The Weekly Gravy #168

Passages (2023) – ***½

Liking Tomas is pretty much out of the question. He cheats on his husband Martin (with a woman, Agathe) and excitedly tells him about it the following day, soon breaks up with Martin and moves in with Agathe, but when Martin begins a relationship with another man, he weasels his way back into Martin’s life – and when Agathe becomes pregnant, gets the notion that they can form some kind of threesome. Add in his childish refusal to engage in any conversation where he doesn’t have the upper hand and his nerve-wracking indifference to boundaries, and you’ve got someone who can reasonably be called The Worst.

Perhaps the cleverest thing about Passages is that it doesn’t even try to make us like Tomas, or even to sell us on his charm. Your mileage may vary, but I didn’t find him as irresistible as Martin or Agathe seem to, and I doubt the film needs us to. Most of us, I think, have at least been drawn to people we know wouldn’t be good for us; if we’re lucky, we never let it get too far, but Martin and Agathe do, and the film encourages us to bring our experiences with toxic infatuation to the table to understand their choices.

And perhaps the central shortcoming of Passages, at least for me, is that we don’t. That’s not a knock against Franz Rogowski’s performance as Tomas (he just won the NYFCC award the other day), as he gives a sincere performance as an egotistical bastard who truly cannot put the needs of anyone else first. No wonder he’s a filmmaker; the first scene, where he harangues an actor over the way they walk down the stairs, establishes his controlling, demanding nature, and for the rest of the film he treats the world as his domain, resorting to pathetic appeals if demands won’t work, and sulking if he can’t get his way.

But because we don’t see much of the good times (again, I think, by design), we’re left shaking our heads at poor Martin’s manipulability and Agathe’s seeming naivete, hoping they’ll wise up and show Tomas the door. I won’t say whether or not they do, but in either case, you may wonder just how he got into their hearts in the first place. Sex is clearly part of it, and the sex scenes, while not that explicit, are fairly visceral in showing how two bodies connect. (The MPAA threatened the film with an NC-17, which is absurd; Mubi released the film unrated.)

Ben Whishaw, at least, conveys how easily Martin is pressured into putting up with Tomas’ behavior; his initial reaction when Tomas tells him of what he did with Agathe suggests this is not the first time Tomas has cheated on him, and his willingness to take him back after he’d begun to move on is played so subtly it’s painful to behold. As Agathe, Adèle Exarchopoulos has less room to show just what Tomas does for her, but she too gives a natural, believable performance, and one scene of quiet devastation conveys more than enough for us to understand her choices in the final stretch of the film.

Ira Sachs’ understated direction makes for a straightforward but smoothly packaged film; his script, written with Mauricio Zacharias and Arlette Langmann, has more emotional lacunae than I’d prefer. I suppose that’s better than spelling things out, but taking more time to show the characters simply existing together might’ve filled in some of those gaps (it runs a fairly brisk 92 minutes). The soundtrack features some intriguing selections, most notably an Albert Ayler piece at the end which I quite appreciated.

It’s a good film, objectively very well done, but as with Sachs’ Love is Strange, I don’t quite see greatness here. Sometimes understated realism works beautifully for me. Sometimes it feels like the cinematic equivalent of Truman Capote’s critique of On the Road: “That’s not writing, that’s typing.” This is closer to the positive side of the spectrum, but as cinematic triangles this year go, Past Lives has the advantage – even if it too can’t help being about the literati.

Score: 81

Fateful Findings (2013*) – Dreck

I was well aware of Neil Breen’s notorious masterpiece but had never dared to experience it for myself until last night, when I felt like watching a movie but didn’t quite have it in me to watch something I had to take too seriously, or that wouldn’t pair well with a glass of brandy. In short, I expected a bad film – but what I got was so far beyond my expectations that the brandy hardly mattered. Stone sober, this would still be one of the most confounding things ever to call itself a film.

I don’t even know where to begin. Do I talk about the story? In brief, it has to do with a writer who’s hacking into government databases and exposing the corruption of the powers that be. In detail, it has to do with a magic black cube, shadowy government agents who seem capable of teleportation, a loveless marriage, alcoholism, prescription drug abuse, an unexplained cloud of smoke, a baffling number of laptops, a room covered in what looks like trash bags, inexplicable healing abilities, and rather a lot of sex and (coy) nudity.

