The Story of Lover's Rock

THE STORY OF LOVER’S ROCK               C                    

Great Britain  (96 mi)  2011  d:  Menelik Shabazz                     Official site

Set against the backdrop of riots and racial tensions in South London in 1981, Lover’s Rock identifies a uniquely British adaptation of Jamaican reggae music from the 70’s and 80’s, music that appealed to a large segment of Caribbean culture in London, but was basically banned from playing on the British radio airways.  One music industry commentator noticed that despite the passing of some 40 years, reggae is still not a style of music recognized at the British Music Awards, banned for no other reason other than its racial implications.  The filmmaker, from Barbados, captures the origins of the cultural awakening, where at that time “only the British” were allowed in the pubs, a code word for white, as many of these ex-patriots are British born, where perhaps their parents are from the islands, where they literally had no social outlet until the rise of these Caribbean clubs that catered to mostly all black audiences, accentuating dark lights, a hypnotic bass rhythm, a reggae beat, with romantic lyrics associated with love, creating a rare intimacy in these young teenage lives.  Perhaps the most amusing acknowledgement coming from both men and women looking back at their experience is that the house lights were so dark that you couldn’t identify who you were dancing with except by their body rhythms, where the joined-at-the-hips, rock steady method seemed to be the favored dance method, doing dips and pulsating up and down motions, where the intimacy of the experience was something to be treasured, something kids looked forward to every weekend.  But when the house lights came on and one got an unflattering glimpse of an ugly or unattractive partner, the dance was over.     

Both the phenomena itself and the racial angle show rare insight, but the documentary shows little footage from the times and instead recreates modern era simulated dances through a kind of nostalgia-tinged vantage point, where the teenagers are now middle aged, and the musical performers are singing songs they made famous forty years ago.  Of course one would rather see the real thing instead of a re-enhancement, so instead it relies upon the commentary of various people in the music industry, as well as people who recapture the recollections from their youth, all of which has a way of continually looking backwards.  The music talking heads attempt to suggest there was a difference between British and Jamaican Lover’s Rock, but then provided no musical examples for the audience to compare, also offer a few musical explanations, such as American soul music tends to accentuate the mid-range bass notes, as that sounds better on the radio.  Lover’s Rock, on the other hand, was never played on the radio, but was featured as a kind of house music, so they accentuated a much deeper bass sound, as the rhythm is always led by bass lines, where during the week they may actually practice introducing deejay style reverberations that generate a unique sound over the blasting sound systems, where a sampling of the music might work better than the explanation.  This is the frustrating aspect of the film, as only snippets of the original music are ever heard, instead it’s a soundtrack laden with recreations.       

Many of the original performers offer their views, where especially interesting is the impact of women singers, adding a softer side of the experience, as heard here:  Louisa Mark's (only age 14 at the time) Caught You in a Lie (1975) on YouTube (6:49), where young teens would wait for the deejays to play what was designated couples music, as this intimacy was designed to be shared.  Modern era deejays apparently don’t focus on this softer side anymore, as especially male lyrics tend to be harsh and brutal, showing a razor edge instead of a romantic notion.  Since this Lovers Rock music provided such a healthy outlet to the otherwise constantly harassing racial rejection and abuse of the era, especially since blacks were routinely targeted for crimes by the color of their skin rather than any suspicious or criminal behavior, it is one of the few positive memories of their constantly agitated youth.  Brief footage of the Brixton riots of 1981 is shown, said to be the birth of black rights in Britain as people came out in mass to protest the abusive actions of the policemen, finally standing up for themselves and the continual mistreatment of its own citizens.  The modern era racist inclination to continue to associate reggae in Britain with only black music and culture as a kind of second class status, still denying access to public airwaves, diminishes the international power of the music itself, which preaches one love and one heart, and a kind of universal interracial community living in harmony, beautifully expressed by young Japanese reggae singers who are popular in their own country, and where some of these original Lovers Rock artists are selling first time records to an enthusiastic Japanese audience after having been denied recording contracts in their own nation forty years ago.  One wishes this might have been more thoroughly explored, perhaps from experts outside the music community examining the social implications, as the film leaves a bitter taste of racism at the root of reggae in Britain, with little hope that this will change in the foreseeable future.  

