"La La Land" Revisited

Barry Jenkins, the director of “Moonlight’’ recently said in an interview with Esquire,

“I think there's a very superficial read of La La Land that does injustice to what Damien's doing in the film, and it's convenient because these are tough times to make a superficial read of that film. But it's like, no, this is America. This is what this shit is. You gain something; you sacrifice something else in the gaining of that thing. I mean, that's dark stuff.”[1]

            Jenkins was right.  And I was wrong in my review of “La La Land” over a month ago.  And so, for the first time on Op-Rob I will be revisiting a film.  But not purely because of Jenkins’ sage statement. 

One of the things I love about movies, and what keeps me coming back to them, is how they can transform along with you.  By that I mean you have new experiences, live a bit more of life, and a movie’s meaning can change.  On my first viewing of “La La Land” there was an overwhelming sense of frustration and disappointment.  In the film, Mia and Sebastian take this wonderful musical journey and fall in love while chasing their dreams.  But in the end, they don’t end up together.  It doesn’t work out.  As a viewer, and as a person, I felt like there was something left on the table.  Why wouldn’t Mia and Sebastian stay together?  Isn’t that how life is supposed to happen?

The answer, unfortunately, is no.  There are several subtle reminders throughout the film that point to the reality that these two people are at crossroads that do not lead to the same place.  For example, Mia is in a far more fresh stage of her acting career, while Sebastian is near the end of his rope as a struggling musician.  One individual is prepared to take the route of idealism, while the other is more inclined to compromise.  This dynamic plays out when Sebastian sells out classic jazz to take a position in an alt-jazz band, while Mia cannot come to accept the practicality of the decision.  Mia continues on her path of idealism apart from Sebastian, and it culminates in astounding success when she lands the film role of a lifetime.  Meanwhile, it is implied that Sebastian parlays his alt-jazz success into achieving his own dream of owning a classic jazz club.  In a superficial viewing, these discrepancies are ignored or perhaps missed because of the incredible pace and style of the film.  Director Damien Chazelle’s subtle message can easily be lost in the fantastic visual and musical narrative. 

            This brings me back to Barry Jenkins’ comments about “La La Land”.  He perceptively points out that anyone viewing the film as a light, happy musical is mistaken.  Or perhaps that people watching “La La Land” for uplift will be disappointed, like I was.  The overarching message of the film is rather that life doesn’t work out like a Hollywood script.  Yes, there can be moments of idealism and triumph, but in the end life is full of reevaluations and compromise: often at the expense of people that we love.  In the words of Jenkins, “that’s dark stuff”.  In my previous review I summed up “La La Land’s” message as nothing more than a half-hearted “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need”.  Upon revisiting the film, the meaning is far more heavy and vital to everyday life than I could have realized at the time.  “La La Land”, does not just offer a visually stunning story and beautifully scored music.  It bears a subtle, sobering and crushingly true message about life.  "La La Land" is not a starter.  It's a legend.

[1] http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/q-and-a/a52155/barry-jenkins-moonlight-interview/

"Paterson" Review

OP-ROB RATING: LEGEND

            “Paterson” is an indie drama written and directed by Jim Jarmusch.  To see it, I had to venture downtown to the E Street Cinema in Washington, DC.  Just a few short blocks away from the White House, the Capitol Building, and the Trump International Hotel: all of the buzzy hotspots that were featured in this weekend’s inauguration and protests.  I waited until Sunday to go downtown in order to avoid all of the chaos and jogged down Pennsylvania Avenue to check out the aftermath of the weekend.  With the exception of a few signs and pink hats and a lot of trash, the streets were normally crowded if not a bit empty.  By the time I got to E Street Cinema I was excited for “Paterson”, which details a week in the life of a bus driver and amateur poet named Paterson (Adam Driver).  Ironically or perhaps poetically, Paterson lives in the City of Paterson, New Jersey with his beautiful wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) and their ill-behaved English bulldog Marvin. 

