The Sleepy Time Gal

 

Writer/director Christopher Münch

Münch with Maximilian Schell and Jacqueline Bisset in Munich

THE SLEEPY TIME GAL         A                                                                                         USA  (108 mi)  2002  d: Christopher Münch

What a discovery!  Christopher Münch, who is the writer, director, editor, and producer of the film, does a brilliant job of poetically weaving together multiple story lines of crisscrossing characters that haven’t seen and don’t know about one another, confronting incredibly powerful moments in their lives, where it’s not always the accomplishments we look back upon, but the biggest regrets and disappointments that we tend to remember.  There’s some terrific writing here, with a unique editing design, while there’s also extraordinary acting by all involved. Jacqueline Bisset?  It might be hard to believe, as Charlotte Rampling has re-invented herself in recent roles, but she never had a part as well written or as fully realized as this one.  Add to this Martha Plimpton and Nick Stahl, who both worked beautifully together before in Tim Blake Nelson’s first film THE EYE OF GOD (1997), which was one of the best American films seen in recent years.  Seymour Cassel, of all people, from the Cassavetes films (who the director met briefly before he died), reappears here along with Frankie R. Faison, where even the secondary roles have a profound impact.  All are simply fabulous.  This is highly personalized and amazingly human, a contemplative experience that is as intense and emotionally compelling as anything seen this year, a small gem of a film that has rarely been seen since its initial limited release.  Taking three years to make, with jazz and classical musical selections playing a prominent role in this rich under the surface atmosphere, the film premiered at Sundance, where most of the director’s features have played, distinguished by never having found a distributor, appearing on The Village Voice list of Best Undistributed Films of 2001, eventually released on the director’s own production company, Antarctic Pictures, shown on television by the Sundance Channel, which led to a brief American theatrical release, followed by a DVD from Sundance Home Channel Entertainment that is now out of print, never released on Blu Ray, making this an overlooked and very difficult find, though it has streamed on the Criterion Channel.  According to Film Comment editor Gavin Smith (FILM; Adventures of an Indie Gem on Its Way to the Screen), the film takes “incredible risks with material that’s been handled in really banal ways in the past.”  From the director of Letters From the Big Man (2011), Münch is a self-taught filmmaker from Southern California, the recipient of a Guggenheim fellow, while his first film, THE HOURS AND TIMES (1992), an inquiry into the Beatles’ psychosexual dynamics based on the friendship of Brian Epstein and John Lennon, won the Wolfgang Staudte Prize at Berlin for the best first or second feature.  He’s not a well-known artist, the son of astrophysicist Guido Münch and writer Louise Fernandez, and few have likely seen any of his works, but this particular film is a revelation, and well worth seeking out.

At the center of this film is Frances, played by Jaqueline Bisset, star of Peter Yates’ Bullitt (1968), François Truffaut’s DAY FOR NIGHT (1973), and John Huston’s UNDER THE VOLCANO (1984), who regards this as the finest performance of her career, where much of the character is based on the director’s own mother, a remarkable free-spirited woman in her fifties who has led a full life, with a keen intellect and love for the arts, married twice with two sons, one from each husband, though one lives abroad and is heard only by telephone and never seen.  Working as a freelance writer, social activist, and radio personality, also something of a history buff, she has an enlightened effect on the many people she has met, yet also interwoven into the storyline is Rebecca (Martha Plimpton), a high-powered corporate attorney, as we discover parallels between a younger version of Frances and Rebecca’s own life, where initially viewers have no idea how it all fits together.  Feeling more like a subconscious memory exploration, featuring a series of spatial shifts moving back and forth in time, a patchwork of random incidents, beginning with Frances in New York City in the summer of 1982, moving to Frances in San Francisco six months later, then discovering Rebecca in New York, jumping forward another year to Frances in San Francisco, switching back to Rebecca in Boston before boarding a plane for Daytona Beach, Florida.  Yet there are also some extraordinary 1930’s shots of New York City, supposedly shot by the director’s grandfather, a Mexican newsreel cameraman who had spent time in New York.  The autobiographical elements are simply an underside of this film, where things don’t necessarily have to make sense, as this is more of a story about human relationships, yet the stream of images are a potent reminder of how we come to understand the complexity of our lives.  What we see from Frances’ past is shown in poetic flashbacks of black-and-white photographs and home movies, which may be real or imagined, given a very literary feel.  Frances has a young gay son living in San Francisco, Morgan (Nick Stahl, a stand-in for the director), trying to establish himself as a photographer, working a minimum wage job in a photo copy shop, where they are close, but often butt heads in disagreements, leading completely different lives, where most of the backstory is never filled in.  Instead, Frances has to come to terms with rapidly spreading cancer, where part of confronting her own mortality is revisiting the source of her biggest regret, as she was forced by her own mother, Anna (Carmen Zapata), to give up a baby girl born out of wedlock to adoption.  Illegitimacy was once a real concern in 1950’s America, carrying a heavy weight, something few would comprehend today.  Rebecca, as it turns out, is that missing daughter, who also reflects on her birth mother as she gets older, pondering all the missing and unanswered questions, revealing the profound influence parents have on their children, oftentimes in ways that are only understood when reflecting on them later in life.  It’s an unusual technique of developing two separate storylines on parallel tracks throughout the picture that somehow merge emotionally and psychologically, as they never come face to face, but meet only in their minds and imaginations, which adds greatly to the emotional weight of the film.  This is an extremely original cinematic vision, taking us to unexpected places, surprising us every step of the way, showcasing different locations, styles of architecture, and enticing landscapes, as it probes an underside of something that never fully surfaces into the light, but has a pregnant life force of its own, with the director reeling viewers into their anxiously unsettled mindsets, where it’s clear just how much this exploration means to them, becoming a rarely seen existential essay on pursuing one’s own identity, where this unforgettable film is essentially that journey. 

