Moonlight (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

1 hr. and 50 min, color, 2016

Have you ever been lulled and seduced by the sound of soft ocean waves?  Have you ever found them hypnotic?  That sound plays a big part in the story of Chiron, an African American boy growing up and struggling to find his sexual and social identity.  We first see him as an elementary school age child in Miami being chased by ruffians and hiding out in an abandoned shack, frightened into mute withdrawal, until a tall grown man named Juan (Mahershala Ali), who happens to be a drug pusher, rescues him from the nasty, bullying malevolence which he is facing and takes him under his wing. 

Juan soon discovers that Chiron has no known father and is up against a drug addicted mother (Naomie Harris) from whom he receives no love.   He soon meets and comes under the watchful and sympathetic eye of Juan’s woman friend Teresa (Janelle Monae), who gives him a home away from home where he can stop in as the need arises.  This offer gives him some respite from the pain he endures at his mother’s hand and opens up new territory for him to explore, though it is not quite a total rescue.

One standout scene consists of Juan teaching Chiron how to swim.  It is a major moment when that gentle surf I have already mentioned works its charm.  It feels to me like a baptism of his spirit.  The camera literally gets into the ocean with the two of them and performs in a kind of ballet motion.  We watch as over time the kid catches on to how to conduct himself safely in the calm waters, a new vista opening up for him.  Juan tells him he is “in the middle of the world”.   This is quite literally true, water occupying about three quarters of the globe’s surface!  It is in this scene that the first sign of joy begins to appear on Chiron’s face.

But Chiron is greatly conflicted when he learns of Juan’s profession.  Without a strong rudder he faces a huge crisis propelling him into a drastic, startling move that sets his sail in a dangerous direction.

Juan is a Cuban who has been hustling all his life but has apparently mellowed over the years, possibly due to the sickness from which he is soon to die, one never identified.  He left me wanting to know him better, to explore what he as a child went through.  Maybe another movie can be made, set at an earlier time, telling his own tale of stand-up-or-be-knocked-down.  (Ali won the Oscar this past season for Best Supporting Actor.) 

The life of a child living in a thicket of poverty and neglect is not new on screen, but this is no blistering indictment of anybody or anything.  There is no aura of bleakness despite this setting and there is no political pulse beating behind the writing.  It is not an especially controversial presentation, though in the not too distant past it would have raised eyebrows in the black community in its treatment of a black child who discovers that he is gay and whose discovery is not held in a negative light.   The aura and pace of the film are low keyed, soft, gentle, without frenzy or delirium, even though there are a few incidental characters who are hostile and bullying.   He is called a faggot and subjected to various indignities.  It remains for Juan and Teresa to assure him that the barb does not apply to him and that he has ample time to decide whether he is gay or straight.  Juan also tells him that only he can decide what kind of life he is going to live. 

The kid’s story is told in three extended chapters, covering the space of about fifteen to twenty years, beginning with preadolescence, jumping to late teens, and ending when he is in his middle twenties.  A different actor portrays him in each chapter – Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevente Rhodes respectively.  A friend named Kevin shows up in all three segments, also portrayed by different players.  He is someone who plays a very important part in Chiron’s coming of age. 

Barry Jenkins is the director of this gem, an African American graduate of Florida State University, only thirty-seven years of age and already, after only three modest movies before this one, displaying great genius.  Lots of people recognize this, as evidenced by the Oscars “Moonlight” won for Best Picture and for Best Screenplay, an honor which he shared with fellow writer Tarrell Alvin McCraney.  The movie also won the Golden Globe for Best Drama.  He is not an activist or an iconoclast.  He treats his characters as young American men, who just happen to be black, trying to find the center of themselves through the maze of peer pressure, growing pain, bewilderment, disillusionment, emotional upset and discovery.

At the same time Jenkins does not misrepresent the quirks of the subculture in which the story takes place.  There is much dialogue that some might find a little difficult to understand.  I confess that I had to consult another writer’s plot summary before some links were connected for me.  There is a lingo that pervades much of the action that I found curiously interesting even before I got the translation.  Just the sound and pace of it has its own appeal.  Jenkins sets the story in the environment in which he himself grew up and where he could wield the language meaningfully and astutely.  But of course there is never a flood of words; this is a lean script but at the same time a very crisp one.  The dialogue is mostly and appropriately slang.

Late in the film, after violence and betrayal have impacted upon both, Chiron and his mother have a reconciliation that stands very much alone in my memory.  It is a very emotional scene, but not overdone or in the slightest soapy.  Great acting all the way through the movie by Naomie Harris!  She really delivers!  As far as I am concerned she has the most difficult role to fill in the entire screenplay.  What a bridge of emotion she has to cross!

