The Weekly Gravy #55

The Card Counter (2021) – ***½

Even with Oscar Isaac patiently explaining the mathematics behind counting cards in blackjack, or the technical intricacies of poker, I left The Card Counter no wiser about such matters than when I took my seat in the theater. But I don’t suppose it really matters whether or not you know how what a “river” in poker is, as long as you believe that William Tell (Isaac) knows all the tricks, knows just how far he can push his luck before he needs to gather his chips, cash in, and move on to the next casino. Indeed, before the film is over you believe that William could do just about anything he set his mind to, and that might be part of why he tries so hard to keep a low profile in the first place.

Of course, his name isn’t exactly William Tell, but Tillich, a fact we learn fairly early on, just as we learn that he spent eight and a half years in prison for torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. He knows there’s no justification for what he did. And then he meets Cirk (Tye Sheridan), whose father was also sent to prison for what happened at Abu Ghraib, after which he descended into violence and death. Cirk isn’t trying to justify what happened either, he just knows that the real masterminds behind “enhanced interrogation” got away scot-free, men like John Gordo (Willem Dafoe), who now works as a security consultant.

I should note that, before meeting Cirk, William was approached by La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), a manager of gamblers who wants to find him a sponsor for high-stakes poker. William initially demurs because he prefers to avoid publicity, but after Cirk reveals that he wants to abduct Gordo and give him just desserts, William takes La Linda up on her offer, and as he plays the poker circuit, the three of them form something of a bond, as we learn more about William’s past, La Linda’s feelings for him, and Cirk’s fundamental immaturity.

Somewhere around this point I thought I’d figured out where the film was heading. But without giving too much away, it takes a turn towards the end which doesn’t really work, less because of what happens than because of how abrupt and underdeveloped the final scenes feel. I get that writer-director Paul Schrader probably wanted to subvert our expectations a bit, especially since he was drawing pretty heavily on his own previous film, the fantastic First Reformed, but he just doesn’t quite pull it off.

Too bad, since the film is really, really good up until that point. Sure, First Reformed also had the protagonist sipping whisky while writing in his diary. Sure, the relationship between William and La Linda has at least a few parallels with the one between Ernst Toller and Mary Mensana. And sure, the film uses the journey of its ex-military protagonist to touch upon a serious issue (environmentalism there, the War on Terror here). By the same token, First Reformed feels a lot like the ecclesiastical flip-side of Taxi Driver.

But it works, because Schrader is so effective at depicting the dreary gaudiness of the casinos William passes through and the quiet, solitary life he leads, both as a director and a writer. It works because Isaac’s performance is so good, tightly controlled even when he’s showing his capacity for darkness, restrained without feeling artificial. It works because Haddish walks the line between vivacity and vulnerability, because Sheridan is so convincing as an immature young man who thinks he’s tough, yet never makes him unsympathetic. It works because the cinematography is spot-on, whether in the deadly artificiality of the casinos, the hallways of Abu Ghraib (shot with an ultra-wide lens that makes for really disorienting imagery), or a fantastical light-garden William and La Linda visit.

It works because of the production design (William has a habit of turning his motel rooms into prison cells by wrapping everything in cloth), the score (eerie and moody, with some very good original songs), and the ways in which it handles themes of guilt, responsibility, friendship, and human connection. It works until it doesn’t, and that’s what keeps it from inching into the realm of greatness. More’s the pity.

Now if Schrader could only stop shooting his mouth off on social media and let his films do the talking…

Score: 86

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) – ****

When I first saw this film, five years ago, I was recovering from hernia surgery and taking hydrocodone for the pain. Now, George and Martha and Nick and Honey may spend the whole film medicating themselves with liquor (to an almost medically impossible degree), but that’s no way to watch them, no way to appreciate the acting or the writing or the filmmaking. Going back to it, quite alert, I was able to appreciate all of it, even more than I expected to, for I now see that this is not just a great film, but one of the greatest, with some of the greatest performances in all of American cinema, playing a smart adaptation of a brilliant play.

It’s fitting that I rewatched this so soon after rewatching Duck Soup; the wisecracks and recriminations here, especially from George, fly as fast and furious as those the Marxes, especially Groucho, hurl at their unsuspecting victims. And much of it is incredibly funny (“Martha, will you show her where we keep the, uh, euphemism?’), making us laugh even as we’re recoiling from the emotional warfare on display. But what we might recoil from most of all is the unnerving realization that George and Martha are so perfect for each other, so desperately need one another, and in their horrifying way, really do love each other.

