A TRAVEL COMPANION ON EVERYDAY ROAD

MUSIC BY JOHN MAYER 

 

John Mayer, at a pre-release event, pointed out the difference between being ‘open’ and being ‘honest’ as he saw it. Being ‘open’ is saying what comes to mind, beating boredom, trying to come off as cocky and, well, interesting in the process. Being ‘honest’, on the other hand, is baring it all – the worst of insecurities, the cruellest of self-indulgence, the most haphazard of misalignment as far from stability as possible – all in the past, though. 

“Born and Raised 

In half the time, I’ll be twice my age, 

Better learn how to turn a page 

‘cause time is strange 

now I’m Born and Raised.”

You say what goes that very second inside your head, it’s a mistake. You say it a couple of years later with a tone of regret at having said it before, where regret stems from self-embarrassment than a mob-inflicted gash on relentless cheek, it becomes something else entirely, its warmth uncharacteristic of the gesture you intend to atone for. 

I’ve always been fervent with whatever I’ve felt about John. He’s one of those guys, you know? “It’s better to say too much,” he once sang. “Than never to say what you need to say.” So far, he has lived by it. Who would say that? Anyone on the right side of the world would count what they bring to the table when, as it looks, John lays it all out there and takes his pick right in plain sight. The illusion, thus, is broken, more or less. It’s like having the LeMarc sequence right in the beginning, instead of the very end, of ‘Ocean’s Twelve’ if you see what I’m saying. 

 As eager as he’s been to share expertise, wise-up and impart wisdom, John has never been about holding the cards himself, previously. The guitarist is, no doubt, exceptional. But the writer has been but fast-talking and scared shitless, kind of like a musical version of Will Hunting. He’s been the guy who watches the game and when you’re out to call the bluff he’d go, “Oh no, you wouldn’t want to do that.” Because he wouldn’t do that, if only he played. But then again, he has played before. He will play further. "If Olivia herself were at my door, I'll have to say I'll let her it." He says that.

With ‘Born and Raised’, John Mayer seems to have changed from the guy who’d blow a whistle and ask you not to swim in the lake for reasons undisclosed, to the guy who’d show you the crocodile and the arm he lost to one. It’s poetry that’s circumstantial evidence, and it’s played pretty close. There are a couple of songs that show some scars, where most of them – and this is the crucial point – are self-inflicted. You speak too much, you have more to explain. 

John has never had a problem with saying/doing what comes to mind until the other person finds a problem with it and spreads the word. But then, like I said, to talk about it is one, to sing about it is another. He’s taken his time, but that’s what he’s seemed to have realized. The man with the guitar has something that the man without the guitar can never have in a case of charm against an actual, substantial voice that can influence people. Charm can, at most, get him laid where he’d only have more to talk about and make things worse for himself. 

If ‘Battle Studies’ was a textbook on how to make a deeply insightful record without getting personal about it, ‘Born and Raised’ throws caution out the window and sits it out at a fireplace, finger-picking with a diary in hand whose pages he turns as the guitar plays itself. Music comes easy to John; in fact, it comes so easy that we tend to undermine the effect due to the absence of conspicuous effort put out to cause it. How else are we able to stomach so easily a Country/Folk record after possibly the most mainstream of albums that almost had people click their tongues? 

The album is pitch-perfect. I needn’t say more. It has been compared to those it references, although I doubt if that’s the intention. It’s not like John suddenly bought ‘After the Gold Rush’ and ‘Ladies of the Canyon’ and said he’s going to recreate that kind of soul. His album shows signs of immense care, the songs have been nursed, no song has been over-performed. ‘Born and Raised’ is, truly, ‘Born and Raised’ by a parent musician who really loves his baby and thus wants to shape it better. Which he does by shaping himself better, adding a layer, fine-tuning and waiting enough to find some sheen. It’s a husband’s responsibility on top of a lover’s despair, where, once again, John reminds us why we need him around. In his words, 

“You know that something isn’t right 

when all your heroes are in Black and White.” 

 It’s from a song called ‘Speak for Me’ where he sighs about a thankless job and yet we find he does it all the same. The record is Technicolor where we live in a sepia-toned world – three-dimensional; conspicuously human. And an A-plus on the Progress Report of the Boy-Genius who’s finally put it all out there instead of merely ‘playing it down.’ It’s a keeper. It’s overwhelming.

SAY IT AGAIN, DIANNE

DIRECTED BY CAMERON CROWE

STARRING: JOHN CUSACK, IONE SKYE, JOHN MAHONEY, LILI TAYLOR, CHYNNA PHILIPS, AMY BROOKS, POLLY PLATT, JEREMY PIVEN with BEBE NEUWIRTH and PHILIP BAKER HALL

Dianne Court (Ione Skye) is the nervous valedictorian whose speech doesn’t connect with a single person from school. Lloyd Doddler (John Cusack) doesn’t want it to. He’s a sweet variation of the jock who’d score ten on ten on the vulnerability scale. In him, there’s much to love and little to comprehend – he’s the guy who’d ask you what you’d want for your birthday as much as he’s capable of springing a surprise on his own. And he can manage a full party at that, given the amount of people in his influence circle – one he plays ‘keymaster’ to.

