One Night in Miami: Compelling revisionist history

One Night in Miami (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated R, for profanity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.15.21

On Feb. 25, 1964 — on the eve of the name change that would prove so controversial — Cassius Clay became the world boxing champion after an upset victory over Sonny Liston, during a bout at Florida’s Miami Convention Center.

 

Basking in the euphoria of an historic sports upset by Cassius Clay (Eli Goree, second
from left), he and his friends — from left, Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), Malcolm X
(Kingsley Ben-Adir) and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) — are about to debate how best
to "market" such an outcome.

Following the match, Clay returned to his room at the Hampton House Hotel, where he spent a quiet evening with friends Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown … under the watchful eye of Nation of Islam security. Nobody knows what they talked about — at least, not to any great degree — but playwright Kemp Powers became obsessed by the notion of what could have been discussed by that amazing quartet, at that seminal moment during the nascent Civil Rights movement.

 

The result was 2013’s One Night in Miami, a 90-minute one-act play that Powers has just adapted into a film — available via Amazon Prime — helmed with capable assurance by actress-turned-director Regina King (an impressive feature film debut). 

 

It’s a fascinating “what if” scenario. And even if hindsight has allowed Powers to shade the content of this encounter, the issues discussed certainly would have been just as relevant then, as they are today (sadly).

 

Making a movie from a play, particularly one of this claustrophobic nature, always involves the challenge of “opening up” the action, so that we don’t feel we’re merely watching a filmed stage performance. Powers and King get around this with some brief prologues that cleverly — and wincingly — blend Black oppression with failure.

 

Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), despite possessing more than two dozen Top 40 hits by this point in his career, flops miserably before a white Copacabana audience that radiates contempt. Clay (Eli Goree), facing Henry Cooper in June 1963, is knocked to the mat. (The astonished look on Goree’s face is an early indication of the almost eerie way he channels the once-and-future Muhammad Ali.)

 

Brown (Aldis Hodge), just beginning to transition from NFL fame to an acting career — having just wrapped his co-starring debut in 1964’s Rio Conchos — drops in on a family friend (Beau Bridges) at a Georgia plantation. What initially seems a congenial visit between equals who like and admire each other, takes a sharp left turn with a line from Bridges — delivered so blandly, so matter-of-factly — that we’re left breathless.

 

The subsequent shift to Clay’s victory over Liston therefore is even more triumphant, with Cooke, Brown and Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) cheering in the audience. When they return to the hotel room, it’s with different intentions; Cooke and Brown hope to party, while the abstinent Malcolm X has something more important in mind.

 

The Highwaymen: Old dogs on the hunt

The Highwaymen (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for strong violence and bloody images
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.5.19

Some actors are inherently captivating, even when their characters are engaged in activities that aren’t otherwise cinematically interesting.

Having detected a possible pattern to Bonnie and Clyde's movements, Many Gault
(Woody Harrelson, left) and Frank Hamer (Kevin Costner) hope to be on hand,
the next time the outlaws strike.

That’s definitely true of Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson, who make an art form of quiet, contemplative brooding in director John Lee Hancock’s The Highwaymen. Both are note-perfect as — respectively — Texas Rangers Frank Hamer and Maney Gault, brought out of retirement in early 1934, in order to hunt down Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.

John Fusco’s thoughtful, fact-based screenplay does much to undo the historical damage wrought by 1967’s pop culture-oriented Bonnie and Clyde. At the same time, Fusco slyly acknowledges the dangerous “cult of celebrity” that made the outlaws attractive to people beaten down by Depression-era poverty, who naively — stupidly — believed that two kill-crazy sociopaths were “looking out for the common folks.”

(That dynamic similarly blinds the percentage of today’s American public that continues to worship at the altar of a narcissist who repeatedly worsens their lives.)

Although Bonnie and Clyde’s increasingly violent crime spree had continued for two years — in part — due to overwhelmed small-town police departments not yet able to coordinate effectively with each other, the challenge of catching the outlaws was exacerbated by civilians disinclined to help. But that sentiment began to shift after Jan. 16, 1934, when the gang freed a quartet of inmates from Texas’ Eastham Prison Farm, shooting two guards in the process. (One died two weeks later.)

This was the last straw for Texas Gov. Miriam Amanda Wallace “Ma” Ferguson (an appropriately feisty Kathy Bates), and it’s where Hancock’s film begins. Despite opposition from Bureau of Investigation agents — soon to become the FBI — Ferguson lets her Department of Corrections chief (John Carroll Lynch, as Lee Simmons) seek out Hamer, long respected as a dedicated and dogged law enforcement officer.

