7/31/21
7/29/21
Screen Notes: Old; Roadrunner
Old dir M. Night Shyamalan
I was excited to see M. Night Shyamalan's new film Old based on the cast, particularly Gael Garcia Bernal (Guy) and Vicky Krieps (Prisca), who play the central, vacationing couple-on-the-rocks. Bernal is one of the great, underrated actors of the last twenty years, from his work with Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Amores Perros, Babel) to his more recent films with Pablo Larraín (No and Neruda), and a slew of gems in between, my favorite being his subtle turn in Julia Loktev's brilliant and underseen film The Loneliest Planet. As for Vicky Krieps, her memorable turn in Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread deserves another round of applause, given how well she stood her ground in the intimidating (and considerably more seasoned) presence of Daniel Day-Lewis and Leslie Manville. Alex Wolff (Hereditary and Pig) is also excellent in Old, as is another up-and-comer, Thomasin McKenzie, who I first saw in one of the best films of 2018, Debra Granik's Leave No Trace.
Old is, for me, the strongest of Shyamalan's movies yet (although I'll confess to having skipped quite a few), and I think it may be because it's not an original script, but, rather, based on a graphic novel--Sandcastle by Frederick Peeters--about a remote resort hotel that features a scenic beach/tourist incubator that accelerates aging at an alarming rate, and from which there seems to be no escape. I can't say I understand the fan base for the early films of Shyamalan--The Sixth Sense, Signs, Unbreakable--that have seemingly propelled his career to this point, and after the previous film of his I saw in the theatre--the somewhat detestable Split from 2016, featuring a laughable, show-boat performance by James McAvoy--I didn't expect Old to be quite as strong as it is. Yet, the presupposed, lingering dramatic question that Shyamalan is cursed to carry with him forever as an auteur seems inescapable at this point, and it proves to be the least interesting aspect of Old. What is fascinating about Old is the same kind of surrealist or absurdist play that makes Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel or great episodes of The Twilight Zone so compelling, and it's completely at odds with yet another, inevitable twist ending. More importantly, Shyamalan doesn't know what to do with the characters in the final reel of the film, which seems a much more glaring weakness than the final, illuminating "explanation" of it all. Still, Old is a fun watch; somehow a provocative mediation on the tourism industry and those who can afford to "slow life down" in a remote, luxurious locale, and a funny, eat-the-rich comeuppance that manages a balance of the grotesque and the poignant. I don't really know what to do with the ending, and don't really need it, but I found everything that precedes it quite entertaining, especially as a cinematic magic trick of time. In the end, I feel like Shyamalan has yet to make a movie that bears repeatability despite it's twist, as with Robin Hardy's endlessly rewatchable The Wicker Man, or even Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island. I would love to see a version of Old that is satisfied with the concept, and uninterested in the explanation.
Special birthday shout-out to my favorite movie/life-partner Jen, who returned to the theatres for the first time in a long time on her 42nd birthday...to see Old! Her recommendation of the film is probably stronger than mine. Also, she is aging at a much slower rate than me, as the following photos reveal:
Roudrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain dir Morgan Neville
Morgan Neville's new documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain takes it's title from the effortlessly hip, early 70's Modern Lover's song that seems to be the musical equivalent of the subject at hand, or, at least, to the carefree ideal that fans imagined through Bourdain, and that the documentary reveals he could never fully realize. This is a curious film to have seen following M. Knight Shyamalan's Old, because it firmly positions itself as a meditation on death from the familiar, opening intonations of Bourdain's voiceover, and proceeds to accelerate the life of a complex man, from fame to suicide, through a fairly conventional two hour documentary. There has been a lot of controversy around the absence of Asia Argento as a contributing talking head in the documentary, as well as the use of an AI recreation of Bourdain's voice, layered over a friend's reading of an email he received from Tony, asking: "Are you happy?" The quest for happiness inside of the fame is the primary narrative thread here, and it's to the film's credit that it doesn't manufacture something that feels false in relation to that narrative, but it's a documentary that seemingly has a million different potential paths to take, about a subject who has already travelled, and been documented travelling, a million and one different roads. The controversies of this film will quickly fade, but I think, perhaps for that reason, the film will too. The subject is a fascinating one, endlessly photographable in his restless, lanky glory, but we knew that going in. I get why so many, myself included, envied his life, and that's for certain why so many will buy the ticket for this documentary: a sense of closure.
Within the first few moments of the documentary, as we see the friends and collaborators settling into frame, there's an appropriately anarchic gesture by Neville to insert the great musician/actor/painter John Lurie--a sort of bizarro-world version of Bourdain himself--restlessly, bluntly laying it on the audience: "He committed suicide, the fuckin asshole." This moment, coupled with the final sequence of Roadrunner--a similarly anarchic choice that attempts to sum up how Bourdain would have felt about much of the documentary you've just seen--reminds me how stale the whole bio-doc genre has become. It's not that there isn't anything else to take away from Roadrunner, and I'm sure many fans will find it cathartic, but, for me, I always feel sorry (for anyone, really) who has their life reduced down to two hours, be it fictional bio-pic or doc. Where's the adventurous, dare I say experimental, possibly very messy documentary on Bourdain? Whether intentional or not, I think the movie asks us to think about the failure of it's own method. It brings to mind that wonderful, brief music video for Johnny Cash's rendition of Nine Inch Nail's "Hurt," and how it was vastly more expressive of Cash's life than the entirety of James Mangold's two-hour-plus Walk the Line. In Bourdain's writing there was something a cut above the stale media scripts of travel and cooking shows. I wish that Neville had thrown off the narrative trappings and just let us watch and listen to Bourdain. I still want to see that much less structured, much deeper-dive into this troubled guy. It might be five minutes long, it might be an eight part mini-series, but it needs to start with the sentiment that this movie ends with: Anthony Bourdain would have hated it.
7/23/21
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