THE GREAT BEAUTY (LA GRANDE BELLEZZA) 1/18/14

I HATED the pretentious film THE GREAT BEAUTY and won't write my usual review -  rather  I am jotting down some reflections...but had to allow my squirmy, moaning, muttering self - I am a terribly annoying movie partner to settle down. Judith who went with me had to literally kick my leg to shut me up. (She's allowed to do that by the way - we are such good friends.)

I am both perversely attracted and repelled by Germanic history, and the tragedy of my own German heritage - an internal antenna inside of me is finely tuned  to absolutist and monocratic proclamations - so the premise of the search for the glorification of the IDEAL of "GREAT BEAUTY" makes me tremble, bringing  me back to Aryanism.  But I tend to go there very quickly. I too am captivated by the rare blossoming of pulchritude (a word that sounds ugly) and often swivel my head to gaze at loveliness with appreciation, but that does not keep me from the day to day, often tedious business of going on with my life and work. The search for "Great Beauty" is no excuse to live an aimless life. Not in my book. The"romanticism" with the past is over-blown and "dangerously destructive."

This retro Fellini-esque film brought me back to the panting, excited girl who was seeing Italian and "foreign movies" in the Art Houses of the 60's; the enveloping darkness was erotic and mysterious;  those movies...oops "films"  were fresh and felt grounded in a magic that was new and enchanting, shattering the projected conventions of its period. THE GREAT BEAUTY was full of what some perceived as "deep", pithy, "philosophical" statements uttered by a jaded, older, seen-it-all, one book under his belt, AESTHETE whose boredom was YES boring.

Tony Servillo plays Jep Gambardella whose 65th birthday festivity  is an important pivotal moment in the film, which begins with his celebratory bacchanal. I did not mind  the director, Paolo Sorrentino's quoting other artists. Bernardo Bertolucci could touch upon the self-illusions that we need to construct for ourselves in order to survive, particularly in The Conformist brilliantly. But in this case the referencing was pure parody.  I was also uninterested in most of the characters, except the participants in an art performance dealing with Botox vignettes, addressing the fine touches we resort to in order to experience once again the ripe luster of youth.  Had the director conveyed the enthusiasts' "anguish" with greater conviction,  I might have been more sympathetic.

Undoubtedly I kept thinking about the Berlusconi years which continue today, but feel that someone in the future will do a film about that period of history more incisively. I bristled at the dialogue, the upper-class one-dimensional Fellini-but-not-Fellini eccentrics trying to find meaning through excess tiring me out to the point that my eyes were closing - opening only when  the one "echt" (interesting) person turns out to be a woman"dwarf" who actually revels in her daily ventures - a welcoming exception.

Many of my friends loved this movie - particularly those who have been to Rome. Nostalgia pins us to hours - even seconds from an earlier existence - when we can go back and shave off flakes of delicate memory. Even the cinematography felt predictable - shots of the moving clouds in the sky, the rippling water and of course views of the Coliseum - the site of great triumphs, brutality and decay - symbolic of the desultory lives of the film's self-conscious personalities.

ART REVIEW: ISA GENZKEN AT MOMA 1/17/14

Isa Genzken - reflections on her MOMA exhibition.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1345

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2008/may/isa-genzkens-proposals-for-ground-zero

The Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts. Founded by Walter Gropius with the idea of creating a "total" work of art in which all arts, including architecture, would eventually be brought together, it operated from 1919 to 1933 when the Nazis shut it down.

Isa Genzken’s stunningly moving retrospective both utilizes and repudiates Bauhaus legacy, brashly demonstrated by a seminal work entitled "Fuck The Bauhaus". Her retrospective surprised me with its range of experimental approaches, giving voice to a unique personal view of life – from the frottage oil paintings that looked like aerial views of bombed out/flattened terrains to the glitzy pedestal sculptures.

When I entered the Isa Genzken show at MOMA I was floored by the beauty of an installation depicting large formally pristine kayak-like shapes lying on the ground (“ellipsoids” and “hyperbolos”) – having no contact with one another, but hovering alongside each other with a do-not-touch-beauty that is rarified. Then I turn around and the aesthetic has shifted. I chuckle to see cement blocks anthropomorphized with T.V. antenna’s shooting out of their heads – inanimate becoming animate, making a point about materials – industrial materials in particular which often seem remote and inaccessible – but now like a magnet I approach what was once unapproachable.