‘Say Anything’ has a plot that I don’t even need to discuss. You'd see why. Dianne has won a fellowship to England, Lloyd doesn’t even know what he’s going to do the coming Summer. Dianne has a friend in her Father (John Mahoney), Lloyd has a big sister (Joan Cusack) to whom he plays older brother at times. And younger brother at other times. He finds close friends in DC (Amy Brooks) and Corey (Lili Taylor) while Dianne has muses at best. His is a world that she is yet to explore. Hers is one he wouldn’t if not for her. Let me quote some lines in support of that:

"I don’t know, I’ve thought about this quite a bit, Sir. And I don’t think there’s really much that’s waiting out there for me. I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, I wouldn’t buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought or... processed. And I wouldn’t want to repair anything sold, bought or processed, as a career, I don’t want to do that. My Father’s in the army and he wants me to join, but eh... I can’t do that. What I’m going to do then is... kickboxing. Which is a new sport, but I think it’s got a good future."

Cameron Crowe is the best 80s filmmaker of the 90s. And the new millennium as well. Right down to his latest in ‘We Bought a Zoo’ (that I happened to watch/review a few days back), an unusual choice of film that he romanticized in his own way. He’s the epitome of extra-optimism characteristic of one who grew up with Springsteen and Rock-n-Roll; he ‘sticks.’ Enough to get you inspired; enough to get you wanting not to be. Either way, he’d trigger a response.

I’m reverse-processing the Crowe line of heroes here. ‘We Bought a Zoo’ had a really natural Matt Damon, complete with testy smile and the twinkle in his eye as the romantic, which he contrasted with a passable portrayal of the helpless Dad who didn’t know what to do to help his Son, only capable of holding on to him, hoping he’d cling. ‘Elizabethtown’ had Orlando Bloom in a surprising revelation of potential as the Crowe-romantic, which I think he followed up decently well in his segment with Christina Ricci in ‘New York, I Love you.’ ‘Jerry Maguire’ and ‘Vanilla Sky’ had Hollywood’s own jerk/loser in Tom Cruise (remember ‘Cocktail’?), while in ‘Almost Famous,’ he split man and boy to two different beings (Billy Crudup and Patrick Fugit), switching bodies every now and then.

‘Say Anything’ has John Cusack. I think he’s one of the most endearing of Hollywood heroes. Anyone who’s watched ‘Bullets over Broadway’ would side with me here. Like how someone who’s watched ‘Midnight in Paris’ would side with me on Owen Wilson as well, whom I’ve liked ever since Wes Anderson’s ‘Bottle Rocket’ (1996). These are really personal filmmakers we're talking about. Allen, Crowe; Alexander Payne. You can’t get any more personal than a Woody Allen protagonist does. Payne, I think, would come second best, where Crowe is ambition rather than depiction as such. Cusack would eventually go on to work his charm yet again with the inimitably sugar-coated ‘Serendipity’ that had Nick Drake as well to add to its worth.

Anyway, since this is a recollection (self-proclaimed) and not an actual ‘review’, let me quote another line.

“Are you here because you want someone or you want me? (pause) Well, you know what? Forget it. (goes ahead and kisses)”

Ione Skye is beautiful. Standout beautiful, I mean. In the sense that I wouldn’t want to watch another film of hers to foil the impression she’s made with this one. It’s a rare delight when actor and character mesh so well that you’re in a trance enough to not see their individual fibres. Like Julie Delpy in ‘Before Sunrise.’ Felicity Jones in ‘Like Crazy.’ Emily Watson in ‘Punch-Drunk Love,’ even though more abstract and less-emphasized. All these people substantiate a really pretty woman with character and intellect or simple street-smartness which, in essence, amounts to the same thing. And Skye, as Dianne, we find, is exactly what Corey and DC concur about her – that she’s “a Brain, trapped in the body of a game-show host.”

I don’t mean to patronize when I say this, or maybe I do mean to, but ‘Say Anything’ sets the romance standard. Contemporary urban cinema-wise, I mean. It has all the ingredients, where what’s best is that Crowe made the ingredients and he's made them with wild-eyed honesty and utmost care. I’d like to move for induction of the Crowe standard into the list of the seven basic plots in Film Theory as an upgrade of the 'Romeo and Juliet' routine. Who’s with me on this?

TWENTY SECONDS TOO LATE?

