The Holden Caulfield Reincarnation

12/05/2008

Posted by Andrea Hubert

Holden Caulfield simply won't die, will he? In some form or another, every generation of filmmakers resurrects J.D. Salinger's iconic lead character in Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield is the disaffected, alienated young male protagonist, usually middle class and somewhat affluent, casually drifting aimlessly through life in the wanton pursuit of either fun, or distraction (not necessarily one and the same thing).

The movie version of Holden probably originates with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, a film that came out four years after the book. And since then, in every generation, a Holden is born – the coming-of-age youth who confronts the lies and idiocy of the grown up world he's supposed to be preparing for. Comedically, nobody can beat Ferris Bueller, who runs rings around the adults in his world with only a trace of bitterness: "She got a car...I got a computer". The closest to the original is probably Igby Goes Down, in which a freshly expelled prep school boy muddles his way through a debauched New York weekend of drink, drugs and women. Wes Anderson's Rushmore shows the dark side of Holden in his protagonist Max Fischer, while films like Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused (set in graduation weekend) and Kevin Smith's Mallrats (set in a shopping mall) suggest a more lighthearted approach to the Caulfield obsession.

Girls can play too, most notably Ellen Page in Juno. Although her problems are a little more pressing than that of a rich prep school dropout, she still has the biting wit and air of inevitability that any self respecting Holden incarnations should possess.

The latest teenage Holden Caulfield to grace our screens is Charlie Bartlett, the eponymous lead, played by adorable rising star Anton Yelchin (last seen being murdered by Justin Timberlake in Alpha Dog). Charlie, a rich boy with an entrepreneurial bent, is neither a geek nor cool, but a highly intelligent individual with a pill-popping mother and a psychiatrist who misdiagnoses with cheerful abandon. The combination allows Charlie to start up his own psychiatry practice at his new school, dispensing Ritalin, Xanax and advice from the boys' toilets, hitting his doctor up for new prescriptions by adroitly describing symptoms he's looked up in a medical journal.

Charlie Bartlett taps into the medication overload zeitgeist very succinctly, and cuts a little deeper into the dividing lines between the social strata of a high school than, say, Mean Girls, by bridging them with the only concept that transcends class – drugs. But more than that, Charlie Bartlett adds another layer to the Holden incarnation, whereby he uses his heightened intelligence and sensitivity not to criticise the fake and unjust society he finds himself drowning in, like Igby, or to run away from it, like Ferris, but to find a way to make the pain a little more bearable. And irresponsible teenage medication abuse aside, even movie-hating Holden Caulfield, and his creator J.D. Salinger would have to agree, for a teenager, that's really quite remarkable.

Charlie Bartlett is released on May 16.

Persepolis

28/04/2008

Posted by Andrea Hubert

As a graphic novel novice, I wasn't sure what to expect from illustrator Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, the film version of her popular comic strip which deals with her childhood experiences in Iran. My experience of cartoons depicting serious subject matter was limited to Watership Down, and until I saw Persepolis, I could undoubtedly spout far more detailed information about how each rabbit died (and exactly how much I cried) in that movie than I can about the Islamic revolution in Iraq, and the subsequent Iran/Iraq war. Talk about your disparate childhood experiences…

The tragic history of Iran from the late 70s until the present is beautifully and vividly rendered in black, white, grey and all shades in between. Persepolis tells the story of Marjane, beginning in Tehran in 1978 with an exuberant nine year old girl who likes Adidas trainers and pop music and asks a million questions a minute. Unlike the commonly accepted view of Iran (at least in your average Sun reader's eyes) as a war-torn fundamentalist country, the Iran depicted in the early years of Marjane's life is cultured, liberal and beautiful, if still under the control of a dictator.

The history of the Iranian Shah monarchy, and its subsequent downfall at the hands of the revolutionaries in 1979 is explained simply and diplomatically, choosing to focus not on the intricacies of war and politics, but on the matters that affect a small child – the murder of her beloved uncle at the hands of the new fundamentalist government, and the loss of her personal freedom in the form of the obligatory headscarf. The 12 year old Marjane rebels with a "punk is not dead" jacket and trainers, but ultimately, her outspoken ways and refusal to conform to the new regime leads to a life in exile, when her parents send her to live in Austria during the Iraq invasion of the eighties.

