows of public opinion as he defends an indefensible defendant to prove that, gosh darn it, everyone deserves due process. Even Commie spies.
Said Commie Spy is Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), a taciturn painter who lives in Brooklyn and just happens to be passing military secrets to the Soviets. In the opening scenes we observe him going about his day as he's tracked by CIA agents. They arrest him and soon there's to be a hugely publicised trial. His legal counsel is the initially reluctant James Donovan (Tom Hanks), who knows full well what defending this man will entail for his reputation.
A film of two halves, the courtroom drama eventually develops into Berlin-set Cold War intrigue. While piloting a U2 spy plane over Soviet territory, pilot Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) is shot down and captured. With a head full of espionage secrets, the US are determined to get him back before he cracks under interrogation, and decide to arrange a transfer of prisoners: Abel for Powers. Wary of an international incident, the US sends someone with no government ties - and so the personable Donovan is off to negotiate with the KGB.
A Steven Spielberg film starring Tom Hanks is about as safe a bet as you can get in modern cinema. Donovan is the precise kind of quiet, dignified, intelligent and subtly playful character that Tom Hanks does so well, mixing in layers of rebelliousness, quick thinking and legal creativity that sit atop an impenetrable bedrock of principles.
Spielberg similarly relishes material that, when you strip it back to its bones, is largely middle-aged men sitting in dowdy, smoke-filled rooms. There's clear shades of Lincoln in the way light hangs in the air as it pierces windows, or as low-wattage bulbs pick out the crags in these men's faces. Further directorial mileage comes in Spielberg's knack for locations; the hum and vigour of Brooklyn nicely contrasting with the monochrome iciness of Berlin - making it literally a 'cold war'.
But, for all Spielberg and Hanks' expertise, the film occasionally feels like pre-baked Oscar bait - peppered with sledgehammer 'inspirational' moments where the score rises and Hanks solemnly intones the guiding principles of the founding fathers. Too much of that gloop would be a recipe for mediocrity - yet Bridge of Spies is saved by two factors.
The first is a Coen Brothers authored script that subtly spins a thread of absurdity through the narrative. Moments like a gang of incredibly polite East German muggers, a puffed up GDR lawyer answering the wrong telephone or the appearance of a bizarre East German family feel deliciously playful. Bridge of Spies isn't straightforwardly Coenesque, but it's got enough of the same DNA inside to add a sprinkling of pizzazz.
The other major thing it's got going for it is Mark Rylance's astonishing performance. Somehow he manages to make doing literally nothing fascinating. It's surreal how magnetic Rylance can be just standing silently, observing events through impossibly perceptive eyes. I've seen him on stage a number of times, yet cinema has never exploited his talents to the fullest until now. With Abel he seems a shoe-in for awards nominations - knotting together the twin poles of cool impassivity and intense charisma.
While by no means a top flight Spielberg (or Hanks for that matter) movie, the 140 minute runtime breezily passes in a swirl of genuinely interesting historical minutia and rock-solid film-craft. There's even a couple of flashes of genuine panache - particularly a powerfully edited sequence showing schoolchildren absorbing the horrors of nuclear war via Duck and Cover.
While not a milestone in anyone's careers, Bridge of Spies achieves its goals with laudably little fuss - worthy of admiration for unpretentious craftsmanship, humanistic intentions and just enough peculiarity to tease Coen fans. Worth a watch.
★★★
Bridge of Spies is released November 27th
Friday, August 23, 2013
Friday, August 23, 2013
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The phenomenon known as infrasound has some very strange effects on human beings. These are sounds lower in frequency than 20 Hz, below the normal limit of human hearing. Infrasound has the effect of inducing anxiety, uneasiness, uncontrollable feelings of fear and awe. In nature they're found in the roar of the tiger and other large predators - the theory being that that human beings are hard-wired to experience a surge of adrenaline at hearing them - triggering a fight or flight response to escape a hungry predator. When the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the undisputed star of Jurassic Park, roared full blast through the BFI IMAX sound system I felt that instinctive, primal fear - an awe that cut past all intellectual analysis right to the animal core of my brain.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Friday, January 18, 2013
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‘Lincoln’ oozes importance. Every frame of the film is polished to a mirror sheen, aware of its cinematic quality and its unbending morality. Considering the film is largely a series of debates between red-faced, bald men in smoky rooms, arguing about complex political minutia using surprisingly technical language it’s absolutely fascinating. ‘Lincoln’ functions in complete confidence that its subject matter is interesting enough to keep an audience’s attention.
‘Lincoln’ isn’t a biopic of Abraham Lincoln, it’s an examination of a crucial period in world politics in which he’s a crucial factor. The goal is get the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution approved, an amendment that outlaws slavery. The politicking here is unabashedly complex, factions within the Democratic and Republican parties compete against each other for political ground and the American Civil War loom larges in the background. Occupying this tempestuous political landscape are familiar names like William H. Seward, Thaddeus Stevens, Alexander H. Stephens and Ulysses S. Grant.
