Viewing Journal - May 2016 #5

Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman, United Kingdom, 2016)

I'm now convinced that Whit Stillman was born to write and direct Jane Austen adaptations. While watching Love & Friendship I realized he's been making Austen stories all along - comedies of manners that are both satirical and affectionate - only in contemporary settings. His unique wit flourishes even more in the 1790s, and when matched with Austen's beautifully drawn characters. I haven't yet read Lady Susan, which Love & Friendship is adapted from, but in some ways it's an atypical Austen story. Lady Susan is a devious and cheerfully amoral character, a social climber with a genius for manipulation. She begins and ends the film unrepentantly horrible, but she is so witty and charismatic that we can't help but be impressed by her scheming ways. Kate Beckinsale clearly had a blast playing this character, delivering Lady Susan's politely wicked dialogue with virtuosic comic timing. Love & Friendship also has a welcome absurdist, irreverent streak, more reminiscent of Oscar Wilde or screwball comedy than Jane Austen. Yet, more than any other Austen adaptation I've seen, Love & Friendship captures her humor - her genius for mining comedy out of the gap between what people say and what they actually mean. It's one of the funniest movies I've seen in ages.

Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, United States / Hong Kong, 1973)

Despite considering myself a fan of Hong Kong kung fu flicks, I had never seen a single one starring the legendary Bruce Lee. Clearly I needed to correct this oversight. Enter the Dragon is a collaboration between East and West - made in Hong Kong with a local crew, but filmed in English with an American director and co-stars. It's a genre hybrid as well, both a martial arts extravaganza and a James Bond-style espionage thriller, with influences of so-called "blaxploitation" and psychedelia. About every B-movie genre popular in America or Hong Kong circa 1973 shows up in Enter the Dragon in one form or another. This democratic blending of East and West is typical of Lee, a citizen of both Hong Kong and the United States who was passionate about spreading the philosophy of martial arts across the globe. Enter the Dragon is also a total mess, though an exuberantly fun mess. I now see why Bruce Lee was such a star. He's not only an astonishing athlete but a magnetic screen presence. There's a mischief and wily intelligence in his eyes, and his lightning quick movements are mesmerizing. His body zigs when you expect it to zag; his bird-like shrieks in battle are amusing and terrifying.

The Most Dangerous Game (Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel, United States, 1932)

I love these horror-thrillers made in the early 30s, before the Production Code clamped down on what Hollywood films could show. Though tame by today's ultra-violent standards, The Most Dangerous Game remains an entertaining thriller that must have shocked audiences of 1932. Based on a famous and influential short story (which I have yet to read) with a perfectly simple, sinister premise: a wealthy madman and big game hunter entraps shipwrecked people on his private island to hunt them. If they survive a single night, he will release them - but none have survived before! Though it's only an hour long, The Most Dangerous Game spends much of its runtime building up to the hunt, as shipwrecked survivors are trapped inside Count Zaroff's gothic castle. The evil Zaroff is played by an over-the-top Leslie Banks; his bug-eyed expressions and preposterous Russian accent are difficult to take seriously but quite entertaining, especially next to Joel McCrea's stiffly stoic leading man. The really good parts arrive in the final twenty minutes, in a cat-and-mouse showdown in the jungle. The Most Dangerous Game was filmed on the same sets as King Kong - Kong would use the sets during the day, and Game at night. It's clearly an artificial jungle, but with all the grandiose charm and dream-like exaggeration of Old Hollywood. It's the perfect setting for an action-packed climax, as our heroes set elaborate booby traps, flee from hounds across logs bridging canyons, and do battle at the edge of a giant waterfall. The final fight is unusually realistic for the time, with sweaty, flailing desperation that looks unchoreographed.

Flirting (John Duigan, Australia, 1991)

Ignore the frivolous title. Flirting is the rare teenage comedy that treats its adolescent characters with dignity, as intelligent and thoughtful people. In 1965 Australia, two boarding schools, one all male and one all female, face each other across a lake. Danny is a gawky kid, intelligent, not athletic, teased by fellow students, though he's mostly unfazed by them. Thandiwe has just arrived to Australia from Uganda, and stands out from her peers for her race, her sophistication and irreverent humor. Both are attracted by the rebellious qualities of the other, and over a series of awkward and charming encounters grow to love each other. Flirting is the kind of well-observed film where even minor characters come alive as real, specific people, where you will laugh and cringe with fond recognition at their behavior. Noah Taylor and Thandie Newton give sensitive, lively performances as the leads, while Nicole Kidman and a baby-faced Naomi Watts appear in small early roles. Director John Duigan brings to Flirting a quiet beauty unique for its genre - like when Danny sneaks out at night to meet Thandiwe, rowing across a shimmering starlit lake out of a fairy tale.

Mad Max: Fury Road

United States / Australia, 2015
Directed by George Miller

Mad Max: Fury Road opens on a shot of a desert landscape, with a shocking contrast between the  scorched yellow-orange sand and the bright blue sky. A wildman stands alone in this wasteland, muttering about the voices of those he's lost "worming their way into the black matter of my brain". A two-headed mutant lizard scuttles past him - he crushes it with his boot and eats it alive.

