Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

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First, let me say that even a Scorcese near miss is more interesting, more challenging than 95% of Hollywood “successes.” As a director, Scorcese is always pondering the deep questions about human existence & presenting it onscreen in a terribly compelling way.

In Gangs he set out to make a great epic on a scale w. the David Lean films like Zhivago or Lawrence of Arabia . No question, the cinematography is extraordinary. You feel you are right in the midst of the streets of old New York, a place that once was but will never be again. You can almost smell the food fr. the stalls, smell the horse dung in the streets, etc. So Scorcese succeeds in establishing the tone of the great epic films. But what about characterization & plot? Here he falls down in my opinion.

Yes, Cutting is an extraordinary character–totally compelling & riveting for every moment he is onscreen. He is the film’s anchor. But where are the other characters? Di Caprio is miscast in his role as a sullen youth seeking to avenge his father’s murder. Nothing compelling about his performance at all. And Cameron Diaz, beautiful, touching Cameron–where is her character in all this? Almost never to be found I’m afraid. She has a few good scenes, but then Scorcese seems to tire of her & she disappears for the rest of the movie. Too bad.

Other problems: in my opinion, the real drama here is not the rivalry between the two gangs; but rather the Civil War & Draft Riots raging through NYC & the nation, simultaneously to the gang violence. Scorcese does provide some background on the rising level of ethnic & class tension in the city. But he doesn’t connect the Civil War to the action at all. And the Battle of Gettysburg took place only ONE WEEK before the Draft Riots. All Federal troops dispatched frantically to New York came directly from Gettysburg! Scorcese focuses on hatred between ‘Know Nothing’ German immigrants & Irish Catholic immigrants. But the hatred and violence shown to Blacks was more severe, more lethal & should have been acknowledged more seriously. After all, the Draft Rioters focused their most serious vehemence against Blacks (not whites…not even immigrants) who were murdered & humiliated in horribly disfiguring ways.

Why doesn’t someone do a film about the Draft Riots? That would be a great drama.

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My wife & I just had the good fortune to see Far from Heaven. It is a wondrous, but terribly, achingly sad film. Much has been written about the connections between this film & Douglas Sirk’s tearjerker melodramas of the 1950s. If I were to use shorthand, I’d say that while “Pleasantville” was a great satiric/parodic sendup of the period; Far from Heaven functions as a tragic/dramatic reflection on it.

What is interesting about Todd Haynes’ screenplay is that the dialogue & plot developments are not merely a reflection of the 1950s, they are an extreme or slavish parody of the period. In the characters language, you hear the exaggerated civility & stilted bonhommie that characterized the period (at least in our subsequent & reflected observations of it). Wives call their husband “darling” with a smile in one scene, while in the next scene they weep in despair as the same husband asks for a divorce because he comes to realize that he is a homosexual. Of course, this alienation & strangeness is just what Haynes was after to reflect the rigidity & social stratification of the era. But I found the “taking it to extremes” nature of the dialogue to be a bit precious or off-putting in places, even though I understood that the device was their for a good purpose.

In one telling scene, Dennis Haysbert & Julianne Moore’s character talk about their relationship in the context of their society’s fascination with “surfaces.” They say that their hope is that not everything has to be seen only for its surface. Sometimes, they hope, things can be seen from the inside & for what they really are. Of course, they are really talking about the race divide & whether whites & blacks can ever cross it either in everyday life or in romance.

By the end of the film, the answer is clearly no, as everything in Julianne Moore’s life–her family, her love of Haysbert’s character–has disintegrated before her very eyes and leaving her with nothing. By the way, Moore’s performance (as is true of almost everything she is in) is commanding & mesmerizing. She is truly a treasure. Randy Quaid has the thankless task of playing an unhappy, workaholic dad & husband who is a closet homosexual. Unfortunately, his character is merely a foil for Moore. His character is never really developed into a real human being with whom we can feel some empathy.

The final scene of her car leaving the Hartford train station as the camera pans a newly budded springtime apple tree; mirrors the opening scene in which the camera pans a flaming red fall maple tree. The ironic message is that the fall colors, which so beautifully mimic Moore’s beautiful costumes & the films other interiors portend the slow death that Moore’s character will suffer; while the spring blooms (symbolizing hope?) contradict the absolute hopelessness of Moore’s character & her future. So perhaps we can say that the spring blooms really reflect a hope that this horrible 1950s culture will gradually open up in coming years (even if not soon enough for Moore’s character)?

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Would it be a contradiction in terms to say that a film essentially about depression could be a beautiful, elegant & eloquent work of art? The Hours is one of the most intense works of art I’ve ever experienced. A note of warning: whatever the greatnesses of this film (& they are many) there are many things this film is not: it is not happy, falsely optimistic, sentimental or anything that almost every other Hollywood film is. It is brutal, it is cruel, it is, well goddamn depressing! That’s all there is to it.

But if you do not see this film because it is hard or depressing, then you will be missing one of the great films of this year or any other.

Ed Harris’ performance as a poet dying of AIDS is harrowing to the Nth degree. His dying, fiery blue eyes are penetrating. They are frightening to behold. His final speech to Meryl Streep’s character is moving beyond words (if you can say that about something that is, in fact, made of words).

Nicole Kidman rivets as Virginia Woolf in the darkest throes of her depressive illness. The scenes she shares with her niece, Angelica Bell, are achingly sad & beautiful: in one they together bury a dead bird, after which Virginia lays her body down calmly next to the bird’s as if to share its fate. In Virginia’s final scene in the film w. Angelica, the young girl sits in her lap & asks her what she was thinking. Woolf replies that she was thinking of killing her heroine & then thought better of it. But Woolf adds that she now must kill off someone else. The blazing glance that she gives her niece after this statement is fearless, profound & frighteningly acute acting on Kidman’s part.

Everyone connected with this film should be deeply proud of their accomplishment. They have made something moving, powerful & deeply troubling.

Another warning: if you suffer from depression or know anyone who has, this film will be even more disturbing. So be prepared for a tough, intense experience, but one more than worth having.