"Legends of the Fall" revisited

In the autumn of 1994, I saw Legends of the Fall on its original theatrical run.  I looked forward to this film for two reasons: Edward Zwick, the director of Glory, and Anthony Hopkins, whom I am yet to see give a bad performance in anything (and given his volume of work, that’s saying something).  I drove 45 miles to a “decent” movie theater, as I did for most all movies in those days, as my local theater was only worthy of bad porn.  I braced myself for what I was sure was going to be one of the best films of that year, as I sat in the dark and marveled at the panoramas of the Montana countryside, so beautifully photographed by Oscar-winning cinematographer John Toll.  I fell a little in love with beautiful Julia Ormond, who so sadly vanished from the American movie scene for so many years after this film was released.  And then I left the theater greatly disappointed.

Why, you ask?  Because the hero and central focus of the movie, Brad Pitt’s Tristan, is a JACKASS!!  A completely spoiled rotten, irresponsible, unethical, self-centered JACKASS!!  Have I made it clear enough that he was an utter and total JACKASS!!??  I hope that I have.  Allow me to explain.

Hopkins portrays a grizzled old veteran of the Indian Wars of the 1870s, bitter at the Indian policy his government ordered him to enforce.  He ranches cattle now, a few years shy of World War I, and has three sons on this ranch, along with several Native American hangers-on.  His wife has long left him, but his youngest and oldest sons have their mother’s disposition.  Only the middle son, Pitt’s Tristan, is his father’s child.  After the youngest child, played by E.T.’s Henry Thomas, brings a European fiancee’ (Ormond) home, he leaves for the war in Europe, where he promptly dies.  This leaves the other two brothers to fight for their dead brother’s fiancee’s hand.  Got it?

I had thought that now, twenty years later, I might would see this film again and find something I had missed the first time and see it in a new light.  After a Braves game a week or so ago, insomnia sets in, so I spent an evening flipping around Netflix and stumbled across it amongst the suggestions the service so all-knowingly provides.  Never let it be said that wisdom will overpower insomnia, as I did the dumb thing and cued up the movie, and alas, two hours and fifteen minutes later, I find that I’m going to have a very long day at work the next day, and that my take on this flick hasn’t changed.

Just as I remembered, almost all of the parts here are wonderful, except for one very essential property: a worthwhile hero.  The plot comes from a novella of the same name, written by author Jim Harrison, whose work has been compared favorably to Faulkner’s and Hemmingway’s.  Of course, I’ve not read the source material, so I cannot speak as to how faithfully Zwick and his screenwriters adapted Tristan’s actions for the big screen.  I can (and will) speak of the film, and will state that the movie is not horrible at all, because it has several good things going for it.  The locations are lushly photographed, the costumes and sets are perfectly detailed, and all of the performances are terrific, even Pitt’s.  Here’s an example of how one can assemble the perfect cast, the perfect director and the perfect crew in the perfect setting and begin to make a can’t-miss film, only to end up with something less than perfect.  It is not the performance of Pitt’s character that lessens this film; it is the character itself.

Legends of the Fall has the feel of a grand American Epic, in the fashion of Red River and The Big Country (both of which are amongst my favorite Westerns of all time).  The story winds through the years after World War I and the Prohibition era, with the characters aging and changing as they advance in years and alter their outlook on the world.  In that sense, it is an epic.  However, in the course of the epic events happening in these characters’ world, we’re presented a case study of a family that is dysfunctional in epic proportions, and the obvious hero of the entire story is so self-centered, immature and asinine in his choices and behavior that I can feel no sympathy for him, only for the folks whom his choices affect, often disastrously so.

Leaving a woman who loves him alone with HIS family for years while he wanders the Earth in “search of himself” (and not even having the decency to drop her off in Europe with HER family while he’s headed that way) is just one of numerous instances where this odd son puts those closest to him through absolute Hell.  I’m reluctant to go into much more detail, because as I much as I may loathe this particular character, he is the protagonist of the film and describing his actions in detail would give away too much of the story.  But shouldn’t a protagonist be likable, or least bearable?  It must suffice to say that while I understand a tragic figure can make for good drama, a selfish, stupid one just makes for a tragically wasted film.

Ridley Scott's "The Counselor" leaves me in great need of counseling...

