Hard laughs (Easy Virtue)

In Sydney-born Stephan Elliott's Easy Virtue there's a butler called Furber, played with contagious mirth by Kris Marshall. Irreverent and sly, he makes brief background appearances - usually drunk - conveying in a raised eyebrow both his distaste for the upper crust family who employs him and the amusement their antics procure him. The first whiff of staleness likely to be detected by the viewer when watching this film emanates from the realization that Furber's effortlessly funny character is meant to be the comic relief. And when a comedy requires comic relief - a wisecracking character who comments on the absurdity of the narrative - you know it's in trouble.

The absurdity of the narrative in Easy Virtue, a period farce adapted from the eponymous Noel Coward play, needs no explicit commentary, from Furber or anyone else. In fact, a little fill-the-blanks subtlety would have been nice: a few moments of silence perhaps, a break from the cacophony. Insecure is the comedy which fears silence, so intent on showing us an uproarious good time it falls prey to a manic relentlessness.

While on holidays in Monaco, John Whittaker (Ben Barnes) meets and marries the lively American racing driver Larita Huntington (Jessica Biel). The couple travel back to John's ancestral home in rural England, where his ice queen of a mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) is waiting for him. A farce of culture shocks and class warfare ensues as Larita tries, unsuccessfully, to win over each member of the aristocratic family. Only John's dour father (Colin Firth) finds her interesting. As tempers fray, Larita and John's pastoral honeymoon loses its glow and everyone is forced to reconsider their choices.

There's a witty Noel Coward play under this mess of a movie, and once in a while, a clever one-liner does make a brave apparition. Mostly though, the actors battle with the banality of a script so thoroughly updated as to be almost unrecognizable - one imagines Coward tossing and turning uncomfortably in his grave. It's easy to picture the worried meetings between filmmakers and production executives - how can we make this period piece a little sexier, a little less old fashioned? After all, the play had already been adapted once, faithfully if not particularly successfully, by a young Alfred Hitchcock.

Unfortunately the choices are all wrong. Going for the crudely farcical rather than the satirical, the film is updated in unseemly patches of grotesque buffoonery. Imagine if you will staging a fox hunt to a jazzy arrangement of Sex Bomb, or a scene in which the lovely Jessica Biel kills a chihuahua by sitting on its face. Other sequences mine melodrama with a straight face, only to surrender all pretense of seriousness a minute later when a character breaks into song for no apparent reason. The film might've worked as a full-blown musical, but instead it plods along trying on different genres for size, never at ease with itself. 

The dialogue gets an update but the resulting vernacular, an incoherent mix of 20's English accents and cringe-worthy contemporary turns of phrase, is not particularly inventive. Equally tone deaf are the film's aesthetics. Gimmicky camera moves and zany special effects attempt to offset the stuffy strictness of the venerable mansions which serve as sets, but the effect is crass and tedious.

The actors are all talented performers struggling with caricatures. No one does upper crust bitch like Kristin Scott Thomas, but in parodying herself, she erases in one roll of her eyes all the credit won with her work against cast in I've Loved You So Long. Colin Firth sleepwalks through his role as the depressed father, seemingly not aware that he's wandered onto the set of a British period film. Jessica Biel looks great, does what she can with what she's given and hints at real untapped talent. This is not her breakout role. 

Easy Virtue is another disappointment from Stephan Elliott, who hasn't been able to follow up the success of Priscilla Queen of the Desert with anything approaching that film's effortless style and narrative flair. Like Larita, Elliot tries hard to break with the stifling traditions of the past and embrace the exciting possibilities of modern times. His efforts are foiled not by the weight of these cinematic traditions, but by that of his unwieldy undertaking. Easy Virtue is rarely funny, often tedious and never insightful. 

Easy Virtue is out in Australia on March 12th and in the US on May 22nd.

Hard laughs (Easy Virtue)

A little... square? (AFCA Awards)

The Australian Film Critics’ Association (AFCA) - of which I am a member - has announced the results of their 2008 Film Awards. And the winner is...

