The High Cost of Living

This film was absolutely beautiful, both inside and out. I was really moved. It reminds me of the way I felt the first time I watched Laura Linney, in You Can Count on Me, except this was a better film. That feeling of getting to know and care about people so deeply in only 1 1/2 hours -- that feeling of understanding the world of the characters almost as if they were real people; your world and theirs become one; you become enclosed together in sensation -- it was that, plus, it was a REALLY engaging story of an ethical dilemma. So many times the movie critics go on and on about "a real human story," or a character facing "tough choices," but the movie itself won't live up to the description. In The High Cost of Living, Zach Braff is so skilled that his character's ethical dilemma becomes your own. I also think the title of the movie is completely fitting. What does it cost to be a human being? What kind of pain or sacrifice is required to connect (truly) to other human beings around us?

That's what it's about. (Not only death, which the title suggests, although yes, there is a death in the film. But I think the title means more and the film carries more meaning.)

Including this one, I have now seen Zach Braff in two very touching movies. The first one was Garden State, which many of us of a certain generation could relate to. The typical sort of Generation X movie. (I mean my generation, otherwise known as "those who grew up in the 1980s" - a group of us born mostly between the mid 60s and the late 70s - a group of which I was on the tail end - also considered the generation that followed the baby boomers.) It was filmed almost 10 years ago. Zach Braff was a lot younger then, as was I. He did an excellent job portraying a young man in his 20s who is smart, handsome, capable, and yet rather lost. That word, "lost," describes how a lot of us felt in our 20s, and maybe beyond... Walking around, almost silently, the character of Andrew carried an inner burden and an inner universe of feeling, but did not know what to do with it. Where to put it. There seemed to be no place for it in the post-1970s superficiality that denied us the passion of our birthright. "Garden State" was also about human connection, about how to strip life down to its tiniest and most essential details, and how actually to share those with another person (!). It was a love story, despite appearances (there were a few standard tropes in there that made several people shout 'bildungsroman!' like a knee-jerk reaction).

But getting into his late 30s now, Zach Braff is a grown-up man. He's different; he seems to own himself. He's got facial hair and looks mature. And he's gotten even more skilled as an actor. He brings a gentle roughness to the character of Henry ("High Cost of Living"), lets us know that Henry is not a bad guy, not a scary guy, even though he's a drug dealer and clearly walks on the wrong side of the tracks. Braff also lets us know, subtly, that Henry is a lonely person. He's not out there advertising his loneliness; he's not desperate, but he sure could use a friend (someone who's not strung out). He's actually quite...normal...almost, except for the drug-dealing lifestyle. What went wrong with Henry? We won't know exactly, but Braff will let us know that it wasn't irreversible. In Henry's encounter with an upper-class, quite lovely, pregnant housewife named Nathalie (in French-speaking Montreal) we begin to see his real soul emerging. Is it too much? Some of the critics have laid into the sensitivity of this movie.

There are some potentially risky elements that might weaken the impact were they not so beautiful. Montreal as location suggests internationalism and cultures colliding, because Henry is "American" (i.e., from the United States) and these people speak French. There is also the class conflict between the couple, (Nathalie and her husband), who are enchantingly well-off and reside in a very good neighborhood, and Henry, dweller of the urban jungle, selling drugs on the street and in ratty back bathrooms and in basements. You get the idea. So when Henry collides literally with Nathalie, and it changes his life, the movie says "now his real soul begins to emerge..." Is it too much?

For me, it struck just the right note, not only because I feel a generational kinship with the actor, but because of people we've lost, like David Foster Wallace, who believed that it was not possible to write real emotions simply and straightforwardly anymore, in this age of commercials. Or like Heath Ledger, whose blunt-edged emotions in "Brokeback Mountain" were a stunning sight to behold, like watching someone fall from a cliff. We need more of this. We need beauty and humanity, and beauty in humanity. Quite frankly. We just do.

And Zach Braff - who would seem from the outside to be not the right person for the job (he's so little-known as a serious independent film actor, and for years worked an awkward part in a lame television slapstick serial) - does it perfectly. This movie is beautiful, and he carries the meaning of it just beautifully.

Tell No One - Best Movie I've Seen In A While - an Escape/Adventure/Surprise, and a Love Story!

"Tell No One" is one of the best movies I've seen in a while. It's pretty rare that you get to watch a murder mystery story that is not predictable, for one thing. The feeling of really wanting to know What happened? Who did it? reminds me of when I was a kid and enjoyed Agatha Christie books. I don't know the last time I got that feeling from a movie! Plus, this was an adventure story, where you're following the hero as he gets himself into one suspenseful situation after another. What will happen with the secret meeting in the park? Can he escape capture? Yet, it's not cliche-driven like so many typical suspense films. There are characters you just have to love and you don't see it coming. For example, the hero, Alex, is a pediatrician. And when he gets in trouble he has to recruit some muscle to come save him. The muscle he recruits is a guy who looks like a tough guy and who has connections to the street, but who is really a sensitive father who once took his son to the pediatrician's office. Yup! That conversation about "I owe this guy a favor"? -- So not typical for it to be followed by "He helped me out when I took my kid to the doctor."

And, of course, what else would I want but a good love story? Also included, free of charge. Just a bonus.

Brideshead Revisited

"Brideshead Revisited." I can only imagine how good the book must be. For a story so filled with longing, the movie could only hint at much of the complexity behind it. The cruelty inflicted on its two main characters -- a brother and a sister -- was mostly felt, and not seen. Their fear, the vulnerability in their eyes, might have been inspired by a man with a dagger hiding behind the curtain, and not a rigidly Catholic, tyrannical mother. Emma Thompson did have her moments.

