Mubi Monday: Heaven's Gate (1980)

I've seen Heaven's Gate before, but it somehow made no impression on me. I remember thinking that it wasn't as bad as others might have you believe, but that's been a general opinion for many years now, considering the softening effects of the passing of time and the reappraisal this has received since the longer cut became more widely available.

This second viewing has me creeping closer to the view that this is close to being a real great. It doesn't get there, not quite, but it's a fascinating mess.

Kris Kristofferson, Isabelle Huppert, Christopher Walken, Sam Waterston, and Brad Dourif have main roles here, all of them playing a part in telling a tale of unrest and deadly fighting among the various citizens of Wyoming. Some of them feel themselves more deserving than others when it comes to the land and their positions, and there's a plan to write up a list of names of people who have to go. 

Written and directed by Michael Cimino, I could write thousands and thousands of words about the making of Heaven's Gate, but many others have already done that. It's well-documented as one of the most bloated and damaging directorial features of all time. There's such a stink all over it that I am always surprised to see that Cimino was allowed to make other movies after it. I'm less surprised to find that none of his later efforts come close to the strange magnificence of this.

Every cast member mentioned, whether playing a stereotype or a more well-rounded character, does excellent work here, and the hefty runtime of the movie also allows time for appearances from Joseph Cotten, Jeff Bridges, Geoffrey Lewis, Richard Masur, and a number of other familiar faces (keep your eyes peeled for Tom Noonan, Mickey Rourke, and Terry O'Quinn, among others) in both credited and uncredited roles.

I'm not sure it really matters about the people in front of the camera though. As good a job as they do, this is Cimino's vision, and he seizes the opportunity to put the United States of America under a lens that shows how those once-glorified "Wild West" years were full of violence, mistrust, bigotry, and huge divisions between the rich and the poor that make the current climate of the country much easier to understand, especially when so many people living there still think that life was better in what they like to view as a simpler time, despite the evidence to the contrary.

The 219-minute runtime is a hell of a commitment, but I encourage people to make time for it. There are moments that could have been trimmed down, but it's a large beast full of life, with teeth and claws that can occasionally hurt, compared to the sad and neutered pet that the more heavily-edited version resembles. I'm unlikely to now put aside another entire afternoon for it, but I am definitely glad that I took the time to give it one more chance to impress me, and impress me it did. At times.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris (2022)

You can spend all the time you like working through lists of the greatest movies ever made. You can, and should, check out the worthwhile filmographies of people like Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock, Danny Boyle, Lynne Ramsay, and many others. You can even spend as much of your free time as possible exploring your favourite genres and sub-genres, whether they are rom-coms, serial killer movies, or low-budget zombie flicks. It's also important to make time for films like Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris though, another film based on the novel by Paul Gallico. This won't necessarily be named as anyone's favourite film from the year it was released, and it didn't seem to gain any momentum throughout the awards season, but it is a genuine delight from start to finish. I was grinning a LOT, there were times when I laughed aloud, and some moments had me turning my face away slightly so that my partner didn't see the tears creeping out of the corners of my eyes. There are many films vying for your time, and many that will have made a bigger impact on the cinematic landscape, but I doubt there are too many from the recent release schedule that will warm your cockles like this one.

Lesley Manville plays Ada Harris, a cleaning lady in the 1950s who eventually finds out that her husband has been officially declared to have been killed during his military service. Having fallen in love with a Christian Dior dress that she sees in the home of one of her regular clients, Mrs. Harris becomes determined to head over to Paris and treat herself to one. She needs £500. Yes, that should do it. As the title suggests, Mrs. Harris makes her trip, but not without a few setbacks on the way, but she then has to figure out how to deal with the snobbery of those who believe a Dior dress should remain exclusive to the rich (although, as the film notes on a number of occasions, the rich often appear rich while deciding on what bills they can keep defering until a later date). Claudine Colbert (Isabelle Huppert) is one person working at Dior who believes in that principle of exclusivity, but Mrs. Harris finds herself some useful allies in the shame of the Marquid de Chassange (Lambert Wilson), an accountant named André Fauvel (Lucas Bravo), and a lovely model named Natasha (Alba Baptista). And there's also her own forceful and winning personality to help her achieve her goal, which becomes something that a lot of people around her end up rooting for.

