I want to love Jupiter Ascending. SO MUCH. And make no mistake, there is plenty here to keep you entertained, including some beautiful outer space visuals, Channing Tatum's anti-gravity rollerblades, the adorable Elephant Man and every second of Eddie Redmayne's utterly batshit performance which consists solely of hoarse whispers punctuated at random by ear-splitting screams. But in the end, the most impressive thing about the latest Wachowski film is that it somehow manages to feel both thinly drawn and completely overstuffed at the same time. Throw in a surprisingly inert Mila Kunis and a stifled Channing Tatum, add a romance with absolutely no chemistry whatsoever, and you end up with a movie that simply collapses under the weight of its richly detailed yet completely empty spectacle.
And yet, part of me can't wait to watch it again. I guess that's just the kind of guy I am.
Jamie and Bart join me on the podcast to break down this big bad space opera, plus Bart and I continue to forge ahead through the Bourne franchise with The Bourne Supremacy. Bart didn't particularly care for it, while I discovered that I've apparently been confusing it for the third Bourne movie for years. Who knew?
PS: At one point I suggest that the Wachowskis particular brand of storytelling would be far better served by a long form premium TV series, completely forgetting that their next project, Sense8, is exactly that. It airs on Netflix this May. Huzzah!
Next Week: We celebrate Bart's Birthday with Kingsman: The Secret Service and The Bourne Ultimatum.
I tend to look forward to the avalanche of serious, high class, IMPORTANT MOVIES that overrun the box office each December, all searching for a taste of that Oscar glory. But I must admit that so far this year I've been largely disappointed. I think that the Best Actor race is going to be very hotly contested (as it usually is) and while most of these performances will absolutely deserve all that praise and more, the films themslves simply have not measured up. There's no better example of this conundrum than The Theory Of Everything.
Eddie Redmayne does some astonishing work, both physically and emotionally, as the brilliant cosmologist Stephen Hawking. Watching him slowly succumb to the ravages of Lou Gehrig's Disease is a heart breaking affair and it's a wonderfully realized transformation. Felicity Jones matches Redmayne punch for punch as Hawking's wife Jane Wild, who is put in the unenviable position of havingtory to not only spend a lifetime caring for her crippled husband (who's initially given a prognosis of two years to live) but also raising three children without the benefit of live-in assistance. The strain and pressure that puts upon Jane, as well as the guilt the Hawking experiences over his lack of self-sufficiency, hardly makes for an ideal household. More than anything else, this is a story about the burgeoning young romance that slowly and inexorably crumbles apart.
That's all well and good, but the movie never really manages to break the surface in regards to the themes, characters, their relationship, or the plot. In fact, I'm not even sure if the movie really has a plot, strictly speaking. It's more just a series of events tied together by a Rocky IV-esque number of montages. There's seemingly no bigger message to unpack here. I was hoping for something examining the price of success at the expense of family, or the ability of hope and strength to overcome incredible obstacles, or even just a keen juxtaposition of intellectual achievement set against extreme physical degradation. None of those ideas are actually present in the film, despite director James Marsh's attempt to convince you otherwise in the last ten minutes.
I'm honestly left wondering if this film even needs to be about Stephen Hawking, as the film doesn't seem particularly interested in his work or personality. You could essentially tell the exact same story with fictional protagonists and the only thing that would be missing is the name recognition that sells tickets. It's a shame, because Redmayne and Jones really are doing great work and the sun-drenched cinematography by Benoit Delhomme is fairly stunning. Unfortunately, the largely hollow script by Anthony McCarten simply strands everyone, most notably the audience.
This week marks the first episode of the show sans Bart. Thankfully, Jamie stepped up in his absence in order to keep the podcast train rolling. We also talk about the newly minted cast of Suicide Squad, Benedict Cumberbatch taking on the mantle of Doctor Strange, and the intriguing first trailer for the unfortunately titled Terminator: Genisys.
Jamie also makes a smart suggestion which I've been contemplating for a while now. I ask you readers, would you prefer two shorter podcasts each week, one covering movie news and one examining a new film in detail, or do you like the single stream, longer format that we're currently producing? I'm open to suggestions!
Next Week: Some combination of The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies and/or The Imitation Game.
"It's agony because he's a great actor who wants to be a film star, and you're a film star who wants to be a great actress. This film won't help either of you."
Michelle Williams got plenty of attention for her work portraying Marilyn Monroe, and rightly so. She is absolutely marvelous, both as the public persona of Marilyn and the sweet and simple Norma Jean hidden within. In one of my favorite moments, she encounters a group of applauding fans while touring Windsor Castle, turns to her young admirer and asks, "Shall I be her?" She instantly transforms before our eyes into the playful, flirting starlet that every man in America fell in love with. Naomi Watts has also had a Marilyn biopic in development for a while but if that movie ever coalesces, as much as I love Watts, it'll be hard to watch her without secretly pining for Williams. This might be the definitive portrayal for a generation.
