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Getting Caught in the Grasp of THE IRON CLAW
“Ever since I was a child, people said my family was cursed.”
It remains unclear to me why Sean Durkin remains less celebrated than he should be in the world of indie filmmaking. His debut feature, 2011’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, remains one of the most unnerving tales about the world of cults that’s ever been made. Even if The Nest, Durkin’s 2020 follow-up didn’t connect the way that it should have, those who did embrace it found themselves wowed by a story that showed the dangers of reaching for an existence that was never meant to be a reality. Now, the filmmaker has returned with The Iron Claw, an offering that offers up a series of firsts for Durkin in terms of genre, budget, and star power. Despite the slow trickle of acclaim that has come his way, Durkin does seem to be moving up the industry ladder. It’s a well-earned climb, and judging by The Iron Claw, it looks to take him higher.
Based on the true story, The Iron Claw takes place in the late 70s/early 80s and follows the Von Erik family, who made a name for themselves in the world of wrestling. Following patriarch Fritz’s (Holt McCallany) end to a once-promising career, his three sons Kevin (Zac Efron), David (Harris Dickinson), and Kerry (Jeremy Allen-White) each seem poised to carry on where he left off as mother Doris (Maura Tierney) and youngest brother Mike (Stanley Simons) watch from the side. However, Kevin’s budding relationship with Pam (Lily James) and a string of personal tragedies look to end everything the family has fought to build.
The Iron Claw is being sold as a story about wrestling, which in many respects is very true. There are some scenes and sequences that show how the family made their name in the sport and how they all but became a dynasty of wrestlers. These are well-shot, effective moments in The Iron Claw which not only shows Durkin’s versatility as a director but also his knack for allowing him and his camera to be consumed by the world he’s trying to capture. Whenever he’s not in the ring, Durkin ensures that The Iron Claw never loses its wrestling movie credibility by looking at the mentality required to exist in such a world. In Kevin, Kerry, and David we see the different sides of the wrestler’s mind, and what the sport means to each of them. While one wants to please his father, another aims to make a name for himself, while the other sees it as a natural duty that he must fulfill, regardless of what it costs. If each brother borders on obsession, their father is flat out held captive by it, determined that his sons carry him to the glory he believes was always meant to be his.
It’s when Durkin focuses on the side of life outside of the ring that The Iron Claw feels like a Sean Durkin film. The film is at its best when it operates as a story about the familial bond, what it means to each member of the Von Erik family, and the person each one becomes when another tragedy befalls them. Fueled by their part of the legacy they’re leaving behind, each brother is given his own moment of struggling to be seen as a viable member of the family while also trying to exist as the person he naturally is. At each brother’s heels is Fritz, who remains steadfast in his praise of whichever son is currently proving himself to be the best. It’s hard not to feel the pain in each brother’s heart as Fritz pushes him aside to dote on another, especially when the family’s supposed curse starts to take effect. Once the dust settles and the curse has wreaked havoc on the Von Erik’s by claiming one life after another, the real tragedy that emerges is not what has been lost, but rather what was missed, and what probably never had a chance to be.
While he’s top-billed, I can’t say that Efron’s work in The Iron Claw is remarkably good, but he is as good as he’s ever been. The film borders on being an ensemble piece, but Kevin is definitely the soul of the film and Efron takes great care to make sure the audience clocks the growing anguish that will never leave his character’s soul. As his brothers, Simon is heartbreaking, Allen-White makes good use of his Bear hiatus, and Dickinson continues his rise as an actor whose work is to be anticipated. James and Tierney give what could have otherwise been simple stock characters real life, while longtime character actor McCallany turns in what might be his finest hour on film.
As I said before, The Iron Claw functions as a Durkin film thanks to both the director’s exploration into a world he’s not yet ventured into and his attraction to the raw humanity at the root of it. If there’s one moment that all but cinches The Iron Claw‘s heart, it’s the film’s final scene in which a broken Kevin sits in a grassy yard all alone. It’s a striking scene in which the once-promising athlete finds himself overcome with emotion as he watches his young sons playing in the yard. Seeing his children be allowed to freely be children, it finally sinks in how much he gave to his family, and how much they all gave to an entity that destroyed them in ways none of them could have ever imagined. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better way to end the story, or a better testament to a filmmaker whose work only keeps getting richer.
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THE ZONE OF INTEREST: Jonathan Glazer Once Again Delivers Masterpiece-Level Filmmaking
There’s a moment in The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s (Under the Skin, Birth, Sexy Beast) brilliantly disquieting, provocative adaptation of Martin Amis’s 2014 novel, where Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), the Nazi commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, stops at a staircase, almost retching as the camera hovers at a discrete distance. Interpretations will vary but will seem like a minor, even tangential moment likely isn’t. Coming as it does after Höss celebrates what qualifies as his greatest personal and professional success, his involuntary spasms might represent anything from a badly prepared meal, the rot destroying what’s left of his soul, or the last, dying embers of his curdled conscience.
The Zone of Interest opens several months earlier with Hoss, his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), and their five children enjoy a bucolic afternoon on an isolated, tree-lined river in Poland. Nothing out of the ordinary occurs during the family gathering: The children play in and around the river, Hedwig cares for the youngest, an infant, while the stoic, taciturn Rudolf occasionally stands apart, presumably lost in the monstrous thoughts that will define his legacy as a monster among monsters, albeit a monster with an ordinary, human face, devoting his talent as a logistical problem-solver to the issues surrounding the mass extermination of the Jews and other undesirables who arrive on train transports multiple times a day.
