Movie Review: "About Elly"

"About Elly": A-.  When choosing whether to fork over the price of admission, most American movie goers are much more likely to pay greater attention to the stars of a given film than the film's director.  Only a handful of directors (e.g., Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers) have a devoted following large enough to make a box office difference on their names alone.  Add Asghar Farhadi, the esteemed Iranian director of About Elly, to that list.  When I learned that Farhadi's latest US release was playing in Uptown, I put it on my short must-see list.  This decision was based mostly on my thorough enjoyment of his last film to play a long run in Minnesota, A Separation (reviewed here February 25, 2012; A-).

Farhadi is brilliant at taking common everyday situations and turning them into suspenseful dramatic tales.  In A Separation, things go awry when a woman who's been hired to look after an elderly homebound man momentarily leaves her post.  In About Elly, a similar lapse of duty, this one involving children playing in or near the ocean, creates chaos.  The ensuing reaction of the film's characters, individually and collectively, is very real.  One can imagine himself saying the same things, asking the same questions and going through the same emotions as the people in the film.  There is nothing fabricated or dishonest about the script, and the actors are astonishingly convincing.  Panic, fabrications, scheming, white lies, moral questions, potentially misplaced honor; they all come into play as the plot thickens.  So do red herrings; what's up with the coughing women?

The setup for the tale is a weekend outing by a group of eight adults who have a connection to a law school in Iran's capital, Tehran.  Two of the couples are parents, and have brought along their three children.  When they arrive at their destination after a long drive from the city, they are advised that the villa they'd reserved is not available because its owner has unexpectedly returned and is using the place himself.  They are offered what is described as a less-desirable accommodation on the beach of the Caspian Sea.  Although this alternative building has not been cleaned and has no cell phone or internet connection, the group decides that staying there is preferable to canceling their plans altogether.  But as the manager leaves she cautions them, "Be sure to lock the door at night."

We quickly find out that three of the couples, including Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani) and her husband, are married.  The fourth male, Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini), is a newly divorced friend who is visiting from Germany.  The fourth female, Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti), is the single kindergarten teacher of one of the kids and has been invited by Sepideh.  As the adults are cleaning up the place, there is a lot of playful banter, especially among the males who are prompting Ahmad to hit on Elly.  Elly is friendly, but on the bashful side.  She seems alone in her thoughts and sometimes strays from the group, heading into the kitchen or out on the front porch.  Whether she is receptive to the idea of hooking up with Ahmad is hard to gauge.

One of the many interesting aspects about this story is that the muslim religion influences the action.  The women are, for the most part, respected by the men, yet the difference in power between husbands and wives within the respective families is clear.  Also, when the group first arrives at the rental establishment, Sepideh tells the manager that Ahmad and Elly are newlyweds.  This lie is necessary because religion and culture would not tolerate two unmarried people of the opposite sex sharing living quarters.

The poster advertising this film is noteworthy for two reasons.  First, as a public service announcement, I will advise you that the character whose picture dominates the poster is not Elly; it is Sepideh.  I point this out because initially I had a hard time distinguishing between those two characters, and the fact that the poster featured a female other than the title character contributed to my confusion.  Eventually I identified them by the solid colors of their omnipresent scarves -- Elly reddish brown, Sepideh green.  That worked until the next day when those two women wore different color scarves.  I should have known, especially being married to Momma Cuan, that a woman would travel with more than one scarf!

Second, and more importantly, one of the two review quotes appearing on the poster reads, "The less you know in advance, the better."  I am going to heed that advice by film critic David Bordwell, and therefore it's up to you to check out how the story unfolds.  I highly recommend doing so.

As she was sucking down a delicious Insight Saison de Blanc at Libertine following the movie, Momma Cuan made a valid point which bears repeating.  She opined that when you watch a movie with talented but unfamiliar foreign actors, it is easier to forget that they are, in fact acting.  The only familiarity we have with them is that they are one with their corresponding characters.  As we like to say on ND Nation, "Agreeance."  The acting in About Elly is nothing less than phenomenal. 