Facial expressions play a major part in assaying the inner life of Chiron and Kevin, especially in the closing half hour when they are alone and weighing the content of the lives the two of them have thus far led.  It is a brilliant piece of work in and of itself.  (Here Kevin the grownup is portrayed by Andre Holland.) I was deeply moved by the course their simple conversation takes and the non-verbal messages they send back and forth with their eyes and their body language.  By the close of it Chiron has undergone a very simple breakthrough that points to a significant change that we are to assume will not be all that long in coming about, even though the exact form of it remains unknown.  I was on the verge of tears following them as they groped for words to express deep seated feeling, trying to cut through the pretense and the buddy/buddy palaver and the shame over past mistakes.  The last few minutes, overlaid with the sound of those gentle waves on the shore, left me almost in a trance.  Beautiful and breathtaking!   

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

Cruelty - Up Close and From Afar (Essay by Bob Racine)

Until very recently I never gave much thought to what animals had to be put through in order to be counted on to perform for the pleasure of human beings.  Practically everybody of my generation has been to the circus at one time or another in their lives and we have all been dazzled and maybe thrilled to see those elephants and tigers and lions performing in obedience to their so-called “trainers”.  Did we ever notice that they did not fawn over the man who cracked the whip?  A domesticated dog, hungry for human attention and with lots of instinctive affection to bestow, bubbles over when laying eyes upon just about anybody who comes into view, especially when the approaching individual is the pet’s owner or even somebody halfway familiar.  Walk into any pet shop and you will be greeted by yelps and sniffs and scratching coming from just about every cage on the many shelves.  But in the circus we see no wagging tails on those performing beasts in the ring, no delight in the very presence of those giving the commands.  They respond only to threats.

The ones performing are not domesticated; they are captives who have been subjected to the cruel abuse and repression of their captors.  A few weeks ago 60 Minutes had a segment that featured an elderly married couple who have made it a life’s work gathering proof of such cruelty.  They have spent what must be millions to expose the racket, even to the extent of paying photographers to eavesdrop with hidden cameras behind the scene to record the deadly doings.  They have extended their investigation into many different countries. We were warned ahead of time that some of what we would see would be deeply disturbing and horrifying.  It was!  But the good news is that these folks have had tremendous success in getting humane laws passed and rescuing what must be hundreds of animals from a fate worse for them than death.  Barnum and Bailey’s recent abolishment of its elephant extravaganzas was surely one of the fruits of the labors of these humane and committed folks. 

In 1962 a movie, “Hatari”, featuring John Wayne, put in a successful bid at the box office.  Unlike other Wayne vehicles, this one had no villains.  The viewer visited an African game compound and watched as an assorted band of daredevils captures one animal after another for display in the zoos of the world.  Romantic comedy was mixed with the action; Wayne and Elsa Martinelli (owner of the hunting business for which the men work) fall for each other, and Red Buttons provides some sassy pun licks, but ultimately it all comes down to the dangerous business of capture and ship. Hatari after all is Swahili for “danger”.  I remember feeling entertained by the film, especially by Henry Mancini’s score that included the famous “Baby Elephant Walk”, but over the decades since, my consciousness raising over animal rights has reached such a point that I do not plan ever to see “Hatari” again or recommend it to any viewers.  The only positive thing I can say about it is that no animals are killed for sport – only one crocodile to save a member of the party from fatal attack.   

What we are not shown in the film are the conditions to which the captured animals are subjected.  I know they are confined to pens awaiting their new existence displaying themselves for curious citizens in varied countries.  But how can we not be aware of the fact that these denizens of the forest will never know freedom again?  Their fate is unknown, after we last see them, but thanks to 60 Minutes I have a rather clear idea of what it is.  

Animal rights are one thing, human rights are right there alongside of them.  There are thousands of refugees from war torn nations who are at this very minute being treated in like fashion, confined to walled-up and wired up encampments barely surviving, and many of them will likewise never know again the freedom that was once theirs.  We say that what is happening to these creatures is cruel, which it is, but the more I give thought to the subject of cruelty, the more it becomes clear to me that cruel treatment does not necessarily involve sadistic treatment.  Conditions themselves can be cruel – conditions that evolve from desperate and dangerous circumstances that nobody welcomes. 

