The Elderly and Beautiful Adventurers

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a surprising pleasure.  The main draw, of course, is its exemplary cast, who are introduced in their British habitats precisely in time to leave them.

Maggie Smith, Ronald Pickup, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton, Celia Imrie, and Judi Dench.  (c) 2011 Fox Searchlight.

-         Evelyn Greenslade — the delightfully subdued and spectacular Judi Dench — is recently widowed, having some issues with income and outsourced call centers as we all have.  While the remaining men in her life try to solve her problems as they see fit, she decides to give a whole new life a try.

-         Douglas and Jean Ainslie — Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton — are retiring.  Well, he is.  She is a housewife with dreams of glory.  They’ve entrusted their retirement funds to their daughter, so presently cannot afford to live as Mrs. Ainslie would like to become accustomed.  Listen for her “turning left” dream.  They’re a mismatched pair, him self-effacing, self-sacrificing and kind; her, not so much.  Even when she’s not whining, we brace for a sour note.

-         Graham Dashwood, a dashing judge — the always welcome Tom Wilkinson — is suddenly of a mind to retire.  Get away from it all, and back to the land of his youth.  And possibly more than just the land and its light and color.

-         Mrs. Muriel Donnelly is retired, alone, and trapped in a wheelchair.  She is humorless, bigoted, and terrified, and as played by the irresistible Maggie Smith, still likeable.  She cannot get about without a new hip, the waiting list for which is too long in England.  She can get it more quickly and cheaply elsewhere….

-         Madge Hardcastle — the wittily impish Celia Imrie — is tired of being a live-in babysitter for her married daughter.  She wants life, and sex, and a new husband.  Her adolescent grandchildren understand her better than her own daughter, and off she goes.

-         Norman Cousins has still got it, he’s certain, he just needs to find someone who wants it.  Ronald Pickup makes this character a 20-something stuck in a 60-something’s body, but his forays into London nightlife are disheartening.  Norman needs a new audience for his old pick-up lines, so he joins these strangers awaiting a flight to a new home for “the elderly and beautiful,” the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

The journey is hard, the arrival disappointing, despite the optimism and warmth of their host, the proprietor of the hotel, Sonny Kapoor.  The sweet-faced and sincere Dev Patel plays Sonny with just a tad too much enthusiasm.  Sonny is in love with (but can’t say it) the lovely Sunaina (a delicately feisty young woman played by Tena Desae), who works for her brother Jay’s (Sid Makkar) call center. 

Evelyn (Judi Dench) and Madge (Celia Imrie) arrive at their new home.  (c) 2011 Fox Searchlight

Sonny Kapoor has a dream:  to resurrect his father’s dream of this ancient hotel in this rundown part of Jaipur, India.  His ruling mantra is “It’ll all work out in the end.  If it hasn’t, it is not yet the end.”  The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a disappointment to say the least.  The phones don’t work (although the computer connected to the internet does), and Madge’s room doesn’t even have a door — until she takes over Sonny’s room, so now he’s in a room without a door.  That’s Madge for you.  Madge and Norman look for love separately and keep bumping into each other.  Graham was brought up in India, so he’s looking for his rose-colored memories, perhaps, or perhaps something more.  Evelyn reinvents herself in this new land by getting her very first job — in Sunaina’s brother Jay’s call center of all places.  Douglas Ainslie is enthralled by his surroundings, the smiling faces, the food, the land, the buildings, the history.  Jean Ainslie won’t leave the hotel she hates.  Mrs. Donnelly gets her surgery despite her fears, and settles in, talking to the silent food server.  Real life interferes on occasion in the person of Sonny’s mother (Lillete Dubey), but not too much.  Even the traffic jams are entertaining.

Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy.  (c) 2011 Fox Searchlight.

Does all this sound too good to be true?  Sure, but during the film no one cares. 

The actors are all very fine.  They take a lightweight script by Ol Parker (based on a novel by Deborah Moggach) and make it work. John Madden’s direction is swift without rushing.  The film pronounces its themes clearly:  Love is possible at any age, and retirement — not to mention life — will be what you make of it, money or no money.  And, of course, Sonny’s mantra. 