DIRECTED BY CAMERON CROWE

STARRING: MATT DAMON, SCARLETT JOHANSSON, COLIN FORD, MAGGIE ELIZABETH JONES, PATRICK FUGIT, ANGUS MacFADYEN, ELLE FANNING, JOHN MICHAEL HIGGINS, CARLA GALLO with JB SMOOVE, STEPHANIE SZOSTAK and THOMAS HADEN CHURCH

Cameron Crowe’s most adventurous film till date might not have all it takes to jump off the page. But it has enough to make do with. ‘We Bought a Zoo’ is ridden with Crowe-staples in a plotline that looks too easy to come by but hard to digest – exactly what the man has been about all his life. It’s a leisure trip that doesn’t amount to much else. Kind of how a newly-widowed father takes his two kids, one on the shoulder, the other by his side, on an escape into the wilderness where, in this case, he’s bought it beforehand. ‘Do not feed the animals’ doesn’t apply to his crazy twenty seconds.

Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon) is about Damon’s age and has his hair, something that his seven year old daughter Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones) uses to distinguish him with from other Dads his age. It has been six months since his wife had died, so we’re looking at a time past the mourning period where the decision gets made about setting the wheels in motion back again. Well, the wheels are in motion, Ben gets hit on by a fellow single parent who’s taken her time to make them some lasagna, a dinner which he, out of solidarity or rather a lack thereof, saves for later in a fridge that’s stacked. There looks to be plenty of cooks for hire about town.

The younger child is easy where the older one is beyond repair. It’s only natural to expect that with Crowe’s optimism. Rosie mothers her Dad, Ben gives back. The older child is a boy who has, to put it simply, crossed over. Every child spawned in Hollywood is an amazing artist post-trauma. In a Cameron Crowe movie, we’re simply looking at escalation. Dylan (Colin Ford), named for Bob Dylan by both Benjamin and Crowe, sleeps with his art book so his Dad could take a look when he’s done. This effort is totally required after he gets expelled from school for decapitating on the school wall. It’s what you get when you draw a grotesque head-severing mural amidst sunshine and rainbows.

On a parallel note, Ben quits his job as an investigative reporter who’s given a column on an e-Paper as a sympathetic gesture. His Boss thinks it’s only natural. Ben thinks he can do better. He’s still a forty-year old bundle of quirks with all of Damon’s spontaneity and, like I said, a whole head of hair. His son has just been expelled, his daughter can adapt and his brother Duncan (Thomas Haden Church) keeps asking him why he hasn’t moved on yet. What can be a better time to decide to?

Now, I don’t know how many real-estate agents are Black, and it sure isn’t easy logic to ascertain why Crowe had cast JB Smoove in the role of one Mr. Stevens, but we almost have a ‘Show me the Money’ recap where Rosie tells him she likes him instead. He shows the Mee-twosome of Ben and Rosie a long-abandoned house that’s ‘9 miles away from the nearest grocer.’ However, it doesn’t overlook a graveyard as far as clichés go. It comes with a Zoo. And a 28-year old zookeeper by the name of Kelly Foster (Scarlett Johansson) who’s married to it to agoraphobic proportions.

The other ‘inmates’ are technical expert Peter MacCready (Angus MacFadyen), who’s kind of a Luigi to this Radiator Springs where Guido, possibly, is Robin Jones (Patrick Fugit) as the only person in the vicinity who can be entrusted with the extremely rare Capuchin monkey. Then there’s Lily Miska (Elle Fanning) a really tall 13-year old who is home-schooled and works at the restaurant for under-the-table wages just so she could bring Dylan a sandwich at 4:15 in the evening every day. There are a couple more people to put up tent-poles and fences and help to round up an escaped bear, but that’s only because there can’t be more rifles than there are human beings. It’s a ground rule.

Duncan calls Kelly a motivating factor. Ben courts the zoo. A personal drama becomes an obstacle course where the hurdles disappear with a sleight of heart. In other words, Ben sidesteps them with his daughter on his shoulder and his son by his side, like I said. It’s an escape, not a solution, but the sad part is that the escape also encompasses the solution, as discussed by Kelly and Ben with respect to Spar, the Tiger, in an obvious comparison. Jerry Maguire tells Dorothy Boyd that he’d take her Son to the Zoo sometime. Dorothy tells him that wouldn’t change a thing. It’s the same case with Kelly and the film on the whole. It takes us all to the Zoo. We have a wife-bereft individual and a son who’s resisting change and we go to the zoo with them. I think that sums up the experience.

