Though King Richard is a sports film, sports players are not our focus. Instead, director Reinaldo Marcus Green crafts a character study of mentorship – the kind that doesn’t rebuke or harshly punish students when they fail, but rather nurtures them holistically into better people, and not just betters players. High expectations are set, but the relationship is a two-way street. While other aspiring tennis players are berated by overbearing parents and burn out from the stress, teenagers Venus and Serena Williams find the opposite problem. Their father, Richard, fully believes that they will become the best in the sport one day, but in the meantime, patience, family, and education will be top priorities.
There is no hypocrisy to his lessons either, as it is equally when they are not looking that he continues to work tirelessly for them. While the days are spent on their training, he works nights as a security guard to support them beyond mere verbal guidance, and is even willing to put his neck on the line in confronting a group of thugs lurking outside the local tennis courts. Not once in King Richard do we ever doubt that he has anything but his daughters’ best interests at hearts, but the frustrating patience with which he approaches their professional progress drives a tension in the family drama which is not easily resolved. If Venus is growing irritated with the pace at which he is pushing her, Serena is even more exasperated, being the one to live in the shadow of her older sister. But even when tempers are raised, there remains an air of cool collectedness to Will Smith’s performance, giving Richard all the confidence of a man who acts as if he has seen decades into the future.
Or maybe it is just his complete faith in the 85-page plan he wrote in his daughters’ infancy, plotting out their rises to success in careful detail. Though some adjustments are made along the way, his strong principles of humility and patience are rigidly maintained, as is his own detailed understanding of the sport. Most significantly, after he identifies a toxic atmosphere within the junior tournaments, he pulls both of them out and disallows them from competing in matches until they turn professional, aggravating both them and their befuddled coaches.
Time passes and the girls’ talents grow, and Green proves himself to be a particularly good editor in the sharpness with which he moves through it all. A jump forward three years in time lands a graphic match cut precisely on the hit of a tennis ball mid-serve, and these sound effects similarly punctuate transitions between other scenes as well. Montages and slow-motion sequences continue to move through climactic matches with superb tension, though among it all Richard remains a grounding force, as a source of conviction that the future remains bright even at his daughters’ lowest moments. Just as he is patient with them, so too is Green patient with him, peeling back the layers of this kind yet stubborn character whose unconventional choices cannot be fought against, but merely trusted with all the faith one would put in a sturdy, dependable father figure.
Even as Paul Thomas Anderson has experimented in period pieces, romantic comedies, and psychological dramas, his fascination in the surrogate families and oddball coupling of unlikely characters has barely wavered over the decades. Often these characters find themselves lost in the turmoil of unpredictable, changing worlds, from the post-war America setting of The Master to the smaller, more contained collision of chaotic plot threads in Punch Drunk Love, and Licorice Pizza is no exception. What does set this apart from anything else in his filmography is just how languid it is, almost like the happy-go-lucky first half of Boogie Nights but with no impending sense of doom, and far less cocaine.
A mountain of an adolescent in a sea of a children – so much character conveyed in a simple image.
In fact, the rate at which times passes here is entirely unclear. Gary is 15 with confidence of a 30-year-old and the heart of an 8-year-old, auditioning for children’s parts in movies while hustling a few different businesses on the side. Alana is “25”, but you could give or take a few years based on the wavering conviction with which she tells us this. They meet at Gary’s high school on picture day when she comes in to take photos, and then we never see another scene set there again, their friendship instead unfolding over what could be a few weeks, a few months, or a year on the streets of the San Fernando Valley. Neither look like the sorts of movie stars we have come to expect from even the most casual coming-of-age movies, their pimples and crooked teeth letting them blend into crowds of teenagers and young adults with similarly natural imperfections. Even in Anderson’s lesser films, he has never made one that lacks in characterisation, and here, in what may be considered one of his more modest artistic achievements, this remains the case.
How odd it is to call a film of this calibre “modest” though. Licorice Pizza may be possess less stylistic or formal ambition than Magnolia or There Will Be Blood, and yet for virtually any other working filmmaker it may as well be their crowning jewel. The Los Angeles from Anderson’s childhood is recreated in especially loving detail, calling back especially to Quentin Tarantino’s own Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with the brazen commitment to yellows all through the production design, and the attractive matching of colours between period costumes and sets.
Bradley Cooper’s brief segment as Jon Peters (who also produced his 2018 movie A Star is Born) is one of the best episodes of the film.
Most impressive of all though are Anderson’s tracking shots, lingering by the sides and backs of Alana and Gary as they move through their constantly shifting environments, like a restless search for stability in a world pushing them from one capitalistic pursuit to the next. In one scene set in the 1973 Teen-Age Fair, the camera skilfully weaves through crowds of students and performers where Gary plans to sell waterbeds, though even here his venture is cut short by a hilariously unfortunate case of mistaken identity. Later when the 1973 oil crisis hits, his shrewd business instincts prove to be even more useless against the overwhelming force of economic turmoil.