A not unpredictable case study in – to borrow Hannah Arendt’s phrase in describing Adolf Eichmann sixty years ago – the banality of evil, Glazer’s adaptation de-fictionalizes Amis’s novel by using the Höss’s family real names (Amis used pseudonyms), focusing on the day-to-day activities in and around the Höss household, a spacious (but not too spacious according to Hedwig) home that sits uncomfortably outside Auschwitz’s gates and walls. Working from footage culled from hundreds of hours taken from fixed cameras set up around the set they constructed for the fictionalized Hoss family, Glazer methodically details the denial necessary for Rudolf, Hedwig, and their children to live lives of comfort and – in their eyes – respectability. In effect, Rudolf and Hedwig have created a cocoon of complicity around the Höss family.
As much a film about what we don’t see but hear (gunshots, screams, the ever-present hum of the camp’s machines of death), The Zone of Interest demands an atypical level of intense engagement from the audience: To imagine the unimaginable, the dehumanizing, industrialized murder of tens of thousands just outside the frame, and in imagining the unimaginable, becoming an active, complicit part of the filmmaking process itself. Glazer hints at the atrocities occurring offscreen through aforementioned sound and image, the latter via the red-brick walls topped by barbed wire surrounding the house and Hedwig’s garden, the puffs of white smoke associated with trains arriving in Auschwitz, and the black, bilious smoke emanating from the crematorium.
Glazer recognizes the immense psychic cost involved with living in a constant, heightened sense of denial, segregating yourself – as both Rudolf and Hedwig repeatedly do – from the consequences of your actions and life choices. Pretense, Glazer would likely argue, can only get you so far and no further. Even when Rudolf and Hedwig reminisce about a spa trip, the laughter that follows seems disproportionate to the humor involved (because it is). Later, Rudolf’s rudimentary paternal instincts emerge briefly when another trip to the river with two of his older children ends abruptly after a gruesome discovery and a sudden rainstorm filled with ash from the crematorium.
There too, Glazer takes a similarly oblique, elliptical, anti-sensationalistic approach, letting the audience discern for themselves the horrors Rudolf has created on the other side of the wall and the minute impingements of those daily horrors on Rudolf and his family. A telling episode involves a visit by Hedwig’s mom to the Hoss home: It goes contrary as planned for the prideful Hedwig. Her eagerness to impress her mother with the residual power, prestige, and privilege of her position as the camp commandant’s wife gradually gives way to revulsion and disgust in her mother.
Glazer emphasizes the incidental, the tangential over what usually passes as dramatic conflict in mainstream narrative filmmaking. Only temporary friction over an impending promotion for Rudolf and a possible relocation for his family would qualify as conflict. Even that source of friction eventually resolves itself, ending with the scene of Rudolf at the staircase. Glazer, however, paradoxically splices a modern-day scene into the Rudolf staircase scene. Once again, Glazer asks audiences to critically interrogate their biases, prejudices, and attitudes towards history, how we consume and interact with history and the Holocaust.
The Zone of Interest opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, December 15th, before expanding to additional markets on Friday, December 22nd.
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Cozying Up with Some AMERICAN FICTION
“Potential is what people see when what’s in front of them isn’t good enough.”
There’s a scene early on in American Fiction where Jeffrey Wright’s character Monk sees his class interrupted by a student who has a problem with the fact that they are covering a work by Flannery O’Connor that contains a racial slur in the title. The student says she finds the word offensive to which Monk tells her that they are looking at it concerning the work of literature they are studying. When the student says it doesn’t matter because the word makes her uncomfortable, Monk tells her that if he can get over it, she can too. Eventually, the camera cuts to the student leaving the class in tears. The scene gives us a great introduction to the character of Monk, as well as the kind of topical ideas American Fiction is setting him up to tackle. What the audience doesn’t know is that American Fiction will force Monk to tackle not just the current landscape, but just how much a part of it he is.
In American Fiction, Wright plays Thelonius “Monk” Ellison, a revered writer whose literary career has hit an impasse. Monk can’t get his latest novel published and he finds himself fed up with the current brand of black writers who are receiving praise for books which he feels plays into the stereotypes of black America. Out of frustration, Monk writes a novel under a pseudonym that’s filled with the kinds of characters and tropes he despises, only to have it be a surprise success. At the same time, he’s forced to confront the issues he has with his family, including sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), mom Agnes (Leslie Uggams), and brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown).
It’s easy to feel Monk’s struggle with the black literary scene around him; a struggle which only grows when he finds himself becoming a part of it in a way he hadn’t anticipated. Monk has spent ages proudly condemning those who conform to stereotypes, both creatively and culturally, as well as those who heap praise on them for their supposed authenticity. His disdain for works that embrace stories from the ghetto and characters whom Monk feels are not well-spoken angers him the more celebrated they become. It’s more than clear that he resents that side of black America, especially since he’s spent so much of his life proving that there’s another side to the culture. Yet when he is confronted with the opportunity to compromise and sell out, he finds himself both incensed and flabbergasted. Monk does eventually agree to let the novel be published under absurd conditions, all of which his publishers remarkably agree to. The more outrageous his unexpected success becomes, the more believable American Fiction feels as both character and film look at these types of works and question: Is it pandering to write such stories, or is it exposing something that some, like Monk, would prefer to keep hidden?
