Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

Can a child understand war? Can any of us, really, understand war?

A child cannot grasp why people must die or why violence must destroy everything they know, but they do know emotion, perhaps more purely than we ourselves can express it.

Despite being a cartoon, “Grave of the Fireflies” is not a children’s film. But it envelops us with pain, sadness and loss on a simple level such that perhaps a child could understand and embrace this Japanese film’s otherwise tough, gruesome images.

Isao Takahata’s film is an early masterpiece from Studio Ghibli, which also spawned Hayao Miyazaki and this year’s “The Secret World of Arrietty.” The animated style is a bit rough around the edges compared to its more contemporary siblings, but it shares the natural world’s stark and colorful beauty that wash over our eyes like visual poetry.

The look and feel of this film is bleak and war-torn, but Takahata uses animation as a way of instilling a sense of magic serenity. An early scene shows a radiant red bloom of fireflies rising from a grassy field. The moment is hardly lifelike, but it is stunning.

It tells the story of a teenage boy, Seita, and his toddler sister Setsuko in Japan during World War II. Their father is a naval officer and their mother has just been killed in a bombing raid. Seeing the charred remains of Seita’s mother is no pleasant site for the queasy, least of all for children. The animation however makes watching it grippingly possible.

The brother and sister try to stay with their aunt, but she’s cruel and stingy in a time when everyone is rationing for the war. She eggs Seita on to join the army or battle the unbeatable napalm fires, but he can neither bring himself to die, nor to abandon Setsuko.

As they set out to live on their own free of their parents, “Grave of the Fireflies” becomes one of the most powerfully saddening films you’ll ever see about independence, hardship and loss.

By centering on these two children, the story becomes instantly more relatable and heart wrenching. Takahata builds a lovely bond between brother and sister through enchanting musical montages. Whether it’s a scene of the pair sharing a laugh on a beach, doing chores at home or scurrying during an air raid, everything they share is handled artfully as though it were one of their most tender moments.

Can any war film ever made boast so many moments of beauty and levity peppering the film’s otherwise desolate landscapes? Live action filmmakers can learn from how elegiac “Grave of the Fireflies” can be. This is such a sad movie, and yet it’s all so delicate and simple.

Perhaps it’s because animation grants the film a level of emotional range almost not capable with human actors. Whether or not these anime figures with big eyes and even a lack of nipples look lifelike, the faces of Seita and Setsuko have such an engrossing level of expression. Their tears are anything but artificial.

One of “Grave of the Fireflies’” most devastating segments is a pair of quick shots as Setsuko aims to bury her collection of fireflies in the same way her mother was likely buried. A morbid image of a mass grave in the city flashes through Seita’s head, and we’re left with a grim sense of mortality after war.

This is a child who has drawn this parallel. “Grave of the Fireflies” is great not because it is painful and beautiful, but because it is universal.

Jeff, Who Lives at Home

Sometimes movies try so hard to be realistic they forget that they’re still movies.

The heartwarming comedy “Jeff, Who Lives at Home” has a mystic fascination with the idea that some signs that point to our destiny are almost too powerful to not be scripted.

Jeff (Jason Segel), the 30-year-old, couch-ridden stoner living with his mom (Susan Sarandon), believes in such a fate, and he thinks it’s more than coincidence he bumped into his brother Pat (Ed Helms) to help him investigate if his wife Linda (Judy Greer) is having an affair.

The film has a subtly self-aware plot structure. These characters belong in a small-scale indie movie, but they keep getting put into madcap situations worthy of something greater. Continue reading “Jeff, Who Lives at Home”

Rapid Response: What’s Eating Gilbert Grape

I recently wrote a story on a film series at the IU Cinema on Disability Awareness Films as part of Indiana’s Disability Awareness Month that you can read here, and although the interviews I did drastically changed the way I thought about disabilities, I wondered if a movie, especially tonight’s screening of “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” could do the same.

The movie is sweet and saccharine with some melodrama that surprisingly never steps too far, but when you consider all it does wonderfully in depicting disabilities as a natural part of everyday life, you begin to realize how special the film is.

The story is of a family of four young adults living and caring with their morbidly obese mother in a small town. Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) does a lot of work around the house and around town and is also the primary care giver for his autistic younger brother Arnie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

The beauty of the story in relation to disabilities is that the handicapped individuals are hardly one-dimensional figures made to pose problems or melodrama for the able bodied people. Both the mother and Arnie are endearing, likeable, emotional, display growth and are not defined by their disabilities. For instance, the mother’s disability is not really obesity but grief over the death of her husband.

The film treats the problems of disabled people as just another complication in a normal day, and we see depth in that this is really a story of being stuck and being judged. Gilbert is stuck inside his hometown, the mother is trapped in her home, Arnie is trapped within his own mind, Gilbert’s new-found girlfriend Becky is literally stuck in this town in the middle of nowhere, and a local married woman having an affair with Gilbert is first stuck in a dysfunctional family and is later surrounded by accusations of her killing her husband.