Running is a constant motif in this film – together, towards each other, in pursuit of their individual goals.
Meanwhile, Alana carries a sharp insight into social situations that he does not possess, seeing the misogynistic, racist culture they live in for what it is and manipulating it to her benefit. There is little glamour to be found in this memory piece, as those unsavoury parts of eras we have left behind are recalled not with heavy didacticism nor merciful nostalgia, but rather a bitter amusement and heavy acceptance.
Yet regardless of where they are coming from or what blows they have suffered, Gary and Alana consistently find themselves running back to each other, this visual motif carrying with it a desperation to obtain the security which corporate America cannot provide. Alana’s discovery that the mayoral candidate for whom she is working is hiding a homosexual relationship from the public in fear of its impact on his popularity becomes a turning point for her, as it also comes with a realisation that very few people are suited to the mould cut out for them. Definitions around her relationship with Gary don’t come easily either, as although there is an attraction there, it manifests in complex ways. Are they friends? Business partners? Lovers? Theoretically nothing about them should work, especially given the age gap. And yet despite it all, they continue to run, driven by an instinctive need for companionship and mutual understanding that no one else can offer.
A gorgeously creative shot from beneath the waterbed Gary and Alana are lying on.
And when they are united in camaraderie, Anderson takes great pleasure in peeling back the layers of their flaws, passions, and mannerisms, building their friendship up with each new revelation. Just as Gary playfully points out that Alana often habitually repeats the statement twice in a row, so too does she slyly pick up on his unspoken fetish when he compliments a woman’s painted toenails. Later, she coyly uses that to her advantage while demonstrating how to flirt with potential customers, teasingly putting her own feet up on her desk.
Paul Thomas Anderson doing Tarantino.
The other vignettes in this seemingly endless summer (or year?) of entrepreneurship unfold with unhurried, comedic naturalism, and yet individually become the sort of memories one might recall years later as funny anecdotes – that time Gary was mistaken for a murderer and arrested, that time we flooded a movie producer’s house just because he was a d*ck, that time Alana fell off a famous film director’s motorbike. “I’m not going to forget you. Just like you’re not going to forget me,” he tells her, and though within that there is an implication that they will eventually set off on different trajectories, so too does it reserve a special place for each other in their individual futures.
But whenever that separation occurs, it isn’t going to be within this bubble of eternity that Licorice Pizza is set inside. In the final minutes as they once again run towards each other, there is the sense that this really is the last time they will ever have to do so, now that they realise where they both stand. While Anderson cuts from one to the other coming from either sides of the frame, he also inserts brief cutaways of them hurtling along sidewalks and fields from earlier scenes, as if everything up until now has built to this one climactic collision. As it is represented in this motif, the tension underlying this film is not predicated on whether they will find romantic feelings for each other – that would be to reduce their connection down to something far too conventional. As they keep on running, heading towards a common point in space, the suspense leading us on is simply the hope that they will find each other.
A wonderful formal pay-off and exciting piece of editing in the film’s superb finale.
In a film culture drowning in adaptations of existing intellectual property, West Side Story is a timely reminder that remakes of beloved movies need not necessarily be considered an attempt to displace revered legacies and treasured childhood memories. Besides the very specific casting choice of Rita Moreno, Steven Spielberg barely references the original at all, making this adaptation just as much a product of his own vibrant artistic vision as the 1961 version was Robert Wise’s. No longer is New York lit like a furnace burning with the passion of lovers and rivals, but it is rather washed out with cold blues and greys, underscoring the scarcity and desperation of this city that can only be pierced by the vibrant cultural expressions bursting forth from the characters’ costumes, blocking, and dancing.
In this cinematic take on the classic musical, scaffolding, machinery, and debris litter the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and Spielberg brings us into this right from the very first shot when he lifts us up into the air in a magnificently long take, sweeping across dystopian demolition sites of torn-down buildings before dropping us into the prologue’s heated balletic clash between Sharks and Jets. Later on in the musical number ‘Cool’, the collapsed shell of an old freight station becomes the tumbledown stage upon which Tony calls the Jets to step down from the planned rumble, visually working in conjunction with the questions of territory roiling around in the screenplay to turn this urban environment into an apocalyptic wasteland ruled by gangs.
Derelict architecture and debris setting the scene for this adaptation of West Side Story, as these gangs steadily find themselves being displaced within a gradually gentrifying neighbourhood.Marvellous set pieces from Spielberg, particularly in using this salt warehouse as the setting for the rumble.
