Wild

Author Cheryl Strayed (left) and actress Reese Witherspoon  

Cheryl Strayed  

WILD              B-                   

USA  (115 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Jean-Marc Vallée          Official site

I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told.

—Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, 2012

Adapted from the 2012 memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, this is a case where literature is the better format than film, as most of the story is told through seemingly disconnected, stream-of-conscious thoughts that continually feel fragmented in the film, randomly pulled together through music and flashback sequences, but it all feels so cliché’d, especially the choices of music, which are mere snippets, where the audience never gets a feel for how or why this journey is so essential, other than on a superficial level.  It’s not unusual for people’s lives to fall apart from time to time, but this is certainly an unusual method to put the missing pieces back together again.  By the end, despite the grand poetic gesture, supposedly finding transcendence in the final moment, there’s little reason to believe this character is really any different, as she’s always been the sum of her parts.  The film pales in comparison to the male counterpart, Sean Penn’s Into the Wild (2007), where the characters throughout are more deeply fleshed out and complex, offering more memorable performances, where here it feels more like a mother and daughter film, where neither one is fully revealed, but remain abstract configurations.  Reese Witherspoon purchased the rights to the book, while Oprah listed it on her Oprah's Book Club 2.0 in June, 2012, becoming a #1 best seller for seven weeks, where Witherspoon plays the lead character (author Cheryl Strayed) and is also a producer on the film.  While the backstory is only revealed in flashback, the film counts off the days in 1995 as 26-year old Cheryl begins her journey alone in the Mohave Desert near the Mexican border and follows the Pacific Crest Trail through the mountainous terrain of the Sierra Nevada in California and the southern end of the Cascade Range in Oregon, where hikers have to make sure they complete enough miles every day to reach the opposite end of the trail before weather conditions make snowy sections impassable, targeting several resupply points en route to stock up on food and water, until reaching the Bridge of the Gods traversing the Columbia River at the border of Washington, the lowest elevation of the entire 1100-mile journey that took over 3-months.  While the feat is not to be minimized, something very few could actually accomplish, nonetheless the film itself minimizes the difficulty of the journey and instead attempts to reveal the unfolding narrative through the restlessness anxiety of her interior world.    

While Cheryl Strayed is a novelist and essayist, someone extremely familiar with words and language, this adaptation by Nick Hornby is a poor substitute, as the various sequences never feel connected, but remain isolated moments, as people Cheryl meets along the road simply vanish from view without a word, where they, along with her memories, are like ghosts following her along the trail, where they never materialize into living, breathing human beings that matter to the audience.  Instead, the camera focuses entirely on Cheryl 100% of the time, where everything else is incidental, even the vastness of the wilderness, beautifully photographed by Yves Bélanger, where despite the continuing timeline, there is no real comprehension of time and distance, as the film really takes place inside her head.  While the experience is a document of mood swings, resembling Danny Boyle’s 127 HOURS (2010), it lacks that film’s intensity and sense of desperation as well as the degree of difficulty encountered, though both rely upon the interior world of flashbacks.  In the end it becomes a road movie, where Cheryl’s initial encounters with her own naiveté reflect just how angry and unprepared she is to make such an extreme journey, where the F-word is littered throughout, but she receives needed help and excellent advice along the way.  One of the more unusual scenes is seeing Cheryl and Paul (Thomas Sadoski), her husband of seven years, getting matching tattoos, something they can share forever even as it comes on the day they are getting divorced.  Their familiarity with each other is touching, especially when Cheryl acknowledges she cheated on him, obviously recognizing the cost at that moment, adding that she actually cheated on him a lot.  This may be their closest moment together throughout the film, though it only hints at her own personal descent into reckless drug abuse and a rampant proclivity for sleeping around with any man that so much as looks at her.  Much of these self-destructive experiences are narrated as she hikes along the trail, becoming a parallel world of soul searching through her past that she carries with her throughout her long and arduous ordeal.