Here's a recipe for a Can't-Miss "Great Hollywood Film" - 1.) take an original screenplay from Cormac McCarthy, the author of such hallmarks of recent American literature as "The Road," "Blood Meridian" and "The Sunset Limited."  2.) Get epic-master Ridley Scott, the director of such crowd-pleasers as Gladiator, Alien and Blade Runner to direct.  3.) Assemble an all-star cast consisting of Oscar winners and nominees like Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz and Brad Pitt to bring the story to life.  Your result from mixing all these ingredients will without a doubt get you one of the greatest films ever made, no matter what they turn out, right?  Right?  Well...

I watched The Counselor around 8:00 on a Sunday evening, and I am writing this review about eighteen hours later.  I watched the unrated, extended home video edit of the film, not the version that played in theaters last fall and was so savaged by critics and what few moviegoers paid to see it.  I watched it without distraction and without interruption, so as to assure my full attention be devoted to it.  As a result, I have suffered a mostly-sleepless night afterward, having the reprehensible things depicted in this movie invade my dreams and keep me awake for a lot longer than a more enjoyable movie would.  I have struggled to decide just what I think, or more simply, how I even feel, about this film.  I’m still struggling, but perhaps crafting this essay will help me decide just what my final opinion should be. 

The Counselor weaves a tale (or tries to) of the titular El Paso lawyer (Fassbender), who is never referred to by any name other than “Counselor,” planning on making some sort of drug deal with a powerful, shadowy Mexican cartel; a one-time occurrence that will theoretically set up him and his bride-to-be (Penelope Cruz) financially for life.  Since he can only afford to fly to Amsterdam and buy a 3-carat stone for her engagement ring, he apparently needs the money something fierce.  He works with a fairly successful drug-dealer acquaintance (Bardem) and a middleman connection to the cartel (Pitt) to make a sale to dealers in Chicago.  Through a series of double-crosses and mistaken assumptions, the Counselor quickly finds just how incredibly naive he has been, how hopeless his predicament is, and how many people will suffer the consequences of his decisions. 

The plot, as much of one as there is, is fairly simple, and mostly unnecessary, as the bare-bones story structure is mostly a means to provide these characters opportunities to have McCarthy-esque philosophical conversations with one another, so I’ll spare you any deeper summarization than that.  Save for a few minor action/violence scenes to bridge scenes of dialogue, the film flows more like one of McCarthy’s stage plays, with a great number of scenes consisting primarily of two characters talking at great length. Of course, there is that much-talked-about scene with Cameron Diaz doing… oh, how shall I say it?... gynecologically immoral things to the windscreen of a Ferrari, but even that scene is a talking scene, a flashback playing over Javier Bardem’s character talking about the event to the Counselor. 

Cormac McCarthy always populates his stories with morally bankrupt figures, and he may have surpassed his quota here.  There are no redeemable characters to be found anywhere in this film, save for the Counselor’s poor fiancee’, although one might could claim the level of her innocence/naivete’ is almost so pathetically great that she deserves what she gets, too.  Cameron Diaz’ portrayal of the cheetah-spot tattooed, cheetah-keeping girlfriend/business manager Malkina is so vampy that it’s either a brilliant acting choice or her acknowledging the absurdity of the character, but I’m not sure which.  Even Brad Pitt is not stretching his acting chops much, as he seems to be pretty much playing the same character he portrayed in Thelma & Louise twenty-two years earlier, but perhaps twenty-two years older, and in the only place in life that character could’ve ended up.  Fassbender and Bardem, however, do a credible job, Bardem in particular chewing the scenery enough to convey his character’s feelings of inferiority when next to the sexually and intellectually superior Malkina. 

I can’t imagine that any of Cormac McCarthy’s written work would translate word-for-word to an audible presentation in any conversationally believable manner.  Now, I’ve never heard any of his works in audiobook form, so I suppose I can’t rule out that medium as a possible mean of enjoying his complex dialogue, but there is a reason that (until now) he has never penned the screenplay for any of his other works adapted to film.  Sure, previous movies based on his books are notable for characters waxing philosophic in rather dreary/poetic ways (think Tommy Lee Jones in No Country for Old Men or Matt Damon in All the Pretty Horses), but the screenwriters of those films did a pretty reasonable job of following the Less-is-More rule.  The Counselor, being straight from Cormac McCarthy’s own hand, has no such filter, and for whatever reason, it seems Ridley Scott decided to film every bleepin’ word McCarthy wrote.  For example, Ruben Blades is in only one scene of the movie, speaking to the Counselor over the phone, giving a lengthy Hispanic/New Age-ish existential assessment of the Counselor’s situation, ending by quoting some obscure Mexican poet at length, (literally) driving the Counselor to tears.  Hell, it almost drove ME to tears. 

