Lady Macbeth

Sunday night I went to the Broadway, as I often do on a Sunday night, to see Lady Macbeth.  My friend saw this film at Sundance and gave it a very unfavorable review (even going so far as to call it "indie rubbish" which has become a bit of an inside joke with us) while another friend loved it, hailing it as a masterpiece.  After viewing this film myself, my reaction falls somewhere in between.  Katherine (a mesmerizing Florence Pugh) is forced into an arranged marriage with a much older man, Alexander (Paul Hilton), who shows very little interest in her.  Alexander's father, Boris (Christopher Fairbank), continually reminds her of her marital duty which is, namely, to provide them with a legitimate heir, and he also mistreats her.  She is kept to a very rigid schedule and is never allowed outside of the house.  When both Alexander and Boris are called away, she takes advantage of the opportunity and roams the countryside.  She also begins a passionate affair with Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), a groomsman on the estate.  When Boris returns, he hears about the affair, which has been conducted very openly, and has Sebastian beaten and locked up.  Katherine poisons Boris so she can be with Sebastian, showing very little remorse.  As is often the case, they are forced to commit several more murders (including a particularly egregious one) in order to keep up pretenses and Sebastian begins to feel more and more guilty.  There are a few things I really liked about this film but there are definitely some aspects that I didn't enjoy.  I was quite impressed by Florence Pugh's performance as a woman who will go to any lengths to keep her newfound freedom and her journey is very compelling, at least in the beginning.  I was on the edge of my seat most of the time and the eerie silence on screen added greatly to my unease.  I also think that William Oldroyd made some very interesting choices; for example, highly composed shots of Katherine sitting on a couch wearing a buttoned up dress and corset with her hair tightly coiled juxtaposed with beautiful shots of her roaming the moor unbound with her hair blowing in the wind are highly effective at establishing her motivation.  However, some of his choices are less effective.  I found the scenes involving a cat to be completely bewildering.  I am sure that these scenes are meant to be artistic but the symbolism was lost on me because the cat disappears after a few early scenes never to be seen again.  Why?  Another problem I had was that, while I sympathized with Katherine in the first half of the film because of her ill-treatment, I found many of her actions in the latter half to be completely reprehensible.  She ends up being more ruthless than her oppressors, particularly to her maid, Anna (Naomi Ackie).  I had to look away during a scene involving a horse and the final murder (which went on for so long) of an innocent child was especially brutal.  The ambiguous ending did not hold her to account for her actions in a way that brought me satisfaction.  Finally, I don't know if it is just me but I thought there was a racist undertone to this film.  There is absolutely no discussion of race but all of the characters portrayed by black actors end up as victims and it left a bad taste in my mouth.  Hmmm.  Have you seen this film?  What did you think?

Note:  This film is not based on William Shakespeare's Scottish play (as I originally thought) but, rather, on the novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov.

Atomic Blonde

Atomic Blonde is a sleek and stylish thriller with Cold War intrigue and a kick-ass female spy.  What could be better on a Saturday night?  Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) is an MI6 agent sent to Berlin just before the fall of the wall to retrieve a list, stolen by the KGB, of every British agent under cover in the Soviet Union and to discover and assassinate a double agent named Satchel.  She is aided by the Berlin Chief of Station (James McAvoy) who may or may not be her ally.  I found it to be an interesting, if sometimes convoluted, story with one twist after another but what makes this movie so much fun to watch is the action.  The set pieces are pretty violent (Lorraine does get pretty battered and bloody) but, as I mentioned, they are extremely stylish with incredibly complex choreography and camera work with multiple angles.  There is a fantastic sequence involving a stiletto heel in a moving car, another one involving a garden hose over a balcony, and yet another in a stairway (which goes on for at least ten minutes without any discernible cuts).  Charlize Theron does most of her own stunts and it is impossible to take your eyes off of her as she punches, shoots, and kicks her way out of trouble in one fabulous outfit after another.   James McAvoy looks like he is having so much fun with a "disastrous Sinead O'Connor haircut" and a knowing smirk.  As a child of the 80s, I really loved the soundtrack which features at least a dozen pop songs from that decade.  I think I giggled out loud when I heard the opening notes to "Der Kommissar."  My only complaint with this movie is that we see Lorraine naked multiple times (she takes an ice bath, not once but, twice and she has quite the sex scene with another female agent) for no reason beyond titillation.  Can we please have a strong female character without resorting to objectifying her?  However, this is a fun movie and I recommend it to fans of the spy genre.

A Ghost Story

A Ghost Story is a film that just about blew my mind at Sundance this year.  It stayed with me for quite a while and I eagerly anticipated its wide release so I could see it again.  I have to say that I found it to be even more profound upon a second viewing on Friday night and I was not alone in my reaction.  The entire audience stayed seated in absolute silence long after the credits had rolled and the lights had come back on.  The narrative revolves around a man (Casey Affleck) who dies in a car accident and returns, shrouded in a sheet, to the home he shared with his wife (Rooney Mara).  He stays and watches her as she grieves and then eventually moves away.  He continues to haunt the house for decades as it is occupied by various people, is demolished, and is replaced by a high-rise building until he is finally able to let go of his attachment.  There is another ghost haunting the house next door until he is able to leave behind a person he is waiting for.  The ghost is one of the most sympathetic characters I've ever seen on film, even completely shrouded as he is, and the long, sustained shots with very little action are strangely compelling.  The score is very evocative and greatly enhances the otherworldly mood.  As previously mentioned, I found many of the themes to be so moving.  I've always believed that the spiritual aspect of humanity is more important than the physical which is, indeed, impermanent.  We must ultimately leave behind our attachment to people, places, and things to progress on our journey.  It is enchanting to believe that we leave behind a piece of ourselves and that we will be remembered but our time here is temporary and time inevitably and inexorably moves on.  We don't really belong here in this physical plane.  I know I will be thinking about these ideas for a long time to come and I suspect that this beautiful film will provide even more philosophical musings each time I watch it.  I must admit that A Ghost Story might not appeal to everyone.  It is a high-concept film and you must commit to this concept fully in order to appreciate it but, if you can, you will be forever changed by its powerful message.

