Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

“Slumdog Millionaire” represents the future of movies in an ever-shrinking world. It’s in two languages, English and Hindi. It’s filmed in India, with Indian actors, but directed by an Englishman, Danny Boyle (“Trainspotting"). The music is a mix of traditional Indian sounds and hip-hop. None of the actors is famous in the West, but with Boyle directing, this can hardly be called low-budget Independent fare. It isn’t Hollywood, either, or Bollywood. “Slumdog Millionaire” is part of a new movement of multi-national, multi-lingual films that will eventually make the Academy Award category for “Foreign Films” obsolete. These movies may make Hollywood, Bollywood, and other centers of filmmaking power obsolete as well.

“Slumdog Millionaire” is only partly about a young man winning millions of rupees on the Indian version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” The film is really about that boy’s life as an untouchable in the slums of Mumbai. His family and neighbors live a life of physical squalor that still has spots of dignity and community, but they are constant prey for criminals, police, and vicious religious pogroms. In this world, the only hope for advancement for a boy seems to be crime; for a girl – prostitution. Jamal Malik, his brother Salim, and their friend Latika come of age as orphans in this world, eventually becoming separated, as Salim and Latika get sucked into the criminal underworld. Jamal, meanwhile, makes an honorable, if undistinguished life for himself in the new India, with a job as a gofer for phone operators in a call center.

Jamal lucks into the opportunity to play on the “Millionaire” show, where a lifetime of being observant pays off with one correct answer after another. In India, where many still seem to believe that your caste says everything there is to know about you, Jamal’s success leads the police to assume he has cheated. They torture and question him about how he got the answers, and it is through his explanations that his heartbreaking life story is revealed.

Some movie critics seem determined to sneer at “Slumdog Millionaire,” while grudgingly conceding that it is a story well-told. They call it a fairy tale, and it IS a fairy tale, complete with a happy ending. I think that all of us who have seen it were aware that we were watching a fictional movie, but these reviewers seem to feel it is important to remind us that it is unrealistic that a boy from the slums could win a quiz show. I think they are the victims of their own liberal snobbery. They doubtless approve of a film that shows the deplorable conditions of a third-world slum, but they can’t enjoy a happy ending that does not involve the government re-distributing wealth to save the slumdogs.

“Slumdog Millionaire” shows a heartbreaking side of India, and it helps put some things about America in perspective. We in the U.S. widely believe that our country provides opportunity for everyone, and that we are less obsessed with class than many other countries. “Slumdog Millionaire” made me realize that we Americans are absolutely right about that. Modern naysayers love to run America down, and one way they do it is by pointing out that classism exists here more than we admit. That may be true, but in “Slumdog Millionaire,” the game-show host teases Jamal repeatedly about being a “chai wallah” (tea waiter) from the slums, to the audience’s delight. Can you imagine a waiter or janitor being teased that way on American TV? Say what you want about America, but here we at least give lip-service to the idea of equal-treatment, respect, and opportunity for all.

“Slumdog Millionaire” is an optimistic movie in a time when we need the encouragement. In these troubled economic times, there are some cynics who have no room for optimism. I think that most of us, however, will enjoy a beautifully told story about how doing the right thing can pay off. Personally, I wouldn’t care to live in a world where people don’t believe in that possibility.

4 stars out of 5.

The Seventh Seal (1957) *****

There are certain movies that loom like Everest, foreboding and unattainable. “The Seventh Seal” is one of those. It’s in black & white; it’s by Ingmar Bergman; it’s in Swedish; it tackles huge issues like death and religion. All the things that make it one of the great films also tend to drive you to watch “Spiderman 3” instead. As a film buff, you know you are supposed to see “The Seventh Seal,” but it tends to sit there like a dreaded homework assignment, put off for another day.

My advice is to get over it and throw that bad boy in the DVD player. “The Seventh Seal” is an amazing movie, and once you get into it, it is not hard to watch. The first few minutes look like some bizarre, art-house schlock, but that is just because all the art-house schlock since 1957 has been trying to look like “The Seventh Seal.”

