The Damned United

Les Misérables

** out of ****

Directed by: Tom Hooper

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne and Anne Hathaway

Running time: 158 minutes

When Tom Hooper’s hotly anticipated adaptation of (arguably) the most beloved stage production of all time starts focusing on the class struggle around an hour in, the film starts living up to its musical legacy. In fact, it would even make Victor Hugo, the author of Les Misérables, proud.

In June 1832, dissatisfied Parisian students and insurrectionists revolted against their government, deriding their lack of sympathy toward the lower- and middle-classes. Besieged behind a barricade, in actuality, was Hugo.

During this middle section – from the bellows of “Look Down,” through the showstopper “One Day More” and up until the tissue-grabber “A Little Fall of Rain” – Hooper’s film largely succeeds. However, although this part of the adaptation achieves the power and unabashed sincerity fans of the long-running musical expect, this version is, largely, a Les Miss.

For those unfamiliar with Hugo’s novel or the musical from Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, Les Misérables tells the tale of Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), a prisoner who breaks his parole but chooses a life directed by mercy and forgiveness. Nevertheless, bitter policeman Javert (Russell Crowe) still pursues Valjean and hopes to capture him so the ex-con can repay his debt to society.

Eight years after Valjean receives his yellow ticket of leave, he is the mayor of a small town in France. Factory worker Fantine (Anne Hathaway), who lives in his town, loses her job. Frightened to spend her life among the mobs of the vagrant poor and with a child to care for, Fantine prostitutes herself into submission.

On the eve of her death, Fantine entrusts her daughter’s safety with Valjean. The ex-prisoner retrieves the girl, a snowy blonde named Cosette, from the care of two malicious innkeepers, the Thenardiers (Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter). That young girl will grow up to be played by Amanda Seyfried.

In Valjean’s care, adult Cosette wishes for a life of normalcy. She falls for a revolutionary named Marius (Eddie Redmayne), himself the object of affection for the Thenardiers’ daughter, Eponine (Samantha Barks). In addition, this love triangle starts spinning its tri-color passion on the eve of the 1832 revolution.

The film’s cast has spoken at length about Hooper’s creative decision to have them sing live on set, instead of pre-recording the soundtrack for them to lip-sync during the shoot. This move gives the actors the freedom to experiment with different line deliveries during takes. As a result, the film frames these solos primarily in close-ups and medium close-ups.

The medium of film gains an advantage over theatre since the players’ faces can be shown at a closer distance, giving the viewer a more intimate glimpse into the pain and the plight of the characters. However, this creative decision only works on a few occasions here.

When Anne Hathaway belts out “I Dreamed a Dream,” her anguished reminisce of days gone by is powerful – and shot impressively in two uninterrupted takes. We can hear the aches and creaks in her voice while seeing the desperation in the actor’s face. The two long takes are emotionally devastating, guaranteeing her an Academy Award nomination.

Both Redmayne (who sings “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables”) and Barks (“On My Own”) also give their solos similar gusto and dedication and have the chops to sell it at an onscreen close-up. However, the sung soliloquies that comprise quite a portion of the film’s soundtrack can only be visually arresting if the performer is good enough for the material.

Unfortunately, Jackman doesn't have Colm Wilkinson’s urgency and vocal power. Crowe, meanwhile, strains his throat and stands mostly granite-faced throughout the film's duration, hardly an intimidating villain.

Neither actor has the conviction to match their stage counterparts, nor does the film's proletariat chorus have the range to match the level of a community theatre production. Too many of the group lyrics are mumbled to the point of incoherence.

To blame for these missteps is Hooper, more at home with television work for BBC and HBO (although he has a Best Director Oscar for The King’s Speech). It’s not just the film’s costumes and sets that are torn and sewery: the editing, especially in group scenes and numbers, is disjointed and often confusing, as the camera doesn’t hold on these miserables long enough.

Les Misérables has its share of riveting moments and powerful showstoppers, but it is too inconsistent to wholeheartedly embrace. The talent is mixed, the direction sloppy and the characters mostly incomplete. Often, Les Misérables lacks showmanship when it tries to be bombastic and integrity when it tries to be intimate. You will hear the people strain.

The Road Goes On

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

*** out of ****

Directed by: Peter Jackson

Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Graham McTavish and Andy Serkis

Running time: 169 minutes

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a thrilling return to Middle Earth, full of many stunning peaks and a few interminable valleys.

