To the Nines

9

NINE

While I await your next post on Lost (or whatever else you want to talk about), I thought I'd say a word about two upcoming movies that, I must admit, I'm pretty intrigued by.

The first is 9 (trailers), whose trailer I saw in the sidebar, inspiring this post. (Keep in mind, watching the trailers was the full extent of my research for this post, so everything that follows may be completely wrong.) In a post-apocalyptic future (with a retro-futurist aesthetic), a group of small, walking, talking rag dolls must survive and defend themselves against the machines that've taken over and destroyed the world. Though Tim Burton was only a producer, it displays a very Burton-esque sensibility and visual style—charming but dark, gothic, with mixed time-period/technology cues (Matrix-esque machines and spinning-newspaper newsreels). In a world where even a Terminator movie gets toned down to a PG-13 rating, I'm impressed that the makers of 9 were willing to make an animated film featuring cute, merchandizing-ready characters with PG-13-level "violence and scary images" (according to the MPAA); I don't think anyone who's seen 9's trailers would think they'd be walking into The Care Bears Have Tea with Rainbow Brite, but I'm sure they were still under some pressure to make it more child-friendly and mainstream. I can't say for sure if they were able to resist that pressure or not, but the trailers seem to display a rather unique, and uncompromising, vision. Plus, I'm loving the cast they've assembled: Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly (even if you don't like Walk Hard, you gotta love Dr. Steve Brule), Martin Landau, Crispin Glover, Jennifer Connelly, and Christopher Plummer (Captain von Trapp!); my only regret is not being able to see them all actually acting together, live-action-wise.

Also coming out this fall is Nine (trailer), a musical film based on a stage musical based on a play based on Fellini's film 8 1/2 (trailer) based on Fellini's life. I saw 8 1/2 for the first time not so long ago, and though I found it arresting and intriguing in many ways—first and foremost visually—I think I need to watch it at least once more. (As is often the case with watching a film, reading a book, etc., for the first time, I think I was too focused on trying to follow what was going on plot-wise; I read somewhere recently that when Nabokov taught Anna Karenina, he started by telling his students the ending so that as they read they'd focus on Tolstoy's literary craftsmanship and not on "what's gonna happen.") Nine sounds like an intriguing idea (at least on paper) and has some impressive talent involved—the late Anthony Minghella and Michael Tolkin writing the screenplay, starring Penélope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Dame Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman (hopefully starting to atone for Australia), Sophia Loren, and Fergie (!)—but I have to say that the factor most likely to get me in the theater when it comes out is Daniel Day-Lewis. Not only would I see one of those Movie movies if DDL were in it, but (at least based on the trailer) he seems eerily to capture and embody Mastroianni's performance (though since this is DDL we're talking about, I'm sure we're going to get much more than just a Mastroianni impression). I'm certainly not anti-musical, but they aren't often films I anticipate months in advance; Nine is.

P.S. — You said earlier that you'd been watching a British mini-series that you might post on. What was it? I ask because I too have been watching a British mini-series, the 1981 ITV production of Brideshead Revisited with (among others) Jeremy Irons, Sir John Gielgud, and Sir Laurence Olivier. (When the film with Matthew Goode and Emma Thompson came out last year, even the most favorable reviews said, "It's good, but the mini-series was better," so I decided just to watch the mini-series; it's taken it this long to get to the top of my Netflix queue.) I'm still working my way through it (eleven hours total), and so far it's not exactly action packed—the last episode I saw mostly just consisted of Sebastian being a mopey alcoholic the whole time and everyone else worrying about this—but the compelling story and fantastic performances make it one definitely to look into.

Owen breaks out his spirit fingers

And his jazz hands. And his happy feet.

So I largely agree with what you said about the musical. I think the breakdown of musicals—or at least of popular ones—into those two categories, showbiz musicals and teenybopper musicals, makes sense, as does your description of their respective characteristics and popularities. I haven't seen a whole lot of musicals myself, but I've probably seen enough to contribute my two cents on the subject.

I'd say that, broadly speaking, Once would fall into the showbiz category, since it's about musicians. But functionally it's very different from most examples of such musicals. The songs don't come from the characters just deciding, "Hey, let's sing a song about what's going on!" They come from the guy teaching the girl one of his songs in the music store, or her listening to a CD that he made her, or their recording his music together in the studio—i.e., things that people actually do in real life, as opposed to musical-fantasy life. (You could make the case that it's not even a musical as that term is usually understood; what would it be then, just a "drama with singing"?) In that respect, Once, A Prairie Home Companion, and the film version of Cabaret (I'll have to take you word on that one; I saw it as a kid and remember almost nothing) are alike in eschewing the escapist song-and-dance fantasy world in which most musicals reside. (That's not to say that the fantasy world is always sunshine and gumdrops, of course; I can't imagine anyone walking out of Fiddler on the Roof cheerfully whistling and snapping their fingers.)