The film actually feels pretty slight overall, a simple plot that's punctuated by some sharp performances by Williams, Eddie Redmayne and Kenneth Branagh as screen icon Lawrence Olivier. Put simply, Marilyn traveled to England in 1956 to film a "light comedy" with Olivier, and while there she had a brief romance with a young crew member named Colin Clark (Redmayne). It's not really a physical romance so much as an emotional one. While they do kiss and go skinny dipping, Colin mostly served as an emotional confidante, someone who would speak honestly to her and to whom she could confess her personal fears and professional doubts. When all is said and done, the movie itself feels much like Marilyn and Colin's relationship as well as the film we see her shooting: an enjoyable lark that's pleasant enough in the moment but doesn't really leave a lasting impression. (The movie, The Prince And The Showgirl, was considered a minor hit that was eventually overshadowed by her next film, Some Like It Hot.)
The most interesting element to me is the conflict that drives so much of the tension on Oliver's set. 1956 sits at a kind of crossroads in the entertainment industry, a clash between two different schools of acting which are perfectly embodied by the two leads. Olivier was a classically trained stage actor, and his performance style was very large and theatrical. He relied on a mastery of accents and dialects as well as a precise control of both his body and has facial expression. To Olivier, acting was simply a matter of adopting the correct physical and vocal mannerisms as the script demanded; it was essentially a learned set of skills. On the other side of the coin was "The Method," to which Marilyn was an enthusiastic devotee. First made popular by Marlon Brando and legendary filmmaker Elia Kazan, The Method favored the actor's internal process over the external. Utilizing tools like sense memory, the actor would try to find the emotional truth of the character in the given moment. While the process was far more involved and complicated, the results spoke for themselves. (Just watch Brando in On The Waterfront and compare it to most any movie from about ten years prior. It's like night and day.) Despite its name, The Method didn't rely on any one technique, and most of today's A-list actors utilize method acting in some form.
Needless to say the two schools didn't exactly play well together and if nothing else, My Week With Marilyn does a great job at exploring precisely why. Olivier and his contemporaries arrive to set on time, don their wardrobe and makeup, and are in their place precisely on schedule. Marilyn is the opposite. She's frequently late to set, or holed up in her dressing room because she's not yet emotionally ready to perform. She is constantly accompanied by her acting coach Paula Strasberg, whose husband Lee Strasberg created The Method in the first place. While Marilyn depends on Paula to help her find the character's inner life, Olivier is beyond frustrated with her presence, as they can't even get through a simple table read without Paula stopping everything to pull Marilyn aside and get her to examine the character further.
That frustration certainly reminded me of much of my own early performing experiences. Acting and directing was my major in college and the program I attended focused a lot on various incarnations of Meisner and Stanislavski's method. Personally, I was never a strict follower of any one technique, approaching different roles and shows from different perspectives. Sometimes I found it easy to identify with the character and could easily put myself in his shoes, whereas other times it was more about simply drawing on my own life to get in touch with the appropriate emotional state that the moment required. But, like Olivier, I too would sometime grow frustrated with my classmates/castmates, some of whom would burst into tears at the drop of a hat and almost seemed to prize emotional instability as an asset. Acting class became quasi-group therapy sessions and it all seemed rather besides the point to me. Often times these emotional explorations resulted in a compelling performance, but it usually made for an exasperating work environment.
At one point Olivier laments that Marilyn should spend time doing stage work, as a theater company would never put up with such nonsense. In a way, that speaks to the essential distinction between Olivier and Marilyn, between their differing performance styles, and between the theater and the film industries themselves. Marilyn, Brando, Strasberg and their ilk understood something that Olivier did not: the camera will pick up all sorts of subtleties that do not come across on stage. The arrival of the close up shot meant it was no longer simply about hitting your mark and articulating your lines clearly. The actor needs to become a fully realized human character that reacts to the world honestly in the moment, because any falsity on camera becomes instantly obvious and pulls the audience out of the film entirely. You can see it clearly whenever Marilyn and Olivier are in a scene together; she has a natural charm and charisma that is absolutely captivating and can't be replicated no matter what artificial pose, inflection or expression Olivier adopts. There's a reason she was America's sweetheart. When she's on camera, everything else simply fades into the background. It's therefore easy to sympathize with Olivier when he tells Colin that he wanted to work with her in order to feel young again, but instead he feels even older. Olivier can see the writing on the wall, that his revels now are ended and world he's dedicated his life to is about to leave him behind.
In the end, My Week With Marilyn is frustrating on a few levels. Generally I applaud these sorts of biopic stories that choose a specific moment or era to examine a person instead of trying to cover an entire lifetime in two hours. And Williams's performance is so great that I would gladly see a whole series of movies about her incarnation of Marilyn, but here it feels like her considerable talents are wasted on a story that never really goes anywhere. A big part of the problem is that she's not the protagonist. This tale belongs to Colin Clark, and therefore we only really see Marilyn through his eyes. It's more about how Marilyn affected Colin than vice versa and ultimately I don't care about him nearly as much as I do about her. It's not Redmayne's fault, as he does his best with the limited material, and while I found the conflict between Olivier and The Method to be far more fascinating, I'm not sure if it would really appeal to those without a performing background.
I wouldn't recommend you go out of your way for this one, but if the opportunity presents itself than it's worth watching just for Williams. If nothing else, she made me excited to go find some old Marilyn movies and add them to my viewing list.
--------------------------------------- Title: My Week With Marilyn Director: Simon Curtis Starring: Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Watson Year Of Release: 2011 Viewing Method: Showtime (DVR)
