If you’re not into superheroes (“Captain America,” “X-Men”) and super
villains (“Suicide Squad”); if thriller (“Jason Bourne,” “Independence Day,” “Now
You See Me”) and sci-fi (“Star Trek”) and horror (“The Conjuring,” “The Purge”)
and animation (“Angry Birds,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “Ice Age”) franchises
and franchises-to-be (“Warcraft”) aren’t
your thing; if just plain stupid makes you just plain sick (“Neighbors,” “Bad
Moms,” “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates”)…
Hidden amidst the dross were some lovely little movies about
relationships like Whit Stillman’s quick-witted adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Love and Friendship”; writer/director Rebecca Miller’s “Maggie’s Plan” in which
Greta Gerwig and Julianne Moore are rivals, then co-conspirators in love; and “Don’t
Think Twice,” Mike Birbiglia’s charming tale of a sextet of improv comedians
and their abiding familial loyalty amidst life’s ups and downs.
A number of quirky little subversive gems also made for a delightful summer. “The
Lobster” had only a limited release in March and came into the theaters of
middle America at the end of May, making it, by default, a summer movie for
those of us not living in New York or LA. Then came “Swiss Army Man,” “Wiener-Dog,”
“Captain Fantastic” and “Hunt for the Wilderpeople.”
THE LOBSTER
Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos made his English-speaking debut with
“The Lobster,” a black comedy about a dystopian world in which being single is
a crime. Any adult person who has become mate-less has 45 days to find a new partner.
The newly-single must check into a hotel-like institution, strictly run by a
rigid staff, expressly designed to facilitate this process. Guests who fail to
achieve paired status are turned into an animal of their choosing.
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| Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz in The Lobster |
We follow newly divorced David (Colin Farrell in a superb incarnation
of a milquetoast who achieves rebel status) into a world that is eerily strange
to us but matter-of-fact to him. He arrives with a dog who had been his brother, and should he fail to become half of a twosome,
David has chosen to become a lobster. “An excellent choice,” the hotelier says
to him flatly. The hotel is run like a summer camp – every minute of the day
filled with activity, with demonstrations and expeditions.
An obverse system pertains in the forest that lies beyond the hotel. On
forest expeditions, hotel guests are expected to hunt each other with stun guns,
apparently to reduce the bother of too many failures for the hotelier/warden.
During one such pursuit, David discovers his soulmate among a band of escapees
hiding there. Played by Rachel Weisz and known only as Short Sighted
Woman in the credits, she is also the film’s narrator. The forest people
observe a wholly chaste covenant, so it is a tragic turn by the time Short
Sighted Woman and David are deeply in love – for which there will be
consequences.
Lanthimos wrote the script with Efthymis Filippou, with whom he
previously collaborated on “Dogtooth” and “Alps.” Writing for rogerebert.com,
Sheila O’Malley says, “Lanthimos is interested, here and in his other films, in
the sometimes pathological human need for systems. Why wait for a totalitarian
government to institute rules from the top-down when human beings submit to
atomization of every aspect of their lives all on their own?” This is true, but
Lanthimos is doing something more, I think. Perhaps unwittingly, “The Lobster” recalls
a classic American novel, Sherwood Anderson’s 1919 “Winesburg, Ohio.” The book
consists of 22 interconnected stories that Anderson introduces with a preface
that concerns a writer and the book he purportedly wrote near the end of his
life. “It was never published,” the narrator says, “but I saw it once and it
made an indelible impression on my mind.” The book was called “The Book of the
Grotesque” and it
had one central
thought that is very strange and has always remained with me. [….]
That in the
beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such
thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of
a great many vague thoughts. [….]
The old man had
listed hundreds of the truths in his book. I will not try to tell you of all of
them. There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of
wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and
abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful.
And then the people
came along. Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were
quite strong snatched up a dozen of them.
It was the truths
that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory
concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took
one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life
by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.
