Much Ado About Nothing
Director/Country/Time: Joss Whedon, USA, 107 min.
Cast: Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Fran Kranz, Reed Diamond, Sean Maher, Clark Gregg, Nathan Fillion, Tom Lenk, Jillian Morgese
Program: Special Presentations
Headline: A giddy thing
Noel’s Take: The best part of Joss Whedon’s adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing is probably when Fred and Wesley finally get to be happy together, despite the villainous machinations of Simon Tam. Or wait, maybe the best part is when Topher, Dominic and Agent Coulson conspire to play matchmaker. Or when Andrew and Captain Mal show up as bumbling cops. The point is this: There’s a very strong possibility that a viewer’s enjoyment of Whedon’s take on William Shakespeare will be affected by how much of a Whedon fan he or she already is. It’s not a requirement, mind. This Ado does tell Shakespeare’s story, with Shakespeare’s dialogue, with the only overt twists being that the film is in modern dress, shot in black-and-white in Whedon’s own sunny Southern California home. But it was done quickly, with a cast of Whedon regulars and youngsters who aren’t, overall, the strongest Shakesperean actors ever assembled. Some, like Amy Acker—as the sharp-tongued anti-romantic Beatrice—find exactly the right balance between 21st century casualness and poetic classicism. (Seriously, why isn’t Acker a huge star yet?) Others seem more like they’re reciting. So some measure of forgiveness for the process by which Much Ado About Nothing came to be may be helpful, as would some preexisting affection for these actors and the roles they’ve played for Whedon in the past. But at the same time, Whedon is smart enough to make the “hey kids let’s put on a show” aspect of this project work for him. Few writer-directors in TV or movies are as skilled as Whedon at luring an audience with agreeable actors and an an ebullient tone before yanking out the rug, which is exactly what happens in Shakespeare’s play, where days and nights of revelry and playful teasing turns grave when a visiting rogue besmirches a young lady’s reputation. And Whedon has also always been fascinated by the roles people feel obliged to play, which another big part of Much Ado About Nothing: characters pretending things ostentatiously, to influence others’ behavior. The meta elements of Whedon’s Much Ado do serve a purpose. Shakespeare’s play, like Whedon’s movie, is about people goofing their way to something serious.
Grade: A-
The Act Of Killing
Director/Country/Time: Joshua Oppenheimer & Christine Cynn, UK, 116 min.
Documentary
Program: TIFF Docs
Headline: “Justice,” via movie camera
Noel’s Take: It’s not every documentary that opens with brightly attired actors moving into place for a musical number, but then not every documentary is as audacious as Joshua Oppenheimer and Christine Cynn’s The Act Of Killing. The film tells the story of what happened in Indonesia in the mid-‘60s, when the country went though a western-backed military coup. Within a year, a million citizens had been slaughtered by paramilitary organizations staffed with gangsters and teenagers, under orders to “kill communists,” as defined by the people in charge. A half-century later, many of the people who committed those murders are still in positions of leadership in the government, or at the least are allowed to roam freely, to enjoy the fruits of their crimes in their old age. These former death squad leaders aren’t just tolerated, but in some quarters lionized, so they have no apparent compunction about boasting to Oppenheimer about what they did and how they did it. And because one of the main executioners—a frail old man named Anwar Congo—is a movie buff, The Act Of Killing even gives him the chance to re-stage the highlights of his glory years, with make-up, special effects, costumes, and a pool of not-always-willing extras drawn from the populace. Congo and his accomplishes dress up as gangsters, or cowboys, or soldiers, and encourage the women and children to wail realistically, as they show Oppenheimer the best way to slash and strangle people without making too much of a mess. The Act Of Killing feels a little too structureless at times, as it moves from one restaging to another, linked by footage of these men going about their fairly prosperous daily lives. But the movie is frequently jaw-dropping, as Oppenheimer and Cynn sit back and let their subjects talk themselves into recognizing their guilt. At first they’re full of justifications, talking about how “gangster” just means “free man” in English, and citing the story of Cain and Abel and the atrocities of others as a way of providing perspective. Yet as they pay attention for the first time to the weeping, terrified “actors,” the goons wonder if the footage will change the public perception of that they did. The Act Of Killing raises all kinds of questions about the sins of nations in transition, and acknowledges that these thugs are paying no real price, even as they’re convicted by art. But this is better than nothing.
