I am a guy. Guydom dictates a great number of the movies I go see. Often I want to see films where very large orange fireball explosions destroy large intricate articles like buildings, cars and bridges. Amidst the debris I like these movies to have a story flow that is intense. A good blow ‘em up will leave you breathless. If you are not afraid to go take that needed leak for fear of missing something the movie isn’t doing a good job.
The next group of movies that I watch have beautiful people wearing very expensive and pretty clothes. They drive Tesla cars or Lamborghinis. Pretty people and car genre movies usually require the hero and heroine to end up mostly naked at some point engaging in callisthenic style sex that nobody I know or have even known could keep up with in real life. The plot usually involves the transfer of financial valuable things (or some lifesaving talisman such as a rare medicine) and a double cross of some kind. The final plot twist is really, really important. Who was Keyer Soze, eh?
When I go to these movies I eat a bucket of popcorn and drink a gallon of pop. Most of the time by the point the indigestion from this gross mass ingestion has passed my memory of the movie has been deleted. I am older now and that purging is probably a good thing. Who needs that kind of useless glittering trash taking up long term mental storage?
But there is another kind of movie that I make it a point to go and see, the well told mature adult story. In other words even though I live in the Midwest the land of the multiplex I crave indie films. Some prime examples are Richard Jenkins in the Visitor, Peter O’Toole in Venus, the foreign language film from India called The Pool and a recent opus from a director named John Carney called Once starring Glen Hansard. Once was a sweet tale of a busker’s life in Ireland.
Oh yeah little quirky movies like Layer Cake and the Commitments also fit in here. I would however put Layer Cake in a triumvirate of films including The Usual Suspects and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. These movies are basically crime mysteries with an indie twisted twist. Guy Ritchie movies are even more of a sub-sub-genre of this style of film and a real guilty pleasure for me. Even Rock n Rolla works for me.
The joy of Once was that it starred two unknowns and it played off the audiences expectations of what big studio Hollywood formula movies would do with the characters. We all kind of know what Hollywood would do with a busker and a flower girl. Struggle would happen and then well-deserved success would shower down on them.
Once was different. Somehow something was there between these characters, you wanted the leads to end up a couple. You wanted the busker and the flower girl to become stars in some subgenre of folk pop. But the tale didn’t take you to those places. Instead it showed you two people with complex motivations and various strings of life complications pulling them in directions unexpected. Somehow what the duo accomplished shows growth and joy amidst the pain of living a real life and its compromises made for mere survival.
Begin Again is a great deal like Once for it was written and directed by John Carney, the person who had helmed Once. However this time the director went with known actors and celebrities, Mark Ruffalo, Kiera Knightley, Mos Def, Catherine Keener, Rob Morrow, Cee Lo Green and Adam Levine playing the biggest asshole in the New York City. The casting works. Knightley as a talented principled song smith is very credible. Ruffalo as a creative was with a dubious future career arc and a penchant for bourbon plays his role in a way that shows an actor’s true ownership of the director’s vision of the character. Catherine Keener is great, just like she is every single time she enters into a movie’s flow no matter how crappy the film might be.
The narrative nature of the Once’s story starts out with an event in a hipster bar on an open mike night. Three versions of the event play out over about 12 or so minutes each narrative placing one of the central characters and all of their emotional baggage at a strategic position for the catalytic scene. Three times the scene plays out through very different perspectives each showing what the participants brought to the problem at hand.
The problem: a good songwriter who has nobody interested in her music mainly because she was too disengaged. Her distance from the moment and from life in general stops her from presenting a property finished product to an appropriate audience. Her not insubstantial talent, as the tale evolves, because of her tentative persona and somewhat naïve view of what the art form of publically performed music mandates is getting further and further buried. She is also in danger of disappearing under the growing strength and public explosion of her love interest’s personality and persona.
But a washed up alcoholic record exec hears (and sees) what a song can be. Through a delicate dance the duo brings a nuanced form out of the music that just grows into something organically beautiful. The songsmith’s tale of love that is one of the two main plot lines here is played well. Adam Levine plays a dick and he plays it well. Knightley takes on the metamorphosis from someone who is willing to stand in the shadows to someone willing to grab the spotlight and bend its rays in a credible and delightful way.
Ruffalo’s record producer has almost as his own 100 pounds of chain hanging off him from a marriage that has failed. The union produced a daughter played by Hailee Steinfield. Steinfield’s turn is a subtle tale of change that although a little too bright and filled with life is played to a tee. She will be seen again, her demeanor is so apt for this movie it tells the audience she has real acting chops.
The movie is not perfect. There are some story lines that resolve a little too cleanly but they are not enough of a distraction to hurt the film. It has been a long time since I have heard a film audience actually clap at the end of the movie. Last night when we had finished with the screening even here in megaplex popcorn land a solid round of applause was raised.
If you celebrate a good story go see Begin Again. Or rent Once.
1 comment:
We'll go check out Born Again. If I can get V past the megapixel showing "Tammy". Well written, as always. You might want to consider writing more........
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