Every character (almost) has his or her arc of learning, growing, taking that first terrifying step into another life.  I won’t get specific here and produce spoilers.  Structurally I pronounce The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel sound — that is, the film, not the building!  If something’s amiss, it’s that the film is largely predictable, as is any story that strives for a happy ending.  This is a bit of summery fluff.  If you want no more than a sweet summer fling, sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

Evelyn reinvented.  (c) 2011 Fox Searchlight.

~ Molly Matera, signing off to look for a verandah and an exotic cocktail….

Debt Paid

“The Debt” is an unglamorous thriller that’s not about car chases or gunfights, or unlikely leaps from one building to another.  There are guns, there’s a van, and there’s an attempt to escape from East Berlin, but “The Debt” goes deeper into its characters, imprisoning the four main characters inside an East Berlin apartment and inside their own tortured lives. 

The prey:  In the winter of 1965-66, three Mossad agents are under cover in East Berlin to extract a Nazi war criminal, the “Surgeon of Birkenau,” and return him to Israel for trial.  The Nazi doctor is now “Dr. Bernhardt,” a kindly old obstetrician with a practice in East Berlin.  Jesper Christensen gives a chilling performance as the Nazi monster who can appear benevolent, charming, and lethal inside seconds. 

Jesper Christensen as the Surgeon of Birkenau

 The searchers:

• Stephan Gold (played by Marton Csokas in 1966, then Tom Wilkinson in 1997), to put it very simply, wants revenge and glory.  He is a political animal, and an angry one.  His rage is barely contained in his younger days, and well-directed by experience as he ages.  Stephan’s furious piano playing in the East Berlin apartment was particularly frightening.  Csokas is the only one of the primary actors with whom I’m unfamiliar, and while I cannot yet pronounce his name, I won’t forget it. 
• David Peretz (Sam Worthington in 1966, Ciaran Hinds in 1997) wants justice, and he wants it publicly:  The world must know.  His sole purpose is the mission.  He seems to live on despair as if he was doomed from birth just for surviving. Worthington’s face is bland, childlike, often immobile.  David keeps a mask in place as long as he can.  Only two things break through his discipline — the Surgeon of Birkenau and Rachel Singer. 
• Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain in 1966, Helen Mirren in 1997) may just want to be worthy of having survived.  She had been a translator, and the East Berlin mission is her first time in the field.  She is determined, but not yet as hardened as Stephan and not as fiercely stoic as David.  Soon after the mission, her life revolves around keeping the truth of the mission a secret, perhaps to protect herself, Stephan, and David as much as daughter Sara.

Chastain, Csokas, Worthington as Rachel, Stephan, and David in 1966.

The film goes back and forth between the mission in 1965-66 and its aftermath thirty years later.  The symmetries between Tom Wilkinson and Martin Csokas as Stephan as well as Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain as Rachel are remarkable. 

The older Stephan is as well written and acted as the younger — an angry young man grown up, ambitious, arrogant, manipulative, not one to deny himself the objects of his lust or to restrain his fury.  Mirren’s Rachel is Chastain grown much stronger after thirty years of building a persona for the world to see.  Accustomed to being in the public eye, only David can force Rachel to reflect.  Worthington’s David is less clear, and Ciaran Hinds as David thirty years later seems to be out of sync with the other actors.  He has enormous sad eyes, but his character’s actions speak much louder than his words.  The character David travels far in his quest for redemption, leaving Rachel to follow his path to its end.  I know this, yet it seems to me David was more effective offscreen than either Worthington or Hinds were onscreen.  In the 1997 story, David reappears like a revenant, unfulfilled in his mission for the world to know the truth, both about the Surgeon of Birkenau, and about 1966.

Excellent lighting helps to differentiate the locations and times of the film:  1966 East Berlin was dingy, wet and cold.  More rain entered the apartment than light.  Once back in Israel, Tel Aviv was bright, wide open, hot with a fresh wind.  The film makes powerful use of repetition in small details of scenes; in its lighting design ranging from grays to blacks to bright whites; in sudden changes from what we’d seen before and therefore anticipated. 

Helen Mirren as Rachel in 1997.

