Darkest Hour

Lily James and Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in "Darkest Hour" 

"Darkest Hour" is another biopic of an important historical figure that doesn't fall prey to the boring machinations of so many other biopics about important white men. Maybe that's because it's about Winston Churchill, whose influence and legacy are as potent today as they ever have been. What stands out still, from history and now from this movie, is the power of his words, and the way he relayed them and relied on them to speak the truth and convey immediacy and strength. It is mainly his decisions and his actions after all that continue to have a lasting impact on Western Civilization, almost a century later, and watching "Darkest Hour", I thought about just how close the UK and Europe as a whole, and possibly even America, was to falling to the Nazis. In 2017, it's shocking to watch a historical figure from the past come up against a gruesome regime, hellbent on control and power, and not think about the current state of America, of Western influence, of Nationalism, and of the imminent threat of war. For Churchill, who became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom out of mere circumstance and barely held on to the position because of his stubbornness in refusing to negotiate with Hitler, World War II was just beginning but Western Europe had been crumbling for a long time. In "Darkest Hour", which is a lyrically told and paced historical chamber piece, Joe Wright, the director, and Anthony McCarten, the screenwriter, focus on just over a month in the late Spring of 1940, and in this short period of time, Churchill, who I always remember in a top hat with cane in grip, comes to life. The main reason to see this movie is the performance that Gary Oldman gives as Winston Churchill, who disappears into the role the same way Helen Mirren disappeared into Queen Elizabeth II in "The Queen". The actor becomes the character, or in this instance the actual person, they become one. Of course, it must be noted, Oldman is helped tremendously by the copious amounts of makeup and prosthetics that were applied to his face, and yet even under all the outer layers, the inner life, the personality, shines through. His sense of humor, his intelligence, his way with words, these are the details that Wright focuses on and by doing this, history becomes much more engaging. "Darkest Hour", which for the majority of it's running time is full of stodgy, old men having important conversations in confined spaces, is never boring, and full of small performances that pop, like Ben Mendelsohn as King George the VI, and Stephen Dillane as Viscount Halifax. But it will be Gary Oldman as Churchill that will linger in most viewers minds, his nerve, his conviction, his belief in fighting for what it right. It's hard not to be inspired, and even encouraged to do the same today.

Lady Bird

Saoirse Ronan in Greta Gerwig's "Lady Bird" 

Last week before “Lady Bird”, the new film written and directed by Greta Gerwig, was screened, I didn’t feel good. There was a tension in my neck. I gripped my throat, feeling constantly thirsty. I was driving down Beverly Drive and turned right onto Charleville Boulevard before parking in the same place I always park on Doheny Drive right in front of this beautifully lived-in Spanish Revival Duplex. I reached over to the passenger seat of my car and grabbed my water bottle, looking at the traffic start and stop, focusing on the tail lights of Tesla’ s and BMW’s stopping ahead of me. Over and over, I would chug water, until there was no water left. I knew this feeling, and sometimes I can manage it, and sometimes I can’t. I was worried that being far from home, from family and friends, from the comforts of the familiar, that my anxiety would rear it’s fiercely deformed head.

Once I walked to the theater three blocks away and sat down in the same seat I always sit in I watched each person come inside searching for a comfortable spot. There were many seats open, but a panic usually set in. Where was the best seat? Can I see with this person in front of me? I laughed to myself. When I took my phone out of my pocket, I became upset, it wasn’t distracting me the way I relied on it to and for a second I got nervous.

I’m not going to take the time to discuss the inner workings of my brain, maybe another day, and another post, but I will say that it’s different for each person. For me, anxiety comes at times I can’t predict, like say before watching a movie that I fell completely in love with. So with “Lady Bird”, a movie so touching, and so deeply personal, I can honestly say that I felt my anxiety melt away with each passing minute.

* * *

Christine wants to be called Lady Bird, so her mom calls her by that name, as do her friends, her teachers, her family, even the nuns at her Catholic School. It is 2002, and we are in Sacramento, California, that forgotten capital city. The cinematographer Sam Levy and costume designer April Napier, both of whom spoke to us after the film was screened, understand this time period and place almost as well as Greta Gerwig, who grew up there. She loves Northern California the way Joan Didion loved Southern California. The landscape informs the emotions of her characters, the weather reflects their attitudes. Sacramento has never been filmed more tenderly.

