Playing Catch-Up: Manchester By The Sea (dir by Kenneth Lonergan)

Posted on January 4, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Manchester By The Sea is the latest Oscar contender to be set in Massachusetts. I’m not exactly sure why but it appears that if you want your film to get some sort of Oscar consideration, it’s always good idea to set it some place in New England.

Consider some of the films nominated for Best Picture since the 1992:

1992′ Scent of a Woman featured a New England prep school.

1994’s The Shawshank Redemption took place in Maine.

1997’s Good Will Hunting took place in Boston.

1999’s The Cider House Rules was set in Maine.

2001’s In The Bedroom took place in Maine.

2003’s Mystic River was set in Boston.

The 2006 winner The Departed was also a Boston-set film.

2010’s The Fighter also set in Boston. For that matter, The Social Network started at Harvard.

2013’s Captain Phillips featured Tom Hanks speaking with Boston accent.

And, finally, last year’s Spotlight was as much a celebration of Boston as anything else.

As of this writing, it appears that Manchester By The Sea will continue the long tradition of New England-set films being nominated for best picture. Interestingly, of all those films, Manchester By The Sea is probably the most low-key. Though it’s a film that deals with death, it’s a natural death as opposed to the violent executions that dominated The Departed and Mystic River. And though there are two bar fights, there’s very little violence to be found in Manchester By The Sea. As opposed to Spotlight, Manchester By The Sea is not about moral crusaders battling against the corrupt establishment.

Instead, it’s the story of an intelligent but irresponsible man named Lee Chadler (Casey Affleck). When Lee was a young man living in the town of Manchester-By-The-Sea, he was someone. He was a high school hockey star. He made an okay living, he had a lot of friends, and he was very close to his older brother, Joe (Kyle Chandler). He was married to Randi (Michelle Williams) and he had two daughters.

And then he lost everything. He lost his daughters, through a stupid accident for which he blamed himself. Randi divorced him. His friends abandoned him. The only thing that prevented him from shooting himself was the intervention of Joe. Lee eventually ended up in Quincy, Massachusetts, working as a maintenance man and keeping to himself.

And that’s probably what Lee would have done his entire life, if Joe hadn’t died. Lee returns to Manchester-By-The-Sea and, to his shock, he discovers that he’s been named the guardian of Joe’s sixteen year-old son, Patrick (Lucas Hedges). Still struggling with his own feelings of guilt, Lee now finds himself thrust into the role of being a father.

Patrick, of course, doesn’t think he needs a guardian and sometimes, it almost seems as if Patrick might be right. At times, it’s hard not to feel that Patrick is a hundred times more mature than his uncle but occasionally, Patrick’s grown-up mask will slip. When he learns that his father cannot be buried until the spring and the body will be kept in a freezer, Patrick stays calm until he opens up the freezer at home. That’s when the reality of it all hits him and it’s an amazingly powerful moment.

Manchester By The Sea is not an easy film to describe. There’s not much of a plot. Instead, it’s just a portrait of people living from day-to-day, trying to juggle handling tragedy with handling everyday life. Conditioned by previous films, audiences watch something like Manchester By The Sea and wait for some gigantic dramatic moment that will magically make sense of the human condition but, by design, that moment never comes. That’s not what Manchester By The Sea is about. If there is any great lesson to be found in Manchester By The Sea, it’s that life goes on.

Despite being full of funny lines, it’s a sad film but fortunately, it’s also a well-acted one. I have to admit that I’m not as crazy about Manchester By The Sea as some of the critics who are currently declaring Manchester to be the best film of 2016 are but I can’t disagree with those who have praised Casey Affleck’s lead performance. Lucas Hedges also does a good job as Patrick and Michelle Williams gets one revelatory scene in which she happens to randomly run into her ex-husband on the street.

As I said, I liked Manchester By The Sea but I didn’t quite love it. It’s a well-made and well-acted film and, if it’s not as brilliant as some have claimed, it’s still worthy of respect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn–zOO8LN8

Film Review: True Story (dir by Rupert Goold)

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2002, a man named Christian Longo was arrested in Mexico. Longo, who was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List, was charged with murdering his wife and his three children. When he was arrested, he was using the name of Michael Finkel, a real-life travel writer for the New York Times. When asked why he had been using Finkel’s name, Longo explained that he admired Finkel as a writer.

At the same time that Christian Longo was getting arrested, Michael Finkel was in the process of watching his career fall apart, the result of his having fabricated part of a story. Fired from the New York Times, Finkel found himself unemployable. When he discovered that Longo had been using his name, Finkel arranged to meet with him. Not only was he curious as to why Longo wanted to be him but he also saw Longo as potentially being the story that could relaunch his career.

During their initial meeting, Longo told Finkel that he was a long-time admirer. Longo agreed to tell Finkel his side of the story in exchange for writing lessons and Finkel’s promise to keep the details of their conversations a secret until after the trial. Finkel agreed and soon, the two men became unlikely friends.

