New movie review: Macbeth

Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard star in director Justin Kurzel's Macbeth.

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth may be one of the five or 10 best literary works ever written. Contained within its tale of greed, corruption, madness, guilt, vengeance, and sorrow is just about every element of modern drama. The Scottish Play is simply staggering in its depth of insight into human character and the machinations of evil, while at the same time being one of Shakespeare’s most accessible pieces. The language is high-minded but quotable, and the story moves like a locomotive, shifting seamlessly from big action to subtle emotion.

Mind you, this is all on the page in Shakespeare’s words, which have little changed in the 400 years since they were first performed. For filmmakers looking to adapt the Bard’s work, the process can be something of a litmus test. Great directors will find something new in these old masterpieces and infuse the work with energy, style, and originality such as Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, itself a Macbeth adaptation. On the other hand, bad directors fail this test, either by slavish adherence to the text or by misunderstanding its inherent greatness.

Happily, director Justin Kurzel’s new imagining of Macbeth falls to the positive side of that spectrum. A moody, atmospheric showcase for a uniformly stellar cast, Kurzel presents a world that has turned into hell and is populated by a thousand little demons fighting to be the devil. By going darker and quieter than the text suggests, Kurzel and screenwriters Jacob Koskoff, Michael Lesslie, and Todd Louiso downplay the action and political maneuvering in order to highlight the despair and sorrow that result.

The opening battle, though exquisitely photographed by cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, is not depicted as a gloriously waged war but rather as an anonymous slaughter. Hidden in fog and caked in mud and blood, the living and the dead alike seem to sink into the earth. It is in this place, hovering between life and death, that Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) first spies the Weird Sisters who will set him on a doomed path of mayhem and destruction.

He is told he will be thane of Cawdor, a prediction that quickly proves true. He is told he will be king of Scotland, which at the urging of wife Lady Macbeth (Marion Cotillard) he makes true through murder. However, he is also told it will be his friend Banquo (Paddy Considine) whose sons will be kings, and from this looming prophecy, Macbeth’s paranoia and madness grow until he unleashes a furious plague of death and terror on all those who stand in his way.

Cotillard in Macbeth.

Throughout the film, Kurzel displays a fantastic feel for the momentum of the story, expertly picking his spots to go big and flashy but smartly pulling back and letting the characters speak for themselves when the moment calls for it. Macbeth, the play and film, is filled with visions of ghosts and unimaginable horrors, but Kurzel’s restraint means that when he finally unleashes his ghastly imagery, the full visceral and emotional impact is felt.

However, the film is more than just its gorgeous tableaux as Kurzel and his screenwriters demonstrate a complete understanding of the tragedy of Shakespeare’s story. In an opening scene that is the invention of the filmmakers, the Macbeths lay to rest their dead child, creating a perfectly judged subtext for both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth that informs their actions for the rest of the plot. They are consumed by a quest for control. Determined not to let fate, which took their only child, dictate their destinies, their final tragedy is the realization that it was fate all along that led them to this place.

I said back in August when I named Macbeth among my most anticipated movies of the fall that one of its chief draws would be to watch two of the greatest characters ever written portrayed by two of the best actors of their generation. Fassbender and Cotillard do not disappoint and in fact exceed all reasonable expectations. They are shockingly good in roles that require madness and cunning, fury and tenderness, confidence and fear.

Fassbender is easily the best Macbeth since Toshirô Mifune in Throne of Blood, which Fassbender has said in interviews is his favorite Macbeth adaptation. One of the best things about this performance is the consistency Fassbender finds at the core of the character. Macbeth is a madman from the beginning, but a madman wielding a sword on the battlefield is a different beast from one wielding a crown in a kingdom. By tapping into the underlying threat of insanity throughout, Fassbender shows how it is not power that drives Macbeth mad but instead guilt that tears away at his soul.

Cotillard deftly handles the arguably trickier task of playing the woman who sets in motion this terrible chain of events but whose soul cannot bear the carnage she has wrought. Even apart from the fact English is not her first language, Cotillard demonstrates a facility for Shakespeare’s words that rivals that of the great Shakespearean actors.

It is a brilliant, show-stopping moment when Cotillard delivers the famous “Out damn spot” speech, which Kurzel chooses to shoot almost entirely in a single, extreme close-up. Before our very eyes, Cotillard transforms Lady Macbeth from just another demon possessed by avarice into a weary shell of a woman who can no longer bear the thought of how hollow she is. Cotillard is a gifted performer who takes an already great sequence and turns it into a scene for the ages.

