The Pledge

THE PLEDGE       B+   
USA  (123 mi)  2001  ‘Scope  d:  Sean Penn

This is a Sean Penn film with a brooding quality and a highly distinctive, snowy opening, where the opening credit sequence lists a cast of characters that looks like one of the greatest casts ever assembled.  While the opening scenes are in Reno, Nevada, the rest of the film was shot in the moody landscapes of British Columbia, one of the most breathtakingly beautiful places on the planet.  Shot by Chris Menges, the look of the film is notable for its terrific use of nature, where man is dwarfed by the larger circumstances surrounding human existence, where often the balance goes askew.  In changing times, when the overwhelming rush of the present can usher out the old with a certain indifferent disdain, one has a tendency to become instantly irrelevant, old before our time if we’re not careful, where the principles we live by can become easily discarded, replaced by a cynicism of so-called modern efficiency where numbers and statistics often take precedence over hard earned instincts and professional wisdom.  Jack Nicholson, in one of his unsung performances back when he was truly a *great* actor, not playing some caricature of himself, is retiring Reno police detective Jerry Black, seen ice-fishing in a terrific wintry opening filled with an atmospheric mystery.  He’s already seen as out of touch with today’s group of police officers when he’s given a surprise retirement party, but sees something in the corner of his eyes that suggests trouble.  Sure enough, a young girl has been found sexually brutalized and murdered, found dead by a child on a snowmobile in the snow of a nearby frozen lake.  While he still has 6 hours left on duty, he is appalled at what he discovers on the scene, not only the brutal horror of the crime, but also the amateurish way the police on the scene are handling the case.  Adapted by Jerzy Kromolowski and Mary Olson-Kromolowski from Swiss playwright Friedrich Düerrenmatt’s book, the film is an existential murder mystery that thrives on the chaos created from the event itself, where waves of disturbing ramifications will offset any rational methods used to solve what is essentially a crime of nature, leaving behind an unspeakable trauma that exists on its own.

Aaron Eckhart is Stan, a cynical detective filling Jerry’s shoes, and we see he likes to cut corners and take the easy route, something of a showboat, exactly the opposite of Jerry’s more internalized, exhaustively thorough style, where Nicholson actually channels his own subdued performance in THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS (1972).  Much to Jerry’s consternation, Stan goes way over the top in an interrogation interview with a suspect, Benicio del Toro as a mentally disturbed Native Indian sex offender known as Toby.  Stan probably breaks all the rules of fairness and objectivity by leading Toby into a confession, never really giving him any other option, where it’s clear the suspect is so confused, he’d probably admit to anything.  Nonetheless Stan raises his arms in victory to the interrogation room hidden camera, as if he just scored a touchdown.  Two minutes later, however, Toby takes a gun from one of the jailers and blows his brains out.  To all the officers involved, including Dale Dickey and Sam Shepard as two of the commanders, the case is closed.  Only Jerry remains convinced there’s a killer still on the loose, and despite being officially retired, he continues to work the case, discovering a pattern of similar murders in the same geographical region going back ten years, all targeting 7-year old blond girls, sexually violating every one before they are brutally murdered.  What haunts him the most, however, is informing the parents of the most recent victim, where the distraught mother (Patricia Clarkson) makes him promise on his “soul’s salvation” that he will find who did this to their little girl.  With that, his conscience has been unable to rest.  Perhaps the most dramatic moment in the entire film is provided by Vanessa Redgrave as the victim’s piano teacher, where recalling one of the deceased’s  favorite passages from Hans Christian Anderson becomes one of the most chilling scenes of the film.  She also gives Jerry a picture made by the recent victim of a man she was supposed to meet, depicted as a giant in the Porcupine Forest where he is actually giving her something resembling tiny porcupines while arriving in a large, black station wagon.  While the entire police force scoffs at the idea, Jerry is sure the girl was drawing a picture of the potential killer.  Accordingly, he visits Helen Mirren as a child psychologist, whose analysis of the picture is as much about Jerry himself, as he won’t let go of his nagging theory.

