Category Archives: Criterion Collection

Aug 4 2011

Criterion Collection: “Life During Wartime” (2009)

Todd Solondz is an acquired taste, much like cilantro or GG Allin. His films probe the grimmest parts of human experience: the hell of early adolescence (“Welcome to the Dollhouse”), class snobbery and exploitation (“Storytelling”), the depths of suburban misery and loneliness (“Happiness”). Solondz’s latest effort, ”Life During Wartime” is another film that’s not for everyone. But even underneath all the bleakness, there’s an element of hope. The hope is faint, but it’s there, and it means that “Life During Wartime” is more than simply a sequel to “Happiness.”

The first — and most obvious — way Solondz sets “Life During Wartime” apart is his decision to cast new actors in old parts. (Solondz likes to toy with his viewers that way; in “Palindromes,” 10 actresses of various ages and races portrayed 13-year-old protagonist Aviva.) It’s a bold move that works mostly because Solondz assembles a fine team of character actors, including Allison Janney, Paul Reubens and Ciarán Hinds. This explodes any preconceived notions about the characters as they used to be; Solondz has reinvented them while retaining some key elements. The biggest change is swapping Dylan Baker for the imposing Hinds as Bill, a pedophile recently released from prison. Once meek, Hinds’ Bill is a sinister observer who lurks, not cowers. He’s haunting and haunted. Bill has traveled to Florida to reconnect with his estranged sons Timmy (Dylan Riley Snyder), who’s preparing for his bar mitzvah, and Billy (Chris Marquette), a college student. Bill’s ex-wife Trish (Janney) has established a new life in Florida on the pretense that Bill is dead; she’s moved on, or pops enough pills to convince herself that she has. Trish wants to marry Harry (Michael Lerner) — she’s besotted with his normalcy — and blend their families, though Harry’s antisocial son Mark (Rich Pecci) proves a challenge. Janney lends a new air of weary defiance to Trish, formerly obsessed with appearances and perfection; her post-coital FTW speech (a more succint version of Edward Norton’s monologue in “25th Hour”) is one of the film’s best blink-and-miss-it moments. 

“Life During Wartime” also focuses on Joy (the superbly timid Shirley Henderson), now married to Allen (Michael Kenneth Williams, a walking wound), whose strange sexual urges threaten to end their marriage. To make matters worse, Joy can’t shake visions of Andy (Reubens, perfect for the part), the ex-boyfriend who comitted suicide in “Happiness.” Several of that film’s more prominent characters, including Helen (Ally Sheedy), still insufferable and now a successful screenwriter, and put-upon matriarch Mona (Renée Taylor), have been reduced to a few moments of screentime — not a bad call, since their stories are less interesting than Joy and Trish’s dramatic problems. But there’s a stellar new addition to this sadsack universe: the mysterious, predatory Jacqueline (Charlotte Rampling), who picks up Bill in a hotel bar. Their brief conversation indicates that these two, on some primal level, understand what it means to be be “monsters,” desiring things and behaving in ways that horrify polite society. Rampling’s character is a human highlighter in “Life During Wartime” much the same way Kristina (Camryn Manheim) was in “Happiness”; both women exist to illuminate something about main characters — here, Bill; in “Happiness,” Allen — they don’t want to know about themselves. It’s a pity that Rampling’s part is small because she’s a tremendously talented actress, but what her scenes lack in quantity they make up for in impact.

Also startling is the look of “Life During Wartime,” a far cry from the gloominess common to Solondz’s films. This is where the hope creeps in, in Edward Lachman’s cinematography. The Florida setting is all blue skies and brightness. Dull colors are juxtaposed with bright ones, most memorably in Hinds’ lumbering walk to his hotel room, where he passes by a shabby off-white wall lined with brilliant blue planks. Even more lush are Bill’s hazy dreams of Timmy, who approaches him carrying a red tulip. The vibrancy, to a degree, does contrast the characters’ unhappiness, but it also suggests hope. Even in the depths of misery, in a post-9/11 world fraught with anxiety, promise hangs in the air: the promise of love despite faults and, more importantly, the promise of forgiveness and redemption.   

Grade: A

Jul 27 2011

Criterion Collection: “Wings of Desire” – 1987 Dir. Wim Wenders

With Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander and Peter Falk

Spine #490

“To smoke, and have coffee – and if you do it together, it’s fantastic.” – Peter Falk (as himself)

    Have you ever longed for something? To Touch something? Touch someone? Feel something? Feel someone? Those are the inner feelings of an angel, Damiel, who watches over the streets of Berlin in Wim Wenders’ masterpiece of human emotion “Wings of Desire”.

Bruno Ganz gives an incredibly touching and profound performance as the conflicted angel Damiel, who watches from above the city of Berlin (before the Wall was taken down). He glides around the city undetected, spending time in libraries, listening to peoples thoughts, dreams, fears, and aspirations. He’s undetected by everyone, except for children. Thought the film never explains the fact that children can be attuned to an angel’s presence, it has to be because they embody innocence.

    Damiel begins to follow a French circus performer Marion (Solveig Dommartin) who pines for the exact same thing Damiel does. She wants to be loved, to be touched by a loving hand – she longs for it. Damiel silently struggles with his deep love for Marion, so much so his angel companion Cassiel (Otto Sander) begins to worry about him because Damiel confesses his wanting to take, “a leap of faith”.

Aside from children being able to detect the presence of an angel, only one other person can. He’s an American actor who flew to Germany to film a movie, and he just so happens to be a “fallen angel” himself. That American actor is Peter Falk, who plays himself.