Movie Review: "Me And Earl And The Dying Girl"

"Me And Earl And The Dying Girl": B.  I had no intention of seeing Me And Earl And The Dying Girl until I received an e-mail from my pen pal, Colin Covert, praising the film as "a wonderful movie just crammed with talent and creative energy."  Covert is the film critic for the Star Tribune, so yes, I am name-dropping a little bit here.  I refer to him as "my pen pal" because he is one of the few Strib journalists who is kind enough to respond to my e-mails.  In fact, he always responds.  I had written to him asking if he'd seen Testament Of Youth (reviewed here June 30, 2015; B), for which the Strib had used a review by New York Times critic Stephen Holden.  It turns out Covert had not seen that picture, and in closing steered me to Me And Earl.

The story is about three high school friends, Greg (Thomas Mann), Earl (Ronald Cyler II) and Rachel (Olivia Cooke), classmates at a Pittsburgh high school.  The two guys are best buds who share movie-making as a hobby.  The titles of their short, low budget films are take-offs on familiar sayings, slogans and movie titles such as My Dinner With Andre The Giant, Senior Citizen Kane and Anatomy Of A Burger.  Greg and Rachel have known each other since grade school, but have traveled in different circles within their high school as they grew older.  It isn't until Greg's mother (Connie Britton of TV's Friday Night Lights fame) informs him of Rachel's cancer condition that he and Rachel reconnect, albeit mutually reluctantly.  He is brutally honest when, without prompting, he reveals to Rachel that his mother is the one who suggested he pay her a home visit.  Rachel does not take offense, instead appreciating such candor. She is bemused by his simple charm.  More visits ensue.  Many of the movie's scenes occur in her spacious bedroom, where she has a collection of offbeat pillows and, of all things, scissors.

Greg's initial plan for surviving senior year was to be cordial to each of the wide varieties of cliques and other social groups, while simultaneously avoiding membership.  His approach is to be an acquaintance to all but not close friends with any, except for Earl.  But the more he talks with Rachel, the harder it is to stay aloof.  Little by little he puts his friendship with her on higher priority levels, even to the point of starting on a movie project with Earl which is tailor made for Rachel.  Her disease is no longer the impetus for his frequent visits.

Greg was never a stellar student, settling for average grades.  Now that he's a senior his mother insists he's got to get serious about college plans.  She has him carting around an eight hundred page college guide, and even suggests Princeton as a school to which he should apply.  Clearly she is clueless, but at least he has in his life a history teacher, Mr. McCarthy (Jon Bernthal), who can relate to kids and offer sage advice from time to time.  Greg and Earl make themselves at home in McCarthy's office, even when the teacher is elsewhere.  Unfortunately, the more time Greg devotes to Rachel, the less he focuses on his already precarious schoolwork. 

 

Me And Earl, told in a first person narrative from Greg's perspective, is a coming-of-age story.  Even though the time span is a single school year, it reminds me a lot of 2009's 500 Days Of Summer, to which I gave a pre-blog rating of B+ and is likewise told from the male's perspective.  Coincidentally, both movies use the device of compartmentalizing sections of the story with on-screen chapter titles. 

 

Me And Earl is a true-to-life portrayal of what it's like to be a high schooler who is so normal as to be almost hidden in plain sight; not a jock, a climber, a party animal, a scholar, a stoner or a trouble maker.  Just an average joe with a couple of close friends who, despite his plans for an uneventful senior year, instead experiences one which will stay with him a long time.    

Driving Miss Linda

Last Friday the news of Egyptian actor Omar Sharif's death in Cairo saddened movie buffs around the world.  Sharif was an international star whose film career extended almost right up to his passing from a heart attack at age eighty-three.  His most famous role was that of the title character in the 1965 epic of the Russian Revolution, Doctor Zhivago (scanned April 1, 2012; B+), for which he won a Golden Globe Award.  But the movie I personally associate more with Sharif is 1962's Lawrence Of Arabia, for which he also won a Golden Globe and a nomination for an Academy Award.  I remember it well because is was the destination for my first real date.

In the winter of 1962-63 I was a fifteen year old sophomore at Assumption High in Davenport, Iowa.  Although I had been the so-called "boyfriend" of several girls in grade school and the first year and a half at Assumption --  mostly girls I barely knew, artificial connections manufactured by female classmates with too much time on their hands -- I had never really gone on a date.  By "date" I mean picking a girl up, taking her somewhere (not just hanging out), and then bringing her back to her house.  Once I became fifteen, I thought it was about time, maybe even long overdue.  The two biggest obstacles to executing my plan were building the courage to ask someone out, and dealing with the fact that I was under sixteen and therefore without a driver's license.  Since I figured there was a better-than-even chance I might not ever build up the courage to overcome the first obstacle until I was, say, seventeen, I decided not to worry about the car issue.  By the time I'd be seventeen, I'd have my own wheels!

