2014 Top Ten List #8 The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELEANOR RIGBY:  THEM           A-        
USA  (122 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Ned Benson 

All the lonely people…Where do they all come from? 

—Eleanor Rigby, The Beatles, 1966, The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby (Original Animated Video) (1966) (2:45)

It takes a certain audacity to name a lead character in a film Eleanor Rigby, a featured character in a Beatles song, since the song itself tells a story of heartbreak, death and loneliness, where the movie follows similar themes, imagining a couple very much in love who seemingly have it all ending up nose-diving into opposite wavelengths, ending up alone, grief-stricken and depressed.  While there is some controversy surrounding this film and the different versions being released, the important thing to do is to see it, as it is startlingly effective.  It’s a powerhouse film with a cast to die for, rather miraculous for a first time feature film director, with elevated performances from Jessica Chastain (also one of the producers) as Eleanor Rigby and James McAvoy as Conor, the romantic couple at the center of the film, both offering career-defining performances.  Secondary characters include William Hurt and Isabelle Huppert as Eleanor’s off-beat parents, Jess Weixler as her younger sister Katy, with Viola Davis playing earthy, no nonsense college Professor Friedman, also Ciarán Hinds as Conor’s distraught father, with Nina Arianda (Alex) and Bill Hader (Stuart) rounding out the cast as Conor’s friends.  Ned Benson grew up in New York City, attended Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, graduating from Columbia University in 2001 with a degree in English and Film.  His only previous directing experience was writing and directing four short films, each made on a shoestring budget of $500 dollars, while also writing a play entitled Remission.  This film was originally released at the Toronto Film Festival on 2013 in a 191-minute version that interestingly explored each of the lead characters one at a time, where scenes repeat, but with subtle variations in dialogue and dramatic emphasis, becoming an extended character study on a disintegrating marriage.  Bought by Miramax Films, Harvey Weinstein decided to shorten the film down to a more audience friendly 2-hour movie called THEM, cutting 68-minutes of running time, where instead of sharing significant time with each character, their stories are interwoven into the overall fabric of the film.  Weinstein’s plan was to follow up this release with two separate films entitled HIM and HER, told from two different perspectives, which seen together may resemble the initial film (released in New York, while neither was ever released in Chicago).  Since Chastain’s performance is so brilliant, it’s hard to imagine which version the Academy might consider when contemplating awards, as this marketing scheme may backfire, confusing the audience to such an extent that they don’t show up at all, perhaps thwarting her opportunity for greater acclaim.  As a producer of the film, however, it’s hard to believe she didn’t have a hand in this streamlining process.  This beautifully directed shorter version, however, rather than being the disaster one might suspect, turns out to be one of the more brilliant films of the year, a stunning portrait of shattered lives and emotional devastation.    

For viewers looking for an adult approach to movies exploring serious relationships, look no further, as this film provides what few others even attempt.  It’s really an offshoot of Antonioni’s L’AVVENTURA (1960), which explores how the mysterious disappearance of a friend changes the emotional landscape of those affected by the loss.  Similarly, Kenneth Lonergan’s 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #2 Margaret is another dramatic powerhouse dealing in loss, showing how a random death can alter the interior circuitry, resulting in inexplicable sorrow and confusion.  Benson is not the playwright Lonergan is, where he’s not able to capture the effortlessness of his language or the deep-seeded guilt and complexity of personal transformation, but he has conceived an extraordinary film that revels in the brilliance of the performances, where the eclectic musical choices beautifully highlight a changing emotional world, becoming a moody interior landscape of tormented lives consumed by unknowable anguish and despair from the inexplicable loss of a child, unable to find the right balance afterwards when their lives are destroyed by the loss, continually finding themselves in an uncontrollable state of flux.  John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole (2010) explores similar territory, a married couple grieving over the loss of their son, or Nanni Moretti’s Palme d’Or winning film The Son's Room (La stanza del figlio) (2001), where the affected characters retreat into a disturbing sense of isolation, where the sublime beauty of these films is capturing emotional authenticity, often expressed in long, extended wordless sequences.  Due to the significance of the dialogue, capturing so many smaller, personal moments when two characters continually hold the screen, there’s an intensely theatrical feel, where this could easily have been adapted from a play.  The level of intimacy achieved throughout from both characters is stunning, which makes one think extended time with each person would add even more weight to the film experience.  This kind of thing has been done before, as Rainer Werner Fassbinder tried this with his television adaptation of BOLWIESER (1977), featuring a married couple on the rocks, starring the incomparable Elisabeth Trissenaar as the assertive wife who dominates and cheats on her husband with impunity, and Kurt Raab in his last Fassbinder performance as the masochistic near infantile husband whose sad descent into madness and utter despair is heartbreaking.  Fassbinder filmed a longer 3-hour version on 16 mm that accentuated the husband’s point of view (BOLWIESER), then re-edited the film down to less than 2-hours blown up on 35 mm from the wife’s perspective (THE STATIONMASTER’S WIFE), the only version available on DVD in America, which is essentially a showcase for Trissenaar.  Both of these films work due to the strength of the performances, but the longer version is among the more emotionally horrifying films he ever made. 

