Back with more reviews
Back in Europe, and here are the results of another 12 hours with Lufthansa's inflight entertainment program:
Woman in Gold: Trufax: When I was in Los Angeles this last week, I visited a friend of mine, the fabulous Barbara Schönberg, who asked whether I had seen this movie yet. I hadn't. "I'm in it," she said, "well, an actress supposed to be me, strolling through a cemetery with Helen Mirren. Also my son Randy is one of the two main characters, and the other is my friend Maria. But my parents aren't in the flashbacks, when they were Maria's best friends! That was wrong. But they are buried in that cemetery Helen Mirren is walking through, so at least they are in the film in a way."
So I watched the movie, in which Barbara's friend Maria is played by Tatiana Maslany when young and by Helen Mirren when old. Her son Randy is played by Ryan Reynolds. ("He ought to be flattered", said a mutual friend who also asked me whether I had seen the movie. "I mean, have you met Randy? He does NOT look like Ryan Reynolds.") (I have met Randy, and no, he doesn't.) The director is Simon Curtis, who also directed My Week with Marilyn, and it's the same type of film, a good acting vehicle, playing on add couple dynamics, without ever being great. Helen Mirren and Tatiana Maslany are both in fine form as Maria, offspring of a wealthy Jewish Viennese family and niece to Adele Bloch-Gruber whose portrait (painted by Gustav Klimt) gets stolen (along with everything else) by the Nazis; Maria's effort to get it back decades later is the main plot of the movie, and Barbara's son Randy is her lawyer. The movie's non Jewish Austrians are smug soulless jerks except for earnest investigative journalist Hubertus Czernin who is played by Daniel Brühl and the main reason why Austrian reviewers were indignant about this film, as I just found out via googling. According to every Austrian article the internet has available, the late Hubertus Czernin (he died in 2006) was "the true hero of the story", who as a part of his investigations into the fate of stolen art for a series of articles that was already being published came across the Klimt painting case and contacted Maria Hartman in the States, whereupon the whole thing got rolling, as opposed to waylaying her at the airport of Vienna as in the movie and joining her and Randy Schönberg belatedly. The articles to a writer also complain To me, this sounds a bit like the indignation about Argo, re: the role of the Canadian ambassador in movie versus reality, with the complaints in both cases being that it's downplayed in favour of an American character getting the central white knight role. Though a) dear Austrian reviewers, wouldn't you say the true hero of the story is Maria, not either Randy or Hubertus, and b) from what I've read about the late Hubertus Czernin, he wouldn't have minded. In the easily availalbe interview you can google about the case, he mainly talks about how amazing Maria is. (Not that he's not an interesting and sympathetic figure both in reality and in the movie; he was a life long crusader against cover ups of the Nazi past, with his most famous case probably being Kurt Waldheim's.)
Anyway, making young Randy central isn't the only obvious Hollywoodism; young Maria in Vienna with her husband also gets a chase scene in which she and her husband run from the Gestapo and escape to the airport, which according to said reviews never happened, either. (Also she didn't leave Vienna until after, not before as in the movie, the death of her father.) Old Maria and Randy hunt down a copy of Aunt Adele's will via secret mole/pal of Hubertus Czernin in the archive via going through endless dusty folders when in reality there was no problem getting a copy officially (and it wasn't kept in that particular archive, either). But none of this takes away of the core of the story, Maria as a survivor of monstrous injustice to whom the point isn't simply who has physical possession of the painting in question but a way to retrieve something of her identity and her lost family. (While Randy's arc is going from glib young lawyer to whom the Holocaust was eons ago and not something that concerns him personally to literally throwing up once the reality of it all hits him in Austria. (Btw, as opposed to Maria's reaction when visiting Austria - very much against her will - for the first time since she left it due to the legal procedings, I doubted Randy's reaction, if only because I know his mother Barbara visits Vienna every year, and I can't believe she never took the kids along, so real Randy Schönberg in all likelihood would have been already familiar with Vienna before the Maria Hartmann suit.)
A word re: language - to its credit, the movie has everyone in the Vienna flashback talk in (subtitled) German. (In the present, Maria refuses to speak German, until eventually near the end she says one sentence, so Helen Mirren just has to say that one sentence as well.) This means Tatiana Maslany had to do all her acting in a language she doesn't speak (that I know of), and yet she's as amazing as usual. She also must have trained the intonations and speech rhythms, which are right. You can still hear she's not a native because the ch occasionally trips her up - it's the toughest thing to get right for original English speakers - but it still sounds excellent. If there ever is a Katja flashback in Orphan Black, she's ready for it.
Jane the Virgin, pilot episode: another show about which I'd heard a lot of good things. The pilot episode was delightful and funny; between Jane, her mother, her grandmother and the doctor who accidentally artificially impregnates her because of the really bad day she's having, there are already four female characters whom I'm already looking forward to find out more about.
Far from the Madding Crowd: gorgeous cinematography, which I hope won many awards. This is one of those films where you could still frame every screencap, basically. (Who knew dead sheep could look beautiful? Here they do. Also devastating, because of what their death means.) I must confess I haven't read any Thomas Hardy - neither te book this film is based on nor any of the others, and only one or two of the poems -, but because his reputation via pop culture osmosis is for ultra depressing, I was expecting a darker ending than what we got. Carey Mulligan - btw, given what a star she's become by now, it's a amazing to I hadn't seen her as anyone but Sally Sparrow in DW's Blink only a couple of years ago - is fine as Batsheba Everdeen, the heroine, though I must say: male 19th century authors really seem to be wedded to the idea that a woman will first go for the shallow rascal rather than the worthy guy truly devoted to her, don't they? Ah well, it means a lot of UST and smouldering.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1111264.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Woman in Gold: Trufax: When I was in Los Angeles this last week, I visited a friend of mine, the fabulous Barbara Schönberg, who asked whether I had seen this movie yet. I hadn't. "I'm in it," she said, "well, an actress supposed to be me, strolling through a cemetery with Helen Mirren. Also my son Randy is one of the two main characters, and the other is my friend Maria. But my parents aren't in the flashbacks, when they were Maria's best friends! That was wrong. But they are buried in that cemetery Helen Mirren is walking through, so at least they are in the film in a way."
