By Govindini Murty. Kat Coiro’s While We Were Here (see a clip above) is the latest in a tradition of stories about travelers whose lives are transformed by Italy. From Goethe’s famous trip to Italy and its echoes in his Wilhelm Meister novels to William Wyler’s Roman Holiday, Merchant Ivory’s A Room With a View, and Mike Newell’s Enchanted April, Italy has long worked its magic on voyagers to its mythic shores.
While We Were Here presents an understated variation on this familiar theme. Jane (Kate Bosworth), a quiet and somewhat melancholy writer, journeys to southern Italy with her husband, the dour Leonard (Iddo Goldberg). Leonard, a viola player, has been invited to perform in a concert in Naples. While Leonard spends his days in rehearsal, Jane wanders the streets of Naples, experiencing life at second-hand. The mediated nature of Jane’s existence is reinforced by the fact that rather than interact with any of the locals, she spends her time listening to tape-recorded conversations of her Grandmother Eves (Claire Bloom) discussing her experiences during WWII. All this is purportedly for a book that Jane is writing, but Grandma Eves’ lively reminiscences about life during the war form a pointed contrast to Jane’s anomie in the peace and plenty of the present. One day Jane makes an impulsive decision to take a ferry to the island of Ischia off the coast of Naples – and there falls into a romance with an American lad named Caleb (Jamie Blackley) living a carefree existence on the island.
Kate Bosworth and Jamie Blackley in "While We Were Here."
While We Were Here is essentially a three-character chamber drama that plays outdoors in the glorious settings of Naples and Ischia. All the character’s problems are of an internal nature. Jane and Leonard have marriage problems, but even as Jane tries to address them, the gloomy Leonard prefers to disappear into the work of his viola rehearsals. Jane wants to write a book about her grandmother’s experiences in WWII, but she’s worried she can’t make the book interesting because of a lack of engagement on her part.
Kate Bosworth as Jane.
As for Caleb, his disruptive influence on Jane and Leonard’s lives is overtly likened to that of Dionysus, with one scene taking place in a grape arbor on Ischia and Caleb himself somewhat resembling Caravaggio’s portrait of the vine-bedecked god. However, even as Caleb pursues Jane, he has no job and no plans for his life. He quotes Vittoria Colonna’s sonnets to Michelangelo as he and Jane tour an Aragonese castle, he takes Jane riding on a scooter and swimming in the ocean, but their relationship doesn’t seem destined for much more than that. Indeed, it seems to be her grandmother’s voice-over about the fun she had with her American and Belgian boyfriends during WWII that spurs Jane on to her affair with Caleb in the first place. Ultimately, Jane makes her own choices, but the person having the most fun with life in the film may just be Claire Bloom’s earthy, albeit unseen, Grandma Eves.
While We Were Here is not only an homage to the great “voyage to Italy” films, but, with its black and white cinematography, also evokes the look of classic Italian Neorealist drama. As Jane wanders through the narrow streets of Spaccanapoli, one would almost expect a young Sophia Loren, in her role as a voluptuous pizza maker in De Sica’s The Gold of Naples, to appear around the corner. And though Kate Bosworth might be the physical opposite of Sophia Loren, her slim blonde beauty and reserved quality do resemble that of such ‘60s actresses as the pixyish Jean Seberg from Godard’s Breathless (even down to the striped sailor top) and the cool, lovely Monica Vitti in Antonioni’s masterpiece of alienation, L’Avventura. Beyond looks though, Bosworth’s strong, sensitive acting forms the emotional core of the film (in particular in one standout scene with Goldberg’s Leonard), and she and Blackley have a number of amusing scenes in which their easy banter make the movie eminently watchable.
Romance in Italy.