            Beginning on Monday, “Paterson” depicts a relatively routine week in the life of Paterson.  He wakes up between 6:10 and 6:30 in the morning and promptly gets dressed, drinks coffee, eats cheerios and then walks down to the bus depot.  In the average day, Paterson drives the bus route around the city sometimes thinking of poetry and other times listening to his passenger’s conversations.  After work Paterson returns home to Laura and takes Marvin out for a walk.  The walk always leads to a small bar where Paterson stops for a beer and chats with Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley), the perennial local bartender.  Afterwards, Paterson returns home to go to bed and restart the cycle.  By all means it would seem that Paterson is a simple man leading a simple life.  Yet, as only his wife Laura knows, he is a talented poet.  Throughout the film Jarmusch inserts voiceovers of Paterson’s simple and beautiful poetry that he writes in his “secret” notebook.  The turning point of the film occurs when Marvin tears up Paterson’s singular volume of poetry, which Laura had earlier implored him to Xerox copies of. 

            As with all Jim Jarmusch films, “Paterson” is unpredictable and doesn’t follow a typical narrative.  In fact, the “turning point” of Marvin destroying Paterson’s poetry doesn’t necessarily represent the climax.  The strength of the film is not in the plot, but rather in Jarmusch’s unique attention to detail.  While many scenes don’t make much sense to the storyline, they force you to reconsider the meaning of the film over and over.  While driving the bus Paterson listens to passengers discuss various former residents of Paterson, New Jersey such as the middleweight boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and the anarchist Gaetano Bresci.  In the bar, Doc constantly searches for historical pop-culture references to Paterson, New Jersey to pin on his “wall of fame”.  These scenes evoke the feeling of a forgotten city that never quite made it, remembered only by its last inhabitants.  It’s ideas like these that force the viewer to listen more carefully to the plot points in Paterson’s personal story.

            Ultimately, one of the greatest aspects of Paterson is the representation of diversity, and celebration of intellect.  On one night while Paterson is walking Marvin, he stops by a Laundromat where a man (Method Man)[1] is working on a rap song.  Paterson stands by the Laundromat entrance and just listens, carefully taking in the man’s lyrics.  To listen is to care, which is a great compliment.  This human recognition is returned to Paterson in a scene after his notebook is shredded.  As Paterson sits on a bench despondently looking at his favorite view of the city, the Paterson Great Falls, a Japanese poet (Masatoshi Nagase) joins him.  The mysterious man asks Paterson various questions about poetry, seemingly aware that Paterson himself is a poet.  Although the Japanese man cannot speak very good English, he and Paterson share a universal language.  The Japanese man ultimately gives Paterson a brand new, blank notebook before leaving.  The interaction is sparse, yet powerful.

In the end "Paterson" presents a lot of ideas.  The more obvious one is that sometimes disappointments and even tragedies can lead to beautiful new beginnings. But there are other, more subtle notions throughout the film such as the double-edged nature of focusing on every little detail.  Paterson is so viscerally aware of his surroundings that he can get caught up in them and miss the point, or become addicted to his own routine.  After all, meaningful growth is often spurred on by change.  In my own life I've had moments when I felt like my whole volume of work got torn up.  I'm sure I'll have a few more.  Starting from a blank page is never easy.  However, as the Japanese man reminds Paterson, "sometimes an empty page presents the most possibilities."

And so jogging back to Georgetown through the remnants of the protests and scarce marchers that still remained, I had to reevaluate the grandeur of everything that had occurred just a day before.  I had to question if we are all so numb-skulled that any kind of meaning has to be thumped over our heads for us to finally get it.  Was anyone not already aware of President Trump's offenses or personal flaws?  Did any American have a single doubt over the polarization of this election?  It is movies like "Paterson" that serve as a reminder that true meaning comes in tidbits, day after day.  Many people believe that historians will look back on the Women’s Marches as a watershed moment.  Time will tell, but as the story presented in “Paterson” teaches, daily life has more influence.  As a large-scale protest the Marches were unprecedented.  But as the photos get lost in the Instagram feed and the headlines get replaced by new ones, what influence will the marches have if people cannot take their meaning into daily life?  As a country moving forward with President Trump, perhaps we all need to calm our voices, and take the time to listen to one another.  Sometimes meaning can come from the most foreign and unlikely sources.

