Secret Agent Gal Movie Reviews

The Tree of Life *****

 

A family drama interpreted spiritually and artistically, The Tree of Life is a sweeping tale from the beginning to the end of time. Terrence Malick’s epic masterpiece won the Palme d’Or, top prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,” wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupery. To fully appreciate Malick’s fifth feature, we must experience it with the heart.

A mother asks why her son is dead, who God is, and why we are here at all. Set in 1950's Texas, the film is all yearning, exploring, imploring. It’s a stark contrast to the loud, violent fare filling modern multiplexes.

After Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) receives news of her 19-year-old son’s death, Malick returns us to our cosmic origins. Galaxies form. Earth develops. A couple meets. A child is born. Hundreds of beautifully composed images shape a quiet, elegant whole. Upheavals, universal and personal, take on a stately grace. The soundscape is lyrical. Even protozoa and dinosaurs demonstrate gentle intelligence.

Malick's sparse dialogue and interior monologues accompany these scenes like poetry. Lush cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki and the orchestral score by Alexandre Desplat are a revelation.

 

Mrs. O’Brien teaches her sons two ways through life. The way of grace accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked, insulted or injured. The way of nature (i.e., the way of the ego) dominates others, pleases itself and dwells in unhappiness. “Love is smiling through all things,” she says.

The Tree of Life shows the relationship of young Jack (Hunter McCracken in a stirring debut) and his strict, sometimes unhinged father (Brad Pitt in an Oscar-worthy dramatic performance). 

Pitt reveals a complex go-getter in the aerospace industry, a stern father who is an avid fan of Brahms. Yet O’Brien can’t reconcile the strains of a concerto with his family assembled around the dinner table. His sons never show him enough respect or measure up to his machismo.

Young Jack has begun breaking windows, stealing and tormenting small animals. “I’m as bad as you are,” Jack tells his father. Grace touches him one day and he experiences a change of heart. Jack apologizes to the brother (Laramie Eppler) he has hurt. He is kind to a neighborhood boy scarred in a house fire.

“The only way to be happy is to love. Unless you love, your life will flash by.” As Jack’s mother, Chastain is grace personified. She evokes a woman so gentle that a butterfly lands on her outstretched hand. When she disinfects a child’s cut and blows on it, we can feel her cool breath.  

 

Childhood innocence is gradually worn by the rules of society. “It takes fierce will to get ahead in this world,” Jack’s father tells him. The boy is forbidden to cross the invisible property line of a neighbor’s yard.

Sean Penn plays Jack as an angry, disillusioned man still grappling with his difficult father. Every year he lights a candle to commemorate his “true, kind” brother. Best Actor Penn delivers strong supporting work as he looks to the celestial skyscrapers of Houston for solace. They are a kind of postmodern church for Jack.

An asteroid strikes, causing massive tsunamis. Jack wanders a beach afterwards, filled with awe and wonder. It is a new beginning.

If we are open to it, The Tree of Life imparts a direct, mystical encounter between God and humans. Malick uses Christian references as the family attends church in Waco, Texas. The tree of life is an ancient symbol of heaven and earth in many religions.

The director continues his fascination with nature and the manmade world. The fields and forests of Jack’s childhood are a respite from searing inner conflicts. A universal perspective helps Jack heal years later. 

Douglas Trumbull’s special effects are natural and imaginative, resonant with the film’s ordered harmony. Superb editing is accomplished by Hank Corwin, Jay Rabinowitz, Daniel Rezende, Billy Weber and Mark Yoshikawa. 

Malick makes films with great care and thought. After studying philosophy at Harvard, he directed four films over four decades, The New World, The Thin Red Line, Days of Heaven and Badlands.

"He is working within a Hollywood system, but in a unique and personal way, much the same as Kubrick did," according to Hannah Patterson, author of The Cinema of Terrence Malick: Poetic Visions of America. "There is that level of mystery that comes from not doing interviews and not being in the public eye,” she said. Malick allows his films to speak for themselves.

Three years in the making, The Tree of Life is the director’s most epic and spiritual film to date. It reveals civilization as an experiment, a tiny shard of all that is.

Malick’s newest project stars Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Javier Bardem and Rachel Weisz. It is scheduled for release in 2012.

 If you like The Tree of Life, you might enjoy: Of Gods and Men; I Am; 127 Hours.