There are probably endless interpretations of this film, and mine is bound to be unsophisticated. I am holding off on delving into any of the scholarship surrounding this movie until I get my own thoughts down. The story surrounds Antonius Black, a knight (Max von Sydow) returning from 10 years in the Crusades with his squire (Gunnar Bjornstrand). They return, soul-sick and disillusioned by meaningless conflict, to a Europe devastated by the Plague. One morning, Death (Bengt Ekerot) comes to claim Antonius. Faced with the end, Antonius stalls for time by challenging Death to a game of chess. The game takes place over several days of travel, during which Antonius tries desperately to regain his lost faith in the existence of God, while his squire tackles life with a pragmatic, agnostic wisdom. Along the way they befriend a number of people in various stages of joy or unhappiness, but none of them give Antonius the answers he craves.

“The Seventh Seal” is filmed in a stark black & white that displays landscapes harshly, but flatters many of the actors, particularly the lovely Bibi Andersson, who plays a member of an acting troupe. This is a serious film, but there is a lot of humor mixed in. My favorite character is the Squire, a very cool, confident dude. While Antonius agonizes over questions of God and Eternity, his Squire seems content in his atheism. Instead, he spends his energy enjoying life and committing acts of true chivalry. Here are a couple of his quotes that sum up his style quite well: “Our crusade was such madness that only a real idealist could have thought it up.” “Do you have any brandy? I've had nothing but water. It's made me as thirsty as a camel in the desert.” Antonius is a dryer, more earnest character who represents the part in all of us that burns with existential angst when he says, “I want knowledge! Not faith, not assumptions, but knowledge. I want God to stretch out His hand, uncover His face and speak to me.”

I will resist the urge to go into a long-winded discussion of everything I think “The Seventh Seal” means. It would give away too much, and besides, this film deserves to be mulled over, in small pieces, over time. “The Seventh Seal” is not for everyone, but for those willing to invest in a more artsy kind of movie, this is one of the greats. By the time the credits roll on a movie like “Spiderman,” you will already have thought everything worth thinking about the movie, but I suspect I will be mulling over “The Seventh Seal” for years.

5 stars.

Hors de Prix (“Priceless,” 2006)

My wife says the romantic comedy is dead; they just don’t make good ones anymore. On reflection, of course, it’s clear that that is an overstatement. “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” came out just last year, and it was charming and hilarious. It is true, though that the genre is dominated by trite, disposable crap. The formula is pretty standard. Two people meet in some cute circumstance. They have obvious chemistry, and eventually they give in to it and hook up. Then there is some sort of misunderstanding that drives them apart. Then, triggered by obvious clues from the soundtrack, they realize that they were truly meant for each other and re-unite. Bring on the swelling score, the embrace, and the pull-back shot of the lovers in some romantic location, and everyone gets to go home and wait for their check. Hollywood just switches out actors and a few details and cranks these things out, and most of them suck.

Now to be fair to the romantic-comedy genre, I must point out that the same could be said of all Hollywood genres. Hollywood is not about making movies as much as they are about making money. Mostly they make crap, and they serve it up as fast as they can to a public desperate for the next distraction. By its nature, filmmaking requires the collaboration of so many artists and financiers that it is no wonder that most films are such a watered-down mediocrity, pandering to the lowest common denominator in the audience, that I can’t bear to watch. That’s why it is such a huge relief to me when I see something that doesn’t suck.

“Hors de Prix” is a sweet, funny Audrey Tautou movie in French that doesn’t suck. It doesn’t fail-to-suck in an epic, stirring way, the way “Lord of the Rings” didn’t suck. It fails-to-suck in the compact, straightforward way of well-done small films. Tautou plays Irene, a talented gold-digger who is one step short of being a prostitute. She lives glamorously off the largess of the older men she seduces, but she has nothing of her own and is always a day away from poverty. In quiet desperation, she works towards the goal of marrying one of these billionaires.

