Friday, June 11, 2010
Watched: The Messenger
Y'know, after my rant earlier about my dislike/distrust for films about WWII generally and specifically about the Holocaust and the Third Reich, it seems fitting that I would love this film as much as I did. The Messenger works with a palette of greys that never even got looked at in those films, where so often the Nazis are evil and the Jews/civilians are not. Occasionally you'll get a rogue Nazi whose humanity betrays the cause or a bad apple who turns in their neighbor but mostly, those movies go for the easy heroes and villians. Which... blergh. I think I've ranted enough about that kind of filmmaking for a while. But The Messenger makes no attempt to make anyone hero or villian, and allows all its characters the dignity of being flawed three dimensionally. Maybe I also liked it because it's a hell of a lot easier for me to relate to. What do I know about genocide, or warfare? I do know something about the way people talk and think about the Iraq War HERE, NOW, and the messy world the men and women serving there come home to. Besides my identification with my fucked up generation and its fucked up war (as opposed to The Greatest Generation, gag), Foster and Woody are incredible in this. Samantha Morton too. I just wanted to hug all of these people.
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Foster is neither convincing nor interesting, even when the director gives him ten minutes in a two-shot to get to that point. Morton is always good, Woody goes above and beyond the call of Woody. And you didn't even mention Steve Buscemi's distracting cameo.
ReplyDeleteI did think when I watched that everything looked awfully familiar. Then I realized the whole thing is shot in Central Jersey. They go fishing in Edison, for Pete's sake.
Where was I?
Oh yeah. Good movie.
1. Way to come out of the woodwork, Jordan! But thanks for reading?
ReplyDelete2. I disagree about Foster. I think he's terrific in the scene with the cop; he manages to show both his unhappiness with his new job and his weariness with all the protocol that he otherwise seems accustomed to, perhaps even depends on. Other scenes which I think he pulls of really well: his attempt to connect to the fellow Iraq War vet, his coming-unhinged speech at his ex-girlfriend's engagement party, and maybe not the whole scene, but the look on his face when he hides in his kitchen while Woody weeps on his couch. I liked his performance a lot, it seemed very natural to me.
2. WALL-E may make the Happy Mac noise but ethologically and aesthetically he seems to identify with a PC. Not only does he rebuild himself from new parts (something associated more with PC's than with Macs, for whom it's more common that users take their ailing computers to "AppleCare" or whatever), but he personifies, as much as a robot can, the sort of low-tech underdog that Apple themselves labeled PCs in the Mac vs. PC commercials they've been airing for years now. Eve, on the other hand, spends a lot of the movie saving both their asses and being competent (again, commercial) and also exhibits the clean white lines and minimalistic design Macs are kind of known for. So to answer your question, yes. I do watch these movies. But one sound does not a persona unmake.
3. Just curious, under what circumstances do you suggest that I would enjoy The Doom Generation?
1. Ben mentioned you in an e-mail, so I decided to poke around.
ReplyDelete2. I think you've identified some of the best written scenes in the movie, but I still was not bowled over by him. He reminds me more of a generic, uglier, skinnier Sam Worthington. He didn't figure a lot of stuff out performance-wise, and so he left it out, but I don't buy that as subtlety. Did I mention he was ugly?
2. I'm impressed by your passionate response on this issue. I will only say the filmmakers likely didn't intend on any PC characters, because they don't want those kinds of influences in a children's film. Can we agree that Wall-E is an Apple 2E and Eva is an iPod and opposites attract?
3. If you haven't been there yet, maybe you won't be.
i think that's probably fair, on all counts.
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