‘We Bought a Zoo’ is exactly how Crowe would make ‘We Bought a Zoo’ and that doesn’t make it a bad film. It’s ill-fated in that there’s been a better one recently. I’m talking about ‘the Descendants,’ from the second-most romantic of defeatists after Woody Allen. Everyone in this film pitted against everyone in ‘the Descendants’ would lose big on credibility except for Kelly who doesn’t have a peer. And Ben, maybe, who is Damon’s own characteristic show. ‘Elizabethtown’ wasn’t worst-hit where ‘Jersey Girl’ went down on a ‘Garden State’ time. ‘We Bought a Zoo’ is most unfortunate that way. Between two inheritances, you pick the one with more at stake. And I, with widower-speculation, felt I should kiss Elizabeth goodbye rather than have Katherine (Stephanie Szostak) say ‘Why Not?’ again. Which, of course, has more to do with the film than the actual situation that is Crowe-crazy and, no doubt, beautiful.

THE "LET'S KILL SOME SCREEN SPACE" VENTURE

DIRECTED BY BALAJI MOHAN

STARRING: SIDDHARTH NARAYAN, AMALA PAUL, ARJUN, VIGNESH, DHANYA BALAKRISHNA, SHYAM, POOJA, SRI RANJANI, SUREKHA with RAVI RAGHAVENDRA and SURESH

I find it infuriating when a movie tells me what to do. It’s something I’d always take with a bucket load of salt. Please don’t take me wrong when I say that. This isn’t me depriving the director of his freedom, this is me asserting mine. Cinema has been a role model ever since I founded fascination; some of my biggest inspirations have been movie characters. I find strength in such didacticism that coaxes me into an illusion whose impact I’ve been found to feel even when it’s long gone. The song might have ended, but the melody would linger. That’s what Cinema does to me.

Post-Modernism broke this illusion. The intentions are as valid as they’re not, for we live in a world that can’t go around too long with more tilt to it than before. Where the message was considered vital, filmmakers decided not to sugar-coat it. Brechtian theatre, one of the strongest of precursors and possibly the core inspiration for post-modern cinema, was storytelling at its didactic best. Word needed conveyance, where the man found, in his toneless wit and his biased neutrality characteristic of a reporter, an ideal medium to get it across to the audience. He would rather crucify the crowd than put them to sleep and instruct in dream. Anaesthetics were restricted to the Hospital.

Cinema to instruct, Cinema as a medium to reform, Cinema as the single most effective propagandist device. All share the one similarity in that the message conveyed is important. The director earns his credit in only the fact that he’s come up with something that I, as the disciplined viewer, cannot come up with on my own. It’s a tricky situation. It doesn’t mean that I require the film to seduce me with stark originality, I only demand it to have enough so as to earn my respect. I could honour Christopher Nolan not for conceiving ‘Inception’ but for executing it, wherein I wasn’t entirely impressed with how the film visually turned out to be either. Do you see what I’m saying?

So you see, it’s simple. I’d not want to spend two hours on something that I already know. I do not mean this only with reference to the instructional aspect of Cinema. A film as an experience in itself loses some air when you rewind the tapes and watch it back all over again. In some cases, a closer watch makes way for new dimensions, I agree. In others, it’s as redundant as flipping through the pages of a self-help book. Like browsing through a porn catalogue when you know exactly what you’re looking for. It’s a waste of precious time.

What do you say about a self-help work adapted for the screen, then – one that teaches you how to make an omelette when you pride yourself to be a Gourmet Chef, that too? What doesn’t make for a better life better make for an amusing watch at least. Like the Ben Affleck segment in ‘He’s Just not that into You.’ Key here is connection – how much fondness the movie inspires, how effortlessly you get to swap places with characters and how, as a result, you feel as the film provokes them to feel.

'Kaadhalil Sodhappuvadhu Yeppadi?’ was a fifteen minute short film. It still is the very same fifteen minute movie stretched to about eight times its length. It is unimaginative, lethargic, suffers from an incurable sort of inertia to kick-off into consideration – which is still acceptable for a short film. For a two hour movie, on the other hand, it lacks content. The short film is reverse-engineered with a storyline that could take fifteen more minutes to be resolved. The rest of the hour and a half is wasted in commentary for a film which, ideally, doesn’t require any. Am I the only person to think that, however ingeniously constructed, the idea of a film speaking to the viewer is ridiculous? I’m sick of movies telling me what to feel. Movies, with background music, overwhelming photography and excessive closeness to an undeserving character. Thank God for Ramin Bahrani.

For a movie with a title as good as a generalization; a movie which IS a generalization, considering its characters talk about ‘Men’ and ‘Women’ as opposed to ‘Him’ and ‘Her’ or ‘Me’ and ‘You,’ it is incredibly close-minded, playing to specific characters and situational stereotypes. Parvathy (Amala Paul) is erratic because her parents are in for a divorce. Arun (Siddharth Narayan) plays straight because he’s never had to struggle to earn his worth. Every man who’s seen a war would invariably make it his own. Arun becomes his own Obi-Wan. The force is universal. It needs to be mastered.