You see it in the way they cling to each other, laughing at the beginning, exhausted at the end. You see it in the way they snark at Nick and Honey, turning their relative youth and naïveté into a punchline borne of their own age and bitterness. And you see it in the way their dynamic surges and recedes like waves on a beach, how even the most hateful insults are swept away by moments of smiling calm, followed by fresh recriminations. It’s hideous to contemplate, but they’re as perfectly matched a couple as ever shared a stage.

And what of Nick and Honey? Do they need each other so desperately? Can their marriage survive what this long drunken evening will stir up? It’s less clear because they’re less clear – we never actually hear Nick’s name said out loud, and “Honey” is presumably just a term of endearment – because their own marriage is built on greed (Nick wanting her father’s money) and illusion (Honey’s phantom pregnancy), because we never see their dynamic stripped so bare as George and Martha’s.

And oh, how much George and Martha bare before it’s all over. The facts may be hidden behind lies great and small, but the raw emotions at play are all too vivid. I’m tempted to conclude that, the obvious lies aside, George and Martha have done damn near nothing with their lives, so deep are their senses of self-loathing and regret. Martha has a monologue about her son towards the end, one so full of longing, so full of hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, that it’s positively heartrending.

Obviously, this film is a showcase for brilliant acting. Richard Burton is breathtakingly good as George, shifting between weariness and clownishness and viciousness without missing a step. And Elizabeth Taylor as Martha is so perfectly obnoxious at first and so effectively peels back her garish exterior to reveal the aching sadness underneath. But George Segal as Nick and Sandy Dennis as Honey are never overshadowed. Dennis finds the humor in Honey’s giddy drunkenness whilst keeping a firm grip on her humanity, and Segal, playing the most “normal” of the four characters, makes excellent use of his skill at playing smug peevishness. Taylor and Dennis won Oscars, while Burton and Segal were nominated and should’ve won (well, I don’t mind that Segal lost to Walter Matthau for The Fortune Cookie, but Burton should’ve beat Paul Scofield).

And it’s just as obviously a showcase for brilliant writing; I haven’t actually read Edward Albee’s play or seen it staged (George is one of my dream roles), but the dialogue is amazing throughout (well, I never much liked the line “some goddamn Warner Brothers epic,” but otherwise it’s near-perfect), and its grasp of human nature, of the way we treat one another, of the ways in which dreams turn into lies and how those lies grow until you must destroy them wholesale, is nothing short of astounding. Ernest Lehman’s adaptation helps break up the scenes and re-arrange them so that it never feels stagey. He should’ve won the Oscar as well (and the play would’ve won the Pulitzer, but the Pulitzer board rejected it).

But it’s less obviously a showcase for brilliant filmmaking, accounting for seven of the film’s amazing 13 Oscar nominations and three of its five wins. Mike Nichols makes one of the all-time great directorial debuts, keeping perfect pace with the shifting energies of the scenes and characters, showing the actors to their best advantage without letting them showboat. And in league with Haskell Wexler, who won the last Oscar for Black-and-White Cinematography, he captures the quiet beauty of a small college town at night as well as the restless energy of the gathering, mixing tracking shots, hand-held shots, close-ups, and more restrained compositions with a fine, subtle use of light.

Sam O’Steen’s editing keeps the pace and tone in careful balance, ensuring that the 130-minute running time never drags, Alex North’s sparingly used score is quite fine, especially the lovely guitar-and-strings theme which bookends the film, and the sound mixing keeps the frequently noisy conversation from overwhelming us, ensuring that the brilliant dialogue comes through crisp and clear. It also won Oscars, in the last year of the B&W/Color split, for Art Direction and Costume Design. The costumes are fine for what they are – Martha’s “chapel dress” and Honey’s huge fur coat are memorable – but the sets, namely George and Martha’s home, are very well done, with the clutter, the masses of books and papers, the pictures and prints on the wall, and the whole atmosphere of intellectual dowdiness ringing very true.

And of course, it was nominated for Best Picture, losing to A Man for All Seasons; a very good film, but this is a masterpiece. Really, it should say enough that a black-and-white film, set in the middle of the night, mostly in a rather drab house, about four people drinking and making each other miserable should end up the third-highest-grossing film of its year (yes, it stars Liz and Dick, but it made more than all of their joint vehicles save Cleopatra). And long after its language and subject matter has ceased to shock, its greatness remains undiminished.

Score: 98

Mogul Mowgli (2020) – ***½

Riz Ahmed plays a musician blindsided by a medical crisis at a crucial moment in his career. As he struggles to cope, he must consider the ramifications of a procedure which may be his only hope for regaining his old life, while at the same time contending with the future (or lack thereof) of his relationship with his girlfriend. And no, it’s not Sound of Metal, though I understand if you’re a bit confused.