“Gilbert Grape” is perhaps little seen today but well heard of because it happens to be a remarkable time capsule with a million now famous actors doing things radically different from what they’re doing today. Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Juliette Lewis, Mary Steenburgen, John C. Reiley and Crispin Glover all have early, major roles, and just about all of them are wonderful.

You could talk for hours about how good Leo is as someone with autism. He was rightfully nominated for an Oscar, but you watch him act and can hardly see the actor he is today, let alone would be within just years of that performance as a teen heartthrob. He’s so natural, as if he was an actual autistic actor, and his portrayal is considered remarkably accurate.

This is also a great everyman performance for Johnny Depp. It’s very understated and reserved, and yet he displays some touching range and emotion. I wonder whatever happened to that actor.

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

Like “The Artist,” the spy spoof “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies” is as wonderfully made as the movies it is spoofing.

OSS 117 Cairo Nest of Spies

After “The Artist” won five Oscars, it looked almost ridiculous that the goofy looking spy spoof “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies” now had so much award bait pedigree. But you watch this charming and silly film and begin to realize what Michel Hazanivicius must have had in mind all along before making a silent film.

Most movies that parody just about anything riff on names, plot points, characters and once interesting ideas that have become clichéd. But “Nest of Spies” is an image-based spoof. It’s very attentive to what these films look like first and runs from there.

“The Pink Panther,” “Charade, “Austin Powers;” these are all movies that know their target well, but none of them are as well made or visually dynamic as their counterparts.

“Nest of Spies” is. The wacky plot and debonair hero are almost secondary to making the film look right first. Continue reading “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies”

Rapid Response: Born Yesterday (1950)

“Born Yesterday” is silly and overrated on its bad puns alone, but it also has unlikeable characters portrayed by Judy Holliday and William Holden.

Born Yesterday

How stupid must people think I am to believe that this is a good movie? What, you think I was born yesterday?

That bad pun was probably more jokey than all of George Cukor’s “Born Yesterday” actually is. After seeing a handful of his movies now, including “Adam’s Rib” just over a week ago, I realize Cukor’s films feel less like comedies full of punch lines, screwball situations or witty jabs and are slighter in their straight presentation of socially awkward dialogue. There’s an audience for that sort of thing (and this movie surely has its defenders), and it typically makes for pleasant movies.

The difference however is that the main characters in “Born Yesterday” are strikingly unlikable and idiotic to the point that it has to soapbox the ideas of morality and intelligence in society.

It feels a little like a “My Fair Lady” (also directed by Cukor) story mixed with, for whatever reason it comes to mind, “Legally Blonde.” A ditzy blonde learns about the government and life from a good looking journalist; and she wears glasses! How kooky is that? Continue reading “Rapid Response: Born Yesterday (1950)”

Rapid Response: sex, lies and videotape

Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood said in a discussion of “War Horse” that films look less and less like Spielberg and more like Soderbergh, implying an attention to realism in cinematography over gorgeous, unnatural lighting and landscapes.

Could Steven Soderbergh and his debut feature “sex, lies and videotape” really revolutionized cinematography in the last 20 years of filmmaking?

Although his film came before the advent of digital, Soderbergh adheres to the same principles in 1989 as he does today. He said in an interview with the A.V. Club (a must read for directors) that if he can help it, he won’t use things like establishing shots that clutter the film’s tight editing and cinematic language. And here in “sex, lies and videotape,” we see hardly any establishing shots, no pretty “money shots,” (the first image is of a gravel road for God’s sake) and if he can tell us about two simultaneous moments with only showing us one, he does.

The film’s opening scene is a great example, in which Ann (Andie MacDowell) speaks to her therapist about how her husband John (Peter Gallagher) is distant from her just as he’s having an affair with her sister Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo).

And throughout the film Soderbergh plays with these dual meanings and conflicts. Ann is a woman of simple pleasures, innocent behavior and self-conscious attitudes, and she’s the polar opposite of her forthright, one-dimensional husband. John is more drawn to Cynthia, who is equally demanding and arrogant, going as far as to be openly vindictive of her sister.

The balancing force, strange as that may seem considering his character, is Graham (James Spader), John’s old college roommate who now seems dark and introverted (I’ll point out that John criticizes his clothing choice as though he were in a funeral, and he’s merely wearing a black shirt and blue jeans, for anyone looking for a way in which this film is horribly dated). His sexual fetish is to videotape women just talking about sex, a blunt metaphor for how something like a perverse confessional can be more deeply intimate than anything sex can accomplish.