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The Tree of Life     2011  /  PG-13  /  2 hours, 18 min

Cast Overview:  Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Fiona Shaw, Irene Bedard, Jessica Fuselier, Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, Tye Sheridan 

Director:  Terrence Malick

Genre:  Drama, Indie, Period Piece

 
 

Cave of Forgotten Dreams ****

 

New wave German filmmaker Werner Herzog reveals a protocinema of Paleolithic drawings in the documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Herzog’s enthusiasm is contagious in this unprecedented filming of Chauvet Cave in southern France. Here Earth’s earliest known drawings, about 32,000 years old, were discovered in 1994.

Cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger’s exquisite 3-D images show horses gallop, and now-extinct cave bears and cave lions stalk the undulating walls glittering with calcite. Woolly mammoths peer back at us. Spotted panthers prowl.

The 3-D camerawork brings viewers more deeply into the cave. Herzog’s offbeat narration and signature metaphysical musings keep the film lively. A sacred feeling is evoked in kinship with the ancients.

Cave bears clawed these walls. Leaving their mark on the drawings, they seem like collaborators. Only a small camera and four small, portable panel lights were allowed. Filmed under strict limitations to protect the delicate ecology, the scenes inspire awe.

Since ancient artists carried torches to provide light, Herzog theorizes that they held these aloft and danced, their shadows moving with the animals in an ancient cinema. Impishly, he shows us a clip of Fred Astaire dancing with his own shadow in Swing Time.             

 

In a striking marriage of science and art, a laser spectroscopy image is shown. Hundreds of thousands of points of light reveal every detail and contour of Chauvet Cave's 1300 feet. Jean Clottes, head of the scientific team studying the cave and its art, shares his excitement and theories.

Europe was a dry, cold glacial land back then. One could journey on foot from England to France and Germany. Dominique Baffier, archaeologist and curator of Chauvet Cave, tours the drawings. Each one tells a story, she believes. Rhinoceros lock horns. Bison run, their multiple legs meant to show movement.

Archaeology Magazine reports that the Chauvet artwork was created 35,000 years ago, and again 5,000 years later. Looking fresh and new, the images have been carbon dated.

Fantastic beauty fills the cave. Stalactites and stalagmites glow. Some formations unfurl like candy ribbon. Others evoke thin, frozen needles of rain.  

In another mystery, only one human form was drawn. On a rock pendant, the bottom half of a woman with Venus of Willendorf proportions appears. The team mounts its camera on a stick to reveal the upper half of the image for the first time. It is a bison head.

Animals and humans shared a common, dreamtime existence then. Trees spoke. Have we forgotten how to listen? The footprint of an eight-year-old is found next to a wolf paw print. Herzog wonders whether they walked side by side.

The cave was used for drawing and ceremony, experts believe. There are no human remains. Animal bones, including cave bear skulls and even a golden eagle skeleton, carpet the floor. A Bear Skull Altar faces the cave’s entrance. Bits of charcoal are strewn about like remnants of incense.

Herzog interviews several odd, passionate spiritual seekers. Reindeer-skin clad Wulf Hein plays The Star-Spangled Banner on an ancient flute made from a vulture’s ulna. Archaeologist Julien Monmey shares a story about an Australian aborigine. When asked why he was painting on rock, the aborigine replied, “I am not painting. The hand of the spirit is painting.”

Marring this beautiful documentary is its obtrusive soundtrack, ill-suited to quiet reverence. When Herzog asks his team to observe silence and listen to the cave, moviegoers listen with them for only a few seconds before the heavy-handed score intrudes. Herzog also invites a master perfumer along, but he is unable to detect much aroma.

Risking his life to uncover mystery and truth in his work, 68-year-old Herzog explored some of the most remote areas of the South Pole in Encounters at the End of the World. In Fitzcarraldo and Grizzly Man, he delved into man’s improbable visions and showed the price for realizing those dreams.

In a surreal coda, we see a nuclear power plant some 20 miles away from Chauvet Cave. Its super-heated water prompted officials to build a tropical biosphere dome there. Alligators were introduced. They thrive, some mutating into a ghoulish white.

Might the reptiles escape one day and invade the Chauvet area, once covered by thousands of feet of ice? Two albino alligators face each other in the waters, teeth bared. Herzog asks whether we are doppelgangers, ghostly doubles of the ancients.

If you like Cave of Forgotten Dreams, you might enjoy: The Wind Journeys; Sanctum.

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Cave of Forgotten Dreams     2010  /  G  /    1 hour, 30 min

Cast Overview:  Werner Herzog, Dominique Baffier, Jean Clottes, Jean-Michel Geneste, Carole Fritz, Gilles Tosello, Michel Philippe, Julien Monney, Charles Fathy 

Director:  Werner Herzog

Genre:  Documentary, Nature, Science, Spirituality

 

Miral ***1/2

 

A schoolgirl flirts with terrorism and falls in love in the controversial drama Miral. Jewish American director Julian Schnabel directs this film from a Palestinian perspective.

