Funerals & Snakes

Paul Verhoeven is one of those directors that has no hand-brake, regardless of the subject matter. For ice-pick wielding murderers (Basic Instinct) or giant alien bugs (Starship Troopers) this damn-the-torpedos attitude is perfect; when we’re talking about Dutch jews being betrayed by corrupt members of the resistance in WWII - not so much.

Black Book is Verhoeven’s first film in seven years, and his first film back home in Holland since Flesh + Blood back in 1985. Carice van Houten plays Rachel Stein, a nightclub singer before the war, now on the run from the Nazis. When her family is murdered on the brink of escape she dyes her hair blonde and joins the resistance, going undercover and then falling in love with the good German played by Sebastian Koch from The Lives of Others (you know he’s going to be a good German because he collects stamps and doesn’t have a scar on his cheek).

Verhoeven piles it on at every opportunity, making Black Book an old-fashioned entertaining melodrama when a different approach might have given us something really meaningful.

Don’t miss the beginning of The Kingdom as the beautifully graphic-designed opening titles contain as succinct a geo-political history of the Middle East as one could wish for in three minutes. While it lays out the background nicely, it also sets up the key message of the film: American involvement in the region is all about oil and that involvement means some culpability for the insecurity of the region and the rest of the world.

One of the secure western compounds in Riyadh has been targeted by terrorists. Hundreds are dead and the FBI sends in an elite investigative team (a sort of “CSI: Saudi”) led by Jamie Foxx but they have only five days to catch the ratbags and nobody from either government really wants them there. The Kingdom is considerably more culturally and politically sensitive than any $100m action movie has any right to be and I enjoyed it a lot.

The Nanny Diaries follows in the footsteps of last year’s hit The Devil Wears Prada, a not-terribly-subtle satire of the Manhattan upper class as seen by an ordinary girl outsider. This year’s model is Scarlet Johansson as Annie Braddock an anthropology graduate from New Jersey who gets a job as a Nanny to rich and shallow Mrs X (Laura Linney). Love interest is provided by the smarmy Chris Evans from Fantastic Four and the best friend is the singer Alicia Keys who should be grateful she has a day job.

The simple lesson on offer is that lack of love as a child will make you unhappy and lack of love as an adult will turn you in to a cruel, selfish and heartless bitch but both problems are easily turned around by a little honesty from a complete stranger. There, I’ve saved you fifteen bucks.

A very welcome return from the Festival is Half Nelson, a beautifully acted character study about a gifted school teacher (Ryan Gosling) with a drug problem and the unlikely friendship he forms with one of his students, played by newcomer Shareeka Epps. They are both lonely and misunderstood and for a short while they make a connection (even if it is mostly unspoken).

Of all the young leading men around at the moment (many of whom also seem to be named Ryan) Gosling is the real deal. It’s no accident that Peter Jackson has cast him as the father in The Lovely Bones despite being about ten years too young for the role. On this evidence he’ll be fine.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 10 October, 2007.

Full disclosure: Half Nelson is distributed in New Zealand by Palace Films who are mates.

As recounted by celebrated neurologist Oliver Sacks in a recent New Yorker, amnesia is a fascinating condition. In the article he tells the story of classical musician Clive Wearing who, due to enchaphalitis more than 20 years ago, can retain new memories for no longer than a few seconds. The devastation of his case is transcended by two things: the love of his wife (which he is aware of even though he sees her as if for the first time every day) and his musical ability which remains complete.

In Hollywood, amnesia (like other disorders) is rarely portrayed as a tragic condition with serious and fascinating psychological impacts but instead is usually just a plot device. New thriller Unknown, starring Jim Caviezel, Greg Kinnear and Barry Pepper, tries a little bit of both.

In a remote abandoned chemical warehouse five men wake up with no memories of who they are or how they got there. Two of the group have been kidnapped, the others are the gang. But who?

While all the evidence points to Caviezel being one of the kidnappers (he wasn’t tied up at the beginning for a start) he doesn’t feel like one and, despite the shifting allegiances and Lord of the Flies power-plays, he attempts to bind the group together so they can all escape before the ringleader returns with the ransom. It’s an interesting existentialist provocation although, in the end, further psychological insight is sacrificed in favour of yet another plot twist.

Insight is what forensic psychologist Tilda Swinton is after in Stephanie Daley. Heavily pregnant, and still mourning the loss of a previous unborn child, she is asked to interview the eponymous schoolgirl (Amber Tamblyn) who is accused of concealing her own pregnancy and then murdering the new-born baby. Her examination will decide the fate of the timid young Christian girl who may indeed be too innocent to realize what a drunken date-rape can lead to. Stephanie Daley is a well acted drama with a fine sense of place, located in snowy upstate New York, and a lot going on under the surface.

Back at the multiplex, Rush Hour 3 is one of the poorest excuses for entertainment it is been my misfortune to witness. And to think that part-timer Chris Tucker was paid $25m to star in it (a fee which evidently did not require any time at the gym to prepare). Jackie Chan is showing his age too. Abject.

I spent most of the time watching La Vie En Rose thinking that I’d seen the film somewhere before. A beautifully art directed recreation of the life of a troubled artist from the wrong side of the tracks, devastated by drug addiction and guilt, it could have been Ray or Walk The Line except for the fact that little Edith Piaf didn’t have time for the redemption and triumph that the Hollywood biopics demand.

Piaf was an extraordinary character, a huge and vibrant voice in a frail and tiny frame. Writer-director Olivier Dahan makes consistently interesting choices (particularly a death-bed montage at the end which amazingly contains nothing that we have seen before) and Marion Cotillard plays Piaf with all the fierce and demented self-destructive energy she can summon up. She’s a force of nature and it is one of the performances of the year.

Finally, superb documentary Deep Water finally gets the promised commercial release and I urge you not to miss it. And, if you already saw it at the Festival check it out again as it’s quite a different film second time around.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 3 October, 2007.

Full disclosure: Unknown is distributed in New Zealand by Arkles Entertainment who pay me money to do stuff for them from time to time.