Archive for April, 2011
Their Most Underrated Film: Snow Angels
David Gordon Green is often rightly heralded for both his soft-spoken indie dramas (George Washington, All the Real Girls) and his Hollywood studio comedies (Pineapple Express, Your Highness, though the latter medieval stoner comedy was uniformly rejected by both critics and audiences. I guess America was never ready for a mainstream comedy where a major punchline involves the implications of a young James Franco getting molested by a Yoda-like puppet in any case.). However, the film which signaled his career transition between the two halves of his career, 2008’s lovely and haunting Snow Angels, has been unfairly ignored within the scope of his cinematic evolution as a filmmaker. A hit at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, Snow Angels was quickly acquired by mini-major Warner Independent Pictures, and distributed a year later in the winter of 2008. However, opening weekend results in New York and Los Angeles were dismal, and the film didn’t expand as planned. Snow Angels was left to die a quick death on DVD six months later, and that summer, Warner Independent Pictures closed up shop.
Whether the film’s marketing campaign or the burst of the indie-film bubble were to blame for Snow Angels’ commercial failure remains ambiguous, though the film’s depressing content certainly didn’t help matters. Adapting a novel from Stewart O’Nan, Green centers the film around two couples: Glen (Sam Rockwell) and Annie (Kate Beckinsale) and Arthur (Michael Angarano) and Lila (Olivia Thirlby). The former pairing occupies the narrative terrain of the melodrama, as Glen (a former alcoholic who’s found Jesus), tries desperately and pathetically to work his way back into Annie’s life. Thankfully there is some levity in the film, the vast majority of which relates to the other romance, as Angarano deftly portrays a goofy band kid who falls for the charmingly nerdy new girl, Lila (It should also be noted that Thirlby is positively radiant in this turn, differentiating herself beautifully from a potentially similar role of hers in 2008’s similarly underseen teen dramedy The Wackness. That, and Green’s lens loves her.) And as if that wasn’t enough, there are two other couples in the mix: Nate (Nicky Katt) and Barb (Amy Sedaris), the latter of whom Annie buddies up with at her waitress job as she plays around in bed with the former on the side; and Don (Griffin Dunne) and Louise (Jeannetta Arnette), Arthur’s bickering, divorcing parents who cast a grim shade over his blossoming romance. There’s a whole spectrum of relationships on display, with the two major couplings (Arthur and Lila and Glen and Annie, respectively) signifying the beginning and end.
The film takes a major turn midway through which I won’t spoil here, but suffice it to say, Snow Angels walks a tonal tightrope in its second half, delicately balancing the tender romance of Arthur and Lila with the violent fallout of Glen’s emotional breakdown. To its credit though, the film never feels choppy, as the adolescent debauchery of the teenagers provides a nice palate cleanser following the weighty theatrics of the adults. And Green’s loose, heavily improvised style brings a much needed levity to the proceedings in unexpected moments, such as a scene in a mattress store where the evangelical Glen tries uncomfortably to use Christ’s teachings while pitching to a pair of lesbians. Green’s studio comedies are made unique by their unusual rhythms – Pineapple Express wouldn’t be the same without its oddball narrative detours, like when a chubby little girl in a bathing suit watches with curiosity as James Franco weeps over a cheeseburger on a park swing-set. Generally, people attribute Malick as a major influence on Green’s films (the two are indeed friends), but these directorial flourishes are more reminiscent of the style of Robert Altman, as the film takes relish in exploring the world around its characters.
Yet the world of Snow Angels, for all that levity, is often a dark and unsettling one, much to the credit of Rockwell’s phenomenal performance. His Glen is, in short, a loser, and a character the audience instinctively takes pity on from the first time we see him forget to bring a teddy bear to his daughter during a weekend visit. However, Rockwell takes that pity and makes it magnetic, as he drags the viewer through his twisted downward spiral, leaving audience members unsure whether to chuckle or be afraid. Consider the scene where Glen, unable to communicate with his wife, head-butts away at the tree in front of her house until his forehead goes bloody. It’s undoubtedly a somewhat goofy moment, and Green and Rockwell both know it. For all of the malformed love, anger, and violence inside Glen, he’s about as emotionally sophisticated as a kid banging his head in a tantrum. But that violence still festers inside of him, and his inability to articulate it in any manner that doesn’t involve a bottle renders devastating consequences in the film’s finale.