The dictionary gives us essentially two definitions of the word “cruelty”.  On the one hand, it is identified as delighting in the pain of others, and secondly as doing what causes pain, whether the doer is aware of the result or not.  A cruel act can be nothing more than the making of a decision that causes needless suffering.  Pertaining to the first meaning, a sadist is a demented individual who enjoys inflicting pain.  Such a one does not have to have a political or practical reason for what s/he does.  The suffering s/he imposes is reason enough.  Watching another living being writhing and slowly succumbing to the numbness of death feeds some perverted hunger of theirs.  They glory in the agony.  Jack the Ripper comes to mind and numerous self-confessed killers on Death Row, as well as the Nazi death camps that were run by people hired to be monstrous.  But by far the most insidious form of cruelty is the second type, the unintentional, the suffering that emerges from what is conceived of as a high and noble purpose. 

Those of us who have seen the movie “Apocalypse Now” might recall the moment in which Robert Duvall as a military commander expresses delight in the smell of napalm.  He claims it gives him a lift, especially in the morning.  He bellows about it as he bends down to serve water to a wounded civilian right after his company has leveled the town and brought devastation upon the civilian he is supposed to be serving.  He is so distracted by his own waxing enthusiasm that he never finishes letting the man drink.  He does not seem to be pleased with suffering as such, but he is totally insensitive to what impact his actions have had upon the lives of Vietnamese peasants.  He wants to win the war, to correct something that allegedly needs correcting, but he might as well be delighting in the smell of blood, which for sure is just as keen in that morning air as is his beloved napalm.   

War’s and injustice’s cruel aftermath!   

How many of us decent citizens have ever been the recipients of cruelty as children?  I know I was.  I am not speaking of domestic abuse and violence; I suffered none of that.  I mean the kind of cruelty that one child can practice upon another on the playground or in the streets during playtime.  I was not a very brave kid.  I was terrified of rough play or physical combat.  Bullies were not unheard of where I spent my preteen years.  Some of what I underwent is such a painful and shameful memory that I could not bring myself to talk about it, much less put it down in print.  I saw what must have been criminals in the making, whether they ever stepped over onto the wrong side of the law or not.  My parents and I did not live in a very affluent neighborhood.  And I realize now all these decades later that the economic deprivations contributed to the shaping of many young minds.  A child fights back against such things and the inhibited scaredy-cats like me are an easy target.  If you get stomped on at home where you cannot defend yourself, you take it out on weaker playmates who you know will not make trouble for you.  The seeds of inferiority get planted in the child’s mind and as they germinate the seeds of superiority can grow up right alongside in a tug-of-war. 

What the two types of cruelty have in common – that which comes from close up and that which comes from afar – is the needlessness of it, whatever form it takes.  No human or social or political good is served when innocent people are savagely conquered and exploited.  It only serves to fulfill the demands of somebody’s warped understanding of their own or their nation’s or tribe’s importance and the supposed authority of their own brute strength.  Those immigrants who have found shelter in our country could tell us a lot about that.  We can only imagine what they have lived through.  Let us as a nation of peace and plenty welcome them and support them in their struggle to start a new life.  

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

Arrival (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

1 hr & 56 min, color, 2016

                                               

Visitors from outer space!  Often they are called “aliens”.  And in the minds of many the word “alien” has come to be a synonym for “enemy”, or at best someone who falls under suspicion, deemed a potential threat.  In the lore of science fiction we have become accustomed to variously shaped creatures from other galaxies who do not comport themselves as we earthlings do and make strange sounds that our scientists have to translate into our language(s).  Or in some cases the visitors have already familiarized themselves with our speech patterns and phraseologies and are prepared to communicate in the native tongue(s).  Or in the spookiest of the lore they may not speak at all but cast themselves in the cloak of mystery or make certain atmospheric things happen that have the sole effect of frightening the human race.  Who are they and what do they want other than studying us?

An “alien” by dictionary definition is actually defined not as an enemy but as an outsider, someone not a citizen of the given country or territory or region but simply residing among the native population – for a designated span of time as a visitor or for an indefinite future.  The question might hang over their heads, be they from outer space or immigrants from other nations: Are they our friends or have they come to subvert? 

