Reviews

I've come to this show late, as I haven't had television for over 16 years, but I am sooooo grateful to have found it through Youtube. Lipton deserves all the praise that can be given for his "character" as the interviewer who actually allows the interviewee to speak. He asks intelligent questions and shuts-the-eff up after that (unlike the smarmy and intrusive C. Rose, per ex). I would love a full DVD set to become available. I would love Lipton to be given many lifetime achievement awards. All the good (and none of the bad) reviews here are accurate: this is a great show, created by a great (and really modest) man that allows the profession and its many practitioners to SHINE.

The opening and closing shots of Mike Leigh's bittersweet film frame the faces of two different women. We first see Imelda Staunton's Janet, a deeply alienated older working class woman who seems beyond the help of either her medical doctor or Gerri, the therapist. The film's last frame focuses on Lesley Manville's Mary, caught like some helpless insect in the web of Britain's university-based class system and the apparently eternal constraints of gender and age. Within this frame, Leigh demonstrates the good and bad fortune of his characters. But his theme is not merely what the luck of the draw brings, nor does he allow his audience to blame the victims.

The happy couple of the film--Tom and Gerri--are happy because they are lucky and also because, in the context of their professional lives and privileges, their attempts at being sympathetic and understanding are undercut by a quite natural need to absolve themselves of any duty to others that requires deep self scrutiny. This is not to say the characters are insensitive or unlikeable, quite the contrary. However, when questions arise about Mary's work, she is characterized as a "secretary" by Tom and Gerri's son's new (and very professional) girlfriend. This emphasizes the difference in education (and thus class) of Mary and the others, and is not questioned by the family. When Mary half-seriously questions the ethos of Tom's job--analyzing earth samples in order to facilitate more urban sprawl--he readily agrees, and gets on with his evening. When Gerri closes the door on an unsettling and failed session with Janet, she can only breathe a sigh of relief. Both members of this highly successful marriage with highly successful careers are willing to acknowledge the limits of what they can actually do to change their world for the better--but not so much that they feel compelled to act on a larger stage than the one their life provides. Within the larger frame of the film, four smaller frames--seasonal depictions of the communal garden in which Gerri and Tom work and from which they take home harvests--add to this portrait of a world that is both communal and limited--it is the community of the lucky, the successful,and the generous. But it is not a community that can really be asked to heal the much larger wounds that its existence entails.

First, there's the great French director, Tavernier, who made many films Americans missed. But at least most remember "'Round Midnight,'" an amazingly done jazz film with the late Dexter Gordon. Then there are the great actors, from Tommy Lee (who did indeed "nail" Robicheaux), but also Ned Beatty, Mary Steenburgen (who made the ordinary character of Bootsie bearable), the other great director John Sayles (as a director,of course) and countless lesser known character actors. The production values are superb. I've read most of Burke's novels and the sets of Dave's house, the dives he visits, the bayou, all of it are exactly as I'd imagined. The writing is good and I don't get why people think the story is confusing. But there is one major flaw (for me) that rankles. Why cast musicians (Levon Helm, Buddy Guy) in roles that really need strong acting? Helm was a great drummer for The Band, but I've never seen him act with much conviction. And the character of the dead Confederate general requires strength. Hal Holbrook would have been perfect. Then there's Buddy Guy, a great Chicago blues man, but he's no actor. He seemed almost to be reading most of his lines from off camera in one scene.

You cannot put strong actors in the same scenes with weak ones. But good actors together can make a scene--witness the last confrontation between Tommy Lee's Robicheaux and Ned Beatty's Lemoyne.

So, solid direction, much strong acting, faithful to the book, great sets and setting, all brought lower by some bad casting. Still, I think this one deserves more respect, especially compared to many of this year's "Oscar worthy" films.

Cooper does as much as he can with this character. But Hanssen, in the O'Neill version at any rate, is a one-dimensional obsessive whose behavior goes far beyond "quirky." The visit to O'Neill's home and the "takeover" by Hanssen and his Stepford wife is one example, as are all the dictatorial rules he imposes on his "clerk." The film works hard to create a suspense that isn't there. Because of the film's opening use of news footage, we already know Hanssen gets caught, therefore his fate is guaranteed. Further, since this film is based on O'Neill's version, there is no tension about the younger man's fate--he couldn't have been eliminated or found out by Hanssen if he is the author of the story. What would have been interesting would be a more intimate portrait of Hanssen and his motives. But the script keeps using dialogue to try to convince the audience that it ("the why") doesn't matter. The sole gesture toward motivation comes near the end of the film, after Hanssen's arrest, when he (apparently) projects his motives (wounded pride, calling attention to CIA's lax security) onto another spy. It's not enough and, although Cooper is a terrific actor, this film doesn't make good use of his talents.

There is, indeed, a lot of hype around the film, some unjustified. I agree with reviewers who found Nicholson's performance overwrought--a hambone variation on the Down-and-Dirty bit he's been doing for over thirty years. DiCaprio, Sheen, Baldwin, and particularly Wahlberg and Winstone are fine. But Vera Farmiga, however much she's hyped as portraying a "stong" character, doesn't do much for me. She's a psychiatrist who becomes involved with *two* patients, moves in with one (after only four months??) and gets pregnant, apparently on purpose (one might assume a medical professional would know where babies come from). She's an over-dressed substitute for a character. Frankly, Cameron Diaz' turn in "Gangs of New York" was much stronger.

But what really bothers me is that critics are *raving* over this slickly vapid variation on Scorsese's admittedly brilliant "Mean Streets." Why force him to repeat this formula until he's finally awarded an Oscar? I suspect it's because many in the industry don't believe a working-class Italian-American is worthy of making films of literary classics ("Age of Innocence") or historic films ("The Aviator," "Gangs of New York"). I once heard a scholar remark in a presentation that Scorsese must have been "intimidated" by the setting and characters of Wharton's novel *because* he was just a working class guy. By extension, Hollywood seems unable to believe Scorsese deserves credit for being able to "stretch" beyond his ethnic and class origins with any authenticity. Why isolate Scorsese on the mean streets? Because it's easier to typecast--even with directors.

Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" is a classic, both in terms of film and literature. Annie Proulx's short story is followed almost perfectly--with two non-essential scenes added by the screenwriters--and this adds to the strength of the elliptical dialogue.

What makes this a classic? First, like any Greek tragedy, the story revolves around two "star-crossed" lovers whose fate involves not only their lives, but also the larger culture in which they attempt to negotiate irreconcilable desires. The sub-text of "Brokeback" is the vanishing American West and all that it symbolizes. As with Cormac McCarthy's "Border Trilogy", the story of these two men is played out over time, and the audience sees both the slow downward spiral of Jake and Ennis and the gradual commercialization of the West. In the Edenic world where the two men meet, the audience sees pure blue skies, ranging grasslands, powerful mountain ranges, horses, sheep, campfires--in short, an idyllic setting worthy of Homer. In the "real" lives of the men, horses are replaced with trucks, rodeos with television football, whiskey with pot, and the classic intimacy of tents with the bleakness of trailers.

The film is also classic in that it mirrors many of John Ford's westerns. Profound and painful close-ups alternate with equally profound shots of the natural world. Heath Ledger's unarticulated pain and anger reach a tragic climax only once in the film. And this scene--Ennis' emotional "showdown" with Jack--marks the heartbreaking slide of the plot into its bleak denouement. It's a John Wayne movie without the Duke, and the absence of this icon of impossibly romantic machismo is yet another source of invisible power that makes this film one for the ages.