 

Surprisingly, the first hurdle was overcome with relative ease.  As I've written before (in my August 25, 2012 post), Assumption was not co-ed, so the only high school girls I knew very well were my former classmates from Our Lady Of Lourdes Grade School in Bettendorf, Iowa.  I chose Linda Roemer as the "target" because she met my three criteria: pretty (call me "shallow" if you must), talkative (to complement my reticence) and a Lourdes alum.  In a weak moment, she said yes.  It's a good thing she said yes because my universe of potential candidates was countable on one hand, and I may not have ever continued the quest beyond a rejection from Linda.

 

Now it was time for figuring out transportation.  I did not know any Assumption upperclassmen (read: drivers) well enough to propose a double date, so I had to ask the one person I knew would oblige: The Marquis.

 

As I correctly predicted, Pook had way more questions about my upcoming date than did The Marquis.  How do you know Linda?  What is she like?  How did you go about asking her?  Where does she live?  What are you going to do?  Do you know her parents?  Etc.  The Marquis, on the other hand, had only one very practical question.  Do you want to sit in the back seat with Linda, or would you prefer that you both sit in the front with me?  Better to figure this out now instead of experiencing an awkward hesitation later.

 

I only remember my dad owning one kind of car, a station wagon for hauling National cash registers.  Nothing impresses a girl more than pulling up in a big ol' station wagon with a couple of clunky registers in the far back.  In any event, it was my feeling that it would seem more like a date if Linda and I sat in the back (i.e., between the front seat and the registers) than crammed in the front with the old man.

 

Time for an aside:  The Marquis gave me some advice which I deemed to be good and therefore attempted to follow.  He said, if you want to ask a girl out, do so several days, maybe even a week, before the planned outing.  If you wait until the last minute, you give the impression that she was not the first girl you had in mind for that evening, not to mention that the longer you wait the greater the chance that she will have made other plans.  The main downside for me was that, for the entire week leading up to the big Saturday night with Linda, it was hard for me to concentrate on anything else, like classes and studying.  The Nerves Meter was in the red zone throughout.

 

The Roemers lived in Bettendorf, as did my family.  My dad pulled in their driveway, and I went to the door to get Linda and to meet her parents for the first time.  I stepped into the living room and, although both of her folks were friendly, they were sizing me up with a list of questions that would have made Pook's list look like an abridged Readers' Digest version.  (In case you are wondering, no, they did not ask me to present a personal financial statement!)  At some point during the multi-minute inquisition, Linda sneaked out and went to the station wagon.  If you are guessing that she sat in the front seat with The Marquis, you would be correct.  So much for that part of my plans!

 

The seating arrangement actually turned out to be fine because my dad, with his Irish wit, could keep just about any conversation rolling.  We needed it to keep rolling because we were headed for Illinois.  "Why Illinois?" you might ask.  Well because the movie I chose for the date was the one everybody was buzzing about, Lawrence Of Arabia, and the only Quad Cities venue where that film was playing was the Rocket Theater in Rock Island, Illinois.  For those of you who are not Geography Bee participants, the Quad Cities are comprised of Davenport and Bettendorf, separated from Moline, Illinois and Rock Island by the Mississippi River.

 

Most guys, when they are selecting an activity for their first date with a girl, will choose something which will enable them to get to know each other better.  For example, going bowling, to a sporting event or out to dinner would afford opportunities for talking and asking each other questions.  Most would avoid movies altogether, because they obviously do not lend themselves to chit chat.  Not me.  Instead of doing the smart thing, I chose not only to go to a movie, but to go to one with a running time exceeding three and a half hours!  Other than a mumble here and there, Linda and I sat in silence for over three and a half hours (two hundred twenty-seven minutes, to be exact).  Well, at least it lessens the prospects of saying something stupid!

 

When the closing credits were rolling, I asked Linda, "Do you think this is a double feature?"  I had been working on that joke for the past two hundred twenty-seven minutes.

 

I'm not sure if she thought that was funny, because her reply was, "His eyes were so blue!"  She was referring not to Sharif, who had a supporting role, but to lead actor Peter O'Toole, whose eyes were, indeed, a deep, almost mesmerizing blue.