Regardless, it’s enough for me that the film is set in Naples and Ischia. Naples is one of my favorite cities, and although I haven’t yet made it to Ischia (I opted for Capri instead on a trip some years ago), it was delightful to see again the streets and sights of old Neapolis. I have many fond memories of wandering the narrow thoroughfares of Spaccanapoli (under which lie ancient Roman streets), down the long Via Toledo, through the 19th century glass and wrought iron Galleria Umberto I, and into the Cafe Gambrinus (den of literati and revolutionaries) for an espresso. Other favorite sights that appear in the film include the Teatro San Carlo, the vast hemispherical Piazza del Plebiscito with its Neoclassical church, and the impressive facade of the Bourbon-era Palazzo Real. The latter in particular has a charming old library surrounded by dusty palm trees that overlook the massive walls of the medieval Castel Nuovo (only in a land as ancient as Italy is a medieval castle described as ‘new’!). Even if the film’s characters don’t seem to revel in their surroundings, we certainly can.
By Govindini Murty. In the midst of a movie season dominated by special-effects blockbusters, it’s nice to see smaller-scale indie films that celebrate the human within technology. Lee Kirk’s The Giant Mechanical Man, a selection of the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival currently available on VOD (video on demand), depicts two sensitive souls looking for meaning within the machinery of the modern city. Set in Detroit, the title also evokes the industrial heritage of the city, with elegant montages that resemble sequences from such classic ‘20s documentaries as Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler’s Manhatta or Walter Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a City.
The Giant Mechanical Man stars Jenna Fischer as Janice, a shy and insecure thirty-something struggling to find purpose in her life. She works as a temp but her lack of focus gets her fired – forcing her to move in with her picture-perfect, blonde, ambitious sister Jill (Malin Akerman) and her dentist husband. Tim (Chris Messina) is also a thirty-something loner adrift in the big city. He spends his days as a performance artist on the streets of Detroit playing a robot-like figure on stilts known as the Giant Mechanical Man.
The opening of the film features a striking, almost avant-garde sequence. Tim dons silver face paint, a silver suit, and stilts, puts on a silver bowler hat and – grabbing a silver umbrella – heads down the streets with a purposeful stride that is an ironic commentary on the businessmen around him going to work. Tim’s Giant Mechanical Man is an exaggerated, postmodern version of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, the subject of the best-selling 1955 novel by Sloan Wilson about a businessman who struggles to find meaning in his career.
When a local news show asks Tim why he does his act, he explains:
“I thought that it might brighten people’s lives up. … I guess I feel like modern life can be alienating … you’re mindlessly walking through it like a robot and you can feel lost. … Maybe if you see a giant mechanical man wandering down the street towards you, it would help to put it into perspective, you know?”
Jenna Fischer and Chris Messina in "The Giant Mechanical Man."
Janice sees Tim performing on the street and feels a connection with him, recognizing in his mechanical motions her own sense of being just a cog in the machine of the city. Through serendipity, Janice and Tim then both get jobs at the Fillmore Zoo. The zoo serves as yet another metaphor for the entrapment of humans in modern city life, with Tim at one point even comically pretending to be one of the exhibits. Janice and Tim strike up a friendship that turns into romance, but Tim is unable to tell Janice that he is the mechanical man. All this is further complicated by her sister Jill’s efforts to set Janice up with a self-absorbed author of motivational books, played with gusto by Topher Grace.
Woven into the story is Janice and Tim’s love of silent movies. As in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, a love of silent movies in Mechanical Man is used to indicate an affinity for the poetic and the romantic. Janice watches Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid and Buster Keaton’s The General – perhaps drawn to both films because they feature wistful, sensitive characters who resemble herself.
The Giant Mechanical Man is a sweet, feel-good alternative to this summer’s action-heavy movie fare. Jenna Fischer and Chris Messina are both charming in their roles, and the quirky cast of supporting characters deftly play their parts. I especially appreciate the fact that Chris Messina’s Tim is a gentleman, standing up at one point to some misogynistic yuppie characters at a business party. I would have liked to have seen more stylistic experimentation in the film to highlight the theme of mechanization, but director Lee Kirk nonetheless shows in his debut feature a nice touch for genuine emotion and humanistic values.