Best Australian Film: 

WINNER: The Black Balloon (Elissa Down)

Commended: The Square (Nash Edgerton)

Best Overseas Film: 

WINNER: There Will Be Blood (USA)
Commended: The Dark Knight (USA)

Best Documentary: 

WINNER: Man On A Wire (UK/USA)
Commended: Not Quite Hollywood (Australia)

None of these titles got (m)any votes from me, which makes me think I might be a little out of touch with other Australian critics. My tastes don't seem much more aligned with those of the Film Critics Circle of Australia either. Oh well. Diversity serves criticsm well, in my humble opinion.

Best Un-released Film: 

WINNER: En La Ciudad De Sylvia (Spain)
Commended: Les Amours d’Astrée et de Céladon (The Romance of Astree & Celadon)
(France/Italy/Spain)

Great news! In 2009 AFCA will launch its inaugural awards for film writing to be called the AFCA Ivan Hutchinson Award for Excellence in Film Writing which will offer two cash prizes - one for the Best Essay or Article on Australian film, the other for the Best Example of Film Criticism. Entries will open May 1, 2009. 

AFCA started life as the Melbourne Film Critics’ Forum in 1996, expanding to a national organization in 2004 and is a member of FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics and Film Journalists. AFCA claims to support both mainstream and independent cinema and particularly aims to generate appreciation for significant or challenging films that may, for whatever reason, have been overlooked (like The Dark Knight).

I'm hoping the Melbourne-centric AFCA widens its base to properly cover the entire country, living up to its name. One new Sydney-based member is Josh Wheatley, and I encourage you to check out his sensible criticism right now. 

AFCA member Bernard Hemingway's look at the performance of Australian films at the box-office in 2008 also makes for a great read.

A little... square? (AFCA Awards)

The Road to Perdition (Revolutionary Road)

In the capable hands of director Sam Mendes and screenwriter Justin Haythes, Richard Yates' powerful commentary on the way we lived then has become a powerful commentary on the way we live now. This story of a suburban couple imploding under the weight of conformity, expectations and shattered dreams may be set in the summer of 1955, but its universal and savage truths are equally exacting today.

Frank and April Wheeler - Leonardo diCaprio and Kate Winslet - may have bought a lovely house in Connecticut, they're confident they haven't bought into the suburban lifestyle. Frank may slave away anonymously at a job that he hates in the city, deep down he's a free spirit waiting for the opportunity to soar. April might spend her days playing house, deep down she's aspiring to better things, convinced the couple are somehow special. But what's held to be self-evident, deep down, is in danger of being progressively buried under the weight of comfort, habit, and the hundred little lies told day after day, including to oneself. 

The tragedy of Revolutionary Road is that this knowledge - shared by the intelligent, self-aware couple - becomes not the key to the salvation of their marriage but the lens through which they foresee its unsparing and seemingly inescapable destruction.

Seeking to break out of the deadening routine, April convinces Frank they should move to Paris with their two children. April would work, supporting her husband while he enjoys his freedom and spare time and "finds himself". At first these plans infuse the couple with hope, and the shocked reactions of colleagues and neighbours only confirm the validity of their bold decision. Eventually however it is April who will come to find herself, too late for salvation, lucidly seeing the house on Revolutionary Road for what it truly is, a trap society has set for them - and one the young couple all too willingly walked into.

Acting as a catalyst for both these awakenings is John Givings (played by Bug's talented Michael Shannon), the "certified lunatic" son of the house's realtor (Kathy Bates). In two brief visits to the house, John becomes the tactless voice of truth. During his first visit, he alone seems to understand the "hopeless emptiness" - identified by Frank - which threatens to consume the Wheelers. During the second, he delivers the post-mortem before the act, dissecting the couple's malaise in words too brutal for anyone to bear.

By then it is too late, existential angst has devoured the couple from the inside. Its weaker half - Frank - has unwittingly become a cruel, self-deluded puppet whose strings are pulled by an unimaginative and un-liberated post-war society all too enamoured by its new consumerist ideals. Its stronger half - April - is meanwhile unable to extricate herself from the oppressive nightmare her optimistic dreams have now turned into. Isolation and loneliness, in a house she shares with her loved ones, have become a best-case scenario.

