Philomena (1 hr & 39 min, color 2013) and Saving Mr. Banks (2 hrs & 5 min, color, 21013)

                              (Movie Reviews by Bob Racine)

The phrase “fact based” is one I feel as if I have been running into far more than usual in recent months.  The creators of the films to which I refer are acknowledging that there is a body of material they are handling that can be documented but that liberties have been taken with it for the purpose of telling an entertaining story.  A disclaimer is being issued to the effect that they have not raised any bar of truth telling so high that they feel the need to be accountable to any court of authenticating inquiry.  I have written about this in past reviews – enough for me to have established that I am no purist in such matters.  “The Insider,” the 1989 feature regarding the exposure of the tobacco industry’s malfeasance which I examined in January, does not contain one hundred percent fact, but it comes close enough that the basic circumstances being dramatized are legitimately covered and enlarged upon.  The principle characters are treated with journalistic justice, as is also the case with “Dallas Buyer’s Club” and “12 Years a Slave,” more recently reviewed.  These three might not have been literalistic about facts but they are respectful of the truth embedded in those facts and the identity and contribution of the characters portrayed.  But I am having a little trouble in the tolerance department regarding the two to which I now give my attention.            

“Philomena” gives an accounting of the struggle a mother, Philomena Lee, went through trying to locate a son who was taken from her when she was but a teenager.  She went fifty years without letting anybody in her family or among her friends know of her experience, though not a day went by in that half century that he was not present in her thoughts.  Judy Dench gives a rich portrayal of the woman, a very accurate one from all accounts.  She and the entire cast touch us deeply and the story plays to the alternating rhythm of courage, hope, disappointment, forgiveness and rediscovery. 

The screenplay begins with a flashback to 1951 when at sixteen she has a brief sexual encounter that results in her pregnancy and her abandonment to an Irish convent by her father.  A strikingly talented young actress named Sophie Kennedy Clark portrays the young distraught Phil who has to watch her child being driven away by strangers, powerless to stop them.  Then we jump fifty years ahead and the middle aged woman is breaking the news to her grown daughter Jane (Anne Maxwell Martin).   Upon her daughter’s urging she enlists the help of journalist Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) to write the book that tells her tale.  Knowing that her son was adopted by an American family, she and Sixsmith travel to the States to track him down, not knowing what they will find out.  I am choosing not to tell anymore.  Not knowing ahead of time what the search uncovers allowed me to experience the woman’s inner conflict much more personally and poignantly, and I wish all who see it the same depth of experience.  

I recommend the movie without hesitation for all who enjoy an adventure of the heart and soul that brings completion to a human life, especially someone who has suffered unjustly. “I don’t want to hate anybody.”   That appears to be the attitude, the sentiment that guided Phil through the whole enquiry, the line beautifully delivered at a tense moment of truth by Ms. Dench.  Stephen Frears’ direction is appropriately gentle and delicate, sounding out the humor as well as the pathos in the drama.   

My only disappointment is in learning afterward that the contribution of Sixsmith has been greatly exaggerated.  He wrote the book “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee” and deserves credit for giving the woman a voice.  But it was the daughter Jane who made the journey to the States with her mother.  She did the digging that the movie credits to Sixsmith, the digging that not only turned up an amazing series of developments but also exposed the dishonest dealings of the convent and the manner in which it exploited a child in its care.  If I were she, I would be very hurt and disappointed, maybe not to the point of suing but to the point of making a serious and loud complaint.  Steve Coogan not only played the writer, he composed the screenplay and co-produced the film.  It appears to me that he wanted to create a role for himself and reduced Jane to a minor player seen only on three brief occasions in the footage.  That is a little too much license to suit me.  But at least, as I have already stated, Ms. Lee herself is given a fair shake. 

The person who gets anything but that is P.T. Travers, author of the world famous children’s classic “Mary Poppins.”  The screenplay of “Saving Mr. Banks” is presumably about how Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) cajoled her into signing over permission for the character to be the subject of a movie.  We of course all know the outcome – the 1964 extravaganza that made a screen star out of Julie Andrews, broke box office records as they had been established at that time, advanced the art of combining live action and animation and introduced a melange of original songs that still linger in the corporate memory.  But in the final analysis “Saving Mr. Banks” is one of those films that for all its spirit of fun never really justifies being made.  The whole premise is false.  Ms. Travers was nothing like the stubborn and starchy prude that Emma Thompson portrays her to be.  She was a quite sophisticated lady who lived a very free-wheeling life long before it was cool or hip to do so.  Just Google her and you will see for yourself.  She put a lot of heart and soul into the planning of that musical, even though she had some reservations at first about having Mary sing.  It was not she who played Disney; it was he who played her.  She did not know until she sat for the premiere that animation would be used against her wishes in visualizing the fantasy characters.  It is not surprising that the Disney Corporation waited until after her death to make this frolic.  She might have had a stroke watching it.  There is not a single new tune heard on this soundtrack, only a rehash of some of those composed for the original picture. 

