Tilda Swinton – The Magnificent 60s

Asteroid City (2023) **** – Seen at the Cinema

“Up to his clavicle in whimsicality,” is the best I can do. While acknowledging that quote is not mine, I should also make clear it could apply to any Wes Anderson picture. He strikes me as critic-proof. With a hard core of fans, whether his movies enter box office heaven depends on the oldest and most elusive of marketing tricks: word-of-mouth.

I am going to be telling everyone to go-see without really being able to explain why they should. I might not be able to describe the plot without putting everyone off. I might get the plot wrong. Ostensibly, it’s about a bunch of disparate characters coming together in the titular city (pop: 87!!) to celebrate in the mid-1950s the gazillionth anniversary of the landing of an asteroid, a pock-marked rock about the size of a giant watermelon.

The motley crowd includes scientists, U.S. Army representatives, schoolkids taking part in a science competition, sightseers and some characters stranded there and, halfway through, an alien who commits the heist of the century, though unlike most caper pictures there’s none of the usual pre-robbery set-up.

While Anderson has a consistency of outlook that delights/bewilders/infuriates critics, he has a stunning sense of originality. He doesn’t repeat himself and reveals an astonishing freshness when it comes to the myriad methods employed to tell a story. At least here, the narrative is, roughly, straightforward not breaking off into various routes (or even cul de sacs) as in his previous outing The French Dispatch, which struggled in the old word-of-mouth department but which I adored.

To help me along here with what the film was all about I looked up the lead review in Imdb. Not only was it no help at all, it was pretty dispiriting. Poor old Wes Anderson gets walloped for lack of plot. I couldn’t care tuppence for plot as long as I’m entertained. And I went along quite happily with the ultra-post-ironic (post-something anyway) notion that we were watching the filmed version of a famous play or possibly the situation which inspired the play but cutting between both and the actors in the movie version not only playing characters but dropping into their genuine personalities – or perhaps not, maybe these were the characters from the play.

And here, the last thing I want to do is put you off. So, yeah, if you think narrative isn’t just watching a bunch of people who’ve never met before interact, a category into which I guess you would chuck movies as different as The Towering Inferno (1974) and Titanic (1997), and think they have to be gathered for a doomsday scenario, and ignore the likes of Bus Stop (1956) then just go ahead and talk yourself out of that rare sighting on the Hollywood hills, an adult movie with nary a superhero (discounting said alien of course, whose back story might include super-heroism for all I know) involved.

This might just be one long litany of jokes, but why would you complain about that? Anyway, for the sake of anyone who has come here for a proper review, here goes.

Grieving widower Augie (Jason Schwartzmann) is unexpectedly stuck in Asteroid City when his car goes into meltdown. His three young children think they are auditioning for Macbeth, constantly casting spells and intent on burying their mother’s ashes, contained in a Tupperware bowl, in the desert, and generally acting weird. His equally widowed father-in-law Stanley (Tom Hanks), dressed as if coming straight from the golf course, turns up to pretty much tell him how much he dislikes him. Augie has a short affair with movie star Midge (Scarlett Johansson) while her science-minded daughter gets to experience first love and proves a whiz at some extremely complicated memory game that I might have played when young but can’t remember the name of or which could equally be a Wes Anderson invention.

Please sir, that’s as much plot as I can remember. Various other characters appear, flitting in and out, and don’t behave as you might expect. Oh, some do, there’s a hotel owner selling plots of real estate, but there’s also the apparently straight from Central Casting General Gibson (Jeffrey Wright) whose speech sounds more like an elevator pitch for a novel. See, I told you, explaining it won’t help. You just gotta go see it.

You might spend the whole picture rubber-necking, spotting stars in cameo roles, but except for Edward Norton and to some extent Tilda Swinton none of them are doing what they are famous/infamous for. Maybe Wes Anderson has a constant queue of A-list applicants for small roles just because a) they get to play someone completely different from normal and/or b) they get to work with the great man.

Roman Coppola (Moonrise Kingdom, 2012) was drafted in to help write the screenplay maybe just so the director can get to share the blame if it’s a critical dog.

Go see.

Did I already say that?

