Winter.......offers us a cinematic abyss.
Winter is a lean time for movie fans. Holding their new movies for later
release, the studios offer us a cinematic abyss. What we can do in this dismal
period is to catch the good ones we missed during the past year. These four are
worth the hunt.
In the Valley of Elah gets everything right. A father is searching
for his son who has gone AWOL from the Army. Tommy Lee Jones makes him
vulnerable, honest, precise, uncomfortable, unrelenting, and possessed of a will
of iron. He shows us who he is by making himself ordinary in the face of
bureaucracy. He is a gentleman and a warrior in his own small life. As his wife
in a marriage of cool distance, Susan Sarandon captures the worn resignation of
a woman living with a silent man. Charlize Theron is a police office clerk who
helps a despairing man find the truth of his search. For these three superb
actors, it’s all in the details; in my not so humble opinion, they made the best
movie of this year.
La Vie En Rose is a patchwork that mimics the chaos of Edith
Piaf’s life. Marion Cotillard’s daring performance is the central wonder of the
film. For all her life, Piaf sang for her supper until Paris took notice. From
childhood forward she sang songs of despair that reflected the physical and
emotional darkness that engulfed her life, and she sang them in that famous
strong, clear voice that belied her fragile self. Addicted to morphine and
alcohol, she died at 47. Cotillard’s face reflects Piaf’s frightening range of
emotion – radiance to petulance to rage. It is a dazzling performance.
The Lives of Others unfolds in the Orwellian state of East Germany
in 1984 when the secret police, the Stasi, cast a shadow over a citizenry that
is itself riddled with informers. Surveillance, and the threat of it, have
erased vibrancy. People, buildings, and streets have turned into a shade of
gray. From an apartment above his target, a Stasi spy watches the daily life of
a playwright at work and in love. Spy and target become two decent men wrestling
with their culture and their consciences. Two fine actors and their director
paint in a chilling monochrome.
3:10 to Yuma marks the return of the Western. With this comes the
violent reality that can take over in the absence of the rule of law.
Downtrodden Christian Bale is paid to deliver the captured killer Russell Crowe
to justice in Yuma. It becomes an intriguing journey into the minds of two men.
The final exhaustion of the audience is the clear measure of two terrific actors
and a fine cast who turn something familiar into something wonderfully new.
Tommy Lee Jones and Marion Cotillard each deserve an Oscar, and these four films
stand at the top of the 2007 pyramid. You’ll be glad you made the effort.
Copyright (c) Illusion