The last key then, now that sex and videotape are out of the way in the story, is lying. John never overcomes his one-dimensionality, but by the end he’ll realize that his entire existence has forced him to lie to himself. As for Graham and Ann, the two share their personal problems honestly in a way that seems Earth shattering. The scene in which this occurs has John watching the pair on tape, but we realize that honesty goes both ways in getting at what’s behind and around the camera, which for film buffs like me, is a nerdy, meta statement about what’s outside the frame is as important as what’s inside it.

“sex, lies and videotape” won the Palme D’Or at Cannes in 1989, beating out titles like “Do the Right Thing,” “A Cry in the Dark” and “Cinema Paradiso,” and James Spader went on to not only win Best Actor but win the right to star in more complex roles than he had previously been given credit for. One could say that his creepy turn in Soderbergh’s film led him to his creepy turn on “The Office,” but that Soderbergh’s character obviously has more depth and is less awful.

The MPAA is a bully

The MPAA is being a bully. It teases us with misleading ratings and then pummels us with violence. It saps all the fun and meaning out of naughty words. It dangles interesting and important films just out of reach. And it holds a stubborn grudge when anyone thinks to complain about it.

Never have we been more irritated by the MPAA’s annoyances than recently with the upcoming documentary “Bully.”

“Bully” captures middle and high school students in their everyday social lives in an effort to point out the cruel behavior of teenage bullies that led one of its student subjects to suicide.

It was bound to be controversial, but the MPAA bestowed the film with an R-rating because it contains “some language,” effectively restricting it from the under-17 teenagers it depicts.

School field trips have been cancelled, teen advocates have generated petitions, producer Harvey Weinstein has threatened to abandon the MPAA, and critics have thrown around as many four-letter words as those used by the kids in the movie.

And after similar controversies with films like “The King’s Speech” and “Blue Valentine,” the latter of which initially received an NC-17 rating, effectively banning it from most movie theaters, it has become clear the MPAA rating scale needs rethinking. Continue reading “The MPAA is a bully”

The Turin Horse

Bela Tarr’s “The Turin Horse” is a modest feature with minimal activity, but at the end it will feel as if the world is ending.

Bela Tarr’s “The Turin Horse” is one of the bleakest, loneliest and most depressing films I’ve ever seen. But as is true of the Hungarian master’s other films, notably 2000’s “Werckmeister Harmonies,” it is a spellbinding endeavor.

Perhaps unlike “Werckmeister,” I find it more challenging to recommend embracing “The Turin Horse’s” even heavier burden. It is a film of modest proportions, characters, settings and presentation, but by the end of its 146-minute runtime the weight of the world will be on your shoulders.

The story consists of a man and his daughter struggling to survive on a farm during a violent gale with a horse that will not eat. Over the six days we meet these people, they will do nothing and say little and yet do all they must for survival. Continue reading “The Turin Horse”

The Secret World of Arrietty

The Studio Ghibli film “The Secret World of Arrietty” isn’t as strong as Hayao Miyazaki’s movies, but it’s colorful and inventive all the same.

A lot of American children’s films are all about friendship and being yourself. The movies hold your hand and soothe your kids with familiar voices and hypnotizing madcap action.

Only Japan’s Studio Ghibli tosses kids into the dangerous world and exposes them to a lonely, often painful existence before showing them the magic within. “The Secret World of Arrietty” is a touching, but tough children’s film about survival, self-sufficiency and looking the fear of the world right in the face.

After beloved masterpieces like “Grave of the Fireflies” and at least a dozen great ones over the last few years by Hayao Miyazaki, Disney has swept up the distribution of the studio’s output and redubbed their films with American actors so that even obscure animes like “The Secret World of Arrietty” can be seen widely. Continue reading “The Secret World of Arrietty”

The Man Who Wasn’t There

In “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” the Coen Brothers have crafted a beautifully bleak noir.

The Coen Brothers are no strangers to dour films with masterpieces such as “Fargo,” “No Country for Old Men” and “A Serious Man,” but their 2001 film noir is as gracefully desolate, lonely and saddening as any film they’ve ever made. Rarely is a film as beautiful as “The Man Who Wasn’t There” also this bleak.

The title refers to Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), a man so empty of expressions, motivations or purpose that he literally seems absent minded from this world. He cuts hair for a living, but he’s never considered himself a barber.

So what is he? He looks at his wife (Frances McDormand) who he married after two weeks of dating and doesn’t seem to know either. The only thing he does know is that she’s having an affair with her boss, the successful department store owner Big Dave (James Gandolfini).

Ed decides to take a chance on an entrepreneur with the revolutionary idea of dry cleaning. He gets him the investment money by blackmailing Big Dave with the knowledge of his affair, and as is true of any noir, things begin to tumble with a little bit of crime and violence. Continue reading “The Man Who Wasn’t There”