Blu-Ray Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

[Note: I received this disc from Warner Bros. as part of their Blu-Ray Elite program.]

Film

Any movie that opens with an artistic abstraction of a body falling to signify someone jumping from one of the Twin Towers can't hope for greatness, but the shamelessness of Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is breathtaking in its outrage. In fairness, it was always going to be this way. An adaptation of the hideous book by Jonathan Safran Foer, the worst, most self-satisfied writer in America today, EL&IC does not so much process the horror of September 11 and its bewildering aftermath through the eyes of a possibly autistic 9-year-old as use this blank protagonist to skirt any sincere approach to the tragedy.

Oskar (Thomas Horn, discovered being robotic and eerily smart on Jeopardy's Kids Week) roams around New York seeking some sense of closure for his father's (Tom Hanks) death in the terrorist attack, especially concerned with finding what his father's mysterious key unlocks. The lad, afraid of subways, runs around the city with a tambourine so that we have something to irritate us when the soundtrack isn't dominated by Horn's monotoned complaints about things that make him nervous. Unable to process emotion, he intrudes upon the turbulent lives of adults dealing with their own issues and presses them to answer his questions. For a movie supposedly about coping with 9/11, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close depicts a disgusting inability to deal with the realities of life and the manner in which banal sorrows do not cease with the occurrence of large-scale travesties.

The Help (Tate Taylor, 2011)

The Help takes the obliviousness of Kathryn Stockett's 2009 hit novel and magnifies it to the level of the dangerously ignorant. The novel at least had the decency to include a modicum of ambiguity and the suggestion that Stockett could vaguely remember some of her 3rd-grade social studies lessons on the Civil Rights Era. The film, on the other hand, is erected out of pure fantasy, set in a plastic, pastel Jackson, Miss. that has all the authenticity of Lars von Trier's Dogville set. Stockett's novel dropped whiffs of the true reality of 1960s Jackson among her dialect-ridden, charmed view of social prejudice like talismans to ward off criticism, but childhood friend Tate Taylor has to condense 500 pages into two-and-a-half hours. Given the paper-thin characterization of the novel's figures, this means that the obliterated subplots and truncated, blunt dialogue serve to make the material even more farcical.

In fairness, Taylor does try to refashion Stockett's book around the African-American characters instead of a white guilt cipher. But this idea goes no farther than letting Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis), a maid who becomes the first to tell her stories of life serving whites, narrate the movie. Soon enough, focus is back on Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone), a recent college grad and sort-of feminist who, despite no clear identity before leaving for school and a blindness to current events (at least in the book), decides to get the black perspective of Jackson life. In the novel, Skeeter is almost jaw-droppingly entitled and never criticized for it. Here, Taylor dispenses with nearly all of her story, which would be a significant improvement if he also cut down her screen time to match. But no, regardless of who had to go in to record ADR, this is still Skeeter's story.

Far From Heaven

Green is the dominant color of Todd Haynes' revisionist melodrama. Green, the color of envy, nature, money and hope, all of which bubble under the surface of a quiet Connecticut suburb. through the director's carefully chosen color palettes. Said palettes perfectly evoke the look of Douglas Sirk's vivid Technicolor melodramas, with period sets to boot. Yes, just as Martin Scorsese strove to make New York, New York not only work as a musical set in the '40s and '50s but to look like it was made in classic Hollywood, Far From Heaven might very well have worked as a completely straight-faced depiction of the irony and banality of the suburban nightmare that became the American ideal. But Haynes takes it one step further by openly addressing issues that seem contemporary yet were every bit as present then, only buried beneath hardened exteriors both physical (makeup and clothes, consumerism) and emotional (denial).

Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) has such barriers; she lives in a lush manor tended by the family maid (Viola Davis), giving her all the free time needed to becoming the perfect trophy wife. She speaks the sort of ridiculous, pretentious dialogue that was present in all those old classics, that Sirk only had to spin slightly to place its absurdity on full display. Even her children speak with in such haughty tones, telling "mother" how "delightful" their school day was. She stands slightly outside the town gossip circle, yet they co-opt her perfection to share the glory and victory of her photo-ops in the local newspaper.

It's as good as life can conceivably be in postwar America, though she never sees her poor, hard-working husband (Dennis Quaid) because of his heavy workload. At least that's the reason he gives her; one night Cathy checks up on her husband just to say hello, only to find him in the arms of another man. Now, finding out your husband is gay and you're simply his beard is hard on even the most open-minded person today, so Cathy's utter shock is understandable. She handles herself with surprising calm, however, pledging to stand by her husband, who volunteers to see a therapist to determine what's "wrong" with him. "I'm gonna beat this," he assures his shrink, who lists his client some figures on the successful conversion rates back to heterosexuality.