Though praise must be given to the editing in those quiet montages of the city that underscore a palpable tension in the air and the precariously balanced ‘Tonight Quintet’, Spielberg’s brilliant camerawork largely forms the foundation of his cinematic achievement all throughout West Side Story. At its most dazzling, he soars his camera over the top of a dance at the local gym, before dropping it to the floor and letting it crawl around the legs of the attendees. In subtler moments it effortlessly integrates with his choreography and blocking, particularly in ‘Gee Officer Krupke’ where the Jets turn the police station into a playground for both themselves and the camera to energetically zoom around in an irreverent mockery of clueless authority figures. This is to say nothing of Spielberg’s creative angles which heighten the forbidden interactions between lovers Tony and Maria through extreme highs and lows on the side of an apartment building, as well as those Dutch tilts which further throw this desolate world dramatically off-kilter.
High and low angles heightening the drama of Tony and Maria’s blossoming love, while Spielberg uses the architecture of his set to divide his characters.
Beyond Spielberg’s acute visual acumen, his casting similarly astounds right across his entire ensemble, the only weak link being a performance from Ansel Elgort that never quite matches the edgy verve of almost everyone around him. There is little he can do from being blown off the screen by his co-stars Rachel Zegler and Mike Faist, respectively playing Maria and Riff. In Zegler’s performance, the sweet passion of romance manifests in full bloom, shining brightly in her wide, expressive smile, while Faist’s deadpan disillusionment draws out a touching vulnerability in the leader of the Jets. Rounding out the trio of breakthrough performances in West Side Story is Ariane DeBose, whose charisma and conviction as Anita lifts the number ‘America’ to spectacularly energetic heights and brings the tragedy of this Shakespearean narrative crashing to devastating lows.
The show-stopping America number spills out onto the streets, taking over New York with this vibrant celebration and playful argument.
In smaller characters, Spielberg builds out the social commentary of the piece with minor tweaks, emphasising their attempts to find their place in a society that despises them. On the Sharks’ side, Chino is far more timid than historical representations of him, and as such is equally motivated to earn the respect of the gang as he is to win Maria’s love. Meanwhile, the traditional queer coding of Anybodys manifests here in fully embracing the character’s identity as a trans man wanting to become part of the Jets. This does not exist purely as an adjustment to pre-existing material though, nor does it act as a strained call to modern audiences to appreciate that which came before. Spielberg is one of the truly great pop artists of cinema, and his broad, sweeping style of iconographic filmmaking is well-suited to such classical Shakespearean stories as that which West Side Story takes its own spin on. Above all else, this film is an eruption of creative genius from a master of his craft, flowing with musical excitement, tragedy, and remarkable stylistic ambition.
Remarkable blocking even beyond the fantastic musical numbers as Spielberg creates gorgeous formations out of his ensemble.One of the greatest shots of the film – expressionistic shadows moving towards each other in anticipation of the rumble.
The decades that Maggie Gyllenhaal has spent watching and learning from directors on film sets has paid off – The Lost Daughter is one of the more outstanding directorial debuts of 2021, delivering an entirely unsettling take on motherhood that has no inhibitions in peeling back the sensitive and at times ugly layers of what it means to lose yourself in such an overwhelming duty of care. Olivia Colman is in the lead role here as Leda, a woman whose beach holiday in Greece starts to quietly derail after meeting young mother Nina and her small family. The psychological drama that unravels from here is almost entirely internal, depicted in flashbacks that reveal Leda’s own fraught history as a mother of two young girls, and yet there is an anxiety which seems to arise in her immediate environment as well.
A magnificent performance from Olivia Colman capturing every complex layer of Leda’s identity. She is unpredictable, flirting with strangers before running off in shame, reaching out to her past while trying to run from it.
Part of this troubled atmosphere can be put down to Leda’s paranoid, erratic behaviour, particularly in her strange decision to steal the doll of Elena, Nina’s child, which gives rise to symbolic suggestions of wishful surrogacy. But then there are those falling pinecones that always seem to target her along the same path home from the beach, and a group of troublesome local men who seem to be everywhere she goes. The uneasiness attached to these threats draw a very thin line between drama and thriller, as does the subtle suggestion that there may be some deeper truth to Leda’s past which she refuses to address. While meeting new people and answering basic personal questions, the hesitancy in Colman’s line deliveries suggests nervous dishonesty even when she is speaking the truth. In actuality, it is what she leaves unsaid that conceals the explanations we are looking for.
The crafting of such persistent ambiguity and disorientation is the basis of Gyllenhaal’s filmmaking strengths here, as in the formal repetition of flashbacks and motifs she builds a character who feels both immediately accessible in her mental state, and yet mysteriously distant in her unsympathetic behaviour. Names are awkwardly misheard and mistaken more than once, and a rhyming couplet that continues to reappear in Leda’s flashbacks with her children brings both an eerie metaphoric significance and a sweet innocence to her fondest memories.
“Don’t let it break, peel it like a snake.”
An uneasy relationship with the locals and holidaymakers around her.