 

We had roughly twenty minutes until The Marquis was scheduled to chauffeur us back home to Iowa, so we ducked into a diner next to the Rocket for ice cream.  This was, after all, the early sixties, and finishing up a date with ice cream, just like you would a meal, was in fashion.  It was the best part of our date, the only time we had to talk alone.  Throughout the brief treat, Linda must have commented on O'Toole's blue eyes three or four more times.  She was in love, but not with me.  When The Marquis showed up he asked us, "How did you two like the movie?"

 

I preempted Linda by immediately replying, "It was a little too long, but you wouldn't believe Peter O'Toole's blue eyes!"

Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XX

Reasonable minds can disagree as to which Alfred Hitchcock movie was his best.  Rear Window from 1954 is always in the conversation.  How many directors besides Hitch could keep us interested in a main character who is confined to a wheelchair and spends most of the time gazing out his apartment window?  The beautiful Grace Kelly gracing the screen no doubt helps keep the interest level high.  If building atmospheric scenes is your cup of tea, you might vote for Vertigo (1958).  I remember after first seeing that movie I had a dream about the haunting Kim Novak, and not in a good way.  There was a time in my life when I thought The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) was the most entertaining movie by any director that I'd ever seen.  The climax in London's Albert Hall -- yep, the same Albert Hall mentioned in the Beatles' A Day In The Life -- is spine tingling.  By the way, the three aforementioned movies all starred Jimmy Stewart.  Psycho (scanned January 7, 2015; A-) was groundbreaking and controversial, a horror story of sorts without ghosts, zombies or digitized monsters.  And in my pre-blog days I bestowed an A on Dial M For Murder, thus anointing it one of the top forty films I've ever had the pleasure of viewing.

 

If you selected as your top choice one of those five Hitchcock dramas -- or even a different one such as The 39 Steps (1935) or Rebecca (1940) -- I would not dump your seven dollar bucket of buttered popcorn over your head, although all bets are off if you prefer 1963's The Birds (scanned January 7, 2015; C).  But the one Hitchcock film I put on the throne is North By Northwest from 1959.  I have watched Cary Grant, James Mason and Eva Marie Saint in that intriguing cold war thriller more than a half dozen times.

 

Grant plays Roger Thornhill, a smooth, suave Manhattan advertising executive who is usually seen in a Brooks Brothers suit, regardless of the occasion.  Mason is Phillip Vandamm, equally smooth and suave, who is covertly under surveillance by the US Intelligence Agency, a government agency similar to the FBI.  The agency is headed by The Professor (Leo G. Carroll).  Vandamm is suspected of carrying on some dastardly deeds, like spying, smuggling or drug running.  The government isn't sure exactly what, and therefore waiting for just the right moment to pounce.

 

Vandamm and his henchmen kidnap Thornhill, mistakenly believing he is a rival named George Kaplan, notwithstanding protestations by Thornhill.  The ad man is able to escape from the bad guys' clutches, but not without running afoul of the law.  Even his own mother, Clara (the feisty and funny Jessie Royce Landis), doesn't believe his incredible version of what transpired.  Thus, the nattily attired Thornhill has both the cops and Vandamm's men after him.  Along the way he encounters Eve Kendall (Saint), who is….; well, I'll leave it to you to figure out that character.  The scenes shift from Manhattan to the New York Central Railroad to Chicago, then Indiana and back to Chicago, and finally South Dakota.

 

What sets North By Northwest apart from those other Hitchcock classics?  I am going to list two important attributes plus the unique icing on the cake.  But before I do so, I must concede that the plot has at least one gaping flaw of the type which usually turns me off to a story as a whole.  Thornhill, while on the run from both the cops and Vandamm, must get from New York to Chicago discretely yet quickly in order to confront the mysterious Mr. Kaplan.  The ticketless Thornhill opts for the train, but until he makes a mad dash past the entry gate conductor in Grand Central Station, there is a strong likelihood he will not get on board.  Wouldn't you know it?  Vandamm and the boys are on the same train!  How did they know Thornhill was going to be on that train when, moments before the train pulls out of the station, Thornhill himself didn't even know?

 

Now for those favorable attributes.

 

The Male Leads:  In 1959 both Grant and Mason were established film stars with impressive resumes.  Both hailed from England and possessed that certain je ne sais quoi enabling them to convert rather mundane lines into quotable colloquy.  Supplement that talent with their handsomeness, fine tailored suits, smooth buttery British accents and a natural flair, and you have the makings of a combination for the ages.  The scenes in which these two superbly skilled actors are paired is cinema at its best.

