Week Of October 2, 2006 - Atonement Mon / Wed / Fri

October 4, 2006

THE YEAR OF THE SHITTY BIOPIC

As each Oscar season begins, there are usually more than a few biographical movies in the mix. In some years, there are a surprising amount of quality choices. And in some years, most of the offering suck.

We are already five really bad biopics into the season. They fit into two different categories. Two are from directors who have experience, but who have had to work hard to find a way to get their projects done. And the other three… well, we'll get to those.

Bobby - Emilio Estevez is a talented guy… but he needs a year or two shooting TV hour-longs before he might really be ready as a director for a project this complex. And, as a screenwriter, he needs a tough voice pushing him to make stronger choices and push harder for more memorable dialogue.

That said, Bobby is a movie that is not really about Bobby (Kennedy) at all. The title "Death of A President" might be more appropriate for this film. There is nothing wrong with the conceit of a film that takes a central event and shows you how it affects a range of people who you might otherwise not even be aware were connected to the more famous event. (This can also be done with a not-so-famous or fictional event.) But the casting of this movie completely overwhelms whatever idea Estevez had in mind because the actors take you out of any reality. As an audience, you don't search for the depth of the character because most of the actors are iconic and even if playing against type, it them feels like someone playing against type and not just playing.

If you want to make a movie about how an event becomes bigger than the details we are more aware of, it helps to have a clear idea. This year, World Trade Center played on this idea, much as Apollo 13 once did, creating tension within the famous event, but also focusing on the families waiting and hoping for their loved ones to come home. JFK was not really about the assassination, but about one man who never knew Kennedy, but who was obsessed with uncovering a greater truth. But Bobby is more like All The Kings Men, which is about one character while the audience desperately wants to see the movie they thought they were being promised.

What is Bobby about? Yes, there are a bunch of lovely clips of Bobby Kennedy giving powerful speeches. But that is a documentary, not a movie.

Infamous - This disaster is exactly the movie that many of us feared Capote might be. A guy doing an imitation of Truman Capote and a bunch of celebrities playing dress up as historic characters. How often does this work? Well, The Aviator was nominated two seasons ago. But even there, with the exception of Cate Blanchett as The Great Kate, the characters were really little known. Howard Hughes was filmed more often as the young man he was in that film, but still, he was not a familiar character.

Capote, nominated last year, was not as accurate an imitation of life. But it was a much better movie because instead of trying to be a Xerox (or mimeograph in that period), it was an emotional interpretation of the story. Phil Hoffman did a voice and lightened his hair and lost a lot of weight, but you can't really say he did the world's greatest Tru imitation. What won him the Oscar was that he brought this character's emotions to the surface while doing his best at the impersonation part.

THE SECOND KIND of bad biopic is the Auteurogant Biopic. This strain is particularly apparent this season, as three directors who have proven themselves enough for producers to finance them, banking on their previously proven skill set. (in alphabadical order)

The Black Dahlia - Wasn't it wonderful of Brian DePalma to hire so many amateurs instead of professional actors?

This is certainly the worst film Brian DePalma has ever been associated with, surpassing the mess of Bonfire of the Vanities and the excess and incoherence of Mission To Mars with a magical combination of miscast actors, a muddled, incoherent script, terrible lighting, and no real DePalma flourishes of interest.

It makes perfect sense after seeing this film that Scarlett Johansson and Josh Hartnett ended up together, because birds of a feather flock together. Scarlett is certainly more talented as an actor than Josh - I think he may actually match her pretty for pretty, height vs busty width - but neither one of them stands a chance in this mess. If you ever want to know how NOT to hold a 1930's cigarette holder, Scarlett has it for you.

But the much bigger sin is that DePalma somehow got career worst performances out of a couple of excellent actors, Aaron Eckhart and Fiona Shaw, not to mention making the very serviceable Mike Starr look like he's never been on a set. And poor, poor Rose McGowan.

The one quality thing in the entire film is Mia Kirshner in a series of black & white supposed screen tests. She has the lack of context that DePalma is so good at. We hear his voice directing her. And what we see are the parts of the screen test that aren't the test… Betty Short being Betty Short. Of course, it is completely unrealistic that this much film was being used on flirting instead of the serious testing. But still, she and the film shine in those moments. Unfortunately, they only make up about 5 minutes of the 121 minute film.

I think that the complaints about Hilary Swank are unfair, but she does play a classically wrong role. Her character has sex with everyone, but never gets naked. This is an option in many films, but with easy nudity in parts of the film that are not about sexual power, it stands out as yet another stupid mistake in a movie that is a leading candidate for worst of the year.

Fur - Steve Shainberg did good with Secretary. Some people didn't like it, but I think it walked the tightrope between emotional realism and hyperreality pretty well. It was kinky and sexy. And it gave us Maggie Gyllenhaal.

And what did he do with this success? He jerked himself off until he couldn't jerk off any more.

The result is Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus aka An Imaginary Portrait of a Decent Movie.

This tiresome exercise alleges to be about the imagination that lead Arbus to become the photographer she became. But…. nah! It's really about Robert Downey, Jr. as Fur Man, a slight variation on the Beast of Cocteau's Beauty & The Beast and Nicole Kidman as Arbus, the frustrated housewife and mother. Amazingly, for all the sound and fury, almost nothing happens. Yes, she slowly slides away from her suburban-minded NY life. But we knew that the minute she decided to pursue something other than her straight and narrow. (Actually, we know it before this, as the movie opens in a nudist camp. And no, Nicole doesn't strip down in this one, quite carefully avoiding it.)

You can see Shainberg's ego all over the place as his movie feels a bit like the lair of V, featuring bits and pieces of all of his cultural awareness, almost daring us to know as much as he does.

We do.

And we know a biopic that is trying to be anything but a biopic when we see it.

(There has been no specific acknowledgement about legal issues, but the film opens with two cards explaining that it is not strictly an Arbus biopic and Picturehouse has started pushing the effort to get people to call it by its long, unmemorable, but more legally distinct title.)

Marie Antoinette - I don't think Sofia Coppola needs to be beheaded for this effort, but there is no doubt she lost her head.

You understand the initial conceit if you've seen the recent ads and trailer. Young girl queen trapped by her position acts out and is fabulous. And that is beautifully rendered for 40 minutes or so. And then, Sofia loses interest in storytelling, just as Marie loses interest in the monarchy.

The central flaw here is that the conceit that interested Ms. Coppola is that Marie was a little girl lost, but that idea could not be used to speak to the real issues of France that lead to her and her children's deaths. There would be a very interesting drama about a girl who thought the monarchy was a toy with which she could play only to learn that something much more important was happening, only to die at the end of her journey. I don't even care if history had to be rewritten to do it. Emotional reality first. History second.

The most clear reflection of the failure of thought on this film is the interesting and humorous focus on the overwhelming and invasive protocol of the court ("This is ridiculous." "This, madame, is Versailles!") which is simply abandoned at around the hour mark. Yes, there could be ways around it. But that is not in the film. The shackles of her challenged life at court simply disappear.

Go for the movie, stay for the catalogue.

E Me.

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