Despite that, he’d been forced into retirement after Ferguson disbanded the Texas Rangers the previous year (political revenge, after the agency had backed her election opponent). We meet Hamer on a typical morning, as he putters silently around the lovely home shared with wife Gladys (Kim Dickens). We get a sense that she’s constantly busy with volunteer work, whereas Costner’s resigned, slightly aimless expression speaks volumes about a man who has lost his purpose in life.

Even so, Hamer is disinclined to accept Simmons’ request, in part due to a reluctant recognition of age-related limitations, and also by way of respecting Gladys’ legitimate fear over the assignment’s obvious dangers. The die is cast when Bonnie and Clyde are involved in another violent confrontation in Missouri.

Never Look Away: You simply can't!

Never Look Away (2018) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for graphic nudity, sexual content, dramatic intensity and brief violent images
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.1.19

He who saves one life, saves the world entire.

It therefore stands to reason that he who destroys one life, destroys the world entire. And he who destroys many lives, destroys a galaxy of worlds.

When finally given the opportunity to create any sort of art that he desires, Kurt (Tom
Schilling) finds it difficult to reverse years of the repressive limitations he was forced
to observe, lest he come to the attention of the wrong sort of people.

Hold that thought.

German writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Never Look Away is like getting thoroughly absorbed by a sweeping historical novel … and I mean that in the best possible way.

Von Donnersmarck previously brought us 2006’s mesmerizing The Lives of Others, which deservedly won the Oscar for that year’s best foreign film, and also should have been nominated — at the very least — for screenplay.

He’s clearly intrigued by what prompted the madness that infected his country during the Nazi years, and the repression that followed amid the subsequent blockaded decades, prior to the barriers coming down in November 1989 (and the Berlin Wall’s destruction, two years later). 

The Lives of Others focused on a Stasi (secret police) operative inexorably drawn into the desires and behavior of those he surveilled over the course of several years. Never Look Away takes a much longer view of how one young man’s life becomes woven — without his awareness — into the fabric of a heinous Nazi loyalist.

Von Donnersmarck opens his new film in 1937 Dresden, as 6-year-old Kurt Barnert (Cai Cohrs) is taken by his beloved young aunt, Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl), to see the touring Entartete Kunst (“Degenerate Art”) exhibit at a nearby museum. Von Donnersmarck takes his time with this sequence, as cinematographer Caleb Deschanel’s camera slowly pans over works by Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Ludwig Kirchner and others, while a smug Nazi guide contemptuously dismisses everything as a “disgusting sign of mental illness.”

But young Kurt is transfixed, with whispered encouragement from Elisabeth. “Never look away,” she tells the boy. Never be afraid of something new, something different, something challenging.

Alas, her three-word mantra soon takes on an entirely different meaning.

BlacKkKlansman: provocatively brilliant

BlacKkKlansman (2018) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, highly disturbing and violent images, sexual candor, racial epithets and profanity
By Derrick Bang

This is another one for the jaw-dropping Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction file: an audacious adaptation of a real-world event that simply wouldn’t be believed, had it not actually happened.

Detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver, left) stares in astonishment at the KKK
membership card that his police colleague Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) has
just received in the mail, after he politely asked — during a phone conversation, in the guise
of a dedicated white racist — that KKK Grand Wizard David Duke expedite the request.

Granted, director Spike Lee and his co-scripting colleagues — Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott — have taken liberties here and there: changing some names, fabricating a few supporting characters, adjusting the time frame a bit. But the key details are just as they’re depicted in Ron Stallworth’s 2014 memoir of the same title, and the succinct elevator pitch can’t help raising eyebrows: the astonishing saga of how a black Colorado Springs police officer became a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan.

But that isn’t the only selling point of Lee’s big-screen adaptation. He has shrewdly shaped BlacKkKlansman to make what went down in the 1970s sound like a foreshadowing of what’s happening right now. Occasional lines of dialogue leap off the screen, as echoes of today’s headlines.

A casual conversation partway through this film, during which Stallworth (John David Washington) smugly discounts any possibility of KKK Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace) gaining traction on his desire to occupy the White House — Duke being described in contemptuous (but wholly accurate) terms that are equally relevant to the current racist Pretender-in-Chief — can’t help raising goose bumps.