Without having seen the longer version, this shorter 2-hour film skips around quite a bit, opening with a happy couple in the thrall of love, seen through an overly sensuous vantage point, most notably a dance sequence to Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - So In Love - YouTube  (3:32) shot in the dark illuminated by car headlights, a Terrence Malick technique used in BADLANDS (1973), but it’s highly effective here, creating a mood of lush romanticism. Jumping ahead several years, this is quickly followed by Eleanor’s impulsive jump off the Manhattan Bridge, where the mood shifts to extended scenes of trauma and internalized anguish.  Retreating to the safety of her parent’s house in Westwood, Connecticut, the gravity of the situation is not lost to the viewers, further emphasized by the way her family completely avoids talking to her about her feelings or state of mind, where the mental confusion becomes the focal point of the film, as she’s fallen off the edge emotionally and struggles to retain her balance.  Meanwhile Conor has opened a bar in the Village that remains mostly empty, reflecting the downbeat turn in his own life, commiserating in his misery with his best friend Stuart, the cook, before taking more desperate measures, moving in with his father, Ciarán Hinds, who is supposedly at the pinnacle of his career, running a highly successful restaurant, yet his life is in shambles as well, perhaps the most troubled character in the film.  Woven into the pattern of these withdrawn lives is Conor’s discovery that Eleanor may be taking classes at NYU, resorting to stalking/surveillance measures to root her out, but she remains frightened and is in no mood to see him, angrily walking away from him on the street, leaving an even greater gulf between them.  The scenes with Viola Davis are priceless, a professor ironically teaching identity theory, as despite her gruff and hard-nosed exterior, she’s a devoutly loyal friend whose concern is genuine, making her a needed ally in the center of the storm.  Each marital partner continues to have thoughts about one another, but the mood of grief and depression is overwhelming, a seemingly unbridgeable gap, where the spaciousness of the film leaves plenty of room for interpretation, enhanced by the electric soundtrack of Son Lux, where their song “No Fate Awaits Me” is heard over the official trailer, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby Official ... - YouTube (2:23), with snippets of dialogue interspersed throughout, but very little is ever explained, instead it’s expressed in long scenes where the internalized anguish of the performances are the real highlight of the film. It’s rare to see a film this committed to the authenticity of the characters, where it’s fascinating to get under their skin, two people whose lives have been altered beyond comprehension, who can’t even look at each other any more, or be in the same room, as their presence is too painful a reminder of what they’ve lost.  While there are brief moments of shared connectivity that show a profound, deep-seeded understanding, the two dance around the issue throughout the entire film, resembling the utter interior devastation of Visconti’s White Nights (La Niotti Bianche) (1957), a choreography of missed opportunities where what lies ahead may well resemble where they’ve been, as a part of them has been unalterably broken, suggesting grief and heartache may always lie between them.  The final shots add a lyrical grace note of screen poetry, and while there is a hint at hope, no clear picture is provided, remaining ambiguous, a couple left adrift, two shadows in the night that mirror one another, where we’re left to wonder if they will ever find their way.  

Welcome to the Punch

WELCOME TO THE PUNCH           C    
USA  Great Britain  (100 mi)  2013  d:  Eran Creevy  

This is exactly the kind of action movie America exports around the world, where popcorn entertainment is seen as a blur of action sequences and no character development, so is there any surprise when one decides to send a movie back in exactly the same style—lesson learned:  this is how to make a lot of money.  While this was made on a measly $8.5 million dollar budget, one can envision this director making Hollywood movies on several hundred million dollar budgets.  In this case, it’s all about non-stop action, which translates to money, and the director’s personal drive and ambition to cash in while he can, as there’s nothing remotely new or original about the movie itself, but it’s designed to resemble the big Hollywood blockbuster by transplanting the Hong Kong action thriller with bullets flying in all directions to a setting in Great Britain.  The film wastes no time, opening with a terrific chase sequence, one angry guy in a car, Detective Inspector Max Lewinsky (James McAvoy), and 4 hooded and masked men in black, like THE MATRIX (1999), driving in formation on motorcycles, where the cyclists get away, but not before one of them is unmasked, Mark Strong as Jacob Sternwood, putting a bullet in Max’s knee, just enough to incapacitate him for the ultimate getaway.  The film jumps forward three years and Max is still fuming over allowing this consummate criminal (who was involved in some kind of heist) to slip through his fingers, where the police department relegates him to a secondary role with his partner, detective Sarah Hawks (Andrea Riseborough), afraid to let him get too close to the action.  We can see his personal life is a mess, his home in shambles, and his knee requires regular injections just to keep active and mobile, but despite his psychological funk, he’s still obviously hampered by the limitations from his shattered leg.  With a muddled narrative that never intends on making things clear, this is a style over substance film, using plenty of computer graphic images of the city illuminated at night, given a very futuristic look. 

