Youth

YOUTH                      B                                            

Italy  France  Great Britain  Switzerland  (119 mi)  2015  ‘Scope  

d:  Paolo Sorrentino                    Pathé [France]          

Only Sorrentino’s second film in English, after the oddly compelling use of Sean Penn in This Must Be the Place (2011), where the title suggests one thing, while the subject of the film is diametrically opposite, as this is more of a quirky meditation on aging, featuring Michael Caine as Fred and Harvey Keitel as Mick, two longtime, near eighty-year old friends in the latter stages of their lives that one initially suspects are brothers due to their intimate familiarity, but instead they’ve known each other for 60 years.  Taking place nearly exclusively on the secluded grounds of an upscale spa for the rich and famous at the Waldhaus hotel in the Swiss Alps, the same hotel featured in the recent Olivier Assayas film, 2014 Top Ten List #3 Clouds of Sils Maria (2014), offering dazzling views of the surrounding Sils Maria countryside, this is the first Sorrentino film where the superficiality of the subject matter simply doesn’t live up to the whirlwind cinematography from Luca Bigazzi, who is among the best in the business, normally elevating this director’s films into rarified air.  While it’s something of a delight throughout, often lighthearted and humorous, this film is arguably the lightest and least successful in the director’s career, becoming more of a scattershot virtuoso film where much of its power is diluted from attempting to cover so much territory, where it is entertaining throughout, though it borders on spectacle.  Opening with the très chic sounds of The Retrosettes, a retro band from Manchester, You Got The Love by The Retrosettes - SoundCloud (3:20), where the female singer may as well be spewing her message on a rotating platform coming from the middle of a bonafide “fountain of youth,” the song jumpstarts the film with an adrenal rush that in every respect is equivalent to a thoroughbred breaking out of the gate at a racetrack.  The problem is sustaining the pace all the way through till the end.  While there are heady moments, and more than a few pleasant surprises in store, it’s hard to say this film has any lasting power, as there’s really not much of a developing story, feeling more like a series of vignettes strung together creating an impressionistic mosaic, where there are few entry points into the lives of the characters portrayed.  Certainly part of the problem is the exclusivity of the place itself, catering to power and privilege, where most will never spend a minute of their lives in a swanky place like this. 

Fred is a retired symphonic conductor spending most of his days being oiled and massaged, where he is pampered and catered to by kids that barely look out of their teens.  Having lost his wife some time ago, he’s acutely aware that he’s in the latter stages of his life, with little to actually look forward to, instead harping on certain incidents from his past that crop up from time to time.  Mick, on the other hand, has a core of young writers trying to help him finish off a screenplay entitled Life’s Last Day, the summation of his life’s work as a film director.  They come off a bit like a Laurel & Hardy act, with Keitel in the role of Laurel handing out the straight lines while Michael Caine relishes playing the more pompous Hardy, where both can be seen walking the massive grounds of the place together, where their pace is a near crawl, holding cryptic conversations about their prostrates and other physical ailments, though their womanizing eyes still rove to the ladies just as much as when they were pubescent teenage boys on the prowl.  Joining them is a young American actor Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano), who seemingly has no business being there, as the place is crawling with people two and three times his age, but he enjoys the seclusion as he prepares for a new role.  In a celebratory moment, Fred’s grown daughter Lena (Rachel Weisz) is heading out on a Pacific holiday with her fiancé, Mick’s son Julian (Ed Stoppard), where for a brief moment the past and the present intersect, with both men reliving the exuberance of their lives through the romantic affairs of their children.  Also entering the picture is an emissary from the Queen, a very squirrely Alex Macqueen, who is sent on a mission to invite Fred to come out of retirement for a gala concert performance of his most celebrated composition “Simple Songs” in London before the royal family in exchange for knighthood.  Despite the honor, Fred refuses for personal reasons, and despite repeated pleas, the emissary leaves dejected and thoroughly disappointed, as the Queen does not like to receive bad news.  In short order, Lena is back as well, having been unceremoniously dumped for a pop celebrity, none other than Paloma Faith playing herself, where both men find Julian’s conduct appalling (in his defense, Julian claims Paloma is a wonder in bed), where Mick even sides with Fred on this one, giving his son a thorough tongue lashing for his selfish display of male arrogance and bad taste. 