The movie’s air of romance carried over into real life, as well, with star Jenna Fischer and director Lee Kirk falling in love during the shoot and getting married – a sweet, real world ending to a charming movie tale. The Giant Mechanical Man is currently available from Tribeca Films on video on demand through June 19th.
"The Avengers" was photographed digitally, whereas "The Dark Knight Rises" was shot on film.
[Editor’s Note: the piece below was featured today on the front page of The Atlantic.]
Digital moviemaking is on the rise, but some high-profile directors still shoot popcorn flicks the old way.
By Jason Apuzzo & Govindini Murty. This summer, Hollywood’s blockbusters are engaging in a high-stakes format war between cutting-edge digital technology and old-fashioned, photochemical film. Digitally photographed thrillers like The Avengers, Prometheus, and The Amazing Spider-Man will be battling it out with equally epic movies shot on film such as The Dark Knight Rises, Men in Black 3, and Battleship. Indeed, no summer in recent memory boasts so much variety in terms of how films are photographed and exhibited.
Yet with studios looking to trim costs on increasingly expensive “tentpole” movies, traditional celluloid film—easily the more expensive of the two formats—may be on its way out as the cinema’s medium of choice. Still, advocates of film continue to make compelling arguments about why theirs is the more enduring medium, even as both sides pull out their biggest guns this summer in an effort to prove definitively the commercial value of their respective formats.
Right now, advocates of film have numbers on their side. Of this summer’s major blockbusters, more were shot on film than digitally. Aside from The Dark Knight Rises, Men in Black 3, and Battleship, other summer tentpole movies filmed photochemically include Snow White and the Huntsman, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and The Bourne Legacy.
But digital technology has the momentum and the prestigious advocates who will likely help it win out eventually.
For the rest of the article please visit The Atlantic.
By Govindini Murty. The best films about Communism nowadays are emerging from countries whose citizens have directly experienced Communist rule. One sees this in the wave of films coming out of Eastern Europe as well as in recent Chinese documentaries like High Tech, Low Life that just screened at the Tribeca Film Festival. Eastern European filmmakers, perhaps having more distance from life under the Communist boot, tend to take a farcical, absurdist approach when it comes to depicting totalitarian oppression. Croation director Slobodan Karajlovic’s narrative short Easter Eggs, which screened at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, follows in this tradition by showing what happens when Communist intolerance targets a family’s innocent Easter celebration.
Set in 1970s Yugoslavia, Easter Eggs depicts a mother who is determined that her young son and daughter enjoy Easter the way she did as a child – with an egg hunt, special tea, and commemoration of Christian ritual. The only problem is that her husband is a vehement Communist opposed to all signs of Christianity – even when practiced in the privacy of the home. A career-minded army officer, he is convinced that any sign of ideological deviation in his family will be disastrous for his career. As he rants at his wife when she persists in practicing Christianity: “You work against me, you work against the country.” Their child, the unseen narrator of the film, describes him as “an ingrained and incorrigible Communist.”
Looking forward to Easter.
Nonetheless, the mother secretly arranges an Easter celebration for her children when her husband leaves for work, hiding eggs in the living room, setting up a nice tea table, and placing a cross on the sideboard. In one of the funniest moments of the film, the children look at the figure on the cross and ask if it is Tito, the communist dictator of Yugoslavia. The mother answers “It’s not Tito, it’s Jesus.”
Things then take a somewhat melodramatic turn, but Karajlovic keeps a nice balance between comedy and drama in depicting the horrifying reality of life in communist Yugoslavia. Evoking the drab colors and settings of life in the Eastern bloc, while humorously depicting the army officer father’s obsession with his mustache and his demands for heated underpants, Easter Eggs follows in the absurdist style of such favorite films of ours as the Estonian-Finnish documentary Disco and Atomic War. Like Disco, Easter Eggs shows how average citizens through small or symbolic acts of resistance can subvert apparently monolithic communist and totalitarian ideologies. Recommended for anyone interested in celebrating freedom through film.
