The Weekly Gravy #187

The Letter (1940) – ****

There’s no question in The Letter of who done it – from the very beginning we know that Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis) shot Geoffrey Hammond. And while it’s a little before we learn exactly why, it’s pretty clear that her claims of shooting him in self-defense are a lie; if her stoic expression while shooting him didn’t tip us off, then her behavior as she explains what happened would – as it does for Howard Joyce (James Stephenson), who will be her attorney when the matter comes to trial.

No, the question is how Leslie and Howard are going to negotiate the fallout of this killing, how they’re going to deal with the titular letter which reveals her motives, with Hammond’s widow (Gale Sondergaard) and her desire to get some kind of concession from Leslie, with Joyce’s dilemma as to whether he must obey his conscience or the social codes of British society in colonial Malaya and Singapore, and with the impact all of this will have on Leslie’s devoted husband Robert (Herbert Marshall).

Some of the fascination of the film rests in following how Joyce, who considers himself an honest man and has his suspicions about Leslie from the start, compromises himself to suppress the letter and visibly struggles with his sense of guilt in court. Stephenson got an Oscar nomination for his work, and rightfully so, as he uses his dignified bearing and sonorous voice in contrast to his dishonest actions and in concert with his knowledge that he is doing wrong and that somehow, he’ll have to “pay the piper.”

Some of it lies in observing Leslie, who in classic Davis fashion goes beyond simple distinctions of heroism and villainy; she’s certainly capable of cuckolding her adoring husband, of resenting her lover’s Eurasian wife, and of shooting her lover dead because she can’t have him, but she’s also capable of great pity for her husband and still loves, with all her heart, the man she killed – she says as much in the film’s most famous line. Davis was of course nominated for an Oscar as well, and what she communicates with her eyes alone – cold fury when she kills, guarded suspicion as she tells her story, fear as it begins to fall apart, resignation as Robert learns the truth – justifies it.

Some of it lies in the film’s treatment of racial themes. It’s definitely a mixed bag in that regard, and Sondergaard’s performance – a yellow-face performance as a mostly silent “dragon lady” – is definitely its weakest element. On the other hand, there’s the character of Ong Chi Seng (Sen Yung), Joyce’s secretary and the one who reveals the existence of the letter. Ong could’ve simply been scheming and manipulative – we learn he’s getting a cut of the letter’s ransom – but Yung’s performance helps us understand how he’s playing the part of a polite, even obsequious go-between, holding his own in a society where he is socially inferior to the British but not acting out of mere resentment. He would be an intriguing character in any case, but for an Asian character played by an Asian actor in 40s Hollywood, he holds up remarkably well.

And some of it is in the atmosphere crafted by William Wyler’s direction, Tony Gaudio’s noir cinematography, and Carl-Jules Weyl’s sets, which make fantastic use of the moonlight and the clouds which conceal and reveal it, of the lush colonial homes and how they contrast with the Chinese Quarter where Joyce and Leslie go to retrieve the letter – frankly, its complexity and variety are far more inviting than the sterility of the colonists’ domain. Wyler and Gaudio also received Oscar nominations, as did Max Steiner for his moody score and Warren Low for his sold editing, but Weyl was unfortunately passed over.

Also passed over were Marshall, who played Hammond in the 1929 version (in which Hammond is a real character – here he’s only seen in death), who’s excellent as poor unsuspecting Robert, who can’t believe that his wife is anything other than honest and true, and who has plans for the future which paying off Mrs. Hammond must derail, and Howard Koch for his adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s play, which had to change the ending for the sake of the Production Code, but in my view makes it work, thanks to Wyler’s direction which has Leslie drawn to her fate by an ambiguous force – possibly her own guilt, possibly her desire to join her lover in death, possibly some higher moral force.

It was, however, nominated for Best Picture, going 0 for 7 in the year of Rebecca, admittedly an even greater film. But Wyler was one of the Academy’s great darlings, ultimately winning Picture and Director three times; he was nominated for Director a record 12 times and directed 13 Picture nominees (including Jezebel, which won Davis her second Oscar). This is not the most famous or acclaimed of them, but it’s no less of a great film for that.