I hate those movies that extrapolate an experience to the extent of a worldview. This movie sells it as one. The content is destroyed with explanation which the movie is philanthropic about. There are very few, very rare scenes which show the actual conflict – even lesser still, the affection. We never suffer what they were suffering, we don’t rejoice when the curse is lifted. Neither is there anything remarkable about any of these characters in this systemic plotline that’s sewn together with rags of everyday scenes from the Hollywood Gazette. What ‘Made of Honor’ did with a storyline, this movie accomplishes with a lack thereof. And that they sucked is this unparalleled feat that they both achieved.

WE HAVE A MASTERPIECE!

DIRECTED BY NANNI MORETTI

STARRING: MICHAEL PICCOLI, JERZY STUHR, RENATO SCARPA, FRANCO GRAZIOSI, CAMILLO MILLI, ROBERTO NOBILE, ULRICH VON DOBSCHUTZ, GIANLUCA GOBBI, DARIO CANTARELLI with MARGHERITA BUY and NANNI MORETTI

Nanni Moretti crowns the Pope at a staging of Chekov’s ‘the Seagull.’ I don’t know if I’m allowed to call it a ‘coronation,’ I don’t even know if it CAN be called that, the unorthodox revelation it was, but I take Moretti’s stance in ignorance – that of not wanting to learn. The play is in full attendance. The seats are all almost filled to begin with, and we have a hundred more of cardinals, nuns and colourfully dressed security guards marching in. Of course, there’s nothing funnier than a play gone horribly wrong; where one actor goes round the twist and renders all lines from the script with the stage directions as well. But that’s not why they were there. That’s not why they applauded.

I do not know if ‘We Have a Pope’ self-references Chekov, I could think of cinematic analogies at most. It is as elaborate, as intensive and as comprehensive with its opinion as a Pasolini film like ‘the Decameron.’ I haven’t seen anything like it before, but then I haven’t seen much. There’s something uncanny about a parody sketch in the fact that you need to reach a level of elaboration and a reassurance in the execution of it to even consider writing it. The execution and, as a result, the end begets the means or the motivation for the same. Let me rule pastiche out of this, the post-modern vehicle that it is. Pastiche could survive on the written word and the entropy of changing colours on its coat of paint called performance.

But think about this. Anyone can sketch a parody, but it takes real craft to even start to paint the rest of the picture, let alone paint it well. And, not to mention, it takes courage in a time where the world is content with leaving the rest of its canvas empty. Like ‘Shakespeare in Love,’ or the eccentric works of Sacha Baron Cohen. Like ‘Brazil.’ Like ‘Zoolander.’ It’s strenuous in the fact that there is so much necessitated in form of production design for the sake of a script that directs no attention towards it. Of course, I speak here as a writer who finds set-designing to be a daunting task on the lines of a necessary evil.

I’ve previously seen the internal chambers of the Pope’s residence in ‘Angels and Demons.’ We’ve also been treated to a tiny glimpse of it as yet another venue for Jacques Clousseau’s antics in ‘the Pink Panther 2.’ In ‘We Have a Pope,’ I come across the chambers for a third time. I can’t recollect enough to draw similarities, but I did spend a good amount of time wondering if it’s a chartered set. I also wondered how the Church permitted it. Granted that no filmmaker ever has And, granted that no filmmaker ever has shown the Vatican in anything but poor light, the Church permits this portrayal as long as one doesn’t go too out-of-bounds with his/her depiction. Steve Martin’s whoops-a-daisy surely runs along the net-cord, but then what the hell, you know? It’s art for art’s sake, after all.

Moretti, much like the professor he portrays, is irreverent. But not blasphemous. He’s the guy who finds psychoanalytical themes in the Bible in a utilitarian’s helplessness. The character makes his own luck. The filmmaker does too. His lack of faith doesn’t hinder his commitment to the parody. The production design is detailed to intimate proportions. The detail seldom steps out of tune. ‘Angels and Demons’ demanded an aura; we could almost smell the fumes from fires kept constantly aflame, the movie – a ritual in progress. Moretti doesn’t even light candles here in ‘We Have a Pope.’ He turns the conclave to a middle-school examination hall with pencils coming down on the table together, answers being scratched out; cardinals peeking at neighbour answer-scripts. You know it’s a comedy when someone falls. In this case, it’s Cardinal Brummer (Ulrich Von Dobschutz), the joke of the show; unpopular, and thus endearing.

