THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE (DVD)

Director: Rebecca Miller (Personal Velocity, screenwriting credit for Proof, some minor acting credits)
Starring: Daniel Day Lewis, Camilla Belle, Catherine Keener

I remember the day I finally got the Independent Film Channel. I was so happy I’d finally get to see more of the countering voices to the Hollywood din. After about a year I realized something, though. Much of the programming I was seeing on IFC was amateurish. Perhaps it was smart material, or at least the filmmakers making it appeared to be smart, but there definitely wasn’t as much wisdom in the works as I'd been hoping for.
I think we may be entering a real golden age for independent film in this country. It’s easier and cheaper than ever to produce a quality movie. With digitization we may find this even more so. For whatever reason, rather than letting young directors explore their own bounds the Independent film channel has seemed to focus solely on a style of story that often strikes me as somewhat unrewarding. I’ll call it the creative-writing-at-a-small-liberal-arts-school-of-filmmaking. I enjoy a lot of it, but I rarely get too excited by any of it. This film fits into that category like a hand into a glove.

Yes, the Ballad of Jack and Rose is an IFC production, and although I might be reading too much into that, this story definitely works with their “selling counter-culture” business model. Jack (Daniel Day Lewis) is an aging hippie, the last of his kind on a derelict commune on the seashore. His daughter Rose knows little of the world except what she’s learned in her isolation with her father. Sensing that the experimentations in their world may be reaching too far, Jack brings in his girlfriend (of sorts, played by Catherine Keener) and her two sons to live with them. Rose definitely needs another woman around. This is for sure.

In the end, and after some horrible symbolic imagery (an episode where a poisonous snake is let loose in the house for instance), this experiment is also a failure. Through it all Jack is fighting the construction of cheap suburban sprawl against his property. The telling line of the film comes with his final confrontation with the developer. Their differences all came down in the end, he says, to a matter of taste, not truth. Jack had isolated his daughter and raised her in potentially harmful situation because of his own snobbery. That may not be the full story, but it’s close enough to ring a few bells in his head.

As a story it’s nice enough. My faults lay with things like the overdone (and silly) use of imagery, and that there wasn’t a character in this film other than Daniel Day Lewis’ fine creation that felt even slightly real to me. These were parodies of people, or perhaps these were supposed to be characters in a parable. Either way, they didn’t greatly appeal to me. I'l admit that it’s a film that shows potential, although it just ain’t there yet. Wherever “there” may be.

Standouts: Nice enough basis to the story. Daniel Day Lewis is a terrific actor, almost always.
Blowouts: Silly moments in the script, unbelievable characters.

Grade: B-

1/26/2006

BROKEN FLOWERS

Director: Jim Jarmusch (Stranger than Paradise, Mystery Train, Coffee & Cigarettes)
Starring: Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Julie Delpy, Sharon Stone

Jim Jarmusch has a reputation as the lone rebel director, shooting and splicing his art films under the menacing shadow of corporate Hollywood. Note that Jarmusch loves that reputation and does everything he can to promote it. Like any other director, though, I’ll bet he’d rather make a film with more money and the freedom that brings. With that aside however, let’s talk Broken Flowers. I liked this film. I did not love this film. It’s a pleasant, enjoyable little tale about an aging lothario finding old flames in search of the son he never knew he had. He doesn’t find anything, and that’s supposed to be informative. Bill Murray is getting quite a bit of good press for his performance in this film. I’m in the opposition on this one, however. Most of my dislike of his character comes down to the screenplay. I simply didn’t believe that the sad sack shown to me on screen was a ladies man. Nothing rang true to me about his character. He simply seemed false to me. Despite this rather significant flaw (seeing as how Murray is the story), it was still pleasant to watch and entertaining. For positives, I have to note Sharon Stone who gives a fine performance in a small role as an ex-flame, and Jeffrey Wright who provides much of the comedy as Murray’s buddy.

Standouts: Quirky direction, and some of the supporting actors.
Blowouts: Bill Murray and the main character. I did not believe this story, although I still enjoyed it.

Grade: B

8/19/2005

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE

Director: Noah Baumbach (Kicking and Screaming, Mr. Jealousy, The Life Aquatic (Writing credit))
Starring: Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Owen Kline, Jesse Eisenberg

I was a marginal fan of both Kicking and Screaming and Mr. Jealousy, but I tend to think these films suffer from a degree of tunnel vision by the writer. The scripts seemed to be nearly autobiographical works that didn't quite know anything apart from the little worlds they inhabited. It's not that these scripts didn't know their audience, it's that they didn't appear to know there was an audience.

Both stories swirled around groups of smart buffoons. That seems nice enough, but in the end I found little that was appealing to anyone who wasn’t well acquainted with and a proponent of smart buffoonery. What's more, neither story could make up its mind what it really thought of its characters. This film knows better. This film is better.

Once again this story is precisely about a bright idiot, and this time it’s the most idiotic of the bunch. The plot involves two children confronting the dueling personalities of their divorcing parents. The father, played superbly by Jeff Daniels, is a foolish, egocentric, emotionally stunted writer convinced of his own importance. The character is massively incomplete as a functioning adult, and though deep down he may know this, he very well may not. He marks himself as an intellectual, but really his views on life have nothing to do with great thoughts, but rather rise directly from his own childish needs. He is one of the most flawed fools I’ve seen on screen in many years, but he's also entirely believable. The mother is less fleshed out, but she is at the least much preferable to the father.

The story follows the children as they come to realize that their father, who they thought was so bright, may not have been so right in the end. One child reaches this epiphany by dissecting a single memory of his more caring mother at the natural history museum, in an exhibit about a squid and a whale - hence the title.

The film worked on a psychological level, on an emotional level, and surprising to me, on an entertainment level. I found the film very, very funny. I’m reminded of A Confederacy of Dunces in this regard. Both stories had a great deal of fun mocking their pompous main characters.

This was a delightful little film that owes very much to Jeff Daniels. His character creation was very much noteworthy. I hope some award nominations very much come his way.

Standouts: Jeff Daniels performance as the selfish, and foolish father.
Blowouts: Some gruesome psychological problems with the children. I don’t know if they really needed to show the kid masturbating on everything to show he was messed up. Minor complaint, I guess.

Grade: A-

12/12/2005