When Irene meets Jean (Gad Elmaleh), a hotel bartender, she gets the mistaken impression that he is one of the hotel’s wealthy guests. They hook up, but when Irene learns the truth, the pragmatic hussy leaves Jean without even looking back. Jean, meanwhile, is smitten, as Irene is a beauty beyond his wildest dreams. He follows her like a lost puppy, and in order to stay close to her, he becomes a gigolo. Sharing the same profession now, the two finally develop a real connection, and, well, you’ve probably seen enough of these movies to figure out the rest.

“Hors de Prix” never strays from the classic formula; it just executes that formula with grace. This romantic comedy delivers comedy that is understated and unforced, and romance that is actually romantic rather than trite. Now THAT is beyond price.

4.5 stars out of 5

Laura (1944)

I’ve been trying to figure out what I didn’t like about “Laura,” and I think it comes down to the movie trying to pack too many noir mystery staples into one film. The title character is played by Gene Tierney, who is one swell-looking doll. The movie starts with detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) investigating Laura’s murder. He finds no shortage of suspects, including Laura’s fiancé Shelby (Vincent Price), Laura’s aunt, who is keen on Shelby, Shelby’s girl-on-the-side, and Laura’s aged admirer Waldo (Clifton Webb). The movie takes us through the usual rigamarole in which we suspect each person in turn. It also throws in plenty of twists that will be familiar to noir-lovers.

I’m not sure what place “Laura” is supposed to hold in the world of noir. I get the impression it is considered something of a classic, but I never got that magical feeling that is the hallmark of a classic. For example, one major plot device is that detective McPherson finds himself falling in love with Laura as he learns more about her and repeatedly sees her picture. This side of the story may be better developed in the novel, but in the film his morbid attraction is handled in a fairly perfunctory manner. “Laura” is entertaining, but it lacks the distinction of a true classic like “Double Indemnity,” which came out the same year.

2.5 stars out of 5

Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l’echafaud, 1958)

One thing I love about certain old, noir movies is how moralistic they are. They may revel in murder, adultery, and all forms of vice, but in the end, the message is, “No matter how perfectly executed the crime, justice will find you.” In “Elevator to the Gallows,” the crime goes off almost without a hitch. Julien (Maurice Ronet), embroiled in an affair with his boss’s wife Florence (Jeanne Moreau), plots with his lover to kill her husband. He kills his employer in his office, staging it to look like a suicide. He makes only one mistake, but he recognizes it before it is too late, and zips back up in the elevator to fix things. Unfortunately for him, the power gets cut, leaving him trapped in the elevator with his boss’s dead body upstairs. He spends the night trying to figure out an escape, while Florence wanders the streets all night wondering what went wrong with their plan.

In a discussion of another noir movie, “The Third Man,” I believe, I commented that many noir films seem to have as a theme a basically good person who gets put into seedy circumstances in which he may or may not turn bad. Louis Malle’s “Elevator to the Gallows” inserts us into the story a little farther along than that. Julien and Florence have already turned bad, and the theme here is another noir favorite, “Will they get away with it?” As in most of these older films, the answer is “No,” but along the way we get treated to the vicarious pleasure of rooting for the bad guys.

With this film, Jeanne Moreau continues her habit of playing bad girls, with this being one of her darkest roles, yet. In other of her films that I have seen, her characters are torn by complex motivations, and they are not completely evil. In “Elevator to the Gallows,” she is really just a murdering adulteress, and probably a gold-digger. A lesser actress might have overplayed an “evil seductress” role like this, but Jeanne Moreau plays it with self-contained grace. The reason she is so good at these roles is that she plays them without shame. She never asks the audience to forgive her or tries to remind us that she is just playing a character. In watching a Jeanne Moreau performance, the audience is confronted with a strong, female character of dubious morality, and we are not allowed to stereotype or pigeonhole her. Moreau brings all the complexity of a real woman to these roles. We may not love her characters, but we are never able to dismiss them.

4.5 stars out of 5

Bad news for my wife

It turns out I have terrible taste in women. The first time I saw Jeanne Moreau on the screen, my reaction was that she was gorgeous, and I still think she is one of the most beautiful women I have seen in a movie. I would place her in the same pantheon as Liz Taylor and Angelina Jolie. Once I started reading about Jeanne Moreau, though, I discovered that she is widely considered to be a talented actress of marginal looks. Even in her film “Jules and Jim” one of the characters mentions that she has appeal, but she is not really beautiful. Really?