Score: 92

La chimera (2023) – ***½

If Indiana Jones is the archaeologist idealized – handsome, charismatic, daring, principled, employed – then Arthur (Josh O’Connor) is his perpendicular. Handsome? In his way, especially when he’s not hacking up a lung. Charismatic? When he wants to be, but he’s burdened by tragic losses and a short temper. Daring? When he is, it usually comes back to haunt him. Principled? Only when it’s least convenient. Employed? Well, just look at the grungy clothes he wears and the dingy shack where he lives, and you get the idea.

Arthur, unlike Indy, doesn’t think the Etruscan treasures he and his crew steal from ancient tombs belong in a museum; he’s quite happy to sell them to the mysterious Spartaco, who sells them on the antiquities black market. And where the academic Indy uses rational and reliable means to track down his artifacts, Arthur uses a sixth sense, an intuition sometimes channeled through a dowsing rod – and it works.

What haunts him, though, is what – or more precisely who – he cannot find, his beloved Beniamina (Yile Vianello). It’s a ways into the film before we learn why, and the details are buried in the mysteries of his past – how this Englishman came to be living in a shack in Italy, how he got his start, and why he was in jail (as the film begins, he’s just getting out) – but what matters is the present, and he’s too weighed down by his loss to truly move forward.

In that sense, he identifies most with Beniamina’s mother, Flora (Isabella Rossellini), who lives in her family’s crumbling mansion with her ostensible vocal student and de facto servant, Italia (Carol Duarte). Flora’s other daughters urge her to move out and to accept the truth about Beniamina, but she resists, just as Arthur shows no interest in leaving his shack – but as time passes and he gets to know Italia, she seems to awaken his spirit once more.

But of course, she doesn’t know what he does, and she’s none too happy when she finds out, much to the frustration of his ragtag team when she objects to their opening a tomb. There’s a wealth of treasures within, but they’re only able to scavenge the head of a statue before Spartaco’s agents, posing as policemen, scare them off. While his team plots how to hustle Spartaco with the head, Arthur begins to question just what he’s been doing with his life.

Where the Indiana Jones films aim for thrilling adventure, more about the quest to find the mythical objects in question than about the objects themselves, La chimera is more of a character piece, more interested in mood and setting than excitement, more about the kind of man who devotes himself to finding these antiquities and the contrast between him and the people who pay through the nose for them; as Indy had Belloq, Arthur has Spartaco, though their relationship is more complex.

La chimera also aims for more of a magical-realist air than one of outright fantasy; we have a pair of troubadours who provide an occasional Greek chorus to the goings-on, we have a glimpse from Arthur’s perspective of his gang and Spartaco’s squabbling over the statue’s head (or more accurately its price) like growling jackals, and we have the visions of Beniamina, with the repeated image of a loose thread from her dress which seems rooted in the earth, which pay off in an unexpected way.

For me at least, that pay-off leaves a sour taste in the mouth; without giving too much away, it seems as if Arthur has turned a corner in his life, and the film reaches what I figured would be a nice, optimistic ending – only to keep on going and to ignore Arthur’s choices in the final act so we can have a far more bittersweet denouement. I can understand what writer-director Alice Rohrwacher was going for, but it didn’t work for me.

What did work for me were the performances, especially the wonderfully lively and charming Duarte; O’Connor is solid but limited by his mopey character, while Rossellini is all the more poignant for how much spirit is left in Flora and how little that registers on those around her. I also appreciated Rohrwacher’s direction (even if one of my favorite scenes is a direct riff on a scene from Fellini’s Roma – read the last paragraph), the production design (the tombs are especially well done), and the soundtrack, full of 80s pop, and not the 80s pop you’ve heard a thousand times before.

Some people really loved La chimera, and I’d hoped to be one of them, but I really struggle to get past the ending (not helped by the rambling pacing that makes it feel even more like the film doesn’t want to end), which leaves me wondering just what we’re meant to take away from it. It’s a good film, often a very good one, but like Arthur it feels like it’s searching for something it never quite finds – or can’t accept when it does.

Score: 79

Things (1989) – Dreck

If you took out all the dialogue, you might be able to make the case for Things as a proto-Skinamarink, a hand-crafted slice of Canadian lo-fi Dadaism whose very minimalism – shot on cheap video in a random house – and lack of narrative flow almost create a kind of dream logic. If you took out the dialogue, however, you’d lose lines like “The next time you come with me, you’re staying home,” filtered through some of the worst dubbing I’ve ever heard, making the film feel like its own Mystery Science Theater.