Meanwhile, Gyllenhaal takes a step into Terrence Malick territory with the creative choice to let conversations run over shots from elsewhere within the same scene where the characters aren’t speaking, sinking us deeper into Leda’s distracted mental state. Seemingly the only thing that she can focus on completely without disturbance is Nina, within whom she sees a version of her younger self. There is certainly empathy in the complex relationship that develops between them, as Leda notices Nina’s troubles with motherhood and her desire to break free of its constraints, but there is also a little bit of jealousy over her still-intact family. Nina has not yet made the same choices as Leda, but it may only be a matter of time before she too finds herself separated from her children.
Elena’s doll an object of obsession for Leda, and full of symbolism informing her emotional journey.
The film title’s description of a daughter as “lost” may on the surface imply some kind of missing persons narrative, but Gyllenhaal is clearly more interested in where those lost people actually go. Indeed, many things are lost in this film – multiple daughters, a doll, and most of all, Leda herself, who finds herself out of her depth wherever she goes. Back at home she finds herself struggling to raise her children, but then when she is away from them, they dominate her every thought. Certainly parenting isn’t something that everyone can weather, but even in her self-description of being an “unnatural mother” there is a recognition that her daughters are still very much part of her identity, regardless of her actual nurturing instincts. “Don’t let it break,” they continue to whisper to her all throughout the film, and it is within this mantra that Leda finds some hope of reconnection with kindness and understanding.
Gyllenhaal’s flashbacks often caught in close-ups, not always entirely clear.
The Lost Daughter is currently streaming on Netflix.
Since the explosion of Hamilton on Broadway in 2015, it has been nearly impossible to escape the pop culture presence of the playwright behind it. Lin-Manuel Miranda has sung, written, acted, and produced his way into the upper echelons of the theatre, film, and television communities with a joyful passion that has been embraced by most and shunned by others who have deemed his upbeat attitude too corny or intense to be loveable. How fitting it is then that his foray into movie directing centres a figure who once could have inhabited a very similar place as him. In 1996, Jonathan Larson’s rock musical Rent reached similar heights as Miranda’s own decade-defining, hip-hop spin on America’s Founding Fathers, though it was the night before its Off-Broadway preview that he unexpectedly passed away from an undiagnosed illness. Tick, Tick… Boom! seeps with a zest for life shared by both artists that can easily turn off any cynic unprepared for such open embraces of bohemia and playful, self-aware numbers, and yet at the same time Miranda plays out a deconstruction of the artist that may still hold hope of winning over his detractors.
While based off a semi-autobiographical musical of the same name that Larson himself wrote before Rent, Tick, Tick… Boom! also uses a performance of the very show as its own framing device. At the New York Theatre Workshop in 1992, he opens with a monologue. In his head, he has been hearing a ceaseless ticking noise. It is not a technical problem, a musical cue, or a joke, he tells the audience. It is an unstoppable countdown to the moment where he realises his youth, energy, and life has been squandered, and now on the verge of turning 30, he fears that that inevitable ‘Boom’ is close by. We cut to two years earlier, a time when Jonathan has been working on an entirely different project altogether, Superbia, and all throughout the film that ticking comes and goes, a reminder of what waits for him on the other end.
In Miranda’s skilful intercutting between both timelines, an interaction forms between Jonathan’s fiction and reality. Not just in the manifestation of his life in art, but the act of creation itself impedes upon everything else, from his relationships to finances. As we listen to a song comically expressing the complexity of arguing with your significant other, we simultaneously watch such an argument unfold with his girlfriend, Susan, and then just as it seems as if it has been resolved she catches Jonathan’s fingers tapping out a rhythm. Even in the heat of a quarrel, that artistic instinct to transpose real life into music remains. Or is it just an impulsively selfish disconnection from other people? Even then, that song we are watching composed and performed concurrently are not perfect reflections of each other. The resolution found in Jonathan’s musical interpretation is nowhere to be found in reality, but instead becomes a concoction of pure fantasy, embodying the exact kind of detachment that Susan has accused him of.
Jonathan’s musical performances are well-integrated with the story through some skilful editing, often used to display the similarities and disparities between life and art.
The power that Jonathan’s songs carry seems to radiate back from these future performances all through Tick, Tick… Boom!, as in one scene we watch the chaos of a busy diner suddenly dissipate in a burst of tranquillity the moment the first chord of “Sunday” is struck. Miranda’s visual aesthetic is at times plain enough to expose his relative inexperience in film direction, and yet his love for theatrics explodes forth in this number where Jonathan lowers the wall of the restaurant to create a stage upon which the figures of his imagination harmonise in a display of choral brilliance.
The show-stopping “Sunday” number, Jonathan playing the role of conductor in his imagination.
