Watch This: Children of Men

A bi-weekly series featuring a recommendation of a movie available in the Reeves Memorial Library DVD collection

Children of Men (2006)
Co-written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón

The past decade has seen an increasing number of dystopian visions of mankind's future make their way to the silver screen.  Some of these have arrived in the form of film adaptations of young adult science fiction novels like the Hunger Games series, the Divergent series, and the Maze Runner series, while others have been directly targeted at an adult audience.  Despite this sub-genre's potential for trenchant social commentary, imaginative plots, and remarkable visuals, only a handful of these films have really stood out (recent entries such as Snowpiercer (2013) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) come to mind).  However, no recent dystopian film has been as powerful and affecting as Alfonso Cuarón's 2006 masterpiece Children of Men, a gritty, visually-stunning portrait of humanity in decline.

Adapted from a novel by the acclaimed English mystery novelist P. D. James, Children of Men is set in Britain in the year 2027, at a time when nearly two decades of total worldwide infertility have resulted in global chaos and widespread despair.  Great Britain has avoided many of the atrocities that have plagued the rest of the world, but a strict, military-enforced ban on all immigrants has led to violence in the streets and a precarious social and political situation.  As the film opens, the world's youngest person, an 18 year-old South American youth still known as "Baby Diego," has just been murdered by one of his fans after refusing to give an autograph.  We learn of this from a news broadcast in a London coffee shop where the film's protagonist, government bureaucrat Theo Faron (Clive Owen), stops for his morning coffee on his way to work.  Just after Theo leaves, the shop is demolished by a bomb explosion, and a shaken Theo decides to take the day off and visit his old friend Jasper (Michael Caine), a former political cartoonist and activist who now spends his days growing marijuana in his small, well-hidden country house, where he lives with his catatonic wife, Janice.  Theo, it turns out, was an activist in his younger days, but became disillusioned after the death of his son during a flu pandemic and the subsequent break-up of his marriage to fellow activist Julian (Julianne Moore), whom he has not seen in nearly twenty years.  Theo makes his pessimism clear in his conversation with Jasper, stating that even if a cure for infertility is discovered, it's too late to save humanity, which was already a mess even before the infertility.

The following morning, Theo is kidnapped by an underground insurgent group called the Fishes, who are dedicated to fighting for the rights of immigrants.  Theo's ex-wife, Julian, is revealed to be the group's leader, and she asks him to use his government contacts to obtain transit papers for a young immigrant woman named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), who must reach the coast.  Theo succeeds in acquiring the papers, but they state that Theo must accompany her, so he sets off in a car with Julian, her Fishes comrade Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Kee, and Kee's caretaker, Miriam (Pam Ferris).  On a remote stretch of forest road, the car is suddenly attacked by a large gang, and Julian is killed.  It is only after they have narrowly escaped and made their way to a safe house that Theo discovers Kee's secret: she is eight months pregnant.  As the selfish and lethal motives of the new Fishes leadership become clear to Theo, he decides to escape with Kee and Miriam and find a way to get them to the seaside refugee camp of Bexhill, where they can meet a ship belonging to the Human Project, a group of scientists working to cure infertility.

Children of Men offers a frightening depiction of a society on the brink of collapse, as the aging population faces its impending final years.  Immigrants are rounded up and kept in cages along the streets, awaiting their transfer to a refugee camp and their return to the atrocities in their homelands.  A product called Quietus, which promises a painless death by suicide, is made available to the populace with government approval.  The streets are strewn with trash and rubble from numerous past bombings.  There seems to be a gray pallor over everything, as though the gradual disappearance of children from the world was accompanied by the leeching of bright colors and sunshine from the landscape.

