“Jay Kelly”: Stars in Their Eyes

I recently heard a sweet story involving a weather delay at a small airport somewhere in the northwest. For various complex reasons, the passengers suddenly had to rely on ground transportation to get to where they were going. What made all the difference was the fact that one of the passengers was the actor Keanu Reeves. Charmingly self-effacing, he befriended his fellow travelers and used his clout to hire the bus that got them all to their destinations. When they finally parted, they felt they had been personally blessed by this close proximity to stardom.

 That’s part of what being a movie star is about: having an appeal that reaches beyond the screen and makes average citizens feel they have a personal relationship with someone who is magic. There’s a similar sort of moment in the new Noah Baumbach film, Jay Kelly. In it George Clooney plays a world-famous leading man who seems (on the surface, at least) a whole lot like George Clooney. The episode begins on a European train on which Kelly, instantly recognizable by all the other passengers, charms them with self-deprecating humor. Then a disturbed man grabs the pocketbook of a nice old lady, stops the train, and runs off into the Italian countryside. Without a second’s hesitation, Kelly shifts into heroic mode, as he’s doubtless done in countless popular flicks. He leaps from the train and pursues the thief, finally emerging triumphant with the errant purse, to the huzzahs of all the other passengers. That’s the upside of being famous.

 Baumbach’s film (co-written by the talented British actress Emily Mortimer) shows us the downside too: the toll stardom takes on one’s family life, as well as the skewed sense of self that develops when the star is always encircled by a fawning entourage. The film certainly conveys the difficulties faced when an ageing celebrity is no longer so clear about his path forward, and we do feel a certain sympathy for a nice-guy leading man who’s starting to be tired of the usual clamor of expectations. But I found myself (as various critics groups have done) even more interested in the hangers-on who pay a price for their loyalty to the great man. The second lead in this film is played by Adam Sandler as Ron Sukenick, Jay’s long-time manager. He’s a guy who puts family obligations (and pretty much everything else) second to his duties as Jay’s companion, fixer, office wife, and general factotum. Yes, he’s even been known to touch up the star’s greying temples, when necessary. Now he’s left his own kids at home with an increasingly resentful wife (played by Baumbach’s own wife, Greta Gerwig) while he and Jay schlepp around Europe to attend a gala tribute event that Jay had previously turned down, but then mercurially changed his mind about at the very last minute. Sandler, who’s long since graduated from the childish comedies that first made his reputation, has already won some performance awards for this role, and I suspect there’ll be more.

The movie’s certainly a reflection on the price of stardom. And non-stardom: there’s a small but important subplot about the young Jay’s talented buddy who, through the kind of fluke with which the film industry is rife, never gets the chance to move ahead in his career. This is not Baumbach’s best film: its time-jumps and on-the-nose plotting detract from the kind of tightly-focused artistry he generally brings to projects like Marriage Story and The Squid and the Whale. Still, even if it doesn’t reach the starry heights, this is a film worth pondering.

 

 

 

Leaps of Faith: “Lady Bird”

Wasting time on the Internet, I spotted a recent run-down of the 25 all-time best religious movies. I expected the list would contain a lot of Bible epics as well as faith-based old clunkers like The Nun’s Story and Going My Way. (Yes, both have their charm, but they seem awfully far away from life as we know it in the 21st century.) Instead, what I saw was an intelligent cluster of films in which religious faith and religious affiliations of multiple sorts take center stage, even if the central characters are grappling with religion rather than simply believing.  

The list contains some oldies, like Black Narcissus (1947) as well as Ingmar Bergman’s astonishing duo from 1957, Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal. Some of the choices reflect religious traditions other than our familiar ones: see Atanarjuat The Fast Runner, a 2001 prize-winner from Canada that meticulously reflects Inuit culture and language. The luminous Ida, a 2013 Polish film about a nun-to-be who uncovers her Nazi-era past, is a natural for this list, but I hadn’t expected to find Minari or 12 Years a Slave or There Will Be Blood, all of which do in fact have something to say about faith. Of course I was gratified to see the great Schindler’s List in a place of honor. But the inclusion that surprised and pleased me most was that of a film I recently watched for the second time, Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird (2017).

Lady Bird, which apparently hews closely to writer/director Gerwig’s own early life, is the story of a seventeen-year-old girl finishing up high school in Sacramento, California. (She’s played with conviction by Saiorse Ronan, who was 23 at the time.)  Lady Bird is a proudly independent thinker who has given herself a new jazzy name in place of the much more predictable one with which her parents gifted her at birth. But despite the fact that she yearns to boldly enter the adult world, she’s got to finish out her classes at a benign but deeply conventional Catholic high school, where her teachers are priests and nuns. She auditions for the school play, struggles with math, and occasionally butts heads with visiting anti-abortion speakers, while also hanging out with her best pal, falling in and out of love, (with both Lucas Hedges and Timothée Chalamet) and pretending that she lives in a mansion-like local residence instead of a slightly shabby tract home.

