Tag: moviereviews

Sullivan’s Travels (1941)

Preston Sturges | 1hr 30min

Preston Sturges was known more for his sharp turns of phrase, pacey editing, and unrelenting slapstick than his mise-en-scène, but Sullivan’s Travels combines all of his usual trademarks with surprising flashes of visual beauty. These mostly appear in the final act when Sullivan winds up in a chain gang and the entire movie takes a far darker turn, but even before this point it works wonderfully as a quick-witted satire of Hollywood liberalism and privilege.

Sturges opens the film in media res, at what appears to be the climax of an entirely different movie.

“You see the symbolism of it? Capital and Labor destroy each other. It teaches a moral lesson. It has social significance.”

Sullivan is inspired. He wants to make a real movie about real issues, confronting problems that the average American faces every day.

An image of poverty that the wealthy imagine it to be – a rucksack and a baggy coat. Hilariously clueless, but formally setting up the hard-hitting third act well.

“But with a little sex,” his producers continue to insist. Therein lies the problem. If there was ever a studio that could authentically bring rough living conditions to the screen, it isn’t the one Sullivan works for, and Sullivan certainly shouldn’t be the one helming that project. The Italian neorealism movement would prove a few years later that cinema can absolutely treat this sort of subject matter with compassion and authenticity, but those movies were being made by filmmakers with firsthand experience. To Sullivan, stepping into the shoes of the impoverished would serve to assuage some of his class guilt, and he might make a tidy profit out of it on the side. Adding “a little sex” is the studio’s push to romanticise the subject matter, making it conventionally appealing for their audiences who just want a laugh.

A slapstick interlude placed with purpose and precision.

Sullivan’s Travels is also a direct response to early Hollywood comedies that abandoned humour in favour of serious, hard-hitting messages. Sturges’ approach is a complex balancing act of conflicting tones which many directors might struggle to pull off, but this is his specialty. He dances around the real darkness at the heart of the story for the first two acts, playing in the realm of slapstick comedy, irony, and meta-humour. Sullivan’s first attempt to understand the poor is really just him walking around with a rucksack and tattered coat, followed closely by a bus of security, food caterers, and a legal team. As he attempts to shake them off and the bus speeds after him, Sturges has fun sending everyone in it into a tizzy, falling over at all angles, one man even putting his head right through its ceiling. Then Veronica Lake is introduced, and the film delivers its most direct acknowledgement of its own genre conventions.

“How does the girl fit in the picture?”
“There’s always a girl in the picture?”

Credited only as “the woman”, she is there to serve the exact function stated in the text. She tags along, because it is what the film requires of her. But as an actress, Veronica Lake isn’t just filling a part. With her husky voice and plucky attitude she channels all of her charm and glamour into the role, stealing every second of screen time from her co-stars. She serves to underline the part of movies that audiences keep coming back for – that “little bit of sex”.

Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake in two of their best performances, a perfect screwball couple.

So when Sullivan is suddenly assaulted, beaten unconscious, and sentenced to serve time in a chain gang, it is understandable why Lake is pushed to the background. It is a shocking narrative twist, but not entirely unexpected given how much time has been spent with Sullivan wondering it is like to live in poverty. In an earlier montage when he sleeps in a homeless shelter, he worries that his boots which contain his identification have been stolen, setting up the actual theft that takes place during this major plot shift. Now, he is stuck without a name or path back home.

The scene in which he is stalked by the homeless man looking for money is a stunner. Almost entirely silent, it is heavily expressionistic in the light and shadows that are thrown across the train tracks. He skulks behind staircases and trains puffing out steam in the dead of night, perfectly leading us into the darkest section of the film. We realise that all the comedy that has come before this point has merely been distracting us from the actual darkness at its heart, because suddenly all of that humour is gone. Without his status or identity to fall back on, Sullivan is no longer shielded from the dirtiness, violence, and roughness of “real” life.

Sturges’ camera suddenly becomes a lot more active in this final act. He isn’t trying to make this a truthful depiction of poverty, as his own screenplay has already made the argument for why Hollywood cinema isn’t suited to that. Instead he just wants to treat it sensitively, letting a sort of poignancy emerge that acts as a substitute for authenticity. The prisoners of Sullivan’s chain gang are welcomed to a Southern Black church, and Sturges makes the choice to frame the prisoners in gorgeous silhouette walking towards it, as the churchgoers sing a soulful rendition of “Let My People Go”. Inside the aisle symmetrically divides the church in two, and we gaze right down the middle at the prisoners’ feet moving towards us, chains clanking as they walk. It may be the slowest scene of any Sturges film, but this change of pace also marks the change in Sullivan’s character as he becomes more pensive.

An ambitious narrative taking a sudden dark turn. Sturges has never been so solemn, and he pulls it off with aplomb.