At other times, in a neck-snapping shift of tone, Lee’s film is riotously hilarious … although our laughter tends to be nervous, at best.

That’s quite a balancing act: fascinating history, provocative social commentary, unexpected humor, and a terrifying glimpse of humanity at its worst. BlacKkKlansman triumphs on all those levels: alternating dynamic verve and swagger, with victory and heartbreak. It’s by far the most urgently relevant, shrewdly insightful and entertaining film of Lee’s remarkable career: quite an accomplishment, given his already impressive résumé.

It’s the early 1970s: Fresh-faced, Afro-coifed Stallworth becomes the first black officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department. It’s an early stab at racial integration that Chief Bridge (Robert John Burke) warns will test his new hire’s patience and resolve at every turn. And not just from an unknown percentage of local residents, but also from fellow cops such as the loutish Andy Landers (Frederick Weller, doing a great job at being teeth-grindingly loathsome).

Washington deftly establishes Stallworth’s character during this initial interview: calm, patient, insightful and — more than anything else — dignified. But he doesn’t wear the latter arrogantly, like a shield; resolve and a desire for mutual respect just sorta radiate from him. Yet when alone or briefly out of view, repressed frustration erupts like lava: quite jarring, the first time, given the Zen-like tranquility he has displayed up to that moment.

Alpha: A bit of a mutt

Alpha (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

This is a lovely notion for a story, but the execution leaves something to be desired.

Actually, I’m not certain it can be rendered successfully as a film. Director Albert Hughes and scripter Daniele Sebastian Wiedenhaupt certainly put heart and soul into their effort, but the result is slow, occasionally lifeless and frequently — distractingly — contrived.

Separated from their respective companions, Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and his unlikely
ally increasingly rely on each other, while attempting to survive prehistoric Europe's
dangerous environment.

At the risk of sounding like a killjoy, the very premise is flawed. While it’s romantic to consider the notion of a hyper-intelligent “first dog” that allowed itself to be fully domesticated some 20,000 years in our past, in truth it likely took many, many generations of (accidental?) wolf breeding before something approximating humanity’s best friend finally emerged.

But that wouldn’t be nearly as enticing during a studio story pitch.

Alpha belongs to the small but intriguing sub-genre of “protagonist(s) against the elements” films that are largely — or completely — bereft of dialogue. Its predecessors include 1981’s Quest for Fire, 1986’s adaptation of Clan of the Cave Bear and the pack’s stand-out classic, 1988’s The Bear. The latter’s director, Jean-Jacques Annaud — who also helmed Quest for Fire — has a strong artistic, visual and dramatic sense that keeps viewers breathlessly hooked.

Which Hughes can’t do, and no surprise; his résumé, working in tandem with brother Allen, focuses on grim, often socially conscious action thrillers such as Menace II Society, Dead Presidents, From Hell and The Book of Eli. He hasn’t the faintest idea how to handle something requiring the careful, delicate touch that Alpha demands. I kept lamenting how far superior this film would have been, in Annaud’s hands.

Hughes’ insecurity manifests immediately: He opens with a pointless flash-forward to one of the film’s most catastrophically suspenseful moments, freezes the climactic image, leaves us hanging (literally), then backs up to begin the story chronologically. One can’t help feeling that he worried about losing his audience, during a lengthy first act that (frankly) wastes a lot of time setting the stage.

Or perhaps that decision was thrust upon Hughes by nervous execs at Studio 8 (the production company) or Columbia Pictures (the distributor). Regardless, it’s an irritating cheat that bodes ill for the rest of the film.

We’re introduced to a small clan of Cro-Magnon tool-makers toward the end of Europe’s Mesolithic period. These are civilized people, with rituals, a language, primitive weapons, family hierarchies and an understanding that survival depends on working together, with everybody contributing. The tribe is led by Tau (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), stern and strong, and proud that his 17-year-old son, Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee), has just come of age. 

For the first time, Keda will join the men on their dangerous trek to locate the massive herds of steppe bison that populate very distant grasslands: an annual hunt required to supply the food that will get the clan through the subsequent harsh winter.

All the Money in the World ... can't guarantee a perfect film

All the Money in the World (2017) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, dramatic intensity, violence and drug use
By Derrick Bang

This film’s Christmas Day release couldn’t be more appropriate: Rarely has a real-world individual been depicted in a manner so reminiscent of Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge.

