Welcome to Week Twenty-Eight of “Monday at the Movies.” A few romantic comedies on tap this week, plus
a film so disturbing I feel uncomfortable saying I enjoyed it.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
– A long, long time ago, I directed readers to
an essay by David Bordwell in
which he draws the distinction between an excellent film and a film that is to
one’s liking. I invoke Bordwell here
because I think he might be the key to my take on Kubrick’s
A Clockwork Orange; it’s a great film,
certainly, excellent by technical standards and one of Kubrick’s more
accomplished films, but it’s entirely different to “like” on a purely
evaluative level. For one, its
protagonist Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell in the epitome of a career-making
performance) is a brutal sadist who spends his evenings raping and engaging in “ultra-violence.” Perhaps worse, Kubrick’s filmmaking attempts
to get us to sympathize with – and even
like – Alex, a disconcerting
premise once you realize what’s afoot. I’m
probably in the minority on this one, but I usually find Kubrick a bit...
boring;
Dr. Strangelove is, I admit,
genius, but I’ve never been able to watch
2001
or
The Shining in one sitting because
they seem plodding and aimless – which may be the point, perhaps, but they’re just
not “to my liking.” (The first hour of
Full Metal Jacket, though, is brilliant.) But here Kubrick displays his ability to keep
a scene moving even if the camera is stationary, and though much of the film is
repulsive on a moral level, it’s transfixing on an aesthetic one, helped in no
small part by the quirky yet unspeakably evil performance McDowell turns in.
Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)
– I’m on record as not being the world’s biggest Steve Carell fan, and
Crazy, Stupid, Love does very little to
swing me in the other direction. Which
is not to say that the film isn’t enjoyable – halfway far from it. I say halfway because there are really two
movies going on in
Crazy, Stupid, Love
(one, it seems for each unnecessary comma in the title): in one, divorcee Steve Carell tries life
without his wife Julianne Moore, while in the other his womanizing wingman Ryan
Gosling reforms his ways after meeting girl-of-his-dreams Emma Stone. As is usually the case with these kinds of
films, it’s the latter plot, the supporting one, that succeeds far more than
the former. The problem, perhaps, is that
Carell is too real as a man who’s had his heart ripped out; just when the supposed
comedy is getting to the funny bits, Carell mopes into frame with his sad-sack
character to remind us just how miserable he is. It’s a shame, because Gosling and Stone are
so talented and so charismatic together that one wishes for a movie revolving
solely around them. As a consequence of
being so schizophrenic, the film’s message is a mixed one – is love possible or
not? Or is it merely difficult but
worthwhile? If the latter, tell me
something I don’t know. Aside from the
Gosling/Stone scenes, I will credit the film with a rather clever third act
twist, something I didn’t know to see coming.
Friends with Benefits
(2011) – Remember that time that the two leads from
Black Swan starred in separate movies about casual sex? I certainly do, but after seeing Natalie
Portman in
No Strings Attached (with an
uninspiring Ashton Kutcher as her co-lead) I wasn’t exactly ready to join Mila
Kunis and Justin Timberlake in
Friends
with Benefits. Turns out the joke
was on me, because
Friends with Benefits
is by far the better of this odd couple.
Director Will Gluck, who made such a winner out of
Easy A with Emma Stone, creates a solidly funny film here, which is
by and large victorious thanks to the infectious chemistry between Kunis and
Timberlake; their characters are likeable from the first, and – pivotally for a
comedy film – they’re funny, too. Also
back from
Easy A is Patricia
Clarkson, who reprises her role as the kooky and sexually liberated mother,
this time of Kunis’s character. The only
part of the equation that doesn’t fit is Richard Jenkins as Timberlake’s
Alzheimer’s-afflicted father, whose outbursts lead not to comic relief but to
unexpectedly heartfelt pathos. While the
film falls prey to the clichés of the romantic comedy genre, it does so more
credibly than
No Strings Attached,
without asking us to cry for the protagonists when their bizarre experiment
complicates itself. Wisely, the film remembers
that we have to like our characters in order to want to see them together, and Gluck
and company – particularly his leads – achieve both by leaps and bounds.
That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the
Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!
Room 237 (2012) –
On paper, at least, I make my living by interpreting, at best observing
significant patterns and at worst “reading into” things. So for someone like me, Room 237 is a spellbinding documentary about what Stanley Kubrick’s
The Shining really means. The
Shining is a film on which I had to do a complete 180 regarding my opinion,
due in large part to the hermeneutical depth one can plumb with this film. The theories put forth in this film range
from the plausible to the endearingly absurd; one credible theorist posits that
the film is about the nature of evil (sure), while another points to the
prevalence of Native American imagery as a commentary on genocide (well, now
that you mention it...). Sidebar: My favorite is the one about how Kubrick
faked the moon landing while filming 2001:
A Space Odyssey, with The Shining
as his covert confession. While some of
the interpretations are quite clearly out there – and this documentary obviously knows it (one dubious theory is followed by a clip of Jack Nicholson intoning,
“Whatever you say, Lloyd”) – the real fun of the film is in seeing the
enthusiasm these interpreters have for their pet theories and in the way that Room 237 returns frequently to its
source material to show the audience what the interpreters are seeing
(highlighting, for example, the native iconography in the freezer). But at the end of the day, what I really
enjoyed about Room 237 is how similar
it is to watching The Shining with a
group of friends, each as invested in the act of interpretation as I am.