There is no reason for this film, part of a planned trilogy, to be so long and to feature moments of trivial importance. Tolkien’s original novel is slimmer than each of his Lord of the Rings installments – which each got one representative film adaptation also directed by Peter Jackson. Nevertheless, An Unexpected Journey is a merry introduction.

Hobbit Bilbo Baggins (a perfectly cast Martin Freeman) lives in comfort and solitude in his undemanding hobbit hole. One day, the powerful wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellan) brings a gathering of merry, musical dwarves to Bilbo’s home for tea and dinner.

The 13 dwarves are off on a quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain, a stronghold from their old kingdom of Erebor, which was conquered by a dragon named Smaug. Due to Bilbo’s minuscule size, the dwarves hope that the hobbit can burgle the treasure of gold left in the Mountain at the end of a long, treacherous journey – one that involves crossing the Misty Mountains and hopefully steering clear of orcs, goblins and Gollum.

The leader of the group is the noble, if haughty Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), a descendent of the dwarf king. He doubts that the short, hairy-footed protagonist can partake in a quest so perilous.

The first installment of the trilogy covers the first seven chapters of Tolkien’s classic adventure. One could read these pages, and then some, throughout the duration of Jackson’s film. Nevertheless, as Gandalf intones to Bilbo near the start of their quest, “All good stories deserve embellishment.”

The main caveat about this expansion – much of the material comes from appendices to the Lord of the Rings, and other Tolkien works – is that none of it adds much. A subplot involving Radagast the Brown, Gandalf’s flustered wizard cousin, offers little meat to the spine of the story.

Beyond the film’s bloated trajectory, however, this trip back into Middle Earth is well worth it. The scope of Jackson’s production has the same magnitude as his earlier films, complete with magnificent scenescapes – the film ought to enliven New Zealand’s tourism industry – and impressively mounted battle sequences.

An Unexpected Journey is rapt with impressive digital artistry. The nine years of computerized advancement since Return of the King have rid the image of a clean superficiality that the massive, inauthentic-looking armies showed in that film.

Although the journey is unwieldy, it is full of good company. I cannot recall the last time a beloved literary character was cast so perfectly as Martin Freeman is as Bilbo.

The character’s naïve hesitations, lack of pretension and curiosity for adventure is portrayed with colour and a wry charm by the British actor (who has done quite a service to adaptations of beloved English novels, playing Arthur Dent on film and Dr. John Watson on television, as well).

Meanwhile, BBC stalemate Richard Armitage is sharp and steely as the intimidating leader of the dwarves. Andy Serkis, who reprises his role as the scheming, sibilant Gollum (as well as serving as the second unit director) deserves yet another ‘for your consideration’ campaign for his electrifying motion capture performance.

Full of majestic settings and magnificent performances, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has enough high points (and high-spirited adventure) to offset its bloated running time. 

The Philadelphia Story

Silver Linings Playbook

*** out of ****

Directed by: David O. Russell

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver and Chris Tucker

Running time: 122 minutes

A blend of indie melodrama and screwball comedy that is full of pitch-perfect performances, the latest film from director David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook, is also the finest achievement of his career.

A filmmaker lambasted for maddening outbursts to the actors he works with – among them, his Three Kings star George Clooney and I Heart Huckabees actress Lily Tomlin – this is the closest the writer/director has gotten to addressing those wounds. It also hits close to home for Russell, whose own son is bipolar and suffers from OCD.

As Pat Solitano, a Philadelphian with undiagnosed bipolar, Bradley Cooper delivers a career-best performance, full of power and pathos. Pat is discharged from a psychiatric facility after an eight-month stay and returns home to find his graduation portrait off the wall, his superstitious father (Robert De Niro, in a return to form) unemployed and his wife nowhere in sight.

Pat snapped when he found his wife, Nikki (Brea Bee), in the shower with another man and then beat him senseless. Now, there is a restraining order out against Pat to stay away from her, an itch that he keeps scratching.

After reading Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and chucking it out his window, Pat moans about the lack of happy endings to his parents: clearly the character wants one for himself. Pat tries to focus on other matters, with a new motto to live by: “Excelsior,” meaning ‘ever upward’ in Latin.

He goes for runs to get into shape on his quest to reach a silver lining, and is often joined by Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), another misfit with a damaged past who isn’t all together herself due to her husband’s recent death. With both characters having emotional imbalances clearing sifting to their surface, they resolve to help each other.

