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.

Rushmore

Director Wes Anderson

 

RUSHMORE             B+                  

USA  (93 mi)  1998  ‘Scope  d:  Wes Anderson

When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.       

—Jacques Yves-Cousteau

A film that fondly and innocently looks back at who we used to be, including the seemingly live-wire electric jolts streaming through our heads with all these new and wonderful ideas, wondering what to make of ourselves, as the mounting possibilities felt endless, where this film picks up on how easily we get ahead of ourselves, creating endless wish fulfillment scenarios in our heads imagining all the possibilities, where our actual day-to-day reality felt drab and boring compared to how we envisioned things, if only things were as densely impactful as the way we imagine them.  Wes Anderson seems to revel in the ideas that spark our enthusiasm, getting carried away with what might have been, where that mad rush of energy, like youth itself, feels like it will never end.  There’s no feeling in the world like it.  But it doesn’t last forever, extinguished much too soon in the prime of its life, as we all must move on to the next stages in our lives, including responsibilities and payments due, where something will forever drag us back down to earth, quickly forgetting how easy it all once was.  This is like a Peter Pan coming-of-age story, where youth is in a state of arrested development, still fancying all the faraway dreams, free to pursue each and every one, where grown-ups and adulthood represent the apparent end of those dreams.  While not everyone has it as easy as Anderson’s memorable characters, we still inherit traits from this strange and unusual world of the imagination, like checking out books from the library, taking us to mysterious places around the world, where for a short period of time we can imagine ourselves there.  Opening each new chapter, listed by months in the new school year, with the opening of a theater curtain, the whole thing unravels like a play within a play, perhaps all masterminded by a high school theater impresario whose plays are an essential component of the film, offering a window into an unseen reality — our own.  Like a tour guide, the kid leading us on this magical adventure is Max Fischer, a fifteen-year old private school 10th grader at the Rushmore Academy played by Jason Schwartzman, the son of Talia Shire and nephew to Francis Ford Coppola, as if he was born into cinema royalty.  Though he doesn’t have the silver spoon birthright like so many other rich kids attending such an exclusive school, Max operates as if he owns the place, director of his own theater troupe, speaking to the adults as if he’s on their same level, viewing himself as mature beyond his years, but still impulsive and irrepressible as a child, where this film takes full advantage of his wild obsessions that are on full display, becoming the heartbeat and theatrical pulse of the film, sharing all of his hare brained schemes that undoubtedly end in utter disaster for Max.  Still, not to be deterred, Max rises from the ashes of defeat only to proudly display that narcissistic peacock plumage that continually gets him into trouble in the first place, as he’ll go to any extreme, no matter the consequence.        

Basically Max is a bespectacled, intellectual geek, insufferable at times, but a likeable kid with a variety of interests, so many, in fact, that he has no time to study, where he’s made a career out of inventing extracurricular activities on campus, Max Fischer Extracurricular Activities (Rushmore) YouTube (1:25), naming himself president of each and every one, where it’s surprising that he doesn’t have business cards printed up for every one, as Max is mostly a man who toots his own horn, a showman with an appreciation for showmanship, who loves the razzle dazzle but fails to get caught up in the details, so his dreams and fancy ideas have a short shelf life, quickly moving on to the next venture.  In this way, he resembles the life of many artists, where this autobiographic sensibility is what endears audiences to Anderson’s films, where this was his first major success.  Perhaps its major attribute is catching people off guard, as there’s a quirky inventiveness that is amusingly entertaining throughout, filled with cultural references and offbeat humor, not to mention a 60’s British invasion rock soundtrack that is ballsy and whimsical at the same time, offering something altogether new, like J.D. Salinger in the movies, where his subversive wit and brilliant ear for dialogue make him a major player to contend with, yet his films feel light as a feather while probing darker themes, making him something of an oddball himself, impossible to categorize, yet his literary roots are hard to deny.  Shot by cinematographer Robert Yeomen, who shot all Anderson’s features up to 2014, using slow-mo and sophisticated tracking shots, each with its own secret treasures, perhaps it comes as no surprise that the school depicted in the film (St. John’s Prep School) is the same one Anderson himself attended in Houston, co-written by Owen Wilson, a college roommate at the University of Texas in Austin with similar theatrical aspirations, where the lead character Max obtained a full scholarship to the prestigious institution by writing a one-act play about Watergate in second grade that was highly regarded by the school’s headmaster, Dr. Guggenheim (Brian Cox), who comes to regret that decision.  An early scene shows them in a discussion where Guggenheim is forced to put Max on “sudden death” academic probation due to his faltering grades, where another failed class will result in expulsion.  As Rushmore is Max’s entire life, an invented universe where he lives and breathes what takes place on the hallowed grounds (just not in the reality of the classroom), providing his raison d’être and what amounts to his personal identity, so he’s loathe to leave it, but spends no effort on grades and instead embarks on a romance of infatuation, becoming obsessed with a first grade teacher, Rosemary Cross, Olivia Williams, who’s wonderful in the role, but has made some questionable career choices ever since.  Something she scribbled in a library book is what sets his heart on fire, making it his mission to follow her to the ends of the earth.