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| Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln. |
I’m only broadly familiar with the history presented here; I know what happened, but I don’t know much about the why or how. American children are taught these events as a matter of course, but I suspect international audiences are going to have to pay slightly more attention to follow proceedings. Having said that, Spielberg is a master populist and even if you lose track of the precise details, you’ll still be able to follow the plot. The central thrust of the film is getting the amendment passed, and our character’s motivations for opposing or supporting it are a mixture of the ideological and the personal, something which makes these occasionally fusty people relatable.
Despite being directed by Spielberg and featuring an embarrassment of great actors, the biggest thing this film has got going for it is Daniel Day-Lewis’ as Abraham Lincoln. Day-Lewis is probably the finest actor working in Hollywood, and completely vanishes into a deceptively difficult role, a man everyone thinks they already know, yet no-one really knows. Day-Lewis’ plays Lincoln as a man aware of the gears of history grinding around him. While other characters frantically scurry about, he’s calm and still, softly spoken, good tempered and charismatic. He’s perceptibly different from the other politicians we see, someone who can see the bigger picture. We see Lincoln in conversation with his party, his political and military opponents and his family and he behaves in the same manner to them all. This allows Spielberg and Day-Lewis to position Lincoln as not only a loving father to his children, but also, implicitly, to his country.
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| Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln |
We see Lincoln as a character given to folksy, almost Biblical parables concealing sharp arguments, which underline his magnetic charisma and intelligence. But though Day-Lewis’ Lincoln is a spellbinding orator you can get an idea of his state of mind simply through the way he carries himself. The bloodshed of the Civil War weighs heavily upon him, he treats Union and Confederate losses as an inestimable tragedy and holds himself partly responsible for the carnage. In an excellent, dialogue free scene he tours a battlefield, viewing the shattered corpses of soldiers. Day-Lewis’ Lincoln is a strong leader, but you see the strain of the dead in the way he’s ever-so-slightly hunched inwards. Simply put, I can’t imagine anyone else being remotely as good as he is in this role.
Leaving Day-Lewis aside for a moment, Spielberg has assembled a hell of a cast, with even minor characters played by luminaries like Jackie Earle Haley, Sally Field, Jared Harris and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It’s tricky to stand out in a field like this, but Tommy Lee-Jones manages it, providing a vital idealistic counterpoint to the pragmatic Lincoln. Much of ‘Lincoln’ is about the necessities of the political process, and Lee-Jones portrays Stevens as an uncompromising grump, someone who’s rock solid in their convictions. It’s a passionate, charismatic turn, and his flowery-languaged unpleasantness towards his pro-slavery opponents lightens the mood while making a nice contrast to the diplomacy of our central character.
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| Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Lincoln |
Visually, Spielberg and his cinematographer Janusz Kaminski create a richly textured world from a series of stuffy wood-panelled rooms. Kaminski makes expert use of light as it streams in through the windows of the murky rooms, bathing our characters in shimmering white light. These rays of light accentuate the deep, black shadows that play across the character’s faces. Day-Lewis’ Lincoln is craggy and lined, and the chiaroscuro effect accentuates this, underlining his monumental gravitas. Outside these dusty room, the world 1865 is constructed with the kind of immaculate period attention to detail you’d expect from a Spielberg production. What impresses is that they do not linger on their production design, everything is shot in a matter-of-fact way, which helps keep things feeling vivid rather than as distant history.
For all that the film does brilliantly it is not without flaws, and they tend to be a result of Spielberg’s tendency for schmaltz. Considering the subject matter is the abolition of slavery, the black characters in the film function primarily as an emotional backdrop, weeping gratefully in the background rather than as developed characters. It would be unconscionable to portray this moment in history without having black characters, but here they’re cyphers; characterless representatives of all black Americans past and future.
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| If you like men arguing in smoky rooms BOY is this the film for you! |
In a film full of subtlety, aspects like these stand out like a sore thumb. This extends to the score, which undermines some delicate moments with a sledgehammer bluntness. It’s intensely frustrating when we see an outstanding scene where Tommy Lee-Jones’ Thaddeus Stevens decides that his dignity and reputation have to be sacrificed for the greater good. The synthesis between the audience’s and character’s emotions is perfectly established. But as Stevens marches away in triumph we get beaten us over the head by a ridiculously bombastic bit of John Williams’ score. There’s nothing more annoying than being manipulated like this, especially when we were already experiencing what the film ‘wanted’ us to feel.
It's a shame there's a fly in the ointment because I struggle to think too many other films successfully connect backroom political manoeuvring to real-world problems this well. At its core this is a film about how government must function: a chaotic, messy gaggle of egos all pulling in different directions. Politicians are shown as creatures of all stripes, from noble and intelligent to cowardly and corrupt and everything in between. It’s fortunate that the amendment being fought for is so self-evidently noble, because ‘Lincoln’ doesn’t hesitate to admit that ‘Honest Abe’ wasn’t above using some pretty dodgy backdoor trickery to ensure its passing.
The film doesn’t set out to immortalise Abraham Lincoln as a saint. Spielberg and Day-Lewis don't let us forget that this man is just that, a man. Grounding the myth is important because Abraham Lincoln didn’t single-handedly deliver US from slavery. He was an important factor in getting this amendment passed, but not the sole force behind it. What got slavery outlawed was debate: convincing others of the morality of your arguments. If Abraham Lincoln was anything like the character in ‘Lincoln’, that message is the finest possible tribute a film could make.
****
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