Monday, March 25, 2024

The Making (and Mocking) of a President: "Dave"


 In this country, we’re fast approaching the every-four-years Silly Season, when candidates go to insane extremes to convince voters not to support their opponents. (Given the nature of the 2024 U.S. presidential candidates and their proxies, insanity is truly the name of the game.) Last evening, I decided to turn away from political realities by watching a 1993 film that finds great humor and heart in a  presidential what-if.

 In Dave, which came out in the year of Schindler’s List, Kevin Kline plays U.S. President Bill Mitchell,  a cold-hearted man with an eye for pretty young bed-warmers. It bothers him not one whit that his behavior has permanently estranged the First Lady (Sigourney Weaver), who only pretends to be part of a happy presidential couple. But his misbehavior catches up with him when, in bed with a cute member of his staff, he suffers a severe stroke. His cagey chief of staff (the always-slightly-reptilian Frank Langella) has no wish to undermine his own power by handing the reins of government over to the squeaky-clean vice-president (Ben Kingsley, of all people).l His solution is to elevate a convenient look-alike (also, of course, played by Kevin Kline) into the presidency. Kline’s Dave, who runs a Georgetown temp agency, is naturally at first awed by the honor of pretending to be President Mitchell. He’s naïve about the personalities of the powers that be, and overwhelmed by the thrill of actually occupying the presidential suite in the White House. (When he lifts up a phone receiver to make a call from the Oval Office, he feels the need to ask if he needs to dial 9 first.)

 But Dave, for all his aw-shucks manner, is not exactly a fool. He believes in his country’s mission, sees true honor in helping the genuinely needy, and quickly discovers that as President Mitchell he’s positioned to do an end-run around his malevolent chief of staff. There comes a time, though, when the situation of a missing, ailing  president has to be permanently resolved. And Dave’s inventive solution, which I’m sure takes most viewers completely by surprise, allows for a happy ending that’s at least semi-credible, given all that’s gone before.

 It's well known that comedies, even excellent ones, are generally overlooked when Oscars are handed out. The year of Schindler’s List also produced a number of other seriously great films, like The Remains of the Day, The Age of Innocence, and Philadelphia, the AIDS-related drama for which Tom Hanks won his first Oscar.  Dave was nominated for exactly one Academy Award, a well-deserved nod to Gary Ross for his original screenplay, which beautifully sets up all the craziness to come. (As a longtime teacher of screenwriting. I salute him.) The screenwriting Oscar, though, went to Jane Campion, for her extraordinarily inventive work on The Piano. (Other losers in that category were Ron Nyswaner for writing Philadelphia and Nora Ephron—among others—for scripting a romcom classic, Sleepless in Seattle.)

 Politics American-style is a funny business. The year of Dave’s release into theatres was also the year that William Jefferson Clinton entered the White House. When the threat of a presidential impeachment arose in Dave, audiences of the time were well aware that a U.S. president had never been impeached since Andrew Johson in 1868. That was to change in 1998 following the notorious Monica Lewinsky affair, and of course we all know which president was impeached twice during his single term in office.

 What’s going on our country today is no laughing matter. But I’m grateful that Dave finds some humor in unthinkable news from Washington.

 

 

Friday, March 22, 2024

The Daze of Wine and Roses

For many of us, “Days of Wine and Roses” is primarily a ballad, best known in a 1963 rendition by pop singer Andy Williams. It’s got a noble pedigree, featuring Johnny Mercer’s lyrics set to a Henry Mancini tune.  Over the years it’s often been recorded, and has become a jazz standard. It won a Grammy for 1963 Song of the Year, as well as an Oscar for its appearance in the film of the same name.

 It’s that 1962 film I want to focus on now, partly because it, and the Playhouse 90 teleplay that preceded it,  have recently inspired a musical version (now running through the end of this month) that features some of Broadway’s best and brightest. The music is by Adam Guettel, with book by Craig Lucas, both of whom have impressive resumés and reputations for producing serious dramatic work. (Their prime collaboration is the musical version of another sensitive movie drama, The Light in the Piazza.) The female lead is the much-honored Kelli O’Hara, and her male counterpart is another Broadway veteran, Brian d’Arcy James. The score, which does not include the Mancini/Mercer ballad, is gorgeous, and I’ve heard the staging is highly inventive. But the fact that the play was originally scheduled to run through April 28 suggests it has not caught fire with audiences, and I wonder how most of us will ever manage to see it.