Given how much of himself Jonathan puts into his work, those sly references to Rent that continue to turn up are a little more earned than the typical piece of fan service. For better and for worse, his art is very much an obsession, and Andrew Garfield takes the composer’s electric, frazzled energy to new heights even beyond those songs that distil his complicated life into purely emotional expressions. It is also in those moments when Jonathan’s creative block keeps him from summoning up a single note that his desperation and frustration spill forth, and that anxiety around being unable to produce anything of worth takes over. The sentimental voiceover that caps Tick, Tick… Boom! might be a little too jolting even for Manuel fans, especially given how far it steps outside its own narrative form without proper setup, but with the fresh perspective of hindsight, Manuel lends the ticking motif an extra edge of poignancy, extending Jonathan’s fear of time running out to an existential fear of one’s own mortality. Death may arrive as a slow decline or a nasty surprise, but just as both Manuel and Larson strongly abide by in Tick, Tick… Boom!, it is also makes everything that precedes it all the more valuable in its fleetingness.
A charismatic performance from Garfield, capturing a very specific combination of charm, energy, and anxiety.
Tick, Tick… Boom! is currently streaming on Netflix.
It might be a little generous calling House of Gucci “Shakespearean”, but all the hallmarks are there – a conniving Lady Macbeth, the rise and fall of a noble family, fatally flawed antiheroes, and a poetic sense of tragedy in the culmination of remarkable treachery. If not Shakespeare, than perhaps comparisons may be drawn to The Godfather in its unfolding of an epic family saga, where empires built by parents are expanded and destroyed by their own children. The presence of Al Pacino as an uncle who must be cut out to let the younger entrepreneurs flourish is certainly a nod in that direction, though it is largely the strength of this operatic narrative and screenplay that gives House of Gucci such firm grounding in these historical archetypes.
In holding together this colossal historical story, Ridley Scott infuses a strong sense of destiny into its very fabric, most predominantly in the prophecies of Pina who offers counsel to Patrizia Reggiani, First Lady of the Gucci Empire. Though she acts as a soothsayer, she is no doubt a flawed one, often only telling her friend what she wishes to hear and even going so far as to foolishly conspire in her criminal plans. It is through her that Patrizia “sees” the affair going on between her husband, Maurizio, and his mistress, Paola, depicted in a seamless piece of editing that gives the appearance of them all sharing the same space.
The day that Patrizia’s ruthless nature fully surfaces and sets in motion the irrevocable downfall of the Gucci family is also spelled out right from the start, as her voiceover speaks with mournful nostalgia over an apparently ordinary sequence of Maurizio preparing for work. Two hours later we return to that same scene, though this time that narration is replaced with cutaways to Patrizia slyly submerging herself within a soapy bath, anxiously awaiting her dastardly plans to reach fruition. And indeed they do, as Scott brings his narrative full circle in a tragic manifestation of destiny, and the infamous mythology of the Gucci family is set in stone.
For the most part, this cast of bright stars understand and embrace the magnificently dramatic task at hand. In playing these larger-than-life figures whose existences are drenched in wealth and extravagance, their acting styles are suitably turned up to the brink of exaggeration. Some, like Jared Leto, tip over into full-on caricature, while Adam Driver is about as understated as you can be while faking an Italian accent. Lady Gaga is the one who hits the sweet spot in a performance that is certainly heightened, but still fully invested in drawing out the thrillingly dark power plays of the real Patrizia Reggiani. As relationships disintegrate between husbands, wives, fathers, and sons through affairs and backstabbing, there remains an irony to their attempts at upholding the “family character” of their brand that only thinly conceals their own hatred for each other.
True to the film’s operatic tendencies, classical arias and duets from such Italian composers as Rossini and Verdi find their way into House of Gucci, even as much of the soundtrack is dominated by 80s synth pop songs. It is in this blend of two conflicting styles that the duelling identities of the Gucci family are captured, being a family both propped up by tradition and utterly consumed in the hedonism of the modern world. Not every minute of this film is filled with the sort of tight, enthralling storytelling that its dramatic influences clearly possess, and yet Ridley Scott’s decades of experience working with classical narratives and universal archetypes effectively turns this complicated piece of recent history into an epic tragedy of grand destinies and fallen empires.
After his exhilarating take on the Global Financial Crisis in The Big Short, and his slightly more polarising study of Dick Cheney’s political career in Vice, Adam McKay is tying off what he has labelled his ‘Freakout trilogy’ with his broadest satire yet in Don’t Look Up. What exactly his target is here is difficult to pin down – self-serving politicians, exploitative tech billionaires, nationalistic hero worship of soldiers, and vapid media personalities all come into play, though the catalyst for these send-ups is all-encompassing. The end of the world is on its way, as the discovery of a comet coming to obliterate Earth begs for immediate, cooperative action, particularly from those who hold social and political influence. Astronomists Dr Randall Mindy and Kate Dibiasky only barely slide into that category, though it is a strong current of blatant ignorance, arrogance, and nationalism which they are swimming against.
