Motifs in Cinema: The Inevitability of Death

Motifs in Cinema is a discourse across 22 film blogs, assessing the way in which various thematic elements have been used in the 2012 cinematic landscape. How does a common theme vary in use from a comedy to a drama? Are filmmakers working from a similar canvas when they assess the issue of death or the dynamics of revenge? Like most things, a film begins with an idea - Motifs in Cinema assesses how the use of a common theme across various films changes when utilized by different artists.

"I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens." - Woody Allen

Death has fascinated the human kind since the moment of its creation. It has always been said that art was in fact invented as a way for us to defy mortality. What we create, ideally, remains forever. While movies have had a special fixation on what happens after we're gone (perhaps because filmmakers believe they can interpret the idea of an afterlife or earthly purgatory visually) 2012 gave us a roster of films in which death went beyond the limitations of our bodily existence and filmmakers realized that death might also threaten things that were once thought of as immortal.

In the remarkable Holy Motors, Leos Carax brings up the eternal question: is cinema about to die? This question has plagued the art form even before it was thought of as an actual art form. Film, more than any other art, has always been plagued by accusations of fugacity. Why has literature or sculpture never faced such fate? What does paper - which is arguably as spoilable as celluloid - have that film doesn't? Carax observes this through the eyes of someone who's perhaps worried that the digitalization of our world might put an end to the photographic tradition, and as such the movie does a marvelous job in reminding us there is true pleasure in the idea of film, but it fails in achieving a sense of doom. Perhaps Carax wasn't attempting to discourage hope, he was just welcoming the beginning of a new era.

The death of tradition and old world culture is seen palpably in Michael Haneke's Amour, a film that deals with actual physical death, but isn't really about people, but about the passing of generations and the ideas carried by generations. The film's central premise wonders what happens to us when we stop thinking rationally, when nature deems us incapable of fulfilling the promise of immortality we've made ourselves and we are back to being basic creatures with animal needs who care only about survival. The film's "cruelty" is that it reminds us that not only are our bodies deemed to vanish, but also our creations. There is no enough culture, refinement or education that can save the movie's characters from vanishing, not knowing where they're headed and what was everything really about.

The death of love and traditional romance are studied by the wonderful Joe Wright, an uncompromising aesthete who has no trouble removing "emotion" when it serves a higher purpose. While I wasn't a fan of his Anna Karenina perhaps because I'm used to the more traditional readings of it which highlight the fiery passion and romance of Tolstoy's novel, I admired the way with which Wright reminds us that romance might only be a series of plays we put on to convince ourselves we are not cruel and wicked. His interpretation of Anna Karenina - as played by the incredible Keira Knightley - takes love to a level of intellectualism that punches us in the gut. By the time Anna jumps in front of the train we are convinced it wasn't an easy escape, it was her only one.

Like in Amour and Holy Motors, Miguel Gomes' Tabu explores the death of an era. The film could easily form a trilogy with the other two, each one envisioning the end of traditional aesthetic systems through a distinctive eye. In his gorgeous black and white movie, Gomes sees movie history played out in reverse: his film opens with a talkie and ends with a silent movie. We travel back in time as Gomes takes us to a state of "primal existence" where we go beyond the narrowness of "life" and are forced to become one with art. Can movies faithfully interpret lives? Are movies for that matter alive? Tabu easily convinces us that a movie too is a breathing organism subject to whims and emotional changes. Perhaps more significant is to realize that European filmmakers were observing art through similar lenses. Haneke, Carax and Gomes, all creators from different countries, contemplate the end through their own idiosyncrasies, all of them see life and art through the undeniable eye of post-colonialism. When across the ocean we were watching new filmmakers, like Chile's Pablo Larraín, explore life through the refreshing eye of new media (for what is No, if not a hopeful love song to modern life?) back in Europe, artists were obsessed with the end, trying to salvage the pieces they could before everything was just lost...have all these people been watching Melancholia too much?

In the United States, a country which unarguably has mastered the commercial aspects of cinema more than the artistic ones, we got a devastating look at the end of an era as well, only this one wasn't marked by culture or art, but by economic and political power (2012 might've been the one year in recent memory where countries evoked their entire history through key films) In her glorious Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow wonders what happens to a country when a collective ideal has been fulfilled. What happens when you destroy the enemy? Where do you go from there? Wisely Bigelow acknowledges that she has no answers, but what she does with this isn't going against the American idea of patriotism as defending your country without being critical of its shortcomings, instead Bigelow might be one of the most important thinkers of her time. Her movie has been accused of many things, all of which have to do with peripheral details that really amount to nothing. No one in Europe accused Haneke of using torture, even if he has a manipulative record much more prominent than Bigelow's for example. With her ambiguous take on America as a nation on what might be its most significant threshold, it's a shame that Bigelow's ideas are received with torches and pitchforks instead of with open minds. In a society where ignorance and bliss have become one the death she announces in her movie might be more of an eulogy delivered a little bit too late.