If that sounds confusing, it’s immeasurably more baffling to watch. Going in, I expected the exposure of dirty secrets to be the main thrust of the film, but it’s only sporadically mentioned until near the end, when our hero calls a press conference (in front of a very obvious green screen) to deliver revelations so devastating that politicians and businessmen alike confess their crimes and promptly take their own lives rather than face the music.

Until then, the film jumps all over the place, from our hero struggling to work on his new book, or his secret research, or to deal with the residual pain from being hit by a car, which is played as a possible attempt on his life by the powers that be – except who is the woman in the miniskirt and heels, whose face we never see, who’s actually riding in the car? I don’t think she ever comes back. In any case, he ends up in a coma and is hospitalized, but after a mysterious wind blows, he comes to, gets out of bed, somehow goes home, and is back on his feet the rest of the film.

Oh, and one of the doctors at the hospital is his childhood sweetheart. And his wife is struggling with an addiction to pain medication. And his best friend is in an unhappy marriage, drinks too much, and finds happiness only in fixing up his Ferrari. And his friend’s teenage daughter decides to flirt with him by taking a bath at their house. And he has three or four laptops on his desk at any given time. And he has visions of that dark room, and he clings to that cube.

None of it makes a damned bit of sense, and the dialogue only makes it worse, as it ranges from the repetitive (“I can’t believe you committed suicide. I cannot believe you committed suicide”_ to the vague (“I resign today as President of the Bank”) to the nonsensical, as when our hero tells the aforementioned suicide “I can’t help you out of this one.” Criswell himself couldn’t make heads or tails out of this shit.

Breen’s direction is similarly hopeless, with amateurish staging (in one scene, a character is drunk and knocks over a plate of food, but plays it as if he’s having a seizure) and flat imagery, but nothing is worse than the editing, for which one Brian Mills shares the blame with Breen; even at 100 minutes, the film moves at a glacial pace, with numerous long takes which cry out to be broken up or simply cut short. Not that less of this film would be better, but it would be over sooner.

I haven’t even mentioned the acting, let alone the names of the actors or characters; perhaps I was trying to be merciful. Breen plays the alleged hero, and he may be the least charismatic leading man in film history – Tommy Wiseau, by comparison, has the passion of Tennessee Williams. He delivers his own dialogue with the determined anti-conviction of a parent reading their teenager’s bad poetry, and his face reflects little emotion; his bare ass, which we see at least once, is about as expressive.

The others are hardly blameless, but for the most part they’re simply awkward and unable to make the material ring at all true. But who could? The Disaster Artist put Tommy Wiseau’s dialogue in the mouths of talented actors, and the results were just an empty simulacrum of the anti-inspiration of the original. Films that try to be bad are generally tiresome. Films that try to be good and fail to this degree are special.

If it weren’t so frequently tedious, Fateful Findings would be right up there with The Room as an ironic classic, but it still has a decent following among connoisseurs of the worst cinema has to offer, as do Breen’s other films, which by all accounts are just as bad. I may have to seek them out as well.

Score: 0

*The film was first screened in 2012, had festival showings throughout 2013, and was publicly released in 2014. I count it towards 2014 for my own lists, but as the IMDb gives 2013 as the year of origin, I’m listing it here as such.

Dream Scenario (2023) – ****

If Tomas in Passages is pretty obviously a son-of-a-bitch from the start, Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) is, at first, largely sympathetic, as his life crumbles from the social pressures caused by his appearing in many peoples’ dreams – and then in their nightmares. But when you look carefully at Paul’s actions, especially once his story is over and done, you realize that, while he wasn’t responsible for the dreams or nightmares, he was responsible for how he handled the sudden influx of attention – and in this, his fundamental weakness of character did more to destroy him than the dreams.

No, it doesn’t necessarily follow based on the strict moral mathematics of traditional storytelling, but real life doesn’t play by those rules, and neither do Kafkaesque nightmares like Dream Scenario, which arguably come nearer the harrowing unpredictability of life than the reassuring closure fiction can offer.

Paul is an evolutionary biologist with ideas about the psychology of ants, ideas he wants to put into a book, but never has – and when an old colleague takes those ideas and actually turns them into a book, he tries and fails to demand credit; his insecurity and passive aggression cause him to botch the request and make a fool of himself, and though he recorded the meeting at his wife’s request, he deletes the recording and lies about making it.

