Me and Orson Welles

 

Director Richard Linklater

Linklater on the set with Zac Efron and Richard McKay

Author Robert Kaplow

Arthur Anderson and Orson Welles in Julius Caesar, 1937

ME AND ORSON WELLES                        B+                                                                          USA  Great Britain  (114 mi)  2008  ‘Scope  d: Richard Linklater

“How the hell do I top this?”   —Orson Welles (Christian McKay)

Richard Linklater movies tend to have a modernist bent to them, where you can feel at times as if you’re lost in a minefield of existential drift.  But that is certainly not the case here in what amounts to a charming and thoroughly enjoyable piece of historical nostalgia, set in 1937 when Orson Welles was attempting to open his Mercury Theater production with a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, a heavily cut, empty-staged yet daring, politically-charged stage adaptation set in Mussolini’s fascist Italy, with Welles playing the part of Brutus.  Linklater is a sincere admirer of Welles, calling him the patron saint of independent filmmakers.  With wall-to-wall jazz music and a typewriter style opening title sequence, one would swear we are about to witness a Woody Allen movie, but we are soon introduced to a strange new world, all led by the larger-than-life persona of the young 22-year old Welles who has yet to make a single movie and is full of swagger and theatrical bluster.  The brilliant performance by British actor Christian McKay, an alumnus of the Royal Shakespeare Company who was discovered when he played Welles in a one-man play, Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles, on a small stage in London, just nails the all-too-perfect speech intonations and sardonic facial expressions of Welles, a young genius child prodigy who has yet to take the world by storm.  Alongside Richard Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote in Bennett Miller’s CAPOTE (2005), this is one of the great biographical film performances, though completely ignored by the Academy, where Welles’ blustery self-assurance and bullying sarcastic wit are on full display, obviously a man on a mission who is just getting his first taste of his own powers, literally browbeating his cast into submission, refusing to accept anyone else’s way except his own, quickly showing them the door if they refuse, so everyone defers to his judgment.  After all, he takes credit for every idea, even Shakespeare’s, calling it an Orson Welles production of Shakespeare, where he gets top billing, deleting characters and scenes on a whim whenever the mood suits him, but also making everyone feel that despite the fact they are receiving no salary, they are just a few days away from being a part of theater history. 

Interesting that this is the very first Shakespeare performance on Broadway, ever, where Welles is like a traveling road show that rolls in and out of town, driven by the breeze of destiny, yet the “Me” of the title concerns a small bit player, a coming-of-age 17-year old New Jersey high school student Richard (teen idol Zac Efron, working outside his comfort zone), who dreams of becoming an actor, skipping school, wandering downtown, and happening by chance to see Welles on the street in front of the theater, playing up to his enormous ego, all lies and pretense, but he wins a role as the charming, lute-strumming (it’s actually a ukulele) Lucius in the modern-dress revival of the play which is opening in a week.  Adapted by a husband and wife team of Holly Gent Palmo and Vincent Palmo Jr. based upon a New York Times best-selling, meticulously researched historical novel by Robert Kaplow, a writer and New Jersey high school English teacher who was inspired by an archival photograph of a young 15-year old actor (Arthur Anderson) strumming the lute next to Welles onstage, imagining just what he must have been thinking at the time.  Linklater cleverly mixes fact and fiction in this portrait of the artist as a young man, as the film is limited to this memorable week of rehearsals, providing a window into the world of theater, showing the passionate camaraderie of those weary participants, very attentive to period detail, revealing behind-the-scenes vignettes of the principal players, but especially Welles who dominates every scene, as even when the cast sits around doing nothing, “We’re waiting for Orson,” his aura remains evident at all times.  To learn his part, Richard is referred to Sonja (Claire Danes), the all-purpose, exceedingly ambitious personal assistant who is likely already sleeping with Welles (along with pretty much every other female), who has promised her a chance to meet David O. Selznick and an opportunity to play in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939).  Discovering her last name is Jones, Richard serenades her with a line from Rodgers and Hart, Have You Met Miss Jones?, which might actually have spawned the director’s later interest in making Blue Moon (2025). Thoroughly flirtatious, leading to grownup sex, the two become fast friends, which they remain throughout the film, though she trusts Richard simply because he has no clout, so she can be open and honest with him, guiding him through the egos and everyday disasters that take place each day on the set. 