I hope you’ve seen ‘Runaway Bride.’ Cardinal Melville (Michael Piccoli) is like Maggie Fleming in it. He is elated at his selection. He walks down the aisle. He panics. And he runs. Before a sweeping shot across the deserted polling chamber he locks himself in – I love the arrangement when the party is over with the furniture playing victim of human abandonment – he says he ‘can’t do it.’ A physician is brought in to get him checked. His blood pressure is normal, he is able to joke and most certainly smiles gentle. The problem, as we all know, lies within. Enter Moretti as the psychoanalyst whose position is as bad as that of Billy Crystal in ‘Analyze This,’ if not worse. It’s like interviewing Nixon with a dozen Watergates to hide than just one. I hope you get what I’m saying.

But Melville isn’t like Nixon, he shows potential to cooperate. Rajski (Jerzy Stuhr), who’s kind of a secretary to the Pope, locks the psychoanalyst in for confidentiality purposes, and goes to his wife (Margherita Buy) for second opinion. The psychoanalyst finds her clichéd. He says she’s got nothing but a parental deficit card that she plays all the time. But then she works. Sometimes, the cause is not what you identify, but an elaborate Placebo. In Cardinal Melville’s case, we know there’s no need for one. He goes with the diagnosis, takes his intermission and runs away, requesting to be left alone as he goes to satiate an unrequited passion for the stage.

In the meantime, the psychoanalyst becomes an in-house patient in an asylum of his design where he splits Cardinals into continents, picking captains based on their odds of becoming the Pope as per newspaper speculations, organizing a two-court Volleyball tournament in a courtyard that looks like the Union Jack from an aerial shot. He treats them like schoolchildren where we’re shown that he has two of his own – as stubborn, as difficult to manage. He’s as Darwinist as he preaches, being both Ringmaster and the main Clown act in this circus.

Moretti is sort of a Woody Allen of Italy, in writing and in performance. I’ve watched him before as all of writer, director and performer in ‘the Son’s Room’ which won the Golden Palm at Cannes in 2001, rendering him a staple ever since. It’s a heartbreaking film about a middle-aged psychoanalyst who, along with his wife and daughter, copes with the death of their teenage son in a striking depiction of the repair process. I found Moretti to be as incredible a central character as Allen, with the right amount of sarcasm, of anger, a subtle dose of neurotic impatience (even for a shrink) to weigh it down on the other side, and he tops it all with impeccable comic timing. He’s the unabashed bourgeoisie who can afford his cynicism as he always writes his character to be. He’s like an Alexander Payne who can act.

‘We Have a Pope’ is not a study. It’s a fable – hence the ‘Decameron’ comparison earlier, in spite of the fact that it’s heavily sensitized and works as a rather exaggerated cartoon of a man who’s almost like Casper, the Ghost, in all his gentleness and romantic humour. Like Sully from ‘Monsters Inc.’ I’m killing you with comparisons, you’d have to watch the film and place him on your own.

For once, we have a parody that’s not critical of an institution but still makes fun of it with a sibling’s deliberation. Moretti stands before the Catholic Church, fearless and with nothing in his heart but his own agenda, much like Chaplin against Hitler in ‘the Great Dictator.’ It’s not a grudge he holds, but an opinion. Both films ended with the humbleness of a man who is expected to be great but who really isn’t – something that the crowd would never understand. It doesn’t have the rebel’s intention to defame an existing giant, but the romantic’s inclination to put his faith in a new one. It doesn’t want Goliath killed, it makes David stronger. That’s Fabien-Socialist, in all essence.

Of course, Cardinal Melville will be forgotten in due course of time. There will be a new Pope to head the institution. No one will have been affected, nothing will have changed. The most we’d have in hand is a lesson learned – that Oceania needs more Cardinals, at least to make a Volleyball team; they’re miserable otherwise. And, of course, that you’d have a convincing winner in Africa no matter what. It’s best to know the odds before you place your bets. That’s all I have to say.

THE SWIMMING POOL FIVESOME

DIRECTED BY BRETT RATNER

STARRING: BEN STILLER, EDDIE MURPHY, CASEY AFFLECK, MATTHEW BRODERICK, ALAN ALDA, MICHAEL PENA, GABOUREY SIDIBE, JUDD HIRSCH, NINA ARIANDA and TEA LEONI

“So you’re saying you want to rob 20 Million Dollars from Arthur Shaw, which you think he’s hidden in a secret wall-safe in his penthouse apartment – an apartment that he’s not allowed to leave and is guarded by three FBI agents, 24 hours a day. And you want to do this in a building which has the most advanced security surround system in the world. A building which we’re barred from ever entering again,” Charlie (Casey Affleck) asks Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) like an ex-receptionist asks an ex-hotel manager. It’s a yes or no question that Josh, obviously, answers with a ‘Yes.’