Sheet-y Saturday (Fave Posters of 2012)

In no particular order (both because I'm lazy and because I really like them all)

Portrayed the exuberance and joi de vivre the film teasd about having but ended up lacking. It's an image of pure joy captured in a single moment.

Merida gives her back to the world proving just how she's setting herself apart from all other Disney princesses. Brave move indeed.

After reading Pattinson and then Cronenber, you're like "wait, what?" but the matinee idol's look of quiet despair hooks you.

If ever a movie's visual idiosyncrasy was captured by its poster, it's this. 

You can not look at this and not giggle. If only the rest of the marketing campaign had been this Hitchcockian...

Saul Bass brilliance for a noble cause. 

It's like a flyer from an actual strip club. You just wanna do jello shots after looking at it.

Like the cover of a 70s exploitation movie or a bad paperback. 

Promises a mystery larger than what the movie actually contained. 

This redacted title with no movie star names, no "from Oscar winning director" and no release date might be the greatest movie poster of the year (maybe I did have a favorite). Simple, effective and haunting.

What were your faves this year?

I Haven't Been Up to Nothing...

I'm sure you've all been neglecting all the work I've been up to over at PopMatters, so here's a handy list:

• FYC: Ezra Miller for Best Supporting Actor
• Whatever Happened to the Funny Ladies?
• FYC: Jean-Louis Trintignant for Best Actor
• Can Laura Linney be Nominated for Hyde Park on Hudson?
• Reasons Why Anna Karenina Could've Been an Awards Magnet...Reasons Why it Wasn't

PLUS a review of Jane Campion's wonderful The Portrait of a Lady.

Go read and as always I love hearing your thoughts!

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.

The last time we had a sumptuous, lose your life and cry your eyes out, epic melodrama was probably around the time when Joe Wright delivered his astonishing - and despite all the awards, seriously underrated - Atonement. His take on Tolstoy not only looks astonishingly lavish and gorgeous, it also shows how playful he can be as a director. What sounds like a Brech-meets-Visconti take could very well be the most mesmerizing movie of the year and judging from this absolutely gorgeous poster this is one movie that might just blow us all away.

(My) Best of 2011: Actress

5. Keira Knightley in Last Night

It's a true shame that Keira Knightley keeps becoming one of the finest working actresses and people don't seem to be noticing it, taking her for granted as a "has been" among the new crop of British ingenues and that itself might be her problem, Keira has always known how to infuse her characters with ages old wisdom. See her turn as Joanna in Last Night, while the movie itself sometime lingers too dangerously on being some sort of Closer redux, her performance is a complex study of the human heart. Watching her protect her marriage ferociously while being tempted by the idea of restarting an old affair, she is the epitome of a "woman". Knightley's beauty never overshadows her character's deep longings, and she never allows Joanna to descend into soap opera territory, instead she just lets the character speak through her body. Her laugh becomes a bashful flirtatious move, her elegant walk becomes an awkward attempt at shielding herself from what seem like weak moments. It's a pleasure to realize Keira is able to keep surprising us. 

4. Juliette Binoche in Certified Copy

No actress lights up the screen as effortlessly as Juliette Binoche. Whether it's the way in which she lets her characters take over her, the effervescence of her sensual smile, the added bonus that she always chooses interesting projects or just her otherworldly beauty, she always seems to possess a wisdom kept away from us mere mortals. She has that kind of quality in which she can play a "mother" and still be extremely sensual, or she can play a "sexy" woman and retain some innocence. This quality has never been reflected better than in Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy, where Binoche plays a charming woman having trouble with the man who might be her husband or a writer she admires (don't ask if you haven't seen it). In order to play a nameless character that could've easily fallen into being nothing but an archetype, Binoche is able to imprint her ethereal qualities on a woman that might as well be nothing but an intellectual essay.
She makes art both tangible and unreachable, always making us wonder what lies between thee fascinating layer we are watching at an established moment.

3. Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia

A wedding is supposed to bring out moments of unbridled joy but what happens when instead it becomes a culmination of a life of sorrows? Such is the case with Justine (Dunst) a woman who we gather has earned everything she wanted and is just waiting for marriage to fulfill her. During the first scenes Dunst shines with the vibrant energy she has displayed onscreen for almost two decades, her cheerleader smile lighting up everyone else, yet as the plot moves forward and Justine becomes more aware of just how unhappy she is about to become, we see a part of the actress that has rarely surfaced. She turns into a fearful, sad creature, overwhelmed by the lack of significance in her life. It should be ironic that she seems rejuvenated by the fact that the world is about to end. Dunst plays Justine like a human being ascending into the realms of sainthood. In a performance with facial expressions as beautiful and touching as Falconetti's in The Passion of Joan of Arc the actress gives one of the most touching portrayals of metaphysical ecstasy to be ever put onscreen. 

2. Rooney Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Taking on a role made iconic by an actress the year before, Rooney Mara seemed to have been headed for career suicide as Lisbeth Salander. However what she did was even more impressive: she delivered a performance all her own, that takes nothing from the Swedish movies made before her and seems to dig deep into the essence of the literary source. To say that Stieg Larsson's novel wasn't particularly profound would be paying it a compliment, given that it prefers to stick to plot points rather than exploring the nature of its characters. The magic in Mara's performance is all the more astonishing when you realize that she's playing a heroine that we shouldn't really be rooting for. While the previous incarnation of Lisbeth aimed for the stars, Rooney's goes for something much more earthly, she plays Salander as someone breakable. Mara reveals Lisbeth's weaknesses! Watch that scene in which her disgusting guardian touches her face, the way in which the actress' body seems to shrink like a fearful animal, or later as she takes control of her sexuality, as we watch her literally blossom in front of our eyes. Mara combines Lisbeth's childlike features with an ancient soul that's been hurt too much and now walks the Earth looking for solace, for absolution.

You don't expect to have your heart broken by a character who asks for permission to murder a man and yet that's just what she does, the most ironic of all being that her character would kick her ass for doing so.

1. Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene

Sean Durkin's directorial debut will forever be remembered for the powerhouse performance turned in by Elizabeth Olsen. Although saying a "powerhouse performance" seems to be referring to something big, loud and imposing, yet what we get instead is a purely introspective character study. Playing one woman with three different personalities, of sorts, Olsen is just breathtaking. The movie begins with her running away from what we later learn is a cult that had kept her captive. To this cult she was known as Marcy May, once hse goes back to her "normal" life, she goes by Martha, and she imprints all of these personae with different qualities; her Martha being a wild child who was always in the lookout for a deeper existence, her Marcy May being an illusion-filled girl whose crush turned into a nightmare and her Marlene being a completely fictitious creation that defines this woman's darkest intentions. Olsen is so enigmatic that the movie ends and we still have no idea if there were Marys, Mercedes, Mildreds, Marges...within her. She evokes the complexities of a Bergman heroine with the rawness of Cassavettes' characters. She is both beautiful and terrifying to watch, a mystery and its answer.

(My) Best of 2011: Supporting Actress

5. Jennifer Lawrence in The Beaver

Jennifer Lawrence has one of those faces made to encompass the concept of All-American Girl however she has the acting chops to subvert these very notions and turn them into enigmatic traits. Take her performance in Jodie Foster's vastly underrated work of art The Beaver, here Lawrence plays Norah, a high-school girl who also happens to be a cheerleader, valedictorian and an underground graffiti artist. While lesser actresses would've conformed with letting the character do all the work, Lawrence taps onto something great: she recognizes the deep humanity that lies beneath the seemingly perfect shell and turns Norah into the most haunting characters in an already enthralling film.

4. Jennifer Ehle in Contagion

In an ensemble piece that feels more Nashville than Gosford Park it results kind of difficult for one actor to make a more lasting impact than others, particularly when their stories barely intersect and each of them end up commanding tiny movies of their own. In the case of Contagion it would seem almost impossible to choose between the impressively moving work of Kate Winslet, the vanity free performance of  Gwyneth Paltrow or the worldly wisdom projected by the lovely Marion Cotillard and yet it's the subtle work of Jennifer Ehle that stays with you and lingers for weeks after you see the movie. Playing the part of a dedicated scientist most of her scenes are actually dialogue-free. However watching the way her Meryl Streep-ian features light up is nothing if not magical. Ehle has the kind of face that evokes Falconetti and Streep in equal measures, the camera becomes so transfixed by her ethereal beauty that she needs but to muster a smile to let us into the secrets of creation.