Recalling the immersive nature of Cameron Crowe’s ALMOST FAMOUS (2000), with an observant young teenage reporter surrounded by a brave new world of rock ‘n’ roll, Efron is not very good in the play, but that hardly matters, as he’s playing a young novice who’s not supposed to be very good, so he fits comfortably into the production, enthralled by the world around him, which features excellent performances all around.  In perhaps the film’s best scene, Welles whisks “the kid” into a cab with him on route to the radio studio where he observes Welles perform a skit on a live radio broadcast, but along the way Welles drops his guard and reads him a passage from Booth Tarkington’s novel The Magnificent Ambersons, where he mourns that “Ambersons is about how everything gets taken away from you,” a stunning personal admission considering the Hollywood brass did exactly that to his career just a few short years later, destroying his original ending on The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and effectively ending his Hollywood career.  When Welles ad-libs an Ambersons passage on the radio, adding a delicious soliloquy for himself, he’s profoundly seeing his career years ahead of himself.  Outside of Welles, James Tupper is absolutely brilliant as the suave and ever cordial James Cotton, the man behind the scenes of so many of Welles’ successes, Ben Chaplin plays an anxiety-ridden leading man George Coulouris, quickly whisking his mistress offstage when his wife arrives, Eddie Marsan plays the constantly perplexed theater manager and old friend, John Houseman, while Zoe Kazan (Elia Kazan’s granddaughter) plays Gretta, an aspiring young writer Richard befriends, helping her get published in The New Yorker.   While Richard is quickly informed by Sonja of his status, “You’re not getting anything except the opportunity to be sprayed by Orson’s spit,” Orson has a habit of initially bolstering each actor’s confidence with flowery praise, such as seeing “images of magnificence” in their eyes before bringing them back down to earth with his rapid fire rounds of terse criticism.  Thankfully, Linklater does show various scenes from the theatrical premiere, all of which feel like a special treat, so the audience is rewarded and never for a moment feels cheated in this film.   

While the film was a box office bomb, premiering in Toronto after select footage was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, and not released in the U.S. until a year later, this is something completely different for Linklater, yet it’s essential filmmaking, upbeat and thoroughly enjoyable, like a light at the end of the tunnel following the dark times of the Depression, beautifully extolling the glories and virtues of still being young, filled with idealistic hope and promise, with the film suggesting, “it’s all ahead of us.”  Offering an ambitious, behind-the-scenes glimpse of a theater production in the making, this spirited film always feels balanced, intelligent and amusing, filled with an unbridled wit and humor, along with a select few poor souls who unfortunately feel the ignominious wrath of an undeterred mad hatter in charge, yet the focus doesn’t always swirl around Orson Welles, the man who commands the salacious interest in every scene, where it’s hard to take your eyes off such a brilliant rendering of his overwhelming personality.  Instead, the week’s events are seen and filtered through the somewhat bland eyes (think Tab Hunter) of the young thespian who’s still taking classes in high school (actually found sleeping in class, due to his late night carousing), an idealistic, wide-eyed everyman character, just a few years younger than Welles himself, who instantly falls in love with Sonja, and whose life is forever altered by this experience.  Beautifully shot in London, New York, and the Isle of Man by Mike Leigh’s superb cinematographer Dick Pope, the film benefits from some plot twists, capturing the essence of Welles as a rising star and the beginning of the Welles legend, exhaustively researched, with a very beautiful reconstruction of the post-depression era of the 1930’s, a period where art and culture merged together.  Perhaps not up to the caliber of Cassavetes’ brilliant Opening Night (1977), or Chaplin’s LIMELIGHT (1952), both the ultimate masterworks in revealing the wrenching behind-the-scenes activities of a stage production, or even Desplechin’s delightfully offbeat ESTHER KAHN (2000), this film is nonetheless fueled by the supercharged performance of a young, unheralded actor who perfectly captures the indomitable spirit of Orson Welles, a legendary, larger-than-life figure who is one of America’s greatest and most controversial artists.   

Hard Truths

 

Writer/director Mike Leigh

actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste

Jean-Baptiste with the director

cinematographer Dick Pope

HARD TRUTHS                    B-                                                                                                Great Britain  Spain  (97 mi)  2024  d: Mike Leigh

My films aspire to the condition of documentary.                                                                          —Kenneth Turan interview from The LA Times, September 22, 1996, The Case for Mike Leigh 

