September 5, 2002

I just got to Toronto and, boy, are my arms tired…

Two films that will be here at Toronto and which have opened at other festivals are Frida and Auto Focus.  Both films are bio-pics with twists.  Both films are based on artists who some consider underappreciated.   Both are buzz films, filled with awards hope and studio expectations.  But both film films are also flawed to a degree that might cause forgetfulness come awards season.

The lesser of the artists suffers the lesser of the movies.  Auto Focus tries hard to overcome what is an inherent flaw… Bob Crane wasn’t all that special.  And if he was, the film doesn’t do a lot to convince us of that.  Poop Shooter Jeff Wells tells me that Paul Schrader is already quite open about the fact that he really didn’t have any respect for Crane as an artist or as a human being.   But think… when is the last time you saw a good movie about a mediocrity.  There is nothing harder to do successfully.   You can make movies about losers and you can make movies about winners, but the vanilla middle is only good for Oreos and pudding.

The production design on Auto Focus is quite excellent.  And the performances are passable and better.  Willem Dafoe gets to play a new variation of creep and as usual, he brings the role more than it deserves.  Greg Kinnear, who I never have seen as anything more than a TV level performer, gives a TV level performance portraying a TV level performer.  Nothing wrong with that.  But it doesn’t make for a very good movie.

There are ways, I think, of building a movie around Bob Crane.  But that movie has to have a far stronger point of view than Crane’s la-dee-da.  Is he a victim of success?  Is he a bumbler who got lucky?  Is he a faithful husband who can’t hold up to the tests that fame forces on him?  Was he always just one step away from “the dark side”… a car wreck just waiting to happen?  Or was he, as the film almost suggests, a pioneer of sexual freedom who got burnt out by the lifestyle, but was a true rebel without his pants?

But as an audience, you never really get a view of a Bob Crane you care about at all.  He seems to be a hokey, mediocre disk jockey that lucks into the lead of a show where the supporting comedy Nazis did all the heavy lifting, and eventually decides to play drums with mediocre strip club bands which leads to sex which coincides with the advent of videotape and eventually leads to his demise.  Are you still awake?

I went back to see Auto Focus a second time because I wasn’t sure that I was giving it as much love as it deserved the first time around.  And in the same week, I was seeing Frida a first and then a second time.  And the similarities really hit home.  Both films are about men whose first marriages failed because of their sexual appetites before they found women who were stronger than them and accepted who they really were… until the men went too far.

Oh, you thought Frida was about Ms. Kahlo.  Well, it is.  Kind of.  The name of the movie should have been Diego & Frida because that’s the movie that Julie Taymor delivered.  I haven’t spoken to Ms. Taymor - and I hope to in the week to come – but I got the distinct impression from watching the film that she doesn’t have enormous respect for Frida Kahlo: The Artist.  I’m not even sure if she respects Frida Kahlo: The Woman.  Because when you really look at this film, Kahlo is more the muse to others - from her Father to Diego Rivera to Tina Modotti to Leon Trotsky… even to Josephine Baker in the end. 

I walked out of the theater amazed.  Amazed by Taymor’s visual skills.  Amazed at the performances by Alfred Molina and Salma Hayek.  Amazed by the long road this woman took through her life.  But mostly I was amazed at how uninterested I was in her work as an artist.  Perhaps the most shocking sequence in the film is one near the end in which Taymor brings Kahlo’s work to life in a kind of three-dimensional zoetropic collage… that includes less than a dozen works by the artist.  We are watching this film in celebration of this talent who overcame life’s obstacles – the ones she had no control over and the majority of which she brought onto herself with eyes wide open – and was appreciated after her death.  But is she a great artist?

You would think.

And there is some wonderful work in the film.  But Taymor tops her effort time after time after time.  And maybe that is an inherent problem with a film about an artist being made by a highly visualist director.  When Altman did Van Gogh, he told an intimate tale set against Van Gogh’s work.  But the visual honored Van Gogh… it never competed.  Likewise, Ed Harris’ Pollack was not a film made in the style of Pollack’s art.  It was a clean, simple piece of narrative filmmaking that told the story and did a beautiful job with the creation sequences.  One could say that Scorsese’s segment of New York Stories overwhelmed the quality of the work of the artist that Nick Nolte portrayed… that Scorsese’s camera was the virtuoso there.  And that’s probably true.  But the film wasn’t about the art and the film wasn’t about the judgment of the artist’s work in any way.  The film was about a creative, wild heart in middle age, still fighting for air.  And the passion of creation was far more important in that story than the art that was created.

I will still defy anyone to tell me that Taymor is not a great, great film director.  The parts of Frida in which she weaves her magic are as spectacular as you’ll see on a screen.  Really sublime.  And they are good storytelling because they are all representational of moments that define Kahlo’s character… very specific to the moments in the film.  Now, does that leave Kahlo as a great artist?  Remember… as we watch this film, every person who praises Kahlo to high heaven has a sexual stake in her passion.  And this is also the unfortunate downside of casting a woman as near-perfect as Ms. Hayek. 

