Captain America: Civil War

With massive tentpole movies locked into extremely specific release dates way ahead of their actual releases, 2016 was always going to be the Summer of Superheroes Twatting Other Superheroes: ‘Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice’, ‘Captain America: Civil War’, ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’. Hell, let’s call it Summer of the Semi-Colon by way of an alias.

‘B vs S’ was first out of the traps and got the kind of critical drubbing last seen aimed at ‘The Lone Ranger’ (and like that movie, ‘B vs S’ – while no classic – turned out better than anyone gave it credit for), and ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’, which opens in the UK tomorrow, is already being submerged by a wave of negative reviews.

‘Captain America: Civil War’ was always going to emerge victorious. Unlike the rushed attempt to springboard a two-part Justice League movie after just ‘Man of Steel’ and ‘B vs S’, and unlike the all-of-the-place quality control of the ‘X-Men’ franchise and the narrative shell-game of the timelines (Deadpool’s piss-taking line in his own magnificently meta solo movie is a spot-on bit of parody), Marvel have developed their stable of icons and villains over a decade and a dozen movies. Nothing in ‘Civil War’ feels rushed or shoe-horned in. The MCU’s timelines and nexus points have been so carefully mapped out that ‘Civil War’ variously functions as: the conclusion to the Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes arc that links ‘The First Avenger’ and ‘Winter Soldier’; a de facto ‘Age of Ultron’ sequel (only sans Hulk and Thor); a passing on of the baton from Peggy Carter to Sharon Carter (a.k.a. Agent 13 – and kudos to all concerned for giving Emily Vancamp more to do this time round); ‘Iron Man 4: Let’s Give Tony Stark’s Ego Another Kicking’; a showreel for ‘Black Panther’; and a teaser trailer for ‘Spider-Man: Hey, Kids, We’ve Got the Rights Back and This Time it Won’t be an Andrew Garfield Suck-Fest, Honest’.

In other words, there’s a lot going on in ‘Civil War’. The opening mini-movie (redolent of a James Bond pre-credits adventure) has the team intercepting some desperados out to get their filthy paws on a biological weapon. One of these desperados is Crossbones (Frank Grillo), Cap (Chris Evans)’s second division nemesis from ‘Winter Soldier’, and he almost gets the drop on our square-jawed hero. Enter Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), who takes care of business but at the cost of an entire building and some civilian casualties.

This debacle coming so soon after the city-wide destruction of ‘Age of Ultron’, the Avengers are hauled up before a committee (making ‘Civil War’ the second major superhero movie, after ‘B vs S’, to steal a plot point from ‘The Incredibles’) and it is impressed upon them that if they want to continue saving the world, they’d better agree to some checks and measure PDQ. Because nothing says “thank you for saving the world” more than grey-suited bureaucracy.

At this point, ‘Civil War’ makes the first of a couple of wobbles – neither are franchise-disruptingly serious, but they’re still annoying. Cap’s reticence to accede to the whims of politicians is understandable given the political conspiracy shenanigans he got caught up in the middle of in ‘Winter Soldier’. However, Stark (Robert Downey Jnr)’s volte face from supremely arrogant twat who was basically the architect of everything bad that happened in ‘Age of Ultron’ to bleeding-heart/survivor’s-guilt-orphan-boy/ascendee-to-moral-high-ground comes off as a character arc too far; it’s founded on just one scene – and no matter how good Alfre Woodward is as the voice of conscience, I just don’t buy Stark’s tunnel-vision Messianic certainty crumbling based on just this one encounter. Indeed, something happens to War Machine (Don Cheadle) late in the game that, if the scripters had found a way to stage it at the outset, would have pushed Stark down the required narrative avenue a lot of convincingly.

The fact remains, though, that this is ‘Cap vs Iron Man’ and the conflict needed to be established pretty quickly. It’s compounded, effectively enough, by a bombing that disrupts the signing of the accord and for which one B. Barnes Esq is in the frame. Only Cap won’t give up on his old buddy and goes rogue in order to find out the truth of the matter. This section, Cap teaming up with Sharon Carter (and a potential romance simmering away), while one B. Panther Esq (the effortlessly charismatic Chadwick Boseman – bring on the guy’s solo movie) stalks Bucky, is easily the best part of the film.