The inverse of Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), which features an endlessly cheerful Sally Hawkins, whose instincts are to face everything with a smile, yet she’s assaulted by a stream of incendiary verbiage from one of the more disturbingly angry characters in Eddie Marsan, a gloom and doom guy who takes exception to her sunny outlook, where the unanswerable question asked throughout is “Are you happy?”  This film instead seems infused by the relentlessly downbeat emotional whirlwind of a female version of that Eddie Marsan character, with little opportunity to take a breath of fresh air, where it’s something of a chore to put up with a protagonist with a lifetime worth of built-up anguish and resentment, a tortured soul who is undone by a condition that is completely debilitating, leading to a deeply unsatisfying mental outlook, railing against everything, constantly belittling people, as she seems to dislike everyone, thinking the whole world is against her, viewing everything as a perceived slight.  There’s simply no room for happiness here, featuring one of the most deeply unsympathetic figures in memory, who constantly quarrels with everyone around her, whose endless diatribes are soul crushing, spewing vitriol in all directions, with the film continually shining a light on Pansy, Marianne Jean-Baptiste from Secrets and Lies (1996), a performance that earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, the first-ever black British actress to do so, and also wrote the musical score for Career Girls (1997), where it’s been nearly 30 years since they last worked together.  In what has to be regarded as one of the more suffocatingly bleak outlooks, she simply sucks the air out of the room, determined to take everyone else down with her, like an unleashed tornado hell-bent on widespread destruction, wiping out everything in its path.  She exerts a supreme effort to keep a meticulously spotless home that is immaculately clean, yet sterile and cold, like a doctor’s office, with kitchen counters that have no clutter, and a barren back yard with nothing in it that she refuses to step into, fearful of the “squirrel doodoo and rancid bird droppings,” which seems to reflect a crying out for help, where the outward physical manifestations mask her inner turmoil.  Pansy is an angry, bitter woman who continually lashes out at others, seen in long takes, and long conversations around the kitchen, where you have to see it to believe it, with a nonstop enraged monologue over dinner that’s an exhausting ordeal, Hard Truths | Official Clip | Bleecker Street YouTube (1:46), yet there’s not a false note anywhere to be found, as it’s an unending barrage of exploding trauma wherever she goes, with her own family typically feeling the brunt of her punishment, including her overly passive husband Curtley (David Webber), who appears browbeaten and quiet, and her layabout adult son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) who is emotionally shut down, completely withdrawn from life, where you really feel for those who have to put up with her.  Not a pleasant watch, a grueling experience that will try your patience, but it’s an uncompromising immersion into full-on obsessive-compulsive depression mode (OCD and Depression) from a wildly unhappy character, where mental health services are noticeably absent, which is part of the larger black cultural experience, yet there is simply no relief from the unending havoc she causes wherever she goes.  This kind of thing is simply not seen elsewhere, yet Mike Leigh has carved a lifetime of drama with this no bullshit approach, creating memorable characters that are part of his unique theater, and this is no different, but even this feels extreme within the parameters of his entire output, bearing a resemblance to the Clint Eastwood “get off my lawn” attitude in GRAN TORINO (2008).  Eastwood was a disgruntled war veteran, whose ingrained prejudices were part of his less than cheery disposition, yet there is no explanation for what’s happening here.        

With no editorial razzle dazzle or cinematic trickery, working with only a skeleton for a plot, where everything evolves organically, Leigh has cut a path of his own in the cinematic universe and staked out his own territory since the early years of Bleak Moments (1971), getting his start in theater, where his first several productions began as plays, which he then filmed for the BBC on television in the 1970’s and ’80’s before unleashing a string of social realist films beginning with HIGH HOPES (1988) and Life Is Sweet (1990), the latter notable for the first time working with cinematographer Dick Pope, who worked on all of the director’s subsequent films until he died shortly after completing this film, collaborating across period pieces and contemporary working class dramas that have documented the evolution of Britain into its post-Brexit era.  Returning back to an intimate chamber piece following his recent venture into period historical dramas, his first film in more than a decade set in contemporary times, where the interjecting music, like connecting threads between an episodic series of events, is a highbrow, Masterpiece theater style string composition from Leigh’s longtime collaborator Gary Yershon, this film may reflect the disgust that many people currently feel, filled with angst, inexplicable hopelessness, and unending despair, finding themselves living a life they never envisioned, as they’ve lost all sense of balance and independence, instead feeling the brunt of the day-to-day grind of living, completely overwhelmed by circumstances they can’t control.  This is also a story of generational trauma, with Pansy passing that trauma onto her son Moses, where at the heart of it is not being able to do anything about it.  It’s clear she’s not a bully, but the heightened level of terrifying fear she suffers from is likely the consequence of someone who was bullied.  The exaggerated nature of her inflammatory rhetoric can also be weirdly and awkwardly amusing, as it’s just too ridiculous, beyond belief, and incredulously disorienting, where comedy and tragedy are intertwined.  Yet what initially seems funny is also deflating, stopping us dead in our tracks when we understand the full extent of just how out of control she is, with Jean-Baptiste effortlessly exhibiting an astonishing range of emotions, contrasting moments of quiet with long, explosive outbursts that are verbally dense, voicing her displeasure by incessantly antagonizing people, a condition that was likely made worse from the isolation of the pandemic lockdown. The character of Pansy may be the poster child for post-Brexit uneasiness, a woman wracked by anxieties, tormented by inexplicable afflictions, and prone to raging tirades against her husband, son, and anyone who crosses her path, a character so real that it hurts.  At the other end of the spectrum is her easygoing younger sister, Chantelle, played by Michele Austin from Another Year (2010) in her fourth film with Leigh, a single mother whose life working as a hairdresser couldn’t be more drastically different from Pansy’s, brimming with warmth for her salon clients and two grown-up daughters, Clip from HARD TRUTHS - Directed by Mike Leigh, starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Michele Austin YouTube (1:29).  This film follows the adage, “Hurt people hurt people,” talkative enough to be a stage play, performed with the same amount of passion and intensity, yet dysfunction is at the heart of the matter, as Pansy wakes up in a fright, anxiously undone by frightening dreams, with things never improving as the day progresses, as every little thing is a source of irritation.  Rather than keep it to herself, however, she unleashes her frustrations at every turn, with her hard working husband and morbidly silent son typically the butt of her insults, passively avoiding any confrontation, or even eye contact, as it will only prolong the aggravation, instead meeting her volcanic eruptions with an emotionally numb wall of silence, where if they could crawl under a rock, they would, just to get away from her. 