One of the most profound pieces of art in the film appears when Kahlo finally is freed of her full-torso cast.  When that cast is removed, like a piece coming out of a kiln, there is a surprisingly long shot of Ms. Hayek’s bosoms.  And they are, without just being a silly boy, aesthetically perfect.  The camera lingers like a fresh set of eyes seeing a Michelangelo or DiVinci for the first time. 

But it is more than that one scene.  The ferocity of Hayek’s beauty combined with her character’s sexual aggressiveness makes for a combination that never allows the audience to wonder why people are reacting to this woman… we don’t even have to appreciate the work.  She has a unibrow and an occasional light mustache… so what?!?!  Kahlo was, from what I have seen, an attractive woman.  But she was not a physical work of art in and of herself.  And there is a difference.  It’s the difference between Selma Blair or Parker Posey and the women who play the leads in the studio movies in which they act.  Now, both of these are fine looking women, the quality of which most men will never attain.  However, as actors, they are “the plain girls” or “the smart girls” or “the sassy girls.”    Selma Blair has had a lot of sex in recent roles, but every time, she is either being taken advantage of by a wiser, older, abusive man or falling off a bed of having sex with a guy in a mascot suit or something like that.  Even in the indie film, Personal Velocity – directed by a woman and also coming to Toronto – Posey is sexual and romanced by the camera.  But Kyra Sedgwick, in another segment, is given points for her body in a way that Posey is not.

I feel kind of terrible hoisting this weight on Ms. Hayek’s performance.  She fought hard to get this film made and it has been a long-time passion.  And her work is very good.  But this is one of the things that separates the art of film from the art of theater.  The Lion King – feel that irony – made for a great piece of animation and a great piece of representational theater.  But you could never make The Lion King as a live action movie.  It’s kind of obvious, no?  Anne Bancroft is an attractive woman, but if Mrs. Robinson looked like Kathleen Turner in her Body Heat days, that would have changed the entire weight of The Graduate.  And in the recently released Simone, the model who plays the digital character is nearly flawless… but she doesn’t have the charm that would make that character the star she is supposedly turned into.  If anyone ever gave Hayek a chance to play the right roles, she would be one of the world’s biggest stars.  She has the acting chops.  She has the looks.  And she does have a natural charm.  She would kill in an Austin Powers movie.  She would have been a perfect Charlie’s Angel.  She could have been one of the guys in Ocean’s Eleven. 

She’s not an easy cast.  But she has that thing.  And I’d hate to see her become this year’s Halle Berry… beauty waiting to be ridiculed for the next film that can never live up to the weight of her Oscar winner.  Tough place to be.

All that said, both of these are well-made films that will find appreciative audiences.  There is enough to get you through Auto Focus and more than enough to get you through Frida… in a world of short attention spans, Frida will stand as one of the best films, ten minutes at a time, of the year.  (Yes… that is a compliment and an insult… not pull-quote material.) 

SPEAKING OF BERRY:  The new Bond poster is both groundbreaking and absolutely beautiful.  Kudos to the MGM team who did them.  And while I’m at it, have you noticed how Reese Witherspoon has moved up to the major leagues with her new Sweet Home Alabama billboard campaign?  When they started it, they were still using that full body shot that was so successful for Legally Blonde… show the actress and use the rest of the frame to explain the film with visual clues.  Now, it’s all that superstar mug.  And I’m betting that it will work, big time.  Especially if the film is good.  I hope to see it as soon as I get back home from T-Ville.

READER OF THE DAY:  JOHN E writes:  “I finally go to see The Good Girl, and I went looking for your review and it appears you don't have one.

One thing I like about late August is the indie films get expansion when they normally wouldn't.  Had The Good Girl opened in November, it would've been buried.  But since late-August studio movies suck, theaters are okay with giving shots to films like The Good Girl, and hopefully next week we'll get Possession and One Hour Photo near here.

The Good Girl was a movie that wasn't easy to watch.  My friend kept leaning over to let me know how unlikable everyone is, and there was one scene where I had to cover my eyes and say "No, movie, please don't take me there!" But it's nice to watch a film where you don't know where it's going and you don't know what choices are going to be made.

It's another antithesis to Road to Perdition or XXX, movies where you know the whole time exactly where they're going.

And it's nice to see a Friend do some real acting.  Courtney, Matt and Matthew have yet to show anything, but Lisa's had The Opposite of Sex, David had HBO's Band of Brothers, and now Jennifer has The Good Girl.  I'd wager she has a good shot at a Golden Globe nomination for it.”

E ME:  I’m not seeing The Good Girl this week, but tomorrow I am seeing The Good Thief… and Ararat… and Sur Le Bout Des Doigts… and maybe even Secretary… and we’re off…