Soon enough, though, loyalties are tested and sides are taken and it’s time for the big airport smackdown – and ‘Civil War’ takes its second wobble. The sequence is a grandslam piece of showboating which is (a) utterly devoid of narrative tension – after all, Helmut Zemo (Daniel Bruhl) has been plotting away in the background so it’s no surprise that Bucky will turn out to be innocent(ish) and the revelations about the real villain of the piece reserved for the final act; and (b) simply too top heavy. If ‘Civil War’ is one green monster from the id and one Nordic god short of being an actual Avengers film, then it overcompensates for their absence by throwing everyone else into the mix. When the warring factions square off against each for fifteen minutes of action, a few sardonically humorous character beats and about a gazillion dollars of special effects, the viewer is presented with – on screen at the same time – Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow (Scarlett Johannson, shockingly short-changed by the script), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Vision (Paul Bettany), Scarlet Witch, War Machine, Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Ant Man (Paul Rudd), Spider-Man (Tom Holland), Bucky Barnes and Black Panther. That’s twelve iconic characters having a brawl. For fifteen minutes. During which Ant Man makes buses and planes and even himself very small and/or very big. For the most part, the scene is fast, frothy and funny (“are we still friends?” as former partners trade punches; Spider-Man being reminded that fighting doesn’t usually involve so much talk), but it never escapes the fact that it’s so top-heavy the bottom of the screen practically screams for an RSJ to shore it up.

Thankfully, the film continues for another half hour and gets its groove back on (mostly: there’s one horrible moment that’s written in purely to stoke up Stark’s hatred for Bucky, and the way it’s incorporated sucks donkey balls), moving towards a finale that doesn’t actually require entire postcode areas to get blown up or mansion-sized gunships drop from the sky.

As ‘Winter Soldier’ debated the legitimacy of control, ‘Civil War’ questions what happens with it. The script stacks things in a certain someone’s favour, and does so in such a way as to absolve them of any and all thorny j’accuses. There’s a similar sense of cop-out as regards the politics of piece, which don’t make a lot of sense when you subject them to even the slightest critical scrutiny. Nonetheless, when it does work, it works brilliantly. Its best moments are, by turns, exciting, flamboyant and intense. ‘Civil War’ is, like the previous Captain America films, a superhero movie that’s actually about something; and it gets to play around with big themes without hunkering down in a mire of crushing joylessness a la ‘B vs S’.

The thorn in its side – arguably the thorn in every other superhero movie’s side – is ‘Deadpool’. In a way that no example of its ilk has done in recent years (bar, notably, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’), ‘Deadpool’ allowed the superhero movie to be fun: big, dumb, adult-orientated fun. How the next slate of Marvel offerings shape up remains to be seen, likewise whether ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ is as bad as early reviews suggest. But it could be that ‘Deadpool’ was either the death knell or the wake up call for the superhero genre. They say that a week is a long time in politics, and we’ve still got a ways to go until ‘The Infinity Wars’.

Rush

Forget the posters and the trailers that put James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth)’s tousled hair and playboy lifestyle to the forefront – Ron Howard’s ‘Rush’ arguably brings a clearer focus to its portrayal of Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl). Lauda is certainly the more complicated character, a man who took a shortcut into the competitive hierarchy of Formula 1 by basically buying his way in, a man who went against his family’s wishes in doing so (until he proved his dominance on the racing circuits, the name Lauda was synonymous with big business and political careerism), and a man who was basically a genius in understanding what made a car go faster and handle better. Bruhl, an actor not know for sloppy performances, does some of his absolute best work here, not only capturing the slightly shifty physicality of his subject, but brilliantly and constantly suggesting Lauda’s incessant analytical thought processes.

In some respects, Hemsworth inherits a poisoned chalice: Hunt was a maverick, a chancer, a fast-living hedonist who made his mark through a combination of louche charm and devil-may-care showmanship on the tracks. All Hemsworth has to do is flash that grin and look cool with a girl on each arm, a glass of scotch in one hand and a gram of coke in the other and that’s basically James Hunt right there. Fortunately, he’s served by a deliciously serpentine script by Peter Morgan which navigates the chicanes of some very familiar territory – Lauda’s technically brilliant craftsman eternally frustrated by the acclaim lavished on the intuitive, flamboyant and childishly irresponsible Hunt is basically the Salieri/Mozart dynamic from ‘Amadeus’ but with racing cars – and avoids for the most part the clichés of opposite-sides-of-the-same-coin and rivals-who-might-have-been-comrades.