And of that finale, which seems to be something of a sticking point for those watching the film, consider how Green works in a fifth, previously tangential couple into those closing moments. In the final montage, one of the couples in the film is in romantic bliss, two are uneasily trying to work things out (to varying degrees of success), and one has been torn apart by violence and tragedy. Yet while the town celebrates during a high school football game, leaving the tragedy of past events behind them, Glen’s parents shout into the abyss, searching for his loyal dog Bomber. Is this them refusing to let go of the past, moving on by attempting to maintain the status quo, or some combination of the two? Regardless, all work towards the thesis of Green and O’Nan: if you don’t bring the past home, make peace with it, and move on, it’ll always be out there, waiting in the woods for you to dredge it back out.
If you haven’t seen the film, or you couldn’t tell already, Snow Angels is something of an odd bird. As previously mentioned, its serio-comedic tone and big name cast mark a transition in Green’s career, from indie lyricist to Hollywood stoner comedy guru. All the same, I don’t think Green’s auteur status is in question. All of his films balance the human with the whimsical, the blisteringly real and mundane with the poetic (though in Pineapple Express, this humanism is filtered through writers Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen’s understanding of male friendship). If Pineapple Express were a mere stoner comedy, would it have a lengthy montage of Rogen and James Franco frolicking in the woods, pretending to sword fight with tree branches and blowing smoke at caterpillars? If All the Real Girls was a straight up indie love story, would it feature Danny McBride complaining to Zooey Deschanel that restaurants that serve waffles and french toast are too fancy? The answer to both questions is of course no, and that’s what makes Snow Angels such an interesting watermark in his career. Nowhere else are Green’s cinematic intentions as clearly deliberated, as he takes a little bit of everything – romance, teen comedy, tragedy, melodrama, coming-of-age angst – and does his own thing with it. If one filmmaker can pull that off one minute, and then decide to make a stoner comedy homage to Krull the next, then that’s a voice to pay attention to in my book.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )A Belated Eulogy for Sidney Lumet
I still remember my first Sidney Lumet film.
I was in seventh grade, and for whatever reason that September Sunday afternoon, I felt compelled to rent 12 Angry Men from my local video store. Maybe I just felt like a courtroom drama, or maybe I had become so vaguely familiar with the film’s formula after years of sitcom parodies that I was just interested in seeing the real thing. However, even though the DVD was kind of scratched, and the disc made a strange noise in my player for the entirety of the film, I knew immediately I was watching something great. The performances were all just so good. The script was just so tight and involving. However, it was all just held together with such craftsmanship, by a director who knew the story he was telling and how to tell it without missing a single beat.
From there I hit all the usual points in his filmography – Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict, Serpico (a movie I wasn’t sure if I could take seriously, due to its association to Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, but was also eventually blown away by) – while also finding a couple minor gems in there along the way – most notably 1982’s Deathtrap. I can’t say I have seen The Wiz, but no matter. The man directed almost a movie a year from the mid-60s to the mid-90s, at least half-a-dozen of which are stone-cold classics. He was allowed a couple clunkers.
And then of course there was Network, my personal favorite Lumet film. I got Network in a box-set along with Dog Day Afternoon and All the President’s Men for my birthday about five months after seeing 12 Angry Men, and on first viewing, I didn’t quite get it. I knew what I was watching was great cinema – and everything in the film from Peter Finch to Chayefsky’s script was haunting, hilarious, and increasingly relevant in one fell swoop. But I just wasn’t processing it I suppose. Then about two years later, I caught it again at a screening at New York’s Film Forum, and it was like everything came together. It remains a favorite of mine to this day.
You’d be hard-pressed to call Lumet an auteur. You couldn’t recognize a Lumet film just by watching it, as you could a Scorsese picture or an Altman movie. But that doesn’t make him any less of a great director. He was a born storyteller, and one who knew just how to elevate great material with strong casting, location-work, and shot selection. Lumet was the kind of director who didn’t rely on his own style, but rather focused on getting the best out of all those around him.
Yet, there were little touches that can be recognized from Lumet film to Lumet film. I’m thinking of that great slow tracking shot 12 Angry Men when Henry Fonda gives his final speech, and how it mirrors the opening of The Verdict, as Paul Newman plugs away on the pinball machine in that dingy little Boston bar. Even between films, his style reflected the material as appropriate. The former shot reflects the quiet humanity that represents man at his best. The latter aches the pain of a once great man who has since neglected all hope and virtue. As always, Lumet’s direction was there to serve the story and the characters.
He was a great storyteller. He was a great New York filmmaker (for my money, he’s up there with Marty and Woody in terms of directors whose work serves as an extended ode to the city). And he will undoubtedly be missed, by those he was close to, and by those who love cinema. Rest in peace Mr. Lumet.
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Fascinated Film Fanatic 