The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher, 2011)

Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is to sexism what Kathryn Stockett's The Help is to racism. Both work less as attempts to grapple with serious topics than shallow wish-fulfillment fantasies by those unaffected by the subject matter. For Stockett, a white woman, it was the harshness of the Jim Crow era as catalogued by an author stand-in so emphatically not racist that black people not only trust her but risk their lives to secure her book deal. For Larsson, who helplessly witnessed a gang rape as a teenager, it is Sweden's startling patterns of sexual abuse as catalogued by an author stand-in so emphatically not sexist that the avenging fury of violated Woman herself not only trusts him but screws him. Furthermore, as it was written while Larsson was in hiding over his reporting, the book also addresses his longstanding issues with toothless investigative journalism and Sweden's lingering extreme-right element.

Yet David Fincher's adaptation is not really about any of those things. Tossing out Larsson's self-righteousness entirely, the film also reduces protagonist Mikael Blomkvist's almost comically active sex life—it's amusing that the novel's version of Blomkvist gets laid as much as James Bond, and he's played here by the man himself, Daniel Craig. But Fincher even hacks out the questionable feminist empowerment of Lisbeth Salander, presenting her violence with a coldness that robs her vengeance of its bloodlust. Instead, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo acts as a retroactive bridge between several of Fincher's films: it links the religion-tinged carnage of Se7en with the analytical anti-whodunit of Zodiac, as well as that film's painstakingly slow-going, interpersonal analog with The Social Network's ultra-fast, beyond-humanity digital. If Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is about the late author's preoccupations, then Fincher's is about his own.

Beginners (Mike Mills, 2011)

As precious as it can be, Mike Mills' Beginners overcomes its occasional indie accoutrements—twee, arty montages à la Wes Anderson abound—to tell a moving story about one man's total emotional upheaval and his attempt to put his life back in order. Based on Mills' own life experiences, Beginners sidesteps as many clichés as it embraces, moving beyond its quirks to get at the real impacts of life's oddities and even avoiding the pitfall of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Like Mills, Oliver (Ewan McGregor) finds himself in a painful spot in the early 2000s. After his mother's death, his father, then 75 years old, came out as gay. Four years later, he died of cancer. Mills fractures the timeline of events so that we receive this information at the start and get constant flashbacks both to Hal's (Christopher Plummer) new life and to Oliver's reexaminations of his childhood in the wake of his father's outing as he puts the pieces together.

Wind Across the Everglades (Nicholas Ray & Budd Schulberg, 1958)

[The following is a contribution to the Nicholas Ray Blog-A-Thon for Tony Dayoub's Cinema Viewfinder.]

Wind Across the Everglades marked the beginning of the end for Nicholas Ray. After falling ill during several productions during his career and necessitating shots from other directors, Everglades was the first time Ray's substance abuse problems finally got him fired. As such, it opens up a contentious debate centered on the film's auteurist cred. Budd Schulberg, the film's writer and co-producer, took over for Ray and purportedly discarded a great deal of footage in the editing bay. But if the final product certainly feels to have been put together by another's hand, there are numerous visual and narrative traits common to Ray's oeuvre.
 

Set in the late 19th century, Wind Across the Everglades charts American expansion into Florida, opening up new territory through swamps to Miami. It also creates a market for the plumage of region-specific birds, sparking a poaching frenzy that flagrantly ignores conservation laws, and few people rise to the challenge of monitoring the glades to enforce these laws. But when a nature studies professor named Walt Murdock (Christopher Plummer) steps off a train and immediately gets arrested for indignantly ripping the feathers off a woman's hat, the Audobon Society realizes they have just the man for the job. Unfortunately for the now option-less Murdock, the poaching gangs won't give up their lucrative trades without a fight, and as he ventures into the glades, Murdock finds himself confronted with a way of life at odds with his own even, in true Ray fashion, as he comes to see his rival as an equal not merely in intelligence and capability but almost spiritual connection to their setting.