“The Debt” is based on an Israeli film, “Ha-Hov” written by Assaf Bernstein and Ido Rosenblum, directed by the former. 

Matthew Vaughn & Jane Goldman and Peter Straughan have crafted a screenplay for “The Debt” that is taut and disturbing.  Director John Madden does a fabulous job, filling the film with strained nerves, gasps, sharp turns, yet still providing food for thought.  Thomas Newman’s score adds to the suspense, as does Alexander Berner’s editing and Ben Davis’ cinematography.  Excellent fight choreography by Peter Pedrero presents very real people sweating, grunting, panting with the extraordinary effort to kill, capture, or just survive. 

“The Debt” has many white-knuckle scenes which do not dissipate like mist after the movie ends.  This is an intelligent thriller, its violence intimate and terrifying, its humanity sadly fragile.

~ Molly Matera, signing off, but not shutting off the light.  The world is far too scary for that.

History + Film + Robert Redford = A Story Well Told

Generally I don't think people should learn their history from films.  "The Conspirator" is the exception that proves my rule.  “The Conspirator” is intense, driving ever forward into a dark time in American history.  This intricate and intimate film tells more than the story of Mary Surratt, the lone female charged with seven men in the conspiracy to murder the U.S. President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State in 1865.  The film’s tag line is “One bullet killed the President, but not one man.”  We only ever hear about John Wilkes Booth.  This film assures that no one will ever forget the conspiracy – or Mary Surratt -- again.

The pictures are bright or stormy out of doors, dim and soft inside, with light flickering through curtains, halos around candles, and deep shadows in the corners.  There is a mustiness, a layer of dust, dirt and muck as director Robert Redford, writers James D. Solomon and Gregory Bernstein and the American Film Company pull us back in time.  The film’s performances are deep, crisp, with familiar actors becoming less so when embedded in the mid 19^th century -- and I don’t merely mean costumes and haircuts.

For me to give many details would do the film a disservice.  It is a riveting story, extremely well told.  It is deep without slogging or slowing down. The characters are multi-faceted real people, the prices paid to personal relationships, not to mention life, severe.  This is history, so it is no spoiler when I say that the film ends with the statement that, after Mary Surratt was hanged by the military tribunal, a law was passed that all citizens of the United States deserved civil trials, not military.

The film starts on a Civil War battlefield, with Union soldiers and officers suffering in the aftermath of a bloody fight.  Some lay dying, and we meet Union Captain Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy), wounded himself, trying to keep his friend Baker (a tad overplayed by Justin Long) alive by keeping him awake.  The battle over, Union soldiers search the field for survivors, and Aiken’s and Baker’s friend Hamilton (James Badge Dale in a quiet performance of an earnest, sensible, and loyal friend) finds the wounded pair.  We next see them all healed but still in uniform for a party.  Everyone is dressed to the nines, and an abundance of candles light the night.  A lawyer by profession, Aiken has a career and a pretty girl (Alexis Bledel) in his future, and plans for networking on his mind.  

A pleasant evening of social positioning is interrupted by the actions of the conspirators, Confederates attempting to throw the Union government into chaos and turn the tide of the war they had already lost.  Some of the scenes in the early part of this film will be surprising – and somewhat shocking – to many.  The assassination of President Lincoln was one act; the attempted murders of Secretary of State William H. Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson were also on the bill.  We see the young conspirators building their courage, sweating, pushing forward -- or running away.  We see some inexpert and frightening violence.  All that the writers and director throw at us brings us to the height of emotion felt in the capital city in April 1865 and prepares us for the political and legal wrangling to come.  It’s an interesting and stirring story, true to its own time, but also to ours.

Robin Wright is in rare form as Mary Surratt, drawn, dried out and silent, with an extraordinary core of strength.  Catholic, Confederate, and female, everything is against her in Washington, DC.  It was her boarding house where several of the conspirators, including John Wilkes Booth (Toby Kebbel) and Mary’s son John (Johnny Simmons), met and plotted.  The question in her trial was whether or not she knew that, or was just a landlady.  Evan Rachel Wood plays Anna Surratt, Mary’s daughter, sullen, romantic, stubborn, and loyal.  Very fine work, I believed every moment.