Miral follows four generations of Jerusalem-born Muslim women beginning in 1948, before Israel was formed. Hiam Abbass (The Visitor; Lemon Tree) plays Hind Husseini, an affluent woman who converts her father's estate into an orphanage for war refugees. Graceful Abbass conveys matter-of-fact compassion, especially in a scene where she finds children, huddled and dirty, abandoned on a street.

The character of Hind is based on the real social activist who founded the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage and school. Hind meets quirky, charming Col. Edward Smith (Willem Dafoe) at a holiday party. The two sparkle together, but she chooses to devote her life to displaced Arab youth. Vanessa Redgrave shines in a very brief appearance.

The film also depicts the life of Nadia (Yasmine al Massri), beginning with a rape by her father. Schnabel (Before Night Falls; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) reveals the scene by focusing on a bed frame moving up and down. Nadia flees home. Later, we see Nadia’s belly in slow motion, dreamlike, as she performs at a club. By the time Nadia gives birth to Miral, she is full of self-hate and drowns herself in the ocean.

Thrown into prison for punching a heckler on a bus, Nadia meets her compassionate cellmate Fatima (Ruba Blal), a nurse who helped a Palestinian prisoner escape from a hospital, and later left a bomb in a crowded theater.

After her mother’s death, Miral will live at Hind’s orphanage but will be allowed to visit her father Jamal (Alexander Siddig) every weekend. Siddig (Syriana) is wonderful as a devout Muslim.

Indian actress Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) brings depth and complexity to the role of Miral. Following the Intifada in 1987, Miral is asked to teach Palestinian children in a refugee camp. She becomes radicalized and begins to fall in love with revolutionary Hani (Omar Metwally). 

 

Miral is detained for 24 hours, questioned and whipped. After the girl is released, Hind urges Miral not to get involved in politics, for it might endanger the orphanage. Jamal forbids Miral to hang out with Hani and his crowd. She screams at him, “You just don’t understand anything!”

Jamal sends Miral away to her aunt’s home in Haifa, where she meets her cousin’s Jewish Israeli girlfriend Lisa (played by Schnabel’s daughter Stella). As the friendship unfolds, Miral asks, “How can you love an Arab man?” He is a good man who "kisses like an angel," Lisa says. 

Can a budding terrorist reform? Miral comes full circle by the end of the film. Metwally (Munich; The City of Your Final Destination) is convincing as his idealism ultimately leads him in the direction of peace.

Miral is a moving study of personal transformation set in geopolitical turmoil. It is worth seeing despite numerous flaws. The project is marred by occasional preachiness, weak dialogue, uneven editing, odd musical score, and poor makeup to simulate aging for Hind.

Produced by the Weinstein Company, Miral’s screenplay was adapted by journalist Rula Jebreal from her own semi-autobiographical novel.

If you like Miral, you might enjoy:  Lemon Tree; Ajami.

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Miral  2010  /  PG-13  /  1 hour, 52 min

Cast Overview:  Hiam Abbass, Freida Pinto, Alexander Siddig, Omar Metwally, Yasmine Al Massri, Ruba Blal, Willem Dafoe, Vanessa Redgrave, Stella Schnabel

Director:  Julian Schnabel

Genre:  Drama, Foreign, Drama Based on the Book

Language: Arabic and English with English subtitles

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives ****

 

A dying man recalls his other lives in the mystical reflection Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. The Thai fantasy won top prize, the Palme d’Or, at the Cannes Film Festival 2010.

More experience than movie, this film doesn’t offer much plot or character development. It requires surrender to a very slow pace and the play of alternate realities. Suffering from kidney disease, Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar, who is not a professional actor) has moved to an isolated home in the jungle where he runs a tamarind orchard.

Boonmee knows death is near because he is able to see his other lives clearly. His deceased wife Huay (Natthakarn Aphaiwonk) appears at the dinner table one night, sensing that he will make his transition soon.

What’s striking is that Boonmee’s elderly sister-in-law Jen (Jenjira Pongpas) and his nephew Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee) can see and talk with the ghost too.  There is an acceptance of mystery as magic, spirituality and everyday reality coexist. Huay tells Boonmee, “Heaven is overrated. There is nothing there.” Existence is a journey with many wanderers.

