Walking on Air

I thought Robert Zemeckis's movie The Walk – which is based on a story told in James Marsh's Oscar-winning 2008 documentary Man on Wire – was a trifling bit of fluff.

I had heard tell that The Walk was an exciting movie, that it took some time getting started, but that once Philippe Petit, the tightrope walker who put a wire between two corners of the Twin Towers, got onto his wire and started walking across, the movie was really going to get going.

I had also heard that people were getting sick in this movie, getting vertigo or becoming disturbed somehow by the dizzying heights portrayed in the film. (This obviously appealed to me.)

But... The Walk is, more than anything else, a kind of whimsical fairy tale. The screenplay is designed like a children's story, and it is actually narrated by the actor playing Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) from the balcony at the top of the Statue of Liberty's torch. He tells us the story from there, while pulling rabbits out of hats and making coins appear from behind the ears of ingenuous children.

One might say that there is more to this film than whimsy, but The Walk insists on a kind of triviality, one that believes in the magic power of mimes. Throughout the film Petit talks a great deal about Art with a capital A, and he believes that his walk is a grand, superb artistic gesture. Frankly, I am inclined to agree with him. But Zemeckis's film is not interested in Petit as an artist, despite the number of times the word art is repeated in the screenplay. For Zemeckis, the protagonist of The Walk is a kind of magical grown up who can show us all what it is like to be a child again. Petit is reduced from what he thinks he is (an artist) to a kind of street magician, a latter-day Peter Pan who refuses to grow up and from whom we all can learn how not to be old. I don't know about you, but I think that kind of thing is silly.

The Walk is also a miniature love letter to the World Trade Center towers at the center of the film. This is understandable, and this aspect of the film is The Walk at its best. Near the film's end a character says something like "People have hated these towers since construction began on them, but now that you did what you did, people say they love the towers – they say that the towers mean something to them now". The actor who says this line, Steve Valentine, renders it beautifully, and embedded in his delivery is what happened to the towers in September of 2001, and what Petit did as an artist to change how people saw the towers. (The Eiffel Tower had its haters when it was first erected in 1889, as well.)

In short, the likability of the film's star and the sensational quality of the narrative the film wishes to tell are both undermined almost irrevocably by The Walk's writer and director. There was a cool film hidden in here somewhere, but maybe the cool film to which I refer is actually just Man on Wire.

Don Jon

I have to say that I am sort of irritated by how, well, not good Joseph Gordon-Levitt's first feature is.

I don't even think I have a lot to say about this film except that it is basically Ted except for instead of an amusing (well, not that amusing) talking bear, JGL's version of the man-child who doesn't want to grow up has a laptop and some pornography to keep him company.

One thing that Ted has on Don Jon, too, is that Ted has a woman at its center who is actually correct about how to improve the man in her life. Don Jon's version of that is a shallow, idiotic rich girl who literally doesn't approve of speaking out loud about purchasing cleaning products in Target in case someone hears you. I mean this film hates its central female character.

Don Jon isn't without its merits. JGL is hard to dislike. How could anyone? He is clearly a lovely performer, and the picture is decently made – it is his first, and its a lot better than, well, other actors' first features.

And the film makes some really good points, too. Carl's Jr. ads really are pornographic, and this film calls them out on it. Romantic comedies, too, get some women off in the same way that pornographic films get some men off. It is a pleasing comparison: one that basically erases the history of oppression and misogyny to which women have been subjected through the dehumanization of pornographic imagery, but not incorrect.

Here's the deal: this is a film with the tagline There's more to life than a happy ending. A pornographic pun, to be sure. And the film promises to be irreverent, to be relatively sexy/pornographic, and then to end without a happy ending: something at the very least non-normative. But it doesn't know how to do that.

There is not more to life than a happy ending in this film. It is a film with a very earnest message that made me want to throw something. It purports to know how to have sex correctly – the true way to enjoy sex with someone (in case you weren't aware) is really to see someone else, to share something, to make love. I mean, look, I'm glad that is good for some people, and I am not saying that that's, like, a bad way to have sex or anything, but to behave as though the way that you like to have sex is somehow the correct way to do it, seems... well, I'll be generous and say: a bit short sighted.