In such a setting, Theo's early pessimism is understandable, especially after we learn about the death of his son.  In a scene midway through the film, we hear Jasper talking to Kee and Miriam about the relationship between faith and chance, and how Theo lost his faith in the world and his own future after his son died of the flu (a chance event).  However, Theo's outlook begins to change after Julian's death and the revelation of Kee's pregnancy, and Kee's trust in him galvanizes him into action and restores his sense of purpose and hope.  It is this story arc, Theo's gradual progression from dispassionate pessimism to renewed faith and resolve, that underlies all of the film's harrowing drama and high-stakes action, creating a far more moving hero's journey than one usually finds in cinema.

Everyone involved with the film, both in front of the camera and behind, is working at the top of their game.  The script is brisk and intelligent, allowing the circumstances of the film's setting to be revealed organically rather than via heavy-handed exposition from title screens, narration, or superfluous dialogue.  The cast is uniformly superb.  Clive Owen suppresses some of his natural charisma to make Theo a more relatable everyman hero, and Michael Caine shines as Jasper, whose pull-my-finger gags and stork jokes grant the film a welcome dose of levity.  Alfonso Cuarón's assured direction keeps all the filmmaking elements, from the technically dazzling visuals to the top-notch acting, in perfect balance, and it feels impossible to find fault with any of his choices as director, co-writer, and co-editor.

But what really elevates the film, more than any other element, is the outstanding work of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki.  The film's washed-out color scheme contributes immeasurably to the film's bleak tone, and the frequent use of a handheld camera from a slightly low angle places the viewer right in the middle of the action.  Many of the film's key scenes (the coffee shop bombing in the opening scene, Julian's shocking death during the forest ambush, the birth scene, and the extended gunfights between insurgents and military forces in the Bexhill refugee camp) are shot using single takes, and this decision pays off not only in added intensity for these scenes, but also in feelings of awe on the part of viewers, who might wonder how these shots were achieved.  The forest ambush scene, which consists of a single shot taken from inside the car, forcing the viewer to share the passengers' panic, stands out in particular as a remarkable example of Lubezki's immersive visual style.  Throughout his career, Lubezki has proven himself adept at working in just about any visual aesthetic, from the sumptuously-photographed period look of A Little Princess (1995) and A Walk in the Clouds (1995), to the edgier handheld style of Y Tu Mamá También (2001) and Children of Men, to the dreamy visual poetry of director Terrence Malick's The New World (2005) and The Tree of Life (2011).  His work has become even more recognizable over the past two years, after back-to-back Oscars for his virtuosic work on Gravity (2013) and Birdman (2014), and if the immersive visual aesthetic on display in the trailer for his soon-to-be-released film The Revenant (2015) is any indication, he may well be on his way to a third consecutive Academy Award.  Lubezki is quite simply the best cinematographer working today, and Children of Men may be his finest hour.

End of an Era

Watch This: Good Morning

A bi-weekly series featuring a recommendation of a movie available in the Reeves Memorial Library DVD collection

Good Morning (1959)
Co-written and directed by Yasujiro Ozu

With the probable exception of the great Akira Kurosawa, no other filmmaker looms larger over the world of Japanese cinema than Yasujiro Ozu.  He is justly considered one of the greatest film directors of all time, and his stylistic influence can still be felt today, more than five decades after his death.  Ozu's poetic depictions of generational relations and familial life in masterpieces such as The Only Son (1936), Late Spring (1949), Early Summer (1951), Tokyo Story (1953), and Floating Weeds (1959), reveal a keen eye for the nuances of human interaction and an astonishing depth of sentiment.  The later years of his career were devoted to making sober, often heartbreaking portrayals of parent-child relationships, in particular a series of films about aging parents sacrificing their own needs in order to marry off their dutiful daughters.  However, in the midst of all these somber domestic dramas came Good Morning (1959), a light-hearted depiction of suburban Japanese life and postwar modernization that stands not only as an oddity in Ozu's filmography, but also as a welcome reminder of his deep-rooted sense of humor.  Good Morning is that rarity among the works of the great cinematic masters, a film that reveals the director's predominant narrative themes and common stylistic motifs, but also contains a running fart gag.