I think Anderson’s concept – or something similar or parallel to it –
informs “The Lobster.” The regular assemblies the hotel “guests” are required
to attend stress the dangers of being single in the world and the safe haven of
mating. But they also intimate that one will be successful only with a mate who
shares one’s defining flaw: Lisping Man (John C. Reilly) needs to find a woman
who lisps, Lame Man (Ben Whishaw) a woman who limps. That love becomes manifest
in the shared flaw is the innate law that informs the narrative arc of “The
Lobster,” whether within the walls of the institution or in the forest and the inverted
laws of exile.
Through the lens of cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis, the hotel scenes
recall a feeling of Hemingway’s clean well-lighted place; the forest scenes a
somewhat murky atmosphere like a setting from Longfellow’s “Evangeline” where, in
the forest primeval, “The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,/Bearded with moss,
and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight…”; and the excursions into
the city have a simultaneous feel of Big Brother patrols and techno-consumerism.
The soundtrack, predominated by classical chamber pieces – from an
early Beethoven to Russians Alexander Borodin, Igor Stravinsky and Alfred
Schnittke to Benjamin Britten – also includes two haunting early 20th
century popular Greek songs by Takis Morakis and by Danae Stratigopoulou about
love and loss that are incorporated into poignant visual sequences, as well as
Nick Cave’s “Where the Wild Roses Grow” loosely based on the Appalachian murder
ballad “Down in the Willow Garden.”
SWISS ARMY MAN
The premise of Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan’s “Swiss Army Man,” which
they wrote and directed, is no less absurdist, in part because we are reminded
time and again of the realities that attend to the corporeal. We find Hank
(Paul Dano) stranded on an island, sick with loneliness, trying to hang himself,
when, of a sudden, a fellow soul washes ashore. Our desperate castaway manages
to extricate himself from the noose and urgently runs to the aid of the beached
man. Alas, it is too late, and grief attaches to Hank with the clutch of an unguis.
He tries to let the body go, but his need is too great, so he drags the corpse
into his lair and before long has christened him Manny (Daniel Radcliffe).
Both
actors excel in what is essentially a two-man performance, but Radcliffe is
particularly adept in what would seem to be a close to impossible feat. As Hank
becomes gradually more delirious from hunger and sheer exhaustion, Manny
becomes more animated (with Hank’s help) – and talkative – in Hank’s mind’s eye.
Radcliffe manages to allow us to suspend disbelief and hold the conviction that
over the course of three or four days, Manny is beset by the
process of rigor mortis, while at the same time becoming a very real friend to
Hank.
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| Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano in Swiss Army Man |
Again, I can’t help but see a literary forebear in “Swiss Army Man,”
and though, as obvious as the title reference to Johann David Wyss’s 1812 “The
Swiss Family Robinson” is, I am instead thinking of Samuel Beckett’s 1953 play
“Waiting for Godot.” That absurdist masterpiece opens with Gogo (Estragon)
saying to Didi (Vladimir) “Nothing to be done.” Yet as the magnum opus unfolds,
we come to learn there is much to be done – through kindness,
companionship, pity, and the need for grace – all despite the failure of Godot
ever to materialize. Indeed in the face of that failure we create our salvation
through each other.
There is a passage in the second act of “Godot” where the pompous and
exploitative master Pozzo of the first act has been reduced to a pathetic blind
man dragged along by his slave Lucky. Gogo and Didi, the two tramps, debate
what they should do in response to Pozzo's cries for help until finally Didi
says,
[….] Let us do
something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed.
Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally
well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help
still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all
mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it
is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel
fate consigned us! What do you say? (Estragon says nothing.) .... What are we
doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to
know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We
are waiting for Godot to come—
.... Or for night to
fall. We have kept our appointment and that's an end to that. We are not
saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?
Gogo: Billions.
I quote at length to put those last three lines into context. “We are
not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as
much?” “Billions.” Day after day, millennia after millennia people have given
and do give solace and devotion and understanding to each other in whatever way
they can in the face of indifferent nature, in its finite mortality and its
infinitude.
About two thirds through “Swiss Army Man” is a visual and aural
expression of the joy and camaraderie and love that grows out of a devoted
relationship – no matter how unlikely the pairing – in which Hank re-creates,
out of forest branches and dumped detritus, the bus where he has encountered the
stranger-girl he longs for. He play-acts the stranger-girl with an orange mop
atop his pate and insists Manny play him, Hank – a doppelgänger inversion that
allows Hank finally to express his longings through his double. In this magical
scene we see the beauty that transcends the flaws of
the human condition. Ultimately, Hank is Everyman – his doppelgänger, a corpse
named Manny, the condition toward which we are all journeying.