Avarice seems to be the focal point of whatever moral lesson the film wishes to teach. All of these characters are fabuloulsly wealthy by most any rational person’s definition of the word, yet all of the poor decisions, shady dealings and violent acts the characters exhibit are in pursuit of even greater riches.  The drug trade is the means to that end in this movie, but we never see any drug deals or (with one very brief exception) even any drug use.  There isn’t anything one could construe as a just ending for any of the characters here, so Scott or McCarthy certainly didn’t have any notions of delivering any sort of emotionally satisfying experience to an audience. It seems their only definition of success they possibly could have hoped to achieve was to deliver a blistering morality tale about the inevitable outcome of unchecked greed, and on that level, I suppose I must grant that they did succeed.

In the interest of full disclosure, I remind you that Ridley Scott is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers, so take my views on his work with whatever grains of salt you wish.  His work the last ten years has been spotty, as I acknowledge that his last great work was probably Kingdom of Heaven (and even the theatrical release of that film had structural problems; it was his Director’s Cut that made it to home video that restored lots of excised footage and produced a wonderful film).  Each of his films since, with the possible exception of A Good Year, has had script or story structure problems, probably culminating with how almost-incomprehensible Prometheus turned out to be.  He continues to be the consummate visual artist he has always been, however.  I challenge anyone to deny ALL of his films are visual feasts, and The Counselor is no exception, but I wonder why it seems he cannot identify weak screenplays as he advances in years. There are so many scenes and characters in the Blu-ray version of this movie that serve absolutely no purpose in driving the narrative that I wonder how much Scott’s long-time editor Pietro Scalia was actually in the cutting room during post-production.  Malkina’s visit to a confessional to tease a priest and a scene with John Leguizamo and Dean Norris discussing bodies in barrels are just two such scenes that should have been the first to go.

Did I like The Counselor?  I don’t think this movie is really meant to be “liked.”  It is possible that it is meant to be admired, or even respected.  In the end, it seemed to me that Scott and McCarthy were more intent on illustrating how God laughs at us when we make plans than they were on providing us a tale of redemption from evil or growth from baser desires.  I suppose it is a testament to Scott’s power as a filmmaker that, even in his mid-seventies, he still has the sway to get such a film financed, attract such a cast and get such a story on film despite its obvious shortcomings.   

I can say positive things about the stellar cast and how wonderful a job they all did with what they were given to do.  I can rave about Scott’s gorgeous use of the desert landscapes and corresponding color palettes to make yet another visually luscious film. I can’t see how I could bring myself to say I liked it, however.  As a fan of Ridley Scott, I’m glad I saw it, but I don’t think I’ll be making a point of watching it again.  I’ve lost enough sleep over it already.

World War Zzzzzz...

What does $200 million of Paramount’s money get you these days?  Certainly not a fantastic Star Trek movie – that was proven last month.  World War Z proves that it can buy you a gaggle of screenwriters, if you define a “gaggle” as five or more.  The completed movie, however, proves that said gaggle of screenwriters can’t guarantee you an interesting, much less coherent, screenplay.

It’s been said that when a popular genre reaches a point where filmmakers are producing comedies or parodies of it, that’s a sure sign the genre has all but “played out.”  While World War Z may not be a parody (Warm Bodies, from earlier this year, would better fit that bill), it’s at least a sign that the zombie genre is almost dried up from a dramatic viewpoint.  If the old saying about too many cooks spoiling the broth is relatable to filmmaking, then a slew of names under the “written by” credit should be taken as a cause for concern.  Brad Pitt’s production company won a bidding war five or six years ago for the rights to Max Brooks’ (son of Mel) novel about the oral history of a worldwide zombie pandemic.  Of course, this film bears no resemblance whatsoever to that novel, outside of its title and the fact that there are zombies in it, but Hollywood knows best, so out goes all the introspective, human stories and in goes swarms and swarms of computer-generated zombie termites, crashing helicopters, artillery fire and nuclear explosions.  Heaven forbid should somebody make a movie about people describing their experiences in such a fantastically terrifying time as a zombie apocalypse – nobody would want that, right? 