While Max may lie, cheat, and steal with regularity, comedically operating with an absurd level of confidence, he also maintains a kindhearted nature and values friendship, often treading the line between honesty and dishonesty.  In order to fit in at Rushmore, Max has to create an invented persona designed to impress, suggesting his father is a highly in-demand brain surgeon, coming from a background of wealth and prestige, when the truth is his father (Seymour Cassel) is a barber who works down the street, living a modest means, something Max has a hard time accepting, using this fictitious identity to make friends with Herman Blume (Bill Murray), a 50-year old wealthy industrialist who becomes his patron saint and father figure, both mirror images of one another at different stages in their lives.  Max devises a scheme to build a giant outdoor aquarium, in the wild hopes that Ms. Cross will be romantically appreciative of his efforts, but brings in an unauthorized construction crew to demolish the grounds and place it directly on a baseball diamond, which quickly gets him booted out of school and immediately transferred to public school.  In one of the more preposterous scenes, Max gives a little introductory speech about himself in his new class, still wearing the Rushmore blazer, using 3 X 5 note cards with scribbled notes.  This impresses a young girl, Margaret Yang (Sara Tanaka), but he avoids her like the plague, treating her like she doesn’t exist, still embellishing his love interest with Ms. Cross.  Using a Cat Stevens forgotten classic to describe his fantasized euphoria, Rushmore: Here Comes My Baby YouTube (1:42), her image as his own private tutor deliriously sends him to previously unreachable heights.  But Herman, something of a schmuck himself, betrays him and undermines their friendship by going after his girlfriend, becoming his rival and dreaded enemy, where all bets are off in matters of love and warfare, beautifully expressed in a montage set to The Who’s “A Quick One While He’s Away,” Rushmore: Herman vs. Max  YouTube (3:13), each resorting to dirty tricks, which includes outing this extra-marital affair to the school and Herman’s wife, who’s already two-timing him with a much younger man.  Max, however, is unscrupulous enough to use his broken bicycle as a prop device, spreading some fake blood on his scalp and climbing up Ms. Cross’s window, like Romeo scaling the balcony for Juliet, falling into her bed, as if badly injured, and while she gets bandages, he calculatingly introduces his own cassette recorder playing a soft romantic French ballad sung by Yves Montand for just the right background music (like something Woody Allen would have done in his earlier, funnier films), which she immediately decodes, sending him away in disgrace.  Anderson follows with a wordless montage that couldn’t be more illuminating, Rushmore Soundtrack - I Am Waiting   YouTube (2:40), as he’s out of school working with his father in his barbershop, shamed and humiliated, where he’s just a regular kid leading an ordinary life, living adjacent to the cemetery, not far from his mother’s grave.  Of course it doesn’t remain that way for long, as this guy’s got an innate ability to come up with ingenious projects, like a one-man Barnum & Bailey show, or Bialystock and Bloom in THE PRODUCERS (1967), he’s a promoter at heart.  Reviving yet another extravagant stage production by the Max Fischer Players, tapping into his own theatrical entrepreneurship, Max has a way of reconnecting all his ill-advised schemes, paying penance, this time with a different outcome, or so he hopes, offering a more generous spirit, perhaps even wisdom, becoming part of the whole instead of that lonely and isolated figure in the beginning who thought only of himself, actually finding a celebratory tone, merging with the lofty aspirations of the director, hoping to touch the hearts and imaginations with this irreverent yet delightfully inventive comic romp back through the days of adolescence, becoming an instant classic.