And I think it's a shame that musicals on more serious subjects generally aren't more successful, lessening Hollywood's willingness to make them. I really enjoyed Sweeney Todd and Across the Universe the last couple years. (I haven't seen Rent, either the stage or film version; I wonder if the film's financial failure had something to do with stories revolving around AIDS not having the resonance in popular culture that they had in the '80s and '90s, since it's often not the death sentence it was then and we just don't hear a lot about it anymore.)

I'll hold off on addressing your more recent post on Network until later, when I have a little more time and energy to tackle it. I saw it a few years ago, but it didn't quite click with me at the time. However, your post inspired me to rewatch it on Netflix Instant Watch; I got a lot more out of it this time around, and there's certainly lot to talk about. Until then, I'll give those "Depression movies" a shot. One I thought of was Bonnie and Clyde, not only a great movie but a real turning point in film history. Barton Fink might also qualify. While neither of these are directly about the Great Depression, the period is an indelible element of both films. For some reason, I seemed to have an easier time thinking of movies about other countries' depressions than ones about our own times of economic woe. There's Bicycle Thieves (commonly though incorrectly known as The Bicycle Thief), about a man struggling to find and keep work in post-war Italy. From Japan, whose economic golden age in the '80s turned stagnant in the '90s and hasn't fully recovered since, I thought of Satoshi Kon's Tokyo Godfathers (trailer), about three homeless people who come across an abandoned baby—it also happens to be the best anime I've ever seen, and one of my favorite films, period—and Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale (trailer), which imagines a near-future Japan in economic and social collapse resorting to blood sport. Though of the films I've mentioned only Bicycle Thieves centers directly on economic depression, I think that they all very much reflect the time when they were made (in the case of Tokyo Godfathers and Battle Royale) or the period that they depict (in the case of Bonnie and Clyde and Barton Fink).

P.S. — Speaking of Hairspray, I haven't seen it, and I have to say I don't have a lot of interest in John Waters unless its his earlier, perverted, Divine-era movies. (I admit that I haven't actually seen them yet, but I'm working up the courage to watch Pink Flamingos, Mondo Trasho, or Polyester.) I do, however, love this announcement on behalf of theater management.

Do you trust a singing Hugh Jackman?

I have been thinking about this post for a while and the origin started from listening to a radio show (when you have an at times inane job you develop an entire iPod worth of podcasts to pass the time) featuring several interviews with the cast of a new revival of West Side Story on Broadway. I later heard an interview on Fresh Air with Aurthur Laurents who wrote the original book to the musical and is directing this new revival. So it got me to thinking I had never seen the show or movie so I went to add it to the Netflix queue, which if it's not a new movie is a months long waiting period. But it was a soon-to-be-expiring Watch it Now movie so I turned fired it up. As I was watching it I was brought back to the Oscars and the gaudy musical number with Hugh Jackman proclaiming "The musical is back!" at the end and wondering if indeed he is correct. You were so nice as to write about Once this week, giving me what we in the failed-journalist business call a news peg.

So I have to get right to it as there is a bit of ground to cover: I don't agree with Wolverine (and we will not discuss that movie yet despite, oh I don't know, hypothetically knowing people who hypothetically found a copy somewhere, seeing as how it led to one real blogger being fired and I'm not read to quit yet) because West Side Story could not be a success today if it were even made at all, which I doubt. It seems to me there are two types of musicals that can be made right now: films about the music/entertainment industry where music is not particularly out of place and gaudy spectacles aimed at tweens. I started out thinking this was a big departure from the earlier eras where musicals were quite popular but I did my homework and watched a few more movies only to realize that these two subgenres (I won't go into how this proves my unreliability of genre argument) as one might call them go quite far back. It's just the serious dramas that have been eliminated.