As Lady Bird sees it, the biggest cross she has to bear is her mother, a kind-hearted but outspoken nurse who struggles to do what’s best for her headstrong daughter. Mom (Laurie Metcalf) is the practical member of the family, unlike Dad (Tracy Letts), an out-of-work dreamer who would deny his child nothing. Lady Bird has her heart set on an east-coast college (in “a city with culture”) and Dad somehow scrapes together the financials. But it’s only when she’s far from home, and dealing with an acute physical and emotional crisis of her own making, that Lady Bird comes to recognize how much she relies on both an actual home and a spiritual one. For the first time, she reverts to her birth name (Christine) and enters a church of her own volition.

It’s a simple but wholly convincing story, anchored by strong performances and Gerwig’s sure hand on the helm. Ultimately it was nominated for 5 Oscars, two for Ronan’s and Metcalf’s work and three for Gerwig in her various functions. Alas, it won none of them. Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, and the ill-faced La La Land were the big winners. 

 

Sweets for the Sweet: “Wonka”

Timothée Chalamet, all of 28 years old, has certainly been around. In 2017, barely 21, he rose to international fame as a lovestruck Italian teenager discovering his gender preference in Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name. The role brought him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, along with a raft of other honors, while he was also being feted as the “cool” boy who deflowers Saoirse Ronan’s character in Lady Bird, written and directed by Greta Gerwig..

 He has also portrayed a drug addict (Beautiful Boy, 2018), a young cannibal (Bones and All, 2022), a revolutionary student (in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, 2021), and—just for variety—the handsome young love interest in Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women (2019)  Very soon audiences will be able to see him as heroic Paul Atreides in Part II of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the science fiction classic, Dune.

 But at the moment he’s busy making chocolate. I’m talking about his starring role in the prequel to everyone’s childhood favorite, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971). I suspect many of us have fond memories of Gene Wilder playing a mature Willy with bright blue eyes, flyaway hair, and an impish sense of humor. (And I suspect most of us were turned off by Johnny Depp’s more sinister approach in 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which bears the name of Roald Dahl’s original novel.)  Movie franchises being what they are, it wasn’t surprising that someone would decide the tale of Charlie Bucket’s visit to the Wonka factory required a prequel. And so we get to find out, via Chalamet’s performance, just how the young Willy founded that amazing factory in the first place.

 Roald Dahl, of course, was famous for being curmudgeonly. A specialist in creating monsters of various odious sorts, he tempered his sweet story about the magic of chocolate with some very sour characters. The new Wonka does something of the same, with none other that Olivia Colman playing an evil landlady who keeps Willy and a clutch of other unfortunates in thrall, once they’ve had the misfortune of spending a night in her seedy hotel. Her sardonic gloating over her victims is something of which I suspect Dahl would approve. I’m much less sure he would have liked the treacle in the story, like Willy regarding chocolate-making as the legacy passed down to him by his dear, departed mother.  (She’s played in several brief scenes by Sally Hawkins, always a genuinely delightful performer with a heartbreaking smile—but here asked to be part of a saccharine moment of magical beyond-the-grave reunion.)

 The  new film  benefits from lots of fizzy and phantasmagoric visuals (oh, that giraffe!), in a charming European setting. I’m not sure, though, that it needed to be a musical. The various pleasant but not memorable songs (sung well enough by Chalamet and others) simply make a longish film longer. There’s also lots of time spent on building the backstories of some of the lesser characters. A writer of my acquaintance wonders why, in today’s cinema, we can’t simply accept quirky characters for who they are, without giving them all past lives that might possibly lead to sequels, thus broadening the Wonka Universe. This comment made me think of a film with some similarities, Chocolat. In it, the past life of wandering candy-maker Juliette Binoche is left mysterious, and we’re none the worse for that.

 I can’t say enough, though, about Hugh Grant’s role as the drollest of Oompa-Loompas. Now that he’s too old for romantic roles, he’s sure enjoying letting his freak flag fly.

 

Looking Back on “Past Lives”

Not long ago I saw on Facebook two brothers exchanging their views on Celine Song’s 2023 indie film, Past Lives. Both brothers are successful writers, and I worked with one of them (Hi, Lee Goldberg!) in my Roger Corman days. Lee’s brother, Todd, was praising to the skies Song’s writing and directing debut. Many of his friends (both male and female) agreed with him, calling it one of the year’s best, and describing how the ending had them in tears.  Lee countered, though, that he had found Past Lives extremely dull. For which he was accused by brother Todd of having no heart.

 I don’t know about Lee’s lack of a heart, but I’m basically on his side. Not that I found Past Lives boring, exactly. But for me it was remarkably unmemorable, a small and sensitive movie about people I could barely recall once the lights came up. This story of a thirty-six-year-old man who travels from Seoul, Korea  to New York City to reunite with the young woman who won his heart when they were both 12 sounds interesting enough, especially because she’s now married to a loving, and lovable, Caucasian American. And I was pleased that, for a change, the emotions in the film were low-key, with none of the characters on the brink of committing mayhem when they couldn’t get their heart’s desire. I like the internationalism of the concept, and (as someone with experience living in Asia) I’m always pleased to see that part of the world recognized on screen.