Too Late Blues

TOO LATE BLUES                C+                  

USA  (103 mi)  1961  d:  John Cassavetes

When TOO LATE BLUES was over I thought I would be over too. And then Paramount asked me if I’d like to sign a long-term contract. At that point I realized that success and failure weren’t necessarily success and failure. I had heard so much about people who fail and then get enormous contracts. I never could quite believe it, until it happened to me. Paramount upped my salary to $125,000 a picture. I subsequently learned that [Paramount’s Marty Racklin] had to go to his stockholders and tell them I was a bright guy. He’d built me up, taken a gamble on a guy who wasn’t turning out very well, and he had no real option but to go with me and hope I was smart enough to learn. And I did learn. I learned all the tricks: to get a big office and to ask for anything and everything and insist on it. I told them I wouldn’t do another film unless I wanted to do it and unless I could do it my own way.

—John Cassavetes, from the book ‘Cassavetes on Cassavetes’ by Ray Carney

After the success in Europe of SHADOWS (1959) and a short-lived TV show Johnny Staccato where Cassavetes plays a private eye who sides as a jazz pianist in Greenwich Village (though shot entirely in Los Angeles), Cassavetes was offered a chance to direct his first studio film at Paramount, which the producers (specifically Marty Racklin) felt could target the youth market.  While he signed a contract to develop his own script, it was originally conceived by Richard Carr who he met on the TV show, asking if he wouldn’t come up with something, choosing to rework the third of three stories submitted, where Cassavetes wrote the first half with Richard Carr writing the second half.  He was unable to make any changes within a month of the shoot, and certainly no revisions on the set, as everything had to be worked out ahead of time for a 6-week shooting schedule. Additionally, Cassavetes wanted Montgomery Clift and Gena Rowlands for the two leads, while the studio insisted upon pop singer Bobby Darin (somewhat stiff in his first dramatic role) and Stella Stevens, a Playmate of the Year just the year before in January 1960, also considered at the time one of the ten most photographed women in the world.  Cassavetes also lost the battle to shoot the scenes entirely in New York City’s Greenwich Village jazz scene, with the Studio opting for a nearly entirely interior studio shot film.  These little differences of opinion led to a more reserved and suffocating film, as the Hollywood system itself took all the living and breathing life out of the original conception.  What remains is a downbeat story of a jazz pianist selling out his friends for his own chance at success, one that mimics Cassavetes own career move from New York to Los Angeles to star in a TV show, with hopes of breaking into the movie industry.  While Cassavetes felt the movie got away from him, unable to do any significant rewrites to correct what he felt were script flaws, he was stuck with meeting the 6-week shoot, which meant handing in a movie he wasn’t at all happy with.

Nonetheless, from a Studio’s point of view, even though the film was a critical and box office flop, the fact that the movie was competently completed on time led to their offering him a contract and a raise, which led to his second feature, A Child Is Waiting (1963), where Cassavetes had a meltdown with producer Stanley Kramer, again over the direction of the film, disowning the film when Kramer basically fired him to finish and recut the movie himself.  Despite these run-ins, they gave Cassavetes invaluable experience in shooting a motion picture which eventually led to FACES (1968), written and shot in his own way, using his own timetable, starring his wife Gena Rowlands, and is still considered one of the more groundbreaking works in American independent film.  TOO LATE BLUES, on the other hand, is purely a product of the Studio system.  Ironically released the same year as Martin Ritt’s Paris Blues (1961), starring two American jazz musicians in Paris, Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman, also the music of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington who both make appearances in the film, Cassavetes was originally up for the Paul Newman role, so he was familiar with the script, which bears a few casting and nightclub similarities.  Like that film which was all about music, where the lurid romance was secondary, Cassavetes wanted to throw in 17 new jazz pieces into his film, all featured during the nightclub sequences using the musicians that he met on the Johnny Staccato TV show, some of whom are musicians used here, but this was not to be.  The opening two and a half minutes of the film may be the most inventive in the entire film, seen here:  Bobby Darin in Too Late Blues Part 1 of 12 - YouTube (7:57), similar to his realistic use of children in his next movie, and is one of the few natural scenes in the movie that literally feels unstaged and uninhibited. 