The emergence of the showbiz-type musical goes quite far back to movies like Singin' in the Rain, which AFI selected as the top movie musical. This type of musical seems to me to be evolving into the type of musical where it is more a movie that involves songs. You brought up Once (which I loved and would be on my top 10 if not top 5 of 2006), which certainly fits this category and is an exaggeration of a trend already found in Chicago to a lesser extent. In order to bring the latter musical to the screen, they reimagined it with all of the numbers on a stage like performances. Two of the other recent musicals seen as part of the supposed revival are Moulin Rouge! and Dreamgirls. Both of these movies have singing aside from just the musical numbers but they revolve around the music industry (albeit in completely different ways) and in their own ways the singing off-stage is an extension of their already musical atmosphere. The trend can be found in supposedly non-musical movies as well with Walk the Line and A Prairie Home Companion being two recent movies I've seen to have so much singing in them they could be qualified as musicals. One reason this method was picked up could be because of one of the the films for 20-30 years to be on the AFI list of top musicals: Cabaret, which I rewatched and have also previously seen on Broadway. In that movie, the entire story from the stage show was thrown out and they cut out an entire subplot, created new characters, focused more on the Sally Bowles character (who becomes American), and made the male lead bisexual. Furthermore they cut out every musical number except for those sung on stage, making it literally a movie with songs. What they achieved in that movie is what the creators of this new breed of movies is going for: realism. The movie is much more set in its time and about that era of Berlin than about the overall themes of individuality and repression from the stage musical.

The other type of successful musical is the spectacles aimed at a younger crowd and they are doing quite well. There will be more High School Musical and Mamma Mia! There might be the occasional one that does not look completely unappealing, like Hairspray, which I found to be quite good. For the most part, however, these are aimed at the same kids that saw The Little Mermaid and Aladdin as children and are the most recent incarnation of the teens who dug Grease. I'm sure they are fine movies for their particular audience, but they are really not the kind of movies that will be worth remembering.

What continues to fail are the more serious traditional musicals. One example I would give is Rent. It was a box office smash on Broadway, won a Pulitzer, and was arguably the most significant and influential show of the 1990s. But the movie flopped and I do not think it was just because it was poorly made by Chris Columbus. Sweeney Todd was made by Tim Burton and I thought turned out quite well. But hardly anyone saw it and both of these failures will continue to make it harder for more serious films to be made. It will be interesting to see shows like In the Heights and Spring Awakening ever make it to film. I doubt it. And as much as Jackman proclaimed the musical to be returned, I have yet to see him in a Hollywood musical. If and when that does happen, my guess is it will be more a movie with songs. And more than likely about showbiz.

Proof positive of the breadth of my movie tastes

ONCE

COME AND SEE

It looks like we're both pretty busy right now, but just to keep the blog active I thought I'd mention the last two movies I've seen, though I don't have a lot to say about them at the moment.

So last night I saw Once (trailer), just a wonderful, beautiful film. In addition to its purely cinematic qualities (story, acting, photography, etc.), it's also a welcome new take on the musical genre. While standard musicals generally just have a story (itself often non-musical, like an Austrian ex-nun taking care of a military officer's children, or the criminal underworld in Victorian London) with songs interspersed, Once integrates its musical naturally by making its main characters musicians who actually have a logical reason to break into song. I also loved how the relationship between the guy and the girl (those are their names according to the credits and IMDB) skirts the edges of romance and platonic friendship, instead of going the standard route of just being the former. It made the depiction of that relationship much more natural, realistic, and honest than what we usually see, especially in musicals. On top of that, the music was great, too; I have a hankering now to go buy the soundtrack. Once is a well made, touching, and unconventional film, whose songs alone would make it worth seeing if the rest of it weren't great as well.

The night before, I saw Come and See (trailer, good New York Times article), by Soviet director Elem Klimov. Simply, if somewhat glibly, put, this is a war movie that makes every other war movie ever made look like Daddy Day Care. Taking place in 1943 in German-occupied Byelorussia (today's Belarus), it depicts an adolescent boy who joins the Soviet partisans with hopes of adventure, whose innocence, courage, and almost his humanity are beaten out of him by the horrors of war. By the end, the boy looks like a cross between a 70-year-old man and a beaten dog. In many respects, it seemed almost like a depiction of the Fall of Man, with its young couple thrown out of their forest "paradise" into a cruel, hard world. I found out about this film thanks to The Onion A.V. Club's list, "Not Again: 24 Great Films Too Painful to Watch Twice," and it certainly deserves its place on that list; seeing it once is a must, seeing it more than that is probably masochism. It's a stunning, unforgettable film, more terrifying and disgusting than any horror movie, and a powerful indictment of all war (even justifiable war, like the partisans' fight against the Nazis), but following it up with a film like Once was probably a good idea.