One thing that’s clear as the story progresses is the stunning use of these name actors, including appearances by Mickey Rourke and Lois Smith, most onscreen for just a few short minutes, yet their dramatic impact is felt, giving the film a certain gravity it wouldn’t otherwise have.  Penn also uses a poetic realism in advancing his story, where one of the most gorgeous transitions is Jerry moving to the country, into the land of Field and Stream territory, where the drive along a river in a Jeep hauling a boat is accompanied by a simply sublime use of music, including the African song from Mozambique, “Nwalhulwana,” performed by Wazimbo and the Orchestra Marrabenta Star de Moçambique, seen in a brief movie clip here, The Pledge, music - Mozambique - Nwalhulwana ... - YouTube (49 seconds), and in its entirety here, Mozambique - Nwalhulwana - Mazimbo (3:45).  Using a map drawn of the site of the murders, he buys an old gas station and connecting house from Harry Dean Stanton (who actually plays a normal person!), figuring the murderer would have to pass through this area.  With this in mind, he dedicates his life to the best trout lakes in Nevada, while waiting, keeping a continual lookout for anyone who fits the picture description.  The film is further compounded by the introduction of the director’s wife at the time, Robin Wright Penn as Lori, a local bartender who lives with her own 8-year old daughter Chrissy (Pauline Roberts), eventually moving in with Jerry after a violent incident of domestic abuse.  What starts out as friendship leads to more, developing an intimate relationship, where Jerry seems to specialize in reading bedtime stories at night.  While there are a few false leads, in Jerry’s mind, they are indistinguishable from reality, enmeshed with the rhythm and routine of his own life, where protecting Chrissy at all costs from black station wagons and the bogeyman “is” his new occupation.  With bold, unconventional storytelling, we seem to lose track of time, much as Jerry loses his own internalized moral bearings, as the dizzying pace of the world around him seems to pass him by, leaving him to dwell on his illusions and personal obsessions, where the bleak, off-setting finale may leave much of the audience puzzled, as there’s no satisfying symmetry or conclusive rationale for what happens.  Nicholson is simply astonishing throughout, tormented, riveting, yet always completely understated, as is the original music by Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer, yet the tranquil, atmospheric look of the film, surrounded by such majestic beauty, provides a mystifying tone of existential ambiguity and human mystery.  

Moneyball

MONEYBALL            B                     

USA  (133 mi)  2011  d:  Bennett Miller

The problem we’re trying to solve is that there are rich teams, and there are poor teams. Then there’s 50 feet of crap. And then there’s us. It’s an unfair game.         
—Billy Beane (Brad Pitt)

Something of a sleight of hand movie, as it focuses all its attention on Brad Pitt as the star, playing Billy Beane, still the current General Manager of the Oakland Athletics since the late 1990’s, where we see him early in his tenure on the field, in the locker room, the weight room, staff offices, on the phone, alone at home or in his car, as the camera follows him around throughout the entire film, where he’s the more flamboyant character, but he’s not what the movie is about.  Not really.  He’s the star, however, so the movie makes it all about him.  His role, however, is rather insignificant, as history has shown, as he barely makes a dent in baseball history, certainly not as this movie suggests.  Instead the real star is so carefully concealed that his name was changed in the movie, where Jonah Hill plays Peter Brand, who was in real life Paul DePodesta, a shy, nerdy guy who sits in front of computers all day compiling statistics, which doesn’t exactly make for good cinema, but he’s the hero.  In a sport that’s all about speed, physical prowess and brute strength, he’s the odd man out, the guy who doesn’t exactly command respect on the field by people who have been part of the game for decades, so they take swipes at him, ridiculing his influence, decrying his baseball knowledge, as he’s never played the game.  Based on Michael Lewis’s book The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, published in 2003, the verdict is still out on what impact these statisticians have had on the game.  For the record, while not shown in the movie, the A's had a sterling pitching staff in the year shown, 2002, including a Cy Young Award winner in Barry Zito with a 23-5 record and the American League MVP in Miguel Tejada, while DePodesta at the tender age of 31 eventually became the General Manager for the storied Los Angeles Dodgers in 2004, the same seat inhabited by baseball legend Branch Rickey who signed Jackie Robinson, but his less than superlative results, trading some of the most popular players while compiling the worst team results in over a decade, eventually got him fired at the end of the 2005 season.  So much for Field of Dreams.      