While it was written at the same time as Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and can match that play's acerbic and often devastating insights into poisoned relationships blow for blow, Yates' Revolutionary Road steers mostly clear of irony and black humour. So does this often bleak, excoriating adaptation. 

Sam Mendes returns to the suburban territory of American Beauty but does away with the laughter, directing with confidence and a redemptive unwillingness to compromise. His clinical, unsparing style means the film is easier to admire than to love, but that's on par for the course for a story meant to lodge itself firmly under our skin. This is an itch the viewer can't scratch without chipping away at their own armor.

Mendes is served by some excellent acting, partly the result of brilliantly ironic casting: resurrecting one of cinema's enduring romantic couple twelve years after Titanic went down in history as the biggest blockbuster of all time.

Leonardo diCaprio grows into the difficult role of a vile, clueless man whose introspection and intelligence are ultimately no match for the emasculating indictment society attaches to his choices. He portrays Frank as a man out of his depth, clinging desperately to the false promises of his time.

Kate Winslet, meanwhile, is mesmerizing as the optimistic, beautiful woman increasingly crippled by her husband's pernicious betrayals. It's not entirely his doing though. April's paralysis is a form of self-loathing, one she acquires by purposefully blinding herself to the harsher realities of her situation. Winslet makes us believe each facet of April's complex personality as woman, wife and mother: sultry but insecure, strong-mided but kind, defiant yet vulnerable. Her acting unfolds on as many parallel registers: restrained and nuanced one minute, hysterically perched on the edge of self-control the next. 

The bitter exchanges and scarring insults traded by the couple make for uncomfortable viewing. Perfectly captured, for example, is the recognizable tipping point in a heated argument when accusations are authored by despair rather than righteousness, and vexation gives way to abuse. We develop our own love-hate relationship with these damaged characters, relating to their suffering but also, perhaps, recognizing in their behaviours the worst in ourselves.

This translates in an emotionally stifling distance between the viewers and the story, though whether this should be blamed on the filmmakers or on our own defense mechanisms is debatable. Memories of the physical and emotional intimacy shared by the couple all but vanish once the storm erupts, and visual reminders - in a film which does resort to flashbacks - might have rekindled our sympathies for these hardened characters when they eventually need them most.

Despite these reservations, the film does pack a forceful punch to the head, to the heart, to the stomach. The devastating ending cleverly plays on audience expectations, only to ruthlessly expose our own ability for denial. The film's coda is straight out of a horror movie: the dwelling on Revolutionary Road - no longer the Wheelers' - sits menacingly like the House on Haunted Hill, waiting for its next victims. Despite its stunt casting, escapism is not on the agenda here. Depending on what you seek when you enter the deceptively comfortable confines of the cinema auditorium, let that be a warning... or an invitation.

Revolutionary Road is currently out in the US, Australia and Canada. It opens in the UK on January 30th.

The Road to Perdition (Revolutionary Road)

The First Bullet (Milk)

I'm not a big fan of biopics. More often than not, I feel they are let down by a script's need to stick to chronology, truth and history. In such overrated films as La Vie en Rose or Walk The Line, many scenes feel burdened by the pull of biography, a magnetic force with which unimaginative screenwriters wrestle in vain: an interesting life does not necessarily make for an interesting narrative. 

Gus Van Sant's shown us with his poetic Kurt Cobain-inspired Last Days that he knows how to let the work emancipate itself from the conventions of biography. With Milk, the challenge was of a different order: making an awareness-raising political film reaching as wide an audience as possible meant the conventions of the biopic couldn't entirely be ignored. 

Enters relative newcomer Dustin Lance Black. Able to combine a deeply personal approach (that of a gay man raised in a conservative Mormon family) with a precocious understanding of the civil rights movement (he is not even 35 years old), Black's script is deceptively simple and propelled by political urgency.

Disguised as a biography of Harvey Milk - the first openly gay man to be voted into major public office in America - his screenplay is really an examination of the gay civil rights movement, a cultural and political transformation of which the City Supervisor is both the product and the catalyst.