Larkin Seiple’s cinematography gives a quality of wonderment to the
film overall, with dappled forest floor, dancing firelight and glistening
waters. The soundtrack consists of two dozen original pieces by Andy Hull and Robert
McDowell of the Atlanta-based indie rock band Manchester Orchestra. Dano
collaborated on three of the songs, Radcliffe on four, and Dano and Radcliffe together
with the musicians collaborated on five.
WIENER-DOG
Todd Solondz (1995 “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” 1998 “Happiness”) wrote
and directed “Wiener-Dog,” an episodic tale that examines the human conundrum
through a dog’s-eye view as he is passed from one owner to another. Known for
his dissections of suburbia’s self-absorbed underbelly, Solondz does not
disappoint here. With the exception of a few sympathetic characters – a boy who
has just dodged leukemia, a vet assistant (Greta Gerwig) who saves Wiener-Dog
from euthanasia, the guy she accompanies on a road trip (Kieran Culkin) who
turns out not to be the utter creep we have been introduced to, a sweet Down syndrome couple – the people we meet from the dog’s vantage point are self-obsessed,
resentful, entitled, undeserving of man’s best friend.
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| Keaton Nigel Cooke in Wiener-Dog |
The film is bisected by an intermission: a peripatetic sequence
evocative of Sergio Leone’s Man with No Name in which Wiener-Dog has been green-screened
before a montage of various neon-esque landscapes as the soundtrack plays “The
Ballad of Weiner-Dog” by Marc Shaiman. The intermission, in addition to
reinforcing the episodic nature of the dog’s existence, also gives Solondz
something of an out in terms of narrative continuity. In Act I, we follow
Wiener-Dog from owner to owner, but when we return for Act II, it is not clear
how the pup arrived in his new home with an academic film critic (an
angst-ridden Danny DeVito proving his enormous thespian range yet again) nor is
there a clear transition to his final owner (a bitter Ellen Burstyn proving her
enormous thespian range yet again). In this final episode, Solondz takes a detour into magical reverie as the bitter old woman sees incarnations of herself as a girl wondering aloud what her life might have been without resentment and acrimony.
Edward Lachman’s cinematography lends grace to the banal settings, and Claude
Debussy’s “Clair De Lune” creates a melancholy leitmotif as it floats through
James Lavino’s soundtrack.
HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE
Moving from a perpetually orphaned dachshund to a perpetually orphaned
boy, the Kiwi film “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” is Taika Waititi’s (Taiki Cohen)
film adaption of “Wild Pork and Watercress” (1986) by New Zealand comic
novelist Barry Crump. (Waititi co-wrote and -directed with Jemaine Clement last
year’s uproarious vampire comedy “What We Do in the Shadows.”)
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| Julian Dennison and Sam Neill in Hunt for the Wilderpeople |
This is the end of the line for Ricky (Julian Dennison) who has been
thrown out of every foster home into which the system has placed him. He has
one last chance before being sent to juvie. He lies, steals, cheats, kicks,
burns, hits – and that’s not the worst of it, explains social worker Paula (Rachel
House). He also composes haiku. Paula delivers Ricky to the childless Bella
(Rima Te Wiata) and Hec (Sam Neill). Well, to Bella, really, since Hec would like
nothing to do with the boy, but he loves Bella too much to refuse her.
Bella and Hec live in a remote cabin on the edge of the New Zealand bushland,
where the first night Ricky determines to run away. He only gets a few meters before
petering out. Bella waits for him to awake the next morning and is too good at
psychology to fall for his game. Instead, she encourages his escape, but
suggests he have a good meal before setting off again. Ricky’s hooked – even
insisting that he call his new guardians Aunt Bella and Uncle Hec, and, much as
Hec hates the idea, it sticks. A few days later, Bella celebrates Ricky’s
birthday (it’s not his birth day, but it is very much a celebration), the first
time anyone has ever celebrated anything about Ricky. Only days later, Hec
finds Bella on the ground, dead of a heart attack.