Boonmee’s son Boonsong (Geerasak Kulhong) arrives next to explain his disappearance years ago. Following a ghost monkey with his camera, he was transfixed by the silent, black, Big Foot-like creature with glowing red eyes. When he mated with one he became a ghost monkey himself. The group is alarmed by Boonsong’s appearance at first, but gradually accepts him. Boonmee is grateful to reconnect with his family.

Very slow and meditative, the film unfolds scenes from Boonmee’s animal lives. Each is a folk tale in itself. When an aging princess sees her youthful reflection in a forest pool, a catfish (Boonmee), who she calls The Lord of Water, assures her of her worth and beauty. Their sexual encounter is extraordinary, a mystical union of nature and humanity.

Gifted director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who asks Western interviewers to call him “Joe,” conveys a reflective and mischievous, Buddhist-inspired vision where all life is sacred and transitory. "Cinema is a man's way to create an alternate universe," he says. His signature blend of surreal and ordinary mark his art house features Blissfully Yours, Tropical Malady and Syndromes and a Century.

In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Weerasethakul said that meditation for him is “like taking a shower for my mind. I had notes for Uncle Boonmee for years, but I couldn’t complete it. I went to a temple near my home for 10 days straight and did nothing but meditate. When I finished, my mind was clear, and I sat down and wrote the script.”

Boonmee regrets that he killed so many insects in this lifetime. During a walk in the forest, he shows Jen how to eat honey out of a hive. He offers to leave her his home and land. Jen refuses, dwelling on her distrust of the immigrant workers Boonmee employs.

Progress is measured over centuries, like stalactites on cave ceilings. A visit to a cave with ghosts past and present reminds Boonmee of the safety of a womb. Glittering bits of mica shimmer on a cave wall. Slowly the scene transforms into a night sky.

 

Uncle Boonmee is both simultaneous and linear. Weerasethakul often films in dim light, creating a semi-mournful, plodding mood. Cinematographers Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Yukontorn Mingmongkon and Charin Pengpanich render seamless stylistic shifts amidst the gorgeous jungles of northeastern Thailand. Lush soundscapes of birdsong and crickets provide uplift.

A brief depiction of young Thai soldiers killing a communist seems to reflect Boonmee’s anxiety that he broke with his belief in non-violence during a lifetime in the Sixties.

What is the nature of life? Uncle Boonmee ends in meditative paradox. Jen is transfixed by images on a black and white television screen. She doesn’t want to go out, she tells Tong (who is now a monk with a cell phone). Other Jens who dance and sing are alive too. Love life, the director suggests.

If you like Uncle Boonmee, you might enjoy: Biutiful; Nora’s Will; Letters to Father Jacob.

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Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives  2010  /  NR  /  1 hour, 53 min

Cast Overview:  Thanapat Saisaymar, Jenjira Pongpas, Sakda kaewbuadee, Natthakarn Aphaiwonk, Geerasak Kulhong, Kanokporn Thongaram, Samud Kugasang, Wallapa Mongkolprasert, Sumit Suebsee, Vien Pimdee

Director:  Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Genre:  Drama, Fantasy

Language: Thai with English subtitles

I Am ****

 

 

Director Tom Shadyac quests for life meaning in the documentary I Am, a visual feast where he interviews authors, thinkers, scientists and spiritual leaders.

Grateful, enthusiastic and funny, the director of Bruce Almighty, Patch Adams, The Nutty Professor and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective begins by recalling his 2007 cycling accident. Suffering from Post Concussion Syndrome, he was isolated for months with painful sensitivity to light and sound.

Shadyac calls this his dark night of the soul, a life turning point. The resulting depression left him only one place to go – within. He began to consider: What’s wrong with our world? What can we do about it? Suddenly, Shadyac’s pain and symptoms began to fade. With renewed clarity and purpose, he returns to filmmaking.

Among the notables in I Am (most have never heard of Ace Ventura) are Bishop Desmond Tutu; author and MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, and the late historian Howard Zinn.  Tutu addresses being, while the other two address doing. 

“I depend utterly on other human beings to be human,” says Tutu.  Chomsky chides America for the post-911 mantra: shop. Zinn reminds us that “everyday acts, small acts build over time” to create change. “Every word you utter has an effect.” Images from the civil rights and anti-Apartheid movements are shown.

We are powerful, according to I Am. Historic shifts are the direct result of a collective change of heart and mind. When writer G.K. Chesterton was invited to pen an essay about the world’s ills, he famously replied: “Dear Sirs, I Am.” Power and responsibility lie within. 

