Monthly Archives: November 2011

J. Edgar (2011)

Dir. Clint Eastwood

The colour palette of Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar seems to come from the dull tones of Hoover’s suits. His repression and conservatism, the two inseparable elements that form the core of his character, imposed on the world around him, drained of its living colour, forced into meticulous order. A life lived like the catalog system at the library of congress Hoover worships. Neatly filed though everything may seem to be, systems can never account for everything. Eastwood is interested in Hoover’s secret compartments, and in them perhaps the real man can be revealed. The film construes a genuine tragedy out of a man with no clear rise or fall. The Hoover of the film is pathetic from the outset, and the pain this causes escalates with every scene in the film’s ingenious non-linear narrative, that switches back and forth from an aging Hoover dictating his memoir, and the dramatization of the story he is weaving. Dicaprio renders Hoover as an achingly vulnerable weakling. Billy Crudup’s Hoover in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies provides a nice, complimentary performance. Crudup convincingly gives us the mechanical Hoover of the public eye and Dicaprio gives us everything under that shell, if not as convincingly, still as effectively when considering the dramatic heavy lifting required. Even if Hoover played an instrumental role in the capture of the Lindbergh kidnapper, it is a testament to his obsessively methodical nature which the film articulates as part of his tragic flaw, his order as his cage, his disposition as antithetical to his humanity, his feelings.

The film is compelling for sympathizing with Hoover at most every turn without ever aligning with his politics. When Nixon enters the film towards its end, he is offered no sympathy, yet his despicable act of ransacking Hoover’s office in search of confidential files is merely a further distortion of Hoover’s outlook, in which violating privacy is moral in the service of some greater good. The film portrays Hoover as having only three people in his life: his mother; his deputy; and his secretary. His mother, with whom he lived most of his life, shapes who he is and his abnormal dependency on her is shown to be one of the most poisonous aspects of his life. His repressed homosexuality is the central preoccupation of the film. In one painful scene, he makes a crude attempt at coming out to his mother: “I don’t like to dance with women, Mother”. In response, she insinuates she’d rather have a dead son than a gay one, sealing off any chance that Hoover will ever act on his homosexual desire. Armie Hammer is heartbreaking as the object of Hoover’s desire, Clyde Tolson, a man kept as emotional prisoner by Hoover as he was imprisoned by his mother. They spend all their time together yet never open up. On vacation in adjoined hotel rooms, the tension reaches its peak, but they can’t fuck so they fight. Their overwhelming frustration that boils over in this scene is henceforth subdued, a fact they ignore and live with. His secretary, Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts), is his other prisoner, last shown making a sincere gesture of loyalty. Hoover prized loyalty above all else, but in desiring it he stole it rather than earned it, yet Tolson and Gandy seem to arrive at the same place of pity-become-love. Hoover is unable to have a healthy relationship. He is damned by his capacity for love and inability to express it and Hoover’s character is one that suggests that the biggest men are sometimes the smallest.

Drive (2011)

Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn

I’m writing on Drive a tad late with the specific intention of applying the context of audience’s responses to the film. Were I to have written on Drive after initially seeing it I would have come off more positive. Not only would I have raved about it being great but also about seeing two great films with auteurist sensibility two Fridays in a row at the multiplex (the other being the superior Contagion, on which I have written). I do still think it is a very good film but my enthusiasm has been dampened by its widespread appreciation among those who seem to like it for all the wrong reasons, enjoying the superficial pleasures of its stylized violence and pop art aesthetic. Also, it’s about time someone said it: the fetishization of Ryan Gosling among hipsters and the like is downright creepy. This phenomenon has been a detracting factor for Drive (which deserves better) and the also hipster-friendly Blue Valentine (which doesn’t). I’m all for singing Gosling’s praise, indeed he is a very good actor but the second coming of Christ he is not (his fellow cast members of Drive, like Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks and Byran Cranston are all equally impressive and when it comes to Valentine, Michelle Williams is the more notable). Still, even if limited, Drive is a slick deconstruction of the American hero. The seemingly sweet underdog that is Gosling’s Driver is a psychotic with a dormant rage that surfaces with utter brutality in the film’s third act. It’s like a Watchmen-lite statement: the celebrated American hero archetype would have to be, in reality, immoral and dangerous. When the Driver puts on a prosthetic mask with a blank expression it is a symbolization of the dissolution of his identity but he is also putting on a superhero mask (aside: the Driver’s arc is vaguely similar to Batman’s in The Dark Knight) and a horror movie villain mask. As he approaches Ron Perlman’s character to exact fatal revenge, the Driver is photographed like Michael Myers, slowly stalking his prey with absolute certainty of the ensuing kill. Drive‘s more subversive elements may be going over the heads of its most dire enthusiasts, those who want to enjoy shallow Tarantino pleasures yet seem cooler at the same time. Whatever the effect of the film, Drive is a successful and entertaining Hollywood via Euro-sensibility exercise. Refn is clearly meant to make American movies, and I’m cautiously optimistic about his having the keys to Hollywood, and where that may lead.

Note: Expect a more extensive look at Drive from Cinémezzo contributor Mike Archibald in the near future