As the revelation puts strain on the relationship, Cathy only compounds the issue by striking up a friendship with the son of the family's dead gardener, Raymond (Dennis Haysbert). Raymond is soft-spoken and well-read: when Cathy spots him at the art gallery, he's the only one who can talk about the artists with any convincing sense of authority. Cathy's notions of her own open-mindedness reveal themselves as inflated when she awkwardly tries to assure him, "I'm not prejudiced. My husband and I have always believed in equal rights for the Negro and support the N.A.A.C.P." Raymond overlooks her nervousness, and soon they become the only genuine friends in a town where everything is planned for social perception.

Soon, everyone is town is wagging their tongues over the matter, especially after Cathy goes to the black part of town to eat lunch with Raymond. Frank, who spends most of the film in an alcoholic stupor over his inner torment, lashes out at his wife when news gets back to him; in a deliciously ironic rant, he accuses her of threatening to ruin his reputation and tear the family apart, even as he's contemplating divorce to run off with a man.

The relationship issues of the leads slowly tear them apart as the town around them loses itself to speculation and rumor. Cathy assures her closest friend that nothing illicit has happened between her and Raymond, but Mona simply responds that she is acting as if something did. Eventually, the town turns on Cathy and Raymond outright, and a happy ending quickly becomes nothing more than a pipe dream.

Far From Heaven is clearly crafted to appeal to the most discerning film geeks with its flawless reconstruction of '50s drama, from the stylized dialogue to the set and costume design and even the score from classic film composer Elmer Bernstein. Yet those attributes also make it palatable to anyone. The actors are uniformly excellent, with Moore giving the best performance of her career, and they make the characters work beyond the dark satire of the script. For my money, Far From Heaven is one of the finest films of the decade, and a career highlight for everyone involved.

Doubt

I tend to have problems with plays adapted for the film. Obviously this is not a blanket statement, since so many writers have moved a story from the stage to the screen, but often they leave me cold. Why, though? Most of these adaptations sport incredible casts, and many members of those casts perfected their performances by actually appearing in the original play. The writer often adapts his own play, and the sets flesh out the limitations of the stage into something that can add weight to the acting. So why, then, do I have such a hard time with adapted plays?

Doubt, at the onset, at least, seems like it will defy my expectations. It opens with Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) delivering a subject on the title of the film, remarking how doubt "can be a bond as strong as certainty." Moving amongst the children in the back of the cathedral is Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), hissing at the restless kids to straighten up, and already you can sense she doesn't care for the new priest.

Streep moves through the film with a look of perpetually concealed rage. She monitors the class of the cheery, sweet Sister James (Amy Adams), whose students act up a bit thanks to her leniency; after class, Aloysius offers tips on how to get control of the class. "You're too innocent" she tells Sister James later, and one need only sit back and bask in the irony of such an indictment of a nun. One day Sister James tells her superior that Father Flynn called young Donald Miller into the rectory, and when the boy left he acted...strange. The elder sister's eyes flash with fire and narrow. "So," she sighs with malice, "it's happened."

While Sister Aloysius plots to take Flynn down, Sister James must cope with the thought of a man she admires being a molester. She effectively personifies the doubt of the story, as she finds herself torn between the two factions: when (circumstantial) evidence comes to light, she sides with Aloysius. Yet she also notices Flynn's kindness and Aloysius' obvious hatred of the reform Flynn brings with him, and finally levels her own accusation towards the sister: "You just don't like him." Playwright John Patrick Shanley essentially structures Doubt around Sister James, so the responsibility of subtle rests on Adams' shoulders, and she pulls it off magnificently.

Think of her role in these terms, the performances of Hoffman and Streep take on an entirely new context. Sister James represents the average Catholic caught in the middle of two opposing viewpoints of Vatican II: on one side the welcoming new face of Father Flynn, which carries with it the sudden suggestion of molestation that would later tarnish the Church's image, and the old school fire-and-brimstone clergy of Sister Aloysius. When the two figures finally confront each other, the maelstrom of emotions that might normally seem like the usual stage-to-screen overacting works, and it's one of the most memorable scenes of the year.

Complementing these three incredible performances is a brief but scene-stealing appearance from Viola Davis as Donald Miller's mother. She has to go toe-to-toe with Meryl Streep, and the consensus for once is right: she more than holds her own. Her impassioned speech adds layers to the story and only pulls the truth farther from our grasp. Davis adds a human face to three otherwise symbolic figures, which makes her unessential yet welcome.

True to form, Doubt never lets us know what really happened. Oh, there's a clear winner, but we learn something about the method that the character took to best the other, and it raises more questions. Did the loser acquiesce out of guilt, or fear of accusation? Both Flynn and Aloysius know the power of doubt and how it could rip the parish apart, and with Sister James, the parish stand-in, in the middle of it, we'll never learn the full truth.