It’s one of the most incoherent films I’ve ever seen, the basic premise being buried so deep in the chaotic assembly of the scenes – amplified by a budget that could hardly do it justice even if anyone involved displayed a shred of talent and the random cutaways to a newscaster, played by porn star Amber Lynn (so obviously reading off cue cards you’d swear that was the joke) – and the rambling content of the scenes themselves that you wonder if everyone involved was as drunk as co-lead Doug Bunston reputedly was. (Close enough – this is the film equivalent of that pizza in The Onion made and consumed by stoners.)

It has something to do with Doug Drake (Bunston), his bedridden wife Susan (Patricia Sadler), Doug’s brother Don (Barry J. Gillis), their friend Fred Horton (Bruce Roach), the mysterious Dr. Lucas (Jan W. Pachul) whom Doug and Susan consulted over their inability to have children, and the gross creatures – they look like huge ants with needle teeth – she’s apparently given birth to. I apologize if that makes it sound like the film displays any kind of linearity or suspense.

After an opening in which Doug interacts with a nude woman in a devil mask (Jessica Stewarte) who presents him with one of the creatures – all a dream, of course – we get endless scenes of Don and Fred making their way into Doug’s house and milling around his kitchen and living room, drinking beer and making rambling conversation (including a reference to mysterious illicit TV stations – not the only time the film rips off Cronenberg), before Doug joins them, whereupon they continue drinking and talking about nothing, until finally Susan births another creature and dies.

That would seem to be the point where things kick into high gear, but Things isn’t done defying our expectations; we’ve got some excruciating exposition and the abrupt, nonsensical disappearance of Fred (necessitated by Roach’s having to get back to work) and more baffling cutaways to the newscasters before we finally get some action – but the pacing remains as shambling as ever and the filmmaking never approaches competence.

I struggle to do justice to Things, because the closing credit “You have just experienced Things” is so unintentionally apt; can words suitably convey the blurry images, the disembodied sound, the surreal incoherence that almost achieves a dream logic? Can they do justice to Gillis’ mullet and blue sweatshirt, Roach’s abrupt disappearance and reappearance, Bunston’s going shirtless for a good chunk of the film, or the sounds they all make when trying to laugh, scream, or both?

Credit where it’s due, the film uses a fair number of practical effects, and if the sloppy camerawork hardly does them justice – and they’re primitive by any standard – they represent some invention and skill on the part of Glenn Orr, especially the human dismemberment which occurs throughout; it’s odd that he doesn’t seem to have worked on any other films. And the music, mixing songs by the bands Stryk-9 and Familiar Strangers with themes by Jack Procher, isn’t bad either; the song “You’ve Got Yourself in a Tailspin” is especially earwormy.

But Andrew Jordan’s direction is so vague, the script he co-wrote with Gillis (but reputedly kept the cast from reading) is such a mess, and his addle-brained editing so nullifies any attempt to create tension that I can’t give the film more than the most marginal credit. The acting is likewise dreadful: Bunston is unsettling as most touchy drunks are, but he’s not an effective actor, Gillis can’t overcome his absurdly 80s appearance and rambling dialogue, and Lynn reads those cue cards with even less verve than late-period Brando.

I can do little better than quote the following exchange:

DON: Does the toilet flush in a blackout?

DOUG:

DON: I gotta take a wicked piss.

(four-second pause)

DOUG: What’s stoppin’ ya?

DON: I really gotta go to the can bad.

DOUG: Yeah well, go then.

DON: Might be some of those, uh, ugly creature-things in there.

DOUG: Thas’ right. Wouldn’t want any of those things nibblin’ on you when you get in there.

There’s a lot more where that came from, if you’re brave enough to experience Things for yourself.

Score: 1

Civil War (2024) – ****

Like Joker, Civil War has been subject to a great deal of pre-release controversy, partly over fears that its subject matter will inflame social tensions, partly over irritation at its citing Andy Ngo and Helen Lewis in the credits, and partly over the question of how writer-director Alex Garland would approach the ideology behind the titular war; would the British Garland really grasp the nuances of American politics, or shy away from taking a side?

The first remains to be seen, though as with Joker, I think those fears are overblown; the second is a valid complaint, as any footage used by Ngo would’ve been so fleeting that removing it would’ve been feasible; and the third is best summed up by a scene where Joel (Wagner Moura) asks a pair of snipers which side they’re on, only to be told “Someone’s trying to kill us. And we are trying to kill them.” Some might see it as a dodge, but I think it accurately reflects how ideologies count for very little once the shooting starts.