Dour atmospheres can’t last forever in Sturges films though. He gives us just enough moodiness so that when the comedy arrives again in the form of a classic Sturges montage, we eagerly embrace it. Newspaper headlines, studio producers running around barging into rooms, making phone calls, and getting on planes – Sullivan makes his way back to the glamourous city of Hollywood with a fresh outlook on life. Maybe the superficiality of the movies he makes is disconnected from reality, but so what? Disconnecting someone from reality might be the best thing you could do for someone whose reality is pretty terrible. Sturges’ real passion was screwball comedies, but as a comment on the limits of Hollywood moviemaking, this certainly seems like his most personal work.

Sullivan’s Travels is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

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Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

Céline Sciamma | 2hr 1min

The perspective that Céline Sciamma offers us in Portrait of a Lady on Fire is not just that of a spectator viewing a gallery of beautifully delicate paintings, but rather that of the painter themselves, translating every curve and angle of their subject’s visage into its artistic equivalent. That interpretation can only come after an intense study of these details – the contour of the cartilage on an ear, or the way they don’t blink when they are annoyed, as is the case in Marianne’s observation of Héloïse. It is a connection more akin to lovers than a contractor and client, and it is through this lens that such a relationship forms between both women on the distant French island of Brittany.

When Marianne arrives in Héloïse’s life, the young woman of the gentry has already proven herself difficult to capture a likeness of in her refusal to sit still, though her mother is determined for a painting to be completed so that the Milanese nobleman she is betrothed to knows what she looks like. Beyond this island of seaside cliffs and large French manors, it is a world of men that dictates the rules of romance, art, and politics with heavy hands and enormous egos. Besides the glimpses we get of those men who ferry women to and from the isle, this is not the world that Sciamma is interested in depicting. In their absence, a fresh new dynamic begins to form around Marianne and Héloïse, bound not by the oppressive gazes and laws of men, but rather by the slowly expanding limits of their own curiosity.

Seaside cliffs and beaches making for exquisite settings to this blossoming romance, these lovers’ faces and bodies staged beautifully within them.

Not every frame here is seeping with the picturesque imagery its title might express, but as this story gracefully flows along, Sciamma intermittently lands us with the sorts of visual compositions that leap out in their still, expressive beauty. Marianne and Héloïse’s deep red and green dresses imprint against pale blue skies, waves, and interiors, lending their rounded shapes to the elegant poses of both actresses who always seem to be aware of their roles as models for Sciamma’s camera. Where expansive oceans and grassy landscapes open entire worlds to them in exteriors, it is inside the neatly curated mansion that she arranges décor like still-life subjects, offering the women a quiet, pensive retreat.

The blocking and arrangement of bodies with set dressing, evoking the elegance of 18th century European art.
Inventive uses of mirrors, emphasising the artist’s gaze.

One night as the women of this island gather around a bonfire to sing a wildly polyrhythmic chant, Marianne and Héloïse wander over to join them. Though the scene carries visual connotations of a coven gathering to share in something not understood by worldly men, there is not the usual uneasiness often attached to such depictions. In this moment, both our leading women begin to consider the possibility that the freedoms and desires they have experienced aren’t so unique to their own circumstances. The patriarchal view of female relationships as being pagan or demonic does not exist here, and as such these rituals of bonding are able to develop naturally without the typical vilification.

Sciamma’s fascination in the mythologising of gender, love, and art continues to reach out into ancient Greek legends, most significantly touching on the fateful relationship between Orpheus and Eurydice. Together, Marianne, Héloïse, and the housemaid, Sophie, read this story, pondering the tragic decision made by Orpheus towards the end while he is leading his deceased lover out of the underworld, being allowed to take her home as long as he does not turn to look back at her. Though Portrait of a Lady on Fire is not a direct adaptation of this story, it does carefully consider its parallels. Just as a simple gaze can bring an artist and their muse together in a powerfully binding love, so too may it divide them forever.

Artistic interpretations of Orpheus and Eurydice all over this film, including Marianne’s painting that captures the pivotal moment of his turning and loss.

Perhaps then it all comes down the purpose of that gaze. A lover might choose to keep their back turned and preserve this tangible connection, though as Marianne notes, Orpheus “doesn’t make the lover’s choice, but the poet’s.” Humans may die, but the impression they leave behind in the imagination of an artist lives on in many forms, and it is with this in mind that Sciamma evokes ghostly visions of Héloïse through Marianne’s eyes, as if in anticipation of their eventual separation. Within the conventional heterosexual myth, that choice to be either a lover or a poet is integral to Orpheus’ fate, though as the patriarchal influence of the outside world begins to creep in on Sciamma’s paradise, it is evident that there is no such thing as the lover’s choice for Marianne – as society would have it she must be a poet, forever staring in from the outside, or looking back from the future.

The spectre of Héloïse hanging over this film, an eternal image of her in that moment before Marianne parts from her forever.