Caper films are all about the run-through. We don’t care about what happened before, we don’t pay too much attention to what happens after either. We seek explanations, sure, but we trust the makers with detail and their intelligence in the same. We grade them on it. We’d like them to be believable, if not right-on. It all begins with the pitch that precedes the run-through. Like Danny to Rusty in the elevator or Danny and Rusty to Reuben by his pool in ‘Ocean’s Eleven.’ We don’t know for sure what’s being suggested, but we know it’s ridiculously difficult; impossible, even. Like in ‘Charlie’s Angels’ when Dylan is tied up with Sam Rockwell and his goons circling her with smirks on their faces when she has one of her own and tells them clearly how exactly she’s going to escape, how they’d end up helping her to, and how ridiculous it sounds when she says that.

That’s the run-through. It’s an evolution from smash-grab affairs and John Dillinger styled show of power, the burst-in-burst-out kind of heists from Crime dramas and actual reality, for a fact. It’s meant to engage the audience, to count us in on their con where we’re made to see the one golden way ahead and how, absurdly enough, the bunch in focus, the team of people whose midst we’re lured into, are exactly suited to make it happen. “Pick a natural disaster,” says Nigel with all of Eddie Izzard’s British sarcasm in ‘Ocean’s Thirteen.’ Minutes later, it’s “Get me a hundred thousand dollars and a laptop.” He’s figured it out. All he has to do is go on eBay and buy one of those machines that dug the Channel Tunnel. With that, the cons turn operative. It’s a mission-accomplished-to-be.

The best thing when you’re told about what’s going to happen is not that you anticipate, but that you wait for it to go wrong. It’s like being stuck in the middle of a speech and you have the potential to swing it both ways. Films excite with their surprise package, no matter what. The little plan they have to work around this barrier. It could be stupid, it could be the cleverest of ideas, true-blue breakthrough material. Having spent the best of an hour following protocol, it’s the thrill of having the next 40-odd minutes all for yourself to guess, uncover and be satisfied/disappointed.

‘Tower Heist’ is simple. It’s set in a hotel called ‘the Tower’ and it’s about a heist. It’s a big hotel, kind of like Willie Bank's casino, which makes the process hard enough for there to be a movie on it. There’s also a reason to drive it. Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) is the chairman-figure who swims on Benjamin Franklin. His rooftop swimming pool has a hundred-dollar bill for a bottom and he has an elevator that takes him to it. And he has Steve McQueen’s Ferrari in the living room of his penthouse. All this when he’s on house arrest for securities fraud, depriving his employees of their pension pay and some, as in the case of Lester the doorman (Steven McKinley Henderson), of all of their savings.

So Josh is the faithful servant gone rogue – he lives alone and has nothing to lose. Charlie’s wife is in her third trimester where he’d need to sell the baby to pay for its birth, as he hypothesizes. Enrique (Michael Pena), the elevator-attendant will play a part because he ‘knows’ about circuitry and Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick) will because he has nothing better to do. And Slide (Eddie Murphy) is the Chris Tucker of this Rush-Hour-gone-badass, who’d do it because he gets to be cool.

You don’t watch a Brett Ratner movie for intellectual value. You watch it for how he pokes fun with references. And, of course, for his black stereotype. Stereotypes in the plural, this time, for we have Gabourey Sidibe from ‘Precious’ as Odessa, the no-nonsense Jamaican maid who knows about locks like Mikayla knew about automobiles in ‘Transformers.’ In short, she’s home-schooled. As for the references, well let me give you one. Charlie, Enrique and Mr. Fitzhugh sit around a table as Josh and Slide join in. Fitzhugh jokes about them being ‘the Doberman gang’ when Charlie links it to Gregory Peck getting attacked by dogs in ‘the Boys from Brazil’ which Enrique links to ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ and how he was freaked out by Hilary Swank in it. A Gold Car would sit on an elevator and not cause it to overload, security personnel fancy ‘Playboy’ than their jobs, the FBI only plays watchdog with a head shepherd in Agent Claire Denham (Tea Leoni), the love interest who never suspects.

‘Tower Heist’ has Alan Alda for a villain. You’d know what to expect from it. Aside from poking fun and the surprise (yes, the Car, if you haven’t guessed yet) is an obvious nostalgia factor. Slide presses the accelerator in Josh’s car when he’s driving – a car that I thought looked like a Mustang Bullitt, the dash being filmed in a stretch of road under a bridge that looked very much like the one in ‘the French Connection.’ Also is the central Steve McQueen reference. Now that doesn’t make ‘Tower Heist’ a film tribute. Neither is it a water-tight caper venture. But then that doesn’t stop it from being a mildly interesting, sometimes annoying and always amusing Brett Ratner fare. Does it?

