All Is Lost (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

                                   1 hr & 46 min, color, 2013

That the makers of this sea adventure chose to give the above title to their film is in no small degree amazing.  I am sure that it has been enough over the past few months since it was released to scare many away from it.  If all is lost for the main character, in fact the only character portrayed, where in the unfolding of action could we expect to go from there?  Is this a story of survival or one of futility?  Struggle or doom?  It does not sound promising of final reward.  The most appropriate response to the words would be a shrugging of the shoulders, an attitude of dismissal.  Who wants to see and hear somebody’s last gasp of faith and hope?

Believe me, there is good reason to ignore these visceral responses.  What we have is a gripping and in its own way inspiring motion picture that captures something of the length and breadth and depth of the life force and is far more open-ended than the title would lead you to imagine.  I found it quite fascinating.  A part of that fascination is the way it demonstrates the true essence of what dramatic acting really is.  At most only one fifth of the business of portraying a character is dialogue from a script, words memorized and spoken.  At least four fifths has to do with non-verbal communication – body language, facial expression, the shape of the mouth, sounds made with the throat, the control of the legs and feet, the use of the eyes, pauses, postures, shifts of weight, and gestures.  One must give physical specificity in the painting of a persona. 

Robert Redford does just that and does it superbly.  He is the lone member of the cast, an Everyman in the latter part of his life, sailing by himself far from land and faced with the frightening aftermath of a terrible accident that imperils him.  There is no dialogue in the picture, only a brief voiceover of him in a moment of apparent lost-ness at the very beginning, his futile S.O.S. and two curse words at a point of intense frustration.  Otherwise all we learn about Our Man (the name by which he is called in the credits) is what we observe studying his movements and watching his struggle.  He gives a terrific non-verbal performance, and thereby endears himself to his audience.  It takes real seasoning to bring that off; he has fifty years of it.

Let me first set the scene.  One morning alone he awakes to find water rushing into his cabin where it is not supposed to be and discovers when he comes topside a huge metal container that has fallen off a merchant vessel during the night unbeknownst to its crew.  The container has floated up against his sailboat and gashed a hole in its side, the boat and the metal object fastened together close to the aperture.  After he maneuvers his craft with the use of ropes until he breaks it free of the container, he further discovers that the water in the cabin has knocked out his radio, which he tries in vain to revive so that he can send the S.O.S.  His boat is crippled and suddenly adrift, its steering knocked out of control, subject to the danger of sinking, and he is on his own at the mercy of the ocean wind with no means of contacting another living human being.   

His subsequent struggle, and this is the other fascination, is metaphorical for what happens in any human life when normalcy is suddenly and drastically disrupted by a major crisis.  Think of an unexpected negative diagnosis or a potentially debilitating injury!  His subsequent activities fall into four distinct stages, as they might for any of us.  First of all INSTINCT plays its hand.  He knows his ship, knows what is at his disposal, and knows where everything is.  Automatically he goes to work flushing out water, covering and pasting up the hole left by the collision, picking up scattered objects, assessing the damage to various and sundry items, tying down the sail.  He goes on automatic – too busy as yet to contemplate possible eventualities.  

The second stage is that of SELF-DEFENSE.  In a personal crisis it could mean fighting against the throbbing of a recurring or incessant pain or the onrush of a new one.  For Our Man it means fighting off a feeling of desperation and panic, doing battle with a raging storm that flips his vessel over and soaks him to the skin, even momentarily washing him underwater.  It means increasing exhaustion and an injury to his head, which he has to doctor all by himself with his limited medical resources.  It means watching the calm and friendly sea to which he is accustomed turn savage and terrifying and brutal.

The third stage is that of SOMBER ACCEPTANCE and at last a contemplation of odds and options.  This is forced upon him when he has to let his sailboat go and pack himself and all he can salvage into a plastic life raft.  An especially touching moment for me is the one when he has to say a silent goodbye to his prized possession and watch from the raft as it slowly sinks before his eyes into its watery grave.  It is like standing at a loved one’s deathbed watching them breathe their last or having to hang up the car keys when the infirmities of old age make driving hazardous.  Letting go of a piece of your life that has brought you a special joy!  And without scripted words or any narration his face projects the pain of it.  He has to adjust and chart unfamiliar territory!  He has to rely upon map and compass to track the flotation of his small raft, as it drifts with the wind, movement over which he has no control.  And he does all this as he runs out of food and clean drinkable water.  He even sets up a makeshift fishing line – one that does not prove seaworthy.  The lurking sharks, as vultures of the sea, coldly signify the proximity of death. 