Triple Bill Blues: Fall (2022) *; The Forgiven (2021) ; Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022) ** – Seen at the Cinema

You may be aware that I am partial to a triple bill on my weekly Monday trip to the cinema. I’m rather an indiscriminate cinemagoer and generally just see what’s available, though it’s true return trips to view Top Gun: Maverick have helped paper over cracks in the current distribution malaise. Sometimes a triple bill can reveal unsung gems, sometimes I am rowing against the critical tide in my opinions and sometimes, not too often thank goodness, I end up seeing movies with few redeeming qualities. That was the circumstance this week.

FALL

So now I know. If I need to get a mobile phone dropped 2,000 feet without it breaking into pieces, the thing to do is stuff it inside a cadaver. That’s one of the more outlandish suggestions in this climbing picture two-hander that for most of the time is quite gripping.

So as not to have to spend the first anniversary of her husband’s death sozzled in booze and despair, Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) agrees to partner YouTube click-hound Hunter (Virginia Gardner) in scaling an extremely high disused radio mast. Becky, a mountaineer, had watched her husband fall to his death, so is pretty iffy about the expedition. When they reach the top they can’t get down again since the ladder they climbed has disintegrated. Although there was mobile phone reception at ground level, there’s none this high up. Hunter has 60,000 followers and reckons if only her phone reached the ground it would automatically activate so they toss it down in a shoe stuffed with a bra.

That doesn’t work nor does firing a flare pistol to alert two guys in a nearby RV – all they are alerted to is the girl’s vehicle which they promptly steal. The girls are trapped without water or drone, both stuck 50ft below on radio dishes. At one point you think this is going to go in an entirely different – murderous – direction after Becky discovers Hunter had an affair with her husband. But they manage to get over that hiccup. Recuing their water and drone results in Hunter being out of action as far as further climbing goes and it’s up to Becky to reach the top of the mast and recharge the drone from the power there, fending off a passing vulture.

There’s definitely one weird bit where it turns out that Hunter, who you imagined was up there all the time supporting a defeatist Becky, is already dead. But, luckily, the corpse provides the cavity in which to bury the mobile phone. I’m not sure much of a human body survives a drop of 2,000 ft, certainly not enough to safeguard a phone, but that’s the way this plays out.

A great mountaineering film is always a welcome find in my book. This isn’t great but it’s certainly passable. And while Becky is more interesting than the gung-ho Hunter, the pair, emotions almost spinning out of control, make a very watchable pair.

Grace Caroline Curry aka Grace Fulton (Shazam!, 2019) does well in her first starring role and Virginia Gardner (Monster Party, 2018) is as convincing. Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Rampage, 2018) has a small role. A novel take on the mountaineering sub-genre, it’s kudos to director Scott Mann (Heist, 2015) – who co-wrote the screenplay with Jonathan Frank (Final Score, 2018) that I spent a lot of time wondering just how the hell they managed to make it look so realistic.

THE FORGIVEN

Note to studios, no matter how much you plan to tart up a modern version of Appointment in Samarra – aka a tale of unavoidable fate – you ain’t going to get anywhere if it’s filled with entitled obnoxious characters. The worst of it is this is well-made.

Functioning alcoholic doctor David Henninger (Ralph Fiennes) knocks down and kills young Muslim boy Driss (Omar Ghazaoui) while on the way with wife Jo (Jessica Chastain) to a hedonistic weekend party in Morocco hosted by Richard Galloway (Matt Smith) and his partner Dally (Caleb Landry Jones). There are hints that Driss was planning to hijack the tourists, but while his death is deemed an accident by the local cops, David agrees to go back with the boy’s father Ismael (Abdellah Taheri) and observe the local funeral rites and possibly pay the father off.

While her husband is away Jo has a one-night stand with serial seducer Tom (Christopher Abbott) while the rest of the party – including Lord Swanthorne (Alex Jennings) and assorted beautiful men and woman – trade bon mots and make racist and sexist remarks. While the arrogant David changes his perspective and accepts his fate, there is not, himself included, a single likeable person in the whole of the tourist contingent which makes it impossible to care what happens to anybody. Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh (Calvary, 2014) it spends all its time trying to make clever points, not realizing the audience has long lost interest.

THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING

Note to studios, if you’re going to indulge an action director in a vanity project, make sure he hires actors who don’t just drone on. It might also help if the director could decide what story he wants to tell, and not essentially present a voice-over narrative of stuff that happened in the past, no matter how exotic the timescale.

I was astonished to discover there actually is a job called narratologist. Alithea (Tilda Swinton) is a dried-up old stick of a narratologist who summons up the dullest genie/djinn in movie history known – no names, no pack drill – just as The Djinn (Idris Elba) who proceeds to bore the audience to death with his stories of how he came to end up in a bottle.

There’s a bundle of academic nonsense about storytelling, a swathe of tales that sound like rejects from The Arabian Nights, and a lot of unconnected characters. The invention of director George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015) just isn’t inventive enough and the visuals just aren’t arresting enough. I’m assuming this got greenlit on the basis Miller would turn in a couple more in the Mad Max franchise.

The French Dispatch (2021) **** – Seen at the Cinema

It can only be ironical that Wes Anderson’s wonderfully idiosyncratic, evocative, often hilarious, picture – featuring ex-pats writing for an American magazine in the style of the New Yorker – is located in the French town of Ennui (translation: “boredom”) because it is anything but, a continuous stream of imaginative and inventive scenes, settings and characters. Where other directors make aspects of history their own (Ridley Scott, David Lean) and others lay claim to greatness by inverting genres (Quentin Tarantino), Anderson’s genius lies in creating worlds nobody else could lay claim to. Although this particular film covers just a triptych of tales, you can easily imagine Anderson has another hundred or so stories at his fingertips, all contained in his own unique universe.

You can see why actors queue up to work with him for he allows them to develop highly-individual characters far removed from their denoted screen personas. Some like Timothy Chamalet, Benicio del Toro, Jeffrey Wright and Lea Seydoux take advantage of this freedom to conjure deliciously realised human beings, while others such as Owen Wilson and Tilda Swinton let the opportunity slip or appear in the picture so briefly (Elisabeth Moss, Henry Winkler, Bob Balaban) as to make little impact. Even headliner Bill Murray, who bookends the show, is given to more inventiveness than usual, breaking up his usual deadpan delivery to make an occasional emphatic point.

While mostly this zips along, when Anderson occasionally stops for breath the effect is electric, for example a static camera taking in the back of a tenement through which we see by virtue of various windows a waitperson’s exhausted ascent. Mostly, the tales follow their own internal logic, but when forced into a genre corner, such as a shoot-out, Anderson resorts to pure zest. And while the narrative is mostly driven by voice-over, this takes on different aspects, from a loquacious raconteur (Jeffrey Wright) to a droning lecturer (Tilda Swinton).

Clearly planning to keep one step ahead of critics who claim his movies run out of steam, Anderson heads off that issue by filming three short unconnected stories. Del Toro and Seydoux head up the best item which sees a psychotic murderer embark on an artistic career that hooks art dealer (Adrien Brody). Those who expect Anderson to spring surprises might still be taken aback when it transpires that the nude model (Seydoux) of the prisoner (Del Toro) is in fact his gaoler. Having opened a box of twists, Anderson continues in this wild vein. Narrators attempting to impose a semblance of normality generally find themselves at odds with their subject matter. In the second tale, as off-beat a student revolutionary as you could find, Chamalet breathes as much life into the character as he appeared stultified in trying to create a real person in the misfiring Dune (2021). Crime is not usually best served best by asides and droll self-importance but Wright, in the final story, manages to tie up in knots what should a taut kidnapping tale.

If you come looking for star turns by Bill Murray and Oscar-winner Frances McDormand, you will be sorely disappointed but if you willing to settle for an energetic, fresh, nostalgic take on an imaginary France, with plenty laugh out loud moments, you should come away well satisfied. Of course whether the French will feel as insulted as by television show Emily in Paris remains to be seen but I’m sure the Hungarians did not take The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) too literally.

I notice that this received a platform release in the States and broke per-cinema box office records in the process and I wonder what might have been the fate of The Last Duel (2021), regardless of its budget, had it opted for a similar launch approach.