 Days of Wine and Roses, directed by Blake Edwards from a JP Miller screenplay, takes a close look at how lives are destroyed by alcohol abuse. In this it makes a fascinating contrast to the early classic of the genre, Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend. The 1945 Wilder film, starring Ray Milland, is an unforgettable close-up look at a man who, over the course of two harrowing days, nearly destroys his life because of his addiction to the bottle. By contrast, Days of Wine and Roses has a much larger canvas. It unfolds over a number of years, encompassing periods of binge drinking, sobriety, and relapse.  It’s also about a romantic couple, whose relationship to alcohol first enhances and then destroys their marriage. The leads are played by Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick, both of whom give award-worthy performances. Both were indeed nominated for Oscars, but lost out to Gregory Peck (To Kill a Mockingbird) and Anne Bancroft (The Miracle Worker) in a strong year. Shockingly, the film’s only win was for that featured title song, perhaps because this was also the year of Lawrence of Arabia, The Music Man, Sweet Bird of Youth, and The Manchurian Candidate.

 What I’ve found fascinating, both then and now, is the way marriage and alcoholism are shown to be strange bedfellows. Lemmon’s character, San Francisco public relations exec Joe Clay, is a bon vivant type, one who enjoys social drinking and uses liquor to fuel his relationship with clients. When he falls for teetotaler secretary Kirsten, he makes Brandy Alexanders a central part of their exuberant courtship. Over time, both begin to depend on liquor in their domestic relationship: when one pulls back, the other is resentful. Eventually after their cravings have taken a toll on their professional and social lives, the marriage itself implodes, leaving two lost souls in its wake.

 The year 1962 was a long time ago, but this film (despite its black-&-white cinematography) still feels modern. I’ve read it had a powerful long-term effect on its cast and crew, many of whom had their own addictions to face. (Within the film, Alcoholics Anonymous is an important presence in one character’s shaky but genuine recovery.)


 

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Ferreting Out The Best Films I’ve Never Seen

While looking for something completely different at my local library, I came across a book I couldn’t resist. It was written by journalist Robert K. Elder, as a follow-up to his 2011 volume, The Film that Changed My Life. For that book, which garnered respectful reviews from film geeks like Leonard Maltin, Elder interviewed working directors about the films that had helped mold their own aesthetic.  In 2013, Elder was back with a sequel of sorts, The Best Film You’ve Never Seen. Talking mostly to those directors he had featured in his previous book, Elder here sussed out a list of obscure films that (for whatever reason) we movie lovers should know better.

 Part of the fun of The Best Film You’ve Never Seen is discovering movies about which we have little or no prior knowledge. The always perverse Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse) makes a good case for an obscure indie called The Honeymoon Killers. And John Waters, the celebrated purveyor of deliberately skanky films like Pink Flamingos, argues persuasively that the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton misfire known as Boom! can be a source of viewer delight.  The book has also alerted me to the dubious joys of Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

 Some of the directors’ choices are surprising. Several selected big studio productions from bygone eras. The late Peter Bogdanovich, who always had a passion for the stylistics of long ago, endorsed a 1932 Ernst Lubitsch gem, Trouble in Paradise. I’ve seen this frothy film about con artists and thieves, and can vouch for its charm. (Notably, it was selected in 1991 for inclusion in the National Film Registry.) I guess its age makes it obscure to most of today’s moviegoers, but what about Richard Curtis’s selection, Breaking Away? This amiable coming-of-age comedy about bicycle racing in Bloomington, Indiana, won an Academy Award for its Steve Tesich screenplay, and was nominated for four other Oscars, including Best Picture. I enjoy realizing that Curtis, known for such very English romantic farces as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually, is enamored of Tesich and Peter Yates’ cozy slice of Americana.