Unlike many inspirational biopics, there's a lightness and a buoyancy here which carries the viewer through tumultuous times, as if caught up in a feverish march to City Hall. Resisting attempts to give the character depth in that all-too-American way - by resorting to simplistic psychological retro-clarification - Black lets Harvey himself tell the story, sat alone at the kitchen table speaking into a dictaphone, perhaps only days before his assassination.

Harvey's melancholy, world-wary tone contrasts sharply with the effusive, spirited 40 year-old we catch picking up a trick in the subway a decade earlier. Guiding us through the struggle for acceptance of a new generation of gay men and women who converged to 1970's San Francisco from around the country in the months following the Stonewall riots, Harvey is also telling us his story: how a closeted white-collar worker found inspiration in the working-class Castro district and became an outspoken agent for change.

The film charts the eight last years of Harvey's life. Inspired by the youthful optimism of his lover Scott Smith (James Franco), they relocate to San Francisco and open a small camera shop. Before long, Milk becomes known as the friendly neighbourhood problem-solver. In a fledgling gay community, at a time when men could go to jail for dancing with other men, Harvey becomes aware of the need for acceptance and equality. Along with a bunch of eccentric volunteer activists such as protégé Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsh), he begins to wade into the shark-infested waters of local politics, building alliances with unions, labourers, seniors and minorities.

As elected city supervisor, Harvey's courageous fights make him a lightning rod for political and personal attacks, from within the council, from the conservatives at large. Lobbying for an ordinance protecting people from being fired because of their orientation and fighting Proposition 6 - which sought to ban gay teachers, he exposed the bigotry and the hatred which drove so many young people to suicide.

When Proposition 6 is repealed, Harvey is shown a death threat just before the victory speech. It reads "you get the first bullet the moment you walk to the microphone". Harvey Milk may have died at the hands of the haters, but in firing the first bullet against his detractors, he left a legacy that would outlive him and still resonate loudly today.

Sean Penn's portrayal of Harvey Milk is so effortlessly good one forgets the actor entirely. There are no aspects of Harvey's complex personality which ring false: his rescue complex, his giddy enthusiasm, his gift of gab, his many contradictions. With the help of a prosthetic nose and teeth, contact lenses and a redesigned hairline, Penn literally becomes the character. And boy does he get Harvey's indomitable spirit and undefeated optimism just right. When chided, "you can't demand acceptance overnight!", it takes a pitch-perfect combination of the child and the man to make Harvey's answer, "why not?", sound exactly right.

It takes a great actor to play the lead in a biopic (one named after its subject no less), only to check his ego at the door, understanding that Harvey is just a prism through which to understand the gay rights struggle. As one character says in the film, Harvey wasn't the candidate: "the movement is the candidate".

Van Sant surrounds Penn with a superb ensemble cast of talented actors playing real people (many of whom are still alive today). Josh Brolin, for example, is utterly convincing as fellow supervisor Dan White, projecting the perfect, ambiguous mix of self-loathing, suave confidence and mental imbalance. The intelligent screenplay manages to fit Dan White into the story without giving away the true part he played in Harvey Milk's life and myth and Brolin does the role justice.

Also good are James Franco, who brings considerable depth of emotion to his role as Milk's lover, and Emile Hirsh as the young Cleve Jones (the real-life activist is also the film's historical consultant). The only false note comes from Diego Luna who overacts the part of Jack, Milk's lover in later years, unable to convince the audience that - rescue complex notwithstanding - someone like Harvey could fall for the limited charms of this whiny, temperamental and clearly unstable man.

The West Coast's cultural upheaval and burgeoning gay scene is brought vividly to life thanks to inspired production design. gorgeously grainy cinematography and Van Sant's eye for the iconic - think James Franco swimming naked in Advocate publisher David Goodstein's David Hockney-blue swimming pool. 

Visual symbolism is used with great subtlety, blending in nicely with the period detail such a project requires. Dan White's sexuality, for example, is called into question once by Harvey, with subtle visual clues, such as a rainbow of jellybeans on his desk, reinforcing that assessment later in the film. In another scene, a distraught Jack, now irrevocably removed from Harvey's political ambitions, drinks a bottle of Coors: the very brand that Harvey boycotts early in the film in protest of the brewer's discriminatory hiring practices.