Then, when an old girlfriend catches up to him while he’s with his wife Janet (Julianne Nicholson, considerably enhancing what might have been a stock wife role), reveals he’s been in her dreams, and asks to get coffee with him to discuss the dreams and an article she wants to write, he nervously agrees to this despite Janet’s obvious discomfort. Later, at home, he makes waffling excuses for his behavior, and while he has no intention of cheating on Janet, it’s already well established that he folds under pressure, and that he finds pressure all around him.

As he achieves celebrity status, he can’t help himself, agreeing to interviews which raise his personal profile, giving over his lecture time to hear students discuss their own dreams of him, meeting with a marketing team led by Trent (Michael Cera, subtly smarmy) who are interested only in his likeness (he wants them to help publish his book; they are less than enthused), and even going home with Trent’s intern Molly (Dylan Gelula) to re-enact her erotic dreams of him, stopping perilously short of outright adultery.

Cage’s brilliant performance is key to all of this, as his awkward grin, nervous demeanor, and sheepish physicality (aided by the farthest-receded hairline in human history) feel not like an actor’s tics but like the fundamental character of a man who means well enough – he loves his family and takes his work seriously – but whose threshold for crisis is so low that he trips on it well before the real crisis arrives.

That comes when the dreams – which make up a relatively small portion of the film but are very well handled – turn into nightmares where Paul, instead of being a passive figure, is aggressive and brutal. Soon he’s a pariah, and the film directly evokes cancel culture as he’s asked to take a leave from teaching, asked to stay away from his daughter’s school play, and even pressured to leave restaurants because his mere presence unsettles the other diners.

While the film teeters on the verge of reactionary grousing – and while Paul was again not responsible for the nightmares themselves – he is unable to handle the difficult situation with any real tact, ranting at a crowd of students who’ve vandalized his car and are now recording him, making an embarrassing video, after having a nightmare of being hunted down by himself, in which he argues he’s the real victim, and trying to force his way into the play, leading to an accidental catastrophe.

Yes, it’s unfair – and it’s disingenuous to argue that it’s much different from the forms of ostracism which have plagued humanity since the dawn of society – but Paul cannot help making a bad situation worse, offering too little sympathy to Janet when her own career suffers or to his daughters when they are bullied over their association.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

So said Tolkien 70 years ago, and so Paul would’ve done well to keep in mind.

Writer-director Kristoffer Borgli uses what would’ve been a solid surreal premise on its own as the starting point for an examination of celebrity (from all sides of the equation) and for a study of how one man handles a situation he cannot, for all his notoriety, truly control. His script is thoughtful, funny, and pointedly satirical, especially in the final movement, which establishes a cheerful dystopia only a few degrees to the left of our present situation.

And his direction, whether in the dreams or in the frequently absurd reality its characters navigate, is equally clever and carefully considered; Benjamin Loeb’s cinematography is neatly but not fussily framed, Borgli’s editing is marvelously graceful at moving between dream and reality, and Owen Pallett’s score adds to the film’s wryly humorous tone – it’s very reminiscent of Charlie Kaufman, which is a major plus in my book.

Like Kaufman’s work, for all the bizarre elements on display and all the dark humor used to cushion them, there’s a real humanity here, which finally pays off in the poignant final scene, whether you read as hopeful or wistful. Despite its sporadic missteps, Dream Scenario is a winner.

Score: 89

Godzilla Minus One/Gojira Mainasu Wan/ゴジラ-1.0 (2023) – ****

Kaiju films have long had a human being problem. Even the best of them have struggled to develop their human elements as fully as their monstrous aspects, the worst have been outright indifferent, and some, like the 2014 Godzilla, have assembled impressive casts and given them depressingly little to do. Guillermo del Toro justified trimming down the character elements of Pacific Rim by saying “We cannot pretend this is Ibsen with monsters and giant robots. I cannot pretend I’m doing a profound reflection on mankind.” Arguably, Jaws comes close to being An Enemy of the People with a killer shark instead of tannery waste, but it’s just a very mean shark, not a kaiju.

In any case, the marvel of Godzilla Minus One is that the human story is, for once, just about good enough to stand on its own, were it not that the devastation caused by Godzilla and the desperate efforts to stop him are so intertwined with the protagonist’s arc. Shin Godzilla came pretty close, but this is the first Godzilla film I’ve seen – the first kaiju film I’ve seen, in fact – that I can truly call great.