When he crosses into a major shipping lane, hoping to find rescue but cannot get any ship’s attention to his plight, he arrives within himself at the fourth and last stage: RESIGNATION, SURRENDER.  Surrender to what seems to be inevitable!  I guess we can say he casts himself totally and completely into the hands of God.  What happens then amazes even further.

There is no need for me to pretend that “All Is Lost” is anywhere near the great work of art that “Life of Pi” (released in 2012) is, a survival-at-sea adventure reviewed enthusiastically by me in an earlier blog entry.  But it does have an excitement very similar, one that gradually takes us into the realm of the spiritual, that brings us close to the ground of our being, that allows us to touch the essence of the divine, if we are prepared for the touching.  Barring that, it still allows lovers of the sea to enjoy another intake of its beauty.  And we who are not sea-going get to learn a lot about the discipline of sailing, as well as the risks.

A young man named J. C. Chandor is the writer and director of this movie, one that required much professionalism from the technical crew.  If you choose to view it on DVD, I strongly recommend consulting (after your screening, not before) the Special Features to get an idea of how much a feat it was for Chandor to make the film on a very small budget.  One member of the cast, one person seen for the entire hour and forty minutes, but with hundreds of individuals (listed in the closing credits) working behind the camera.  As quaint as it may appear, this is no home movie!          

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

Inherit the Wind (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

                             2 hrs & 8 min, b&w, 1960

The big debate in some quarters about so-called Creationism vs. Evolution shows no sign of cooling off.  Strange to say this sizzling controversy’s persistence has produced in my judgment at least one good result.  It has made a much neglected motion picture more appealing than it was fifty-four years ago when it was released.  “Inherit the Wind,” Producer/Director Stanley Kramer’s excellent adaptation of the hit play of the 1950s by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, hardly made a ripple among the general public when it bowed in at movie houses during the summer of 1960, long before the term Creationism was even invented.   At the time the story is set (the 1920s), so much was unknown at the grass roots about Darwin’s theory, his contention that human mortals were not fashioned out of the dust in six days but evolved from ape-like creatures over millions of eons, but enough was known for fundamentalists in the Bible Belt and elsewhere to dismiss his idea out of hand as a form of flagrant apostasy, something “right out of the pits of hell.” 

There was, however, one community in Tennessee at that time that became exceedingly familiar with the controversy, more than they wanted to be, when the whole furor was dumped upon their doorsteps.  A public school teacher in that town was arrested for introducing his class to Darwin in violation of a state ordinance prohibiting the teaching of any theory of the origin of man contrary to the Genesis account.  Other states had similar laws, but only in Tennessee was anybody ever charged with an infringement.  Only in Tennessee was the viability of such a law ever put to the test.  The result of that testing is not something that I would suppose the average resident or native of Tennessee enjoys looking back on.  At least that is my guess.  The ensuing battle in the courtroom has been colloquially referred to as the “Monkey Trial.”  A more enlightened name for it is the “Scopes Trial,” Scopes being the name of the prosecuted teacher. 

The story is well named, “Inherit the Wind.”  The phrase is taken from a verse in the Book of Proverbs: “He that troubles his own house shall inherit the wind, and the fool shall be servant to the wise in heart.”  Wind there is plenty of in the film, generated by passionate rhetoric and exceptional gifts of oratory, and it blows with the strength of a fierce electric storm.  Any thinking person cannot help being totally absorbed.  The play that made it to the screen is a fictional enlargement upon that factual event.  All the names, including that of the town as well as the notables involved, have been changed.  At least three television versions have come forth over the subsequent decades, but none of them has achieved the power and driving force of Kramer’s.  For purposes of televising, they were all somewhat trimmed and abbreviated, broken up by commercials and the restrictive demand of predetermined air time.  But Kramer, under no such restriction on the big screen, spared no detail; he even added scenes that enlarge upon the issues as well as the fine points of personality, Scriptural interpretation and legality.  He portrays the small town affair as having the ambiance of a circus, as the outside media world descends upon the previously isolated rural hamlet, and he uses his fluid camera to highlight absurdity and elements of satire when it seems appropriate. 

