500 Days of Summer (2009)

Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2009. Directed by Marc Webb. Starring Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

We had the chance to see this movie just a few days ago during this year’s Nashville Film Festival, which has reached its fortieth edition, and it was really a pleasure. 500 Days of Summer is a little jewel of an independent film, witty, tender, hilarious at times, and never pretentious. It centers on the relationship established between its two main characters, Tom and Summer (thence the title), who gradually come to find out that their approaches to love and their expectations from their relationship differ greatly. It’s a simple but compelling story very well directed by Marc Webb, who chooses not to chronicle the love affair in a linear fashion but rather prefers to constantly jump ahead and back in time as he tells the story. This works very well because it gives the audience a better idea of the feelings of the characters at different stages of their relationship, and at the same time, it occasionally achieves interesting comic effects.

This non-chronological way of approaching the story is just one of the many metafictional devices employed by Webb, who proves to be rather conscious of viewers’ expectations about storytelling and filmmaking. Thus, the movie begins with the blatant announcement that it is a story of boy-meets-girl but not a love story. In our opinion, however, 500 Days of Summer is, indeed, a love story—perhaps not a conventional love story, but one that stresses different understandings of the ideas of love and steady relationships and ultimately dramatizes the clash between the way we expect our lives to be and the things that reality has in store for us.

Even though Webb sometimes introduces a narrator, the favored point of view is that of Tom’s. This enables us to have direct access to his perceptions of Summer: we constantly see her through his eyes, and little by little, we come to realize that some of the images of her that he is construing are erroneous. And perhaps because of this narrative device, the character of Summer comes across as not as deep and well-rounded as it could have been. Both Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt give fine performances as the protagonists, and the picture contains several funny parodies of French and Swedish art films and popular culture in general. This movie was certainly a pleasant surprise for us, proving once again that it is possible to make a good film out of a simple story provided that someone takes the time to find an intelligent way to tell it. And Webb, in his first full-length feature, clearly succeeds.

Anton&Erin.

The Lady in the Lake (1947)

MGM, 1947. Directed by Robert Montgomery. Starring Robert Montgomery, Audrey Totter, Leon Ames, Lloyd Nolan, and Tom Tully.

Critics usually cite The Lady in the Lake as the first movie to use a subjective point of view shot as its central narrative device, and more often than not, they praise the experiment. In our opinion, undeservedly so. Although it is true that it isn’t without its interesting moments, the film clearly fails in its innovative attempt, which soon grows old and boring. When it was first released, MGM pushed The Lady in the Lake as a groundbreaking interactive movie, one that gave the viewer the chance to experience the events exactly at the same time and with the same intensity as the protagonist. As you can see here on the left, the original poster called the film "the most amazing since talkies began," also underscoring the fact that it was the spectator that solved the murder mystery along with the main character. Yet, even back in 1947, the actual result must have come across as a disappointment.

Based on a Raymond Chandler novel, the picture casts Robert Montgomery (also acting as director) as private eye Phillip Marlowe, who gets involved in a murder plot that turns out to be rather unsatisfying. We have access to the events in the story from Marlowe’s point of view, and as a result, we hardly ever get to see Montgomery, who stays literally behind the camera. It’s true that plot never was Chandler’s forte; he was much more adept at recreating the atmosphere and cityscape of Los Angeles in the first half of the twentieth century. Yet because of Montgomery’s choice of the subjective point of view device, the movie doesn’t capture any of that atmosphere. The gimmick impairs the narrative, which becomes too slow and repetitive: at times the camera moves so slowly that it makes it look as though Marlowe were walking in slow motion. Perhaps the only positive aspect of this narrative device lies in the fact that Montgomery stays off-camera throughout most of the movie, and we only get to hear him talk. In our opinion, Montgomery isn’t as believable in the role of Marlowe as, say, Robert Mitchum would have been, and certainly much less powerful than Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep, an infinitely more effective entry in the Marlowe saga.

The Lady in the Lake, then, is the perfect example of a movie constructed around an idea that may have sounded interesting in principle but that doesn’t work at all once it’s implemented. The narrative device used by Montgomery doesn’t help advance the plot, and as a consequence, the finished product suffers greatly, precisely because most movies of the noir cycle are so strongly plot-based. Innovation should always be welcome when it serves a clearly defined purpose, but in The Lady in the Lake, we frankly fail to understand such a purpose.

Anton&Erin.

The Shop around the Corner (1940)

MGM, 1940. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Starring James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut, and Felix Bressart.