In the last days of World War II, kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) lands his plane on Odo Island on account of a malfunction, but the mechanics correctly deduce that he is in fact unwilling to sacrifice his life for what is clearly a lost cause. That evening, after Kōichi notices deep-sea fish floating dead on the surface, Godzilla (already mentioned as a local legend) attacks the island, and he’s urged to use his plane’s guns to kill the beast, but he freezes up and watches as the mechanics are slaughtered. Only Sōsaku Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) survives, and he gives Kōichi photographs of the dead men to remind him of his failure.

Returning to a shattered Tokyo, Kōichi finds his family dead and their home destroyed; his neighbor, Sumiko Ōta (Sakura Ando) blames him for the deaths of her children. Ashamed and haunted but determined to survive, he encounters Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe) in a marketplace as she flees irate merchants; she thrusts an infant into his hands and vanishes. Unable to abandon the child, Kōichi holds onto her until he finds Noriko again, then invites her back to his home. He learns that the child, Akiko, was given to Noriko by her own dying mother.

Over the following months, Kōichi and Noriko make a (platonic) home together, raising Akiko with Sumiko’s help, and he takes a job on a rickety boat clearing the mines from the waters around Japan. He works with avuncular Kenji “Doc” Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), eager young Shirō Mizushima (Yuki Yamada) and crusty Yōji Akitsu (Kuranosuke Sasaki). All seems to be going well until a certain someone rears his big ugly head, first attacking Kōichi and his comrades at sea and destroying a battleship that intervenes, then turning his attention to Tokyo.

When he does, the Americans won’t help (for fear of increasing tensions with the Soviets) and the Japanese government can’t help (because Godzilla is a lot more powerful than their ability to counter). It falls to a group of naval veterans, using decommissioned battleships, to attempt a plan devised by Doc (a former naval engineer) to trap and kill Godzilla without causing catastrophic destruction. Kōichi, realizing this is his chance at redemption, decides to take part – but how this will play out I leave for you to find out.

I didn’t realize, going in, that the whole film would be set in the 1940s; I figured the opening scenes were just a prologue, and eventually we’d flash forward to the present. Instead, we have a film set before even the original Gojira, and one which explores not only the impact of the war on the Japanese people, but the attitudes towards life and death which have played such a devastating part in Japanese culture, especially Japanese militarism. Director Takashi Yamazaki’s script explicitly critiques the death-cult ideology which urged so many towards heroic sacrifices, whether for a valid cause or a hopeless one.

A compelling enough theme, but the film pulls it off better than most of its brethren by devoting sufficient care to the characters and the story. Kōichi is a protagonist worth following, a haunted young man torn between the notions of honor and duty he’s been indoctrinated with and the survival instinct he was born with. Kamiki’s performance, if a shade over-the-top at points, conveys the complex emotions more than sufficiently to keep us engaged in his journey and invested in his survival.

The rest of the cast are comparably effective, with Yoshioka making Doc a figure of genial good nature and serious engineering prowess; his plan is a long shot, but it’s far better than simply lobbing firepower at Godzilla. Hamabe is a bit flat as Noriko (a flat character, to be sure), but Ando brings a nice mix of embittered cynicism and neighborly friendship to Sumiko, Aoki has his own heartening arc, and Yamada and Sasaki round out Kōichi’s circle well, bringing some pleasantly organic humor to the table.

As for Godzilla, he’s in great form, thanks to some excellent effects (the film cost $15 million, which is just astounding) which Yamazaki himself helped produce. As such, one may well credit his vision for the malicious sneer on the big guy’s face after he shows Tokyo what he’s made of; this time around, Godzilla is definitely a heel, grabbing people with his teeth only to fling them to their deaths, and exhaling a blast of pure atomic energy which, given the period, seems like a middle finger to the Japanese, if not humanity at large.

A score which makes use of Akira Ifukube’s iconic theme, solid cinematography, excellent sound, and effective sets and costumes round out a damn fine package. Despite some quibbles (there’s one very late twist which didn’t really work for me), it’s an easy recommend for just about everyone.

Score: 89

From Here to Eternity (1953) – ***½

I’d never actually seen Eternity before last night, nor been greatly interested in seeing it. Perhaps it just seemed like too much of a soap opera, too much like San Francisco or a proto-Titanic, giving us a lot of generic character drama before throwing in the attack on Pearl Harbor for a finish. But it was December 7th, this is Eternity’s 70th anniversary, and I’ve been trying to catch up on the Best Picture winners I haven’t seen, so it was as good as time as any to take the plunge. And to be fair, it really is a pretty good film, even if it doesn’t reach greatness in my eyes – or merit all eight of the Oscars it won (from a whopping 13 nominations).