Morgan also gifts Hemsworth with a final act that sees Hunt increasingly under pressure during the final stages of the 1976 world championship, his nerves as shredded as the wreckage of his personal relationship, guilt eating away at him for his role in swinging a vote as to whether to race in inclement weather conditions at the notoriously dangerous Nurburgring course; Lauda’s crash when mechanical problems are compounded by track conditions, resulting in a blaze that leaves him disfigured, is one of the film’s two big set-pieces (the other is the equally rain-swept Japanese Grand Prix race at the foot of Mount Fuji) and as a fully immersive visual and aural experience, it left me braced against my seat and remembering why I love cinema.

I titled this blog after Werner Herzog’s dictum that “film is not analysis, it is the agitation of the mind”. ‘Rush’ certainly agitates. In the two big race sequences, Anthony Dod Mantle’s camera records the bounce of rain off the track, the gouts of spray kicked up by the tyres, the rivulets blurring the drivers’ visors, the blurred hammering of pistons, and the very infrastructures of the cars themselves, speed and vibration in a constant battle against stability. It’s visceral and tactile stuff, ramped up by Hans Zimmer’s predictably Wagnerian score (although ‘Rush’ is one of the few films that benefits from Zimmer’s sturm-und-drang rather than being overwhelmed by it).

It’s easy to forget just how regular F1 fatalities and near-fatalities were in the 70s. Morgan and Howard make no bones about the almost suicidal risks the likes of Hunt and Lauda took. Even Lauda’s repeatedly delineated rationale that he would accept 20% risk on the track and no more (rather than Hunt’s fuck-it-live-for-the-moment 100% risk taking) sounds more like a manta than a certainty, particularly when you stop to think how much of a numbers man Lauda was. 20% is still a one-in-five chance.

Where Morgan’s script slips is the ever-so-slightly moralistic portrayal of Hunt’s drinking, partying and womanising as empty pleasures, particularly in a post-world-champion sequence that reduces his celebrity to a three-ring circus of talk shows, commercials and threesomes with air hostesses. Not that this wasn’t how Hunt rolled, but I have absolutely no doubt that, while his live-it-to-the-max attitude was self-destructive (he died of a heart attack in his mid-40s), the dude had a fucking great time. (Morgan does at least give Hunt one moment where he parries Lauda’s lecture on professionalism and clean living by asking what the point is if there’s no enjoyment.) There’s also a narratively redundant scene that indulges in the worst kind of racial stereotyping (comedy Italians as much as saying “mamma mia, it’s-a Niki Lauda and he’s-a driving my car”) that you really don’t expect from such an accomplished scripter, while female roles – albeit essayed by such capable talents as Olivia Wilde, Alexandra Maria Lara and Natalie Dormer – are functional at best.

But it’s easy to let these criticisms slide. ‘Rush’ lives up to its title and then some. It gave me the best two hours in a cinema that I’ve had in ages. Howard, a director whose work I’ve never really engaged with beyond ‘Apollo 13’ and ‘Frost/Nixon’ (another Morgan script), comes out all guns blazing on this movie, nicely capturing what I can only describe (as one who remembers it) as the drab glamour of the 70s, the life-and-death obsession of the career sportsman (it’s no coincidence that Morgan also adapted David Peace’s novel ‘The Damned United’), and finding a momentum that never falters. ‘Rush’ is as propulsive and unsubtle (in the best possible way) as the sport it depicts.

Good Bye Lenin!

Part 1: A few words on “high concept” (or: The Tao of Don and Jerry)

My son, would you be a writer on film?

Father, I would aspire to the status of a blogger. Also, a paying gig with ‘Sight and Sound’ would be good.

My son, do you consider yourself well-versed in film?

Father, my tastes in film are diverse, eclectic and wide-ranging.

My son, do you know what a ‘tautology’ is?

No, father.

Evidently … My son, are you a keen viewer of mainstream fare?