By Govindini Murty. Cat owners through the ages have pondered the pressing question: where do their furry feline friends go all day? Seth Keal’s charming Tribeca short film CatCam documents the efforts of a German engineer named Juergen Perthold to solve this very question. Juergen lives in South Carolina and adopts – or is rather, adopted by – an insouciant stray tabby cat whom he names Mr. Lee. Mr. Lee disappears for hours and sometimes days on end, and yet mysteriously returns not hungry for food.
Determined to find out where Mr. Lee is going on his adventures, Juergen devises a small camera that dangles from the cat’s collar, and activated by motion, takes periodic photos of what the cat sees. The results are remarkable. The photos reveal that Mr. Lee leads an active life roaming through the neighborhood and into the nearby countryside – encountering a busy network of cat friends (and the odd cat foe) along the way. Juergen posts his cat’s story and photos online – and soon Mr. Lee is an internet sensation.
Neighborhood cat/award-winning photographer Mr. Lee in "CatCam."
Fans write from around the country asking how they can buy a version of Juergen’s camera so they can see what their own cats are up to. International media pick up the story of the auteur cat who takes pictures. A prestigious European photography contest even awards Mr. Lee a prize for his daringly composed, impressionistic photos. This leads to a heated controversy in Europe over whether there is an “intentionality” behind Mr. Lee’s photos – an “artistic eye” that entitles him to be deemed “a photographer.” Ultimately, Mr. Lee is more interested in the shrimp served in his silver prize cup than in the prize itself – showing that despite his celebrity, he still has all four paws firmly planted on the ground.
Definitely recommended and recently the winner of the documentary short jury prize at SXSW, CatCam can be seen at future screenings to be detailed on the film’s website.
Wearing dark shades, and clutching my plastic media badge and a $7 bag of greasy popcorn, I stealthily ducked into a Chelsea multiplex to watch some of my youth flicker by across the big screen.
When I say ‘my’ youth, I’m also talking about the youth of millions of other guys who were teenagers during the late 1980s and tuned into politics. If you were around at that time, there’s probably one name you’ve never forgotten – no matter how hard you’ve tried: Morton Downey, Jr.
The movie I was watching was the probing and hilarious new documentary, Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie. If you never had the chance to experience Downey in his prime, you really missed something. Downey was easily the most popular and controversial TV talk show host of his day – although that’s sort of like saying Genghis Khan was the most popular and controversial equestrian of his day. It doesn’t really capture the scale or the savagery of the phenomenon.
Downey was the id of the 1980s – a real-life Howard Beale, if you remember Paddy Chayefsky’s Network. Like some wild, genetic fusion of Howard Stern, Michael Savage and Howard Cosell, Downey invented the modern political talk show almost overnight during his colorful, meteoric career in the late 1980s – while becoming a tongue-in-cheek folk hero for political junkies like myself, especially (but not exclusively) for those of the teenage male persuasion.
Part rock star (he was a former singer, like his famous father), part populist firebrand, part stand-up comedian, Downey transformed political debate on TV from the staid, genteel disquisitions of David Brinkley’s “This Week” program into something closer to a Vegas floor show – or a night with the Rat Pack. Dangling his trademark cigarette, and wielding a cutting wit, Downey turned the political talk show into the kind of uninhibited, boozy, late-night pleasure it had never been before – and has never really been since.
Watching Downey do his routine all over again in Évocateur (more on the film below), several ideas came to mind about how to liven-up today’s creaky political talk shows:
Talk show maverick Morton Downey, Jr.