Good Morning portrays the day-to-day lives of the residents in a small, suburban, middle-class Japanese neighborhood.  The film offers a delightful portrait of the interactions between neighbors, in a setting where one can slide open one's door and seem almost face-to-face with those living next-door.  At the center of the story is the Hayashi family, made up of the father Keitaro (Chishu Ryu), the mother Tamiko (Kuniko Miyake), and the two sons, Minoru and Isamu (Koji Shitara and Masahiko Shimazu, respectively).  The boys have been spending more and more time at the home of their pajama-clad, Bohemian neighbors, watching sumo wrestling on TV with their friends.  They beg their father to get a set for the Hayashi home, but he refuses, proclaiming that television will create a society of idiots.  In protest, the brothers begin a silence strike, refusing to speak at home or at school until their parents buy a set.

Meanwhile, Tamiko is dealing with the problem of missing club dues for their local women's association.  There are suspicions that the money was taken by the local group head, Mrs. Haraguchi (Haruko Sugimura), who has just purchased a new washing machine.  The money is later found, and it is revealed that the washer was purchased on an installment plan, but the suspicions linger.  The theft rumors can be traced to Mrs. Okubo (Toyo Takahashi) and Mrs. Tomizawa (Teruko Nagaoka), both of whom seem to relish every chance to spread a new piece of gossip.  There is also an amusing, subtly developed romantic plot line involving the Hayashi boys' aunt Setsuko (Yoshiko Kuga) and their English tutor Mr. Fukui (Keiji Sada), whose obvious mutual attraction cannot seem to move beyond basic pleasantries and chit-chat about the weather.  One of the film's well-observed preoccupations is the way in which we pass so much of our lives in idle conversation.

Good Morning provides a fascinating glimpse of society in postwar Japan, in particular the effects of westernization and modernization that became apparent as the country began to rebuild.  The influence of western culture and innovation can be seen throughout the film.  Modern apartment buildings border the characters' small neighborhood, where the homes are surrounded by white picket fences.  French and American movie posters can be seen in the home of the young Bohemian couple.  The purchase of a new appliance such as a television or washing machine symbolizes not just a family's economic stability, but also their embrace of modernity.

More than almost any other Ozu film, Good Morning focuses on the perspectives of its child characters.  In most of his work, the protagonists are aging parents struggling with generational tensions as their grown children begin lives of their own, but in Good Morning, there is a sympathy with the neighborhood boys.  Their daily rituals and preoccupations, and even their growing obsession with television at the expense of their schoolwork, are presented with great affection.  The boys have a recurring joke, a sort of variation on the classic "pull my finger" gag, where one boy presses on a second boy's forehead, and the second boy passes gas.  However, the unfortunate Haraguchi boy cannot seem to master the skill, and always pushes too hard, soiling himself on an almost daily basis.  Ozu seems to share the boys' amusement with these activities.

Yasujiro Ozu has been called the "most Japanese" of Japan's great film directors, and it's undeniable that his films are very specific to their Japanese setting.  Indeed, due to the perceived difficulty of marketing his films overseas, Ozu remained relatively unknown outside of his native country during his career.  This was true even after the growth in popularity of foreign films among English-speaking audiences in the 1950s, when Ozu's fellow Japanese director Akira Kurosawa gained widespread international fame with films like Rashomon (1950) and Seven Samurai (1954).  And yet, one reason that Ozu's films have stood the test of time, and have remained so beloved by cinephiles around the globe, is that they are so immensely relatable.  Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Ozu's body of work is that his films are so intrinsically Japanese, and yet simultaneously so universal.

October DVD Spotlight: Horror Films

October is upon us, and that means Halloween is just around the corner.  Reeves Memorial Library will be celebrating all month long by featuring scary movies from our DVD collection.  We've got something to make everyone's skin crawl, whether it's vampires, demons, zombies, or giant mutant animals.  Featured titles include:

Audition (1999)
The Brood (1979)
The Crawling Eye (1958)
The Exorcist (1973)
Hostel (2005)
Nosferatu (1922)
Psycho (1960)
Saw (2004)
The Shining (1980)

Check one out today ... if you dare.

