A Woman Under the Influence

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

A Woman Under the Influence (1974) was written and directed by John Cassavetes. His films appear uniquely different from other movies of his time. He said he would do long, ten-minute takes which involve sustained acting in very emotional situations. He said that the actors never know which camera is recording them, so that they must be always immersed in their characters. He said in this film he used hand-held cameras about thirty percent of the time, and he did that filming. He said that that technique allowed for more movement and fluidity. Cassavetes makes it appear that the audience is there, in the middle of the whirlwind. His films do not provide a polished look. There is no distancing through artifice. There is no soundtrack here to prompt how the audience should respond. He creates uncomfortable cinema which challenges the viewer to become invested in the story.

In this film, Nick Longhettei (Peter Falk) has a special night planned for him and his wife Mabel (Gena Rowlands, nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress. She was Cassavetes’s wife. Cassavetes was nominated for Best Director). Nick is a hardhat blue-collar worker who is yelling at his boss because he doesn’t want to work that same night because of a water main break. The urgency with which he doesn’t want to ruin his plans shows us how things are precarious in his marriage). Mabel is very agitated as she sends her three young children off with her mother, Martha (Lady Rowlands, Gena’s real mother). Mabel feels guilty about letting them go. She appears frazzled, so we know she is having emotional problems. Throughout the film she wavers between her adult responsibilities versus her own needs.

Nick’s work friend says Mabel is delicate and will go off the deep end when she finds out Nick will have to work, Nick says Mabel is special, not crazy, almost like he’s protesting too much, revealing his own concerns. He does admit that she can burn down a house and that “I don’t know what she can do.” So, his own words reveal his wish to keep things stable while he fears the worst can happen.

Mabel adopts a calm voice when her husband calls about having to work, but then hangs up the phone quickly as if letting go of the forced attempt to appear understanding. She is so upset she goes to a bar, downs a large drink, starts singing, and picks up a guy. Mabel’s drunken staggering implies her physical instability mirrors her mental lack of equilibrium. When man at the bar tries to put the moves on her, she starts hitting him, but then it’s the next morning and hey are at Mabel’s house which shows that she again veered away from acting like a responsible adult since the two obviously had sex. She doesn’t seem to know that the stranger is not Nick, because that is supposed to be who she should be intimate with according to societal rules. She starts wanting to know where her kids and her mother are, bouncing back to her guilt over not being unselfishly present for her family.

Nick brings his crew home, maybe to show his family life is okay, but Mabel talks awkwardly as she offers to cook. She hugs one guy too much, and yells at another in the kitchen for patting her behind. She doesn’t remember one of the guys who was there only three weeks prior. She was listening to Italian opera earlier and now two men sing some opera. She gets too close to one man who is singing. Then Mabel comments about how another is handsome and wants to dance with him. Nick quietly tells her to stop her odd behavior. He eventually explodes when she doesn’t give up. But, he has brought this situation on himself for trying to force what he considers to be normal behavior onto his abnormal family life.

Nick says there’s something in the air causing so many babies to be born. One guy says the moon is causing so many births in the neighborhood. The word lunatic comes from the supposed deviant influence of the moon on people. Nick also uses the word “lunatic” at one point.

Nick gets an annoying call from his mother who fights for his attention as she complains about not feeling well. After hearing all these family issues, the men leave. Nick thinks the workers don’t understand Mabel. Nick desperately wants no negative judgments about his home life.

Nick also has his kids draining him for their attention, even though he has worked all night. He exaggerates his desire for family togetherness by putting everyone in bed, including Mabel’s mother. Mabel’s conflicting emotions are evident as she gets everybody out of the house so the children can go to school, and then abruptly says she misses all those who have left.

Mabel’s nonconformist behavior continues as she confronts people on the street by aggressively asking them the time. She is wearing a skimpy outfit even though she appears chilly. She shows exaggerated excitement as she meets her kids at the bus stop. She asks if others think she’s wacky, which shows she worries about her mental stability. She makes the father of her kids’ friends uncomfortable by being too exuberant, dragging him into kid’s play. She wants the children to play dress-up. Mabel is a child at heart, and she doesn’t show the prescribed behavior of the adult world. She likes Swan Lake, and talks about a swan dying, which suggests how tragedy inhabits the adult mindset. Harold Jensen (Mario Gallo), father of the visiting children, is a disciplinarian and is worried about his kids being with Mabel since the children are taking off their clothes to do dress up.

Nick’s antisocial behavior is evident as he explodes when he comes home with his mother, Margaret (Cassavetes’s real mother, Katherine Cassavetes). He slaps Mabel and has a physical altercation with Jensen. He yells that Mabel should be committed. She says she knows he loves her. She claims that was the first time he hit her, but she’s not angry at him. Her words indicate that things are getting worse between them and are now reaching a breaking point. She then does one of her quick turnarounds by calling Nick a “bug.”