[1] Cameo of the year so far

"Split" Review

OP-ROB RATING: BENCH

            “Split” is the latest film from writer/director M. Night Shyamalan since 2015’s “The Visit”, which I reviewed here.  With another thriller, Shyamalan seems to be retracing his steps trying to regain the success of his early career.  “Split” stars James McAvoy as Kevin, a man with dissociative identity disorder who drugs and kidnaps three teenage girls after a birthday party.  Because of Kevin’s psychological disorder, there are many different personalities that are revealed throughout the film.  The kidnapping is executed by an intense and methodical personality named Dennis.  The girls awaken in a creepy, sparsely decorated underground bunker consisting of a hallway and a few rooms: there are no windows. 

Backstory is only given for one of the three girls whose named Casey (Ana Taylor-Joy).  The other two girls, played by Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula are largely tertiary characters.  Casey differs from the other girls in that she has been through significant trauma as a child and is very introverted.  In the first couple of sequences several of Kevin’s personalities are introduced including a stern older woman named Patricia, and an unassuming nine-year-old boy named Hedwig.  Casey quickly figures out that she can manipulate Hedwig in order to try and escape the bunker.  The story becomes more complicated when Kevin ventures out his domicile and visits his psychiatrist Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley).  The personality that interacts with Dr. Fletcher is named Barry, an upbeat aspiring fashion designer.  In separate scenes with Dr. Fletcher we discover that Kevin has 23 different personalities.  We actually are not introduced to the original “Kevin” personality until the tail end of the movie, along with a personality called “The Beast”.  As many of the different personalities tell the girls, they are food for “The Beast”.  The tension of the film builds around the question of whether or not Kevin can actually become a superhuman creature.

The main problem with “Split” is not inherent within the plot, or acting.  Both are acceptable and even above average for an M. Night Shyamalan movie.  The problem is rather that Shyamalan fails to bolster the film with his own distinct charm.  In the director’s three best films, “The Sixth Sense”, “Unbreakable”, and “Signs” he builds the story up to a final climax complete with a crafty revelation to the audience; something small or seemingly insignificant earlier in the film suddenly because crucial to the story.[1]  The other Shyamalan feature is his skillful use of the City of Philadelphia and its surrounding areas.  Shyamalan made an extra effort to authentically display Philadelphia in “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable” and in the case of “Signs” Newtown and Doylestown, Pennsylvania.  The most memorable scenes from those movies occur in beautiful areas such as St. Alban’s street in South Philly, Franklin Field at Penn and the vast countryside north of the city.  “Split” lacks both of Shyamalan’s most redeeming qualities as a director.  The “twist” ending is unoriginal and related to “Unbreakable” and the majority of the location scenes are shot at night along US Route 13 outside of the Philadelphia Zoo…

While “Split” lacks the best qualities of Shyamalan’s early films, it does have a few positive aspects.  McAvoy is intriguing to watch as he rotates between personalities displaying the full gamut of his acting ability.  Ana Taylor-Joy is equally as impressive portraying Casey, the damaged young girl.  However, the most effective scenes in “Split” occur in the flashbacks providing Casey’s backstory.  In these flashbacks we discover that Casey was molested by her uncle.  In a series of scenes Shyamalan provides a truly shocking and unsettling picture of an innocent young girl being taken advantage of by her much older relative.  Keep in mind that “Split” is PG-13.  Yet Shyamalan rises to the challenge and presents this disturbing facet of the film in a subtle yet powerful way.  The flashbacks left me far more disturbed than anything having to do with Kevin, and made me wonder if Shyamalan is limiting his own talents by resorting to the supernatural.

            With every M. Night Shyamalan film, fans hold their breath in anticipation for a classic thriller like “The Sixth Sense”, or a raging dumpster-fire like “After Earth”. “Split” ranks somewhere slightly above average in the vast spectrum of Shyamalan filmography.  The context of “Unbreakable” gives the movie a slight boost in relevance.  Yet on its own, “Split” is largely forgettable as a charmless, middle-of-the-road thriller. The question now becomes was “The Sixth Sense” a fluke? Or simply, do moviegoers need to readjust their expectations for the seemingly “multiple-identity” director?

[1] Examples: All of Dr. Crowe’s human interactions in the “Sixth Sense”, the unusual durability of David Dunn in “Unbreakable”, and the glasses full of water in “Signs”.