Good and Evil in the Films of Gene Hackman

Once upon a time, I felt the big mystery involving Gene Hackman was exactly why he got fired in 1967 from the plum role of Mr. Robinson, spouse of the notorious middle-aged housewife who beds young Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate. When I  researched the film for my Seduced by Mrs. Robinson, I put this question to producer Larry Turman. He had no good answer for me, saying only that this was a choice made by director Mike Nichols. The firing hardly hurt the finished film: Murray Hamilton was unforgettable in the role. And Hackman recouped by playing Buck Barrow in the same year’s Bonnie and Clyde, landing himself an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor.

Today, of course, there’s a much sadder mystery to ponder:  what killed the 96-year-old retired actor, his decades-younger wife, and one of their three dogs inside their Santa Fe home? A report last Friday concludes Hackman died from a combination of Alzheimer’s and heart disease, following his wife’s very sudden death from Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome. (No word yet about what killed the dog.) All we fans can do now is remember Hackman in his prime, as an actor’s actor. Though he was never a handsome leading-man type, he carried his films with an artistry and power few can match.  

I’ve hardly watched all of Hackman’s 70-plus screen roles, but I’ve deeply admired his performances in films like The French Connection (for which he won his first Oscar) and The Conversation. Though he was most recognized for his work in dramas, I enjoyed seeing his comedic side emerge in projects like The Birdcage (in which he played a conservative U.S. Senator who discovers his daughter’s about to marry the son of a flamboyant gay couple). The sight of the straitlaced Senator Keeley dodging the press by dressing in drag and dancing to “We are Family” is matched in hilarity only by Hackman’s goofy scene as the cheery blind man in Young Frankenstein. 

Still, it was in serious dramas that Hackman found his permanent niche.  In his memory, I’ve just (re)watched two of them, 1988’s Mississippi Burning and 1992’s Unforgiven, the Oscar Best Picture recipient that won Hackman his second Oscar. Seeing them back to back, and remembering Hackman’s other celebrated roles, I came to an interesting conclusion. In Mississippi Burning, which chronicles the 1964 search for three missing civil rights activists in the American South, Hackman is on the side of the good guys. Though a former Mississippi sheriff, he now works for the FBI, assisting the by-the-book agent played by Willem Dafoe in tracking down the killers of the three young men. Certainly we can admire his values (as well as his gentleness toward the young woman married to a local deputy with clear Klan connections), but he can also be infuriating. He’s first seen cheerfully belting out a KKK theme song, and he’s prone to telling jokes that might certainly be offensive in this context. Moreover, his strategies for catching the perps are not entirely ethical (though they do work). In other words, he’s a good guy we’re not sure we like very much.

In Unforgiven, he’s again a lawman, this time in a small Texas town, circa 1880. He claims to have banned firearms, but Big Whiskey is rife with crime and violence, and he’s ultimately taken down (by star Clint Eastwood) late in the game. Still, he’s a fascinatingly genial guy, and we almost agree with his final insistence that he doesn’t deserve what he gets. Gene Hackman’s good bad-guys and bad good-guys will long stay with me. Hail and farewell. 

 

Over the Rainbow: “The Florida Project”

My enthusiasm for Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or- winning Anora led me to wonder about Baker’s earlier films. At fifty-three, he’s not exactly a boy wonder, but until now his work has mostly been seen on the indie circuit. Starting in 2000, he’s been writing, directing, and editing small films that explore the lives of marginalized Americans of all stripes. He seems to have particular sympathy for undocumented immigrants and sex workers, and has placed them at the center of many of his stories. He also relishes using non-actors in central roles that reflect their own shaky situation in life. 

Years ago, I couldn’t resist watching Tangerine (2015), after I found out how it was made. This Christmas-eve tale of a transgender sex worker who’s being cheated on by her lover/pimp was shot on the mean streets of Hollywood by Baker and his crew using (instead of conventional cameras) three iPhone smartphones. Remarkably, it worked. Though the story sounds impossibly grim, there are also moments of great poignancy and even humor in Tangerine. This, Baker’s fifth film, brought him major attention from critics’ groups like the Independent Spirt Awards. The Palm Springs Independent Film Festival, for one, named him a Director to Watch.

Baker’s sixth feature, The Florida Project (2017) was filmed more conventionally, and debuted in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival, It was the first of Baker’s films to feature a major Hollywood actor, Willem Dafoe, but the film’s real star is Brooklynn Prince, a veteran actress who began her career at age 2. She was about 7 when she starred in The Florida Project as Moonee, a plucky kid who lives with her mom in a cheap motel managed by Dafoe’s sympathetic but often frustrated landlord. 