Watch This: Bull Durham

A bi-weekly series featuring a recommendation of a movie available in the Reeves Memorial Library DVD collection

Bull Durham (1988)
Written and directed by Ron Shelton

It's mid-September, which for many Americans means the waning days of the baseball season have given way to the rush of excitement that marks the beginning of football season.  It's a fine time to be a sports fan, and it's a fine time to look back at one of the most beloved sports films ever made, the 1988 baseball comedy Bull Durham.

The film follows three central characters over the course of a single baseball season, and their relationships with one another form the basis of the film's narrative.  There is Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon), a devoted fan of the local Durham Bulls minor league baseball team, who chooses a single Bulls player each year with whom she will "hook up" for the length of the season.  More than just a physical relationship, this liaison also allows her to impart "life wisdom" and help the player improve his skills on the field.  This season, her two leading candidates are rookie pitcher Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), whose sheer natural talent is offset by his stupidity and lack of control ("He's got a million-dollar arm, but a five-cent head," says the Bulls pitching coach), and veteran catcher Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), who has been sent down by the organization to help Nuke mature in preparation for a big-league career.  Crash is unhappy with the assignment, and takes every opportunity to disparage Nuke (who he refers to derogatorily as "Meat") because of his lack of respect for the game and for his incredible physical gifts.  Crash is also put off by the idea of having to "try out" for Annie, and so she is forced to choose Nuke, although it is clear from the beginning that she and Crash are attracted to one another.  As the season progresses, Crash's advice and Annie's unorthodox methods (a strange amalgam of sex, poetry, and Aztec folklore) begin to show results, and the combination of Nuke's dominant pitching and Crash's skill at the plate lead the team to a rare winning streak.  The team's success means that Nuke is eventually called up to the majors, and the remainder of the film is devoted to revealing the effects this sudden development has on both Crash's career and the relationship between Crash and Annie.

Much of the film's success can be attributed to Shelton's terrific, Oscar-nominated screenplay, which perfectly balances the love triangle storyline, Crash and Nuke's evolving mentor/mentee relationship, and the story of the Bulls team and their 142-game season.  Shelton's endlessly quotable script is both literate and vulgar, with strings of profanity fitting comfortably alongside Walt Whitman quotations and musings on metaphysics.  Many of the best lines belong to Crash, including his hilarious pitching advice to Nuke:

"Don't try to strike everybody out.  Strikeouts are boring.  Besides that, they're fascist.  Throw some ground balls, it's more democratic."

There is also a wonderful scene where Crash reminisces to his awestruck teammates about the three weeks he spent in the big leagues, where "other people carry your luggage," "the ballparks are like cathedrals," and "the women all have long legs and brains."

Credit should also be given to the three lead cast members for their pitch-perfect performances.  Robbins plays Nuke as a cocky doofus without ever veering into caricature, and Costner's easy charm and innate athletic ability make him ideal for the role of Crash.  It is Susan Sarandon, however, who is the real standout, bringing a natural vivacity and intelligence to Annie that makes you wonder how anyone else could ever have played the role.

One factor that makes Bull Durham such a revered sports film is its authenticity.  Ron Shelton spent several years in the Baltimore Orioles minor league organization in the late 60s and early 70s, so he knows the subject matter intimately.  His firsthand knowledge manifests itself onscreen in the sights and sounds of the local ballpark crowds, the cadence and profanity of the dugout chatter, the players' superstitious behaviors during the Bulls' winning streak, and the Costner voiceover that reveals Crash's thought process during each pitch of an early at-bat.  Shelton's focus on the relationships between the players and their everyday milieu, rather than a build-up toward a championship or game-winning play, sets the film apart from most other sports films, and lends the story greater credibility.  This authenticity is a likely reason for Bull Durham's placement at the very top of the 2003 Sports Illustrated list of the best sports movies of all time.  The list was compiled by the magazine's editors, a group that would be likely to recognize the accuracy of the film's depiction.