Shadyac walks his talk. He takes us on a tour of his former 17,000-square-foot Pasadena mansion and private jet. He sold both, and now lives in a mobile home in northern Malibu. He bikes to work whenever possible, teaching at Pepperdine University.  He also began the I AM Project which includes a non-profit foundation.

I Am presents us with many cool ideas. Competition and consumerism are seen as forms of mental illness. “Greed is good” isn’t. When Native Americans shared their bounty communally, they didn’t experience poverty or homelessness. “What is an economy for? How much is enough?” asks author David Suzuki.

Humanity’s biggest problem may be its separation from the natural world that sustains us. Suzuki says that “all life is our biological kin.” Most of our genes are identical to those of animals, he reveals. Coleman Barks, who wrote The Essential Rumi, believes that “You couldn’t possibly go to war if ‘the beloved’ was everyone.”

Wacky experiments provide good photo ops, but don’t prove anything and won’t placate left-brained viewers. Shadyac and a dish of yogurt are connected via electrodes. His positive or negative thoughts affect the living cultures immediately. Another experiment seems to indicate that his mind knows which picture will appear a few seconds before it is shown.

 

Shadyac seeks scientific validation here even though contemporary science is based on the idea of separation. Scientific “solutions,” like economic ones, have contributed to our problems. We do learn that Charles Darwin used the word “love” 95 times in The Descent of Man, and the phrase “survival of the fittest” only twice.

The Institute of HeartMath has determined that the heart guides the brain and generates an electromagnetic field beyond the physical body. We are programmed to love and cooperate, Institute studies have found.

Shadyac meets with his dad Richard Shadyac Sr., former CEO of the fundraising division of St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. The elder Shadyac, who passed away in 2009, regretted that the love evident during Sunday services seems to evaporate when people return to everyday life.

The film missteps occasionally. Cooperation in the natural world is called “democracy,” for example. Brief flashes of horrific animal experiments and human violence are shown, along with scenes of compassion, to elicit our instinctive, compassionate responses.

Love and cooperation are key, the filmmaker discovers. Caution: this path gets radical. “Love your enemies,” said Jesus Christ. “Liberate damaged human beings by following the path of love,” said Martin Luther King.

I Am succeeds in rousing our compassion and empathy. That’s quite an achievement.

If you like I Am, you might enjoy:  Happy; 2012: Time for Change; Thrive.

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I Am     2010  /  NR /  1 hour, 16 min

Cast Overview:  Tom Shadyac, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Lynne McTaggart, Marc Ian Barasch, Coleman Barks, David Suzuki

Director:  Tom Shadyac

Genre:  Documentary

 

In a Better World *****

 

 

A father becomes a peacemaker in the Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning drama In a Better World.

Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier explores violence, courage and responsibility in this rich, mature drama, her tenth feature. She’s known for complex, well made films including Open Hearts (2002), Brothers (2004) and After the Wedding (2006).

Mikael Persbrandt (Everlasting Moments) stars as Anton, a surgeon working in a Kenyan field hospital. While he treats refugees, he’s interrupted by bloody emergencies as a local thug, Big Man, butchers pregnant women for sport.

Anton struggles to rescue his marriage to Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), also a doctor, who lives in Denmark with their two sons. Often away from home, Anton spends quality time whenever possible with 10-year-old Elias (Markus Rygaard), a gentle boy who wears braces.

Elias is viciously bullied at school by Sofus (Simon Maagaard Holm) and his followers, who make anti-Swedish comments. School officials misread the dangerous situation and seem unable to take effective action. Anton urges his son to ignore Sofus. Fighting would accomplish nothing except to lower him to the bully’s level, he says.

Elias is befriended by Christian (William Johnk Nielsen), a quiet, intense boy who moves to the area after his mother dies of cancer. Christian advises Elias to fight back so others won’t dare pick on him.

Christian corners Sofus in a school bathroom one day, beating him with a bicycle pump and holding a knife to his throat. Horrified Elias looks on. Police are called, but charges are dropped when they are unable to find the knife.

It’s attack or be attacked, Christian tells his father Claus (Ulrich Thomsen). He accuses the man of wanting his mother to die. Claus tries to explain his complex emotions during his wife’s painful decline.

 

At the park one day, Anton breaks up a fight between a boy and his youngest son as Elias and Christian watch.   Suddenly Anton is insulted and slapped by the boy’s father Lars (Kim Bodnia).

Anton walks away and attempts to forgive. He swims off his anger later in the cold lake of his summer home. Elias asks his dad why he is such a wimp. Anton next tries to craft a teachable moment, revisiting Lars with the boys.  He speaks out and is slapped again.