Those who were only onboard with The Big Short for its sharp insight and incisiveness may be disappointed with the blunt approach with which McKay approaches his contentious subject matter here. Those who appreciate his irreverent wit and zippy, fast-paced editing as a means of crafting an entirely different kind of statement will still find value in Don’t Look Up, even if it is troubling in its formal inconsistencies. His efforts to break past the polished, conventional aesthetic on display to let his more familiar documentary style breathe are largely successful in his handheld camera, voiceovers, and comically harsh cuts away from intense scenes mid-conversation, though some oddly placed jump cuts and cutaways don’t fare so well, and neither does one strangely isolated fourth wall break. The flashing of some text over a freeze frame early on to inform us that the Planetary Defense Coordination Office is indeed a real organisation within NASA is the sort of self-aware, playful gag that gave The Big Short and Vice such distinctive humour, and yet given the lack of recurring acknowledgement of the story’s own fictionality from this point on, its insertion simply makes for poor film form.
While keeping all these flaws in mind though, there should still be no hesitation in pointing out McKay’s idiosyncratic and playful use of montages to imbue energy and texture into his work. His editing in Don’t Look Up doesn’t quite touch the heights of Damien Chazelle or Edgar Wright, but the great strength of his stylistic achievement here comes back to those mosaics of insects, cities, animals, babies, temples, riots, sex, planets – everything that encompasses the micro and macro experiences of human life in all its beauty and terror. The sheer velocity with which he flits through these images only ever allows us short, sharp glimpses before snatching them away in an instant, keeping us from appreciating the scope of humanity beyond its overwhelming transience. It is only in the weighty moment which this film eventually winds towards that he slows his footage right down to a snail’s pace, expanding milliseconds out to what seems like an eternity, and finally letting the humanity of the piece linger as each central character discovers the value in their fleeting lives.
An epic scope of subjects reduced to fleeting images in montages – riots, animals, babies, religion, Earth, daily commutes, here and then gone again in an instant.
Certainly McKay’s star-studded cast is yet another characteristic stamp of his that turns up here, and this too pays off on multiple levels. For Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, the gravity of the situation is fully realised in angry outbursts, panic attacks, and their characters’ eventual despairing turns to hedonism, keeping the centre of the film grounded as almost every other plot thread spins off in wild directions. In smaller parts, McKay does well to keep casting big names in amusingly appropriate roles – Ariana Grande as a parody of the kind of superficial pop star the world believes her to be, as well as an especially gruff Ron Perlman playing a grim-faced Colonel who is more than willing to unnecessarily sacrifice his life for his country. The satirical parallels are often all too plain, especially when it comes to Meryl Streep’s self-serving Trumpian President, and yet McKay has no pretensions about his style of low-brow humour. Don’t Look Up is an act of political catharsis more than anything else – provocative, contemptuous, and hilariously bleak from start to finish.
Perhaps the film’s single greatest shot, caught in devastating slow-motion as the end nears.
In a motel room where each piece of furniture has been wrapped tightly in white sheets and all decor has been stashed away, a man sits at a desk and writes. This is William Tell, a small-time gambler as skilled at card counting as he is restrained in flexing this talent. His routine is rigid – move from city to city, win modestly, and then depart without leaving so much as a blip on anyone’s radar. It is a level of dogmatic dedication equal only to Paul Schrader himself, whose flair for constructing formally rigorous character studies of brooding, isolated men stretches all the way back to Taxi Driver, and which has manifested more recently in his theological meditation on human greed and corruption, First Reformed.
Schrader doesn’t falter here in The Card Counter either. With a slightly narrowed aspect ratio, a consistent voiceover meticulously expounding the tricks of each casino game, and a deeply internalised performance from Oscar Isaac, the film becomes a wholly focused examination of regret, self-discipline, and atonement. Having lived a troubled life as both an ex-soldier and ex-convict, William is as complex a figure as any Schrader protagonist. Sin has implanted itself so firmly in his soul that profiting off it is the only way he knows how to survive, but as long as he keeps it quiet and modest, there may be some hope that his environment remains untainted by his presence. In wrapping his motel rooms up in sheets, he similarly ensures that no trace of his inherently iniquitous existence is left behind, and denies himself any chance of worldly pleasure by turning them into bare chambers of his own self-punishment.
This chamber of self-punishment revealing character through stark, minimalist mise-en-scène.
Such minimalistic austerity suits Isaac tremendously, whose quiet, grim performance stands monumentally among the best of the last few years, and certainly in the upper tier of his own career. He is discreet, logical, and observant, gazing out at the world from beneath heavy lids with an intense, unblinking focus. In nightmares and flashbacks that let us into glimpses of his days conducting enhanced interrogation techniques for the US military, Schrader filters the environment through ultra wide-angle lenses that catch everything within a 180-degree field of vision, putting every inch of pain and suffering on full, hyper-sensitive display. “This isn’t about following a manual. It’s about getting answers,” William’s superior, Major John Gordo, instructs him, and within this line Schrader draws a clear distinction between their attitudes towards codes of conduct as means to keep one honest. Though Willem Dafoe is not onscreen a lot in The Card Counter, the weight he carries in this role is substantial, especially as Major Gordo’s presence continues to hang over William as a reminder that his past sins are still very much alive and unatoned for.