Such is the question posed in the current movie “Arrival”, which has stirred up big box office and has arrested the attention of science fiction lovers worldwide.  Among its virtues is the astute portrayal by Amy Adams of a brilliant Linguistics professor and author, Louise Banks, who is called upon by the U.S. government and its military to penetrate a giant oval shaped object suspended over a field in Montana and try to ascertain the language of the aliens who dwell within it and to find out why they have come and what they want.  (Several others have landed in various countries around the globe.  Those nations’ scientific geniuses are at work also in penetrating the mystery.)  Adams does a superb job of bringing this petite lady of letters to life and giving her dimension and power.  Louise approaches her task with some fear, as would anyone in like circumstances, but she evolves into a gutsy fighter who stands her ground when she has to face up to hawkish powers that be, insisting that the visitors are not invaders and that time must be given for the people of earth to fathom their message.  Watching this dramatic transition take place is quite gripping and fascinating. (I am floored by Adams’ failure to garner an Oscar nomination.  She certainly does top drawer work.  I have not at this point seen all the contenders’ performances, but there is at least one she surpasses in my judgment.)

The screenplay by Eric Heisserer from a story by Ted Chiang certainly challenges the intellect and the imagination.  It leaves engraved upon our memories some awesome images, in particular the sight of Louise standing before the huge glass partition that separates her from the creatures who are entreating her for a meeting of minds.  The connections they make do not come easily.  We are not told how long she is at the site or how long the visitors from space stay, but the precise editing conveys the sense that the encounter lasts for at least many weeks.  The labor and the fatigue are constantly in evidence.      

Another plus is the eventual relationship Louise enjoys with her little girl, who interestingly enough is a product of the mother’s adventure with the aliens.  No, she is not impregnated by one of them; the father is scientist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) whom she meets at the site of the oval capsule and who supports and assists her in her struggle.  You will have to see the movie to understand how this parental linkage comes about.  When the film takes time to portray warm personal emotion it is at its very best thanks to the directorial skill of Denis Villeneuve. 

If only that skill had been put to more discerning use!  Some are calling “Arrival” a masterpiece, but I must dispute this claim. For one thing, I found nothing new about the soundtrack.  We’ve heard those growling chords more than once.  They sound like some primordial beast laboring with a stomach spasm.  And I found the cinematography to be equally heavy-handed – too many dark, dreary images, even in the case of exteriors. The film is a stirring drama of search and discovery, no doubt about that.  The concept it puts forth in the portrayal of intergalactic encounter is both startling and challenging.  But for me the story material eventually devolves into the working of an arguable premise and into misty confusion. 

There is nothing new about earthlings having a transformation of consciousness experience from an encounter with extraterrestrials.  In “2001: A Space Odyssey” the apes in the opening sequence, just from standing in front of the monolith and touching it, are changed from grubbing little lower life forms into rational homo sapiens.  And in “The Day the Earth Stood Still” we have a friendly outer space visitor come to earth to try to persuade humankind to abandon nuclear weapons.  Some are persuaded; many are not.

Those who have not seen “Arrival” might want to stop their reading at this point.  I am giving a spoiler alert here, before I take on what I consider this arguable premise – beginning with the following paragraph. 

For those of you still with me, here I go!

The premise has to do with the ability to tell the future.  Louise learns to look at time differently.  She finds that she can foretell her own future and has come to be joyous in the living out of what she sees coming.  But such a thing is humanly impossible.  Why?  Because the future does not exist!  You cannot foresee what does not yet exist.  It has to be created, and that takes time, years and years for most people – years and years of decision-making, of trial and error and the imposition of history that others have been instrumental in making.  To believe that such a thing is possible, one would have to presume that those futures are determined by someone else – God or some higher power of predetermination.  That would preclude any possibility of hope as a thing to hold onto, when nothing else is apparent.        

Yes, Louise is content and joyous in the living out of what she foresees, and why should she not be?  She lives in a comfortable, secure, and loving environment, with a loving husband and daughter.  But why would you take hope away from those who are not so fortunate?  There are thousands of displaced persons in our world, and many of them will never find a secure place; they will die in the middle of their plight.  Anyone who watches the news should be well aware of that.  Victims of poverty, war and agonizing disease!  The mere odds themselves tell you that.  I for one do not crave such an unearthly foresight, and I do not suppose that any other sensible person now living would.  The idea of time past closing some gap with time to come lends itself to a nice mathematical mind game, but as a working principle it is overwhelmed by hard reality.     

And would somebody explain to me how Louise is able by a quick phone call to turn a warmongering general into a peacemaker?  Somehow she has set forces in motion that result in nations coming together in unity.  But we are given no insight into how this is supposed to have been facilitated.  That, if such a thing is plausible, would be another story within itself.   

I would be willing to take part in a discussion of the movie with those who have found it other than I have indicated.  I am in a show me attitude!  What did I miss in my two complete screenings of it?  Or let me have argumentative feedback at least.  That would be exciting.  I wonder what Stephen Hawking thinks of it!