The whole show is one of contradictions in the service of Isa Genzken’s singular humanity. She tosses off previous restraints, and I imagine her saying “fuck it – I NEED to do this!” And she does. Experimenting with materials – all kinds of detritus from the mechanical/manufactured culture to the throwaways of the consumer-merchandising sphere.

Scale dominates the show not only the physical but the psychological reaches of hierarchy and structure, often woven together - most evident in a group of building columns transmuting into intimate portraits of good friends – each subtly individualized. We are tossed around by architectural scale reduced to accessible mortal proportions.

American capitalistic scope and power is explored; the underbelly of shame and greed, the global reach of violence and mayhem are presented in assemblages utilizing whatever objects (toy cars, dolls, fast-food wrappers, etc.) and materials that are necessary to vent her anger at man’s inhumanity to man. These assemblages employ scale to great emotional effect ie: a building structure becomes larger because a small plastic tree is placed in the tableaux, delicate and fragile; a dreamlike ornament floats next to blood and terror. Installations are ripped from the headlines - the assault on a young schoolgirl being witnessed by her classmates’ cell phone pictures – a room reeking of horror and voyeurism.

Isa Genzken was in Manhattan on September 11, 2001 and there is a room devoted to her apocalyptic architectural proposals for Ground Zero that includes a Church, Disco, Hospital and Memorial Tower. Monuments that do not memorialize but instead bear witness to the act of destruction itself. In Car Park miniature cars are upended in a cage-like structure that is devoid of any possible movement or passage. The journey has ended.

Isa Genzken’s exhibition can be unabashedly gaudy wrapping the fragility and vulnerability of the human condition with the rubble and sediment of everyday objects. The result is painful and piercingly tender. The sadness enraptures.

HER 1/13/14

 We are in the future - a time when technology rules every aspect of our lives, and Director Spike Jonze’s HER catapults that idea to what some might consider an absurd place, but makes perfect sense when we consider our ever increasing umbilical ties to the computer in organizing and communicating with friends and strangers in our lives. This movie is billed as a comedy, but in essence it is a poetic story of searching for human contact with the very instrument that we rely on to contact other humans.

Joaquin Phoenix, an actor who keeps getting better and better, transforms himself into Theordore Twombly, a broken hearted reclusive man in the midst of a divorce, ironically working at a job as a “surrogate” love-letter writer, living a life of mournful resignation and withdrawal – coming home to an antiseptic apartment, playing video games and having the occasional Internet sex with strangers in the kooky way things are done in this “advanced “world; a universe that is not too different from the one we live in today, but the technological innovations are more all-encompassing.

The need to love and be loved, the need to listen and to be heard, the need to laugh and experience joy – face to face with another flesh and blood person – those are the existential issues posed in HER. Can a computer fulfill those needs? Can the disembodied voice, even that of the husky, resonant, sweet-toned Operating System Speaker Samantha  (articulated by Scarlett Johansson) whose electronic persona takes on a life of its own, programmed to be both empathetic and intuitive, can SHE become the idealized companion that Theodore dreams of? Can an “inter-species” relationship with a machine give us the emotional profundity and togetherness that we ache for in contrast to real, corporeal interactions which often involve compromise, and where selfishness over selflessness is often the norm.

The movie witnesses other couples – one being a neighbor played by Amy Adams (a lovely actor who chameleon-like is always a surprise) trying to contain the bursting seams of her own marriage. More and more of the characters in HER are seeking adequate substitutes for traditional alliances and Operating System “romances”  - whose basic nature is onanistic - might be a solution. Perhaps making love to oneself is the ultimate aphrodisiac?

This film felt fresh and original, like the winds of change transporting the way we interact with one another in our determined attempt to stave off isolation and find intimacy. Nowadays we spend less and less time on the phone - instead we text; we meet our friends in chat and hangout rooms; we have the increasing capacity to have a “fulfilling” virtual life - one that is populated with avatars and perpetuated by illusion. I was fascinated by the issues raised in HER, charmed by the enchanting magic of Samantha and Theodore’s “software system” courtship – no matter how much a chimera – at least it was “shared.”