Pitt cast himself in the lead role, that of one Gerry Lane (a name which, for some reason, planted a Beatles’ song in my head and never let it go), who before his recent retirement, was some sort of go-to investigator-type guy for the United Nations at one point, although the movie doesn’t bother explaining any more than that to us.  He, his wife and two daughters manage to escape Philadelphia, by way of Newark, as the pandemic breaks out, narrowly and miraculously avoiding swarming death several times before being rescued and taken out to a helicopter carrier which serves as… Oh, screw it.  None of it matters, because you’ve seen all this before!  Did you see 28 Days Later?  Then you’ve seen this.  Did you see the pilot episode of “The Walking Dead?”  Then you’ve seen this.  The filmmakers have spurned a totally original take on the zombie-movie provided to them by the source novel for which they paid an astronomical sum of money, and instead chosen to make a zombie flick as they imagine Roland Emmerich might have.

Okay, sure, the zombies here evoke “hive” or “swarm” behavior, similar to flocks of birds or colonies of insects, presaged by images of those creatures in the opening credits.  This could be construed as slightly different from some other zombie flicks, but why do they behave this way?  Well, not only is that never explained, we’re also never even given a hint about what actually started all of this.  Oh, sure, there are couple lines of dialogue about somebody biting a doctor in Korea, and the Indian Army “fighting the undead,” but those plot points are never explored.

Gerry’s wife and kids? What about them?  They’re nothing more than a plot device, giving Gerry a reason to call back to the command ship and serendipitously get information that leads him to the movie’s next CGI-created set-piece.  Heck, for all we learn about those characters, “wife and kids” is really all the identification they require.  When a senior military official refers to them as “non-essential personnel” at one point, I wondered for a second if it was meant as a joke.

Why Brad Pitt would be so devoted to such a project that he would throw a good chunk of his own money at it sort of baffles me, too.  Don’t kid yourself, folks – Pitt considers himself a “serious” actor, and maybe with exception of Troy, has never done the “summer blockbuster” movie before.  What’s even more baffling is how the movie we finally get to see is a lot LESS a spectacle picture than was originally intended.  The final forty minutes of the movie are a complete rewrite/reshoot, eliminating a third act that would have centered around a massive zombie battle all throughout Moscow (a good portion of which was actually even filmed, but now won’t see the light of day) into the more intimate, thriller-type ending we get now.  I’ve read of how the original ending played poorly with test audiences, as well as Paramount executives, and how screenwriter Damon Lindelof, the man who made such an absolute mess of the Prometheus script last year, was brought aboard to formulate a new ending.  While that ending is the most zombie movie-like story arc of the entire film, it’s too little/too late by that point.  We’ve learned so little about Gerry, much less the characters who inhabit the medical research facility in which he finds himself, that it’s hard to feel much dread over what possible horrible fate may await him.

I’ve said in some previous review that once you’ve seen one zombie movie, then for the most part, you’ve pretty much seen ‘em all, and that remains so.  Given that semi-debatable fact, the only thing that can differentiate one zombie flick from another is the stable of characters inhabiting the story.  Since I really don’t know any more about Gerry Lane, his wife and/or his kids at the end of this movie than I did at the beginning, much less any cause for the pandemic, was their any point in my seeing it, other than to see that Paramount was willing to spend $200 million to convince me zombies can clickity-clack their teeth and swarm like ants…?

Revisiting David Fincher's "Fight Club"

Somebody, I can’t remember whether it was Groucho Marx or Woody Allen, once said that he wouldn’t belong to any club that would have him as a member.  This is the first flash of wisdom that comes to my mind after seeing what the central character of Fight Club experiences.  Perhaps it has something to do with my being male, and this flick is nothing if it isn’t an insight into the pent-up aggression that all men (or at least the straight ones) in modern society must feel, at least at one time or another.  The violence for which this movie is primarily known is certainly not the worst in modern cinema, but it has to be some of the most intense.  If there’s a movie I’ve seen that is more grotesque and disturbing, while at the same time engrossing and fascinating, I can’t quickly think of it.