Rachel Weisz, who also acts as her father’s personal assistant, is easily the best thing in the film, as she’s a smart, vulnerable and relatable character who shows some imagination and verve, who doesn’t pout about her circumstances, but instead rails against her father for his rude and neglectful treatment of his own children, as he was never emotionally accessible, always on the road traveling with the symphony, while at home she was forever being shushed and instructed to “be quiet” while Daddy was busy at work composing music, locked away in a room somewhere that was completely off limits.  The beauty of this scathing monologue is that it is conducted while both are receiving side by side massages, where there is literally nothing he can do about it, where he’s forced to endure the full brunt of every blistering word.  Sorrentino is the closest thing to Fellini working today, where it wouldn’t be one of his signature films without a myriad of oddball side characters that continually keep popping up on the screen, like the gargantuan Diego Maradona soccer player with a full-sized tattoo of Karl Marx on his back who has ballooned up to over 400 pounds, who swims a length of the pool and stops, thoroughly exhausted, or a brief, poignant scene of a young masseuse seen dancing alone in her room showing surprising dexterity and ballet-like grace, or the stunning arrival of Miss Universe (Madalina Diana Ghenea), the object of Fred’s daydreams even before she confidently takes a dip utterly naked in the wading pool with the eyes of two drooling men staring at her.  It’s, of course, a picture of what they’re missing, a part of their pasts that can never be regained, but can only be summoned in wish fulfillment daydreams (activate the trashy music video).  There’s even an all-too-brief appearance by Jane Fonda as Mick’s gutty actress Brenda Morel, the star of all his successful pictures, who is caked with so much make-up that she looks more like a campy character in drag, but she gives Mick a lacerating, no holds barred wake-up call in uncensored sailor lingo, traveling great distances to remind him face-to-face that his work has turned into “shit,” that “You’re going on 80, and like most of your colleagues, you’re getting worse with age,” declaring “Television is the future” before making a hasty retreat.  (Ironically Sorrentino is working on an 8-episode TV mini-series entitled The Young Pope co-produced by Sky Italy and HBO, expected release sometime in 2016).  While this summarily dismissive rant seems right out of some trashy soap opera, with equally melodramatic results, much of this operatic film is thoroughly intoxicating, where the music, much of it scored by American composer David Lang, couldn’t be more in synch with what’s shown onscreen, but there’s no real sense of urgency and some lingering questions whether any of this will matter or be remembered in the years to come.        

