45 Years ****1/2
Short Take: Just before their 45th wedding anniversary a couple receives news that will forever change their relationship.
REEL TAKE: 45 Years is a quiet, tiny film. But it seeps into your pores and packs a surprising emotional wallop. It’s simple. It’s elegant. And ultimately it’s an riveting essay on love and relationship.
Kate and Geoff Mercer (Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay) are a week away from celebrating their 45th wedding anniversary when they receive news that will forever impact their relationship. A letter from Switzerland informs Geoff that the body of his first love has been found after being frozen in glacier in Switzerland since 1963.
At first it seems ok. This relationship pre-dated theirs and Kate knew about the incident, but there’s more to the story than she knew. As she puts the pieces together, the invisible presence of this long-dead person changes everything she’s ever known and felt about her relationship with Geoff.
Geoff and Kate have enjoyed a long and happy marriage. The fact that this news, and surprises therein, could so readily threaten to undo their relationship after 52 years is unnerving to anyone. The toll it takes on both characters shows the vulnerability of love no matter the age.
Charlotte Rampling is magnificent as Kate and Tom Courtenay is the perfect dance for her. There’s a maturity to their love and yet a youthful spirit. There’s the fragility of growing old, and the second guessing of choices they’ve made. There’s not one false note as the story unfolds. 45 Years stayed with me in a way that very films do. It’s certainly not for everyone, but if it appeals to you in any way, it will probably stay with you too.
45 Years will open at The Fine Arts Theatre and The Carolina this month. If you want to see it, I suggest you see it quickly as it’s not the kind of film to stick around long. We are fortunate to have theatres that bring us this caliber of entertainment, and we’re fortunate that Charlotte Rampling was nominated for an Oscar, bringing just that much more attention to such a little but shatteringly powerful film.
Rated R for language and brief sexuality.
Review by Michelle Keenan
Anomalisa ***1/2
Short Take: Stop motion animation version of a typically pretentious Charlie Kaufman (no relation) screenplay has the animation going for it but little else.
REEL TAKE: I am not a huge fan of Charlie Kaufman. Sunshine of the Spotless Mind somewhat engaged me because of Kate Winslet and a surprisingly effective Jim Carrey, but not because of Kaufman’s writing, even if he did win an Oscar. The less said about Synedoche, New York the better although it certainly has its champions.
If Kaufman’s intention was to alienate me from the proceedings in Anomalisa then he succeeded brilliantly but somehow I don’t think that’s what he had in mind. Alienation is one thing but disengagement is another and I was completely disengaged after the first 15 minutes. Animating dull proceedings doesn’t make them any less dull once the novelty of the animation wears off.
Anaomalisa is based on a play that Kaufmann wrote in 2005 under the pseudonym of Francis Fregoli. It was originally conceived as an Our Town like experience with actors performing on a bare stage voicing the characters. The twist is that the main character envisions all the other characters, male & female, as being exactly the same so they are voiced by the same actor. The one exception is Anomalisa.
This basic premise is carried over into the film only now you can animate all the other characters to look exactly alike. Men, women, and children are all virtually the same. Talk about disengagement with reality! I get it Charlie but I got it within the first 30 minutes. The total running time is 80 minutes.
The stop motion animation using characters done with a 3D printer is well directed by Duke Johnson. They resemble those in The Polar Express only here they are doing ordinary, mundane things. As I found The Polar Express characters creepy and disturbing, the sight of these characters engaging in R rated sex was more than a little off putting. Again I don’t think that was Kaufman’s intention.
Self-help writer Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis) has become disengaged from Life because everyone else (all voiced by Tom Noonan) seems exactly the same. At a hotel in Cincinnati he meets a woman named Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh) who seems different therefore she’s an anomaly hence Anomalisa (drum roll, cymbal crash please). After they have sex, David has a nightmare and suffers a meltdown at the convention he is attending. Returning home to LA, he finds his life is worse than ever but Lisa, who is transformed, hopes to see him again.
Once you get past the novel idea of using animated characters what you are left with is an extended Twilight Zone episode from Hell. Kaufman originally wrote a 40 minute play for the bare stage wanting the audience to envision the characters. He initially opposed the film but came on board because of the animation.
As a member of SEFCA, I got to see an advance screening copy in the comfort and privacy of my home. I wish that others could do the same for had I wound up seeing this on the big screen after shelling out big bucks, it would not only be off putting, it would be anger inducing.
Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, and strong language.
Review by Chip Kaufmann
The Hateful Eight ****
Short Take: Agathie Christie whodunit meets revisionist western, Tarantino-style.