Christian builds a pipe bomb using internet instructions, planning to blow up Lars’ van. Outwardly calm and serious, he urges Elias to accompany him. The explosion will happen early Sunday and no one will be hurt, he promises. Reluctantly, Elias agrees.

Back in Kenya, Big Man has been seriously wounded and is brought to the hospital.  The warlord orders Anton to save his leg, and offers him a bribe. The surgeon treats him because he must. When villagers take matters into their own hands, Anton is a helpless witness.

A flawed man struggling to live his truth, Anton chooses peace and surrenders the satisfaction of being right. He can’t change the world, but he can be present and loving. In a Better World suggests that all children belong to us.

Bier skillfully manages many story elements to craft a majestic film. Morton Soborg provides stunning camerawork. Screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen, composer Johan Soderqvist and editor Pernille Bech Christensen lend their talents.

If you like In a Better World, you might enjoy:  Win Win; The Kids Are All Right; Precious.

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In a Better World     2010  /  R  /     1 hour, 53 min

Cast Overview:  Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, Ulrich Thomsen, Markus Rygaard, William Johnk Nielsen, Bodil Jorgensen, Elsebeth Steentoft, Martin Buch, Anette Stovlebaek, Kim Bodnia

Director:  Susanne Bier

Genre:  Drama, Thriller, World Cinema

Language:  Danish and Swedish with English subtitles

 

 

Letters to Father Jacob *****

 

 

Mysteriously pardoned after serving part of a life sentence, Leila (Kaarina Hazard) is angry. She was perfectly content. Who has dared interrupt her punishment?

With nowhere else to go, Leila is corralled into a job as a personal assistant to a blind priest who lives alone at a rundown parish, Father Jacob (Heikki Nousiainen).

Jacob greets Leila wholeheartedly, pouring tea and inviting her to dine with him on hearty bread.  He seems to know her.  She’s not planning to stay long, she tells him. She won’t do any menial labor.

Jacob reassures the rotund, frowning woman.  He only needs her help to read his letters. Requests for prayer arrive each day, delivered by a jovial postman (Jukka Keinonen). The letter carrier has heard all about Leila’s crime. Privately he warns her: she had better not harm the saintly cleric.

Contemptuous Leila suspects that Father Jacob engineered her release. Still she can’t help respect him. Clearly Jacob has a gift. He knows who is writing even if Leila doesn’t share the sender’s name.  People from all over are sick or troubled. Students struggle at school.

Seeing into the heart of each request, Jacob directs Leila to look up Bible passages (most of which he knows by heart). He prays. He asks her to write brief replies. The letters are then hoarded under his bed with a thousand others.

Beautifully acted and engaging from start to finish, Letters to Father Jacob asks us to consider why we do what we do. Klaus Haro (Mother of Mine) directs this deeply felt inquiry into ego, faith and transformative love. Tuomo Hutri’s cinematography adds to its quiet power, as does the unassuming script by Jaana Makkonen.

When the letters stop arriving, Jacob tortures himself. How selfless has his service been? He no longer feels needed or important.

Jacob and Leila each drop into a world of pain and doubt. Finally Leila asks for forgiveness. Grace imparts quiet miracles, unearned and unexpected. 

If you like Letters to Father Jacob, you might enjoy:  Of Gods and Men; Winter in Wartime; Win Win.

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Letters to Father Jacob     2009  /  NR  /  1 hour, 14 min

Cast Overview:  Kaarina Hazard, Jukka Keinonen, Heikki Nousiainen, Esko Roine

Director:  Klaus Haro

Genre:  Drama, Foreign

Language: Finnish with English subtitles

Of Gods and Men *****

 
 

Seven French monks face death as civil war sweeps through a mountain village in Of Gods and Men.

Xavier Beauvois directs the true life drama which won Best Film at the Cesar Awards (France’s Oscars) and the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes 2010.

The Trappist monks offer compassionate service in the rural Algerian highlands. They raise crops and sell honey. Elderly Brother Luc (Cesar winner Michael Lonsdale) gives medical care to the poor.  When a child’s shoes are worn, he provides a new pair.

Extremists slit the throats of Croatian highway workers one day. Villagers run to tell the brothers. Tensions rise between Islamist insurgents and a corrupt government. France’s colonization of Algeria, years after the country regained independence, still rankles. Foreigners are not trusted.  

In this can’t-look-away film, Beauvois focuses on the inner and outer lives of the monks, who were kidnapped during the 1996 civil war and later executed.  No group admitted to the slayings.