There are numerous touches of pure brilliance, one of which is the opening pan shot of the town square, accompanied on the soundtrack by a very slow-paced, doleful singing of “That Old Time Religion.”  A familiar, lively evangelical song treated as a funeral march!  Foreshadowing the coming of a war of strong wills which somebody is going to lose!  The credits roll as we see the hand of intrigue at work in that square – the community elders moving toward the schoolhouse to make the arrest of the teacher.  But the mood quickly shifts, once the arrest is made, as the unsuspecting town bursts into life absorbing the news.  From that point on the movie has pace and delivers one wallop after another.

Another move on Kramer’s part in making the work superior is the decision to cast two icons to fill the leading roles of prosecutor and defender, both of them two time Oscar winners.  Here, though the characters’ names may be fictitious, little is done to disguise the identities of Clarence Darrow for the defense and William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution.  These two men made indelible history in that remote place.  Spencer Tracy has one of his finer moments on screen as the Darrow-like defender.  He has the appearance of a tired warhorse who has suffered through many a battle for the dignity of vulnerable individuals standing before the formidable bar of blind justice.  Paunchy and gravel voiced, he scarcely needs to breathe his well chosen words to coil his way into the listener’s mind.  There is also the quality of naturalism that he always employed.  He was the first notable naturalistic actor in American movies.  (Once asked by a student aspiring to learn to act if he had any advice to give about the craft; with a cool tongue he replied, “Yeah, don’t let anybody catch you at it.”)  If Kramer had been able to resurrect Darrow from the grave, he could not have improved on Tracy.

The other giant is Fredric March, as much a veteran at the time as Tracy.  He too improves on every other rendition of the character of the prosecutor we have since seen.  His more expansive style of delivering a line, in contrast to Tracy’s naturalism, serves equally as well in making the Bryan-like figure come to exciting life.  The man he embodies is the sharp witted, well dressed super salesman in political and pious trappings, and super self-confident, until the heat and ferment of the trial betray a hidden and fatal flaw.  Gene Kelly does himself quite proud as the cynical journalist covering the big story, inspired by the figure of H. L. Mencken, who actually did.   The jailed teacher, also a somewhat conflicted person at first, is played with forthright tenacity and emotional clarity by Dick York.  He is actually a completely fictional character, in love with and engaged to Donna Anderson, the daughter of the town’s leading cleric, who is quite active in the prosecution of the defendant.  Scopes himself was single at the time but not romantically involved with anyone.  I guess the playwrights felt obligated to hand the audience a love theme.  Needless to say, the young woman is put into a very awkward predicament and almost sinks her fiance’s ship.    

The trial is by all standards a travesty of impartial justice.  The rulings this judge (Harry Morgan) makes could not be made today without bringing down the wrath of the Justice System upon his head.  A mistrial would be a cinch to obtain.  And at the very least any lawyer in Darrow’s place would early on petition for a change of venue.  But back then local jurisprudence did not fall so squarely under the searchlight of Federal authority, especially in the prosecution of a controversial law of mostly regional interest.  As for the guilt or innocence of the accused in this case, I have to say that the final verdict is not the end of the proceedings but the first of a series of climaxes that have a most sobering effect upon all the parties involved, including the spectators.   What was won or lost to this day remains a matter of opinion and perception.    

The film is so thick with earthshaking issues and questions that just about each and every scene could be an extensive subject for discussion by itself.   Science and the Bible, judicial prerogative and precedent, intellectual freedom, the education of young minds, the sanctity of truth, the mixed blessing of democracy, freedom of the press – you name it!  Thought-provoking, ironically humorous, eloquent, explosive and uplifting!  What a feast!

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

Lee Daniels' The Butler (2 hrs & 18 min, color, 2013) and Blue Jasmine (1 hr & 38 min, color, 2013)

Movie Reviews by Bob Racine

Motion picture history is replete with examples of great acting that has made otherwise only medium level screenplays memorable and uniquely enjoyable.  The portrayals transcend the material; the charisma of the players elevates it to a level of emotional clout that is not especially inherent in the writing itself.  In Woody Allen’s latest dramedy, “Blue Jasmine,” Cate Blanchett does a sensational job of breathing life into a very reprehensible character – a wealthy, spoiled, dishonest, manipulative lush, whom we are expected to find amusing.  I found her and her devices disgusting.  Aside from her antics, the film has nothing more to recommend it.  Allen (of whom I am a longtime fan), for my money, has many times before done far better, whatever my fellow critics and the Academy of Motion Pictures have chosen to say.  The action is so contrived and cartoonish, and the general dialogue so full of clichés that do not serve the quality of the cast he has assembled that I was turned off.  But of course Blanchett chews up the scenery until not a morsel of it is left.  She alone might make many take delight in what I found to be a labored vehicle of comedy errors. 