Remade as In the Good Old Summertime, a 1949 musical starring Van Johnson and Judy Garland, and then brought into the internet age as You've Got Mail (1998), a far inferior movie with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, The Shop around the Corner is a delightful screenplay by Samson Raphaelson (the writer of The Jazz Singer) based on the Miklos Laszlo play Parfumerie. And in the hands of director Ernst Lubitsch, it turns into a timeless classic.

The action takes place in 1930s Budapest, although it's clearly set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, and the plot is a sort of tragicomedy of errors and mistaken identities, full of witty dialogues and Lubitsch's usual flair for tenderness. At first sight, The Shop around the Corner simply looks like a typical romantic comedy, but it'll only take a little scratching of its surface to discover a great deal of hidden tensions that, in spite of its Hungarian setting, bring us back to 1930s America. For instance, Klara Novak's desperation as she insistently looks for a job and Pirovitch's comments about his family's financial struggles underscore the precarious economy of the working class in the thirties. In this respect, we can hear echoes of Rouben Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight, a musical that enacts a displacement of the Great Depression by setting its story in France and bringing in elements of the fairytale tradition.

Yet Lubitsch's main concern in The Shop around the Corner doesn't seem to lie merely in social commentary; he seems much more interested in human relations and in the effects of work on the interactions between people. Thus, store owner Hugo Matuschek becomes a vital character, as he finds in old age that devoting his whole life and effort to his business hasn't brought him real happiness, but rather that his life has been wasted in an endless search for economic growth. Lubitsch seems to hint at the fact that redemption is still possible for Matuschek, though, but only by means of an awareness of his place in the world and a reevaluation of his priorities in life.

Lubitsch places Matuschek in sharp contrast with the young Alfred Kralik, his oldest employee and, in many ways, his opposite. As is usually the case in a Lubitsch film, even though humor plays an important role in the contrast between both characters, the effect is rather serious. As the movie unfolds, we realize that Kralik's approach to life isn't the same as Matuschek's, that his priorities are different. The purely romantic element of the movie, that is, the relationship established between Kralik and Klara, is another instance of Lubitsch's attempt to go beyond plot-based facts: it becomes a statement about lack of communication and the influence of appearances on human relations. In spite of their daily interactions at the store where they work, both characters need to don a mask and create a world of make-believe where they pretend to be what they really aren't in order to approach and get to understand each other.

In short, The Shop around the Corner tells a delightful story that is sometimes funny, sometimes bittersweet, but always tender and deeply moving. The movie is brought to life by an outstanding cast led by James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and Frank Morgan, whose performances are flawless. And, of course, the genius of Lubitsch's directing, with his very elegant treatment of the subject matter and the characters, arguably makes it one of our favorite films of all time.

Anton&Erin.

Ladies in Lavender (2004)

UK Film Council/Baker Street, 2004. Directed by Charles Dance. Starring Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Daniel Brühl, and Natascha McElhone.

Ladies in Lavender may well be the archetype of the movie that lays a quite interesting foundation but that fails to build on those initial premises. Even though it's compelling and very beautifully put together, its screenplay ends up coming across as a good chance that's been wasted away. In the end, it looks as though British filmmaker Charles Dance hadn't dared to follow the road less traveled, and we can't help but feel that, if trodden, that road might have led him closer to a more satisfying work of art.

Set on a remote English coastal town a few months before the outset of World War II, the film tells the story of two sisters, Ursula (Judi Dench) and Janet (Maggie Smith), whose uneventful life is dramatically altered by the unexpected appearance of the young Andrea (Daniel Brühl), whom they find lying unconscious on the beach. The plot is built around a study of the relationship between the youth and the two elderly ladies, but in our opinion, this study is sometimes lacking in depth. For instance, the presence of Andrea awakens Ursula's yearning for a life that she never had the chance to live, and she plunges into nostalgic memories of a past that never existed. As she grows old, Ursula's innermost longings and desires come to the surface as she looks back on her life and is overwhelmed by the wonder of the many things that could have been but never were. Yet the treatment of this aspect of the plot comes across as rather shallow, and we certainly wish that it'd been pushed a little further. The same could be said of the influence that Andrea exerts on the small community that inhabits the tiny village: even though at first it looks as though the film is going to delve deeper into this issue, it's eventually overlooked in favor of Andrea's passion for music.