Father, I … I have seen ‘Transformers’.

I will hear your confession later –

But father, I only went to see it for Megan Fox who I believe to be a talented up-and-coming young actress and –

I said I will hear your confession later. For now, my son, can you explain the term “high concept”?

Yes, father. “High concept” is when a film has one single idea; usually an idea that can be expressed so succinctly that it serves as a pitch, a plot synopsis and a marketing campaign all rolled into one.

My son, whose films exemplify this most explicitly?

Those of Messrs Si—

My son, do you know what a lawsuit is?

Yes, father.

Then stick with first names only.

Yes, father. The films of, ahem, Don and Jerry are perfect exemplars of “high concept”.

My son, can you cite an example?

A street-talkin’ black cop from Detroit finds himself partnering a buttoned-down white cop in Beverley Hills in a culture-clash comedy thriller.

My son, is “high concept” a predominantly Hollywood phenomenon?

Not necessarily, father. European films can also be “high concept”.

And being European, are they generally better?

I believe so, father.

Can you cite an example?

Yes, father, I can …


Part 2: … and here’s how the Germans do “high concept”

It’s the late ’80s and Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika are moving inexorably towards the fall of the Berlin wall and the reunification of a four-decades’ divided city. But not in the utilitarian apartment of staunch socialist Christiane Kerner (Katrin Sass). Since the departure to the West of her husband, the Party has been her life; her loyalty is unswervable.

Her children, already under the influence of Western culture, don’t toe the line quite so enthusiastically. In fact, her son Alex (Daniel Brühl), doesn’t toe the line at all. “On the evening of October 7 1989,” Alex explains in voiceover, “several hundred people got together for some evening exercise and marched for the right to go for walks without the Berlin Wall getting in their way.”

Naturally, the authorities intrude upon said perambulations. Naturally, there’s a clash. Alex scuffles with a cop before a truncheon to the midriff and a ride in a police van effectively curtail his involvement. Unfortunately Christiane, on her way to a Party function where she’s to be honoured for her work, witnesses this and the shock proves too much for her. She collapses of a heart attack.

Released from his holding cell on the basis of his mother’s good standing and her current hospitalisation, Alex visits Christiane only to find her in a coma. Eight months later, she wakes up with no recollection as to the circumstances that engineered her heart attack. Her doctor warns Alex and his free-living sister Ariane (Maria Simon) that any further shock to the system could kill her.

Such as: Ariane having redecorated the apartment and moved her new boyfriend in. Such as: Ariane having quit her studies and taken a job at Burger King. Such as: there actually being a Burger King in East Berlin thanks to the Wall having been pulled down, reunification underway, a fiscal changeover from old currency to Deutschmarks in progress, and signs of Westernization on every corner.

Those kind of shocks.

So Alex, aided by his friend and colleague Denis (Florian Lukas), a wannabe film-maker, hatches a plot to keep his mother in the dark. Step one: redecorate the apartment. Step two: scour Berlin for pre-reunification branded goods. Step three: initiate some of her friends and colleagues into the conspiracy in order to navigate a potentially awkward birthday party.

And for a while it all goes swimmingly. Until Christiane, bed-ridden, complains about the lack of entertainment and demands a TV in her room. Suddenly it’s not enough that Alex has concocted a time-capsule DDR within the four walls of his mother’s bedroom; now he has to get really creative. And when a “drink Coca-Cola” advert goes up on the wall of the high-rise opposite, that’s when his troubles really start …

‘Good Bye Lenin!’ – the title refers to an iconic shot of Lenin’s statue being helicoptered out of the city – is high concept meets high art … but it’s never artsy. It’s incredibly cleverly written and structured … but never comes across as clever-clever. In fact, the visual language of ‘Good Bye Lenin!’ – from speeded-up footage to edits designed for maximum comic effect to gleefully re-contextualised archive material (Alex and Denis’s videos pre-suppose the dime-store ingenuity of ‘Be Kind Rewind’) – is pure mainstream cinema.

All of which would make for a satirical slice of subtitled entertainment, except that director and co-writer Wolfgang Becker anchors his story with a beautifully understated emotional core. The finale is poignant and resonant; the metaphor is unforced: reunification, the family as a microcosm of the city.