The Proposition (2005)

The Western. A genre of film featuring an uncompromising land in hard times with even harder people. From the stylized Spaghetti Western to the John Ford classics, the Wild West has seen its share of heroes, anti-heroes, and villains, but I'm not sure if any of them could have lasted long in Australia in the late 1800s. Director John Hillcoat paints Australia as a dead, fly infested world where the people are ugly and rotten with a terrain that is as haunting and beautiful as it is vast and empty. The story follows two main characters, the ruthless and haggard Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) and the outlaw Charlie Burns (almost unrecognizably played by Guy Pierce). The film opens with a gun fight in a whorehouse that leads to the capture of Charlie and his younger brother Mike (Richard Wilson), both of whom have deserted the notorious Burns Gang, whose most recent crime includes the murder and rape of a pregnant mother and her whole family. Captain Stanley has become desperate to "civilize" the land by any means necessary. Under the belief that Charlie and Mike weren't responsible for this particular crime, he presents Charlie with a proposition (or the plot of the film): By Christmas he must kill his older brother Arthur (Danny Huston). In return he and his little brother Mike will not only be set free, but pardoned. Everything that follows is in direct response to this deal. The world depicted in this film is the dirtiest and grittiest Western setting in almost any film. The people are covered in dirt and sweat, there is an infestation of flies, and the only thing that surpasses the grime is blood. The filth only gets worse as the characters participate in violence. During the scene where Mike Burns is flogged as ordered by Eden Fletcher (played as a perfect weasel by David Whenhem), the crowd's reactions are shown as the flogging drags out. There are shots of their backs, only to show off the dark spots of their sweat that are completely covered in flies. The depiction of the way aborigines were treated is often graphic and there is rarely a moment that doesn't seem tainted by the land and the time.

The people of this era had to be tough and cruel in order to survive, something that Captain Stanley is quickly learning. In order to bring law and order to the country, he has to be worse than any of the criminals it has to offer. Ray Winestone does a terrific job capturing the internal struggle of a man trying to be more than what he is. The scenes of him at home with his wife (Emily Watson) show the toll that the stress and the weight of his burden have had on him both physically and mentally. Guy Pierce is believable as Charlie, the only member of the Burns Gang who ever had anything resembling a conscience. The majority of his performance is quiet as he is often alone, but there is a silent intensity to his interactions with other characters. Almost overshadowing every performance in the film however, is that of Danny Huston. He doesn't appear until about halfway through the film, and the build up is spectacular. He is described as a monster, an abomination, a demonic dog-creature, you name it. His reputation promises him to be nothing short of the devil incarnate. When you meet him for the first time though, something doesn't add up. He seems educated and friendly, often barely speaking above a whisper. He speaks of love and family as the key to enlightenment and truly sees Australia as a beautiful country. From his point of view on a cliff high above the land, the sun rises and sets in a plethora of red and orange adding weight to his words. It is difficult to associate him with is deeds. That is until you see him in action. Then it becomes too clear the kind of man he is inside. There is a great scene where he and two of his gang are prepared to ride into town where they plan to kill a lot of people and one of his gang asks him what a misanthrope is. After defining it, the gang member then asks if they are misanthropes. With a laugh, Arthur responds: "Good lord no. We're a family!" The score by Nick Cave (who also wrote the screenplay) and Warren Ellis is surreal and dreamlike featuring a recurring poem throughout most of the film. It establishes a tone that suits the desolate countryside that the characters travel through. The Proposition offers a distinctly uncompromising view of the western and sets it in a place that makes the American West seem almost mild by comparison. Though not always easy to sit through, it is film that deserves more attention.

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

Based on the popular and celebrated children’s book of the same title written in 1963 by Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are has a lot to live up to. The story follows a young boy named Max who after getting in an argument with his mother is sent to bed and in the process runs away to an imaginary land where he is king of the monsters. After he gets homesick, he returns home to his mother. The story is simple, and not what you’d expect to be the content of a nearly two hour film. Director Spike Jonze however, manages to take this story, and while keeping the spirit if the source material intact, adds a much more mature setting to both the real world and the imaginary one where Max seeks refuge.

