Brooklyn, and especially Manhattan, have rarely been as vibrantly rendered as in Scott McGehee and David Siegel's excellent
Uncertainty, set on a hot July 4 holiday, one of the finds of this year's Toronto International Film Festival. Missing are the more self-conscious, academic touches that slowed down their earlier films, such as
Suture (1993)and
The Deep End (2001). Here, beginning and ending on the Brooklyn Bridge, the codirectors give you two, two, two films in one: parallel narratives occurring simultaneously in both boroughs with the same couple, Bobby (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Kate (Lynn Collins), at the center of each. Realistic, no, but you go with it. Rain Li's mostly handheld camera, and Paul Zucker's creative editing, dynamize the enterprise, and the intensity of collaboration between filmmakers and actors is apparent.(Much of the dialog was improvised.)
The Brooklyn drama is charged by the intensity of family issues at the home of Kate's parents, where relatives have gathered for a barbecue. Mom is worried about the future of a younger daughter, an uncle has mental problems; things would become even more complicated if they all knew that Kate is 11 weeks pregnant, and that she and Bobby have not figured out what to do about it. The Manhattan tale is high-energy, high-action: A cell phone they find in the back of a cab leads them to a criminal who sends goons to kill them. Most of those scenes are shot in Chinatown, among real people, no "sets" as such, and, in spite of some improbably plot twists, it all feels so alive, so real.
The Manhattan Richard Linklater attempts to capture in
Me and Orson Welles, a UK-backed film, is fake from the get-go. It's set around Welles's Mercury Theater in 1937, but the production is hampered by the period fakery. If you are going to place the action seven decades back, then budget the requisite amount. This is plain cheesy, less American than Stilton.
The movie involves a young acting student, Richard (Zac Efron), who gets a non-paying job playing Lucius to the Brutus of Welles (Christian McKay)in a problematic production of
Julius Caesar. Based on the novel by Robert Kaplow, the producers must have thought that
Me and Orson Welles would come to life through McKay's performance. He had done a one-man show as Welles, and here he is very good. Claire Danes does a superb job as Sonja, the married genius's girl Friday (and Saturday and Sunday), and Efron is okay, though more of a pretty boy than a gifted thespian at this point.
Linklater is versatile, as we all know, having made two-character romantic films like
Before Sunrise and
Before Sunset, and toyed with unique animation, not to mention taking a (disastrous) shot at a cinematic version of
Fast Food Nation. This, however, is hack work, servicable but undistinguished. He is a talented, ballsy filmmaker, and I hope this was just a project to pay off the mortgage.
He might have benefited from watching Kenneth Branagh's
In the Bleak Midwinter(1995), a very low-budget, funny let's-put-on-a-play film with a soul, in which an unemployed actor on the verge of a nervous breakdown directs
Hamlet with some dodgy performers in an effort to save a church. The dialog and interaction feel natural, unlike the overly scripted ripostes in
Me and Orson Welles. In the latter film, McKay's nasty one-liners and Danes's sex-inflected commentary become tiresome. Efron is like a pincushion in their presence. The set-up is even worse against the fake backdrops, both interior and exterior.
McGehee and Siegel, on the other hand, had the resourcefulness to fully integrate their characters into an electrifying, unforgettable mise-en-scene in
Uncertainty.
#
posted by Howard Feinstein @ 9/10/2008 09:48:00 PM
Comments (0)