Love and devotion are genuine. Cinematographer Caroline Champetier (also a Cesar winner) captures the monks’ emotion, movement and conversation close up in the beautiful, meditative mountains. The film was made in Morocco.

As violence spreads, the government orders the monks to leave the country. The men debate their fate. They have long accepted their Islamic brothers and sisters.

The monks are radicals too, believing that reconciliation is possible. Daily service, prayer and devotion fill their days. The community’s prior Christian (Lambert Wilson) reads both the Koran and the Bible.

Ego is almost completely subdued among the brothers.  Chatter doesn’t fill their dinner hour. Instead, they listen to scripture readings as they eat in silence.

Wilson told The New York Times that the actors went on retreat in the French Alps to prepare for their roles. "We spent a few days observing the monks, eating in silence with the other people who were going on the retreat, and then we started singing. And that was really the best preparation. We learned Gregorian chanting. We learned liturgical singing as a group. This is really what got this group of French actors together."

Known for his performances in the Matrix trilogy, Wilson usually plays romantic and lighthearted characters.

After a terse showdown with Christian on Christmas evening, a terrorist leader designates the abbey as protected. To Beauvois’ credit he transcends stereotypes.

When a wounded jihadist is brought in, Luc treats him as he would anyone else.  The act of charity must be kept secret or the group risks government retaliation.  

Each monk must decide whether to stay or leave.  Christophe (Olivier Rabourdin) struggles with fear and anger more than the rest. 

The men don’t want to be martyrs, they decide. But where else will they go when they are so needed here?  “It is mad to stay, like it is mad to become a monk,” says Christian.

 

 

In one of the best scenes, the group stands during morning prayer and sings loudly as a military helicopter hovers overhead, filling the monastery with a terrifying racket.

Towards the end, Luc breaks out two bottles of wine for dinner.  Wordlessly, he plays a tape of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.  The monks smile, tears glistening. The music swells as does their passion to follow Christ in selfless service.

Of Gods and Men is worth seeing twice for its nuance.  It is the best movie exploration yet of silent devotion in a complex world. Beauvois, who co-wrote the script, captures simple sanctity and dramatic tension. Films covering similar territory include Silent Light, Into Great Silence and Hadewijch.

The film is loosely based on The Monks of Tibhirine by John Kiser.

If you like Of Gods and Men, you might enjoy:  Get Low; 127 Hours; The King’s Speech.

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Of Gods and Men   2010  /  PG-13  /  2 hours

Cast:  Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Olivier Rabourdin, Philippe Laudenbach, Jacques Herlin, Loic Pichon, Jean-Marie Laudenbach

Director:  Xavier Beauvois

Genre:  Drama, Historical Drama, Foreign Film, True Stories, Movie Based on the Book

Languages:  French and Arabic with English subtitles

 

 

Please Give ***

 

Nicole Holofcener writes and directs Please Give, a tart, touching indie drama about generosity and selfishness. Holofcener (Lovely & Amazing, Friends With Money) explores familiar territory in her latest film, showing the comedy and pathos of haves and have nots in Manhattan.

Women’s breasts are readied for scanning by mammogram technician Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) in the film’s striking opening scene. Pale, serious Rebecca comforts and assists an unending parade of patients. A compulsive giver, she’s not receiving much. Rebecca lives with her elderly grandmother and rarely goes out, not even to see the fall foliage upstate. To her, breasts are neither beautiful nor repulsive, but “tubes that can get infected.”

Holofcener shows the interplay between two Manhattan families, reflecting America’s uneasy balance of wealth and poverty. Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) are a wealthy couple that resell contemporary antiques in their city showroom. The two live and work together all day long, an arrangement bound to strain any marriage.

Adding to that tension is Kate as she plunks $20 bills into the hand of any homeless person she meets. Opportunities to profit and feel guilty about it abound as Kate and Alex acquire estate furniture bargains from grieving adults. Meanwhile their 15-year-old daughter Abby (refreshing Sarah Steele) begs for a pair of $200 designer jeans.

Living next door is 91-year-old Andra (Ann Guilbert). In space-hungry Manhattan, Kate and Alex have already purchased Andra’s apartment and plan to expand their living space after she dies. Meanwhile they are genuinely polite to the cantankerous neighbor and her granddaughters Rebecca (Hall) and sexpot Mary (Amanda Peet).

 

Guilbert is best known as the Petrie's neighor Millie Helper on The Dick Van Dyke Show.  Peet (Something’s Gotta Give; Martian Child; 2012) portrays Mary as the newest incarnation of needy, needling Andra. She’s just as selfish as Rebecca is selfless.