James McAvoy is totally true as Aiken.  He is like everyone else – he survives the war and is preparing for civilian life, riding his popularity and connections to a successful career.  He sees not only his President but his Commander-in-Chief murdered and naturally wants all the guilty parties brought to justice.  It just doesn’t occur to him that the law requires that all parties accused of a crime be defended competently, even if in the wrong court of law.  He does not want the duty foisted on him by his employer, Reverdy Johnson, to defend a woman accused of conspiring to kill the President.  Day by day, though, as he does his job as best he can, he questions himself, he opens his mind, he learns, and then he must question others.  Questioning popular opinion as well as those in authority makes for a doubtful future.  McAvoy passionately engages us so that we see what he sees, feel what he feels; we watch his face and understand what he is coming to understand.  Very nice work.

Tom Wilkinson is the Maryland lawyer Reverdy Johnson for whom Aiken works.  Johnson insists that Mary Surratt is entitled to an adequate defense even in time of war, national exhaustion, and hatred of the conspirators.  He leaves it to Aiken to carry forward the defense, perhaps honestly thinking this young officer will be viewed more fairly than the southern-sounding Marylander.  Perhaps not.  Wilkinson is not at the top of his game here, but rather a smidgen over it.

Kevin Kline lives the part of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, staunch, determined, sure of himself.  He’s an extraordinary actor, brilliant in his youth, and steadily more so as he ages.  Long may he reign.

Colm Meaney is the leader of the military tribunal that tries Mary Surratt, Danny Huston the prosecutor Joseph Holt. Both are interesting players, making it clear that what’s behind what sometimes appears to be a witch hunt may be a little more complex.  This was not the writers trying to be even handed.  This was a fair presentation of different points of view of the people trying to hold the country together in a time of crisis.  These two actors were up to the task.

Aiken’s girlfriend Sarah Weston clearly hoped for a settled future with a war hero and a lawyer, until he actually did his best to follow the law and defend his unpopular client.  Alexis Bledel is a rather quirky, charming actress, but doesn’t quite fit in this role. 

Jonathan Groff gives an odd performance as Louis Weichmann, a friend of the Surratt household who turned against Mary.  Although it was clear he lied through his testimony, as did others, his disposition was so off-kilter that he distracted from the story.  I thought of him not as Weichmann, but as Groff the actor making strange choices that, whatever they were, might have worked on stage, but which were not working on film.

None of the testimonies mattered, of course.  The military tribunal had essentially decided on Mrs. Surratt’s guilt – the only disagreement was about hanging her.  All they wanted was her son, John, but he remained in hiding out of the country.  However the audience might have felt in the beginning of the film, when politics overrules law, even those who stood with Secretary of War Stanton might waver.

John Cullum has a small but choice role as Judge Wylie, who stands for the law and the rights of citizens instead of following the hysteria and short-term vengeance of other leaders of the nation. Cullum is simple and straightforward and gravelly as a tired old man who pulls what he requires from young Aiken.

Frederick Aiken believed in the law, but the law did not prevail at this moment in history.  Perfectly understandable political vengeance prevailed, our divided country was wounded in a way it did not even notice, and Frederick Aiken left the profession of law as if it were a mistress who had betrayed him.

Beginning to end, Robert Redford’s direction is flawless, the story moves forward, pauses for a moment’s reflection, then moves forward again to its inevitable climax.  This is history, after all. While people and quotes from primary research sources are bound to be left out to keep the story moving and uncluttered, these filmmakers were clearly determined on deep research and accuracy.  "The Conspirator" tells the story of the people as they were and their actions, all in a well-structured and -performed film.  We follow Frederick Aiken on his emotional and intellectual journey, we feel with him, we rage with him, we change with him.  The solid, crisp, yet deeply felt script by James D. Solomon and Gregory Bernstein is expertly handled by Mr. Redford.  I’d be interested in any story these three might venture to tell together in future.

The viewer’s mind is riveted to this shocking story in the past, but finally flashes forward to our present conflicts and issues.  Nothing really changes, does it.

~ Molly Matera, turning off the computer, but not the light.  Lots of reading to do…