Invitation to catastrophe: Gail (Michelle Williams) and her husband John (Andrew Buchan,
right) assume that being embraced by his father, J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer)
will be the best possible thing for their family, and particularly for their eldest child Paul
(Charlie Shotwell). How wrong they are...

Although All the Money in the World draws its stomach-clenching suspense from the uncertain fate endured by its young victim, director Ridley Scott’s film gets most of its juice from Christopher Plummer’s mesmerizing portrayal of billionaire J. Paul Getty: an avaricious, repugnant monster whose breathtakingly awful behavior knows no bounds.

Indeed, each example of cruelty is topped by one that’s much worse. We’re frequently inclined to believe that scripter David Scarpa fabricated this or that jaw-droppingly ludicrous detail ... but no. Getty really was that stingy and parsimonious, particularly with family members, and Plummer’s performance oozes heartless contempt. (How artistically fitting that Plummer recently played Scrooge in The Man Who Invented Christmas.)

Scarpa’s script is drawn from the relevant portion of John Pearson’s 1995 book, Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty. One can’t help feeling that it ain’t easy to be wealthy (although everybody would love to try).

I also can’t help wondering if Scott, Scarpa and Plummer intend this performance as a thinly veiled indictment of the similarly callous behavior currently emanating from the unfeeling über-rich in Washington, D.C.

Plummer is so perfect — so contemptibly vile — that it’s difficult to imagine anybody else in the role. And yet he was a last-minute replacement for the publicly disgraced Kevin Spacey, who had completed work on the film. Assuming Scott and Sony are willing to release that footage, it’ll be fascinating to compare the two performances, once this drama hits home video.

(Actually, 88-year-old Plummer seems a better choice than 68-year-old Spacey, given that Getty was 81 when these events went down.)

All the Money in the World concerns one of history’s most unusual — and protracted — crimes: the 1973 kidnapping of Getty’s 16-year-old grandson, John Paul Getty III, affectionately known as Paul. He endured half a year of imprisonment, from mid-July through mid-December, while his captors’ demands encountered a brick wall of refusal from the old man.

The Birth of a Nation: Strong delivery

The Birth of a Nation (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for violence, cruelty, rape and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.7.16

It’s telling — likely for all the wrong reasons — that the Nat Turner slave rebellion hadn’t yet been dramatized in an American film.

Having viewed a solar eclipse as a sign — of a black man's hand reaching to obscure the
sun — Nat Turnet (Nate Parker, foreground) gathers an increasingly large band of
equally enraged slaves, in order to begin a movement that he hopes will gather strength
and build, from county to city to state.

Aside from earning a chapter in the 1977 TV miniseries Roots — which got a few key details wrong — the event has gone unacknowledged by mainstream visual media.

Until now.

Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation was the darling of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, taking both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize; without doubt, its arrival is timely. But tapping into the current combustible zeitgeist is ephemeral; relying on that sort of serendipity has consigned many films (and books, and plays) into the basement of forgotten relics.

The question is whether Parker has made a truly good film: an honorable, balanced and historically truthful document that will stand the test of time, and resonate with future viewers. On balance, the answer is yes: This shattering drama falls somewhat short of the bar set by 2013’s 12 Years a Slave, but it’s worthy competition. Thanks to these and other recent entries such as Selma and Fruitville Station, we’re experiencing an alternate — and equally valid — depiction of events which, in some cases, have remained shamefully overlooked.

ALL drama is compelling, particularly when experienced from differing viewpoints. Variety — as ever — is the spice of life.

Granted, Parker’s Birth of a Nation occasionally is guilty of grandiloquent excess. (The angel imagery is a particular overreach, as is his tendency toward unnecessary close-ups.) The indiscriminate butchery fomented by Turner is glossed over; no matter how justified the rage, it’s difficult to condone the slaughter of children (a detail Parker simply disregards).

Race: Gold medal material, bronze execution

Race (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for thematic material and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

When it comes to true-life sports sagas, few can match the triumphant power of Jesse Owens’ amazing feats at the 1936 Olympics.

Having demonstrated his incredible speed on the track, Jesse Owens (Stephan James,
center) is congratulated by his coach, Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis, far right). Both
have their eyes on the bigger prize: qualifying for the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

His few days in Berlin, striking a glorious blow against Adolf Hitler’s racist vision of Aryan supremacy, resonated to a degree that can’t really be calculated. Certainly the Nazi despot was humiliated before the world, and one can’t help speculating whether the subsequent timetable of German events was influenced by such embarrassment.