The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005)

Thus far in his slim corpus, each Terrence Malick film has solidified and purified Malick’s transcendentalist belief in the connection of man and nature, even when he shows horrible, destructive acts. The murder spree in Badlands fits with uncomfortable harmony with the flat plains and scattered, gnarled grass lining the sides of Midwestern country roads. Days of Heaven moved deeper into that territory to bask in the glow of our amber waves of grain, yet the mangled love triangle and plot to steal the farmer’s wealth contrasts to the invasion of locusts naturally laying waste to the area. The Thin Red Line builds further on this contrast, presenting even the monstrous environmental and human cost of war as an exaggerated of the destruction inherent in an ecosystem even as it pushed gently and spiritually for an end to such horrors.

Malick’s films, like Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poetry, make me want to walk in a field, palms outstretched, letting leaves and blades of foliage brush against my fingertips. When I experience their work, I feel that I can go outside and be jolted by the current running through nature, running through us as well if we’d stop breaking the circuit. Their conceptions of the universe are heady, allegorical and concerned less with what’s before their transparent eyeball than its spiritual essence (even the romance between Smith and Pocahontas feels like an encapsulation of the pure love of nature for those who can tap into its grace). Yet they also are some of the most tactile artists to ever live, offering intoxicating panoramas of nature and the past, present and future it contains. Unlike Emerson, however, Malick lacks the self-absorbed narrow-mindedness that undercuts his own idealism. Malick seeks to capture it all, even when he leaves out one side entirely (as he did in The Thin Red Line). His view of destruction as but one facet within nature is but one example of his more universal belief in the force that connects us.

That Malick would make a film about Native Americans seems so obvious it’s a wonder he didn’t find the inspiration to do it about 30 years before he released The New World in 2005. Perhaps it was for the best, though: by building off the moral, philosophical and natural themes he’d refined to that point, Malick crafted unquestionably the most singular film to chart the English settlement of America and the interaction with the tribes already there. It is not about environmentally indifferent white settler vs. the attuned native, though certainly conflict and discrepancies exist, as do moments of horrific violence that destroy so much that nature csually covers over in a season. Nor is it a Disneyfied version of John Smith’s romance with Pocahontas, a symbolic union of an open-minded Englishman bonding with a purer spirit, though elements of that exist as well.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Terry Gilliam's latest feature, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, arrives in theaters just as besotted with issues as all of his other tortured productions, but if only one positive aspect arose from Heath Ledger's death (and I can think of no other remotely bright side to that tragedy), it is that it secured Gilliam's film a wide release. In other circumstances, no film this uncompromisingly bizarre could have slipped into so many theaters.

In a year defined, in part, by career-summarizing work from distinctive filmmakers (Inglourious Basterds, A Serious Man, The Limits of Control), The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus treads in Gilliam's familiar milieu -- the splintered line between reality and dreams -- and a decently evocative alternative title might have read: Baron Munchausen's Flying Circus. For, like Munchausen, The Imaginarium opens with an acting troupe, but they remain the focus of the film, traveling from street corner to street corner peddling a curious sideshow that fell out of fashion several centuries ago. For Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), however, it might simply be force of habit, as he claims to be a thousand years old. Flanked by his trusty assistant Percy (Verne Troyer), his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) and crier/sleight-of-hand expert Anton (Andrew Garfield), Parnassus peddles his curious contraption -- a horse-driven theater-on-wheels with a curious mirror that promises to show intrepid customers (read: belligerent drunks and petulant children) the grandest reaches of their imagination.

Indeed, when someone bolts through the tacky foil folds of the hyped mirror, they enter a realm controlled by Parnassus but constructed by the thoughts and desires of the person who entered. It's a world of goofy CGI, never remotely realistic and never remotely trying to be. As such, it works as a place of dreams and imagination. Middle-aged women regain their youth and vigor, a boy wades through a world of candies and ice creams while blast things apart through his portable game console; but all who enter are subject not only to their desires and joys but the darker recesses of the mind, twisted temptations that offer an identifiable but cheap thrill amidst the fantastical ecstasy of the rest of the imaginarium.