Nonetheless, in spite of these drawbacks, the movie is quite entertaining, and its scenes are drenched with emotion and occasional humor. Judi Dench and Maggie Smith prove yet again that they're magnificent performers, and Daniel Brühl and Natascha McElhone add to the consistently high interpretive quality of the film. Overall, then, we do recommend the watching of Ladies in Lavender, a film that is further embellished by its picturesque setting and its beautiful, dramatic music. Yet we wish that Dance had been a wee bit more daring in his approach to the telling of the story—it surely would have gone a long way...

Anton&Erin.

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Columbia, 1947. Directed by Orson Welles. Starring Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Everett Sloane, and Glenn Anders

To say that Orson Welles was ahead of his time sounds so much like an understatement nowadays that it may well fall into the category of a widely accepted stereotype. Based on Sherwood King's novel If I Die before I Wake (which Anton took the time to read and actually turned out to be much better than he expected), and graced by fantastic performances by Welles, his then-wife Rita Hayworth, and two fabulous actors such as Everett Sloane and Glenn Anders, The Lady from Shanghai bears witness to this. Welles landed this project merely by chance, when his career as a director was faltering, and he needed money for other endeavors. But no matter, because the movie represents one of those instances when fate and genius come together, and the result is pure and simple greatness.

In The Lady from Shanghai, Welles undertakes a highly interesting generic revision: this is indeed a film noir, yet a very atypical one at that. The movie plays around with most elements of the genre (murder, shady characters, the figure of a femme fatale) but the plot is so elaborate and leaves so many questions unanswered that we often find ourselves completely at sea as spectators. We constantly have the feeling that Welles is playing with us, building up our expectations in one scene merely to shatter them completely in the next one. The characters add to the overall sense of indeterminacy of the film. All of them are complex characters, but their complexity lies mainly in the fact that their development throughout the storyline is conveyed by means of brushstrokes. They are like puppets in Welles's hands, and we only get a very superficial idea of what is hidden behind their masks. For instance, when at some point Grisby (Glenn Anders) stares directly at the camera with a grin on his face and says to Michael (Orson Welles), "Remember that you were only doing target practice," we can't help but feel unsettled because Grisby seems to be winking at us, as though he were announcing that he knows something that we don't.

The plot also moves along unevenly, sometimes almost tentatively, and quite often the events in the story don't seem to be clearly connected. This might be due in part to the fact that Welles's original cut of the movie ran over an hour longer than the final version, which clocks in at roughly ninety minutes. Welles was made to reduce the length of the film against his will, and that definitely influences the way in which the story is told. However, The Lady from Shanghai is also a wonderful example of Welles's highly personal use of the camera: the movie is full of bizarre shots, improbable angles, and strange, almost grotesque settings. This unsettling atmosphere provokes a feeling of estrangement in the viewer, which climaxes in that powerful final scene at the funhouse, a directorial tour de force that embodies what The Lady from Shanghai is ultimately about. As each character pulls the trigger and smashes one another's image on the mirrors, Welles reminds us that, both within the movie and in the outside world, things are hardly ever what they seem.

Although it wasn't well received when it was first released, in our opinion, The Lady from Shanghai is a masterpiece. Like most of Welles's movies, it requires several viewings in order to make sense out of its intricacies. However, don't feel frustrated if you see it dozens of times and you still feel that you can't find convincing answers for all your questions. In most of Welles's movies, greatness isn't necessarily planned; it simply happens.

Anton&Erin.

The Happening (2008)

20th Century Fox, 2008. Written and Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Starring Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, and Ashlyn Sanchez.

Whoever told M. Night Shyamalan that it's acceptable to write a story without justifying the key elements of the plot? That's exactly what he does in The Happening: he proposes an interesting idea (people who, for some unknown reason, are drawn to killing themselves), but the idea never gets anywhere. The movie never explains the reasons why this happens, but rather prefers to leave it up to our own imagination: perhaps it's terrorism, or air pollution, or an evil coincidence, or maybe a combination of all of these. Nothing really happens in the movie, and everything seems to come out of the blue.

If you're hoping to see a well-developed film, with a beginning, a middle, and an ending, this is not the one for you. We went to see it at the theater and came out of the room with the feeling that we'd been swindled by the story. Its premises are interesting, but the possibilities that these premises offer are totally wasted away. That's not to say that Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel don't do a good job: they are good actors, but they are stuck in a story that is not only unbelievable, but that actually makes no attempt at verisimilitude. In our opinion, The Sixth Sense (1999) is undoubtedly Shyamalan's best work, and The Happening is a clear example that either he's run out of ideas or he's become a little lazy at screenplay writing.

Anton&Erin.