The film follows a quartet of journalists as they make their way from New York to Washington D.C. in the final days of a civil war in which the Western Forces (comprising California and Texas) have fought their way across a fractured America and are aiming for the White House, where the President (Nick Offerman) continues to call for their surrender. In addition to Joel, we have veteran photojournalist Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), novice photojournalist Jessie Cullen (Cailee Spaeny), and veteran reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson).

Lee, who’s photographed war zones around the world, has numbed herself to the horrors of warfare, but is dismayed by the inability of her work to convince America not to descend into its own chaos. Joel is eager to get to Washington and get an interview with the President before it’s too late. Jessie is eager to be like Lee – and much to Lee’s frustration, she convinces Joel to let her ride with them. As for Sammy, he just wants to see what kind of a story they might find along the way.

109 minutes might not have been enough time to explore the world Garland, working with the biggest budget in A24’s history, has created here – or enough time to do full justice to all four principals – but we get some vivid episodes along the way, including a small town where men are tortured and hung up for all the world to see (by their own former schoolmates), another, seemingly peaceful town whose tranquility is enforced by rooftop snipers, and a confrontation with a soldier (Jesse Plemons) who’s loyal only to his own sociopathic amusement.

There are also potent character beats, some of which simultaneously reflect the best and worst of the film; when Jessie says, “I’ve never been so scared, but I’ve never felt so alive,” it’s a trite line (though befitting a young character defining themselves), but it’s validated by the look Lee gives her in response, a masterful bit of facial acting by Dunst that suggests horror, recognition, and maybe a strange kind of pride in her determined protégé. (They also both reveal how their respective parents are “pretending none of this is happening,” a small touch that rings entirely true.)

Indeed, while Garland’s script doesn’t always go as deep as it might have – even into those matters it chooses to explore – it’s greatly bolstered by the acting, Garland’s direction, and the technical aspects. Dunst is fantastic as the cynical, embittered Lee, humanizing those qualities to make room for those moments when she reveals the sensitive and haunted soul she’s tried to keep at bay. Spaeny has to rush Jessie’s baptism-by-fire arc, but she plays every step of it with conviction.

Moura balances their reserve as the hot-tempered, passionately determined Joel, getting some of the funnier moments in a film with a welcome sense of dark humor, and Henderson continues to be one of my favorite character actors, bringing a warmth and old-pro wiliness to Sammy that complements his younger companions’ angst and righteous anger. Offerman is effective, but his role is little more than a cameo; Plemons has only a single scene, but he’s utterly chilling in his uncharmable cruelty.

On a technical level, the film is superbly crafted; Rob Hardy’s direction encompasses the gritty and visceral and the quietly beautiful with equal skill, and a scene where the characters drive through a forest fire – embers dancing around them, reminiscent of a similar scene in the brilliant Afire – is especially striking. Jake Roberts’ editing is even better, especially when it freezes the image to show how Lee and Jessie are capturing these moments, applying their aesthetic values to violence and death while ostensibly not questioning what they see.

Both elements, along with some superb sound design and production design which makes the film look even more expensive than its $50 million budget, come together to make the climactic siege of the White House one of the best set-pieces of the year to date; if the character beats in this sequence are a shade rushed (though Moura’s best moment in the film comes at the very end), then it feels in keeping with how the individual gets lost amidst the sweep of history.

One could argue that Civil War betrays a failure of imagination in not fleshing out how the war began or what precisely drives the participants; one could also argue that its refusal to do so – its refusal to point fingers – is itself provocative. Time alone will tell – especially depending on how the cinema treats this theme in the future – but I think Garland made a damn good film about how history is made in the moment. See it and judge for yourselves.

Score: 87

Riddle of Fire (2023) – ****

Some films truly surprise you. I thought Riddle of Fire looked like fun, but I wasn’t necessarily expecting a great film, just a fun childhood adventure. What I got was far stranger, yet far more enthralling – and in the end, more satisfying – than the flippant pastiche one might have expected. To be sure, it’s a film that will probably leave many viewers cold, but such are the risks one runs in making something so idiosyncratic as this little gem.

