SANDY GARNETT ART BLOG

Matt Damon has made a career for himself as the man who holds secrets that noone will ever catch from him.  This of course is the nature of the spy game in Mr. DeNiro’s strong film.  People call it boring and plodding but I disagree.  Secrets are captivating and empowering, and those who have the capacity to hold secrets are all the more powerful.  I prefer autonomy and creativity as primary goals in life, but trustworthy friendships rely on vaulting information about other human beings.  Mr. Damon plays a man with skeletons who is indoctrinated into the Skull and Bones Society at Yale, from which wealth and power spring as if this needs to be stated.  His character is observed between WWII and the escalating Cold War in an intelligent and economic fashion.

There is plenty of intrigue that makes the spy game exciting, and this picture reminds me that the spy game is not for me.  I am pleased not to spend my life in a hallway of mirrors.    To live a life trusting no person on the planet is a depressing thought.  And of course there is this argument that many enemies are often closer than the media is dispensed to write about.  It is a fragile world in the end, and these people have their purposes.  I do think there are plenty of government people in every nation who want to protect their respective countries.  Mr. DeNiro asks what the personal cost is for such commitment in the powerfully persuasive The Good Shepherd. 

Children of Men, starring Clive Owens, Julianne Moore and Michael Caine is a frightening futuristic romp in which England remains the only country without war thanks to its Big Brother militant socialism, or something of the sort.  Humanity is dying off as infertility is the lay of the land.  Mr. Owens, whose venerable screen presence enhances celluloid, plays a once father who drones on in an occupation that provides him less relief than the booze he swigs to forget his sad past at the end of the day.  When not drunk or working Mr. Owens trains it out of military lockdown London to visit his mentor in the hidden countryside to taste the beauty of life and art in the character of Mr. Caine, who I will watch forever. 

 The government is busy exporting illegal aliens and killing activists in a contemporary way.  Mr. Owens is guilted into escorting an illegal alien to the coast for big cash money, at which point all hell breaks loose.

 The story line is smart and stylish, very English and therefore easy to slip into, a sort of picture that reminds of me of Mr. Boyle’s frightening 28 Days (writer and director of Trainspotting).  Mr. Owens pilots the action in his trademark cynical way, grudgingly doing the right thing at all times, the unlikely hero he is born to play and why directors tap for this sort of role.  He is the smart, prescient undercard, pulling off Croupier and Inside Man characters with ease, a sort of Steve McQueen, the loner with a conscience, the man with the plan.  Once he sees what’s at historical stake he takes the lead and protects his people at all cost.  Julianne Moore, who I adore in the cinema, is unfortunately not present enough in the film for its strong writing, so I can’t complain that much.  She is jarring and effective as always, my favorite of hers Far From Heaven, one of the best films of the decade.

There is a remarkable cinematic moment in this film that is worth the ticket.  Perhaps there is fertility on earth, and when this suspicion arises warring factions over silly things stop dead in their tracks to observe the magic of humanity.  This alone makes the movie a strong recommendation, this two minute passage, the special moments film buffs watch a hundred hours of film to see.  This mirrors those moments of epiphany in art making that I spend my life going after, and when they occur the world stands still and the soul is charged and regains its purpose to live this life with all we have to bring to the table every day.  As my beloved father often reminds me, there are no dress rehearsals.  God bless him for that pearl of wisdom because it’s so true.

 

Blood Diamond talks about the filthy diamond trade and those who profit in it.  Apparently diamonds are a dime a dozen and the diamond market is hyperinflated because suppliers lock up most of the stones on the market.  This is logical yet ugly, and Blood Diamond takes a look at how many innocent lives are snuffed out for each diamond in unstable African nations.  DiCaprio is his usual excellent acting self and Jennifer Connelly is pretty and effective.  This is a short review several weeks later, almost an afterthougt, but I recommend the film.  Manohla Dargis is off her rocker to give the film 50 of 100… typical pretentious New York Times.

