Rabbit Hole

RABBIT HOLE           A-              
USA  (91 mi)  2010  d:  John Cameron Mitchell

Any movie featuring Dianne Wiest these days is definitely worth seeing, as she makes rare screen appearances and has simply become one of the more openhearted actresses whose captivating warmth is unlike anyone else, as opposed to Nicole Kidman who has taken on empty-hearted, angry and hateful roles, characters that retreat into the comfort zone of grief and self-centeredness so they no longer give a damn about anyone else, where tragedy is her excuse to behave so badly.  Based on a Tony Award and Pulitzer prize-winning play by David Lindsay-Abaire, there is already a structure in place here, where a married couple, Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart) find themselves in the throes of grief after losing their 4-year old son in an unfortunate car accident when he chased the family dog into the middle of the street.  By the time we meet them, the characters have retreated into a disturbing sense of isolation and feelings are already compartmentalized, where characters are under extreme emotional duress expressed by their failed attempts at self control, where occasionally extremely hurtful and inappropriate comments would blurt out, usually in the presence of their family, including Becca’s kindhearted mother (Dianne Wiest) and hard-edged sister (Tammy Blanchard) who announces she’s pregnant.  So life goes on, with or without them.   

While they live on an idealized lakefront home with plenty of glass windows, this is an emotionally austere drama filled with gaping silences, where the couple is so over-defensive that every word and thought is misunderstood or somehow a reference to their lost son, where there’s no chance whatsoever that they could talk about it.  When they go to a grieving family support group, Becca mocks how ridiculous it all is, offering ingratiatingly phony comfort when there’s simply none to be had, the exact view she takes with her mother who sympathizes with Becca, as she lost a 30-year old son to drug addiction.  But Becca wants no sympathy or support, as she has no quick fix solutions, but finds it’s better to grieve and be unhappy, irrespective how others feel about it.  Howie, for instance, feels ready to try to move on, not to plummet to some undefined abyss of despair where there’s no way out, but Becca will have none of it.  Her grief is her life, and she’ll allow no one to stand in her way.  In this manner, she’s become another fiercely contemptible character that Kidman associates herself with these days, older and more hurtful roles, like MARGOT AT THE WEDDING (2007), where she becomes monstrous.  Her mother and sister take refuge in each other, as they build a line of defense against Becca, who is constantly in attack mode.  Every time her mother attempts to soften the blows and provide a mother’s nurturing love, Becca hurls abusive invectives with the ease of a sailor’s profanity.                 

There is a wonderful twist in the story that becomes the best part of the film, where something finally captures Becca’s interest and she’s not so surly all the time, where we finally see a softer side that is remarkably poignant and sensitive.  It’s as if she’s discovered her own support group that she’s forced to keep secret from her husband.  At the same time, Howie has discovered other women are interested in him, providing comfort in areas Becca is just not yet ready to deal with yet, remaining sexually frozen in time, afraid to ever feel again.  Their emotional flight from one another becomes a personal road of salvation for each, which is a very fragile and delicate thing, as both continue to avoid one another while secretly seeking comfort in their own ways.  It’s here that the delicate music by Anton Sanko plays such a key role, as there’s finally something brewing underneath the emotional fireworks that continue to gnaw at their lives.  The film is restrained and movingly directed, shot unfortunately on digital, but also superbly edited, with segments cut into small fragments of life, ordinary moments that resemble our own lives, never overreaching or creating a distance between the audience.  Instead, this is a film of inclusion, where after repeatedly being kept out by the incendiary emotional trauma, the audience is finally allowed back into the center of the picture, where this family is no different from our own, and it’s the human condition that finally brings us all back together again inhabiting the same space.  This is an edgy and painful journey of redemption exposing shattered pieces of the human soul, perhaps reminiscent of the transcending sadness in Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter (1997), where by the end no one feels quite the same as when they began the journey.   