Through a process of extensive rehearsal and improvisation, always trying something new, the actors in Mike Leigh films actually build their own characters, an essential part of the collaborative process, fervently believing in what they’ve created, with audiences sharing that same sense of belief.  The first of Leigh’s films led by a black ensemble, where it’s rare to see black mental health given any space onscreen, and even the title seems to suggest a clever retort to Secrets and Lies, yet viewer reaction may differ, as you might wonder why anyone would create such a compulsively miserable, openly antagonizing misanthrope, who has nothing but hatred for the people and the world around her, especially those closest to her, who can’t escape the relentless assaults on their character.  But this is not a film that asks viewers to sympathize with such a contemptible person, or even understand what’s behind it, yet by keeping her as the central focus of the film, Leigh offers an astonishingly humane portrait of a troubled soul, perhaps a reflection of the world gone wrong, where if she had cancer or radiation sickness, you might feel differently about her, but Leigh provides no clues.  She’s certainly intelligent enough to contemplate an awareness of the damage she inflicts, completely insufferable to be around, where the psychological ramifications are enormous, yet she’s excruciatingly lonely, actually hating what she’s become, expressing a deep dissatisfaction that she has experienced since she was a child, forced to endure her own mother’s incessant criticisms while taking care of her little sister when she was way too young, leaving her filled with self-loathing and disgust, but she simply can’t stop herself.  Growing more vulnerable as the film evolves, she’s seemingly running on fumes, as it all happens automatically, without intent or free will, literally driving herself into the ground, emotionally depleted and utterly exhausted, completely engulfed by things she can’t understand, the victim of her own revved-up anxieties and fears, where she can’t even visit a doctor without inflicting this same pattern of abuse on them, inevitably keeping her at arm’s length, not really able to help, so it’s a neverending cycle.  Perhaps the unsung hero of the film is Chantelle, who doesn’t understand what’s happening to her, but nonetheless loves her, as she’s family and wants to stay close, knowing she needs a friend, someone who won’t turn away or make any judgments, even as she aggressively turns on everyone she meets.  There’s no magical elixir offered, but Chantelle treats her as she would herself like to be treated, continually being there for her, offering loving support, which is a herculean effort, to say the least, as many in the audience will likely lose patience and tune out, fed up with this flabbergasting stream of unending insults, most coming with no provocation whatsoever, so whatever triggers these outbursts are internal, unseen, undiagnosed, yet lethal.  Few directors would have the courage to make a movie like this, but Leigh has a history of taking risks, and is currently 82 years of age, beholden to no one, free to do as he pleases, but unfiltered miserablism has always been at the core of British Kitchen sink realism, accentuating flaws and the complexities of life, where frustrations and disillusionment are human attributes, never a pretty sight to endure, but it’s a significant part of British cinema history, and Leigh’s own postwar upbringing, blurring the lines between theater and cinema, carving a path for new directors like Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay, and Clio Barnard, while greatly admired by a younger generation of American filmmakers, including Sean Baker, the Safdie brothers, and Kelly Reichardt.  Expect the unexpected may be his mantra, as he’s been delivering a cinema of discomfort his entire career, but none more unsparingly depressing and bleak as this, trapped in your own body with no hint of escape. 

Mike Leigh and Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s Closet Picks   Criterion, YouTube (5:04)