1. Encourage In-Studio Fistfights.
Let’s face it: most guests on today’s talk shows look like they’re just going through the motions – like they’re only concerned with their hair, and with being invited back. When was the last time someone upended a table, or stormed off a cable news show? It never happens anymore. Before Downey’s show, no one had ever seen political activists throw chairs at each other on national television, or watched ACLU lawyers battle screaming teenagers with mohawks, or watched Hollywood directors get dragged off stage – their legs flailing helplessly, as Downey’s working-class crowd hooted with joy. Downey’s guests were passionate, and always willing to put their bodies on the line when it counted (watch the legendary Al Sharpton-Roy Innis throwdown). There should be more fistfights, and table- and chair-throwing on political talk shows today – then maybe we’ll believe more of the nonsense these shows are spouting.
2. Bring Back Live Studio Audiences!
Why are today’s political talk show hosts so afraid of live studio audiences? Downey began his shows by high-fiving his crowd, even kissing the women in his studio audience. Downey’s hyped-up, seemingly inebriated audience (they often dressed in Halloween costumes) was encouraged to talk back to the show’s guests from a lectern known as ‘The Loudmouth.’ It was at ‘The Loudmouth’ that the audience lived out the primal fantasy of speaking truth to power – as teenagers, truck drivers, dental assistants and other regular folk got their chance to berate corrupt officials, phony celebrities, radical professors or gasbag political activists. It was this cathartic opportunity to abuse and humiliate the powerful that gave Downey’s show its special electricity. (“Step up to the Loudmouth” even became a catchphrase of the day.)
Downey with Al Sharpton.
3. Invite Actual Human Beings on as Guests.
This is an important point: consultants, political strategists and journalists should be replaced by actual human beings on political talk shows. Although media figures of today like Al Sharpton, Gloria Allred and Alan Dershowitz got their first big breaks on Downey’s show (alongside even wilder guests like Joey Ramone of The Ramones, or Ace Frehley of Kiss), Downey rarely played it easy by inviting on the usual pundits – or even people conversant in the English language – to talk about issues. He instead found people who were colorful, off-beat, or in some way good foils for him and his hyper-charged studio audience. As a result, a lot of all-too-real people made their way onto his show: street hustlers, pro wrestlers, strippers, UFO conspiracy theorists, communists, small-time evangelists. Not even Fox News covers as much ground in this respect as Downey once did.
4. Boot Bad Guests Off the Show – Frequently.
This is the flipside of #3. Downey took great relish in booting dull or belligerent guests off his show – and this is really something today’s political shows should consider doing. Although Downey invited the most radical, combative and often freakish public figures of his day onto his show, sometimes their schtick didn’t work and the guest had to be cut loose – quickly. As an example from today, Fox News keeps bringing on some guy who’s listed as a ‘conservative comedian’ – but the guy’s never made me laugh once. He should be barked-at and ridiculed by Bill O’Reilly, then hauled off by security guards while a live studio audience throws wads of Kleenex at him. Then he might be fun to have around.
Firing up the crowd.
5. Get Up Off Your Behind!
Downey was rarely seated on his show; he prowled around the set for the full hour, gesticulating with a cigarette, pointing at the camera, hovering over his guests and bantering with the studio audience. It brought pizzazz and theatricality to the show. Plus, Downey understood that he was the real star of his show, which he why his guests as a rule stayed firmly planted in their seats – under threat of getting booted. Today’s hosts should get off their asses, get out from behind their desks, and start moving around more.
6. Drop the Dress Code.
Part of why people are so inhibited on today’s shows is that everybody dresses like they’re at a GE stock holders meeting. It’s boring. Downey frequently came onto his show in jeans, sans coat or tie. He also dressed up as Dracula once, and even wore war paint and army fatigues. Plus, his audience members sometimes dressed as gorillas, carnival clowns, or Cuban revolutionaries. It set the tone, and people loosened up.
7. Learn to Ignore the News Cycle.
This is a big one with me. The term ‘news cycle’ is really just another way to say: ‘whatever somebody else is talking about.’ It’s tedious to turn on the big cable news networks and see them covering identical subjects, day in and day out. Branch out! Be creative, the way Downey was (he once did a show on “Strippers for God”). Find news stories nobody else is covering, like: “Oil Drillers Who Dig with Their Teeth,” or “Green Technology You Can’t Afford.” It would liven things up.