Whiplash

WHIPLASH        B+              

USA  (106 mi)  2014  d:  Damien Chazelle

After his acclaimed 16mm debut film GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH (2009) was made on a shoestring budget, never playing in more than three theaters at the same time across the entire country, the follow-up effort won the Grand Jury 1st Prize for a Dramatic Film at Sundance, while the year before the same film in a shortened version won a Jury Prize for Best U.S. Fiction Short Film.  It’s a curious evolution in filmmaking these days when budding young filmmakers enlarge their awards tested short films into features (19 Short Films That Were Made Into Feature-Length Movies ...), where crime writer Cornell Woolrich (aka William Irish) made a practice of enlarging his short stories into novels, so it’s not like there isn’t a precedent for this kind of thing.  Initially the director conceived the full-length feature, but couldn’t get funding for his film, so he submitted a short film to Sundance, winning an award, which brought about the needed funding of $3.3 million dollars.  Shot in just 19 days, part of the brilliance of the film is the ferociousness in how it is filmed, bringing an edgy, unconventional style to the viewer’s experience, where it’s the first film about jazz music to capture the public’s imagination since Clint Eastwood’s BIRD (1988).  Largely based on the writer/director’s own experience as a band student in high school, where the instructor ruled by fear and intimidation, Chazelle creates a screenplay that embellishes the feeling of teaching through public humiliation, where J.K. Simmons, largely a character actor throughout his thirty-year career, finally gets a juicy lead role and makes the best of it in one of the most physically demanding, emotionally exhaustive performances of the year.  While it may actually be the best performance of the year, usually characters this appallingly deplorable do not go on to win Oscars, but it can happen, such as Forest Whitaker as the murderous egomaniac Idi Amin in THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND (2006) or Anthony Hopkins as the fiendishly deadly and cannibalistic Hannibal Lecter in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991).     

Set in a fictitious Schaffer Conservatory of Music in midtown Manhattan, considered the most prestigious music academy in the country, the film opens with a slowly developing drum roll in the dark, where Miles Teller, so good in The Spectacular Now (2013), plays Andrew Neyman, a relentlessly driven drums prodigy student just entering the school.  In a brief opening encounter he realizes he’s being watched by the school’s most feared instructor, Terence Fletcher (Simmons), which sets the stage for an ongoing battle of wills for the duration of the picture.  Surrounded by photos of Buddy Rich, constantly plugging his music into his ears, Andrew aspires to be the greatest jazz drummer in history.  For the record, Rich was a showboating drum virtuoso known for his speed and power that promoted himself front and center above all other members of his band, often appearing on The Tonight Show billing himself as “the world’s greatest drummer.”  Rich was full of macho swagger, a 60-year old black belt in karate who delighted in showing how tough he was, displaying a volatile temper with a short fuse and an imposing personality, well known for leveling insults and throwing backstage tantrums.  It’s ironic that his musical role model also happens to fit his teacher Fletcher to a T, a musical instructor that believes in terrorizing his students, a man fixated with perfection, who will obsessively drive musicians to repeat certain passages literally for hours (“We’re gonna be here all night…”) while others stand around and wait, who teaches by hurling an angry tirade of personally malicious invectives at them, homophobic slurs, and a constant refrain of abusive and degrading insults, believing this motivates them to become better musicians.  Simmons literally inhabits the role, as he has the timing of the vitriolic language along with the contemptuous tone of arrogance down perfectly, repeatedly cutting musicians off after just a few seconds, “Not my tempo,” he says repeatedly, forcing them to do it again and again, always demanding some fictionalized version of perfection that doesn’t exist, something only Fletcher knows, apparently, while others can only aspire to that same mindset.   