Channeling his Robert Redford, Pitt looks every bit the part of a man possessed with winning, a guy who spits tobacco with the coaches and has a head for the game, but realizes he plays for a team in a small market that can’t compete with the giant-sized pocketbooks of the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox, as they can’t afford to pay a decent salary, so any player that’s any good will eventually be lured by the smell of money.  The Athletics ($30 million dollar payroll) were actually being described as a farm team for the Yankees ($140 million dollar payroll), as New York annually lifted their best players by offering lucrative salaries.  This leaves Beane in a dilemma, as this is not a problem that needs to be addressed by rebuilding their team every year with affordable new players, each one hand selected by their team of knowledgeable scouts, but with a different concept about their approach to the game.  Beane was particularly impressed with how the Cleveland GM actually listened to this bespectacled and nerdy looking fat guy in the corner, a guy that would look uncomfortable in any room, who quietly thwarted his attempts when he entered their stadium to make a deal.  So he hired this guy as an Assistant General Manager and put his mathematical theories of statistics to the test, which took a blasting by baseball people completely upset with the idea of a computer doing their jobs.  As baseball is such a traditional sport, where players are always being compared to the legends of old, like Ruth or DiMaggio, Mantle or Mays, where blacks couldn’t play in the majors until the late 40’s, the idea of change does not exactly come easily or naturally.  Instead the baseball traditionalists, including his own manager Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) greeted DePodesta with a volley or criticism, where he initially felt like a ruse, or a sick, twisted joke being foisted upon the team, undermined by their own General Manager, as they were seen as a team of collectable spare parts. 

Beane is projected as a tragic hero, the little guy whose situation in life is in constant turmoil, made even worse by his own divorce, where he lives in some closeted apartment setting while his wife (Robin Wright Penn) is living in a lavish estate with a spectacular view overlooking the ocean, where they have a young 12-year old daughter in common (Kerris Dorsey) who has obviously been hurt by the separation.  When Dorsey sings this heartfelt autobiographical song (which turns out to be Lenka - The Show (New Version) - YouTube, a 2008 song covered in the movie by Dorsey:  Kerris Dorsey performs "The Show" by Lenka acoustic song from ...) about being torn apart in that whimsical manner of JUNO (2007), it’s easily the best scene in the film and becomes the driving force in Beane’s life, where he is obsessed with overcoming all possible odds to make things work.  This movie has something of a storied past as well, ironically having to overcome a radical overhaul of its own, as initially Steven Soderbergh was scheduled to direct the film, altering the existing screenplay by developing documentary style interviews to advance the story, which led to his ousting in favor of a more conventional style of movie.  Soderbergh has a spotty history and has been hit or miss in the last decade, but his more varied approach to filmmaking lends itself more closely to the DePodesta method, approaching things from a new or unique angle, instead of the more traditional star driven technique used in this film, which of course, doesn’t tell the whole truth, which is a major shortcoming.  The movie version belies the terrific talent on this team, which is actually the best in the past decade, while giving the impression they're instead a bunch of misfits and nobodies.  Many will flock to this film based on Brad Pitt alone, who is one of the executive producers of the film, but this movie just offers a feel good, tunnel vision, behind-the-scenes sports story that makes Hollywood feel good about itself.  There are some moments of candor, scripted by Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillan who worked separately, apparently re-worked dozens of times before the final product, but there is nothing revelatory here.  All sports are more scrutinized by statistics than ever before because of the easy facility of computers, where scoreboards can update batting averages or a pitcher’s E.R.A. as the game progresses and there are hired hands that routinely crunch the numbers.  But sports at all levels are played by athletes who determine their own outcome, where much like the Olympics, there are occasional surprises, but the best players usually win.