The flip side of American Fiction takes Monk back to Massachusetts where he must deal with his somewhat dysfunctional family. For a while, it feels as if the film wastes too much time on his relationship with the people from his past. Yet these scenes eventually prove instrumental when it comes to exploring who Monk was before we met him and do manage to give strong motivations to his actions. It’s here where we meet the real Monk; who he was and how it shaped him as a writer. In seeing him trying to hold it together amid Agnes’ dementia and Cliff’s somewhat hedonistic lifestyle, we watch Monk cling to his pretenses as armor, making sure he doesn’t sacrifice too much of himself to his family at this stage of his life. Eventually, Monk realizes (as we all do at some point) that he’s living a novel of his own, one over which he has very little authorship over. What kind of novel is he living? What kind was he living before? The answers to these will differ according to each audience member who will walk into American Fiction with their own relationship to the culture they come from. How much they allow themselves to be defined by that culture is what will either allow them to identify with Monk, or turn away from him altogether.
We’ve all waited for Wright to have a role that allows him this much room and freedom to shine, which he undoubtedly does. For years the actor has made a career playing characters on the sidelines which usually come in, make an indelible impression, and then sadly depart. American Fiction is the role that was made for Wright, drawing on his emotional depth, hypnotic timbre, and presence which has been his calling card for decades. Quite simply, it’s one of the most stunning performances of the year. The actor is in good company here, allowing his fellow players to share the spotlight with some especially good work coming from Brown, Uggams, Ross, and Erika Alexander as Coraline, Monk’s love interest.
If the title American Fiction might not be the most flashy for a movie whose aims are high and bold, it’s certainly one of the most provocative. Monk’s story in many ways is the story of a part of America that deals with a very specific social experience. It’s the story of someone who has used where they’ve come from to fashion themselves into an image and persona that represents the person they want to be, rather than who society assumes they already are. There’s a continuous struggle between race, culture, and class within oneself that exists in virtually every moment, regardless of whether or not it’s the subject of the scene, and to the movie’s credit, its direct comments on such themes are dealt with in actions rather than through a string of monologues. American Fiction will not be the film many think it will be going into it. But it’s one that takes a lot of the questions that many of us have avoided for so long and dares to answer them.
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Hopkins, Goode Both Show Up for FREUD’S LAST SESSION
“We are all cowards before death.”
Looking at the synopsis for Freud’s Last Session, one would assume it to be a straightforward chamber piece; the kind of stagey two-hander in which a pair of characters aim to break each other down before the end credits roll. While there’s some truth to what I’ve just described when it comes to the kind of film this actually is, the reality is that it’s far more than that. Freud’s Last Session is a stirring period drama that’s accentuated by clever editing, handsome cinematography, and an incredibly rich production design. More visually appealing than the setup would have you believe, the film is the kind of cinematic experience that most cinephiles typically long for but seldom get. At its center, however, beyond the many cinematic flourishes, is an exploration into two of the greatest minds ever to emerge from the 20th century and how they may (or may not have) left a mark on the other’s world.
Co-written and directed by Matt Brown, Anthony Hopkins stars as a the famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who is battling oral cancer and a compromised relationship with his daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries). One day, he agrees to have a meeting with an Oxford alum named C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode), who has a desire to meet with Freud to discuss a variety of subjects. As the two men engage in intellectual sparring, they find the tables turned on them and are forced to confront their pasts.
The filmmakers behind Freud’s Last Session have made sure that equal time is given to both figures so that we can note the traits that gave them their reputations and also to get to know them as individuals away from those reputations. The best device the film has up its sleeve to gain insight into the men on the screen is the use of flashbacks, which tell us almost better than anything else, how Freud and Lewis became who they were. Both of these flashbacks have different strengths; Lewis’ is somewhat fantastic and slightly magical, while Freud’s is emotionally charged. In each instance, both men are stripped down to his most rawest, natural state for events that will be an instrumental part of their lives. But the film makes some missteps as well when it comes to trying to delve into the psyche of these two. The scenes with Freud and Anna are repetitive (truthfully, it’s a subplot that still needed a great deal of extra work to have a reason to exist) and a virtually lifeless narration by Lewis sends the movie back a few steps every time it comes around again.
Freud’s Last Session really sparkles when it stays on the two men as a unit going back and forth to prove something to each other, and themselves. Among the many discussion topics they cover are belief in God (specifically, the mythology and mythologizing of God), the natural state of homosexuality, the horrors of war, and the effects of man’s own creations. For a film that aims to cover as much ground as this one hopes to, strong dialogue is key. The script here works more than it doesn’t, although there are the inevitable times when certain scenes can’t help but feel like they’ve been taken from a college lecture. Overall, however, the script allows both lead characters enough room to stand their ground as two generations with very different schools of thought continuously challenge each other. Yet the most surprising moments between the two come when they allow themselves to be human in front of each other. An air raid sequence sees Freud give vital comfort to a PTSD-stricken Lewis, while the latter comes swiftly to the former’s aid when his cancer becomes too much to bear at one point.
If anyone were to think that The Father was the last breath of brilliance that Hopkins had left in him, they would certainly be proven wrong with his first scene here. His Freud is as commanding as the world thought he was, but also remarkably down-to-earth. The legendary actor seamlessly accomplishes both sides in what is some of his most solid, later-era work. Goode is a well-matched cinematic partner for Hopkins. The actor gives great life to Lewis and delivers what feels like his most layered and vulnerable performance since his turn as Robert Evans in The Offer. Elsewhere Fries as Anna and Jodi Balfour as Dorothy, her secret lover, provide great supporting work even if the film doesn’t know what to do with them most of the time.