Yet for all its technical, stylistic and acting excellence, Milk succeeds first and foremost because as an impassioned piece of political filmmaking, it is able to move and inspire in equal measure. There is very little use for cloying sentimentality when you are revealing the pain caused by so many years of oppression, degradation, discrimination and ignorance. Milk - both the man and the film - force the viewer to put themselves into the viewing equation. How does one fit in in the tragedy of homophobia and its opposite, the celebration of acceptance?

That I spent nearly half of the screening in tears surprised no one more than myself. Where were these tears coming from? As a gay man I conjured up the series of pent up humiliations, discreet outrages and uncelebrated triumphs stifled daily in a society which, while it may have come a long way since Stonewall, is still reluctant to distribute its rights and its freedoms impartially. In the darkness of the movie theatre I felt like a kid at Castro Camera, able to open the floodgates of feelings not expressed often enough, freely enough, strongly enough.

There's a beautiful scene in which Harvey offers an inspirational vision of happiness to a depressed teenager, one firmly anchored in the success of the gay rights movement: "you're going to meet the sexiest, funniest, brightest men, right until the end of your life, until you are never entirely sure which were your greatest loves and which were your greatest friends."

Gus Van Sant's masterful Milk is a testament to cinema's power to put us in front of our demons - and our collective achievements. In a time of change (I write this on the day of Obama's inauguration) and in a time of unresolved hang-ups (the film opened amidst the furor of California's Proposition 8), very few films have the power to bring viewers together without resorting solely to popcorn entertainment. Milk is a harrowing film, and because it is able to articulate a cautiously optimistic and politically viable definition of happiness, a superbly uplifting one. 

Milk is currently out in the US. It is out in the UK January 23rd and in Australia January 29th. 

The First Bullet (Milk)

In the kingdom of the blind (Valkyrie)

Bryan Singer's first ever feature was 1993's little seen Sundance winner Public Access. This chillingly subversive micro-budget gem of a thriller manipulated audience expectations, allowing us to sympathize with the lead character until his evil intentions became clear and the audience was forced to look away in shame and self-disgust. 

Public Access was - arguably - a disturbingly seductive portrait of a neo-Nazi, while 1998's Apt Pupil saw its teenage lead fall under the spell of a charismatic Nazi war criminal. Singer's body of work, from Usual Suspects to X-Men, has been concerned mostly with the evil that men are capable of and what drives intelligent men and women to choose one side over the other. 

In Singer's new film Valkyrie, Tom Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a decorated German war hero who takes the lead in an ambitious eleventh hour plot to assassinate Hitler, seize Berlin from the SS and the Gestapo and negotiate a truce with the advancing enemy. Joining a group of conspirators hidden within the Führer's inner-circle, Stauffenberg risks losing his wife and children, not to mention his life, by attempting to detonate explosives inside the Wolf's Lair bunker.

The planning, execution and aftermath of the failed coup d'etat are portrayed with the utmost precision, each scene calculated to maximize suspense and ratchet up the tension. Singer's efficient handling of a very tight script takes a story whose outcome is known to everyone and turns it into a nail-biting thriller. It may be sold as an action thriller, but despite its structure - Tom Cruise leads an ace team on a suicide mission - Valkyrie owes more to Hitchcock than to Mission Impossible.

The PR team found Tom Cruise a great role, both for himself and his troubled career. His limited acting range is sufficient to convey the stoic determination of a serious man caught up in serious times. Partially hidden behind an eye patch and a uniform, he has no trouble coming up with the inexpressive poker face the part demands. 

It takes a while to get over the fact that every German in the film speaks English (the accents are all over the place),  but thankfully Singer and collaborator Christophe McQuarrie know when to keep the characters quiet. A lot of the suspense in Valkyrie stems from conspiratorial looks shot across briefing tables and long moments of loaded silences as we wait to discover if the plot has been exposed. 

