Exit Man-Child

I watched Phantom Thread a few days ago. In the theatre! The last film I watched in the theatre was probably Nil Batte Sannata, but this was Daniel Day-Lewis' last, so I had to watch it on a big screen, etc etc is why I put myself through all that going to a mall to watch a film entails.

(That was a complicated sentence. I will keep it simple for the rest of this post).

In this interview with middle school girls, Anderson says that he wanted to work with Day-Lewis again, and so over the course of a few months, the two of them sat together and figured out the story they wanted to tell.

So here's the thing: this story of a grown man surrounded by women propping him up in all things great and small is the role Daniel Day-Lewis wanted to be his last, before he retires forever from cinema.

That is even more disappointing than the film itself.

I'm not going over the plot. It involves clothes, Day-Lewis looking quite hot, the women he dresses not so, and a weird twist in the tale in the last ten minutes that was - how shall I put it? - very difficult to stomach.

You'd think that a film where most of the speaking roles belong to women, where in fact, there are more named women characters than men, would be a good thing. Nope. Not if, in all their actions, the needs of this great big man-child are the only important thing.

He needs silence at the breakfast table. Scrape butter too loudly, crunch toast, pour tea from an unacceptable height, tell him he's expected to attend a wedding, and the man's a nervous wreck, his day ruined and his inspiration in shreds. He asks a woman out and talks about his dead mother the entire time. Worse: he removes her make up at a restaurant because that's how he likes to see her. 

And so creepy the way his sister grooms this woman he brings home to be his muse (someone said on twitter, men having muses is nothing more than a way to conceal an erection beneath an education): how softly she should eat, how she must not introduce the slightest variation in his routine, etc etc.

I think this is supposed to signify the man's fragile genius. 

Poor Daniel Day-Lewis. If he needs to remove every male character from the script (bar one doctor whom his character tells to fuck off), if he needs to play a man who has to have women mother him and protect him and stand like mannequins around him, and be jealous but not so jealous that they impinge on his life in any meaningful way, all in order to garner a final Oscar nomination, then that's just pathetic.

If he wins, I think I will be capable of one more level of disappointment. (Personally, I think Timothee Chalamet should win in this category).

(I had more to say but now I'm just bored with how silly this film is. Now that this is out my system, I hope I will stop saying, "Another thing about Phantom Thread' to myself at odd moments during the day.)

Artist, War Horse, meh

Just back from watching The Artist and must confess to deep disappointment. And I say this not only because it's up for all those Oscars and has swept all the other awards until now into its little kitty. What was the fuss about, really?

Yeah, it has clever, nice tips of the hat to Sunset Boulevard ("I never loved you, Norma") and Singin' on the Rain, and ok, I get that the dog is cute, but dear god, what a waste of an opportunity! It's even reasonably clever in the use of limited sync sound, and the moments when it chooses to be self-referential ("I won't speak. I won't say a word" is the very first inter title, very appropriately) such as the restaurant scene when Miller - her back to Valentine - is being interviewed. Despite all that, it's a dull film.

I think the reason it failed is because it looks for inspiration and pays homage to a very self-conscious cinema at the adolescence of the sound era that harks back to its own (very-recent) history when it should have been looking to silent cinema. It had Murnau, Stroheim, Keaton (and yes, Harold Lloyd) to drawn on and it ignored all of them in favour of - what? No, really, what? - nothing very special.

Not even the gag that averted the suicide at the end raised a laugh in the audience (though I'll concede there were some chuckles) and that told me everything I needed to know. That laugh was supposed to be the post-climactic tension-relieving laughter and the hall was mostly silent. It's not that the audience didn't get it; it's that they clearly didn't care enough to need the relief of laughter afterwards.

Imagine the same scene in the hands of Griffith.

There were other annoying things about the film: Miller's inspired solution to the problem of a silent film star making it in the new world was not just implausible, it was also unbelievably providential. And the idea came to her...how? We are given no clue. And the nice, feudal driver who refuses to be sacked and turns up every time afterwards when he's needed most? Sickening. Even Valentine's shadow had a more independent existence.

I want to say, In those days we had films.

This was just a fast-fading nap-time dream.

*

I realise this might be the time to get War Horse out of the way. What can I say? It was vintage Spielberg. The kid loved it, it hit all the emotional and plot arcs we're told are necessary. It wrung my son's heart and elated him and I suppose that's a good thing. It was this generation's International Velvet.

Me, I was mostly unmoved. Actually, strike that. All those blood-red susets (which, as Baradwaj Rangan rightly pointed out, were pure Gone With the Wind) and backlit trenches that made war and its aftermath look immensely beautiful, made me ill. And all those good people! I mean, it makes you ask how there ever was a war when everyone was so fucking nice all the time.

For me, again, meh. (Though the kid loved the film).

"mysterious adventures in the country of language"

France's left-wing Liberation newspaper suggests Hollywood may be better off if Godard stays away from the ceremony. "Godard's speeches have become mysterious adventures in the country of language," it says. "It would be interesting to measure their effects on the American public."

So apparently Godard's got the letter telling him he's being given an honorary Oscar, but he won't say anything except a thank you to inquisitive reporters. His partner asks, "Would you go all that way just for a bit of metal?"

Apparently many people would, absurd though it sounds when she puts it that way.

Actually, they should send someone over like they did with Ray. Maybe Isabelle Huppert - with Uncle Oscar. And while JLG refuses to so much as twitch the curtains to see what's happening outside, they chould have Herzog follow Huppert around the house, filming the attempt to give the man his statuette. Herzog can whisper confidentially to the camera as Huppert stalks around and yells incomprehensible obscenities at the blank windows; maybe Depardieu can make a short appearance just to play the violin in Herzog's face and Herzog can turn around, pull out a gun and threaten to shoot Depardieu or himself, before being overcome with nostalgia. Godard can then put up cut out signs in his window telling people to kindly fuck off.

All this can then be screened at the Oscars to a standing ovation.