TIFF Review: Gravity

My other post makes my feelings more plain, as this was a quickly written mini-review, but these were my first thoughts on the disappointing Gravity. Read them at Movie Mezzanine.

Anti-Gravity: Why Alfonso Cuarón’s Space Odyssey Is Shortsighted About Long-Takes

So, I was one of a precious few people who found Gravity to be a mediocre film, not just in its weak script (which has been noted even by admirers) but in its meaningless, programmed long-takes. CGI and digital cameras have unlocked new possibilities for extended shots, but I find them to be so hollow, and I place Gravity among films like Episode III and The Avengers that use massively scaled, digitally rendered long-takes that highlight to me only their falsity and the unimpressive accomplishment of adding a shot's mise-en-scène during post-production.

My full essay is up at Film.com.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

After Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets solved some of the issues of the first film while further entrenching many of its other weaknesses, Chris Columbus at last parted ways with the franchise as the producers decided to extend the shooting length for the rest of the films to ensure they weren't rushed. After fantasy maestro Guillermo Del Toro declined the offer to direct, the mantle passed to one of his compatriots, Alfonso Cuaròn.

That must have seemed a bit odd to those old enough to know who Alfonso Cuaròn was: his previous film, y tu mamá también, remains one of the most critically lauded films of the decade, but you'd hardly hand the keys of a fantasy franchise to the director for it. The closest he'd even come to fantasy was A Little Princess, which is based on children's literature but not more about a child who believes in magic than a world in which it truly exists. After the first two movies triumphed at the box office, perhaps the producers felt they could do no wrong and found themselves willing to experiment. Even so, it was a gamble.

One that paid off magnificently, I might add. Steve Kloves, still, unfortunately, the writer, apparently read some critiques of the other two films which singled out his devotion to the narrative and mystery of the books and not the character. A curious fixation, as surely the legions of Potter fans already knew what was going to happen, so the emphasis on mystery made little sense.

That's not to say that there's no mysterious air to the film; far from it, it's the only one of the film series yet to actually make you wonder what you'll see next. We know that Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) escapes from the wizard prison Azkaban, and that it somehow makes life for Harry more dangerous, but Cuaròn so streamlines the film (down a healthy 20 minutes from the previous installment) that details are left vague. We never really learn how he escaped, and even the explanation of his crime goes no further than some mumblings of betrayal and of his relationship to Harry. The overwhelming majority of those who have seen or will watch the movie in the future will know all about Sirius, but enough of him is concealed in darkness and Oldman plays him with enough of a manic edge that the character works better than he ever did on the page.

Black's story seems all the more unsettling with Cuaròn's direction. Where the first two films had too much of a glossed-over look, even in the darkness of the Chamber of Secrets, Azkaban borders on the Expressionist in its superb use of shadow and mise-en-scène. Hogwarts now appears more cluttered, more angular, and its sweeping majesty carries a bit of an edge to it. The soul-sucking dementors are not as scary as they perhaps should be, yet the effect of them moving through the scenes are (pardon the pun) chilling. The lone shot of a flower wilting and freezing to herald their advance is more captivating than anything in the first two movies.

Also joining the cast alongside Oldman are Timothy Spall as the sniveling Peter Pettigrew, rat-faced even when he's not turning himself into an animal, and David Thewlis, whose Remus Lupin looks just as dishelved as his Johnny from Naked, only with an air of warmth and soft, encouraging wit. Rounding out the new additions is Michael Gambon as Dumbledore, replacing the late Richard Harris. Gambon thankfully does not attempt to ape Harris' portrayal and instead moves the character somewhat closer to his original personality: in one great bit, he absent-mindedly taps Ron on his broken leg as Ron winces in agony. Emma Thompson's loopy Trewlaney, however, is simply too over-the-top for her own good, and she fails to elicit more than a chuckle or two.

In place of the cluttered narrative of the first two films, Prisoner of Azkaban takes the time to follow its leads, who have matured along with their characters. Ron seems doomed to never move outside of comic relief, but Grint pulls it off nicely, and his burgeoning romantic scenes with Hermione -- more explicitly stated than in the book -- have a sweet, unforced charm to them. Radcliffe, who's never really gotten the angsty aspect of the character down, does a fine job of it here: when he announces his intention to find and kill Sirius Black, he conveys some dark nuance. But it's Watson, normally the weakest link of the trio, who walks away with the entire movie, even outpacing the adults. Hermione's put up with a lot throughout the series, and that one punch she lands on Malfoy still makes me want to stand and cheer.

Unfortunately, Kloves' noble attempt to inject character moments reveal his weaknesses as a writer. Without the safety net of simple recreation to help him, we see his inability to coax nuance out of the story, and the mystery of the film comes from omissions and Cuaròn's framing. Indeed, the director's rapport with the kids garners their best work yet, and the older actors are made a real part of the story and not simply plot devices for the first time. It also helps the film greatly that John Williams backs off the insufferable loudness of his previous scores, and actually this ranks as one of his finest scores and one of his most wonderfully nuanced.