Nick called the family physician, Dr. Zepp (Eddie Shaw) and she becomes paranoid about her mother-in-law and Nick. She says that Zepp has something in his bag that will “imprison” her, a sedative which she sees as restricting her. The mother then explodes, yelling that Mabel can’t be in the house. Irrational behavior blossoms all over the place. However, Mabel says that insanity is what the children are subjected to, getting up, going to school, suggesting they are locked into restrictive routines. She tells the doctor he’s the one who is sick, probably implying that someone who would enforce one’s will on another is the person with an illness. Perhaps the "Influence" of the title could refer to this external pressure warping an individual's individuality, the word itself meaning a "flowing in" from the outside. She makes the sign of the cross as if warding off a vampire who would suck out her life force. He commits her to be hospitalized.

Nick is an Italian American male who doesn’t want to appear to be vulnerable. He also wants his privacy. His family life becomes a topic for discussion at work, which just aggravates his position in and out of the home. A worker he yells at falls off a hill, showing how his anti-social anger causes harm to others.

He keeps trying to impose normalcy by taking his kids to the beach to have a good time, but he is so frazzled and yells so much that he makes everything seem tense. His desire to make his children happy leads him to recklessness, as is seen when he lets them sip some beer despite their young ages. They get dizzy and sleepy.

After six months, Nick wants to have a welcoming home party for Mabel, but it is overwhelming because he forces too much of what passes for normalcy onto the situation. But despite his desires, he is not up to managing a party, since he has no refreshments at home for his guests. His mother yells (that may be where he gets his anger from), saying there are too many people and only family members should be present. Nick tells his mother to send everybody except a few guests away, which makes things uncomfortable, the opposite of Nick’s goal.

Mabel arrives and struggles to stay “calm” as she cries when reuniting with her kids. Her father is encouraging but she acts too affectionately toward him because she requires so much support. Nick almost isn’t accepting of her sedate way and yells that she should just be herself. (Falk, in an interview, said there must have been an attraction for Nick toward Mabel’s unconventional behavior). Nick keeps piling pressure on how life should be by saying how everything is going to get better and better. However, Mabel starts making uncomfortable, but honest, statements as she says how big one relative’s ass is, and now she wants everyone to go home so she can go to bed with Nick. Nick again forces what is supposed to be normal when he requires small talk. Mabel starts to talk about shock therapy, which again is frank, unnerving talk. Mabel begs for her father to “stand up” for her. Mabel’s mother makes an enigmatic comment about how Mabel’s father should know what that means. There may be a suggestion that there was inappropriate behavior between father and daughter in the past here.

Mabel starts to act bizarrely, yelling at others, then singing, then running away from Nick. She cuts herself and moves her hands in slow motion while standing on a couch. These unconventional actions seem to be protests against trying to restrain her behavior. Nick is out of control, too, but violently, as he smacks Mabel off the couch, threatening to kill her and the kids. His words may suggest his exasperated way of wishing to escape what he sees as chaos in his life. She quiets down again, and Nick says the kids want her to tuck them in, another attempt to play at an average home life. She keeps saying she loves Nick despite his violence. The little boy hugs mom and shows his dad a fist, shows he is taking a stance to protect his mother.

After the kids are in the bedroom, Mabel, lucidly, says she must really be nuts, and she doesn’t know how all of this started. She seems to be able at this moment to gain some distance and insight from all that has transpired. Nick wants to take care of her cut hand, but at this moment he is unable to reassure her that he still loves her. He is not trying to rationalize here and is finally being honest about things. They do some cleaning up, like a regular husband and wife would do after a party. There is a phone ringing, and Nick ignores it. Falk said that is probably his mother, and Nick is taking a stance to put his wife first at that point.

We finally get music, which features a kazoo, over the closing credits, which fits the unconventional thrust of the story.

Badlands

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Badlands (1973), directed by Terrence Malick, has an appropriate title, not only because of where the movie takes place, but because of the criminal action that it depicts. It is based on the story of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate and the deaths of ten people during a nine-day period. The movie focuses on how someone gains attention through infamy if the chance at legitimate fame is out of reach. The film explores the same area that Truman Capote addresses in his novel In Cold Blood, that is, the underbelly of the United States. As Michael Almereyda says in his essay “Misfits,” the two main characters symbolize “some lethal short circuit in the American psyche.” Badlands also touches on the American fascination and celebration of outlaws, revealing its citizens’ anti-authoritarian feelings.

Almereyda notes that Malick left out some of the more gruesome acts of Starkweather to construct an almost bloodless fairy tale, as Malick once described the film. Most of the story is told from the perspective of an innocent, the fifteen-year-old Holly (Sissy Spacek), which allows the audience to gradually perceive what is happening in her association with Kit (Martin Sheen). She moves from a place of teenage romance to shell-shocked detachment.

Her story, though, is not one of youthful protection from the effects of reality. She says that her mother died young and her relations with her father (Warren Oates), became strained after the death. He moved her to Fort Dupree, South Dakota, which added to the feeling of disconnection from the outside world and increased her feeling of being an outsider. Malick provides still shots (the emphasis on “still”) of an alley of trash cans and peopleless streets, which promote the feeling of isolation.