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET 12/29/13

Martin Scorsese’s new film THE WOLF OF WALL STREET makes Gordon Gekko, famous for his “Greed is Good” speech in Oliver Stone's 1987 movie WALL STREET, look housebroken and tame by comparison. This wild and offensive cinematic experience is overly long, with a kinetic performance by Leonardo DiCaprio portraying the real life, shameless Jordan Belfort (who wrote the book from which this movie was made,) an individual who reminded me of an evangelical preacher - stirring up his congregation of hungry, amoral brokers to bilk working class people - seducing them to invest in fraudulent penny stock transactions. The rapid ascension to personal enrichment is made to seem smooth and simple.

While many people in the audience laughed at Jordan and his team’s gaming of the “suckers”, I wore a dour expression during the three hours of what some experienced as exhilarating entertainment. I despised Scorsese’s celebration of the perks of debauchery. Though some critics might see this film as a sharp indictment of the culture of Wall Street, I found the opposite to be true; there was absolutely no penetration of the surface capitalist veneer of grasping wealth at the expense of others. On the contrary, this movie plunges into the dank, muddy swamps of excrement and attempts to beguile us with the empty putrid spoils that are found there.

Jonah Hill is proving to be a good actor playing Jordan’s co-conspirator, Donnie Azoff - introducing him to the world of getting “high”, giving him the "gift" of hallucinatory release, ecstasy and eventual addiction. Also Matthew McConaughey in a very short cameo role, almost steals the show as Belfort ‘s early “mentor” in the business of exploiting corporate acquisitiveness. It was also good to see Rob Reiner as Jordan’s father, the one sane person in a room of “animals” all unfettering their “ids” in unison.

We witness the hackneyed culture of “the good life,” lots of drugs, (quaaludes  and cocaine,) constant screwing – women’s bodies were all of the typical  fantasy mold  - existing to satisfy the “boys” in both classic and extravagant positions. Despite the illusion of “extreme” dissipation, the unfeeling and repetitive acts of dissolution became tiresome, and that was one of my major problems with THE WOLF OF WALL STREET. Jordan Belfort is a cardboard,  onanistic testosterone driven, self-indulgent man who can motivate others with the passion of his own greed, but there is no sense of an actual person behind the beautiful clothes and cars that he surrounds himself with, and so frankly I don’t give a damn about him or his ilk.

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG 12/25/13

Peter Jackson, the wonderful maestro of the magical world of Middle Earth has now directed THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG, the second in a trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s great novel The Hobbit, prequel to The Lord of The Rings, and it is another big budget film, and more importantly to the studios and its investors, a huge successful moneymaker. Looking at the closing credits took at least 15 minutes – filled with name upon name of all those involved in the making of this spectacular “much of the same” and for me alas a yawning bore of a cinema experience.

My problem with the film is that it felt like last year’s model, the territory including the mood and “light” is visually too familiar. The landscape and special effects are panoramic, both natural and artificial – products of the digital age we live in - filled with fierce, snarling animals, teeth bared accompanying equally vicious and savage creatures called Orcs, along with gigantic spiders weaving viscous entangling webs, and a rapacious fire-breathing flying dragon, Smaug – of the title - who resides in The Lonely Mountain protecting his copious bounty of purloined coins and jewels.

Despite the inclusion of many of the same actors such as Gandalf the Wizard (a bit more bedraggled Ian McKellan) who can still conjure up enchanted divinations, and the beautiful Orlando Bloom, heroic as ever as an Elvin Prince, I felt confused by the addition of characters that were never in the original book. I can accept a director creating composites in their screenplays that diverge from the book, but this time it was at the expense of the wonderful  Bilbo Baggins (delightfully played by an often bewildered Martin Freeman,) the brave Hobbit who reluctantly again leads a band of 13 dwarves on their urgent quest to reclaim their homeland, the dwarf Kingdom of Erebor from the overlord of Middle Earth, Smaug, the green-eyed, molten bellied monstrosity, at any moment primed to expectorate flames annihilating all those who step into his realm. Unfortunately, Bilbo’s humanity disappears in the CGI effects, and for much of this barely under three-hour movie, he is an ancillary personage in the plot. One inclusion I did respond to was that of a female Elfin warrior Tauriel (lovely Evangeline Lilly,) who is excellent at her craft and refreshingly human, inserted into this practically all-male cast to attract female audiences, creating a whisper of a possible “interspecies” romance.