Schrader’s ultra wide-angle lenses turning the prison camp into a hyper-sensitive, torturous fever dream.
Notions of forgiveness, revenge, and redemption all swirl around each other in Schrader’s screenplay, particularly as William begins to engage with two new associates who each draw out pieces of his identity he has been trying to suppress. In Cirk, the young, rash son of one of William’s former army comrades, he finds the temptation to dredge up the past as a means to destroy it entirely. In La Linda, a gambling acquaintance, he finds the chance to absolve himself of his own sins, and to once again interact with the world without putting up physical and emotional barriers. There may seem to be a conflict between both goals, but there is also a tenderness to the small, oddball family that forms between them. As William and La Linda wander through the Missouri Botanical Gardens through tunnels of colourful lights on a date, the two are illuminated in a warm glow of love and redemption, and there is similarly something spiritually transcendent in Schrader’s sweeping camera movement upwards, revealing the expanse of this bright, shining corner of the world.
The colourfully lit sequence in the Botanic Gardens is a welcome break from the severity of the rest of the film.Tracking the back of William’s head through casinos, keep him at a distance from his surroundings like a ghost.
The casino is where William feels most at home though, centred as the one in charge through recurring back-of-head tracking shots that follow him around the space. He haunts the space like a ghost, influencing it just enough to make a difference but never enough to draw attention to himself. The world beyond the poker and roulette tables is ruled out-of-bounds, though when he finally does violently breach that gap Schrader makes the intelligent choice to keep the camera removed, leaving us only to listen to the grisly developments from the next room over. That barrier between William and the rest of the society is no doubt a tough one to break, but Schrader touchingly recognises in the final minutes of The Card Counter that there is still hope even as it remains intact. Sometimes all it takes is a simple recognition from someone on the other side, both parties reaching out in a mutually affectionate gesture of acknowledgement and appreciation.
A lingering close-up of fingers reaching out to touch, held throughout the credits – a hopeful ending to an otherwise austere film.
In the seemingly never-ending flow of Netflix content that shines brightly in the public consciousness for a good few weeks before disappearing again into obscurity (Bird Box anyone?), there are few series that carry some level of artistic bravura to back it up, or which are as in conversation with the modern cinematic landscape as Squid Game. Hwang Dong-hyuk rides the cultural excitement of the Korean New Wave that in recent years saw the elevation of such directors as Park Chan-wook (Oldboy), Lee Chang-dong (Burning), and most famously Bong Joon-ho (Parasite), attacking similar notions of class inequality with a sharp and particularly bloody knife. Men and women violently fighting it out in controlled arenas to win some prize is not a wholly original concept, but in breaking it up into six separate childhood games with deadly twists, Hwang adds a modicum of innocence into each thrilling set piece, and then shatters it with the cruel barbarism of late stage capitalism, splitting its players into two camps – the wealthy and the dead.
The candy-coloured palette of the mysterious fortress within which these 456 impoverished players sleep and compete is deceptively innocuous, lulling each of them into a false sense of security as they traverse a labyrinth of pastel pink, blue, and green stairs on their way to the first game, and the classical waltz of Strauss’ ‘The Blue Danube’ plays over speakers. Dressed in teal jumpsuits and kept under control by pink-uniformed guards in black masks, they are all too happy to ignore the multiple red flags along the way, especially given the promise of money for those who remain in the competition until the end. And even when that first death hits and the stakes are revealed, that temptation of riches still continues to pull them forward, manifesting as a giant golden orb filled with growing piles of cash that hangs above their beds and lights up the room as they sleep, an ever-present reminder of a better life that awaits them on the other side.
One of the most haunting episodes in this series is a quieter one early on, in which these players are offered the opportunity to return to their difficult lives back home, though eventually decide that the likely chance of dying is a better alternative. There is no violent set piece in this episode, but the weighty drama and debate which Hwang skilfully draws out between these diverse characters even beyond the arena offers them a great deal of empathy. Having realised of their own accord the opportunity that the games may provide them, they individually stand on street kerbs waiting to be ferried back, and Hwang binds them together in a poignant montage recognising their devastating lack of options.
From this point on, the characters of Squid Game begin to develop their own alliances and strategies with renewed focus and perspective. Though the mysterious organisation behind it all are clearly responsible for this situation, this is also a perfectly designed environment for its wealthy members to remain untouched, as the competition between these players allows them to channel their anger towards each other instead. Hwang’s metaphor isn’t always subtle, but it is at least potent, with one major exception being in episode 7 where foreign VIPs arrive to watch the games up close. A combination of poor acting and glib writing lets these scenes down quite drastically, bringing little of value to the series that wasn’t already hinted at in metaphors or tantalising mysteries. Perhaps there is a leaner version of Squid Game that doesn’t need ten episodes to tell its story, but at the same time Hwang does brilliantly in building out his characters in rich enough detail that both set pieces and quieter moments of drama are able to operate on equally gripping levels of tension, melding together to form a layered microcosm of South Korea’s capitalist society.