Such a story.

So sad — and so puzzling — that the better part of a century has passed, before it was brought to the big screen.

Director Stephen Hopkins has made up for this oversight, with the family-friendly Race — great title, just in passing — which displays a degree of heart and dignity that Owens likely would have appreciated.

Despite the existence of numerous published biographies and Owens’ own memoir, writers Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse have fashioned an original script that focuses solely on the two years leading up to the 1936 Olympics. That’s a shrewd decision, as it allows this 134-minute film to concentrate on these key events without feeling rushed.

We catch up with Owens (Stephan James) in 1934, just as he’s about to begin his college career at Ohio State University. He leaves behind a girlfriend, Ruth (Shanice Banton), and their young daughter, promising to send money whenever possible. Sadly, and despite being mentored by head track coach Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis), Jesse finds the locker room environment unpleasantly racist.

No doubt the reality was much worse than what is depicted here. We certainly get the point, but Hopkins chooses a restrained approach more akin to 2013’s Jackie Robinson biopic, 42, than the often grim brutality of Selma (which also featured James).

The Danish Girl: An awkward transformation

The Danish Girl (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for nudity and considerable sexual candor
By Derrick Bang

History is laden with fascinating people whose stories never make it into standard classroom curriculum, even at the college level.

We can be grateful, then, that movies often come to the rescue.

When Greta (Alicia Vikander, left) learns that her husband Einar (Eddie Redmayne)
enjoys posing in the guise of a woman, she begins to produce an entire series of
paintings that find favor with art lovers.

During the early decades of the 20th century, Danish artist Einar Wegener was celebrated for his landscape paintings. His wife, Gerda, enjoyed a steady career as a portraitist of prominent citizens, but recognition as an accomplished artist eluded her. This changed when Gerda began producing a series of Art Deco paintings of alluring, fashionably dressed women with distinctly almond-shaped eyes: in many cases, working with the same model.

The “model” later was revealed to be Einar, who had embraced this role as a means of validating a lifelong desire to dress and live as a woman: a wish so all-consuming that he eventually sought radical surgical intervention.

Today, Wegener is acknowledged as one of the first-known recipients of gender-reassignment surgery: a procedure most people probably don’t realize dates back to the early 1930s.

Einar and Gerda’s story has been dramatized with sensitivity by director Tom Hooper, the gifted British filmmaker who draws exemplary performances from his casts, and who turned The King’s Speech into such a droll, charming and effervescent slice of historical drama. Hooper elicits similarly strong work from stars Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander in The Danish Girl, but — alas — the film itself doesn’t live up to their memorably haunting efforts.

The problems are difficult to specify. At 120 minutes, Hooper’s film is a bit too long; the pacing also is extremely slow. Perhaps most noticeably, much as we admire Redmayne’s richly complex performance, Hooper and cinematographer Danny Cohen overuse tight close-ups, particularly of Redmayne’s mega-watt smile. To be sure, they’re varying levels of grins — nervous, bashful, triumphant — but, ultimately, a smile is a smile is a smile.

Strip 15 minutes’ worth of Redmayne’s smiles, and I’m convinced the entire film would play better.

But the issues go deeper. Lucinda Coxon’s script, adapted from David Ebershoff’s 2000 novel of the same title, is a bit sloppy with detail. This film has us believe that Einar’s transition from “closeted” female to surgically altered woman takes place in four short years, starting in 1926, when in fact Einar was “passing” as female by 1912. Compressing so many key events into this shorter time-span feels false and contrived: absolutely (I’m sure) the last impression Hooper would have desired.

That said, we’re no less transfixed by Redmayne and Vikander. Both cross that threshold that transcends acting, where we simply accept that they are the characters being brought to life.

Bridge of Spies: Riveting Cold War thriller

Bridge of Spies (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for war violence, dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.16.15

Atticus Finch lives.

Harper Lee is known to have based the iconic hero of To Kill a Mockingbird on her own father, Alabama lawyer Amasa Coleman Lee, who — like the book’s character — represented unpopular defendants in a highly publicized (and politicized) trial.

As the trial that might send Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance, left) to the gas chamber proceeds,
defense attorney James Donovan (Tom Hanks) is surprised to see his client remain so
calm. "Aren't you worried?" Donovan asks. Abel's response becomes the film's best
signature line.