While his insightful partner Hawks is aware that Max is distracted, the police are thwarted in an attempt to raid Sternwood’s mountain retreat in Iceland, then after he eludes their grasp, they hope to lure him out of hiding and snare him at the hospital visiting his wounded son, shot under mysterious circumstances.  The entire film is set in a noirish atmosphere of pervasive trouble, where the department itself has gotten itself into the murky waters of a corrupt political election, as the police commissioner (David Morrissey) has acquiesced to a secret deal contracting weapons from a shady British military contractor backing a law and order candidate, none of which is above board.  In fact, the connection to the weapons firm is a shadowy underworld figure, ex-military man Dean Warns (Johnny Harris), whose carefully chosen random acts of violence are designed to create a climate of societal fear that helps the chosen candidate get elected.  Fully unaware of this scheme, Max remains obsessed with the idea that Sternwood is the root of all evil.  Accordingly, he fails to see the unexpected danger that blindsides one of the lead characters, one of the first signs that this movie could be more than it is, as this is one of the better secondary figures, but instead of enlarge the character, no one comes to the rescue, as apparently all are expendable, casting this movie instead into a fatalistic cloud of gloom.  In fact, the body is moved to Max’s apartment to make it appear he’s the killer, which makes him quickly deviate from any intended plan, where this movie quickly takes a choreographic turn into a blitzkrieg assault of non-stop bullets in scene after scene, where Sternwood and Warns are usually in the middle of it, with Max more than a little confused, as his arch enemy Sternwood continues to pull him out of deadly situations, where he’s damned if he (or the audience) can understand why.       

Sternwood’s ace in the hole is his partner in crime Roy (Peter Mullan), another sociopath on the loose that with an automatic weapon in his hands can be put to good use.  This is the extent of character development in this movie, as it’s a brilliant cast, but outside of one extremely British drawing room scene, one with deadly and comical overtones, there are simply no memorable characters, as nearly everyone ends up dead.  But the scene of the film is when a heavily armed Roy, Sternwood, and Max all show up in the living room of Warns’s mother (Ruth Sheen, from Mike Leigh’s staple of actors), who’s convinced these are her son’s old army buddies, so they all sit around the sofa with Mom, nice and cozy sipping tea, so when Warns arrives, everyone’s hiding the gun they have pointed at someone else as they have a pleasant family chat.  This picture of family bliss is of course fractured by another dizzying array of bullets, the same image that punctuates nearly every scene, where the point of it all, one supposes, is to apparently stage unending gunfights, like the Wild West, where the electric synth score by Harry Escott sounds like it was written by John Carpenter, easily the best thing in the film.  If only more *felt* like John Carpenter, who loved and adored his eccentric characters, giving them plenty of room to operate.  But everything here is secondary to the battle of bullets, becoming an endless cliché, where the last man standing feels more like LA CONFIDENTIAL (1997), where a lone gunman seemingly takes on the entire corrupt wing of the police force, which has become an elite army operation of nonstop criminal activities.  In each, the finale feels like total chaos, like there’s no police force left to belong to, as the entire operation is on the take.  McAvoy is good as the constantly befuddled Max, one man against the world, but Mark Strong is better as Sternwood, always focused and under control, whose dominant outlaw presence becomes the moral center of the picture. 