Grade: B+
At Any Price
Director/Country/Time: Ramin Bahrani, USA, 105 min.
Cast: Zac Efron, Dennis Quaid, Heather Graham, Clancy Brown, Kim Dickens
Program: Special Presentations
Headline: Rain on the scarecrow, whatnot
Noel’s Take: Ramin Bahrani’s Man Push Cart, Chop Shop and Goodbye Solo all belong on the top shelf of recent American independent film, but ye gods is his At Any Price ever a misfire. Dennis Quaid stars as a prosperous Iowa farmer and seed salesman who worries a lot. He worries about losing territory to the more successful salesman Clancy Brown, and he worries that his father is ashamed of him because his sons have shown no interest in carrying on the family business, and he worries that some of his financial improprieties and sexual indiscretions will be found out. And while Quaid worries, At Any Price delivers what amounts to a State Of The American Farm address, embedded in a narrative about how the drive for success leads people to make choices that compromise their integrity and, perversely, their happiness. Bahrani’s intentions here are good, and the movie’s plot (co-written with Hallie Elizabeth Newton) is suitably complex, thanks in large part to the parallel story of Quaid’s son Zac Efron, who’s a rising but volatile star on the NASCAR circuit. The racing scenes in At Any Price are beautifully shot; in fact, the whole movie looks as good as Bahrani’s previous films, which were all quite handsome. But the dialogue and performances in At Any Price are about at the level of a Founder’s Day pageant. To some extent, this is intentional, in that Bahrani seems to want to make a mainstream melodrama, in which he can embed some serious consideration of contemporary farm policy. But the result is like the corniest aspects of Hollywood storytelling mixed with bullet points. And given the potential of this subject matter and what Bahrani is capable of, At Any Price is an especially painful whiff.
Grade: C
The Company You Keep
Director/Country/Time: Robert Redford/USA/125 min.
Cast: Robert Redford, Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie
Program: Gala
Headline: Free Radicals
Scott’s Take: One thought occurred to me while watching Robert Redford’s latest political drama: “I’ve underrated the Assayas.” For all the now petty-seeming grousing I did a couple of days ago about Something In The Air, Assayas’ semi-autobiographical film about his experiences as a young leftist radical post-1968, it has about 1,000 times the vitality of The Company You Keep, which distills the twilight of Vietnam-era radicals into a warm cup of sleepytime tea. Granted, Redford wants the film to be a sober reflection on the political upheaval of 40 years earlier, when the escalation of the war in Vietnam gave rise to the Weather Underground, a terrorist operation that vowed to “bring the war home.” Redford stars as a former Weatherman who leaves his job as a New York attorney and goes back on the run when a fellow radical (Susan Sarandon) gets arrested for a decades-old crime and an enterprising young journalist (Shia LaBeouf) uncovers his identity. An absurdly loaded cast—Nick Nolte, Julie Christie (the rumors are true), Terrence Howard, Richard Jenkins, Chris Cooper, Stephen Root, and Sam Elliott among them—is wasted on a journalist procedural that unfolds at quarter-speed. Redford nobly attempts to account for how the Weather Underground could justify its actions, but at a time when names like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn are campaign rallying cries, it’s mystifying that he could make a film that’s so doggedly resistant to provocation. In typical Baby Boomer style, he also lands a few broadsides against millennials, who are too busy “updating their Facebook statuses” to take to the streets. If the film even had a barest flicker of that revolutionary spirit, it might have owned its condescension.
Grade: C-