Kit arrives in the story working on a trash truck, which suggests that he not only works with garbage, he is also part of the refuse of the land. He basically collects stuff and discards them during the course of the film, which implies he is stuck in this job. (Almereyda says that Kit’s accumulating and discarding objects may reference “Malick’s skepticism about the ephemeral nature of human identity, possessions, and the encompassing material world”). He also is good at talking trash in an almost charismatic way. His weirdness is immediately illustrated when he offers his coworker a dollar if he’ll eat a dead dog on the road. But, his fellow trashman says he will not do it for a dollar. That suggests that things are so destitute here, that he might consider it for more cash.

Kit tries to make money selling some of the trash and analyzes the people from the refuse he finds, which shows he has a bit of insight into what makes people tick. He meets Holly as she practices baton twirling. It is a wholesome image which Mallick possibly wants to contrast with what happens to her, and which may be the reason for Kit’s initial interest, if opposites attract. One of the first things he says to her is that he’ll try anything once. Which shows that prohibitions are not what he cares about. That attitude can be exciting to a young, lonely girl like Holly.

To add to his alienation from society, Kit gets fired. When asked at the unemployment office, he says he can’t think of anything he’s qualified to do. His line stresses how detached from the mainstream he is. Holly narrates that she found Kit handsome and that he reminded her of James Dean. That is a telling remark. Dean epitomized the renegade, and his good looks made that lifestyle attractive. Kit holds that same fascination for Holly, but he is a sort of Hollywood knock-off.

Kit goes to Holly’s place again and says he quit (a lie) and that he’s going to be a cowboy (not true – he will be working at a cattle feedlot). He tries to make it seem that he is more independent and important than he is. He may feel that way about himself, since he earlier told her that he has things to say, and most people don’t. She ran away from him the first time, saying her dad wouldn’t approve of Kit. Now she says she has homework to do when he wants her to join him. She acts like she is clinging to her routine life, but she is only giving lip service to it, and this time she goes for a ride with him. He notes that someone threw a bag on the ground and observes how filthy everything would be if everyone did that. His work as a trash collector probably elicits this comment, but it also shows that he feels all people are transgressors, so why should he be judged?

Holly says the two fell in love, adding that she wasn’t popular at school because she “didn’t have a lot of personality.” The interest of a handsome young man raises her self-esteem, as she notes that he could have had any other girl. She keeps their relationship secret from her dad, since Kit is ten years older than she. She says that secrecy kept them “away from all the cares of the world.” She saw her bond with Kit as an emotional oasis in an empty personal desert.

She says he wanted to “die” with her, which is a kind of dark way of expressing feelings for another. She is now smoking, which shows the rule-breaking effect he has on her. Mallick gives us a shot of a catfish in a bowl. Is that an image of a bottom feeder who tries to get by on the leftovers of society? She admits to throwing her pet fish out before it died when it was sick. She felt guilty about this act but can confess it to Kit, who has no moral judgment.

After the first time they have sex, Holly questions why is it supposed to be such a big deal? It was not noteworthy for either, which may show a feeling of letdown of their hopeful dreams by reality. Kit says they should smash their hands to remember the day, noting pain will remind them of their consummation. What stands out for him is not something pleasant but hurtful, an indication of his dark outlook on life and how they can’t be remembered by anything positive in their lives. He puts a note about standing by her and other mementos in a balloon that flies away. Holly points out that he did this act because he must have known they would never be happy in the future. The balloon could indicate how Kit’s hopes were not felt to come true and just drift away like the way a dream disappears after waking to reality.

When Holly’s father discovers the relationship, he shoots Holly’s dog as a punishment. What a disturbing way of disciplining her. He recreates a loss of something she loved, like the death of her mother. It shows how disturbed he became due to the loss of his wife which led to the end of his dreams of happiness.

Her father rejects Kit’s desire to keep seeing Holly. So, Kit breaks into her house and packs Holly’s clothes so she can leave with him. When father and daughter return, Kit shoots and kills the father. His remorseless pathology is obvious now, showing no emotion about his act of violence. His action shows he will no longer let others stand in his way. She smacks his face at first but she quicky switches to coverup mode as she wonders if neighbors heard the shot. He leaves her fate up to her though, saying she can call the police.

Kit leaves a recording saying that he and Holly decided to kill themselves. He does this act to gain time, hoping the authorities would think they were dead. He ends the recording by perversely saying, “I can’t deny we’ve had fun, though,” summing up their relationship as pleasant, despite his committing murder. That statement alone shows his sociopathic mentality. He sets fire to Holly’s house, in essence destroying her attachment to the past. He says they will change their names and hide out up north. She goes along with him because she says, “it was better to live a week with someone who loved me for what I was, then years of loneliness.” Her statement shows how empty her life felt to her.

The music that plays in the background is a playful, almost childlike tune that is in counterpoint to their illegal actions. Kit sees their life like a childhood adventure, tinged with practicality. They build a treehouse and tunnels in the wilderness. They stole food, and Kit taught Holly survivalist techniques, including how to shoot. They dance at one point to “Love is Strange,” a fitting tune for this odd couple. She admitted they had their spats, and that she wished sometimes he would fall into the river and drown. Her admission reminds us of the fish she let die, but it also sounds like a remark a child may say about a young companion.

