The Company You Keep: The guests exceed their talking points

The Company You Keep (2012) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang

Almost four decades later, Robert Redford continues to flee from The Establishment.

The Company You Keep has some pleasant echoes of 1975’s Three Days of the Condor, particularly during the first act. Granted, this new thriller lacks any sort of spy element, but in both cases Redford’s man on the run must outwit better organized and far more numerous pursuers, while we audience members attempt to solve the twisty mystery that fuels the hunt.

FBI Agent Cornelius (Terrence Howard, left) is quite annoyed by the arrogance displayed
by journalist Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf), and even angrier that rookie agent Diana
(Anna Kendrick) apparently allowed her previous relationship with this reporter to
cloud her professional judgment. Somebody's head is about to roll; meanwhile,
long-dormant domestic terrorists continue to elude what Cornelius regards as justice.

The political element is significantly different, however, reflecting a greater maturity on Redford’s part. His CIA researcher in Three Days of the Condor was an undisputed good guy caught in a conspiracy that anticipated the energy crisis: a vividly black-and-white scenario that ultimately made a savior of the great Fourth Estate, and its ability to keep the American public informed about vile doings.

Screenwriter Lem Dobbs’ view of newspaper journalists is a bit more complicated in The Company You Keep, and the political subtext is various shades of gray; indeed, it could be argued that Redford’s character here deserves to be caught and punished. Absolute right and wrong are more difficult to pin down, although confirmed leftists will be cheered by the fact that various good fights still seem worth the effort.

The tone also is agreeable; the shrill preaching that characterized Redford’s previous political drama, 2007’s Lions for Lambs, is largely absent here. Granted, this new film also relies too much on talking heads at times, particularly during a final act that wears out its welcome; some judicious trimming could have made a better-paced drama out of this somewhat self-indulgent 121-minute experience.

That said, it’s hard not to be impressed by the cast Redford assembled (he also directed). You’ll rarely find an ensemble as accomplished as Julie Christie, Susan Sarandon, Chris Cooper, Stanly Tucci, Richard Jenkins, Brendan Gleeson and Nick Nolte; and tomorrow’s stars are equally well represented by Shia LaBeouf, Brit Marling and Anna Kendrick.

Many of these performers pop up in relatively small roles, which ordinarily might be distracting, or invite an accusation of stunt casting. But everybody perfectly fits their parts, and it’s hard to argue with the results (at least, from an acting standpoint). In that sense, The Company You Keep hearkens back to Hollywood’s golden age, when similarly star-laden casts weren’t all that unusual.

Arbitrage: A fascinating, high-stakes poker game

Arbitrage (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.14.12

Alfred Hitchcock was famous for this trick.

Deranged Robert Walker, intended to plant incriminating evidence — a cigarette lighter — to unjustly implicate Farley Granger in a murder, accidently drops the item into a storm drain while nearing the scene of the crime. We viewers should be delighted; if Walker loses the lighter, then Granger triumphs: Good wins out over evil.

Increasingly troubled by irregularities in their company books, Brooke (Brit Marling) shares
her concerns with her father (Richard Gere). But his efforts to reassure her ring hollow,
forcing this intelligent young woman to wonder why he's being so evasive. What might
he be hiding?

And yet, perversely, as Walker stuffs his arm through the grate during this climactic scene in Strangers on a Train, his fingers not quite able to reach the lighter, we’re on the edge of our seats ... wanting him to succeed.

In Frenzy, serial killer Barry Foster disposes of his latest victim in a potato sack that is dumped into the rear of a truck filled with such sacks. Shortly thereafter, Foster realizes that his monogrammed stick pin, lost in the struggle, must be clasped in the dead woman’s hand. Foster tears off after the truck, climbs inside and starts pawing through burlap sacks.

We shouldn’t root for him; failure means that the wholly innocent — but circumstantially accused — Jon Finch will go free. But, again, we become emotionally invested in Foster’s search, and feel relieved when he finds the body ... and calmly breaks her fingers in order to retrieve the pin held tight in her fist.

In writer/director Nicholas Jarecki’s richly nuanced Arbitrage, uber-wealthy New York hedge fund magnate Robert Miller (Richard Gere) cheats on his wife, and has embezzled funds in order to conceal a $420 million shortfall that would derail the sale of his company to a bank. Just to dig the hole deeper, he flees the scene of a road accident in order to evade responsibility.

Make no mistake: Miller is a bad guy ... a smug, self-serving reprobate at best, and a conniving, soulless, law-breaking bastard at worst. And still, almost against our wills, we cheer him on, hoping that he’ll somehow keep all these tottering plates spinning, and somehow extricate himself from this ever-widening disaster of his own creation.

Jarecki’s clever premise and archly savvy script deserve considerable credit, as does Gere, giving the performance of his often under-appreciated career. But he’s not the only person tearing up the screen; solid supporting performances also are turned in by Susan Sarandon, Brit Marling, Tim Roth and young Nate Parker.

Sound of My Voice: Needs to be silenced

Sound of My Voice (2011) • View trailer
Two stars. Rating: R, for profanity, sexual candor, fleeting nudity and brief drug use 
By Derrick Bang

Brit Marling made a bit of noise on the indie scene last year, as the star and co-writer of Another Earth, a mildly intriguing blend of science fiction and psychological drama that held my attention to its provocative final scene.