That the cartoon is depicted in a thousand shades of grey is itself poetic – warmongering and the reasons given are never black and white, and though a child's perception of right and wrong may be, as Marjane grows up, she accepts the shades of grey with varying degrees of ease. While it's easy for her to deny being Iranian when being chatted up by a boy in Austria, it's impossible for her to deny it when listening to others talk about her ethnicity derisively and in utter ignorance of what being Iranian really means - something that might hit home for a lot of those people who spout pub-lunch opinions painfully devoid of either knowledge or experience.

Through its beautifully rendered cartoon imagery, Persepolis is far more effective as a tale of a war-torn childhood that rips families apart and removes personal freedom than it would be with all-too-earnest actors taking up the roles. And as a depiction of the war from the viewpoint of a young woman trying to find her place in both the society she grew up in, and the western world she was exiled into, it seems far more acceptable to use this to get a grasp of the realities of modern Iran than flicking open a newspaper. Because here the bias is purely personal and the individual stories within are often far more interesting than the politics behind the drama.



Persepolis is out now.

Fantastic Foreign Films

14/04/2008

Posted by Andrea Hubert

The last time I tried to persuade a friend to see a foreign film with me, I was treated to this entertaining rebuttal: "Subtitles? If I wanted to read, I'd buy a book". Now, I don't want to use the word ‘philistine’ lightly, nor do I want to suggest that watching foreign films makes you look as clever as putting on a pair of glasses, but if you're a person for whom reading while watching AND listening requires more brain activity than you're capable of, then you'll be missing out on three of the best films out this month.

 
I'm A Cyborg (But That's Ok) is a surreal love story from South Korean director Park Chan-Wook, familiar to western audiences as the slightly twisted but undeniably brilliant mind behind the ultra violent  Oldboy and Lady Vengeance. But if you're looking for a similar level of incest, torture and insane levels of bloodshed (and if you're already a fan of his work, you probably are), you won't find it in this touching tale set in mental institution. Cha Young-Goon is a young girl who thinks she's a cyborg, committed after slitting her wrists at work and shoving a handful of wires up her veins in an attempt to recharge. She only eats batteries, talks to vending machines, and periodically in her head, guns down the entire hospital staff when her fingertips fall off and bullets fly out of her hands (alright, there's a little blood). Dying of starvation, the only one who can save her is Park Il-Sun, a bunny-mask wearing schizophrenic who invents a food-to-electricity converter he magically inserts into her machinery. Though the depiction of the patients borders on the cartoonish, I'm a Cyborg… is the perfect mix of comedy, acid-trip surreal interludes that owe a nod to David Lynch and William Burroughs, and beautiful romance. Previously a master of bloodshed, Chan-Wook shows his softer side with a touchingly eccentric, visually enthralling love story for those who like a little crazy with their cool.
 
Closer to home, The Last Mistress is a French film that also explores the nature of love; this time a lasting illicit affair between a courtesan on the wane and her longtime lover, in 18th century Paris. Writer / director Catherine Breillat is well known for her daring explorations of women in both her films and her explicit novels, and this is no different – although it's slightly disturbing to see that the women in this film fall into the usual categories of Madonna, whore and old maid. The main character is played by Asia Argento (daughter of horror maestro Dario Argento) and if you've never seen her on screen before, there can be no better introduction than this – a smouldering, sex-on-legs goddess that makes Angelina Jolie resemble Julie Andrews, dressed as Mary Poppins, with a hangover.
 
And from Spain, low-budget horror film [Rec] scared the shit out of me for the first time since the Blair Witch Project, proving that you don't need a serial killer with a bad childhood, or a bunch of shiny teenagers (who frankly, always deserve what's coming to them) to be truly terrified. Adopting the same amateur footage style that made Blair Witch and the more recent Cloverfield so effective, [Rec] follows TV reporter Angela and her cameraman Pablo, who are covering the night shift in a Barcelona fire station. But when a little old lady trapped in a house turns out to have more bite than bark, it turns into a 28 Days Later style vampiric nightmare. Call me squeamish, but as far as genuine frights go, I'll take this modern twist on a classic theme over gratuitous torture-murder horror porn any day.