Kit insisted that she take her schoolbooks with her. It almost seems like he is in some way nurturing her growth as a child. It is interesting that she reads from Kon Tiki, a book that details a voyage on a raft, since its survivalist story away from society is something Kit and Holly would be interested in. She says she grew to love the forest because she felt like all the rest of humanity were dead. Again, we have this anti-grownup, outsider feeling.

She ruminates about her life, the actions of parents and meeting Kit that led to this very moment in her life. She then lived “in dread” about how short life is and how destiny comes down to a domino effect set in motion out of one’s control.

Somebody sees Kit trying to catch fish, using a gun. Kit views men approaching from up in a tree and he shoots and kills three men. Kit justifies his actions to Holly saying the men were willing to kill them for a bounty. But he is cold as ice about his actions, feeling no emotion about harming others. It’s almost like he views death like some kind of game.

Kit has a friend named Cato (Ramon Bieri), and they visit his remote home. Kit and Holly go out into the field and Kit sees Cato running back to his house and looking back at them. He doesn’t let on, but he probably felt that Cato was going to turn them in. Kit shoots Cato, and then perversely opens the door for him to get to his bed. When Holly asks, “Is he upset?” Kit says dispassionately, “He didn’t say nothing to me about it.” He even shoots two young people looking for Cato. Sheen’s tone of voice and lazy swagger paints a pitiless picture of Kit.

Kit’s violence seems to have put Holly into a state of numbness. She calls it feeling “blah,” but her description of feeling like all the water being drained out of a bathtub reflects her emotional emptiness. Now the police are on alert in several states, and citizens are armed and vigilant, not knowing where Kit might strike next. To avoid public places, Kit and Holly go to an upscale house and he tells the owner that he is sorry to disturb him as he reveals his handgun. His politeness is disarming, as he hides his violent nature under a calm surface.

(At one point an architect visits the upscale house. He says he talked to the owner the night before, but Kit, answering the door, says the man is sick. The visitor is Malick, and his role as an architect is appropriate for a man constructing the film we are watching).

Holly’s detachment increases as she says that the world now feels like a “faraway planet” that she could not return to. She wanders around the rich man’s estate, whose lavish beauty stresses how out of place she is. She may wish to escape into a fantasy world, a pleasant dream distant from the horrors of reality.

Kit uses a Dictaphone to record a message which is ironically funny given his actions. He sounds like an upright citizen when he says that one should listen to parents and teachers, consider the viewpoints of others, and accept the majority opinion once it prevails. He acts like he is just temporarily taking the car of the rich man (John Carter) and gives him a list of the things he has “borrowed.” His friendly attitude makes him seem like a nice fellow until he turns violent. The Cadillac he steals is the only way he can show what it would be like to be prosperous.

They leave South Dakota and go to Montana. Almereyda says at this point “the landscape drains like that tub, and we may glean that Badlands is a story of lost children at large in a moral vacuum.” There is a shot of Kit from the back as he holds a rifle over his shoulders with his raised hands. The view from that angle makes him look like a scarecrow. That figure is supposed to scare but not harm, but Kit is very scary in reality. She talks about traveling like Marco Polo, which points to her wish to be on a great adventure, when in fact they are living like fugitives where no place provides them with solace. Kit buries some of their things, saying they will revisit them to remind them of how they were. He acts as if they will overcome the miserable fate that awaits them due to his actions. He says the buried objects will be like a time capsule for future people to consider, which shows a grandiose idea of a legacy.

Holly narrates that although Kit needed her given his desperate situation, she says, “something had come between us. I’d stopped even paying attention to him.” She says she, “spelled out entire sentences with my tongue on the roof of my mouth where nobody could read them.” Her loneliness is palpable now as she seems to be in a no man’s land, disconnected from everyone, and only communicating with herself.

She privately vows never to run around with someone as wild as Kit again. She seems to lack any insight into what kind of trouble she is in, having attached herself to someone like Kit in the first place. Finally, she voices her concerns to Kit about how even if they somehow escaped to Canada, he couldn’t provide them with any income. He is so lacking in insight when he says, “I can get a job with the Mounties.” He stops the car to dance to a Nat King Cole song and talks about how he wished he could sing like that. He can be romantic as he realizes what a different life he would have if he had other talents. He can appreciate the beautiful look of the sun rising over the mountains. Instead of gaining notoriety through artistic talents he thinks about being remembered for his infamy.

As a helicopter chases them, Holly is no longer willing to go on with Kit’s crazy adventure. As Kit escapes he adds another policeman to his body count and drives away. After stopping at a gas station, he throws away all their stuff, as if freeing himself from the objects of the world that he is tethered to. He does hold onto Holly’s journal, the source of the narration we hear. Possibly he feels that it can be something that will let his story live on. After a high-speed chase Kit stops and builds a pile of rocks that marks where he was caught. It is a sort of monument to his notoriety. (At one point Malick shows a photograph of a native holding a rifle in front of the Great Sphinx. Could Kit be similarly, in a mock-epic manner, attempting to erect his personal object for prosperity?). And he has gained a renegade’s fame as one of the officers says, “We did it,” as if they will now receive recognition for capturing such a well-known criminal, who actually gave himself up. One of the policemen, after looking at Kit, says, “Hell, he ain’t no bigger than I am.” His remark shows how publicity exaggerates the aspects of an individual.