The most intriguing part of THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG addresses the age-old question of isolationism vs. interventionism in the face of dictatorial chieftains preparing to expand their territory. Absolute power vs. the exploited; tribal factions, self-interest, and ethnic purity with its accompanying disdain for the “other,” are still recognizable in our contemporary universe. The grab for world superiority aligned with the corrupting dominance of lucre is never-ending, and the fictional Middle Earth is no exception.

For some context - here is last year's review of the first of this Hobbit Trilogy:

THE HOBBIT 12/25/12

Very simply The Hobbit is a tale of a displaced people (in this case Dwarves) struggling to reclaim their Lonely Mountain Kingdom; in doing so wandering through the lands to reach that home. There are trials by fire and the "help of Wizards - one being Gandalf The Gray - subtly and merrily not-so-subtly played by the wonderful Ian McKellan and Galadriea the fairest and most powerful Maiden in Elve Land acted by the beautiful Cate Blanchett. I regretted not seeing more of her as she is such an aesthetic feast for my eyes.

That this adventure takes place in Middle Earth - prequel to The Lord of the Rings does not change a basic tale of mankind's journey and fight for their homeland. I found the early scenes in the Hobbitshire charmingly fairytale-ish and the dialogue between Bilbo Baggins ( a well-cast Martin Freeman) and Gandalf quite amusing and also touching on another universal theme - the quiet, unassuming home-body who goes on an adventure and steps out of his/her "ordinary" life and thereby changes him/herself and the "world."

I must admit to terrible boredom with fight scenes between goblins and various creatures on scary wolf-like animals and wait for those scenes to end-my only fascination with them is how they are choreographed.

The pivotal and most moving scene in the film is between the wonderful Andy Serkis as the schizophrenic Gollum (fighting between his dark and light side - evident by his eyes and facial expressions) and Bilbo who discovers more about his own character through this encounter.

This film also uses special effects, and all that CGI can do to make a small lovely book The Hobbit, into a 3 part movie - with all the money that it will rake in. 

AMERICAN HUSTLE 12/15/13

The con artist mentality – everyone is a sucker and the more you say NO to “marks”, the more they want what you are selling; conversely everyone likes to play the flim-flam game – that is the basic premise of David O. Russell’s goofy, madcap new film AMERICAN HUSTLE. And the Federal Government turns out to be the ultimate hustler in the “idealistic” pursuit of justice or “entrapment”– a thin line that bends and sways depending on the ambitions of prosecutors. The word “real” is used in the dialogue over and over and over again…disguise is the norm – being “real” involves a rare moment of trust and exposure of your inner self which always reeks of a putrid scent, barely camouflaged by the fragrance of nectar that we employ as a shield of body armor.

This convoluted, crazily complex movie originated “somewhat” with a true story-the ABSCAM scandal of the 1970’s. Understanding the source will help make sense of AMERICAN HUSTLE, giving you the opportunity to relax and be entertained, without being distracted trying to puzzle out what is going on. ABSCAM was an FBI sting operation in the late 1970s and early1980s, initially trafficking in stolen property but later converted to a public corruption investigation. The FBI hired Melvin Weinberg, a convicted con man, to help plan and conduct the operation. "Abscam" was the FBI codename for the undertaking, because it involved Abdul Enterprises, Ltd., as its front company, using an FBI employee posing as Karim Abdul Rahman, a fictional Middle Eastern sheikh bribing targeted government officials in videotaped meetings. Suffice it to say Atlantic City and its burgeoning casino industry were in the mix, ultimately leading to the conviction of a United States senator, six members of the House of Representatives, one member of the New Jersey State Senate, members of the Philadelphia City Council, and an inspector for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Christian Bale (terrific) still handsome after gaining over 40 lbs playing the beer bellied mastermind and proud-of-it charlatan, Irving Rosenfeld (based on Abscam’s Melvin Weinberg) who owns many dry-cleaning and window glass stores in the Bronx and Manhattan – all small time establishments fronting illegal loan activities. The movie opens with Irving fashioning his daily make-over on an elaborately funny and very serious comb-over – a source of pride and concealment before attending a cocktail party where he glances over and BAMMM sees a gorgeous Amy Adams who portrays the seductive, alabaster toned Sydney Prosser, and Irving Rosenfeld is hooked on the spot – meeting his match in brains and larceny. But this dame is a classy one, who has already “masked” her persona, and intuiting a fellow traveler responds to Christian Bale in kind.  A love story is in the making, despite the fact that Irving is married to a surprisingly, (for me) wonderfully, eccentric, often inept, and unsuitable (to his chosen profession) wife, Rosalyn played by Jennifer Lawrence, who might be the most authentic person in AMERICAN HUSTLE.