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

In the Heat of the Night (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

1 hr and 50 min, color, 1967

                                               

Landmark movies do not have to be super spectacular creations.  “In the Heat of the Night”, released fifty years ago this summer (yes, another half century anniversary), did not introduce any new cinematic devices or any technical innovations or original narrative techniques.  Viewers did not set new records in attendance; crowds were not lined up at box offices in serpentine formation around the block.  But the picture did sell, enough to start a groundswell of interest that led to Oscar victory and did make an unmistakable impact upon the American movie audience’s mind.  It was what it signaled that set it apart and drew earnest attention from all over the country.  To put it precisely, in the words of Malcolm Boyd, it was in this one that “the black man became a man” on screen at last, in every sense of the term.   The African American male image has never been the same since in motion pictures. 

Sidney Poitier is a proud, professionally competent northern police detective, a homicide expert, traveling through Sparta, Mississippi, who gets roped into showing bigoted small town sheriff Rod Steiger how to solve a murder and throws Jim Crow racism back into the redneck teeth with a flourish.  Director Norman Jewison and Screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, working from a John Ball novel, are our benefactors.  The film is full of high tension face-offs, and almost every scene is memorable.  It not only portrayed the entrenchment of Southern bigotry at the time but ripped into it and exposed its raw core.  And it did not do this in the garb of a docudrama or a narrated, topical illustration.  It was staged as one might stage any conventional who-done-it, served up with a heaping helping of police detective work and undercover investigating.  But its detective hero just happened in this case to be a man whose racial identity pushed buttons that set off a chain reaction of enmity and violent aggressiveness. 

This was not by a long shot Sidney Poitier’s first starring role.  He has been in films since the early 1950s and in most of them he has played a lead.  (The most memorable of those is “Lilies of the Field”, which I recently reviewed.)  But this was the first case in which the film was devoted intentionally and conspicuously to the red hot button issue of Southern styled racism.  By 1967 most of the landmark civil rights legislation of the Johnson years had already been enacted.  The 1963 March on Washington was recent history and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial was fresh in most Americans’ minds.  But of course what was on the books and what was being enforced were worlds apart.  Jim Crow still ruled the South, especially in small town and rural areas.    

Many of you reading this may be unfamiliar with the film for the simple reason that it came out before you were born or at least well before you were of an age when you would have been aware of its existence; maybe it got lost in the torrent of world events or of personal struggles of your own.  I myself was only thirty-four when I first viewed it at a theater on Times Square.  It was an afternoon in the middle of a week, with very few people present.  That was nothing unusual at a matinee, except for the fact that the rest of the viewers in the audience were all black, and they were so exercised by what they saw that I began to fear that maybe I, the lone whitey, would not get out of there alive.  (I did, of course!  They acted as if I was not even present, and that pleased me no end.) 

Can we now imagine how cathartic as well as electrifying it must have been for them to see a black man stand up to the white baron of the community, returning the man’s facial slap without hesitation?  That was a first, and it tore through the air.  The big shot is so startled by what this supposedly inferior black man has done that he is reduced to tears.  What gets unmasked in this scene is the essence of so-called Southern white paternalism.  We see that it is nothing more than a thin veneer loosely disguising hate, thuggery, and paranoia.   The black folk who saw it on first release must also have found catharsis in the scene in which three redneck hooligans gang up on Poitier in a garage, and this black Philadelphia citizen fights them back with courage and expertise.  This is one of two scenes actually in which the detective comes perilously close to getting lynched.  But he does not kow-tow for an instant. 

Not that the man is a crusader.  He is a reluctant participator.  He is on his way to visit his mother when he is corralled by a twist of circumstances into taking charge of the investigation.  He is not out to prove anything, other than the identity of the killer.  He simply believes in being thorough and professional in the performance of a duty, regardless of the time or place.  In the larger sense he has nothing to prove and is not out to impress the white establishment or curry favor.  

Poitier may be the focus of attention all the way through, but he is not the only leading player.  Rod Steiger is mammoth in the role of the sheriff, who is conflicted over the investigation Poitier is doing.  He feels pressure from two sides.  The white oligarchs of the town do not want Poitier to show them up; Steiger is ready to put him on the train and ship him out.  But the wife (Lee Grant) of the murdered man, an industrialist from the north who has come south to build a factory, has other ideas.  After seeing how hasty and incompetent the sheriff is in arresting a suspect who Poitier proves is innocent, she declares that she wants the black detective kept on the case until the true felon is caught, threatening to pack up her dead husband’s engineers and equipment and leave the area, if her wish is not met.  The factory is something of huge economic importance to the life of the community, and the bigwigs need to keep her appeased.  And there is Steiger right in the shaky middle – the horns of a daunting, king-size dilemma!  