Squid Game is currently available to stream on Netflix.
“What kind of man would I be if I did not help my mother?” ponders young aspiring veterinarian, Peter Gordon, in the opening lines of The Power of the Dog. He is an image of masculinity not often found in westerns like these – thin, effeminate, intelligent, and standing out drastically among the loud, boisterous farmhands who sneeringly make jabs at him. The only reason he has ended up on this farm in the first place is because of his mother, Rose, whose recent marriage to wealthy rancher George Burbank has forced him into close quarters with his step-father’s particularly nasty brother, Phil. Several times through the film Jane Campion shifts our perceptions of who exactly is the main character here, which although at times leads to a little unevenness in the storytelling, is crucial to the final crack of the whip landed in the final scene, forcing us to reconsider our notions of what sort of men held real power in this period of pioneering American history.
Authority and insecurity on display in Campion’s staging, both in majestic exteriors and claustrophobic interiors.
It might have looked like Campion was done with making feature films after her 2009 film Bright Star, but The Power of the Dog marks one of the more remarkable career resurrections of this century. As a director with a flair for unhurriedly building out the inner worlds of rich characters, there are many times during this film that we might assume her wandering focus on seemingly irrelevant aspects such as Phil’s careless disregard for wearing gloves or Pete’s surprisingly clinical attitude towards dissecting animals are simply there to flesh them out in fascinating detail. This purpose is certainly served, and very effectively at that, and yet the macabre manner in which the pieces all fall into place within this deliberately paced plot lends it an almost Hitchcockian bent.
Until this moment though, The Power of the Dog simmers with mesmerising tension between each of our four main characters, pushing their interactions agonisingly close to boiling point before letting them cool back down with some new shift in dynamics established between them. Benedict Cumberbatch often acts as the oppressive force in these situations, delivering what will go down as one of his great film performances in the role of the cruel, brow-beating Phil. This is a man who tauntingly calls his brother “fatso”, maliciously burns the delicate paper flowers that Pete designs, and in one scene, silently intimidates Rose in a musical duel between their instruments. Unlike him, she is not as refined a musician, and to him her lack of confidence becomes a prime target. As she plays her piano and Campion’s camera drifts forward, we begin to catch onto the quiet sound of a banjo expertly mimicking her melody from upstairs. Each time she stumbles, the camera and banjo both similarly pause as well, the latter purposefully mocking her own insecurity. Without so much as a word, Phil continues to make his terrible presence known until she gives up entirely, and even then he continues to play forcefully through the empty space previously occupied by her music.
An intensely detailed power dynamic magnificently conveyed through blocking and mise-en-scène – Rose shrunken and consumed by the architecture of this house, Phil caught from an intimidating low angle, leering from the upper storey.
The depth with which Campion eventually grants this cruel character isn’t quite an act of empathy, but rather one of understanding, using him as a vessel through which she can pry into the history, customs, and fabrications of American masculinity. Phil’s nostalgic yearning for an era where “real men” ran society is not so much an assertion of specific gender ideals as it is a wistful longing after one particular man, Bronco Henry, whose heavy presence still hangs over the farm. The suggestions of some sort of romance between Phil and his once-mentor are more than implied, especially when he tries to set himself up as a similar sort of idol and takes his antagonistic relationship with Pete in a new direction.
Such vulnerable depictions of the Old West and its masculine “protectors” play right into Campion’s strengths in capturing stunning, wild vistas in soft natural light. Though The Power of the Dog is set in 1925 Montana, the South Island of New Zealand is her choice of shooting location, and indeed this film belongs among the most beautiful shot in this nation’s crisp, picturesque landscapes. Her majestic establishing shots are certainly worth marvelling at, but it is those images caught from the dark interior of stables looking out upon the flat planes and rolling mountains that truly astound in their compositional magnificence, calling back to The Searchers in the elegant framing of characters within bright, open doorways and windows.
Campion’s eye for beautiful landscapes are as strong as ever, especially in using the natural scenery of her native New Zealand.The choice to shoot the ranch and mountains through darkened frames is significant to the form of The Power of the Dog, letting us into this world through the perspectives of those who dwell in homes and barns.
It is the struggle for dominance over this delicate beauty that lies at the heart of The Power of the Dog. Just as pioneers tame and cultivate the land, so too do they assert control over the society that lives off it, but it is also those with tender hearts and practical minds who carry the power to destabilise that authority. Within the mesmerising power plays between brothers, musicians, ranchers, and family members, Campion paints out duelling images of the Old West, neither of which clash in violent shootouts so much as they quietly manipulate each other according to their own visions of America’s future.
Golden hour lighting diffused in the dusty air making for simply remarkable shots like this.
The Power of the Dog is currently available to stream on Netflix.