In an era when a boxing movie is more exciting than the real life heavyweight division, Rocky Balboa comes through in a thoughtful, entertaining and poignant way.  We love the Stallion because he was a loser picked by the champ for a showboat bout back in 1976.  Everyone expected him to get slaughtered, but his heart and guts prevailed and he went the distance with Apollo Creed.  The film was a smash success and mirrored Sylvester Stallone’s unlikely rise to Oscar winning writer and star of his own brain child, a project everyone wanted to take away from him on the way up.  The bum from Phillie streets connected with audiences in a broad and impactful fashion to achieve almost instant mythic cultural status.  Rocky is one of the great American characters in cinema, a simple man with a big heart going for  his dream in an often ugly world.  He made believers out of all of us the way champions do, listening only to himself when people laughed and spat on him.  Rocky’s easy charm and good will humanized the desperately fighting beast within which made him such a lovable creature, one you wanted to root for when everyone was there to watch.   The audience missed this man’s quiet moments in Rocky sequels that Stallone returns to his character in the succesful Rocky Balboa.

We all have a piece of Rocky in us.  I was six when he came out and I’ve used the word Rocky a million times in thousands of ways, not least of them jokes.  I make art for a living, my business is a blood sport, so inspirational characters like Rocky pepper my existence, remind me I’m really not alone, and push me to excel.  Rocky sequels became fodder for masses over time as his wealth came and went and his challenges got outlandish.  But Mr. Stallone reminds us in this last installment he wrote and directed why American cinema ought to appreciate him and why we’ll always love his alter ego Rocky.  I will say that I think Invincible still might be my favorite sports movie of 2006, a film about another unlikely Phillie hometown hero Vince Papalo, who walks on and tries out for Dick Vermeil’s Eagles in the Seventies.  Here’s a good Phillie double feature for all sports fans, even if you’re a New Yorker.  Bitter rivalries why?  Always so close, same divisions, tough teams… and respect in the end.

The History Boys is set in England where language remains supreme and intellect is the meat on the funny bone of this picture.  A small form at a local secondary school achieves high marks and are therefore privy to Cambridge and Oxford applications, a format apart from this country and therefore exotic for those unfamiliar.  I was a little English schoolboy between the ages of 8 and 10 and I maintain that had I stayed on in England I would have maximized my intellectual potential, something I certainly did not do upon returning to the States, even in a decent town with graduating high school classes that routinely rank well with US boarding schools.  At Hill House in London boys came and went with their families and the first question asked was ‘what country are you from?’  And then do you have humor, are you athletic, do you have artistic or language capacities, and are you fun to play with.  The intellect was sharp and fascinating then, perhaps more so than any other experience in school that I recall and so lament.  The History Boys reminds me what bright intellect and the passages of striving academically in adolescence might have been for me had I not been so mired in the thought that at one point in time everyone would accept and like me.  This is a universal story but I maintain that cool in England involved intellect and cool stateside was and remains another animal.

 Hector is a genius character in the film, a general studies professor with scruples who nonetheless inspires his class with a daily regimen of perfectly phrased quotations from literary masters in response to any questions posed.  His free form approach and homoerotic leanings play humorous in contrast to the new instructor on the grounds who will prepare these boys for the test.  And there is the aging graceful History professor, whose razor dialogue makes her more attractive as she pushes the boys to be all they can be, frustrated woman that she is observing a history that does not contain enough women.

 Every trace of this film underscores that even the dullest English thoughts exude intelligence, as if at any turn one might be struck down for a thought which might be perceived as idiotic.  This is what I remember about my few years in London and I miss it for this reason.  The boys are overly written, the dialogue cannot quite represent 17 year olds, but I don’t care.  The form attacks their last term with books and poems and songs and thinking in order to compel Cambridge and Oxford to consider them for acceptance.

I am reminded of the gratuitous Wonder Boys and sweet, drippy Dead Poet’s Society.  Neither movie contains the power of the History Boys, a film to repeatedly view with enjoyment and personal enhancement, barring a bit much of the homosexual undertones that aren’t necessary and come off a bit overly critical of professors, as with the excellent Magdelene Sisters.  That film talked about the laundry services in Ireland, which were running until 1986 I want to say, in which girls who had shamed their families for sometimes benign reasons were placed in a work camp environment subsidized by the Catholic Church.  The former has a great spin and the latter a cautionary one, but there are overriding parallels I draw which convey the unnecessary intensity in both on certain fronts.  Nevertheless, The History Boys is top 10 material and will stretch the brain the way much English work does.  Pity we don’t have more of that Stateside.