Bobby Darin plays a character named Ghost, who leads an undiscovered jazz quintet seen playing in the opening, which includes Seymour Cassel (in only his second picture) on bass, guys who have been working together for years but are still forced into taking whatever gigs come their way.  Hanging out in a neighborhood bar afterwards, much of the film is set after hours when the guys are drinking, dancing, playing cards, or goofing off, unfortunately featuring the loud overacting of the Greek bar owner Nick Dennis, who, like many of the cast, were brought over from the TV show, including the sleazy agent (Everett Chambers, a producer on the show), the owner of the recording studio (Val Avery), and the Countess (Marilyn Clark).  Ghost’s agent is quickly seen undermining the fragile esteem of the group’s female singer Jess (Stella Stevens), Ghost’s girlfriend, where he’s something of an oily double crosser throughout, always using underhanded tactics to either backstab or showcase his represented talent, who never seem to get a fair shake, but he’s the shady representative of the exclusively financial interests of the music industry, the kind of snake that seems to thrive in the sewer.  After a volatile trial number in a recording studio leads to a follow up recording the next day, the guys (and girl) are out celebrating, where a drunk customer (Vince Edwards) gets into a drunken brawl with the boys, challenging and humiliating Ghost in front of his girl, which sends him plunging into self pity, wanting nothing more to do with any of them.  In Cassavetes original script, there is a ten-minute dreamlike sequence where Ghost goes out and picks up a girl, spending the night together, but this sequence was cut by the Studio in favor of Jess going home with one of the other members of the band and sleeping with him, effectively ending their relationship.

Devastated by the change of events, Ghost shows up at the studio but walks out on the band, calling them a bunch of amateurs he picked up off the street, making a deal with his agent to find gigs showcasing his talent, where he is sponsored by an older women of means, the Countess, who receives sexual favors in return.  This sleazy road to stardom never materializes, sending Ghost back to his roots years later searching for his original band, playing in a dive somewhere in Los Angeles.  Also searching for Jess, where Stella Stevens downward spiral is one of the few superbly realized scenes, but one can easily imagine Rowlands and similar drinking scenes with men at the beginning of FACES, he finds her sadly working the customers at the bar of a flophouse, an intensely sad portrait of dreams gone awry, where she doesn’t wish to be reminded of her former life, creating a sense of hopeless melodrama and despair before Ghost hauls her off to confront the band.  One by one they reject him, rebuffing his attempts to reconcile their differences, until Jess, off to the side of the stage, starts singing the melody of  a song they shared together, bringing them back together again with a reunified sense of optimism and hope as the curtain falls. Once again, this is the Studio imposed upbeat ending, as originally Ghost rejoins the band and starts playing the piano, where the music immediately comes alive as Jess walks out of the club, as he had walked out on her years earlier, where the drive for success has a deep-seeded personal price.  One problem with the use of music in this film is the audience can’t tell the difference between the more creative, supposedly original, avant-garde jazz music and the more sell-out, commercial music that audiences tend to prefer listening to. Much of it written by David Raskin, it tends to fall in the middle somewhere of “pseudo-jazz” where there is little distinction drawn between the various styles, which diminishes the theme of an artist selling out for commercial success, as we never really hear what real art sounds like.  This is a stark contrast with Paris Blues, for instance, which features Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, where the feverish intensity of live music in jammed nightclubs couldn’t be more exhilarating.

You Can Count On Me

YOU CAN COUNT ON ME          A            

USA  (111 mi)  2000  d:  Kenneth Lonergan

I’m not the kind of guy that everyone says I am.         —Terry Prescott (Mark Ruffalo)