Steiger was quite brilliant with anything he did, though he was never a box office champion.  He was something very special and quite versatile.  He might have second billing here, but he makes something prodigious out of this easily rattled, nervous, slouchy, gum chewing officer of the law.  Not only do we get to observe his chief’s performance on the job, but in an intimate scene the screenwriter takes us into his inner mind to show us how lonely and wretched he is.  By film’s end he has come to feel a quiet respect for Poitier.  Steiger’s work in the movie earned him a well-deserved Oscar, and the work of the combined cast and crew earned the Best Picture trophy.   

The settings are so believable that I sometimes get the feeling while watching that I am smelling the town, smelling the dusty roads, smelling the jail and police station, smelling the depot.  There is nothing phony about the visuals and nothing half disclosed about the reactionary fear of the isolated town.  And a low keyed jazzy score by the celebrated Quincy Jones on the soundtrack adds its rich flavor as well as the voice of Ray Charles singing the title song. 

Not often have I ever pleaded with my readers for their attention to what I am highlighting, but this time I cannot think of a better word for what I want to say.  I plead with everyone reading this who has never seen “In the Heat of the Night” to check it out from Netflix and screen it, or if you remember once seeing it but the memory is hazy, check it out and refresh yourself on a vital aspect of American life and history.  I am saddened to have to say that it still reflects upon a very real danger dogging at our nation’s heels.  Hate crimes and enflamed racism are still very much with us, as recent killings that have made front page news so painfully demonstrate.  Jim Crow may not be as dominant as he once was, but he is still lurking around.   See this and educate yourself a little more on the subject.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

Sully (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

1 hr & 36 min, color, 2016

                                     

The badge of heroism is not always so easy to come by.  So many who end up feted for valorous behavior or courageous undertakings have to be proven worthy of the honor, in some cases posthumously.  “Sully” is the true story of Chesley Sullenberger, the U. S. Airways pilot forced on January 15, 2009 to land his passenger plane in the Hudson River, with one hundred and fifty-five on board including the crew, when both of his engines conked out within minutes after taking off from LaGuardia; it seems a huge flock of birds collided with the aircraft and killed the engines.  He ended up doing what had never been done before in the entire history of aviation – using a riverbed as a landing platform for a jet.  He has long since been credited as a hero, but following his accomplishment he was subjected to testing and debriefing and the overwhelm of publicity that proved just as rugged as the ordeal in the air and on the water which he and his passengers and crew had survived.  Both the physical and the emotional tolls for Sully and his copilot are portrayed in no uncertain terms.

                                     

It is significant that the film begins with a nightmare in which Sully finds himself back in the air, trying to pilot his craft in descent over the New York skyline, the nightmare ending in his crash into one of the skyscrapers.  The flaming impact wakes him up in a state of abject terror.  He deals with the dream’s aftermath by jogging through the Manhattan streets.  What he is undergoing is a form of PTSD that he has to carry with him for many days, made no easier by the grilling he has to undergo from the flying commission’s panel.  The two airmen find themselves on the defensive about the decision that was made at the moment of midair crisis. 

                                     

Heroes it seems are not so easily recognized in present times, when everything in officialdom is appraised with caution and skepticism, both in government and in the private sector.

                                     

The challenge to derive something tense and exciting out of true story material in which the inspiring outcome is already known at large is one that few film makers seem to tackle anymore, but Director Clint Eastwood and his fellow producers have taken on the job with very informative and satisfying results.  The incisive screenplay is the work of Todd Komarnicki, based upon Sullenberger’s own book.   One thing that helped make the adaptation a success is the excellent casting of Tom Hanks as Sully.  He seems to be one of those multi-dimensional actors who can do no wrong; he has portrayed a plethora of characters during his many years on the screen, and he never disappoints.  His face always plays a major role in giving the character visibility of body and soul.  I will never forget how his countenance conveys the sharp edge of quiet incredulity when he hears that all passengers and crew members have survived the ditching in the river.  He does not dance around or whoop and holler.  He barely even smiles.  You know that he wants to believe it is true, yet it takes him a few stubborn moments to ingest the news and internalize it. 