See, where Ruben in Sound was a heavy metal drummer, Zaheer “Zed” Anwar is a rapper. Ruben, as far as we know, was an American, and Zed is an Englishman of Pakistani descent. Ruben was struck by a sudden loss of hearing, while Zed is struck by an auto-immune disease which causes muscle wasting. And Ruben sought cochlear implants (which were prohibitively expensive), while Zed reluctantly accepts stem-cell therapy. But that’s all on the surface.

More significantly, Sound is more focused on Ruben’s hearing loss and how he adapts to it, while Mowgli deals not only with Zed’s disease but his complex identity and how that manifests itself in his dreams and visions which may well be hallucinations, as well as in how he and his family approach his treatment. Sound is by far the more straight-forward film, while Mowgli plays around with reality and leans heavily upon cultural signifiers non-Pakistani/British viewers may not fully grasp.

Certainly I’m not entirely sure what the character of Tuba Tek Singh* (Jeff Mirza) represents; a spot of research tells me Toba Tek Singh is a region and city in Pakistan, and certainly Tuba (whose face is obscured by a veil of flowers) is some kind of personification of the conflict between Zed’s independent nature and the traditions his parents, especially his father Bashir (Alyy Khan), cling to. And glimpses of Bashir’s own perilous childhood journey, in a train filled with dead bodies (I knew from reading IndieWire’s review that this comes straight from history), are visually striking and affecting without quite connecting thematically.

(*Correction after consulting other reviews: the character’s name is Ghulab Mian.)

Indeed, the vividness of Bassam Tariq’s direction is, at times, at odds with the focus and clarity of the script he co-wrote with Ahmed. The film looks very good (Annika Summerson’s cinematography is excellent), sounds great, with a good score by Paul Corley and some really effective rapping in which Zed (and, perhaps, Ahmed himself) reckons with the question of just who he is, and how everyone else has an answer of their own. But it doesn’t always cohere into a satisfactory story, and by the end we’re at once impressed and a bit confused as to what it’s trying to say.

A very good performance from Ahmed helps; Zed can be frankly something of a jerk, and Ahmed’s performance makes him a believable one, even if his script doesn’t quite bridge the gap between his behavior and our understanding. The supporting cast is all solid, but the only who really stands out is Khan, who’s quite solid as the father who struggles with his son’s choices and how his own life turned out, but whose love for his son is never in doubt. Their bond is a touching one.

In the end, Sound is a great film and Mowgli only a very good one, largely because Sound has stronger acting and is the more accomplished piece of cinema. But aside from the sound design, it’s the less daring film, the less boldly personal one. Mowgli is a flawed, sometimes opaque film, but it’s rather fascinating in what it tries to do. See them both and appreciate how good an actor Ahmed can be – and his potential as a screenwriter on top of that.

Score: 82

High Noon (1952) – ****

In a sense, I’d been a fan of High Noon long before I actually saw it. When I was growing up, my father owned a wonderful CD-ROM called Cinemania, which gathered thousands of film reviews, articles on actors and filmmakers, and media related to the films in question – stills, dialogue, music, and even a few clips. And possibly my favorite clip was the sequence in High Noon where the clock ticks down the last minute or two to noon, Dmitri Tiomkin’s score ominously pounding away as we cut back and forth between Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) writing his will, the henchmen of his nemesis Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald) waiting for the noon train that’ll bring Miller, and the people of Hadleyville, all of whom, for various reasons, have left Kane to stand alone against Miller and his men. It’s a magnificent sequence, more than earning the film its Oscars for Editing and Score.

But I’d only seen the whole film once, and that nearly 20 years ago. And going back to it, I can see its faults more clearly; it can be heavy-handed in the way Stanley Kramer’s films often are (even if he was only the producer). Also, Carl Foreman’s script occasionally fudges things to focus on the points being made – Kane’s most rational reason for staying in Hadleyville and confronting Miller, that Miller and his men would pursue him and his bride Amy (Grace Kelly) even if they did leave town, is brought up early on and then ignored for the rest of the film. It’s a great film, but outside of the premise it’s not quite an all-timer, at least to me.

At the same time, I can also appreciate the ambiguities in Foreman’s script a lot more. On the surface, it may seem like the people of Hadleyville have failed Kane, that he is the out-and-out hero and they are passive in the face of Miller’s villainy. But Kane isn’t really such a purely heroic character. He’s stubborn, self-righteous, and far from universally popular in Hadleyville; we’re told many in the town believe he’s got a “comeuppance” due, Gillis the saloon owner (Larry Blake) takes bets on how Kane’ll fare against Miller (he’s convinced Kane will be dead within five minutes), and when he goes to the local church to raise a posse, the minister (Morgan Farley) chastises him for not attending regularly.