 It's fitting, I guess, that Bill Condon—best recalled for splashy Hollywood musicals like Chicago and Dreamgirls—would endorse Bob Fosse’s first screen directorial effort, Sweet Charity. But who would have guessed that Kevin Smith, the outrageous indie director of Clerks, would have a thing for Fred Zinnemann’s (and Paul Scofield’s) 1966 Best-Picture winner,  A Man for All Seasons? It seems that Smith’s Catholic school education, and the efforts of one particular nun, have made him passionate about Sir Thomas More’s doomed efforts to save the One True Church back during the reign of Henry VIII. Smith has high praise for the filmmaking as well as the subject matter, which he expresses in very Kevin Smith fashion. Book author Elder asks the question; “You’ve said that A Man for All Seasons is ‘porn for somebody who loves language.’ How does it differ from regular, missionary-position dialogue in other movies?” And here is Smith’s reply: “Because every line of dialogue is a close-up jizz shot to some degree or a really great close-up on double penetration.”  (You can’t get much more eloquent than that.)

 Reading this book has made me eager to check out some films I’ve only heard of, like Frank Perry’s The Swimmer and Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running (produced in the same year as his great triumph, Gigi).  And I’ll be pondering Henry Jaglom’s take on his friend and mentor Orson Welles’ F for Fake, which Jaglom tantalizingly calls “the most autobiographical of Orson’s films.”


 

Friday, March 15, 2024

Sandra Hüller Takes Off in “Toni Erdmann”

There was German actress Sandra Hüller at the Oscars last weekend, looking sleek and pretty as she beamed for the cameras. But we also saw her on-screen in film clips: as an accused murderer cruelly deriding her late husband; as a Nazi wife purring gleefully as she tried on someone else’s fur coat and lipstick. So what are we to make of this woman, formerly unknown to most American audiences? Out of curiosity, I decided to watch the 2016 German film that first put Hüller on the world cinema map. Toni Erdmann, written and directed by Maren Ade, won awards all over Europe, and was an Oscar nominee for foreign language feature. I knew nothing about it, but sensed it was off-beat. An English-language poster full of review quotes contained language like this: “Wildly imaginative!” and “It’s absolutely nuts!”

 It's also long (162 minutes), and for much of the early going I debated about switching off the video. The story begins with a white-haired German man, Winfried Conradi, opening the door to a delivery guy and implying that the package that’s arriving contains bomb-making materials. Winfried, who’s a divorced music teacher, likes to play bizarre practical jokes, sometimes donning a mop of a wig and a snaggly set of fake teeth to shock those around him. Hüller enters later as his grown daughter Ines, a successful businesswoman visiting from her high-power job in Bucharest, Romania. She’s in town to visit relatives, but can’t be torn away from her ever-present mobile phone.

 The scene shifts to Bucharest, where we see more of Ines’ work life. Under constant stress from a need to please her bosses, she shoves herself daily into a business-like dark suit and very high heels, then coils her blonde hair into a tight French twist before setting out to make presentations to clients. She has a social life of sorts, but it’s always being interrupted by her strong sense of obligation to bosses who don’t always seem to have her best interests in mind. It’s only in a scene with her co-worker/lover—she’s uncharacteristically wearing a short, tight dress that doesn’t flatter—that we start to discover she’s incapable of truly feeling pleasure.

 Into this tense atmosphere comes Winfried in his wig and fake teeth, introducing himself to Ines and her colleagues as an unlikely “life coach” named Toni Erdmann. The more that Ines tries to send him back to Germany, the more he pops up in her life, mingling with those in her circle and even claiming to be the German ambassador: they try to be polite but are clearly confused.  It’s at this juncture that Ines seems to reach her breaking point. She’s been asked by the higher-ups to turn her birthday celebration into a team-building exercise via a party at her comfortable flat. She’s put out a spread of fancy foods and is struggling to pull herself into a colorful frock . . . but then something in her seems to give way. I won’t spoil all the surprises, but will merely say that after that wild and crazy sequence the audience starts looking at Ines in an entirely different way.

 By the end, we’re back in Winfried’s German home town, for the staging of an elderly relative’s funeral. Once again father and daughter come together, for an interchange that’s surprisingly poignant. Both, I think, have changed—but Ines has clearly learned some key truths about herself, and we expect her future will be somehow much different from what has gone before. Brava to Sandra Hüller, who has shown us that she contains many possibilities.