Perhaps the heart of the film is her close relationship with her mother Bobbi, Laura Dern, who rescued her and her little brother from an abusive and alcoholic father, yet maintained her dignity and self-esteem throughout the ensuing years of struggle, sacrificing all to make sure her children had a brighter future than her own, suggesting she would never change a thing if it produced something as beautiful as her two children, but she dies quickly at the age of 45 after being diagnosed with lung cancer, fueling a period of rage and self-destruction.  Her own history of sexual violation leaves her even more exposed as a lone traveler through such remote territory, where she has to instantly assess her encounters with various men, where the possibility of sexual violence is always on the back of her mind, yet it’s the terrain she’s chosen to navigate on her own terms.  What’s perhaps most surprising is how few negative encounters she has, where most everyone she meets is helpful and overly friendly, except for a couple of leering, beer guzzling DELIVERANCE (1972) guys carrying bows and arrows, who find it most peculiar to run into a woman alone in the woods, though we never get a clear picture of just how much time is spent alone.  When she wanders into the heart of civilization, where a guy is passing out flyers for a musical tribute to Jerry Garcia, who just passed away, she jolts at the closeness of his physical presence, something she’s obviously not been used to for several months, where she has to recalibrate her bearings.  But apparently it’s like riding a bike, as in no time she’s hopped into the sack with the same guy, heading back out the next morning.  Particularly because she crosses through some of the prime real estate for pot growing in America, one wonders what might have been cleaned up for the movie, as drug use is not uncommon for back packers in that neck of the woods, but this subject is completely glossed over without incident.  While we assume Cheryl has gone through some psychological trajectory, this is never evident, though a final sequence attempts to grow increasingly transcendent without ever actually rising to the moment.  It recalls a more dramatically compelling bridge sequence at the end of Chris Eyre’s SMOKE SIGNALS (1997), where both films attempt to reconcile the violence and discord of their pasts with a Siddhartha-like moment of self-realization. 

2013 Top Ten List #2 Laurence Anyways

LAURENCE ANYWAYS       A           
Canada  France  (168 mi)  2012  d:  Xavier Dolan        Official site [Canada]

Two pale figures
Ache in silence
Timeless
In the quiet ground
Side by side
In age and sadness

I watched
And acted wordlessly
As piece by piece
You performed your story
Moving through an unknown past
Dancing at the funeral party

Memories of childrens dreams
Lie lifeless
Fading
Lifeless
Hand in hand with fear and shadows
Crying at the funeral party

I heard a song
And turned away
As piece by piece
You performed your story
Noiselessly across the floor
Dancing at the funeral party

—The Cure - The funeral party - YouTube (4:15), 1981

Easily one of the movie experiences of the year, yet this film was inexplicably chosen to bypass theaters from the entire Chicagoland region and instead played for less than a week in the barren and isolated realm of South Barrington in a 30 theater Cineplex that sits in the middle of an empty field, where at the time tickets were purchased the box office clerk had never heard of this film, where a friend and I were the only two patrons (perhaps all day, perhaps all week) to watch this incredible movie.  Only 19 and 21 when he made his first two movies, now 23-years of age making his first film that does not star the director, he nonetheless writes an original script, directs, edits, subtitles, produces, and does the costume design for his third film, something of an epic romance, a film navigating ten years in the complex and turbulent relationship between a couple in the throes of love where at age 35 the man becomes an openly female transsexual, a gender shift that tests the boundaries of love and tolerance.  The cinematic reach of this film is simply outstanding, where one would be hard pressed to find a more originally conceived film all year, where the fluidity of the slo-mo and hand-held camera movement by Yves Bélanger is balanced by perfectly composed shots, likely by the director himself, where the look of the film is meticulously shaped.  The acting throughout is superb, especially the passionate and powerful performances of the two leads, Melvil Poupaud (who first worked for Raúl Ruiz at age 9 and a last-minute replacement for Louis Garrel) from Ozon’s HIDEAWAY (2009) and TIME TO LEAVE (2005) as the more subdued Laurence and Suzanne Clément as the fiery Frédérique, more commonly called Fred, where there are blown up moments of anger and melodramatic excess, but also quietly heartfelt moments of restraint that express an intimate sincerity, approaching a kind of honesty rarely seen in films today. 

Not since Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret (2011) has a film delivered so many sensational sequences, where the sheer originality factor is impressive, as every scene is beautifully set up, and Dolan’s exquisite use of music can be jaw-dropping on occasion.  Some may feel cheated that the story only tangentially explores gender identification, never approaching a sex change, that it is far more about the tragic effects of an impossible love saga between two strong-willed, artistically inclined characters.  Both, however, are clearly defined, where at nearly three hours in length the film is a marathon for all concerned, where the emotional peaks and valleys are explored at length, delivering cluster bombs of emotion, giving the film a novelesque scope, thoroughly taking its time, often lingering far longer with characters than other auteurs might dare, a common criticism of Cassavetes as well, giving the film a few jagged edges and a feeling of imperfection, where this is not the shortened product as a result of studio demands, but already feels like the extended director’s cut.  Despite claims of youthful indulgence or exaggerated overstylization that make conventional filmmaking seem like ancient history, it remains one of the best and most convincingly moving films seen all year due to the director’s unflappable persistence in accentuating such a deeply felt, carefully nuanced level of humanism.        