What’s also right on target is the cutthroat competition among studio jazz musicians to sit in the lead chair, where students will obviously endure plenty if it will get them to that coveted position.  Certainly one of the scenes of the film shows Andrew in the throes of this madly obsessive state of mind, where he will literally walk through a brick wall to please Fletcher, and out of nowhere he’s involved in a serious car crash, where blood is dripping all over his hands and shirt, yet he refuses help and insistently walks away like nothing happened, heading straight for the concert hall in order to get to that lusted after first chair.  Andrew may be a fictionalized composite of many hopefuls who were literally driven into the ground by the ravings of tyrannical teachers.  The title of the film is the name of a musical piece that is particularly notorious for it’s lightning quick drum tempo changes, where drummers live or die in their attempts to take on this monstrosity of tortuous hell, driving Andrew into incessant drum rehearsals with its self-imposed willingness to absorb punishment and pain, where the vigorous demands result in blood and blisters on his hands, and often even that’s not good enough.  While it may be impossible to please someone who thinks the words “good job” are the most harmful words in the English language, as if they lead to complacency and mediocrity, the contentious relationship that develops between teacher and student becomes not only hurtful and abusive, but destructive, where the ruthlessly oppressive methods ultimately demand total submission, literally crushing his spirit.  It’s painful to look at, yet audacious as hell, riveting stuff “full of sound and fury,” infused with a kind of ecstatic energy where drums unceasingly drive the pace of this film.  The fierce acting between the two combatants couldn’t get more brutally intense, where raw emotion surges to the surface and literally bleeds onscreen, where your mind is racing, thinking “hell hath no fury” like what’s taking place between these two guys.  The musical subject alone is a fascinating study, especially when we see Fletcher perform at the piano in a small west Village jazz club, where it’s nothing at all like we expect, as in our minds he’s ferociously driven to the point of death and destruction, instead it’s conventionally tranquil and bland, suggesting the guy outside the sheltered hallways of school is a complete sell-out in his convictions.  But the film is ultimately a psychological study of misplaced obsession, two men fueled by their own inner fury of fire and brimstone, both crossing the line of outrageous morally unacceptable behavior, where you wonder where it will all lead.  For a moment you think it’s the psych ward, a place familiar to many jazz artists that literally burn themselves out, but instead there’s an ultimate meeting of the minds, a battle royale with a decisively different outcome, where inevitably it’s the furious sound of the drums that has the last word.   

The Spectacular Now

THE SPECTACULAR NOW              B+                  

USA  (95 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d:  James Ponsoldt          Official site

I open my arms wide and let the wind flow over me. I love the universe and the universe loves me. That’s the one-two punch right there, wanting to love and wanting to be loved. Everything else is pure idiocy—shiny fancy outfits, Geech-green Cadillacs, sixty-dollar haircuts, schlock radio, celebrity-rehab idiots, and most of all, the atomic vampires with their de-soul-inators, and flag-draped coffins.

Goodbye to all that, I say. And goodbye to Mr. Asterhole and the Red Death of algebra and to the likes of Geech and Keeeevin. Goodbye to Mom’s rented tan and my sister’s chargecard boobs. Goodbye to Dad for the second and last time. Goodbye to black spells and jagged hangovers, divorces, and Fort Worth nightmares. To high school and Bob Lewis and once-upon-a-time Ricky. Goodbye to the future and the past and, most of all, to Aimee and Cassidy and all the other girls who came and went and came and went.

Goodbye. Goodbye. I can’t feel you anymore. The night is almost too beautifully pure for my soul to contain. I walk with my arms spread open under the big fat moon. Heroic weeds rise up from the cracks in the sidewalk, and the colored lights of the Hawaiian Breeze ignite the broken glass in the gutter. Goodbye, I say, goodbye, as I disappear little by little into the middle of the middle of my own spectacular now.

—The Spectacular Now, ending paragraphs from the book, by Tim Tharp, 2008, The Spectacular Now - Page 294 - Google Books Result

Like S.E. Hinton’s young adult novels, this Tim Tharp novel is also set in Oklahoma, but has been transported to movie director James Ponsoldt’s home town of Athens, Georgia, as he explained:  “The script didn't identify where it was set—the setting just wasn't a big city.  It felt vaguely suburban—or kind of like a college town.  It seemed to me that the script had a sense of place in the way that Breaking Away (1979) did.  Athens was such an obvious candidate as a setting to shoot the film in—and it was really the only place I wanted to make the film.  Filming in Athens was incredibly meaningful to me.  We shot in the streets and houses of my childhood!”  While the movie is filmed in Georgia, there are no accents, no southern hospitality give-aways, no local beer references like Terrapin Beer Company, and nothing specific to identify a location, although we learn it’s not Texas, California, or Philadelphia, and is in a place that seems far away from those places.  But the beauty of it all is that it could be anywhere, as it’s a rite of passage story, one that takes us to a place most of us have already been before, as we’ve probably lived it.  What distinguishes this small little indie film from others is that the voices ring so true, as there’s nothing fabricated or Hollywood contrived about these characters.  These are beautifully written people that have not yet been corrupted by a movie business that long ago forgot to tell their stories, so at least for a brief moment in time, what you experience here feels genuine.  Opening and closing with the voice of Sutter Keely, Miles Teller from John Cameron Mitchell’s RABBIT HOLE (2010), a high school senior that is narrating a college application essay where he’s asked to mention experiences about any particular hardships he’s had to overcome.  This immediately jettisons us directly into his life which is expressed as a sustained flashback.  His is not an ordinary story, but there’s also nothing truly exceptional about it either, as it could be any one of us.  What makes it so compelling is the naturalistic strand of realism exhibited throughout, where there are even noticeable scars left intact on actor Teller’s face incurred from a real life car accident that figure prominently in how the film refuses to whitewash reality.     