3. Keira Knightley in A Dangerous Method

Year after year Keira Knightley seems to be delivering astonishing work that goes by without people making a fuss about it. Why? Her work in a movie like A Dangerous Method for example would get countless actresses hyperbolic comments about their craft and such. The way in which the young actress immerses herself into the character of Sabina Spielrein proves she possesses talents that go beyond her years. The way she allows the character to possess her is almost too disturbing to watch. The way in which Sabina's inner demons surface in shocking demonic moves makes Keira look completely awful, her notorious jaw and underbite deforming her lovely features and yet out of all of this - done without prosthetic work or special effects - Keira is always able to come back and find the latent humanity in this woman. She turns in absolutely moving work and steals the show from both Michael Fassbender and Viggo Mortensen; watching her squirm with pleasure as Carl Jung (Fassbender) whips her might just send you into nervous shock.

2. Jessica Chastain in The Help

We all know Jessica Chastain had the most terrific year any actress could've ever wished for. Her presence in some of the most important pictures of 2011 turned into a recurrent joke, where everyone assumed in reality she'd literally been in every single movie. The beauty of  the Chastain effect however wasn't her perseverance but the quality of her work. She was the MVP in each of those movies she was in! She created different characters whose only common denominator was the actress playing them, other than that you could never see any of her conflicted Samantha from Take Shelter in the haunting performance she turned in The Tree of Life. However even within her flawless list of performances it was her affecting turn as Celia Foote in The Help the one which might very well become the most iconic of her short career. Filling the colorful 60's costumes and donning an outrageous blond wig, Chastain plays the ultimate ditzy blond, who moves into a town where she is hated for representing everything others only dream they could be. In a movie that takes intolerance to the front of the equation, it's her beautifully nuanced performance that comments on the way in which hatred can go beyond the confines of race, sex or religion. With the comedic timing of Judy Holliday and the whoop-dee-doop sex appeal of Marilyn Monroe, Chastain is more remarkable in quiet scenes where Celia's true persona surfaces. She might be all sunshine and smiles on the outside but we learn that she crafted this persona in order to survive in a world that would crush her without giving it a second thought.

1.Charlotte Gainsbourg in Melancholia

Lars von Trier has earned a reputation for torturing and destroying any actress who come near him. This results in quite the paradox when you see the performances he gets out of women in his films. It should mean something then - both for Lars and his ways and tough love in general - to see how Charlotte Gainsbourg has flourished under his direction. She was absolutely ravishing in Antichrist turning a performance that fearlessly dared to carry all the evil of the world upon its shoulders. Conversely her work in Melancholia seems almost saintlike. Playing Claire, the sister of depressed bride Justine (Kirsten Dunst), Gainsbourg effortlessly overcomes what could've been one of the film's biggest setbacks: the fact that no one in the family seems to be even remotely related. Instead of focusing on the differences between Claire and Justine, Gainsbourg devotes her performance to making them familiar because of the intense love they share. The way in which the actress seems to take pleasure in comforting the petite Dunst exudes warmth and a humanity unlike anything you've ever seen in a von Trier film. Even as she has to cope with her own fears and pain - after all a huge planet is about to destroy Earth - Gainsbourg gives a mature, unfathomably brave performance. She only allows Claire to break down during the very last moments of the film and unlike Dunst who is always one minute away from exploding with the joys of new discoveries, Gainsbourg always seems to have the knowledge of the world. Watching the way Claire's entire life flashes by in Gainsbourg's eyes in a matter of seconds isn't only testament to her prowess as an actress, it also reminds us of the beauty and fragility of life. 

Short Take: "Young Adult" and "A Dangerous Method".

The biggest problem with all of Jason Reitman's movies is that his characters never humanize the nifty, clever concepts they represent. Juno for example, never really was more than a smart-ass teenager who failed sex-ed, Ryan Bingham from Up in the Air failed to becomes something more than a symbol of the recession and  his female sidekicks in that one, were flat portrayals of society's insistence that women must play either whores or ice-queens. 

It results pleasantly surprising then to find a real human being in what posed to be Reitman's most artificial character yet. Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) had all the potential to become a caricature: a beautiful but emotionally hollow divorcee, who writes young adult fiction and decides to visit her hometown just to get her high school boyfriend (Patrick Wilson) back.