Frances goes through the chemotherapy sessions, surrounded by caring doctors and hospital staff, with encouraging therapists, then she got better, and was in remission, hoping it’s just a setback, that she can get her life back on track, revisiting an old flame, Bob (Seymour Cassel), who happens to be Rebecca’s father, currently living with his wife of thirty years, Betty (Peggy Gormley), on a farm in the Amish country of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  While they still have a serious connection, perhaps more interesting is the relationship between the women, who have always known about the other, as it was never a secret, but Betty never knew about the child, only that Bob could just as easily have been married to Frances, where she is writing a book that fictionalizes a love story she imagines, which turns out to be fairly close to the truth about the affair between Bob and Frances.  Coming face to face, finally, opens up a part of their lives that each has never experienced, where there are so many emotions hidden beneath the surface.  Bob, of course, wants to pick up where they left off, even going on a hot-air balloon ride together, causing Frances to grow uncomfortable and leave without any word, as she just disappears like a thief in the night.  Seeking to make amends with some of the combative relationships she has experienced, always feeling strangely unfulfilled, Frances has a strained relationship with her mother, a small-minded Puerto Rican woman who is openly racist, still something of a culture shock and open wound in her life, something that apparently will never heal.  Rebecca, meanwhile, is sent to a Daytona Beach radio station for a corporate takeover, where she runs into one of the disc jockeys there, Jimmy (Frankie Faison), a black radio station manager who had free reign to play whatever he liked on what was commonly known as a “race station,” but he understands how the business works and has no hard feelings, thankful for the time he had there, where the station’s reputation was established by late night programming from a woman who described herself as the “Sleepy Time Gal,” with a photo of her hanging in the studio, someone Jimmy was drawn to as well, but Rebecca has no idea this is her mother.  As Rebecca attempts to gather court sealed information about her mother, it’s an eye-opening process, with Frances leaving behind messages for the daughter she never knew, searching for missed opportunities, where the dramatic combustion is nothing less than compelling, treading on very rare territory, using kaleidoscopic, stream of conscious imagery that can feel abstract and emotionally jarring, where we can never be sure whether we’re watching the fantasies of one character or the memories of another, yet it’s all in pursuit of a better understanding of ourselves.  There’s even a French girl (Clara Bellar) gathering mushrooms near San Francisco Bay that Frances encounters, where these ambiguous side excursions just add to the complexity of the experience.  As Frances’ condition deteriorates, she makes peace with life and death without an ounce of sentimentality, attended by a sympathetic hospice nurse, Maggie (Amy Madigan), and visited by her son, where it’s as close to being in the same room with someone dying as you’re ever likely to see onscreen, with Bisset miraculously displaying an unsparing depth of range we’ve never seen from her, providing touching moments that are simply unforgettable, most without uttering a word, requiring the full attention of viewers.  Tenderly observant, falling outside of traditional boundaries, ultimately this is a probing exploration of what it means to face death, avoiding melodrama, forgoing typically comforting clichés in favor of multifaceted ambiguity, offering something far more truthful and uncompromisingly open-ended.