Master of this twisted subrealm is the devil himself, Mr. Nick, who gave Parnassus the imaginarium, along with everlasting life for winning a bet. The two clearing have a history of games, as Nick appears throughout the film reminding Parnassus that he's meant to take Valentina on her 16th birthday. No one is better suited to the role of the devil, particularly one as smooth and jazzy as this one, as Tom Waits: in his day job, he breathes wheezing, gasping life into decrepit instruments long ago banished to a musical hell (including his voice, a ragged, beautiful tatters at this point), and if he is not the Hades of the musical world he is at least its Charon, the ferryman who guides lost, depraved souls to their final resting place. As an actor, Waits has the curious ability to appear in supporting roles, usually off-kilter and occasionally manic ones, and steal the show without hoarding the attention or chewing scenery. Nick promises to forgo his claim to Valentina's soul with yet another bet, promising her to the one who collects five souls first. How Parnassus actually collects the souls of those who enter and re-emerge is never made clear, nor what he does with those souls (the same is true, actually, for Satan), but the wager reveals an odd relationship between the devil and Parnassus: the devil is a trickster and a deceiver, but he likes to gamble more than win. He tends to enjoy a more cruel victory later when he "loses" anyway, but the act of outright winning the bet means he can't play anymore, which disappoints him more than losing face. Over time, we see that each is perhaps the truest friend the other has.

To collect souls, Parnassus must woo an eager crowd, something he hasn't done in decades. But a glimmer of hope appears in Tony (Heath Ledger, for a time), whom the troupe discovers hanging from a bridge. Suffering from amnesia, Tony alludes to a darker past involving the mob, but he proves an apt pitchman, drawing crowds with his seductive speechifying. To continue after Ledger's passing, Gilliam used Jude Law, Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell for Tony's scenes inside the imaginarium, and it's a move that works brilliantly, revealing the idealized portrait of the women he leads inside (as well as his own ever-shifting opinion of himself, allowing each of the three replacement actors to cater to their personae: Depp reflecting his rakishness, Farrell his darkness and Law his fresh-faced boyhood). Both Tony and Parnassus contain a bit of Gilliam, Tony being the one to entice you into the theater almost against your will and Parnassus the supreme creator of the impossible. Tony entrances crowds by reminding of them what no longer exists in the modern world -- the profound epiphany of imaginative storytelling -- something Gilliam clearly mourns as he gazes upon kids lost in video games and adults who've lost the ability to dream.

None of this is unfamiliar territory for the director, but he uses the limitless opportunity afforded by the structure of the imaginarium for some of his most sumptuous visuals yet. Furthermore, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus reflects just how British the ex-pat's sensibilities have become: Parnassus overflows with British humor, from the Pythonesque absurdity Gilliam helped create (men in dresses gets more than one laugh) to that magnificent deadpan that I'd begun to think was genetic amongst Brits: when some mobsters chase Tony into the imaginarium, Parnassus attempts to win their souls by presenting a group of policemen who ask them to join the force with a song-and-dance number that, buried in the sheer glorious nonsense of the moment, suggests some deliciously wicked reasons for joining, among them that their love of violence and oppression would be legalized. At least one joke is purely for the Brits: when Anton discovers a newspaper revealing some of Tony's past, Tony replies, "Don't believe everything you read in the paper. Especially the [Daily] Mirror." Perhaps Percy summarizes the film's off-kilter, twisted sensibilities by answering the question "Where are we?": "Geographically, Northern Hemisphere. Socially, on the margins. And narratively, with some way to go."

The story doesn't make sense. The ending in particular will frustrate those who appreciate the rest of the film. Yet I can't help but wonder if some of the film's harsher critics -- most of them, perhaps tellingly, American -- have ever even seen one of Gilliam's previous works. He doesn't like to end with a clear answer regarding what actually happened and what might be a dream or hallucination. When a child eying one of Parnassus' miniature plays asks Percy if it comes with "a happy ending," Percy gently declines, saying "We can't guarantee that." That's an appropriate response for a film about imagination: dreams don't always end on a positive note. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is perhaps Gilliam's most uncompromising feature to date; naturally, "uncompromising" does not ensure greatness (I would not hesitate to call Lars von Trier uncompromising), but Gilliam's vision complements Parnassus' scattershot narrative. His film is beautiful, twisted, corkscrewing, confusing, frustrating, tantalizing and tempting, and if Gilliam's goal was to capture the nature of our daydreams and fantasies and place them on the screen, it is my humble opinion that he wildly succeeded. Catch it before theater chains understand just what they've placed alongside banal January fodder and replace it with a romantic comedy about a career-driven businesswoman who needs a man in her life for emotional stability.