I don’t know what is wrong with my eyes. I look at Jeanne Moreau’s strong features, full lips, and natural eyebrows, and I think she is a goddess, and an amazing actress to boot.

Dangerous Liaisons (Les Liaisons Dangereuses, 1959)

Our mini love affair with Jeanne Moreau continues with this French adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos’s “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” Rather than telling the tale in its original eighteenth-century setting, as did the American version starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich, director Roger Vadim and writer Claude Brule set this story in late-1950’s France.

This time around, Merteuil (Moreau) and Valmont (Gerard Philipe) are cast as a couple in a VERY open marriage. They actively encourage each other in their dalliances, and enjoy crowing about their conquests to one another. Outsiders view them as a little odd, and most of their acquaintances know that at least one of them is unfaithful, but no one guesses at the true depths of their degeneracy. Merteuil is slightly piqued that Court, a lover whom she had been planning to dump, has beaten her to the punch by getting engaged to a pretty, young woman named Cecile (Jeanne Valerie). Merteuil decides to get even by having Valmont seduce Cecile, thus sullying Court’s marriage bed. In a stunning Alps ski resort, Valmont sets about the relatively easy task of bedding the curious teenager, but along the way he meets a much more intriguing woman. Marianne Tourvel is not only beautiful and charming, but a virtuous wife; and Valmont has just enough heart left to be drawn to her. He tells himself and Merteuil that he is simply relishing a difficult conquest, but Merteuil senses the budding love behind his bravado, and she is jealous of it. There follows a classic storm of jealousy and deceit, leaving behind broken hearts, minds, and lives.

I have not read the novel on which this film is based. My introduction to this story was through the 1988 John Malkovich movie, and I am a huge fan of that film. Merteuil and Valmont are simply fascinating people. They put on this elaborate show of worldliness and seduction, each for an audience consisting only of the other, yet they hold each other at arm’s length. There have never been two who deserve each other more, but they express their love for each other through elaborate conquests of others. Or maybe their delight in each other’s dalliances is not love at all, but a sick form of possessiveness. Perhaps each feels that as long as the other is completely promiscuous, they will never commit true, emotional infidelity.

Laclos’s novel is said to have made waves upon its publication in 1782. The tale of French aristocrats is one of a class of people whose lifestyle has run itself to its logical conclusion. The Aristocracy is known for living lives of leisure, with an obsession with fashion, and a lack of the usual sexual mores. In Merteuil and Valmont, the Aristocracy is seen as consisting of nothing but leisure, fashion, and sexual obsession. It is a story, in a way, of the end of an era, and some say it helped hasten the end of that era. The novel’s dramatization of depraved behavior may have helped flame the fires of the rising French Revolution. Really, the guillotine is too good for Merteuil and Valmont!

This modernized version of the story did not thrill me quite as much as the Malkovich/Close film. The quality of acting and dialog in that 1988 movie conspire to make it perfect. The 1959 “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” is not quite perfect, but it is still excellent. Jeanne Moreau and Gerard Philipe play their roles with charm and menace. Early on, Moreau seemed to be playing a slightly gentler version of Merteuil, but I think that was just her incredible beauty influencing me. Eventually she is seen to be crueler and more heartless than Valmont.

Jeanne Moreau is a fascinating actress. She has what I would consider to be one of the most beautiful faces in film. Her eyebrows are natural and full, on a strong, yet feminine face that, like many beautiful faces, borders on the ugly at times. With her looks and talent she could have been a traditional movie star, but she seems to have made a specialty of playing dangerous women, heartbreakers, and libertines rather than heroines. In an interview on "The Lovers" DVD, she makes it clear that she didn’t set out to play villainesses, but she was always drawn to strong female parts, and in the 1950’s and 60’s, that meant playing unsympathetic women. She plays them unapologetically.