She blew up the screen when she had the opportunity. Still, some will say it was not enough, that it was difficult to believe the Flyte siblings' upbringing was enough to bring them to such a state of misery. But the movie didn't have time to show everything. It had to give more time to the boy, Sebastian. We had to be interested in him especially, primarily to capture our attention and to begin the narrative - to bring the narrator into his world. We along with the narrator had to be entranced. Ben Whishaw, who is he? I've never seen him before. But he definitely got my attention! He made Sebastian so funny, and pathetic, so lovely, and fragile, so frightened and courageous -- What a performance.

I was told this was a snoozefest. It wasn't. The narrator, much like Nick Carraway in Gatsby, might be called boring I suppose. But he is irrelevant. He's an entry point. The story has something in common with Gatsby, actually. We want like the narrator to have an entry into the magical lives of the more "fortunate." Of course, the price of admission in this case is exposure to their suffering and self-loathing. We have to watch the beautiful princes and princesses fall down, one by one.

But on the way we can dance at dawn in their sculptured gardens, splash around in their sparkling fountains, sample their thousands of enchanted wines, and fall in love.

The story was rich, with characters you wanted to spend more time with, and whose history you would have liked to know more intimately. A perfect movie? No. But it makes you feel things. Desire, shame, and a creeping fear. You know something's horribly wrong, although you can't always say exactly what it is. So, not a perfect movie... A perfect story? Perhaps. It was alluded to. Now I can't wait to read the book.

Twelve Angry Men

"Twelve Angry Men" does exactly what it's supposed to do. An amazing feat for a movie, I say. So often we start out with high expectations and we're disappointed. We balk at a movie that claims it will provide us with a profound experience.

Here, You start out with one juror who believes the boy is innocent and you know he's supposed to convince all the other jurors. They are ready to send the boy to the electric chair. It's the proverbial lone juror. Ay ay ay.

So you know the situation immediately. You know what is supposed to happen. You know that, by the end, all the jurors will be persuaded to change their minds. You know too that, this will have implications beyond the personal, beyond the political. It will teach us something about the quality of humanity.

However, it seems impossible! Both for Henry Fonda and for the movie. How can one man persuade all these other men (who are not just angry, but sweaty, impatient, bullying, rude, and exhausted, who have people to see and places to go) to change their position on something so serious as a murder? This is an old-fashioned, deeply serious, moral movie. Yet how can one little movie teach us something truly profound about the humanity in all of us? Wow. Even as I write the words, it sounds like too much to take. "Give me a break!" I might say. Or "Don't give me that!" Sounds overbearing, over-profound, too much for this movie to shoulder.

Yet, it succeeds 100% and there isn't an overblown moment in the whole darn thing. It is one of those extremely rare things - the perfect movie.

Takes you for a ride, entertains you, lets you coast while it does all the work (another rare feat for a movie, at least these days), keeps you guessing, you're in suspense - you think you can predict it but you can't, keeps you emotionally involved - you actually care about each and every character! - and keeps you at the center of the issue, never leaves you bored or yawning, it makes you laugh, makes you think, makes you re-evaluate your own certainty about whether certainty is possible. Makes you re-evaluate what it means to be a human being, what is at the heart of all of us. And lets you do all this without getting irritated with yourself. What a treat.

Things We Lost in the Fire

I expected to be depressed by this movie. I heard it was about a heroin addict, so naturally, I assumed it would be a downer. Imagine my surprise to discover what an uplifting movie it actually is! And it gets better: This film celebrated my favorite quality (if one can be said to have such a thing as a 'favorite quality' without being accused of vagueness). That is, subtlety. It's my favorite quality in people and in acting and in filmmaking. It's my favorite quality in flavor and in flirtation and in intelligent conversation. It's my favorite quality.

Anyway, subtlety. Let me give you some examples.

Subtlety in camerawork: A lingering closeup on one - just one - of Halle Berry's eyes. The mark of tears, but no tears, on the side of her face. When she goes to the sink then, to wash her face, we see the water softly splashing as she washes her hands. (Subtle substitute for image of crying, you see.)

Subtlety in character development: Benicio del Toro plays the part of Jerry, the long-time friend of a man who's just died. Jerry shows up at the funeral and it's clear that no one knows who he is. (Well, even before the wife - Halle Berry - called him, people were asking "who's Jerry.") Jerry is alone at the funeral, wandering, sort of lost, smoking one cigarette with another behind his ear. We, the viewers, already know that he's an addict, and that the friendship was kept hidden for a reason. Thing is we don't know how Jerry feels about it. He seems sad, but how close were they, really? We're wondering. We're watching Jerry for a few good minutes and we want to like him, but we're not sure if we can. Then, he approaches the two kids on the swing. And slowly, he begins revealing himself to them. He lets them know that he knows stories about them. Something about a burn or a birthmark or a fear one of them has.

We, the viewers, can see then that he was a good friend of the dead man, a confidant. We realize that Jerry can be taken seriously. This is the superficial work of the scene. What's the subtlety, you're wondering? Consider: Jerry reveals himself only to the kids.

There isn't much in the way of "plot," and I understand why critics panned the film.

You may be curious about thematic subtlety (as I often am); i.e. "What's the point of this movie?" It's often hard to figure out when you've got mostly mood to go on, and some subtle writing.

I'll tell you. There is only one major plot point in the film - several small ones, of course, and plenty of beautiful camerawork and character development to keep you going, but only one major plot point. The key to theme is in that plot point. If you can figure out why it happens - What do Audrey and Jerry have in common? - then you've got it and everything that was subtle becomes obvious, all of a sudden. All of a beautiful sudden.

The question is, Can mood, subtle camerawork, and subtle character development keep you going until you get to this point? For me, they can.