Tag: Melanie Laurent

Side by Side: The Double and Enemy

Two films were released this year about people who look identical, but they’re highly different films.

“You’re in my place.” That’s the opening line to “The Double,” and it’s the on-the-nose thesis to both that movie and a similar film also released this year, “Enemy.” In each film, a timid and lonely protagonist comes face to face with a more confident doppelganger, causing the original’s life to unravel.

Two copycat movies in a given year is a jarring coincidence, but to call them doppelgangers of each other would be a misnomer. However, it certainly doesn’t help that both are based off books called “The Double” and that neither is particularly good.

More so than a replica of “Enemy”, “The Double” is actually a pastiche of Orwellian dystopias, most notably Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”. Director Richard Ayoade’s first film was yet another cinematic pastiche (or homage if you prefer) called “Submarine” that reimagined the French New Wave with its own dark comedy turns. This new film owes Gilliam a lot, with drab colors and cold, boxy, ‘80s machinery and technology filling every part of the set design. Continue reading “Side by Side: The Double and Enemy”

Beginners

In a smattering of close-up pictures and jump cuts, Mike Mills accelerates us through time and history during his film “Beginners.” He points out the sun, the stars, the president and what emotions look like. These symbols have come to define us, but they’re endowed by someone else, by society. His story is about three people learning to communicate their own personalities and embrace the idea and feeling of happiness, not just the image.

Few films are truly about communication. Even “The Social Network” merely analyzes speech patterns, internal coding and societal trends. “Beginners” understands that the words and symbols themselves have no meaning except the meaning we assign to them. Society has branded Hal (Christopher Plummer) as the member of a happy American family, complete with a job, wife, child and home in the suburbs. But after his wife dies, Hal, at the age of 75, confesses to his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) that he’s gay.

This comes months before Hal’s death, yet in the time before and after Hal’s death, Oliver is just as confused with the symbols of success and friendship he’s been presented with. He does not begin to change until he meets the lovely Anna (“Inglourious Basterds’” Melanie Laurent) and she asks him, “Why are you at a party if you’re so sad?”

The beauty of that question is twofold. Firstly, why would anyone even think to ask a question like that? Aren’t their emotions simply implied by the people around them? But secondly, she asks this question with a pad and pencil. She has laryngitis, but not by accident, and not for the filmmaker to be cute. Look at how clearly Anna learns how to communicate with Oliver without words and even without expression behind makeup at a costume party.

“Beginners” speaks without speaking at all, and it is eloquent and beautiful in its quiet. Continue reading “Beginners”

Inglourious Basterds

Unlike “Pulp Fiction,” Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” pushes no new boundaries in terms of cinema; so it may just fall in at number two on Tarantino’s best list. But this film is a testament to his lifelong passion with movies.
“Inglourious Basterds” displays directing, acting, writing, cinematography and art direction at its finest, and it is the best movie of 2009.

Tarantino’s episodic tale is not a World War II epic but a story set in 1940’s occupied France. His acute obsession with the intricacies and depth of his characters drives the action, and the result is a verbose yet invigorating endeavor. The film clocks in at two and a half hours, but these dialogue riddled scenes each more intense than the last make the time fly by. And yet, the film only has anywhere between 10 and 15 scenes. Tarantino moves the action along through his conversations, and if violence is a consequence or resolution to the scene, it is because his characters have led it to that point.

So any fanboy attending “Inglourious Basterds” may have to wait for the blood to hit the fan, and they will no doubt be praising the beautifully orchestrated violence Tarantino can conjure, but in their patience they will not be disappointed. Tarantino’s screenplay is the crowning achievement of the film, and it’s well deserving of his Oscar nomination. Continue reading “Inglourious Basterds”