A small, independent gem of a film showing a glimpse of life and family strife in a rural upstate New York community, where trees and rolling hills are prevalent, and the idyllic Main Street is the picture of any one-street small American town, which is the setting of a brother and sister reunion.  Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney are Terry and Sammy Prescott, young adults now after being orphaned at an early age when their parents died in a senseless car accident.  Sammy has an 8-year old son Rudy (Rory Culkin), whose absent father stays out of the picture, leaving unanswered questions and a certain curiosity from the child.  Sammy is the kind of responsible, overcontrolling perfectionist that never has a hair out of place while Terry has always been a more aimless drifter that never worries about how things are supposed to be, as he’d never do things that way anyway.  Sammy still lives in their parent’s house, has a respectable job at the bank, and feels connected to the small town community through church and her son’s school affairs, while Terry never allows himself to feel tied down, comes and goes whenever he pleases, and worries his sister sick about being the kind of guy that continually screws up his life.  But Terry is not a bad guy, just a continual fuck-up, still filled with the rebellious, teenage angst from the trouble he likely got into as a child, where he just doesn’t fit in anywhere and doesn’t stick around long enough to find out why.  People tend to like Terry for his friendly affability and offbeat sense of humor, while Sammy has a way of always making other people feel small by continually proving that she is better than they are.  While she’s smart and reliable, she can behave inappropriately, as she takes advantage of others by extending the range of acceptable behavior because she’s usually so good at what she does.  In this way, really, she can be smug and morally superior, answerable to no one, feeling above it all, as if her life matters more than anyone else’s, though she’s loath to admit it. 

Feeling much like a road movie, where life is an isolated journey, oftentimes sad and lonely, this is a toned down, understated search for truth, where there aren’t any real answers, just difficult questions making our lives feel smaller and our friends and family more disconnected, where here the fragmented pieces of people’s lives are connected by a truly sublime unaccompanied Bach cello piece, the Prelude to the Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007 Rostropovich plays the Prelude from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 ... YouTube (1:59) that adds a sacred element to our ordinary lives.  Initially written as a one act play, featuring a conversation between a brother and sister in a restaurant, where the intensity of their outbursts draws the staring attention of others, remaining oblivious to the rules of public decorum, as they’re simply lost in the drama that is their lives.  Both characters couldn’t be more different, but are highly appealing and become fully developed through the clarity of the dialog which is filled with a rich description of their inner complexities, not always what they appear, more often revealing a wounded reaction to the troubling world outside that has never given either one of them a break.  It’s a soul searching, heartbreaking drama filled with wrenching truths about honesty and feeling connected to someone.  The truth often hurts, as people’s lives aren’t something you can control, as they easily veer off track in unimaginable ways that aren’t always apparent, becoming evident at the most inopportune times and often in the most embarrassing of ways.  The film is always changing moods and shifting directions, very much in the moody and irrepressible manner of Terry, whose inner fury simply will not be contained, yet is framed in the luxuriant color of reds and greens, immersed in the woods which are always nearby, told with an exactitude of detail and formal precision that feels meticulously accurate.  The relaxed authenticity of character just feels so naturalistic and comfortable most of the time, where there isn’t an ounce of pretension, gently and intelligently told as if this were our own lives unfolding onscreen.    

         

Linney and Ruffalo give arguably the best performances of their careers, largely because they each so confoundingly do the unexpected, which is what likely endures us to the characters, Ruffalo as the lovable loser who continually wanders astray and Linney as the maternal anchor of both her boys, who surprises us by needing to break the chains of confinement.  Lonergan himself plays an unflappable small-town minister who remains grounded and personally connected to the lives in this community through the troubles they experience, where he’s constantly confronted by the dark side of human woe, offering human support and encouragement without always resorting to Biblical scripture as lofty ivory tower sentiment, as he understands the fragility of the human soul and how easily it breaks down.  His job is to help repair the broken parts, which often takes a lifetime.  Caught between the love of her brother and the need to protect her son, Sammy can be a force to reckon with, driving everyone around her batty, but what works in this film is how the lines of communication remain open, damaged and flawed as that may be, it’s also equally impressive how she willfully remains a connected force in people’s lives, exerting herself in a place of need, someone to look after broken parts and wandering souls, offering that needed touch with reality from time to time.  Ruffalo beautifully expresses that kind of character that has no real affinity for anyplace, that’s hard to pin down, that refuses to be defined, that will spend the rest of his life searching for something just outside his reach, never settling for the middle ground.  He’s a scarred and wounded character that is achingly real, the kind of guy who disappears and gets lost for large periods of time only to resurface later a bit older, wearier, but still open and vulnerable, and still the same guy you love and always hope he will be.  This is as refreshing a portrait of humanity as you’re going to find, driven by the strong performances, always touching and humorous, filled with near reverential small moments that eloquently speak to us long after the movie has ended.  