The film’s premise reminds me of Nora Ephron’s 2002 play, Imaginary Friends, which told the story of writers/archrivals Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman being forced to face each other in the afterlife. It’s a setup that worked just as well then as it does now because there’s always something so tantalizing when it comes to the idea of some of the greatest and most influential historical figures meeting and (perhaps) changing the course of history, from a “what if” scenario at least. Freud’s Last Session accomplishes this, but not without a few rough spots. Besides the aforementioned moments of patchy dialogue, you can feel the screenwriting during the times when the film tries to overanalyze the analyst. Elsewhere, Lewis’ war flashback goes on so long, that the whole movie becomes something different entirely. But none of this hurts what is a well-made, compelling look at a time in history through two fascinating and unique perspectives.
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The Zone of Interest and the Comfortability of Evil
Jonathan Glazer’s return to cinema brutally depicts how complacency walls us off from terrible truths
Stills courtesy of A24. NOTE: There are light spoilers for some stylistic elements and brief plot points for The Zone of Interest. Proceed with caution.
Inspired by the novel by the late Martin Amis, The Zone of Interest captures with raw immediacy the domestic lives of the Höss family just beyond the walls of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Patriarch Rudolf (Christian Friedel) has developed Auschwitz into a ruthlessly efficient killing machine for European Jews, while wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their five children reap his rewards by living in astonishing comfort. Their days are filled with swims in the pool and parties amidst Hedwig’s thriving garden; they enjoy regular upper-class visitors and daily deliveries of supplies and fine clothes, which are eagerly picked over by the family and their servants.
Never mind how these items came to be in their possession, or how they know to look for lipstick or diamonds tucked in the lining. Pay no attention to the incessant screams beyond the ivy-colored walls, or the plumes of smoke whose glow provides a night-light for the Höss children. Ash in the nearby river? Just scrub it off like the blood on Rudolf’s boots, or use it as fertilizer for the garden. For the Hösses, these peripheral terrors are as commonplace as storms or sunshine. The family’s acknowledgment of these atrocities and their role in them only extends as far as how they immediately benefit from them; they remain out of sight, out of mind, and always under their control.
This dissonant detachment comes by choice for the Hösses, yet is denied at every turn to the film’s audience by director Jonathan Glazer and cinematographer Łukasz Żal. Any violence remains out of frame yet constantly heard, clawing at our senses but always out of our reach. We stare at Rudolf as he surveys his invisible creation, a relentless soundscape of screams, train doors, and churning machinery. As Hedwig’s mother-in-law visits, they question whether her neighbor is just over the wall before bemoaning how another neighbor got her curtains in a street auction. At night, an elder Höss child examines a small collection of golden teeth as if they were rocks found in the nearby woods. If not for the screams and gunfire layered among the garden get-togethers or quiet moments of domestic drama, or the near jump-scare moments of Nazi uniforms, one could forgive audiences for thinking the Hösses exist in another time or universe entirely. The sensorial assault, and the characters’ effortless acts to deny it, reveal just how chillingly easy it is to indulge in the lucrative cognitive dissonance uniquely offered to those who benefit from genocide.
This compartmentalization has reared its head in other films this year, from the ideological justifications behind creating weapons of mass destruction in Oppenheimer to the rampant greed at the heart of the Osage murders in Killers of the Flower Moon. Both films root their respective audiences in the heart of one man’s struggle to justify their actions in the wake of their fatal consequence. However, there’s no such moral guide in Glazer’s film we can attach to; with the film’s ghostly near-first-person perspective, The Zone of Interest stands apart in how directly it interrogates and implicates its audience in unspeakable ongoing horror.
Hidden cameras installed throughout the Höss villa capture scenes with a cold naturalism. Seemingly placed within the middle of the action without any sense of boundary or composition, lines between voyeurism and authorial intention are blurred–almost like a surveillance system installed by ghosts. Uncomfortably close to these smiling faces, we’re constantly reminded of how we can’t act, especially when those we’re forced to follow deliberately choose not to at every opportunity. We also bear witness to brief moments of humanity, as Rudolf reads bedtime stories to the children, or when Hedwig and Rudolf reminisce about the past or furtively debate their future. When Rudolf’s position is threatened, it’s bloodcurdling how Hedwig tries to come up with solutions that protect her family’s status quo, even if it means potentially abandoning her husband to the doldrums of Nazi bureaucracy. It’s terrible that we see this family actively deny their culpability in crimes against humanity; it’s another terror entirely to witness how they warp their actions around the best of intentions. Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon recognize just how slippery of a moral slope its characters find themselves upon–yet The Zone of Interest disturbingly depicts just how willingly and casually we can walk down a path to hell.
Yet, for all of the Höss family’s efforts and daily distractions, the screams are always within earshot, the last sounds of rebellion or fear from the voices they make their living from by silencing. Johnnie Burn’s sound design ensures that the victims of the Holocaust excruciatingly remain guests within the Höss home. Despite all of the Höss’ efforts to control every aspect of their environment, no matter how sweet the rewards of their actions may be, the horrible truth cannot be repressed.