Klute

KLUTE            A                    

USA  (114 mi)  1971  ‘Scope  d:  Alan J. Pakula

Alan J. Pakula, a Yale drama graduate, is one of the leading proponents of richly textured, character-driven dramas, where he helped guide eight different actors to Oscar-nominated performances, including Academy Award winners relatively early in the careers of both Jane Fonda (age 34) in KLUTE (1971) and Meryl Streep (age 33, another Yale grad) in SOPHIE’S CHOICE (1982).  In much the same vein as Roman Polanski, Pakula excels in smart, sophisticated thrillers, known for creating tension through oppressive, tightly constricted screen space, with a fascination for sleek, modern exteriors that lend a timelessness to his films.  The 70’s may be the greatest era of American cinema, where the once-powerful Hollywood Studios sold off many of their assets temporarily reducing their power and influence, leaving an opening for directors to have an impact on films like never before, producing the likes of Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces (1970), Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) and BARRY LYNDON (1975), Altman’s MASH (1970), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Images (1972), The Long Goodbye (1973),  California Split (1974), Nashville (1975), and 3 Women (1977), Coppola’s THE GODFATHER (1972), THE GODFATHER Pt. II (1974), THE CONVERSATION (1974) and APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), Polanski’s CHINATOWN (1974), Woody Allen’s ANNIE HALL (1977) and MANHATTAN (1979), but also American independent films like Barbara Loden’s Wanda (1970), Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN (1978), along with a decade of films from movie maverick John Cassavetes, Husbands (1970), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), and Opening Night (1977).  Almost forgotten in this firestorm of powerful dramas are the carefully orchestrated paranoid thrillers of Alan J. Pakula, who specializes in suspense thrillers layered in subtlety, plot secrets, and deception.  The first of what would become known as the “paranoia trilogy,” along with THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974) and ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1976), these were films made in response to the looming fears that gripped the nation coming on the heels of 60’s assassinations, the Vietnam War, and Watergate, where television images flooded the nation reinforcing a government that had lost control, where behind the scenes secret and often nefarious powers vied for the power vacuum, where instead of the massive participatory demonstrations of the protest movements of the 60’s, suddenly ordinary citizens felt powerless to effect their destiny.  

The paranoia thriller exemplified impotence in the face of danger, simultaneously ushering in an era of 70’s disaster films like AIRPORT (1970), THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972), EARTHQUAKE (1974), THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974), and JAWS (1975), with revenge films to follow in the 80’s, vividly portraying a breakdown of community cohesiveness leaving the individual feeling isolated, hopelessly trapped and alone, exuding a strange and mysterious passivity bordering on defeatism, represented by Sydney Pollack’s THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975).  What’s lacking in these films is a conquering hero to eradicate the pervasive threat, like Clint Eastwood in DIRTY HARRY (1971) or Charles Bronson in DEATH WISH (1974), as the mythical era of the western hero has passed, replaced by ineffectual real-life political leaders disgraced by unethical abuse of power and rampant corruption, where Pakula in particular emphasized the empty spaciousness of the surroundings, where the individual is dwarfed by the seemingly mammoth skyscraper reflections of power and modernity, barraged by interior fears, often of unknown origin, while the idea of security or personal well-being has all but vanished, left with a feeling of impending doom creeping into the moral fabric of society.  Ironically, Pakula himself lost his life in a freak auto accident on the Long Island Expressway in 1998 when another car hit a lead pipe on the road that flew through his windshield, killing him instantly.  KLUTE was the director’s first major commercial success, significant for the exhaustive research done by both the director and lead actress in exploring the lurid, behind-the-scenes lives of Manhattan’s call girls, including meticulous production values that included fashionable haute couture outfits from Fonda’s own personal wardrobe that made such a splash onscreen.  Despite Pakula’s considerable talents, this is largely remembered as a Jane Fonda movie, having lost the Oscar earlier to British actress Maggie Smith in THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (1969), despite being the odds-on favorite for her amazing performance in Sydney Pollack’s THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY? (1969), suspected to be due to her unpopular (in Hollywood) “Hanoi Jane” activism against the war in Vietnam at the time.  But in KLUTE Fonda is quite simply brilliant in a career-defining performance, blowing away the all-British competition to win the Best Actress Award, the last of her “sexy” performances playing a high-priced call girl in this interesting dual exploration of sex and capitalism as seen through the lens of the burgeoning feminist movement.  Written by Dave and Andy Lewis, almost exclusively known as television writers, Fonda’s character is uncommonly rich and fully realized, a complex composite of a prostitute and film noir femme fatale, much of it developed improvisationally by Fonda herself, especially the therapy sessions, exhibiting mood shifts that are often beautiful and ugly in the same scene, where her surface level wit and everpresent sarcasm is her chief defense mechanism hiding a more scarred and wounded interior soul. 

