One Day

ONE DAY                   C-                   

USA  (107 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  Lone Scherfig 

This is a case of an actress not being compelling enough to carry a movie, where she’s unfortunately in over her head, where poor casting ultimately brings down the entire production.  Danish director Lone Scherfig is known for intelligent writing and directing great ensemble casts of relatively unknown actors, all of whom give terrific performances, such as the two excellent Danish films, ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS (2000) and WILBUR WANTS TO KILL HIMSELF (2002), both introducing a wry wit and quirky performances, veering between romanticism and dark comedy.  AN EDUCATION (2009) was shot in England, saved by an outstanding performance by Carey Mulligan, while this is an American film also shot in England.  Both of the later films seem to suffer from culture shock, using someone else’s material for the first time, which lacks the personal charm and intimacy of her earlier works, but one really has to scratch their head about the choice of actress Anne Hathaway who is annoying and unlikeable in every sense of the word—not good in a romantic drama.  Instead of the quietly repressed yet somewhat Bohemian creature she pretends to be, she seems hopelessly lost, supposedly caught up in a whirlwind of romance, yet whose every last nerve seems to grate on the audience.  While the syrupy music by Rachel Portman may be appropriate for an epic of some kind, along with the sweeping, panoramic ‘Scope cinematography by Benoît Delhomme, but this grandiose style falls flat when the central characters can’t hold the audience’s attention.  One problem, no doubt, is they are sloshed throughout the entire film until the final reel.  In literally every scene together it is accompanied by excessive drinking, the kind many will find simply obnoxious and boring—hardly memorable. 

There’s little evidence of Scherfig’s tight and compact structure, instead everything is enlarged, sentimentalized, and greatly exaggerated, losing whatever wit and appeal this film was going for, as few, if any characters stand out.  Hathaway plays Emma, who feels like an American overseas but she’s supposedly British, while Jim Sturgess, sensational in ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007), plays Dexter.  Both celebrate their graduation from Edinburgh University in an all night, drunken evening, where they end up in bed while barely knowing each other, yet become best friends for the rest of their lives, where the story returns to the anniversary date of their first night together for the next 20 years.  This is not BEFORE SUNSET (2004), and despite the continuing lifelong conversations together, the dialogue, oftentimes uncomfortably overlapping, lacks all attempts at romanticism, as there is never a sense of urgency in either character, desperation maybe, but never love.  Instead we witness the two of them throw away their lives on missed opportunities, each following a different direction, constantly missing what they ultimately need in life while pretending they are happy, growing farther and farther apart even as they continue their lifelong friendship.  Dexter is something of a spoiled, self-indulgent ladies man, a child of privilege whose recklessness seems to know no bounds, while Emma is a closeted writer, a woman who keeps her thoughts to herself, never managing to get her life on track, settling for small change jobs that offer no satisfaction whatsoever.  Her dreamy idealization of Dexter seems largely an infantile fantasy, as the real thing is incapable of commitment or taking responsibility, but is largely a lush. 

Sturgess does indeed look terrific throughout the movie, but the way he continually drowns in his own personal sorrows never once becomes brooding (Danish melancholic style) or interesting.  Patricia Clarkson plays his more stoically reserved mother, perhaps the only honest character in the entire film, voicing her disappointment in him to his face, but unfortunately she has too little screen time.  Despite the numerical countdown of the years, there is very little evidence of the passing of time except through the changing hairstyles and fashion, with the exception of the exquisite use of the song:  Corona - Rhythm of the Night - YouTube (3:49), also used in the Claire Denis film BEAU TRAVAIL (1999), which reflects Dexter’s colorful immersion into the Me Generation, complete with rhapsodic indulgences into women, drugs and alcohol.  Emma, on the other hand, has friendships, but little romance, finding the wrong guy in Ian (Rafe Spall), a nice enough guy, but not the brightest bulb in the box, a guy who wants to be so much more than he really is, becoming one of her biggest disappointments.  In this way, both characters feel like they’re attempting to fight their way out of a paper bag, each an expression of failure and futility, where the audience simply doesn’t have the patience to put up with their meandering mediocrity.  There’s simply nothing about either one of them that compels us to watch the screen, instead we are treated to splendid views of Edinburgh, London, and Paris, each given the travelogue style tourist’s view.  When the settings are the most remarkable element of the picture, something is obviously lacking.  In this case it’s chemistry, as there’s never any onscreen combustion.

By the way, one thing must be said for this picture, as evidenced from one of the opening shots, the motion picture industry should remember the standard cyclist’s credo:  In today’s world anyone who rides a bike should be responsible enough to wear a helmet. They should be as commonplace as seat belts in motor vehicles, as they save lives.  