Set in and around Montreal during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, the story spans an entire decade, using a completely naturalistic film style intermixed with surrealist bursts of inspiration, where perhaps no one uses music to the same dazzling effect as Dolan, expressing the state of mind of the characters while also providing an infectious dose of youthful energy.  The film begins in an empty apartment, curtains flapping in the breeze, as a door closes like an ending chapter from a book, as Laurence walks outdoors into the light of day dressed as a woman, drawing looks of curiosity and surprise, perhaps even flirting with danger, set to Fever Ray’s “If I Had A Heart” Exclusive: Watch The Opening Sequence From Xavier Dolan's ...  (2:23), where Dolan startlingly provokes the audience with a montage of close-ups and faces, where the viewing audience itself is reeled into this spectator observation mode, becoming part of a collective Greek chorus that bears witness to the events we are about to see.  All in all, this is an exceptionally delivered opening sequence, before backtracking and telling the story entirely in flashback.  Laurence is a 35-year old award winning novelist and literature professor who asks his students questions like:  “Can one’s writing be great enough to exempt one from the rejection and ostracism that affects people who are different?” while Fred works as an assistant director in the movie industry.

All of Dolan’s films are comments on gay culture, where this one may dig the deepest, showing inconsistencies between the progressive idealization and the reality of everyday life, where the shallowness of looks and appearances somewhat unexpectedly is part of the equation, intruding into areas of desire.  The couple’s happiness is expressed early on through a black light sequence, Laurence Anyways - Club scene [The Cure - Funeral Party] (1:25), where the untapped joy, energy and exuberance can be unnerving and a bit overwhelming, appearing larger than life, until out of nowhere, on Fred’s birthday, Laurence announces he’s been living a lie, that he can’t go on living as a man anymore, knowing in his soul that he was always meant to be woman, comparing it to holding one’s breath underwater for over 30 years, finally allowed to surface for air.  Initially, finding this outrageous, Fred is aghast and thinks nothing could be more cruel, but soon comes around to realizing that whatever it is, irrespective of the abject negativity Laurence has received from both families, especially Fred’s bitchy sister, Monia Chokri, a dour picture throughout of pessimism and gloom, deciding she needs to be there for Laurence, becoming her biggest supporter, helping her through the transition with hair, makeup and clothing.  After a few failed attempts, Laurence arrives in the classroom dressed as a woman, to a pall of silence, broken finally by a question asked about homework, but the state of mind is sumptuously revealed to the music of Headman’s “Moisture (Headman Club Mix)” Laurence Anyways (2012) Best Scene YouTube (2:33).

Despite the cruel difficulties that Laurence must endure, where prejudice contributes to a whopping 41% attempted suicide rate among the transgendered, even worse for non-whites or those living outside metropolitan areas, the film exhibits various stages of shaky confidence, where her life is never trouble free, including getting the crap beat out of her, exactly as portrayed in Fassbinder’s mother of all transgender films, In a Year of 13 Moons (In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden... (1978), it also leads to a mental breakdown of sorts from Fred, who is ill-prepared to handle such a major psychological change, as she feels her life literally coming apart, where the camera follows each of them as they go their separate ways, feeling a bit like the tragic end of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cher... (1964), where another all-consuming love gets lost and slowly fades from view, yet remains very much alive in the minds and imaginations of the viewing audience.  Fred’s re-entry into fashionable high society is expressed in a surreal entrance to an extravagant society ball, where she literally floats into the party, to the music of Visage’s “Fade to Grey” Laurence Anyways - Scène du Bal - YouTube (2:58), where the director can be seen lighting a cigarette at 17 seconds.  Laurence maintains a somewhat masculine look and retreats into the fringe regions of transgender society, including a family of aging drag queens and burlesque singers that feel right out of a Fellini movie, preferring a self-imposed isolation where she can write and heal her own wounds. 