Running On Empty

 

River Phoenix with director Sidney Lumet

River Phoenix with Martha Plimpton

RUNNING ON EMPTY          B                                                                                                 USA  (116 mi)  1988  d: Sidney Lumet

I’ve done three movies, Daniel, Running on Empty, and Family Business, that are thematically the same thing—the cost that others pay for one’s passions—and I only recognized this afterwards…. Any deep emotional commitment on the part of the parents is going to cost something… not just to the parents but also almost always to the children.                       —Sidney Lumet

A film that takes us back to the fallout from the Vietnam War of the 60’s, revealing the ominous implications still reverberating decades later from the aftermath of that momentous event, recalling the paranoia of 70’s films, yet made a decade later, with the passage of time having a decidedly toned down effect on the subject matter, which is fictitiously portrayed.  Largely shaped by the Great Depression, Lumet began his career at the height of McCarthyism, brought up in New York City with a Jewish, left-wing background, claiming there’s no real left-wing in America anymore, like there is in Europe, so political ramifications may be something he intrinsically understands, as it’s in his blood.  What’s unique about the 60’s generation is the tireless effort extended to bring about the end of the Vietnam War, with kids going against their parent’s generation, causing plenty of family strife, but this was largely a young person’s crusade that successfully ended the war, something unprecedented in American history, yet with Nixon re-elected with his racistly repressive law and order campaign, still targeting all the 60’s radicals, it wasn’t the result they wanted, so they grew weary and exhausted and simply ran out of gas, thus, the title, something they never recovered from, abandoning earlier alliances with blacks and chucking their ideals for monetary gain, with many of those same kids growing up and voting for Reagan.  Revisiting the era of the Weather Underground, a radical left-wing offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society in the 60’s, a student activist counterculture movement that attempted to stop the war in Vietnam, which splintered from a disagreement in tactics, with the radically inspired Weather Undergound taking on a targeted bombing campaign meant to disrupt the machinations of the war effort, committing strategic acts of sabotage against the government by carrying out bombings of the United States Capitol, the Pentagon, the State Department, Bank of America, Army bases, as well as the New York City police department, yet slowly disbanded by the mid 70’s.  By the mid 80’s, they were essentially history, yet several fugitives from justice were able to successfully hide themselves for decades under assumed identities, eventually emerging quietly by turning themselves in, often pleading to lesser charges, as the government’s case against them was compromised by the 1971 exposure of the FBI’s questionable and even unlawful methods of domestic surveillance under the COINTELPRO program, which quickly evolved from a legitimate effort to protect the national security from foreign threats of Communism into an effort to suppress a wide range of domestic activism (that included Martin Luther King and other Civil Rights leaders) through an array of dirty tricks, including illegal wiretaps, warrantless searches, planted media lies, and much more.  Recalling earlier films like Hal Ashby’s COMING HOME (1978), John Sayle’s RETURN OF THE SECAUSCUS SEVEN (1980), Lawrence Kasdan’s THE BIG CHILL (1983), or Oliver Stone’s PLATOON (1986), and a latter crop of Bill Siegel’s THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND (2002), Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep (2013), or Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves (2013), most of it is watered down revisionism that screws up 60’s politics, often looking back nostalgically with a sense of guilt, while regretting past mistakes.  An extension of his earlier film DANIEL (1983), which examines the generational consequences of the Rosenberg spy trial (The Rosenberg Case), resulting in the execution of both parents, specifically exploring the trauma suffered by the children, where the sins of the parents are hoisted upon the backs of the children, a strong burden to carry, where Lumet’s primary interest is not the politics, but the emotional costs, while in this film crimes of consciousness and acts of terror are largely indistinguishable in the eyes of the law, where an overriding theme is that actions, no matter how nobly intended, have consequences.  The obvious reference is Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn, leaders of the Weather Underground, who went into hiding for ten years before surrendering to authorities in 1980.  Making no apologies for their activism to bring about the end of the war, likewise no apology was ever offered by the United States government to the country of Vietnam, dropping nearly 400,000 tons of napalm, an incendiary chemical compound that burns at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, literally burning people alive, spraying 19.5 million gallons of Agent Orange at twenty times the recommended dosage, containing a toxic chemical contaminant linked to cancers, diabetes, birth defects, and other disabilities, remaining in the soil for decades, affecting three million Vietnamese (7% of the population), causing birth defects in 150,000 children, with millions still affected, not to mention other atrocities committed.  The film’s inciting event, the bombing of a napalm laboratory that blinded and paralyzed a janitor, echoes the infamous Sterling Hall bombing of August 24, 1970 (When bomb tore through Sterling Hall 50 years ago, he was ...), where radicals attempted to shut down an Army Math Research Center on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but instead killed a university physics researcher, Robert Fassnacht, a postdoctoral researcher conducting physics experiments on superconductivity, completely destroying the physics lab, with three other grad students suffering serious injuries, while a night watchman suffered memory impairment and permanent loss of some hearing and vision.   