The film begins with Max in his iconic wolf pajamas playing a rough wrestling game with the family dog. Afterwards we are shown him playing outside by himself. Max doesn’t seem to have many (if any) friends and his older sister is growing older and more distant from him. Max has a lot of bottled up aggression that he takes out on his sister’s room and later his mother (Catherine Keener) when her boyfriend comes over to dinner. The boyfriend is played by Mark Ruffalo briefly (if you blink you may miss him). His fight with his mother gets too rough and he bites her; the immediate guilt and fear prompts him to run away and he ends up sailing to the imaginary island where the wild things are. Max right from the beginning is given more of a reason to be angry and seeking attention than his literary counterpart.

Max Records does an incredible job capturing that fear and desire to be loved and comforted that a child may have. He likes to play games and roughhouse, but often these games lead to someone getting hurt as he often experiences in the film. But even more than Max himself, the monsters inhabiting the island seem to have been expanded upon in terms of character depth. Each monster has his or her own emotional issues to sort out. They are all depressed, insecure, and miserable wanting nothing more than for some mysterious stranger to arrive and make them all happy. As their king, Max promises to do this for them, but both he and they soon find that one person can’t make everybody happy. Their leader is Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini) who is Max’s favorite monster and also the most unbalanced. Like Max, he has his own aggression problems and often ends up hurting the people he loves with his mood swings and anxiety. I am aware that this last sentence described a character that is about 12 feet tall and furry.

Despite that fact that the book is a children’s story, make no mistake that this isn’t quite what one would consider a typical children’s film. I would argue that it is not so much a movie for children as it is a movie about children. The tone it sets is instantly relatable to anyone who has ever come close to having what could be considered a lonely childhood. It’s something that nearly every kid feels at one point or another, especially if they are the youngest or from a broken home. The film is dark and often as moody as the characters, but there is no denying the beauty of the world that has been adapted to the screen. It’s an imperfect world whether it is imaginary or real and this is executed very carefully by Spike Jonze. The first part of the film is shot almost like a documentary, and that same realism transfers over to the imaginary one that Max escapes to, albeit with more music and fantastic settings. The island contains cliffs, a dense forest, and even a desert where Carol explains that is the dead part of the island and expresses his fears about how everything will one day turn to dust.

The creatures themselves are quite impressive as a mix of CG and giant suits. The faces are usually the only part that’s animated and for the other parts, I honestly couldn’t tell. These things look as real as they can look with today’s technology. The only real problem that I have with this film is the question of who this is targeted to. In a time where the majority of the competition are other children’s films like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs or Monsters vs. Aliens, it’s difficult to see where a film like Where the Wild Things Are fits in. That being said, it is still a powerful film that should be seen by children and adults alike.

A Serious Man (2009)

A Serious Man is the latest film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, this time taking place in a Midwestern suburb in the late sixties. The story follows Larry Gopnik, a Jewish family man and a physics professor, who is experiencing some problems in his life at a relatively important time; his son’s bar mitzvah is approaching and he is up for receiving tenure. Unfortunately many troubles arise such as his wife wanting a divorce and him to move out, someone submitting anonymous letters suggesting that he not receive tenure, his children not really valuing his existence, his brother (Richard Kind) sleeping on his couch and hogging the bathroom, his attractive neighbor sunbathing naked, and his South Korean student attempting to bribe him or sue him for not giving him a passing grade in the class.

More and more problems pile on top of this and poor Larry becomes increasingly incapable of dealing with them. They all spiral out of control and Larry attempts to seek advice from three rabbis in ascending order. The scenes involving each are particularly hilarious as well as equally not helpful. No matter what Larry does, he is clearly meant to suffer, and suffer he does. The piling on of these problems lead Larry to begin to ask some big questions that the film then addresses: Does everything happen for a reason? Who’s in control? There is an obsession of watching Larry squirm for the sake of comedy in this film and it works incredibly well. This film falls into the range of comedy known as cringe comedy, but the reactions and ways that Larry deals (or doesn’t) with each problem that arises is often very funny. Michael Stuhlbarg does an incredible job capturing a specific sense of humor while also seeming sympathetic.