All of this builds to an epic conclusion in which Macbeth’s actions have transformed his world into a literal inferno – a bit of poetic license the filmmakers take to bring Birnam Wood to Dunsinane Hill. Everything he built and everything he cherished, he has burned it all to the ground. He mounts one final charge against the forces of fate, but surrounded by the ash and rubble of a shattered world, he must confront the truth. His destiny was decided long ago.

See it? Yes.

New movie review: The Danish Girl

Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander star in director Tom Hooper's rich historical drama The Danish Girl.

I sincerely hope that 50 years from now, people look back on how we live today and wonder how we did it. If two or three generations from now kids cannot fathom the way the world worked in 2015, society will have achieved some kind of success. Nothing against today, of course, but we all hopefully want the same thing – for our children’s lives to be better than ours. So far, in the course of human history, we have done pretty well.

In the U.S., for instance, every generation can say it did better than people 50 years previously. We have problems. We always have, and we always will. Perfection is impossible, but progress should never be. Advances in technology, communication, medicine, and human rights have made this the best time to be alive in our collective history, but if future generations do not blow us out of the water with their amelioration, something will have gone horribly wrong.

I thought about all of this a lot while watching director Tom Hooper’s stylish historical drama The Danish Girl. Just as sure as Lili Elbe was born in the wrong body, she was born in the wrong time. It has never been easy to be a transgender person. Still today, despite increased visibility and tolerance thanks to celebrities such as Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox, the battle for basic rights and respect rages on. Now, imagine the first couple decades of the 20th century, when even a basic malady might get you subjected to shock treatments, radiation therapy, or whatever other quackery was en vogue.

Lili’s short, sad journey through life was marked by all of these and more, but it was marked also by compassion, strength, and love, which Hooper and screenwriter Lucinda Coxon go to great lengths to tease out in The Danish Girl. Through its lush cinematography and elegant production design, the film argues – rightly, in my opinion – that the experience of discovering your truest self is as much sensory as it is emotional. The camera lingers on fabrics and textures that illuminate Lili’s inner world, even as she is trapped in the body and life of popular Danish painter Einar Wegener.

Coxon’s script is based on the David Ebershoff novel of the same name, which is a highly fictionalized account of Lili’s life story. Where the historical Lili’s life was more complex and decidedly tragic, Coxon, and Ebershoff before her, draw out the romance at the heart of Lili’s life in her marriage to fellow painter Gerda Wegener. By focusing so acutely on the love story, the filmmakers give the plot an easy-to-follow through line and give modern audiences something more tangible to grasp.

Eddie Redmayne, fresh off an Academy Award win for last year’s The Theory of Everything, plays Lili, and he brings the same commitment and passion to this performance as he brought to that previous biopic. It is a cliché to say that an actor “disappears” into a part, but for Redmayne’s dual role as Einar and Lili, the description is apt. He is tasked with portraying two characters – one long hidden; the other fading away – in a constant struggle for supremacy.

It perhaps goes without saying – yet here I find myself saying it – Redmayne’s work as Lili is the kind of transformative, heady work that, yes, wins Oscars but also takes audiences deep inside the life and mind of the character. However, I found myself even more impressed by his performance as Einar, who is wholly a construct, a façade that can no longer hold back the truth. It is painful to watch as Einar fights to keep up the charade he has propagated while Lili refuses to be denied her right to existence any longer. It is a role with a high degree of difficulty, carried off wonderfully by Redmayne.

Vikander in The Danish Girl.

This makes it all the more remarkable that Alicia Vikander not only holds her own but often outshines Redmayne as Gerda, whose life is thrown into chaos by Lili’s sudden awakening. Vikander was amazing as the possibly sentient robot Ava earlier this year in Ex Machina, and here she brings out a different side of herself, though no less strong or impressive.

The script treats the story of Gerda, who is a talented artist in her own right, as equally important to that of Lili. This allows Vikander to dig deeply into the role of a woman who fears she is losing her husband but also must come to grips with the fact she may never have had one in the first place. She is supportive and understanding, but she refuses to put her life on the back burner, and Vikander infuses her character with a depth of sensitivity and soul few actresses could match.

Though it is not factually accurate, the story Coxon chooses to tell of Lili and Gerda feels emotionally honest. It is a love story, though ultimately a platonic one. Once Einar is irretrievably lost, leaving only Lili in his place, Gerda must decide what it was she loved about Einar and whether she can give that same love to Lili. It is a tale of acceptance and tolerance that would not be out of place today, nearly 85 years since the real Lili died. So, maybe I am wrong, and we have not come as far as I would like to think, but in 50 years, who knows?