The line most used to promote the film was “the story of a man who was too proud to run.” But consider the various meanings of the word “pride.” Pride can mean a rational and healthy belief in the value of one’s self, but it can also mean an arrogant conviction in one’s infallibility and one’s superiority to others. Is Kane the only man of values in Hadleyville? Or is he paying the price for his own rigid character, his (justified) low opinion of his deputy Harvey Pell (Lloyd Bridges), and his possibly being stuck in the mindset of a Wild West marshal? One of his seeming allies, Mayor Henderson (Thomas Mitchell), praises his efforts in cleaning up Hadleyville, but worries that a gunfight between Kane and the Miller gang will damage the town’s reputation. Is he being cowardly or pragmatic?

I also better appreciated some of the secondary characters, like Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado), who has been a lover of Miller, Kane, and Pell (in that order), but who acts in her own best interest as the film progresses, proving herself a resourceful and self-possessed character at a time when Latina actresses were rarely accorded such roles. She actually won the Globe for Supporting Actress, but wasn’t even nominated for the Oscar. And I’d totally forgotten the character of the catty hotel clerk (Howland Chamberlain), who knows everyone’s business and isn’t the least bit cowed by Kane’s moral rectitude. His blithely insensitive comment to Amy that what happens at noon will be “quite a sight to see” is one of the film’s most darkly amusing moments.

It’s touches like these that rescue the film from its occasional lapses into blunt preachiness. Fred Zinnemann’s direction also helps a great deal, with the action scenes in particular having a rawness unusual for the time (the showdown is an excellent set-piece). And the use of the lovely Oscar-winning theme song, “High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me, O My Darling,” is spot-on from start to finish; the opening credits play out in silence except for the song itself, Tex Ritter’s drawling delivery and the soft drumming of the accompaniment making a starkly effective start to a film whose appeal lies partly in its stark simplicity – it famously takes place in real time, running a brisk 85 minutes, ending right after the final showdown is concluded. Floyd Crosby’s black-and-white cinematography only adds to the elemental effect of the story.

Ironically, it’s the film’s fourth Oscar I least agree with. Cooper does a very solid job as Kane, of course, showing his steadfastness alongside his frustrations and disillusionment with those around him. I just don’t quite see an award-worthy performance in what he does. I’m more impressed by Jurado’s quiet force of will and Bridges’ pathetic resentment, as well as the pragmatic cowardice of Otto Kruger as Judge Mettrick and the cynical weariness of Lon Chaney Jr. as Kane’s embittered mentor. Harry Morgan also makes a good impression in a rather brief role as perhaps the least honorable of Kane’s would-be deputies. Kelly is somewhat less impressive, but the role doesn’t give her much to work with.

High Noon got nominations for Picture, Director, and Screenplay (what’s now called Adapted Screenplay, even though the script was really original – Foreman’s script was found to have some similarities to the story “The Tin Star” and it was credited to avoid accusations of plagiarism), losing, respectively, to The Greatest Show on Earth (terrible choice), John Ford for The Quiet Man (iffy choice but Zinnemann would win the following year), and The Bad and the Beautiful (about as good a choice). It has certainly stood the test of time better than two of those films, and perhaps all three.

As I said, it’s not an unequivocally great film, but with its classic premise, fine craftsmanship, great theme song, and elements of ambiguity, it remains a must-see. The controversial final moment, where Kane tosses his badge on the ground, can be read in many ways, but I think of it as a mic-drop to cap off Kane’s accomplishments (with an assist from his wife, of course). It’s a great little moment, but to me nothing tops this, the sequence which long since fixed itself in my memory as one of the best in any Western:

Score: 89

Gojira/ゴジラ (1954) – ***

Godzilla: King of the Monsters! (1956) – ***

I decided to take part in Hooptober this year, and to start by meeting the requirement for “1 Kaiju or Kong Film (not the new Godzilla vs. Kong).” Well, I saw that film, I saw the original Kong last year, and I didn’t feel like devoting three hours to rewatching Peter Jackson’s version…so why not watch two films that combined are still shorter than Jackson’s Kong? Obviously, I’m speaking of the original Gojira and its Americanized re-edit, which gave Raymond Burr one of his first lead roles a year before Perry Mason secured his stardom. (If only he could’ve gotten Godzilla in a courtroom…)

Gojira might not have been the first giant-monster film by a long way, but it’s cast a shadow which extends to this very day, and introduced one of the most iconic non-anthropomorphic characters in film history, one who’s been antagonist, villain, and hero alike, sometimes within a single film. Here, he’s a figure of pure destructive menace, not necessarily destroying Tokyo out of malice, but paying back humanity’s efforts to destroy him tenfold. I can’t blame Toho for softening his edges in later films; as awesome as he is, you can’t really build a franchise on such a single-mindlessly vicious force of nature.