L'Argent

Director Robert Bresson

L’ARGENT                 A-                  

aka:  Money

France  Switzerland  (85 mi)  1983  d:  Robert Bresson

The corruption of an innocent soul is a familiar theme in Bresson’s works, adapting a Tolstoy short story The Counterfeit Bill, where oddly each are the last works of the two great masters.  But unlike previous works, where the soul is eventually cleansed and finds redemption, not so here, as the misguided protagonist instead becomes consumed by society’s picture of him as damaged goods, tainting him with a Macbethian stain of impurity and corruption that doesn’t wipe off, where his life takes a downward descent into what can only be called Hell.  There was little evidence of God in Bresson’s last picture, but there is none here.  At 82, the French director has created one of his most radical works, where this is another uncompromising glimpse into the human soul, branded with a kind of scorn and bitterness non-existent in other Bresson works.  The finale of this film is simply unfamiliar territory, handled with some of the most exacting filmmaking in Bresson’s career, where the framing and lighting and precise compositional camerawork couldn’t be more sublime, yet the bleak subject matter is shattering.  It’s quite a leap from the banal simplicity of the film’s first hour to the profound devastation of the finale, where the culmination of raw power by the end is unprecedented with this director.  This is hardly the kind of film one enjoys to watch, but this is certainly the kind of storytelling and cinematic art one can’t help but appreciate.      

The story concerns the passing of counterfeit notes, how the passing from one to another only enlarges the scope of the crime, especially when the passing is not accidental but intentional, where individuals may feign innocence to protect themselves, unaware of the damage they cause to others.  Yvon (Christian Patey) is that unlucky someone who just happens to have been stuck with the notes, completely unaware that the money is counterfeit, who picks up a payment during the regular rounds of his delivery, accompanied by a receipt.  When the police pick him up with false money, he returns to the store that handed it to him and they deny any knowledge, even pay off one of their clerks to lie in court to protect the store’s reputation.  Despite a show of leniency by the court, Yvon loses his job anyway, which starts his circuitous path into a life of crime, eventually ending up in jail for a bungled robbery, where he eventually meets one of the clerks from the store that passed him the notes in the first place, who still believes his crime was one without victims.  Yvon’s imprisonment is proof otherwise, where it’s clear all who passed the money are in some way tainted by the crime.  By changing the title of the story, Bresson has also shifted the emphasis to money as a means of exchange, which includes all the nefarious acts associated with it, including lies, embezzlement, and theft, all of which have greater implications than the two individuals making the transaction.       

Once released from prison, the story takes on an onerous shift.  Discovering his wife is lost to him and his daughter dead with diphtheria, Yvon moves far away, staying in a countryside inn where he can’t seem to stop himself from taking advantage of the situation, as rural ways are more lax, and to him, more inviting, beckoning him to rob the place, which he does easily, but also leaves no trace behind, all of which happens offscreen.  What happens next is simply baffling, as the color pattern of the film alters sharply, where the rich hues of a forest colored green meet Yvon just after he passes next to an old woman (Sylvie Van den Elsen), as both quickly pass glances, where his mysterious behavior is just as shocking, as if he internally recognizes this change, suddenly confessing his crime to this woman, who doesn’t seem the least bit phased by it.  As he enters into this new realm, Bresson’s focus couldn’t be more mesmerizing, as his attention to detail is meticulous, using an oil lamp in an otherwise darkened space, adding richness to the color while the film composition by Pasqualino De Santis, who shot the two previous films by Bresson, is equally as masterful.  Because so much happens offscreen, and what remains onscreen is so gorgeously visualized, this has a surreal quality to it, given a very painterly look by Bresson, who was initially a painter, but the dark and dreamlike tone adds so much complexity to the constantly changing atmosphere, as it sneaks up on the viewer and comes out of nowhere.  The finale is simply stunning.  By the end, of course, we are all implicated in this human drama, where absent the guiding hand of God, man has plunged off the edge and fallen into the abyss.