 Still, I was and still am surprised at the ecstatic reaction that Past Lives has garnered. I can see it as a Sundance success, but I’ve been stunned at how often it shows up these days on Top Ten lists. As of Tuesday morning, it is now officially one of ten films up for a Best Picture Oscar, along with such masterworks as Oppenheim and Killers of the Flower Moon. Radio commentators were lamenting on Tuesday that Celine Song was not included by Oscar voters as one of the year’s five best directors. (Hey, I’m more concerned about the snub to Barbie’s Greta Gerwig.) I doubt Song herself is much lamenting her omission, because she also authored the Oscar-nominated original screenplay. Several commentators also seem a bit bummed that lead actors Greta Lee and Teo Yoo were overlooked by the Academy. (I’m more inclined to regret the omission of Margot Robbie and Willem Dafoe.)

 Don’t get me wrong—I like small, sensitive movies. And it’s nice to applaud female writer/directors  (especially women of color) who do something good their first time out. But I also understand why the big prizes generally go to those connected with ambitious projects, films that try something brand-new and gutsy. (That’s why I’m pleased with all the acclaim for Poor Things.) I also tend to root for projects that have something highly important to say. (That’s why my very favorite film of the year is Killers of the Flower Moon.) I guess Past Lives has taken the “sensitive indie” slot on the Oscar Best Picture list. Good for Celine Song and her team! What I really want to see, though, is what she does hereafter.

 Not that everyone who wins an Oscar needs to be a Hollywood veteran. There’s room for the occasional dazzling newcomer,  especially when their achievement strikes a chord with national and international audiences. (Yes, I’m thinking of Lily Gladstone.) But I’m  not a fan of overpraising good, modest work, and I believe that when prizes are handed out, a track record should count for something.

 

Tuning in to the White Noise

My online dictionary explains the phrase “white noise” as “a steady, unvarying, unobtrusive sound, [such] as an electronically produced drone or the sound of rain, used to mask or obliterate unwanted sounds.”  White Noise is also the name of a new Netflix film by Noah Baumbach, based on a 1985 Dom DeLillo novel. The talented Baumbach, known as the writer/director of such quirky but highly emotional films as 2006’s The Squid and the Whale and 2019’s Marriage Story, here works at capturing DeLillo’s  darkly comic sensibility, the better to convey the absurdity of everyday life.

 It’s not often that what sticks in your mind at the end of a film is the footage under the closing credits. Though White Noise, in re-creating 1980s suburbia, frequently sets scenes in the aisles of the gleaming local supermarket, I wouldn’t have guessed that this is where we would end up at the final fadeout. After all, the story has big things on its mind, like academic rivalries, an “airborne toxic event” leading to mass evacuations, covert drug use, betrayal, and even attempted murder. But when push comes to shove, everyone has to eat, right? And—as the credits roll—the well-behaved shoppers at the local A&P (product placement is rife in White Noise) suddenly begin to dance, lofting rolls of toilet paper, exuberantly tossing plastic bags in the air, engaging a fellow  cart-pusher in an exuberant pas de deux in the produce aisle.  

 The first thing you notice as the film begins is the clamor and the clatter of everyday speech, which permeates the household of Jack Gidney. He’s played by Baumbach stalwart Adam Driver,  who is here dressed and made up to look as paunchy and unattractively middle-aged as possible. Baumbach doesn’t play favorites; his longtime partner, Greta Gerwig, takes the role of Jack’s wife, and she too is shot to look frazzled and angst-ridden. Part of the tension stems from their complicated family life: Jack has been married four times, and the four kids who help make up the teeming household are generally at odds, partly because although each of them comes from a different relationship, they are all expected to meld into a convivial family unit. And so they do—at times, such as when that mysterious toxic event forces them out into the potentially lethal  countryside.

 Meanwhile, Jack is troubled by his wife’s mysterious behavior, and even by his own career choices. As the world’s leading authority on Hitler Studies, he’s trying not to own up the fact that he knows no German. And then there’s Murray, his campus frenemy (Don Cheadle), who envies Jack’s fame and would like to be receiving similar recognition for his own Elvis Studies expertise. Will Jack’s dramatic appearance in front of Murray’s students help lift Murray’s campus prestige?  Or will it destroy any ties of friendship between two ambitious iconoclasts? Do we care? Maybe not, but Baumbach’s overall aim is to point up the ridiculousness of their goals.

 If you like tightly-structured films that head inexorably in one direction, building at last to a powerful conclusion, White Noise is not for you. This film meanders from place to place, ricocheting between ideas and styles. Some critics have applauded; others have not been charmed. I like a comment from David Ehrlich of IndieWire  who called the results of Baumbach’s work here “equal parts inspired and exasperating.”  Personally, I miss both the sweetness and the character complexity of Marriage Story. But White Noise is provocative and definitely not dull. And it has made me look at my local supermarket in an entirely new way.