The King (2019)

The King is directed terribly. David Michôd, as ever, seems to have no sense of urgency or stakes. The whole movie is ponderous, as if everything is very, very important, but the direction never seems to communicate that importance, only assume it. There is, accordingly, a great deal of slow-motion photography and an overburdened but beautiful score by Nicholas Britell.

This is a shame because everyone is doing very good work here, especially the armorer, the costumer, Joel Edgerton, the production designer, and every other actor. I think Timothée Chalamet is miscast slightly, but he is still doing good work. Edgerton, who co-wrote the screenplay by telescoping Shakespeare's 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV and focusing on a much adjusted version of Henry V, has given himself all the best lines and has turned Sir John Falstaff into a wise old sage. That is sort of delightful. There's even a gorgeous reference to a speech in Hamlet in The King's version of the St. Crispin's day speech from Henry V. But none of this can save this movie from what Michôd does to it.

Oh and the fights! I should say something about the fights. My housemate, who is a director and fight choreographer, watched the movie with me, and while we were watching I offhandedly said This looks like a fight from a Marvel movie. It makes no sense in the context of the medieval period we are watching. Turns out, the fights were choreographed by a guy who works on the Marvel stuff. Zzzzzz. Stop with all the punching! It's so boring. They're wearing armor, for fuck's sake!

If I Had a Hammer...

Everyone, it seems, is talking about Drive, the film that was released this week from director Nicolas Winding Refn. People are loving it and hating it. I meant to see this movie on Friday, but then I went to a release party for a collection of poetry written by my friend Greg. This book, in fact. So I didn't get to the movie in time, but my roommate and our friend George both went to see Drive knowing nothing about it. They both loved it.

When I saw it on Sunday I was less enthusiastic, but I have been rather inarticulate about it so far. Anyway, I figured that I would post a conversation Greg and I had about Drive since it was his fault I missed the movie on Friday in the first place.

Me: Drive.
Greg: Did you love it?
Me: No. I liked it though.
Greg: Sad face.
Me: Hahaha. Oh. I didn't know I was supposed to love it. I loved all the violence, of course. And the scene with the hammer is amazing.
Greg: YES. I thought the elevator scene was the most beautiful moment I've seen in a theater in a while.
Me: Oh yeah. That was a great scene too. I am frustrated with slow-motion shots, though. They create a real pacing problem, I think.
Greg: Normally I would agree.
Me: I don't have a problem with the director showing his hand (slomo shots do that, I think), but I get frustrated with the importance slomo places on certain things. The kiss worked. But there is a lot of slomo in this movie.
Greg: I am in love with Ryan Gosling.
Me: Oh I am too. Why else did you like it?
Greg: The soundtrack, the slow pace, the opening sequence; it didn't give in. Albert Brooks. I believed that all of it happened. I wanna make someone swallow a bullet. Everyone was emotionally vulnerable.
Me: I liked all of these things as well. And I loved Bryan Cranston. And Oscar Isaac.
Greg: Yes.

Me: My objection is that the film wants two things at once. I think. It wants us to love Ryan Gosling. For us to think he's a hero. (The soundtrack spells it out: "...and a real hero...")
Greg: He is a hero. Every hero is flawed.
Me: Well, no, Greg. He's also deeply troubled. And frankly, a bit scary.
Greg: The world forces him to be scary.
Me: Does it really?
Greg: I think so.
Me: The shot in the elevator after the kiss is, I think, intended to make us think differently. He doesn't need to smash that guy's head in.
Greg: He would've killed both of them.
Me: Yes. I understand that. It is the excess of the violence that I think we are meant to read as troubling. I read it as troubling, at any rate.
Greg: Well yeah, but that wasn't long after he gets fucked over & those guys with the shotguns. Who wouldn't snap?
Me: I hear you. I do. But he does snap.

Greg: We create these action heroes who don't use guns because we don't want to see them kill anyone, so they have whips or tie people up or kung fu them, but the reality is they are hunting him down to kill him & the people he cares about. Part of me thinks it'd be less scary if he didn't snap & kick the guy's head in.
Me: I think you are completely correct. But I want to remain ambivalent about him.
Greg: Haha. That's fair.
Me: And the film wants me to think he is heroic. I think he does what is right. Definitely. But I don't think he is a hero per se.
Greg: By making him overly violent it's easier to dismiss his death at the end.
Me: I do not dismiss his death.
Greg: It's a way for the audience to get a pass out. You know what I mean.
Me: Yeah. Drive reminded me more than anything of Animal Kingdom from last year. The David Michôd movie. Did you see it?
Greg: I didn't catch it.
Me: Drive is slicker. And I liked Drive better. But it has this same obsession with slow-motion. And empty (if you ask me) silences.
Greg: I would've liked a little more dialogue. It seemed like a cheap screenplay, if that makes sense.
Me: It does.