8. When You Say Something Stupid, Apologize.
It’s inevitable that a host will say something stupid or otherwise regrettable over the course of doing a daily political TV show. Downey certainly did, and apologized when necessary. What’s annoying is when today’s hosts, in an effort to save their careers, double-down on stupid comments later – pretending that their inane remark (“Senator Smith’s wife has skin like a Maine lobster”) was actually a carefully considered policy statement (“Actually, my critics aren’t aware that before I was a TV talk show host, I worked at The American Crustacean Society. So I know what I’m talking about!”). It’s embarrassing. When you say something inappropriate, fess up, apologize and move on – in other words, be a human being.
Downey with rockers Honey One Percenter and Ace Frehley.
9. Feature Live Music.
A former singer himself, Downey occasionally brought live bands – mostly hard rock acts – onto his show to great effect. It gave the show a late-night, uninhibited vibe that today’s political shows desperately need. (Side note: in the absence of music, such primitive group behavior as chanting or catcalls should be encouraged from the studio audience.) Downey understood that the enemy of political talk shows is stuffiness – and nobody ever called his show stuffy.
10. Bring Cigarettes & Liquor Back to Late Night.
OK, admittedly this one is never going to happen – but it should.
Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie
The suggestions above are just a few examples of what Morton Downey, Jr. would likely do to liven up political talk shows, were he around today. And who knows? Maybe somebody will actually take some of this advice and turn today’s dull, grimly earnest shows into the glorious, Rabelaisian carnivals of human excess that they could be.
In the meantime, thanks to Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie, we can look back at how cathartic and liberating it once was to “step up to the Loudmouth.”
A populist at heart.
In Évocateur, filmmakers Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller, and Jeremy Newberger dig into Downey’s personal story, beginning with his privileged youth as the son of popular singer Morton Downey and actress Barbara Bennett (the sister of actresses Constance and Joan Bennett). We learn, in an incredible irony, that Downey was actually raised next door to the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port – and was a lifelong friend of Ted Kennedy, with whom he clearly shared the same salty sense of humor.
Downey rambled through a series of careers as a singer and radio announcer until he finally hit his stride as a New Jersey TV host in the late ’80s, channeling mostly working class resentments against liberal cultural elites. (Sound familiar?) The moment his opera buffa-style talk show went national in 1988 it became an overnight hit – although it would last less than two years. After jumping the shark a few too many times – at one point even staging a fake assault on himself by neo-Nazis in an airport bathroom stall – his show petered out, his audience moving on to more sedate fare.
Évocateur does a fabulous job of bringing Downey’s cracked brilliance back to life with a slew of archival clips from his show, and interviews with former guests and co-workers. It’s clear that even liberals loved the guy – Gloria Allred and Alan Dershowitz have especially warm words for him, in particular.
Colorful and groundbreaking.
After the Tribeca screening I asked Jeremy Newberger, one of the film’s directors, what made Downey different from today’s talk show hosts of either the conservative or liberal variety. “The [hosts] today … there’s more machinery in place to protect them,” Newberger said. “They have more infrastructure … a lot of these guys are in a vacuum, where no one gets to come across and have a different opinion without being edited out.”
“This guy [Downey] was tough, he was willing to speak his mind, and he had an interactive show – and he was pretty brave to do what he did.”
Newberger is right – Downey was brave. His show was a far cry from the stale, corporate programs of today that seem intent on insulating their high-priced hosts from criticism, awkward questions or interaction with regular citizens. Downey didn’t avoid such public exposure – he thrived on it.
Downey’s raucous show may not have been particularly noble or elevating – no doubt he turned political debate into something more vulgar and carnivalesque than it had ever been. But he also made political TV more earthy, entertaining and human – and nobody’s equaled him in that way since.