One element, however, stands out for me in a hesitant yet necessary revisit of The Zone of Interest. The lone respites from our imprisonment in the Höss home are sequences of a young Polish girl (Zuzanna Kobiela) sneaking out in the dead of night to hide apples for camp prisoners to find. Captured with deeply unsettling thermal imagery, the girl and her apples have an alien white glow in the inky dark, creating breathless tension from the threat of discovery. It’s the film’s sole act of resistance, a beacon of hope amidst the film’s oppressive complacency. But in a near-throwaway line, we learn that two prisoners are caught fighting over an apple, and are drowned for their insubordination. How does this color, then, the girl’s attempts to make a difference? As prisoners in Auschwitz, it’s likely these victims were unjustly destined for their fates to begin with–but if she hadn’t planted the apple, would their lives have been prolonged for a few more moments? Do their fates invalidate the others that might be saved (or have been saved) as a result of her actions? Is that incremental resistance, even with its own fatal consequences, better than no resistance at all?
There’s another narrative break that further pairs with Killers of the Flower Moon as one of 2023’s most shockingly self-reflexive endings. As we bear witness to the consequences of the Hösses’ actions at a far nearer point in time, it becomes clear that Glazer’s film is just as concerned with its own culpability in creating a film about the Hösses as much as it is with how it depicts their actions. Like the Polish villager and her fateful apples, does creating a film about the Holocaust from the POV of its perpetrators run the risk of humanizing such bloodshed as much as it admonishes it? Will smashing the boundaries between past and present have as much impact on the future as we might hope?
Despite how little heed is given to the future by figures like Höss, it’s clear that The Zone of Interest finds further hope in those who preserve the grounds of Auschwitz and other concentration camps today. Where so many others in the film go to great lengths to build walls and create order to deny the chaos around them, these caretakers of the past devote their lives to maintaining an environment that rejects the ability for such denial to thrive.
The Zone of Interest’s total legacy is yet to be seen, but it’s clear that we’ve reached a point in our consumption of pop culture where it’s not enough to condemn the actions of the past and leave our screenings reassured of our moral superiority. It’s too easy to look at atrocities like the Holocaust from the comforts of our cinema seats and dolefully agree that these things should and will never happen again. Domestic and international incidents still unfolding today in Europe and the Middle East to disturbingly increasing global apathy prove that isn’t the case.
If anything, The Zone of Interest proves itself to be horrifically timely in how willingly we wall ourselves off from our complicity in genocide by any means necessary, however involved we are or how well-intentioned our actions may be.
The Zone of Interest is now playing in limited release from A24.
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SPIRITED AWAY: LIVE ON STAGE Magically brings the Animated Classic to Life
Miyazaki’s 2001 hand animated fantasy masterwork Spirited Away is a film that only gets better with age. The dark fairy tale is the story of a young girl, who is trapped in servitude under a powerful sorceress at a bathhouse for gods; while she attempts to save her parents who are turned into pigs. The film operates as not only a gorgeously rendered warning about the generational rift, but does so while reaffirming Miyazaki’s message of fanatical environmentalism (very much not a bad thing), through its themes and story. The film is filled with these amazing otherworldly creatures and beings that have gone on to become mainstays in the cultural zeitgeist, you may have never seen Spirited Away, but you’d probably recognize No-face or the film’s protagonist in a heartbeat.
In 2021, two decades after the film was released a live action stage adaptation was announced by Les Misérables director and honorary Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company John Caird, with full blessing of Hayao Miyazaki. Given how understandably cautious the director is with his properties, it speaks volumes of the amount of trust that was placed in John’s vision for the adaptation. This production was financed by the Japanese studio Toho in coordination with the anniversary of the Toho Stage’s 90th year of productions and ran in 2022. The particular version on this set, was filmed during its acclaimed run at Tokyo’s historic Imperial Theatre and was originally screened during Fathom Events’ yearly Ghibli Fest, where I was blown away by how well they managed to translate the otherworldly story to the stage.
This production of Spirited Away finally hits home just in time for the holidays on Blu-ray thanks to G-Kids who present the three hour production on two separate Blu-ray discs one each featuring a different actress as the protagonist Chihiro. In Japanese theater, it’s common to have reciprocal double casting, which essentially means two actors sharing a role, and alternating performances. This helps to not only encourage repeat attendance, but also allows more shows per day. When this was screened in theaters, opposite actors were screened on opposite days to honor this practice. Kanna Hashimoto and Mone Kamishiraishi lead this cast that also features Mari Natsuki, who voiced the sorceress Yubaba in the original motion picture, reprising her role accompanied by voice actor Romi Park as her alternate.
While the performances are truly stellar, what makes this production something really special and dare I say magical is how they’ve managed to translate the film’s visuals to the stage. Through the use of projection, puppets and slight of hand that sense of cinematic wonder is translated effortlessly onstage. The stage itself rotates and changes configuration so as not to lose any momentum as the scenes play out just as you’d expect. This is accompanied by a live orchestra who imbue every moment with Joe Hisaishi’s epic score. It’s something that even on a smaller screen, it still has that weight and delivers that awe-inspiring experience that I remember seeing on the big screen. It’s the kind of production that gets everything right and fills you with a legitimate sense of child-like wonder watching the story play out.
Revisiting it for this review, only reaffirmed my initial love for the adaptation. But this time I was able to enjoy the smaller details and the actors’ reactions, which you rarely get to enjoy in productions like this without splurging on the good seats. The performances here were as rich as the production and I was also able to really enjoy some of the stagecraft that brought some of these larger than life characters to life. When you first watch something like this as a fan, you’re purely in a reactionary state, and being able to revisit it on Blu-ray allows you to really appreciate the production itself and its nuances more in depth. If you haven’t seen this, I can’t recommend it enough. Because of how it interprets these creatures and story, the film accomplishes the inconceivable, it reinfuses that original story with this sense of wonder and magic that you experienced the first time you watched Spirited Away, and you get to feel that all over again.