Shelton has always excelled in writing films about the relationships between men.  Nearly all of his films, including the criminally underrated White Men Can't Jump (1992), focus on a competitive relationship, friendship, or partnership between two men, and most of these characters are athletes or cops.  In Bull Durham, Crash and Nuke's antagonistic relationship is portrayed without triteness or cliché, and as they move gradually toward a mutual respect, that respect feels earned and sincere.

Given Shelton's career-long preoccupation with male characters and male-dominated settings, the character of Annie Savoy stands out even more clearly as the film's highlight.  Annie, especially as portrayed by Sarandon, is a fully fleshed-out character who exists on an equal footing with the two male protagonists, which is almost unheard of among films set in the world of professional sports.  She is smart, funny, sexy, and cultured, and she maintains the power in her relationships with men by choosing for herself which player she wants to be with, yet she also reveals a vulnerability in her need to be seen as "exotic" and "mysterious."  Although Bull Durham is about baseball, and the relationship between Crash and Nuke is central to the narrative, the film is really told from Annie's point of view, and it is Annie's relationships with Nuke and Crash that provide the film's overarching story.  It would be easy to credit Bull Durham's general popularity, especially among female viewers, to the film's romantic plot elements.  Certainly, the film works well as a romantic comedy, and there is chemistry to spare between both Sarandon and Costner and Sarandon and Robbins.  However, it is the subtly progressive character of Annie that really lends the film its enduring appeal.

Watch This: Once Upon a Time in the West

A bi-weekly series featuring a recommendation of a movie available in the Reeves Memorial Library DVD collection

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Directed by Sergio Leone

Three gunmen in brown duster overcoats await the arrival of a train at an isolated station in the middle of the desert.  They are nasty-looking customers, grizzled, cold-eyed, and full of malice.  After locking up the stationmaster, they have spread themselves out around the station, holding themselves in cool readiness for the train's arrival.  Each passes the time in his own way.  The trio's leader (Jack Elam) sits in a shaded rocking chair outside the station house, where he proceeds to try, with as little effort as possible, to shoo away a bothersome fly that has landed on his face.  Another of the gunmen, played by Woody Strode, takes his place beneath the water tank at one end of the platform, where he remains steady and unflinching as the leaking tank drips water first on his bare head, and then on the brim of his cowboy hat.  Finally, the whistle of the approaching train sounds, and the three men converge on the platform, weapons ready.  The train stops, but no one gets off, and just as the three gunmen turn to leave, there comes the sound of a harmonica playing.  The train pulls away to reveal the source of the music, the expected passenger (Charles Bronson) standing on the smaller platform across the tracks.

"Did you bring a horse for me?" asks Harmonica, noting that there only three horses tied up behind the platform. His question is met by smiles and laughter from the three gunmen.

"Looks like we're shy one horse," replies the leader, still amused.

Harmonica shakes his head.  "You brought two too many," he says.  The three gunmen are no longer amused, their smiles fading quickly at the implication of this remark.  Not surprisingly, a shootout soon follows.

This opening scene, inarguably one of the very best in all of cinema, is pretty much perfect, and sets the tone for one of the greatest western films ever made.  It is the first of many long set pieces in the film, and the deliberate pacing, the superb framing of the shots, the subtle humor, and the expertly-staged action of this first scene are all present throughout the remainder of the film.  The opening scene lasts about fourteen minutes, and although the film features a superlative musical score by the incomparable Ennio Morricone, there is no music and almost no dialogue as the opening scene unfolds.  There are only the sounds naturally heard at the railroad station: the incessant squeaking of the windmill, the sound of footsteps on the wooden platform, the ticking of a telegraph machine in the station house, the creaking of the rocking chair, the fly's buzzing, etc.