Trance

TRANCE         C           
Great Britain  (101 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d:  Danny Boyle

While there’s no question that Danny Boyle can make a Hollywood film with his eyes closed, it’s never a good thing to simply watch him waste his talent on superfluous films like this one, which certainly showcases his demonstrable skills, but to what end?  While this is essentially a copycat drama, one that owes its existence to Christopher Nolan’s puzzle movies MEMENTO (2000) and INCEPTION (2010), it feels exactly like a fake, carbon copy imitation, lacking the exhilaration of the original, which at least originated in the head of the writer/director.  Boyle seems inclined to match many of the same technical skills, seamlessly blending dreams, memory, and reality to the point where they are often indistinguishable, where the viewer is caught up in a mental labyrinth of no escape, wondering throughout which version of reality will prevail, as the director loves to tease the audience with multiple possibilities.  Unfortunately, borrowing heavily from the formula of other successful movies has become conventional Hollywood entertainment, basically hand-me-down thrills, where little effort has gone into creating anything new.  The result is a slick looking product onscreen, but overly formulaic, where what’s lacking are memorable characters, an essential ingredient in a film with human interaction, but there’s none of that here.  Even with name stars, this entire cast is forgettable, as none of the performances stand out and there isn’t an ounce of tension or suspense throughout.  Despite the hoops the story jumps through, so obviously wanting to be a sophisticated, mind-bender, the film just never generates any interest.  Instead it feels like painting by the numbers, where everyone does a credible job, but nothing feels inspired.  Even the interweaving of the narrative feels tired and worn out, not fresh and inventive, as no one really cares about any of the characters, so by the end, none of it really matters, as it all feels so conventional. 

Two men are at odds throughout, caught up in a heist gone wrong, where one character, James McAvoy’s Simon, seeped in gambling debt, attempts to steal a valuable painting at an art auction, while the man he tries to steal it from, a sleazy lowlife gangster Franck (Vincent Cassel), catches him in the act and lands a haymaker across the chin, causing amnesia, where throughout the film Simon can’t remember where he hid the stolen painting.  After losing a finger or two to tortuous methods, Franck is inclined to believe he really can’t remember, which calls for desperate measures—hypnosis.  Enter Rosario Dawson as the calm, soft-spoken hypnotherapist Elizabeth, whose mix of sexual allure and soothing voice instantly sends Simon into a hypnotic state, where the rest of the film tests the audience’s patience, as the storyline weaves in and out of his altered states.  Meanwhile, Elizabeth joins up with Franck and his gang of thieves, apparently to split the profits of what is likely a multi-million dollar work of art.  While it all seems to blend together too smoothly, as everything in this new alliance goes without a hitch, except Simon keeps losing his focus and concentration, no doubt due to the stress from the fact these men are bound and determined to kill him once they get the information out of him.  Elizabeth keeps wafting back and forth as one of the gang, but she also has a man totally at her mercy during a submissive state, where she can program literally anything into his head.  While continually leading Franck on, vowing allegiance to his criminal mentality, offering him sexual favors as well, she also plays up her sexual allure with the patient, thinking if Simon gets what he wants, then he’ll reveal to her what she wants, which is the information.  In this way, Elizabeth becomes a blatant sex object throughout the film, both in fantasy and reality, where Rosario Dawson has an interesting nude scene with Simon, where she’s the projection of his fantasies, but the surreal nature of his fears keeps intervening, altering the landscape while constantly shifting the tenuous dynamic between the two of them.  

What seems like a romantic love triangle between Elizabeth and both men is played out against a myriad of repressed and forgotten memories, where Elizabeth’s own motives continually shift throughout the film, growing out of control, developing her own personal side story of events with Simon leading up to the art heist, so while she’s attempting to unravel the truth about where the painting it hidden, she’s also got some ulterior motive about erasing his other memories, wiping the past clean, literally lifting the storyline from Michel Gondry’s ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004), apparently thinking the public had forgotten.  Elizabeth’s over the top conversion from quasi therapist who’s not against turning herself into a sex object with a patient to a mercilessly powerful, spurned lover who would turn hypnosis into some kind of tyrannical mind control is something you’d more likely see from Ming the Merciless in a cheap sci-fi movie attempting to take control of the entire universe.  This storyline abomination changes everything that came before, where there isn’t a single sympathetic character anywhere in the movie, making everyone out for themselves, so what’s the point of all the plot twists?  But as the audience quickly loses interest in the various versions of reality and dreams and wish fulfillments, all that’s left is the ultimate showdown where they spend a gazillion dollars on blowing things up and special effects, all designed in the name of Hollywood entertainment.  Instead of the blur of fast action explosions and demolition that passes for conventional movie entertainment these days, this one instead delves into the deconstruction of thought, where the director gets to perform technical trickery with the camera and various editing schemes, but he’s simply omitted the human element.  When there’s no one left to care about, what’s to sustain the interest in the film?  As it goes through its various machinations and transformations, it just feels like such a con job, like it’s the audience that’s getting ripped off.  And unfortunately, that’s the reality that matters, as this movie is little more than contrived manipulation, making a sucker out of the audience by giving them old, retrodden material at the same price you pay for something new.  For a director with the stature of Danny Boyle, this is the ultimate disappointment, as this is little more than a commercial sell out.