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AMERICAN FICTION is a Fresh Take on the Publishing World
Cord Jefferson’s filmmaking debut is a piercing adaptation of Percival Everett’s award-winning novel
Jeffrey Wright stars as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison and Sterling K. Brown as Cliff Ellison in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s AMERICAN FICTION. Photo credit: Courtesy of Orion Pictures © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved. Published in 2001, Percival Everett’s sharp satire Erasure stands out among other books I’ve read. Literature professor and author Monk is fed up with the institutional racism he’s experienced within the spheres of academia and publishing. He writes a fictional work full of stereotype as a joke, under a pseudonym… then it becomes a bestseller. In 2023, former Gawker writer Cord Jefferson adapts and directs Everett’s novel for the screen as American Fiction (Everett is a producer).
The screenplay and performances drip with wit. Jeffrey Wright leads the cast as Monk, who has a bitter sense of humor, even sardonic at times. His return to Massachusetts after being placed on a forced leave from his West Coast school finds him immediately tossed into the chaos of caring for a mother with dementia (Leslie Uggams). Tracee Ellis Ross is his stressed sister Lisa, who passes on new information to Monk about their deceased dad. Younger brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown), recently out as gay to his family, is little help with the minutia involved in getting their mother moved into a facility.
Jeffrey Wright stars as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison in AMERICAN FICTION. Photo credit: Claire Folger © 2023 Orion Releasing LLC. All Rights Reserved. Is it any wonder Monk resorts to an amusing writing exercise as stress release? Celebrated performer Keith David cameos to act out the clichéd story Monk writes, adding an additional layer of hilarity. As Monk’s agent Arthur (John Ortiz) tells his client, unsure of whether the publishing companies will get the joke: “White people think they want the truth, but they don’t. They just want to feel absolved.”
This is a central theme of the work. Even as white viewers may see reflections of their own microaggressions and biases in characters and scenes depicted here, the film is never preachy or overly heavy on moments of cringe. There’s just enough cringe: you get the joke or reference, recognize the racist stereotype involved, and laugh at the film (and yourself). After Stagg R. Lee is chosen as the pseudonym, Arthur adds another element to the author bio: Lee is a fugitive from the law.
Jefferson’s film is an imaginative blend of biting wit, anger and family friction, with memorable performances from Wright and Brown. The actors spark off each other, making the family connection utterly believable. American Fiction also has one of the best film scores I’ve heard this year; the jazzy music composed by Laura Karpman adds to the humor, perfectly accompanying the onscreen dissonance.
As the tension of the film builds up to denouement — will Monk’s secret come out? — a few twists are tossed in. This unexpected move is surprising and inspired, but makes sense for this film with its meta tendencies. Just like Monk refuses for his writing to be limited to a genre, so does American Fiction. In this season of movies that take themselves too seriously, Jefferson’s film takes on serious topics with creativity and — dare I say it — fun.
American Fiction opens in Austin theaters on Friday, December 15.
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GOODBYE, DRAGON INN is a Love Letter to the Cinematic Experience
When it comes to launching their new Blu-ray imprint, one of my favorite New York Rep houses, the Metrograph is starting off strong with a title that shows both a love of cinema and the urban culture that surrounds inner city theaters. I hate to use the phrase, but 2003’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn is definitely a film that’s more of a vibe than anything else. Taking place in the Fu-Ho Grand, a rundown film palace in Taipei on its closing night, the film chronicles the happenings, nearly in real time in its darkened corners during its valedictory screening. The mise en abyme is King Hu’s wuxia classic Dragon Inn, which unfurls to an audience that includes hustlers, the various stars of Dragon Inn in cameos, children and ghosts. Through the dream-like voyeuristic lens of Pen-Jung Liao, we follow each of our cast of characters throughout the screening as they try and find love, engage in some rough trade, or just enjoy a wholesome night out with Hu’s classic.
The closest thing we have to a protagonist is the lovelorn female ticket taker (Chen Shiang-chyi) who shuffles through the theater’s dark and damp halls in an iron leg brace, cleaning up, and eating her steamed bun on her lunch break. She and the nearly invisible projectionist kind of exist in this isolated purgatory, as opposed to the patrons, some of which spend the film breaching theater going social etiquette in an attempt to find some kind of personal connection during the screening. The film is very clear, even though it takes place in a cinema where they are all having this collective viewing, to highlight the singularness of the cinematic experience. It’s a strange dichotomy that perfectly illustrates how all cinephiles, while looking for some kind of connection to the events on the silver screen, are all just alone in the dark.
The Blu-ray features a new 4K restoration that preserves the dreariness of the color palette, while highlighting the ethereal and isolated landscapes that all exist inside of the Fu-Ho Grand. This all transpires with a new DTS-HD 5.1 mix that really works to keep the home viewer enveloped in the world of the film whether it be in the theater or walking the halls. Along with Goodbye, Dragon Inn, included is Tsai Ming-liang’s short film – Light, an intro by critic Nick Pinkerton and a commentary track by writer Phoebe Chen. Chen does a fantastic job unlocking the subtext of Dragon Inn and digging into the film’s many themes. It’s an informative discussion that I found both enlightening and all encompassing of the ways someone could dissect this film.