If this film doesn’t sound like an interesting film already, let me throw on a few more layers of complexity. First, this is a three language film containing of German (how the angels talk, and the thoughts they hear of the people down below), French (the inner thoughts of Marion) and in English whenever Peter Falk is on the screen.

    Peter Falk, who just passed away recently, is an incredibly underrated actor. He will always be best known as Detective Colombo, the character he played on television for over forty years. I think Peter Falk is second only to Jack Lemmon as an actor who serves to facets: the first being a great comedic actor who’s timing is impeccable and secondly for being a great dramatic actor who is able to disappear inside of the character, even when he plays himself.

This film is shot in black and white, and in the first person whenever Damiel takes the narrative of the film, we see what he sees (and how he sees it), whenever the narrative is shifted to Marion or Peter Falk, the film pops into beautiful cinematic colors, showing us that humans live a freer, and more beautiful life than the angels do. Though I think that Wenders begs the question of who serves a greater purpose: angels or humans?

This film is also Wenders’ metaphor for how the German people want to come together and tear down the Berlin Wall and reunite the nation. Wenders says in the Blu-Ray supplements that while he wrote the film, and while they were shooting the film, no one thought that the Berlin Wall would ever come down (it fell two years after the film’s release in 1989).

    Needless to say, this film has a whole hell of a lot going on, and not once does Wenders lose focus, and allow this film to become misguided or pretentious. “Wings of Desire” is a truly beautiful and inspirational film, and can be viewed either two ways, one as a touching love story that shows us that God cannot even interfere with true love, and the second view of the film would be a cry for world peace.

Even though this film is incredibly heavy, and was remade as the atrocious “City of Angels” with Nic Cage and Meg Ryan (that also incredibly changes the entire plot and structure of the film), I cannot recommend this film high enough. This is truly a great film that is criminally under seen.

Rating: 10/10

Jul 20 2011

Criterion Collection: “Days of Heaven” – 1978 Dir. Terrence Malick

With Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Linda Manz and Sam Shephard

Criterion Collection #409

“Days of Heaven” has a simple plot (which one could argue that all of Malick’s films) but his visionary images sets his films apart as being very unique and richly organic. Bill (Richard Gere) accidentally kills his foreman at the factory he works at in Chicago. Bill flees with his little sister Linda (Linda Manz) and his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams) along the railroads of the Midwest until they reach Texas where an ill landowner (Sam Shephard who’s character is not given a name) hire the trio as seasonal help for the upcoming harvest.

    Where the plot thickens is Bill and Abby pretend to be brother and sister (hey, it takes place in 1917) and Bill hatches a plan for Abby to marry the ill landowner. She does marry him, but then he’s not as sick as he seems. Naturally Abby and the Farmer develop feelings for one another as Bill watches from the grain fields.


    I firmly believe that this film is where Malick discovered how he could fuse a narrative in with the beauty and awe of nature. As Richard Gere says in the Supplements, the final film was something completely different than the film he shot. Most of the scenes of dialogue were removed, and what was inserted were shots of the wind blowing the field, turkeys running through grass and close ups of locust. It’s truly extraordinary.

    The cast of the film is rather odd in its own right. Richard Gere, who was fresh off the theater circuit and had not made many feature films, brings an aggressive filled conman who’s edge is softened by his urbanely polished clothing and his looks. Gere gives one of the best performances of his career and shows that he can be a very powerful and effective dramatic actor.

    Sam Shephard, who was known as a playwright prior to his acting, was convinced by Terrence Malick to step in front of the camera. Even on repeat viewings, the character of the Farmer is incredibly sympathetic and victimized by Gere’s plan. But there is an excellent interview in the disc’s Supplements with Shepard where he gives his take on the Farmer, and how he views him as a man who’s filled with jealousy from the first moment he sees Brooke Adams, and how he’s a very rich man who knows nothing but loneliness and solitude and is very desperate to fill the void in his life.


    Speak the truth Pulitzer Prize winning Sam Shepard.

    The acting in this film is terrific, but what makes this film great and a must see is the imagery that Malick puts in front of you. When I watch a Malick film, I feel very rooted, and it’s as if I’m watching a painter paint. It’s very methodical and moving.

    The house, which sits alone on a small incline where Farmer lives, is such a powerful asset of the film. It’s as important as the Bate’s house in “Psycho”. It’s incredibly haunting and its presence on screen is demanding of your attention. It’s the one image that I think of when this film comes across my mind.


    The blu-ray disc that Criterion put out of this film is fantastic, though the Supplements may be slightly thin. There is a commentary track of four members of the original crew that is incredibly insightful and gives you many stories behind the scenes of the film. There are two video interviews with camera operator John Bailey and cinematographer Haskell Wexler (who replaced the original DP who had other obligations).

The highlight of the extras are an audio interview by Gere that’s queued up to footage of the film. Gere is very straightforward about his working relationship with Malick, and how he felt about his methods and the final product of the film. It’s very honest and very fascinating.

    Sam Shephard gives a video interview where he goes into the mythology of Malick’s film, and how he preserves the film, and his thoughts behind much of the imagery and the characters. Sam Shepard is nobody’s fool.

    The Criterion Collection gives “Days of Heaven” an incredible film transfer. Mind you, it won’t pop out like “TRON Legacy” or “The Social Network”, but don’t forget, this film is from 1978 and wasn’t shot digitally. This film was a part of an epic movement in film, and it may not be Malick’s best film, or my favorite of his, but it sure is spectacular.

Rating: 10/10