No reference to any actual event ever occurs, while the title is appropriated from the Jackson Browne song (notoriously absent from the movie and the credits), a huge hit in 1978, also featured prominently in FORREST GUMP (1994), with a controversial history as well, due to its unauthorized use by Senator John McCain and the Republican Party in a controversial ad targeting Presidential nominee Barack Obama in 2008, forcing Browne to sue, eventually settling out of court for an unnamed sum, with the Republican Party apologizing afterwards.  Screenwriter Naomi Foner (mother of Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal) was nominated for an Oscar, yet acknowledged making changes at the behest of Lorimar Productions, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers, worried about controversial content, drawing from personal experiences of her radical friends, including a classmate at Columbia University who went underground in 1969 and resurfaced in the 80’s, sharing with Foner the hardships she faced in hiding while trying to raise her two children, as noted in a Vanity Fair article, THE WEATHER OVERGROUND | Vanity Fair | October 1988, while a nearly identical plot is also attributed to acclaimed Berlin filmmaker Christian Petzold in THE STATE I AM IN (2000).  The film is listed at #10 on Roger Ebert’s Top Ten from 1988, Roger Ebert: 1967-2006, though largely missing from other lists, not nearly as pivotal as many of his other films like 12 ANGRY MEN (1957), LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (1962), SERPICO (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976), The Verdict (1982), and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007).  The biggest misstep is the insipid music by New Jersey guitarist Tony Mottola that feels hijacked from some limp romance drama, never once capturing the actual feel of the movie, which turns into a family relationship drama, with a budding romance at the center.  While some may view this family as terrorists, it goes to great lengths to create a family with moral values and strong ties to love, where they genuinely relate to one another, making substantial sacrifices for deeply held principles, moving every few months, constantly assuming new names and identities, relying upon an underground network for money, cheap housing, and phony documents.  Rarely do you ever see movies with children on the run, yet the level of domesticity that the family has achieved is mirrored in the camera work, shot by British cinematographer Gerry Fisher in a decidedly low-key style, like a 1950’s Playhouse 90 domestic drama (live television, several episodes directed by Lumet).  At the outset of the film, the family quickly relocates to another city when it becomes apparent the FBI is watching their house, soon finding themselves in the fictional town of Waterford, New Jersey.  Artie and Annie Pope, Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti, are the radical couple on the run with two sons, 17-year old Danny, River Phoenix, the older brother of Joaquin in his only Oscar-nominated performance, starring later in Gus van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho (1991) before his untimely death two years later at the age of 23, and ten-year old Harry (Jonas Abry).  The film is largely seen through Danny’s eyes, exhibiting a mixture of shyness and self-assurance, seriously introverted because his parents have cut him off from the rest of the world, much like the early childhood of Phoenix, part of a controversial Christian religious cult known as the Children of God, emphasizing unlimited sex with no restrictions, moving from Venezuela to Mexico to Puerto Rico to spread the word.  Unable to draw attention to himself, he quickly stands out to his music teacher, Mr. Phillips (Ed Crowley), because of his impressive (and overly idealized) talent on the piano, playing Beethoven by heart, Running on Empty, Beethoven Pathétique YouTube (1:15), easily separating him from other students who are completely hooked on the MTV era of Madonna and pop music videos.  Both parents quickly find jobs, where the transition seems relatively unforced until the school inquires about prior transcripts, which are strangely missing.  Normally this would be no big deal, as they never stay long enough at a single location, but Danny is at the age where he needs to start applying for college, where transcripts are mandatory.  Given access to his teacher’s home to play the piano, he’s pleasantly surprised when a same age daughter takes an interest, Lorna, Martha Plimpton, the real-life girlfriend of Phoenix at the time, having met on the set of Peter Weir’s THE MOSQUITO COAST (1986).  Lorna’s quirky personality registers with a Bob Marley poster on the inside of her bedroom door, a Charlie Chaplin poster taking up the entirety of her closet door, while inside is a poster of James Dean from Rebel Without a Cause (1955), where she has a unique collection of hats hanging from a rack, one of which grabs Danny’s attention, a boater straw hat reminiscent of Silent film stars Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd, but also the musicals of Fred Astaire and Maurice Chevalier, playfully trying it on, even wearing it out of the house, giving him something of hers to think about.  Their budding romance makes this a coming-of-age movie, with romantic walks through the woods and along a lake, continually keeping his distance, never allowing himself to get too emotionally attached, which eventually turns her off, thinking this guy really doesn’t care, getting pissed off, finally forced to confess his secrets, creating something of an emotional steamrolling effect.