Kit continues to act so much like an average person that it shows how odd he is. He is conversational, talking about guns to the cops, and how he’ll attach his well-known status to them, calling them “heroes” for taking down such a famous outlaw. One of the policemen knocks the hat he stole from the rich man off Kit’s head, as if removing any perception on Kit’s part that he belonged to the upper class. Even the patrolman says Kit looks like James Dean, another left-handed association with fame. The cops feed his desire to be a well-known by talking about how they admire his clothes, receiving his lighter as a souvenir like it belonged to a celebrity, and asking who his favorite movie star is.

He seems considerate as he reunites with Holly while being taken into custody. He says he’ll make sure she’ll get off and find a good man to be with. But then he says that the rich man was lucky he didn’t kill him, too. She does get off on probation and marries the son of the lawyer who defended her. Kit is sentenced to die in the electric chair, but donates his body to science, which shows that Dr. Jekyll side which was offset by his Mr. Hyde killer. The last shot is of the air transport taking the captured duo away, and the camera shows the sun-laced sky, as if ironically showing that Kit felt he rose above the masses to achieve fame in the only way he knew how.

Five 2023 Films

 SPOILER ALERT! The plots will be discussed.

I thought I would make some brief comments on five 2023 movies:

BARBIE:

Greta Gerwig’s film was a critical and very big commercial success. She was able to present a funny movie that was also heavy on theme. The opening is an enjoyable reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey, with the evolutionary progression moving away from girls playing with one-dimensional versions of dolls to the multifaceted menu of Barbies. However, as the story moves forward, those versions are shown as creations by men who are trying to cash in on women adopting various professions in the modern world.

In the real world, women are still not respected for their roles, so there is disenchantment that their lives are not living up to the ideals presented in Barbie World. This disillusionment is represented by Gloria (America Fererra). Her unhappiness affects Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), who shocks other Barbies by ruminating on death, and travels to the real world to explore the problems there.

She has a stowaway in her Barbiemobile. It’s Stereotypical Ken (Ryan Gosling). In Barbie World he is just an accessory, as are the other Ken dolls. In the real world he learns how to be macho, and he brings that attitude back to Barbie World to share with the Kens. Barbie must return to set things straight before revisiting the real world at the end.

The thrust here is that neither gender should dominate, and that women must become empowered by way of their own identity, and not by what is prescribed by men.

The film is accomplished at bringing the world of Barbie to life, and the performances hit their marks. Great last line, when Barbie says she is in an office to see her “gynecologist.”

 OPPENHEIMER:

Christopher Nolan dazzles again in this story about the scientist who created the atomic bomb. In this film, unlike some others by Nolan, it is not that difficult to follow the different timelines. The story jumps between Oppenheimer in his early years associating with the Communist movement and his early brilliance as a physicist. There is the time period when he works on the Manhattan Project developing the atomic bomb. When he refuses to continue work toward developing the even more devastating hydrogen bomb, the government persecutes him for his early association with Communism. Eventually, the film depicts his acquittal.

We discussed this film in an online forum that the Bryn Mawr Film Institute presented. I asked about how the instructors viewed Nolan’s attitude toward science in general, mentioning his films, Inception, Interstellar, and his Batman trilogy. The instructors stated that Nolan appears to view people as flawed creatures who are not equipped to handle the fallout (pun intended in this case) from their technological advances. Inception shows the psychological devastation of delving into the dreams of others. Interstellar, although optimistic in the end, shows the need to leave Earth because of how humans destroyed the environment with technology. There is the section in the Batman stories where Bruce Wayne can listen to everything that the citizens are saying, totally invading their privacy. He allows that technology to be destroyed, but the fear is there if unscrupulous individuals used that system. In Oppenheimer, the ethical question that torments the main character is if he doesn’t develop the nuclear bomb, then Hitler might dominate the world if he is not stopped. However, by developing the A-Bomb, he opens a nuclear Pandor’s Box that threatens the existence of the world.

Great performances by Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer, and Robert Downey, Jr. as the scientist’s eventual nemesis, Lewis Strauss (both Golden Globe winners).

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON:

The title of the movie refers to an Osage Native American ceremony that cherishes the blossoming of flowers each year. During the ritual they discover oil on their land and the tribe becomes rich. However, they are surrounded by the enemy, the white man, who cherishes the land for profit. The whites exploit the Natives by marrying into the tribe and then bringing about the deaths of the Osage community to inherit the land’s wealth. They even have some declared incompetent while living to gain control of the assets.

The Native population is somewhat to blame for being seduced by the white culture’s love of materialism. Martin Scorsese’s film suggests that the desire for oil destroys the soul of the people who were its initial residents and pollutes the land with whom the Osage people were joined. One image that backs up this theme is when the natives have visions of their ancestors, they are covered in the dark liquid coming from the gushing oil, suggesting a blackening of their souls.