As the story continues, we see a man named McBain and his children brutally gunned down as they prepare for a celebration at their remote desert home.  The killers are led by the steely-eyed Frank (Henry Fonda, whose casting was intended to shock audiences unaccustomed to seeing him play villains).  The celebration, as it turns out, was meant to welcome McBain's new wife, Jill (Claudia Cardinale), who has just arrived on the train from New Orleans.  Jill crosses paths with Harmonica (we never learn his real name), who has come looking for Frank in order to avenge a past misdeed, and the outlaw Cheyenne (Jason Robards), whose duster-clad gang has been framed for the recent killings.   Both men agree to help her discover a motive for the family's murder and to defend her against further attacks by Frank and his men, who we learn are working for the railroad magnate Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti).  McBain, it turns out, was smarter than anyone thought, anticipating the path of the coming railroad through his property, a development that makes his land invaluable, and thus the target of Morton's greed.  As allegiances shift and Cheyenne's men work to build a station ahead of the approaching railroad workers, the events of the narrative lead to a final showdown and the revelation of Harmonica's revenge motive.

Once Upon a Time in the West was co-written and directed by the great Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone, whose famous "Man with No Name" trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)) launched the wave of Italian-made genre entries known as "spaghetti westerns," not to mention the career of the trilogy's leading man, Clint Eastwood.  Aside from being the spaghetti western sub-genre's progenitor, Leone was also its indisputable master (although some might argue that the title belongs to Sergio Corbucci, whose influential Django (1966) and The Great Silence (1968) are also genre masterpieces).  Leone's films have often been compared to operas, and Once Upon a Time in the West is without a doubt his most operatic.  The film exhibits the narrative tendencies of Italian opera, with its unhurried pacing and emphasis on themes of revenge and betrayal, and score composer Ennio Morricone's use of a recurring musical theme for each of the four main characters (the soaring, wordless female vocals that accompany Jill's scenes are particularly memorable) recalls the use of operatic leitmotifs.

The "Once Upon a Time ..." that begins the film's title suggests a legend or fairy tale, and the film's sweeping grandeur and scope do indeed grant the story an almost mythic quality.  Like another great western masterpiece of the late 1960s, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), Once Upon a Time in the West depicts the social change that took place in the western United States in the late nineteenth century.  The coming of the railroad and "civilized" society created an environment in which men like Harmonica, Cheyenne, and Frank, men whose lives are defined by violence and lawlessness, would be out of place.  Leone's film is an elegy to that bygone era, and it recognizes the inevitability of society's civilizing influence, even though it may bring the corruption that is characteristic of men like Morton.

Many consider Once Upon a Time in the West to be the first entry in an informal "Once Upon a Time" trilogy directed by Leone, along with the western Duck, You Sucker (1971), which was alternately titled Once Upon a Time ... the Revolution, and the Jewish gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America (1984).  Both Duck, You Sucker and Once Upon a Time in America are also available in the Reeves Memorial Library collection.

September DVD Spotlight: Sports Films

From popular crowd-pleasers like Rocky (1976) and Rudy (1993), to artistic masterworks like Raging Bull (1980), it's undeniable that the sports film genre has given us countless cinematic classics.  All through the month of September, Reeves Library is featuring sports titles from our DVD collection.

Looking for a laugh?  Check out the baseball comedy A League of Their Own (1992), or the silent film classic The Freshman (1925), starring the great Harold Lloyd as an aspiring football player.  Or, if you're looking to be inspired, try true stories like Glory Road (2006) and The Express (2008), both of which tell the stories of athletes who broke racial barriers in college sports.  If documentary's your thing, we've got Hoop Dreams (1994), along with an extensive collection of ESPN's "30 for 30" films.

Other featured titles include:

Ali (2001)
Battling Butler (1926)
Bull Durham (1988)
Coach Carter (2005)
Jerry Maguire (1996)
The Set-Up (1949)
The Wrestler (2008)

With such a wide variety of choices, everyone's a winner!