As in “Philomena” the current action is intercut with scenes from the woman’s childhood.  But unlike it, I could never close the gap between that childhood and this straight-laced bore that Emma Thompson has created.  In the flashbacks she is depicted as quite the adorable sweet kid with a sick but very loving and attentive father whom she loses to a fatal disease early on, a child who rises above the sadness and stress of her family life.  There is also a dreaminess about her that I cannot detect anywhere in the troublesome individual that Tom Hanks’ Disney partners with.  It is like watching two separate films that do not really match up. 

 

A movie that stands in the lengthening shadow of an all time classic by which it is enormously overshadowed!  To what point?  What I wish the Disney Corporation had done with the money they wasted on this needless trifle is set up a new theatrical release of “Mary Poppins” itself, celebrating its fiftieth year.  At least two generations of kids have come and gone, kids that have not seen it and probably have little familiarity with it, if any at all.  But “Saving Mr. Banks” did have one positive effect on me and my wife Ruby: It reawakened our yen to see that musical once more.  That is what I recommend to my readers.  A flying, otherworldly nanny (Julie Andrews) and a versatile clown (Dick Van Dyke) take two undervalued children in Victorian England on the outing of their lives.  The child in all of us will yet thrill to this magnificent chunk of magic and make believe.  Out-of-this-world orchestration, dancing and lyrics – all offered in jumbo servings!  Take the jolly holiday trip with Mary and her friends.  You can get it from Netflix.

            

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.

Sorry I'm Late! Oh, Really? (Essay by Bob Racine)

In the opening act of “1776,” the Broadway musical, the new delegate from Georgia to the Continental Congress, a Dr. Lyman Hall, on his first day, enters the meeting room where the fate of the colonies is to be decided within the coming month, only to find the room almost empty and no sign of the session having been called to order.  The doctor, having understood the meeting time to be 10:00 am, asks the custodian if this information is correct, to which the custodian replies in the affirmative.  Well, then, where is everybody, he asks, it already being many minutes past the hour.  “Oh, they’ll be strolling in pretty soon,” the custodian answers.  Hall is struck by the matter-of-factness in the custodian’s reply, signifying that the regulation regarding 10:00 is one honored more in the breach than in the observance.  Business as usual!  Late!  The fact of the matter is that all the delegates are either already in the building in various nooks and crannies or on their way somewhere around the corner.  In fact, business is already being transacted, as the delegates feel each other out on crucial issues such as (oh, yes) Independence.

In 1966 I traveled to Washington with three other ministers, it being our intent to get ourselves more up to date on reforms being proposed in the legislatures and various other matters, and the highlight of our stay in our nation’s capital for me was our visit to the Senate building and sitting in the gallery to watch deliberations.  Sen. Everett Dirksen, Republican Minority Leader at the time, was on the floor, and another senator whose name I never learned was expounding his views on the Vietnam situation.  In other words, he had the floor – a floor populated at that moment by just about nobody.  He was talking to mostly empty chairs, and even Dirksen was in private discussion with somebody else and not listening to the man.  The speaker seemed content simply to know that his words were being read into the record.  If “1776” is to any valid degree authentic, we have to conclude that the style in which government business is conducted has not changed drastically over the two centuries.

As best I understand it, much (though far from all) of the business in Congress is conducted off the floor anyhow.  Many deals are made, many compromises, many decisions are finalized, coalitions formed, off the floor or in committee.  Most of the “arm-twisting” that Lyndon Johnson did to get the votes he needed for the passage of the Civil Rights Act took place in hallways or in back rooms or even over the telephone.  By the time the delegates all get into their seats, much has often already been finalized.  The proceedings are simply a matter of formality, when the cards are turned over so to speak for everyone at the card table to read them.   

Business as usual!  Late by the clock, but not necessarily too late to fulfill an agenda!