Perhaps the scene of the film is set to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, a composition of manic and furious energy, where after continually being denied entrance back to her parent’s house, for fear of how this radical transformation might effect her father, she finally returns to the front door drenched in a downpour of rain, a truly pathetic sight, where her mother, a picture of chilly, overcontrolled perfection as played by the stately Nathalie Baye, simply can endure no more, picking up the television that her husband is continually planted in front of and slams it to the ground, inviting Laurence into the doorway in full view of her father, deciding straightaway to get a divorce, where her life will forever include the daughter she never had.  For Laurence and Fred, however, attempts to stay together do not end so well, where we are treated to an emotional blitzkrieg of accusations and confessional outpourings, with an incendiary performance by Suzanne Clément (showing at least a dozen different hairstyles) that should elevate her to the cover of fashion magazines and star status, where she ferociously defends the man/woman she loves, Laurence Anyways - Restaurant Scene (English Subtitle) YouTube (2:31), utterly confused herself by what it all means, where Dolan repeatedly drags us through the mud of hopeless despair, rubbing our noses in the derailed aftereffects of a broken romance, until sheer exasperation drives them away.  While they do briefly reunite years later, expressed with a giddy Surrealist happiness in the winter snow, Laurence Anyways - Ile au Noir scene (1:48), it quickly fades again into a distant memory, as the film is about how brutally hard it is to survive loving someone, where Dolan’s brilliance in depicting an aura of love transcends the transgender story of what it means to be your true self, as the film ends on a beautiful grace note back at the beginning, with a door opening at the first sparks of love, when “everything was strange and new.”     

Dallas Buyer's Club

 









Ron Woodroof

 




Ron Woodroof

DALLAS BUYER’S CLUB         B       
USA  (117 mi)  2013  d:  Jean-Marc Vallée      Official site

Apparently this story has been lying around for awhile, as in the mid 90’s Dennis Hopper was initially signed on to direct the film with Woody Harrelson as Ron Woodroof, but the money never came together.  While uncredited, which is a bit unfathomable, the origin of the movie comes from a lengthy  newspaper story called Buying Time written by Bill Minutaglio from the Dallas Life Magazine, published August 9, 1992, which can be read in its entirety on Robert Wilonsky’s Pop Culture Blog, For Matthew McConaughey, next up is true-life tale of 'The Dallas ....  The timing of the article was significant as Woodroof died just a few days after the article appeared in print.  Writers Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack are credited with writing the story, but they are actually adapting someone else’s story who should be compensated for their work.   Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), described by Minutaglio as a man “who cursed like four sailors,” is an enigmatic figure, as he’s your typical redneck Texas homophobe who hated “faggots” throughout his lifetime, as he was likely killed by a bisexual partner having sex with his girlfriend, as both were diagnosed as HIV+ in 1985 at a time when the expression hadn’t even been invented yet, as everyone was still labeled under the single AIDS category, as contracting the disease at that time meant sure death, as there were no medications offered.  Woodroof was a licensed electrical contractor and part-time rodeo rider known for his fearless nature while living a hard life of boozing, smoking, sniffing cocaine, and womanizing. The film leaves out a girlfriend, where she’s replaced by any number of attractive women for hire, where using condoms was exclusively something for kids.  When Woodroof ends up in the hospital for a work-related injury, his white blood cells are nearly non-existent, where doctors can’t even scientifically offer an explanation for why he’s still alive, informing him that he has 30 days remaining to live.  Angry and in denial about being told he has a “faggot’s” disease, he’s even more disappointed to discover there’s no treatment.

Showing amazing foresight and resiliency, he spends his time in Dallas libraries researching all the known information about the disease, discovering there is a government trial program administering AZT, which is the only known drug to have any effect, though there are significant side effects.  Also, this was still in the clinical trial stage, which takes months and years before results can be tabulated.  When you’ve been diagnosed as terminally ill, somehow the side effects aren’t your real worry, as it’s more about what’s killing you.  Losing 40 pounds for the role, McConaughey is an emaciated skeleton of a man whose life is slipping away from him.  Unable to legally buy AZT, he’s able to obtain some on the black market, as he has ready cash, but this pipeline closes when they lock it up in the hospitals.  He is, however, given a doctor’s name in Mexico that has the drug.  Driving the seven hours to Nuevo Laredo, he nearly collapses at the door.  What he does discover is an American doctor, Dr. Vass (Griffin Dunne), who’s been stripped of his license, but continues to practice in Mexico where his own research concludes that AZT is too strong, that it kills all the healthy cells, but that a patient’s health improves with vitamin and protein supplements.  Incredibly, Woodroof was still alive 3 month’s later, and his blood count was improving once he stopped taking AZT, which nearly killed him.  Returning back to Dallas with a trunkful of medicine, he began selling it to patients desperate for an alternative, one of whom is closer to the AIDS community than he is, a transvestite named Rayon (Jared Leto, in his first film in four years, who lost 30 pounds for the role), who becomes his business partner.  Together they rake in the money, but the FDA officials are on their heels, threatening to shut them down, which they eventually do, confiscating all their medicine.  When they re-open for business, they don’t sell drugs anymore, but buyer’s club subscriptions, where a monthly payment entitles the buyer to a month’s worth of pharmaceutical drugs.

