Week Of November 27, 2006 - Mon / Wed / Fri

November 29, 2006

"There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those."

The speaker of this inverted word insight is not Yoda, but Mother Teresa.

I have been reluctant to write this column because all of the films I am about to discuss certainly are small things with great love. And really, in a week where the Gotham Awards are whoring and the Independent Spirit Awards are showing themselves as more indie than in years (intentionally or not), could you really ask for a better definition of independent films?

But these seven films - with the kinda-exception of one that was made by one studio's division and released by another - are studio movies, not independent films. And all seven filmmakers are highly creative, highly respected, and responsible for movies that their studios will consider fiscal failures that will be leveraged by some to avoid making similarly challenging films in the future.

In other words, they got the shot... and now, others will have to wait a while before the opportunity comes up again.

Steven Soderbergh, as he has done before, is following up The Good German, a film that he must have intuitively known was uncommercial, with a third Ocean's Eleven film. The first of the series was the third of Soderbergh's most commercial career run, following the unexpected $100 million hits of Erin Brockovich and Traffic. After making the experimental, cheap Full Frontal and the challenging, big budgeted Solaris, the next step was to return to the Ocean. Now, with Bubble on the Indie Spirit list and the equally experimental but much more expensive The Good German about to offer the experience of cold sea water rushing a man's lower body, he's already back on the Ocean track.

My sense - which could be wrong - is that Soderbergh is about to pull back into a primarily experimental period, really pushing himself as he did with The Underneath, Schizopolis, Out of Sight, and The Limey, which led to the aforementioned big money period.

The same is allegedly true of Martin Scorsese, who has had the greatest commercial success of his career with his last three films and has been telling people he is ready to return to more personal work. (Word is also that the next one won't really be cheap... just half the price tag of his recent flicks.)

Less commercially and creatively disastrous are two very different films by Marc Forster and Christopher Nolan. Neither film comes close to be a black eye for their studios. But on the other hand, neither will be particularly profitable either.

In the case of Forster, his first comedy is a follow-up to the low point of his career, the very funny but very much meant to be serious Stay, which he made for Fox and which Fox dumped as quietly as possible last year. What he's delivered in Stranger Than Fiction is a pleasant enough little thing, but with tonal problems that seem to start with his quality indie tendencies which are betrayed by the fact that this film seems desperate to be a balls out studio romantic comedy. $40 million is not a real disaster... but it will quite clearly be Will Ferrell's worst fiscal performance in a starring role in his career.

And, of course, it's another waste of a great Dustin Hoffman supporting turn.

The Prestige cracked $50 million and won't lose money, but if you were a studio and you had the long magic movie with big names that cost a ton to market did $53 million and you were looking at the tiny magic movie that did $40 million with almost no marketing (The Illusionist), you'd likely be sending Mr. Nolan to Miramax to make a cheaper movie next time... unless all you really wanted was to snare him for a future film.

Three films were delivered this year, made for literally multiples of the previous high budgets from their prestige filmmakers. The most financially successful of the films, fiscally, looks to gross a little less than $25 million domestic.

Babel is also probably the most fully realized of the visions from these four budding auteurs. The Gonzalez Inarritu/Arriaga team is capable of absolute magic and deliver a bunch of it in Babel. But they also deliver the kind of showy abuses of the audience's good will that kept 21 Grams out of the Oscar race as it threatens to do once again here.

More significantly from an industry point of view, Babel has claimed a production budget of anywhere between $25 million and $35 million, though sources close to the production have long acknowledged that these numbers are significantly lower than the reality. Moreover, with Brad Pitt - whose last four openings were between $38 million and $50 million - in the lead and an unusually large Dependent marketing budget, the film has to get an Oscar nomination to have any chance of catching up with Pitt's worst performer in the last dozen years, Snatch's $30 million domestic. (That film was a success at that number, mind you, as it had a much lower budget and a stronger base overseas.)

Another director whose last film caused a fight for their services this time around, leading to a budget no less than triple the last film, is Sofia Coppola, whose Marie Antoinette has generated reviews all over the map, from passion for or against to a kind of lazy acceptance of its frills and its failures. But the bottom line is this... under $30 million worldwide, split with just over 50% coming here in the U.S.

There is a real chance that Marie will have a big cult following on DVD, as the girls who refused to shell out to see the lavish film but rushed to the multiplex to see Step Up (not that Channing Tatum sold many tickets to A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints either) finally put some money on the table to see the endless pink. But it can't be considered anything less than a major disappointment which shows that no matter how much Ms. Coppola may have to work with, her tastes in clothes, drapes, wigs, shoes, horses, and landscapes is impeccable and she still doesn't seem ready to make a film that can support the weight increased budget.

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Except that it reminds the studios to say "no" - not to Sofia, of course - the next time an indie minded director looks to go bigger.

The Fountain is a classic example of a very talented young filmmaker being given enough green rope to hang himself, his studio, and his future ability to get financed for more than $15 million. I like the movie, but I embraced its limitations, while the movie - and especially the marketing - virtually smack you in the face with the notion that you should have expected more.

The film is basically a love story - not very much unlike Soderbergh's Solaris at the core - that involves a man who is used to being in control losing control over the one thing that is most important to him... his wife's life and death. I choose to believe that the future and the past are, essentially, fever dreams, as this man of medicine prays in the only way he can for a miracle that he somehow knows is beyond his human genius. Interesting enough. But desperately close to pretension and easily readable as bad camp.