I'm A Cyborg (But That's Ok), The Last Mistress and [Rec] are all in cinemas now.

Lars and the Real Girl

24/03/2008

Posted by Film Blogger

Delusional movie characters usually fall into two categories. On the one side you have your Norman Bates type; characterised by a close personal relationship with a parental corpse still maintaining a two-way conversation and giving advice of the "murder people in the shower" variety. On the other end of the scale, there are your Elwood P. Dowd types – amiable, perfectly functional, and best friends with a giant rabbit named Harvey. Neither are what we'd call normal – though being British, we're more likely to use "eccentric", while nervously edging further and further away from both types should they approach us on the tube. But both are integral stereotypes of a certain type of delusional protagonist that crops up on the movie landscape every few years.

Lars and The Real Girl sees Ryan Gosling charmingly channeling Raymond Babbitt as the latest film presentation of acceptable mental illness. Lars, a sweet, socially challenged introvert living in a sleepy Midwestern town can't seem to connect with the well meaning people who want to include him in their community. When he announces the arrival of his internet girlfriend Bianca, his family is delighted – until they realise she's a life size doll. That she chose to travel from South America in a sealed wooden box rather than an aeroplane, is made of plastic, and sports a permanently open mouth that's just begging to be abused makes no difference to Lars, who immediately enters into a relationship with her, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she is, in fact, a sex doll. To Lars, Bianca is a real girl.

What makes the film so endearing, aside from the permanent thread of humour that comes from the camera focusing on the reactions of people meeting Bianca for the first time, is the townspeople's camaraderie. They adopt Bianca into their world, because of their love for Lars, and soon he finds that his new girlfriend is so busy shopping with friends and volunteering at the hospital she barely has time for him. Just like a real relationship then – but certainly pointedly unlike the blanket small mindedness and intolerance we've been led to expect from small-town America. Poor old Donnie Darko – he'd have needed far fewer hypnosis sessions if people had just accepted Frank the rabbit was real, and maybe even laid an extra place at the table for him once in a while.

Delusions can make you a happier person in an ultimately cruel world. I can't imagine Norma Desmond wasted too much time in prison wondering what happened to her career – she was far too busy posing for her imaginary close up. And where would Jack Black have been in Shallow Hal if he'd seen Gwyneth Paltrow's Rosemary the size she actually was, instead of the sylph-like goddess his imagination wanted her to be? Hell, it was supposed to be a comedy, not a moral-message-movie of the week. What would be funnier than Hal turning round and demanding his delusion back? It makes you wonder if the truth is always going to set you free – or if there are some exceptions.

Of course, the straight laced villagers struggle at first to accept Lars' strange new relationship.  As they discuss their planned response, the kindly pastor of the local church grounds them with that old reliable adage: "What would Jesus do?"  A 2000 year old virgin and a sex doll....hmmm. What would Jesus do? While you try and wash that biblically challenged image out of your mental cavity, consider that maybe, at the end of the day, mentally challenged or sound of mind, delusion is pretty much a party and everyone's invited to play.

Lars and the Real Girl is in cinemas now.

Son of Rambow

10/03/2008

Posted by Andrea Hubert

For those mildly devastated by the generally accepted idea that a good British film will almost always give Keira Knightley and her top lip star billing, or those concerned that the British film industry is destined to survive by recycling some version of Four Weddings/Notting Hill/Love Actually until someone murders Richard Curtis, there's a film out soon to restore your faith that our countrymen have more to offer than floppy haired toffs saying "fuck" a lot.

Son of Rambow is the second directorial offering from Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith – aka Hammer and Tongs, the creative duo behind 2005's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and more familiarly, their music videos for Fatboy Slim's ‘Right Here Right Now’, Blur's ‘Coffee & TV’, and Supergrass' ‘Pumping On Your Stereo’.

