Christina Ricci

Once again, I’ve failed to prepare a review …

Once again, sheer unmitigated laziness has played its part …

Once again, I’m using the fact that it’s an extremely photogenic celebrity’s birthday to bail myself out.

So happy 31st to Christina Ricci.

Monster

Posted as part of Operation 101010
Category: biopics / In category: 2 of 10 / Overall: 45 of 100

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the pre-credits title card “based on a true story” can strike fear into the heart of even the most hardened movie buff. The phrase often covers a multitude of sins. For “sins” read inconsistencies, inaccuracies, blatant fabrications, composite characters and redacted timelines. And to be fair, filmmakers kind of have to. Even if your subject is, say, Jim Morrison – who died at the age of 27 – a two and a half hour movie about that person’s life will still have to be incredibly selective in terms of what to feature, what to depict. Composite characters help reduce timelines; blatant fabrications are sometimes necessary to provide context.

All told, the biopic is something of a poisoned chalice. A filmmaker can draw as much flak for basing their movie on disputed material. Take Bernard Rose’s ‘Immortal Beloved’: a barnstorming performance by Gary Oldman, the music of Beethoven used contextually and often very imaginatively, a couple of inspired moments of visual poetry … and yet Rose bases his screenplay on Anton Schindler’s account of the maestro’s life – a version all but written off by academics and historians as spurious at best and almost certainly whitewashed by Schindler in order to claim a far greater importance as Beethoven’s friend and professional associate than was actually the case.

Patty Jenkins’s ‘Monster’ seems to draw from a multitude of sources. Aileen Wuornos’s own witness-stand account of the first killing – motivated by her rape at the hands of a client – is graphically depicted in the film; the other killings, however, have no sexual imperative beyond Wuornos picking the men up as potential clients, instead using the secluded areas they take her to as cover for robbery and murder. These scenes smack of Wuornos’s recanted story just before her execution – a recantation that Nick Broomfield’s second documentary on Wuornos exposes as a ploy to expedite said execution.

‘Monster’ also replaces Wuornos’ turncoat partner Tyria Moore with a fictional stand-in character, Shelby Wall (Christina Ricci), who serves the same narrative function as Moore (ie. requires Wuornos to go back to in-car prostitution in order to provide for her; and promptly sells her out to the cops the moment the heat comes down) but is demonstrably different in terms of characterisation. I guess this was a compromise Jenkins and her collaborators had little choice in since Moore is still alive (although thought to be living under an assumed name) and could conceivably sue.

Jenkins’s script probes Wuornos (Charlize Theron)’s troubled background in superficial depth, mainly concerning itself with depicting the relationship between Wuornos and Wall. This is both the film’s strength and weakness. For all that her film is called ‘Monster’, Jenkins is generally even-handed in depicting Wuornos as a flawed and temperamental human being but a human being nonetheless. On the minus side, any real psychological approach is jettisoned in favour of an increasingly shrill series of altercations between Wuornos and Wall (Ricci’s portrayal of Wall as clingy, demanding and immature – while a good piece of acting – adds up to a pathetic and annoying character) occasionally punctuated by a murder.

Nonetheless, Theron gives the performance of her career, the incredibly gorgeous actress disappearing into the old-before-her-time visage of Wuornos. Watching the film a day after the Broomfield documentaries (‘The Selling of a Serial Killer’ was apparently Theron’s go-to resource for her portrayal) is to marvel at how unnervingly convincing Theron is; it’s not just the look or the voice, but the entire panoply of facial expressions and mannerisms. The Oscar was richly deserved.