There are some particularly fine performances to enjoy, the ensemble cast being a who's who of overachieving, mostly British supporting actors. Eddie Izzard, Terence Stamp, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy and Kenneth Brannagh all leave strong impressions as men left little time to decide just how much they were willing to risk. There's also a subtly moving performance by Jamie Parker as Stauffenberg's right hand man (literally, the colonel lost his right hand in Tunisia). It takes a little reading-between-the-lines, but a homoerotic reading of their relationship gives the ending an added note of melancholy.

Gorgeously photographed in bleached out grays and pale hues (the blood red of the Nazi flag being the only exception), Valkyrie is often disturbingly beautiful to look at. Bryan Singer always pays a lot of attention to composition and detail and this film is no exception. A seemingly innocuous close-up of a soldier killing a mosquito with his cigarette, for example, sends chills down one's spine. The filmmakers keep proceeds lean and understated, focusing on actions rather emotions and using silence to encourage the viewer to weigh the consequences of each rash decision, each perilous operation. 

Yet, while the film could be described as coldly efficient, it's far from emotionless. The very fact that we all know exactly how the coup will end should have neutered the suspense and removed us from the viewing equation. Surprisingly, the exact opposite happens. With the hindsight of history, the doomed nature of Operation Valkyrie gives everything an undertow of pathos. Tom Cruise, used to portraying confident action heroes, becomes a tragic martyr, as do his accomplices, inexorably headed towards a summary execution as traitors. 

That this WWII thriller should move us as it does makes up for many of its faults. There  are some decidedly clunky lines and the conspirators' motivations - on which each character's life hinges - are barely alluded to. In the case of Cruise's character, they boil down to simplistic inspirational speeches, leaving no room for moral ambiguity. 

Then there's the problem of sympathizing with German officers of the Reich. Whatever their convictions about Hitler may be, the screenwriters keep mum on ideology, and the extermination of Jews, queers and others - to cite but one of its many tenets - barely gets a mention. It's also unclear how much the film sticks to the facts (or at least to historical accounts of the facts). Intent on keeping a straight face and a serious tone, the film's impact hinges on our faith in the storytellers' truthfulness. When the coup unfolds, it's easy to imagine its scope and scale augmented for the sake of heightened drama. This is, after all, a Hollywood movie. It's hard in other words to suspend disbelief when what you're asked is to believe what you're told.

In fact I almost wished Singer had pushed the revisionist fantasy to its logical conclusion and imagined a successful coup against Hitler. The story already unfolds like a big budget, extended Twilight Zone episode, why not take it a step further: camp up the tone a notch and save Europe from itself? Tom Cruise and the Hollywood machine make a decent film striving to do justice to the darkest hour of history. They might've made a great one had they not even bothered.

Valkyrie is out in the US. It hits Australian multiplexes on January 22 and British screens the next day. I recommend seeing it on DVD, dubbed in German and with the colour saturation turned down to zero.

In the kingdom of the blind (Valkyrie)

In the name of the father (W.)

Oliver Stone can't resist a Big American Subject and we know from his mediocre World Trade Centre that getting it right is less important than getting in first. He's done controversial American presidents before, from JFK to Nixon, so George W. Bush was a no-brainer (no pun intended). 

So what if the guy's still in office? So what if Stanley Weiser's script offers very little in the way of new insight or critical distance? Oliver Stone is worried about his legacy, his place in history as the commander in chief of our undivided attention, as the great chronicler of American life. Well, yes, too right. It is the opinion of this humble blogger that Oliver Stone should be worried about his legacy. Very worried indeed.

This psycho-biographical portrait of the 43rd American president alternates between war room chatter pre- and post-invasion of Iraq and supposedly illuminating anecdotes of Junior's antics in the 60's and 70's. As the flashbacks catch up with the present, the viewer's spirits sink further and further into an abyss of despair, from which they soar up again in a fireball of anger when the lights go up, 129 long minutes after this excruciatingly naive expose first began.

Our collective hangover (and by our I mean the world's) hasn't even started but already we are asked to relive the most painful moments of the Bush years. As the disastrous repercussions of Dubya's policies begin to truly come into ugly focus, what could possibly entice us to put ourselves through this ordeal? 