The film is very much about being in denial. The best example in Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Ernest Burkhart (The “Earnest” name comes off as ironic, since he deceives his wife and himself). He comes to Oklahoma seeking financial help from his uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro), who is a deputy sheriff and big landowner. On the surface he appears as a benefactor to the Osage community, but appearances are deceiving in this film, and he orchestrates the deaths of Osage natives for the personal gain of the whites. Ernest marries Mollie (Lily Gladstone, Golden Globe winner for her role), and fools himself into thinking he is helping her treat her diabetes when he is actually poisoning her. Mollie herself also deludes herself by not seeing how the man she believes she loves is attempting to do away with her. She finally comes to her senses after personal losses and is strong enough to get the Federal Government to investigate the many killings of Osage natives. The self-denial is general here, as the white people act as if they are helping the Native Americans while actually ruining their way of life.

Scorsese employs the camera to good effect when he places it at ground level and makes the audience feel as if it is a character walking with the film’s characters in rooms in houses. There is a smart image of Ernest swatting flies on two occasions. It brings to mind Beelzebub, the “Lord of the Flies,” and generally acts as a symbol for decay and corruption.

We discussed this film in a Zoom class. One instructor thought, given the length, that there should have been more of the story told from the Native American perspective. It seems a valid observation. This movie, and exceptional films such as Dances with Wolves and Little Big Man, tell the stories from the perspective of the white man, and not from that of the Native American.

 MAESTRO:

Bradley Cooper does it all here, writing, directing, and starring in this biopic about musical conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein, who composed the music for West Side Story. The movie is stylized, as it moves at the beginning from one location to another without breaks, which stresses the artistry of the filmmaking and thus can be distancing for the audience to invest emotionally. There is not a great deal of background information about Bernstein’s early life. Some may find the lack of exposition admirable while others may again find it difficult to understand the main character’s passion for music. But that passion is undeniable, and Cooper is submerged in the character, energetically demonstrating his conducting ability. Along with the makeup, Cooper inhabits Bernstein, and it is a virtuoso performance. I did, however, find his voice distracting, since he constantly sounded like he was suffering from a cold.

The film focuses on his marriage, and the conflict between his love for his wife and his homosexual orientation, and the homophobia of the time period. Carey Mulligan plays the spouse, Felicia, and she shows her love for and frustration with her husband. She displays emotional depth as she battles the cancer that ends her life.

 THE HOLDOVERS:

While the above films stress moviemaking artistry and theme, this film by Alexander Payne is very much about character. Paul Giamatti reunites with Payne after previously starring in Sideways. He is Paul Hunham, a sarcastic ancient history teacher at a boys’ boarding school who bemoans the lack of educational accomplishment of the privileged students who attend the school by way of their affluent parents. There is a School Ties and Dead Poets Society feel as to the locale of the story.

Hunham is stuck with having to babysit a few of the students over the Christmas holiday period because the boys’ parents are otherwise engaged. One of the fathers eventually arrives, literally as a helicopter parent, and whisks all but one student to a ski getaway after the child emotionally blackmails the patriarch. The one remaining boy, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa, in a wonderful performance) has shown his anguish about the demise of his parents’ marriage.

The story is set during the beginning of the Vietnam War, and the cafeteria worker, Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), has lost a son who was a student at the school. She took advantage of her employment to allow her boy to attend. There is a definite class antagonism here as Hunham’s background is more in tune with the workers at the school.

There is a great deal of witty and insightful dialogue in the movie. Hunham’s pessimistic attitude is shown when he says, “Life is like a henhouse ladder: shitty and short.” He tells Tully at one point the need for learning about history when he says, “history is not simply the study of the past. It is an explanation of the present.”

As the film progresses, secrets about the lives of both Hunham and Tully come to the surface, and they find that there is more to each of them than appears on the surface. This film says that you don’t understand people until you take the time to really get to know them. Preconceived stereotypes don’t always conveniently fit into one’s world view.

Both Giamatti and Randolph deserved their Golden Globe wins.

The next film to be analyzed is Badlands.

Foreign Correspondent

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

I haven’t discussed an Alfred Hitchcock film in a while so I decided on reviewing Foreign Correspondent (1940). The opening credits have a revolving globe of the Earth above a newspaper building to show the universal need to gather international information. The beginning notes pay tribute to foreign correspondents, saying they were out there investigating dangerous situations while the rest of us were watching “rainbows,” an obvious reference to the Wizard of Oz and the isolationism noted in Casablanca.

Powers (the man who is in charge played by Harry Davenport), who is the city editor of the New York Globe (like the Daily Planet?) says he is not getting enough info from his foreign correspondents. He remembers that Johnny Jones (an everyman name) is a tough reporter. Joel McCrea plays the character and excels in the role. Jones has been proficient in solving criminal activity and Powers wants to find out about the “crime” that Nazi Germany is hatching. He notes that Jones beat up a policeman working on one story, which most likely refers to Hitchcock’s well-known fear of cops.

Jones is ripping up newspapers and making them into snowflakes, showing his cynicism about the profession. Powers doesn’t want a stereotypical foreign correspondent, but instead a “reporter,” someone who has no preconceived ideologies and who can be objective. Powers wants Jones to use an Englishman, Stephen Fisher (Herbert Marshall), head of the Universal Peace Party, who can help Jones get to a Dutch diplomat named Van Meer (Albert Bassermann), to find out what’s going on in Europe. Powers wants him to use the name Harvey Haverstick which sounds more important. At this point the practical Jones just wants an expense account.