In civilian society, not many are extended this kind of luxury.  Punctuality must be far better enforced, or else all is chaos, and commerce and industry and executive transaction falter.  Not many employers are tolerant of lateness to work among their employees.  Showing up when and where directed can make the crucial difference with those efficiency ratings.  When it comes to our private lives, punctuality can do much to preserve friendships that might otherwise be wrecked by the habitual tardiness of one of the persons involved.  How many of us have been annoyed by having to wait for someone who said they would be at the restaurant by 8:00, only to have them stroll in at 8:30 with the vaguest of excuses?  In volunteer work, when an individual’s services are counted on to go into motion at a specific time, with needy people waiting for them, those in charge do not have recourse to the same pressures that an employer can exert to bring someone on the payroll to heel.  Let’s face it -

Showing up late in most domains constitutes dishonesty, the failure to keep one’s word. 

All of us are late to something occasionally, due to honest human error – a  miscalculation of the time maybe.  Or there might be the intervention of a delay factor not foreseeable and not of our making or a frail body that cannot always be counted on to move at a preferred speed!  (I am learning fast about that in my eighty-second year.)  And then there is a little phenomenon called an emergency.  Of course we have to be straight about the fact that not everything in this world called an emergency is one.  In fact, most are not.  If I am late for a scheduled meeting and upon late arrival give as my reason that I had to drive a friend to work first, that is not an emergency; that is poor planning, the failure to get priorities straight in my head, something so many of us are too proud to admit that we can fail at.  How did I think I could do both in the same morning, afternoon or evening?  Nothing gets mistaken for emergency more in this world than the results of poor planning.  But granted, arriving late cannot always be prevented, not even for those of us who are religious about being on time.

What gums up the social workings mainly are the habitually tardy, and it is about them that I wish to vent a little now.  During my pastorate in a northern town many years ago there was a fellow clergyman – let’s call him by the alias Fred – who could almost never be counted on for promptness.  It was nothing unusual for his deacons to have to get a service started or delay it many minutes waiting for him to show up.  Counseling sessions, business meetings, youth fellowships, regional conferences, baptisms – nothing was off limits for him.  He was so much in the habit of late arrivals that he earned the nickname among everyone who knew him The Late Freddy Foster.  I was not around after he died many years later, but it would not surprise me if his gravestone read The Late Late Freddy.  An extreme example, but not an unheard of one!

I offer a maxim that I dare anyone to disprove or refute.  This is it: All habitually tardy people are habitually tardy for the exact same reason.  Whatever the circumstances, whatever the occasion, whatever the subject of convocation, whatever its reason or purpose, this maxim applies.  Those who you can count on to be late showing up are late for the same reason – always.  No exceptions!  That reason? 

They are not committed to being on time. 

Punctuality requires commitment.  I am not talking about some super perfectionist attitude.  Kick me in the shins if I’m not there on the dot of 7:00!  That kind of expectation is one destined by the fates and the tides to come up short, especially in a complex world such as ours.  In Jules Verne’s classic “Around the World in Eighty Days” a wealthy, stuffy English gentleman named Phileas Fogg drives everyone crazy in his insistence that things be done precisely by the clock.  A tardy servant, even if on one isolated occasion, would find himself instantly without a job.  All things must be in their place when the schedule, usually his, calls for them to be.   He even gives his fellow club members an argument when they declare the time it takes to circumnavigate the globe to be far in excess of what he has calculated to the day and hour it would take.  And he is so cocksure of himself that he bets them a fantastic sum that he can do it in eighty days (unheard in the 1870s when the story is set) and starts out with his servant to prove it.  Hence, it is no surprise that at the close of the story, when he thinks he is just one day late arriving back in his home country, he feels like crawling into a hole and hiding, until a recalculation proves otherwise and he strolls into his club smugly with only seconds to spare, where his friends are waiting, in vain as it turns out, to collect from him.  Phileas Foggs we can all do without; they are merely amusing, not virtuous exemplars of principle. 

But there is another we can do without.  There is such a thing as slipping into a meeting late, either consciously or unconsciously, so as not to be conspicuous.  This is especially the case when the gathering is large – more other people to hide among; the back row is a favorite spot.  They are not sure they really want to be where they are, doing what they have committed to do (presumably) and it shows by the lethargy in which they place body and brain in the room.  Why did I ever sign up for this? 