In the character’s unpredictable disposition, Cooper is always on a thin line between enthusiasm and rage. The character wants to take responsibility of his life. His mother (a thankless Jacki Weaver) digresses, saying that he should stick to medication. Pat resists and puts the burden of getting better on his own shoulders.

Silver Linings Playbook, with its disgruntled characters and off-kilter romance, is a comedy of misplaced aggression. Characters often say impolite things – Russell’s script is harsh and humourous – and are just as screwy as the tone of the film is screwball. The film has its own bipolar disorder, with unwieldy handheld camerawork and circular passages of dialogue.

Trapped in Pat’s outlook, Russell gleans a brisk performance from his leading man. However, Silver Linings Playbook only visualizes a few moments from Tiffany’s damaged perspective, which turns her more into an object of Pat’s affection than a character with authority.

Nevertheless, Lawrence continues her ascent to superstardom and her frankness is insatiable considering the actor’s best performances have come from darker materials, such as her Oscar-nominated tour de force in Winter’s Bone. The young actress, 22, is wonderful but somewhat wasted, a bit too much of a 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl' (although with a firm emphasis on the 'manic' component, given the subject matter).

Silver Linings Playbook glides to a proudly all-American ending, where characters lay two bets – one involving an Eagles game and the other, a ballroom dancing competition – and are forced to overcome their malfunctioning personalities. The last third of the film is a crowd-pleaser, although the seams of this messy love story are stitched together too tidily. The main caveat of Silver Linings Playbook is that it all too easily turns into a film that Pat would adore. 

The Poker Night

Killing Them Softly

*** out of ****

Directed by: Andrew Dominik

Starring: Brad Pitt, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, Richard Jenkins and James Gandolfini

Running time: 98 minutes

Weeks away from the 2008 presidential election, New Orleans is a ghost town, with garbage strewn all over the streets and not a trumpet’s note heard. Already sitting in ruin from the whipping winds of Hurricane Katrina three years prior, the Big Easy is going through big hardship, further crippled by the financial collapse on Wall St.

Pre-Obama New Orleans is the setting for Killing Them Softly, a rough, wiry and well-acted gangster story set amidst financial disarray. The film reunites writer/director Andrew Dominik with his Assassination of Jesse James star Brad Pitt, who once again plays a cunning if enigmatic outlaw.

Pitt is Jackie Cogan, a hitman assigned to eliminate two amateur thieves, the off-kilter Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and his junkie friend Russell, (Ben Mendelsohn). Frankie and Russell are two intermediaries who rob a card game where many of the city’s criminals allocate their stolen riches.

At the head of the table is Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta), a sleaze that tried to pull a similar heist years earlier. After disclosing to the players that he had set up an inside job, his criminal friends were amused. Regardless, they figure that if something like that happens again, they can put the heat onto Markie; unfortunately, Trattman’s mistake spawns the imitators.

Frankie and Russell swoop in with poor masks and dishwashing gloves and take the cash. Cogan knows that the only way to revitalize the region’s broken crime syndicates is to have Markie killed – but that doesn’t mean the two petty thieves can get away with their riches.

Killing Them Softly gets its title from Cogan’s method for murder – to shoot from a distance and make a clean getaway. Pitt’s work as a forceful hitman is nuanced, closely linked to the mysterious killer tropes from recent films like Drive and The American.

Dominik sometimes overreaches with some flashy tricks, such as one scene that uses camera filters to align the audience with a drugged-up Russell. However, some of these woozier shots come from Russell’s point of view while others are from Frankie’s position – although his friend is sober. Further, one of the kills on Cogan’s spree is delivered in colourful and very inauthentic CGI, contrary to the character's method that the title alludes to.

Dominik has a better ear for dialogue. While the plot is lean, the characters ramble on – and to good effect. Frankie and Russell speak like giddy high-schoolers about to shoplift before heading to the card game in a drawn-out scene that situates them as the amateur thugs they are.

On the other side of town, disgruntled hitman Mickey (James Gandolfini) muses to Cogan about his financial troubles and sexual disappointments. These scenes are superfluous to the plot but situate the setting within a desperate underbelly of criminals that is so strapped for cash that the mob cannot even tip a waiter for drinks.

Killing Them Softly is compact and its ensemble of character actors exceptional; Mendelsohn and McNairy are devilishly funny as the incompetent poser criminals while few actors relish bitter profane streaks better than Gandolfini.