  

KLUTE is an unusually intelligent film that balances mood and atmosphere with personality and vulnerability, which is what we remember afterwards in Fonda’s character of Bree Daniels.  Dressed in mini-skirts and high boots, wearing tight sweaters without a bra, with a shag haircut accentuating her bangs designed by a hairdresser in New York’s Lower East Side, Bree is a modern woman that always looks like a million bucks.  An aspiring model and actress, seemingly in control of her own career path, she is a part-time call-girl making quick cash in order to pay for the lavish lifestyle to which she has become accustomed, living alone, drinking wine and smoking an occasional joint upon returning home at night to relax and wind down.  Mixing themes of surveillance and voyeurism, over the opening credits the audience is introduced to an audio tape recording where Bree can be heard reassuring one of her customers to relax, have fun, and basically “let it all hang out,” which serves as a kind of code for the sexual revolution of the 60’s that went awry when certain factions turned violent, basically spoiling the party for the free love generation.  Meanwhile, somewhere in the heartland of Tuscarora, Pennsylvania, a family man and business executive Tom Gruneman (Robert Milli) disappears during a business trip to the city, where his boss, Peter Cable (Charles Cioffi), feels somewhat responsible, so he hires Gruneman’s best friend, Donald Sutherland as John Klute, a Pennsylvania-based private detective to search for his missing friend.  According to the police, they reached a dead end after six month’s, as the only evidence obtained is an obscene typewritten letter found in Gruneman’s office addressed to call-girl Bree Daniels in New York, who reports receiving several letters and phone calls from Gruneman, though she can’t recall meeting him, while she also has a feeling she’s being stalked.  Renting an apartment in the basement of her building, Klute taps the phone of Ms. Daniels while also following her as she turns tricks.  While she exudes confidence and a sense of personal liberation by always being in control of her male customers, seen faking an orgasm while looking at her watch, we’re also privy to a different side, seen in a series of visits to her psychiatrist (Vivian Nathan), where she reveals the sex work is more a compulsion than a necessity, though it pays well, but it’s hardly fulfilling, leaving behind an interior void in her life, where she’s been trying to get out of “the life” with little success.  When Klute finally talks to Bree, after her initial reluctance, she reveals she was seriously beaten by a psychopathic customer several years earlier who “was serious” about beating women, though she can’t connect the photo of Gruneman to that man. 

Klute discovers Bree is his only connection to a lurid world of women-for-hire in a city that he is already excluded from, so he needs her help, delving more deeply into her personal associates, including ex-boyfriend Frankie Ligourin (Roy Scheider), her former pimp and protector, a slick con man with underworld connections who is the picture of male arrogance and pride, always seen with a beautiful girl on his arm, making sure Klute gets the company message, “I want to make something clear:  You know, I don’t go to a woman.  A woman comes to me.  *Her* choice.”  Frankie reveals it was one of his other girls that passed on the abusive client to Bree and another girl, Arlyn Page (Dorothy Tristan).  While that girl is now dead from a suicide, Page has become a drug addict and completely dropped out of sight, where she could be anywhere.  Despite dealing with a sophisticated call-girl who speaks freely and openly about sex, Klute remains an honorable man, who comes from a small town and retains his core values of conservatism and good will, offering his protection, which is something Bree takes advantage of, “Don’t feel bad about losing your virtue.  I sort of knew you would.  Everybody always does.”  However, their relationship deepens, developing into a sexual romance (as it did in real life between the two leads), where one of the best scenes in the film is walking the streets of New York together where they stop and pick up fruit at an outdoor market, where she is just eying the guy, as if for the first time, afterwards seen telling her therapist that she’s afraid of losing control, that this man is good and decent to her, who’s seen her look fabulous, but also completely horrid, where trusting a man is not easy, suggesting she wishes sometimes she could go back to “just feeling numb.”  Throughout the film, she is frequently shown alone in her apartment from the vantage point of a stalker across the street who is watching her.  At one point Klute realizes he’s on the roof, but his search proves futile.  The uninhibited freedom of her lifestyle is constantly under threat, reflective of the early stages of a feminist era that was continually under attack as well, where it’s interesting that early feminist critics lauded the film as a realistic portrayal of a woman’s personal conflict, only to later reverse course, as her attempt to accept a man in her life for stability or balance is paramount to endorsing patriarchy.  This reflects, however, the complexity of the role, as it appeals to a cross-section of viewpoints, even after the passage of time, retaining a unique blend of modernity and film noir, pitting hardboiled cynicism against the romanticism of a possible relationship.     