There are some other great scenes involving the son (Aaron Wolff). The banter between him and his friends on the bus is immature and funny, and his main conflict outside of having bad reception on the TV, is that he loses his transistor radio in class that had the money he owed a much larger kid inside. His entire subplot builds up to his bar mitzvah and a realization that the son is a lot like the father in that he simply lets these things happen to him. The rest of the cast is as offbeat as you would expect from a Coen brothers film. The suburban Jews being comparable to the Texans from No Country for Old Men and the people of Fargo, North Dakota in Fargo. The most interesting of these side characters is probably Sy Ableman, played brilliantly by Fred Melamed, the man that Larry’s wife is leaving him for. Sy shows up and deals with the whole problem in such a way that it would be off-putting if it were happening to anyone else. Watching Larry helplessly deal with this character and their situation is just amusing to say the least.

The film opens with a prologue set in Europe in the distant past. A man enters his home and tells his wife a story of how the wheel on his wagon was damaged, but that an elderly man showed up and helped him claiming to be an acquaintance of his wife’s. She yells at him for this, explaining that the man the stranger claimed to be is dead and that he was actually helped by a spirit (referred to as a “dybbuk”), which should always be avoided. At this moment the stranger shows up having been invited for soup by the husband. The man appears healthy and friendly, but the wife remains fearful and even stabs their guest in the chest with an icepick. He seems fine until he bleeds and leaves the house. It is never confirmed whether or not he is a spirit. This seemingly random prologue sets up the tone of the rest of the film as the husband stood by and let these things happen in a way that mirrors Larry’s inability to resolve his own problems. Another great film from the Coen Brothers, A Serious Man is a thought provoking and humorous film that will stay with you long after the ending credits.

Ponyo (2008)

Ponyo is the latest animated feature from world renowned director Hayao Miyazaki. The story follows a young fish (Yuria Nara) who escapes from her father (who is some kind of eccentric sorcerer who lives under the sea in a submarine with wings that is encased in bubbles) and makes her way to the surface. Ending up outside of a port town she gets lost and washes to shore where she is eventually found by a five year old boy named Sosuke (Hiroki Doi), who immediately takes a liking to his new discovery which he names Ponyo and believes has magical powers. After her father manages to rescue her by stealing her from Sosuke, he discovers to his horror that not only does she want to become a human, but that she has fallen in love with Sosuke. During her second escape, she inadvertently unleashes her father’s magic and not only turns herself into a human with magical powers, but causes a typhoon that hits the town where Sosuke lives.

To start off, I loved this film and it is another instant classic from Miyazaki. Sosuke and Ponyo are so innocent and sweet (but not in a way that they become annoying) that it’s hard not to be happy as you watch their story unfold. All the supporting characters are great as well, especially Ponyo’s parents. Fujimoto (Ponyo’s father, who is voiced by Jôji Tokoro) seems like he may be the villain (though it’s hard to describe anyone in this film as a villain) but he’s often very funny and you can see that he really cares for his daughter. Sosuke’s mother (Tomoko Yamaguchi) is well written and fleshed out while Ponyo’s mother (Yûki Amami) is a sea goddess that you have to actually see to truly understand. The animation in this film is (as always) incredible and very in some ways very different from his other works. The water is particularly fascinating to look at, and not at all like the way it’s portrayed in his other films (as well as any other film for that matter). It’s definitely a departure from what is usually seen in other animated films such as Finding Nemo, where the water animation is so realistic that it’s easy to forget its animated, in Ponyo however, there is never really an instance where, as an audience, you are not aware of the water’s animation. During the typhoon sequence for example, the waves become inconceivably tall and often take the form of giant fish. This may sound strange, but watching it happen seems so natural and fits well with the style of animation. In fact, one of the most memorable scenes in the film is when during the typhoon, Ponyo literally runs on top of these colossal fish-waves searching for Sosuke. The water becomes a living character and not simply part of the environment.

As usual, Joe Hisaishi, one of the great modern composers (Welcome to Dongmakgol, Dolls, and more notably: all of Miyazaki’s films), does all the music for the film further cementing the tone of the story as a fantasy despite the more modern day settings. The sense of wonderment that the two kids have as they explore the flooded town and can see all kinds of strange creatures swimming underneath is contagious. Hayao Miyazaki is often compared to Walt Disney but at this point, I think it’s safe to say that the Miyazaki library of films has not only matched but surpassed the classic Disney films in terms of quality and lasting power. These stories are timeless and enjoyable for children and adults alike. Ponyo is a must see.