Up

Only Pixar could make an animated film about a man who soars above the rain forests of South America in his own house realistic. Up follows two of Pixar’s biggest successes to date in Ratatouille and Wall•E, and anyone who thought the streak might end has another thing coming. The idea of an old man flying his house may sound straightforward on paper, but in the hands of director Pete Docter it becomes Pixar’s most subtly moving film to date, even as it is also one of its most action-packed.

The flying house in question belongs to Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner), who grew up a fan of explorer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer). He befriended his future wife, Ellie, through a mutual love of adventure, and they pledge to one day move to Paradise Falls in Venezuela. But, as it so often does, life gets in the way. Before you know it, the pair grow old and Ellie dies. As contractors buy up all the land around Carl’s home to turn into high-priced condos, Carl decides to pay tribute to his wife and ties thousands of balloons to his house to fulfill their dream. The floating house calls to mind the great Hayao Miyazaki, the primary influence on Pixar's films, and his Castle in the Sky, while the scene where the house lifts off the ground for the first time reflect that legendary moment in Herzog's great Fitzcarraldo in which he successfully drags a boat across land. It's a moment of pure euphoria, a fulfillment of everyone's fantasy of just leaving it all behind.

Unwittingly accompanying Carl is Russell, a young scout who happened to be on the front porch when the house lifted. Russell is your usual cartoon kid: plucky, motor-mouthed and pudgy. But his purpose here is not, as is usually the case, to remind Carl of forgotten youth and to reinvigorate the spirit; the man tied balloons to his house to live on a waterfall in South America, for Pete’s sake. For once, the child doesn’t have all the answers, but then neither does Carl.

At this point the film moves from a quiet tearjerker into a full-bore adventure, a multi-colored ode to old-fashioned serials and jungle treks. Carl and Russell befriend a gigantic tropical bird Russell dubs “Kevin,” as well as a talking dog. Yes, there’s a talking dog, but the way in which he speaks is rather clever, and he says what a dog might say if one could really talk. Much of the comedy comes from these animal compatriots, but this is one of the more dramatic Pixar films yet produced.

Up is the second film directed by Pete Docter, who also gave us Pixar’s heretofore most heartbreaking number, and he pulls out all the stops here. The opening, nearly silent segment won’t leave a dry eye in the house, but it’s by no means the only touching moment of the 96 minutes. Pixar films famously do not pander to the audience – which is impressive, considering the median age is below puberty – but Docter visually explores the themes and characters more subtly and elegantly than ever before. Often he pauses on a small, framed photograph of Ellie located next to the helm, and he beautifully captures the majesty of the rain forest that Carl dreamed about for decades.

That love of nature inspires Carl when he discovers that a familiar face has also taken up residence at Paradise Falls solely to capture rare creatures. Docter, who came up for the story for Wall•E, clearly cares about the environment, but the message here is neither as pronounced nor as didactic as Pixar’s previous hit. At last Russell and Carl must face down the villain in an aerial showdown that would make Indiana Jones proud, a ten-minute battle that mixes breathtaking animation, high comedy and exhilarating action effortlessly.

But for all its extravagance, Up succeeds because of its intimacy. Like the very best of Pixar’s productions, it’s concerned not so much with gags but drama, and the incredible animation only fleshes out the characters more: every bit of Russell moves in perfect harmony with his incessant speaking and Carl, giant square head and all, personifies the gruff and the charming aspect of that Walter Mathau-esque Grumpy Old Man. This is not a film about lost youth but of acceptance of loss and the courage to move on, and few characters in Pixar's ouevre display Carl's strength. While the much-hyped 3-D aspect of the film is, by the sheer nature of the technology, a gimmick, Up is an iridescent, eye-popping adventure that gives itself enough space to breathe and reflect, and in many ways it’s the film Steven Spielberg might have made if he had been an animator. At this point I can’t even act surprised that Pixar yet again have given us the warmest, most human and most original film of the year.

