CQ
A charming, intricate, compulsively watchable, rather brilliant comedy by Roman Coppola, his first and, to date, only feature.
A young, experimental filmmaker in 1969 Paris is suddenly handed the reins of an unfinished sci-fi sex comedy. As he grapples with his daunting new assignment, he also deals with his fractured love life, his stunted artistic ambitions and his decaying family.
It perfectly captures a moment in film history when the possibilities of film as a language seemed unlimited. As the young man tussles with the problems of his film and life, the mysteries, pleasures, seductions and promises of the art form open to him and allow him to lose and find himself. That the movie pulls all this off while remaining funny, fast, original, unpretentious and fizzy is something like a minor miracle.
Jeremy Davies, it-boy of the modern independent film movement, plays the young filmmaker, and Gerard Depardieu and Giancarlo Giannini are on hand to remind us of the moment that the film encapsulates.
If the movie finally falls short of its revolutionary promises (“Astonish me!” is the producer’s note to the untested director, while an older director insists that film has the power to change the world), well, then it reflects well the time it’s describing. But it also shows the joys and sadness of the art of film, and how the most malleable, most complex, most powerful of artistic tools is consistently put in the service of silliness.
RKO 281
Orson Welles incurs the wrath of William Randolph Hearst when he makes Citizen Kane. An important story about the collision of art and commerce, told in a brisk, enjoyable, coherent, straight-ahead fashion.
In the manner of most TV movies, it is overlit, overacted, oversimplfied and over-explained. In the manner of most biographical dramas, compression renders complex relationships into two-line exchanges, scenes where Famous People trade Statements instead of human beings conversing. The characters almost wear name tags and plot points are telegraphed far in advance. John Logan, who wrote the screenplay, went on to write many very good scripts, including the similar The Aviator, which gets the Famous Person Biography genre with much more panache, grace and detail.
The presence of Brenda Blethyn reminds me of Topsy-Turvy, Mike Leigh’s film about Gilbert and Sullivan, which is my personal high-water mark for biographical drama of this sort. In that film, a premium is placed on observation and behavioralism; one picks up the plot as the film goes along. Here (and, honestly, in most biographical drama) the viewer is constantly reminded who everyone is and what their relationships are. Or as David Mamet puts it, people are always saying “Come in, because I am the King of France.” The drama is presented instead of inferred; the audience does little work, there are no dots to connect.
The cast is an extraordinary collection of very good actors, but sadly, whenever a group like this is assembled to play Famous, Charismatic People from the Past, all they can really do is demonstrate how we don’t have titans like that in our culture any more.
Liev Schreiber, one of my favorite actors working today, can only hint at the towering presence and commanding force that Welles possessed. I can hardly blame him; the last time I saw Welles depicted on film, it took both Vincent D’onofrio and Maurice LaMarche working together to pull it off. (It’s funny how, in yesterday’s query for films about filmmakers, Welles comes up so often, and always in such tragic terms.)
One thing that RKO 281 does that I wasn’t expecting was to make a human being out of William Randolph Hearst, and it brings up an idea that fascinates me: how does it feel to be the subject of a brilliant artist’s scathing portrait? How does it feel to be portrayed as a soulless monster by an artist with full command of his tools, to know that, no matter what else you accomplished, you will always be remembered as “that guy from Citizen Kane?” How does it feel to be the guy in Alanis Morrissette’s “You Oughta Know?” How does it feel (sorry) to be the subject of “Like a Rolling Stone?” It doesn’t matter what “your side” of the story is, the other side has already been told too well, no one would ever believe you, or care to listen. The subject is defenseless.
Ironcially enough, it’s largely through the craft and brilliance of Citizen Kane that anyone bothers to think about William Randolph Hearst at all these days. Also ironic is that, as much as Hearst must have hated the film, that Welles, in fact, endowed him with more pathos and sympathy than he probably deserved.