Then I perceive that some make themselves late, because it adds to their sense of power.  Business cannot get underway without this person, and choosing for himself/herself exactly when the proceedings begin gives this one a kind of leverage.  It is a perverse pleasure to keep people waiting; a handy way to be somewhat intimidating and self-important and subtly controlling without being overtly rude. 

“Sorry I’m late!”  A practiced latecomer is as likely to be heard uttering these words as any normally punctual person who has been unexpectedly detained.  We immediately sympathize with someone for whom it is a sincere humble apology, someone with a plausible reason.  But when a habitually tardy person says this, we look upon that one with justifiable skepticism.  Sorry you’re late?  Are you really?  Maybe sorry you got caught breaking the promise you made or violating your agreement!  Those three words, “Sorry I’m late,” have become a hackneyed, knee jerk cliché that only takes on substance with a sincere convincing explanation added to them.  It is so clear to me that those in the habit of keeping people waiting are not really sorry at all.  They never stop to think what the world would be like if everyone was as thoughtless and oblivious to time as they are.  They do not seem to realize that by letting some other agenda of theirs even partially get in the way of the agenda they have agreed on with other people they are saying in effect, “My agenda is more pressing than yours.”         

Well, I have issued my maxim; now I want to put forth a paradox.  With what I have said thus far the impression may have been created that I believe the trouble with the modern world is the lack of commitment.  Actually, I believe just the opposite.  Non-commitment is not our society’s problem.  Over-commitment is.  All around me I see decent and saintly citizens who have taken on too many jobs, too many obligations, too many projects.  Even these habitual latecomers that I have been talking about are not usually uncommitted; they are in all likelihood over committed folk.  So many, especially parents of children, are stretching themselves too thin, jamming their time and space with more than they or the children can handle without the loss of serenity and at the risk of endangered health.  I even know goodhearted activists on behalf of worthy causes who think they have to jump upon every bandwagon that runs down their street.  In fact, the existence of habitual tardiness can to a great extent be attributed to this very overreach.  They are not bad people; they are lively people on the move who have forgotten that one object cannot occupy more than one space at the same moment in time.  You cannot keep pace with everything going on.

Early in my life I heard a man I otherwise respected give this dubious advice:  If you have got an urgent task that needs doing, get a busy person to do it.  That busy one knows how to get things done and is used to spending herself/himself.  Do not try to enlist a fresh, untested recruit.  I think it is time for that notion to be buried in the ground along with old wives tales and fairy tales.  I call upon us all to take a deep breath and slow the pace enough that those elusive priorities cease to be so elusive.  Let us spare ourselves the embarrassment of having to declare, however sheepishly, “Sorry I’m late!”

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.

12 Years a Slave (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

                            (2 hrs & 14 min, color, 2013)

Not so very long ago I stated somewhere in writing that a great movie by my definition is one that deserves viewing again and again, a film that I never tire of screening and finding new ways to enjoy.  Its richness beckons to my taste countless times; I gladly keep it in my sights, either purchasing my own copy to be kept on my shelf or at the very least keeping my finger on the sources from which it can be rented or borrowed.  They are jewels to be valued and revisited ad infinitum.  These are in great contrast to merely commendable movies I have somewhat enjoyed but would not go out of my way to watch a second time.  Once seen and experienced they become just a pleasant memory. 

Commendably good or first rate great!  

But after sitting through “12 Years a Slave,” I am forced to rethink my premise.  For the first time ever that I can recall, I have viewed what I regard as a superb motion picture, deserving of all the recent accolades it has received – Academy Awards, etc. – a choice bit of story-telling that gives a definitive portrait of a very crucial and ignominious period in our nation’s history, namely, the slavery era, a film of top acting, directing and writing stature that drives the message of oppression completely home, but at the same time it is one that I am not sure I will ever want to sit through again, at least not anytime soon.  When it was over, I could swear that I was shaking in my shoes.  I felt sucked dry of empathetic emotion.  I was a snarling combination of anger, shame, sadness, outrage, bitterness, broken-heartedness, and weariness of both body and mind.  The scenes of atrocity I had witnessed played themselves over and over in my mind.  The story cast a shadow that lasted for many hours. 