Yet what Theron does defies expectations of both the character and the actress' own ability to use her beauty to construct an even more beautiful performance. Mavis is quite an ugly person, she drinks too much, holds contempt for everyone she knows and seems to have no regard whatsoever for anything or anyone that isn't her. As written by Diablo Cody, Mavis has remained trapped in eternal adolescence, she is the ultimate "mean girl". As played by Theron she is a flawed human being who has earned a right to be this way. The actress doesn't look for easy explanations, other than the fact that Mavis is truly a unique person who can not be defined by societal standards. It's a pleasure to see Theron, for once, collaborating with her extraordinary physique; she doesn't hide it under makeup, prosthetic pieces or miner wear, she owns up to it in such a way that during the movie's most tender scene, she actually allows herself to be "ugly" selfconsciously. She also displays a knack for comedic timing (she and Patton Oswalt make the most unique comedy duo of 2011) and if anything else, she proves that the best acting comes from within. Check out the last scene in this movie, you never get to hate and love someone this much.

Christopher Hampton's screenplays often boast astonishing literary pedigree and more often than not feel almost too pompous in their achievements. While this might've worked perfectly for the nihilist seducers of Dangerous Liaisons it truly feels misguided in A Dangerous Method, a film that like Liaisons and Atonement, features a fascinating menage a trois through which the author explores the darkest desires of the human mind.
The issue is that this time around, the characters are real life people and quite notorious for that matter. The plot centers on the relationship between Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) and her psychoanalysts: Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen). Spielrein goes from being Jung's patient, to becoming his mistress which leads to melodramatic consequences and her eventual treatment with Freud.
For decades, David Cronenberg has been one of the most consistent researchers of what moves human sexuality and what desire consists of. It makes sense then that he would try to get to the essence of it by studying the men who obsessed over this as much as he did.
If Cronenebrg movies prove something is that the erotic element can be completely removed from intercourse and added to different elements. "Pleasure is never simple" adds one of the characters in this movie and the truth is that Cronenberg has been much more successful in exploring the complicated turns of sexuality in movies like Crash and even A History of Violence which successfully links the thrill of crime with the jolt achieved during an orgasm.
The film feels too polished for the subject it explores and its intellectualism is too often stalled by Hampton's excessive theatricality (the screenplay was based on his eponymous play). Perhaps the problem is that the movie is stuck between wanting to be a biopic and an auterist essay. Needless to say so, the cast is truly extraordinary with Mortensen creating a Freud for the ages. The actor infuses the famed analyst with his knack for knowing more about a character than he lets the audience knows. Watching his subtly passionate attempt to convince Jung of his beliefs is a true joy to watch and considering he could've spent the movie smoking cigars and mimicking Freud, his performance taps into something far more extraordinary.
The movie however owes itself to Knightley's brilliant work who as Spielrein gives the best performance of her career. Allowing her body to transform itself as Sabina endures the pain of her disorder, the actress disappears only to then blossom as her character finds new hope through intellectual development.

Grades
Young Adult ***
A Dangerous Method ***

Swoon (Russian Style).

Won't Anna Karenina be absolutely breathtaking?

Style Sunday.

*drools* 

I.

KNOW.

RIGHT.

This Dior clad beauty and more were discussed by Nathaniel and I over at The Film Experience.

Go read it now!

"What I wouldn't give to have tired of you?"

Last Night ***

Director: Massy Tadjedin

Cast: Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Eva Mendes, Guillaume Canet

Stephanie Romanov, Daniel Eric Gold

When did Keira Knightley become such a fascinating actress? Her performance in Last Night sneaks up on you in completely unexpected ways, proving that she's become one to watch. In the film she plays Joanna Reed, a modestly successful, but insecure writer married to real estate agent Michael (Worthington). Minutes into the running time the young couple arrive at a party where Joanna meets Michael's new coworker, the voluptuous Laura (Mendes), she watches her husband and this woman together and becomes convinced that they are having an affair.

Back home they engage in a discussion where she tries to squeeze the truth out of her husband, however she wants to hear the truth she thinks is real.

Massy Tadjedin's Last Night then slowly begins to show its true colors, it's not a standard drama in how it follows a chronological order, instead it's more of an exploration of what shapes our lives as adults and an oneiric study of what exactly constitutes love after marriage.

Some scenes are insterspersed with other scenes to highlight specific passages or to make us doubt what we are watching. This happens mostly in latter scenes where Joanna goes out with former lover Alex (Canet) while her husband is away on a business trip with Laura.

Director Tadjedin may not always be subtle, in fact some of these bits are enough to make your eyes roll as we can tell that she does indeed like some characters more than others and there are some stories she wished she'd pursued more.

Why then does she seem to punish some of the characters by condemning them to lives they obviously do not want? The truth is that the director faces these truths as absolute and wonders why have we created the need to adjust ourselves to the unwanted?