With four people working to adapt this from page to screen, including director Anthony Fabian, this could have easily ended up as either a bit of a mess or something a bit too episodic and disjointed to be truly effective. Although I am not familiar with anything else from Fabian, I would say that I've had mixed reactions to other films featuring writing from Carroll Cartwright, Keith Thompson, or Olivia Hetreed. Thankfully, everyone seems to be pulling in the right direction here, almost as if the onscreen struggle to push Mrs. Harris to victory was replicated by those behind the camera (and I mean that compliment for everyone, but must also mention the wonderful, and arguably more vital than ever, costume design by Jenny Beavan).

While Fabian and co. do great work, the cast really do everything they can to put the icing on the cake. Those already mentioned are varying degrees of wonderful, whether being cast as a temporary villain (Huppert) or a welcome helping hand (Bravo), or even someone who seems very pleasant and well-meaning, but ends up causing a great deal of hurt with one ill-considered "compliment" (Wilson). There are also great turns from the cast members who stay in old Blighty while Mrs. Harris flies over to France. Ellen Thomas plays a very good friend, Jason Isaacs is a twinkle-eyed rogue who might be missing a beautiful chance at happiness right under his nose, and both Anna Chancellor and Rose Williams are clients who are both quite horrifying and selfish in different ways. And as for Manville, I truly believe that this is the kind of performance that should have been showered with all kinds of praise and accolades. Equally believable while making herself small or allowing herself to blossom into a new full bloom, her acting here is a masterclass in how you deliver an unforgettable movie character without relying on a bag-full of tricks and quirks. Manville carries herself throughout every scene with a likeability and an honesty, seemingly playing a character that she cares for as much as she wants us to.

Although I was a bit wary as soon as the film started, I soon warmed to it, and I started to fall in love with it very quickly, mainly thanks to Manville's performance. I think it only has one main flaw, and that is the predictability. Even the seemingly unpredictable moments eventually wind around and head back to intersect where you think things were heading, but that just adds to the warmth and comfort of the whole thing.

Everyone should watch this, especially while the world around us feels so stressful and dangerous, to put it mildly. This is a real balm for your soul, it's a cinematic delight, and it should be available to everyone on prescription. If you have any sense of decency and fairness, if you have ever worked hard for something that others have had gifted to them, and if you believe in good things happening to good people, there's a little bit of Mrs. Harris in you already. That's a good thing, and it also means that you should reward yourself with a viewing of this film.

10/10

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Mubi Monday: La Cérémonie (1995)

Adapted from “A Judgement In Stone”, a 1977 novel by Ruth Rendell, La Cérémonie is yet another wonderful film from writer-director Claude Chabrol (helped in adapting the tale from page to screen by Caroline Eliacheff). 

Sophie Bonhomme (Sandrine Bonnaire) is hired as a maid by the Lelièvre family, a unit consisting of two adults and two children (both in their later teens, at least). While very good at her job, in most respects, Sophie has a secret that she struggles to maintain. She cannot read or write. She may be able to keep up a pretence of literacy, however, with the help of a new friend, a postmistress named Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert). Jeanne is no friend of the Lelièvre family though, and her presence soon starts to cause problems.

Making great use of a super cast, La Cérémonie is a film that scatters small details throughout every scene to build something as potentially darkly comedic as it is menacing. Viewers can sense that things are finely-balanced at almost every turn, and the mix of characters onscreen ensure that you are rarely 100% sure of who you should be rooting for, even as some people try to paint others in a bad light. I am not familiar with the source material, I don’t think I have read any Ruth Rendell books yet in my life, but I suspect that there is less ambiguity there than there is here. Although I should note that it is apparently widely-regarded as one of the best writing works by Rendell, for those wanting to dive into her work.

Bonnaire and Huppert are excellent together, happily forming a stronger bond with each shared experience that allows them to bring out the worst in one another. The latter is especially entertaining, quick to provide what she views as essential information to someone she can claim as a firm friend. Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Pierre Cassel are very good as Mr & Mrs. Lelièvre, and Virginie Ledoyen and Valentin Merlet are almost as good as the mature children of the household, although the character played by Merlet feels like he could easily have been cut from the plot without much really being changed.

While it may wear clothing that helps it look cosy and sedate, this is very much a wolf hiding in a woolly jumper. The sharp teeth are there, not just for the biting wit either, and the finale delivers a gut punch that rivals many better-known, bleaker, endings, even if there is still a vein of pitch-black humour and irony running through it.

Excellent stuff all round. The more I see from Chabrol, and I have seen a fair few of his films now (and own a couple of nice boxsets released over the past few years), the more I like his French Hitchcockian style.