At first, Finkel believed that Longo was innocent. But then, on the first day of the trial, Longo was asked how he pled to four charges of murder. Longo entered two pleas of not guilty and two pleas of guilty and Finkel found himself forced to reexamine everything that he had previously believed about his new friend…

Amazingly enough, that’s a true story. It’s also the subject matter of a recently released film called True Story.

In True Story, Michael Finkel is played by Jonah Hill and Christian Longo is played by James Franco. Both Franco and Hill (who, despite having 3 Oscar nominations between them, remain oddly underrated actors) give the type of excellent performances that can elevate an entire film. Interestingly enough, they’re both playing dramatic versions of their own typically comedic personas. Hill plays up his trademark nerdy aggressiveness while Franco brings his own deliberately ambiguous persona to Christian Longo. Just as James Franco enjoys leaving people guessing about who he really is, Longo seems to get a perverse pleasure out of keeping Finkel guessing about whether or not he really killed his family. When Longo takes the stand in his own defense and gives his version of what happened on the night of the murders, he does it with a perverse gleam in his eye. Longo may be facing the death penalty but mostly, he’s just enjoying being in the spotlight.

Hill and Franco are famous for being off-screen friends and they bring a lot of their own real-life chemistry to their shared scenes. As played by Hill and Franco, Finkel and Longo develop a relationship that is nearly co-dependent. Longo wishes that he could be a writer like Finkel. Finkel wishes that he could be as personable and outwardly confident as Longo. When Longo writes Finkel an 80-page letter that’s full of crude drawings, Finkel responds by taping each page to the wall of his office until he’s literally encircled by Longo’s words, much as how someone like me may have once been tempted to tape pictures of James Franco to the wall of her college dorm room.

With Franco and Hill both giving great performances, it’s a bit disappointing that the rest of the film isn’t always as strong. Director Rupert Goold makes his feature film debut here and, at times, it feels as if he’s struggling to keep up with his actors. There’s a lot of slow motion scenes of people walking down hallways and getting out of cars. As well, too much of Finkel and Longo’s relationship is portrayed via montage. We see countless rapidly-edited montages of Longo and Finkel speaking but, instead of actually hearing what the two of them are talking about, we instead listen to Marco Beltrami’s score. Goold gets a lot of perfectly lit visuals but True Story is a film that could have used a rougher edge.

Even more unfortunate is that the film totally wastes Felicity Jones. Playing Finkel’s wife, she doesn’t get to do much beyond looking pensive and concerned. It’s a role that anyone could have played and it’s frustrating to watch because Felicity Jones is capable of doing so much more than just playing a worried wife. Towards the end of the film, there’s a great scene where Longo and Jill talk on the phone and, at that moment, Felicity Jones finally gets to show some strength and personality. James Franco, as well, seems to be relishing the chance to play up Longo’s manipulative side. (It’s interesting to listen to the perversely flirtatious tone that he takes with her as opposed to the passive aggressive flattery that he uses on Finkel.) The scene works wonders but then, the film makes the mistake of having Jill face Longo face-to-face and it falls flat precisely because Jill isn’t deep enough a character for us to feel any real satisfaction in watching her tell him off.

In the end, True Story is worth watching. James Franco and Jonah Hill both give great performances. If you’re a true crime fan like I am, you’ll find a lot of True Story to be intriguing. Ultimately, if True Story is frustrating, it’s because it’s a good film that should have been great.

Shattered Politics #82: An American Affair (dir by William Olsson)

Posted on February 8, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Though the names may have been changed, the 2008 film An American Affair is clearly based on the true story of Mary Pinchot Meyer.

In the early 60s, Mary Pinchot Meyer was a celebrated member of the Washington D.C. social scene. A talented painter, Meyer was also the ex-wife of CIA officer Cord Meyer and was an early proponent of LSD. She also happened to the mistress of John F. Kennedy and reportedly use to smoke weed with him in the Oval Office. It’s also been reported that she kept a diary, which mysteriously disappeared after Mary’s still unsolved murder in 1964. Needless to say, many a JFK assassination conspiracy theory has featured Mary Pinchot Meyer as a supporting character.

In An American Affair, Meyer is renamed Catherine Caswell (Gretchen Mol) and she lives across the street from 13 year-old Adam Stafford (Cameron Bright). While Catherine has secret meetings with the President and deals with her alcoholic ex-husband (played, quite well, by Mark Pellegrino), Adam watches from his bedroom window. Eventually, Adam goes across the street and offers to work in Catherine’s garden. Realizing that Adam has a crush on her, an amused Catherine agrees. While the future of America is being determined all around him, Adam learns about life, love, and art from Catherine.

An American Affair is an odd mix of conspiracy film and coming-of-age dramedy but it actually work pretty well. Gretchen Mol gives a good performance as the poignantly unstable Catherine and, despite the fact that Adam is kind of a creep at times, Cameron Bright manages to make the character sympathetic. However, the film’s best performances come from James Rebhorn and Pellegrino, playing two menacing figures who always seem to hovering in the shadows.

An American Affair is a surprisingly good film. I saw it on Netflix and so should you.