  

The film’s content is based upon an autobiographical book published in 1863 by a free Afro-American man named Solomon Northup, an accomplished musician, husband and father of two small children, and a respected citizen of Saratoga, New York, where he lived peacefully and prosperously with his family, until in 1841 he underwent the  nightmare experience of being kidnapped and sold a slave, ending up on a plantation in the deep south, his whereabouts unknown to his family for the entire dozen cruel years he spent there.  We have British film-maker Steve McQueen (a black man himself and no relation to the legendary American actor) and his insightful writer John Ridley (also black) to thank for this accomplishment.   But still I am reticent to screen it again.   

Am I trying to discourage people from seeing it?  Not in the slightest!  I recommend it for as many as are up to it.  The squeamish (one of which I am not) might want to read the book instead and not put themselves needlessly through the ordeal of watching a reenactment.  But there is no way the story could have been filmed without the stark realism, without the pain and suffering treated with uncompromising and vivid honesty.  It is a tale many times referenced and scanned in previous pictures but never until now has it been related in no-holds-barred, gut-wrenching terms.  I am sure that McQueen and Ridley did not expect any viewing audience to en-joy it in any sense.  It should hurt to watch it, and I am grateful that I was not spared that hurt.    

The performance that Chiwetel Ejafor gives in the role of Solomon is unimpeachable; he lives into it, and moves and reacts exactly as we would expect a quietly desperate man to move and react under circumstances in which his survival depends upon the total concealment of his free status, education and personal history.  In every particular he made me shudder and recoil and of course empathize.  This may be his first conspicuous leading role in films, but at only thirty-seven years of age he has racked up a sizeable list of not only credits on stage, screen and television but awards and citations as well.  He knows what he is up to every split second of the footage.  A native of Forest Gate, England, his family of Nigerian descent, he is a graduate of Dulwich College in that country as well as the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.  

And yet, he is not the sole executor of the film’s force and bleeding heart.  A young petite black lady named Lupita Nyong’o creates her own wonders as fellow slave Patsy (so named by her overseers), separated from her children, who endures some of the most cruel and inhuman treatment ever portrayed in a motion picture.  She wrung my heart almost dry.  Speak of the bloody but unbowed head!  She makes the woman more than pitiful; she gives her fire and a kind of ferocity that is genuinely heartbreaking.  I have no quarrel with the Oscar she won for her supporting performance.  And Michael Fassbinder as that cruel and abusive overseer Edwin Epps is uncompromisingly strong and believable without the slightest hint of caricature.  He knows how to make the man sly and deadly as well as blatant – whichever the scene calls for.  He is more than a malevolence machine.  His character has a psyche, warped though it may be, and Fassbinder gets into it and is given plenty of room to move around in it, and he does so with sureness of foot, inciting to genuine fear.  What a powerful threesome these make!   

  

So, you might ask, why would I be hesitant to sit through the movie again?

At some future date I probably will, but right now I do not want to run the risk of becoming the slightest bit inured to its explicitness.  That is always the danger that movie critics face.  We see so much violence on that screen, film after film, and so much abuse and tawdriness, so much hatefulness and vindictiveness and pure savagery that there is always the danger that we will get used to it, that it will cease to shock or disturb.  Shame on us if we ever do!  Anyone, film critic or just a member of the audience, who can sit through the picture and not feel bruised is in big trouble soul-wise and heart-wise. 

Whenever I do decide to screen “12 Years a Slave” again, I want enough time to have passed for it to have lost enough of its familiarity that it can still cut me to the quick.  I want it to be new and fresh again.  If I became the least bit inured to its harshness, that would be a further injustice not only to Afro-Americans but all oppressed minorities and to the very soul of our civilization.  The movie is close to our nation’s heart, the dark side of our history that we do not relive with anything like the exciting pleasure of watching “Lincoln” or “1776” or Ken Burns’ “Civil War” series or even the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.  This one comes out of our darkest closet and haunts us.       

Of course the most interesting question of all is: How does the film speak to conditions and attitudes in the 21 st Century?  What does it give us to help with our continued struggle to create a just society?  The racist serpent still sleeps and snores in many an American mind.  Does it surprise us all that much that the owner of a Basketball team could be caught red-handed with his bigoted slurs wafting across the social media and earning himself a life time banishment from the ball club’s affairs?  Lurking still in some of the backwaters of our country is the notion that the black person must be kept “in his/her place.”   There is an Edwin Epps snoozing inside all of us.  We must keep him contained and dis-empowered. 

Yes, when I see “12 Years a Slave” again, I want it to hurt every bit as much as it did the first time.  I owe it to myself, to the departed soul of Northup and to my country.

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.