Jones travels by ship to London and meets Stebbins (writer Robert Benchley who contributed dialogue to the screenplay), who is an American journalist who is stationed in England. His character is funny as he complains that he has been drinking alcohol too much and now must drink milk, not the drink of tough newsmen.

Jones sees Van Meer getting into a taxi taking him to Fisher’s dinner in his honor. He gets a ride with Van Meer who dodges questions and then shows he is shrewd because he knows Jones is a reporter. He does admit that he feels helpless about the oncoming possibility of a war, which stresses a tone of pessimism. In contrast, Fisher’s daughter, Carol (Laraine Day), argues with others that people say we stumble into war but never into peace. She implies people can embrace peace just as much as war.

Jones encounters Carol at dinner, not knowing she is Fisher’s daughter, which adds to the humor of the film. His cynical ways about whether Fisher is legit miffs Carol, who says her name is “Smith,” which is a counter to Jones’s generic last name. She will not sit with him even after he sends her thirty notes. Fisher announces that Van Meer can’t attend, which surprises Jones, since the man took him to the affair. Fisher reveals that Carol is his daughter, and Jones looks at her with an adoring stare which throws her off her speech. When she looks for her notes she encounters all the messages that Jones sent, further adding to the unnerving chemistry that is developing between them.

Van Meer went to a peace conference in Holland and Jones receives a message to follow him there. Jones confronts Van Meer as he is entering the building where the gathering is to take place, but Van Meer appears not to recognize Jones. Then a supposed reporter (one of many deceptions in the movie) asks to take Van Meer’s picture but he has a gun next to his camera and shoots Van Meer. The scene shows how appearances can be deceiving as Jones, the true journalist, is contrasted against the phony one. It is raining and Jones chases the shooter through a sea of umbrellas. The umbrellas show how the surface can cover the reality beneath and add to confusion for someone seeking the truth. The killer shoots other as he makes a getaway and has help from a man in a car, suggesting a conspiracy is at work. Jones happens to hop into a car which contains a smiling Carol, happy to see the handsome Jones, and Scott ffolliott (George Sanders), a stereotypical unflappable Britisher, and another journalist. He says the wife of an ancestor who Henry VIII beheaded dropped off the capital letter at the beginning of his name to commemorate her husband (Benchley’s witty dialogue is apparent here). They chase after the car transporting the murderer, who fires shots at them, as the police follow. However, they mysteriously lose the killer in a flat plain near some windmills. The wind causes Jones to lose his hat for the second time (think of the Coesn Brothers film Miller’s Crossing where losing a hat makes one seem unsure and foolish). However, after chasing it he notices that a windmill’s blades reversed their motion, and he suspects that the killer is inside. He sends the other two to retrieve the police.

There is a plane flying by and the smart Jones realizes that the windmill is signaling the plane to land. He goes inside and hears men speaking a foreign language. Those from the plane join them as Jones hides on stairs leading toward the top. He discovers the real Van Meer, who is alive but drugged. He tries to stay coherent, saying that there was an attempt to make it look like he was assassinated by using a double. He becomes mute after scribbling something on a piece of paper. Again, we have appearances being deceiving, as represented by Van Meer’s double and the fake assassination. Hitchcock builds suspense by having Jones’s raincoat getting caught in the mill’s mechanism. But he removes it and grasps it before it can be discovered. In addition, Van Meer looks upward, possibly revealing Jones. Instead, he hides, and the foreigners only see a bird and light coming in from a window. Outside of the latter, Jones holds on, trying to prevent a fall, and escapes. (Light becomes a metaphor in the story, especially at the end).

Later, Jones tries to explain what he has observed to the authorities. They go to the windmill and everyone and the car are gone. There is a man sleeping where Jones found Van Meer and he says he has been sleeping there all day and there were no others. We have here a further example of deceptive appearances, and an attempt to discredit Jones. The police and even Carol doubt his story. Hitchcock often has a truthful man being doubted by others, and he again exhibits his distrust of the police.

Jones is quite observant as he notices that the wires to his hotel room have been cut when two men pretending to be policemen say they need to take him to headquarters. He is cool and funny under pressure when one of the men says they all speak English. Jones says not everybody where he comes from can make that claim, obviously referring to some uneducated Americans. He realizes that he knows too much, and these conspirators are out to get rid of him. He pretends to take a bath and goes out the window to Carol’s room. As he goes along the edge of the building he touches a light that extinguishes which leave a sign that says “Hot … Europe,” a reference to the Nazi threat. She is there trying to get support for her father’s peace movement, and she does not believe his story after what happened at the windmill. Jones continues to be the honest man who others do not believe. He is a true journalist because he says, “There’s something fishy going on around here. There’s a big story in this. I can smell it. I can feel it and I’m going to get to the bottom of it if it’s the last thing I do. And nothing’s going to stop me.”