However, audiences should be warned: the film is rough, bleak and full of bone-cracking violence. It has the ear and (occassionally) the eye of an unsentimental street-set 70s film (in fact, the end credits ditch jazzy music halfway through for B-roll sound of cars and police sirens). Like the debt-ridden crooks in the film, it leaves no tip to thank you for your service. 

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Allegory

Life of Pi

***½  out of ****

Directed by: Ang Lee

Starring: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Rafe Spall, Tabu and Adil Hussain

Running time: 127 minutes

Life of Pi, adapted to the screen by David Magee (Finding Neverland) and realized by master filmmaker Ang Lee, is the third film from the past month to come from a bestselling novel deemed unfilmable, after Cloud Atlas and Midnight’s Children.

But, despite a tempestuous journey to the big screen, the adaptation is stunning, filled with the arguments of belief and doubt that the novel explored dutifully while adding some dazzling visual effects to the veneer.

The odyssey of a young Indian man and a carnivorous Bengal tiger marooned to a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean can only work if digital technology can create the illusion of a man-eating creature. Simply put, the Bengali tiger, named Richard Parker, is the most breathtaking visual effect I have ever seen in any film.

Although created entirely by digital artists, not once did I deny the creature as photographically present. Richard Parker isn’t just a frightening character due to its ferocity, but for how its appearance, movement and voice are miraculously photo-realistic.

Based on Yann Martel’s life-affirming bestseller, Life of Pi is a faithful adaptation, as well as a faith-full one. The protagonist, Pi, is a young boy growing up in Pondicherry, a town in India’s southeastern curve, and his coming-of-age is shown through three actors of different ages

Pi’s father (Adil Hussain) owns a zoo on some botanical gardens in the town. When the young boy and his brother tempt Richard Parker with meat, his father scolds them by making the two watch the tiger engulf a goat. The scene, like many of the situations on the boat, is less graphic than their depictions in Martel’s novel – likely done to fit the boundaries of a PG rating.

Growing up in a town with many religiously divided quarters, the naturally curious boy embraces many beliefs, becoming an astute follower of Christianity and Islam while being raised as Hindu. Pi’s father, a follower of the New India, is more secular and feels that his son is wasting his energy through spiritualism. It doesn’t matter to the young boy – when he hides under his covers at night to read comic books, the figures in them are religious. The Gods are his superheroes.

However, the rest of the film is a test of faith for the boy. When his family sails to Canada, the freighter capsizes. Marooned to the lifeboat, Pi has little time to grapple with his family’s death. Instead, he must learn how to share his territory with the ferocious Richard Parker.

Martel’s narrative was thrust forward with the protagonist’s courageous will to survive, and director Ang Lee sustains the pace wonderfully – vital for a film that spend about two thirds of its running time in the middle of the ocean. Newcomer Suraj Sharma is commanding as Pi, his performance even more impressive when one realizes that he’s reacting against CGI creatures. 

Sharma boasts an emotional range needed for such a demanding journey – Pi loses his family in an instant and then must fend for himself under the tiger’s glowering watch. As Richard Parker and Pi’s struggle intensifies to suffering and starvation, both the boy and his tiger begin to mirror each other.

Much of this middle section is dialogue-free, and director Ang Lee uses a magnificent visual palette to make up for the lack of words. The achingly majestic beauty of the scenescapes from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon return here, although the same sense of alertness and danger that flowed through his earlier masterwork is also present.

Arguably the must sumptuous-looking film of the year, Life of PI is photographed by Claudio Miranda (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). Miranda captures both the solitude and the peril of the seas with various ocean-blue and stringent yellow hues. In the film’s wondrous opening credits sequence, the camera nimbly adapts to the habitat of the various zoo animals it follows.

However, the Kipling-esque story, one imbued with magic realism and metaphor, is not just a dazzling spectacle. Lee meditates on the connections between religion and reason that prompted thought-provoking discussion when the bestseller was released.

Life of Pi meets its only bumps when it concludes. The film returns to Montreal, where the middle-aged Pi (Irrfan Khan) is retelling his odyssey to a writer friend (Rafe Spall). The scenes with the older Pi, only marginally in Martel’s novel, could have been cut without neglecting the film’s power or its exploration of religious belief.

As the older Pi promises at the beginning of the film, his story is one that “would make you believe in God.” Both a stunning visual spectacle and a resonant meditation on the resilience of faith in the midst of extraordinary circumstances, Life of Pi doesn’t quite make me a believer to the extent that Martel’s novel did, although it is still a film worth preaching about.