8/10

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Netflix And Chill: Dead Man Down (2013)

As prone to the whims of Netflix as many others who browse the service, I saw that Dead Man Down was on there are remembered that someone had once told me it wasn't a bad little crime thriller. It was, according to some of the ways I had seen it labelled, actually a neo-noir, which made this month as good a time as any to check it out. And whoever told me that it wasn't a bad little crime thriller was quite correct.

Colin Farrell plays a man working for crime boss Alphonse (Terrence Howard). These are bad people who do bad things. But Farrell has more secrets than most. And that allows him to end up in a position where he can be blackmailed by Beatrice (Noomi Rapace), a neighbour who wants suitable punishment to be administered to the man who disfigured her in a road accident. Farrell is working on a masterplan that is now due to be complicated, Rapace grows closer to him as they prepare to deliver the payback she feels that she needs, and Howard and his crew (including Darcy, played by Dominic Cooper) start to "draw the wagons into a circle" as they deal with someone trying to cause division and death among their ranks.

Perhaps wrongly marketed at the time of release, I recall a lot being made of the fact that this from the director of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (which gave Rapace her star-making turn) and I think there was a trailer that emphasised some of the action moments, which is what trailers do. I liked The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but didn't love it. And I wasn't willing to rush out and see Colin Farrell in another action thriller that wasted his talents in the middle of some bland mess. I believe others may have felt the same way (and we can all be thankful that we've had so many better performances from Farrell over the past decade since people stopped trying to sell him in those roles), but don't let that put you off.

Niels Arden Oplev does another good job in the director's chair, giving the film a similar look to his previous outing, but with more rays of light shining through here and there. The script, by J. H. Wyman, who has more experience with TV work than movies, is as good as it needs to be. Based around that old chestnut of "if you set out for revenge then you'd best dig room to serve two cold dishes", or something, the central pairing of Farrell and Rapace works well enough to have you worrying as it looks less and less likely that anything will lead to a happy ending.

Speaking of the two leads, they both do very good work here, even working at various times with various accents. It also helps a lot that the supporting cast has some great players mixed in. Howard and Cooper have large roles, but there are also smaller turns for Isabelle Huppert, F. Murray Abraham, and the always entertaining Armand Assante. A lot of the other cast members are generic gang member types, but that is perfectly fine when you are just waiting to see the bodycount go up and up on the way to a tense third act.

Not an easy film to assume that others will enjoy as much as I did, I still recommend checking it out. The 2-hour runtime flies by quickly enough, the familiar plot is handled well, and there are some surprisingly satisfying moments of violence as soon as the motivation for everything becomes clear.

7/10

You can buy the movie here.
American friends can pick it up here.

Amour (2012)

I can't apologise enough for not remembering who said this, but before seeing Amour I'd seen someone describe it as: "remember the first 5 minutes of Up? Well, imagine that for two hours."

That description is spot on, but it's also a little off-putting. I know that I had the rental disc sitting beside my player for almost a fortnight before I finally decided to stick it on and see whether or not I would be crying by the time the end credits rolled.

Amour is a simple character study, a sombre and sobering look at old age and the horrible tricks that mother nature can pull on people struggling to retain their independence and dignity. It IS moving, but it's also as unsentimental and powerful as you would expect a Heneke movie to be.

Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva (who received a deserved Oscar nomination for her fantastic performance) play, respectively, Georges and Anne, a married couple in their eighties. They have a nice life, a nice home and remain quite active, and they still have lots of love for each other. Unfortunately, Anne has an "episode" one day and ends up hospitalised. When she gets home again, some time later, she makes Georges promise her that hospitals won't figure in her future. She wants to stay at home, no matter what. Georges agrees, perhaps not quite aware of just how difficult things will get.

While the film also includes decent supporting turns from Isabelle Huppert, concert pianist Alexandre Tharaud, William Shimell and a few others, it feels very much like a two-hander between Trintignant and Riva. The two stars do a fantastic job from start to finish, even in the moments when the struggles become too much for them and they let out their frustration in regretful ways.

The script takes a back seat to the performances most of the time, but when it comes to the fore it contains some beautiful passages (mainly spoken by Trintignant, for whom it was written). This works in line with the cinematography and direction, which seems plain and uncluttered but shows occasional moments of beauty in even the bleaker sequences.

I've seen about three or four films from Michael Haneke, but I've loved all of them. I think that it's about time I tracked down his entire filmography and worked my way through it. After all, I'm not getting any younger.

8/10


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Amour-Blu-ray-Jean-Louis-Trintignant/dp/B00A2P503A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1370330000&sr=8-2&keywords=amour