He persists and wins Carol over. He is shrewd again as he asks for several people to go to his hotel room for assistance as a diversion as a valet gets his clothes. Jones and Carol escape and head for a ship. The humor continues as they both profess their love for each other and the desire to marry. With a wink to the audience Jones says, “Well that cuts our love scene quite short.”

In London, Jones meets Fisher and Krug (Eduardo Ciannelli), and recounts that he saw Van Meer killed, but does not mention the double because he recognizes Krug as one of the men at the windmill. When Krug leaves the room, he tells Fisher what he knows. Fisher talks privately with Krug, and we realize that Fisher is one of the conspirators. Krug leaves and Jones is upset by this act and says he wants to spill the story now. Fisher convinces him to keep his story quiet so as not to endanger Van Meer. He also says Jones can have a private eye to protect him since he is in danger. The man they will use is really an assassin. We have more deception as people who seem friendly are deadly. Fisher almost seems admiring when he describes how the supposed enemy is quite cunning, since he is really talking about himself. However, he almost hesitates to go forward with the plan, since he sees how attached his daughter is to Jones.

Rowley (Edmund Gwenn) is the private eye who is supposed to protect Jones, but pushes him in front of a truck. Jones is not hit, and Rowley covers by saying it was safer to push than to pull. Pretending (deceit again) that they are being followed, Rowley gets a reluctant Jones to go into a church and up to the top of the tower. He tries to push him off. We see a man fall to his death, but there is a delay which heightens the tension until we learn that Jones stepped aside, and it was Rowley that fell. (Hitchcock will kill off a lead character quickly in Psycho, but not here. He also likes cliffhangers as he has falling from heights, for example, in North by Northwest, Saboteur, and Vertigo).

Because it was Fisher who hooked Jones up with Rowley, Jones now knows Fisher isn’t the upstanding man he pretends to be. ffolliott shows up at Stebbins’s office and says he suspected Fisher because of his own investigating. He says that there was some memorized section of a peace initiative that the real kidnappers are trying to extract from Van Meer. He suggests that Jones and Carol hide under the guise of protecting Jones, but ffolliott will say that Carol was kidnapped, as a way to invent leverage over Fisher (false fronts erected all around). Even ffolliott schemes involving his allies as he called Carol earlier to suggest hiding (and he doesn’t tell her about her father), and ffolliott does not tell Jones of the ploy. Everybody here twists the truth.

Carol hears Jones setting up a separate room at a hotel for her to keep her away longer so ffolliott can contact Fisher. She leaves for home when she discovers Jones’s secret scheme and believes he is just using her to get at her father, and spoils ffolliott’s attempt to get Van Meer’s whereabouts. ffolliott follows Fisher after hearing him say the address to a cab driver and tells Stebbins to bring Jones later. He is hoping to discover where Van Meer is. Carol answers the phone and recognizes Kruger’s voice, which make her wonder why that man is calling her father.

ffolliott is caught at the place where they are keeping Van Meer just as Fisher pretends he is still Van Meer’s friend to get the clause of the treaty out of him. The journalist says that Fisher is not his friend, and it is enough for the drugged Van Meer to realize the deception since there are no police to help him. He says there is “no help for the whole poor, suffering world.” Van Meer’s assessment is an accurate prediction of the Nazi onslaught that will follow.

The captors off screen torture Van Meer and he starts to divulge the information. Ffolliott breaks the window, and unlike Rowley, his fall is broken by an awning. However, the bad guys escape as Jones arrives. Van Meer is unconscious and not able to corroborate ffolliott’s story. Thus, Scotland Yard is reluctant to pursue Fisher due to his respected, but false, position. As the conspirators head for the United States, England declares war on Germany.

Carol is on the plane with her father and reveals her knowledge of Fisher’s connection to Kruger. He confesses his deception as a spy for Germany. He feels ashamed now for what he has done. Jones and ffolliott are also on the plane. Carol is still devoted to her father even as Jones says he didn’t come to take down her father, it was only where the story led.

At that moment a German ship shells the plane, mistakenly thinking it’s a bomber. The fog of war is taking hold. Now even the pilots lie to prevent panic, saying that it was target practice and the firing is an accident. Luckily, Carol distributes life vests, realizing lies will not protect anyone. The plane goes into the ocean and Fisher sacrifices himself so others can stay afloat on a wing, gaining some redemption for himself.

An American ship rescues the remaining main characters. Jones does not want to soil Fisher’s name because of his love for Carol. She grants him leave because, as Rick from Casablanca says, their story isn’t that important compared to the rest of the world. The captain of the ship says no information should be released while onboard. Here, Jones uses deception to get the truth out by pretending to talk to his “uncle” while letting the phone stay off the hook as he details the story to his boss, Powers, by arguing for its release to the captain.

The once reluctant foreign correspondent now reports the war from various places in Europe in the epilogue to the story. His broadcast speech over the radio at the end is an argument against isolationism as he reports while bombs rain from the sky. He tells listeners in the United States to rally against the darkness of fascism that is coming when he says it’s, “as if the lights were all out everywhere except in America. Keep those lights burning … they’re the only lights left in the world.” It is a plea for truth to combat lies, which has become an ongoing battle.

The next film is Badlands.