If you’ve never seen Goodbye, Dragon Inn and couldn’t make it to one of the theatrical screenings when this restoration was first unveiled, I can’t imagine a better way to experience it. Not only do you get the film, but you get some truly thoughtful discussions that really help to make the movie which maybe a bit obtuse to some, much more approachable and accessible. It’s a film that through us, watching these people watch this film, attempts and succeeds at telling this meta, bittersweet, minimalist story where so much is conveyed without uttering a single word for long stretches. Goodbye, Dragon Inn is a bold first statement by the theater turned distributor, that works as both a manifesto and high bar which genuinely makes me curious as to what film they will tackle next.
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WONKA Prequel Delivers a Passably Entertaining, Lightweight Confection For the Masses
Warner Bros Writer Roald Dahl might be done and dusted, but his most singular 1964 creation, Willem “Willy” Wonka continues to not just survive, but thrive across multiple media (e.g., book, film, audio). IP is forever, especially when Dahl’s estate and Warner Bros., the original production company behind 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, are both involved and involved both were in Wonka’s latest big-screen incarnation, Wonka. Overflowing with eye-popping, ultra-colorful production design – clearly inspired by the architecture of late 19th/early 20th-century European cities, wall-to-wall song-and-dance routines, and a charming, A-for-effort performance from Timothée Chalamet as the title character, Wonka qualifies as mostly pleasant, mostly inoffensive family-oriented entertainment.
Co-written and directed by Paul King (Paddington I and II), Wonka finds the title character returning “home” after seven years abroad, joyfully singing about his personal and professional dreams on a merchant ship as it enters the harbor of an unnamed city. The city Wonka discovers contains the usual assortment of haves and have-nots, but Wonka brushes past the city’s Dickensian dichotomies and enters the city’s central square and market. Within minutes, a series of encounters with the city’s denizens leaves him with just one sovereign (out of twelve) and nowhere to sleep for the night except a chilly park bench. A few missteps or drawbacks, though, are far from enough to curb Wonka’s enthusiasm: He’s a dreamer par excellence, an inventor, an entrepreneur, and most importantly, a chocolatier of refined taste and even more refined confections.
Wonka’s ambition puts the twenty-something title character into the crosshairs of the city’s chocolate-centered elite, a cartel led by familiar sounding names, Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), Prodnose (Matt Lucas), and Fickelgruber (Mathew Baynton). Together, the villainous trio, helped along by a corrupt, chocolate-addicted Chief of Police (Keegan-Michael Key), keep potential rivals for the city’s chocolate-consuming population in check (or worse, depending on the severity of the perceived threat). Wonka’s entry into the chocolate market makes him a marked man, one that the chocolate cartel will do anything, up to and including permanently removing Wonka’s soul from his body, to stop.
Before the chocolate cartel can put their plans into action, however, Wonka finds himself the semi-permanent guest of Mrs. Scrubbit (Olivia Colman), a hotel owner with a lucrative side gig in the wash-and-fold business, and Mr. Bleacher (Tom Davis), her besotted henchman. Forced to work as an indentured servant alongside Mrs. Scrubbit’s charge, Noodle (Calah Lane), and a handful of permanent hotel guests, including Abacus Crunch (Jim Carter), Lottie Bell (Rakhee Thakrar), Piper Benz (Natasha Rothwell), and Larry Chucklesworth (Rich Fulcher), Wonka finds his borderline toxic positivity tested to the breaking point and beyond.
The remainder of Wonka’s running time centers on a heist-adjacent plot as Wonka and his fecund imagination conjure up vast washing-and-folding machinery while the others sleep, effectively freeing them from the everyday drudgery of working in Mrs. Scrubbit’s laundry service. Wonka’s plan, of course, involves chocolate, but not just any chocolate wrapped in tinfoil. Pace Dahl’s original incarnation, Wonka’s confections contain all manner of unexplained, sometimes inexplicable wonders. Some give eaters the temporary power of flight, while others take eaters through an entire range of memory-based emotions.
Warner Bros After much emphatic singing and expressive dancing by Wonka and the other players, along with the frequent overuse of the word “imagination” to counter the film’s occasionally downbeat tone, Wonka eventually coalesces around a heist. Said heist involves a life-or-death development involving tens of thousands of gallons of liquid chocolate stored in vast underground vats, and, of course, a pivotal role for a minor, soon-to-be-key character in Wonka’s future, Lofty (Hugh Grant, mildly amusing), an eight-inch-tall, orange-skinned Oompa Loompa on a personal mission to obtain justice, restorative or redistributive, for Wonka’s perceived crimes and misdemeanors against the Oompa Loompas. It’s an intriguing idea, especially as it helps to counter the oft-cited issue of the Oompa Loompas’ professional relationship with the title character (i.e., partners or like Wonka here, indentured servants).
Not surprisingly for a prequel that desperately wants to remind audiences of its 1971 predecessor, Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley’s classic song, “Pure Imagination,” receives multiple (re)plays throughout. Seven new songs composed by Neil Hannon, the lead singer and songwriter for the Divine Comedy, an Irish rock-pop group, round out the film’s repertoire, though none match the Bricusse-Newley song as an earworm. Likewise, Joby Talbot’s score proves to be more than serviceable, though that also means it’s rarely memorable and all too often, the opposite.
When the end credits painlessly arrive after roughly two slightly busy hours, Wonka (the movie, again) has delivered a more than passable, lighter-than-light, mostly inoffensive, perfectly forgettable piece of IP-exploiting, studio-branded entertainment. Chalamet proves himself capable of leading a musical fantasy (albeit with at least one caveat involving his vocal range), Paul King equally capable of navigating the pluses and minuses associated with big-budget, high-profile brand extensions like Wonka, and families on the other side of the screen will, if nothing else, feel like the money and time spent at their local multiplex won’t be a total waste.