See it? Yes.

Auteur for hire: When visionary directors take on franchises

Ryan Coogler (left) directs star Michael B. Jordan on the set of Creed.

Earlier this week, in my review of Creed, I called Ryan Coogler one of the most talented young directors working today. I was not the first or only writer to say this, and Hollywood certainly seems to have taken notice as news broke Friday that Coogler is in talks to direct Marvel’s Black Panther movie. It would be a major step up for the director of the independent hit Fruitvale Station and the rather modestly budgeted Creed, but should Coogler sign on, he has definitely earned the shot.

It is almost a cliché in the film industry right now for studios and production companies to seek out acclaimed indie directors and hand over the keys to some of their more lucrative and important franchises. Sometimes, this strategy works well as with Colin Trevorrow jumping from Safety Not Guaranteed to this summer’s biggest hit Jurassic World. Other times, it does not as with Josh Trank moving from Chronicle to this summer’s biggest flop Fantastic Four.

In both those cases, the directors had just one previous feature film under their belt and had yet to prove themselves capable of handling something more than a small-scale production. That would not be the case with Coogler, who has shown with Creed he can more than handle himself with a big budget on a big stage. Let’s leave aside for now the question of why a black director of at least equal talent to white directors Trank and Trevorrow needed an extra film to show studios his capabilities – though this is certainly a topic for another day.

The now-defunct Grantland had a great analysis of this phenomenon over the summer and addressed the way directors used to climb the ranks rather than simply being catapulted to the top. Among the primary arguments is that directors used to make midsize movies like Creed before jumping to blockbusters. Apart from being something of a proving ground, these mid-level movies also allow a director to develop a recognizable style.

To wit, Coogler’s stamp is all over Creed. It is his film through and through, and it is better for it. Jurassic World shares no DNA with Safety Not Guaranteed other than its director’s title card. For me, this is the most dangerous and troubling aspect of the rush to anoint the next Steven Spielberg or the next Stanley Kubrick or what have you – we already have a Spielberg and a Kubrick. I want a Coogler, someone with a unique vision and the talent to bring it to life.

Rian Johnson (right) directs Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Looper.

I got to thinking about this topic a little last year when it was announced Brick and Looper director Rian Johnson would helm the eighth film in the Star Wars franchise. I will admit to being a little bummed out, and part of me still is. Johnson is a fiercely original storyteller, and I would prefer he spent his time telling all the wonderful stories he clearly has in his head rather than trying to play in someone else’s sandbox.

At the same time, like Coogler, he has shown himself to be a gifted auteur who is likely to bring his own personal style to whatever he works on, something Last Cinema Standing contributor Sean Patrick Leydon touched on earlier this year when writing about Johnson’s terrific, under-seen The Brothers Bloom. Johnson’s Star Wars and Coogler’s Black Panther, should he choose to make it, will be excellent films because they are excellent directors. That will not change with the franchise.

It may be a little proprietary of me to wince just a little when an independent director I admire signs on for a blockbuster studio picture, like a music fan whose favorite punk band just signed to a major label. This was already at the forefront of my mind yesterday after I caught a screening of Sam Mendes’ Spectre, the Oscar-winning director’s second entry in the James Bond series. It is a hell of a lot of fun, of course, but it sure does not feel like a Mendes movie.

Remember when Mendes, a theater director by trade, made his feature debut with the instant classic American Beauty? He then made the deconstructionist gangster picture Road to Perdition, the Gulf War thriller Jarhead, and a pair of fiercely different marital dramas, Revolutionary Road and Away We Go. Mendes is an immensely talented filmmaker, and his 007 movies are worth seeing – Skyfall should be in the conversation for best Bond film – but wouldn’t it be cool if he made another movie like his first few? Maybe that’s just the fan in me talking, but then again, that’s who goes to the movies.

New movie review: Brooklyn

Saoirse Ronan stars as Irish immigrant Eilis in director John Crowley's romantic drama Brooklyn.

It sometimes seems we lack appreciation for simplicity, particularly in our entertainment. Call it the Lost effect or whatever you want, but audiences and critics especially now demand immense complexity from television shows and films. This has led showrunners and filmmakers to mistake illogical mythologies and labyrinthine plotting for depth of character and richness of storytelling. As it is, entertainment that engages the mind but not the heart is doing only half its job.