Edward Norton portrays a man, whose name is not initially given to us, who can’t sleep.  Why can’t he sleep?  He’s not sure.  He only knows that he’s miserable.  He hates his job.  He hates his boss.  He hates living alone.  He can’t find any meaning to his life.  He narrates this story with the type of lines Hunter S. Thompson or Robert B. Parker would write in their pulpy novels; the kind of things only a man would say, and most likely only to other men (in one scene, “I want to destroy something beautiful; I wanted to break open oil tankers and pour crude on all of those pretty French beaches I’ll never see,” etc.).  He goes to all sorts of group therapy meetings, dealing with afflictions from which he doesn’t suffer, using the suffering of others to make his own seem less by comparison.  This newfound outlook brings him sleep, until he notices Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) appearing at all of these meetings, too.  She’s another like him, and it eats at his craw that there’s someone else in the room that isn’t really in pain; he needs to know he’s the only one in the room who’s really okay.

He next meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a stranger on an airplane that speaks to him more directly than perhaps anyone ever has, and seems to understand his inner torment better than even he does.  When our Narrator’s condo explodes in a mysterious gas explosion, he ends up rooming with Tyler in a dilapidated, run-down shack of a house where Tyler makes soap and explosives out of human fat garnered from liposuction clinics which he sells to department stores for twenty bucks a cake (“selling the fat asses of old ladies back to them,” as the Narrator puts it).  Tyler spews anarchic philosophy about being free of society’s rules, not being a slave to our possessions, the hell of being raised by women in a society of male rules.  Tyler begins a wild, raucous sexual affair with Marla, the shallowness of which disgusts our Narrator.

Somewhere in all of this, the two men begin fighting; not out of any disagreement, but supposedly for the adrenaline rush, or hostility towards the world at large, or maybe just because they don’t have anything more meaningful to do.  It becomes an ongoing thing, and pulls in other men who see them fighting and want to share in the energy.  Large numbers of strangers meet on a regular basis to pound the living snot out of each other, then return to their lives the next day, the bruises and gashes and broken noses not seeming to have any effect on their ability to hold jobs.  The sounds of fists landing on jaws and skulls landing on concrete floors pulses along with images of swollen cheeks bursting and eyes blackening, all the more disgustingly interesting for being in slow motion.  Our Narrator tells us that one never feels more alive than after a fight (as my last fight was in the fifth grade, my memory is a bit dim on that), and the club grows and grows.  Perhaps he just finally wanted to be in a club that would have him as a member.

The climax of the film is one of the better "twist endings you're likely to ever see, and in a somewhat unrealistic fashion, brings order to all this chaos.  David Fincher has composed a film that, for me at least, escapes a simple description.  There are turns in the film that demand we suspend our disbelief, or perhaps force us to.  Instead of turning me off to what came next, such turns lured me into what came next.  If I could think of movies with similar imagery to list for comparison, I'd do so, but none come to mind.

I have been a fan Fincher's since his days making music videos (his video for Steve Winwood’s “Roll With It” is still one of the most visually engaging videos of which I can think, and it was made almost twenty-five years ago).  His earlier films Alien³ and The Game were both visually impressive, but it's probably best that he made Fight Club when he did, as given how he has "graduated" to more commercially-acceptable fare like The Social Network and the remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, he probably wouldn't have been able to make a film like this now.

Different viewers may have different takes on the deeper meaning of our Narrator’s struggles with his outlook on life and Tyler Durden’s ultra-radical, nihilistic rants and raves, any of which may have merit.  As for myself, I don’t think the meaning is as deep as some others have stated, but I do think it’s deeper than a mere statement about men needing to find an outlet for the pent-up aggression in an ever-increasing pansy-fied society.  Fight Club is not for the faint of heart; humorous in places due to its out-and-out assault on our ideas of logical behavior (especially its closing scene), but gut-wrenching in others as we realize the depths of madness to which the Narrator has fallen.  I couldn’t not watch this movie.  On that basis, I recommend it, but if you do see it, don’t come whining and crying to me if you couldn’t take it (how’s that for focusing my male aggression?).