The Insider

Michael Mann deservedly earned himself a reputation as one of the preeminent action directors of the last 20 years, but that unfairly typecasts him. He brings the same attention to detail to his dramas that he does to his action flicks: Ali, heavily, heavily flawed as it was, was as interesting outside the boxing ring as it was within it. His experience with more visceral fare allows him to maintain a steady pace while maintaining an ability to capture every shot in pristine clarity. That precision makes every shot seem necessary, and it has a way of creating tension, as it leads the audience to believe that something important is on-screen, that anything cast in such detail will have some bearing on the narrative later in the film.

Ergo, while he may have superior films, The Insider best showcases Mann's talents. Making an actual thriller as opposed to shooting an action film like one gave the director license to make moments almost unbearable in their suspense. Even the scenes in which the corporate aspect of this corporate thriller come to the fore do not lessen the tension of Jeffrey Wigand's paranoia, for they expose a much deeper corruption than Wigand can uncover. Like the best of the old newspaper thrillers, The Insider pits intrepid whistle blowers against faceless enemies with unlimited resources as they desperately try to tell their story without dying.

Wigand, head of research for tobacco company Brown and Williamson, loses his job when he discovers that the tobacco industry used a chemically-altered form of nicotine in their cigarettes that made them more addictive while also increasing the risk of cancer and never informed the public in order to make bigger profits. Even though the company fired him, he must still honor his nondisclosure agreements or face a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit; fearing he might take his knowledge to the news anyway, executives attempt to force Wigand into signing an even more stringent agreement by threatening to withhold severance benefits, including the medical insurance he needs to cover his asthmatic daughter's medical fees. An outraged Wigand tells them where they can shove it and takes up a job as a high school teacher to get healthcare.

By random chance, Wigand crosses paths with 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), who was referred to the former executive to decode some information regarding health and safety-related documents concerning cigarettes. Worried that any involvement with a journalist could place him in a courtroom, Wigand initially refuses, but eventually capitulates and agrees to meet him at a hotel. The two begin a correspondence, and Wigand slowly reveals more and more details about the "Seven Dwarfs," the seven leading tobacco corporations, and how the CEOs of each perjured before Congress concerning their knowledge of nicotine's addictive properties.

The more Wigand divulges, the more he starts noticing strange things. A man spies on him at a golf course. Someone leaves a bullet in Wigand's mailbox. Eventually, his wife opens an email containing a death threat. Mann shoots these scenes in a style highly reminiscent of that great whistle blower film All the President's Men: shadow doesn't so much bathe the frame as wash over it like a tidal wave, all of it contrasted with the cold, artificial light he likes to use to play up his urban elements. That sickly faint-green hue only exacerbates that feeling in your gut that something terrible is about to happen.

Russell Crowe gives what may be his finest performance as the older Wigand: he walks with the slack gait of a desk jockey and delivers his lines with alternate boredom and frenzy. Sadly, Crowe seems to use that same characterization for any American role these days, but despite his self-typecasting, his Wigand stands out. He provides a nice foil for Pacino, playing against type as the more subdued of the leads; indeed, Crowe seems to be playing what would usually be the Pacino part, though Al excels in his "straight man" role.

Even as the threats pour in and his family begins to crumble, the strong-arming only strengthens Wigand's resolve. He agrees to testify in a Mississippi state case against Big Tobacco for Medicaid costs covering those affected by smoking, only to find himself served with a restraining order that the industry's elite lawyers cooked up. At last, Mann reveals the real thrust of the story: this is not the story of Jeff Wigand so much as a commentary on the monetary structure of news groups. CBS interviews Wigand for a 60 Minutes segment, only to censor the interview because the station receives ad money from the tobacco industry and can also be sued for billions. Mann and writers Eric Roth and Marie Brenner uncover the irony of journalists striving for integrity and truth when corporations known for their corruption have a stake in major journalistic avenues.

That's what makes The Insider so enraging: though Wigand succeeds in getting his message to the public, how many people in how many fields have been silenced in one form or another by corporations that seem to have sway over everything? Whistle blowing always takes a degree of courage, but it's downright suicide in some cases. But Mann never beats us over the head with this theme, allowing us to spend more time gripped by the plot. For all its talkative scenes held in boardrooms and surreptitious meeting places, The Insider is Mann's most involving film. It may not reach the heights of his epic, Heat, but I can think of no better argument for the man's greatness than this 2-1/2 thriller that passes in half the time.