The Proposition

THE PROPOSITION              B+                  

Australia  Great Britain  (104 mi)  2005  ‘Scope  d:  John Hillcoat

A good and evil revenge drama written and scored by Nick Cave, drearily set in a town on the border of the wide open spaces of the Australian Outback, as desolate and godforsaken a place as has ever graced the screen, where any semblance of “civilization” is as out of place as any notion of justice.  Yet those are the overriding themes in this concisely paired down western where an outlaw gang has been terrorizing the locals, where humans are like ants on the landscape, barely scratching the surface from the overall looks of things, yet leaving behind a bloody trail of the savagely brutal evidence of their handiwork, which includes murder and rape.  The story is largely seen through two sets of eyes, Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone), the bullying British sheriff wearing an Army uniform brought in to establish the law, boasting “I will civilize this country,” and Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce), part of the ruthless Burns gang, captured early on by Stanley along with his baby brother Mikey (Richard Wilson).  Stanley makes him a proposition to set him free in order to kill his older brother, the sadistically psychotic madman Arthur Burns (Danny Huston), the most violently uncontrollable of the brothers, holed up in the most barren, vacuous landscape that the police and even the Aboriginals refuse to go there.  Carry out this act and his baby brother’s life will be spared, otherwise Mikey will be hanged in one week’s time on Christmas Day.  What follows are beautifully structured parallel stories of the two men, both of whom spend their time in the company of corrupt, disgruntled and despicable men, as the soldiers are drunken lowlifes who would just as soon beat the prisoner to death as see him live another day, while the Burns brothers themselves are no picnic, depraved savages who seem to kill for sport. 

What’s evident in nearly every shot is the scorching heat, where dirt and dust define the land, where barely anything survives in this hostile isolation, where the land itself couldn’t be more uninviting, yet the beauty of the landscape is magnificently shot by cinematographer Benoît Delhomme, much of which resembles the poetic look of a Terrence Malick film, capturing the serenity of a series of sunsets that torch the earth in bright, brazen colors.  But the people couldn’t be more dark and gloomy, having nothing that amounts to satisfaction in their perpetually deprived lives.  In a lustrous performance, Emma Watson plays Captain Stanley’s exaggeratedly well mannered wife, whose gorgeous presence is like a mirage on the landscape, where the constantly under siege Stanley continually has to return her safely back home to the white picket fence and the pristine red rose bushes in order to prevent her from seeing the brutally dirty business involved in tracking down outlaws.  Winstone has spent so much of his career playing guys on the wrong side of the law, that when he plays this robust sheriff with a raw edge, he’s like the last bastion of moral order, as the townspeople can’t wait until Christmas and want to rip the prisoner apart, despite the fact he’s just a kid, and the real danger remains at large.  When the local prosecutor gets wind of the deal Stanley made with the outlaws, he undermines his authority and orders Mikey to receive a public flogging of 100 lashes, perhaps the turning point of the film, as Stanley is reduced to a powerless bystander while the savagely grotesque scene shows justice when administered as revenge to be as wickedly evil as the crime itself, where even the horrified onlookers turn away witnessing this kid completely slumped over already near dead, reduced to a bloody mess before they even get halfway done.   

As Charlie crosses the expanse of the perpetually empty landscape contemplating what he has to do with his brother, we have seen this part of the story before visualized in Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), where a U.S. Captain (Martin Sheen) is ordered to take out a deranged renegade American commander (Marlon Brando) who has portrayed himself as a God to the natives.  Similarly, Arthur Burns is living in an abandoned cave somewhere with another younger white Samuel (Tom Budge), who sings a lovely Irish song, along with an Aboriginal sidekick Two-Bob (Tom E. Lewis) and Queenie (Leah Purcell), living among the Aboriginal people, hunting and living off the land as they do, but also making murderous raids into the white town.  Charlie’s visit is a bit unsettling, as he arrives without Mikey, where the weight of his visit is upon his shoulders.  Hillcoat does an excellent job shifting between the two stories, editing the material together, and sustaining the psychological tension, where there’s some question as to whether Captain Stanley or Charlie Burns is the lead, as both carry moral dilemmas on their backs, like bullseyes, but only Stanley is targeted and actually emasculated by his superior.  Charlie is the great unknown, as he’s already an unlawful outsider, so for him to administer justice does not typically meet Western society’s needs.  It’s unusual for him to have been assigned the task, which adds plenty of weight to his role, played with a near wordless complexity that Pearce relishes.  His outsider status confirms the difficulty in assigning society’s moral responsibility, like Charles Bronson’s vigilante justice in DEATH WISH (1974 – 94), or John Wayne’s years long search for his niece in THE SEARCHERS (1956), which sometimes resemble the lawless acts the society condemns, but silently accepts during particularly harsh and brutal times, where in crossing the line the film actually plunges into the horror genre to make that point.