 

The Humor:  Secondly we have the humor, with kudos and a standing O for script writer Ernest Lehman.  We like Thornhill immediately when, in the movie's opening scene, he cracks a couple of good one-liners to his secretary, Maggie (Doreen Lang), in a taxi.  "In the world of advertising there's no such thing as a lie -- only expedient exaggeration."  A few minutes later, after instructing Maggie to call his mother with dinner plans when Maggie gets back to the office: "Tell her I'm having two drinks at the Oak Room, so she doesn't need to smell my breath."

 

More humor from Grant's character:

 

To Eve Kendall on the train: "Tell me, what do you do besides lure men to their doom on the 20th Century Limited?"

 

To Eve, kissing her in the Pullman car: "[I have good] taste in women; I like your flavor."

 

To Eve in a hotel room: "How does a girl like you get to be a girl like you?"

 

To The Professor on an airport tarmac: "Now wait a minute, you listen to me.  I'm an advertising man, not a red herring.  I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders dependent on me, and I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed."

 

The Unforgettable Scenes:  Finally, as promised, the icing on the cake, a theory of mine after pondering the issue over a few adult beverages, not including a Gibson (Thornhill's favorite cocktail).

 

Most films do not have any individual scene that has lasted in the public's collective memory over a multi-year span.  But think about some famous movies which do contain an iconic scene:  The car chase in Bullitt (1968); the Normandy Beach landing in Saving Private Ryan (1998); farting around the camp fire in Blazing Saddles (1974); the ear carving in Reservoir Dogs (1992); the shower scene in Hitch's Psycho.  All of these scenes have two things in common.  First, when you see or hear one of those movie titles, your thoughts immediately go to that famous scene.  The word associations are practically instinctive.  Second, each is by far the most memorable scene in its respective film.  In some cases, it's hard to come up with any other scene.

 

North By Northwest does not fit that description.  Why?  Because it is one of only a handful of films -- and arguably the only Hitchcock film -- which contains two epic scenes which have been inextricably linked to the movie.  Those two scenes are the Indiana crop dusting scene and the Mount Rushmore finale.  Each of those two scenes lasts only about five minutes, yet they are historic.  It is impossible to think of North By Northwest without recalling, and marveling at, those sequences.

 

Here are the movies I've watched in the comfort of The Quentin Estates during the second quarter of 2015.

 

1.  Colorado Territory (1949 western; Joel McCrea busts out of jail and hooks up with fellow bad guys to pull off one last heist, not at all planning to be distracted by earthy Texan Virginia Mayo or genteel Georgian Dorothy Malone.) A

 

2. A Country Wedding (2015 romance; Jesse Metcalfe is a superstar country singer who, on the eve of his wedding to Hollywood starlet Laura Mennell, reconnects with florist Autumn Reeser, who owns the ranch next door.) B+

3. How To Marry A Millionaire (1953 comedy; Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable are three poor models who rent a luxury Manhattan apartment as part of a scheme to find and marry rich men.) C

4. LA Confidential  (1997 drama; in a corrupt LA police department, Guy Pearce is the baby-faced politician who aspires to climb the ladder, Kevin Spacey is a narcotics detective with connections to a Dragnet-type of television show and a tabloid magazine, and Russell Crowe is a tough guy who doesn't mind bending the rules to put a suspect behind bars.) A

 

5. Last Days In Viet Nam (2014 documentary; the US Army and American embassy staff leave Saigon as the North Viet Nam enemy is on the march, and in the process of evacuation many South Vietnamese who had helped the US are deceitfully left behind.)  A

 

6. Mean Streets (1973 drama; Harvey Keitel is a small time hood in NYC, under the thumb of his mafia uncle who warns him to distance himself from his deadbeat friend Robert De Niro.) C

 

7. North By Northwest (1959 drama; see the above mini-review.) A

8. A Place In The Sun (1951  drama; Montgomery Clift wants to ditch plain and pregnant Shelly Winters so he can take up with socialite glamour girl Elizabeth Taylor.) B-

9. The Sundowners (1960 Australian western; Robert Mitchum enjoys the nomadic life of an itinerant sheep drover, but wife Deborah Kerr is ready to settle down on a ranch.) B+

Movie Review: "Testament Of Youth"

"Testament Of Youth": B.  This British film is, essentially, a war movie with no shots fired but plenty of bloodshed.  The story follows four years in the life of Vera Brittain (Swedish actress Alicia Vikander), starting with Armistice Day in London, 1918, and quickly flashing back to the beginning of World War I.  The film is an adaptation of Brittain's memoirs, and thus is non-fiction.