“Lady Bird” is about a 17 year old girl, played by Saoirse Ronan, and simply put, it’s about her coming of age during her senior year in high school. She desperately wants to go to College on the East Coast, her mother works too much, her father is out of work. She flip- flops friends and boyfriends and hair colors. I was reminded of Angela Chase from the short-lived television series “My So-Called Life”, whose hair was a similar shade of red, or ‘crimson glow’. That series understood teenagers and treated them with respect, allowing a platform for the emotions most adults would dismiss as juvenile, without any true meaning.

Greta Gerwig is 34 years old. The last film she wrote being 2015’s “Mistress America”, which was a female friendship analysis wrapped with a screwball comedy bow. But now, with “Lady Bird”, she has achieved something much more powerful. Through the rearview mirror of her own life and experiences, her love letter to Sacramento becomes something rare, specific and universal. The decision to cast the young Irish actress Saoirse Ronan as Lady Bird, who is able to convey more with her ice blue eyes than most actresses twice or even three times her age, was very wise, as was casting the theater veterans Tracy Letts, and most especially Laurie Metcalf as her mother, Marion. Metcalf is just as expressive an actress as Ronan, with an elastic face and a curious way of phrasing. We believe them as mother and daughter, their fights are piercing, their love, palpable. Gerwig's script is perfectly written, attuned to the rhythm of how people actually talk, and even more, how they react. 

I'm not quite sure how to describe my feelings about this movie, which is how I feel after any movie I truly fall for. I will say though, that it moved me in surprising and profound ways, and the ending, a whirlwind of moments ending in a monologue delivered by Ronan is a voicemail, spoken in fresh air. I won't say anymore. In that last scene, which as a viewer we know is so so important, we watch as Greta Gerwig becomes master at emotional and tonal clarity. Everything we have previously watched is summed up in those last moments. It is sad, funny, true, warm, something special. 

Wonderstruck

The extraordinary Millicent Simmonds in the new film directed by Todd Haynes

The best part about watching a movie you know nothing about, having never seen the trailer, vaguely knowing the actors in the cast, is the thrill of discovery, of coming into a story with fresh eyes, willing to be taken to another world. "Wonderstruck", which was directed by Todd Haynes, and written and adapted for the screen by Brian Selznick based on his own children's book from 2011, does take you away, to two very different worlds. Two stories, one, about a young deaf girl named Rose (Millicent Simmonds) in 1927 New Jersey, the other, about a young boy named Ben (Oakes Fegley) in 1977 Minnesota, are interwoven, bleeding into one another. Rose's journey is told silently, in striking black and white cinematography, Ben's, is a kaleidoscope of color, blasted with a rock and roll and disco soundtrack. Both are on a similar quest, Rose, to find her idol, a silent screen actress named Lillian Mayhew (Julianne Moore, in multiple roles), Ben, to find his father. These themes, of deafness, self-discovery, friendship, and family are complex, surprising for a supposed children's movie, but they are told with an emotional vitality that can really only be felt when telling stories about a child's experience. The director, Todd Haynes, has a delicacy and sensitivity that is needed for this type of storytelling, the emotions he creates are pure and the images can be overwhelming. He fills the screen with his young actor's faces, especially Millicent Simmonds as the young Rose, who is deaf in real life and was discovered for this movie. The portion with her acts like a short silent picture from the past, hazy in memory, and methodical, the musical score by Carter Burwell mimicking every emotion that flashes over her face.

For me, the most remarkable aspect of "Wonderstruck" was the attention to detail, and the craft in recreating the New York City, and the Museum of Natural History specifically, of 1927 and 1977. After the film's first 25 minutes which puts the narrative into motion, our heroine and hero get to New York and once there, I stopped caring so much about the plot of the journey, and started to purely feel the journey. The producer, Christine Vachon, spoke to us after the screening, and explained that they shot on location, which was a shock. New York of 1977 does not exist anymore. The cinematographer Ed Lachmann, and the production designer Mark Friedberg, scouted locations, discovering corners and blocks in the deepest parts of Brooklyn and Queens to bring a sense of realism to the story. Without New York City the story wouldn't have the same excitement and thrill and the images that Hayne's creates of the chaos in the streets and the explosion of colors from the gritty Penn Station and Upper West Side of 1977, along with the floating hats and cavernous shadows of the downtown scene of 1927 enhance the story of Rose and Ben. "Wonderstruck" was a surprise. The best surprises creep up on you, and linger, the knowledge of the care that went into it just as important as the surprise itself. This movie, a fairytale of childhood, I imagine will linger with me as well, it's optimism and lyricism something unusual, something we only believe in as children, but yearn for so desperately as adults.