Perhaps we'd do it for the sake of comedy? There is more comedy in a minute of Tina Fey's SNL skits than in this entire movie. Not that the filmmakers don't try hard for laughs... but if there's one thing we've learned over the past eight years, it's that there's nothing easier than laughing a Dubya. I've heard primary school students taking the piss with more wit.

Perhaps we'd do it for the sake of damning political indictment? Unless you are both braindead and a republican, there's no accusation in this film that you won't already be familiar with, no satire that hasn't been road tested to death, no criticism that won't already have occurred to you waiting in line at the gas pump.

Perhaps we'd do it for the sake of insight? There is very little in the way of revelation here. What passes for insight in Stone's film is the psychology-101 banality of daytime television. Stone's attempts at explaining away evil through psychobabble is as lazy as it is dangerous. Whatever poor Junior went through between birth - silver spoon in mouth - and inauguration - hand stuck to the bible - it's neither interesting, unique or scarring enough to sustain investigative zeal.

Maybe he wanted to impress Our Father? Perhaps. But for all his inarticulate mumblings, Bush has ironically done a better job of explaining the role his faith plays in his decision making process than the writer and director of W. 

Maybe he wanted to impress his father? There's certainly material here. Stone focuses squarely on Senior's disapproval and incapacity to communicate, Junior's love-hate relationship with him. The oedipal quest portrayed here (where the un-erecting of Saddam Hussein's statue is a quasi-erotic apotheosis stolen from a father who wasn't able to reach climax during the first Gulf War) is unfortunately as subtle as something from Dallas.

W. is a bad film, hiding its lack of intellectual rigor behind its zeitgeist-chasing, moment-defining ambition. Tonally dispersed, it switches from grotesque parody - simplistic satire of a simplistic man - to weighty but misguided attempts at realism. At its best, the juxtaposition of these disparate styles is tedious and grating. At its worst - news images of the bombings of Baghdad set to 4th of July BBQ anthems - it's downright insulting.  

It might have been interesting to go all the way, using the codes of the soap opera to portray this larger-than-life tragedy: an arrogant, privileged prick working out his family issues on a geopolitical stage - with disastrous consequences. Canned laughter could have represented our disgust-disguised-as-mocking attitude to Bush's presidency. Unfortunately, the brief forays into sitcom feel almost accidental. Stylistically, Stone doesn't know whether to go for The Queen or Dr Strangelove. 

W. is a waste of talent, from Stanley Weiser's plodding script to Stone's poor execution (the film is rumoured to have been rushed to be released before the 2008 elections). Paul Cantelon's score is muzak meets Dynasty. Thandie Newton's constipated performance as Condie Rice is so cringe-worthy many in the audience were openly laughing at her whenever she graced the screen. 

Josh Brolin saves face, tackling an impossible role with infectious gusto, infusing his impersonation with energy and humour. His Dubya is still a caricature, but Brolin makes him believable as a screen character, a minor miracle in this narrative mess. Elizabeth Banks and Toby Jones also make good impressions, cast against type as Laura Bush and Karl Rove respectively.

For such a film to exist however, it would take a more talented writer, a more cerebral director, and more than a little critical distance.  This inept document of a critical period in American and world history is made all the more dangerous by its likely endurance on our shelves and in our collective memory as a pop-culture product designed for mass-appeal. 

W. is a missed opportunity to hammer the final nail in the coffin of this exasperating double-term. A missed opportunity to get at some kind of truth about a country able to elect both a Bush and an Obama to the executive office in the same decade. A missed opportunity to focus not on the puppet, but on those who pulled the strings, not on the performer, but on those who paid good money for the show.

W. is out on DVD in the US on February 10th and on Australian screens February 26th.

In the name of the father (W.)

The Pain Factor (The Wrestler)

Following a credit sequence which introduces the illustrious career of professional wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson through a series of fight posters, The Wrestler opens with the words "20 years later" and a shot of a tired hulk of man, his back to the camera, coughing his heart out. 

Now an ageing fighter putting his body through hell in the gyms and community halls of derelict industrial suburbs, Randy Robinson (Mickey Rourke) spends his hard-earned small bills on the short-lived pain relief of a lap dance by a fourtysomething stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei). 