Now that Ricky is no longer with a couple, the state sends Hec notice
that it will reclaim the boy. This time Ricky runs away for real, and Hec feels
obliged to go after him. Ricky and Uncle Hec finally find one another only to
discover that law enforcement and the media have concluded that Hec has
abducted Ricky. A succession of comic episodes ensues as the fugitives traipse
through the bush to elude capture and come, in every sense of the phrase, to
one another’s rescue.
Lachlan Milne’s beautiful cinematography makes the harsh bushland
romantic. The wonderful original soundtrack was written, performed and produced
by the group Moniker and features the collaborative efforts of Lukasz Buda,
Samuel Scott and Conrad Wedde. Late in the film, Ricky must go for help on his
own, and Waititi segues from the Moniker soundtrack to Leonard Cohen’s “The
Partisan.”
When they poured
across the border
I was cautioned to
surrender,
this I could not do;
I took my gun and
vanished.
I have changed my
name so often,
I've lost my wife
and children
but I have many
friends,
and some of them are
with me.
“The Partisan,” in turn, segues into Ukrainian composer Mykola
Leontovych’s 1914 “Carol of the Bells” creating nothing less than a gorgeous
sequence that speaks to our need for one another and the existential desolation
we experience in the face of isolation.
CAPTAIN FANTASTIC
Matt Ross wrote and directed “Captain Fantastic,” the most conventional
of our suite of quirky films, but even it turns some conventions on their
heads. For example, it varies the old trope of the dying girl by having her die
only a few scenes into the film and by having her die by her own hand instead
of wasting away from a romanticized disease. She will essentially remain an
enigma to us, as we watch her closest intimates grieve.
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| Ben Cash (Viggo Mortensen) with his brood in Captain Fantastic |
Viggo Mortensen is Ben Cash. He and the ailing woman, unreconstructed
hippies, have been raising their family of six children off the grid somewhere
in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest. It is not altogether an idyll. Hard work,
filled with rigorous instruction, both physical and intellectual, informs every
structured day. Even the youngest children are expected to tackle arduous rock
climbing exercises and all are well-schooled in killing game.
Cash has sent their mother to be treated near her parents in New Mexico,
and when she dies her overbearing father (Frank Langella) who, it is an
understatement to say, wholly objects to the life his daughter and son-in-law
have made for their children, mandates that they stay put and not attend the
funeral. His haughtiness – and affluence – telegraph why his daughter might
have chosen an alternative life, but once the family defiantly arrives, a back
and forth begins to suggest that prudence and jeopardy affect both men’s points
of view and their anger at one another ultimately grows out of their love for
those around them.
Cinematographer Stephane Fontaine makes the most of forest verdancy,
and the visual enchantment of the film’s penultimate scene, which I will not
spoil here, is worth the price of admission.
Each of these movies is a variation on the on-the-road convention,
which is itself a modern variation of the quest narrative. In “The Lobster,” David
and Short Sighted Woman come to each other, not through institutions or tribal
codes, but through a love that gives them the strength to violate laws. They,
Hank and Manny, and Ricky and Uncle Hec sojourn on foot, Weiner-Dog through
various conveyances, and Ben Cash and his brood in a dilapidated old school bus
outfitted very much like a school. The journey teaches all of them about, not
what it means to be human, but what it means to become human. Conventional orthodoxy
about what constitutes familial love is turned on its head, and we are all the
richer for it.
DVD and streaming release dates for films mentioned in this article:
“The Lobster” available on DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon and Redbox
“Wiener-Dog” available on DVD, Blu-ray and Amazon
“Maggie’s Plan” available on DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon and Redbox
“Love & Friendship” available September 6, 2016 on DVD, Amazon,
Redbox and Netflix
“Hunt for the Wilderpeople” available September 27, 2016 on DVD
“Swiss Army Man” available October 4, 2016 on DVD, Amazon, Redbox and
Netflix
“Captain Fantastic” available October 25, 2016 on DVD, Amazon, Redbox
and Netflix
“Don’t Think Twice” TBA