When Peter (Christopher Denham) balks at regurgitating the apple he has just
eaten — with good reason; he earlier swallowed a transmitter, to conceal it —
Maggie (Brit Marling) challenges his failure to cooperate with the rest of her
group. Maggie's disapproval begins gently but quickly turns nasty and oddly
personal: merely one of many idiotic segments of psycho-babble twaddle in
this dull and dreary film.

Yes, it was paced languidly — to put it kindly — and Marling’s view of human behavior stretched credibility more than once, but Another Earth definitely packed about an hour’s worth of good storytelling into its 92 minutes: a better average than many films deliver these days.

Her new film, Sound of My Voice — which she co-wrote with its director, Zal Batmanglij — has only about 15 minutes of good storytelling in its 85 minutes. At best, it might have made a medium-decent half-hour episode of Rod Serling’s original Twilight Zone.

She’s trending in the wrong direction.

Sound of My Voice is insufferably elliptical: an unfocused story that raises far more questions than it even attempts to address, and which spends most of its time — interminable amounts of time — with a dozen folks enduring the sort of laughable encounter group grope that gives a bad name to therapy sessions.

Not that these sessions are intended to be therapy; it’s closer to the cultish behavior of impressionable acolytes who’ve flocked to a messianic leader. That’s what draws the attention of Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius), a couple who turn amateur investigators in order to make a documentary film intended to expose the behavior of an enigmatic young woman named Maggie (Marling).

The story, which unfolds slightly out of sequence, begins as Peter and Lorna submit to removing their regular clothes, taking thorough showers, dressing in hospital gowns and then enduring blindfolds and plastic cuffs on their hands, while being driven God knows where, in order to meet Maggie.

This raises an eyebrow at least a little. I understand that journalists will tolerate much for the sake of a story, but this seems a high threshold of trust for amateur journalists. And that’s actually one of this story’s many problems: We later learn that Peter is a substitute teacher, while Lorna is a former hard-living party girl, now sober, who tries to write novels. They’re “documentarians” only because this script tells us they are; we see absolutely no evidence of former journalistic endeavors.

Which also begs the first big question: Given the secrecy surrounding Maggie and her followers, and the care they take to remain below the radar, how did Peter and Lorna find out about her in the first place?

Uh-huh. It’s that kind of sloppy script.

Another Earth: Celestial salvation?

Another Earth (2011) • View trailer for Another Earth
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for thematic elements, profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang


Science-fiction films come in several distinct flavors.

Hollywood delights in the most obvious end of the spectrum: the flamboyant space operas filled with ray guns, robots and other ostentatious hardware. Think Star Wars. At the other extreme, we have quieter stories that employ futuristic what-ifs solely as a backdrop to the primary character drama. Cliff Robertson's Academy Award-winning turn in 1968's Charly comes to mind here.

Rhoda (Brit Marling), a young woman desperately trying to flee the mess she
has made of her life, wonders if some sort of solution might be offered by the
mysterious, newly discovered planet that is revealed to be increasingly
Earth-like, as the weeks and months pass.

The latter type always intrigue me, particularly those not immediately recognized as science fiction.

While Fox Searchlight is marketing Another Earth to capitalize on its sci-fi trappings, director Mike Cahill's thoughtful indie drama actually is a study of guilt, and whether any act of atonement is possible in the wake of an unforgivable act. Cahill co-wrote the story with Brit Marling, who also stars. The film took two awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and it's easy to see why; Cahill and Marling quietly weave a staggering futuristic element into a primarily real-world drama, which leads to an unexpectedly clever denouement.

That said, their film is slow, at times almost leaden. Aside from brief encounters with incidental people, this is primarily a two-character piece without much dialogue. Marling and co-star William Mapother are expected to convey a lot of emotion and anguish via body language and facial expression, and neither has the subtle acting chops to pull that off at all times. Quite often, yes, but not consistently.

Additionally, the film's low-budget origins work against it. Cahill also handles the cinematography and editing, and his cheap, grainy film stock does him no favors. While he might argue that the bland, washed-out color palette is an intentional artistic decision intended to convey his protagonist's drab, day-to-day existence, the inadequate lighting and washed-out visuals are distracting ... and they pull us out of the story.

We meet Rhoda Williams (Marling) as a bright teen giddy over having just been accepted into MIT's astrophysics program. She celebrates this triumph at a party and then unwisely drives home. Distracted further by a startling announcement on the car radio — the discovery of another planet near Earth — Rhoda leans out the window to scan the night sky ... while still driving.

The collision is inevitable, and entirely her fault. She destroys the family in the other vehicle, putting the driver into a coma and killing his pregnant wife and their young child.

Cahill handles this sequence with admirable restraint, allowing us to fill in the details as Rhoda stands, aghast, unable to comprehend what she has done. She cannot move, and as the sound of sirens rises in the background, Marling deftly conveys, without words, this young woman's realization that her bright future has been snuffed out like the lives she has just taken.

Four years pass, in a single black text card.