As progressive a story as Portrait of a Lady on Fire may be, such skilful layering of narrative archetypes lends classical definitions to its characters, intertwining their passions with the nature of humanity as it has been represented narratively throughout history. All throughout, it comes back to the gazes of lovers and artists, both of which are especially tied together in Sciamma’s magnificent final shot that spends two and a half minutes zooming in on Héloïse’s profile at a live orchestra performance. While we engage with every tear and smile that breaks across her face, the camera remains unbroken and unwavering, offering a gaze which ties two people closely in a single moment in time with a burning passion, and yet which will only go on to survive as a lonely, singular, and eternally youthful impression.

A superb final shot paired with a remarkable performance – an entire story unfolds on Adèle Hanael’s face over two and a half minutes.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Video.

C’mon C’mon (2021)

Mike Mills | 1hr 48min

There is an invitation built into both the title and story of C’mon C’mon, beckoning us to join a radio journalist and his nine-year-old nephew on a road trip across the United States. At one point in the film these words manifest in young Jesse’s dialogue as he records himself on his uncle’s microphone, putting his own thoughts towards Johnny’s audio project which involves conducting interviews with children from around the country. Their optimistic, cynical, pensive, and unconstrained ideas about the future of the world make up the connective tissue of C’mon C’mon, marking Johnny’s episodic journey from city to city like a path to understanding his own identity in relation to others.

When Jesse’s mother, Viv, finds herself needing to care for her estranged husband, Paul, the responsibility of child-caring is thrust onto Johnny for a few months, the joys and hardships of which are quick to reveal themselves. Even through his fights with Jesse though, the tenderness between them is pervasive. When Johnny briefly loses his temper after Jesse hides from him in a shop, he takes the opportunity to learn from Viv how he can do better, bringing himself to apologise to repair the relationship. These are flawed, complicated people who have suffered through much, but there is also a joy in realising that they are taking this journey together, maintaining their individuality while endlessly learning about others. Reflecting on his mother’s words, Jesse finds comfort in this perspective.

“She says even though we love each other she’ll never know everything about me, and I’ll never know everything about her. It’s just the way it is.”

A breath-taking shot framing Johnny and Jesse beneath the long-reaching branches of oak trees – an image of tender nurture.

It is no coincidence that this is the project Joaquin Phoenix has chosen to move onto after starring in the heavily cynical thriller Joker. In its sentimentality, C’mon C’mon may as well be that film’s polar opposite, and only continues to prove his range in offering him voiceovers and absorbingly naturalistic dialogue to mumble and stutter through. Jesse’s bluntness makes for an excellent and often hilarious contrast to Johnny’s verbal clumsiness, telling him without inhibition that “Mum said you would be awkward.” Later when the boy brings up an abortion his mother had years ago, an uncomfortable silence fills the air, broken only by Johnny’s voiceover.

“What the fuck do I say to that?”

This is not an uneasiness that Johnny will completely overcome by the end of the film, but there is a joy in seeing him accept those moments as demonstrations of Jesse’s unique character. Mills smooths over these bumps with a lyrical elegance in his cutting, bringing scenes to an end by fading out the dialogue, and wandering through flashbacks and cutaways with the same stream-of-consciousness flow as those unscripted interviews interspersed throughout. There is a distinct impression that we are watching a skilled editor and formalist at work here, passing through rhythms with Dessner Brothers’ floating, ambient score, and bringing each piece together to paint a portrait of a relationship as sweet and unhurried as this narrative’s languid pace.

Mills’ picturesque long shots identifying the distinct characteristics of each city, the soft black-and-white cinematography lending a gentle air of nostalgia to each.

There are certainly traces of Woody Allen’s Manhattan in the way Mills gives character to bustling American cities through long shots and montages, setting up the metropolitan bustle of New York streets against the quaint Creole architecture of New Orleans, but the influence becomes even more evident when we escape inside houses, hotels, and stores. There is particular attention that Mills pays to how his actors are blocked against interiors within his black-and-white cinematography, fracturing Johnny and Viv’s connection in one shot that splits them across the room through the precise placement of a mirror. In moments of unity though, they are brought together in tight frames through doors and hallways, emphasising the physical affection between family members living under a single roof.

Superb blocking within interior sets, capturing this family through doorways and mirrors.

In this way Mills finds an emotional vulnerability growing inside each of his characters, but it is especially in Johnny that we see the greatest transformation of all. As a journalist, he feels “a sense of invincibility, a sense of invisibility,” as he passes through others lives, experiences a taste, and then leaves without any major commitments. But just as Jesse quickly learns how to use the microphone, so too does he become an interviewer of sorts, encouraging his uncle to turn inwards with often awkward questions. “Why don’t you and mum act like brother and sister?” he asks. “Do you have trouble expressing your emotions?” It is no wonder that Johnny finds himself overwhelmed, and yet this push from passive observation to actively examining his identity in relation to loved ones and strangers is a subtle but impactful development.

When all is said and done though, it is not Johnny’s words that Mills leaves us with. Instead, he ends on the voices of those children that Phoenix interviewed, playing out over the credits in place of music – each one distinct in its perspective, finding the words to express ideas they have never had to articulate before, and together leaving a sweet, lingering taste of hope for their futures.

C’mon C’mon is currently playing in theatres.