Last Night goes beyond being a Closer redux about how adults in romantic relationships hurt the hell out of each other and turns into a clever questioning of the power of love. Notice how she quietly reveals her interest in discovering whether two loves can live within the same heart. It's fortunate for the audience that she gives Knightley a real chance to show her chops and it's her character that haunts us the most after the movie ends (the last two minutes are a thing of real beauty).

To be fair though, everyone in the cast is superb, Worthington tries to imprint his character with a bit of mystery and turns out delivering a performance of troubled feelings, Canet has to do little more than smile to make us woo and wish we could leave our entire lives for him and surprisingly Mendes turns in some stunning, affecting work as the femme fatale who might not be one at all.

Last Night is a delightful reminder that movies about adults don't need to have screenplay gimmicks in order to catch our attention, this film, like having too much wine leaves you lingering on a cloud of fuzzy guilt and craving for more the following night.

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.

Unlike the rest of the planet I don't want to have Ryan Gosling's babies but I'm loving the old-school masculinity he brings to this new poster for Drive.

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn who won the mise-en-scene prize at Cannes the film is a throwback to B movies and macho films so the poster embodies this effectively. Gotta love the unashamedly tacky pink font and Gosling's dirty look. I wasn't a fan of Refn's last film but this one seems quite promising.

Is this really the best they could come up with? They should've at least tried to do something like the cup and two faces psych trick. This is just so blah.

Kudos to whoever decided Keira Knightley's delicate frame looked so big it seems she can kick Viggo and Fassy's asses.

What's your take on these? Crazy to see Keira kick some Freudian ass?

Never Let Me Go ***½

Director: Mark Romanek

Cast: Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley

Andrea Riseborough, Sally Hawkins, Charlotte Rampling

Never Let Me Go begins with a title card that reveals we're about to take a trip to a past that never existed. One where human beings had finally found a way to cure disease and life expectancy had grown to 100 years.

This past also meant a different route had been taken and some had obviously suffered; however, we almost immediately understand that this isn't an exploration of the ethical rules and alternate history that shaped this events but merely a snapshot of a few lives trapped in it.

The scene then changes to Hailsham school, a seemingly idyllic boarding school where quite simply, clones were raised to donate organs during their adulthood.

Twenty-nine year old Kathy (Mulligan) narrates her own story, first within the confines of Hailsham and later in the "outer world". We see how as a child (played seamlessly by Isobel Meikle-Small) she develops a crush on the introverted Tommy (Charlie Rowe) and how, after they learn about the nature of their existence (in a perfect scene with a devastating Hawkes), their lives only seem to take a minor twist, as Kathy's friend Ruth (Knightley) begins a romantic relationship with Tommy.

Why the plot focuses more on the friends and not the secret they've just learned about their fates is one of the many things that make this such an enigmatically, beautiful piece.
Director Mark Romanek shoots Alex Garland's screenplay (based on Kazuo Ishiguro's novel) with the utmost trust in that there is an entire universe contained in what we are not seeing.
The matter of fact-ness with which these young people embrace the source of their existence is so unromantic that we are forced to wonder if we shouldn't in fact envy them, for they have already solved dilemmas that have plagued human kind since its start?
Where are we going? Where do we come from? Why are we here? Because of Romanek's precise hand and elegant formalism we see the characters' reactions as something that just couldn't have been any other way. These people have not been raised in the same way the rest of society was.

This makes it absolutely fascinating to watch as they try to fit in the world they only know through horror stories and eventually through duty. The cast does a terrific job in creating all these subtleties that don't entirely give them away but help establish the fact that they aren't as the others.
Knightley for example, seems to always hesitate before she does something. This hesitation is minimal and the actress disguises it beautifully giving us just enough. The plot may sometimes try to turn her into a villainous creature, or an antagonist to be more precise but because of the actress' committal to the role we see that this is just her nature.

Same with Garfield, whose contained performance doesn't really scream "romantic lead" but his quiet grace makes for something irresistible in the context.

In one of their best scenes together we see Tommy and Ruth have sex, as she acts like someone she must've seen on a movie, he covers his face unsure as to how he should be acting.
It's strange and somewhat off-putting that the filmmakers never really try to make us "understand" what's going on. We get a grasp that there's an entire hierarchy at work and that there must be harrowing stories to be told about these clones, yet by choosing to concentrate on these three characters we are being made part of the society that's beyond Hailsham.