Director John Crowley’s Brooklyn does not make this mistake. Crowley, working from a script by Nick Hornby based on the novel by Colm Tóibín, takes a simple story and tells it well. Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) is a young woman living in a stiflingly small Irish town in the 1950s who embarks on a journey to America, leaving behind her mother and older sister. In the U.S., she gets a job, makes friends, and falls in love with an Italian-American boy, Tony (Emory Cohen). Tragedy brings her back to Ireland, where she is forced to choose between her old life and the new one she has made for herself overseas.

Simple enough, but Crowley and Hornby infuse the characters and situations with humor, heart, and emotional honesty. There is never a false moment, and while the plot may be relatively small shakes in the grand scheme of things, Eilis’ conflict seems great because we care deeply about what happens to the character and want what is best for her.

Emory Cohen and Ronan in Brooklyn.

Ronan, who is still all of 21 years old, has not had a lengthy film career, but it sure has been an interesting one. Oscar nominated for just her third feature, Atonement, she has consistently chosen compelling parts in daring films by talented directors, including Joe Wright’s Hanna, Peter Weir’s The Way Back, and Ryan Gosling’s Lost River, not to mention her turn in last year’s Best Picture-nominated The Grand Budapest Hotel.

In Brooklyn, Ronan takes another left turn to explore the life of a girl who lived not so long ago – an age at a time that could make the character many of our mothers or grandmothers now. It is her most sensitive, subtle performance yet as she inhabits the sweet, soulful psyche of an immigrant who feels displaced both at home and abroad. Ronan easily taps into Eilis’ gentle naïveté but adds an undercurrent of strength and resiliency that is less on the page than in the performance.

Credit is due to the filmmakers, however, for bringing to the screen a movie filled with strong, well developed female characters when a lot of movies in theaters these days struggle to come up with just one. The boarding house Eilis lives in is populated by a witty, funny group of women who joke and snipe but ultimately support each other, and Eilis’ mother and sister are an intriguing study in people burdened by old-world values as the new world springs up around them.

The male characters are somewhat less developed but no less interesting. Cohen, playing the American love interest, and Domhnall Gleeson, Eilis’ suitor back in Ireland, deliver grounded, sympathetic performances as two men in love with the same woman. There are shades of Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront in Cohen’s tremendous portrayal of a lunk-headed guy who falls in love with a shy girl from the neighborhood – there are also shades of Eva Marie Saint in Ronan’s performance. 

Domhnall Gleeson and Ronan in Brooklyn.

As for Gleeson, here are his credits for the last two years: Frank; Calvary; Unbroken; Ex Machina; Brooklyn; The Revenant; and a little movie called Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It is a hot streak few other actors can lay claim to, and he has earned every one of those roles with consistently brilliant performances in wildly different parts. He has little screen time in Brooklyn, but the character is crucial to the film’s arc, and Gleeson leaves enough of an impression that we understand fully Eilis’ dilemma.

The key to the story is that neither man is a villain. They are well meaning people who see in Eilis the same things the audience sees. One simply represents her old life and the other her new one. In choosing between these two men, Eilis is really choosing between the past and the future. The culture she was raised with values the past deeply, and she values her culture, so it becomes a question of how willing she is to leave behind the life and people that made her who she is.

Apart from a few gorgeous shot set-ups, particularly when Eilis is checking in at Ellis Island, Crowley’s direction is unfussy and effective. He matches Hornby and Tóibín’s simple but sophisticated story with a straightforward style that leaves the plot room to breathe and gives the actors space to shine. Brooklyn is not the fanciest or flashiest movie you will see this year, but it is something better: admirable.

See it? Yes.

New movie review: Creed

Michael B. Jordan stars as Adonis Johnson in writer-director Ryan Coogler's excellent Creed.

A lot of us probably went through the five stages of movie reboot grief when the announcement came that there was a new Rocky movie in the works. Denial – Well, movies get announced all the time; that doesn’t mean anyone’s actually going to make it. Anger – How dare they ruin the legacy of a classic character like Rocky Balboa? Bargaining – As long as they respect the history of the originals, maybe it will be okay. Depression – They’re really going through with this, eh? Acceptance – Looks like it comes out around Thanksgiving; I guess it’s that or see Spectre again.

Only, I never had any trepidation about the new film because it has one thing no other reboot, remake, or sequel has: writer-director Ryan Coogler. Sure enough, under the steady, guiding hand of one of the best young filmmakers in the business, Creed is a crowd-pleasing triumph that takes a world we loved and updates it for the world we know.