Movies and Methods: An Anthology  Pt. 1, by Bill Nichols, 1976 (pdf format)

More than a classical thriller, a “film noir,” or a contemporary reworking of the “private eye” movie — as some critics have seen it — Klute seems closer to the psychological suspense thriller, with most of the action going on inside the central character’s head.  Klute is told from a highly subjective viewpoint, and the other characters, while “real,” can be seen as projections of the heroine’s psyche.  The film functions on both levels, as a straight suspense story and as a dramatization of intense inner conflict, but it is from its second level that it derives its power. 

Critic Diane Giddis in her essay The Divided Woman:  Bree Daniels in Klute, taken from her book Women and Film, 1973, suggests women should completely disregard the conventional film noir conventions and reclaim the film on the basis of its sexual politics alone, where Bree becomes a stand-in for the feminist cause.  But the film offers an equally compelling narrative about the male psyche, where the private eye genre is a vehicle commonly used for strong individual male characters, where the stalker element in a tense paranoia film adds a disturbing element of potential male violence directed towards women.  Offering an openly cinéma vérité style of viewing the streets of New York, the interior shots, by contrast, beautifully photographed by cinematographer Gordon Willis, create a visual claustrophobia that explores the male fears about women.  While championing Bree’s interior psychological world, where asking what a woman wants becomes such a significant aspect of her character, the film simultaneously delves into a world of male apprehension, where a liberated woman, as reflected by the repeated tape recording loop heard at the opening, somehow opens the floodgates of a demented male psychopath whose masculinity is threatened by these open sexual freedoms, where his only response is criminally inappropriate.  This unfortunately reflects the existing reality where rape remains a systematically entrenched violent form of criminal male domination over women that continues to plague all sections of the globe, including the American armed forces, but is especially prevalent in war ravaged regions.  The distinctively eerie musical soundtrack by Michael Small, so effective in the film, is reminiscent of John Carpenter’s memorable synth score in HALLOWEEN (1978), where it’s hard to believe Carpenter wasn’t hugely influenced by this film, as much of this has the same creepy feel as a slasher movie, where something is always approaching Bree, with the camera continuing to follow her wherever she goes (as it does Jamie Lee Curtis), at times literally becoming the eyes of the stalker.  Pakula does an extraordinary job creating a feeling of pathological disassociation, of being outside societal boundaries and literally over the edge, especially the view of a man seething in his own disgust with himself, alone in the darkness of a penthouse skyscraper office with floor-to-ceiling windows revealing an utterly spectacular vantage point of the city of New York.  But in fairness, the film also offers another more balanced male view, that of the titular character Klute, who may as well be a stand-in for the audience.  Sutherland is terrific in a performance defined by quietly subtle restraint, where his impassive stoicism is laudable, making no judgments about her former life as a Manhattan prostitute, recognizing that she needs total acceptance as a woman to really be free of her past.  He appreciates her even when she doesn’t appreciate herself, but in a subversion of the testosterone-laden film noir detective genre, he’s not the featured central character.  While she freely exposes her inner domain both sexually and through repeated visits with a therapist, his more closed, inner psyche remains hidden and largely unknown, as it’s uncertain where this will all lead and whether they even have a future together.  Ahead of its time both then and now, the film’s true insight is the revelation that feelings of love alter the sexual and psychic dynamic, as the normally self-reliant Bree feels increasingly overwhelmed and disempowered by a sudden surge of feelings she can’t control, as it’s no longer all about her, where learning to share the uniqueness and fragility of her own inner world with a significant other remains one of the mysterious challenges of anyone’s life.