Sutter begins his story by describing how he loses his girlfriend Cassidy (Brie Larsen) by trying to get Ricky (Masam Holden), one of his smart but geeky friends “some action,” setting him up on a double date where he’s unfortunately caught by his girlfriend.  As Cassidy is one of the prettiest girls in school, Sutter has ties with the more popular “in crowd,” where he’s such an easy going kid that he seems to connect with everyone, as his friendly, overly gregarious nature makes him extremely likeable, where at his age he exhibits an unshakeable confidence, often dispensing advice to others.  When we see him at parties, he and Cassidy have always been the life of the party, the ones other kids come to hang out with for fun.  But she’s not cool with what she’s seen, so Sutter spends a night bravely trying to drink away his difficulties, ending up asleep the next morning on somebody’s front lawn, completely in the dark about where he left his car.  He’s discovered by Aimee, Shailene Woodley from Alexander Payne’s The Descendants (2011), a smart but overly shy girl that knows him from school, as they’re in the same classes, but he hasn’t a clue who she is.  Nonetheless, she’s cute and he’s without a girlfriend at the moment, so he takes an interest and discovers she’s an amazingly sweet listener who’s uncomfortable talking about herself, which for an amiable guy like him is something of a challenge, so he grows more curious about her.  By this time, we realize Sutter has a habit of pulling a flask out of his coat pocket and pouring alcohol into his soft drinks, something he regularly does at his job at a shoe store as well, where we begin to realize why he’s such a happy go lucky guy, a friend to everyone except himself.  Aimee is much the same way, exhibiting low self-esteem, never wanting to draw attention to herself, where the two, perhaps surprisingly, hit it off immediately, even though it’s obvious he still has his eye on Cassidy. 

What’s perhaps more surprising is Cassidy still likes him, enjoys speaking candidly with him like they’re still good friends, but expresses no interest in going out with him again, as she’s currently going out with Marcus (Dayo Okeniyi), the black football star who’s also class president.  So even though the audience knows he’s waffling about his strong feelings for Cassidy, the relationship with Aimee is genuinely motivated and utterly sincere, where she can even help him with his failing geometry, but they both have parental anxiety issues, as Aimee wants to go to college in Philadelphia, and has been accepted, but her mom insists that she stay at home and help support the family, while Sutter hasn’t a clue where his father is, but knows his mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) won’t even speak about him since he left.  What we discover are two unhappy kids who literally need one another, where both are in denial about major issues in their lives, each one shrugging it off as if it’s an everyday part of being normal.  Sutter’s family, including his friends, all have broken marriages, where he’s not aware of any happy adults, making him a bit leery about the future, where he instead concentrates on today and forgets about tomorrow.  There are some extraordinary scenes of extended conversations that have a way of including the audience in the impact of the moment, where our reactions will surely conflict with the notions of teenage kids, but some of these scenes are simply heartbreaking.  The secondary characters are hardly window dressing, but feature significantly into their lives, where their influence matters, as these are genuinely helpful people who are concerned about their welfare but may not know how to help.  The film is something of a portrait of unseen and unspoken tragedies, as Sutter is perfectly fine on the outside, popular and liked by all, where even as others are passing him by on their roads to having a future, making plans to go to college and choose a career, he’s perfectly content with being where he is, knowing “We’ll never be this young again.”  Even as the façade starts crumbling around the edges, where his life is a tragedy waiting to happen, we sense an incredible sadness in his ultimate fatalism, a lost soul where all that matters is this day and this moment, as nothing else exists.  There are no existentialist cues here, as this is still just a kid, but one we’re not apt to forget.