Those folks nervous about a return to this universe probably had good reason to be. Sometimes in boxing, a fighter comes back one too many times – hell, it is the plot of at least three Rocky movies – but that fighter is rarely infused with this much new blood, new energy, and new life. Coogler and co-writer Aaron Covington, who worked closely with Sylvester Stallone in developing the script, have a firm grasp of both the established world of the film and the next-generation story they want to tell. As such, Creed shines as a stirring, bold standalone film and a worthy successor to the Rocky franchise.

Coogler reteams with his Fruitvale Station star Michael B. Jordan to tell the story of Adonis Johnson, son of Rocky rival and friend Apollo Creed. Adonis spends his youth in and out of group homes and juvenile detention centers until he is taken in by Apollo’s widow, Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad). She brings him up with the intention of getting him away from fighting, but he proves to be his father’s son, seemingly genetically drawn to the ring.

Jordan and Sylvester Stallone in Creed.

Because of the way Apollo died, however, no trainer of worth will take on Adonis, so he moves to Philadelphia to seek counsel from the long-retired Rocky. The former heavyweight champion, now restauranteur, whose life has been defined mostly by struggle and loss, is initially reluctant, but he has the same fighting gene as Apollo and Adonis, and he cannot stay away. Now, with Rocky in his corner, Adonis seeks to build his own legacy and escape the darkness of the long shadow cast by his father.

Stallone wrote the first six Rocky movies and directed four of them, and his handle on the character he created is as strong now as it was nearly 40 years ago. Across seven films in five different decades, Stallone has never lost sight of the sweet, quiet guy with a champion’s heart that made Rocky so lovable and popular. When Adonis takes a photo on his phone and tells Rocky he has uploaded it to the cloud, Stallone’s brief, curious glance up at the sky tells us all we need to know about the character. This is still our Rocky.

All credit, though, goes to Coogler, who developed the original story for this film, for keeping the focus squarely on Adonis. As important as Stallone is to the character and Rocky is to the plot, Creed is not a Rocky movie. Rocky is in the final act of his life, while Adonis is in the first act of his. So, while it may be fun to see one of our favorite old characters brought back one more time, the real draw is watching Adonis’ story develop and, by extension, Jordan’s remarkable performance.

It is hard to say maybe from where you might know Jordan best. His first major onscreen work came in The Wire. Later came recurring roles on Friday Night Lights and Parenthood. I caught my first real glimpse of him in the excellent 2012 found-footage movie Chronicle, but his real breakout came two years ago in Coogler’s acclaimed true-life drama Fruitvale Station as the doomed Oscar Grant. In all of these parts, Jordan has been impressive, but in both his physical and emotional commitment to Adonis, we see him stretch his range further than he ever has. If this is an indication of things to come for Jordan, it will be exciting to see where he chooses to go next.

Jordan and Tessa Thompson in Creed.

Jordan provides Adonis with a rough exterior and pained interior that make the audience root for him to grow, and he does with Rocky’s training and a burgeoning romance with Bianca (Tessa Thompson). Bianca is the rare female character in a sports movie with her own story and her own complex life experiences, and Thompson gives her the inner strength to match Adonis blow for emotional blow. A singer-songwriter with degenerative hearing loss, she does not need Adonis to make her whole, but they each benefit from having the other in their lives.

With all the pieces in place – a superb cast delivering great performances, a killer story, and a willing audience – all that is left is to deliver the knockout punch, and Coogler’s direction sure does deliver that. I had the chance to meet Coogler last year around this time when he and Jordan were at the Lincoln Center in New York City for a script reading of Do the Right Thing as part of #BlackOutBlackFriday.

Coogler grew up in the East Bay in Northern California, where I was also raised. I told him how much it meant to me to see the area I grew up in portrayed so vibrantly and so accurately on screen in Fruitvale Station. In our brief chat, he came off as a smart, passionate filmmaker who cares deeply about his subjects. The remarkable thing about Coogler is how he is able to bring that same passion and care he showed in his much more intimate first film to a large-scale, sports movie franchise. Creed is a characters-first movie, and every choice the director makes is in service of those characters.

For Adonis’ first fight with Rocky as his trainer, the entire bout is filmed in one extended take that boggles the mind for its technical prowess and emotional intensity. For those 10 minutes, every one of us is Adonis, sweating, bleeding, dealing punches, taking them, and simply trying to stay on our feet. It is a painful but rewarding experience and a beautiful microcosm of the film around it. To climb out of the shadows, Adonis must battle the darkness around him and within him, but when he reaches the light, the fight will have made it that much brighter and that much warmer.

See it? Yes.