As Ruth, Kathy and Tommy begin to get entangled in their very own way of love and survival, and the mood becomes more quietly moving and not macabre, we realize that this isn't a film about clones, it's a metaphor about existence itself.

Therefore Ishiguro, Garland and Romanek have gotten away with telling us the story about our own existences and making us believe we're watching something completely external. Once we begin to think about this, we are moved to explore if there is anything really natural about the things around us.
Is love, for example, a game we invent just to keep ourselves entertained while we await our demise? Do we not too sometimes stop fighting against a fate we have determined has been written in stone for us?

The movie's themes are embodied beautifully by Carey Mulligan's performance. Through her simple performance we realize that the fact she accepts her fate with such resignation makes the film's events all the more heartbreaking.

And it's ironic that the film should even result moving when everything about it is so sterile and distant.

Then it clicks on us, nothing in the movie is heartfelt because how could it be? When a heart is something that can be so easily extracted from us at any time.

Style Sunday.

I swear it's not my intention to have Carey Mulligan in every edition of this series but the girl sure can dress. She's the epitome of effortlessness cool in this Vionett tunic with a risky pattern that might've made other women look like a hippie art teacher from New Mexico.
The hair and makeup are flawless.


Keira Knightley is a complete vision in this simple Chanel dress. At first glance nothing seems entirely interesting about this look and some might say the creamy color washes Keira's pale complexion but look closer and you will notice hundreds of little pears holding the whole thing together.
For those who think pearls work better until you're an older lady this look kicks that conception right in the butt. The heavy black shoes to anchor the entire look are a stroke of genius!

What do you guys think about these two?

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.


The teaser was already a bit disappointing (with the whole I want to be Shrek vibe) and now is it just me or does the poster for Tangled seem completely icky?
All that hair! That conspicuous opening! It would've been a more appropriate poster for something like Teeth maybe...


Thanks to this magnificent new poster for Never Let Me Go I am now desperate to read the novel (best of the decade! according to the elegant quote from Time magazine)
Movie posters usually go one of two ways lately: creating specific concepts or terrible Photoshopping.
Rarely do we get movie stills as part of the campaign (I'm assuming this is a movie still by the way) and this one in particular has so much to say!
The beauty of the moment captured is that we don't know whether the characters are running to something or from something.
When to that you add the refreshingly odd sense of nostalgia brought by the peer and that genius stroke of typography genius in the "go" and we have something that promises more than I'd expected.
Will it deliver?

Seen anything good at your theater lobbies lately?

The Duchess **1/2

Director: Saul Dibb
Cast: Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes
Hayley Atwell, Dominic Cooper, Charlotte Rampling

In the year 1774 Georgiana Spencer (Knightley) was married to William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire (Fiennes).
After becoming Duchess, Georgiana became one of the most influential women of her time. She was a style and fashion icon who also took political matters at hand, despite the fact that women weren't allowed to vote, and supported the American Revolution among other controversial causes.
She also had to endure her husband's distance as he demanded a male heir from her, his constant infidelities and eventually even had to acknowledge his mistress, Lady Bess Foster (Atwell), as part of their family.
Georgiana eventually took a lover as well: Earl of Grey, and eventual Prime Minister and famous tea flavor, Charles (Cooper). If this all rings a bell it must be added that Georgiana was Lady Diana Spencer's great-great-great-great aunt.
The genealogical link invites us to wonder if the film's intention is to point out the Spencers bad luck with royal marriages, lead us to sigh about how little has changed in the role of women or just serve as an E! True Hollywood Story, two centuries in the making.
In what might be as close to a Princess Di biopic as we're getting any time soon, Dibb's adaptation of Amanda Foreman's biographic novel, is a gorgeously designed, fascinating, albeit aimless, portrait of womanhood in both the realms of royalty and society.
Since the characters are at the service of a director and a screenplay who have no real idea what is it they want to say, it's amazing how they deliver such amazing performances.
Knightley, who just keeps getting better and better, infuses Georgiana with a wit and charm beyond her time.
Barely a child when the film starts, by the conclusion she has evolved into a woman who's lived through more than what is expected of someone her age. The screenplay suggests that she was highly effective as a political advocate, but the only evidence we get of this is in the defiance Knightley gives Georgiana.
The film rarely shows us episodes outside her immediate space (Knightley is featured in almost every scene) and because of this our impressions of the character rely on some title cards, other characters' dialogues and mostly Knightley who perhaps doesn't need external help to make us perceive what everyone else saw in the Duchess.
Perhaps the most affecting quality about her character is her palpant disappointment when she realizes that her fairy tale is over. "Does he love me?" she asks to her mother (Rampling) after she learns of her bethrotal. The glow in her eyes as painful as her neglect to wonder if she loves him back.
Her change can be detected years later when she cynically agrees "how foolish of me to think I could converse with my husband", with this Knightley disappears as Georgiana emerges.
Atwell is wonderful as Lady Bess, because in all her Pompadour glory she makes it impossible for us to completely hate her, somehow we even begin to understand her choices.
But perhaps the character that stays with you the most is the Duke. The person we were supposed to see as a monster becomes in Fiennes expert hands as much a tragic figure as the heroine.
At film's start the Duke barely says a word and moves in a predatory way. During the honeymoon scene as he disrobes his wife he wonders why are their clothes so complicated. When she suggests that fashion is the only way left for women to express themselves something in his eyes suggests a sudden sadism in getting rid of them and just getting to the act.
We later begin to grasp the fact that his monstruosity was in fact that of a complete generation in which men were brought up to believe in mysogyny (with much support from the women themselves it must be said).
Fiennes mannerisms let us see that this is a man who finds it easier to express love to his dogs than to creatures he grew up thinking were meant to procreate.
"I love you in the way I understand love" he says to his wife and in one moment of revelation the film turns upside down making us wonder how much, if, either of them are to blame for the unhappiness in their lives.
Fiennes barely needs to speak to provide a touching portrait of why the political currents mentioned through the film are needed in the world.
Their characters are reminders of the need to evolve, which is why it's sad that "The Duchess" tries so hard to be so much at once without being anything.
When Georgiana attends the theater, a group of men sketch her picture which later appears in the papers as if they were winking "Hello" and "People" tabloid-ness from the screen.
We see little of what it is that made these people who they were and in the end the film never does justice to the historical people and to the absolutely brilliant actors playing them.