                                     

If that had been the end of his internal warfare, there would scarcely be a story to tell.  The most trying days and hours, however, are yet before him, as his professional reputation hangs in an uncertain balance and he is virtually required to be guilty of negligence until proven innocent.  As Sully sees it, his three decades of safely flying passengers will be practically worthless to his examiners; he knows history will judge him solely for how he performed during what turned out to be only 208 seconds.

                                     

The crash and the rescue are enacted (in flashback of course) with superb attention to detail.  The passengers know something is wrong when the plane’s main power goes out.  The flight attendants must preside over near panic, especially after the dreaded message comes from the captain to “Brace for impact”.  The attendants must keep them all buckled up and bent over with heads completely down.  Sullenberger has to call forth his trained instincts and draw upon his years of experience and learning to make sure the wings stay level and well balanced over the water; if one or the other dipped, the plane would have flipped over and probably broken in half.  In such a case it would have been a different story; deaths would have been almost impossible to avoid, maybe many. 

Once the aircraft has ceased moving and settled in upon the riverbed, Sullenberger leaves the cabin at once and goes to his passengers with the urgent request to disembark from the plane, as water begins to flood into the aisles.  He and the attendants manage to get most all the people out onto the wings, though some activate the emergency exits and slide into the freezing water. 

                                     

What a blessing it was that the bird encounter took place where it did – in the New York vicinity where rescue help was plentiful and speedy.  The rescuers consisted of people who were primed and ready to save lives and had the provisions for getting the endangered passengers warm, and boating them out to the area to safety.  I lost count of how many there were.  I teared up a bit watching this display of humanity coming to the willing aid of humanity.  Eastwood takes his time with these details, and I am so glad he does.  He does not go for spectacle; he keeps the action intimate and heartfelt.      

                                     

What we are so vividly reminded of in this narrative is the fact that some decisions in this world must be made by only one person, even though many lives are at stake.  Sullenberger is required to act solely on his own; it is a dilemma he has not asked for.  The size of the flight crew, including the copilot, and the many voices over the radio giving him information about possible nearby airports where he might try landing was really of no help to him in the final analysis.  No one outside that cockpit could possibly have known what it felt like to be faced with his situation.  It is the loneliest place in the world to be.  It is not the kind of decision that he can take time discussing with fellow flyers; there is no time to weigh options in preparation for something that awaits him with hours or days to spare.  He had to act quickly.  That kind of thing separates the adults from the kids.  At first I found the panel’s digging to be harrowing for me to watch, but slowly I began to see that walking through that hail of stones provided a chance to open up this pilot’s heart and to place us all in that crisis, physically and emotionally.  It made the outcome that much more sweet and cathartic.   

                                     

Jeffrey Skiles, the copilot who stands with Sully and supports him with great admiration is warmly portrayed by Aaron Eckhart.  And though Sully and his wife (a marvelous Laura Linney) never do more than talk over the phone, the bond between them emerges as strong as if their encounter had occurred  in the wee hours of the night in their bedroom.  You can feel how much their arms ache for each other.  Those hours of separation while required to wait through the lengthy investigation must have been the most trying they as a couple had ever experienced.  Is it any wonder that Sullenberger retired during the following year, wrote his memoirs and concentrated on a new career as an international speaker on airline safety.  

                                     

While our nation’s moral compass is being weakened by a near despotic administration, this factual parable about true honor and idealism could not come before us at a better time. 

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

A Man Called Ove (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

1 hr & 55 min, color, 2016

                                            

It is not often that we see a lighthearted motion picture featuring an individual’s repeated attempts to commit suicide.  Yes, you are reading me correctly – suicide intentions made humorous.  Not an easy task, but a Swedish auteur named Hannes Holm, director and screen writer, has succeeded where many others would probably have failed.  The individual whose grim, resolute efforts are depicted is a fifty-nine year-old construction engineer Ove (pronounced o-va) laid off from his decades-long job and six months a widower.  He is in every respect a curmudgeon who alienates himself from his neighbors over the most inconsequential issues.  He is a loud constant complainer, what we Americans might call a regular sourpuss.  

                                             

Most of the magic in the story derives from an astoundingly effective performance by an actor named Rolf Lassgard, someone fittingly unhandsome, whose tall obese body, pudgy face and deep base bark give us a kind of ferocious music.  Ove is a perfectionist, whose avocation is watchman in a lower middle class housing project, a gated community where each morning he does the rounds and tries to enforce rules of cleanliness and order, including the disallowance of automobiles on the narrow main street.  He never hesitates to dress down any violator, however slight the violation.  But his job has become only a habit; his heart has not been in it since his wife Sonya died, a woman he dearly loved.  Each day he takes flowers to her grave and talks with her, promising to join her very soon.  He is such a “proper” person that before each attempt to snuff himself out he dresses up in his finest clothes, as if he is going on a date, anticipating his reconciliation with his beloved.  That practice alone supplies comic value to his brash behavior.  Something in his manner begs us not to take him too seriously. 