REEL TAKE: The Hateful Eight marks Tarantino’s third entry into his unofficial ‘Revisionist Myth’ trilogy and what an entry it is! It is ‘Tarantino Unchained.’ If you’re not inclined to like his work, cross this one off your list. If, on the other hand, you like Tarantino’s films and the notion of a band of bounty hunters and outlaws in a Wild West version of an Agatha Christie-like whodunit, then you may just want to mosey on down to the theatre.
The Hateful Eight takes place in the years (it’s vague as to exactly when) after the Civil War. When bounty Hunters John ‘The Hangman’ Ruth (Kurt Russell) and Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), one Miss Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and the newly appointed, yet-to-be-instated Sheriff of Red Rock (Walton Coggins) stop at Minnie’s Haberdashery to sit out a blizzard, they get more than any of them bargained for thanks to the colorful characters waiting inside.
Tarantino tells the tale in five chapters. His flare for dialogue has never been better. His casting is spot on as well, and there is nary a weak link in the ensemble. Kurt Russell looks born to the part. Samuel L. Jackson has never been better (and that’s saying a lot), and Jennifer Jason Leigh is finally given a part she can literally sink her teeth into. Tim Roth is a hoot. Demian Bichir, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern and James Parks all add to the fun. Sure there’s the requisite excess of blood and violence befitting any Tarantino film, but it wouldn’t be right without it.
For me one of the true joys of any Tarantino film is his love of movies. Everything he does comes from that love. Here he enlisted the talent of Ennio Morricone (composer of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) once again to do the score. But he took his cinematic homage to new levels this go ‘round by actually shooting the film in 70 mm – and it does look good.
If you were to divide The Hateful Eight up into three acts, instead of five chapters, I’d say acts one and two were incredibly strong. For me, the final Act has some brilliant moments but lacked something over all that would put The Hateful Eight at the top of Tarantino’s leader board. Still though, it’s a bloody good time if it’s your cup of tea.
Rated R for strong bloody violence, a scene of violent sexual content, language and some graphic nudity.
Review by Michelle Keenan
Son of Saul *****
Short Take: An utterly devastating but ultimately remarkable Holocaust film from Hungary about one man’s effort to provide a young camp victim with a proper burial.
REEL TAKE: I can’t think of another film that I have awarded 5 stars to that you will probably never want to see again but Son of Saul fits that description. Never has there been a more harrowing or brutally accurate portrayal of the Holocaust than the one depicted here. Everyone should see it and then they can decide whether or not they ever want to revisit it.
There have been numerous Holocaust themed films over the years from Alain Resnais’ 1955 documentary Night and Fog to Lina Wertmuller’s searing story of camp survival Seven Beauties (1975) to Roberto Benigni’s controversial Life is Beautiful (1997) but none are as shocking or as powerful as Son of Saul.
This Hungarian made film focuses on the last months of Auschwitz and unflinchingly gives the viewer a look at what it must have been like to be there. The central character of Saul Auslander (heartbreakingly performed by Geza Rohrig) is a Hungarian Jew who is one of many Sonderkommandos at the camp.
The Sonderkommandos were prisoners set aside by the Nazis whose job was to clean out the gas chambers after the occupants had been annihilated. Afterwards they were responsible for burning the bodies in the crematoriums and then disposing of the ashes in the nearby Vistula River.
These “commandos” were better housed and better fed so that they could better perform their gruesome tasks. This robbed these prisoners of their last vestiges of humanity but it powerfully illustrates what people will do in order to survive. But this was no guarantee of survival as each group would be executed after about a year so there would be no witnesses.
However Saul is able to reclaim his humanity by trying to give the body of a young boy a proper Jewish burial. Why he wants to do this and how he goes about it serve as the crux of the film’s storyline.
What makes Son of Saul so powerful and disturbing is that the audience is given an unflinching look at how the gas chambers operate in all their ruthless efficiency. We know what happened but we have never seen it up close before.
Hungarian Laszlo Nemes, directing his first feature film, shoots most of the movie in extreme close up focusing on Saul as he moves from task to task. The real life horrors are glimpsed out of focus but not enough that we can’t see or hear what is going on. The appalling nature of what really happened is then made evident with a vengeance.
Son of Saul has already won numerous awards and is considered a lock for the Best Foreign Film Oscar as it should be. It’s an extremely hard film to recommend because of the subject matter and the depiction of that subject matter but it is a film that everyone should experience. Once seen, Son of Saul cannot be forgotten.
Rated R for disturbing violent content and graphic nudity.
Review by Chip Kaufmann