CHAOS, ORDERED IN

DIRECTED BY ROMAN POLANSKI

STARRING: JODIE FOSTER, KATE WINSLET, JOHN C. REILLY and CHRISTOPH WALTZ

Two couples become four individuals in ‘Carnage.’ Then they realign. Nothing amounts to anything. In a manner not quite unlike ‘Ken Park,’ which postulated inaction in action, we come face to face with a ‘plot device’ that has nothing to do with the story we’re told. I doubt if many of you would’ve watched ‘Ken Park,’ so I’ll take the liberty of throwing some light on the reference. ‘Ken Park’ starts with Ken Park shooting himself in the head at a Skate park. A diary is found in his bag by means of which we come to learn of his friends’ circle. The film then completes a full circle right up to the starting point where it’s revealed why Ken shot himself in the first place – an absurdist detail that serves to explain the film itself.

Ken Park was the ‘plot device’ of ‘Ken Park,’ which means he had nothing to do with the film other than contribute to it its very premise. Without him, there is no ‘Ken Park.’ As I remember mentioning in my review, we would’ve had something like ‘the Beautiful perversions of Randomly-colliding Teenagers’ instead. I’m not aware if that’s the title I used back then, but I’m sure you understand.

‘Carnage,’ the film, begins with ‘Carnage,’ the poster, and, not to mention, the plot summary. It’s a Yasmina Reza play adapted to the screen by Roman Polanski and Reza herself. I might not be too familiar with the work of Reza, but I can say I’ve had my share of exposure. I’ve watched ‘Art’ being staged twice by two different sets of people giving scope enough for me to rank them. And arrive at some definitive conclusions about Reza herself as a playwright.

Reza is postmodern with her writing. A different set of actors would translate to a different version of the play. The material is toneless and hostile for the most part with bursts of passion that render themselves salient on their own accord. ‘Art’ in all its glory was a deconstructive argument about Art in the outlooks of three close friends that inevitably served to deconstruct their friendship itself. Ivan, the impulsive, heart-on-sleeve simpleton cries in the end at the wreck of faith, kneeling in the midst of shambles from the damage the friends had caused to themselves. We’re taught about eventuality and our very own wicked, selfish contributions to it.

‘Carnage’ is a lesson on insignificance; on the inconsequential. Zachary and Ethan reconcile on their own accord, not depending on the passive-aggressive interaction between their parents. We watch out of a window without zoom/perspective as a disgruntled Zachary smacks Ethan with a sizeable stick and walks away without a second look. The dispute, as we understand, began with Ethan, along with the rest of the gang, counting him out. That episode ends, and we cut to a computer screen where Penelope Longstreet (Jodie Foster) writes a complaint in the most hospitable of manners as her husband Michael (John C. Reilly), along with Alan (Christoph Waltz) and Nancy Cowan (Kate Winslet), look on. The Longstreets are Ethan’s parents, while the Cowans show faint traces of shame and regret along with upper-middle class pride at having borne the aggressor, Zachary.

I do not know how much Bunuel’s ‘the Exterminating Angel’ could’ve been an influence. The most I’ve seen/heard of it was in ‘Midnight in Paris,’ where Woody Allen had cheek enough to suggest its idea to Bunuel himself, making his Gil Pender a sort of Ghost-contributor. But I kept relating throughout. It’s a film (as anyone who has watched ‘Midnight in Paris’ would know) about five dinner-guests who aren’t able to leave the house after their meal. They move, they shift around, but they just can’t leave.

In ‘Carnage’ in the guise of the Longstreets, Reza doesn’t let them. Insistence stems from hospitality, the most brutal of forces – you feed the bird to make it stay. Food here is discussion as well as the cobbler that Penelope serves the Cowans. Discussion evolves into friendly interaction with the meal and then devolves to an argument and a feud, literally, as food turns to vomit that Nancy throws up right in the middle of the coffee table – one that bears an assortment of Art magazines and catalogues and a bunch of bright Yellow, long-stalked Tulips in a big glass bowl.

Vomit is impulse where the reaction is as uncontrollable. Nancy cuts loose with apologies while Penelope struggles not to do the same with her hysterics. Destruction here was both unnecessary and unavoidable. But then it progresses to a point where it becomes deliberate when it could easily have been side-stepped. It’s like bumping into a person on the street and then it turns into an ugly brawl with both trying to cause the other as much pain as possible in a quest for self-establishment.

What I didn’t like about the film is how it steadied the pace of devolution in a case of constructed chaos. I found that to be irksome. Everything else was there to appreciate. The setup, the elegance, the performances. I liked John C. Reilly the best even though I know Polanski situates emphasis in his women. Each actor is cast in their respective comfort zone. Winslet with her hysterics, Foster with jabs of helplessness, Reilly for his laid-back gait and teddy-bear bursts of anger and sarcasm; Waltz for his presence. The script-to-stage entropy provided by a Reza work makes it the perfect Polanski vehicle, even though he plays it safe with textbook direction. The effect doesn’t lure us to stay – it asks us to. An insistence which I found to be reflected in the film itself, falling in its favour.