In true British tongue in cheek style, I find it entirely unsurprising that the most heartwarming film to come out of the UK in years comes from the same men who placed a cool indie band in giant puppet suits and preferred to create a walking milk carton from "a tiny, tiny little man in a milk carton suit" than use CGI. Mavericks of film-tricks-on-a-budget, these guys can get away with anything – which certainly explains how they managed to persuade TV veteran Eric Sykes to dress up in a tank top and long red wig to play an ageing Sylvester Stallone for the purposes of their film.

The film, a coming-of age drama set in the early eighties, follows the Spielberg style adventures of Will, a member of the Plymouth Brethren religious sect who has never watched TV in his life, and Lee, a badly behaved school misfit whose ambition in life is to make a film inspired by Rambo: First Blood. He enlists the pliable Will in his endeavour as the unlikely stuntman and co-star, but the film soon spirals out of their control as the elusive French exchange student Didier arrives, and an accident with a flying dog leaves Lee out in the cold.

In the tradition of films like Stand By Me and Harold and Maude, this is unashamedly tugging at your heart strings, and effectively so. What makes it different is Jennings and Goldsmith's dedication to innovation. So a chase scene involving a menacing scarecrow with a castor oil head takes on magical new dimensions, a teacher gets speared by a flying dog attack, and through two twelve year old boys, we can see the journey through which the filmmakers have gone from the early days of home video equipment and Stallone-worship, to get where they are today.

Children of the eighties will appreciate the attention to detail – everything from Space Dust, transfer tattoos, sarcastic science teachers droning on in the days before pupil evaluations, even smoking in cinemas - sets the scene with immense authenticity. But you don't have to have been there to enjoy the sheer creativity, joy and possibility of what looks set to be the best British film in years.

Son of Rambow is out March 28.

Be Kind, Rewind

22/02/2008

Posted by Andrea Hubert

With Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and last year's The Science of Sleep, one could have accused maverick visionary Michel Gondry of creating weirdness in a vacuum – characters in love with each other within a surreal world, with nobody ultimately able to penetrate their bubble.

His latest film, Be Kind Rewind, never loses the magical touch that made him one of the most sought after music video directors in the business (remember all those bizarre but brilliant Björk videos? Now imagine if the two of them had babies…), but it has a heart and soul that's as near to Hollywood schmaltz as Gondry will allow himself to get – and that's no bad thing.

Jerry (Jack Black, playing Jack Black) and Mike (Mos Def, who acts with a sweet, if slightly autistic naturalism) star as clerks in an old fashioned video store in Passaic, New Jersey, owned by Danny Glover and housed in a condemned building. When a stunt to destroy the power plant he believes is melting his brain leaves him with all-over magnetisation, Jerry accidentally wipes clean all the videos in the store. So it's up to Mike and Jerry to remake every single one of them, getting help from an entire community eager for more homemade films.

Those with Jack Black fatigue should breathe a sigh of relief – perhaps in reverence to Gondry's infinite creativity, he manages to take it down a couple of notches, thus helping Be Kind avoid the tag "Jack Black's latest film". And this film is all about Gondry's vision – the remakes of everything from Ghostbusters to Back to the Future, Driving Miss Daisy (with Black as an unlikely Jessica Tandy), Boogie Nights, Apollo 13, King Kong (with Black clambering up a rusty piece of corrugated iron) and even The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The movie-making montage plays out like one long Björk video watched whilst on mushrooms – and just imagine the storyboarding.

In Be Kind..., Gondry has wholeheartedly embraced the concept of community, and this provides those moments in between the conceptual and the comedic where the traditionalists amongst you can find pure enjoyment. There's nothing more heartening than watching a community come together against corporate America. Especially if it involves the recreation of the life of forties jazz legend Fats Waller filmed using plastic bands, cardboard cut-out cars and a condemned house with no fourth wall.

Gondry takes the idea of creating entertainment for its own sake, and translates it into a public service. Last week, Youtube announced that Gondry will be guest editing the website for the Sundance Film Festival. Now there's one public service top ten list I'll be looking out for.

View Jack Black's spoof of 'The Queen' here.

 

Be Kind, Rewind is in cinemas this week.