Most of the people in England did not feel threatened by the outbreak of war precipitated by the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand over a thousand miles away in Sarajevo.  Even when England decided to send its young men into battle, the public under-appreciated the magnitude of the risks.  This was merely going to be a short-term skirmish, more an adventure than a life-and-death confrontation.  The boys would return as heroes within a year.  No need to disrupt long-term plans.  Joining the fray was the honorable thing to do.  How could a bloke look his mates in the eye if he was the only one in the group not to enlist?

Vera's dream is to become a professional writer, and the coveted credential to achieve that is a degree from Oxford.  Her old-fashioned father thinks spending tuition money to put a daughter through college is a waste; she should concentrate instead on finding a suitable husband.  Vera's brother Edward (Teron Egerton), to whom she is extremely close, goes to bat for her by helping to persuade dear old dad that the new piano he purchased to appease Vera is trivial compared to her prospective education.  Months later, Vera returns her brother's favor by convincing pops to allow Edward to go to war.  It isn't long before Vera wishes she could retract her sales pitch.

One of Edward's friends is Roland Leighton (Kit Harington).  He and Vera become engaged right before he boards a train to take him to his first military assignment.  What is it about train scenes in war movies?  Those settings, especially the plaintive engine whistles and the white steam wafting from the locomotive over the station platform, provide a great background for lingering goodbyes.  And of course all this is accompanied by a score of French horns and violins.

Vera is sure she failed the Oxford entrance exam, a section of which asked her to translate English passages into Latin.  Vera does not know Latin, so she does the next best thing; she makes the translation into a foreign language she does know, German.  The film has several scenes in which characters are receiving mail and reading other people's mail, sometimes at the addressee's request, sometimes not.  Vera is stunned when Edward opens the envelope and informs her that she passed the test.  But as the war gets closer to home and the Germans prove to be a much more stubborn and formidable adversary than originally predicted, Vera makes the tough decision to put her education on hold and volunteer as a nurse.

Vera is almost overwhelmed by the hospital wards where she toils.  Things get worse when she chooses to cross the channel to offer her services in "dangerous France," as her disapproving mother describes it.  The carnage is repulsive, but at least her long hours working tirelessly gets her mind off her brother and fiancé, who are near the front lines.  Seeing the effects of war from this vantage point informs the memoirs she would write almost twenty years later.

Like many other films which I've graded a B, Testament Of Youth is more interesting than entertaining.  The story arch is slow paced, and perhaps not surprisingly since we're dealing with early twentieth century England, the affection between Vera and Roland seems almost platonic.  For at least the first half of the movie, I was not sure if Vera had one, two or three brothers, as three similarly aged male characters (including Edward and Roland) often appeared together on screen and seemed fungible.  The muddled Brit accents did not help matters either.  Roland uses poetry, instead of conversation, to express his feelings for Vera.  That's great, I guess, if you're into poetry, but it is not all that effective for purposes of making a feature film. 

Watching Testament made me think of two other movies for divergent reasons.  Regarding the famous Hitchcock thriller Psycho (scanned here on January 7, 2015; A-), critics felt that the explanatory lecture by the psychiatrist at the movie's end was extraneous.  Some went so far as to call it an insult to the collective intelligence of the audience, which should have been able to draw their own conclusions and interpretations about main character Norman Bates.  Near the end of Testament, Vera delivers a sermon to a small but angry crowd which had gathered in London after the war to discuss reparations.  I felt the same way about that scene as the critics felt about the lecture in Psycho.  We already know, after almost two hours of viewing, that Vera views war as a senseless waste of humanity.  That outlook is firmly established once she is asked to treat mortally wounded "Huns" (as her colleague calls the enemy), and realizes if she hadn't before that those soldiers are pawns just like the British combatants.  If the film goers had been paying attention, Vera's unspoken message would have sufficed.   Therefore, Testament would have been better without the lecture, even though it gives actress Vikander a chance to showcase more of her talents. 