How ironic, then, that at the same time Harper Lee was fine-tuning the novel that would make her famous, newspaper headlines across the United States pilloried the country’s most-hated lawyer, James Donovan, who had bravely accepted the assignment to defend captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

I can’t help wondering if any of Donovan’s characteristics wandered into Lee’s depiction of Atticus.

Donovan’s name and historical significance have remained buried for decades, although Abel might ring a few bells. Sirens are likely to go off, however, when both men are linked to American pilot Francis Gary Powers, who was captured after his U-2 spy plane was blasted out of the sky during a photographic reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union.

The interlinked saga involving Donovan, Abel and Powers has been resurrected and transformed into a thoughtful, fascinating and thoroughly absorbing period drama by director Steven Spielberg and scripters Matt Charman, Joel and Ethan Coen. It’s Cold War-era spyjinks right out of John Le Carre, except that these events actually took place: yet another reminder that truth can be far stranger than fiction.

(The film credits make no mention of Donovan’s well-received 1964 memoir, Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel and Francis Gary Powers, which I find odd; it’s impossible to imagine that Charman and the Coen brothers didn’t read that book.)

Spielberg’s film is anchored by a commanding performance from Tom Hanks, who channels every dedicated and deeply honorable character ever played by Henry Fonda and James Stewart. At the same time, Hanks brings his own wry, subtle humor to this depiction of Donovan: a capable and hard-working family man caught up in events far beyond his imagining.

(Or so we’re led to believe. Given Donovan’s WWII service as General Counsel at the Office of Strategic Services, he may not have been as “ordinary” as this film suggests. But this portrayal makes for a better story.)

Belle: Rings a robust note

Belle (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, and mostly harmless, aside from an unexpectedly vulgar sexual assault
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.9.14

Even under dire circumstances, virtuous individuals will stand against the entrenched horror of grim mob rule, risking social censure at best, their very lives at worst.

With her future — and happiness — on the line, Dido (Gugu Mbatha-Raw, left) accepts
some sage relationship advice from her foster mother, Lady Mansfield (Emily Watson),
before determining what her gentleman caller has in mind.

Oskar Schindler clandestinely defied Nazis and saved the roughly 1,200 Jews employed in his German factories. Civil rights activist César Chávez essentially shamed the United States into acknowledging and improving the wretched conditions under which primarily Latino laborers harvested foodstuffs. Polish shipyard worker Lech Walesa founded the Solidarity Movement that led to the fall of communism in his own country, and likely hastened the demise of the Soviet Union.

Which brings us to William Murray, the first Earl of Mansfield, a late 18th century barrister, politician and judge whose enlightened but highly unpopular decisions did much to encourage England’s eradication of slavery and the financially lucrative slave trade.

Murray may not be the central character in director Amma Asante’s thoroughly engaging Belle, but his presence looms large over the events depicted in this period drama. I must point out, however, that Misan Sagay’s script is far more fancy than fact; she plays fast and loose with historical accuracy, and it’s best to regard this depiction of Dido Elizabeth Belle as wish-fulfillment ... a suggestion of what might (should?) have been, rather than what was.

Sagay candidly admits, in this film’s press notes, that she was “inspired” to write this story after viewing a painting displayed at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland. The 1779 work, a typically aristocratic portrait at one time credited to Johann Zoffany, depicts two beautifully outfitted young women — one black, one white — who, from their stance and expressions, appear to be both affectionate friends and equals.

Which, needless to say, would have been quite unusual at the time.

Asante and Sagay adhere closely to established fact during a brief prologue, with Captain Sir John Lindsay (Matthew Goode) bringing his illegitimate mixed-race daughter, Dido, to be raised at Hampstead’s Kenwood House by his uncle and aunt, Lord and Lady Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson), while he returns to his naval duties. This childless couple already are raising another grand-niece, Elizabeth Murray, roughly the same age as Dido (which makes them third cousins, if I have that straight).

Lord and Lady Mansfield likely initially accept Dido as a companion for Elizabeth, but there’s no question that the former grows up in privileged surroundings, well treated in a household that tolerates both her illegitimacy and dark skin.

The Railway Man: Journey to serenity

Railway Man (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for highly disturbing scenes of torture and war violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.25.14

It’s somewhat ironic that the “code of silence” shared by former British prisoners of war who survived their WWII ordeal, while forced to help construct the Siam-Burma railway, seems to have been echoed by filmmakers.