Elsewhere, the film has some minor flaws (the pacing is a tad uneven; the soundtrack is contrived instead of seeming organic; and there’s no real visual flair, Jenkins and her DoP Steven Bernstein conjuring far fewer grittily iconic images than you’d expect given the material), but there’s not an ounce of sensationalism, nor does Jenkins’s attempt to humanise Wuornos tip over into cloying melodrama of the “tragic heroine” school. Ultimately, ‘Monster’ – made just a year after Wuornos’s execution – is a good film that falls somewhat short of being great but is gifted with a simply awesome central performance.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

There’s a scene in Terry Gilliam’s ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ where Raoul Duke (Johnny Depp) and Dr Gonzo (Benicio del Toro) – thinly fictionalised versions of Hunter S Thompson and Samoan attorney Oscar Acosta – are driving through the neon-lit artifice of Las Vegas in a convertible. They pull up next to a car full of straight-laced, middle-aged, middle-class white people (let’s call them ‘squares’ for short). Duke is hunched over the steering wheel, under the influence of just about every narcotic substance known to mankind; Dr Gonzo is hanging out the window, whining and blubbering pathetically, his moustache and the side of the car pebble-dashed with vomit.

The squares try heroically to ignore him. Then Dr Gonzo addresses them directly: “You folks wanna buy some heroin? God damn it, I’m serious. All I’m trying to sell you is some pure fucking smack. This is the real stuff. You won’t get hooked. I just got back from Vietnam ... I wanna sell you some pure fucking smack ... puuuuure ... fuuuuuuck ...”

One of them snaps: “God damn it, you bastards!” he yells, hammering on the car window with his fist. “Pull over! I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you.”

Which was pretty much how the critics reacted when ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ was originally released in 1998. “Simply unwatchable” opined Mike Clarke in USA Today and he wasn’t alone in that opinion. The majority of the film-going public didn’t even have an opinion – ‘F&L in LV’ did about $10 million at the American box office, earning back just over half of its budget.

I saw it on the big screen back in ’98 and loved it. Bought the video – loved it. Wore the VHS out and bought the DVD – still love it. And yet most people I talk to haven’t seen it; many have never heard of it. It came as pleasant and long-awaited validation, when I started the new job a few weeks ago, to find that one of my colleagues had not only seen the film but loves it wholeheartedly, and we had a grand time comparing our favourite scenes.

‘F&L in LV’ is zonked-out, screwed-up film-making with an emphasis on self-destructive behaviour, illicit substances and the over-consumption thereof. Politically incorrect? Hell, yeah. Irresponsible? Probably, but who’s counting? Not me. There’s a case to be made that we need a few more films to be irresponsible and politically incorrect – otherwise cinema, as with any art form that’s not given a thorough shaking up every so often, stagnates.

‘F&L in LV’ sets out its stall in the first scene, Duke and Dr Gonzo cutting through the desert in a big open-top car with fins and whitewall tyres and a flame red paint job. They’re on the outskirts of Barstow and the drugs have just kicked in. “We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-coloured uppers, downers, screamers and laughers,” Duke enumerates (Depp’s pitch-perfect voiceover is one of the chief joys of the film). “Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into locked a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.”

By this time the pair have hallucinated a sky full of attacking bats. It gets worse: checking into a plush hotel, Duke’s base of operations while he ostensibly covers a motorcycle race in the desert, the psychedelically patterned carpet comes bleeding to life. A lounge full of bloated gamblers turns into a rutting grotesquery of giant lizards.

It gets worse: Duke and Dr Gonzo freak out, run up epic room service bills, destroy said hotel rooms, skip paying for both, damage cars, terrorize the innocent, insult authority, brandish weapons, rail against a government and a country going to hell, and merrily drink, snort and in any way possible ingest everything they can get their hands on, all the while encountering any number of other oddballs from an underage and possibly mentally deficient artist (Christina Ricci) who paints nothing but portraits of Barbara Streisand (Duke warns Dr Gonzo off her thusly: “in a few hours, she'll probably be sane enough to work herself into some kind of towering Jesus-based rage at the hazy recollection of being seduced by some kind of cruel Samoan who fed her liquor and LSD, dragged her to a Vegas hotel room and then savagely penetrated every orifice in her little body with his throbbing, uncircumcised member”) to a traffic cop (Gary Busey) who enthusiastically pursues a way over-the-limit* Duke only to let him off with a warning and ask for a kiss (“I’m very lonely here”).