Testament also brought to mind Tangerines (reviewed May 15, 2015; B+), for the simple reason that both carry "stupidity and futility of war" messages.  The latter is a much more effective film, and comes without any closing sermon on the mount.

The Candy Stripers

Around here at the Quentin Estates, we call each June 25 the anniversary of Mary's Second Big Mistake.  (We celebrate her First Big Mistake on February 14.)  We got married thirty-nine years ago on a Friday evening at Most Holy Trinity Church.  Our reception was held in the church "parlours," which is a euphemism for "basement."  To commemorate the occasion there are many stories surrounding the wedding which could be related, and which someday may yet be told, but due to time constraints I am limiting myself to one shortie.

In the spring of 1976 I was just completing my seventh year of teaching at MHT School, and my fourth as assistant principal.  My salary was in the neighborhood of $9,500.  In addition to that whopping sum, one of my perks -- actually, my only perk --  was being allowed to live, free of charge, in a small two bedroom house adjacent to the school's parking lot.  The house, which was owned by the parish, used to provide lodging for one or two associate pastors, but by the mid-seventies the days of small parishes having the luxury of more than just a pastor were long gone.

Given the relatively late hour (5:00) of the nuptial Mass, and not really believing the old adage about the groom not seeing the bride on her wedding day before the ceremony for fear of bad luck, Momma Cuan and I decided to have our professional photographer take pictures at 4:00.  Mary and her bridesmaids used some rooms in the school to get ready, while my four groomsmen and I used my house.  Two of the guys used my living room and a small front room to get dressed, and two others used my second bedroom while I was in my own bedroom.  As I was standing there in my tightie whities, a half-hour before picture time, I heard one of the guys, high school bud Denny McMahon, call out from the living room, "Hey John, aren't all of us supposed to be wearing solid white tuxes?"  As a matter of fact, we were!

"What!?" I exclaimed as I raced out from my room.  There they were, Denny and my brother-in-law Mike, fully dressed wearing white tuxes with red candy stripes on the jackets.  They must have guessed, thankfully correctly, that I did not have a heart condition, because if I were ever going to go into cardiac arrest, this was it.  I immediately went into panic mode, and as I scrambled to unearth my yellow pages from beneath one of the several piles of papers strewn throughout my abode, four thoughts danced simultaneously through my noggin.  First, how could the formalwear people screw up so badly?  Second, even if the formalwear place has two solid white jackets available, how are we going to get them in time?  The store was twenty minutes away in Southdale, and 4:00 was quickly approaching.  Third, why did we wait till the eleventh hour to check inside the clothing bags?  And fourth -- really first -- Mary is going to kill me!

I finally found my yellow pages and was literally dialing up the store's number when all four groomsmen (including best man Tom and my cousin Louie) burst out laughing so hard they were getting stomach aches.  The joke was on me.  They had conned the guy at the formal wear store to let them borrow two candy stripe jackets, in addition to the rented solid whites, for the sole purpose of pulling off that pre-wedding prank.  I'm sure the clerk didn't mind, as the demand for candy striped jackets was most likely nonexistent.  My friends knew a gullible sucker (me) when they saw one, and correctly predicted my over-the-top frenzied reaction.

None of that foursome ever confessed to who came up with the idea for those shenanigans.  Thirty-nine years later, that crime remains unsolved.  (So does the mystery of who trashed my getaway car which I had locked up in my garage, a discovery I did not make until 1:00 in the morning.)  If CBS ever resurrects their show Cold Case, maybe the culprit will be revealed.     

Movie Review: "Love & Mercy"

"Love & Mercy": B.  As a public service announcement, let me caution you against a misconception and offer a piece of advise.  If you enjoyed the play or the movie Jersey Boys, the story of the 4 Seasons, don't think that Love & Mercy follows suit by being a film about the Beach Boys.  It would be logical to expect that, because in the pre-Beatles era, and even during and after the British Invasion, the 4 Seasons and the Beach Boys were by far the two most commercially successful American vocal groups.  (You already knew that, if not from your own experience then from reading my March 10, 2014 and June 25, 2014 (among others) posts on this blog.)  Thus, they are often linked together.  The 4 Seasons were a quartet featuring lead singer Frankie Valli, but Jersey Boys is not Valli's biopic.  Rather, it is the story of the foursome, and as I pointed out in that June 25 review (A-), the story's treatment of all four members almost equally is one of its important strengths.  On the other hand, Love & Mercy is the story not of the Beach Boys but of their mastermind, Brian Wilson.  There has not, as yet, been a feature film about the Beach Boys; only a couple of made-for-TV attempts.