While the film does show the Texas aversion to homosexuality, where discrimination is the rule, not the exception, Woodroof is initially skeptical to even be seen in the company of gays, but eventually he makes it into gay bars, where nearly all his customers hang out.  He and Rayon are a love/hate relationship in progress, continually getting on each other’s nerves, but they make a ton of dough while offering people the only known product that inhibits the progress of the HIV virus, so there are literally lines out their door for help.  While the film takes a shot at how the pharmaceutical business pays the FDA for what they want marketed and distributed, where AZT became the most expensive drug available, even with horrific side effects, the movie muddles any real developing connection in this area, as eventually it was determined the initial doses of AZT used were too high and the lowered doses used today have been much more successful.  In the early days of AIDS research, little was actually known, and what was known wasn’t released to the public fast enough.  Woodroof represents an anti-government strain at the time, especially since President Reagan and his Republican conservatives, largely supported by rabidly anti-gay religious fundamentalists, didn’t believe in government help, where by 1984 there were 2000 deaths and more than 4000 reported cases of AIDS in America, yet he remained indifferent to a national health crisis, only addressing the issue in 1987 near the end of his second term, forming a year-long commission to study the devastating effects of the disease, when by that time nearly 21,000 were dead and 36,000 Americans were diagnosed with AIDS.  The politics of the era are completely left out of the film, as are the medical statistics, where HIV currently infects 34 million people worldwide per year, where 10% of them are children.  

The use of Jennifer Garner is little more than a generic Hollywood treatment that demands a leading lady, and while she is terrific as a sympathetic hospital doctor who grows suspicious of the deadly effects of AZT, she also develops friendly relations with Woodroof, becoming a kind of romantic interest, especially since her normal looking physique stands out among streams of skeletal AIDS patients.  While the film can get ghoulish, with ghostly looking, overly emaciated clientele that resemble concentration camp survivors, the film interestingly adds the mysterious music of T-Rex, “Main Man” T. Rex - Main Man - YouTube (4:21) and “Life Is Strange” Marc Bolan and T. Rex - Life is Strange - YouTube (2:10), also an interesting joke where Rayon plasters their office with photos of lead singer Marc Bolan on the wall that Woodroof amusingly mistakes for Boy George.  After making the trip to Mexico some 300 times over the course of his lifetime, the life-saving network of smuggling underground experimental AIDS medications eventually comes to an end when the FDA tightens their restrictions, preventing medicines from other nations from entering the country, forcing AIDS patients to enter a bureaucratic maze of governmental dead ends and disillusionments.  The film is shot by cinematographer Yves Bélanger, who filmed Xavier Dolan’s Laurence Anyways (2012), yet here his use of handheld cameras expresses the restless anxiety of the characters who are racing to find a way to combat this disease, having literally no time to waste.  Despite the film’s best efforts, it doesn’t capture the nation’s dreaded fear of the disease, where no one was prepared for this, when at the time people were even afraid to touch AIDS patients, much less hug them.  It was an era when hospital workers were instructed to wipe down seats with Clorox where AIDS patients sat, where there was so much homophobia and racism surrounding the disease, creating terrible times, when no one would talk openly about the disease, including the government.  The film eulogizes Woodroof as an AIDS activist who’s something of a saint, while also portraying him as an utterly contemptible human being and a lifelong bigot, yet his predicament raises the question of when is breaking the law actually for the public good, as his underground pressure did shed needed light onto the government’s inactions, as they’d been dragging their feet for nearly five years, eventually forcing them to act more responsibly (which the film never shows) by providing needed medications to all American HIV patients, which by now effectively suppresses the spread of the virus.