Again, I am pleased that a quality filmmaker got a chance to play something like this out, even if it isn't a complete success. But the failure is more than his own.

Finally, one more film, which has quickly become the most overrated movie of the holiday season, Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men. In this case, this is not the filmmaker's most expensive film. It is hard to find a budget higher than that of a Harry Potter franchise film. But it is certainly the biggest budget for one of Cuaron's personal films. And that is, essentially, what this futuristic action epic is... remarkably personal... and like our minds in real life... lost in the excitement of the moment and unable to ever come together to make the case that it so desperately runs after for an hour and forty minutes.

It is a remarkable occasion that all three of the Mexican Justice League of Directors have films in theaters not only in the same year, but all in the same season. One look at the most successful of the three films, Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, reminds you of how all three directors have similar, but varied skill sets and that their voices split at the heart. Del Toro is the most emotionally raw, even when doing big stunt and gross effects, the giant heart of a child (and we all hope the Guillermo's heart remains oversized in spirit and not literally) is always on display. Gonzalez Inarritu is clearly the intellectual of the group, able to deliver powerful emotion on screen, but always stepping back not only to treat the characters as pieces of a chess board, but to remind the audience that he, not they, are in control. (I look forward to him growing out of this limitation.)

Cuaron works right in the middle. His work, even in Harry Potter, has an unmistakably sexual scent to it. As disappointing as Great Expectations was on one level, there was something kinky about it... something that gave greater depth and range to both Paltrow and Hawke than we have really ever seen them display before or since (the exception being Paltrow as Sylvia, though it is always an odd estimate of a performance in a biopic.) Y Tu Mama Tambien screamed its sexuality out, but then took us somewhere even more profound, turning lust into a lust for living... surviving. The puberty buttons were popping all over Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. His characters are always human, vulnerable, searching. But there is a certain lack of sentimentality.

Children of Men is as well made as a movie can be made. It's the near future. The world is in isolationist chaos due to disease. And the human race has stopped being able to procreate.

Wow... what a set up (care of novelist P.D. James).

But with the money to do virtually whatever he could think of on screen, what did Cuaron focus on? The production design, some great actors creating harsh but compelling characters, and basically a long chase movie with the human clock of the very pregnant woman who they hope will give birth for the first time in the species in over a decade.

But what is the movie about?

All of us who love movies have seen many variations on the movie Cuaron delivers. Ironically, The Good German is not far off. Grit, action, moments. But the question remains... so what?

Children of Men is not a movie about an intelligent species dealing with the pressing fear of its own extinction.

Children of Men is not a movie about the inhumanity of man to man, though that is a constant theme, as Cuaron evokes every historical memory of state oppression from the jewish holocaust to Abu Gharib.

Children of Men is not a movie about how people who desperately need to share in hope in order to survive are too caught up in their petty daily grind to see that it is about more than that, and in the process destroying the hope they are so desperate for.

Children of Men is not a satisfying action movie, moving the McGuffin from one place to another against all odds, to a satisfying conclusion.

Children of Men is all of those movies... and less. So in the end, it is lacking in basic human emotion... basic human logic... and never really explores the themes it keeps throwing in our faces.

The defining moment of the film is the eight minute long (or however long) handheld shot that follows and leads our hero through all kinds of action that is almost impossible to imagine as one shot... and which is completely unnecessary as anything other than an act of showing off. Unlike the famous shots in GoodFellas and Touch of Evil, the shot doesn't change or set a tone for the film. It happens in the third act and would have been just as effective for audiences had it been done in a bunch of edits. Yes, bravo. Well done. And so what?

I would have loved any of the films that Cuaron was chasing here. I love the performances, especially of Michael Caine and Clive Owen. But many of the other excellent actors here are absolutely wasted (especially Chewi Elijofor) because they don't get to do more than their individual scenes.

Seeing the film again on DVD, it was improved. Some of the "huh?" moments made more sense. And this kind of action film plays really, really well on TV. It is a vastly superior episode of 24. But as a film, it never fights its own most important battle... the battle of emotion and meaning. There are plenty of poignant moments, but they don't ring more bells as the story moves along because the poignant moments become story points instead of emotional landmarks.

And it's too bad.

It's certainly a much superior exercise to another well intended and unopened disaster that some whackos are still touting as Oscar bait involving a rock and a human liquid. But when movies like this open and underperform expectations or hopes, all kinds of excuses are made. But I believe that people who don't dissect a movie like I do (and you might) can feel these holes in the product. They can be dazzled. In a film like Sin City or Kill Bill, they can enjoy the wind on their face, even if the work fills no part of their soul. But Children of Men wants to be more than that thrill ride and it really isn't. So you get so-so word of mouth. Subtle disappointment. And a wait for DVD attitude.

The thing is, this was one of those great studio opportunities. Great young filmmaker. Tough idea. A supportive studio. And when these films flop - or are perceived as flopping - that is when the price is paid. But this year, it is not so much Those Great Unwashed who have and will come up short, but the films and filmmakers themselves. And that is sad.

I look forward to the next films of every one of the filmmakers mentioned in today's column... sincerely. And maybe some fiscal restraint will force more focused creativity. I hope so. And I hope that the industry will have a short memory about the year when so many great expectations got away from us.

E Me.

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