The Edge of Love **

Director: John Maybury
Cast: Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Cillian Murphy, Matthew Rhys

Loosely inspired on events in the life of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (Rhys), "The Edge of Love" is a period romance striving hard to become this year's literary masterpiece, specifically "Atonement" (hell, even their ad campaign compares itself to Joe Wright's film).
It opens in London during the Blitz were the luscious singer Vera Phillips (Knightley) performs in an underground venue, almost making people oblivious to the horrors going up above them. She runs into Thomas at a bar after a decade long absence. The poet was Vera's first love and as she starts to rekindle her feelings for him she meets his wife Caitlin (Miller).
Despite their inherent rivalry the trio begins a strange relationship, even moving in together, until Vera begins receiving the attentions of dashing soldier William Killick (Murphy) who she consequently marries to the disapproval of Thomas and without being convinced she really loves him.
William then is sent to combat, leaving his wife behind as she battles between who is it she really loves, with the hopes she chooses him in the end.
What should've been a traditional romantic plot is turned by director Maybury into a stale essay of the consequences of war and an unflattering portrait of Thomas.
Most of the events seem like excuses for cinematographer Jonathan Freeman to lens everything in a stunningly beautiful light; and truly who are we to complain when everything looks as if a vintage postcard had come to life?
But while the actors look at their best, the characters remain drained of any real emotion and motivation.
This happens because most of the plot turns around two notions: first that Thomas exudes such charm and is so irresistible that he can inspire two smart women to live in platonic poligamy while truth is that Rhys' performance is so uninspired that he can't even pass off as even talented for most of the film, much less impossible to live without, and we're supposed to buy his mad genius just because others say it's there. The second notion is that William is such a disposable character that the simple hope of an "I love you" can be the engine for his life.
In a way Thomas is a modern character, extracted from a contemporary film while William plays out like a Robert Taylor character of the era.
And it's truly a shame that the film fails to involve us emotionally because the women are exquisite. Miller had never been so visceral and rapturous, she almost disappears into Caitlin and in some demanding scenes she underplays her every move.
Knightley on the other side just keeps on growing as a performer, here she sings, beautifully (Angelo Badalamenti's compositions suit her perfectly) and during one key moment after an air strike hits London, she goes from frightened to sensual (and convinces you that she must be cast in a musical soon!).
The rest of the film has her rehashing her role from "Atonement", especially every time she whispers that "come back to me" line; but near the end you realize her character has turned into a full blown woman.
Maybury's debut film was also a free spirited take on the life of a celebrated artist, they both were visually daring and had some remarkable performances, but were emotionally drained.
It's sad and disappointing that "The Edge of Love" barely stays on the sidelines.

A Different Shade of Keira.