Moonee’s mom Halley was played by first-timer Bria Vinaite. Halley is a well-tattooed ex-stripper who’ll try just about anything—including drug sales, larceny, and prostitution—to house and feed herself and her daughter. (Needless to say, there’s no dad around.) She’s an angry young woman with a talent for scrounging and a very foul mouth, but at the same time she’s a loving mom who, when in a rare good mood, can delight Moonee with offbeat adventures. 

The Florida Project, named for an early codeword for Disney World, wants us  to see life chiefly from Moonee’s youthful perspective. For her and the other kids who live in the seedy but colorful Magic Castle Motel, there’s always time for fun, especially in summer. They try spitting on cars from the motel’s second- floor walkway; they gawk at the lady who sunbathes topless near the motel pool; they start a small fire that nearly destroys an abandoned housing project. Adult supervision is almost nil, and Moonee’s future may be bleak.  But meanwhile she’s enjoying her freedom.

The slow, relaxed pace of the storytelling encourages us to revel in the gorgeous Florida landscape. The film—dazzling in its sunny cinematography--was shot in Kissimmee, a stone’s throw from Walt Disney World, and a would-be fantasy environment hangs over everything. Moonee’s motel ($38 a night) is a startling shade of lavender, and the nearby Futureland Motel, home of new buddy Jancey, is painted pink and turquoise. We’re on the outskirts of Disney’s sprawling theme park, but a good distance from the well-curated fantasy venue enjoyed by well-heeled tourists. In recompense, Moony and her friends enjoy brilliant sunsets, dramatic rainstorms, lush foliage, and exotic waterfowl. The film’s endling essentially slips into their romantic dreams.  Too bad they will one day have to grow up and discover the harsher, darker world their parents know. 

. 

 

Poor Things: Barbie Goes Victorian

You’ve heard of Dr. Frankenstein, who created a monster out of bits and pieces of human beings. And you’ve heard of Pygmalion, the ancient Greek who sculpted a beautiful woman and then fell in love with her. (The story was modernized by George Bernard Shaw, author of a play about linguist Henry Higgins, who turns a cockney flower girl into a duchess by teaching her how to speak the King’s English. Of course, Shaw’s play became a beloved romantic musical, My Fair Lady, in which confirmed bachelor Higgins and former flower-seller Eliza Doolittle come together in the finale.)    

 I mention all of the above because a current hit film, Poor Things, combines elements of the Frankenstein monster with Pygmalion’s beloved Galatea. The pieced-together woman who develops into an unlikely love object first shows up in this film as a childlike innocent who can barely speak, and walks with an unsteady gait. The odd and fascinating details behind her creation are something you won’t hear from me. Suffice it to say that she calls her much-disfigured patron “God” (his name is Dr. Godwin Baxter), and that initially she clings to his every word. But her boundless appetite for life leads her to discover corners of the world—and her own body—she was not anticipating. So she’s off on a series of erotic adventures in the various capitals of Victorian Europe, portrayed via Yorgos Lanthimos’ highly original filmmaking as the most charming of stage sets. (Lanthimos seems to share with Wes Anderson a passion for fanciful art direction, but I’m convinced Lanthimos, who previously released The Lobster and The Favourite, has much more to say.)

 It's easy enough to call Poor Things kinky. Certainly it’s full of sexual couplings, blunt language, and body-revealing costumes (and the lack thereof). We certainly see a great deal of Emma Stone, who—in the innocent-abroad role of Bella Baxter—discovers both the joys and the humiliations of sex. It’s fun to remember that Stone, a producer as well as the star of this film, made her breakthrough in 2010’s Easy A. There she played the bravura role of  a smart, nerdy (and virginal) teen who pretends to be the local tramp as a way to navigate the rigid social scene at her high school. In Poor Things, the “tramp” label would have no meaning for Bella. Totally committed to satisfying her own wants and needs, she judges the behavior of others in terms of the level of satisfaction they bring to her. Still, she’s constantly evolving, learning that the bed-jumping that had so delighted her in the arms of the roguish Duncan Wedderburn (a slimy Mark Ruffalo) is not always the route to personal satisfaction.

 Bella’s path turns out to be full of men who want to control her. There is, first of all, her “creator,” the obsessive scientist eerily played by Willem Dafoe. There is Wedderburn, a sexual libertine who finds the tables turned when he falls for Bella. There’s another man who emerges late in the film, and seems to have the means to bend her to his will. All these can be said, by final fadeout, to be among the “poor things” to which the title refers. Men don’t fare well in this film, except perhaps for Max (Ramy Youssef), the gentle science nerd who loves Bella for herself.

  Poor Things is a triumph of cinematography, musical scoring, set design, and the melding of past and present. Bella Baxter is a heroine for today, a Barbie who has taken a different (but parallel) route to self-realization.