September 1, 2004

Fair is about right…

Mira Nair is an interesting director. Sometimes she hits it, sometimes she doesn't… but she always seems to be trying to get somewhere. Right now, the folks at Warner Bros. are pushing for her to direct Harry Potter 5. And that may work beautifully, as she will have control of the look and texture, but not really the storytelling.

And the story is the only thing that really goes wrong in Nair's version of Vanity Fair. (That is, and the odd choice to shoehorn in lovely Indian imagery into a veddy British story that is full of people who were off proudly killing people of various colors in various wars.) The photography is beautiful, the performances are solid and better across the board, and the period is brought to life effectively. But the ultimate answer is… so what?

Interestingly, I saw two period movies just today that made me feel very much the same way. (Both are headed to Toronto and both think they are Oscar contenders... they would be sadly mistaken. I will name them and explain further in due time.) It's as though there was such a focus on getting the period right and matching all the accents and getting the production design just so, that they forgot to make sure that the screenplays really did something more than just tread water, staying endlessly in place. (I guess that makes me the sharks in Open Water… oh well.)

One Thackery website shows an old Vanity Fair book cover calling it "a novel with no hero." And, indeed, that notion does make it to the movie. What is missing, for me at least, is a central character that seems to act in ways we may disagree with, but that seem to fit into the context of one individual's actions. Becky Sharp, in this film, bounces around like a philosophical pinball. Is she a gold digger? Yes. Is she a woman in love? Yes. Is she willing to throw her seemingly central goals out for love? Yes. Is she willing to throw away love for her previously central goals? Yes. She can be a brilliant conniver, but when she takes a wrong turn the audience sees it coming a half-dozen scenes away. And over and over, her goals switch so drastically that the reels almost seem to be out of order.

Of the performers, Eileen Atkins steals the show and gets a nude scene in at just 70 years young. Bob Hoskins does his first high-profile supporting character actor slot in a while and does a nice, relatively quiet turn in a noisy role. Romola Garai is intriguing, if barely challenged. And Ms. Witherspoon is just fine and a little better than that… but this is a soon forgotten performance.

On the other side, James Purefoy is handsome and remarkably boring… at least until he gets the shiv in the emotional back. John Rhys-Meyers is also remarkably boring and unworthy of Becky in any way… especially height. Gabriel Byrne… boring. Rhys Ifans… dressed so weird that a nice performance is distracted from. And Jim Broadbent is actually in the movie for a few seconds longer than he is in the new Mike Leigh.. but not many more seconds.

The thing about Vanity Fair is that there was never a moment where I wanted to dash for the door in disgust. There is nothing wrong with the film. But there isn't nearly enough right about the film to make it worth watching either.

It's too bad. Many of the puzzle pieces fit and the parts of the picture we can see are pretty. But someone took away all the pieces that fill the middle… you know, where the heart is.

READER OF THE DAY: BS, YES, BS writes: "I enjoyed Hero, certainly, but seems impossible to think of this movie without thinking and talking about Crouching Tiger. Hero is pleasureable on an intellectual and aesthetic level, I mean, it's smart and of course its beautiful, but it just doesn't have that something that Crouching Tiger has. Think back to the first time you saw that movie and were walking out of the theater, I was just singing to myself. That movie is pure cinema love. As you might say, a chick flick, well then a chick flick never felt so good. Hero looks great, thinks great, but it doesn't grab you and make you want to turn right around and watch it again. It's not as fun? Maybe that's it."

And this from LAWYER BOY: "Two things on Hero: 1) After it ended, some folks started talking loudly about how "They wanted some QT and what the hell is this?" Which I believe could demonstrate how this film opened so large, because several people bought into the QT PRESENTS tag. People love Kill Bill and they came out to Hero possibly expecting as much or some QT like magic. I am willing to speculate that Brass Monkey (The First QT presents film) would have had a similar opening weekend to Hero if it had had Kill Bill before it… unlike the QT who presented Brass Monkey a few years ago pretty much forgotten by the MASSES.

2) Would it be too much to ask for people to start giving the moviegoing public shit, because said person thinks they aren't "smart" enough? If that's too much to ask, then please let these ENLIGHTENED folks think through their whacky opinions. Especially when it comes to Hero. A movie where the multiple stories seem like nothing more than the credits of Walking Tall; just a way to meet a running time. It would be nice if they mattered, but they do not outside of a need for more digital colour timing, wire work, and fight scenes. So forgive the moviegoing public for possibly being put off by various plotpoints that have little to no baring on the overall story except to show how pretty China can look when the director decides to use a computer to enhance it or to kill Zhang Ziyi a couple more times just for kicks."

E ME: Are you going to Vanity Fair… parsley, sage, rosemary harris and time?