Kate and Alex’s birthday party for Andra, reluctantly attended by Rebecca and Mary, offers a high point of comic realism. It is here where Alex’s mid-life crisis begins to manifest.

Several performances delight in this often uncomfortable film. Guilbert manages to be sympathetic even as she delivers her barbs. Lois Smith is radiant as wise Mrs. Portman, a patient who befriends Rebecca. Thomas Ian Nicholas plays Mrs. Portman’s fresh-faced nephew Eugene.

Keener has starred in each of Holofcener’s feature films as a tough yet vulnerable woman exploring life’s ironies. As Kate, Keener is so edgy that she succeeds in making moviegoers squirm.

Spiritual teacher Fredrick Lenz once said, “When you do something for someone else, it’s for you. When you do something for yourself, it’s for someone else.” Kate and Rebecca, the two most generous characters in Please Give, finally discover that they are good people who deserve to be happy.

If you like Please Give, you might enjoy: The Soloist; Welcome; Man Push Cart.

Please Give 2010 / PG-13 / 1 hr, 30 min

Cast Overview: Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, Sarah Steele, Ann Guilbert

Director: Nicole Holofcener

Genres: Drama, Indie, Indie Drama

Eat Pray Love ****1/2

 
 
 

Julia Roberts finds herself - and we rediscover her considerable talents -  in a rare “movie-is-better-than-the-book” travel adventure, Eat Pray Love.

Screenplay by director Ryan Murphy and Jennifer Salt redeems the navel-gazing memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert. Revealing an inner adventure that drags at first, the film soon falls into natural rhythm as a world traveler faces her inner demons and searches for love.

Best of all, Eat Pray Love stars a Julia Roberts who shows up in nearly every scene. Abundant screen time allows Roberts to inhabit her character Liz, weave us into her anger and frustration, and reveal a radiant, smiling beauty. There’s no trace of the tight-assed Anna of Closer or Tess of Ocean’s Eleven. Instead we could be watching Mystic Pizza’s Daisy Arujo all grown up.

Roberts seems to be playing herself in the film which avoids becoming preachy or too New Agey. Instead Liz meets an array of honest, memorable characters as she learns to love herself during trips to Italy, India and Bali.

“Ruin is the path to transformation,” Liz finds. After a bitter divorce from sarcastic dreamer Stephen (perfectly played by Billy Crudup), she leaves a rebound-relationship with actor David (James Franco). Tarrying too long in New York City with her literary agent (Viola Davis), Liz finally she sets out, broke and alone.

The film’s rich atmosphere and scenery in all three countries is pleasurable. How big the world is, and how it puts our personal struggles into perspective.

In Italy, Liz indulges in food and abstains from sex. It’s her time to be in relationship with herself. She ruminates about her romantic failures while wolfing down Pizza Margherita in Napoli and enjoying prosciutto topped melon with a motley crew of natives and expatriates. The philosophical group, including new friend Sofi (Tuva Novotny), share interesting times, including a morning-after Thanksgiving turkey with extended family. What Liz takes away from her stay is gratitude – for her friends and for life.

A few pounds heavier, she heads to India and the ashram of David’s guru. Plunging herself into a regimen of chanting, vegetarian meals and 4:00 a.m. meditations, she meets Richard from Texas (raw, honest Richard Jenkins, a likely nominee for Best Supporting Actor). Filled with fear and skepticism, Liz is shown meditating just enough to give us the idea: accept whatever happens, and move on. Rushita Singh is memorable as a teenager who’s being forced into an arranged marriage.

Bali is where Liz reunites with a wise, eccentric shaman Ketut (irresistible Hadi Subiyanto) and befriends a healer Wayan (soulful Christine Hakim). It isn’t long before warm-hearted divorcee Felipe (Javier Bardem) nearly collides with the soul searcher. Roberts and Bardem are magical together onscreen.

Eat Pray Love is part of a new Hollywood tradition: the blockbuster film about self-discovery. The screenplay reportedly struck a chord with Roberts. The film’s team of producers includes Brad Pitt (Seven Years in Tibet; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).

Eat Pray Love reveals an authentic side of Julia Roberts while it shows us how the real can become sublime.

If you like Eat Pray Love, you might enjoy: I Am Love; Wild Grass; Another Year.

Eat Pray Love 2010 / PG-13 / 2 hours, 15 minutes

Cast Overview: Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem, Viola Davis, Billy Crudup, Richard Jenkins, James Franco, Luca Spaghetti

Director: Ryan Murphy

Genres: Self-Discovery, Adventure, Travel, Romance