And Don Jon is totally invested in its main character learning exactly this lesson. In fact, like other recent comedies about grown men turning into adults and leaving their childhoods behind (Knocked Up, The Forty-Year-Old Virgin, Ted), Don Jon links growing up or "becoming a man" to something very specific that the film argues is "what adults do". In the case of Don Jon, "what adults do" is watch less porn than they did when they were teens/kids/whatever. And they make love with the women with whom they have sex: they don't simply engage in "one-sided" sex.

This is all fine, I suppose. I jut don't relate to this kind of thing in any way.

Maybe I need to grow up and start having sex the "right" way. Paging Dr. Freud.

Oscar Nominees 2014: Part 13 of 14

The Wind Rises (風立ちぬ)

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Hayao Miyazaki

Cast: Hideaki Anno, Miori Takimoto, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Masahiko Nishimura, Stephen Alpert, Keiko Takeshita, Mirai Shida, Jun Kunimura, Shinobu Otake, Nomura Mansai (except that they all spoke English when I saw it, so: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Martin Short, Stanley Tucci, Werner Herzog, William H. Macy, Jennifer Grey)

This is apparently not going to be (as has been reported) Miyazaki's final film. We should all breathe a sigh of relief at this. The subject matter of The Wind Rises is not Miyazaki's usual fanciful content, so I was sort of worried that The Wind Rises wouldn't be as magical as his previous films. I oughtn't to have worried one bit. This is a film about an artist, and his visions of what he can create are told through beautiful, fanciful dreams that feel like nothing but magic. It is gorgeous. The score is beautiful (and really should've taken Philomena's spot – who remembers that score?), but what's really on show here are Miyazaki's beautiful vistas, intriguing ways of looking at things, memorable quirky characters, and fanciful storytelling. This is a director who tells us that a couple is falling in love by having them fly paper airplanes to one another from the ground to a third-story window. The planes in flight are breathtaking, and the film itself becomes about what it is like to love something, to dedicate your life to something only to have it destroyed by something else (the military, illness). This is beautiful stuff and is easily my favorite in the Animated Feature category, not that that means it's going to win; it hasn't a prayer.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win:N/A

My Rating: #21 out of 82

Ernest et Célestine (Ernest & Celestine)

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Benjamin Renner

Cast: Lambert Wilson, Pauline Brunner, Dominique Maurin, Anne-Marie Loop

I don't get to see this before the Academy Awards, and my bet is that most people won't have seen it. It, frankly, looks adorable, and captures the look of the children's books on which it is based (the books are by Gabrielle Vincent and you can see them – some are even translated into English – here). French animation has soared in this category recently, and it has become a safe bet for a nomination almost every single year, though (it would appear) not for the win. Films like Une Vie de Chat, Persepolis, and Sylvain Chomet's superb L'Illusionniste and Les Triplettes de Belleville have all gotten nominations, but none has gone on to the win (despite L'Illusionniste's superiority to almost all of the films – animated or not – that were released in 2010). Ernest et Célestine is released in the U.S. today, so if you live in a city bigger than mine you may have better luck than I catching this picture. 
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: Not ranked

The Croods

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Kirk DeMicco, Chris Sanders

Cast:Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener, Cloris Leachman

I liked this film more than most of my friends did, and I liked it mostly for the kinds of lovely visuals you can see in the image above. The Croods is a silly little story, with characters who are, for the most part, unattractive (they are cro-magnons, after all). The plot covers a family who are running away from the splitting of the supercontinent Pangaea. It is, more importantly a story of learning new things – adapting to new technologies and new ideas. It is about parents learning to listen to their kids and kids learning to listen to their parents. In the ideology of this film, the parents don't know the best way to do things, but they have much bigger hearts than the children. All of this is sort of sweet, and the tone is tongue-in-cheek enough that it didn't make me groan too heavily at any point. And then there is the art design! It is gorgeous. There are millions of bizarre little creatures and plants that look like something out of a prettified Hieronymus Bosch or Pieter Bruegel painting. The Croods is worth watching for these inventive visuals alone.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #60 out of 82