A pop visit from an old friend causes ripples, Gus, L.M. Kit Carson, something of a counterculture artist, a co-director of Dennis Hopper’s The American Dreamer (1971) and co-writer of Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas (1984), yet here he appears as a connection to their radical past, showing romantic inclinations towards Annie that she quickly deflects before trying to recruit Artie for a bank robbery, still holding onto his youthful revolutionary ideals, suggesting what they’re doing is too safe and comfortable, with Artie going apoplectic afterwards, refusing to have anything to do with guns, defiantly repulsed by the idea, angrily declaring “Guns aren’t what we’re about.”  Danny’s interest in his parent’s welfare is significant, often hidden and isolated from the rest of the family, yet still supportive during troubled times, where all they’ve got is each other, which probably means more to his parents, as they’re the ones responsible for the predicament they’re in.  While the parents are openly conscientious, they even leave a pet dog behind during one of their moves, a disturbing image for animal lovers, actually having more of an impact than the headlines revealing Gus was shot and killed in a bank robbery escape, the living embodiment of what can go wrong with radical ideals, certainly putting a punctuation point on the end of his dreams, suggesting there are good radicals and bad ones.  Afterwards, Artie gets the urge to pack it in and head for another destination, coming across as a bit of an ass, overly regimented and authoritative, patriarchal, continually barking out orders, where his one-note character isn’t really developed, lacking the nuance and complexity of Annie, who is more comforting and understanding of what her kids must be going through, where you can grow exhausted from all the running, acknowledging at one point, “What are we doing to these kids?  They’ve been running their whole lives like criminals, and they didn’t do anything.”  Danny, in particular, feels overwhelmed by the decision, even defiantly so, where his need to grow and break free from the family’s stranglehold becomes the central drama, wanting to pursue his own dreams, thrive in a romance, with the faint possibility of something lurking beyond if they don’t screw it up, where this inner dilemma was similarly explored in Siân Heder’s Academy Award winning CODA (2021), with the deaf community replacing the underground, a confining world of silence where the unique talent of one family member offers the promise of something more, something they never anticipated.  Mr. Phillips is so enamored with Danny’s playing that he encourages him to apply for Julliard, offering him a stellar letter of recommendation, but it keeps getting back to his earlier school transcripts, leaving him in a precarious position, as he doesn’t really want to abandon his family.  Lorna quickly sees through the family dilemma, emphasizing Danny has nothing to do with it, “Why do you have to carry the burden of someone else’s life?”  The failures of the radical left and 60’s counterculture movement are never really addressed, as there was a unique multi-racial coalition where privileged white college students and Black Panthers were mingling together sharing a common cause, creating something of a cultural revelation, while the promised revolution never happened.  Instead the film emphasizes family above politics, where any earlier propensity for violence is thoroughly discouraged, countered by a communal BIG CHILL dance sequence, The Big Chill (1983) - Dancing in the Kitchen Scene (6/10) (1:48), set to a James Taylor song, "Fire and Rain" Birthday Dance Scene - Running on Empty ... (1:53), all captured in a single take, acting as an anthem and memorial tribute for so much from that era which has been lost or forgotten.  This film was made more than 30-years ago, when ramifications of the Vietnam era were still at the forefront of everyone’s minds (the devastation of the AIDS crisis was about to take its place in terms of having a generational impact), but looking back today, very little is known about the turbulent times of the 60’s, as books and movies serving as eloquent time capsules simply do not do it justice.  Yet it wouldn’t be a Sidney Lumet movie if there weren’t several standout emotional scenes, like Annie discovering Danny already auditioned for Julliard, playing Mozart’s Fantasia, K. 475, Running on Empty - Danny auditions for Julliard -Who did you ... YouTube (2:00), so she breaks her cover and cautiously meets her father who she hasn’t seen in 15 years (Steven Hill) for a heartrending reunion in a restaurant, an emotionally devastating scene that traverses plenty of territory in a short period of time, leaving both something of a trainwreck afterwards, one of the most poignantly affecting scenes ever filmed by Lumet, while Danny and Lorna have an equally wrenching, tearjerker moment.  While Christine Lahti is superb, convincing performances by River Phoenix and Martha Plimpton are the real stand-outs, given greater dramatic extension than the adults, covering up for the movie’s deficiencies, refusing to explore what was essential about the times, like why people would be willing to take such drastic measures, instead becoming a smaller character study that has a way of sneaking up on you, reminding us of how much we truly miss the loss of River Phoenix.  That alone is reason to see the film.