The calm before the storm: Patti (Nicole Kidman) has fallen deeply in love with Eric
(Colin Firth), despite knowing very little about his past. Details will emerge soon enough,
at which point we'll find out just how determined this woman can be, when it comes to
uncovering the truth.

Following the 1957 release of director David Lean’s classic (if fictionalized) Bridge on the River Kwai, nobody has re-visited those events on the big screen.

Ironic, because — as often happens — truth is far more powerful than fiction. And, in this particular case, even a bit stranger.

Director Jonathan Teplitzky’s adaptation of Eric Lomax’s memoir, The Railway Man, is a deeply personal film: by turns grim, heartbreaking and spiritually uplifting. It’s propelled by yet another impressive and emotionally complex performance from star Colin Firth, who appears to be cornering the 21st century market on delicately articulated psychological turmoil.

Merely to glance upon Firth’s face is to share in the grief of a man we don’t yet know; the invisible scars radiate from him in waves.

But Firth isn’t alone. He’s matched, scene for scene, by Nicole Kidman’s equally fine work. Her part isn’t as showy, but it’s just as crucial; she delivers the same persuasive power with small gestures. A tilt of the head, a half-smile that vanishes before blossoming fully. The beginnings of a comment, swallowed before any words escape her lips. A sense that this woman constantly walks on eggshells, lest she unknowingly awaken more dormant memories in the man she loves, but doesn’t yet know or understand.

Memorably deft performances, in both cases.

For the most part, the same can be said of scripters Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson, who labored for years to turn Lomax’s book into a film. Their first act is a clever tease: deceptively light and sweet, almost a frothy romance, before dark storm clouds begin to smother the cheerful, sun-speckled tone.

The longer second act is horrific, in the manner of all powerful WWII sagas. The narrative may be far removed from the usual Western European setting, and the enemy faces may be different, but barbarism is universal. We wonder, once again, at man’s ability to debase and torture his peers. Not even war — not even this war — seems an adequate excuse for such spiteful cruelty.

The third act ... well, that’s where Boyce and Paterson falter a bit. But only a bit, and I’ll get back to that.

Saving Mr. Banks: Deplorably heartless

Saving Mr. Banks (2013) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rating: PG-13, and needlessly, for "unsettling images"
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.20.13

Pamela Lyndon Travers published Mary Poppins in 1934, and quickly followed it with Mary Poppins Comes Back. Shortly before the series’ third book arrived, she was approached by Walt Disney and his older brother, Roy, about bringing her character to the big screen.

As screenwriter Don DaGradi (Bradley Whitford) sinks ever further into his chair,
P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) painstakingly nitpicks the proposed script for
Mary Poppins, questioning increasingly inane details such as the placement of
punctuation marks.

She declined.

Walt, never one to surrender easily, persisted. Indeed, he persisted for roughly two decades, at which point a crack appeared in Travers’ armor.

Director John Lee Hancock’s rather unusual film, Saving Mr. Banks, suggests that financial necessity drove Travers to contemplate Disney’s offer. This seems a reasonable assumption; Travers’ literary output inexplicably stopped in 1953, shortly after the series’ fourth entry, Mary Poppins in the Park. (Travers also wrote other books in between.)

Scripters Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith had at least four biographies from which to fashion their narrative, along with a 2002 Australian television documentary (The Shadow of Mary Poppins) and the voluminous recordings and internal documents made during Travers’ two-week visit to the Disney Studios, in the spring of 1961. We therefore can assume reasonable historical accuracy, although — this being a Disney production — the portrait can’t help being shaded in favor of Uncle Walt.

All that said, unknowing viewers are likely to be quite surprised by this film, and perhaps not in a good way. Everybody will bring iconic memories of the cheery 1964 musical, with its effervescent songs and marvelous star turns by Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. Hancock’s film, in great contrast, is a serious downer: frequently depressing and, ultimately, unforgivably mean-spirited.

Emma Thompson is a precise, highly skilled performer who never wastes a word or gesture, and her take on Travers brings new meaning to the word “shrew.” The author depicted here is arrogant, boorish, condescending and hyper-critical to a degree that suggests mental illness. She demands polite behavior from others but gives none in return. One searches in vain for kindness.

This film’s split narrative — the other half taking place during a crucial year of Travers’ childhood, in rural Australia in 1906 — offers ample reason for the impregnable, emotionally withdrawn shell she’d construct, as an adult; it’s a saga of great sorrow, and we grieve for this little girl, played to apple-cheeked perfection by young Annie Rose Buckley.