Greg: I am bummed. it got great reviews but audience reviews have been bad. I don't think it'll have legs.
Me: Really?
Greg: Yeah. Cinemascore was like a C-. The trailers were very misleading.
Me: Oh! Wow! Everyone I've talked to has loved it.
Greg: Because you know educated people.
Me: I don't know any educated people.

You can read more from Gregory Sherl (about Drive and John Cusack and poetry and fucking) in a delightful interview with Roxane Gay over at HTMLgiant.

2011's Nominees: Part 7 of 12

ANIMAL KINGDOM

1 Nomination:

  · Best Supporting Actress: Jacki Weaver

Director: David Michôd
Cast: James Frecheville, Jacki Weaver, Ben Mendelsohn, Guy Pearce, Joel Edgerton, Luke Ford, Sullivan Stapleton

 
I have written about this film here. I have felt compelled to write about it mostly because I didn't particularly care for it, though it was reviewed very well by critics here and in Australia. As for Weaver's nomination, I am delighted for her. This is her big break in the States, and it is nice to see a working actress – someone who has made a career playing character parts – get bigtime recognition like this. I hope she is having a great time.


Will Win: N/A
Might Win: N/A
My Rating: #40 out of 45

INCENDIES

1 Nomination:

  · Best Foreign Language Film: Canada (The Barbarian Invasions, Water)

Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Rémy Girard, Maxim Gaudette

 
I haven't seen this picture and it won't be released until April, but you can watch the trailer here. I don't expect this to win the Oscar, either.


Will Win: N/A
Might Win: N/A
My Rating: Released in 2011

IN A BETTER WORLD

1 Nomination:

  · Best Foreign Language Film: Denmark (After the Wedding)

Director: Susanne Bier
Cast: Ulrich Thomsen, Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, William Jøhnk Juels Nielsen, Wil Johnson

 
I love Susanne Bier's movies, and I was surprised to see this here because I thought she was exclusively making movies in the U.S. these days (Things We Lost in the Fire was her debut here, and it is excellent.) Her After the Wedding was nominated in this category before and her Brothers was remade into a movie with Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire (I skipped the remake). Bier's films are explorations of deep trauma and the three I've seen depend heavily on powerfully emotional acting and honest writing. You can read my review of Things here. At any rate, this will not be released until later in 2011, but until then, we can all watch the trailer here. I expect lots of heavy emotionality and some really hard questions.
 
Will Win: N/A
Might Win: Foreign Language Film
My Rating: Released in 2011

Michôd, Un Prophète, et un Hommage à Van Sant

David Michôd's Animal Kingdom is a story of a crime family--a group of petty criminals, actually--who sell drugs, rob banks, kill policemen, and randomly threaten hapless civilians. The story is told from the perspective of a seventeen-year-old nephew who has lived outside of the family for most of his life. Sounds good, right?

Well, to be honest, it really isn't. Part of this reason is one of the last movies I saw was Jacques Audiard's Un Prophète, which doesn't quite tell the same story, but does cover the not dissimilar narrative of a young male naïf who learns the ropes and then rises meteorically to run the criminal show. Un Prophète, however, is a far superior movie to Animal Kingdom.

Michôd's film tells its story in fits and starts, pausing to lovingly shoot a walk down a hallway in slow motion, and covering what could be illuminating dialogue with its score (which is, admittedly, probably Animal Kingdom's most interesting component).

The more I think about Animal Kingdom, in fact, the more I think that it wishes it were a Gus Van Sant movie. But Gus Van Sant would appear to know a lot more about building tension, casting, and cinematic poetry than David Michôd does. Too, Van Sant is not really interested in cold movies. His films have real affection for their protagonists and, indeed, for their supporting characters.

Michôd is highly critical of his characters, while simultaneously employing a Van Sant style of shooting those characters. The effect is bizarre to say the least, and I kept waiting for Animal Kingdom to lurch into real action, to ramp up its brutality, to ratchet up its tension. But the film simply never goes there. It is content, instead, to behave as though it is an emotional character study, revealing the inner workings of masculinity and family dynamics in an Australian crime family, when it is clearly nothing of the sort.

Two more things:
I want to point out that Michôd includes a direct homage to Van Sant in Animal Kingdom, when he has one of the characters sit watching the music video of Air Supply's "All Out of Love" after his friend has been murdered. I took this as a direct reference to the scene in Last Days when Van Sant shoots the video of Boyz II Men's "On Bended Knee" almost in its entirety.

The other thing I wanted to underline before I finish talking about Animal Kingdom is the fact that Un Prophète is totally great. It's a French prison movie about a young Arab (a naïf, like the young man in Michôd's film) who goes to work for the Sicilian mafia while in prison, learns to read, then learns Italian, then starts running his own setup while still in the clink. It's also simultaneously brutal, poetic, intelligent, and incredibly tension-filled, with a stellar central performance by Tahar Rahim. I highly recommend it.