That soundtrack aids the visual poetry of Cuaròn's direction, and combined with the interesting, if muddled, story makes for a major leap forward in the franchise's quality. The director's deft hand with a bigger scale set the stage for Children of Men, the perfect mix of his intimate detail and this newly found epic sweep, and reflects a clear influence of his friend Guillermo Del Toro. This dark, vaguely Expressionist fairy tale is the first of the Harry Potter films to really grab your excitement, and it's a dam good fantasy film in its own right.

Y tu mamá también

Alfonso Cuarón, one of the so-called "Three Amigos" of contemporary Mexican cinema (the other two of course being his friends and collaborators Guillermo Del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu), is possibly the most balanced of the group: he's able to mix Iñárritu's grasp of character with Del Toro's grand scale. His Children of Men remains the greatest science fiction film of the decade, and the best since 1998's Dark City if not 1985's Brazil, and he gave us the only truly well-made Harry Potter film yet released (and it's likely to stay that way, considering David "Just cut out all that silly character nonsense" Yates is seeing it through to the end).

Y tu mamá también is not Cuarón's first film, but it's the one that put him on the map of the cinephile community and paved the way for his successes this decade. Its premise is simple but, as is the hallmark of all great films, it turns clichés on their heads and delivers a final product unlike any other. Had Cuarón been born an American, he might have taken the road trip of two adolescents on the verge of adulthood and mined it for cheap humor, as we are wont to do. Instead, he presents us with a story of lust, humor, sadness and the losses we incur when we grow up. Along the way, we see it grow into a metaphor for the class gap in Mexico.

Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal) bid farewell to their girlfriends, who are leaving for a summer abroad in Italy, in the opening moments of the film in the ay that young lovers do: by getting one last piece of nookie. They have their ladies swear not to bed any men in Europe, only to go skirt-chasing themselves the second the plane leaves Mexican airspace. Their efforts are unsuccessful, and soon they're trapped in the terrible vise of ennui.

The pair attend an opulent wedding -- Julio comes from an upper-middle class family, while Tenoch's father is a high-ranking politician -- and meet Luisa (Maribel Verdú), an older woman and wife to Tenoch's cousin Jano. The brash young men try to impress her with talk of a road trip to an exotic beach (a made-up location they dub la Boca del Cielo, or "Heaven's Mouth"), but she's having none of it. Later that night, however, she receives a phone call from her husband admitting his adultery, and she decides to accompany the boys.

As they set out to their imaginary destination, Julio and Tenoch attempt to one-up another in terms of pure braggadocio, each trying to seduce Luisa with tales of their sexual prowess. When they prod her for her own sexual past, she responds in more measured terms, focusing on her first love (who died in an accident) and her crumbling relationship with her husband. While the men's tales only concern the fulfillment of lust, of conquest, Luisa's reflect love, albeit not in the naïve you might expect.

When she calls her husband to bid a final farewell, she breaks down and seduces both of the boys to ease the pain. Rather than give them some sense of satisfaction -- considering how badly they were trying to win her favor -- it brings out mutual resentment and jealousy. Each boy is so thrilled at the idea of having sex with this older woman, but we see how their previous sexcapades did not truly provide any experience, as they seem utterly clueless when confronted with a woman who actually knows what good sex is. Coupled with the jealousy of watching the other man sleep with her, they drop all pretension and reveal themselves for the children they really are.

Only when Luisa threatens to leave them do they calm themselves, and she becomes the instrument of their sexual awakening. The film culminates with a moment of shared passion between the three of them that alters them forever. Too often films of this nature believe that they turn the characters' world upside-down, but Cuarón truly rips apart everything these men thought they knew about themselves, and it understandably scares them.

As they drive across the Mexican landscape, Cuarón beautifully juxtaposes the drunken, pot-smoking antics of the boys with the decaying Mexico just outside their filthy car windows. Beggars surround them at all times, yet they pay little heed to the sea of needy. When the trio stumble across a deserted, exotic beach, they pay a local fisherman to share his food and guide them around the beautiful area; then the soundtrack breaks for one of the frequent narrational asides, mentioning that, in the future, businessmen would destroy this unmarred location to erect a resort, forcing the fisherman to work for them as a janitor. The film as a whole takes places at the end of the Institutional Revolutionary Party's 71-year reign, giving the lads' journey of self-discovery a political undertone and using them as personifications of the nation's transition under Vincente Fox.

Those layers make an already fascinating narrative that much more rewarding. Y tu mamá también combines so many messages and emotions so effortlessly it's a wonder that the film manages to move at such a brisk pace. It certainly helps that Cuarón's camera floats among these characters so gracefully that, as with Scorsese's movements, you're more inclined to view it as another character than an observer.

Hilarious and sad, straightforward and layered, Y tu mamá también is one of the greatest films of the decade. What a shame that films like this cannot even face the MPAA ratings board for fear that it would be given the NC-17 kiss of death, while the trashy violence of the Saw series only rarely has any trouble getting by with an R.