New movie review: Two Days, One Night

Marion Cotillard plays Sandra in the new Belgian drama Two Days, One Night.

Ethics 101: A train barrels toward a fork in the tracks. If it goes one way, it strikes a busload of children. The other way, it hits one person. You stand at the switch. Which way do you throw it? Variations on this conundrum have littered psychology text books the world over for years, and even the Joker has put Batman to the test on more than one occasion.

Despite the difficulty or impossibility inherent in choosing, we like these kinds of questions because we all know precisely how we would react. In our hearts, we know we are good people who will make the altruistic choice and sacrifice the individual for the good of the many. Add a layer to the question: There is a still a bus of children, but the lone person is your mother – or even yourself. Now, how do we act? The numbers have not changed. The reality has not changed. Maybe we even think our answer has not changed. History says we are wrong.

There is a reason we enjoy these theoretical dilemmas. They allow us to feel good about our own altruism without ever having to learn the truth, as most of us will never face this situation or one similar. Yet, we know the truth. Many people alive today have lived the truth. From the rise of Nazism to the prison camps at Abu Ghraib, history makes it plain: If it is us or them, to hell with them.

In Two Days, One Night, filmmaker siblings Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne stretch out this dilemma to feature length. Marion Cotillard plays Sandra, a Belgian wife and mother who finds out on a Friday she will lose her job come Monday. Her 16 coworkers have voted to lay her off. In exchange, each will receive a 1,000 Euro bonus (about $1,200). The foreman agrees to hold another vote Monday, which gives Sandra the weekend to convince a majority of her coworkers to give up their bonuses so she may keep her job.

Complications arise in the details, but the idea is simple, and as a premise, it is nearly irresistible. Cotillard is magnificent – dressed down and a little dowdy but still her recognizable movie-star self – as a woman battling clinical depression and crushing self-doubt. With each person who turns her away, she sinks deeper into her malaise but is perked up again every time she shifts a vote over into her column. Forced to beg, Cotillard projects pride and defiance as Sandra goes door to door to plead her case.

Taken together with her performance earlier this year in The Immigrant, Cotillard continues to prove she is more than just a sex symbol. She is not playing the femme fatale of her work with Christopher Nolan (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises) or the eye-candy love interest as in Nine or A Good Year. It seems she prefers – and duly shines in – more confrontational work such as her Oscar-winning turn in La Vie en Rose or 2012’s Rust and Bone. Thankfully, there are filmmakers who want her to do more than look pretty and smile, and Cotillard is hungry enough to chase challenging roles.

Yet, as great as Cotillard is and as intriguing as the premise may be, Two Days, One Night never forces the audience to move beyond the surface pleasures of its narrative. The Dardenne brothers make it too easy to sit in judgment of Sandra’s coworkers. The audience should come away wondering what it would do if posed the question: my bonus or a coworker? Instead, the film lets viewers off the hook when it should be making them squirm.

Most of the Dardennes’ films are low-key dramas about real people in difficult situations, and this may be the epitome of that style. Shot almost entirely with handheld cameras in and around the neighborhoods of the brothers’ Belgian hometown, Two Days, One Night drips with authenticity. Its naturalism helps to establish the characters in a recognizable place and time to which audiences from any part of the world could relate.

The downside of the film’s dogged realism is that the stakes remain low throughout. In treating even major events with a “That’s life” wave of the hand, the Dardennes fail to imbue the proceedings with much urgency, which has the added side effect of making Sandra’s interactions feel repetitive. By her sixth or seventh visit, we pretty much know how this is going to go as many of her coworkers have the same excuse. They need the money – a valid excuse and one we all might share but not particularly illuminating the 10th time we hear it.

Sandra’s coworkers live in richly detailed environments that suggest deep inner lives, but the general circumstances are roughly similar. People have families they need to support, or recent life changes necessitate an influx of cash. Otherwise, they are friends of Sandra’s or people for whom she has done a favor. This creates two camps within the film: those who will vote for Sandra and those who will vote for their bonus. There is little separating the members within each group from one another, which keeps the suspense at a minimum as few people have reason to deviate from their stated intention to vote one way or the other.

Stellar performances and an intriguing premise make the film a must see, but I cannot help but be a little disappointed. The opportunity was there for the Dardennes to confront their audience and force viewers to question the way they think about themselves, their loved ones, and the people orbiting just outside their personal solar systems. How would we react? Is it necessarily wrong to take the bonus? Where do we draw the line between us and them? In leaving these questions unasked, the film settles for being merely good, when it could have been great.

See it? Yes.

Critical mass: The race is on to crown the year’s best films

Ellar Coltrane stars in the critical smash Boyhood.

If the Gotham Film Independent and Independent Spirit awards are the starting gun for the race to the Oscars, this week is when all the contenders shift into high gear. Within a two-week span, we will have heard announcements from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, groups in Boston and Washington, as well as several online organizations. The Golden Globes, for whatever they are worth, will announce their nominees, and so will the Screen Actors Guild.

Around this time, a consensus forms in the critical community for what will be “the most critically acclaimed film of the year” – a phrase you may recognize from movie posters and DVD boxes. Of course, this is not one organization. There is no hive mind controlling what the mythical “they” will choose. Each group is made up of individual reviewers voting for what they like best. If one film rises to the top, we should consider it more confirmation than conspiracy.