Randy comes across as a man who prides himself on being a loner, a survivor who spends his weekdays hauling crates in a supermarket warehouse and his weeknights holed up in his trailer, a bottle of cheap bourbon for company. On weekends he basks in the waning floodlights of his last fans, faux-ramming his elbows into the thick necks of fellow has-beens and signing autographs at poorly attended wrestling conventions. Getting old's a bitch though, and the steroids don't help any: a heart attack threatens to end to his career and forces The Ram to confront his mortality.

Faced with the end of everything he lived for, Randy commences an awkward flirtation with Cassidy while attempting to reconnect with his bitter lesbian daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), who isn't ready to forgive him for walking out on her so many years ago. Redemption won't come easy.

Mickey Rourke's "don't call it a comeback" rant in recent interviews is pointless and he knows it - Darren Aronofsky's film is designed and promoted as a comeback vehicle on every possible level, and Rourke owes his inevitable Oscar nomination to this strategy at least as much as to his admittedly stunning performance.

It's not often that a film's lead is cast with such skill (Nic Cage was once attached), the fit between the actor and the character here is so tight we may as well be watching a film about Rourke's career, A-list fame in the 80's giving way to a boxing and acting career in freefall after a decade of temperamental excesses and self-abuse.

Rourke is entirely believable as a man wrestling with his demons, willing - but not entirely able - to fight the last fight. He doesn't just dress the part, he is the part, disappearing entirely behind a pockmarked face, long bleached hair, distressed muscles and leathery skin. When he answers a worried Cassidy "it only hurts when I breathe" after a particularly vicious fight, there's no denying the authentic tone of Rourke's husky voice.

Mickey Rourke's performance has been fuelling the buzz ever since the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year (I'd skipped the press and industry screening, scheduled the day of the announcement of the film's Golden Lion win in Venice, fearing long lines). In a way, the true talent here belongs to the director whose understated approach knows when to rein it in and keep in real in the face of the over-the-top antics of his larger-than-life actor/character. 

While The Wrestler is an impressive, enjoyable and eventually quite moving film, I found its depiction of violence somewhat problematic. There's a large serving here of masochism as entertainment. Sure, that's something to be expected from a film about professional wrestling. But rather than distance the viewer from this through clever satire or insightful commentary, the film works on pretty much the same level. Taking a page from the success of torture porn (from Saw to Hostel), it seeks to arouse through graphic depictions of sado-masochism.

I feel that the praise for Rourke's performance is proportional to amount of pain the character (and behind him, the actor) accepts to inflict upon himself (and yes, this includes the hairnet when Randy gets a job behind the deli counter at the supermarket). The award-bestowing establishment, like the press, seems to evaluate a performance based on the amount of transformative violence exeprienced by a character. Wrestling is fake, but so, we'd do well to remember, is acting. What's very real here however is the craftsmanship behind the film. 

That the film is tender without being sentimental is the great surprise of what is really a rather straightforward screenplay by Robert Siegel. The Wrestler could also be called a comeback for director Darren Aronofsky, keen to erase the bad reviews for The Fountain. Sticking to a linear narrative entirely devoid of flourishes, he leaves behind the stylistic hijinks of Pi or Requiem for a Dream, opting for a grainy, gritty approach which lets the story tell itself. 

The synopsis might read like movie-of-the-week melodrama but the film is carefully calibrated to eschew sentimentality. The editing saves the day more than once, with brutal cuts interrupting any obvious messages (such as Cinderella's song on the radio, "don't know what you got till it's...") or moving orchestration (Clint Mansell's score is often cut mid-phrase). 

The film is never more affecting than in its exploration of the vicious cycles of poverty and unemployment, and their consequences on the emotional well-being of the underclass. Marisa Tomei's single-mom stripper doesn't have a heart of gold, she's got bills to pay. Like Randy, she accepts to objectify and degrade her body for a few dollars a day. Like Randy, her survival depends on the sadistic voyeurism a working class itself in need of escapism. This bleak assessment of a society where the poor revel in the suffering of the poor is The Wrestler's true punch to the stomach. 

The Wrestler is out in the US. It is released in the UK on January 15 and in Australia on January 16.

The Pain Factor (The Wrestler)