Of course he is not very good at dying by his own hand.  Something or someone always distracts him or interrupts him.  An attempt at hanging from his living room ceiling is thwarted when the rope breaks.  This failure impels him to march back to the supply store and bawl out the saleswoman for selling him material that is not as strong as she allegedly claimed it was. A plan to throw himself in front of a train goes awry when another individual on the station platform accidently passes out and falls onto the tracks, and he is faced with the “inconvenience” of rescuing the guy.  By the time the others present pull Ove to safety the excitement for him is passed.  An attempt to asphyxiate himself in his car garage is interrupted by neighbors who pick up the scent.  And it is neighbors again whose pounding on his door causes him to lose his grip on his shotgun pressed to his throat.  Even a stray cat does its share in slowing his rush to extinction.  You have to witness these scenes to really appreciate the droll humor in them.                                      

There is, however, a sober and serious aspect to the story, one that becomes visible to us in an extended interwoven flashback.  It seems that Ove has not had the happiest life.  Death has visited him with great shock three times.  First, his mother dies when he is but a small child, he being the only offspring.  Then his father, a railroad worker, is accidentally killed on the job when Ove is in his early twenties.  This crisis leaves him vulnerable and all alone, until he meets Sonya (played with great sparkle and zest by Ida Engvoll), preparing to be a teacher.  Their courtship is very touching and joyously uplifting and ends when she successfully supports him in becoming an engineer.  They have a long and largely happy marriage.   Of course the third death and the most heartbreaking is that of Sonya herself, paraplegic and childless because of a severe tragedy.  In the wake of her passing from cancer, which is never portrayed, Ove grows hard and decides that nothing good has happened to him other than the woman he has loved.  “There was nothing before Sonya and there will be nothing after Sonya”.  

The rest of the magic stems from a lively supporting performance. 

Bahar Pars plays Parvaneh,  a young Persian mother of two who is expecting a third, a refugee from her Middle Eastern country, a woman who turns out to be a match for Ove, at least in the strongminded department.  She and her young Swedish husband and their two children move in next door, and Ove is repeatedly drawn with much resistance into helping them with one thing or another.   Parvaneh becomes the closest thing to a real friend, something that causes some conflicting emotion for Ove.  It is Parvaneh who finally breaks through his shell and lets him know how insane he is thinking that he does not need anyone.  She is the one to whom he ends up telling the flashback history.  The sharing of it, which apparently he has kept for so long to himself, does much to quieten the self-destructive urge that has been driving him.                                          

It is a real delight watching the influence of the two women upon Ove.  He betrays the fact, ever so slowly, that he does have a conscience and a heart of sympathy.  It takes relatively little to uncover that heart that still beats below the bluster.  Every time he does a favor upon request we get the feeling that he is just getting some duty out of the way so that he can effect his escape from the lonely life he is living.  Just this one last bothersome thing before I depart!  But one “bothersome” thing leads to another and another, until we are finally treated to his smile.  For me the most touching moment in the story is his holding Parvaneh’s newborn baby and placing it lovingly in the cradle he once made for the child he expected but never had.                     

“A Man Called Ove” is a sensitive and warm movie, very much on the side of the angels, well written and cleverly conceived, adapted from a novel by Fredrik Buckman.  It is one of the most enjoyable films from the continent of Europe I have seen in quite a while. 

My only fault-finding has to do with the casting of the young Ove.  Filip Berg is a competent actor and one to whom I extend my best wishes in the pursuit of his career, but I think he was miscast.  Admittedly it is always a challenge trying to match up different generations of the same character.  But I see nothing in the physique of Berg that bears any comparison to Lassgard’s bulkiness and broad countenance.  The same can be said for their personalities.  One is unassuming, the other is forceful and in your face.  I cannot close the gap between old and young, something I know is possible in motion pictures, because I have seen it done many times.  But what makes the flashback so enjoyable nonetheless is the appeal of the lovely Ida Engvoll.  She is the dominant figure in most of the scenes in which Berg appears.  She is the sun that outshines his moon.  As such they make a lovely pair.                               

I highly recommend “Ove” for viewers who are drawn to storytelling about ordinary people struggling with sorrow and in transition toward crucial personal discoveries about themselves, people crawling out of cages of their own making.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.