For all that the critics didn’t get it and the majority of cinema-goers didn’t bother with it, ‘F&L in LV’ achieves a perfect marriage of source material, cast and director. It’s a blast, a trip and a head-fuck. Anyone whose sensibilities are easily offended would do best to avoid. But to anyone who likes cinema in the fast lane, 100mph, drunk in charge and not wearing a seatbelt, all I can say is: buy the ticket, take the ride.



*In both senses.

Hallowe'en Triple Bill

The glow-in-the-dark bats are glowing in the dark, the illuminated pumpkin is trying to disassociate itself from how crap a movie 'Halloween III: Season of the Witch' is, the nibbles are arrayed in bowls on the coffee table, the wine is poured and Paula pulls the first title out of the witches' cauldron.

Way-hey! One from the faves list.

PERSONAL FAVES: A Tale of Two Sisters

Getting the triple bill in and posting before midnight means thumbnail write-ups and this film suits brevity down to the ground. There's almost nothing you can say about it - you certainly can't get into a discussion about director Kim Jee-Woon's genius for misdirection and the keeping of crucial things under wraps - without spoiling the twist.

Although perhaps twist is the wrong word. Twist implies something that's thrown in at the last minute to take you by surprise. What 'A Tale of Two Sisters' has is one fuck-off big hum-dinger of a narrative development; it comes about two-thirds of the way through and forces you to re-evaluate everything you've seen up to this point. But Jee-Woon's not satisfied with that and the last half hour or so takes the film into ever darker territory.

Giving nothing away, I'll just say this: it's about guilt (this applies to more than one character); you might think that one of the characters is a ghost (they kind of are and aren't); pay attention to the cringeingly embarrassing dinner party (it's all about perspectives: who sees what).

It's a beautifully shot, incredibly well acted and infinitely creepy piece of work. It proves that 'The Ring' doesn't necessarily have the monopoly on freaky women with lank black hair creeping slowly towards you. It blends psychological horror with arguably the best take on the haunted house movie since Robert Wise's 'The Haunting'. It yields up its many facets and ambiguities with repeated viewings: think 'Memento' or 'The Prestige', but with the requirement that you shelter behind the sofa to watch much of it.

*

A short break, the topping up of drinks, a bit of mood music ('Danse Macabre' by Saint-Saens), then the next title is drawn:

Land of the Dead

The most maligned of Romero's zombie sequence (even the decidedly hit-and-miss 'Diary of the Dead' got better reviews). Nonetheless, 'Land of the Dead' is a film I enjoy for its socio-political themes, and one that I see as the logical conclusion of the critique of Americana that spans 'Night', 'Dawn' and 'Day' and pretty much makes 'Diary' superfluous. The zombies evolve, fall in behind a leader, revenge themselves on a surviving core of humanity who have become so inured they treat the living dead as sideshow entertainments. Maybe it should have been called 'Sympathy for the Dead'.

Plenty to love: Asia Argento's tough-chick performance; the 'Shaun of the Dead' stars in an inspired cameo; supporting roles by Dennis Hopper and John Leguizamo ("I still prefer him as Chichi," Paula comments*). Then there's the whole post-9/11 American insularity subtext ...

But enough. My musings on Romero's ground-breaking sequence have already been documented on this blog, here, here, here, here and here.

*

Another short break, another gothic tune (Mussorgsky's 'Night on the Bare Mountain'), then it's heads-down-and-see-you-at-the-end. Here we go: the final title is picked.

Oh.

The Addams Family

Barry Sonnenfeld: a master of style over substance. Yes, 'The Addams Family' looks great. Yes, everyone's perfectly cast. Yes, it's a pleasant little diversion after the head-fuck of 'A Tale of Two Sisters' and the viscera of 'Land of the Dead', but I find myself wishing it was the sequel, with its gloriously subversive summer camp subplot and expanded role for Christina Ricci's deliciously deadpan Wednesday, that we were watching.


* 'To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar' up next on The Agitation of the Mind? Watch this space.