That “Dangerous Liaisons” goes down so well in a more modern setting shows how timeless it is, and I’m sure that the right filmmaker could make a science fiction classic out of it. This story will remain relevant as long as people continue to fall in love and get jealous of each other. As for me, this film only left me more in love with Jeanne Moreau, who is quickly becoming my favorite actress.

4.5 stars

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) (1964)

This ranks as one of the most bizarre movies I have seen. From the first line to the last, everything is sung. I don’t mean this is a musical, where there are actual songs that tell the story. It is a regular movie, with regular scenes and dialog, but the actors sing all of their lines. Try it. Get your favorite song going in your head, and then sing these words along with the music. That’s this movie! I couldn’t believe my ears for the first couple of minutes, but after a while I got used to it, and it really wasn’t too bad! Actually, the singing adds charm to what is otherwise a pretty minimalist story.

Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) and Genevieve (Catherine Deneuve) are a couple of young lovebirds whose prospects are threatened by the clash between Guy’s working-class position and the aspirations of Genevieve’s scrabbling, bourgeois mother. They are devastated when Guy gets drafted, so they commemorate their last date by finally doing the big nasty. You can guess how that turns out. Guy goes to Algeria, leaving Genevieve in Cherbourg with a bun in the oven. Genevieve is determined to wait for Guy, but her mom takes the opportunity to try to pair her daughter with Roland Cassard, a wealthy diamond merchant (Marc Michel, reprising his role from another Jacques Demy movie called “Lola”). It’s actually harder than you’d expect to root for Guy at that point, because he rarely writes to Genevieve, and damn, that Roland is charming!

At the risk of spoiling the plot, I’m just going to say that nothing really dramatic happens in “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.” (By the way, the title comes from the fact that Genevieve and her mom run an umbrella shop.) This film is driven by vibrant, colorful sets and winsome performances from the cast, who manage to make the singing-the-lines thing work. The movie was a nice introduction to director Jacques Demy, who is apparently quite accomplished. His work has been described as the “tragedy of the everyday,” but I don’t really see “Umbrellas of Cherbourg” as tragedy. To me the film is about how life doesn’t necessarily go in the direction we think we want it to, but there are still great opportunities for love and happiness if we face forward and embrace them. The wistful final scene is tinged with regret, but it also contains a hopeful message about refusing to give in to regret over lost opportunities.

3 stars

The Graduate (1967) *****

To really get what a classic “The Graduate” is, it helps to consider that it perfectly captured the shifting societal mood of its time, but is still imminently watchable today. Prior to the late ‘60’s, movies almost always portrayed a positive outlook on America and our way of life. A few films, like “Rebel Without a Cause,” bucked that trend, but in general, Hollywood told America what it wanted to hear about itself. In westerns, the guys in white came out on top; in love stories, the guy got the girl; and in war movies (not to mention the wars themselves), America always triumphed. In the ‘60’s, people were questioning the American dream, and Hollywood started to really dip its toes into those turbulent waters with movies like “Easy Rider,” “Midnight Cowboy,” and “The Graduate.” Movies like these paved the way for what is today an almost dogmatically pessimistic view of American life among artistic films.

The standard description of “The Graduate” is that it is about a younger man, Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman), who has an affair with an older woman, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). That misses the point of the movie, though. There is an affair, of course, and as far as that goes, it is fairer to say that it is about an older woman who seduces a younger man. The affair is initiated by Mrs. Robinson as a way to restore her sexual confidence and escape her boring, affluent life and inattentive husband. Being with a younger man, of course, helps her deal with her fear of aging and her disillusionment. The affair is also meant to help her combat her fear that her daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross) now possesses the youth and beauty that Mrs. Robinson once had, which is why she reacts so jealously when Benjamin takes notice of Elaine’s photograph.

But “The Graduate” is mainly about Benjamin, and for him, the affair is almost incidental. He IS trapped into the “sick” affair, but in the end it is really a more or less convenient way for him to deal with his horniness while he floats aimlessly through post-college life, waiting to be struck by the desire to make something of himself. He has successfully jumped through all the hoops his parents and society have set up for him, and faced with yet another hoop, graduate school, he suddenly finds himself completely without motivation. He looks ahead to a life of suburban homes, cocktail parties, and cheating wives, and he balks.