Adams and Bale join forces and become partners in crime, and business is soon flourishing until a wildly enterprising, tightly curled poodle cut, FBI undercover agent, Bradley Cooper (Richie DiMaso) shows up and snares them in his net.  From then on our heroes are working for the impulsive, righteously manic, Cooper in order to stay out of jail.

And then the fun begins! Larger and more intricate schemes including Abscam (Arab scam) loom ahead. Passionate avidity blossoms as a Mafioso - a critical bit part by a barely recognizable Robert De Niro - gets enmeshed into the conspiracy. Despite harebrained shenanigans and lots of heedless bungling, and plot twists, the underlying romance perseveres, complicated by Christian Bale’s hesitant equivocation concerning the age-old choice between wife and girlfriend. Another memorable character, a linchpin of the FBI shakedown operation - Jeremy Renner is startling as the oblivious, charismatic Mayor Carmine Polito of Camden NJ, complete with an Elvis-style mop of hair, and the only politician who actually cares and works for his constituents. He is the one genuinely tragic figure in this tale.

AMERICAN HUSTLE is a complicated mosaic of cynicism, questions of credibility, legitimacy and the art of illusion tempting desire. The energetic soundtrack weaves through each scene punctuating the activity; passages are episodic - some hilarious and others predictable. Absurdity nesting in farce can be sublime…those resplendent moments appear and vanish like the hypothesis of the film itself.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS 12/14/13

I was on my way home on an icy day in NYC, after going to art galleries in Chelsea, and decided to pop into a theater and see Joel and Ethan Coen’s INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS.  The wintery weather befitted the mood of this slow, strange, original movie  which left me with a lingering unexplainable feeling of pensive melancholy. I exited the cinema confused and stunned thinking of beginnings, endings, and repeated beginnings, a cycle which spins round and round – “ the times they are a-changin.” Afterwards, I took the bus home to my Greenwich Village apartment - deep in thought - the very locale where in 1961 an aspiring folk-singer named Llewyn Davis attempted to maintain his creative integrity in the face of commercial and personal ambush, often self-inflicted; youth is the period for reckless and self-righteous inquiry as well as outbursts of peevish anger and defiance.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS is a road trip with an expressive dark-eyed, bearded Oscar Issac playing the lead character – a young man stumbling along the path he has chosen for himself; a young man determinedly serious about being a folk singer who wants to be taken seriously; a young man who is careless and yet caring, a young man who is finding out about himself and his effect on others with haunting revelations from his past and present shaping future actions. Llewyn’s songs sung in a mellow, resonant voice (arranged by executive music producer T-Bone Burnett} are an audible measure of the depth of the complexity “inside” Llewyn Davis - more so than any of the dialogue he laconically utters.

Communication with family and friends are almost farcical if they were not so ruefully inadequate. The Coen brothers skirt the line of caricature and burlesque when depicting these incidents, lightening the acutely dispiriting ambiance. There are many weirdly compelling bit parts by actors that contribute to the surrealistic mood of the film. One example being John Goodman who is grotesquely sinister, playing a fellow traveler in the claustrophobic atmosphere of an automobile, spraying a frenzy of wildly bizarre dialogue during those staccato moments when he is not “nodding off” from whatever actions he is performing every time he staggers off to the bathroom.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS flows at a pace all its own. A cat by the name of Ulysses flits in and out of various scenes, referencing Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, alluding to the “trials” that our hero must go through to return a changed man to himself. This is also a movie about being an artist, hanging on to one’s own vision in the face of the marketable embrace of mediocrity. The sadness I felt when INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS ended was the bitter shroud of familiarity.