So I watched the movie, in which Barbara's friend Maria is played by Tatiana Maslany when young and by Helen Mirren when old. Her son Randy is played by Ryan Reynolds. ("He ought to be flattered", said a mutual friend who also asked me whether I had seen the movie. "I mean, have you met Randy? He does NOT look like Ryan Reynolds.") (I have met Randy, and no, he doesn't.) The director is Simon Curtis, who also directed My Week with Marilyn, and it's the same type of film, a good acting vehicle, playing on add couple dynamics, without ever being great. Helen Mirren and Tatiana Maslany are both in fine form as Maria, offspring of a wealthy Jewish Viennese family and niece to Adele Bloch-Gruber whose portrait (painted by Gustav Klimt) gets stolen (along with everything else) by the Nazis; Maria's effort to get it back decades later is the main plot of the movie, and Barbara's son Randy is her lawyer. The movie's non Jewish Austrians are smug soulless jerks except for earnest investigative journalist Hubertus Czernin who is played by Daniel Brühl and the main reason why Austrian reviewers were indignant about this film, as I just found out via googling. According to every Austrian article the internet has available, the late Hubertus Czernin (he died in 2006) was "the true hero of the story", who as a part of his investigations into the fate of stolen art for a series of articles that was already being published came across the Klimt painting case and contacted Maria Hartman in the States, whereupon the whole thing got rolling, as opposed to waylaying her at the airport of Vienna as in the movie and joining her and Randy Schönberg belatedly. The articles to a writer also complain To me, this sounds a bit like the indignation about Argo, re: the role of the Canadian ambassador in movie versus reality, with the complaints in both cases being that it's downplayed in favour of an American character getting the central white knight role. Though a) dear Austrian reviewers, wouldn't you say the true hero of the story is Maria, not either Randy or Hubertus, and b) from what I've read about the late Hubertus Czernin, he wouldn't have minded. In the easily availalbe interview you can google about the case, he mainly talks about how amazing Maria is. (Not that he's not an interesting and sympathetic figure both in reality and in the movie; he was a life long crusader against cover ups of the Nazi past, with his most famous case probably being Kurt Waldheim's.)
Anyway, making young Randy central isn't the only obvious Hollywoodism; young Maria in Vienna with her husband also gets a chase scene in which she and her husband run from the Gestapo and escape to the airport, which according to said reviews never happened, either. (Also she didn't leave Vienna until after, not before as in the movie, the death of her father.) Old Maria and Randy hunt down a copy of Aunt Adele's will via secret mole/pal of Hubertus Czernin in the archive via going through endless dusty folders when in reality there was no problem getting a copy officially (and it wasn't kept in that particular archive, either). But none of this takes away of the core of the story, Maria as a survivor of monstrous injustice to whom the point isn't simply who has physical possession of the painting in question but a way to retrieve something of her identity and her lost family. (While Randy's arc is going from glib young lawyer to whom the Holocaust was eons ago and not something that concerns him personally to literally throwing up once the reality of it all hits him in Austria. (Btw, as opposed to Maria's reaction when visiting Austria - very much against her will - for the first time since she left it due to the legal procedings, I doubted Randy's reaction, if only because I know his mother Barbara visits Vienna every year, and I can't believe she never took the kids along, so real Randy Schönberg in all likelihood would have been already familiar with Vienna before the Maria Hartmann suit.)
A word re: language - to its credit, the movie has everyone in the Vienna flashback talk in (subtitled) German. (In the present, Maria refuses to speak German, until eventually near the end she says one sentence, so Helen Mirren just has to say that one sentence as well.) This means Tatiana Maslany had to do all her acting in a language she doesn't speak (that I know of), and yet she's as amazing as usual. She also must have trained the intonations and speech rhythms, which are right. You can still hear she's not a native because the ch occasionally trips her up - it's the toughest thing to get right for original English speakers - but it still sounds excellent. If there ever is a Katja flashback in Orphan Black, she's ready for it.
Jane the Virgin, pilot episode: another show about which I'd heard a lot of good things. The pilot episode was delightful and funny; between Jane, her mother, her grandmother and the doctor who accidentally artificially impregnates her because of the really bad day she's having, there are already four female characters whom I'm already looking forward to find out more about.
Far from the Madding Crowd: gorgeous cinematography, which I hope won many awards. This is one of those films where you could still frame every screencap, basically. (Who knew dead sheep could look beautiful? Here they do. Also devastating, because of what their death means.) I must confess I haven't read any Thomas Hardy - neither te book this film is based on nor any of the others, and only one or two of the poems -, but because his reputation via pop culture osmosis is for ultra depressing, I was expecting a darker ending than what we got. Carey Mulligan - btw, given what a star she's become by now, it's a amazing to I hadn't seen her as anyone but Sally Sparrow in DW's Blink only a couple of years ago - is fine as Batsheba Everdeen, the heroine, though I must say: male 19th century authors really seem to be wedded to the idea that a woman will first go for the shallow rascal rather than the worthy guy truly devoted to her, don't they? Ah well, it means a lot of UST and smouldering.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1111264.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.