From this cracked and crazy opening, Fury Road more than earns the word "mad" in its title. This movie is completely bonkers. With his original Mad Max films director George Miller essentially invented the post-apocalyptic genre as we know it today, with its heavy metal / punk stylings (or, as succinctly described in Spongebob: "Welcome to the apocalypse, Mr. Squidward...I hope you like leather"). With Fury Road, George Miller has been given a gargantuan budget to bring his mad vision to life on an epic scale, and the results are awe-inspiring. Fury Road is essentially a two-hour long chase scene, set in a breathtakingly detailed, truly mad apocalyptic world.

And what incredible chase scenes! The action in Fury Road is beautifully choreographed and executed - George Miller is a maestro of vehicular mayhem. Take this sequence as an example:

There are a lot of moving parts to this sequence, with our heroes in the "War Rig", Immortan Joe in pursuit, and a gang of motorcycle bandits on the attack. Yet the action never becomes chaotic or confusing - we always know where everyone is situated, what they are doing, and what the immediate dangers are. And all those crazy leaping motorcycles and explosions? They're real - it's actual stuntwork, not CGI. It's understandable why most action films create much of their action on computers, as it's easier and a hell of a lot safer, but CGI never holds the same impact (and the one scene in Mad Max that does use big special effects is, by a significant margin, the film's least engaging action sequence). There is a believable, brutal physicality to Fury Road that, when combined with impressive choreography and clean camerawork, makes for a terribly exciting, intense viewing experience. And believe it or not, that motorcycle chase is pretty sedate compared to the absolutely nuts action in the last act. Once our heroes are assaulted by a whole horde of lunatics in a caravan that is like a cross between an apocalyptic Cirque du Soleil and a metal concert on wheels, things get really crazy, but all the madness is executed with the same clarity and perfect timing.


The story is simple but engrossing. The lizard-eater of the opening sequence is Max, a hardened survivalist haunted by guilt. He is captured and taken to The Citadel, a community governed by the tyrannical Immortan Joe, who keeps the populace under control by creating a violent death cult in which he is the central figure. Max is used as a "blood bag" for Nux, one of Joe's War Boys, who are wasting away from the effects of radiation and need supplies of fresh blood to stay strong for battle. Here we meet the real protagonist of Fury Road - Imperator Furiosa, a former slave who drives the massive War Rig for Joe and his army. She deviates from her latest mission, escaping in the War Rig with five of Joe's concubines, or "breeders". Max and even the War Boy Nux become accomplices of Furiosa and the women - initially a hostile partnership borne of desperation, but mutual respect begins to grow in the ragtag group of escapees.

It's a basic story with a predictable arc, but set in a richly realized world of Miller's creation. Fury Road is the most immersive science fiction film I can recall since Children of Men nearly a decade ago. Like Children of Men, Fury Road never stops to explain to the audience the rules or history of its world - they are communicated through visual details, the language and customs of the characters. For all its outrageousness, the world of Fury Road feels lived-in and authentic, and holds relevance to ours. Immortan Joe's society is a religious cult that keeps the masses ignorant and does not tolerate any dissidents, that ensnares powerless young men by promising them glory in the afterlife if they die for their cause, and treats women as products to be controlled. That is hardly the stuff of fantasy - the Islamic State operates on largely the same principles.

The characters, too, are simple but drawn and performed with conviction. Tom Hardy's Max is gruff and near-silent - he grunts more than he speaks - but his development from a crazed survivalist to a man with actual concern for other lives is quietly moving. The women who escape with Furiosa have striking individual personalities, with Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's Splendid Angharad, who is clearly the brave natural leader of the group, the quirky, eerie Dag (played by Abbey Lee), and the kindhearted Capable (Riley Keough) being particular standouts. Nicholas Hoult is brilliant as Nux, the initially scary-funny brainwashed War Boy who becomes brutally disillusioned of the Immortan Joe cult, and turns sympathetic as we realize he is, in a different way, as much an innocent victim as the women. But best in show is undeniably Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa. Like Max, Furiosa doesn't speak much, but we understand all we need to through Theron's eyes - her grit and courage, her genuine care for her young stowaways, her quiet self-loathing and seething fury. Furiosa is a terrific character, played with subtlety and soul by Theron - an actress who is sometimes cast based on her blonde goddess beauty but actually excels when playing difficult, spiky characters. She's an action heroine comparable to the great Sigourney Weaver in Aliens.

Also like Aliens, Mad Max: Fury Road is an intense action masterpiece elevated by surprising tenderness. Because for all the carnage and grotesquerie on display, Mad Max: Fury Road is actually hopeful. I grew to care for this band of heroes and their fight for dignity in a mad world that robbed them of sanity and humanity. The acts of redemption and sacrifice at the film's end are sincerely heartfelt. Perhaps the most impressive accomplishment of Fury Road is its affirmation that subtlety and soul can co-exist with wild bombastic spectacle.

But if that doesn't interest you, the "wild bombastic spectacle" should be more than enough - there's even a giant truck carrying dreadlocked drummers and a warrior playing an electric guitar that's also a flamethrower, which is about the nerdiest, coolest thing I've ever seen.