It’s a film whose sense of morality is aligned less with the state or the rule of law than with the values of childhood – friendship, imagination, adventure, and sticking it to the grown-ups. Its heroes are unequivocal thieves and not out of necessity, unless you consider getting to play on the coolest new console a necessity. But stealing the console is just the beginning – our heroes also need an egg.

The first act of the film sets this up in a wonderfully convoluted way. Hazel (Charlie Stover) and his little brother Jodie (Skyler Peters) have stolen the console with their friend Alice (Phoebe Ferro). They go to Hazel and Jodie’s house and set it up but discover that the TV has a new password. Their mother, Julie (Danielle Hoetmer) is sick in bed and doesn’t want them to waste the day gaming but relents, on the condition that they bring her a blueberry pie.

But her favorite bakery is out of pie and the baker is herself sick at home. So they go to the baker’s house and ask for the recipe, which she’s reluctant to share – unless they can bring her something “colder than ice” to ease her fever. Hazel gets a bag of ice. Alice gets a back of peppermint gum. Jodie gets a creepy old doll. That last one – or at least Jodie’s chutzpah – does the trick. Now they just have to steal the ingredients.

They get everything but the egg, thanks to John Redrye (Charles Halford) snagging the last package and refusing to let the kids have one. John works for Anna-Freya Hollyhock (Lio Tipton), a witch and taxidermist who poaches her subjects with the help of her brother Marty (writer-director Weston Razooli) and sisters/acolytes Suds (Rachel Browne) and Kels (Andrea Browne), whom she controls with magic words that her young daughter Petal (Lorelei Mote) has learned. But the kids don’t know anything about that. They just want the egg.

However, when they and Petal stow away in John’s pickup truck as the grown-ups go off to poach a prized stag – “the Prince of the Mountain” – they all get far more than they expected. They find ample danger, especially from the brutish John, but they also find new friendship, as Petal, who doesn’t go to school and has no friends her age, becomes a part of the “Three Immortal Reptiles.”

There are plenty of reasons I can imagine why one wouldn’t take to Riddle of Fire. It takes its time (113 minutes) spinning its little yarn, shifts gears between kid-empowerment fantasy, realistic danger, hooliganism, and sweetness (Hazel and Alice have a puppy-love crush, and Petal takes a shine to Jodie), has its young characters swear (they dub John the “woodsy bastard”), drink, and fire paintballs at the grownups who stand in their way. They’re not bad kids, but they’re not role models.

But I loved it, and the four young actors who anchor it are a big part of why. Razooli’s direction surely helped, but kudos also to casting director Jeff Johnson for finding kids who could ham it up and crack wise the way real kids do. Ferro gives Alice a sense of self-confident cool leavened by the limitations of childhood, Stover shows Hazel’s own modest pomposity, then deflates it with a very relatable bashfulness, Peters steals scene after scene as the giddily sardonic Jodie, but never upstages his co-stars, and Mote makes Petal at once wise beyond her years and badly in need of some friends her own age.

Among the adult cast, the standouts are Tipton and Halford. Tipton lives up to Petal’s description of Anna-Freya as “a great mom but not a good mom,” showing a genuine concern and desire to prepare Petal for a challenging world, while also showing how her limited power (her spells only work on willing subjects, it seems) has gone to her head and how her narcissism manifests itself in a willingness to kill the Prince of the Mountain just to sell his stuffed hide. Halford relishes John’s obnoxious bluster – he chafes at Anna-Freya’s leadership but can’t challenge it to save his life – but provides a few moments of real menace to remind us that it’s not all fun and games.

I’m not sure if Razooli intended this, but watching Anna-Freya and John I had a sense that there, but for the grace of God, go our young protagonists. Could they grow up to be such people, who have a similar indifference to the rules of society, if they weren’t grounded by the love of their friends? For the moment, at least, they seem to be all right, because they most certainly have one another – the wonderful final moment makes that clear if the joyous dance number a few minutes earlier hadn’t already.

It’s lovingly made, full of little touches like the spy-gadget apps the kids have on their phones and the 40-ounce bottles of Ali Baba malt liquor (if that’s not a real brand, the props department sure fooled me) and packed with funny lines and character moments, balanced with moments of unabashed imagination. But none of these come at the expense of the characters and their wonderfully silly journey, and it’s as apt a depiction of childhood at its most adventurous as I’ve ever seen. Highly recommended.

Score: 89