Here is what has won with the announcing groups so far. See if you notice a pattern:

NY Film Critics Circle – Boyhood

LA Film Critics Association – Boyhood

Boston Film Critics – Boyhood

NY Online Film Critics – Boyhood

Boston Online Critics – Snowpiercer

Gotham Awards – Birdman

National Board of Review – A Most Violent Year

Clearly, Richard Linklater’s 12-years-in-the-making odyssey Boyhood is picking up the early steam. If we remember back to the film’s July opening and its sterling reviews, this is not particularly surprising. Film review aggregator sites such as Rotten Tomatoes (99 percent fresh) and Metacritic (100/100) would seem to suggest we can expect more of the same as the year wears on. There is nothing wrong with this necessarily, though one wishes more groups would think a little more outside the box as the Boston Online Critics did.

However, this does not mean much when it comes to what will likely win the Academy Award for Best Picture. As with most precursor awards and recognitions, critical acclaim does more to keep a film in the conversation for the Oscars than to propel it toward victory. Linklater, who has earned his share of recognition for writing and directing the film, should probably clear his schedule for the last Sunday in February, but he may not want to write that victory speech just yet. It is a long way from December to the Dolby Theatre stage.

With that in mind, let us take a look at some of the other contenders building momentum as the awards circuit barrels ahead.

Michael Keaton is generating best actor heat for his performance in Birdman.

Michael Keaton has picked up a number of best actor awards for his career-best work in Birdman, while Timothy Spall has earned kudos for his turn as famed painter J.M.W. Turner in Mr. Turner, which will be in theaters at the end of December. The Julianne Moore best actress train is off to a smashing start for her performance in Still Alice, but a bit more surprising has been the love for Marion Cotillard’s dual performances in The Immigrant and French-language drama Two Days, One Night.

In the supporting world, Patricia Arquette so far has ruled the roost for her performance as the mother of the central character in Boyhood, though the Los Angeles Film Critics threw a curveball today and awarded Arquette best actress. It is a development that will bear monitoring throughout the season. In best supporting actor, J.K. Simmons’ towering performance as a maniacal music teacher in Whiplash is head and shoulders above everything else and probably will remain there.

Tony Revolori and Saoirse Ronan star in Wes Anderson's colorful romp The Grand Budapest Hotel.

As mentioned, Linklater has earned the lion’s share of early directing awards for his opus, while also picking up some traction in the screenplay field. More intriguing there is the heat surrounding Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel script, which will likely remain a player throughout the season. Elsewhere, Laura Poitras’ Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour has dominated the nonfiction world, and The Lego Movie seems to be pulling away in the animated race.

There are still many kudos left to hand out on the road to the Academy Awards and much time left for this film or that to gain or lose momentum. I have found the best way to treat these early awards is as a crib sheet. If you have not caught up with everything – and really, how many of us can – the critics’ awards are a great map to the multiplexes, offering mostly fantastic suggestions for anyone wondering on what to spend their hard-earned $10-15.

For people such as myself, who watch these things closely and tend to overanalyze, it is a crazy time of year. For the rest of the world, it is barely a blip on the radar. Yet, there is a happy medium. One need not be obsessed to see the value in year-end consensus. One need only be concerned with making good decisions when heading out to the movies. In the end, anything that fosters a love of quality film cannot be that crazy.

New Film Review: The Immigrant

Hidden somewhere in James Gray’s The Immigrant is a great film about a waif beaten down by the hardships of the world and who must find it within herself to keep going. What surrounds these wonderful elements, however, is a stilted period drama about two unworthy men fighting over a woman who desires no such emotional dueling.

Make no mistake, Marion Cotillard is brilliant as the titular Polish immigrant who comes to America with her sister to find a better life and escape the Great War. There is a fragility to Cotillard that the Paris-born actress – here playing a Polish émigré without missing a beat – uses as a strength. A deep well of pain resides within the character, Ewa, and from that well she draws the power to devote herself to her cause.

She and her sister arrive at Ellis Island, and it is clear from the beginning her sister is not well. Sure enough, she is quarantined and told she will be deported in six months if her condition does not improve. Ewa is turned away as a “woman of low morals” and informed she will be sent back to Poland immediately. She will not leave her sister, though, and determines to do anything she can to help her sister get off the island. In walks Bruno Weiss, a usually reliable Joaquin Phoenix, to help her. Thus begin Ewa’s problems – and the film’s.

There is much to like about the story of a woman of faith disturbed by the things she must do to survive and even more disturbed that the ability to do such things exists within her. Cotillard is naturalistic and brooding, and there is not a hint of vanity or affectation in her performance. But Gray, with Ric Menello, has written a film that cannot match her tone.

Cotillard is taking part in a neo-realist tragedy in the vein of Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria, a film with similar themes and even a few shared scenes. The rest of the cast, including Phoenix and a game, if overmatched, Jeremy Renner, seems to be in a melodramatic period piece with Vaudevillian pimps (Phoenix) and roguish magicians (Renner). 

Phoenix has several good moments toward the end, and Renner’s Orlando the Magician is charming in an Errol Flynn sort of way. But both are underserved by a lack of backstory, either pertaining to them as individuals or to their shared history, which has created some vague tension that is never satisfactorily explained. The men fight over Ewa because that is what men do in this type of high drama, but there is little motivating them aside from the shared love of a woman who could do as well without either of their attentions.

Gray reportedly told his wife, upon a viewing of the Puccini opera “Il Trittico,” filmmakers do not make movies about women anymore such as the classics with Barbara Stanwyck and Greer Garson. She told him to make one, and he embarked upon The Immigrant. After seeing the film, one wishes he had hewn more closely to that ideal.

See it? No.