Let’s start with the acting nods. Montgomery Clift and Burt Lancaster were both nominated for Best Actor, Clift for playing Pvt. Robert E. Lee “Prew” Prewitt, Lancaster for playing Sgt. Milton Warden. Prewitt is a complicated figure from the get-go, devoted to the Army but determined to serve in his own way, namely by refusing to fight for the Schofield Barracks boxing team despite pressure from Capt. Holmes (Philip Ober) and hazing from the other sergeants with Holmes’ approval. When he falls in love with Alma Burke (Donna Reed), a dance-club hostess with a complex past of her own, his loyalty to the Army is tested, and when events force him to go AWOL, he takes refuge with her. But when the attack occurs, he decides to go back, and his own rashness costs him his life. Clift excelled at playing sensitivity, and does so here, but he’s no less convincing at showing Prewitt’s strength of will, whether in moments of quiet defiance or open rebellion.

As for Warden, at first he seems like a straight-forward fellow, devoted to his men and privately exasperated by Holmes’ indifference to his duties, but not to the point of being indulgent; he can bark an order with the best of them. But then he falls in love with Holmes’ wife Karen (Deborah Kerr), who has an outright tragic past, and his own complexities come to the fore as they try to reconcile their passion with the mores of the time and try to figure out how they could be openly together. Lancaster is fantastic in his moments of friendly leadership and nearly as good in his scenes with Kerr, but his big drunk scene is unconvincing; Lancaster was too disciplined an actor to play a man not in control of himself.

Then there’s the nod for Kerr in Best Actress (despite having barely more screen time than Reed). Playing notably against type as an unhappy adulteress, Kerr is excellent at showing Karen’s gracefully cynical indifference to her husband, passionately abandoned in Lancaster’s arms, and affecting when she reveals the reasons for her reputation and when she confronts the unlikelihood of lasting happiness for herself. It’s a very fine little turn, and if she’d gone supporting she might well have won.

Reed, however, won Supporting Actress, and she’s quite strong herself, even if Alma’s motives – her determination to prove herself “respectable” by the standards of her hometown – seem dated and the film softened her character from James Jones’ novel, where she was a prostitute. She’s charming in her romantic scenes with Clift, and if she’s a little stiff in the scene where she lays out her plans for the future, she’s heartrending when she begs Prewitt not to return to Schofield and quietly poignant in the final scene.

Then there’s Frank Sinatra, who won Supporting Actor, as Pvt. Angelo Maggio, the fun-loving character who runs afoul of the racist brute who runs the stockade, Staff Sgt. “Fatso” Judson (Ernest Borgnine), and finally meets a tragic end. Sinatra’s win, which revitalized his career, has since been validated by some and criticized by others; I think he does a solid job, especially in the comic moments (rolling cocktail olives like dice), but I also think the arc of the role does a lot of the work for him – and that he would give even more impressive performances later in his career.

Add in Borgnine’s grinning loathsomeness, Ober’s smugness, and a number of solid smaller performances including those by Jack Warden and George Reeves (the Superman of my mother’s youth) and you’ve got a fine ensemble. But does the rest of the film measure up to it?

To a degree. The Oscar for Sound was mostly for the final attack but is solidly earned; more deserved was the Oscar for Film Editing, as it moves from character to character and keeps everything straight. On the other hand, the Oscar-winning cinematography didn’t really impress me; the film looks fine but not notably different from other studio pictures of the time. There were also nominations for the score (decent) and costumes (not bad).

Then we have the wins for Screenplay and Director. Daniel Taradash’s script had to compress an 860-page novel into a two-hour film, while also toning down the book’s controversial content. It does a solid job for the most part, but not necessarily a remarkable one. And with the direction it runs into a major problem when it comes to Prewitt’s fateful choices at the end; he changes his mind so abruptly and behaves so recklessly it’s baffling, especially since his actions in the book are subtly but significantly different. The scene isn’t that well-staged, either, blunting the film’s impact in the final approach.

Fred Zinnemann’s direction is generally solid, and strong in the relatively brief attack sequence, but for the most part it too feels like a 50s studio picture – solid, efficient, but not really remarkable. He did better with High Noon the previous year, but that film was the victim of politics, at least when it came to the top prizes. This film triumphed, and it’s certainly a good film and a decent winner – but I don’t think it’s truly great, however iconic that one scene may be.

Score: 85