The affair between Ben and Mrs. Robinson is, of course, a major portion of the film, but when you take a step back and look at how Ben’s life is unfolding, the affair is not really a seminal event. The movie starts with a party celebrating Ben’s college graduation, and it is apparent that his academic career has been a success. Interestingly, the party is populated entirely by friends of his parents, so the tone is set early on that Ben hasn’t yet established his own identity. Ben’s attitude toward the party can be interpreted as shyness around all those older folks, but we eventually see that Ben is feeling deeply lost. We are left to guess at when and how he turned this corner, but he seems to have succumbed to the feeling that he has spent 20 years pursuing his parents’ dreams for him. He now finds himself very empty, without anything of his own to pursue.

Elaine gives Ben something to pursue. He is initially cold to her, at the insistence of her jealous mother, but he inevitably warms to the joy of being with someone his own age. Once he gets past her shyness, Ben falls for Elaine, and it is this, not the affair, that is the seminal event in the film. Falling in love awakens Ben to himself, gives him a sense of purpose, and makes him a man.

“The Graduate” is not an entirely perfect movie. Some of the directorial choices, like the rapid flashes of nudity in one scene, look a little dated now. I also think that Anne Bancroft played Mrs. Robinson as a tad overly harsh, which is ironic, because the role was supposedly very difficult for the normally sweet-natured Bancroft. The occasional flaw really isn’t worth quibbling over, though. In its witty, artful way, “The Graduate” is truly one of the great films.

5 stars out of 5

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)

It’s a rare occasion now that I see a movie in the theater. On a whim, we decided to take our 3-year-old to see the “Madagascar” sequel. She saw the original in a hotel a while back, and she still talks about it, so she was completely stoked to see “Madagascar 2.” We would have been better off just watching “Monsters, Inc.” on DVD again.

For those without kids, just stop reading now. This is not one of those crossover animated movies that appeals to adults. “Madagascar 2” is for kids, and the adults will be lucky not to fall asleep. (My wife literally did fall asleep for a while!) Briefly, the plot is that those wacky zoo animals that were left stranded at the end of “Madagascar” finally fix up their plane and launch an effort to get back to New York. It turns out that penguins can’t navigate worth a damn, so when the plane inevitably crash lands, it is in Africa. This gives Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer), and Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) a chance to re-unite with their own kind, which strains their friendship. Not that the plot matters, really. What “Madagascar 2” is really about is hyperkinetic characters zipping around the screen doing exaggerated voice acting and making winking pop-culture references.

Maybe I’m being churlish criticizing a kid’s movie, but “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” really isn’t the kind of entertainment I’m looking for for my kid. The characters, situations, and crises all feel manufactured and two-dimensional. It seems like whenever the writers got stuck, they just threw in some hip-hop and made the characters dance around. The film also slips in some clumsy slurs against hunters. Call me reactionary, but being a hunter myself I’m really not interested in having Hollywood teach my daughter that hunters are evil, thuggish, and trigger-happy. (If it sounds like I am over-reacting, I will direct you to Whit Stillman’s movie "The Last Days of Disco" for an exposition on how the depiction of hunters in “Bambi” shaped the modern environmental movement.)

If this were the best entertainment available for kids, I guess we could tolerate it, but we don’t have to! As Exhibit A, I give you "Wall-E," which also came out this year. “Wall-E” mops the floor with the “Madagascar” movies in every way possible. This is a movie that doesn’t even have any dialog for the first 10 to 20 minutes, and yet my three-year-old daughter loved it. The robots and people in “Wall-E” have depth and subtlety to them. With a minimum of celebrity voices and no dance music, “Wall-E” manages to tell a charming story that entertains kids and adults alike. Since that is possible, we don’t have to settle for sub-par fare like “Madagascar 2”. Sure, kids like the “Madagascar” movies; kids like just about anything animated you put in front of them. We might as well put them in front of something good.

2 stars out of 5