That of course is an extreme example.  Lee Daniels’ work in “The Butler” is something far above mere device and bare bones.  The idea of tracing the life of an Afro-American male, Cecil Gaines (Forrest Whitaker), from plantation poverty and cruelty to and throughout a career as a manservant in the White House under eight presidents (beginning with Eisenhower) and using that narrative line to reflect upon the major newsreel events that have carved themselves into the nation’s collective memory over the intervening fifty years is at the very least an enticing adventure of the mind and heart.  We see things through Cecil’s eyes.  He views the unfolding history from behind the silent class barrier that keeps him and other household staff in a state of helpless subservience to a political system in which they have no real input.  So near, at the elbow, but so far removed!  

The film suffers a little for trying to cover so much of a time span.  A whole half century!  So much has to be skipped over, so much space that never gets filled.  Surfaces must be skimmed.  But largely compensating for that flaw are two sterling performances – by Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey as Cecil’s wife and the mother of his two sons.  The work these two turn in elevates the story so far beyond the mere perfunctory that it gives deep voice as well as presence to the family’s struggle with the demeaning life they are forced to live despite the luxury they enjoy.  The domestic sequences are by far the best in the footage. 

Oprah at first resisted Daniels’ offer of the part.  But there is no doubt that whatever else she has developed a knack for over the years, whatever other personae she has taken to herself, she is still first and foremost a quality actress.  Though a supporting player she is in enough of the movie to shake me profoundly.  I felt so much sympathy for her, even in her drunken moments.  As for Whitaker, I have to agree with so many others that he here surpasses all his past work, as adorable as that work has been.  Brilliant seems too tame a word for what he makes of Cecil Gaines.  As marginalized as Cecil is on his job, at home he is right in the thick of intergenerational strife.  His oldest son becomes a much battered Freedom Rider and eventual Black Panther, bringing unexpected worry and heartache to his parents who want him to finish school and enter a profession.  The youngest son enlists in the army during the Vietnam War and by so doing adds to the parents’ worry.  It is as if the national conflicts have invaded their well protected lives. 

The central conflict is quite explicitly a generation gap that threatens to swallow the lives of father, mother, and sons before it can be closed.  I found myself envying Cecil after escaping his horrid childhood and landing his indoor job in the President’s home, but slowly I began to worry that all of that would be snatched away as pressures of family close in on him and he succumbs to the befuddlement of the racial issue that his son brings into his space.  There are some very harsh moments at the dinner table resulting in a bitter estrangement.  But he lives to experience some vindication for all his heartache when Obama is elected to that White House and new promise and hope raise their esteemed heads.     

As far as I am concerned this is a fictional tale, even if it was inspired by the life of a factual person.  The cast is huge; most of the casting is well done, though a few choices provoke a little head-scratching.  Robin Williams as Eisenhower!?  John Cusack as Nixon!?  Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan looks the part, but why waste an accomplished actress like her in nothing more than a walk-on?  She is only on the screen for little more than a minute in medium range, never seen in close-up.  Another head scratcher is the director Daniels’ decision to include his name in the titling, something very rarely done I am pleased to say.  “The Butler” would have been sufficient nomenclature unto itself, without this bit of conceit.  But his writing is good enough that the vast production does not inundate the major characters.  The personal saga comes through most vividly.  In lesser actors’ hands I am not sure that would have been the case. 

Someone of my generation naturally looks at all the story’s chapters with some degree of nostalgia, having lived through them all.  It would be interesting to me to hear how the story plays for those who have been born in the last two or three decades.  What is their experience of Kennedy’s assassination, or the Watergate scandal, or the Civil Rights Movement or the student protests of the 1960s and 1970s?  How do they perceive that their lives have been impacted upon by all that, or do they at all?  The viewer is asked by implication to locate herself/himself in the ongoing drama of a nation still struggling to understand the full meaning of economic equality and individual freedom.  It would be like my being asked to contemplate how World War I and the Great Depression have impacted upon me, neither of which I encountered first hand.  Locating one’s self in the larger odyssey of time and national history is not easily done, but “The Butler” has made the task at least a bit more possible for many Americans now living.  I would not be surprised if the picture were sooner or later a part of high school curricula.      

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.