The grind of the New York Film Festival is wearing on me,
and we’re not even at the midway point. There are still new films to see from
the likes of James Gray, Jim Jarmusch, Claire Denis and, uh, Ben Stiller, so
perhaps there’s excitement on the horizon. But I’d be lying if I said this
wasn’t a disappointing slate so far, with a couple of genuine bad films in the
mix. Of course, maybe that’s my fault – twice I bailed on “Norte, The End Of
History,” intimidated by the four hour plus (plus!) runtime and the fact that
it was Lav Diaz’s (who?) twelfth, and shortest (!) film. The wonderful thing
about being a film buff is that everyone has blind spots, there are no such
thing as completists. Maybe one day I’ll look up Diaz’ other work. The New York
Film Festival already tests me when I mistake “319 minutes” for “three hours
and nineteen minutes,” as I did with Olivier Assayas’ “Carlos” a couple of
years back. I love movies, but sometimes I don’t really like vanishing from the
physical world for four hours. Maybe with a friend, but, how many other people
do you know willing to put Lav Diaz on their to-do list?
That same sort of thinking is, in a reductive sense, what
stuffs the theater for the premiere of “Captain Phillips,” a tense pirate
thriller from Paul Greengrass. It’s also the sort that allows Tom Hanks to
uncharacteristically fire back at the press, as he did during the post-film q+a.
When asked about preparing for the role (or some similarly boilerplate
question), he talked about meeting the real Captain Phillips, and compared his
more sensitive, inquisitive style of investigating the subject to the
indelicate way media jerks poke and prod at their subjects with the same
stupid, insipid inquiries. There was a brief heckling from the crowd, and Hanks
fired back in his usually charming, conflict-deflating way, but it was an
interesting set of teeth from the star, perhaps in response to yet another
critic cave troll in the audience loudly demanding (not asking) that the people
on-stage speak louder into their microphones. Hanks was completely in the
right, of course, but you can tell some folks grumbled that this major movie
star had reminded them that their jobs are secondary to whatever Lav Diaz is
doing.
Whatever the case, Hanks has a right to be judgy, as he
hacks and wheezes through “Captain Phillips,” being beaten and dragged
throughout the runtime. Greengrass is a sentimentalist in spite of his verite
approach, so he can never help giving his lead characters a little fight, and
Hanks’ Phillips refuses to be a puppet to these gangly Somali pirates who take
over his cargo ship. And yeah, it’s tense and suspenseful and Greengrass knows
how to tell a story through this action-chaos method that he’s perfected, but
so what? How many movies can Greengrass make where the white American has to
battle the dark-skinned foreigner? He would be Hollywood’s red-state secret
weapon if he hadn’t blown $140 million on “Green Zone,” which pretended that
the general public would care that we went to war in the Middle East under
false pretense. When he makes “United 93,” it’s interesting. When he gives the
defense department a freebie with the glamorous, politically-cynical “Bourne”
films, its understandable escapism. What do we call it now, where Phillips
leads a primarily white crew (black crew members have no dialogue) against the blackest
men of any mainstream Hollywood release this year? What am I saying? I’m just
saying that you start to wonder about this Greengrass character. That’s all.
For now.
To say “Inside Llewyn Davis” is “minor Coen” is dismissive
and obnoxious as hell. But the reason the phrase keeps creeping up is that the
brothers are masters at finding the grace in nothingness, in reaching out into
the void and finding out that there’s no central meaning, there’s no movie-like
contrivance connecting everything. Sometimes, Tommy Lee Jones doesn’t walk into
that bloodbath, and sometimes The Dude doesn’t come close to solving the
mystery. Such is the case with Davis, the title character played by Oscar
Isaac. Clearly, he’s tremendously talented; Isaac plays the songs himself,
which is admittedly impressive. But this sixties-era folk singer isn’t going to
be rewarded for his skills or his stubbornness. Folk music isn’t even viable
during this era, as one such impresario hears Davis play (impressively) and
succinctly tells him, “I see no money in this.”