Maudie

Thursday I spent the afternoon in a darkened theater full of senior citizens (seriously, I was the youngest person there by decades) watching Maudie, the real-life love story between Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis (Sally Hawkins) and her husband Everett (Ethan Hawke).  Maud suffers from a debilitating form of arthritis (although we don't learn the nature of her ailment until almost the end of the film) and her brother and aunt consider her to be a tremendous burden.  One day she answers an advertisement to be a maid for a curmudgeonly and reclusive fishmonger, mostly to get away from her aunt.  Everett lives in a dilapidated one room shack in rural Nova Scotia and he treats Maud very cruelly, even telling her that his dogs are more important than she is.  She begins painting simple flowers, trees, and birds on the walls to brighten her grim existence.  She eventually worms her way into Everett's heart and they marry, although he is still very gruff with her.  She paints cards to deliver to all of Everett's customers and attracts the attention of a wealthy New Yorker on vacation who commissions a painting which brings her national exposure.  She spends the rest of her life selling her paintings outside of her tiny shack and when she dies Everett realizes how much he loved her.  While the film tells the story of Maud's life and career as an artist, the narrative focuses on the relationship between the two lonely outsiders and it is such a poignant story.  My favorite line is when Maud says that they are like two mismatched socks!  Sally Hawkins gives an incredible performance that is sure to be remembered during awards season and this is an Ethan Hawke like you've never seen before.  I feel that I have unjustly pigeon-holed him as the goofy deadbeat dad that he has portrayed lately (see here, here, and here) but he surprised me because he is marvelous in this multi-layered role.  After a while I didn't even notice that I was watching Ethan Hawke.  In addition, there are some stunning shots of the surrounding landscape (Canada is a beautiful country) and I really enjoyed the score by Michael Timmins (of the Cowboy Junkies, a favorite band from my youth).  I highly recommend this lovely film.

Note:  I am not very familiar with Sally Hawkins but she seems to be everywhere at the moment.  This performance captivated me and I am really looking forward her next film, The Shape of Water.

Summer Reading: Eligible

The next selection on my summer reading list was Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld. I was really looking forward to this novel because it is a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, one of my favorite novels of all time. I absolutely hated it and, before you accuse me of being a purist, I loved Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame Smith because I thought it was so clever. Eligible is not clever; it is absolute rubbish. Liz Bennett is a writer for a gossip magazine and Jane Bennett is a yoga instructor, both of whom live in New York.  Liz is in a long term relationship with a married man named Jasper Wick and Jane, concerned about her biological clock, is inseminated by a donor. The two of them are called back to their home in Cincinnati when their father suffers a heart attack. They end up staying for the summer to sort things out because the family's rambling Tudor home is in a state of disrepair and the Bennetts are living well beyond their means because Mrs. Bennett is addicted to shopping and the three younger girls are sponging off their parents. The family is invited to a Fourth of July barbecue hosted by the Lucases where they meet Chip Bingley, a contestant on a popular TV program (like The Bachelor), and his friend Fitzwilliam Darcy, a Harvard educated brain surgeon. Mrs. Bennett is a fan of the TV show and encourages Jane's relationship with Chip while Liz takes an immediate dislike to the snobby Darcy (although that doesn't stop them from having casual sex with each other). Chip and Jane eventually break up when Jane discovers that the IUI has been successful and that she is pregnant while Liz spurns Darcy's proposal (for no discernible reason). The rest of the novel is about getting the two couples back together (in a trashy televised ceremony for Chip's TV show). Ugh! I hated so many things about this novel. It is almost as if Sittenfeld was trying replace every plot point in the original novel with the most salacious details possible. I hated what she did to all of the characters: Liz is a cynical woman involved with a married man, Jane is a passive woman who lives off of the kindness of others, Mary may or may not be a lesbian simply because she is intelligent, Kitty and Lydia are crass and vulgar young women, Mrs. Bennett is racist and homophobic, Mr. Bennett is nasty to everyone, Mr. Bingley is a simpering weakling, Mr. Darcy is bland and unappealing, Miss Lucas is unmarried because she is overweight, Mr. Collins frequents prostitutes, and Miss Darcy is anorexic. I didn't care about any of them by the time I reached the bewildering end. It took a long time to reach the end because the story is bloated with so many useless details such as the names of every single street Liz passes as she runs in the morning, a disgusting spider infestation, and an interview with a feminist named Kathy De Bourgh that does nothing to advance the plot. Ugh! The original novel is a brilliant comedy of manners but this novel has reduced the beloved characters to people without any manners to speak of. Avoid this novel at all costs.

Have you read Eligible? What did you think?