Paul Dano plays Wilson as a twenty-something, and John Cusack portrays Wilson as a middle-aged man.  Throughout the film, director Bill Pohlad, a Minnesotan, switches from '60's scenes to the '90's.  Here is the nugget of advice:  If you are distracted by the facts that Dano does not resemble Cusack and Cusack does not resemble Wilson, you need to pay more attention to the other facets of the film in order to "get the most out of it."  At least there is a similitude between Dano and the young Wilson.

Brian Wilson was and remains one of the most fascinating characters in the history of the music industry.  If ever there were a genius in the pop music realm, it was he, a thesis driven home by the documentary The Wrecking Crew (reviewed here on April 28, 2015; A-).  Brian and his two brothers, along with a cousin and a close friend, formed the Beach Boys in Hawthorne, California.  Almost every single they released from 1962 to 1966 became a smash.  The most frequent themes were those of surfing, sports cars, high school and, of course, girls.  Their harmonies were rich, the beat was usually uptempo, and their lyrics resonated with teens nationwide, even those in the landlocked Midwest.  Many young fans, including me back in the day, figured these guys grew up on the beach and were natural-born surfers.  The truth, as we later found out, was that Hawthorne is landlocked too, separated by a few busy highways and LA suburbs from the ocean, several miles away.  And of the five bandmates, only drummer Dennis Wilson surfed.

Although Brian is a genius, he was psychologically tormented.  His struggle with mental illness is the focus of this movie.  The film does not purport to explain the cause of his problems, but the presence of two misguided, if not evil, superior males were exacerbating factors.  As children the Wilson brothers were beaten by their father Murry (Bill Camp), a tyrant both in terms of their upbringing and their fledgling careers.  A blow administered by Murry to Brian's ear left him partially deaf.  Of even deeper concern and more illustrated in the film is the presence of a court-appointed psychotherapist, Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti).  Landy is determined to control every aspect of Brian's life, including his diet, his medications, his residence and his social life.  Landy is a one dimensional character who clearly sees Brian as his meal ticket.  Landy uses round the clock surveillance to keep his "patient" under his dominion.  By exerting a ridiculous level of control over him, particularly with respect to his regimen of overmedicating, Landy easily has the vulnerable Brian at his mercy.  Every scene Landy is in is difficult to watch.

Elizabeth Banks plays Melinda Ledbetter, a former model turned Cadillac salesperson, who first encounters Brian in a dealer's showroom.  She does not know that the male customer examining the innards of a Caddy is the music legend.  She is fascinated by Brian's quirkiness and simple honesty.  The more she is around him, the more suspicious she becomes over his relationship with Landy and the latter's motives.  While in the presence of Melinda, Landy attempts to disguise his domination over Brian, but she is an astute observer whose hunches about the unnaturalness of the Landy-Wilson relationship are accurate.

The Beach Boys' music became much more experimental in the mid-sixties.  Wilson was fascinated with the Beatles' Rubber Soul album, released in December 1965.  The Beatles had decided to take their music in a different direction than the pure pop style which had lifted them to fame.  Rubber Soul was their vehicle to do so.  Brian wanted his band to follow a similar path, and 1966's Pet Sounds was the result.  Those two albums are universally considered masterpieces by music historians.  Another parallel one can draw about the two bands is that the Beatles stopped touring within nine months of releasing Rubber Soul, and Wilson abandoned touring to devote more time to writing and producing near the Pet Sounds chapter of the Beach Boys' reign.  One important difference between the new paths charted by the Beatles and the Beach Boys was that all four Mop Tops were on board with the transcendence, whereas Brian's change of direction caused internal dissension among the group.

I was hoping for a little more Beach Boys music on the sound track, but given Pohlad's narrower focus of concentrating much more on Brian than the band itself, the smaller sample size of tunes is understandable.  Dano displays acting chops I never knew he possessed, while Banks and Giamatti strike the right notes in their performances.  Cusack was a good call to fill the role of the older Brian.  His characters always seem to be at least a touch off dead center; in this film, way off.

One has to wonder how Landy's emotional abuse of the mentally ill music man could go unnoticed by others who were close to him, such as Brian's bandmates, other family members, his professional colleagues and court personnel.  It took a car salesperson to discover what was going on.