Wonka opens Friday, December 15th, via Warner Bros.
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STAND BY ME 4K Steelbook Review
Rob Reiner’s Classic Stephen King Adaptation Stands the Test of Time.
Review disc provided by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, images captured by reviewer and subject to copyright. There are films that can land on you so hard at such a perfect time that they can almost make you afraid of revisiting them, of discovering that you have no solid tether to the person you were when the story meant so much to you and you’ve somehow invited an unwelcome stranger into your house. What makes Rob Reiner’s film — adapted from the Stephen King novella “The Body” — so effective, in spite of however long it’s been since the last meeting, is that it knows this all too well. For all that Stand By Me is absolutely one of those “1980s Nostalgia Movies,” it’s not in mourning for the time or the place in which its set, but for the people who pass through it.
Review disc provided by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, images captured by reviewer and subject to copyright. Set in Castle Rock, Oregon in 1959, the movie follows Gordie (Wil Wheaton), Chris (River Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman), and Vern (Jerry O’Connell) as they hike out into the woods to find the body of a local boy who went missing, but what it’s “about” is far more dense than you’d expect from its sub-90 minute running time. The four 12-year-olds are clinging to their last summer before junior high school, and what starts as a lark to be hailed as local celebrities grows into a study of the men these boys will become, even as they cling fast to their youth on their journey to confront death.
Having one of the great observational writers of our time on source material duties couldn’t have hurt, but Stand By Me is universally counted among the best King adaptations for a reason. For all the plates he’s having to spin, Reiner captures a window into the world these characters inhabit so elegantly that it seems simple. The screenplay by Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon weaves through character introductions, flashbacks, story-within-a-story vignettes, and even a frame narrative without ever feeling rushed or crowded, and Reiner wrings incredible pathos out of his young actors alongside the “kids on an adventure” comedy and thrills. Scenes like the boys playing cards in their clubhouse or local bully Ace (Kiefer Sutherland) threatening Gordie and Chris on the street are the kind of invisible table setting that are fully functional in establishing relationships but also feel like a version of experiences these characters have had a hundred times before.
Review disc provided by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, images captured by reviewer and subject to copyright. The movie also features a meandering “story over plot” structure as the kids rove toward their backwoods destination. Between the seemingly direction-less structure and the keen observation of youth on the cusp of change, it’s almost like someone doing their version of a Miyazaki movie before that was a thing people shot for. Reiner had a knack in this era for movies that seem loosely-designed on the surface but are in fact tight as a drum. That serves him especially well here, but none of it works if the performances aren’t all keyed in just right. While the cast is packed with character actor legends and blistering up-and-comers, it’s a testament to Phoenix and Wheaton how much of the story rests on their shoulders and how natural they make it look.
Stand By Me paints a picture where the ugly shadows of the town these boys long to escape and the light of the bonds that keep them together — even if only for now — are inextricable. And while so many films about the longing for the days of our youth are ever looking behind, Reiner’s movie argues that the death of childhood finds rebirth by instead looking forward.
Review disc provided by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, images captured by reviewer and subject to copyright. Presentation:
There’s a case to be made for this being Rob Reiner’s prettiest film, and the 2160p Ultra High Definition conversion kicks up the quality from the Anniversary Blu-ray appreciably, filling the 1:85:1 frame with more detail and clarity than any other release by a long stretch of track.
The movie’s warm pastoral color palette and soft lighting really benefit from this transfer, and the dawn and night time scenes really show off the blacks nicely. Remastered from the 35mm negative and presented in Dolby Vision, this transfer really nails the “looking through a hazy backyard widow” aesthetic of Thomas Del Ruth’s cinematography while still capturing the fine details like minuscule ripples in the water or the fraying cords on the boy’s camping packs. The layer of grain never makes things feel overly fuzzy or murky, even in the dimmer scenes, adding texture instead of the over-slick plastic look of excessive scrubbing. It’s a beautiful picture seemingly without trying, which is how you know a lot of people tried very hard indeed to achieve this result.
Review disc provided by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, images captured by reviewer and subject to copyright. In addition to the English 5.1 mix from the earlier blu-ray, the 4k release of Stand By Me features both an English Dolby Atmos and English DTS-HD Mono option. Vocals are punchy and clear even when spoken low, and the bass doesn’t show off much except for when it’s time to run a train down the tracks or give a cowboy serial kick to a gunshot, and then it flexes tidily. What’s especially impressive is how vibrantly the background sounds come through, laying just under Jack Nitzsche’s snyth score to make the woods and fields really come alive as the kids stroll along.
Bonus Content:
It’s fortunate that the previous Blu-ray had a handful of solid exras, because this release barely adds to them. There’s exactly one set of new exclusive features in this release, and then the 25th Anniversary extras are on the included Blu-ray disc.
Disc 1 (4K UHD)
Deleted and Alternate Scenes – Presented in HD (6 min)
Disc 2 (Blu-Ray)
Picture-in-Picture Commentary – With Director Rob Reiner and actors Wil Wheaton and Corey Feldman
Audio Commentary – With Director Rob Reiner
Walking the Tracks: The Summer of Stand By Me – Making-of featurette, SD (37 min)
“Stand By Me” Music Video – SD (3 min)
Review disc provided by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, images captured by reviewer and subject to copyright. Stand By Me is available from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on 4k Steelbook, 4k Blu-ray, and Blu-ray disc.
Get it at Amazon: Stand By Me 4K UHD Steelbook
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