Nor could you likely make a franchise whose every entry was as thoroughly bleak as this. Neither version is especially upbeat, but Gojira in particular can be a harrowing experience, long before the tragic sacrifice which concludes it. The sheer ease with which Godzilla smashes buildings and infrastructure and the total inability of human weaponry to even slow him down is fundamentally horrifying. Some of the film’s best moments depict how the human characters accept their utter powerlessness: a mother tearfully tells her children that they’ll be joining their father soon (and we later see her dead); a newsman continues broadcasting, announcing his impending doom, until Godzilla topples the tower he’s on as if it were made of twigs.

To its credit, King of the Monsters! doesn’t soften the blow by much. Indeed, it opens with reporter Steve Martin (Burr) buried in the rubble of Tokyo and being taken to the hospital, after it which it flashes back to Godzilla’s first appearance at sea, which is where Gojira begins. And it proceeds to weave Martin into the story of the original, sometimes by carefully recreating the sets of the original film and having stand-ins costumed like the original actors (usually seen from behind) converse with Burr, or by having Burr watching the action from a suitable distance. He manages to tag along for most of the important scenes, and his news agency’s office in Tokyo gives him a fine vantage point for Godzilla’s raids.

And while the effect isn’t exactly seamless—especially the scenes with the stand-ins—I really have to give director Terry O. Morse a lot of credit for how well he did given the limitations of time and money he faced. The sets and costumes are really quite well matched, the sounds of the original film and the new footage are, all things considered, well balanced, and above all Morse shows a respect for the original film which shines through in how much of the original footage he does keep intact. Many of the best moments in the original are still there, although some are re-arranged and others shortened.

It might help that the original film isn’t a masterpiece by any stretch. The first two-thirds of Gojira can drag at times, especially when the focus is too much on the human characters, most of whom are frankly no more interesting than their counterparts in later kaiju pictures. Oh, Takashi Shimura gives Dr. Yamane some gravitas, and Akihiko Hirata hints at greater depths in Dr. Serizawa than the film bothers to explore, but Akira Takarada’s Ogata and Momoko Kōchi’s Emiko are pretty bland, and the writing fails to flesh out characters like Shinkichi (Toyoaki Suzuki), a native of Odo Island who hangs around for the rest of the film; it appears he was adopted by the Yamanes, but this isn’t made very clear. (For that matter, Burr’s performance isn’t especially memorable, but he’s adequate.)

The film works rather better when Godzilla is the center of attention, and starting with his second raid on Tokyo (the first is comparatively short), the film really kicks into a higher gear, with the attack itself being impressively apocalyptic, the aftermath heartrending – the sequence where the schoolchildren sing a peace hymn is quite beautifully understated – and Serizawa’s sacrifice, followed by Yamane’s fear that Godzilla was not the only one of his kind, makes for a sobering conclusion to the film. Even the destruction of Godzilla via Serizawa’s “Oxygen Destroyer” is more melancholy than cathartic. King of the Monsters! omits Yamane’s final lines and suggests the danger has decisively passed, but even that doesn’t make the ending a happy one.

Akira Ifukube’s score, at least, is very strong all the way through, from the iconic main theme to the almost satirical martial themes which accompany humanity’s efforts to understand and/or defeat Godzilla. And Eiji Tsurubaya’s effects, while rough in some particulars (there’s some pretty dodgy compositing), retain most of their original grandeur, Godzilla himself remaining a compelling force of nature – as long as he doesn’t look at the camera head-on. Then he looks pretty damned goofy. (But don’t tell him that, or he’ll use his atomic breath on you.) The sound effects, namely Godzilla’s roar, are comparably effective. By and large, these virtues are undimmed in King of the Monsters!.

Ishirō Honda may not have been as great a talent or as acclaimed a filmmaker as his friend Kurosawa (and they were friends – he would assist Kurosawa on some of his later films), but his work reached as wide an audience, if not wider, and his impact on the cinema of the fantastic is not to be downplayed. Shin Godzilla, 60 years later, would be the cream of the franchise by balancing the human and kaiju sides of the story better than just about any previous film had bothered to (and by finding the humor in the humans’ dithering over how to handle the threat), but without the trail Honda blazed, it would never have happened. And Morse did his bit as well.

Score: 73 (Gojira) 69 (Godzilla: King of the Monsters!)